Search results for: Effective band inference based power control algorithm (EBIA)

Authors: Yuan Zheng

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3D model-based vehicle matching provides a new way for vehicle recognition, localization and tracking. Its key is to construct an evaluation function, also called fitness function, to measure the degree of vehicle matching. The existing fitness functions often poorly perform when the clutter and occlusion exist in traffic scenarios. In this paper, we present a practical and efficient fitness function. Unlike the existing evaluation functions, the proposed fitness function is to study the vehicle matching problem from both local and global perspectives, which exploits the pixel gradient information as well as the silhouette information. In view of the discrepancy between 3D vehicle model and real vehicle, a weighting strategy is introduced to differently treat the fitting of the model’s wireframes. Additionally, a normalization operation for the model’s projection is performed to improve the accuracy of the matching. Experimental results on real traffic videos reveal that the proposed fitness function is efficient and robust to the cluttered background and partial occlusion.

Keywords: 3D-2D matching, fitness function, 3D vehicle model, local image gradient, silhouette information.

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Authors: Laura Zizka, Gaby Probst

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have given their courses. From emergency remote where all students and faculty were immediately confined to home teaching and learning, the continuing evolving sanitary situation obliged HEIs to adopt other methods of teaching and learning from blended courses that included both synchronous and asynchronous courses and activities to HyFlex models where some students were on campus while others followed the course simultaneously online. Each semester brought new challenges for HEIs and, subsequently, additional emotional reactions. This paper investigates the affective side of teaching and learning in various online modalities and its toll on students and faculty members over the past three semesters. The findings confirm that students and faculty who have more self-efficacy, flexibility, and resilience reported positive emotions and embraced the opportunities that these past semesters have offered. While HEIs have begun a new semester in an attempt to return to ‘normal’ face-to-face courses, this paper posits that there are lessons to be learned from these past three semesters. The opportunities that arose from the challenge of the pandemic should be considered when moving forward by focusing on a greater emphasis on the affective aspect of teaching and learning in HEIs worldwide. 

Keywords: affective teaching and learning, engagement, interaction, motivation, social presence

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Authors: Robson C. Santos, Christian N. Barreto, Gerson G. Cunha, Severino J. C. Neto

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This paper aims to project the construction of a prototype azimuthal thruster, mounted with materials of low cost and easy access, testing in a controlled environment to measure their performance, characteristics and feasibility of future projects. The construction of the simulation of dynamic positioning software, responsible for simulating a vessel and reposition it when necessary. Validation tests were performed in the form of partial or complete system. These tests validate the system manually or automatically. The system provides an interface to the user and simulates the conditions unfavorable positioning of a vessel, accurately calculates the azimuth angle, the direction of rotation of the helix and the time that this should be turned on so that the vessel back to position original. A serial communication connects the Simulation Dynamic Positioning System with Embedded System causing the usergenerated data to simulate the DP system arrives in the form of control signals to the motors of the propellant. This article addresses issues in the marine industry employees.

Keywords: Azimuthal Thruster, Dynamic Positioning, Embedded System.

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Authors: Yahia M., Chaoui N., Chaouch A., Massinissa Yahia

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Our study was designed to determine the metabolic  changes of some biochemical parameters (cholesterol, triglyceride,  Iron, uric acid, Urea and folic acid) and highlight their changes in 57  women of the region Batna, during the first trimester of pregnancy.  This practical work was done with 27 women with missed  miscarriage, compared with 30 control subjects of normal pregnant  women. The assay results revealed a highly significant difference (P  = 0.0006) between the two groups in serum iron (64.00 vs 93.54) and  in the rate of folate (6.70 vs 9.22) (P <0.001) but no difference was  found regarding the rate of Ca (9.69 vs 10.20), urea (0.19 vs 0.17),  UA (33.96 vs 32.76), CH (1.283 vs 1.431), and TG (0.8852 vs  0.8290). The present study indicates that iron deficiency and folate  are associated with missed miscarriage, but no direct  pathophysiological link has been determined. Further in-depth studies  are needed to determine the exact mechanism by which these deficits  lead to a missed miscarriage.

