Search results for: memory effects

Authors: C. Adam, G. Henri, T. Levent, J.-B. Mauro, A. -L. Mayet

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This paper is concerning the application of a deterministic decisional pattern to a multi-agent system which would provide intelligence to a distributed energy smart grid at local consumer level. Development of multi-agent application involves agent specifications, analysis, design and realization. It can be implemented by following several decisional patterns. The purpose of present article is to suggest a new approach to control the smart grid system in a decentralized competitive approach. The proposed algorithmic solution results from a deterministic dichotomous approach based on environment observation. It uses an iterative process to solve automatic learning problems. Through memory of collected past tries, the algorithm monotonically converges to very steep system operation point in attraction basin resulting from weak system nonlinearity. In this sense, system is given by (local) constitutive elementary rules the intelligence of its global existence so that it can self-organize toward optimal operating sequence.

Keywords: Decentralized Competitive System, Distributed Smart Grid, Multi-Agent System

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Authors: Zakaria Boual, Abdellah Kemassi, Toufik Chouana, Philippe Michaud, Mohammed Didi Ould El Hadj

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In order to investigate the prebiotic potential of oligosaccharides prepared by chemical hydrolysis of water-soluble polysaccharides (WSP) from Zizyphus lotus leaves, the effect of oligosaccharides on bacterial growth was studied. The chemical composition of WSP was evaluated by colorimetric assays revealed the average values: 7.05±0.73% proteins and 86.21±0.74% carbohydrates, among them 64.81±0.42% is neutral sugar and the rest 16.25±1.62% is uronic acids. The characterization of monosaccharides was determined by high performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD) was found to be composed of galactose (23.95%), glucose (21.30%), rhamnose (20.28%), arabinose (9.55%), and glucuronic acid (22.95%). The effects of oligosaccharides on the growth of lactic acid bacteria were compared with those of fructooligosaccharide (RP95). The oligosaccharides concentration was 1g/L of Man, Rogosa, Sharpe broth. Bacterial growth was assessed during 2, 4.5, 6.5, 9, 12, 16 and 24 h by measuring the optical density of the cultures at 600 nm (OD600) and pH values. During fermentation, pH in broth cultures decreased from 6.7 to 5.87±0.15. The enumeration of lactic acid bacteria indicated that oligosaccharides led to a significant increase in bacteria (P≤0.05) compared to the control. The fermentative metabolism appeared to be faster on RP95 than on oligosaccharides from Zizyphus lotus leaves. Both RP95 and oligosaccharides showed clear prebiotic effects, but had differences in fermentation kinetics because of to the different degree of polymerization. This study shows the prebiotic effectiveness of oligosaccharides, and provides proof for the selection of leaves of Zizyphus lotus for use as functional food ingredients.

Keywords: Zizyphus lotus, polysaccharides, characterization, prebiotic effects.

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Authors: Rehab H. Alwan, Fadhil J. Kadhim, Ahmad T. Al-Taani

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In this study, a novel approach of image embedding is introduced. The proposed method consists of three main steps. First, the edge of the image is detected using Sobel mask filters. Second, the least significant bit LSB of each pixel is used. Finally, a gray level connectivity is applied using a fuzzy approach and the ASCII code is used for information hiding. The prior bit of the LSB represents the edged image after gray level connectivity, and the remaining six bits represent the original image with very little difference in contrast. The proposed method embeds three images in one image and includes, as a special case of data embedding, information hiding, identifying and authenticating text embedded within the digital images. Image embedding method is considered to be one of the good compression methods, in terms of reserving memory space. Moreover, information hiding within digital image can be used for security information transfer. The creation and extraction of three embedded images, and hiding text information is discussed and illustrated, in the following sections.

Keywords: Image embedding, Edge detection, gray level connectivity, information hiding, digital image compression.

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Authors: Chompunut Jantarasorn, Chutima Prommak

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The important issue considered in the widespread deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is an efficiency of the energy consumption. In this paper, we present a study of the optimal relay station planning problems using Binary Integer Linear Programming (BILP) model to minimize the energy consumption in WSNs. Our key contribution is that the proposed model not only ensures the required network lifetime but also guarantees the radio connectivity at high level of communication quality. Specially, we take into account effects of noise, signal quality limitation and bit error rate characteristics. Numerical experiments were conducted in various network scenarios. We analyzed the effects of different sensor node densities and distribution on the energy consumption.

