Search results for: Wireless Local Area NetworkWiFi.

Authors: Qingyue Wang, Jun Morita, Shinichi Nakamura, Di Wu, Xiumin Gong, Miho Suzuki, Makoto Miwa, Daisuke Nakajima

Abstract:

Cry j 1 is a causative substance of Japanese cedar pollinosis, and it may deteriorate by Cry j 1 invasion to a lower respiratory tract. We observed airborne particles containing Cry j 1 by an immunofluorescence technique using a fluorescence microscope, and we clarified that Cry j 1 exist as aggregates of airborne fine particles (< 1.1 μm) in the urban atmosphere. Airborne Cry j 1 may react with air pollutants and be denature to a substance deteriorated Japanese cedar pollinosis. Therefore, we applied a sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) to evaluate a Cry j 1 reacted with various air pollutants by liquid phase reaction, and calculated kinetics constants of Cry j 1 extracted from pollens collected in various sites and airborne fine particles containing Cry j 1 by using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) method. As a result, it is suggested that Cry j 1 may be denatured by air pollutants during the transportation to the urban atmosphere.

Keywords: Cry j 1, Japanese cedar pollinosis, SDS-PAGE, SPR

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Authors: M. Safa, S. Samarasinghe

Abstract:

An artificial neural network (ANN) approach was used to model the energy consumption of wheat production. This study was conducted over 35,300 hectares of irrigated and dry land wheat fields in Canterbury in the 2007-2008 harvest year.1 In this study several direct and indirect factors have been used to create an artificial neural networks model to predict energy use in wheat production. The final model can predict energy consumption by using farm condition (size of wheat area and number paddocks), farmers- social properties (education), and energy inputs (N and P use, fungicide consumption, seed consumption, and irrigation frequency), it can also predict energy use in Canterbury wheat farms with error margin of ±7% (± 1600 MJ/ha).

Keywords: Artificial neural network, Canterbury, energy consumption, modelling, New Zealand, wheat.

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Authors: D. Zare, H. Safiyari, F. Salmanizade

Abstract:

In this study, some physical and mechanical properties of jujube fruits, were measured and compared at constant moisture content of 15.5% w.b. The results showed that the mean length, width and thickness of jujube fruits were 18.88, 16.79 and 15.9 mm, respectively. The mean projected areas of jujube perpendicular to length, width, and thickness were 147.01, 224.08 and 274.60 mm2, respectively. The mean mass and volume were 1.51 g and 2672.80 mm3, respectively. The arithmetic mean diameter, geometric mean diameter and equivalent diameter varied from 14.53 to 20 mm, 14.5 to 19.94 mm, and 14.52 to 19.97 mm, respectively. The sphericity, aspect ratio and surface area of jujube fruits were 0.91, 0.89 and 926.28 mm2, respectively. Whole fruit density, bulk density and porosity of jujube fruits were measured and found to be 1.52 g/cm3, 0.3 g/cm3 and 79.3%, respectively. The angle of repose of jujube fruit was 14.66° (±0.58°). The static coefficient of friction on galvanized iron steel was higher than that on plywood and lower than that on glass surface. The values of rupture force, deformation, hardness and energy absorbed were found to be between 11.13-19.91N, 2.53- 4.82mm, 3.06-5.81N mm and 20.13-39.08 N/mm, respectively.

Keywords: Mechanical and Physical properties, Jujube fruits, friction coefficient

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Authors: Chad A. Long

Abstract:

The United States military is now commonly responding to complex humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters around the world. From catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti to typhoons devastating the Philippines, U.S. military assistance is requested when the event exceeds the local government's ability to assist the population. This study assesses the characteristics of catastrophes that surpass a nation’s individual ability to respond and recover from the event. The paper begins with a historical summary of military aid and then analyzes over 40 years of the United States military humanitarian response. Over 300 military operations were reviewed and coded based on the nature of the disaster. This in-depth study reviewed the U.S. military’s deployment events for cyclones and earthquakes to determine the strength of the natural disaster requiring external assistance. The climatological data for cyclone landfall and magnitude data for earthquake epicenters were identified, grouped into regions and analyzed for time-based trends. The results showed that foreign countries will likely request the U.S. military for cyclones with speeds greater or equal to 125 miles an hour and earthquakes at the magnitude of 7.4 or higher. These results of this study will assist the geographic combatant commands in determining future military response requirements.

