Search results for: heat source function

Authors: Othman O. Khalifa, Zakiah Hanim Ahmad, Teddy Surya Gunawan

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This paper presents a rule-based text- to- speech (TTS) Synthesis System for Standard Malay, namely SMaTTS. The proposed system using sinusoidal method and some pre- recorded wave files in generating speech for the system. The use of phone database significantly decreases the amount of computer memory space used, thus making the system very light and embeddable. The overall system was comprised of two phases the Natural Language Processing (NLP) that consisted of the high-level processing of text analysis, phonetic analysis, text normalization and morphophonemic module. The module was designed specially for SM to overcome few problems in defining the rules for SM orthography system before it can be passed to the DSP module. The second phase is the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) which operated on the low-level process of the speech waveform generation. A developed an intelligible and adequately natural sounding formant-based speech synthesis system with a light and user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) is introduced. A Standard Malay Language (SM) phoneme set and an inclusive set of phone database have been constructed carefully for this phone-based speech synthesizer. By applying the generative phonology, a comprehensive letter-to-sound (LTS) rules and a pronunciation lexicon have been invented for SMaTTS. As for the evaluation tests, a set of Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT) word list was compiled and several experiments have been performed to evaluate the quality of the synthesized speech by analyzing the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) obtained. The overall performance of the system as well as the room for improvements was thoroughly discussed.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Text-To-Speech (TTS), Diphone, source filter, low-/ high- level synthesis.

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Authors: Leila Kazemi, Akram Pourmohammad, Zargham OstadiAsl, Maryam Jahandideh, Ahadollah Azami

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Due to its geographical location, Iran is considered one of the earthquake-prone areas where the best way to decrease earthquake effects is supposed to be strengthening the buildings. Even though, one idea suggests that the use of adobe in constructing buildings be prohibited for its weak function especially in earthquake-prone areas, however, regarding ecological considerations, sustainability and other local skills, another idea pays special attention to adobe as one of the construction technologies which is popular among people. From the architectural and technological point of view, as strong sustainable building construction materials, compressed adobe construction materials make most of the construction in urban or rural areas ranging from small to big industrial buildings used to replace common earth blocks in traditional systems and strengthen traditional adobe buildings especially against earthquake. Mentioning efficient construction using compressed adobe system as a reliable replacement for traditional soil construction materials , this article focuses on the experiences of India in the fields of sustainable development of compressed adobe systems in the form of system in which the compressed soil is combined with cement, load bearing building with brick/solid concrete block system, brick system using rat trap bond, metal system with adobe infill and finally emphasizes on the use of these systems in the earthquake-struck city of Bam in Iran.

Keywords: Local Materials, Compressed Earth Blocks, Sustainable Construction, Retrofitting

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Authors: G. Arabaci

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Heavy metals are one of the major groups of contaminants in the environment and many of them are toxic even at very low concentration in plants and animals. However, some metals play important roles in the biological function of many enzymes in living organisms. Metals such as zinc, iron, and cooper are important for survival and activity of enzymes in plants, however heavy metals can inhibit enzyme which is responsible for defense system of plants. Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) is a copper-containing metalloenzyme which is responsible for enzymatic browning reaction of plants. Enzymatic browning is a major problem for the handling of vegetables and fruits in food industry. It can be increased and effected with many different futures such as metals in the nature and ground. In the present work, PPO was isolated and characterized from green leaves of red poppy plant (Papaverr hoeas). Then, the effect of some known antibrowning agents which can form complexes with metals and metals were investigated on the red poppy PPO activity. The results showed that glutathione was the most potent inhibitory effect on PPO activity. Cu(II) and Fe(II) metals increased the enzyme activities however, Sn(II) had the maximum inhibitory effect and Zn(II) and Pb(II) had no significant effect on the enzyme activity. In order to reduce the effect of heavy metals, the effects of metal-antibrowning agent complexes on the PPO activity were determined. EDTA and metal complexes had no significant effect on the enzyme. L-ascorbic acid and metal complexes decreased but L-ascorbic acid-Cu(II)-complex had no effect. Glutathione–metal complexes had the best inhibitory effect on Red poppy leaf PPO activity.

Keywords: Inhibition, metal, red poppy, Polyphenol oxidase (PPO).

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Authors: Sambit Prasad Kar, P.Palanisamy

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In this paper a novel method for multiple one dimensional real valued sinusoidal signal frequency estimation in the presence of additive Gaussian noise is postulated. A computationally simple frequency estimation method with efficient statistical performance is attractive in many array signal processing applications. The prime focus of this paper is to combine the subspace-based technique and a simple peak search approach. This paper presents a variant of the Propagator Method (PM), where a collaborative approach of SUMWE and Propagator method is applied in order to estimate the multiple real valued sine wave frequencies. A new data model is proposed, which gives the dimension of the signal subspace is equal to the number of frequencies present in the observation. But, the signal subspace dimension is twice the number of frequencies in the conventional MUSIC method for estimating frequencies of real-valued sinusoidal signal. The statistical analysis of the proposed method is studied, and the explicit expression of asymptotic (large-sample) mean-squared-error (MSE) or variance of the estimation error is derived. The performance of the method is demonstrated, and the theoretical analysis is substantiated through numerical examples. The proposed method can achieve sustainable high estimation accuracy and frequency resolution at a lower SNR, which is verified by simulation by comparing with conventional MUSIC, ESPRIT and Propagator Method.