Keywords: Binary Integer Linear Programming, BILP, Energy consumption, Optimal node placement and Wireless sensor networks.

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Authors: Wann-Ming Wey, Yi-Chih Huang

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Proper maintenance and preservation of significant cultural heritages or historic buildings is necessary. It can not only enhance environmental benefits and a sense of community, but also preserve a city's history and people’s memory. It allows the next generation to be able to get a glimpse of our past, and achieve the goal of sustainable preserved cultural assets. However, the management of maintenance work has not been appropriate for many designated heritages or historic buildings so far. The planning and implementation of the reuse has yet to have a breakthrough specification. It leads the heritages to a mere formality of being “reserved”, instead of the real meaning of “conservation”. For the restoration and preservation of cultural heritages study issues, it is very important due to the consideration of historical significance, symbolism, and economic benefits effects. However, the decision makers such as the officials from public sector they often encounter which heritage should be prioritized to be restored first under the available limited budgets. Only very few techniques are available today to determine the appropriately restoration priorities for the diverse historical heritages, perhaps because of a lack of systematized decision-making aids been proposed before. In the past, the discussions of management and maintenance towards cultural assets were limited to the selection of reuse alternatives instead of the allocation of resources. In view of this, this research will adopt some integrated research methods to solve the existing problems that decision-makers might encounter when allocating resources in the management and maintenance of heritages and historic buildings.

The purpose of this study is to develop a sustainable decision making model for local governments to resolve these problems. We propose an alternative decision support model to prioritize restoration needs within the limited budgets. The model is constructed based on fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy analysis network process (FANP) and goal programming (GP) methods. In order to avoid misallocate resources; this research proposes a precise procedure that can take multi-stakeholders views, limited costs and resources into consideration. Also, the combination of many factors and goals has been taken into account to find the highest priority and feasible solution results. To illustrate the approach we propose in this research, seven cultural heritages in Taipei city as one example has been used as an empirical study, and the results are in depth analyzed to explain the application of our proposed approach.

Keywords: Cultural Heritage, Historic Buildings, Priority Evaluation, Multi-Criteria Decision Making, Goal Programming, Fuzzy Analytic Network Process, Resource Allocation.

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Authors: R. Hosseini, A. Gholaminejad, H. Jahandar

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The present paper is an experimental investigation of roughness effects on nucleate pool boiling of refrigerant R113 on horizontal circular copper surfaces. The copper samples were treated by different sand paper grit sizes to achieve different surface roughness. The average surface roughness of the four samples was 0.901, 0.735, 0.65, and 0.09, respectively. The experiments were performed in the heat flux range of 8 to 200kW/m2. The heat transfer coefficient was calculated by measuring wall superheat of the samples and the input heat flux. The results show significant improvement of heat transfer coefficient as the surface roughness is increased. It is found that the heat transfer coefficient of the sample with Ra=0.901 is 3.4, 10.5, and 38.5% higher in comparison with surfaces with Ra of 0.735, 0.65, and 0.09 at heat flux of 170 kW/m2. Moreover, the results are compared with literature data and the well known Cooper correlation.

Keywords: Nucleate Boiling, Pool Boiling, R113, SurfaceRoughness

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Authors: B. Medjahed, M. A. Didi, B. Guezzen

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This work concerns with the experimental study of the adsorption of the Ni(II) on bentonite. The effects of various parameters such as contact time, stirring rate, initial concentration of Ni(II), masse of clay, initial pH of aqueous solution and temperature on the adsorption yield, were carried out. The study of the effect of the ionic strength on the yield of adsorption was examined by the identification and the quantification of the present chemical species in the aqueous phase containing the metallic ion Ni(II). The adsorbed species were investigated by a calculation program using CHEAQS V. L20.1 in order to determine the relation between the percentages of the adsorbed species and the adsorption yield. The optimization process was carried out using 2³ factorial designs. The individual and combined effects of three process parameters, i.e. initial Ni(II) concentration in aqueous solution (2.10⁻³ and 5.10⁻³ mol/L), initial pH of the solution (2 and 6.5), and mass of bentonite (0.03 and 0.3 g) on Ni(II) adsorption, were studied.

Keywords: Adsorption, bentonite, factorial design, Nickel(II).

