Search results for: asynchronous input

Authors: Emad Alenany, M. Adel El-Baz

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In this paper, the flow of different classes of patients into a hospital is modelled and analyzed by using the queueing network analyzer (QNA) algorithm and discrete event simulation. Input data for QNA are the rate and variability parameters of the arrival and service times in addition to the number of servers in each facility. Patient flows mostly match real flow for a hospital in Egypt. Based on the analysis of the waiting times, two approaches are suggested for improving performance: Separating patients into service groups, and adopting different service policies for sequencing patients through hospital units. The separation of a specific group of patients, with higher performance target, to be served separately from the rest of patients requiring lower performance target, requires the same capacity while improves performance for the selected group of patients with higher target. Besides, it is shown that adopting the shortest processing time and shortest remaining processing time service policies among other tested policies would results in, respectively, 11.47% and 13.75% reduction in average waiting time relative to first come first served policy.

Keywords: queueing network, discrete-event simulation, health applications, SPT

Procedia PDF Downloads 171

Authors: Yakin Hajlaoui, Richard Labib, Jean-François Plante, Michel Gamache

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This study introduces the Multi-Layer Inverse Distance Weighting Model (ML-IDW), inspired by the mathematical formulation of both multi-layer neural networks (ML-NNs) and Inverse Distance Weighting model (IDW). ML-IDW leverages ML-NNs' processing capabilities, characterized by compositions of learnable non-linear functions applied to input features, and incorporates IDW's ability to learn anisotropic spatial dependencies, presenting a promising solution for nonlinear spatial interpolation and learning from complex spatial data. it employ gradient descent and backpropagation to train ML-IDW, comparing its performance against conventional spatial interpolation models such as Kriging and standard IDW on regression and classification tasks using simulated spatial datasets of varying complexity. the results highlight the efficacy of ML-IDW, particularly in handling complex spatial datasets, exhibiting lower mean square error in regression and higher F1 score in classification.

Keywords: deep learning, multi-layer neural networks, gradient descent, spatial interpolation, inverse distance weighting

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Authors: Bentoutou Houari, Boutte Aissa, Belaidi El Yazid, Limam Lakhdar

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The integration of a load switch with a DC/DC buck converter using LM2596 for power distribution in low-cost educational nanosatellites is a technique that aims to efficiently manage the power distribution system in these small spacecraft. The converter is based on the LM2596 regulator and designed to step down the input voltage of +16.8V to +12V, +5V, and +3.3V output, which are suitable for the nanosatellite's various subsystems. The load switch is based on MOSFET and is used to turn on or off the power supply to a particular load and protect the nanosatellite from power surges. A prototype of a +12V DC/DC buck converter with a high side load switch has been realized and tested, which meets our requirements and shows a good efficiency of 89%. In addition, the prototype features a capacitor between the source and gate of the MOSFET, which has effectively reduced the inrush current, demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in reducing surges of current when the load is connected. The output current and voltage were measured at 0.7A and 11.89V, respectively, making this design suitable for use in low-cost educational nanosatellites.

Keywords: DC/DC buck converter, load switch, LM2596, electrical power subsystems, nanosatellite, inrush current

Procedia PDF Downloads 81

Authors: Taher Bahrani

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Armed with technological development, the present study aimed at gauging the effectiveness of exposure to news and movies as two types of audio-visual programs on improving language learners’ listening comprehension at the intermediate level. To this end, a listening comprehension test was administered to 108 language learners and finally 60 language learners were selected as intermediate language learners and randomly divided into group one and group two. During the experiment, group one participants had exposure to audio-visual news stories to work on in-and out-side the classroom. On the contrary, the participants in group two had only exposure to a sample selected utterances extracted from different kinds of movies. At the end of the experiment, both groups took another sample listening test to find out to what extent the participants in each group could enhance their listening comprehension. The results obtained from the post-test were indicative of the fact that the participants who had exposure to news outperformed the participants who had exposure to movies. The findings of the present research seem to indicate that the language input embedded in the type of audio-visual programs which language learners are exposed to is more important than the amount of exposure.

