Search results for: human resources recruitment

Authors: M. C. Proença

Abstract:

The tools described in this paper enable the location of burned areas where took place the annihilation of natural habitats and establishes a baseline for major changes in forest ecosystems during recovery. Moreover, the result allows the follow up of the surface fuel loading, allowing the evaluation and guidance of restoration measures to remote areas by phased time planning. This case study implements the evaluation of burned areas that suffered successive wildfires in Portugal mainland during the summer of 2017, killing more than 60 people. The goal is to show that this evaluation can be done with remote sense data free of charges in a simple laptop, with open-source software, describing the not-so-simple methodology step by step, to make it accessible for local workers in the areas attained, where the availability of information is essential for the immediate planning of mitigation measures, such as restoring road access, allocate funds for the recovery of human dwellings and assess further needs for restoration of the ecological system. Wildfires also devastate forest ecosystems having a direct impact on vegetation cover and killing or driving away the animal population, besides loss of all crops in rural areas that are essential as local resources. The economic interests are also attained, as the pinewood burned becomes useless for the noblest applications, so its value decreases, and resin extraction ends for several years.

Keywords: Image processing, remote sensing, wildfires, burned areas, SENTINEL-2.

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Authors: Jeewanee Bamunusinghe, Damminda Alahakoon

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Visual inputs are one of the key sources from which humans perceive the environment and 'understand' what is happening. Artificial systems perceive the visual inputs as digital images. The images need to be processed and analysed. Within the human brain, processing of visual inputs and subsequent development of perception is one of its major functionalities. In this paper we present part of our research project, which aims at the development of an artificial model for visual perception (or 'understanding') based on the human perceptive and cognitive systems. We propose a new model for perception from visual inputs and a way of understaning or interpreting images using the model. We demonstrate the implementation and use of the model with a real image data set.

Keywords: Image understanding, percept, visual perception.

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Authors: Abolfazl Moeini, Elahe Alizadeh Paeenafrakaty

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The protection of groundwater resources is the great important many semiarid and arid environments. Baghan watershed is located in the north of Kangan in the Boshehr province in Iran. The groundwater resources have a vital role in supplying agricultural, drinking, domestic and industrial water demand in Baghan watershed. For our investigation into the water quality we collected 30 samples to chemical and physical analysis. The result showed the marl and evaporation deposits that contain anhydrite and gypsum is the main source of groundwater pollution, and one part of the groundwater was polluted by oil and gas industrial. Another part of the groundwater was contaminated by urban waste water. The electrical conductivity and captions and anions increased around of towns and gas refinery. Although the negative impact of untreated domestic wastewater is relatively low but the results showed strongly the negative impact of wastewater refinery is very considerable. This negative impact increased in downstream due to shallow aquifer. Additionally, the agents that adversely affect the quality of groundwater come from a variety of sources, including geology, domestic wastewater and the Jam refinery in Baghan watershed.

Keywords: Baghan watershed, Chemical quality, Groundwater, Pollution sources.

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Authors: M. Bernasconi, M. Grothkopp, T. Friedli

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The objective of this paper is to examine the relationships between technical and social lean bundles as well as operational performance in the context of the pharmaceutical industry. We investigate the direct and mediating effects of the lean bundles Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Total Quality Management (TQM), Just-In-Time (JIT), and Human Resource Management (HRM) on operational performance. Our analysis relies on 113 manufacturing facilities from the St.Gallen OPEX benchmarking database. The results show that HRM has a positive indirect effect on operational performance mediated by the technical lean bundles.

Keywords: Human resource management, operational performance, pharmaceutical industry, technical lean practices.

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Authors: Emad Hezbkhah, Ebrahim Akhlaghi

Abstract:

From a long time age, human beings have chosen their place of residence and comfort so that those places would have relatively ideal natural and climatic conditions. For this reason, from the beginning, the civilizations have been formed in the susceptible natural regions such as Mesopotamia in Iran and Nile coasts in Egypt. Also, the core of human density has been made in the form of an oasis in the deserts. Regarding the formation and combination of the native architecture in different regions of Iran, we find that different properties of these climates have affected frequently the formation of cities and the architectural combinations of these regions. Thus, the precise determinations of climatic areas and attaining the climatic properties of different regions have a great deal of importance in presenting appropriate and compatible-with-climate designs.