Keywords: Cyclones, earthquakes, natural disasters, military.

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Authors: A. M. Omoare, E. O. Fakoya, B. G. Abiona, W. O. Oyediran

Abstract:

This study assessed fish marketing as panacea towards sustainable agriculture in Ogun State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used in the selection of 150 fish marketers for this study. Descriptive statistics were used for the objectives while Product Pearson Moment Correlation was used to test the hypothesis. Result of the findings revealed that the mean age of the respondents was 38.60 years. Majority (93.33%) of the respondents had acceptable levels of formal education. Many (44.00%) of the respondents had spent 1-5 years in fish marketing. The average quantity of fish sold in a day was 94.10kg. However, efficient fish marketing were hindered by inadequate processing equipment, storage rooms and ice holding facilities (86.67%). There was a significant relationship between socio-economic characteristics and profit realized from fish marketing (p < 0.05). It was recommended that storage and warehousing facilities should be provided to the fish marketers in the study area.

Keywords: Fish marketers, panacea, retail markets, sustainable.

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Authors: D. Yilmaz, M.R. Usal

Abstract:

Nozzle is the main part of various spinning systems such as air-jet and Murata air vortex systems. Recently, many researchers worked on the usage of the nozzle on different spinning systems such as conventional ring and compact spinning systems. In these applications, primary purpose is to improve the yarn quality. In present study, it was produced the yarns with two different nozzle types and determined the changes in yarn properties. In order to explain the effect of the nozzle, airflow structure in the nozzle was modelled and airflow variables were determined. In numerical simulation, ANSYS 12.1 package program and Fluid Flow (CFX) analysis method was used. As distinct from the literature, Shear Stress Turbulent (SST) model is preferred. And also air pressure at the nozzle inlet was measured by electronic mass flow meter and these values were used for the simulation of the airflow. At last, the yarn was modelled and the area from where the yarn is passing was included to the numerical analysis.

Keywords: Nozzle, compressed air, swirling airflow, yarn properties.

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Authors: Wenhao Lan, Ning Li, Qiang Tong

Abstract:

To improve the registration accuracy of a source point cloud and template point cloud when the initial relative deflection angle is too large, a PointNetLK algorithm combined with an oriented bounding box (PointNetLK-OBB) is proposed. In this algorithm, the OBB of a 3D point cloud is used to represent the macro feature of source and template point clouds. Under the guidance of the iterative closest point algorithm, the OBB of the source and template point clouds is aligned, and a mirror symmetry effect is produced between them. According to the fitting degree of the source and template point clouds, the mirror symmetry plane is detected, and the optimal rotation and translation of the source point cloud is obtained to complete the 3D point cloud registration task. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, a comparative experiment was performed using the publicly available ModelNet40 dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that, compared with PointNetLK, PointNetLK-OBB improves the registration accuracy of the source and template point clouds when the initial relative deflection angle is too large, and the sensitivity of the initial relative position between the source point cloud and template point cloud is reduced. The primary contribution of this paper is the use of PointNetLK to avoid the non-convex problem of traditional point cloud registration and leveraging the regularity of the OBB to avoid the local optimization problem in the PointNetLK context.

Keywords: Mirror symmetry, oriented bounding box, point cloud registration, PointNetLK-OBB.

