Search results for: Random simple polygon generation.

Authors: El Hansali Hasnaa, Bennani Mohammed

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Hexapod legged robot’s missions, particularly in irregular and dangerous areas, require high stability and high precision. In this paper, we consider the rectangular architecture body of legged robots with six legs distributed symmetrically along two sides, each leg contains three degrees of freedom for greater mobility. The aim of this work is planning tripod gait trajectory, based on the computing of the kinematic model to determine the joint variables in the lifting and the propelling phases. For this, appropriate coordinate frames are attached to the body and legs in order to obtain clear representation and efficient generation of the system equations. A simulation in MATLAB software platform is developed to confirm the kinematic model and various trajectories to the tripod gait adopted by the hexapod robot in its locomotion.

Keywords: hexapod legged robot, inverse kinematic model, simulation in MATLAB, tripod gait

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Authors: Constantinos Vayenas, Athanasios Fokas, Dimitrios Grigoriou

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We use special relativity to compute the inertial and thus gravitational mass of relativistic electron and muon neutrinos, and we find that, for neutrino kinetic energies above 150 MeV/c2, these masses are in the Planck mass range. Consequently, we develop a simple Bohr-type model using gravitational rather than electrostatic forces between the rotating neutrinos as the centripetal force in order to examine the bound rotational states formed by two or three such relativistic neutrinos. We find that the masses of the composite rotational structures formed, are in the meson and baryon mass ranges, respectively. These models contain no adjustable parameters and by comparing their predictions with the experimental values of the masses of protons and pions, we compute a mass of 0.0437 eV/c2 for the heaviest electron neutrino mass and of 1.1 x10-3 eV/c2 for the heaviest muon neutrino mass.

Keywords: geons, gravitational confinement, neutrino masses, special relativity

Procedia PDF Downloads 252

Authors: Charalabos Antonatos, Mariza Panoutsopoulou, Georgios K. Georgakilas, Evangelos Evangelou, Yiannis Vasilopoulos

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The extended tissue damage and severe clinical outcomes of autoimmune diseases, accompanied by the high annual costs to the overall health care system, highlight the need for an efficient therapy. Increasing knowledge over the pathophysiology of specific chronic inflammatory diseases, namely Psoriasis (PsO), Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) consisting of Crohn’s disease (CD) and Ulcerative colitis (UC), and Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), has provided insights into the underlying mechanisms that lead to the maintenance of the inflammation, such as Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha (TNF-α). Hence, the anti-TNFα biological agents pose as an ideal therapeutic approach. Despite the efficacy of anti-TNFα agents, several clinical trials have shown that 20-40% of patients do not respond to treatment. Nowadays, high-throughput technologies have been recruited in order to elucidate the complex interactions in multifactorial phenotypes, with the most ubiquitous ones referring to transcriptome quantification analyses. In this context, a random effects meta-analysis of available gene expression cDNA microarray datasets was performed between responders and non-responders to anti-TNFα therapy in patients with IBD, PsO, and RA. Publicly available datasets were systematically searched from inception to 10th of November 2020 and selected for further analysis if they assessed the response to anti-TNFα therapy with clinical score indexes from inflamed biopsies. Specifically, 4 IBD (79 responders/72 non-responders), 3 PsO (40 responders/11 non-responders) and 2 RA (16 responders/6 non-responders) datasetswere selected. After the separate pre-processing of each dataset, 4 separate meta-analyses were conducted; three disease-specific and a single combined meta-analysis on the disease-specific results. The MetaVolcano R package (v.1.8.0) was utilized for a random-effects meta-analysis through theRestricted Maximum Likelihood (RELM) method. The top 1% of the most consistently perturbed genes in the included datasets was highlighted through the TopConfects approach while maintaining a 5% False Discovery Rate (FDR). Genes were considered as Differentialy Expressed (DEGs) as those with P ≤ 0.05, |log2(FC)| ≥ log2(1.25) and perturbed in at least 75% of the included datasets. Over-representation analysis was performed using Gene Ontology and Reactome Pathways for both up- and down-regulated genes in all 4 performed meta-analyses. Protein-Protein interaction networks were also incorporated in the subsequentanalyses with STRING v11.5 and Cytoscape v3.9. Disease-specific meta-analyses detected multiple distinct pro-inflammatory and immune-related down-regulated genes for each disease, such asNFKBIA, IL36, and IRAK1, respectively. Pathway analyses revealed unique and shared pathways between each disease, such as Neutrophil Degranulation and Signaling by Interleukins. The combined meta-analysis unveiled 436 DEGs, 86 out of which were up- and 350 down-regulated, confirming the aforementioned shared pathways and genes, as well as uncovering genes that participate in anti-inflammatory pathways, namely IL-10 signaling. The identification of key biological pathways and regulatory elements is imperative for the accurate prediction of the patient’s response to biological drugs. Meta-analysis of such gene expression data could aid the challenging approach to unravel the complex interactions implicated in the response to anti-TNFα therapy in patients with PsO, IBD, and RA, as well as distinguish gene clusters and pathways that are altered through this heterogeneous phenotype.