Keywords: climate and architecture, energy Optimizing, Greenhouse

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Authors: Paul Y. Oh, Rares I. Stanciu

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Cameras are often mounted on platforms that canmove like rovers, booms, gantries and aircraft. People operate suchplatforms to capture desired views of scene or target. To avoidcollisions with the environment and occlusions, such platforms oftenpossess redundant degrees-of-freedom. As a result, manipulatingsuch platforms demands much skill. Visual-servoing some degrees-of-freedom may reduce operator burden and improve tracking per-formance. This concept, which we call human-in-the-loop visual-servoing, is demonstrated in this paper and applies a Α-β-γ filter and feedforward controller to a broadcast camera boom.

Keywords: Computer vision, visual-servoing, man-machine sys-tems, human-in-the-loop control

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Authors: Peter Pfeifer, Julian Pfeifer, Niko Pfeifer

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Information processing is at the focus of brain and cognition research. This work has a different perspective, it starts with behaviors. The detailed analysis of behaviors leads to the discovery that a significant proportion of them are based on only five basic drives. These basic drives are combinable, and the combinations result in the diversity of human behavior and thinking. The key elements are drive memories. They collect memories of drive-related situations and feelings. They contain variations of basic drives in numerous areas of life and build combinations with different meanings depending on the area. Human thinking could be explained with variations on these nested combinations of basic drives.

Keywords: Cognitive modeling, psycholinguistics, psychology, psychophysiology of cognition.

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Authors: F. Ruiz-Fuster

Abstract:

Arnold’s redefinition of human motives can sustain a psychology of education which emphasizes the beauty of knowledge and the exercise of intellectual functions. Thus, education instead of focusing on skills and learning by doing would be centered on ‘the widest reaches of the human spirit’. One way to attain it is by developing children’s inherent interest. Arnold takes into account the fact that the desire to know is the inherent interest which leads students to explore and learn. She also emphasizes the need of exercising human functions as thinking, judging and reasoning. According to Arnold, the influence of psychological theories of motivation in education has derived in considering that all learning and school tasks should derive from children’s needs and impulses. The desire to know and the curiosity have not been considered as basic and active as any instinctive drive or basic need, so there has been an attempt to justify and understand how biological drives guide student’s learning. However, understanding motives and motivation not as a drive, an instinct or an impulse guided by our basic needs, but as a want that leads to action can help to understand, from a psychological perspective, how teachers can motivate students to learn, strengthening their desire and interest to reason and discover the whole new world of knowledge.

Keywords: Academic motivation, interests, desire to know, educational psychology, intellectual functions.

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Authors: J. Prakash, K. Rajesh

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In this paper we propose a novel method for human face segmentation using the elliptical structure of the human head. It makes use of the information present in the edge map of the image. In this approach we use the fact that the eigenvalues of covariance matrix represent the elliptical structure. The large and small eigenvalues of covariance matrix are associated with major and minor axial lengths of an ellipse. The other elliptical parameters are used to identify the centre and orientation of the face. Since an Elliptical Hough Transform requires 5D Hough Space, the Circular Hough Transform (CHT) is used to evaluate the elliptical parameters. Sparse matrix technique is used to perform CHT, as it squeeze zero elements, and have only a small number of non-zero elements, thereby having an advantage of less storage space and computational time. Neighborhood suppression scheme is used to identify the valid Hough peaks. The accurate position of the circumference pixels for occluded and distorted ellipses is identified using Bresenham-s Raster Scan Algorithm which uses the geometrical symmetry properties. This method does not require the evaluation of tangents for curvature contours, which are very sensitive to noise. The method has been evaluated on several images with different face orientations.

Keywords: Circular Hough Transform, Covariance matrix, Eigenvalues, Elliptical Hough Transform, Face segmentation, Raster Scan Algorithm.

