Search results for: extreme weather
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 384

Search results for: extreme weather

294 Investigating the Vehicle-Bicyclists Conflicts Using LIDAR Sensor Technology at Signalized Intersections

Authors: Alireza Ansariyar, Mansoureh Jeihani

Abstract:

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors is capable of recording traffic data including the number of passing vehicles and bicyclists, the speed of vehicles and bicyclists, and the number of conflicts among both road users. In order to collect real-time traffic data and investigate the safety of different road users, a LiDAR sensor was installed at Cold Spring Ln – Hillen Rd intersection in Baltimore city. The frequency and severity of collected real-time conflicts were analyzed and the results highlighted that 122 conflicts were recorded over a 10-month time interval from May 2022 to February 2023. By employing an image-processing algorithm, a safety Measure of Effectiveness (MOE) aims to identify critical zones for bicyclists upon entering each respective zone at the signalized intersection. Considering the trajectory of conflicts, the results of analysis demonstrated that conflicts in the northern approach (zone N) are more frequent and severe. Additionally, sunny weather is more likely to cause severe vehicle-bike conflicts.

Keywords: LiDAR sensor, Post Encroachment Time threshold, vehicle-bike conflicts, measure of effectiveness, weather condition.

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293 Development of Coronal Field and Solar Wind Components for MHD Interplanetary Simulations

Authors: Ljubomir Nikolic, Larisa Trichtchenko

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The connection between solar activity and adverse phenomena in the Earth’s environment that can affect space and ground based technologies has spurred interest in Space Weather (SW) research. A great effort has been put on the development of suitable models that can provide advanced forecast of SW events. With the progress in computational technology, it is becoming possible to develop operational large scale physics based models which can incorporate the most important physical processes and domains of the Sun-Earth system. In order to enhance our SW prediction capabilities we are developing advanced numerical tools. With operational requirements in mind, our goal is to develop a modular simulation framework of propagation of the disturbances from the Sun through interplanetary space to the Earth. Here, we report and discuss on the development of coronal field and solar wind components for a large scale MHD code. The model for these components is based on a potential field source surface model and an empirical Wang-Sheeley-Arge solar wind relation. 

Keywords: Space weather, numerical modeling, coronal field, solar wind.

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292 Analysis on Precipitation Variation Patterns of Chenzhou City

Authors: Li Wu

Abstract:

By using linear regression methodology to analyze the data of daily precipitation from 1961-2012, this paper studied the variation tendency of precipitation in Chenzhou. The outcome showed: (1) The annual precipitation was decreasing for 52 years and the difference of precipitation variation tendency among four seasons was remarkable. The precipitation of spring and autumn showed more remarkable decrease than of summer; but the precipitation of winter significantly increased. (2) The annual precipitation frequency tended to lower, which was consistent with the tendency of yearly variation. The seasonal precipitation frequency was greatly different, namely, precipitation frequency in spring and autumn decreased, co-occurring with the phenomenon of mutation; but the winter precipitation frequency increased notably. (3) The precipitation intensity displayed a tendency of increase, including spring, autumn and winter; among them, winter had the most obvious tendency to increase, and autumn had the most yearly variation. Summer was the only season with a tendency of decreasing in precipitation intensity. (4) Annual extreme precipitation tended to reduce, spring, summer and autumn are all included; whereas, winter extreme precipitation tended to increase at the rate of 0.1d/10a. (5) The daily maximum precipitation intensity increased slightly and it varied greatly.

Keywords: Chenzhou, precipitation variation, precipitation frequency, precipitation intensity.

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291 Effect of Atmospheric Turbulence on Hybrid FSO/RF Link Availability under Qatar Harsh Climate

Authors: Abir Touati, Syed Jawad Hussain, Farid Touati, Ammar Bouallegue

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Although there has been a growing interest in the hybrid free-space optical link and radio frequency FSO/RF communication system, the current literature is limited to results obtained in moderate or cold environment. In this paper, using a soft switching approach, we investigate the effect of weather inhomogeneities on the strength of turbulence hence the channel refractive index under Qatar harsh environment and their influence on the hybrid FSO/RF availability. In this approach, either FSO/RF or simultaneous or none of them can be active. Based on soft switching approach and a finite state Markov Chain (FSMC) process, we model the channel fading for the two links and derive a mathematical expression for the outage probability of the hybrid system. Then, we evaluate the behavior of the hybrid FSO/RF under hazy and harsh weather. Results show that the FSO/RF soft switching renders the system outage probability less than that of each link individually. A soft switching algorithm is being implemented on FPGAs using Raptor code interfaced to the two terminals of a 1Gbps/100 Mbps FSO/RF hybrid system, the first being implemented in the region. Experimental results are compared to the above simulation results.

Keywords: Atmospheric turbulence, haze, soft switching, Raptor codes, refractive index.

