Taking People, Process and Partnership on Board for Participatory Decision Making

Public administration institutions in cooperation with politicians are not the sole policy decision makers in full meaning any longer. Meanwhile, a special role, namely steering the decision making process, could be delegated to them. Despite the wide scientific discussion on different aspects what has direct impact on policy creation, there is a lack of holistic practical managerial advice, which could integrate infrastructure of policy decision making with intellectual capital and with interconnection of partnership. The proposed harmonized decision making model of process, people and partnership entitled by acronym HM-3P is analyzed as a framework for implementation of public administration steering role seeking the coherent social involvement in policy decision making.

A General Model for Amino Acid Interaction Networks

In this paper we introduce the notion of protein interaction network. This is a graph whose vertices are the protein-s amino acids and whose edges are the interactions between them. Using a graph theory approach, we identify a number of properties of these networks. We compare them to the general small-world network model and we analyze their hierarchical structure.

Thermal Performance Rating of Solar Water Heating Systems in ASEAN

Solar water heating (SWH) systems are gaining popularity in ASEAN in the midst of increasing number of affluent population in society and environmental concerns from seemingly unchanged reliance on fossil-based fuels. The penetration of these systems and technologies into ASEAN markets is a welcome development; however there is a need for the method of assessment of their thermal performances. This paper discusses the reasons for this need and a suitable method for thermal performance evaluation of SWH systems in ASEAN. The paper also calls on research to be focused on the establishment of reliable data to be entered into the performance rating software. The establishment of accredited solar systems testing facilities can help boost the competitiveness of ASEAN solar industry.

Design Considerations of Scheduling Systems Suitable for PCB Manufacturing

This paper identifies five key design characteristics of production scheduling software systems in printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing. The authors consider that, in addition to an effective scheduling engine, a scheduling system should be able to process a preventative maintenance calendar, to give the user the flexibility to handle data using a variety of electronic sources, to run simulations to support decision-making, and to have simple and customisable graphical user interfaces. These design considerations were the result of a review of academic literature, the evaluation of commercial applications and a compilation of requirements of a PCB manufacturer. It was found that, from those systems that were evaluated, those that effectively addressed all five characteristics outlined in this paper were the most robust of all and could be used in PCB manufacturing.

Seven step Adams Type Block Method With Continuous Coefficient For Periodic Ordinary Differential Equation

We consider the development of an eight order Adam-s type method, with A-stability property discussed by expressing them as a one-step method in higher dimension. This makes it suitable for solving variety of initial-value problems. The main method and additional methods are obtained from the same continuous scheme derived via interpolation and collocation procedures. The methods are then applied in block form as simultaneous numerical integrators over non-overlapping intervals. Numerical results obtained using the proposed block form reveals that it is highly competitive with existing methods in the literature.

A Practical Solution of a Plant Pipes Monitoring System Using Bio-mimetic Robots

There has been a growing interest in the field of bio-mimetic robots that resemble the shape of an insect or an aquatic animal, among many others. One bio-mimetic robot serves the purpose of exploring pipelines, spotting any troubled areas or malfunctions and reporting its data. Moreover, the robot is able to prepare for and react to any abnormal routes in the pipeline. In order to move effectively inside a pipeline, the robot-s movement will resemble that of a lizard. When situated in massive pipelines with complex routes, the robot places fixed sensors in several important spots in order to complete its monitoring. This monitoring task is to prevent a major system failure by preemptively recognizing any minor or partial malfunctions. Areas uncovered by fixed sensors are usually impossible to provide real-time observation and examination, and thus are dependant on periodical offline monitoring. This paper provides the Monitoring System that is able to monitor the entire area of pipelines–with and without fixed sensors–by using the bio-mimetic robot.

Photomechanical Analysis of Wooden Testing Bodies under Flexural Loadings

Application of wood in rural construction is diffused all around the world since remote times. However, its inclusion in structural design deserves strong support from broad knowledge of material properties. The pertinent literature reveals the application of optical methods in determining the complete field displacement on bodies exhibiting regular as well as irregular surfaces. The use of moiré techniques in experimental mechanics consists in analyzing the patterns generated on the body surface before and after deformation. The objective of this research work is to study the qualitative deformation behavior of wooden testing specimens under specific loading situations. The experiment setup follows the literature description of shadow moiré methods. Results indicate strong anisotropy influence of the generated displacement field. Important qualitative as well as quantitative stress and strain distribution were obtained wooden members which are applicable to rural constructions.

Magnetic Properties of NiO and MnO by LSDA+U

The spin (ms) and orbital (mo) magnetic moment of the antiferromagnetic NiO and MnO have been studied in the local spin density approximation (LSDA+U) within full potential linear muffin-tin orbital (FP-LMTO method with in the coulomb interaction U varying from 0 to 10eV, exchange interaction J, from 0 to 1.0eV, and volume compression VC in range of 0 to 80%. Our calculated results shown that the spin magnetic moments and the orbital magnetic moments increase linearly with increasing U and J. While the interesting behaviour appears when volume compression is greater than 70% for NiO and 50% for MnO at which ms collapses. Further increase of volume compression to be at 80% leads to the disappearance of both magnetic moments.