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Authors: Aeslina Binti Abdul Kadir, Ahmad Shayuti Bin Abdul Rahim

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Brick is one of the most common masonry units used as building material. Due to the demand, different types of waste have been investigated to be incorporated into the bricks. Many types of sludge have been incorporated in fired clay brick for example marble sludge, stone sludge, water sludge, sewage sludge, and ceramic sludge. The utilization of these waste materials in fired clay bricks usually has positive effects on the properties such as lightweight bricks with improved shrinkage, porosity, and strength. This paper reviews on utilization of different types of sludge wastes into fired clay bricks. Previous investigations have demonstrated positive effects on the physical and mechanical properties as well as less impact towards the environment. Thus, the utilizations of sludge waste could produce a good quality of brick and could be one of alternative disposal methods for the sludge wastes.

Keywords: Fired Clay Brick, Sludge waste, Compressive strength, Shrinkage, Water absorption.

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Authors: M.Machhout, M.Zeghid, W.El hadj youssef, B.Bouallegue, A.Baganne, R.Tourki

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Long number multiplications (n ≥ 128-bit) are a primitive in most cryptosystems. They can be performed better by using Karatsuba-Ofman technique. This algorithm is easy to parallelize on workstation network and on distributed memory, and it-s known as the practical method of choice. Multiplying long numbers using Karatsuba-Ofman algorithm is fast but is highly recursive. In this paper, we propose different designs of implementing Karatsuba-Ofman multiplier. A mixture of sequential and combinational system design techniques involving pipelining is applied to our proposed designs. Multiplying large numbers can be adapted flexibly to time, area and power criteria. Computationally and occupation constrained in embedded systems such as: smart cards, mobile phones..., multiplication of finite field elements can be achieved more efficiently. The proposed designs are compared to other existing techniques. Mathematical models (Area (n), Delay (n)) of our proposed designs are also elaborated and evaluated on different FPGAs devices.

Keywords: finite field, Karatsuba-Ofman, long numbers, multiplication, mathematical model, recursivity.

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Authors: Nor Aziati Abdul Hamid, Juhana Salim

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The main objective of this paper is to contribute the existing knowledge transfer and IT Outsourcing literature specifically in the context of Malaysia by reviewing the current practices of e-government IT outsourcing in Malaysia including the issues and challenges faced by the public agencies in transferring the knowledge during the engagement. This paper discusses various factors and different theoretical model of knowledge transfer starting from the traditional model to the recent model suggested by the scholars. The present paper attempts to align organizational knowledge from the knowledge-based view (KBV) and organizational learning (OL) lens. This review could help shape the direction of both future theoretical and empirical studies on inter-firm knowledge transfer specifically on how KBV and OL perspectives could play significant role in explaining the complex relationships between the client and vendor in inter-firm knowledge transfer and the role of organizational management information system and Transactive Memory System (TMS) to facilitate the organizational knowledge transferring process. Conclusion is drawn and further research is suggested.

Keywords: E-government, IT Outsourcing, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Transfer

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Authors: Mohammadi K., Ghalavand A., Aghaalikhani M

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In order to evaluation the effects of natural, biological and chemical fertilizers on grain yield and chickpea quality, field experiments were carried out in 2007 and 2008 growing seasons. In this research the effects of different organic, chemical and biological fertilizers were investigated on grain yield and quality of chickpea. Experimental units were arranged in split-split plots based on randomized complete blocks with three replications. The highest amounts of yield and yield components were obtained in G1×N5 interaction. Significant increasing of N, P, K, Fe and Mg content in leaves and grains emphasized on superiority of mentioned treatment because each one of these nutrients has an approved role in chlorophyll synthesis and photosynthesis ability of the crop. The combined application of compost, farmyard manure and chemical phosphorus (N5) had the best grain quality due to high protein, starch and total sugar contents, low crude fiber and reduced cooking time.

Keywords: soil fertility, grain yield, chickpea, natural resources.

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Authors: Andy Handouyahia, Tony Haddad, Frank Eaton

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Recent quasi-experimental evaluation of the Canadian Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) has provided an opportunity to examine alternative methods to estimating the incremental effects of Employment Benefits and Support Measures (EBSMs) on program participants. The focus of this paper is to assess the efficiency and robustness of inverse probability weighting (IPW) relative to kernel matching (KM) in the estimation of program effects. To accomplish this objective, the authors compare pairs of 1,080 estimates, along with their associated standard errors, to assess which type of estimate is generally more efficient and robust. In the interest of practicality, the authorsalso document the computationaltime it took to produce the IPW and KM estimates, respectively.

