User involvement: a review of the benefits and challenges

User involvement is a widely accepted principle in development of usable systems. However, it is a vague concept covering many approaches. This study first clarifies the nature of user involvement and its expected benefits, and secondly reviews three streams of research, to evaluate the benefits and problems of varied user involvement approaches in practice. The particular focus of this study is on the early activities in the development process. An analysis of the literature suggests that user involvement has generally positive effects, especially on user satisfaction, and some evidence exists to suggest that taking users as a primary information source is an effective means of requirements capture. However, the role of users must be carefully considered and more cost-efficient practices are needed for gathering users' implicit needs and requirements in real product development contexts.     

Analysis of predistortion, equalization, and ISI cancellationtechniques in digital radio systems with nonlinear transmit amplifiers

An analysis made of the performance of predistortion, equalization, and intersymbol interference (ISI) cancellation techniques in compensating for the transmit amplifier nonlinearity in digital microwave radio systems. The study is carried out using the 64 QAM and 256 QAM signal formats and two values of the roll-off factor in the Nyquist pulse shaping. The simulated compensation techniques include three types of predistortion, two ISI cancellers, and several nonlinear equalizers with or without decision feedback. A basic result is that decision-feedback equalizers do not offer any significant advantage over nonrecursive equalizers. It is also shown that ISI cancelers with a memoryless equalizer as first-stage decision device do not perform any better than nonlinear equalizers of similar complexity. Another contribution an improved fifth-order analog signal predistortion technique is analyzed. The gain that can be achieved using a modified 256 QAM signal constellation that is more robust to nonlinear distortion is quantified     

Critical flux in cross-flow ultrafiltration of protein solutions

The effect of solute size relative to membrane pore size on the critical flux during the ultrafiltration of protein solutions was investigated using the constant pressure method. Hydrophilic regenerated cellulose membranes with a cut-off of 10, 30 and 100 kg mol⁻¹, model proteins and skimmed milk solutions were used. The critical flux mainly increased with the pore size of the ultrafiltration membrane. The lowest critical fluxes, 40-50 L m⁻²h⁻¹, were obtained with the retentive 10 kg mol⁻¹ cut-off membrane. This membrane had a very low permeability and, thus, the critical fluxes were achieved at high transmembrane pressures (TMP): 1.7-2.3 bar. With the 100 kg mol⁻¹ cut-off membrane critical fluxes were obtained at 0.2 bar TMP, which were around 100 L m⁻² h⁻¹, slightly declining with increasing protein molar mass. In skimmed milk experiments the permeate flux decreased when the protein molecules were enzymatically split to peptides. A critical flux for skimmed milk solution could not be found unless the protein concentration was diluted to 0.3-w% or lower. The results with model proteins were then compared to those obtained with skimmed milk resulting in β-lactoglobulin being the worst foulant.     

Reappraisal of the role of vegetables in the vitamin A status of mothers in Central Java, Indonesia

Food-based approaches for controlling vitamin A deficiency and its consequences, such as increased mortality, more severe morbidity, and anemia, have become increasingly important, thus prompting a reassessment of the relation between vitamin A intake and status. A nutrition surveillance system in Central Java, Indonesia, assessed the vitamin A intake and serum retinol concentration of women with a child < or =24 mo old with a semiquantitative 24-h recall method that categorized vitamin A-containing foods into 3 categories of plant foods and into 2 categories of animal foods and identified portions as small, medium, or large. Median vitamin A intake was 335 retinol equivalents (RE)/d (n = 600) and vitamin A intake from plant foods was 8 times higher than from animal foods. Serum retinol concentration was related to vitamin A intake in a dose-response manner. The multiple logistic regression model for predicting the chance for a serum retinol concentration greater than the observed median (> or = 1.37 micromol/L) included physiologic factors, vitamin A intake from plant [odds ratio (95% CI) per quartile: 1st, 1.00: 2nd, 1.23 (0.75, 2.02); 3rd, 1.60 (0.97, 2.63); and 4th, 2.06 (1.25, 3.40)] and animal [1st and 2nd, 1.00; 3rd, 1.31 (0.86, 2.02); and 4th, 2.18 (1.40. 3.42)] foods, home gardening [(no, 1.00; yes, 1.71 (1.12, 2.60)], and woman's education level [< or =primary school, 1.00; > or =secondary school, 1.51 (1.02, 2.22)]. Despite the fact that plant foods contributed 8 times as much vitamin A as did animal foods, serum retinol concentrations did not reflect this large difference. Home gardening and woman's education level seemed to reflect longer-term consumption of vitamin A-rich plant and animal foods, respectively.     

