Search results for: back propagation algorithm

Authors: Sang-Wook Lee, So-Yeon Jeon, Min-Gi Cho, Dae-Young Shin, Sung-Ho Hwang

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Hydraulic system of excavator gets working energy from hydraulic pump which is connected to output shaft of engine. Recently, main control valve (MCV) which is composed of several independent metering valve (IMV) has been introduced for better energy efficiency of the hydraulic system so that fuel efficiency of the excavator can be improved. Excavator with IMV has 5 operating modes depending on the quantity of regeneration flow. In this system, the hydraulic pump is controlled to supply demanded flow which is needed to operate each mode. Because the regenerated flow supply energy to actuators, the hydraulic pump consumes less energy to make same motion than one that does not regenerate flow. The horse power control is applied to the hydraulic pump of excavator for maintaining engine start under a heavy load and this control makes the flow of hydraulic pump reduced. When excavator is in complex operation such as loading or unloading soil, the hydraulic pump discharges small quantity of working fluid in high pressure. At this operation, the engine of excavator does not run at optimal operating line (OOL). The engine needs to be operated on OOL to improve fuel efficiency and by controlling hydraulic pump the engine can drive on OOL. By continuous mode changing of IMV, the hydraulic pump is controlled to make engine runs on OOL. The simulation result of this study shows that fuel efficiency of excavator with IMV can be improved by considering engine OOL and continuous mode changing algorithm.

Keywords: continuous mode changing, engine fuel consumption, excavator, fuel efficiency, IMV

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Authors: D. J. Kalita

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Cancer is one of the prime causes of early death worldwide. Mutation of the gene involve in DNA repair and damage, like BRCA2 (Breast cancer gene two) genes, can be detected efficiently by PCR-RFLP to early breast cancer diagnosis and adopt the suitable method of treatment. Host Defense Peptide can be used as blueprint for the design and synthesis of novel anticancer drugs to avoid the side effect of conventional chemotherapy and chemo resistance. The change at nucleotide position 392 of a -› c in the cancer sample of dog mammary tumour at BRCA2 (exon 7) gene lead the creation of a new restriction site for SsiI restriction enzyme. This SNP may be a marker for detection of canine mammary tumour. Support vector machine (SVM) algorithm was used to design and predict the anticancer peptide from the mature functional peptide. MTT assay of MCF-7 cell line after 48 hours of post treatment showed an increase in the number of rounded cells when compared with untreated control cells. The ability of the synthesized peptide to induce apoptosis in MCF-7 cells was further investigated by staining the cells with the fluorescent dye Hoechst stain solution, which allows the evaluation of the nuclear morphology. Numerous cells with dense, pyknotic nuclei (the brighter fluorescence) were observed in treated but not in control MCF-7 cells when viewed using an inverted phase-contrast microscope. Thus, PCR-RFLP is one of the attractive approach for early diagnosis, and synthetic cationic peptide can be used for the treatment of canine mammary tumour.

Keywords: cancer, cationic peptide, host defense peptides, Breast cancer genes

Procedia PDF Downloads 85

Authors: Tjipta Lesmana

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Terrorist attacks quickly penetrated Indonesia following the downfall of Soeharto regime in May 1998. Reform era was officially proclaimed. Indonesia turned to 'heaven state' from 'authoritarian state'. For the first time since 1966, the country experienced a full-scale freedom of expression, including freedom of the press, and heavy acknowledgement of human rights practice. Some religious extremists previously run away to neighbor countries to escape from security apparatus secretly backed home. Quickly they consolidated the power to continue their long aspiration and dream to establish 'Shariah Indonesia', Indonesia based on Khilafah ideology. Bali bombings I which shocked world community occurred on 12 October 2002 in the famous tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people (including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians, and people from more than 20 other nationalities). In the capital, Jakarta, successive bombings were blasted in Marriott hotel, Australian Embassy, residence of the Philippine Ambassador and stock exchange office. A 'drunken Indonesia' is far from ready to combat nationwide sudden and massive terrorist attacks. Police Detachment 88 (Densus 88) Indonesian counter-terrorism squad, was quickly formed following 2002 Bali Bombing. Anti-terrorism Provisional Act was immediately erected, as well, due to urgent need to fight terrorism. Some Bali bombings criminals were deadly executed after sentenced by the court. But a series of terrorist suicide attacks and another Bali bombings (the second one) in Bali, again, shocked world community. Terrorism network is undoubtedly spreading nationwide. Suspicion is high that they had close connection with Al Qaeda’s groups. Even 'Afghanistan alumni' and 'Syria alumni' returned to Indonesia to back up the local mujahidins in their fights to topple Indonesia constitutional government and set up Islamic state (Khilafah). Supported by massive aids from friendly nations, especially Australia and United States, Indonesia launched large scale operations to crush terrorism consisted of various radical groups such as JAD, JAS, and JAADI. Huge energy, money, and souls were dedicated. Terrorism is, however, persistently entrenched. High ranking officials from Detachment 88 squad and military intelligence believe that terrorism is still one the most deadly enemy of Indonesia.

Keywords: counter-radicalization, de-radicalization, Khalifah, Union State, Al Qaedah, ISIS

Procedia PDF Downloads 175

Authors: Yulin Rao, Zhixuan Li, Burra Venkata Durga Kumar

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Intrusion detection refers to monitoring the actions of internal and external intruders on the system and detecting the behaviours that violate security policies in real-time. In intrusion detection, there has been much discussion about the application of neural network technology and artificial immune system (AIS). However, many solutions use static methods (signature-based and stateful protocol analysis) or centralized intrusion detection systems (CIDS), which are unsuitable for real-time intrusion detection systems that need to process large amounts of data and detect unknown intrusions. This article proposes a framework for a distributed intrusion detection system (DIDS) with multi-agents based on the concept of AIS and neural network technology to detect anomalies and intrusions. In this framework, multiple agents are assigned to each host and work together, improving the system's detection efficiency and robustness. The trainer agent in the central server of the framework uses the artificial neural network (ANN) rather than the negative selection algorithm of AIS to generate mature detectors. Mature detectors can distinguish between self-files and non-self-files after learning. Our analyzer agents use genetic algorithms to generate memory cell detectors. This kind of detector will effectively reduce false positive and false negative errors and act quickly on known intrusions.