Keywords: audio-visual news, movies, listening comprehension, intermediate level

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Authors: Lewis Wallace, William Dempster, David Nash, Alexandros Boukis, Craig Maclean

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This paper, through traditional test methods and close adherence to international standards, presents a characterization study of a woven Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET). Testing is undergone in the axial, shear, and out-of-plane (bend) directions, and the results are fitted to the *FABRIC material model with ABAQUS FEA. The non-linear behaviors of the fabric in the axial and shear directions and behaviors on the macro scale are explored at the meso scale level. The medical grade bio-fabric is tested in untreated and heat-treated forms, and deviations are closely analyzed at the micro, meso, and macro scales to determine the effects of the process. The heat-treatment process was found to increase the stiffness of the fabric during axial and bending stiffness testing but had a negligible effect on the shear response. The ability of *FABRIC to capture behaviors unique to fabric deformation is discussed, whereby the unique phenomenological input can accurately represent the experimentally derived inputs.

Keywords: experimental techniques, FEA modelling, materials characterization, post-processing techniques

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Authors: Mayada Attia Ibrahim

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Evaluating and developing the electroplating production process is a key challenge in this type of process. The process is influenced by several factors such as process parameters, process costs, and production environments. Analyzing and optimizing all these factors together requires extensive analytical techniques that are not available in real-case industrial entities. This paper presents a practice-based framework for the evaluation and optimization of some of the crucial factors that affect the costs and production times associated with this type of process, energy costs, material costs, and product flow times. The proposed approach uses Design of Experiments, Discrete-Event Simulation, and Theory of Constraints were respectively used to identify the most significant factors affecting the production process and simulate a real production line to recognize the effect of these factors and assign possible bottlenecks. Several scenarios are generated as corrective strategies for improving the production line. Following that, data envelopment analysis CCR input-oriented DEA model is used to evaluate and optimize the suggested scenarios.

Keywords: electroplating process, simulation, design of experiment, performance optimization, theory of constraints, data envelopment analysis

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Authors: R. S. Sheu, H. Usman, M. S. Lawal

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Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model based control of a load frequency deviation in a single machine with limit nonlinearity on power coefficient is presented in the paper. Two T-S fuzzy rules with only rotor angle variable as input in the premise part, and linear state space models in the consequent part involving characteristic matrices determined from limits set on the power coefficient constant are formulated, state feedback control gains for closed loop control was determined from the formulated Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) with eigenvalue optimization scheme for asymptotic and exponential stability (speed of esponse). Numerical evaluation of the closed loop object was carried out in Matlab. Simulation results generated of both the open and closed loop system showed the effectiveness of the control scheme in maintaining load frequency stability.

Keywords: T-S fuzzy model, state feedback control, linear matrix inequality (LMI), frequency deviation control

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Authors: Avichal Malhotra, Jerome Frisch, Christoph van Treeck

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The utilization of semantic, cadastral and topological data from geographic information systems (GIS) has exponentially increased for building and urban-scale energy performance simulations. Urban planners, simulation scientists, and researchers use virtual 3D city models for energy analysis, algorithms and simulation tools. For dynamic energy simulations at city and district level, this paper provides an overview of the available GIS data models and their levels of detail. Adhering to different norms and standards, these models also intend to describe building and construction industry data. For further investigations, CityGML data models are considered for simulations. Though geographical information modelling has considerably many different implementations, extensions of virtual city data can also be made for domain specific applications. Highlighting the use of the extended CityGML models for energy researches, a brief introduction to the Energy Application Domain Extension (ADE) along with its significance is made. Consequently, addressing specific input simulation data, a workflow using Modelica underlining the usage of GIS information and the quantification of its significance over annual heating energy demand is presented in this paper.

Keywords: CityGML, EnergyADE, energy performance simulation, GIS

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Authors: Yas Barzegar, Atrin Barzegar

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Drinking water quality assessment is a major issue today; technology and practices are continuously improving; Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods prove their efficiency in this domain. The current research seeks a hierarchical fuzzy model for predicting drinking water quality in Rome (Italy). The Mamdani fuzzy inference system (FIS) is applied with different defuzzification methods. The Proposed Model includes three fuzzy intermediate models and one fuzzy final model. Each fuzzy model consists of three input parameters and 27 fuzzy rules. The model is developed for water quality assessment with a dataset considering nine parameters (Alkalinity, Hardness, pH, Ca, Mg, Fluoride, Sulphate, Nitrates, and Iron). Fuzzy-logic-based methods have been demonstrated to be appropriate to address uncertainty and subjectivity in drinking water quality assessment; it is an effective method for managing complicated, uncertain water systems and predicting drinking water quality. The FIS method can provide an effective solution to complex systems; this method can be modified easily to improve performance.

