Abstract: Travelling salesman problem (TSP) is a combinational
optimization problem and solution approaches have been applied
many real world problems. Pure TSP assumes the cities to visit are
fixed in time and thus solutions are created to find shortest path
according to these point. But some of the points are canceled to visit
in time. If the problem is not time crucial it is not important to
determine new routing plan but if the points are changing rapidly and
time is necessary do decide a new route plan a new approach should
be applied in such cases. We developed a route plan transfer method
based on transfer learning and we achieved high performance against
determining a new model from scratch in every change.
Abstract: The seismic rehabilitation designs of two reinforced
concrete school buildings, representative of a wide stock of similar
edifices designed under earlier editions of the Italian Technical
Standards, are presented in this paper. The mutual retrofit solution
elaborated for the two buildings consists in the incorporation of a
dissipative bracing system including pressurized fluid viscous springdampers
as passive protective devices. The mechanical parameters,
layouts and locations selected for the constituting elements of the
system; the architectural renovation projects developed to properly
incorporate the structural interventions and improve the appearance
of the buildings; highlights of the installation works already
completed in one of the two structures; and a synthesis of the
performance assessment analyses carried out in original and
rehabilitated conditions, are illustrated. The results of the analyses
show a remarkable enhancement of the seismic response capacities of
both structures. This allows reaching the high performance objectives
postulated in the retrofit designs with much lower costs and
architectural intrusion as compared to traditional rehabilitation
interventions designed for the same objectives.
Abstract: The purpose of the present paper is to study the concept
of fuzzy bi-ideals in ternary semirings. We give some characterizations of fuzzy bi-ideals. Characterizations of regular ternary semirings
are provided.
Abstract: Waste management is now a global concern due to its
high environmental impact on climate change. Because of generating
huge amount of waste through our daily activities, managing waste in
an efficient way has become more important than ever. Alternative
Waste Technology (AWT), a new category of waste treatment
technology has been developed for energy recovery in recent years to
address this issue. AWT describes a technology that redirects waste
away from landfill, recovers more useable resources from the waste
flow and reduces the impact on the surroundings. Australia is one of
the largest producers of waste per-capita. A number of AWTs are
using in Australia to produce energy from waste. Presently, it is vital
to identify an appropriate AWT to establish a sustainable waste
management system in Australia. Identification of an appropriate
AWT through Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) of four AWTs by using
five key decision making criteria is presented and discussed in this
paper.
Abstract: Effectiveness of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)
and Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifiers for fault diagnosis of
rolling element bearings are presented in this paper. The
characteristic features of vibration signals of rotating driveline that
was run in its normal condition and with faults introduced were used
as input to ANN and SVM classifiers. Simple statistical features such
as standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis etc. of the time-domain
vibration signal segments along with peaks of the signal and peak of
power spectral density (PSD) are used as features to input the ANN
and SVM classifier. The effect of preprocessing of the vibration
signal by Discreet Wavelet Transform (DWT) prior to feature
extraction is also studied. It is shown from the experimental results
that the performance of SVM classifier in identification of bearing
condition is better then ANN and pre-processing of vibration signal
by DWT enhances the effectiveness of both ANN and SVM classifier
Abstract: Although considerable amount of research has attested to the link between work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) and psychological strain and wellbeing, there is a paucity of research investigating the phenomenon in the context of social workers. Moreover, very little is known about the impact of WFC and FWC in developing countries. The present study investigated the mediating effect of psychological strain on the relationship between WFC and FWC with wellbeing of social workers in India. Our findings show that WFC and FWC are influential antecedents of wellbeing; their influence is both direct on psychological strain, and indirect on wellbeing transmitted through psychological strain. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Abstract: Well-being has been given special emphasis in quality
of life. It involves living a meaningful, life satisfaction, stability and
happiness in life. Well-being also concerns the satisfaction of
physical, psychological, social needs and demands of an individual.
