Search results for: time series feature extraction

Authors: I. P. Singh, Ajesh Kumar Kapoor

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Rapid globalization have led to a change towards massive uncontrolled urbanization. Whereas during initial years negligence was there in the name of development, growth and vision toward healthier and better tomorrow. Considering the scenario of developing nations (India) where 70% of their population is living on 30% (urban areas) of their total land available. The need of an hour is to consider the ethical values of each and every person living in urban fringes, whereby the sustainable urban development is promoted which encompasses the move toward low carbon developments. It would help reviving a city lung space and reducing carbon credits as per Kyoto Protocol 1991. This paper would provide an overview about Indian scenario of current urban areas, ongoing developments, series of regulatory policy measures, materials innovative use and policies framed and opted for low carbon development.

Keywords: urban sustainability, indicators for sustainable development, low carbon development, Indian Policies toward low carbon development

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Authors: Min Dai, Hong Liu, Shuaijie Qian

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We study a portfolio selection problem of an investor who faces constraints on rebalancing frequency, which is common in pension fund investment. We formulate it as a multiple optimal stopping problem and utilize the dynamic programming principle. By numerically solving the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation, we find a series of free boundaries characterizing optimal strategy, and the constraints significantly impact the optimal strategy. Even in the absence of transaction costs, there is a no-trading region, depending on the number of the remaining trading chances. We also find that the equivalent wealth loss caused by the constraints is large. In conclusion, our model clarifies the impact of the constraints on transaction frequency on the optimal strategy.

Keywords: portfolio selection, rebalancing frequency, optimal strategy, free boundary, optimal stopping

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Authors: Harold Jideofor

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Wastewater treatment consists of applying known technology to improve or upgrade the quality of a wastewater. Usually wastewater treatment will involve collecting the wastewater in a central, segregated location (the Wastewater Treatment Plant) and subjecting the wastewater to various treatment processes. Most often, since large volumes of wastewater are involved, treatment processes are carried out on continuously flowing wastewaters (continuous flow or "open" systems) rather than as "batch" or a series of periodic treatment processes in which treatment is carried out on parcels or "batches" of wastewaters. While most wastewater treatment processes are continuous flow, certain operations, such as vacuum filtration, involving storage of sludge, the addition of chemicals, filtration and removal or disposal of the treated sludge, are routinely handled as periodic batch operations.

Keywords: wastewater treatment, environmental engineering, waste water

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Authors: Naik Muhammad, Zahid Ullah, Dong-Ho Choi

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Submerged floating tunnel (SFT) is a new solution for the transportation infrastructure through sea straits, fjords, and inland waters, and can be a good alternative to long span suspension bridges. SFT is a massive cylindrical structure that floats at a certain depth below the water surface and subjected to extreme environmental conditions. The identification of dominant structural response of SFT becomes more important due to intended environmental conditions for the design of SFT. The time domain dynamic problem of SFT moored by vertical and inclined mooring cables/anchors is formulated. The dynamic time history analysis of SFT subjected to hydrodynamic and seismic excitations is performed. The SFT is modeled by finite element 3D beam, and the mooring cables are modeled by truss elements. Based on the dynamic time history analysis the displacements and internal forces of SFT were calculated. The response of SFT is presented for hydrodynamic and seismic excitations. The transverse internal forces of SFT were the maximum compared to vertical direction, for both hydrodynamic and seismic cases; this indicates that the cable system provides very small stiffness in transverse direction as compared to vertical direction of SFT.

Keywords: submerged floating tunnel, hydrodynamic analysis, time history analysis, seismic response

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Authors: Yijie Wang, Tianyue Wang

