Search results for: fuzzy Delphi technique

Authors: Feng Wang, Shencheng Ni, Shuying Han, Shanhong You

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With the development of optical communication, optical performance monitoring (OPM) has received more and more attentions. Since optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) is directly related to bit error rate (BER), it is one of the important parameters in optical networks. Recently, artificial neural network (ANN) has been greatly developed. ANN has strong learning and generalization ability. In this paper, a method of OSNR monitoring based on delay-tap sampling (DTS) and ANN has been proposed. DTS technique is used to extract the eigenvalues of the signal. Then, the eigenvalues are input into the ANN to realize the OSNR monitoring. The experiments of 10 Gb/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) on–off keying (OOK), 20 Gb/s pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) and 20 Gb/s return-to-zero (RZ) differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) systems are demonstrated for the OSNR monitoring based on the proposed method. The experimental results show that the range of OSNR monitoring is from 15 to 30 dB and the root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) for 10 Gb/s NRZ-OOK, 20 Gb/s PAM4 and 20 Gb/s RZ-DPSK systems are 0.36 dB, 0.45 dB and 0.48 dB respectively. The impact of chromatic dispersion (CD) on the accuracy of OSNR monitoring is also investigated in the three experimental systems mentioned above.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, ANN, chromatic dispersion, delay-tap sampling, optical signal-to-noise ratio, OSNR.

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Authors: A. Srion, W. Thepsuwan, N. Monmaturapoj

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Two Lithium Disilicate (LD) glass ceramics based on SiO2-Li2O-K2O-Al2O3 system were prepared through a glass melting method. The glass rods were then fabricated into dental crowns via a hot pressing at 900˚C and 850˚C in order to study the effect of the pressing temperatures on the phase formation and microstructure of the glasses. Different samples of as cast glass and heat treated samples (600˚C and 700˚C) were used to press for investigating the effect of an initial microstructure on the hot pressing technique. Xray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were performed to determine the phase formation and microstructure of the samples, respectively. XRD results show that the main crystalline structure was Li2Si2O5 by having Li3PO4, Li0.6Al0.6Si2O6, Li2SiO3, Ca5 (PO4)3F and SiO2 as minor phases. Glass compositions with different heat treatment temperatures exhibited a difference phase formations but have less effect during pressing. SEM micrographs showed the microstructure of Li2Si2O5 as lath-like shape in all glasses. With increasing the initial heat treatment temperature, the longer the lath-like crystals of lithium disilicate were increased especially when using glass heat treatment at 700˚C followed by pressing at 900˚C. This could be suggested that LD1 heat treatment at 700˚C which pressing at 900˚C presented the best formation by the hot pressing and compiled microstructure.

Keywords: Lithium disilicate, Hot pressing, Dental crown, Microstructure.

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Authors: Okezie A. Ihugba

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The bounds testing ARDL (2, 2, 2, 2, 0) technique to cointegration was used in this study to investigate the effect of energy consumption and energy loss on Nigeria's manufacturing sector from 1981 to 2020. The model was created to determine the relationship between these three variables while also accounting for interactions with control variables such as inflation and commercial bank loans to the manufacturing sector. When the dependent variables are energy consumption and energy loss, the bound tests show that the variables of interest are bound together in the long run. Because electricity consumption is a critical factor in determining manufacturing value-added in Nigeria, some intriguing observations were made. According to the findings, the relationship between log of electricity consumption (LELC) and log of manufacturing value added (LMVA) is statistically significant. According to the findings, electricity consumption reduces manufacturing value-added. The target variable (energy loss) is statistically significant and has a positive sign. In Nigeria, a 1% reduction in energy loss increases manufacturing value-added by 36% in the first lag and 35% in the second. According to the study, the government should speed up the ongoing renovation of existing power plants across the country, as well as the construction of new gas-fired power plants. This will address a number of issues, including overpricing of electricity as a result of grid failure.

Keywords: ARDL, cointegration, Nigeria's manufacturing, electricity.

