Search results
1 – 10 of 149Aznaoui Hanane, Arif Ullah and Said Raghay
The purpose of this paper is to design an enhanced routing protocol to minimize energy consumed and extend network lifetime in sensor network (WSN).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to design an enhanced routing protocol to minimize energy consumed and extend network lifetime in sensor network (WSN).
Design/methodology/approach
With the use of appropriate routing protocols, data collected by sensor nodes reache the BS. The entire network lifetime can be extended well beyond that of its single nodes by putting the nodes in sleep state when they are not in use, and make active just a single node at a time within a given area of interest. So that, the lowest-cost routing arises by minimizing the communication cost. This paper proposes an enhanced adaptive geographic fidelity (E-GAF) routing protocol based on theory of graphs approach to improve the discovery phase, select the optimal path, reduce the energy used by nodes and therefore extend the network lifetime. Following the simulations established by varying the number of grids and tests, a comparison is made between the E-GAF and basic GAF (B-GAF) based on the number of dead nodes and energy consumption.
Findings
The results obtained show that E-GAF is better than the existing basic GAF protocol in terms of energy efficiency and network lifetime.
Originality/value
This paper adopts the latest optimization algorithm know as E-GAF, which is used to solve the problem of energy and improve the network lifetime in a WSN. This is the first work that utilizes network lifetime in WSN.
Details
Keywords
S.O. Babalola, O. Taylor, A.O. Babalola and O.A. Ashaye
Yam flour (YMF) is an important staple food in the tropics but its utilization is limited by low nutrient and consumer acceptability. The aim of this paper is to investigate the…
Abstract
Purpose
Yam flour (YMF) is an important staple food in the tropics but its utilization is limited by low nutrient and consumer acceptability. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of substituting yam flour with grain amaranth on chemical and sensory properties.
Design/methodology/approach
YMF and grain amaranth flour (GAF) were prepared on a dry matter basis; GAF was mixed with YMF at ratio 1:3. All flour samples were subjected to chemical (moisture, protein, fat, ash, crude fibre, carbohydrate and minerals) evaluation and sensory evaluation of the stiff gel was conducted by a ten‐member panel consisting of five adult males and five females.
Findings
GAF increased the protein content of YMF significantly at p < 0.05 from 1.8 to 9.63 per cent. There was a decrease in carbohydrate content of YAF when substituted with GAF. There was a significant increase (at p < 0.05) in phosphorus and sodium elements when YMF was substituted with GAF. There was no significant difference in acceptability of gel from grain amaranth and yam flour (GAF–YMF) compared with whole YMF gel on colour, texture, flavour and overall acceptability.
Originality/value
It was apparent that substitution of YMF with GAF improved nutrient composition without affecting the acceptability. This will further improve the nutritional status of people in YMF‐consuming areas.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to explore the library’s on-going relationship with the academic resource center (ARC), and how over the past two years, there have been new services and programs…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the library’s on-going relationship with the academic resource center (ARC), and how over the past two years, there have been new services and programs thriving as a result of this collaboration. The paper presents three case studies that demonstrate the library’s collaboration with the ARC and assesses the opportunities and challenges in working with this department in a new university.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach of this paper is to explore three case studies on how the library collaborated with the ARC in supporting students. The case studies explore the opportunities for partnerships in developing innovative services, programs and resources. Librarians are integral members of the ARC and are embedded in this community by providing support to the department as well.
Findings
The paper finds that collaborations between the library and the ARC are mutually beneficial: academic libraries may consider partnering with tutoring centers to create synergies in enhancing the students’ research experience. However, not all collaborative projects or programs are successful or repeatable in success. They are still opportunities to build and strengthen the relationship between the library and the ARC.
Originality/value
This paper presents three case studies on how the library works closely with the “Global Academic Fellows” (GAF) from the ARC. The GAFs work closely with faculty and librarians as they teach, tutor and collaborate with different university departments to create programs or initiatives that enrich the student experience and the university. Their roles have been instrumental in collaborating with the library to create innovative programs, events and support services throughout the two years since the university opened in 2013.
