Toward successful knowledge transfer in web-based self-service for information technology services

Web-based self-service has emerged as an important strategy for providing pre- and post-sales customer support. Yet, there is a dearth of theoretical or empirical research concerning the organisational, customer-oriented, knowledge-based, and employee-oriented factors that enable web-based self-service systems (WSS) to be successful in a competitive global marketplace. In this paper, we describe and discuss findings from the first phase of a multi-method research study designed to address this literature gap. This study explores critical success factors (CSFs) involved in the transfer of support-oriented knowledge from an information technology (IT) services firm to commercial customers when WSS are employed. Empirical data collected in a CSF study of a large multinational IT services business are used to identify twenty-six critical success factors. The findings indicate that best-in-class IT service providers are aware of a range of critical success factors in the transfer to commercial customers of resolutions and other support-oriented knowledge via WSS. However, such firms remain less certain about what is needed to support customer companies after support-oriented knowledge has initially been transferred to the customer firm.

Alternating heat transfer between objects of large geometrical difference

The heat transfer on the surface of an object in a gas fluidised bed is sequentially and alternately induced by particle-packet and gas bubble. This phenomenon is studied with computational simulation. The particle-packet and bubble are modelled by a double particle-layers and porous medium model and a hemispherical model, respectively. The heat transfer to and within the object is simulated concurrently. Different grid schemes are applied and different grid sizes are used in meshing the particle-packet and the object as there is a very large difference in their geometrical sizes. Based on theoretical analysis, an approximate method is developed to calculate the heat flux at the surface of the object. The simulation is implemented in a CFD package and the results are compared with experiments.

The effect of cure cycle heating rate on the fibre/matrix interface

Development of civil aerospace composites is key to future “greener” aircraft. Aircraft manufacturers must improve efficiency of their product and manufacturing processes to remain viable. The aerospace industry is undergoing a materials revolution in the design and manufacture of composite airframes. The Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 (both due to enter service in the latter part of this decade) will push utilisation levels of  composite materials beyond 50% of the total airframe by weight. This  change requires massive investment in materials technology, manufacturing capability and skills development. The Quickstep process provides the ability to rapidly cure aerospace standard composite materials whilst providing enhanced mechanical properties. Utilising fluid to transfer heat to the   composite component during the curing process allows far higher heat rates than with conventional cure techniques. The rapid heat-up rates reduce the viscosity of the resin system greatly to provide a longer processing window introducing greater flexibility and removing the need for high pressure during cure. Interlaminar fracture toughness (Mode I) and Interfacial Shear Strength of aerospace standard materials cured using Quickstep have been    compared to autoclave cured laminates. Results suggest an improvement in fibre-matrix adhesion.

Measurement of the mass transfer coefficient at workpiece surfaces in heat treatment furnaces

The mass (e.g. carbon) transfer coefficient at a workpiece surface is an important kinetic factor to control the heat treatment process of the workpiece and to evaluate heat treatment equipment. The coefficient can be calculated from the carbon concentration at the surface of a sample carburized in a carburizing furnace for a given time. Two common measurement methods which use a thin plate and employ a component as samples respectively are evaluated and compared for sensitivity and uncertainty. The comparison shows that the use of a component produces higher measurement precision and also has the advantage in measuring the carbon transfer coefficients at different treated positions. This method is then extended and discussed methodologically. Also two equations are proposed to calculate the carbon transfer coefficient and its uncertainty, respectively. This method is also applied to measure the carbon transfer coefficient in a fluidized bed heat treatment furnace.

Inspection of drop-weight impact damage in woven CFRP laminates fabricated by different processes

The influence of manufacturing process on the drop-weight impact damage in woven carbon/epoxy laminates was inspected by visual observation, dyepenetrant X-ray technique, and optical microscopy observation. The MTM56/ CF0300 woven quasi-isotropic laminates were fabricated by two processes: the autoclave and the Quickstep processes. Quickstep^TM is a novel composite manufacturing process, which was designed for the out-of-autoclave production of high-quality composite parts at lower cost. It utilizes higher heat conduction of fluid other than gas to transfer heat to components, which results in much shorter cure cycles. The laminates cured by this fast heating process showed different impact failure modes from those cured by the conventional autoclave process. The residual indentation in the top side of the Quickstep-cured laminates had a bigger diameter, but a smaller depth at the same impact energy level. Dye-penetrant X-ray revealed more intense and connected impact damage regions in the autoclave-cured laminates. Optical micrography as a supplementary method showed less severe matrix damage in the quickstep-cured laminates indicating a more ductile property of the resin matrix cured at a faster heating rate.