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Authors: D. De-León-Escobedo, D. J. Delgado-Hernández, S. Pérez

Abstract:

A probabilistic formulation to assess the slopes safety under the hazard of strong storms is presented and illustrated through a slope in Mexico. The formulation is based on the classical safety factor (SF) used in practice to appraise the slope stability, but it is introduced the treatment of uncertainties, and the slope failure probability is calculated as the probability that SF<1. As the main hazard is the rainfall on the area, statistics of rainfall intensity and duration are considered and modeled with an exponential distribution. The expected life-cycle cost is assessed by considering a monetary value on the slope failure consequences. Alternative mitigation measures are simulated, and the formulation is used to get the measures driving to the optimal one (minimum life-cycle costs). For the example, the optimal mitigation measure is the reduction on the slope inclination angle.

Keywords: Expected life-cycle cost, failure probability, slopes failure, storms.

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Authors: Paulo Fernando Silva Filho, Elcio Hideiti Shiguemori

Abstract:

The selection of specific landmarks for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ Visual Navigation systems based on Automatic Landmark Recognition has significant influence on the precision of the system’s estimated position. At the same time, manual selection of the landmarks does not guarantee a high recognition rate, which would also result on a poor precision. This work aims to develop an automatic landmark selection that will take the image of the flight area and identify the best landmarks to be recognized by the Visual Navigation Landmark Recognition System. The criterion to select a landmark is based on features detected by ORB or AKAZE and edges information on each possible landmark. Results have shown that disposition of possible landmarks is quite different from the human perception.

Keywords: Clustering, edges, feature points, landmark selection, X-Means.

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Authors: Muhammad Jamaluddin Thaheem, Alberto De Marco

Abstract:

The area of Project Risk Management (PRM) has been extensively researched, and the utilization of various tools and techniques for managing risk in several industries has been sufficiently reported. Formal and systematic PRM practices have been made available for the construction industry. Based on such body of knowledge, this paper tries to find out the global picture of PRM practices and approaches with the help of a survey to look into the usage of PRM techniques and diffusion of software tools, their level of maturity, and their usefulness in the construction sector. Results show that, despite existing techniques and tools, their usage is limited: software tools are used only by a minority of respondents and their cost is one of the largest hurdles in adoption. Finally, the paper provides some important guidelines for future research regarding quantitative risk analysis techniques and suggestions for PRM software tools development and improvement.

Keywords: Construction industry, Project risk management, Software tools, Survey study.

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Authors: Ubonwan Chaiyo, Savitri Garivait, Kobsak Wanthongchai

Abstract:

The study site was located in Ratchaburi Province, Thailand. Four experimental plots in dry dipterocarp forest (DDF) and four plots in mixed deciduous forest (MDF) were set up to estimate the above-ground biomass of tree, sapling and bamboo. The allometry equations were used to investigate above-ground biomass of these vegetation. Seedling and other understory were determined using direct harvesting method. Carbon storage in above-ground biomass was calculated based on IPCC 2006. The results showed that the above-ground biomass of DDF at 20-40% slope, <20% slope and MDF at <20% slope were 91.96, 30.95 and 59.44 ton/ha, respectively. Bamboo covers about half of total aboveground biomass in MDF, which is a specific characteristic of this area. The carbon sequestration potential in above-ground biomass of plot slope range 20-40% DDF, <20% DDF and <20% MDF are 43.22, 14.55 and 27.94 ton C/ha, respectively.

Keywords: Carbon storage, aboveground biomass, tropical deciduous forest, dry dipterocarp forest, mixed deciduous forest.

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Authors: Dhurgham Al-Karawi, Nisreen Polus, Shakir Al-Zaidi, Sabah Jassim

Abstract:

The management of COVID-19 patients based on chest imaging is emerging as an essential tool for evaluating the spread of the pandemic which has gripped the global community. It has already been used to monitor the situation of COVID-19 patients who have issues in respiratory status. There has been increase to use chest imaging for medical triage of patients who are showing moderate-severe clinical COVID-19 features, this is due to the fast dispersal of the pandemic to all continents and communities. This article demonstrates the development of machine learning techniques for the test of COVID-19 patients using Chest X-Ray (CXR) images in nearly real-time, to distinguish the COVID-19 infection with a significantly high level of accuracy. The testing performance has covered a combination of different datasets of CXR images of positive COVID-19 patients, patients with viral and bacterial infections, also, people with a clear chest. The proposed AI scheme successfully distinguishes CXR scans of COVID-19 infected patients from CXR scans of viral and bacterial based pneumonia as well as normal cases with an average accuracy of 94.43%, sensitivity 95%, and specificity 93.86%. Predicted decisions would be supported by visual evidence to help clinicians speed up the initial assessment process of new suspected cases, especially in a resource-constrained environment.

