Search results for: Residue Number System

Authors: Wanwipa Siriwatwechakul, Nutte Teraphongphom, Vatcharani Ngaotheppitak, Sureeporn Kunataned

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The study investigated the hydrophilic to hydrophobic transition of modified polyacrylamide hydrogel with the inclusion of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIAM). The modification was done by mimicking micellar polymerization, which resulted in better arrangement of NIAM chains in the polyacrylamide network. The degree of NIAM arrangement is described by NH number. The hydrophilic to hydrophobic transition was measured through the partition coefficient, K, of Orange II and Methylene Blue in hydrogel and in water. These dyes were chosen as a model for solutes with different degree of hydrophobicity. The study showed that the hydrogel with higher NH values resulted in better solubility of both dyes. Moreover, in temperature above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIAM)also caused the collapse of NIPAM chains which results in a more hydrophobic environment that increases the solubility of Methylene Blue and decreases the solubility of Orange II in the hydrogels with NIPAM present.

Keywords: Thermo-sensitive hydrogel, partition coefficient, the lower critical solution temperature (LCST), micellar polymerization.

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Authors: Omer Cahana, Maya Herman, Ofer Levi

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Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a lengthy medical scan that stems from a long acquisition time. Its length is mainly due to the traditional sampling theorem, which defines a lower boundary for sampling. However, it is still possible to accelerate the scan by using a different approach such as Compress Sensing (CS) or Parallel Imaging (PI). These two complementary methods can be combined to achieve a faster scan with high-fidelity imaging. To achieve that, two conditions must be satisfied: i) the signal must be sparse under a known transform domain, and ii) the sampling method must be incoherent. In addition, a nonlinear reconstruction algorithm must be applied to recover the signal. While the rapid advances in Deep Learning (DL) have had tremendous successes in various computer vision tasks, the field of MRI reconstruction is still in its early stages. In this paper, we present an end-to-end method for MRI reconstruction from k-space to image. Our method contains two parts. The first is sensitivity map estimation (SME), which is a small yet effective network that can easily be extended to a variable number of coils. The second is reconstruction, which is a top-down architecture with lateral connections developed for building high-level refinement at all scales. Our method holds the state-of-art fastMRI benchmark, which is the largest, most diverse benchmark for MRI reconstruction.

Keywords: Accelerate MRI scans, image reconstruction, pyramid network, deep learning.

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Authors: Dalvin D. Hill, Hector M. Castro Garcia

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A growing number of individuals utilize wearable devices on a daily basis. The usage and functionality of these wearable devices vary from user to user. One popular usage of said devices is to track health-related activities that are typically stored on a device’s memory or uploaded to an account in the cloud; based on the current trend, the data accumulated from the wearable device are stored in a standalone location. In many of these cases, this health related datum is not a factor when considering the holistic view of a user’s health lifestyle or record. This health-related data generated from wearable and Internet of Things (IoT) devices can serve as empirical information to a medical provider, as the standalone data can add value to the holistic health record of a patient. This paper proposes a solution to incorporate the data gathered from these wearable and IoT devices, with that a patient’s Personal Health Record (PHR) stored within the confines of a Health Information Exchange (HIE).

Keywords: Electronic health record, health information exchanges, Internet of Things, personal health records, wearable devices, wearables.

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Authors: Siti Norfazlina Yusoff, Noorlailahusna Mohd Yusof

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The aging of the workforce is occurring globally and has significant impact on organizations. The Malaysian population is ageing. Although, not as quickly as the populations of a number of Asian nations, or of parts of Europe; the rate is sufficient to cause a concern. The life expectancy of Malaysians has increased in year 2012 with an average of 73.8 years or equal to 71.1 years for males and 76.7 years for females. The birth and death rates are 26.05 births/1,000 population and 5.29 deaths/1,000 population respectively. These figures have placed a greater liability on the government’s shoulder, and have become a push factor for the country to revise a new retirement age for the public servants. The ‘aged population’ impinged on the new challenges faced by the Malaysian government, which had to deal with an unproductive aged workforce. A new retirement age from 58 to 60 years old has been introduced and this could have a positive effect on this cohort, in maintaining financial security. However, keeping older employees might affect organizations’ performance and productivity. The organizations need to pay more attention on them, since they are less effective and might be affected by numerous health problems. An innovative culture should be introduced and this could be a good indicator for organizations that deal with these ‘expensive’ workers.

