Aleisawee M. Alsseid   Abdulrahman A. A. Emhemed   and Mosa A. Abdesalam   

DC grids based on VSC-HVDC could be a competitive and an attractive option for many applications such as renewable energy interconnection or for power supply to large metropolitan areas for many reasons. A detailed 121^st order multiple-input multiple output small-signal dynamic model of a DC grid network is presented in this paper. It contains control systems, and detailed representations of the AC and DC side. Aspects such as DC voltage droop control, the cut off frequency of the DC voltage feedback filters are discussed in detail. An eigenvalues stability study is used to find the optimum values of the droop gains and the cut off frequency of the DC voltage feedback filters. The model accuracy is verified using detailed PSCAD simulation. Testing on the detailed simulator PSCAD/EMTDC is carried out all over to validate the conclusions that obtained from analytical studies.

Odoyo Collins Otieno   and Samuel Liyala   

Over the last decade Amartya Sen's Capability Approach has emerged as the leading alternative to standard economic frameworks for thinking about poverty, inequality and human development generally. Professor Sen has developed, refined and defended a framework that is directly concerned with human capability and freedom [1]. This framework as it looks at peoples' freedoms and the means that enable them attain such freedoms, was found suitable for this study. This study therefore looked at mobile money users' functionings and freedoms in both rural and urban settings. The framework was therefore established to be suitable in studying societal development that focuses on the people, the development being yearned for and the means to attain such development.

Odoyo Collins Otieno   Samuel Liyala   Benson Charles Odongo   Silvance Abeka   and Solomon Ogara   

Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), postulated by social psychologist, has been established to be relevant in guiding Information Systems studies. The theory resulted from attitude research using the Expectancy Value Models. Therefore, TRA can be more effective if extended with additional determinants/constructs of systems use. The purpose of this study was to validate the additional constructs expected to strengthen TRA. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used in compilation of this paper. Additional determinants have therefore been validated using correlation and are illustrated in this article to demonstrate their effects on technology use in an Information Systems discourse. To achieve this, the authors used the findings from a study that was conducted in setting that presented rural urban characteristics, varied social economic characteristic as well as the varied age sets. The paper puts clearly the possibility of applying the theory of reasoned action in an information systems discourse, with additional constructs, giving birth to the Extended Theory of Reasoned Action.

Mohammed A. Hassan   and Mazen S. Bashraheel   

Color images reveal more meaningful information to the human observers rather than grayscale ones. Regardless of the advantages of the existing well-known objective image quality metrics, one of the common and major limitations of these metrics is that they evaluate the quality of grayscale images only and don't make use of color information. In this paper we propose an improved method for image quality assessment that adds a color comparison to the criteria of the well-known Structural Similarity index (SSIM). We validated the proposed metric on the TID2013 image database and the experimental results show that the quality scores given by the proposed metric are more consistent with HVS than other state-of-art metrics.

Chunming Xu   and Yong Zhang   

In this paper, an effective dimension reduction approach called semi-supervised discriminant analysis (SDA) is employed to deal with the protein subcellular localization problem. Firstly, a novel protein sequence encoding method that consists of pseudo amino acid composition (PseAAC) and dipeptide composition (DC) is introduced to represent a protein. Secondly, the SDA algorithm is applied to extract the essential discriminant features from the combined feature data set consisting of PseAAC and DC. Finally, the K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) classifier is used to identify the subcellular localization of Gram-positive bacterial proteins. The proposed method can effective utilize both manifold information and the class information of the protein samples to guide the produce of protein subcellular localization. To evaluate the prediction performance of the proposed algorithm, a jackknife test based on nearest neighbor algorithm is employed on the gram-negative bacterial proteins data set. The results show that we can get a high total accuracy in a low-dimensional feature space, which indicates that the proposed approach is effective and practical.

Fernando Almeida   

Software development methodologies are constantly evolving due to the appearance of new technologies and increasingly demanding user requests. Organizations seek to respond to these new challenges by changing their work practices, both at the technical and organizational levels. Agile methodologies thus emerge as a new development model characterized by greater flexibility and responsiveness to these new requirements, but also introduced new challenges. This study adopts a systematic review methodology to identify the key challenges in the migration process from traditional software development paradigms to agile methodologies. Four dimensions of challenges and a total of 49 sub-dimensions were found. Additionally, we discussed how those challenges can emerge, and what practices can be applied to properly manage and mitigate them.

Anas Mohammad Jawarneh   Azhar Ali Shah   Zain-UL-Abdin Khuhro   and Shahzad Ahmed Memon   

Bioinformatics has been a hot topic in Pakistan to be a separate and vital field of study. There has been a sudden increase in the Bioinformatics courses for both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The courses selected in this study four years bachelor degree and two year master degree of full-time study, each of these courses dissecting into six categories as: Bioinformatics, Biological Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science and Elective subjects, to determine where the differences lie. This study reviews state-of-the-art Bioinformatics education in Pakistan, compares it with global standards and initiatives and proposes a set of recommendations to be integrated in the national educational framework of curriculum and policy making.

Anwesha Barai (Deb)   and Lopamudra Dey   

An outlier in a pattern is dissimilar with rest of the pattern in a dataset. Outlier detection is an important issue in data mining. It has been used to detect and remove anomalous objects from data. Outliers occur due to mechanical faults, changes in system behavior, fraudulent behavior, and human errors. This paper describes the methodology or detecting and removing outlier in K-Means and Hierarchical clustering. First apply clustering algorithm K-means and Hierarchical clustering on a data set then find outliers from the each resulting clustering. In K-Means clustering outliers are found by distance based approach and cluster based approach. In case of hierarchical clustering, by using dendrogram outliers are found. The goal of the project is to detect the outlier and remove the outliers to make the clustering more reliable.

