Abstract: The work proposes a decision support methodology
for the credit risk minimization in selection of investment projects.
The methodology provides two stages of projects’ evaluation.
Preliminary selection of projects with minor credit risks is made
using the Expertons Method. The second stage makes ranking of
chosen projects using the Possibilistic Discrimination Analysis
Method. The latter is a new modification of a well-known Method of
Fuzzy Discrimination Analysis.
Abstract: A generalized vortex lattice method for complex
lifting surfaces with flap and aileron deflection is formulated. The
method is not restricted by the linearized theory assumption and
accounts for all standard geometric lifting surface parameters:
camber, taper, sweep, washout, dihedral, in addition to flap and
aileron deflection. Thickness is not accounted for since the physical
lifting body is replaced by a lattice of panels located on the mean
camber surface. This panel lattice setup and the treatment of different
wake geometries is what distinguish the present work form the
overwhelming majority of previous solutions based on the vortex
lattice method. A MATLAB code implementing the proposed
formulation is developed and validated by comparing our results to
existing experimental and numerical ones and good agreement is
demonstrated. It is then used to study the accuracy of the widely used
classical vortex-lattice method. It is shown that the classical approach
gives good agreement in the clean configuration but is off by as much
as 30% when a flap or aileron deflection of 30° is imposed. This
discrepancy is mainly due the linearized theory assumption
associated with the conventional method. A comparison of the effect
of four different wake geometries on the values of aerodynamic
coefficients was also carried out and it is found that the choice of the
wake shape had very little effect on the results.
Abstract: A method is proposed for stable detection of
seismoacoustic sources in C-OTDR systems that guarantee given
upper bounds for probabilities of type I and type II errors. Properties
of the proposed method are rigorously proved. The results of
practical applications of the proposed method in a real C-OTDRsystem
are presented.
Abstract: An analysis of the Australian Diabetes Screening
Study estimated undiagnosed diabetes mellitus [DM] prevalence in a
high risk general practice based cohort. DM prevalence varied from
9.4% to 18.1% depending upon the diagnostic criteria utilised with
age being a highly significant risk factor. Utilising the gold standard
oral glucose tolerance test, the prevalence of DM was 22-23% in
those aged >= 70 years and
Abstract: The generalized wave equation models various
problems in sciences and engineering. In this paper, a new three-time
level implicit approach based on cubic trigonometric B-spline for the
approximate solution of wave equation is developed. The usual finite
difference approach is used to discretize the time derivative while
cubic trigonometric B-spline is applied as an interpolating function in
the space dimension. Von Neumann stability analysis is used to
analyze the proposed method. Two problems are discussed to exhibit
the feasibility and capability of the method. The absolute errors and
maximum error are computed to assess the performance of the
proposed method. The results were found to be in good agreement
with known solutions and with existing schemes in literature.
Abstract: From an organizational perspective, leaders are a
variation of the same talent pool in that they all score a larger than
average value on the bell curve that maps leadership behaviors and
characteristics, namely competence, vision, communication,
confidence, cultural sensibility, stewardship, empowerment,
authenticity, reinforcement, and creativity. The question that remains
unanswered and essentially unresolved is how to explain the irony
that leaders are so much alike yet their organizations diverge so
noticeably in their ability to innovate. Leadership intersects with
innovation at the point where human interactions get exceedingly
complex and where certain paradoxical forces cohabit: conflict with
conciliation, sovereignty with interdependence, and imagination with
realism. Rather than accepting that leadership is without context, we
argue that leaders are specialists of their domain and that those
effective at leading for innovation are distinct within the broader pool
of leaders. Keeping in view the extensive literature on leadership and
innovation, we carried out a quantitative study with data collected
over a five-year period involving 240 participants from across five
dissimilar companies based in the United States. We found that while
innovation and leadership are, in general, strongly interrelated (r =
.89, p = 0.0), there are five qualities that set leaders apart on
innovation. These qualities include a large radius of trust, a restless
curiosity with a low need for acceptance, an honest sense of self and
other, a sense for knowledge and creativity as the yin and yang of
innovation, and an ability to use multiple senses in the engagement
with followers. When these particular behaviors and characteristics
are present in leaders, organizations out-innovate their rivals by a
margin of 29.3 per cent to gain an unassailable edge in a business
environment that is regularly disruptive. A strategic outcome of this
study is a psychometric scale named iLeadership, proposed with the
underlying evidence, limitations, and potential for leadership and
innovation in organizations.c
Abstract: One of the major goals of Spoken Dialog Systems
(SDS) is to understand what the user utters.
