Search results for: Regional Screening Method (RSM)
7152 Multiple Crack Identification Using Frequency Measurement
Authors: J.W. Xiang, M. Liang
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This paper presents a method to detect multiple cracks based on frequency information. When a structure is subjected to dynamic or static loads, cracks may develop and the modal frequencies of the cracked structure may change. To detect cracks in a structure, we construct a high precision wavelet finite element (EF) model of a certain structure using the B-spline wavelet on the interval (BSWI). Cracks can be modeled by rotational springs and added to the FE model. The crack detection database will be obtained by solving that model. Then the crack locations and depths can be determined based on the frequency information from the database. The performance of the proposed method has been numerically verified by a rotor example.Keywords: Rotor, frequency measurement, multiple cracks, wavelet finite element method, identification.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16217151 The Study of the Desulfurization Process of Oil and Oil Products of “Zhanazhol” Oil Field Using the Approaches of Green Chemistry
Authors: Zhaksyntay K. Kairbekov, Zhannur K. Myltykbaeva, Nazym T. Smagulova, Dariya K. Kanseitova
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In this paper we studied sono catalytic oxidative desulfurization of oil and diesel fraction from “Zhanazhol” oil deposits. We have established that the combined effect of the ultrasonic field and oxidant (ozone-air mixture) in the presence of the catalyst on the oil is potentially very effective method of desulfurization of oil and oil products. This method allows increasing the degree of desulfurization of oil by 62%.
Keywords: Desulfurization, diesel, oil, oil products, sonication.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19427150 Nile Red, an Alternative Fluorescence Method for Quantification of Neutral Lipids in Microalgae
Authors: P. Rattanapoltee, P. Kaewkannetra
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According to biodiesel from microalgae is an attractive fuel for several reasons such as renewable, biodegradable and environmental friendly. Thus, this study, green microalgae Scenedesmus acutus PPNK1 isolated from natural water, was selected based on high growth rates, easy cultivation and high lipid content. The Nile red fluorescence method has been successfully applied to the determination of lipids in S. acutus PPNK1. The combination of the method to the lipid composition in algal cells showed the yellow fluorescence under fluorescent microscope. Interestingly, maximum cell numbers and biomass concentration were obtained at 5.44´107 cells/mL and 1.60 g/L when it was cultivated in BG-11 medium while in case of BG-11 with nitrogen deprivation (N 0.25 g/L), accumulated lipid content in cells (44.67%) was achieved that was higher than that found in case of BG-11 medium at about 2 times (22.63%).
Keywords: Biodiesel, Lipid, Microalgae, Nile red.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 69787149 The Numerical Study of Low Level Jets Formation in South Eastern of Iran
Authors: Mehdi Salehi Barough, Saviz Sehat Kashani, A.A. Bidokhti, A.Ranjbar
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The presence of cold air with the convergent topography of the Lut valley over the valley-s sloping terrain can generate Low Level Jets (LLJ). Moreover, the valley-parallel pressure gradients and northerly LLJ are produced as a result of the large-scale processes. In the numerical study the regional MM5 model was run leading to achieve an appropriate dynamical analysis of flows in the region for summer and winter. The results of this study show the presence of summer synoptical systems cause the formation of north-south pressure gradients in the valley which could be led to the blowing of winds with the velocity more than 14 ms-1 and vulnerable dust and wind storms lasting more than 120 days. Whereas the presence of cold air masses in the region in winter, cause the average speed of LLJs decrease. In this time downslope flows are noticeable in creating the night LLJs.Keywords: Cold advection, Low Level Jet, MM5 Model, Pressure gradient
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15137148 Rating and Generating Sudoku Puzzles Based On Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Authors: Bahare Fatemi, Seyed Mehran Kazemi, Nazanin Mehrasa
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Sudoku is a logic-based combinatorial puzzle game which people in different ages enjoy playing it. The challenging and addictive nature of this game has made it a ubiquitous game. Most magazines, newspapers, puzzle books, etc. publish lots of Sudoku puzzles every day. These puzzles often come in different levels of difficulty so that all people, from beginner to expert, can play the game and enjoy it. Generating puzzles with different levels of difficulty is a major concern of Sudoku designers. There are several works in the literature which propose ways of generating puzzles having a desirable level of difficulty. In this paper, we propose a method based on constraint satisfaction problems to evaluate the difficulty of the Sudoku puzzles. Then we propose a hill climbing method to generate puzzles with different levels of difficulty. Whereas other methods are usually capable of generating puzzles with only few number of difficulty levels, our method can be used to generate puzzles with arbitrary number of different difficulty levels. We test our method by generating puzzles with different levels of difficulty and having a group of 15 people solve all the puzzles and recording the time they spend for each puzzle.