Paul Nyagorme   Albert Arthur Qua-Enoo   Brandford Bervell   and Valentina Arkorful   

E-learning is seen as a potent option for mass education globally. Consequently, institutions are hastily adopting it to meet the 21^st century education demands, often without recourse to considering the antecedents that promotes the success or otherwise of this mode of instruction. In view of this, the study investigates the awareness and use of e-learning platforms in some selected senior high schools in the Accra metropolitan area of Ghana with emphasis on parameters such as perception, training, accessibility, and infrastructural availability. Questionnaire was used to sample 303 respondents in this descriptive survey. Linear regression analysis and correlation were used on participants' training, motivation and computer availability in relation to perception, e-learning usage and awareness of e-learning implementation. The findings suggest participants know of e-learning and e-learning platforms but lacked adequate training. The computer literacy was low and most schools lacked adequate ICT laboratories and reliable internet negatively affects e-learning adoption. The major mode of internet access was the mobile phones. Students had a positive perception of e-learning and its adoption. The study recommends among other things that the Ghana Education Service train and educate teachers and students on e-learning to enhance their use and/or development of e-learning platforms. Furthermore, it should provide properly furnished ICT laboratories enhance accessibility and e-learning.

Aman Kedia   Manu Narsaria   Saptarsi Goswami   and Jayant Taparia   

Healthcare is a rapidly growing industry in both developed and developing countries. The expanse of technology has facilitated the storage and analysis of the diverse data which the healthcare industry generates. Data mining algorithms have been employed in the health care industry for the past few years for diverse kind of decision making and predictive analysis related tasks. Classification algorithms have been widely used for early detection of disease symptoms among patients. However, the selection of a suitable classifier for a particular dataset is an important problem in various healthcare related problems. This paper puts forward an empirical comparison of five important classifiers built using decision trees, bayesian learning, support vector machines and ensemble learning on twelve UCI healthcare datasets. The experimental results are examined from multiple perspectives, namely accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure.

Safiriyu Eludiora   and Ridwan Atolagbe   

The study reported in this paper considered English to Yorùbá machine translation system for prepositional phrase. The prepositional phrase machine translation system is a subset of English to Yorùbá machine translation (EYMT) system. There are issues to address in English to Yorùbá machine translation system. Some of these issues are: serial verb, split verbs, noun phrase, verb phrase, numerals and prepositional phrase to mention few. The prepositional phrase (PP) plays a significant role in EYMT system because it describes the object position in a sentence. The two languages are subject verb object (SVO). In some sentences PP can be in subject and object positions. The object position was considered in the study reported in this paper. The theoretical framework was considered first. Therein the structure of PP was x-rayed and the translation process was modelled and designed. The UML was used to design the system. The flowchart, sequence, use case, and class diagrams were designed using the UML. A bilingual database (lexicon) was built to store words from the source language (English) and its equivalent target language (Yorùbá), and the system translation process model was implemented using the Java programming language. The developed system was tested and the sample outputs were compared with the Yorùbá Google translator outputs. The system performed better than the Yorùbá Google translator in terms of good orthography and syntax.

Odoyo Collins Otieno   Samuel Liyala   Benson Charles Odongo   and Silvance Abeka   

The history of mobile payments is more than 10 years old and mobile money services in various countries such as Finland are still relatively unpopular, even though consumers have shown clear interest towards mobile money. The Mobile phone banking idea was initially born out of the intention to reach the unbanked poor. There exist a spectacular mobile phone money service divide, highly skewed against the rural population. The study therefore, established mobile phone elements enhancing mobile money services, in Homa Bay Region. A sample size of 48 participants for semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion and participant observation was used. The data for the study was both primary and secondary. Interview was the main tool for primary data collection, supported by focus group discussion and participant observation, while secondary data was obtained from online journals, books and Daily Newspapers. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. The study established that remittances had a positive influence on mobile phone money use, while lack of National Identification cards as well as lack of information by some users had a negative influence on mobile phone money use in the study area.

Sanjay Chakraborty   and Nilotpal Choudhury   

Distributing workloads across multiple computing resources are one of the major challenges in a cloud computing environment. This paper is being discussed over the basic obstacles of load balancing in cloud environment. The paper looks beyond the problems faced by the cloud system to overcome those through probable improvised techniques. This is a paper over solving the problems exist in the present days by logically analyzing and presenting in an algorithmic format. This approach is mainly focused on an effective job queue making strategy which is suitably allocated the various jobs to CPUs based on their priority or without priority. It also deals with some of the major problems of load balancing in cloud environment like, timeout. Finally, it shows how this approach is fitted in famous AWS and GAE cloud architecture partially. This article will provide the readership an overview of various load balancing problems in cloud environment while also simulating further interest to pursue more advanced research in it.

Fidelis Okechukwu Ezeokoli   Kevin Chuks Okolie   Peter Uchenna Okoye   and Christopher Chidi Belonwu   

This study examined the perception of construction professionals and the extent of digital transformation in the Nigeria construction industry. A questionnaire survey was carried out where 84 copies of questionnaires containing information relating to digital technologies trends and transformation were randomly administered to the selected construction professionals in Anambra State Nigeria. 80 were completed, returned and found useful, thus, giving a response rate of 95.24%. Data collected were analysed and presented using mean, percentages, charts and relative importance index (RII). The study revealed that 69% and 12% of the professionals viewed digital transformation as opportunity and threat respectively, whereas; 19% viewed it as both threat and opportunity. It further revealed that 63% were satisfied with their firms' readiness to transform digitally. The study then observed that application of digital technologies among construction firms in the study area was still at infancy due to lack capacity, critical knowledge and digital transformation enthusiasm among managerial teams. It was therefore, evident that digital transformation would help the industry to better its data storage and management capacity, increase employee productivity and gain competitive advantage. The study recommended collaboration between government and relevant regulatory bodies in Nigeria construction industry to workout appropriate roadmap that would position the industry in the right track towards transforming digitally.

Justus Onkware Arita   Victoria Munyao   Marc Felix Mugoh Muriuki   and Benard Omallah George   

Succession planning enables internal people with the potential, to develop and fill key leadership positions in the library. This study sought to understand how academic libraries apply succession plan in their management. In this paper the researchers identified and discussed various succession planning strategies that exist in academic libraries, analyzed the benefits they accrue to their respective libraries and the challenges faced by library management in implementing the succession plan strategies. Through random sampling technique the researchers sampled various senior university staff from 5 academic libraries in Kenya. Questionnaires and focus group discussions were used to collect.