Keywords: COVID-19, chest x-ray scan, artificial intelligence, texture analysis, local binary pattern transform, Gabor filter.

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Authors: Wei Zhang, Yao-Yu Li, Yi-Fan Zhu, Qun Li, Wei-Ping Wang

Abstract:

It-s known that incorporating prior knowledge into support vector regression (SVR) can help to improve the approximation performance. Most of researches are concerned with the incorporation of knowledge in the form of numerical relationships. Little work, however, has been done to incorporate the prior knowledge on the structural relationships among the variables (referred as to Structural Prior Knowledge, SPK). This paper explores the incorporation of SPK in SVR by constructing appropriate admissible support vector kernel (SV kernel) based on the properties of reproducing kernel (R.K). Three-levels specifications of SPK are studied with the corresponding sub-levels of prior knowledge that can be considered for the method. These include Hierarchical SPK (HSPK), Interactional SPK (ISPK) consisting of independence, global and local interaction, Functional SPK (FSPK) composed of exterior-FSPK and interior-FSPK. A convenient tool for describing the SPK, namely Description Matrix of SPK is introduced. Subsequently, a new SVR, namely Motivated Support Vector Regression (MSVR) whose structure is motivated in part by SPK, is proposed. Synthetic examples show that it is possible to incorporate a wide variety of SPK and helpful to improve the approximation performance in complex cases. The benefits of MSVR are finally shown on a real-life military application, Air-toground battle simulation, which shows great potential for MSVR to the complex military applications.

Keywords: admissible support vector kernel, reproducing kernel, structural prior knowledge, motivated support vector regression

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Authors: Wei Zhang, Yao-Yu Li, Yi-Fan Zhu, Qun Li, Wei-Ping Wang

Abstract:

It-s known that incorporating prior knowledge into support vector regression (SVR) can help to improve the approximation performance. Most of researches are concerned with the incorporation of knowledge in form of numerical relationships. Little work, however, has been done to incorporate the prior knowledge on the structural relationships among the variables (referred as to Structural Prior Knowledge, SPK). This paper explores the incorporation of SPK in SVR by constructing appropriate admissible support vector kernel (SV kernel) based on the properties of reproducing kernel (R.K). Three-levels specifications of SPK are studies with the corresponding sub-levels of prior knowledge that can be considered for the method. These include Hierarchical SPK (HSPK), Interactional SPK (ISPK) consisting of independence, global and local interaction, Functional SPK (FSPK) composed of exterior-FSPK and interior-FSPK. A convenient tool for describing the SPK, namely Description Matrix of SPK is introduced. Subsequently, a new SVR, namely Motivated Support Vector Regression (MSVR) whose structure is motivated in part by SPK, is proposed. Synthetic examples show that it is possible to incorporate a wide variety of SPK and helpful to improve the approximation performance in complex cases. The benefits of MSVR are finally shown on a real-life military application, Air-toground battle simulation, which shows great potential for MSVR to the complex military applications.

Keywords: admissible support vector kernel, reproducing kernel, structural prior knowledge, motivated support vector regression

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Authors: Antti Pirhonen, Minna Silvennoinen

Abstract:

The only relevant basis for the design of an educational application are objectives of learning for the content area. This study analyses the process in which the real – not only the formal – objectives could work as the starting point for the construction of an educational game. The application context is the education of perioperative nursing. The process is based on the panel discussions of nursing teachers. In the panels, the teachers elaborated the objectives. The transcribed discussions were analysed in terms of the conceptions of learning and teaching of perioperative nursing. The outcome of the study is first the elaborated objectives, which will be used in the implementation of an educational game for the needs of pre-, intra and post-operative nursing skills learning. Second, the study shows that different views of learning are necessary to be understood in order to design an appropriate educational application.

