Abstract: Given the limited research on Small and Mediumsized
Enterprises’ (SMEs) contribution to Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) and even scarcer research on Swiss SMEs, this
paper helps to fill these gaps by enabling the identification of supranational
SME parameters. Thus, the paper investigates the current
state of SME practices in Switzerland and across 15 other countries.
Combining the degree to which SMEs demonstrate an explicit (or
business case) approach or see CSR as an implicit moral activity with
the assessment of their attributes for “variety of capitalism” defines
the framework of this comparative analysis. To outline Swiss small
business CSR patterns in particular, 40 SME owner-managers were
interviewed. A secondary data analysis of studies from different
countries laid groundwork for this comparative overview of small
business CSR. The paper identifies Swiss small business CSR as
driven by norms, values, and by the aspiration to contribute to
society, thus, as an implicit part of the day-to-day business. Similar to
most Central European, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Asian countries,
explicit CSR is still very rare in Swiss SMEs. Astonishingly, also
British and American SMEs follow this pattern in spite of their strong
and distinctly liberal market economies. Though other findings show
that nationality matters this research concludes that SME culture and
an informal CSR agenda are strongly formative and superseding even
forces of market economies, nationally cultural patterns, and
language. Hence, classifications of countries by their market system,
as found in the comparative capitalism literature, do not match the
CSR practices in SMEs as they do not mirror the peculiarities of their
business. This raises questions on the universality and
generalisability of unmediated, explicit management concepts,
especially in the context of small firms.
Abstract: This paper participates in giving new vision and
explains the learning and acquisition processes of English language
by analyzing a certain context. Five important factors in English
language acquisition and learning are discussed and suitable solutions
are provided. The factors are compared with the learners' linguistic
background at Bisha College of Technology BCT attempting to link
the issues faced by students and the research done on similar
situations. These factors are phonology, age of acquisition,
motivation, psychology and courses of English. These factors are
very important; because they interfere and affect specific learning
processes at BCT context and general English learning situations.
Abstract: Reticence is a prominent and complex phenomenon
which occurs in foreign language classrooms and influences students’
oral passivity. The present study investigated the extent in which
students experience reticence in the EFL classrooms and explored the
underlying factors triggering reticence. The participants were 104
Iranian freshmen undergraduate male and female EFL students, who
enrolled in listening and speaking courses, all majoring in English
studying at Islamic Azad University Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch and
University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran. To collect the data, the Reticence
Scale-12 (RS-12) questionnaire which measures the level of reticence
consisting of six dimensions (anxiety, knowledge, timing,
organization, skills, and memory) was administered to the
participants. The statistical analyses showed that the reticent level
was high among the Iranian EFL undergraduate students, and their
major problems were feelings of anxiety and delivery skills.
Moreover, the results revealed that factors such as low English
proficiency, the teaching method, and lack of confidence contributed
to the students’ reticence in Iranian EFL classrooms. It can be
implied that language teachers’ awareness of learners’ reticence can
help them choose more appropriate activities and provide a friendly
environment enhancing hopefully more effective participation of EFL
learners. The findings can have implications for EFL teachers,
learners and policy makers.
Abstract: Students' academic achievement, along with the
effects of different variables, has been a serious concern of educators
since long ago. This study was an attempt to investigate the interplay
of Locus of Control (LOC), academic achievement and biological
variables among Iranian online EFL Learners. The participants of the
study included 100 students of different age groups and genders
studying English online at Iran Language Institute (ILI), Isfahan,
Iran. The instrument used was Trice Academic LOC questionnaire
which identifies orientations of internality or externality. The
participants' Grade Point Averages (GPAs) were used as the measure
of their academic achievement. A series of independent samples ttests
were performed on the data. The results of the study showed that
(a) there were no significant differences between male and female
participants in LOC orientation, (b) there was no relationship
between LOC and academic achievement among internal males and
females, (c) external females were better achievers than external
males, (d) and the age had no significant relationship with LOC and
academic achievement. It can be concluded that the social, cultural
patterns of genders have changed. This study might help sociologists
and psychologists as well as applied linguists in that they reflect the
recent social changes and their effects on the LOC and their
consequent implications in teaching languages.
Abstract: The Speexx results revealed four main factors
affecting the success of 190 Thai sophomores as follows: 1) Future
English training should be pursued in applied Speexx development.
2) Thai students didn’t see the benefit of having an Online Language
Training Program. 3) There is a great need to educate the next
generation of learners on the benefits of Speexx within the
community. 4) A great majority of Thai Sophomores didn't know
what Speexx was.
A guideline for self-reliance planning consisted of four aspects: 1)
Development planning: by arranging groups to further improve
English abilities with the Speexx Language Training program and
encourage using Speexx into every day practice. Local communities
need to develop awareness of the usefulness of Speexx and share the
value of using the program among family and friends. 2) Humanities
and Social Science staff should develop skills using this Online
Language Training Program to expand on the benefits of Speexx
within their departments. 3) Further research should be pursued on
the Thai Students progression with Speexx and how it helps them
improve their language skills with Business English. 4) University’s
and Language centers should focus on using Speexx to encourage
learning for any language, not just English.
