Search results for: search word extraction
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 1671

Search results for: search word extraction

1041 The Capacity of Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients for Speech Recognition

Authors: Fawaz S. Al-Anzi, Dia AbuZeina

Abstract:

Speech recognition is of an important contribution in promoting new technologies in human computer interaction. Today, there is a growing need to employ speech technology in daily life and business activities. However, speech recognition is a challenging task that requires different stages before obtaining the desired output. Among automatic speech recognition (ASR) components is the feature extraction process, which parameterizes the speech signal to produce the corresponding feature vectors. Feature extraction process aims at approximating the linguistic content that is conveyed by the input speech signal. In speech processing field, there are several methods to extract speech features, however, Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) is the popular technique. It has been long observed that the MFCC is dominantly used in the well-known recognizers such as the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Sphinx and the Markov Model Toolkit (HTK). Hence, this paper focuses on the MFCC method as the standard choice to identify the different speech segments in order to obtain the language phonemes for further training and decoding steps. Due to MFCC good performance, the previous studies show that the MFCC dominates the Arabic ASR research. In this paper, we demonstrate MFCC as well as the intermediate steps that are performed to get these coefficients using the HTK toolkit.

Keywords: Speech recognition, acoustic features, Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients.

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1040 Local Curvelet Based Classification Using Linear Discriminant Analysis for Face Recognition

Authors: Mohammed Rziza, Mohamed El Aroussi, Mohammed El Hassouni, Sanaa Ghouzali, Driss Aboutajdine

Abstract:

In this paper, an efficient local appearance feature extraction method based the multi-resolution Curvelet transform is proposed in order to further enhance the performance of the well known Linear Discriminant Analysis(LDA) method when applied to face recognition. Each face is described by a subset of band filtered images containing block-based Curvelet coefficients. These coefficients characterize the face texture and a set of simple statistical measures allows us to form compact and meaningful feature vectors. The proposed method is compared with some related feature extraction methods such as Principal component analysis (PCA), as well as Linear Discriminant Analysis LDA, and independent component Analysis (ICA). Two different muti-resolution transforms, Wavelet (DWT) and Contourlet, were also compared against the Block Based Curvelet-LDA algorithm. Experimental results on ORL, YALE and FERET face databases convince us that the proposed method provides a better representation of the class information and obtains much higher recognition accuracies.

Keywords: Curvelet, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) , Contourlet, Discreet Wavelet Transform, DWT, Block-based analysis, face recognition (FR).

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1039 Bioprocessing of Proximally Analyzed Wheat Straw for Enhanced Cellulase Production through Process Optimization with Trichodermaviride under SSF

Authors: Ishtiaq Ahmed, Muhammad Anjum Zia, Hafiz Muhammad Nasir Iqbal

Abstract:

The purpose of the present work was to study the production and process parameters optimization for the synthesis of cellulase from Trichoderma viride in solid state fermentation (SSF) using an agricultural wheat straw as substrates; as fungal conversion of lignocellulosic biomass for cellulase production is one among the major increasing demand for various biotechnological applications. An optimization of process parameters is a necessary step to get higher yield of product. Several kinetic parameters like pretreatment, extraction solvent, substrate concentration, initial moisture content, pH, incubation temperature and inoculum size were optimized for enhanced production of third most demanded industrially important cellulase. The maximum cellulase enzyme activity 398.10±2.43 μM/mL/min was achieved when proximally analyzed lignocellulosic substrate wheat straw inocubated at 2% HCl as pretreatment tool along with distilled water as extraction solvent, 3% substrate concentration 40% moisture content with optimum pH 5.5 at 45°C incubation temperature and 10% inoculum size.

Keywords: Cellulase, Lignocellulosic residue, Processoptimization, Proximal analysis, SSF, Trichoderma viride.

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1038 A New Approach to Face Recognition Using Dual Dimension Reduction

Authors: M. Almas Anjum, M. Younus Javed, A. Basit

Abstract:

In this paper a new approach to face recognition is presented that achieves double dimension reduction, making the system computationally efficient with better recognition results and out perform common DCT technique of face recognition. In pattern recognition techniques, discriminative information of image increases with increase in resolution to a certain extent, consequently face recognition results change with change in face image resolution and provide optimal results when arriving at a certain resolution level. In the proposed model of face recognition, initially image decimation algorithm is applied on face image for dimension reduction to a certain resolution level which provides best recognition results. Due to increased computational speed and feature extraction potential of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), it is applied on face image. A subset of coefficients of DCT from low to mid frequencies that represent the face adequately and provides best recognition results is retained. A tradeoff between decimation factor, number of DCT coefficients retained and recognition rate with minimum computation is obtained. Preprocessing of the image is carried out to increase its robustness against variations in poses and illumination level. This new model has been tested on different databases which include ORL , Yale and EME color database.

Keywords: Biometrics, DCT, Face Recognition, Illumination, Computation, Feature extraction.

