Search results for: endocrine system

Authors: Saeed Asiri

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The Novel Automated System (NAS) has the control system of the level of chlorine and acid (i.e. pH level) through a feedback in three forms of synchronous alerts. The feedback is in the form of an alert voice, a visible color, and a message on a digital screen. In addition, NAS contains a slide-in container in which chemicals are used to treat the problems of chlorine and acid levels independently. Moreover, NAS has a net in front of it to clean the pool on the surface of the water from leaves and wastes and so on which is controlled through a remote control. The material used is a lightweight aluminum with mechanical and electric parts integrated with each other. In fact, NAS is qualified to serve as an assistant security guard for swimming pools because it has the characteristics that make it unique and smart.

Keywords: novel automated system, pool safety, maintenance, pH level, digital screen

Procedia PDF Downloads 72

Authors: Mohd Tariq

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The three phase system drives produce the problem of more torque pulsations and harmonics. This issue prevents the smooth operation of the drives and it also induces the amount of heat generated thus resulting in an increase in power loss. Higher phase system offers smooth operation of the machines with greater power capacity. Five phase variable-speed induction motor drives are commonly used in various industrial and commercial applications like tractions, electrical vehicles, ship propulsions and conveyor belt drive system. In this work, a comparative analysis of the different modulation schemes applied on the five-level five-phase Packed U Cell (PUC) inverter fed induction motor drives is presented. The performance of the inverter is greatly affected with the modulation schemes applied. The system is modeled, designed, and implemented in MATLAB^®/Simulink environment. Experimental validation is done for the prototype of single phase, whereas five phase experimental validation is proposed in the future works.

Keywords: Packed U-Cell (PUC) inverter, five-phase system, pulse width modulation (PWM), induction motor (IM)

Procedia PDF Downloads 183

Authors: T. Aboumahboub, R. Brecha, H. B. Shrestha, U. F. Hutfilter, A. Geiges, W. Hare, M. Schaeffer, L. Welder, M. Gidden

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The proposed stringent mitigation targets require an immediate start for a drastic transformation of the whole energy system. The current Australian energy system is mainly centralized and fossil fuel-based in most states with coal and gas-fired plants dominating the total produced electricity over the recent past. On the other hand, the country is characterized by a huge, untapped renewable potential, where wind and solar energy could play a key role in the decarbonization of the Australia’s future energy system. However, integrating high shares of such variable renewable energy sources (VRES) challenges the power system considerably due to their temporal fluctuations and geographical dispersion. This raises the concerns about flexibility gap in the system to ensure the security of supply with increasing shares of such intermittent sources. One main flexibility dimension to facilitate system integration of high shares of VRES is to increase the cross-sectoral integration through coupling of electricity to other energy sectors alongside the decarbonization of the power sector and reinforcement of the transmission grid. This paper applies a multi-sectoral energy system optimization model for Australia. We investigate the cost-optimal configuration of a renewable-based Australian energy system and its transformation pathway in line with the ambitious range of proposed climate change mitigation targets. We particularly analyse the implications of linking the electricity and transport sectors in a prospective, highly renewable Australian energy system.

Keywords: decarbonization, energy system modelling, renewable energy, sector coupling

Procedia PDF Downloads 134

Authors: Amalia Sholihati, Bambang Riyanto Trilaksono

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As an island nation, is a necessity for the Republic of Indonesia to have a capable military defense on land, sea or air that the development of military weapons such as rockets for air defense becomes very important. RKX rocket-200 is one of the guided missiles which are developed by consortium Indonesia and coordinated by LAPAN that serve to intercept the target. RKX-200 is designed to have the speed of Mach 0.5-0.9. RKX rocket-200 belongs to the category two-stage rocket that control is carried out on the second stage when the rocket has separated from the booster. The requirement for better performance to intercept missiles with higher maneuverability continues to push optimal guidance law development, which is derived from non-linear equations. This research focused on the design and implementation of a guidance system based OGL on the rocket RKX-200 while considering the limitation of rockets such as aerodynamic rocket and actuator. Guided missile control system has three main parts, namely, guidance system, navigation system and autopilot systems. As for other parts such as navigation systems and other supporting simulated on MATLAB based on the results of previous studies. In addition to using the MATLAB simulation also conducted testing with hardware-based ARM TWR-K60D100M conjunction with a navigation system and nonlinear models in MATLAB using Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation (HILS).