Keywords: Treatment effect, causal inference, observational studies, Propensity score based matching, Kernel Matching, Inverse Probability Weighting, Estimation methods for incremental effect.

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Authors: Manfred Hartmann, Andreas Graef, Hannes Perko, Christoph Baumgartner, Tilmann Kluge

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In this paper we introduce a novel method for the characterization of synchronziation and coupling effects in multivariate time series that can be used for the analysis of EEG or ECoG signals recorded during epileptic seizures. The method allows to visualize the spatio-temporal evolution of synchronization and coupling effects that are characteristic for epileptic seizures. Similar to other methods proposed for this purpose our method is based on a regression analysis. However, a more general definition of the regression together with an effective channel selection procedure allows to use the method even for time series that are highly correlated, which is commonly the case in EEG/ECoG recordings with large numbers of electrodes. The method was experimentally tested on ECoG recordings of epileptic seizures from patients with temporal lobe epilepsies. A comparision with the results from a independent visual inspection by clinical experts showed an excellent agreement with the patterns obtained with the proposed method.

Keywords: EEG, epilepsy, regression analysis, seizurepropagation.

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Authors: Hamed Khani Arani, Mohammad Shariyat, Armaghan Mohammadian

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In the present study, the free vibration of magnetostrictive nano-plate (MsNP) resting on the Pasternak foundation is investigated. Firstly, the modified couple stress (MCS) and nonlocal elasticity theories are compared together and taken into account to consider the small scale effects; in this paper not only two theories are analyzed but also it improves the MCS theory is more accurate than nonlocal elasticity theory in such problems. A feedback control system is utilized to investigate the effects of a magnetic field. First-order shear deformation theory (FSDT), Hamilton’s principle and energy method are utilized in order to drive the equations of motion and these equations are solved by differential quadrature method (DQM) for simply supported boundary conditions. The MsNP undergoes in-plane forces in x and y directions. In this regard, the dimensionless frequency is plotted to study the effects of small scale parameter, magnetic field, aspect ratio, thickness ratio and compression and tension loads. Results indicate that these parameters play a key role on the natural frequency. According to the above results, MsNP can be used in the communications equipment, smart control vibration of nanostructure especially in sensor and actuators such as wireless linear micro motor and smart nano valves in injectors.

Keywords: Feedback control system, magnetostrictive nano-plate, modified couple stress theory, nonlocal elasticity theory, vibration analysis.

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Authors: Darren Zou

Abstract:

Forecasting the stock market is a very challenging task. Various economic indicators such as GDP, exchange rates, interest rates, and unemployment have a substantial impact on the stock market. Time series models are the traditional methods used to predict stock market changes. In this paper, a machine learning method, Bayesian Additive Regression Tree (BART) is used in predicting stock market indexes based on multiple economic indicators. BART can be used to model heterogeneous treatment effects, and thereby works well when models are misspecified. It also has the capability to handle non-linear main effects and multi-way interactions without much input from financial analysts. In this research, BART is proposed to provide a reliable prediction on day-to-day stock market activities. By comparing the analysis results from BART and with time series method, BART can perform well and has better prediction capability than the traditional methods.

Keywords: Bayesian, Forecast, Stock, BART.

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Authors: Mingtao Ding, Zheng Tian, Haixia Xu

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The batch nature limits the standard kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) methods in numerous applications, especially for dynamic or large-scale data. In this paper, an efficient adaptive approach is presented for online extraction of the kernel principal components (KPC). The contribution of this paper may be divided into two parts. First, kernel covariance matrix is correctly updated to adapt to the changing characteristics of data. Second, KPC are recursively formulated to overcome the batch nature of standard KPCA.This formulation is derived from the recursive eigen-decomposition of kernel covariance matrix and indicates the KPC variation caused by the new data. The proposed method not only alleviates sub-optimality of the KPCA method for non-stationary data, but also maintains constant update speed and memory usage as the data-size increases. Experiments for simulation data and real applications demonstrate that our approach yields improvements in terms of both computational speed and approximation accuracy.

