Search results for: financial time series.

Authors: Laurenţiu Militeanu, Cristina Gena Dascâlu, D. Cristea

Abstract:

The human head representations usually are based on the morphological – structural components of a real model. Over the time became more and more necessary to achieve full virtual models that comply very rigorous with the specifications of the human anatomy. Still, making and using a model perfectly fitted with the real anatomy is a difficult task, because it requires large hardware resources and significant times for processing. That is why it is necessary to choose the best compromise solution, which keeps the right balance between the details perfection and the resources consumption, in order to obtain facial animations with real-time rendering. We will present here the way in which we achieved such a 3D system that we intend to use as a base point in order to create facial animations with real-time rendering, used in medicine to find and to identify different types of pathologies.

Keywords: 3D models, virtual reality.

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Authors: Turgut Ayten, Tayfun Çay

Abstract:

In the current expropriation of Turkey, the state acquires necessary lands for its investment without permission of the owners and not searching for alternative solutions, so it is determined that neither processor nor processed is not happy. In this study, interactions of enterprises in Turkey are analysed in case the necessary land for public investments are acquired by expropriation purposed land consolidation. Legal basis, positive and negative sides, financial effects to enterprises of this method is evaluated according to Konya Kadınhanı, Kolukısa avenue which is on the Konya-Ankara High-Speed Train Route.

Keywords: Land consolidation, expropriation purposed land consolidation, sustainable rural development, cost.

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Authors: Sagar Jajoo

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Urban planning is the need of the hour in a rapidly developing county like India. In essence, urban planning enhances the quality of land at a reasonable cost. Naya (New) Raipur is the new planned capital of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, and is one of India’s few planned cities. Over the next decade it will drastically change the landscape of the state of Chhattisgarh. This new planned development is quintessential in growing this backward region and providing for future infrastructure. Key questions that arise are: How are people living in the surrounding region of New Raipur affected by its development? Are the affected people satisfied with compensation and rehabilitation that has been provided by the New Raipur Development Authority? To answer these questions, field research study in the form of questionnaires, interviews and site visits was conducted. To summarize the findings, while a majority of the surveyed population was dissatisfied with the rehabilitation and compensation provided by the New Raipur Development Authority, they were very positive about the success of the new development. Most thought that the new city would help their careers, improve job opportunities, improve prospects for their future generations, and benefit society as a whole.

To improve rehabilitation schemes for the future, the reasons for the negative sentiment brewing amongst the villagers regarding the monetary compensation was investigated. Most villagers deemed the monetary compensation to be lacking as they had squandered their financial windfall already. With numerous interviews and site visits, it was discovered that the lump sum form of monetary compensation was to blame. With a huge sum of money received at once and a lack of financial education, many villagers squandered this newly gained money on unnecessary purchases such as alcohol and expensive vehicles without investing for the long run in farmland and education for their children. One recommendation proposed to the New Raipur Development Authority (NRDA) for future monetary compensation design in times of rehabilitating people was to provide payments in installments rather than lump sums and educate the people about investing the compensation money wisely. This would save them from wasting money they receive and the ensuing dissatisfaction of squandering that money.

Keywords: Compensation, Naya Raipur, Rehabilitation, Satisfaction Survey, Urban Planning.

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Authors: Sh. Ranjbar-Bahadori, N. Farhadifar, L. Mohammadyar

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Plant preparations from thyme and garlic have been shown to be effective acaricides against the poultry red mite, Dermanyssus gallinae. In a layer house with a history of D. gallinae problem, mites were detected in the monitoring traps for the first time and number of them was counted. Then, some rows of layer house was sprayed twice using a concentration of 0.21 mg/cm² thyme essential oil and 0.07 mg/cm² garlic juice and a similar row was used as an untreated control group. Red mite traps made of cardboard were used to assess the mite density during days 1 and 7 after treatment and always removed after 24 h. the collected mites were counted and the efficacy against all mite stages (larvae, nymphs and adults) was calculated. Results showed that on day 1 and 7 after the administration of garlic extract efficacy rate was 92.05% and 74.62%, respectively. Moreover, efficacy rate on day 1 and 7 was 89.4% and 95.37% when treatment was done with thyme essential oil. It is concluded that using garlic juice to control of D. gallinae is more effective on short time. But thyme essential oil has a long time effect in compare to garlic preparation.

