Abstract: In this paper we present the information life cycle and analyze the importance of managing the corporate application portfolio across this life cycle. The approach presented here corresponds not just to the extension of the traditional information system development life cycle. This approach is based in the generic life cycle. In this paper it is proposed a model of an information system life cycle, supported in the assumption that a system has a limited life. But, this limited life may be extended. This model is also applied in several cases; being reported here two examples of the framework application in a construction enterprise and in a manufacturing enterprise.
Abstract: The mechanism of microwave heating is essentially
that of dielectric heating. After exposing the emulsion to the
microwave Electromagnetic (EM) field, molecular rotation and ionic
conduction due to the penetration of (EM) into the emulsion are
responsible for the internal heating. To determine the capability of
microwave technology in demulsification of crude oil emulsions,
microwave demulsification method was applied in a 50-50 % and 20-
80 % water-in-oil emulsions with microwave exposure time varied
from 20-180 sec. Transient temperature profiles of water-in-oil
emulsions inside a cylindrical container were measured. The
temperature rise at a given location was almost horizontal (linear).
The average rates of temperature increase of 50-50 % and 20-80 %
water-in-oil emulsions are 0.351 and 0.437 oC/sec, respectively. The
rate of temperature increase of emulsions decreased at higher
temperature due to decreasing dielectric loss of water. These results
indicate that microwave demulsification of water-in-oil emulsions
does not require chemical additions. Microwave has the potential to
be used as an alternative way in the demulsification process.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for the effective implementation of Six Sigma in non-formal service Sectors.
Based on the survey of literature, the critical success factors (CSFs) for Six Sigma have been identified and are assessed for their importance in Non-formal service sector using Delphi Technique. These selected CSFs were put forth to the panel of expert to cluster them and prepare cognitive map to establish their relationship.
All the critical success factors examined and obtained from the review of literature have been assessed for their importance with respect to their contribution to Six Sigma effectiveness in non formal service sector.
The study is limited to the non-formal service sectors involved in the organization of religious festival only. However, the similar exercise can be conducted for broader sample of other non-formal service sectors like temple/ashram management, religious tours management etc.
The research suggests an approach to identify CSFs of Six Sigma for Non-formal service sector. All the CSFs of the formal service sector will not be applicable to Non-formal services, hence opinion of experts was sought to add or delete the CSFs. In the first round of Delphi, the panel of experts has suggested, two new CSFs-“competitive benchmarking (F19) and resident’s involvement (F28)”, which were added for assessment in the next round of Delphi. One of the CSFs-“fulltime six sigma personnel (F15)” has been omitted in proposed clusters of CSFs for non-formal organization, as it is practically impossible to deploy full time trained Six Sigma recruits.
Abstract: Static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) is a shunt connected voltage source converter (VSC), which can affect rapid control of reactive flow in the transmission line by controlling the generated a.c. voltage. The main aim of the paper is to design a power system installed with a Static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) and demonstrates the application of the linearised Phillips-heffron model in analyzing the damping effect of the STATCOM to improve power system oscillation stability. The proposed PI controller is designed to coordinate two control inputs: Voltage of the injection bus and capacitor voltage of the STATCOM, to improve the Dynamic stability of a SMIB system .The power oscillations damping (POD) control and power system stabilizer (PSS) and their coordinated action with proposed controllers are tested. The simulation result shows that the proposed damping controllers provide satisfactory performance in terms of improvements of dynamic stability of the system.
Abstract: Cryptographic algorithms play a crucial role in the
information society by providing protection from unauthorized
access to sensitive data. It is clear that information technology will
become increasingly pervasive, Hence we can expect the emergence
of ubiquitous or pervasive computing, ambient intelligence. These
new environments and applications will present new security
challenges, and there is no doubt that cryptographic algorithms and
protocols will form a part of the solution. The efficiency of a public
key cryptosystem is mainly measured in computational overheads,
key size and bandwidth. In particular the RSA algorithm is used in
many applications for providing the security. Although the security
of RSA is beyond doubt, the evolution in computing power has
caused a growth in the necessary key length. The fact that most chips
on smart cards can-t process key extending 1024 bit shows that there
is need for alternative. NTRU is such an alternative and it is a
collection of mathematical algorithm based on manipulating lists of
very small integers and polynomials. This allows NTRU to high
speeds with the use of minimal computing power. NTRU (Nth degree
Truncated Polynomial Ring Unit) is the first secure public key
cryptosystem not based on factorization or discrete logarithm
problem. This means that given sufficient computational resources
and time, an adversary, should not be able to break the key. The
multi-party communication and requirement of optimal resource
utilization necessitated the need for the present day demand of
applications that need security enforcement technique .and can be
enhanced with high-end computing. This has promoted us to develop
high-performance NTRU schemes using approaches such as the use
of high-end computing hardware. Peer-to-peer (P2P) or enterprise
grids are proven as one of the approaches for developing high-end
computing systems. By utilizing them one can improve the
performance of NTRU through parallel execution. In this paper we
propose and develop an application for NTRU using enterprise grid
middleware called Alchemi. An analysis and comparison of its
performance for various text files is presented.