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Authors: Jishu Das Gupta, Srecko Howard, Angela Howard

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Insufficient Quality of Service (QoS) of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a growing concern that has lead the need for research and study. In this paper we investigate the performance of VoIP and the impact of resource limitations on the performance of Access Networks. The impact of VoIP performance in Access Networks is particularly important in regions where Internet resources are limited and the cost of improving these resources is prohibitive. It is clear that perceived VoIP performance, as measured by mean opinion score [2] in experiments, where subjects are asked to rate communication quality, is determined by end-to-end delay on the communication path, delay variation, packet loss, echo, the coding algorithm in use and noise. These performance indicators can be measured and the affect in the Access Network can be estimated. This paper investigates the congestion in the Access Network to the overall performance of VoIP services with the presence of other substantial uses of internet and ways in which Access Networks can be designed to improve VoIP performance. Methods for analyzing the impact of the Access Network on VoIP performance will be surveyed and reviewed. This paper also considers some approaches for improving performance of VoIP by carrying out experiments using Network Simulator version 2 (NS2) software with a view to gaining a better understanding of the design of Access Networks.

Keywords: Codec, DiffServ, Droptail, RED, VOIP

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Authors: Hang Yu

Abstract:

The visualization of geographic information on mobile devices has become popular as the widespread use of mobile Internet. The mobility of these devices brings about much convenience to people-s life. By the add-on location-based services of the devices, people can have an access to timely information relevant to their tasks. However, visual analysis of geographic data on mobile devices presents several challenges due to the small display and restricted computing resources. These limitations on the screen size and resources may impair the usability aspects of the visualization applications. In this paper, a variable-scale visualization method is proposed to handle the challenge of small mobile display. By merging multiple scales of information into a single image, the viewer is able to focus on the interesting region, while having a good grasp of the surrounding context. This is essentially visualizing the map through a fisheye lens. However, the fisheye lens induces undesirable geometric distortion in the peripheral, which renders the information meaningless. The proposed solution is to apply map generalization that removes excessive information around the peripheral and an automatic smoothing process to correct the distortion while keeping the local topology consistent. The proposed method is applied on both artificial and real geographical data for evaluation.

Keywords: Map simplification, visualization, mobile devices.

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Authors: N. H. Adenan, M. S. M. Noorani

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River flow prediction is an essential tool to ensure proper management of water resources and the optimal distribution of water to consumers. This study presents an analysis and prediction by using nonlinear prediction method with monthly river flow data for Tanjung Tualang from 1976 to 2006. Nonlinear prediction method involves the reconstruction of phase space and local linear approximation approach. The reconstruction of phase space involves the reconstruction of one-dimension (the observed 287 months of data) in a multidimensional phase space to reveal the dynamics of the system. The revenue of phase space reconstruction is used to predict the next 72 months. A comparison of prediction performance based on correlation coefficient (CC) and root mean square error (RMSE) was employed to compare prediction performance for the nonlinear prediction method, ARIMA and SVM. Prediction performance comparisons show that the prediction results using the nonlinear prediction method are better than ARIMA and SVM. Therefore, the results of this study could be used to develop an efficient water management system to optimize the allocation of water resources.

Keywords: River flow, nonlinear prediction method, phase space, local linear approximation.

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Authors: Jalaluddin Abdul Malek, Mohd Asruladlyi Ibrahim, Zurinah Tahir

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This paper is to reveal developments in the areas of urban technology in Malaysia. Developments occur intend to add value intelligent city development to the ubiquitous city (U-city) or smart city. The phenomenon of change is called the development of post intelligent cities. U-City development discourse is seen from the perspective of the philosophy of the virtuous city organized by al-Farabi. The prosperity and perfection of a city is mainly caused by human personality factors, as well as its relationship with material and technological aspects of the city. The question is, to what extent to which human factors are taken into account in the concept of U-City as an added value to the intelligent city concept to realize the prosperity and perfection of the city? Previously, the intelligent city concept was developed based on global change and ICT movement, while the U-city added value to the development of intelligent cities and focused more on the development of information and communications technology (ICT). Value added is defined as the use of fiber optic technology that is wired to the use of wireless technology, such as wireless broadband. In this discourse, the debate on the concept of U-City is to the symbiosis between the U-City and the importance of local human e-participation (U-Society) for prosperity. In the context of virtuous city philosophy, it supports the thought of symbiosis so the concept of U-City can achieve sustainability, prosperity and perfection of the city.

