Search results for: system quality.
1096 Evolving a Fuzzy Rule-Base for Image Segmentation
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A new method for color image segmentation using fuzzy logic is proposed in this paper. Our aim here is to automatically produce a fuzzy system for color classification and image segmentation with least number of rules and minimum error rate. Particle swarm optimization is a sub class of evolutionary algorithms that has been inspired from social behavior of fishes, bees, birds, etc, that live together in colonies. We use comprehensive learning particle swarm optimization (CLPSO) technique to find optimal fuzzy rules and membership functions because it discourages premature convergence. Here each particle of the swarm codes a set of fuzzy rules. During evolution, a population member tries to maximize a fitness criterion which is here high classification rate and small number of rules. Finally, particle with the highest fitness value is selected as the best set of fuzzy rules for image segmentation. Our results, using this method for soccer field image segmentation in Robocop contests shows 89% performance. Less computational load is needed when using this method compared with other methods like ANFIS, because it generates a smaller number of fuzzy rules. Large train dataset and its variety, makes the proposed method invariant to illumination noiseKeywords: Comprehensive learning Particle Swarmoptimization, fuzzy classification.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19561095 Eye Gesture Analysis with Head Movement for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
Authors: Siti Nor Hafizah bt Mohd Zaid, Mohamed Abdel Maguid, Abdel Hamid Soliman
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Road traffic accidents are a major cause of death worldwide. In an attempt to reduce accidents, some research efforts have focused on creating Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) able to detect vehicle, driver and environmental conditions and to use this information to identify cues for potential accidents. This paper presents continued work on a novel Non-intrusive Intelligent Driver Assistance and Safety System (Ni-DASS) for assessing driver point of regard within vehicles. It uses an on-board CCD camera to observe the driver-s face. A template matching approach is used to compare the driver-s eye-gaze pattern with a set of eye-gesture templates of the driver looking at different focal points within the vehicle. The windscreen is divided into cells and comparison of the driver-s eye-gaze pattern with templates of a driver-s eyes looking at each cell is used to determine the driver-s point of regard on the windscreen. Results indicate that the proposed technique could be useful in situations where low resolution estimates of driver point of regard are adequate. For instance, To allow ADAS systems to alert the driver if he/she has positively failed to observe a hazard.
Keywords: Head rotation, Eye-gestures, Windscreen, Template matching.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17961094 A Nanosensor System Based On Disuccinimydyl–CYP2E1 for Amperometric Detection of the Anti-Tuberculosis Drug, Pyrazinamide
Authors: R. F. Ajayi, U. Sidwaba, U. Feleni, S. F. Douman, E. Nxusani, L. Wilson, C. Rassie, O. Tovide, P. G. L. Baker, S. L. Vilakazi, R. Tshikhudo, E. I. Iwuoha
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Pyrazinamide (PZA) is among the first-line pro-drugs in the tuberculosis (TB) combination chemotherapy used to treat Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Numerous reports have suggested that hepatotoxicity due to pyrazinamide in patients is due to inappropriate dosing. It is, therefore necessary to develop sensitive and reliable techniques for determining the PZA metabolic profile of diagnosed patients promptly and at point-of-care. This study reports the determination of PZA based on nanobiosensor systems developed from disuccinimidyl octanedioate modified Cytochrome P450-2E1 (CYP2E1) electrodeposited on gold substrates derivatised with (poly(8-anilino-1-napthalene sulphonic acid) PANSA/PVP-AgNPs nanocomposites. The rapid and sensitive amperometric PZA detection gave a dynamic linear range of 2µM to 16µM revealing a limit of detection of 0.044µM and a sensitivity of 1.38µA/µM. The Michaelis-Menten parameters; KM, KM app and IMAX were calculated to be 6.0µM, 1.41µM and 1.51x10-6 A, respectively, indicating a nanobiosensor suitable for use in serum.