Keywords: Perioperative nursing, conceptions of learning, educational applications.

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Authors: Mahdi Hamzehei

Abstract:

In this research, heat transfer of a poly Ethylene fluidized bed reactor without reaction were studied experimentally and computationally at different superficial gas velocities. A multifluid Eulerian computational model incorporating the kinetic theory for solid particles was developed and used to simulate the heat conducting gas–solid flows in a fluidized bed configuration. Momentum exchange coefficients were evaluated using the Syamlal– O-Brien drag functions. Temperature distributions of different phases in the reactor were also computed. Good agreement was found between the model predictions and the experimentally obtained data for the bed expansion ratio as well as the qualitative gas–solid flow patterns. The simulation and experimental results showed that the gas temperature decreases as it moves upward in the reactor, while the solid particle temperature increases. Pressure drop and temperature distribution predicted by the simulations were in good agreement with the experimental measurements at superficial gas velocities higher than the minimum fluidization velocity. Also, the predicted time-average local voidage profiles were in reasonable agreement with the experimental results. The study showed that the computational model was capable of predicting the heat transfer and the hydrodynamic behavior of gas-solid fluidized bed flows with reasonable accuracy.

Keywords: Gas-solid flows, fluidized bed, Hydrodynamics, Heat transfer, Turbulence model, CFD

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Authors: Ali H. Mahfouz, Gao Ming-Jun, Mohamad Sharif

Abstract:

Slurry dredged soil at coastal area has a high water content, poor permeability, and low surface intensity. Hence, it is infeasible to use vacuum preloading method to treat this type of soil foundation. For the special case of super soft ground, a floating bridge is first constructed on muddy soil and used as a service road and platform for implementing the modified vacuum preloading method. The modified technique of vacuum preloading and its construction process for the super soft soil foundation improvement is then studied. Application of modified vacuum preloading method shows that the technology and its construction process are highly suitable for improving the super soft soil foundation in coastal areas.

Keywords: Super soft foundation, dredger fill, vacuum preloading, foundation treatment, construction technology.

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Authors: Dennis Corbett

Abstract:

The city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, provides a number of examples of how a growing city can integrate urban planning and water planning to achieve sustainable urban development, environmental protection, liveability and integrated water management outcomes, and move towards becoming a “Water Sensitive City". Three examples are provided - the development at Botanic Ridge, where a 318 hectare residential development is being planned and where integrated water management options are being implemented using a “triple bottom line" sustainability investment approach; the Toolern development, which will capture and reuse stormwater and recycled water to greatly reduce the suburb-s demand for potable water, and the development at Kalkallo where a 1,200 hectare industrial precinct development is planned which will merge design of the development's water supply, sewerage services and stormwater system. The Paper argues that an integrated urban planning and water planning approach is fundamental to creating liveable, vibrant communities which meet social and financial needs while being in harmony with the local environment. Further work is required on developing investment frameworks and risk analysis frameworks to ensure that all possible solutions can be assessed equally.

Keywords: Integrated water management, stormwater management, sustainable urban development.

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Authors: A. K. Al-Othman, Nabil A. Ahmed, A. M. Al-Kandari, H. K. Ebraheem

Abstract:

Selective harmonic elimination-pulse width modulation techniques offer a tight control of the harmonic spectrum of a given voltage waveform generated by a power electronic converter along with a low number of switching transitions. Traditional optimization methods suffer from various drawbacks, such as prolonged and tedious computational steps and convergence to local optima; thus, the more the number of harmonics to be eliminated, the larger the computational complexity and time. This paper presents a novel method for output voltage harmonic elimination and voltage control of PWM AC/AC voltage converters using the principle of hybrid Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm-Pattern Search (RGA-PS) method. RGA is the primary optimizer exploiting its global search capabilities, PS is then employed to fine tune the best solution provided by RGA in each evolution. The proposed method enables linear control of the fundamental component of the output voltage and complete elimination of its harmonic contents up to a specified order. Theoretical studies have been carried out to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method of selective harmonic elimination. Theoretical results are validated through simulation studies using PSIM software package.

