Search results for: Usage monitoring

Authors: Y. A. Adla, R. Soubra, M. Kasab, M. O. Diab, A. Chkeir

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Over the past several years, researchers have shown a great interest in assessing the mobility of elderly people to measure their functional status. Usually, such an assessment is done by conducting tests that require the subject to walk a certain distance, turn around, and finally sit back down. Consequently, this study aims to provide an at home monitoring system to assess the patient’s status continuously. Thus, we proposed a technique to automatically detect when a subject sits down while walking at home. In this study, we utilized a Doppler radar system to capture the motion of the subjects. More than 20 features were extracted from the radar signals out of which 11 were chosen based on their Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC > 0.75). Accordingly, the sequential floating forward selection wrapper was applied to further narrow down the final feature vector. Finally, five features were introduced to the Linear Discriminant Analysis classifier and an accuracy of 93.75% was achieved as well as a precision and recall of 95% and 90% respectively.

Keywords: Doppler radar system, stand-to-sit phase, TUG test, machine learning, classification

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Authors: Mary A. Bisi-Johnson, Hamzat A. Oyelade, Kehinde A. Adediran, Saheed A. Akinola

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Geophagic and cosmetic clays are among potential nanomaterial which occur naturally and are of various forms. The use of these nanoclays is a common practice in both rural and urban areas mostly due to tradition and medicinal reasons. These naturally occurring materials can be valuable sources of nanomaterial by serving as nanocomposites. The need to ascertain the safety of these materials is the motivation for this research. Physical Characterization based on the hue value and microbiological qualities of the nanoclays were carried out. The Microbial analysis of the clay samples showed considerable contamination with both bacteria and fungi with fungal contaminants taking the lead. This observation may not be unlikely due to the ability of fungi species to survive harsher growth conditions than bacteria. ‘Atike pupa’ showed no bacterial growth. The clay with the largest bacterial count was Calabash chalk (Igbanke), while that with the highest fungal count was ‘Eko grey’. The most commonly isolated bacteria in this study were Clostridium spp. and Corynebacterium spp. while fungi included Aspergillus spp. These results are an indication of the need to subject these clay materials to treatments such as heating before consumption or topical usage thereby ascertaining their safety.

Keywords: Nanomaterial, clay, microorganism, quality.

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Authors: Angelo Nodari, Ignazio Gallo

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The novelty proposed in this study is twofold and consists in the developing of a new color similarity metric based on the human visual system and a new color indexing based on a textual approach. The new color similarity metric proposed is based on the color perception of the human visual system. Consequently the results returned by the indexing system can fulfill as much as possibile the user expectations. We developed a web application to collect the users judgments about the similarities between colors, whose results are used to estimate the metric proposed in this study. In order to index the image's colors, we used a text indexing engine to facilitate the integration of visual features in a database of text documents. The textual signature is build by weighting the image's colors in according to their occurrence in the image. The use of a textual indexing engine, provide us a simple, fast and robust solution to index images. A typical usage of the system proposed in this study, is the development of applications whose data type is both visual and textual. In order to evaluate the proposed method we chose a price comparison engine as a case of study, collecting a series of commercial offers containing the textual description and the image representing a specific commercial offer.

Keywords: Color Extraction, Content-Based Image Retrieval, Indexing

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Authors: Matthias Dehmer, Frank Emmert Streib, Jürgen Kilian, Andreas Zulauf

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Methods for organizing web data into groups in order to analyze web-based hypertext data and facilitate data availability are very important in terms of the number of documents available online. Thereby, the task of clustering web-based document structures has many applications, e.g., improving information retrieval on the web, better understanding of user navigation behavior, improving web users requests servicing, and increasing web information accessibility. In this paper we investigate a new approach for clustering web-based hypertexts on the basis of their graph structures. The hypertexts will be represented as so called generalized trees which are more general than usual directed rooted trees, e.g., DOM-Trees. As a important preprocessing step we measure the structural similarity between the generalized trees on the basis of a similarity measure d. Then, we apply agglomerative clustering to the obtained similarity matrix in order to create clusters of hypertext graph patterns representing navigation structures. In the present paper we will run our approach on a data set of hypertext structures and obtain good results in Web Structure Mining. Furthermore we outline the application of our approach in Web Usage Mining as future work.

