AUS Repository

The construction boom in the Arabian Gulf region has resulted in an inflow of consultants from around the world. Most have little or no experience of the particular requirements of the residents of the region, who are predominantly Muslim. One of these requirements is to have prayer facilities in public buildings to accommodate practicing Muslims who pray five times a day. The design requirements of such facilities are described only vaguely in commonly-used books on architecture design standards. The result is that inadequate design of such facilities in many projects causes discomfort to users. This paper describes an effort by an academic to support the profession with recommended standards for the design of prayer facilities. It covers not only the basic functional requirements of a prayer facility but also other issues such as fire protection and the relationship with supporting amenities such as ablution space. The research uses several methods to derive the recommended design standards. It draws from those few standards that already exist for the design standards of mosques and adapts them to prayer facilities within public buildings. It capitalizes on the author's experience as a space user who also has analytical capabilities in architecture design. Hence it studies well-designed spaces, identifies their strengths and incorporates them into the recommendations. It also studies poorly-designed spaces, identifies their weaknesses and recommends their avoidance. The purpose of the paper is to trigger more discussion on the design standards of such critical spaces in a region where there is a large population of users. The intention is to change the long-established practices of the many local and international consultants who design prayer facilities on an ad-hoc basis.

Forecasting stock prices is of critical importance for investors who wish to reduce investment risks. Forecasting is based on the idea that stock prices move in patterns. So far, it is understood that developed, emerging, and frontier markets have different general characteristics. Subsequently, this research uses design of experiments (DOE) to study the significance and behavior of artificial neural networks' (ANN) design parameters and their effect on the performance of predicting movement of developed, emerging, and frontier markets. In this study, each classification is represented by two market indices. The data is based on Morgan Stanley Country Index (MSCI), and includes the indices of UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, and UK. Two designed experiments are conducted where 5 neural network design parameters are varied between two levels. The first model is a 4 factor full factorial, which includes the parameters of type of network, number of hidden layer neurons, type of output transfer function, and the learning rate of Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm. The second model, a 5 factor fractional factorial, includes all previous four parameters plus the shape of hidden layer sigmoid function. The results show that, for a specific financial market, DOE is a useful tool in identifying the most significant ANN design parameters. Furthermore, the results show that there exist some commonly significant and commonly insignificant factors among all tested markets, and sometimes among markets of the same classification only. However, there does not seem to be any differences in ANN design parameters' effect based on market classification; all main effects and interactions that appear to be significant behave similarly through all tested markets. Search Terms: Artificial neural networks (ANN), Design of experiments (DOE), Frontier, Emerging, Developed, Financial time series

Ethane recovery in a conventional turboexpander process is optimized considering different demethanizer pressures and different feeds: a lean gas and a rich one. The design variables are varied, while meeting process constraints, in order to find the optimum conditions achieving the maximum profit. The analysis covers the whole process including the refrigeration part, and the entire typical demethanizer pressure range. The optimum ethane recovery is compared with the maximum possible recovery for each value of the demethanizer pressure. Recommendations are given regarding the selection of the level of ethane recovery, along with the demethanizer pressure, and refrigeration recovery system.