Search results for: sol-gel processing

Authors: Sachin Singh, Thomas Penzel, Dinesh Nandan

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Accurate identification of Sleep Apnea Hypopnea Syndrom Diagnosis is difficult problem for human expert because of variability among persons and unwanted noise. This paper proposes the diagonosis of Sleep Apnea Hypopnea Syndrome (SAHS) using airflow, ECG, Pulse and SaO2 signals. The features of each type of these signals are extracted using statistical methods and ANN learning methods. These extracted features are used to approximate the patient's Apnea Hypopnea Index(AHI) using sample signals in model. Advance signal processing is also applied to snore sound signal to locate snore event and SaO2 signal is used to support whether determined snore event is true or noise. Finally, Apnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) event is calculated as per true snore event detected. Experiment results shows that the sensitivity can reach up to 96% and specificity to 96% as AHI greater than equal to 5.

Keywords: neural network, AHI, statistical methods, autoregressive models

Procedia PDF Downloads 119

Authors: S. M. Khairul Halim, Mojtaba Ghodsi, Morteza Mohammadzaheri

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Gait analysis is essential for diagnosing musculoskeletal and neurological conditions. However, current methods are often complex and expensive. This paper introduces a methodology for analysing gait parameters using a smart insole with a built-in accelerometer. The system measures stance time, swing time, step count, and cadence and wirelessly transmits data to a user-friendly IoT dashboard for centralized processing. This setup enables remote monitoring and advanced data analytics, making it a versatile tool for medical diagnostics and everyday usage. Integration with IoT enhances the portability and connectivity of the device, allowing for secure, encrypted data access over the Internet. This feature supports telemedicine and enables personalized treatment plans tailored to individual needs. Overall, the approach provides a cost-effective (almost 25 GBP), accurate, and user-friendly solution for gait analysis, facilitating remote tracking and customized therapy.

Keywords: gait analysis, IoT, smart insole, accelerometer sensor

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Authors: Shweta Kumari, Parmjit S. Panesar, Manab B. Bera

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The hydrolysis of lactose using β-galactosidase is one of the most promising biotechnological applications, which has wide range of potential applications in food processing industries. However, due to intracellular location of the yeast enzyme, and expensive extraction methods, the industrial applications of enzymatic hydrolysis processes are being hampered. The use of permeabilization technique can help to overcome the problems associated with enzyme extraction and purification of yeast cells and to develop the economically viable process for the utilization of whole cell biocatalysts in food industries. In the present investigation, standardization of permeabilization process of novel yeast isolate was carried out using a statistical model approach known as Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to achieve maximal b-galactosidase activity. The optimum operating conditions for permeabilization process for optimal β-galactosidase activity obtained by RSM were 1:1 ratio of toluene (25%, v/v) and ethanol (50%, v/v), 25.0 oC temperature and treatment time of 12 min, which displayed enzyme activity of 1.71 IU /mg DW.

Keywords: β-galactosidase, optimization, permeabilization, response surface methodology, yeast

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Authors: Francesca Scalisi, Cesare Sposito

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The building construction industry consumes a large amount of resources and energy, both during construction (embodied energy) and during the operational phase (operating energy). This paper presents a review of the literature on low carbon and low embodied energy materials in buildings. The embodied energy comprises the energy consumed during the extraction, processing, transportation, construction, and demolition of building materials. While designing a nearly zero energy building, it is necessary to choose and use materials, components, and technologies that allow to reduce the consumption of energy and also to reduce the emissions in the atmosphere during all the Life Cycle Assessment phases. The appropriate choice of building materials can contribute decisively to reduce the energy consumption of the building sector. The increasing worries for the environmental impact of construction materials are witnessed by a lot of studies. The mentioned worries have brought again the attention towards natural materials. The use of more sustainable construction materials and construction techniques represent a major contribution to the eco-efficiency of the construction industry and thus to a more sustainable development.