Keywords: Cytochrome P450-2E1, Disuccinimidyl octanedioate, Pyrazinamide, Tuberculosis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22241093 Binarization of Text Region based on Fuzzy Clustering and Histogram Distribution in Signboards
Authors: Jonghyun Park, Toan Nguyen Dinh, Gueesang Lee
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In this paper, we present a novel approach to accurately detect text regions including shop name in signboard images with complex background for mobile system applications. The proposed method is based on the combination of text detection using edge profile and region segmentation using fuzzy c-means method. In the first step, we perform an elaborate canny edge operator to extract all possible object edges. Then, edge profile analysis with vertical and horizontal direction is performed on these edge pixels to detect potential text region existing shop name in a signboard. The edge profile and geometrical characteristics of each object contour are carefully examined to construct candidate text regions and classify the main text region from background. Finally, the fuzzy c-means algorithm is performed to segment and detected binarize text region. Experimental results show that our proposed method is robust in text detection with respect to different character size and color and can provide reliable text binarization result.Keywords: Text detection, edge profile, signboard image, fuzzy clustering.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22261092 Novel SNC-NN-MRAS Based Speed Estimator for Sensor-Less Vector Controlled IM Drives
Authors: A.Venkadesan, S.Himavathi, A.Muthuramalingam
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Rotor Flux based Model Reference Adaptive System (RF-MRAS) is the most popularly used conventional speed estimation scheme for sensor-less IM drives. In this scheme, the voltage model equations are used for the reference model. This encounters major drawbacks at low frequencies/speed which leads to the poor performance of RF-MRAS. Replacing the reference model using Neural Network (NN) based flux estimator provides an alternate solution and addresses such drawbacks. This paper identifies an NN based flux estimator using Single Neuron Cascaded (SNC) Architecture. The proposed SNC-NN model replaces the conventional voltage model in RF-MRAS to form a novel MRAS scheme named as SNC-NN-MRAS. Through simulation the proposed SNC-NN-MRAS is shown to be promising in terms of all major issues and robustness to parameter variation. The suitability of the proposed SNC-NN-MRAS based speed estimator and its advantages over RF-MRAS for sensor-less induction motor drives is comprehensively presented through extensive simulations.Keywords: Sensor-less operation, vector-controlled IM drives, SNC-NN-MRAS, single neuron cascaded architecture, RF-MRAS, artificial neural network
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18751091 The Adoption of Halal Transportations Technologies for Halal Logistics Service Providers in Malaysia
Authors: Mohd Iskandar Illyas Tan, Raziah Noor Razali, Zuhra Junaida Husny
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The purpose of this study is i) to investigate the driving factors and barriers of the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Halal logistic and ii) to develop an ICT adoption framework for Halal logistic service provider. The Halal LSPs selected for the study currently used ICT service platforms, such as accounting and management system for Halal logistic business. The study categorizes the factors influencing the adoption decision and process by LSPs into four groups: technology related factors, organizational and environmental factors, Halal assurance related factors, and government related factors. The major contribution in this study is the discovery that technology related factors (ICT compatibility with Halal requirement) and Halal assurance related factors are the most crucial factors among the Halal LSPs applying ICT for Halal control in transportation-s operation. Among the government related factors, ICT requirement for monitoring Halal included in Halal Logistic Standard on Transportation (MS2400:2010) are the most influencing factors in the adoption of ICT with the support of the government. In addition, the government related factors are very important in the reducing the main barriers and the creation of the atmosphere of ICT adoption in Halal LSP sector.
Keywords: Information and communication technology (ICT), Halal logistic, Halal transportation, Technology adoption
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 56931090 In-Plane Responses of Axially Moving Plates Subjected to Arbitrary Edge Excitations
Authors: T. H. Young, Y. S. Ciou
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The free and forced in-plane vibrations of axially moving plates are investigated in this work. The plate possesses an internal damping of which the constitutive relation obeys the Kelvin-Voigt model, and the excitations are arbitrarily distributed on two opposite edges. First, the equations of motion and the boundary conditions of the axially moving plate are derived. Then, the extended Ritz method is used to obtain discretized system equations. Finally, numerical results for the natural frequencies and the mode shapes of the in-plane vibration and the in-plane response of the moving plate subjected to arbitrary edge excitations are presented. It is observed that the symmetry class of the mode shapes of the in-plane vibration disperses gradually as the moving speed gets higher, and the u- and v-components of the mode shapes belong to different symmetry class. In addition, large response amplitudes having shapes similar to the mode shapes of the plate can be excited by the edge excitations at the resonant frequencies and with the same symmetry class of distribution as the u-components.