Keywords: water quality, fuzzy logic, smart cities, water attribute, fuzzy inference system, membership function

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Authors: Nor Diana Ahmad, Eric Atwell, Brandon Bennett

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Text processing techniques for English have been developed for several decades. But for the Malay language, text processing methods are still far behind. Moreover, there are limited resources, tools for computational linguistic analysis available for the Malay language. Therefore, this research presents the use of natural language processing (NLP) in processing Malay translated Qur’an text. As the result, a new language resource for Malay translated Qur’an was created. This resource will help other researchers to build the necessary processing tools for the Malay language. This research also develops a simple question-answer prototype to demonstrate the use of the Malay Qur’an resource for text processing. This prototype has been developed using Python. The prototype pre-processes the Malay Qur’an and an input query using a stemming algorithm and then searches for occurrences of the query word stem. The result produced shows improved matching likelihood between user query and its answer. A POS-tagging algorithm has also been produced. The stemming and tagging algorithms can be used as tools for research related to other Malay texts and can be used to support applications such as information retrieval, question answering systems, ontology-based search and other text analysis tasks.

Keywords: language resource, Malay translated Qur'an, natural language processing (NLP), text processing

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Authors: Getachew Demeissie Ayalew, Yongtao Sun, Yang Yang

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The spiral welded pipe manufacturing industry requires strict production standards for automated grinders for welding seams. However, traditional grinding machines in this sector are insufficient due to a lack of quality control protocols and inconsistent performance. This research aims to improve the quality of spiral welded pipes by developing intelligent automated abrasive belt grinding equipment. The system has equipped with six degrees of freedom (6 DOF) KUKA KR360 industrial robots, enabling concurrent grinding operations on both internal and external welds. The grinding robot control system is designed with a PLC, and a human-machine interface (HMI) system is employed for operations. The system includes an electric speed controller, data connection card, DC driver, analog amplifier, and HMI for input data. This control system enables the grinding of spiral welded pipe. It ensures consistent production quality and cost-effectiveness by reducing the product life cycle and minimizing risks in the working environment.

Keywords: Intelligent Systems, Spiral Welded Pipe, Grinding, Industrial Robot, End-Effector, PLC Controller System, 3D Laser Sensor, HMI.

Procedia PDF Downloads 265

Authors: F. S. Alavi

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In this study, MATLAB engineering software was used in order to model an industrial Ambient Air Vaporizer (AAV), considering combined convection and conduction heat transfers from the fins and the tube. The developed theoretical model was then used to investigate the effects of various design factors such as gas flow rate, ambient air temperature, fin thickness and etc. on total vaporizer ‘s length required. Cryogenic liquid nitrogen was selected as an input fluid, in all cases. According to the results, increasing the inlet fluid flow rate has direct linear effect on the total required length of vaporizer. Vaporizer’s required length decreases by increasing the size of fin radius or size of fin thickness. The dependency of vaporizer’s length on fin thickness’ size reduces at higher values of thickness and gradually converge to zero. For low flow rates, internal convection heat transfer coefficient depends directly on gas flow rate but it becomes constant, independent on flow rate after a specific value. As the ambient air temperature increases, the external heat transfer coefficient also increases and the total required length of vaporizer decreases.

