Search results for: Sung Chang You

Authors: Yun-Yao Chi, Chieh-Kai Tsai, Dai-Ling Li

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In this paper, a method of fast 3D topography modeling using the high-resolution camera images is studied based on the characteristics of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system for low altitude aerial photogrammetry and the need of three dimensional (3D) urban landscape modeling. Firstly, the existing high-resolution digital camera with special design of overlap images is designed by reconstructing and analyzing the auto-flying paths of UAVs, which improves the self-calibration function to achieve the high precision imaging by software, and further increased the resolution of the imaging system. Secondly, several-angle images including vertical images and oblique images gotten by the UAV system are used for the detail measure of urban land surfaces and the texture extraction. Finally, the aerial photography and 3D topography construction are both developed in campus of Chang-Jung University and in Guerin district area in Tainan, Taiwan, provide authentication model for construction of 3D topography based on combined UAV-based camera images from system. The results demonstrated that the UAV system for low altitude aerial photogrammetry can be used in the construction of 3D topography production, and the technology solution in this paper offers a new, fast, and technical plan for the 3D expression of the city landscape, fine modeling and visualization.

Keywords: 3D, topography, UAV, images.

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Authors: Ren-Hua Kung, Jen-Chieh Liu , Chih-Teng Chang, Pei-Ti Chen

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The consumption capability of people in China has been a big issue to tourism business. Due to the increasing of China tourists, Taiwan-s government rescinded the category of people in China and opened up the non-stopped airline from China to Taiwan. The “one-day traveling style between China and Taiwan" has formed, hoping to bring business to Taiwan. Night market, which shows foreigners the very local character of Taiwan, contains various merchandise for consumers to purchase. With the increasing numbers of non-stopped airline, visiting Taiwan-s night markets has also been one of major activities to China-s tourists. The purpose of the present study is to understand the consumer behavior of China tourists in tourist night markets in Taipei and analyze that if their shopping motives cause the different shopping behaviors and post-purchase satisfaction and revisiting intention. The results reveled that for the China tourists, the motives of significant influence to the shopping behaviors. Also, the shopping behaviors significant influence to the whole satisfaction and the whole satisfaction significant influence to post-purchase behavior.

Keywords: Shopping Motivation, Shopping Behavior, Satisfaction, Post-Purchase Behavior

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Authors: Cheng-Chia Yang , Yi-Shun Wang , Sue-Ting Chang, Suh-Er Guo, Mei-Fen Huang

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Object: Review recent publications of patient safety culture to investigate the relationship between leadership behavior, safety culture, and safety performance in the healthcare industry. Method: This study is a cross-sectional study, 350 questionnaires were mailed to hospital workers with 195 valid responses obtained, and a 55.7% valid response rate. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to test the factor structure and determine if the composite reliability was significant with a factor loading of >0.5, resulting in an acceptable model fit. Results: Through the analysis of One-way ANOVA, the results showed that physicians significantly have more negative patient safety culture perceptions and safety performance perceptions than non- physicians. Conclusions: The path analysis results show that leadership behavior affects safety culture and safety performance in the health care industry. Safety performance was affected and improved with contingency leadership and a positive patient safety organization culture. The study suggests improving safety performance by providing a well-managed system that includes: consideration of leadership, hospital worker training courses, and a solid safety reporting system.

Keywords: Leadership Behavior, Patient Safety, Safety Culture, Safety Performance

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Authors: Ya-Chi Yu, Pei-Syuan Ruan, Shao-Wen Chen, Yu-Hsien Chang, Jin-Der Lee, Jong-Rong Wang, Chunkuan Shih

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This study analyzed the transient signals of central region void fraction of air-water two-phase flow in a 3x3 rod bundle. Experimental tests were carried out utilizing a vertical rod bundle test section along with a set of air-water supply/flow control system, and the transient signals of the central region void fraction were collected through the electrical conductivity sensors as well as visualized via high speed photography. By converting the electric signals, transient void fraction can be obtained through the voltage ratios. With a fixed superficial water velocity (J_f=0.094 m/s), two different superficial air velocities (J_g=0.094 m/s and 0.236 m/s) were tested and presented, which were corresponding to the flow conditions of bubbly flows and cap/slug flows, respectively. The time averaged central region void fraction was obtained as 0.109-0.122 with 0.028 standard deviation for the selected bubbly flow and 0.188-0.221with 0.101 standard deviation for the selected cap/slug flow, respectively. Through Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis, no clear frequency peak was found in bubbly flow, while two dominant frequencies were identified around 1.6 Hz and 2.5 Hz in the present cap/slug flow.