Keywords: Arbitrary edge excitations, axially moving plates, in-plane vibration, extended Ritz method.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17841089 Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network Classifier with Binary Particle Swarm Optimization Based Feature Selection for Brain-Computer Interfaces
Authors: K. Akilandeswari, G. M. Nasira
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Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) measure brain signals activity, intentionally and unintentionally induced by users, and provides a communication channel without depending on the brain’s normal peripheral nerves and muscles output pathway. Feature Selection (FS) is a global optimization machine learning problem that reduces features, removes irrelevant and noisy data resulting in acceptable recognition accuracy. It is a vital step affecting pattern recognition system performance. This study presents a new Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) based feature selection algorithm. Multi-layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLPNN) classifier with backpropagation training algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm classify selected features.Keywords: Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), Feature Selection (FS), Walsh–Hadamard Transform (WHT), Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO), Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21851088 A Particle Swarm Optimal Control Method for DC Motor by Considering Energy Consumption
Authors: Yingjie Zhang, Ming Li, Ying Zhang, Jing Zhang, Zuolei Hu
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In the actual start-up process of DC motors, the DC drive system often faces a conflict between energy consumption and acceleration performance. To resolve the conflict, this paper proposes a comprehensive performance index that energy consumption index is added on the basis of classical control performance index in the DC motor starting process. Taking the comprehensive performance index as the cost function, particle swarm optimization algorithm is designed to optimize the comprehensive performance. Then it conducts simulations on the optimization of the comprehensive performance of the DC motor on condition that the weight coefficient of the energy consumption index should be properly designed. The simulation results show that as the weight of energy consumption increased, the energy efficiency was significantly improved at the expense of a slight sacrifice of fastness indicators with the comprehensive performance index method. The energy efficiency was increased from 63.18% to 68.48% and the response time reduced from 0.2875s to 0.1736s simultaneously compared with traditional proportion integrals differential controller in energy saving.
Keywords: Comprehensive performance index, energy consumption, acceleration performance, particle swarm optimal control.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6421087 Analyzing the Perception of Social Networking Sites as a Learning Tool among University Students: Case Study of a Business School in India
Authors: Bhaskar Basu
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Universities and higher education institutes are finding it increasingly difficult to engage students fruitfully through traditional pedagogic tools. Web 2.0 technologies comprising social networking sites (SNSs) offer a platform for students to collaborate and share information, thereby enhancing their learning experience. Despite the potential and reach of SNSs, its use has been limited in academic settings promoting higher education. The purpose of this paper is to assess the perception of social networking sites among business school students in India and analyze its role in enhancing quality of student experiences in a business school leading to the proposal of an agenda for future research. In this study, more than 300 students of a reputed business school were involved in a survey of their preferences of different social networking sites and their perceptions and attitudes towards these sites. A questionnaire with three major sections was designed, validated and distributed among a sample of students, the research method being descriptive in nature. Crucial questions were addressed to the students concerning time commitment, reasons for usage, nature of interaction on these sites, and the propensity to share information leading to direct and indirect modes of learning. It was further supplemented with focus group discussion to analyze the findings. The paper notes the resistance in the adoption of new technology by a section of business school faculty, who are staunch supporters of the classical “face-to-face” instruction. In conclusion, social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn provide new avenues for students to express themselves and to interact with one another. Universities could take advantage of the new ways in which students are communicating with one another. Although interactive educational options such as Moodle exist, social networking sites are rarely used for academic purposes. Using this medium opens new ways of academically-oriented interactions where faculty could discover more about students' interests, and students, in turn, might express and develop more intellectual facets of their lives. hitherto unknown intellectual facets. This study also throws up the enormous potential of mobile phones as a tool for “blended learning” in business schools going forward.
Keywords: Business school, India, learning, social media, social networking, university.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14281086 Optimizing Logistics for Courier Organizations with Considerations of Congestions and Pickups: A Courier Delivery System in Amman as Case Study
Authors: Nader A. Al Theeb, Zaid Abu Manneh, Ibrahim Al-Qadi
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Traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a combinatorial integer optimization problem that asks "What is the optimal route for a vehicle to traverse in order to deliver requests to a given set of customers?”. It is widely used by the package carrier companies’ distribution centers. The main goal of applying the TSP in courier organizations is to minimize the time that it takes for the courier in each trip to deliver or pick up the shipments during a day. In this article, an optimization model is constructed to create a new TSP variant to optimize the routing in a courier organization with a consideration of congestion in Amman, the capital of Jordan. Real data were collected by different methods and analyzed. Then, concert technology - CPLEX was used to solve the proposed model for some random generated data instances and for the real collected data. At the end, results have shown a great improvement in time compared with the current trip times, and an economic study was conducted afterwards to figure out the impact of using such models.