An iterative equalization method for nonirreducible MIMO FIR channels

This paper deals with the equalization of a nonirreducible multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) finite-impulse-response (FIR) channel provided that the estimate of the channel matrix is available. An iterative method is developed to perform the channel equalization. The effectiveness of the proposed equalization method is demonstrated by simulation examples.

Conducting composite using an immiscible polymer blend matrix

Carbon black (CB) fillers were used to study the feasibility of achieving multiple percolation using an immiscible (polar) polymer blend matrix. By tailoring the morphology of the insulating dual phase matrix it has been shown that the percolation threshold (Ф_c) can be reduced over single-phase matrices. Cocontinuity in the polymer matrix is important in reducing Ф_c by either preferentially isolating the conducting filler at the interface of the two phases or within one particular continuous phase of the matrix thereby forming a continuous conducting network within a continuous network (multiple percolation). Actual melt processing time has been found to influence the dispersion of the fillers and hence Ф_c. Polarity of the matrix as well as the processing method has also been found to influence the dispersion of the filler within the host polymer.

Modelling for injection moulding process based on principal component regression method

Determination of the optimal operating condition for moulding process has been of special interest for many researchers. To determine the optimal setting, one has to derive the model of injection moulding process first which is able to map the relationship between the input process control factors and output responses. One of most popular modeling techniques is the linear least square regression due to its effectiveness and completeness. However, the least square regression was found to be very sensitive to the outliers and failed to provide a reliable model if the control variables are highly related with each other. To address this problem, a new modeling method based on principal component regression was proposed in this paper. The distinguished feature of our proposed method is it does not only consider the variance of covariance matrix of control variables but also consider the correlation coefficient between control variables and target variables to be optimised. Such a modelling method has been implemented into a commercial optimisation software and field test results demonstrated the performance of the proposed modelling method.

Laguerre Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg method for simulating laser pulse propagation in biological tissue

An efficient algorithm for solving the transient radiative transfer equation for laser pulse propagation in biological tissue is presented. A Laguerre expansion is used to represent the time dependency of the incident short pulse. The Runge–Kutta– Fehlberg method is used to solve the intensity. The discrete ordinates method is used to discretize with respect to azimuthal and zenith angles. This method offers the advantages of representing the intensity with a high accuracy using only a few Laguerre polynomials, and straightforward extension to inhomogeneous media. Also, this formulation can be easily extended for solving the 2-D and 3-D transient radiative transfer equations.

A new method to warm up lubricating oil to improve the fuel efficiency during cold start

Cold start driving cycles exhibit an increase in friction losses due to the low temperatures of metal and media compared to normal operating engine conditions. These friction losses are responsible for up to 10% penalty in fuel economy over the official drive cycles like the New European Drive Cycle (NEDC), where the temperature of the oil even at the end of the 1180 s of the drive cycle is below the fully warmed up values of between 100°C and 120°C. At engine oil temperatures below 100°C the water from the blow by condensates and dilutes the engine oil in the oil pan which negatively affects engine wear. Therefore engine oil temperatures above 100°C are desirable to minimize engine wear through blow by condensate. The paper presents a new technique to warm up the engine oil that significantly reduces the friction losses and therefore also reduces the fuel economy penalty during a 22°C cold start NEDC. Chassis dynamometer experiments demonstrated fuel economy improvements of over 7% as well as significant emission reductions by rapidly increasing the oil temperature. Oil temperatures were increased by up to 60°C during certain parts of the NEDC. It is shown how a very simple sensitivity analysis can be used to assess the relative size or efficiency of different heat transfer passes and the resulting fuel economy improvement potential of different heat recovery systems system. Due to its simplicity the method is very fast to use and therefore also very cost effective. The method demonstrated a very good correlation for the fuel consumption within ±1% compared to measurements on a vehicle chassis roll.