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Authors: Qasem Qananwah, Ahmad Dagamseh, Hiam AlQuran, Khalid Shaker Ibrahim

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Blood pressure helps the physicians greatly to have a deep insight into the cardiovascular system. The determination of individual blood pressure is a standard clinical procedure considered for cardiovascular system problems. The conventional techniques to measure blood pressure (e.g. cuff method) allows a limited number of readings for a certain period (e.g. every 5-10 minutes). Additionally, these systems cause turbulence to blood flow; impeding continuous blood pressure monitoring, especially in emergency cases or critically ill persons. In this paper, the most important statistical features in the photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals were extracted to estimate the blood pressure noninvasively. PPG signals from more than 40 subjects were measured and analyzed and 12 features were extracted. The features were fed to principal component analysis (PCA) to find the most important independent features that have the highest correlation with blood pressure. The results show that the stiffness index means and standard deviation for the beat-to-beat heart rate were the most important features. A model representing both features for Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) and Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) was obtained using a statistical regression technique. Surface fitting is used to best fit the series of data and the results show that the error value in estimating the SBP is 4.95% and in estimating the DBP is 3.99%.

Keywords: Blood pressure, noninvasive optical system, PCA, continuous monitoring.

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Authors: Ayesha Zaman, Tanvir Atahary, Shahida Rafiq

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Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging(fMRI) is a noninvasive imaging technique that measures the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the human brain. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI) is a form of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in which a series of fMRI images are time-locked to a stimulus presentation and averaged together over many trials. Again an event related potential (ERP) is a measured brain response that is directly the result of a thought or perception. Here the neuronal response of human visual cortex in normal healthy patients have been studied. The patients were asked to perform a visual three choice reaction task; from the relative response of each patient corresponding neuronal activity in visual cortex was imaged. The average number of neurons in the adult human primary visual cortex, in each hemisphere has been estimated at around 140 million. Statistical analysis of this experiment was done with SPM5(Statistical Parametric Mapping version 5) software. The result shows a robust design of imaging the neuronal activity of human visual cortex.

Keywords: Echo Planner Imaging, Event related Response, General Linear Model, Visual Neuronal Response.

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Authors: Bandula-Heva, T., Dhanasekar, M.

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True stress-strain curve of railhead steel is required to investigate the behaviour of railhead under wheel loading through elasto-plastic Finite Element (FE) analysis. To reduce the rate of wear, the railhead material is hardened through annealing and quenching. The Australian standard rail sections are not fully hardened and hence suffer from non-uniform distribution of the material property; usage of average properties in the FE modelling can potentially induce error in the predicted plastic strains. Coupons obtained at varying depths of the railhead were, therefore, tested under axial tension and the strains were measured using strain gauges as well as an image analysis technique, known as the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The head hardened steel exhibit existence of three distinct zones of yield strength; the yield strength as the ratio of the average yield strength provided in the standard (σyr=780MPa) and the corresponding depth as the ratio of the head hardened zone along the axis of symmetry are as follows: (1.17 σyr, 20%), (1.06 σyr, 20%-80%) and (0.71 σyr, > 80%). The stress-strain curves exhibit limited plastic zone with fracture occurring at strain less than 0.1.

Keywords: Stress-Strain Curve, Tensile Test, Particle Image Velocimetry, Railhead Metal Properties

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Authors: Siham G. Farag

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The main objective of this paper is to provide a new methodology for road safety assessment in Oman through the development of suitable accident prediction models. GLM technique with Poisson or NBR using SAS package was carried out to develop these models. The paper utilized the accidents data of 31 un-signalized T-intersections during three years. Five goodness-of-fit measures were used to assess the overall quality of the developed models. Two types of models were developed separately; the flow-based models including only traffic exposure functions, and the full models containing both exposure functions and other significant geometry and traffic variables. The results show that, traffic exposure functions produced much better fit to the accident data. The most effective geometric variables were major-road mean speed, minor-road 85th percentile speed, major-road lane width, distance to the nearest junction, and right-turn curb radius. The developed models can be used for intersection treatment or upgrading and specify the appropriate design parameters of T-intersections. Finally, the models presented in this thesis reflect the intersection conditions in Oman and could represent the typical conditions in several countries in the middle east area, especially gulf countries.

Keywords: Accidents Prediction Models (APMs), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), T-intersections, Oman.

