Abstract: Absorptive capacity generally facilitates the adoption
of innovation. How does this relationship change when economic
return is not the sole driver of innovation uptake? We investigate
whether absorptive capacity facilitates the adoption of green
innovation based on a survey of 79 construction companies in
Scotland. Based on the results of multiple regression analyses, we
confirm that existing knowledge utilisation (EKU), knowledge
building (KB) and external knowledge acquisition (EKA) are
significant predictors of green process GP), green administrative
(GA) and green technical innovation (GT), respectively. We discuss
the implications for theories of innovation adoption and knowledge
enhancement associated with environmentally-friendly practices.
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: Established objective and subjective preconditions for
entrepreneurship, forming the business organically related whole, are
the necessary condition of successful entrepreneurial activities.
Objective preconditions for entrepreneurship are developed by
market economy that should stimulate entrepreneurship by allowing
the use of economic opportunities for all those who want to do
business in respective field while providing guarantees to all owners
and creating a stable business environment for entrepreneurs.
Subjective preconditions of entrepreneurship are formed primarily by
personal characteristics of the entrepreneur. These are his properties,
abilities, skills, physiological and psychological preconditions which
may be inherited, inborn or sequentially developed and obtained
during his life on the basis of education and influences of
surrounding environment. The paper is dealing with issues of
objective and subjective preconditions for entrepreneurship and
provides their analysis in view of the current situation in Slovakia. It
presents risks of the business environment in Slovakia that the Slovak
managers considered the most significant in 2014 and defines the
dominant attributes of the entrepreneur in the current business
environment in Slovakia.
Abstract: Living today in turbulent business environment forces
companies to distinguish from each other, securing sustainable
competitive growth and competitive advantage. The best possible
solution is to invest (effort and financial resources) within
companies’ different practices of human resource management
(HRM), more specifically in employees’ knowledge, skills and
abilities. Applying this approach companies will create enviable level
of human capital securing its economic growth. Employees become
human capital for their employers at the moment when they
contribute with their own knowledge and abilities in creating material
and non-material value of the company. The main aim of this
research is to explore the relations between human capital
investments and business excellence of Croatian companies.
Furthermore, the differences in the level of human capital
investments with regard to several companies’ characteristics (e.g.
size of the company, ownership and type of the industry) are
investigated.
Abstract: It has become an increasing evident that large
development influences the climate. There are concerns that rising
temperature over developed areas could have negative impact and
increase living discomfort within city boundaries. Temperature trends
in Ibadan city have received little attention, yet the area has
experienced heavy urban expansion between 1972 and 2014. This
research aims at examining the impact of landuse change on surface
temperature knowing that the built-up environment absorb and store
solar energy, resulting into the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. The
Landsat imagery was used to examine the landuse change for a
period of 42 years (1972-2014). Land Surface Temperature (LST)
was obtained by converting the thermal band to a surface temperature
map and zonal statistic analyses was used to examine the relationship
between landuse and temperature emission. The results showed that
the settlement area increased to a large extent while the area covered
by vegetation reduced during the study period. The spatial and
temporal trends of surface temperature are related to the gradual
change in urban landuse/landcover and the settlement area has the
highest emission. This research provides useful insight into the
temporal behavior of the Ibadan city.
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 ultrasound imaging is very popular to diagnosis
the disease because of its non-invasive nature. The ultrasound
imaging slowly produces low quality images due to the presence of
spackle noise and wave interferences. There are several algorithms to
be proposed for the segmentation of ultrasound carotid artery images
but it requires a certain limit of user interaction. The pixel in an
image is highly correlated so the spatial information of surrounding
pixels may be considered in the process of image segmentation which
improves the results further. When data is highly correlated, one pixel
may belong to more than one cluster with different degree of
membership. There is an important step to computerize the evaluation
of arterial disease severity using segmentation of carotid artery lumen
in 2D and 3D ultrasonography and in finding vulnerable
atherosclerotic plaques susceptible to rupture which can cause stroke.
