Search results for: Acoustic level
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 3533

Search results for: Acoustic level

3233 Effect of Trataka on Anxiety among Adolescents

Authors: Pushp Lata Rajpoot, Pushpa Vaishnav

Abstract:

Anxiety is a common psychological problem and also implicated as a contributor to many chronic diseases which decreased quality of life even with pharmacological treatment. At the present time several yogic practices- meditation, pranayama, and mantra, etcetera are playing important role in treating physiological and psychological problems. Hence, the present investigation is aimed to see the effect of Trataka on the level of anxiety among adolescents. For the present study, a sample of 30 adolescents belonging to the age range 20-30 years was selected from Devsanskriti Vishwa Vidyalaya Haridwar through random sampling. In this investigation, Sinha’s Comprehensive anxiety test has been used to measure the level of anxiety. Statistical analysis has been done by using t-test. Findings of this study reveal that Trataka significantly decreases the level of anxiety among adolescents.

Keywords: Adolescents, Anxiety, Trataka.

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3232 A Taxonomy of Behavior for a Medical Coordinator by Utlizing Leadership Styles

Authors: Aryana Collins Jackson, Elisabetta Bevacqua, Pierre De Loor, Ronan Querrec

Abstract:

This paper presents a taxonomy of non-technical skills, communicative intentions, and behavior for an individual acting as a medical coordinator. In medical emergency situations, a leader among the group is imperative to both patient health and team emotional and mental health. Situational Leadership is used to make clear and easy-to-follow guidelines for behavior depending on circumstantial factors. Low-level leadership behaviors belonging to two different styles, directive and supporting, are identified from literature and are included in the proposed taxonomy. The high-level information in the taxonomy consists of the necessary non-technical skills belonging to a medical coordinator: situation awareness, decision making, task management, and teamwork. Finally, communicative intentions, dimensions, and functions are included. Thus this work brings high-level and low-level information - medical non-technical skills, communication capabilities, and leadership behavior - into a single versatile taxonomy of behavior.

Keywords: Medical, leadership styles, taxonomy, human behavior.

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3231 Decision Support System for Flood Crisis Management using Artificial Neural Network

Authors: Muhammad Aqil, Ichiro Kita, Akira Yano, Nishiyama Soichi

Abstract:

This paper presents an alternate approach that uses artificial neural network to simulate the flood level dynamics in a river basin. The algorithm was developed in a decision support system environment in order to enable users to process the data. The decision support system is found to be useful due to its interactive nature, flexibility in approach and evolving graphical feature and can be adopted for any similar situation to predict the flood level. The main data processing includes the gauging station selection, input generation, lead-time selection/generation, and length of prediction. This program enables users to process the flood level data, to train/test the model using various inputs and to visualize results. The program code consists of a set of files, which can as well be modified to match other purposes. This program may also serve as a tool for real-time flood monitoring and process control. The running results indicate that the decision support system applied to the flood level seems to have reached encouraging results for the river basin under examination. The comparison of the model predictions with the observed data was satisfactory, where the model is able to forecast the flood level up to 5 hours in advance with reasonable prediction accuracy. Finally, this program may also serve as a tool for real-time flood monitoring and process control.

Keywords: Decision Support System, Neural Network, Flood Level

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3230 Employee Aggression, Labeling and Emotional Intelligence

Authors: Martin Popescu D. Dana Maria

Abstract:

The aims of this research are to broaden the study on the relationship between emotional intelligence and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). The study sample consisted in 441 Romanian employees from companies all over the country. Data has been collected through web surveys and processed with SPSS. The results indicated an average correlation between the two constructs and their sub variables, employees with a high level of emotional intelligence tend to be less aggressive. In addition, labeling was considered an individual difference which has the power to influence the level of employee aggression. A regression model was used to underline the importance of emotional intelligence together with labeling as predictors of CWB. Results have shown that this regression model enforces the assumption that labeling and emotional intelligence, taken together, predict CWB. Employees, who label themselves as victims and have a low degree of emotional intelligence, have a higher level of CWB.

