Abstract: Today, building automation is advancing from simple
monitoring and control tasks of lightning and heating towards more
and more complex applications that require a dynamic perception
and interpretation of different scenes occurring in a building. Current
approaches cannot handle these newly upcoming demands. In this
article, a bionically inspired approach for multimodal, dynamic scene
perception and interpretation is presented, which is based on neuroscientific
and neuro-psychological research findings about the perceptual
system of the human brain. This approach bases on data from diverse
sensory modalities being processed in a so-called neuro-symbolic
network. With its parallel structure and with its basic elements being
information processing and storing units at the same time, a very
efficient method for scene perception is provided overcoming the
problems and bottlenecks of classical dynamic scene interpretation
systems.
Abstract: This paper analyzed the perception of e-commerce
application services by construction material traders in Malaysia.
Five attributes were tested: usability, reputation, trust, privacy and
familiarity. Study methodology consists of survey questionnaire and
statistical analysis that includes reliability analysis, factor analysis,
ANOVA and regression analysis. The respondents were construction
material traders, including hardware stores in Klang Valley, Kuala
Lumpur.
Findings support that usability and familiarity with e-commerce
services in Malaysia have insignificant influence on the acceptance of
e-commerce application. However, reputation, trust and privacy
attributes have significant influence on the choice of e-commerce
acceptance by construction material traders. E-commerce
applications studied included customer database, e-selling, emarketing,
e-payment, e-buying and online advertising. Assumptions
are made that traders have basic knowledge and exposure to ICT
services. i.e. internet service and computers. Study concludes that
reputation, privacy and trust are the three website attributes that
influence the acceptance of e-commerce by construction material
traders.
Abstract: Prediction of fault-prone modules provides one way to
support software quality engineering. Clustering is used to determine
the intrinsic grouping in a set of unlabeled data. Among various
clustering techniques available in literature K-Means clustering
approach is most widely being used. This paper introduces K-Means
based Clustering approach for software finding the fault proneness of
the Object-Oriented systems. The contribution of this paper is that it
has used Metric values of JEdit open source software for generation
of the rules for the categorization of software modules in the
categories of Faulty and non faulty modules and thereafter
empirically validation is performed. The results are measured in
terms of accuracy of prediction, probability of Detection and
Probability of False Alarms.
Abstract: Public bus service plays a significant role in our
society as people movers and to facilitate travels within towns and districts. The quality of service of public bus is always being
regarded as poor, or rather, underestimated as second class means of transportation. Reliability of service, or the ability to deliver service as planned, is one key element in perceiving the quality of bus service and the punctuality index is one of the performance parameters in determining the service reliability. This study
concentrates on evaluating the reliability performance of bus operation using punctuality index assessment. A week data for each
of six city bus routes is recorded using the on-board methodology to calculate the punctuality index for city bus service in Kota Bharu. The results revealed that the punctuality index for the whole city bus network is 94.25% (LOS B).
Abstract: A Laboratory-scale packed bed reactor with microbial
cellulose as the biofilm carrier was used to investigate the
denitrification of high-strength nitrate wastewater with specific
emphasis on the effect the nitrogen loading rate and hydraulic
retention time. Ethanol was added as a carbon source for
denitrification. As a result of this investigation, it was found that up
to 500 mg/l feed nitrate concentration the present system is able to
produce an effluent with nitrate content below 10 ppm at 3 h
hydraulic retention time. The highest observed denitrification rate
was 4.57 kg NO3-N/ (m3 .d) at a nitrate load of 5.64 kg NO3-
N/(m3 .d), and removal efficiencies higher than 90% were obtained
for loads up to 4.2 kg NO3-N/(m3 .d). A mass relation between COD
consumed and NO3-N removed around 2.82 was observed. This
continuous-flow bioreactor proved an efficient denitrification system
with a relatively low retention time.
