• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.233-241
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• 2022

Biodiesel is a non-polluting and non-toxic energy source that can replace conventional diesel. However, the higher production cost and raw material scarcity became challenges that obstruct the commercialization of biodiesel production. In the current investigation, fried cooking oil is used for biodiesel production in a hydrodynamic cavitation reactor, thus enhancing raw material availability and helping better waste oil disposal. However, due to the cavitation effect inside the reactor, the hydrodynamic cavitation reactor can give biodiesel yield above 98%. Thus, the use of orifice plates (having a different number of holes for cavitation) in the reactor shows more than 90% biodiesel yield within 10 mins of a time interval. The effects of rising temperature at different molar ratios are also investigated. The five-hole plate achieves the highest yield for a 4.5:1 molar ratio at 65℃. And the similar result is predicted by the response surface methodology model; however, the optimized yield is obtained at 60℃. The investigation will help understand the effect of hydrodynamic cavitation on biodiesel yield at different molar ratios and elevated temperatures.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.346-376
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• 2018

Digital forensics is a vital part of almost every criminal investigation given the amount of information available and the opportunities offered by electronic data to investigate and evidence a crime. However, in criminal justice proceedings, these electronic pieces of evidence are often considered with the utmost suspicion and uncertainty, although, on occasions are justifiable. Presently, the use of scientifically unproven forensic techniques are highly criticized in legal proceedings. Nevertheless, the exceedingly distinct and dynamic characteristics of electronic data, in addition to the current legislation and privacy laws remain as challenging aspects for systematically attesting evidence in a court of law. This article presents a comprehensive study to examine the issues that are considered essential to discuss and resolve, for the proper acceptance of evidence based on scientific grounds. Moreover, the article explains the state of forensics in emerging sub-fields of digital technology such as, cloud computing, social media, and the Internet of Things (IoT), and reviewing the challenges which may complicate the process of systematic validation of electronic evidence. The study further explores various solutions previously proposed, by researchers and academics, regarding their appropriateness based on their experimental evaluation. Additionally, this article suggests open research areas, highlighting many of the issues and problems associated with the empirical evaluation of these solutions for immediate attention by researchers and practitioners. Notably, academics must react to these challenges with appropriate emphasis on methodical verification. Therefore, for this purpose, the issues in the experiential validation of practices currently available are reviewed in this study. The review also discusses the struggle involved in demonstrating the reliability and validity of these approaches with contemporary evaluation methods. Furthermore, the development of best practices, reliable tools and the formulation of formal testing methods for digital forensic techniques are highlighted which could be extremely useful and of immense value to improve the trustworthiness of electronic evidence in legal proceedings.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.563-573
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• 2015

For hard rock subsea tunnels the most challenging rock mass conditions are in most cases represented by major faults/weakness zones. Poor stability weakness zones with large water inflow can be particularly problematic. At the pre-construction investigation stage, geological and engineering geological mapping, refraction seismic investigation and core drilling are the most important methods for identifying potentially adverse rock mass conditions. During excavation, continuous engineering geological mapping and probe drilling ahead of the face are carried out, and for the most recent Norwegian subsea tunnel projects, MWD (Measurement While Drilling) has also been used. During excavation, grouting ahead of the tunnel face is carried out whenever required according to the results from probe drilling. Sealing of water inflow by pre-grouting is particularly important before tunnelling into a section of poor rock mass quality. When excavating through weakness zones, a special methodology is normally applied, including spiling bolts, short blast round lengths and installation of reinforced sprayed concrete arches close to the face. The basic aspects of investigation, support and tunnelling for major weakness zones are discussed in this paper and illustrated by cases representing two very challenging projects which were recently completed (Atlantic Ocean tunnel and T-connection), one which is under construction (Ryfast) and one which is planned to be built in the near future (Rogfast).

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.313-327
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• 2018

Meeting the touchdown point (TDP) target box is one of the challenges during catenary riser installation, especially for deep water or ultra-deep water riser systems. TDP location mismatch compared to the design can result in variation of riser configuration, additional hang-off misalignment, and extra bending loads going into the hang-off porch. A good understanding of the key installation parameters can help to minimize this mismatch, and ensure that the riser global response meets the design criteria. This paper focuses on investigating the potential factors that may affect the touchdown point location, and addressing the challenges both in the design stage and during installation campaign. Conventionally, the vessel offset and current are the most critical factors which may affect the TDP movement during installation. With the offshore exploration going deeper and deeper in the sea (up to 10,000ft), other sources such as the seabed slope and seabed soil stiffness are playing an important role as well. The impacts of potential sources are quantified through case studies for steel catenary riser (SCR) and lazy wave steel catenary riser (LWSCR) in deep water application. Investigations through both theoretical study and numerical validation are carried out. Furthermore, design recommendations are provided during execution phase for the TDP mismatch condition to ensure the integrity of the riser system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.427-436
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• 2017

Concrete technologists have used ultrasonic pulse velocity test for decades to evaluate the properties of concrete. However, the presented research work focuses on the use of ultrasonic pulse velocity test to study the degradation in steel-concrete bond subjected to increasing loading. A detailed experimental investigation was conducted by testing five identical beam specimens under increasing loading. The loading was increased from zero till failure in equal increments. From the experimentation, it was found that as the reinforced concrete beams were stressed from control unloaded condition till complete failure, the propagating ultrasonic wave velocity reduced. This reduction in wave velocity is attributed to the initiation, development, and propagation of internal cracking in the concrete surrounding the steel reinforcement. Using both direct and semidirect methods of testing, results of reduction in wave velocity with evidence of internal cracking at steel-concrete interface are presented. From the presented results and discussion, it can be concluded that the UPV test method can be successfully employed to identify zones of poor bonding along the length of reinforced concrete beam. The information gathered by such testing can be used by engineers for localizing repairs thereby leading to saving of time, labor and cost of repairs. Furthermore, the implementation strategy along with real-world challenges associated with the application of the proposed technique and area of future development have also been presented.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.245-251
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• 2016