Keywords: Central region, rod bundles, transient void fraction, two-phase flow.

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Authors: Chiao-Chen Chang, Yang-Chieh Chin

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This study examines the issue of recommendation sources from the perspectives of gender and consumers- perceived risk, and validates a model for the antecedents of consumer online purchases. The method of obtaining quantitative data was that of the instrument of a survey questionnaire. Data were collected via questionnaires from 396 undergraduate students aged 18-24, and a multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify causal relationships. Empirical findings established the link between recommendation sources (word-of-mouth, advertising, and recommendation systems) and the likelihood of making online purchases and demonstrated the role of gender and perceived risk as moderators in this context. The results showed that the effects of word-of-mouth on online purchase intentions were stronger than those of advertising and recommendation systems. In addition, female consumers have less experience with online purchases, so they may be more likely than males to refer to recommendations during the decision-making process. The findings of the study will help marketers to address the recommendation factor which influences consumers- intention to purchase and to improve firm performances to meet consumer needs.

Keywords: Recommendation sources, Online purchaseintentions, Gender differences, Perceived risk.

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Authors: Yong-Sung Kim, Je-Seok Shin, Ho-Jun Jo Jin-O Kim

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Home Energy Management System (HEMS), which makes the residential consumers, contribute to the demand response is attracting attention in recent years. An aim of HEMS is to minimize their electricity cost by controlling the use of their appliances according to electricity price. The use of appliances in HEMS may be affected by some conditions such as external temperature and electricity price. Therefore, the user’s usage pattern of appliances should be modeled according to the external conditions, and the resultant usage pattern is related to the user’s comfortability on use of each appliances. This paper proposes a methodology to model the usage pattern based on the historical data with the copula function. Through copula function, the usage range of each appliance can be obtained and is able to satisfy the appropriate user’s comfort according to the external conditions for next day. Within the usage range, an optimal scheduling for appliances would be conducted so as to minimize an electricity cost with considering user’s comfort. Among the home appliance, electric heater (EH) is a representative appliance, which is affected by the external temperature. In this paper, an optimal scheduling algorithm for an electric heater (EH) is addressed based on the method of branch and bound. As a result, scenarios for the EH usage are obtained according to user’s comfort levels and then the residential consumer would select the best scenario. The case study shows the effects of the proposed algorithm compared with the traditional operation of the EH, and it represents impacts of the comfort level on the scheduling result.

Keywords: Load scheduling, usage pattern, user’s comfort, copula function, branch, bound, electric heater.

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Authors: Yi-Hsiang Pan, Wei-Ting Hsu, Chang-Pang Lin

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The purpose of this study was to develop and examine a Teaching Commitment Scale of Health and Physical Education (TCS-HPE) for Taiwanese elementary school teachers. First of all, based on teaching commitment related theory and literatures to develop a original scale with 40 items, later both stratified random sampling and cluster sampling were used to sample participants. During the first stage, 300 teachers were sampled and 251 valid scales (83.7%) returned. Later, the data was analyzed by exploratory factor analysis to obtain 74.30% of total variance for the construct validity. The Cronbach-s alpha coefficient of sum scale reliability was 0.94, and subscale coefficients were between 0.80 and 0.96. In the second stage, 400 teachers were sampled and 318 valid scales (79.5%) returned. Finally, this study used confirmatory factor analysis to test validity and reliability of TCS-HPE. The result showed that the fit indexes reached acceptable criteria(¤ç2 (246 ) =557.64 , p<.05, RMSEA= 0.03, GFI = 0.96, AGFI = 0.95, NFI = 0.91, CFI = 0.98, RMR = 0.04, SRMR = 0.03). In conclusion, TCS-HPE has four dimensions with 24 items, including teaching identification, teaching involvement, teaching objectives and tendency towards work continuation. It is an acceptable measurement instrument with reliability and validity.

Keywords: Attitude, belief, construct validity, teachers' professional development.

