2,519 research outputs found

    Design and application of reconfigurable circuits and systems

    No full text
    Open Acces

    Faculty Publications & Presentations, 2007-2008

    Get PDF

    The effect of government policy on the relationship between organizational factors and construction waste management in Abuja, Nigeria

    Get PDF
    Poor motivation for the implementation of the construction on-site waste reduction, insufficient waste management skills, the shortage of appropriately designed and decently handled landfill system, lack of team work, unequal workload and task distribution among the divisions is the result of poor organizational structure among construction organizations in Nigeria. Lack of frequent staff training, performance management and human resource management practices and the problems of waste management regulations is the result of improper enforcement of waste management policy and planning framework for waste management. Further the inadequacy of unified waste management regulations and operational system for the enforcement and control of construction waste management practices among others are accountable for the unsuccessful construction waste management. Drawing upon the resource base view theory, this study aimed to examine the effects of government policy on the relationship between organizational factors and construction waste management. A stratified simple random sampling was adopted for the four categories of construction organizations that are registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission. Out of 331 questionnaires’ distributed to the construction organizations a total of 178 completed and valid questionnaires were returned, yielding a 53.7 percent response rate. Structural equation model, smart PLS algorithms and bootstrapping were adopted to achieve all of the research objectives. This study found out that organizational structure has a strong and positive relationship with construction waste management. Organizational resources established a strong and positive relationship with construction waste management among Nigerian construction organizations. The government policy shows a strong, positive relationship with construction waste management among construction organizations and it also moderates and strengthens the relationship positively between organizational structure and construction waste management in Abuja. Finally, the study further found that government policy also moderates the relationship between organizational resources and construction waste management in Abuja. The results support the hypothesized direct relationship of the organizational structure and construction waste management with the t-value of 7.09, organizational resources and construction waste management with the t-value of 10.16, government policy and construction waste management with the t-value of 5.42. Government policy moderates the relationship between organizational structure and construction waste management with the t-value of 2.61 and also it moderates the relationship between organizational resources and construction waste management with the t-value of 1.66. The study provides appropriate theoretical, practical contributions to the academic, industry and the policy-makers. It is therefore recommended that construction organizations should focus on organizational factors that influence construction waste management. This study focused on non-hazardous material waste. The study suggested that hazardous waste, time and overrun waste should also be considered; while case study or qualitative method could be adopted in future research

    Combining information seeking services into a meta supply chain of facts

    Get PDF
    The World Wide Web has become a vital supplier of information that allows organizations to carry on such tasks as business intelligence, security monitoring, and risk assessments. Having a quick and reliable supply of correct facts from perspective is often mission critical. By following design science guidelines, we have explored ways to recombine facts from multiple sources, each with possibly different levels of responsiveness and accuracy, into one robust supply chain. Inspired by prior research on keyword-based meta-search engines (e.g., metacrawler.com), we have adapted the existing question answering algorithms for the task of analysis and triangulation of facts. We present a first prototype for a meta approach to fact seeking. Our meta engine sends a user's question to several fact seeking services that are publicly available on the Web (e.g., ask.com, brainboost.com, answerbus.com, NSIR, etc.) and analyzes the returned results jointly to identify and present to the user those that are most likely to be factually correct. The results of our evaluation on the standard test sets widely used in prior research support the evidence for the following: 1) the value-added of the meta approach: its performance surpasses the performance of each supplier, 2) the importance of using fact seeking services as suppliers to the meta engine rather than keyword driven search portals, and 3) the resilience of the meta approach: eliminating a single service does not noticeably impact the overall performance. We show that these properties make the meta-approach a more reliable supplier of facts than any of the currently available stand-alone services

    Annual Report, 2013-2014

    Get PDF
    Beginning in 2004/2005- issued in online format onl

    The relationship between e-government system and government operation excellence in the Sultanate of Oman

    Get PDF
    Every government is seeking to provide the best services to demonstrate efficiency and excellence of performance. This goal could be achieved by improving the service performance of entire sectors in society. The government of Sultanate of Oman has realized the importance of moving towards information technology. Therefore, e-Government initiatives were launched in Oman as a part of overall country information technology in 1998. It was first established under the name “Digital Oman”. Every government sector has since upgraded the performance by having its own websites and e-services application. However, there are gaps and loose connections exist among the sectors, which has consequently tarnished the image of Omani E-government. This has led to important questions about the requirement of modification and improvement of such service. Hence, the purpose of this research is to investigate and explore the factors that drive the e-government implementation and affect the government performance as well as the government-citizen relationship in Sultanate of Oman. A survey was conducted among Omani citizens in order to have their feedback and overview of the current e-government in the Sultanate, their technological and behavioral intention in using the e-government system and the governmental operation excellence (GOE) of the system. The outcomes of the study indicate that the e-government system has a direct effect towards GOE. The ‘technology intention to use’ is found to have a mediating effect, while the ‘behavioral intention to use’ has a partially mediating effect on the e-government project approach from citizen's point of view. The study outcomes should offer guidance to conduct e-government projects, especially for the policy makers in the Sultanate of Oman for future researchers. It also can provide a foundation for future researches related to the issues of the government-citizen relationship

    Secure and Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

    Get PDF
    This chapter discusses the need of security and privacy protection mechanisms in aggregation protocols used in wireless sensor networks (WSN). It presents a comprehensive state of the art discussion on the various privacy protection mechanisms used in WSNs and particularly focuses on the CPDA protocols proposed by He et al. (INFOCOM 2007). It identifies a security vulnerability in the CPDA protocol and proposes a mechanism to plug that vulnerability. To demonstrate the need of security in aggregation process, the chapter further presents various threats in WSN aggregation mechanisms. A large number of existing protocols for secure aggregation in WSN are discussed briefly and a protocol is proposed for secure aggregation which can detect false data injected by malicious nodes in a WSN. The performance of the protocol is also presented. The chapter concludes while highlighting some future directions of research in secure data aggregation in WSNs.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, 3 table
    corecore