Keywords: artificial immune system, distributed artificial intelligence, multi-agent, intrusion detection system, neural network

Procedia PDF Downloads 105

Authors: Iván Rivet, Narges Dialami, Miguel Cervera, Michele Chiumenti

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Process parameters in Additive Manufacturing (AM) play a critical role in the mechanical performance of the final component. In order to find the input configuration that guarantees the optimal performance of the printed part, the process-performance relationship must be found. Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is the selected demonstrative AM technology due to its great popularity in the industrial manufacturing world. A material model that considers the different printing patterns present in a FFF part is used. A voxelized mesh is built from the manufacturing toolpaths described in the G-Code file. An Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) based on the octree strategy is used in order to reduce the complexity of the mesh while maintaining its accuracy. High-fidelity and cost-efficient Finite Element (FE) simulations are performed and the influence of key process parameters in the mechanical performance of the component is analyzed. A robust optimization process based on appropriate failure criteria is developed to find the printing direction that leads to the optimal mechanical performance of the component. The Tsai-Wu failure criterion is implemented due to the orthotropy and heterogeneity constitutive nature of FFF components and because of the differences between the strengths in tension and compression. The optimization loop implements a modified version of an Anomaly Detection (AD) algorithm and uses the computed metrics to obtain the optimal printing direction. The developed methodology is verified with a case study on an industrial demonstrator.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, optimization, printing direction, mechanical performance, voxelization

Procedia PDF Downloads 56

Authors: P. Intaracharoen, P. Chantraket, C. Detyothin, S. Kirtsaeng

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Radar reflectivity data from Phimai weather radar station of DRRAA (Department of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation) were used to analyzed the rainstorm characteristics via Thunderstorm Identification Tracking Analysis and Nowcasting (TITAN) algorithm. The Phimai weather radar station was situated at Nakhon Ratchasima province, northeastern Thailand. The data from 277 days of rainstorm events occurring from May 2016 to May 2017 were used to investigate temporal distribution characteristics of convective individual rainclouds. The important storm properties, structures, and their behaviors were analyzed by 9 variables as storm number, storm duration, storm volume, storm area, storm top, storm base, storm speed, storm orientation, and maximum storm reflectivity. The rainstorm characteristics were also examined by separating the data into two periods as wet and dry season followed by an announcement of TMD (Thai Meteorological Department), under the influence of southwest monsoon (SWM) and northeast monsoon (NEM). According to the characteristics of rainstorm results, it can be seen that rainstorms during the SWM influence were found to be the most potential rainstorms over northeastern region of Thailand. The SWM rainstorms are larger number of the storm (404, 140 no./day), storm area (34.09, 26.79 km²) and storm volume (95.43, 66.97 km³) than NEM rainstorms, respectively. For the storm duration, the average individual storm duration during the SWM and NEM was found a minor difference in both periods (47.6, 48.38 min) and almost all storm duration in both periods were less than 3 hours. The storm velocity was not exceeding 15 km/hr (13.34 km/hr for SWM and 10.67 km/hr for NEM). For the rainstorm reflectivity, it was found a little difference between wet and dry season (43.08 dBz for SWM and 43.72 dBz for NEM). It assumed that rainstorms occurred in both seasons have same raindrop size.

Keywords: rainstorm characteristics, weather radar, TITAN, Northeastern Thailand

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Authors: Isra Elfatih Salih Edrees, Mehmet Serdar Ufuk Türeli

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In this paper, an energy-aware method is presented, integrating energy-efficient relay-augmented techniques for correlated data routing with the goal of optimizing bottleneck throughput in wireless sensor networks. The system tackles the dual challenge of throughput optimization while considering sensor network energy consumption. A unique routing metric has been developed to enable throughput maximization while minimizing energy consumption by utilizing data correlation patterns. The paper introduces a game theoretic framework to address the NP-complete optimization problem inherent in throughput-maximizing correlation-aware routing with energy limitations. By creating an algorithm that blends energy-aware route selection strategies with the best reaction dynamics, this framework provides a local solution. The suggested technique considerably raises the bottleneck throughput for each source in the network while reducing energy consumption by choosing the best routes that strike a compromise between throughput enhancement and energy efficiency. Extensive numerical analyses verify the efficiency of the method. The outcomes demonstrate the significant decrease in energy consumption attained by the energy-efficient relay-augmented bottleneck throughput maximization technique, in addition to confirming the anticipated throughput benefits.

Keywords: correlated data aggregation, energy efficiency, game theory, relay-augmented routing, throughput maximization, wireless sensor networks

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Authors: Yanyan Wang

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This paper on second language teaching and learning uses conversation analysis (CA) approach and focuses on how second language learners of Chinese do repair when making clarification requests. In order to demonstrate their behavior in interaction, a comparison was made to study the differences between native speakers of Chinese with non-native speakers of Chinese. The significance of the research is to make second language teachers and learners aware of repair and how to seek clarification. Utilizing the methodology of CA, the research involved two sets of naturally occurring recordings, one of native speaker students and the other of non-native speaker students. Both sets of recording were telephone talks between students and teachers. There were 50 native speaker students and 50 non-native speaker students. From multiple listening to the recordings, the parts with repairs for clarification were selected for analysis which included the moments in the talk when students had problems in understanding or hearing the speaker and had to seek clarification. For example, ‘Sorry, I do not understand ‘and ‘Can you repeat the question? ‘were the parts as repair to make clarification requests. In the data, there were 43 such cases from native speaker students and 88 cases from non-native speaker students. The non-native speaker students were more likely to use repair to seek clarification. Analysis on how the students make clarification requests during their conversation was carried out by investigating how the students initiated problems and how the teachers repaired the problems. In CA term, it is called other-initiated self-repair (OISR), which refers to student-initiated teacher-repair in this research. The findings show that, in initiating repair, native speaker students pay more attention to mutual understanding (inter-subjectivity) while non-native speaker students, due to their lack of language proficiency, pay more attention to their status of knowledge (epistemic) switch. There are three major differences: 1, native Chinese students more often initiate closed-class OISR (seeking specific information in the request) such as repeating a word or phrases from the previous turn while non-native students more frequently initiate open-class OISR (not specifying clarification) such as ‘sorry, I don’t understand ‘. 2, native speakers’ clarification requests are treated by the teacher as understanding of the content while non-native learners’ clarification requests are treated by teacher as language proficiency problem. 3, native speakers don’t see repair as knowledge issue and there is no third position in the repair sequences to close repair while non-native learners take repair sequence as a time to adjust their knowledge. There is clear closing third position token such as ‘oh ‘ to close repair sequence so that the topic can go back. In conclusion, this paper uses conversation analysis approach to compare differences between native Chinese speakers and non-native Chinese learners in their ways of conducting repair when making clarification requests. The findings are useful in future Chinese language teaching and learning, especially in teaching pragmatics such as requests.