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Authors: Tae-Hyub Hong, Choeng-Ryul Choi, Chang-Nyung Kim

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Human heart valves diseased by congenital heart defects, rheumatic fever, bacterial infection, cancer may cause stenosis or insufficiency in the valves. Treatment may be with medication but often involves valve repair or replacement (insertion of an artificial heart valve). Bileaflet mechanical heart valves (BMHVs) are widely implanted to replace the diseased heart valves, but still suffer from complications such as hemolysis, platelet activation, tissue overgrowth and device failure. These complications are closely related to both flow characteristics through the valves and leaflet dynamics. In this study, the physiological flow interacting with the moving leaflets in a bileaflet mechanical heart valve (BMHV) is simulated with a strongly coupled implicit fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method which is newly organized based on the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach and the dynamic mesh method (remeshing) of FLUENT. The simulated results are in good agreement with previous experimental studies. This study shows the applicability of the present FSI model to the complicated physics interacting between fluid flow and moving boundary.

Keywords: Bileaflet Mechanical Heart Valve, Fluid- Structure Interaction.

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Authors: Rei-Tang Tsai, Chih-Yang Wu, Chia-Yuan Chang, Ming-Ying Kuo

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This study aims to investigate the mixing behaviors of deionized (DI) water and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) solutions in C-shaped serpentine micromixers over a wide range of flow conditions. The flow of CMC solutions exhibits shear-thinning behaviors. Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the effects of the mean flow speed, fluid properties and geometry parameters on flow and mixing in the micromixers with the serpentine channel of the same overall channel length. From the results, we can find the following trends. When convection dominates fluid mixing, the curvature-induced vortices enhance fluid mixing effectively. The mixing efficiency of a micromixer consisting of semicircular C-shaped repeating units with a smaller centerline radius is better than that of a micromixer consisting of major segment repeating units with a larger centerline radius. The viscosity of DI water is less than the overall average apparent viscosity of CMC solutions, and so the effect of curvature-induced vortices on fluid mixing in DI water is larger than that in CMC solutions for the cases with the same mean flow speed.

Keywords: Microfluidics, mixing, non-Newtonian fluids, curved channel, vortex.

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Authors: Yi-Shiang Shiu, Meng-Lung Lin, Kang-Tsung Chang, Tzu-How Chu

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Most paddy rice fields in East Asia are small parcels, and the weather conditions during the growing season are usually cloudy. FORMOSAT-2 multi-spectral images have an 8-meter resolution and one-day recurrence, ideal for mapping paddy rice fields in East Asia. To map rice fields, this study first determined the transplanting and the most active tillering stages of paddy rice and then used multi-temporal images to distinguish different growing characteristics between paddy rice and other ground covers. The unsupervised ISODATA (iterative self-organizing data analysis techniques) and supervised maximum likelihood were both used to discriminate paddy rice fields, with training areas automatically derived from ten-year cultivation parcels in Taiwan. Besides original bands in multi-spectral images, we also generated normalized difference vegetation index and experimented with object-based pre-classification and post-classification. This paper discusses results of different image classification methods in an attempt to find a precise and automatic solution to mapping paddy rice in Taiwan.

Keywords: paddy rice fields; multi-temporal; FORMOSAT-2images, normalized difference vegetation index, object-basedclassification.

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Authors: Chia-Jung Chen, Rong-Shine Lin, Rong-Guey Chang

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As networking has become popular, Web-learning tends to be a trend while designing a tool. Moreover, five-axis machining has been widely used in industry recently; however, it has potential axial table colliding problems. Thus this paper aims at proposing an efficient web-learning collision detection tool on five-axis machining. However, collision detection consumes heavy resource that few devices can support, thus this research uses a systematic approach based on web knowledge to detect collision. The methodologies include the kinematics analyses for five-axis motions, separating axis method for collision detection, and computer simulation for verification. The machine structure is modeled as STL format in CAD software. The input to the detection system is the g-code part program, which describes the tool motions to produce the part surface. This research produced a simulation program with C programming language and demonstrated a five-axis machining example with collision detection on web site. The system simulates the five-axis CNC motion for tool trajectory and detects for any collisions according to the input g-codes and also supports high-performance web service benefiting from C. The result shows that our method improves 4.5 time of computational efficiency, comparing to the conventional detection method.

Keywords: Collision detection, Five-axis machining, Separating axis.

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Authors: Cheon Sik Min, Hyeong Wook Song, Sook Yeon Shim, Hoon Chang

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The purpose of this study was to analyze the correlation between permitted building areas and housing distribution ratios and their fluctuation, and test a distribution model during 3 successive governments in 5 cities including Bucheon in reference to the time series administrative data, and thereby, interpret the results of the analysis in association with the policies pursued by the successive governments to examine the structural fluctuation of permitted building areas and housing distribution ratios. In order to analyze the fluctuation of permitted building areas and housing distribution ratios during 3 successive governments and examine the cycles of the time series data, the spectral analysis was performed, and in order to analyze the correlation between permitted building areas and housing distribution ratios, the tabulation was performed to describe the correlations statistically, and in order to explain about differences of fluctuation distribution of permitted building areas and housing distribution ratios among 3 governments, the goodness of fit test was conducted.