Despite the exponential throughput improvement in mobile communications systems, their ability to satisfy requirements of state-of-the-art and future applications of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is still under investigation. Challenges are mainly due to the inadequacy of third generation partnership project (3GPP) networks to support large amounts of devices simultaneously, while the number of AMI end-devices and the frequency of their data transmission increase with new AMI-based applications. In this introductory survey, innovative and future AMI applications and their communication requirements are first reviewed. Then, we identify challenges of 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) in enabling future AMI applications. More importantly, the latest improvements to LTE-A standard release 12 and 13 are reviewed and analyzed with regards to their potential to improve the quality of LTE-enabled AMI. It is found that 3GPP enhancements on machine type communications (MTC) standards will significantly enhance AMI communications. Beyond MTC specifications, non-MTC-specific enhancements such as carrier aggregation and multi-connectivity for user equipment will also contribute greatly to improving reliability and availability of AMI devices. The paper's focus is towards improved backhaul support for innovative and future AMI applications, beyond traditional automatic meter reading.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.241-269
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• 2012

Wireless networks composed of multimedia-enabled resource-constrained sensor nodes have enriched a large set of monitoring sensing applications. In such communication scenario, however, new challenges in data transmission and energy-efficiency have arisen due to the stringent requirements of those sensor networks. Generally, congested nodes may deplete the energy of the active congested paths toward the sink and incur in undesired communication delay and packet dropping, while bit errors during transmission may negatively impact the end-to-end quality of the received data. Many approaches have been proposed to face congestion and provide reliable communications in wireless sensor networks, usually employing some transport protocol that address one or both of these issues. Nevertheless, due to the unique characteristics of multimedia-based wireless sensor networks, notably minimum bandwidth demand, bounded delay and reduced energy consumption requirement, communication protocols from traditional scalar wireless sensor networks are not suitable for multimedia sensor networks. In the last decade, such requirements have fostered research in adapting existing protocols or proposing new protocols from scratch. We survey the state of the art of transport protocols for wireless multimedia sensor networks, addressing the recent developments and proposed strategies for congestion control and loss recovery. Future research directions are also discussed, outlining the remaining challenges and promising investigation areas.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.253-265
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• 2022

This paper examines South Korea's past developmental experience and its current strategy and policy initiatives to overcome global and domestic challenges and sustain economic growth in the twenty-first century, the digital and global era, to explain how the country became a high-income economy. The findings of this research highlight the following three factors: First, the most significant factor in rapid industrialization was the adoption of an outward-looking strategy, with the help of a highly skilled workforce and the development of high-tech manufacturing and services sectors, which was supported by the government plans. Second, the high R&D intensity helped South Korea become a global leader in information and communication technologies, which has emerged from a top-down innovation system that promotes close collaboration between government, industry, and the academic community. Third, according to the recently released Global Entrepreneurship Index, South Korea tops the region in entrepreneurship environment. Among the list of criteria, South Korea dominates in the ease of starting a business and enforcing contracts. They all play a significant role in encouraging investment, production, communication, and, eventually, economic growth. Finally, this paper suggests forward-looking developments promoting transformation and diversification into high-tech manufacturing and digital and green technologies.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.341-350
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• 2021

The energy production of offshore wind farms plays an important role in expanding renewable energy. However, the development of offshore wind farms faces many challenges due to its incompatibility with marine environments and its social acceptability among the local community. In this study, we reviewed the marine environmental impact assessment status of offshore wind farm development projects for 2012-2019 in South Korea. A total of nine projects were selected for this study, all of which experienced considerable conflict with local fisheries resources. To appropriately respond to the underlying challenges faced by offshore wind farm development and in order to better support decision-making for future impact assessment, our findings identified: i) a need for adequate preliminary investigation and technical examination of fisheries resources; ii) a need to assess and estimate the impact of underwater noise, vibration, and electromagnetic waves on fisheries resources during wind farm construction and operation; and iii) a need for a bottom-up approach that allows for communication with local stakeholders and policy-makers to guarantee the local acceptability of the development.

• Journal of applied mathematics & informatics
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.1129-1143
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• 2023

Social media platforms have become an integral part of our daily lives, and they generate vast amounts of data that can be analyzed for various purposes. However, the quality of the data obtained from social media is often questionable due to factors such as noise, bias, and incompleteness. Enhancing data quality is crucial to ensure the reliability and validity of the results obtained from such data. This paper proposes an enhanced decision-making framework based on Business Decision Management Systems (BDMS) that addresses these challenges by incorporating a data quality enhancement component. The framework includes a backtracking method to improve plan failures and risk-taking abilities and a steep optimized strategy to enhance training plan and resource management, all of which contribute to improving the quality of the data. We examine the efficacy of the proposed framework through research data, which provides evidence of its ability to increase the level of effectiveness and performance by enhancing data quality. Additionally, we demonstrate the reliability of the proposed framework through simulation analysis, which includes true positive analysis, performance analysis, error analysis, and accuracy analysis. This research contributes to the field of business intelligence by providing a framework that addresses critical data quality challenges faced by organizations in decision-making environments.