Search

Canada's oil industry is a growing energy source, with proven reserves exceeding 174 billion barrels. The majority of the production is attributable to oil sands. Thermal bitumen extraction is the predominant production method, and is poised to grow at an annual rate of 23% to 2025. This has important long-term GHG emissions implications. To date, CO 2 emissions mitigation efforts have overwhelmingly focused on implementing CCS in bitumen upgrading operations, rather than in thermal bitumen extraction processes. The paper covers the application of CO 2 capture to the main thermal bitumen extraction process: SAGD (Steam-assisted gravity drainage). The paper presents four SAGD-oxy-fuel integration configurations and compares their techno-economics to a SAGD process featuring natural gas-fired co-generation without CO 2 capture (reference case). Configuration one is a natural-gas fired co-generation boiler retrofitted for oxy-fuel operation. Configuration two is an oxy-fuel fluidized boiler using bitumen as fuel. The third configuration features a natural gas oxy-fuel boiler integrated with a cryogenic Air Separation Unit (ASU). The pressurized “waste” N2 is expanded in a turbine with additional heat integration. The fourth configuration features natural gas oxy-combustion with O2 from an Oxygen Transport Membrane (OTM) unit. Other integration concepts, including Chemical Looping combustion (CLC) are introduced. Because these concepts are in an earlier stage of development, the discussion covers their qualitative aspects and potential benefits over the previously mentioned cases.

This study attempts to examine how some writers are more successful than others in writing scientific papers in English, in non-English speaking societies. To do so, interviews were conducted with 10 Iranian university teachers‘of TEFL: 5 junior, 2 middle-ranking and 3 senior researchers. The analysis is concerned not only with their difficulties, but also with their strategies to cope with them. Findings show that identification of their audience may distinguish senior researchers from others. Another important characteristic seems to be their learning strategies, and these strategies are divided into two categories. The first one focuses on reading academic papers in their field to learn typical writing patterns. This strategy was followed by all. The second involves giving direct attention to mastering English speakers’ language use, but these were employed by only 2 junior and 3 senior researchers. Half of these researchers seem to prefer simply to cope with their English. Efforts to adopt the second type, however, would appear to be successful in the long run.

Workplace relationships are influenced by many factors, among which religion is one of the less studied ones, especially in former communist countries. The development context of these countries put their people in a unique position, experiencing more phenomena at once. People from former communist countries learned what freedom is and what can be done with it in the context of capitalism, integration and globalization. They learned how to act as an employee, according to capitalist standards, and how to work with and for This paper aims at investigating the attitude of Christian orthodox employees towards working for a Muslim employer. This research paper is mostly an exploratory investigation, as the Romanian literature in this area is missing. The present work is developed as a qualitative research, based on in-depth interviews with employees that are working for Muslim companies established in Romania and active in Bucharest. The results are then discussed within a focus group in order to identify the possible reasons behind the responses. The inquiry aims at answering questions as: Is the religion a factor t hat influences the working attitude of the employees? How are working relationships influenced by the difference in religion?

With an emphasis on internationalization of education and the global economy these days, study abroad programmes are increasingly important to enrich student learning experience. This paper focuses on short-term study abroad programmes which are becoming more popular in higher education curricula. As a component of degrees awarded in the home countries, short-term programmes usually refer to those running from a period of few weeks to one year in overseas universities. With mixed-methods approach, this study aimed to examine (1) the students’ perceived value of the short-term programmes; and (2) the influences of such value in deciding students’ participation. All participants were students who were studying in Hong Kong universities. The findings reveals that (1) the students perceived the most beneficial aspect of studying abroad is to facilitate their personal development; (2) academic and professional enhancement was less valued by the participants; and (3) UK and the USA were the most preferred host countries they selected. This paper concludes that policymakers and educators should be aware of the students’ expectations. Implications for enhancing short-term study abroad programmes, which affect the development of higher education curricula and international education, are also discussed.

