Search results for: RLT test results

Authors: Saeed Mian Qaisar, Laurent Fesquet, Marc Renaudin

Abstract:

Mostly the real life signals are time varying in nature. For proper characterization of such signals, time-frequency representation is required. The STFT (short-time Fourier transform) is a classical tool used for this purpose. The limitation of the STFT is its fixed time-frequency resolution. Thus, an enhanced version of the STFT, which is based on the cross-level sampling, is devised. It can adapt the sampling frequency and the window function length by following the input signal local variations. Therefore, it provides an adaptive resolution time-frequency representation of the input. The computational complexity of the proposed STFT is deduced and compared to the classical one. The results show a significant gain of the computational efficiency and hence of the processing power. The processing error of the proposed technique is also discussed.

Keywords: Level Crossing Sampling, Activity Selection, Adaptive Resolution Analysis, Computational Complexity

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1243

Authors: Mina Alibeigi, Sattar Hashemi, Ali Hamzeh

Abstract:

Since dealing with high dimensional data is computationally complex and sometimes even intractable, recently several feature reductions methods have been developed to reduce the dimensionality of the data in order to simplify the calculation analysis in various applications such as text categorization, signal processing, image retrieval, gene expressions and etc. Among feature reduction techniques, feature selection is one the most popular methods due to the preservation of the original features. In this paper, we propose a new unsupervised feature selection method which will remove redundant features from the original feature space by the use of probability density functions of various features. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, popular feature selection methods have been implemented and compared. Experimental results on the several datasets derived from UCI repository database, illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed methods in comparison with the other compared methods in terms of both classification accuracy and the number of selected features.

Keywords: Feature, Feature Selection, Filter, Probability Density Function

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2055

Authors: A.Y. Bani Hashim, N.A. Abu Osman, W.A.B. Wan Abas, L. Abdul Latif

Abstract:

The unique structural configuration found in human foot allows easy walking. Similar movement is hard to imitate even for an ape. It is obvious that human ambulation relates to the foot structure itself. Suppose the bones are represented as vertices and the joints as edges. This leads to the development of a special graph that represents human foot. On a footprint there are point-ofcontacts which have contact with the ground. It involves specific vertices. Theoretically, for an ideal ambulation, these points provide reactions onto the ground or the static equilibrium forces. They are arranged in sequence in form of a path. The ambulating footprint follows this path. Having the human foot graph and the path crossbred, it results in a representation that describes the profile of an ideal ambulation. This profile cites the locations where the point-of-contact experience normal reaction forces. It highlights the significant of these points.

Keywords: Ambulation, edge, foot, graph, vertex.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1132

Authors: Bin Cai, Shilong Wang, Haibo Hu

Abstract:

The job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is a notoriously difficult problem in combinatorial optimization. This paper presents a hybrid artificial immune system for the JSSP with the objective of minimizing makespan. The proposed approach combines the artificial immune system, which has a powerful global exploration capability, with the local search method, which can exploit the optimal antibody. The antibody coding scheme is based on the operation based representation. The decoding procedure limits the search space to the set of full active schedules. In each generation, a local search heuristic based on the neighborhood structure proposed by Nowicki and Smutnicki is applied to improve the solutions. The approach is tested on 43 benchmark problems taken from the literature and compared with other approaches. The computation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Artificial immune system, Job shop scheduling problem, Local search, Metaheuristic algorithm

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1902

Authors: Maznah Abdullah, Mohammed Quaddus

Abstract:

Bio-demographic diversity which refers to age and gender of members in a team, has been frequently identified to influence team innovation directly. As the theories expanded, biodemographic diversity was suggested to influence team innovation via psychosocial trait and interaction process. This study examines those suggestions, in which psychosocial trait and interaction process were operationalized as 'participation safety climate' and 'team reflexivity' respectively. The role of team reflexivity as a mediator to participation safety climate and team innovation was also assessed. Due to a small number of teams involved in the study, data were analyzed by using a PLS-graph. While the results show only gender is significantly related to the participation safety climate, which in turn influences team reflexivity and team innovation, there is no statistical evidence that team reflexivity mediates the impact of participation safety climate on team innovation.

