Search results for: Process Monitoring

Authors: Rana AlHajri, Salah Al-Sharhan, Ahmed Al-Hunaiyyan

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Mobile learning is a new learning landscape that offers opportunity for collaborative, personal, informal, and students’ centered learning environment. In implementing any learning system such as a mobile learning environment, learners’ expectations should be taken into consideration. However, there is a lack of studies on this aspect, particularly in the context of Kuwait higher education (HE) institutions. This study focused on how students perceive the use of mobile devices in learning. Although m-learning is considered as an effective educational tool in developed countries, it is not yet fully utilized in Kuwait. The study reports on the results of a survey conducted on 623 HE students in Kuwait to a better understand students' perceptions and opinions about the effectiveness of using mobile learning systems. An analysis of quantitative survey data is presented. The findings indicated that Kuwait HE students are very familiar with mobile devices and its applications. The results also reveal that students have positive perceptions of m-learning, and believe that video-based social media applications enhance the teaching and learning process.

Keywords: Higher education, mobile learning, social media, students’ perceptions.

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Authors: L. Nouri Taiba, Y. Bouhamidi, F. Kaouah, Z. Bendjama, M. Trari

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In the present study, an ecofriendly biocomposite namely calcium alginate immobilized Ammi Visnaga (Khella) extraction waste (SWAV/CA) was prepared by electrostatic extrusion method and used on the cadmium biosorption from aqueous phase with and without the assistance of ultrasound in batch conditions. The influence of low frequency ultrasound (37 and 80 KHz) on the cadmium biosorption kinetics was studied. The obtained results show that the ultrasonic irradiation significantly enhances and improves the efficiency of the cadmium removal. The Pseudo first order, Pseudo-second-order, Intraparticle diffusion, and Elovich models were evaluated using the non-linear curve fitting analysis method. Modeling of kinetic results shows that biosorption process is best described by the pseudo-second order and Elovich, in both the absence and presence of ultrasound.

Keywords: Biocomposite, biosorption, cadmium, non-linear analysis, ultrasound.

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Authors: Farzin Salmasi

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The design of a gravity dam is performed through an interactive process involving a preliminary layout of the structure followed by a stability and stress analysis. This study presents a method to define the optimal top width of gravity dam with genetic algorithm. To solve the optimization task (minimize the cost of the dam), an optimization routine based on genetic algorithms (GAs) was implemented into an Excel spreadsheet. It was found to perform well and GA parameters were optimized in a parametric study. Using the parameters found in the parametric study, the top width of gravity dam optimization was performed and compared to a gradient-based optimization method (classic method). The accuracy of the results was within close proximity. In optimum dam cross section, the ratio of is dam base to dam height is almost equal to 0.85, and ratio of dam top width to dam height is almost equal to 0.13. The computerized methodology may provide the help for computation of the optimal top width for a wide range of height of a gravity dam.

Keywords: Chromosomes, dam, genetic algorithm, globaloptimum, preliminary layout, stress analysis, theoretical profile.

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Authors: Seow-Mun Hue, Amru Nasrulhaq Boyce, Chandran Somasundram

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Ipomoea batatas (Sweetpotato) is currently ranked sixth in the total world food production and are planted mainly for their storage roots. The present study was undertaken to evaluate and compare the antioxidant properties of the leaf and carotenoids extract from the Ipomoea batatas var. Oren leaves. Total flavonoids in the leaf extract was 144.6 ± 40.5 μg/g compared to 114.86 ± 4.35 μg/g catechin equivalent in the carotenoids extract. Total polyphenols in the leaf extracts (3.470 ± 0.024 GAE g/100g DW) was slightly higher compared to carotenoids extract (2.994 ± 0.078 GAE g/100g DW). The carotenoids extract marked a higher radical scavenging capacity with the IC50= 491.86 μg/ml compared to leaf extract (IC50= 545.39 μg/ml). Concentration-dependent reducing activity was observed for both extracts. Thus, the carotenoids extraction process retained most of the antioxidant capacity from the leaves and can be made into potential natural yellow dye with antioxidant property.

