Search results for: synthetic aperture focusing technique

Authors: Zuhaib Ashfaq Khan, Imran Khan, Nandana Rajatheva

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In this paper, hybrid FDMA-TDMA access technique in a cooperative distributive fashion introducing and implementing a modified protocol introduced in [1] is analyzed termed as Power and Cooperation Diversity Gain Protocol (PCDGP). A wireless network consists of two users terminal , two relays and a destination terminal equipped with two antennas. The relays are operating in amplify-and-forward (AF) mode with a fixed gain. Two operating modes: cooperation-gain mode and powergain mode are exploited from source terminals to relays, as it is working in a best channel selection scheme. Vertical BLAST (Bell Laboratories Layered Space Time) or V-BLAST with minimum mean square error (MMSE) nulling is used at the relays to perfectly detect the joint signals from multiple source terminals. The performance is analyzed using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation scheme and investigated over independent and identical (i.i.d) Rayleigh, Ricean-K and Nakagami-m fading environments. Subsequently, simulation results show that the proposed scheme can provide better signal quality of uplink users in a cooperative communication system using hybrid FDMATDMA technique.

Keywords: Cooperation Diversity, Best Channel Selectionscheme, MIMO relay networks, V-BLAST, QRdecomposition, and MMSE.

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Authors: Oluwatosin A. Ijabadeniyi

Abstract:

The fact that traditional food safety system in the absence of food safety culture is inadequate has recently become a cause of concern for food safety professionals and other stakeholders. Focusing on implementation of traditional food safety system i.e HACCP prerequisite program and HACCP without the presence of food safety culture in the food industry has led to the processing, marketing and distribution of contaminated foods. The results of this are regular out breaks of food borne illnesses and recalls of foods from retail outlets with serious consequences to the consumers and manufacturers alike. This article will consider the importance of food safety culture, the cases of outbreaks and recalls that occurred when companies did not make food safety culture a priority. Most importantly, the food safety cultures of some food industries in South Africa were assessed from responses to questionnaires from food safety/food industry professionals in Durban South Africa. The article was concluded by recommending that both food industry employees and employers alike take food safety culture seriously.

Keywords: Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), food borne illnesses, food safety culture, food safety system, HACCP.

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Authors: Christian Arcos, Marley Vellasco, Abraham Alcaim

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In this paper, we present a wavelet coefficients masking based on Local Binary Patterns (WLBP) approach to enhance the temporal spectra of the wavelet coefficients for speech enhancement. This technique exploits the wavelet denoising scheme, which splits the degraded speech into pyramidal subband components and extracts frequency information without losing temporal information. Speech enhancement in each high-frequency subband is performed by binary labels through the local binary pattern masking that encodes the ratio between the original value of each coefficient and the values of the neighbour coefficients. This approach enhances the high-frequency spectra of the wavelet transform instead of eliminating them through a threshold. A comparative analysis is carried out with conventional speech enhancement algorithms, demonstrating that the proposed technique achieves significant improvements in terms of PESQ, an international recommendation of objective measure for estimating subjective speech quality. Informal listening tests also show that the proposed method in an acoustic context improves the quality of speech, avoiding the annoying musical noise present in other speech enhancement techniques. Experimental results obtained with a DNN based speech recognizer in noisy environments corroborate the superiority of the proposed scheme in the robust speech recognition scenario.

Keywords: Binary labels, local binary patterns, mask, wavelet coefficients, speech enhancement, speech recognition.

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Authors: Jason Chien-Hsun Tseng, Nguyen Dong-Thai Dao, Chong-Ching Chang

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A novel PDE solver using the multidimensional wave digital filtering (MDWDF) technique to achieve the solution of a 2D seismic wave system is presented. In essence, the continuous physical system served by a linear Kirchhoff circuit is transformed to an equivalent discrete dynamic system implemented by a MD wave digital filtering (MDWDF) circuit. This amounts to numerically approximating the differential equations used to describe elements of a MD passive electronic circuit by a grid-based difference equations implemented by the so-called state quantities within the passive MDWDF circuit. So the digital model can track the wave field on a dense 3D grid of points. Details about how to transform the continuous system into a desired discrete passive system are addressed. In addition, initial and boundary conditions are properly embedded into the MDWDF circuit in terms of state quantities. Graphic results have clearly demonstrated some physical effects of seismic wave (P-wave and S–wave) propagation including radiation, reflection, and refraction from and across the hard boundaries. Comparison between the MDWDF technique and the finite difference time domain (FDTD) approach is also made in terms of the computational efficiency.

