Muhammad Hafidz Fazli Md Fauadi, Fairul Azni Jafar, Adi Saptari, Wan Ling Li
The increasingly challenging and dynamic nature of manufacturing industry has driven organizations to enhance their system efficiency. One of the most important aspects in manufacturing plant is the Material Transportation System (MTS). In order to address dynamic factors, MTS need to be equipped with rescheduling capability. This paper focuses on reactive transportation task assignment to a fleet of autonomous Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). This paper proposes a Mixed Integer Programming method to reschedule transportation tasks for a non-disruptive job shop manufacturing system based on Multi Agent System (MAS) architecture. The result shows that proposed rescheduling method is able to outperform conventional method significantly.
In recent years, the Semantic Web has become the focus of life science database development as a means to link life science data in an effective and efficient manner. In order for carbohydrate data to be applied to this new technology, there are two requirements for carbohydrate data representations: (1) a linear notation which can be used as a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) if needed and (2) a unique notation such that any published glycan structure can be represented distinctively. This latter requirement includes the possible representation of nonstandard monosaccharide units as a part of the glycan structure, as well as compositions, repeating units, and ambiguous structures where linkages/linkage positions are unidentified. Therefore, we have developed the Web3 Unique Representation of Carbohydrate Structures (WURCS) as a new linear notation for representing carbohydrates for the Semantic Web.
The economic crisis in 1997 caused tremendous changes to higher education system in Thailand, in particular the decentralization of university's administration. A number of Thai public universities have been gradually transforming to be autonomous universities. However, almost all cannot achieve the most important goal for academic excellence as reflected by global recognition. During the transitional period, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) was the only public university that transformed from a university under the Civil Services to be an autonomous public university. The university could sustain as one of the leading universities and be ranked in the top 400 World university by Times Higher Education (THE). It relatively outperformed other universities and was regarded as a role model for Thai higher education development. This research aimed to figure out how autonomous public universities could manage to secure from the Thai bureaucratic system and innovate themselves to sustain continuous improvement in the world class university leagues. Key factors influencing autonomous public university to be recognized as a leading and world-class university were explored. Research data were studied and gathered from primary source by an in-depth interview from KMUTT management teams and other relevant stakeholders. Secondary data were also used such as the university's documents and other related studies. Findings from descriptive and content analyses revealed that leadership and teamwork have played crucial roles for KMUTT during the transitional period. Strategic foresight with various initiative projects by KMUTT management team in 1998 created sharp- and-shared vision that paved the way of science and technology university to be one of the leading universities in Thailand and successfully stepped into the world-class university. A commitment to be Learning University has substantially influenced KMUTT to be ranked among world-class university and resulted in present success.
The Bitcoin has emerged as a fascinating phenomenon in the Financial markets. Without any central authority issuing the currency, the Bitcoin has been associated with controversy ever since its popularity, accompanied by increased public interest, reached high levels. Here, we contribute to the discussion by examining the potential drivers of Bitcoin prices, ranging from fundamental sources to speculative and technical ones, and we further study the potential influence of the Chinese market. The evolution of relationships is examined in both time and frequency domains utilizing the continuous wavelets framework, so that we not only comment on the development of the interconnections in time but also distinguish between short-term and long-term connections. We find that the Bitcoin forms a unique asset possessing properties of both a standard financial asset and a speculative one.