Keywords: Aged workforce, financial relief, innovative culture retirement policy.

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Authors: GuoQiang Peng, Yi Sun

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In this paper, based on the work in [1], we further give a general model for acquiring knowledge, which first focuses on the research of how and when things involved in problems are made then describes the goals, the energy and the time to give an optimum model to decide how many related things are supposed to be involved in. Finally, we acquire knowledge from this model in which there are the attributes, actions and connections of the things involved at the time when they are born and the time in their life. This model not only improves AI theories, but also surely brings the effectiveness and accuracy for AI system because systems are given more knowledge when reasoning or computing is used to bring about results.

Keywords: Time, knowledge, model.

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Authors: Pei-Chann Chang, Jui-Chien Hsieh, Jyun-Jie Lin, Feng-Ming Yeh

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Atrial Fibrillation is the most common sustained arrhythmia encountered by clinicians. Because of the invisible waveform of atrial fibrillation in atrial activation for human, it is necessary to develop an automatic diagnosis system. 12-Lead ECG now is available in hospital and is appropriate for using Independent Component Analysis to estimate the AA period. In this research, we also adopt a second-order blind identification approach to transform the sources extracted by ICA to more precise signal and then we use frequency domain algorithm to do the classification. In experiment, we gather a significant result of clinical data.

Keywords: 12-Lead ECG, Atrial Fibrillation, Blind SourceSeparation, Kurtosis

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Authors: S.A. Al-Qallaf, S.A. Al-Mawsawi, A. Haider

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Among all FACTS devices, the unified power flow controller (UPFC) is considered to be the most versatile device. This is due to its capability to control all the transmission system parameters (impedance, voltage magnitude, and phase angle). With the growing interest in UPFC, the attention to develop a mathematical model has increased. Several models were introduced for UPFC in literature for different type of studies in power systems. In this paper a novel comparison study between two dynamic models of UPFC with their proposed control strategies.

Keywords: FACTS, UPFC, Dynamic Modeling, PWM, Fundamental Frequency.

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Authors: Pakorn Uttayopas, Chawalit Kittichaikarn

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This paper presents an experimental investigation for the characteristics of an energy harvesting device exploiting flow-induced vibration in a wind tunnel. A stationary bluff body is connected with a downstream tip body via an aluminium cantilever beam. Various lengths of aluminium cantilever beam and different shapes of downstream tip body are considered. The results show that the characteristics of the energy harvester’s vibration depend on both the length of the aluminium cantilever beam and the shape of the downstream tip body. The highest ratio between vibration amplitude and bluff body diameter was found to be 1.39 for an energy harvester with a symmetrical triangular tip body and L/D₁ = 5 at 9.8 m/s of flow speed (Re = 20077). Using this configuration, the electrical energy was extracted with a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric beam with different load resistances, of which the optimal value could be found on each Reynolds number. The highest power output was found to be 3.19 µW, at 9.8 m/s of flow speed (Re = 20077) and 27 MΩ of load resistance.

Keywords: Downstream structures, energy harvesting, flow-induced vibration, piezoelectric material, wind tunnel.

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Authors: Chompoonuch Jinjakam, Yuta Odagiri, Kobchai Dejhan, Hamamoto Kazuhiko

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Virtual environment induces simulator sickness effect for some users. The purpose of this research is to compare the simulation sickness relative with parallax affect in one-screen and three-screen HoloStageTM system, measured by Simulation Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). The results show the subjects tested in three-screen has less sickness than one-screen and effect from the Oculomotor (O) more than from the Disorientation (D) and more than from the Nausea (N) or represented in O>D>N.

Keywords: Virtual environment, virtual sickness, simulationsickness questionnaire, HoloStageTM.