Wamalwa Lucas Wanangeye   and Benard Omallah George   

This research sought to determine, assess and evaluate the knowledge management practices and performance in academic libraries. The researcher chose the case study of Mount Kenya University, Kigali Campus library. The general objective of this study was to understand the knowledge management practices used in enhancing the performance of academic libraries. Specifically, the researcher identified major drivers of Knowledge Management (KM) practices in academic libraries; analyzed the KM activities needed to enhance the academic library for proper KM practice; and determined the challenges that might face the academic librarians in implementing KM. The study population included all the library staff in the university. The researcher used census to sample the total population of all the university library staff. Data was collected using questionnaires and data analysis procedures involved editing to verify the coherent of respondents in answering the questionnaires, coding to summarize and simplify the work of processing data and finally graphical representation to make statistical frequency distributions.

Wamalwa Lucas Wanangeye   and Benard Omallah George   

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a crucial role in creating access to and utilization of library information resources and services through the use of library management systems leading to the current stampede to train and refresh library staff skills in order to promote and engender service delivery. When academic libraries integrate ICTs in acquisition, processing, storage, dissemination and accession to their holdings, user needs are addressed quickly and on time. In this study the researchers sought to determine the application of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Use for information provision by library staff of the Mount Kenya University Library, Kisii Campus. The target population was Mount Kenya university library staff and students. A survey research design aimed at identifying users' views and interpretation of the application and use of ICTs in the provision of library information resources and services. Stratified sampling was used to identify the students-respondents and purposive sampling used to select the library staff. While questionnaires were placed to collect the data from students, library staff respondents were interviewed. The study sample comprised four hundred (320) library users and staff out of a population of three thousand five hundred and twenty eight (1456). The study showed among other findings, that there are improved access and use of library resources and services through the use ICTs in Mount Kenya University, Kisii Campus.

Benard Omallah George   Jane Maina   and Lucas Wamalwa Wanangeye   

Tremendous advancements attained in the last one decade in computer and mobile phone technologies have completely changed patrons' information seeking behavior and left librarians and information professionals rethinking about ways of re-engineering library resources to foster their utility. Libraries and information centres have invested heavily on holding library resources and services from different disciplines in a frantic move to address users' needs but limited readership is still recorded. In this paper, the researcher delved into analyzing the use of mobile phone technology in access and utilization of library resources and services as a way of re-engineering library holdings to promote their (library resources and services) consumption. The targeted population was Mount Kenya University Kisii campus library users. A cross sectional survey research design aimed at identifying library users' perception on the use of mobile phone technology was used. Stratified sampling was used to identify the students-respondents and purposive sampling used to select the library staff. While questionnaires were placed to collect the data from students, library staff respondents were interviewed. The study sample comprised four hundred (445) library users and staff out of a population of three thousand five hundred and twenty eight (1467). Once the data collection is complete, quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, distributions in percentages and frequency counts. Qualitative data was recorded from field data, transcribed and reported in themes and sub themes. The study showed among other findings, that there are increased retrieval and use of library resources and services through the use mobile phone technology in Mount Kenya University Kisii Campus.

Odoyo Collins Otieno   Samuel Liyala   Benson Charles Odongo   and Silvance Abeka   

The Mobile phone banking idea was initially born out of the intention to reach the unbanked rural poor. However, there still existed mobile phone money service divide, highly skewed against the rural poor population. This paper was therefore seeking to explore challenges facing mobile phone money services. Qualitative research technique was used. Further, both primary and secondary data was used. The study was conducted in Homa Bay region in Kenya, using ethnography research design. The study established that mobile phone money use and adoption had numerous challenges that had hindered it. Most affected by the challenges were the mobile phone money users and potential users from the rural poor communities. Some of the challenges included lack of national ID cards by potential users, few mobile phone money agents, inadequate cash and e-floats by the agents, awareness and lack of information on how to access and operate certain features in mobile money platform, as well as language barrier.

Odoyo Collins Otieno   Samuel Liyala   Benson Charles Odongo   and Silvance Abeka   

There are a number of theories and models that have been employed over the years in understanding and studying users' technology adoption behaviors. These theories and models focus on people's intention to engage in a certain behavior such as the adoption and use of new technologies. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) is one of such theories that have been widely used in technology adoption as well as used in a number of other research fields as a foundation to such studies. Most of the Information Systems scholars, who have used this theory, have used only to set a foundation or help build other theories and models. TRA has therefore been compared with other theories and models for technological innovation, and found to be a strong theory for innovation adoption upon a few additions of other variables such as facilitating conditions, awareness of innovation by users, social pressure and user readiness.

M. Elamparithi   and V. Anuratha   

In general, Relational Database Migration (RDBM) has always complex, time-consuming, and magnified process due to heterogeneous structures and several data types of RDB. This paper discusses the categorized literature review of existing migration strategies, surveys the translation techniques, and also discusses the technical issues for making the migration process more effective. This review assesses the impact of existing migration strategies and shows how it has been designed according to the recent trends. In software industries, plenty of Database Migration Tools (DBMTs) are available, but finding the effective one is still a risky job. Hence, some of the DBMTs are reviewed and suggested several basic criteria for evaluating migration toolkits. The discussion of these issues will help the researchers and also database practitioner in planning the migration projects.

Mabude C.N   and Awoyelu I.O.   

Expertise recommendation is a peculiar task in recommender systems development because it deals with humans who possess the attribute of reason, as items for recommendation compared to other items such as movies, songs, books, among others. Previous systems have deployed feedback through rating of experts by users as a means of evaluating their expertise in order to enhance quality of recommendation. However, this method is deficient because it denies the experts the opportunity of airing their opinion about the activity for which they were being rated by the users, especially in academic research. This has made the feedback mechanism in existing systems a one-way structure. To address this challenge, a bidirectional feedback approach to expertise recommendation in academic research that incorporates user classification is therefore proposed. The proposed system was developed using Unified Modeling Language (UML) for the model design, MySql for the database implementation, Java Script and Hypertext-Pre-Processor (PHP) for the program coding. The proposed system was evaluated using precision and recall. It was further benchmarked using the harmonic mean difference between the expertise recommendation approach of an existing system and the proposed system. The results from both systems were shown using line charts. The benchmarking result indicated that the proposed system outperformed the existing system by 2.5%.