Keywords: Frequency estimation, peak search, subspace-based method without eigen decomposition, quadratic convex function.

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Authors: Sergio Mauricio Pérez López, Luis Rodrigo Valencia Pérez, Juan Manuel Peña Aguilar, Adelina Morita Alexander

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The culture of continuous improvement in organizations is very important as it represents a source of competitive advantage. This article discusses the transfer of knowledge between companies which formed cross-functional teams and used a dynamic model for knowledge creation as a framework. In addition, the article discusses the structure of cognitive assets in companies and the concept of "stickiness" (which is defined as an obstacle to the transfer of knowledge). The purpose of this analysis is to show that an improvement in the attitude of individual members of an organization creates opportunities, and that an exchange of information and knowledge leads to generating continuous improvements in the company as a whole. This article also discusses the importance of creating the proper conditions for sharing tacit knowledge. By narrowing gaps between people, mutual trust can be created and thus contribute to an increase in sharing. The concept of adapting knowledge to new environments will be highlighted, as it is essential for companies to translate and modify information so that such information can fit the context of receiving organizations. Adaptation will ensure that the transfer process is carried out smoothly by preventing "stickiness". When developing the transfer process on cross-functional teams (as opposed to working groups), the team acquires the flexibility and responsiveness necessary to meet objectives. These types of cross-functional teams also generate synergy due to the array of different work backgrounds of their individuals. When synergy is established, a culture of continuous improvement is created.

Keywords: Knowledge transfer, continuous improvement, teamwork, cognitive assets.

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Authors: Anca-Diana Bibiri, Mihaela Mocanu, Adrian Turculeț

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In a language the inventory of greetings is dynamic with frequent input and output, although this is hardly noticed by the speakers. In this register, there are a number of constant, conservative elements that survive different language models (among them, the classic formulae: bună ziua! (good afternoon!), bună seara! (good evening!), noapte bună! (good night!), la revedere! (goodbye!) and a number of items that fail to pass the test of time, according to language use at a time (ciao!, pa!, bai!). The source of innovation depends both of internal factors (contraction, conversion, combination of classic formulae of greetings), and of external ones (borrowings and calques). Their use imposes their frequencies at once, namely the elimination of the use of others. This paper presents a sociolinguistic approach of contemporary Romanian greetings, based on prosodic surveys in two research projects: AMPRom, and SoRoEs. Romanian language presents a rich inventory of questions (especially partial interrogatives questions/WH-Q) which are used as greetings, alone or, more commonly accompanying a proper greeting. The representative of the typical formulae is Ce mai faci? (How are you?), which, unlike its English counterpart How do you do?, has not become a stereotype, but retains an obvious emotional impact, while serving as a mark of sociolinguistic group. The analyzed corpus consists of structures containing greetings recorded in the main Romanian cultural (urban) centers. From the methodological point of view, the acoustic analysis of the recorded data is performed using software tools (GoldWave, Praat), identifying intonation patterns related to three sociolinguistics variables: age, sex and level of education. The intonation patterns of the analyzed statements are at the interface between partial questions and typical greetings.

Keywords: acoustic analysis, greetings, Romanian language, sociolinguistics

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Authors: Chanchal Biswas, Anrin Bhattacharyya, Gopes Chandra Das, Mahua Ghosh Chaudhuri, Rajib Dey

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Boiler coals with low fixed carbon and higher ash content have always challenged the metallurgists to develop a suitable method for their utilization. In the present study, an attempt is made to establish an energy effective method for the reduction of iron ore fines in the form of nuggets by using ‘Syngas’. By devolatisation (expulsion of volatile matter by applying heat) of boiler coal, gaseous product (enriched with reducing agents like CO, CO2, H2, and CH4 gases) is generated. Iron ore nuggets are reduced by this syngas. For that reason, there is no direct contact between iron ore nuggets and coal ash. It helps to control the minimization of the sulphur intake of the reduced nuggets. A laboratory scale devolatisation furnace designed with reduction facility is evaluated after in-depth studies and exhaustive experimentations including thermo-gravimetric (TG-DTA) analysis to find out the volatile fraction present in boiler grade coal, gas chromatography (GC) to find out syngas composition in different temperature and furnace temperature gradient measurements to minimize the furnace cost by applying one heating coil. The nuggets are reduced in the devolatisation furnace at three different temperatures and three different times. The pre-reduced nuggets are subjected to analytical weight loss calculations to evaluate the extent of reduction. The phase and surface morphology analysis of pre-reduced samples are characterized using X-ray diffractometry (XRD), energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), carbon sulphur analyzer and chemical analysis method. Degree of metallization of the reduced nuggets is 78.9% by using boiler grade coal. The pre-reduced nuggets with lesser sulphur content could be used in the blast furnace as raw materials or coolant which would reduce the high quality of coke rate of the furnace due to its pre-reduced character. These can be used in Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) as coolant also.

Keywords: Alternative ironmaking, coal devolatisation, extent of reduction, nugget making, syngas based DRI, solid state reduction.

