Abstract: User-Centered Design (UCD), Usability Engineering (UE) and Participatory Design (PD) are the common Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) approaches that are practiced in the software development process, focusing towards issues and matters concerning user involvement. It overlooks the organizational perspective of HCI integration within the software development organization. The Management Information Systems (MIS) perspective of HCI takes a managerial and organizational context to view the effectiveness of integrating HCI in the software development process. The Human-Centered Design (HCD) which encompasses all of the human aspects including aesthetic and ergonomic, is claimed as to provide a better approach in strengthening the HCI approaches to strengthen the software development process. In determining the effectiveness of HCD in the software development process, this paper presents the findings of a content analysis of HCI approaches by viewing those approaches as a technology which integrates user requirements, ranging from the top management to other stake holder in the software development process. The findings obtained show that HCD approach is a technology that emphasizes on human, tools and knowledge in strengthening the HCI approaches to strengthen the software development process in the quest to produce a sustainable, usable and useful software product.
Abstract: Complaints today have the ability to retain
customer loyalty using state of the art systems and strategies
in customer relationship management to analyze and respond
to a plethora of customer perception. The Majority of
companies are not aware of the beneficiary utilization of
customer complaints for the sake of quality improvements.
Also, some companies have problems determining how
resolution of complaints can be profitable. In this study, we
will define the problems and ascertain the importance of
customer management system on the companies. Furthermore,
we will determine the impact of such a system on efficiency,
confidence, profitability and customer complaints. Eventually,
we will develop methods and address the issues. In this paper,
we used an open-ended questionnaire and distributed that to
30 randomly chosen respondents which were the passengers in
an airport. We also define three hypotheses for our study and
we will validate each of them. Then using frequency, Chi-
Square and quality control method we optimized the size of
customers- negative feedback and improved the process of
customer retention.
Abstract: Ten simply supported grossly underreinforced
tapered concrete beams of full size were tested upto complete
collapse under flexural effect .Out of 10 beams, 5 beams were
nonfibrous and the remaining beams contained fibres. The beams
had a variation in the tapered angle as 2°, 4°, 6°, 8° and 10°. The
concrete mix, conventional steel and the type of fibre used were
held constant. Flat corrugated steel fibres were utilized as
secondary reinforcement. The strength and stability parameters
were measured. It is established that the fibrous tapered beams can
be used economically in earthquake prone areas.
Abstract: Design patterns describe good solutions to common
and reoccurring problems in program design. Applying design
patterns in software design and implementation have significant
effects on software quality metrics such as flexibility, usability,
reusability, scalability and robustness. There is no standard rule for
using design patterns. There are some situations that a pattern is
applied for a specific problem and this pattern uses another pattern.
In this paper, we study the effect of using chain of patterns on
software quality metrics.
Abstract: Nowadays, quick technological changes force companies
to develop innovative products in an increasingly competitive
environment. Therefore, how to enhance the time of new product
development is very important. This design problem often lacks
the exact formula for getting it, and highly depends upon human
designers- past experiences. For these reasons, in this work, a Casebased
reasoning (CBR) system to assist in new product development
is proposed. When a case is recovered from the case base, the system
will take into account not only the attribute-s specific value and
how important it is. It will also take into account if the attribute
has a positive influence over the product development. Hence the
manufacturing time will be improved. This information will be
introduced as a new concept called “adaptability". An application to
this method for hearing instrument new design illustrates the proposed
approach.
Abstract: Sediment loads transfer in hydraulic installations and their consequences for the O&M of modern canal systems is emerging as one of the most important considerations in hydraulic engineering projects apriticularly those which are inteded to feed the irrigation and draiange schemes of large command areas such as the Dez and Mogahn in Iran.. The aim of this paper is to investigate the applicability of the vortex tube as a viable means of extracting sediment loads entering the canal systems in general and the water inatke structures in particulars. The Western conveyance canal of the Dez Diversion weir which feeds the Karkheh Flood Plain in Sothwestern Dezful has been used as the case study using the data from the Dastmashan Hydrometric Station. The SHARC software has been used as an analytical framework to interprete the data. Results show that given the grain size D50 and the canal turbulence the adaption length from the beginning of the canal and after the diversion dam is estimated at 477 m, a point which is suitable for laying the vortex tube.
Abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that negative
attitudes towards people with physical disabilities and obesity are
predicted by a component of perceived vulnerability to disease; germ
aversion. These findings have been suggested as illustrations of an
evolved but over-active mechanism which promotes the avoidance of
pathogen-carrying individuals. To date, this interpretation of attitude
formation has not been explored with regard to people with
intellectual disability, and no attempts have been made to examine
possible mediating factors. This study examined attitudes in 333
adults and demonstrated that the moderate positive relationship
between germ aversion and negative attitudes toward people with
intellectual disability is fully mediated by social dominance
orientation, a general preference for hierarchies and inequalities
among social groups. These findings have implications for the
design of programs which attempt to promote community acceptance
and inclusion of people with disabilities.