Keywords: antioxidants, carotenoids extract, Ipomoea batatas, sweetpotato leaves

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Authors: T. T. Naas, Y. Lasbet, C. Kezrane

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The thermal control in many systems is widely accomplished applying mixed convection process due to its low cost, reliability and easy maintenance. Typical applications include the aircraft electronic equipment, rotating-disc heat exchangers, turbo machinery, and nuclear reactors, etc. Natural convection in an inclined square enclosure heated via wall heater has been studied numerically. Finite volume method is used for solving momentum and energy equations in the form of stream function–vorticity. The right and left walls are kept at a constant temperature, while the other parts are adiabatic. The range of the inclination angle covers a whole revolution. The method is validated for a vertical cavity. A general power law dependence of the Nusselt number with respect to the Rayleigh number with the coefficient and exponent as functions of the inclination angle is presented. For a fixed Rayleigh number, the inclination angle increases or decreases is found.

Keywords: Inclined enclosure, natural convection in enclosure, Nusselt number.

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Authors: Towards Better Quality in Healthcare, Operations Management: A Developmental Literature Review

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This work presents the various perspectives, dimensions, components and definitions given to quality in the operations management (OM) and healthcare services (HCS) literature in time, highlighting gaps and learning opportunities between the two disciplines through a thorough search into their rich and distinct body of knowledge. Greater and new insights about the general nature of quality are obtained with findings such as in OM, quality has been approached in six fairly distinct paradigms (excellence, value, conformity to specifications, attributes, satisfaction and meeting or exceeding customer expectations), whereas in HCS, two approaches are prominent (Donabedian’s structure, process and outcomes model and Lohr and Schroeder’s circumscribed definition). The two disciplines views on quality seem to have progressed much in parallel with little cross-learning from each other. This work then proposes an encompassing definition of quality as a lever and suggests further research and development avenues for a better use of the concept of quality by academics and practitioners alike toward the goals of greater organizational performance and improved management in healthcare and possibly other service domains.

Keywords: Healthcare, management, operations, quality, services.

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Authors: Kanchana Sitlaothaworn

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Yogurt capsule was made by mixing 14% w/v of reconstitution of skim milk with 2% FOS. The mixture was fermented by commercial yogurt starter comprising Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. These yogurts were made as yogurt powder by freeze-dried. Yogurt powder was put into capsule then stored for 28 days at 4oc. 8ml of commercial yogurt was found to be the most suitable inoculum size in yogurt production. After freeze-dried, the viability of L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus reduced from 109 to 107 cfu/g. The precence of sucrose cannot help to protect cell from ice crystal formation in freeze-dried process, high (20%) sucrose reduced L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus growth during fermentation of yogurt. The addition of FOS had reduced slowly the viability of both L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus similar to control (without FOS) during 28 days of capsule storage. The viable cell exhibited satisfactory viability level in capsule storage (6.7x106cfu/g) during 21 days at 4oC.

Keywords: Yogurt capsule, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, freeze-drying, sucrose.

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Authors: Mohamed T. Sorour, Mohamed A. Abdellatif, Ahmed A. Ramadan, Ahmed A. Abo-Ismail

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This paper describes the development of an autonomous robot for painting the interior walls of buildings. The robot consists of a painting arm with an end effector roller that scans the walls vertically and a mobile platform to give horizontal feed to paint the whole area of the wall. The painting arm has a planar twolink mechanism with two joints. Joints are driven from a stepping motor through a ball screw-nut mechanism. Four ultrasonic sensors are attached to the mobile platform and used to maintain a certain distance from the facing wall and to avoid collision with side walls. When settled on adjusted distance from the wall, the controller starts the painting process autonomously. Simplicity, relatively low weight and short painting time were considered in our design. Different modules constituting the robot have been separately tested then integrated. Experiments have shown successfulness of the robot in its intended tasks.

Keywords: Automated roller painting, Construction robots, Mobile robots, service robots, two link planar manipulator

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Authors: Neelam Bawane nee' Singhal, C. V. Srikrishna

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Many metrics were proposed to evaluate the characteristics of the analysis and design model of a given product which in turn help to assess the quality of the product. Function point metric is a measure of the 'functionality' delivery by the software. This paper presents an analysis of a set of programs of a project developed in Cµ through Function Points metric. Function points are measured for a Data Flow Diagram (DFD) of the case developed at initial stage. Lines of Codes (LOCs) and possible errors are calculated with the help of measured Function Points (FPs). The calculations are performed using suitable established functions. Calculated LOCs and errors are compared with actual LOCs and errors found at the time of analysis & design review, implementation and testing. It has been observed that actual found errors are more than calculated errors. On the basis of analysis and observations, authors conclude that function point provides useful insight and helps to analyze the drawbacks in the development process.

