Search results for: Smart Parking Applications

Authors: Seyedebrahim Afkhami, Meisam Abdi, Reza Baserinia

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Additive manufacturing is revolutionizing production in different industries, including pharmaceuticals. This case study explores the influence of surface area on the dissolution of additively manufactured polyvinyl alcohol parts as a polymer candidate. Specimens of different geometries and constant mass were fabricated using a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printer. The dissolution behavior of these samples was compared with respect to their surface area. Improved and accelerated dissolution was observed for samples with a larger surface area. This study highlights the capabilities of additive manufacturing to produce samples of complex geometries that cannot be manufactured otherwise to control the dissolution behavior for pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical applications.

Keywords: Additive manufacturing, polymer dissolution, fused deposition modelling, geometry optimization.

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Authors: Mircea Ivanescu, Nirvana Popescu, Decebal Popescu, Dorin Popescu

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This paper addresses the control problem of a class of hyper-redundant arms. In order to avoid discrepancy between the mathematical model and the actual dynamics, the dynamic model with uncertain parameters of this class of manipulators is inferred. A procedure to design a feedback controller which stabilizes the uncertain system has been proposed. A PD boundary control algorithm is used in order to control the desired position of the manipulator. This controller is easy to implement from the point of view of measuring techniques and actuation. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the presented methods. In order to verify the suitability of the control algorithm, a platform with a 3D flexible manipulator has been employed for testing. Experimental tests on this platform illustrate the applications of the techniques developed in the paper.

Keywords: Distributed model, flexible manipulator, observer, robot control.

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Authors: S.N.Paul, G.Pakira, B.Paul, B.Ghosh

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Nonlinear propagation of ion-acoustic waves in a selfgravitating dusty plasma consisting of warm positive ions, isothermal two-temperature electrons and negatively charged dust particles having charge fluctuations is studied using the reductive perturbation method. It is shown that the nonlinear propagation of ion-acoustic waves in such plasma can be described by an uncoupled third order partial differential equation which is a modified form of the usual Korteweg-deVries (KdV) equation. From this nonlinear equation, a new type of solution for the ion-acoustic wave is obtained. The effects of two-temperature electrons, gravity and dust charge fluctuations on the ion-acoustic solitary waves are discussed with possible applications.

Keywords: Charge fluctuations, gravitating dusty plasma, Ionacoustic solitary wave, Two-temperature electrons

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Authors: Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Parisa Khoshvaght

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In some applications, such as image recognition or compression, segmentation refers to the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple segments. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries (lines, curves, etc.) in images. Image segmentation is to classify or cluster an image into several parts (regions) according to the feature of image, for example, the pixel value or the frequency response. More precisely, image segmentation is the process of assigning a label to every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same label share certain visual characteristics. The result of image segmentation is a set of segments that collectively cover the entire image, or a set of contours extracted from the image. Several image segmentation algorithms were proposed to segment an image before recognition or compression. Up to now, many image segmentation algorithms exist and be extensively applied in science and daily life. According to their segmentation method, we can approximately categorize them into region-based segmentation, data clustering, and edge-base segmentation. In this paper, we give a study of several popular image segmentation algorithms that are available.

Keywords: Image Segmentation, hierarchical segmentation, partitional segmentation, density estimation.

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Authors: Antonino Greco, Nadia Mammone, Francesco Carlo Morabito, Mario Versaci

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Artifact rejection plays a key role in many signal processing applications. The artifacts are disturbance that can occur during the signal acquisition and that can alter the analysis of the signals themselves. Our aim is to automatically remove the artifacts, in particular from the Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. A technique for the automatic artifact rejection, based on the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) for the artifact extraction and on some high order statistics such as kurtosis and Shannon-s entropy, was proposed some years ago in literature. In this paper we try to enhance this technique proposing a new method based on the Renyi-s entropy. The performance of our method was tested and compared to the performance of the method in literature and the former proved to outperform the latter.

Keywords: Artifact, EEG, Renyi's entropy, kurtosis, independent component analysis.