Cosmina Ivan   and Radu Cojocari   

The Internet multimedia streaming increased proportional to the number of streaming users and from 2005 peer-to-peer media streaming received a substantial amount of research attention and was applied for both live and on-demand video streaming. This technique succeeded to provide a large number of multimedia streams while consuming less bandwidth than in the case of a client-server architecture. Multimedia streaming is a complex subject, it widens over various computer science fields as the networking area, multimedia compression area and the security area. Due to the increasing need of multimedia streaming applications and the need for continuous communication with harsh constraints such as real-time communication, low bandwidth and content security, the need for a flexible and extensible tool is justified, and the main purpose of such a tool is to facilitate the development of applications such as Goober [9], IConf [10], Ekiga [11] or Skype [12]. The responsibilities of such SDK are to capture efficiently multimedia information from a web camera and/or a microphone and send them to its peer. The proposed SDK was built on the .NET Framework 4.5 based on a hybrid peer-to-peer architecture. The SDK can be integrated on multiple .NET platforms such .NET Framework 4.5, Silverlight, and Windows Phone 8, and due to its flexibility it can be used by desktop clients, web clients and mobile clients. From a communication perspective, the SDK starts several independent services which capture incoming data, and uses dynamic proxy objects to send data to its peers, services which assure the necessary degree of parallelism needed to have a responsive application with real-time communication.

Sarawut Markchit   

The purposes of this research were firstly, to identify the problem and obtain necessary requirements data from the librarians. Secondly, to analyze the obtain data, design and develop the system. Thirdly, to conduct an assessment or survey from the users of library resources service through websites and mobile systems with web services with regards overall performance of Suratthani Rajabhat University Central Library. The researcher obtained the data from the users through questionnaires and directs interview, after the feedback was consolidated, the obtained information were analyzed, designed and developed the system. The instruments used for the development were visual studio .NET (ASP.NET) for web-based application, HTML5 for mobile application, web-service for data communication with the component and connected to staff system of this University, Microsoft SQL server for database management and longest matching algorithm for data retrieval. After installed the system, assess for the users satisfaction such as easily to use, method of output, prompt service, accuracy, security, completely, increase efficacy for work and benefit from the system showed that the total average as satisfactory

H. N. Yadav   

Silence compression algorithm for voice message compresses sound files. In This paper software shows greater efficiency for the sound files having number of silence runs. It can be used in telecommunication for sending voice messages in compressed form the advantage of context adaptive voice message Silence compression is that it frequently smooths out the data, which makes it even more suitable [4]. In This paper we get an extra unexpected benefit from lossy compression, above and beyond the compression itself. Silence compression software has successfully been tested for 25 wav files sampled at 8000hz ,16 bits .

Yee Koon Loh   and Shahrel A. Suandi   

Facial expression recognition has been a very important task for human-computer interactions. Computer vision techniques have been much employed to get the automated recognition of facial expression. Facial Action Coding System has best described on facial expression, which includes 46 action units that involve facial muscle movements. In this paper, the relationships between Action Units are modeled using Bayesian Network structure. Action Units relationship and modeling are explained, and the learning algorithms for Bayesian Network structure are discussed. The aim of this work is to get the optimized structure to best explain the relationships of AUs based on two AU-coded databases. The relationships among AUs are important for further facial expression recognition. Experiments demonstrate that a prior network is essential to start up and ease the searching process. Due to the complexity of the possible structures, constraints are applied to simplify the work. Bayesian Network parameters are also learned from two databases for different structures to do Bayesian Network inference and classification based on the data set. Average recognition rate for each AU is illustrated, and the overall recognition performance is analyzed to get the optimized structure to best describe the AU relationship.

Valery I. Struchenkov   

Under study is the problem of searching the extremal of given functional ( two or three-dimensional curve ), which must satisfy a number of predetermined restrictions. A specific feature of the desired curve is that it should consist of elements of special types, whose parameters are limited. The number of elements is unknown and should be determined in the process of solving the problem. Such problems arise in particular in designing linear structures routes. In the case searching of two-dimensional extremal piecewise linear and piecewise parabolic curves are considered. Such problems arise in the design of optimal longitudinal profile of railways and roads. Multi-stage approach is proposed using the methods of nonlinear and dynamic programming. At the first stage we define broken line consisting of elements of small length, using nonlinear programming. At the second stage we determine a number of the elements and the initial approximation, using dynamic programming. At the third stage we find the optimal decision using a special non-linear programming algorithm.

Sharmin Jahan   and M. Mozammel Hoque Chowdhury   

Health is the most important aspect for economic sustainability of a country. Bangladesh is facing a lot of challenges in quality healthcare management. The recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) could play vital role in improving healthcare services and reaching them to the doorstep of the marginalized people. This research aims to evaluate the present health status of the country and explores the applicability of e-Health as well as the challenges and issues of electronic healthcare development. This study has conducted a survey on patient's views and expectations toward e-Health for quality healthcare management. The survey was conducted in some selected rural and urban hospitals/clinics in the light of effective adoption of ICT in eHealth services. This research would be useful to improve the access, effectiveness and quality of health services utilized by healthcare organizations, doctors, patients, and consumers in an effort to pick up the health status of patients and to face the emergency situations in some cases. Finally, a set of guidelines has been provided to aid the implementation of a successful electronic healthcare system.

Valery I. Struchenkov   

Under study is an optimization problem which arises in line structure routing. In large systems we must solve such problems many times with different source data. So it is necessary to develop non-standard algorithms with using the features of the particular application. The article deals with this kind of algorithms based on the use of constraints features, which arise in the problems of optimal line structures routing. This is a big dimension problem of nonlinear programming. Nonlinear programming problems with the number of variables and constraints in a few hundreds and more demands a lot of machine time.

Changwoo Yoon   

We present an efficient intelligent information retrieval model using reduction of domain-specific expert knowledge, demonstrating its use in the pathology medical domain. We created an information retrieval model that incorporates domain-specific knowledge to provide knowledgeable answers to users. This model converts domain-specific knowledge to a relationship of terms represented as quantitative values, which gives improved efficiency. The conversion technology, called “knowledge reduction,” enables the off-line calculation of knowledge separate from the information retrieval (IR) process. This results in the real-time processing of retrieval results. We performed a simulation of the developed Intelligent IR model in the Pathology medical domain. Our approach resulted in an approximately 30% performance gain measured by average precision at 11 standard recall levels metrics when compared with the vector space model based IR method.