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Authors: Samy A. Selim

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The antimicrobial, antiplasmid and cytotoxic activities of marine algae Halimeda opuntia and Sarconema filiforme were investigated. Antimicrobial bioassay against some human pathogenic bacteria and yeast were conducted using disc diffusion method. Halimeda extract exhibited antibacterial activity against six species of microrganisms, with significant inhibition against Staphylococcus aureus. While Sarconema extract was better potent as antifungal against Candida albicans. Comparative antibacterial studies showed that Halimeda extract showed equivalent or better activity as compared with commercial antibiotic when tested against Staphylococcus aureus. Further tests conducted using dilution method showed both extracts as having bacteriostatic mode of action against the tested microorganisms. Methanol extract of two species showed significant cytotoxicity (LC50 <500μg) on brine shrimp. Halimeda opuntia showed highest cytotoxic activity (LC50 =192.3μg). Also, the present investigation was undertaken to investigate the ability of methanolic extract of the algal extracts to cure R-plasmids from certain clinical E. coli isolates. The active fraction of Halimeda and Sarconema could cure plasmids from E. coli at curing efficiencies of approximately 78%. The active fraction mediated plasmid curing resulted in the subsequent loss of antibiotic resistance encoded in the plasmids as revealed by antibiotic resistance profile of cured strains. The screening results confirm the possible use of marine algae Halimeda opuntia and Sarconema filiforme as a source of pharmacological benefits.

Keywords: Antimicrobial, antiplasmid Cytotoxicity, Marine Algae.

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Authors: Hatice Özbek, Caner Çil, Ahmet Rodoplu

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Automotive lighting is the leading function in the configuration of vehicle architecture. Especially headlights and taillights from external lighting functions are among the structures that determine the stylistic character of the vehicle. At the same time, the fact that lighting functions are related to many other functions brings along difficulties in design. Customers expect maximum quality from the vehicle. In these circumstances, it is necessary to make designs that aim to keep the performance of bulbs with limited working lives at the highest level. With this study, the factors that influence the working lives of filament lamps were examined and bulb explosions that can occur sooner than anticipated in the future were prevented while the vehicle was still in the design phase by determining the relations with electrical, dynamical and static variables. Especially the filaments of the bulbs used in the front lighting of the vehicle are deformed in a shorter time due to the high voltage requirement. In addition to this, rear lighting lamps vibrate as a result of the tailgate opening and closing and cause the filaments to be exposed to high stress. With this study, the findings that cause bulb explosions were evaluated. Among the most important findings: 1. The structure of the cables to the lighting functions of the vehicle and the effect of the voltage values are drawn; 2. The effect of the vibration to bulb throughout the life of the vehicle; 3 The effect of the loads carried to bulb while the vehicle doors are opened and closed. At the end of the study, the maximum performance was established in the bulb lifetimes with the optimum changes made in the vehicle architecture based on the findings obtained.

Keywords: Vehicle architecture, automotive lighting functions, filament lamps, bulb lifetime.

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Authors: M. Feliciano, F. Maia, A. Gonçalves

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Olive oil production sector plays an important role in Portuguese economy. It had a major growth over the last decade, increasing its weight in the overall national exports. International market penetration for Mediterranean traditional products is increasingly more demanding, especially in the Northern European markets, where consumers are looking for more sustainable products. Trying to support this growing demand this study addresses olive oil production under the environmental and eco-efficiency perspectives. The analysis considers two consecutive product life cycle stages: olive trees farming; and olive oil extraction in mills. Addressing olive farming, data collection covered two different organizations: a middle-size farm (~12ha) (F1) and a large-size farm (~100ha) (F2). Results from both farms show that olive collection activities are responsible for the largest amounts of Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. In this activities, estimate for the Carbon Footprint per olive was higher in F2 (188g CO₂e/kg_olive) than in F1 (148g CO₂e/kg_olive). Considering olive oil extraction, two different mills were considered: one using a two-phase system (2P) and other with a three-phase system (3P). Results from the study of two mills show that there is a much higher use of water in 3P. Energy intensity (EI) is similar in both mills. When evaluating the GHG generated, two conditions are evaluated: a biomass neutral condition resulting on a carbon footprint higher in 3P (184g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}) than in 2P (92g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}); and a non-neutral biomass condition in which 2P increase its carbon footprint to 273g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}. When addressing the carbon footprint of possible combinations among studied subsystems, results suggest that olive harvesting is the major source for GHG.

Keywords: Carbon footprint, environmental indicators, farming subsystem, industrial subsystem, olive oil.

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Authors: Amir Hossein Pakshir, A. Hossein Pour, N. Jahandar, Ali Paydar

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Roundabout work on the principle of circulation and entry flows, where the maximum entry flow rates depend largely on circulating flow bearing in mind that entry flows must give away to circulating flows. Where an existing roundabout has a road hump installed at the entry arm, it can be hypothesized that the kinematics of vehicles may prevent the entry arm from achieving optimum performance. Road humps are traffic calming devices placed across road width solely as speed reduction mechanism. They are the preferred traffic calming option in Malaysia and often used on single and dual carriageway local routes. The speed limit on local routes is 30mph (50 km/hr). Road humps in their various forms achieved the biggest mean speed reduction (based on a mean speed before traffic calming of 30mph) of up to 10mph or 16 km/hr according to the UK Department of Transport. The underlying aim of reduced speed should be to achieve a 'safe' distribution of speeds which reflects the function of the road and the impacts on the local community. Constraining safe distribution of speeds may lead to poor drivers timing and delayed reflex reaction that can probably cause accident. Previous studies on road hump impact have focused mainly on speed reduction, traffic volume, noise and vibrations, discomfort and delay from the use of road humps. The paper is aimed at optimal entry and circulating flow induced by road humps. Results show that roundabout entry and circulating flow perform better in circumstances where there is no road hump at entrance.

