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In supply chain inventory management it is generally accepted that safety stocks are a suitable strategy to deal with demand and supply uncertainty aiming to prevent inventory stock-outs. Safety stocks have been the subject of intensive research, typically covering the problems of dimensioning, positioning, managing and placement. Here, we narrow the scope of the discussion to the safety stock dimensioning problem, consisting in determining the proper safety stock level for each product. This paper reports the results of a recent in-depth systematic literature review (SLR) of operations research (OR) models and methods for dimensioning safety stocks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of the application of OR-based approaches to investigate this problem. A set of 95 papers published from 1977 to 2019 has been reviewed to identify the type of model being employed, as well as the modeling techniques and main performance criteria used. At the end, we highlight current literature gaps and discuss potential research directions and trends that may help to guide researchers and practitioners interested in the development of new OR-based approaches for safety stock determination., This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020, and by the European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Program (COMPETE 2020) [Project no. 39479, Funding reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-39479].

Selecting sampling points to monitor traces of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage at the intra-urban scale is no trivial task given the complexity of the networks and the multiple technical, economic and socio-environmental constraints involved. This paper proposes two algorithms for the automatic selection of sampling locations in sewage networks. The first algorithm, is for the optimal selection of a predefined number of sampling locations ensuring maximum coverage of inhabitants and minimum overlapping amongst selected sites (static approach). The second is for establishing a strategy of iterations of sample&analysis to identify patient zero and hot spots of COVID-19 infected inhabitants in cities (dynamic approach). The algorithms are based on graph-theory and are coupled to a greedy optimization algorithm. The usefulness of the algorithms is illustrated in the case study of Girona (NE Iberian Peninsula, 148,504 inhabitants). The results show that the algorithms are able to automatically propose locations for a given number of stations. In the case of Girona, always covering more than 60% of the manholes and with less than 3% of them overlapping amongst stations. Deploying 5, 6 or 7 stations results in more than 80% coverage in manholes and more than 85% of the inhabitants. For the dynamic sensor placement, we demonstrate that assigning infection probabilities to each manhole as a function of the number of inhabitants connected reduces the number of iterations required to detect the zero patient and the hot spot areas Lluís Corominas acknowledges the Ministry of Economy and competitiveness for the Ramon and Cajal grant (RYC-2013-14595) and its corresponding I3 consolidation. The authors acknowledge the project VirWASTE (2020PANDE00044) funded by AGAUR. The authors acknowledge the CLEaN-TOUR (CTM2017-85385-C2-1-R) and INVEST (RTI2018-097471-B-C21) projects from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and thank Generalitat de Catalu-nya through Consolidated Research Group 2017 SGR 1318. ICRA researchers thank funding from the CERCA program. UdG researchers thank funding from Red tem´atica Go2Edge (Ref.: RED2018-102585-T) and Ajut PontUdG2020/ 23

This paper describes different aspects of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), presents visualization of the spread of the infection, and discusses the potential applications of data analytics on this viral infection. Firstly, a literature survey is done on COVID-19 highlighting a number of factors including its origin, its similarity with previous coronaviruses, its transmission capacity, its symptoms, etc. Secondly, data analytics is applied on a dataset of Johns Hopkins University to find out the spread of the viral infection. It is shown here that although the disease started in China in December 2019, the highest number of confirmed cases up to June 04, 2020 is in the USA. Thirdly, the worldwide increase in the number of confirmed cases over time is modelled here using a polynomial regression algorithm with degree 2. Fourthly, classification algorithms are applied on a dataset of 5644 samples provided by Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein of Brazil in order to diagnose COVID-19. It is shown here that multilayer perceptron (MLP), XGBoost and logistic regression can classify COVID-19 patients at an accuracy above 91%. Finally, a discussion is presented on the potential applications of data analytics in several important factors of COVID-19.

International audience; 4D modeling has been an applied research area for around two decades since the first seminal works in the nineties. In the last years, a number of case studies have been published both for demonstrating the various applications of 4D and for assessing technological propositions. However, in most papers only little place is given to the particular content of 4D models. In parallel, following the growing implementation of Building Information Modeling, 4D modeling process is usually recognized as a “BIM use”. In BIM implementations and protocols, the Level Of Development of datasets is a fundamental issue. This paper describes the application of two distinct “4D uses” conducted on a single pilot project. They aim to assess the levels of graphical and temporal details required for the implemented uses. The authors finally discuss the diversity of 4D uses with 4D models, both planned or ad-hoc, as well as the logical understanding related to 4D LOD.

Nowadays architects are challenged by constantly evolving technology and, in consequence, are provoked to explore undiscovered domains. The masterpieces of contemporary architecture would not be possible without advanced information technology. As a result, it evokes constant challenges and requirements of the education process. The paper, based on the author's pedagogical experience, addresses methods for teaching/learning of computer aided design in a changing and challenging educational setting. The impact of the Bologna Process and implementation of the Bloom's taxonomy on the assessments’ requirements are stressed. The results of students’ selected semester projects and workshops are presented, and teaching methods are discussed. Various modes of teaching applied in the projects are presented, including group work, workshop and problem based learning as compared to instructional courses. On the basis of the analytical, systematic overview of teaching experiences and approaches the paper concludes with posing some questions concerning the best methods to achieve intellectually satisfying results of high quality.

