Abstract: Almost all universities include some form of assignment in their courses. The assignments are either carried out in either in groups or individually. To effectively manage these submitted assignments, a well-designed assignment submission system is needed, hence the need for an online assignment submission system to facilitate the distribution, and collection of assignments on due dates. The objective of such system is to facilitate interaction of lecturers and students for assessment and grading purposes. The aim of this study was to create a web based online assignment submission system for University of Mauritius. The system was created to eliminate the traditional process of giving an assignment and collecting the answers for the assignment. Lecturers can also create automated assessment to assess the students online. Moreover, the online submission system consists of an automatic mailing system which acts as a reminder for students about the deadlines of the posted assignments. System was tested to measure its acceptance rate among both student and lecturers.
Abstract: This Paper proposes a new facial feature extraction approach, Wash-Hadamard Transform (WHT). This approach is based on correlation between local pixels of the face image. Its primary advantage is the simplicity of its computation. The paper compares the proposed approach, WHT, which was traditionally used in data compression with two other known approaches: the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) using the face database of Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL). In spite of its simple computation, the proposed algorithm (WHT) gave very close results to those obtained by the PCA and DCT. This paper initiates the research into WHT and the family of frequency transforms and examines their suitability for feature extraction in face recognition applications.
Abstract: This paper discusses a curriculum approach that will
give emphasis on practical portions of teaching network security
subjects in information and communication technology courses. As
we are well aware, the need to use a practice and application oriented
approach in education is paramount. Research on active learning and
cooperative groups have shown that students grasps more and have
more tendency towards obtaining and realizing soft skills like
leadership, communication and team work as opposed to the more
traditional theory and exam based teaching and learning. While this
teaching and learning paradigm is relatively new in Malaysia, it has
been practiced widely in the West. This paper examines a certain
approach whereby students learning wireless security are divided into
and work in small and manageable groups where there will be 2
teams which consist of black hat and white hat teams. The former
will try to find and expose vulnerabilities in a wireless network while
the latter will try their best to prevent such attacks on their wireless
networks using hardware, software, design and enforcement of
security policy and etc. This paper will try to show that the approach
taken plus the use of relevant and up to date software and hardware
and with suitable environment setting will hopefully expose students
to a more fruitful outcome in terms of understanding of concepts,
theories and their motivation to learn.
Abstract: Intelligent Video-Surveillance (IVS) systems are
being more and more popular in security applications. The analysis
and recognition of abnormal behaviours in a video sequence has
gradually drawn the attention in the field of IVS, since it allows
filtering out a large number of useless information, which guarantees
the high efficiency in the security protection, and save a lot of human
and material resources. We present in this paper ADABeV, an
intelligent video-surveillance framework for event recognition in
crowded scene to detect the abnormal human behaviour. This
framework is attended to be able to achieve real-time alarming,
reducing the lags in traditional monitoring systems. This architecture
proposal addresses four main challenges: behaviour understanding in
crowded scenes, hard lighting conditions, multiple input kinds of
sensors and contextual-based adaptability to recognize the active
context of the scene.
Abstract: For stricter drinking water regulations in the future, reducing the humic acid and disinfection byproducts in raw water, namely, trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs) is worthy for research. To investigate the removal of waterborne organic material using a lab-scale of bio-activated carbon filter under different EBCT, the concentrations of humic acid prepared were 0.01, 0.03, 0.06, 0.12, 0.17, 0.23, and 0.29 mg/L. Then we conducted experiments using a pilot plant with in-field of the serially connected bio-activated carbon filters and hollow fiber membrane processes employed in traditional water purification plants. Results showed under low TOC conditions of humic acid in influent (0.69 to 1.03 mg TOC/L) with an EBCT of 30 min, 40 min, and 50 min, TOC removal rates increases with greater EBCT, attaining about 39 % removal rate. The removal rate of THMs and HAAs by BACF was 54.8 % and 89.0 %, respectively.
Abstract: Selective harmonic elimination-pulse width modulation techniques offer a tight control of the harmonic spectrum of a given voltage waveform generated by a power electronic converter along with a low number of switching transitions. Traditional optimization methods suffer from various drawbacks, such as prolonged and tedious computational steps and convergence to local optima; thus, the more the number of harmonics to be eliminated, the larger the computational complexity and time. This paper presents a novel method for output voltage harmonic elimination and voltage control of PWM AC/AC voltage converters using the principle of hybrid Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm-Pattern Search (RGA-PS) method. RGA is the primary optimizer exploiting its global search capabilities, PS is then employed to fine tune the best solution provided by RGA in each evolution. The proposed method enables linear control of the fundamental component of the output voltage and complete elimination of its harmonic contents up to a specified order. Theoretical studies have been carried out to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method of selective harmonic elimination. Theoretical results are validated through simulation studies using PSIM software package.