Keywords: Biochemical parameters, pregnant women, missed miscarriage.

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Authors: Mohsin T. Mohammed, Zahid A. Khan, Arshad N. Siddiquee

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The field of biomedical materials plays an imperative requisite and a critical role in manufacturing a variety of biological artificial replacements in a modern world. Recently, titanium (Ti) materials are being used as biomaterials because of their superior corrosion resistance and tremendous specific strength, free- allergic problems and the greatest biocompatibility compared to other competing biomaterials such as stainless steel, Co-Cr alloys, ceramics, polymers, and composite materials. However, regardless of these excellent performance properties, Implantable Ti materials have poor shear strength and wear resistance which limited their applications as biomaterials. Even though the wear properties of Ti alloys has revealed some improvements, the crucial effectiveness of biomedical Ti alloys as wear components requires a comprehensive deep understanding of the wear reasons, mechanisms, and techniques that can be used to improve wear behavior. This review examines current information on the effect of thermal and thermomechanical processing of implantable Ti materials on the long-term prosthetic requirement which related with wear behavior. This paper focuses mainly on the evolution, evaluation and development of effective microstructural features that can improve wear properties of bio grade Ti materials using thermal and thermomechanical treatments.

Keywords: Wear Resistance, Heat Treatment, Thermomechanical Processing, Biomedical Titanium Materials.

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Authors: Abdelbaset Rabaiah

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e-Government mobile applications provide an extension for effective e-government services in today’s omniconnected world. They constitute part of m-government platforms. This study explores the usefulness, availability, discoverability and maturity of such applications. While this study impacts theory by addressing a relatively lacking area, it impacts practice more. The outcomes of this study suggest valuable recommendations for practitioners-developers of e-government applications. The methodology followed is to examine a large number of e-government smartphone applications. The focus is on applications available at the Google Play Store. Moreover, the study investigates applications published on government portals of a number of countries. A sample of 15 countries is researched. The results show a diversity in the level of discoverability, development, maturity, and usage of smartphone apps dedicated for use of e-government services. It was found that there are major issues in discovering e-government applications on both the Google Play Store and as-well-as on local government portals. The study found that only a fraction of mobile government applications was published on the Play Store. Only 19% of apps were multilingual, and 43% were developed by third parties including private individuals. Further analysis was made, and important recommendations are suggested in this paper for a better utilization of e-government smartphone applications. These recommendations will result in better discoverability, maturity, and usefulness of e-government applications.

Keywords: Mobile applications, e-government, apps, app store.

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Authors: Bashirah Ishak, Jacyln JiaYing Thye, Bariah Mohd Ali, Norhani Mohidin

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Background Contact lens (CL) wear can cause changes in blinking and corneal staining. Aims and Objectives To determine the effects of CL materials (HEMA and SiHy) on spontaneous blink rate, blinking patterns and corneal staining after 2 months of wear. Methods Ninety subjects in 3 groups (control, HEMA and SiHy) were assessed at baseline and 2-months. Blink rate was recorded using a video camera. Blinking patterns were assessed with digital camera and slit lamp biomicroscope. Corneal staining was graded using IER grading scale Results There were no significant differences in all parameters at baseline. At 2 months, CL wearers showed significant increment in average blink rate (F1.626, 47.141 = 7.250, p = 0.003; F2,58 = 6.240, p = 0.004) and corneal staining (χ2 2, n=30 = 31.921, p < 0.001; χ2 2, n=30 = 26.909, p < 0.001). Conclusion Blinking characteristics and corneal staining were not influence by soft CL materials.

Keywords: Spontaneous blinking, cornea staining, grading, soft contact lenses.

