Abstract: Literature review revealed the importance of the
adoption of marketing Relationship for loyalty and retaining
profitable customer (Customer Relationship Management). LPQ
satisfaction will reinforce the loyalty and customer brand
attachment. Customer will communicate the operator to others. The
focus of this study is to examine the relationship between the
LPPQ and the WOM recommendations through: customer
satisfaction, loyalty and attachment. The results show that LPQ
affect positively the satisfaction, negatively the loyalty. LPQ has an
indirectly effect on WOM recommendations but through the
satisfaction and attachment. The mediating effect of satisfaction in
the relationship between LPQ and Loyalty is rejected. This finding
can be explained by the nature of mobile sector in Tunisia.
Abstract: The study entitled “The Construction of Interactive
Computer Multimedia Instruction on Basic Japanese Vocabulary"
was aimed: 1) To construct the interactive computer multimedia
instruction on Basic Japanese Vocabulary, 2) To find out
multimedia-s quality, 3) To examine the student-s satisfaction and 4)
To study the learning achievement in Basic Japanese vocabulary. The
sampling group used in this study was composed of 40 1st year
student in Educational Communications and Technology Department,
Faculty of Industrial Education and Technology, King Mongkut-s
University of Technology Thonburi, in the academic year 2553 B.E.
(2010). According to research results, we found that 1). The quality
assessment by 3 mass media experts was at 4.72 on average or at high
level. 2) In terms of contents, the evaluation by 3 experts was at 4.81
on average or at high level. 3) In terms of achievement, there was a
statistical significance between before and after the treatment at the
.05 level. 4) The satisfaction of students towards the interactive
computer multimedia Instruction on “Basic Japanese Vocabulary"
was 4.35 on average, or at high level.
Abstract: This study was conducted to examine the effects of ketum extract on development of Chrysomya rufifacies and to analyze the presence of mitragynine in the larvae samples. 110 newly emerged first instar larvae of C. rufifacies were introduced on ketum extract-mixed cow liver at doses of 0, 20, 40 and 60g. Blowfly development rate was determined with 12 hour intervals and
mitragynine in larvae was extracted and quantitated. C. rufifacies in control group took about 192 hours to complete their development from first instar larvae to adult blowfly; meanwhile blowfly form from the highest dose of ketum was 264 hours. Mitragynine was detected in all groups of treatment, except for control. In conclusion, the presence of mitragynine in C. rufifacies is affected in delaying development rates of the blowfly for up to 62 hours or 3 days. Chemical analysis of mitragynine from larvae samples showed that this alkaloid present in all specimens analyzed.
Abstract: In a representative democracy political parties
promote vital competition on different policy issues and play
essential roles by offering ideological alternatives. They also give
channels for citizens- participation in government decision-making
processes and they are significant conduits and interpreters of
information about government. This paper attempts to examine how
opposition political parties and rebel fronts emerged in Ethiopia, and
examines their present conditions. In this paper, selected case studies
of political parties and rebel fronts are included to highlight the status
and the role of opposition groups in the country in the three
successive administrations: Haile Selassie (1930-1974), Derg (1974-
1991), and EPRDF (1991-Present).
Abstract: Internet addiction has become a critical problem on
adolescents in Taiwan, and its negative effects on various dimensions
of adolescent development caught the attention of educational and
psychological experts. This study examined the correlation between
cognitive (locus of control) and emotion (emotion venting strategies)
factors on internet addiction of adolescents in Taiwan. Using the
Compulsive Internet Use (CIU) and the Emotion Venting Strategy
scales, a survey was conducted and 215 effective samples (students
ranging from12 to14 years old) returned. Quantitative analysis
methods such as descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson
correlations and multiple regression were adopted. The results were as
follows: 1. Severity of Internet addiction has significant gender
differences; boys were at a higher risk than girls in becoming addicted
to the Internet. 2. Emotion venting, locus of control and internet
addiction have been shown to be positive correlated with one another.
3. Setting the locus of control as the control variable, emotion venting
strategy has positive and significant contribution to internet addiction.
The results of this study suggest that coaching deconstructive emotion
strategies and cognitive believes are encouraged to integrate with
actual field work.
Abstract: In order to enhance the aircraft survivability, the
infrared signatures emitted by hot engine parts should be determined
exactly. For its reduction it is necessary for the rear fuselage
temperature to be decreased. In this study, numerical modeling of flow
fields and heat transfer characteristics of an aircraft nozzle is
performed and its temperature distribution along each component wall
is predicted. The radiation shield is expected to reduce the skin
temperature of rear fuselage. The effect of material characteristic of
radiation shield on the heat transfer is also investigated. Through this
numerical analysis, design parameters related to the susceptibility of
aircraft are examined.
