Abstract: Innovations not only contribute to competitiveness of
the company but have also positive effects on revenues. On average,
product innovations account to 14 percent of companies’ sales.
Innovation management has substantially changed during the last
decade, because of growing reliance on external partners. As a
consequence, a new task for purchasing arises, as firms need to
understand which suppliers actually do have high potential
contributing to the innovativeness of the firm and which do not.
Proper organization of the purchasing function is important since
for the majority of manufacturing companies deal with substantial
material costs which pass through the purchasing function. In the past
the purchasing function was largely seen as a transaction-oriented,
clerical function but today purchasing is the intermediate with supply
chain partners contributing to innovations, be it product or process
innovations. Therefore, purchasing function has to be organized
differently to enable firm innovation potential.
However, innovations are inherently risky. There are behavioral
risk (that some partner will take advantage of the other party),
technological risk in terms of complexity of products and processes
of manufacturing and incoming materials and finally market risks,
which in fact judge the value of the innovation. These risks are
investigated in this work. Specifically, technological risks which deal
with complexity of the products, and processes will be investigated
more thoroughly. Buying components or such high edge technologies
necessities careful investigation of technical features and therefore is
usually conducted by a team of experts. Therefore it is hypothesized
that higher the technological risk, higher will be the centralization of
the purchasing function as an interface with other supply chain
members.
Main contribution of this research lies is in the fact that analysis
was performed on a large data set of 1493 companies, from 25
countries collected in the GMRG 4 survey. Most analyses of
purchasing function are done by case study analysis of innovative
firms. Therefore this study contributes with empirical evaluations that
can be generalized.
Abstract: The organizations of European and Czech critical
infrastructure have specific position, mission, characteristics and
behaviour in European Union and Czech state/business environments,
regarding specific requirements for regional and global security
environments. They must respect policy of national security and
global rules, requirements and standards in all their inherent and
outer processes of supply - customer chains and networks. A
controlling is generalized capability to have control over situational
policy. This paper aims and purposes are to introduce the controlling
as quite new necessary process attribute providing for critical
infrastructure is environment the capability and profit to achieve its
commitment regarding to the effectiveness of the quality
management system in meeting customer/ user requirements and also
the continual improvement of critical infrastructure organization’s
processes overall performance and efficiency, as well as its societal
security via continual planning improvement via DYVELOP
modelling.
Abstract: A total of 150 meat type chickens comprising 50 each
of Arbor Acre, Marshall and Ross were used for this study which
lasted for 10 weeks at the Federal University of Agriculture,
Abeokuta, Nigeria. Growth performance data were collected from the
third week through week 10 and data obtained were analysed using
the Generalized Linear Model Procedure. Heritability estimates (h2)
for body dimensions carried out on the chicken strains ranged from
low to high. Marshall broiler chicken strain had the highest h2 for
body weight 0.46±0.04, followed by Arbor Acre and Ross with h2
being 0.38±0.12 and 0.26±0.06, respectively. The repeatability
estimates for body weight in the three broiler strains were high, and it
ranged from 0.70 at week 4 to 0.88 at week 10. Relationships
between the body weight and linear body measurements in the broiler
chicken strains were positive and highly significant (p > 0.05).
Abstract: This paper presents a 3D guidance scheme for
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The proposed guidance scheme
is based on the sliding mode approach using nonlinear sliding
manifolds. Generalized 3D kinematic equations are considered
here during the design process to cater for the coupling between
longitudinal and lateral motions. Sliding mode based guidance
scheme is then derived for the multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) system using the proposed nonlinear manifolds. Instead of
traditional sliding surfaces, nonlinear sliding surfaces are proposed
here for performance and stability in all flight conditions. In the
reaching phase control inputs, the bang-bang terms with signum
functions are accompanied with proportional terms in order to reduce
the chattering amplitudes. The Proposed 3D guidance scheme is
implemented on a 6-degrees-of-freedom (6-dof) simulation of a UAV
and simulation results are presented here for different 3D trajectories
with and without disturbances.
Abstract: A generalized vortex lattice method for complex
lifting surfaces with flap and aileron deflection is formulated. The
method is not restricted by the linearized theory assumption and
accounts for all standard geometric lifting surface parameters:
camber, taper, sweep, washout, dihedral, in addition to flap and
aileron deflection. Thickness is not accounted for since the physical
lifting body is replaced by a lattice of panels located on the mean
camber surface. This panel lattice setup and the treatment of different
wake geometries is what distinguish the present work form the
overwhelming majority of previous solutions based on the vortex
lattice method. A MATLAB code implementing the proposed
formulation is developed and validated by comparing our results to
existing experimental and numerical ones and good agreement is
demonstrated. It is then used to study the accuracy of the widely used
classical vortex-lattice method. It is shown that the classical approach
gives good agreement in the clean configuration but is off by as much
as 30% when a flap or aileron deflection of 30° is imposed. This
discrepancy is mainly due the linearized theory assumption
associated with the conventional method. A comparison of the effect
of four different wake geometries on the values of aerodynamic
coefficients was also carried out and it is found that the choice of the
wake shape had very little effect on the results.