Keywords: RKX-200, guidance system, optimal guidance law, Hils

Procedia PDF Downloads 255

Authors: Andres Frederic

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We present the MindFlow system supporting the detection and the diagnosis of stresses. The heart of the system is a knowledge synthesis engine allowing occupational health stakeholders (psychologists, occupational therapists and human resource managers) to formulate queries related to stress and responding to users requests by recommending a pattern of stress if one exists. The stress pattern diagnosis is based on expert knowledge stored in the MindFlow stress ontology including stress feature vector. The query processing may involve direct access to the MindFlow system by occupational health stakeholders, online communication between the MindFlow system and the MindFlow domain experts, or direct dialog between a occupational health stakeholder and a MindFlow domain expert. The MindFlow knowledge model is generic in the sense that it supports the needs of psychologists, occupational therapists and human resource managers. The system presented in this paper is currently under development as part of a Dutch-Japanese project and aims to assist organisation in the quick diagnosis of stress patterns.

Keywords: occupational stress, stress management, physiological measurement, accident prevention

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Authors: Zuhier Altawallbeh

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This paper investigates the approximate analytical solutions of general form of Volterra integro-differential equations system by using the residual power series method (for short RPSM). The proposed method produces the solutions in terms of convergent series requires no linearization or small perturbation and reproduces the exact solution when the solution is polynomial. Some examples are given to demonstrate the simplicity and efficiency of the proposed method. Comparisons with the Laplace decomposition algorithm verify that the new method is very effective and convenient for solving system of pantograph equations.

Keywords: integro-differential equation, pantograph equations, system of initial value problems, residual power series method

Procedia PDF Downloads 418

Authors: Irina E. Sukovataya, Oleg S. Sutormin, Valentina A. Kratasyuk

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Effect of viscosity of media on kinetic parameters of the coupled enzyme system NADH:FMN-oxidoreductase–luciferase was investigated with addition of organic solvents (glycerol and sucrose), because bioluminescent enzyme systems based on bacterial luciferases offer a unique and general tool for analysis of the many analytes and enzymes in the environment, research, and clinical laboratories and other fields. The possibility of stabilization and increase of activity of the coupled enzyme system NADH:FMN-oxidoreductase–luciferase activity in vicious aqueous-organic mixtures have been shown.

Keywords: coupled enzyme system of bioluminescence bacteria NAD(P)H:FMN-oxidoreductase–luciferase, glycerol, stabilization of enzymes, sucrose

Procedia PDF Downloads 395

Authors: R. Kiran, B. R. Lakshmikantha, R. V. Parimala

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Secure operation of power systems requires monitoring of the system operating conditions. Phasor measurement units (PMU) are the device, which uses synchronized signals from the GPS satellites, and provide the phasors information of voltage and currents at a given substation. The optimal locations for the PMUs must be determined, in order to avoid redundant use of PMUs. The objective of this paper is to make system observable by using minimum number of PMUs & the implementation of stability software at 22OkV grid for on-line estimation of the power system transfer capability based on voltage and thermal limitations and for security monitoring. This software utilizes State Estimator (SE) and synchrophasor PMU data sets for determining the power system operational margin under normal and contingency conditions. This software improves security of transmission system by continuously monitoring operational margin expressed in MW or in bus voltage angles, and alarms the operator if the margin violates a pre-defined threshold.

Keywords: state estimator (SE), flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS), optimal location, phasor measurement units (PMU)

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Authors: Krishnan Manickavasagam, Manikandan Shanmugam

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Clean and abundant renewable energy sources (RES) such as solar energy is seen as the best solution to replace conventional energy source. Unpredictable power generation is a major issue in the penetration of solar energy, as power generated is governed by the irradiance received. Controlling the power generated from solar PV (SPV) panels to battery and load is a challenging task. In this paper, power flow control from SPV to load and energy storage device (ESD) is controlled by a fuzzy decision support system (FDSS) on the availability of solar irradiation. The results show that FDSS implemented with the energy management system (EMS) is capable of managing power within the area, and if excess power is available, then shared with the neighboring area.