Keywords: Aggression, CWB, emotional intelligence, labeling.

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3229 Usage of Internet Technology in Financial Education and Financial Inclusion by Students of Economics Universities

Authors: B. Frączek

Abstract:

The paper analyses the usage of the Internet by university students in Visegrad Countries (4V Countries) who study economic fields in their formal and informal financial education and captures the areas of untapped potential of Internet in educational processes. Higher education and training, technological readiness, and the financial market development are in the group of pillars, that are key for efficiency driven economies. These three pillars have become an inspiration to the research on using the Internet in the financial education among economic university students as the group of the best educated people in finance. The financial education is a process that allows for improving the level of financial literacy. In turn, the financial literacy it is the set of financial knowledge, skills, awareness and patterns influencing the financial decisions. The level of financial literacy influences the level of financial well-being of individuals, determines the scale of saving of households and at the same time gives the greater chance for sustainable and more predictable development of the financial market with the positive impact on economy. The financial literacy is necessary for each group of society but its appropriate level is desirable especially in respect of economics students as future participants of financial markets as well as the experts and advisors in financial decision making. The low level of financial literacy is the great problem of many target groups in both developing and developed countries and the financial education is seen as the best way of improving this situation. Also the financial inclusion plays the special role in enhancing the level of financial literacy in the aspect of education by practice as well as due to interrelation between level of financial literacy and degree of financial inclusion. Despite many initiatives under financial education, the level of financial literacy is still very low. Scientists still search for new ways of solving this problem. One of the proposal is more effective usage of the new technology in financial education, especially the Internet, because of the growing popularity of e-learning and the increasing number of Internet users, especially among young people who are called the Generation Net. Due to special role of the university students studying the economics fields for the future financial markets, students of four universities from Visegrad Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) were invited to participate in the survey. The aim of the article is to present the level and ways of using the Internet technology in financial education and indicating the so far unused or underused opportunities.

Keywords: Financial education, financial inclusion, financial literacy, usage of Internet in education.

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3228 Development of a Smart Liquid Level Controller

Authors: Adamu Mudi, Fawole Wahab Ibrahim, Abubakar Abba Kolo

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a microcontroller-based liquid level controller which identifies the various levels of a liquid, carries out certain actions and is capable of communicating with the human being and other devices through the GSM network. This project is useful in ensuring that a liquid is not wasted. It also contributes to the internet of things paradigm, which is the future of the internet. The method used in this work includes designing the circuit and simulating it. The circuit is then implemented on a solderless breadboard after which it is implemented on a strip board. A C++ computer program is developed and uploaded into the microcontroller. This program instructs the microcontroller on how to carry out its actions. In other to determine levels of the liquid, an ultrasonic wave is sent to the surface of the liquid similar to radar or the method for detecting the level of sea bed. Message is sent to the phone of the user similar to the way computers send messages to phones of GSM users. It is concluded that the routine of observing the levels of a liquid in a tank, refilling the tank when the liquid level is too low can be entirely handled by a programmable device without wastage of the liquid or bothering a human being with such tasks.

Keywords: Arduino Uno, HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, Internet of Things, IoT, SIM900 GSM Module.

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3227 Dual Pyramid of Agents for Image Segmentation

Authors: K. Idir, H. Merouani, Y. Tlili.

Abstract:

An effective method for the early detection of breast cancer is the mammographic screening. One of the most important signs of early breast cancer is the presence of microcalcifications. For the detection of microcalcification in a mammography image, we propose to conceive a multiagent system based on a dual irregular pyramid. An initial segmentation is obtained by an incremental approach; the result represents level zero of the pyramid. The edge information obtained by application of the Canny filter is taken into account to affine the segmentation. The edge-agents and region-agents cooper level by level of the pyramid by exploiting its various characteristics to provide the segmentation process convergence.

Keywords: Dual Pyramid, Image Segmentation, Multi-agent System, Region/Edge Cooperation.

