Abstract: Innovation is more important in any companies.
However, it is not easy to measure the innovation performance
correctly. Patent is one of measuring index nowadays. This paper
wants to purpose an approach for valuing patents based on market
reaction to patent infringement litigations. The interesting
phenomenon is found from collection of patent infringement litigation
events. That is if any patent litigation event occurs the stock value will
follow changing. The plaintiffs- stock value raises some percentage.
According to this interesting phenomenon, the relationship between
patent litigation and stock value is tested and verified. And then, the
stock value variation is used to deduce the infringed patents- value.
The purpose of this study is providing another concept model to
evaluate the infringed patents. This study can provide a decision assist
system to help drafting patent litigation strategy and determine the
technology value
Abstract: A topologically oriented neural network is very
efficient for real-time path planning for a mobile robot in changing
environments. When using a recurrent neural network for this
purpose and with the combination of the partial differential equation
of heat transfer and the distributed potential concept of the network,
the problem of obstacle avoidance of trajectory planning for a
moving robot can be efficiently solved. The related dimensional
network represents the state variables and the topology of the robot's
working space. In this paper two approaches to problem solution are
proposed. The first approach relies on the potential distribution of
attraction distributed around the moving target, acting as a unique
local extreme in the net, with the gradient of the state variables
directing the current flow toward the source of the potential heat. The
second approach considers two attractive and repulsive potential
sources to decrease the time of potential distribution. Computer
simulations have been carried out to interrogate the performance of
the proposed approaches.
Abstract: Dioscorea species or commonly named as yam is
reported to be one of the major food sources worldwide. This
ethnobotanical study was conducted to document local knowledge
and potentials of DioscoreahispidaDennst. and to investigate and
record its distribution in three districts of Terengganu. Information
was gathered from 23 villagers from three districts of Besut, Marang
and Setiu by using semi-structured questionnaire. The villagers were
randomly selected and no appointment was made prior to the visits.
For distribution, the location of Dioscoreahispida was recorded by
using the Global Positioning System (GPS). The villagers identified
Dioscoreahispida or locally named ubigadong by looking at the
physical characteristics that include its leaf shape, stem and the color
of the tuber-s flesh. The villagers used Dioscoreahispida in many
ways in their life such as for food, medicinal purposes and fish
poison.
Abstract: The results show that the bridge equipped with seismic isolation bearing system shows a high amount of energy dissipation. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the overall performance of continuous curved highway viaducts with different bearing supports, with an emphasis on the effectiveness of seismic isolation based on lead rubber bearing and hedge reaction force bearing system consisted of friction sliding bearing and rubber bearing. The bridge seismic performance has been evaluated on six different cases with six bearing models. The effects of the different arrangement of bearing on the deck superstructure displacements, the seismic damage at the bottom of the piers, movement track at the pier-s top and the total and strain energies absorbed by the structure are evaluated. In conclusion, the results provide sufficient evidence of the effectiveness on the use of seismic isolation on steel curved highway bridges.
Abstract: Presently and in line with the United Nations (EPA),
human thinking system has shifted towards clean fuels so as to
maintain a cleaner environment and to save our planet earth.
One of the most successful studies in order to achieve new
energies includes the use of animal wastes and their organic residues,
and the result of these researches has been represented in the form of
very simple and cheap methods called biogas technology. Biogas
technology has developed a lot in the recent decades; its reason is the
high cost of fossil fuels and the greater attention of countries to the
environmental pollutions due to the consumption of this kind of
fuels.
IRAN is ready for the optimized application of renewable
energies, having much enriched resources of this kind of energies; so
a special place could be considered for it when making programs.
The purpose of biogas technology is the recovery of energy and
finally the protection of the environment, which is much appropriate
for the third world farmers with respect to their technical abilities and
economic potentials. Studies show that the production and
consumption of biogas is appropriate and economic in IRAN,
because of the high amount of waste in the agriculture sector, the
significant amount of animal and human excrement production, the
great volume of garbage produced and the most important the
specific social, climatic and agricultural conditions in IRAN, in order
to proceed towards the reduction of pollution due to the use of fossil
fuels.