Keywords: conversation analysis (CA), clarification request, second language (L2), teaching implication

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Authors: Surekha Barkur, Aseefhali Bankapur, Santhosh Chidangil

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Raman Tweezers technique has become prevalent in single cell studies. This technique combines Raman spectroscopy which gives information about molecular vibrations, with optical tweezers which use a tightly focused laser beam for trapping the single cells. Thus Raman Tweezers enabled researchers analyze single cells and explore different applications. The applications of Raman Tweezers include studying blood cells, monitoring blood-related disorders, silver nanoparticle-induced stress, etc. There is increased interest in the toxic effect of nanoparticles with an increase in the various applications of nanoparticles. The interaction of these nanoparticles with the cells may vary with their size. We have studied the effect of silver nanoparticles of sizes 10nm, 40nm, and 100nm on erythrocytes using Raman Tweezers technique. Our aim was to investigate the size dependence of the nanoparticle effect on RBCs. We used 785nm laser (Starbright Diode Laser, Torsana Laser Tech, Denmark) for both trapping and Raman spectroscopic studies. 100 x oil immersion objectives with high numerical aperture (NA 1.3) is used to focus the laser beam into a sample cell. The back-scattered light is collected using the same microscope objective and focused into the spectrometer (Horiba Jobin Vyon iHR320 with 1200grooves/mm grating blazed at 750nm). Liquid nitrogen cooled CCD (Symphony CCD-1024x256-OPEN-1LS) was used for signal detection. Blood was drawn from healthy volunteers in vacutainer tubes and centrifuged to separate the blood components. 1.5 ml of silver nanoparticles was washed twice with distilled water leaving 0.1 ml silver nanoparticles in the bottom of the vial. The concentration of silver nanoparticles is 0.02mg/ml so the 0.03mg of nanoparticles will be present in the 0.1 ml nanoparticles obtained. The 25 ul of RBCs were diluted in 2 ml of PBS solution and then treated with 50 ul (0.015mg) of nanoparticles and incubated in CO2 incubator. Raman spectroscopic measurements were done after 24 hours and 48 hours of incubation. All the spectra were recorded with 10mW laser power (785nm diode laser), 60s of accumulation time and 2 accumulations. Major changes were observed in the peaks 565 cm-1, 1211 cm-1, 1224 cm-1, 1371 cm-1, 1638 cm-1. A decrease in intensity of 565 cm-1, increase in 1211 cm-1 with a reduction in 1224 cm-1, increase in intensity of 1371 cm-1 also peak disappearing at 1635 cm-1 indicates deoxygenation of hemoglobin. Nanoparticles with higher size were showing maximum spectral changes. Lesser changes observed in case of 10nm nanoparticle-treated erythrocyte spectra.

Keywords: erythrocytes, nanoparticle-induced toxicity, Raman tweezers, silver nanoparticles

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Authors: Chiahsu Yang, Peiling Wu, Ted Ho

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From emphasizing economic development to stressing public happiness, the international community mainly hopes to be able to understand whether the quality of life for the public is becoming better. The Better Life Index (BLI) constructed by OECD uses living conditions and quality of life as starting points to cover 11 areas of life and to convey the state of the general public’s well-being. In light of the BLI framework, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) of the Executive Yuan instituted the Gross National Happiness Index to understand the needs of the general public and to measure the progress of the aforementioned conditions in residents across the island. Whereas living conditions consist of income and wealth, jobs and earnings, and housing conditions, health status, work and life balance, education and skills, social connections, civic engagement and governance, environmental quality, personal security. The ICT area consists of health care, living environment, ICT-enabled communication, transportation, government, education, pleasure, purchasing, job & employment. In the wake of further science and technology development, rapid formation of information societies, and closer integration between lifestyles and information societies, the public’s well-being within information societies has indeed become a noteworthy topic. the Board of Science and Technology of the Executive Yuan use the OECD’s BLI as a reference in the establishment of the Taiwan-specific ICT-Enabled Better Life Index. Using this index, the government plans to examine whether the public’s quality of life is improving as well as measure the public’s satisfaction with current digital quality of life. This understanding will enable the government to gauge the degree of influence and impact that each dimension of digital services has on digital life happiness while also serving as an important reference for promoting digital service development. The content of the ICT Enabled Better Life Index. Information and communications technology (ICT) has been affecting people’s living styles, and further impact people’s quality of life (QoL). Even studies have shown that ICT access and usage have both positive and negative impact on life satisfaction and well-beings, many governments continue to invest in e-government programs to initiate their path to information society. This research is the few attempts to link the e-government benchmark to the subjective well-being perception, and further address the gap between user’s perception and existing hard data assessment, then propose a model to trace measurement results back to the original public policy in order for policy makers to justify their future proposals.

Keywords: information and communications technology, quality of life, satisfaction, well-being

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Authors: Niina Meriläinen

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Digital platforms are arenas for dialogue, various kinds of political debates, information and news gathering, policymaking, and social change processes. Human rights serve as examples of social and political issues that are universally noted as principles and yet often violated on digital platforms as well as in the analog world. Digital platforms in this study are different Internet sites, blogs, discussion platforms, social media apps, and gaming. Various actors, from human rights activists and non-governmental organizations to individual people, governments, and corporations, use digital platforms along with analog arenas to discuss and defend human rights, while violators can find new victims and continue violating rights on the same platforms. Digital platforms create opportunities for various women and minorities to empower themselves and others and to be active in various arenas of society and policymaking. At the same time, digital platforms pose threats to human rights globally, especially to women, girls, and minorities. The results of this meta-study of n=120 academic case studies indicate that more research is needed to determine the framework of human rights and human rights on digital platforms. A broad discussion must be had on what human rights require in the digital realm and how ICTs may enhance or threaten our ability to respect, protect, and fulfill a wide variety of human rights while various digital platforms pose multiple threats to human rights. This relates to the willingness of political decision-makers to act upon various crimes committed on and with online platforms. More research is needed to determine the framework of digital human rights and human rights on digital platforms in relation to political communication and decision-making. It is important to develop a framework in which these are defined. It must be discussed who participates in this process: those whose rights are violated, companies that profit by selling our personal data, activists, governments, and some unknown actors. In the end, the question comes back to who has the power to define what we talk about, when, and where. This use of power plays a big role. Digital platforms illustrate the darker side of technological progress, which, on the one hand, has given various people the possibility to engage in society, empower themselves, and take ownership of their rights globally. At the same time, the platforms enable others to use the same platforms to find victims, abuse them, and exploit them. Bullying, harassment, and violence are rampant on various digital platforms, where minorities and people with limited support are victims. There is indeed a need for a discussion of normative values in the era of fake news, the power of influencers, Trumpism, and institutionalized disregard for human rights, gender equality, and the elimination of gender-based violence online. Attention and obligations must be placed on politicians and internet architecture, such as corporations, and their roles in human rights and their violations online.

