Abstract: In the frame of the European Union project entitled EU-Families and Adolescents Quit Tobacco (www.eufaqt.eu) focus group analysis has been carried out in Hungary to acquire qualitative information on attitudes towards smoking in groups of adolescents, parents and educators, respectively. It rendered to identify methods for smoking prevention/ intervention with family approach. The results explored the role of the family in smoking behaviour. Teachers do not feel responsibility in prevention or cessation of smoking. Adolescents are not aware of the addictive effect of the cigarette. Water pipe is popular among adolescent, therefore spreading of more information needed on the harmful effects of water pipe. We outlined the requirement for professionals to provide interventions. Partnership of EU-FAQT project has worked out antismoking interventions for adolescents and their families conducted by psychologists to ensure skill development to prevent and quit tobacco.
Abstract: As one of the big government bank, Bank X is paying attention its performance, so that it can compete. One of them is the existence of organizational culture which recognized with term TIPEC (Trust, Integrity, Professionalism, Costumer Focus, and Excellence). In application of organizational culture, it is needed the existence of employee involvement (job involvement). It can be influenced by various factors, such as Locus of Control. Related to above mentioned, the problems are how employee tendency of Locus of Control, how job involvement, how organizational culture applied by employees and how influence of Locus of Control and job involvement to the organizational culture applied by employees. Researchers collected data with questioner spreading, and respondents number of 30 people. After that, the data were analyzed with SPSS software constructively. The influence of Locus of Control and job involvement to the application of organizational culture was strong, i.e. 58.3%.
Abstract: Firstly, this study briefly presents the current situation that there exists a vast gap between current Chinese and Japanese seismic design specification for bridge pile foundation in liquefiable and liquefaction-induced lateral spreading ground; The Chinese and Japanese seismic design method and technical detail for bridge pile foundation in liquefying and lateral spreading ground are described and compared systematically and comprehensively, the methods of determining coefficient of subgrade reaction and its reduction factor as well as the computing mode of the applied force on pile foundation due to liquefaction-induced lateral spreading soil in Japanese design specification are especially introduced. Subsequently, the comparison indicates that the content of Chinese seismic design specification for bridge pile foundation in liquefiable and liquefaction-induced lateral spreading ground, just presenting some qualitative items, is too general and lacks systematicness and maneuverability. Finally, some defects of seismic design specification in China are summarized, so the improvement and revision of specification in the field turns out to be imperative for China, some key problems of current Chinese specifications are generalized and the corresponding improvement suggestions are proposed.
Abstract: We present analysis of spatial patterns of generic
disease spread simulated by a stochastic long-range correlation SIR
model, where individuals can be infected at long distance in a power
law distribution. We integrated various tools, namely perimeter,
circularity, fractal dimension, and aggregation index to characterize
and investigate spatial pattern formations. Our primary goal was to
understand for a given model of interest which tool has an advantage
over the other and to what extent. We found that perimeter and
circularity give information only for a case of strong correlation–
while the fractal dimension and aggregation index exhibit the growth
rule of pattern formation, depending on the degree of the correlation
exponent (β). The aggregation index method used as an alternative
method to describe the degree of pathogenic ratio (α). This study may
provide a useful approach to characterize and analyze the pattern
formation of epidemic spreading
Abstract: The successful use of CDMA technology is based on
the construction of large families of encoding sequences with good
correlation properties. This paper discusses PN sequence generation
based on Residue Arithmetic with an effort to improve the performance
of existing interference-limited CDMA technology for mobile
cellular systems. All spreading codes with residual number system
proposed earlier did not consider external interferences, multipath
propagation, Doppler effect etc. In literature the use of residual
arithmetic in DS-CDMA was restricted to encoding of already spread
sequence; where spreading of sequence is done by some existing
techniques. The novelty of this paper is the use of residual number
system in generation of the PN sequences which is used to spread
the message signal. The significance of cross-correlation factor in
alleviating multi-access interference is also discussed. The RNS based
PN sequence has superior performance than most of the existing
codes that are widely used in DS-CDMA applications. Simulation
results suggest that the performance of the proposed system is
superior to many existing systems.
Abstract: The major urban centers are all facing rapid growth is
most often associated with spreading urbanization, social status of the
car has also changed: it has become a commodity of mass
consumption. There are currently about 5 million and 260 cars in
Algeria (2008), this number increases every year 200,000 new cars.
These phenomena induce a demand for greater mobility and a
significant need for transport infrastructure. Faced with these
problems and development of the growing use of the automobile,
central governments and local authorities in charge of urban transport
issues are aware of the need to develop their urban transport systems
but often lack opportunities.