Keywords: PWM, AC/AC voltage converters, selectiveharmonic elimination, direct search method, pattern search method, Real-coded Genetic algorithms, evolutionary algorithms andoptimization.

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Authors: Y. Deng, X. Li, C. Kwan, B. Raj, R. Stern

Abstract:

The current speech interfaces in many military applications may be adequate for native speakers. However, the recognition rate drops quite a lot for non-native speakers (people with foreign accents). This is mainly because the nonnative speakers have large temporal and intra-phoneme variations when they pronounce the same words. This problem is also complicated by the presence of large environmental noise such as tank noise, helicopter noise, etc. In this paper, we proposed a novel continuous acoustic feature adaptation algorithm for on-line accent and environmental adaptation. Implemented by incremental singular value decomposition (SVD), the algorithm captures local acoustic variation and runs in real-time. This feature-based adaptation method is then integrated with conventional model-based maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) algorithm. Extensive experiments have been performed on the NATO non-native speech corpus with baseline acoustic model trained on native American English. The proposed feature-based adaptation algorithm improved the average recognition accuracy by 15%, while the MLLR model based adaptation achieved 11% improvement. The corresponding word error rate (WER) reduction was 25.8% and 2.73%, as compared to that without adaptation. The combined adaptation achieved overall recognition accuracy improvement of 29.5%, and WER reduction of 31.8%, as compared to that without adaptation.

Keywords: speaker adaptation; environment adaptation; robust speech recognition; SVD; non-native speech recognition

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Authors: Umar Ubandawaki

Abstract:

Political participation involves voluntary and deliberate efforts by the members of a political system to determine the kinds of political institution and individuals that will govern them and equally influence the mobilization and allocation of the available societal resources. Over the years, youths in Nigeria participate actively in political party rallies and voting to elect their leaders and representatives in governance. This paper examines categories and nature of participation in politics as well as factors that drive youths into politics in Sokoto State. A survey conducted, through focus group discussions, interviews and questionnaire, in the six sampled Local Government of Sokoto State identifies three category of political participation; namely, active, moderate and apathetic participation. The findings reveal that 63.57% of respondents are apathetic to politics in the State and unemployed youth constitutes 34.74% of the entire responses. The paper establishes that lack of attainment of need (63.22%) is one of the reasons that make youths engage into participatory activities that encourage political thuggery and manipulation of electoral outcomes. The paper recommends that youths should be engaged into positive rational participatory activities that ensure inclusiveness and promotion of good governance in Nigeria. It is hoped that this will enlighten youths and policy implementers on the constructive strategies in controlling youths’ negative participation in politics in Nigeria.

Keywords: Democracy, Governance, Inclusiveness, Participation and Politics.

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Authors: Wei-Hwa Chiang, Hao-Hsiang Hsu, Jian-Sheng Huang

Abstract:

Appropriate ventilation in a classroom is helpful for enhancing air exchange rate and student concentration. This study focuses on the effects of fenestration in a four-story school building by performing numerical simulation of a building when considering indoor and outdoor environments simultaneously. The wind profile function embedded in PHOENICS code was set as the inlet boundary condition in a suburban environment. Sixteen fenestration combinations were compared in a classroom containing thirty seats. This study evaluates mean age of air (AGE) and airflow pattern of a classroom on different floors. Considering both wind profile and fenestration effects, the airflow on higher floors is channeled toward the area near ceiling in a room and causes older mean age of air in the breathing zone. The results in this study serve as a useful guide for enhancing natural ventilation in a typical school building.

