Search results for: grey code

Authors: A. K. Borah, A. K. Singh

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In this paper we deal building blocks of the computer simulation of the multiphase flows. Whole simulation procedure can be viewed as two super procedures; The implementation of VOF method and the solution of Navier Stoke’s Equation. Moreover, a sequential code for a Navier Stoke’s solver has been studied.

Keywords: Bi-conjugate gradient stabilized (Bi-CGSTAB), ILUT function, krylov subspace, multifluid flows preconditioner, simple algorithm

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Authors: Uswah Khairuddin, Rubiyah Yusof, Nenny Ruthfalydia Rosli

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This paper presents a comparative study between k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN) and Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP-NN) classifier using Genetic Algorithm (GA) as feature selector for wood recognition system. The features have been extracted from the images using Grey Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM). The use of GA based feature selection is mainly to ensure that the database used for training the features for the wood species pattern classifier consists of only optimized features. The feature selection process is aimed at selecting only the most discriminating features of the wood species to reduce the confusion for the pattern classifier. This feature selection approach maintains the ‘good’ features that minimizes the inter-class distance and maximizes the intra-class distance. Wrapper GA is used with k-NN classifier as fitness evaluator (GA-kNN). The results shows that k-NN is the best choice of classifier because it uses a very simple distance calculation algorithm and classification tasks can be done in a short time with good classification accuracy.

Keywords: feature selection, genetic algorithm, optimization, wood recognition system

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Authors: Ebere Ellison Obisike, Justina N. Adalikwu-Obisike

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is progressively transforming health and social care. With the rapid invention of various electronic devices, machine learning, and computing systems, the use of AI istraversing many health and social care practices. In this systematic review of journal and grey literature, this study explores how the applications of AI might promote the prevention of micro and macrovascular complications in type 1 diabetic patients. This review focuses on the use of a digitized blood glucose meter and the application of insulin pumps for the effective management of type 1 diabetes in low and middle-income countries. It is projected that the applications of AI may assist individuals with type 1 diabetes to monitor and control their blood glucose level and prevent the early onset of micro and macrovascular complications.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, blood glucose meter, insulin pump, low and middle-income countries, micro and macrovascular complications, type 1 diabetes

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Authors: Jadon Matthiasa, Cindy Donga, Ali Al Jibouria, Hsin Kuo

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The environmental impact of emissions from the Covanta Waste-to-Energy facility in Burnaby, BC, was comprehensively evaluated, focusing on the dispersion of air pollutants and the subsequent assessment of heavy metal contamination in surrounding soils. A Gaussian Plume Model, implemented in MATLAB, was utilized to simulate the dispersion of key pollutants to understand their atmospheric behaviour and potential deposition patterns. The MATLAB code developed for this study enhanced the accuracy of pollutant concentration predictions and provided capabilities for visualizing pollutant dispersion in 3D plots. Furthermore, the code could predict the maximum concentration of pollutants at ground level, eliminating the need to use the Ranchoux model for predictions. Complementing the modelling approach, empirical soil sampling and analysis were conducted to evaluate heavy metal concentrations in the vicinity of the facility. This integrated methodology underscored the importance of computational modelling in air pollution assessment and highlighted the necessity of soil analysis to obtain a holistic understanding of environmental impacts. The findings emphasized the effectiveness of current emissions controls while advocating for ongoing monitoring to safeguard public health and environmental integrity.

Keywords: air emissions, Gaussian Plume Model, MATLAB, soil contamination, air pollution monitoring, waste-to-energy, pollutant dispersion visualization, heavy metal analysis, environmental impact assessment, emission control effectiveness

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Authors: Shreyash Hadke, Manendra Singh Parihar, Rajesh Khatirkar

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In the present investigation, the variation in the microstructure with the changes in the heat treatment conditions i.e. temperature and time was observed. Ti-6Al-4V alloy was subject to solution annealing treatments in β (1066C) and α+β phase (930C and 850C) followed by quenching, air cooling and furnace cooling to room temperature respectively. The effect of solution annealing and cooling on the microstructure was studied by using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). The chemical composition of the β phase for different conditions was determined with the help of energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) attached to SEM. Furnace cooling resulted in the development of coarser structure (α+β), while air cooling resulted in much finer structure with widmanstatten morphology of α at the grain boundaries. Quenching from solution annealing temperature formed α’ martensite, their proportion being dependent on the temperature in β phase field. It is well known that the transformation of β to α follows Burger orientation relationship (OR). In order to reconstruct the microstructure of parent β phase, a MATLAB code was written using neighbor-to-neighbor, triplet method and Tari’s method. The code was tested on the annealed samples (1066C solution annealing temperature followed by furnace cooling to room temperature). The parent phase data thus generated was then plotted using the TSL-OIM software. The reconstruction results of the above methods were compared and analyzed. The Tari’s approach (clustering approach) gave better results compared to neighbor-to-neighbor and triplet method but the time taken by the triplet method was least compared to the other two methods.