Abstract: Formal verification is proposed to ensure the
correctness of the design and make functional verification more
efficient. As cache plays a vital role in the design of System on Chip
(SoC), and cache with Memory Management Unit (MMU) and cache
memory unit makes the state space too large for simulation to verify,
then a formal verification is presented for such system design. In the
paper, a formal model checking verification flow is suggested and a
new cache memory model which is called “exhaustive search model”
is proposed. Instead of using large size ram to denote the whole cache
memory, exhaustive search model employs just two cache blocks. For
cache system contains data cache (Dcache) and instruction cache
(Icache), Dcache memory model and Icache memory model are
established separately using the same mechanism. At last, the novel
model is employed to the verification of a cache which is module of a
custom-built SoC system that has been applied in practical, and the
result shows that the cache system is verified correctly using the
exhaustive search model, and it makes the verification much more
manageable and flexible.
Abstract: It is likely that robots will cross the boundaries of
industry into households over the next decades. With demographic
challenges worldwide, the future ageing populations will require the
introduction of assistive technologies capable of providing, care,
human dignity and quality of life through the aging process. Robotics
technology has a high potential for being used in the areas of social
and healthcare by promoting a wide range of activities such as
entertainment, companionship, supervision or cognitive and physical
assistance. However such close Human Robotics Interaction (HRI)
encompass a rich set of ethical scenarios that need to be addressed
before Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) reach the global markets.
Such interactions with robots may seem a worthy goal for many
technical/financial reasons but inevitably require close attention to
the ethical dimensions of such interactions. This article investigates
the current HRI benchmark of social success. It revises it according
to the ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and justice
aligned with social care ethos. An extension of such benchmark is
proposed based on an empirical study of HRIs conducted with elderly
groups.
Abstract: The research studies the behaviors based on
sufficiency economy philosophy at individual and community
levelsas well as the satisfaction of the urban community leaders by
collecting data with purposive sampling technique. For in-depth
interviews with 26 urban community leaders, the result shows that
the urban community leaders have good knowledge and
understanding about sufficiency economy philosophy. Especially in
terms of money spending, they must consider the need for living and
be economical. The activities in the community or society should not
take advantage of the others as well as colleagues. At present, most of
the urban community leaders live in sufficient way. They often spend
time with public service, but many families are dealing with debt.
Many communities have some political conflict and high family
allowances because of living in the urban communities with rapid
social and economic changes. However, there are many communities
that leaders have applied their wisdom in development for their
people by gathering and grouping the professionals to form activities
such as making chilli sauce, textile organization, making artificial
flowers to worship the sanctity. The most prominent group is the foot
massage business in Wat Pracha Rabue Tham. This professional
group is supported continuously by the government. One of the
factors in terms of satisfaction used for evaluating community leaders
is the customary administration in brotherly, interdependent way
rather than using the absolute power or controlling power, but using
the roles of leader to perform the activities with their people intently,
determinedly and having public mind for people.
Abstract: Total hip replacement had been one of the most
successful operations in hip arthritis surgery. The purpose of this
research had been to develop a dynamic hip contact of Thai femoral
bone to analyze the stress distribution on the implant and the strain
distribution on the bone model under daily activities and compared
with the static load simulation. The results showed the different of
maximum von Mises stress 0.14 percent under walking and 0.03
percent under climbing stair condition and the different of equivalent
total strain 0.52 percent under walking and 0.05 percent under
climbing stair condition. The muscular forces should be evaluated
with dynamic condition to reduce the maximum von Mises stress and
equivalent total strain.
