Enhanced rare region effects in the contact process with long-range correlated disorder

We investigate the nonequilibrium phase transition in the disordered contact process in the presence of long-range spatial disorder correlations. These correlations greatly increase the probability for finding rare regions that are locally in the active phase while the bulk system is still in the inactive phase. Specifically, if the correlations decay as a power of the distance, the rare region probability is a stretched exponential of the rare region size rather than a simple exponential as is the case for uncorrelated disorder. As a result, the Griffiths singularities are enhanced and take a non-power-law form. The critical point itself is of infinite-randomness type but with critical exponent values that differ from the uncorrelated case. We report large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations that verify and illustrate our theory. We also discuss generalizations to higher dimensions and applications to other systems such as the random transverse-field Ising model, itinerant magnets and the superconductor-metal transition.Comment: 11 pages, 8 eps figures include

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Employees in the Hotel Sector

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained much attention in recent years. It provides companies with a signifi cant approach for achieving performance excellence and considered a source for enhancing competitive advantage. This paper comes to investigate CSR within the context of fi ve-star hotels in Hurgada, Egypt and assess its impact on employees’ job engagement, retention, attraction, and organizational commitment. Data was collected using multiple research methods, including: questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis.This research found that the majority of hotels did not consider their CSR to society but tackled their CSR to environment undertaking various measures to conserve resources. Hotels provided little support to most internal CSR practices identifi ed in this study. The study showed that internal CSR could be used as an important driver for enhancing employee job engagement and organizational commitment. However, CSR still not considered a signifi cant tool to attract and retain high potential candidates.This research concluded that hotels should show more commitment to serve the community and formulate their core business strategies accordingly. The governmental and environmental organizations’ intervention is essential to provide more awareness to hotel businesses regarding tackling their CSR

Modelling the functional role of microorganisms in the daily exchanges of carbon between atmosphere, plants and soil

There has been considerable research on organic carbon (OC) stocks in the upper layer of the soil but it has focused on semi-mechanistic predictions of OC stocks in the long term rather than on microbial processes acting on OC transformations. Published data lack of reference concerning the modelling of the short-term exchanges between atmosphere, plants, rhizobia and other microorganisms of soil. We think it is because the mechanistic role of microorganisms is poorly considered in most of the existing models. Compartmental theory is the most used to model the complex system of OC forms, with linear or no-linear propositions. Sometimes, the models did not consider explicitly an active microbial compartment and were often over parameterized. In contrast, the MOMOS proposition defined linearly the functional role of microorganisms with only a no-linear term linked to microbial respiration. It uses only 7 kinetic parameters having a clear ecological definition and being related to climate (all parameters), soil texture or pH (microbial respiration), and biological properties of debris inputs (enzymatic breakdown of plant debris and microbial mortality). The 3 other parameters (rates of humus stabilisation and enzyme assimilation of labile and stable humus) were found linked only to climate, suggesting that quality of humified materials should be more constant than OC forms from living materials. In coupling with soil water and production modules, the model emerges as a new theoretical basis to describe the life cycle and its applications to agro-ecology and global change

Approach Based on Traditional Architecture Indicators to Strengthen Urban Identity in Diverse Cities

This chapter presents an analytical study and a review of the contemporary architecture in Doha- The capital city of the State of Qatar. It demonstrates where ‘Traditional Criteria” are available in three recently developed cases study. The selected cases study has different values of traditional value that response to contemporary architecture trend. The assessment of traditional value is based on an analytical survey approach. This aim of the analysis is to develop a matrix for unifying local architecture with contemporary architecture in Doha city. The developed matrix will enable local authorities, investors, and architects to assess the value of local architecture language in contemporary architecture for diverse cities in general and for Doha city in particular. The study is valuable to be considered as one of the most attempts investigated work against an ever-increasing loss of local building trend that caused by an industrialized and standardized world. The significant of the study is the demonstration of what is learned and what is gained in understanding contemporary architecture in Doha city. The outcomes include an implementation of a scoring system of different local architecture variable. Future study is suggested to address the design typologies of buildings, and traditional elements to response to the local environment and the socioeconomic of the city

Optimizing construction and utilization of wheat storage facilities to minimize post-harvest losses

