Search results for: Cash Conversion Cycle.

Authors: Zixian Zhang, Shanliang Yao, Zile Huang, Zhaodong Wu, Xiaohui Zhu, Yong Yue, Jieming Ma

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Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) hold significant value for their capacity to undertake hazardous and labor-intensive operations over aquatic environments. Object detection tasks are significant in these applications. Nonetheless, the efficacy of USVs in object detection is impeded by several intrinsic challenges, including the intricate dispersal of obstacles, reflections emanating from coastal structures, and the presence of fog over water surfaces, among others. To address these problems, this paper provides a fusion method for USVs to effectively detect objects in the inland surface environment, utilizing vision sensors and 3+1D Millimeter-wave radar. The MMW radar is a complementary tool to vision sensors, offering reliable environmental data. This approach involves the conversion of the radar’s 3D point cloud into a 2D radar pseudo-image, thereby standardizing the format for radar and vision data by leveraging a point transformer. Furthermore, this paper proposes the development of a multi-source object detection network, named RV-YOLOX, which leverages radar-vision integration specifically tailored for inland waterway environments. The performance is evaluated on our self-recording waterways dataset. Compared with the YOLOX network, our fusion network significantly improves detection accuracy, especially for objects with bad light conditions.

Keywords: Inland waterways, object detection, YOLO, sensor fusion, self-attention, deep learning.

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Authors: Patrick O. Bobbie, Prince S. Attrams

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In recent times, the rapid change in new technologies has spurred up the way and manner records are handled in educational institutions. Also, there is a need for reliable access and ease-of use to these records, resulting in increased productivity in organizations. In academic institutions, such benefits help in quality assessments, institutional performance, and assessments of teaching and evaluation methods. Students in educational institutions benefit the most when advanced technologies are deployed in accessing records. This research paper discusses the use of biometric technologies coupled with smartcard technologies to provide a unique way of identifying students and matching their data to financial records to grant them access to restricted areas such as examination halls. The system developed in this paper, has an identity verification component as part of its main functionalities. A systematic software development cycle of analysis, design, coding, testing and support was used. The system provides a secured way of verifying student’s identity and real time verification of financial records. An advanced prototype version of the system has been developed for testing purposes.

Keywords: Biometrics, fingerprints, identity-verification, smartcards.

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Authors: Sanjeev Kumar, S. K. Nath

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Proper selection of welding parameters for getting excellent weld is a challenge. HAZ simulation helps in identifying suitable welding parameters like heating rate, cooling rate, peak temperature, and energy input. In this study, the influence of weld thermal cycle of heat affected zone (HAZ) is simulated for Submerged Arc Welding (SAW) using Gleeble ® 3800 thermomechanical simulator. A (Micro-alloyed) MA steel plate of thickness 18 mm having yield strength 450MPa is used for making test specimens. Determination of the mechanical properties of weld simulated specimens including Charpy V-notch toughness and hardness is performed. Peak temperatures of 1300°C, 1150°C, 1000°C, 900°C, 800°C, heat energy input of 22KJ/cm and preheat temperatures of 30°C have been used with Rykalin-3D simulation model. It is found that the impact toughness (75J) is the best for the simulated HAZ specimen at the peak temperature 900ºC. For parent steel, impact toughness value is 26.8J at -50°C in transverse direction.

Keywords: HAZ Simulation, Mechanical Properties, Peak Temperature, Ship hull steel, and Weldability.

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Authors: Cornelia-Eugenia Munteanu

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The goal of this paper is to present the diagnostic contribution that the screening instrument, Mini-Mental State Examination-2: Expanded Version (MMSE-2:EV), brings in detecting the cognitive impairment or in monitoring the progress of degenerative disorders. The diagnostic signification is underlined by the interpretation of the MMSE-2:EV scores, resulted from the test application to patients with mild and major neurocognitive disorders. The cases were selected from current practice, in order to cover vast and significant neurocognitive pathology: mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, mixed dementia, Parkinson’s disease, conversion of the mild cognitive impairment into Alzheimer’s disease. The MMSE-2:EV version was used: it was applied one month after the initial assessment, three months after the first reevaluation and then every six months, alternating the blue and red forms. Correlated with age and educational level, the raw scores were converted in T scores and then, with the mean and the standard deviation, the z scores were calculated. The differences of raw scores between the evaluations were analyzed from the point of view of statistic signification, in order to establish the progression in time of the disease. The results indicated that the psycho-diagnostic approach for the evaluation of the cognitive impairment with MMSE-2:EV is safe and the application interval is optimal. In clinical settings with a large flux of patients, the application of the MMSE-2:EV is a safe and fast psychodiagnostic solution. The clinicians can draw objective decisions and for the patients: it does not take too much time and energy, it does not bother them and it doesn’t force them to travel frequently.