Abstract: The generalized wave equation models various
problems in sciences and engineering. In this paper, a new three-time
level implicit approach based on cubic trigonometric B-spline for the
approximate solution of wave equation is developed. The usual finite
difference approach is used to discretize the time derivative while
cubic trigonometric B-spline is applied as an interpolating function in
the space dimension. Von Neumann stability analysis is used to
analyze the proposed method. Two problems are discussed to exhibit
the feasibility and capability of the method. The absolute errors and
maximum error are computed to assess the performance of the
proposed method. The results were found to be in good agreement
with known solutions and with existing schemes in literature.
Abstract: The growth of wireless devices affects the availability
of limited frequencies or spectrum bands as it has been known that
spectrum bands are a natural resource that cannot be added.
Meanwhile, the licensed frequencies are idle most of the time.
Cognitive radio is one of the solutions to solve those problems.
Cognitive radio is a promising technology that allows the unlicensed
users known as secondary users (SUs) to access licensed bands
without making interference to licensed users or primary users (PUs).
As cloud computing has become popular in recent years, cognitive
radio networks (CRNs) can be integrated with cloud platform. One of
the important issues in CRNs is security. It becomes a problem since
CRNs use radio frequencies as a medium for transmitting and CRNs
share the same issues with wireless communication systems. Another
critical issue in CRNs is performance. Security has adverse effect to
performance and there are trade-offs between them. The goal of this
paper is to investigate the performance related to security trade-off in
CRNs with supporting cloud platforms. Furthermore, Queuing
Network Models with preemptive resume and preemptive repeat
identical priority are applied in this project to measure the impact of
security to performance in CRNs with or without cloud platform. The
generalized exponential (GE) type distribution is used to reflect the
bursty inter-arrival and service times at the servers. The results show
that the best performance is obtained when security is disabled and
cloud platform is enabled.
Abstract: Fluid rheology may have essential impact on sound propagation in a liquid-filled pipe, especially, in a low frequency range. Rheological parameters of liquid are temperature-sensitive, which ultimately results in a temperature dependence of the wave speed and attenuation in the waveguide. The study is devoted to modeling of this effect at sound propagation in an elastic pipe with polymeric liquid, described by generalized Maxwell model with non-zero high-frequency viscosity. It is assumed that relaxation spectrum is distributed according to the Spriggs law; temperature impact on the liquid rheology is described on the basis of the temperature-superposition principle and activation theory. The dispersion equation for the waveguide, considered as a thin-walled tube with polymeric solution, is obtained within a quasi-one-dimensional formulation. Results of the study illustrate the influence of temperature on sound propagation in the system.
Abstract: The effect of non-homogeneity on the free transverse vibration of thin rectangular plates of bilinearly varying thickness has been analyzed using generalized differential quadrature (GDQ) method. The non-homogeneity of the plate material is assumed to arise due to linear variations in Young’s modulus and density of the plate material with the in-plane coordinates x and y. Numerical results have been computed for fully clamped and fully simply supported boundary conditions. The solution procedure by means of GDQ method has been implemented in a MATLAB code. The effect of various plate parameters has been investigated for the first three modes of vibration. A comparison of results with those available in literature has been presented.
Abstract: This paper proposes a GLMM with spatial and
temporal effects for malaria data in Thailand. A Bayesian method is
used for parameter estimation via Gibbs sampling MCMC. A
conditional autoregressive (CAR) model is assumed to present the
spatial effects. The temporal correlation is presented through the
covariance matrix of the random effects. The malaria quarterly data
have been extracted from the Bureau of Epidemiology, Ministry of
Public Health of Thailand. The factors considered are rainfall and
temperature. The result shows that rainfall and temperature are
positively related to the malaria morbidity rate. The posterior means
of the estimated morbidity rates are used to construct the malaria
maps. The top 5 highest morbidity rates (per 100,000 population) are
in Trat (Q3, 111.70), Chiang Mai (Q3, 104.70), Narathiwat (Q4,
97.69), Chiang Mai (Q2, 88.51), and Chanthaburi (Q3, 86.82).
According to the DIC criterion, the proposed model has a better
performance than the GLMM with spatial effects but without
temporal terms.
Abstract: In review the generalized data about different methods of synthesis of biological activity acylatedhydrohyanthraquinones is presented. The basic regularity of a synthesis is analyzed. Action of temperature, pH, solubility, catalysts and other factors on a reaction product yield is revealed.