The use of inefficient wheat storage and transportation facilities in developing countries often causes significant quantity and quality losses. These post-harvest losses are estimated to be as much as 20% of harvested wheat and a study by the Government of India puts the total preventable wheat losses at 10% of total production. These post-harvest wheat losses in developing countries can be minimized by (1) optimizing wheat storage and transportation throughout the entire supply chain network of existing facilities in villages, local markets, and regional locations; (2) constructing new public storage facilities that are funded and/or subsidized by government to expand and improve the existing storage facilities; and (3) building new private storage facilities that are funded by farmers to minimize post-harvest losses, maximize profitability of farmers, and improve their food security. The main goal of this research study is to develop novel models for optimizing the storage and transportation of wheat to minimize post-harvest losses. To accomplish this, the research objectives of this study are to (1) conduct a comprehensive literature review to study local conditions, (2) develop a novel model for optimizing the storage and transportation of wheat using existing facilities in developing countries, (3) develop an innovative model for optimizing the construction of public wheat storage facilities that are funded and/or subsidized by government or other agencies, and (4) develop a novel model for optimizing the construction and utilization of private wheat storage facilities that are cooperatively funded by farmers. The performance of the developed optimization models is analyzed and verified using case studies. The results of these case studies illustrate the novel and unique capabilities of the developed models in searching for and identifying optimal storage and transportation decisions. These new and unique capabilities are expected to support decision makers such as governments and farmers in identifying (i) optimal wheat storage levels in each existing facility and optimal transportation routes among them to minimize post-harvest losses and minimize storage and transportation costs throughout the entire network; (ii) optimal location, type, and capacity for the construction of new publicly-funded storage facilities to minimize post-harvest losses during storage and transportation throughout the entire network; and (iii) optimal construction decisions for privately-funded storage facilities and optimal wheat sales, purchases and storage quantities to minimize post-harvest losses and maximize the profit of farmers. The expected impact of the developed optimization models include (a) reduced post-harvest losses during wheat storage and transportation; (b) minimized storage and transportation costs throughout the entire network of existing and new storage facilities; (c) increased annual profits for farmers; (d) enhanced food security for local farmers by increasing the storage capacity in their villages; and (e) expanded storage capacity for grain reserves and for potential increases in wheat production

The role of mega projects in redefining housing development in Gulf cities

Since the end of the 1990s large scale mega projects have been initiated in Gulf cities to enable an unprecedented urban growth and the expansion of new economic sectors. In this respect, mega projects have played a key role in redefining housing developments in Gulf cities. This paper explores the newly emerging housing typologies and their distinctive roles in defining new urban environments. The selected case studies are located in the Jumeirah District in Dubai, which can be seen as the first prototype of a large cohesive development area that has been built of nine rather differing mega projects including the iconic Palm project and one of the largest residential high-rise agglomerations in the Middle East. The paper is based on the evaluation of official planning data from each project and field observations. Conclusions are drawn to highlight key implications while identifying housing development tendencies

Performance Modelling and Evaluation of Network On Chip Under Bursty Traffic. Performance evaluation of communication networks using analytical and simulation models in NOCs with Fat tree topology under Bursty Traffic with virtual channels.

Physical constrains of integrated circuits (commonly called chip) in regards to size and finite number of wires, has made the design of System-on-Chip (SoC) more interesting to study in terms of finding better solutions for the complexity of the chip-interconnections. The SoC has hundreds of Processing Elements (PEs), and a single shared bus can no longer be acceptable due to poor scalability with the system size. Networks on Chip (NoC) have been proposed as a solution to mitigate complex on-chip communication problems for complex SoCs. They consists of computational resources in the form of PE cores and switching nodes which allow PEs to communicate with each other. In the design and development of Networks on Chip, performance modelling and analysis has great theoretical and practical importance. This research is devoted to developing efficient and cost-effective analytical tools for the performance analysis and enhancement of NoCs with m-port n-tree topology under bursty traffic. Recent measurement studies have strongly verified that the traffic generated by many real-world applications in communication networks exhibits bursty and self-similar properties in nature and the message destinations are uniformly distributed. NoC's performance is generally affected by different traffic patterns generated by the processing elements. As the first step in the research, a new analytical model is developed to capture the burstiness and self-similarity characteristics of the traffic within NoCs through the use of Markov Modulated Poisson Process. The performance results of the developed model highlight the importance of accurate traffic modelling in the study and performance evaluation of NoCs. Having developed an efficient analytical tool to capture the traffic behaviour with a higher accuracy, in the next step, the research focuses on the effect of topology on the performance of NoCs. Many important challenges still remain as vulnerabilities within the design of NoCs with topology being the most important. Therefore a new analytical model is developed to investigate the performance of NoCs with the m-port n-tree topology under bursty traffic. Even though it is broadly proved in practice that fat-tree topology and its varieties result in lower latency, higher throughput and bandwidth, still most studies on NoCs adopt Mesh, Torus and Spidergon topologies. The results gained from the developed model and advanced simulation experiments significantly show the effect of fat-tree topology in reducing latency and increasing the throughput of NoCs. In order to obtain deeper understanding of NoCs performance attributes and for further improvement, in the final stage of the research, the developed analytical model was extended to consider the use of virtual channels within the architecture of NoCs. Extensive simulation experiments were carried out which show satisfactory improvements in the throughput of NoCs with fat-tree topology and VCs under bursty traffic. The analytical results and those obtained from extensive simulation experiments have shown a good degree of accuracy for predicting the network performance under different design alternatives and various traffic conditions.Libyan Ministry of Higher Educatio