Keywords: Ti-6Al-4V alloy, microstructure, electron backscattered diffraction, parent phase reconstruction

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Authors: Judith Enriquez-Gibson

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This paper meddles with the notion of phatic communion introduced 90 years ago by Malinowski, who was a Polish-born British anthropologist. It explores the phatic in Twitter within the contents of tweets related to moocs (massive online open courses) as a topic or trend. It is not about moocs though. It is about practices that could easily be hidden or neglected if we let big or massive topics take the lead or if we simply follow the computational or secret codes behind Twitter itself and third party software analytics. It draws from media and cultural studies. Though at first it appears data-driven as I submitted data collection and analytics into the hands of a third party software, Twitonomy, the aim is to follow how phatic communion might be practised in a social media site, such as Twitter. Lurking becomes its research method to analyse mooc-related tweets. A total of 3,000 tweets were collected on 11 October 2013 (UK timezone). The emphasis of lurking is to engage with Twitter as a system of connectivity. One interesting finding is that a click is in fact a phatic practice. A click breaks the silence. A click in one of the mooc website is actually a tweet. A tweet was posted on behalf of a user who simply chose to click without formulating the text and perhaps without knowing that it contains #mooc. Surely, this mechanism is not about reciprocity. To break the silence, users did not use words. They just clicked the ‘tweet button’ on a mooc website. A click performs and maintains connectivity – and Twitter as the medium in attendance in our everyday, available when needed to be of service. In conclusion, the phatic culture of breaking silence in Twitter does not have to submit to the power of code and analytics. It is a matter of human code.

Keywords: click, Twitter, phatic communion, social media data, mooc

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Authors: Din Eak Arathai

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The purpose of this research report is to investigate the language choice and use among the young generation of Malaysian Thais community. Besides that, it aims to investigate if there is a difference in language choice across the different domains. It will also examine if there has been a language shift from Thai to other languages by the young generation of Thai community in Malaysia. First the study focuses on the proficiency of Thai and other languages used by hundred (100) respondents belonging to young generation of Malaysian Thais aged range from 18-35. Next, language use and choice will be presented with a focus on the domains of family, friendship, entertainment and social. Finally, based on the findings and data collected, we will be able to see if language shift from Thai to other languages has occurred among the young Thai generation in Malaysia. The instrument used in this study was a 30-item questionnaire and the findings of the data analysis were presented in the form of frequency counts and percentages. The findings found that Thai language remains the most preferred language of choice among young Malaysian Thais but usage of other languages, such as Malay, English and Mandarin has increased and begun to influence the language choice of young Malaysian Thais and their proficiency of their mother tongue.In all the domains studied, Thai is almost exclusively the preferred language used when communicating with family. Malay is the most preferred language in communicating with friends while English is the most preferred language when communicating with colleagues. With regards to social and entertainment activities, young Malaysian Thais show great affinity for entertainment in the Thai language. In conclusion, the result of the study showed the beginning of young Malaysian Thais shifting to other languages, especially English and Malay through their daily choices when communicating with friends and family and especially through their language preferences in entertainment.

Keywords: language choice, language use, language shift, language maintenance, young Malaysian Thais, code switching, code mixing

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Authors: Abdellah Hanafi, G. M. Mostafa, Mohamed Mortada, Ahmed Hamed

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The steam ejectors are the heart of most of the desalination systems that employ vacuum. The systems that employ low grade thermal energy sources like solar energy and geothermal energy use the ejector to drive the system instead of high grade electric energy. The jet-ejector is used to create vacuum employing the flow of steam or air and using the severe pressure drop at the outlet of the main nozzle. The present work involves developing a one dimensional mathematical model for designing jet-ejectors and transform it into computer code using Engineering Equation solver (EES) software. The model receives the required operating conditions at the inlets and outlet of the ejector as inputs and produces the corresponding dimensions required to reach these conditions. The one-dimensional model has been validated using an existed model working on Abu-Qir power station. A prototype has been designed according to the one-dimensional model and attached to a special test bench to be tested before using it in the solar desalination pilot plant. The tested ejector will be responsible for the startup evacuation of the system and adjusting the vacuum of the evaporating effects. The tested prototype has shown a good agreement with the results of the code. In addition a numerical analysis has been applied on one of the designed geometry to give an image of the pressure and velocity distribution inside the ejector from a side, and from other side, to show the difference in results between the two-dimensional ideal gas model and real prototype. The commercial edition of ANSYS Fluent v.14 software is used to solve the two-dimensional axisymmetric case.

Keywords: solar energy, jet ejector, vacuum, evaporating effects

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Authors: Yousif Mohamed Y. Abdallah, Razan Manofely, Rajab M. Ben Yousef

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X-Ray images are very popular as a first tool for diagnosis. Automating the process of analysis of such images is important in order to help physician procedures. In this practice, teeth segmentation from the radiographic images and feature extraction are essential steps. The main objective of this study was to study correction preprocessing of x-rays images using local adaptive filters in order to evaluate contrast enhancement pattern in different x-rays images such as grey color and to evaluate the usage of new nonlinear approach for contrast enhancement of soft tissues in x-rays images. The data analyzed by using MatLab program to enhance the contrast within the soft tissues, the gray levels in both enhanced and unenhanced images and noise variance. The main techniques of enhancement used in this study were contrast enhancement filtering and deblurring images using the blind deconvolution algorithm. In this paper, prominent constraints are firstly preservation of image's overall look; secondly, preservation of the diagnostic content in the image and thirdly detection of small low contrast details in diagnostic content of the image.

Keywords: enhancement, x-rays, pixel intensity values, MatLab

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Authors: Yi-Ting Liu, Pei-Ying Wen

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In order to improve the overall safety of chemotherapy, safety-protecting net was established for the whole process from prescribing by physicians, transcribing by nurses, dispensing by pharmacists to administering by nurses. The information system was used to check and monitor whole process of administration and related sheets were computerized to simplify the paper work.