Keywords: renewable energy sources, fuzzy decision support system, solar photovoltaic, energy storage device, energy management system

Procedia PDF Downloads 100

Authors: Pradeep Kulshrestha, Maulana Ayoub Ali

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The concept of financial inclusion has been tabled in the whole world where practitioners, academicians, policy makers and economists are working hard to look for the best possible opportunities in order to enable the whole society to be in the banking cycle. The Islamic banking system is considered to be one of the said opportunities. Countries like the United Kingdom, United States of America, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the whole of the United Arab Emirates and many African countries have accommodated the aspect of Islamic banking in the conventional banking system as one of the financial inclusion strategies. This paper tries to analyse the current state of affairs of the Islamic Banking system in Tanzania in order to understand the improvement of the provision of Islamic banking products and services in the said country. The paper discusses the historical background of the banking system in Tanzania, the level of penetration of banking products and services and the coming of the Islamic banking system in the country. Furthermore, the paper discusses banking regulatory bodies, legal instruments governing banking operations as well as number of legal challenges facing Islamic banking operations in the country. Following a critical literature review, the paper discovered that there is no legal instrument which talks about the introduction and provision of Islamic banking system in Tanzania. Furthermore, the Islamic banking system was considered as a banking product which is absolutely incorrect because Islamic banking is considered to be as a banking system of its own. In addition to that, it has been discovered that lack of a proper regulatory system and legal instruments to harmonize the conventional and Islamic banking systems has resulted in the closure of one Islamic window in the country, which in the end affects the credibility of the newly introduced banking system. In its conclusive remarks, the paper suggests that Tanzania should work on all legal challenges affecting the smooth operations of the Islamic banking system. This can be in a way of adopting various Islamic banking legal models which are used in countries like Malaysia and others, or a borrowing legal harmonization process which has been adopted by the UK, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya.

Keywords: Islamic banking, Islamic windows, regulations, banks

Procedia PDF Downloads 189

Authors: Hongshan Guo

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Ground-source heat pumps provide stable and reliable heating and cooling when designed properly. The confounding effect of the borehole depth for a GSHP system, however, is rarely taken into account for any optimization: the determination of the borehole depth usually comes prior to the selection of corresponding system components and thereafter any optimization of the GSHP system. The depth of the borehole is important to any GSHP system because the shallower the borehole, the larger the fluctuation of temperature of the near-borehole soil temperature. This could lead to fluctuations of the coefficient of performance (COP) for the GSHP system in the long term when the heating/cooling demand is large. Yet the deeper the boreholes are drilled, the more the drilling cost and the operational expenses for the circulation. A controller that reads different building load profiles, optimizing for the smallest costs and temperature fluctuation at the borehole wall, eventually providing borehole depth as the output is developed. Due to the nature of the nonlinear dynamic nature of the GSHP system, it was found that between conventional optimal controller problem and model predictive control problem, the latter was found to be more feasible due to a possible history of both the trajectory during the iteration as well as the final output could be computed and compared against. Aside from a few scenarios of different weighting factors, the resulting system costs were verified with literature and reports and were found to be relatively accurate, while the temperature fluctuation at the borehole wall was also found to be within acceptable range. It was therefore determined that the MPC is adequate to optimize for the investment as well as the system performance for various outputs.

Keywords: geothermal borehole, MPC, dynamic modeling, simulation

Procedia PDF Downloads 287

Authors: Sridhar Rapuru, D. Mallikarjunreddy, Rajanarendra Sai

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In this reign of the internet, the access of any multimedia file to the users at any time with a superior quality is needed. To achieve this goal, it is very important to have a good network without any interruptions between the satellites along with various earth stations. For that purpose, a high speed inter-satellite optical wireless communication system (IsOWC) is designed with space and polarization diversity techniques. IsOWC offers a high bandwidth, small size, less power requirement and affordable when compared with the present microwave satellite systems. To improve the efficiency and to reduce the propagation delay, inter-satellite link is established between the satellites. High accurate tracking systems are required to establish the reliable connection between the satellites as they have their own orbits. The only disadvantage of this IsOWC system is laser beam width is narrower than the RF because of this highly accurate tracking system to meet this requirement. The satellite uses the 'ephemerides data' for rough pointing and tracking system for fine pointing to the other satellite. In this proposed IsOWC system, laser light is used as a wireless connectedness between the source and destination and free space acts as the channel to carry the message. The proposed system will be designed, simulated and analyzed for 6000km with an improvement of data rate over previously existing systems. The performance parameters of the system are Q-factor, eye opening, bit error rate, etc., The proposed system for Inter-satellite Optical Wireless Communication System Design Using Diversity Techniques finds huge scope of applications in future generation communication purposes.