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In the past two decades, there has been a great ‘piano lesson frenzy’ among Chinese middle-class families, with a large number of parents adding piano training to children’s extra-curriculum lists. Superficially, the frenzy reflects a rather ‘leisurely’ attitude: parents typically claim that pianos lessons are ‘just for fun’ and will hopefully render children’s life more exciting. However, a closer scrutiny reveals that there is great social-status anxiety hidden beneath this ‘leisurely’ surface. Based on pre-interviews of six Chinese middle-class parents who have enthusiastically signed their children up for piano lessons, several tentative analysis are made: 1. Owing to a series of historical and social factors, the Chinese middle-class have yet to establish their cultural norms in the past few decades, resulting in great confusion concerning how to cultivate cultural tastes in their offspring. And partly due to the fact that the middle-class status of the past Chinese generation is mostly self-acquired rather than inherited, parents are much less confident about their cultural resources—which require long-time accumulation—than material ones. Both factors combine to lead to a sort of blind, overcompensating enthusiasm in culture-related education, and the piano frenzy is but a demonstration. 2. The piano has been chosen to be the object of the frenzy partly because of its inherent characteristics as well as socially-constructed ones. Costly, large in size, imported from another culture and so forth, the piano has acquired the meaning of being exclusive, high-end and exotic, which renders it a token of top-tier status among Chinese people, and piano lessons for offspring have therefore become parents’ paths towards a kind of ‘symbolic elevation’. A child playing piano is an exhibition as well as psychological assurance of the families’ middle-class status. 3. A closer look at children’s piano training process reveals that there is much more anxiety than leisurely elements involved. Despite parents’ claim that ‘piano is mainly for kids to have fun,’ the whole process is evidently of a rather ‘ascetic’ nature, with the demands of diligence and senses of time urgency throughout, and techniques rather than flair or styles are emphasized. This either means that the apparent ‘piano-for-fun’ stance is unauthentic and is only other motives in disguise, or that the Chinese middle-class parents are not yet capable of shaking off the sense of anxiety even if they sincerely intend to. 4. When viewed in relation to Chinese formal school system as well as the job market at large, it can be said that by signing children up for piano lessons, parents are consciously or unconsciously seeking to prepare for, or reduce the risks of, their children’s future social mobility. In face of possible failures in the highly-crucial, highly-competitive formal school system, piano-playing as an extra-curriculum activity may be conveniently transferred into an alternative career path. Besides, in contemporary China, as the occupational structure goes through change, and the school-related certificates decline in value, aspects such as a person’s overall deportment, which can be gained or proved by piano-learning, have been gaining in significance.

Keywords: extra-curriculum activities, middle class, piano lesson frenzy, status anxiety

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Authors: Nicholas D. Assimakis

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In linear estimation, the traditional Kalman filter uses the Kalman filter gain in order to produce estimation and prediction of the n-dimensional state vector using the m-dimensional measurement vector. The computation of the Kalman filter gain requires the inversion of an m x m matrix in every iteration. In this paper, a variation of the Kalman filter eliminating the Kalman filter gain is proposed. In the time varying case, the elimination of the Kalman filter gain requires the inversion of an n x n matrix and the inversion of an m x m matrix in every iteration. In the time invariant case, the elimination of the Kalman filter gain requires the inversion of an n x n matrix in every iteration. The proposed Kalman filter gain elimination algorithm may be faster than the conventional Kalman filter, depending on the model dimensions.

Keywords: discrete time, estimation, Kalman filter, Kalman filter gain

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Authors: Hyung-Jin Kim, Dae-Wan Kim, Moo-Yeon Lee

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The objective of this study is to experimentally investigate the heat transfer characteristics of 200 W class woofer speaker units with the input voice signals. The temperature and heat transfer characteristics of the 200 W class woofer speaker unit were experimentally tested with the several input voice signals such as 1500 Hz, 2500 Hz, and 5000 Hz respectively. From the experiments, it can be observed that the temperature of the woofer speaker unit including the voice-coil part increases with a decrease in input voice signals. Also, the temperature difference in measured points of the voice coil is increased with decrease of the input voice signals. In addition, the heat transfer characteristics of the woofer speaker in case of the input voice signal of 1500 Hz is 40% higher than that of the woofer speaker in case of the input voice signal of 5000 Hz at the measuring time of 200 seconds. It can be concluded from the experiments that initially the temperature of the voice signal increases rapidly with time, after a certain period of time it increases exponentially. Also during this time dependent temperature change, it can be observed that high voice signal is stable than low voice signal.

Keywords: heat transfer, temperature, voice coil, woofer speaker

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Authors: Massra M. Sabeima, Myriam lamolle, Mohamedade Farouk Nanne

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Adapting the learning resources of an e-learning system to the characteristics of the learners is an important aspect to consider when designing an adaptive e-learning system. However, this adaptation is not a simple process; it requires the extraction, analysis, and modeling of user information. This implies a good representation of the user's profile, which is the backbone of the adaptation process. Moreover, during the e-learning process, collaboration with similar users (same geographic province or knowledge context) is important. Productive collaboration motivates users to continue or not abandon the course and increases the assimilation of learning objects. The contribution of this work is the following: we propose an adaptive e-learning semantic platform to recommend learning resources to learners, using ontology to model the user profile and the course content, furthermore an implementation of a multi-agent system able to progressively generate the learning graph (taking into account the user's progress, and the changes that occur) for each user during the learning process, and to synchronize the users who collaborate on a learning object.