Details
Keywords
Zhijun Wang, Hezeng Li and Jingyuan Zhang
In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), design of energy‐efficient routing schemes is essential for prolonging the network lifetime. The purpose of this paper is to show that one way…
Abstract
Purpose
In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), design of energy‐efficient routing schemes is essential for prolonging the network lifetime. The purpose of this paper is to show that one way to achieve energy efficiency in routing is to utilize location information, which becomes practical due to the recent increasing availability of low‐cost and reliable positioning devices.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper proposes an eight‐direction forwarding virtual grid aided (VGA) routing scheme that uses location information to save energy. As a grid‐based scheme, VGA divides the whole network area into virtual grids.
Findings
By using eight‐direction forwarding, the proposed VGA scheme outperforms the previous four‐direction forwarding geographical adaptive fidelity (GAF) protocol. The proposed VGA scheme is motivated by the fact that, in the GAF protocol, forwarding to the four diagonal neighboring grids cannot be done in one single hop, although most nodes in these grids can hear the signal.
Originality/value
Theoretical analysis shows the eight‐direction forwarding protocol performs better than the four‐direction one unless the forwarding direction has an angle of less than 15○ with the horizontal or vertical grid axis. Simulation supports the fact that the eight‐direction forwarding VGA scheme has better energy performance than the four‐direction forwarding GAF scheme without sacrificing any routing performance.
Details
Keywords
Rebeca Schroeder, Denio Duarte and Ronaldo dos Santos Mello
Designing efficient XML schemas is essential for XML applications which manage semi‐structured data. On generating XML schemas, there are two opposite goals: to avoid redundancy…
Abstract
Purpose
Designing efficient XML schemas is essential for XML applications which manage semi‐structured data. On generating XML schemas, there are two opposite goals: to avoid redundancy and to provide connected structures in order to achieve good performance on queries. In general, highly connected XML structures allow data redundancy, and redundancy‐free schemas generate disconnected XML structures. The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate by experiments an approach which balances such trade‐off through a workload analysis. Additionally, it aims to identify the most accessed data based on the workload and suggest indexes to improve access performance.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper applies and evaluates a workload‐aware methodology to provide indexing and highly connected structures for data which are intensively accessed through paths traversed by the workload.
Findings
The paper presents benchmarking results on a set of design approaches for XML schemas and demonstrates that the XML schemas generated by the approach provide high query performance and low cost of data redundancy on balancing the trade‐off on XML schema design.
Research limitations/implications
Although an XML benchmark is applied in these experiments, further experiments are expected in a real‐world application.
Practical implications
The approach proposed may be applied in a real‐world process for designing new XML databases as well as in reverse engineering process to improve XML schemas from legacy databases.
Originality/value
Unlike related work, the reported approach integrates the two opposite goal in the XML schema design, and generates suitable schemas according to a workload. An experimental evaluation shows that the proposed methodology is promising.
Details
Keywords
Retailing is a trillion‐dollar business. In 1981, department store sales alone amounted to $104 billion. However, the market is as tough as it is large, for retailing is a mature…
Abstract
Retailing is a trillion‐dollar business. In 1981, department store sales alone amounted to $104 billion. However, the market is as tough as it is large, for retailing is a mature business with moderate growth. Although the initial investment required to enter the market is relatively small, competition is stiff. There are over 300,000 stores selling GAF merchandise (General merchandise, Apparel, and Furniture/home furnishings) of which 49,000 outlets are general merchandise retailers. Competitive pricing is intense, and as a result, selling prices tend to rise more slowly than the rate of inflation. Since 1970 the prices of GAF merchandise have risen at a rate from half to three‐fourths the rate of increase of the Consumer Products Index (CPI). Costs, on the other hand, tend to rise in line with CPI, and most retailers borrow for the short term to finance their highly seasonal working capital needs. As a result, they are quite sensitive to fluctuations in the interest rate.