Keywords: inter-satellite optical wireless system, space and polarization diversity techniques, line of sight, bit error rate, Q-factor

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Authors: Tahany W. Sadak, Fouly, A. Anwer, M. Rizk

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The current investigation presents a study on the hydraulic performance of an electro-hydraulic servo solenoid valve controlled linear piston used in hydraulic systems. Advanced methods have been used to measure and record laboratory experiments, to ensure accurate analysis and evaluation. Experiments have been conducted under different values of temperature (28, 40 and 50 °C), supply pressure (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 bar), system stiffness (32 N/mm), and load (0.0 & 5560 N). It is concluded that increasing temperature of hydraulic oil increases the quantity of flow rate, so it achieves an increase of the quantity of flow by 5.75 % up to 48.8 % depending on operating conditions. The values of pressure decay at low temperature are less than the values at high temperature. The frequency increases with the increase of the temperature. When we connect the springs to the system, it decreases system frequency. These results are very useful in the process of packing and manufacturing of fluid products, where the properties are not affected by 50 °C, so energy and time are saved.

Keywords: electro-hydraulic servo valve, fluid power control system, system stiffness, static and dynamic performance

Procedia PDF Downloads 156

Authors: Zeplin Jiwa Husada Tarigan, Sautma Ronni Basana, Widjojo Suprapto

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Manufacturing companies in East Java develop their own ERP system or alter the ERP system which is developed by other companies to suit their needs. To make their own system, the companies mostly assign several employees from various departments to create a project team, and the employees are from the departments that are going to utilize the ERP system as the integrated data. The project team decides the making of the ERP system from the preparation stage until the going live implementation process. In designing the business process, the top management is working together with the project team until the project is accomplished. The completion of the ERP projects depends on the project to be undertaken itself, the strategy chosen to complete the project, the work method selection, the measurement system to monitor the project, the evaluation system of the project, and, in the end, the declaration of 'going live' of the ERP project. There is an increase in the business performance for the companies that have implemented the information technology or ERP as they manage to integrate all management functions within their companies. To investigate, some questionnaires are distributed to 100 manufacturing companies, and 90 questionnaires are returned; however, there are only 46 companies that develop their own ERP system, so the response rate is 46%. The result of data analysis using PLS shows that the management competency brings impacts to the project team and the process design. The process design is adjusted to the real process in order to implement the ERP, but it does not bring direct impacts to the business performance. The implementation of ERP brings positive impacts to the company business performance.

Keywords: management competency, project team, process design, ERP implementation, business performance

Procedia PDF Downloads 219

Authors: C. U. Om Kumar, S. Kishore, A. Geetha

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An Operating system (OS) is software that manages computer hardware and software resources by providing services to computer programs. One of the important user expectations of the operating system is to provide the practice of defending information from unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, inspection, recording or destruction. Operating system is always vulnerable to the attacks of malwares such as computer virus, worm, Trojan horse, backdoors, ransomware, spyware, adware, scareware and more. And so the anti-virus software were created for ensuring security against the prominent computer viruses by applying a dictionary based approach. The anti-virus programs are not always guaranteed to provide security against the new viruses proliferating every day. To clarify this issue and to secure the computer system, our proposed expert system concentrates on authorizing the processes as wanted and unwanted by the administrator for execution. The Expert system maintains a database which consists of hash code of the processes which are to be allowed. These hash codes are generated using MD5 message-digest algorithm which is a widely used cryptographic hash function. The administrator approves the wanted processes that are to be executed in the client in a Local Area Network by implementing Client-Server architecture and only the processes that match with the processes in the database table will be executed by which many malicious processes are restricted from infecting the operating system. The add-on advantage of this proposed Expert system is that it limits CPU usage and minimizes resource utilization. Thus data and information security is ensured by our system along with increased performance of the operating system.