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Authors: W. D. Wan Rosli, Z. Zainuddin, R. Lanouette, S. Sathasivam

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This paper reports work done to improve the modeling of complex processes when only small experimental data sets are available. Neural networks are used to capture the nonlinear underlying phenomena contained in the data set and to partly eliminate the burden of having to specify completely the structure of the model. Two different types of neural networks were used for the application of Pulping of Sugar Maple problem. A three layer feed forward neural networks, using the Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (PCG) methods were used in this investigation. Preconditioning is a method to improve convergence by lowering the condition number and increasing the eigenvalues clustering. The idea is to solve the modified problem where M is a positive-definite preconditioner that is closely related to A. We mainly focused on Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient- based training methods which originated from optimization theory, namely Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient with Fletcher-Reeves Update (PCGF), Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient with Polak-Ribiere Update (PCGP) and Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient with Powell-Beale Restarts (PCGB). The behavior of the PCG methods in the simulations proved to be robust against phenomenon such as oscillations due to large step size.

Keywords: Convergence, Modeling, Neural Networks, Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient.

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Authors: Yew Mun Hung, Ching Sze Lim, Tiew Wei Ting, Ningqun Guo

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The effect of streamwise conduction on the thermal characteristics of forced convection for nanofluidic flow in rectangular microchannel heat sinks under isothermal wall has been investigated. By applying the fin approach, models with and without streamwise conduction term in the energy equation were developed for hydrodynamically and thermally fully-developed flow. These two models were solved to obtain closed form analytical solutions for the nanofluid and solid wall temperature distributions and the analysis emphasized details of the variations induced by the streamwise conduction on the nanofluid heat transport characteristics. The effects of the Peclet number, nanoparticle volume fraction, thermal conductivity ratio on the thermal characteristics of forced convection in microchannel heat sinks are analyzed. Due to the anomalous increase in the effective thermal conductivity of nanofluid compared to its base fluid, the effect of streamwise conduction is expected to be more significant. This study reveals the significance of the effect of streamwise conduction under certain conditions of which the streamwise conduction should not be neglected in the forced convective heat transfer analysis of microchannel heat sinks.

Keywords: fin approach, microchannel heat sink, nanofluid, streamwise conduction

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Authors: Nilson Barbieri, Renato Barbieri

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–In this paper the damage in clamped-free, clampedclamped and free-free beam are analyzed considering samples without and with structural modifications. The damage location is investigated by the use of the bispectrum and wavelet analysis. The mathematical models are obtained using 2D elasticity theory and the Finite Element Method (FEM). The numerical and experimental data are approximated using the Particle Swarm Optimizer (PSO) method and this way is possible to adjust the localization and the severity of the damage. The experimental data are obtained through accelerometers placed along the sample. The system is excited using impact hammer.

Keywords: Damage, beam, PSO, bispectrum, wavelet transform

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Authors: Areej Babiker Idris Babiker, Rosdiazli Ibrahim

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Gas chromatography (GC) is the most widely used technique in analytical chemistry. However, GC has high initial cost and requires frequent maintenance. This paper examines the feasibility and potential of using a neural network model as an alternative whenever GC is unvailable. It can also be part of system verification on the performance of GC for preventive maintenance activities. It shows the performance of MultiLayer Perceptron (MLP) with Backpropagation structure. Results demonstrate that neural network model when trained using this structure provides an adequate result and is suitable for this purpose. cm.

Keywords: Analyzer, Levenberg-Marquardt, Gas chromatography, Neural network

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Authors: Abdenour Bounsiar, Edith Grall, Pierre Beauseroy

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In this paper we are interested in classification problems with a performance constraint on error probability. In such problems if the constraint cannot be satisfied, then a rejection option is introduced. For binary labelled classification, a number of SVM based methods with rejection option have been proposed over the past few years. All of these methods use two thresholds on the SVM output. However, in previous works, we have shown on synthetic data that using thresholds on the output of the optimal SVM may lead to poor results for classification tasks with performance constraint. In this paper a new method for supervised classification with rejection option is proposed. It consists in two different classifiers jointly optimized to minimize the rejection probability subject to a given constraint on error rate. This method uses a new kernel based linear learning machine that we have recently presented. This learning machine is characterized by its simplicity and high training speed which makes the simultaneous optimization of the two classifiers computationally reasonable. The proposed classification method with rejection option is compared to a SVM based rejection method proposed in recent literature. Experiments show the superiority of the proposed method.

Keywords: rejection, Chow's rule, error-reject tradeoff, SupportVector Machine.