Keywords: anti-TNFα, autoimmune, meta-analysis, microarrays

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Authors: Vinod Kumar, Arun Kumar, Surjit Angra

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This paper addresses the junction stress analysis of orthogonally intersecting thin walled cylindrical shell and thin walled cylindrical nozzle subjected to external loading on nozzle. Junction stresses have been calculated theoretically by welding research council (WRC) bulletins 107 and 297 for different nozzle loads. WRC bulletins 107 and 297 have been used by design engineers for calculating nozzle-vessel junction stresses since their publication. They give simple empirical relations and easy in application. Also 3D FEA in which material is elastic has been done in ANSYS software with 8 node solid element model and results of FEA have been compared with WRC results. Stress intensities obtained by WRC 297 are generally slightly higher than obtained by WRC 107. Membrane stresses obtained by FEA are much higher than WRC and membrane plus bending stresses obtained by FEA are lower than WRC.

Keywords: FEA, junction stress, solid element, WRC 107, WRC 297

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Authors: Kamaludeen Samaila, Khashyaullah Abdulfattah, Fahimi Ahmad Bin Amir

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The study was conducted to examine the relationship between selected factors (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating condition) and students’ intention to use the learning management system (LMS), as well as investigating the factors predicting students’ intention to use the LMS. The study was specifically conducted at the Faculty of Educational Study of University Putra Malaysia. Questionnaires were distributed to 277 respondents using a random sampling technique. SPSS Version 22 was employed in analyzing the data; the findings of this study indicated that performance expectancy (r = .69, p < .01), effort expectancy (r=.60, p < .01), social influence (r = .61, p < .01), and facilitating condition (r=.42, p < .01), were significantly related to students’ intention to use the LMS. In addition, the result also revealed that performance expectancy (β = .436, p < .05), social influence (β=.232, p < .05), and effort expectancy (β = .193, p < .05) were strong predictors of students’ intention to use the LMS. The analysis further indicated that (R2) is 0.054 which means that 54% of variation in the dependent variable is explained by the entire predictor variables entered into the regression model. Understanding the factors that affect students’ intention to use the LMS could help the lecturers, LMS managers and university management to develop the policies that may attract students to use the LMS.

Keywords: LMS, postgraduate students, PutraBlas, students’ intention, UPM, UTAUT model

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Authors: Stephen Orimoloye, Jose Horrillo-Caraballo, Harshinie Karunarathna, Dominic E. Reeve

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Prediction of wave overtopping is an essential component of coastal seawall designing and management. Not only that excessive overtopping is reported for impermeable seawalls under bimodal waves, but overtopping is also showing a high sensitivity to the peakedness of the random wave propagation patterns. In the present study, we present a comprehensive analysis of the effects of peakedness of bimodal wave patterns of the overtopping of sloping seawalls. An energy-conserved bimodal spectrum with four different spectra peak periods and swell percentages was applied to estimate wave overtopping in both numerical and experimental flumes. Results of incident surface elevations and bimodal spectra were accurately captured across the flume domain using sets of well-positioned resistant-type wave gauges. Peakedness characteristics of the wave patterns were extracted to derive a relationship between the non-dimensional overtopping and the peakedness across the wave groups in the wave series. The full paper will briefly describe the development of the spectrum and present a comprehensive results analysis leading to the derivation of the relationship between dimensionless overtopping and peakedness of bimodal waves.

Keywords: wave overtopping, peakedness, bimodal waves, swell percentages

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Authors: Adelayo Akeem Jolaoye

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Historically urban centers serve as the fulcrum upon which significant complex social and economic development rest. Despite their fixed geographical locations, though in different degree, cities generate self-sustenance and multiplier effects in all aspects of life. They also house inestimable human capital, which serves as a power house for future generation transformation requirements. Unfortunately, the untamed global urbanization process has resulted in an unimaginable damage to the urban social structure as well as urban environmental value. The preceding has caused cities failure in performing their expected roles worst still becoming a regional burden and national liabilities. This paper briefly discusses the ecological concept of urban settlements and reviews the world historical urban evolution and growth. Also, given the above-mentioned anomalies, the paper also raised conceptual principles of urban planning as well as administrative policies for its strategic management.