Keywords: Function Points, Data Flow Diagram, Lines ofCodes.

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Authors: Sergio Garcia, Alfredo Trueba, Luis M. Vega, Ernesto Madariaga

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Biofilms adhesion is one of the more important cost of industries plants on wide world, which use to water for cooling heat exchangers or are in contact with water. This study evaluated the effect of Electromagnetic Fields on biofilms in tubular heat exchangers using seawater cooling. The results showed an up to 40% reduction of the biofilm thickness compared to the untreated control tubes. The presence of organic matter was reduced by 75%, the inorganic mater was reduced by 87%, and 53% of the dissolved solids were eliminated. The biofilm thermal conductivity in the treated tube was reduced by 53% as compared to the control tube. The hardness in the effluent during the experimental period was decreased by 18% in the treated tubes compared with control tubes. Our results show that the electromagnetic fields treatment has a great potential in the process of removing biofilms in heat exchanger.

Keywords: Biofilm, heat exchanger, electromagnetic fields, seawater.

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Authors: Chaudhuri Manoj Kumar Swain, Susmita Das

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This paper explores a detailed procedure of predicting a path loss (PL) model and its application in estimating the coverage probability in a WiMAX network. For this a hybrid approach is followed in predicting an empirical PL model of a 2.65 GHz WiMAX network deployed in a suburban environment. Data collection, statistical analysis, and regression analysis are the phases of operations incorporated in this approach and the importance of each of these phases has been discussed properly. The procedure of collecting data such as received signal strength indicator (RSSI) through experimental set up is demonstrated. From the collected data set, empirical PL and RSSI models are predicted with regression technique. Furthermore, with the aid of the predicted PL model, essential parameters such as PL exponent as well as the coverage probability of the network are evaluated. This research work may assist in the process of deployment and optimisation of any cellular network significantly.

Keywords: WiMAX, RSSI, path loss, coverage probability, regression analysis.

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Authors: Ali Dehgan Moroozeh, B. Farhadi Bansouleh

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Evapotranspiration is one of the most important components of the hydrological cycle. Evapotranspiration (ETo) is an important variable in water and energy balances on the earth’s surface, and knowledge of the distribution of ET is a key factor in hydrology, climatology, agronomy and ecology studies. Many researchers have a valid relationship, which is a function of climate factors, to estimate the potential evapotranspiration presented to the plant water stress or water loss, prevent. The FAO-Penman method (PM) had been recommended as a standard method. This method requires many data and these data are not available in every area of world. So, other methods should be evaluated for these conditions. When sufficient or reliable data to solve the PM equation are not available then Hargreaves equation can be used. The Hargreaves equation (HG) requires only daily mean, maximum and minimum air temperature extraterrestrial radiation .In this study, Hargreaves method (HG) were evaluated in 12 stations in the North West region of Iran. Results of HG and M.HG methods were compared with results of PM method. Statistical analysis of this comparison showed that calibration process has had significant effect on efficiency of Hargreaves method.

Keywords: Evapotranspiration, Hargreaves equation, FAOPenman method.

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Authors: Bundit Pungnirund

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This research aimed to investigate the relationship between attitude towards marketing mix, brand image and consumer behavior of the passengers of low-cost airlines service. This study employed by quantitative research and the questionnaire was used to collect the data from 400 sampled of the passengers who have ever used the low-cost airline services based in Bangkok, Thailand. The descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation analysis were used to analyze data. The research results revealed that the attitude of the marketing mix of the low-cost airline services including product, price, place, promotion and process had related to the consumer behavior on the aspects of duration of service and frequency of service. While, the brand image of the low cost airline including the characteristics of organization, service quality and company identity had related to the consumer behavior on duration of service, frequency of service and cost of service at the significant statistically acceptable levels.

Keywords: Brand image, consumer behavior, low-cost airlines, marketing mix.