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Authors: Faisal Alazzaz, Andrew Whyte

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Off-site construction methods have played an important role in the construction sector in the past few decades. It is increasingly becoming a major alternative technique and strategic direction compared to traditional in-situ method. It produces a significant amount of value for the construction industry and the economy more generally. To date, an impressive number of studies have been lunched on the perceived perception of off-site construction. However, it seems that a quantifying benefit on the offsite construction area is lacking. Therefore, this paper examines the recent research literature on the benefits of off- site construction and provides future direction. In the beginning, this paper provides a brief history and current value of the off-site construction followed by a detailed discussion on the benefit of off-site construction. These benefits include but not limited to time saving, quality improvement, relieving skills shortages, cost reduction and productivity improvement. Toward this end, off-site construction should learn from other productive industry similar to services or manufacturing industry by applying operational management tools and techniques with extensive focus on employee empowerment will shed the light on future uptake of Off-site construction. This study is of value in providing scholars have a clear picture of perceived benefit of off-site construction research and give an opportunities for future uptake of off-site method.

Keywords: Building projects, Employer empowerment, Off-site construction benefits, Productivity.

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Authors: L. B. Gboeloh, K. Elele

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Gastrointestinal parasitic infections are common health problems in sub-Saharan Africa. A cross- sectional study was carried out to determine the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites among workers in major abattoirs in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. These abattoirs are located in Trans-Amadi, Rumuodumaya, Mile III and Easter-by-Pass. Formol-ether concentration technique was used to isolate the ova and cysts from faecal samples. Out of 201 workers (herdsmen, butchers, and cleaners) investigated for the presence of these parasites, 89 (44.2%) were infected with one or more parasites. The prevalence of the parasites among herdsmen and cleaners was significantly (P<0.05) higher. However, there was no significant (P>0.05) difference in the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in relation to age. Parasites identified included Ascaris lumbricoide (33.3%), tapeworm (4.97%), Entamoeba histolytica (5.47%), hookworms (13.9%), Trichuris trichiura (9.95%), Gardia lamblia (3.48%), and Schistosoma mansoni (1.9%). The frequency of A. lumbricoide was significantly (P<0.05) higher than other parasites. Many workers (65.2%) had single infection than double (23.6%) and triple infection (11.2%). Sanitary improvements, increased level of personal hygiene, routine surveillance by public health practitioners and veterinary experts as well as hygienic operation using modern technologies to process meat at these abattoirs will go a long way to control occupational gastrointestinal parasites among workers.

Keywords: Abattoirs, Gastrointestinal parasites, Port Harcourt, Workers.

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Authors: F. Rahnamay Roodposhti, S. A. Nabavi Chashmi

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The role of corporate governance is to reduce the divergence of interests between shareholders and managers. The role of corporate governance is more useful when managers have an incentive to deviate from shareholders- interests. One example of management-s deviation from shareholders- interests is the management of earnings through the use of accounting accruals. This paper examines the association between corporate governance internal mechanisms ownership concentration, board independence, the existence of CEO-Chairman duality and earnings management. Firm size and leverage are control variables. The population used in this study comprises firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) between 2004 and 2008, the sample comprises 196 firms. Panel Data method is employed as technique to estimate the model. We find that there is negative significant association between ownership concentration and board independence manage earnings with earnings management, there is negative significant association between the existence of CEO-Chairman duality and earnings management. This study also found a positive significant association between control variable (firm size and leverage) and earnings management.

Keywords: Earnings management, board independence, ownership concentration, corporate governance.

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Authors: Imran Khan Pathan, Anil Bhandari, Peeyush K. Sharma, Rakesh K. Patel, Suresh Purohit

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Floating tablets of Marichyadi Vati were developed with an aim to prolong its gastric residence time and increase the bioavailability of drug. Rapid gastrointestinal transit could result in incomplete drug release from the drug delivery system above the absorption zone leading to diminished efficacy of the administered dose. The tablets were prepared by wet granulation technique, using HPMC E50 LV act as Matrixing agent, Carbopol as floating enhancer, microcrystalline cellulose as binder, Sodium bi carbonate as effervescent agent with other excipients. The simplex lattice design was used for selection of variables for tablets formulation. Formulation was optimized on the basis of floating time and in vitro drug release. The results showed that the floating lag time for optimized formulation was found to be 61 second with about 97.32 % of total drug release within 3 hours. The vitro release profiles of drug from the formulation could be best expressed zero order with highest linearity r² = 0.9943. It was concluded that the gastroretentive drug delivery system can be developed for Marichyadi Vati containing Piperine to increase the residence time of the drug in the stomach and thereby increasing bioavailability.