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Authors: A. Amar

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A new model namely, the crystal model, has been modified to calculate radius and density distribution of light nuclei up to 8Be. The crystal model has been modified according to solid state physics which uses the analogy between nucleon distribution and atoms distribution in the crystal. The model has analytical analysis to calculate the radius where the density distribution of light nuclei has been obtained from the analogy of crystal lattice. The distribution of nucleons over crystal has been discussed in general form. The equation used to calculate binding energy was taken from the solid-state model of repulsive and attractive force. The numbers of the protons were taken to control repulsive force where the atomic number was responsible for the attractive force. The parameter has been calculated from the crystal model was found to be proportional to the radius of the nucleus. The density distribution of light nuclei was taken as a summation of two clusters distribution as in 6Li=alpha+deuteron configuration. A test has been done on the data obtained for radius and density distribution using double folding for d+6,7Li with M3Y nucleon-nucleon interaction. Good agreement has been obtained for both radius and density distribution of light nuclei. The model failed to calculate the radius of 9Be, so modifications should be done to overcome discrepancy.

Keywords: nuclear lattice, crystal model, light nuclei, nuclear density distributions

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Authors: Liwen Hou

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The booming mobile business has been penetrating the taxi industry worldwide with P2P (peer to peer) taxi services, as an emerging business model, transforming the industry. Parallel with other mobile businesses, member recommendations and online reviews are believed to be very effective with regard to acquiring new users for P2P taxi services. Based on an empirical dataset of the taxi industry in China, this study aims to reveal which factors influence users’ recommendations and review-writing behaviors. Differing from the existing literature, this paper takes the taxi driver’s perspective into consideration and hence selects a group of variables related to the drivers. We built two models to reflect the factors that influence the number of recommendations and reviews posted on the platform (i.e., the app). Our models show that all factors, except the driver’s score, significantly influence the recommendation behavior. Likewise, only one factor, passengers’ bad reviews, is insignificant in generating more drivers’ reviews. In the conclusion, we summarize the findings and limitations of the research.

Keywords: Online recommendation, P2P taxi service, review-writing, word of mouth.

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Authors: Fanny Guay

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Building resilience, sustainable buildings, urbanization, climate change, resilient cities, are just a few examples of where the focus of research has been in the last few years. It is obvious that there is a need to rethink how we are building our cities and how we are renovating our existing buildings. However, the question remaining is how can we assure that we are building sustainable yet resilient cities? There are many aspects one can touch upon when discussing resilience in cities, but after the event of Grenfell in June 2017, it has become clear that fire resilience must be a priority. We define resilience as a holistic approach including communities, society and systems, focusing not only on resisting the effects of a disaster, but also how it will cope and recover from it. Cities are an example of such a system, where components such as buildings have an important role to play. A building on fire will have an impact on the community, the economy, the environment, and so the entire system. Therefore, we believe that fire and resilience go hand in hand when we discuss building resilient cities. This article aims at discussing the current state of the concept of fire resilience and suggests actions to support the built of more fire resilient buildings. Using the case of Grenfell and the fire safety regulations in the UK, we will briefly compare the fire regulations in other European countries, more precisely France, Germany and Denmark, to underline the difference and make some suggestions to increase fire resilience via regulation. For this research, we will also include other types of resilience such as technological resilience, discussing the structure of buildings itself, as well as community resilience, considering the role of communities in building resilience. Our findings demonstrate that to increase fire resilience, amending existing regulations might be necessary, for example, how we performed reaction to fire tests and how we classify building products. However, as we are looking at national regulations, we are only able to make general suggestions for improvement. Another finding of this research is that the capacity of the community to recover and adapt after a fire is also an essential factor. Fundamentally, fire resilience, technological resilience and community resilience are closely connected. Building resilient cities is not only about sustainable buildings or energy efficiency; it is about assuring that all the aspects of resilience are included when building or renovating buildings. We must ask ourselves questions as: Who are the users of this building? Where is the building located? What are the components of the building, how was it designed and which construction products have been used? If we want to have resilient cities, we must answer these basic questions and assure that basic factors such as fire resilience are included in our assessment.

Keywords: Buildings, cities, fire, resilience.