Keywords: heat exchanger, modeling, heat transfer, design

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Authors: Prateek Guleria, Shubham Sharma, Rakesh Kumar Shukla, Harshit Sharma

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Performance measurement of small and medium-sized businesses is the primary need for all companies to survive and thrive in a dynamic global company. A structured and systematic, integrated organization increases employee reliability, sustainability, and loyalty. This paper is a case study of a gear manufacturing industry that was facing the problem of rejection due to dents and damages in gear. The DMAIC cycle, along with different tools used in the research work includes SIPOC (Supply, Input, Process, Output, Control) Pareto analysis, Root & Cause analysis, and FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis). The six-sigma level was improved from 4.06 to 3.46, and the rejection rate was reduced from 7.44% to 1.56%. These findings highlighted the influence of a Lean Six Sigma module in the gear manufacturing unit, which has already increased operational quality and continuity to increase market success and meet customer expectations. According to the findings, applying lean six sigma tools will result in increased productivity. The results could assist businesses in deciding the quality tools that were likely to improve efficiency, competitiveness, and expense.

Keywords: six sigma, DMAIC, SIPOC, failure mode, effect analysis

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Authors: Liang-Hsuan Chen, Sheng-Shing Nien

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This study aims to develop approaches to formulate intuitionistic fuzzy regression (IFR) models for many decision-making applications in the fuzzy environments using intuitionistic fuzzy observations. Intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (IFNs) are used to characterize the fuzzy input and output variables in the IFR formulation processes. A mathematical programming problem (MPP) is built up to optimally determine the IFR parameters. Each parameter in the MPP is defined as a couple of alternative numerical variables with opposite signs, and an intuitionistic fuzzy error term is added to the MPP to characterize the uncertainty of the model. The IFR model is formulated based on the distance measure to minimize the total distance errors between estimated and observed intuitionistic fuzzy responses in the MPP resolution processes. The proposed approaches are simple/efficient in the formulation/resolution processes, in which the sign of parameters can be determined so that the problem to predetermine the sign of parameters is avoided. Furthermore, the proposed approach has the advantage that the spread of the predicted IFN response will not be over-increased, since the parameters in the established IFR model are crisp. The performance of the obtained models is evaluated and compared with the existing approaches.

Keywords: fuzzy sets, intuitionistic fuzzy number, intuitionistic fuzzy regression, mathematical programming method

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Authors: Syed Adnan, Javed Iqbal

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In urban and rural areas groundwater is the most economic natural source of drinking. Groundwater resources of Pakistan are degraded due to high population growth and increased industrial development. A study was conducted in district Peshawar to assess groundwater vulnerable zones using GIS based DRASTIC model. Six input parameters (groundwater depth, groundwater recharge, aquifer material, soil type, slope and hydraulic conductivity) were used in the DRASTIC model to generate the groundwater vulnerable zones. Each parameter was divided into different ranges or media types and a subjective rating from 1-10 was assigned to each factor where 1 represented very low impact on pollution potential and 10 represented very high impact. Weight multiplier from 1-5 was used to balance and enhance the importance of each factor. The DRASTIC model scores obtained varied from 47 to 147. Using quantile classification scheme these values were reclassified into three zones i.e. low, moderate and high vulnerable zones. The areas of these zones were calculated. The final result indicated that about 400 km2, 506 km2, and 375 km2 were classified as low, moderate, and high vulnerable areas, respectively. It is recommended that the most vulnerable zones should be treated on first priority to facilitate the inhabitants for drinking purposes.

Keywords: DRASTIC model, groundwater vulnerability, GIS in groundwater, drinking sources

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Authors: Hamad Albadr

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With the development that has occurred in the orientation of universities from liability cognitive and maintain the culture of the community to responsibility job formation graduates to work according to the needs of the community development; representing universities in today's world, the prime motivator for the wheel of development in the community and find appropriate solutions to the problems they are facing and adapt to the demands of the changing environment. In this paper review of the reality of engineering education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its suitability to the requirements of the labor market, where they will be looking at the university as a system administrator educational using System Analysis Approach as one of the methods of modern management to analyze the performance of organizations and institutions, administrative and quality assessment. According to this approach is to deal with the system as a set of subsystems as components of the main divided into : input, process, and outputs, and the surrounding environment, will also be used research descriptive method and analytical , to gather information, data and analysis answers of the study population that consisting of a random sample of the beneficiaries of these services that the universities provided that about 500 professionals about employment in the business sector.