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3226 DNA Methylation Changes Caused by Lawsone

Authors: Zuzana Poborilova, Anna B. Ohlsson, Torkel Berglund, Anna Vildova, Petr Babula

Abstract:

Lawsone is a pigment that occurs naturally in plants. It has been used as a skin and hair dye for a long time. Moreover, its different biological activities have been reported. The present study focused on the effect of lawsone on a plant cell model represented by tobacco BY-2 cell suspension culture, which is used as a model comparable with the HeLa cells. It has been shown that lawsone inhibits the cell growth in the concentration-dependent manner. In addition, changes in DNA methylation level have been determined. We observed decreasing level of DNA methylation in the presence of increasing concentrations of lawsone. These results were accompanied with overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Since epigenetic modifications can be caused by different stress factors, there could be a connection between the changes in the level of DNA methylation and ROS production caused by lawsone.

Keywords: DNA methylation, Lawsone, Naphthoquinone, Reactive Oxygen Species.

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3225 Design, Simulation, and Implementation of a Digital Pulse Oxygen Saturation Measurement System Using the Arduino Microcontroller

Authors: Muhibul Haque Bhuyan, Md. Refat Sarder

Abstract:

If a person can monitor his/her oxygen saturation level intermittently then he/she can identify his/her condition early and thus he/she can seek a doctor’s help. This paper reports the design, simulation, and implementation of a low-cost pulse oxygen saturation measurement device based on a reflective photoplethysmography (PPG) system using an integrated circuit sensor as the fundamental component of this health status checking device. The measurement of the physiological parameter is the blood oxygen saturation level (SpO2) in the peripheral capillary. This work has been implemented using an Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller along with this sensor integrated circuit (IC). The system is designed in the Proteus environment and then simulated to check its performance. After that, the hardware implementation is performed. We used a clipping type optical sensor to sense the arterial oxygen saturation level of blood signal from the fingertips of an individual and then transformed it into the digital data in the microcontroller through its programming its instruction. The designed system was tested by measuring the SpO2 level for several people of different ages, from 12 to 57 years of age. Besides, the same people were tested using a standard machine purchased from the market. Test results were found very satisfactory as the average percentage of error was very low, 1.59% only.

Keywords: Digital pulse oxygen saturation level, oximeter, measurement, design, simulation, implementation, proteus, Arduino Uno microcontroller.

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3224 Salt-Tolerance of Tissue-Cultured Date Palm Cultivars under Controlled Environment

Authors: L. Al-Mulla, N. R. Bhat, M. Khalil

Abstract:

A study was conducted in greenhouse environment to determine the response of five tissue-cultured date palm cultivars, Al- Ahamad, Nabusaif, Barhee, Khalas, and Kasab to irrigation water salinity of 1.6, 5, 10, or 20 dS/ m. The salinity level of 1.6dS/m, was used as a control. The effects of high salinity on plant survival were manifested at 360 days after planting (DAP) onwards. Three cultivars, Khalas, Kasab and Barhee were able to tolerate 10 dS/m salinity level at 24 months after the start of study. Khalas tolerated the highest salinity level of 20 dS/ m and 'Nabusaif' was found to be the least tolerant cv. The average heights of palms and the number of fronds were decreased with increasing salinity levels as time progressed.

Keywords: Acclimatization, Irrigation water salinity, Kuwait, Land degradation.

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3223 Implementation and Comparison between Two Algorithms of Three-Level Neutral Point Clamped Voltage Source Inverter

Authors: K. Benamrane, T. Abdelkrim, T. Benslimane, Aeh. Benkhelifa, B. Bezza

Abstract:

This paper presents a comparison between two Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) algorithms applied to a three-level Neutral Point Clamped (NPC) Voltage Source Inverter (VSI). The first algorithm applied is the triangular-sinusoidal strategy; the second is the Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) strategy. In the first part, we present a topology of three-level NCP VSI. After that, we develop the two PWM strategies to control this converter. At the end the experimental results are presented.