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Authors: Guozhen Li, Philip Hall, Nick Miles, Tao Wu

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This paper presents a numerical investigation of two horizontally mounted four-lobed swirl pipes in terms of swirl induction effectiveness into flows passing through them. The swirl flows induced by the two swirl pipes have the potential to improve the efficiency of Clean-In-Place procedures in a closed processing system by local intensification of hydrodynamic impact on the internal pipe surface. Pressure losses, swirl development within the two swirl pipe, swirl induction effectiveness, swirl decay and wall shear stress variation downstream of two swirl pipes are analyzed and compared. It was found that a shorter length of swirl inducing pipe used in joint with transition pipes is more effective in swirl induction than when a longer one is used, in that it has a less constraint to the induced swirl and results in slightly higher swirl intensity just downstream of it with the expense of a smaller pressure loss. The wall shear stress downstream of the shorter swirl pipe is also slightly larger than that downstream of the longer swirl pipe due to the slightly higher swirl intensity induced by the shorter swirl pipe. The advantage of the shorter swirl pipe in terms of swirl induction is more significant in flows with a larger Reynolds Number.

Keywords: Swirl pipe, swirl effectiveness, CFD, wall shear stress, swirl intensity.

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Authors: Nor-Edine Abriak, Mouhamadou Amar, Mahfoud Benzerzour

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The transition to a more sustainable economy is directed by a reduction in the consumption of raw materials in equivalent production. The recovery of byproducts and especially the dredged sediment as mineral addition in cements matrix represents an alternative to reduce raw material consumption and construction sector’s carbon footprint. However, the efficient use of sediment requires adequate and optimal treatment. Several processing techniques have so far been applied in order to improve some physicochemical properties. The heat treatment by calcination was effective in removing the organic fraction and activates the pozzolanic properties. In this article, the effect of the optimized heat treatment of marine sediments in the physico-mechanical and environmental properties of mortars are shown. A finding is that the optimal substitution of a portion of cement by treated sediments by calcination at 750 °C helps to maintain or improve the mechanical properties of the cement matrix in comparison with a standard reference mortar. The use of calcined sediment enhances mortar behavior in terms of mechanical strength and durability. From an environmental point of view and life cycle, mortars formulated containing treated sediments are considered inert with respect to the inert waste storage facilities reference (ISDI-France).

Keywords: Sediment, calcination, cement, reuse.

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Authors: Ameni Mokni, Hatem Mhiri, Georges Le Palec, Philippe Bournot

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Numerical study of a plane jet occurring in a vertical heated channel is carried out. The aim is to explore the influence of the forced flow, issued from a flat nozzle located in the entry section of a channel, on the up-going fluid along the channel walls. The Reynolds number based on the nozzle width and the jet velocity ranges between 3 103 and 2.104; whereas, the Grashof number based on the channel length and the wall temperature difference is 2.57 1010. Computations are established for a symmetrically heated channel and various nozzle positions. The system of governing equations is solved with a finite volumes method. The obtained results show that the jet-wall interactions activate the heat transfer, the position variation modifies the heat transfer especially for low Reynolds numbers: the heat transfer is enhanced for the adjacent wall; however it is decreased for the opposite one. The numerical velocity and temperature fields are post-processed to compute the quantities of engineering interest such as the induced mass flow rate, and the Nusselt number along the plates.

Keywords: Channel, Heat flux, Jet, Mixed convection.

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Authors: A. M. Pashayev, C. Ardil, D. D. Askerov, R. A. Sadiqov, P. S. Abdullayev

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In this paper is shown that the probability-statistic methods application, especially at the early stage of the aviation gas turbine engine (GTE) technical condition diagnosing, when the flight information has property of the fuzzy, limitation and uncertainty is unfounded. Hence is considered the efficiency of application of new technology Soft Computing at these diagnosing stages with the using of the Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks methods. Training with high accuracy of fuzzy multiple linear and non-linear models (fuzzy regression equations) which received on the statistical fuzzy data basis is made. Thus for GTE technical condition more adequate model making are analysed dynamics of skewness and kurtosis coefficients' changes. Researches of skewness and kurtosis coefficients values- changes show that, distributions of GTE work parameters have fuzzy character. Hence consideration of fuzzy skewness and kurtosis coefficients is expedient. Investigation of the basic characteristics changes- dynamics of GTE work parameters allows to draw conclusion on necessity of the Fuzzy Statistical Analysis at preliminary identification of the engines' technical condition. Researches of correlation coefficients values- changes shows also on their fuzzy character. Therefore for models choice the application of the Fuzzy Correlation Analysis results is offered. For checking of models adequacy is considered the Fuzzy Multiple Correlation Coefficient of Fuzzy Multiple Regression. At the information sufficiency is offered to use recurrent algorithm of aviation GTE technical condition identification (Hard Computing technology is used) on measurements of input and output parameters of the multiple linear and non-linear generalised models at presence of noise measured (the new recursive Least Squares Method (LSM)). The developed GTE condition monitoring system provides stage-bystage estimation of engine technical conditions. As application of the given technique the estimation of the new operating aviation engine temperature condition was made.