Abstract: An adaptive Fuzzy Inference Perceptual model has
been proposed for watermarking of digital images. The model
depends on the human visual characteristics of image sub-regions in
the frequency multi-resolution wavelet domain. In the proposed
model, a multi-variable fuzzy based architecture has been designed to
produce a perceptual membership degree for both candidate
embedding sub-regions and strength watermark embedding factor.
Different sizes of benchmark images with different sizes of
watermarks have been applied on the model. Several experimental
attacks have been applied such as JPEG compression, noises and
rotation, to ensure the robustness of the scheme. In addition, the
model has been compared with different watermarking schemes. The
proposed model showed its robustness to attacks and at the same time
achieved a high level of imperceptibility.
Abstract: Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) films of polyaniline (PANI) grown onto ITO coated glass substrates were utilized for the fabrication of Uric acid biosensor for efficient detection of uric acid by immobilizing Uricase via EDC–NHS coupling. The modified electrodes were characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The response characteristics after immobilization of uricase were studied using cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy techniques. The uricase/PANI/ITO/glass bioelectrode studied by CV and EIS techniques revealed detection of uric acid in a wide range of 0.05 mM to 1.0 mM, covering the physiological range in blood. A low Michaelis–Menten constant (Km) of 0.21 mM indicates the higher affinity of immobilized Uricase towards its analyte (uric acid). The fabricated uric acid biosensor based on PANI LB films exhibits excellent sensitivity of 0.21 mA/mM with a response time of 4 s, good reproducibility, long shelf life (8 weeks) and high selectivity.
Abstract: Meat and meat products for human consumption are one of main sources of protein, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. Popular variety of meat product is meatballs, which can be enriched with valuable product – Jerusalem artichoke powder, made from dried and grinded Jerusalem artichoke tubers, it is raw material with low-calorie, low fat, rich in dietary fibres, minerals, and vitamins. The results of this study indicate that that people could accept the new product - meatballs with Jerusalem artichoke powder and Jerusalem artichoke powder is suitable for meatballs preparation, in result them is possible to improve meatballs sensory and physical properties.
Abstract: Due to the coexistence of different Radio Access
Technologies (RATs), Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN)
are predicted to be heterogeneous in nature. The coexistence of
different RATs requires a need for Common Radio Resource
Management (CRRM) to support the provision of Quality of Service
(QoS) and the efficient utilization of radio resources. RAT selection
algorithms are part of the CRRM algorithms. Simply, their role is to
verify if an incoming call will be suitable to fit into a heterogeneous
wireless network, and to decide which of the available RATs is most
suitable to fit the need of the incoming call and admit it.
Guaranteeing the requirements of QoS for all accepted calls and at
the same time being able to provide the most efficient utilization of
the available radio resources is the goal of RAT selection algorithm.
The normal call admission control algorithms are designed for
homogeneous wireless networks and they do not provide a solution
to fit a heterogeneous wireless network which represents the NGWN.
Therefore, there is a need to develop RAT selection algorithm for
heterogeneous wireless network. In this paper, we propose an
approach for RAT selection which includes receiving different
criteria, assessing and making decisions, then selecting the most
suitable RAT for incoming calls. A comprehensive survey of
different RAT selection algorithms for a heterogeneous wireless
network is studied.
Abstract: Visual inputs are one of the key sources from which
humans perceive the environment and 'understand' what is
happening. Artificial systems perceive the visual inputs as digital
images. The images need to be processed and analysed. Within the
human brain, processing of visual inputs and subsequent
development of perception is one of its major functionalities. In this
paper we present part of our research project, which aims at the
development of an artificial model for visual perception (or
'understanding') based on the human perceptive and cognitive
systems. We propose a new model for perception from visual inputs
and a way of understaning or interpreting images using the model.
We demonstrate the implementation and use of the model with a real
image data set.
