Abstract: Organizational culture fosters innovation, and
innovation is the main engine to be sustained within the uncertainty
market. Like other countries, the construction industry significantly
contributes to the economy, society and technology of Malaysia, yet,
innovation is still considered slow compared to other industries such
as manufacturing. Given the important role of an architect as the key
player and the contributor of new ideas in the construction industry,
there is a call to identify the issue and improve the current situation
by focusing on the architectural firms. In addition, the existing
studies tend to focus only on a few dimensions of organizational
culture and very few studies consider whether innovation is being
generated or adopted. Hence, the present research tends to fill in the
gap by identifying the organizational cultures that foster or hinder
innovation generation and/or innovation adoption, and propose a
model of organizational culture and innovation generation and/or
adoption.
Abstract: SEMG (Surface Electromyogram) is one of the
bio-signals and is generated from the muscle. And there are many
research results that use forearm EMG to detect hand motions. In this
paper, we will talk about our developed the robot hand system that can
control grasping power by SEMG. In our system, we suppose that
muscle power is proportional to the amplitude of SEMG. The power is
estimated and the grip power of a robot hand is able to be controlled
using estimated muscle power in our system. In addition, to perform a
more precise control can be considered to build a closed loop feedback
system as an object to a subject to pressure from the edge of hand. Our
objectives of this study are the development of a method that makes
perfect detection of the hand grip force possible using SEMG patterns,
and applying this method to the man-machine interface.
Abstract: Salinity level may affect early development of
biofuel feedstock crops. The biofuel feedstock crops canola
(Brassica napus L.), sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], and
sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.); and the potential feedstock crop
sweet corn (Zea mays L.) were planted in media in pots and treated
with aqueous solutions of 0, 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 M NaCl once at: 1)
planting; 2) 7-10 days after planting or 3) first true leaf expansion.
An additional treatment (4) comprised of one-half strength of the 0.1,
0.5 and 1.0 M (concentrations 0.05, 0.25, 0.5 M at each application)
was applied at first true leaf expansion and four days later. Survival
of most crops decreased below 90% above 0.5 M; survival of canola
decreased above 0.1 M. Application timing had little effect on crop
survival. For canola root fresh and dry weights improved when
application was at plant emergence; for sorghum top and root fresh
weights improved when the split application was used. When
application was at planting root dry weight was improved over most
other applications. Sunflower top fresh weight was among the
highest when saline solutions were split and top dry weight was
among the highest when application was at plant emergence. Sweet
corn root fresh weight was improved when the split application was
used or application was at planting. Sweet corn root dry weight was
highest when application was at planting or plant emergence. Even at
high salinity rates survival rates greater than what might be expected
occurred. Plants that survived appear to be able to adjust to saline
during the early stages of development.
Abstract: Recently, several designs of single fed circularly
polarized microstrip antennas have been studied. Relatively, a few
designs for achieving circular polarization using triangular microstrip
antenna are available. Typically existing design of single fed
circularly polarized triangular microstrip antennas include the use of
equilateral triangular patch with a slit or a horizontal slot on the patch
or addition a narrow band stub on the edge or a vertex of triangular
patch.
In other word, with using a narrow band tune stub on middle of an
edge of triangle causes of facility to compensate the possible
fabrication error and substrate materials with easier adjusting the
tuner stub length. Even though disadvantages of this method is very
long of stub (approximate 1/3 length of triangle edge). In this paper,
instead of narrow band stub, a wide band stub has been applied,
therefore the length of stub by this method has been decreased
around 1/10 edge of triangle in addition changing the aperture angle
of stub, provides more facility for designing and producing circular
polarization wave.
Abstract: Simultaneous recovery of copper and DCA from
simulated MEUF concentrated stream was investigated. Effects of
surfactant (DCA) and metal (copper) concentrations, surfactant to
metal molar ratio (S/M ratio), electroplating voltage, EDTA
concentration, solution pH, and salt concentration on metal recovery
and current efficiency were studied. Electric voltage of -0.5 V was
shown to be optimum operation condition in terms of Cu recovery,
current efficiency, and surfactant recovery. Increasing Cu recovery and
current efficiency were observed with increases of Cu concentration
while keeping concentration of DCA constant. However, increasing
both Cu and DCA concentration while keeping S/M ratio constant at
2.5 showed detrimental effect on Cu recovery at DCA concentration
higher than 15 mM. Cu recovery decreases with increasing pH while
current efficiency showed an opposite trend. It is believed that
conductivity is the main cause for discrepancy of Cu recovery and
current efficiency observed at different pH. Finally, it was shown that
EDTA had adverse effect on both Cu recovery and current efficiency
while addition of NaCl salt had negative impact on current efficiency
at concentration higher than 8000 mg/L.
