Search results for: edge based enhancement

Authors: Y. Shiren, M. Masuzawa, H. Ohkura, T. Yamagata, Y. Aman, N. Kobayashi

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An important problem for the CaSO4/CaSO4･1/2H2O Chemical heat pump (CHP) is that the material is deactivated through repetitive reaction between hydration and dehydration in which the crystal phase of the material is transformed from III-CaSO4 to II-CaSO4. We investigated suppression on the phase change by adding a sulfated compound. The most effective material was MgSO4. MgSO4 doping increased the durability of CaSO4 in the actual CHP repetitive cycle of hydration/dehydration to 3.6 times that of undoped CaSO4. The MgSO4-doped CaSO4 showed a higher phase transition temperature and activation energy for crystal transformation from III-CaSO4 to II-CaSO4. MgSO4 doping decreased the crystal lattice size of CaSO4･1/2H2O and II-CaSO4 to smaller than that of undoped CaSO4. Modification of the crystal structure is considered to be related to the durability change in CaSO4 resulting from MgSO4 doping.

Keywords: CaSO4, chemical heat pump, durability of chemical heat storage material, heat storage.

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Authors: Wenhsuan Lee, Yachi Chang, Yingyih Shih

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In clinical practices, it is common that while facing the unknown progress of their disease, palliative care patients may easily feel anxious and depressed. These types of reactions are a cause of psychosomatic diseases and may also influence treatment results. However, the purpose of palliative care is to provide relief from all kinds of pains. Therefore, how to make patients more comfortable is an issue worth studying. This study adopted the “bio-psycho-social model” proposed by Engel and applied spontaneous breathing training, in the hope of seeing patients’ psychological state changes caused by their physiological state changes, improvements in their anxious conditions, corresponding adjustments of their cognitive functions, and further enhancement of their social functions and the social support system. This study will be a one-year study. Palliative care outpatients will be recruited and assigned to the experimental group or the control group for six outpatient visits (once a month), with 80 patients in each group. The patients of both groups agreed that this study can collect their physiological quantitative data using an HRV device before the first outpatient visit. They also agreed to answer the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire” before the first outpatient visit, to fill a self-report questionnaire after each outpatient visit, and to answer the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire” after the last outpatient visit. The patients of the experimental group agreed to receive the breathing training under HRV monitoring during the first outpatient visit of this study. Before each of the following three outpatient visits, they were required to fill a self-report questionnaire regarding their breathing practices after going home. After the outpatient visits, they were taught how to practice breathing through an HRV device and asked to practice it after going home. Later, based on the results from the HRV data analyses and the pre-tests and post-tests of the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire”, the influence of the breathing training in the bio, psycho, and social aspects were evaluated. The data collected through the self-report questionnaires of the patients of both groups were used to explore the possible interfering factors among the bio, psycho, and social changes. It is expected that this study will support the “bio-psycho-social model” proposed by Engel, meaning that bio, psycho, and social supports are closely related, and that breathing training helps to transform palliative care patients’ psychological feelings of anxiety and depression, to facilitate their positive interactions with others, and to improve the quality medical care for them.

Keywords: Palliative care, breathing training, bio-psycho-social Model, heart rate variability.

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Authors: Anis Fatmi, Amur Al Yahmadi, Lazhar Khriji, Nouri Masmoudi

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One of the long standing challenging aspect in mobile robotics is the ability to navigate autonomously, avoiding modeled and unmodeled obstacles especially in crowded and unpredictably changing environment. A successful way of structuring the navigation task in order to deal with the problem is within behavior based navigation approaches. In this study, Issues of individual behavior design and action coordination of the behaviors will be addressed using fuzzy logic. A layered approach is employed in this work in which a supervision layer based on the context makes a decision as to which behavior(s) to process (activate) rather than processing all behavior(s) and then blending the appropriate ones, as a result time and computational resources are saved.