Keywords: Seismic Wave Propagation, Multi-dimension WaveDigital Filters, Partial Differential Equations.

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Authors: Sultan Daud, John P. Forth, Nikolaos Nikitas

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The current study aims to highlight the loading characteristics impact on the time evolution (focusing particularly on long term effects) of the deformation of realized reinforced concrete beams. Namely the tension stiffening code provisions (i.e. within Eurocode 2) are reviewed with a clear intention to reassess their operational value and predicting capacity. In what follows the experimental programme adopted along with some preliminary findings and numerical modeling attempts are presented. For a range of long slender reinforced concrete simply supported beams (4200 mm) constant static sustained and repeated cyclic loadings were applied mapping the time evolution of deformation. All experiments were carried out at the Heavy Structures Lab of the University of Leeds. During tests the mid-span deflection, creep coefficient and shrinkage strains were monitored for duration of 90 days. The obtained results are set against the values predicted by Eurocode 2 and the tools within an FE commercial package (i.e. Midas FEA) to yield that existing knowledge and practise is at times over-conservative.

Keywords: Eurocode2, midas fea, repeated, sustained loading.

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Authors: Mohd Iskandar bin Illyas Tan, Iziati Saadah bt Ibrahim

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Logistics is part of the supply chain processes that plans, implements, and controls the efficient and effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer requirements. This research aims to investigate the current status and future direction of the use of Information Technology (IT) for logistics, focusing on Supply Chain Management (SCM) and E-Commerce adoption in Malaysia. Therefore, this research stresses on the type of technology being adopted, factors, benefits and barriers affecting the innovation in SCM and E-Commerce technology adoption among Logistics Service Providers (LSP). A mailed questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 265 logistics companies in Johor. The research revealed a high level of SCM technology adoption among LSP as they had adopted SCM technology in various business processes while they perceived a high level of benefits from SCM adoption.

Keywords: E-Commerce, Logistics Service Providers, Malaysia, Supply Chain Management.

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Authors: Mithilesh Singh, Rakhi Chaturvedi

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Neem is a highly heterozygous and commercially important perennial plant. Conventionally, it is propagated by seeds which loose viability within two weeks. Strictly cross pollinating nature of the plant causes serious barrier to the genetic improvement by conventional methods. Alternative methods of tree improvement such as somatic hybridization, mutagenesis and genetic transformation require an efficient in vitro plant regeneration system. In this regard, somatic embryogenesis particularly secondary somatic embryogenesis may offer an effective system for large scale plant propagation without affecting the clonal fidelity of the regenerants. It can be used for synthetic seed production, which further bolsters conservation of this tree species which is otherwise very difficult The present report describes the culture conditions necessary to induce and maintain repetitive somatic embryogenesis, for the first time, in neem. Out of various treatments tested, the somatic embryos were induced directly from immature zygotic embryos of neem on MS + TDZ (0.1 μM) + ABA (4 μM), in more than 76 % cultures. Direct secondary somatic embryogenesis occurred from primary somatic embryos on MS + IAA (5 μM) + GA3 (5 μM) in 12.5 % cultures. Embryogenic competence of the explant as well as of the primary embryos was maintained for a long period by repeated subcultures at frequent intervals. A maximum of 10 % of these somatic embryos were converted into plantlets.

Keywords: Azadirachta indica A. Juss., Cytokinin, Somatic embryogenesis, zygotic embryo culture.

