In 2008 the global older population (aged 65 and over) was estimated to be about 7% of the world's population; it is estimated to reach 2 billion by 2050 accounting for 22% of the world total population. This demographic trend sets new challenges to health services and policies, and imposes a significant financial and social burden on economies as a whole. The decline in musculoskeletal system in the aging population is the biggest cause of injury death in older people who require effective physiotherapy treatment. However the current demand for physiotherapists outstrips current supply. To address this problem this paper described an innovative approach which consists of a screening risk assessment of the elderly which can be combined with a case based reasoning system to support physiotherapist in managing the care of the elderly following a fall. Although the study is based on a small cohort of the Thai population it is believed that this approach can address the shortage of physiotherapists and bring a significant improvement in the health care of older people. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper identifies a problem within forensics computing entailing the recognition of known suspect images which may have been modified. Current hashing techniques mean that if an image is changed by its file type, it cannot be detected from the known hash of the original image file. The technique outlined in this paper solves this problem by utilising techniques used in audio recognition algorithms to identify greyscale and colour images. This technique is also able to output as a percentage, the match between the original image and any modification of the image. The technique is able to identify suspect files that may require further investigation and so increases the efficiency of the pre-investigation stage. It can be used against a wide range of image modification techniques that can be used to avoid detection. The paper outlines various recognition methods that can be used to detect suspect files located within electronic media.

Current procedures for the detection and identification of suspect picture files relies on the use of MD5 hashing and then using the resultant hash value to search a database of known hash values for a match, to identify any suspect file. Even a slight modification to the suspect file causes a different hash value to be created which will then fail to generate a match from the records in the database. A novel approach is proposed by converting the suspect picture file to a sound file, generating a `fingerprint' for this sound wave and using a matching algorithm to identify the file from a suspect file database.

The paper is concerned with the hydrogeological appraisal of the proposed mining operations in theThar lignite field in Sindh, Pakistan. The Thar coalfield covers an area of approximately 9000km2 andcontains three lignite seams lying at depth of 130m to 250 m. In the Thar lignite field, the presence ofthree main aquifers induces pore pressure in the rock mass surrounding the lignite seams and makes highwall slopes potentially unsafe. It is, therefore, necessary to dewater the rock mass before commencingmining excavations. The paper describes the proposed mine dewatering scheme to facilitatedepressurising of the rock mass surrounding the mining excavations. Inflow prediction of groundwater tothe surface mining excavation was carried out using a SEEP/W finite element software package. Thesimulation results show that the ground water inflow from the Top aquifer is 114m3/d, from theIntermediate confined aquifer is 141m3/d and from the Bottom confined aquifer is 1.28 x 105 m3 /d. Theseresults were compared with the analytical solutions which indicated that the relative error of estimation ofinflow quantities varies from 3.4 % to 6.4%.

With the aging population increasing at a faster rate the muscular skeletal system disorder caused by falling is becoming a challenging problem to health providers. In Thailand there is lack of training of therapists to assist the elderly people following fall injuries. The need for innovative approaches to help with the care of elderly is required. This paper addresses this issue by describing a decision support system based on a case based reasoning paradigm to support the physiotherapists in their care for the elderly.

Automatic identification of human activity has led to a possibility of providing personalised services in different domains i.e. healthcare, security and sport etc. With advancement in sensor technology, automatic activity recognition can be done in an unobtrusive and non-intrusive way. The placement of the sensor and wearability are ones of vital keys in the successful activity recognition of free space livings. Experiments were carried out to investigate the use of a single wrist-worn accelerometer for automatic activity classification. The performances of two classification algorithms namely Decision Tree C4.5 and Artificial Neural Network were compared using four different sets of features to classify five daily living activities. The result revealed that Decision Tree C4.5 has outperformed Neural Network regardless of the different sets of features used. The best classification result was achieved using the set containing the most popular and accurate features i.e. mean, minimum, energy and sample differences etc. The best accuracy of 94.13% was achieved using only wrist-worn accelerometer showing a possibility of automatic activity classification with no movement constrain, discomfort and stigmatisation caused by the sensor.

The research proposes a novel generic fleet scheduling for a split delivery with scarce resource problem. The research presents the problem in Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) and further tackling it using Constraint Programming. The prototype system has been developed to evaluate the proposed method using problem statement case study from one of the large agricultural product supplier in the north of Thailand. The developed system deals with practical constraints including hard constraints e.g. vehicle capacity, time window, vehicle usage restriction and fleet constraints, and soft constraint which is a minimising of using subcontractor. The results showed a primary success of the proposed method in providing efficiency decision for agricultural transport planning.

