Abstract: This paper proposes a cooperative Alamouti space time
transmission scheme with low relay complexity for the cooperative
communication systems. In the proposed scheme, the source node
combines the data symbols to construct the Alamouti-coded form at
the destination node, while the conventional scheme performs the
corresponding operations at the relay nodes. In simulation results,
it is shown that the proposed scheme achieves the second order
cooperative diversity while maintaining the same bit error rate (BER)
performance as that of the conventional scheme.
Abstract: Enzyme activity was evaluated in the intestine of
juvenile dourado (Salminus brasiliensis) fed with diets containing 0,
10 or 20% of lyophilized bovine colostrum (LBC) inclusion for either
30 or 60 days. The intestinal enzymes acid and alkaline phosphatase
(ACP and ALP, respectively), non-specific esterase (NSE), lipase
(LIP), dipeptidyl aminopeptidase IV (DAP IV) and leucine
aminopeptidase (LAP) were studied using histochemistry in four
intestinal segments (S1, S2, S3 and posterior intestine). Weak
proteolitic activity was observed in all intestinal segments for DAP
IV and LAP. The activity of NSE and LIP was also weak in all
intestines, except for the moderate activity of NSE in the S2 of 20%
LBC group after 30 days and in the S1 of 0% LBC group after 60
days. The ACP was detected only in the S2 and S3 of the 10% LBC
group after 30 days. Moderate and strong staining was observed in
the first three intestinal segments for ALP and weak activity in the
posterior intestine. The activity of DAP IV, LAP and ALP were also
present in the cytoplasm of the enterocytes. In the present results,
bovine colostrum feeding did not cause alterations in activity of
intestinal enzymes.
Abstract: Paper deals with analysis of strategic management
methods in non-profit making organization in the Czech Republic.
Strategic management represents an aggregate of methods and
approaches that can be applied for managing organizations - in this
article the organizations which associate owners and keepers of nonstate
forest properties. Authors use these methods of strategic
management: analysis of stakeholders, SWOT analysis and
questionnaire inquiries. The questionnaire was distributed
electronically via e-mail. In October 2013 we obtained data from a
total of 84 questionnaires. Based on the results the authors
recommend the using of confrontation strategy which improves the
competitiveness of non-profit making organizations.
Abstract: Thermal insulation materials based on natural fibers
represent a very promising area of materials based on natural easy
renewable row sources. These materials may be in terms of the
properties of most competing synthetic insulations, but show
somewhat higher moisture sensitivity and thermal insulation
properties are strongly influenced by the density and orientation of
fibers. The paper described the problem of hygrothermal behavior of
thermal insulation materials based on natural plant and animal fibers.
This is especially the dependence of the thermal properties of these
materials on the type of fiber, bulk density, temperature, moisture and
the fiber orientation.
Abstract: Osteoporosis is a common multifactorial disease with
a strong genetic component characterized by reduced bone mass and
increased risk of fractures. Genetic factors play an important role in
the pathogenesis of osteoporosis. The aim of our study was to
identify the genotype and allele distribution of T245G polymorphism
in OPG gene in Slovak postmenopausal women. A total of 200
unrelated Slovak postmenopausal women with diagnosed
osteoporosis and 200 normal controls were genotyped for T245G
(rs3134069) polymorphism of OPG gene. Genotyping was performed
using the Custom Taqman®SNP Genotyping assays. Genotypes and
alleles frequencies showed no significant differences (p=0.5551;
p=0.6022). The results of the present study confirm the importance of
T245G polymorphism in OPG gene in the pathogenesis of
osteoporosis.
Abstract: The objectives of this research were to study the
influencing factors that contributed to the success of e-collaborative
in e-commerce of B2C (Business to Customer) business in Bangkok,
Thailand. The influencing factors included organization, people,
information technology and the process of e-collaborative. A
questionnaire was used to collect data from 200 small e-commerce
businesses and the path analysis was utilized as the tool for data
analysis.
By using the path analysis, it was revealed that the factors
concerning with organization, people and information technology
played an influence on e-collaborative process and the success of ecollaborative,
whereas the process of e-collaborative factor
manipulated its success. The findings suggested that B2C ecommerce
business in Thailand should opt in improvement approach
in terms of managerial structure, leaderships, staff’s skills and
knowledge, and investment of information technology in order to
capacitate higher efficiency of e-collaborative process that would
result in profit and competitive advantage.
Abstract: ‘Steganalysis’ is one of the challenging and attractive interests for the researchers with the development of information hiding techniques. It is the procedure to detect the hidden information from the stego created by known steganographic algorithm. In this paper, a novel feature based image steganalysis technique is proposed. Various statistical moments have been used along with some similarity metric. The proposed steganalysis technique has been designed based on transformation in four wavelet domains, which include Haar, Daubechies, Symlets and Biorthogonal. Each domain is being subjected to various classifiers, namely K-nearest-neighbor, K* Classifier, Locally weighted learning, Naive Bayes classifier, Neural networks, Decision trees and Support vector machines. The experiments are performed on a large set of pictures which are available freely in image database. The system also predicts the different message length definitions.
