Search results for: Effective Permeability

Authors: F. S. Eguakun, T. C. Nkwor

Abstract:

Trees in the university environment are uniquely position; however, they can also present a millstone to the infrastructure and humans they coexist with. The numerous benefits of trees can be negated due to poor tree health and anthropogenic activities and as such can become hazardous. The study aims at evaluating the hazardous status of avenue trees in University of Port Harcourt. Data were collected from all the avenue trees within the selected major roads in the University. Tree growth variables were measured and health condition of the avenue trees were assessed as an indicator of some structural defects. The hazard status of the avenue trees was determined. Several tree species were used as avenue trees in the University however, Azadirachta indica (81%) was found to be most abundant. The result shows that only 0.3% avenue tree species was found to pose severe harzard in Abuja part of the University. Most avenue trees (55.2%) were rated as medium hazard status. Due to the danger and risk associated with hazardous trees, the study recommends that good and effective management strategies be implemented so as to prevent future damages from trees with small or medium hazard status.

Keywords: Avenue tree, hazard status, inventory, urban.

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Authors: Khemanand Moheeput, Smita S. D. Goorah, Satish K. Ramchurn

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We report a computational study of the spreading dynamics of a viral infection in a complex (scale-free) network. The final epidemic size distribution (FESD) was found to be unimodal or bimodal depending on the value of the basic reproductive number R0 . The FESDs occurred on time-scales long enough for intermediate-time epidemic size distributions (IESDs) to be important for control measures. The usefulness of R0 for deciding on the timeliness and intensity of control measures was found to be limited by the multimodal nature of the IESDs and by its inability to inform on the speed at which the infection spreads through the population. A reduction of the transmission probability at the hubs of the scale-free network decreased the occurrence of the larger-sized epidemic events of the multimodal distributions. For effective epidemic control, an early reduction in transmission at the index cell and its neighbors was essential.

Keywords: Basic reproductive number, epidemic control, scalefree network, viral infection.

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Authors: Yun-Hsuan Yu, Chi-Shung Tang, Nzar Rauf Abdullah, Vidar Gudmundsson

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Spin-orbit gap feature in energy dispersion of one-dimensional devices is revealed via strong spin-orbit interaction (SOI) effects under Zeeman field. We describe the utilization of a finger-gate or a top-gate to control the spin-dependent transport characteristics in the SOI-Zeeman influenced split-gate devices by means of a generalized spin-mixed propagation matrix method. For the finger-gate system, we find a bound state in continuum for incident electrons within the ultra-low energy regime. For the top-gate system, we observe more bound-state features in conductance associated with the formation of spin-associated hole-like or electron-like quasi-bound states around band thresholds, as well as hole bound states around the reverse point of the energy dispersion. We demonstrate that the spin-dependent transport behavior of a top-gate system is similar to that of a finger-gate system only if the top-gate length is less than the effective Fermi wavelength.

Keywords: Spin-orbit, Zeeman, top-gate, finger-gate, bound state.

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Authors: M. Chavleishvili, E. Kharaishvili, G. Erkomaishvili

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The article presents the development trends of farms, estimates on the optimal scope of farming, as well as the experience of local and foreign countries in this area. As well, the advantages of small and large farms are discussed; herewith, the scales of farms are compared to the local reality. The study analyzes the results of farm operations and the possibilities of diversification of farms. The indicators of an effective use of land resources and land fragmentation are measured; also, a comparative analysis with other countries is presented, in particular, the measurements of agricultural lands for farming, as well as the indicators of population ensuring. The conducted research shows that most of the farms in Georgia are small and their development is at the initial stage, which outlines that the country has a high resource potential to increase the scale of the farming industry and its full integration into market relations. On the basis of the obtained results, according to the research on the scale of farming in Georgia and the identification of hampering factors of farming development, the conclusions are presented and the relevant recommendations are suggested.

Keywords: Farm cooperatives, farms, farm scale, land fragmentation, small and large farms.

