Collaborative system: higher education search engine

Malaysian universities or colleges has been one of the main attractive educational destinations to foreigners for the last decade. Malaysian educational institutions are recognized in opening doors of knowledge that fulfill student’s lives with skills, awareness and enthusiasm. There are over 20 public universities and 60 private colleges that offer a complete range of programs leading to highly regarded and internationally recognized qualifications. Despite the vast information made available by these institutions on their websites, majority of potential students face challenges in choosing the right program, courses and university that suits their needs. This research study the innovative method which could be developed and leveraged by the educational industries, specifically the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE) in close collaboration with these universities and colleges, in using search engine comparator technology whereby assisting potential students in making selection. The study raises awareness of relevant collaboration initiatives that could be adopted and replicated to facilitate students and parents in making well-informed decision

From Business Understanding to Deployment: An application of Machine Learning Algorithms to Forecast Customer Visits per Hour to a Fast-Casual Restaurant in Dublin

This research project identifies the significant factors that affects the number of customer visits to a fast-casual restaurant every hour and proceeds to develop several machine learning models to forecast customer visits. The core value proposition of fast-casual restaurants is quality food delivered at speed which means they have to prepare meals in advance of customers visit but the problem with this approach is in forecasting future demand, under estimating demand could lead to inadequate meal preparation which would leave customers unsatisfied while over estimation of demand could lead to wastage especially with restaurants having to comply with food safety regulations whereby heated food not consumed within 90 minutes has to be discarded. Hourly forecasting of demand as opposed to monthly or even daily forecasting is important to help the manager of the fast-casual restaurant optimize resources and reduce wastage. Approaches to forecasting demand can be broadly categorized into qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative methods can be further divided into time series and regression-based methods. The regression-based approach which is used for this study enabled the researcher to gather data on several factors hypothesized to have an impact on the number of customer visits to the fast-casual restaurant every hour, carry out an experiment to test for the significance of these factors and to develop several predictive machine learning models capable of predicting the number of customer visits every hour. The results of the experiments carried out shows that hour, day, public holidays, temperature, humidity, rain and windspeed are significant factors in predicting the number of hourly customer visits. Multiple linear regression, regression tree, random forest and gradient boosting machine learning algorithms were also trained to predict the number of customer visits with the Gradient boosting algorithm achieving the lowest Mean Absolute Percentage Error(MAPE) of 18.82%

An Automated Negotiation System for eCommerce Store Owners to Enable Flexible Product Pricing

If a store owner wishes to sell a product online, they traditionally have two options for deciding on a price. They can sell the product at a fixesd price like the products sold on sites like Amazon, or they can put the product in an auction and let demand from customers drive the final sales price like the products sold on sites like eBay. Both options have their pros and cons. An alternative option for deciding on a final sales price for the product is to enable negotiation on the product. With this, there is a dynamic nature to the price; each customer can negotiate with the store owner on the price which allows the final sales price to both change over time and on a customer by customer basis. The issue with enabling negotiation in the context of eCommerce is the time investment needed from the store owner. A store owner cannot negotiate every time an offer comes in from a potential customer, the potential time investment would not be acceptable. Using software agents to automate the process of negotiation for the seller is a potential solution to enabling negotiation in eCommerce for store owners. In this research, a system such as the one just described is developed in a way that mirrors real life negotiations more closely and after evaluation, is found to be a potential solution for the enabling of negotiation in eCommerce

Arquitetura de software baseada em agentes para gerenciamento de portfólio de fontes de informação existentes na web

