Exploring the Potential of SME Alliances in the Construction Sector

The paper explores the adoption of information and communication technology-enabled alliance modes of operation by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the construction sector. It argues that SME alliance modes of operations promote business process innovation and allow SMEs to compete in new ways, get better reward for their work, and gain greater financial strength, which in turn, will give them the financial capability to move forward and develop their products and services. Findings from the multiple case study approach used to conduct the research are discussed, including: (1) the concept of an SME alliance and its key features; (2) business relationships management in an SME alliance; (3) SME alliance viability and sustainability; (4) the role of information and communication technologies in an alliance; and (5) technical innovation management in an alliance regime of peers. Recommendations for future research in the form of open questions to the research community are given.     

Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction?

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation.     

Uniform stabilization for linear systems with persistency of excitation: the neutrally stable and the double integrator cases

Consider the controlled system dx/dt = Ax + α(t)Bu where the pair (A, B) is stabilizable and α(t) takes values in [0, 1] and is persistently exciting, i.e., there exist two positive constants μ, T such that, for every t ≥ 0, ${\int_t^{t+T}\alpha(s){\rm d}s \geq \mu}Consider the controlled system dx/dt = Ax + α(t)Bu where the pair (A, B) is stabilizable and α(t) takes values in [0, 1] and is persistently exciting, i.e., there exist two positive constants μ, T such that, for every t ≥ 0, . In particular, when α(t) becomes zero the system dynamics switches to an uncontrollable system. In this paper, we address the following question: is it possible to find a linear time-invariant state-feedback u = Kx, with K only depending on (A, B) and possibly on μ, T, which globally asymptotically stabilizes the system? We give a positive answer to this question for two cases: when A is neutrally stable and when the system is the double integrator. Notation  A continuous function is of class , if it is strictly increasing and is of class if it is continuous, non-increasing and tends to zero as its argument tends to infinity. A function is said to be a class -function if, for any t ≥ 0, and for any s ≥ 0. We use |·| for the Euclidean norm of vectors and the induced L ₂-norm of matrices.     

Affective Communication through Air Jet Stimulation: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

In this article, effectiveness of air jet stimulation in mediated emotional communication was investigated by assessing cross-modal influences of visual emotional expressions on tactile perception. Brain responses to combined visual faces and air jet stimuli were measured using event-related potentials; whereas, emotional responses were assessed using self-reported pleasantness of the tactile stimulation. ERP results reveal significant differences between the different facial expressions for the same tactile air-jet intensity in the somatosensory area. Moreover, participants’ pleasantness ratings suggest an effect of the visual stimulus on the difference tactile conditions that correspond to air jet stimulation intensities: low, medium, and high. These promising results provide evidence in the potential efficiency of this stimulation technique in activating skin receptors that play an important role in social and affective behaviors.     

Green media-aware medical IoT system

Rapid proliferation in state-of-the art technologies has revolutionized the medical market for providing urgent, effective and economical health facilities to aging society. In this context media (i.e., video) transmission is considered as a quite significant step during first hour of the emergency for presenting a big and better picture of the event. However, the energy hungry media transmission process and slow progress in battery technologies have become a major and serious problem for the evolution of video technology in medical internet of things (MIoT) or internet of medical things (IoMT). So, promoting Green (i.e., energy-efficient) transmission during voluminous and variable bit rate (VBR) video in MIoT is a challenging and crucial problem for researchers and engineers. Therefore, the need arose to conduct research on Green media transmission techniques to cater the need of upcoming wearable healthcare devices. Thus, this research contributes in two distinct ways; first, a novel and sustainable Green Media Transmission Algorithm (GMTA) is proposed, second, a mathematical model and architecture of Green MIoT are designed by considering a 8-min medical media stream named, ‘Navigation to the Uterine Horn, transection of the horn and re-anastomosis’ to minimize transmission energy consumption in media-aware MIoT, and to develop feasible media transmission schedule for sensitive and urgent health information from physian to patients and vice vers through extremely power hungry natured wearable devices. The experimental results demonstrate that proposed GMTA saves energy up to 41%, to serve the community.