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Authors: K. Thulasimani, K. G. Srinivasagan

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Driver fatigue is an important factor in the increasing number of road accidents. Dynamic template matching method was proposed to address the problem of real-time driver fatigue detection system based on eye-tracking. An effective vision based approach was used to analyze the driver’s eye state to detect fatigue. The driver fatigue system consists of Face detection, Eye detection, Eye tracking, and Fatigue detection. Initially frames are captured from a color video in a car dashboard and transformed from RGB into YCbCr color space to detect the driver’s face. Canny edge operator was used to estimating the eye region and the locations of eyes are extracted. The extracted eyes were considered as a template matching for eye tracking. Edge Map Overlapping (EMO) and Edge Pixel Count (EPC) matching function were used for eye tracking which is used to improve the matching accuracy. The pixel of eyeball was tracked from the eye regions which are used to determine the fatigue state of the driver.

Keywords: Driver fatigue detection, Driving safety, Eye tracking, Intelligent transportation system, Template matching.

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Authors: Ha Thi Nguyen, Guangya Yang, Arne Hejde Nielsen, Peter Højgaard Jensen

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Automatic voltage regulator (AVR) plays an important role in volt/var control of synchronous condenser (SC) in power systems. Test AVR performance in steady-state and dynamic conditions in real grid is expensive, low efficiency, and hard to achieve. To address this issue, we implement hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) test for the AVR of SC to test the steady-state and dynamic performances of AVR in different operating conditions. Startup procedure of the system and voltage set point changes are studied to evaluate the AVR hardware response. Overexcitation, underexcitation, and AVR set point loss are tested to compare the performance of SC with the AVR hardware and that of simulation. The comparative results demonstrate how AVR will work in a real system. The results show HiL test is an effective approach for testing devices before deployment and is able to parameterize the controller with lower cost, higher efficiency, and more flexibility.

Keywords: Automatic voltage regulator, hardware-in-the-loop, synchronous condenser, real time digital simulator.

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Authors: Kang Won Lee, Jung Won Lee

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Characterizing the network flow is of fundamental importance to understand the complex dynamics of networks. And passenger flow characteristics of the subway network are very relevant for an effective transportation management in urban cities. In this study, passenger flow of Seoul metropolitan subway network is investigated and characterized through statistical analysis. Traditional betweenness centrality measure considers only topological structure of the network and ignores the transportation factors. This paper proposes a weighted betweenness centrality measure that incorporates monthly passenger flow volume. We apply the proposed measure on the Seoul metropolitan subway network involving 493 stations and 16 lines. Several interesting insights about the network are derived from the new measures. Using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, we also find out that monthly passenger flow between any two stations follows a power-law distribution and other traffic characteristics such as congestion level and throughflow traffic follow exponential distribution.

Keywords: Betweenness centrality, correlation coefficient, power-law distribution, Korea traffic data base.

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Authors: M. Brahim, I. Bahri, Y. Bernard

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Traveling Wave Ultrasonic Motor (TWUM) is a compact, precise, and silent actuator generating high torque at low speed without gears. Moreover, the TWUM has a high holding torque without supply, which makes this motor as an attractive solution for holding position of robotic arms. However, their nonlinear dynamics, and the presence of load-dependent dead zones often limit their use. Those issues can be overcome in closed loop with effective and precise controllers. In this paper, robust H-infinity (H∞) and discrete time RST position controllers are presented. The H∞ controller is designed in continuous time with additional weighting filters to ensure the robustness in the case of uncertain motor model and external disturbances. Robust RST controller based on the pole placement method is also designed and compared to the H∞. Simulink model of TWUM is used to validate the stability and the robustness of the two proposed controllers.

Keywords: Piezoelectric motors, position control, H∞, RST, stability criteria, robustness.

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Authors: Neil Morgan

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The notion of Threshold Concepts has offered a fertile new perspective on the transformative effects of mastery of particular concepts on student understanding of subject matter and their developing identities as inductees into disciplinary discourse communities. Only by successfully traversing essential knowledge thresholds can neophytes achieve the more sophisticated understandings of subject matter possessed by mature members of a discipline. This paper uses thematic analysis of disciplinary guiding principles to identify nine candidate Threshold Concepts that appear to underpin effective TESOL practice. The relationship between these candidate TESOL Threshold Concepts, TESOL principles, and TESOL instructional techniques appears to be amenable to a schematic representation based on superordinate categories of TESOL practitioner concern and, as such, offers an alternative to the view of Threshold Concepts as a privileged subset of disciplinary core concepts. The paper concludes by exploring the potential of a Threshold Concepts framework to productively inform TESOL initial teacher education (ITE) and in-service education and training (INSET).