Proposed paper reports a project of dissertation thesis realized at Faculty of Education of Trnava University in Trnava (Slovak Republic). Research project of dissertation thesis is oriented towards a problem of didactics of education of programming at university, concretely by application of new teaching procedures in scope of introductory courses of programming in study field Teaching of Academic Subjects of programme combinations including Computer Science as one of subject. It concerns with application of new-developed class groups for Java, which is a part of micro-environment implementation, applying inter alia principles of Turtle graphics, well-known from programming language Logo. Problem of programming is for most of admitted students unknown at all. That causes their disorientation and involves teaching of essential fundaments required. That is a purpose of new procedure formation in scope of teaching of introductory courses of programming. Class groups of graphical robot aim to joint future-teacher of Computer Science preparation for programming by usage of graphical Logo principles with teaching of Java programming together. In research Design-Based Research as qualitative research method is used. In paper we describe prime phase of dissertation project (phase of analysis) and interpret findings and recommendations for following project phases, aimed to propose an innovative method applied within introductory courses of programming, to develop adequate device for its realization and to reflect their relevance. Outcome thesis will partially support Education Sciences development.

This paper studies the evaluation system of urban expressway schemes. By comparing the most widely-used evaluation methods, analytic hierarchy process method is selected to build the framework of the indexes system. After the classification and screening, technical indexes, economic indexes, construction indexes and environmental indexes are selected as the first grade containing second representative indexes. The methods to define and to quantify these qualitative evaluation indexes and determination of the weight of each index are studied in this paper. Next, the evaluation value is calculated by establish mathematical model with fuzzy evaluation method and gray correlation analysis method, so the optimal scheme can be gained by sorting analysis. Finally, an urban expressway of Nantong as an example is evaluated according this system to verify the correctness of this evaluation method. In general, the research presents a specific method of urban expressway scheme evaluation, quantifies each scheme into specific value in order to make comparison easy, and provides a reference for future evaluation.

The paper is devoted to teaching language for specific profession-related purposes to engineering students and lecturers. The authors associate the teaching process with using the metaplan technique as the information basis of oral speech. The paper characterizes heterogeneous sign elements of a metaplan as material and ideal teaching media and reveals the mechanism of expanding compressed metaplan information. The mechanism is based on developing speaking skills in lexico-grammatical and semantic expansion of verbal information and intersemiotic translation of extralinguistic information into speech register. The authors have developed a set of exercises with due consideration of actual second-language speaking situations encountered by engineering specialists.

This paper describes preliminary results of research related to programming teaching tools. This study focuses on the key issues being highlighted in this research. Among the research questions of the study are: What are the important issues in programming teaching and learning research? What are the methods of the research? What kind of tools involved in programming teaching and learning? What is the level of programming involved? The study applies systematic review approach to 45 research papers derived from the ACM digital database, published between 2005 and 2011. The study found six issues related to programming teaching tools, and most of the issues concern on the techniques and methods used in teaching, learning and assessment. Regarding the level of programming involved, majority of the research focuses on introductory stage.

At universities students have to possess well-developed academic skills, such as making oral presentations, extracting the key information from the scientific texts or taking notes, in order to succeed in their studies. The article addresses one of such skills, i.e. writing an abstract/a summary, which students usually write on a weekly basis during their university studies and, particularly, when they have to write a longer seminar paper, a bachelor paper or a dissertation. Therefore, the article discusses how this type of scientific writing should look like and provide a few tips of completing it. In conclusion, a specific teaching example is outlined.

It is fair to say that English language teaching has always been teaching for special purposes, however since the 1960's, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown to become one of the most important areas of English as a Second Language (ESL). Consequently there has been a notable increase in courses, materials and methodologies. However, despite its reasonably long history the ESP community doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of what ESP means. This paper aims to examine the teaching of (ESP) in the tertiary level of the education system. It will consider the emergence of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and how this approach gave way to other approaches, focusing on English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP The paper will also consider factors of the local context; the students, the institution and issues related to the academic discipline and to assess to what extent these factors impinge upon methodologies, course design and classroom activities. In doing so I intend to describe and exemplify a pragmatic approach, which I call a parallel course approach, to teaching English for Special Academic Purposes and discuss the rationale for and nature of such an approach.

Modelling heterogeneous traffic flow for Asian countries is one of the emerging research areas in the past few years. The two main challenges in modelling are: capturing the effect of varying size of vehicles, and the lack in lane discipline, both of which together lead to the „capacity filling‟ behavior of vehicles. The same section length of the road can be occupied by different types of vehicles at the same time, and the conventional measure of traffic concentration, density (vehicles per lane per unit length), is not a good measure for heterogeneous traffic modelling. This paper addresses the above mentioned two challenges by extending the Aw-Rascle macroscopic model based on continuum theory using area occupancy for traffic concentration instead of density. The aim of the model is to have a parsimonious model of heterogeneous traffic for network wide applications that can capture unique phenomena in heterogeneous traffic flow such as capacity filling. The paper calibrates and validates the model using data from an arterial road in Chennai city.