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1037 Hybrid GA Tuned RBF Based Neuro-Fuzzy Controller for Robotic Manipulator

Authors: Sufian Ashraf Mazhari, Surendra Kumar

Abstract:

In this paper performance of Puma 560 manipulator is being compared for hybrid gradient descent and least square method learning based ANFIS controller with hybrid Genetic Algorithm and Generalized Pattern Search tuned radial basis function based Neuro-Fuzzy controller. ANFIS which is based on Takagi Sugeno type Fuzzy controller needs prior knowledge of rule base while in radial basis function based Neuro-Fuzzy rule base knowledge is not required. Hybrid Genetic Algorithm with generalized Pattern Search is used for tuning weights of radial basis function based Neuro- fuzzy controller. All the controllers are checked for butterfly trajectory tracking and results in the form of Cartesian and joint space errors are being compared. ANFIS based controller is showing better performance compared to Radial Basis Function based Neuro-Fuzzy Controller but rule base independency of RBF based Neuro-Fuzzy gives it an edge over ANFIS

Keywords: Neuro-Fuzzy, Robotic Control, RBFNF, ANFIS, Hybrid GA.

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1036 Fuzzy Population-Based Meta-Heuristic Approaches for Attribute Reduction in Rough Set Theory

Authors: Mafarja Majdi, Salwani Abdullah, Najmeh S. Jaddi

Abstract:

One of the global combinatorial optimization problems in machine learning is feature selection. It concerned with removing the irrelevant, noisy, and redundant data, along with keeping the original meaning of the original data. Attribute reduction in rough set theory is an important feature selection method. Since attribute reduction is an NP-hard problem, it is necessary to investigate fast and effective approximate algorithms. In this paper, we proposed two feature selection mechanisms based on memetic algorithms (MAs) which combine the genetic algorithm with a fuzzy record to record travel algorithm and a fuzzy controlled great deluge algorithm, to identify a good balance between local search and genetic search. In order to verify the proposed approaches, numerical experiments are carried out on thirteen datasets. The results show that the MAs approaches are efficient in solving attribute reduction problems when compared with other meta-heuristic approaches.

Keywords: Rough Set Theory, Attribute Reduction, Fuzzy Logic, Memetic Algorithms, Record to Record Algorithm, Great Deluge Algorithm.

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1035 Development of Corn (Zea mays L.) Stalk Geotextile Net for Soil Erosion Mitigation

Authors: Cristina S. Decano, Vitaliana U. Malamug, Melissa E. Agulto, Helen F. Gavino

Abstract:

This study aimed to introduce new natural fiber to be used in the production of geotextile net for mitigation of soil erosion. Fiber extraction from the stalks was the main challenge faced during the processing of stalks to ropes. Thus, an investigation on the extraction procedures of corn (Zea mays L.) stalk under biological and chemical retting was undertaken. Results indicated significant differences among percent fiber yield as affected by the retting methods used with values of 15.07%, 12.97%, 11.60%, and 9.01%, for dew, water, chemical (1 day after harvest and15 days after harvest), respectively, with the corresponding average extracting duration of 70, 82, 89, and 94 minutes. Physical characterization of the developed corn stalk geotextile net resulted to average mass per unit area of 806.25 g/m2 and 241% water absorbing capacity. The effect of corn stalk geotextile net in mitigating soil erosion was evaluated in a laboratory experiment for 30o and 60o inclinations with three treatments: bare soil (A1), corn stalk geotextile net (A2) and combined cornstalk geotextile net and vegetation cover (A3). Results revealed that treatment A2 and A3 significantly decreased sediment yield and an increase in terms of soil loss reduction efficiency. The cost of corn stalk geotextile net is Php 62.41 per square meter.

Keywords: Corn stalk, natural geotextile, retting, soil erosion.

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1034 Fingerprint Compression Using Contourlet Transform and Multistage Vector Quantization

Authors: S. Esakkirajan, T. Veerakumar, V. Senthil Murugan, R. Sudhakar

Abstract:

This paper presents a new fingerprint coding technique based on contourlet transform and multistage vector quantization. Wavelets have shown their ability in representing natural images that contain smooth areas separated with edges. However, wavelets cannot efficiently take advantage of the fact that the edges usually found in fingerprints are smooth curves. This issue is addressed by directional transforms, known as contourlets, which have the property of preserving edges. The contourlet transform is a new extension to the wavelet transform in two dimensions using nonseparable and directional filter banks. The computation and storage requirements are the major difficulty in implementing a vector quantizer. In the full-search algorithm, the computation and storage complexity is an exponential function of the number of bits used in quantizing each frame of spectral information. The storage requirement in multistage vector quantization is less when compared to full search vector quantization. The coefficients of contourlet transform are quantized by multistage vector quantization. The quantized coefficients are encoded by Huffman coding. The results obtained are tabulated and compared with the existing wavelet based ones.