Keywords: Dermanyssus gallinae, Essential oil, Garlic, Thyme, Efficacy.

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Authors: Rami H. Fouad

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The purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate the scale of implementation of Just-In-Time (JIT) in the different industrial sectors in the Middle East. This study analyzes the empirical data collected by a questionnaire survey distributed to companies in three main industrial sectors in the Middle East, which are: food, chemicals and fabrics. The following main hypotheses is formulated and tested: (The requirements of JIT application differ according to the type of industrial sector).Descriptive statistics and Box plot analysis were used to examine the hypotheses. This study indicates a reasonable evidence for accepting the main hypotheses. It reveals that there is no standard way to adopt JIT as a production system. But each industrial sector should concentrate in the investment on critical requirements that differ according to the nature and strategy of production followed in that sector.

Keywords: Just-In-Time, JIT, Questionnaire, Types of Industrial Sectors.

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Authors: K. Sontaya, B. Pitiyont, V. Punsuvon

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The objective of this study is to investigate the performance of the electrocoagulation process for color and COD removal in palm oil wastewater using a 10 L batch reactor. Iron was used as electrodes and the distance between electrodes was 2 cm. The effects of operating parameters: current voltage (6, 12 and 18 volt), reaction time (5, 15, 30, 45 and 60 min) and initial pH (4 and 9) of treatment efficiency were examine. The result showed that decolorization and COD removal efficiency increased with the increase in current voltage and reaction time. The proper condition for decolorization achieved at initial pH 4 and 9 were current voltage of 12 volt, reaction time 30 min. The decolorization efficiency reached 90.4% and 88.9%, respectively. COD removal was achiveved at current voltage 12 volt, reaction time 15 min. COD removal efficiency was 89.2 % and 83.0%, respectively. From the results, to show electrocoagulation process can treat palm oil mill wastewater in both acidic and basic condition at high efficiency for color and COD removal. Consequently, electrocoagulation process can be used or applied as a post-treatment step to improve the quality of the final discharge in term of color and residual COD removal.

Keywords: COD removal, decolorizaton, electrocoagulation, iron electrode, palm oil mill wastewater.

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Authors: R. Dariani, S. Schmidt, R. Kasper

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Based on a non-linear single track model which describes the dynamics of vehicle, an optimal path planning strategy is developed. Real time optimization is used to generate reference control values to allow leading the vehicle alongside a calculated lane which is optimal for different objectives such as energy consumption, run time, safety or comfort characteristics. Strict mathematic formulation of the autonomous driving allows taking decision on undefined situation such as lane change or obstacle avoidance. Based on position of the vehicle, lane situation and obstacle position, the optimization problem is reformulated in real-time to avoid the obstacle and any car crash.

Keywords: Autonomous driving, Obstacle avoidance, Optimal control, Path planning.

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Authors: Kohtaroh Miyamoto

Abstract:

As enterprise computing becomes more and more complex, the costs and technical challenges of IT system maintenance and support are increasing rapidly. One popular approach to managing IT system maintenance is to prepare and use a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) system to manage and reuse systems knowledge. Such a FAQ system can help reduce the resolution time for each service incident ticket. However, there is a major problem where over time the knowledge in such FAQs tends to become outdated. Much of the knowledge captured in the FAQ requires periodic updates in response to new insights or new trends in the problems addressed in order to maintain its usefulness for problem resolution. These updates require a systematic approach to define the exact portion of the FAQ and its content. Therefore, we are working on a novel method to hierarchically structure the FAQ and automate the updates of its structure and content. We use structured information and the unstructured text information with the timelines of the information in the service incident tickets. We cluster the tickets by structured category information, by keywords, and by keyword modifiers for the unstructured text information. We also calculate an urgency score based on trends, resolution times, and priorities. We carefully studied the tickets of one of our projects over a 2.5-year time period. After the first 6 months we started to create FAQs and confirmed they improved the resolution times. We continued observing over the next 2 years to assess the ongoing effectiveness of our method for the automatic FAQ updates. We improved the ratio of tickets covered by the FAQ from 32.3% to 68.9% during this time. Also, the average time reduction of ticket resolution was between 31.6% and 43.9%. Subjective analysis showed more than 75% reported that the FAQ system was useful in reducing ticket resolution times.

