Search results for: experiments

Authors: Gabriela Lindemann, Danilo Schmidt, Thomas Schrader, Dietmar Keune

Abstract:

The amount and heterogeneity of data in biomedical research, notably in interdisciplinary fields, requires new methods for the collection, presentation and analysis of information. Important data from laboratory experiments as well as patient trials are available but come out of distributed resources. The Charité - University Hospital Berlin has established together with the German Research Foundation (DFG) a new information service centre for kidney diseases and transplantation (Open European Nephrology Science Centre - OpEN.SC). Beside a collaborative aspect to create new research groups every single partner or institution of this science information centre making his own data available is allowed to search the whole data pool of the various involved centres. A core task is the implementation of a non-restricting open data structure for the various different data sources. We decided to use a modern RDF model and in a first phase transformed original data coming from the web-based Electronic Patient Record database TBase©.

Keywords: Medical databases, Resource Description Framework (RDF), metadata repository.

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Authors: Changyeop Lee, Sewon Kim

Abstract:

Reburning is a useful technology in reducing nitric oxide through injection of a secondary hydrocarbon fuel. In this paper, an experimental study has been conducted to evaluate the effect of fuel lean reburning on NOx/CO reduction in LNG flame. Experiments were performed in flames stabilized by a co-flow swirl burner, which was mounted at the bottom of the furnace. Tests were conducted using LNG gas as the reburn fuel as well as the main fuel. The effects of reburn fuel fraction and injection manner of the reburn fuel were studied when the fuel lean reburning system was applied. The paper reports data on flue gas emissions and temperature distribution in the furnace for a wide range of experimental conditions. At steady state, temperature distribution and emission formation in the furnace have been measured and compared. This paper makes clear that in order to decrease both NOx and CO concentrations in the exhaust when the pulsated fuel lean reburning system was adapted, it is important that the control of some factors such as frequency and duty ratio. Also it shows the fuel lean reburning is also effective method to reduce NOx as much as reburning.

Keywords: Fuel lean reburn, NOx, CO, LNG flame.

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Authors: Toyomi Fujita

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This paper presents a sensing system for 3D sensing and mapping by a tracked mobile robot with an arm-type sensor movable unit and a laser range finder (LRF). The arm-type sensor movable unit is mounted on the robot and the LRF is installed at the end of the unit. This system enables the sensor to change position and orientation so that it avoids occlusions according to terrain by this mechanism. This sensing system is also able to change the height of the LRF by keeping its orientation flat for efficient sensing. In this kind of mapping, it may be difficult for moving robot to apply mapping algorithms such as the iterative closest point (ICP) because sets of the 2D data at each sensor height may be distant in a common surface. In order for this kind of mapping, the authors therefore applied interpolation to generate plausible model data for ICP. The results of several experiments provided validity of these kinds of sensing and mapping in this sensing system.

Keywords: Laser Range Finder, Arm-Type Sensor Movable Unit, Tracked Mobile Robot, 3D Mapping.

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Authors: Ana Paula Melchiors Stahlschmidt, Cristina Py de Pinto Gomes Mairesse

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This paper presents observations on the early supervised internships in Psychology, currently called basic internships in Brazil, and its importance in professional training. The work is an experience report and focuses on the Professional training, illustrated by the reality of a Brazilian institution, used as a case study. It was developed from the authors' experience as academic supervisors of this kind of practice throughout this undergraduate course, combined with aspects investigated in the post-doctoral research of one of them. Theoretical references on the subject and related national legislation are analyzed, as well as reports of students who experienced at least one semester of this type of practice, articulated to the observations of the authors. The results demonstrate the importance of the early supervised internships as a way of creating opportunities for the students of a first contact with the professional reality and the practice of psychologists in different fields of insertion, preparing them for further experiments that require more involvement in activities of training and practices in Psychology.

Keywords: Training of psychologists, Internships in Psychology, Supervised internships, Combination of theory and practice.