The paper is concerned with the hydrogeological appraisal of the proposed mining operations in the Thar Lignite field in Sindh, Pakistan containing lignite reserves >9 billion tonnes. The presence of three main aquifers surrounding three lignite seams induces pore pressure in the rock mass making the high wall slopes potentially unsafe. In order to dewater the surrounding rock mass before commencing mining excavations groundwater inflow predictions were carried out using a SEEP/W finite element software package. The simulation results for the three aquifers are presented indicating that the relative error of estimation between analytical and the numerical solutions vary from 3.4 % to 6.4%.

Ground water and surface water create a range of problems in lignite mining utilizing surface mining methods. In order to create a safe and economic mining environment, it is essential to carry out mining after dewatering the rock mass surrounding the lignite mines by advance dewatering techniques. This paper briefly describes the ground water regimes including pressure gradients associated with various lignite deposits together with the practical examples of some important lignite deposits in the world. An effective method of controlling ground water in multi -aquifer environment in lignite deposits is to carry out rock mass dewatering using borehole pumps. This approach will help reducing the inflow rates of ground water to the mining excavation and also increase the effective strength of the overburden strata, thus, increasing the slope stability of the mining excavations. The main theme of this paper is to present a case history analysis of Thar lignite deposit in Sindh, Pakistan which has lignite reserves of some 193 billion tonnes. The paper presents a proposed method of dewatering the Thar prospect together with an assessment of the quality of aquifer water which can be used to improve the quality of life of people inhabiting in the Thar Desert area of Sindh, Pakistan. Water samples from three aquifers were collected from nine different locations and were analyzed in the laboratory for evaluating their physical and chemical characteristics. The test results indicated that the aquifer water can be classified as (sodium+ potassium) chloride type water with a TDS range of 1000 to 20,000 mg/L. Consequently, this ground water is classified as brackish (saline water) requiring treatment before it can be utilised for domestic or industrial consumptions. It should be noted that this ground water does not contain heavy metals and toxic metals including arsenic, mercury and lead or cyanide. However, results indicate that groundwater from a few locations contained traces of silver (<4oppb)Owithozinc0<0.1ppm.

In recent years the widespread application of outsourcing to help improve finance and maintain competitiveness is growing rapidly, and has been accompanied by a growth of academic research in this field. Most of the outsourcing literature has focused primarily on the social and cultural impacts, the organisational and management perspectives of outsourcing and very few tools have been developed to assist managers in making outsourcing decisions. Incorrect decision-making in outsourcing can lead to devastating consequences for their business. To guide decision makers in managing the complexity of outsourcing a holistic approach to outsourcing has been developed by taking business, information and organisational perspectives (HABIO). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how HABIO can be applied to help managers evaluate the impact of their decision-making by providing them with a set of 'what-if' scenarios, which are enacted by intelligent agents. The case example, discussed in this paper, demonstrates that HABIO can be applied effectively using a multi-agent system to analyse the outsourcing decision for a call centre sector in the retail industry. A prototype of the multi-agent system is presented where intelligent agents are endowed with specific domain ontologies, appropriate to solve a specific problem, and with a reasoning mechanism to achieve specific goals and to collaborate together to produce a set of ''what-if scenarios'' to the outsourcing managers.

An outburst in a coal mine may be defined as the violent ejection of gas and rock from a freshly exposed face due to sudden release of kinetic energy stored in the rock mass. This paper is concerned with outburst problems associated with coal mining in the Southern Coalfield in New South Wales. In this coalfield mining is carried-out mainly in the Bulli seam in 12 collierics producing some 18 million tones of coal per year. The Bulli seam is highly gassy and prone to outbursts of coal, gas and rock presenting a major risk to the safety of mine workers and consequently a threat to the overall viability of the mining operations. Since the Occurrence of a major outburst incident in the South Bulli Colliery in 1991 involving three fatalities, the primary contributory factors associated with coal/gas outbursts in the Bulli coal seam have been identified (Ryncarz, 1992). This requires a development strategy for the management of the outburst risk by the Department of Mineral Resources, NSW with the cooperation of mine operators and mining union (DMR, 1995). Utilisation of risk management techniques in combination with modern gas drainage technologies and geological control methods have led to the formation of an effective outburst management plan. Clause 15 of the Coal Mines (Underground) Regulation 1999 in NSW (DMR, 1999) has made it mandatory in an area of outburst to carry out mining in accordance with a code or guidelines developed for mining in outburst prone areas (DMR, 1995). The paper presents a case history of Outburst risk management plan developed for Colliery X in Southern Coalfield of NSW. The conclusion from this study is that since the introduction of the Outburst risk management system from the Southern Coalfield considerable reduction in outburst incidences has been experienced and this expertise should be incorporated in a Knowledge Management System (KMS) to support the mining industry to maximize safety of mine workers aided by social network technology.