Abstract: The issue of leadership has been investigated from
several perspectives; however, very less from ethical perspective.
With the growing number of corporate scandals and unethical roles
played by business leaders in several parts of the world, the need to
examine leadership from ethical perspective cannot be over
emphasized. The importance of leadership credibility has been
discussed in the authentic model of leadership. Authentic leaders
display high degree of integrity, have deep sense of purpose, and
committed to their core values. As a result they promote a more
trusting relationship in their work groups that translates into several
positive outcomes. The present study examined how authentic
leadership contribute to subordinates- trust in leadership and how this
trust, in turn, predicts subordinates- work engagement. A sample of
395 employees was randomly selected from several local banks
operating in Malaysia. Standardized tools such as ALQ, OTI, and
EEQ were employed. Results indicated that authentic leadership
promoted subordinates- trust in leader, and contributed to work
engagement. Also, interpersonal trust predicted employees- work
engagement as well as mediated the relationship between this style of
leadership and employees- work engagement.
Abstract: Healthcare providers sometimes use the power of
humor as a treatment and therapy for buffering mental health or easing
mental disorders because humor can provide relief from distress and
conflict. Humor is also very suitable for advertising because of similar
benefits. This study carefully examines humor's widespread use in
advertising and identifies relationships among humor mechanisms,
female depictions, and product types. The purpose is to conceptualize
how humor theories can be used not only to successfully define a
product as fitting within one of four color categories of the product
color matrix, but also to identify compelling contemporary female
depictions through humor in ads. The results can offer an idealization
for marketing managers and consumers to help them understand how
female role depictions can be effectively used with humor in ads. The
four propositions developed herein are derived from related literature,
through the identification of marketing strategy formulations that
achieve product memory enhancement by adopting humor
mechanisms properly matched with female role depictions.
Abstract: Current air conditioning system is using refrigerant as
the cooling medium. The main purpose of this study is to develop an
air conditioning system using chill water as the cooling medium. In
this system, chill water used to replace refrigerant as the cooling
medium. This study is focus on the split type unit air conditioning
system only. It will be involving some renovation on the indoor unit
and freezer. The cooling capability of this system was validate by few
series of testing, which conducted at standard 36m3 office room.
Result of the testing found that 0.1 m3 of chill water is able to
maintain the room temperature within standard up to 4 ~ 8 hours. It
expected able to maintain room temperature up to 10 hour with some
improvement.
Abstract: A renewable energy system discussed in this paper is
a stand-alone wind-hydrogen system for a remote island in Australia.
The analysis of an existing wind-diesel power system was performed.
Simulation technique was used to model the power system currently
employed on the island, and simulated different configurations of
additional hydrogen energy system. This study aims to determine the
suitable hydrogen integrated configuration to setting up the prototype
system for the island, which helps to reduce the diesel consumption
on the island. A set of configurations for the hydrogen system and
associated parameters that consists of wind turbines, electrolysers,
hydrogen internal combustion engines, and storage tanks has been
purposed. The simulation analyses various configurations that
perfectly balances the system to meet the demand on the island.
Abstract: Feed is one of the factors which play an important role in determining a successful development of an aquaculture industry. It is always critical to produce the best aquaculture diet at a minimum cost in order to trim down the operational cost and gain more profit. However, the feed mix problem becomes increasingly difficult since many issues need to be considered simultaneously. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to review the current techniques used by nutritionist and researchers to tackle the issues. Additionally, this paper introduce an enhance algorithm which is deemed suitable to deal with all the issues arise. The proposed technique refers to Hybrid Genetic Algorithm which is expected to obtain the minimum cost diet for farmed animal, while satisfying nutritional requirements. Hybrid GA technique with artificial bee algorithm is expected to reduce the penalty function and provide a better solution for the feed mix problem.