Keywords: FAQ System, Resolution Time, Service Incident Tickets, IT System Maintenance.

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Authors: Bassam Istanbouli

Abstract:

With the technology evolving every day and with the increase in global competition, industries are always under the pressure to be the best. They need to provide good quality products at competitive prices, when and how the customer wants them.  In order to achieve this level of service, products and their respective supply chain processes need to be flexible and evolvable; otherwise changes will be extremely expensive, slow and with many combinatorial effects. Those combinatorial effects impact the whole organizational structure, from a management, financial, documentation, logistics and specially the information system Enterprise Requirement Planning (ERP) perspective. By applying the normalized system concept/theory to segments of the supply chain, we believe minimal effects, especially at the time of launching an organization global software project. The purpose of this paper is to point out that if an organization wants to develop a software from scratch or implement an existing ERP software for their business needs and if their business processes are normalized and modular then most probably this will yield to a normalized and modular software system that can be easily modified when the business evolves. Another important goal of this paper is to increase the awareness regarding the design of the business processes in a software implementation project. If the blueprints created are normalized then the software developers and configurators will use those modular blueprints to map them into modular software. This paper only prepares the ground for further studies;  the above concept will be supported by going through the steps of developing, configuring and/or implementing a software system for an organization by using two methods: The Software Development Lifecycle method (SDLC) and the Accelerated SAP implementation method (ASAP). Both methods start with the customer requirements, then blue printing of its business processes and finally mapping those processes into a software system.  Since those requirements and processes are the starting point of the implementation process, then normalizing those processes will end up in a normalizing software.

Keywords: Blueprint, ERP, SDLC, Modular.

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Authors: Soo-young Ye, Gi-Ryon Kim, Dong-Keun Jung, Seong-wan Baik, Gye-rok Jeon

Abstract:

In this paper, algorithm estimating the blood pressure was proposed using the pulse transit time (PTT) as a more convenient method of measuring the blood pressure. After measuring ECG and pressure pulse, and photoplethysmography, the PTT was calculated from the acquired signals. Thereafter, the system to indirectly measure the systolic pressure and the diastolic pressure was composed using the statistic method. In comparison between the blood pressure indirectly measured by proposed algorithm estimating the blood pressure and real blood pressure measured by conventional sphygmomanometer, the systolic pressure indicates the mean error of ±3.24mmHg and the standard deviation of 2.53mmHg, while the diastolic pressure indicates the satisfactory result, that is, the mean error of ±1.80mmHg and the standard deviation of 1.39mmHg. These results are satisfied with the regulation of ANSI/AAMI for certification of sphygmomanometer that real measurement error value should be within the mean error of ±5mmHg and the standard deviation of 8mmHg. These results are suggest the possibility of applying to portable and long time blood pressure monitoring system hereafter.

Keywords: Blood pressure, Systolic, Diastolic, Pulse transit time.

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Authors: Jaedo Kim, Youngjoon Han, Hernsoo Hahn

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to detect human in images. This paper proposes a method for extracting human body feature descriptors consisting of projected edge component series. The feature descriptor can express appearances and shapes of human with local and global distribution of edges. Our method evaluated with a linear SVM classifier on Daimler-Chrysler pedestrian dataset, and test with various sub-region size. The result shows that the accuracy level of proposed method similar to Histogram of Oriented Gradients(HOG) feature descriptor and feature extraction process is simple and faster than existing methods.