Keywords: adaptative learning, collaboration, multi-agent, ontology

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Authors: Ljerka Kratofil Krehula, Vanja Gilja, Andrea Husak, Sniježana Šuka, Zlata Hrnjak-Murgić

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Zinc oxide (ZnO) can be used as photocatalysts for water purification. However, one particular interest is given on the integration of inorganic ZnO nanoclusters with conducting polymers because the resulting nanocomposites may possess unique properties and enhanced photocatalytic activity in comparison to pure ZnO, using UV and also visible light. It is needed to explore the appropriate structure of polypyrrole that can induce activation of ZnO photocatalyst since the synthesis of organic/inorganic hybrid materials can result in a synergistic and complementary feature, increasing ZnO photocatalytic efficiency. In this paper several different composites of polypyrrole/zinc oxide (ZnO) were studied. Composite samples were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The photocatalytic efficiency of prepared samples was studied as a decomposition of Reactive Red 45 (RR 45) dye, which was monitored by UV-Vis spectroscopy as a change in absorbance of characteristic wavelength at 542 nm. Results show good photocatalytic efficiency of all nanocomposite samples.

Keywords: photocatalysis, polypyrrole, wastewater, zinc oxide

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Authors: Ronit Chakraborty, Sugata Banerji

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There has been a marked increase in the reported prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) among children in the US over the past two decades. This research has analyzed the growth in state-level ASD prevalence against 45 different potentially explanatory factors, including socio-economic, demographic, healthcare, public policy, and political factors. The goal was to understand if these factors have adequate predictive power in modeling the differential growth in ASD prevalence across various states and if they do, which factors are the most influential. The key findings of this study include (1) the confirmation that the chosen feature set has considerable power in predicting the growth in ASD prevalence, (2) the identification of the most influential predictive factors, (3) given the nature of the most influential predictive variables, an indication that a considerable portion of the reported ASD prevalence differentials across states could be attributable to over and under diagnosis, and (4) identification of Florida as a key outlier state pointing to a potential under-diagnosis of ASD there.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, clustering, machine learning, predictive modeling

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Authors: Roshani S. Golhar, Neerajkumar S. Sathawane, Snehal Dongre

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Background and objectives: As the, cardiovascular illnesses increasing and becoming cause of mortality worldwide, killing around lot of people each year. Arrhythmia is a type of cardiac illness characterized by a change in the linearity of the heartbeat. The goal of this study is to develop novel deep learning algorithms for successfully interpreting arrhythmia using a single second segment. Because the ECG signal indicates unique electrical heart activity across time, considerable changes between time intervals are detected. Such variances, as well as the limited number of learning data available for each arrhythmia, make standard learning methods difficult, and so impede its exaggeration. Conclusions: The proposed method was able to outperform several state-of-the-art methods. Also proposed technique is an effective and convenient approach to deep learning for heartbeat interpretation, that could be probably used in real-time healthcare monitoring systems

Keywords: electrocardiogram, ECG classification, neural networks, convolutional neural networks, portable document format

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Authors: Eva Tvrdá, Boris Botman, Marek Halenár, Tomáš Slanina, Norbert Lukáč

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In vitro storage and processing of animal semen represents a risk factor to spermatozoa vitality, potentially leading to reduced fertility. A variety of substances isolated from natural sources may exhibit protective or antioxidant properties on the spermatozoon, thus extending the lifespan of stored ejaculates. This study compared the ability of different concentrations of the Salvia officinalis extract on the motility, mitochondrial activity, viability and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by bovine spermatozoa during different time periods (0, 2, 6 and 24 h) of in vitro culture. Spermatozoa motility was assessed using the Computer-assisted sperm analysis (CASA) system. Cell viability was examined using the metabolic activity MTT assay, the eosin-nigrosin staining technique was used to evaluate the sperm viability and ROS generation was quantified using luminometry. The CASA analysis revealed that the motility in the experimental groups supplemented with 0.5-2 µg/mL Salvia extract was significantly lower in comparison with the control (P<0.05; Time 24 h). At the same time, a long-term exposure of spermatozoa to concentrations ranging between 0.05 µg/mL and 2 µg/mL had a negative impact on the mitochondrial metabolism (P<0.05; Time 24 h). The viability staining revealed that 0.001-1 µg/mL Salvia extract had no effects on bovine male gametes, however 2 µg/mL Salvia had a persisting negative effect on spermatozoa (P<0.05). Furthermore 0.05-2 µg/mL Salvia exhibited an immediate ROS-promoting effect on the sperm culture (P>0.05; Time 0 h and 2 h), which remained significant throughout the entire in vitro culture (P<0.05; Time 24 h). Our results point out to the necessity to examine specific effects the biomolecules present in Salvia officinalis may have individually or collectively on the in vitro sperm vitality and oxidative profile.