Chii-Huei Yu   and Bing-Huei Chen   

This article uses the mathematical software Maple for the auxiliary tool to study two types of improper integrals. We can obtain the infinite series forms of these two types of integrals by using geometric series, differentiation term by term, and differentiation with respect to a parameter. On the other hand, we provide some examples to do calculation practically. The research methods adopted in this study involved finding solutions through manual calculations and verifying these solutions by using Maple. This type of research method not only allows the discovery of calculation errors, but also helps modify the original directions of thinking from manual and Maple calculations. For this reason, Maple provides insights and guidance regarding problem-solving methods.

Waiyawat Saitum   Cee Triamornpan   Nuttapon Thitichaiyongkit   and Nuttawut Tipamornwiwat   

The purpose of this research was to create 3D animation silent movie presented about story of one man who wants to save the world from dying by global warming. The process of creating this movie was divided in to 5 steps. First, set limitations and scope of the story. Second, design the structure and plotline of the story. Third, design characters and scene of the story. Fourth, create characters and scene movement into 3-Dimension using the computer graphics program into video format. And the last, evaluation of 3D animation silent movie as following: 1) Evaluate quality of movie by experts. 2) Evaluate satisfaction from viewers of the controlled population. 3) Interpret the level of Understanding Compare between Male and Female. The result of evaluations present a good outcome with an average of 3.55 from experts and the average from the sampling group was 4.02 which present a good result level and the level of understanding compare between male and female was no different. It can be concluded that research can be used as a media for attract audience attention because of the overall atmosphere of the scenes come out nearly realistic and also have an excitement and more interesting in 3D animation.

Duncan Waga   Kefa Rabah   and James Ogalo   

‘Internet of Things’ is choking the world with Zettabyte scale data rate of which traditional computing can neither store nor process. Outputs of various kinds of Research endeavors are held in different media over the years and cannot be made to “talk to each other” to exploit each other for beneficial relative information. The prime objective is to find a platform that can easily accommodate Cloud technology which can elastically handle the big data concept. In this study a private cloud is built using Ubuntu and Eucalyptus open source software on two quad processor machines with 8GB Ram. Using Apache Flume and Hadoop analytics, Big Data obtained from Research outputs is mounted on the R-Wingu framework with capacity to data mine unstructured, unrelated data and relate the components intelligently and may be leased as Database as a Service(DaaS). Once disparate data streams are accessible in real time, in one place and a consistent fashion, data suddenly becomes much more powerful and decisions become that much more impactful. Surveys are conducted across research communities with an aim of isolating research Gaps through various statistical tools. Sample results are discussed alongside previous studies’ outputs. Research Gaps filled are compared by poll results conducted with exiting outcomes. Establishments are urged to embrace Big Data approach for competitive advantage.

Chii-Huei Yu   and Bing-Huei Chen   

The multiple integral problem is closely related to probability theory and quantum field theory. This paper uses the mathematical software Maple for the auxiliary tool to study three types of multiple integrals. We can obtain the infinite series forms of these three types of multiple integrals by using differentiation with respect to a parameter, differentiation term by term, and integration term by term. In addition, we provide some examples to do calculation practically. The research methods adopted in this study involved finding solutions through manual calculations and verifying these solutions by using Maple. This type of research method not only allows the discovery of calculation errors, but also helps modify the original directions of thinking from manual and Maple calculations. For this reason, Maple provides insights and guidance regarding problem-solving methods.

Duncan Waga   and Kefa Rabah   

The World is getting swamped with data to the tune of 7ZB a year mostly emanating from the ‘internet of things’ devices. This data is scattered in various devices and no meaningful relationship may be derived from it, and neither can this terrific rate be managed by traditional storage or processors. It is believed that organizations that are best able to make real-time business decisions using Big Data solutions will thrive, while those that are unable to embrace and make use of this shift will increasingly find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in the market and face potential failure. Cloud computing promises enough capacity in terms of storage and processing power to elastically handle data of such magnitude and through the use of analytics get value from it. This paper focuses on environmental conditions’ data like rainfall, winds, temperature etc and the use of particular cloud computing analytical tool to get some meaningful information from it which can be utilized by farmers for strategic and successful Agriculture. Previous similar studies are discussed and recommendations given.

Muhammad Adeel Javaid   

Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular, especially for businesses and organizations. A lot of enterprises are shifting to the clouds because it offers a lot of benefits. With cloud computing, SMEs no longer have to maintain software and servers on their premises. There is no need to employ highly technical personnel to maintain the IT infrastructure. What businesses do now is that they rent a space on a server located anywhere in the world so that they can access their software applications. A lot of large businesses have moved to the clouds and it is expected that small and medium-sized businesses will follow suit. SMEs can enjoy a lot of benefits when they shift to the clouds. One of such benefits is that they can save on costs. There is no need to invest on hardware and not use it fully. With cloud computing, SMEs can pay only for what they have utilized. They have the option to choose the kind of service level they require. Cloud computing service providers take care of IT support, licenses, and costly equipment. They also ensure that they have the newest software versions installed on their systems. Thus, SMEs need not worry about software installations and updates. Also, cloud computing service providers employ IT experts who can help users with their needs. The aim of this research work is to provide an overview of the implementation of cloud computing for Small and Medium Enterprises to help them make strategic decisions regarding the adoption of cloud computing within their own environment.

Chii-Huei Yu   

This study uses the mathematical software Maple for the auxiliary tool to evaluate two types of definite integrals. We can obtain the closed forms of these two types of definite integrals by using differentiation with respect to a parameter and Leibniz differential rule. At the same time, we provide some definite integrals to do calculation practically. The research methods adopted in this study involved finding solutions through manual calculations and verifying these solutions by using Maple.