Keywords: Bio-demographic diversity, participation safetyclimate, team innovation, team reflexivity

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1343

Authors: Siyuan Jing, Kun She

Abstract:

Virtualization-based server consolidation has been proven to be an ideal technique to solve the server sprawl problem by consolidating multiple virtualized servers onto a few physical servers leading to improved resource utilization and return on investment. In this paper, we solve this problem by using existing servers, which are heterogeneous and diversely preferred by IT managers. Five practical consolidation rules are introduced, and a decision model is proposed to optimally allocate source services to physical target servers while maximizing the average resource utilization and preference value. Our model can be regarded as a multi-objective multi-dimension bin-packing (MOMDBP) problem with constraints, which is strongly NP-hard. An improved grouping generic algorithm (GGA) is introduced for the problem. Extensive simulations were performed and the results are given.

Keywords: GGA-based Heuristics, Preference, Real-worldConstraints, Resource Utilization, Server Consolidation

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1624

Authors: I. Erins, J. Erina

Abstract:

The aim of the present article is to determine the impact of the external and internal factors of bank performance on the profitability indicators of the CEE countries banks in the period from 2006 to 2012. On the basis of research conducted abroad on bank and macroeconomic profitability indicators, in order to obtain research results, the authors evaluated return on average assets (ROAA) and return on average equity (ROAE) indicators of the CEE countries banks. The authors analyzed profitability indicators of banks using descriptive methods, SPSS data analysis methods, as well as data correlation and linear regression analysis. The authors concluded that most internal and external indicators of bank performance have no direct influence the profitability of the banks in the CEE countries. The only exceptions are credit risk and bank size, which affect one of the measures of bank profitability – return on average equity.

Keywords: Banks, CEE countries, Profitability ROAA, ROAE.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2644

Authors: M. Z. Othman, S. Uludag-Demirer, G. N. Demirer

Abstract:

One of the main challenges for one phase anaerobic digestion processes is the high concentration of NH4+ and PO4 3- ions  in the digested sludge supernatant. This project focuses on enhancing the removal of nutrients during the anaerobic digestion process through fixing both NH4+ and PO4 3- ions in the form of struvite (magnesium ammonium phosphate, MAP, MgNH4PO4.6H2O) within the anaerobic sludge. Batch anaerobic digestion tests showed that Mg2+ concentration in the range 279 – 812 mg/L had insignificant effect on CGP but incurred a slight increase in COD removal. The reactor that had soluble Mg2+:NH4+:PO43- at a molar ratio of 1.28:1:00:1:00 achieved the best performance enhancement of 8% increase in COD removal and 32% reduction in NH4+ in the reactor supernatant. Overall, the results show that there is a potential to optimise conventional anaerobic digestion such that supernatant lean in P and N, and sludge rich in nutrients are obtained. 

Keywords: Anaerobic Digestion, Nutrients, Struvite, Waste Activated Sludge (WAS)

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1809

Authors: Ramin Javadzadeh., Zahra Afsahi, MohammadReza Meybodi

Abstract:

The Artificial immune systems algorithms are Meta heuristic optimization method, which are used for clustering and pattern recognition applications are abundantly. These algorithms in multimodal optimization problems are more efficient than genetic algorithms. A major drawback in these algorithms is their slow convergence to global optimum and their weak stability can be considered in various running of these algorithms. In this paper, improved Artificial Immune System Algorithm is introduced for the first time to overcome its problems of artificial immune system. That use of the small size of a local search around the memory antibodies is used for improving the algorithm efficiently. The credibility of the proposed approach is evaluated by simulations, and it is shown that the proposed approach achieves better results can be achieved compared to the standard artificial immune system algorithms

Keywords: Artificial immune system, Cellular Automata, Cellular learning automata, Cellular learning automata, , Local search, Optimization.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1867

Authors: K. Pipitthapan, S. Maksasithorn, P. Praserthdam, J. Panpranot, K. Suriye, S. Kunjara Na Ayudhya

Abstract:

WO3/SiO2 catalysts were modified by an ion exchange method with sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide solution. The performance of the modified catalysts was tested in the metathesis of ethylene and trans-2-butene to propylene. During ion exchange, sodium and potassium ions played different roles. Sodium modified catalysts revealed constant trans-2-butene conversion and propylene selectivity when the concentrations of sodium in the solution were varied. In contrast, potassium modified catalysts showed reduction of the conversion and increase of the selectivity. From these results, potassium hydroxide may affect the transformation of tungsten oxide active species, resulting in the decrease in conversion whereas sodium hydroxide did not. Moreover, the modification of catalysts by this method improved the catalyst stability by lowering the amount of coke deposited on the catalyst surface.