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Authors: Q. Han, W. Schaefer, R. van den Berg

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This paper deals with stakeholders’ decisions within energy neutral urban redevelopment processes. The decisions of these stakeholders during the process will make or break energy neutral ambitions. An extensive form of game theory model gave insight in the behavioral differences of stakeholders regarding energy neutral ambitions and the effects of the changing legislation. The results show that new legislation regarding spatial planning slightly influences the behavior of stakeholders. An active behavior of the municipality will still result in the best outcome. Nevertheless, the municipality becomes more powerful when acting passively and can make the use of planning tools to provide governance towards energy neutral urban redevelopment. Moreover, organizational support, recognizing the necessity for energy neutrality, keeping focused and collaboration among stakeholders are crucial elements to achieve the objective of an energy neutral urban (re)development.

Keywords: Energy neutrality urban (re)development, stakeholder behavior, legislation, game theory.

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Authors: M. A. Hasan, M. R. Islam, R. A. Tarefder

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Currently, there are few user friendly Weigh-in- Motion (WIM) data analysis softwares available which can produce traffic input data for the recently developed AASHTOWare pavement Mechanistic-Empirical (ME) design software. However, these softwares have only rudimentary Quality Control (QC) processes. Therefore, they cannot properly deal with erroneous WIM data. As the pavement performance is highly sensible to the quality of WIM data, it is highly recommended to use more refined QC process on raw WIM data to get a good result. This study develops a userfriendly software, which can produce traffic input for the ME design software. This software takes the raw data (Class and Weight data) collected from the WIM station and processes it with a sophisticated QC procedure. Traffic data such as traffic volume, traffic distribution, axle load spectra, etc. can be obtained from this software; which can directly be used in the ME design software.

Keywords: Weigh-in-motion, software, axle load spectra, traffic distribution, AASHTOWare.

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Authors: Payam Mousavi, Andrew L. Stewart, Huiwen You, Aryeh F. G. Fayerman

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We present a decision-support tool to assist an operator in the detection and tracking of a suspect vehicle traveling to an unknown target destination. Multiple data sources, such as traffic cameras, traffic information, weather, etc., are integrated and processed in real-time to infer a suspect’s intended destination chosen from a list of pre-determined high-value targets. Previously, we presented our work in the detection and tracking of vehicles using traffic and airborne cameras. Here, we focus on the fusion and processing of that information to predict a suspect’s behavior. The network of cameras is represented by a directional graph, where the edges correspond to direct road connections between the nodes and the edge weights are proportional to the average time it takes to travel from one node to another. For our experiments, we construct our graph based on the greater Los Angeles subset of the Caltrans’s “Performance Measurement System” (PeMS) dataset. We propose a Bayesian approach where a posterior probability for each target is continuously updated based on detections of the suspect in the live video feeds. Additionally, we introduce the concept of ‘soft interventions’, inspired by the field of Causal Inference. Soft interventions are herein defined as interventions that do not immediately interfere with the suspect’s movements; rather, a soft intervention may induce the suspect into making a new decision, ultimately making their intent more transparent. For example, a soft intervention could be temporarily closing a road a few blocks from the suspect’s current location, which may require the suspect to change their current course. The objective of these interventions is to gain the maximum amount of information about the suspect’s intent in the shortest possible time. Our system currently operates in a human-on-the-loop mode where at each step, a set of recommendations are presented to the operator to aid in decision-making. In principle, the system could operate autonomously, only prompting the operator for critical decisions, allowing the system to significantly scale up to larger areas and multiple suspects. Once the intended target is identified with sufficient confidence, the vehicle is reported to the authorities to take further action. Other recommendations include a selection of road closures, i.e., soft interventions, or to continue monitoring. We evaluate the performance of the proposed system using simulated scenarios where the suspect, starting at random locations, takes a noisy shortest path to their intended target. In all scenarios, the suspect’s intended target is unknown to our system. The decision thresholds are selected to maximize the chances of determining the suspect’s intended target in the minimum amount of time and with the smallest number of interventions. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our current approach to motivate a machine learning approach, based on reinforcement learning in order to relax some of the current limiting assumptions.

Keywords: Autonomous surveillance, Bayesian reasoning, decision-support, interventions, patterns-of-life, predictive analytics, predictive insights.