Keywords: MMSE-2, dementia, cognitive impairment, neuropsychology.

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Authors: Vaso K. Kapnopoulou, Piero Caridis

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The fatigue of ship structural details is of major concern in the maritime industry as it can generate fracture issues that may compromise structural integrity. In the present study, a fatigue analysis of the lower hopper knuckle connection of a bulk carrier was conducted using the Finite Element Method by means of ABAQUS/CAE software. The fatigue life was calculated using Miner’s Rule and the long-term distribution of stress range by the use of the two-parameter Weibull distribution. The cumulative damage ratio was estimated using the fatigue damage resulting from the stress range occurring at each load condition. For this purpose, a cargo hold model was first generated, which extends over the length of two holds (the mid-hold and half of each of the adjacent holds) and transversely over the full breadth of the hull girder. Following that, a submodel of the area of interest was extracted in order to calculate the hot spot stress of the connection and to estimate the fatigue life of the structural detail. Two hot spot locations were identified; one at the top layer of the inner bottom plate and one at the top layer of the hopper plate. The IACS Common Structural Rules (CSR) require that specific dynamic load cases for each loading condition are assessed. Following this, the dynamic load case that causes the highest stress range at each loading condition should be used in the fatigue analysis for the calculation of the cumulative fatigue damage ratio. Each load case has a different effect on ship hull response. Of main concern, when assessing the fatigue strength of the lower hopper knuckle connection, was the determination of the maximum, i.e. the critical value of the stress range, which acts in a direction normal to the weld toe line. This acts in the transverse direction, that is, perpendicularly to the ship's centerline axis. The load cases were explored both theoretically and numerically in order to establish the one that causes the highest damage to the location examined. The most severe one was identified to be the load case induced by beam sea condition where the encountered wave comes from the starboard. At the level of the cargo hold model, the model was assumed to be simply supported at its ends. A coarse mesh was generated in order to represent the overall stiffness of the structure. The elements employed were quadrilateral shell elements, each having four integration points. A linear elastic analysis was performed because linear elastic material behavior can be presumed, since only localized yielding is allowed by most design codes. At the submodel level, the displacements of the analysis of the cargo hold model to the outer region nodes of the submodel acted as boundary conditions and applied loading for the submodel. In order to calculate the hot spot stress at the hot spot locations, a very fine mesh zone was generated and used. The fatigue life of the detail was found to be 16.4 years which is lower than the design fatigue life of the structure (25 years), making this location vulnerable to fatigue fracture issues. Moreover, the loading conditions that induce the most damage to the location were found to be the various ballasting conditions.

Keywords: Lower hopper knuckle, high cycle fatigue, finite element method, dynamic load cases.

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Authors: Youkyung Park, SeungYup Kang, SungHo Kim, SimKyun Yook

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IMCS is Integrated Monitoring and Control System for thermal power plant. This system consists of mainly two parts; controllers and OIS (Operator Interface System). These two parts are connected by Ethernet-based communication. The controller side of communication is managed by CNet module and OIS side is managed by data server of OIS. CNet module sends the data of controller to data server and receives commend data from data server. To minimizes or balance the load of data server, this module buffers data created by controller at every cycle and send buffered data to data server on request of data server. For multiple data server, this module manages the connection line with each data server and response for each request from multiple data server. CNet module is included in each controller of redundant system. When controller fail-over happens on redundant system, this module can provide data of controller to data sever without loss. This paper presents three main features – separation of get task, usage of ring buffer and monitoring communication status –of CNet module to carry out these functions.

Keywords: Ethernet communication, DCS, power plant, ring buffer, data integrity

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Authors: Vikas Rastogi, Vipan Kumar, Loveleen Kumar Bhagi

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The present work deals with the structural analysis of turbine blades and modeling of turbine blades. A common failure mode for turbine machines is high cycle of fatigue of compressor and turbine blades due to high dynamic stresses caused by blade vibration and resonance within the operation range of the machinery. In this work, proper damping system will be analyzed to reduce the vibrating blade. The main focus of the work is the modeling of under platform damper to evaluate the dynamic analysis of turbine-blade vibrations. The system is analyzed using Bond graph technique. Bond graph is one of the most convenient ways to represent a system from the physical aspect in foreground. It has advantage of putting together multi-energy domains of a system in a single representation in a unified manner. The bond graph model of dry friction damper is simulated on SYMBOLS-shakti® software. In this work, the blades are modeled as Timoshenko beam. Blade Vibrations under different working conditions are being analyzed numerically.