Keywords: Constraint satisfaction problem, generating Sudoku puzzles, hill climbing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 31867147 Online Signature Verification Using Angular Transformation for e-Commerce Services
Authors: Peerapong Uthansakul, Monthippa Uthansakul
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The rapid growth of e-Commerce services is significantly observed in the past decade. However, the method to verify the authenticated users still widely depends on numeric approaches. A new search on other verification methods suitable for online e-Commerce is an interesting issue. In this paper, a new online signature-verification method using angular transformation is presented. Delay shifts existing in online signatures are estimated by the estimation method relying on angle representation. In the proposed signature-verification algorithm, all components of input signature are extracted by considering the discontinuous break points on the stream of angular values. Then the estimated delay shift is captured by comparing with the selected reference signature and the error matching can be computed as a main feature used for verifying process. The threshold offsets are calculated by two types of error characteristics of the signature verification problem, False Rejection Rate (FRR) and False Acceptance Rate (FAR). The level of these two error rates depends on the decision threshold chosen whose value is such as to realize the Equal Error Rate (EER; FAR = FRR). The experimental results show that through the simple programming, employed on Internet for demonstrating e-Commerce services, the proposed method can provide 95.39% correct verifications and 7% better than DP matching based signature-verification method. In addition, the signature verification with extracting components provides more reliable results than using a whole decision making.Keywords: Online signature verification, e-Commerce services, Angular transformation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15697146 Rule-Based Message Passing for Collaborative Application in Distributed Environments
Authors: Wataru Yamazaki, Hironori Hiraishi, Fumio Mizoguchi
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In this paper, we describe a rule-based message passing method to support developing collaborative applications, in which multiple users share resources in distributed environments. Message communications of applications in collaborative environments tend to be very complex because of the necessity to manage context situations such as sharing events, access controlling of users, and network places. In this paper, we propose a message communications method based on unification of artificial intelligence and logic programming for defining rules of such context information in a procedural object-oriented programming language. We also present an implementation of the method as java classes.
Keywords: agent programming, logic programming, multi-media application, collaborative application.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14247145 State Estimation Based on Unscented Kalman Filter for Burgers’ Equation
Authors: Takashi Shimizu, Tomoaki Hashimoto
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Controlling the flow of fluids is a challenging problem that arises in many fields. Burgers’ equation is a fundamental equation for several flow phenomena such as traffic, shock waves, and turbulence. The optimal feedback control method, so-called model predictive control, has been proposed for Burgers’ equation. However, the model predictive control method is inapplicable to systems whose all state variables are not exactly known. In practical point of view, it is unusual that all the state variables of systems are exactly known, because the state variables of systems are measured through output sensors and limited parts of them can be only available. In fact, it is usual that flow velocities of fluid systems cannot be measured for all spatial domains. Hence, any practical feedback controller for fluid systems must incorporate some type of state estimator. To apply the model predictive control to the fluid systems described by Burgers’ equation, it is needed to establish a state estimation method for Burgers’ equation with limited measurable state variables. To this purpose, we apply unscented Kalman filter for estimating the state variables of fluid systems described by Burgers’ equation. The objective of this study is to establish a state estimation method based on unscented Kalman filter for Burgers’ equation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical simulations.Keywords: State estimation, fluid systems, observer systems, unscented Kalman filter.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 7327144 Identification of Cardiac Arrhythmias using Natural Resonance Complex Frequencies
Authors: Moustafa A. Bani-Hasan, Yasser M. Kadah, Fatma M. El-Hefnawi