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Authors: K. Rattanachan

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In sheet metal forming process, raw material mechanical properties are important parameters. This paper is to compare the wall’s incline angle or formability of SS 400 steel and SUS 304 stainless steel in single point incremental forming. The two materials are ferrous base alloyed, which have the different unit cell, mechanical property and chemical composition. They were forming into cone shape specimens having 100 mm diameter with different wall’s incline angle: 90o, 75o and 60o. The investigation was continued until the specimens formed surface facture. The experimental result showed that the smaller the wall incline angle higher the formability with the both materials. The formability limit of the ferrous base alloy was approx. 60o wall’s incline angle. By nature, SS 400 has higher formability than SUS 304. This result can be used as the initial data in designing the single point incremental forming parts.

Keywords: NC incremental forming, Single point incremental forming, Wall incline angle, Formability.

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Authors: Eleni Aggelogiannaki, Haralambos Sarimveis

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In this work, a radial basis function (RBF) neural network is developed for the identification of hyperbolic distributed parameter systems (DPSs). This empirical model is based only on process input-output data and used for the estimation of the controlled variables at specific locations, without the need of online solution of partial differential equations (PDEs). The nonlinear model that is obtained is suitably transformed to a nonlinear state space formulation that also takes into account the model mismatch. A stable robust control law is implemented for the attenuation of external disturbances. The proposed identification and control methodology is applied on a long duct, a common component of thermal systems, for a flow based control of temperature distribution. The closed loop performance is significantly improved in comparison to existing control methodologies.

Keywords: Hyperbolic Distributed Parameter Systems, Radial Basis Function Neural Networks, H∞ control, Thermal systems.

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Authors: S. R. De Oliveira, A. De Almeida, I. M. Dal Fabbro

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Residues are produced in all stages of human activities in terms of composition and volume which vary according to consumption practices and to production methods. Forms of significant harm to the environment are associated to volume of generated material as well as to improper disposal of solid wastes, whose negative effects are noticed more frequently in the long term. The solution to this problem constitutes a challenge to the government, industry and society, because they involve economic, social, environmental and, especially, awareness of the population in general. The main concerns are focused on the impact it can have on human health and on the environment (soil, water, air and sights). The hazardous waste produced mainly by industry, are particularly worrisome because, when improperly managed, they become a serious threat to the environment. In view of this issue, this study aimed to evaluate the management system of solid waste of a coprocessing industrial waste company, to propose improvements to the rejects generation management in a specific step of the Blending production process.

Keywords: Blending, environment, industrial residues.

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Authors: G. Mattia, A. Di Leo, L. Principato

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The purchase impulsiveness is preceded by a lack of self-control: consequently, it is legitimate to believe that a consumer with a low level of self-control can result in a higher probability of cognitive dissonance. Moreover, the process of purchase is influenced by the pre-existing affective state in a considerable way. With reference to on-line purchases, digital behavior cannot be merely ascribed to the rational sphere, given the speed and ease of transactions and the hedonistic dimension of purchases. To our knowledge, this research is among the first cases of verification of the effect of moderation exerted by the positive affective state in the on-line impulse purchase of products with a high expressive value such as a smartphone on the occurrence of cognitive dissonance. To this aim, a moderation analysis was conducted on a sample of 212 impulsive millennials buyers. Three scales were adopted to measure the constructs of interest: IBTS for impulsivity, PANAS for the affective state, Sweeney for cognitive dissonance. The analysis revealed that positive affective state does not affect the onset of cognitive dissonance.

Keywords: Cognitive dissonance, impulsive buying, online shopping, online consumer behavior.

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Authors: Ahd Aljarf, Saad Amin

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Images are important source of information used as evidence during any investigation process. Their clarity and accuracy is essential and of the utmost importance for any investigation. Images are vulnerable to losing blocks and having noise added to them either after alteration or when the image was taken initially, therefore, having a high performance image processing system and it is implementation is very important in a forensic point of view. This paper focuses on improving the quality of the forensic images. For different reasons packets that store data can be affected, harmed or even lost because of noise. For example, sending the image through a wireless channel can cause loss of bits. These types of errors might give difficulties generally for the visual display quality of the forensic images. Two of the images problems: noise and losing blocks are covered. However, information which gets transmitted through any way of communication may suffer alteration from its original state or even lose important data due to the channel noise. Therefore, a developed system is introduced to improve the quality and clarity of the forensic images.