Keywords: Turbine blade vibrations, Friction dampers, Timoshenko Beam, Bond graph modeling.

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Authors: Marina Franulovic, Robert Basan, Bozidar Krizan

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Constitutive modeling of material behavior is becoming increasingly important in prediction of possible failures in highly loaded engineering components, and consequently, optimization of their design. In order to account for large number of phenomena that occur in the material during operation, such as kinematic hardening effect in low cycle fatigue behavior of steels, complex nonlinear material models are used ever more frequently, despite of the complexity of determination of their parameters. As a method for the determination of these parameters, genetic algorithm is good choice because of its capability to provide very good approximation of the solution in systems with large number of unknown variables. For the application of genetic algorithm to parameter identification, inverse analysis must be primarily defined. It is used as a tool to fine-tune calculated stress-strain values with experimental ones. In order to choose proper objective function for inverse analysis among already existent and newly developed functions, the research is performed to investigate its influence on material behavior modeling.

Keywords: Genetic algorithm, kinematic hardening, material model, objective function

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Authors: Jung-Ho Moon, Tae Kwon Ha

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This paper presents a car parking monitoring system using wireless sensor networks. Multiple sensor nodes and a sink node, a gateway, and a server constitute a wireless network for monitoring a parking lot. Each of the sensor nodes is equipped with a 3-axis AMR sensor and deployed in the center of a parking space. Each sensor node reads its sensor values periodically and transmits the data to the sink node if the current and immediate past sensor values show a difference exceeding a threshold value. The sensor nodes and sink node use the 448 MHz band for wireless communication. Since RF transmission only occurs when sensor values show abrupt changes, the number of RF transmission operations is reduced and battery power can be conserved. The data from the sensor nodes reach the server via the sink node and gateway. The server determines which parking spaces are taken by cars based upon the received sensor data and reference values. The reference values are average sensor values measured by each sensor node when the corresponding parking spot is not occupied by a vehicle. Because the decision making is done by the server, the computational burden of the sensor node is relieved, which helps reduce the duty cycle of the sensor node.

Keywords: Car parking monitoring, magnetometer, sensor node, wireless sensor network.

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Authors: Madhukar Nagare, Pankaj Dutta

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Inventory decisional environment of short life-cycle products is full of uncertainties arising from randomness and fuzziness of input parameters like customer demand requiring modeling under hybrid uncertainty. Prior inventory models incorporating fuzzy demand have unfortunately ignored stochastic variation of demand. This paper determines an unambiguous optimal order quantity from a set of n fuzzy observations in a newsvendor inventory setting in presence of fuzzy random variable demand capturing both fuzzy perception and randomness of customer demand. The stress of this paper is in providing solution procedure that attains optimality in two steps with demand information availability in linguistic phrases leading to fuzziness along with stochastic variation. The first step of solution procedure identifies and prefers one best fuzzy opinion out of all expert opinions and the second step determines optimal order quantity from the selected event that maximizes profit. The model and solution procedure is illustrated with a numerical example.

Keywords: Fuzzy expected value, Fuzzy random demand, Hybrid uncertainty, Optimal order quantity, Single-period inventory

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Authors: W. Loongyai, N. Saengsawang, W. Danvilai, C. Kridtayopas, P. Sopannarath, C. Bunchasak

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Betong chicken is a slow growing and a lean strain of chicken, while the rapid growth of broiler is accompanied by increased fat. We investigated the growth performance, fat accumulations, lipid serum biochemical levels and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) gene expression of female Betong (KU line) at the age of 4 and 6 weeks. A total of 80 female Betong chickens (KU line) and 80 female broiler chickens were reared under open system (each group had 4 replicates of 20 chicks per pen). The results showed that feed intake and average daily gain (ADG) of broiler chicken were significantly higher than Betong (KU line) (P < 0.01), while feed conversion ratio (FCR) of Betong (KU line) at week 6 were significantly lower than broiler chicken (P < 0.01) at 6 weeks. At 4 and 6 weeks, two birds per replicate were randomly selected and slaughtered. Carcass weight did not significantly differ between treatments; the percentage of abdominal fat and subcutaneous fat yield was higher in the broiler (P < 0.01) at 4 and 6 week. Total cholesterol and LDL level of broiler were higher than Betong (KU line) at 4 and 6 weeks (P < 0.05). Abdominal fat samples were collected for total RNA extraction. The cDNA was amplified using primers specific for LPL gene expression and analysed using real-time PCR. The results showed that the expression of LPL gene was not different when compared between Betong (KU line) and broiler chickens at the age of 4 and 6 weeks (P > 0.05). Our results indicated that broiler chickens had high growth rate and fat accumulation when compared with Betong (KU line) chickens, whereas LPL gene expression did not differ between breeds.