Keywords: Travel salesman problem, congestions, pick-up, integer programming, package carriers, service engineering.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9411085 A Four Architectures to Locate Mobile Users using Statistical Mapping of WLANs in Indoorand Outdoor Environments-Loids
Authors: K. Krishna Naik, M. N. Giri Prasad
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These days wireless local area networks has become very popular, when the initial IEEE802.11 is the standard for providing wireless connectivity to automatic machinery, equipment and stations that require rapid deployment, which may be portable, handheld or which may be mounted on moving vehicles within a local area. IEEE802.11 Wireless local area network is a sharedmedium communication network that transmits information over wireless links for all IEEE802.11 stations in its transmission range to receive. When a user is moving from one location to another, how the other user knows about the required station inside WLAN. For that we designed and implemented a system to locate a mobile user inside the wireless local area network based on RSSI with the help of four specially designed architectures. These architectures are based on statistical or we can say manual configuration of mapping and radio map of indoor and outdoor location with the help of available Sniffer based and cluster based techniques. We found a better location of a mobile user in WLAN. We tested this work in indoor and outdoor environments with different locations with the help of Pamvotis, a simulator for WLAN.Keywords: AP, RSSI, RPM, WLAN.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13151084 Effect of Atmospheric Pressure on the Flow at the Outlet of a Propellant Nozzle
Authors: R. Haoui
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The purpose of this work is to simulate the flow at the exit of Vulcan 1 engine of European launcher Ariane 5. The geometry of the propellant nozzle is already determined using the characteristics method. The pressure in the outlet section of the nozzle is less than atmospheric pressure on the ground, causing the existence of oblique and normal shock waves at the exit. During the rise of the launcher, the atmospheric pressure decreases and the shock wave disappears. The code allows the capture of shock wave at exit of nozzle. The numerical technique uses the Flux Vector Splitting method of Van Leer to ensure convergence and avoid the calculation instabilities. The Courant, Friedrichs and Lewy coefficient (CFL) and mesh size level are selected to ensure the numerical convergence. The nonlinear partial derivative equations system which governs this flow is solved by an explicit unsteady numerical scheme by the finite volume method. The accuracy of the solution depends on the size of the mesh and also the step of time used in the discretized equations. We have chosen in this study the mesh that gives us a stationary solution with good accuracy.
Keywords: Launchers, supersonic flow, finite volume, nozzles, shock wave.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8771083 Assessment of Drug Delivery Systems from Molecular Dynamic Perspective
Authors: M. Rahimnejad, B. Vahidi, B. Ebrahimi Hoseinzadeh, F. Yazdian, P. Motamed Fath, R. Jamjah
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In this study, we developed and simulated nano-drug delivery systems efficacy in compare to free drug prescription. Computational models can be utilized to accelerate experimental steps and control the experiments high cost. Molecular dynamics simulation (MDS), in particular NAMD was utilized to better understand the anti-cancer drug interaction with cell membrane model. Paclitaxel (PTX) and dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) were selected for the drug molecule and as a natural phospholipid nanocarrier, respectively. This work focused on two important interaction parameters between molecules in terms of center of mass (COM) and van der Waals interaction energy. Furthermore, we compared the simulation results of the PTX interaction with the cell membrane and the interaction of DPPC as a nanocarrier loaded by the drug with the cell membrane. The molecular dynamic analysis resulted in low energy between the nanocarrier and the cell membrane as well as significant decrease of COM amount in the nanocarrier and the cell membrane system during the interaction. Thus, the drug vehicle showed notably better interaction with the cell membrane in compared to free drug interaction with the cell membrane.