In the SDS domain, the Spoken Language Understanding (SLU)
Module classifies user utterances by means of a pre-definite
conceptual knowledge. The SLU module is able to recognize only the
meaning previously included in its knowledge base. Due the vastity
of that knowledge, the information storing is a very expensive
process.
Updating and managing the knowledge base are time-consuming
and error-prone processes because of the rapidly growing number of
entities like proper nouns and domain-specific nouns. This paper
proposes a solution to the problem of Name Entity Recognition
(NER) applied to a SDS domain. The proposed solution attempts to
automatically recognize the meaning associated with an utterance by
using the PANKOW (Pattern based Annotation through Knowledge
On the Web) method at runtime.
The method being proposed extracts information from the Web to
increase the SLU knowledge module and reduces the development
effort. In particular, the Google Search Engine is used to extract
information from the Facebook social network.
Abstract: This paper presents a new meta-heuristic bio-inspired
optimization algorithm which is called Cuttlefish Algorithm (CFA).
The algorithm mimics the mechanism of color changing behavior of
the cuttlefish to solve numerical global optimization problems. The
colors and patterns of the cuttlefish are produced by reflected light
from three different layers of cells. The proposed algorithm considers
mainly two processes: reflection and visibility. Reflection process
simulates light reflection mechanism used by these layers, while
visibility process simulates visibility of matching patterns of the
cuttlefish. To show the effectiveness of the algorithm, it is tested with
some other popular bio-inspired optimization algorithms such as
Genetic Algorithms (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and
Bees Algorithm (BA) that have been previously proposed in the
literature. Simulations and obtained results indicate that the proposed
CFA is superior when compared with these algorithms.
Abstract: Three dimensional non-Interlaced carbon fibre
reinforced silicon carbide (3-D-Cf/SiC) composites with pyrocarbon
interphase were fabricated using isothermal chemical vapor
infiltration (ICVI) combined with polymer impregnation pyrolysis
(PIP) process. Polysilazane (PSZ) is used as a preceramic polymer to
obtain silicon carbide matrix. Thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA),
Infrared spectroscopic analysis (IR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD)
analysis were carried out on PSZ pyrolysed at different temperatures
to understand the pyrolysis and obtaining the optimum pyrolysing
condition to yield β-SiC phase. The density of the composites was
1.94 g cm-3 after the 3-D carbon preform was SiC infiltrated for 280 h
with one intermediate polysilazane pre-ceramic PIP process.
Mechanical properties of the composite materials were investigated
under tensile, flexural, shear and impact loading. The values of
tensile strength were 200 MPa at room temperature (RT) and 195
MPa at 500°C in air. The average RT flexural strength was 243 MPa.
The lower flexural strength of these composites is because of the
porosity. The fracture toughness obtained from single edge notched
beam (SENB) technique was 39 MPa.m1/2. The work of fracture
obtained from the load-displacement curve of SENB test was 22.8
kJ.m-2. The composites exhibited excellent impact resistance and the
dynamic fracture toughness of 44.8 kJ.m-2 is achieved as determined
from instrumented Charpy impact test. The shear strength of the
composite was 93 MPa, which is significantly higher compared 2-D
Cf/SiC composites. Microstructure evaluation of fracture surfaces
revealed the signatures of fracture processes and showed good
support for the higher toughness obtained.
Abstract: This study aimed at designing and developing a
mechanical force gauge for the square watermelon mold for the first
time. It also tried to introduce the square watermelon characteristics
and its production limitations. The mechanical force gauge
performance and the product itself were also described. There are
three main designable gauge models: a. hydraulic gauge, b. strain
gauge, and c. mechanical gauge. The advantage of the hydraulic
model is that it instantly displays the pressure and thus the force
exerted by the melon. However, considering the inability to measure
forces at all directions, complicated development, high cost, possible
hydraulic fluid leak into the fruit chamber and the possible influence
of increased ambient temperature on the fluid pressure, the
development of this gauge was overruled. The second choice was to
calculate pressure using the direct force a strain gauge. The main
advantage of these strain gauges over spring types is their high
precision in measurements; but with regard to the lack of conformity
of strain gauge working range with water melon growth, calculations
were faced with problems. Finally the mechanical pressure gauge has
advantages, including the ability to measured forces and pressures on
the mold surface during melon growth; the ability to display the peak
forces; the ability to produce melon growth graph thanks to its
continuous force measurements; the conformity of its manufacturing
materials with the required physical conditions of melon growth; high
air conditioning capability; the ability to permit sunlight reaches the
melon rind (no yellowish skin and quality loss); fast and
straightforward calibration; no damages to the product during
assembling and disassembling; visual check capability of the product
within the mold; applicable to all growth environments (field,
greenhouses, etc.); simple process; low costs and so forth.