Abstract: This paper presents the application of an enhanced
Particle Swarm Optimization (EPSO) combined with Gaussian
Mutation (GM) for solving the Dynamic Economic Dispatch (DED)
problem considering the operating constraints of generators. The
EPSO consists of the standard PSO and a modified heuristic search
approaches. Namely, the ability of the traditional PSO is enhanced
by applying the modified heuristic search approach to prevent the
solutions from violating the constraints. In addition, Gaussian
Mutation is aimed at increasing the diversity of global search, whilst
it also prevents being trapped in suboptimal points during search. To
illustrate its efficiency and effectiveness, the developed EPSO-GM
approach is tested on the 3-unit and 10-unit 24-hour systems
considering valve-point effect. From the experimental results, it can
be concluded that the proposed EPSO-GM provides, the accurate
solution, the efficiency, and the feature of robust computation
compared with other algorithms under consideration.
Abstract: The explosive growth of World Wide Web has posed
a challenging problem in extracting relevant data. Traditional web
crawlers focus only on the surface web while the deep web keeps
expanding behind the scene. Deep web pages are created
dynamically as a result of queries posed to specific web databases.
The structure of the deep web pages makes it impossible for
traditional web crawlers to access deep web contents. This paper,
Deep iCrawl, gives a novel and vision-based approach for extracting
data from the deep web. Deep iCrawl splits the process into two
phases. The first phase includes Query analysis and Query translation
and the second covers vision-based extraction of data from the
dynamically created deep web pages. There are several established
approaches for the extraction of deep web pages but the proposed
method aims at overcoming the inherent limitations of the former.
This paper also aims at comparing the data items and presenting them
in the required order.
Abstract: Distance visualization of large datasets often takes the direction of remote viewing and zooming techniques of stored static images. However, the continuous increase in the size of datasets and visualization operation causes insufficient performance with traditional desktop computers. Additionally, the visualization techniques such as Isosurface depend on the available resources of the running machine and the size of datasets. Moreover, the continuous demand for powerful computing powers and continuous increase in the size of datasets results an urgent need for a grid computing infrastructure. However, some issues arise in current grid such as resources availability at the client machines which are not sufficient enough to process large datasets. On top of that, different output devices and different network bandwidth between the visualization pipeline components often result output suitable for one machine and not suitable for another. In this paper we investigate how the grid services could be used to support remote visualization of large datasets and to break the constraint of physical co-location of the resources by applying the grid computing technologies. We show our grid enabled architecture to visualize large medical datasets (circa 5 million polygons) for remote interactive visualization on modest resources clients.
Abstract: One of the main consequences of the ubiquitous usage of Internet as a means to conduct business has been the progressive internationalization of contracts created to support such transactions. As electronic commerce becomes International commerce, the reality is that commercial disputes will occur creating such questions as: "In which country do I bring proceedings?" and "Which law is to be applied to solve disputes?" The decentralized and global structure of the Internet and its decentralized operation have given e-commerce a transnational element that affects two questions essential to any transaction: applicable law and jurisdiction in the event of dispute. The sharing of applicable law and jurisdiction among States in respect of international transactions traditionally has been based on the use of contact factors generally of a territorial nature (the place where real estate is located, customary residence, principal establishment, place of shipping goods). The characteristics of the Internet as a new space sometimes make it difficult to apply these rules, and may make them inoperative or lead to results that are surprising or totally foreign to the contracting parties and other elements and circumstances of the case.
Abstract: Green propellants used for satellite-level propulsion
system become attractive in recent years because the non-toxicity and
lower requirements of safety protection. One of the green propellants,
high-concentration hydrogen peroxide H2O2 solution (≥70% w/w,
weight concentration percentage), often known as high-test peroxide
(HTP), is considered because it is ITAR-free, easy to manufacture and
the operating temperature is lower than traditional monopropellant
propulsion. To establish satellite propulsion technology, the National
Space Organization (NSPO) in Taiwan has initialized a long-term
cooperation project with the National Cheng Kung University to
develop compatible tank and thruster. An experimental propulsion
payload has been allocated for the future self-reliant satellite to
perform orbit transfer and maintenance operations. In the present
research, an 1-Newton thruster prototype is designed and the thrusting
force is measured by a pendulum-type platform. The preliminary
hot-firing test at ambient environment showed the generated thrust and
the specific impulse are about 0.7 Newton and 102 seconds,
respectively.
