Abstract: The protein domain structure has been widely used as the most informative sequence feature to computationally predict protein-protein interactions. However, in a recent study, a research group has reported a very high accuracy of 94% using hydrophobicity feature. Therefore, in this study we compare and verify the usefulness of protein domain structure and hydrophobicity properties as the sequence features. Using the Support Vector Machines (SVM) as the learning system, our results indicate that both features achieved accuracy of nearly 80%. Furthermore, domains structure had receiver operating characteristic (ROC) score of 0.8480 with running time of 34 seconds, while hydrophobicity had ROC score of 0.8159 with running time of 20,571 seconds (5.7 hours). These results indicate that protein-protein interaction can be predicted from domain structure with reliable accuracy and acceptable running time.
Abstract: Basel III (or the Third Basel Accord) is a global
regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and
market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel
Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010-2011, and scheduled to
be introduced from 2013 until 2018. Basel III is a comprehensive set
of reform measures. These measures aim to; (1) improve the banking
sector-s ability to absorb shocks arising from financial and economic
stress, whatever the source, (2) improve risk management and
governance, (3) strengthen banks- transparency and disclosures.
Similarly the reform target; (1) bank level or micro-prudential,
regulation, which will help raise the resilience of individual banking
institutions to periods of stress. (2) Macro-prudential regulations,
system wide risk that can build up across the banking sector as well
as the pro-cyclical implication of these risks over time. These two
approaches to supervision are complementary as greater resilience at
the individual bank level reduces the risk system wide shocks.
Macroeconomic impact of Basel III; OECD estimates that the
medium-term impact of Basel III implementation on GDP growth is
in the range -0,05 percent to -0,15 percent per year. On the other hand
economic output is mainly affected by an increase in bank lending
spreads as banks pass a rise in banking funding costs, due to higher
capital requirements, to their customers. Consequently the estimated
effects on GDP growth assume no active response from monetary
policy. Basel III impact on economic output could be offset by a
reduction (or delayed increase) in monetary policy rates by about 30
to 80 basis points. The aim of this paper is to create a framework
based on the recent regulations in order to prevent financial crises.
Thus the need to overcome the global financial crisis will contribute
to financial crises that may occur in the future periods. In the first
part of the paper, the effects of the global crisis on the banking
system examine the concept of financial regulations. In the second
part; especially in the financial regulations and Basel III are analyzed.
The last section in this paper explored the possible consequences of
the macroeconomic impacts of Basel III.
Abstract: WIMAX relay station mesh network has been approved by IEEE 802.16j as a standard to provide a highly data rate transmission, the RS was implemented to extend the coverage zone of the BS, for instance the MSs previously were out of the coverage of the BS they become in the coverage of the RS, therefore these MSs can have Admission control from the BS through the RS. This paper describe a problem in the mesh network Relay station, for instance the problem of how to serve the mobile stations (MSs) which are out of the Relay station coverage. This paper also proposed a solution for mobile stations out of the coverage of the WIMAX Relay stations mesh Network. Therefore Ad-hoc network defined as a solution by using its admission control schema and apply it on the mobiles inside and outside the Relay station coverage.
Abstract: The present investigation is concerned with
sub-impacts taken placed when a rigid hemispherical-head block
transversely impacts against a beam at different locations. Dynamic
substructure technique for elastic-plastic impact is applied to solve
numerically this problem. The time history of impact force and energy
exchange between block and beam are obtained. The process of
sub-impacts is analyzed from the energy exchange point of view. The
results verify the influences of the impact location on impact duration,
the first sub-impact and energy exchange between the beam and the
block.
Abstract: Money laundering has been described by many as the lifeblood of crime and is a major threat to the economic and social well-being of societies. It has been recognized that the banking system has long been the central element of money laundering. This is in part due to the complexity and confidentiality of the banking system itself. It is generally accepted that effective anti-money laundering (AML) measures adopted by banks will make it tougher for criminals to get their "dirty money" into the financial system. In fact, for law enforcement agencies, banks are considered to be an important source of valuable information for the detection of money laundering. However, from the banks- perspective, the main reason for their existence is to make as much profits as possible. Hence their cultural and commercial interests are totally distinct from that of the law enforcement authorities. Undoubtedly, AML laws create a major dilemma for banks as they produce a significant shift in the way banks interact with their customers. Furthermore, the implementation of the laws not only creates significant compliance problems for banks, but also has the potential to adversely affect the operations of banks. As such, it is legitimate to ask whether these laws are effective in preventing money launderers from using banks, or whether they simply put an unreasonable burden on banks and their customers. This paper attempts to address these issues and analyze them against the background of the Malaysian AML laws. It must be said that effective coordination between AML regulator and the banking industry is vital to minimize problems faced by the banks and thereby to ensure effective implementation of the laws in combating money laundering.