Mohammed I. Alghamdi  

Most research of Solid State Drives architectures rely on Flash Translation Layer (FTL) algorithms and wear leveling; however, internal parallelism in Solid State Drives has not been well explored. In this research, I proposed a new strategy to improve SSD write performance by enhancing internal parallelism inside SSDs. A SDRAM buffer is added in the design for buffering and scheduling write requests. Because the same logical block numbers may be translated to different physical numbers at different times in FTL, the on-board DRAM buffer is used to buffer requests at the lower level of FTL. When the buffer is full, same amount of data will be assigned to each storage package in the SSDs to enhance internal parallelism. To accurately evaluate performance, I use both synthetic workloads and real-world applications in experiments. I compare the enhanced internal parallelism scheme with the traditional LRU strategy, because it is unfair to compare an SSD having buffer with an SSD without a buffer. The simulation results demonstrate that the writing performance of our design is significantly improved compared with the LRU-cache strategy with the same amount of buffer sizes.

Maurizio Adriano Strangio   

In two recent papers, Zuowen Tan (Security and Communication Networks) and Chih-ho Chou et al. (Computers and Electronics) published three party key agreement protocols especially convenient for protecting communications in mobile-centric environments such as e-payments, vehicular mobile networks (VMN), RFID applications, etc. For his protocol, Tan provides a formal security proof developed in a model of distributed computing based on the seminal work of Bellare and Rogaway. In this paper, we show that both protocols are vulnerable to KCI attacks. We suggest modifications to both protocols that fix the vulnerability at the expense of a small decrease in their computational efficiency.

Abeer Badr El Din Ahmed   and Ibrahim Sayed Elaraby   

Currently the amount huge of data stored in educational database these database contain the useful information for predict of students performance. The most useful data mining techniques in educational database is classification. In this paper, the classification task is used to predict the final grade of students and as there are many approaches that are used for data classification, the decision tree (ID3) method is used here.

Rapudo A Onyango   Raymond W. Ongus   Fredrick M Awuor   and Constantine Nyamboga   

The study sought to determine the impact of adoption and use of mobile phone technology on the performance of micro and small enterprises in Kisii municipality, Kenya. The owner’s’ perception on mobile phone adoption, purpose, sources, factors and perceived effects were studied. The study targeted owners of MSEs in Kisii Municipality. A cross sectional survey research design aimed at identifying MSE owners’ perception on the adoption and use of mobile phone technology was used. Stratified sampling was used to identify the MSEs and simple random sampling techniques used to select the respondents and questionnaires placed to collect the data. A questionnaire was used to collect data and a split-half method of estimating reliability used with the aim of assessing the reliability and validity of the research instrument through the expert advice of the supervisors and faculty. The study sample comprised four hundred (400) owners of MSEs out of a population of three thousand five hundred and twenty eight (3528). Once the data had been collected, quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, distributions in percentages and frequency counts. Qualitative data was recorded from field data, transcribed and reported in themes and sub themes. Multiple regression analysis was also utilized to assess the relationship among the independent and dependent variables. The study showed among other findings, that there is an impact on adoption and use of mobile phone technology on the performance of micro and small enterprises.

Muhammad Adeel Javaid   

In the specific context of safeguard of old documents encountered by specific problems of conservation (damp patches, folds, tears, shade… etc.), we are interested in the diagnosis of the methods of compression of the two families: reversible (without loss) and irreversible methods (with loss). Particularly, we are interested in the current methods like RLE, Compression LZ and LZW, Huffman, Deflate, CCITT Group 3 and 4, JPEG, JPEG2000, png, and fractal Compression. The goal of this work is to develop a semi-automatic tool able to quantify the quality of a compression of old documents. Then, can answer objectively for the choice of a compression method from a collection of images. The choice of this collection must be representative in terms of a number of images and typology of images of the same context, like here the old documents. In this paper, we propose a semi-automatic method that operates at the first time on a supervised classification of the original image to raise K groups with distinguished characteristics. The choice of K is previously determined by the user: writing, bottom, tear….etc. In the second step, we calculate the movements (intra class and inter class). The last step consists in calculating of the degradation measurement.

Ferei Shabaia   

The concept of a Z-mouse and some of its possible applications are presented in this paper. Z-mouse is considered as a visual means for fuzzy data entry and retrieval. As a graphical tool, Z-mouse has the potential of being used in different applications of fuzzy logic. The focus of this paper is mainly on the introduction of this new tool and some recommended fields in which it may be useful. Cancer images and data dispersion analysis are mentioned as examples.

Enrico Denti   

There is a no-man’s land between how the Graphical User Interfaces are typically conceived, designed and engineered in desktop applications and mobile apps, and what users actually expect: it’s where the users’ experience, expectations, training, habits, mental attitude come into play. New software versions add features, change the GUI layout, behavior and environment for innovation and marketing reasons, but in doing so they often disregard the value of the user experience: all the user can do is accept the new situation and trying to adapt. To make things worse, customization options are usually limited when it comes to restoring the previous environment, and downgrading restrictions in software licenses also apply. Background services may also start at the worst time, monopolizing the system against the user’s will, causing frustration and possibly more serious problems due to service unavailability. In short, there’s a grey cross area in software design and deployment where the user is not fully respected as a person whose experience is intrinsically a value worth preserving. In this paper we analyze and discuss some common situations from different scenarios, and exploit them to extract some golden rules for a more respected software user – the Respected User Manifesto.

Kuo-pao Yang   Sebastian van Delden   and Elyse Bond   

KinectFlix is a hand gesture recognition application which uses a Xbox 360 Kinect to interact with NetFlix while watching online movies and TV shows. This project is designed and developed with the intention of providing an easily adaptable interface for the Xbox 360 Kinect to be used with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications to provide a controller-less interactive user interface.

Valery I. Struchenkov   

Under study are approximation problems of plane curves defined by a sequence of points. These problems arise in computer-aided design planning of linear structures. The approximating curve consists of elements of a certain type (straight-line segments, arcs or 2nd degree parabolas, and also clothoids). The parameters of these elements are constrained. Moreover, the number of elements is unknown. The article deals with the simplest of the tasks of the per-element approximation, in which the elements are line segments with presence of a number of restrictions. The problem is solved by dynamic programming. An algorithm for solving the problem under the restrictions of special kind is considered. This algorithm for new CAD of railways gives decrease of construction cost when designing the optimal longitudinal profile.