In this paper we present cognitive mechanisms (applied and validated at various levels of the protocol stack) for supporting smart applications and services towards users. More specifically, we introduce the results of a pilot test that took place as an application of web-based learning systems. The instance used was the example of linguistics and more specifically the cognitive vocabulary learning system. In the context of this pilot the aim was to test if and how a web-based vocabulary learning system may indeed improve the learning process. More specifically, the focus was put on detecting the student's performance after taking a personalised course and a set of exercises/activities. The learning styles, the vocabulary level of each student and his/her technical background have been taken into consideration in developing the learning material. In the paper we showcase the results of this pilot test, when taking activities fully dependent on the environment. The statistical analysis of the results shows that the final success rate of the students in the exercises referring to the form, the meaning and the use of the vocabulary increases significantly.

This paper presents Large Eddy simulations of flow and acoustic computations around 2D and 3D airfoils using a novel type of mesh called voxel mesh. Voxel mesh refers to the mesh that has different number of nodes in the neighbouring cell layers. Voxel mesh has many advantages such as creating cells with minimum skewness, automatic mesh generation and uniformity in cell shapes and sizes. The voxel meshes aren’t yet validated in boundary layer computations. In this paper we validate the use of voxel meshes in boundary layer computations in 2D and 3D airfoils. Six cases were tried out in the research three 2D meshes and three 3D cases were tried out. Each case was simulated at Reynolds number 2.83×105 and attack angle of 90. Flow field computation was done by FrontFlowBlue-7.2 software the acoustic computation was done by using FrontFlowBlue-Acoustic2.2 software. The results obtained from the simulations were compared with the experimental values. The use of voxel meshes to resolve the boundary layer in turbulent fluid flows could be validated using 2D airfoils. Therefore voxel meshes were used in 3D airfoil flow computations. After successful flow computations the source fluctuations in the flow was used for the acoustic computations. The sound pressure levels computed from the acoustic computations were compared with the experimental values. Some oscillation in the pressure could be observed due to the step like structure at the surface of voxel mesh but these variations were less apparent in meshes that had smaller cells.

The application of pulsed electric field (PEF) technology as a non-thermal cell membrane permeabilization treatment, was widely demonstrated widely to be effective in microbial inactivation studies, as well as to increase the rates of heat and mass transfer phenomena in food and biotechnological processes (drying, osmotic treatment, freezing, extraction, and diffusion). Nevertheless, most published papers on the topic do not provide enough information for other researchers to assess results properly. A general rule/guidance in reporting experimental data and most of all exposure conditions, would be to report details to the extent that other researchers will be able to repeat, judge and evaluate experiments and data obtained. This is what is described in the present recommendation paper. Industrial relevance Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment is a promising technology that has received considerable attention in food and biotechnology related applications food and biotechnology related applications of PEF include: i) “cold” pasteurization of liquid foods and disinfection of wastewater by microbial inactivation ii) PEF-assisted processing (drying, extraction or expression)

This paper considers the stability of the dynamical system which arises when a responsive control system is utilised in a signal-controlled urban road network. In this case current traffic flows change current green-times (according to the responsive control policy) and current green-times change current delays and hence drivers' route choices and current flows. Simple networks only are considered; starting with a small symmetrical network with two routes and a traffic signal which follows the equisaturation control policy. The symmetrical equilibrium, with equal flows on both routes, is (under reasonable conditions) unstable. The paper then shows that, within the simple network considered, bottlenecks may be added which makes the symmetrical equilibrium stable for certain steady Origin-Destination loads. Finally the paper considers the stability of a similar asymmetrical network when a special responsive policy is used. Under natural conditions the network is shown to be stable under this policy for all feasible Origin-Destination loads. The stability proof given for this network is designed to generalise so as to apply to a general signal-controlled network under suitable conditions; however such a general stability proof is not included in this paper.

A number of accessible RDF stores are populating the linked open data world. The navigation on data reticular relationships is becoming every day more relevant. Several knowledge base present relevant links to common vocabularies while many others are going to be discovered increasing the reasoning capabilities of our knowledge base applications. In this paper, the Linked Open Graph, LOG, is presented. It is a web tool for collaborative browsing and navigation on multiple SPARQL entry points. The paper presented an overview of major problems to be addressed, a comparison with the state of the arts tools, and some details about the LOG graph computation to cope with high complexity of large Linked Open Dada graphs. The LOG.disit.org tool is also presented by means of a set of examples involving multiple RDF stores and putting in evidence the new provided features and advantages using dbPedia, Getty, Europeana, Geonames, etc. The LOG tool is free to be used, and it has been adopted, developed and/or improved in multiple projects: such as ECLAP for social media cultural heritage, Sii-Mobility for smart city, and ICARO for cloud ontology analysis, OSIM for competence/knowledge mining and analysis. LOG tool provides a large number of new features for managing LDs on web.Understanding RDF storesi s becoming a fundamental skill.Exploiting linked data without copying them locally is becoming a must.Managing complexity of Linked Data on web is needed.

Power systems need a safe management and power control. This means they are fault tolerant systems and specially need a strong safety of the processors, which have one of the most important tasks of the control. The paper presents how a processor can be modeled, what types of failures can appear in the functional state and the availability advanced modeling using discreet stochastic events models. The advanced Stochastic Petri Nets model proposed and used in this paper has a strong modeling power and this will be proved in comparison with classical availability models.

