Search results for: Utopia and Ideal City

Authors: Daomao Yang, Qizhi Wang

Abstract:

Monoterpenoids are mainly found in plant essential oils and they are ideal substrates for biotransformation into oxygen-containing derivatives with important commercial value due to their low price and simple structure. In this paper, eleven strains of endophytic fungi from Praxelis clematidea were used as test strains to conduct the whole cell biotransformation of the monoterpenoids: (+)-limonene, (-)-limonene and myrcene. The fungi were inoculated in 50 ml Sabouraud medium and incubated at 30 ℃ with the agitation of 150 r/min for 6 d, and then 0.5% (v/v) substrates were added into the medium and biotransformed for further 3 d. Afterwards the cultures were filtered, and extracted using equal volume of ethyl acetate. The metabolites were analyzed by GC-MS technique with NIST database. The Total Ion Chromatogram of the extractions from the eleven strains showed that the main product of (+)- and (-)-limonene biotransformation was limonene-1,2-diol, while it is limonene and linalool oxide for biotransformation of myrcene. This work will help screen the microorganisms to biotransform the monoterpenes.

Keywords: Endophytic fungi, (+)–limonene, (-)–limonene, myrcene.

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Authors: Bin Mu, Site Li, Shijin Yuan

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Under the circumstance of environment deterioration, people are increasingly concerned about the quality of the environment, especially air quality. As a result, it is of great value to give accurate and timely forecast of AQI (air quality index). In order to simplify influencing factors of air quality in a city, and forecast the city’s AQI tomorrow, this study used MATLAB software and adopted the method of constructing a mathematic model of PCA-GABP to provide a solution. To be specific, this study firstly made principal component analysis (PCA) of influencing factors of AQI tomorrow including aspects of weather, industry waste gas and IAQI data today. Then, we used the back propagation neural network model (BP), which is optimized by genetic algorithm (GA), to give forecast of AQI tomorrow. In order to verify validity and accuracy of PCA-GABP model’s forecast capability. The study uses two statistical indices to evaluate AQI forecast results (normalized mean square error and fractional bias). Eventually, this study reduces mean square error by optimizing individual gene structure in genetic algorithm and adjusting the parameters of back propagation model. To conclude, the performance of the model to forecast AQI is comparatively convincing and the model is expected to take positive effect in AQI forecast in the future.

Keywords: AQI forecast, principal component analysis, genetic algorithm, back propagation neural network model.

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Authors: Ali Beydoun, Hamzé H. Alaeddine

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One of the main challenges in MIMO-OFDM system to achieve the expected performances in terms of data rate and robustness against multi-path fading channels is the channel estimation. Several methods were proposed in the literature based on either least square (LS) or minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimators. These methods present high implementation complexity as they require the inversion of large matrices. In order to overcome this problem and to reduce the complexity, this paper presents a solution that benefits from the use of the STBC encoder and transforms the channel estimation process into a set of simple linear operations. The proposed method is evaluated via simulation in AWGN-Rayleigh fading channel. Simulation results show a maximum reduction of 6.85% of the bit error rate (BER) compared to the one obtained with the ideal case where the receiver has a perfect knowledge of the channel.

Keywords: Channel estimation, MIMO, OFDM, STBC, CAZAC sequence.

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Authors: Chih-Cheng Chen, Meng-Lung Lin, Yung-Tan Lee, Tien-Tze Chen

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The rotation of starting pitchers is a strategic issue which has a significant impact on the performance of a professional team. Choosing an optimal starting pitcher from among many alternatives is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this study, a model using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is proposed with which to arrange the starting pitcher rotation for teams of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. The AHP is used to analyze the structure of the starting pitcher selection problem and to determine the weights of the criteria, while the TOPSIS method is used to make the final ranking. An empirical analysis is conducted to illustrate the utilization of the model for the starting pitcher rotation problem. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model.