Abstract: Increased physical fitness participation has been
paralleled by increasedoveruse injuries such as insertional Achilles
tendinosis (AT). Treatment has provided inconsistentresults. The use
of extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ECSWT) offers a new
treatment consideration.The purpose of this study was to assess the
effects of ECSWTon pain, function, range of motion (ROM), joint
mobility and strength in patients with AT. Thirty subjects were
treated with ECSWT and measures were takenbefore and three
months after treatment. There was significant differences in visual
analog scale (VAS) scores for pain at rest (p=0.002); after activity
(p= 0.0001); overall improvement(p=0.0001); Lower Extremity
Functional Scale (LEFS) scores (p=0.002); dorsiflexion range of
motion (ROM) (p=0.0001); plantarflexion strength (p=0.025);
talocrural joint anterior glide (p=0.046); and subtalar joint medial and
lateral glide (p=0.025).ECSWT offers a new intervention that may
limit the progression of the disorder and the long term healthcare
costs associated with AT.
Abstract: This paper presents a dominant color descriptor
technique for medical image retrieval. The medical image system
will collect and store into medical database. The purpose of
dominant color descriptor (DCD) technique is to retrieve medical
image and to display similar image using queried image. First, this
technique will search and retrieve medical image based on keyword
entered by user. After image is found, the system will assign this
image as a queried image. DCD technique will calculate the image
value of dominant color. Then, system will search and retrieve again
medical image based on value of dominant color query image.
Finally, the system will display similar images with the queried
image to user. Simple application has been developed and tested
using dominant color descriptor. Result based on experiment
indicates this technique is effective and can be used for medical
image retrieval.
Abstract: Wet chemistry methods are used to prepare the
SiO2/Au nanoshells. The purpose of this research was to synthesize
gold coated SiO2 nanoshells for biomedical applications. Tunable
nanoshells were prepared by using different colloidal concentrations.
The nanoshells are characterized by FTIR, XRD, UV-Vis
spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The FTIR results
confirmed the functionalization of the surfaces of silica nanoparticles
with NH2 terminal groups. A tunable absorption was observed
between 470-600 nm with a maximum range of 530-560 nm. Based
on the XRD results three main peaks of Au (111), (200) and (220)
were identified. Also AFM results showed that the silica core
diameter was about 100 nm and the thickness of gold shell about 10
nm.
Abstract: The main purpose of the study was to determine whether students- interpretation achievement differed with the use of various multimedia presentation types. Four groups of students, text only (T), audio only (A), text and audio (TA), text and image (TI), were arranged and they were presented the same story via different types of multimedia presentations. Inference achievement was measured by a critical thinking inference test. Higher mean scores for the TA group compared to the other three groups were found. Also when compared pairwise, interpretation achievement of the TA group differed significantly from scores of the T and TI groups. These differences were interpreted with the increased cognitive load. Increased cognitive load for the TA group may have invited students to put more effort into comprehending the text, thus resulting in better test scores. Findings of the study can be seen as a sign of the importance of learning situations and learning outcomes in multimedia-supported learning environments and may have practical benefits for instructional designers.
Abstract: The agriculture lignocellulosic by-products are receiving increased attention, namely in the search for filter materials that retain contaminants from water. These by-products, specifically almond and hazelnut shells are abundant in Portugal once almond and hazelnuts production is a local important activity. Hazelnut and almond shells have as main constituents lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses, water soluble extractives and tannins. Along the adsorption of heavy metals from contaminated waters, water soluble compounds can leach from shells and have a negative impact in the environment. Usually, the chemical characterization of treated water by itself may not show environmental impact caused by the discharges when parameters obey to legal quality standards for water. Only biological systems can detect the toxic effects of the water constituents. Therefore, the evaluation of toxicity by biological tests is very important when deciding the suitability for safe water discharge or for irrigation applications.