Keywords: Gas turbine engines, neural networks, fuzzy logic, fuzzy statistics.

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Authors: Somenath Mukherjee, Raj Kumar Samanta, Gautam Sanyal

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Different services based on different switching techniques in wireless networks leads to drastic changes in the properties of network traffic. Because of these diversities in services, network traffic is expected to undergo qualitative and quantitative variations. Hence, assumption of traffic characteristics and the prediction of network events become more complex for the wireless networks. In this paper, the traffic characteristics have been studied by collecting traces from the mobile switching centre (MSC). The traces include initiation and termination time, originating node, home station id, foreign station id. Traffic parameters namely, call interarrival and holding times were estimated statistically. The results show that call inter-arrival and distribution time in this wireless network is heavy-tailed and follow gamma distributions. They are asymptotically long-range dependent. It is also found that the call holding times are best fitted with lognormal distribution. Based on these observations, an analytical model for performance estimation is also proposed.

Keywords: Wireless networks, traffic analysis, long-range dependence, heavy-tailed distribution.

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Authors: Barenten Suciu, Yoshiki Tsuji

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In this paper, a theoretical investigation on the dynamic characteristics of one degree of freedom vibration system equipped with inerter of variable inertance, is presented. Differential equation of movement was solved under proper initial conditions in the case of free undamped/damped vibration, considered in the absence/presence of the inerter in the mechanical system. Influence of inertance on the amplitude of vibration, phase angle, natural frequency, damping ratio, and logarithmic decrement was clarified. It was mainly found that the inerter decreases the natural frequency of the undamped system and also of the damped system if the damping ratio is below 0.707. On the other hand, the inerter increases the natural frequency of the damped system if the damping ratio exceeds 0.707. Results obtained in this work are useful for the adequate design of inerters.

Keywords: One degree of freedom vibration system, inerter, parallel connection, variable inertance, frequency control, damping.

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Authors: S. M. Biondi, V. Catania, R. Di Natale, A. R. Intilisano, D. Panno

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One of the major goals of Spoken Dialog Systems (SDS) is to understand what the user utters. In the SDS domain, the Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) Module classifies user utterances by means of a pre-definite conceptual knowledge. The SLU module is able to recognize only the meaning previously included in its knowledge base. Due the vastity of that knowledge, the information storing is a very expensive process. Updating and managing the knowledge base are time-consuming and error-prone processes because of the rapidly growing number of entities like proper nouns and domain-specific nouns. This paper proposes a solution to the problem of Name Entity Recognition (NER) applied to a SDS domain. The proposed solution attempts to automatically recognize the meaning associated with an utterance by using the PANKOW (Pattern based Annotation through Knowledge On the Web) method at runtime. The method being proposed extracts information from the Web to increase the SLU knowledge module and reduces the development effort. In particular, the Google Search Engine is used to extract information from the Facebook social network.

Keywords: Spoken Dialog System, Spoken Language Understanding, Web Semantic, Name Entity Recognition.