Keywords: human rights, digital platforms, violations, internet, social media

Procedia PDF Downloads 51

Authors: Abobaker Mohammed Qasem Farhan, Shangming Yang, Mohammed Al-Nehari

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Pneumonia is a kind of lung disease that creates congestion in the chest. Such pneumonic conditions lead to loss of life of the severity of high congestion. Pneumonic lung disease is caused by viral pneumonia, bacterial pneumonia, or Covidi-19 induced pneumonia. The early prediction and classification of such lung diseases help to reduce the mortality rate. We propose the automatic Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system in this paper using the deep learning approach. The proposed CAD system takes input from raw computerized tomography (CT) scans of the patient's chest and automatically predicts disease classification. We designed the Hybrid Deep Learning Algorithm (HDLA) to improve accuracy and reduce processing requirements. The raw CT scans have pre-processed first to enhance their quality for further analysis. We then applied a hybrid model that consists of automatic feature extraction and classification. We propose the robust 2D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model to extract the automatic features from the pre-processed CT image. This CNN model assures feature learning with extremely effective 1D feature extraction for each input CT image. The outcome of the 2D CNN model is then normalized using the Min-Max technique. The second step of the proposed hybrid model is related to training and classification using different classifiers. The simulation outcomes using the publically available dataset prove the robustness and efficiency of the proposed model compared to state-of-art algorithms.

Keywords: CT scan, Covid-19, deep learning, image processing, lung disease classification

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Authors: Nicolas Peyret, Sylvain Courtois, Gaël Chevallier

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This article outlines the development of the Project Based Learning (PBL) at the level of a last year’s Bachelor’s Degree. This form of pedagogy has for objective to allow a better involving of the students from the beginning of the module. The theoretical contributions are introduced during the project to solving a technological problem. The module in question is the module of mechanical dimensioning method of Supméca a French engineering school. This school issues a Master’s Degree. While the teaching methods used in primary and secondary education are frequently renewed in France at the instigation of teachers and inspectors, higher education remains relatively traditional in its practices. Recently, some colleagues have felt the need to put the application back at the heart of their theoretical teaching. This need is induced by the difficulty of covering all the knowledge deductively before its application. It is therefore tempting to make the students 'learn by doing', even if it doesn’t cover some parts of the theoretical knowledge. The other argument that supports this type of learning is the lack of motivation the students have for the magisterial courses. The role-play allowed scenarios favoring interaction between students and teachers… However, this pedagogical form known as 'pedagogy by project' is difficult to apply in the first years of university studies because of the low level of autonomy and individual responsibility that the students have. The question of what the student actually learns from the initial program as well as the evaluation of the competences acquired by the students in this type of pedagogy also remains an open problem. Thus we propose to add to the pedagogy by project format a regressive part of interventionism by the teacher based on pedagogy by example. This pedagogical scenario is based on the cognitive load theory and Bruner's constructivist theory. It has been built by relying on the six points of the encouragement process defined by Bruner, with a concrete objective, to allow the students to go beyond the basic skills of dimensioning and allow them to acquire the more global skills of engineering. The implementation of project-based teaching coupled with pedagogy by example makes it possible to compensate for the lack of experience and autonomy of first-year students, while at the same time involving them strongly in the first few minutes of the module. In this project, students have been confronted with the real dimensioning problems and are able to understand the links and influences between parameter variations and dimensioning, an objective that we did not reach in classical teaching. It is this form of pedagogy which allows to accelerate the mastery of basic skills and so spend more time on the engineer skills namely the convergence of each dimensioning in order to obtain a validated mechanism. A self-evaluation of the project skills acquired by the students will also be presented.

Keywords: Bruner's constructivist theory, mechanisms dimensioning, pedagogy by example, problem based learning

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Authors: Mukul Sharma, Madhusmita Das, Sundeep Chaitanya Vedithi

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Leprosy is a chronic human disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae, that cannot be cultured in vitro. Though treatable with multidrug therapy (MDT), recently, bacteria reported resistance to multiple antibiotics. Targeting DNA replication and repair pathways can serve as the foundation of developing new anti-leprosy drugs. Due to the absence of an axenic culture medium for the propagation of M. leprae, studying cellular processes, especially those belonging to DNA repair pathways, is challenging. Genomic understanding of M. Leprae harbors several protein-coding genes with no previously assigned function known as 'hypothetical proteins'. Here, we report identification and expression of known and hypothetical DNA repair genes from a human skin biopsy and mouse footpads that are involved in base excision repair, direct reversal repair, and SOS response. Initially, a bioinformatics approach was employed based on sequence similarity, identification of known protein domains to screen the hypothetical proteins in the genome of M. leprae, that are potentially related to DNA repair mechanisms. Before testing on clinical samples, pure stocks of bacterial reference DNA of M. leprae (NHDP63 strain) was used to construct standard graphs to validate and identify lower detection limit in the qPCR experiments. Primers were designed to amplify the respective transcripts, and PCR products of the predicted size were obtained. Later, excisional skin biopsies of newly diagnosed untreated, treated, and drug resistance leprosy cases from SIHR & LC hospital, Vellore, India were taken for the extraction of RNA. To determine the presence of the predicted transcripts, cDNA was generated from M. leprae mRNA isolated from clinically confirmed leprosy skin biopsy specimen across all the study groups. Melting curve analysis was performed to determine the integrity of the amplification and to rule out primer‑dimer formation. The Ct values obtained from qPCR were fitted to standard curve to determine transcript copy number. Same procedure was applied for M. leprae extracted after processing a footpad of nude mice of drug sensitive and drug resistant strains. 16S rRNA was used as positive control. Of all the 16 genes involved in BER, DR, and SOS, differential expression pattern of the genes was observed in terms of Ct values when compared to human samples; this was because of the different host and its immune response. However, no drastic variation in gene expression levels was observed in human samples except the nth gene. The higher expression of nth gene could be because of the mutations that may be associated with sequence diversity and drug resistance which suggests an important role in the repair mechanism and remains to be explored. In both human and mouse samples, SOS system – lexA and RecA, and BER genes AlkB and Ogt were expressing efficiently to deal with possible DNA damage. Together, the results of the present study suggest that DNA repair genes are constitutively expressed and may provide a reference for molecular diagnosis, therapeutic target selection, determination of treatment and prognostic judgment in M. leprae pathogenesis.