Abstract: Embedded systems need to respect stringent real
time constraints. Various hardware components included in such
systems such as cache memories exhibit variability and therefore
affect execution time. Indeed, a cache memory access from an
embedded microprocessor might result in a cache hit where the
data is available or a cache miss and the data need to be fetched
with an additional delay from an external memory. It is therefore
highly desirable to predict future memory accesses during
execution in order to appropriately prefetch data without incurring
delays. In this paper, we evaluate the potential of several artificial
neural networks for the prediction of instruction memory
addresses. Neural network have the potential to tackle the nonlinear
behavior observed in memory accesses during program
execution and their demonstrated numerous hardware
implementation emphasize this choice over traditional forecasting
techniques for their inclusion in embedded systems. However,
embedded applications execute millions of instructions and
therefore millions of addresses to be predicted. This very
challenging problem of neural network based prediction of large
time series is approached in this paper by evaluating various neural
network architectures based on the recurrent neural network
paradigm with pre-processing based on the Self Organizing Map
(SOM) classification technique.
Abstract: Requirements are critical to system validation as they guide all subsequent stages of systems development. Inadequately specified requirements generate systems that require major revisions or cause system failure entirely. Use Cases have become the main vehicle for requirements capture in many current Object Oriented (OO) development methodologies, and a means for developers to communicate with different stakeholders. In this paper we present the results of a laboratory experiment that explored whether different types of use case format are equally effective in facilitating high knowledge user-s understanding. Results showed that the provision of diagrams along with the textual use case descriptions significantly improved user comprehension of system requirements in both familiar and unfamiliar application domains. However, when comparing groups that received models of textual description accompanied with diagrams of different level of details (simple and detailed) we found no significant difference in performance.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to improve electromagnetic characteristics on grounding grid by applying the conductive concrete. The conductive concrete in this study is under an extra high voltage (EHV, 345kV) system located in a high-tech industrial park or science park. Instead of surrounding soil of grounding grid, the application of conductive concrete can reduce equipment damage and body damage caused by switching surges. The focus of the two cases on the EHV distribution system in a high-tech industrial park is presented to analyze four soil material styles. By comparing several soil material styles, the study results have shown that the conductive concrete can effectively reduce the negative damages caused by electromagnetic transient. The adoption of the style of grounding grid located 1.0 (m) underground and conductive concrete located from the ground surface to 1.25 (m) underground can obviously improve the electromagnetic characteristics so as to advance protective efficiency.
Abstract: A review of the literature found that Domestic
violence and child maltreatment co-occur in many families, the
purpose of this study attempts to emphasize the factors relating to
intra-family relationships (order point of view) on violence against
the children, For this purpose a survey technique on the sample size
amounted 200 students of governmental guidance schools of city of
Gilanegharb in country of Iran were considered. For measurement of
violence against the children (VAC) the CTS scaled has been used
.The results showed that children have experienced the violence more
than once during the last year. degree of order in family is high.
Explanation result indicated that the order variables in family
including collective thinking, empathy, communal co-circumstance
have significant effects on VAC.
Abstract: In this manuscript, a wavelet-based blind
watermarking scheme has been proposed as a means to provide
security to authenticity of a fingerprint. The information used for
identification or verification of a fingerprint mainly lies in its
minutiae. By robust watermarking of the minutiae in the fingerprint
image itself, the useful information can be extracted accurately even
if the fingerprint is severely degraded. The minutiae are converted in
a binary watermark and embedding these watermarks in the detail
regions increases the robustness of watermarking, at little to no
additional impact on image quality. It has been experimentally shown
that when the minutiae is embedded into wavelet detail coefficients
of a fingerprint image in spread spectrum fashion using a
pseudorandom sequence, the robustness is observed to have a
proportional response while perceptual invisibility has an inversely
proportional response to amplification factor “K". The DWT-based
technique has been found to be very robust against noises,
geometrical distortions filtering and JPEG compression attacks and is
also found to give remarkably better performance than DCT-based
technique in terms of correlation coefficient and number of erroneous
minutiae.