Keywords: Smart city, ubiquitous city, U-Society, e-participation, prosperity.

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Authors: Nur Adilah Md Zain, Mohd Salehuddin Mohd Zahari, Mohd Hafiz Hanafiah, Muhammad Izzat Zulkifly

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This paper empirically investigates the relationship between Sabah state core tourism products and its destination image. Through a descriptive design using a quantitative method with a self-reported and self-administered questionnaire, this research surveyed the individual international tourists who had visited Sabah and experienced the state’s core tourism products. The research findings clearly indicate that Sabah, one of the states in Malaysia has a lot of valuable resources in the eyes of the international tourists. Interestingly, it was found that Sabah’s core tourism products namely unique marine resources, various nature attractions and cultural diversities have undoubtedly contributed to the state’s tourism image. Good feedbacks and the promising insights from the international tourists’ point of view offer varying consequences, repercussion, and implication to the state government and the relevant authorities. Collaboration and cooperation between all responsible authorities are therefore crucial in strengthening the “total tourism experience” among the international tourists in this state.

Keywords: Tourism core products, marine, cultural, nature, destination image, Sabah.

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Authors: Sanga Monthatipkul, Pio Iovenitti, Igor Sbarski

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Bicycle usage for exercise, recreation, and commuting to work in Australia shows that pedal cycling is the fourth most popular activity with 10.6% increase in participants between 2001 and 2007. As with other means of transport, accident and injury becomes common although mandatory bicycle helmet wearing has been introduced. The research aims to develop a face surrogate made of sandwich of rigid foam and rubber sheets to represent human facial bone under blunt impact. The facial surrogate will serve as an important test device for further development of facial-impact protection for cyclist. A test procedure was developed to simulate the energy of impact and record data to evaluate the effect of impact on facial bones. Drop tests were performed to establish a suitable combination of materials. It was found that the sandwich structure of rigid extruded-polystyrene foam (density of 40 kg/m3 with a pattern of 6-mm-holes), Neoprene rubber sponge, and Abrasaflex rubber backing, had impact characteristics comparable to that of human facial bone. In particular, the foam thickness of 30 mm and 25 mm was found suitable to represent human zygoma (cheekbone) and maxilla (upper-jaw bone), respectively.

Keywords: Facial impact protection, face surrogate, cyclist, accident prevention

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Authors: Permphan Dharmasaroja

Abstract:

Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) has been reported to develop after a hymenoptera sting, but its pathogenesis is not known in detail. Myelin basic protein (MBP)- specific T cells have been detected in the blood of patients with ADEM, and a proportion of these patients develop multiple sclerosis (MS). In an attempt to understand the mechanisms underlying ADEM, molecular mimicry between hymenoptera venom peptides and the human immunodominant MBP peptide was scrutinized, based on the sequence and structural similarities, whether it was the root of the disease. The results suggest that the three wasp venom peptides have low sequence homology with the human immunodominant MBP residues 85-99. Structural similarity analysis among the three venom peptides and the MS-related HLA-DR2b (DRA, DRB1*1501)-associated immunodominant MHC binding/TCR contact residues 88-93, VVHFFK showed that hyaluronidase residues 7-12, phospholipase A1 residues 98-103, and antigen 5 residues 109-114 showed a high degree of similarity 83.3%, 100%, and 83.3% respectively. In conclusion, some wasp venom peptides, particularly phospholipase A1, may potentially act as the molecular motifs of the human 3HLA-DR2b-associated immunodominant MBP88-93, and possibly present a mechanism for induction of wasp sting-associated ADEM.

Keywords: central nervous system, Hymenoptera, myelin basicprotein, molecular mimicry.

