Abstract: Nowadays, huge amount of multimedia repositories
make the browsing, retrieval and delivery of video contents very slow
and even difficult tasks. Video summarization has been proposed to
improve faster browsing of large video collections and more efficient
content indexing and access. In this paper, we focus on approaches to
video summarization. The video summaries can be generated in many
different forms. However, two fundamentals ways to generate
summaries are static and dynamic. We present different techniques
for each mode in the literature and describe some features used for
generating video summaries. We conclude with perspective for
further research.
Abstract: Despite the highly touted benefits, emerging
technologies have unleashed pervasive concerns regarding unintended
and unforeseen social impacts. Thus, those wishing to create safe and
socially acceptable products need to identify such side effects and
mitigate them prior to the market proliferation. Various methodologies
in the field of technology assessment (TA), namely Delphi, impact
assessment, and scenario planning, have been widely incorporated in
such a circumstance. However, literatures face a major limitation in
terms of sole reliance on participatory workshop activities. They
unfortunately missed out the availability of a massive untapped data
source of futuristic information flooding through the Internet. This
research thus seeks to gain insights into utilization of futuristic data,
future-oriented documents from the Internet, as a supplementary
method to generate social impact scenarios whilst capturing
perspectives of experts from a wide variety of disciplines. To this end,
network analysis is conducted based on the social keywords extracted
from the futuristic documents by text mining, which is then used as a
guide to produce a comprehensive set of detailed scenarios. Our
proposed approach facilitates harmonized depictions of possible
hazardous consequences of emerging technologies and thereby makes
decision makers more aware of, and responsive to, broad qualitative
uncertainties.
Abstract: MSMEs are regarded as the sunrise sector of the
Indian economy in view of its large potential for growth and likely
socio economic impact specifically on employment and income
generation. In today’s competitive business environment, global
competition forces companies to continuously seek ways of
improving their products and services. The pressure on organizations
to adapt to new technologies and external threats requires
resourcefulness, creativity and innovation. Market has become more
open, competitive and customers more demanding. Without
continuous technology innovation, no organization can ever remain
competitive. Innovations reflect a critical way in which organizations
respond to either technological or market challenges. The need of the
market is to deliver high quality products through continuous
changing in features in product, improve existing products, reduce
their cost, and improve employee skills, training, technology
infrastructure and financial policies. Therefore, the key factor of
organization’s ability to change is innovation. The study presents a
detailed review of literature on the role of technology innovation in
improving manufacturing performance of industries.
Abstract: Africa enjoys some of the best solar radiation levels in
the world averaging between 4-6 kWh/m2/day for most of the year
and the global economic and political conditions that tend to make
African countries more dependent on their own energy resources
have caused growing interest in renewable energy based
technologies. However to-date, implementation of modern Energy
Technologies in Africa is still very low especially the use of solar
conversion technologies. This paper presents literature review and
analysis relating to the techno-economic feasibility of solar
photovoltaic power generation in Africa. The literature is basically
classified into the following four main categories. Techno-economic
feasibility of solar photovoltaic power generation, design methods,
performance evaluations of various systems and policy of potential
future of technological development of photovoltaic (PV) in Africa
by exploring the impact of alternative policy instruments and
technology cost reductions on the financial viability of investing solar
photovoltaic in Africa.
Abstract: Pedagogy has always been open to other disciplines
that reflect about the educational process (philosophy, sociology,
psychology, anthropology, technology, etc.). Its interdisciplinary
openness puts education, as the subject of pedagogy within a broader
context of the community, enabling the knowledge of other
disciplines to contribute to a better understanding of the fundamental
pedagogical notion of education. The purpose of pedagogy as a
science serves humans, strives towards humans, must be for humans,
and this is its ultimate goal. Humans are essentially dependent on
education, which is also considered as a category of humans’ being,
because through education an entire world develops in humans.
Anthropological assumptions of humans as "deficient beings" see the
solution in education, but they also indicate a wealth of shortcomings,
because they provide an opportunity for enrichment and formation of
culture, living and the self. In that context, this paper illustrates the
determination of pedagogy through an anthropological conception of
humans and the phenomenon of education. It presents a review of
anthropological ideas about education, by providing an analysis of
relevant literature dealing with the anthropological notion of humans,
which provides fruitful conditions for a pedagogical reconsideration
of education.