Abstract: Jordan exerts many efforts to nurture their academically gifted students in special schools since 2001. During
the past nine years of launching these schools, their learning and excellence environments were believed to be distinguished compared
to public schools. This study investigated the environments of gifted
students compared with other non-gifted, using a survey instrument
that measures the dimensions of family, peers, teachers, school- support, society, and resources –dimensions rooted deeply in supporting gifted education, learning, and achievement. A total
number of 109 were selected from excellence schools for
academically gifted students, and 119 non-gifted students were selected from public schools. Around 8.3% of the non-gifted students
reported that they “Never" received any support from their surrounding environments, 14.9% reported “Seldom" support, 23.7% reported “ Often" support, 26.0% reported “Frequent" support, and
32.8% reported “Very frequent" support. Where the gifted students reported more “Never" support than the non-gifted did with 11.3%,
“Seldom" support with 15.4%, “Often" support with 26.6%,
“Frequent" support with 29.0%, and reported “Very frequent" support less than the non-gifted students with 23.6%. Unexpectedly,
statistical differences were found between the two groups favoring
non-gifted students in perception of their surrounding environments
in specific dimensions, namely, school- support, teachers, and society. No statistical differences were found in the other dimensions
of the survey, namely, family, peers, and resources. As the
differences were found in teachers, school- support, and society, the
nurturing environments for the excellence schools need to be revised to adopt more creative teaching styles, rich school atmosphere and
infrastructures, interactive guiding for the students and their parents, promoting for the excellence environments, and re-build successful
identification models. Thus, families, schools, and society should
increase their cooperation, communication, and awareness of the
gifted supportive environments. However, more studies to investigate
other aspects of promoting academic giftedness and excellence are recommended.
Abstract: Housing is a basic human right. The provision of new
house shall be free from any defects, even for the defects that people
do normally considered as 'cosmetic defects'. This paper studies
about the building defects of newly completed house of 72 unit of
double-storey terraced located in Bangi, Selangor. The building
survey implemented using protocol 1 (visual inspection). As for new
house, the survey work is very stringent in determining the defects
condition and priority. Survey and reporting procedure is carried out
based on CSP1 Matrix that involved scoring system, photographs and
plan tagging. The analysis is done using Statistical Package for Social
Sciences (SPSS). The finding reveals that there are 2119 defects
recorded in 72 terraced houses. The cumulative score obtained was
27644 while the overall rating is 13.05. These results indicate that the
construction quality of the newly terraced houses is low and not up to
an acceptable standard as the new house should be.
Abstract: To unveil the mechanism of fast autooxidation of fish
myoglobins, the effect of temperature on the structural change of tuna
myoglobin was investigated. Purified myoglobin was subjected to
preincubation at 5, 20, 50 and 40oC. Overall helical structural decay
through thermal treatment up to 95oC was monitored by circular
dichroism spectrometry, while the structural changes around the heme
pocket was measured by ultraviolet/visible absorption spectrophotometry.
As a result, no essential structural change of myoglobin
was observed under 30oC, roughly equivalent to their body
temperature, but the structure was clearly damaged at 40oC. The Soret
band absorption hardly differed irrespective of preincubation
temperature, suggesting that the structure around the heme pocket was
not perturbed even after thermal treatment.
Abstract: The organic farmers use wider range of crop varieties than the conventional farming. Bread wheat is the most favorite and the most common food crop. The organic bread wheat is usually of worse technological quality. Therefore, it is supposed to be an attractive alternative to the hulled wheat species (einkorn, emmer wheat and spelt). Twenty-five hulled bread wheat varieties and control bread wheat ones were grown on the certified organic parcel in České Budějovice (the Czech Republic) between 2009 and 2012. Their baking quality was measured and evaluated with standard methods, and in accordance with ICC. The results have shown that the grain of hulled wheat varieties contain a lot of proteins in grains (up to 18 percent); even the organic hulled bread wheat varieties are characterized by such good baking quality. Einkorn and emmer wheat are of worse technological quality of proteins (low values of gluten index and Zeleny test), which is a disadvantage of these two wheat species. On the other hand, spelt wheat is of better technological quality and is similar to the control bread wheat varieties. Mixtures consisting of bread wheat, among others, are considered good alternatives; they may contribute to wider range of use of the hulled wheat species. It is one of the possibilities which may increase the proportion of proteins in bread wheat grains; the nutrition-rich hulled wheat grains may be also used in such way at the same time.
Abstract: The ever growing sentiment of environmentalism across the globe has made many people think on the green lines. But most of such ideas halt short of implementation because of the short term economic viability issues with the concept of going green. In this paper we have tried to amalgamate the green concept with social entrepreneurship for solving a variety of issues faced by the society today. In addition the paper also tries to ensure that the short term economic viability does not act as a deterrent. The paper comes up three sustainable models of social entrepreneurship which tackle a wide assortment of issues such as nutrition problem, land problems, pollution problems and employment problems. The models described fall under the following heads: - Spirulina cultivation: The model addresses nutrition, land and employment issues. It deals with cultivation of a blue green alga called Spirulina which can be used as a very nutritious food. Also, the implementation of this model would bring forth employment to the poor people of the area. - Biocomposites: The model comes up with various avenues in which biocomposites can be used in an economically sustainable manner. This model deals with the environmental concerns and addresses the depletion of natural resources. - Packaging material from empty fruit bunches (EFB) of oil palm: This one deals with air and land pollution. It is intended to be a substitute for packaging materials made from Styrofoam and plastics which are non-biodegradable. It takes care of the biodegradability and land pollution issues. It also reduces air pollution as the empty fruit bunches are not incinerated. All the three models are sustainable and do not deplete the natural resources any further. This paper explains each of the models in detail and deals with the operational/manufacturing procedures and cost analysis while also throwing light on the benefits derived and sustainability aspects.