Keywords: embodied energy, embodied carbon, life cycle assessment, architecture, sustainability, material construction

Procedia PDF Downloads 343

Authors: Ruedee Niyomrath, Somboon Sarasit, Chaisri Tharaswatpipat

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This research aims to study the potential of local waste material in quantity and quality. The potential for such local forms of waste material used as renewable energy for the production of processed agricultural products. The results of this study are useful to producers of agricultural products to use fuel that in local, reduce production costs, and conservation. The results showed that Samut Songkhram is a small province located in the central Thailand, sea area, and subdivided into 3 districts. This province has a population of 80 percent of farmers and agriculture with 50 percent of the area planted to coconut growing. Productivity of coconut help create value for the primacy of the province. Waste materials from coconut have quantity and quality potentials for processing biomass into charcoal as the renewable energy for the production of processed agricultural products.

Keywords: waste, renewable energy, producing of product, processed agricultural products

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Authors: Randa Boukhris, Alima Damak, Dorra Sellami

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Fingervein biometric authentication is one of the most popular and accurate technologies. However, low cost embedded solution is still an open problem. In this paper, a real-time implementation of fingervein recognition process embedded in Raspberry-Pi has been proposed. The use of Raspberry-Pi reduces overall system cost and size while allowing an easy user interface. Implementation of a target technology has guided to opt some specific parallel and simple processing algorithms. In the proposed system, we use four structural directional kernel elements for filtering finger vein images. Then, a Top-Hat and Bottom-Hat kernel filters are used to enhance the visibility and the appearance of venous images. For feature extraction step, a simple Local Directional Code (LDC) descriptor is applied. The proposed system presents an Error Equal Rate (EER) and Identification Rate (IR), respectively, equal to 0.02 and 98%. Furthermore, experimental results show that real-time operations have good performance.

Keywords: biometric, Bottom-Hat, Fingervein, LDC, Rasberry-Pi, ROI, Top-Hat

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Authors: Somayeh Komeylian

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The antenna arrays for the entire 3D spherical coverage have been developed for their potential use in variety of applications such as radars and body-worn devices of the body area networks. In this study, we have rigorously revamped the hybrid antenna array using the optimum geometry of bowtie elements for achieving a significant improvement in the angular discrimination capability as well as in separating two adjacent targets. In this scenario, we have analogously investigated the effectiveness of increasing the virtual array length in fostering and enhancing the directivity and angular resolution in the 10 GHz frequency. The simulation results have extensively verified that the proposed antenna array represents a drastic enhancement in terms of size, directivity, side lobe level (SLL) and, especially resolution compared with the other available geometries. We have also verified that the maximum directivities of the proposed hybrid antenna array represent the robustness to the all  variations, which is accompanied by the uniform 3D scanning characteristic.

Keywords: bowtie antenna, hybrid antenna array, array signal processing, body area networks

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Authors: F. R. M. Nascimento, E. E. S. Lora, J. C. E. Palácio

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A mathematical model to investigate the performance of a two stage fixed bed downdraft gasifier operating with air, steam and oxygen mixtures as the gasifying fluid has been developed. The various conditions of mixtures for a double stage fluid entry, have been performed. The model has been validated through a series of experimental tests performed by NEST – The Excellence Group in Thermal and Distributed Generation of the Federal University of Itajubá. Influence of mixtures are analyzed through the Steam to Biomass (SB), Equivalence Ratio (ER) and the Oxygen Concentration (OP) parameters in order to predict the best operating conditions to obtain adequate output gas quality, once is a key parameter for subsequent gas processing in the synthesis of biofuels, heat and electricity generation. Results show that there is an optimal combination in the steam and oxygen content of the gasifying fluid which allows the user find the best conditions to design and operate the equipment according to the desired application.

