Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

Flexion des roseaux

L’étude porte sur le calcul des contraintes et des déplacements de la tige en tenant compte de l’effet de ces disques de renforts qui permettent à la tige de ne pas s’écraser sous l’effet de ces deux moments fléchissants. La distribution des disques de renforcement le long de la tige creuse permet à la plante de ne pas s’alourdir avec une tige pleine, d’avoir une grande résistance à la flexion comme le prouve le calcul des contraintes de flexion. Dans cette étude nous allons présenter la forme de la plante avec ses renforts de résistance à la flexion. Nous présenterons le moment fléchissant engendré par le déplacement du centre de gravité loin de l’axe vertical à la racine de la plante et le calcul du champ des contraintes de flexion, puis nous analyserons l’influence de l’espacement des renforts

Predictors of Prenatal Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy in Malaysian Women: a Cross-Sectional Study

Mothers with better self-efficacy are tend to have intent to breastfeed, initiate early and have lengthier of exclusive breastfeeding. This study aimed to evaluate the level of breastfeeding self-efficacy and to investigate the determinants of breastfeeding self-efficacy among pregnant mothers. A total of 180 expecting mothers were recruited in this cross sectional study from chosen Maternal and Child Health Clinics in Selangor. Self-administered questionnaires of Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Score (IIFAS) and Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy (BSES-SF) were used to attain information on maternal attitudes and knowledge of breastfeeding and breastfeeding self-efficacy. Findings showed subjects had high level of breastfeeding self-efficacy (mean 51.79±11.94) and majority of them had fair knowledge in breastfeeding. Breastfeeding self-efficacy is found associated with number of children, while, residential area, occupation and household income were associated with breastfeeding knowledge (p<0.05). The best-fit regression analysis revealed three variables that explained 41.0% of the variance in breast feeding self-efficacy among expectant mothers. They were being housewife, multiparous and had positive breastfeeding attitudes (p<0.05). For that reason, healthcare providers can tactically identify women vulnerable to low breastfeeding self-efficacy by providing early intervention through increasing the awareness and knowledge in breastfeeding during prenatal and antenatal

Patterns of injuries and illness among Malaysian athletes during the XVII Asian Games 2014

Although more Malaysians are taking part in International Multisport Games, these athletes well-being at such events have not been fully explored. The purpose of this study was to examine the pattern of injury and illness among Malaysian athletes during the XVII Asian Games 2014. Clinical and socio-demographic information of athletes diagnosed with injury or illness during the centralised training camp and at the Games were recorded in a standardised report form. Throughout the study period, 83 injuries and 64 illnesses were recorded from 276 athletes. Muscle strains and tears were the most common injury followed by ligamentous injury and soft tissues contusion. The number of injuries was highest among badminton players followed by hockey and rugby. Significantly higher incidence of injuries was observed among men than women hockey players. Athletes in individual events had higher proportion of more severe injury than those in team events. Respiratory tract infection was the most frequent illness diagnosed among athletes. Most injuries and illnesses diagnosed among athletes were minor and did not result in time away from participation. The incidence of injuries and illnesses among Malaysian athletes at the XVII Asian Games were comparable with those reported by previous authors. Injury and illness rate were influenced by gender and sports. Fortunately, majority of injuries and illnesses were minor and did not prevent athletes from participation

Finite Element Simulation on Damage and Fracture Properties of a Ring Cut from Filament-Wound Pipes with and without Delamination

The technological advances in various industries have increased the demands on new engineered material tremendously since conventional materials such as steel, failed to perform in severe conditions. Nowadays, composite materials especially fibre-reinforced plastic composites (FRP) are broadly being used in many engineering fields to manufacture critical components with high stress concentration, exposure to extreme surrounding or weight constraint. However, they often suffer from a characteristic weakness, i.e. they are prone to interlaminar damage, often in a form delamination. In order to assess the development and the consequences of such damage, interlaminar fracture properties are essential. In this study, the ring cut specimen from filament-wound pipes with and without delamination was modelled and simulated based on experimental work using finite element modelling to further assist the identification and determination of the fracture properties. Investigation also involves the effect of the delamination length to the Energy Release Rate, G. Comparison between 23mm delamination of simulation and experimental results from [7] is presented

Developing a Conceptual Model for Strategic Knowledge Sharing of Facilities Management Protocol (FMP)