Keywords: city, urbanization, urban planning, urban malice

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Authors: Jaeyoung Lee

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Autonomous driving systems require high reliability to provide people with a safe and comfortable driving experience. However, despite the development of a number of vehicle sensors, it is difficult to always provide high perceived performance in driving environments that vary from time to season. The image segmentation method using deep learning, which has recently evolved rapidly, provides high recognition performance in various road environments stably. However, since the system controls a vehicle in real time, a highly complex deep learning network cannot be used due to time and memory constraints. Moreover, efficient networks are optimized for GPU environments, which degrade performance in embedded processor environments equipped simple hardware accelerators. In this paper, a semantic segmentation network, matrix multiplication accelerator network (MMANet), optimized for matrix multiplication accelerator (MMA) on Texas instrument digital signal processors (TI DSP) is proposed to improve the recognition performance of autonomous driving system. The proposed method is designed to maximize the number of layers that can be performed in a limited time to provide reliable driving environment information in real time. First, the number of channels in the activation map is fixed to fit the structure of MMA. By increasing the number of parallel branches, the lack of information caused by fixing the number of channels is resolved. Second, an efficient convolution is selected depending on the size of the activation. Since MMA is a fixed, it may be more efficient for normal convolution than depthwise separable convolution depending on memory access overhead. Thus, a convolution type is decided according to output stride to increase network depth. In addition, memory access time is minimized by processing operations only in L3 cache. Lastly, reliable contexts are extracted using the extended atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP). The suggested method gets stable features from an extended path by increasing the kernel size and accessing consecutive data. In addition, it consists of two ASPPs to obtain high quality contexts using the restored shape without global average pooling paths since the layer uses MMA as a simple adder. To verify the proposed method, an experiment is conducted using perfsim, a timing simulator, and the Cityscapes validation sets. The proposed network can process an image with 640 x 480 resolution for 6.67 ms, so six cameras can be used to identify the surroundings of the vehicle as 20 frame per second (FPS). In addition, it achieves 73.1% mean intersection over union (mIoU) which is the highest recognition rate among embedded networks on the Cityscapes validation set.

Keywords: edge network, embedded network, MMA, matrix multiplication accelerator, semantic segmentation network

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Authors: Mohammad Abdullah-Al-Wadud

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In the current era of automation and artificial intelligence, different systems have been increasingly keeping on depending on decision-making capabilities of machines. Such systems/applications may range from simple classifiers to sophisticated surveillance systems based on traditional sensors and related equipment which are becoming more common in the internet of things (IoT) paradigm. However, the available data for such problems are usually imprecise and incomplete, which leads to uncertainty in decisions made based on traditional probability-based classifiers. This requires a robust fusion framework to combine the available information sources with some degree of certainty. The theory of evidence can provide with such a method for combining evidence from different (may be unreliable) sources/observers. This talk will address the employment of the Dempster-Shafer Theory of evidence in some practical applications.

Keywords: decision making, dempster-shafer theory, evidence fusion, incomplete data, uncertainty

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Authors: Ali Ben Abbes, Imed Riadh Farah

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Due to the considerable advances in Multi-Temporal Satellite Images (MTSI), remote sensing application became more accurate. Recently, many advances in modeling MTSI are developed using various models. The purpose of this article is to present an overview of studies using Hidden Markov Model (HMM). First of all, we provide a background of using HMM and their applications in this context. A comparison of the different works is discussed, and possible areas and challenges are highlighted. Secondly, we discussed the difference on vegetation monitoring as well as urban growth. Nevertheless, most research efforts have been used only stationary data. From another point of view, in this paper, we describe a new non-stationarity HMM, that is defined with a set of parts of the time series e.g. seasonal, trend and random. In addition, a new approach giving more accurate results and improve the applicability of the HMM in modeling a non-stationary data series. In order to assess the performance of the HMM, different experiments are carried out using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI time series of the northwestern region of Tunisia and Landsat time series of tres Cantos-Madrid in Spain.