Abstract: This work presents a comparison between the Annual
Energy Output (AEO) of two commercial vertical-axis wind turbines
(VAWTs) for a low-wind urban site: both a drag-driven and a liftdriven
concepts are examined in order to be installed on top of the
new Via dei Giustinelli building, Trieste (Italy). The power-curves,
taken from the product specification sheets, have been matched to the
wind characteristics of the selected installation site. The influence of
rotor swept area and rated power on the performance of the two
proposed wind turbines have been examined in detail, achieving a
correlation between rotor swept area, electrical generator size and
wind distribution, to be used as a guideline for the calculation of the
AEO.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine and identify the
type of Iranian financial market in terms of being symmetrical or
asymmetrical and to measure relationship between type of market
and the market's indices. In this study, daily information on the
market-s Share Price Index, Industrial Index and Top Fifty Most
Active Companies during the years 1999-2010 has been used. In
addition, to determine type of the financial market, rate of return on
Security is taken into account. In this research, by using logistic
regression analysis methods, relationship of the market type with the
above mentioned indices have been examined. The results showed
that the type of the financial market has a positive significant
association with market share price index and Industrial Index. Index
of Top Fifty Most Active Companies is significantly associated with
type of financial market, however this relationship is inverse.
Abstract: The growing health hazardous impact of arsenic (As)
contamination in environment is the impetus of the present
investigation. Application of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) for the
removal of toxic and heavy metals from water has been reported.
This study was performed in order to isolate and characterize the Asresistant
LAB from mud and sludge samples for using as efficient As
uptaking probiotic. Isolation of As-resistant LAB colonies was
performed by spread plate technique using bromocresol purple
impregnated-MRS (BP-MRS) agar media provided with As @ 50
μg/ml. Isolated LAB were employed for probiotic characterization
process, acid and bile tolerance, lactic acid production, antibacterial
activity and antibiotic tolerance assays. After As-resistant and
removal characterizations, the LAB were identified using 16S rDNA
sequencing. A total of 103 isolates were identified as As-resistant
strains of LAB. The survival of 6 strains (As99-1, As100-2, As101-3,
As102-4, As105-7, and As112-9) was found after passing through the
sequential probiotic characterizations. Resistant pattern pronounced
hollow zones at As concentration >2000 μg/ml in As99-1, As100-2,
and As101-3 LAB strains, whereas it was found at ~1000 μg/ml in
rest 3 strains. Among 6 strains, the As uptake efficiency of As102-4
(0.006 μg/h/mg wet weight of cell) was higher (17 – 209%)
compared to remaining LAB. 16S rDNA sequencing data of 3 (As99-
1, As100-2, and As101-3) and 3 (As102-4, As105-7, and As112-9)
LAB strains clearly showed 97 to 99% (340 bp) homology to
Pediococcus dextrinicus and Pediococcus acidilactici, respectively.
Though, there was no correlation between the metal resistant and
removal efficiency of LAB examined but identified elevated As
removing LAB would probably be a potential As uptaking probiotic
agent. Since present experiment concerned with only As removal
from pure water, As removal and removal mechanism in natural
condition of intestinal milieu should be assessed in future studies.
Abstract: Green Roofs offers numerous advantages, including lowering ambient temperature, which is of increasing interest due to global warming concerns. However, there are technical problems pertaining to waterproofing to be resolved. Currently, the only recognized green roof waterproofing test is the German standard FLL. This paper examines the potential of replicating the test in tropical climate and reducing the test duration by using pre-grown plants. A three year old sample and a new setup were used for this experimental study. The new setup was prepared with close reference to the FLL standards and was compared against the three year old sample. Results showed that the waterproofing membrane was damaged by plant roots in both setups. Joints integrity was also challenged.
Abstract: Occurrences of spurious crests on the troughs of large,
relatively steep second-order Stokes waves are anomalous and not an
inherent characteristic of real waves. Here, the effects of such
occurrences on the statistics described by the standard second-order
stochastic model are examined theoretically and by way of
simulations. Theoretical results and simulations indicate that when
spurious occurrences are sufficiently large, the standard model leads
to physically unrealistic surface features and inaccuracies in the
statistics of various surface features, in particular, the troughs and
thus zero-crossing heights of large waves. Whereas inaccuracies can
be fairly noticeable for long-crested waves in both deep and
shallower depths, they tend to become relatively insignificant in
directional waves.
Abstract: In this paper, a new model order reduction
phenomenon is introduced at the design stage of linear phase digital
IIR filter. The complexity of a system can be reduced by adopting the
model order reduction method in their design. In this paper a mixed
method of model order reduction is proposed for linear IIR filter. The
proposed method employs the advantages of factor division technique
to derive the reduced order denominator polynomial and the reduced
order numerator is obtained based on the resultant denominator
polynomial. The order reduction technique is used to reduce the delay
units at the design stage of IIR filter. The validity of the proposed
method is illustrated with design example in frequency domain and
stability is also examined with help of nyquist plot.
Abstract: Crawling movement as a motive mode seen in nature
of some animals such as snakes possesses a specific syntactic and
dynamic analysis. Serpentine robot designed by inspiration from
nature and snake-s crawling motion, is regarded as a crawling robot.
In this paper, a serpentine robot with spiral motion model will be
analyzed. The purpose of this analysis is to calculate the vertical and
tangential forces along snake-s body and to determine the parameters
affecting on these forces. Two types of serpentine robots have been
designed in order to examine the achieved relations explained below.