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Authors: Shuen-Tai Wang, Ying-Chuan Chen, Hsi-Ya Chang

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The rapid improvement of the microprocessor and network has made it possible for the PC cluster to compete with conventional supercomputers. Lots of high throughput type of applications can be satisfied by using the current desktop PCs, especially for those in PC classrooms, and leave the supercomputers for the demands from large scale high performance parallel computations. This paper presents our development on enabling an automated deployment mechanism for cluster computing to utilize the computing power of PCs such as reside in PC classroom. After well deployment, these PCs can be transformed into a pre-configured cluster computing resource immediately without touching the existing education/training environment installed on these PCs. Thus, the training activities will not be affected by this additional activity to harvest idle computing cycles. The time and manpower required to build and manage a computing platform in geographically distributed PC classrooms also can be reduced by this development.

Keywords: PC cluster, automated deployment, cluster computing, PC classroom.

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Authors: M. Ovinis, D. Kerr, K. Bouazza-Marouf, M. Vloeberghs

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The use of machine vision to inspect the outcome of surgical tasks is investigated, with the aim of incorporating this approach in robotic surgery systems. Machine vision is a non-contact form of inspection i.e. no part of the vision system is in direct contact with the patient, and is therefore well suited for surgery where sterility is an important consideration,. As a proof-of-concept, three primary surgical tasks for a common neurosurgical procedure were inspected using machine vision. Experiments were performed on cadaveric pig heads to simulate the two possible outcomes i.e. satisfactory or unsatisfactory, for tasks involved in making a burr hole, namely incision, retraction, and drilling. We identify low level image features to distinguish the two outcomes, as well as report on results that validate our proposed approach. The potential of using machine vision in a surgical environment, and the challenges that must be addressed, are identified and discussed.

Keywords: Visual inspection, machine vision, robotic surgery.

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Authors: Nuray Gökçek Karaca

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This study aims to examine the application of occupational health and safety supervision in Turkey and EU countries in terms of legal regulations. The results of research reveal that occupational health and safety supervision in EU countries, whatever the understanding of welfare state, is effectively carried out and almost all legal regulations on this subject are consistent with the EU directives. On the other hand, there are serious problems in applications, not legal regulations, of occupational health and safety supervision in Turkey by the side of EU countries. Indeed, Turkey has modern regulations on occupational health and safety supervision whereas there are several problems such as ignoring prevention policy on occupational health and safety supervision, understanding of monotype inspector, problems resulting from this understanding and dispersed structure of occupational health and safety organizations in workplaces. As a result, Turkey needs to carry out effective supervision mechanisms.

Keywords: Legal Rules, Occupational Health and Safety, Inspection, Supervision, Legislation.

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Authors: Arvind Bhardwaj, Ajay Gupta, Arun Kanda

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Theory of Constraints has been emerging as an important tool for optimization of manufacturing/service systems. Goldratt in his first book “ The Goal " gave the introduction on Theory of Constraints and its applications in a factory scenario. A large number of production managers around the globe read this book but only a few could implement it in their plants because the book did not explain the steps to implement TOC in the factory. To overcome these limitations, Goldratt wrote this book to explain TOC, DBR and the method to implement it. In this paper, an attempt has been made to summarize the salient features of TOC and DBR listed in the book and the correct approach to implement TOC in a factory setting. The simulator available along with the book was actually used by the authors and the claim of Goldratt regarding the use of DBR and Buffer management to ease the work of production managers was tested and was found to be correct.

Keywords: Drum Buffer Rope (DBR), Optimized ProductionTechnology (OPT), Capacity Constrained Resource (CCR)

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Authors: J. Silvestre, L. Almeida, R. Marau, P. Pedreiras

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Currently, there are many local area industrial networks that can give guaranteed bandwidth to synchronous traffic, particularly providing CBR channels (Constant Bit Rate), which allow improved bandwidth management. Some of such networks operate over Ethernet, delivering channels with enough capacity, specially with compressors, to integrate multimedia traffic in industrial monitoring and image processing applications with many sources. In these industrial environments where a low latency is an essential requirement, JPEG is an adequate compressing technique but it generates VBR traffic (Variable Bit Rate). Transmitting VBR traffic in CBR channels is inefficient and current solutions to this problem significantly increase the latency or further degrade the quality. In this paper an R(q) model is used which allows on-line calculation of the JPEG quantification factor. We obtained increased quality, a lower requirement for the CBR channel with reduced number of discarded frames along with better use of the channel bandwidth.

Keywords: Industrial Networks, Multimedia.

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Authors: Abdalla Mohamed Eblabla

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Due to the high increase in and demand for a wide assortment of applications that require low-cost, high-efficiency, and compact systems, RF power amplifiers are considered the most critical design blocks and power consuming components in wireless communication, TV transmission, radar, and RF heating. Therefore, much research has been carried out in order to improve the performance of power amplifiers. Classes-A, B, C, D, E and F are the main techniques for realizing power amplifiers.