Keywords: Acid sites, alkali metals, isomerization, metathesis.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1695

Authors: Velappa Ganapathy, Kok Leong Liew

Abstract:

Advancement in Artificial Intelligence has lead to the developments of various “smart" devices. Character recognition device is one of such smart devices that acquire partial human intelligence with the ability to capture and recognize various characters in different languages. Firstly multiscale neural training with modifications in the input training vectors is adopted in this paper to acquire its advantage in training higher resolution character images. Secondly selective thresholding using minimum distance technique is proposed to be used to increase the level of accuracy of character recognition. A simulator program (a GUI) is designed in such a way that the characters can be located on any spot on the blank paper in which the characters are written. The results show that such methods with moderate level of training epochs can produce accuracies of at least 85% and more for handwritten upper case English characters and numerals.

Keywords: Character recognition, multiscale, backpropagation, neural network, minimum distance technique.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1901

Authors: N. S. Achour, M. Hamdaoui, S. Ben Nasrallah, A. Perwuelz

Abstract:

The main idea of this work is to investigate the effect of knitted fabrics characteristics on moisture management properties. Wetting and transport properties of single jersey, Rib 1&1 and English Rib fabrics made out of cotton and blended Cotton/Polyester yarns were studied. The dynamic water sorption of fabrics was investigated under same isothermal and terrestrial conditions at 20±2°C-65±4% by using the Moisture Management Tester (MMT) which can be used to quantitatively measure liquid moisture transfer in one step in a fabric in multidirections: Absorption rate, moisture absorbing time of the fabric's inner and outer surfaces, one-way transportation capability, the spreading/drying rate, the speed of liquid moisture spreading on fabric's inner and outer surfaces are measured, recorded and discussed. The results show that fabric’s composition and knit’s structure have a significant influence on those phenomena.

Keywords: Knitted fabrics characteristics, moisture management properties, multidirections, the Moisture Management Tester.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3119

Authors: Nemat Abazari, Ilgin Sager

Abstract:

In this paper smooth trajectories are computed in the Lie group SO(2, 1) as a motion planning problem by assigning a Frenet frame to the rigid body system to optimize the cost function of the elastic energy which is spent to track a timelike curve in Minkowski space. A method is proposed to solve a motion planning problem that minimizes the integral of the Lorentz inner product of Darboux vector of a timelike curve. This method uses the coordinate free Maximum Principle of Optimal control and results in the theory of integrable Hamiltonian systems. The presence of several conversed quantities inherent in these Hamiltonian systems aids in the explicit computation of the rigid body motions.

Keywords: Optimal control, Hamiltonian vector field, Darboux vector, maximum principle, lie group, rigid body motion, Lorentz metric.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1556

Authors: S. Anbumozhi, P. S. Manoharan

Abstract:

Medical Image fusion plays a vital role in medical field to diagnose the brain tumors which can be classified as benign or malignant. It is the process of integrating multiple images of the same scene into a single fused image to reduce uncertainty and minimizing redundancy while extracting all the useful information from the source images. Fuzzy logic is used to fuse two brain MRI images with different vision. The fused image will be more informative than the source images. The texture and wavelet features are extracted from the fused image. The multilevel Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Classifier classifies the brain tumors based on trained and tested features. The proposed method achieved 80.48% sensitivity, 99.9% specificity and 99.69% accuracy. Experimental results obtained from fusion process prove that the use of the proposed image fusion approach shows better performance while compared with conventional fusion methodologies.

Keywords: Image fusion, Fuzzy rules, Neuro-fuzzy classifier.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3039

Authors: Abigail Qian Zhou

Abstract:

In today's China, the well-educated middle class, with stable jobs and above-average income, are the driving force behind its Internet society. Through the analysis of data from the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey and 50 interviewees, this study investigates the current situation of this group’s specific internet usage. The findings of this study demonstrate that daily life among the members of this socioeconomic group is closely tied to the Internet. For Chinese middle class, the Internet is used to socialize and entertain self and others. It is also used to search for and share information as well as to build their identities. The empirical results of this study will provide a reference, supported by factual data, for enterprises seeking to target the Chinese middle class through online marketing efforts.