Abstract: Web search engines are designed to retrieve and
extract the information in the web databases and to return dynamic
web pages. The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in
which it includes semantic content in web pages. The main goal of
semantic web is to promote the quality of the current web by
changing its contents into machine understandable form. Therefore,
the milestone of semantic web is to have semantic level information
in the web. Nowadays, people use different keyword- based search
engines to find the relevant information they need from the web.
But many of the words are polysemous. When these words are
used to query a search engine, it displays the Search Result Records
(SRRs) with different meanings. The SRRs with similar meanings are
grouped together based on Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD). In
addition to that semantic annotation is also performed to improve the
efficiency of search result records. Semantic Annotation is the
process of adding the semantic metadata to web resources. Thus the
grouped SRRs are annotated and generate a summary which
describes the information in SRRs. But the automatic semantic
annotation is a significant challenge in the semantic web. Here
ontology and knowledge based representation are used to annotate
the web pages.
Abstract: As currently various portable devices were launched,
smart business conducted using them became common. Since smart
business can use company-internal resources in an exlternal remote
place, user authentication that can identify authentic users is an
important factor. Commonly used user authentication is a method of
using user ID and Password. In the user authentication using ID and
Password, the user should see and enter authentication information
him or her. In this user authentication system depending on the user’s
vision, there is the threat of password leaks through snooping in the
process which the user enters his or her authentication information.
This study designed and produced a user authentication module
using an actuator to respond to the snooping threat.
Abstract: Concerns on corrosion and effective coating
protection of double hull tankers and bulk carriers in service have
been raised especially in water ballast tanks (WBTs). Test
protocols/methodologies specifically that which is incorporated in the
International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Performance Standard
for Protective Coatings for Dedicated Sea Water ballast tanks (PSPC)
are being used to assess and evaluate the performance of the coatings
for type approval prior to their application in WBTs. However, some
of the type approved coatings may be applied as very thick films to
less than ideally prepared steel substrates in the WBT. As such films
experience hygrothermal cycling from operating and environmental
conditions, they become embrittled which may ultimately result in
cracking. This embrittlement of the coatings is identified as an
undesirable feature in the PSPC but is not mentioned in the test
protocols within it. There is therefore renewed industrial research
aimed at understanding this issue in order to eliminate cracking and
achieve the intended coating lifespan of 15 years in good condition.
This paper will critically review test protocols currently used for
assessing and evaluating coating performance, particularly the IMO
PSPC.
Abstract: The growth of wireless devices affects the availability
of limited frequencies or spectrum bands as it has been known that
spectrum bands are a natural resource that cannot be added.
Meanwhile, the licensed frequencies are idle most of the time.
Cognitive radio is one of the solutions to solve those problems.
Cognitive radio is a promising technology that allows the unlicensed
users known as secondary users (SUs) to access licensed bands
without making interference to licensed users or primary users (PUs).
As cloud computing has become popular in recent years, cognitive
radio networks (CRNs) can be integrated with cloud platform. One of
the important issues in CRNs is security. It becomes a problem since
CRNs use radio frequencies as a medium for transmitting and CRNs
share the same issues with wireless communication systems. Another
critical issue in CRNs is performance. Security has adverse effect to
performance and there are trade-offs between them. The goal of this
paper is to investigate the performance related to security trade-off in
CRNs with supporting cloud platforms. Furthermore, Queuing
Network Models with preemptive resume and preemptive repeat
identical priority are applied in this project to measure the impact of
security to performance in CRNs with or without cloud platform. The
generalized exponential (GE) type distribution is used to reflect the
bursty inter-arrival and service times at the servers. The results show
that the best performance is obtained when security is disabled and
cloud platform is enabled.
Abstract: This paper presents the design and analysis of Liquid
Crystal (LC) based tunable reflectarray antenna with different design
configurations within X-band frequency range. The effect of LC
volume used for unit cell element on frequency tunability and
reflection loss performance has been investigated. Moreover different
slot embedded patch element configurations have been proposed for
LC based tunable reflectarray antenna design with enhanced
performance. The detailed fabrication and measurement procedure
for different LC based unit cells has been presented. The waveguide
scattering parameter measured results demonstrated that by using the
circular slot embedded patch elements, the frequency tunability and
dynamic phase range can be increased from 180MHz to 200MHz and
120° to 124° respectively. Furthermore the circular slot embedded
patch element can be designed at 10GHz resonant frequency with a
patch volume of 2.71mm3 as compared to 3.47mm3 required for
rectangular patch without slot.