Keywords: multi-temporal satellite image, HMM , nonstationarity, vegetation, urban

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Authors: Amal Maazoun, Abderrazak Mezghani, Ali Ben Moussa

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Aerogel consists of a ramified and inter-connected solid skeleton enclosing a very important number of nano-sized pores filled with air that occupies most of the volume and makes very low density. The thermal conductivity of this material can reach lower values than those of any other material, and it changes with the type of the aerogel and its composition. So, in order to explain the causes of the super-insulation of our material and to determine the factors in which depends on its conductivity we used a numerical simulation. We have developed a numerical code that generates random fractal structure of silica aerogel with pre-defined concentration, properties of the backbone and the gas in the pores as well as the size of the particles. The calculation of the conductivity at any point of domain shows that it is not constant and that it depends on the pore size and the location in the pore. A numerical method based on resolution by inversion of block tridiagonal matrices is used to calculate the equivalent thermal conductivity of the whole fractal structure. The average conductivity calculated for each concentration is in good agreement with those of typical aerogels. And we found that the equivalent thermal conductivity of a silica aerogel depends strongly not only on the porosity but also on the tortuosity of the solid backbone.

Keywords: aerogel, fractal structure, numerical study, porous media, thermal conductivity

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Authors: Ana M. Korol, Bibiana Riquelme, Osvaldo A. Rosso

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Since erythrocyte deformability analysis is mostly qualitative, the development of quantitative nonlinear methods is crucial for restricting subjectivity in the study of cell behaviour. An electro-optic mechanic system called erythrodeformeter has been developed and constructed in our laboratory in order to evaluate the erythrocytes' viscoelasticity. A numerical method formulated on the basis of fractal approximation for ordinary (OBM) and fractionary Brownian motion (FBM), as well as wavelet transform analysis, are proposed to distinguish chaos from noise based on the assumption that diffractometric data involves both deterministic and stochastic components, so it could be modelled as a system of bounded correlated random walk. Here we report studies on 25 donors: 4 alpha thalassaemic patients, 11 beta thalassaemic patients, and 10 healthy controls non-alcoholic and non-smoker individuals. The Correlation Coefficient, a nonlinear parameter, showed evidence of the changes in the erythrocyte deformability; the Wavelet Entropy could quantify those differences which are detected by the light diffraction patterns. Such quantifiers allow a good deal of promise and the possibility of a better understanding of the rheological erythrocytes aspects and also could help in clinical diagnosis.

Keywords: red blood cells, deformability, nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory, wavelet trannsform

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Authors: Konstantinos G. Papaioannou, Panagiotis K. Serdaris

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This study, examines the level of implementation of Human Resource Management (HRM) activities in law enforcement agencies in Greece. Recognizing that HRM is crucial for maximizing organizational performance, the study aims to evaluate its application within Greek law enforcement. A quantitative-descriptive survey was conducted, involving 996 executives from Greek Law Enforcement Agencies (477 from the Hellenic Police and 519 from the Hellenic Coast Guard), through random sampling. The survey, revealed significant concerns regarding the minimal implementation of HRM practices, in both agencies. The findings indicate that HRM practices, such as HR planning, recruitment, job position, selection, training and development, personnel management, compensation, labor relations and health and safety, are minimally applied. Neither the Hellenic Police nor the Hellenic Coast Guard appears to follow a comprehensive HRM plan. The study, contributes both theoretically and practically by highlighting the lack of HRM implementation in these agencies. The data suggest that by adopting strategic HRM practices, these organizations can enhance personnel performance and better fulfill their societal roles. Future research should extend to law enforcement agencies in other countries to draw more representative conclusion.

Keywords: coastguard, human resources management, law enforcement agencies, performance management, police

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Authors: Rouhollah Radjabi, Mojtaba Zarei, Elham Sanatgar, Hossein Shouhani

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RAPD molecular markers in order to discrimination of the Iranian native Bombyx mori silkworm breeds were used. DNA extraction using phenol - chloroform was and the qualitative and quantitative measurements of extracted DNA and its dilution, the obtained bands on agarose gel 1.5 percent were marked and analyzed. Results showed that the bands are observed between 250-2500 bp and most bands have been observed as Gilani-orange, the lowest bands observed are Khorasani-lemon. Primer 3 with 100% polymorphism with the highest polymorphism and primer 2 with 61.5 polymorphism had the lowest percentage of polymorphism. Cluster analysis of races and placed them in three main groups, races Gilani - orange, Baghdad and Khorasani -pink if the first group, camel's thorn, Herati - yellow race was alone in the second group and Khorasani – lemon was alone in the third group. The greatest similarity between the races, between Khorasani- pink and Baghdad (0.64). RAPD markers have been determined different silkworm races based on various morphological or economic characteristics except geographic origin.