An implementation of high efficiency class-F power amplifier with Gallium Nitride (GaN) High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) was realized in this paper. The simulation and optimization of the class-F power amplifier circuit model was undertaken using Agilent’s Advanced Design system (ADS). The circuit was designed using lumped elements.

Keywords: Power Amplifier (PA), Gallium Nitride (GaN), Agilent’s Advanced Design system (ADS) and lumped elements.

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Authors: D. Sumathi, P. Poongodi

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Cloud Computing refers to applications delivered as services over the internet, and the datacenters that provide those services with hardware and systems software. These were earlier referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). Scheduling is justified by job components (called tasks), lack of information. In fact, in a large fraction of jobs from machine learning, bio-computing, and image processing domains, it is possible to estimate the maximum time required for a task in the job. This study focuses on Trust based scheduling to improve cloud security by modifying Heterogeneous Earliest Finish Time (HEFT) algorithm. It also proposes TR-HEFT (Trust Reputation HEFT) which is then compared to Dynamic Load Scheduling.

Keywords: Software as a Service (SaaS), Trust, Heterogeneous Earliest Finish Time (HEFT) algorithm, Dynamic Load Scheduling.

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Authors: Sedrak Vardanyan

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The investigation of the vibrational character of magnetic cylindrical shells placed in an axial magnetic field has important practical applications. In this work, we study the vibrational behaviour of such a cylindrical shell by making use of the so-called exact space treatment, which does not assume any hypothesis. We discuss the effects of several practically important boundary conditions on the vibrations of the described setup. We find that, for some cases of boundary conditions, e.g. clamped, simply supported or peripherally earthed, as well as for some values of the wave numbers, the vibrational frequencies of the shell are approximately zero. The theoretical and numerical exploration of this fact confirms that the vibrations are absent or attenuate very rapidly. For all the considered cases, the imaginary part of the frequencies is negative, which implies stability for the vibrational process.

Keywords: Free vibrations, magnetic cylindrical shells, exact space treatment, bending vibrational frequencies.

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Authors: M. Michalska-Domańska, P. Jóźwik, Z. Bojar

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Intermetallic Ni3Al – based alloys belong to a group of advanced materials characterized by good chemical and physical properties (such as structural stability, corrosion resistance) which offer advenced technological applications. The paper presents the study of catalytic properties of Ni3Al foils (thickness approximately 50 &m) in the methanol and hexane decomposition. The egzamined material posses microcrystalline structure without any additional catalysts on the surface. The better catalytic activity of Ni3Al foils with respect to quartz plates in both methanol and hexane decomposition was confirmed. On thin Ni3Al foils the methanol conversion reaches approximately 100% above 480 oC while the hexane conversion reaches approximately 100% (98,5%) at 500 oC. Deposit formed during the methanol decomposition is built up of carbon nanofibers decorated with metal-like nanoparticles.

Keywords: hexane decomposition, methanol decomposition, Ni3Al thin foils, Ni nanoparticles

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Authors: Muhammad Tahir, Muhammad H. Sayyad, Dil N. Khan, Fazal Wahab

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Herein, the organic semiconductor methyl orange (MO), is investigated for the first time for its electronic applications. For this purpose, Al/MO/n-Si heterojunction is fabricated through economical cheap and simple “drop casting” technique. The currentvoltage (I-V) measurements of the device are made at room temperature under dark conditions. The I-V characteristics of Al/MO/n-Si junction exhibits asymmetrical and rectifying behavior that confirms the formation of diode. The diode parameters such as rectification ratio (RR), turn on voltage (Vturn on), reverse saturation current (I0), ideality factor (n), barrier height ( b f ), series resistance (Rs) and shunt resistance (Rsh) are determined from I-V curves using Schottky equations. These values of these parameters are also extracted and verified by applying Cheung’s functions. The conduction mechanisms are explained from the forward bias I-V characteristics using the power law.