Keywords: Multilevel inverter, Space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM), triangular-sinusoidal strategy.

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3222 Tourist Satisfaction and Loyalty toward Service Quality of the Online Tourism Enterprises

Authors: Wanida Suwunniponth

Abstract:

The objectives of this research paper were to study the expectation and satisfaction of tourists in five tourism service quality dimensions, namely, website quality, service ability, trust ability, customer empathy, and responsiveness to customer and also to study the influences of satisfaction affecting loyalty toward quality service of the online tourism enterprises located in Bangkok Thailand. This research utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In terms of quantitative method, a questionnaire was used as a tool to collect data from 400 tourists who were using in online travel services. Statistics analysis included descriptive statistics, t-test and Multiple Regression Analysis. In terms of qualitative analysis, an in-depth interview and content analysis were used along with 10 individual management levels of e-commerce enterprises.

The results revealed that the respondents had higher expectations than their level of satisfaction in all five categories. However, the respondents were more satisfied with online travel services than without online service. The demographic factors such as gender and age had no influence on the level of satisfaction whereas the demographic factors of education, occupation, and income had influenced the level of satisfaction. The test results also indicated that the level of satisfaction from responsiveness to customer had the highest influence on the loyalty of tourists who used online travel. The level of satisfaction from customer empathy had the highest influence on the tourists to recommend others to use online travel services. Also, the level of satisfaction from service ability had the highest influence on tourists to take an actual trip.

Keywords: Satisfaction, Loyalty, Service Quality, Online Tourism Enterprises.

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3221 Sea Level Characteristics Referenced to Specific Geodetic Datum in Alexandria, Egypt

Authors: Ahmed M. Khedr, Saad M. Abdelrahman, Kareem M. Tonbol

Abstract:

Two geo-referenced sea level datasets (September 2008 – November 2010) and (April 2012 – January 2014) were recorded at Alexandria Western Harbour (AWH). Accurate re-definition of tidal datum, referred to the latest International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF-2014), was discussed and updated to improve our understanding of the old predefined tidal datum at Alexandria. Tidal and non-tidal components of sea level were separated with the use of Delft-3D hydrodynamic model-tide suit (Delft-3D, 2015). Tidal characteristics at AWH were investigated and harmonic analysis showed the most significant 34 constituents with their amplitudes and phases. Tide was identified as semi-diurnal pattern as indicated by a “Form Factor” of 0.24 and 0.25, respectively. Principle tidal datums related to major tidal phenomena were recalculated referred to a meaningful geodetic height datum. The portion of residual energy (surge) out of the total sea level energy was computed for each dataset and found 77% and 72%, respectively. Power spectral density (PSD) showed accurate resolvability in high band (1–6) cycle/days for the nominated independent constituents, except some neighbouring constituents, which are too close in frequency. Wind and atmospheric pressure data, during the recorded sea level time, were analysed and cross-correlated with the surge signals. Moderate association between surge and wind and atmospheric pressure data were obtained. In addition, long-term sea level rise trend at AWH was computed and showed good agreement with earlier estimated rates.

Keywords: Alexandria, Delft-3D, Egypt, geodetic reference, harmonic analysis, sea level.

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3220 Investigation about Mechanical Equipment Needed to Break the Molecular Bonds of Heavy Oil by Using Hydrodynamic Cavitation

Authors: Mahdi Asghari

Abstract:

The cavitation phenomenon is the formation and production of micro-bubbles and eventually the bursting of the micro-bubbles inside the liquid fluid, which results in localized high pressure and temperature, causing physical and chemical fluid changes. This pressure and temperature are predicted to be 2000 atmospheres and 5000 °C, respectively. As a result of small bubbles bursting from this process, temperature and pressure increase momentarily and locally, so that the intensity and magnitude of these temperatures and pressures provide the energy needed to break the molecular bonds of heavy compounds such as fuel oil. In this paper, we study the theory of cavitation and the methods of cavitation production by acoustic and hydrodynamic methods and the necessary mechanical equipment and reactors for industrial application of the hydrodynamic cavitation method to break down the molecular bonds of the fuel oil and convert it into useful and economical products.