Delay is acknowledged as one of the most common, costly, and risky problems, and the source of frequent disputes and claims among owners, clients and consultants leading to lawsuits. Such situations usually involve questioning the facts, causal factors, contract interpretations and quantum of the claims. Questions that emerge are: Does a particular delay warrant an extension of project duration and/or an extra cost? What is the maximal amount that an activity can be held responsible for? How can costs be divided among the activities? Since the ability to make a claim is very much based on what the contract says about delays, contractual documentation needs to reflect the particular nature of each project in order to prevent disputes and claims. This paper proposes a method based on game theory and applies it to a road building project, in order to identify the activities that are responsible for the delay of the project and divide the costs among them. Using the model presented in this paper, a wide variety of project situations can be modelled and placed as contractual obligations. The number of variables, equations, and inequalities needed to model these real-life situations will depend on the complexity of the problem.

In this paper, a sports strategy decision support system, called SportsViz, for ball games is presented. Both the results of statistical analysis and player motions are visualized in an integrated way to facilitate easy decision making by this system. The player motions can be easily aggregated with our newly developed trajectory mining technique for deep consideration on the motions. This paper also describes how the system can be used for effective strategy analysis in American football.

The aim of this paper is to compare the policies for measurement, depreciation and recognition of tangible fixed assets according to the International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs) and according to the full version of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS/IFRS). In addition, the paper presents results of an empirical research into the awareness level of respondents (economists and chief accountants of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Czech Republic) as to the IAS/IFRS and IFRS for SMEs accounting system.

In this paper we present EvacTunnel 3.0 an evacuation model design specifically for road tunnels. The model combines coarse network (space discretization) and a microscopic approach for modeling individual behaviors. Based on Monte Carlo methods, the model has the capability to perform multiple simulations by changing random variables of tunnel users such as pre-movement times and walking speeds. The proposed model allows the user to incorporate the effects of fire into the evacuation simulation (importing fire data/results from another model) and, therefore, predicts the number of people directly affected by the smoke (victims). Three verification cases of the proposed model are shown in this paper: 1) risk analysis application, 2) comparison with other evacuation models and 3) a real case application.

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of flow theory - a psychological state - and its marketing outcomes in online environments. Despite the strong interest of researchers from various disciplines, adapting the flow theory to online environments has been problematic. Based on a careful examination of the literature, we identified conceptual challenges confronted when studying flow online. The paper further discusses some possible solutions for challenges and underlines the need for more studies in this research area. Finally, marketing outcomes of applying flow theory in online environment were examined.

The aim of the paper is to present a modified modulation suitable for Indoor Wireless Optical Communications (IWOC)systems that use usually LEDs as transmitter components. As bandwidth of LEDs is times tighter than that of lasers. A modulation that provide high spectral efficiency is desirable, thus we propose Multi-level Anisochronous Harmonic Multi-Pulse Pulse Position Modulation as a modified AH-MPPM modulations for IWOC. This modified modulation has been shown to be a good candidate for IWOC systems that require high data rate and spectral efficiency, especially for those systems that use LEDs. In this paper we present the expressions of band width efficiency, power requirements, and the data rate normalized to PPM, and we also present comparison results to AH-MPPM modulation scheme.

There are a number of players in the domain of agriculture playing different roles as key stakeholders with different level of involvement and influence. Government agencies, agri-entrepreneurs and individual farmers are amongst those who play significant roles in ensuring sufficient food supply for the nation. The agriculture sector contributes significantly to the economic growth in Malaysia and in ensuring food security in the country. The recent occurrence of staple food crisis affecting many countries became severe when India, Vietnam and China had limited the exporting of rice to other countries. The overall development of paddy sector under the agricultural framework initiatives are carefully planned and implemented in the recent Economic Transformation Program (ETP). The aim of the initiatives is not only to ensure national food security but also to tap into the global market as the world population continues to grow driving for an increase in the demand. One of the quick win initiatives by the government in overcoming the crisis is to increase the soil fertility for paddy planting which requires promotion of new technology and rigorous research. The paper critically discusses innovation diffusion in the agricultural context with specific reference on the analysis of how innovation is diffused, its communication channels, and the dissemination movement. Preliminary findings of farmers’ experience on innovation diffusion process shall be discussed in this paper. Farmers at the granary area in Perak, under Integrated Agriculture Development Agency (IADA), had taken part in the study. The results indicate the level of farmers’ knowledge and information about fertilizer in general, management of the innovation dissemination process, and the extent of readiness in realizing innovations.