The purpose of this study was to validate three-factor measurement
model of well-being using structural equation modeling (SEM). The
conceptions of well-being measured such dimensions as physical,
psychological and social well-being. This study was done based on a
total sample of 650 adolescents from east-coast of peninsular
Malaysia. The Well-Being Scales which was adapted from [1] was
used in this study. The items were hypothesized a priori to have nonzero
loadings on all dimensions in the model. The findings of the
SEM demonstrated that it is a good fitting model which the proposed
model fits the driving theory; (x2df = 1.268; GFI = .994; CFI = .998;
TLI= .996; p = .255; RMSEA = .021). Composite reliability (CR)
was .93 and average variance extracted (AVE) was 58%. The model
in this study fits with the sample of data and well-being is important
to bring sustainable development to the mainstream.
Abstract: The aim of the present paper is to investigate the
interdependency among ego-identity status, autobiographical memory
and cultural life story schema. The study shows considerable
differences between autobiographical memory characteristics and
“family script", which is typical for participants (adolescents, M age
years = 17.84, SD = 1.18, N = 58), with different ego-identity
statuses. Participants with diffused ego-identity status recalled fewer
autobiographical memories. Additionally, this group of participants
recalled fewer events from their parents- life. Participants with
moratorium ego-identity status dated their first recollections to a later
age than others, and recalled fewer memories relating to their
childhood. Participants with achieved identity status recalled more
self-defining memories and events from their parents- life. They used
more functions from the autobiographical memory. There weren-t
any significant differences between the foreclosed identity status
group and the others. These findings support the idea of a
bidirectional relation between culture, memory and self.
Abstract: This article discusses superordinate national identity as a means for immigrants integration into democratic polities. It is suggested that a superordinate national identity perceived as inclusive, by immigrants and by the native population, would be conducive to such integration. Command of the dominant language of society is seen as most important of the inclusive criteria. Other such criteria are respect of the country's political institutions and feelings of belonging to the country where you live. The argument is supported by data, showing a majority in favour of inclusive criteria for 'Swedishness', from a recent study among 1000 secondary school students of 'Swedish' and non-'Swedish' backgrounds.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a practical digital music matching system that is robust to variation in sound qualities. The proposed system is subdivided into two parts: client and server. The client part consists of the input, preprocessing and feature extraction modules. The preprocessing module, including the music onset module, revises the value gap occurring on the time axis between identical songs of different formats. The proposed method uses delta-grouped Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) to extract music features that are robust to changes in sound quality. According to the number of sound quality formats (SQFs) used, a music server is constructed with a feature database (FD) that contains different sub feature databases (SFDs). When the proposed system receives a music file, the selection module selects an appropriate SFD from a feature database; the selected SFD is subsequently used by the matching module. In this study, we used 3,000 queries for matching experiments in three cases with different FDs. In each case, we used 1,000 queries constructed by mixing 8 SQFs and 125 songs. The success rate of music matching improved from 88.6% when using single a single SFD to 93.2% when using quadruple SFDs. By this experiment, we proved that the proposed method is robust to various sound qualities.
Abstract: This paper introduces a method of calculating the
quantities of construction materials and construction waste on site in
city of Novi Sad. In buildings is about 40% of the total weight of
materials that are in circulation in the world economic space. The
best solution for this waste is to be stored at source, at the point of
generation. There are several treatment options for this type of waste,
reduction at source, reuse, recycling. Beside its negative effects on
the environment, construction waste can be and resource. Novi Sad is
divided in 16 single family resident zones and 10 multi family
resident zones. For every zone of the city, quantities of used
construction materials and construction waste were obtained.
Rational use of natural resources is an essential factor in applying the
principles of development with savings.
Abstract: A method to predict the column size for displacement based design of reinforced concrete frame buildings with higher target inter storey drift is reported here. The column depth derived from empirical relation as a function of given beam section, target inter-story drift, building plan features and common displacement based design parameters is used. Regarding the high drift requirement, a minimum column-beam moment capacity ratio is maintained during capacity design. The method is used in designing four, eight and twelve story frame buildings with displacement based design for three percent target inter storey drift. Non linear time history analysis of the designed buildings are performed under five artificial ground motions to show that the columns are found elastic enough to avoid column sway mechanism assuring that for the design the column size can be used with or without minor changes.
