Abstract: In this paper, a watermarking algorithm that uses the wavelet transform with Multiple Description Coding (MDC) and Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) concepts is introduced. Also, the paper investigates the role of Contourlet Transform (CT) versus Wavelet Transform (WT) in providing robust image watermarking. Two measures are utilized in the comparison between the waveletbased and the contourlet-based methods; Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC). Experimental results reveal that the introduced algorithm is robust against different attacks and has good results compared to the contourlet-based algorithm.
Abstract: In Peer-to-Peer service networks, where peers offer any kind of publicly available services or applications, intuitive navigation through all services in the network becomes more difficult as the number of services increases. In this article, a concept is discussed that enables users to intuitively browse and use large scale P2P service networks. The concept extends the idea of creating virtual 3D-environments solely based on Peer-to-Peer technologies. Aside from browsing, users shall have the possibility to emphasize services of interest using their own semantic criteria. The appearance of the virtual world shall intuitively reflect network properties that may be of interest for the user. Additionally, the concept comprises options for load- and traffic-balancing. In this article, the requirements concerning the underlying infrastructure and the graphical user interface are defined. First impressions of the appearance of future systems are presented and the next steps towards a prototypical implementation are discussed.
Abstract: Traditionally, terror groups have been formed by ideologically aligned actors who perceive a lack of options for achieving political or social change. However, terrorist attacks have been increasingly carried out by small groups of actors or lone individuals who may be only ideologically affiliated with larger, formal terrorist organizations. The formation of these groups represents the inverse of traditional organizational growth, whereby structural de-evolution within issue-based organizations leads to the formation of small, independent terror cells. Ideological franchising – the bypassing of formal affiliation to the “parent" organization – represents the de-evolution of traditional concepts of organizational structure in favor of an organic, independent, and focused unit. Traditional definitions of dark networks that are issue-based include focus on an identified goal, commitment to achieving this goal through unrestrained actions, and selection of symbolic targets. The next step in the de-evolution of small dark networks is the miniorganization, consisting of only a handful of actors working toward a common, violent goal. Information-sharing through social media platforms, coupled with civil liberties of democratic nations, provide the communication systems, access to information, and freedom of movement necessary for small dark networks to flourish without the aid of a parent organization. As attacks such as the 7/7 bombings demonstrate the effectiveness of small dark networks, terrorist actors will feel increasingly comfortable aligning with an ideology only, without formally organizing. The natural result of this de-evolving organization is the single actor event, where an individual seems to subscribe to a larger organization-s violent ideology with little or no formal ties.
Abstract: Research on damage of gears and gear pairs using
vibration signals remains very attractive, because vibration signals
from a gear pair are complex in nature and not easy to interpret.
Predicting gear pair defects by analyzing changes in vibration signal
of gears pairs in operation is a very reliable method. Therefore, a
suitable vibration signal processing technique is necessary to extract
defect information generally obscured by the noise from dynamic
factors of other gear pairs.This article presents the value of cepstrum
analysis in vehicle gearbox fault diagnosis. Cepstrum represents the
overall power content of a whole family of harmonics and sidebands
when more than one family of sidebands is present at the same time.
The concept for the measurement and analysis involved in using the
technique are briefly outlined. Cepstrum analysis is used for detection
of an artificial pitting defect in a vehicle gearbox loaded with
different speeds and torques. The test stand is equipped with three
dynamometers; the input dynamometer serves asthe internal
combustion engine, the output dynamometers introduce the load on
the flanges of the output joint shafts. The pitting defect is
manufactured on the tooth side of a gear of the fifth speed on the
secondary shaft. Also, a method for fault diagnosis of gear faults is
presented based on order Cepstrum. The procedure is illustrated with
the experimental vibration data of the vehicle gearbox. The results
show the effectiveness of Cepstrum analysis in detection and
diagnosis of the gear condition.
Abstract: Self-directed learning (SDL) was developed initially
for adult learning. Guglielmino constructed a scale to measure SDL.
Recent researchers have applied this concept to children. Although
there are sufficient theoretical evidences to present the possibility of
applying this concept to children, empirical evidences were not
provided. This study aimed to examine the quality of SDL and
construct a scale to measure SDL among young children. A modified
scale of Guglielmino-s scale was constructed and piloted with 183
subjects of age 9. Findings suggest that the qualities of SDL in young
ages are apparently congruent with that of adults.