Keywords: Cavitation, hydrodynamic cavitation, cavitation reactor, fuel oil.

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3219 Triangle Issues of Sustainability at the University Level within a Vision of Knowledge Economy and Society

Authors: Ashiquer Rahman

Abstract:

The paper focuses on the importance of the knowledge economy and society, emphasizing the significance of the triangle issues (Innovation, Sustainability, and Higher Education) for building a sustainable campus at the university level and preparing students to face the upcoming sustainability challenges in the competitive and sustainable world. Within a framework of the knowledge economy and society, the paper discusses the significance of sustainable campus, triangle issues and potential action plan for the university level. It makes mention of the emergence of a knowledge-based economy and society as well as the necessity of combining innovation, sustainability, and education to create a sustainable campus at the university level. The paper outlines nine significant issues or challenges related to a sustainable campus that have been emphasized, and cross-linked with each other. Optimistically, it will be a milestone in higher education, a pathway to meet the imminent sustainable challenges of the completive world and be able to manage the knowledge economy and societal system

Keywords: Triangle issues, sustainable campus, higher education, knowledge economy, knowledge society.

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3218 Effects of Synthetic Jet in Suppressing Cavity Oscillations

Authors: S. Sarkar, R. Mandal

Abstract:

The three-dimensional incompressible flow past a rectangular open cavity is investigated, where the aspect ratio of the cavity is considered as 4. The principle objective is to use large-eddy simulation to resolve and control the large-scale structures, which are largely responsible for flow oscillations in a cavity. The flow past an open cavity is very common in aerospace applications and can be a cause of acoustic source due to hydrodynamic instability of the shear layer and its interactions with the downstream edge. The unsteady Navier-stokes equations have been solved on a staggered mesh using a symmetry-preserving central difference scheme. Synthetic jet has been used as an active control to suppress the cavity oscillations in wake mode for a Reynolds number of ReD = 3360. The effect of synthetic jet has been studied by varying the jet amplitude and frequency, which is placed at the upstream wall of the cavity. The study indicates that there exits a frequency band, which is larger than a critical value, is effective in attenuating cavity oscillations when blowing ratio is more than 1.0.

Keywords: Cavity oscillation, Large Eddy Simulation, Synthetic Jet, Flow Control, Turbulence

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3217 Maintaining User-Level Security in Short Message Service

Authors: T. Arudchelvam, W. W. E. N. Fernando

Abstract:

Mobile phone has become as an essential thing in our life. Therefore, security is the most important thing to be considered in mobile communication. Short message service is the cheapest way of communication via the mobile phones. Therefore, security is very important in the short message service as well. This paper presents a method to maintain the security at user level. Different types of encryption methods are used to implement the user level security in mobile phones. Caesar cipher, Rail Fence, Vigenere cipher and RSA are used as encryption methods in this work. Caesar cipher and the Rail Fence methods are enhanced and implemented. The beauty in this work is that the user can select the encryption method and the key. Therefore, by changing the encryption method and the key time to time, the user can ensure the security of messages. By this work, while users can safely send/receive messages, they can save their information from unauthorised and unwanted people in their own mobile phone as well.

Keywords: SMS, user level security, encryption, mobile communication.

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3216 Level of Behavioral Development for Hepatitis C Virus Cases versus Their Contacts: Does Infection Make a Difference and What Is Beyond?

Authors: Ammal M. Metwally, Lobna A. El Etreby, Rehan M. Saleh, Ghada Abdrabou, Somia I. Salama, Amira Orabi, Mohamed Abdelrahman

Abstract:

Hepatitis C virus infection is a public health threat in Egypt. To control infection, efforts should be spent to encourage healthy behavior. This study aimed to assess the level of behavioral development in order to create a positive environment for the adoption of the recommended behaviors. The study was conducted over one year from Jan. 2011 till Jan. 2012.Knowledge, attitude and behavior of 540 HCV patients and 102 of their contacts were assessed and the level of behavioral development was determined. The study revealed that the majority of patients and contacts knew that HCV infection is dangerous with perceived concern for early diagnosis and treatment. More than 75% knew the correct modes of transmission. The assessment showed positive attitudes towards the recommended practices with intention to adopt those practices. Strategies of creating opportunities to continue the recommended behaviors should be adopted together with the reinforcement of social support.