Abstract: Employees commonly encounter unpredictable and
unavoidable work related stressors. Exposure to such stressors can
evoke negative appraisals and associated adverse mental, physical,
and behavioral responses. Because Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy (ACT) emphasizes acceptance of unavoidable stressors and
diffusion from negative appraisals, it may be particularly beneficial
for work stress. Forty-five workers were randomly assigned to an
ACT intervention for work stress (n = 21) or a waitlist control group
(n = 24). The intervention consisted of two 3-hour sessions spaced
one week apart. An examination of group process and outcomes was
conducted using the Revised Sessions Rating Scale. Results indicated
that the ACT participants reported that they perceived the
intervention to be supportive, task focused, and without adverse
therapist behaviors (e.g., feelings of being criticized or discounted).
Additionally, the second session (values clarification and
commitment to action) was perceived to be more supportive and task
focused than the first session (mindfulness, defusion). Process ratings
were correlated with outcomes. Results indicated that perceptions of
therapy supportiveness and task focus were associated with reduced
psychological distress and improved perceived physical health.
Abstract: The wireless adhoc network is comprised of wireless
node which can move freely and are connected among themselves
without central infrastructure. Due to the limited transmission range
of wireless interfaces, in most cases communication has to be relayed
over intermediate nodes. Thus, in such multihop network each node
(also called router) is independent, self-reliant and capable to route
the messages over the dynamic network topology. Various protocols
are reported in this field and it is very difficult to decide the best one.
A key issue in deciding which type of routing protocol is best for
adhoc networks is the communication overhead incurred by the
protocol. In this paper STAR a table driven and DSR on demand
protocols based on IEEE 802.11 are analyzed for their performance
on different performance measuring metrics versus varying traffic
CBR load using QualNet 5.0.2 network simulator.
Abstract: The article deals with the relation between rainfall in selected months and subsequent weed infestation of spring barley. The field experiment was performed at Mendel University agricultural enterprise in Žabčice, Czech Republic. Weed infestation was measured in spring barley vegetation in years 2004 to 2012. Barley was grown in three tillage variants: conventional tillage technology (CT), minimization tillage technology (MT), and no tillage (NT). Precipitation was recorded in one-day intervals. Monthly precipitation was calculated from the measured values in the months of October through to April. The technique of canonical correspondence analysis was applied for further statistical processing. 41 different species of weeds were found in the course of the 9-year monitoring period. The results clearly show that precipitation affects the incidence of most weed species in the selected months, but acts differently in the monitored variants of tillage technologies.
Abstract: The case study deals with the semi-quantitative risk
assessment of water resource earmarked for the emergency supply
of population with drinking water. The risk analysis has been based
on previously identified hazards/sensitivities of the elements
of hydrogeological structure and technological equipment of ground
water resource as well as on the assessment of the levels of hazard,
sensitivity and criticality of individual resource elements in the form
of point indexes. The following potential sources of hazard have
been considered: natural disasters caused by atmospheric and
geological changes, technological hazards, and environmental
burdens. The risk analysis has proved that the assessed risks are
acceptable and the water resource may be integrated into a crisis plan
of a given region.
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel system for monitoring the
health of underground pipelines. Some of these pipelines transport
dangerous contents and any damage incurred might have catastrophic
consequences. However, most of these damage are unintentional and
usually a result of surrounding construction activities. In order to
prevent these potential damages, monitoring systems are
indispensable. This paper focuses on acoustically recognizing road
cutters since they prelude most construction activities in modern
cities. Acoustic recognition can be easily achieved by installing a
distributed computing sensor network along the pipelines and using
smart sensors to “listen" for potential threat; if there is a real threat,
raise some form of alarm. For efficient pipeline monitoring, a novel
monitoring approach is proposed. Principal Component Analysis
(PCA) was studied and applied. Eigenvalues were regarded as the
special signature that could characterize a sound sample, and were
thus used for the feature vector for sound recognition. The denoising
ability of PCA could make it robust to noise interference. One class
SVM was used for classifier. On-site experiment results show that the
proposed PCA and SVM based acoustic recognition system will be
very effective with a low tendency for raising false alarms.