Keywords: silkworm, molecular marker, RAPD, Iran

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Authors: Madiha Liaqat, Rehan Ahmed Khan, Shahid Kamal

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Multiple imputation with delta adjustment is a versatile and transparent technique for addressing univariate missing data in the presence of various missing mechanisms. This approach allows for the exploration of sensitivity to the missing-at-random (MAR) assumption. In this review, we outline the delta-adjustment procedure and illustrate its application for assessing the sensitivity to deviations from the MAR assumption. By examining diverse missingness scenarios and conducting sensitivity analyses, we gain valuable insights into the implications of missing data on our analyses, enhancing the reliability of our study's conclusions. In our study, we focused on assessing logPSA, a continuous biomarker in incomplete prostate cancer data, to examine the robustness of conclusions against plausible departures from the MAR assumption. We introduced several approaches for conducting sensitivity analyses, illustrating their application within the pattern mixture model (PMM) under the delta adjustment framework. This proposed approach effectively handles missing data, particularly loss to follow-up.

Keywords: loss to follow-up, incomplete response, multiple imputation, sensitivity analysis, prostate cancer

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Authors: Z. H. Shi, T. J. Dou, H. Zhang, H. X. Huang, N. Zeng

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The contamination of significant quantities of soils and sediments with uranium and other actinide elements as a result of nuclear activity poses many environmental risks. The electrokinetic process is one of the most promising remediation techniques for sludge, sediment, and saturated or unsaturated soils contaminated with heavy metals and radionuclides. However, secondary waste is a major concern for soil contaminated with nuclides. To minimize the generation of secondary wastes, this study used the anion and cation exchange membranes to improve the performance of the experimental apparatus. Remediation experiments of uranium-contaminated soil were performed with different agents. The results show that using acetic acid and EDTA as chelating agents clearly enhances the migration ability of the uranium. The ion exchange membranes (IEMs) used in the experiments not only reduce secondary wastes, but also, keep the soil pH stable.

Keywords: electrokinetic remediation, ion exchange membranes, soil, uranium

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Authors: Morfaw Bernice Njinju

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The contribution of exporting and small businesses to an economy cannot be overemphasized. However, small firms in developing economies are characterized by resource deficiencies, which hinders their exporting abilities. As a result, export promotion programs are designed by the government as external resources that small firms can access to overcome export barriers and improve their exporting. Nevertheless, doubts still exist as to whether firms are aware of these programs and the extent to which they are utilizing it. To analyse the level of awareness and usage of these programs, the questionnaire was developed from the review of the literature. A pilot study was conducted to determine the ease of completing the questionnaire by respondent before incorporating feedback to produce the final questionnaire. Data were collected from 200 small businesses in Cameroon in the manufacturing and agricultural sector through random sampling and analysed using regression analysis. The results indicated that different programs had different levels of awareness than others. Programs to provide training to improve product quality was found to have the highest level of awareness while those providing findings had low levels of awareness. Despite these different levels of awareness, usage was very low, as firms do not want to open up to government scrutiny of their business. Implications to policy, practice, and direction for further research are also discussed.

Keywords: export promotion programs, exporting, small businesses, Cameroon

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Authors: Sonu Gandhi, Neena Capalash, Prince Sharma, C. Raman Suri

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A sensitive chemiluminescence immunoassay (CIA) for heroin and its major metabolites is reported. The method is based on the competitive reaction of horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-labeled anti-MAM antibody and free drug in spiked urine samples. A hapten-protein conjugate was synthesized by using acidic derivative of monoacetyl morphine (MAM) coupled to carrier protein BSA and was used as an immunogen for the generation of anti-MAM (monoacetyl morphine) antibody. A high titer of antibody (1:64,0000) was obtained and the relative affinity constant (Kaff) of antibody was 3.1×107 l/mol. Under the optimal conditions, linear range and reactivity for heroin, mono acetyl morphine (MAM), morphine and codeine were 0.08, 0.09, 0.095 and 0.092 ng/mL respectively. The developed chemiluminescence inhibition assay could detect heroin and its metabolites in standard and urine samples up to 0.01 ng/ml.