Abstract: Through inward perceptions, we intuitively expect
distributed software development to increase the risks associated with
achieving cost, schedule, and quality goals. To compound this
problem, agile software development (ASD) insists one of the main
ingredients of its success is cohesive communication attributed to
collocation of the development team. The following study identified
the degree of communication richness needed to achieve comparable
software quality (reduce pre-release defects) between distributed and
collocated teams. This paper explores the relevancy of
communication richness in various development phases and its
impact on quality. Through examination of a large distributed agile
development project, this investigation seeks to understand the levels
of communication required within each ASD phase to produce
comparable quality results achieved by collocated teams. Obviously,
a multitude of factors affects the outcome of software projects.
However, within distributed agile software development teams, the
mode of communication is one of the critical components required to
achieve team cohesiveness and effectiveness. As such, this study
constructs a distributed agile communication model (DAC-M) for
potential application to similar distributed agile development efforts
using the measurement of the suitable level of communication. The
results of the study show that less rich communication methods, in
the appropriate phase, might be satisfactory to achieve equivalent
quality in distributed ASD efforts.
Abstract: An experiment was conducted in October 2008 due the ability replacement plant associate biofertilizers by chemical fertilizers and the qualifying rate of chemical N fertilizers at the moment of using this biofertilizers and the interaction of this biofertilizer on each other. This field experiment has been done in Persepolis (Throne of Jamshid) and arrange by using factorial with the basis of randomized complete block design, in three replication Azespirilium SP bacteria has been admixed with consistence 108 cfu/g and inoculated with seeds of wheat, The streptomyces SP has been used in amount of 550 gr/ha and concatenated on clay and for the qualifying range of chemical fertilizer 4 level of N chemical fertilizer from the source of urea (N0=0, N1=60, N2=120, N3=180) has been used in this experiment. The results indicated there were Significant differences between levels of Nitrogen fertilizer in the entire characteristic which has been measured in this experiment. The admixed Azespirilium SP showed significant differences between their levels in the characteristics such as No. of fertile ear, No. of grain per ear, grain yield, grain protein percentage, leaf area index and the agronomic fertilizer use efficiency. Due the interaction streptomyses with Azespirilium SP bacteria this actinomycet didn-t show any statistically significant differences between it levels.
Abstract: One of the most important aspects expected from an
ERP system is to mange user\administrator manual documents
dynamically. Since an ERP package is frequently changed during its
implementation in customer sites, it is often needed to add new
documents and/or apply required changes to existing documents in
order to cover new or changed capabilities. The worse is that since
these changes occur continuously, the corresponding documents
should be updated dynamically; otherwise, implementing the ERP
package in the organization encounters serious risks. In this paper, we
propose a new architecture which is based on the agent oriented
vision and supplies the dynamic document generation expected from
ERP systems using several independent but cooperative agents.
Beside the dynamic document generation which is the main issue of
this paper, the presented architecture will address some aspects of
intelligence and learning capabilities existing in ERP.
Abstract: Indium-tin oxide films are deposited by low plasma
temperature RF sputtering on highly flexible modification of glycol
polyethyleneterephtalate substrates. The produced layers are
characterized with transparency over 82 % and sheet resistance of
86.9 Ω/square. The film’s conductivity was further improved by
additional UV illumination from light source (365 nm), having power
of 250 W. The influence of the UV exposure dose on the structural
and electro-optical properties of ITO was investigated. It was
established that the optimum time of illumination is 10 minutes and
further UV treatment leads to polymer substrates degradation.
Structural and bonds type analysis show that at longer treatment
carbon atoms release and diffuse into ITO films, which worsen their
electrical behavior. For the optimum UV dose the minimum sheet
resistance was measured to be 19.2 Ω/square, and the maximum
transparency remained almost unchanged – above 82 %.
Abstract: In this paper, we present an innovative scheme of
blindly extracting message bits from an image distorted by an attack.
Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to nonlinearly classify the
bits of the embedded message. Traditionally, a hard decoder is used
with the assumption that the underlying modeling of the Discrete
Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients does not appreciably change.