Abstract: Noise has adverse effect on human health and
comfort. Noise not only cause hearing impairment, but it also acts as
a causal factor for stress and raising systolic pressure. Additionally it
can be a causal factor in work accidents, both by marking hazards
and warning signals and by impeding concentration. Industry
workers also suffer psychological and physical stress as well as
hearing loss due to industrial noise. This paper proposes an approach
to enable engineers to point out quantitatively the noisiest source for
modification, while multiple machines are operating simultaneously.
The model with the point source and spherical radiation in a free field
was adopted to formulate the problem. The procedure works very
well in ideal cases (point source and free field). However, most of the
industrial noise problems are complicated by the fact that the noise is
confined in a room. Reflections from the walls, floor, ceiling, and
equipment in a room create a reverberant sound field that alters the
sound wave characteristics from those for the free field. So the model
was validated for relatively low absorption room at NIT Kurukshetra
Central Workshop. The results of validation pointed out that the
estimated sound power of noise sources under simultaneous
conditions were on lower side, within the error limits 3.56 - 6.35 %.
Thus suggesting the use of this methodology for practical
implementation in industry. To demonstrate the application of the
above analytical procedure for estimating the sound power of noise
sources under simultaneous operating conditions, a manufacturing
facility (Railway Workshop at Yamunanagar, India) having five
sound sources (machines) on its workshop floor is considered in this
study. The findings of the case study had identified the two most
effective candidates (noise sources) for noise control in the Railway
Workshop Yamunanagar, India. The study suggests that the
modification in the design and/or replacement of these two identified
noisiest sources (machine) would be necessary so as to achieve an
effective reduction in noise levels. Further, the estimated data allows
engineers to better understand the noise situations of the workplace
and to revise the map when changes occur in noise level due to a
workplace re-layout.
Abstract: The increasing industrialization and motorization of the world has led to a steep rise for the demand of petroleum-based fuels. Petroleum-based fuels are obtained from limited reserves. These finite reserves are highly concentrated in certain regions of the world. Therefore, those countries not having these resources are facing energy/foreign exchange crisis, mainly due to the import of crude petroleum. Hence, it is necessary to look for alternative fuels which can be produced from resources available locally within the country such as alcohol, biodiesel, vegetable oils etc. Biodiesel is a renewable, domestically produced fuel that has been shown to reduce particulate, hydrocarbon, and carbon monoxide emissions from combustion. In the present study an experimental investigation on emission characteristic of a liquid burner system operating on several percentage of biodiesel and gas oil is carried out. Samples of exhaust gas are analysed with Testo 350 Xl. The results show that biodiesel can lower some pollutant such as CO, CO2 and particulate matter emissions while NOx emission would increase in comparison with gas oil. The results indicate there may be benefits to using biodiesel in industrial processes.
Abstract: Automatic Extraction of Event information from
social text stream (emails, social network sites, blogs etc) is a vital
requirement for many applications like Event Planning and
Management systems and security applications. The key information
components needed from Event related text are Event title, location,
participants, date and time. Emails have very unique distinctions over
other social text streams from the perspective of layout and format
and conversation style and are the most commonly used
communication channel for broadcasting and planning events.
Therefore we have chosen emails as our dataset. In our work, we
have employed two statistical NLP methods, named as Finite State
Machines (FSM) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for the
extraction of event related contextual information. An application
has been developed providing a comparison among the two methods
over the event extraction task. It comprises of two modules, one for
each method, and works for both bulk as well as direct user input.
The results are evaluated using Precision, Recall and F-Score.
Experiments show that both methods produce high performance and
accuracy, however HMM was good enough over Title extraction and
FSM proved to be better for Venue, Date, and time.
Abstract: In this paper, a low noise microwave bandpass filter
(BPF) is presented. This filter is fabricated by modifying the
conventional cross-coupled structure. The spurious response is
improved by using the end open coupled lines, and the influence of the
noise is minimized. Impedance matrix of the open end coupled circuit
clarifies the characteristic of the suppression of the spurious response.
The rejection of spurious suppression region of the proposed filter is
greater than 20 dB from 3-13 GHz. The measured results of the
fabricated filter confirm the concepts of the proposed design and
exhibits high performance.