This paper presents several parallelization aspects of Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problems in computational mechanics when using an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) scheme. The physical domain of the coupled problem is then solved on two different zones: a first zone for the fluid dynamics and the fluid mesh deformation and a second one for the solid mechanics. The idea can be further extended by adding more Physics to the coupled system, such as heat transport (for fluid and solid) or excitable media, among many others. In this paper, the basic two premises are that all problems can already be solved individually in parallel with good scalability and that the coupled system is solved in a coupled way within the same code. The paper introduces the formulation, presents some parallelization issues and proposes how to attack them, presents some results and discuss them and draws some future lines.

2012 and 2013 have been challenging years for Computer Science (CS) education in the UK. After decades of national neglect, there has been a sudden impetus to reintroduce CS into the 11-16 age school curriculums. Immediate obstacles include a generation of children with no CS background and an estimated need for 20,000 new CS teachers - existing UK IT teachers being insufficiently qualified and experienced. The Computing at School (CAS) movement has been instrumental in this quantum transition from an IT to Computing syllabus, as have the British Computer Society (BCS), leading UK universities and a number of major international technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, IBM, British Telecom and Facebook.This paper discusses the background to this position and the progress being made to address these challenges. It describes, in particular, the work of the BCS-funded Glyndwr University ‘Turing Project’ in introducing Welsh high-school students and staff to high-level programming and ‘computational thinking’. The Turing Project uses an innovative combination of Lego NXT Mindstorm robots, Raspberry Pi computers and PicoBoard hardware together with the Robot C and Scratch programming platforms. The paper discusses initial objectives and the general approach, describes focused delivery across different age groups and ability ranges and presents results and analysis demonstrating the effectiveness of the programme. Lessons learnt and future directions are considered in conclusion.

The modeling of travel behavior is complicated by the joint and causal relationships among multiple endogenous variables. And it is generally accepted that commute mode choice and the choice of including intermediate activities on a work tour are interrelated. But the nature of the interrelationship is not clear. In order to give an in depth exploration on this, this paper presents a mathematical model to investigate the decision order of trip chaining and travel mode choice. By using household travel survey data from Beijing, China, this paper applies the co-evolutionary approach to capture the interrelationship between travel mode choice and trip chaining. The co-evolutionary approach is combined with two MNL models, one for travel mode choice and the other for trip chaining behavior. The empirical results show that the order of the transport mode and trip chaining decisions varied among commuters. But the pattern that trip chaining drives mode choice is the dominating trend.

In present there are a lot of software tools that can be used in Power Engineering laboratories in order to teach a large variety of phenomena. Some of them are dedicated for specific applications like simulation of transient phenomena of electromagnetic and some of them are general purpose tools for modeling and simulating dynamic systems. Technical literature presents a lot of comparison between such tools but the results are presented only from the perspective of research criteria. The scope of this paper is to present how to choose the right tool to be used in a specific laboratory, in order of a better understanding of the phenomena regarding a specific application of power system field. The paper presents a study case of a power system having two high voltage levels, modeled using two different tools: ATP-EMTP – dedicated software and MatLab Simulink – a general analyzing tool. The comparison is done for a power quality study.

In academia Plagiarism means copying of other work without author's permission. Presently available system mainly focuses on software plagiarism. They mainly based on token analysis, linguistic patterns, taxonomy and textual features. In this paper we mainly concentrate on research papers to check whether the documents are plagiarized or not. So far not much work has been done to detect plagiarism in research document. Our work focuses on the similarity of different simple equations present in a document. It can easily extract those equations from the documents, compare them even if the variables are changed in plagiarized document with the original one and can detect if the document is plagiarized or not. This method will not work if the research paper does not contain any equation.

This paper proposes a novel video steganography scheme for efficient and effective information hiding. In this era of Internet communication video is considered to be an effective and important tool for communication. Video steganography uses video as cover media for embedding secret data. A 3-3-2 LSB based scheme has been used as a base technique for video steganography. Imperceptibility and video quality are supposed to be two key parameters for deciding goodness of any steganographic scheme. Thus the base technique is enhanced using Genetic Algorithm (GA) which thrives to get an optimal imperceptibility of hidden data. An anti-steganalysis test is used to check for the innocence of the frame with respect to original frame. Experimental results show a substantial improvement in the Peak Signal Noise Ratio (PS NR) and Image Fidelity (IF) values after optimization over the base technique. Complexity analysis of the proposed method is also reported in the paper.

Programming courses are significant part of IT experts' education process. To being able to provide adequate teaching quality in such courses, lecturers should be exempted from routine tasks like source code compilation, testing and grading. Current computers are equipped with enough computational power to automat. These routine tasks. This paper discusse. The analysis and realization of such a system for user submitted automatic source code evaluation. The main system requirement wa. The safe runtime environment (sandbox) for executing potentially dangerous programs. Container based platform Docker was selected after research of ready to use sandbox technologies. This platform simplifies access to isolation mechanism which are implemented i. The current Linux kernel and provides API for system integration. The implemented system around Docker platform is named APAC (Automatic Programming Assignment Checker). I. The paper APAC's architecture and implementation are described and discussed. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article unde. The CC BY-NC-ND license.