Keywords: Clustering methods, graph-based patterns, graph similarity, hypertext structures, web structure mining

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Authors: Aktan Ozsoy, Ali Fırat Cabalar, Eyyub Karakan

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Climate change is one of the biggest issues facing communities. Increasing population, growing economies, rapid industrialization are the main factors triggering it. On the other hand, the millions of tons of waste have generated by the period of rapid global growth not only harm to the environment but also lead to the use of valuable lands around the world as landfill sites. Moreover, it is rapidly consuming our resources and this forces the human population and wildlife to share increasingly shrinking space. In this direction, it is vital to reuse waste materials with a sustainability philosophy. This study was carried out to contribute to the combat against climate change, conserve our natural resources and the environment. An oedometer (consolidation) test was performed on two waste materials combined in certain proportions to evaluate their sustainable usage. Crushed brick dust (BD) was mixed with rock powder (RP) in 0%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% (dry weight of soil). The results obtained revealed the importance of the gradation of the material used in the consolidation test. It was found that there was a negligible difference between the initial and final void ratio of mixtures with BD added.

Keywords: Waste material, oedometer test, environmental geotechnics, sustainability, crushed brick dust, rock powder.

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Authors: Maamar Ali Saud Al Tobi, Geraint Bevan, K. P. Ramachandran, Peter Wallace, David Harrison

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Centrifugal pumps are complex machines which can experience different types of fault. Condition monitoring can be used in centrifugal pump fault detection through vibration analysis for mechanical and hydraulic forces. Vibration analysis methods have the potential to be combined with artificial intelligence systems where an automatic diagnostic method can be approached. An automatic fault diagnosis approach could be a good option to minimize human error and to provide a precise machine fault classification. This work aims to introduce an approach to centrifugal pump fault diagnosis based on artificial intelligence and genetic algorithm systems. An overview of the future works, research methodology and proposed experimental setup is presented and discussed. The expected results and outcomes based on the experimental work are illustrated.

Keywords: Centrifugal pump setup, vibration analysis, artificial intelligence, genetic algorithm.

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Authors: Meenakshi Bansal, Iqbal Singh, Parvinder S. Sandhu

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In over deployed sensor networks, one approach to Conserve energy is to keep only a small subset of sensors active at Any instant. For the coverage problems, the monitoring area in a set of points that require sensing, called demand points, and consider that the node coverage area is a circle of range R, where R is the sensing range, If the Distance between a demand point and a sensor node is less than R, the node is able to cover this point. We consider a wireless sensor network consisting of a set of sensors deployed randomly. A point in the monitored area is covered if it is within the sensing range of a sensor. In some applications, when the network is sufficiently dense, area coverage can be approximated by guaranteeing point coverage. In this case, all the points of wireless devices could be used to represent the whole area, and the working sensors are supposed to cover all the sensors. We also introduce Hybrid Algorithm and challenges related to coverage in sensor networks.

Keywords: Wireless sensor networks, network coverage, Energy conservation, Hybrid Algorithms.

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Authors: P. C. Chiu, Jehnming Lin

Abstract:

In this study, a 50-W CO₂ laser was used for the clad of 304L powders on the stainless steel substrate with a temperature sensor and image monitoring system. The laser power and cladding speed and focal position were modified to achieve the requirement of the workpiece flatness and mechanical properties. The numerical calculation is based on ANSYS to analyze the temperature change of the moving heat source at different surface positions when coating the workpiece, and the effect of the process parameters on the bath size was discussed. The temperature of stainless steel powder in the nozzle outlet reacting with the laser was simulated as a process parameter. In the experiment, the difference of the thermal conductivity in three-dimensional space is compared with single-layer cladding and multi-layer cladding. The heat dissipation pattern of the single-layer cladding is the steel plate and the multi-layer coating is the workpiece itself. The relationship between the multi-clad temperature and the profile was analyzed by the temperature signal from an IR pyrometer.