Keywords: TESOL, threshold concepts, TESOL principles, TESOL ITE/INSET, community of practice.

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Authors: Mohammed Erritali

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The growth in the volume of text data such as books and articles in libraries for centuries has imposed to establish effective mechanisms to locate them. Early techniques such as abstraction, indexing and the use of classification categories have marked the birth of a new field of research called "Information Retrieval". Information Retrieval (IR) can be defined as the task of defining models and systems whose purpose is to facilitate access to a set of documents in electronic form (corpus) to allow a user to find the relevant ones for him, that is to say, the contents which matches with the information needs of the user. This paper presents a new semantic indexing approach of a documentary corpus. The indexing process starts first by a term weighting phase to determine the importance of these terms in the documents. Then the use of a thesaurus like Wordnet allows moving to the conceptual level. Each candidate concept is evaluated by determining its level of representation of the document, that is to say, the importance of the concept in relation to other concepts of the document. Finally, the semantic index is constructed by attaching to each concept of the ontology, the documents of the corpus in which these concepts are found.

Keywords: Semantic, indexing, corpora, WordNet, ontology.

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Authors: Ravinu Garg, Naresh V. Datla

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We study the fracture mechanics of peeling of thin films perfectly bonded to a rigid substrate of any random surface topology using an analytical formulation. A generalized theoretical model has been developed to determine the peel strength of thin elastic films. It is demonstrated that an improvement in the peel strength can be achieved by modifying the surface characteristics of the rigid substrate. Characterization study has been performed to analyze the effect of different parameters on effective peel force from the rigid surface. Different surface profiles such as circular and sinusoidal has been considered to demonstrate the bonding characteristics of film-substrate interface. Condition for the instability in the debonding of the film is analyzed, where the localized self-debonding arises depending upon the film and surface characteristics. This study is towards improved adhesion strength of thin films to rigid substrate using different textured surfaces.

Keywords: Debonding, fracture mechanics, surface topology, thin film adhesion.

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Authors: Mesfer Al Duhayyim, Paul Newbury

Abstract:

This paper proposes an effective adaptive e-learning system that uses a coloured concept map to show the learner's knowledge level for each concept in the chosen subject area. A Fuzzy logic system is used to evaluate the learner's knowledge level for each concept in the domain, and produce a ranked concept list of learning materials to address weaknesses in the learner’s understanding. This system obtains information on the learner's understanding of concepts by an initial pre-test before the system is used for learning and a post-test after using the learning system. A Fuzzy logic system is used to produce a weighted concept map during the learning process. The aim of this research is to prove that such a proposed novel adapted e-learning system will enhance learner's performance and understanding. In addition, this research aims to increase participants' overall understanding of their learning level by providing a coloured concept map of understanding followed by a ranked concepts list of learning materials.

Keywords: Adaptive e-learning system, coloured concept map, fuzzy logic, ranked concept list.

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Authors: Richard Ji

Abstract:

Nondestructive deflection testing has been accepted widely as a cost-effective tool for evaluating the structural condition of airfield pavements. Backcalculation of pavement layer moduli can be used to characterize the pavement existing condition in order to compute the load bearing capacity of pavement. This paper presents an improved best-fit backcalculation methodology based on deflection predictions obtained using finite element method (FEM). The best-fit approach is based on minimizing the squared error between falling weight deflectometer (FWD) measured deflections and FEM predicted deflections. Then, concrete elastic modulus and modulus of subgrade reaction were back-calculated using Heavy Weight Deflectometer (HWD) deflections collected at the National Airport Pavement Testing Facility (NAPTF) test site. It is an alternative and more versatile method in considering concrete slab geometry and HWD testing locations compared to methods currently available.

Keywords: Nondestructive testing, Pavement moduli backcalculation, Finite Element Method, FEM, concrete pavements.