Election is the ultimate event in which people express themselves to get the most appropriate leader based on majority interest. Among the campaign period, the interactions between swing voters make the election’s result unpredictable. This paper aims to measure the dynamic behavior among swing voters which is affected by the influence from people around the individual, the electability level of a candidate, and the loyalty threshold of a candidate’s voters. The purpose of this paper is to provide a simulation that accommodates all changes in continuous time, so the election result can be predicted dynamically. The influence factors and several additional settings will be analyzed carefully to provide a comprehensive simulation. Furthermore, the proposed setting will be used to test two hypotheses which are commonly known among election analysts. Moreover, the result will give a dynamic simulation which brings a new approach to understand the impact of applied campaign strategy. In other hand, this study also throws brighter understanding to the dynamic behavior of voters and gives feedback for campaign teams to develop a better strategy for increasing their candidates’ competitiveness. © 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICIBSoS 2012

Small computer software for analysis of stress concentration factors was developed at Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Sarajevo. Software name is AlfaK. Developing process of the software was presented in previous papers of same authors, in this paper testing of the software was done using numerical analysis. To test accuracy of AlfaK software, analysis of stress concentration factors was done numerically using CATIA V5 commercial software for characteristic geometrical changes in form. Obtained data from numerical analysis are used for comparison with results from AlfaK, and on that way, accuracy of AlfaK software is investigated.

Purpose: The main purpose of the paper should be presented – Information and communication technology (ICT) is becoming an integral part of other products and services, thereby increasing their added value and making processes and services provided to the population and to economic entities more effective. The paper aims to analyse selected aspects in the use of information and communication technology in selected EU countries in connection with “national models of behaviour”. Methodology: The methodology or theoretical approach should be described in brief on the basis of the type of paper – The economic theory that forms the essential basis of the model is adequately explained in the introductory section and serves as a basis for the drawing up of the model. Also used are methods of analysis and synthesis, and analyses using methods of descriptive statistics and methods of multivariate statistical analysis will be performed in order to obtain further information. The program Statistica 10 was also used for statistical data processing. Results: The main results and findings of the research should be presented – ICT provides large numbers of people with access to information, knowledge and education and thereby acts to increase their quality of life. The use of e-commerce by individuals and, in particular, households is relatively weak in certain EU countries in respect of an international comparison, a fact confirmed by multivariate analysis of the data. The theoretical contribution: The value and implications of the paper in the selected field, perspective or discipline should be indicated – There are significant differences in ICT access and use in individual EU countries. Indicators of the economic standard of individual countries may be used as a general criterion for estimating the intensity of ICT use, though the mentality of the population must also be taken into consideration. Practical implications (if applicable): This section should be included in research papers and, if possible, in theoretical papers as well – In the contemporary environment of the information society, attention is focused on the development of the global information environment (in particular the Internet), the scope and structure of its use (both by individuals and by households), and the qualitative standard of companies and entire sectors of the economy in the countries of the EU according to global statistics and analyses. The conclusions of these analyses presented in the paper show, however, that the state of preparedness of the user sphere and the public for the use of new information services and the mentality of the population must be taken into consideration to ensure the sustainability of development of ICT application.

This paper is aimed at increasing knowledge about uncertainties of measurements on Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs) by applying a model of corrections based on combining a Global Metric procedure, a Monte Carlo statistical analysis and a Neural Network method that links and commands both items. In fact, this paper analyses general criteria for using a variant of Monte Carlo method (π-Monte Carlo) not only in propagating uncertainties, but also as methodology using numerical simulation for collecting necessary information for such propagation. Viewpoint presented here provides a model that stands out with contributions to uncertainty of CMM in use, making it a task-oriented calibration alternative methodology applied to CMM with special guidance to industry.

Practical knowledge gained at university is an important subject for today's engineering major students. The paper proposes a learning by doing method and involves students attending the Electrical Power University. In this paper we developed an interface that simulates in Delphi the control monitors of the dispatchers. The program aims to deepen and test knowledge, but also follows the reaction capacity of the students. The student has the option to put himself in the dispatcher's place, commanding breakers and disconnectors. The program assists and notes all the student's moves and when he makes a mistake, it warns him about the error he has made. Another variable that the interface uses is reaction time, the student being penalized with a smaller grade if he does not make a decision in time. The program is structured in three difficulty levels, starting from an easy level in test 1 and reaching a medium to advanced level in test 3. At the end of the tests, the program shows the three test grades and their average. The student is also shown a list of all the areas where he failed and the bonuses for doing right and in time. This kind of program helps the student solidify his knowledge and test his abilities.

This paper outlines the preparatory scientific activities that should precede and accompany the design and development of a spaceborne instrument for Earth Observation (EO), to guarantee fitness for purpose, ensure quality and performance, and minimize risks. This roadmap is addressed to policy and decision makers, program managers, customers and users of remote sensing products, as well as scientists involved in this field, and aims to provide the necessary background and motivation for the many steps and processes that are necessary to conduct a successful spaceborne EO mission. The paper focuses on, and is limited to, the description of a comprehensive, ideal methodology; it does not address the needs of a particular mission, or the engineering processes of design and development of the satellite hardware that will meet the user expectations. It should prove useful for the competent authorities to understand the scope and purpose (as well as the reasons for the associated implied costs) of preparatory phases, for the users and customers to express their expectations in ways that are conducive to the definition of a spaceborne EO mission, and for the scientific community to logically derive measurement requirements that are actionable by engineers to design and implement a successful mission (including both space and ground segments) that delivers relevant remote sensing products to the users.