Keywords: Behavior based navigation, context based coordination, fuzzy logic, mobile robots.

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Authors: Sanjeev Sharma, Manoj Sahni

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Transition theory has been used to derive the elasticplastic and transitional stresses. Results obtained have been discussed numerically and depicted graphically. It is observed that the rotating disk made of incompressible material with inclusion require higher angular speed to yield at the internal surface as compared to disk made of compressible material. It is seen that the radial and circumferential stresses are maximum at the internal surface with and without edge load (for flat disk). With the increase in thickness parameter (k = 2, 4), the circumferential stress is maximum at the external surface while the radial stress is maximum at the internal surface. From the figures drawn the disk with exponentially varying thickness (k = 2), high angular speed is required for initial yielding at internal surface as compared to flat disk and exponentially varying thickness for k = 4 onwards. It is concluded that the disk made of isotropic compressible material is on the safer side of the design as compared to disk made of isotropic incompressible material as it requires higher percentage increase in an angular speed to become fully plastic from its initial yielding.

Keywords: Finite deformation, Incompressibility, Transitionalstresses, Elastic-plastic.

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Authors: Mohamed H. Gabr, Kiyoshi Uzawa

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The current study aims to investigate the effect of fillers with different geometries and sizes on the interfacial shear properties of PA6 composites with de-sized carbon fiber. The fillers which have been investigated are namely; nano-layer silicates (nanoclay), sub-micro aluminum titanium (ALTi) particles, and multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT). By means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), epoxide group which defined as a sizing agent, has been removed. Sizing removal can reduce the acid parameter of carbon fibers surface promoting bonding strength at the fiber/matrix interface which is a desirable property for the carbon fiber composites. Microdroplet test showed that the interfacial shear strength (IFSS) has been enhanced with the addition of 10wt% ALTi by about 23% comparing with neat PA6. However, with including other types of fillers into PA6, the results did not show enhancement of IFSS.

Keywords: Sub-micro-filler, nano-composites, interfacial shear strength, polyamide.

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Authors: Sallama Athab, Hala Bahjat

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Detecting object in video sequence is a challenging mission for identifying, tracking moving objects. Background removal considered as a basic step in detected moving objects tasks. Dual static cameras placed in front and rear moving platform gathered information which is used to detect objects. Background change regarding with speed and direction moving platform, so moving objects distinguished become complicated. In this paper, we propose framework allows detection moving object with variety of speed and direction dynamically. Object detection technique built on two levels the first level apply background removal and edge detection to generate moving areas. The second level apply Moving Areas Filter (MAF) then calculate Correlation Score (CS) for adjusted moving area. Merging moving areas with closer CS and marked as moving object. Experiment result is prepared on real scene acquired by dual static cameras without overlap in sense. Results showing accuracy in detecting objects compared with optical flow and Mixture Module Gaussian (MMG), Accurate ratio produced to measure accurate detection moving object.

Keywords: Background Removal, Correlation, Mixture Module Gaussian, Moving Platform, Object Detection.

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Authors: Guilherme Ribeiro, Alexandre Oliveira, Antonio Ferreira, Shyam Visweswaran, Gregory Cooper

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Patient-specific models are instance-based learning algorithms that take advantage of the particular features of the patient case at hand to predict an outcome. We introduce two patient-specific algorithms based on decision tree paradigm that use AUC as a metric to select an attribute. We apply the patient specific algorithms to predict outcomes in several datasets, including medical datasets. Compared to the patient-specific decision path (PSDP) entropy-based and CART methods, the AUC-based patient-specific decision path models performed equivalently on area under the ROC curve (AUC). Our results provide support for patient-specific methods being a promising approach for making clinical predictions.

Keywords: Approach instance-based, area Under the ROC Curve, Patient-specific Decision Path, clinical predictions.