Keywords: China, internet use, middle class, network behavior, online marketing.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 733

Authors: Michael T. Miller, G. David Gearhart

Abstract:

Shared governance is an important element in higher education decision making. Through the joint decision making process, faculty members are provided an opportunity to help shape the future of an institution while increasing support for decisions that are made. Presidents, those leaders who are legally bound to guide their institutions, must find ways to collaborate effectively with faculty members in making decisions, and the first step in this process is understanding when and how presidents and faculty leaders interact. In the current study, a national sample of college presidents reported their preparation for the presidency, their perceptions of the functions of a faculty senate, and ultimately, the locations for important interactions between presidents and faculty senates. Results indicated that presidents, regardless of their preparation, found official functions to be the most important for communicating, although, those presidents with academic backgrounds were more likely to perceive faculty senates as having a role in all aspects of an institutions management.

Keywords: College faculty, college president, faculty senate, leadership.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 406

Authors: P.Cordero, R.Poler, R.Sanchis

Abstract:

The environmental impacts caused by the current production and consumption models, together with the impact that the current economic crisis, bring necessary changes in the European industry toward new business models based on sustainability issues that could allow them to innovate and improve their competitiveness. This paper analyzes the key environmental issues and the current and future market trends in one of the most important industrial sectors in Spain, the furniture sector. It also proposes new decision support tools -diagnostic kit, roadmap and guidelines- to guide companies to implement sustainability criteria into their organizations, including eco-design strategies and other economical and social strategies in accordance with the sustainability definition, and other available tools such as eco-labels, environmental management systems, etc., and to use and combine them to obtain the results the company expects to help improve its competitiveness.

Keywords: Furniture sector, eco-design, sustainability, economical crisis, market trends, roadmap

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1495

Authors: Yasmeen Bassas, Sandra Kuebler, Allen Riddell

Abstract:

Native Language Identification is one of the growing subfields in Natural Language Processing (NLP). The task of Native Language Identification (NLI) is mainly concerned with predicting the native language of an author’s writing in a second language. In this paper, we investigate the performance of two types of features; content-based features vs. content independent features when they are evaluated on a different corpus (using social media data “Reddit”). In this NLI task, the predefined models are trained on one corpus (TOEFL) and then the trained models are evaluated on a different data using an external corpus (Reddit). Three classifiers are used in this task; the baseline, linear SVM, and Logistic Regression. Results show that content-based features are more accurate and robust than content independent ones when tested within corpus and across corpus.

Keywords: NLI, NLP, content-based features, content independent features, social media corpus, ML.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 362

Authors: S. Pancucci

Abstract:

Professional development is the focus of this study. It reports on questionnaire data that examined the perceived effectiveness of the Train the Trainer model of technology professional development for elementary teachers. Eighty-three selected teachers called Information Technology Coaches received four half-day and one after-school in-service sessions. Subsequently, coaches shared the information and skills acquired during training with colleagues. Results indicated that participants felt comfortable as Information Technology Coaches and felt well prepared because of their technological professional development. Overall, participants perceived the Train the Trainer model to be effective. The outcomes of this study suggest that the use of the Train the Trainer model, a known professional development model, can be an integral and interdependent component of the newer more comprehensive learning community professional development model.

Keywords: change, education, learning community, professional development, school improvement, technology coach, Train the Trainer.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2618

Authors: Ahmed Kayad Abdourazak, Abderafi Souad, Zejli Driss, Idriss Abdoulkader Ibrahim

Abstract:

In this paper Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used to predict the solar irradiation in Djibouti for the first Time that is useful to the integration of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and sites selections for new or future solar plants as part of solar energy development. An ANN algorithm was developed to establish a forward/reverse correspondence between the latitude, longitude, altitude and monthly solar irradiation. For this purpose the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) data of eight Djibouti sites were used as training and testing in a standard three layers network with the back propagation algorithm of Lavenber-Marquardt. Results have shown a very good agreement for the solar irradiation prediction in Djibouti and proves that the proposed approach can be well used as an efficient tool for prediction of solar irradiation by providing so helpful information concerning sites selection, design and planning of solar plants.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, solar irradiation, concentrated solar power, Lavenberg-Marquardt.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1055

Authors: F. Demir

Abstract:

Strategic Management is highly critical for all types of organizations. This paper examines maturity level of strategic management practices of public and private sector organizations in Turkey, and presents a conceptual model for assessing the maturity of strategic management in any organization. This research focuses on R&D intensive organizations (RDO) because it is claimed that such organizations are more innovative and innovation is a critical part of the model. The Strategic management maturity model (S-3M) is basically composed of six maturity levels with five different dimensions. Based on 63 organizations, the findings reveal that the average maturity of all organizations in the sample group is three out of five. It corresponds to the stage of ‘performed’. Results simply show that the majority of organizations from various industries and sectors implement strategic management activities; however, they experience multiple challenges to optimize strategic management processes and integrate organizational components with business strategies. Briefly, they struggle to become an innovative organization.

Keywords: Strategic management, innovation, developing countries, research and development.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1409

Authors: Ahmad Z., Othman S. Z., Md Yunus B., Mohamed A.

Abstract:

According to the masonry standard the compressive strength is basically dependent on factors such as the mortar strength and the relative values of unit and mortar strength. However interlocking brick has none or less use of mortar. Therefore there is a need to investigate the behavior of masonry walls using interlocking bricks. In this study a series of tests have been conducted; physical properties and compressive strength of brick units and masonry walls were constructed from interlocking bricks and tested under constant vertical load at different eccentricities. The purpose of the experimental investigations is to obtain the force displacement curves, analyze the behavior of masonry walls. The results showed that the brick is categorized as common brick (BS 3921:1985) and severe weathering grade (ASTM C62). The maximum compressive stress of interlocking brick wall is 3.6 N/mm2 and fulfilled the requirement of standard for residential building.

Keywords: Interlocking brick, soil-cement brick, masonry wall, compressive strength, eccentricities

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6168

Authors: Dae-Hee Son, Seung-Hwa Kang, Sang-Hee Kang, Soon-Ryul Nam

Abstract:

Wind farms usually produce power irregularly, due to  unpredictable change of wind speed. Accordingly, we should  determine the penetration limit of wind power to consider stability of  power system and build a facility to control the wind power. The  operational limit of wind power is determined as the minimum  between the technical limit and the dynamic limit of wind power. The  technical limit is calculated by the number of generators and the  dynamic limit is calculated by the constraint of frequency variation  when a wind farm is disconnected suddenly. According to the  determined operational limit of wind power, pitch angles of wind  generators are controlled. PSS/E simulation results show that the pitch  angles were correctly controlled when wind speeds are changed in  addition to loads.

Keywords: Pitch Angle, Dynamic limit, Operational limit, Technical limit.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1694

Authors: Rungnapa Taithai, Anant Oonsivilai

Abstract:

This paper presents optimal based damping controllers of Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) for improving the damping power system oscillations. The design problem of UPFC damping controller and system configurations is formulated as an optimization with time domain-based objective function by means of Adaptive Tabu Search (ATS) technique. The UPFC is installed in Single Machine Infinite Bus (SMIB) for the performance analysis of the power system and simulated using MATLAB-s simulink. The simulation results of these studies showed that designed controller has an tremendous capability in damping power system oscillations.

Keywords: Adaptive Tabu Search (ATS), damping controller, Single Machine Infinite Bus (SMIB), Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC).

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2462

Authors: K. Chalernpon, P. Aroonjarattham, K. Aroonjarattham

Abstract:

Total hip replacement had been one of the most successful operations in hip arthritis surgery. The purpose of this research had been to develop a dynamic hip contact of Thai femoral bone to analyze the stress distribution on the implant and the strain distribution on the bone model under daily activities and compared with the static load simulation. The results showed the different of maximum von Mises stress 0.14 percent under walking and 0.03 percent under climbing stair condition and the different of equivalent total strain 0.52 percent under walking and 0.05 percent under climbing stair condition. The muscular forces should be evaluated with dynamic condition to reduce the maximum von Mises stress and equivalent total strain.