Urban Transport Plans (PDU) were born in reaction to the "culture
of automobile." Their existence in the world the '80s, however, they
had little success before laws on air and rational use of energy in 90
years does not alter substantially their content and make mandatory
their implementation in cities of over 100,000 inhabitants (Abroad)
[1].
The objective of this work is to use the tool and specifically
Geomatics techniques as decision support in the organization and
management of travel while taking into consideration the influence,
which will then translate by National Urban Transport Plan.
Abstract: The third generation (3G) of cellular system adopted
the spread spectrum as solution for the transmission of the data in the
physical layer. Contrary to systems IS-95 or CDMAOne (systems
with spread spectrum of the preceding generation), the new standard,
called Universal Mobil Telecommunications System (UMTS), uses
long codes in the down link. The system is conceived for the vocal
communication and the transmission of the data. In particular, the
down link is very important, because of the asymmetrical request of
the data, i.e., more remote loading towards the mobiles than towards
the basic station. Moreover, the UMTS uses for the down link an
orthogonal spreading out with a variable factor of spreading out
(OVSF for Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor). This
characteristic makes it possible to increase the flow of data of one or
more users by reducing their factor of spreading out without
changing the factor of spreading out of other users. In the current
standard of the UMTS, two techniques to increase the performances
of the down link were proposed, the diversity of sending antenna and
the codes space-time. These two techniques fight only fainding. The
receiver proposed for the mobil station is the RAKE, but one can
imagine a receiver more sophisticated, able to reduce the interference
between users and the impact of the coloured noise and interferences
to narrow band. In this context, where the users have long codes
synchronized with variable factor of spreading out and ignorance by
the mobile of the other active codes/users, the use of the sequences of
code pseudo-noises different lengths is presented in the form of one
of the most appropriate solutions.
Abstract: Controlled release urea has become popular in agricultural industry as it helps to solve environmental issues and increase crop yield. Recently biomass was identified to replace the polymer used as a coating material in the conventional coated urea. In this paper spreading and contact angle of biomass droplet (lignin, cellulose and clay) on urea surface are investigated experimentally. There were two tests were conducted, sessile drop for contact angle measurement and pendant drop for contact angle measurement. A different concentration of biomass droplet was released from 30 mm above a substrate. Glass was used as a controlled substrate. Images were recorded as soon as the droplet impacted onto the urea before completely adsorb into the urea. Digitized droplets were then used to identify the droplet-s surface tension and contact angle. There is large difference observed between the low surface tension and high surface tension liquids, where the wetting and spreading diameter is higher for lower surface tension. From the contact angle results, the data showed that the biomass coating films were possible as wetting liquid (θ < 90º). Contact angle of biomass coating material gives good indication for the wettablity of a liquid on urea surface.
Abstract: In a previously developed fast vortex method, the
diffusion of the vortex sheet induced at the solid wall by the no-slip
boundary conditions was modeled according to the approximation
solution of Koumoutsakos and converted into discrete blobs in the
vicinity of the wall. This scheme had been successfully applied to a
simulation of the flow induced with an impulsively initiated circular
cylinder. In this work, further modifications on this vortex method are
attempted, including replacing the approximation solution by the
boundary-element-method solution, incorporating a new algorithm for
handling the over-weak vortex blobs, and diffusing the vortex sheet
circulation in a new way suitable for high-curvature solid bodies. The
accuracy is thus largely improved. The predictions of lift and drag
coefficients for a uniform flow past a NASA airfoil agree well with the
existing literature.
Abstract: Digital watermarking is a way to provide the facility of secure multimedia data communication besides its copyright protection approach. The Spread Spectrum modulation principle is widely used in digital watermarking to satisfy the robustness of multimedia signals against various signal-processing operations. Several SS watermarking algorithms have been proposed for multimedia signals but very few works have discussed on the issues responsible for secure data communication and its robustness improvement. The current paper has critically analyzed few such factors namely properties of spreading codes, proper signal decomposition suitable for data embedding, security provided by the key, successive bit cancellation method applied at decoder which have greater impact on the detection reliability, secure communication of significant signal under camouflage of insignificant signals etc. Based on the analysis, robust SS watermarking scheme for secure data communication is proposed in wavelet domain and improvement in secure communication and robustness performance is reported through experimental results. The reported result also shows improvement in visual and statistical invisibility of the hidden data.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to emphasize and alleviate the effect of phase noise due to imperfect local oscillators on the performances of a Multi-Carrier CDMA system. After the cancellation of Common Phase Error (CPE), an iterative approach is introduced which iteratively estimates Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) components in the frequency domain and cancels their contribution in the time domain. Simulation are conducted in order to investigate the achievable performances for several parameters, such as the spreading factor, the modulation order, the phase noise power and the transmission Signal-to-Noise Ratio.