Keywords: adaptive method, kernel principal component analysis, online extraction, recursive algorithm

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Authors: Rizwan Asghar, Dake Liu

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A hardware efficient, multi mode, re-configurable architecture of interleaver/de-interleaver for multiple standards, like DVB, WiMAX and WLAN is presented. The interleavers consume a large part of silicon area when implemented by using conventional methods as they use memories to store permutation patterns. In addition, different types of interleavers in different standards cannot share the hardware due to different construction methodologies. The novelty of the work presented in this paper is threefold: 1) Mapping of vital types of interleavers including convolutional interleaver onto a single architecture with flexibility to change interleaver size; 2) Hardware complexity for channel interleaving in WiMAX is reduced by using 2-D realization of the interleaver functions; and 3) Silicon cost overheads reduced by avoiding the use of small memories. The proposed architecture consumes 0.18mm2 silicon area for 0.12μm process and can operate at a frequency of 140 MHz. The reduced complexity helps in minimizing the memory utilization, and at the same time provides strong support to on-the-fly computation of permutation patterns.

Keywords: Hardware interleaver implementation, WiMAX, DVB, block interleaver, convolutional interleaver, hardwaremultiplexing.

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Authors: M. Haj Seyed Hadi, M. Taghi Darzi, Z. Ghandeharialavijeh, GH. Riazi

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The main objective of this study was to determine the effects of vermicompost and amino acids on the qualitative and quantitative yield of chamomile. The experiment was conducted during the growing season of 2010 at the Alborz Medical Research Center. The Treatment groups consisted of vermicompost (0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 tons/ha) and the sprays of amino acids (budding stag, flowering stage, and budding + flowering stage). The experimental design was a factorial experiment based on Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The present results have shown that the highest plant height, flower head diameter, fresh and dry flower yield and significant essential oil content were obtained by using 20- ton vermicompost per hectare. Effects of amino acids were similar to those seen in vermicompost treatment and all measured traits were seen to be significant after the spray of amino acids at the budding + flowering stage).

Keywords: Vermicompost, amino acids, chamomile, yield

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Authors: Masood Roohi, Amir Taghavipour

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This paper describes a strategy to develop an energy management system (EMS) for a charge-sustaining power-split hybrid electric vehicle. This kind of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) benefit from the advantages of both parallel and series architecture. However, it gets relatively more complicated to manage power flow between the battery and the engine optimally. The applied strategy in this paper is based on nonlinear model predictive control approach. First of all, an appropriate control-oriented model which was accurate enough and simple was derived. Towards utilization of this controller in real-time, the problem was solved off-line for a vast area of reference signals and initial conditions and stored the computed manipulated variables inside look-up tables. Look-up tables take a little amount of memory. Also, the computational load dramatically decreased, because to find required manipulated variables the controller just needed a simple interpolation between tables.

Keywords: Hybrid electric vehicles, energy management system, nonlinear model predictive control, real-time.

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Authors: Dev Ras Pandey, Bharat Mishra, S. K. Tripathi

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Cloud computing is ready to transform the structure of businesses and learning through supplying the real-time applications and provide an immediate help for small to medium sized businesses. The ability to run a hypervisor inside a virtual machine is important feature of virtualization and it is called nested virtualization. In today’s growing field of information technology, many of the virtualization models are available, that provide a convenient approach to implement, but decision for a single model selection is difficult. This paper explains the applications of operating system based virtualization in cloud computing with an appropriate/suitable model with their different specifications and user’s requirements. In the present paper, most popular models are selected, and the selection was based on container and hypervisor based virtualization. Selected models were compared with a wide range of user’s requirements as number of CPUs, memory size, nested virtualization supports, live migration and commercial supports, etc. and we identified a most suitable model of virtualization.

Keywords: Virtualization, OS based virtualization, container and hypervisor based virtualization.

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Authors: Maziar A. Sharbafi, Caro Lucas, Aida Mohammadinejad, Mostafa Yaghobi

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The Combination of path planning and path following is the main purpose of this paper. This paper describes the developed practical approach to motion control of the MRL small size robots. An intelligent controller is applied to control omni-directional robots motion in simulation and real environment respectively. The Brain Emotional Learning Based Intelligent Controller (BELBIC), based on LQR control is adopted for the omni-directional robots. The contribution of BELBIC in improving the control system performance is shown as application of the emotional learning in a real world problem. Optimizing of the control effort can be achieved in this method too. Next the implicit communication method is used to determine the high level strategies and coordination of the robots. Some simple rules besides using the environment as a memory to improve the coordination between agents make the robots' decision making system. With this simple algorithm our team manifests a desirable cooperation.

