Search results for: online travel shopping sites

Authors: Christian Endisch, Christoph Hackl, Dierk Schröder

Abstract:

This paper presents an exact pruning algorithm with adaptive pruning interval for general dynamic neural networks (GDNN). GDNNs are artificial neural networks with internal dynamics. All layers have feedback connections with time delays to the same and to all other layers. The structure of the plant is unknown, so the identification process is started with a larger network architecture than necessary. During parameter optimization with the Levenberg- Marquardt (LM) algorithm irrelevant weights of the dynamic neural network are deleted in order to find a model for the plant as simple as possible. The weights to be pruned are found by direct evaluation of the training data within a sliding time window. The influence of pruning on the identification system depends on the network architecture at pruning time and the selected weight to be deleted. As the architecture of the model is changed drastically during the identification and pruning process, it is suggested to adapt the pruning interval online. Two system identification examples show the architecture selection ability of the proposed pruning approach.

Keywords: System identification, dynamic neural network, recurrentneural network, GDNN, optimization, Levenberg Marquardt, realtime recurrent learning, network pruning, quasi-online learning.

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Authors: Muzaffar Bashir, Jürgen Kempf

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The purpose of this paper is to present a Dynamic Time Warping technique which reduces significantly the data processing time and memory size of multi-dimensional time series sampled by the biometric smart pen device BiSP. The acquisition device is a novel ballpoint pen equipped with a diversity of sensors for monitoring the kinematics and dynamics of handwriting movement. The DTW algorithm has been applied for time series analysis of five different sensor channels providing pressure, acceleration and tilt data of the pen generated during handwriting on a paper pad. But the standard DTW has processing time and memory space problems which limit its practical use for online handwriting recognition. To face with this problem the DTW has been applied to the sum of the five sensor signals after an adequate down-sampling of the data. Preliminary results have shown that processing time and memory size could significantly be reduced without deterioration of performance in single character and word recognition. Further excellent accuracy in recognition was achieved which is mainly due to the reduced dynamic time warping RDTW technique and a novel pen device BiSP.

Keywords: Biometric character recognition, biometric person authentication, biometric smart pen BiSP, dynamic time warping DTW, online-handwriting recognition, multidimensional time series.

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Authors: Michaela Skulinova, Wanping Zheng, Yan-Ru Hu, Yvan Soucy

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Space exploration is a highly visible endeavour of humankind to seek profound answers to questions about the origins of our solar system, whether life exists beyond Earth, and how we could live on other worlds. Different platforms have been utilized in planetary exploration missions, such as orbiters, landers, rovers, and penetrators. Having low mass, good mechanical contact with the surface, ability to acquire high quality scientific subsurface data, and ability to be deployed in areas that may not be conducive to landers or rovers, Penetrators provide an alternative and complimentary solution that makes possible scientific exploration of hardly accessible sites (icy areas, gully sites, highlands etc.). The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has put space exploration as one of the pillars of its space program, and established ExCo program to prepare Canada for future international planetary exploration. ExCo sets surface mobility as its focus and priority, and invests mainly in the development of rovers because of Canada's niche space robotics technology. Meanwhile, CSA is also investigating how micro-penetrators can help Canada to fulfill its scientific objectives for planetary exploration. This paper presents a review of the micro-penetrator technologies, past missions, and lessons learned. It gives a detailed analysis of the technical challenges of micro-penetrators, such as high impact survivability, high precision guidance navigation and control, thermal protection, communications, and etc. Then, a Canadian perspective of a possible micro-penetrator mission is given, including Canadian scientific objectives and priorities, potential instruments, and flight opportunities.