Keywords: universities in Saudi Arabia, engineering education, labor market, administrative, quality assessment

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Authors: Moiz Masood Syed, Seong-Jun Hong, Geun-Hie Rim, Kyung-Ae Cho, Hyoung-Suk Kim

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In the near future, energy storage will play a vital role to enhance the present changing technology. Energy storage with power generation becomes necessary when renewable energy sources are connected to the grid which consequently adjoins to the total energy in the system since utilities require more power when peak demand occurs. This paper describes the operational function of a 3 kW grid-connected residential Energy Storage System (ESS) which is connected with Photovoltaic (PV) at its input side. The system can perform bidirectional functions of charging from the grid and discharging to the grid when power demand becomes high and low respectively. It consists of PV module, Power Conditioning System (PCS) containing a bidirectional DC/DC Converter and bidirectional DC/AC inverter and a Lithium-ion battery pack. ESS Configuration, specifications, and control are described. The bidirectional DC/DC converter tracks the maximum power point (MPPT) and maintains the stability of PV array in case of power deficiency to fulfill the load requirements. The bidirectional DC/AC inverter has good voltage regulation properties like low total harmonic distortion (THD), low electromagnetic interference (EMI), faster response and anti-islanding characteristics. Experimental results satisfy the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Keywords: energy storage system, photovoltaic, DC/DC converter, DC/AC inverter

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Authors: Deepshikha Shukla, C. H. Solanki, Mayank K. Desai

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Amongst all the natural hazards, earthquakes have the potential for causing the greatest damages. Since the earthquake forces are random in nature and unpredictable, the quantification of the hazards becomes important in order to assess the hazards. The time and place of a future earthquake are both uncertain. Since earthquakes can neither be prevented nor be predicted, engineers have to design and construct in such a way, that the damage to life and property are minimized. Seismic hazard analysis plays an important role in earthquake design structures by providing a rational value of input parameter. In this paper, both mathematical, as well as computational methods adopted by researchers globally in the past five years, will be discussed. Some mathematical approaches involving the concepts of Poisson’s ratio, Convex Set Theory, Empirical Green’s Function, Bayesian probability estimation applied for seismic hazard and FOSM (first-order second-moment) algorithm methods will be discussed. Computational approaches and numerical model SSIFiBo developed in MATLAB to study dynamic soil-structure interaction problem is discussed in this paper. The GIS-based tool will also be discussed which is predominantly used in the assessment of seismic hazards.

Keywords: computational methods, MATLAB, seismic hazard, seismic measurements

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Authors: Francisco Borja de Lara, Ali Ravanbakhsh, Robert F. Wimmer-Schweingruber, Lars Seimetz, Fermín Navarro

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The intense structural loads during the launch of a spacecraft represent a challenge for the space structure designers because enough resistance has to be achieved while maintaining at the same time the mass and volume within the allowable margins of the mission requirements and inside the limits of the budget project. In this conference, we present the structural analysis of the Lunar Lander Neutron Dosimetry (LND) experiment on the Chang'E4 mission, the first probe to land on the moon’s far side included in the Chinese’ Moon Exploration Program by the Chinese National Space Administration. To this target, the software Nastran/Patran has been used: a structural model in Patran and a structural analysis through Nastran have been realized. Next, the results obtained are used both for the optimization process of the spacecraft structure, and as input parameters for the model structural test campaign. In this way, the feasibility of the lunar instrument structure is demonstrated in terms of the modal modes, stresses, and random vibration and a better understanding of the structural tests design is provided by our results.

Keywords: Chang’E4, Chinese national space administration, lunar lander neutron dosimetry, nastran-patran, structural analysis

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Authors: Ghania Zerari, Abderrezak Guessoum, Rachid Beguenane

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This paper introduces high-performance architecture for fully parallel stochastic Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) field programmable gate array (FPGA) based LDPC decoder. The new approach is designed to decrease the decoding latency and to reduce the FPGA logic utilisation. To accomplish the target logic utilisation reduction, the routing of the proposed sub-variable node (VN) internal memory is designed to utilize one slice distributed RAM. Furthermore, a VN initialization, using the channel input probability, is achieved to enhance the decoder convergence, without extra resources and without integrating the output saturated-counters. The Xilinx FPGA implementation, of IEEE 802.3an standard LDPC code, shows that the proposed decoding approach attain high performance along with reduction of FPGA logic utilisation.