Keywords: chemotherapy, bar code medication administration, medication safety

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Authors: Ariq Bani Hardi

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Empowerment of smartphone technology is growing very rapidly in various fields of science. One of the mobile operating systems that dominate the smartphone market today is Android by Google. Unfortunately, the expansion of mobile technology is misused by criminals to hide the information that they store or exchange with each other. It makes law enforcement more difficult to prove crimes committed in the judicial process (anti-forensic). One of technique that used to hide the information is encryption, such as the usages of SMS encryption applications. A Mobile Forensic Examiner or an investigator should prepare a countermeasure technique if he finds such things during the investigation process. This paper will discuss an extension procedure if the investigator found unreadable SMS in android evidence because of encryption. To define the extended procedure, we create and analyzing a dataset of android SMS encryption application. The dataset was grouped by application characteristics related to communication permissions, as well as the availability of source code and the documentation of encryption scheme. Permissions indicate the possibility of how applications exchange the data and keys. Availability of the source code and the encryption scheme documentation can show what the cryptographic algorithm specification is used, how long the key length, how the process of key generation, key exchanges, encryption/decryption is done, and other related information. The output of this paper is an extended or alternative procedure for examination and analysis process of android digital forensic. It can be used to help the investigators while they got a confused cause of SMS encryption during examining and analyzing. What steps should the investigator take, so they still have a chance to discover the encrypted SMS in android evidence?

Keywords: anti-forensic countermeasure, SMS encryption android, examination and analysis, digital forensic

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Authors: Can Huang, Xiaoliang Wang, Qingquan Liu

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Soil‒water coupling is an important process in landslide-generated impulse waves (LGIW) problems, accompanied by large deformation of soil, strong interface coupling and three-dimensional effect. A meshless particle method, smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) has great advantages in dealing with complex interface and multiphase coupling problems. This study presents an improved soil‒water coupled model to simulate LGIW problems based on an open source code DualSPHysics (v4.0). Aiming to solve the low efficiency problem in modeling real large-scale LGIW problems, graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration technology is implemented into this code. An experimental example, subaerial landslide-generated water waves, is simulated to demonstrate the accuracy of this model. Then, the Huangtian LGIW, a real large-scale LGIW problem is modeled to reproduce the entire disaster chain, including landslide dynamics, fluid‒solid interaction, and surge wave generation. The convergence analysis shows that a particle distance of 5.0 m can provide a converged landslide deposit and surge wave for this example. Numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the limited field survey data. The application example of the Huangtian LGIW provides a typical reference for large-scale LGIW assessments, which can provide reliable information on landslide dynamics, interface coupling behavior, and surge wave characteristics.

Keywords: soil‒water coupling, landslide-generated impulse wave, large-scale, SPH

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Authors: Nada Poropat Jeletic, Gordana Hrzica

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Bilingual conversational corpora represent a meaningful and the most comprehensive data source for investigating the genuine contact phenomena in non-monitored bi-lingual speech productions. They can be particularly useful for bilingual research since some features of bilingual interaction can hardly be accessed with more traditional methodologies (e.g., elicitation tasks). The method of language sampling provides the resources for describing language interaction in a bilingual community and/or in bilingual situations (e.g. code-switching, amount of languages used, number of languages used, etc.). To capture these phenomena in genuine communication situations, such sampling should be as close as possible to spontaneous communication. Bilingual spoken corpus design is methodologically demanding. Therefore this paper aims at describing the methodological challenges that apply to the corpus design of the conversational corpus design of the Istrian Istrovenetian-Croatian Bilingual Corpus. Croatian is the first official language of the Croatian-Italian officially bilingual Istria County, while Istrovenetian is a diatopic subvariety of Venetian, a longlasting lingua franca in the Istrian peninsula, the mother tongue of the members of the Italian National Community in Istria and the primary code of informal everyday communication among the Istrian Italophone population. Within the CLARIN infrastructure, TalkBank is being used, as it provides relevant procedures for designing and analyzing bilingual corpora. Furthermore, it allows public availability allows for easy replication of studies and cumulative progress as a research community builds up around the corpus, while the tools developed within the field of corpus linguistics enable easy retrieval and analysis of information. The method of language sampling employed is kept at the level of spontaneous communication, in order to maximise the naturalness of the collected conversational data. All speakers have provided written informed consent in which they agree to be recorded at a random point within the period of one month after signing the consent. Participants are administered a background questionnaire providing information about the socioeconomic status and the exposure and language usage in the participants social networks. Recording data are being transcribed, phonologically adapted within a standard-sized orthographic form, coded and segmented (speech streams are being segmented into communication units based on syntactic criteria) and are being marked following the CHAT transcription system and its associated CLAN suite of programmes within the TalkBank toolkit. The corpus consists of transcribed sound recordings of 36 bilingual speakers, while the target is to publish the whole corpus by the end of 2020, by sampling spontaneous conversations among approximately 100 speakers from all the bilingual areas of Istria for ensuring representativeness (the participants are being recruited across three generations of native bilingual speakers in all the bilingual areas of the peninsula). Conversational corpora are still rare in TalkBank, so the Corpus will contribute to BilingBank as a highly relevant and scientifically reliable resource for an internationally established and active research community. The impact of the research of communities with societal bilingualism will contribute to the growing body of research on bilingualism and multilingualism, especially regarding topics of language dominance, language attrition and loss, interference and code-switching etc.