Keywords: virus, worm, Trojan horse, back doors, Ransomware, Spyware, Adware, Scareware, sticky software, process table, MD5, CPU usage and resource utilization

Procedia PDF Downloads 428

Authors: Hsiao-Chuan Huang, King-Lung Kuo, Mei-Hsin Lo, Hsiao-Yun Chou, Yusen Lin

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The most robust and economical method for laboratory diagnosis of TB is to identify mycobacterial bacilli (AFB) under acid-fast staining despite its disadvantages of low sensitivity and labor-intensive. Though digital pathology becomes popular in medicine, an automated microscopic system for microbiology is still not available. A new AI-assisted automated microscopic system, consisting of a microscopic scanner and recognition program powered by big data and deep learning, may significantly increase the sensitivity of TB smear microscopy. Thus, the objective is to evaluate such an automatic system for the identification of AFB. A total of 5,930 smears was enrolled for this study. An intelligent microscope system (TB-Scan, Wellgen Medical, Taiwan) was used for microscopic image scanning and AFB detection. 272 AFB smears were used for transfer learning to increase the accuracy. Referee medical technicians were used as Gold Standard for result discrepancy. Results showed that, under a total of 1726 AFB smears, the automated system's accuracy, sensitivity and specificity were 95.6% (1,650/1,726), 87.7% (57/65), and 95.9% (1,593/1,661), respectively. Compared to culture, the sensitivity for human technicians was only 33.8% (38/142); however, the automated system can achieve 74.6% (106/142), which is significantly higher than human technicians, and this is the first of such an automated microscope system for TB smear testing in a controlled trial. This automated system could achieve higher TB smear sensitivity and laboratory efficiency and may complement molecular methods (eg. GeneXpert) to reduce the total cost for TB control. Furthermore, such an automated system is capable of remote access by the internet and can be deployed in the area with limited medical resources.

Keywords: TB smears, automated microscope, artificial intelligence, medical imaging

Procedia PDF Downloads 230

Authors: Mohammed Jamal Al-Mansor, Kok Beng Gan

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This paper develops an optimized embedding of payload in medical image by using genetic optimization. The goal is to preserve region of interest from being distorted because of the watermark. By using this developed system there is no need of manual defining of region of interest through experts as the system will apply the genetic optimization to select the parts of image that can carry the watermark with guaranteeing less distortion. The experimental results assure that genetic based optimization is useful for performing steganography with less mean square error percentage.

Keywords: AES, DWT, genetic algorithm, watermarking

Procedia PDF Downloads 411

Authors: Anita Kushwaha

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We propose a new evolutionary computational model called Artificial Reproduction System which is based on the complex process of meiotic reproduction occurring between male and female cells of the living organisms. Artificial Reproduction System is an attempt towards a new computational intelligence approach inspired by the theoretical reproduction mechanism, observed reproduction functions, principles and mechanisms. A reproductive organism is programmed by genes and can be viewed as an automaton, mapping and reducing so as to create copies of those genes in its off springs. In Artificial Reproduction System, the binding mechanism between male and female cells is studied, parameters are chosen and a network is constructed also a feedback system for self regularization is established. The model then applies Mendel’s law of inheritance, allele-allele associations and can be used to perform data analysis of imbalanced data, multivariate, multiclass and big data. In the experimental study Artificial Reproduction System is compared with other state of the art classifiers like SVM, Radial Basis Function, neural networks, K-Nearest Neighbor for some benchmark datasets and comparison results indicates a good performance.

Keywords: bio-inspired computation, nature- inspired computation, natural computing, data mining

Procedia PDF Downloads 274

Authors: Jason Sheng-Hong Tsai, Faezeh Ebrahimzadeh, Min-Ching Chung, Shu-Mei Guo, Leang-San Shieh, Tzong-Jiy Tsai, Li Wang

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In this paper, we first construct a new state and disturbance estimator using discrete-time proportional plus integral observer to estimate the system state and the unknown external disturbance for the discrete-time system with an input-to-output direct-feedthrough term. Then, the generalized optimal linear quadratic digital tracker design is applied to construct a proportional plus integral observer-based tracker for the system with an unknown external disturbance to have a desired tracking performance. Finally, a numerical simulation is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new application of our proposed approach.