Keywords: Electrical properties, Organic/inorganic heterojunction diode, Methyl Orange, Cheungs Functions

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Authors: Lynn. J. MacFarlane. A

Abstract:

Within the healthcare system, training and continued professional development although essential, can be effected by cost and logistical restraints due to the nature of healthcare provision e.g employee shift patterns, access to expertise, cost factors in releasing staff to attend training etc. The use of multimedia technology for the development of e-learning applications is also a major cost consideration for healthcare management staff, and this type of media whether optical or on line requires careful planning in order to remain inclusive of all staff with potentially varied access to multimedia computing. This paper discusses a project in which the use of DVD authoring technology has been successfully implemented to meet the needs of distance learning and user considerations, and is based on film production techniques and reduced product turnaround deadlines.

Keywords: DVD, healthcare, distance learning, cost.

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Authors: Liu Dan, Wang Xue, Wang Guiqin, Qian Zhihong

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The burst noise is a kind of noises that are destructive and frequently found in semiconductor devices and ICs, yet detecting and removing the noise has proved challenging for IC designers or users. According to the properties of burst noise, a methodological approach is presented (proposed) in the paper, by which the burst noise can be analysed and detected in time domain. In this paper, principles and properties of burst noise are expounded first, Afterwards, feasibility (viable) of burst noise detection by means of wavelet transform in the time domain is corroborated in the paper, and the multi-resolution characters of Gaussian noise, burst noise and blurred burst noise are discussed in details by computer emulation. Furthermore, the practical method to decide parameters of wavelet transform is acquired through a great deal of experiment and data statistics. The methodology may yield an expectation in a wide variety of applications.

Keywords: Burst noise, detection, wavelet transform

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Authors: T. Hirner, J. Polec

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This paper describes a new method of unequal error protection (UEP) for region of interest (ROI) with embedded zerotree wavelet algorithm (EZW). ROI technique is important in applications with different parts of importance. In ROI coding, a chosen ROI is encoded with higher quality than the background (BG). Unequal error protection of image is provided by different coding techniques. In our proposed method, image is divided into two parts (ROI, BG) that consist of more important bytes (MIB) and less important bytes (LIB). The experimental results verify effectiveness of the design. The results of our method demonstrate the comparison of the unequal error protection (UEP) of image transmission with defined ROI and the equal error protection (EEP) over multiple noisy channels.

Keywords: embedded zerotree wavelet (EZW), equal error protection (EEP), region of interest (ROI), RS code, unequal error protection (UEP)

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Authors: A.K.M. Khaled Ahsan Talukder, Taibun Nessa, Kaushik Roy

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The weight constrained shortest path problem (WCSPP) is one of most several known basic problems in combinatorial optimization. Because of its importance in many areas of applications such as computer science, engineering and operations research, many researchers have extensively studied the WCSPP. This paper mainly concentrates on the reduction of total search space for finding WCSP using some existing Genetic Algorithm (GA). For this purpose, some controlled schemes of genetic operators are adopted on list chromosome representation. This approach gives a near optimum solution with smaller elapsed generation than classical GA technique. From further analysis on the matter, a new generalized schema theorem is also developed from the philosophy of Holland-s theorem.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, Evolutionary Optimization, Multi Objective Optimization, Non-linear Schema Theorem, WCSPP.

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Authors: R. Alageswaran, S. Selvakumar, P. Neelamegam

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Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are emerging because of the developments in wireless communication technology and miniaturization of the hardware. WSN consists of a large number of low-cost, low-power, multifunctional sensor nodes to monitor physical conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion, etc. The MAC protocol to be used in the sensor networks must be energy efficient and this should aim at conserving the energy during its operation. In this paper, with the focus of analyzing the MAC protocols used in wireless Adhoc networks to WSN, simulation experiments were conducted in Global Mobile Simulator (GloMoSim) software. Number of packets sent by regular nodes, and received by sink node in different deployment strategies, total energy spent, and the network life time have been chosen as the metric for comparison. From the results of simulation, it is evident that the IEEE 802.11 protocol performs better compared to CSMA and MACA protocols.

Keywords: CSMA, DCF, MACA, TelosB

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Authors: Arun Sharma, Rajesh Kumar, P. S. Grover

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The last decade has shown that object-oriented concept by itself is not that powerful to cope with the rapidly changing requirements of ongoing applications. Component-based systems achieve flexibility by clearly separating the stable parts of systems (i.e. the components) from the specification of their composition. In order to realize the reuse of components effectively in CBSD, it is required to measure the reusability of components. However, due to the black-box nature of components where the source code of these components are not available, it is difficult to use conventional metrics in Component-based Development as these metrics require analysis of source codes. In this paper, we survey few existing component-based reusability metrics. These metrics give a border view of component-s understandability, adaptability, and portability. It also describes the analysis, in terms of quality factors related to reusability, contained in an approach that aids significantly in assessing existing components for reusability.