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An electrocardiogram (ECG) feature extraction system based on the calculation of the complex resonance frequency employing Prony-s method is developed. Prony-s method is applied on five different classes of ECG signals- arrhythmia as a finite sum of exponentials depending on the signal-s poles and the resonant complex frequencies. Those poles and resonance frequencies of the ECG signals- arrhythmia are evaluated for a large number of each arrhythmia. The ECG signals of lead II (ML II) were taken from MIT-BIH database for five different types. These are the ventricular couplet (VC), ventricular tachycardia (VT), ventricular bigeminy (VB), and ventricular fibrillation (VF) and the normal (NR). This novel method can be extended to any number of arrhythmias. Different classification techniques were tried using neural networks (NN), K nearest neighbor (KNN), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and multi-class support vector machine (MC-SVM).Keywords: Arrhythmias analysis, electrocardiogram, featureextraction, statistical classifiers.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20627143 An Estimating Parameter of the Mean in Normal Distribution by Maximum Likelihood, Bayes, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods
Authors: Autcha Araveeporn
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This paper is to compare the parameter estimation of the mean in normal distribution by Maximum Likelihood (ML), Bayes, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The ML estimator is estimated by the average of data, the Bayes method is considered from the prior distribution to estimate Bayes estimator, and MCMC estimator is approximated by Gibbs sampling from posterior distribution. These methods are also to estimate a parameter then the hypothesis testing is used to check a robustness of the estimators. Data are simulated from normal distribution with the true parameter of mean 2, and variance 4, 9, and 16 when the sample sizes is set as 10, 20, 30, and 50. From the results, it can be seen that the estimation of MLE, and MCMC are perceivably different from the true parameter when the sample size is 10 and 20 with variance 16. Furthermore, the Bayes estimator is estimated from the prior distribution when mean is 1, and variance is 12 which showed the significant difference in mean with variance 9 at the sample size 10 and 20.
Keywords: Bayes method, Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, Maximum Likelihood method, normal distribution.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14237142 Newton-Raphson State Estimation Solution Employing Systematically Constructed Jacobian Matrix
Authors: Nursyarizal Mohd Nor, Ramiah Jegatheesan, Perumal Nallagownden
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Newton-Raphson State Estimation method using bus admittance matrix remains as an efficient and most popular method to estimate the state variables. Elements of Jacobian matrix are computed from standard expressions which lack physical significance. In this paper, elements of the state estimation Jacobian matrix are obtained considering the power flow measurements in the network elements. These elements are processed one-by-one and the Jacobian matrix H is updated suitably in a simple manner. The constructed Jacobian matrix H is integrated with Weight Least Square method to estimate the state variables. The suggested procedure is successfully tested on IEEE standard systems.Keywords: State Estimation (SE), Weight Least Square (WLS), Newton-Raphson State Estimation (NRSE), Jacobian matrix H.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24547141 Development of Scratching Monitoring System Based On Mathematical Model of Unconstrained Bed Sensing Method
Authors: Takuya Sumi, Syoko Nukaya, Takashi Kaburagi, Hiroshi Tanaka, Kajiro Watanabe, Yosuke Kurihara
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We propose an unconstrained measurement system for scratching motion based on mathematical model of unconstrained bed sensing method which could measure the bed vibrations due to the motion of the person on the bed. In this paper, we construct mathematical model of the unconstrained bed monitoring system; and we apply the unconstrained bed sensing method to the system for detecting scratching motion. The proposed sensors are placed under the three bed feet. When the person is lying on the bed, the output signals from the sensors are proportional to the magnitude of the vibration due to the scratching motion. Hence, we could detect the subject’s scratching motion from the output signals from ceramic sensors. We evaluated two scratching motions using the proposed system in the validity experiment as follows: 1st experiment is the subject’s scratching the right side cheek with his right hand, and; 2nd experiment is the subject’s scratching the shin with another foot. As the results of the experiment, we recognized the scratching signals that enable the determination when the scratching occurred. Furthermore, the difference among the amplitudes of the output signals enabled us to estimate where the subject scratched.