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290 Classifier Based Text Mining for Neural Network

Authors: M. Govindarajan, R. M. Chandrasekaran

Abstract:

Text Mining is around applying knowledge discovery techniques to unstructured text is termed knowledge discovery in text (KDT), or Text data mining or Text Mining. In Neural Network that address classification problems, training set, testing set, learning rate are considered as key tasks. That is collection of input/output patterns that are used to train the network and used to assess the network performance, set the rate of adjustments. This paper describes a proposed back propagation neural net classifier that performs cross validation for original Neural Network. In order to reduce the optimization of classification accuracy, training time. The feasibility the benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated by means of five data sets like contact-lenses, cpu, weather symbolic, Weather, labor-nega-data. It is shown that , compared to exiting neural network, the training time is reduced by more than 10 times faster when the dataset is larger than CPU or the network has many hidden units while accuracy ('percent correct') was the same for all datasets but contact-lences, which is the only one with missing attributes. For contact-lences the accuracy with Proposed Neural Network was in average around 0.3 % less than with the original Neural Network. This algorithm is independent of specify data sets so that many ideas and solutions can be transferred to other classifier paradigms.

Keywords: Back propagation, classification accuracy, textmining, time complexity.

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289 A New Intelligent, Dynamic and Real Time Management System of Sewerage

Authors: R. Tlili Yaakoubi, H. Nakouri, O. Blanpain, S. Lallahem

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The current tools for real time management of sewer systems are based on two software tools: the software of weather forecast and the software of hydraulic simulation. The use of the first ones is an important cause of imprecision and uncertainty, the use of the second requires temporal important steps of decision because of their need in times of calculation. This way of proceeding fact that the obtained results are generally different from those waited. The major idea of this project is to change the basic paradigm by approaching the problem by the "automatic" face rather than by that "hydrology". The objective is to make possible the realization of a large number of simulations at very short times (a few seconds) allowing to take place weather forecasts by using directly the real time meditative pluviometric data. The aim is to reach a system where the decision-making is realized from reliable data and where the correction of the error is permanent. A first model of control laws was realized and tested with different return-period rainfalls. The gains obtained in rejecting volume vary from 19 to 100 %. The development of a new algorithm was then used to optimize calculation time and thus to overcome the subsequent combinatorial problem in our first approach. Finally, this new algorithm was tested with 16- year-rainfall series. The obtained gains are 40 % of total volume rejected to the natural environment and of 65 % in the number of discharges.

Keywords: Automation, optimization, paradigm, RTC.

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288 Regionalization of IDF Curves with L-Moments for Storm Events

Authors: Noratiqah Mohd Ariff, Abdul Aziz Jemain, Mohd Aftar Abu Bakar

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The construction of Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves is one of the most common and useful tools in order to design hydraulic structures and to provide a mathematical relationship between rainfall characteristics. IDF curves, especially those in Peninsular Malaysia, are often built using moving windows of rainfalls. However, these windows do not represent the actual rainfall events since the duration of rainfalls is usually prefixed. Hence, instead of using moving windows, this study aims to find regionalized distributions for IDF curves of extreme rainfalls based on storm events. Homogeneity test is performed on annual maximum of storm intensities to identify homogeneous regions of storms in Peninsular Malaysia. The L-moment method is then used to regionalized Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution of these annual maximums and subsequently. IDF curves are constructed using the regional distributions. The differences between the IDF curves obtained and IDF curves found using at-site GEV distributions are observed through the computation of the coefficient of variation of root mean square error, mean percentage difference and the coefficient of determination. The small differences implied that the construction of IDF curves could be simplified by finding a general probability distribution of each region. This will also help in constructing IDF curves for sites with no rainfall station.

Keywords: IDF curves, L-moments, regionalization, storm events.

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287 Performance Assessment of Computational Gridon Weather Indices from HOAPS Data

Authors: Madhuri Bhavsar, Anupam K Singh, Shrikant Pradhan

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Long term rainfall analysis and prediction is a challenging task especially in the modern world where the impact of global warming is creating complications in environmental issues. These factors which are data intensive require high performance computational modeling for accurate prediction. This research paper describes a prototype which is designed and developed on grid environment using a number of coupled software infrastructural building blocks. This grid enabled system provides the demanding computational power, efficiency, resources, user-friendly interface, secured job submission and high throughput. The results obtained using sequential execution and grid enabled execution shows that computational performance has enhanced among 36% to 75%, for decade of climate parameters. Large variation in performance can be attributed to varying degree of computational resources available for job execution. Grid Computing enables the dynamic runtime selection, sharing and aggregation of distributed and autonomous resources which plays an important role not only in business, but also in scientific implications and social surroundings. This research paper attempts to explore the grid enabled computing capabilities on weather indices from HOAPS data for climate impact modeling and change detection.