Keywords: Contourlet Transform, Directional Filter bank, Laplacian Pyramid, Multistage Vector Quantization

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1033 Real-Time Vision-based Korean Finger Spelling Recognition System

Authors: Anjin Park, Sungju Yun, Jungwhan Kim, Seungk Min, Keechul Jung

Abstract:

Finger spelling is an art of communicating by signs made with fingers, and has been introduced into sign language to serve as a bridge between the sign language and the verbal language. Previous approaches to finger spelling recognition are classified into two categories: glove-based and vision-based approaches. The glove-based approach is simpler and more accurate recognizing work of hand posture than vision-based, yet the interfaces require the user to wear a cumbersome and carry a load of cables that connected the device to a computer. In contrast, the vision-based approaches provide an attractive alternative to the cumbersome interface, and promise more natural and unobtrusive human-computer interaction. The vision-based approaches generally consist of two steps: hand extraction and recognition, and two steps are processed independently. This paper proposes real-time vision-based Korean finger spelling recognition system by integrating hand extraction into recognition. First, we tentatively detect a hand region using CAMShift algorithm. Then fill factor and aspect ratio estimated by width and height estimated by CAMShift are used to choose candidate from database, which can reduce the number of matching in recognition step. To recognize the finger spelling, we use DTW(dynamic time warping) based on modified chain codes, to be robust to scale and orientation variations. In this procedure, since accurate hand regions, without holes and noises, should be extracted to improve the precision, we use graph cuts algorithm that globally minimize the energy function elegantly expressed by Markov random fields (MRFs). In the experiments, the computational times are less than 130ms, and the times are not related to the number of templates of finger spellings in database, as candidate templates are selected in extraction step.

Keywords: CAMShift, DTW, Graph Cuts, MRF.

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1032 An Hybrid Approach for Loss Reduction in Distribution Systems using Harmony Search Algorithm

Authors: R. Srinivasa Rao

Abstract:

Individually Network reconfiguration or Capacitor control perform well in minimizing power loss and improving voltage profile of the distribution system. But for heavy reactive power loads network reconfiguration and for heavy active power loads capacitor placement can not effectively reduce power loss and enhance voltage profiles in the system. In this paper, an hybrid approach that combine network reconfiguration and capacitor placement using Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) is proposed to minimize power loss reduction and improve voltage profile. The proposed approach is tested on standard IEEE 33 and 16 bus systems. Computational results show that the proposed hybrid approach can minimize losses more efficiently than Network reconfiguration or Capacitor control. The results of proposed method are also compared with results obtained by Simulated Annealing (SA). The proposed method has outperformed in terms of the quality of solution compared to SA.

Keywords: Capacitor Control, Network Reconfiguration, HarmonySearch Algorithm, Loss Reduction, Voltage Profile.

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1031 Robust Steam Temperature Regulation for Distillation of Essential Oil Extraction Process using Hybrid Fuzzy-PD plus PID Controller

Authors: Nurhani Kasuan, Zakariah Yusuf, Mohd Nasir Taib, Mohd Hezri Fazalul Rahiman, Nazurah Tajuddin, Mohd Azri Abdul Aziz

Abstract:

This paper presents a hybrid fuzzy-PD plus PID (HFPP) controller and its application to steam distillation process for essential oil extraction system. Steam temperature is one of the most significant parameters that can influence the composition of essential oil yield. Due to parameter variations and changes in operation conditions during distillation, a robust steam temperature controller becomes nontrivial to avoid the degradation of essential oil quality. Initially, the PRBS input is triggered to the system and output of steam temperature is modeled using ARX model structure. The parameter estimation and tuning method is adopted by simulation using HFPP controller scheme. The effectiveness and robustness of proposed controller technique is validated by real time implementation to the system. The performance of HFPP using 25 and 49 fuzzy rules is compared. The experimental result demonstrates the proposed HFPP using 49 fuzzy rules achieves a better, consistent and robust controller compared to PID when considering the test on tracking the set point and the effects due to disturbance.

Keywords: Fuzzy Logic controller, steam temperature, steam distillation, real time control.

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1030 Employing QR Code as an Effective Educational Tool for Quick Access to Sources of Kindergarten Concepts

Authors: Ahmed Amin Mousa, M. Abd El-Salam

Abstract:

This study discusses a simple solution for the problem of shortage in learning resources for kindergarten teachers. Occasionally, kindergarten teachers cannot access proper resources by usual search methods as libraries or search engines. Furthermore, these methods require a long time and efforts for preparing. The study is expected to facilitate accessing learning resources. Moreover, it suggests a potential direction for using QR code inside the classroom. The present work proposes that QR code can be used for digitizing kindergarten curriculums and accessing various learning resources. It investigates using QR code for saving information related to the concepts which kindergarten teachers use in the current educational situation. The researchers have established a guide for kindergarten teachers based on the Egyptian official curriculum. The guide provides different learning resources for each scientific and mathematical concept in the curriculum, and each learning resource is represented as a QR code image that contains its URL. Therefore, kindergarten teachers can use smartphone applications for reading QR codes and displaying the related learning resources for students immediately. The guide has been provided to a group of 108 teachers for using inside their classrooms. The results showed that the teachers approved the guide, and gave a good response.

Keywords: Kindergarten, child, learning resources, QR code, smart phone, mobile.