Keywords: Anti-cancer drug, center of Mass, interaction energy, molecular dynamics simulation, nanocarrier.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13221082 The Analysis of Radial/Axial Error Motion on a Precision Rotation Stage
Authors: Jinho Kim, Dongik Shin, Deokwon Yun, Changsoo Han
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Rotating stages in semiconductor, display industry and many other fields require challenging accuracy to perform their functions properly. Especially, Axis of rotation error on rotary system is significant; such as the spindle error motion of the aligner, wire bonder and inspector machine which result in the poor state of manufactured goods. To evaluate and improve the performance of such precision rotary stage, unessential movements on the other 5 degrees of freedom of the rotary stage must be measured and analyzed. In this paper, we have measured the three translations and two tilt motions of a rotating stage with high precision capacitive sensors. To obtain the radial error motion from T.I.R (Total Indicated Reading) of radial direction, we have used Donaldson's reversal technique. And the axial components of the spindle tilt error motion can be obtained accurately from the axial direction outputs of sensors by Estler face motion reversal technique. Further more we have defined and measured the sensitivity of positioning error to the five error motions.Keywords: Donaldson's reversal methods, Estler face motionreversal method, Error motion, sensitivity, T.I.R (Total IndicatedReading).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 35431081 A Robust Al-Hawalees Gaming Automation using Minimax and BPNN Decision
Authors: Ahmad Sharieh, R Bremananth
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Artificial Intelligence based gaming is an interesting topic in the state-of-art technology. This paper presents an automation of a tradition Omani game, called Al-Hawalees. Its related issues are resolved and implemented using artificial intelligence approach. An AI approach called mini-max procedure is incorporated to make a diverse budges of the on-line gaming. If number of moves increase, time complexity will be increased in terms of propositionally. In order to tackle the time and space complexities, we have employed a back propagation neural network (BPNN) to train in off-line to make a decision for resources required to fulfill the automation of the game. We have utilized Leverberg- Marquardt training in order to get the rapid response during the gaming. A set of optimal moves is determined by the on-line back propagation training fashioned with alpha-beta pruning. The results and analyses reveal that the proposed scheme will be easily incorporated in the on-line scenario with one player against the system.
Keywords: Artificial neural network, back propagation gaming, Leverberg-Marquardt, minimax procedure.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19361080 A High Level Implementation of a High Performance Data Transfer Interface for NoC
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.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20401079 Variable Input Range Continuous-time Switched Current Delta-sigma Analog Digital Converter for RFID CMOS Biosensor Applications
Authors: Boram Kim, Shigeyasu Uno, Kazuo Nakazato
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Continuous-time delta-sigma analog digital converter (ADC) for radio frequency identification (RFID) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) biosensor has been reported. This delta-sigma ADC is suitable for digital conversion of biosensor signal because of small process variation, and variable input range. As the input range of continuous-time switched current delta-sigma ADC (Dynamic range : 50 dB) can be limited by using current reference, amplification of biosensor signal is unnecessary. The input range is switched to wide input range mode or narrow input range mode by command of current reference. When the narrow input range mode, the input range becomes ± 0.8 V. The measured power consumption is 5 mW and chip area is 0.31 mm^2 using 1.2 um standard CMOS process. Additionally, automatic input range detecting system is proposed because of RFID biosensor applications.
Keywords: continuous time, delta sigma, A/D converter, RFID, biosensor, CMOS
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15631078 Performance Analysis of Deterministic Stable Election Protocol Using Fuzzy Logic in Wireless Sensor Network
Authors: Sumanpreet Kaur, Harjit Pal Singh, Vikas Khullar
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In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), the sensor containing motes (nodes) incorporate batteries that can lament at some extent. To upgrade the energy utilization, clustering is one of the prototypical approaches for split sensor motes into a number of clusters where one mote (also called as node) proceeds as a Cluster Head (CH). CH selection is one of the optimization techniques for enlarging stability and network lifespan. Deterministic Stable Election Protocol (DSEP) is an effectual clustering protocol that makes use of three kinds of nodes with dissimilar residual energy for CH election. Fuzzy Logic technology is used to expand energy level of DSEP protocol by using fuzzy inference system. This paper presents protocol DSEP using Fuzzy Logic (DSEP-FL) CH by taking into account four linguistic variables such as energy, concentration, centrality and distance to base station. Simulation results show that our proposed method gives more effective results in term of a lifespan of network and stability as compared to the performance of other clustering protocols.