Keywords: micro-penetrator, CSA, planetary exploration

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Authors: Karolina Porada

Abstract:

Over the last 40 years, there has been a trend in landscape architecture which supporters do not perceive the role of pro-ecological or postmodern solutions in the design of public green spaces as an essential goal, shifting their attention to the 'sculptural' shaping of areas with the use of slopes, hills, embankments, and other forms of terrain. This group of designers can be considered avant-garde, which in its activities refers to land art. Initial research shows that such applications are particularly frequent in places of former post-industrial sites and landfills, utilizing materials such as debris and post-mining waste in their construction. Due to the high degradation of the environment surrounding modern man, the brownfields are a challenge and a field of interest for the representatives of landscape architecture avant-garde, who through their projects try to recover lost lands by means of transformations supported by engineering and ecological knowledge to create places where nature can develop again. The analysis of a dozen or so facilities made it possible to come up with an important conclusion: apart from the cultural aspects (including artistic activities), the green areas formally referring to the land are important in the process of remediation of post-industrial sites and waste recycling (e. g. from construction sites). In these processes, there is also a potential for applying the concept of Natural Based Solutions, i.e. solutions allowing for the natural development of the site in such a way as to use it to cope with environmental problems, such as e.g.  air pollution, soil phytoremediation and climate change. The paper presents examples of modern parks, whose compositions are based on shaping the surface of the terrain in a way referring to the land art, at the same time providing an example of brownfields reuse and application of waste recycling.  For the purposes of object analysis, research methods such as historical-interpretation studies, case studies, qualitative research or the method of logical argumentation were used. The obtained results provide information about the role that landscape architecture can have in the process of remediation of degraded areas, at the same time guaranteeing the benefits, such as the shaping of landscapes attractive in terms of visual appearance, low costs of implementation, and improvement of the natural environment quality.

Keywords: Brownfields, landscape architecture, contemporary parks, remediation.

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Authors: Greeshma Sharma, Sushil Chandra, Vijander Singh, Alok Prakash Mittal

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Navigational ability requires spatial representation, planning, and memory. It covers three interdependent domains, i.e. cognitive and perceptual factors, neural information processing, and variability in brain microstructure. Many attempts have been made to see the role of spatial representation in the navigational ability, and the individual differences have been identified in the neural substrate. But, there is also a need to address the influence of planning, memory on navigational ability. The present study aims to evaluate relations of aforementioned factors in the navigational ability. Total 30 participants volunteered in the study of a virtual shopping complex and subsequently were classified into good and bad navigators based on their performances. The result showed that planning ability was the most correlated factor for the navigational ability and also the discriminating factor between the good and bad navigators. There was also found the correlations between spatial memory recall and navigational ability. However, non-verbal episodic memory and spatial memory recall were also found to be correlated with the learning variable. This study attempts to identify differences between people with more and less navigational ability on the basis of planning and memory.

Keywords: Memory, planning navigational ability, virtual reality.

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Authors: Ralf God, Lothar Kerschgens, Leonardo Goratti, Steven Lemaire

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Ubiquitous connectivity is a reality and a basic need for users on ground. Air travel connectivity in the cabin is also becoming increasingly important for passengers during cabin use. Wireless sensor networks that provide information to cabin management systems are being used by airlines to optimize cabin crew workload. In networked cabin systems, communications and digitally transmitted data must be managed by airlines in every direction. Security and privacy, information processing and knowledge management are the current and future requirements for a smart and connected cabin.

Keywords: Smart and connected cabin management, Internet of Things, power management, airline business.

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Authors: Jafreezal Jaafar, Hasiah Mohamed, Hazida Razali

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This paper focuses on the 3D reconstruction of the architectural design of Darul Ridzuan Museum. It has concentrated on designing exterior part of the building according to colored digital photo of the real museum. Besides viewing the architecture, walkthroughs are generated for the user to control it in an easier way. User can travel through the museum to get the feel of the environment and to explore the design of the museum as a whole; both exterior and interior. The result has shown positive result in terms of realism, navigation, collision detection, suitability, usability and user-s acceptance. In brief, the 3D virtual museum has provided an alternative to present a real museum.