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1029 Methyltrioctylammonium Chloride as a Separation Solvent for Binary Mixtures: Evaluation Based on Experimental Activity Coefficients

Authors: B. Kabane, G. G. Redhi

Abstract:

An ammonium based ionic liquid (methyltrioctylammonium chloride) [N8 8 8 1] [Cl] was investigated as an extraction potential solvent for volatile organic solvents (in this regard, solutes), which includes alkenes, alkanes, ketones, alkynes, aromatic hydrocarbons, tetrahydrofuran (THF), alcohols, thiophene, water and acetonitrile based on the experimental activity coefficients at infinite THF measurements were conducted by the use of gas-liquid chromatography at four different temperatures (313.15 to 343.15) K. Experimental data of activity coefficients obtained across the examined temperatures were used in order to calculate the physicochemical properties at infinite dilution such as partial molar excess enthalpy, Gibbs free energy and entropy term. Capacity and selectivity data for selected petrochemical extraction problems (heptane/thiophene, heptane/benzene, cyclohaxane/cyclohexene, hexane/toluene, hexane/hexene) were computed from activity coefficients data and compared to the literature values with other ionic liquids. Evaluation of activity coefficients at infinite dilution expands the knowledge and provides a good understanding related to the interactions between the ionic liquid and the investigated compounds.

Keywords: Separation, activity coefficients, ionic liquid, methyltrioctylammonium chloride, capacity.

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1028 Improved Closed Set Text-Independent Speaker Identification by Combining MFCC with Evidence from Flipped Filter Banks

Authors: Sandipan Chakroborty, Anindya Roy, Goutam Saha

Abstract:

A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for SI applications. However, due to the structure of its filter bank, it captures vocal tract characteristics more effectively in the lower frequency regions. This paper proposes a new set of features using a complementary filter bank structure which improves distinguishability of speaker specific cues present in the higher frequency zone. Unlike high level features that are difficult to extract, the proposed feature set involves little computational burden during the extraction process. When combined with MFCC via a parallel implementation of speaker models, the proposed feature set outperforms baseline MFCC significantly. This proposition is validated by experiments conducted on two different kinds of public databases namely YOHO (microphone speech) and POLYCOST (telephone speech) with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) as a Classifier for various model orders.

Keywords: Complementary Information, Filter Bank, GMM, IMFCC, MFCC, Speaker Identification, Speaker Recognition.

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1027 Prediction of Metals Available to Maize Seedlings in Crude Oil Contaminated Soil

Authors: Stella O. Olubodun, George E. Eriyamremu

Abstract:

The study assessed the effect of crude oil applied at rates, 0, 2, 5, and 10% on the fractional chemical forms and availability of some metals in soils from Usen, Edo State, with no known crude oil contamination and soil from a crude oil spill site in Ubeji, Delta State, Nigeria. Three methods were used to determine the bioavailability of metals in the soils: maize (Zea mays) plant, EDTA and BCR sequential extraction. The sequential extract acid soluble fraction of the BCR extraction (most labile fraction of the soils, normally associated with bioavailability) were compared with total metal concentration in maize seedlings as a means to compare the chemical and biological measures of bioavailability. Total Fe was higher in comparison to other metals for the crude oil contaminated soils. The metal concentrations were below the limits of 4.7% Fe, 190mg/kg Cu and 720mg/kg Zn intervention values and 36mg/kg Cu and 140mg/kg Zn target values for soils provided by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) guidelines. The concentration of the metals in maize seedlings increased with increasing rates of crude oil contamination. Comparison of the metal concentrations in maize seedlings with EDTA extractable concentrations showed that EDTA extracted more metals than maize plant.

Keywords: Availability, crude oil contamination, EDTA, maize, metals.

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1026 Real-time 3D Feature Extraction without Explicit 3D Object Reconstruction

Authors: Kwangjin Hong, Chulhan Lee, Keechul Jung, Kyoungsu Oh

Abstract:

For the communication between human and computer in an interactive computing environment, the gesture recognition is studied vigorously. Therefore, a lot of studies have proposed efficient methods about the recognition algorithm using 2D camera captured images. However, there is a limitation to these methods, such as the extracted features cannot fully represent the object in real world. Although many studies used 3D features instead of 2D features for more accurate gesture recognition, the problem, such as the processing time to generate 3D objects, is still unsolved in related researches. Therefore we propose a method to extract the 3D features combined with the 3D object reconstruction. This method uses the modified GPU-based visual hull generation algorithm which disables unnecessary processes, such as the texture calculation to generate three kinds of 3D projection maps as the 3D feature: a nearest boundary, a farthest boundary, and a thickness of the object projected on the base-plane. In the section of experimental results, we present results of proposed method on eight human postures: T shape, both hands up, right hand up, left hand up, hands front, stand, sit and bend, and compare the computational time of the proposed method with that of the previous methods.

Keywords: Fast 3D Feature Extraction, Gesture Recognition, Computer Vision.