Abstract: The indoor airflow with a mixed natural/forced convection
was numerically calculated using the laminar and turbulent
approach. The Boussinesq approximation was considered for a simplification
of the mathematical model and calculations. The results
obtained, such as mean velocity fields, were successfully compared
with experimental PIV flow visualizations. The effect of the distance
between the cooled wall and the heat exchanger on the temperature
and velocity distributions was calculated. In a room with a simple
shape, the computational code OpenFOAM demonstrated an ability to
numerically predict flow patterns. Furthermore, numerical techniques,
boundary type conditions and the computational grid quality were
examined. Calculations using the turbulence model k-omega had a
significant effect on the results influencing temperature and velocity
distributions.
Abstract: After the Terengganu state government decided to give a boost in teaching and learning through the allocation of free ebooks to all Primary five and six students; it was time to examine the presence of e-books in the classrooms. A survey was conducted on 101 students to determine how they felt about using the e-book and their experiences. It was discovered that a majority of these students liked using the e-book. However, although they had little problems using the e-book and the e-book helped to lighten the schoolbags, these new-age textbooks were not fully utilized. It is implied that perhaps the school administrators, teachers and students may not be able to overcome the unfamiliar characteristics of the e-book and its limitations.
Abstract: This study proposes a new recommender system based on the collaborative folksonomy. The purpose of the proposed system is to recommend Internet resources (such as books, articles, documents, pictures, audio and video) to users. The proposed method includes four steps: creating the user profile based on the tags, grouping the similar users into clusters using an agglomerative hierarchical clustering, finding similar resources based on the user-s past collections by using content-based filtering, and recommending similar items to the target user. This study examines the system-s performance for the dataset collected from “del.icio.us," which is a famous social bookmarking website. Experimental results show that the proposed tag-based collaborative and content-based filtering hybridized recommender system is promising and effectiveness in the folksonomy-based bookmarking website.
Abstract: An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of the level of performance stabilization on the human adaptability to perceptual-motor perturbation in a complex coincident timing task. Three levels of performance stabilization were established operationally: pre-stabilization, stabilization, and super-stabilization groups. Each group practiced the task until reached its level of stabilization in a constant sequence of movements and under a constant time constraint before exposure to perturbation. The results clearly showed that performance stabilization is a pre-condition for adaptation. Moreover, variability before reaching stabilization is harmful to adaptation and persistent variability after stabilization is beneficial. Moreover, the behavior of variability is specific to each measure.
Abstract: This study examines the use of the persuasive strategy
of deixis and personalization in advertising slogans. This rhetorical/
stylistic and linguistic strategy has been found to be widely used in
advertising slogans for over a century. A total of five hundred
advertising slogans of multinational companies in both product and
service sectors were obtained. The analysis reveals the 3 main
components of this strategy as being deictic words, absolute
uniqueness and personal pronouns. The percentage and mean of the
use of the 3 components are tabulated. The findings show that
advertisers have used this persuasive strategy in creative ways to
persuade consumers to buy their products and services.
Abstract: The frontal area in the brain is known to be involved in
behavioral judgement. Because a Kanji character can be discriminated
visually and linguistically from other characters, in Kanji character
discrimination, we hypothesized that frontal event-related potential
(ERP) waveforms reflect two discrimination processes in separate
time periods: one based on visual analysis and the other based
on lexcical access. To examine this hypothesis, we recorded ERPs
while performing a Kanji lexical decision task. In this task, either a
known Kanji character, an unknown Kanji character or a symbol was
presented and the subject had to report if the presented character was
a known Kanji character for the subject or not. The same response
was required for unknown Kanji trials and symbol trials. As a preprocessing
of signals, we examined the performance of a method
using independent component analysis for artifact rejection and found
it was effective. Therefore we used it. In the ERP results, there
were two time periods in which the frontal ERP wavefoms were
significantly different betweeen the unknown Kanji trials and the
symbol trials: around 170ms and around 300ms after stimulus onset.
This result supported our hypothesis. In addition, the result suggests
that Kanji character lexical access may be fully completed by around
260ms after stimulus onset.
Abstract: High level and high velocity flood flows are
potentially harmful to bridge piers as evidenced in many toppled
piers, and among them the single-column piers were considered as
the most vulnerable. The flood flow characteristic parameters
including drag coefficient, scouring and vortex shedding are built into
a pier-flood interaction model to investigate structural safety against
flood hazards considering the effects of local scouring, hydrodynamic
forces, and vortex induced resonance vibrations. By extracting the
pier-flood simulation results embedded in a neural networks code,
two cases of pier toppling occurred in typhoon days were reexamined:
(1) a bridge overcome by flash flood near a mountain side;
(2) a bridge washed off in flood across a wide channel near the
estuary. The modeling procedures and simulations are capable of
identifying the probable causes for the tumbled bridge piers during
heavy floods, which include the excessive pier bending moments and
resonance in structural vibrations.