Keywords: Lipoprotein lipase gene, Betong (KU line), broiler, abdominal fat, gene expression.

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Authors: Dong Wook Lee, Seung Hyun Kim

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Trial blasting is conducted to identify the characteristics of the blasting of the applicable ground before production blasting and to investigate various problems posed by blasting. The methods and pattern of production blasting are determined based on an analysis of the results of trial blasting. The bedrock in Jeju Island, South Korea is formed through the volcanic activities unlike the inland areas, composed of porous basalt. Trial blasting showed that the blast vibration frequency of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks in the inland areas is in a high frequency band of about 80 Hz while the blast vibration frequency of Jeju Island is in a low frequency band of 10~25 Hz. The frequency band is analyzed to be low due to the large cycle of blasting pattern as blast vibration passes through the layered structured ground layer where the rock formation and clickers irregularly repeat. In addition, the blast vibration equation derived from trial blasting was R: 0.885, S.E: 0.216 when applying the square root scaled distance (SRSD) relatively suitable for long distance, estimated at the confidence level of 95%.

Keywords: Attenuation index, basaltic ground, blasting vibration constant, blast vibration equation, clinker layer.

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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: Francis Chinweuba Eboh, Peter Ahlström, Tobias Richards

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Entropy, as an outcome of the second law of thermodynamics, measures the level of irreversibility associated with any process. The identification and reduction of irreversibility in the energy conversion process helps to improve the efficiency of the system. The entropy of pure substances known as absolute entropy is determined at an absolute reference point and is useful in the thermodynamic analysis of chemical reactions; however, municipal solid waste (MSW) is a structurally complicated material with unknown absolute entropy. In this work, an empirical model to calculate the absolute entropy of MSW based on the content of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and chlorine on a dry ash free basis (daf) is presented. The proposed model was derived from 117 relevant organic substances which represent the main constituents in MSW with known standard entropies using statistical analysis. The substances were divided into different waste fractions; namely, food, wood/paper, textiles/rubber and plastics waste and the standard entropies of each waste fraction and for the complete mixture were calculated. The correlation of the standard entropy of the complete waste mixture derived was found to be s^o_msw= 0.0101C + 0.0630H + 0.0106O + 0.0108N + 0.0155S + 0.0084Cl (kJ.K^-1.kg) and the present correlation can be used for estimating the absolute entropy of MSW by using the elemental compositions of the fuel within the range of 10.3% ≤ C ≤ 95.1%, 0.0% ≤ H ≤ 14.3%, 0.0% ≤ O ≤ 71.1%, 0.0 ≤ N ≤ 66.7%, 0.0% ≤ S ≤ 42.1%, 0.0% ≤ Cl ≤ 89.7%. The model is also applicable for the efficient modelling of a combustion system in a waste-to-energy plant.

Keywords: Absolute entropy, irreversibility, municipal solid waste, waste-to-energy.

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Authors: Joserra Díez, Ainhoa Meñika, Iñaki Sanz-Azkue, Arritokieta Ortuzar

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Biodiversity provides humans with a great range of ecosystemic services; it is therefore an indispensable resource and a legacy to coming generations. However, in the last decades, the increasing exploitation of the Planet has caused a great loss of biodiversity and its acquaintance has decreased remarkably; especially in urbanized areas, due to the decreasing attachment of humans to nature. Yet, the Primary Education curriculum primes the identification of flora and fauna to guarantee the knowledge of children on their surroundings, so that they care for the environment as well as for themselves. In order to produce effective didactic material that meets the needs of both teachers and pupils, it is fundamental to diagnose the current situation. In the present work, the knowledge on biodiversity of 3^rd cycle Primary Education students in Biscay (n=98) and its relation to the size of the town/city of their school is discussed. Two tests have been used with such aim: one for tree identification and the other one so that the students enumerated the species of trees and animals they knew. Results reveal that knowledge of students on tree identification is scarce regardless the size of the city/town and of their school. On the other hand, animal species are better known than tree species.