Abstract: Industrial design engineering is an information and
knowledge intensive job. Although Wikipedia offers a lot of this
information, design engineers are better served with a wiki tailored to
their job, offering information in a compact manner and functioning
as a design tool. For that reason WikID has been developed.
However for the viability of a wiki, an active user community is
essential. The main subject of this paper is a study to the influence of
the communication and the contents of WikID on the user-s
willingness to contribute.
At first the theory about a website-s first impression, general
usability guidelines and user motivation in an online community is
studied. Using this theory, the aspects of the current site are analyzed
on their suitability. These results have been verified with a
questionnaire amongst 66 industrial design engineers (or students
industrial design engineering).
The main conclusion is that design engineers are enchanted with
the existence of WikID and its knowledge structure (taxonomy) but
this structure has not become clear without any guidance. In other
words, the knowledge structure is very helpful for inspiring and
guiding design engineers through their tailored knowledge domain in
WikID but this taxonomy has to be better communicated on the main
page. Thereby the main page needs to be fitted more to the target
group preferences.
Abstract: Corrosion of metallic water pipelines buried below
ground surface is a function of the nature of the surrounding soil and
groundwater. This gives the importance of knowing the physical and
chemical characteristics of the pipe-s surrounding environment. The
corrosion of externally – unprotected metallic water pipelines,
specially ductile iron pipes, in localities with aggressive soil
conditions is becoming a significant problem. Anticorrosive
protection for metallic water pipelines, their fittings and accessories
is very important, because they may be attached by corrosion with
time. The tendency of a metallic substrate to corrode is a function of
the surface characteristics of the metal and of the metal/protective
film interface, the physical, electrical and electrochemical properties
of the film, and the nature of the environment in which the pipelines
system is placed. In this work the authors have looked at corrosion
problems of water pipelines and their control. The corrosive
properties of groundwater and soil environments are reviewed, and
parameters affecting corrosion are discussed. The purpose of this
work is to provide guidelines for materials selection in water and soil
environments, and how the water pipelines can be protected against
metallic corrosion.
Abstract: This paper introduces a measure of similarity between
two clusterings of the same dataset produced by two different
algorithms, or even the same algorithm (K-means, for instance, with
different initializations usually produce different results in clustering
the same dataset). We then apply the measure to calculate the
similarity between pairs of clusterings, with special interest directed
at comparing the similarity between various machine clusterings and
human clustering of datasets. The similarity measure thus can be used
to identify the best (in terms of most similar to human) clustering
algorithm for a specific problem at hand. Experimental results
pertaining to the text categorization problem of a Portuguese corpus
(wherein a translation-into-English approach is used) are presented, as well as results on the well-known benchmark IRIS dataset. The
significance and other potential applications of the proposed measure
are discussed.
Abstract: Cognitive Dissonance can be conceived both as a concept related to the tendency to avoid internal contradictions in certain situations, and as a higher order theory about information processing in the human mind. In the last decades, this last sense has been strongly surpassed by the former, as nearly all experiment on the matter discuss cognitive dissonance as an output of motivational contradictions. In that sense, the question remains: is cognitive dissonance a process intrinsically associated with the way that the mind processes information, or is it caused by such specific contradictions? Objective: To evaluate the effects of cognitive dissonance in the absence of rewards or any mechanisms to manipulate motivation. Method: To solve this question, we introduce a new task, the hypothetical social arrays paradigm, which was applied to 50 undergraduate students. Results: Our findings support the perspective that the human mind shows a tendency to avoid internal dissonance even when there are no rewards or punishment involved. Moreover, our findings also suggest that this principle works outside the conscious level.