Keywords: low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder, stochastic decoding, field programmable gate array (FPGA), IEEE 802.3an standard

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Authors: Antonello Troncone, Luigi Pugliese, Andrea Parise, Enrico Conte

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The present study deals with the landslides periodically reactivated by groundwater level fluctuations owing to rainfall. The main type of movement which generally characterizes these landslides consists in sliding with quite small-displacement rates. Another peculiar characteristic of these landslides is that soil deformations are essentially concentrated within a thin shear band located below the body of the landslide, which, consequently, undergoes an approximately rigid sliding. In this context, a simple method is proposed in the present study to forecast the movements of this type of landslides owing to rainfall. To this purpose, the landslide body is schematized by means of a two-block model. Some analytical solutions are derived to relate rainfall measurements with groundwater level oscillations and these latter, in turn, to landslide mobility. The proposed method is attractive for engineering applications since it requires few parameters as input data, many of which can be obtained from conventional geotechnical tests. To demonstrate the predictive capability of the proposed method, the application to a well-documented landslide periodically reactivated by rainfall is shown.

Keywords: rainfall, water level fluctuations, landslide mobility, two-block model

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Authors: Soheib Fergani

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This paper concerns with the formal asymptotic stability guarantees, analysis and evaluation of a nonlinear controlled unmanned aerial vehicles (uav) for trajectory tracking purpose. As the system has been recognised as an under-actuated non linear system, the control strategy has been oriented towards a hierarchical control. The dynamics of the system and the mission purpose make it mandatory to provide an absolute proof of the vehicle stability during the maneuvers. For this sake, this work establishes the complete theoretical proof for an implementable control oriented strategy that asymptotically stabilizes (GAS and LISS) the system and has never been provided in previous works. The considered model is reorganized into two partly decoupled sub-systems. The concidered control strategy is presented into two stages: the first sub-system is controlled by a nonlinear backstepping controller that generates the desired control inputs to stabilize the second sub-system. This methodology is then applied to a harware in the loop uav simulator (SiMoDrones) that reproduces the realistic behaviour of the uav in an indoor environment has been performed to show the efficiency of the proposed strategy.

Keywords: UAV application, trajectory tracking, backstepping, sliding mode control, input to state stability, stability evaluation

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Authors: Atinkut Atinafu Yilma, Eyob Messele Sefene

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Anomaly detection is one of the essential mechanisms to control and reduce production loss, especially in today's smart manufacturing. Quick anomaly detection aids in reducing the cost of production by minimizing the possibility of producing defective products. However, developing an anomaly detection model that can rapidly detect a production change is challenging. This paper proposes Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) combined with Random Forest (RF) to detect anomalies in the production process in real-time quickly. The GRU is used as a feature detector, and RF as a classifier using the input features from GRU. The model was tested using various synthesis and real-world datasets against benchmark methods. The results show that the proposed GRU-RF outperforms the benchmark methods with the shortest time taken to detect anomalies in the production process. Based on the investigation from the study, this proposed model can eliminate or reduce unnecessary production costs and bring a competitive advantage to manufacturing industries.

Keywords: anomaly detection, multivariate time series data, smart manufacturing, gated recurrent unit network, random forest

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Authors: Nebiat Lemenih Lenger

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Today, the digital economy is evolving faster than ever in Ethiopia. Platforms that provide a ride-hailing service are growing fast in the country. The market welcomed them as they disrupt it with quality services and lower prices. This revolution is, however, not without challenges. These include cybersecurity breaches, facilitating illegal economic activities, and challenging concepts of privacy. To mitigate the risks and utilize the benefits, appropriate regulation should be introduced in the economy. By identifying legal and institutional gaps in Ethiopia`s digital economy, this research work assists the government`s effort to create a better digital economy. Moreover, this study, being a pioneer study in the area, will be an input for further studies in academia. The research employs a qualitative legal research method and analyzes various legal and policy instruments in Ethiopia in comparison with best international experiences. As this research applies a qualitative research method, a grounded theory method of data analysis is used. The research concluded that Ethiopia is far from designing appropriate legal and regulatory infrastructures. Due to the government monopoly of the sector, there is poor digital infrastructure in the country. The existing labor laws have no specific provisions on the rights and obligations of gig workers.