This paper is to provide up-to-date information on the state of acoustic ignition system development, with such systems seen as one of the most promising alternative to the traditional electrical systems. The article summarizes the principles of the gas-dynamic (acoustic) ignition systems, describes the most commonly used igniter designs, and also describes some unusual and potentially promising igniter designs. It also contains a survey of contemporary domestic and foreign theoretical and experimental research in the field of gas-dynamic ignition. Descriptions of promising igniter designs are provided. The paper analyses identified strengths and weaknesses of the construction designs described. On the basis of accumulated and presented materials, recommendations are drawn for the future course of development, which comprise the need to address the thermal issues of such igniters, their lifetime and the need for more comprehensive studies on atypical designs, which can be more efficient than their currently used counterparts.

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.

This paper offers an overview of the development of management consulting in Romania, exploring some lesser known aspects of its evolution in the communist period. The research is focused on exploring the main historical facts of this evolution, trying to capture the elements of the struggle to develop a profession with many capitalist traits in a communist economy. After a brief presentation of the main aspects of local consulting before the end of World War II, a few important facts and ideas are presented regarding the profession in the first few years of the communist regime. Then, much of the paper is focused on the results of the historical research on the issue, in the more enlightened period of the 1960's and 1970's. The article ends with a discussion of the factors that inhibited the development of management consulting in Romania in the analyzed period.

This paper describes synthetically the design, development and characterization of two wireless instrumented crutches for monitoring lower-limb rehabilitation activities. These sensorized crutches allow monitoring axial and shear forces and tilt angles in real time. Each crutch is composed of three strain-gauge bridges measuring axial and shear forces, a conditioning and transmission circuit, a tri-axial accelerometer and a battery power management circuit. The data are transmitted wirelessly via Bluetooth to a remote computer, no further readout unit is necessary. The instrumented crutches have been tested and characterized using an ad-hoc experimental setup and they have been used for the first tests on one subject. This paper shows, in a concise manner, the description of the system and the first experimental results on one crutch obtained in laboratory.

From the upper echelons perspective, we investigate the financial leverage decision of publicly listed companies in Bursa Malaysia for the period from 2002 to 2011. Using pooled OLS and fixed-effect regressions, we examine the impacts of CEO personal characteristics on financial leverage. Our measures of CEO personal characteristics such as CEO overconfidence based on CEO profile photo, CEO age, and CEO prior experience are significantly and negatively related to leverage. However, CEO education level and CEO tenure are significantly and positively related to leverage. Furthermore, we partition our sample of companies based on CEO age and CEO education level. In the CEO-age group, we find that female CEOs are greater risk takers as compared to male CEOs in Malaysia. With respect to CEO education level, we show that younger CEOs, female CEOs, and longer-serving CEOs are risk takers and more aggressive. This paper contributes to the debate of the UET as well as determinants of leverage decision from several dimensions. First, this is the first study that investigates the impacts of CEO personal characteristics on financial leverage of Malaysian firms. Second, we make the first attempt by classifying CEO certain characteristic (age and educational level) into groups to make a further comparison on the impact of CEO personal characteristics on financial leverage. Third, this study uses a larger data sample and a longer study period than the previous studies in the literature. Fourth, the paper also makes a methodological contribution. This study employs different methods (pooled OLS regression and fixed effects panel regression) for the analysis. It is hoped that the result of this paper can fill the gap of the literature on the relationship between CEO personal characteristics and financial leverage as explained by Upper Echelon Theory.

A large number of literature on education of women clearly suggest that educating a woman is equal to educating a family and that woman are worth training more than their counterparts, men, in many respects. However, despite the fact that positive contribution of women education to the economy and society has long been known, education of women in many nations, particularly in developing countries, needs to attract more attention. The education level of women is quite low in Muslim countries which are mostly developing countries. Increasing the level of education is dependent upon eliminating gender inequality in education. Muslim countries need to use all of their resources in order to reach their economic development targets. Women participation in economy is a major economic resource which is not frequently used in Muslim countries. A large amount of literature (Dollar and Gatti, 1999; Barro, 2001; Schultz, 2002; Klasen, 2002; and Knowles, 2002) suggests that, gender equality has a positive effect on economic growth. Taking Muslim countries into account, one can reasonably claim that the rate of the effect of gender equality on economic growth is higher in developing countries. In this paper, the impact of gender inequality in education on economic growth for Turkey will be explored, using econometric techniques. The relationship between such variables as primary school graduation, high school graduation, vocational high school education and university graduation with economic growth will be discussed in detail. The paper will take into account of all variables for the period 1968-2005. The contributions of educated women in an economy are threefold. First of which is that increasing the level of human capital, correspondingly, decreasing the fertility rate of the women. Second argument is that infant mortality rate might decline by virtue of decreasing the fertility rate of the women. Thirdly, increasing women education level may affect the education level of next generation positively. Within this framework, co-integration approach will be applied in order to understand long run relationship between these variables which is gender inequality in education and economic growth. The empirical results indicate that there is a long-run relationship among these variables.

© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. This paper examines the issues related to the implementation of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the construction industry and the various initiatives and approaches that are being used in various countries around the world to promote effective BIM implementation in their construction industries. Objectives of Study The effective implementation and use of BIM remains a major issue for the construction industry. Whilst the technology underpinning BIM has been around for well over a decade BIM implementation and take-up has been relatively slow in the construction industry compared to industries such as manufacturing and engineering. The purpose of this study is to investigate the initiatives and approaches that are being used by countries that are leading the way in the field. Methods The methodology for this paper is based on a literature review of the key global trends in relation to BIM implementation and then a detailed investigation of implementation strategies that have been developed in a range of countries and regions such as North America, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Australia. Results The research reveals that there BIM implementation has gained considerable momentum over the past few years. A number of countries are developing successful implementation strategies with North America, the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian region generally leading the way. A key finding was the importance of coordinated government support and leadership as a critical driver for BIM implementation. Other important strategies were found to be the development of national and global BIM standards, legal protocols to address liability issues, BIM certification, education and training and articulating the business case for BIM implementation. Conclusions The paper concludes with a range of strategies and recommendations that flow from the research findings.

The performance of local public administration it is an extremely actual topic and its research has a strategical importance. The objective in this paper is to see how Romanian local authorities understand the sense of performance and its aspects. It is very important for local collectivities to have a good local public administration and a continuous process of performance improvement. To get to the improvement process you have to start with evaluation. The purpose of the study is to build a mirror of different aspects of Romanian local public administration performance, in the limit of information collected from the loca l public administration units investigated: communes, towns and municipalities. The method used for this research was the analysis of documents about the performance management of public services and the local and regional development, legislation, studies and reports with relevant content. The main tool of the research was the questionnaire and its questions were groupe d in six investigation dimensions. The interpretation of results was made in the light of information collected. Conclusions and recommendations of the study were pertained to the meaning of public administration performance from the specialized literatu re and legislation. The set of the performance indicators suggested in the paper represents the starting point of an appropiate performance evaluation in the context of Romanian local public administration.

Tender price evaluation of construction project is one of the most important works for the clients to control project cost in the bidding stage. However,the previously underutilization of project cost data made the tender price evaluation of new projects lack of effective evaluation criterion, which brings challenge to cost control. With the improvement of companies’ information technology application and the advent of big data era, the project cost-related data can be completely and systematically recorded in real time, as well as fully utilized to support decision-making for construction project cost management. In this paper, a system for tender price evaluation of construction project based on big data is presented, aiming to use related technique of big data to analysis project cost data to give a reasonable cost range, which contributes to obtaining the evaluation criterion to support the tender price controls. The paper introduced the data sources, data extraction, data storage and data analysis of the system respectively. A case study is conducted in a metro station project to evaluate the system. The results show that the system based on big data is significant for tender price evaluation in construction project.

This paper studies the adoption of mobile Internet by airports. Using a new theoretical model, the study tests whether early adopters of mobile Internet for airports can be considered real innovators. Seventy-five international airports from four different geographical areas and of three different sizes are analyzed. The paper complements the analysis with an additional innovation adoption, the PC-Website, and two dimensions are analyzed: the time of adoption and the degree of maturation. Our findings show that there are four real innovator airports: London Heathrow, London Stansted, Amsterdam Schiphol and Copenhagen. Airport innovation is found to be related to geographical location and commercial revenue rather than to airport size. The four real innovator airports iPhone apps are used as case studies to identity best practices for the delivery of airport mobile services.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the impact of globalisation on economic cooperation between Malaysia and India. It analyses to what extent globalisation has brought about closer integration between Malaysia and India and the role of the state in stimulating this bilateral cooperation. First, the paper provides a brief background on the economic cooperation. The second section provides a critical assessment of the literature on globalisation and role of the state. The third section evaluates the role of the state as one of the key drivers in directing and promoting economic relations between Malaysia and India.