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Authors: V. Paployan, K. Madoyan, A. Melikyan, H. Minassian

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In this paper, we calculate the two-photon ionization (TPI) cross-section for pump-probe scheme in Ag neutral cluster. The pump photon energy is assumed to be close to the surface plasmon (SP) energy of cluster in dielectric media. Due to this choice, the pump wave excites collective oscillations of electrons-SP and the probe wave causes ionization of the cluster. Since the interband transition energy in Ag exceeds the SP resonance energy, the main contribution into the TPI comes from the latter. The advantage of Ag clusters as compared to the other noble metals is that the SP resonance in silver cluster is much sharper because of peculiarities of its dielectric function. The calculations are performed by separating the coordinates of electrons corresponding to the collective oscillations and the individual motion that allows taking into account the resonance contribution of excited SP oscillations. It is shown that the ionization cross section increases by two orders of magnitude if the energy of the pump photon matches the surface plasmon energy in the cluster.

Keywords: Resonance enhancement, silver clusters, surface plasmon, two-photon ionization.

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Authors: Basit Shahzad, Muhammad Tanvir Afzal

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Many algorithms are available for sorting the unordered elements. Most important of them are Bubble sort, Heap sort, Insertion sort and Shell sort. These algorithms have their own pros and cons. Shell Sort which is an enhanced version of insertion sort, reduces the number of swaps of the elements being sorted to minimize the complexity and time as compared to insertion sort. Shell sort improves the efficiency of insertion sort by quickly shifting values to their destination. Average sort time is O(n1.25), while worst-case time is O(n1.5). It performs certain iterations. In each iteration it swaps some elements of the array in such a way that in last iteration when the value of h is one, the number of swaps will be reduced. Donald L. Shell invented a formula to calculate the value of ?h?. this work focuses to identify some improvement in the conventional Shell sort algorithm. ''Enhanced Shell Sort algorithm'' is an improvement in the algorithm to calculate the value of 'h'. It has been observed that by applying this algorithm, number of swaps can be reduced up to 60 percent as compared to the existing algorithm. In some other cases this enhancement was found faster than the existing algorithms available.

Keywords: Algorithm, Computation, Shell, Sorting.

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Authors: Jiuyang Lin, Wenyuan Ye, Arcadio Sotto, Bart Van der Bruggen

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Application of nanoparticles as additives in membrane synthesis for improving the resistance of membranes against fouling has triggered recent interest in new membrane types. However, most nanoparticle-enhanced membranes suffer from the tradeoff between permeability and selectivity. In this study, nano-WS2 was explored as the additive in membrane synthesis by non-solvent induced phase separation. Blended PES-WS2 flat-sheet membranes with the incorporation of ultra-low concentrations of nanoparticles (from 0.025 to 0.25%, WS2/PES ratio) were manufactured and investigated in terms of permeability, fouling resistance and solute rejection. Remarkably, a significant enhancement in the permeability was observed as a result of the incorporation of ultra-low fractions of nano-WS2 to the membrane structure. Optimal permeability values were obtained for modified membranes with 0.10% nanoparticle/polymer concentration ratios. Furthermore, fouling resistance and solute rejection were significantly improved by the incorporation of nanoparticles into the membrane matrix. Specifically, fouling resistance of modified membrane can increase by around 50%.

Keywords: Nano-WS2, Nanoparticle enhanced hybrid membrane, Ultralow concentration, Antifouling.

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Authors: Ayman El Sabagh, Sobhy Sorour, Abd Elhamid Omar, Adel Ragab, Mohammad Sohidul Islam, Celaleddin Barutçular, Akihiro Ueda, Hirofumi Saneoka