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Authors: Kamaldeep Joshi, Rajkumar Yadav, Ashok Kumar Yadav

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Digital Watermarking is a procedure to prevent the unauthorized access and modification of personal data. It assures that the communication between two parties remains secure and their communication should be undetected. This paper investigates the consequence of the watermark strength of the grayscale image using a Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT) additive technique. In this method, the gray scale host image is divided into four sub bands: LL (Low-Low), HL (High-Low), LH (Low-High), HH (High-High) and the watermark is inserted in an LL sub band using DWT technique. As the image is divided into four sub bands, a watermark of equal size of the LL sub band has been inserted and the results are discussed. LL represents the average component of the host image which contains the maximum information of the image. Two kinds of experiments are performed. In the first, the same watermark is embedded in different images and in the later on the strength of the watermark varies by a factor of s i.e. (s=10, 20, 30, 40, 50) and it is inserted in the same image.

Keywords: Watermarking, discrete wavelet transform, scaling factor, steganography.

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Authors: Geeta Negi, Pankaj, Anjana Srivastava, Anita Sharma

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In the present study, presence of endosulfan, imidacloprid, carbendazim, in the soil /vegetables/cereals and water samples was observed in agriculture fields of Uttarakhand. In view of biodegradation of these pesticides, 9 bacterial isolates were recovered from the soil samples of the fields which tolerated endosulfan, imidacloprid, carbendazim from 100 to 200 µg/ml. Three bacterial consortia used for in vitro bioremediation experiments were consisted of 3 bacterial isolates for carbendazim, imidacloprid and endosulfan, respectively. Maximum degradation (87 and 83%) of α and β endosulfan respectively was observed in soil slurry by consortium. Degradation of Imidacloprid and carbendazim under similar conditions was 88.4 and 77.5% respectively. FT-IR analysis of biodegraded samples of pesticides in liquid media showed stretching of various bonds. GC-MS of biodegraded endosulfan sample in soil slurry showed the presence of nontoxic intermediates. A pot trial with Bacterial treatments lowered down the uptake of pesticides in onion plants.

Keywords: Biodegradation, carbendazim, consortium, Endosulfan.

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Authors: Hyuck Ki Hong, Young Chang Jo, Yeon Shik Choi, Beom Joon Kim, Hyo Derk Park

Abstract:

To measure the thickness of the subcutaneous adipose tissue layer, a non-invasive optical measurement system (λ=1300 nm) is introduced. Animal and human subjects are used for the experiments. The results of human subjects are compared with the data of ultrasound device measurements, and a high correlation (r=0.94 for n=11) is observed. There are two modes in the corresponding signals measured by the optical system, which can be explained by two-layered and three-layered tissue models. If the target tissue is thinner than the critical thickness, detected data using diffuse reflectance method follow the three-layered tissue model, so the data increase as the thickness increases. On the other hand, if the target tissue is thicker than the critical thickness, the data follow the two-layered tissue model, so they decrease as the thickness increases.

Keywords: Subcutaneous adipose tissue layer, non-invasive measurement system, two-layered and three-layered tissue models.

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Authors: Kamil Ďurana, Robert Černý

Abstract:

An electrical apparatus for measuring moisture content was developed by our laboratory and uses dependence of electrical properties on water content in studied material. Error analysis of the apparatus was run by measuring different volumes of water in a simplified specimen, i.e. hollow plexiglass block, in order to avoid as many side-effects as possible. Obtained data were processed using both basic and advanced statistics and results were compared with each other. The influence of water content on accuracy of measured data was studied as well as the influence of variation of apparatus' proper arrangement or factual methodics of its usage. The overall coefficient of variation was 4%. There was no trend found in results of error dependence on water content. Comparison with current surveys led to a conclusion, that the studied apparatus can be used for indirect measurement of water content in porous materials, with expectable error and under known conditions. Factual experiments with porous materials are not involved, but are currently under investigation.

Keywords: device, capacitance method, error analysis, moisture meter

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Authors: Romisaa Ali

Abstract:

This paper presents a comparison between twin-delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) and Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) reinforcement learning algorithms in the context of training robust navigation policies for Jackal robots. By leveraging an open-source framework and custom motion control environments, the study evaluates the performance, robustness, and transferability of the trained policies across a range of scenarios. The primary focus of the experiments is to assess the training process, the adaptability of the algorithms, and the robot’s ability to navigate in previously unseen environments. Moreover, the paper examines the influence of varying environment complexities on the learning process and the generalization capabilities of the resulting policies. The results of this study aim to inform and guide the development of more efficient and practical reinforcement learning-based navigation policies for Jackal robots in real-world scenarios.