Abstract: Over the past few years, the online multimedia
collection has grown at a fast pace. Several companies showed
interest to study the different ways to organise the amount of audio
information without the need of human intervention to generate
metadata. In the past few years, many applications have emerged on
the market which are capable of identifying a piece of music in a
short time. Different audio effects and degradation make it much
harder to identify the unknown piece. In this paper, an audio
fingerprinting system which makes use of a non-parametric based
algorithm is presented. Parametric analysis is also performed using
Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). The feature extraction methods
employed are the Mel Spectrum Coefficients and the MPEG-7 basic
descriptors. Bin numbers replaced the extracted feature coefficients
during the non-parametric modelling. The results show that nonparametric
analysis offer potential results as the ones mentioned in
the literature.
Abstract: Multi-Level Inverter technology has been developed in the area of high-power medium-voltage energy scheme, because of their advantages such as devices of lower rating can be used thereby enabling the schemes to be used for high voltage applications. Reduced Total Harmonic Distortion (THD).Since the dv/dt is low; the Electromagnetic Interference from the scheme is low. To avoid the switching losses Lower switching frequencies can be used. In this paper present a survey of various topologies, control strategy and modulation techniques used by these inverters. Here the regenerative and superior topologies are also discussed.
Abstract: Facing the understanding problem of update and
preservation of urban history space under background of rapid Chinese
urbanization, so at first there is a need to dig the philosophic principles
of “antithesis” and “unification” which are contained in the traditional
Chinese literature known as “antithesis” and do the job of planning
translation by personal understanding in order to form understanding
and value systems of dialectical urban history space under the
foundation of “antithesis”. Then we could put forward a “context”
concept for urban history space under the foregoing basis. After that,
we will take the update and preservation of Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion’s
historical district as an example to discuss problems related to
understanding of urban history area under the basis of Chinese
tradition culture, improvement of value system, construction of urban
trait space and Chinese “localization” of planning theory.
Abstract: There has been a significant decline in active travel
and a massive increase in the use of car dependent travel in many
countries during the past two decades. Evidential risks for people’s
physical and mental health problems are correlated with this
increased use of motorized travel. These health related problems
range from overweight and obesity to increased air pollution. In
response to these rising concerns health professionals, traffic planers,
local authorities and others have introduced a variety of initiatives to
counterbalance the dominance of cars for daily journeys.
However, the nature of travel behavior change interventions,
which aim to reduce car use, are very complex and challenging
regarding their interactions with human behavior. To change travel
behavior at least two aspects have to be taken into consideration.
First, how to alter attitudes and perceptions toward the sustainable
and healthy modes of travel, in competition with experiences of
private car use. And second, how to make these behavior change
processes irreversible and sustainable. There are no comprehensive
models available to guide policy interventions to increase the level of
success of travel behavior change interventions across both these
dimensions.
A comprehensive theoretical framework is required in the effort to
optimize how to facilitate and guide the processes of data collection
and analysis to achieve the best possible guidelines for policy
makers. Regarding the gaps in the travel behavior change research
literature, this paper attempted to identify and suggest a
multidimensional framework in order to facilitate planning the
implemented travel behavior change interventions. A structured
mixed-method model is suggested to improve the analytic power of
the results according to the complexity of human behavior.
In order to recognize people’s attitudes towards a specific travel
mode, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was operationalized.
But in order to capture decision making processes the Transtheoretical
model of Behavior Change (TTM) was also used.
Consequently, the combination of these two theories (TTM and TPB)
has resulted in a synthesis with appropriate concepts to identify and
design an implemented travel behavior change interventions.
Abstract: While millings materials from old pavement surface
can be an important component of cost effective maintenance
operation, their use in maintenance projects are not uniform and well
documented. This study documents the different maintenance
practices followed by four transportation districts of New Mexico
Department of Transportation (NMDOT) in an attempt to find
whether millings are being used in maintenance projects by those
districts. Based on existing literature, a questionnaire was developed
related to six common maintenance practices. NMDOT district
personal were interviewed face to face to discuss and get answers to
that questionnaire. It revealed that NMDOT districts mainly use chip
seal and patching. Other maintenance procedures such as sand seal,
scrub seal, slurry seal, and thin overlay have limited use. Two out of
four participating districts do not have any documents on chip
sealing; rather they employ the experiences of the chip seal crew. All
districts use polymer modified high float emulsion (HFE100P) for
chip seal with an application rate ranging from 0.4 to 0.56 gallons per
square yard. Chip application rate varies from 15 to 40 lb/ square
yard. State wide, the thickness of chip seal varies from 3/8'' to 1'' and
life varies from 3 to 10 years. NMDOT districts mainly use three type
of patching: pothole, dig-out and blade patch. Pothole patches are
used for small potholes and during emergency, dig-out patches are
used for all type of potholes sometimes after pothole patching, and
blade patch is used when a significant portion of the pavement is
damaged. Pothole patches last as low as three days whereas, blade
patch lasts as long as 3 years. It was observed that all participating
districts use millings in maintenance projects.
