| 1. |
- Shahid, Muhammad, et al.
(författare)
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Selection of a Graduate Thesis Topic in a Multicultural Educational Environment
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article presents a case study, performed at Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden, about the topic selection routines for a graduate thesis. The study focuses on the international graduate students who are having different academic cultures of their respective countries. Given that BTH has succeeded in the provision of an academic environment that has been efficient in absorbing different academic cultures in a productive manner at a reasonably good scale. However, in a multi-cultural educational environment, it is a challenge for most international students to adapt to the new academic culture and select the graduate thesis topic according to their real potential. Our findings gathered through an online survey, questionnaire, and focus group discussion is presented. The conclusions indicate, albeit, BTH has well defined routines for the thesis selection, the international graduate students face problems at the stage of thesis selection. The article concludes with suggestions to refine the thesis selection process at the micro level to help both students and staff.
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| 2. |
- El Mekawy, Mohamed Sobih Aly, et al.
(författare)
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Towards Interoperating CityGML and IFC Building Models: A Unified Model Based Approach
- 2010
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Ingår i: 5th International 3D GeoInfo Conference. - Berlin : Springer.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- . CityGML represents 3D urban objects that can be shared over different applications, whereas, IFC provides a very detailed semantic model for 3D building representations using constructive elements like beams, walls, etc. Attempts have been made to interoperate CityGML and IFC for seeking useful common applications. However, these efforts use a unidirectional method (mostly from IFC to CityGML) for conversion processes. A bidirectional method can lead to development of unified applications in the areas of urban planning, building construction analysis, homeland security, etc. The benefits of these applications clearly appear at the operational level (e.g., cost reduction, unified data-view), and at the strategic level (e.g., crisis management and increasing the analyses capabilities). In this paper, we present an approach for interoperating CityGML and IFC based on development of a unified building model for converting IFC to CityGML and vice versa. The conversion is a two-steps process in which a model is firstly converted to the unified model and secondly to the target model. Finally, we demonstrate the approach and outcome of each step by a hospital building case that is located in Norrtälje City, north of Stockholm, Sweden.
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| 3. |
- Elias, Mturi, 1975-, et al.
(författare)
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A business process metadata model for a process model repository
- 2010
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Ingår i: Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. - Berlin : Springer Berlin/Heidelberg. - 9783642130519 - 9783642130502 ; , s. 287-300
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Today reuse of business process models is becoming increasingly important. One of the proven solutions for reusing business process models is the use of repositories. Repositories should have process models and process metadata that can help users in searching, understanding, and interpreting process models. The purpose of this paper is to propose a Business Process Metadata Model (BPMM) that would facilitate a) locating process models, b) understanding and/or interpreting process models, and c) navigating a process model repository. In order to evaluate the BPMM, an empirical study is conducted to measure consistency and correctness of annotating business processes by using BPMM.
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| 4. |
- fasel, daniel, et al.
(författare)
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A Data Warehouse Model for Integrating Fuzzy Concepts in Meta Table Structures
- 2010
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Ingår i: 17th- International Conference on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems. - : IEEE. - 9780769540054
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In classical data warehouses (DWH), classification of values takes place in a sharp manner, because of this true values cannot be measured and smooth transition between classes does not occur. In this paper, a fuzzy data ware- house (FDWH) modeling approach, which allows integration of fuzzy concepts without affecting the core of a DWH is presented. This is accomplished through the addition of a meta-table structure, which enables integration of fuzzy concepts on dimensions and facts, while preserving the time-invariability of the DWH and allowing analysis of data both sharp and fuzzy. A comparison to existing approaches for integrating fuzzy concepts in DWH is presented. Guide- lines for modeling the fuzzy meta-tables and a meta-model for the FDWH are also outlined in this paper. The use of the proposed approach is demonstrated by a retail company example. Finally, a comparison of fuzzy and classical data warehousing approaches is presented.
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| 5. |
- Imran, Muhammad, et al.
