Abstract: Given a large sparse signal, great wishes are to
reconstruct the signal precisely and accurately from lease number of
measurements as possible as it could. Although this seems possible
by theory, the difficulty is in built an algorithm to perform the
accuracy and efficiency of reconstructing. This paper proposes a new
proved method to reconstruct sparse signal depend on using new
method called Least Support Matching Pursuit (LS-OMP) merge it
with the theory of Partial Knowing Support (PSK) given new method
called Partially Knowing of Least Support Orthogonal Matching
Pursuit (PKLS-OMP).
The new methods depend on the greedy algorithm to compute the
support which depends on the number of iterations. So to make it
faster, the PKLS-OMP adds the idea of partial knowing support of its
algorithm. It shows the efficiency, simplicity, and accuracy to get
back the original signal if the sampling matrix satisfies the Restricted
Isometry Property (RIP).
Simulation results also show that it outperforms many algorithms
especially for compressible signals.
Abstract: This work presents the first results from the long-term experiment, which is focused on the impact of intensive rainfall and long period of drought on microbial activities in soil. Fifteen lysimeters were prepared in the area of our interest. This area is a protection zone of underground source of drinking water. These lysimeters were filed with topsoil and subsoil collected in this area and divided into two groups. These groups differ in fertilization and amount of water received during the growing season. Amount of microbial biomass and leaching of mineral nitrogen and phosphates were chosen as main indicators of microbial activities in soil. Content of mineral nitrogen and phosphates was measured in soil solution, which was collected from each lysimeters. Amount of microbial biomass was determined in soil samples that were taken from the lysimeters before and after the long period of drought and intensive rainfall.
Abstract: We study the possibility of using geometric operators
in the selection of human resources. We develop three new methods
that use the ordered weighted geometric (OWG) operator in different
indexes used for the selection of human resources. The objective of
these models is to manipulate the neutrality of the old methods so the
decision maker is able to select human resources according to his
particular attitude. In order to develop these models, first a short
revision of the OWG operator is developed. Second, we briefly
explain the general process for the selection of human resources.
Then, we develop the three new indexes. They will use the OWG
operator in the Hamming distance, in the adequacy coefficient and in
the index of maximum and minimum level. Finally, an illustrative
example about the new approach is given.
Abstract: The aim for this research is to deliberately discuss
how and why the contexts of culture are the main significant factors
which need to be considered when conducting the international
business oversea. As a consequence of understanding these various
factors, the researcher would be able to infer some suggestions to the
international organizations. With this in mind, the results of the
understanding in a national culture environment can support the
organizations to settle its international strategies which may be useful
to develop the national export and import effectiveness. This data
collecting methods will be concentrated upon 5-10 interviews from
the senior members and business officers in the international
company in Thailand by e-mail interview and analyses the individual
manager’s viewpoint. As well as, focus on the questionnaires which
the respondents were selected randomly around 100 samples from
UK and Thailand, together with providing a functional sample size
and comparable to data. The results of the study question the role of
national culture, which contributed to in international business
effectiveness and emphasize the positive and negative aspects, as
well as suggestions to business investors are informed.
Abstract: The increasing development of wireless networks and
the widespread popularity of handheld devices such as Personal
Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones and wireless tablets
represents an incredible opportunity to enable mobile devices as a
universal payment method, involving daily financial transactions.
Unfortunately, some issues hampering the widespread acceptance of
mobile payment such as accountability properties, privacy protection,
limitation of wireless network and mobile device. Recently, many
public-key cryptography based mobile payment protocol have been
proposed. However, limited capabilities of mobile devices and
wireless networks make these protocols are unsuitable for mobile
network. Moreover, these protocols were designed to preserve
traditional flow of payment data, which is vulnerable to attack and
increase the user-s risk. In this paper, we propose a private mobile
payment protocol which based on client centric model and by
employing symmetric key operations. The proposed mobile payment
protocol not only minimizes the computational operations and
communication passes between the engaging parties, but also
achieves a completely privacy protection for the payer. The future
work will concentrate on improving the verification solution to
support mobile user authentication and authorization for mobile
payment transactions.