Ruth Chweya   

In the telecommunications industry, mobile numbers are increasingly being seen as an asset of the regulator. The freedom of the customer using it is left to him/her to decide which service provider to use while retaining the same number. Mobile number portability (MNP) has been introduced to provide a platform for this freedom to the customer. The Telecommunications market Regulator in Kenya, the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), began the course of mobile number portability in 2010 through newspaper advertisement. The regulator had an aim that in the end, the right customer experience will be provided by the service providers, help service providers building profitable and lasting relationships between the service providers and their customer, and to differentiate themselves in the market. In this paper, we seek to evaluate the performance of MNP in Kenya since its launch. This paper seeks to find out how the service has performed after the first three months of operation. We survey and analyze MNP framework in Kenya and compare that to MNP in Japan, Finland, Sweden and Hong Kong to establish the future of MNP in Kenya. It first looks at the MNP framework as used in Kenya, the procedure for reversal in case the customer is dissatisfied with a service provider which he moves to and makes a reference to how the service has performed in other markets such as Finland, Sweden, and Hong Kong in order to enable comparative observations. Since there has been very little literature published for countries in Africa it will only make comments on countries like Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria. Further, it gives recommendations to the participating parties.

Hassan Reza   and Washington Helps   

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of security aspect of Web-Based applications that utilize Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The architectural solutions that address security requirements are examined and compared with other quality attributes relevant to web-based systems. More specifically, a trade off analysis based on ATAM performed to show the correlation between security and other system wide qualities related to the successful selection of SOA. The optimal architectural solution should not only meet the security requirements of a web-based system but also meets other QAs such as performance, availability, usability, modifiability, etc.

Osho Oluwafemi   Falaye Adeyinka Adesuyi   and Shafi’i M. Abdulhamid   

Recently, terrorism has become one of the biggest threats to the survival of mankind on the planet. Nigeria has had her own share of the effects of this menace. It is evidently a challenge to national security, a sure enemy to national development. No doubt, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has pervaded every facet of human endeavour, and terrorist groups too are taking advantage of its potentials to recruit, propagate their propaganda, train its members, communicate and conspire, and even to raise money. In this paper, we sought to highlight cyber tools and techniques used by terrorists in Nigeria in their activities, assess the government’s response so far and capacity in tackling terrorism, and proffer recommendations that can help mitigate the menace. It was found out that the cyberspace could fast become the biggest promoter of terrorism in Nigeria, and unfortunately, the government does not possess the necessary cyber-capabilities to tackle this in the country. To forestall this, we highlight the need to view the security of the country’s cyberspace as the trigger point in developing effective anti- and counter-terrorism strategies, and consequently, put necessary cybersecurity measures in place to this effect.

Duncan WAGA   and Kefa RABAH   

Despite the young age of Cloud Computing (CC), there is already tremendous pressure to metamorph its structure due to the dynamic nature of technology in the virtualization environment. Cloud providers are supplying users with varied flavors of CC while the latter haphazardly implements their systems to stay an edge over their competitors. Solution to the numerous technical and otherwise challenges affecting CC currently will compel a total overhaul of the CC architecture. The next decade will doubtlessly see a completely different CC with possible compatibility issues to current user systems. This paper presents the most probable changes that will hit the CC and outlines what end users should brace themselves to. The year 2020 is used as a reference point and federated datacenters behaving like breathing organisms with changing states are discussed. Views from a cross section of Industry are given and recommendations are suggested to users who are currently planning to take up CC.

Geoffrey Rotich   Benjamin Kyambo   Fredrick M. Awuor   and Felix Obegi   

Tremendous advances in computer technology and the evolution of the Internet have led to new approaches in learning and training which are summarized under the term e-Learning. This research studied the effects of e-learning system on teacher orientation programs conducted by Kenya Institute of Education (KIE), which is a National Curriculum Development and Research Centre, offers online teacher orientation courses using Elimika learning management system. The objectives of this study were to establish the extent of use of e-learning system by teachers in curriculum orientation programs, assess teachers’ perceptions, identify challenges and establish possible mechanisms that can be put in place to encourage teachers to use e-learning system in curriculum orientation programs. Theoretical framework for the study was Technology Acceptance Model which postulates that a person’s behavioural intention to use e-learning is determined by perceived usefulness and ease of use. The population consisted of 800 primary school teachers enrolled in Elimika e-learning system and 124 curriculum developers working at KIE. Stratified random sampling was used to select a sample of 214 teachers and 110 curriculum developers. The curriculum developers who responded to the questionnaire were 198 and teachers were 80 representing a response rate of 92.52 percent and 72.73 percent respectively. Data was collected using questionnaires and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 19. The study found out that e-learning system features such as ease of use, interactivity and flexibility had significant total effects upon usage by teachers in curriculum orientation. Also teachers’ perceptions on the appropriate content, saving on time and effort, learning enhancement and enjoyment had a significant effect on intention to use Elimika system. The study also identified various challenges encountered by teachers and some mechanisms that can be put in place to encourage teachers to use e-learning system. Slow internet connectivity, network downtime and lack of computers were the main challenges encountered by teachers when using Elimika e-learning system.

Fiona Carroll   and Rhyd Lewis   

As the boundaries of aesthetics are broadening out to take on board and appreciate the experiences of new technologies, so too, the designers and developers of these new technologies are realising the power of aesthetics to create ‘intended’ human computer interaction (HCI) experiences. In this paper, the interest lies in the ‘engaged’ interaction and what actually needs to be harnessed between the aesthetic and the algorithm to ensure the ‘intended’ HCI experience is achieved. The paper will focus on the design and development of an interactive website for solving a real world combinatorial optimization problem. Its main contribution lies in its investigation into the ‘engaged’ interaction whilst highlighting how we really need to understand and appreciate the interface between the aesthetic and the algorithm in order to fully get to the heart of HCI experience.

Chandan Srivastava   

Uncertainty plays an important role in analyzing and minimizing the errors in a given experimental data set in order to increase the reliability and quality of the obtained data. In this paper, we study biological data which is subject to technical limitations and errors, rendering the gathered data likely to be uncertain. By using fundamental numerical analysis approach, we have targeted to statistically identify the uncertainties. So far, it is extremely functional when dealing with a giant data sample containing large variations. Thus, identifying the margin above the threshold error of uncertainties, we offer a novel statistical modeling and its perspective applications in data analysis.