Transitional Adaptation model for facilitating technology and expertise mobilisation in Gulf AEC Organisations

The fragmented nature of the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry is well recognised, the main issues of which relate to failures in communication, process, productivity and interoperability. These failures have contributed to an increased proliferation of adversarial relationships between the different parties involved in projects, the result of which have deleteriously affected projects. Challenges include a range of issues, from the veracity of design information throughout the project lifecycle, through to supply chain communication. These are global issues. For example, in the Gulf States, the nature and complexity of AEC projects has changed significantly due to increased globalisation and the emergence of enmeshed transnational practices. This has created an overwhelming reliance on the mobilisation and transfer of technology/expertise of professional expatriates, which has influenced the approach taken to traditional design and construction business models, including staff roles and procedures. New knowledge and ways of working are needed to support future projects in the Gulf States. There is also a requirement to capture and codify domain-specific expertise. This paper discusses the need to enhance Qatar’s AEC industry by fostering a smooth transition from its current position, into a more sustainable [replicable] state. The philosophical underpinnings of this paper take into account disparate socio-cultural, environmental and economic impacts of change, in terms of business models, technology, innovation, labour market needs, local laws/bylaws, and legislation. A theoretical growth model is presented for discussion. This builds on the experience of the UK (in particular) in terms of facilitating the mobility and penetration of technology/expertise/change in the AEC sectors. This paper presents a series of recommendations needed to develop a Pervasive Transnational Adaptation model for Qatar and the Gulf States, covering such issues as: ICT adoption, agile project management, technology-transfer, innovation, offsite construction, Public Private Partnerships, capacity building, and international strategic alliances

Migrant Knowledge Workers’ Perceptions of Housing Conditions in Gulf Cities

© 2017, The Author(s). The various efforts in diversifying local economies in most Gulf States led to the emergence of new medium to high-income groups of migrant knowledge workers whose efforts are required to develop various new economic sectors. This paper aims to investigate the current housing conditions and perceptions of these migrant communities to identify key similarities and differences with respect to housing made available to them and depending on their cultural background. To this end, the methodology involves field surveys to explore the three main housing typologies for higher-income groups and a questionnaire with a total of 258 knowledge workers in the city of Doha as a representative case to investigate the associated perceptions of four dominant groups from different cultural backgrounds. The findings reveal that there is a distinct social segregation between cultural groups, which is mainly rooted in varying income levels. Furthermore, the supply-driven market has hardly integrated cultural needs of migrants and thus diversified and inclusive housing has been identified as major planning and design challenge

A dual mode pulsed electro-magnetic cell stimulator

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on March 13, 2013Thesis advisor: Walter D. León SalasVitaIncludes bibliographic references (p. 96-97)Thesis (M.S.)--School of Computing and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012This thesis presents the design and test of a dual-modality cell stimulator. The stimulator generates pulsing electric and magnetic fields at programmable rates and intensities. The target application is the stimulation of bone and muscle cells. While electric and magnetic stimulators have been reported before, this is the first device that combines both modalities. The ability of the dual stimulation to target bone and muscle tissue simultaneously has the potential to improve the therapeutic treatment of osteoporosis and sarcopenia. The device is fully programmable and easy to use and can run from a battery or a power supply. In-vitro tests show a 4% increase in protein synthesis 24 hours after the stimulation. These levels are comparable to heat shock stimulation.Introduction -- Hardware design -- Firmware design -- Device operation -- Measurements and data -- Conclusions and future work -- Appendix A. MSP430FG439 functional diagram -- Appendix B. Firmware C Code -- Appendix D. Serial communications user interface menu outpu