Keywords: conversational corpora, bilingual corpora, code-switching, language sampling, corpus design methodology

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Authors: Xavier Bertrand, Alexandre Cayrel

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The early phase of an aircraft development is instrumental as it really drives the potential of a new concept. Any weakness in the high-level design (wing planform, moveable surfaces layout etc.) will be extremely difficult and expensive to recover later in the aircraft development process. Aerodynamic evaluation in this very early development phase is driven by two main criteria: a short lead-time to allow quick iterations of the geometrical design, and a high quality of the calculations to get an accurate & reliable assessment of the current status. These two criteria are usually quite contradictory. Actually, short lead time of a couple of hours from end-to-end can be obtained with very simple tools (semi-empirical methods for instance) although their accuracy is limited, whereas higher quality calculations require heavier/more complex tools, which obviously need more complex inputs as well, and a significantly longer lead time. At this point, the choice has to be done between accuracy and lead-time. A brand new approach has been developed within Airbus, aiming at obtaining quickly high quality evaluations of the aerodynamic of an aircraft. This methodology is based on a joint use of Surrogate Modelling and a lifting line code. The Surrogate Modelling is used to get the wing sections characteristics (e.g. lift coefficient vs. angle of attack), whatever the airfoil geometry, the status of the moveable surfaces (aileron/spoilers) or the high-lift devices deployment. From these characteristics, the lifting line code is used to get the 3D effects on the wing whatever the flow conditions (low/high Mach numbers etc.). This methodology has been applied successfully to a concept of medium range aircraft.

Keywords: aerodynamics, lifting line, surrogate model, CFD

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Authors: Jin Woo Hwang, Byung Kwan Oh, Yousok Kim, Hyo Seon Park

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As greenhouse effect has been recognized as serious environmental problem of the world, interests in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission which comprises major part of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been increased recently. Since construction industry takes a relatively large portion of total CO₂ emissions of the world, extensive studies about reducing CO₂ emissions in construction and operation of building have been carried out after the 2000s. Also, performance based design (PBD) methodology based on nonlinear analysis has been robustly developed after Northridge Earthquake in 1994 to assure and assess seismic performance of building more exactly because structural engineers recognized that prescriptive code based design approach cannot address inelastic earthquake responses directly and assure performance of building exactly. Although CO₂ emissions and PBD approach are recent rising issues on construction industry and structural engineering, there were few or no researches considering these two issues simultaneously. Thus, the objective of this study is to minimize the CO₂ emissions and cost of building designed by PBD approach in structural design stage considering structural materials. 4 story and 4 span reinforced concrete building optimally designed to minimize CO₂ emissions and cost of building and to satisfy specific seismic performance (collapse prevention in maximum considered earthquake) of building satisfying prescriptive code regulations using non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II). Optimized design result showed that minimized CO₂ emissions and cost of building were acquired satisfying specific seismic performance. Therefore, the methodology proposed in this paper can be used to reduce both CO₂ emissions and cost of building designed by PBD approach.

Keywords: CO2 emissions, performance based design, optimization, sustainable design

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Authors: Babar Khan, Wang Zhijie

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Machine Vision has been playing a significant role in Industrial Automation, to imitate the wide variety of human functions, providing improved safety, reduced labour cost, the elimination of human error and/or subjective judgments, and the creation of timely statistical product data. Despite the intensive research, there have not been any attempts to classify fabric prints based on printed texture and colour, most of the researches so far encompasses only black and white or grey scale images. We proposed a biologically inspired processing architecture to classify fabrics w.r.t. the fabric print texture and colour. We created a texture descriptor based on the HMAX model for machine vision, and incorporated colour descriptor based on opponent colour channels simulating the single opponent and double opponent neuronal function of the brain. We found that our algorithm not only outperformed the original HMAX algorithm on classification of fabric print texture and colour, but we also achieved a recognition accuracy of 85-100% on different colour and different texture fabric.

Keywords: automatic classification, texture descriptor, colour descriptor, opponent colour channel

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Authors: Erifyli Tsagkari, Stephanie Connelly, Zhaowei Liu, Andrew McBride, William Sloan

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Biofilms play an essential role in treating water in biofiltration systems. The biofilm morphology and function are inextricably linked to the hydrodynamics of flow through a filter, and yet engineers rarely explicitly engineer this interaction. We develop a system that links computer simulation and 3-D printing to optimize and rapidly prototype filter media to optimize biofilm function with the hypothesis that biofilm function is intimately linked to the flow passing through the filter. A computational model that numerically solves the incompressible time-dependent Navier Stokes equations coupled to a model for biofilm growth and function is developed. The model is imbedded in an optimization algorithm that allows the model domain to adapt until criteria on biofilm functioning are met. This is applied to optimize the shape of filter media in a simple flow channel to promote biofilm formation. The computer code links directly to a 3-D printer, and this allows us to prototype the design rapidly. Its validity is tested in flow visualization experiments and by microscopy. As proof of concept, the code was constrained to explore a small range of potential filter media, where the medium acts as an obstacle in the flow that sheds a von Karman vortex street that was found to enhance the deposition of bacteria on surfaces downstream. The flow visualization and microscopy in the 3-D printed realization of the flow channel validated the predictions of the model and hence its potential as a design tool. Overall, it is shown that the combination of our computational model and the 3-D printing can be effectively used as a design tool to prototype filter media to optimize biofilm formation.