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção, Florianópolis, 2013.Observando-se as novas tecnologias em software que surgiram com o advento da plataforma da rede Internet, constata-se que algumas ganharam destaque por possibilitar o armazenamento do conhecimento narrado intacto e catalogado como, por exemplo, os wikis e fóruns da rede Internet. Entretanto, os gestores muitas vezes não conseguem utilizar essas informações dentro do processo de tomada de decisão. Esse fato se deve principalmente à impossibilidade de tratamento dessas informações por meio dos sistemas informatizados tradicionais, devido a particularidades do armazenamento de informações nos ambientes distribuídos. Nesse sentido, o objetivo deste trabalho é desenvolver uma arquitetura de software baseada em agentes para gerenciamento de portfólio de fontes de informação existentes na web, com o objetivo de auxiliar o gestor no processo de tomada de decisão. As metodologias da pesquisa utilizadas são as revisões bibliográfica e sistemática, na conceituação dos conceitos que regem o atual panorama tecnológico e inovador atual, a Inteligência Competitiva e os softwares envolvidos, os sistemas agentes e, estudo de caso, na proposta da ferramenta informatizada e grupo focal em sua validação. Os resultados demonstram que é viável a implementação de estruturas de software a fim de efetuar coleta de dados na Internet, para apoiar o gestor em processos de tomada de decisão Abstract : Observing the new software technology that cames with the Internet platform, appears that some gained prominence by store narrated knowledge intact and cataloged, eg, wikis and forums over the Internet. However, managers has fail to use this information in decision-making processes. This fact occurs towards the impossibility of treating these information through traditional information systems, due details of storage information in distributed environments. The focus of this work is to develop a Competitive Intelligence process model and agent based software modeling, to help managers in decision making processes. The research methodologies used are literature systematically review on the bibliographical concepts, that shows the current technological panorama, Competitive Intelligence and involved software, the agents systems; case study, in the models and focus group on the validation of the applied case study. The results shows that it is possible to develop software structures to perform data collection on the Internet, to support the manager in decision-making processes

Smart rhetoric: dumb city

This research concerns the densest city in the world, Mumbai, and the environmental impact of the proposed redevelopment proposals that are likely to increase densities from about 3,500persons per hectare to about 5,000, achieved by demolition of existing 3-5 storey height buildings and replacing them with towers averaging 40 floors. What has become known in Mumbai as ‘vertical with a vengeance’ (Rathod, 2012). The study investigates the environmental impact of a proposed redevelopment of a 16.5-acre site. Of the many redevelopment proposals in Mumbai, this is in the most advanced stage and is an exemplar for both Mumbai in its ambition to become a ‘global city’ and the Indian Government who have identified it as a key development in their proposal to achieve 100 ‘smart’ cities that are claimed to be sustainable, environmentally friendly and ‘smart’ (Government of India, 2015). The study uses the extended urban metabolism (Newman et al, 1996) model as a basis of analysis and predicts the flows of water supply (reticulated and rainwater harvesting), drainage, solid waste, electricity supply, potential for solar energy, fuel for transport, carbon dioxide production and sequestration. From the results of the sample site, the analysis is then extrapolated to the overall impact if similar developments were to be carried out, as is proposed, across all of the Island city of Mumbai

The economic development of the Greek olive-oil industry with special reference to Messenia Province

This study examines the economic development of the Greek OliveIndustry. Its focal point is the impact of recent socio-economicprocesses on the structure and organisation of the industry. In thefirst part, which is concerned with the rural sector, it is argued thatolive cultivation and its development through time, has beenconstrained by a number of social, structural and institutional factorswhich are identified and their influence is then discussed. It iscontended that recent changes due to the imposition of the EEC regimehave brought about socio-economic processes which have considerablyaffected the mode of organisation of the rural sector in particular andthe whole industry in general.In the second part of this study, which is concerned with the urbansector, it is argued that during the last decade, rapid change hastransformed the outlook of the second-stage processing of the industry.This change has affected the structure in two ways. First, there hasbeen a large increase inkhe number of small packing units which operatein domestic market niches and compete for a share in the export trade.Secondly, there has been a concentration of output and economic powerin the hands of three leading packers, two multinational subsidiaries,and the cooperative enterprise Eleour7_giki. The financial base of thisindustrial change, though, is somewhat artificial. In particular,expansion in production and the modernisation process which has beentaking place recently, are largely based on the CAP support system tothe second-stage processing and packing, and also to large amounts ofearnings which every year go through tax evasion