Abstract: Distance education program is a dimension of contemporary and new education technologies. Concepts and applications in this field are the results of a series of educational demands and developments in various communication and education technologies. Distance education applications have some conceptual bases. These are creating new education opportunities, realizing work-education unity, getting democratic in education, lifelong education, tendency to individual matters, effective use of institutions, integration of technology and education, tendency to individual and social needs, taking three dimensional integration as the main principle (publishing, printed materials and face to face education), reaching maximum mass, individual and mass education integrity and education demand and financial matters balance. Economics, Business Administration and Open Education faculties, which have been giving education within Anadolu University since 1982 in Turkey, are carrying on education with nearly 1.000.000 students. The aim of this study is to determine organizational commitment levels of students who have been studying at Anadolu University Economics, Business Administration and Open Education faculties in the scope of affective, continuance and nominative commitment in Allen&Meyer model. In the study, organizational commitment of the Economics, Business Administration and Open Education faculty students, who are receiving education by means of distance education, to their faculties is dealt after introducing Anadolu University Distance Education system which gives higher education via distance education method in Turkey. In order to increase the success level of faculties it is required for students to have high level of organizational commitment to their faculties. A questionnaire has been applied by using “Organizational Commitment Scale", developed by Meyer&Allen to determine organizational commitments of Economics, Business Administration and Open Education students. Organizational commitment is dealt with as affective, continuance and nominative commitment. The questionnaire was applied face to face to randomly chosen 500 students living in Eskişehir and the data was downloaded to the computer by using SPSS program and the results were analyzed in terms of demographic features (gender, age, marital status, years of study, work and income level) of students by using frequency test, ttest and ANOVA test. As a result of these analyses, when the comments of Open Education Faculty students on levels of affective, continuance and nominative commitment to their faculties were examined, it has been revealed that continuance commitment level has the highest rate. Among the female participants; continuance commitment is high in the age range of 30-40, for normative commitment it is 17-22. However no dominant age range was defined for affective commitment. Regarding the marital status; continuance commitment average is higher among married participants; but nominative affective commitment average is higher among single participants. As to the years of study, affective and continuance commitment is higher among senior students while normative commitment is higher among junior students. Moreover; in terms of continuance, affective and normative commitment, those who do not work and have low income have higher level of all there commitment types than those who work and have relatively high income.
Abstract: Since the conception of JML, many tools, applications and implementations have been done. In this context, the users or developers who want to use JML seem surounded by many of these tools, applications and so on. Looking for a common infrastructure and an independent language to provide a bridge between these tools and JML, we developed an approach to embedded contracts in XML for Java: XJML. This approach offer us the ability to separate preconditions, posconditions and class invariants using JML and XML, so we made a front-end which can process Runtime Assertion Checking, Extended Static Checking and Full Static Program Verification. Besides, the capabilities for this front-end can be extended and easily implemented thanks to XML. We believe that XJML is an easy way to start the building of a Graphic User Interface delivering in this way a friendly and IDE independency to developers community wich want to work with JML.
Abstract: In this paper a hybrid technique of Genetic Algorithm
and Simulated Annealing (HGASA) is applied for Fractal Image
Compression (FIC). With the help of this hybrid evolutionary
algorithm effort is made to reduce the search complexity of matching
between range block and domain block. The concept of Simulated
Annealing (SA) is incorporated into Genetic Algorithm (GA) in order
to avoid pre-mature convergence of the strings. One of the image
compression techniques in the spatial domain is Fractal Image
Compression but the main drawback of FIC is that it involves more
computational time due to global search. In order to improve the
computational time along with acceptable quality of the decoded
image, HGASA technique has been proposed. Experimental results
show that the proposed HGASA is a better method than GA in terms
of PSNR for Fractal image Compression.
Abstract: The research investigates the “impact of VLE on mathematical concepts acquisition of the special education needs (SENs) students at KS4 secondary education sector" in England. The overall aim of the study is to establish possible areas of difficulties to approach for above or below knowledge standard requirements for KS4 students in the acquisition and validation of basic mathematical concepts. A teaching period, in which virtual learning environment (Fronter) was used to emphasise different mathematical perception and symbolic representation was carried out and task based survey conducted to 20 special education needs students [14 actually took part]. The result shows that students were able to process information and consider images, objects and numbers within the VLE at early stages of acquisition process. They were also able to carry out perceptual tasks but with limiting process of different quotient, thus they need teacher-s guidance to connect them to symbolic representations and sometimes coach them through. The pilot study further indicates that VLE curriculum approaches for students were minutely aligned with mathematics teaching which does not emphasise the integration of VLE into the existing curriculum and current teaching practice. There was also poor alignment of vision regarding the use of VLE in realisation of the objectives of teaching mathematics by the management. On the part of teacher training, not much was done to develop teacher-s skills in the technical and pedagogical aspects of VLE that is in-use at the school. The classroom observation confirmed teaching practice will find a reliance on VLE as an enhancer of mathematical skills, providing interaction and personalisation of learning to SEN students.