To carry out detailed source attribution for air quality assessment it is necessary to distinguish pollutant contributions that arise from local emissions from those attributable to non-local or regional emission sources. Frequently this requires the use of complex models and inversion methods, prior knowledge or assumptions regarding the pollution environment. In this paper we demonstrate how high spatial density and fast response measurements from low-cost sensor networks may facilitate this separation. A purely measurement-based approach to extract underlying pollution levels (baselines) from the measurements is presented exploiting the different relative frequencies of local and background pollution variations. This paper shows that if high spatial and temporal coverage of air quality measurements are available, the different contributions to the total pollution levels, namely the regional signal as well as near and far field local sources, can be quantified. The advantage of using high spatial resolution observations, as can be provided by low-cost sensor networks, lies in the fact that no prior assumptions about pollution levels at individual deployment sites are required. The methodology we present here, utilising measurements of carbon monoxide (CO), has wide applicability, including additional gas phase species and measurements obtained using reference networks. While similar studies have been performed, this is the first study using networks at this density, or using low cost sensor networks.

The Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) that are installed in commercial and institutional buildings contain a gold mine of data, which could be exploited for the purpose of ongoing commissioning of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Two applications are presented in this paper. First the paper discusses the feasibility of a virtual air flow meter to estimate the outdoor air flow rate brought in the air-handling units. Second the paper presents the development of benchmarking models of electric demand of chillers in terms of measurements of the following variables: the chilled water flow rate, the supply air flow rate at the air-handling unit, and the return chilled water temperature.

This paper presents a management proposal to improve the efficient use of water resources in water supply systems. This is based on management tools, project management and is organized into three levels of planning (strategic, tactical and operational), following definitions of theories of strategic planning. This paper details these levels of planning, with a focus on strategic management, i.e., action plans at the strategic level, describing a methodology and detailing the main tasks that should be executed, as well as the main tools that can be used in each task, such as SWOT analysis and Balanced Scorecard.

A recent report from Asia Pacific Colliers suggests that continued proactive marketing efforts and tenancy offerings could maintain the local office market performance. Therefore, the characteristics of PBO are significant factors that need to be studied. The aim of this paper is to examine the occupiers’ perceptions and needs as well as the importance of the characteristics that applied in PBO. Hence, this paper identified the issues that could provide ideas to the property market participants in improving PBO's market and building performance via investigating the perception of occupants in order to determine the factors that affect office market property performance.

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)

As a complex phenomenon that occurs as a response of the taxpayer in relation to the state coercion action, tax evasion is a disputed topic both in legal sciences and economic ones branch, being analyzed by the economic law. The purpose of this paper is to prove that tax evasion takes place at the line between licit and illicit activities. To achieve the purpose of the paper we shall use a basic fundamental research, making use of an inductive strategy, namely, observation, and a comparative one, namely historical-comparative and longitudinal, in order to observe the difference in views between the European and national legislator regarding the way to address tax evasion. Involving a question of morality, tax evasion occurs due to purely hedonistic interest of any natural or legal person for profit. Based on various causes (economic, political, legal, psychological), tax evasion should be observed somewhere between tax havens and its criminal character. Efforts to combat tax evasion, expressed in rigorous and stringent regulations take on international forms (FATCA), regional (Savings Tax Directive in 2003 at EU level) and national (Law no. 241/2005 on preventing and combating tax evasion in Romania). The perception of the citizens on tax evasion, its effects on each individual and on the economy in general take different forms of control or acceptance of tax evasion.

The objective of the present paper is to describe the applications of tensegrity structures in civil engineering (roofs, domes, stadiums, etc.). The term of tensegrity was introduced by Fuller in the middle 50th of XX century. There are several definitions of this concept. For the purpose of this paper the tensegrity is defined a pin-joined system with a particular configuration of cables and struts that form a statically indeterminate structure in a stable equilibrium. Infinitesimal mechanism should exist in a tensegrity with equivalent self-stress state. Major advantages of tensegrity are: large stiffness-to-mass ratio, deployability, reliability and controllability.