Abstract: A numerical study of natural convection heat transfer
in water filled cavity has been examined in 3-Dfor single phase liquid
cooling system by using an array of parallel plate fins mounted to one
wall of a cavity. The heat generated by a heat source represents a
computer CPU with dimensions of 37.5∗37.5mm mounted on
substrate. A cold plate is used as a heat sink installed on the opposite
vertical end of the enclosure. The air flow inside the computer case is
created by an exhaust fan. A turbulent air flow is assumed and k-ε
model is applied. The fins are installed on the substrate to enhance
the heat transfer. The applied power energy range used is between 15
- 40W. In order to determine the thermal behaviour of the cooling
system, the effect of the heat input and the number of the parallel
plate fins are investigated. The results illustrate that as the fin number
increases the maximum heat source temperature decreases. However,
when the fin number increases to critical value the temperature start
to increase due to the fins are too closely spaced and that cause the
obstruction of water flow. The introduction of parallel plate fins
reduces the maximum heat source temperature by 10% compared to
the case without fins. The cooling system maintains the maximum
chip temperature at 64.68°C when the heat input was at 40W that is
much lower than the recommended computer chips limit temperature
of no more than 85°C and hence the performance of the CPU is
enhanced.
Abstract: Human motion capture has become one of the major
area of interest in the field of computer vision. Some of the major
application areas that have been rapidly evolving include the
advanced human interfaces, virtual reality and security/surveillance
systems. This study provides a brief overview of the techniques and
applications used for the markerless human motion capture, which
deals with analyzing the human motion in the form of mathematical
formulations. The major contribution of this research is that it
classifies the computer vision based techniques of human motion
capture based on the taxonomy, and then breaks its down into four
systematically different categories of tracking, initialization, pose
estimation and recognition. The detailed descriptions and the
relationships descriptions are given for the techniques of tracking and
pose estimation. The subcategories of each process are further
described. Various hypotheses have been used by the researchers in
this domain are surveyed and the evolution of these techniques have
been explained. It has been concluded in the survey that most
researchers have focused on using the mathematical body models for
the markerless motion capture.
Abstract: The present article seeks to carry out along the lines of
interpretation of the recent Portuguese Constitutional Court case law
on the possibility of an employee to observe a worship day imposed
by religious beliefs. In this approach to the question, considerations
on the subject of the relationship between religious freedom and
labour relations will inevitably arise. We intend to draw conclusions
of practical application from the court decisions on the matter of
freedom of religion.
Abstract: Collection of storm water runoff and forcing it into the
groundwater is the need of the hour to sustain the ground water table.
However, the runoff entraps various types of sediments and other
floating objects whose removal are essential to avoid pollution of
ground water and blocking of pores of aquifer. However, it requires
regular cleaning and maintenance due to problem of clogging. To
evaluate the performance of filter system consisting of coarse sand
(CS), gravel (G) and pebble (P) layers, a laboratory experiment was
conducted in a rectangular column. The effect of variable thickness
of CS, G and P layers of the filtration unit of the recharge shaft on the
recharge rate and the sediment concentration of effluent water were
evaluated.
Medium sand (MS) of three particle sizes, viz. 0.150–0.300 mm
(T1), 0.300–0.425 mm (T2) and 0.425–0.600 mm of thickness 25 cm,
30 cm and 35 cm respectively in the top layer of the filter system and
having seven influent sediment concentrations of 250–3,000 mg/l
were used for experimental study. The performance was evaluated in
terms of recharge rates and clogging time. The results indicated that
100 % suspended solids were entrapped in the upper 10 cm layer of
MS, the recharge rates declined sharply for influent concentrations of
more than 1,000 mg/l. All treatments with higher thickness of MS
media indicated recharge rate slightly more than that of all treatment
with lower thickness of MS media respectively. The performance of
storm water infiltration systems was highly dependent on the
formation of a clogging layer at the filter. An empirical relationship
has been derived between recharge rates, inflow sediment load, size
of MS and thickness of MS with using MLR.
Abstract: This paper presents the simulation results of the
effects of sampling frequency on the total harmonic distortion (THD)
of three-phase inverters using the space vector pulse width
modulation (SVPWM) and space vector control (SVC) algorithms.