Keywords: Laser cladding, temperature, profile, microstructure.

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Authors: Hironori Kakuta, Kajiro Watanabe, Yosuke Kurihara

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Water leakage is a serious problem in the maintenance of a waterworks facility. Monitoring the water flow rate is one way to locate leakage. However, conventional flowmeters such as the wet-type flowmeter and the clamp-on type ultrasonic flowmeter require additional construction for their installation and are therefore quite expensive. This paper proposes a novel estimation system for the flow rate in a water pipeline, which employs a vibration sensor. This assembly can be attached to any water pipeline without the need for additional high-cost construction. The vibration sensor is designed based on a condenser microphone. This sensor detects vibration caused by water flowing through a pipeline. It is possible to estimate the water flow rate by measuring the amplitude of the output signal from the vibration sensor. We confirmed the validity of the proposed sensing system experimentally.

Keywords: Condenser microphone, Flow rate estimation, Piping vibration, Water pipe.

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Authors: Gizelle K. Vianna, Gustavo S. Oliveira, Gabriel V. Cunha

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The use of decision support systems in agriculture may help monitoring large fields of crops by automatically detecting the symptoms of foliage diseases. In our work, we designed and implemented a decision support system for small tomatoes producers. This work investigates ways to recognize the late blight disease from the analysis of digital images of tomatoes, using a pair of multilayer perceptron neural networks. The networks outputs are used to generate repainted tomato images in which the injuries on the plant are highlighted, and to calculate the damage level of each plant. Those levels are then used to construct a situation map of a farm where a cellular automata simulates the outbreak evolution over the fields. The simulator can test different pesticides actions, helping in the decision on when to start the spraying and in the analysis of losses and gains of each choice of action.

Keywords: Artificial neural networks, cellular automata, decision support system, pattern recognition.

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Authors: S. Chovancova, F. Illek, J. Winkler

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The effect of tillage technology of maize on intensity of weed infestation and weed species composition was observed at experimental field. Maize is grown consecutively since 2001. The experimental site is situated at an altitude of 230 m above sea level in the Czech Republic. Variants of tillage technology are CT: plowing – conventional tillage 0.22 m, MT: loosening – disc tillage on the depth of 0.1 – 0.12 m, NT: direct sowing – without tillage. The evaluation of weed infestation was carried out by numerical method in years 2012 and 2013. Within the monitoring were found 20 various species of weeds. Conventional tillage (CT) primarily supports the occurrence of perennial weeds (Cirsium arvense, Convolvulus arvensis). Late spring species (Chenopodium album, Echinochloa crus-galli) were more frequently noticed on variants of loosening (MT) and direct sowing (NT). Different tillage causes a significant change of weed species spectrum in maize.

Keywords: Weeds, maize, tillage, loosening, direct sowing.

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Authors: Myagmarsuren Soronzonjav, N. Togtokhbayar, L. Davaahuu, B. Minjigdorj, Seong Gu Hwang

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The number of natural or organic product consumers is increased in recent years and this healthy demand pushes to increase usage of healthy meat. At the same time, consumers pay more attention on the healthy fat, especially on unsaturated fatty acids. These long chain carbohydrates reduce heart diseases, improve memory and eye sight and activate the immune system. One of the important issues to be solved for our Mongolia’s food security is to provide healthy, fresh, widely available and cheap meat for the population. Thus, an importance of the Selenge breed meat production is increasing in order to supply the quality meat food security since the Selenge breed cattle are rapidly multiplied, beneficial in term of income, the same quality as Mongolian breed, and well digested for human body. We researched the lipid, unsaturated and saturated fatty acid contents of meat of Selenge breed younger cattle by their muscle types. Result of our research reveals that 11 saturated fatty acids are detected. For the content of palmitic acid among saturated fatty acids, 23.61% was in the sirloin meat, 24.01% was in the round and chuck meat, and 24.83% was in the short loin meat.