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Authors: Wei Zhang, Yao-Yu Li, Yi-Fan Zhu, Qun Li, Wei-Ping Wang

Abstract:

It-s known that incorporating prior knowledge into support vector regression (SVR) can help to improve the approximation performance. Most of researches are concerned with the incorporation of knowledge in the form of numerical relationships. Little work, however, has been done to incorporate the prior knowledge on the structural relationships among the variables (referred as to Structural Prior Knowledge, SPK). This paper explores the incorporation of SPK in SVR by constructing appropriate admissible support vector kernel (SV kernel) based on the properties of reproducing kernel (R.K). Three-levels specifications of SPK are studied with the corresponding sub-levels of prior knowledge that can be considered for the method. These include Hierarchical SPK (HSPK), Interactional SPK (ISPK) consisting of independence, global and local interaction, Functional SPK (FSPK) composed of exterior-FSPK and interior-FSPK. A convenient tool for describing the SPK, namely Description Matrix of SPK is introduced. Subsequently, a new SVR, namely Motivated Support Vector Regression (MSVR) whose structure is motivated in part by SPK, is proposed. Synthetic examples show that it is possible to incorporate a wide variety of SPK and helpful to improve the approximation performance in complex cases. The benefits of MSVR are finally shown on a real-life military application, Air-toground battle simulation, which shows great potential for MSVR to the complex military applications.

Keywords: admissible support vector kernel, reproducing kernel, structural prior knowledge, motivated support vector regression

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Authors: Wei Zhang, Yao-Yu Li, Yi-Fan Zhu, Qun Li, Wei-Ping Wang

Abstract:

It-s known that incorporating prior knowledge into support vector regression (SVR) can help to improve the approximation performance. Most of researches are concerned with the incorporation of knowledge in form of numerical relationships. Little work, however, has been done to incorporate the prior knowledge on the structural relationships among the variables (referred as to Structural Prior Knowledge, SPK). This paper explores the incorporation of SPK in SVR by constructing appropriate admissible support vector kernel (SV kernel) based on the properties of reproducing kernel (R.K). Three-levels specifications of SPK are studies with the corresponding sub-levels of prior knowledge that can be considered for the method. These include Hierarchical SPK (HSPK), Interactional SPK (ISPK) consisting of independence, global and local interaction, Functional SPK (FSPK) composed of exterior-FSPK and interior-FSPK. A convenient tool for describing the SPK, namely Description Matrix of SPK is introduced. Subsequently, a new SVR, namely Motivated Support Vector Regression (MSVR) whose structure is motivated in part by SPK, is proposed. Synthetic examples show that it is possible to incorporate a wide variety of SPK and helpful to improve the approximation performance in complex cases. The benefits of MSVR are finally shown on a real-life military application, Air-toground battle simulation, which shows great potential for MSVR to the complex military applications.

Keywords: admissible support vector kernel, reproducing kernel, structural prior knowledge, motivated support vector regression

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Authors: Nevine M. Labib, Michael N. Malek

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Data Mining aims at discovering knowledge out of data and presenting it in a form that is easily comprehensible to humans. One of the useful applications in Egypt is the Cancer management, especially the management of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia or ALL, which is the most common type of cancer in children. This paper discusses the process of designing a prototype that can help in the management of childhood ALL, which has a great significance in the health care field. Besides, it has a social impact on decreasing the rate of infection in children in Egypt. It also provides valubale information about the distribution and segmentation of ALL in Egypt, which may be linked to the possible risk factors. Undirected Knowledge Discovery is used since, in the case of this research project, there is no target field as the data provided is mainly subjective. This is done in order to quantify the subjective variables. Therefore, the computer will be asked to identify significant patterns in the provided medical data about ALL. This may be achieved through collecting the data necessary for the system, determimng the data mining technique to be used for the system, and choosing the most suitable implementation tool for the domain. The research makes use of a data mining tool, Clementine, so as to apply Decision Trees technique. We feed it with data extracted from real-life cases taken from specialized Cancer Institutes. Relevant medical cases details such as patient medical history and diagnosis are analyzed, classified, and clustered in order to improve the disease management.

Keywords: Data Mining, Decision Trees, Knowledge Discovery, Leukemia.