Collecting Indian PortraitsGovernor Kirkwood, William Henry Jackson, and the Nineteenth-Century Photographic Album Rachel M. Sailor (bio) Key Words Samuel Kirkwood, William Henry Jackson, photography, Native Americans The past few decades have brought increased scholarly attention to issues surrounding the photography of the nineteenth-century Indian population.1 So, too, the academic eye has turned toward the methods by which these images were collected. For instance, Gerald Vizenor observed that “Cultural pageantry, dioramas, and museum presentations pictured the fugitive Indian in the archives of dominance.”2 Many methods of collecting, housing, and displaying images exist, but perhaps one of the most intriguing types is the nineteenth-century photo album. The University of Iowa Libraries’ Special Collection Department has such an artifact—one of a two-volume set that originally had matching album bindings containing images of Native American portraits and locales. These impressively large volumes (approximately 17 ¾ × 24 inches), presumably made between 1877 and 1885, contained several hundred photographs taken between ca. 1858 and 1885 (Figs. 1, 2).3 While they resemble typical ledger books, they were almost certainly constructed to be scrapbooks because of the heavyweight paper and the guarding in the binding that would have made the albums lie flat when filled with inserted materials. While William Henry Jackson, John K. Hillers, and more recently Zeno Shindler are credited as the main photographers of the collection, the images come from a variety of sources. The albums were initially the property of Jane and Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa governor (1860–64, 1876–77), US senator (1866–67, 1877–81), and secretary of the interior (1881–82). A dedicatory inscription on a frontispiece suggests Mrs. Jane Clark Kirkwood (1821–1921) gave the albums to Josiah Little Pickard (1824–1914, president of the University of Iowa from 1878 to 1887 and of the State Historical Society of Iowa from 1881 to 1900), who in turn gave them to [End Page 257] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Kirkwood album. William Henry Jackson Photographs, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Kirkwood album clasps. William Henry Jackson Photographs, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa. [End Page 258] the university in the early 1900s. In the 1990s, the deteriorating albums were disassembled and preserved so the photographs could be better stored and more easily accessed. The vast majority of the images are 5 × 7 ¼ inches with a few toward the end of volume 2 that measure 17 × 19 inches. Volume 1 of the Kirkwood albums contained six hundred photographs divided by language groups and then tribes within those group according to William Henry Jackson’s United States Geological Survey catalog of photographs.4 Language groups in the first volume correspond to those titled “Algonkins,” “Athabascas,” “Dakotas,” “Pawnees,” and “Shoshones” in Jackson’s catalog. Volume 2 contained 355 photographs that correspond to Jackson’s headings “Sahaptins,” “Kalmaths,” “Pimas,” “Muskogees,” and other “Independent and unclassified tribes,” which included the Arapahoe, Caddo, Cherokee, pueblo groups, and others. Furthermore, printed text from the Jackson catalog provided the pasted-in captions for the photographs in the albums. In fact, the Kirkwood albums mimic Jackson’s catalog almost identically, with the most notable exception of 145 images that are included at the end of volume 2. Both the albums and the photographs they contain are rich sources of information about late nineteenth-century America in general and about Euro-American attitudes toward the Native American population and territory of the West. They point specifically to the immense public interest and great consumer demand for Native American imagery, widely distributed as stereo views, cartes de visite, postcards, cabinet cards, and sometimes as large-format photographs. What is more, the albums are also relics of the era’s rage for collecting. Despite the wide circulation of the photographic prints and the many forms of scrapbooks and albums that existed, however, the Iowa collection is unusual; the large volumes contained tipped-in photographs and pasted-in captions, and indicate a level of interest and effort that went beyond homemade scrapbooks yet didn’t quite reach the level of a professional publication. The photographs certainly record superficial facts about...
Vivek Kuthanazhi, Anil Kottantharayil, N. C. Narayanan
Decentralization of energy planning through local self-governments has become a possibility since the development of solar photovoltaics and other small scale power generation technologies. The state of Kerala, India is well known for its success stories in decentralized administration of villages through panchayati raj1institutions. Panchayats in Kerala have proved their efficiency in the past by handling development projects, hence the scope for implementing decentralized PV power plants in a panchayat scale in Kerala is quite high. A study was conducted at Chendamangalam gram panchayat, Kerala, India to assess the electricity demand and rooftop PV power generation potential of a typical panchayat located in the low-lands of Kerala. The changing trends in electricity consumption due to the use and spread of new appliances and 100% grid extension to the villages could be discerned. Appliances like televisions, ceiling fans, water pumps, washing machines, electric mixers, refrigerators etc has penetrated well in this area. Inverter based power back up systems and new high power equipments like induction cookers, air conditioners, water heaters etc. are increasingly being used by the domestic consumers, which indicate a possible leap in electricity demand in the near future. The study could conclude that the collective shade free rooftop area from nearly 6500 buildings in the panchayat can support nearly 11.3 MW rooftop PV installations and it is more than enough to meet the current energy demands of the panchayat. Innovative design of custom PV solutions and institutionalization of operation and maintenance, supported with clear government policies and finance options can help in transforming a panchayat into an energy surplus entity.