Keywords: bulls, CASA, MTT test, reactive oxygen species, sage, Salvia officinalis, spermatozoa

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Authors: Jurriaan Gillissen

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This work is concerned with stabilizing the numerical integration of the Navier-Stokes equation (NSE), backwards in time. Applications involve the detection of sources of, e.g., sound, heat, and pollutants. Stable reverse numerical integration of parabolic differential equations is also relevant for image de-blurring. While the literature addresses the reverse integration problem of the advection-diffusion equation, the problem of numerical reverse integration of the NSE has, to our knowledge, not yet been addressed. Owing to the presence of viscosity, the NSE is irreversible, i.e., when going backwards in time, the fluid behaves, as if it had a negative viscosity. As an effect, perturbations from the perfect solution, due to round off errors or discretization errors, grow exponentially in time, and reverse integration of the NSE is inherently unstable, regardless of using an implicit time integration scheme. Consequently, some sort of filtering is required, in order to achieve a stable, numerical, reversed integration. The challenge is to find a filter with a minimal adverse affect on the accuracy of the reversed integration. In the present work, we explore an adjoint gradient method (AGM) to achieve this goal, and we apply this technique to two-dimensional (2D), decaying turbulence. The AGM solves for the initial velocity field u0 at t = 0, that, when integrated forward in time, produces a final velocity field u1 at t = 1, that is as close as is feasibly possible to some specified target field v1. The initial field u0 defines a minimum of a cost-functional J, that measures the distance between u1 and v1. In the minimization procedure, the u0 is updated iteratively along the gradient of J w.r.t. u0, where the gradient is obtained by transporting J backwards in time from t = 1 to t = 0, using the adjoint NSE. The AGM thus effectively replaces the backward integration by multiple forward and backward adjoint integrations. Since the viscosity is negative in the adjoint NSE, each step of the AGM is numerically stable. Nevertheless, when applied to turbulence, the AGM develops instabilities, which limit the backward integration to small times. This is due to the exponential divergence of phase space trajectories in turbulent flow, which produces a multitude of local minima in J, when the integration time is large. As an effect, the AGM may select unphysical, noisy initial conditions. In order to improve this situation, we propose two remedies. First, we replace the integration by a sequence of smaller integrations, i.e., we divide the integration time into segments, where in each segment the target field v1 is taken as the initial field u0 from the previous segment. Second, we add an additional term (regularizer) to J, which is proportional to a high-order Laplacian of u0, and which dampens the gradients of u0. We show that suitable values for the segment size and for the regularizer, allow a stable reverse integration of 2D decaying turbulence, with accurate results for more then O(10) turbulent, integral time scales.

Keywords: time reversed integration, parabolic differential equations, adjoint gradient method, two dimensional turbulence

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Authors: Rungnapa Chantra

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As health care rapidly changes, the nursing profession is also evolving to improve quality of care while maintaining competency in their practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors of disaster nurse competencies and investigate the predictable variables in disaster nurse competencies in Suratthani Province, Thailand. The sample consisted of 305 nurses who were recruited by simple random sampling. The development questionnaires from ICN Framework and research contains Pre/Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Recovery/Rehabilitation Competencies (α=0.87). The data were analyzed using Principle Components Extraction and Orthogonal Rotation with Varimax Method. The findings were as follows; four significant factors of disaster nurse competencies in Suratthani Province, Thailand were identified. These factors were described by 62 variables that accounted for 50.01% of the total variance. The results of this study could be for agencies that are responsible for the development of nursing competencies and should be aware of the development of knowledge and skills in disaster management.

Keywords: disaster nursing competency of nurses, nursing informatics, health science, medical

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Authors: Salima Smiti, Ines Gasmi, Makram Soui

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Credit risk is the most important issue for financial institutions. Its assessment becomes an important task used to predict defaulter customers and classify customers as good or bad payers. To this objective, numerous techniques have been applied for credit risk assessment. However, to our knowledge, several evaluation techniques are black-box models such as neural networks, SVM, etc. They generate applicants’ classes without any explanation. In this paper, we propose to assess credit risk using rules classification method. Our output is a set of rules which describe and explain the decision. To this end, we will compare seven classification algorithms (JRip, Decision Table, OneR, ZeroR, Fuzzy Rule, PART and Genetic programming (GP)) where the goal is to find the best rules satisfying many criteria: accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. The obtained results confirm the efficiency of the GP algorithm for German and Australian datasets compared to other rule-based techniques to predict the credit risk.