Keywords: The Permitted Building Areas, Housing Distribution Ratios, the Structural Fluctuation.

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Authors: Zoe Chang, Max Williams, Gautham Das

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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the incorporation of hemp fibers (HF) in concrete. Hemp fiber reinforced concrete (HFRC) is becoming more popular as an alternative for regular mix designs. This study was done to evaluate the compressive strength of HFRC regarding mix procedure. HF were obtained from the manufacturer and hand processed to ensure uniformity in width and length. The fibers were added to concrete as both wet and dry mix to investigate and optimize the mix design process. Results indicated that the dry mix had a compressive strength of 1157 psi compared to the wet mix of 985 psi. This dry mix compressive strength was within range of the standard mix compressive strength of 1533 psi. The statistical analysis revealed that the mix design process needs further optimization and uniformity concerning the addition of HF. Regression analysis revealed that the standard mix design had a coefficient of 0.9 as compared to the dry mix of 0.375 indicating a variation in the mixing process. While completing the dry mix, the addition of plain HF caused them to intertwine creating lumps and inconsistency. However, during the wet mixing process, combining water and HF before incorporation allows the fibers to uniformly disperse within the mix hence the regression analysis indicated a better coefficient of 0.55. This study concludes that HRFC is a viable alternative to regular mixes however more research surrounding its characteristics needs to be conducted.

Keywords: hemp fibers, hemp reinforced concrete, wet and dry, freeze thaw testing, compressive strength

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Authors: Yuan-Hsiang Chang, Zhong-Xian Peng, Li-Der Jeng

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Music has always been an integral part of human’s daily lives. But, for the most people, reading musical score and turning it into melody is not easy. This study aims to develop an Automatic music score recognition system using digital image processing, which can be used to read and analyze musical score images automatically. The technical approaches included: (1) staff region segmentation; (2) image preprocessing; (3) note recognition; and (4) accidental and rest recognition. Digital image processing techniques (e.g., horizontal /vertical projections, connected component labeling, morphological processing, template matching, etc.) were applied according to musical notes, accidents, and rests in staff notations. Preliminary results showed that our system could achieve detection and recognition rates of 96.3% and 91.7%, respectively. In conclusion, we presented an effective automated musical score recognition system that could be integrated in a system with a media player to play music/songs given input images of musical score. Ultimately, this system could also be incorporated in applications for mobile devices as a learning tool, such that a music player could learn to play music/songs.

Keywords: Connected component labeling, image processing, morphological processing, optical musical recognition.

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Authors: Fu-Hsuan Huang, Po-Jung Yuan, Kang-Ping Lin, Hen-Hong Chang, Cheng-Lun Tsai

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Photoplethysmography is a simple measurement of the variation in blood volume in tissue. It detects the pulse signal of heart beat as well as the low frequency signal of vasoconstriction and vasodilation. The transmission type measurement is limited to only a few specific positions for example the index finger that have a short path length for light. The reflectance type measurement can be conveniently applied on most parts of the body surface. This study analyzed the factors that determine the quality of reflectance photoplethysmograph signal including the emitter-detector distance, wavelength, light intensity, and optical properties of skin tissue. Light emitting diodes (LEDs) with four different visible wavelengths were used as the light emitters. A phototransistor was used as the light detector. A micro translation stage adjusts the emitter-detector distance from 2 mm to 15 mm. The reflective photoplethysmograph signals were measured on different sites. The optimal emitter-detector distance was chosen to have a large dynamic range for low frequency drifting without signal saturation and a high perfusion index. Among these four wavelengths, a yellowish green (571nm) light with a proper emitter-detection distance of 2mm is the most suitable for obtaining a steady and reliable reflectance photoplethysmograph signal

Keywords: Reflectance photoplethysmograph, Perfusion index, Signal-to-noise ratio

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Authors: Kuo-Yang Cheng, Yi-Lun Pan, Chang-Hsing Wu, His-En Yu, Hui-Shan Chen, Weicheng Huang

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The main mission of Ezilla is to provide a friendly interface to access the virtual machine and quickly deploy the high performance computing environment. Ezilla has been developed by Pervasive Computing Team at National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC). Ezilla integrates the Cloud middleware, virtualization technology, and Web-based Operating System (WebOS) to form a virtual computer in distributed computing environment. In order to upgrade the dataset and speedup, we proposed the sensor observation system to deal with a huge amount of data in the Cassandra database. The sensor observation system is based on the Ezilla to store sensor raw data into distributed database. We adopt the Ezilla Cloud service to create virtual machines and login into virtual machine to deploy the sensor observation system. Integrating the sensor observation system with Ezilla is to quickly deploy experiment environment and access a huge amount of data with distributed database that support the replication mechanism to protect the data security.