The major Lithuanian cities are experiencing a rapid growth of their suburbs. This process is under the surveillance for more than 40 years and is difficult to be controlled. Regional territorial distribution is constituted by cities and rural settlements. The sustainable development of the region depends on interaction between these two different systems. A rapid growth of the suburbs has highlighted the disparities in regional hierarchical network of suburban rural settlements. Growing suburbanization of the cities moves citizens into the neighbour peripheral rural settlements and creates a cohesive hierarchical network of peripheral settlements in the metropolitan district. The authors of the paper are interested in a qualitative future development of peripheral rural settlements in districts of the major cities. The previous authors’ research has shown that the difference between real positive indicators values of settlements, which are usually used in Lithuania by planners to characterise the residential quality of suburban settlement and treat future development of this settlement, frequently differs from the city’ s residents choice to live in such an interpretive suburban residential quality. The aim of this paper is to bring together the results of authors’ other research deliverables ((1) the identification of subjective and objective indicators of suburban residential environment; (2) creation of conceptual model of subjectively and objectively integrated quality indicators assessment of the suburban residential environment) designed to create a picture of the peripheral future of the major Lithuanian cities (Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda) and discuss them in different scenarios, drawing out implications for metropolitan districts’ hierarchical network of rural settlements. The creation of scenarios will be performed under the multiple criteria methods.

Selection of export market is a very important step for a company which is going to expand its business and to become more global. Company should choose the markets in which export activity is most valuable. Scientists suggest different models for the reasoning of export market selection decisions, but almost all of them agree that markets have to be evaluated according to the most important criteria: economic, political, social and technological. Different criteria are important for different companies. Determination of the most important criteria is the first step in the process of export market selection. After analysing the significance of the criteria and their values, a target export market can be identified. The paper aims to present the scheme which can help to determine basic export market selection factors and thus enable to find target markets. Analysis, synthesis and comparative analysis, as well as expert evaluation methods are used. The findings of the research performed in the paper help to decide in which markets export activity should be expanded according to the main factors from the point of view of particular company.

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.

With the urban rail transit network in Beijing becoming gradually intensive, the passenger flow organization also develops towards the type of the network mode. This paper analyzes the development trend of the urban rail transit network in Beijing. On the basis of a reasonable classification of emergencies occurred in urban rail transit, this paper puts forward the passenger organization model of rail transit network under emergency conditions, and then set a certain train accident of Beijing Metro Line 1 as an example to illustrate the practical application of the passenger emergency organization mode.

The article is devoted to the problems of making cargo passages through low-head waterpower developments (those built in XX century in Central Russia). The paper presents an analysis of layout and structural properties of these passages which go through phreatic and concrete dams and through river-run power plants. The paper stresses the importance of these cargo passages for transport connection both at the time when hydraulic engineering structures were being built and nowadays. The research also points out the problems in cargo passages operation and explains why these problems occur. Motor highways through the biggest hydroelectric power stations of the Volga are taken as an example. The author offers some efficient technical solutions for making cargo passages through lowland rivers more effective.

The paper describes an innovative software that is used for real estate evaluation and mapping and analyzing of real estate advertisements published on the internet in the Czech Republic. The software systematically collects, analyzes and assesses data about the changes in the real estate market. For each half year, the software assembles over 650,000 price quotations concerning sale or rental of apartments, houses, business properties and building lots. All real estate advertisements are continuously stored in a software database and are thoroughly analyzed for their credibility. There have been numerous articles concerning real estate market analysis in both mass media and scholarly publications. Unfortunately, not all presented information is objective and unbiased. Many cases by “independent specialists” have stated information with no verified research. We have witnessed manipulation of information by lobbies (such as banks offering mortgage agents, real estate companies and agents, building companies, developers, majority owners, etc.). The author of this paper offers objective and unbiased evaluation of price development in real estate market. The author brings forward information based on extensive research and large amounts of statistical data which has been collected continuously from year 2007 until today.

Motivation comes before demotivation in teaching learning process. The present paper goes the other way round to first factorize the reasons of demotivation which limit the students‟ performance and then finding motivation through best practices. Demotivation has not been extensively researched and discussed due to its negative orientation, though it plays an important role in the language learning process. The paper explores the issue of motivation-demotivation continuum so as to find remedy to demotivating factors. It investigates Saudi students‟ perspective of demotivating factors through the use of open-ended questionnaire and follow-up interviews. These findings provide useful information and implications for teaching professionals. Many demotivating factors were identified and if controlled will eventually result in Quality enhancement.