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Authors: Serkan Ozbay, Ergun Ercelebi

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Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) has many applications in traffic systems (highway electronic toll collection, red light violation enforcement, border and customs checkpoints, etc.). License Plate Recognition is an effective form of AVI systems. In this study, a smart and simple algorithm is presented for vehicle-s license plate recognition system. The proposed algorithm consists of three major parts: Extraction of plate region, segmentation of characters and recognition of plate characters. For extracting the plate region, edge detection algorithms and smearing algorithms are used. In segmentation part, smearing algorithms, filtering and some morphological algorithms are used. And finally statistical based template matching is used for recognition of plate characters. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested on real images. Based on the experimental results, we noted that our algorithm shows superior performance in car license plate recognition.

Keywords: Character recognizer, license plate recognition, plate region extraction, segmentation, smearing, template matching.

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Authors: Mohammad Taghi Taghavifard, Danial Mirheydari

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This paper suggests an algorithm for the evaluation and selection of suppliers. At the beginning, all the needed materials and services used by the organization were identified and categorized with regard to their nature by ABC method. Afterwards, in order to reduce risk factors and maximize the organization's profit, purchase strategies were determined. Then, appropriate criteria were identified for primary evaluation of suppliers applying to the organization. The output of this stage was a list of suppliers qualified by the organization to participate in its tenders. Subsequently, considering a material in particular, appropriate criteria on the ordering of the mentioned material were determined, taking into account the particular materials' specifications as well as the organization's needs. Finally, for the purpose of validation and verification of the proposed model, it was applied to Mobarakeh Steel Company (MSC), the qualified suppliers of this Company are ranked by the means of a Hierarchical Fuzzy TOPSIS method. The obtained results show that the proposed algorithm is quite effective, efficient and easy to apply.

Keywords: ABC analysis, Hierarchical Fuzzy TOPSIS, Primary supplier evaluation, Purchasing strategy, supplier selection

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Authors: Abu Qudeiri Jaber, Yamamoto Hidehiko Rizauddin Ramli

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To create a solution for a specific problem in machine learning, the solution is constructed from the data or by use a search method. Genetic algorithms are a model of machine learning that can be used to find nearest optimal solution. While the great advantage of genetic algorithms is the fact that they find a solution through evolution, this is also the biggest disadvantage. Evolution is inductive, in nature life does not evolve towards a good solution but it evolves away from bad circumstances. This can cause a species to evolve into an evolutionary dead end. In order to reduce the effect of this disadvantage we propose a new a learning tool (criteria) which can be included into the genetic algorithms generations to compare the previous population and the current population and then decide whether is effective to continue with the previous population or the current population, the proposed learning tool is called as Keeping Efficient Population (KEP). We applied a GA based on KEP to the production line layout problem, as a result KEP keep the evaluation direction increases and stops any deviation in the evaluation.

Keywords: Genetic algorithms, Layout problem, Machinelearning, Production system.

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Authors: Hakim Aguedal, Hafida Hentit, Abdallah Aziz, Djillali Rida Merouani, Abdelkader Iddou

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The major environmental risk of soil pollution is the contamination of groundwater by infiltration of organic and inorganic pollutants which can cause a serious menace. To prevent this risk and to protect the groundwater, we proceeded in this study to test the reliability of a biosolid as barrier to prevent the migration of very dangerous pollutants as ‘Cadmium’ through the different soil layers. In this study, we tried to highlight the effect of several parameters such as: turbidity (different cycle of Hydration/Dehydration), rainfall, effect of initial Cd(II) concentration and the type of soil. These parameters allow us to find the most effective manner to integrate this barrier in the soil. From the results obtained, we found a significant effect of the barrier. Indeed, the recorded passing quantities are lowest for the highest rainfall; we noted also that the barrier has a better affinity towards higher concentrations; the most retained amounts of cadmium has been in the top layer of the two types of soil tested, while the lowest amounts of cadmium are recorded in the bottom layers of soils.

Keywords: Adsorption of Cadmium, Barrier, Groundwater Pollution, Protection.

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Authors: Fawehinmi Olabisi Alaba, Adeniyi O. R.