Keywords: Cloud, Virtualization, Cassandra, WebOS

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Authors: Nan-Chyuan Tsai, Din-Chang Chen, Rong-Mao Lee, Bai-Lu Wang

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This paper presents how the real-time chatter prevention can be realized by feedback of acoustic cutting signal, and the efficacy of the proposed adaptive spindle speed tuning algorithm is verified by intensive experimental simulations. A pair of microphones, perpendicular to each other, is used to acquire the acoustic cutting signal resulting from milling chatter. A real-time feedback control loop is constructed for spindle speed compensation so that the milling process can be ensured to be within the stability zone of stability lobe diagram. Acoustic Chatter Signal Index (ACSI) and Spindle Speed Compensation Strategy (SSCS) are proposed to quantify the acoustic signal and actively tune the spindle speed respectively. By converting the acoustic feedback signal into ACSI, an appropriate Spindle Speed Compensation Rate (SSCR) can be determined by SSCS based on real-time chatter level or ACSI. Accordingly, the compensation command, referred to as Added-On Voltage (AOV), is applied to increase/decrease the spindle motor speed. By inspection on the precision and quality of the workpiece surface after milling, the efficacy of the real-time chatter prevention strategy via acoustic signal feedback is further assured.

Keywords: Chatter compensation, Stability lobes, Non-invasivemeasurement.

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Authors: Chang-Guk Sun, Jin-Soo Shin

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In this study, an inland metropolitan area, Gwangju, in Korea was selected to assess the amplification potential of earthquake motion and provide the information for regional seismic countermeasure. A geographic information system-based expert system was implemented for reliably predicting the spatial geotechnical layers in the entire region of interesting by building a geo-knowledge database. Particularly, the database consists of the existing boring data gathered from the prior geotechnical projects and the surface geo-knowledge data acquired from the site visit. For practical application of the geo-knowledge database to estimate the earthquake hazard potential related to site amplification effects at the study area, seismic zoning maps on geotechnical parameters, such as the bedrock depth and the site period, were created within GIS framework. In addition, seismic zonation of site classification was also performed to determine the site amplification coefficients for seismic design at any site in the study area. KeywordsEarthquake hazard, geo-knowledge, geographic information system, seismic zonation, site period.

Keywords: Earthquake hazard, geo-knowledge, geographic information system, seismic zonation, site period.

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Authors: Chang-Lin Hu, Yao-You Cheng, Meng-Lin Li

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The need of high frame-rate imaging has been triggered by the new applications of ultrasound imaging to transient elastography and real-time 3D ultrasound. Using plane wave excitation (PWE) is one of the methods to achieve very high frame-rate imaging since an image can be formed with a single insonification. However, due to the lack of transmit focusing, the image quality with PWE is lower compared with those using conventional focused transmission. To solve this problem, we propose a filter-retrieved transmit focusing (FRF) technique combined with cross-correlation weighting (FRF+CC weighting) for high frame-rate imaging with PWE. A restrospective focusing filter is designed to simultaneously minimize the predefined sidelobe energy associated with single PWE and the filter energy related to the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). This filter attempts to maintain the mainlobe signals and to reduce the sidelobe ones, which gives similar mainlobe signals and different sidelobes between the original PWE and the FRF baseband data. Normalized cross-correlation coefficient at zero lag is calculated to quantify the degree of similarity at each imaging point and used as a weighting matrix to the FRF baseband data to further suppress sidelobes, thus improving the filter-retrieved focusing quality.

Keywords: retrospective synthetic focusing, high frame rate, correlation weighting.