A popular new strategy has appeared on the scene lately. It is called restructuring or, occasionally, redeployment. It may resemble the tried and true strategies of disinvestment…
Abstract
A popular new strategy has appeared on the scene lately. It is called restructuring or, occasionally, redeployment. It may resemble the tried and true strategies of disinvestment and spin‐outs, but it attempts to be something much more far‐reaching; no less than the entire redirection of products, markets, and technologies of the restructuring firm. Seagrams, Bendix, Northwest Industries, Cities Service, Borden, American Can, GAF, and dozens more have pioneered and implemented restructuring on a radical scale in recent times. In all these instances, management has shed not just a doggy division but a whole line of endeavor—typically representing a third to a quarter of its asset base—with the intent of using the proceeds to plunge into entirely new activities.
Eila Repo-Tiihonen, Tero Hallikainen, Päivi Kivistö and Jari Tiihonen
There is a considerable disparity between clinical practice and recommendations based on meta-analyses of antipsychotic polypharmacy in clozapine resistant schizophrenia. For this…
Abstract
There is a considerable disparity between clinical practice and recommendations based on meta-analyses of antipsychotic polypharmacy in clozapine resistant schizophrenia. For this reason, we investigated the clinical response to reducing the use olanzapine that had been previously added on clozapine treatment among seriously ill hospitalized patients. In a randomized controlled trial with crossover design, we studied volunteer patients (N=15) who had olanzapine added on to clozapine in a state mental hospital. Clozapine monotherapy was just as effective as clozapine-olanzapine therapy, according to results from Clinical Global Impression Scale and Global Assessment of Functioning as primary outcome measures. Polypharmacy is widely used in treating schizophrenia, and usually, add-on medications are started because of worsening of the clinical state. A major confounding feature of these add-ons is whether observed improvements are caused by the medication or explained by the natural fluctuating course of the disorder. The present study, in spite of its small size, indicates the necessity of reconsidering the value of polypharmacy in treating schizophrenia.
Details
Keywords
Stefan Gebhardt and Martin Tobias Huber
Treatment satisfaction of different mental disorders is still poorly understood, but of high clinical interest. Inpatients of a general psychiatric care hospital were asked to…
Abstract
Treatment satisfaction of different mental disorders is still poorly understood, but of high clinical interest. Inpatients of a general psychiatric care hospital were asked to fill out questionnaires on satisfaction and clinical variables at admission and discharge. On the basis of an exploratory approach, differences in treatment satisfaction among diagnostic groups were examined by means of one-way analysis of variance. Potential associated clinical and socio-demographic variables were studied using multi/univariate tests. Patients with personality disorders (n=18) showed a significantly lower treatment satisfaction (ZUF-8, Zurich Satisfaction Questionnaire) and a slightly lower improvement of symptoms (CGI, Clinical Global Impression) and global functioning (GAF, Global Assessment of Functioning scale) than that of other diagnostic groups (n=95). Satisfaction in patients with personality disorders correlated much stronger with the symptom improvement and slightly with the functioning level than in patients without personality disorders. Interestingly, in patients with personality disorders psychopharmacological treatment in general (present versus not present) was independent from satisfaction. This exploratory investigation suggests that a lower satisfaction of patients with personality disorders in a general psychiatric hospital is mainly based on a reduced improvement of the symptoms and of the global functioning level.
Details
Keywords
Kjersti B. Tharaldsen and Edvin Bru
Since more than 450 million people worldwide suffer from mental disorders, interventions that promote mental health have been called for. Mindfulness-based coping (MBC) is an…
Abstract
Since more than 450 million people worldwide suffer from mental disorders, interventions that promote mental health have been called for. Mindfulness-based coping (MBC) is an intervention based on coping skills from cognitive behavioral therapy integrating mindfulness practices. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the MBC program for psychiatric outpatients. The study employed a mixed research method with a qualitative approach using semi-structured patient interviews and clinical assessments from patients' therapists and a quantitative approach using instruments measuring mindful coping, mental ill health, and life satisfaction. The study sample included 38 psychiatric outpatients from a district psychiatric outpatient service in Norway. Results suggested that although use of the different skills varied, participants had a positive experience with the program and positive changes in psychological functioning were observed. Findings provide knowledge regarding the design of interventions integrating mindfulness to promote more adequate psychological coping.
Details