Keywords: AHP, TOPSIS, starting pitcher rotation, CPBL

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Authors: G. Reinhart, S. Schindler

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Due to dynamic evolution, the ability of a manufacturing technology to produce a special product is changing. Therefore, it is essential to monitor the established techniques and processes to detect whether a company-s production will fit future circumstances. Concerning the manufacturing technology planning process, companies must decide when to change to a new technology for maintaining and increasing competitive advantages. In this context, the maturity assessment of the focused technologies is crucial. This article presents an approach for defining the maturity of a manufacturing technology from a strategic point of view. The concept is based on the approach of technology readiness level (TRL) according to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), but also includes dynamic changes. Therefore, the model takes into account the concept of the technology life cycle. Furthermore, it enables a company to estimate the ideal date for implementation of a new manufacturing technology.

Keywords: Maturity Assessment, Manufacturing Technology Planning, Technology Life Cycle, Technology Readiness Level.

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Authors: Tarek M. Alguhane, Ayman H. Khalil, M. N. Fayed, Ayman M. Ismail

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A 15-storey RC building, studied in this paper, is representative of modern building type constructed in Madina City in Saudi Arabia before 10 years ago. These buildings are almost consisting of reinforced concrete skeleton i.e. columns, beams and flat slab as well as shear walls in the stairs and elevator areas arranged in the way to have a resistance system for lateral loads (wind – earthquake loads). In this study, the dynamic properties of the 15-storey RC building were identified using ambient motions recorded at several, spatially-distributed locations within each building. Three dimensional pushover analysis (Nonlinear static analysis) was carried out using SAP2000 software incorporating inelastic material properties for concrete, infill and steel. The effect of modeling the building with and without infill walls, on the performance point as well as capacity and demand spectra due to EQ design spectrum function in Madina area has been investigated. ATC- 40 capacity and demand spectra are utilized to get the modification factor (R) for the studied building. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the expected performance of structural systems by estimating, strength and deformation demands in design, and comparing these demands to available capacities at the performance levels of interest. The results are summarized and discussed.

Keywords: Seismic assessment, pushover analysis, ambient vibration, modal update.

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Authors: Jing Zhou, Steven Su, Aihuang Guo

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COSMED K4b2 is a portable electrical device designed to test pulmonary functions. It is ideal for many applications that need the measurement of the cardio-respiratory response either in the field or in the lab is capable with the capability to delivery real time data to a sink node or a PC base station with storing data in the memory at the same time. But the actual sensor outputs and data received may contain some errors, such as impulsive noise which can be related to sensors, low batteries, environment or disturbance in data acquisition process. These abnormal outputs might cause misinterpretations of exercise or living activities to persons being monitored. In our paper we propose an effective and feasible method to detect and identify errors in applications by principal component analysis (PCA) and a back propagation (BP) neural network.

Keywords: BP Neural Network, Exercising Testing, Fault Detection and Identification, Principal Component Analysis.

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Authors: Essam Al Daoud

Abstract:

Intrusion detection is a mechanism used to protect a system and analyse and predict the behaviours of system users. An ideal intrusion detection system is hard to achieve due to nonlinearity, and irrelevant or redundant features. This study introduces a new anomaly-based intrusion detection model. The suggested model is based on particle swarm optimisation and nonlinear, multi-class and multi-kernel support vector machines. Particle swarm optimisation is used for feature selection by applying a new formula to update the position and the velocity of a particle; the support vector machine is used as a classifier. The proposed model is tested and compared with the other methods using the KDD CUP 1999 dataset. The results indicate that this new method achieves better accuracy rates than previous methods.

Keywords: Feature selection, Intrusion detection, Support vector machine, Particle swarm.