Abstract: Recently GPS data is used in a lot of studies to
automatically reconstruct travel patterns for trip survey. The aim is to
minimize the use of questionnaire surveys and travel diaries so as to
reduce their negative effects. In this paper data acquired from GPS and
accelerometer embedded in smart phones is utilized to predict the
mode of transportation used by the phone carrier. For prediction,
Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Adaptive boosting (AdaBoost)
are employed. Moreover a unique method to improve the prediction
results from these algorithms is also proposed. Results suggest that the
prediction accuracy of AdaBoost after improvement is relatively better
than the rest.
Abstract: We have studied a method to widen the spectrum
of optical pulses that pass through an InGaAsP waveguide for
application to broadband optical communication. In particular, we
have investigated the competitive effect between spectral broadening
arising from nonlinear refraction (optical Kerr effect) and shrinking
due to two photon absorption in the InGaAsP waveguide with
χ(3) nonlinearity. The shrunk spectrum recovers broadening by
the enhancement effect of the nonlinear refractive index near the
bandgap of InGaAsP with a bandgap wavelength of 1490 nm. The
broadened spectral width at around 1525 nm (196.7 THz) becomes
10.7 times wider than that at around 1560 nm (192.3 THz) without
the enhancement effect, where amplified optical pulses with a pulse
width of ∼ 2 ps and a peak power of 10 W propagate through a
1-cm-long InGaAsP waveguide with a cross-section of 4 (μm)2.
Abstract: Construction in Finland is focusing increasingly on
renovation instead of conventional new construction, and this trend
will continue to grow in the coming years and decades. Renovation of
the large number of suburban residential apartment buildings built in
the 1960s and 1970s poses a particular challenge. However,
renovation projects are demanding for the residents of these
buildings, since they usually are uninitiated in construction issues. On
the other hand, renovation projects generally apply the operating
models of new construction.
Nevertheless, the residents of an existing residential apartment
building are some of the best experts on the site. Thus, in this
research project we applied a relational model in developing and
testing at case sites a planning process that employs interactive
planning methods. Current residents, housing company managers, the
city zoning manager, the contractor’s and prefab element supplier’s
representatives, professional designers and researchers all took part in
the planning. The entire interactive planning process progressed
phase by phase as the participants’ and designers’ concerted
discussion and ideation process, so that the end result was a
renovation plan desired by the residents.
Abstract: Fibrin degradation is an important part in prevention
or treatment of intravascular thrombosis and cardiovascular diseases.
Plasmin like fibrinolytic enzymes has given new hope to patient with
cardiovascular diseases by treating fibrin aggregation related diseases
with traditional plasminogen activator which have many side effects.
Various researches involving wide range of sources for production of
fibrinolytic proteases, from bacteria, fungi, insects and fermented
foods. But few have looked into endophytic fungi as a potential
source. Sixteen (16) endophytic fungi were isolated from Hibiscus sp.
leaves from six different locations in Shah Alam, Selangor. Only two
endophytic fungi, FH3 and S13 showed positive fibrinolytic protease
activities. FH3 produced 5.78cm and S13 produced 4.48cm on Skim
Milk Agar after 4 days of incubation at 27°C. Fibrinolytic activity
was observed; 3.87cm and 1.82cm diameter clear zone on fibrin plate
of FH3 and S13 respectively. 18srRNA was done for identification of
the isolated fungi with positive fibrinolytic protease. S13 had the
highest similarity (100%) to that of Penicillium citrinum strain TG2
and FH3 had the highest similarity (99%) to that of Fusarium sp.
FW2PhC1, Fusarium sp. 13002, Fusarium sp. 08006, Fusarium
equiseti strain Salicorn 8 and Fungal sp. FCASAn-2. Media
composition variation showed the effects of carbon nitrogen on
protein concentration, where the decrement of 50% of media
composition caused drastic decrease in protease of FH3 from 1.081 to
0.056 and also S13 from 2.946 to 0.198.
Abstract: This paper presents circular polar coordinates
transformation of periodic fuzzy membership function. The purpose
is identification of domain of periodic membership functions in
consequent part of IF-THEN rules. Proposed methods in this paper
remove complicatedness concerning domain of periodic membership
function from defuzzification in fuzzy approximate reasoning.
Defuzzification on circular polar coordinates is also proposed.
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: The study examines the influence of marital status on
consumers of products and services using blogs as a source of
information. A pre-designed questionnaire was used to collect the
primary data from the respondents (experiences). Data were collected
from one hundred and eighty seven respondents residing in and
around the Emirates of Sharjah and Dubai of the United Arab
Emirates. The collected data was analyzed with the help of statistical
tools such as averages, percentages, factor analysis, Student’s t-test
and Structural Equation Modelling Technique.
Objectives of the study are to know the reasons how married and
unmarried or single consumers of products and services are
motivated to use blogs as a source of information, to know whether
the consumers of products and services irrespective of their marital
status share their views and experiences with other bloggers and to
know the respondents’ future intentions towards blogging.