Keywords: air, equilibrium, downdraft, fixed bed gasification, mathematical modeling, mixtures, oxygen steam

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Authors: Santos Maza, Enzo Aldoradin, Carlos Pariona, Eliud Arpi, Maria Rosales

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The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of flaying then bleeding anchovy (Engraulis ringens) immersed within a sodium citrate solution. Anchovy is a pelagic fish that readily deteriorates due to its high content of polyunsaturated fatty acids. As such, within the Peruvian food industry, the shelf life of frozen anchovy is explicitly 6 months, this short duration imparts a barrier to use for direct consumption human. Thus, almost all capture of anchovy by the fishing industry is eventually used in the production of fishmeal. We offer this an alternative to its typical production process in order to increase shelf life. In the present study, 100 kg of anchovies were captured and immediately mixed with ice on ship, maintaining a high quality sensory metric (e.g., with color blue in back) while still arriving for processing less than 2 h after capture. Anchovies with fat content of 3% were immediately flayed (i.e., reducing subcutaneous fat), beheaded, gutted and bled (i.e., removing hemoglobin) by immersion in water (Control) or in a solution of 2.5% sodium citrate (treatment), then subsequently frozen at -30 °C for 8 h in 2 kg batches. Subsequent glazing and storage at -25 °C for 14 months completed the experiments parameters. The peroxide value (PV), acidity (A), fatty acid profile (FAP), thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), heme iron (HI), pH and sensory attributes of the samples were evaluated monthly. The results of the PV, TBARS, A, pH and sensory analyses displayed significant differences (p<0.05) between treatment and control sample; where the sodium citrate treated samples showed increased preservation features. Specifically, at the beginning of the study, flayed, beheaded, gutted and bled anchovies displayed low content of fat (1.5%) with moderate amount of PV, A and TBARS, and were not rejected by sensory analysis. HI values and FAP displayed varying behavior, however, results of HI did not reveal a decreasing trend. This result is indicative of the fact that levels of iron were maintained as HI and did not convert into no heme iron, which is known to be the primary catalyst of lipid oxidation in fish. According to the FAP results, the major quantity of fatty acid was of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PFA) followed by saturated fatty acid (SFA) and then monounsaturated fatty acid (MFA). According to sensory analysis, the shelf life of flayed, beheaded and gutted anchovy (control and treatment) was 14 months. This shelf life was reached at laboratory level because high quality anchovies were used and immediately flayed, beheaded, gutted, bled and frozen. Therefore, it is possible to maintain the shelf life of anchovies for a long time. Overall, this method displayed a large increase in shelf life relative to that commonly seen for anchovies in this industry. However, these results should be extrapolated at industrial scales to propose better processing conditions and improve the quality of anchovy for direct human consumption.

Keywords: citrate sodium solution, heme iron, polyunsaturated fatty acids, shelf life of frozen anchovy

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Authors: Waqas A. Toor, Anis U. Baig, Nuaman Shafqat, Raafia Irfan, Muhammad Ashraf

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A 2.45GHz microwave plasma system and its few applications have been developed. Argon and helium plasma is produced by metallic nozzle and also in a quartz tube at atmospheric pressure, using WR-340 waveguide and its tapered version. The waveguide applicator is also simulated in HFSS and field patterns are analyzed for maximum power absorption in the load. The system is tuned to operate at less than 10% reflected power. Various experimental techniques are used to initiate and sustain the plasma at atmospheric pressure. Plasma of atmospheric air is also produced without using any other shielding gas. The plasma flame is also characterized by its spectrum. Spectral analyses of plasma flame can be used for online analysis of combustion gases produced in industry. The applications of the system include glass and quartz processing, vitrification, emission spectroscopy, plasma coating. Low pressure plasma applications of the system include intense UV light for water purification and ozone generation.

Keywords: HFSS high frequency structure simulator, Microwave plasma, UV ultraviolet, WR rectangular waveguide

Procedia PDF Downloads 271

Authors: Marcos Bosques-Perez, Walter Izquierdo, Harold Martin, Liangdon Deng, Josue Rodriguez, Thony Yan, Mercedes Cabrerizo, Armando Barreto, Naphtali Rishe, Malek Adjouadi

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Aerial imagery is a powerful tool when it comes to analyzing temporal changes in ecosystems and extracting valuable information from the observed scene. It allows us to identify and assess various elements such as objects, structures, textures, waterways, and shadows. To extract meaningful information, multispectral cameras capture data across different wavelength bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this study, the collected multispectral aerial images were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) to identify independent and uncorrelated components or features that extend beyond the visible spectrum captured in standard RGB images. The results demonstrate that these principal components contain unique characteristics specific to certain wavebands, enabling effective object identification and image segmentation.