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Authors: Martin Skutil, Klára Havlíčková, Renata Matějíčková

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The paper is the first output of a larger research project conducted at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Králové, which deals with an improved understanding of teachers' work in the subject of National History and Geography. Partial findings focusing on the use of didactic material resources in teaching are presented in this phase. With the regard to promotion of independent activity of students within learner based education, material equipment of schools with didactic aids is becoming increasingly important. This paper is based on qualitative research, where the possibilities and mainly the reasons for use of material didactic resources in teaching were investigated through semi-structured interviews. Attention was focused on ways of working with different teaching aids and their implementation in the educational process. It turns out that teachers accept current constructivist and humanistic approaches to education associated with the requirement to prepare students for life in an information society, and accordingly they adjust their teaching.

Keywords: Primary education, National History and Geography, didactic material resources, qualitative research.

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Authors: Nalinee Sophatsathit

Abstract:

The objectives of memorabilia of Suan Sunandha are to develop a general knowledge presentation about the historical royal garden through interactive graphic simulation technique and to employ high-functionality context in enhancing interactive user navigation. The approach infers non-intrusive display of relevant history in response to situational context. User’s navigation runs through the virtual reality campus, consisting of new and restored buildings. A flash back presentation of information pertaining to the history in the form of photos, paintings, and textual descriptions are displayed along each passing-by building. To keep the presentation lively, graphical simulation is created in a serendipity game play so that the user can both learn and enjoy the educational tour. The benefits of this human-computer interaction development are two folds. First, lively presentation technique and situational context modeling are developed that entail a usable paradigm of knowledge and information presentation combinations. Second, cost effective training and promotion for both internal personnel and public visitors to learn and keep informed of this historical royal garden can be furnished without the need for a dedicated public relations service. Future improvement on graphic simulation and ability based display can extend this work to be more realistic, user-friendly, and informative for all.

Keywords: Interactive user navigation, high-functionality context, situational context, human-computer interaction.

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Authors: Arda Yunianta, Norazah Yusof, Mohd Shahizan Othman, Dewi Octaviani

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Learning is the acquisition of new mental schemata, knowledge, abilities and skills which can be used to solve problems potentially more successfully. The learning process is optimum when it is assisted and personalized. Learning is not a single activity, but should involve many possible activities to make learning become meaningful. Many e-learning applications provide facilities to support teaching and learning activities. One way to identify whether the e-learning system is being used by the learners is through the number of hits that can be obtained from the e-learning system's log data. However, we cannot rely solely to the number of hits in order to determine whether learning had occurred meaningfully. This is due to the fact that meaningful learning should engage five characteristics namely active, constructive, intentional, authentic and cooperative. This paper aims to analyze the e-learning activities that is meaningful to learning. By focusing on the meaningful learning characteristics, we match it to the corresponding Moodle e-learning activities. This analysis discovers the activities that have high impact to meaningful learning, as well as activities that are less meaningful. The high impact activities is given high weights since it become important to meaningful learning, while the low impact has less weight and said to be supportive e-learning activities. The result of this analysis helps us categorize which e-learning activities that are meaningful to learning and guide us to measure the effectiveness of e-learning usage.

Keywords: e-learning system, e-learning activity, meaningful learning characteristics, Moodle

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Authors: J.-C. Cexus, A.O. Boudraa

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In this paper, a new approach for target recognition based on the Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm of Huang etal. [11] and the energy tracking operator of Teager [13]-[14] is introduced. The conjunction of these two methods is called Teager-Huang analysis. This approach is well suited for nonstationary signals analysis. The impulse response (IR) of target is first band pass filtered into subsignals (components) called Intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) with well defined Instantaneous frequency (IF) and Instantaneous amplitude (IA). Each IMF is a zero-mean AM-FM component. In second step, the energy of each IMF is tracked using the Teager energy operator (TEO). IF and IA, useful to describe the time-varying characteristics of the signal, are estimated using the Energy separation algorithm (ESA) algorithm of Maragos et al .[16]-[17]. In third step, a set of features such as skewness and kurtosis are extracted from the IF, IA and IMF energy functions. The Teager-Huang analysis is tested on set of synthetic IRs of Sonar targets with different physical characteristics (density, velocity, shape,? ). PCA is first applied to features to discriminate between manufactured and natural targets. The manufactured patterns are classified into spheres and cylinders. One hundred percent of correct recognition is achieved with twenty three echoes where sixteen IRs, used for training, are free noise and seven IRs, used for testing phase, are corrupted with white Gaussian noise.

