Abstract: Presently, it is necessary to ensure the sustainable
development of passenger and freight transport. Increasing
performance of road freight has had a negative impact to environment
and society. It is therefore necessary to increase the competitiveness
of intermodal transport, which is more environmentally friendly. The
study describes the effectiveness of logistical centers realization for
companies and society and research how the partial internalization of
external costs reflected in the efficient use of these centers and
increase the competitiveness of intermodal transport to road freight.
In our research, we use the method of comparative analysis and
market research to describe the advantages of logistic centers for their
users as well as for society as a whole. Method normal costing is used
for calculation infrastructure and total costs, method of conversion
costing for determine the external costs. We modelled total society
costs for road freight transport and inter modal transport chain (we
assumed that most of the traffic is carried by rail) with different
loading schemes for condition in the Slovak Republic. Our research
has shown that higher utilization of inter modal transport chain do
good not only for society, but for companies providing freight
services too. Increase in use of inter modal transport chain can bring
many benefits to society that do not bring direct immediate financial
return. They often bring the multiplier effects, such as greater use of
environmentally friendly transport mode and reduce the total society
costs.
Abstract: Today, the pollution due to non-degradable material
such as plastics, has led to studies about the development of
environmental-friendly material. Because of biodegradability
obtained from natural sources, polylactid acid (PLA) and ijuk fiber
are interesting to modify into a composite. This material is also
expected to reduce the impact of environmental pollution. Surface
modification of ijuk fiber through alkalinization with 0.25 M NaOH
solution for 30 minutes was aimed to enhance its compatibility to
PLA, in order to improve properties of the composite such as the
mechanical properties. Alkalinization of the ijuk fibers annihilates
some surface components such as lignin, wax and hemicelloluse, so
the pore on the surface clearly appeared, decreasing of the density
and diameter of the ijuk fibers. The change of the ijuk fiber properties
leads to increase the mechanical properties of PLA composites
reinforced the ijuk fibers through strengthening of the mechanical
interlocking with the PLA matrix. An addition to enhance the
distribution of the fibers in the PLA matrix, the stirring during DCM
solvent evaporation from the mixture of the ijuk fibers and the
dissolved-PLA can reduce amount of the trapped-voids and fibers
pull-out phenomena, which can decrease the mechanical properties of
the composite.
Abstract: This research aimed to study the characteristics of a
community in the social, economic and cultural context. This
research used interviews and surveys of the members in the Patthana
Soi Ranongklang community, Dusit District, Bangkok. The results
are as follows: In terms of overall conditions and characteristics, the
Patthana Soi Ranongklang community is located on the property of
the Treasury Department. 50 years ago, the location of this
community consisted of paddy fields with limited convenience in
terms of transportation. Rama V Road was only a small narrow road
accessed only by three-wheelers there were no buses. The majority of
community members moved in from Mak Khawan Rangsan Bridge.
Thus, most community members were either workers or government
officials as they were routers not the owners of the land. Therefore,
there were no primary occupations within the 7 acres of this
community. The development of the community started in 1981. At
present, the community is continuously being developed and
modernization is rapidly flowing in. One of the reasons was because
the main roads were widened, especially Rama V Road that allows
more convenient transportation, leading to heightened citizens’
convenience. In terms of the economy and society, Rama V Road
causes the research to find out the development and expansion of
change in the conditions of the area and buildings. Some buildings
were improved and changed along the time, as well as the
development of new facilities that caused the community members to
continually become more materialistic. In the community, it has well
organized and managed jobs to each part of community members,
and areas were improved to allow the new buildings and apartments.
The trend of jobs became more varied, in terms of both jobs at home,
such as workers, merchandizing and small own businesses, and the
community jobs outside, which became much more convenient to car
drivers as they got used to the narrow roads inside the community.
The location of the community next to Rama V Road also allows
assistance from government agencies to reach the community with
ease. Moreover, the welfare of the community was well taken care of
by the community committee. In terms of education, the research
found that there are two schools: Wat Pracharabuedham School and
Wat Noi Noppakun School that are providing education within the
community. The majority in the community have received Bachelor
degrees. In areas of culture, the research found that the culture,
traditions and beliefs of people in the community were mainly
transferred from the old community: the majorities are Buddhists, so
especially beliefs in Buddhism; the main reason for this is because
the old community was situated near Wat Makut Kasattriyaram.