Keywords: big data, image processing, multispectral, principal component analysis

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Authors: Mahdi Bazarganigilani

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Aortic enlargement, also known as an aortic aneurysm, can occur when the walls of the aorta become weak. This disease can become deadly if overlooked and undiagnosed. In this paper, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system was introduced to accurately diagnose aortic enlargement from chest x-ray images. An enhanced convolutional neural network (CNN) was employed and then trained by transfer learning by using three different main areas from the original images. The areas included the left lung, heart, and right lung. The accuracy of the system was then evaluated on 1001 samples by using 4-fold cross-validation. A promising accuracy of 90% was achieved in terms of the F-measure indicator. The results showed using different areas from the original image in the training phase of CNN could increase the accuracy of predictions. This encouraged the author to evaluate this method on a larger dataset and even on different CAD systems for further enhancement of this methodology.

Keywords: computer-aided diagnosis systems, aortic enlargement, chest X-ray, image processing, convolutional neural networks

Procedia PDF Downloads 162

Authors: F. Kovács, K. Kádár, G. Hosszú, Á. T. Balogh, T. Zsedrovits, N. Kersner, A. Nagy, Gy. Jeney

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The paper presents a novel screening method to indicate congenital heart diseases (CHD), which otherwise could remain undetected because of their low level. Therefore, not belonging to the high-risk population, the pregnancies are not subject to the regular fetal monitoring with ultrasound echocardiography. Based on the fact that CHD is a morphological defect of the heart causing turbulent blood flow, the turbulence appears as a murmur, which can be detected by fetal phonocardiography (fPCG). The proposed method applies measurements on the maternal abdomen and from the recorded sound signal a sophisticated processing determines the fetal heart murmur. The paper describes the problems and the additional advantages of the fPCG method including the possibility of measurements at home and its combination with the prescribed regular cardiotocographic (CTG) monitoring. The proposed screening process implemented on a telemedicine system provides an enhanced safety against hidden cardiac diseases.

Keywords: cardiac murmurs, fetal phonocardiography, screening of CHDs, telemedicine system

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Authors: Yaacoub Tina, Youssef Roua, Radoi Emanuel, Burel Gilles

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Recently, low-complexity sub-Nyquist sampling schemes based on the Finite Rate of Innovation (FRI) theory have been introduced to sample parametric signals at minimum rates. The multichannel modulating waveforms (MCMW) is such an efficient scheme, where the received signal is mixed with an appropriate set of arbitrary waveforms, integrated and sampled at rates far below the Nyquist rate. In this paper, the MCMW scheme is adapted to the special case of ultra wideband (UWB) channel estimation, characterized by dense multipaths. First, an appropriate structure, which accounts for the bandpass spectrum feature of UWB signals, is defined. Then, a novel approach to decrease the number of processing channels and reduce the complexity of this sampling scheme is presented. Finally, the proposed concepts are validated by simulation results, obtained with real filters, in the framework of a coherent Rake receiver.

Keywords: coherent rake receiver, finite rate of innovation, sub-nyquist sampling, ultra wideband

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Authors: Chia-Feng Lu, Yuh-Jen Wang, Yu-Te Wu, Sui-Hing Yan

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This study aimed at investigating whether the functional brain networks constructed using the initial EEG (obtained when patients first visited hospital) can be correlated with the progression of cognitive decline calculated as the changes of mini-mental state examination (MMSE) scores between the latest and initial examinations. We integrated the time–frequency cross mutual information (TFCMI) method to estimate the EEG functional connectivity between cortical regions, and the network analysis based on graph theory to investigate the organization of functional networks in aMCI. Our finding suggested that higher integrated functional network with sufficient connection strengths, dense connection between local regions, and high network efficiency in processing information at the initial stage may result in a better prognosis of the subsequent cognitive functions for aMCI. In conclusion, the functional connectivity can be a useful biomarker to assist in prediction of cognitive declines in aMCI.