Keywords: DNA repair, human biopsy, hypothetical proteins, mouse footpads, Mycobacterium leprae, qPCR

Procedia PDF Downloads 100

Authors: Hesham Abd Elkhalek, Sherif M. Hafez, Yasser M. El Fahham

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Allocating limited budget to maintain bridge networks and selecting effective maintenance strategies for each bridge represent challenging tasks for maintenance managers and decision makers. In Egypt, bridges are continuously deteriorating. In many cases, maintenance works are performed due to user complaints. The objective of this paper is to develop a practical and reliable framework to manage the maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation (MR&R) activities of Bridges network considering performance and budget limits. The model solves an optimization problem that maximizes the average condition of the entire network given the limited available budget using Genetic Algorithm (GA). The framework contains bridge inventory, condition assessment, repair cost calculation, deterioration prediction, and maintenance optimization. The developed model takes into account multiple parameters including serviceability requirements, budget allocation, element importance on structural safety and serviceability, bridge impact on network, and traffic. A questionnaire is conducted to complete the research scope. The proposed model is implemented in software, which provides a friendly user interface. The framework provides a multi-year maintenance plan for the entire network for up to five years. A case study of ten bridges is presented to validate and test the proposed model with data collected from Transportation Authorities in Egypt. Different scenarios are presented. The results are reasonable, feasible and within acceptable domain.

Keywords: bridge management systems (BMS), cost optimization condition assessment, fund allocation, Markov chain

Procedia PDF Downloads 287

Authors: T. Manesh, Abdalla A. Alameen, M. Mohemmed Sha, A. Mohamed Mustaq Ahmed

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Email and instant messaging applications are foremost and extensively used electronic communication methods in this era of information explosion. These applications are generally used for exchange of information using several frontend applications from various service providers by its users. Almost all such communications are now secured using SSL or TLS security over HTTP communication. At the same time, it is also noted that cyber criminals and terrorists have started exchanging information using these methods. Since communication is encrypted end-to-end, tracing significant forensic details and actual content of messages are found to be unattended and severe challenges by available forensic tools. These challenges seriously affect in procuring substantial evidences against such criminals from their working environments. This paper presents a vibrant forensic exploration and architectural framework which not only decrypts any communication or network session but also reconstructs actual message contents of email as well as instant messaging applications. The framework can be effectively used in proxy servers and individual computers and it aims to perform forensic reconstruction followed by analysis of webmail and ICQ messaging applications. This forensic framework exhibits a versatile nature as it is equipped with high speed packet capturing hardware, a well-designed packet manipulating algorithm. It regenerates message contents over regular as well as SSL encrypted SMTP, POP3 and IMAP protocols and catalyzes forensic presentation procedure for prosecution of cyber criminals by producing solid evidences of their actual communication as per court of law of specific countries.

Keywords: forensics, network sessions, packet reconstruction, packet reordering

Procedia PDF Downloads 339

Authors: Derjew Ayele Ejigu, Houde Song, Xiaojing Liu

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This work presents the particle swarm optimization trained neural network (PSO-NN) supervisory proportional integral derivative (PID) control method to monitor the pressurized water reactor (PWR) core power for safe operation. The proposed control approach is implemented on the transfer function of the PWR core, which is computed from the state-space model. The PWR core state-space model is designed from the neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, and reactivity models using perturbation around the equilibrium value. The proposed control approach computes the control rod speed to maneuver the core power to track the reference in a closed-loop scheme. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to train the neural network (NN) and to tune the PID simultaneously. The controller performance is examined using integral absolute error, integral time absolute error, integral square error, and integral time square error functions, and the stability of the system is analyzed by using the Bode diagram. The simulation results indicated that the controller shows satisfactory performance to control and track the load power effectively and smoothly as compared to the PSO-PID control technique. This study will give benefit to design a supervisory controller for nuclear engineering research fields for control application.

Keywords: machine learning, neural network, pressurized water reactor, supervisory controller

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Authors: Manal M. Kame, Zeinab A. Demerdash, Hanan G. El-Baz, Salwa M. Hassan, Faten M. Salah, Wafaa Mansour, Olfat Hammam

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Cord blood (CB) derived Unrestricted Somatic Stem Cells (USSCs) with their multipotentiality hold great promise in liver regeneration. This work aims at evaluation of the therapeutic potentiality of USSCs in two experimental models of chronic liver injury induced either by S. mansoni infection in balb/c mice or CCL4 injection in hamsters. Isolation, propagation, and characterization of USSCs from CB samples were performed. USSCs were induced to differentiate into osteoblasts, adipocytes and hepatocyte-like cells. Cells of the third passage were transplanted in two models of liver fibrosis: (1) Twenty hamsters were induced to liver fibrosis by repeated i. p. injection of 100 μl CCl4 /hamster for 8 weeks. This model was designed as; 10 hamsters with liver fibrosis and treated with i.h. injection of 3x106 USSCs (USSCs transplanted group), 10 hamsters with liver fibrosis (pathological control group), and 10 hamsters with healthy livers (normal control group). (2) Murine chronics S.mansoni model: twenty mice were induced to liver fibrosis with S. mansoni ceracariae (60 cercariae/ mouse) using the tail immersion method and left for 12 weeks. This model was designed as; 10 mice with liver fibrosis were transplanted with i. v. injection of 1×106 USCCs (USSCs transplanted group). Other 2 groups were designed as in hamsters model. Animals were sacrificed 12 weeks after USSCs transplantation, and their liver sections were examined for detection of human hepatocyte-like cells by immunohistochemistry staining. Moreover, liver sections were examined for fibrosis level, and fibrotic indices were calculated. Sera of sacrificed animals were tested for liver functions. CB USSCs, with fibroblast-like morphology, expressed high levels of CD44, CD90, CD73 and CD105 and were negative for CD34, CD45, and HLA-DR. USSCs showed high expression of transcripts for Oct4 and Sox2 and were in vitro differentiated into osteoblasts, adipocytes. In both animal models, in vitro induced hepatocyte-like cells were confirmed by cytoplasmic expression of glycogen, alpha-fetoprotein, and cytokeratin18. Livers of USSCs transplanted group showed engraftment with human hepatocyte-like cells as proved by cytoplasmic expression of human alpha-fetoprotein, cytokeratin18, and OV6. In addition, livers of this group showed less fibrosis than the pathological control group. Liver functions in the form of serum AST & ALT level and serum total bilirubin level were significantly lowered in USSCs transplanted group than pathological control group (p < 0.001). Moreover, the fibrotic index was significantly lower (p< 0.001) in USSCs transplanted group than pathological control group. In addition liver sections, of i. v. injection of 1×106 USCCs of mice, stained with either H&E or sirius red showed diminished granuloma size and a relative decrease in hepatic fibrosis. Our experimental liver fibrosis models transplanted with CB-USSCs showed liver engraftment with human hepatocyte-like cells as well as signs of liver regeneration in the form of improvement in liver function assays and fibrosis level. These data provide hope that human CB- derived USSCs are introduced as multipotent stem cells with great potentiality in regenerative medicine & strengthens the concept of cellular therapy for the treatment of liver fibrosis.