Keywords: Virtual Heritage, 3D Modelling, Virtual Museum, Usability Evaluation

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Authors: Kamal Amarouche, Houda Benbrahim, Ismail Kassou

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Nowadays, e-commerce shopping websites have experienced noticeable growth. These websites have gained consumers’ trust. After purchasing a product, many consumers share comments where opinions are usually embedded about the given product. Research on the automatic management of opinions that gives suggestions to potential consumers and portrays an image of the product to manufactures has been growing recently. After launching the product in the market, the reviews generated around it do not usually contain helpful information or generic opinions about this product (e.g. telephone: great phone...); in the sense that the product is still in the launching phase in the market. Within time, the product becomes old. Therefore, consumers perceive the advantages/ disadvantages about each specific product feature. Therefore, they will generate comments that contain their sentiments about these features. In this paper, we present an unsupervised method to extract different product features hidden in the opinions which influence its purchase, and that combines Time Weighting (TW) which depends on the time opinions were expressed with Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). We conduct several experiments using two different datasets about cell phones and hotels. The results show the effectiveness of our automatic feature extraction, as well as its domain independent characteristic.

Keywords: Opinion mining, product feature extraction, sentiment analysis, SentiWordNet.

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Authors: Leon Pan

Abstract:

The first programming course within post-secondary education has long been recognized as a challenging endeavor for both educators and students alike. Historically, these courses have exhibited high failure rates and a notable number of dropouts. Instructors often lament students' lack of effort on their coursework, and students often express frustration that the teaching methods employed are not effective. Drawing inspiration from the successful principles of Extreme Programming, this study introduces an approach—the Extremes-based teaching model—aimed at enhancing the teaching of introductory programming courses. To empirically determine the effectiveness of the model, a comparison was made between a section taught using the extreme-based model and another utilizing traditional teaching methods. Notably, the extreme-based teaching class required students to work collaboratively on projects, while also demanding continuous assessment and performance enhancement within groups. This paper details the application of the extreme-based model within the post-secondary online classroom context and presents the compelling results that emphasize its effectiveness in advancing the teaching and learning experiences. The extreme-based model led to a significant increase of 13.46 points in the weighted total average and a commendable 10% reduction in the failure rate.

Keywords: Extreme-based teaching model, innovative pedagogical methods, project-based learning, team-based learning.

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Authors: Anil S. Khopkar, Kartik S. Pandya

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Lightning overvoltage phenomenon in power systems cannot be avoided; however, it can be controlled to certain extent. To prevent system failure, power system equipment must be protected against overvoltage. Metal Oxide Surge Arrestors (MOSA) are connected in the system to provide protection against overvoltages. Under normal working conditions, MOSA function as, insulators, offering a conductive path during overvoltage events. MOSA consists of zinc oxide elements (ZnO Blocks) which has non-linear V-I characteristics. The ZnO blocks are connected in series and fitted in ceramic or polymer housing. Over time, these components degrade due to continuous operation. The degradation of zinc oxide elements increases the leakage current flowing through the surge arrestors. This increased leakage current results in elevated temperatures within the surge arrester, further decreasing the resistance of the zinc oxide elements. Consequently, the leakage current increases, leading to higher temperatures within the MOSA. This cycle creates thermal runaway conditions for the MOSA. Once a surge arrester reaches the thermal runaway condition, it cannot return to normal working conditions. This condition is a primary cause of premature failure of surge arrestors. Given that MOSA constitutes a core protective device for electrical power systems against transients, it contributes significantly to the reliable operation of power system networks. Therefore, periodic condition monitoring of surge arrestors is essential. Both online and offline condition monitoring techniques are available for surge arrestors. Offline condition monitoring techniques are not as popular because they require the removal of surge arrestors from the system, which requires system shutdown. Therefore, online condition monitoring techniques are more commonly used. This paper presents an evaluation technique for the surge arrester condition based on leakage current analysis. The maximum amplitudes of total leakage current (IT), fundamental resistive leakage current (IR), and third harmonic resistive leakage current (I3rd) are analyzed as indicators for surge arrester condition monitoring.

Keywords: Metal Oxide Surge Arrester, MOSA, Over voltage, total leakage current, resistive leakage current, third harmonic resistive leakage current, capacitive leakage current.