Abstract: The research object was apple-black currant
marmalade candies. Experiments were carried out at the Faculty of
Food Technology of the Latvia University of Agriculture. An active
packaging in combination with modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2
100%) was examined and compared with traditional packaging in air
ambiance. Polymer Multibarrier 60 and paper bags were used.
Influence of iron based oxygen absorber in sachets of 500 cc
obtained from Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Europe Ageless® was tested
on the quality during the shelf of marmalade. Samples of 80±5 g
were packaged in polymer pouches (110 mm x 110 mm),
hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC C300 vacuum chamber machine,
and stored in room temperature +20.0±1.0 °C. The physiochemical
properties – weight losses, moisture content, hardness, aw, pH, colour,
changes of atmosphere content (CO2 and O2) in headspace of packs,
and microbial conditions were analysed before packaging and in the
1st, 3rd , 5th, 8th, 11th and 15th weeks of storage.
Abstract: Space-time block code(STBC) has been studied to get
full diversity and full rate in multiple input multiple output(MIMO)
system. Achieving full rate is difficult in cooperative communications
due to the each user consumes the time slots for transmitting
information in cooperation phase. So combining MIMO systems
with cooperative communications has been researched for full diversity
and full rate. In orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA) system, it is an alternative way that each user shares their
allocated subchannels instead of using the MIMO system to improve
the transmission rate. In this paper, a Decode-and-forward (DF)
based cooperative communication scheme is proposed. The proposed
scheme has improved transmission rate and reliability in multi-path
fading channel of the OFDMA up-link condition by modified STBC
structure and subchannel sharing.
Abstract: In this paper, the influencing parameters of a novel
purely mechanical wireless in-mould injection moulding sensor
were investigated. The sensor is capable of detecting the melt
front at predefined locations inside the mould. The sensor comprises
a movable pin which acts as the sensor element generating
structure-borne sound triggered by the passing melt front. Due to
the sensor design, melt pressure is the driving force. For pressure
level measurement during pin movement a pressure transducer
located at the same position as the movable pin. By deriving
a mathematical model for the mechanical movement, dominant
process parameters could be investigated towards their impact
on the melt front detection characteristic. It was found that the
sensor is not affected by the investigated parameters enabling it
for reliable melt front detection. In addition, it could be proved
that the novel sensor is in comparable range to conventional melt
front detection sensors.
Abstract: Content-based music retrieval generally involves analyzing, searching and retrieving music based on low or high level features of a song which normally used to represent artists, songs or music genre. Identifying them would normally involve feature extraction and classification tasks. Theoretically the greater features analyzed, the better the classification accuracy can be achieved but with longer execution time. Technique to select significant features is important as it will reduce dimensions of feature used in classification and contributes to the accuracy. Artificial Immune System (AIS) approach will be investigated and applied in the classification task. Bio-inspired audio content-based retrieval framework (B-ACRF) is proposed at the end of this paper where it embraces issues that need further consideration in music retrieval performances.
Abstract: Latvia is the fourth in the world by means of broadband internet speed. The total number of internet users in Latvia exceeds 70% of its population. The number of active mailboxes of the local internet e-mail service Inbox.lv accounts for 68% of the population and 97.6% of the total number of internet users. The Latvian portal Draugiem.lv is a phenomenon of social media, because 58.4 % of the population and 83.5% of internet users use it. A majority of Latvian company profiles are available on social networks, the most popular being Twitter.com. These and other parameters prove the fact consumers and companies are actively using the Internet.
However, after the authors in a number of studies analyzed how enterprises are employing the e-environment, namely, e-environment tools, they arrived to the conclusions that are not as flattering as the aforementioned statistics. There is an obvious contradiction between the statistical data and the actual studies. As a result, the authors have posed a question: Why are entrepreneurs resistant to e-tools? In order to answer this question, the authors have addressed the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The authors analyzed each phase and determined several factors affecting the use of e-environment, reaching the main conclusion that entrepreneurs do not have a sufficient level of e-literacy (digital literacy).
The authors employ well-established quantitative and qualitative methods of research: grouping, analysis, statistic method, factor analysis in SPSS 20 environment etc.
The theoretical and methodological background of the research is formed by, scientific researches and publications, that from the mass media and professional literature, statistical information from legal institutions as well as information collected by the author during the survey.