Keywords: Target recognition, Empirical mode decomposition, Teager-Kaiser energy operator, Features extraction.

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Authors: Salem Alsanusi, Loubna Bentaher

Abstract:

Response Surface Methods (RSM) provide statistically validated predictive models that can then be manipulated for finding optimal process configurations. Variation transmitted to responses from poorly controlled process factors can be accounted for by the mathematical technique of propagation of error (POE), which facilitates ‘finding the flats’ on the surfaces generated by RSM. The dual response approach to RSM captures the standard deviation of the output as well as the average. It accounts for unknown sources of variation. Dual response plus propagation of error (POE) provides a more useful model of overall response variation. In our case, we implemented this technique in predicting compressive strength of concrete of 28 days in age. Since 28 days is quite time consuming, while it is important to ensure the quality control process. This paper investigates the potential of using design of experiments (DOE-RSM) to predict the compressive strength of concrete at 28th day. Data used for this study was carried out from experiment schemes at university of Benghazi, civil engineering department. A total of 114 sets of data were implemented. ACI mix design method was utilized for the mix design. No admixtures were used, only the main concrete mix constituents such as cement, coarseaggregate, fine aggregate and water were utilized in all mixes. Different mix proportions of the ingredients and different water cement ratio were used. The proposed mathematical models are capable of predicting the required concrete compressive strength of concrete from early ages.

Keywords: Mix proportioning, response surface methodology, compressive strength, optimal design.

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Authors: Mohd Iskandar bin Illyas Tan, Iziati Saadah bt Ibrahim

Abstract:

Logistics is part of the supply chain processes that plans, implements, and controls the efficient and effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer requirements. This research aims to investigate the current status and future direction of the use of Information Technology (IT) for logistics, focusing on Supply Chain Management (SCM) and E-Commerce adoption in Johor. Therefore, this research stresses on the type of technology being adopted, factors, benefits and barriers affecting the innovation in SCM and ECommerce technology adoption among Logistics Service Providers (LSP). A mailed questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 265 logistics companies in Johor. The research revealed that SCM technology adoption among LSP was higher as they had adopted SCM technology in various business processes while they perceived a high level of benefits from SCM adoption. Obviously, ECommerce technology adoption among LSP is relatively low.

Keywords: E-Commerce, Johor, Logistics Service Providers, Supply Chain Management.

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Authors: M. Yoneda

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to identify human walking vertical force by using FFT power spectrum density from the experimental acceleration data of the human body. An experiment on human walking is carried out on a stationary floor especially paying attention to higher components of dynamic vertical walking force. Based on measured acceleration data of the human lumbar part, not only in-phase component with frequency of 2fw, 3fw, but also in-opposite-phase component with frequency of 0.5 fw, 1.5 fw, 2.5 fw where fw is the walking rate is observed. The vertical vibration of pedestrian bridge induced by higher components of human walking vertical force is also discussed in this paper. A full scale measurement for the existing pedestrian bridge with center span length of 33 m is carried out focusing on the resonance phenomenon due to higher components of human walking vertical force. Dynamic response characteristics excited by these vertical higher components of human walking are revealed from the dynamic design viewpoint of pedestrian bridge.

Keywords: Simplified method, Human walking vertical force, Higher component, Pedestrian bridge vibration.