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Authors: Teyana S. Sapula, Damian D. Haule

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In online context, the design and implementation of effective remote laboratories environment is highly challenging on account of hardware and software needs. This paper presents the remote laboratory software framework modified from ilab shared architecture (ISA). The ISA is a framework which enables students to remotely acccess and control experimental hardware using internet infrastructure. The need for remote laboratories came after experiencing problems imposed by traditional laboratories. Among them are: the high cost of laboratory equipment, scarcity of space, scarcity of technical personnel along with the restricted university budget creates a significant bottleneck on building required laboratory experiments. The solution to these problems is to build web-accessible laboratories. Remote laboratories allow students and educators to interact with real laboratory equipment located anywhere in the world at anytime. Recently, many universities and other educational institutions especially in third world countries rely on simulations because they do not afford the experimental equipment they require to their students. Remote laboratories enable users to get real data from real-time hand-on experiments. To implement many remote laboratories, the system architecture should be flexible, understandable and easy to implement, so that different laboratories with different hardware can be deployed easily. The modifications were made to enable developers to add more equipment in ISA framework and to attract the new developers to develop many online laboratories.

Keywords: Batched, ISA, labserver, servicebroker.

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Authors: Pimploi Tirastittam, Sawanath Treesathon, Amornrath Ongkawat

Abstract:

Learning Management System (LMS) is the system which uses to manage the learning in order to grouping the content and learning activity between the lecturer and learner including online examination and evaluation. Nowadays, it is the borderless learning era so the learning activities can be accessed from everywhere in the world and also anytime via the information technology and media. The learner can easily access to the knowledge so the different in time and distance is not a constraint for learning anymore. The learning pattern which was used in this research is the integration of the in-class learning and online learning via internet and will be able to monitor the progress by the Learning management system which will create the fast response and accessible learning process via the social media. In order to increase the capability and freedom of the learner, the system can show the current and history of the learning document, video conference and also has the chat room for the learner and lecturer to interact to each other. So the objectives of the “The Design and Applied of Learning Management System via Social Media on Internet: Case Study of Operating System for Business Subject” are to expand the opportunity of learning and to increase the efficiency of learning as well as increase the communication channel between lecturer and student. The data of this research was collect from 30 users of the system which are students who enroll in the subject. And the result of the research is in the “Very Good” which is conformed to the hypothesis.

Keywords: Learning Management System, Social Media.

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Authors: M. Afshin, A. Sohankar, M. Dehghan Manshadi, M. R. Daneshgar, G. R. Dehghan Kamaragi

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In this paper, the influence of upstream structures on the flow patternaround and inside the wind-catcher is experimentally investigated by smoke flow visualization techniques. Wind-catchers are an important part of natural ventilation in residential buildings or public places such as shopping centers, libraries, etc. Wind-catchers might be also used in places of high urban densities; hence their potential to provide natural ventilation is dependent on the presence of upstream structures. In this study, the two-sided wind-catcher model was based on a real wind-catcher observed in the city of Yazd, Iran. The present study focuses on the flow patterns around and inside the isolated two-sided wind-catcher, and on a two-sided wind-catcher in the presence of an upstream structure. The results show that the presence of an upstream structure influences the airflow pattern force and direction. Placing a high upstream structure reverses the airflow direction inside the wind-catcher.

Keywords: Natural Ventilation, Smoke Flow Visualization, Two-Sided Wind-Catcher.

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Authors: J. Cheeneebash, S. Jugee

Abstract:

In this paper, the Tabu search algorithm is used to solve a transportation problem which consists of determining the shortest routes with the appropriate vehicle capacity to facilitate the travel of the students attending the University of Mauritius. The aim of this work is to minimize the total cost of the distance travelled by the vehicles in serving all the customers. An initial solution is obtained by the TOUR algorithm which basically constructs a giant tour containing all the customers and partitions it in an optimal way so as to produce a set of feasible routes. The Tabu search algorithm then makes use of a search procedure, a swapping procedure and the intensification and diversification mechanism to find the best set of feasible routes.

Keywords: Tabu Search, Vehicle Routing, Transport.

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Authors: Y. R. Li, Y. Y. Wang

Abstract:

After allowing direct flights from Mainland China to Taiwan, Chinese tourists increased according to Tourism Bureaustatistics. There are from 0.19 to 2 million tourists from 2008 to 2011. Mainland China has become the main source of Taiwan developing tourism industry. Taiwanese government should know more about comments from Chinese tourists to Taiwan in order toproperly market Taiwan tourism and enhance the overall quality of tourism. In order to understand Chinese visitors’ comments, this study adopts content analysis to analyze electronic word-of-mouth on Web. This study collects 375 blog articles of Chinese tourists from Ctrip.com as a database during 2009 to 2011. Through the qualitative data analysis the traveling destination imagesis divided into seven dimensions, such as senic spots, shopping, food and beverages, accommodations, transportation, festivals and recreation activities. Finally, this study proposes some practical managerial implication to know both positive and negative images of the seven dimensions from Chinese tourists, providing marketing strategies and suggestions to traveling agency industry.