Keywords: multi-agent systems (MAS), Emotional learning, MIMO system, BELBIC, LQR, Communication via environment

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Authors: Y. Hong, H. Y. Hu, A. Sakoda, M. Sagehashi

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Toxic and bloom-forming cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa was exposed to antialgal allelochemical gramine (0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8 mg·L-1), The effects of gramine on photosynthetic pigments (lipid soluble: chlorophyll a and β-carotene; water soluble: phycocyanin, allophycocyanin, phycoerythrin, and total phycobilins) and absorption spectra were studied in order to identify the most sensitive pigment probe implicating the crucial suppression site on photosynthetic apparatus. The results obtained indicated that all pigment parameters were decreased with gramine concentration increasing and exposure time extending. The above serious bleaching of pigments was also reflected on the scanning results of absorption spectra. Phycoerytherin exhibited the highest sensitivity to gramine added, following by the largest relative decrease. It was concluded that gramine seriously influenced algal photosynthetic activity by destroying photosynthetic pigments and phycoerythrin most sensitive to gramine might be contributed to its placing the outside of phycobilins.

Keywords: Absorption spectra, allelochemical, gramine, Microcystis aeruginosa, photosynthetic pigments.

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Authors: Esther T. Akinlabi, Stephen A. Akinlabi

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This paper reports on the effects of heat treatment on 3CR12 and AISI 316 stainless steel grades. Heat treatment was conducted on the steel grades and cooled using two different media; air and water in order to study the effect of each medium on the evolving properties of the samples. The heat treated samples were characterized through the evolving microstructure and hardness. It was found that there was a significant grain size reduction in both the heat treated stainless steel specimens compared to the parent materials. The finer grain sizes were achieved as a result of impediment to growth of one phase by the other. The Vickers microhardness values of the heat treated samples were higher compared to the parent materials due to the fact that each of the steel grades had a proportion of martensitic structures in their microstructures thereby improving the integrity of the material.

Keywords: Austenite, Ferrite, Grain size, Hardness, Martensite, Microstructure and stainless steel.

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Authors: A. Al-Sayyad, P. Lama, J. Bardon, P. Hirchenhahn, L. Houssiau, P. Plapper

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Composite metal–polymer materials, in particular titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) to polyamide (PA6.6), fabricated by laser joining, have gained cogent interest among industries and researchers concerned with aerospace and biomedical applications. This work adopts infrared (IR) thermography technique to investigate effects of laser parameters used in the welding process on the three-dimensional temperature profile at the rear-side of titanium, at the region to be welded with polyamide. Cross sectional analysis of welded joints showed correlations between the morphology of titanium and polyamide at the weld zone with the corresponding temperature profile. In particular, spatial temperature profile was found to be correlated with the laser beam energy density, titanium molten pool width and depth, and polyamide heat affected zone depth.

Keywords: Laser welding, metals to polymers joining, process monitoring, temperature profile, thermography.

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Authors: Gurju Awgichew, G. Radhakrishnamacharya

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Steady incompressible couple stress fluid flow through two dimensional symmetric channel with stenosis is investigated. The flow consisting of a core region to be a couple stress fluid and a peripheral layer of plasma (Newtonian fluid). Assuming the stenosis to be mild, the equations governing the flow of the proposed model are solved using the slip boundary condition and closed form expressions for the flow characteristics (the dimensionless resistance to flow and wall shear stress at the maximum height of stenosis) are derived. The effects of various parameters on these flow variables have been studied. It is observed that the resistance to flow as well as the wall shear stress increase with the height of stenosis, viscosity ratio and Darcy number. However, the trend is reversed as the slip and the couple stress parameter increase.

Keywords: Stenosis, Couple stress fluid, Slip condition, Peripheral layer.