With the vast increase in smartphones, there have been an increasing number of opportunities growing in the app industry. One in particular is the way we deal with money. There are huge overheads in the current payment systems around the world particularly in the United States, many of which include large transaction fees. Many new businesses have grown to solve these inefficiencies and create a new platform that provides a new user experience, security, and convenience among many other things. However, many of these platforms are still centralized, making them more susceptible to attacks. This thesis goes over the various methods of payments, starting from their origins and discusses their flaws and ways they are being improved. This study explains where payment platforms are going and how they line up against other platforms in terms of security and usability. We look at the origins of credit cards and why the US is lagging behind other countries in credit card security. Digital wallets like PayPal, Venmo, Square, etc. have done a remarkable job, but still have room for improvement in terms of security and usage. I try to solve these problems with the mobile application AnyCoin by bringing one platform that houses different types of digital wallets. The goal of this application was to grow a large user base and collect data off the transaction for future analysis and advertising. This study goes through an in depth analysis on the application from the iv perspective of merchants and consumers to understand what users are looking for in digital wallets. Decentralized platforms and crypto-currencies like Bitcoin have also created different ways to send money by creating a trustless system that does not depend on any central authority. I discuss what Bitcoin is and exactly how it works and the flaws in the current system. Mining is the process that puts Bitcoin into circulation and secures the network. However, as more customized hardware is released, Bitcoin will fall subject to becoming more centralized, and unfortunately become heavy regulated if it is to be used as a currency. Ethereum is a new technology that takes the concepts of Bitcoin and creates a platform for a developer to create a decentralized application. I create a few contracts that show how we can create a decentralized version of PayPal that works using other crypto- currencies. Ethereum is still in its alpha stage and has yet to
This study, Impact Assessment of Decentralization on Health Care Service Delivery was done at Gozamin woreda of East Gojjam Zone Administration in Amhara National Regional state. The major objective of the study was to assess the impacts of decentralization on the health care service delivery. The current status of health care services, the responsibilities and functions of the woreda health office, the level of community participation and the major challenges of the woreda that hinder from providing quality health care services were reviewed. Methodologically, a descriptive research design with qualitative research technique/ method was employed to collect the data for the study. The instruments used to collect the data are interviews, focus group discussions and field observations. Primary and secondary data were collected from different Health institutions in the Woreda as well as from annual official health sector reports and documents. The analysis part was supported by legal and official documents. The findings of the study revealed the recruitment of health personnel, collection of user fee, management and supervision of health institutions, in-service training and career development of health workers are devolved to the woreda. The study also found that undertaking construction of health HCs and health posts is given to the woreda in a delegated form. Whereas, purchasing of drugs and other pharmaceutical equipments are highly centralized, controlled by the regional governments. The health care service accessibility and coverage of the woreda in terms of expansion of health care institutions has shown an improvement, it reach 100%. However, shortage of health personnel (midwifery, lab technician and pharmacy technician), shortage of finance for duty service and per-diem payment, and drugs shortage are the challenges of the woreda health care delivery system that affects the quality of the services. Moreover, according to the patients and households view, the costs of health care treatment is high as compared to the ability of most beneficiaries incomes, the free service scheme-which is very impressive were abused by kebele officials and weak one to five and one thirty network or groups were also the challenges of Gozamin woreda health care service delivery system.
The paper focuses on Romanian experiences regarding the financial strategies used by managers from pre-university education. In Romania, local public authorities provide funds to pre-university institutions. Given the sharp economic recession and the austerity measures imposed by Romanian government, the public executives had to find solutions in collecting additional funds and in spending wisely the existing financial resources. Therefore, our paper aims at examining several practices regarding: (i) employees' wages, (ii) EU funds implementing, (iii) self-financing activities, (iv) public procurement and (v) balancing strategies for the budgets, which could improve the financial management of public institutions. This also can contribute to the increase in the efficiency of spending at micro-level within public administration.