Keywords: Road hump, Roundabout, Speed Reduction

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Authors: L. Moussaoui, L. Rahmani

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This paper deals with the direct torque control (DTC) of the induction motor. This type of control allows decoupling control between the flux and the torque without the need for a transformation of coordinates. However, as with other hysteresis-based systems, the classical DTC scheme represents a high ripple, in both the electromagnetic torque and the stator flux and a distortion in the stator current. As well, it suffers from variable switching frequency. To solve these problems various modifications, in conventional DTC scheme, have been made during the last decade. Indeed the DTC based on space vector modulation (SVM) has proved to generate very low ripples in torque and flux with constant switching frequency. It also shows almost the same dynamic performances as the classical DTC system. On the other hand, fuzzy logic is considered as an interesting alternative approach for its advantages: Analysis close to the exigencies of user, ability of nonlinear systems control, best dynamic performances and inherent quality of robustness.

Therefore, two fuzzy direct torque control approaches, for the induction motor fed by SVM-voltage source inverter, are proposed in this paper. By using these two approaches of DTC, the advantages of fuzzy logic control, space vector modulation, and direct torque control method are combined. The performances of these DTC schemes are evaluated through digital simulation using Matlab/Simulink platform and fuzzy logic tools. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and the superiority of the proposed Fuzzy DTC-SVM schemes in comparison to the classical DTC.

Keywords: Direct torque control, Fuzzy logic control, Induction motor, Switching frequency, Space vector modulation, Torque and flux ripples.

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Authors: Rana Daneshvar Salehi

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In many Iranian cities including ‎‎Mashhad‎, the capital of ‎‎‎‎Razavi Khorasan Province‏‎, ‎ordinary samples of domestic architecture ‎on a ‎‏small scale is not ‎‎‎considered as ‎heritage. ‎While the ‎principals of house formation are ‎‎respected in all ‎‎traditional Iranian ‎‎‎‎houses‎; ‎from moderate to great ones. During the past decade, Mashhad has lost its identity, and has become a modern city. Identifying it as the capital of the Islamic Culture in 2017 by ISESCO and consequently looking for new developments and transfiguration caused to demolish a large ‎number ‎of ‎traditional modest habitation. ‎For this ‎reason, the present paper aims to introduce ‎the three ‎undiscovered houses with the ‎historical and monumental values located in the ‎oldest ‎neighborhoods of Mashhad which have been neglected in the cultural ‎heritage field. The preliminary phase of this approach will be a measured survey to identify the significant characteristics ‎of ‎selected dwellings and understand the challenges through focusing on building ‎form, orientation, ‎‎room function, space proportion and ornamental elements’ details. A comparison between the ‎‎case studies and the wealthy domestically buildings ‎presents that a house belongs to inhabitants ‎with an average income could introduce the same accurate, regular, harmonic and proportionate ‎design which can be found in the great mansions. It reveals that an ordinary traditional house can ‎be regarded as valuable construction not only for its historical characteristics but also ‎for its ‎aesthetical and architectural features that could avoid further destructions in the future.

Keywords: Traditional ordinary house, architectural characteristic, proportion, heritage.

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Authors: Cigdem Safak Saglam

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Most thermal power plants use steam as working fluid in their power cycle. Therefore, in addition to fuel, water is the other main input for thermal plants. Water and steam must be highly pure in order to protect the systems from corrosion, scaling and biofouling. Pure process water is produced in water treatment plants having many several treatment methods. Treatment plant design is selected depending on raw water source and required water quality. Although working principle of fossil-fuel fired thermal power plants are same, there is no standard design and equipment arrangement valid for all thermal power plant utility systems. Besides that, there are many other technology evaluation and selection criteria for designing the most optimal water systems meeting the requirements such as local conditions, environmental restrictions, electricity and other consumables availability and transport, process water sources and scarcity, land use constraints etc. Aim of this study is explaining the adopted methodology for technology selection for process water preparation and industrial waste water treatment plant in a thermal power plant project located in Tufanbeyli, Adana Province in Turkey. Thermal power plant is fired with indigenous lignite coal extracted from adjacent lignite reserves. This paper addresses all above-mentioned factors affecting the thermal power plant water treatment facilities (demineralization + waste water treatment) design and describes the ultimate design of Tufanbeyli Thermal Power Plant Water Treatment Plant.

Keywords: Thermal power plant, lignite coal, pre-treatment, demineralization, electrodialysis, recycling, waste water, process water.

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Authors: Ivandic Kreso, Spiranec Miljenko, Kavur Boris, Strelec Stjepan

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This article discusses the possibility of using dilatometer tests (DMT) together with in situ seismic tests (MASW) in order to get the shape of G-g degradation curve in cohesive soils (clay, silty clay, silt, clayey silt and sandy silt). MASW test provides the small soil stiffness (G_o from v_s) at very small strains and DMT provides the stiffness of the soil at ‘work strains’ (M_DMT). At different test locations, dilatometer shear stiffness of the soil has been determined by the theory of elasticity. Dilatometer shear stiffness has been compared with the theoretical G-g degradation curve in order to determine the typical range of shear deformation for different types of cohesive soil. The analysis also includes factors that influence the shape of the degradation curve (G-g) and dilatometer modulus (M_DMT), such as the overconsolidation ratio (OCR), plasticity index (IP) and the vertical effective stress in the soil (s_vo'). Parametric study in this article defines the range of shear strain g_DMT and G_DMT/G_o relation depending on the classification of a cohesive soil (clay, silty clay, clayey silt, silt and sandy silt), function of density (loose, medium dense and dense) and the stiffness of the soil (soft, medium hard and hard). The article illustrates the potential of using MASW and DMT to obtain G-g degradation curve in cohesive soils.