Abstract: Employers occupational safety and health training
obligations are regulated in 89/391/EEC Framework Directive and
also in 6331 numbered Occupational Health and Safety Law in
Turkey.
The main objective of this research is to determine and evaluate
the employers’ occupational health and safety training obligations in
Framework Directive in comparison with the 6331 numbered
Occupational Health and Safety Law and to examine training
principles in Turkey. For this purpose, employers’ occupational
health and safety training obligations examined in Framework
Directive and Occupational Health and Safety Law. This study
carried out through comparative scanning model and literature model.
The research data were collected through European Agency and
ministry legislations.
As a result, employers’ occupational health and safety training
obligations in the 6331 numbered Occupational Health and Safety
Law are compatible with the 89/391/EEC numbered Framework
Directive and training principles are determined by in different ways
like the trained workers, training issues, training period, training time
and trainers. In this study, employers’ training obligations are
evaluated in detail.
Abstract: Standard processes, similar and limited production
lines, the production of high direct costs will be more accurate than
the use of parts of the traditional cost systems in the literature.
However, direct costs, overhead expenses, in turn, decrease the
burden of increasingly sophisticated production facilities, a situation
that led the researchers to look for the cost of traditional systems of
alternative techniques. Variety cost management approaches for
example Total quality management (TQM), just-in-time (JIT),
benchmarking, kaizen costing, targeting cost, life cycle costs (LLC),
activity-based costing (ABC) value engineering have been
introduced. Management and cost applications have changed over the
past decade and will continue to change. Modern cost systems can
provide relevant and accurate cost information. These methods
provide the decisions about customer, product and process
improvement. The aim of study is to describe and explain the
adoption and application of costing systems in SME. This purpose
reports on a survey conducted during 2014 small and medium sized
enterprises (SME) in Ankara. The survey results were evaluated
using SPSS18 package program.
Abstract: A Disaster Management System (DMS) is very important for countries with multiple disasters, such as Chile. In the world (also in Chile)different disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruption, fire or other natural or man-made disasters) happen and have an effect on the population. It is also possible that two or more disasters occur at the same time. This meansthata multi-risk situation must be mastered. To handle such a situation a Decision Support System (DSS) based on multiagents is a suitable architecture. The most known DMSs are concernedwith only a singledisaster (sometimes thecombination of earthquake and tsunami) and often with a particular disaster. Nevertheless, a DSS helps for a better real-time response. Analyze the existing systems in the literature and expand them for multi-risk disasters to construct a well-organized system is the proposal of our work. The here shown work is an approach of a multi-risk system, which needs an architecture and well defined aims. In this moment our study is a kind of case study to analyze the way we have to follow to create our proposed system in the future.
Abstract: The Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is a common in-situ
test which generally investigates a much greater volume of soil more
quickly than possible from sampling and laboratory tests. Therefore,
it has the potential to realize both cost savings and assessment of soil
properties rapidly and continuously. The principle objective of this
paper is to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of using
artificial neural networks (ANNs) to predict the soil angle of internal
friction (Φ) and the soil modulus of elasticity (E) from CPT results
considering the uncertainties and non-linearities of the soil. In
addition, ANNs are used to study the influence of different
parameters and recommend which parameters should be included as
input parameters to improve the prediction. Neural networks discover
relationships in the input data sets through the iterative presentation
of the data and intrinsic mapping characteristics of neural topologies.
General Regression Neural Network (GRNN) is one of the powerful
neural network architectures which is utilized in this study. A large
amount of field and experimental data including CPT results, plate
load tests, direct shear box, grain size distribution and calculated data
of overburden pressure was obtained from a large project in the
United Arab Emirates. This data was used for the training and the
validation of the neural network. A comparison was made between
the obtained results from the ANN's approach, and some common
traditional correlations that predict Φ and E from CPT results with
respect to the actual results of the collected data. The results show
that the ANN is a very powerful tool. Very good agreement was
obtained between estimated results from ANN and actual measured
results with comparison to other correlations available in the
literature. The study recommends some easily available parameters
that should be included in the estimation of the soil properties to
improve the prediction models. It is shown that the use of friction
ration in the estimation of Φ and the use of fines content in the
estimation of E considerable improve the prediction models.