Keywords: Piperine, Marichyadi Vati, Gastroretentive drug delivery, Floating tablet.

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Authors: D. E. Egirani, J. E. Andrews, A. R. Baker

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This study investigates sorption of Cu and Zn contained in natural mine wastewater, using mixed mineral systems in sulfidic-anoxic condition. The mine wastewater was obtained from disused mine workings at Cwmheidol in Wales, United Kingdom. These contaminants flow into water courses. These water courses include River Rheidol. In this River fishing activities exist. In an attempt to reduce Cu-Zn levels of fish intake in the watercourses, single mineral systems and 1:1 mixed mineral systems of clay and goethite were tested with the mine waste water for copper and zinc removal at variable pH. Modelling of hydroxyl complexes was carried out using phreeqc method. Reactions using batch mode technique was conducted at room temperature. There was significant differences in the behaviour of copper and zinc removal using mixed mineral systems when compared  to single mineral systems. All mixed mineral systems sorb more Cu than Zn when tested with mine wastewater.

Keywords: Cu- Zn, hydroxyl complexes, kinetics, mixed mineral systems, reactivity

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Authors: Hui-Jae You, Sun-Tae Chung, Souhwan Jung

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SAD (Sum of Absolute Difference) algorithm is heavily used in motion estimation which is computationally highly demanding process in motion picture encoding. To enhance the performance of motion picture encoding on a VLIW processor, an efficient implementation of SAD algorithm on the VLIW processor is essential. SAD algorithm is programmed as a nested loop with a conditional branch. In VLIW processors, loop is usually optimized by software pipelining, but researches on optimal scheduling of software pipelining for nested loops, especially nested loops with conditional branches are rare. In this paper, we propose an optimal scheduling and implementation of SAD algorithm with conditional branch on a VLIW DSP processor. The proposed optimal scheduling first transforms the nested loop with conditional branch into a single loop with conditional branch with consideration of full utilization of ILP capability of the VLIW processor and realization of earlier escape from the loop. Next, the proposed optimal scheduling applies a modulo scheduling technique developed for single loop. Based on this optimal scheduling strategy, optimal implementation of SAD algorithm on TMS320C67x, a VLIW DSP is presented. Through experiments on TMS320C6713 DSK, it is shown that H.263 encoder with the proposed SAD implementation performs better than other H.263 encoder with other SAD implementations, and that the code size of the optimal SAD implementation is small enough to be appropriate for embedded environments.

Keywords: Optimal implementation, SAD algorithm, VLIW, TMS320C6713.

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Authors: D. Kriebel, J. E. Mehner

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The paper introduces a method to efficiently simulate nonlinear changing electrostatic fields occurring in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). Large deflections of the capacitor electrodes usually introduce nonlinear electromechanical forces on the mechanical system. Traditional finite element methods require a time-consuming remeshing process to capture exact results for this physical domain interaction. In order to accelerate the simulation process and eliminate the remeshing process, a formulation of a strongly coupled electromechanical transducer element will be introduced which uses a combination of finite-element with an advanced mesh morphing technique using radial basis functions (RBF). The RBF allows large geometrical changes of the electric field domain while retain high element quality of the deformed mesh. Coupling effects between mechanical and electrical domains are directly included within the element formulation. Fringing field effects are described accurate by using traditional arbitrary shape functions.

Keywords: electromechanical, electric field, transducer, simulation, modeling, finite-element, mesh morphing, radial basis function

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Authors: R. Rama Kishore, Sunesh

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This paper presents an optimized, robust, and secured watermarking technique. The methodology used in this work is the combination of entropy and chaotic grid map. The proposed methodology incorporates Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) on the host image. To improve the imperceptibility of the method, the host image DCT blocks, where the watermark is to be embedded, are further optimized by considering the entropy of the blocks. Chaotic grid is used as a key to reorder the DCT blocks so that it will further increase security while selecting the watermark embedding locations and its sequence. Without a key, one cannot reveal the exact watermark from the watermarked image. The proposed method is implemented on four different images. It is concluded that the proposed method is giving better results in terms of imperceptibility measured through PSNR and found to be above 50. In order to prove the effectiveness of the method, the performance analysis is done after implementing different attacks on the watermarked images. It is found that the methodology is very strong against JPEG compression attack even with the quality parameter up to 15. The experimental results are confirming that the combination of entropy and chaotic grid map method is strong and secured to different image processing attacks.