Abstract: Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) blanched for 20min was dehulled and milled into flour. The flour was incorporated into dried whole fermented maize (Ogi) at five levels. The resultant products were analyzed for chemical and pasting properties. The fortified Ogi samples were also assessed for sensory attributes: appearance, color, flavor, mouth feel and overall acceptability. The protein content in the whole Ogi fortified samples was in the range of 11.2-16.6% and crude fibre 3.22-3.46%. Fortified whole Ogi with pigeon pea at 30%, 40% and 50% of inclusion with pigeon pea flour has higher protein, crude fibre and ash content. Varying range of pasting quality was recorded for the blends, pasting temperature for fortified Obi was in the range of 45.3-49.50C and peak time 5.05-5.210C. The sensory acceptability of the whole Ogi fortified blends prepared into gruel has higher acceptability for various qualities in comparison with the traditional Ogi gruel.
Abstract: The concept of order reduction by least-squares moment matching and generalised least-squares methods has been extended about a general point ?a?, to obtain the reduced order models for linear, time-invariant dynamic systems. Some heuristic criteria have been employed for selecting the linear shift point ?a?, based upon the means (arithmetic, harmonic and geometric) of real parts of the poles of high order system. It is shown that the resultant model depends critically on the choice of linear shift point ?a?. The validity of the criteria is illustrated by solving a numerical example and the results are compared with the other existing techniques.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the production of an Arabic word semantic similarity benchmark dataset. It is the first of its kind for Arabic which was particularly developed to assess the accuracy of word semantic similarity measurements. Semantic similarity is an essential component to numerous applications in fields such as natural language processing, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and psychology. Most of the reported work has been done for English. To the best of our knowledge, there is no word similarity measure developed specifically for Arabic. In this paper, an Arabic benchmark dataset of 70 word pairs is presented. New methods and best possible available techniques have been used in this study to produce the Arabic dataset. This includes selecting and creating materials, collecting human ratings from a representative sample of participants, and calculating the overall ratings. This dataset will make a substantial contribution to future work in the field of Arabic WSS and hopefully it will be considered as a reference basis from which to evaluate and compare different methodologies in the field.
Abstract: Application of flexible structures has been
significantly, increased in industry and aerospace missions due to
their contributions and unique advantages over the rigid counterparts.
In this paper, vibration analysis of a flexible structure i.e., automobile
wiper blade is investigated and controlled. The wiper generates
unwanted noise and vibration during the wiping the rain and other
particles on windshield which may cause annoying noise in different
ranges of frequency. A two dimensional analytical modeled wiper
blade whose model accuracy is verified by numerical studies in
literature is considered in this study. Particle swarm optimization
(PSO) is employed in alliance with input shaping (IS) technique in
order to control or to attenuate the amplitude level of unwanted
noise/vibration of the wiper blade.
Abstract: This study was aimed to determine seasonal variations
of leaf nutrient concentrations to define nutrient needs related to
growing period and to compare irrigation programs in terms of
nutrient uptake. In this study,'Starkrimson Delicious' variety grafted
onto seedling rootstock was used during 2009-2010 growing seasons.
The study was conducted at E─ƒirdir Fruit Growing Research Station.
Leaf samples were taken in five different sample seasons (May, June,
July, August and September). Four different pan coefficients (0.50,
0.75, 1.0, 1.25) were applied during drip irrigation treatments in 7
days irrigation interval. Leaf K, Mg, Ca, P, Fe, Zn, Mn and Cu
concentrations were determined.
The results showed that among the seasonal changes, the highest
concentrations of K, Mg, P and Mn in leaves were recorded in May,
followed by a decrease in the other months, while in contrast Ca and
Fe showed the lowest concentration in May.
Results of the study demonstrate that among irrigation programs K
and Cu concentration in plants was significantly influenced. Cu
concentrations decreased with seasonal variations and different
irrigation programs. Thus, nutrient needs of 'Starkrimson Delicious'apple trees at different growth stages should be taken into
consideration before making effective fertilization program.
Abstract: This study aims to initiate sustainable water management for tourist accommodations in Amphawa, Samut Songkram Province, Thailand. Wastewater generated by tourist accommodation was conducted in 10 homestays and resorts in Amphawa during August – October, 2011. The prominent parameters which are of pH, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Fat Oil and Grease (FOG), Nitrate (No3-), and Phosphate (PO43-) were conducted monthly. The results revealed that some parameters were over national water quality standard (Class II). Especially, 90% of tourist accommodations have been recorded that FOG was over the standard of wastewater quality from accommodation (group I: total room of accommodation less than 200 rooms). Therefore, grease trap and natural treatment should be utilized in tourist accommodations in order to reduce the discharged of fat, oil, and grease from tourism activities. In addition, number of tourists also relate statistically with BOD and Nitrate at 0.05 level of significance.