SIMGraph: Simplifying Contig Graph to Improve de Novo Genome Assembly Using Next-generation Sequencing Data

De novo genome assembly is always fragmented. Assembly fragmentation is more serious using the popular next generation sequencing (NGS) data because NGS sequences are shorter than the traditional Sanger sequences. As the data throughput of NGS is high, the fragmentations in assemblies are usually not the result of missing data. On the contrary, the assembled sequences, called contigs, are often connected to more than one other contigs in a complicated manner, leading to the fragmentations. False connections in such complicated connections between contigs, named a contig graph, are inevitable because of repeats and sequencing/assembly errors. Simplifying a contig graph by removing false connections directly improves genome assembly. In this work, we have developed a tool, SIMGraph, to resolve ambiguous connections between contigs using NGS data. Applying SIMGraph to the assembly of a fungus and a fish genome, we resolved 27.6% and 60.3% ambiguous contig connections, respectively. These results can reduce the experimental efforts in resolving contig connections.

Risk Quantification for Tunnel Excavation Process

Construction of tunnels is connected with high uncertainty in the field of costs, construction period, safety and impact on surroundings. Risk management became therefore a common part of tunnel projects, especially after a set of fatal collapses occurred in 1990's. Such collapses are caused usually by combination of factors that can be divided into three main groups, i.e. unfavourable geological conditions, failures in the design and planning or failures in the execution. This paper suggests a procedure enabling quantification of the excavation risk related to extraordinary accidents using FTA and ETA tools. It will elaborate on a common process of risk analysis and enable the transfer of information and experience between particular tunnel construction projects. Further, it gives a guide for designers, management and other participants, how to deal with risk of such accidents and how to make qualified decisions based on a probabilistic approach.

Combining ILP with Semi-supervised Learning for Web Page Categorization

This paper presents a semi-supervised learning algorithm called Iterative-Cross Training (ICT) to solve the Web pages classification problems. We apply Inductive logic programming (ILP) as a strong learner in ICT. The objective of this research is to evaluate the potential of the strong learner in order to boost the performance of the weak learner of ICT. We compare the result with the supervised Naive Bayes, which is the well-known algorithm for the text classification problem. The performance of our learning algorithm is also compare with other semi-supervised learning algorithms which are Co-Training and EM. The experimental results show that ICT algorithm outperforms those algorithms and the performance of the weak learner can be enhanced by ILP system.

Urban Environment Quality Improvement Planning Case Study: Moft Abad Neighborhood, Tehran, Iran

Rapid enlargement and physical development of cities have facilitated the emergence of a number of city life crises and decrease of environment quality. Subsequently, the need for noticing the concept of quality and its improvement in urban environments, besides quantitative issues, is obviously recognized. In the domain of urban ideas the importance of taking these issues into consideration is obvious not only in accordance to sustainable development concepts and improvement of public environment quality, but also in the enhancement of social and behavioral models. The major concern of present article is to study the nature of urban environment quality in urban development plans, which is important not only in the concept and the aim of projects but also in their execution procedure. As a result, this paper is going to utilize planning capacities caused by environmental virtues in the planning procedure of Moft Abad neighborhood. Thus, at the first step, applying the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), it has assessed quantitative environmental issues. The present conditions of Moft Abad state that “the neighborhood is generally suffering from the lack of qualitative parameters, and the previously formed planning procedures could not take the sustainable and developmental paths which are aimed at environment quality virtues." The diminution of economical and environmental virtues has resulted in the diminution of residential and social virtues. Therefore, in order to enhance the environment quality in Moft Abad, the present paper has tried to supply the subject plans in order to make a safe, healthy, and lively neighborhood.

Greedy Geographical Void Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

With the advantage of wireless network technology, there are a variety of mobile applications which make the issue of wireless sensor networks as a popular research area in recent years. As the wireless sensor network nodes move arbitrarily with the topology fast change feature, mobile nodes are often confronted with the void issue which will initiate packet losing, retransmitting, rerouting, additional transmission cost and power consumption. When transmitting packets, we would not predict void problem occurring in advance. Thus, how to improve geographic routing with void avoidance in wireless networks becomes an important issue. In this paper, we proposed a greedy geographical void routing algorithm to solve the void problem for wireless sensor networks. We use the information of source node and void area to draw two tangents to form a fan range of the existence void which can announce voidavoiding message. Then we use source and destination nodes to draw a line with an angle of the fan range to select the next forwarding neighbor node for routing. In a dynamic wireless sensor network environment, the proposed greedy void avoiding algorithm can be more time-saving and more efficient to forward packets, and improve current geographical void problem of wireless sensor networks.