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Authors: Supattra Kanchanopast

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The purpose of this research was to identify factors that influenced the success of e-commerce implementation within SMEs businesses. In order to achieve the objectives of this research, the researcher collected data from random firms in Thailand, both the users and those who are not using the e-commerce. The data was comprised of the results of 310 questionnaires, as well as 10 interviews with owner/managers of businesses who are currently using e-commerce successfully. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, which included frequency, percentages, mean, and the standard deviation of pertinent factors. Independent t-test and one-way ANOVA test were also used. The findings of this research revealed that 50% of all the firms surveyed had e-commerce website, whereas, over 20% of all firms surveyed had developing an ecommerce strategy. The result findings also indicate that organizational factors, technological factors and environment factors as significant factors effecting success of e-commerce implementation in SMEs. From the hypotheses testing, the findings revealed that the different level of support use ecommerce by owner/manager had different success in e-commerce implementation. Moreover, the difference in e-commerce management approach affected the success in terms of higher total sales for the business or higher number of retained or returning customers.

Keywords: Electronic commerce, Implementation of ECommerce, small and medium sized enterprises, SMEs, Website, success factors.

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Authors: Thomas Meier

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One of the major challenges for sustainable smart building systems is to support device interoperability, i.e. connecting sensor or actuator devices from different vendors, and present their functionality to the external applications. Furthermore, smart building systems are supposed to connect with devices that are not available yet, i.e. devices that become available on the market sometime later. It is of vital importance that a sustainable smart building platform provides an appropriate external interface that can be leveraged by external applications and smart services. An external platform interface must be stable and independent of specific devices and should support flexible and scalable usage scenarios. A typical approach applied in smart home systems is based on a generic device interface used within the smart building platform. Device functions, even of rather complex devices, are mapped to that generic base type interface by means of specific device drivers. Our new approach, presented in this work, extends that approach by using the smart building system’s rule engine to create complex virtual devices that can represent the most diverse properties of real devices. We examined and evaluated both approaches by means of a practical case study using a smart building system that we have developed. We show that the solution we present allows the highest degree of flexibility without affecting external application interface stability and scalability. In contrast to other systems our approach supports complex virtual device configuration on application layer (e.g. by administration users) instead of device configuration at platform layer (e.g. platform operators). Based on our work, we can show that our approach supports almost arbitrarily flexible use case scenarios without affecting the external application interface stability. However, the cost of this approach is additional appropriate configuration overhead and additional resource consumption at the IoT platform level that must be considered by platform operators. We conclude that the concept of complex virtual devices presented in this work can be applied to improve the usability and device interoperability of sustainable intelligent building systems significantly.

Keywords: Complex virtual devices, device integration, device interoperability, Internet of Things, smart building platform.

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Authors: R. Bremananth

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Acoustic Imaging based sound localization using microphone array is a challenging task in digital-signal processing. Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based near-field acoustical holography (NAH) is an important acoustical technique for sound source localization and provide an efficient solution to the ill-posed problem. However, in practice, due to the usage of small curtailed aperture and its consequence of significant spectral leakage, the DFT could not reconstruct the active-region-of-sound (AROS) effectively, especially near the edges of aperture. In this paper, we emphasize the fundamental problems of DFT-based NAH, provide a solution to spectral leakage effect by the extrapolation based on linear predictive coding and 2D Tukey windowing. This approach has been tested to localize the single and multi-point sound sources. We observe that incorporating extrapolation technique increases the spatial resolution, localization accuracy and reduces spectral leakage when small curtail aperture with a lower number of sensors accounts.

Keywords: Acoustic Imaging, Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), k-space wavenumber, Near-Field Acoustical Holography (NAH), Source Localization, Spectral Leakage.

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Authors: Pavel E. Golosov, Vladimir I. Gorelov, Oksana L. Karelova

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There are visible changes in the world organization, environment and health of national conscience that create a background for discussion on possible redefinition of global, state and regional management goals. Authors apply the sustainable development criteria to a hierarchical management scheme that is to lead the world community to non-contradictory growth. Concrete definitions are discussed in respect of decision-making process representing the state mostly. With the help of system analysis it is highlighted how to understand who would carry the distinctive sign of world leadership in the nearest future.

Keywords: Decision-making, information technology, public administration.

