Abstract: On the territory of France fenugreek is spread since long on a line from the Gironde to the Italian border. In Belarus experimental cultivation has begun since 2004. Experiments with fenugreek variety Ovari 4 were conducted about time of sowing in order to study their growth, development, and evaluation of productivity in the North-east part of Belarus and Central part of France. Reaching full ripeness of seeds the plants of fenugreek in the Central part of France requires about 94-97 days. Average seeds yield of 2011-2012 is 1259 kg/ha. Plant height is about 36,8 cm. Plants were affected by aphid and in the high moist agro-climatic conditions by powdery mildew. In North-east part of Belarus plants need 86-93 days to full ripeness. Plants of fenugreek have steam about 59 cm. The average seeds yield of 2007-2009 was about 723 kg/ha. Plants were resistant to aphid and diseases.
Abstract: In this paper, using a model transformation approach a system of linear delay differential equations (DDEs) with multiple delays is converted to a non-delayed initial value problem. The variational iteration method (VIM) is then applied to obtain the approximate analytical solutions. Numerical results are given for several examples involving scalar and second order systems. Comparisons with the classical fourth-order Runge-Kutta method (RK4) verify that this method is very effective and convenient.
Abstract: The fact that traditional food safety system in the
absence of food safety culture is inadequate has recently become a
cause of concern for food safety professionals and other stakeholders.
Focusing on implementation of traditional food safety system i.e
HACCP prerequisite program and HACCP without the presence of
food safety culture in the food industry has led to the processing,
marketing and distribution of contaminated foods. The results of this
are regular out breaks of food borne illnesses and recalls of foods
from retail outlets with serious consequences to the consumers and
manufacturers alike. This article will consider the importance of food
safety culture, the cases of outbreaks and recalls that occurred when
companies did not make food safety culture a priority. Most
importantly, the food safety cultures of some food industries in South
Africa were assessed from responses to questionnaires from food
safety/food industry professionals in Durban South Africa. The
article was concluded by recommending that both food
industry employees and employers alike take food safety culture
seriously.
Abstract: The area of knowledge management has been in the
highlight for enterprises over the past three decades. Many
enterprises would like to have knowledge management and work hard
to achieve it, however they are often confused about which direction
to take to be successful and this point is especially true for Small and
Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Many large
companies have realized that knowledge is one of the richest
resources which an organization possesses and knowledge
management is a part of the foundation for a sustainable competitive
advantage. Much work has been done in the area of knowledge
management, but most of it has served large enterprises. This
research provides a Model of knowledge management strategy for
SMEs. It is based on analysis, insights and recommendations and it is
presented so that SMEs in developing countries can easily understand
and implement this model.
Abstract: The importance of hints in an intelligent tutoring system is well understood. The problems however related to their delivering are quite a few. In this paper we propose delivering of hints to be based on considering their usefulness. By this we mean that a hint is regarded as useful to a student if the student has succeeded to solve a problem after the hint was suggested to her/him. Methods from the theory of partial orderings are further applied facilitating an automated process of offering individualized advises on how to proceed in order to solve a particular problem.
Abstract: Let D = 1 be a positive non-square integer and let δ = √D or 1+√D 2 be a real quadratic irrational with trace t =δ + δ and norm n = δδ. Let γ = P+δ Q be a quadratic irrational for positive integers P and Q. Given a quadratic irrational γ, there exist a quadratic ideal Iγ = [Q, δ + P] and an indefinite quadratic form Fγ(x, y) = Q(x−γy)(x−γy) of discriminant Δ = t
2−4n. In the first section, we give some preliminaries form binary quadratic forms, quadratic irrationals and quadratic ideals. In the second section, we obtain some results on γ, Iγ and Fγ for some specific values of Q and P.
Abstract: The rapid growth of e-Commerce services is
significantly observed in the past decade. However, the method to
verify the authenticated users still widely depends on numeric
approaches. A new search on other verification methods suitable for
online e-Commerce is an interesting issue. In this paper, a new online
signature-verification method using angular transformation is
presented. Delay shifts existing in online signatures are estimated by
the estimation method relying on angle representation. In the
proposed signature-verification algorithm, all components of input
signature are extracted by considering the discontinuous break points
on the stream of angular values. Then the estimated delay shift is
captured by comparing with the selected reference signature and the
error matching can be computed as a main feature used for verifying
process. The threshold offsets are calculated by two types of error
characteristics of the signature verification problem, False Rejection
Rate (FRR) and False Acceptance Rate (FAR). The level of these two
error rates depends on the decision threshold chosen whose value is
such as to realize the Equal Error Rate (EER; FAR = FRR). The
experimental results show that through the simple programming,
employed on Internet for demonstrating e-Commerce services, the
proposed method can provide 95.39% correct verifications and 7%
better than DP matching based signature-verification method. In
addition, the signature verification with extracting components
provides more reliable results than using a whole decision making.