Keywords: non-minimum phase system, optimal linear quadratic tracker, proportional plus integral observer, state and disturbance estimator

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Authors: Rashmi Tomar, A. Srinivasan, Nayan K. Mohanty, Arun K. Jain

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Phthalates have been used as additives in industrial products since the 1930s, and are universally considered to be ubiquitous environmental contaminants. The general population is exposed to phthalates through consumer products, as well as diet and medical treatments. Animal studies showing the existence of an association between some phthalates and testicular toxicity have generated public and scientific concern about the potential adverse effects of environmental changes on male reproductive health. Unprecedented declines in fertility rates and semen quality have been reported during the last half of the 20th century in developed countries and increasing interest exists on the potential relationship between exposure to environmental contaminants, including phthalates, and human male reproductive health Studies. Phthalates may be associated with altered endocrine function and adverse effects on male reproductive development and function, but human studies are limited. The aim of the present study was detection of phthalate compounds, estimation of their metabolites in infertile & fertile male. Blood and urine samples were collected from 150 infertile patients & 75 fertile volunteers recruited through Department of Urology, Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. Blood have been collected in separate glass tubes from the antecubital vein of the patients, serum have been separate and estimate the phthalate level in serum samples by Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry using NIOSH / OSHA detailed protocol. Urine of Infertile & Fertile Subjects was collected & extracted using solid phase extraction method, analysis by HPLC. In conclusion, to the best of our knowledge the present study based on human is first to show the presence of phthalate in human serum samples and their metabolites in urine samples. Significant differences were observed between several phthalates in infertile and fertile healthy individuals.

Keywords: Gas Chromatography, HPLC, male infertility, phthalates, serum, toxicity, urine

Procedia PDF Downloads 366

Authors: Ashkan Ebadi, Adam Krzyzak

Abstract:

Recommender systems, also known as recommender engines, have become an important research area and are now being applied in various fields. In addition, the techniques behind the recommender systems have been improved over the time. In general, such systems help users to find their required products or services (e.g. books, music) through analyzing and aggregating other users’ activities and behavior, mainly in form of reviews, and making the best recommendations. The recommendations can facilitate user’s decision making process. Despite the wide literature on the topic, using multiple data sources of different types as the input has not been widely studied. Recommender systems can benefit from the high availability of digital data to collect the input data of different types which implicitly or explicitly help the system to improve its accuracy. Moreover, most of the existing research in this area is based on single rating measures in which a single rating is used to link users to items. This paper proposes a highly accurate hotel recommender system, implemented in various layers. Using multi-aspect rating system and benefitting from large-scale data of different types, the recommender system suggests hotels that are personalized and tailored for the given user. The system employs natural language processing and topic modelling techniques to assess the sentiment of the users’ reviews and extract implicit features. The entire recommender engine contains multiple sub-systems, namely users clustering, matrix factorization module, and hybrid recommender system. Each sub-system contributes to the final composite set of recommendations through covering a specific aspect of the problem. The accuracy of the proposed recommender system has been tested intensively where the results confirm the high performance of the system.

Keywords: tourism, hotel recommender system, hybrid, implicit features

Procedia PDF Downloads 274

Authors: Said Lamghari, Abdelkader Outzourhit, Hassan Hamdi, Mohamed Krarouch, Fatima Ait Nouh, Mickael Benhaim, Mehdi Khaldoun

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Traditional Hammams are big consumers of water and wood-energy. Any approach to reduce this consumption will contribute to the preservation of these two resources that are more and more stressed in Morocco. In the InnoTherm/InnoBiomass 2014 project HYBRIDBATH, funded by the Research Institute for Solar Energy and New Energy (IRESEN), we will use a hybrid system consisting of a micro-CSP system and a biomass boiler for water and space heating of a Hammam. This will overcome the problem of intermittency of solar energy, and will ensure continuous supply of hot water and heat. We propose to use local agricultural residues (olive pomace, shells of walnuts, almonds, Argan ...). Underfloor heating using either copper or PEX tubing will perform the space heating. This work focuses on the description of the system and the activities carried out so far: The installation of the system, the principle operation of the system and some preliminary test results.

Keywords: biomass boiler, hot water, hybrid systems, micro-CSP, parabolic sensor, solar energy, solar fraction, traditional hammam, underfloor heating