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Salinity is one of the major factors limiting crop production in an arid environment. Despite its global importance soybean production suffer the problems of salinity stress causing damages at plant development. So it is implacable to either search for salinity enhancement of soybean plants. Therefore, in the current study we try to clarify the mechanism that might be involved in the ameliorating effects of osmo-protectants such as proline and glycine betaine as well as, compost application on soybean plants grown under salinity stress. The experiment was conducted under greenhouse conditions at the Graduate School of Biosphere Science Laboratory of Hiroshima University, Japan in 2011. The experiment was designed as a spilt-split plot based on randomized complete block design with four replications. The treatments could be summarized as follows; (i) salinity concentrations (0 and 15 mM), (ii) compost treatments (0 and 24 t ha-1) and (iii) the exogenous, proline and glycine betaine concentrations (0 mM and 25 mM) for each. Results indicated that salinity stress induced reduction in growth and physiological aspects (dry weight per plant, chlorophyll content, N and K+ content) of soybean plant compared with those of the unstressed plants. On the other hand, salinity stress led to increases in the electrolyte leakage ratio, Na and proline contents. Special attention was paid to, the tolerance against salt stress was observed, the improvement of salt tolerance resulted from proline, glycine betaine and compost were accompanied with improved K+, and proline accumulation. While, significantly decreased electrolyte leakage ratio and Na+ content. These results clearly demonstrate that harmful effect of salinity could reduce on growth aspects of soybean. Consequently, exogenous osmoprotectants combine with compost will effectively solve seasonal salinity stress problem and are a good strategy to increase salinity resistance of soybean in the drylands.

Keywords: Compost, glycine betaine, growth, proline, salinity tolerance, soybean.

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Authors: Mohammed T. Taher, Usman Ghani, Ahmed S. Khan

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This paper compares the findings of two studies conducted to determine the effectiveness of simulation-based, hands-on and feedback mechanism on students learning by answering the following questions: 1). Does the use of simulation improve students’ learning outcomes? 2). How do students perceive the instructional design features embedded in the simulation program such as exploration and scaffolding support in learning new concepts? 3.) What is the effect of feedback mechanisms on students’ learning in the use of simulation-based labs? The paper also discusses the other aspects of findings which reveal that simulation by itself is not very effective in promoting student learning. Simulation becomes effective when it is followed by hands-on activity and feedback mechanisms. Furthermore, the paper presents recommendations for improving student learning through the use of simulation-based, hands-on, and feedback-based teaching methodologies.

Keywords: Simulation-based teaching, hands-on learning, feedback-based learning, scaffolding.

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Authors: Said Ali Al-Hadhrami

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Ranked set sampling (RSS) was first suggested to increase the efficiency of the population mean. It has been shown that this method is highly beneficial to the estimation based on simple random sampling (SRS). There has been considerable development and many modifications were done on this method. When a concomitant variable is available, ratio estimation based on ranked set sampling was proposed. This ratio estimator is more efficient than that based on SRS. In this paper some ratio type estimators of the population mean based on RSS are suggested. These estimators are found to be more efficient than the estimators of similar form using simple random sample.

Keywords: Bias, Efficiency, Ranked Set Sampling, Ratio Type Estimator

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Authors: Sun-Ki Hong, Yong-Ho Cho, Ki-Seok Kim, Tae-Sam Kang

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Piezoelectric actuator is treated as RC load when it is modeled electrically. For some piezoelectric actuator applications, arbitrary voltage is required to actuate. Especially for unidirectional arbitrary voltage driving like as sine wave, some special inverter with circuit that can charge and discharge the capacitive energy can be used. In this case, the difference between power supply level and the object voltage level for RC load is varied. Because the control gain is constant, the controlled output is not uniform according to the voltage difference. In this paper, for charge and discharge circuit for unidirectional arbitrary voltage driving for piezoelectric actuator, the controller gain is controlled according to the voltage difference. With the proposed simple idea, the load voltage can have controlled smoothly although the voltage difference is varied. The appropriateness is proved from the simulation of the proposed circuit.

Keywords: Analog voltage inverter, Capacitive load, Gain control, DC-DC converter, Piezoelectric, Voltage waveform.