Abstract: Nowadays social media are important tools for web
resource discovery. The performance and capabilities of web searches
are vital, especially search results from social research paper
bookmarking. This paper proposes a new algorithm for ranking
method that is a combination of similarity ranking with paper posted
time or CSTRank. The paper posted time is static ranking for
improving search results. For this particular study, the paper posted
time is combined with similarity ranking to produce a better ranking
than other methods such as similarity ranking or SimRank. The
retrieval performance of combination rankings is evaluated using
mean values of NDCG. The evaluation in the experiments implies
that the chosen CSTRank ranking by using weight score at ratio 90:10
can improve the efficiency of research paper searching on social
bookmarking websites.
Abstract: This study focuses on bureau management
technologies and information systems in developing countries.
Developing countries use such systems which facilitate executive and
organizational functions through the utilization of bureau
management technologies and provide the executive staff with
necessary information.
The concepts of data and information differ from each other in
developing countries, and thus the concepts of data processing and
information processing are different. Symbols represent ideas,
objects, figures, letters and numbers. Data processing system is an
integrated system which deals with the processing of the data related
to the internal and external environment of the organization in order
to make decisions, create plans and develop strategies; it goes
without saying that this system is composed of both human beings
and machines. Information is obtained through the acquisition and
the processing of data. On the other hand, data are raw
communicative messages. Within this framework, data processing
equals to producing plausible information out of raw data.
Organizations in developing countries need to obtain information
relevant to them because rapid changes in the organizational arena
require rapid access to accurate information. The most significant
role of the directors and managers who work in the organizational
arena is to make decisions. Making a correct decision is possible only
when the directors and managers are equipped with sound ideas and
appropriate information. Therefore, acquisition, organization and
distribution of information gain significance. Today-s organizations
make use of computer-assisted “Management Information Systems"
in order to obtain and distribute information.
Decision Support System which is closely related to practice is an
information system that facilitates the director-s task of making
decisions. Decision Support System integrates human intelligence,
information technology and software in order to solve the complex
problems. With the support of the computer technology and software
systems, Decision Support System produces information relevant to
the decision to be made by the director and provides the executive
staff with supportive ideas about the decision.
Artificial Intelligence programs which transfer the studies and
experiences of the people to the computer are called expert systems.
An expert system stores expert information in a limited area and can
solve problems by deriving rational consequences.
Bureau management technologies and information systems in
developing countries create a kind of information society and
information economy which make those countries have their places
in the global socio-economic structure and which enable them to play
a reasonable and fruitful role; therefore it is of crucial importance to
make use of information and management technologies in order to
work together with innovative and enterprising individuals and it is
also significant to create “scientific policies" based on information
and technology in the fields of economy, politics, law and culture.
Abstract: We propose a control design scheme that aims to
prevent undesirable liquid outpouring and suppress sloshing during
the forward and backward tilting phases of the pouring process, for
the case of liquid containers carried by manipulators. The proposed
scheme combines a partial inverse dynamics controller with a PID
controller, tuned with the use of a “metaheuristic" search algorithm.
The “metaheuristic" search algorithm tunes the PID controller based
on simulation results of the plant-s linearization around the operating
point corresponding to the critical tilting angle, where outpouring
initiates. Liquid motion is modeled using the well-known pendulumtype
model. However, the proposed controller does not require
measurements of the liquid-s motion within the tank.
Abstract: Growth and mineral nutrient elemental content were
studied in Mokara chark kuan pink terrestrial orchid and wild
Lantana camara weed agroecosystem. The treated subplots were
encircled with L. camara plants and sprayed weekly with L. camara
10% leaf aqueous extract. Allelopathic interactions were possible
through extensive invading root of L. camara plants into the treated
orchid subplots and weekly L. camara leaf aqueous extract
sprayings. Orchid growth was not significantly different in between
the control and treated plots, but chlorosis and yellowish patches of
leaves were observed in control orchid leaves. Nitrogen content in L.
camara leaf was significantly higher than in orchid leaf, the order of
importance of mineral nutrient contents in L. camara leaf was
K>Mg>Na>N. In treated orchid leaf, the order of importance was
N>K>Mg>Na. Orchid leaf N content from the treated plot was
higher than control, but Mg and Na contents were almost similar.