Keywords: Biodiversity, population, tree identification, animal identification.

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Authors: Mansi Jhamb, R. K. Sharma, A. K. Gupta

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The distribution of a single global clock across a chip has become the major design bottleneck for high performance VLSI systems owing to the power dissipation, process variability and multicycle cross-chip signaling. A Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture partitioned into several synchronous blocks has become a promising approach for attaining fine-grain power management at the system level. In a NoC architecture the communication between the blocks is handled asynchronously. To interface these blocks on a chip operating at different frequencies, an asynchronous FIFO interface is inevitable. However, these asynchronous FIFOs are not required if adjacent blocks belong to the same clock domain. In this paper, we have designed and analyzed a 16-bit asynchronous micropipelined FIFO of depth four, with the awareness of place and route on an FPGA device. We have used a commercially available Spartan 3 device and designed a high speed implementation of the asynchronous 4-phase micropipeline. The asynchronous FIFO implemented on the FPGA device shows 76 Mb/s throughput and a handshake cycle of 109 ns for write and 101.3 ns for read at the simulation under the worst case operating conditions (voltage = 0.95V) on a working chip at the room temperature.

Keywords: Asynchronous, FIFO, FPGA, GALS, Network-on- Chip (NoC), VHDL.

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Authors: Worachat Wannawong, Usa W. Humphries, Prungchan Wongwises, Suphat Vongvisessomjai, Wiriya Lueangaram

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A numerical analysis of wave and hydrodynamic models is used to investigate the influence of WAve and Storm Surge (WASS) in the regional and coastal zones. The numerical analyzed system consists of the WAve Model Cycle 4 (WAMC4) and the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) which used to solve the energy balance and primitive equations respectively. The results of both models presented the incorporated surface wave in the regional zone affected the coastal storm surge zone. Specifically, the results indicated that the WASS generally under the approximation is not only the peak surge but also the coastal water level drop which can also cause substantial impact on the coastal environment. The wave–induced surface stress affected the storm surge can significantly improve storm surge prediction. Finally, the calibration of wave module according to the minimum error of the significant wave height (Hs) is not necessarily result in the optimum wave module in the WASS analyzed system for the WASS prediction.

Keywords: energy balance equation, numerical analysis, primitiveequation, storm surge, wave.

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Authors: S. Arun Rajan, S. Bhavani

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Wireless sensor networks can be tiny, low cost, intelligent sensors connected with advanced communication systems. WSNs have pulled in significant consideration as a matter of fact that, industrial as well as medical solicitations employ these in monitoring targets, conservational observation, obstacle exposure, movement regulator etc. In these applications, sensor hubs are thickly sent in the unattended environment with little non-rechargeable batteries. This constraint requires energy-efficient systems to drag out the system lifetime. There are redundancies in data sent over the network. To overcome this, multiple virtual spine scheduling has been presented. Such networks problems are called Maximum Lifetime Backbone Scheduling (MLBS) problems. Though this sleep wake cycle reduces radio usage, improvement can be made in the path in which the group heads stay selected. Cluster head selection with emphasis on geometrical relation of the system will enhance the load sharing among the nodes. Also the data are analyzed to reduce redundant transmission. Multi-hop communication will facilitate lighter loads on the network.

Keywords: WSN, wireless sensor networks, MLBS, maximum lifetime backbone scheduling.

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Authors: N. Boontian

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Biological conversion of biomass to methane has received increasing attention in recent years. Grasses have been explored for their potential anaerobic digestion to methane. In this review, extensive literature data have been tabulated and classified. The influences of several parameters on the potential of these feedstocks to produce methane are presented. Lignocellulosic biomass represents a mostly unused source for biogas and ethanol production. Many factors, including lignin content, crystallinity of cellulose, and particle size, limit the digestibility of the hemicellulose and cellulose present in the lignocellulosic biomass. Pretreatments have used to improve the digestibility of the lignocellulosic biomass. Each pretreatment has its own effects on cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, the three main components of lignocellulosic biomass. Solidstate anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) generally occurs at solid concentrations higher than 15%. In contrast, liquid anaerobic digestion (AD) handles feedstocks with solid concentrations between 0.5% and 15%. Animal manure, sewage sludge, and food waste are generally treated by liquid AD, while organic fractions of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) and lignocellulosic biomass such as crop residues and energy crops can be processed through SS-AD. An increase in operating temperature can improve both the biogas yield and the production efficiency, other practices such as using AD digestate or leachate as an inoculant or decreasing the solid content may increase biogas yield but have negative impact on production efficiency. Focus is placed on substrate pretreatment in anaerobic digestion (AD) as a means of increasing biogas yields using today’s diversified substrate sources.