Therefore, the community members have always had Buddhist
temples as the centre of the community. Later years, more citizens
moved along culture in and bring traditions and beliefs with them.
The community members also took part in building a Dharma hall
named Wat Duang Jai which is 72 year old.
Abstract: The pursuit of the MPPT has led to the development of many kinds of controllers, one of which is the Fuzzy Logic controller, which has proven its worth. To further tune this controller this paper will discuss and analyze the use of Genetic Algorithms to tune the Fuzzy Logic Controller. It will provide an introduction to both systems, and test their compatibility and performance.
Abstract: Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are playing
increasingly prominent roles in defense programs and defense
strategies around the world. Technology advancements have
enabled the development of it to do many excellent jobs as
reconnaissance, surveillance, battle fighters, and communications
relays. Simulating a small unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV)
dynamics and analyzing its behavior at the preflight stage is too
important and more efficient. The first step in the UAV design is
the mathematical modeling of the nonlinear equations of motion. .
In this paper, a survey with a standard method to obtain the full
non-linear equations of motion is utilized, and then the
linearization of the equations according to a steady state flight
condition (trimming) is derived. This modeling technique is
applied to an Ultrastick-25e fixed wing UAV to obtain the valued
linear longitudinal and lateral models. At the end the model is
checked by matching between the behavior of the states of the nonlinear
UAV and the resulted linear model with doublet at the
control surfaces.
Abstract: With drug resistance becoming widespread in
Plasmodium falciparum infections, the development of the alternative
drugs is the desired strategy for prevention and cure of malaria. Three
drug targets were selected to screen promising drug molecules from
the GSK library of 13469 molecules. Using an in silico structure-based
drug designing approach, the differences in binding energies of
the substrate and inhibitor were exploited between target sites of
parasite and human to design a drug molecule against Plasmodium.
The docking studies have shown several promising molecules from
GSK library with more effective binding as compared to the already
known inhibitors for the drug targets. Though stronger interaction has
been shown by several molecules as compared to the reference, few
molecules have shown the potential as drug candidates though in
vitro studies are required to validate the results. In case of
thymidylate synthase-dihydrofolatereductase (TS-DHFR), three
compounds have shown promise for future studies as potential drugs.
Abstract: The impact of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has
been analyzed for many years by researchers. There are lot of
theoretical studies proving the SEZs importance for regional
development, however, there is lack of empirical studies (and they
are mainly focused on China market) that are based on available data.
The theoretical studies indicate the various impacts of enterprises
operating within SEZs on the economy. The article proves that, in
case of Poland, locating SEZs in municipalities is an important part
of increasing municipalities’ income. Therefore SEZs have a positive
impact on regional development. Municipality income is understood
as taxes paid by taxpayers who depend on SEZ companies’
performance. The analysis includes the Corporate Income Tax (CIT),
Personal Income Tax (PIT) and real estate tax. The effects of SEZs
on regional development were narrowed to a few variables that are
most significant for the financial system. The analysis indicates the
significant impact of SEZs on the amount of taxes influencing the
municipality budget.
Abstract: This study investigated some results of the use of
digital art tools by junior school children in order to discover if these
tools could promote artistic ability and creativity. The study considers
the ease of use and usefulness of the tools as well as how to assess
artwork produced by digital means. As the use of these tools is a
relatively new development in Art education, this study may help
educators in their choice of which tools to use and when to use them.
The study also aims to present a model for the assessment of
students’ artistic development and creativity by studying their artistic
activity. This model can help in determining differences in students’
creative ability and could be useful both for teachers, as a means of
assessing digital artwork, and for students, by providing the
motivation to use the tools to their fullest extent. Sixteen students
aged nine to ten years old were observed and recorded while they
used the digital drawing tools. The study found that, according to the
students’ own statements, it was not the ease of use but the successful
effects the tools provided which motivated the children to use them.
Abstract: This study aims to analyze ceramic employees’
occupational health and safety training expectations. To that general
objective, the study tries to examine whether occupational health and
safety training expectations of ceramic employees meaningfully
differentiate depending on demographic features and professional,
social and economic conditions. For this purpose, a questionnaire was
developed by the researcher. The research data were collected
through this questionnaire called “Questionnaire of Occupational
Health and Safety Training Expectation” (QSOHSTE). QSOHSTE
was applied to 125 ceramic employees working in Kütahya, Turkey.