Abstract: Fisheries management all around the world is
hampered by the lack, or poor quality, of critical data on fish
resources and fishing operations. The main reasons for the chronic
inability to collect good quality data during fishing operations is the
culture of secrecy common among fishers and the lack of modern
data gathering technology onboard most fishing vessels. In response,
OLRAC-SPS, a South African company, developed fisheries datalogging
software (eLog in short) and named it Olrac. The Olrac eLog
solution is capable of collecting, analysing, plotting, mapping,
reporting, tracing and transmitting all data related to fishing
operations. Olrac can be used by skippers, fleet/company managers,
offshore mariculture farmers, scientists, observers, compliance
inspectors and fisheries management authorities. The authors believe
that using eLog onboard fishing vessels has the potential to
revolutionise the entire process of data collection and reporting
during fishing operations and, if properly deployed and utilised,
could transform the entire commercial fleet to a provider of good
quality data and forever change the way fish resources are managed.
In addition it will make it possible to trace catches back to the actual
individual fishing operation, to improve fishing efficiency and to
dramatically improve control of fishing operations and enforcement
of fishing regulations.
Abstract: In digital signal processing it is important to
approximate multi-dimensional data by the method called rank
reduction, in which we reduce the rank of multi-dimensional data from
higher to lower. For 2-dimennsional data, singular value
decomposition (SVD) is one of the most known rank reduction
techniques. Additional, outer product expansion expanded from SVD
was proposed and implemented for multi-dimensional data, which has
been widely applied to image processing and pattern recognition.
However, the multi-dimensional outer product expansion has behavior
of great computation complex and has not orthogonally between the
expansion terms. Therefore we have proposed an alterative method,
Third-order Orthogonal Tensor Product Expansion short for 3-OTPE.
3-OTPE uses the power method instead of nonlinear optimization
method for decreasing at computing time. At the same time the group
of B. D. Lathauwer proposed Higher-Order SVD (HOSVD) that is
also developed with SVD extensions for multi-dimensional data.
3-OTPE and HOSVD are similarly on the rank reduction of
multi-dimensional data. Using these two methods we can obtain
computation results respectively, some ones are the same while some
ones are slight different. In this paper, we compare 3-OTPE to
HOSVD in accuracy of calculation and computing time of resolution,
and clarify the difference between these two methods.
Abstract: The complexity of today-s software systems makes
collaborative development necessary to accomplish tasks.
Frameworks are necessary to allow developers perform their tasks
independently yet collaboratively. Similarity detection is one of the
major issues to consider when developing such frameworks. It allows
developers to mine existing repositories when developing their own
views of a software artifact, and it is necessary for identifying the
correspondences between the views to allow merging them and
checking their consistency. Due to the importance of the
requirements specification stage in software development, this paper
proposes a framework for collaborative development of Object-
Oriented formal specifications along with a similarity detection
approach to support the creation, merging and consistency checking
of specifications. The paper also explores the impact of using
additional concepts on improving the matching results. Finally, the
proposed approach is empirically evaluated.
Abstract: Tofurther advance research on immune-related genes
from T. molitor, we constructed acDNA library and analyzed
expressed sequence taq (EST) sequences from 1,056 clones. After
removing vector sequence and quality checkingthrough thePhred
program (trim_alt 0.05 (P-score>20), 1039 sequences were generated.
The average length of insert was 792 bp. In addition, we identified 162
clusters, 167 contigs and 391 contigs after clustering and assembling
process using a TGICL package. EST sequences were searchedagainst
NCBI nr database by local BLAST (blastx, E
Abstract: Prestressing in structure increases ratio of load-bearing capacity to weight. Suspendomes are single-layer braced domes reinforced with cable and strut. Prestressing of cables alter value and distribution of stress in structure. In this study two configuration, diamatic and lamella domes is selected. Investigated domes have span of 100m with rise-to-span ratios of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3. Single layer domes loaded under service load combinations according to ISO code. After geometric nonlinear analysis, models are designed with tubular and I-shaped sections then reinforced with cable and strut and converted to suspendomes. Displacements and stresses of some groups of nodes and elements in all of single-layer domes and suspendomes for three load combinations, symmetric snow, asymmetric snow and wind are compared. Variation due to suspending system is investigated. Suspendomes are redesigned and minimum possible weight after addition of cable and strut is obtained.