Keywords: Dilatometer testing, MASW testing, shear wave, soil stiffness, stiffness reduction, shear strain.

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Authors: Shahram Naghizadeh Raeisi, Ali Alghooneh

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Using membrane technology and modification of milk protein structural properties, a lactose free yogurt was developed. The functional, textural and structural properties of the sample were evaluated and compared with the commercial ones. Results showed that the modification of protein in high fat set yogurt resulted in 11.55%, 18%, 20.21% and 7.08% higher hardness, consistency, water holding capacity, and shininess values compared with the control one. Furthermore, these indices of modified low fat set yogurt were 21.40%, 25.41%, 28.15% & 10.58% higher than the control one, which could be related to the gel network microstructural properties in yogurt formulated with modified protein. In this way, in comparison with the control one, the index of linkage strength (A), the number of linkages (z), and time scale of linkages (λrel) of the high fat modified yogurt were 22.10%, 50.68%, 21.82% higher than the control one; whereas, the average linear distance between two adjacent crosslinks (ξ), was 16.77% lower than the control one. For low fat modified yogurt, A, z, λrel, and ξ indices were 34.30%, 61.70% and 42.60% higher and 19.20% lower than the control one, respectively. The shelf life of modified yogurt was extended to 10 weeks in the refrigerator, while, the control set yogurt had a 3 weeks shelf life. The acidity of high fat and low fat modified yogurts increased from 76 to 84 and 72 to 80 Dornic degrees during 10 weeks of storage, respectively, whereas for control high fat and low fat yogurts they increased from 82 to 122 and 77 to 112 Dornic degrees, respectively. This behavior could be due to the elimination of microorganism’s source of energy in modified yogurt. Furthermore, the calories of high fat and low fat lactose free yogurts were 25% and 40% lower than their control samples, respectively. Generally, results showed that the lactose free yogurt with modified protein, despite of 1% lower protein content than the control one, showed better functional properties, nutritional properties, network parameters, and shelf stability, which could be promising in the set yogurt industry.

Keywords: Lactose free, low calorie, network properties, protein modification.

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Authors: Azadeh Rouhandeh, Chris Joslin, Zhen Qu, Yuu Ono

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The centre of rotation of the hip joint is needed for an accurate simulation of the joint performance in many applications such as pre-operative planning simulation, human gait analysis, and hip joint disorders. In human movement analysis, the hip joint center can be estimated using a functional method based on the relative motion of the femur to pelvis measured using reflective markers attached to the skin surface. The principal source of errors in estimation of hip joint centre location using functional methods is soft tissue artefacts due to the relative motion between the markers and bone. One of the main objectives in human movement analysis is the assessment of soft tissue artefact as the accuracy of functional methods depends upon it. Various studies have described the movement of soft tissue artefact invasively, such as intra-cortical pins, external fixators, percutaneous skeletal trackers, and Roentgen photogrammetry. The goal of this study is to present a non-invasive method to assess the displacements of the markers relative to the underlying bone using optical motion capture data and tissue thickness from ultrasound measurements during flexion, extension, and abduction (all with knee extended) of the hip joint. Results show that the artefact skin marker displacements are non-linear and larger in areas closer to the hip joint. Also marker displacements are dependent on the movement type and relatively larger in abduction movement. The quantification of soft tissue artefacts can be used as a basis for a correction procedure for hip joint kinematics.

Keywords: Hip joint centre, motion capture, soft tissue artefact, ultrasound depth measurement.

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Authors: Sylvain Amailland, Jean-Hugh Thomas, Charles Pézerat, Romuald Boucheron, Jean-Claude Pascal

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The noise requirements for naval and research vessels have seen an increasing demand for quieter ships in order to fulfil current regulations and to reduce the effects on marine life. Hence, new methods dedicated to the characterization of propeller noise, which is the main source of noise in the far-field, are needed. The study of cavitating propellers in closed-section is interesting for analyzing hydrodynamic performance but could involve significant difficulties for hydroacoustic study, especially due to reverberation and boundary layer noise in the tunnel. The aim of this paper is to present a numerical methodology for the identification of hydroacoustic sources on marine propellers using hydrophone arrays in a large hydrodynamic tunnel. The main difficulties are linked to the reverberation of the tunnel and the boundary layer noise that strongly reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. In this paper it is proposed to estimate the reflection coefficients using an inverse method and some reference transfer functions measured in the tunnel. This approach allows to reduce the uncertainties of the propagation model used in the inverse problem. In order to reduce the boundary layer noise, a cleaning algorithm taking advantage of the low rank and sparse structure of the cross-spectrum matrices of the acoustic and the boundary layer noise is presented. This approach allows to recover the acoustic signal even well under the boundary layer noise. The improvement brought by this method is visible on acoustic maps resulting from beamforming and DAMAS algorithms.

Keywords: Acoustic imaging, boundary layer noise denoising, inverse problems, model adaptation.