In this paper a deep analysis on an internal combustion engine's beauty cover is carried out for identifying the best material for Noise Reduction improvements.The paper is organized as follows: • Experimental modal analysis and comparison with the FEM simulation • Experimental test on Noise Reduction assessment by using a novel experimental set up with a Pressure/Velocity Sound Intensity • Numerical Boundary Element Analysis for computing the Noise Reduction on the engine cover • Comparison between the experimental and BEM simulation The comparison of the experimental and FEM/BEM analysis results show a very good agreement in all investigated frequency range. The obtained results encourage to use the numerical model for further investigations aimed at the improvement of the acoustic performances. The implemented numerical procedure can be applied successfully not only in automotive field but also in all problems where material acoustic performances is due.

This paper is concerned with analyzing financial and environmental perspective of alternative scenarios for electric power sector of Pakistan. In this paper, LEAP model is used to perform extensive scenario analysis by examining overnight capital cost, fuel cost, operation & maintenance cost (O&M), and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from different source of power plants. However, the outcome of simulations show that New Coal scenario (NC) is more attractive economically requiring less running and capital cost than Business as usual scenario (BAU) and Green future scenario (GF). Meanwhile in GHG emissions analysis, GF scenario is more viable in environmental aspect with BAU and NC scenarios having comparatively higher emissions. These scenario simulations provide recommendations in economic and environmental aspect for Pakistan's future electric power sector infrastructure.

The fundamental information, in the current world, is one of the main elements for decision making among governments, banks and individual investors. The paper discussesuseof basicfundamentalindicatorsin the trading strategycreation. The main goal and researchideaisto testthe ability, sensitivity and reaction rate of markets on the information. The idea was to research how quickly market absorbsanannounced value of the fundamental information andconverse them intothe desiredchanges inthe price movements. Research offersan unconventionallook at the instrument price movement, taking into consideration comparedvalue changes of fundamental information and different timedelaysapplied to the entrypositions. The approach is applied to the majorstock indexS&P 500representing the widest scope of the market. The lengthof the time series,on whichthe strategies could be tested, together with the impact of information, served us as determinantsof the stock indexes selection. In the development phase the maximumpossible combinations of strategiesfordecision-makingalgorithm,were tested. The results were used for the selection of the most efficient strategies taking into account the smallest drawdown. At the end of the paper the results and strategies are discussed, and selected strategies are back-tested ontheunderlying assets ETF, SPDRS&P500 (SPY).

The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative energetic and economic assessment of two solar tower power configurations; the molten salt (MS) and the direct steam generation (DSG) technologies in order to study the appropriate configuration for Algerian climate conditions. For this, Tamanrasset has been chosen as representative site to simulate the proposed solar tower power plant configurations. The first section of this paper analyses the conversion of the solar energy into electric energy. The NREL's SAM software (Solar Advisor Model) is used to evaluate the energetic performances of the two plant configurations in the proposed site and also to study their economic feasibility in the second section.

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.

Hydrogen is widely recognised as an important option for future road transportation, but a widespread infrastructure must be developed if the potential for hydrogen is to be achieved. This paper and related appendices which can be downloaded as Supplementary material present a mixed-integer linear programming model (called SHIPMod) that optimises a hydrogen supply chains for scenarios of hydrogen fuel demand in the UK, including the spatial arrangement of carbon capture and storage infrastructure. In addition to presenting a number of improvements on past practice in the literature, the paper focuses attention on the importance of assumptions regarding hydrogen demand. The paper draws on socio-economic data to develop a spatially detailed scenario of possible hydrogen demand. The paper then shows that assumptions about the level and spatial dispersion of hydrogen demand have a significant impact on costs and on the choice of hydrogen production technologies and distribution mechanisms.