Keywords: Ethiopia, gig economy, digital, ride-hailing, regulation

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Authors: M. Khairudin

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This paper investigates the system identification and design quantitative feedback theory (QFT) for the robust control of a lathe spindle. The dynamic of the lathe spindle is uncertain and time variation due to the deepness variation on cutting process. System identification was used to obtain the dynamics model of the lathe spindle. In this work, real time system identification is used to construct a linear model of the system from the nonlinear system. These linear models and its uncertainty bound can then be used for controller synthesis. The real time nonlinear system identification process to obtain a set of linear models of the lathe spindle that represents the operating ranges of the dynamic system. With a selected input signal, the data of output and response is acquired and nonlinear system identification is performed using Matlab to obtain a linear model of the system. Practical design steps are presented in which the QFT-based conditions are formulated to obtain a compensator and pre-filter to control the lathe spindle. The performances of the proposed controller are evaluated in terms of velocity responses of the the lathe machine spindle in corporating deepness on cutting process.

Keywords: lathe spindle, QFT, robust control, system identification

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Authors: Naif Albelwi, Alan Kwan, Yacine Rezgui

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Cities with rapid growth face tremendous challenges not only to provide services to meet this growth but also to assure that this growth occurs in a sustainable way. The consumption of material, energy, and water resources is inextricably linked to population growth with a unique impact in urban areas, especially in light of significant investments in infrastructure to support urban development. Urban Metabolism (UM) is becoming popular as it provides a framework accounting the mass and energy flows through a city. The objective of this study is to determine the energy and material flows of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia using locally generated data from 1996 and 2012 and analyzing the temporal trends of energy and material flows. Preliminary results show that while the population of Riyadh grew 90% since 1996, the input and output flows have increased at higher rate. Results also show increasing in energy mobile consumption from 61k TJ in 1996 to 157k TJ in 2012 which points to Riyadh’s inefficient urban form. The study findings highlight the importance to develop effective policies for improving the use of resources.

Keywords: energy and water consumption, sustainability, urban development, urban metabolism

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Authors: Jodie Hughes

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Endometriosis affects 1 in 10 individuals that were born female globally. Endometriosis incidence rates peak between 30-40 year of age, in young women and adolescents it is a rarely suspected and often ill-diagnosed. The average cost of endometriosis is €9,579 per woman. More than 75% of women have reported being absent from work due to endometriosis, with 40% of women becoming unemployed due to the disease. 46% of patients with endometriosis need to have appointments with upward of five doctors to gain a correct diagnosis. Quantitative data were collected by way of an online PSS-10 survey that included demographic questions from two sample groups of females, group 1 was females with endometriosis, group 2 were healthy women. The data were scored using Cohens scoring system, overall scores were input to SPSS. A non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test and ANOVA was used to ascertain any differences between the PSS-10 scores of the two groups. A significance level of P<0.05 was adopted. Four women were invited to take part in a semi structured interview that was recorded, transcribed and coded using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) using NVivo 12. Results showed that the PSS-10 scores were significantly higher in women with endometriosis compared to healthy women with a p=<0.005. Endometriosis affects all aspects of a patient’s life, to adequately diagnose and treat the condition and improve HRQoL there needs to be better understanding of the clinical symptoms and how they impact the lives of patients.

Keywords: endometriosis, HRQoL, perceived stress, women

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Authors: Nishank Raisinghani

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Efficiently predicting drug response remains a challenge in the realm of drug discovery. To address this issue, we propose four model architectures that combine graphical representation with varying positions of multiheaded self-attention mechanisms. By leveraging two types of multi-omics data, transcriptomics and genomics, we create a comprehensive representation of target cells and enable drug response prediction in precision medicine. A majority of our architectures utilize multiple transformer models, one with a graph attention mechanism and the other with a multiheaded self-attention mechanism, to generate latent representations of both drug and omics data, respectively. Our model architectures apply an attention mechanism to both drug and multiomics data, with the goal of procuring more comprehensive latent representations. The latent representations are then concatenated and input into a fully connected network to predict the IC-50 score, a measure of cell drug response. We experiment with all four of these architectures and extract results from all of them. Our study greatly contributes to the future of drug discovery and precision medicine by looking to optimize the time and accuracy of drug response prediction.