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Authors: Jun Li, Wenze Wang, Zhanggui Hu, Yongwei Zhu, Dunwen Zuo

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Non-water based fixed abrasive polishing was adopted to manufacture LBO crystal for nano precision surface quality because of its deliquescent. Ethyl alcohol was selected as the non-water based slurry solvent and ethanediamine, lactic acid, hydrogen peroxide was added in the slurry as a chemical additive, respectively. Effect of different additives with non-water based slurry on material removal rate, surface topography, microscopic appearances, and surface roughness were investigated in fixed abrasive polishing of LBO crystal. The results show the best surface quality of LBO crystal with surface roughness Sa 8.2 nm and small damages was obtained by non-water based slurry with lactic acid. Non-water based fixed abrasive polishing can achieve nano precision surface quality of LBO crystal with high material removal.

Keywords: Non-water based slurry, LBO crystal, Fixed abrasive polishing, Surface roughness.

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Authors: Somayeh Komeylian

Abstract:

Array signal processing techniques have been recently developing in a variety application of the performance enhancement of receivers by refraining the power of jamming and interference signals. In this scenario, biases induced to the antenna array receiver degrade significantly the accurate estimation of the carrier phase. Owing to the integration of frequency becomes the carrier phase, we have obtained the unbiased doppler frequency for the high precision estimation of carrier phase. The unbiased characteristic of Doppler frequency to the power jamming and the other interference signals allows achieving the highly accurate estimation of phase carrier. In this study, we have rigorously investigated the unbiased characteristic of Doppler frequency to the variation of the antenna array geometries. The simulation results have efficiently verified that the Doppler frequency remains also unbiased and accurate to the variation of antenna array geometries.

Keywords: Array signal processing, unbiased Doppler frequency, GNSS, carrier phase, slowly fluctuating point target.

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Authors: Ali Dehghani, Mojtaba Hakimzadeh, Amir Habibi, Navid Mehdizadeh Afroozi

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In this paper an isolated wind-diesel hybrid power system has been considered for reactive power control study having an induction generator for wind power conversion and synchronous alternator with automatic voltage regulator (AVR) for diesel unit is presented. The dynamic voltage stability evaluation is dependent on small signal analysis considering a Static VAR Compensator (SVC) and IEEE type -I excitation system. It's shown that the variable reactive power source like SVC is crucial to meet the varying demand of reactive power by induction generator and load and to acquire an excellent voltage regulation of the system with minimum fluctuations. Integral square error (ISE) criterion can be used to evaluate the optimum setting of gain parameters. Finally the dynamic responses of the power systems considered with optimum gain setting will also be presented.

Keywords: SVC, Small Signal Stability, Reactive Power, Control, Hybrid System.

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Authors: Salise Oktay, Nilgün Kızılcan, Başak Bengü

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At present, formaldehyde-based adhesives such as urea formaldehyde (UF), melamine formaldehyde (MF), melamine-urea formaldehyde (MUF) etc. are mostly used in wood-based panel industry because of their high reactivity, chemical versatility and economic competitiveness. However, formaldehyde-based wood adhesives are produced from non-renewable resources. Hence, there has been a growing interest in the development of environment friendly, economically competitive, bio-based wood adhesives in order to meet wood-based panel industry requirements. In this study, as formaldehyde free adhesive, tannin and starch-based wood adhesive was synthesized. Citric acid and tartaric acid were used as hardener for the resin system. Solid content, viscosity and gel time analyzes of the prepared adhesive were performed in order to evaluate the adhesive processability. FTIR characterization technique was used to elucidate chemical structures of the cured adhesive samples. In order to evaluate the performance of the prepared bio-based resin formulation, particleboards were produced in laboratory scale and mechanical, physical properties of the boards were investigated. Besides, formaldehyde contents of the boards were determined by using perforator method. The obtained results revealed that the developed bio-based wood adhesive formulation can be a good potential candidate to use in wood-based panel industry with some developments.

Keywords: Wood adhesive, cornstarch, mimosa tannin, particleboard.