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Farming households faces lots of disaster which contribute to endemic poverty. Anticipated increases in extreme weather events will exacerbate this. Primary data was administered to farming household using multi-stage random sampling technique. The result of the analysis shows that majority of the respondents (69.9%) are male, have mean household size, years of formal education and age of 5±1.14, 6±3.41, and 51.06±10.43 respectively. The major (48.9%) type of disaster experienced is flooding. Major coping mechanism adopted is sourcing for support from family and friends. Age, education, experience, access to extension agent, and mitigation control method contribute significantly to vulnerability to disaster. The major adaptation method (62.3%) is construction of drainage.

The study revealed that the coping mechanisms employed may become less effective as increasingly fragile livelihood systems struggle to withstand disaster shocks. Thus there is need for training of the farmers on measures to adapt to mitigate the shock from disasters

Keywords: Adaptation, Disasters, Flooding, Vulnerability.

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Authors: Srinivasa Reddy Mallampati, Chi-Hyeon Lee, Nguyen Thi Thanh Truc, Byeong-Kyu Lee

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In the present study, feasibility of the selective surface hydrophilization of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by microwave treatment was evaluated to facilitate the separation from automotive shredder residue (ASR), by the froth flotation. The combination of 60 sec microwave treatment with PAC, a sharp and significant decrease about 16.5° contact angle of PVC was observed in ASR plastic compared with other plastics. The microwave treatment with the addition of PAC resulted in a synergetic effect for the froth flotation, which may be a result of the 90% selective separation of PVC from ASR plastics, with 82% purity. While, simple mixing with a nanometallic Ca/CaO/PO4 dispersion mixture immobilized 95-100% of heavy metals in ASR soil/residues. The quantity of heavy metals leached from thermal residues after treatment by nanometallic Ca/CaO/PO4 was lower than the Korean standard regulatory limit for hazardous waste landfills. Microwave treatment can be a simple and effective method for PVC separation from ASR plastics.

Keywords: Automotive shredder residue, microwave treatment, chlorinated plastics, separation, heavy metals, Immobilization, separation.

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Authors: Ali A. Ahmed, Mohammed I. Hussein

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The amounts of radioactivity in the igneous rocks have been investigated; samples were collected from the total of eight basalt rock types in the northeastern of Kurdistan region/Iraq. The activity concentration of 226Ra (238U) series, 228Ac (232Th) series, 40K and 137Cs were measured using Planar HPGe and NaI(Tl) detectors. Along the study area the radium equivalent activities Raeq in Bq/Kg of samples under investigation were found in the range of 22.16 to 77.31 Bq/Kg with an average value of 44.8 Bq/Kg, this value is much below the internationally accepted value of 370 Bq/Kg. To estimate the health effects of this natural radioactive composition, the average values of absorbed gamma dose rate D (55 nGyh-1), Indoor and outdoor annual effective dose rates Eied (0.11 mSvy-1) . and Eoed (0.03 mSvy-1), External hazard index Hex (0.138) and internal hazard index Hin(0.154), and representative level index Iγr (0.386) have been calculated and found to be lower than the worldwide average values.

Keywords: Absorbed dose, activity concentration, igneousrocks, HPGe, NaI(TI), Natural Radioactivity.

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Authors: M. Mohamadi, A. M. Maskooki., S. A. Mortazavi

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The quality and shelf life of foods of containing lipids (fats and oils) significantly reduces due to rancidity.Applications of natural antioxidants are one of the most effective manners to prevent the oxidation of oils and lipids. The antioxidant properties of juice extracted from barberry fruit (Berberris vulgaris.L) using maceration and SWE (10 bars and 120 - 180°C) methods were investigated and compared with conventional method. The amount of phenolic compound and reduction power of all samples were determined and the data were statistically analyzed using multifactor design. The results showed that the total amount of phenolic compound increased with increasing of pressure and temprature from 1861.9 to 2439.1 (mg Gallic acid /100gr Dry matter). The ability of reduction power of SWE obtained antioxidant extract compared with BHA (synthetic antioxidant) and ascorbic acid (natural antioxidant). There were significant differences among reduction power of extracts and there were remarkable difference with BHA and Ascorbic acid (P<0.01).