Keywords: drug discovery, transformers, graph neural networks, multiomics

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Authors: Kriti Jain, Sucha Singh Gill

Abstract:

Subsidies have been a major part of agricultural policies around the world, and more extensively since the green revolution in developing countries, for the sake of attaining higher agricultural productivity and achieving food security. But entrenched subsidies lead to distorted incentives and promote inefficiencies in the agricultural sector, threatening the viability of these very subsidies and sustainability of the agricultural production systems, posing a threat to the livelihood of farmers and laborers dependent on it. This paper analyzes the economic and ecological sustainability implications of prolonged input and output subsidies in agriculture by studying the case of Indian Punjab, an agriculturally developed state responsible for ensuring food security in the country when it was facing a major food crisis. The paper focuses specifically on the environmentally unsustainable cropping pattern changes as a result of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and assured procurement and on the resource use efficiency and cost implications of power subsidy for irrigation in Punjab. The study is based on an analysis of both secondary and primary data sources. Using secondary data, a time series analysis was done to capture the changes in Punjab’s cropping pattern, water table depth, fertilizer consumption, and electrification of agriculture. This has been done to examine the role of price and output support adopted to encourage the adoption of green revolution technology in changing the cropping structure of the state, resulting in increased input use intensities (especially groundwater and fertilizers), which harms the ecological balance and decreases factor productivity. Evaluation of electrification of Punjab agriculture helped evaluate the trend in electricity productivity of agriculture and how free power imposed further pressure on the extant agricultural ecosystem. Using data collected from a primary survey of 320 farmers in Punjab, the extent of wasteful application of groundwater irrigation, water productivity of output, electricity usage, and cost of irrigation driven electricity subsidy to the exchequer were estimated for the dominant cropping pattern amongst farmers. The main findings of the study revealed how because of a subsidy has driven agricultural framework, Punjab has lost area under agro climatically suitable and staple crops and moved towards a paddy-wheat cropping system, that is gnawing away the state’s natural resources like water table has been declining at a significant rate of 25 cms per year since 1975-76, and excessive and imbalanced fertilizer usage has led to declining soil fertility in the state. With electricity-driven tubewells as the major source of irrigation within a regime of free electricity and water-intensive crop cultivation, there is both wasteful application of irrigation water and electricity in the cultivation of paddy crops, burning an unproductive hole in the exchequer’s pocket. There is limited access to both agricultural extension services and water-conserving technology, along with policy imbalance, keeping farmers in an intensive and unsustainable production system. Punjab agriculture is witnessing diminishing returns to factor, which under the business-as-usual scenario, will soon enter the phase of negative returns to factor.

Keywords: cropping pattern, electrification, subsidy, sustainability

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Authors: Mehran Naghizaderokni, Asscar Janalizadechobbasty

Abstract:

There are more probabilistic and deterministic liquefaction evaluation procedures in order to judge whether liquefaction will occur or not. A review of this approach reveals that there is a need for a comprehensive procedure that accounts for different sources of uncertainty in liquefaction evaluation. In fact, for the same set of input parameters, different methods provide different factors of safety and/or probabilities of liquefaction. To account for the different uncertainties, including both the model and measurement uncertainties, reliability analysis is necessary. This paper has obtained information from Standard Penetration Test (SPT) and some empirical approaches such as: Seed et al, Highway bridge of Japan approach to soil liquefaction, The Overseas Coastal Area Development Institute of Japan (OCDI) and reliability method to studying potential of liquefaction in soil of Babol city in the north of Iran are compared. Evaluation potential of liquefaction in soil of Babol city is an important issue since the soil of some area contains sand, seismic area, increasing level of underground waters and consequently saturation of soil; therefore, one of the most important goals of this paper is to gain suitable recognition of liquefaction potential and find the most appropriate procedure of evaluation liquefaction potential to decrease related damages.

Keywords: reliability analysis, liquefaction, Babol, civil, construction and geological engineering

Procedia PDF Downloads 487