Keywords: Climate model, Computational Grid, GridApplication, Heterogeneous Grid

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286 Voyage Analysis of a Marine Gas Turbine Engine Installed to Power and Propel an Ocean-Going Cruise Ship

Authors: Mathias U. Bonet, Pericles Pilidis, Georgios Doulgeris

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A gas turbine-powered cruise Liner is scheduled to transport pilgrim passengers from Lagos-Nigeria to the Islamic port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Since the gas turbine is an air breathing machine, changes in the density and/or mass flow at the compressor inlet due to an encounter with variations in weather conditions induce negative effects on the performance of the power plant during the voyage. In practice, all deviations from the reference atmospheric conditions of 15 oC and 1.103 bar tend to affect the power output and other thermodynamic parameters of the gas turbine cycle. Therefore, this paper seeks to evaluate how a simple cycle marine gas turbine power plant would react under a variety of scenarios that may be encountered during a voyage as the ship sails across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea before arriving at its designated port of discharge. It is also an assessment that focuses on the effect of varying aerodynamic and hydrodynamic conditions which deteriorate the efficient operation of the propulsion system due to an increase in resistance that results from some projected levels of the ship hull fouling. The investigated passenger ship is designed to run at a service speed of 22 knots and cover a distance of 5787 nautical miles. The performance evaluation consists of three separate voyages that cover a variety of weather conditions in winter, spring and summer seasons. Real-time daily temperatures and the sea states for the selected transit route were obtained and used to simulate the voyage under the aforementioned operating conditions. Changes in engine firing temperature, power output as well as the total fuel consumed per voyage including other performance variables were separately predicted under both calm and adverse weather conditions. The collated data were obtained online from the UK Meteorological Office as well as the UK Hydrographic Office websites, while adopting the Beaufort scale for determining the magnitude of sea waves resulting from rough weather situations. The simulation of the gas turbine performance and voyage analysis was effected through the use of an integrated Cranfield-University-developed computer code known as ‘Turbomatch’ and ‘Poseidon’. It is a project that is aimed at developing a method for predicting the off design behavior of the marine gas turbine when installed and operated as the main prime mover for both propulsion and powering of all other auxiliary services onboard a passenger cruise liner. Furthermore, it is a techno-economic and environmental assessment that seeks to enable the forecast of the marine gas turbine part and full load performance as it relates to the fuel requirement for a complete voyage.

Keywords:

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285 Application of Computational Methods Mm2 and Gussian for Studing Unimolecular Decomposition of Vinil Ethers based on the Mechanism of Hydrogen Bonding

Authors: Behnaz Shahrokh, Garnik N. Sargsyan, Arkadi B. Harutyunyan

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Investigations of the unimolecular decomposition of vinyl ethyl ether (VEE), vinyl propyl ether (VPE) and vinyl butyl ether (VBE) have shown that activation of the molecule of a ether results in formation of a cyclic construction - the transition state (TS), which may lead to the displacement of the thermodynamic equilibrium towards the reaction products. The TS is obtained by applying energy minimization relative to the ground state of an ether under the program MM2 when taking into account the hydrogen bond formation between a hydrogen atom of alkyl residue and the extreme atom of carbon of the vinyl group. The dissociation of TS up to the products is studied by energy minimization procedure using the mathematical program Gaussian. The obtained calculation data for VEE testify that the decomposition of this ether may be conditioned by hydrogen bond formation for two possible versions: when α- or β- hydrogen atoms of the ethyl group are bound to carbon atom of the vinyl group. Applying the same calculation methods to other ethers (VPE and VBE) it is shown that only in the case of hydrogen bonding between α-hydrogen atom of the alkyl residue and the extreme atom of carbon of the vinyl group (αH---C) results in decay of theses ethers.

Keywords: Gaussian, MM2, ethers, TS, decomposition

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284 Trends in Extreme Rainfall Events in Tasmania, Australia

Authors: Orpita U. Laz, Ataur Rahman

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Climate change will affect various aspects of hydrological cycle such as rainfall. A change in rainfall will affect flood magnitude and frequency in future which will affect the design and operation of hydraulic structures. In this paper, trends in subhourly, sub-daily, and daily extreme rainfall events from 18 rainfall stations located in Tasmania, Australia are examined. Two nonparametric tests (Mann-Kendall and Spearman’s Rho) are applied to detect trends at 10%, 5%, and 1% significance levels. Sub-hourly (6, 12, 18, and 30 minutes) annual maximum rainfall events have been found to experience statistically significant upward trends at 10% level of significance. However, sub-daily durations (1 hour, 3 and 12 hours) exhibit decreasing trends and no trends exists for longer duration rainfall events (e.g. 24 and 72 hours). Some of the durations (e.g. 6 minutes and 6 hours) show similar results (with upward trends) for both the tests. For 12, 18, 60 minutes and 3 hours durations both the tests show similar downward trends. This finding has important implication for Tasmania in the design of urban infrastructure where shorter duration rainfall events are more relevant for smaller urban catchments such as parking lots, roof catchments and smaller sub-divisions.

Keywords: Climate change, design rainfall, Mann-Kendall test, trends, Spearman’s Rho, Tasmania.