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Authors: Shahadat Uddin, Md Ekramul Hossain, Arif Khan

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The collaboration among physicians during episodes of care for a hospitalised patient has a significant contribution towards effective health outcome. This research aims at improving this health outcome by analysing the attributes of patient-sharing physician collaboration network (PCN) on hospital data. To accomplish this goal, we present a research framework that explores the impact of several types of attributes (such as clique and clan) of PCN on hospitalisation cost and hospital length of stay. We use electronic health insurance claim dataset to construct and explore PCNs. Each PCN is categorised as ‘low’ and ‘high’ in terms of hospitalisation cost and length of stay. The results from the proposed model show that the clique and clan of PCNs affect the hospitalisation cost and length of stay. The clique and clan of PCNs show the difference between ‘low’ and ‘high’ PCNs in terms of hospitalisation cost and length of stay. The findings and insights from this research can potentially help the healthcare stakeholders to better formulate the policy in order to improve quality of care while reducing cost.

Keywords: Clique, clan, electronic health records, physician collaboration.

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Authors: R. Sarathi, M. G. Danikas, Y. Chen, T. Tanaka

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In the present work, Pulsed Electro Acoustic (PEA) technique was adopted to understand the space charge dynamics in elastomeric material. It is observed that the polarity of the applied DC voltage voltage and its magnitude alters the space charge dynamics in insulation structure. It is also noticed that any addition of compound to the base material/processing technique have characteristic variation in the space charge injection process. It could be concluded based on the present work that the plasticizer could inject heterocharges into the insulation medium. Also it is realized that space charge magnitude is less with the addition of plasticizer. In the PEA studies, it is observed that local electric field in the insulating material can be much more than applied electric field due to space charge formation. One of the important conclusions arrived at based on PEA technique is that one could understand the safe operating electric field of an insulation material and the charge trap sites.

Keywords: Pulsed electro acoustic technique, space charge, DCvoltage, elastomers, Electric field, high voltage.

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Authors: H. Murat Tanarslan

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The dominant judgment for earthquake damaged reinforced concrete (RC) structures is to rebuild them with the new ones. Consequently, this paper estimates if there is chance to repair earthquake RC beams and obtain economical contribution to modern day society. Therefore, the totally damaged (damaged in shear under cyclic load) reinforced concrete (RC) beams repaired and strengthened by externally bonded carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips in this study. Four specimens, apart from the reference beam, were separated into two distinct groups. Two experimental beams in the first group primarily tested up to failure then appropriately repaired and strengthened with CFRP strips. Two undamaged specimens from the second group were not repaired but strengthened by the identical strengthening scheme as the first group for comparison. This study studies whether earthquake damaged RC beams that have been repaired and strengthened will validate similar strength and behavior to equally strengthened, undamaged RC beams. Accordingly, a strength correspondence according to strengthened specimens was acquired for the repaired and strengthened specimens. Test results confirmed that repair and strengthening, which were estimated in the experimental program, were effective for the specimens with the cracking patterns considered in the experimental program. 

Keywords: Shear Strengthening, Repairing, CFRP Strips.

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Authors: Carmen E. Zapata, José F. Jiménez, Mauricio Ramiréz, Natalia A. Cano

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The majority of the urban areas in Latin America face the challenges associated with city planning and development problems, attributed to human, technical, and economical factors; therefore, we cannot ignore the issues related to climate change because the city modifies the natural landscape in a significant way transforming the radiation balance and heat content in the urbanized areas. These modifications provoke changes in the temperature distribution known as “the heat island effect”. According to this phenomenon, we have the need to conceive the urban planning based on climatological patterns that will assure its sustainable functioning, including the particularities of the climate variability. In the present study, it is identified the Local Climate Zones (LCZ) in the Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley (Colombia) with the objective of relocate the air quality monitoring stations as a partial solution to the problem of how to measure representative air quality levels in a city for a local scale, but with instruments that measure in the microscale.

Keywords: Air quality, monitoring, local climatic zones, valley, monitoring stations.

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Authors: Zeinab Galavani, Reza Rezaei-Nasirabad, Rasoul Sadighi-Bonabi

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Using a force balanced translational-radial dynamics, phase space of the moving single bubble sonoluminescence (m- SBSL) in 85% wt sulfuric acid has been numerically calculated. This phase space is compared with that of single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) in pure water which has been calculated by using the mere radial dynamics. It is shown that in 85% wt sulfuric acid, in a general agreement with experiment, the bubble-s positional instability threshold lays under the shape instability threshold. At the onset of spatial instability of moving sonoluminescing (SL) bubble in 85% wt sulfuric acid, temporal effects of the hydrodynamic force on the bubble translational-radial dynamics have been investigated. The appearance of non-zero history force on the moving SL bubble is because of proper condition which was produced by high viscosity of acid. Around the moving bubble collapse due to the rapid contraction of the bubble wall, the inertial based added mass force overcomes the viscous based history force and induces acceleration on the bubble translational motion.