Keywords: heroin, metabolites, chemiluminescence immunoassay, horse radish peroxidase

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Authors: Badar Muneer, Waseem Shabir, Faisal Karim Shaikh

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Substrate Integrated waveguide based 6-element array of Planar Inverted F antenna (PIFA) has been presented and analyzed parametrically in this paper. The antenna is fed with coupled transverse slots on a plate laminated waveguide cavity to ensure wide bandwidth and simplicity of feeding network. The two-layer structure has one layer dedicated for feeding network and the top layer dedicated for radiating elements. It has been demonstrated that the presented feeding technique for feeding such class of array antennas can be far simple in structure and miniaturized in size when it comes to designing large phased array antenna systems. A good return loss and standing wave ratio of 2:1 has been achieved while maintaining properties of typical PIFA.

Keywords: feeding network, laminated waveguide, PIFA, transverse slots

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Authors: Z. M. Biyasheva, M. Zh. Tleubergenova, Y. A. Zaripova, A. L. Shakirov, V. V. Dyachkov

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In recent years, interest in ecogenetic and biomedical problems related to the effects on the population of radon and its daughter decay products has increased significantly. Of particular interest is the assessment of the consequence of irradiation at hazardous radon areas, which includes the Almaty region due to the large number of tectonic faults that enhance radon emanation. In connection with the foregoing, the purpose of this work was to study the genetic effects of exposure to supernormal radon doses on the alpha-radiation model. Irradiation does not affect the growth of the cell, but rather its ability to differentiate. In addition, irradiation can lead to somatic mutations, morphoses and modifications. These damages most likely occur from changes in the composition of the substances of the cell. Such changes are epigenetic since they affect the regulatory processes of ontogenesis. Variability in the expression of regulatory genes refers to conditional mutations that modify the formation of signs of intraspecific similarity. Characteristic features of these conditional mutations are the dominant type of their manifestation, phenotypic asymmetry and their instability in the generations. Currently, the terms “morphosis” and “modification” are used to describe epigenetic variability, which are maintained in Drosophila melanogaster cultures using linkaged X- chromosomes, and the mutant X-chromosome is transmitted along the paternal line. In this paper, we investigated the epigenetic effects of alpha particles, whose source in nature is mainly radon and its daughter decay products. In the experiment, an isotope of plutonium-238 (Pu²³⁸), generating radiation with an energy of about 5500 eV, was used as a source of alpha particles. In an experiment in the first generation (F₁), deformities or morphoses were found, which can be called "radiation syndromes" or mutations, the manifestation of which is similar to the pleiotropic action of genes. The proportion of morphoses in the experiment was 1.8%, and in control 0.4%. In this experiment, the morphoses in the flies of the first and second generation looked like black spots, or melanomas on different parts of the imago body; "generalized" melanomas; curled, curved wings; shortened wing; bubble on one wing; absence of one wing, deformation of thorax, interruption and violation of tergite patterns, disruption of distribution of ocular facets and bristles; absence of pigmentation of the second and third legs. Statistical analysis by the Chi-square method showed the reliability of the difference in experiment and control at P ≤ 0.01. On the basis of this, it can be considered that alpha particles, which in the environment are mainly generated by radon and its isotopes, have a mutagenic effect that manifests itself, mainly in the formation of morphoses or deformities.

Keywords: alpha-radiation, genotoxicity, morphoses, radioecology, radon

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Authors: Hashem Dehghanniri

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Crime scripting is a simple and effective crime modeling technique that aims to improve understanding of security analysts about security and crime incidents. Low-quality scripts provide a wrong, incomplete, or sophisticated understanding of the crime commission process, which oppose the purpose of their application, e.g., identifying effective and cost-efficient situational crime prevention (SCP) measures. One important and overlooked factor in generating quality scripts is the crime scripting method. This study investigates the problems within the existing crime scripting practices and proposes a crime scripting approach that contributes to generating quality crime scripts. It was validated by experienced crime scripters. This framework helps analysts develop better crime scripts and contributes to their effective application, e.g., SCP measures identification or policy-making.