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Authors: Wang Shuen-Tai, Lin Yu-Ching, Chang Hsi-Ya

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Cloud computing is the innovative and leading information technology model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. In this paper, we aim at the development of workflow management system for cloud computing platforms based on our previous research on the dynamic allocation of the cloud computing resources and its workflow process. We took advantage of the HTML5 technology and developed web-based workflow interface. In order to enable the combination of many tasks running on the cloud platform in sequence, we designed a mechanism and developed an execution engine for workflow management on clouds. We also established a prediction model which was integrated with job queuing system to estimate the waiting time and cost of the individual tasks on different computing nodes, therefore helping users achieve maximum performance at lowest payment. This proposed effort has the potential to positively provide an efficient, resilience and elastic environment for cloud computing platform. This development also helps boost user productivity by promoting a flexible workflow interface that lets users design and control their tasks' flow from anywhere.

Keywords: Web-based, workflow, HTML5, Cloud Computing, Queuing System.

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Authors: Yi-Zhong Weng, Chien-Kang Huang, Yu-Feng Huang, Chi-Yuan Yu, Darby Tien-Hao Chang

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Search for a tertiary substructure that geometrically matches the 3D pattern of the binding site of a well-studied protein provides a solution to predict protein functions. In our previous work, a web server has been built to predict protein-ligand binding sites based on automatically extracted templates. However, a drawback of such templates is that the web server was prone to resulting in many false positive matches. In this study, we present a sequence-order constraint to reduce the false positive matches of using automatically extracted templates to predict protein-ligand binding sites. The binding site predictor comprises i) an automatically constructed template library and ii) a local structure alignment algorithm for querying the library. The sequence-order constraint is employed to identify the inconsistency between the local regions of the query protein and the templates. Experimental results reveal that the sequence-order constraint can largely reduce the false positive matches and is effective for template-based binding site prediction.

Keywords: Protein structure, binding site, functional prediction

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Authors: Yao-Tang Chang, Chuen-Ching Wang, Shu-Han Hu

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In order to implement flexibility as well as survivable capacities over passive optical network (PON), a new automatic random fault-recovery mechanism with array-waveguide-grating based (AWG-based) optical switch (OSW) is presented. Firstly, wavelength-division-multiplexing and optical code-division multiple-access (WDM/OCDMA) scheme are configured to meet the various geographical locations requirement between optical network unit (ONU) and optical line terminal (OLT). The AWG-base optical switch is designed and viewed as central star-mesh topology to prohibit/decrease the duplicated redundant elements such as fiber and transceiver as well. Hence, by simple monitoring and routing switch algorithm, random fault-recovery capacity is achieved over bi-directional (up/downstream) WDM/OCDMA scheme. When error of distribution fiber (DF) takes place or bit-error-rate (BER) is higher than 10-9 requirement, the primary/slave AWG-based OSW are adjusted and controlled dynamically to restore the affected ONU groups via the other working DFs immediately.

Keywords: Random fault recovery mechanism, Array-waveguide-grating based optical switch (AWG- based OSW), wavelength-division-multiplexing and optical code-divisionmultiple-access (WDM/ OCDMA)

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Authors: Hsin-Hung Chang, Jin-Lung Guan, Ming-Ta Yang

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This paper presents a compact thermoelectric power generator system based on temperature difference across the element. The system can transfer the burning heat energy to electric energy directly. The proposed system has a thermoelectric generator and a power control box. In the generator, there are 4 thermoelectric modules (TEMs), each of which uses 2 thermoelectric chips (TEs) and 2 cold sinks, 1 thermal absorber, and 1 thermal conduction flat board. In the power control box, there are 1 storing energy device, 1 converter, and 1 inverter. The total net generating power is about 11W. This system uses commercial portable gas stoves or burns timber or the coal as the heat source, which is easily obtained. It adopts solid-state thermoelectric chips as heat inverter parts. The system has the advantages of being light-weight, quite, and mobile, requiring no maintenance, and havng easily-supplied heat source. The system can be used a as long as burning is allowed. This system works well for highly-mobilized outdoors situations by providing a power for illumination, entertainment equipment or the wireless equipment at refuge. Under heavy storms such as typhoon, when the solar panels become ineffective and the wind-powered machines malfunction, the thermoelectric power generator can continue providing the vital power.

Keywords: Thermoelectric chip, seekback effect, thermo electric power generator.