Abstract: This paper presents the voltage problem location
classification using performance of Least Squares Support Vector
Machine (LS-SVM) and Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) in
electrical power system for proper voltage problem location
implemented by IEEE 39 bus New- England. The data was collected
from the time domain simulation by using Power System Analysis
Toolbox (PSAT). Outputs from simulation data such as voltage, phase
angle, real power and reactive power were taken as input to estimate
voltage stability at particular buses based on Power Transfer Stability
Index (PTSI).The simulation data was carried out on the IEEE 39 bus
test system by considering load bus increased on the system. To verify
of the proposed LS-SVM its performance was compared to Learning
Vector Quantization (LVQ). The results showed that LS-SVM is faster
and better as compared to LVQ. The results also demonstrated that the
LS-SVM was estimated by 0% misclassification whereas LVQ had
7.69% misclassification.
Abstract: In Egypt, girls have traditionally been educationally
disadvantaged. This disadvantage, however, has been focused on the
failure to enter school. Increasingly it is recognized that girls who
ever-enroll are at least as likely to complete primary and secondary
education as boys. Still the belief persists that girls, especially those
from poor families, will be disadvantaged in terms of school
expenditures and the transitions to secondary and higher education.
We examine expenditures on tutoring during the final year of
preparatory school, and the transition to specific tracks of secondary
education. Tests during the last year of preparatory largely determine
a student’s educational future. Results show that girls, even girls from
poor families, are not disadvantaged in terms of expenditures,
whether for tutoring, fees or general expenses. Moreover, girls are
more likely than boys to advance to general secondary education, the
track that leads to higher education.
Abstract: Recently, to cope with the rapidly changing
construction trend with aging infrastructures, modular bridge
technology has been studied actively. Modular bridge is easily
constructed by assembling standardized precast structure members in
the field. It will be possible to construct rapidly and reduce
construction cost efficiently. However, the shape of the transverse
connection of T-type girder newly developed between the segmented
modules is not verified. Therefore, the verification of the connection
shape is needed. In this study, shape of the modular T-girder bridge
transverse connection was analyzed by finite element model that was
verified in study which was verified model of transverse connection
using Abaqus. Connection angle was chosen as the parameter. The
result of analyses showed that optimal value of angle is 130 degree.
Abstract: Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) E-commerce has been
growing at a very high speed in recent years. Since identical or
nearly-same kinds of products compete one another by relying on
keyword search in C2C E-commerce, some sellers describe their
products with spam keywords that are popular but are not related to
their products. Though such products get more chances to be retrieved
and selected by consumers than those without spam keywords,
the spam keywords mislead the consumers and waste their time.
This problem has been reported in many commercial services like
ebay and taobao, but there have been little research to solve this
problem. As a solution to this problem, this paper proposes a method
to classify whether keywords of a product are spam or not. The
proposed method assumes that a keyword for a given product is
more reliable if the keyword is observed commonly in specifications
of products which are the same or the same kind as the given
product. This is because that a hierarchical category of a product
in general determined precisely by a seller of the product and so is
the specification of the product. Since higher layers of the hierarchical
category represent more general kinds of products, a reliable degree
is differently determined according to the layers. Hence, reliable
degrees from different layers of a hierarchical category become
features for keywords and they are used together with features only
from specifications for classification of the keywords. Support Vector
Machines are adopted as a basic classifier using the features, since
it is powerful, and widely used in many classification tasks. In
the experiments, the proposed method is evaluated with a golden
standard dataset from Yi-han-wang, a Chinese C2C E-commerce,
and is compared with a baseline method that does not consider
the hierarchical category. The experimental results show that the
proposed method outperforms the baseline in F1-measure, which
proves that spam keywords are effectively identified by a hierarchical
category in C2C E-commerce.
Abstract: In the present study, M2 high speed steels were
fabricated by using electro-slag rapid remelting process. Carbide
structure was analysed and the fracture toughness and hardness were
also measured after austenitization treatment at 1190 and 1210oC
followed by tempering treatment at 535oC for billets with various
diameters from 16 to 60 mm. Electro-slag rapid remelting (ESRR)
process is an advanced ESR process combined by continuous casting
and successfully employed in this study to fabricate a sound M2 high
speed ingot. Three other kinds of commercial M2 high speed steels,
produced by traditional method, were also analysed for comparison.
Distribution and structure of eutectic carbides of the ESRR billet were
found to be comparable to those of commercial alloy and so was the
fracture toughness.