Abstract: We developed a method based on quasi-molecular
modelling to simulate the fall of water drops on horizontally smooth
and rough surfaces. Each quasi-molecule was a group of particles
that interacted in a fashion entirely analogous to classical Newtonian
molecular interactions. When a falling water droplet was simulated at
low impact velocity on both smooth and rough surfaces, the droplets
moved periodically (i.e. the droplets moved up and down for a
certain period, finally they stopped moving and reached a steady
state), spreading and recoiling without splash or break-up. Spreading
rates of falling water droplets increased rapidly as time increased
until the spreading rate reached its steady state at time t ~ 0.25 s for
rough surface and t ~ 0.40 s for smooth surface. The droplet height
above both surfaces decreased as time increased, remained constant
after the droplet diameter attained a maximum value and reached its
steady state at time t ~ 0.4 s. However, rough surface had higher
spreading rates of falling water droplets and lower height on the
surface than smooth one.
Abstract: In this paper we proposed the use of Huffman
coding to reduce the PAR of an OFDM system as a distortionless
scrambling technique, and we utilize the amount saved in the
total bit rate by the Huffman coding to send the encoding table
for accurate decoding at the receiver without reducing the
effective throughput. We found that the use of Huffman coding
reduces the PAR by about 6 dB. Also we have investigated the
effect of PAR reduction due to Huffman coding through testing
the spectral spreading and the inband distortion due to HPA with
different IBO values. We found a complete match of our
expectation from the proposed solution with the obtained
simulation results.
Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a good opportunities
for city development schemes in UK. The government encouraged
restoration of city centers to comprise mixed use developments with
high density residential apartments. Investments in regeneration areas
were doing well according to the analyses of Property Databank
(IPD). However, more recent analysis by IPD has shown that since
2007, property in regeneration areas has been more vulnerable to the
market downturn than other types of investment property. The early
stages of a property market downturn may be felt most in
regeneration where funding, investor confidence and occupier
demand would dissipate because the sector was considered more
marginal or risky when development costs rise. Moreover, the Bank
of England survey shows that lenders have sequentially tightened the
availability of credit for commercial real estate since mid-2007. A
sharp reduction in the willingness of banks to lend on commercial
property was recorded. The credit crunch has already affected
commercial property but its impact has been particularly severe in
certain kinds of properties where residential developments are
extremely difficult, in particular city centre apartments and buy-to-let
markets. Commercial property – retail, industrial leisure and mixed
use were also pressed, in Birmingham; tens of mixed use plots were
built to replace old factories in the heart of the city. The purpose of
these developments was to enable young professionals to work and
live in same place. Thousands of people lost their jobs during the
recession, moreover lending was more difficult and the future of
many developments is unknown. The recession casts its shadow upon
the society due to cuts in public spending by government, Inflation,
rising tuition fees and high rise in unemployment generated anger and
hatred was spreading among youth causing vandalism and riots in
many cities. Recent riots targeted many mixed used development in
the UK where banks, shops, restaurants and big stores were robbed
and set into fire leaving residents with horror and shock. This paper
examines the impact of the recession and riots on mixed use
development in UK.
Abstract: The study in this paper underlines the importance of
correct joint selection of the spreading codes for uplink of multicarrier
code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) at the transmitter
side and detector at the receiver side in the presence of nonlinear
distortion due to high power amplifier (HPA). The bit error rate
(BER) of system for different spreading sequences (Walsh code, Gold
code, orthogonal Gold code, Golay code and Zadoff-Chu code) and
different kinds of receivers (minimum mean-square error receiver
(MMSE-MUD) and microstatistic multi-user receiver (MSF-MUD))
is compared by means of simulations for MC-CDMA transmission
system. Finally, the results of analysis will show, that the application
of MSF-MUD in combination with Golay codes can outperform
significantly the other tested spreading codes and receivers for all
mostly used models of HPA.
Abstract: The financial crisis has decreased the opportunities of
small businesses to acquire financing through conventional financial
actors, such as commercial banks. This credit constraint is partly the
reason for the emergence of new alternatives of financing, in addition
to the spreading opportunities for communication and secure
financial transfer through Internet. One of the most interesting venues
for finance is termed “crowdfunding". As the term suggests
crowdfunding is an appeal to prospective customers and investors to
form a crowd that will finance projects that otherwise would find it
hard to generate support through the most common financial actors.
Crowdfunding is in this paper divided into different models; the
threshold model, the microfinance model, the micro loan model and
the equity model. All these models add to the financial possibilities of
emerging entrepreneurs.