Keywords: Hepatitis C virus, Level of behavioral development, recommended behaviors.

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3215 Acoustic and Flow Field Analysis of a Perforated Muffler Design

Authors: Zeynep Parlar, Şengül Ari, Rıfat Yilmaz, Erdem Özdemir, Arda Kahraman

Abstract:

New regulations and standards for noise emission increasingly compel the automotive firms to make some improvements about decreasing the engine noise. Nowadays, the perforated reactive mufflers which have an effective damping capability are specifically used for this purpose. New designs should be analyzed with respect to both acoustics and back pressure. In this study, a reactive perforated muffler is investigated numerically and experimentally. For an acoustical analysis, the transmission loss which is independent of sound source of the present cross flow, the perforated muffler was analyzed by COMSOL. To be able to validate the numerical results, transmission loss was measured experimentally. Back pressure was obtained based on the flow field analysis and was also compared with experimental results. Numerical results have an approximate error of 20% compared to experimental results.

Keywords: Back Pressure, Perforated Muffler, Transmission Loss.

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3214 Reciprocating Compressor Optimum Design and Manufacturing with Respect to Performance, Reliability and Cost

Authors: A. Almasi

Abstract:

Reciprocating compressors are flexible to handle wide capacity and condition swings, offer a very efficient method of compressing almost any gas mixture in wide range of pressure, can generate high head independent of density, and have numerous applications and wide power ratings. These make them vital component in various units of industrial plants. In this paper optimum reciprocating compressor configuration regarding interstage pressures, low suction pressure, non-lubricated cylinder, speed of machine, capacity control system, compressor valve, lubrication system, piston rod coating, cylinder liner material, barring device, pressure drops, rod load, pin reversal, discharge temperature, cylinder coolant system, performance, flow, coupling, special tools, condition monitoring (including vibration, thermal and rod drop monitoring), commercial points, delivery and acoustic conditions are presented.

Keywords: Design, optimum, reciprocating compressor.

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3213 Habits: Theoretical Foundations and a Conceptual Framework on a Managerial Trap and Chance

Authors: K. Piórkowska

Abstract:

The overarching aim of the paper is to incorporate the micro-foundations perspective in strategic management and offering possibilities to bridge the macro–micro divide, to review the concept of habits, as well as to propose research findings and directions in terms of further exploring the habit construct and its impact on higher epistemological level phenomena (for instance organizational routines, which is a domain inherently multilevel in nature). To realize this aim, the following sections have been developed: (1) habits’ origins, (2) habits – cognitive constellations, (3) interrelationships between habits and mental representations, intentions, (4) habits and organizational routines, and (5) habits and routines linkages with adaptation. The conclusions that have been made support recent and current studies linking the level of individual heterogeneous agents with the level of macro (organizational) outcomes.

Keywords: Behaviorism, habits, micro-foundations, routines.

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3212 Restoration of Noisy Document Images with an Efficient Bi-Level Adaptive Thresholding

Authors: Abhijit Mitra

Abstract:

An effective approach for extracting document images from a noisy background is introduced. The entire scheme is divided into three sub- stechniques – the initial preprocessing operations for noise cluster tightening, introduction of a new thresholding method by maximizing the ratio of stan- dard deviations of the combined effect on the image to the sum of weighted classes and finally the image restoration phase by image binarization utiliz- ing the proposed optimum threshold level. The proposed method is found to be efficient compared to the existing schemes in terms of computational complexity as well as speed with better noise rejection.

Keywords: Document image extraction, Preprocessing, Ratio of stan-dard deviations, Bi-level adaptive thresholding.