Abstract: Investigation of soil properties like Cation Exchange
Capacity (CEC) plays important roles in study of environmental
reaserches as the spatial and temporal variability of this property
have been led to development of indirect methods in estimation of
this soil characteristic. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) provide an
alternative by estimating soil parameters from more readily available
soil data. 70 soil samples were collected from different horizons of
15 soil profiles located in the Ziaran region, Qazvin province, Iran.
Then, multivariate regression and neural network model (feedforward
back propagation network) were employed to develop a
pedotransfer function for predicting soil parameter using easily
measurable characteristics of clay and organic carbon. The
performance of the multivariate regression and neural network model
was evaluated using a test data set. In order to evaluate the models,
root mean square error (RMSE) was used. The value of RMSE and
R2 derived by ANN model for CEC were 0.47 and 0.94 respectively,
while these parameters for multivariate regression model were 0.65
and 0.88 respectively. Results showed that artificial neural network
with seven neurons in hidden layer had better performance in
predicting soil cation exchange capacity than multivariate regression.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to investigate the
enhancement of power system stability via coordinated tuning of
Power System Stabilizers (PSSs) in a multi-machine power system.
The design problem of the proposed controllers is formulated as an
optimization problem. Chaotic catfish particle swarm optimization
(C-Catfish PSO) algorithm is used to minimize the ITAE objective
function. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on a two-area, 4-
machines system. The robustness of the proposed algorithm is
verified on this system under different operating conditions and
applying a three-phase fault. The nonlinear time-domain simulation
results and some performance indices show the effectiveness of the
proposed controller in damping power system oscillations and this
novel optimization algorithm is compared with particle swarm
optimization (PSO).
Abstract: The objective of this study was to determine the accuracy to estimation fetal weight by Johnson-s method and compares it with actual birth weight. The sample group was 126 infants delivered in Dan KhunThot hospital from January March 2012. Fetal weight was estimated by measuring fundal height according to Johnson-s method. The information was collected by studying historical delivery records and then analyzed by using the statistics of frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. Finally, the difference was analyzed by a paired t-test.The results showed had an average birth weight was 3093.57 ± 391.03 g (mean ± SD) and 3,455 ± 454.55 g average estimated fetal weight by Johnson-s method higher than average actual birth weight was 384.09 grams. When classifying the infants according to birth weight found that low birth weight ( 4000 g) actual birth weight was more than estimated fetal weight. The difference was found between actual birth weight and estimation fetal weight of the minimum weight in high birth weight ( > 4000 g) , the appropriate birth weight (2500-3999g) and low birth weight (
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the
motivation factors to influence the decision to choose Thai Fabric. A
multiple-stage sample was utilized to collect 400 samples from
working women who had diverse occupations all over Thailand. This
research was a quantitative analysis and questionnaire was used a tool
to collect data. Descriptive statistics used in this research included
percentage, average, and standard deviation and inferential statistics
included hypothesis testing of one way ANOVA.
The research findings revealed that demographic factors and social
factors had an influence to the positive idea of wearing Thai fabric (F
= 5.377, P value < 0.05). The respondents who had the age over 41
years old had a better positive idea of wearing Thai fabric than other
groups. Moreover, the findings revealed that age had influenced the
positive idea of wearing Thai fabric (F = 3.918, P value < 0.05). The
respondents who had the age over 41 years old also had stronger
believe that wearing Thai fabric to work and social gatherings are
socially acceptable than other groups.
Abstract: This paper presents a mean for reducing the torque
variation during the revolution of a vertical-axis wind turbine
(VAWT) by increasing the blade number. For this purpose, twodimensional
CDF analysis have been performed on a straight-bladed
Darreius-type rotor. After describing the computational model, a
complete campaign of simulations based on full RANS unsteady
calculations is proposed for a three, four and five-bladed rotor
architecture characterized by a NACA 0025 airfoil. For each
proposed rotor configuration, flow field characteristics are
investigated at several values of tip speed ratio, allowing a
quantification of the influence of blade number on flow geometric
features and dynamic quantities, such as rotor torque and power.
Finally, torque and power curves are compared for the analyzed
architectures, achieving a quantification of the effect of blade number
on overall rotor performance.