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Authors: L. Lindsay, S. A. Coleman, D. Kerr, B. J. Taylor, A. Moorhead

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Cognitive decline and frailty is apparent in older adults leading to an increased likelihood of the risk of falling. Currently health care professionals have to make professional decisions regarding such risks, and hence make difficult decisions regarding the future welfare of the ageing population. This study uses health data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), focusing on adults over the age of 50 years, in order to analyse health risk factors and predict the likelihood of falls. This prediction is based on the use of machine learning algorithms whereby health risk factors are used as inputs to predict the likelihood of falling. Initial results show that health risk factors such as long-term health issues contribute to the number of falls. The identification of such health risk factors has the potential to inform health and social care professionals, older people and their family members in order to mitigate daily living risks.

Keywords: Classification, falls, health risk factors, machine learning, older adults.

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Authors: Junjie Chen, Deguang Xu

Abstract:

The high energy density of hydrocarbon fuels creates a great opportunity to develop catalytic combustion based micro-power generation systems to meet increasing demands for micro-scale devices. In this work, the recent technological development progress in fundamental understanding of the catalytic combustion at micro-scales are reviewed. The underlying fundamental mechanisms, flame stability, hetero-homogeneous interaction, catalytic ignition, and catalytic reforming are reviewed in catalytic micro-scale combustion systems. Catalytic combustion and its design, diagnosis, and modeling operation are highlighted for micro-combustion application purpose; these fundamental aspects are reviewed. Finally, an overview of future studies is made. The primary objective of this review is to present an overview of the development of micro-power generators by focusing more on the advances and challenges in the fundamental understanding of the catalytic combustion at micro-scales.

Keywords: Micro-combustion, catalytic combustion, flame stability, hetero-homogeneous interaction, catalytic ignition, catalytic reforming.

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Authors: Noriyoshi Hosoya, Kayoko Yamamoto

Abstract:

This study, focusing on the importance of encouraging outdoor activities for children, aims to propose and implement a Web-GIS based outdoor education program for elementary schools, which will then be evaluated by users. Specifically, for the purpose of improved outdoor activities in the elementary school education, the outdoor education program, with chiefly using the Web-GIS that provides a good information provision and sharing tool, is proposed and implemented before being evaluated by users. Conclusions of the study boil down to: (1) An eight-staged outdoor education program based on the Web-GIS was proposed for a “second school" of an elementary school that was then implemented before being evaluated by users (teachers, instructors, students, and their parents). (2) The program generally received a good evaluation, while a lot of students and their parents evaluated negatively for the degree of discovery and for the degree of interest, respectively, in the questionnaire survey of students and their parents conducted after the “second school". The surveys clearly show that an issue to be solved, from the viewpoint of teachers in particular, is the establishment of the GIS that will easily represent teaching materials developed by teachers and of Web-GIS, and improved significance of the use of GIS and Web-GIS for their widespread.

Keywords: Elementary Schools, School Education, Outdooreducation, Web-GIS

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Authors: Marianna I. Triantou, Konstantina I. Stathi, Petroula A. Tarantili

Abstract:

In the present study, the incorporation of graphene into blends of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene terpolymer with polypropylene (ABS/PP) was investigated focusing on the improvement of their thermomechanical characteristics and the effect on their rheological behavior. The blends were prepared by melt mixing in a twin-screw extruder and were characterized by measuring the MFI as well as by performing DSC, TGA and mechanical tests. The addition of graphene to ABS/PP blends tends to increase their melt viscosity, due to the confinement of polymer chains motion. Also, graphene causes an increment of the crystallization temperature (Tc), especially in blends with higher PP content, because of the reduction of surface energy of PP nucleation, which is a consequence of the attachment of PP chains to the surface of graphene through the intermolecular CH-π interaction. Moreover, the above nanofiller improves the thermal stability of PP and increases the residue of thermal degradation at all the investigated compositions of blends, due to the thermal isolation effect and the mass transport barrier effect. Regarding the mechanical properties, the addition of graphene improves the elastic modulus, because of its intrinsic mechanical characteristics and its rigidity, and this effect is particularly strong in the case of pure PP.

Keywords: Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene terpolymer, blends, graphene, polypropylene.