Keywords: Destination Image, Content Analysis, Electronic Word-of-Mouth.

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Authors: Mounira Taileb, Sid Lamrous, Sami Touati

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In order to accelerate the similarity search in highdimensional database, we propose a new hierarchical indexing method. It is composed of offline and online phases. Our contribution concerns both phases. In the offline phase, after gathering the whole of the data in clusters and constructing a hierarchical index, the main originality of our contribution consists to develop a method to construct bounding forms of clusters to avoid overlapping. For the online phase, our idea improves considerably performances of similarity search. However, for this second phase, we have also developed an adapted search algorithm. Our method baptized NOHIS (Non-Overlapping Hierarchical Index Structure) use the Principal Direction Divisive Partitioning (PDDP) as algorithm of clustering. The principle of the PDDP is to divide data recursively into two sub-clusters; division is done by using the hyper-plane orthogonal to the principal direction derived from the covariance matrix and passing through the centroid of the cluster to divide. Data of each two sub-clusters obtained are including by a minimum bounding rectangle (MBR). The two MBRs are directed according to the principal direction. Consequently, the nonoverlapping between the two forms is assured. Experiments use databases containing image descriptors. Results show that the proposed method outperforms sequential scan and SRtree in processing k-nearest neighbors.

Keywords: K-nearest neighbour search, multi-dimensional indexing, multimedia databases, similarity search.

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Authors: S. Chaisit, H.Y. Kung, N.T. Phuong

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Radio frequency identification (RFID) applications have grown rapidly in many industries, especially in indoor location identification. The advantage of using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values as an indoor location measurement method is a cost-effective approach without installing extra hardware. Because the accuracy of many positioning schemes using RSSI values is limited by interference factors and the environment, thus it is challenging to use RFID location techniques based on integrating positioning algorithm design. This study proposes the location estimation approach and analyzes a scheme relying on RSSI values to minimize location errors. In addition, this paper examines different factors that affect location accuracy by integrating the backpropagation neural network (BPN) with the LANDMARC algorithm in a training phase and an online phase. First, the training phase computes coordinates obtained from the LANDMARC algorithm, which uses RSSI values and the real coordinates of reference tags as training data for constructing an appropriate BPN architecture and training length. Second, in the online phase, the LANDMARC algorithm calculates the coordinates of tracking tags, which are then used as BPN inputs to obtain location estimates. The results show that the proposed scheme can estimate locations more accurately compared to LANDMARC without extra devices.

Keywords: BPNs, indoor location, location estimation, intelligent location identification.

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Authors: Weihong Guo, Dan Brennan, Phil Blythe

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This paper presents the effect of driving a motor vehicle on the stress levels of older drivers, indicated by monitoring their hear rate increase whilst completing various everyday driving tasks. Results suggest that whilst older female drivers heart rate varied more significantly than males, the actual age of a participant did not result in a significant change in heart rate due to stress, within the age group tested. The analysis of the results indicates the most stressful manoeuvres undertaken by the older drivers and highlights the tasks which were found difficult with a view to implementing technologies to aid the more senior driver in automotive travel.

Keywords: Driver stress, heart rate, older driver, road safety, speeding.