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283 Investigating the Demand for Short-shelf Life Food Products for SME Wholesalers

Authors: Yamini Raju, Parminder S. Kang, Adam Moroz, Ross Clement, Ashley Hopwell, Alistair Duffy

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Accurate forecasting of fresh produce demand is one the challenges faced by Small Medium Enterprise (SME) wholesalers. This paper is an attempt to understand the cause for the high level of variability such as weather, holidays etc., in demand of SME wholesalers. Therefore, understanding the significance of unidentified factors may improve the forecasting accuracy. This paper presents the current literature on the factors used to predict demand and the existing forecasting techniques of short shelf life products. It then investigates a variety of internal and external possible factors, some of which is not used by other researchers in the demand prediction process. The results presented in this paper are further analysed using a number of techniques to minimize noise in the data. For the analysis past sales data (January 2009 to May 2014) from a UK based SME wholesaler is used and the results presented are limited to product ‘Milk’ focused on café’s in derby. The correlation analysis is done to check the dependencies of variability factor on the actual demand. Further PCA analysis is done to understand the significance of factors identified using correlation. The PCA results suggest that the cloud cover, weather summary and temperature are the most significant factors that can be used in forecasting the demand. The correlation of the above three factors increased relative to monthly and becomes more stable compared to the weekly and daily demand.

Keywords: Demand Forecasting, Deteriorating Products, Food Wholesalers, Principal Component Analysis and Variability Factors.

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282 A Comparative Study of the Techno-Economic Performance of the Linear Fresnel Reflector Using Direct and Indirect Steam Generation: A Case Study under High Direct Normal Irradiance

Authors: Ahmed Aljudaya, Derek Ingham, Lin Ma, Kevin Hughes, Mohammed Pourkashanian

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Researchers, power companies, and state politicians have given concentrated solar power (CSP) much attention due to its capacity to generate large amounts of electricity whereas overcoming the intermittent nature of solar resources. The Linear Fresnel Reflector (LFR) is a well-known CSP technology type for being inexpensive, having a low land use factor, and suffering from low optical efficiency. The LFR was considered a cost-effective alternative option to the Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) because of its simplistic design, and this often outweighs its lower efficiency. The LFR power plants commercially generate steam directly and indirectly in order to produce electricity with high technical efficiency and lower its costs. The purpose of this important analysis is to compare the annual performance of the Direct Steam Generation (DSG) and Indirect Steam Generation (ISG) of LFR power plants using molten salt and other different Heat Transfer Fluids (HTF) to investigate their technical and economic effects. A 50 MWe solar-only system is examined as a case study for both steam production methods in extreme weather conditions. In addition, a parametric analysis is carried out to determine the optimal solar field size that provides the lowest Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) while achieving the highest technical performance. As a result of optimizing the optimum solar field size, the solar multiple (SM) is found to be between 1.2 – 1.5 in order to achieve as low as 9 Cent/KWh for the DSG of the LFR. In addition, the power plant is capable of producing around 141 GWh annually and up to 36% of the capacity factor, whereas the ISG produces less energy at a higher cost. The optimization results show that the DSG’s performance overcomes the ISG in producing around 3% more annual energy, 2% lower LCOE, and 28% less capital cost.

Keywords: Concentrated Solar Power, Levelized cost of electricity, Linear Fresnel reflectors, Steam generation.

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281 Application of Unstructured Mesh Modeling in Evolving SGE of an Airport at the Confluence of Multiple Rivers in a Macro Tidal Region

Authors: A. A. Purohit, M. M. Vaidya, M. D. Kudale

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Among the various developing countries in the world like China, Malaysia, Korea etc., India is also developing its infrastructures in the form of Road/Rail/Airports and Waterborne facilities at an exponential rate. Mumbai, the financial epicenter of India is overcrowded and to relieve the pressure of congestion, Navi Mumbai suburb is being developed on the east bank of Thane creek near Mumbai. The government due to limited space at existing Mumbai Airports (domestic and international) to cater for the future demand of airborne traffic, proposes to build a new international airport near Panvel at Navi Mumbai. Considering the precedence of extreme rainfall on 26th July 2005 and nearby townships being in a low-lying area, wherein new airport is proposed, it is inevitable to study this complex confluence area from a hydrodynamic consideration under both tidal and extreme events (predicted discharge hydrographs), to avoid inundation of the surrounding due to the proposed airport reclamation (1160 hectares) and to determine the safe grade elevation (SGE). The model studies conducted using the application of unstructured mesh to simulate the Panvel estuarine area (93 km2), calibration, validation of a model for hydraulic field measurements and determine the maxima water levels around the airport for various extreme hydrodynamic events, namely the simultaneous occurrence of highest tide from the Arabian Sea and peak flood discharges (Probable Maximum Precipitation and 26th July 2005) from five rivers, the Gadhi, Kalundri, Taloja, Kasadi and Ulwe, meeting at the proposed airport area revealed that: (a) The Ulwe River flowing beneath the proposed airport needs to be diverted. The 120m wide proposed Ulwe diversion channel having a wider base width of 200 m at SH-54 Bridge on the Ulwe River along with the removal of the existing bund in Moha Creek is inevitable to keep the SGE of the airport to a minimum. (b) The clear waterway of 80 m at SH-54 Bridge (Ulwe River) and 120 m at Amra Marg Bridge near Moha Creek is also essential for the Ulwe diversion and (c) The river bank protection works on the right bank of Gadhi River between the NH-4B and SH-54 bridges as well as upstream of the Ulwe River diversion channel are essential to avoid inundation of low lying areas. The maxima water levels predicted around the airport keeps SGE to a minimum of 11m with respect to Chart datum of Ulwe Bundar and thus development is not only technologically-economically feasible but also sustainable. The unstructured mesh modeling is a promising tool to simulate complex extreme hydrodynamic events and provides a reliable solution to evolve optimal SGE of airport.