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3211 Impact of Viscous and Heat Relaxation Loss on the Critical Temperature Gradients of Thermoacoustic Stacks

Authors: Zhibin Yu, Artur J. Jaworski, Abdulrahman S. Abduljalil

Abstract:

A stack with a small critical temperature gradient is desirable for a standing wave thermoacoustic engine to obtain a low onset temperature difference (the minimum temperature difference to start engine-s self-oscillation). The viscous and heat relaxation loss in the stack determines the critical temperature gradient. In this work, a dimensionless critical temperature gradient factor is obtained based on the linear thermoacoustic theory. It is indicated that the impedance determines the proportion between the viscous loss, heat relaxation losses and the power production from the heat energy. It reveals the effects of the channel dimensions, geometrical configuration and the local acoustic impedance on the critical temperature gradient in stacks. The numerical analysis shows that there exists a possible optimum combination of these parameters which leads to the lowest critical temperature gradient. Furthermore, several different geometries have been tested and compared numerically.

Keywords: Critical temperature gradient, heat relaxation, stack, viscous effect.

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3210 The Photon-Drag Effect in Cylindrical Quantum Wire with a Parabolic Potential

Authors: Hoang Van Ngoc, Nguyen Thu Huong, Nguyen Quang Bau

Abstract:

Using the quantum kinetic equation for electrons interacting with acoustic phonon, the density of the constant current associated with the drag of charge carriers in cylindrical quantum wire by a linearly polarized electromagnetic wave, a DC electric field and a laser radiation field is calculated. The density of the constant current is studied as a function of the frequency of electromagnetic wave, as well as the frequency of laser field and the basic elements of quantum wire with a parabolic potential. The analytic expression of the constant current density is numerically evaluated and plotted for a specific quantum wires GaAs/AlGaAs to show the dependence of the constant current density on above parameters. All these results of quantum wire compared with bulk semiconductors and superlattices to show the difference.

Keywords: Photon-drag effect, constant current density, quantum wire, parabolic potential.

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3209 Laser Data Based Automatic Generation of Lane-Level Road Map for Intelligent Vehicles

Authors: Zehai Yu, Hui Zhu, Linglong Lin, Huawei Liang, Biao Yu, Weixin Huang

Abstract:

With the development of intelligent vehicle systems, a high-precision road map is increasingly needed in many aspects. The automatic lane lines extraction and modeling are the most essential steps for the generation of a precise lane-level road map. In this paper, an automatic lane-level road map generation system is proposed. To extract the road markings on the ground, the multi-region Otsu thresholding method is applied, which calculates the intensity value of laser data that maximizes the variance between background and road markings. The extracted road marking points are then projected to the raster image and clustered using a two-stage clustering algorithm. Lane lines are subsequently recognized from these clusters by the shape features of their minimum bounding rectangle. To ensure the storage efficiency of the map, the lane lines are approximated to cubic polynomial curves using a Bayesian estimation approach. The proposed lane-level road map generation system has been tested on urban and expressway conditions in Hefei, China. The experimental results on the datasets show that our method can achieve excellent extraction and clustering effect, and the fitted lines can reach a high position accuracy with an error of less than 10 cm.

Keywords: Curve fitting, lane-level road map, line recognition, multi-thresholding, two-stage clustering.

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3208 Reversible Watermarking for H.264/AVC Videos

Authors: Yih-Chuan Lin, Jung-Hong Li

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose a reversible watermarking scheme based on histogram shifting (HS) to embed watermark bits into the H.264/AVC standard videos by modifying the last nonzero level in the context adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC) domain. The proposed method collects all of the last nonzero coefficients (or called last level coefficient) of 4×4 sub-macro blocks in a macro block and utilizes predictions for the current last level from the neighbor block-s last levels to embed watermark bits. The feature of the proposed method is low computational and has the ability of reversible recovery. The experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed scheme has acceptable degradation on video quality and output bit-rate for most test videos.