Keywords: Digital watermarking, discrete cosine transform, chaotic grid map, entropy.

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Authors: S. Aneeka, S.M. Phyoe, R. Guo, Z.W. Zhong

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Arrival flights tend to spend long waiting times at holding stacks if the arrival airport is congested. However, the waiting time spent in the air in the vicinity of the arrival airport may be reduced if the delays are distributed to the cruising phase of the arrival flights by means of speed control. Here, a case study was conducted for the flights arriving at Changi Airport. The flights that were assigned holdings were simulated to fly at a reduced speed during the cruising phase. As the study involves a single airport and is limited to imposing speed constraints to arrivals within 200 NM from its location, the simulation setup in this study could be considered as an application of the Extended Arrival Management (E-AMAN) technique, which is proven to result in considerable fuel savings and more efficient management of delays. The objective of this experiment was to quantify the benefits of imposing cruise speed constraints to arrivals at Changi Airport and to assess the effects on controllers’ workload. The simulation results indicated considerable fuel savings, reduced aircraft emissions and reduced controller workload.

Keywords: Aircraft emissions, air traffic flow management, controller workload, fuel consumption.

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Authors: Pranee Tridhoskul

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This research paper is aimed to examine a relationship between the service marketing mix and customers’ frequency of use of service at Mercedes Benz Auto Repair Centres under Thonburi Group, Thailand. Based on 2,267 customers who used the service of Thonburi Group’s Auto Repair Centres as the population, the sampling of this research was a total of 340 samples, by use of Probability Sampling Technique. Systematic Random Sampling was applied by use of questionnaire in collecting the data at Thonburi Group’s Auto Repair Centres. Mean and Pearson’s basic statistical correlations were utilized in analyzing the data. The study discovered a medium level of customers’ perception towards product and service of Thonburi Group’s Auto Repair Centres, price, place or distribution channel and promotion. People who provided service were perceived also at a medium level, whereas the physical evidence and service process were perceived at a high level. Furthermore, there appeared a correlation between the physical evidence and service process, and customers’ frequency of use of automobile service per year.

Keywords: Service Marketing Mix, Behavior, Mercedes Auto Service Centre.

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Authors: Preetam Kumar

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The number of users supported in a DS-CDMA cellular system is typically less than spreading factor (N), and the system is said to be underloaded. Overloading is a technique to accommodate more number of users than the spreading factor N. In O/O overloading scheme, the first set is assigned to the N synchronous users and the second set is assigned to the additional synchronous users. An iterative multistage soft decision interference cancellation (SDIC) receiver is used to remove high level of interference between the two sets. Performance is evaluated in terms of the maximum number acceptable users so that the system performance is degraded slightly compared to the single user performance at a specified BER. In this paper, the capacity of CDMA based O/O overloading scheme is evaluated with SDIC receiver. It is observed that O/O scheme using orthogonal Gold codes provides 25% channel overloading (N=64) for synchronous DS-CDMA system on an AWGN channel in the uplink at a BER of 1e-5.For a Rayleigh faded channel, the critical capacity is 40% at a BER of 5e-5 assuming synchronous users. But in practical systems, perfect chip timing is very difficult to maintain in the uplink.. We have shown that the overloading performance reduces to 11% for a timing synchronization error of 0.02Tc for a BER of 1e-5.

Keywords: DS-CDMA, Interference Cancellation, MultiuserDetection, Orthogonal codes, Overloading.