Abstract: Human perceives color in categories, which may be
identified using color name such as red, blue, etc. The categorization
is unique for each human being. However despite the individual
differences, the categorization is shared among members in society.
This allows communication among them, especially when using
color name. Sociable robot, to live coexist with human and become
part of human society, must also have the shared color
categorization, which can be achieved through learning. Many
works have been done to enable computer, as brain of robot, to learn
color categorization. Most of them rely on modeling of human color
perception and mathematical complexities. Differently, in this work,
the computer learns color categorization through interaction with
humans. This work aims at developing the innate ability of the
computer to learn the human-like color categorization. It focuses on
the representation of color categorization and how it is built and
developed without much mathematical complexity.
Abstract: The paper presents an analytical solution for dispersion
of a solute in the peristaltic motion of a couple stress fluid
through a porous medium with slip condition in the presence of both
homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical reactions. The average
effective dispersion coefficient has been found using Taylor-s limiting
condition and long wavelength approximation. The effects of various
relevant parameters on the average coefficient of dispersion have been
studied. The average effective dispersion coefficient tends to increase
with permeability parameter but tends to decrease with homogeneous
chemical reaction rate parameter, couple stress parameter, slip parameter
and heterogeneous reaction rate parameter.
Abstract: The ability to recognize humans and their activities by computer vision is a very important task, with many potential application. Study of human motion analysis is related to several research areas of computer vision such as the motion capture, detection, tracking and segmentation of people. In this paper, we describe a segmentation method for extracting human body contour in modified HLS color space. To estimate a background, the modified HLS color space is proposed, and the background features are estimated by using the HLS color components. Here, the large amount of human dataset, which was collected from DV cameras, is pre-processed. The human body and its contour is successfully extracted from the image sequences.
Abstract: This paper presents development of an ignition system using spark electrodes for application in a research explosion vessel.
A single spark is aimed to be discharged with quantifiable ignition energy. The spark electrode system would enable study of flame
propagation, ignitability of fuel-air mixtures and other fundamental characteristics of flames. The principle of the capacitive spark circuit
of ASTM is studied to charge an appropriate capacitance connected across the spark gap through a large resistor by a high voltage from
the source of power supply until the initiation of spark. Different spark energies could be obtained mainly by varying the value of the
capacitance and the supply current. The spark sizes produced are found to be affected by the spark gap, electrode size, input voltage
and capacitance value.
Abstract: The current study begins with an awareness that
today-s media environment is characterized by technological
development and a new way of reading caused by the introduction of
the Internet. The researcher conducted a meta analysis framed within
Technological Determinism to investigate the process of hypertext
reading, its differences from linear reading and the effects such
differences can have on people-s ways of mentally structuring their
world. The relationship between literacy and the comprehension
achieved by reading hypertexts is also investigated. The results show
hypertexts are not always user friendly. People experience hyperlinks
as interruptions that distract their attention generating comprehension
and disorientation. On one hand hypertextual jumping reading
generates interruptions that finally make people lose their
concentration. On the other hand hypertexts fascinate people who
would rather read a document in such a format even though the
outcome is often frustrating and affects their ability to elaborate and
retain information.
Abstract: In a competitive production environment, critical
decision making are based on data resulted by random sampling of
product units. Efficiency of these decisions depends on data quality
and also their reliability scale. This point leads to the necessity of a
reliable measurement system. Therefore, the conjecture process and
analysing the errors contributes to a measurement system known as
Measurement System Analysis (MSA). The aim of this research is on
determining the necessity and assurance of extensive development in
analysing measurement systems, particularly with the use of
Repeatability and Reproducibility Gages (GR&R) to improve
physical measurements. Nowadays in productive industries,
repeatability and reproducibility gages released so well but they are
not applicable as well as other measurement system analysis
methods. To get familiar with this method and gain a feedback in
improving measurement systems, this survey would be on
“ANOVA" method as the most widespread way of calculating
Repeatability and Reproducibility (R&R).
Abstract: The availability of water in adequate quantity and
quality is imperative for sustainable development. Worldwide,
significant imbalance exists with regards to sustainable development
particularly from a water and sanitation perspective. Water is a
critical component of public health, and failure to supply safe water
will place a heavy burden on the entire population. Although the 21st
century has witnessed wealth and advanced development, it has not
been realized everywhere. Billions of people are still striving to
access the most basic human needs which are food, shelter, safe
drinking water and adequate sanitation. The global picture conceals
various inequalities particularly with regards to sanitation coverage in
rural and urban areas. Currently, water scarcity and in particular
water governance is the main challenge which will cause a threat to
sustainable development goals. Within the context of water,
sanitation and health, sustainable development is a confusing concept
primarily when examined from the viewpoint of policy options for
developing countries. This perspective paper aims to summarize and
critically evaluate evidence of published studies in relation to water,
sanitation and health and to identify relevant solutions to reduce
public health impacts. Evidently, improving water and sanitation
services will result in significant and lasting gains in health and
economic development.