Keywords: Bjerknes force, History force, Reynolds number, Sonoluminescence.

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Authors: Lara Alam, Laetitia Van-Schoors, Olivier Sicot, Benoit Piezel, Shahram Aivazzadeh

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Over the last decades, worldwide environmental awareness has grown due to the depletion of raw material resources and global warming. This awareness has prompted the development of new products more environmentally friendly. Among these products are biocomposite materials reinforced with natural fibers. The main challenge in developing the use of biocomposites in exterior applications is the lack of knowledge about their durability and the evolution of their mechanical and physicochemical properties in the long term. The aim of this work is to study the photooxidation of unidirectional (UD) composites based on recycled matrix. For this purpose, UD flax fiber composites based on recycled polypropylene were prepared by thermocompression. An accelerated aging test was carried out using a xenon arc WeatherOmeter. The consequences of UV exposure on the chemical composition and morphology of the surface of composites as well as on their tensile mechanical properties have been reported. The results showed that accelerated aging had a significant effect on the surface of these composites while it had little impact on their mechanical properties.

Keywords: Flax fiber, photooxidation, physico-chemical properties, recycled polypropylene, tensile properties.

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Authors: Kanchana Sitlaothaworn

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Yogurt capsule was made by mixing 14% w/v of reconstitution of skim milk with 2% FOS. The mixture was fermented by commercial yogurt starter comprising Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. These yogurts were made as yogurt powder by freeze-dried. Yogurt powder was put into capsule then stored for 28 days at 4oc. 8ml of commercial yogurt was found to be the most suitable inoculum size in yogurt production. After freeze-dried, the viability of L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus reduced from 109 to 107 cfu/g. The precence of sucrose cannot help to protect cell from ice crystal formation in freeze-dried process, high (20%) sucrose reduced L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus growth during fermentation of yogurt. The addition of FOS had reduced slowly the viability of both L. bulgaricus and S. thermophilus similar to control (without FOS) during 28 days of capsule storage. The viable cell exhibited satisfactory viability level in capsule storage (6.7x106cfu/g) during 21 days at 4oC.

Keywords: Yogurt capsule, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, freeze-drying, sucrose.

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Authors: Omaymah AlAzhari

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Nomadic tribes have always had the need to relocate and build shelters, moving from one site to another in search of food, water, and natural resources. They are affected by weather and seasonal changes and consequently started innovating textiles to build better shelters. Their solutions came from the observation of their natural environment, material, and surroundings. ‘AlRahala’ Nomadic Bedouin tribes from the Middle East and North African region have used textiles as a fundamental architectural element in their tent structure, ‘Bayt AlShar’ (House of Hair). The nomadic tribe has innovated their textile to create a fabric that is more suited to change in climatic and weather conditions. They used sheep, goat, or camel hair to weave the textiles to make their shelters. The research is based on existing literature on the weaving technicalities used by these tribes, based on their available materials encountered during travel. To conclude how they create the traditional textiles and use in the tents are a rich source of information for designers to create innovative solutions of modern-day textiles and environmentally responsive products.

Keywords: AlRahala Nomadic Tribes, Bayt AlShar, tent structure, textile innovation.

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Authors: Chung-Hung Tsai

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Global environmental changes lead to increased frequency and scale of natural disaster, Taiwan is under the influence of global warming and extreme weather. Therefore, the vulnerability was increased and variability and complexity of disasters is relatively enhanced. The purpose of this study is to consider the source and magnitude of hazard characteristics on the tourism industry. Using modern risk management concepts, integration of related domestic and international basic research, this goes beyond the Taiwan typhoon disaster risk assessment model and evaluation of loss. This loss evaluation index system considers the impact of extreme weather, in particular heavy rain on the tourism industry in Taiwan. Consider the extreme climate of the compound impact of disaster for the tourism industry; we try to make multi-hazard risk assessment model, strategies and suggestions. Related risk analysis results are expected to provide government department, the tourism industry asset owners, insurance companies and banking include tourist disaster risk necessary information to help its tourism industry for effective natural disaster risk management.