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Authors: Jong-Whoi Shin, Soon-Tai Park, Chong-Sun Hwang

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Active network was developed to solve the problem of the current sharing-based network–difficulty in applying new technology, service or standard, and duplicated operation at several protocol layers. Active network can transport the packet loaded with the executable codes, which enables to change the state of the network node. However, if the network node is placed in the sharing-based network, security and safety issues should be resolved. To satisfy this requirement, various security aspects are required such as authentication, authorization, confidentiality and integrity. Among these security components, the core factor is the encryption key. As a result, this study is designed to propose the scheme that manages the encryption key, which is used to provide security of the comprehensive active directory, based on the domain.

Keywords: Active Network, Domain-based Key Management, Security Components.

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Authors: Bu Seog Ju, Woo Young Jung

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A multi-panel PMC infilled system, using polymer matrix composite (PMC) material, was introduced as new conceptual design for seismic retrofitting. A proposed multi panel PMC infilled system was composed of two basic structural components: inner PMC sandwich infills and outer FRP damping panels. The PMC material had high stiffness-to-weight and strength-to-weight ratios. Therefore, the addition of PMC infill panels into existing structures would not significantly alter the weight of the structure, while providing substantial structural enhancement.

In this study, an equivalent linearized dynamic analysis for a proposed multi-panel PMC infilled frame was performed, in order to assess their effectiveness and their responses under the simulated earthquake loading. Upon comparing undamped (without PMC panel) and damped (with PMC panel) structures, numerical results showed that structural damping with passive interface damping layer could significantly enhance the seismic response.

Keywords: Polymer Matrix Composite (PMC), Panel, Piece-wise linear, Earthquake, FRP.

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Authors: Abdoullah Namdar, Fadzil Mat Yahaya

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Many synthetic additives have been using for improve cement mortar and concrete characteristics, but natural additive is a friendly environment option. The quantity of (2% and 4%) seashell powder has been replaced in cement mortar, and compared with plain cement mortar in early age of 7 days. The strain gauges have been installed on beams and cube, for monitoring fluctuation of flexural and compressive strength. Main objective of this paper is to study effect of linear static force on flexural and compressive strength of modified cement mortar. The results have been indicated that the replacement of appropriate proportion of seashell powder enhances cement mortar mechanical properties. The replacement of 2% seashell causes improvement of deflection, time to failure and maximum load to failure on concrete beam and cube, the same occurs for compressive modulus elasticity. Increase replacement of seashell to 4% reduces all flexural strength, compressive strength and strain of cement mortar.

Keywords: Compressive strength, flexural strength, compressive modulus elasticity, time to failure, deflection.

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Authors: Yasmin Nanabhay

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The paper scrutinizes the literature on accountability and non-accountability, and then presents an analysis of a South African case which demonstrated consequences of a lack of accountability. Ethical conduct displayed by members of the public sector is integral to creating a sustainable democratic government, which upholds the constitutional tenets of accountability, transparency and professional ethicality. Furthermore, a true constitutional democracy emphasises and advocates the notion of service leadership that nurtures public participation and engages with citizens in a positive manner. Ethical conduct and accountability in the public sector earns public trust; hence these are key principles in good governance. Yet, in the years since the advent of democracy in South Africa, the government has been plagued by rampant corruption and mal-administration by public officials and politicians in leadership positions. The control measures passed by government in an attempt to ensure ethicality and accountability within the public sector include codes of ethics, rules of conduct and the enactment of legislation. These are intended to shape the mindset of members of the public sector, with the ultimate aim of an efficient, effective, ethical, responsive and accountable public service. The purpose of the paper is to analyse control systems and accountability within the public sector and to present reasons for non-accountability by means of a selected case study. The selected case study is the corruption trial of Jackie Selebi, who served as National Commissioner of the South African Police Service but was dismissed from the post. The reasons for non-accountability in the public sector as well as recommendations based on the findings to enhance accountability will be undertaken. The case study demonstrates the experience and impact of corruption and/or mal-administration, as a result of a lack of accountability, which has contributed to the increasing loss of confidence in political leadership in the country as elsewhere in the world. The literature is applied to the erstwhile National Commissioner of the South African Police Service and President of Interpol, as a case study of non-accountability.