Keywords: biofilm, biofilter, computational model, von karman vortices, 3-D printing.

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Authors: Eduardo Garcia Agustin

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This paper focuses on how Mickey – the 10-year-old main character and narrator in Paul McVeigh’s novel The Good Son (2015) – becomes aware of his own queerness and its implications in a conflicting place and time such as Belfast during ‘The Troubles’ in the 1980s. Queer theory allows a comparative reading of identity issues such as national and gender discourses. As opposed to some other excluding social constructs that classify identities in an Us-Others binomial, queer has become a sort of umbrella term where there is room for more identities other than LGTBQ. Therefore, it offers some relevant tools to read this highly awarded novel by focusing on the intersectional construction of Mickey’s identity in progress within the social and familiar realms. The aim of this paper is to offer a queer reading of the The Good Son, which was awarded with the Polari First Book Prize in 2016, by showing the key role of Mickey’s conflictive realization of his own queerness in the polarized society of Northern Ireland in the 1980s, where there is no shade of grey. Within such a polarized context, Mickey’s perception of his own internal and external identity conflicts he is exposed to will show how necessary a certain touch of pink is as a potential escape to those conflicts.

Keywords: conflict, national identity, Northern Ireland, queer identity

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Authors: R. R. Hordijk, O. J. G. Somsen

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Traditionally, radar systems are the eyes and ears of a ship. However, these systems have their drawbacks and nowadays they are extended with systems that work with video and photos. Processing of data from these videos and photos is however very labour-intensive and efforts are being made to automate this process. A major problem when trying to recognize objects in water is that the 'background' is not homogeneous so that traditional image recognition technics do not work well. Main question is, can a method be developed which automate this recognition process. There are a large number of parameters involved to facilitate the identification of objects on such images. One is varying the resolution. In this research, the resolution of some images has been reduced to the extreme value of 1% of the original to reduce clutter before the polynomial fit (pre-processing). It turned out that the searched object was clearly recognizable as its grey value was well above the average. Another approach is to take two images of the same scene shortly after each other and compare the result. Because the water (waves) fluctuates much faster than an object floating in the water one can expect that the object is the only stable item in the two images. Both these methods (pre-processing and comparing two images of the same scene) delivered useful results. Though it is too early to conclude that with these methods all image problems can be solved they are certainly worthwhile for further research.

Keywords: image processing, image recognition, polynomial fit, water

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Authors: Sylvia Szabo, Thilini Navaratne, Indrajit Pal, Seree Park

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Deltaic and coastal regions are often strategically important both from local and regional perspectives. While deltas are known to be bread baskets of the world, delta inhabitants often face the risk of food and nutritional insecurity. These risks are highly exacerbated by the impacts of climate and environmental change. While numerous regional studies examined the prevalence and the determinants of food security in specific delta and coastal regions, there is still a lack of a systematic analysis of the most widely used scientific food security indicators. In order to fill this gap, a systematic review was carried out using Covidence, a Cochrane-adopted systematic review processing software. Papers included in the review were selected from the SCOPUS, Thomson Reuters Web of Science, Science Direct, ProQuest, and Google Scholar databases. Both scientific papers and grey literature (e.g., reports by international organizations) were considered. The results were analyzed by food security components (access, availability, quality, and strategy) and by world regions. Suggestions for further food security, nutrition, and health research, as well as policy-related implications, are also discussed.

Keywords: delta regions, coastal, food security, indicators, systematic review

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Authors: C. Gopi Jinimole, A. Harsha

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For detecting strokes, Computed Tomography (CT) scan is preferred for imaging the abnormalities or infarction in the brain. Because of the problems in the window settings used to evaluate brain CT images, they are very poor in the early stage infarction detection. This paper presents an automatic estimation method for the window settings of the CT images for proper contrast of the hyper infarction present in the brain. In the proposed work the window width is estimated automatically for each slice and the window centre is changed to a new value of 31HU, which is the average of the HU values of the grey matter and white matter in the brain. The automatic window width estimation is based on the average of median of statistical central moments. Thus with the new suggested window centre and estimated window width, the hyper infarction or post-stroke regions in CT brain images are properly detected. The proposed approach assists the radiologists in CT evaluation for early quantitative signs of delayed stroke, which leads to severe hemorrhage in the future can be prevented by providing timely medication to the patients.

Keywords: computed tomography (CT), hyper infarction or post stroke region, Hounsefield Unit (HU), window centre (WC), window width (WW)

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Authors: Chung-Ming Lo, Chung-Chien Lee