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Authors: Abdelsalam Omran Gebril, Ali Gh Saeid

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Grazing and pastoral overloading through human factors result in significant land desertification. Failure to take into account the phenomenon of desertification as a serious problem can lead to an environmental disaster because of the damages caused by land encroachment. Therefore, soil on residential and urban areas is affected because of the deterioration of vegetation. Overgrazing or grazing in open and irregular lands is practiced in these areas almost throughout the year, especially during the growth cycle of edible plants, thereby leading to their disappearance. In addition, the large number of livestock in these areas exceeds the capacity of these pastures because of pastoral land overloading, which results in deterioration and desertification in the region. In addition, rare plants, the extinction of some edible plants in the region, and the emergence of plants unsuitable for grazing, must be taken into consideration, as along with the emergence of dust and sand storms during the dry seasons (summer to autumn) due to the degradation of vegetation. These results show that strategic plans and regulations that protect the environment from desertification must be developed. Therefore, increased pastoral load is a key human factor in the deterioration of vegetation cover, leading to land desertification in this region.

Keywords: Overloading, pastoral, grazing, desertification, Libya

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Authors: Shailendra Kumar Patidar

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Eutrophication of surface water is one of the most widespread environmental problems at present. Large number of pilgrims and tourists visit sacred artificial tank known as “Brahma Sarover” located at Kurukshetra, India to take holy dip and perform religious ceremonies. The sources of pollutants include impurities in feed water, mass bathing, religious offerings and windblown particulate matter. Studies so far have focused mainly on assessing water quality for bathing purpose by using physico-chemical and bacteriological parameters. No effort has been made to assess nutrient concentration and trophic status of the tank to take more appropriate measures for improving water quality on long term basis. In the present study, total nitrogen, total phosphorous and chlorophyll a measurements have been done to assess the nutrient level and trophic status of the tank. The results show presence of high concentration of nutrients and Chlorophyll a indicating mesotrophic and eutrophic state of the tank. Phosphorous has been observed as limiting nutrient in the tank water.

Keywords: Brahma Sarover, eutrophication, nutrients, trophic status.

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Authors: Mehrnaz Najafi, Hassan Haghighi

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Morgan-s refinement calculus (MRC) is one of the well-known methods allowing the formality presented in the program specification to be continued all the way to code. On the other hand, Object-Z (OZ) is an extension of Z adding support for classes and objects. There are a number of methods for obtaining code from OZ specifications that can be categorized into refinement and animation methods. As far as we know, only one refinement method exists which refines OZ specifications into code. However, this method does not have fine-grained refinement rules and thus cannot be automated. On the other hand, existing animation methods do not present mapping rules formally and do not support the mapping of several important constructs of OZ, such as all cases of operation expressions and most of constructs in global paragraph. In this paper, with the aim of providing an automatic path from OZ specifications to code, we propose an approach to map OZ specifications into their counterparts in MRC in order to use fine-grained refinement rules of MRC. In this way, having counterparts of our specifications in MRC, we can refine them into code automatically using MRC tools such as RED. Other advantages of our work pertain to proposing mapping rules formally, supporting the mapping of all important constructs of Object-Z, and considering dynamic instantiation of objects while OZ itself does not cover this facility.

Keywords: Formal method, Formal specification, Formalprogram development, Morgan's Refinement Calculus, Object-Z

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Authors: A. Faro, D. Giordano, M. Pennisi, G. Scarciofalo, C. Spampinato, F. Tramontana

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The paper proposes a methodology to process the signals coming from the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in order to identify the pathology and evaluate the therapy to treat the patients affected by demency diseases. In particular, a fuzzy model is developed to identify the demency of the patients affected by Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Dementia (SIVD) and to measure the effect of a repetitive TMS on their motor performances. A tool is also presented to support the mentioned analysis.

Keywords: TMS, EMG, fuzzy logic, transcranial magnetic stimulation.

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Authors: Jalal Haghighat Monfared, Zahra Akbari