Abstract: The goal of image segmentation is to cluster pixels
into salient image regions. Segmentation could be used for object
recognition, occlusion boundary estimation within motion or stereo
systems, image compression, image editing, or image database lookup.
In this paper, we present a color image segmentation using
support vector machine (SVM) pixel classification. Firstly, the pixel
level color and texture features of the image are extracted and they
are used as input to the SVM classifier. These features are extracted
using the homogeneity model and Gabor Filter. With the extracted
pixel level features, the SVM Classifier is trained by using FCM
(Fuzzy C-Means).The image segmentation takes the advantage of
both the pixel level information of the image and also the ability of
the SVM Classifier. The Experiments show that the proposed method
has a very good segmentation result and a better efficiency, increases
the quality of the image segmentation compared with the other
segmentation methods proposed in the literature.
Abstract: Comparisons of financial development across
countries are central to answering many of the questions on factors
leading to economic development. For this reason this study analyzes
the implications of financial system’s development on country’s
economic development. The aim of the article: to analyze the impact
of financial system’s development on economic development. The
following research methods were used: systemic, logical and
comparative analysis of scientific literature, analysis of statistical
data, time series model (Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)
Model). The empirical results suggest about positive short and long
term effect of stock market development on GDP per capita.
Abstract: Recently, universities are increasingly consuming
energy to support various activities. A large population of staff and
students in Malaysian universities has led to excessive energy
consumption which directly gives an impact to the environment. The
key question then ascended “How well is an energy management
(EM) been practiced in universities without taking the Critical
Success Factors (CSFs) into consideration to ensure the management
of university achieves the goals in reducing energy consumption.
Review on past literature is carried out to establish CSFs for EM best
practices. Thus, this paper highlighted the CSFs which have to be
focused on by management of university to successfully measure the
EM implementation and its performance. At the end of this paper, a
theoretical framework is developed for EM success factors towards
sustainable university.
Abstract: Diffusion stills have been effective in water
desalination. The present work represents a model of the distillation
process by using vertical single-effect diffusion stills. A semianalytical
model has been developed to model the process. A
software computer code using Engineering Equation Solver EES
software has been developed to solve the equations of the developed
model. An experimental setup has been constructed, and used for the
validation of the model. The model is also validated against former
literature results. The results obtained from the present experimental
test rig, and the data from the literature, have been compared with the
results of the code to find its best range of validity. In addition, a
parametric analysis of the system has been developed using the
model to determine the effect of operating conditions on the system's
performance. The dominant parameters that affect the productivity of
the still are the hot plate temperature that ranges from (55- 90°C) and
feed flow rate in range of (0.00694-0.0211 kg/m2-s).
Abstract: PLA emerged as a promising polymer because of its
property as a compostable, biodegradable thermoplastic made from
renewable sources. PLA can be polymerized from monomers
(Lactide or Lactic acid) obtained by fermentation processes from
renewable sources such as corn starch or sugarcane. For PLA
synthesis, ring opening polymerization (ROP) of Lactide monomer is
one of the preferred methods. In the literature, the technique mainly
developed for ROP of PLA is based on metal/bimetallic catalyst (Sn,
Zn and Al) or other organic catalysts in suitable solvent. However,
the PLA synthesized using such catalysts may contain trace elements
of the catalyst which may cause toxicity. This work estimated the
usefulness and drawbacks of using different catalysts as well as effect
of alternative energies and future aspects for PLA production.
Abstract: The Standard Penetration Test (SPT) is the most
common in situ test for soil investigations. On the other hand, the
Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is considered one of the best
investigation tools. Due to the fast and accurate results that can be
obtained it complaints the SPT in many applications like field
explorations, design parameters, and quality control assessments.
Many soil index and engineering properties have been correlated to
both of SPT and CPT. Various foundation design methods were
developed based on the outcome of these tests. Therefore it is vital to
correlate these tests to each other so that either one of the tests can be
used in the absence of the other, especially for preliminary evaluation
and design purposes.
The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the
relationships between the SPT and CPT for different type of sandy
soils in Florida. Data for this research were collected from number of
projects sponsored by the Florida Department of Transportation
(FDOT), six sites served as the subject of SPT-CPT correlations. The
correlations were established between the cone resistance (qc), sleeve
friction (fs) and the uncorrected SPT blow counts (N) for various
soils.
A positive linear relationship was found between qc, fs and N for
various sandy soils. In general, qc versus N showed higher
correlation coefficients than fs versus N. qc/N ratios were developed
for different soil types and compared to literature values, the results
of this research revealed higher ratios than literature values.