Keywords: Jackal robot environments, reinforcement learning, TD3, SAC, robust navigation, transferability, Custom Environment.

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Authors: Mongkorn Klingajay, Tawatchai Jitson

Abstract:

The pipe inspection operation is the difficult detective performance. Almost applications are mainly relies on a manual recognition of defective areas that have carried out detection by an engineer. Therefore, an automation process task becomes a necessary in order to avoid the cost incurred in such a manual process. An automated monitoring method to obtain a complete picture of the sewer condition is proposed in this work. The focus of the research is the automated identification and classification of discontinuities in the internal surface of the pipe. The methodology consists of several processing stages including image segmentation into the potential defect regions and geometrical characteristic features. Automatic recognition and classification of pipe defects are carried out by means of using an artificial neural network technique (ANN) based on Radial Basic Function (RBF). Experiments in a realistic environment have been conducted and results are presented.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, Radial basic function, Curve fitting, CCTV, Image segmentation, Data acquisition.

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Authors: Azeem Ahmad, Magnus Goransson, Aamir Shahzad

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The selection of appropriate requirements for product releases can make a big difference in a product success. The selection of requirements is done by different requirements prioritization techniques. These techniques are based on pre-defined and systematic steps to calculate the requirements relative weight. Prioritization is complicated by new development settings, shifting from traditional co-located development to geographically distributed development. Stakeholders, connected to a project, are distributed all over the world. These geographically distributions of stakeholders make it hard to prioritize requirements as each stakeholder have their own perception and expectations of the requirements in a software project. This paper discusses limitations of the Analytical Hierarchy Process with respect to geographically distributed stakeholders- (GDS) prioritization of requirements. This paper also provides a solution, in the form of a modified AHP, in order to prioritize requirements for GDS. We will conduct two experiments in this paper and will analyze the results in order to discuss AHP limitations with respect to GDS. The modified AHP variant is also validated in this paper.

Keywords: Requirements Prioritization, GeographicallyDistributed Stakeholders, AHP, Modified AHP.

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Authors: M. Michael Gromiha, Kiyonobu Yokota, Kazuhiko Fukui

Abstract:

We have developed an energy based approach for identifying the binding sites and important residues for binding in protein-protein complexes. We found that the residues and residuepairs with charged and aromatic side chains are important for binding. These residues influence to form cation-¤Ç, electrostatic and aromatic interactions. Our observation has been verified with the experimental binding specificity of protein-protein complexes and found good agreement with experiments. The analysis on surrounding hydrophobicity reveals that the binding residues are less hydrophobic than non-binding sites, which suggests that the hydrophobic core are important for folding and stability whereas the surface seeking residues play a critical role in binding. Further, the propensity of residues in the binding sites of receptors and ligands, number of medium and long-range contacts, and influence of neighboring residues will be discussed.

Keywords: Protein-protein interactions, energy based approach;binding sites, propensity, long-range contacts, hydrophobicity

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Authors: M. Abdou, M. K. Khalil

Abstract:

The heat pipe is a thermal device which allows efficient transport of thermal energy. The experimental work of this research was split into two phases; phase 1 is the development of the facilities, material and test rig preparation. Phase 2 is the actual experiments and measurements of the thermal control mockup inside the modified vacuum chamber (MVC). Due to limited funds, the development on the thermal control subsystem was delayed and the experimental facilities such as suitable thermal vacuum chamber with space standard specifications were not available from the beginning of the research and had to be procured over a period of time. In all, these delays extended the project by one and a half year. Thermal control subsystem needs a special facility and equipment to be tested. The available vacuum chamber is not suitable for the thermal tests. Consequently, the modification of the chamber was a must. A vacuum chamber has been modified to be used as a Thermal Vaccum Chamber (TVC). A MVC is a vacuum chamber modified by using a stainless mirror box with perfect reflectability and the infrared lamp connected with the voltage regulator to vary the lamp intensity as it will be illustrated through the paper.