Keywords: Human detection, Projected edge descriptor, Linear SVM, Local appearance feature

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Authors: Tarek M. Mahmoud

Abstract:

Skin color can provide a useful and robust cue for human-related image analysis, such as face detection, pornographic image filtering, hand detection and tracking, people retrieval in databases and Internet, etc. The major problem of such kinds of skin color detection algorithms is that it is time consuming and hence cannot be applied to a real time system. To overcome this problem, we introduce a new fast technique for skin detection which can be applied in a real time system. In this technique, instead of testing each image pixel to label it as skin or non-skin (as in classic techniques), we skip a set of pixels. The reason of the skipping process is the high probability that neighbors of the skin color pixels are also skin pixels, especially in adult images and vise versa. The proposed method can rapidly detect skin and non-skin color pixels, which in turn dramatically reduce the CPU time required for the protection process. Since many fast detection techniques are based on image resizing, we apply our proposed pixel skipping technique with image resizing to obtain better results. The performance evaluation of the proposed skipping and hybrid techniques in terms of the measured CPU time is presented. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods achieve better result than the relevant classic method.

Keywords: Adult images filtering, image resizing, skin color detection, YcbCr color space.

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Authors: Sen Yung Lee, Chih Cheng Huang, Te Wen Tu

Abstract:

A solution methodology without using integral transformation is proposed to develop analytical solutions for transient heat conduction in nonuniform hollow cylinders with time-dependent boundary condition at the outer surface. It is shown that if the thermal conductivity and the specific heat of the medium are in arbitrary polynomial function forms, the closed solutions of the system can be developed. The influence of physical properties on the temperature distribution of the system is studied. A numerical example is given to illustrate the efficiency and the accuracy of the solution methodology.

Keywords: Analytical solution, nonuniform hollow cylinder, time-dependent boundary condition, transient heat conduction.

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Authors: Marcio Leal, Marta Villamil

Abstract:

Computacional recognition of sign languages aims to allow a greater social and digital inclusion of deaf people through interpretation of their language by computer. This article presents a model of recognition of two of global parameters from sign languages; hand configurations and hand movements. Hand motion is captured through an infrared technology and its joints are built into a virtual three-dimensional space. A Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP) was used to classify hand configurations and Dynamic Time Warping (DWT) recognizes hand motion. Beyond of the method of sign recognition, we provide a dataset of hand configurations and motion capture built with help of fluent professionals in sign languages. Despite this technology can be used to translate any sign from any signs dictionary, Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) was used as case study. Finally, the model presented in this paper achieved a recognition rate of 80.4%.

Keywords: Sign language recognition, computer vision, infrared, artificial neural network, dynamic time warping.

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Authors: Heng Ma

Abstract:

Aiming at the problems existing in low-carbon technology of Chinese manufacturing industries, such as irrational energy structure, lack of technological innovation, financial constraints, this paper puts forward the suggestion that the leading role of the government is combined with the roles of enterprises and market. That is, through increasing the governmental funding the adjustment of the industrial structures and enhancement of the legal supervision are supported. Technological innovation is accelerated by the enterprises, and the carbon trading will be promoted so as to trigger the low-carbon revolution in Chinese manufacturing field.

Keywords: Low-carbon economy, traditional manufacturing industry, industrial structure, carbon emission reduction.

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Authors: E. Pop, M. Barbos

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Using mobile Internet access technologies and eservices, various economic agents can efficiently offer their products or services to a large number of clients. With the support of mobile communications networks, the clients can have access to e-services, anywhere and anytime. This is a base to establish a convergence of technological and financial interests of mobile operators, software developers, mobile terminals producers and e-content providers. In this paper, a client server system is presented, using 3G, EDGE, mobile terminals, for Stock Exchange e-services access.

Keywords: Mobile communications, e-services access, stockexchange.

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Authors: Dmitri Men, Byong-soon Chun, Soon-ok Myong

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The article deals with the problems of political and economic processes in Kazakhstan since independence in the context of globalization. It analyzes the geopolitical situation and selfpositioning processes in the world after the end of the "cold war". It examines the problems of internal economization of the Republic for 20 years of independence. The authors argue that the reforms proceeded in the economic sphere have brought ambiguous and tangible results. Despite the difficult economic and political conditions facing a world economical crisis the country has undergone fundamental and radical transformations in the whole socio-economic system

Keywords: Globalization, Kazakhstan, integration, economic processes, financial crisis, multi-vector.