Keywords: Unconstrained bed sensing method, scratching, body movement, itchy, piezoceramics.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17227140 Seismic Vulnerability of Structures Designed in Accordance with the Allowable Stress Design and Load Resistant Factor Design Methods
Authors: Mohammadreza Vafaei, Amirali Moradi, Sophia C. Alih
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The method selected for the design of structures not only can affect their seismic vulnerability but also can affect their construction cost. For the design of steel structures, two distinct methods have been introduced by existing codes, namely allowable stress design (ASD) and load resistant factor design (LRFD). This study investigates the effect of using the aforementioned design methods on the seismic vulnerability and construction cost of steel structures. Specifically, a 20-story building equipped with special moment resisting frame and an eccentrically braced system was selected for this study. The building was designed for three different intensities of peak ground acceleration including 0.2 g, 0.25 g, and 0.3 g using the ASD and LRFD methods. The required sizes of beams, columns, and braces were obtained using response spectrum analysis. Then, the designed frames were subjected to nine natural earthquake records which were scaled to the designed response spectrum. For each frame, the base shear, story shears, and inter-story drifts were calculated and then were compared. Results indicated that the LRFD method led to a more economical design for the frames. In addition, the LRFD method resulted in lower base shears and larger inter-story drifts when compared with the ASD method. It was concluded that the application of the LRFD method not only reduced the weights of structural elements but also provided a higher safety margin against seismic actions when compared with the ASD method.
Keywords: Allowable stress design, load resistant factor design, nonlinear time history analysis, seismic vulnerability, steel structures.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10947139 Fault Detection and Isolation using RBF Networks for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell
Authors: Mahanijah Md Kamal., Dingli Yu
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This paper presents a new method of fault detection and isolation (FDI) for polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell (FC) dynamic systems under an open-loop scheme. This method uses a radial basis function (RBF) neural network to perform fault identification, classification and isolation. The novelty is that the RBF model of independent mode is used to predict the future outputs of the FC stack. One actuator fault, one component fault and three sensor faults have been introduced to the PEMFC systems experience faults between -7% to +10% of fault size in real-time operation. To validate the results, a benchmark model developed by Michigan University is used in the simulation to investigate the effect of these five faults. The developed independent RBF model is tested on MATLAB R2009a/Simulink environment. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method for FDI under an open-loop condition. By using this method, the RBF networks able to detect and isolate all five faults accordingly and accurately.
Keywords: Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, radial basis function neural networks, fault detection, fault isolation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18037138 Protein Profiling in Alanine Aminotransferase Induced Patient cohort using Acetaminophen
Authors: Gry M, Bergström J, Lengquist J, Lindberg J, Drobin K, Schwenk J, Nilsson P, Schuppe-Koistinen I.
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Sensitive and predictive DILI (Drug Induced Liver Injury) biomarkers are needed in drug R&D to improve early detection of hepatotoxicity. The discovery of DILI biomarkers that demonstrate the predictive power to identify individuals at risk to DILI would represent a major advance in the development of personalized healthcare approaches. In this healthy volunteer acetaminophen study (4g/day for 7 days, with 3 monitored nontreatment days before and 4 after), 450 serum samples from 32 subjects were analyzed using protein profiling by antibody suspension bead arrays. Multiparallel protein profiles were generated using a DILI target protein array with 300 antibodies, where the antibodies were selected based on previous literature findings of putative DILI biomarkers and a screening process using pre dose samples from the same cohort. Of the 32 subjects, 16 were found to develop an elevated ALT value (2Xbaseline, responders). Using the plasma profiling approach together with multivariate statistical analysis some novel findings linked to lipid metabolism were found and more important, endogenous protein profiles in baseline samples (prior to treatment) with predictive power for ALT elevations were identified.Keywords: DILI, Plasma profiling, PLSDA, Randomforest.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13067137 Using Genetic Algorithms to Outline Crop Rotations and a Cropping-System Model
Authors: Nicolae Bold, Daniel Nijloveanu
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The idea of cropping-system is a method used by farmers. It is an environmentally-friendly method, protecting the natural resources (soil, water, air, nutritive substances) and increase the production at the same time, taking into account some crop particularities. The combination of this powerful method with the concepts of genetic algorithms results into a possibility of generating sequences of crops in order to form a rotation. The usage of this type of algorithms has been efficient in solving problems related to optimization and their polynomial complexity allows them to be used at solving more difficult and various problems. In our case, the optimization consists in finding the most profitable rotation of cultures. One of the expected results is to optimize the usage of the resources, in order to minimize the costs and maximize the profit. In order to achieve these goals, a genetic algorithm was designed. This algorithm ensures the finding of several optimized solutions of cropping-systems possibilities which have the highest profit and, thus, which minimize the costs. The algorithm uses genetic-based methods (mutation, crossover) and structures (genes, chromosomes). A cropping-system possibility will be considered a chromosome and a crop within the rotation is a gene within a chromosome. Results about the efficiency of this method will be presented in a special section. The implementation of this method would bring benefits into the activity of the farmers by giving them hints and helping them to use the resources efficiently.Keywords: Genetic algorithm, chromosomes, genes, cropping, agriculture.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15947136 Hybrid Artificial Bee Colony and Least Squares Method for Rule-Based Systems Learning
Authors: Ahcene Habbi, Yassine Boudouaoui
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This paper deals with the problem of automatic rule generation for fuzzy systems design. The proposed approach is based on hybrid artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization and weighted least squares (LS) method and aims to find the structure and parameters of fuzzy systems simultaneously. More precisely, two ABC based fuzzy modeling strategies are presented and compared. The first strategy uses global optimization to learn fuzzy models, the second one hybridizes ABC and weighted least squares estimate method. The performances of the proposed ABC and ABC-LS fuzzy modeling strategies are evaluated on complex modeling problems and compared to other advanced modeling methods.