Abstract: Organic Flash Cycle (OFC) has potential of improving
efficiency for recovery of low temperature heat sources mainly due to
reducing temperature mismatch in the heat exchanger. In this work
exergetical performance analysis of ORC is conducted for recovery of
low grade heat source. Effects of system parameters such as flash
evaporation temperature or heating temperature are theoretically
investigated on the exergy destructions (anergies) at various
components of the system as well as exergy efficiency. Results show
that exergy efficiency has a peak with respect to the flash temperature,
and the optimum flash temperature increases with the heating
temperature. The component where the largest exergy destruction
occurs varies with the flash temperature or heating temperature.
Abstract: In the present paper, a set of parametric FE stress
analyses is carried out for two-planar welded tubular DKT-joints
under two different axial load cases. Analysis results are used to
present general remarks on the effect of geometrical parameters on
the stress concentration factors (SCFs) at the inner saddle, outer
saddle, toe, and heel positions on the main (outer) brace. Then a new
set of SCF parametric equations is developed through nonlinear
regression analysis for the fatigue design of two-planar DKT-joints.
An assessment study of these equations is conducted against the
experimental data; and the satisfaction of the criteria regarding the
acceptance of parametric equations is checked. Significant effort has
been devoted by researchers to the study of SCFs in various uniplanar
tubular connections. Nevertheless, for multi-planar joints
covering the majority of practical applications, very few
investigations have been reported due to the complexity and high
cost involved.
Abstract: The effect of a chiral bianisotropic substrate on the
complex resonant frequency of a rectangular microstrip resonator has
been studied on the basis of the integral equation formulation. The
analysis is based on numerical resolution of the integral equation
using Galerkin procedure for moment method in the spectral domain.
This work aim first to study the effect of the chirality of a
bianisotopic substrate upon the resonant frequency and the half
power bandwidth, second the effect of a magnetic anisotropy via an
asymptotic approach for very weak substrate upon the resonant
frequency and the half power bandwidth has been investigated. The
obtained results are compared with previously published work [11-9],
they were in good agreement.
Abstract: The emergence of networked information and communication has transformed the accessibility and delivery of scholarly information and fundamentally impacted on the processes of research and scholarly communication. The purpose of this study is to investigate disciplinary differences in the use of networked information for research and scholarly communication at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. This study has produced quantitative data about how and why academics within different disciplines utilize networked information that is made available either internally through the university library, or externally through networked services accessed by the Internet. The results indicate some significant differences between the attitudes and practice of academics in the science disciplines when compared to those from the social sciences and humanities. While respondents from science disciplines show overall longer and more frequent use of networked information, respondents from humanities and social sciences indicated more positive attitudes and a greater degree of satisfaction toward library networked services.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to emphasize the opportunities in space design under the aspect of HCI as performance areas. HCI is a multidisciplinary approach that could be identified in many different areas. The aesthetical reflections of HCI by virtual reality in space design are the high-tech solutions of the new innovations as computational facilities by artistic features. The method of this paper is to identify the subject in 3 main parts. In the first part a general approach and definition of interactivity on the basis of space design; in the second part the concept of multimedia interactive theater by some chosen samples from the world and interactive design aspects; in the third part the samples from Turkey will be identified by stage designing principles. In the results it could be declared that the multimedia database is the virtual approach of theatre stage designing regarding interactive means by computational facilities according to aesthetical aspects. HCI is mostly identified in theatre stages as computational intelligence under the affect of interactivity.
Abstract: This paper considers the influence of promotion
instruments for renewable energy sources (RES) on a multi-energy
modeling framework. In Europe, so called Feed-in Tariffs are
successfully used as incentive structures to increase the amount of
energy produced by RES. Because of the stochastic nature of large
scale integration of distributed generation, many problems have
occurred regarding the quality and stability of supply. Hence, a
macroscopic model was developed in order to optimize the power
supply of the local energy infrastructure, which includes electricity,
natural gas, fuel oil and district heating as energy carriers. Unique
features of the model are the integration of RES and the adoption of
Feed-in Tariffs into one optimization stage. Sensitivity studies are
carried out to examine the system behavior under changing profits
for the feed-in of RES. With a setup of three energy exchanging
regions and a multi-period optimization, the impact of costs and
profits are determined.