Abstract: Business and IT alignment has continued as a
top concern for business and IT executives for almost three
decades. Many researchers have conducted empirical studies on
the relationship between business-IT alignment and performance.
Yet, these approaches, lacking a social perspective, have had little
impact on sustaining performance and competitive advantage. In
addition to the limited alignment literature that explores
organisational learning that is represented in shared understanding,
communication, cognitive maps and experiences.
Hence, this paper proposes an integrated process that enables
social and intellectual dimensions through the concept of
organisational learning. In particular, the feedback and feedforward
process which provide a value creation across dynamic
multilevel of learning. This mechanism enables on-going
effectiveness through development of individuals, groups and
organisations, which improves the quality of business and IT
strategies and drives to performance.
Abstract: In the traditional concept of product life cycle management, the activities of design, manufacturing, and assembly are performed in a sequential way. The drawback is that the considerations in design may contradict the considerations in manufacturing and assembly. The different designs of components can lead to different assembly sequences. Therefore, in some cases, a good design may result in a high cost in the downstream assembly activities. In this research, an integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model is presented. Given a product requirement, there may be several design alternative cases to design the components for the same product. If a different design case is selected, the assembly sequence for constructing the product can be different. In this paper, first, the designed components are represented by using graph based models. The graph based models are transformed to assembly precedence constraints and assembly costs. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach is presented by encoding a particle using a position matrix defined by the design cases and the assembly sequences. The PSO algorithm simultaneously performs design evaluation and assembly sequence planning with an objective of minimizing the total assembly costs. As a result, the design cases and the assembly sequences can both be optimized. The main contribution lies in the new concept of integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model and the new PSO solution method. The test results show that the presented method is feasible and efficient for solving the integrated design evaluation and assembly planning problem. In this paper, an example product is tested and illustrated.
Abstract: The design of weight is one of the important parts in
fuzzy decision making, as it would have a deep effect on the evaluation
results. Entropy is one of the weight measure based on objective
evaluation. Non--probabilistic-type entropy measures for fuzzy set
and interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FS) have been developed and applied
to weight measure. Since the entropy for (IT2FS) for decision
making yet to be explored, this paper proposes a new objective
weight method by using entropy weight method for multiple attribute
decision making (MADM). This paper utilizes the nature of IT2FS
concept in the evaluation process to assess the attribute weight based
on the credibility of data. An example was presented to demonstrate
the feasibility of the new method in decision making. The entropy
measure of interval type-2 fuzzy sets yield flexible judgment and
could be applied in decision making environment.
Abstract: The Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), and the Wide World Web (WWW) have fundamentally
altered the practice of teaching and learning world wide. Many
universities, organizations, colleges and schools are trying to apply
the benefits of the emerging ICT. In the early nineties the term
learning object was introduced into the instructional technology
vernacular; the idea being that educational resources could be broken
into modular components for later combination by instructors,
learners, and eventually computes into larger structures that would
support learning [1]. However in many developing countries, the use
of ICT is still in its infancy stage and the concept of learning object
is quite new. This paper outlines the learning object design
considerations for developing countries depending on learning
environment.
Abstract: This paper provides a key driver-based conceptual framework that can be used to improve a firm-s success in commercializing technology and in new product innovation resulting from collaboration with other organizations through strategic alliances. Based on a qualitative study using an interview approach, strategic alliances of entrepreneurs in the food processing industry in Thailand are explored. This paper describes factors affecting decisions to collaborate through alliances. It identifies four issues: maintaining the efficiency of the value chain for production capability, adapting to present and future competition, careful assessment of value of outcomes, and management of innovation. We consider five driving factors: resource orientation, assessment of risk, business opportunity, sharing of benefits and confidence in alliance partners. These factors will be of interest to entrepreneurs and policy makers with regard to further understanding of the direction of business strategies.