Keywords: cord blood, liver fibrosis, stem cells, transplantation

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Authors: Xavier Louis, Madhava Soma Sundaram

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The Palk Bay, a narrow strip of water, separates the state of Tamil Nadu in India from north Sri Lanka. The bay, which is 137 km in length and varies from 64 to 137 kilometers in width and is home to more than 580 fish species and chunks of shrimp’s resources, is divided by the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL). The bay, bordering it are five Tamil Nadu districts of India and three Sri Lankan districts and assumes importance as it is one of the areas presenting permanent and serious challenges to both India and Sri Lanka with respect to the fishing rights in the Bay. Fishermen from both sides were enjoying fishing with hormones for centuries. Katchchadeevu is a tiny Island located in the Bay, which was a part of India. After the Katchchadeevu agreement 1974 it became a part of Sri Lanka and a fishing conflict arose between the two countries' fishermen. Fuelling the dispute over Katchatheevu is the overfishing of Indian mechanized trawlers in Palk Bay and the damaging environmental and economic effects of trawling. Since 2008, more than 300 Indian fishermen have been killed by firing by Sri Lankan Navy, nearly 100 fishermen have gone missing and more than 3000 fishermen were arrested and later released after the trials for trespassing into Sri Lankan waters. Currently, more than 120 fishing boats and 29 fishermen are in Sri Lankan custody. This paper attempts to find out the causes of fishing conflict and who has the fishing rights in the mentioned waters, how the international treaties are complied with at the time of arrest and trials, how the arrested fishermen are treated by them and how they suffer from fishermen families without a breadwinner. A Semi-structured interview schedule tool was prepared by the researcher, which is suitable for measuring quantitative and qualitative aspects of the above-mentioned theme. One hundred arrested fishermen were interviewed and recorded their prison experiences in Sri Lanka. The research found that the majority of the fishermen believe that they have the right to fish in the historical water and that the Sri Lankan Naval personnel have brutally attacked the Indian fishermen at the time of the arrest. The majority of the fishermen accepted that they had limited fishing grounds. As a result, they entered Sri Lankan waters for their livelihood. The majority of the fishermen expected that they would also get their belongings back at the time of release, primarily the boats. Most of the arrested fishermen's families face financial crises in the absence of their breadwinners and this situation has created conditions for child labor among the affected families and some fishers migrate to different places for different occupations. The majority of the fishers have trauma about their victimization and face uncertainty in the future of their occupation. We can discuss more the causes and nature of the fishing conflict and the financial and psychological victimization of Indian fishermen in relation to the conflict.

Keywords: palk bay, historical water, fishing conflict, arrested fishermen, victimization

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Authors: Ruchirek Ratchaburi, W. Kevin. Hicks, Christopher S. Malley, Lisa D. Emberson

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Air pollution problems in Thailand have improved over the last few decades, but in some areas, concentrations of coarse particulate matter (PM₁₀) are above health and regulatory guidelines. It is, therefore, useful to investigate how PM₁₀ varies across Thailand, what conditions cause this variation, and how could PM₁₀ concentrations be reduced. This research uses data collected by the Thailand Pollution Control Department (PCD) from 17 monitoring sites, located across 12 provinces, and obtained between 2011 and 2015 to assess PM₁₀ concentrations and the conditions that lead to different levels of pollution. This is achieved through exploration of air mass pathways using trajectory analysis, used in conjunction with the monitoring data, to understand the contribution of different months, an hour of the day and source regions to annual PM₁₀ concentrations in Thailand. A focus is placed on locations that exceed the national standard for the protection of human health. The analysis shows how this approach can be used to explore the influence of biomass burning on annual average PM₁₀ concentration and the difference in air pollution conditions between Northern and Southern Thailand. The results demonstrate the substantial contribution that open biomass burning from agriculture and forest fires in Thailand and neighboring countries make annual average PM₁₀ concentrations. The analysis of PM₁₀ measurements at monitoring sites in Northern Thailand show that in general, high concentrations tend to occur in March and that these particularly high monthly concentrations make a substantial contribution to the overall annual average concentration. In 2011, a > 75% reduction in the extent of biomass burning in Northern Thailand and in neighboring countries resulted in a substantial reduction not only in the magnitude and frequency of peak PM₁₀ concentrations but also in annual average PM₁₀ concentrations at sites across Northern Thailand. In Southern Thailand, the annual average PM₁₀ concentrations for individual years between 2011 and 2015 did not exceed the human health standard at any site. The highest peak concentrations in Southern Thailand were much lower than for Northern Thailand for all sites. The peak concentrations at sites in Southern Thailand generally occurred between June and October and were associated with air mass back trajectories that spent a substantial proportion of time over the sea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand prior to arrival at the monitoring sites. The results show that emissions reductions from biomass burning and forest fires require action on national and international scales, in both Thailand and neighboring countries, such action could contribute to ensuring compliance with Thailand air quality standards.

Keywords: annual average concentration, long-range transport, open biomass burning, particulate matter

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Authors: Nyeng P. Gyang

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Even though past, current and future trends suggest that multicore and cloud computing systems are increasingly prevalent/ubiquitous, this class of parallel systems is nonetheless underutilized, in general, and barely used for research on employing parallel Delaunay triangulation for parallel surface modeling and generation, in particular. The performances, of actual/physical and virtual/cloud multicore systems/machines, at executing various algorithms, which implement various parallelization strategies of the incremental insertion technique of the Delaunay triangulation algorithm, were evaluated. T-tests were run on the data collected, in order to determine whether various performance metrics differences (including execution time, speedup and efficiency) were statistically significant. Results show that the actual machine is approximately twice faster than the virtual machine at executing the same programs for the various parallelization strategies. Results, which furnish the scalability behaviors of the various parallelization strategies, also show that some of the differences between the performances of these systems, during different runs of the algorithms on the systems, were statistically significant. A few pseudo superlinear speedup results, which were computed from the raw data collected, are not true superlinear speedup values. These pseudo superlinear speedup values, which arise as a result of one way of computing speedups, disappear and give way to asymmetric speedups, which are the accurate kind of speedups that occur in the experiments performed.

Keywords: cloud computing systems, multicore systems, parallel Delaunay triangulation, parallel surface modeling and generation

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Authors: Jocelyn B. Barbosa, Angeli L. Magbaril, Mariel T. Sabanal, John Paul T. Galario, Mikka P. Baldovino

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The use of technology has become ubiquitous in different areas of business today. With the advent of digital imaging and database technology, business owners have been motivated to integrate technology to their business operation ranging from small, medium to large enterprises. Technology has been found to have brought many benefits that can make a business grow. Hog or swine raising, for example, is a very popular enterprise in the Philippines, whose challenges in production monitoring can be addressed through technology integration. Swine production monitoring can become a tedious task as the enterprise goes larger. Specifically, problems like delayed and inconsistent reports are most likely to happen if counting of swine per pen of which building is done manually. In this study, we present iCount, which aims to ensure efficient swine detection and counting that hastens the swine production monitoring task. We develop a system that automatically detects and counts swine based on Sobel filter and ellipse fitting model, given the still photos of the group of swine captured in a pen. We improve the Sobel filter detection result through 8-neigbhorhood rule implementation. Ellipse fitting technique is then employed for proper swine detection. Furthermore, the system can generate periodic production reports and can identify the specific consumables to be served to the swine according to schedules. Experiments reveal that our algorithm provides an efficient way for detecting swine, thereby providing a significant amount of accuracy in production monitoring.