Open access
Fiscal Policies and Political Economy
Economic Analysis and Policy
Education, Management, Technology, Human Resources
In this article an attempt of analysis of peculiarities of the market of crypto currency is carried out, peculiarities of peer payment systems such as Bitcoin, Namecoin, Litecoin, PPCoin, Novacoin are analyzed. Attitude to crypto currency in the modern world is ambiguous, due to the pseudo anonymity of crypto currency the use of crypto currency may have fraudulent schemes, may be used for financing shadow sector, including terrorism and drug trafficking. Author explores possible links of crypto currency and shadow economy, highlights the main distinguishing characteristics of crypto currency and payment schemes with their use, the analysis of pros and cons of presence of competitive money in the economic cycle of the country is carried out.
Smart grid is the intelligent power grid, in which Scheduling system is the most important part. In this paper, we will introduce a new schedule system based on contract net protocol improved scheduling efficiency. As one of the most important coordination mechanism, contract net protocol (CNP) has been extensively studied in many areas, and many other techniques can also be used to improve the quality of decision. The new CNP is based on trust mechanism, that makes the system more efficient scheduling. Experimental results show that the initiators with trust model almost steadily get the best participants no matter the environment is honest-dominated or dishonest-dominated. Even in the dishonest-dominated environment, this approach gets better results and is proved valuable.
This article presents one of the new elements of virtual reality, which is the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. This thesis focuses on the condition and perspectives on development of the trading function of this instrument. The authors discuss the legal aspects of functioning of the Bitcoin, conduct a SWOT analysis of this cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange, and examin the scale of use of Bitcoin in transaction purposes. As of March 1, 2014 the trading system gradually develops and the strengths of this cryptographic currency outweigh its weaknesses, but the future of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange is difficult to determine.
IntroductionAs society has become more democratized and decentralized, citizens have been more willing to participate not only in issues in their community, but also in government work. They are also interested in the improvement of public service delivery to address social problems. Recently, the pattern of public service delivery has changed from a hierarchical system to a governance model, in which public service is provided through a complex form of network building with other nongovernmental entities. This is because government programs and regulatory activities directly affect citizens, and government is well supported by citizens only when it performs its activities and carries out its responsibilities well. Public service can be provided through various systems and devices with the private sector, especially when the nonprofit sector's interest in and criticism of public service is rapidly increasing. That is, collaboration with different participants is one of the critical factors that ought to be considered in planning and processes for government policy making that results in positive outcomes and also addresses social problems in the community.Currently, various nonprofit organizations are immersed in the context of governance and are considered a type of collaborator. This is because a nonprofit organization in the community commits to advancing its social responsibility by managing social business, and the forms of collaboration is through the provision of empowerment to community residents. Citizens in the community take over vital services for the greater benefit of their community. Nonprofit organizations in the community have an autonomous and democratic nature. Additionally, profits from their commercial activities are reinvested into the community, and these activities of nonprofit organizations can serve as strong policy tools for addressing community problems with voluntary cooperation from citizens.While the number of nonprofit organizations in the community has increased, there is no previous empirical study which examines why nonprofit organizations are established more in some local governments than others, although several studies have examined the impact of nonprofit organizations on community conditions. This nonprofit organization's diffusion is meaningful to study because: 1) it leads to competition with other public sector services or businesses, and as a result, service quality can been improved; 2) nonprofit organizations bring positive social impacts to the community and local government through the revitalization of communities and the support of disadvantaged groups; and 3) it improves the community through innovations in the form of service.Nonprofit organizations are more likely to appear when severe community conditions are present, such as high unemployment and poverty rates, because nonprofits are often one of the best alternative solutions for a community. Additionally, they might be varied based on financial conditions in local government because nonprofit organizations rely on governmental grants. This is because nonprofits have suffered from revenue shortages as grant money decreases when governments face economic crises. Alternatively, they are initiated by emulating behavior of other neighborhoods and communities as they learn how they work. Thus, this study attempts to examine why nonprofit organizations are more commonly established based upon the financial condition of county governments. The study not only includes variables such as socioeconomic attributes within a county but also considers emulating behavior from neighboring counties.Literature ReviewCollaboration with Nonprofit Organizations: The necessity for changes to the form of public services leads to changes in the way policy is delivered. The form and direction of public service delivery to citizens has stressed increased cooperation and partnerships among various actors such as the government, the private sector, nonprofit organizations, and even citizens themselves. …