Abstract: In this work, the precipitation of asphaltene from a Malaysian light oil reservoir was studies. A series of experiments were designed and carried out to examine the effect of CO2 injection on asphaltene precipitation. Different pressures of injections were used in Dynamic flooding experiment in order to investigate the effect of pressure versus injection pore volume of CO2. These dynamic displacement tests simulate reservoir condition. Results show that by increasing the pore volume of injected gas asphaltene precipitation will increases, also rise in injection pressure causes less precipitation. Sandstone core plug was used to represent reservoir formation during displacement test; therefore it made it possible to study the effect of present of asphaltene on formation. It is found out that the precipitated asphaltene can reduce permeability and porosity which is not favorable during oil production.
Abstract: What influences microsystems (MEMS) and nanosystems (NEMS) innovation teams apart from technology complexity? Based on in-depth interviews with innovators, this research explores the key influences on innovation teams in the early phases of MEMS/NEMS. Projects are rare and may last from 5 to 10 years or more from idea to concept. As fundamental technology development in MEMS/NEMS is highly complex and interdisciplinary by involving expertise from different basic and engineering disciplines, R&D is rather a 'testing of ideas' with many uncertainties than a clearly structured process. The purpose of this study is to explore the innovation teams- environment and give specific insights for future management practices. The findings are grouped into three major areas: people, know-how and experience, and market. The results highlight the importance and differences of innovation teams- composition, transdisciplinary knowledge, project evaluation and management compared to the counterparts from new product development teams.
Abstract: In the paper the study of synthetic transmit aperture
method applying the Golay coded transmission for medical
ultrasound imaging is presented. Longer coded excitation allows to
increase the total energy of the transmitted signal without increasing
the peak pressure. Moreover signal-to-noise ratio and penetration
depth are improved while maintaining high ultrasound image
resolution. In the work the 128-element linear transducer array with
0.3 mm inter-element spacing excited by one cycle and the 8 and 16-
bit Golay coded sequences at nominal frequency 4 MHz was used. To
generate a spherical wave covering the full image region a single
element transmission aperture was used and all the elements received
the echo signals. The comparison of 2D ultrasound images of the
tissue mimicking phantom and in vitro measurements of the beef liver
is presented to illustrate the benefits of the coded transmission. The
results were obtained using the synthetic aperture algorithm with
transmit and receive signals correction based on a single element
directivity function.
Abstract: Insufficient Quality of Service (QoS) of Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a growing concern that has lead the need
for research and study. In this paper we investigate the performance
of VoIP and the impact of resource limitations on the performance of
Access Networks. The impact of VoIP performance in Access
Networks is particularly important in regions where Internet
resources are limited and the cost of improving these resources is
prohibitive. It is clear that perceived VoIP performance, as measured
by mean opinion score [2] in experiments, where subjects are asked
to rate communication quality, is determined by end-to-end delay on
the communication path, delay variation, packet loss, echo, the
coding algorithm in use and noise. These performance indicators can
be measured and the affect in the Access Network can be estimated.
This paper investigates the congestion in the Access Network to the
overall performance of VoIP services with the presence of other
substantial uses of internet and ways in which Access Networks can
be designed to improve VoIP performance. Methods for analyzing
the impact of the Access Network on VoIP performance will be
surveyed and reviewed. This paper also considers some approaches
for improving performance of VoIP by carrying out experiments
using Network Simulator version 2 (NS2) software with a view to
gaining a better understanding of the design of Access Networks.
Abstract: This paper proposes an efficient method for the design
of two channel quadrature mirror filter (QMF) bank. To achieve
minimum value of reconstruction error near to perfect reconstruction,
a linear optimization process has been proposed. Prototype low pass
filter has been designed using Kaiser window function. The modified
algorithm has been developed to optimize the reconstruction error
using linear objective function through iteration method. The result
obtained, show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is
better than that of the already exists methods.
Abstract: The Swine flu outbreak in humans is due to a new
strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that derives in part from
human influenza, avian influenza, and two separated strains of swine
influenza. It can be transmitted from human to human. A
mathematical model for the transmission of Swine flu is developed in
which the human populations are divided into two classes, the risk
and non-risk human classes. Each class is separated into susceptible,
exposed, infectious, quarantine and recovered sub-classes. In this
paper, we formulate the dynamical model of Swine flu transmission
and the repetitive contacts between the people are also considered.
We analyze the behavior for the transmission of this disease. The
Threshold condition of this disease is found and numerical results are
shown to confirm our theoretical predictions.