Keywords: automatic swine counting, swine detection, swine production monitoring, ellipse fitting model, sobel filter

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Authors: Marvin Chibuzo Offiah, Susanne Rosenthal, Markus Borschbach

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Certain research projects in Computer Science often involve research on existing signal processing algorithms and developing improvements on them. Research budgets are usually limited, hence there is limited time for implementing the algorithms from scratch. It is therefore common practice, to use implementations provided by other researchers as a template. These are most commonly provided in a rapid development, i.e. 4th generation, programming language, usually Matlab. Rapid development is a common method in Computer Science research for quickly implementing and testing new developed algorithms, which is also a common task within agile project organization. The growing relevance of mobile devices in the computer market also gives rise to the need to demonstrate the successful executability and performance measurement of these algorithms on a mobile device operating system and processor, particularly on a smartphone. Open mobile systems such as Android, are most suitable for this task, which is to be performed most efficiently. Furthermore, efficiently implementing an interaction between the algorithm and a graphical user interface (GUI) that runs exclusively on the mobile device is necessary in cases where the project’s goal statement also includes such a task. This paper examines different proposed solutions for porting computer algorithms obtained through rapid development into a GUI-based smartphone Android app and evaluates their feasibilities. Accordingly, the feasible methods are tested and a short success report is given for each tested method.

Keywords: SMARTNAVI, Smartphone, App, Programming languages, Rapid Development, MATLAB, Octave, C/C++, Java, Android, NDK, SDK, Linux, Ubuntu, Emulation, GUI

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Authors: Alireza Rasekh, Peter Sergeant, Jan Vierendeels

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This paper copes with the numerical simulation for convective heat transfer in the stator disk of an axial flux permanent magnet (AFPM) electrical machine. Overheating is one of the main issues in the design of AFMPs, which mainly occurs in the stator disk, so that it needs to be prevented. A rotor-stator configuration with 16 magnets at the periphery of the rotor is considered. Air is allowed to flow through openings in the rotor disk and channels being formed between the magnets and in the gap region between the magnets and the stator surface. The rotating channels between the magnets act as a driving force for the air flow. The significant non-dimensional parameters are the rotational Reynolds number, the gap size ratio, the magnet thickness ratio, and the magnet angle ratio. The goal is to find correlations for the Nusselt number on the stator disk according to these non-dimensional numbers. Therefore, CFD simulations have been performed with the multiple reference frame (MRF) technique to model the rotary motion of the rotor and the flow around and inside the machine. A minimization method is introduced by a pattern-search algorithm to find the appropriate values of the reference temperature. It is found that the correlations are fast, robust and is capable of predicting the stator heat transfer with a good accuracy. The results reveal that the magnet angle ratio diminishes the stator heat transfer, whereas the rotational Reynolds number and the magnet thickness ratio improve the convective heat transfer. On the other hand, there a certain gap size ratio at which the stator heat transfer reaches a maximum.

Keywords: AFPM, CFD, magnet parameters, stator heat transfer

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Authors: Sheikh Shams Azam, Manoj Raju, Venkatesh Pagidimarri, Vamsi Kasivajjala

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Over the past decade, there has been a steep rise in the data-driven analysis in major areas of medicine, such as clinical decision support system, survival analysis, patient similarity analysis, image analytics etc. Most of the data in the field are well-structured and available in numerical or categorical formats which can be used for experiments directly. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, there exists a wide expanse of data that is intractable for direct analysis owing to its unstructured nature which can be found in the form of discharge summaries, clinical notes, procedural notes which are in human written narrative format and neither have any relational model nor any standard grammatical structure. An important step in the utilization of these texts for such studies is to transform and process the data to retrieve structured information from the haystack of irrelevant data using information retrieval and data mining techniques. To address this problem, the authors present Q-Map in this paper, which is a simple yet robust system that can sift through massive datasets with unregulated formats to retrieve structured information aggressively and efficiently. It is backed by an effective mining technique which is based on a string matching algorithm that is indexed on curated knowledge sources, that is both fast and configurable. The authors also briefly examine its comparative performance with MetaMap, one of the most reputed tools for medical concepts retrieval and present the advantages the former displays over the latter.

Keywords: information retrieval, unified medical language system, syntax based analysis, natural language processing, medical informatics

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Authors: Radhika Jain

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The nursing community in India face unique challenges ranging from lack of adequate career progression, low social status attached to the profession, poor nurse-to-patient ratio leading to heavy workload resulting in stress and burnout, lack of general recognition and the responsibility of often having to deal with the ire of the patients and their families. This study explores how a combination of Playback Theatre and Expressive Arts could be used as a very powerful tool to understand the concerns, and consequently as a self-care tool to bring about the sense of well-being and emotional awareness for the nurses. For the purpose of this study, Playback Theatre was used as an entry tool to understand the thoughts, feelings and concerns. Playback theatre is a unique improvisational form of theatre developed by Jonathan Fox and Jo Salas in 1975, in which audience share their own stories from their lives and the performers play them back through a range of improv techniques such as metaphor, poetry, music and movement. Playback Theatre helped in first warming them up to the idea of sharing and then gave them the confidence of a safe space to collectively go deeper into their emotional experiences. As the next step, structured sessions of Expressive Arts were conducted with the same set of nurses, for them to work on the issues and concerns they have (and which they shared during the Playback performance). These sessions were to enable longer engagements as many of the concerns expressed were related to perceptions and beliefs that have been ingrained over a period of time and hence it needs a longer engagement to be worked on in detail. The Expressive Art sessions helped in this regard. Expressive arts therapy combines psychology and the creative process to promote emotional growth and healing. The study was conducted at two places: one a geriatric centre and the other, a palliative care centre. The study revealed that concerns and challenges would not be identical across the nursing community or across similar types of health care organizations but would be specific to each organization or centre as the circumstances and set-up at each place would be different. At the geriatric centre, stress and burnout emerged as the main concerns while at the palliative care centre, the main concern that came up was around the difficulty the nurses faced in expressing emotions and in communicating their feelings. The objective analysis of the results of the study indicated how longer-term engagements using Expressive Arts as the modality helped the nurses have better awareness of their emotions and helped them develop tools of self-care tools while also tapping into their emotions to express and experience. The process of eliciting the main concerns from the nurses using a Playback Theatre performance and then following that with subsequent sessions of expressive arts helped the nurses in the way nurses approached their job and the reduced level of overwhelm that they felt.