Keywords: Chromatogram, gas chromatography, organic resolving, saturated and unsaturated fatty acids.

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Authors: Azian Hariri, M. Z. M Yusof, A. M. Leman

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Experimental study was conducted to assess personal welding fumes exposure toward welders during an aluminum metal inert gas (MIG) process. The welding process was carried out by a welding machine attached to a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) workbench. A dummy welder was used to replicate welder during welding works and was attached with sampling pumps and filter cassettes for welding fumes sampling. Direct reading instruments to measure air velocity, humidity, temperature and particulate matter with diameter size 10µm or less (PM₁₀) were located behind the dummy welder and parallel to the neck collar level to make sure the measured welding fumes exposure were not being influenced by other factors. Welding fumes exposure during standing and sitting position with and without the usage of local exhaust ventilation (LEV) was investigated. Welding fume samples were then digested and analyzed by using inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) according to ASTM D7439-08 method. The results of the study showed the welding fume exposure during sitting was lower compared to standing position. LEV helped reduce aluminum and lead exposure to acceptable levels during standing position. However during sitting position reduction of exposure was smaller. It can be concluded that welder position and the correct positioning of LEV should be implemented for effective exposure reduction. 

Keywords: ICP-MS, MIG process, personal sampling, welding fumes exposure.

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Authors: Y. Wang, H. Fukuda, A. Ozaki, H. Sato

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In this study, we discussed the effects on the thermal comfort of super high-rise residences that how effected by the high thermal capacity structural components. We considered different building orientations, structures, and insulation methods. We used the dynamic simulation software THERB (simulation of the thermal environment of residential buildings). It can estimate the temperature, humidity, sensible temperature, and heating/cooling load for multiple buildings. In the past studies, we examined the impact of air-conditioning loads (hereinafter referred to as AC loads) on the interior structural parts and the AC-usage patterns of super-high-rise residences. Super-high-rise residences have more structural components such as pillars and beams than do ordinary apartment buildings. The skeleton is generally made of concrete and steel, which have high thermal-storage capacities. The thermal-storage capacity of super-high-rise residences is considered to have a larger impact on the AC load and thermal comfort than that of ordinary residences. We show that the AC load of super-high-rise units would be reduced by installing insulation on the surfaces of interior walls that are not usually insulated in Japan.

Keywords: High-rise Residences, AC Load, Thermal Comfort, Thermal Storage, Insulation Patterns

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Authors: Zhiwen Pan, Jesus Pacheco, Salim Hariri, Yiqiang Chen, Bozhi Liu

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The Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to the development of advanced Smart Home services that are pervasive, cost-effective, and can be accessed by home occupants from anywhere and at any time. However, advanced smart home applications will introduce grand security challenges due to the increase in the attack surface. Current approaches do not handle cybersecurity from a holistic point of view; hence, a systematic cybersecurity mechanism needs to be adopted when designing smart home applications. In this paper, we present a generic intrusion detection methodology to detect and mitigate the anomaly behaviors happened in Smart Home Systems (SHS). By utilizing our Smart Home Context Data Structure, the heterogeneous information and services acquired from SHS are mapped in context attributes which can describe the context of smart home operation precisely and accurately. Runtime models for describing usage patterns of home assets are developed based on characterization functions. A threat-aware action management methodology, used to efficiently mitigate anomaly behaviors, is proposed at the end. Our preliminary experimental results show that our methodology can be used to detect and mitigate known and unknown threats, as well as to protect SHS premises and services.