The aim of this paper is to identify a key dimension of knowledge sharing strategy to improve Facilities Management Process of Protocol (FMP) in achieving facilities management organization performance. It investigates the key dimension of facilities management protocol strategy that can be adopted by the Facilities Management organizations and examines the problem related to IBS during the operational stages of maintenance management. An analysis of previous research provides an insight of the relationship between the IBS attribute and Facilities Management Protocol (FMP) component that can proposed a significant variable to improve the FM performance to solve problem related maintenance for IBS building. The review shows that a factor related to FM Protocol such as ‘operate and optimize facility’, ‘monitor and record facility condition’, ‘implement schedule maintenance work’, ‘manage inventory and spare part’, and ‘supervised vendor work’ was identified as a key dimension for FMP strategy to improve FM performance. Meanwhile a factor such as ‘diagnosing tools and assessment’, ‘systematic procurement procedure’, ‘complementary IBS input and information document’ and ‘handing over document’ was classified as a key factor to improve FM performance through adopting knowledge sharing strategy. This paper suggests that through improvement of each factor, the recognition of the whole strategic approach process in FMP can be increase thus helping to strengthen the facilities management organization for competitive advantages

Developing a Conceptual Model for Strategic Knowledge Sharing of Facilities Management Protocol (FMP)

The aim of this paper is to identify a key dimension of knowledge sharing strategy to improve Facilities Management Process of Protocol (FMP) in achieving facilities management organization performance. It investigates the key dimension of facilities management protocol strategy that can be adopted by the Facilities Management organizations and examines the problem related to IBS during the operational stages of maintenance management. An analysis of previous research provides an insight of the relationship between the IBS attribute and Facilities Management Protocol (FMP) component that can proposed a significant variable to improve the FM performance to solve problem related maintenance for IBS building. The review shows that a factor related to FM Protocol such as ‘operate and optimize facility’, ‘monitor and record facility condition’, ‘implement schedule maintenance work’, ‘manage inventory and spare part’, and ‘supervised vendor work’ was identified as a key dimension for FMP strategy to improve FM performance. Meanwhile a factor such as ‘diagnosing tools and assessment’, ‘systematic procurement procedure’, ‘complementary IBS input and information document’ and ‘handing over document’ was classified as a key factor to improve FM performance through adopting knowledge sharing strategy. This paper suggests that through improvement of each factor, the recognition of the whole strategic approach process in FMP can be increase thus helping to strengthen the facilities management organization for competitive advantages

Magnétotribologie des contacts glissants ferromagnétiques

Les contacts glissants des couples de matériaux ferromagnétique/ferromagnétique sont largement influencés par la présence d'un champ magnétique dans la zone du tribocontact. L'oxydation des surfaces fraîches cisaillées aux jonctions de contact est activée par l'application du champ magnétique. Cette activation est induite par les forts gradients magnétiques au niveau des jonctions et des phénomènes d'induction engendrés par la variation temporelle et cyclique du champ magnétique à travers les jonctions de contact qui se renouvellent continuellement dans le contact. Les essais expérimentaux montrent que l'application du champ magnétique favorise notamment la formation des oxydes ferromagnétiques pour préserver le passage magnétique à travers le contact et le taux des spins positifs. Dans cette étude nous présenterons les résultats tribologiques et la morphologie des surfaces usées de contact ferromagnétique/ferromagnétique à l'air libre ou bien sous vide poussé 10-5 Pa avec ou sans champ magnétique autour du contact pour comparer la phénoménologie observée. Puis nous discuterons les processus magnétiques et physico chimiques mis en jeu dans le contact glissant magnétisé

Optimal Parameter Selection Using Three-term Back Propagation Algorithm for Data Classification

The back propagation (BP) algorithm is the most popular supervised learning method for multi-layered feed forward Neural Network. It has been successfully deployed in numerous practical problems and disciplines. Regardless of its popularity, BP is still known for some major drawbacks such as easily getting stuck in local minima and slow convergence; since, it uses Gradient Descent (GD) method to learn the network. Over the years, many improved modifications of the BP learning algorithm have been made by researchers but the local minima problem remains unresolved. Therefore, to resolve the inherent problems of BP algorithm, this paper proposed BPGD-A3T algorithm where the approach introduces three adaptive parameters which are gain, momentum and learning rate in BP. The performance of the proposed BPGD-A3T algorithm is then compared with BPGD two term parameters (BPGD-2T), BP with adaptive gain (BPGD-AG) and conventional BP algorithm (BPGD) by means of simulations on classification datasets. The simulation results show that the proposed BPGD-A3T shows better performance and performed highest accuracy for all dataset as compared to other

Supply Chain Management Strategy for an Effective Collaboration: A Case Study in Malaysia

The relationship between the refinery and other oil palm industries represent there is an industry that affects other supply chain actors through power collaboration for influencing the supply chain strategy. The purpose of this study is to analyze supply chain relationships in an oil palm refinery. The study employed case study research which the data collection adopted through semi-structured interviews and observation. Oil palm refinery in Malaysia was selected in the case study and analyzed using supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model. Finding showed that the oil palm refinery adopted push strategy. Then, the refinery and vessels emerged to be dominant actors in this supply chain relationship. The result provided implications for analyzing the supply chain relationships between supply chain actors which can be applied to any industry that decide to establish an effective collaboration