Keywords: Public sector, public accountability, internal control, oversight mechanisms, non-compliance, corruption, mal-administration.

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Authors: Abhinav Kumar, Raja Sekhar Bandaru, B Madhusudan Rao, Saket Kulkarni, Nilesh Ghatpande

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This paper proposes an algorithm which automatically aligns and stitches the component medical images (fluoroscopic) with varying degrees of overlap into a single composite image. The alignment method is based on similarity measure between the component images. As applied here the technique is intensity based rather than feature based. It works well in domains where feature based methods have difficulty, yet more robust than traditional correlation. Component images are stitched together using the new triangular averaging based blending algorithm. The quality of the resultant image is tested for photometric inconsistencies and geometric misalignments. This method cannot correct rotational, scale and perspective artifacts.

Keywords: Histogram Matching, Image Alignment, ImageStitching, Medical Imaging.

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Authors: Nikol Žižková, Šárka Keprdová, Rostislav Drochytka

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The paper focuses on the study of the properties of cement-based composites produced using secondary crystallization (crystalline additive). In this study, cement mortar made with secondary crystallization was exposed to an aggressive environment and the influence of secondary crystallization on the degradation of the cementitious composite was investigated. The results indicate that the crystalline additive contributed to increasing the resistance of the cement-based composite to the attack of the selected environments (sodium sulphate solution and ammonium chloride solution).

Keywords: Secondary crystallization, cement-based composites, durability.

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Authors: Uğur Çakır, Erol Sahin, Kemal Çomaklı, Aysegül Çokgez Kus

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Greenhouses offer us suitable conditions which can be controlled easily for the growth of the plant and they are made by using a covering material that allows the sun light entering into the system. Covering material can be glass, fiber glass, plastic or another transparent element. This study investigates the solar energy usability rates and solar energy benefitting rates of a semi-spherical (modified arch) type greenhouse system according to different orientations and positions which exists under climatic conditions of Bayburt. In the concept of this study it is tried to determine the best direction and best sizes of a semi-spherical greenhouse to get best solar benefit from the sun. To achieve this aim a modeling study is made by using MATLAB. However, this modeling study is run for some determined shapes and greenhouses it can be used for different shaped greenhouses or buildings. The basic parameters are determined as greenhouse azimuth angle, the rate of size of long edge to short and seasonal solar energy gaining of greenhouse. The optimum azimuth angles of 400, 300, 250, 200, 150, 100, 50 m2 modified arch greenhouse are 90o, 90o, 35o, 35o, 34o, 33o and 22o while their optimum k values (ratio of length to width) are 10, 10, 10, 10, 6, 4 and 4 respectively. Positioning the buildings in order to get more solar heat energy in winter and less in summer brings out energy and money savings and increases the comfort.

Keywords: Greenhousing, solar energy, direct radiation, renewable energy.

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Authors: Naser Ahmadi Sani, Karim Solaimani, Lida Razaghnia, Jalal Zandi

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In recent decades, rapid and incorrect changes in land-use have been associated with consequences such as natural resources degradation and environmental pollution. Detecting changes in land-use is one of the tools for natural resource management and assessment of changes in ecosystems. The target of this research is studying the land-use changes in Haraz basin with an area of 677000 hectares in a 15 years period (1996 to 2011) using LANDSAT data. Therefore, the quality of the images was first evaluated. Various enhancement methods for creating synthetic bonds were used in the analysis. Separate training sites were selected for each image. Then the images of each period were classified in 9 classes using supervised classification method and the maximum likelihood algorithm. Finally, the changes were extracted in GIS environment. The results showed that these changes are an alarm for the HARAZ basin status in future. The reason is that 27% of the area has been changed, which is related to changing the range lands to bare land and dry farming and also changing the dense forest to sparse forest, horticulture, farming land and residential area.