The relationship between the variables was studied using curve fitting
techniques, and it has been shown that, for 50 Hz inverters, there is
an exponential relation between the sampling frequency and THD up
to around 8500 Hz, beyond which the performance of the model
becomes irregular, and there is an negative exponential relation
between the sampling frequency and the marginal improvement to
the THD. It has also been found that the performance of SVPWM is
better than that of SVC with the same sampling frequency in most
frequency range, including the range where the performance of the
former is irregular.
Abstract: Macro invertebrates have been used to monitor
organic pollution in rivers and streams. Several biotic indices based
on macro invertebrates have been developed over the years including
the Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP). A new biotic
index, the Gammarus:Asellus ratio has been recently proposed as an
index of organic pollution. This study tested the validity of the
Gammarus:Asellus ratio as an index of organic pollution, by
examining the relationship between the Gammarus:Asellus ratio and
physical chemical parameters, and other biotic indices such as
BMWP and, Average Score Per Taxon (ASPT) from lakes and
streams at Markeaton Park, Allestree Park and Kedleston Hall,
Derbyshire. Macro invertebrates were sampled using the standard
five minute kick sampling techniques physical and chemical
environmental variables were obtained based on standard sampling
techniques. Eighteen sites were sampled, six sites from Markeaton
Park (three sites across the stream and three sites across the lake). Six
sites each were also sampled from Allestree Park and Kedleston Hall
lakes. The Gammarus:Asellus ratio showed an opposite significant
positive correlations with parameters indicative of organic pollution
such as the level of nitrates, phosphates, and calcium and also
revealed a negatively significant correlations with other biotic indices
(BMWP/ASPT). The BMWP score correlated positively significantly
with some water quality parameters such as dissolved oxygen and
flow rate, but revealed no correlations with other chemical
environmental variables. The BMWP score was significantly higher
in the stream than the lake in Markeaton Park, also The ASPT scores
appear to be significantly higher in the upper Lakes than the middle
and lower lakes. This study has further strengthened the use of
BMWP/ASPT score as an index of organic pollution. But additional
application is required to validate the use of Gammarus:Asellus as a
rapid bio monitoring tool.
Abstract: Arising problems of countries’ public finances, social
and demographic changes motivate scientific and policy debates on
public spending size, structure and efficiency in order to meet the
changing needs of society and business. The concept of sustainable
development poses new challenges for scientists and policy-makers
in the field of public finance. This paper focuses on the investigation
of the relationship between government expenditure and country’s
economic development in the context of sustainable development.
Empirical analysis focuses on the data of the European Union (except
Croatia and Luxemburg) countries. The study covers 2003 – 2012
years, using annual cross-sectional data. Summarizing the research
results, it can be stated that governments should pay more attention to
the needs that ensure sustainable development in the long-run when
formulating public expenditure policy, particularly in the field of
environment protection.
Abstract: The main aim of this article is to present a balance of the decade of Polish air transport market in the European Union having taking into account selected entities of the aviation market. This article analyzes the functioning of the Polish air transport market after the Polish accession to the European Union. During the study two main areas were pointed: shipping activity and activity of the airports. The most important benefits of integration and the benefits of introducing of the open sky policy were indicated. The last part of the article presents the perspectives of development of air traffic.
Abstract: This review emphasizes the effectiveness of men’s
participation in preventing domestic violence, and whether nonviolent
(NV) boys’ and men’s perceptions of intimate partner
violence (IPV) prevention programs affect their involvement. The
main goals of this assessment were to investigate (1) how NV men
engaged in anti-violence prevention programs that empower women,
(2) what were the possible perceptions of NV men involved in
prevention programs (3) how to identify effective approaches and
strategies that encouraged NV men to become involved in prevention
programs. This critical review also included the overview of
prevention programs such as: The Mentors in Violence Prevention
Programs (MVP), The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC), and
Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership through
Alliances (DELTA). The review suggested that (1) the expanding
prevention programs need to reach more macro settings such as work
place, faith-based and other community based organizations, and (2)
territory prevention programs should expand through addressing the
long-term effects of violence.