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Authors: A. Sayadi, A. Khodadadi D., S. Partani

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Today Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is known as one of the most important tools for decision makers in the construction of civil and industrial projects towards sustainable development. In the past, projects were evaluated based on cost and benefit analysis regardless of the physical and biological environmental effects and its socio-economical impacts. According to the Department of Environment (DOE) of Iran's regulations, the construction of hydroelectric dams is an activity that requires an EIA report. In this paper the environmental impact assessment of the Gotvand hydro-electrical dam has been evaluated in the three environment elements, biological, Physical-chemical and cultural units. This dam is one of the largest dams in Iran with a volume of 4500 MCM and is going to be the last dam on the Karoon River in the south of Iran. In this paper the ICOLD (International Commission on Large Dams) technique was employed for the environmental impact assessment of the dam. The research includes all socio economical and environmental effects of the dam during the construction and operation of the hydro electric dam and Environmental management, monitoring and mitigation of negative impacts were analyzed. In this project the results led to using some techniques to protect the destructive impacts on biological aspects beside the effective long time period impacts on the biological aspects. The impacts on physical aspects are temporary and negative commonly that could be restored and rehabilitated in natural process in the long time in operation period.

Keywords: "Gotvand Hydro Electric Dam", "EIA", "ICOLD and Leopold matrices"

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Authors: Miho Tsukamoto

Abstract:

This paper examines Japanese life expectancy, and the declining birth rate to investigate the Japanese people’s view of death, and their consciousness of death. To support their perspectives toward death, “Eitai Kuyobo,” and tombs with Japanese animation will be focused as Japanese citizens have created unique tombs designs of their own tombs. With the methodological aspects, Japan’s birth and mortality rates, Japan’s average life expectancy, history of tombs, creation of one’s own tombs and types of marriage will be significant. By examining the Japanese history of tombs, social change and unique tombs, and the increase of mortality rate in Japanese super-aging society, this study contributes the change of people’s view toward tombs, and a view toward life and death. Accordingly, focusing on the change of people’s view toward tombs it is concluded that the change is caused by the increase of mortality rate in Japanese super-aging society.

Keywords: Tombs, History, Change, New Designed Tombs, Family Relationship.

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Authors: Dipti Patra, Mridula J

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose a new image segmentation approach for colour textured images. The proposed method for image segmentation consists of two stages. In the first stage, textural features using gray level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM) are computed for regions of interest (ROI) considered for each class. ROI acts as ground truth for the classes. Ohta model (I1, I2, I3) is the colour model used for segmentation. Statistical mean feature at certain inter pixel distance (IPD) of I2 component was considered to be the optimized textural feature for further segmentation. In the second stage, the feature matrix obtained is assumed to be the degraded version of the image labels and modeled as Markov Random Field (MRF) model to model the unknown image labels. The labels are estimated through maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation criterion using ICM algorithm. The performance of the proposed approach is compared with that of the existing schemes, JSEG and another scheme which uses GLCM and MRF in RGB colour space. The proposed method is found to be outperforming the existing ones in terms of segmentation accuracy with acceptable rate of convergence. The results are validated with synthetic and real textured images.

Keywords: Texture Image Segmentation, Gray Level Cooccurrence Matrix, Markov Random Field Model, Ohta colour space, ICM algorithm.

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Authors: Jingwen Shan

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In order to explore the key factors affecting the robot program learning intention of school students, this study takes the technology acceptance model as the theoretical basis and invites 167 students from Jiading District of Shanghai as the research subjects. In the robot course, the model of school students on their learning behavior is constructed. By verifying the causal path relationship between variables, it is concluded that teachers can enhance students’ perceptual usefulness to robotics courses by enhancing subjective norms, entertainment perception, and reducing technical anxiety, such as focusing on the gradual progress of programming and analyzing learner characteristics. Students can improve perceived ease of use by enhancing self-efficacy. At the same time, robot hardware designers can optimize in terms of entertainment and interactivity, which will directly or indirectly increase the learning intention of the robot course. By changing these factors, the learning behavior of primary and secondary school students can be more sustainable.

Keywords: TAM, learning behavior intentions, robot courses, primary and secondary school students.