The main purpose of the present work was to assess the potential impacts of waters after been treated for heavy metal removal by hazelnut and almond shells adsorption systems, with short term acute toxicity tests.
To conduct the study, water at pH 6 with 25 mg.L-1 of lead, was treated with 10 g of shell per litre of wastewater, for 24 hours. This procedure was followed for each bark. Afterwards the water was collected for toxicological assays; namely bacterial resistance, seed germination, Lemna minor L. test and plant grow. The effect in isolated bacteria strains was determined by disc diffusion method and the germination index of seed was evaluated using lettuce, with temperature and humidity germination control for 7 days. For aquatic higher organism, Lemnas were used with 4 days contact time with shell solutions, in controlled light and temperature. For terrestrial higher plants, biomass production was evaluated after 14 days of tomato germination had occurred in soil, with controlled humidity, light and temperature.
Toxicity tests of water treated with shells revealed in some extent effects in the tested organisms, with the test assays showing a close behaviour as the control, leading to the conclusion that its further utilization may not be considered to create a serious risk to the environment.
Abstract: The Petri net tool INA is a well known tool by the
Petri net community. However, it lacks a graphical environment to
cerate and analyse INA models. Building a modelling tool for the
design and analysis from scratch (for INA tool for example) is
generally a prohibitive task. Meta-Modelling approach is useful to
deal with such problems since it allows the modelling of the
formalisms themselves. In this paper, we propose an approach based
on the combined use of Meta-modelling and Graph Grammars to
automatically generate a visual modelling tool for INA for analysis
purposes. In our approach, the UML Class diagram formalism is
used to define a meta-model of INA models. The meta-modelling
tool ATOM3 is used to generate a visual modelling tool according to
the proposed INA meta-model. We have also proposed a graph
grammar to automatically generate INA description of the
graphically specified Petri net models. This allows the user to avoid
the errors when this description is done manually. Then the INA tool
is used to perform the simulation and the analysis of the resulted INA
description. Our environment is illustrated through an example.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present the fuzzy contraction
properties of the Hutchinson-Barnsley operator on the fuzzy
hyperspace with respect to the Hausdorff fuzzy metrics. Also we
discuss about the relationships between the Hausdorff fuzzy metrics
on the fuzzy hyperspaces. Our theorems generalize and extend some
recent results related with Hutchinson-Barnsley operator in the metric
spaces.
Abstract: Pressures for urban redevelopment are intensifying in
all large cities. A new logic for urban development is required –
green urbanism – that provides a spatial framework for directing
population and investment inwards to brownfields and greyfields
precincts, rather than outwards to the greenfields. This represents
both a major opportunity and a major challenge for city planners in
pluralist liberal democracies. However, plans for more compact
forms of urban redevelopment are stalling in the face of community
resistance. A new paradigm and spatial planning platform is required
that will support timely multi-level and multi-actor stakeholder
engagement, resulting in the emergence of consensus plans for
precinct-level urban regeneration capable of more rapid
implementation. Using Melbourne, Australia as a case study, this
paper addresses two of the urban intervention challenges – where and
how – via the application of a 21st century planning tool ENVISION
created for this purpose.
Abstract: In this work a dual laser triangulation system is presented for fast building of 2.5D textured models of objects within a production line. This scanner is designed to produce data suitable for 3D completeness inspection algorithms. For this purpose two laser projectors have been used in order to considerably reduce the problem of occlusions in the camera movement direction. Results of reconstruction of electronic boards are presented, together with a comparison with a commercial system.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body
of knowledge in the area of management accounting, particularly
performance measurement systems within the BSC framework, by
investigating empirically the extent of multiple performance
measures usage and their effects on the financial performance of
Jordanian banks in the branches level. Nevertheless, the result of this
study shows that the non-financial measures usages, particularly,
customer oriented indicators and product/ service oriented indicators,
appears to be important as it enhances firm performance.
Remarkably, the findings reveal that there is positive relationship
between the usages of multiple performance measures via overall
BSC measures and financial performance in the branches level.