Data obtained from questionnaire were analyzed via SPSS 21.
The findings, obtained from the study, revealed that employees’
agreement level to occupational health and safety training expectation
statements is generally high-level. The findings reveal that employees
expect professional interest such as increased development and
investment, preventive measures for accidents, interventions to
evaluate the working conditions, establishment of safe working
environments and sustainment of adequate equipment for
occupational health and safety training process.
Besides these findings, employees’ agreement level to
occupational health and safety training expectation statements also
varies in terms of educational level, professional seniority, income
level and perception of economic condition.
Abstract: Risk analysis is considered as a fundamental aspect
relevant for ensuring the level of critical infrastructure protection,
where the critical infrastructure is seen as system, asset or its part
which is important for maintaining the vital societal functions. Article
actually discusses and analyzes the potential application of selected
tools of information support for the implementation and within the
framework of risk analysis and critical infrastructure protection. Use
of the information in relation to their risk analysis can be viewed as a
form of simplifying the analytical process. It is clear that these
instruments (information support) for these purposes are countless, so
they were selected representatives who have already been applied in
the selected area of critical infrastructure, or they can be used. All
presented fact were the basis for critical infrastructure resilience
evaluation methodology development.
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: Development of a method to estimate gene functions is
an important task in bioinformatics. One of the approaches for the
annotation is the identification of the metabolic pathway that genes are
involved in. Since gene expression data reflect various intracellular
phenomena, those data are considered to be related with genes’
functions. However, it has been difficult to estimate the gene function
with high accuracy. It is considered that the low accuracy of the
estimation is caused by the difficulty of accurately measuring a gene
expression. Even though they are measured under the same condition,
the gene expressions will vary usually. In this study, we proposed a
feature extraction method focusing on the variability of gene
expressions to estimate the genes' metabolic pathway accurately. First,
we estimated the distribution of each gene expression from replicate
data. Next, we calculated the similarity between all gene pairs by KL
divergence, which is a method for calculating the similarity between
distributions. Finally, we utilized the similarity vectors as feature
vectors and trained the multiclass SVM for identifying the genes'
metabolic pathway. To evaluate our developed method, we applied the
method to budding yeast and trained the multiclass SVM for
identifying the seven metabolic pathways. As a result, the accuracy
that calculated by our developed method was higher than the one that
calculated from the raw gene expression data. Thus, our developed
method combined with KL divergence is useful for identifying the
genes' metabolic pathway.
Abstract: Much attention is paid to the development of space
branch in Kazakhstan at present. Two Earth remote sensing satellites
of Kazakhstan have been launched successfully. Many projects
related to the development of components for satellite are carried in
Kazakhstan, in particular the project related to the development of
star tracker experimental model. It is planned to use the results of this
project for development of star tracker prototype in the future. This
article describes the main stages of development of star tracker
experimental model.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to build ‘Ubi-Net’, a
decision-making support system for systematic establishment in
U-City planning. We have experienced various urban problems caused
by high-density development and population concentrations in
established urban areas. To address these problems, a U-Service
contributes to the alleviation of urban problems by providing real-time
information to citizens through network connections and related
information. However, technology, devices, and information for
consumers are required for systematic U-Service planning in towns
and cities where there are many difficulties in this regard, and a lack of
reference systems.
Thus, this study suggests methods to support the establishment of
sustainable planning by providing comprehensive information
including IT technology, devices, news, and social networking
services (SNS) to U-City planners through intelligent searches. In this
study, we targeted Smart U-Parking Planning to solve parking
problems in an ‘old’ city. Through this study, we sought to contribute
to supporting advances in U-Space and the alleviation of urban
problems.
Abstract: The concept of technology as well as itself has
evolved continuously over time, such that, nowadays, this concept is
still marked by myths and realities. Even the concept of science is
frequently misunderstood as technology. In this way, this paper
presents different forms of interpretation of the concept of technology
in the course of history, as well as the social and cultural aspects
associated with it, through an analysis made by means of insights
from sociological studies of science and technology and its multiple
relations with society. Through the analysis of contents, the paper
presents a classification of how technology is interpreted in the social
sphere and search channel efforts to show how a broader
understanding can contribute to better interpretations of how
scientific and technological development influences the environment
in which we operate. The text also presents a particular point of view
for the interpretation of the concept from the analysis throughout the
whole work.