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Authors: M. A. Askari, M. A. Nazari, P. Perrier, Y. Payan

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Growth and remodeling of biological structures have gained lots of attention over the past decades. Determining the response of living tissues to mechanical loads is necessary for a wide range of developing fields such as prosthetics design or computerassisted surgical interventions. It is a well-known fact that biological structures are never stress-free, even when externally unloaded. The exact origin of these residual stresses is not clear, but theoretically, growth is one of the main sources. Extracting body organ’s shapes from medical imaging does not produce any information regarding the existing residual stresses in that organ. The simplest cause of such stresses is gravity since an organ grows under its influence from birth. Ignoring such residual stresses might cause erroneous results in numerical simulations. Accounting for residual stresses due to tissue growth can improve the accuracy of mechanical analysis results. This paper presents an original computational framework based on gradual growth to determine the residual stresses due to growth. To illustrate the method, we apply it to a finite element model of a healthy human face reconstructed from medical images. The distribution of residual stress in facial tissues is computed, which can overcome the effect of gravity and maintain tissues firmness. Our assumption is that tissue wrinkles caused by aging could be a consequence of decreasing residual stress and thus not counteracting gravity. Taking into account these stresses seems therefore extremely important in maxillofacial surgery. It would indeed help surgeons to estimate tissues changes after surgery.

Keywords: Finite element method, growth, residual stress, soft tissue.

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Authors: Sunitha. S.L., V. Udayashankara

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Background noise is particularly damaging to speech intelligibility for people with hearing loss especially for sensorineural loss patients. Several investigations on speech intelligibility have demonstrated sensorineural loss patients need 5-15 dB higher SNR than the normal hearing subjects. This paper describes Discrete Cosine Transform Power Normalized Least Mean Square algorithm to improve the SNR and to reduce the convergence rate of the LMS for Sensory neural loss patients. Since it requires only real arithmetic, it establishes the faster convergence rate as compare to time domain LMS and also this transformation improves the eigenvalue distribution of the input autocorrelation matrix of the LMS filter. The DCT has good ortho-normal, separable, and energy compaction property. Although the DCT does not separate frequencies, it is a powerful signal decorrelator. It is a real valued function and thus can be effectively used in real-time operation. The advantages of DCT-LMS as compared to standard LMS algorithm are shown via SNR and eigenvalue ratio computations. . Exploiting the symmetry of the basis functions, the DCT transform matrix [AN] can be factored into a series of ±1 butterflies and rotation angles. This factorization results in one of the fastest DCT implementation. There are different ways to obtain factorizations. This work uses the fast factored DCT algorithm developed by Chen and company. The computer simulations results show superior convergence characteristics of the proposed algorithm by improving the SNR at least 10 dB for input SNR less than and equal to 0 dB, faster convergence speed and better time and frequency characteristics.

Keywords: Hearing Impairment, DCT Adaptive filter, Sensorineural loss patients, Convergence rate.

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Authors: Akram Mahdaviparsa, Tamera McCuen, Vahideh Karimimansoob

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Fire service is responsible for protecting life, assets, and natural resources from fire and other hazardous incidents. Search and rescue in unfamiliar buildings is a vital part of firefighters’ responsibilities. Providing firefighters with precise building information in an easy-to-understand format is a potential solution for mitigating the negative consequences of fire hazards. The negative effect of insufficient knowledge about a building’s indoor environment impedes firefighters’ capabilities and leads to lost property. A data rich building information modeling (BIM) is a potentially useful source in three-dimensional (3D) visualization and data/information storage for fire emergency response. Therefore, this research’s purpose is prioritizing the required information for firefighters from the most important information to the least important. A survey was carried out with firefighters working in the Norman Fire Department to obtain the importance of each building information item. The results show that “the location of exit doors, windows, corridors, elevators, and stairs”, “material of building elements”, and “building data” are the three most important information specified by firefighters. The results also implied that the 2D model of architectural, structural and way finding is more understandable in comparison with the 3D model, while the 3D model of MEP system could convey more information than the 2D model. Furthermore, color in visualization can help firefighters to understand the building information easier and quicker. Sufficient internal consistency of all responses was proven through developing the Pearson Correlation Matrix and obtaining Cronbach’s alpha of 0.916. Therefore, the results of this study are reliable and could be applied to the population.

Keywords: BIM, building fire response, ranking, visualization.

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Authors: Asim Majeed, Anwar Ul Haq, Mike, Lloyd-Williams, Arshad Jamal, Usman Butt

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This study aims to investigate the impact of data leak of M&S customers on digital communities. Modern businesses are using digital communities as an important public relations tool for marketing purposes. This form of communication helps companies to build better relationship with their customers which also act as another source of information. The communication between the customers and the organizations is not regulated so users may post positive and negative comments. There are new platforms being developed on a daily basis and it is very crucial for the businesses to not only get themselves familiar with those but also know how to reach their existing and perspective consumers. The driving force of marketing and communication in modern businesses is the digital communities and these are continuously increasing and developing. This phenomenon is changing the way marketing is conducted. The current research has discussed the implications on M&S business performance since the data was exploited on digital communities; users contacted M&S and raised the security concerns. M&S closed down its website for few hours to try to resolve the issue. The next day M&S made a public apology about this incidence. This information was proliferated on various digital communities and it has impacted negatively on M&S brand name, sales and customers. The content analysis approach is being used to collect qualitative data from 100 digital bloggers including social media communities such as Facebook and Twitter. The results and finding provide useful new insights into the nature and form of security concerns of digital users. Findings have theoretical and practical implications. This research will showcase a large corporation utilizing various digital community platforms and can serve as a model for future organizations.