Keywords: credit risk assessment, classification algorithms, data mining, rule extraction

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Authors: Mina Naeini, Thomas A. Adams II

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Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) feature high electrical efficiency and generate substantial amounts of waste heat that make them suitable for integrated community energy systems (ICEs). By harvesting and distributing the waste heat through hot water pipelines, SOFCs can meet thermal demand of the communities. Therefore, they can replace traditional gas boilers and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Despite these advantages of SOFCs over competing power generation units, this technology has not been successfully commercialized in large-scale to replace traditional generators in ICEs. One reason is that SOFC performance deteriorates over long-term operation, which makes it difficult to find the proper sizing of the cells for a particular ICE system. In order to find the optimal sizing and operating conditions of SOFCs in a community, a proper knowledge of degradation mechanisms and effects of operating conditions on SOFCs long-time performance is required. The simplified SOFC models that exist in the current literature usually do not provide realistic results since they usually underestimate rate of performance drop by making too many assumptions or generalizations. In addition, some of these models have been obtained from experimental data by curve-fitting methods. Although these models are valid for the range of operating conditions in which experiments were conducted, they cannot be generalized to other conditions and so have limited use for most ICEs. In the present study, a general, detailed degradation-based model is proposed that predicts the performance of conventional SOFCs over a long period of time at different operating conditions. Conventional SOFCs are composed of Yttria Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) as electrolyte, Ni-cermet anodes, and LaSr₁₋ₓMnₓO₃ (LSM) cathodes. The following degradation processes are considered in this model: oxidation and coarsening of nickel particles in the Ni-cermet anodes, changes in the pore radius in anode, electrolyte, and anode electrical conductivity degradation, and sulfur poisoning of the anode compartment. This model helps decision makers discover the optimal sizing and operation of the cells for a stable, efficient performance with the fewest assumptions. It is suitable for a wide variety of applications. Sulfur contamination of the anode compartment is an important cause of performance drop in cells supplied with hydrocarbon-based fuel sources. H₂S, which is often added to hydrocarbon fuels as an odorant, can diminish catalytic behavior of Ni-based anodes by lowering their electrochemical activity and hydrocarbon conversion properties. Therefore, the existing models in the literature for H₂-supplied SOFCs cannot be applied to hydrocarbon-fueled SOFCs as they only account for the electrochemical activity reduction. A regression model is developed in the current work for sulfur contamination of the SOFCs fed with hydrocarbon fuel sources. The model is developed as a function of current density and H₂S concentration in the fuel. To the best of authors' knowledge, it is the first model that accounts for impact of current density on sulfur poisoning of cells supplied with hydrocarbon-based fuels. Proposed model has wide validity over a range of parameters and is consistent across multiple studies by different independent groups. Simulations using the degradation-based model illustrated that SOFCs voltage drops significantly in the first 1500 hours of operation. After that, cells exhibit a slower degradation rate. The present analysis allowed us to discover the reason for various degradation rate values reported in literature for conventional SOFCs. In fact, the reason why literature reports very different degradation rates, is that literature is inconsistent in definition of how degradation rate is calculated. In the literature, the degradation rate has been calculated as the slope of voltage versus time plot with the unit of voltage drop percentage per 1000 hours operation. Due to the nonlinear profile of voltage over time, degradation rate magnitude depends on the magnitude of time steps selected to calculate the curve's slope. To avoid this issue, instantaneous rate of performance drop is used in the present work. According to a sensitivity analysis, the current density has the highest impact on degradation rate compared to other operating factors, while temperature and hydrogen partial pressure affect SOFCs performance less. The findings demonstrated that a cell running at lower current density performs better in long-term in terms of total average energy delivered per year, even though initially it generates less power than if it had a higher current density. This is because of the dominant and devastating impact of large current densities on the long-term performance of SOFCs, as explained by the model.

Keywords: degradation rate, long-term performance, optimal operation, solid oxide fuel cells, SOFCs

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Authors: Artion Kashuri, Rozana Liko

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In this paper, the authors establish an integral identity using delta differentiable functions. By applying this identity, some new results via a general class of convex functions with respect to two nonnegative functions on a time scale are given. Also, for suitable choices of nonnegative functions, some special cases are deduced. Finally, in order to illustrate the efficiency of our main results, some applications to special means are obtained as well. We hope that current work using our idea and technique will attract the attention of researchers working in mathematical analysis, mathematical inequalities, numerical analysis, special functions, fractional calculus, quantum mechanics, quantum calculus, physics, probability and statistics, differential and difference equations, optimization theory, and other related fields in pure and applied sciences.

Keywords: convex functions, Hermite-Hadamard inequality, special means, time scale

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Authors: R. C. Sharma, Rishabh Bansal, Prajwal Menon, Manoj K. Sharma

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Silicon-air battery is highly promising for electric vehicles due to its high theoretical energy density (8470 Whkg⁻¹) and its discharge products are non-toxic. For the first time, pure silicon and germanium powders are used as anode material. Nickel wire meshes embedded with charcoal and manganese dioxide powder as cathode and concentrated potassium hydroxide is used as electrolyte. Voltage-time curves have been presented in this study for pure silicon and germanium powder and 5% and 10% germanium with silicon powder. Silicon powder cell assembly gives a stable voltage of 0.88 V for ~20 minutes while Si-Ge provides cell voltage of 0.80-0.76 V for ~10-12 minutes, and pure germanium cell provides cell voltage 0.80-0.76 V for ~30 minutes. The cell voltage is higher for concentrated (10%) sodium hydroxide solution (1.08 V) and it is stable for ~40 minutes. A sharp decrease in cell voltage beyond 40 min may be due to rapid corrosion.