Engineers are torn between an attitude of strong design and dreams of autonomous devices. They want full mastery of their artifacts while wishing these were much more adaptive or “intelligent.” Today, while we must still spoon-feed (program, repair, upgrade) our most sophisticated computer and robotic systems, insatiable demand for novelty has created an escalation in system size and complexity. In this context, the tradition of rigid top-down planning and implementation in every detail has become unsustainable. Natural complex systems, large sets of elements interacting locally and producing nontrivial collective behaviors, offer a powerful alternative and source of innovative ideas. Going beyond metaheuristic disciplines based on “neurons” (machine learning), “genes” (genetic algorithms), or “ants” (ant colony optimization), this article highlights a new avenue of bioinspired engineering that simulates the growth of fine-grained multicellular organisms. It presents a brief overview of morphogenetic engineering and one of its instances, embryomorphic engineering, which are two fields that explore the decentralized self-organization of artificial complex morphologies and behaviors. MapDevo3D, an embryomorphic engineering model of developmental animats in a 3D virtual physics world, is described in more detail. Bodies are composed of several hundreds of cells, giving them a quasi-continuous texture close to the tenets of “soft robotics.” Motion results from local muscle twitching without a central nervous system. Altogether, the challenge is not to build a system directly but find the rules that its components must follow to build it for us.
Alex Biryukov, Dmitry Khovratovich, Ivan Pustogarov
Bitcoin is a digital currency which relies on a distributed set of miners to mint coins and on a peer-to-peer network to broadcast transactions. The identities of Bitcoin users are hidden behind pseudonyms (public keys) which are recommended to be changed frequently in order to increase transaction unlinkability. We present an efficient method to deanonymize Bitcoin users, which allows to link user pseudonyms to the IP addresses where the transactions are generated. Our techniques work for the most common and the most challenging scenario when users are behind NATs or firewalls of their ISPs. They allow to link transactions of a user behind a NAT and to distinguish connections and transactions of different users behind the same NAT. We also show that a natural countermeasure of using Tor or other anonymity services can be cut-off by abusing anti-DoS countermeasures of the bitcoin network. Our attacks require only a few machines and have been experimentally verified. We propose several countermeasures to mitigate these new attacks.
Open access
4 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Purpose – Crisis management entails among other things developing organizational systems that are capable of reacting to unpredictable and different types of crises. It also involves designing cohesive operational elements to deal with the local dynamics of an actual crisis situation. This challenge of responsiveness – where organizations simultaneously need to react to change demands of different task environments – has hardly been investigated in management theory. The purpose of this paper is to initiate to shed more light on this blind spot. Design/methodology/approach – Modular organizing and organizational sensing are introduced as key drivers of organizational responsiveness. Based on a large-scale survey among 1,200 senior officers the study investigates how these two variables have influenced the responsiveness of the Netherlands armed forces for crisis response deployment. Findings – The findings indicate that the level of modularization is an important facilitator of organizational responsiveness. Organizational systems that are made up of semi-autonomous work groups are in a better position to simultaneously live up to the change demands of different environmental levels than organizations that follow a fine-grained modularization approach. Originality/value – It uses the military crisis response organization as an exemplary case for project-based organzations in general to take advantage of.
This paper focuses on the unique characteristics of Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency and the major security issues regarding the mining process and transaction process of Bitcoin. Nowadays, Bitcoin is emerging as the most successful implementation of the concept known as cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. The distributed protocols that maintain the blockchain are responsible for the security of the Bitcoin. The blockchain is run by participants known as the miners. The Bitcoin technology the protocol and the cryptography has a strong security track record, and the Bitcoin network is known as one of the largest distributed computing project in the world. The security aspect of the Bitcoin is the major area of research. This currency may be vulnerable during the transactions or it can be also attacked on its online storage pools or exchanges. The recent researches, mainly focused on the protocol of the Bitcoin, shows that the currency is not fully secure against the colluding groups of users that uses different attacks to fraud the ‘Honest’ miners of the Bitcoin. General Terms Security.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are often seen as a threat by governmental and financial institutions worldwide. Regulation could help minimise the risks involved. The author explores some legal and self-regulatory precedents from which we can learn.