Keywords: Digital, communities, performance, dissemination, implications, data, exploitation.

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Authors: Magda S. Taipina, Maria L. Garbelotti, Mariana G.B. Cadioli

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Banana is one of the most consumed fruits in the tropics and subtropics. Brazil accounts for about 9% of the world banana production. However, the production losses are as high as 30 to 40% and even much higher in some developing countries. The green banana flour is a complex carbohydrate source, including a high total starch (73.4%), resistant starch (17.5%) with functional properties. Gamma irradiation is considered to be an alternative method for food preservation. It has been performed due to the need of extending the shelf - life of foods, whilst maintaining their safety and avoiding one of the main concerns: the nutrient loss. In this work data about on the effects of ionizing radiation on the physicochemical analysis (carbohydrate, proteins, lipids, alimentary fiber, moistures and ashes) of Brazilian functional products (biscuits and bread) of the green banana pulp are presented. The caloric value was calculated. No significant difference was observed between the samples of irradiated and non – irradiated green banana biscuits with the following determinations: carbohydrates, proteins, alimentary fiber and ashes. Only a small significant difference was found in lipids (macronutrients). The results of physical chemical analysis of the irradiated and non- irradiated green banana bread non- irradiated showed no significant difference with the following determinations: carbohydrates, lipids (macronutrients), moisture, ashes and caloric value. A small difference was found in proteins (macronutrients). Irradiation of functional products (biscuits and bread) with doses of 1 and 3kGy maintained their original macronutrients content, showing good radioresistance.

Keywords: Irradiation, Functional Food, Nutritional value.

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Authors: Rohit Kumar Shrivastava, Amalia Thomas, Nathalie Vriend, Stefan Luding

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A mechanical wave or vibration propagating through granular media exhibits a specific signature in time. A coherent pulse or wavefront arrives first with multiply scattered waves (coda) arriving later. The coherent pulse is micro-structure independent i.e. it depends only on the bulk properties of the disordered granular sample, the sound wave velocity of the granular sample and hence bulk and shear moduli. The coherent wavefront attenuates (decreases in amplitude) and broadens with distance from its source. The pulse attenuation and broadening effects are affected by disorder (polydispersity; contrast in size of the granules) and have often been attributed to dispersion and scattering. To study the effect of disorder and initial amplitude (non-linearity) of the pulse imparted to the system on the coherent wavefront, numerical simulations have been carried out on one-dimensional sets of particles (granular chains). The interaction force between the particles is given by a Hertzian contact model. The sizes of particles have been selected randomly from a Gaussian distribution, where the standard deviation of this distribution is the relevant parameter that quantifies the effect of disorder on the coherent wavefront. Since, the coherent wavefront is system configuration independent, ensemble averaging has been used for improving the signal quality of the coherent pulse and removing the multiply scattered waves. The results concerning the width of the coherent wavefront have been formulated in terms of scaling laws. An experimental set-up of photoelastic particles constituting a granular chain is proposed to validate the numerical results.

Keywords: Discrete elements, Hertzian Contact, polydispersity, weakly nonlinear, wave propagation.

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Authors: Ahmet Yetik, Seyit Ali Kara, Cevat Özarpa

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Load changes occur on natural gas and oil pipelines due to natural disasters. The displacement of the soil around the natural gas and oil pipes due to situations that may cause erosion, such as earthquakes, landslides, and floods, is the source of this load change. The exposure of natural gas and oil pipes to variable loads causes deformation, cracks, and breaks in these pipes. Such cracks and breaks can cause significant damage to people and the environment, including the risk of explosions. Especially with the examinations made after natural disasters, it can be easily understood which of the pipes has sustained more damage in those quake-affected regions. It has been determined that earthquakes in Türkiye have caused permanent damage to pipelines. This project was initiated in response to the identification of cracks and gas leaks in the insulation gaskets placed in the pipelines, especially at the junction points. In this study, a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) application has been developed to monitor load changes caused by natural disasters. The developed SCADA application monitors the changes in the x, y, and z axes of the stresses occurring in the pipes with the help of strain gauge sensors placed on the pipes. For the developed SCADA system, test setups in accordance with the standards were created during the fieldwork. The test setups created were integrated into the SCADA system, and the system was followed up. Thanks to the SCADA system developed with the field application, the load changes that will occur on the natural gas and oil pipes are instantly monitored, and the accumulations that may create a load on the pipes and their surroundings are immediately intervened, and new risks that may arise are prevented. It has contributed to energy supply security, asset management, pipeline holistic management, and overall sustainability in the industry.

Keywords: Earthquake, natural gas pipes, oil pipes, voltage measurement, landslide.

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Authors: P. B. Sob, A. A. Alugongo, T. B. Tengen

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The activation volume of 6082T6 aluminum is investigated at different temperatures for grain size variants. The deformation activation volume was computed on the basis of the relationship between the Boltzmann’s constant k, the testing temperatures, the material strain rate sensitivity and the material yield stress grain size variants. The material strain rate sensitivity is computed as a function of yield stress and strain rate grain size variants. The effect of the material strain rate sensitivity and the deformation activation volume of 6082T6 aluminum at different temperatures of 3-D grain are discussed. It is shown that the strain rate sensitivities and activation volume are negative for the grain size variants during the deformation of nanostructured materials. It is also observed that the activation volume vary in different ways with the equivalent radius, semi minor axis radius, semi major axis radius and major axis radius. From the obtained results it is shown that the variation of activation volume increase and decrease with the testing temperature. It was revealed that, increase in strain rate sensitivity led to decrease in activation volume whereas increase in activation volume led to decrease in strain rate sensitivity.