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Authors: Jalal M. Abdallah

Abstract:

This paper presents an experimental investigation of transformer dielectric response and solid insulation water content. The dielectric response was carried out on the base of Hybrid Frequency Dielectric Spectroscopy and Polarization Current measurements method (FDS &PC). The calculation of the water content in paper is based on the water content in oil and the obtained equilibrium curves. A reference measurements were performed at equilibrium conditions for water content in oil and paper of transformer at different stable temperatures (25, 50, 60 and 70°C) to prepare references to evaluate the insulation behavior at the not equilibrium conditions. Some measurements performed at the different simulated normal working modes of transformer operation at the same temperature where the equilibrium conditions. The obtained results show that when transformer temperature is mach more than the its ambient temperature, the transformer temperature decreases immediately after disconnecting the transformer from the network and this temperature reduction influences the transformer insulation condition in the measuring process. In addition to the oil temperature at the near places to the sensors, the temperature uniformity in transformer which can be changed by a big change in the load of transformer before the measuring time will influence the result. The investigations have shown that the extremely influence of the time between disconnecting the transformer and beginning the measurements on the results. And the online monitoring for water content in paper measurements, on the basis of the oil water content on line monitoring and the obtained equilibrium curves. The measurements where performed continuously and for about 50 days without any disconnection in the prepared the adiabatic room.

Keywords: Conductivity, Moisture, Temperature, Oil-paperinsulation, Online monitoring, Water content in oil.

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Authors: El-Said. I. Shabana, Mohammad S. Tayeb, Maher M. T. Qutub, Abdulraheem A. Kinsara

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Usually, phosphate deposits contain ²³⁸U and ²³²Th in addition to their decay products. Due to their different pathways in the environment, the ²³⁸U/²³²Th activity concentration ratio usually found to be greater than unity in phosphate sediments. The presence of these radionuclides creates a potential need to control exposure of workers in the mining and processing activities of the phosphate minerals in accordance with IAEA safety standards. The greatest dose to workers comes from exposure to radon, especially ²²²Rn from the uranium series, and has to be controlled. In this regard, radon (²²²Rn) was measured in the atmosphere (indoor and outdoor) of Al-Jalamid phosphate-mines working area using a portable radon-measurement instrument RAD7, in a purpose of radiation protection. Radon was measured in 61 sites inside the open phosphate mines, the phosphate upgrading facility (offices and rooms of the workers, and in some open-air sites) and in the dwellings of the workers residence-village that lies at about 3 km from the mines working area. The obtained results indicated that the average indoor radon concentration was about 48.4 Bq/m³. Inside the upgrading facility, the average outdoor concentrations were 10.8 and 9.7 Bq/m³ in the concentrate piles and crushing areas, respectively. It was 12.3 Bq/m³ in the atmosphere of the open mines. These values are comparable with the global average values. Based on the average values, the annual effective dose due to radon inhalation was calculated and risk estimates have been done. The average annual effective dose to workers due to the radon inhalation was estimated by 1.32 mSv. The potential excess risk of lung cancer mortality that could be attributed to radon, when considering the lifetime exposure, was estimated by 53.0x10^-4. The results have been discussed in detail.

Keywords: Dosimetry, environmental monitoring, phosphate deposits, radiation protection, radon-22.

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Authors: Wookuen Shin, Gregory R. Miller, Pedro Arduino, Peter Mackenzie-Helnwein

Abstract:

This paper presents strategies for dynamically creating, managing and removing mesh cells during computations in the context of the Material Point Method (MPM). The dynamic meshing approach has been developed to help address problems involving motion of a finite size body in unbounded domains in which the extent of material travel and deformation is unknown a priori, such as in the case of landslides and debris flows. The key idea is to efficiently instantiate and search only cells that contain material points, thereby avoiding unneeded storage and computation. Mechanisms for doing this efficiently are presented, and example problems are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of dynamic mesh management relative to alternative approaches.

Keywords: Numerical Analysis, Material Point Method, Large Deformations, Moving Boundaries.

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Authors: Nida Rizvi, Deeksha Katyal, Varun Joshi