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1025 Machine Vision System for Automatic Weeding Strategy in Oil Palm Plantation using Image Filtering Technique

Authors: Kamarul Hawari Ghazali, Mohd. Marzuki Mustafa, Aini Hussain

Abstract:

Machine vision is an application of computer vision to automate conventional work in industry, manufacturing or any other field. Nowadays, people in agriculture industry have embarked into research on implementation of engineering technology in their farming activities. One of the precision farming activities that involve machine vision system is automatic weeding strategy. Automatic weeding strategy in oil palm plantation could minimize the volume of herbicides that is sprayed to the fields. This paper discusses an automatic weeding strategy in oil palm plantation using machine vision system for the detection and differential spraying of weeds. The implementation of vision system involved the used of image processing technique to analyze weed images in order to recognized and distinguished its types. Image filtering technique has been used to process the images as well as a feature extraction method to classify the type of weed images. As a result, the image processing technique contributes a promising result of classification to be implemented in machine vision system for automated weeding strategy.

Keywords: Machine vision, Automatic Weeding Strategy, filter, feature extraction

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1024 A Quasi-Systematic Review on Effectiveness of Social and Cultural Sustainability Practices in Built Environment

Authors: Asif Ali, Daud Salim Faruquie

Abstract:

With the advancement of knowledge about the utility and impact of sustainability, its feasibility has been explored into different walks of life. Scientists, however; have established their knowledge in four areas viz environmental, economic, social and cultural, popularly termed as four pillars of sustainability. Aspects of environmental and economic sustainability have been rigorously researched and practiced and huge volume of strong evidence of effectiveness has been founded for these two sub-areas. For the social and cultural aspects of sustainability, dependable evidence of effectiveness is still to be instituted as the researchers and practitioners are developing and experimenting methods across the globe. Therefore, the present research aimed to identify globally used practices of social and cultural sustainability and through evidence synthesis assess their outcomes to determine the effectiveness of those practices. A PICO format steered the methodology which included all populations, popular sustainability practices including walkability/cycle tracks, social/recreational spaces, privacy, health & human services and barrier free built environment, comparators included ‘Before’ and ‘After’, ‘With’ and ‘Without’, ‘More’ and ‘Less’ and outcomes included Social well-being, cultural coexistence, quality of life, ethics and morality, social capital, sense of place, education, health, recreation and leisure, and holistic development. Search of literature included major electronic databases, search websites, organizational resources, directory of open access journals and subscribed journals. Grey literature, however, was not included. Inclusion criteria filtered studies on the basis of research designs such as total randomization, quasirandomization, cluster randomization, observational or single studies and certain types of analysis. Studies with combined outcomes were considered but studies focusing only on environmental and/or economic outcomes were rejected. Data extraction, critical appraisal and evidence synthesis was carried out using customized tabulation, reference manager and CASP tool. Partial meta-analysis was carried out and calculation of pooled effects and forest plotting were done. As many as 13 studies finally included for final synthesis explained the impact of targeted practices on health, behavioural and social dimensions. Objectivity in the measurement of health outcomes facilitated quantitative synthesis of studies which highlighted the impact of sustainability methods on physical activity, Body Mass Index, perinatal outcomes and child health. Studies synthesized qualitatively (and also quantitatively) showed outcomes such as routines, family relations, citizenship, trust in relationships, social inclusion, neighbourhood social capital, wellbeing, habitability and family’s social processes. The synthesized evidence indicates slight effectiveness and efficacy of social and cultural sustainability on the targeted outcomes. Further synthesis revealed that such results of this study are due weak research designs and disintegrated implementations. If architects and other practitioners deliver their interventions in collaboration with research bodies and policy makers, a stronger evidence-base in this area could be generated.

Keywords: Built environment, cultural sustainability, social sustainability, sustainable architecture.

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1023 Opinion Mining Framework in the Education Domain

Authors: A. M. H. Elyasir, K. S. M. Anbananthen

Abstract:

The internet is growing larger and becoming the most popular platform for the people to share their opinion in different interests. We choose the education domain specifically comparing some Malaysian universities against each other. This comparison produces benchmark based on different criteria shared by the online users in various online resources including Twitter, Facebook and web pages. The comparison is accomplished using opinion mining framework to extract, process the unstructured text and classify the result to positive, negative or neutral (polarity). Hence, we divide our framework to three main stages; opinion collection (extraction), unstructured text processing and polarity classification. The extraction stage includes web crawling, HTML parsing, Sentence segmentation for punctuation classification, Part of Speech (POS) tagging, the second stage processes the unstructured text with stemming and stop words removal and finally prepare the raw text for classification using Named Entity Recognition (NER). Last phase is to classify the polarity and present overall result for the comparison among the Malaysian universities. The final result is useful for those who are interested to study in Malaysia, in which our final output declares clear winners based on the public opinions all over the web.

Keywords: Entity Recognition, Education Domain, Opinion Mining, Unstructured Text.

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1022 Heuristic Search Algorithm (HSA) for Enhancing the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks

Authors: Tripatjot S. Panag, J. S. Dhillon

Abstract:

The lifetime of a wireless sensor network can be effectively increased by using scheduling operations. Once the sensors are randomly deployed, the task at hand is to find the largest number of disjoint sets of sensors such that every sensor set provides complete coverage of the target area. At any instant, only one of these disjoint sets is switched on, while all other are switched off. This paper proposes a heuristic search method to find the maximum number of disjoint sets that completely cover the region. A population of randomly initialized members is made to explore the solution space. A set of heuristics has been applied to guide the members to a possible solution in their neighborhood. The heuristics escalate the convergence of the algorithm. The best solution explored by the population is recorded and is continuously updated. The proposed algorithm has been tested for applications which require sensing of multiple target points, referred to as point coverage applications. Results show that the proposed algorithm outclasses the existing algorithms. It always finds the optimum solution, and that too by making fewer number of fitness function evaluations than the existing approaches.