Abstract: The purpose of this research is to disentangle and
validate the underlying factorial-structure of Ecotourism Experiential
Value (EEV) measurement scale and subsequently investigate its
psychometric properties. The analysis was based on a sample of 225
eco-tourists, collected at the vicinity of Taman Negara National Park
(TNNP) via interviewer-administered questionnaire. Exploratory
factor analysis (EFA) was performed to determine the factorial
structure of EEV. Subsequently, to confirm and validate the factorial
structure and assess the psychometric properties of EEV,
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was executed. In addition, to
establish the nomological validity of EEV a structural model was
developed to examine the effect of EEV on Total Eco-tourist
Experience Quality (TEEQ). It is unveiled that EEV is a secondorder
six-factorial structure construct and it scale has adequately met
the psychometric criteria, thus could permit interpretation of results
confidently. The findings have important implications for future
research directions and management of ecotourism destination.
Abstract: In this paper, some brief sufficient conditions for the stability of FO-LTI systems dαx(t) dtα = Ax(t) with the fractional order are investigated when the matrix A and the fractional order α are uncertain or both α and A are uncertain, respectively. In addition, we also relate the stability of a fractional-order system with order 0 < α ≤ 1 to the stability of its equivalent fractional-order system with order 1 ≤ β < 2, the relationship between α and β is presented. Finally, a numeric experiment is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of our results.
Abstract: From an economic standpoint the current and future
road traffic situation in urban areas is a cost factor. Traffic jams and
congestion prolong journey times and tie up resources in trucks and
personnel. Many discussions about imposing charges or tolls for
cities in Europe in order to reduce traffic congestion are currently in
progress. Both of these effects lead – directly or indirectly - to
additional costs for the urban distribution systems in retail
companies. One approach towards improving the efficiency of retail
distribution systems, and thus towards avoiding negative
environmental factors in urban areas, is horizontal collaboration for
deliveries to retail outlets – Urban Retail Logistics. This paper
presents a classification system to help reveal where cooperation
between retail companies is possible and makes sense for deliveries
to retail outlets in urban areas.
Abstract: Currently electronic slide (e-slide) is one of the most common styles in educational presentation. Unfortunately, the utilization of e-slide for the visually impaired is uncommon since they are unable to see the content of such e-slides which are usually composed of text, images and animation. This paper proposes a model for presenting e-slide in multimodal presentation i.e. using conventional slide concurrent with voicing, in both languages Malay and English. At the design level, live multimedia presentation concept is used, while at the implementation level several components are used. The text content of each slide is extracted using COM component, Microsoft Speech API for voicing the text in English language and the text in Malay language is voiced using dictionary approach. To support the accessibility, an auditory user interface is provided as an additional feature. A prototype of such model named as VSlide has been developed and introduced.
Abstract: Compliance requires an effective communication
within an enterprise as well as towards a company-s external
environment. This requirement commences with the
implementation of compliance within large scale compliance
projects and still persists in the compliance reporting within
standard operations. On the one hand the understanding of
compliance necessities within the organization is promoted.
On the other hand reduction of asymmetric information with
compliance stakeholders is achieved. To reach this goal, a
central reporting must provide a consolidated view of different
compliance efforts- statuses. A concept which could be
adapted for this purpose is the balanced scorecard by Kaplan /
Norton. This concept has not been analyzed in detail
concerning its adequacy for a holistic compliance reporting
starting in compliance projects until later usage in regularly
compliance operations.
At first, this paper evaluates if a holistic compliance
reporting can be designed by using the balanced scorecard
concept. The current status of compliance reporting clearly
shows that scorecards are generally accepted as a compliance
reporting tool and are already used for corporate governance
reporting. Additional specialized compliance IT - solutions
exist in the market. After the scorecard-s adequacy is
thoroughly examined and proofed, an example strategy map as
the basis to derive a compliance balanced scorecard is defined.
This definition answers the question on proceeding in
designing a compliance reporting tool.