Keywords: Heat pipe, thermal control, thermal vacuum chamber, satellite.

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Authors: Sandra Muizniece-Brasava, Lija Dukalska, Irisa Murniece, Ilona Dabina-Bicka, Emils Kozlinskis, Svetlana Sarvi, Ralfs Santars, Anna Silvjane

Abstract:

The research object was wheat bread. Experiments were carried out at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia University of Agriculture. An active packaging in combination with modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2 60% and N2 40%) was examined and compared with traditional packaging in air ambiance. Polymer Multibarrier 60, PP and OPP bags were used. Influence of iron based oxygen absorber in sachets of 100 cc obtained from Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Europe Ageless® was tested on the quality during the shelf of wheat bread. Samples of 40±4 g were packaged in polymer pouches (110 mm x 120 mm), hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC C300 vacuum chamber machine, and stored in room temperature +21.0±0.5 °C. The physiochemical properties – weight losses, moisture content, hardness, pH, colour, changes of atmosphere content (CO2 and O2) in headspace of packs, and microbial conditions were analysed before packaging and in the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days of storage.

Keywords: Active packaging, wheat bread, shelf life.

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Authors: Sachin Man Bajimaya, SangChul Park, Gi-Nam Wang

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The objective of this paper is to estimate realistic principal extrusion process parameters by means of artificial neural network. Conventionally, finite element analysis is used to derive process parameters. However, the finite element analysis of the extrusion model does not consider the manufacturing process constraints in its modeling. Therefore, the process parameters obtained through such an analysis remains highly theoretical. Alternatively, process development in industrial extrusion is to a great extent based on trial and error and often involves full-size experiments, which are both expensive and time-consuming. The artificial neural network-based estimation of the extrusion process parameters prior to plant execution helps to make the actual extrusion operation more efficient because more realistic parameters may be obtained. And so, it bridges the gap between simulation and real manufacturing execution system. In this work, a suitable neural network is designed which is trained using an appropriate learning algorithm. The network so trained is used to predict the manufacturing process parameters.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Indirect Extrusion, Finite Element Analysis, MES.

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Authors: Hamza A. Al-Sewadi, Akram N. A. Aldakari

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Copyright protection and ownership proof of digital multimedia are achieved nowadays by digital watermarking techniques. A text watermarking algorithm for protecting the property rights and ownership judgment of color images is proposed in this paper. Embedding is achieved by inserting texts elements randomly into the color image as noise. The YIQ image processing model is found to be faster than other image processing methods, and hence, it is adopted for the embedding process. An optional choice of encrypting the text watermark before embedding is also suggested (in case required by some applications), where, the text can is encrypted using any enciphering technique adding more difficulty to hackers. Experiments resulted in embedding speed improvement of more than double the speed of other considered systems (such as least significant bit method, and separate color code methods), and a fairly acceptable level of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) with low mean square error values for watermarking purposes.

Keywords: Steganography, watermarking, private keys, time complexity measurements.

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Authors: Maryam Nejat Dehkordi, Per Lincoln, Hassan Momtaz

Abstract:

Interaction of Schiff base complexes of Iron and Manganese: Iron [N, N’ Bis (5- (triphenyl phosphonium methyl) salicylidene) -1, 2 ethanediamine) chloride, [Fe Salen]Cl; Manganese [N, N’ Bis (5- (triphenyl phosphonium methyl) salicylidene) -1, 2 ethanediamine) acetate, were investigated by spectroscopic and isothermal titration calorimetry techniques (ITC). The absorbance spectra of complexes have shown hyper and hypochromism in the presence of DNA that is indication of interaction of complexes with DNA. The linear dichroism (LD) measurements confirmed the bending of DNA in the presence of complexes. Furthermore, Isothermal titration calorimetry experiments approved that complexes bound to DNA on the base of both electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. More, ITC profile exhibits the existence of two binding phases for the complexes. Antibacterial activity of ligand and complexes were tested in vitro to evaluate their activity against the gram positive and negative bacteria.

Keywords: Schiff base complexes, Linear dichroism (LD), Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC).