Keywords: Deterministic stable election protocol, energy model, fuzzy logic, wireless sensor network.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9771077 Gonadotoxic and Cytotoxic Effect of Induced obesity via Monosodium Glutamate on Mus musculus Testis Cytoarchitecture and Sperm Parameter
Authors: I. Nur Hilwani, R. Nasibah, S. Nurdiana, M. J. Norashirene
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Impaired fertility may be the result of indirect consumption of anti-fertility agents through food. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) has been widely used as food additive, flavour enhancer and included in vaccines. This study focuses in determining the gonadotoxic and cytotoxic effect of MSG on selected sperm parameters such as sperm viability, sperm membrane integrity and testes cytoarchitecture of male mice via histological examination to determine its effect on spermatogenesis. Twenty-four Mus musculus were randomly divided into 4 groups and given intraperitoneal injections (IP) daily for 14 days of different MSG concentrations at 250, 500 and 1000mg/kg MSG to body weight to induce obesity. Saline was given to control group. Mice were sacrificed and analysis revealed abnormalities in values for sperm parameters and damages to testes cytoarchitecture of male mice. The results recorded decreased viability (p<0.05) and integrity of sperm membrane (p>0.05) with degenerative structures in seminiferous tubule of testes. The results indicated various implications of MSG on male mice reproductive system which has consequences in fertility potential.
Keywords: Sperm parameter, sperm viability, sperm membrane integrity and testes histology.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23761076 Building an Inferential Model between Caregivers and Patients by using RFID
Authors: Yung-Ting Chang, Chung-You Tsai, Yu-Chuan Li
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Nosocomial (i.e., hospital-acquired) infections (NI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitals. NI rate is higher in intensive care units (ICU) than in the general ward due to patients with severe symptoms, poor immunity, and accepted many invasive therapies. Contact behaviors between health caregivers and patients is one of the infect factors. It is difficult to obtain complete contact records by traditional method of retrospective analysis of medical records. This paper establishes a contact history inferential model (CHIM) intended to extend the use of Proximity Sensing of rapid frequency identification (RFID) technology to transferring all proximity events between health caregivers and patients into clinical events (close-in events, contact events and invasive events).The results of the study indicated that the CHIM can infer proximity care activities into close-in events and contact events. The infection control team could redesign and build optimal workflow in the ICU according to the patient-specific contact history which provided by our automatic tracing system.Keywords: Active Radio Frequency Identification, Intensive Care Unit, Nosocomial Infections
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16241075 Analysis of the Accuracy of Earth Movement with Drone Surveys
Authors: Raúl Pereda García, Julio Manuel de Luis Ruiz, Elena Castillo López, Rubén Pérez Álvarez, Felipe Piña García
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New technologies for the capture of point clouds have experienced a great advance in recent years. In this way, its use has been extended in geomatics, providing measurement solutions that have been popularized without there being, many times, a detailed study of its accuracy. This research focuses on the study of the viability of topographic works with drones incorporating different sensors sensitive to the visible spectrum. The fundamentals have been applied to a road, located in Cantabria (Spain), where a platform extension and the reform of a riprap were being constructed. A total of six flights were made during two months, all of them with GPS as part of the photogrammetric process, and the results were contrasted with those measured with total station. The obtained results show that the choice of the camera and the planning of the flight have an important impact on the accuracy. In fact, the representations with a level of detail corresponding to 1/1000 scale are admissible, depending on the existing vegetation, and obtaining better results in the area of the riprap. This set of techniques is, therefore, suitable for the control of earthworks in road works but with certain limitations which are exposed in this paper.