Keywords: Cross ventilation, Fenestration effect, Wind profile, Mean age of air, CFD

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Authors: Ciprian Dobre

Abstract:

The scale, complexity and worldwide geographical spread of the LHC computing and data analysis problems are unprecedented in scientific research. The complexity of processing and accessing this data is increased substantially by the size and global span of the major experiments, combined with the limited wide area network bandwidth available. We present the latest generation of the MONARC (MOdels of Networked Analysis at Regional Centers) simulation framework, as a design and modeling tool for large scale distributed systems applied to HEP experiments. We present simulation experiments designed to evaluate the capabilities of the current real-world distributed infrastructure to support existing physics analysis processes and the means by which the experiments bands together to meet the technical challenges posed by the storage, access and computing requirements of LHC data analysis within the CMS experiment.

Keywords: Modeling and simulation, evaluation, large scale distributed systems, LHC experiments, CMS.

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Authors: N. Boshkova, K. Kamburova, N. Tabakova, N. Boshkov, Ts. Radeva

Abstract:

Coatings based on polyaniline (PANI) can improve the resistance of steel against corrosion. In this work, the preparation of stable suspensions of colloidal PANI-SiO₂ particles, suitable for obtaining of composite anticorrosive coating on steel, is described. Electrokinetic data as a function of pH are presented, showing that the zeta potentials of the PANI-SiO₂ particles are governed primarily by the charged groups at the silica oxide surface. Electrosteric stabilization of the PANI-SiO₂ particles’ suspension against aggregation is realized at pH>5.5 (EB form of PANI) by adsorption of positively charged polyelectrolyte molecules onto negatively charged PANI-SiO₂ particles. The PANI-SiO₂ particles are incorporated by electrodeposition into the metal matrix of zinc in order to obtain composite (hybrid) coatings. The latter are aimed to ensure sacrificial protection of steel mainly in aggressive media leading to local corrosion damages. The surface morphology of the composite zinc coatings is investigated with SEM. The influence of PANI-SiO₂ particles on the cathodic and anodic processes occurring in the starting electrolyte for obtaining of the coatings is followed with cyclic voltammetry. The electrochemical and corrosion behavior is evaluated with potentiodynamic polarization curves and polarization resistance measurements. The beneficial effect of the stabilized PANI-SiO₂ particles for the increased protective ability of the composites is commented and discussed.

Keywords: Corrosion, polyaniline particles, zinc, protective ability.

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Authors: Hai-Qing Xie, Yun Zeng, Yong-Hong Yan, Jian-Ping Zeng, Tai-Hong Wang

Abstract:

Photo-BJMOSFET (Bipolar Junction Metal-Oxide- Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) fabricated on SOI film was proposed. ITO film is adopted in the device as gate electrode to reduce light absorption. Depletion region but not inversion region is formed in film by applying gate voltage (but low reverse voltage) to achieve high photo-to-dark-current ratio. Comparisons of photoelectriccharacteristics executed among VGK=0V, 0.3V, 0.6V, 0.9V and 1.0V (reverse voltage VAK is equal to 1.0V for total area of 10×10μm2). The results indicate that the greatest improvement in photo-to-dark-current ratio is achieved up to 2.38 at VGK=0.6V. In addition, photo-BJMOSFET is compatible with CMOS integration due to big input resistance

Keywords: Photo-BJMOSFET, Responsivity, Sensitivity, Spectral response.

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Authors: K. Ishii, T. Furuichi, A. Fujiyama, S. Hariya

Abstract:

Rice straw pellets are a promising fuel as a renewable energy source. Financial analysis is needed to make a utilization system using rise straw pellets financially feasible, considering all regional conditions including stakeholders related to the collection and storage, production, transportation and heat utilization. We conducted the financial analysis of feasibility for a heat utilization system using rice straw pellets which has been developed for the first time in Nanporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Especially, we attempted to clarify the effect of factors required for the system to be financial feasibility, such as the heating energy demand and collection and storage method of rice straw. The financial feasibility was found to improve when increasing the heating energy demand and collecting wheat straw in August separately from collection of rice straw in November because the costs of storing rice straw and producing pellets were reduced. However, the system remained financially unfeasible. This study proposed a contractor program funded by a subsidy from Nanporo local government where a contracted company, instead of farmers, collects and transports rice straw in order to ensure the financial feasibility of the system, contributing to job creation in the region.