(författare)
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Energy Efficient SRAM FPGA based Wireless Vision Sensor Node: SENTIOF‐CAM
- 2014
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Ingår i: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology (Print). - 1051-8215 .- 1558-2205. ; 24:12, s. 2132-2143
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many Wireless Vision Sensor Networks (WVSNs) applications are characterized to have a low duty cycling. An individual wireless Vision Senor Node (VSN) in WVSN is required to operate with limited resources i.e., processing, memory and wireless bandwidth on available limited energy. For such resource constrained VSN, this paper presents a low complexity, energy efficient and programmable VSN architecture based on a design matrix which includes partitioning of processing load between the node and a server, a low complexity background subtraction, bi-level video coding and duty cycling. The tasks partitioning and proposed background subtraction reduces the processing energy and design complexity for hardware implemented VSN. The bi-level video coding reduces the communication energy whereas the duty cycling conserves energy for lifetime maximization. The proposed VSN, referred to as SENTIOF-CAM, has been implemented on a customized single board, which includes SRAM FPGA, microcontroller, radio transceiver and a FLASH memory. The energy values are measured for different states and results are compared with existing solutions. The comparison shows that the proposed solution can offer up to 69 times energy reduction. The lifetime based on measured energy values shows that for a sample period of 5 minutes, a 3.2 years lifetime can be achieved with a battery of 37.44 kJ energy. In addition to this, the proposed solution offers generic architecture with smaller design complexity on a hardware reconfigurable platform and offers easy adaptation for a number of applications.
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| 6. |
- Shahzad, Muhammad Khurram
(författare)
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Improving Business Processes using Process-oriented Data Warehouse
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle consists of four phases: design and analysis, configuration, enactment, and evaluation - also known as performance analysis and improvement. Performance analysis and improvement of business processes, one of the core phases in the BPM life cycle, is becoming on top of the agenda for many enterprises. An emerging approach to that is to use the business intelligence approaches that attempt to facilitate the analytical capabilities of business process management systems by implementing process-oriented data warehouse and mining techniques. However, little work has been has done on developing core methods and tools for performance analysis and improvement of business processes. In particular, adequate methods, clearly defined steps or instructions that can guide process managers for analyzing and improving processes using process warehouse (PW) are not available. In the absence of such methods, guidelines or clearly defined steps, important steps may be ignored and credible improvements steps cannot be taken.This research addresses the described limitations by developing a method for performance analysis and improvement of business processes. The key feature of the developed method is, it employs business-orientation in the design and utilization of a PW. The method is composed of three steps, building goal-structure, integrating goal-structure with PW, and analyzing and improving business processes. During the first step, a set of top-level performance goals are identified for the process of interest. Subsequently, the identified goals are decomposed to generate a goal-structure that is aligned with the functional decomposition of the process of interest. The second step describes a technique for integrating the generated goal-structure with PW. The third step describes, a performance estimation model, a decision model and a step by step approach that focuses on utilizing PW for analysis and improvement of business processes.In order to facilitate the use of the proposed method a prototype is developed. The prototype offers a graphical user interface for defining goal structure, integrating goals with PW, and goal-based navigation of PW. In order to evaluate the proposed method, we first develop an evaluation framework and subsequently use it for the evaluation of the proposed method. The framework consists of three components, each representing a type of evaluation. The components are, methodological-structure evaluation, performance-based evaluation and perception-based evaluation. The results of the evaluation show partial support for the methodological structure. However, the results of performance and perception evaluation show promising results of the proposed method.