Keywords: Drone, earth movement control, global position system, surveying technology.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 7151074 Improve of Evaluation Method for Information Security Levels of CIIP (Critical Information Infrastructure Protection)
Authors: Dong-Young Yoo, Jong-Whoi Shin, Gang Shin Lee, Jae-Il Lee
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As the disfunctions of the information society and social development progress, intrusion problems such as malicious replies, spam mail, private information leakage, phishing, and pharming, and side effects such as the spread of unwholesome information and privacy invasion are becoming serious social problems. Illegal access to information is also becoming a problem as the exchange and sharing of information increases on the basis of the extension of the communication network. On the other hand, as the communication network has been constructed as an international, global system, the legal response against invasion and cyber-attack from abroad is facing its limit. In addition, in an environment where the important infrastructures are managed and controlled on the basis of the information communication network, such problems pose a threat to national security. Countermeasures to such threats are developed and implemented on a yearly basis to protect the major infrastructures of information communication. As a part of such measures, we have developed a methodology for assessing the information protection level which can be used to establish the quantitative object setting method required for the improvement of the information protection level.Keywords: Information Security Evaluation Methodology, Critical Information Infrastructure Protection.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16601073 Piezoelectric Bimorph Harvester Based on Different Lead Zirconate Titanate Materials to Enhance Energy Collection
Authors: Irene Perez-Alfaro, Nieves Murillo, Carlos Bernal, Daniel Gil-Hernandez
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Nowadays, the increasing applicability of internet of things (IoT) systems has changed the way that the world around is perceived. The massive interconnection of systems by means of sensing, processing and communication, allows multitude of data to be at our fingertips. In this way, countless advances have been made in different fields such as personal care, predictive maintenance in industry, quality control in production processes, security, and in everything imaginable. However, all these electronic systems have in common the need to be electrically powered. In this context, batteries and wires are the most commonly used solutions, but they are not a definitive solution in some applications, because of the attainability, the serviceability, or the performance requirements. Therefore, the need arises to look for other types of solutions based on energy harvesting and long-life electronics. Energy Harvesting can be defined as the action of capturing energy from the environment and store it for an instantaneous use or later use. Among the materials capable of harvesting energy from the environment, such as thermoelectrics, electromagnetics, photovoltaics or triboelectrics, the most suitable is the piezoelectric material. The phenomenon of piezoelectricity is one of the most powerful sources for energy harvesting, ranging from a few micro wats to hundreds of wats, depending on certain factors such as material type, geometry, excitation frequency, mechanical and electrical configurations, among others. In this research work, an exhaustive study is carried out on how different types of piezoelectric materials and electrical configurations influence the maximum power that a bimorph harvester is able to extract from mechanical vibrations. A series of experiments has been carried out in which the manufactured bimorph specimens are excited under fixed inertial vibrational conditions. In addition, in order to evaluate the dependence of the maximum transferred power, different load resistors are tested. In this way, the pure active power that achieves the maximum power transfer can be approximated. In this paper, we present the design of low-cost energy harvesting solutions based on piezoelectric smart materials with tunable frequency. The results obtained show the differences in energy extraction between the PZT materials studied and their electrical configurations. The aim of this work is to gain a better understanding of the behavior of piezoelectric materials, and the design process of bimorph PZT harvesters to optimize environmental energy extraction.
Keywords: Bimorph harvesters, electrical impedance, energy harvesting, piezoelectric, smart material.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4711072 Unsteady Heat and Mass Transfer in MHD Flow of Nanofluids over Stretching Sheet with a Non-Uniform Heat Source/Sink
Authors: Bandaris Shankar, Yohannes Yirga
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In this paper, the problem of heat and mass transfer in unsteady MHD boundary-layer flow of nanofluids over stretching sheet with a non uniform heat source/sink is considered. The unsteadiness in the flow and temperature is caused by the time-dependent stretching velocity and surface temperature. The unsteady boundary layer equations are transformed to a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations and solved numerically using Keller box method. The velocity, temperature, and concentration profiles were obtained and utilized to compute the skin-friction coefficient, local Nusselt number, and local Sherwood number for different values of the governing parameters viz. solid volume fraction parameter, unsteadiness parameter, magnetic field parameter, Schmidt number, space-dependent and temperature-dependent parameters for heat source/sink. A comparison of the numerical results of the present study with previously published data revealed an excellent agreement.