Keywords: Coverage, disjoint sets, heuristic, lifetime, scheduling, wireless sensor networks, WSN.

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1021 Preparation and Characterization of Maltodextrin Microcapsules Containing Walnut Green Husk Extract

Authors: Fatemeh Cheraghali, Saeedeh Shojaee-Aliabadi, Seyede Marzieh Hosseini, Leila Mirmoghtadaie

Abstract:

In recent years, the field of natural antimicrobial and antioxidant compounds is one of the main research topics in the food industry. Application of agricultural residues is mainly cheap, and available resources are receiving increased attention. Walnut green husk is one of the agricultural residues that is considered as natural compounds with biological properties because of phenolic compounds. In this study, maltodextrin 10% was used for microencapsulation of walnut green husk extract. At first, the extract was examined to consider extraction yield, total phenolic compounds, and antioxidant activation. The results showed the extraction yield of 81.43%, total phenolic compounds of 3997 [mg GAE/100 g], antioxidant activity [DPPH] of 84.85% for walnut green husk extract. Antioxidant activity is about 75%-81% and by DPPH. At the next stage, microencapsulation was done by spry-drying method. The microencapsulation efficiency was 72%-79%. The results of SEM tests confirmed this microencapsulation process. In addition, microencapsulated and free extract was more effective on gram-positive bacteria’s rather than the gram-negative ones. According to the study, walnut green husk can be used as a cheap antioxidant and antimicrobial compounds due to sufficient value of phenolic compounds.

Keywords: Biopolymer, microencapsulation, Spray-drying, Walnut green husk.

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1020 Dynamic Routing to Multiple Destinations in IP Networks using Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (DRHGA)

Authors: K. Vijayalakshmi, S. Radhakrishnan

Abstract:

In this paper we have proposed a novel dynamic least cost multicast routing protocol using hybrid genetic algorithm for IP networks. Our protocol finds the multicast tree with minimum cost subject to delay, degree, and bandwidth constraints. The proposed protocol has the following features: i. Heuristic local search function has been devised and embedded with normal genetic operation to increase the speed and to get the optimized tree, ii. It is efficient to handle the dynamic situation arises due to either change in the multicast group membership or node / link failure, iii. Two different crossover and mutation probabilities have been used for maintaining the diversity of solution and quick convergence. The simulation results have shown that our proposed protocol generates dynamic multicast tree with lower cost. Results have also shown that the proposed algorithm has better convergence rate, better dynamic request success rate and less execution time than other existing algorithms. Effects of degree and delay constraints have also been analyzed for the multicast tree interns of search success rate.

Keywords: Dynamic Group membership change, Hybrid Genetic Algorithm, Link / node failure, QoS Parameters.

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1019 Extraction of Fetal Heart Rate and Fetal Heart Rate Variability from Mother's ECG Signal

Authors: Khaldon Lweesy, Luay Fraiwan, Christoph Maier, Hartmut Dickhaus

Abstract:

This paper describes a new method for extracting the fetal heart rate (fHR) and the fetal heart rate variability (fHRV) signal non-invasively using abdominal maternal electrocardiogram (mECG) recordings. The extraction is based on the fundamental frequency (Fourier-s) theorem. The fundamental frequency of the mother-s electrocardiogram signal (fo-m) is calculated directly from the abdominal signal. The heart rate of the fetus is usually higher than that of the mother; as a result, the fundamental frequency of the fetal-s electrocardiogram signal (fo-f) is higher than that of the mother-s (fo-f > fo-m). Notch filters to suppress mother-s higher harmonics were designed; then a bandpass filter to target fo-f and reject fo-m is implemented. Although the bandpass filter will pass some other frequencies (harmonics), we have shown in this study that those harmonics are actually carried on fo-f, and thus have no impact on the evaluation of the beat-to-beat changes (RR intervals). The oscillations of the time-domain extracted signal represent the RR intervals. We have also shown in this study that zero-to-zero evaluation of the periods is more accurate than the peak-to-peak evaluation. This method is evaluated both on simulated signals and on different abdominal recordings obtained at different gestational ages.

Keywords: Aabdominal ECG, fetal heart rate variability, frequency harmonics, fundamental frequency.

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1018 A Corpus-Based Study on the Styles of Three Translators

Authors: Wang Yunhong

Abstract:

The present paper is preoccupied with the different styles of three translators in their translating a Chinese classical novel Shuihu Zhuan. Based on a parallel corpus, it adopts a target-oriented approach to look into whether and what stylistic differences and shifts the three translations have revealed. The findings show that the three translators demonstrate different styles concerning their word choices and sentence preferences, which implies that identification of recurrent textual patterns may be a basic step for investigating the style of a translator.