Abstract: The Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) plays a
vital role in automation and process control. Grafcet is used for
representing the control logic, and traditional programming
languages are used for describing the pure algorithms. Grafcet is used
for dividing the process to be automated in elementary sequences that
can be easily implemented. Each sequence represent a step that has
associated actions programmed using textual or graphical languages
after case. The programming task is simplified by using a set of
subroutines that are used in several steps. The paper presents an
example of implementation for a punching machine for sheets and
plates. The use the graphical languages the programming of a
complex sequential process is a necessary solution. The state of
Grafcet can be used for debugging and malfunction determination.
The use of the method combined with a set of knowledge acquisition
for process application reduces the downtime of the machine and
improve the productivity.
Abstract: An experiment was conducted on the comparative
study of drip and furrow irrigation methods at the farmer-s field in
Umar Kot. The total area under experiment about 4000m2 was
divided into two equal portions. One portion about 40m X 50m was
occupied by drip and the other portion about 40m X 50m by furrow
irrigation method. Soil at the experimental site was clay loam in
texture for 0-60cm depth; average dry bulk density and field capacity
was 1.16g/cm3 and 28.5% respectively. The results reveal that the
drip irrigation method saved 56.4% water and gave 22% more yield
as compared to that of furrow irrigation method. Higher water use
efficiency about 4.87 was obtained in drip irrigation method; whereas
lower water used efficiency about 1.66 was obtained in furrow
irrigation method. The present study suggests farming community to
adopt drip irrigation method instead of old traditional flooding
methods.
Abstract: The fact that traditional food safety system in the
absence of food safety culture is inadequate has recently become a
cause of concern for food safety professionals and other stakeholders.
Focusing on implementation of traditional food safety system i.e
HACCP prerequisite program and HACCP without the presence of
food safety culture in the food industry has led to the processing,
marketing and distribution of contaminated foods. The results of this
are regular out breaks of food borne illnesses and recalls of foods
from retail outlets with serious consequences to the consumers and
manufacturers alike. This article will consider the importance of food
safety culture, the cases of outbreaks and recalls that occurred when
companies did not make food safety culture a priority. Most
importantly, the food safety cultures of some food industries in South
Africa were assessed from responses to questionnaires from food
safety/food industry professionals in Durban South Africa. The
article was concluded by recommending that both food
industry employees and employers alike take food safety culture
seriously.
Abstract: The direct discharge of palm oil mill effluent (POME) wastewater causes serious environmental pollution due to its high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Traditional ways for POME treatment have both economical and environmental disadvantages. In this study, a membrane anaerobic system (MAS) was used as an alternative, cost effective method for treating POME. Six steady states were attained as a part of a kinetic study that considered concentration ranges of 8,220 to 15,400 mg/l for mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) and 6,329 to 13,244 mg/l for mixed liquor volatile suspended solids (MLVSS). Kinetic equations from Monod, Contois and Chen & Hashimoto were employed to describe the kinetics of POME treatment at organic loading rates ranging from 2 to 13 kg COD/m3/d. throughout the experiment, the removal efficiency of COD was from 94.8 to 96.5% with hydraulic retention time, HRT from 400.6 to 5.7 days. The growth yield coefficient, Y was found to be 0.62gVSS/g COD the specific microorganism decay rate was 0.21 d-1 and the methane gas yield production rate was between 0.25 l/g COD/d and 0.58 l/g COD/d. Steady state influent COD concentrations increased from 18,302 mg/l in the first steady state to 43,500 mg/l in the sixth steady state. The minimum solids retention time, which was obtained from the three kinetic models ranged from 5 to 12.3 days. The k values were in the range of 0.35 – 0.519 g COD/ g VSS • d and values were between 0.26 and 0.379 d-1. The solids retention time (SRT) decreased from 800 days to 11.6 days. The complete treatment reduced the COD content to 2279 mg/l equivalent to a reduction of 94.8% reduction from the original.