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In many countries, the lifetime prevalence of shoulder pain is up to 70%. In America, the health care system spends 7 billion per year about the healthy issues of shoulder pain. With respect to the origin, up to 70% of shoulder pain is attributed to rotator cuff lesions This study proposed a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system to assist radiologists classifying rotator cuff lesions with less operator dependence. Quantitative features were extracted from the shoulder ultrasound images acquired using an ALOKA alpha-6 US scanner (Hitachi-Aloka Medical, Tokyo, Japan) with linear array probe (scan width: 36mm) ranging from 5 to 13 MHz. During examination, the postures of the examined patients are standard sitting position and are followed by the regular routine. After acquisition, the shoulder US images were drawn out from the scanner and stored as 8-bit images with pixel value ranging from 0 to 255. Upon the sonographic appearance, the boundary of each lesion was delineated by a physician to indicate the specific pattern for analysis. The three lesion categories for classification were composed of 20 cases of tendon inflammation, 18 cases of calcific tendonitis, and 18 cases of supraspinatus tear. For each lesion, second-order statistics were quantified in the feature extraction. The second-order statistics were the texture features describing the correlations between adjacent pixels in a lesion. Because echogenicity patterns were expressed via grey-scale. The grey-scale co-occurrence matrixes with four angles of adjacent pixels were used. The texture metrics included the mean and standard deviation of energy, entropy, correlation, inverse different moment, inertia, cluster shade, cluster prominence, and Haralick correlation. Then, the quantitative features were combined in a multinomial logistic regression classifier to generate a prediction model of rotator cuff lesions. Multinomial logistic regression classifier is widely used in the classification of more than two categories such as the three lesion types used in this study. In the classifier, backward elimination was used to select a feature subset which is the most relevant. They were selected from the trained classifier with the lowest error rate. Leave-one-out cross-validation was used to evaluate the performance of the classifier. Each case was left out of the total cases and used to test the trained result by the remaining cases. According to the physician’s assessment, the performance of the proposed CAD system was shown by the accuracy. As a result, the proposed system achieved an accuracy of 86%. A CAD system based on the statistical texture features to interpret echogenicity values in shoulder musculoskeletal ultrasound was established to generate a prediction model for rotator cuff lesions. Clinically, it is difficult to distinguish some kinds of rotator cuff lesions, especially partial-thickness tear of rotator cuff. The shoulder orthopaedic surgeon and musculoskeletal radiologist reported greater diagnostic test accuracy than general radiologist or ultrasonographers based on the available literature. Consequently, the proposed CAD system which was developed according to the experiment of the shoulder orthopaedic surgeon can provide reliable suggestions to general radiologists or ultrasonographers. More quantitative features related to the specific patterns of different lesion types would be investigated in the further study to improve the prediction.

Keywords: shoulder ultrasound, rotator cuff lesions, texture, computer-aided diagnosis

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Authors: Mohamad Najari, Gilbert Grondin, Marwan El-Rich

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Design trucks in standard codes are selected based on the amount of damage they cause on structures-specifically bridges- and roads to represent the real traffic loads. Some limited numbers of trucks are run on a bridge one at a time and the damage on the bridge is recorded for each truck. One design track is also run on the same bridge “n” times -“n” is the number of trucks used previously- to calculate the damage of the design truck on the same bridge. To make these damages equal a reduction factor is needed for that specific design truck in the codes. As the limited number of trucks cannot be the exact representative of real traffic through the life of the structure, these reduction factors are not accurately calculated and they should be modified accordingly. Started on July 2004, the vehicle load data were collected in six weigh in motion (WIM) sites owned by Alberta Transportation for eight consecutive years. This database includes more than 200 million trucks. Having these data gives the opportunity to compare the effect of any standard fatigue trucks weigh and the real traffic load on the fatigue life of the bridges which leads to a modification for the fatigue truck factor in the code. To calculate the damage for each truck, the truck is run on the bridge, moment history of the detail under study is recorded, stress range cycles are counted, and then damage is calculated using available S-N curves. A 2000 lines FORTRAN code has been developed to perform the analysis and calculate the damages of the trucks in the database for all eight fatigue categories according to Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CSA S-16). Stress cycles are counted using rain flow counting method. The modification factors for design truck (CL-625) are calculated for two different bridge configurations and ten span lengths varying from 1 m to 200 m. The two considered bridge configurations are single-span bridge and four span bridge. This was found to be sufficient and representative for a simply supported span, positive moment in end spans of bridges with two or more spans, positive moment in interior spans of three or more spans, and the negative moment at an interior support of multi-span bridges. The moment history of the mid span is recorded for single-span bridge and, exterior positive moment, interior positive moment, and support negative moment are recorded for four span bridge. The influence lines are expressed by a polynomial expression obtained from a regression analysis of the influence lines obtained from SAP2000. It is found that for design truck (CL-625) fatigue truck factor is varying from 0.35 to 0.55 depending on span lengths and bridge configuration. The detail results will be presented in the upcoming papers. This code can be used for any design trucks available in standard codes.

Keywords: bridge, fatigue, fatigue design truck, rain flow analysis, FORTRAN

Procedia PDF Downloads 521

Authors: Amjad Alsulami, Farah Albishri, Kholod Alzubidi, Lama Almehemadi, Salma Elhag

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Food allergy is a common and rising problem among children. Many students have their first allergic reaction at school, one of these is anaphylaxis, which can be fatal. This study discovered that several schools' processes lacked safety regulations and information on how to handle allergy issues and chronic diseases like diabetes where students were not supervised or monitored during the cafeteria purchasing process. There is no obvious prevention or effort in academic institutions when purchasing food containing allergens or negatively impacting the health status of students who suffer from chronic diseases. Students must always be stable to reflect positively on their educational development process. To address this issue, this paper uses a business reengineering process to propose the automation of the whole food-purchasing process, which will aid in detecting and avoiding allergic occurrences and preventing any side effects from eating foods that are conflicting with students' health. This may be achieved by designing a smart card with an embedded QR code that reveals which foods cause an allergic reaction in a student. A survey was distributed to determine and examine how the cafeteria will handle allergic children and whether any management or policy is applied in the school. Also, the survey findings indicate that the integration of QR technology into the food purchasing process would improve health condition detection. The suggested system would be beneficial to all parties, the family agreed, as they would ensure that their children didn't eat foods that were bad for their health. Moreover, by analyzing and simulating the as-is process and the suggested process the results demonstrate that there is an improvement in quality and time.