Keywords: Nanostructured materials, grain size variants, temperature, yield stress, strain rate sensitivity, activation volume.

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Authors: M. Byzedi, B. Saghafian

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Droughts are complex, natural hazards that, to a varying degree, affect some parts of the world every year. The range of drought impacts is related to drought occurring in different stages of the hydrological cycle and usually different types of droughts, such as meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomical are distinguished. Streamflow drought was analyzed by the method of truncation level (at 70% level) on daily discharges measured in 54 hydrometric stations in southwestern Iran. Frequency analysis was carried out for annual maximum series (AMS) of drought deficit volume and duration series. Some factors including physiographic, climatic, geologic, and vegetation cover were studied as influential factors in the regional analysis. According to the results of factor analysis, six most effective factors were identified as area, rainfall from December to February, the percent of area with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) <0.1, the percent of convex area, drainage density and the minimum of watershed elevation that explained 90.9% of variance. The homogenous regions were determined by cluster analysis and discriminate function analysis. Suitable multivariate regression models were evaluated for streamflow drought deficit volume with 2 years return period. The significance level of regression models was 0.01. The results showed that the watershed area is the most effective factor with high correlation with deficit volume. Also, drought duration was not a suitable drought index for regional analysis.

Keywords: Iran, Streamflow drought, truncation level method, regional analysis.

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Authors: Ankit Sinha, Soham Banerjee, Pratik Chattopadhyay

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Automated product recognition in retail stores is an important real-world application in the domain of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatically identifying the classes of the products placed on racks in retail stores from an image of the rack and information about the query/product images. We improve upon the existing approaches in terms of effectiveness and memory requirement by developing a two-stage object detection and recognition pipeline comprising of a Faster-RCNN-based object localizer that detects the object regions in the rack image and a ResNet-18-based image encoder that classifies  the detected regions into the appropriate classes. Each of the models is fine-tuned using appropriate data sets for better prediction and data augmentation is performed on each query image to prepare an extensive gallery set for fine-tuning the ResNet-18-based product recognition model. This encoder is trained using a triplet loss function following the strategy of online-hard-negative-mining for improved prediction. The proposed models are lightweight and can be connected in an end-to-end manner during deployment to automatically identify each product object placed in a rack image. Extensive experiments using Grozi-32k and GP-180 data sets verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Keywords: Retail stores, Faster-RCNN, object localization, ResNet-18, triplet loss, data augmentation, product recognition.

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Authors: Saeid Fazli, Hajar Mohammadi D., Payman Moallem

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This paper presents a robust method to detect obstacles in stereo images using shadow removal technique and color information. Stereo vision based obstacle detection is an algorithm that aims to detect and compute obstacle depth using stereo matching and disparity map. The proposed advanced method is divided into three phases, the first phase is detecting obstacles and removing shadows, the second one is matching and the last phase is depth computing. We propose a robust method for detecting obstacles in stereo images using a shadow removal technique based on color information in HIS space, at the first phase. In this paper we use Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) function matching with a 5 × 5 window and prepare an empty matching table τ and start growing disparity components by drawing a seed s from S which is computed using canny edge detector, and adding it to τ. In this way we achieve higher performance than the previous works [2,17]. A fast stereo matching algorithm is proposed that visits only a small fraction of disparity space in order to find a semi-dense disparity map. It works by growing from a small set of correspondence seeds. The obstacle identified in phase one which appears in the disparity map of phase two enters to the third phase of depth computing. Finally, experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Keywords: obstacle detection, stereo vision, shadowremoval, color, stereo matching

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Authors: Chareerut Phruksaniyom, Khwanthana Grataitong, Permphan Dharmasaroja, Surapol Issaragrisil

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Bone marrow-derived stem cells have been widely studied as an alternative source of stem cells. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were mostly investigated and studies showed MSCs can promote neurogenesis. Little is known about the non-mesenchymal mononuclear cell fraction, which contains both hematopoietic and nonhematopoietic cells, including monocytes and endothelial progenitor cells. This study focused on unfractionated bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMCs), which remained 72 h after MSCs were adhered to the culture plates. We showed that BMMC-conditioned medium promoted morphological changes of human SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells from an epithelial-like phenotype towards a neuron-like phenotype as indicated by an increase in neurite outgrowth, like those observed in retinoic acid (RA)-treated cells. The result could be explained by the effects of trophic factors released from BMMCs, as shown in the RT-PCR results that BMMCs expressed nerve growth factor (NGF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF). Similar results on the cell proliferation rate were also observed between RA-treated cells and cells cultured in BMMC-conditioned medium, suggesting that cells creased proliferating and differentiated into a neuronal phenotype. Using real-time RT-PCR, a significantly increased expression of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) mRNA in SHSY5Y cells indicated that BMMC-conditioned medium induced catecholaminergic identities in differentiated SH-SY5Y cells.

Keywords: bone marrow, neuronal differentiation, neurite outgrowth, trophic factor, tyrosine hydroxylase

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