Abstract: The cable tower of Liede Bridge is a double-column curved-lever arched-beam portal framed structure. Being novel and unique in structure, its cable tower differs in complexity from traditional ones. This paper analyzes the ultimate load capacity of cable tower by adopting the finite element calculations and model tests which indicate that constitutive relations applied here give a better simulation of actual failure process of prestressed reinforced concrete. In vertical load, horizontal load and overloading tests, the stepped loading of the tower model is of linear relationship, and the test data has good repeatability. All suggests that the cable tower has good bearing capacity, rational design and high emergency capacity.
Abstract: Cu-mesoporous TiO2 is developed for removal acid
odor cooperated with ozone assistance and online- regeneration
system with/without UV irradiation (all weather) in study. The results
showed that Cu-mesoporous TiO2 present the desirable adsorption
efficiency of acid odor without UV irradiation, due to the larger
surface area, pore sizeand the additional absorption ability provided by
Cu. In the photocatalysis process, the material structure also benefits
Cu-mesoporous TiO2 to perform the more outstanding efficiency on
degrading acid odor. Cu also postponed the recombination of
electron-hole pairs excited from TiO2 to enhance photodegradation
ability. Cu-mesoporous TiO2 could gain the conspicuous increase on
photocatalysis ability from ozone assistance, but without any benefit
on adsorption. In addition, the online regeneration procedure could
process the used Cu-mesoporous TiO2 to reinstate the adsorption
ability and maintain the photodegradtion performance, depended on
scrubbing, desorping acid odor and reducing Cu to metal state.
Abstract: In this paper we describe the design and implementation of a parallel algorithm for data assimilation with ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) for oil reservoir history matching problem. The use of large number of observations from time-lapse seismic leads to a large turnaround time for the analysis step, in addition to the time consuming simulations of the realizations. For efficient parallelization it is important to consider parallel computation at the analysis step. Our experiments show that parallelization of the analysis step in addition to the forecast step has good scalability, exploiting the same set of resources with some additional efforts.
Abstract: Quantitative Investigation of impact of the factors' contribution towards measuring the reusability of software components could be helpful in evaluating the quality of developed or developing reusable software components and in identification of reusable component from existing legacy systems; that can save cost of developing the software from scratch. But the issue of the relative significance of contributing factors has remained relatively unexplored. In this paper, we have use the Taguchi's approach in analyzing the significance of different structural attributes or factors in deciding the reusability level of a particular component. The results obtained shows that the complexity is the most important factor in deciding the better Reusability of a function oriented Software. In case of Object Oriented Software, Coupling and Complexity collectively play significant role in high reusability.
Abstract: Cryptography provides the secure manner of
information transmission over the insecure channel. It authenticates
messages based on the key but not on the user. It requires a lengthy
key to encrypt and decrypt the sending and receiving the messages,
respectively. But these keys can be guessed or cracked. Moreover,
Maintaining and sharing lengthy, random keys in enciphering and
deciphering process is the critical problem in the cryptography
system. A new approach is described for generating a crypto key,
which is acquired from a person-s iris pattern. In the biometric field,
template created by the biometric algorithm can only be
authenticated with the same person. Among the biometric templates,
iris features can efficiently be distinguished with individuals and
produces less false positives in the larger population. This type of iris
code distribution provides merely less intra-class variability that aids
the cryptosystem to confidently decrypt messages with an exact
matching of iris pattern. In this proposed approach, the iris features
are extracted using multi resolution wavelets. It produces 135-bit iris
codes from each subject and is used for encrypting/decrypting the
messages. The autocorrelators are used to recall original messages
from the partially corrupted data produced by the decryption process.
It intends to resolve the repudiation and key management problems.
Results were analyzed in both conventional iris cryptography system
(CIC) and non-repudiation iris cryptography system (NRIC). It
shows that this new approach provides considerably high
authentication in enciphering and deciphering processes.
Abstract: Rainfall data at fine resolution and knowledge of its
characteristics plays a major role in the efficient design and operation
of agricultural, telecommunication, runoff and erosion control as well
as water quality control systems. The paper is aimed to study the
statistical distribution of hourly rainfall depth for 12 representative
stations spread across Peninsular Malaysia. Hourly rainfall data of 10
to 22 years period were collected and its statistical characteristics
were estimated. Three probability distributions namely, Generalized
Pareto, Exponential and Gamma distributions were proposed to
model the hourly rainfall depth, and three goodness-of-fit tests,
namely, Kolmogorov-Sminov, Anderson-Darling and Chi-Squared
tests were used to evaluate their fitness. Result indicates that the east
cost of the Peninsular receives higher depth of rainfall as compared
to west coast. However, the rainfall frequency is found to be
irregular. Also result from the goodness-of-fit tests show that all the
three models fit the rainfall data at 1% level of significance.
However, Generalized Pareto fits better than Exponential and
Gamma distributions and is therefore recommended as the best fit.