     

Building sustainable parking lots with the Web of Things

Peak-time traffic woes create considerable amount of stress and environmental pollution resulting in an economic loss. Research innovations in areas such as the Web of Things are able to curtail some of these issues by creating scalable and sustainable environments like parking lots, which provide motorists with access to convenient parking spots. We present a scalable parking lot network infrastructure that exposes parking management operations through a judicious mashup of physical things’ services within a parking lot. Our system uses service-oriented architecture, allowing motorists to reserve parking spots in advance. In doing so, our proposed system leverages the use of HTTP and Wi-Fi for the Web enablement and interoperability of things within a parking spot and elevates it as a Smart Parking Spot on the Web. Our suggested semantic Web-based structure for representing things makes it possible to query physical things’ states and services depending on their capabilities and other relevant parking-related parameters. Our performance evaluation reveals that a maximum of 40 % time is saved to find parking spots and also 40 % reduction in air pollution is observed.     

Certification-based trust models in mobile ad hoc networks: A survey and taxonomy

A mobile ad hoc network is a wireless communication network which does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure or any centralized management. Securing the exchanges in such network is compulsory to guarantee a widespread development of services for this kind of networks. The deployment of any security policy requires the definition of a trust model that defines who trusts who and how. There is a host of research efforts in trust models framework to securing mobile ad hoc networks. The majority of well-known approaches is based on public-key certificates, and gave birth to miscellaneous trust models ranging from centralized models to web-of-trust and distributed certificate authorities. In this paper, we survey and classify the existing trust models that are based on public-key certificates proposed for mobile ad hoc networks, and then we discuss and compare them with respect to some relevant criteria. Also, we have developed analysis and comparison among trust models using stochastic Petri nets in order to measure the performance of each one with what relates to the certification service availability.     

Side effects of identity management in SIP VoIP environment

In this article, we summarize the security threats targeting SIP proxy servers or other infrastructures in NGN by misusing a specific signaling authentication mechanism, which has been proposed in RFC 4474 (Peterson and Jennings, 2006). This mechanism is designed to authenticate inter-domain SIP requests based on domain certificates to prevent identity theft. Nevertheless, despite its contribution, this protection raises some “side effects”, that actually lead to new vulnerabilities in both the availability and confidentiality of SIP services. We provide an overview of different attack possibilities and explain them in more detail, including attacks utilizing algorithm complexity, certificates storage, and certificates distribution. We also suggest some alternative design to prevent or reduce the attacks. SIP, VoIP, NGN, Authentication, Denial of Service, Timing attack.     

Multitask Quantum Study of the Curcumin-Based Complex Physicochemical and Biological Properties

Density functional theory (DFT), time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM), and extended transition state natural orbitals for chemical valence (ETS-NOCV) have all been used to investigate the physicochemical and biological properties of curcumin and three complexes, i.e., Cur-M (M = Ni, Cu, and Mg). Based on DFT calculations, the enolic form (Cur-Enol) is more stable than the anti-diketone form (Cur-Anti diketone) favored for complexation. This enolic form stability was explained by the presence of three intramolecular hydrogen bonds according to the QTAIM analysis. Furthermore, the ETS-NOCV technique revealed that the enolic form had more significant antioxidant activity compared with the anti-diketone form. The calculations from the COnductor-like Screening MOdel for Realistic Solvents (COSMO-RS) showed that the dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solvent could dissolve all the curcumin tautomers Cur-Enol, Cur-Anti-diketone and Cur-Cu, Cur-Mg, and Cur-Ni complexes in contrast to benzene, acetone, octanol, ethanol, methanol, and water. Furthermore, except for Cur-Mg, which had a relatively low solubility (14 g/L), all complexes were insoluble in water. Cur-Anti-diketone was considerably more soluble than Cur-Enol in the examined solvents.