Abstract: The design of a complete expansion that allows for
compact representation of certain relevant classes of signals is a
central problem in signal processing applications. Achieving such a
representation means knowing the signal features for the purpose of
denoising, classification, interpolation and forecasting. Multilayer
Neural Networks are relatively a new class of techniques that are
mathematically proven to approximate any continuous function
arbitrarily well. Radial Basis Function Networks, which make use of
Gaussian activation function, are also shown to be a universal
approximator. In this age of ever-increasing digitization in the
storage, processing, analysis and communication of information,
there are numerous examples of applications where one needs to
construct a continuously defined function or numerical algorithm to
approximate, represent and reconstruct the given discrete data of a
signal. Many a times one wishes to manipulate the data in a way that
requires information not included explicitly in the data, which is
done through interpolation and/or extrapolation.
Tidal data are a very perfect example of time series and many
statistical techniques have been applied for tidal data analysis and
representation. ANN is recent addition to such techniques. In the
present paper we describe the time series representation capabilities
of a special type of ANN- Radial Basis Function networks and
present the results of tidal data representation using RBF. Tidal data
analysis & representation is one of the important requirements in
marine science for forecasting.
Abstract: The scope of this paper is to describe a real electrical
installation of renewable energy using photovoltaic cells. The
displayed power grid connected network was established in 2007 at
area of Northern Greece. The photovoltaic park is composed of 6120
photovoltaic cells able to deliver a total power of 1.101.600 Wp. For
the transformation of DC voltage to AC voltage have been used 25
stand alone three phases inverters and for the connection at the
medium voltage network of Greek Power Authority have been
installed two oil immersed transformer of 630 kVA each one. Due to
the wide space area of installation a specific external lightning
protection system has been designed. Additionally, due to the
sensitive electronics of the control and protection systems of park,
surge protection, equipotent bonding and shielding were also of
major importance.
Abstract: Empirical force fields and density functional theory
(DFT) was used to study the binding energies and structures of
methylamine on the surface of activated carbons (ACs). This is a first
step in studying the adsorption of alkyl amines on the surface of
functionalized ACs. The force fields used were Dreiding (DFF),
Universal (UFF) and Compass (CFF) models. The generalized
gradient approximation with Perdew Wang 91 (PW91) functional
was used for DFT calculations. In addition to obtaining the aminecarboxylic
acid adsorption energies, the results were used to establish
reliability of the empirical models for these systems. CFF predicted a
binding energy of -9.227 (kcal/mol) which agreed with PW91 at -
13.17 (kcal/mol), compared to DFF 0 (kcal/mol) and UFF -0.72
(kcal/mol). However, the CFF binding energies for the amine to ester
and ketone disagreed with PW91 results. The structures obtained
from all models agreed with PW91 results.
Abstract: Many recent electrophysiological studies have
revealed the importance of investigating meditation state in order to
achieve an increased understanding of autonomous control of
cardiovascular functions. In this paper, we characterize heart rate
variability (HRV) time series acquired during meditation using
nonlinear dynamical parameters. We have computed minimum
embedding dimension (MED), correlation dimension (CD), largest
Lyapunov exponent (LLE), and nonlinearity scores (NLS) from HRV
time series of eight Chi and four Kundalini meditation practitioners.
The pre-meditation state has been used as a baseline (control) state to
compare the estimated parameters. The chaotic nature of HRV during
both pre-meditation and meditation is confirmed by MED. The
meditation state showed a significant decrease in the value of CD and
increase in the value of LLE of HRV, in comparison with premeditation
state, indicating a less complex and less predictable nature
of HRV. In addition, it was shown that the HRV of meditation state
is having highest NLS than pre-meditation state. The study indicated
highly nonlinear dynamic nature of cardiac states as revealed by
HRV during meditation state, rather considering it as a quiescent
state.
Abstract: The theoretical investigation is carried out to describe
the effect of increase of pressure waves amplitude in clean and bubbly liquid. The goal of the work is to capture the regime of multiple magnification of acoustic and shock waves in the liquid,
which enables to get appropriate conditions to enlarge collapses of
micro-bubbles. The influence of boundary conditions and frequency
of the governing acoustic field is studied for the case of the
cylindrical acoustic resonator. It has been observed the formation of
standing waves with large amplitude at resonant frequencies. The
interaction of the compression wave with gas and vapor bubbles is
investigated for the convergent channel. It is shown theoretically that
the chemical reactions, which occur inside gas bubbles, provide additional impulse to the wave, that affect strongly on the collapses
of the vapor bubbles