Keywords: palliative care, nurses, self-care, expressive arts, playback theatre

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Authors: Balarabe Z. Ahmad, Anne-Lorène Vernay

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The emergence of electricity in Nigeria was dated back to 1896. The power plants have the potential to generate 12,522 MW of electric power. Whereas current dispatch is about 4,000 MW, access to electrification is about 60%, with consumption at 0.14 MWh/capita. The government embarked on energy reforms to mitigate energy poverty. The reform targeted the provision of electricity access to 75% of the population by 2020 and 90% by 2030. Growth of total electricity demand by a factor of 5 by 2035 had been projected. This means that Nigeria will require almost 530 TWh of electricity which can be delivered through generators with a capacity of 65 GW. Analogously, the geographical location of Nigeria has placed it in an advantageous position as the source of solar energy; the availability of a high sunshine belt is obvious in the country. The implication is that the far North, where energy poverty is high, equally has about twice the solar radiation as against southern Nigeria. Hence, the chance of generating solar electricity is 66% possible at 11850 x 103 GWh per year, which is one hundred times the current electricity consumption rate in the country. Harvesting these huge potentials may be a mirage if the entrepreneurs in the solar panel business are left with the conventional business models that are not uncertainty resilient. Currently, business entities in RE in Nigeria are uncertain of; accessing the national grid, purchasing potentials of cooperating organizations, currency fluctuation and interest rate increases. Uncertainties such as the security of projects and government policy are issues entrepreneurs must navigate to remain sustainable in the solar panel industry in Nigeria. The aim of this paper is to identify how entrepreneurial firms consider uncertainties in developing workable business models for commercializing solar energy projects in Nigeria. In an attempt to develop a novel business model, the paper investigated how entrepreneurial firms assess and navigate uncertainties. The roles of key stakeholders in helping entrepreneurs to manage uncertainties in the Nigeria RE sector were probed in the ongoing study. The study explored empirical uncertainties that are peculiar to RE entrepreneurs in Nigeria. A mixed-mode of research was embraced using qualitative data from face-to-face interviews conducted on the Solar Energy Entrepreneurs and the experts drawn from key stakeholders. Content analysis of the interview was done using Atlas. It is a nine qualitative tool. The result suggested that all stakeholders are required to synergize in developing an uncertainty resilient business model. It was opined that the RE entrepreneurs need modifications in the business recommendations encapsulated in the energy policy in Nigeria to strengthen their capability in delivering solar energy solutions to the yawning Nigerians.

Keywords: uncertainties, entrepreneurial, business model, solar-panel

Procedia PDF Downloads 140

Authors: Dileep Kumar Gupta, Rajendra Prasad, Pradeep Kumar, Varun Narayan Mishra, Ajeet Kumar Vishwakarma, Prashant K. Srivastava

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An approach was evaluated for the retrieval of soil moisture of bare soil surface using bistatic scatterometer data in the angular range of 200 to 700 at VV- and HH- polarization. The microwave data was acquired by specially designed X-band (10 GHz) bistatic scatterometer. The linear regression analysis was done between scattering coefficients and soil moisture content to select the suitable incidence angle for retrieval of soil moisture content. The 250 incidence angle was found more suitable. The support vector regression analysis was used to approximate the function described by the input-output relationship between the scattering coefficient and corresponding measured values of the soil moisture content. The performance of support vector regression algorithm was evaluated by comparing the observed and the estimated soil moisture content by statistical performance indices %Bias, root mean squared error (RMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE). The values of %Bias, root mean squared error (RMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) were found 2.9451, 1.0986, and 0.9214, respectively at HH-polarization. At VV- polarization, the values of %Bias, root mean squared error (RMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) were found 3.6186, 0.9373, and 0.9428, respectively.

Keywords: bistatic scatterometer, soil moisture, support vector regression, RMSE, %Bias, NSE

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Authors: Arwa Alzughaibi

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Human Motion detection is a challenging task due to a number of factors including variable appearance, posture and a wide range of illumination conditions and background. So, the first need of such a model is a reliable feature set that can discriminate between a human and a non-human form with a fair amount of confidence even under difficult conditions. By having richer representations, the classification task becomes easier and improved results can be achieved. The Aim of this paper is to investigate the reliable and accurate human motion detection models that are able to detect the human motions accurately under varying illumination levels and backgrounds. Different sets of features are tried and tested including Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG), Deformable Parts Model (DPM), Local Decorrelated Channel Feature (LDCF) and Aggregate Channel Feature (ACF). However, we propose an efficient and reliable human motion detection approach by combining Histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) and local phase quantization (LPQ) as the feature set, and implementing search pruning algorithm based on optical flow to reduce the number of false positive. Experimental results show the effectiveness of combining local phase quantization descriptor and the histogram of gradient to perform perfectly well for a large range of illumination conditions and backgrounds than the state-of-the-art human detectors. Areaunder th ROC Curve (AUC) of the proposed method achieved 0.781 for UCF dataset and 0.826 for CDW dataset which indicates that it performs comparably better than HOG, DPM, LDCF and ACF methods.

Keywords: human motion detection, histograms of oriented gradient, local phase quantization, local phase quantization

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Authors: Misganaw Abebe Baye, Ji-Woo Park, Beom-Soo Kang

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The product quality of multi-point dieless forming (MDF) is identified to be dependent on the process parameters. Moreover, a certain variation of friction and material properties may have a substantially worse influence on the final product quality. This study proposed on how to compensate the MDF product defects by minimizing the sensitivity of noise parameter variations. This can be attained by reliability-based robust optimization (RRO) technique to obtain the optimal process setting of the controllable parameters. Initially two MDF Finite Element (FE) simulations of AA3003-H14 saddle shape showed a substantial amount of dimpling, wrinkling, and shape error. FE analyses are consequently applied on ABAQUS commercial software to obtain the correlation between the control process setting and noise variation with regard to the product defects. The best prediction models are chosen from the family of metamodels to swap the computational expensive FE simulation. Genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to determine the optimal process settings of the control parameters. Monte Carlo Analysis (MCA) is executed to determine how the noise parameter variation affects the final product quality. Finally, the RRO FE simulation and the experimental result show that the amendment of the control parameters in the final forming process leads to a considerably better-quality product.

Keywords: dimpling, multi-point dieless forming, reliability-based robust optimization, shape error, variation, wrinkling

Procedia PDF Downloads 245