Procedia PDF Downloads 313

Authors: Abeer K. Jameel, Harry Evdorides

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The Assessment of the road safety performance is a challengeable issue. This is not only because of the ineffective and unreliability of road and traffic crash data system but also because of its systematic character. Recent strategic plans and interventions implemented in some of the developed countries where a significant decline in the rate of traffic and road crashes considers that the road safety is a system. This system consists of four main elements which are: road user, road infrastructure, vehicles and speed in addition to other supporting elements such as the institutional framework and post-crash care system. To assess the performance of a system, it is required to assess all its elements. To present an understandable results of the assessment, it is required to present a unique term representing the performance of the overall system. This paper aims to develop an overall performance indicator which may be used to assess the road safety system. The variables of this indicators are the main elements of the road safety system. The data regarding these variables will be collected from the World Health Organization report. Multi-criteria analysis method is used to aggregate the four sub-indicators for the four variables. Two weighting methods will be assumed, equal weights and different weights. For the different weights method, the factor analysis method is used. The weights then will be converting to scores. The total score will be the overall indicator for the road safety performance in a national scale. This indicator will be used to compare and rank countries according to their road safety performance indicator. The country with the higher score is the country which provides most sustainable and effective interventions for successful road safety system. These indicator will be tested by comparing them with the aggregate real crash rate for each country.

Keywords: factor analysis, Multi-criteria analysis, road safety assessment, safe system indicator

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Authors: Martin Dupuy, Solange Grunenwald, Pierre-Louis Colombo, Laurence Mahieu, Pomone Richard, Philippe Bartoli

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Endonasal endoscopic trans-sphenoidal surgery for pituitary tumours has become a mainstay of treatment over the last two decades. Although it is generally accepted that there is no significant difference between endoscopic versus microscopic approach for surgical outcomes (endocrine and ophthalmologic status), nasal morbidity seems to the benefit of endoscopic procedures. Minimally invasive endoscopic surgery needs an operative learning curve to achieve surgeon’s efficiency. This learning curve is now well known for surgical outcomes and complications rate, however, few data are available for nasal morbidity. The aim of our series is to document operative experience and nasal quality of life after (NQOL) endoscopic trans-sphenoidal surgery. The prospective pituitary surgical cohort consisted of 525 consecutives patients referred to our Skull Base Diseases Department. Endoscopic procedures were performed by a single neurosurgeon using an uninostril approach. NQOL was evaluated using the Sino-Nasal Test (SNOT-22), the Anterior Base Nasal Inventory (ASBNI) and the Skull Base Inventory Score (SBIS). Data were collected before surgery during hospital stay and 3 months after the surgery. The seventy first patients were compared to the latest 70 patients. There was no significant difference between comparison score before versus after surgery for SNOT-22, ASBNI and SBIS during the single surgeon’s learning curve. Our series demonstrates that in our institution there is no statistically significant learning curve for NQOL after uninostril endoscopic pituitary surgery. A careful progression through sinonasal structures with very limited mucosal incision is associated with minimal morbidity and preserves nasal function. Conservative and minimal invasive approach could be achieved early during learning curve.

Keywords: pituitary surgery, quality of life, minimal invasive surgery, learning curve, pituitary tumours, skull base surgery, endoscopic surgery

Procedia PDF Downloads 124

Authors: Mohammed Kamil, M. M. Rahman, Rosli A. Bakar

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Modeling of hydrogen fueled engine (H₂ICE) injection system is a very important tool that can be used for explaining or predicting the effect of advanced injection strategies on combustion and emissions. In this paper, a common rail injection system (CRIS) is proposed for 4-strokes 4-cylinders hydrogen fueled engine with port injection feeding system (PIH₂ICE). For this system, a numerical one-dimensional gas dynamic model is developed considering single injection event for each injector per a cycle. One-dimensional flow equations in conservation form are used to simulate wave propagation phenomenon throughout the CR (accumulator). Using this model, the effect of common rail on the injection system characteristics is clarified. These characteristics include: rail pressure, sound velocity, rail mass flow rate, injected mass flow rate and pressure drop across injectors. The interaction effects of operational conditions (engine speed and rail pressure) and geometrical features (injector hole diameter) are illustrated; and the required compromised solutions are highlighted. The CRIS is shown to be a promising enhancement for PIH₂ICE.

Keywords: common rail, hydrogen engine, port injection, wave propagation

Procedia PDF Downloads 426

Authors: Firas A. Al Laban, Mohamed Chabi, Sammani Danwawu Abdullahi

Abstract:

There are a real needs to integrate types of Open Educational Resources (OER) with an intelligent system to extract information and knowledge in the semantic searching level. Those needs raised because most of current learning standard adopted web based learning and the e-learning systems does not always serve all educational goals. Semantic Web systems provide educators, students, and researchers with intelligent queries based on a semantic knowledge management learning system. An ontology-based learning system is an advanced system, where ontology plays the core of the semantic web in a smart learning environment. The objective of this paper is to discuss the potentials of ontologies and mapping different kinds of ontologies; heterogeneous or homogenous to manage and control different types of Open Educational Resources. The important contribution of this research is to approach a methodology uses logical rules and conceptual relations to map between ontologies of different educational resources. We expect from this methodology to establish for an intelligent educational system supporting student tutoring, self and lifelong learning system.