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Authors: Rudi Kurniawan Arief

Abstract:

Manufacturing cost and setup time are the hot topics to improve in Metal Stamping industry because material and components price are always rising up while costumer requires to cut down the component price year by year. The Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) is one of many methods to reduce waste in stamping industry. The Japanese Quick Die Change (QDC) dies system is one of SMED systems that could reduce both of setup time and manufacturing cost. However, this system is rarely used in stamping industries. This paper will analyze how deep the QDC dies system could reduce setup time and the manufacturing cost. The research is conducted by direct observation, simulating and comparing of QDC dies system with conventional dies system. In this research, we found that the QDC dies system could save up to 35% of manufacturing cost and reduce 70% of setup times. This simulation proved that the QDC die system is effective for cost reduction but must be applied in several parallel production processes.

Keywords: Press die, metal stamping, quick die change, QDC system, single minute exchange die, manufacturing cost saving, SMED.

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Authors: Changqing Yang, Jianhua Hou, Beibo Qin

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A numerical method for Riccati equation is presented in this work. The method is based on the replacement of unknown functions through a truncated series of hybrid of block-pulse functions and Chebyshev polynomials. The operational matrices of derivative and product of hybrid functions are presented. These matrices together with the tau method are then utilized to transform the differential equation into a system of algebraic equations. Corresponding numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed method.

Keywords: Hybrid functions, Riccati differential equation, Blockpulse, Chebyshev polynomials, Tau method, operational matrix.

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Authors: H. Amoozad-khalili, R. Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, N.Shahab-Dehkordi

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The main aim of Supply Chain Management (SCM) is to produce, distribute, logistics and deliver goods and equipment in right location, right time, right amount to satisfy costumers, with minimum time and cost waste. So implementing techniques that reduce project time and cost, and improve productivity and performance is very important. Emerging technologies such as the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are now making it possible to automate supply chains in a real time manner and making them more efficient than the simple supply chain of the past for tracing and monitoring goods and products and capturing data on movements of goods and other events. This paper considers concepts, components and RFID technology characteristics by concentration of warehouse and inventories management. Additionally, utilization of RFID in the role of improving information management in supply chain is discussed. Finally, the facts of installation and this technology-s results in direction with warehouse and inventory management and business development will be presented.

Keywords: Logistics, Supply Chain Management, RFIDTechnology, Inventory Control.

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Authors: Theodosios Tsiakis, George Stephanides, George Pekos

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The growth of open networks created the interest to commercialise it. The establishment of an electronic business mechanism must be accompanied by a digital-electronic payment system to transfer the value of transactions. Financial organizations are requested to offer a secure e-payment synthesis with equivalent levels of trust and security served in conventional paper-based payment transactions. The paper addresses the challenge of the first trade problem in e-commerce, provides a brief literature review on electronic payment and attempts to explain the underlying concept and method of trust in relevance to electronic payment.

Keywords: Electronic payment, security, trust, electronic business mechanism.

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Authors: Azaz Zaman, Mirazur Rahman

Abstract:

Capital market is a crucial financial market place where companies and the government can raise long-term funds and, at the same time, investors get the opportunity to invest in the listed companies. Capital markets play a vital role not only in shifting the funds from surplus entity to deficit for investment, but also in the overall economic development of any developing country like Bangladesh. Being the first and biggest capital market of Bangladesh, Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) is the prime bourse of the country. The differences in the investment preference— among three broad categories of investors in DSE including individual investors, institutional investors, and government— are easily observed. Authors of this article have used five categories of investors such as sponsors or directors of the company, institutional investors, foreign investors, government, and the general public in order to present a comparative analysis of their investment patterns. Obtaining data on the percentage of investment by these five types of investors in different sectors from the DSE website, this study aims to analyze the sector-wise investment preference of these investors using August 2018 data. The study has found that the sponsors or directors of the company have the highest percentage of investment in the textile industry which is close to 16%. The Bangladesh government, as an investor, has the highest percentage of investment in the fuel & power sector, approximately 32%. It has also found that the mutual funds' sector is mostly financed by institutional investors, nearly 28%. Foreign investors have their most investments in the banking sector, which is close to 22%. It has also revealed that the textile sector is mostly financed by the general public, close to 17%. Nevertheless, general public, surprisingly, has the lowest percentage of investment in the telecommunication sector, which is 0.10%.