Keywords: Airport, hydrodynamics, hydrographs, safe grade elevation, tides.

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280 Effects of Different Meteorological Variables on Reference Evapotranspiration Modeling: Application of Principal Component Analysis

Authors: Akinola Ikudayisi, Josiah Adeyemo

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The correct estimation of reference evapotranspiration (ETₒ) is required for effective irrigation water resources planning and management. However, there are some variables that must be considered while estimating and modeling ETₒ. This study therefore determines the multivariate analysis of correlated variables involved in the estimation and modeling of ETₒ at Vaalharts irrigation scheme (VIS) in South Africa using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique. Weather and meteorological data between 1994 and 2014 were obtained both from South African Weather Service (SAWS) and Agricultural Research Council (ARC) in South Africa for this study. Average monthly data of minimum and maximum temperature (°C), rainfall (mm), relative humidity (%), and wind speed (m/s) were the inputs to the PCA-based model, while ETₒ is the output. PCA technique was adopted to extract the most important information from the dataset and also to analyze the relationship between the five variables and ETₒ. This is to determine the most significant variables affecting ETₒ estimation at VIS. From the model performances, two principal components with a variance of 82.7% were retained after the eigenvector extraction. The results of the two principal components were compared and the model output shows that minimum temperature, maximum temperature and windspeed are the most important variables in ETₒ estimation and modeling at VIS. In order words, ETₒ increases with temperature and windspeed. Other variables such as rainfall and relative humidity are less important and cannot be used to provide enough information about ETₒ estimation at VIS. The outcome of this study has helped to reduce input variable dimensionality from five to the three most significant variables in ETₒ modelling at VIS, South Africa.

Keywords: Irrigation, principal component analysis, reference evapotranspiration, Vaalharts.

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279 Fuzzy Control of Thermally Isolated Greenhouse Building by Utilizing Underground Heat Exchanger and Outside Weather Conditions

Authors: Raghad Alhusari, Farag Omar, Moustafa Fadel

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A traditional greenhouse is a metal frame agricultural building used for cultivation plants in a controlled environment isolated from external climatic changes. Using greenhouses in agriculture is an efficient way to reduce the water consumption, where agriculture field is considered the biggest water consumer world widely. Controlling greenhouse environment yields better productivity of plants but demands an increase of electric power. Although various control approaches have been used towards greenhouse automation, most of them are applied to traditional greenhouses with ventilation fans and/or evaporation cooling system. Such approaches are still demanding high energy and water consumption. The aim of this research is to develop a fuzzy control system that minimizes water and energy consumption by utilizing outside weather conditions and underground heat exchanger to maintain the optimum climate of the greenhouse. The proposed control system is implemented on an experimental model of thermally isolated greenhouse structure with dimensions of 6x5x2.8 meters. It uses fans for extracting heat from the ground heat exchanger system, motors for automatic open/close of the greenhouse windows and LED as lighting system. The controller is integrated also with environmental condition sensors. It was found that using the air-to-air horizontal ground heat exchanger with 90 mm diameter and 2 mm thickness placed 2.5 m below the ground surface results in decreasing the greenhouse temperature of 3.28 ˚C which saves around 3 kW of consumed energy. It also eliminated the water consumption needed in evaporation cooling systems which are traditionally used for cooling the greenhouse environment.

Keywords: Automation, earth-to-air heat exchangers, fuzzy control, greenhouse, sustainable buildings.

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278 The Impact of Surface Roughness and PTFE/TiF3/FeF3 Additives in Plain ZDDP Oil on the Friction and Wear Behavior Using Thermal and Tribological Analysis under Extreme Pressure Condition

Authors: Gabi N. Nehme, Saeed Ghalambor

Abstract:

The use of titanium fluoride and iron fluoride (TiF3/FeF3) catalysts in combination with polutetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in plain zinc- dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP) oil is important for the study of engine tribocomponents and is increasingly a strategy to improve the formation of tribofilm and provide low friction and excellent wear protection in reduced phosphorus plain ZDDP oil. The influence of surface roughness and the concentration of TiF3/FeF3/PTFE were investigated using bearing steel samples dipped in lubricant solution at 100°C for two different heating time durations. This paper addresses the effects of water drop contact angle using different surface; finishes after treating them with different lubricant combination. The calculated water drop contact angles were analyzed using Design of Experiment software (DOE) and it was determined that a 0.05 μm Ra surface roughness would provide an excellent TiF3/FeF3/PTFE coating for antiwear resistance as reflected in the Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and the tribological testing under extreme pressure conditions. Both friction and wear performance depend greatly on the PTFE/and catalysts in plain ZDDP oil with 0.05 % phosphorous and on the surface finish of bearing steel. The friction and wear reducing effects, which was observed in the tribological tests, indicated a better micro lubrication effect of the 0.05 μm Ra surface roughness treated at 100°C for 24 hours when compared to the 0.1 μm Ra surface roughness with the same treatment.