Abstract: Nowadays the construction industry is growing specially among developing counties. Iran also has a critical role in these industries in terms of workers disorders. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) assign 7% of the whole diseases in the society, which make some limitations. One of the main factors, which are ended to WMSDs, is awkward posture. Steel bar bending is considered as one of the prominent performance among construction workers. In this case study we conducted to find the major tasks of bar benders and the most important related risk factors. This study was carried out among twenty workers (18-45 years) as our volunteer samples in some construction sites with less than 6 floors in two regions of Tehran municipality. The data was gathered through in depth observation, interview and questionnaire. Also postural analysis was done by OWAS. In another part of study we used NMQ for gathering some data about psychosocial effects of work related disorders. Our findings show that 64% of workers were not aware of work risks, also about 59% of workers had troubles in their wrists, hands, and especially among workers who worked in steel bar bending. In 46% cases low back pain were prevalence. Considering with gathered data and results, awkward postures and long term tasks and its duration are known as the main risk factors in WMSDs among construction workers, so work-rest schedule and also tools design should be considered to make an ergonomic condition for the mentioned workers.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to establish a possible relationship between sustainable business practice and firm performance. Using a field survey methodology, a sample of sixty manufacturing companies in Nigeria was studied. The firms were categorised into two groups, environmentally 'responsible' and 'irresponsible' firms. An investigation was undertaken into the possible relationship between firm performance and three selected indicators of sustainable business practice: employee health and safety (EHS), waste management (WM), and community development (CD), common within the 30 'responsible' firms. Findings from empirical results reveal that the sustainable practices of the 'responsible' firms are significantly related with firm performance. In addition, sustainable practices are inversely related with fines and penalties. The paper concludes that, within the Nigerian setting at least, sustainability affects corporate performance and sustainability may be a possible tool for corporate conflict resolution as evidenced in the reduction of fines, penalties and compensations. The paper therefore recommends research into the relationship between sustainability and conflict management.
Abstract: Eight Etawah cross bred does were divided into two
groups based on body condition score (BCS). Group I (BSC 2, body
weight 25-30 kg; n = 4), and Group II (BSC 3, body weight, 35-40 kg, n=4). All does received intravaginal controlled internal drug
release devices (CIDR) for 10 days, and a prostaglandin F2α at 48 h before CIDR removal. Estrus detection was carried out using
vasectomized buck. Vaginal epithelium was taken to determine estrus cycle. Blood samples were taken every 3-6 hours, started from
moment of CIDR removal until the end of estrus. The results showed vaginal histological indicated estrus occurred at the hours of 25 to 60
and 30 to 70 post CIDR removal in BCS 2 and 3, respectively. Progesterone peak of BCS 2 and BCS 3 were 0.18±0.31 and
0.48±0.31 ng/mL on the hour 0 post CIDR removal. Estradiol -17ß
peak of each group was 53.25±35.08 and 89.91±92.84 pg/mL at 48
post CIDR removal. LH surge only occurred on BCS 3 groups, the LH concentrations were 9.9± 9.1; 4.5± 4.0; and 18.2± 9.1 ng/mL at
45, 48 and 51 hours post CIDR removal, respectively. It was concluded that the BCS had effects on vaginal histological changes
and LH surge.
Abstract: The alumosilicate ceramics with mullite crystalline phase are used in various branches of science and technique. The mullite refractory ceramics with high porosity serve as a heat insulator and as a constructional materials [1], [2]. The purpose of the work was to sinter high porosity ceramic and to increase the quantity of mullite phase in this mullite, mullite-corundum ceramics. Two types of compositions were prepared at during the experiment. The first type is compositions with commercial alumina and silica oxides. The second type is from mixing these oxides with 10, 20 and 30 wt.%. of kaolin. In all samples the Al2O3 and SiO2 were in 2.57:1 ratio, because that was conformed to mullite stechiometric compositions (3Al2O3.2SiO2). The types of alumina oxides were α-Al2O3 (d50=4µm) and γ-Al2O3 (d50=80µm). Ratios of α-: γ-Al2O3 were (1:1) or (1:3). The porous materials were prepared by slip casting of suspension of raw materials. The aluminium paste (0.18 wt.%) was used as a pore former. Water content in the suspensions was 26-47 wt.%. Pore formation occurred as a result of hydrogen formation in chemical reaction between aluminium paste and water [2]. The samples were sintered at the temperature of 1650°C and 1750°C for one hour. The increasing amount of kaolin, α-: γ-Al2O3 at the ratio (1:3) and sintering at the highest temperature raised the quantity of mullite phase. The mullite phase began to dominate over the corundum phase.