Keywords: Internet of Things, network security, context awareness, intrusion detection

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Authors: Abhay Utpat, R. B. Ingle, M. R. Nandgaonkar

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The vibrations produced by a single point defect on various parts of the bearing under constant radial load are predicted by using a theoretical model. The model includes variation in the response due to the effect of bearing dimensions, rotating frequency distribution of load. The excitation forces are generated when the defects on the races strike to rolling elements. In case of the outer ring defect, the pulses generated are with periodicity of outer ring defect frequency where as for inner ring defect, the pulses are with periodicity of inner ring defect frequency. The effort has been carried out in preparing the physical model of the system. Different defect frequencies are obtained and are used to find out the amplitudes of the vibration due to excitation of the bearing parts. Increase in the radial load or severity of the defect produces a significant change in bearing signature characteristics.

Keywords: Condition monitoring, defect frequency, rolling element, vibration response.

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Authors: J. Menčík, B. Culek, Jr., L. Beran, J. Mareš

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Large metal and concrete structures suffer by various kinds of deterioration, and accurate prediction of the remaining life is important. This paper informs about two methods for its assessment. One method, suitable for steel bridges and other constructions exposed to fatigue, monitors the loads and damage accumulation using information systems for the operation and the finite element model of the construction. In addition to the operation load, the dead weight of the construction and thermal stresses can be included into the model. The second method is suitable for concrete bridges and other structures, which suffer by carbonatation and other degradation processes, driven by diffusion. The diffusion constant, important for the prediction of future development, can be determined from the depth-profile of pH, obtained by pH measurement at various depths. Comparison with measurements on real objects illustrates the suitability of both methods.

Keywords: Bridges, carbonatation, concrete, diagnostics, fatigue, life prediction, monitoring, railway, simulation, structures.

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Authors: Chinlun Lai, Lunjyh Jiang

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Due to the heavy burden and pressure of caring for infants, an integrated automatic baby watching system based on IoT smart sensing and deep learning machine vision techniques is proposed in this paper. By monitoring infant body conditions such as heartbeat, breathing, body temperature, sleeping posture, as well as the surrounding conditions such as dangerous/sharp objects, light, noise, humidity and temperature, the proposed system can analyze and predict the obvious/potential dangerous conditions according to observed data and then adopt suitable actions in real time to protect the infant from harm. Thus, reducing the burden of the caregiver and improving safety efficiency of the caring work. The experimental results show that the proposed system works successfully for the infant care work and thus can be implemented in various life fields practically.

Keywords: Baby care system, internet of things, deep learning, machine vision.

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Authors: Nwakaego C. Onyenokporo

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Cement is the most extensively used construction material due to its strength and versatility of use. However, the production of Portland cement has become unsustainable because of high energy usage, reduction of natural non-renewable resources and emissions of greenhouse gases. Production of cement contributes to anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions annually. The growing concerns for the environment resulting from this constant and excessive use of cement has therefore raised the need for more green materials and technology. The use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) is considered as one of the many alternatives suited to address this issue and serve as a sustainable partial replacement for cement in construction. This paper will examine the reuse of these waste materials to partially replace Portland cement. It provides a critical review of literature analysing various supplementary cementitious materials which are applicable in the building industry as either partial replacement for cement or aggregates. These materials have been grouped based on source into industrial wastes, domestic/general wastes, and agricultural wastes. The reuse of these waste materials could potentially reduce the negative effects of cement production and reduce landfills which constitute an environmental nuisance. This paper seeks to inform building industry professionals and researchers in the field on the applicability of these waste materials in construction.

Keywords: cement, greenhouse gases, landfills, sustainable, waste materials

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Authors: Nwakaego C. Onyenokporo

Abstract:

Cement is the most extensively used construction material due to its strength and versatility of use. However, the production of Portland cement has become unsustainable because of high energy usage, reduction of natural non-renewable resources and emissions of greenhouse gases. Production of cement contributes to anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions annually. The growing concerns for the environment resulting from this constant and excessive use of cement has therefore raised the need for more green materials and technology. The use of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) is considered as one of the many alternatives suited to address this issue and serve as a sustainable partial replacement for cement in construction. This paper will examine the reuse of these waste materials to partially replace Portland cement. It provides a critical review of literature analysing various supplementary cementitious materials which are applicable in the building industry as either partial replacement for cement or aggregates. These materials have been grouped based on source into industrial wastes, domestic/general wastes, and agricultural wastes. The reuse of these waste materials could potentially reduce the negative effects of cement production and reduce landfills which constitute an environmental nuisance. This paper seeks to inform building industry professionals and researchers in the field on the applicability of these waste materials in construction.