Keywords: cognitive decline, functional connectivity, MCI, MMSE

Procedia PDF Downloads 383

Authors: Ashish Kumar, Kaptan Singh, Amit Saxena

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Today, it is believed that crimes have the greatest impact on a person's ability to progress financially and personally. Identifying places where individuals shouldn't go is crucial for preventing crimes and is one of the key considerations. As society and technologies have advanced significantly, so have crimes and the harm they wreak. When there is a concentration of people in one place and changes happen quickly, it is even harder to prevent. Because of this, many crime prevention strategies have been embraced as a component of the development of smart cities in numerous cities. However, crimes can occur anywhere; all that is required is to identify the pattern of their occurrences, which will help to lower the crime rate. In this paper, an analysis related to crime has been done; information related to crimes is collected from all over India that can be accessed from anywhere. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between several factors and India's crime rate. The review has covered information related to every state of India and their associated regions of the period going in between 2001- 2014. However various classes of violations have a marginally unique scope over the years.

Keywords: K-nearest neighbor, random forest, decision tree, pre-processing

Procedia PDF Downloads 93

Authors: Lilah Inzelberg, David Rand, Stanislav Steinberg, Moshe David Pur, Yael Hanein

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Human facial expressions carry important psychological and neurological information. Facial expressions involve the co-activation of diverse muscles. They depend strongly on personal affective interpretation and on social context and vary between spontaneous and voluntary activations. Smiling, as a special case, is among the most complex facial emotional expressions, involving no fewer than 7 different unilateral muscles. Despite their ubiquitous nature, smiles remain an elusive and debated topic. Smiles are associated with happiness and greeting on one hand and anger or disgust-masking on the other. Accordingly, while high-resolution recording of muscle activation patterns, in a non-interfering setting, offers exciting opportunities, it remains an unmet challenge, as contemporary surface facial electromyography (EMG) methodologies are cumbersome, restricted to the laboratory settings, and are limited in time and resolution. Here we present a wearable and non-invasive method for objective mapping of facial muscle activation and demonstrate its application in a natural setting. The technology is based on a recently developed dry and soft electrode array, specially designed for surface facial EMG technique. Eighteen healthy volunteers (31.58 ± 3.41 years, 13 females), participated in the study. Surface EMG arrays were adhered to participant left and right cheeks. Participants were instructed to imitate three facial expressions: closing the eyes, wrinkling the nose and smiling voluntary and to watch a funny video while their EMG signal is recorded. We focused on muscles associated with 'enjoyment', 'social' and 'masked' smiles; three categories with distinct social meanings. We developed a customized independent component analysis algorithm to construct the desired facial musculature mapping. First, identification of the Orbicularis oculi and the Levator labii superioris muscles was demonstrated from voluntary expressions. Second, recordings of voluntary and spontaneous smiles were used to locate the Zygomaticus major muscle activated in Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles. Finally, recording with a wireless device in an unmodified natural work setting revealed expressions of neutral, positive and negative emotions in face-to-face interaction. The algorithm outlined here identifies the activation sources in a subject-specific manner, insensitive to electrode placement and anatomical diversity. Our high-resolution and cross-talk free mapping performances, along with excellent user convenience, open new opportunities for affective processing and objective evaluation of facial expressivity, objective psychological and neurological assessment as well as gaming, virtual reality, bio-feedback and brain-machine interface applications.

