WORK TOGETHER… WHEN APART CHALLENGES AND WHAT IS NEED FOR EFFECTIVE VIRTUAL TEAMS

Increasingly competitive global markets and accelerating technological changes have increased the need for people to contact via electronic medium to have daily updates, the people those who could not able to meet face to face every day. Those who contact via electronic medium i.e. Virtual Team, are having number of benefit but to achieve these potential benefits, however, leaders need to overcome liabilities inherent in the lack of direct contact among team members and managers. Team members may not naturally know how to interact effectively across space and time. By this paper author try to throw some lights on the challenges that virtual team faces and try to elaborate what is needed for Virtual Team

The Role of Soft skills in Empowering Fresh Engineering Graduates in India

Soft Skills are personal attributes that enables one to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. During campus recruitment process students with high grades fail to get a job due to poor soft skills. NASSCOM-McKinsey report (2005), states that only 25% of technical students and 10-15% of the general graduates in India are employable. In the recent past the awareness regarding soft skill has increased but the studentrsquos attitude and efforts to imbibe these qualities hasnrsquot.nbspConsidering the above facts it is high time that the present generation should change their attitude towards imbibing soft skills in their daily life. The growing population, increasing number of engineering colleges across the country, shrinking number of job opportunities and volatile market conditions will only add further burden to our younger generation.nbs

Effect of ground basalt on chemical properties of an ultisol and oxisol in Malaysia

Highly weathered soils in Malaysia need to be amended to rejuvenate their chemical fertility. In particular, soil pH should be increased sufficiently, while exchangeable Al eliminated in order to make them productive. A glasshouse study was conducted in Malaysia to determine changes in the chemical properties of Ultisol and Oxisol (highly weathered, infertile soils) treated with ground basalt under moist condition. The results showed that soil pH increased and exchangeable Al decreased significantly due to basalt application within 6 months, whereas the value registered was determined by the rate of application. At the application of 10 t basalt/ha, it was observed that available P and exchangeable K, Ca, and Mg were increased to the level sufficient for crop growth. Meanwhile, chemical reactions (increase in pH and decrease in pHo) in the soils had resulted in an increase of the cation exchange capacity (CEC). This means that the soils are now able to reduce the loss of basic cations via leaching under high rainfall. Thus, basalt is a good soil ameliorant with the efficacy comparable to that of limestone, which is commonly applied to eliminate acid soil infertility in the tropics

Class-based storage assignments for miniload AS/RS with open-rack structure

Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RSs) are warehousing systems that are used for the storage and retrieval of products in both distribution and production environments. This paper presents an open-rack structure with unidirectional-upward mobile loads within the rack, for miniload AS/RS, in which the stacker crane is only used for the retrieval operations, and the storage operations are carried out by separate devices namely, storage platforms. Heuristics algorithms and models are developed for load shuffling and travel time of the storage platform, respectively. The well-known ABC approach is used to classify inventory items for determination of class-based storage assignments. Then the expected travel time of the proposed AS/RS is derived. The travel time model and the performance of proposed AS/RS are validated using Monte Carlo simulation and are compared with a conventional one. The results show that the open-rack AS/RS represents a higher performance and the proposed models are reliable for the design and analysis of this kind of AS/RS

Tools and concepts of journey towards a natural capitalism with special reference to environmental impact assessment, life cycle assessment and industrial ecology.

The evolution of tool applications and approaches for industrial-environmentally related management systems in minimizing their impact on natural environment has facilitated the concept of journey to natural capitalism, notably, on physical flows and the accumulation of substances and materials due to industrial activities. These environmental management tools include risk assessment, resource accounting, costbenefit analysis, environmental impact statement, and environmental impact assessment. In addition, environmental management system (EMS) series of standards derived fromSociety of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) and International Standard of Organization (ISO) Technical Committee 207 initiatives emphasizing on EMS, environmental auditing, life cycle assessment, ecolabeling, environmental performance evaluation, design for environment and climate change. Recent concept on industrial ecology (IE) was introduced and applied respectively into EMS for industrial sustainability. It is based on the integration of human dimension, industrial processes, and environmental concerns that perpetually mimics natural ecosystem processes. This paper describes how these theoretical frameworks of Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools being developed and applied and subsequently used as central tenet in IE concept in meeting their objectives that indirectly could be further enhanced the journey towards natural capitalism