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Authors: Prakash Persad, Kelvin Loutan, Jr., Trichelle Seepersad

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The Finite Element Method is commonly used in the analysis of flexible manipulators to predict elastic displacements and develop joint control schemes for reducing positioning error. In order to preserve simplicity, regular geometries, ideal joints and connections are assumed. This paper presents the dynamic FE analysis of a 4- degrees of freedom open chain manipulator, intended for striking a curved 3D surface percussion musical instrument. This was done utilizing the new MultiBody Dynamics Module in COMSOL, capable of modeling the elastic behavior of a body undergoing rigid body type motion.

Keywords: Dynamic modeling, Entertainment robots, Finite element method, Flexible robot manipulators, Multibody dynamics, Musical robots.

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Authors: O. O. Obe, V. Balanica, E. Neagoe

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The effects of hypertension are often lethal thus its early detection and prevention is very important for everybody. In this paper, a neural network (NN) model was developed and trained based on a dataset of hypertension causative parameters in order to forecast the likelihood of occurrence of hypertension in patients. Our research goal was to analyze the potential of the presented NN to predict, for a period of time, the risk of hypertension or the risk of developing this disease for patients that are or not currently hypertensive. The results of the analysis for a given patient can support doctors in taking pro-active measures for averting the occurrence of hypertension such as recommendations regarding the patient behavior in order to lower his hypertension risk. Moreover, the paper envisages a set of three example scenarios in order to determine the age when the patient becomes hypertensive, i.e. determine the threshold for hypertensive age, to analyze what happens if the threshold hypertensive age is set to a certain age and the weight of the patient if being varied, and, to set the ideal weight for the patient and analyze what happens with the threshold of hypertensive age.

Keywords: Neural Network, hypertension, data set, training set, supervised learning.

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Authors: Andreas Theissler, Ian Dear

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The one-class support vector machine “support vector data description” (SVDD) is an ideal approach for anomaly or outlier detection. However, for the applicability of SVDD in real-world applications, the ease of use is crucial. The results of SVDD are massively determined by the choice of the regularisation parameter C and the kernel parameter  of the widely used RBF kernel. While for two-class SVMs the parameters can be tuned using cross-validation based on the confusion matrix, for a one-class SVM this is not possible, because only true positives and false negatives can occur during training. This paper proposes an approach to find the optimal set of parameters for SVDD solely based on a training set from one class and without any user parameterisation. Results on artificial and real data sets are presented, underpinning the usefulness of the approach.

Keywords: Support vector data description, anomaly detection, one-class classification, parameter tuning.

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Authors: Nazir Ahmad Zafar, Nabeel Sabir, Amir Ali

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Functionalities and control behavior are both primary requirements in design of a complex system. Automata theory plays an important role in modeling behavior of a system. Z is an ideal notation which is used for describing state space of a system and then defining operations over it. Consequently, an integration of automata and Z will be an effective tool for increasing modeling power for a complex system. Further, nondeterministic finite automata (NFA) may have different implementations and therefore it is needed to verify the transformation from diagrams to a code. If we describe formal specification of an NFA before implementing it, then confidence over transformation can be increased. In this paper, we have given a procedure for integrating NFA and Z. Complement of a special type of NFA is defined. Then union of two NFAs is formalized after defining their complements. Finally, formal construction of intersection of NFAs is described. The specification of this relationship is analyzed and validated using Z/EVES tool.

Keywords: Modeling, Nondeterministic finite automata, Znotation, Integration of approaches, Validation.

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Authors: Yuan-Jye Tseng, Jia-Shu Li

Abstract:

To design a product with the given product requirement and design objective, there can be alternative ways to propose the detailed design specifications of the product. In the design modeling stage, alternative design cases with detailed specifications can be modeled to fulfill the product requirement and design objective. Therefore, in the design evaluation stage, it is required to perform an evaluation of the alternative design cases for deciding the final design. The purpose of this research is to develop a product evaluation model for evaluating the alternative design cases by integrated evaluating the criteria of functional design, Kansei design, and design for supply chain. The criteria in the functional design group include primary function, expansion function, improved function, and new function. The criteria in the Kansei group include geometric shape, dimension, surface finish, and layout. The criteria in the design for supply chain group include material, manufacturing process, assembly, and supply chain operation. From the point of view of value and cost, the criteria in the functional design group and Kansei design group represent the design value of the product. The criteria in the design for supply chain group represent the supply chain and manufacturing cost of the product. It is required to evaluate the design value and the supply chain cost to determine the final design. For the purpose of evaluating the criteria in the three criteria groups, a fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) method is presented to evaluate a weighted index by calculating the total relational values among the three groups. A method using the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used to compare and rank the design alternative cases according to the weighted index using the total relational values of the criteria. The final decision of a design case can be determined by using the ordered ranking. For example, the design case with the top ranking can be selected as the final design case. Based on the criteria in the evaluation, the design objective can be achieved with a combined and weighted effect of the design value and manufacturing cost. An example product is demonstrated and illustrated in the presentation. It shows that the design evaluation model is useful for integrated evaluation of functional design, Kansei design, and design for supply chain to determine the best design case and achieve the design objective.

Keywords: Design evaluation, functional design, Kansei design, supply chain, design value, manufacturing cost, fuzzy analytic network process, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution.

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Authors: M. Alwetaishi

Abstract:

One of the most common and traditional strategies in architecture is to design buildings passively. This is a way to ensure low building energy reliance with respect to specific micro-building locations. There are so many ways where buildings can be designed passively, some of which are applying thermal insulation, thermal mass, courtyard and glazing to wall ratio. This research investigates the impact of each of these aspects with respect to the hot and dry climate of the capital of Riyadh. Thermal Analysis Simulation (TAS) will be utilized which is powered by Environmental Design Simulation Limited company (EDSL). It is considered as one of the most powerful tools to predict energy performance in buildings. There are three primary building designs and methods which are using courtyard, thermal mass and thermal insulation. The same building size and fabrication properties have been applied to all designs. Riyadh city which is the capital of the country was taken as a case study of the research. The research has taken into account various zone directions within the building as it has a large contribution to indoor energy and thermal performance. It is revealed that it is possible to achieve nearly zero carbon building in the hot and dry region in winter with minimum reliance on energy loads for building zones facing south, west and east. Moreover, using courtyard is more beneficial than applying construction materials into building envelope. Glazing to wall ratio is recommended to be 10% and not exceeding 30% in all directions in hot and arid regions.

Keywords: Sustainable buildings, hot and arid climates, passive building design, Saudi Arabia.

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Authors: M. Bouguerra, H. Meglouli, I. Habi

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The great majority of the electric installations belong to the first and second category. In order to ensure a high level of reliability of their electric system feeder, two power supply sources are envisaged, one principal, the other of reserve, generally a cold reserve (electric diesel group). The principal source being under operation, its control can be ideal and sure, however for the reserve source being in stop, a preventive maintenance-s which proceeds on time intervals (periodicity) and for well defined lengths of time are envisaged, so that this source will always available in case of the principal source failure. The choice of the periodicity of preventive maintenance of the source of reserve influences directly the reliability of the electric feeder system. On the basis of the semi-markovians processes, the influence of the periodicity of the preventive maintenance of the source of reserve is studied and is given the optimal periodicity.

Keywords: Semi Markovians processes, reliability, optimization, electric network.

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Authors: Mohd. Hasan, Ajmal Kafeel, S. D. Pable

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Ultra-low-power (ULP) circuits have received widespread attention due to the rapid growth of biomedical applications and Battery-less Electronics. Subthreshold region of transistor operation is used in ULP circuits. Major research challenge in the subthreshold operating region is to extract the ULP benefits with minimal degradation in speed and robustness. Process, Voltage and Temperature (PVT) variations significantly affect the performance of subthreshold circuits. Designed performance parameters of ULP circuits may vary largely due to temperature variations. Hence, this paper investigates the effect of temperature variation on device and circuit performance parameters at different biasing voltages in the subthreshold region. Simulation results clearly demonstrate that in deep subthreshold and near threshold voltage regions, performance parameters are significantly affected whereas in moderate subthreshold region, subthreshold circuits are more immune to temperature variations. This establishes that moderate subthreshold region is ideal for temperature immune circuits.