Keywords: Cement, greenhouse gases, landfills, sustainable, waste materials.

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Authors: Dimitrios Koukopoulos, Yiannis Stamatiou

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In this work, we present for the first time in our perception an efficient digital watermarking scheme for mpeg audio layer 3 files that operates directly in the compressed data domain, while manipulating the time and subband/channel domain. In addition, it does not need the original signal to detect the watermark. Our scheme was implemented taking special care for the efficient usage of the two limited resources of computer systems: time and space. It offers to the industrial user the capability of watermark embedding and detection in time immediately comparable to the real music time of the original audio file that depends on the mpeg compression, while the end user/audience does not face any artifacts or delays hearing the watermarked audio file. Furthermore, it overcomes the disadvantage of algorithms operating in the PCMData domain to be vulnerable to compression/recompression attacks, as it places the watermark in the scale factors domain and not in the digitized sound audio data. The strength of our scheme, that allows it to be used with success in both authentication and copyright protection, relies on the fact that it gives to the users the enhanced capability their ownership of the audio file not to be accomplished simply by detecting the bit pattern that comprises the watermark itself, but by showing that the legal owner knows a hard to compute property of the watermark.

Keywords: Audio watermarking, mpeg audio layer 3, hard instance generation, NP-completeness.

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Authors: S. Prem Kumar, H. Thameemul Ansari, V. Saminadan

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A smart grid is an emerging technology in the power delivery system which provides an intelligent, self-recovery and homeostatic grid in delivering power to the users. Smart grid communication network provides transmission capacity for information transformation within the connected nodes in the network, in favor of functional and operational needs. In the electric grids communication network delay is based on choosing the appropriate technology and the types of devices enforced. In distinction, the combination of IEEE 802.16 based WiMAX and IEEE 802.11 based WiFi technologies provides improved coverage and gives low delay performances to meet the smart grid needs. By incorporating this method in Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) the performance of the smart grid will be considerably improved. This work deals with the implementation of WiMAX-WLAN integrated network architecture for WAMS and AMI in the smart grid.

Keywords: WiMAX, WLAN, WAMS, Smart Grid, HetNet, AMI.

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Authors: I. Yakubu, Y. Y. Ziggah, C. Yeboah

Abstract:

In the mining environment, tailings dam embankment is among the hazards and risk areas. The tailings dam embankment could fail and result to damages to facilities, human injuries or even fatalities. Periodic monitoring of the dam embankment is needed to help assess the safety of the tailings dam embankment. Artificial intelligence techniques such as fractals can be used to analyse the stability of the monitored dataset from survey measurement techniques. In this paper, the fractal dimension (D) was determined using D = 2-H. The Hurst parameters (H) of each monitored prism were determined by using a time domain of rescaled range programming in MATLAB software. The fractal dimensions of each monitored prism were determined based on the values of H. The results reveal that the values of the determined H were all within the threshold of 0 ≤ H ≤ 1 m. The smaller the H, the bigger the fractal dimension is. Fractal dimension values ranging from 1.359 x 10^-4 m to 1.8843 x 10^-3 m were obtained from the monitored prisms on the based on the tailing dam embankment dataset used. The ranges of values obtained indicate that the tailings dam embankment is stable.

Keywords: Hurst parameter, fractal dimension, tailings dam embankment, surveyed dataset.