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Authors: Manoj Singh, Mumtaz Ahmad Khan, Abdul Hakim Khan

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The investigation in the present paper is to obtain certain types of relations for the well known hypergeometric functions by employing the technique of fractional derivative and integral.

Keywords: Fractional Derivatives and Integrals, Hypergeometric functions.

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Authors: R.Rahimi, F.Moharrami

Abstract:

Titanium gels doped with water-soluble cationic porphyrin were synthesized by the sol–gel polymerization of Ti (OC4H9)4. In this work we investigate the spectroscopic properties along with SEM images of tetra carboxyl phenyl porphyrin when incorporated into porous matrix produced by the sol–gel technique.

Keywords: TCPP, Titanium matrix, UV/Vis spectroscopy, SEM.

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Authors: Michael Grigutsch, Peter Nyhuis

Abstract:

Due to the volatile global economy, enterprises are increasingly focusing on logistics. By investing in suitable measures a company can increase their logistic performance and assert themselves over the competition. However, enterprises are also faced with the challenge of investing available capital for maximum profits. In order to be able to create an informed and quantifiably comprehensible basis for a decision, enterprises need a suitable model for logistically and monetarily evaluating measures in production. Previously, within the frame of Collaborate Research Centre 489 (SFB 489) at the Institute for Production Systems and Logistics, (IFA) a Logistic Information System was developed specifically for providing enterprises in the forging industry with support when making decisions. Based on this research, a new initiative referred to as ‘Transfer Project T7’, aims to develop a universal approach for logistically and monetarily evaluating production measures. This paper focuses on the structural measure echelon storage and their impact on the entire production system.

Keywords: Logistic Operating Curves, Transfer Functions, Production Logistics, Storages Echelon.

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Authors: Chong Wang, Kellem M. Soares, Luis E. Kosteski

Abstract:

The problem of toughening in brittle materials reinforced by fibers is complex, involving all of the mechanical properties of fibers, matrix and the fiber/matrix interface, as well as the geometry of the fiber. Development of new numerical methods appropriate to toughening simulation and analysis is necessary. In this work, we have performed simulations and analysis of toughening in brittle matrix reinforced by randomly distributed fibers by means of the discrete elements method. At first, we put forward a mechanical model of toughening contributed by random fibers. Then with a numerical program, we investigated the stress, damage and bridging force in the composite material when a crack appeared in the brittle matrix. From the results obtained, we conclude that: (i) fibers of high strength and low elasticity modulus are beneficial to toughening; (ii) fibers of relatively high elastic modulus compared to the matrix may result in substantial matrix damage due to spalling effect; (iii) employment of high-strength synthetic fibers is a good option for toughening. We expect that the combination of the discrete element method (DEM) with the finite element method (FEM) can increase the versatility and efficiency of the software developed. The present work can guide the design of ceramic composites of high performance through the optimization of the parameters.

Keywords: Bridging stress, discrete element method, fiber reinforced composites, toughening.

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Authors: Wanhyun Cho, Soonja Kang, Sangkyoon Kim, Soonyoung Park

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose the variational EM inference algorithm for the multi-class Gaussian process classification model that can be used in the field of human behavior recognition. This algorithm can drive simultaneously both a posterior distribution of a latent function and estimators of hyper-parameters in a Gaussian process classification model with multiclass. Our algorithm is based on the Laplace approximation (LA) technique and variational EM framework. This is performed in two steps: called expectation and maximization steps. First, in the expectation step, using the Bayesian formula and LA technique, we derive approximately the posterior distribution of the latent function indicating the possibility that each observation belongs to a certain class in the Gaussian process classification model. Second, in the maximization step, using a derived posterior distribution of latent function, we compute the maximum likelihood estimator for hyper-parameters of a covariance matrix necessary to define prior distribution for latent function. These two steps iteratively repeat until a convergence condition satisfies. Moreover, we apply the proposed algorithm with human action classification problem using a public database, namely, the KTH human action data set. Experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm shows good performance on this data set.

Keywords: Bayesian rule, Gaussian process classification model with multiclass, Gaussian process prior, human action classification, laplace approximation, variational EM algorithm.

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