Julia Taratukhina   and Dmitry Aldunin   

Nowadays, the Internet has become the main medium of information exchange. It affects such areas as business, entertainment, advertising, e-education, mass media, various communities of interest and so on. Very often, such e-resources involve multicultural audience. There are different approaches to creation of ergonomic user interface design in different cultures, though. This particular paper is devoted to analysis of differentiation of those approaches and is also aimed at working out a list of recommendations on the ways to improve ergonomic user interface design of e-resources for multicultural audience.

Ulla Gain and Virpi Hotti 

There exist large amounts of heterogeneous digital data. This phenomenon is called Big Data which will be examined. The examination of Big Data has been launched as Big Data analytics. In this paper, we present the literature review of definitions for Big Data analytics. The objective of this review is to describe current reported knowledge in terms of what kind of Big Data analytics is defined in the articles that can be found in ACM and IEEE Xplore databases in June 2013. We found 19 defining parts of the articles for Big Data analytics. Our review shows that Big Data analytics is verbosely explained, and the explanations have been meant for professionals. Furthermore, the findings show that the concept of Big Data analytics is unestablished. Big Data analytics is ambiguous to the professionals - how would we explain it to laypeople (e.g. leaders)? Therefore, we launch the term data-milling to illustrate an effort to uncover the information nuggets. Data-milling can be seen as an examination of heterogeneous data or as part of competitive advantage. Our example concerns investments of coal power plants in Europe.

V.Vi jayakumari 

Face is the index of mind. It is a complex multidimensional structure and needs a good computing technique for recognition. While using automatic system for face recognition, computers are easily confused by changes in illumination, variation in poses and change in angles of faces. A numerous techniques are being used for security and authentication purposes which includes areas in detective agencies and military purpose. These surveys give the existing methods in automatic face recognition and formulate the way to still increase the performance.

Gursharanjeet Singh Kalra Rajneesh Talwar and Harsh Sadawarti 

Piracy in the presence of internet and computers proves to be a biggest jolt to the concerned industry. To reduce the piracy and duplicity of the images, digital watermarking technique is having an edge over the other available techniques. In this paper, a blind digital watermarking algorithm is presented which is robust enough to resist the watermark against the attacks. The algorithm exploits the random sequence generated by Arnold and Chaos transformations. Discrete wavelet transformation of third level decomposition is used to convert the image into its frequency domain. In another transformation, the image is converted into frequency domain by using DCT and DWT combined. The binary watermark is embedded into its HL3 domain. The evaluation of the algorithm is calculated in terms of peak signal to noise ratio and non correlation. The results prove that the algorithm is robust enough to handle the attacks like JPEG, filtering, and different types of noise attacks.

Yeslam Al-Saggaf and Md Zahidul Islam 

This article explores the potential of data mining as a technique that could be used by malicious data miners to threaten the privacy of Social Network Sites (SNSs) users. It applies a data mining algorithm, specifically a clustering algorithm, to a hypothetical dataset to show the ease at which characteristics about the SNSs users can be discovered and used in a way that could invade their privacy. One important outcome of exploring the threats from data mining on individuals’ privacy is enable SNSs developers better understand the ways in which SNSs can be used by malevolent data miners to harm users. Another important outcome is to help developers of SNSs develop mechanisms that will provide protection to users from these knowledge discovery techniques.

Fathy E.Eassa M. Zaki Ahmed M. Eassa and Tahani Aljehani 

In this paper, an integrated multiagent testing tool is presented. Such tool comprises static analyzer, dynamic tester and an integrator of the two components for detecting security vulnerabilities and errors in agent based web applications written in Java. The static analysis component analyzes the source code of the web application to identify the locations of security vulnerabilities and displays them to the programmer. Consequently, dynamic testing of the web application is carried out. Here, a temporal-based assertion language is introduced to help in detecting security violations (errors) in the underlying application. The proposed language has operators for detecting SQL injection and cross-site scripting, XSS, security errors. The dynamic tester consists of two components: instrumentor (preprocessor) and run-time-agent. The instrumentor has many modules that have been implemented as software agents using Java language under the control of a multi agent framework. The agents of the instrumentor are: static analyzer agent, parser agent, and code converter agent. Moreover, an integrator for integrating both static and dynamic analyses is employed. Eventually the implementation details of IMATT are reported.

Rawan T.  Khasawneh and Emad A.  Abu-Shanab 

The Internet became an indispensable part of people's lives because of the significant role it plays in the way individuals interact, communicate and collaborate with each other. Also, the recent evolvements in social media (such as blogs, websites and other social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and Googleplus) tempted governments around the world to join these sites in a try to benefit from the new way of communication and interaction provided by such tools. On the other hand, social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with Internet access which makes governments that joined these sites have the capacity to rebuild the relationship with their citizens and increase the level of citizens' engagement and participation. In order to achieve the goal of this paper, the Jordan e-government page on Facebook is taken as a case study. Several page insights indicates that there is a good level of engagement by citizens, where they interact positively with the posts published by the page through making a like, comment, share, answering a question or just see the page. Also, it is noticeable that the insights show that the page fan base is mostly comprised of men between 25 and 34.

Ugochukwu Onwudebelu Godwin O. Igbinosa and Uchenna C. Ugwoke 

A Collegiate Software Exhibition and Competition was conducted with five tertiary institutions fielding team. An in-house exhibition and competition was also carried out by one of the participating universities. These events were designed to provide student led teams with a unique opportunity and environment in which they could test and showcase their skills at software development. Teams were scored based on their ability to develop software that meets specific criteria such as technicality, marketability and user friendless amongst others. The objective of this initiative was to provide an environment where the students could exercise their information system abilities and of providing feedback to each team as its skill level and abilities was achieved over the course of these successful events. Lessons were learned which are being used to move this local event to a national level event.

Kevin K.H. Cheung 

A computational realization of Ross W. Duffin's approach towards obtaining just tuning for Renaissance music is described. The method is implemented in Optune, a tool developed in Python.