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Authors: Chalermpol Tapsai

Abstract:

The objectives of this research were to develop and find the efficiency of integrated online lessons by investigating the usage of online lessons, the relationship between learners’ background knowledge, and the achievement after learning with online lessons. The sample group in this study consisted of 97 students randomly selected from 121 students registering in 1/2012 at Trimitwittayaram Learning Center. The sample technique employed stratified sample technique of 4 groups according to their proficiency, i.e. high, moderate, low, and non-knowledge. The research instrument included online lessons in integration model on the topic of Java Programming, test after each lesson, the achievement test at the end of the course, and the questionnaires to find learners’ satisfaction. The results showed that the efficiency of online lessons was 90.20/89.18 with the achievement of after learning with the lessons higher than that before the lessons at the statistically significant level of 0.05. Moreover, the background knowledge of the learners on the programming showed the positive relationship with the achievement learning at the statistically significant level at 0.05. Learners with high background knowledge employed less exercises and samples than those with lower background knowledge. While learners with different background in the group of moderate and low did not show the significant difference in employing samples and exercises.

Keywords: Integration model, Online lessons.

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Authors: Michael J. Hamlin, Mick Grimley, Vicki Cowley, Chris D. Price, Jill M. Hargreaves, Jenny J. Ross

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The aim of this study was to examine current levels of physical activity determined via heart rate monitoring. A total of 176 children (85 boys, 91 girls) aged 5-13 years wore sealed Polar heart rate monitors for at least 10 hours per day on at least 3 days. Mean daily minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity was 65 ± 43 (mean ± SD) for boys and 54 ± 37 for girls. Daily minutes of vigorous-intensity activity was 31 ± 24 and 24 ± 21 for boys and girls respectively. Significant differences in physical activity levels were observed between school day and weekends, boys and girls, and among age and geographical groups. Only 36% of boys and 22% of girls met the New Zealand physical activity guideline. This research indicates that a large proportion of New Zealand children are not meeting physical activity recommendations.

Keywords: activity guidelines, moderate activity, sedentary, vigorous activity

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Authors: M. Eisakhani, A. Pauzi, O. Karim, A. Malakahmad, S.R. Mohamed Kutty, M. H. Isa

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Cameron Highlands is a mountainous area subjected to torrential tropical showers. It extracts 5.8 million liters of water per day for drinking supply from its rivers at several intake points. The water quality of rivers in Cameron Highlands, however, has deteriorated significantly due to land clearing for agriculture, excessive usage of pesticides and fertilizers as well as construction activities in rapidly developing urban areas. On the other hand, these pollution sources known as non-point pollution sources are diverse and hard to identify and therefore they are difficult to estimate. Hence, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) was used to provide an extensive approach to evaluate landuse and other mapping characteristics to explain the spatial distribution of non-point sources of contamination in Cameron Highlands. The method to assess pollution sources has been developed by using Cameron Highlands Master Plan (2006-2010) for integrating GIS, databases, as well as pollution loads in the area of study. The results show highest annual runoff is created by forest, 3.56 × 108 m3/yr followed by urban development, 1.46 × 108 m3/yr. Furthermore, urban development causes highest BOD load (1.31 × 106 kgBOD/yr) while agricultural activities and forest contribute the highest annual loads for phosphorus (6.91 × 104 kgP/yr) and nitrogen (2.50 × 105 kgN/yr), respectively. Therefore, best management practices (BMPs) are suggested to be applied to reduce pollution level in the area.

Keywords: Cameron Highlands, Land use, Non-point Sources of Pollution

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Authors: Methawee Yuttapongtada

Abstract:

Intensifier is the linguistic term and device that is generally found in different languages in order to enhance and give additional quantity, quality or emotion to the words of each language. In fact, each language in the world has both of the similar and dissimilar intensifying device. More specially, the wide variety of intensifying device is used for Thai language and one of those is usage of the impolite word or the word that used to mean something negative as intensifier. The data collection in this study was done throughout the spoken language style by collecting from intensifiers regarded as impolite words because these words as employed in the other contexts will be held as the rude, swear words or the words with negative meaning. Then, backward study to the past was done in order to consider the historical change. Explanation of the original meaning and the contexts of words use from the past till the present time were done by use of both textual documents and dictionaries available in different periods. It was found that regarding the semantics and pragmatic aspects, subjectification also is the significant motivation that changed the impolite words to intensifiers. At last, it can explain pathway of the semantic change of these very words undoubtedly. Moreover, it is found that use tendency in the impolite word or the word that used to mean something negative will more be increased and this phenomenon is commonly found in many languages in the world and results of this research may support to the belief that human language in the world is universal and the same still reflected that human has the fundamental thought as the same to each other basically.