Keywords: Stock market investment, Dhaka stock exchange, capital market, Bangladesh.

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Authors: Larbi Omar, Elberrichi Zakaria

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Many research works are carried out on the analysis of traces in a digital learning environment. These studies produce large volumes of usage tracks from the various actions performed by a user. However, to exploit these data, compare and improve performance, several issues are raised. To remedy this, several works deal with this problem seen recently. This research studied a series of questions about format and description of the data to be shared. Our goal is to share thoughts on these issues by presenting our experience in the analysis of trace-based log files, comparing several approaches used in automatic classification applied to e-learning platforms. Finally, the obtained results are discussed.

Keywords: Classification, , e-learning platform, log file, Trace.

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Authors: A. Doosti, S. Moshkelani

Abstract:

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease; its symptoms and appearances are not exclusive in human and its traditional diagnosis is based on culture, serological methods and conventional PCR. For more sensitive, specific detection and differentiation of Brucella spp., the real time PCR method is recommended. This research has performed to determine the presence and prevalence of Brucella spp. and differentiation of Brucella abortus and Brucella melitensis in house mouse (Mus musculus) in west of Iran. A TaqMan analysis and single-step PCR was carried out in total 326 DNA of Mouse's spleen samples. From the total number of 326 samples, 128 (39.27%) gave positive results for Brucella spp. by conventional PCR, also 65 and 32 out of the 128 specimens were positive for B. melitensis, B. abortus, respectively. These results indicate a high presence of this pathogen in this area and that real time PCR is considerably faster than current standard methods for identification and differentiation of Brucella species. To our knowledge, this study is the first prevalence report of direct identification and differentiation of B. abortus and B. melitensis by real time PCR in mouse tissue samples in Iran.

Keywords: Differentiation, B. abortus, B. melitensis, TaqManprobe, Iran.

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Authors: Shougi Suliman Abosuliman, Arun Kumar, Firoz Alam

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Disaster preparedness is a key success factor for any effective disaster management practices. This paper evaluates the disaster preparedness and management in Saudi Arabia using an empirical investigation approach. It presents the results of the survey conducted by interviewing representatives of the Saudi decision-makers and administrators responsible for disaster control in Jeddah before, during and after flooding in 2009 and 2010. First, demographics of the respondents are presented, followed by quantitative analysis of their views and experiences regarding the Kingdom’s readiness before and after each flood. This is shown as a series of dependent and independent variables. Following this is a list of respondents’ priorities for disaster preparation in the Kingdom.

Keywords: Disaster response policy, crisis management, effective service delivery.

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Authors: Meng Hu, Lili Wang

Abstract:

In this paper, based on linear matrix inequality (LMI), by using Lyapunov functional theory, the exponential stability criterion is obtained for a class of uncertain Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy Hopfield neural networks (TSFHNNs) with time delays. Here we choose a generalized Lyapunov functional and introduce a parameterized model transformation with free weighting matrices to it, these techniques lead to generalized and less conservative stability condition that guarantee the wide stability region. Finally, an example is given to illustrate our results by using MATLAB LMI toolbox.

Keywords: Hopfield neural network, linear matrix inequality, exponential stability, time delay, T-S fuzzy model.

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Authors: Seyed Sadegh Naseralavi, Sohrab Nemati, Ehsan Khojastehfar, Sadegh Balaghi

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In the present research, various formulations of wavelet transform are applied on acceleration time history of earthquake. The mentioned transforms decompose the strong ground motion into low and high frequency parts. Since the high frequency portion of strong ground motion has a minor effect on dynamic response of structures, the structure is excited by low frequency part. Consequently, the seismic response of structure is predicted consuming one half of computational time, comparing with conventional time history analysis. Towards reducing the computational effort needed in seismic optimization of structure, seismic optimization of a shear frame structure is conducted by applying various forms of mentioned transformation through genetic algorithm.