Keywords: Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), ZDDP, catalysts, PTFE, friction, wear.

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277 Prediction Modeling of Alzheimer’s Disease and Its Prodromal Stages from Multimodal Data with Missing Values

Authors: M. Aghili, S. Tabarestani, C. Freytes, M. Shojaie, M. Cabrerizo, A. Barreto, N. Rishe, R. E. Curiel, D. Loewenstein, R. Duara, M. Adjouadi

Abstract:

A major challenge in medical studies, especially those that are longitudinal, is the problem of missing measurements which hinders the effective application of many machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, recent Alzheimer's Disease studies have focused on the delineation of Early Mild Cognitive Impairment (EMCI) and Late Mild Cognitive Impairment (LMCI) from cognitively normal controls (CN) which is essential for developing effective and early treatment methods. To address the aforementioned challenges, this paper explores the potential of using the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithm in handling missing values in multiclass classification. We seek a generalized classification scheme where all prodromal stages of the disease are considered simultaneously in the classification and decision-making processes. Given the large number of subjects (1631) included in this study and in the presence of almost 28% missing values, we investigated the performance of XGBoost on the classification of the four classes of AD, NC, EMCI, and LMCI. Using 10-fold cross validation technique, XGBoost is shown to outperform other state-of-the-art classification algorithms by 3% in terms of accuracy and F-score. Our model achieved an accuracy of 80.52%, a precision of 80.62% and recall of 80.51%, supporting the more natural and promising multiclass classification.

Keywords: eXtreme Gradient Boosting, missing data, Alzheimer disease, early mild cognitive impairment, late mild cognitive impairment, multiclass classification, ADNI, support vector machine, random forest.

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276 Extremism among College and High School Students in Moscow: Diagnostics Features

Authors: Puzanova Zhanna Vasilyevna, Larina Tatiana Igorevna, Tertyshnikova Anastasia Gennadyevna

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In this day and age, extremism in various forms of its manifestation is a real threat to the world community, the national security of a state and its territorial integrity, as well as to the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens. Extremism, as it is known, in general terms described as a commitment to extreme views and actions, radically denying the existing social norms and rules. Supporters of extremism in the ideological and political struggles often adopt methods and means of psychological warfare, appeal not to reason and logical arguments, but to emotions and instincts of the people, to prejudices, biases, and a variety of mythological designs. They are dissatisfied with the established order and aim at increasing this dissatisfaction among the masses. Youth extremism holds a specific place among the existing forms and types of extremism. In this context in 2015, we conducted a survey among Moscow college and high school students. The aim of this study was to determine how great or small is the difference in understanding and attitudes towards extremism manifestations, inclination and readiness to take part in extremist activities and what causes this predisposition, if it exists. We performed multivariate analysis and found the Russian college and high school students' opinion about the extremism and terrorism situation in our country and also their cognition on these topics. Among other things, we showed, that the level of aggressiveness of young people were not above the average for the whole population. The survey was conducted using the questionnaire method. The sample included college and high school students in Moscow (642 and 382, respectively) by method of random selection. The questionnaire was developed by specialists of RUDN University Sociological Laboratory and included both original questions (projective questions, the technique of incomplete sentences), and the standard test Dayhoff S. to determine the level of internal aggressiveness. It is also used as an experiment, the technique of study option using of FACS and SPAFF to determine the psychotypes and determination of non-verbal manifestations of emotions. The study confirmed the hypothesis that in respondents’ opinion, the level of aggression is higher today than a few years ago. Differences were found in the understanding of and respect for such social phenomena as extremism, terrorism, and their danger and appeal for the two age groups of young people. Theory of psychotypes, SPAFF (specific affect cording system) and FACS (facial action cording system) are considered as additional techniques for the diagnosis of a tendency to extreme views. Thus, it is established that diagnostics of acceptance of extreme views among young people is possible thanks to simultaneous use of knowledge from the different fields of socio-humanistic sciences. The results of the research can be used in a comparative context with other countries and as a starting point for further research in the field, taking into account its extreme relevance.

Keywords: Extremism, youth extremism, diagnostics of extremist manifestations, forecast of behavior, Sociological polls, theory of psychotypes, FACS, SPAFF.

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275 New Classes of Salagean type Meromorphic Harmonic Functions

Authors: Hakan Bostancı, Metin Öztürk

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In this paper, a necessary and sufficient coefficient are given for functions in a class of complex valued meromorphic harmonic univalent functions of the form f = h + g using Salagean operator. Furthermore, distortion theorems, extreme points, convolution condition and convex combinations for this family of meromorphic harmonic functions are obtained.

Keywords: Harmonic mappings, Meromorphic functions, Salagean operator.