Abstract: The linear methods of heart rate variability analysis
such as non-parametric (e.g. fast Fourier transform analysis) and
parametric methods (e.g. autoregressive modeling) has become an
established non-invasive tool for marking the cardiac health, but their
sensitivity and specificity were found to be lower than expected with
positive predictive value
Abstract: This paper presents the effect of corrugation profile
geometry on the crushing behavior, energy absorption, failure
mechanism, and failure mode of woven roving glass fibre/epoxy
laminated composite tube. Experimental investigations were carried
out on composite tubes with three different profile shapes: sinusoidal,
triangular and trapezoidal. The tubes were subjected to lateral
compressive loading. On the addition to a radial corrugated
composite tube, cylindrical composite tube, were fabricated and
tested under the same condition in order to know the effect of
corrugation geometry. Typical histories of their deformation are
presented. Behavior of tubes as regards the peak crushing load,
energy absorbed and mode of crushing has been discussed. The
results show that the behavior of the tube under lateral compression
load is influenced by the geometry of the tube itself.
Abstract: The effect of the number of quantum dot (QD) layers
on the saturated gain of doped QD semiconductor optical amplifiers
(SOAs) has been studied using multi-population coupled rate
equations. The developed model takes into account the effect of
carrier coupling between adjacent layers. It has been found that
increasing the number of QD layers (K) increases the unsaturated
optical gain for K
Abstract: Search for a tertiary substructure that geometrically
matches the 3D pattern of the binding site of a well-studied protein provides a solution to predict protein functions. In our previous work,
a web server has been built to predict protein-ligand binding sites
based on automatically extracted templates. However, a drawback of such templates is that the web server was prone to resulting in many
false positive matches. In this study, we present a sequence-order constraint to reduce the false positive matches of using automatically
extracted templates to predict protein-ligand binding sites. The binding site predictor comprises i) an automatically constructed template library and ii) a local structure alignment algorithm for
querying the library. The sequence-order constraint is employed to
identify the inconsistency between the local regions of the query protein and the templates. Experimental results reveal that the sequence-order constraint can largely reduce the false positive matches and is effective for template-based binding site prediction.
Abstract: School leadership is commonly considered to have a
significant influence on school effectiveness and improvement.
Effective school leaders are expected to successfully introduce and
support change and innovation at the school unit. Despite an
abundance of studies on educational leadership, very few studies
have provided evidence on the link between leadership models, and
specific educational and school outcomes. This is true of a popular
contemporary approach to leadership, namely, distributed leadership.
The paper provides an overview of research findings on the effect of
distributed leadership on educational outcomes. The theoretical basis
for this approach to leadership is presented, with reference to
methodological and research limitations. The paper discusses
research findings and draws their implications for educational
research on school leadership.
Abstract: The solvated electron is self-trapped (polaron) owing
to strong interaction with the quantum polarization field. If the
electron and quantum field are strongly coupled then the collective
localized state of the field and quasi-particle is formed. In such a
formation the electron motion is rather intricate. On the one hand the
electron oscillated within a rather deep polarization potential well
and undergoes the optical transitions, and on the other, it moves
together with the center of inertia of the system and participates in
the thermal random walk. The problem is to separate these motions
correctly, rigorously taking into account the conservation laws. This
can be conveniently done using Bogolyubov-Tyablikov method of
canonical transformation to the collective coordinates. This
transformation removes the translational degeneracy and allows one
to develop the successive approximation algorithm for the energy and
wave function while simultaneously fulfilling the law of conservation
of total momentum of the system. The resulting equations determine
the electron transitions and depend explicitly on the translational
velocity of the quasi-particle as whole. The frequency of optical
transition is calculated for the solvated electron in ammonia, and an
estimate is made for the thermal-induced spectral bandwidth.
Abstract: Pattern recognition is the research area of Artificial Intelligence that studies the operation and design of systems that recognize patterns in the data. Important application areas are image analysis, character recognition, fingerprint classification, speech analysis, DNA sequence identification, man and machine diagnostics, person identification and industrial inspection. The interest in improving the classification systems of data analysis is independent from the context of applications. In fact, in many studies it is often the case to have to recognize and to distinguish groups of various objects, which requires the need for valid instruments capable to perform this task. The objective of this article is to show several methodologies of Artificial Intelligence for data classification applied to biomedical patterns. In particular, this work deals with the realization of a Computer-Aided Detection system (CADe) that is able to assist the radiologist in identifying types of mammary tumor lesions. As an additional biomedical application of the classification systems, we present a study conducted on blood samples which shows how these methods may help to distinguish between carriers of Thalassemia (or Mediterranean Anaemia) and healthy subjects.