Keywords: attack modelling, crime commission process, crime script, situational crime prevention

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Authors: Tomasz Grzes, Maciej Kopczynski, Jaroslaw Stepaniuk

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The rough sets theory developed by Prof. Z. Pawlak is one of the tools that can be used in the intelligent systems for data analysis and processing. Banking, medicine, image recognition and security are among the possible fields of utilization. In all these fields, the amount of the collected data is increasing quickly, but with the increase of the data, the computation speed becomes the critical factor. Data reduction is one of the solutions to this problem. Removing the redundancy in the rough sets can be achieved with the reduct. A lot of algorithms of generating the reduct were developed, but most of them are only software implementations, therefore have many limitations. Microprocessor uses the fixed word length, consumes a lot of time for either fetching as well as processing of the instruction and data; consequently, the software based implementations are relatively slow. Hardware systems don’t have these limitations and can process the data faster than a software. Reduct is the subset of the decision attributes that provides the discernibility of the objects. For the given decision table there can be more than one reduct. Core is the set of all indispensable condition attributes. None of its elements can be removed without affecting the classification power of all condition attributes. Moreover, every reduct consists of all the attributes from the core. In this paper, the hardware implementation of the two-stage greedy algorithm to find the one reduct is presented. The decision table is used as an input. Output of the algorithm is the superreduct which is the reduct with some additional removable attributes. First stage of the algorithm is calculating the core using the discernibility matrix. Second stage is generating the superreduct by enriching the core with the most common attributes, i.e., attributes that are more frequent in the decision table. Described above algorithm has two disadvantages: i) generating the superreduct instead of reduct, ii) additional first stage may be unnecessary if the core is empty. But for the systems focused on the fast computation of the reduct the first disadvantage is not the key problem. The core calculation can be achieved with a combinational logic block, and thus add respectively little time to the whole process. Algorithm presented in this paper was implemented in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) as a digital device consisting of blocks that process the data in a single step. Calculating the core is done by the comparators connected to the block called 'singleton detector', which detects if the input word contains only single 'one'. Calculating the number of occurrences of the attribute is performed in the combinational block made up of the cascade of the adders. The superreduct generation process is iterative and thus needs the sequential circuit for controlling the calculations. For the research purpose, the algorithm was also implemented in C language and run on a PC. The times of execution of the reduct calculation in a hardware and software were considered. Results show increase in the speed of data processing.

Keywords: data reduction, digital systems design, field programmable gate array (FPGA), reduct, rough set

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Authors: Babitha Elizabeth Philip

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This paper aims to study in general about bridges without expansion joints. Integral Abutment Bridges (IAB) fall into this category of bridges. They are having a continuous deck and also the girders are integrated into the abutments. They are most cost effective system in terms of construction, maintenance, and longevity. The main advantage of IAB is that it is corrosion resistant since water is not allowed to pass through the structure. The other attractions of integral bridges are its simple and rapid construction, smooth and uninterrupted deck which provides a safe ride. Also damages to the abutments can be avoided to a great extent due to better load distribution at the bridge ends. Damages due to improper drainage are not seen in IAB because of its properly drained approach slabs thus eliminating the possibility of erosion of the abutment backfill and freeze and thaw damage resulting from saturated backfill.

Keywords: continuous bridge, integral abutment bridge, joint bridge, life cycle cost, soil interaction

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Authors: Nader A. Al Theeb, Zaid Abu Manneh, Ibrahim Al-Qadi

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Traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a combinatorial integer optimization problem that asks "What is the optimal route for a vehicle to traverse in order to deliver requests to a given set of customers?”. It is widely used by the package carrier companies’ distribution centers. The main goal of applying the TSP in courier organizations is to minimize the time that it takes for the courier in each trip to deliver or pick up the shipments during a day. In this article, an optimization model is constructed to create a new TSP variant to optimize the routing in a courier organization with a consideration of congestion in Amman, the capital of Jordan. Real data were collected by different methods and analyzed. Then, concert technology - CPLEX was used to solve the proposed model for some random generated data instances and for the real collected data. At the end, results have shown a great improvement in time compared with the current trip times, and an economic study was conducted afterwards to figure out the impact of using such models.

Keywords: travel salesman problem, congestions, pick-up, integer programming, package carriers, service engineering

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Authors: Jorge Olivares, Fernando Maass, Pablo Martin

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Fractional derivatives have been considered recently as a way to solve different problems in Engineering. In this way, second kind modified Bessel functions are considered here. The order α fractional differential equations of second kind Bessel functions, Kᵥ(x), are studied with simple initial conditions. The Laplace transform and Caputo definition of fractional derivatives are considered. Solutions have been found for ν=1/3, 1/2, 2/3, -1/3, -1/2 and (-2/3). In these cases, the solutions are the sum of two hypergeometric functions. The α fractional derivatives have been for α=1/3, 1/2 and 2/3, and the above values of ν. No convergence has been found for the integer values of ν Furthermore when α has been considered as a rational found m/p, no general solution has been found. Clearly, this case is more difficult to treat than those of first kind Bessel Function.