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274 Analytical Camera Model Supplemented with Influence of Temperature Variations

Authors: Peter Podbreznik, Božidar Potocnik

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A camera in the building site is exposed to different weather conditions. Differences between images of the same scene captured with the same camera arise also due to temperature variations. The influence of temperature changes on camera parameters were modelled and integrated into existing analytical camera model. Modified camera model enables quantitatively assessing the influence of temperature variations.

Keywords: camera calibration, analytical model, intrinsic parameters, extrinsic parameters, temperature variations.

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273 Time Domain and Frequency Domain Analyses of Measured Metocean Data for Malaysian Waters

Authors: Duong Vannak, Mohd Shahir Liew, Guo Zheng Yew

Abstract:

Data of wave height and wind speed were collected from three existing oil fields in South China Sea – offshore Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah regions. Extreme values and other significant data were employed for analysis. The data were recorded from 1999 until 2008. The results show that offshore structures are susceptible to unacceptable motions initiated by wind and waves with worst structural impacts caused by extreme wave heights. To protect offshore structures from damage, there is a need to quantify descriptive statistics and determine spectra envelope of wind speed and wave height, and to ascertain the frequency content of each spectrum for offshore structures in the South China Sea shallow waters using measured time series. The results indicate that the process is nonstationary; it is converted to stationary process by first differencing the time series. For descriptive statistical analysis, both wind speed and wave height have significant influence on the offshore structure during the northeast monsoon with high mean wind speed of 13.5195 knots ( = 6.3566 knots) and the high mean wave height of 2.3597 m ( = 0.8690 m). Through observation of the spectra, there is no clear dominant peak and the peaks fluctuate randomly. Each wind speed spectrum and wave height spectrum has its individual identifiable pattern. The wind speed spectrum tends to grow gradually at the lower frequency range and increasing till it doubles at the higher frequency range with the mean peak frequency range of 0.4104 Hz to 0.4721 Hz, while the wave height tends to grow drastically at the low frequency range, which then fluctuates and decreases slightly at the high frequency range with the mean peak frequency range of 0.2911 Hz to 0.3425 Hz.

Keywords: Metocean, Offshore Engineering, Time Series, Descriptive Statistics, Autospectral Density Function, Wind, Wave.

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272 Modelling the Role of Prophylaxis in Malaria Prevention

Authors: Farai Nyabadza

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Malaria is by far the world-s most persistent tropical parasitic disease and is endemic to tropical areas where the climatic and weather conditions allow continuous breeding of the mosquitoes that spread malaria. A mathematical model for the transmission of malaria with prophylaxis prevention is analyzed. The stability analysis of the equilibria is presented with the aim of finding threshold conditions under which malaria clears or persists in the human population. Our results suggest that eradication of mosquitoes and prophylaxis prevention can significantly reduce the malaria burden on the human population.

Keywords: Prophylaxis prevention, basic reproductive number, stability.

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271 Modern Detection and Description Methods for Natural Plants Recognition

Authors: Masoud Fathi Kazerouni, Jens Schlemper, Klaus-Dieter Kuhnert

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Green planet is one of the Earth’s names which is known as a terrestrial planet and also can be named the fifth largest planet of the solar system as another scientific interpretation. Plants do not have a constant and steady distribution all around the world, and even plant species’ variations are not the same in one specific region. Presence of plants is not only limited to one field like botany; they exist in different fields such as literature and mythology and they hold useful and inestimable historical records. No one can imagine the world without oxygen which is produced mostly by plants. Their influences become more manifest since no other live species can exist on earth without plants as they form the basic food staples too. Regulation of water cycle and oxygen production are the other roles of plants. The roles affect environment and climate. Plants are the main components of agricultural activities. Many countries benefit from these activities. Therefore, plants have impacts on political and economic situations and future of countries. Due to importance of plants and their roles, study of plants is essential in various fields. Consideration of their different applications leads to focus on details of them too. Automatic recognition of plants is a novel field to contribute other researches and future of studies. Moreover, plants can survive their life in different places and regions by means of adaptations. Therefore, adaptations are their special factors to help them in hard life situations. Weather condition is one of the parameters which affect plants life and their existence in one area. Recognition of plants in different weather conditions is a new window of research in the field. Only natural images are usable to consider weather conditions as new factors. Thus, it will be a generalized and useful system. In order to have a general system, distance from the camera to plants is considered as another factor. The other considered factor is change of light intensity in environment as it changes during the day. Adding these factors leads to a huge challenge to invent an accurate and secure system. Development of an efficient plant recognition system is essential and effective. One important component of plant is leaf which can be used to implement automatic systems for plant recognition without any human interface and interaction. Due to the nature of used images, characteristic investigation of plants is done. Leaves of plants are the first characteristics to select as trusty parts. Four different plant species are specified for the goal to classify them with an accurate system. The current paper is devoted to principal directions of the proposed methods and implemented system, image dataset, and results. The procedure of algorithm and classification is explained in details. First steps, feature detection and description of visual information, are outperformed by using Scale invariant feature transform (SIFT), HARRIS-SIFT, and FAST-SIFT methods. The accuracy of the implemented methods is computed. In addition to comparison, robustness and efficiency of results in different conditions are investigated and explained.