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Authors: A.K.Balirsingh, S.C.Swain, S. Panda

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Recently, Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm technique have attracted considerable attention among various modern heuristic optimization techniques. Since the two approaches are supposed to find a solution to a given objective function but employ different strategies and computational effort, it is appropriate to compare their performance. This paper presents the application and performance comparison of DE and GA optimization techniques, for flexible ac transmission system (FACTS)-based controller design. The design objective is to enhance the power system stability. The design problem of the FACTS-based controller is formulated as an optimization problem and both the PSO and GA optimization techniques are employed to search for optimal controller parameters. The performance of both optimization techniques has been compared. Further, the optimized controllers are tested on a weekly connected power system subjected to different disturbances, and their performance is compared with the conventional power system stabilizer (CPSS). The eigenvalue analysis and non-linear simulation results are presented and compared to show the effectiveness of both the techniques in designing a FACTS-based controller, to enhance power system stability.

Keywords: Differential Evolution, Flexible AC TransmissionSystems (FACTS), Genetic Algorithm, Low Frequency Oscillations, Single-machine Infinite Bus Power System.

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Authors: Udeme O. Ini, Edikan E. Akpanibah

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This paper studies the optimal investment strategies for a plan member (PM) in a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme with transaction cost, taxes on invested funds and couple risky assets (stocks) under the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (O-U) process. The PM’s portfolio is assumed to consist of a risk-free asset and two risky assets where the two risky assets are driven by the O-U process. The Legendre transformation and dual theory is use to transform the resultant optimal control problem which is a nonlinear partial differential equation (PDE) into linear PDE and the resultant linear PDE is then solved for the explicit solutions of the optimal investment strategies for PM exhibiting constant absolute risk aversion (CARA) using change of variable technique. Furthermore, theoretical analysis is used to study the influences of some sensitive parameters on the optimal investment strategies with observations that the optimal investment strategies for the two risky assets increase with increase in the dividend and decreases with increase in tax on the invested funds, risk averse coefficient, initial fund size and the transaction cost.

Keywords: Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, portfolio management, Legendre transforms, CARA utility.

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Authors: R. Keerativittatayut, B. Kaewkamnerdpong, J. Laothamatas, W. Sungkarat

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Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a promising technique to study the connectivity among brain regions and effects of stimuli through modeling neuronal interactions from time-series neuroimaging. The aim of this study is to study characteristics of a mirror neuron system (MNS) in elderly group (age: 60-70 years old). Twenty volunteers were MRI scanned with visual stimuli to study a functional brain network. DCM was employed to determine the mechanism of mirror neuron effects. The results revealed major activated areas including precentral gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, inferior occipital gyrus, and supplementary motor area. When visual stimuli were presented, the feed-forward connectivity from visual area to conjunction area was increased and forwarded to motor area. Moreover, the connectivity from the conjunction areas to premotor area was also increased. Such findings can be useful for future diagnostic process for elderly with diseases such as Parkinson-s and Alzheimer-s.

Keywords: Mirror Neuron System (MNS), Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM), Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

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Authors: Sara Ansari, Mohammad Hadi Sadreddini

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The increasing importance of data stream arising in a wide range of advanced applications has led to the extensive study of mining frequent patterns. Mining data streams poses many new challenges amongst which are the one-scan nature, the unbounded memory requirement and the high arrival rate of data streams. In this paper, we propose a new approach for mining itemsets on data stream. Our approach SFIDS has been developed based on FIDS algorithm. The main attempts were to keep some advantages of the previous approach and resolve some of its drawbacks, and consequently to improve run time and memory consumption. Our approach has the following advantages: using a data structure similar to lattice for keeping frequent itemsets, separating regions from each other with deleting common nodes that results in a decrease in search space, memory consumption and run time; and Finally, considering CPU constraint, with increasing arrival rate of data that result in overloading system, SFIDS automatically detect this situation and discard some of unprocessing data. We guarantee that error of results is bounded to user pre-specified threshold, based on a probability technique. Final results show that SFIDS algorithm could attain about 50% run time improvement than FIDS approach.

Keywords: Data stream, frequent itemset, stream mining.

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Authors: Montri Phothisonothai, Masahiro Nakagawa

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The objective of this paper is to characterize the spontaneous Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals of four different motor imagery tasks and to show hereby a possible solution for the present binary communication between the brain and a machine ora Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The processing technique used in this paper was the fractal analysis evaluated by the Critical Exponent Method (CEM). The EEG signal was registered in 5 healthy subjects,sampling 15 measuring channels at 1024 Hz.Each channel was preprocessed by the Laplacian space ltering so as to reduce the space blur and therefore increase the spaceresolution. The EEG of each channel was segmented and its Fractaldimension (FD) calculated. The FD was evaluated in the time interval corresponding to the motor imagery and averaged out for all the subjects (each channel). In order to characterize the FD distribution,the linear regression curves of FD over the electrodes position were applied. The differences FD between the proposed mental tasks are quantied and evaluated for each experimental subject. The obtained results of the proposed method are a substantial fractal dimension in the EEG signal of motor imagery tasks and can be considerably utilized as the multiple-states BCI applications.