According to the ambiguity and uncertainty for evaluation on Modernization of the Inland Port and Shipping Management (MIPSM) as well as the deficiency of objectivity and accuracy for traditional evaluation methods, the paper establishes the index system for the evaluation based on Driving-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) model. Moreover, the paper determines the index weight based on Entropy Weight. Thus, the stage of development of MIPSM is determined according to the gray correlation degree between the evaluated objective and the stage of development. Credible results are obtained from the case application. Therefore, this research can provide a new way to evaluate the modernization of the inland port and shipping management.

The role of translation in our lives is of great importance as translation has always enriched human life as a tool for communication and sharing information across the world. However, it is observed that in the teaching of translation the literature is missing teaching materials for different genres. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that it is possible to teach different genres of translation through authentic materials with a special focus on teaching the translation of advertising. This study involves a suggested lesson plan which was conducted in a Translation Course in an English Language Teaching Department. The syllabus of the course is based on Reiss's Text-Type Approach in order to provide students with the translation of various genres and the lesson plan presented in this study is designed in accordance with The PPP Approach to Language Teaching. Thus, it also shares a common feature with language teaching studies. The materials used in this lesson plan were commercials, slogans and logos from daily life. Considering its real life function and being a sample translation lesson plan, this paper is assumed to be a creative and contributive study for the teaching of translation of advertising and genre-based teaching of translation in general. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Megacities over the developing world have been facing increased traffic problems, including congestion, pollution and accidents, which strongly call for a sustainable traffic management with clearly predefined goals and objectives. This paper aims to set a framework for traffic management and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications in urban areas to help address the traffic problems at regional level. Ten potential approaches to achieve sustainability in traffic management are formulated based on international experience. The paper highlights the role, functions and applications of ITS in the various approaches to achieve sustainability.

Although the integration of engineering data within the framework of product data management systems has been successful in the recent years, the holistic analysis (from a systems engineering perspective) of multi-disciplinary data or data based on different representations and tools is still not realized in practice. At the same time, the application of advanced data mining techniques to complete designs is very promising and bears a high potential for synergy between different teams in the development process. In this paper, we propose shape mining as a framework to combine and analyze data from engineering design across different tools and disciplines. In the first part of the paper, we introduce unstructured surface meshes as meta-design representations that enable us to apply sensitivity analysis, design concept retrieval and learning as well as methods for interaction analysis to heterogeneous engineering design data. We propose a new measure of relevance to evaluate the utility of a design concept. In the second part of the paper, we apply the formal methods to passenger car design. We combine data from different representations, design tools and methods for a holistic analysis of the resulting shapes. We visualize sensitivities and sensitive cluster centers (after feature reduction) on the car shape. Furthermore, we are able to identify conceptual design rules using tree induction and to create interaction graphs that illustrate the interrelation between spatially decoupled surface areas. Shape data mining in this paper is studied for a multi-criteria aerodynamic problem, i.e. drag force and rear lift, however, the extension to quality criteria from different disciplines is straightforward as long as the meta-design representation is still applicable.

The paper presents the ‘Marginal Activity Access Cost’, an accessibility indicator providing estimation in monetary terms of the impacts on mobility and on the environment of locating a single new activity in a specific zone of the urban area. In the first part of this paper, the new indicator is presented and compared to other accessibility indicators proposed in literature. In the second part, the MAAC is validated through an application to the urban area of Rome. The paper concludes with brief remarks on using the proposed accessibility indicator as index of performance for sustainable spatial planning.

Many difficult problem solving require computational intelligence. One of the major directions in artificial intelligence consists in the development of efficient computational intelligence algorithms, like: evolutionary algorithms, and neural networks. Systems, that operate in isolation or cooperate with each other, like mobile robots could use computational intelligence algorithms for different problems/tasks solving, however in their behavior could emerge an intelligence called system's intelligence, intelligence of a system. The traveling salesman problem TSP has a large application area. It is a well-known business problem. Maximum benefits TSP, price collecting TSP have a large number of economic applications. TSP is also used in the transport logic Raja, 2012. It also has a wide range of applicability in the mobile robotic agent path planning optimization. In this paper a mobile robotic agent's path planning will be discussed, using unsupervised neural networks for the TSP solving, and from the TSP results the finding of a closely optimal path between two points in the agent's working area. In the paper a modification of the criteria function of the winner neuron selection will also be presented. At the end of the paper measurement results will be presented.