Keywords: HARAZ Basin, Change Detection, Land-use, Satellite Data.

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Authors: M. Baryshev, D.Vainauska, S. Kozireva, A.Karpovs

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Liposomal magnetofection is the most powerful nonviral method for the nucleic acid delivery into the cultured cancer cells and widely used for in vitro applications. Use of the static magnetic field condition may result in non-uniform distribution of aggregate complexes on the surface of cultured cells. To prevent this, we developed the new device which allows to concentrate aggregate complexes under dynamic magnetic field, assisting more contact of these complexes with cellular membrane and, possibly, stimulating endocytosis. Newly developed device for magnetofection under dynamic gradient magnetic field, “DynaFECTOR", was used to compare transfection efficiency of human liver hepatocellular carcinoma cell line HepG2 with that obtained by lipofection and magnetofection. The effect of two parameters on transfection efficiency, incubation time under dynamic magnetic field and rotation frequency of magnet, was estimated. Liposomal magnetofection under dynamic gradient magnetic field showed the highest transfection efficiency for HepG2 cells.

Keywords: Dynamic magnetic field, Lipofection, Magnetofection

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Authors: Tudor Barbu

Abstract:

An automatic moment-based texture segmentation approach is proposed in this paper. First, we describe the related work in this computer vision domain. Our texture feature extraction, the first part of the texture recognition process, produces a set of moment-based feature vectors. For each image pixel, a texture feature vector is computed as a sequence of area moments. Then, an automatic pixel classification approach is proposed. The feature vectors are clustered using an unsupervised classification algorithm, the optimal number of clusters being determined using a measure based on validation indexes. From the resulted pixel classes one determines easily the desired texture regions of the image.

Keywords: Image segmentation, moment-based texture analysis, automatic classification, validity indexes.

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Authors: M.Stella, M. Russo, D. Begušić

Abstract:

Ability of accurate and reliable location estimation in indoor environment is the key issue in developing great number of context aware applications and Location Based Services (LBS). Today, the most viable solution for localization is the Received Signal Strength (RSS) fingerprinting based approach using wireless local area network (WLAN). This paper presents two RSS fingerprinting based approaches – first we employ widely used WLAN based positioning as a reference system and then investigate the possibility of using GSM signals for positioning. To compare them, we developed a positioning system in real world environment, where realistic RSS measurements were collected. Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network was used as the approximation function that maps RSS fingerprints and locations. Experimental results indicate advantage of WLAN based approach in the sense of lower localization error compared to GSM based approach, but GSM signal coverage by far outreaches WLAN coverage and for some LBS services requiring less precise accuracy our results indicate that GSM positioning can also be a viable solution.

Keywords: Indoor positioning, WLAN, GSM, RSS, location fingerprints, neural network.

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Authors: H. Nejadriahi

Abstract:

This paper focuses on the performance of Iwan as one of the significant spaces in the traditional architecture of Iran. The aim of this study is to investigate on the role of Iwan in sustainability enhancement of traditional houses of different climatic regions of Iran. Iwan is considered as a semi-open space, which its form and location in the building highly depends to the climatic situation of that region. For that reason, Iwan is recognized as one of the sustainable elements in the traditional houses of Iran, which can provide more comfort with less use of energy. In this study, the history and emergence of Iwan in the traditional architecture of Iran as well as the concept of sustainability in architecture are explained briefly. Then, the change of performance or form of Iwan is analysed in different climatic regions of Iran in accordance to the sustainability concepts. The methods used in this study are descriptive and analytic. Results of this paper verify that studying the sustainability solutions in the traditional architecture of Iran, would be a valuable source of inspiration for the current designers to create an environmental and sustainable architecture for the future.

Keywords: Climatic regions of Iran, Iwan, sustainability, traditional houses.

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