Keywords: Subcritical water, Antioxidant, Barberry, Phenolic compound, Reduction power

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Authors: Kei Kawamorita, Ryouta Kasahara, Yuuki Mochizuki, Kenichiro Noguchi

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A separation-kernel-based operating system (OS) has been designed for use in secure embedded systems by applying formal methods to the design of the separation-kernel part. The separation kernel is a small OS kernel that provides an abstract distributed environment on a single CPU. The design of the separation kernel was verified using two formal methods, the B method and the Spin model checker. A newly designed semi-formal method, the extended state transition method, was also applied. An OS comprising the separation-kernel part and additional OS services on top of the separation kernel was prototyped on the Intel IA-32 architecture. Developing and testing of a prototype embedded application, a point-of-sale application, on the prototype OS demonstrated that the proposed architecture and the use of formal methods to design its kernel part are effective for achieving a secure embedded system having a high-assurance separation kernel.

Keywords: B method, embedded systems, extended state transition, formal methods, separation kernel, Spin.

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Authors: R. A. Salam, M.A. Rodrigues

Abstract:

The number of features required to represent an image can be very huge. Using all available features to recognize objects can suffer from curse dimensionality. Feature selection and extraction is the pre-processing step of image mining. Main issues in analyzing images is the effective identification of features and another one is extracting them. The mining problem that has been focused is the grouping of features for different shapes. Experiments have been conducted by using shape outline as the features. Shape outline readings are put through normalization and dimensionality reduction process using an eigenvector based method to produce a new set of readings. After this pre-processing step data will be grouped through their shapes. Through statistical analysis, these readings together with peak measures a robust classification and recognition process is achieved. Tests showed that the suggested methods are able to automatically recognize objects through their shapes. Finally, experiments also demonstrate the system invariance to rotation, translation, scale, reflection and to a small degree of distortion.

Keywords: Image mining, feature selection, shape recognition, peak measures.

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Authors: Nemir Al-Azzawi, Harsa A. Mat Sakim, Wan Ahmed K. Wan Abdullah, Yasmin Mohd Yacob

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Feature-based registration is an effective technique for clinical use, because it can greatly reduce computational costs. However, this technique, which estimates the transformation by using feature points extracted from two images, may cause misalignments. To handle with this limitation, we propose to extract the salient edges and extracted control points (CP) of medical images by using efficiency of multiresolution representation of data nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) that finds the best feature points. The MR images were first decomposed using the NSCT, and then Edge and CP were extracted from bandpass directional subband of NSCT coefficients and some proposed rules. After edge and CP extraction, mutual information was adopted for the registration of feature points and translation parameters are calculated by using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The experimental results showed that the proposed method produces totally accurate performance for registration medical CT-MR images.

Keywords: Feature-based registration, mutual information, nonsubsampled contourlet transform, particle swarm optimization.

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Authors: K. Balamurugan, R. Muralisachithanandam, V. Dharmalingam, R. Srikanth

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This paper deals with the optimal choice and allocation of multi FACTS devices in Deregulated power system using Evolutionary Programming method. The objective is to achieve the power system economic generation allocation and dispatch in deregulated electricity market. Using the proposed method, the locations of the FACTS devices, their types and ratings are optimized simultaneously. Different kinds of FACTS devices are simulated in this study such as UPFC, TCSC, TCPST, and SVC. Simulation results validate the capability of this new approach in minimizing the overall system cost function, which includes the investment costs of the FACTS devices and the bid offers of the market participants. The proposed algorithm is an effective and practical method for the choice and allocation of FACTS devices in deregulated electricity market environment. The standard data of IEEE 14 Bus systems has been taken into account and simulated with aid of MAT-lab software and results were obtained.

Keywords: FACTS devices, Optimal allocation, Deregulated electricity market, Evolutionary programming, Mat Lab.