Keywords: Subthreshold, temperature variations, ultralow power.

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Authors: Ibrahim A. Al-Muhaisen, Mohammad N. Al Ymemeni

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Ozone (O3) is considered as one of the most phytotoxic pollutants with deleterious effects on living and non living components of Ecosystems. It reduces growth and yield of many crops as well as alters the physiology and crop quality. The present study described series of experiments to investigate the effects of ambient O3 at different locations with different ambient levels of O3 depending on proximity to pollutant source and ranged between 17 ppb/h in control experiment to 112 ppb/h in industrial area respectively. The ambient levels in other three locations (King Saud University botanical garden, King Fahd Rd, and Almanakh Garden) were 61,61,77 ppb/h respectively. Tow legume crops species (vicia vaba L ; and Pisum sativum) differ in their phenology and sensitivity were used. The results showed a significant negative effect to ozone on morphology, number of injured leaves, growth and productivity with a difference in the degree of response depending on the plant type. Visia Faba showed sensitivity to ozone to number and leaf area and the degree of injury leaves 3, pisum sativum show higher sensitivity for the gas for degree of injury 1,The relative growth rate and seed weight, it turns out there is no significant difference between the two plants in plant height and number of seeds.

Keywords: Ozone, Legume crops, growth and production, Resistance, Riyadh city.

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Authors: M. Armenteros, A. Domínguez, M. Fernández, A. J. Benítez

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The following paper describes the video database tool used by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) as part of the research project developed in collaboration with the Carlos III University of Madrid. The database project began in 2012, with the aim of creating an educational tool for the training of instructors, referees and assistant referees, and it has been used in all FUTURO III courses since 2013. The platform now contains 3,135 video clips of different match situations from FIFA competitions. It has 1,835 users (FIFA instructors, referees and assistant referees). In this work, the main features of the database are described, such as the use of a search tool and the creation of multimedia presentations and video quizzes. The database has been developed in MySQL, ActionScript, Ruby on Rails and HTML. This tool has been rated by users as "very good" in all courses, which prompt us to introduce it as an ideal tool for any other sport that requires the use of video analysis.

Keywords: Video database, FIFA, refereeing, e-learning.

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Authors: A. Kumar, G. K. Singh, R. S. Anand

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In this paper, various algorithms for designing quadrature mirror filter are reviewed and a new algorithm is presented for the design of near perfect reconstruction quadrature mirror filter bank. In the proposed algorithm, objective function is formulated using the perfect reconstruction condition or magnitude response condition of prototype filter at frequency (ω = 0.5π) in ideal condition. The cutoff frequency is iteratively changed to adjust the filters coefficients using optimization algorithm. The performances of the proposed algorithm are evaluated in term of computation time, reconstruction error and number of iterations. The design examples illustrate that the proposed algorithm is superior in term of peak reconstruction error, computation time, and number of iterations. The proposed algorithm is simple, easy to implement, and linear in nature.

Keywords: Aliasing cancellations filter bank, Filter banks, quadrature mirror filter (QMF), subband coding.