Keywords: Automatic design, learning, fuzzy rules, hybrid, swarm optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21467135 Estimating 3D-Position of A Stationary Random Acoustic Source Using Bispectral Analysis of 4-Point Detected Signals
Authors: Katsumi Hirata
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To develop the useful acoustic environmental recognition system, the method of estimating 3D-position of a stationary random acoustic source using bispectral analysis of 4-point detected signals is proposed. The method uses information about amplitude attenuation and propagation delay extracted from amplitude ratios and angles of auto- and cross-bispectra of the detected signals. It is expected that using bispectral analysis affects less influence of Gaussian noises than using conventional power spectral one. In this paper, the basic principle of the method is mentioned first, and its validity and features are considered from results of the fundamental experiments assumed ideal circumstances.
Keywords: 4-point detection, a stationary random acoustic source, auto- and cross-bispectra, estimation of 3D-position.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14267134 Temporally Coherent 3D Animation Reconstruction from RGB-D Video Data
Authors: Salam Khalifa, Naveed Ahmed
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We present a new method to reconstruct a temporally coherent 3D animation from single or multi-view RGB-D video data using unbiased feature point sampling. Given RGB-D video data, in form of a 3D point cloud sequence, our method first extracts feature points using both color and depth information. In the subsequent steps, these feature points are used to match two 3D point clouds in consecutive frames independent of their resolution. Our new motion vectors based dynamic alignement method then fully reconstruct a spatio-temporally coherent 3D animation. We perform extensive quantitative validation using novel error functions to analyze the results. We show that despite the limiting factors of temporal and spatial noise associated to RGB-D data, it is possible to extract temporal coherence to faithfully reconstruct a temporally coherent 3D animation from RGB-D video data.
Keywords: 3D video, 3D animation, RGB-D video, Temporally Coherent 3D Animation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20647133 Sprayer Boom Active Suspension Using Intelligent Active Force Control
Authors: M. Tahmasebi, R.A. Rahman, M. Mailah, M. Gohari
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The control of sprayer boom undesired vibrations pose a great challenge to investigators due to various disturbances and conditions. Sprayer boom movements lead to reduce of spread efficiency and crop yield. This paper describes the design of a novel control method for an active suspension system applying proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller with an active force control (AFC) scheme integration of an iterative learning algorithm employed to a sprayer boom. The iterative learning as an intelligent method is principally used as a method to calculate the best value of the estimated inertia of the sprayer boom needed for the AFC loop. Results show that the proposed AFC-based scheme performs much better than the standard PID control technique. Also, this shows that the system is more robust and accurate.
Keywords: Active force control, sprayer boom, active suspension, iterative learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22877132 An Semantic Algorithm for Text Categoritation
Authors: Xu Zhao
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Text categorization techniques are widely used to many Information Retrieval (IR) applications. In this paper, we proposed a simple but efficient method that can automatically find the relationship between any pair of terms and documents, also an indexing matrix is established for text categorization. We call this method Indexing Matrix Categorization Machine (IMCM). Several experiments are conducted to show the efficiency and robust of our algorithm.