Abstract: Since the feasibility study of R&D programs have been
initiated for efficient public R&D investments, year 2008, feasibility
studies have improved in terms of precision. Although experience
related to these studies of R&D programs have increased to a certain
point, still methodological improvement is required. The feasibility
studies of R&D programs are consisted of various viewpoints, such as
technology, policy, and economics. This research is to provide
improvement methods to the economic perspective; especially the cost
estimation process of R&D activities. First of all, the fundamental
concept of cost estimation is reviewed. After the review, a statistical
and econometric analysis method is applied as empirical analysis.
Conclusively, limitations and further research directions are provided.
Abstract: There are two types of drought as conceptual drought
and operational drought. The three parameters as the beginning, the
end and the degree of severity of the drought can be identifying in
operational drought by average precipitation in the whole region. One
of the methods classified to measure drought is Reconnaissance
Drought Index (RDI). Evapotranspiration is calculated using
Penman-Monteith method by analyzing thirty nine years prolong
climatic data. The evapotranspiration is then utilized in RDI to
classify normalized and standardized RDI. These RDI classifications
led to what kind of drought faced in Bhavnagar region on 12 month
time scale basis. The comparison between actual drought conditions
and RDI method used to find out drought are also illustrated. It can
be concluded that the index results of drought in a particular year are
same in both methods but having different index values where as
severity remain same.
Abstract: This study examined the role of driving experience in hazard perception and categorization using traffic scene pictures. Specifically, young-inexperienced, moderately experienced and very experienced (taxi) drivers observed traffic scene pictures while connected to an eye tracking system and were asked to rate the level of hazardousness of each picture and to mention the three most prominent hazards in it. Target pictures included nine, nearly identical, pairs of pictures where one picture in each pair included an actual hazard as an additional element. Altogether, 22 areas of interest (AOIs) were predefined and included 13 potential hazards and 9 actual hazards. Data analysis included both verbal reports and eye scanning patterns of these AOIs. Generally, both experienced and taxi drivers noted a relatively larger number of potential hazards than young inexperienced drivers Thus, by relating to less salient potential hazards, experienced drivers have demonstrated a better situation model of the traffic environment.
Abstract: The request for a sustainable development challenges
both managers and consumers to rethink habitual practices and
activities. While consumers are challenged to develop sustainable
consumption patterns, companies are asked to establish managerial
systems and structures considering economical, ecological, and social
issues. As this is in particular true for housing associations, this paper
aims first, at providing an understanding of sustainability strategy in
residential trade and industry (RTI) by identifying relevant facets of
this construct and second, at conceptually analyzing the impact of
sustainability strategy in RTI on operational efficiency and
performance of municipal housing companies. The author develops a
model of sustainability strategy in RTI and its effects and further,
sheds light in priorities for future research.
Abstract: Using spatial models as a shared common basis of
information about the environment for different kinds of contextaware
systems has been a heavily researched topic in the last years.
Thereby the research focused on how to create, to update, and to
merge spatial models so as to enable highly dynamic, consistent and
coherent spatial models at large scale. In this paper however, we
want to concentrate on how context-aware applications could use this
information so as to adapt their behavior according to the situation
they are in. The main idea is to provide the spatial model
infrastructure with a situation recognition component based on
generic situation templates. A situation template is – as part of a
much larger situation template library – an abstract, machinereadable
description of a certain basic situation type, which could be
used by different applications to evaluate their situation. In this
paper, different theoretical and practical issues – technical, ethical
and philosophical ones – are discussed important for understanding
and developing situation dependent systems based on situation
templates. A basic system design is presented which allows for the
reasoning with uncertain data using an improved version of a
learning algorithm for the automatic adaption of situation templates.
Finally, for supporting the development of adaptive applications, we
present a new situation-aware adaptation concept based on
workflows.
Abstract: Traditional higher-education classrooms allow lecturers to observe students- behaviours and responses to a particular pedagogy during learning in a way that can influence changes to the pedagogical approach. Within current e-learning systems it is difficult to perform continuous analysis of the cohort-s behavioural tendency, making real-time pedagogical decisions difficult. This paper presents a Virtual Learning Process Environment (VLPE) based on the Business Process Management (BPM) conceptual framework. Within the VLPE, course designers can model various education pedagogies in the form of learning process workflows using an intuitive flow diagram interface. These diagrams are used to visually track the learning progresses of a cohort of students. This helps assess the effectiveness of the chosen pedagogy, providing the information required to improve course design. A case scenario of a cohort of students is presented and quantitative statistical analysis of their learning process performance is gathered and displayed in realtime using dashboards.