The algorithmic thinking is important in all professions, not just in the engineering work. My experiences show that the creating of the algorithmic thinking by the girls in secondary grammar school and in the higher education needs more time and other teaching methods. The numbers of the girls in not-engineering program is higher than in the engineering programs. I evolved a different (game-based) method to teach programming and to help them to acquire the algorithmic thinking easier for my not-engineering students. I thought programming for Economic information technology students with two colleagues. My colleagues used the conventional teaching methods that they use with engineering students in teaching programming and I used my evolved way and we had the same time to teach the learning material. At the end of the semester I separated the paper results of students by different teaching methods and compared. My starting hypothesis was that the group that I used my evolved teaching methods would achieve better results in the papers. Significance level was 5% through the analysis. Significant divergence in knowledge of students who took part on my lectures and the students who followed the conventional way was found. The students could get a one mark better paper results when they followed my method to learn programming and pass the test in higher percent. We can say my evolved teaching method is productive, and the students get better result when writing papers. At the beginning of the second semester more than 70% of students chose my course to learn the next level of programming.

This paper presents a first draft of a model for curriculum development designed in the conceptual framework of the hyper- rationalistic pedagogy. Therefore, our idea to build a model of curriculum development is staked on two theoretical concepts: theory into practice and mereologic reasoning . We used the Posner's questions (1998) to analyze the curriculum development models: procedural question , descriptive question and conceptual question . Based on this conceptual question, we have analyzed several widely known and used curriculum development models. Consequently, was made a first draft of the hyper- rationalistic model of curriculum development. This paper presents that draft but in order to complete the model, our project provides another two research steps. These two steps consist in the implementation process of a randomized-block pedagogical experiment on two similar independent groups, made of 120 participants. After these final steps, we’ll be able to sustain the hyper-rationalistic model of curriculum development with empirical data.

This paper describes a stage in the COMENEGO project, which is creating comparable corpora of Business texts in order to distribute them among translation practitioners so that they can use this resource when translating economic, business or financial texts. This stage consists of discursive analysis of a pilot specialised corpus initially compiled in French and Spanish. Its textual resources are classified in different categories which need to be confirmed so that they can be useful when including them into the virtual platform which will allow users exploit the corpus and filter their searches according to their specific needs. The aim of this paper is to propose a discursive analysis approach based on the concept of ‘metadiscourse’ (Hyland, 2005).

The potential of GPU in scientific computation has been tested in many applications during recent years. CUDA, short for Compute Unified Device Architecture, is a solution of GPGPU proposed by Nvidia Corporation. Researchers can improve performance of programs and reduce time cost with CUDA involved. This paper presents a flow solver for two-dimensional airfoil governed by Euler equations on GPU using CUDA. Body-fitted structured mesh is employed here, and finite-volume method is used to obtain the solution. Since the number of concurrent threads supported by CUDA is very huge(more than 1015), the proposed solver uses a CUDA thread to calculate the flow variables for each cell of the mesh. Two dimensional CUDA blocks are used to manage threads in the application. This paper gives a performance comparison between GPU parallel implementation and CPU serial implementation, and the results show that the proposed method has good efficiency. As CUDA supports three dimensional thread blocks, the solver can be extended to three dimensional cases naturally.

The paper “Ways to streamline didactic communication” focuses on the particular applicative dimension, aiming direct approach of the communicational obstacle issue which, through the impact produced on didactic communication, causes difficulties on its efficient achievement. The paper has also analyzed the degree of development of communication skills in the educational binomial, while identifying as well the tools to stimulate them.

This paper is based on specific applications of Material Flow Theory (MFT) in industrial engineering material flow management (MFM). The accent is put on exploring different possibilities to increase productivity and profit in processing architectures using the MFM approach based on virtual modelling and simulation. In this context the paper presents a case study using virtual modelling of a flexible processing architecture and MFM simulation algorithms for diagnosis and optimization. The virtual model of the processing architecture will be used as a tool for identifying and eliminating the flow concentrators and obtaining an improved productivity of the system.

In the first part of the paper one can attest the fact that generally it is not possible to talk about the quality of education without mentioning school evaluation/assessment, especially methods and procedures regarding it. During the paper there are described some key words on evaluation/assessment, coming from points of view of educational experts. Pointing out the relationship/link between evaluation/assessment and quality/value, talking about the complex process of it, I assert that progress of Educational Sciences depends on some elements of methodology and experiments. During the second part concepts about the availability and fidelity, ways of tackling evaluation/assessment are presented. Although the complexity of the Educational Sciences allows a subjective point of view, I am trying to find out routes and procedures to deal with correct functionality and validity of evaluation/assessment. Bearing in mind different points of view of educational experts, during the last part of the paper I focus on two important methods: 1. based on interpretation of data and the subjective evaluation/assessment in relationship with Gauss ‘curve, a process similar to ZERO hypothesis, which helps in measuring the meaning of different tests, 2. experimenting and calibrating some tests based on the Romanian educational system, school subjects like Math and Science, Romanian and Foreign languages, and so on.