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Authors: Zbigniew Les, Magdalena Les

Abstract:

Intelligence tests are series of tasks designed to measure the capacity to make abstractions, to learn, and to deal with novel situations. Testing of the visual abilities of the shape understanding system (SUS) is performed based on the visual intelligence tests. In this paper the progressive matrices tests are formulated as tasks given to SUS. These tests require good visual problem solving abilities of the human subject. SUS solves these tests by performing complex visual reasoning transforming the visual forms (tests) into the string forms. The experiment proved that the proposed method, which is part of the SUS visual understanding abilities, can solve a test that is very difficult for human subject.

Keywords: Shape understanding, intelligence test, visual concept, visual reasoning.

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Authors: Mahmood Ahmad, Ghulam Murtaza, Sonia Khiljee, Muhammad Asadullah Madni

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A new reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method with fluorescent detector (FLD) was developed and optimized for Norfloxacin determination in human plasma. Mobile phase specifications, extraction method and excitation and emission wavelengths were varied for optimization. HPLC system contained a reverse phase C18 (5 μm, 4.6 mm×150 mm) column with FLD operated at excitation 330 nm and emission 440 nm. The optimized mobile phase consisted of 14% acetonitrile in buffer solution. The aqueous phase was prepared by mixing 2g of citric acid, 2g sodium acetate and 1 ml of triethylamine in 1 L of Milli-Q water was run at a flow rate of 1.2 mL/min. The standard curve was linear for the range tested (0.156–20 μg/mL) and the coefficient of determination was 0.9978. Aceclofenac sodium was used as internal standard. A detection limit of 0.078 μg/mL was achieved. Run time was set at 10 minutes because retention time of norfloxacin was 0.99 min. which shows the rapidness of this method of analysis. The present assay showed good accuracy, precision and sensitivity for Norfloxacin determination in human plasma with a new internal standard and can be applied pharmacokinetic evaluation of Norfloxacin tablets after oral administration in human.

Keywords: Norfloxacin, Aceclofenac sodium, Methodoptimization, RP-HPLC method, Fluorescent detection, Calibrationcurve.

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Authors: Angelo Nodari, Ignazio Gallo

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The novelty proposed in this study is twofold and consists in the developing of a new color similarity metric based on the human visual system and a new color indexing based on a textual approach. The new color similarity metric proposed is based on the color perception of the human visual system. Consequently the results returned by the indexing system can fulfill as much as possibile the user expectations. We developed a web application to collect the users judgments about the similarities between colors, whose results are used to estimate the metric proposed in this study. In order to index the image's colors, we used a text indexing engine to facilitate the integration of visual features in a database of text documents. The textual signature is build by weighting the image's colors in according to their occurrence in the image. The use of a textual indexing engine, provide us a simple, fast and robust solution to index images. A typical usage of the system proposed in this study, is the development of applications whose data type is both visual and textual. In order to evaluate the proposed method we chose a price comparison engine as a case of study, collecting a series of commercial offers containing the textual description and the image representing a specific commercial offer.

Keywords: Color Extraction, Content-Based Image Retrieval, Indexing

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Authors: M. Nahid, A. Bajit, A. Tamtaoui, E. H. Bouyakhf

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To model the human visual system (HVS) in the region of interest, we propose a new objective metric evaluation adapted to wavelet foveation-based image compression quality measurement, which exploits a foveation setup filter implementation technique in the DWT domain, based especially on the point and region of fixation of the human eye. This model is then used to predict the visible divergences between an original and compressed image with respect to this region field and yields an adapted and local measure error by removing all peripheral errors. The technique, which we call foveation wavelet visible difference prediction (FWVDP), is demonstrated on a number of noisy images all of which have the same local peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), but visibly different errors. We show that the FWVDP reliably predicts the fixation areas of interest where error is masked, due to high image contrast, and the areas where the error is visible, due to low image contrast. The paper also suggests ways in which the FWVDP can be used to determine a visually optimal quantization strategy for foveation-based wavelet coefficients and to produce a quantitative local measure of image quality.

Keywords: Human Visual System, Image Quality, ImageCompression, foveation wavelet, region of interest ROI.