Keywords: Corpus, lexical choices, sentence characteristics, style.

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1017 Case Study on Innovative Aquatic-Based Bioeconomy for Chlorella sorokiniana

Authors: Iryna Atamaniuk, Hannah Boysen, Nils Wieczorek, Natalia Politaeva, Iuliia Bazarnova, Kerstin Kuchta

Abstract:

Over the last decade due to climate change and a strategy of natural resources preservation, the interest for the aquatic biomass has dramatically increased. Along with mitigation of the environmental pressure and connection of waste streams (including CO2 and heat emissions), microalgae bioeconomy can supply food, feed, as well as the pharmaceutical and power industry with number of value-added products. Furthermore, in comparison to conventional biomass, microalgae can be cultivated in wide range of conditions without compromising food and feed production, thus addressing issues associated with negative social and the environmental impacts. This paper presents the state-of-the art technology for microalgae bioeconomy from cultivation process to production of valuable components and by-streams. Microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana were cultivated in the pilot-scale innovation concept in Hamburg (Germany) using different systems such as race way pond (5000 L) and flat panel reactors (8 x 180 L). In order to achieve the optimum growth conditions along with suitable cellular composition for the further extraction of the value-added components, process parameters such as light intensity, temperature and pH are continuously being monitored. On the other hand, metabolic needs in nutrients were provided by addition of micro- and macro-nutrients into a medium to ensure autotrophic growth conditions of microalgae. The cultivation was further followed by downstream process and extraction of lipids, proteins and saccharides. Lipids extraction is conducted in repeated-batch semi-automatic mode using hot extraction method according to Randall. As solvents hexane and ethanol are used at different ratio of 9:1 and 1:9, respectively. Depending on cell disruption method along with solvents ratio, the total lipids content showed significant variations between 8.1% and 13.9 %. The highest percentage of extracted biomass was reached with a sample pretreated with microwave digestion using 90% of hexane and 10% of ethanol as solvents. Proteins content in microalgae was determined by two different methods, namely: Total Kejadahl Nitrogen (TKN), which further was converted to protein content, as well as Bradford method using Brilliant Blue G-250 dye. Obtained results, showed a good correlation between both methods with protein content being in the range of 39.8–47.1%. Characterization of neutral and acid saccharides from microalgae was conducted by phenol-sulfuric acid method at two wavelengths of 480 nm and 490 nm. The average concentration of neutral and acid saccharides under the optimal cultivation conditions was 19.5% and 26.1%, respectively. Subsequently, biomass residues are used as substrate for anaerobic digestion on the laboratory-scale. The methane concentration, which was measured on the daily bases, showed some variations for different samples after extraction steps but was in the range between 48% and 55%. CO2 which is formed during the fermentation process and after the combustion in the Combined Heat and Power unit can potentially be used within the cultivation process as a carbon source for the photoautotrophic synthesis of biomass.

Keywords: Bioeconomy, lipids, microalgae, proteins, saccharides.

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1016 Spectroscopic Determination of Functionalized Active Principles from Coleus aromaticus Benth Leaf Extract Using Ionic Liquids

Authors: Zharama M. Llarena

Abstract:

Green chemistry for plant extraction of active principles is the main interest of many researchers concerned with climate change. While classical organic solvents are detrimental to our environment, greener alternatives to ionic liquids are very promising for sustainable organic chemistry. This study focused on the determination of functional groups observed in the main constituents from the ionic liquid extracts of Coleus aromaticus Benth leaves using FT-IR Spectroscopy. Moreover, this research aimed to determine the best ionic liquid that can separate functionalized plant constituents from the leaves Coleus aromaticus Benth using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. Coleus aromaticus Benth leaf extract in different ionic liquids, elucidated pharmacologically important functional groups present in major constituents of the plant, namely, rosmarinic acid, caffeic acid and chlorogenic acid. In connection to distinctive appearance of functional groups in the spectrum and highest % transmittance, potassium chloride-glycerol is the best ionic liquid for green extraction.

Keywords: Coleus aromaticus, ionic liquid, rosmarinic acid, caffeic acid, chlorogenic acid.

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1015 Topographic Arrangement of 3D Design Components on 2D Maps by Unsupervised Feature Extraction

Authors: Stefan Menzel

Abstract:

As a result of the daily workflow in the design development departments of companies, databases containing huge numbers of 3D geometric models are generated. According to the given problem engineers create CAD drawings based on their design ideas and evaluate the performance of the resulting design, e.g. by computational simulations. Usually, new geometries are built either by utilizing and modifying sets of existing components or by adding single newly designed parts to a more complex design. The present paper addresses the two facets of acquiring components from large design databases automatically and providing a reasonable overview of the parts to the engineer. A unified framework based on the topographic non-negative matrix factorization (TNMF) is proposed which solves both aspects simultaneously. First, on a given database meaningful components are extracted into a parts-based representation in an unsupervised manner. Second, the extracted components are organized and visualized on square-lattice 2D maps. It is shown on the example of turbine-like geometries that these maps efficiently provide a wellstructured overview on the database content and, at the same time, define a measure for spatial similarity allowing an easy access and reuse of components in the process of design development.