Keywords: QR code, smart card, food allergies, business process reengineering, health condition detection

Procedia PDF Downloads 75

Authors: Sara Honarparast, Omar Chaallal

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Reinforced concrete (RC) coupled shear walls (CSWs) are very effective structural systems in resisting lateral loads due to winds and earthquakes and are particularly used in medium- to high-rise RC buildings. However, most of existing old RC structures were designed for gravity loads or lateral loads well below the loads specified in the current modern seismic international codes. These structures may behave in non-ductile manner due to poorly designed joints, insufficient shear reinforcement and inadequate anchorage length of the reinforcing bars. This has been the main impetus to investigate an appropriate strengthening method to address or attenuate the deficiencies of these structures. The objective of this paper is to twofold: (i) evaluate the seismic performance of existing reinforced concrete coupled shear walls under reversed cyclic loading; and (ii) investigate the seismic performance of RC CSWs strengthened with externally bonded (EB) carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets. To this end, two CSWs were considered as follows: (a) the first one is representative of old CSWs and therefore was designed according to the 1941 National Building Code of Canada (NBCC, 1941) with conventionally reinforced coupling beams; and (b) the second one, representative of new CSWs, was designed according to modern NBCC 2015 and CSA/A23.3 2014 requirements with diagonally reinforced coupling beam. Both CSWs were simulated using ANSYS software. Nonlinear behavior of concrete is modeled using multilinear isotropic hardening through a multilinear stress strain curve. The elastic-perfectly plastic stress-strain curve is used to simulate the steel material. Bond stress–slip is modeled between concrete and steel reinforcement in conventional coupling beam rather than considering perfect bond to better represent the slip of the steel bars observed in the coupling beams of these CSWs. The old-designed CSW was strengthened using CFRP sheets bonded to the concrete substrate and the interface was modeled using an adhesive layer. The behavior of CFRP material is considered linear elastic up to failure. After simulating the loading and boundary conditions, the specimens are analyzed under reversed cyclic loading. The comparison of results obtained for the two unstrengthened CSWs and the one retrofitted with EB CFRP sheets reveals that the strengthening method improves the seismic performance in terms of strength, ductility, and energy dissipation capacity.

Keywords: carbon fiber reinforced polymer, coupled shear wall, coupling beam, finite element analysis, modern code, old code, strengthening

Procedia PDF Downloads 197

Authors: Suhib A. Abu-Seini, Kyung-Doo Kim

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A heat loss model for ATLAS facility was introduced using SPACE code predefined correlations and various dialing factors. As all previous simulations were carried out using a heat loss free input; the facility was considered to be completely insulated and the core power was reduced by the experimentally measured values of heat loss to compensate to the account for the loss of heat, this study will consider heat loss throughout the simulation. The new heat loss model will be affecting SPACE code simulation as heat being leaked out of the system throughout a transient will alter many parameters corresponding to temperature and temperature difference. For that, a Station Blackout followed by a multiple Steam Generator Tube Rupture accident will be simulated using both the insulated system approach and the newly introduced heat loss input of the steady state. Major parameters such as system temperatures, pressure values, and flow rates to be put into comparison and various analysis will be suggested upon it as the experimental values will not be the reference to validate the expected outcome. This study will not only show the significance of heat loss consideration in the processes of prevention and mitigation of various incidents, design basis and beyond accidents as it will give a detailed behavior of ATLAS facility during both processes of steady state and major transient, but will also present a verification of how credible the data acquired of ATLAS are; since heat loss values for steady state were already mismatched between SPACE simulation results and ATLAS data acquiring system. Acknowledgement- This work was supported by the Korean institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) and the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE) of the Republic of Korea.

Keywords: ATLAS, heat loss, simulation, SPACE, station blackout, steam generator tube rupture, verification

Procedia PDF Downloads 224

Authors: Mounir Filali

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Companies use many innovative ways to reach their customers to stay ahead of the competition. Along with the growing demand for innovative business solutions is the demand for new technology. The most noticeable area of demand for business innovations is the mobile application industry. Recently, companies have recognized the growing need to integrate proprietary mobile applications into their suite of services; Companies have realized that developing mobile apps gives them a competitive edge. As a result, many have begun to rapidly develop mobile apps to stay ahead of the competition. Mobile application development helps companies meet the needs of their customers. Mobile apps also help businesses to take advantage of every potential opportunity to generate leads that convert into sales. Mobile app download growth statistics with the recent rise in demand for business-related mobile apps, there has been a similar rise in the range of mobile app solutions being offered. Today, companies can use the traditional route of the software development team to build their own mobile applications. However, there are also many platform-ready "low-code and no-code" mobile apps available to choose from. These mobile app development options have more streamlined business processes. This helps them be more responsive to their customers without having to be coding experts. Companies must have a basic understanding of mobile app architecture to attract and maintain the interest of mobile app users. Mobile application architecture refers to the buildings or structural systems and design elements that make up a mobile application. It also includes the technologies, processes, and components used during application development. The underlying foundation of all applications consists of all elements of the mobile application architecture; developing a good mobile app architecture requires proper planning and strategic design. The technology framework or platform on the back end and user-facing side of a mobile application is part of the mobile architecture of the application. In-application development Software programmers loosely refer to this set of mobile architecture systems and processes as the "technology stack."