Keywords: Rice straw, pellets, heating energy demand, collection, storage.

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Authors: M. M. Isa, R. Abd-Rahman, H. H. Goh

Abstract:

A compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) is a wellknown non-imaging concentrator that will concentrate the solar radiation onto receiver (PV cell). One of disadvantage of CPC is has tall and narrow height compared to its diameter entry aperture area. Therefore, for economic reason, a truncation had been done by removed from the top of the full height CPC. This also will lead to the decreases of concentration ratio but it will be negligible. In this paper, the flux distribution of untruncated and truncated 2-D hollow compound parabolic trough concentrator (hCPTC) design is presented. The untruncated design has initial height H=193.4mm with concentration ratio C_(2-D)=4. This paper presents the optical simulation of compound parabolic trough concentrator using raytracing software TracePro. Results showed that, after the truncation, the height of CPC reduced 45% from initial height with the geometrical concentration ratio only decrease 10%. Thus, the cost of reflector and material dielectric usage can be saved especially at manufacturing site.

Keywords: Compound parabolic trough concentrator, optical modelling, ray-tracing analysis.

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Authors: Illyani Ibrahim, Azizan Abu Samah, Rosmadi Fauzi

Abstract:

Land surface temperature (LST) is an important parameter to study in urban climate. The understanding of the influence of biophysical factors could improve the establishment of modeling urban thermal landscape. It is well established that climate hold a great influence on the urban landscape. However, it has been recognize that climate has a low priority in urban planning process, due to the complex nature of its influence. This study will focus on the relatively cloud free Landsat Thematic Mapper image of the study area, acquired on the 2nd March 2006. Correlation analyses were conducted to identify the relationship of LST to the biophysical factors; vegetation indices, impervious surface, and albedo to investigate the variation of LST. We suggest that the results can be considered by the stackholders during decision-making process to create a cooler and comfortable environment in the urban landscape for city dwellers.

Keywords: Biophysical factors, land surface temperature, urban planning.

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Authors: Marzieh Moosavi-Nasab, Ali R. Yousefi, Hamed Askari, Maryam Bakhtiyari

Abstract:

In this study, static batch fermentation was used for bacterial cellulose production in date syrup solution (Bx. 10%) at 28°C using Gluconacetobacter. xylinus (PTCC 1734). The physicochemical properties of standard Sigma CMC and the produced carboxymethyl bacterial cellulose (CMBC) were studied using FT-IR spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). According to the FT-IR spectra the bands at 1664 and 1431 cm-1 indicate that carboxylic acid groups and carboxylate groups exist on the surface. The SEM imaging of CMBC and CMC carried out in magnification of 1K. Comparing the SEM imaging obviously showed that the ribbon shape in CMC remained but the length of ribbons became shorter while that shape changed to flake shape for CMBC. Determination of the area under XRD patterns demonstrated that the crystallinity amount of CMC was more than that for CMBC (51.08% and 81.84% for CMBC and CMC, respectively).

Keywords: Carboxymethyl bacterial cellulose, Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray diffractometry.

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Authors: D. R. Ambika, K. R. Radhika, D. Seshachalam

Abstract:

Unconstrained authentication is an important component for personal automated systems and human-computer interfaces. Existing solutions mostly use face as the primary object of analysis. The performance of face-based systems is largely determined by the extent of deformation caused in the facial region and amount of useful information available in occluded face images. Periocular region is a useful portion of face with discriminative ability coupled with resistance to deformation. A reliable portion of periocular area is available for occluded images. The present work demonstrates that joint representation of periocular texture and periocular structure provides an effective expression and poses invariant representation. The proposed methodology provides an effective and compact description of periocular texture and shape. The method is tested over four benchmark datasets exhibiting varied acquisition conditions.

Keywords: Periocular authentication, Zernike moments, LBPV, shape and texture fusion.

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