Keywords: electroencephalogram (EEG), motor imagery tasks, mental tasks, biomedical signals processing, human-machine interface, fractal analysis, critical exponent method (CEM).

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Authors: Necati Içer

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Crop-hail insurance plays a vital role in managing risks and reducing the financial consequences of hail damage on crop production. Predicting insurance premium rates with short-term data is a major challenge in numerous nations because of the unique characteristics of hailstorms. This study aims to suggest a feasible approach for establishing equitable premium rates in crop-hail insurance for nations with short-term insurance data. The primary goal of the rate-making process is to determine premium rates for high and zero loss costs of villages and enhance their credibility. To do this, a technique was created using the author's practical knowledge of crop-hail insurance. With this approach, the rate-making method was developed using a range of temporal and spatial factor combinations with both hypothetical and real data, including extreme cases. This article aims to show how to incorporate the temporal and spatial elements into determining fair premium rates using short-term insurance data. The article ends with a suggestion on the ultimate premium rates for insurance contracts.

Keywords: Crop-hail insurance, premium rate, short-term insurance data, spatial and temporal parameters.

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Authors: Alireza Keshmiri, Shahriar Bagheri, Nan Wu

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This research presents an analytical model for the development of an energy harvester with piezoelectric rings stacked at the boundary of the structure based on the Adomian decomposition method. The model is applied to geometrically non-uniform beams to derive the steady-state dynamic response of the structure subjected to base motion excitation and efficiently harvest the subsequent vibrational energy. The in-plane polarization of the piezoelectric rings is employed to enhance the electrical power output. A parametric study for the proposed energy harvester with various design parameters is done to prepare the dataset required for optimization. Finally, simulation-based optimization technique helps to find the optimum structural design with maximum efficiency. To solve the optimization problem, an artificial neural network is first trained to replace the simulation model, and then, a genetic algorithm is employed to find the optimized design variables. Higher geometrical non-uniformity and length of the beam lowers the structure natural frequency and generates a larger power output.

Keywords: Piezoelectricity, energy harvesting, simulation-based optimization, artificial neural network, genetic algorithm.

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Authors: Asma M. Milad, Mohammad B. Kassim, Wan R. Daud

Abstract:

Highly ordered TiO2 nanotube (TNT) arrays were fabricated onto a pre-treated titanium foil by anodic oxidation with a voltage of 20V in phosphoric acid/sodium fluoride electrolyte. A pretreatment of titanium foil involved washing with acetone, isopropanol, ethanol and deionized water. Carbon doped TiO2 nanotubes (C-TNT) was fabricated 'in-situ' with the same method in the presence of polyvinyl alcohol and urea as carbon sources. The affects of polyvinyl alcohol concentration and oxidation time on the composition, morphology and structure of the C-TN were studied by FE-SEM, EDX and XRD techniques. FESEM images of the nanotubes showed uniform arrays of C-TNTs. The density and microstructures of the nanotubes were greatly affected by the content of PVA. The introduction of the polyvinyl alcohol into the electrolyte increases the amount of C content inside TiO2 nanotube arrays uniformly. The influence of carbon content on the photo-current of C-TNT was investigated and the I-V profiles of the nanotubes were established. The preliminary results indicated that the 'in-situ' doping technique produced a superior quality nanotubes compared to post doping techniques.

Keywords: Anodization, photoelectrochemical cell, 'in-situ', post doping, thin film, and titania nanotube arrays.