Keywords: Design decomposition, topographic non-negative matrix factorization, parts-based representation, self-organization, unsupervised feature extraction.

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1014 Ligandless Extraction and Determination of Trace Amounts of Lead in Pomegranate, Zucchini and Lettuce Samples after Dispersive Liquid-Liquid Microextraction with Ultrasonic Bath and Optimization of Extraction Condition with RSM Design

Authors: Fariba Tadayon, Elmira Hassanlou, Hasan Bagheri, Mostafa Jafarian

Abstract:

Heavy metals are released into water, plants, soil, and food by natural and human activities. Lead has toxic roles in the human body and may cause serious problems even in low concentrations, since it may have several adverse effects on human. Therefore, determination of lead in different samples is an important procedure in the studies of environmental pollution. In this work, an ultrasonic assisted-ionic liquid based-liquid-liquid microextraction (UA-IL-DLLME) procedure for the determination of lead in zucchini, pomegranate, and lettuce has been established and developed by using flame atomic absorption spectrometer (FAAS). For UA-IL-DLLME procedure, 10 mL of the sample solution containing Pb2+ was adjusted to pH=5 in a glass test tube with a conical bottom; then, 120 μL of 1-Hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluoro phosphate (CMIM)(PF6) was rapidly injected into the sample solution with a microsyringe. After that, the resulting cloudy mixture was treated by ultrasonic for 5 min, then the separation of two phases was obtained by centrifugation for 5 min at 3000 rpm and IL-phase diluted with 1 cc ethanol, and the analytes were determined by FAAS. The effect of different experimental parameters in the extraction step including: ionic liquid volume, sonication time and pH was studied and optimized simultaneously by using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) employing a central composite design (CCD). The optimal conditions were determined to be an ionic liquid volume of 120 μL, sonication time of 5 min, and pH=5. The linear ranges of the calibration curve for the determination by FAAS of lead were 0.1-4 ppm with R2=0.992. Under optimized conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) for lead was 0.062 μg.mL-1, the enrichment factor (EF) was 93, and the relative standard deviation (RSD) for lead was calculated as 2.29%. The levels of lead for pomegranate, zucchini, and lettuce were calculated as 2.88 μg.g-1, 1.54 μg.g-1, 2.18 μg.g-1, respectively. Therefore, this method has been successfully applied for the analysis of the content of lead in different food samples by FAAS.

Keywords: Dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction, Central composite design, Food samples, Flame atomic absorption spectrometry.

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1013 Effects of Hidden Unit Sizes and Autoregressive Features in Mental Task Classification

Authors: Ramaswamy Palaniappan, Nai-Jen Huan

Abstract:

Classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals extracted during mental tasks is a technique that is actively pursued for Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) designs. In this paper, we compared the classification performances of univariateautoregressive (AR) and multivariate autoregressive (MAR) models for representing EEG signals that were extracted during different mental tasks. Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) neural network (NN) trained by the backpropagation (BP) algorithm was used to classify these features into the different categories representing the mental tasks. Classification performances were also compared across different mental task combinations and 2 sets of hidden units (HU): 2 to 10 HU in steps of 2 and 20 to 100 HU in steps of 20. Five different mental tasks from 4 subjects were used in the experimental study and combinations of 2 different mental tasks were studied for each subject. Three different feature extraction methods with 6th order were used to extract features from these EEG signals: AR coefficients computed with Burg-s algorithm (ARBG), AR coefficients computed with stepwise least square algorithm (ARLS) and MAR coefficients computed with stepwise least square algorithm. The best results were obtained with 20 to 100 HU using ARBG. It is concluded that i) it is important to choose the suitable mental tasks for different individuals for a successful BCI design, ii) higher HU are more suitable and iii) ARBG is the most suitable feature extraction method.

Keywords: Autoregressive, Brain-Computer Interface, Electroencephalogram, Neural Network.

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1012 Highly Accurate Target Motion Compensation Using Entropy Function Minimization

Authors: Amin Aghatabar Roodbary, Mohammad Hassan Bastani

Abstract:

One of the defects of stepped frequency radar systems is their sensitivity to target motion. In such systems, target motion causes range cell shift, false peaks, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) reduction and range profile spreading because of power spectrum interference of each range cell in adjacent range cells which induces distortion in High Resolution Range Profile (HRRP) and disrupt target recognition process. Thus Target Motion Parameters (TMPs) effects compensation should be employed. In this paper, such a method for estimating TMPs (velocity and acceleration) and consequently eliminating or suppressing the unwanted effects on HRRP based on entropy minimization has been proposed. This method is carried out in two major steps: in the first step, a discrete search method has been utilized over the whole acceleration-velocity lattice network, in a specific interval seeking to find a less-accurate minimum point of the entropy function. Then in the second step, a 1-D search over velocity is done in locus of the minimum for several constant acceleration lines, in order to enhance the accuracy of the minimum point found in the first step. The provided simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Keywords: ATR, HRRP, motion compensation, SFW, TMP.

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