Keywords: Caputo, modified Bessel functions, hypergeometric, linear fractional differential equations, transform Laplace

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Authors: D. Liu, D. M. Donskoy

Abstract:

The vibroacoustic modulation method is based on the modulation effect of high-frequency ultrasonic wave (carrier) by low-frequency vibration in the presence of various defects, primarily contact-type such as cracks, delamination, etc. The presence and severity of the defect are measured by the ratio of the spectral sidebands and the carrier in the spectrum of the modulated signal. This approach, however, does not differentiate between amplitude and frequency modulations, AM and FM, respectfully. It was experimentally shown that both modulations could be present in the spectrum, yet each modulation may be associated with different physical mechanisms. AM mechanisms are quite well understood and widely covered in the literature. This paper is a first attempt to explain the generation mechanisms of FM and its correlation with the flaw properties. Here we proposed two possible mechanisms leading to FM modulation based on nonlinear local defect resonance and dynamic acousto-elastic models.

Keywords: non-destructive testing, nonlinear acoustics, structural health monitoring, acousto-elasticity, local defect resonance

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Authors: Abir S. AL-Harrasi, Eyad B. AL-Zadjali, Zahran S. AL-Salti

Abstract:

Entrepreneurship has captured the attention of policy-makers, educators and researchers in the last few decades. It has been regarded as a main driver for economic growth, development and employment generation in many countries worldwide. However, scholars have not agreed on the key factors that impact entrepreneurial intention. This study attempts, through an extensive literature review, to provide a holistic view and a more comprehensive understanding of the key factors that lead university undergraduate students to become entrepreneurs. A systematic literature review is conducted and several scientific articles and reports have been examined. The results of this study indicate that there are four main sets of factors: the personality-traits factors, contextual factors, motivational factors, and personal background factors. This research will serve as a base for future studies and will have valuable implications for policy makers and educators.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intention, literature review, economic growth

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Authors: Olga V. Kharchenko

Abstract:

Applicability of a KTA crystal-based laser system with optical parametric oscillators (OPO) generation to lidar sounding of the atmosphere in the spectral range 3–4 µm is studied in this work. A technique based on differential absorption lidar (DIAL) method and differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) is developed for lidar sounding of trace atmospheric gases (TAG). The DIAL-DOAS technique is tested to estimate its efficiency for lidar sounding of atmospheric trace gases.

Keywords: atmosphere, lidar sounding, DIAL, DOAS, trace gases, nonlinear crystal

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Authors: A. Bahadoran, M. Zomorodian

Abstract:

The synthesizer of cobalt oxide nanoballs (length 3−4 μm, width 250−400 nm) was achieved by a simple high-temperature supercritical solution method. Multiwalled carbon aerogels are a step towards high-density nanometer-scale nanostructures. Cobalt oxide nanoballs were prepared by supercritical solution method. Synthesis in an aqueous solution containing cobalt hydroxide at ∼80 °C without any further heat treatment at high temperature. The formation of cobalt oxide nanoballs on carbon aerogel was confirmed by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. The FE-SEM images showed the presence of cobalt oxide nanoballs. The reaction mechanism of the ultrasound-assisted synthesis of cobalt oxide nanostructures was proposed on the basis of the XRD, X-ray absorption spectroscopy analysis and FE-SEM observation of the reaction products taken during the course of the synthesis.

Keywords: cobalt oxide nano balls, carbon aerogel, synthesize, nanostructure

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Authors: Runglaksamee Rodkam

Abstract:

The purpose of this research was to study the influence of accountants’ potential performance on their working process, a case study of Government Savings Banks in the northeast of Thailand. The independent variables included accounting knowledge, accounting skill, accounting value, accounting ethics, and accounting attitude, while the dependent variable included the success of the working process. A total of 155 accountants working for Government Savings Banks were selected by random sampling. A questionnaire was used as a tool for collecting data. Descriptive statistics in this research included percentage, mean, and multiple regression analyses. The findings revealed that the majority of accountants were female with an age between 35-40 years old. Most of the respondents had an undergraduate degree with ten years of experience. Moreover, the factors of accounting knowledge, accounting skill, accounting a value and accounting ethics and accounting attitude were rated at a high level. The findings from regression analysis of observation data revealed a causal relationship in that the observation data could explain at least 51 percent of the success in the accountants’ working process.

Keywords: influence, potential performance, success, working process

Procedia PDF Downloads 240