Keywords: Tourism industry, extreme weather, multi-hazard, vulnerability analysis, loss exceeding probability, risk management.

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Authors: Y. Parvizi, M. Gorji, M.H. Mahdian, M. Omid

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Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays a key role in soil fertility, hydrology, contaminants control and acts as a sink or source of terrestrial carbon content that can affect the concentration of atmospheric CO2. SOC supports the sustainability and quality of ecosystems, especially in semi-arid region. This study was conducted to determine relative importance of 13 different exploratory climatic, soil and geometric factors on the SOC contents in one of the semiarid watershed zones in Iran. Two methods canonical discriminate analysis (CDA) and feed-forward back propagation neural networks were used to predict SOC. Stepwise regression and sensitivity analysis were performed to identify relative importance of exploratory variables. Results from sensitivity analysis showed that 7-2-1 neural networks and 5 inputs in CDA models output have highest predictive ability that explains %70 and %65 of SOC variability. Since neural network models outperformed CDA model, it should be preferred for estimating SOC.

Keywords: Soil organic carbon, modeling, neural networks, CDA.

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Authors: Kristjan Kuhi, Kati K. Kaare, Ott Koppel

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Modern management in most fields is performance based; both planning and implementation of maintenance and operational activities are driven by appropriately defined performance indicators. Continuous real-time data collection for management is becoming feasible due to technological advancements. Outdated and insufficient input data may result in incorrect decisions. When using deterministic models the uncertainty of the object state is not visible thus applying the deterministic models are more likely to give false diagnosis. Constructing structured probabilistic models of the performance indicators taking into consideration the surrounding indicator environment enables to estimate the trustworthiness of the indicator values. It also assists to fill gaps in data to improve the quality of the performance analysis and management decisions. In this paper authors discuss the application of probabilistic graphical models in the road performance measurement and propose a high-level conceptual model that enables analyzing and predicting more precisely future pavement deterioration based on road utilization.

Keywords: Probabilistic graphical models, performance indicators, road performance management, data collection

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Authors: K. Arroudj, M. Lanez, M. N. Oudjit

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The introduction of siliceous mineral additions in cement production allows, in addition to the ecological and economic gain, improvement of concrete performance. This improvement is mainly due to the fixing of Portlandite, released during the hydration of cement, by fine siliceous, forming denser calcium silicate hydrates and therefore a more compact cementitious matrix. This research is part of the valuation of the Dune Sand (DS) in the cement industry in Algeria. The high silica content of DS motivated us to study its effect, at ground state, on the properties of mortars in fresh and hardened state. For this purpose, cement pastes and mortars based on ground dune sand (fine quartz) has been analyzed with a replacement to cement of 15%, 20% and 25%. This substitution has reduced the amount of heat of hydration and avoids any risk of initial cracking. In addition, the grinding of the dune sand provides amorphous thin populations adsorbed at the surface of the crystal particles of quartz. Which gives to ground quartz pozzolanic character. This character results an improvement of mechanical strength of mortar (66 MPa in the presence of 25% of ground quartz).

Keywords: Mineralogical structure, Pozzolanic reactivity, quartz, mechanical strength.

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Authors: A. Pontrandolfi, G. Enjolras, F. Capitanio

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The study analyses the strategies Italian farmers use to cope with the risks that face their production. We specifically explore the potential and the limitations of the economic tools for climatic risk management in agriculture of the Common Agricultural Policy 2014-2020, that foresees contributions for economic tools for risk management, in relation to farms’ needs, exposure and vulnerability of agricultural areas to climatic risk. We consider at the farm level approaches to hedge risks in terms of the use of technical tools (agricultural practices, pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation) and economic/financial instruments (insurances, etc.). We develop cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses as well as analyses of correlation that underline the main differences between the way farms adapt their structure and management towards risk. The results show a preference for technical tools, despite the presence of important public aids on economic tools such as insurances. Therefore, there is a strong need for a more effective and integrated risk management policy scheme. Synergies between economic tools and risk reduction actions of a more technical, structural and management nature (production diversification, irrigation infrastructures, technological and management innovations and formation-information-consultancy, etc.) are emphasized.