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Authors: Hrishikesh Purandare, Ashwini Pethe

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The built environment can have a significant effect on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. Children living in urban slums in India confront issues associated with poor living conditions and lack of access to basic service. It is a well-known fact that slums are places of extreme poverty, substandard housing, overcrowding, and poor sanitation. These challenges faced by children living in slums can have a significant impact on their physical, psychological, and social development. Despite the magnitude of the problem, the area of research particularly on the impact of the built environment of slums on children and adolescent well-being has been understudied in India. The impact of the built environment on children’s well-being has been understudied in the global south. Apart from issues of the limited access to health and education of these children, perception of children regarding the built environment which they inhabit is rarely addressed. A sample of 120 children living in the slums of Pune city between the ages 7 and 16 years participated in this study which employed a concurrent embedded approach of mixed method research. Questionnaires were administered to obtain quantitative data that included attributes of crowding, noise, privacy, territoriality, and housing quality in the built environment. The qualitative analysis of children’s sketches highlighted aspects of the built environment with which they associated themselves the most. The study sought to examine the perception of the deprived children living in the urban slums in the city of Pune (India) towards their built environment.

Keywords: Physical environment, poverty, underprivileged children, urban Indian slums.

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Authors: Amirhossein Karamoozian, Desheng Wu, Behzad Abbasnejad

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Building information modelling (BIM) is a new technology to enhance the efficiency of project management in the construction industry. In addition to the potential benefits of this useful technology, there are various risks and obstacles to applying it in construction projects. In this study, a decision making approach is presented for risk assessment in BIM adoption in construction projects. Various risk factors of exerting BIM during different phases of the project lifecycle are identified with the help of Delphi method, experts’ opinions and related literature. Afterward, Shannon’s entropy and Fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Situation) are applied to derive priorities of the identified risk factors. Results indicated that lack of knowledge between professional engineers about workflows in BIM and conflict of opinions between different stakeholders are the risk factors with the highest priority.

Keywords: Risk, BIM, Shannon’s entropy, Fuzzy TOPSIS, construction projects.

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Authors: K. E. Kaharudin, A. H. Hamidon, F. Salehuddin

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Vertical Double Gate (DG) Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) is believed to suppress various short channel effect problems. The gate to channel coupling in vertical DG-MOSFET are doubled, thus resulting in higher current density. By having two gates, both gates are able to control the channel from both sides and possess better electrostatic control over the channel. In order to ensure that the transistor possess a superb turn-off characteristic, the subs-threshold swing (SS) must be kept at minimum value (60-90mV/dec). By utilizing SILVACO TCAD software, an n-channel vertical DG-MOSFET was successfully designed while keeping the sub-threshold swing (SS) value as minimum as possible. From the observation made, the value of sub-threshold swing (SS) was able to be varied by adjusting the height of the silicon pillar. The minimum value of sub-threshold swing (SS) was found to be 64.7mV/dec with threshold voltage (V_TH) of 0.895V. The ideal height of the vertical DG-MOSFET pillar was found to be at 0.265 µm.

Keywords: DG-MOSFET, pillar, SCE, vertical

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Authors: K. Krishna Milan Rao, Nelvin Joseph, Praveen Dwarakanath

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Augmented and Virtual Realties is quickly becoming a hotbed of activity with millions of dollars being spent on R & D and companies such as Google and Microsoft rushing to stake their claim. Augmented reality (AR) is however marching ahead due to the spread of the ideal AR device – the smartphone. Despite its potential, there remains a deep digital divide between the Developed and Developing Countries. The Technological Acceptance Model (TAM) and Hofstede cultural dimensions also predict the behaviour intention to uptake AR in India will be large. This paper takes a quantified approach by collecting 340 survey responses to AR scenarios and analyzing them through statistics. The Survey responses show that the Intention to Use, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Enjoyment dimensions are high among the urban population in India. This along with the exponential smartphone indicates that India is on the cusp of a boom in the AR sector.

Keywords: Mobile augmented reality, technology acceptance model, Hofstede, cultural dimensions, India.