Keywords: Anaerobic digestion, Lignocellulosic biomass, Methane production, Optimization, Pretreatment.

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Authors: Shinpei Ogata, Yoshitaka Aoki, Hirotaka Okuda, Saeko Matsuura

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A key to success of high quality software development is to define valid and feasible requirements specification. We have proposed a method of model-driven requirements analysis using Unified Modeling Language (UML). The main feature of our method is to automatically generate a Web user interface mock-up from UML requirements analysis model so that we can confirm validity of input/output data for each page and page transition on the system by directly operating the mock-up. This paper proposes a support method to check the validity of a data life cycle by using a model checking tool “UPPAAL" focusing on CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete). Exhaustive checking improves the quality of requirements analysis model which are validated by the customers through automatically generated mock-up. The effectiveness of our method is discussed by a case study of requirements modeling of two small projects which are a library management system and a supportive sales system for text books in a university.

Keywords: CRUD, Model Checking, Model Driven Development, Requirements Analysis, Unified Modeling Language, UPPAAL.

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Authors: Mert Tosun, Tuğba Tosun

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The evaporator is the utmost important component in the refrigeration system, since it enables the refrigerant to draw heat from the desired environment, i.e. the refrigerated space. Studies are being conducted on this component which generally affects the performance of the system, where energy efficient products are important. This study was designed to enhance the effectiveness of the evaporator in the refrigeration cycle of a domestic refrigerator by adjusting the capillary tube length, refrigerant amount, and the evaporator pipe diameter to reduce energy consumption. The experiments were conducted under identical thermal and ambient conditions. Experiment data were analysed using the Design of Experiment (DOE) technique which is a six-sigma method to determine effects of parameters. As a result, it has been determined that the most important parameters affecting the evaporator performance among the selected parameters are found to be the refrigerant amount and pipe diameter. It has been determined that the minimum energy consumption is 6-mm pipe diameter and 16-g refrigerant. It has also been noted that the overall consumption of the experiment sample decreased by 16.6% with respect to the reference system, which has 7-mm pipe diameter and 18-g refrigerant.

Keywords: Heat exchanger, refrigerator, design of experiment, energy consumption.

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Authors: Hamide Özyürek, Metin Yılmaz

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Standard processes, similar and limited production lines, the production of high direct costs will be more accurate than the use of parts of the traditional cost systems in the literature. However, direct costs, overhead expenses, in turn, decrease the burden of increasingly sophisticated production facilities, a situation that led the researchers to look for the cost of traditional systems of alternative techniques. Variety cost management approaches for example Total quality management (TQM), just-in-time (JIT), benchmarking, kaizen costing, targeting cost, life cycle costs (LLC), activity-based costing (ABC) value engineering have been introduced. Management and cost applications have changed over the past decade and will continue to change. Modern cost systems can provide relevant and accurate cost information. These methods provide the decisions about customer, product and process improvement. The aim of study is to describe and explain the adoption and application of costing systems in SME. This purpose reports on a survey conducted during 2014 small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Ankara. The survey results were evaluated using SPSS18 package program.

Keywords: Cost Accounting, Costing, Modern Costing Systems, Managerial Accounting.

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Authors: I. U. Wickramasinghe, D. J. Hargreaves, D. V. De Pellegrin

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This paper presents a strategy to predict the lifetime of rails subjected to large rolling contact loads that induce ratchetting strains in the rail head. A critical element concept is used to calculate the number of loading cycles needed for crack initiation to occur in the rail head surface. In this technique the finite element method (FEM) is used to determine the maximum equivalent ratchetting strain per load cycle, which is calculated by combining longitudinal and shear stains in the critical element. This technique builds on a previously developed critical plane concept that has been used to calculate the number of cycles to crack initiation in rolling contact fatigue under ratchetting failure conditions. The critical element concept simplifies the analytical difficulties of critical plane analysis. Finite element analysis (FEA) is used to identify the critical element in the mesh, and then the strain values of the critical element are used to calculate the ratchetting rate analytically. Finally, a ratchetting criterion is used to calculate the number of cycles to crack initiation from the ratchetting rate calculated.

Keywords: Critical element analysis, finite element modeling (FEM), wheel/rail contact.