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Authors: Adarsh Venkataraman Ganesan, Sundaram Swaminathan, Rama Jayaraj

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Human middle-ear is the key component of the auditory system. Its function is to transfer the sound waves through the ear canal to provide sufficient stimulus to the fluids of the inner ear. Degradation of the ossicles that transmit these sound waves from the eardrum to the inner ear leads to hearing loss. This problem can be overcome by replacing one or more of these ossicles by middleear prosthesis. Designing such prosthesis requires a comprehensive knowledge of the biomechanics of the middle-ear. There are many finite element modeling approaches developed to understand the biomechanics of the middle ear. The available models in the literature, involve high computation time. In this paper, we propose a simplified model which provides a reasonably accurate result with much less computational time. Simulation results indicate a maximum sound pressure gain of 10 dB at 5500 Hz.

Keywords: Ear, Ossicles, COMSOL, Stapes.

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Authors: Po-Hsiang Chiu, Torre Wenaus

Abstract:

In the current Grid environment, efficient workload management presents a significant challenge, for which there are exorbitant de facto standards encompassing resource discovery, brokerage, and data transfer, among others. In addition, the real-time resource status, essential for an optimal resource allocation strategy, is often not readily accessible. To address these issues and provide a cleaner abstraction of the Grid with the potential of generalizing into arbitrary resource-sharing environment, this paper proposes a new Condor-based pilot mechanism applied in the PanDA architecture, PanDA-PF WMS, with the goal of providing a more generic yet efficient resource allocating strategy. In this architecture, the PanDA server primarily acts as a repository of user jobs, responding to pilot requests from distributed, remote resources. Scheduling decisions are subsequently made according to the real-time resource information reported by pilots. Pilot Factory is a Condor-inspired solution for a scalable pilot dissemination and effectively functions as a resource provisioning mechanism through which the user-job server, PanDA, reaches out to the candidate resources only on demand.

Keywords: Condor, glidein, PanDA, Pilot, Pilot Factory.

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Authors: Mustafa Engin Başoğlu, Bekir Çakir

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Since large part of electricity is generated by using fossil based resources, energy is an important agenda for countries. In this context, renewable energy sources are alternative to conventional sources due to the depletion of fossil resources, increasing awareness of climate change and global warming concerns. Solar, wind and hydropower energy are the main renewable energy sources. Among of them, since installed capacity of wind power has increased approximately eight times between 2008 - November of 2014, wind energy is a promising source for Turkey. Furthermore, signing of Kyoto Protocol can be accepted as a milestone for Turkey's energy policy. Turkish Government has announced Vision 2023 (energy targets by 2023) in 2010-2014 Strategic Plan prepared by Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (MENR). Energy targets in this plan can be summarized as follows: Share of renewable energy sources in electricity generation is 30% of total electricity generation by 2023. Installed capacity of wind energy will be 20 GW by 2023. Other renewable energy sources such as solar, hydropower and geothermal are encouraged with new incentive mechanisms. Dependence on foreign energy is reduced for sustainability and energy security. On the other hand, since Turkey is surrounded by three coastal areas, wind energy potential is convenient for wind power application. As of November of 2014, total installed capacity of wind power plants is 3.51 GW and a lot of wind power plants are under construction with capacity 1.16 GW. Turkish government also encourages the locally manufactured equipments. In this context, one of the projects funded by private sector, universities and TUBİTAK names as MILRES is an important project aimed to promote the use wind energy in electricity generation. Within this project, wind turbine with 500 kW power has been produced and will be installed at the beginning of the 2015. After that, by using the experience obtained from the first phase of the project, a wind turbine with 2.5 MW power will be manufactured in an industrial scale.

Keywords: Wind energy, wind speed, Vision 2023, MILRES (national wind energy system), wind energy potential, Turkey.

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Authors: Jason Zalev, Reza Sedaghat

Abstract:

This paper describes a complex energy signal model that is isomorphic with digital human fingerprint images. By using signal models, the problem of fingerprint matching is transformed into the signal processing problem of finding a correlation between two complex signals that differ by phase-rotation and time-scaling. A technique for minutiae matching that is independent of image translation, rotation and linear-scaling, and is resistant to missing minutiae is proposed. The method was tested using random data points. The results show that for matching prints the scaling and rotation angles are closely estimated and a stronger match will have a higher correlation.