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Authors: Siyuan Jing, Kun She

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Virtualization-based server consolidation has been proven to be an ideal technique to solve the server sprawl problem by consolidating multiple virtualized servers onto a few physical servers leading to improved resource utilization and return on investment. In this paper, we solve this problem by using existing servers, which are heterogeneous and diversely preferred by IT managers. Five practical consolidation rules are introduced, and a decision model is proposed to optimally allocate source services to physical target servers while maximizing the average resource utilization and preference value. Our model can be regarded as a multi-objective multi-dimension bin-packing (MOMDBP) problem with constraints, which is strongly NP-hard. An improved grouping generic algorithm (GGA) is introduced for the problem. Extensive simulations were performed and the results are given.

Keywords: GGA-based Heuristics, Preference, Real-worldConstraints, Resource Utilization, Server Consolidation

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Authors: Yue Sun, Yuan Wang

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Most of the earliest national industries in Wuhan are located along the Hanjiang River, and Qiaokou is considered to be a gathering place for Dahankou old industrial base. Zongguan Waterworks, Pacific Soap Factory, Fuxin Flour Factory, Nanyang Tobacco Factory and other hundred-year-old factories are located along Hanjiang River in Qiaokou District, especially the Gutian Industrial Zone, which was listed as one of 156 national restoration projects at the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. After decades of development, Qiaokou has become the gathering place of the chemical industry and secondary industry, causing damage to the city and serious pollution, becoming a marginalized area forgotten by the central city. In recent years, with the accelerated pace of urban renewal, Qiaokou has been constantly reforming and innovating, and has begun drastic changes in the transformation of old cities and the development of new districts. These factories have been listed as key reconstruction projects, and a large number of industrial heritage with historical value and full urban memory have been relocated, demolished and reformed, with only a few factory buildings preserved. Through the methods of industrial archaeology, image analysis, typology and field investigation, this paper analyzes and summarizes the spatial characteristics of industrial heritage in Qiaokou District, explores urban renewal from the perspective of industrial heritage protection, and provides design strategies for the regeneration of urban industrial sites and industrial heritage.

Keywords: Industrial heritage, urban renewal, protection, urban memory.

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Authors: F. Esfandyari Darabad, Z. Samadi

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Natural environments have always been affected by one of the most important natural hazards, which is called, the mass movements that cause instability. Identifying the unstable regions and separating them so as to detect and determine the risk of environmental factors is one of the important issues in mountainous areas development. In this study, the northwest of Sabalan hillsides overlooking the Meshkin city and the surrounding area of that have been delimitated, in order to analyze the range processes such as landslides and debris flows based on structural and geomorphological conditions, by means of using GIS. This area due to the high slope of the hillsides and height of the region and the poor localization of roads and so because of them destabilizing the ranges own an inappropriate situation. This study is done with the purpose of identifying the effective factors in the range motion and determining the areas with high potential for zoning these movements by using GIS. The results showed that the most common range movements in the area, are debris flows, rocks falling and landslides. The effective factors in each one of the mass movements, considering a small amount of weight for each factor, the weight map of each factor and finally, the map of risk zoning for the range movements were provided. Based on the zoning map resulted in the study area, the risking level of damaging has specified into the four zones of very high risk, high risk, medium risk, low risk, in which areas with very high and high risk are settled near the road and along the Khyav river and in the  mountainous district.

Keywords: Debris flow, environmental hazards, GIS, landslide.

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Authors: Peng Mei, Yan-Jun Qi, Yu Cui, Song Lu, He-Ping Zhang

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A lot of computer-based methods have been developed to assess the evacuation capability (EC) of high-rise buildings. Because softwares are time-consuming and not proper for on scene applications, we adopted two methods, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS), for EC assessment of a high-rise building in Jinan. The EC scores obtained with the two methods and the evacuation time acquired with Pathfinder 2009 for floors 47-60 of the building were compared with each other. The results show that FAHP performs better than TOPSIS for EC assessment of high-rise buildings, especially in the aspect of dealing with the effect of occupant type and distance to exit on EC, tackling complex problem with multi-level structure of criteria, and requiring less amount of computation. However, both FAHP and TOPSIS failed to appropriately handle the situation where the exit width changes while occupants are few.