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River Hindon is an important river catering the demand of highly populated rural and industrial cluster of western Uttar Pradesh, India. Water quality of river Hindon is deteriorating at an alarming rate due to various industrial, municipal and agricultural activities. The present study aimed at identifying the pollution sources and quantifying the degree to which these sources are responsible for the deteriorating water quality of the river. Various water quality parameters, like pH, temperature, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, total hardness, calcium, chloride, nitrate, sulphate, biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, and total alkalinity were assessed. Water quality data obtained from eight study sites for one year has been subjected to the two multivariate techniques, namely, principal component analysis and cluster analysis. Principal component analysis was applied with the aim to find out spatial variability and to identify the sources responsible for the water quality of the river. Three Varifactors were obtained after varimax rotation of initial principal components using principal component analysis. Cluster analysis was carried out to classify sampling stations of certain similarity, which grouped eight different sites into two clusters. The study reveals that the anthropogenic influence (municipal, industrial, waste water and agricultural runoff) was the major source of river water pollution. Thus, this study illustrates the utility of multivariate statistical techniques for analysis and elucidation of multifaceted data sets, recognition of pollution sources/factors and understanding temporal/spatial variations in water quality for effective river water quality management.

Keywords: Cluster analysis, multivariate statistical technique, river Hindon, water Quality.

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Authors: João Vilas-Boas, Abdul Suleman, Luis Moreira

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This research tested the performance of alternative warehouse designs concerning the picking process. The chosen performance measures were Travel Distance and Total Fulfilment Time. An explanatory case study was built up around a model implemented with SIMUL8. Hypotheses were set by selecting outcomes from the literature survey matching popular empirical findings. 17.4% reductions were found for Total Fulfilment Time and Resource Utilisation. The latter was then used as a proxy for operational efficiency. Literal replication of theoretical data-patterns was considered as an internal validity sign. Assessing the estimated changes benefits ahead of implementation was found to be a contribution to practice.

Keywords: Warehouse discrete-event simulation, Storage policy selection and assessment, Performance evaluation of order picking.

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Authors: K. Venkateswari, U. K. Balaji Saravanan, K. Thangaraj, K. V. Deepana

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Image search engines rely on the surrounding textual keywords for the retrieval of images. It is a tedious work for the search engines like Google and Bing to interpret the user’s search intention and to provide the desired results. The recent researches also state that the Google image search engines do not work well on all the images. Consequently, this leads to the emergence of efficient image retrieval technique, which interprets the user’s search intention and shows the desired results. In order to accomplish this task, an efficient image re-ranking framework is required. Sequentially, to provide best image retrieval, the new image re-ranking framework is experimented in this paper. The implemented new image re-ranking framework provides best image retrieval from the image dataset by making use of re-ranking of retrieved images that is based on the user’s desired images. This is experimented in two sections. One is offline section and other is online section. In offline section, the reranking framework studies differently (reference classes or Semantic Spaces) for diverse user query keywords. The semantic signatures get generated by combining the textual and visual features of the images. In the online section, images are re-ranked by comparing the semantic signatures that are obtained from the reference classes with the user specified image query keywords. This re-ranking methodology will increases the retrieval image efficiency and the result will be effective to the user.

Keywords: CBIR, Image Re-ranking, Image Retrieval, Semantic Signature, Semantic Space.

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Authors: Carolin Lutz, Jörg Matthes, Patrick Waibel, Ulrich Precht, Krassimir Garbev, Günter Beuchle, Uwe Schweike, Peter Stemmermann, Hubert B. Keller

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Online measurement of the product quality is a challenging task in cement production, especially in the production of Celitement, a novel environmentally friendly hydraulic binder. The mineralogy and chemical composition of clinker in ordinary Portland cement production is measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF), where only crystalline constituents can be detected. But only a small part of the Celitement components can be measured via XRD, because most constituents have an amorphous structure. This paper describes the development of algorithms suitable for an on-line monitoring of the final processing step of Celitement based on NIR-data. For calibration intermediate products were dried at different temperatures and ground for variable durations. The products were analyzed using XRD and thermogravimetric analyses together with NIR-spectroscopy to investigate the dependency between the drying and the milling processes on one and the NIR-signal on the other side. As a result, different characteristic parameters have been defined. A short overview of the Celitement process and the challenging tasks of the online measurement and evaluation of the product quality will be presented. Subsequently, methods for systematic development of near-infrared calibration models and the determination of the final calibration model will be introduced. The application of the model on experimental data illustrates that NIR-spectroscopy allows for a quick and sufficiently exact determination of crucial process parameters.

Keywords: Calibration model, celitement, cementitious material, NIR spectroscopy.