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Authors: Alireza Vafaei Sadr, Vida Abedi, Jiang Li, Ramin Zand

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Missing data is a common challenge in medical research and can lead to biased or incomplete results. When the data bias leaks into models, it further exacerbates health disparities; biased algorithms can lead to misclassification and reduced resource allocation and monitoring as part of prevention strategies for certain minorities and vulnerable segments of patient populations, which in turn further reduce data footprint from the same population – thus, a vicious cycle. This study compares the performance of six imputation techniques grouped into Linear and Non-Linear models, on two different real-world electronic health records (EHRs) datasets, representing 17864 patient records. The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) are used as performance metrics, and the results show that the Linear models outperformed the Non-Linear models in terms of both metrics. These results suggest that sometimes Linear models might be an optimal choice for imputation in laboratory variables in terms of imputation efficiency and uncertainty of predicted values.

Keywords: EHR, Machine Learning, imputation, laboratory variables, algorithmic bias.

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Authors: I Made Darmayuda, Chai Tshun Chuan Kevin, Je Minkyu

Abstract:

Plenty researches have reported techniques to harvest energy from piezoelectric transducer. In the earlier years, the researches mainly report linear energy harvesting techniques whereby interface circuitry is designed to have input impedance that match with the impedance of the piezoelectric transducer. In recent years non-linear techniques become more popular. The non-linear technique employs voltage waveform manipulation to boost the available-for-extraction energy at the time of energy transfer.  The fact that non-linear energy extraction provides larger available-for-extraction energy doesn’t mean the linear energy extraction is completely obsolete. In some scenarios, such as where initial power is not available, linear energy extraction is still preferred. A modified Buck Boost circuit which is capable of harvesting piezoelectric energy using both linear and non-linear techniques is reported in this paper. Efficiency of at least 64% can be achieved using this circuit. For linear extraction, the modified Buck Boost circuit is controlled using a fix frequency and duty cycle clock. A voltage sensor and a pulse generator are added as the controller for the non-linear extraction technique. 

Keywords: Buck boost, energy harvester, linear energy harvester, non-linear energy harvester, piezoelectric, synchronized charge extraction.

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Authors: R-C.Buturca, C. Gasol, D. Scarpete, X. Gabarrell

Abstract:

Considering the increasing need of biofuels in Europe and the legislative requirements of the European Union it is needed to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions of biofuels life cycle. In this article a carbon footprint analysis to quantify these gases emitted during production and use of Romanian rapeseed oil (RO) and biodiesel from rapeseed oil (RME) was conducted. The functional unit was considered the LHV of diesel oil of 42.8 MJ·kg^-1 corresponding to 1.15kg. of RO and 1.10 kg. of RME. When the 3 fuels were compared, the results show important benefits when using rapeseed oil or biodiesel instead of diesel. The most impacting stage in terms of GHG emissions is the use of the fuels. In this stage, rapeseed oil registers a total quantity of 3,229 kg CO₂eq.·FU^-1 and biodiesel register a total quantity of 3,088 kg CO₂eq.·FU^-1 while mineral diesel registers a total quantity of 3,156 kg CO₂eq.·FU^-1 emitted in the air. Taking into account that rape plant absorbed during growth stage the same quantity of CO₂ as emitted into atmosphere during usage stage of the fuel, when compared the three fuels, rapeseed oil and biodiesel obtain obvious benefits against fossil diesel. Results show that by substituting diesel with RO a total quantity of 5,663 kg. CO₂eq.·FU^-1 would be saved while using biodiesel a total quantity of 5,570 kg. CO₂eq.·FU^-1 can be saved.

Keywords: Biodiesel, carbon footprint, rapeseed.

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Authors: W. Ketren, J. Wannapeera, Z. Heishun, A. Ryuichi, K. Toshiteru, M. Kouichi, O. Hideaki

Abstract:

Degradative solvent extraction is the method developed for biomass upgrading by dewatering and fractionation of biomass under the mild condition. However, the conversion mechanism of the degradative solvent extraction method has not been fully understood so far. The rice straw was treated in 1-methylnaphthalene (1-MN) at a different solvent-treatment temperature varied from 250 to 350 ^oC with the residence time for 60 min. The liquid membrane-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) technique is applied to study the processing mechanism in-depth without separation of the solvent. It has been found that the strength of the oxygen-hydrogen stretching  (3600-3100 cm^-1) decreased slightly with increasing temperature in the range of 300-350 ^oC. The decrease of the hydroxyl group in the solvent soluble suggested dehydration reaction taking place between 300 and 350 ^oC. FTIR spectra in the carbonyl stretching region (1800-1600 cm^-1) revealed the presence of esters groups, carboxylic acid and ketonic groups in the solvent-soluble of biomass. The carboxylic acid increased in the range of 200 to 250 ^oC and then decreased. The prevailing of aromatic groups showed that the aromatization took place during extraction at above 250 ^oC. From 300 to 350 ^oC, the carbonyl functional groups in the solvent-soluble noticeably decreased. The removal of the carboxylic acid and the decrease of esters into the form of carbon dioxide indicated that the decarboxylation reaction occurred during the extraction process.