In case of an attack, the distribution of the image coefficients is
heavily altered. The distribution of the sufficient statistics at the
receiving end corresponding to the antipodal signals overlap and a
simple hard decoder fails to classify them properly. We are
considering message retrieval of antipodal signal as a binary
classification problem. Machine learning techniques like SVM is
used to retrieve the message, when certain specific class of attacks is
most probable. In order to validate SVM based decoding scheme, we
have taken Gaussian noise as a test case. We generate a data set using
125 images and 25 different keys. Polynomial kernel of SVM has
achieved 100 percent accuracy on test data.
Abstract: This paper presents an application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to forecast actual cost of a project based on the earned value management system (EVMS). For this purpose, some projects randomly selected based on the standard data set , and it is produced necessary progress data such as actual cost ,actual percent complete , baseline cost and percent complete for five periods of project. Then an ANN with five inputs and five outputs and one hidden layer is trained to produce forecasted actual costs. The comparison between real and forecasted data show better performance based on the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) criterion. This approach could be applicable to better forecasting the project cost and result in decreasing the risk of project cost overrun, and therefore it is beneficial for planning preventive actions.
Abstract: This paper presents the enhanced frame-based video coding scheme. The input source video to the enhanced frame-based video encoder consists of a rectangular-size video and shapes of arbitrarily-shaped objects on video frames. The rectangular frame texture is encoded by the conventional frame-based coding technique and the video object-s shape is encoded using the contour-based vertex coding. It is possible to achieve several useful content-based functionalities by utilizing the shape information in the bitstream at the cost of a very small overhead to the bitrate.
Abstract: Today, node-disjoint routing becomes inessential
technique in communication of packets among various nodes in
networks. Meanwhile AODV (Ad Hoc On-demand Multipath
Distance Vector) creates single-path route between a pair of source
and destination nodes. Some researches has done so far to make
multipath node-disjoint routing based on AODV protocol. But
however their overhead and end-to-end delay are relatively high,
while the detail of their code is not available too. This paper proposes
a new approach of multipath node-disjoint routing based on AODV
protocol. Then the algorithm of analytical model is presented. The
extensive results of this algorithm will be presented in the next paper.
Abstract: Independent component analysis can estimate unknown
source signals from their mixtures under the assumption that the
source signals are statistically independent. However, in a real environment,
the separation performance is often deteriorated because
the number of the source signals is different from that of the sensors.
In this paper, we propose an estimation method for the number of
the sources based on the joint distribution of the observed signals
under two-sensor configuration. From several simulation results, it
is found that the number of the sources is coincident to that of
peaks in the histogram of the distribution. The proposed method can
estimate the number of the sources even if it is larger than that of
the observed signals. The proposed methods have been verified by
several experiments.
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the factors
that influenced the success of mobile phone entrepreneurs at Central
Plaza. The sample group included 187 entrepreneurs at Central Plaza.
A questionnaire was utilized as a tool to collect data. Statistics used
in this research included frequency, percentage, mean, and standard
deviation. Independent- sample t- test, one way ANOVA, and
multiple regression analysis. Data were analyzed by using Statistical
Package for the Social Sciences.The findings disclosed that the
majority of respondents were male between 25-40 years old, and held
an undergraduate degree. The average income of respondents was
between 15,001-25,000 baht. The majority of respondents had less
than 5 years of working experience.
In terms of personality, the findings revealed that expression and
agreement were ranked at the highest level. Whereas, emotion
stability, consciousness, open to new experience were ranked at high.
From the hypotheses testing, the findings revealed that different
genders had different success in their mobile phone business with
different income from the last 6 months. However, difference in age,
income, level of education, and experience affected the success in
terms of income, number of customers, and overall success of
business. Moreover, the factors of personalities included expression,
agreement, emotion stability, consciousness, open to new experience,
and competitive strategy. From the findings, these factors were able
to predict mobile phone business success at 66.9 percent.