Keywords: Evacuation capability assessment, FAHP, high-rise buildings, TOPSIS.

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Authors: Mitra Abtahi, Esmat Nasseri, Morteza Abodllahi

Abstract:

Introduction: Adequate hydration is necessary for proper physical and mental function. The aim of this study is to determine the consumption of water and all other beverages in children (8-13 years) and adolescents (14-17 years) in Tehran metropolitan city of Iran. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 455 children (8-13 years) and 334 adolescents (14-17 years) were retrieved from north, center, and south of Tehran (18 schools). Instrument for data collection consisted of a “demographic and general health” questionnaire and a “7-day fluid record”. Data analyses were performed with SPSS 16 software. Results: The mean total consumption of fluids in school children was 1302 ± 500.6 ml/day. The highest mean intakes were observed for water (666 ± 398 ml/day), followed by milk (239 ± 183 ml/day), regular soft beverages (RSB) (188 ± 148 ml/day), and juices (60 ± 74 ml/day). Water, hot drinks (mainly tea) and soft drinks intake was significantly more in boys than girls. A significantly lower intake of milk and a higher intake of RSB and hot beverages (mainly tea) have been seen among adolescents compared to children. Conclusion: The most important finding is that mean fluid intake of children and adolescents does not meet international adequate intake references for water and fluids. This finding may suggest the necessity of development of the local references. To improve fluid intake habits of children and adolescents, relevant policy making and actions are warranted.

Keywords: Adolescents, beverages, children, water.

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Authors: Etienne Provencal, David L. St-Pierre

Abstract:

A facility exploiting only electronic gambling machines (EGMs) opened in 2007 in Quebec City, Canada under the name of Salons de Jeux du Québec (SdjQ). This facility is one of the first worldwide to rely on that business model. This paper models the performance of such EGMs. The interest from a managerial point of view is to identify the variables that can be controlled or influenced so that a comprehensive model can help improve the overall performance of the business. The EGM individual performance model contains eight different variables under study (Game Title, Progressive jackpot, Bonus Round, Minimum Coin-in, Maximum Coin-in, Denomination, Slant Top and Position). Using data from Quebec City’s SdjQ, a linear regression analysis explains 90.80% of the EGM performance. Moreover, results show a behavior slightly different than that of a casino. The addition of GameTitle as a factor to predict the EGM performance is one of the main contributions of this paper. The choice of the game (GameTitle) is very important. Games having better position do not have significantly better performance than games located elsewhere on the gaming floor. Progressive jackpots have a positive and significant effect on the individual performance of EGMs. The impact of BonusRound on the dependent variable is significant but negative. The effect of Denomination is significant but weakly negative. As expected, the Language of an EGMS does not impact its individual performance. This paper highlights some possible improvements by indicating which features are performing well. Recommendations are given to increase the performance of the EGMs performance.

Keywords: EGM, linear regression, model prediction, slot operations.

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Authors: Alvise Pellegrini, Ernesto Benini

Abstract:

The design of a steam turbine is a very complex engineering operation that can be simplified and improved thanks to computer-aided multi-objective optimization. This process makes use of existing optimization algorithms and losses correlations to identify those geometries that deliver the best balance of performance (i.e. Pareto-optimal points). This paper deals with a one-dimensional multi-objective and multi-point optimization of a single-stage steam turbine. Using a genetic optimization algorithm and an algebraic one-dimensional ideal gas-path model based on loss and deviation correlations, a code capable of performing the optimization of a predefined steam turbine stage was developed. More specifically, during this study the parameters modified (i.e. decision variables) to identify the best performing geometries were solidity and angles both for stator and rotor cascades, while the objective functions to maximize were totalto- static efficiency and specific work done. Finally, an accurate analysis of the obtained results was carried out.

Keywords: Steam turbine, optimization, genetic algorithms.

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