Abstract: Object Relational Databases (ORDB) are complex in
nature than traditional relational databases because they combine the
characteristics of both object oriented concepts and relational
features of conventional databases. Design of an ORDB demands
efficient and quality schema considering the structural, functional
and componential traits. This internal quality of the schema is
assured by metrics that measure the relevant attributes. This is
extended to substantiate the understandability, usability and
reliability of the schema, thus assuring external quality of the
schema. This work institutes a formalization of ORDB metrics;
metric definition, evaluation methodology and the calibration of the
metric. Three ORDB schemas were used to conduct the evaluation
and the formalization of the metrics. The metrics are calibrated using
content and criteria related validity based on the measurability,
consistency and reliability of the metrics. Nominal and summative
scales are derived based on the evaluated metric values and are
standardized. Future works pertaining to ORDB metrics forms the
concluding note.
Abstract: This paper aims to address the new trend of social
commerce as electronic commerce leverages Web 2.0 technologies
and online social media. The infusions of new technologies on the
World Wide Web connect users in their homes and workplaces,
thus transforming social formations and business transactions. An
in-depth study of the growth and success of a social commerce site,
Facebook was conducted. The investigation is finalized with a triad
relational model which reflects socioeconomic life in the Internet
today. The following three concepts work jointly to form a global
community that has already started to take the place of traditional
commerce and socialization: Web 2.0 technology, E-commerce,
and online social media. A discussion of the research findings
indicates that social commerce networks are sustainable because of
the various incentives given to users as they collaborate with others
regardless of their identity and location. The focus of this article is
to increase understanding on quickly developing Web 2.0 based
social media and their subsequent effects on the emerging social
commerce.
Abstract: Landscape connectivity combines a description of the
physical structure of the landscape with special species- response to
that structure, which forms the theoretical background of applying
landscape connectivity principles in the practices of landscape
planning and design. In this study, a residential development project in
the southern United States was used to explore the meaning of
landscape connectivity and its application in town planning. The vast
rural landscape in the southern United States is conspicuously
characterized by the hedgerow trees or groves. The patchwork
landscape of fields surrounded by high hedgerows is a traditional and
familiar feature of the American countryside. Hedgerows are in effect
linear strips of trees, groves, or woodlands, which are often critical
habitats for wildlife and important for the visual quality of the
landscape. Based on geographic information system (GIS) and
statistical analysis (FRAGSTAT), this study attempts to quantify the
landscape connectivity characterized by hedgerows in south Alabama
where substantial areas of authentic hedgerow landscape are being
urbanized due to the ever expanding real estate industry and high
demand for new residential development. The results of this study
shed lights on how to balance the needs of new urban development and
biodiversity conservation by maintaining a higher level of landscape
connectivity, thus will inform the design intervention.
Abstract: Cybercrime is now becoming a big challenge in Nigeria apart from the traditional crime. Inability to identify perpetrators is one of the reasons for the growing menace. This paper proposes a design for monitoring internet users’ activities in order to curbing cybercrime. It requires redefining the operations of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which will now mandate users to be authenticated before accessing the internet. In implementing this work which can be adapted to a larger scale, a virtual router application is developed and configured to mimic a real router device. A sign-up portal is developed to allow users to register with the ISP. The portal asks for identification information which will include bio-data and government issued identification data like National Identity Card number, et cetera. A unique username and password are chosen by the user to enable access to the internet which will be used to reference him to an Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) of any system he uses on the internet and thereby associating him to any criminal act related to that IP address at that particular time. Questions such as “What happen when another user knows the password and uses it to commit crime?” and other pertinent issues are addressed.
Abstract: Nowadays wireless technology plays an important
role in public and personal communication. However, the growth of
wireless networking has confused the traditional boundaries between
trusted and untrusted networks. Wireless networks are subject to a
variety of threats and attacks at present. An attacker has the ability to
listen to all network traffic which becoming a potential intrusion.
Intrusion of any kind may lead to a chaotic condition. In addition,
improperly configured access points also contribute the risk to
wireless network. To overcome this issue, a security solution that
includes an intrusion detection and prevention system need to be
implemented. In this paper, first the security drawbacks of wireless
network will be analyzed then investigate the characteristics and also
the limitations on current wireless intrusion detection and prevention
system. Finally, the requirement of next wireless intrusion prevention
system will be identified including some key issues which should be
focused on in the future to overcomes those limitations.