Abstract: Thousands of organisations store important and
confidential information related to them, their customers, and their
business partners in databases all across the world. The stored data
ranges from less sensitive (e.g. first name, last name, date of birth) to
more sensitive data (e.g. password, pin code, and credit card
information). Losing data, disclosing confidential information or
even changing the value of data are the severe damages that
Structured Query Language injection (SQLi) attack can cause on a
given database. It is a code injection technique where malicious SQL
statements are inserted into a given SQL database by simply using a
web browser. In this paper, we propose an effective pattern
recognition neural network model for detection and classification of
SQLi attacks. The proposed model is built from three main elements
of: a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) generator in order to generate
thousands of malicious and benign URLs, a URL classifier in order
to: 1) classify each generated URL to either a benign URL or a
malicious URL and 2) classify the malicious URLs into different
SQLi attack categories, and a NN model in order to: 1) detect either a
given URL is a malicious URL or a benign URL and 2) identify the
type of SQLi attack for each malicious URL. The model is first
trained and then evaluated by employing thousands of benign and
malicious URLs. The results of the experiments are presented in
order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Abstract: The paper deals with the classical fiber bundle model
of equal load sharing, sometimes referred to as the Daniels’ bundle
or the democratic bundle. Daniels formulated a multidimensional
integral and also a recursive formula for evaluation of the
strength cumulative distribution function. This paper describes
three algorithms for evaluation of the recursive formula and also
their implementations with source codes in the Python high-level
programming language. A comparison of the algorithms are provided
with respect to execution time. Analysis of orders of magnitudes of
addends in the recursion is also provided.
Abstract: This research study aims to present a retrospective
study about speech recognition systems and artificial intelligence.
Speech recognition has become one of the widely used technologies,
as it offers great opportunity to interact and communicate with
automated machines. Precisely, it can be affirmed that speech
recognition facilitates its users and helps them to perform their daily
routine tasks, in a more convenient and effective manner. This
research intends to present the illustration of recent technological
advancements, which are associated with artificial intelligence.
Recent researches have revealed the fact that speech recognition is
found to be the utmost issue, which affects the decoding of speech. In
order to overcome these issues, different statistical models were
developed by the researchers. Some of the most prominent statistical
models include acoustic model (AM), language model (LM), lexicon
model, and hidden Markov models (HMM). The research will help in
understanding all of these statistical models of speech recognition.
Researchers have also formulated different decoding methods, which
are being utilized for realistic decoding tasks and constrained
artificial languages. These decoding methods include pattern
recognition, acoustic phonetic, and artificial intelligence. It has been
recognized that artificial intelligence is the most efficient and reliable
methods, which are being used in speech recognition.
Abstract: In this research article of modeling Underwater
Wireless Sensor Network Simulators, we provide a comprehensive
overview of the various currently available simulators used in UWSN
modeling. In this work, we compare their working environment,
software platform, simulation language, key features, limitations and
corresponding applications. Based on extensive experimentation and
performance analysis, we provide their efficiency for specific
applications. We have also provided guidelines for developing
protocols in different layers of the protocol stack, and finally these
parameters are also compared and tabulated. This analysis is
significant for researchers and designers to find the right simulator
for their research activities.
Abstract: Edge is variation of brightness in an image. Edge
detection is useful in many application areas such as finding forests,
rivers from a satellite image, detecting broken bone in a medical
image etc. The paper discusses about finding edge of multiple aerial
images in parallel. The proposed work tested on 38 images 37
colored and one monochrome image. The time taken to process N
images in parallel is equivalent to time taken to process 1 image in
sequential. Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Open Computing
Language (OpenCL) is used to achieve task and pixel level
parallelism respectively.
Abstract: Turkish migrants constitute the largest group among
people with migration background living in Germany. Turkish
women’s labor market participation is of significant importance for
their social and economic integration to the German society. This
paper thus aims to investigate their labor market positions. Turkish
migrant women participate less in the labor market compared to men,
and are responsible for most of the housework, child care, and elderly
care. This is due to their traditional roles in the family, educational
level, insufficient knowledge of German language, and insufficient
professional experience. We strongly recommend that wide-reaching
integration policies for women are formulated, so as to encourage
participation of not only migrant women but also their husbands,
fathers and/or brothers, and natives.
Abstract: In this study, out-of-plane free vibrations of a circular
rods is investigated theoretically. The governing equations for
naturally twisted and curved spatial rods are obtained using
Timoshenko beam theory and rewritten for circular rods. Effects of
the axial and shear deformations are considered in the formulations.
Ordinary differential equations in scalar form are solved analytically
by using transfer matrix method. The circular rods of the mass matrix
are obtained by using straight rod of consistent mass matrix. Free
vibrations frequencies obtained by solving eigenvalue problem. A
computer program coded in MATHEMATICA language is prepared.
Circular beams are analyzed through various examples for free
vibrations analysis. Results are compared with ANSYS results based
on finite element method and available in the literature.