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Authors: S. Yodyingyong, C. Chaichana, C. Nuchsuk, S. Roytrakul, N. P. T-Thienprasert, S. Ratanapo

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Protein hydrolysates prepared from a number of medicinal plants are promising sources of various bioactive peptides. In this work, proteins from dried whole plant of Euphorbia hirta Linn. were extracted and digested with pepsin for 12h. The hydrolysates of lesser than 3 KDa were fractionated by a cut-off membrane. The peptide hydrolysate was then purified by an anion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sephacel™ column and reverse-phase chromatography on Sep-pak C₁₈ column, respectively. The cytotoxic effect of each peptide fraction against a gastric carcinoma cell line (KATO-III, ATCC No. HTB103) was investigated using colorimetric MTT viability assay. A human liver cell line (Chang Liver, CLS No. 300139) was used as a control normal cell line. Two purified peptide peaks, peak l and peak ll at 100µg peptides mL^-1 affected cell viability of the gastric cancer cell lines to 63.85±4.94 and 66.92±6.46%, respectively. Our result showed for the first time that the peptide fractions derived from protein hydrolysate of Euphorbia hirta Linn. have anti-gastric cancer activity, which offers a potential novel and natural anti-gastric cancer remedy.

Keywords: Cytotoxic, peptides, Euphorbia hirta Linn., gastric carcinoma.

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Authors: Hijun Kim, Jungkeun Sung, Seungwoo Kim

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In this paper, a Smart Home Service Robot, McBot II, which performs mess-cleanup function etc. in house, is designed much more optimally than other service robots. It is newly developed in much more practical system than McBot I which we had developed two years ago. One characteristic attribute of mobile platforms equipped with a set of dependent wheels is their omni- directionality and the ability to realize complex translational and rotational trajectories for agile navigation in door. An accurate coordination of steering angle and spinning rate of each wheel is necessary for a consistent motion. This paper develops trajectory controller of 3-wheels omni-directional mobile robot using fuzzy azimuth estimator. A specialized anthropomorphic robot manipulator which can be attached to the housemaid robot McBot II, is developed in this paper. This built-in type manipulator consists of both arms with 3 DOF (Degree of Freedom) each and both hands with 3 DOF each. The robotic arm is optimally designed to satisfy both the minimum mechanical size and the maximum workspace. Minimum mass and length are required for the built-in cooperated-arms system. But that makes the workspace so small. This paper proposes optimal design method to overcome the problem by using neck joint to move the arms horizontally forward/backward and waist joint to move them vertically up/down. The robotic hand, which has two fingers and a thumb, is also optimally designed in task-based concept. Finally, the good performance of the developed McBot II is confirmed through live tests of the mess-cleanup task.

Keywords: Holonomic Omni-wheeled Mobile Robot, Special-purpose, Manipulation, Home Service Robot

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Authors: Chang-Bin Huang, Fu-Kuang Ko

Abstract:

Taiwan was the first country in Asia to announce “Nuclear-Free Homeland" in 2002. In 2008, the new government released the Sustainable Energy Policy Guidelines to lower the nationwide CO2 emissions some time between 2016 and 2020 back to the level of year 2008, further abatement of CO2 emissions is planed in year 2025 when CO2 emissions will decrease to the level of year 2000. Besides, under consideration of the issues of energy, environment and economics (3E), the new government declared that the nuclear power is a carbon-less energy option. This study analyses the effects of nuclear power generation for CO2 abatement scenarios in Taiwan. The MARKAL-MACRO energy model was adopted to evaluate economic impacts and energy deployment due to life extension of existing nuclear power plants and build new nuclear power units in CO2 abatement scenarios. The results show that CO2 abatement effort is expensive. On the other hand, nuclear power is a cost-effective choice. The GDP loss rate in the case of building new nuclear power plants is around two thirds of the Nuclear-Free Homeland case. Nuclear power generation has the capacity to provide large-scale CO2 free electricity. Therefore, the results show that nuclear power is not only an option for Taiwan, but also a requisite for Taiwan-s CO2 reduction strategy.

Keywords: Energy model, CO2 abatement, nuclear power, economic impacts.

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Authors: Chang Hsueh-Sheng, Chen Tzu-Ling

Abstract:

Earthquake is an unpredictable natural disaster and intensive earthquakes have caused serious impacts on social-economic system, environmental and social resilience. Conventional ways to mitigate earthquake disaster are to enhance building codes and advance structural engineering measures. However, earthquake-induced ground damage such as liquefaction, land subsidence, landslide happen on places nearby earthquake prone or poor soil condition areas. Therefore, this study uses spatial statistical analysis to explore the spatial pattern of damaged buildings. Afterwards, principle components analysis (PCA) is applied to categorize the similar features in different kinds of clustered patterns. The results show that serious landslide prone area, close to fault, vegetated ground surface and mudslide prone area are common in those highly damaged buildings. In addition, the oldest building might not be directly referred to the most vulnerable one. In fact, it seems that buildings built between 1974 and 1989 become more fragile during the earthquake. The incorporation of both spatial statistical analyses and PCA can provide more accurate information to subsidize retrofit programs to enhance earthquake resistance in particular areas.