Keywords: Silicon-air battery, Germanium-air battery, voltage-time curve, open circuit voltage, Anodic corrosion

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Authors: Yen-Luan Chen

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Maintenance has a great impact on the capacity of production and on the quality of the products, and therefore, it deserves continuous improvement. Maintenance procedure done before a failure is called preventive maintenance (PM). Sequential PM, which specifies that a system should be maintained at a sequence of intervals with unequal lengths, is one of the commonly used PM policies. This article proposes a generalized sequential PM policy for a system subject to shocks with imperfect maintenance and random working time. The shocks arrive according to a non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) with varied intensity function in each maintenance interval. As a shock occurs, the system suffers two types of failures with number-dependent probabilities: type-I (minor) failure, which is rectified by a minimal repair, and type-II (catastrophic) failure, which is removed by a corrective maintenance (CM). The imperfect maintenance is carried out to improve the system failure characteristic due to the altered shock process. The sequential preventive maintenance-last (PML) policy is defined as that the system is maintained before any CM occurs at a planned time Ti or at the completion of a working time in the i-th maintenance interval, whichever occurs last. At the N-th maintenance, the system is replaced rather than maintained. This article first takes up the sequential PML policy with random working time and imperfect maintenance in reliability engineering. The optimal preventive maintenance schedule that minimizes the mean cost rate of a replacement cycle is derived analytically and determined in terms of its existence and uniqueness. The proposed models provide a general framework for analyzing the maintenance policies in reliability theory.

Keywords: optimization, preventive maintenance, random working time, minimal repair, replacement, reliability

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Authors: Jhu-Wei Ji, Fa-Shian Chang, Lih-Tyng Hwang, Chih-Feng Liu, Jeng-Nan Lee, Shun-Min Wang, Kai-Yi Cho

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This paper presents a tracked robot with blade arms powered to assist movement in difficult environments. As a result, the tracked robot is able to pass a ramp or climb stairs. The main feature is a pair of blade arms on both sides of the vehicle body working in collaboration with previously validated transformable track system. When the robot encounters an obstacle in a terrain, it enlists the blade arms with power to overcome the obstacle. In disaster areas, there usually will be terrains that are full of broken and complicated slopes, broken walls, rubbles, and ditches. Thereupon, a robot, which is instructed to pass through such disaster areas, needs to have a good off-road capability for such complicated terrains. The robot with crawling-assisting blade arms would overcome the obstacles along the terrains, and possibly become to be a rescue robot. A prototype has been developed and built; experiments were carried out to validate the enhanced crawling capability of the robot.

Keywords: tracked robot, rescue robot, blade arm, crawling ability, control system

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Authors: Ruth Shapira

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Introduction: The rapid urbanization of the last century confronts planners, regulatory bodies, developers and most of all – the public with seemingly unsolved conflicts regarding values, capital, and wellbeing of the built and un-built urban space. This is reflected in the quality of the urban form and life which has known no significant progress in the last 2-3 decades despite the on-growing urban population. It is the objective of this paper to analyze some of these fundamental issues through the case study of a relatively small town in the center of Israel (Kiryat-Ono, 100,000 inhabitants), unfold the deep structure of qualities versus disruptors, present some cure that we have developed to bridge over and humbly suggest a practice that may be generic for similar cases. Basic Methodologies: The OBJECT, the town of Kiryat Ono, shall be experimented upon in a series of four action processes: De-composition, Re-composition, the Centering process and, finally, Controlled Structural Disintegration. Each stage will be based on facts, analysis of previous multidisciplinary interventions on various layers – and the inevitable reaction of the OBJECT, leading to the conclusion based on innovative theoretical and practical methods that we have developed and that we believe are proper for the open ended network, setting the rules for the contemporary urban society to cluster by. The Study: Kiryat Ono, was founded 70 years ago as an agricultural settlement and rapidly turned into an urban entity. In spite the massive intensification, the original DNA of the old small town was still deeply embedded, mostly in the quality of the public space and in the sense of clustered communities. In the past 20 years, the recent demand for housing has been addressed to on the national level with recent master plans and urban regeneration policies mostly encouraging individual economic initiatives. Unfortunately, due to the obsolete existing planning platform the present urban renewal is characterized by pressure of developers, a dramatic change in building scale and widespread disintegration of the existing urban and social tissue. Our office was commissioned to conceptualize two master plans for the two contradictory processes of Kiryat Ono’s future: intensification and conservation. Following a comprehensive investigation into the deep structures and qualities of the existing town, we developed a new vocabulary of conservation terms thus redefying the sense of PLACE. The main challenge was to create master plans that should offer a regulatory basis to the accelerated and sporadic development providing for the public good and preserving the characteristics of the PLACE consisting of a tool box of design guidelines that will have the ability to reorganize space along the time axis in a coherent way. In Conclusion: The system of rules that we have developed can generate endless possible patterns making sure that at each implementation fragment an event is created, and a better place is revealed. It takes time and perseverance but it seems to be the way to provide a healthy framework for the accelerated urbanization of our chaotic present.