Keywords: Impolite word, intensifier, Thai, semantic change.

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Authors: Sheroz Khan, A. H. M. Zahirul Alam, Othman O. Khalifa, Mohd Rafiqul Islam, Zuraidah Zainudin, Muzna S. Khan, Nurul Iman Muhamad Pauzi

Abstract:

The study of soil for agriculture purposes has remained the main focus of research since the beginning of civilization as humans- food related requirements remained closely linked with the soil. The study of soil has generated an interest among the researchers for very similar other reasons including transmission, reflection and refraction of signals for deploying wireless underground sensor networks or for the monitoring of objects on (or in ) soil in the form of better understanding of soil electromagnetic characteristics properties. The moisture content has been very instrumental in such studies as it decides on the resistance of the soil, and hence the attenuation on signals traveling through soil or the attenuation the signals may suffer upon their impact on soil. This work is related testing and characterizing a measurement circuit meant for the detection of moisture level content in soil.

Keywords: Analog–digital Conversion, Bridge Circuits, Intelligent sensors, Pulse Time Modulation, Relaxation Oscillator

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Authors: Chuan-Ching Sue, Shi-Zhou Chen, Ting-Yu Huang

Abstract:

Dynamic bandwidth allocation in EPONs can be generally separated into inter-ONU scheduling and intra-ONU scheduling. In our previous work, the active intra-ONU scheduling (AS) utilizes multiple queue reports (QRs) in each report message to cooperate with the inter-ONU scheduling and makes the granted bandwidth fully utilized without leaving unused slot remainder (USR). This scheme successfully solves the USR problem originating from the inseparability of Ethernet frame. However, without proper setting of threshold value in AS, the number of QRs constrained by the IEEE 802.3ah standard is not enough, especially in the unbalanced traffic environment. This limitation may be solved by enlarging the threshold value. The large threshold implies the large gap between the adjacent QRs, thus resulting in the large difference between the best granted bandwidth and the real granted bandwidth. In this paper, we integrate AS with a cooperative prediction mechanism and distribute multiple QRs to reduce the penalty brought by the prediction error. Furthermore, to improve the QoS and save the usage of queue reports, the highest priority (EF) traffic which comes during the waiting time is granted automatically by OLT and is not considered in the requested bandwidth of ONU. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme has better performance metrics in terms of bandwidth utilization and average delay for different classes of packets.

Keywords: EPON, Inter-ONU and Intra-ONU scheduling, Prediction, Unused slot remainder

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Authors: D. A. K. S. Gunaratna, N. D. Kodikara, H. L. Premaratne

Abstract:

Automatic currency note recognition invariably depends on the currency note characteristics of a particular country and the extraction of features directly affects the recognition ability. Sri Lanka has not been involved in any kind of research or implementation of this kind. The proposed system “SLCRec" comes up with a solution focusing on minimizing false rejection of notes. Sri Lankan currency notes undergo severe changes in image quality in usage. Hence a special linear transformation function is adapted to wipe out noise patterns from backgrounds without affecting the notes- characteristic images and re-appear images of interest. The transformation maps the original gray scale range into a smaller range of 0 to 125. Applying Edge detection after the transformation provided better robustness for noise and fair representation of edges for new and old damaged notes. A three layer back propagation neural network is presented with the number of edges detected in row order of the notes and classification is accepted in four classes of interest which are 100, 500, 1000 and 2000 rupee notes. The experiments showed good classification results and proved that the proposed methodology has the capability of separating classes properly in varying image conditions.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, linear transformation and pattern recognition.

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