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| 7. |
- Shahzad, Raja Muhammad Khurram
(författare)
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Classification of Potentially Unwanted Programs Using Supervised Learning
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Malicious software authors have shifted their focus from illegal and clearly malicious software to potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) to earn revenue. PUPs blur the border between legitimate and illegitimate programs and thus fall into a grey zone. Existing anti-virus and anti-spyware software are in many instances unable to detect previously unseen or zero-day attacks and separate PUPs from legitimate software. Many tools also require frequent updates to be effective. By predicting the class of particular piece of software, users can get support before taking the decision to install the software. This Licentiate thesis introduces approaches to distinguish PUP from legitimate software based on the supervised learning of file features represented as n-grams. The overall research method applied in this thesis is experiments. For these experiments, malicious software applications were obtained from anti-malware industrial partners. The legitimate software applications were collected from various online repositories. The general steps of supervised learning, from data preparation (n-gram generation) to evaluation were, followed. Different data representations, such as byte codes and operation codes, with different configurations, such as fixed-size, variable-length, and overlap, were investigated to generate different n-gram sizes. The experimental variables were controlled to measure the correlation between n-gram size, the number of features required for optimal training, and classifier performance. The thesis results suggest that, despite the subtle difference between legitimate software and PUP, this type of software can be classified accurately with a low false positive and false negative rate. The thesis results further suggest an optimal size of operation code-based n-grams for data representation. Finally, the results indicate that classification accuracy can be increased by using a customized ensemble learner that makes use of multiple representations of the data set. The investigated approaches can be implemented as a software tool with a less frequently required update in comparison to existing commercial tools.
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| 8. |
- Sherazi, Syed Muhammad Yasser, et al.
(författare)
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Reduction of Substrate Noise in Sub Clock Frequency Range
- 2010
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Ingår i: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS I-REGULAR PAPERS. - : IEEE. - 1549-8328. ; 57:6, s. 1287-1297
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose a method of reducing the switching noise in the substrate of an integrated circuit. The main idea is to design the digital circuits to obtain a periodic supply current with the same period as the clock. This property locates the frequency components of the switching noise above the clock frequency. Differential return-to-zero signaling is used to reduce the data-dependency of the current. Circuits are implemented in symmetrical precharged DCVS logic with internally asynchronous D registers. A chip was fabricated in a standard 130-nm CMOS technology holding two versions of a pipelined 16-bit adder. First version employed the proposed method, and second version used conventional static CMOS logic circuits and TSPC registers. The respective device counts are 1190 and 684, and maximal operating frequencies 450 and 375 MHz. Frequency domain measurements were performed at the substrate node with on-chip generated sinusoidal and pseudo-random data at a clock frequency of 300 MHz. The sinusoidal case resulted in the largest frequency components, where an 8.5 dB/Hz decrease in maximal power is measured for the proposed circuitry at a cost of three times larger power consumption.
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| 9. |
- Zhang, Ding, et al.
(författare)
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Zinc Supplementation Protects against Cadmium Accumulation and Cytotoxicity in Madin-Darby Bovine Kidney Cells
- 2014
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 9:8, s. e103427-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cadmium ions (Cd2+) have been reported to accumulate in bovine tissues, although Cd2+ cytotoxicity has not been investigated thoroughly in this species. Zinc ions (Zn2+) have been shown to antagonize the toxic effects of heavy metals such as Cd2+ in some systems. The present study investigated Cd2+ cytotoxicity in Madin-Darby bovine kidney (MDBK) epithelial cells, and explored whether this was modified by Zn2+. Exposure to Cd2+ led to a dose-and time-dependent increase in apoptotic cell death, with increased intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial damage. Zn2+ supplementation alleviated Cd2+-induced cytotoxicity and this protective effect was more obvious when cells were exposed to a lower concentration of Cd2+ (10 mu M), as compared to 50 mu M Cd2+. This indicated that high levels of Cd2+ accumulation might induce irreversible damage in bovine kidney cells. Metallothioneins (MTs) are metal-binding proteins that play an essential role in heavy metal ion detoxification. We found that co-exposure to Zn2+ and Cd2+ synergistically enhanced RNA and protein expression of MT-1, MT-2, and the metal-regulatory transcription factor 1 in MDBK cells. Notably, addition of Zn2+ reduced the amounts of cytosolic Cd2+ detected following MDBK exposure to 10 mu M Cd2+. These findings revealed a protective role of Zn2+ in counteracting Cd2+ uptake and toxicity in MDBK cells, indicating that this approach may provide a means to protect livestock from excessive Cd2+ accumulation.
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