Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia

About: Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Symplectic geometry & Numerical integration. The organization has 291 authors who have published 522 publications receiving 7682 citations. The organization is also known as: TEI of West Macedonia & TEI of Western Macedonia.

Effect of tungsten disulfide nanotubes on the thermomechanical properties of polypropylene-graft-maleic anhydride nanocomposites

Abstract: In this work, the influence of tungsten disulfide nanotubes (INT-WS2) on the mechanical, thermal, structural, and morphological characteristics of Polypropylene-graft-maleic anhydride (PPGMA) nanocomposites is investigated. The addition of 5% INT-WS2 increases the Young's Modulus by 28.5% and the storage modulus by 196.5% (in the rubbery state). Furthermore, the nanocomposites' thermal stability increases (up to 10 °C) with the addition of INT-WS2. Transmission electron microscopy observations of the nanocomposites revealed that nanotubes' length is significantly reduced during processing and that nanotubes are well-dispersed inside the PPGMA matrix. DSC results indicated that INT-WS2 serve as nucleating agents in PPGMA. Moreover, AFM observations (coupled with DSC results) suggested the formation of fibrillar crystallites in the nanocomposites. This interfacial crystalline structure seems to interpose between the PPGMA and INT-WS2. Thus, it plays a crucial role in the load transfer from the amorphous part of the polymer to the rather stiff INT-WS2. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 43887.

Public Sector Marketing in a Period of Crisis: Perceptions and Challenges for the Public Sector Managers

Abstract: Public sector marketing has been an important field of marketing study as public sector management paradigms evolve and change because of the challenges posed by e-governance and information technologies. These changes are also reflected in the new models of public administration (New Public Management—NPM) that are more market and customer oriented. In this paper, the perceptions toward the importance of marketing in the public sector are examined, using the NPM model. Structured interviews were performed and questionnaires were filled in by 30 executives working in the public sector in the region of Western Macedonia and Epirus. Our findings show that public sector executives do not consider marketing to be a priority and therefore it is not used at the full of its potential in a way that it could promote the provided services and improve the image that citizens have toward the public administration.

Cultural IoT Framework Focusing on Interactive and Personalized Museum Sightseeing

Abstract: Museum visitors are very focused and demanding. Immersive technologies as virtual and augmented reality, interactive haptics, 3D scanning and plotting, content digitization, and personalized automatic navigation must be exploited by museums in order to stimulate museum visitors and extract their attention. The authors of this work propose an open source IoT InteRactive Museum Experience (IRME) framework. IRME offers information classified in thematic sections. The visitors have the opportunity to explore specific thematic sections of interest. Navigation instructions and artwork guidelines are obtained with the help of a smart phone application. Data-mining, artificial intelligence and cognitive services offer the ability to learn from visitor’s preferences and respond more accurately to future requests and in this way enhance visitor’s experience in the museum. IRME provides a real-time, responsive and personalized navigation to museum visitors. It includes indoor positioning technology, IoT sensors and actuators, haptic devices orchestrated over cloud services. Wherever possible, IRME uses low power technology such as Bluetooth Low Energy devices, led plates-spots-cubes and 3D printing modeling capabilities, in order to promote museum artifacts and to enhance the visitors’ knowledge acquisitions and entertainment. Moreover, the reflection of such recreational improvements to the visitors is also measured using IoT sensors and the results are used as feedback for future thematic land planning, and IoT illustration techniques.

Formal Design Flows for Embedded IoT Hardware

Abstract: Taking into account the current complexity of IoT devices and hardware/software modules, there is a need to shorten the design time of embedded systems along with their custom hardware blocks. Already many microcontroller vendors include embedded hardware security blocks into their products so as to prohibit the potential security attackers and threats. Moreover, when the hardware design tools and methods are based on formal and rapid techniques, then product-to-market delays are eliminated. This chapter discusses a novel high-level synthesis technique which is rapid, and is based on formal methodologies. This synthesis-based methodology is used for the rapid and formal development of custom hardware blocks that collaborate with their host environment to deliver complete IoT nodes. Due to the formal nature of the logic programming-based synthesis transformations of the design tools, the produced hardware is provably correct in respect with the given executable specifications in high-level program code. Moreover, the automatically generated verification testbenches from exactly the same synthesis design model make the verification unified, formal, and rapid. The discussed synthesis and verification approach is rapid, flexible, formal and includes a number of input and output language format making it suitable to plug into any of the industrial design flows. A number of design experiments prove the usability of the discussed design flow.