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Authors: J. Zagorskas, I. Veteikyte

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Physical urban form is recognized to be the media for human transactions. It directly influences the travel demand of people in a specific urban area and the amount of energy used for transportation. Distorted, sprawling form often creates sustainability problems in urban areas. It is declared in EU strategic planning documents that compact urban form and mixed land use pattern must be given the main focus to achieve better sustainability in urban areas, but the methods to measure and compare these characteristics are still not clear. This paper presents the simple methods to measure the spatial characteristics of urban form by analyzing the location and distribution of objects in an urban environment. The extended CA (cellular automata) model is used to simulate urban development scenarios.

Keywords: Cellular automata (CA), Mixed used planning, Spatial analysis, Urban compactness, Geographic information systems (GIS).

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Authors: T. Manzur

Abstract:

Concrete is the predominant construction material in Bangladesh. In large projects, stringent quality control procedures are usually followed under the supervision of experienced engineers and skilled labors. However, in the case of small projects and particularly at distant locations from major cities, proper quality control is often an issue. It has been found from experience that such quality related issues mainly arise from inappropriate proportioning of concrete mixes and improper curing conditions. In most cases external curing method is followed which requires supply of adequate quantity of water along with proper protection against evaporation. Often these conditions are found missing in the general construction sites and eventually lead to production of weaker concrete both in terms of strength and durability. In this study, an attempt has been made to investigate the performance of general concreting works of the country when subjected to several adverse curing conditions that are quite common in various small to medium construction sites. A total of six different types of adverse curing conditions were simulated in the laboratory and samples were kept under those conditions for several days. A set of samples was also submerged in normal curing condition having proper supply of curing water. Performance of concrete was evaluated in terms of compressive strength, tensile strength, chloride permeability and drying shrinkage. About 37% and 25% reduction in 28-day compressive and tensile strength were observed respectively, for samples subjected to most adverse curing condition as compared to the samples under normal curing conditions. Normal curing concrete exhibited moderate permeability (close to low permeability) whereas concrete under adverse curing conditions showed very high permeability values. Similar results were also obtained for shrinkage tests. This study, thus, will assist concerned engineers and supervisors to understand the importance of quality assurance during the curing period of concrete.

Keywords: Adverse, concrete, curing, compressive strength, drying shrinkage, permeability, tensile strength.

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Authors: Jin-Hee Park, Yong-Gyu Lee, Gilwon Yoon

Abstract:

Wireless capsule endoscopy provides real-time images in the digestive tract. Capsule images are usually low resolution and are diverse images due to travel through various regions of human body. Color information has been a primary reference in predicting abnormalities such as bleeding. Often color is not sufficient for this purpose. In this study, we took morphological shapes into account as additional, but important criterion. First, we processed gastric images in order to indentify various objects in the image. Then, we analyzed color information in the object. In this way, we could remove unnecessary information and increase the accuracy. Compared to our previous investigations, we could handle images of various degrees of brightness and improve our diagnostic algorithm.

Keywords: Capsule Endoscopy, HSV model, Image processing, Object Identification, Color Separation.

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Authors: Yahya Alfraidi, Abdel Halim Boussabaine

Abstract:

Climate change confronts the built environment with many new challenges in the form of more severe and frequent hydrometeorological events. A series of strategies is proposed whereby the various aspects of buildings and their sites can be made more resilient to the effects of such events.

Keywords: Design resilience building, resilience strategies, climate change risks, design resilience aspects.

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Authors: Martin Kendra, Jaroslav Mašek, Juraj Čamaj, Matej Babin

Abstract:

The railway transport is considered as a one of the most environmentally friendly mode of transport. With future prediction of increasing of freight transport there are lines facing problems with demanded capacity. Increase of the track capacity could be achieved by infrastructure constructive adjustments. The contribution shows how the travel time can be minimized and the track capacity increased by changing some of the basic infrastructure and operation parameters, for example, the minimal curve radius of the track, the number of tracks, or the usable track length at stations. Calculation of the necessary parameter changes is based on the fundamental physical laws applied to the train movement, and calculation of the occupation time is dependent on the changes of controlling the traffic between the stations.

Keywords: Curve radius, maximum curve speed, track mass capacity, reconstruction.

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