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Authors: Shrey Sharma, Gunjan Kumar Verma

Abstract:

High density electrical prospecting has been widely used in groundwater investigation, civil engineering and environmental survey. For efficient inversion, the forward modeling routine, sensitivity calculation, and inversion algorithm must be efficient. This paper attempts to provide a brief summary of the past and ongoing developments of the method. It includes reviews of the procedures used for data acquisition, processing and inversion of electrical resistivity data based on compilation of academic literature. In recent times there had been a significant evolution in field survey designs and data inversion techniques for the resistivity method. In general 2-D inversion for resistivity data is carried out using the linearized least-square method with the local optimization technique .Multi-electrode and multi-channel systems have made it possible to conduct large 2-D, 3-D and even 4-D surveys efficiently to resolve complex geological structures that were not possible with traditional 1-D surveys. 3-D surveys play an increasingly important role in very complex areas where 2-D models suffer from artifacts due to off-line structures. Continued developments in computation technology, as well as fast data inversion techniques and software, have made it possible to use optimization techniques to obtain model parameters to a higher accuracy. A brief discussion on the limitations of the electrical resistivity method has also been presented.

Keywords: Resistivity, inversion, optimization.

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Authors: Maria Vinca Novenia

Abstract:

The number of school-aged children with autism in Indonesia has been increasing each year. Autism is a developmental disorder which can be diagnosed in childhood. One of the symptoms is the lack of communication skills. Music therapy is known as an effective treatment for children with autism. Music elements and structures create a good space for children with autism to express their feelings and communicate their thoughts. School-aged children are expected to be able to communicate non-verbally very well, but children with autism experience the difficulties of communicating non-verbally. The aim of this research is to analyze the significance of music therapy treatment to improve non-verbal communication tools for children with autism. This research informs teachers and parents on how music can be used as a media to communicate with children with autism. The qualitative method is used to analyze this research, while the result is described with the microanalysis technique. The result is measured specifically from the whole experiment, hours of every week, minutes of every session, and second of every moment. The samples taken are four school-aged children with autism in the age range of six to 11 years old. This research is conducted within four months started with observation, interview, literature research, and direct experiment. The result demonstrates that music therapy could be effectively used as a non-verbal communication tool for children with autism, such as changes of body gesture, eye contact, and facial expression.

Keywords: Autism, non-verbal communication, microanalysis, music therapy, school-aged children.

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Authors: Hassen M. Ouakad

Abstract:

In this paper, the influence of van der Waals, as well as electrostatic forces on the structural behavior of MEMS and NEMS actuators, has been investigated using of a Euler-Bernoulli beam continuous model. In the proposed nonlinear model, the electrostatic fringing-fields and the mid-plane stretching (geometric nonlinearity) effects have been considered. The nonlinear integro-differential equation governing the static structural behavior of the actuator has been derived. An original Galerkin-based reduced-order model has been developed to avoid problems arising from the nonlinearities in the differential equation. The obtained reduced-order model equations have been solved numerically using the Newton-Raphson method. The basic design parameters such as the pull-in parameters (voltage and deflection at pull-in), as well as the detachment length due to the van der Waals force of some investigated micro- and nano-actuators have been calculated. The obtained numerical results have been compared with some other existing methods (finite-elements method and finite-difference method) and the comparison showed good agreement among all assumed numerical techniques.

Keywords: MEMS, NEMS, fringing-fields, mid-plane stretching, Galerkin method.

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Authors: Ming-Jong Tsai, Y. L. Cheng, Y. L. Kuo, S. Y. Hsiao, J .W. Chen, P. H. Liu, D. H. Chen

Abstract:

The 3D printing is a combination of digital technology, material science, intelligent manufacturing and control of opto-mechatronics systems. It is called the third industrial revolution from the view of the Economist Journal. A color 3D printing machine may provide the necessary support for high value-added industrial and commercial design, architectural design, personal boutique, and 3D artist’s creation. The main goal of this paper is to develop photo-curable color 3D manufacturing technology and system implementation. The key technologies include (1) Photo-curable color 3D additive manufacturing processes development and materials research (2) Piezo type ink-jet head control and Opto-mechatronics integration technique of the photo-curable color 3D laminated manufacturing system. The proposed system is integrated with single Piezo type ink-jet head with two individual channels for two primary UV light curable color resins which can provide for future colorful 3D printing solutions. The main research results are 16 grey levels and grey resolution of 75 dpi. 

Keywords: 3d printing, additive manufacturing, color, photo-curable, Piezo type ink-jet, UV Resin.

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