Keywords: Biomass upgrading, liquid membrane-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, FTIR, degradative solvent extraction, mechanism.

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Authors: R. Sarathi, G. Koperundevi

Abstract:

Design of Converter transformer insulation is a major challenge. The insulation of these transformers is stressed by both AC and DC voltages. Particle contamination is one of the major problems in insulation structures, as they generate partial discharges leading it to major failure of insulation. Similarly corona discharges occur in transformer insulation. This partial discharge due to particle movement / corona formation in insulation structure under different voltage wave shapes, are different. In the present study, UHF technique is adopted to understand the discharge activity and could be realized that the characteristics of UHF signal generated under low and high fields are different. In the case of corona generated signal, the frequency content of the UHF sensor output lies in the range 0.3-1.2 GHz and is not much varied except for its increase in magnitude of discharge with the increase in applied voltage. It is realized that the current signal injected due to partial discharges/corona is about 4ns duration measured for first one half cycle. Wavelet technique is adopted in the present study. It allows one to identify the frequency content present in the signal at different instant of time. The STD-MRA analysis helps one to identify the frequency band in which the energy content of the UHF signal is maximum.

Keywords: Contamination, Insulation, Partial Discharges, Transformer oil, UHF sensors.

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Authors: Heba F. Hozyen, Hodallah H. Ahmed, S. I. A. Shalaby, G. E. S. Essawy

Abstract:

Biochemical and hormonal changes that occur in both follicular fluid and blood are involved in the control of ovarian physiology. The present study was conducted on follicular fluid and serum samples obtained from 708 buffaloes. Samples were examined for estradiol, progesterone, and cholesterol concentrations in relation to seasonal changes, ovarian follicular size, and stage of estrous cycle. The obtained results revealed that follicular fluid and serum levels of estradiol, progesterone, and cholesterol were significantly lower during summer and autumn when compared to winter and spring seasons. With the increase in follicular size, the follicular fluid levels of progesterone and cholesterol were significantly decreased, while estradiol levels were significantly increased. Estradiol and progesterone levels were significantly higher in follicular fluid than blood, while cholesterol was significantly lower in follicular fluid than serum. In conclusion, the current study threw a light on the hormonal changes in the follicular fluid and blood under the effect of heat stress which could be related to the low fertility of buffalo in the summer.

Keywords: Buffalo, follicular fluid, follicular development, seasonal changes, steroids.

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Authors: Shiji Hu, Lei Li, Wanting Zhou, Daohong Yang

Abstract:

The data encryption is the foundation of today’s communication. On this basis, to improve the speed of data encryption and decryption is always an important goal for high-speed applications. This paper proposed an elliptic curve crypto processor architecture based on SM2 prime field. Regarding hardware implementation, we optimized the algorithms in different stages of the structure. For modulo operation on finite field, we proposed an optimized improvement of the Karatsuba-Ofman multiplication algorithm and shortened the critical path through the pipeline structure in the algorithm implementation. Based on SM2 recommended prime field, a fast modular reduction algorithm is used to reduce 512-bit data obtained from the multiplication unit. The radix-4 extended Euclidean algorithm was used to realize the conversion between the affine coordinate system and the Jacobi projective coordinate system. In the parallel scheduling point operations on elliptic curves, we proposed a three-level parallel structure of point addition and point double based on the Jacobian projective coordinate system. Combined with the scalar multiplication algorithm, we added mutual pre-operation to the point addition and double point operation to improve the efficiency of the scalar point multiplication. The proposed ECC hardware architecture was verified and implemented on Xilinx Virtex-7 and ZYNQ-7 platforms, and each 256-bit scalar multiplication operation took 0.275ms. The performance for handling scalar multiplication is 32 times that of CPU (dual-core ARM Cortex-A9).

Keywords: Elliptic curve cryptosystems, SM2, modular multiplication, point multiplication.

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