Keywords: Earthquake disaster, spatial statistical analysis, principle components analysis, clustered patterns.

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Authors: J. R. Wang, H. T. Lin, H. C. Chang, W. K. Lin, W. Y. Li, C. Shih

Abstract:

This analysis of Kuosheng nuclear power plant (NPP) was performed mainly by TRACE, assisted with FRAPTRAN and FRAPCON. SNAP v2.2.1 and TRACE v5.0p3 are used to develop the Kuosheng NPP SPU TRACE model which can simulate the turbine trip without bypass transient. From the analysis of TRACE, the important parameters such as dome pressure, coolant temperature and pressure can be determined. Through these parameters, comparing with the criteria which were formulated by United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC), we can determine whether the Kuoshengnuclear power plant failed or not in the accident analysis. However, from the data of TRACE, the fuel rods status cannot be determined. With the information from TRACE and burn-up analysis obtained from FRAPCON, FRAPTRAN analyzes more details about the fuel rods in this transient. Besides, through the SNAP interface, the data results can be presented as an animation. From the animation, the TRACE and FRAPTRAN data can be merged together that may be realized by the readers more easily. In this research, TRACE showed that the maximum dome pressure of the reactor reaches to 8.32 MPa, which is lower than the acceptance limit 9.58 MPa. Furthermore, FRAPTRAN revels that the maximum strain is about 0.00165, which is below the criteria 0.01. In addition, cladding enthalpy is 52.44 cal/g which is lower than 170 cal/g specified by the USNRC NUREG-0800 Standard Review Plan.

Keywords: Turbine trip without bypass, Kuosheng NPP, TRACE, FRAPTRAN, SNAP animation.

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Authors: Chang S. Woo, Hyun S. Park, Wan D. Kim

Abstract:

Fatigue life prediction and evaluation are the key technologies to assure the safety and reliability of automotive rubber components. The objective of this study is to develop the fatigue analysis process for vulcanized rubber components, which is applicable to predict fatigue life at initial product design step. Fatigue life prediction methodology of vulcanized natural rubber was proposed by incorporating the finite element analysis and fatigue damage parameter of maximum strain appearing at the critical location determined from fatigue test. In order to develop an appropriate fatigue damage parameter of the rubber material, a series of displacement controlled fatigue test was conducted using threedimensional dumbbell specimen with different levels of mean displacement. It was shown that the maximum strain was a proper damage parameter, taking the mean displacement effects into account. Nonlinear finite element analyses of three-dimensional dumbbell specimens were performed based on a hyper-elastic material model determined from the uni-axial tension, equi-biaxial tension and planar test. Fatigue analysis procedure employed in this study could be used approximately for the fatigue design.

Keywords: Rubber, Material test, Finite element analysis, Strain, Fatigue test, Fatigue life prediction.

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Authors: Hsin-Chang Yang, Chung-Hong Lee, Kuo-Lung Ke

Abstract:

The self-organizing map (SOM) model is a well-known neural network model with wide spread of applications. The main characteristics of SOM are two-fold, namely dimension reduction and topology preservation. Using SOM, a high-dimensional data space will be mapped to some low-dimensional space. Meanwhile, the topological relations among data will be preserved. With such characteristics, the SOM was usually applied on data clustering and visualization tasks. However, the SOM has main disadvantage of the need to know the number and structure of neurons prior to training, which are difficult to be determined. Several schemes have been proposed to tackle such deficiency. Examples are growing/expandable SOM, hierarchical SOM, and growing hierarchical SOM. These schemes could dynamically expand the map, even generate hierarchical maps, during training. Encouraging results were reported. Basically, these schemes adapt the size and structure of the map according to the distribution of training data. That is, they are data-driven or dataoriented SOM schemes. In this work, a topic-oriented SOM scheme which is suitable for document clustering and organization will be developed. The proposed SOM will automatically adapt the number as well as the structure of the map according to identified topics. Unlike other data-oriented SOMs, our approach expands the map and generates the hierarchies both according to the topics and their characteristics of the neurons. The preliminary experiments give promising result and demonstrate the plausibility of the method.

Keywords: Self-organizing map, topic identification, learning algorithm, text clustering.

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