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Authors: B. Singh, K. K. Agrawal, B. K. Nanda

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In built-up structures, one of the effective ways of dissipating unwanted vibration is to exploit the occurrence of slip at the interfaces of structural laminates. The present work focuses on the dynamic analysis of welded structures. A mathematical formulation has been developed for the mechanism of slip damping in layered and welded mild steel beams with unequal thickness subjected to both periodic and non-periodic forces. It is observed that a number of vital parameters such as; thickness ratio, pressure distribution characteristics, relative slip and kinematic co-efficient of friction at the interfaces, nature of exciting forces, length and thickness of the beam specimen govern the damping characteristics of these structures. Experimental verification has been carried out to validate the analysis and study the effect of these parameters. The developed damping model for the structure is found to be in fairly good agreement with the measured data. Finally, the results of the analysis are discussed and rationalized.

Keywords: Slip damping, tack welded joint, thickness ratio, inplane bending stress

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Authors: Aedah A. Rahman, Nurdatillah Hasim

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Software quality issues require special attention especially in view of the demands of quality software product to meet customer satisfaction. Software development projects in most organisations need proper defect management process in order to produce high quality software product and reduce the number of defects. The research question of this study is how to produce high quality software and reducing the number of defects. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to provide a framework for managing software defects by following defined life cycle processes. The methodology starts by reviewing defects, defect models, best practices, and standards. A framework for defect management life cycle is proposed. The major contribution of this study is to define a defect management roadmap in software development. The adoption of an effective defect management process helps to achieve the ultimate goal of producing high quality software products and contributes towards continuous software process improvement.

Keywords: Defects, defect management, life cycle process, software quality.

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Authors: Reza Sedaghati, Mojtaba Hakimzadeh, Mohammad Hasan Raouf, Mostafa Mirzadeh

Abstract:

Nowadays the growth of distributed generation within the bulk power system is feasible by using the optimal control of the transmission lines power flow. Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOM) is effective for improving voltage stability but it can only exchange reactive power with the power grid. The integration of Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) with a STATCOM can extend the traditional STATCOM capabilities to four-quadrant bulk power system power flow control and providing exchange both the active and reactive power related to the STATCOM with the ac network. This paper shows how the SMES system can be connected to the ac system via the DC bus of a STATCOM and also analyzes how the integration of STATCOM and SMES allows the bus voltage regulation and power oscillation damping (POD) to be achieved simultaneously. The dynamic performance of the integrated STATCOM-SMES is evaluated through simulation by using PSCAD/EMTDC software and the compensation effectiveness of this integrated compensator is shown.

Keywords: STATCOM-SMES compensator, Power Oscillation Damping (POD), stabilizing, signal, voltage.

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Authors: C. N. Vanitha, M. Usha

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In a real world scenario, the viability of the sensor networks has been proved by standardizing the technologies. Wireless sensor networks are vulnerable to both electronic and physical security breaches because of their deployment in remote, distributed, and inaccessible locations. The compromised sensor nodes send malicious data to the base station, and thus, the total network effectiveness will possibly be compromised. To detect and seclude the Route modifiers, a neural network based Pattern Learning predictor (PLP) is presented. This algorithm senses data at any node on present and previous patterns obtained from the en-route nodes. The eminence of any node is upgraded by their predicted and reported patterns. This paper propounds a solution not only to detect the route modifiers, but also to seclude the malevolent nodes from the network. The simulation result proves the effective performance of the network by the presented methodology in terms of energy level, routing and various network conditions.

Keywords: Neural networks, pattern learning, security, wireless sensor networks.

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Authors: A. Sherif, A. El Zafarany, R. Arafa

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Hospitals, everywhere, are considered heavy energy consumers. Hospital Intensive Care Unit spaces pose a special challenge, where design guidelines requires the provision of external windows for daylighting and external view. Window protection strategies could be employed to reduce energy loads without detriment effect on comfort or health care. This paper addresses the effectiveness of using various window strategies on the annual cooling, heating and lighting energy use of a typical Hospital Intensive Unit space. Series of experiments were performed using the EnergyPlus simulation software for a typical Intensive Care Unit (ICU) space in Cairo, located in the Egyptian desert. This study concluded that the use of shading systems is more effective in conserving energy in comparison with glazing of different types, in the Cairo ICUs. The highest energy savings in the West and South orientations were accomplished by external perforated solar screens, followed by overhangs positioned at a protection angle of 45°.

Keywords: Energy, Hospital, Intensive Care Units, Shading.

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