Multicast applications such as video conferencing, weather forecasting and on-line multi player gaming are major areas of Internet traffic growth. The disparity between bandwidth offered by a wavelength and the bandwidth requirement of a multicast connection can be purposefully solved by grooming low bandwidth connection requests into a high bandwidth wavelength channel in an optical network. In this paper, we discuss multicast traffic grooming problem using light-tree approach with static multicast connection requests. As higher layer electronic ports such as transmitters and receivers are dominant cost factors in a WDM mesh networks, it is critical to reduce their number when grooming multicast traffic into high bandwidth trees. This paper propose a heuristic algorithm called Saturated-Light-Tree based Multicast Traffic Grooming (SLTMTG) that solves grooming, routing and wavelength assignment problems. SLTMTG algorithm is based on grooming of multicast traffic to constrained light-trees in which traffic is groomed for better resource utilizations. This approach is used to minimize the grooming cost as well as wavelength requirement. Here, proposed approach tries to satisfy all connection requests. The performance of proposed algorithm has compared with existing Multicast Traffic Grooming (MTG) algorithm. The results are compared on several standard networks to measure cost and wavelength utilization.

Understanding and exploiting the future value of existing buildings is an opportunity for property owners, developers and designers to be sustainable and offer advantages rather than burdens to successiveusers. However, although several assessment methods have been studied to quantifythe future value of buildings, more cases are needed to illustrate their usefulness. Commissioned by theVrijeUniversiteit Brussel's administration we studied the feasibility of the transformation of 352 student residences that have become obsolete. In order to compose a thorough advice, architectural explorations and life cycle assessments have been conducted. This paper reports on the result of Life Cycle Costingon this case in particular. Through Life Cycle Costing, the initial costs of distinct transformation strategies, conventional as well as adaptable, were put in a long term perspective.By combining assessments at element and building level,it was possible to detect the particular value of the residences’ load bearing structure and the conditions under which adaptable building can increase that value. These findings allowed us to formulate straightforward advises in an early project stage. They are useful to both the university's administration and the architectural designers that will be commissioned. Nevertheless, in this paper we alsoexpressthe technical and methodological optimizationthat is necessary.

There is an unrealised potential for new uses of cultural heritage sites. The purpose of this paper is to identify evaluation aspects for assessing the potential of new uses for cultural heritage places and test the proposed aspects in a case study. The proposed framework serves as a tool for understanding the value of spaces for historic buildings. The paper provides a short introduction to the different aspects typically included in the different types of evaluation. We pursue a broad approach to attain a holistic perspective on evaluating cultural heritage places, including evaluation approaches from facilities and project management as well as architectural and cultural heritage management. Based on the review, we propose a framework that consists of key evaluation aspects. We distinguish among nine primary aspects to assess cultural heritage places: history, architecture, structure, environment, legislation, plans, time, users and economy. The proposed set of aspects is applied to evaluate a pilot case and its potential for new use. Two types of results are presented: the proposed aspects for evaluation of a site and reflections based on their application. The case is “Værnes Hovedgård”, a 19th-century manor house located on an air base. The case study illustrates a situation in which a cultural heritage site loses its original function because of a combination of an unfortunate location and physical characteristics. The historic aspect is clearly relevant to this type of site. The building is sound and healthy, and it receives continuous maintenance. This building has direct funding for maintenance but it generates no income and is rarely in use. We discuss different approaches for alternative use, based on the proposed evaluation aspects. These aspects could be applied to evaluating other cultural heritage sites with special focus on the potential for use. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open Access CC-BY-NC-ND

The present paper concentrates on the actual use - in the framework of a Tsunami Early Warning System - of the algorithms to be implemented in the software of wind-wave gages in order to automatically perform the real-time detection of tsunamis within recorded signals. Focus is on the amplitude-discriminating algorithm, mainly based on an infinite impulse response time domain filter, proposed by the authors in a previous paper. In particular, the problems that may arise in filtering out ‘disturbances’ such as long tidal waves are addressed, and an original method to perform the full characterization of the waveform of an actually detected tsunami, automatically and in ‘quasi’ real-time is proposed. Tests were carried out using time-series resulting from the superposi- tion of actual tsunami signals recorded by some of the tsunamometers of the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis program, and different wind-wave signals synthesized by means of the random-phase method. In particular, the tsunamometers’ records collected during the events triggered by the earthquakes occurred off the coast of Chile on February 27, 2010, and off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku (Japan) on March 11, 2011, were used. The results show that the overall detection and characterization of a tsunami can be effectively carried out, automatically and in real-time, using the proposed new algorithm.

The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of organizational culture in achieving performance in Romanian small and medium enterprises SMEs. The method of research used was the survey. The instrument used was the questionnaire elaborated first on paper and then using Google Docs application. This application can become an important tool for any manager so that they become conscient of the culture of their organization. The main idea is that after the employees complete the online questionnaire the manager can receive a complete report about the answers, underlyining the weaknesses and strengths of the organizational culture according to the answers. This evaluation is very important because they can compare the results with other companies in the field and can discover opportunities for competitive advantage. After this phase of the research if the manager wishes we can provide him with a set of strategies to mend the problems, the weaknesses. This step is very important because many researches regarding organizational culture just diagnose the type of culture but do not offer solutions for the problems. Along with the comparison regarding the strengths and weaknesses in the organizational culture the authors propose a comparison regarding financial performance indicators. In the end the authors try to find a relation between these performance indicators and the organizational features evaluated.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).This article has been retracted at the request of EditorThe article is a duplicate of the European Commission published Technical report (ISBN 978-92-79-34677-4; ISSN 1831-9424; doi: 10.2788/40816). One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.