Keywords: Reversible data hiding, H.264/AVC standard, CAVLC, Histogram shifting

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3207 Entrepreneurial Predisposition and Intention of Students from the IFRN – Mossoró, Brazil

Authors: Giovane Gurgel, Cristina S. Rodrigues, Filipa D. Vieira

Abstract:

IFRN – Mossoró is a Brazilian technical education institute that develops several activities to encourage entrepreneurship, such as a curricular discipline about enterprise management and the existence of a business incubator. Despite efforts, the business incubator does not produce the expected effects. Therefore, what predisposes students to start their own business? If literature review explores determinant factors like the family and personal characteristics, it can be sustained that entrepreneurship skills can be taught since primary level, until university level. This paper presents the results of research project “Empreende IFRN” to understand the entrepreneurial predisposition and intention of the students from technical level courses. Data from 365 students from technical level courses reveal an increased entrepreneurial intention of students during time (from a 2 years period to someday in the future). The entrepreneurial behavior of parents affects students’ perception about starting their own business. Students also present a cautions behavior, preferring bank deposit and investment fund instead starting a business.

Keywords: Brazil, Entrepreneurial intention, Entrepreneurship, Secondary technical students.

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3206 Feasibility Study of Distributed Lightless Intersection Control with Level 1 Autonomous Vehicles

Authors: Bo Yang, Christopher Monterola

Abstract:

Urban intersection control without the use of the traffic light has the potential to vastly improve the efficiency of the urban traffic flow. For most proposals in the literature, such lightless intersection control depends on the mass market commercialization of highly intelligent autonomous vehicles (AV), which limits the prospects of near future implementation. We present an efficient lightless intersection traffic control scheme that only requires Level 1 AV as defined by NHTSA. The technological barriers of such lightless intersection control are thus very low. Our algorithm can also accommodate a mixture of AVs and conventional vehicles. We also carry out large scale numerical analysis to illustrate the feasibility, safety and robustness, comfort level, and control efficiency of our intersection control scheme.

Keywords: Intersection control, autonomous vehicles, traffic modelling, intelligent transport system.

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3205 A New Vector Quantization Front-End Process for Discrete HMM Speech Recognition System

Authors: M. Debyeche, J.P Haton, A. Houacine

Abstract:

The paper presents a complete discrete statistical framework, based on a novel vector quantization (VQ) front-end process. This new VQ approach performs an optimal distribution of VQ codebook components on HMM states. This technique that we named the distributed vector quantization (DVQ) of hidden Markov models, succeeds in unifying acoustic micro-structure and phonetic macro-structure, when the estimation of HMM parameters is performed. The DVQ technique is implemented through two variants. The first variant uses the K-means algorithm (K-means- DVQ) to optimize the VQ, while the second variant exploits the benefits of the classification behavior of neural networks (NN-DVQ) for the same purpose. The proposed variants are compared with the HMM-based baseline system by experiments of specific Arabic consonants recognition. The results show that the distributed vector quantization technique increase the performance of the discrete HMM system.

Keywords: Hidden Markov Model, Vector Quantization, Neural Network, Speech Recognition, Arabic Language

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3204 A Multi-Level GA Search with Application to the Resource-Constrained Re-Entrant Flow Shop Scheduling Problem

Authors: Danping Lin, C.K.M. Lee

Abstract:

Re-entrant scheduling is an important search problem with many constraints in the flow shop. In the literature, a number of approaches have been investigated from exact methods to meta-heuristics. This paper presents a genetic algorithm that encodes the problem as multi-level chromosomes to reflect the dependent relationship of the re-entrant possibility and resource consumption. The novel encoding way conserves the intact information of the data and fastens the convergence to the near optimal solutions. To test the effectiveness of the method, it has been applied to the resource-constrained re-entrant flow shop scheduling problem. Computational results show that the proposed GA performs better than the simulated annealing algorithm in the measure of the makespan

Keywords: Resource-constrained, re-entrant, genetic algorithm (GA), multi-level encoding

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