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Authors: Jhu-Wei Ji, Fa-Shian Chang, Lih-Tyng Hwang, Chih-Feng Liu, Jeng-Nan Lee, Shun-Min Wang, Kai-Yi Cho

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This paper presents a tracked robot with blade arms powered to assist movement in difficult environments. As a result, the tracked robot is able to pass a ramp or climb stairs. The main feature is a pair of blade arms on both sides of the vehicle body working in collaboration with previously validated transformable track system. When the robot encounters an obstacle in a terrain, it enlists the blade arms with power to overcome the obstacle. In disaster areas, there usually will be terrains that are full of broken and complicated slopes, broken walls, rubbles, and ditches. Thereupon, a robot, which is instructed to pass through such disaster areas, needs to have a good off-road capability for such complicated terrains. The robot with crawling-assisting blade arms would overcome the obstacles along the terrains, and possibly become to be a rescue robot. A prototype has been developed and built; experiments were carried out to validate the enhanced crawling capability of the robot.

Keywords: Tracked robot, rescue robot, blade arm, crawling ability, control system.

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Authors: Lucie Novakova, Petr Homola, Vaclav Kafka

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Asymmetric incremental sheet forming (AISF) could significantly reduce costs incurred by the fabrication of complex industrial components with a minimal environmental impact. The AISF experiments were carried out on commercially pure titanium (Ti-Gr2), Timetal (15-3-3-3) alloy, and Ti-6Al-4V (Ti-Gr5) alloy. A special testing geometry was used to characterize the titanium alloys properties from the point of view of the forming zone and titanium structure effect. The structure and properties of the materials were assessed by means of metallographic analyses and microhardness measurements.The highest differences in the parameters assessed as a function of the sampling zone were observed in the case of alpha-phase Ti-Gr2at the expense of the most substantial sheet thinning occurrence. A springback causes a smaller stored deformation in Timetal (β alloy) resulting in less pronounced microstructure refinement and microhardness increase. Ti-6Al-4V alloy exhibited early failure due to its poor formability at ambient temperature.

 

Keywords: Incremental forming, metallography, hardness, titanium alloys.

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Authors: B.Singh, B.K.Nanda

Abstract:

Response surface methodology with Box–Benhken (BB) design of experiment approach has been utilized to study the mechanism of interface slip damping in layered and jointed tack welded beams with varying surface roughness. The design utilizes the initial amplitude of excitation, tack length and surface roughness at the interfaces to develop the model for the logarithmic damping decrement of the layered and jointed welded structures. Statistically designed experiments have been performed to estimate the coefficients in the mathematical model, predict the response, and check the adequacy of the model. Comparison of predicted and experimental response values outside the design conditions have shown good correspondence, implying that empirical model derived from response surface approach can be effectively used to describe the mechanism of interface slip damping in layered and jointed tack welded structures.

Keywords: Interface slip damping, welded joint, surface roughness, amplitude, tack length, response surface methodology.

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Authors: Tor Kindsbekken Kjeldby, Ruud Henkes, Ole Jørgen Nydal

Abstract:

Experimental data from an atmospheric air/water terrain slugging case has been made available by the Shell Amsterdam research center, and has been subject to numerical simulation and comparison with a one-dimensional two-phase slug tracking simulator under development at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The code is based on tracking of liquid slugs in pipelines by use of a Lagrangian grid formulation implemented in Cµ by use of object oriented techniques. An existing hybrid spatial discretization scheme is tested, in which the stratified regions are modelled by the two-fluid model. The slug regions are treated incompressible, thus requiring a single momentum balance over the whole slug. Upon comparison with the experimental data, the period of the simulated severe slugging cycle is observed to be sensitive to slug generation in the horizontal parts of the system. Two different slug initiation methods have been tested with the slug tracking code, and grid dependency has been investigated.

Keywords: Hydrodynamic initiation, slug tracking, terrain slugging, two-fluid model, two-phase flow.