The traditional disposal of waste in landfill sites is causing serious environmental concerns due to the amount of hectares consumed by this method and the waste of resources which results from not being proactive in effective recycling. The construction industry, for example, contributes approximately 108mt of the total 335mt of waste annually produced in the United Kingdom of which 50-80% could be reusable or recyclable. Construction waste is composed of at least 1mt of plasterboard waste which has resulted in serious problems because of the emission of hydrogen sulphide gas which is odorous and causes a health hazard to people living near disposal sites. Consequently, this material can only be disposed of in licensed and special designed sites. Plasterboard can be recycled and some countries, for example Japan, Canada, United States and, recently, the United Kingdom, are using this technology to obviate the issue of landfill. This paper outlines knowledge hub using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) linked to Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems for providing auditing and monitoring systems for environmental recycling and/or licensed disposal of plasterboard waste.

The emission of sulphur dioxide into the environment and its implication in the formation of acid rain has stimulated interest into methods to reduce sulphur in coal prior to sale using existing froth flotation plant. The bacterium Thiobacillus ferrooxidans is capable of suppressing the natural floatabihty of pyritic sulphur in a conditioning time of two minutes. This is achieved by changing the surface properties of the pyrite from aerophilic to areophobic. Pyrite particles of various sizes can be suppressed with an efficiency of over 92% providing sufficient bacterial cells are present. The paper describes the effect of bacteria on sulphur suppression of both synthetic coal mixtures and a high sulphur American coal.

Spontaneous combustion of coal is a hazard frequently encountered in coal mining. In underground coal mining the most difficult situation that can occur when spontaneous combustion and the presence of an inherently explosive atmosphere pray promote a local spontaneous combustion incident into an explosion hazard involving the entire mine. Such an incident at the Moura mine in Central Queensland resulted in greater pressure on mine operators for the safe management of spontaneous combustion in their underground coalmines than ever before. As not all coalmines are equally liable to spontaneous combustion due to the different propensities of different coals to self-oxidation, the risk assessment for spontaneous combustion is a primary requirement for the development of a spontaneous combustion management plan for a mine. Once the coal seam has been classified into various categories of spontaneous combustion risk, it is necessary to determine a fire ladder for the coal seam. This is followed by detailed planning of the mine layout including the mine ventilation system and a spontaneous combustion monitoring program before devising a spontaneous combustion management plan as required by the Coal Mines Underground Regulations, 1999. In this paper, a case history is presented which includes the development of a spontaneous combustion management plan for a high-risk coal seam in a greenfield site, from the risk assessment stage to the outbreak stage of spontaneous combustion incident. It is concluded that the risk assessment, evaluation of the fire ladder comprehensive monitoring by a tube bundle system and trending of Graham's ratio and CO levels were the main elements in an effective spontaneous combustion control system for the mine.

The cost of delivery of material into space is very high due to high thrust requirements of the space vehicle to overcome earth 's gravity and need to carry high quantities of fuels by the space vehicle. Thus, the load carrying capacity of a spacecraft is only 5% of it's own weight. If an infrastructure for the supply of fuel in space is developed from the extra-terrestrial sources, then cost of supply of materials in space can be considerably reduced. In this paper a strategy for extracting fuel from short period comets and asteroids is discussed. This will provide an opportunity to supply fuel to a spacecraft for its onward journey to other planets or to a communication satellite for rotating in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) or in Geo-synchronic Earth's Orbit (GEO). This will considerably increase the life span of current telecommunication satellites. Availability of minerals from various extra-terrestrial sources will also increase different industrial activities in space.

Any future progress in the development of space endeavours especially the long voyages, are only viable if the infrastructure is developed in space for the supply of fuel and other construction materials from extra terrestrial sources. One of the major priorities in the development of industrial activities in space is to develop capabilities for the supply of propellant energy extracted from asteroids and short period comets. This will reduce the fuel capacity need of the spacecrafts and increase the capabilities of carrying profitable payloads In this paper, a brief description of the proposed method of exploitation of Short Term Comets for propellant energy is presented.