Keywords: housing, architecture, urban qualities, urban regeneration, conservation, intensification

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Authors: Rupali, Anil Kumar Jaiswal

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Cloud computing can be defined as one of the prominent technologies that lets a user change, configure and access the services online. it can be said that this is a prototype of computing that helps in saving cost and time of a user practically the use of cloud computing can be found in various fields like education, health, banking etc.  Cloud computing is an internet dependent technology thus it is the major responsibility of Cloud Service Providers(CSPs) to care of data stored by user at data centers. Scheduling in cloud computing environment plays a vital role as to achieve maximum utilization and user satisfaction cloud providers need to schedule resources effectively.  Job scheduling for cloud computing is analyzed in the following work. To complete, recreate the task calculation, and conveyed scheduling methods CloudSim3.0.3 is utilized. This research work discusses the job scheduling for circulated processing condition also by exploring on this issue we find it works with minimum time and less cost. In this work two load balancing techniques have been employed: ‘Throttled stack adjustment policy’ and ‘Active VM load balancing policy’ with two brokerage services ‘Advanced Response Time’ and ‘Reconfigure Dynamically’ to evaluate the VM_Cost, DC_Cost, Response Time, and Data Processing Time. The proposed techniques are compared with Round Robin scheduling policy.

Keywords: physical machines, virtual machines, support for repetition, self-healing, highly scalable programming model

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Authors: Shruti Motiwale, Xianlin Zhou, Reuben H. Kraft

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Military and sports personnel are often required to wear heavy helmets for extended periods of time. This leads to excessive cyclic loads on the neck and an increased chance of injury. Computational models offer one approach to understand and predict the time progression of disc degeneration under severe cyclic loading. In this paper, we have applied an analytic non-linear damage evolution model to estimate damage evolution in an intervertebral disc due to cyclic loads over decade-long time periods. We have also proposed a novel strategy for inclusion of recovery in the damage model. Our results show that damage only grows 20% in the initial 75% of the life, growing exponentially in the remaining 25% life. The analysis also shows that it is crucial to include recovery in a damage model.

Keywords: cervical spine, computational biomechanics, damage evolution, intervertebral disc, continuum damage mechanics

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Authors: Biswanath Swain

Abstract:

Ethical relativism, as an ethical perspective, holds that moral worth of a course of action is dependent on a particular space and time. Moral rightness or wrongness of a course of action varies from space to space and from time to time. In short, ethical relativism holds that morality is relative to the context. If we reflect conscientiously on the scope of this perspective, we will find that it is wide-spread amongst the marketers involved in the offshore business. However, the irony is that most of the marketers gone along with ethical relativism in their offshore business have been found to be unsuccessful in terms of loss in market-share and bankruptcy. The upshot is purely self-defeating in nature for the marketers. GSK in China and Nestle Maggi in India are some of the burning examples of that sort. The paper argues and recommends that a marketer, as an alternative, should have recourse to Kantian ethical perspective to deliberate courses of action sensitive to offshore business as Kantian ethical perspective is logically and methodologically sound in nature.

Keywords: business, course of action, Kant, morality, offshore, relativism

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Authors: K. Parandhama Gowd

Abstract:

The aim of this research paper is to conceptualize, discuss, analyze and propose alternate design methodologies for futuristic Black Box for flight safety. The proposal also includes global networking concepts for real time surveillance and monitoring of flight performance parameters including GPS parameters. It is expected that this proposal will serve as a failsafe real time diagnostic tool for accident investigation and location of debris in real time. In this paper, an attempt is made to improve the existing methods of flight data recording techniques and improve upon design considerations for futuristic FDR to overcome the trauma of not able to locate the block box. Since modern day communications and information technologies with large bandwidth are available coupled with faster computer processing techniques, the attempt made in this paper to develop a failsafe recording technique is feasible. Further data fusion/data warehousing technologies are available for exploitation.