On the Exact Solution of Non-Uniform Torsion for Beams with Axial Symmetric Cross-Section

In the traditional theory of non-uniform torsion the axial displacement field is expressed as the product of the unit twist angle and the warping function. The first one, variable along the beam axis, is obtained by a global congruence condition; the second one, instead, defined over the cross-section, is determined by solving a Neumann problem associated to the Laplace equation, as well as for the uniform torsion problem. So, as in the classical theory the warping function doesn-t punctually satisfy the first indefinite equilibrium equation, the principal aim of this work is to develop a new theory for non-uniform torsion of beams with axial symmetric cross-section, fully restrained on both ends and loaded by a constant torque, that permits to punctually satisfy the previous equation, by means of a trigonometric expansion of the axial displacement and unit twist angle functions. Furthermore, as the classical theory is generally applied with good results to the global and local analysis of ship structures, two beams having the first one an open profile, the second one a closed section, have been analyzed, in order to compare the two theories.

The Effects of Multipath on OFDM Systems for Broadband Power-Line Communications a Case of Medium Voltage Channel

Power-line networks are widely used today for broadband data transmission. However, due to multipaths within the broadband power line communication (BPLC) systems owing to stochastic changes in the network load impedances, branches, etc., network or channel capacity performances are affected. This paper attempts to investigate the performance of typical medium voltage channels that uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) techniques with Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) sub carriers. It has been observed that when the load impedances are different from line characteristic impedance channel performance decreases. Also as the number of branches in the link between the transmitter and receiver increases a loss of 4dB/branch is found in the signal to noise ratio (SNR). The information presented in the paper could be useful for an appropriate design of the BPLC systems.

A Discrete Choice Modeling Approach to Modular Systems Design

The paper proposes an approach for design of modular systems based on original technique for modeling and formulation of combinatorial optimization problems. The proposed approach is described on the example of personal computer configuration design. It takes into account the existing compatibility restrictions between the modules and can be extended and modified to reflect different functional and users- requirements. The developed design modeling technique is used to formulate single objective nonlinear mixedinteger optimization tasks. The practical applicability of the developed approach is numerically tested on the basis of real modules data. Solutions of the formulated optimization tasks define the optimal configuration of the system that satisfies all compatibility restrictions and user requirements.

Media and Information Literacy (MIL) for Thai Youths

The objectives of this study are to determine the role of media that influence the values, attitudes and behaviors of Thai youths. Analytical qualitative research techniques were used for this purpose. Data collection based techniques was used which were individual interviews and focus group discussions with journalists, sample of high school and university students, and parents. The results show that “Social Media" is still the most popular media for Thai youths. It is also still in the hands of the marketing business and it can motivate Thai youths to do so many things. The main reasons of media exposure are to find quality information that they want quickly, get satisfaction and can use social media to get more exciting and to build communities. They believe that the need for media and information literacy skills is defined as making judgments, personal integrity, training of family and the behavior of close friends.

Performance Analysis of Cellular Wireless Network by Queuing Priority Handoff calls

In this paper, a mathematical model is proposed to estimate the dropping probabilities of cellular wireless networks by queuing handoff instead of reserving guard channels. Usually, prioritized handling of handoff calls is done with the help of guard channel reservation. To evaluate the proposed model, gamma inter-arrival and general service time distributions have been considered. Prevention of some of the attempted calls from reaching to the switching center due to electromagnetic propagation failure or whimsical user behaviour (missed call, prepaid balance etc.), make the inter-arrival time of the input traffic to follow gamma distribution. The performance is evaluated and compared with that of guard channel scheme.

Mitigation of Flicker using STATCOM with Three-Level 12-pulse Voltage Source Inverter

Voltage flicker is a disturbance in electrical power systems. The reason for this disturbance is mainly the large nonlinear loads such as electric arc furnaces. Synchronous static compensator (STATCOM) is considered as a proper technique to mitigate the voltage flicker. Application of more suitable and precise power electronic converter leads to a more precise performance of the compensator. In this paper a three-level 12-pulse voltage source inverter (VSI) with a 12-terminal transformer connected to the ac system is studied and the obtained results are compared with the performance of a STATCOM using a simple two-level VSI and an optimal and more precise performance of the proposed scheme is achieved.

Beam and Diffuse Solar Energy in Zarqa City

Beam and diffuse radiation data are extracted analytically from previous measured data on a horizontal surface in Zarqa city. Moreover, radiation data on a tilted surfaces with different slopes have been derived and analyzed. These data are consisting of of beam contribution, diffuse contribution, and ground reflected contribution radiation. Hourly radiation data for horizontal surface possess the highest radiation values on June, and then the values decay as the slope increases and the sharp decreasing happened for vertical surface. The beam radiation on a horizontal surface owns the highest values comparing to diffuse radiation for all days of June. The total daily radiation on the tilted surface decreases with slopes. The beam radiation data also decays with slopes especially for vertical surface. Diffuse radiation slightly decreases with slopes with sharp decreases for vertical surface. The groundreflected radiation grows with slopes especially for vertical surface. It-s clear that in June the highest harvesting of solar energy occurred for horizontal surface, then the harvesting decreases as the slope increases.