Keywords: Agriculture and climate change, climatic risk management, insurance schemes.

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Authors: Dimitrios Zarpalas, Anastasios Zafeiropoulos, Petros Daras, Nicos Maglaveras

Abstract:

Segmentation techniques based on Active Contour Models have been strongly benefited from the use of prior information during their evolution. Shape prior information is captured from a training set and is introduced in the optimization procedure to restrict the evolution into allowable shapes. In this way, the evolution converges onto regions even with weak boundaries. Although significant effort has been devoted on different ways of capturing and analyzing prior information, very little thought has been devoted on the way of combining image information with prior information. This paper focuses on a more natural way of incorporating the prior information in the level set framework. For proof of concept the method is applied on hippocampus segmentation in T1-MR images. Hippocampus segmentation is a very challenging task, due to the multivariate surrounding region and the missing boundary with the neighboring amygdala, whose intensities are identical. The proposed method, mimics the human segmentation way and thus shows enhancements in the segmentation accuracy.

Keywords: Medical imaging & processing, Brain MRI segmentation, hippocampus segmentation, hippocampus-amygdala missingboundary, weak boundary segmentation, region based segmentation, prior information, local weighting scheme in level sets, spatialdistribution of labels, gradient distribution on boundary.

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Authors: Radim Cajka, Pavlina Mateckova, Martina Janulikova, Marie Stara

Abstract:

Use of a sliding joint is an effective method to decrease the stress in foundation structure where there is a horizontal deformation of subsoil (areas afflicted with underground mining) or horizontal deformation of a foundation structure (pre-stressed foundations, creep, shrinkage, temperature deformation). A convenient material for a sliding joint is a bitumen asphalt belt. Experiments for different types of bitumen belts were undertaken at the Faculty of Civil Engineering - VSB Technical University of Ostrava in 2008. This year an extension of the 2008 experiments is in progress and the shear resistance of a slide joint is being tested as a function of temperature in a temperature controlled room. In this paper experimental results of temperature dependant shear resistance are presented. The result of the experiments should be the sliding joint shear resistance as a function of deformation velocity and temperature. This relationship is used for numerical analysis of stress/strain relation between foundation structure and subsoil. Using a rheological slide joint could lead to a decrease of the reinforcement amount, and contribute to higher reliability of foundation structure and thus enable design of more durable and sustainable building structures.

Keywords: Pre-stressed foundations, sliding joint, soil-structure interaction, subsoil horizontal deformation.

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Authors: Scott N. Gerard, Aliza Heching, Susann M. Keohane, Samuel S. Adams

Abstract:

The world-wide population of people over 60 years of age is growing rapidly. The explosion is placing increasingly onerous demands on individual families, multiple industries and entire countries. Current, human-intensive approaches to eldercare are not sustainable, but IoT and AI technologies can help. The Knowledge Reactor (KR) is a contextual, data fusion engine built to address this and other similar problems. It fuses and centralizes IoT and System of Record/Engagement data into a reactive knowledge graph. Cognitive applications and services are constructed with its multiagent architecture. The KR can scale-up and scaledown, because it exploits container-based, horizontally scalable services for graph store (JanusGraph) and pub-sub (Kafka) technologies. While the KR can be applied to many domains that require IoT and AI technologies, this paper describes how the KR specifically supports the challenging domain of cognitive eldercare. Rule- and machine learning-based analytics infer activities of daily living from IoT sensor readings. KR scalability, adaptability, flexibility and usability are demonstrated.

Keywords: Ambient sensing, AI, artificial intelligence, eldercare, IoT, internet of things, knowledge graph.

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