The study revealed the following: Majority of the respondents
have the motivation to blog because they are willing to receive
comments on what they post about services, convenience of blogs to
search for information about services and products, by blogging
respondents share information on the symptoms of a disease/ disorder
that may be experienced by someone, helps to share information
about ready to cook mix products and are keen to spend more time
blogging in the future.
Abstract: This paper presents a regression model with
autocorrelated errors in which the inputs are social moods obtained by
analyzing the adjectives in Twitter posts using a document topic
model, where document topics are extracted using LDA. The
regression model predicts Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) more
precisely than autoregressive moving-average models.
Abstract: A simple multi-wavelength passively Q-switched
Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) is demonstrated using low cost
multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) based saturable absorber
(SA), which is prepared using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a host
polymer. The multi-wavelength operation is achieved based on
nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) effect by incorporating 50 m
long photonic crystal fiber (PCF) in the ring cavity. The EDFL
produces a stable multi-wavelength comb spectrum for more than 14
lines with a fixed spacing of 0.48 nm. The laser also demonstrates a
stable pulse train with the repetition rate increases from 14.9 kHz to
25.4 kHz as the pump power increases from the threshold power of
69.0 mW to the maximum pump power of 133.8 mW. The minimum
pulse width of 4.4 μs was obtained at the maximum pump power of
133.8 mW while the highest energy of 0.74 nJ was obtained at pump
power of 69.0 mW.
Abstract: The biomass-based fuels have become great concern in order to replace the petroleum-based fuels. Biofuels are a wide range of fuels referred to liquid, gas and solid fuels produced from biomass. Recently, higher chain alcohols such as 3-methyl-1-butanol and isobutanol have become a better candidate compared to bioethanol in order to replace gasoline as transportation fuel. Therefore, in this study, 3-methyl-1-butanol was produced through a fermentation process by yeast. Several types of yeast involved in this research including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Kluyveromyces lactis GG799 and Pichia pastoris (KM71H, GS115 and X33). The result obtained showed that K. lactis GG799 gave the highest concentration of 3-methyl-1-butanol at 274 mg/l followed by S. cerevisiae, P. pastoris GS115, P. pastoris KM71H and P. pastoris X33 at 265 mg/l, 190 mg/l, 182 mg/l and 174 mg/l respectively. Based on the result, it proved that yeast have a potential in producing 3-methyl-1-butanol naturally.
Abstract: Abundant and cheap agricultural waste of oil palm trunk (OPT) juice was used to produce bioethanol. Two strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and a strain of Pichia stipitis were used to produce bioethanol from the OPT juice. Fermentation was conducted at previously optimized condition at 30oC and without shaking. The kinetic parameters were estimated and calculated. Monod equation and Hinshelwood model is used to relate the specific growth to the concentration of the limiting substrate and also to simulate bioethanol production rate. Among the three strains, single S. cerevisiae Kyokai no. 7 produce the highest ethanol yield of 0.477 g/l.h within the shortest time (12 h). This yeast also produces more than 20 g/l ethanol concentration within 10 h of fermentation.
Abstract: There is an essential need for obtaining the mathematical representation of fish body undulations, which can be used for designing and building new innovative types of marine propulsion systems with less environmental impact. This research work presents a case study to derive the mathematical model for fish body movement. Observation and capturing image methods were used in this study in order to obtain a mathematical representation of Clariasbatrachus fish (catfish). An experiment was conducted by using an aquarium with dimension 0.609 m x 0.304 m x 0.304 m, and a 0.5 m ruler was attached at the base of the aquarium. Progressive Scan Monochrome Camera was positioned at 1.8 m above the base of the aquarium to provide swimming sequences. Seven points were marked on the fish body using white marker to indicate the fish movement and measuring the amplitude of undulation. Images from video recordings (20 frames/s) were analyzed frame by frame using local coordinate system, with time interval 0.05 s. The amplitudes of undulations were obtained for image analysis from each point that has been marked on fish body. A graph of amplitude of undulations versus time was plotted by using computer to derive a mathematical fit. The function for the graph is polynomial with nine orders.
Abstract: As Malaysia aims to be a developed country by year 2020; the construction industry has since been identified as a major catalyst for the country to attain the status. It is one of the sectors that contribute to most environmental pollutions. It is, therefore, important for the industry to implement sustainable construction practices to reduce the negative impacts that it has on the environment. However, most Malaysian developers have placed much focus on market demand and economic factors; neglecting the need for attention on environmental issues. The practice of sustainable construction is deemed to be an obstacle to achieve short-term economic goals due to the higher cost incurred in the operations. Hence, choices need to be made and a balance needs to be struck in weighing the long-term environmental benefits against immediate economic factors. This paper discusses the challenges faced by Malaysian developers in adopting sustainable practices in the construction industry and the cause of these challenges. It also looks into the achievements and breakthroughs that developers in Malaysia have achieved so far. The paper aims explores the long-term benefits of sustainable practices that would potentially raise awareness on the feasibility and economic potential of sustainable construction.