Abstract: Several researches have been conducted to study
consumption of energy in cutting process. Most of these researches
are focusing to measure the consumption and propose consumption
reduction methods. In this work, the relation between the cutting
parameters and the consumption is investigated in order to establish a
generalized energy consumption model that can be used for process
and production planning in real production lines. Using the
generalized model, the process planning will be carried out by taking
into account the energy as a function of the selected process
parameters. Similarly, the generalized model can be used in
production planning to select the right operational parameters like
batch sizes, routing, buffer size, etc. in a production line. The
description and derivation of the model as well as a case study are
given in this paper to illustrate the applicability and validity of the
model.
Abstract: The typical insects employ a flapping-wing mode of flight. The numerical simulations on free flight of a model fruit fly (Re=143) including hovering and are presented in this paper. Unsteady aerodynamics around a flapping insect is studied by solving the three-dimensional Newtonian dynamics of the flyer coupled with Navier-Stokes equations. A hybrid-grid scheme (Generalized Finite Difference Method) that combines great geometry flexibility and accuracy of moving boundary definition is employed for obtaining flow dynamics. The results show good points of agreement and consistency with the outcomes and analyses of other researchers, which validate the computational model and demonstrate the feasibility of this computational approach on analyzing fluid phenomena in insect flight. The present modeling approach also offers a promising route of investigation that could complement as well as overcome some of the limitations of physical experiments in the study of free flight aerodynamics of insects. The results are potentially useful for the design of biomimetic flapping-wing flyers.
Abstract: In order to study the performance of dynamic positioning system during S-lay operations, dynamic positioning system is simulated with the hull-stinger-pipe coupling effect. The roller of stinger is simulated by the generalized elastic contact theory. The stinger is composed of Morrison members. Force on pipe is calculated by lumped mass method. Time domain of fully coupled barge model is analyzed combining with PID controller, Kalman filter and allocation of thrust using Sequential Quadratic Programming method. It is also analyzed that the effect of hull wave frequency motion on pipe-stinger coupling force and dynamic positioning system. Besides, it is studied that how S-lay operations affect the dynamic positioning accuracy. The simulation results are proved to be available by checking pipe stress with API criterion. The effect of heave and yaw motion cannot be ignored on hull-stinger-pipe coupling force and dynamic positioning system. It is important to decrease the barge’s pitch motion and lay pipe in head sea in order to improve safety of the S-lay installation and dynamic positioning.
Abstract: We have considered the harmonic oscillations and general dynamic (pseudo oscillations) systems of theory generalized Green-Lindsay of couple-stress thermo-elasticity for isotropic, homogeneous elastic media. Approximate solution of some mixed boundary value problems for finite domain, bounded by the some closed surface are constructed.
Abstract: Based on the kinematic approach of limit analysis, a full set of upper bound solutions for the stability of homogeneous rock slopes subjected to tension cracks are obtained. The generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion is employed to describe the non-linear strength envelope of rocks. In this paper, critical failure mechanisms are determined for cracks of known depth but unspecified location, cracks of known location but unknown depth, and cracks of unspecified location and depth. It is shown that there is a nearly up to 50% drop in terms of the stability factors for the rock slopes intersected by a tension crack compared with intact ones. Tables and charts of solutions in dimensionless forms are presented for ease of use by practitioners.
Abstract: In this paper, we present new preconditioned generalized mixed-type splitting (GMTS) methods for solving weighted linear least square problems. We compare the spectral radii of the iteration matrices of the preconditioned and the original methods. The comparison results show that the preconditioned GMTS methods converge faster than the GMTS method whenever the GMTS method is convergent. Finally, we give a numerical example to confirm our theoretical results.
Abstract: Beginning with the debate of concept, this essay explains the historical source and development of flexible housing in China. In the former part, the flexibility contained in traditional house is explored. While in the latter, the relevant practices in modern times are systematically analyzed as three phases–the Embryonic Period (1949 - 1980), the Systematic Practice (1981 - 2000), as well as the Integrated Trend and Prosperity (2001 - present). As a conclusion, the generalized flexibility is tentatively discussed.
Abstract: The generalized Higham matrix is a complex symmetric matrix A = B + iC, where both B ∈ Cn×n and C ∈ Cn×n are Hermitian positive definite, and i = √−1 is the imaginary unit. The growth factor in Gaussian elimination is less than 3√2 for this kind of matrices. In this paper, we give a new brief proof on this result by different techniques, which can be understood very easily, and obtain some new findings.
Abstract: The study aimed to investigate whether the affect (experience of feeling or emotion) of ethnic minority people can be predicted by gender and marital status. Toward this end, positive affect and negative affect of 103 adult indigenous persons were measured. Analysis of data in multiple regressions demonstrated that both gender and marital status are significantly associated with positive affect (Gender: β=.318, p