Keywords: knowledge management systems, ontologies, semantic web, open educational resources

Procedia PDF Downloads 500

Authors: Pratibha Srivastava, Chithra V. J., Sudhakar S., Nitin K. D.

Abstract:

A closed-loop system comprises of a controller, a response system, and an actuating system. The controller, which is the system under test for us, excites the actuators based on feedback from the sensors in a periodic manner. The sensors should provide the feedback to the System Under Test (SUT) within a deterministic time post excitation of the actuators. Any delay or miss in the generation of response or acquisition of excitation pulses may lead to control loop controller computation errors, which can be catastrophic in certain cases. Such systems categorised as hard real-time systems that need special strategies. The real-time operating systems available in the market may be the best solutions for such kind of simulations, but they pose limitations like the availability of the X Windows system, graphical interfaces, other user tools. In this paper, we present strategies that can be used on a general purpose operating system (Bare Linux Kernel) to achieve a deterministic deadline and hence have the added advantages of a GPOS with real-time features. Techniques shall be discussed how to make the time-critical application run with the highest priority in an uninterrupted manner, reduced network latency for distributed architecture, real-time data acquisition, data storage, and retrieval, user interactions, etc.

Keywords: real time data acquisition, real time kernel preemption, scheduling, network latency

Procedia PDF Downloads 150

Authors: Deepak Choudhary

Abstract:

COEP-Microgrid, a project by the students of College of Engineering Pune aims at establishing a micro grid in the college campus serving as a living laboratory for research and development of novel grid technologies. Proposed micro grid has an AC-bus and DC-bus, interconnected together with a tie line DC-AC converter. In grid-connected mode AC bus of microgrid is synchronized with utility grid. Synchronization with utility grid requires grid and AC bus to have synchronism in frequency, phase sequence and voltage. Power flow requires phase difference between grid and AC bus. Control System is required to effectively regulate power flow between the grid and AC bus. The grid synchronizing control system is composed of frequency and phase control for regulated power flow and voltage control system for reduction of reactive power flow. The control system involves automatic active power flow control. It takes the feedback of DC link Capacitor and changes the power angle accordingly. Control system incorporating voltage, phase and power control was developed for grid-tie inverter. This paper discusses the design, simulation and practical implementation of control system described in various micro grid scenarios.

Keywords: microgrid, Grid-tie inverter, voltage control, automatic power control

Procedia PDF Downloads 665

Authors: M. Y. Lee, D. H. Shin, S. H. Park, W.C. Ham, S.K. Ko, C. G. Song

Abstract:

Photoacoustic Tomography (PAT) is a promising medical imaging modality that combines optical imaging contrast with the spatial resolution of ultrasound imaging. It can also distinguish the changes in biological features. But, real-time PAT system should be confirmed due to photoacoustic effect for tissue. Thus, we have developed a real-time PAT system using a custom-developed data acquisition board and ultrasound linear probe. To evaluate performance of our system, phantom test was performed. As a result of those experiments, the system showed satisfactory performance and its usefulness has been confirmed. We monitored the degradation of inflammation which induced on the rat’s kidney using real-time PAT.

Keywords: photoacoustic tomography, inflammation detection, rat, kidney, contrast agent, ultrasound

Procedia PDF Downloads 458

Authors: Konstantinos Sofianos, Michael Stefanidakis

Abstract:

Nowadays, advances in information and communication technologies offer a range of opportunities for new approaches, methods, and tools in the field of education and training. Teacher-centered learning has changed to student-centered learning. E-learning has now matured and enables the design and construction of intelligent learning systems. A smart learning system fully adapts to a student's needs and provides them with an education based on their preferences, learning styles, and learning backgrounds. It is a wise friend and available at any time, in any place, and with any digital device. In this paper, we propose an intelligent learning system, which includes an ontology with all elements of the learning process (learning objects, learning activities) and a massive open online course (MOOC) system. This intelligent learning system can be used in music education.

Keywords: intelligent learning systems, e-learning, music education, ontology, semantic web

Procedia PDF Downloads 312