Keywords: Affine Invariant, Fingerprint Recognition, Matching, Minutiae.

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Authors: Debojyoti Mitra

Abstract:

The present study concentrates on solving the along wind oscillation problem of a tall square building from first principles and across wind oscillation problem of the same from empirical relations obtained by experiments. The criterion for human comfort at the worst condition at the top floor of the building is being considered and a limiting value of height of a building for a given cross section is predicted. Numerical integrations are carried out as and when required. The results show severeness of across wind oscillations in comparison to along wind oscillation. The comfort criterion is combined with across wind oscillation results to determine the maximum allowable height of a building for a given square cross-section.

Keywords: Tall Building, Along-wind Response, Across-wind Response, Human Comfort.

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Authors: Jane O. Munonye

Abstract:

Climate change has both negative and positive effects in agricultural production. For agriculture to be sustainable in adverse climate change condition, some natural measures are needed. The issue is to produce more food with available natural resources and reduce the contribution of agriculture to climate change. The study reviewed climate change and sustainable agriculture in southeast Nigeria. Data from the study were from secondary sources. Ten scientific papers were consulted and data for the review were collected from three. The objectives of the paper were as follows: to review the effect of climate change on one major arable crop in southeast Nigeria (yam; Dioscorea rotundata); evident of climate change impact and methods for sustainable agricultural production in adverse weather condition. Some climatic parameter as sunshine, relative humidity and rainfall have negative relationship with yam production and significant at 10% probability. Crop production was predicted to decline by 25% per hectare by 2060 while livestock production has increased the incidence of diseases and pathogens as the major effect to agriculture. Methods for sustainable agriculture and damage of natural resources by climate change were highlighted. Agriculture needs to be transformed as climate changes to enable the sector to be sustainable. There should be a policy in place to facilitate the integration of sustainability in Nigeria agriculture.

Keywords: Agriculture, climate change, sustainability, yam.

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Authors: B. Vadiraj, S. N. Omkar, B. Kapil Bharadwaj, Yash Vardhan Gupta

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During manned exploration of space, missions will require astronaut crewmembers to perform Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs) for a variety of tasks. These EVAs take place after long periods of operations in space, and in and around unique vehicles, space structures and systems. Considering the remoteness and time spans in which these vehicles will operate, EVA system operations should utilize common worksites, tools and procedures as much as possible to increase the efficiency of training and proficiency in operations. All of the preparations need to be carried out based on studies of astronaut motions. Until now, development and training activities associated with the planned EVAs in Russian and U.S. space programs have relied almost exclusively on physical simulators. These experimental tests are expensive and time consuming. During the past few years a strong increase has been observed in the use of computer simulations due to the fast developments in computer hardware and simulation software. Based on this idea, an effort to develop a computational simulation system to model human dynamic motion for EVA is initiated. This study focuses on the simulation of an astronaut moving the orbital replaceable units into the worksites or removing them from the worksites. Our physics-based methodology helps fill the gap in quantitative analysis of astronaut EVA by providing a multisegment human arm model. Simulation work described in the study improves on the realism of previous efforts, incorporating joint stops to account for the physiological limits of range of motion. To demonstrate the utility of this approach human arm model is simulated virtually using ADAMS/LifeMOD^® software. Kinematic mechanism for the astronaut’s task is studied from joint angles and torques. Simulation results obtained is validated with numerical simulation based on the principles of Newton-Euler method. Torques determined using mathematical model are compared among the subjects to know the grace and consistency of the task performed. We conclude that due to uncertain nature of exploration-class EVA, a virtual model developed using multibody dynamics approach offers significant advantages over traditional human modeling approaches.

Keywords: Extra vehicular activity, biomechanics, inverse kinematics, human body modeling.