Keywords: Manetohydrodynamics, nanofluid, non-uniform heat source/sink, unsteady.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 32221071 Ontology-based Domain Modelling for Consistent Content Change Management
Authors: Muhammad Javed, Yalemisew M. Abgaz, Claus Pahl
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Ontology-based modelling of multi-formatted software application content is a challenging area in content management. When the number of software content unit is huge and in continuous process of change, content change management is important. The management of content in this context requires targeted access and manipulation methods. We present a novel approach to deal with model-driven content-centric information systems and access to their content. At the core of our approach is an ontology-based semantic annotation technique for diversely formatted content that can improve the accuracy of access and systems evolution. Domain ontologies represent domain-specific concepts and conform to metamodels. Different ontologies - from application domain ontologies to software ontologies - capture and model the different properties and perspectives on a software content unit. Interdependencies between domain ontologies, the artifacts and the content are captured through a trace model. The annotation traces are formalised and a graph-based system is selected for the representation of the annotation traces.Keywords: Consistent Content Management, Impact Categorisation, Trace Model, Ontology Evolution
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16841070 Leukocyte Detection Using Image Stitching and Color Overlapping Windows
Authors: Lina, Arlends Chris, Bagus Mulyawan, Agus B. Dharmawan
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Blood cell analysis plays a significant role in the diagnosis of human health. As an alternative to the traditional technique conducted by laboratory technicians, this paper presents an automatic white blood cell (leukocyte) detection system using Image Stitching and Color Overlapping Windows. The advantage of this method is to present a detection technique of white blood cells that are robust to imperfect shapes of blood cells with various image qualities. The input for this application is images from a microscope-slide translation video. The preprocessing stage is performed by stitching the input images. First, the overlapping parts of the images are determined, then stitching and blending processes of two input images are performed. Next, the Color Overlapping Windows is performed for white blood cell detection which consists of color filtering, window candidate checking, window marking, finds window overlaps, and window cropping processes. Experimental results show that this method could achieve an average of 82.12% detection accuracy of the leukocyte images.Keywords: Color overlapping windows, image stitching, leukocyte detection.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14921069 Influence of Inter-tube Connections on the Stress-Strain Behavior of Nanotube-Polymer Composites: Molecular Dynamics
Authors: Jianwei Zhang, Dazhi Jiang, Huaxin Peng, Chunqi Wang
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Stress-strain curve of inter-tube connected carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced polymer composite under axial loading generated from molecular dynamics simulation is presented. Comparison of the response to axial mechanical loading between this composite system with composite systems reinforced by long, continuous CNTs (replicated via periodic boundary conditions) and short, discontinuous CNTs has been made. Simulation results showed that the inter-tube connection improved the mechanical properties of short discontinuous CNTs dramatically. Though still weaker than long CNT/polymer composite, more remarkable increase in the stiffness relative to the polymer was observed in the inter-tube connected CNT/polymer composite than in the discontinuous CNT/polymer composite. The manually introduced bridge break process resulted in a stress-strain curve of ductile fracture mode, which is consistent with the experimental result.
Keywords: Carbon nanotube, inter-tube connection, molecular dynamics, stress-strain curve
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17721068 Distributed 2-Vertex Connectivity Test of Graphs Using Local Knowledge
Authors: Brahim Hamid, Bertrand Le Saec, Mohamed Mosbah
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The vertex connectivity of a graph is the smallest number of vertices whose deletion separates the graph or makes it trivial. This work is devoted to the problem of vertex connectivity test of graphs in a distributed environment based on a general and a constructive approach. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, using a preconstructed spanning tree of the considered graph, we present a protocol to test whether a given graph is 2-connected using only local knowledge. Second, we present an encoding of this protocol using graph relabeling systems. The last contribution is the implementation of this protocol in the message passing model. For a given graph G, where M is the number of its edges, N the number of its nodes and Δ is its degree, our algorithms need the following requirements: The first one uses O(Δ×N2) steps and O(Δ×logΔ) bits per node. The second one uses O(Δ×N2) messages, O(N2) time and O(Δ × logΔ) bits per node. Furthermore, the studied network is semi-anonymous: Only the root of the pre-constructed spanning tree needs to be identified.
Keywords: Distributed computing, fault-tolerance, graph relabeling systems, local computations, local knowledge, message passing system, networks, vertex connectivity.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18391067 Simulation on Fuel Metering Unit Used for TurboShaft Engine Model
Authors: Bin Wang, Hengyu Ji, Zhifeng Ye
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Fuel Metering Unit (FMU) in fuel system of an aeroengine sometimes has direct influence on the engine performance, which is neglected for the sake of easy access to mathematical model of the engine in most cases. In order to verify the influence of FMU on an engine model, this paper presents a co-simulation of a stepping motor driven FMU (digital FMU) in a turboshaft aeroengine, using AMESim and MATLAB to obtain the steady and dynamic characteristics of the FMU. For this method, mechanical and hydraulic section of the unit is modeled through AMESim, while the stepping motor is mathematically modeled through MATLAB/Simulink. Combining these two sub-models yields an AMESim/MATLAB co-model of the FMU. A simplified component level model for the turboshaft engine is established and connected with the FMU model. Simulation results on the full model show that the engine model considering FMU characteristics describes the engine more precisely especially in its transition state. An FMU dynamics will cut down the rotation speed of the high pressure shaft and the inlet pressure of the combustor during the step response. The work in this paper reveals the impact of FMU on engine operation characteristics and provides a reference to an engine model for ground tests.
Keywords: Fuel metering unit, stepping motor, AMESim/MATLAB, full digital simulation.
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