Corrosion behaviour of Al-Si cast alloy reinforced with titanium diboride (TiB2) and scandium (Sc)

The aluminium-silicon (Al-Si) based on Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) is widely used in lightweight constructions and transport applications requiring a combination of high strength and ductility. A grain refinement plays a crucial role in improving characteristics and properties of Al alloys. In this investigation, titanium diboride (TiB2) and scandium (Sc) inoculants were added to the Al-Si alloys for grain refinement of an alloy. In this investigation, the corrosion resistance rate of Al-Si cast alloy reinforced by TiB2 and Sc were measured by potentiostat (AUTOLAB) instrument. The aim of this research is to investigate the corrosion rate for Al-Si-TiB2-Sc composites that immersed in different concentration of acidic solutions. Besides, the immersion time of acidic solutions also was investigated. All the samples were prepared accordingly for ASTM standard by the composition of 6.0 wt% TiB2 and 0.6wt% Sc. All the samples undergo cold mounting technique for easy handling on corrosion tests. Then the samples were immersed in two different concentrations acidic medium solutions, which were 0.1.and 1.0 M hydrochloric acids (HCl). The corrosion rate also was investigated for immersion samples of 1.0 M HCl for 21 days. From the results obtained, added TiB2 and Sc onto Al-Si alloy gave the better properties in corrosion resistance. Corrosion rates to reduce when the samples were immersed in a lower concentration of acidic medium, 0.1 HCl. However, there are some significant on the result but it still following the corrosion rates trend. Thus, improvements to reinforcement content need to be done in further research to cover the lack of this corrosion rates trend

QMOS: Query-based multi-documents opinion-oriented summarization

Sentiment analysis concerns the study of opinions expressed in a text. This paper presents the QMOS method, which employs a combination of sentiment analysis and summarization approaches. It is a lexicon-based method to query-based multi-documents summarization of opinion expressed in reviews. QMOS combines multiple sentiment dictionaries to improve word coverage limit of the individual lexicon. A major problem for a dictionary-based approach is the semantic gap between the prior polarity of a word presented by a lexicon and the word polarity in a specific context. This is due to the fact that, the polarity of a word depends on the context in which it is being used. Furthermore, the type of a sentence can also affect the performance of a sentiment analysis approach. Therefore, to tackle the aforementioned challenges, QMOS integrates multiple strategies to adjust word prior sentiment orientation while also considers the type of sentence. QMOS also employs the Semantic Sentiment Approach to determine the sentiment score of a word if it is not included in a sentiment lexicon. On the other hand, the most of the existing methods fail to distinguish the meaning of a review sentence and user's query when both of them share the similar bag-of-words; hence there is often a conflict between the extracted opinionated sentences and users’ needs. However, the summarization phase of QMOS is able to avoid extracting a review sentence whose similarity with the user's query is high but whose meaning is different. The method also employs the greedy algorithm and query expansion approach to reduce redundancy and bridge the lexical gaps for similar contexts that are expressed using different wording, respectively. Our experiment shows that the QMOS method can significantly improve the performance and make QMOS comparable to other existing methods

Improving the productivity of acid sulfate soils for cultivation using limestone, basalt, organic fertilizer and/or their combinations

Acid sulfate soils are generally not suitable for the crop production unless they are efficiently improved. A study was conducted to improve the productivity of acid sulfate soils for rice cultivation using ground magnesium limestone (GML), basalt and organic fertilizer. The study was conducted on rice in laboratory, glasshouse and field. The pH of acid sulfate soils was low and exchangeable Al was very high which affected rice growth. The application of GML and basalt increased soil pH and reduced Al toxicity. GML required to ameliorate the soils for rice cultivation was 4 t ha-1. Basalt in combination with organic fertilizer was a good soil amendment, but required to be applied a few months ahead of rice cultivation. Due to GML or basalt application, rice plants grew well even though water pH was below 5. The highest rice yield obtained was 4.0 t ha-1 season-1 for Sulfaquepts and it was 7.5 t ha-1 season-1 for Sulfosaprists. In general, the application of GML or basalt in combination with organic fertilizer improved the productivity of acid sulfate soils and consequently enhanced rice yield