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Authors: Adriana Alexandru, Elena Jitaru, Rayner Mayer

Abstract:

The paper presents the results of the European EIE project “Realising the potential for small scale renewable energy sources in the home – Kyotointhehome". The project's global aim is to inform and educate teachers, students and their families so that they can realise the need and can assess the potential for energy efficiency (EE) measures and renewable energy sources (RES) in their homes. The project resources were translated and trialled by 16 partners in 10 European countries. A web-based methodology which will enable families to assess how RES can be incorporated into energy efficient homes was accomplished. The web application “KYOTOINHOME" will help the citizens to identify what they can do to help their community meet the Kyoto target for greenhouse gas reductions and prevent global warming. This application provides useful information on how the citizens can use renewable energy sources in their home to provide space heating and cooling, hot water and electricity. A methodology for assessing heat loss in a dwelling and application of heat pump system was elaborated and will be implemented this year. For schools, we developed a set of practical activities concerned with preventing climate change through using renewable energy sources. Complementary resources will also developed in the Romanian research project “Romania Contribution to the European Targets Regarding the Development of Renewable Energy Sources" - PROMES.

Keywords: Education, energy policy, Internet, renewable energy sources.

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Authors: S. Arrizabalaga, A. Salterain, M. Domínguez, I. Alvaro

Abstract:

Traditionally, Internet has provided best-effort service to every user regardless of its requirements. However, as Internet becomes universally available, users demand more bandwidth and applications require more and more resources, and interest has developed in having the Internet provide some degree of Quality of Service. Although QoS is an important issue, the question of how it will be brought into the Internet has not been solved yet. Researches, due to the rapid advances in technology are proposing new and more desirable capabilities for the next generation of IP infrastructures. But neither all applications demand the same amount of resources, nor all users are service providers. In this way, this paper is the first of a series of papers that presents an architecture as a first step to the optimization of QoS in the Internet environment as a solution to a SMSE's problem whose objective is to provide public service to internet with certain Quality of Service expectations. The service provides new business opportunities, but also presents new challenges. We have designed and implemented a scalable service framework that supports adaptive bandwidth based on user demands, and the billing based on usage and on QoS. The developed application has been evaluated and the results show that traffic limiting works at optimum and so it does exceeding bandwidth distribution. However, some considerations are done and currently research is under way in two basic areas: (i) development and testing new transfer protocols, and (ii) developing new strategies for traffic improvements based on service differentiation.

Keywords: Differentiated Services, Linux, Quality of Service, queueing disciplines, web application.

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Authors: A. Yavar, S. Sarmani, K. S. Khoo

Abstract:

The analysis of trace elements in human hair provides crucial insights into an individual's nutritional status and environmental exposure. This research aimed to examine the levels of toxic and essential elements in the scalp hair of school children aged 12-17 from three villages (Anglong Romiot (AR), Svay Romiot (SR), and Kampong Kong (KK)) in Cambodia's Kandal province, a region where residents are especially vulnerable to toxic elements, notably arsenic (As), due to their dietary habits, lifestyle, and environmental conditions. The scalp hair samples were analyzed using the k0-Instrumental Neutron Activation method (k0-INAA), with a six-hour irradiation period in the Malaysian Nuclear Agency (MNA) research reactor followed by High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector use to identify the gamma peaks of radionuclides. The analysis identified 31 elements in the human hair from the study area, including As, Au, Br, Ca, Ce, Co, Dy, Eu-152m, Hg-197, Hg-203, Ho, Ir, K, La, Lu, Mn, Na, Pa, Pt-195m, Pt-197, Sb, Sc-46, Sc-47, Sm, Sn-117m, W-181, W-187, Yb-169, Yb-175, Zn, and Zn-69m. The accuracy of the method was verified through the analysis of ERM-DB001-human hair as a Certified Reference Material (CRM), with the results demonstrating consistency with the certified values. Given the prevalent arsenic pollution in the research area, the study also examined the relationship between the concentration of As and other elements using Pearson's correlation test. The outcomes offer a comprehensive resource for future investigations into toxic and essential element presence in the region. In the main body of the paper, a more extensive discussion on the implications of arsenic pollution and the correlations observed is provided to enhance understanding and inform future research directions.

Keywords: Human scalp hair, toxic and essential elements, Kandal Province, Cambodia, k0-Instrumental Neutron Activation Method.

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