Keywords: Image Filtering, Image Reconstruction, Image Processing, Forensic Images.

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Authors: Sittichai K., Anucha W., Phonsak L.

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Objective of this study was to study and compare the effectiveness of inspectors who had different workloads for feed forward and feedback training. The visual search task was simulated to search for specified alphabets called defects. These defects were included of four alphabets in Thai and English such as s ภ, ถ, X, and V with different background. These defects were combined in the specified alphabets and were given the different three backgrounds i.e., Thai, English, and mixed English and Thai alphabets. Sixty students were chosen as a sample in this study and test for final selection subject. Finally, five subjects were taken into testing process. They were asked to search for defects after they were provided basic information. Experiment design was used factorial design and subjects were trained for feed forward and the feedback training. The results show that both trainings were affected on mean search time. It was also found that the feedback training can increase the effectiveness of visual inspectors rather than the feed forward training significantly different at the level of .05

Keywords: visual search, feed forward, feedback training.

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Authors: P. Pinyaphong, P. Sriburi, S. Phutrakul

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This paper studied the synthesis of monoacylglycerol (monolaurin) by glycerolysis of coconut oil and crude glycerol, catalyzed by Carica papaya lipase. Coconut oil obtained from cold pressed extraction method and crude glycerol obtained from the biodiesel plant in Department of Chemistry, Uttaradit Rajabhat University, Thailand which used oils were used as raw materials for biodiesel production through transesterification process catalyzed by sodium hydroxide. The influences of the following variables were studied: (i) type of organic solvent, (ii) molar ratio of substrate, (iii) reaction temperature, (iv) reaction time, (v) lipase dosage, and (vi) initial water activity of enzyme. High yields in monoacylglycerol (58.35%) were obtained with molar ratio of glycerol to oil at 8:1 in ethanol, temperature was controlled at 45oC for 36 hours, the amount of enzyme used was 20 wt% of oil and initial water activity of enzyme at 0.53.

Keywords: Monoacylglycerol, crude glycerol, coconut oil, Carica papaya lipase.

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Authors: J. Satonsaowapak, M. Krapeedang, R. Oonsivilai, A. Oonsivilai

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The utilize of renewable energy sources becomes more crucial and fascinatingly, wider application of renewable energy devices at domestic, commercial and industrial levels is not only affect to stronger awareness but also significantly installed capacities. Moreover, biomass principally is in form of woods and converts to be energy for using by humans for a long time. Gasification is a process of conversion of solid carbonaceous fuel into combustible gas by partial combustion. Many gasified models have various operating conditions because the parameters kept in each model are differentiated. This study applied the experimental data including three inputs variables including biomass consumption; temperature at combustion zone and ash discharge rate and gas flow rate as only one output variable. In this paper, response surface methods were applied for identification of the gasified system equation suitable for experimental data. The result showed that linear model gave superlative results.

Keywords: Gasified System, Identification, Response SurfaceMethod

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Authors: Rossella Arcucci, Luisa D’Amore, Simone Celestino, Giuseppe Scotti, Giuliano Laccetti

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This work is the first dowel in a rather wide research activity in collaboration with Euro Mediterranean Center for Climate Changes, aimed at introducing scalable approaches in Ocean Circulation Models. We discuss designing and implementation of a parallel algorithm for solving the Variational Data Assimilation (DA) problem on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The algorithm is based on the fully scalable 3DVar DA model, previously proposed by the authors, which uses a Domain Decomposition approach (we refer to this model as the DD-DA model). We proceed with an incremental porting process consisting of 3 distinct stages: requirements and source code analysis, incremental development of CUDA kernels, testing and optimization. Experiments confirm the theoretic performance analysis based on the so-called scale up factor demonstrating that the DD-DA model can be suitably mapped on GPU architectures.

Keywords: Data Assimilation, Parallel Algorithm, GPU architectures, Ocean Models.