Keywords: affective expressions, affective processing, facial EMG, high-resolution electromyography, independent component analysis, wireless electrodes

Procedia PDF Downloads 246

Authors: A. Biran, P. Sobhe Bidari, A. Almazroe, V. Lakshminarayanan, K. Raahemifar

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Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a severe retinal disease which is caused by diabetes mellitus. It leads to blindness when it progress to proliferative level. Early indications of DR are the appearance of microaneurysms, hemorrhages and hard exudates. In this paper, an automatic algorithm for detection of DR has been proposed. The algorithm is based on combination of several image processing techniques including Circular Hough Transform (CHT), Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE), Gabor filter and thresholding. Also, Support Vector Machine (SVM) Classifier is used to classify retinal images to normal or abnormal cases including non-proliferative or proliferative DR. The proposed method has been tested on images selected from Structured Analysis of the Retinal (STARE) database using MATLAB code. The method is perfectly able to detect DR. The sensitivity specificity and accuracy of this approach are 90%, 87.5%, and 91.4% respectively.

Keywords: diabetic retinopathy, fundus images, STARE, Gabor filter, support vector machine

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Authors: Akella Amarendra Babu, Rama Devi Yellasiri, Natukula Sainath

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Where human beings can easily learn and adopt pronunciation variations, machines need training before put into use. Also humans keep minimum vocabulary and their pronunciation variations are stored in front-end of their memory for ready reference, while machines keep the entire pronunciation dictionary for ready reference. Supervised methods are used for preparation of pronunciation dictionaries which take large amounts of manual effort, cost, time and are not suitable for real time use. This paper presents an unsupervised adaptation model for building agile and dynamic pronunciation dictionaries online. These methods mimic human approach in learning the new pronunciations in real time. A new algorithm for measuring sound distances called Dynamic Phone Warping is presented and tested. Performance of the system is measured using an adaptation model and the precision metrics is found to be better than 86 percent.

Keywords: pronunciation variations, dynamic programming, machine learning, natural language processing

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Authors: Serge Provost, Yishan Zang

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Copulas are currently utilized in finance, reliability theory, machine learning, signal processing, geodesy, hydrology and biostatistics, among several other fields of scientific investigation. It follows from Sklar's theorem that the joint distribution function of a multidimensional random vector can be expressed in terms of its associated copula and marginals. Since marginal distributions can easily be determined by making use of a variety of techniques, we address the problem of securing the distribution of the copula. This will be done by using several approaches. For example, we will obtain bivariate least-squares approximations of the empirical copulas, modify the kernel density estimation technique and propose a criterion for selecting appropriate bandwidths, differentiate linearized empirical copulas, secure Bernstein polynomial approximations of suitable degrees, and apply a corollary to Sklar's result. Illustrative examples involving actual observations will be presented. The proposed methodologies will as well be applied to a sample generated from a known copula distribution in order to validate their effectiveness.

Keywords: copulas, Bernstein polynomial approximation, least-squares polynomial approximation, kernel density estimation, density approximation

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Authors: Md Shohidul Islam, Jongmyon Kim, Ui-pil Chong

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Medical image is an integral part of e-health care and e-diagnosis system. Medical image watermarking is widely used to protect patients’ information from malicious alteration and manipulation. The watermarked medical images are transmitted over the internet among patients, primary and referred physicians. The images are highly prone to corruption in the wireless transmission medium due to various noises, deflection, and refractions. Distortion in the received images leads to faulty watermark detection and inappropriate disease diagnosis. To address the issue, this paper utilizes error correction code (ECC) with (8, 4) Hamming code in an existing watermarking system. In addition, we implement the high complex ECC on a graphics processing units (GPU) to accelerate and support real-time requirement. Experimental results show that GPU achieves considerable speedup over the sequential CPU implementation, while maintaining 100% ECC efficiency.

Keywords: medical image watermarking, e-health system, error correction, Hamming code, GPU

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Authors: M. Samadzadeh Mahabadi, J. Shanbehzadeh

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This paper presents a hybrid digital image-watermarking scheme, which is robust against varieties of attacks and geometric distortions. The image content is represented by important feature points obtained by an image-texture-based adaptive Harris corner detector. These feature points are extracted from LL2 of 2-D discrete wavelet transform which are obtained by using the Harris-Laplacian detector. We calculate the Fourier transform of circular regions around these points. The amplitude of this transform is rotation invariant. The experimental results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed method against the geometric distortions and various common image processing operations such as JPEG compression, colour reduction, Gaussian filtering, median filtering, and rotation.