Research conducted in the affective domain of mathematics education found that affective variables such as attitude, motivation, anxiety, beliefs and values were strongly linked to the quality of teaching and learning of mathematics. Unfortunately values seem to receive the least attention although it is one of the most stable affective domains. This is due to the fact that most people viewed mathematics as value-free, where in fact it has various values related to it. This paper fills in the missing literature on values in mathematics, particularly in the area of values assessment in mathematics education. The literature review indicated the absence of psychometrically based instruments which adopted holistic well defined constructs in mathematics education between the years 1985 and 2012. The five related instruments were reviewed on definitions of constructs and sub-constructs, designs of instruments, theoretical bases, samples, validity and reliability processes. Definitions on constructs and sub-constructs were found to be mainly based on the western education philosophy and the definition by Bishop (1988) is the most referred to and used by researchers from Australia, Turkey, and Taiwan. Four out of five instruments used survey method to measure values in mathematics education. Targeted respondents were found to be mainly the pre-service and in-service primary and secondary mathematics teachers. Only two out of five instruments went through rigorous processes to enhance validity and reliability. This study is an initial step in developing instrument measuring values in mathematics education for the Malaysian education system which is based on faith and religion as stipulated by the National Educational Philosophy which is not aligned with the western culture. The paper proposed the model of instrument which is in line with the Malaysian Educational Development Plan.

The paper deals with quality assurance in university education and training graduates demanded by the labor market. It reveals the role of research conducted according to the DPCA cycle for the continuous improvement of degree programs. The essential component of a degree program quality assessment and assurance is monitoring of stakeholders’ satisfaction with education results. The necessity of quality assessment based on the feedback from students and employers is also proved by the criteria and practice of public professional accreditation of degree programs. The paper presents a complex methodology for monitoring of stakeholders’ satisfaction with degree programs education results. The results were obtained at Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University “LETI” (Saint Petersburg, Russia) in the frames of research on quality assurance of its degree programs. Some research results are given based on surveying students and employers on their satisfaction with teaching degree programs. The presented methodology of monitoring students, graduates, and employers’ satisfaction with education results can be used by higher education institutions as a mechanism of quality assurance for degree programs.

The paper introduces a wide range of EB evidence from research into healthcare environments. It explains why so much data can be found on this building typology and argues that it actually has a far wider and more generic value. The paper suggests that we are largely failing to get such generic evidence-based knowledge applied in architectural design practice. It goes on to show that there are a number of obstacles in our way here and suggests a number of ways around these problems.

In spite of all that is known about project management best practices, they are often absent from typical construction projects. This has motivated our interest in developing a tool to assess construction project management practices, focusing on the assessment of individual project practices. We will also explore project outcomes and their correlation with project management practices-potentially identifying project management value. Previous efforts have addressed project management assessment. The paper describes examples that assess an individual's project management skills and approaches that examine the project management competencies of organizations. In contrast to these, our focus is on assessing the project management practices that have been implemented for specific construction projects. A central component of any assessment scheme is the identification of specific elements to be assessed (the assessment “targets”). We intend to draw heavily upon established project management standards and project success factors from previous research to provide the specific targets and benchmarks to be assessed. These include the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) by the PM Institute, the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB) by the International PM Association, ISO 9000, and Prince2 by The Office of Government Commerce UK. This paper describes how these standards are integrated into the project management assessment tool. It discusses the theoretical foundations for the project management assessment tool and the methodologies used for developing the tool and for applying the tool to specific project situations.

One of the most constraints in DC-DC converter is the supply bouncing caused by the fast switching of power MOSFET. The purpose of this paper is to present a DC-DC buck converter using slew-rate modulator to increase the slew times of the PWM output instead the conventional output stage in order to minimize the bouncing, It does not constitutes a trivial task. This paper presents preliminary results of supply bouncing simulations made with a Slew-Rate Modulator. These simulation results show a very good agreement with the expected results.

The current paper aims at presenting a standardized auditing scheme for assessing energy efficiency in water supply systems. The proposed scheme has been developed based on the existing methodologies and International Water Association (IWA) water balance principles. The main innovation is the direct link to the water auditing in order to encourage water utilities to carry out the joint management of water losses and related energy efficiency. Key energy efficiency performance indices are calculated based on the energy auditing without the need of using hydraulic modelling. Two case-studies are explored and discussed. This paper shows that specific energy consumption and pump efficiency are not sufficient to evaluate the energy efficiency of a given system. The energy balance proposed herein allows the development of a preliminary diagnosis and the identification of the critical areas in terms of energy efficiency, and thereby, supports the tactical and operational management of water supply systems. 5 6 8 DHA/NES 2014 14 a 17 de julho