Keywords: mobile applications, development, architecture, technology

Procedia PDF Downloads 105

Authors: Evgeny Obraztsov, Ilya Kremnev, Vitaly Sokolov, Maksim Gavrilov, Evgeny Tretyakov, Vladimir Kukhtevich, Vladimir Bezlepkin

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Over the last decade, a specific set of connected software tools and calculation codes has been gradually developed. It allows simulating I&C systems, thermal-hydraulic, neutron-physical and electrical processes in elements and systems at the Unit of NPP (initially with WWER (pressurized water reactor)). In 2012 it was called a complex simulation suite “Virtual Unit of NPP” (or CSS “VEB” for short). Proper application of this complex tool should result in a complex coupled mathematical computational model. And for a specific design of NPP, it is called the Virtual Power Unit (or VPU for short). VPU can be used for comprehensive modelling of a power unit operation, checking operator's functions on a virtual main control room, and modelling complicated scenarios for normal modes and accidents. In addition, CSS “VEB” contains a combination of thermal hydraulic codes: the best-estimate (two-liquid) calculation codes KORSAR and CORTES and a homogenous calculation code TPP. So to analyze a specific technological system one can build thermal-hydraulic simulation models with different detalization levels up to a nodalization scheme with real geometry. And the result at some points is similar to the notion “engineering/testing simulator” described by the European utility requirements (EUR) for LWR nuclear power plants. The paper is dedicated to description of the tools mentioned above and an example of the application of the engineering thermal-hydraulic simulator in analysis of the boron acid concentration in the primary coolant (changed by the make-up and boron control system).

Keywords: best-estimate code, complex simulation suite, engineering simulator, power plant, thermal hydraulic, VEB, virtual power unit

Procedia PDF Downloads 380

Authors: Ronel Solis, Leonardo Collado

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Migration law in the Republic of Panama has been regulated mainly by the executive branch. This has created a crisis not only institutional but also social because the evolution of these norms has rested greatly from the discretion of the government in office. This has created instability in immigration regulation and more now, with the migration crisis of which Panama is also part. Different migration policies have been established. The most recent is that of the controlled migration flow, in which, for humanitarian reasons, migrants move from the border with Colombia to the border with Costa Rica. Unfortunately, such control is not enough, and in some cases, unprotected migrants have been confined for months, their passports have been withheld, and no recognition of their rights is offered. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has condemned Panama for the unfair detention of an irregular migrant, who was detained for two years in Panamanian prisons, without having committed a crime and without accessing a just defense. This is the case Vélez Loor vs. the Republic of Panama. Uncontrollable migration has been putting pressure on Panamanian public health services. The recent denunciation of HIV-related NGOs that warns that there are hundreds of foreigners who receive expensive antiretroviral therapy in Panama is serious, and several of them are irregular migrants. On the other hand, there are no border control posts with the Republic of Colombia, because it is a jungle area and migrants are exposed to arms and drug trafficking, and unfortunately, also to prostitution. Government entities such as the border police service have provided humanitarian support to migrants on the border with Colombia, although it is not their administrative function, and various entities discuss who should address this crisis. However, few economic resources are allocated by the government to solve this problem, especially with the recent mass migration of Venezuelans who have fled their country. The establishment of a migratory normative code is necessary to establish uniformity in the recognition and application of migratory rights. In this way, dependence on the changing migration policies of the different Panamanian governments would be eliminated, and the rights of migrants and nationals would be guaranteed.

Keywords: executive branch, irregular migration, migration code, Republic of Panama

Procedia PDF Downloads 123

Authors: Xingyu Peng, Qingyuan Hu, Xuebin Zhu, Xi Yuan

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Neutron spectrometry has contributed much to the development of nuclear physics since 1932 and has also become an importance tool in several other fields, notably nuclear technology, fusion plasma diagnostics and radiation protection. Compared with neutron fluxes, neutron spectra can provide more detailed information on the internal physical process of neutron sources, such as fast neutron reactors, fusion plasma, fission-fusion hybrid reactors, and so on. However, high performance neutron spectrometer is not so commonly available as it requires the use of large and complex instrumentation. This work describes the development and characterization of a compact magnetic proton recoil (MPR) spectrometer for high-resolution measurements of fast neutron spectra. The compact MPR spectrometer is featured by its large recoil angle, small size permanent analysis magnet, short beam transport line and dual-purpose detector array for both steady state and pulsed neutron spectra measurement. A 3-dimensional electromagnetic particle transport code is developed to simulate the response function of the spectrometer. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the spectrometer is mainly determined by n-p recoil foil and proton apertures, and an overall energy resolution of 3% is achieved for 14 MeV neutrons. Dedicated experiments using alpha source and mono-energetic neutron beam are employed to verify the simulated response function of the compact MPR spectrometer. These experimental results show a good agreement with the simulated ones, which indicates that the simulation code possesses good accuracy and reliability. The compact MPR spectrometer described in this work is a valuable tool for fast neutron spectra measurements for the fission or fusion devices.

Keywords: neutron spectrometry, magnetic proton recoil spectrometer, neutron spectra, fast neutron

Procedia PDF Downloads 202