Keywords: digital watermarking, geometric distortions, geometrical attack, Harris Laplace, important feature points, rotation, scale invariant feature

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Authors: Violina R. Angelova, Mariana N. Perifanova-Nemska, Galina P. Uzunova, Elitsa N. Kolentsova

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Comparative research has been conducted to allow us to determine the accumulation of heavy metals (Pb, Zn and Cd) in the vegetative and reproductive organs of safflower, and to identify the possibility of its growth on soils contaminated by heavy metals and efficacy for phytoremediation. The experiment was performed on an agricultural field contaminated by the Non-Ferrous-Metal Works (MFMW) near Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The experimental plots were situated at different distances (0.1, 0.5, 2.0, and 15 km) from the source of pollution. The contents of heavy metals in plant materials (roots, stems, leaves, seeds) were determined. The quality of safflower oils (heavy metals and fatty acid composition) was also determined. The quantitative measurements were carried out with inductively-coupled plasma (ICP). Safflower is a plant that is tolerant to heavy metals and can be referred to the hyperaccumulators of lead and cadmium and the accumulators of zinc. The plant can be successfully used in the phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils. The processing of safflower seeds into oil and the use of the obtained oil will greatly reduce the cost of phytoremediation.

Keywords: heavy metals, accumulation, safflower, polluted soils, phytoremediation

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Authors: Rifda Naufalin, Nurul Latifasari, Siti Nuryanti, Muna Ridha Hanifah

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Kecombrang is a Zingiberaceae plant which has antioxidant properties. The high antioxidant content in kecombrang flowers has the potential to be processed as a functional beverage raw material so that it can be used as an ingredient in making herbal teas. The purpose of this study was to determine the chemical components, physicochemistry, antioxidant activity and sensory characteristics of kecombrang tea. The research methodology was carried out by using a completely randomized design with processing factors of kecombrang tea namely blanching and non-blanching, fermentation and non-fermentation, and the optimal time for drying kecombrang tea. The best treatment combination based on the effective index method is the treatment of the blanching process followed by drying at a temperature of 50ᵒC until the 2% moisture content can produce kecombrang tea with a total phenol content of 5.95 mg Tannic Acid Equivalent (TAE) / gram db, total flavonoid 3%, pH 4.5, and antioxidant activity 82.95%, red color, distinctive aroma of tea, fresh taste, and preferred by panelists.

Keywords: kecombrang tea, blanching, fermentation, total phenol, and antioxidant activity

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Authors: Agria Rhamdhan

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WhatsApp as the most popular mobile messaging app has been used as evidence in many criminal cases. As the use of mobile messages generates large amounts of data, forensic investigation faces the challenge of large data problems. The hardest part of finding this important evidence is because current practice utilizes tools and technique that require manual analysis to check all messages. That way, analyze large sets of mobile messaging data will take a lot of time and effort. Our work offers methodologies based on forensic triage to reduce large data to manageable sets resulting easier to do detailed reviews, then show the results through interactive visualization to show important term, entities and relationship through intelligent ranking using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Model. By implementing this methodology, investigators can improve investigation processing time and result's accuracy.

Keywords: forensics, triage, visualization, WhatsApp

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Authors: Mohammad Younus Bhat

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The quaternion offset linear canonical transform (QOLCT), which isa time-shifted and frequency-modulated version of the quaternion linear canonical transform (QLCT), provides a more general framework of most existing signal processing tools. For the generalized QOLCT, the classical Heisenberg’s and Lieb’s uncertainty principles have been studied recently. In this paper, we first define the short-time quaternion offset linear canonical transform (ST-QOLCT) and drive its relationship with the quaternion Fourier transform (QFT). The crux of the paper lies in the generalization of several well-known uncertainty principles for the ST-QOLCT, including Donoho-Stark’s uncertainty principle, Hardy’s uncertainty principle, Beurling’s uncertainty principle, and the logarithmic uncertainty principle.