Abstract: The aim of software maintenance is to maintain
the software system in accordance with advancement in software
and hardware technology. One of the early works on software
maintenance is to extract information at higher level of abstraction. In
this paper, we present the process of how to design an information
extraction tool for software maintenance. The tool can extract the
basic information from old programs such as about variables, based
classes, derived classes, objects of classes, and functions. The tool
have two main parts; the lexical analyzer module that can read the
input file character by character, and the searching module which
users can get the basic information from the existing programs. We
implemented this tool for a patterned sub-C++ language as an input
file.
Abstract: Object-oriented modeling is spreading in current
simulation of physiological systems through the use of the individual
components of the model and its interconnections to define the
underlying dynamic equations. In this paper we describe the use of
both the SIMSCAPE and MODELICA simulation environments in
the object-oriented modeling of the closed loop cardiovascular
system. The performance of the controlled system was analyzed by
simulation in light of the existing hypothesis and validation tests
previously performed with physiological data. The described
approach represents a valuable tool in the teaching of physiology for
graduate medical students.
Abstract: The present study is an attempt to provide a relatively
comprehensive preview of the Iranian English translators’ perception
on Machine Translation. Furthermore, the study tries to shed light on
the status of implementation of Machine Translation among the
Iranian English Translators. To reach the aforementioned objectives,
the Localization Industry Standards Association’s questioner for
measuring perceptions with regard to the adoption of a technology
innovation was adapted and used to investigate the perception and
implementation of Machine Translation applications by the Iranian
English language translators. The participants of the study were 224
last-year undergraduate Iranian students of English translation at 10
universities across the country. The study revealed a very low level of
adoption and a very high level of willingness to get familiar with and
learn about Machine Translation, as well as a positive perception of
and attitude toward Machine Translation by the Iranian English
translators.
Abstract: Due to the rapid increase of Internet, web opinion
sources dynamically emerge which is useful for both potential
customers and product manufacturers for prediction and decision
purposes. These are the user generated contents written in natural
languages and are unstructured-free-texts scheme. Therefore, opinion
mining techniques become popular to automatically process customer
reviews for extracting product features and user opinions expressed
over them. Since customer reviews may contain both opinionated and
factual sentences, a supervised machine learning technique applies
for subjectivity classification to improve the mining performance. In
this paper, we dedicate our work is the task of opinion
summarization. Therefore, product feature and opinion extraction is
critical to opinion summarization, because its effectiveness
significantly affects the identification of semantic relationships. The
polarity and numeric score of all the features are determined by
Senti-WordNet Lexicon. The problem of opinion summarization
refers how to relate the opinion words with respect to a certain
feature. Probabilistic based model of supervised learning will
improve the result that is more flexible and effective.
Abstract: Cultures play a role in business communication and in
research. At the example of language in international business, this
paper addresses the issue of how the research cultures of management
research and linguistics as well as cultures as such can be linked.
After looking at existing research on language in international
business, this paper approaches communication in international
business from a linguistic angle and attempts to explain
communication issues in businesses based on linguistic research.
Thus the paper makes a step into cross-disciplinary research
combining management research with linguistics.
Abstract: The English competence of Thai people was examined
in the context of knowledge of English in everyday life for Small and
Medium Entrepreneurs (SMEs), and also integrated with Second
language acquisition (SLA) students’ classroom. Second language
acquisition was applied to the results of the questionnaires and
interview forms. Levels of the need on English used for SME
entrepreneurs in Thailand, satisfaction on joining the street classroom
project were shown to be significantly high for some certain language
functions and satisfaction. Finding suggests that the language
functions on etiquette for professional use is essential and useful
because lesson learned can be used in the real situation for their
career. Implications for the climate of the street classroom are
discussed.
Abstract: Large-scale data stream analysis has become one of
the important business and research priorities lately. Social networks
like Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms hold an enormous
amount of data that is large in volume, velocity and variety.
Extracting valuable information and trends out of these data would
aid in a better understanding and decision-making. Multiple analysis
techniques are deployed for English content. Moreover, one of the
languages that produce a large amount of data over social networks
and is least analyzed is the Arabic language. The proposed paper is a
survey on the research efforts to analyze the Arabic content in
Twitter focusing on the tools and methods used to extract the
sentiments for the Arabic content on Twitter.
Abstract: The air transport impact on environment is more than
ever a limitative obstacle to the aeronautical industry continuous
growth. Over the last decades, considerable effort has been carried
out in order to obtain quieter aircraft solutions, whether by changing
the original design or investigating more silent maneuvers. The
noise propagated by rotating surfaces is one of the most important
sources of annoyance, being present in most aerial vehicles. Bearing
this is mind, CEIIA developed a new computational chain for
noise prediction with in-house software tools to obtain solutions in
relatively short time without using excessive computer resources. This
work is based on the new acoustic tool, which aims to predict the
rotor noise generated during steady and maneuvering flight, making
use of the flexibility of the C language and the advantages of GPU
programming in terms of velocity. The acoustic tool is based in the
Formulation 1A of Farassat, capable of predicting two important
types of noise: the loading and thickness noise. The present work
describes the most important features of the acoustic tool, presenting
its most relevant results and framework analyses for helicopters and
UAV quadrotors.