Keywords: flight data recorder (FDR), black box, diagnostic tool, global networking, cockpit voice and data recorder (CVDR), air traffic control (ATC), air traffic, telemetry, tracking and control centers ATTTCC)

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Authors: Attila Simon

Abstract:

The subject of this research is an element of Mithras' iconography. It is a new element in the series of research begun with the study of the Bull in the Boat motif. The stylized altars represented by the seven adjacent rectangles appear on only a small group of Mithraic reliefs, which may explain why they have received less attention and fewer attempts at decipherment than other motifs. Using Vermaseren's database, CIMRM (Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae), one collected all the cases containing the motif under investigation, created a database of them grouped by location, then used a comparative method to compare the different forms of the motif and to isolate these cases, and finally evaluated the results. The aim of this research is to interpret the iconographic element in question and attempt to determine its place of origin. The study may provide an interpretation of a Mithraic representation that, to the best of the author's knowledge, has not been explained so far, and the question may generate scientific discourses.

Keywords: roman history, religion, Mithras, iconography

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Authors: Hemalatha Rallapalli, K. Lal Kishore

Abstract:

In comparison to systems that are typically designed to provide capabilities over a narrow frequency range through hardware elements, the next generation cognitive radios are intended to implement a broader range of capabilities through efficient spectrum exploitation. This offers the user the promise of greater flexibility, seamless roaming possible on different networks, countries, frequencies, etc. It requires true paradigm shift i.e., liberalization over a wide band of spectrum as well as a growth path to more and greater capability. This work contributes towards the design and implementation of an open spectrum access (OSA) feature to unlicensed users thus offering a frequency agile radio platform that is capable of performing spectrum sensing over a wideband. Thus, an ultra-wideband (UWB) radio, which has the intelligence of spectrum sensing only, unlike the cognitive radio with complete intelligence, is named as a Smart Software Radio (SSR). The spectrum sensing mechanism is implemented based on energy detection. Simulation results show the accuracy and validity of this method.

Keywords: cognitive radio, energy detection, software radio, spectrum sensing

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Authors: Imad H. Hameed, Mohammad A. Jebor, Ammera J. Omer

Abstract:

The aim of this research is to study the mitochonderial coding region by using the Sanger sequencing technique and establish the degree of variation characteristic of a fragment. FTA® Technology (FTA™ paper DNA extraction) utilized to extract DNA. Portion of coding region encompassing positions 11719 –12384 amplified in accordance with the Anderson reference sequence. PCR products purified by EZ-10 spin column then sequenced and Detected by using the ABI 3730xL DNA Analyzer. Five new polymorphic positions 11741, 11756, 11878, 11887 and 12133 are described may be suitable sources for identification purpose in future. The calculated value D= 0.95 and RMP=0.048 of the genetic diversity should be understood as high in the context of coding function of the analysed DNA fragment. The relatively high gene diversity and a relatively low random match probability were observed in Iraq population. The obtained data can be used to identify the variable nucleotide positions characterized by frequent occurrence which is most promising for various identifications.

Keywords: coding region, Iraq, mitochondrial DNA, polymorphic positions, sanger technique

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Authors: Mamadou I. Wade, Henry C. Ogworonjo, Madiha Gul, Mandoye Ndoye, Mohamed Chouikha, Wayne Patterson

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a novel application of the Paillier cryptographic system to the encryption of RGB (Red Green Blue) images. In this method, an RGB image is first separated into its constituent channel images, and the Paillier encryption function is applied to each of the channels pixel intensity values. Next, the encrypted image is combined and compressed if necessary before being transmitted through an unsecured communication channel. The transmitted image is subsequently recovered by a decryption process. We performed a series of security and performance analyses to the recovered images in order to verify their robustness to security attack. The results show that the proposed image encryption scheme produces highly secured encrypted images.

Keywords: image encryption, Paillier cryptographic system, RBG image encryption, Paillier

Procedia PDF Downloads 236

Authors: Feng Guo

Abstract:

Human brain organoids, 3D brain tissue cultures derived from human pluripotent stem cells, hold promising potential in modeling neuroinflammation for a variety of neurological diseases. However, challenges remain in generating standardized human brain organoids that can recapitulate key physiological features of a human brain. Here, this study presents a series of organoids-on-a-chip systems to generate better human brain organoids and model neuroinflammation. By employing 3D printing and microfluidic 3D cell culture technologies, the study’s systems enable the reliable, scalable, and reproducible generation of human brain organoids. Compared with conventional protocols, this study’s method increased neural progenitor proliferation and reduced heterogeneity of human brain organoids. As a proof-of-concept application, the study applied this method to model substance use disorders.

Keywords: human brain organoids, microfluidics, organ-on-a-chip, neuroinflammation

Procedia PDF Downloads 200