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Authors: Pooja Mishra, Chris Pollett

Abstract:

This paper explores efficient ways to implement various media-updating features like news aggregation, video conversion, and bulk email handling. All of these jobs share the property that they are periodic in nature, and they all benefit from being handled in a distributed fashion. The data for these jobs also often comes from a social or collaborative source. We isolate the class of periodic, one round map reduce jobs as a useful setting to describe and handle media updating tasks. As such tasks are simpler than general map reduce jobs, programming them in a general map reduce platform could easily become tedious. This paper presents a MediaUpdater module of the Yioop Open Source Search Engine Web Portal designed to handle such jobs via an extension of a PHP class. We describe how to implement various media-updating tasks in our system as well as experiments carried out using these implementations on an Amazon Web Services cluster.

Keywords: Distributed jobs framework, news aggregation, video conversion, email.

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Authors: P. Visutsak

Abstract:

The study of the interaction between humans and computers has been emerging during the last few years. This interaction will be more powerful if computers are able to perceive and respond to human nonverbal communication such as emotions. In this study, we present the image-based approach to emotion classification through lower facial expression. We employ a set of feature points in the lower face image according to the particular face model used and consider their motion across each emotive expression of images. The vector of displacements of all feature points input to the Adaptive Support Vector Machines (A-SVMs) classifier that classify it into seven basic emotions scheme, namely neutral, angry, disgust, fear, happy, sad and surprise. The system was tested on the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) dataset of frontal view facial expressions [7]. Our experiments on emotion classification through lower facial expressions demonstrate the robustness of Adaptive SVM classifier and verify the high efficiency of our approach.

Keywords: emotion classification, facial expression, adaptive support vector machines, facial expression classifier.

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Authors: W. P. Hu, J. V. Kumar, Jeffrey J. P. Tsai

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The inhibition of SH2 domain regulated protein-protein interactions is an attractive target for developing an effective chemotherapeutic approach in the treatment of disease. Molecular simulation is a useful tool for developing new drugs and for studying molecular recognition. In this study, we searched potential drug compounds for the inhibition of SH2 domain by performing structural similarity search in PubChem Compound Database. A total of 37 compounds were screened from the database, and then we used the LibDock docking program to evaluate the inhibition effect. The best three compounds (AP22408, CID 71463546 and CID 9917321) were chosen for MD simulations after the LibDock docking. Our results show that the compound CID 9917321 can produce a more stable protein-ligand complex compared to other two currently known inhibitors of Src SH2 domain. The compound CID 9917321 may be useful for the inhibition of SH2 domain based on these computational results. Subsequently experiments are needed to verify the effect of compound CID 9917321 on the SH2 domain in the future studies.

Keywords: Nonpeptide inhibitor, Src SH2 domain, LibDock, molecular dynamics simulation.

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Authors: Martina Holenko Dlab, Natasa Hoic-Bozic, Ivica Boticki

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This paper presents technologically innovative and scalable mobile learning solution within the SCOLLAm project (“Opening up education through Seamless and COLLAborative mobile learning on tablet computers”). The main research method applied during the development of the SCOLLAm mobile learning system is design-based research. It assumes iterative refinement of the system guided by collaboration between researches and practitioners. Following the identification of requirements, a multiplatform mobile learning system SCOLLAm [in]Form was developed. Several experiments were designed and conducted in the first and second grade of elementary school. SCOLLAm [in]Form system was used to design learning activities for math classes during which students practice calculation. System refinements were based on experience and interaction data gathered during class observations. In addition to implemented improvements, the data were used to outline possible improvements and deficiencies of the system that should be addressed in the next phase of the SCOLLAm [in]Form development.

Keywords: Adaptation, collaborative learning, educational technology, mobile learning, tablet computers.

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Authors: M. Kakavand, S. A. Naeini

Abstract:

Dynamic properties of soil in small strains, especially for geotechnical engineers, are important for describing the behavior of soil and estimation of the earth structure deformations and structures, especially significant structures. This paper presents the effect of density on the shear modulus and damping ratio of saturated clean sand at various isotropic confining pressures. For this purpose, the specimens were compared with two different relative densities, loose Dr = 30% and dense Dr = 70%. Dynamic parameters were attained from a series of consolidated undrained fixed – free type torsional resonant column tests in small strain. Sand No. 161 is selected for this paper. The experiments show that by increasing sand density and confining pressure, the shear modulus increases and the damping ratio decreases.