Keywords: Quaternion Fourier transform, Quaternion offset linear canonical transform, short-time quaternion offset linear canonical transform, uncertainty principle

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Authors: Amir Doustgani

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Melt electrospinning is a safe and simple technique for the production of micro and nanofibers which can be an alternative to conventional solvent electrospinning. The effects of various melt-electrospinning parameters, including molecular weight, electric field strength, flow rate and temperature on the morphology and fiber diameter of polylactic acid were studied. It was shown that molecular weight was the predominant factor in determining the obtainable fiber diameter of the collected fibers. An orthogonal design was used to examine process parameters. Results showed that molecular weight is the most effective parameter on the average fiber diameter of melt electrospun PLA nanofibers and the flow rate has the less important impact. Mean fiber diameter increased by increasing MW and flow rate, but decreased by increasing electric field strength and temperature. MFD of optimized fibers was below 100 nm and the result of software was in good agreement with the experimental condition.

Keywords: fiber formation, processing, spinning, melt blowing

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Authors: Thanasis K. Barlas, Helge A. Madsen

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A novel Active Flap System (AFS) has been developed at DTU Wind Energy, as a result of a 3-year R\&D project following almost 10 years of innovative research in this field. The full-scale AFS comprises an active deformable trailing edge has been tested at the unique rotating test facility at the Risoe Campus of DTU Wind Energy in Denmark. The design and instrumentation of the wing section and the active flap system (AFS) are described. The general description and objectives of the rotating test rig at the Risoe campus of DTU are presented, as used for the aeroelastic testing of the AFS in the recently finalized INDUFLAP project. The general description and objectives are presented, along with an overview of sensors on the setup and the test cases. The post-processing of data is discussed and results of steady flap step and azimuth control flap cases are presented.

Keywords: morphing, adaptive, flap, smart blade, wind turbine

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Authors: Yuyan Yi, Jingyi Zheng, Nedret Billor

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Independent component analysis (ICA) is one of the most commonly used blind source separation (BSS) techniques for signal pre-processing, such as noise reduction and feature extraction. The main parameter in the ICA method is the number of independent components (IC). Although there have been several methods for the determination of the number of ICs, it has not been given sufficient attentionto this important parameter. In this study, wereview the mostused methods fordetermining the number of ICs and providetheir advantages and disadvantages. Further, wepropose an improved version of column-wise ICAByBlock method for the determination of the number of ICs.To assess the performance of the proposed method, we compare the column-wise ICAbyBlock with several existing methods through different ICA methods by using simulated and real signal data. Results show that the proposed column-wise ICAbyBlock is an effective and stable method for determining the optimal number of components in ICA. This method is simple, and results can be demonstrated intuitively with good visualizations.

Keywords: independent component analysis, optimal number, column-wise, correlation coefficient, cross-validation, ICAByblock

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Authors: M. G. R. S. Perera, B. S. Weerakoon, L. P. G. Sherminie, M. L. Jayatilake, R. D. Jayasinghe, W. Huang

Abstract:

The aim of this study was to measure and evaluate the Longitudinal Relaxation Times (T1) in bone marrow of an Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) patient in order to explore the potential for a prognostic biomarker using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which will be a non-invasive prognostic approach to AML. MR image data were collected in the DICOM format and MATLAB Simulink software was used in the image processing and data analysis. For quantitative MRI data analysis, Region of Interests (ROI) on multiple image slices were drawn encompassing vertebral bodies of L3, L4, and L5. T1 was evaluated using the T1 maps obtained. The estimated bone marrow mean value of T1 was 790.1 (ms) at 3T. However, the reported T1 value of healthy subjects is significantly (946.0 ms) higher than the present finding. This suggests that the T1 for bone marrow can be considered as a potential prognostic biomarker for AML patients.

Keywords: acute myeloid leukaemia, longitudinal relaxation time, magnetic resonance imaging, prognostic biomarker.

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