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Today, business executives need to have useful information to make better decisions. Banks have also been using information tools so that they can direct the decision-making process in order to achieve their desired goals by rapidly extracting information from sources with the help of business intelligence. The research seeks to investigate whether there is a relationship between the quality of decision making and the business intelligence capabilities of Mellat Bank. Each of the factors studied is divided into several components, and these and their relationships are measured by a questionnaire. The statistical population of this study consists of all managers and experts of Mellat Bank's General Departments (including 190 people) who use commercial intelligence reports. The sample size of this study was 123 randomly determined by statistical method. In this research, relevant statistical inference has been used for data analysis and hypothesis testing. In the first stage, using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the normalization of the data was investigated and in the next stage, the construct validity of both variables and their resulting indexes were verified using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, using the structural equation modeling and Pearson's correlation coefficient, the research hypotheses were tested. The results confirmed the existence of a positive relationship between decision quality and business intelligence capabilities in Mellat Bank. Among the various capabilities, including data quality, correlation with other systems, user access, flexibility and risk management support, the flexibility of the business intelligence system was the most correlated with the dependent variable of the present research. This shows that it is necessary for Mellat Bank to pay more attention to choose the required business intelligence systems with high flexibility in terms of the ability to submit custom formatted reports. Subsequently, the quality of data on business intelligence systems showed the strongest relationship with quality of decision making. Therefore, improving the quality of data, including the source of data internally or externally, the type of data in quantitative or qualitative terms, the credibility of the data and perceptions of who uses the business intelligence system, improves the quality of decision making in Mellat Bank.

Keywords: Business intelligence, business intelligence capability, decision making, decision quality.

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Authors: Anton V. Doroshin

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This article contains a description of main ideas for the attitude reorientation of spacecraft (small dual-spin spacecraft, nanosatellites) using properties of its chaotic attitude motion under the action of internal perturbations. The considering method based on intentional initiations of chaotic modes of the attitude motion with big amplitudes of the nutation oscillations, and also on the redistributions of the angular momentum between coaxial bodies of the dual-spin spacecraft (DSSC), which perform in the purpose of system’s phase space changing.

Keywords: Spacecraft, Attitude Dynamics and Control, Chaos.

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Authors: Raouf Mbarki, Fadi Al Khatib, Malek Adouni

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Knee collateral ligaments play a significant role in restraining excessive frontal motion (varus/valgus rotations). In this investigation, a multiscale frame was developed based on structural hierarchies of the collateral ligaments starting from the bottom (tropocollagen molecule) to up where the fibred reinforced structure established. Experimental data of failure tensile test were considered as the principal driver of the developed model. This model was calibrated statistically using Bayesian calibration due to the high number of unknown parameters. Then the model is scaled up to fit the real structure of the collateral ligaments and simulated under realistic boundary conditions. Predications have been successful in describing the observed transient response of the collateral ligaments during tensile test under pre- and post-damage loading conditions. Collateral ligaments maximum stresses and strengths were observed near to the femoral insertions, a results that is in good agreement with experimental investigations. Also for the first time, damage initiation and propagation were documented with this model as a function of the cross-link density between tropocollagen molecules.

Keywords: Multiscale model, tropocollagen, fibrils, ligaments.

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Authors: M.S.Nourbakhsh, M.E.khosroshahi

Abstract:

Gold coated silica core nanoparticles have an optical response dictated by the plasmon resonance. The wavelength at which the resonance occurs depends on the core and shell sizes, allowing nanoshells to be tailored for particular applications. The purposes of this study was to synthesize and use different concentration of gold nanoshells as exogenous material for skin tissue soldering and also to examine the effect of laser soldering parameters on the properties of repaired skin. Two mixtures of albumin solder and different concentration of gold nanoshells were prepared. A full thickness incision of 2×20 mm2 was made on the surface and after addition of mixtures it was irradiated by an 810nm diode laser at different power densities. The changes of tensile strength σt due to temperature rise, number of scan (Ns), and scan velocity (Vs) were investigated. The results showed at constant laser power density (I), σt of repaired incisions increases by increasing the concentration of gold nanoshells, Ns and decreasing Vs. It is therefore important to consider the trade off between the scan velocity and the surface temperature for achieving an optimum operating condition. In our case this corresponds to σt =1610 gr/cm2 at I~ 60 Wcm-2, T ~ 65ºC, Ns =10 and Vs=0.2mms-1.

Keywords: Tissue soldering, Diode laser, Gold Nanoshells, Tensile strength

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Authors: Oleksandr Poliakov, Yevgen Pashkov, Marina Kolesova, Olena Chepenyuk, Mykhaylo Kalinin, Vadym Kramar

Abstract:

In this paper we present a substantiation of a new Laguerre-s type iterative method for solving of a nonlinear polynomial equations systems with real coefficients. The problems of its implementation, including relating to the structural choice of initial approximations, were considered. Test examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the method at the solving of many practical problems solving.

Keywords: Iterative method, Laguerre's method, Newton's method, polynomial equation, system of equations

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