Keywords: Text categorization, Sub-space learning, Latent Semantic Space
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14537131 Reduced Order Modeling of Natural Gas Transient Flow in Pipelines
Authors: M. Behbahani-Nejad, Y. Shekari
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A reduced order modeling approach for natural gas transient flow in pipelines is presented. The Euler equations are considered as the governing equations and solved numerically using the implicit Steger-Warming flux vector splitting method. Next, the linearized form of the equations is derived and the corresponding eigensystem is obtained. Then, a few dominant flow eigenmodes are used to construct an efficient reduced-order model. A well-known test case is presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the computational efficiency of the proposed method. The results obtained are in good agreement with those of the direct numerical method and field data. Moreover, it is shown that the present reduced-order model is more efficient than the conventional numerical techniques for transient flow analysis of natural gas in pipelines.Keywords: Eigenmode, Natural Gas, Reduced Order Modeling, Transient Flow.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19227130 The e-DELPHI Method to Test the Importance Competence and Skills: Case of the Lifelong Learning Spanish Trainers
Authors: Xhevrie Mamaqi, Jesus Miguel, Pilar Olave
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The lifelong learning is a crucial element in the modernization of European education and training systems. The most important actors in the development process of the lifelong learning are the trainers, whose professional characteristics need new competences and skills in the current labour market. The main objective of this paper is to establish an importance ranking of the new competences, capabilities and skills that the lifelong learning Spanish trainers must possess nowadays. A wide study of secondary sources has allowed the design of a questionnaire that organizes the trainer-s skills and competences. The e-Delphi method is used for realizing a creative, individual and anonymous evaluation by experts on the importance ranking that presents the criteria, sub-criteria and indicators of the e-Delphi questionnaire. Twenty Spanish experts in the lifelong learning have participated in two rounds of the e- DELPHI method. In the first round, the analysis of the experts- evaluation has allowed to establish the ranking of the most importance criteria, sub-criteria and indicators and to eliminate the least valued. The minimum level necessary to reach the consensus among experts has been achieved in the second round.Keywords: competences and skills, lifelong learningtrainers, Spain, e-DELHI method.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16657129 Unattended Crowdsensing Method to Monitor the Quality Condition of Dirt Roads
Authors: Matías Micheletto, Rodrigo Santos, Sergio F. Ochoa
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In developing countries, most roads in rural areas are dirt road. They require frequent maintenance since they are affected by erosive events, such as rain or wind, and the transit of heavy-weight trucks and machinery. Early detection of damages on the road condition is a key aspect, since it allows to reduce the maintenance time and cost, and also the limitations for other vehicles to travel through. Most proposals that help address this problem require the explicit participation of drivers, a permanent internet connection, or important instrumentation in vehicles or roads. These constraints limit the suitability of these proposals when applied into developing regions, like Latin America. This paper proposes an alternative method, based on unattended crowdsensing, to determine the quality of dirt roads in rural areas. This method involves the use of a mobile application that complements the road condition surveys carried out by organizations in charge of the road network maintenance, giving them early warnings about road areas that could be requiring maintenance. Drivers can also take advantage of the early warnings while they move through these roads. The method was evaluated using information from a public dataset. Although they are preliminary, the results indicate the proposal is potentially suitable to provide awareness about dirt roads condition to drivers, transportation authority and road maintenance companies.
Keywords: Dirt roads automatic quality assessment, collaborative system, unattended crowdsensing method, roads quality awareness provision.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5107128 Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility Concept in Greece
Authors: Grigoris Giannarakis, Nikolaos Litinas, Ioannis Theotokas
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This study attempts to clarify major perspectives of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Greek market related to companies that have sufficient CSR. An empirical analysis was undertaken, based on literature review and previous observations and surveys, in order to provide a general analysis of the CSR concept in Greece. The results of Accountability Rating institution were used in order to identify companies that adopt an integrated social responsibility approach. Companies that responded to the survey are both regional and international and belong to different industrial fields. Some of the main survey results reveal: multiple aspects for the CSR concept, weak consensus as regards the importance of stakeholders and benefits from the CSR implementation, the important role of CSR in the decision procedure and CSR practices concerning social issues that affect mostly company-s competitiveness. Sharing companies- experience could address common social issues through CSR best practices and develop new knowledge.
Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Greece, Kendall's co-efficient of concordance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22317127 Simulation of Natural Convection Flow in an Inclined open Cavity using Lattice Boltzmann Method
Authors: H. Sajjadi, M. Gorji, GH.R. Kefayati, D. D. Ganji, M. Shayan nia
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In this paper effects of inclination angle on natural convection flow in an open cavity has been analyzed with Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM).The angle of inclination varied from θ= - 45° to 45° with 15° intervals. Study has been conducted for Rayleigh numbers (Ra) 104 to 106. The comparisons show that the average Nusselt number increases with growth of Rayleigh number and the average Nusselt number increase as inclination angles increases at Ra=104.At Ra=105 and Ra=106 the average Nusselt number enhance as inclination angels varied from θ= -45° to θ= 0° and decrease as inclination angels increase in θ= 0° to θ= 45°.Keywords: Lattice Boltzmann Method, Inclination angle, Opencavity, Natural convection
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19967126 Fuzzy Decision Making via Multiple Attribute
Authors: Behnaz Zohouri, Mahdi Zowghiand, Mohsen haghighi
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In this paper, a method for decision making in fuzzy environment is presented.A new subjective and objective integrated approach is introduced that used to assign weight attributes in fuzzy multiple attribute decision making (FMADM) problems and alternatives and fmally ranked by proposed method.
Keywords: Multiple Attribute Decision Making, Triangular fuzzy numbers, ranking index, Fuzzy Entropy.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14637125 The Efficacy of Neurological Impress Method and Repeated Reading on Reading Fluency of Children with Learning Disabilities in Oyo State, Nigeria
Authors: A. O. Oladele
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The purpose of this study was to find out the effectiveness of neurological impress method and repeated reading technique on reading fluency of children with learning disabilities. Thirty primary four pupils in three public primary schools participated in the study. There were two experimental groups and a control. This research employed a 3 by 2 factorial matrix and the participants were taught for one session. Two hypotheses were formulated to guide the research. T-test was used to analyse the data gathered, and data analysis revealed that pupils exposed to the two treatment strategies had improvement in their reading fluency. It was recommended that the two strategies used in the study can be used to intervene in reading fluency problems in children with learning disabilities.Keywords: Learning disabilities, neurological impress method, repeated reading, reading fluency.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 37887124 Ice Load Measurements on Known Structures Using Image Processing Methods
Authors: Azam Fazelpour, Saeed R. Dehghani, Vlastimil Masek, Yuri S. Muzychka
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This study employs a method based on image analyses and structure information to detect accumulated ice on known structures. The icing of marine vessels and offshore structures causes significant reductions in their efficiency and creates unsafe working conditions. Image processing methods are used to measure ice loads automatically. Most image processing methods are developed based on captured image analyses. In this method, ice loads on structures are calculated by defining structure coordinates and processing captured images. A pyramidal structure is designed with nine cylindrical bars as the known structure of experimental setup. Unsymmetrical ice accumulated on the structure in a cold room represents the actual case of experiments. Camera intrinsic and extrinsic parameters are used to define structure coordinates in the image coordinate system according to the camera location and angle. The thresholding method is applied to capture images and detect iced structures in a binary image. The ice thickness of each element is calculated by combining the information from the binary image and the structure coordinate. Averaging ice diameters from different camera views obtains ice thicknesses of structure elements. Comparison between ice load measurements using this method and the actual ice loads shows positive correlations with an acceptable range of error. The method can be applied to complex structures defining structure and camera coordinates.
Keywords: Camera calibration, Ice detection, ice load measurements, image processing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 12437123 Sensitivity Computations of Time Relaxation Model with an Application in Cavity Computation
Authors: Monika Neda, Elena Nikonova
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We present a numerical study of the sensitivity of the so called time relaxation family of models of fluid motion with respect to the time relaxation parameter χ on the two dimensional cavity problem. The goal of the study is to compute and compare the sensitivity of the model using finite difference method (FFD) and sensitivity equation method (SEM).
Keywords: Sensitivity, time relaxation, deconvolution, Navier- Stokes equations.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1321