Keywords: SIFT combination, feature extraction, feature detection, natural images, natural plant recognition, HARRIS-SIFT, FAST-SIFT.

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270 Quantitative Ranking Evaluation of Wine Quality

Authors: A. Brunel, A. Kernevez, F. Leclere, J. Trenteseaux

Abstract:

Today, wine quality is only evaluated by wine experts with their own different personal tastes, even if they may agree on some common features. So producers do not have any unbiased way to independently assess the quality of their products. A tool is here proposed to evaluate wine quality by an objective ranking based upon the variables entering wine elaboration, and analysed through principal component analysis (PCA) method. Actual climatic data are compared by measuring the relative distance between each considered wine, out of which the general ranking is performed.

Keywords: Wine, grape, vine, weather conditions, rating, climate, principal component analysis, metric analysis.

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269 Analytical Model for Predicting Whole Building Heat Transfer

Authors: Xiaoshu Lu, Martti Viljanen

Abstract:

A new analytical model is developed which provides close-formed solutions for both transient indoor and envelope temperature changes in buildings. Time-dependent boundary temperature is presented as Fourier series which can approximate real weather conditions. The final close-formed solutions are simple, concise, and comprehensive. The model was compared with numerical results and good accuracy was obtained. The model can be used as design and control guidelines in engineering applications for analysing mechanical heat transfer properties for buildings.

Keywords: Analytical model, heat transfer, whole building.

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268 Design Development of Floating Performance Structure for Coastal Areas in the Maltese Islands

Authors: Rebecca E. Dalli Gonzi, Joseph Falzon

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Background: Islands in the Mediterranean region offer opportunities for various industries to take advantage of the facilitation and use of versatile floating structures in coastal areas. In the context of dense land use, marine structures can contribute to ensure both terrestrial and marine resource sustainability. Objective: The aim of this paper is to present and critically discuss an array of issues that characterize the design process of a floating structure for coastal areas and to present the challenges and opportunities of providing such multifunctional and versatile structures around the Maltese coastline. Research Design: A three-tier research design commenced with a systematic literature review. Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders including a naval architect, a marine engineer and civil designers were conducted. A second stage preceded a focus group with stakeholders in design and construction of marine lightweight structures. The three tier research design ensured triangulation of issues. All phases of the study were governed by research ethics. Findings: Findings were grouped into three main themes: excellence, impact and implementation. These included design considerations, applications and potential impacts on local industry. Literature for the design and construction of marine structures in the Maltese Islands presented multiple gaps in the application of marine structures for local industries. Weather conditions, depth of sea bed and wave actions presented limitations on the design capabilities of the structure. Conclusion: Water structures offer great potential and conclusions demonstrate the applicability of such designs for Maltese waters. There is still no such provision within Maltese coastal areas for multi-purpose use. The introduction of such facilities presents a range of benefits for visiting tourists and locals thereby offering wide range of services to tourism and marine industry. Costs for construction and adverse weather conditions were amongst the main limitations that shaped design capacities of the water structures.

Keywords: Coastal areas, lightweight, marine structure, multipurpose, versatile, floating device.

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267 Power Forecasting of Photovoltaic Generation

Authors: S. H. Oudjana, A. Hellal, I. Hadj Mahammed

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Photovoltaic power generation forecasting is an important task in renewable energy power system planning and operating. This paper explores the application of neural networks (NN) to study the design of photovoltaic power generation forecasting systems for one week ahead using weather databases include the global irradiance, and temperature of Ghardaia city (south of Algeria) using a data acquisition system. Simulations were run and the results are discussed showing that neural networks Technique is capable to decrease the photovoltaic power generation forecasting error.

Keywords: Photovoltaic Power Forecasting, Regression, Neural Networks.

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266 Bayesian Geostatistical Modelling of COVID-19 Datasets

Authors: I. Oloyede

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The COVID-19 dataset is obtained by extracting weather, longitude, latitude, ISO3666, cases and death of coronavirus patients across the globe. The data were extracted for a period of eight day choosing uniform time within the specified period. Then mapping of cases and deaths with reverence to continents were obtained. Bayesian Geostastical modelling was carried out on the dataset. The study found out that countries in the tropical region suffered less deaths/attacks compared to countries in the temperate region, this is due to high temperature in the tropical region.

Keywords: COVID-19, Bayesian, geostastical modelling, prior, posterior.

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265 Pattern Recognition of Biological Signals

Authors: Paulo S. Caparelli, Eduardo Costa, Alexsandro S. Soares, Hipolito Barbosa

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This paper presents an evolutionary method for designing electronic circuits and numerical methods associated with monitoring systems. The instruments described here have been used in studies of weather and climate changes due to global warming, and also in medical patient supervision. Genetic Programming systems have been used both for designing circuits and sensors, and also for determining sensor parameters. The authors advance the thesis that the software side of such a system should be written in computer languages with a strong mathematical and logic background in order to prevent software obsolescence, and achieve program correctness.

Keywords: Pattern recognition, evolutionary computation, biological signal, functional programming.

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