Balanced Abstract Web-MVC Style: An Abstract MVC Implementation for Web-based Applications

The features and the capabilities of web applicationsare growing rapidly, and the complexities and difficulties ofweb applications engineering are also growing in parallel. Ifthe architectural formalism of these advanced web applicationsis well realized, the complexities could be understood, thus thedifficulties could be reduced. Model-View-Controller (MVC)has been recognized as a well-formed architectural style, andhas been widely used in web applications engineering invarious forms of implementations. These MVCimplementations are heavily dependent on specific set oftechnologies and/or some other facts; hence, they do notprovide an abstract realization to be used in a wider range ofweb application engineering. We propose an implementation ofMVC in more abstract form, which – we think – will increasethe realization of the advanced web applications, thus lower theengineering complexities and difficulties of web applications.We believe that this implementation is more applicable in awider range of environments and technologies, and will upturnthe architectural properties like performance andmodifiability. Based on this implementation we introduce anMVC based architectural style for web applications. In future,we expect to improve this further towards supporting RichInternet Applications

Factors Influencing Tax Evasion: The Perception of Sri Lankan Medium-Sized Taxpayers

This quantitative study investigates the taxpayers’ perceptions of tax evasion. The tax evasion determinants were considered as institutional, economic, socio-psychological, and political and legal factors. Using a 5-point Likert scale, this study looked at 436 medium-sized entrepreneurs in the Colombo district to determine the most influential determinant of tax evasion. The survey responses were gathered through a questionnaire. The results show that socio-psychological and economic factors have a significant and negative impact on medium-sized taxpayers’ income tax evasion behaviour while institutional and political and legal factors have a weak association on tax evasion. The findings show that tax evasion is influenced by socio-psychological factors such as fairness of the tax system, moral obligation, and social influences, as well as economic factors such as tax rates, penalties, audit, and taxpayer privileges. The results highlight that in the Sri Lankan context, socio-psychosocial factors are regarded as a very crucial determinant that impacts individual income tax evasion. In addition, it offers insight into the influence of gender of business owner on tax evasion behaviour. Results suggest that medium-sized taxpayers’ tax evasion behaviors could be changed if tax policy decisions contemplate more on taxpayer’s psychological condition and affordability to pay tax. Distributing the tax burden to a greater number of taxpayers will help to increase tax compliance.     DOI: http://doi.org/10.31357/fhss/vjhss.v09i01.0

A neural network based place recognition technique for a crowded indoor environment

© 2017 IEEE. Place recognition in a crowded and cluttered environment is a challenging task due to its dynamic characteristics such as moving obstacles, varying lighting conditions and occlusions. This work presents a robust place recognition technique that could be applied into a similar environment, by combining well known Bag of Words technique with a feedforward neural network. The feedforward neural network we use have three layers with a single hidden layer and it relies on rectifier and softmax activation functions. We employ cross entropy function to model the cost of our neural network and utilize Adam algorithm for minimizing this cost at the training phase. The output layer with softmax activation in the neural network, produces a vector of probabilities which represent the likelihood of test image being captured from a given region. These values are further improved by incorporating a transition matrix which is based on the building layout. We have evaluated our neural network based place recognition technique with data collected from a crowded indoor shopping mall and promising results have been observed by this approach. We also have analyzed the behavior of neural network for changes in hyper-parameters and presented the results

C-LOG: A Chamfer Distance based method for localisation in occupancy grid-maps

In this paper, the problem of localising a robot within a known two-dimensional environment is formulated as one of minimising the Chamfer Distance between the corresponding occupancy grid map and information gathered from a sensor such as a laser range finder. It is shown that this nonlinear optimisation problem can be solved efficiently and that the resulting localisation algorithm has a number of attractive characteristics when compared with the conventional particle filter based solution for robot localisation in occupancy grids. The proposed algorithm is able to perform well even when robot odometry is unavailable, insensitive to noise models and does not critically depend on any tuning parameters. Experimental results based on a number of public domain datasets as well as data collected by the authors are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. © 2013 IEEE

Background report: Kurunegala, Sri Lanka

Development projects / Water resources / Social aspects / Population / Households / Income / Water supply / Sanitation / Wastewater / Water quality / Public health / Waterborne diseases / Land use / Land tenure / Legislation / Sri Lanka / Kurunegala / Wan Ela / Beu Ela

Stability of Graphene Oxide encapsulated Gold Nanorods for optical sensing purposes

This paper presents the synthesis and characterization of a graphene oxide encapsulated gold nanorod (GNR) complex, where its stability was investigated over time by recording the absorption spectra obtained using a UV/Visible spectrometer over the wavelength region of 200 nm to 1000 nm. Poly Ethylene Glycol (PEG) stablized GNRs were found to be more stable in the presence of graphene oxide dispersions compared to Cetyl Timethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) stabilized GNRs. These GNR complexes, prepared with an active graphene oxide coating on the surface, are presented as a well-suited platform for the development of localized plasmon resonance-based fibre optic biosensors due to the surface functional groups of graphene oxide that can form bio-composites with other biological nanomaterials

A virtual odometer for a Quadrotor Micro Aerial Vehicle

This paper describes the synthesis and evaluation of a "virtual odometer" for a Quadrotor Micro Aerial Vehicle. Availability of a velocity estimate has the potential to enhance the accuracy of mapping, estimation and control algorithms used with quadrotors, increasing the effectiveness of their applications. As a result of the unique dynamic characteristics of the quadrotor, a dual axis accelerometer mounted parallel to the propeller plane provides measurements that are directly proportional to vehicle velocities in that plane. Exploiting this insight, we encapsulate quadrotor dynamic equations which relate acceleration, attitude and the aerodynamic propeller drag in an extended Kalman filter framework for the purpose of state estimation. The result is a drift free estimation of lateral and longitudinal components of translational velocity and roll and pitch components of attitude of the quadrotor. Real world data sets gathered from two different quadrotor platforms, together with ground truth data from a Vicon system, are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and demonstrate that drift free estimates for the velocity and attitude can be obtained

Development of a novel evidence-based automated powered mobility device competency assessment

This paper describes the outcomes of a clinical study to assess the validity of a stand-alone sensor package and algorithms to aid the assessment by an occupational therapist (OT) whether a person has the capacity to safely and effectively operate a powered mobility device such as a wheelchair in their daily activities. The proposed solution consists of a suite of sensors capable of inferring navigational characteristics from the platform it is attached to (e.g. trajectories, map of surroundings, speeds, distance to doors, etc). Such information presents occupational therapists with the ability to augment their own observations and assessments with correlated, quantitative, evidence-based data acquired with the sensor array. Furthermore, OT reviews can take place at the therapist's discretion as the data from the trials is logged. Results from a clinical evaluation of the proposed approach, taking as reference the commonly-used Power-Mobility Indoor Driving Assessment (PIDA) assessment, were conducted at the premises of the Prince of Wales (PoW) Hospital in Sydney by four users, showing consistency with the OT scores, and setting the scene to a larger study with wider targeted participation. © 2013 IEEE