Abstract: The purpose of this presentation is to describe an interdisciplinary teaching program that integrates physical education concepts using a philosophical approach. The presentation includes a review of: a) the philosophy of American education, b) the philosophy of sports and physical education, c) the interdisciplinary physical education program, d) professional development programs, (e) the Success of this physical education program, f) future of physical education. This unique interdisciplinary program has been implemented in an urban school physical education discipline in East Orange, New Jersey for over 10 years.
During the program the students realize that the bodies go through different experiences. The body becomes a place where a child can recognize in an enjoyable way to express and perceive particular feelings or mental states. Children may distinguish themselves to have high abilities in the social or other domains but low abilities in the field of athletics.
The goal of this program for the individuals is to discover new skills, develop and demonstrate age appropriate mastery level at different tasks, therefore the program consists of 9 to 12 sports, including many game. Each successful experience increases the awareness ability. Engaging in sports and physical activities are social movements involving groups of children in situations such as teams, friends, and recreational settings, which serve as a primary socializing agent for teaching interpersonal skills. As a result of this presentation the audience will reflect and explore how to structure a physical education program to integrate interdisciplinary subjects with philosophical concepts.
Abstract: The decision-making process is theoretically clearly
defined. Generally, it includes the problem identification and
analysis, data gathering, goals and criteria setting, alternatives
development and optimal alternative choice and its implementation.
In practice however, various modifications of the theoretical
decision-making process can occur. The managers can consider some
of the phases to be too complicated or unfeasible and thus they do not
carry them out and conversely some of the steps can be
overestimated.
The aim of the paper is to reveal and characterize the perception of
the individual phases of decision-making process by the managers.
The research is concerned with managers in the military environment
– commanders. Quantitative survey is focused cross-sectionally in the
individual levels of management of the Ministry of Defence of the
Czech Republic. On the total number of 135 respondents the analysis
focuses on which of the decision-making process phases are
problematic or not carried out in practice and which are again
perceived to be the easiest. Then it is examined the reasons of the
findings.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to assess whether
living in proximity to a roofing fiber cement factory in southern
Thailand was associated with physical, mental, social, and spiritual
health domains measured in a self-reported health risk assessment
(HRA) questionnaire. A cross-sectional study was conducted among
community members divided into two groups: near population (living
within 0-2km of factory) and far population (living within 2-5km of
factory) (N=198). A greater proportion of those living far from the
factory (65.34%) reported physical health problems than the near
group (51.04%) (p =0.032). This study has demonstrated that the near
population group had higher proportion of participants with positive
ratings on mental assessment (30.34%) and social health impacts
(28.42%) than far population group (10.59% and 16.67%,
respectively) (p
Abstract: Governments collect and produce large amounts of
data. Increasingly, governments worldwide have started to implement
open data initiatives and also launch open data portals to enable the
release of these data in open and reusable formats. Therefore, a large
number of open data repositories, catalogues and portals have been
emerging in the world. The greater availability of interoperable and
linkable open government data catalyzes secondary use of such data,
so they can be used for building useful applications which leverage
their value, allow insight, provide access to government services, and
support transparency. The efficient development of successful open
data portals makes it necessary to evaluate them systematic, in order
to understand them better and assess the various types of value they
generate, and identify the required improvements for increasing this
value. Thus, the attention of this paper is directed particularly to the
field of open data portals. The main aim of this paper is to compare
the selected open data portals on the national level using content
analysis and propose a new evaluation framework, which further
improves the quality of these portals. It also establishes a set of
considerations for involving businesses and citizens to create eservices
and applications that leverage on the datasets available from
these portals.
Abstract: Comparisons of financial development across
countries are central to answering many of the questions on factors
leading to economic development. For this reason this study analyzes
the implications of financial system’s development on country’s
economic development. The aim of the article: to analyze the impact
of financial system’s development on economic development. The
following research methods were used: systemic, logical and
comparative analysis of scientific literature, analysis of statistical
data, time series model (Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)
Model). The empirical results suggest about positive short and long
term effect of stock market development on GDP per capita.