Keywords: Time history analysis, wavelet transform, optimization, earthquake.

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Authors: Caigen Zhou, Haibo Jiang

Abstract:

The problem of robust fuzzy control for a class of nonlinear fuzzy impulsive singular perturbed systems with time-varying delay is investigated by employing Lyapunov functions. The nonlinear delay system is built based on the well-known T–S fuzzy model. The so-called parallel distributed compensation idea is employed to design the state feedback controller. Sufficient conditions for global exponential stability of the closed-loop system are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), which can be easily solved by LMI technique. Some simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Keywords: T–S fuzzy model, singular perturbed systems, time-varying delay, robust control.

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Authors: B. Sabayan, A. Alidadi, S. Ebrahimi, N. M. Bakhshani

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Neuropsychological problems are more common in hemodialysis (HD) patients than in healthy individuals. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of long term HD on memory types of HD patients. To assess the different type of memory, we used memory parts of the Persian Papers and Pencil Cognitive assessment package (PCAP) and Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE-R). Our study included 80 HD patients of whom 39 had less than six months of HD and 41 patients and another group which had a history of HD more than six months. The population had a mean age of 51.60 years old and 27.5% of them were female. The scores of patients who have been hemodialyzed for a long time (median time of HD was up to 4 years) had lower score in anterograde, explicit, visual, recall and recognition memory (5.44±1.07, 9.49±3.472, 22.805±6.6913, 5.59±10.435, 11.02±3.190 score) than the HD patients who underwent HD for a shorter term, where the median time was 3 to 5 months (P<0.01). The regression result shows that, by increasing the HD duration, all memory types are reduced (R2=0.600, P<0.01). The present study demonstrated that HD patients who were under HD for a long time had significantly lower scores in the different types of memory. However, additional researches are needed in this area.

Keywords: Hemodialysis patients, duration of hemodialysis, memory types, Zahedan.

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Authors: Rifah Ediati, Jajang

Abstract:

The quality of Ribbed Smoked Sheets (RSS) primarily based on color, dryness, and the presence or absence of fungus and bubbles. This quality is strongly influenced by the drying and fumigation process namely smoking process. Smoking that is held in high temperature long time will result scorched dark brown sheets, whereas if the temperature is too low or slow drying rate would resulted in less mature sheets and growth of fungus. Therefore need to find the time and temperature for optimum quality of sheets. Enhance, unmonitored heat and mass transfer during smoking process lead to high losses of energy balance. This research aims to generate simple empirical mathematical model describing the effect of smoking time and temperature to RSS quality of color, water content, fungus and bubbles. The second goal of study was to analyze energy balance during smoking process. Experimental study was conducted by measuring temperature, residence time and quality parameters of 16 sheets sample in smoking rooms. Data for energy consumption balance such as mass of fuel wood, mass of sheets being smoked, construction temperature, ambient temperature and relative humidity were taken directly along the smoking process. It was found that mathematical model correlating smoking temperature and time with color is Color = -169 - 0.184 T4 - 0.193 T3 - 0.160 0.405 T1 + T2 + 0.388 t1 +3.11 t2 + 3.92t3 + 0.215 t4 with R square 50.8% and with moisture is Moisture = -1.40-0.00123 T4 + 0.00032 T3 + 0.00260 T2 - 0.00292 T1 - 0.0105 t1 + 0.0290 t2 + 0.0452 t3 + 0.00061 t4 with R square of 49.9%. Smoking room energy analysis found useful energy was 27.8%. The energy stored in the material construction 7.3%. Lost of energy in conversion of wood combustion, ventilation and others were 16.6%. The energy flowed out through the contact of material construction with the ambient air was found to be the highest contribution to energy losses, it reached 48.3%.

Keywords: RSS quality, temperature, time, smoking room, energy

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