Construction of wavelets and multiwavelets basis : a generalized method

Multiwavelets are wavelets with multiplicity r, that is r scaling functions and r wavelets, which define multiresolution analysis similar to scalar wavelets. They are advantageous over scalar wavelets since they simultaneously posse symmetry and orthogonality. In this work, a new method for constructing multiwavelets with any approximation order is presented. The method involves the derivation of a matrix equation for the desired approximation order. The condition for approximation order is similar to the conditions in the scalar case. Generalized left eigenvectors give the combinations of scaling functions required to reconstruct the desired spline or super function. The method is demonstrated by constructing a specific class of symmetric and non-symmetric multiwavelets with different approximation orders, which include Geranimo-Hardin-Massopust (GHM), Daubechies and Alperts like multi-wavelets, as parameterized solutions. All multi-wavelets constructed in this work, posses the good properties of orthogonality, approximation order and short support.

A novel monotonic fixed-point algorithm for l1-regularized least square vector and matrix problem

Least square problem with l₁ regularization has been proposed as a promising method for sparse signal reconstruction (e.g., basis pursuit de-noising and compressed sensing) and feature selection (e.g., the Lasso algorithm) in signal processing, statistics, and related fields. These problems can be cast as l₁-regularized least-square program (LSP). In this paper, we propose a novel monotonic fixed point method to solve large-scale l₁-regularized LSP. And we also prove the stability and convergence of the proposed method. Furthermore we generalize this method to least square matrix problem and apply it in nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF). The method is illustrated on sparse signal reconstruction, partner recognition and blind source separation problems, and the method tends to convergent faster and sparser than other l₁-regularized algorithms.