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Authors: Debabrata Mazumder

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Constructed and natural wetlands are being used extensively to treat different types of wastewater including the domestic one. Considerable removal efficiency has been achieved for a variety of pollutants like BOD, nitrogen and phosphorous in the wetlands. Wetland treatment appears to be the best choice for treatment or pre-treatment of wastewater because of the low maintenance cost and simplicity of operation. Wetlands are the natural exporters of organic carbon on account of decomposition of organic matter. The emergent plants like reeds, bulrushes and cattails are commonly used in constructed wetland for the treatment process providing surface for bacterial growth, filtration of solids, nutrient uptake and oxygenation to promote nitrification as well as denitrification. The present paper explored different scopes of organic matter (BOD), nitrogen and phosphorous removal from wastewater through wetlands. Emphasis is given to look into the soil chemistry for tracing the behavior of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in the wetland. Due consideration is also made to see the viability for upgrading the BOD, nitrogen and phosphorus removal efficiency through different classical modifications of wetland.

Keywords: BOD removal, modification, nitrogen removal, phosphorous removal, wetland.

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Authors: Samiah Alammari, Nassim Ammour

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When providing a massive number of tasks successively to a deep learning process, a good performance of the model requires preserving the previous tasks data to retrain the model for each upcoming classification. Otherwise, the model performs poorly due to the catastrophic forgetting phenomenon. To overcome this shortcoming, we developed a successful continual learning deep model for remote sensing hyperspectral image regions classification. The proposed neural network architecture encapsulates two trainable subnetworks. The first module adapts its weights by minimizing the discrimination error between the land-cover classes during the new task learning, and the second module tries to learn how to replicate the data of the previous tasks by discovering the latent data structure of the new task dataset. We conduct experiments on hyperspectral image (HSI) dataset on Indian Pines. The results confirm the capability of the proposed method.

Keywords: Continual learning, data reconstruction, remote sensing, hyperspectral image segmentation.

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Authors: Henri Champliaud, Zhengkun Feng, Ngan Van Lê, Javad Gholipour

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In this article, a method is presented to effectively estimate the deformed shape of a thick plate due to line heating. The method uses a fifth order spline interpolation, with up to C3 continuity at specific points to compute the shape of the deformed geometry. First and second order derivatives over a surface are the resulting parameters of a given heating line on a plate. These parameters are determined through experiments and/or finite element simulations. Very accurate kriging models are fitted to real or virtual surfaces to build-up a database of maps. Maps of first and second order derivatives are then applied on numerical plate models to evaluate their evolving shapes through a sequence of heating lines. Adding an optimization process to this approach would allow determining the trajectories of heating lines needed to shape complex geometries, such as Francis turbine blades.

Keywords: Deformation, kriging, fifth order spline interpolation, first, second and third order derivatives, C3 continuity, line heating, plate forming, thermal forming.

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Authors: Hamid Tavakolipour, Mohsen Mokhtarian, Ahmad Kalbasi Ashtari

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In this study, the effect of various drying methods (sun drying, shade drying and industrial drying) on final moisture content, shell splitting degree, shrinkage and color change were studied. Sun drying resulted higher degree of pistachio nuts shell splitting on pistachio nuts relative other drying methods. The ANOVA results showed that the different drying methods did not significantly effects on color change of dried pistachio nut. The results illustrated that pistachio nut dried by industrial drying had the lowest moisture content. After the end of drying process, initially, the experimental drying data were fitted with five famous drying models namely Newton, Page, Silva et al., Peleg and Henderson and Pabis. The results indicated that Peleg and Page models gave better results compared with other models to monitor the moisture ratio’s pistachio nut in industrial drying and open sun (or shade drying) methods, respectively.

Keywords: Industrial drying, Modeling, Pistachio, quality properties, Traditional drying.

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Authors: M. Elsisi, M. Soliman, M. A. S. Aboelela, W. Mansour

Abstract:

This paper considers the design of Dual Proportional- Integral (DPI) Load Frequency Control (LFC), using gravitational search algorithm (GSA). The design is carried out for nonlinear hydrothermal power system where generation rate constraint (GRC) and governor dead band are considered. Furthermore, time delays imposed by governor-turbine, thermodynamic process, and communication channels are investigated. GSA is utilized to search for optimal controller parameters by minimizing a time-domain based objective function. GSA-based DPI has been compared to Ziegler- Nichols based PI, and Genetic Algorithm (GA) based PI controllers in order to demonstrate the superior efficiency of the proposed design. Simulation results are carried for a wide range of operating conditions and system parameters variations.

Keywords: Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA), Load Frequency Control (LFC), Dual Proportional-Integral (DPI) controller.

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