Keywords: Dynamic loading, Static Load, Hip prosthesis, Thai femur, Femoral bone, Finite Element Analysis.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4097

Authors: A. Aarabzadeh, R. Hizaji

Abstract:

Reinforced Concrete (RC) deep beams are a special type of beams due to their geometry, boundary conditions, and behavior compared to ordinary shallow beams. For example, assumption of a linear strain-stress distribution in the cross section is not valid. Little study has been dedicated to fixed-end RC deep beams. Also, most experimental studies are carried out on simply supported deep beams. Regarding recent tendency for application of deep beams, possibility of using fixed-ended deep beams has been widely increased in structures. Therefore, it seems necessary to investigate the aforementioned structural element in more details. In addition to experimental investigation of a concrete deep beam under cyclic load, different failure mechanisms of fixed-ended deep beams under this type of loading have been evaluated in the present study. The results show that failure mechanisms of deep beams under cyclic loads are quite different from monotonic loads.

Keywords: Deep beam, cyclic load, reinforced concrete, fixed-ended.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1119

Authors: E. Moroydor Derun, A. S. Kipcak, O. Dere Ozdemir, M. B. Piskin

Abstract:

Tea is consumed by a big part of the world-s population. It has an enormous importance for the Turkish culture. Nearly it is brewed every morning and evening at the all houses. Also it is consumed with lemon wedge. Habitual drinking of tea infusions may significantly contribute to daily dietary requirements of elements. Different instrumental techniques are used for determination of these elements. But atomic and mass spectroscopic methods are preferred most. In these study chromium, iron and selenium contents after the hot water brewing of black and green tea were determined by Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Furthermore, effect of lemon addition on chromium, iron and selenium concentration tea infusions is investigated. Results of the investigation showed that concentration of chromium, iron and selenium increased in black tea with lemon addition. On the other hand only selenium is increased with lemon addition in green tea. And iron concentration is not detected in green tea but its concentration is determined as 1.420 ppm after lemon addition.

Keywords: Black tea, green tea, ICP-OES, lemon

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1710

Authors: Salvatore Marra, Francesco C. Morabito

Abstract:

In this paper we present an efficient approach for the prediction of two sunspot-related time series, namely the Yearly Sunspot Number and the IR5 Index, that are commonly used for monitoring solar activity. The method is based on exploiting partially recurrent Elman networks and it can be divided into three main steps: the first one consists in a “de-rectification" of the time series under study in order to obtain a new time series whose appearance, similar to a sum of sinusoids, can be modelled by our neural networks much better than the original dataset. After that, we normalize the derectified data so that they have zero mean and unity standard deviation and, finally, train an Elman network with only one input, a recurrent hidden layer and one output using a back-propagation algorithm with variable learning rate and momentum. The achieved results have shown the efficiency of this approach that, although very simple, can perform better than most of the existing solar activity forecasting methods.

Keywords: Elman neural networks, sunspot, solar activity, time series prediction.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1836

Authors: Anne M. Sørebø

Abstract:

In this paper we investigate how wide-ranging organizational support and the more specific form of support, namely management support, may influence on tourism workers satisfaction with a cash transaction system. The IS continuance theory, proposed by Bhattacherjee in 2001, is utilized as a theoretical framework. This implies that both perceived usefulness and ease of use is included in the research model, in addition to organizational and management support. The sample consists of 500 workers from 10 cruise and tourist ferries in Scandinavia that use a cash transaction system to perform their work tasks. Using structural equation modelling, results indicate that organizational support and ease of use perceptions is critical for the users- level of satisfaction with the cash transaction system.The findings have implications for business managers and IS practitioners that want to increase the quality of IT-based business processes within the tourism industry.

Keywords: ease of use, IS continuance, organizational support, tourism industry, user satisfaction.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1544

Authors: Mee-Lin Lim Chai Teo, Darryl M. Small

Abstract:

Wheat has a bimodal starch granule population and the dependency of the rate of enzymatic hydrolysis on particle size has been investigated. Ungelatinised wheaten starch granules were separated into two populations by sedimentation and decantation. Particle size was analysed by laser diffraction and morphological characteristics were viewed using SEM. The sedimentation technique though lengthy, gave satisfactory separation of the granules. Samples (<10μm, >10μm and original) were digested with a-amylase using a dialysis model. Granules of <10μm showed significantly higher rate of reducing sugar release than those >10μm (p<0.05). In contrast, the rate was not significantly different between the original sample and granules >10μm. Moreover, the digestion rate was dependent on particle size whereby smaller granules produced higher rate of release. The methodology and results reported here can be used as a basis for further evaluations designed to delay the release of glucose during the digestion of native starches.

Keywords: in vitro Digestion, a-amylase, wheat starch, granule size.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2822