Guest editorial : In Journal of networks, v.7 n.3

Networking of computing devices has been going through rapid evolution and thus continuing to be an ever expanding area of importance in recent years. New technologies, protocols, services and usage patterns have contributed to the major research interests in this area of computer science. The current special issue is an effort to bring forward some of these interesting developments that are being pursued by researchers at present in different parts of the globe. Our objective is to provide the readership with some insight into the latest innovations in computer networking through this. This Special Issue presents selected papers from the thirteenth conference of the series (ICCIT 2010) held during December 23-25, 2010 at the Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology. The first ICCIT was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1998. Since then the conference has grown to be one of the largest computer and IT related research conferences in the South Asian region, with participation of academics and researchers from many countries around the world. Starting in 2008 the proceedings of ICCIT are included in IEEExplore. In 2010, a total of 410 full papers were submitted to the conference of which 136 were accepted after reviews conducted by an international program committee comprising 81 members from 16 countries. This was tantamount to an acceptance rate of 33%. From these 136 papers, 14 highly ranked manuscripts were invited for this Special Issue. The authors were advised to enhance their papers significantly and submit them to undergo review for suitability of inclusion into this publication. Of those, eight papers survived the review process and have been selected for inclusion in this Special Issue. The authors of these papers represent academic and/or research institutions from Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Korea and USA. These papers address issues concerning different domains of networks namely, optical fiber communication, wireless and interconnection networks, issues related to networking hardware and software and network mobility. The paper titled “Virtualization in Wireless Sensor Network: Challenges and Opportunities” argues in favor of bringing in different heterogeneous sensors under a common virtual framework so that the issues like flexibility, diversity, management and security can be handled practically. The authors Md. Motaharul Islam and Eui-Num Huh propose an architecture for sensor virtualization. They also present the current status and the challenges and opportunities for further research on the topic. The manuscript “Effect of Polarization Mode Dispersion on the BER Performance of Optical CDMA” deals with impact of polarization mode dispersion on the bit error rate performance of direct sequence optical code division multiple access. The authors, Md. Jahedul Islam and Md. Rafiqul Islam present an analytical approach toward determining the impact of different performance parameters. The authors show that the bit error rate performance improves significantly by the third order polarization mode dispersion than its first or second order counterparts. The authors Md. Shohrab Hossain, Mohammed Atiquzzaman and William Ivancic of the paper “Cost and Efficiency Analysis of NEMO Protocol Entities” present an analytical model for estimating the cost incurred by major mobility entities of a NEMO. The authors define a new metric for cost calculation in the process. Both the newly developed metric and the analytical model are likely to be useful to network engineers in estimating the resource requirement at the key entities while designing such a network. The article titled “A Highly Flexible LDPC Decoder using Hierarchical Quasi-Cyclic Matrix with Layered Permutation” deals with Low Density Parity Check decoders. The authors, Vikram Arkalgud Chandrasetty and Syed Mahfuzul Aziz propose a novel multi-level structured hierarchical matrix approach for generating codes of different lengths flexibly depending upon the requirement of the application. The manuscript “Analysis of Performance Limitations in Fiber Bragg Grating Based Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer due to Crosstalk” has been contributed by M. Mahiuddin and M. S. Islam. The paper proposes a new method of handling crosstalk with a fiber Bragg grating based optical add drop multiplexer (OADM). The authors show with an analytical model that different parameters improve using their proposed OADM. The paper “High Performance Hierarchical Torus Network Under Adverse Traffic Patterns” addresses issues related to hierarchical torus network (HTN) under adverse traffic patterns. The authors, M.M. Hafizur Rahman, Yukinori Sato, and Yasushi Inoguchi observe that dynamic communication performance of an HTN under adverse traffic conditions has not yet been addressed. The authors evaluate the performance of HTN for comparison with some other relevant networks. It is interesting to see that HTN outperforms these counterparts in terms of throughput and data transfer under adverse traffic. The manuscript titled “Dynamic Communication Performance Enhancement in Hierarchical Torus Network by Selection Algorithm” has been contributed by M.M. Hafizur Rahman, Yukinori Sato, and Yasushi Inoguchi. The authors introduce three simple adapting routing algorithms for efficient use of physical links and virtual channels in hierarchical torus network. The authors show that their approaches yield better performance for such networks. The final title “An Optimization Technique for Improved VoIP Performance over Wireless LAN” has been contributed by five authors, namely, Tamal Chakraborty, Atri Mukhopadhyay, Suman Bhunia, Iti Saha Misra and Salil K. Sanyal. The authors propose an optimization technique for configuring the parameters of the access points. In addition, they come up with an optimization mechanism in order to tune the threshold of active queue management system appropriately. Put together, the mechanisms improve the VoIP performance significantly under congestion. Finally, the Guest Editors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the 15 reviewers besides the guest editors themselves (Khalid M. Awan, Mukaddim Pathan, Ben Townsend, Morshed Chowdhury, Iftekhar Ahmad, Gour Karmakar, Shivali Goel, Hairulnizam Mahdin, Abdullah A Yusuf, Kashif Sattar, A.K.M. Azad, F. Rahman, Bahman Javadi, Abdelrahman Desoky, Lenin Mehedy) from several countries (Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Pakistan, UK and USA) who have given immensely to this process. They have responded to the Guest Editors in the shortest possible time and dedicated their valuable time to ensure that the Special Issue contains high-quality papers with significant novelty and contributions.

A secure tag ownership transfer scheme in a closed loop RFID system

In this paper we propose a novel secure tag ownership transfer scheme for closed loop RFID systems. An important property of our method is that the ownership transfer is guaranteed to be atomic and the scheme is protected against desynchronisation leading to permanent DoS. Further, it is suited to the computational constraints of EPC Class-1 Gen-2 passive RFID tags as they only use the CRC and PRNG functions that passive RFID tags are capable of. We provide a detailed security analysis to show that our scheme satisfies the required security properties of tag anonymity, tag location privacy, forward secrecy, forward untraceability while being resistant to replay, desynchronisation and server impersonation attacks. Performance comparisons show that our scheme is practical and can be implemented on passive low-cost RFID tags.