Keywords: Dynamic properties, shear modulus, damping ratio, clean sand, density, confining pressure, resonant column/torsional simple shear.

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Authors: Adilson Elias Xavier, Otto Corrêa Rotunno Filho, Paulo Canedo de Magalhães

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This paper addresses the issue of automatic parameter estimation in conceptual rainfall-runoff (CRR) models. Due to threshold structures commonly occurring in CRR models, the associated mathematical optimization problems have the significant characteristic of being strongly non-differentiable. In order to face this enormous task, the resolution method proposed adopts a smoothing strategy using a special C∞ differentiable class function. The final estimation solution is obtained by solving a sequence of differentiable subproblems which gradually approach the original conceptual problem. The use of this technique, called Hyperbolic Smoothing Method (HSM), makes possible the application of the most powerful minimization algorithms, and also allows for the main difficulties presented by the original CRR problem to be overcome. A set of computational experiments is presented for the purpose of illustrating both the reliability and the efficiency of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Rainfall-runoff models, optimization procedure, automatic parameter calibration, hyperbolic smoothing method.

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Authors: Sagir M. Yusuf, Chris Baber

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We describe issues bedeviling the coordination of heterogeneous (different sensors carrying agents) multi-agent missions such as belief conflict, situation reasoning, etc. We applied Bayesian and agents' presumptions inferential reasoning to solve the outlined issues with the heterogeneous multi-agent belief variation and situational-base reasoning. Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was used in modeling the agents' belief conflict due to sensor variations. Simulation experiments were designed, and cases from agents’ missions were used in training the BBN using gradient descent and expectation-maximization algorithms. The output network is a well-trained BBN for making inferences for both agents and human experts. We claim that the Bayesian learning algorithm prediction capacity improves by the number of training data and argue that it enhances multi-agents robustness and solve agents’ sensor conflicts.

Keywords: Distributed constraint optimization problem, multi-agent system, multi-robot coordination, autonomous system, swarm intelligence.

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Authors: M. Hossein Ghadiri, Mohd Farid Mohamed, N. Lukman N. Ibrahim

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Wind catchers are traditional natural ventilation systems attached to buildings in order to ventilate the indoor air. The most common type of wind catcher is four sided one which is capable to catch wind in all directions. CFD simulation is the perfect way to evaluate the wind catcher performance. The accuracy of CFD results is the issue of concern, so sensitivity analyses is crucial to find out the effect of different settings of CFD on results. This paper presents a series of 3D steady RANS simulations for a generic isolated four-sided wind catcher attached to a room subjected to wind direction ranging from 0º to 180º with an interval of 45º. The CFD simulations are validated with detailed wind tunnel experiments. The influence of an extensive range of computational parameters is explored in this paper, including the resolution of the computational grid, the size of the computational domain and the turbulence model. This study found that CFD simulation is a reliable method for wind catcher study, but it is less accurate in prediction of models with non perpendicular wind directions.

Keywords: Wind catcher, CFD, natural ventilation, sensitivity study.

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Authors: H. Bouaziz, N. Soudania, M. Essafia, I. Ben Amara, A. Hakim, K. Jamoussi, Km. Zeghal, N. Zeghal

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In this investigation, we have evaluated the effects of arsenic trioxide on hepatic function in pregnant and lactating Swiss albino mice and their suckling pups. Experiments were carried out on female mice given 175 ppm As2O3 in their drinking water from the 14th day of pregnancy until day 14 after delivery. Our results showed a significant decrease in plasma levels of total protein and albumin, cholesterol and triglyceride in As2O3 treated mice and their pups. The hyperbilirubinemia and the increased plasma total alkaline phosphatase activity suggested the presence of cholestasis. Transaminase activities as well as lactate deshydrogenase activity in plasma, known as biomarkers of hepatocellular injury, were elevated indicating hepatic cells’ damage after treatment with As2O3. Exposure to arsenic led to an increase of liver thiobarbituric acid reactive substances level along with a concomitant decrease in the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione peroxidase and in glutathione.

Keywords: Antioxidant status, arsenic trioxide, hepatotoxicity, mice, oxidative stress.

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