On the h-stability property and energy of wigner lattices in the one component classical plasma: A numerical analysis

After a short review of the H-stability property of the one component classical plasma, we describe simulation of some v dimensional crystalline lattices and we show explicity the agreement between our numerical and theoretical results in the particular example of the square lattice.     

On the Joint Synchronization of Clock Offset and Skew in RBS-Protocol

Motivated by the necessity of having a good clock synchronization amongst the nodes of wireless ad-hoc sensor networks, the joint maximum likelihood (JML) estimator for clock phase offset and skew under exponential noise model for reference broadcast synchronization (RBS) protocol is formulated and found via a direct algorithm. The Gibbs sampler is also proposed for joint clock phase offset and skew estimation and shown to provide superior performance relative to JML- estimator. Lower and upper bounds for the mean-square errors (MSE) of JML-estimator and Gibbs Sampler are introduced in terms of the MSE of the uniform minimum variance unbiased (UMVU) estimator and the conventional best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE), respectively.     

Fault isolation in manufacturing systems based on learning algorithm and fuzzy rule selection

Neural Computing and Applications - This paper addresses the fault detection and isolation problem in manufacturing systems. Some of these systems can be affected by several faults, a first way of...     

Implementing IoT/WSN based smart Saskatchewan Healthcare System

Wireless Networks - The Internet of Things (IoT) technology has recently experienced popularity and growth in every facet of life, and it has been applied to every industry in recent years. The...     

An intelligent based-model role to simulate the factor of safe slope by support vector regression

An infrastructure development in landscape and clearing of more vegetated areas have provided huge changes in Malaysia gradually leading to slope instabilities accompanied by enormous environmental effects such as properties and destructions. Thus, prudent practices through vegetation incorporating to use slope stability is an option to the general stabilized technique. Few researches have investigated the effectiveness of vegetative coverings related to slope and soil parameters. The main goal of this study is to provide an intelligent soft computing model to predict the safety factor (FOS) of a slope using support vector regression (SVR). In the other words, SVR has investigated the surface eco-protection techniques for cohesive soil slopes in Guthrie Corridor Expressway stretch through the probabilistic models analysis to highlight the main parameters. The aforementioned analysis has been performed to predict the FOS of a slope, also the estimator’s function has been confirmed by the simulative outcome compared to artificial neural network and genetic programing resulting in a drastic accurate estimation by SVR. Using new analyzing methods like SVR are more purposeful than achieving a starting point by trial and error embedding multiple factors into one in ordinary low-technique software.

     

Regional labor markets in Finland: Adjustment to total versus region-specific shocks

This article analyses regional labor market adjustment in the Finnish provinces during 1976–2000. We investigate the inter-relations of employment, unemployment, labor force participation, and migration to see how a change in region-specific and total labor demand is adjusted. The analysis reveals that region-specific labor demand shocks adjust mainly via participation, whereas total shocks are adjusted by unemployment. The region-specific component of labor demand shock has shorter-lived effects on unemployment and participation, but its effect on employment is permanent. Conversely, total shocks leave no permanent effect. Migration is more important in the region-specific case where, after a few years, it acquires a large role in the adjustment process.