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Authors: Karolina Grzeszczuk-Kuć, Jolanta Bujok, Tomasz Walski, Małgorzata Komorowska

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Haemodialysis (HD) is a procedure saving patient lives around the world, unfortunately it brings numerous complications. Oxidative stress is one of the major factors which lead to erythrocytes destruction during extracorporeal circulation. Repeated HD procedures destroy blood elements and the organism is not able to keep up with their production. 30 HD procedures on healthy sheep were performed to evaluate effects of such treatment. Oxidative stress study was performed together with an analysis of basic blood parameters and empirical assessment of dialyzer condition after the procedure. A reversible decline in absolute leukocyte count, during first 30 min of HD, was observed. Blood clots were formed in the area of the blood inlet and outlet of the dialyzer. Our results are consistent with outcomes presented throughout the literature specifically with respect to the effects observed in humans and will provide a basis to evaluate methods for blood protection during haemodialysis.

Keywords: Animal model, blood components, haemodialysis, leukocytes, oxidative stress, sheep.

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Authors: Abdulrahman K. Alshegaifi, Chun-Hsi Huang

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Treating data based on its location in memory has received much attention in recent years due to its different properties, which offer important aspects for cache utilization. Stack data and non-stack data may interfere with each other’s locality in the data cache. One of the important aspects of stack data is that it has high spatial and temporal locality. In this work, we simulate non-unified cache design that split data cache into stack and non-stack caches in order to maintain stack data and non-stack data separate in different caches. We observe that the overall hit rate of non-unified cache design is sensitive to the size of non-stack cache. Then, we investigate the appropriate size and associativity for stack cache to achieve high hit ratio especially when over 99% of accesses are directed to stack cache. The result shows that on average more than 99% of stack cache accuracy is achieved by using 2KB of capacity and 1-way associativity. Further, we analyze the improvement in hit rate when adding small, fixed, size of stack cache at level1 to unified cache architecture. The result shows that the overall hit rate of unified cache design with adding 1KB of stack cache is improved by approximately, on average, 3.9% for Rijndael benchmark. The stack cache is simulated by using SimpleScalar toolset.

Keywords: Hit rate, Locality of program, Stack cache, and Stack data.

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Authors: Houshmand E. Masoumi

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Residential self-selection has gained increasing attention in the Western travel behavior research during the past decade. Many studies in the US, UK, and Germany conclude that the role of individuals’ residential location choice on commute travel behavior is more important than that of the built environment or at least it has considerable effects. However the effectiveness of location choice in many countries and cultures like Iran is unclear. This study examines the self-selections in two neighborhoods in Tehran. As a part of a research about the influences of land use on travel behavior information about people’s location preferences was collected by direct questioning. The findings show that the main reasons for selecting the location of residential units are related to socio-economic factors such as rise of house price and affordability of house prices. Transportation has little impacts on location decisions. Moreover, residential self-selection accounts for only 3 to 7.5 percent of the pedestrian, PT, and car trips.

Keywords: Residential self-selection, Tehran, travel behavior, urban transportation.

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Authors: Ahmad Khalesizadeh, Alireza Vakili, Mohsen Danesh Mesgaran, Reza Valizadeh

Abstract:

The objective of this study was to determine the effects of garlic oil (Allium sativa), turmeric powder (Curcuma longa Linn) and Monensin on Total apparent digestibility of nutrients in Baloochi lambs. The experiment was designed as a 4 x 4 Latin square using 4 ruminally baloochi lambs with 4 treatments in four 28-d periods. Treatments were control (no additive), garlic oil (0. 4 g/d), monensin (0. 2 g/d) and turmeric powder (20 g/d). Total apparent digestibility's (% of intake) of organic matter (OM), dry matter (DM), crud protein (CP), ether extract(EE), non fiber carbohydrate (NFC), acid detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) in the total tract were not influenced by addition of either additives.

Keywords: apparent digestibility, essential oil, garlic oil, monensin, turmeric

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Authors: Taher Fodeibou, Ziaul Huque, Jenny Galvis

Abstract:

A parametric study of a mixed-compression supersonic inlet is performed and reported. The effects of inlet Mach Numbers, varying from 4 to 10, and angle of attack, varying from 0 to 10, are reported for a constant inlet dynamic pressure. The paper looked at the variations of mass flow rates through the inlet, gain in entropy through the inlet, and the angles of the external oblique shocks. The mass flow rates were found to decrease monotonically with Mach numbers and increase with angle of attacks. On the other hand the entropy gain through the inlet increased with increasing Mach number and angle of attack. The variation in static pressure was found to be identical from the inlet throat to the exit for Mach number values higher than 6.

Keywords: Angle of attack, entropy gain, mass flow rates, supersonic inlets.

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