Keywords: Components, Customizability, Reusability, and Observability.

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Authors: Fabrizio Logiurato

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Light Polarization has many technological applications, and its discovery was crucial to reveal the transverse nature of the electromagnetic waves. However, despite its fundamental and practical importance, in high school, this property of light is often neglected. This is a pity not only for its conceptual relevance, but also because polarization gives the possibility to perform many brilliant experiments with low cost materials. Moreover, the treatment of this matter lends very well to an interdisciplinary approach between art, biology and technology, which usually makes things more interesting to students. For these reasons, we have developed, and in this work, we introduce a laboratory on light polarization for high school and undergraduate students. They can see beautiful pictures when birefringent materials are set between two crossed polarizing filters. Pupils are very fascinated and drawn into by what they observe. The colourful images remind them of those ones of abstract painting or alien landscapes. With this multidisciplinary teaching method, students are more engaged and participative, and also, the learning process of the respective physics concepts is more effective.

Keywords: Light polarization, optical activity, multidisciplinary education, science and art.

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Authors: Noura Al-Ajmi, Mohammed A. Almulla

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With the increased utilization of technology devices around the world, healthcare and medical diagnosis are critical issues that people worry about these days. Doctors are doing their best to avoid any medical errors while diagnosing diseases and prescribing the wrong medication. Subsequently, artificial intelligence applications that can be installed on mobile devices such as rule-based expert systems facilitate the task of assisting doctors in several ways. Due to their many advantages, the usage of expert systems has increased recently in health sciences. This work presents a backward rule-based expert system that can be used for a headache diagnosis and medication recommendation system. The structure of the system consists of three main modules, namely the input unit, the processing unit, and the output unit.

Keywords: Headache diagnosis system, treatment recommender system, rule-based expert system.

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Authors: Zahra Gharineiat, Malik Khalfan

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The significance of emissions from the road transport sector (such as air pollution, noise, etc) has grown considerably in recent years. In Australia, 14.3% of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2000 were the transport sector-s share which 12.9% of net national emissions were related to a road transport alone. Considering the growing attention to the green house gas(GHG) emissions, this paper attempts to provide air pollution modeling aspects of environmental consequences of the road transport by using one of the best computer based tools including the Geographic Information System (GIS). In other word, in this study, GIS and its applications is explained, models which are used to model air pollution and GHG emissions from vehicles are described and GIS is applied in real case study that attempts to forecast GHG emission from people who travel to work by car in 2031 in Melbourne for analysing results as thematic maps.

Keywords: Geographic Information System (GIS), Green HouseGas(GHG) emission, sustainable development, transportation

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Authors: C. N. Okafor, M. Maaza, T. A. E. Mokrani

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A proton exchange membrane has been developed for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). The nanofiber network composite membranes were prepared by interconnected network of Nafion (perfuorosulfonic acid) nanofibers that have been embedded in an uncharged and inert polymer matrix, by electro-spinning. The spinning solution of Nafion with a low concentration (1 wt% compared to Nafion) of high molecular weight poly(ethylene oxide), as a carrier polymer. The interconnected network of Nafion nanofibers with average fiber diameter in the range of 160-700nm, were used to make the membranes, with the nanofiber occupying up to 85% of the membrane volume. The matrix polymer was crosslinked with Norland Optical Adhesive 63 under UV. The resulting membranes showed proton conductivity of 0.10 S/cm at 25°C and 80% RH; and methanol permeability of 3.6 x 10-6 cm2/s.

Keywords: Composite membrane, electrospinning, fuel cell, nanofibers.

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Authors: Sophio Kobauri, Vladimir P. Torchilin, David Tugushi, Ramaz Katsarava

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Nanotherapy is an actual newest mode of treatment numerous diseases using nanoparticles (NPs) loading with different pharmaceuticals. NPs of biodegradable polymeric micelles (PMs) are gaining increased attention for their numerous and attractive abilities to be used in a variety of applications in the various fields of medicine. The present paper deals with the synthesis of a class of biodegradable micelle-forming polymers, namely ABA triblock-copolymer in which A-blocks represent amino-poly(ethylene glycol) (H₂N-PEG) and B-block is biodegradable amino acid-based poly(ester amide) constituted of α-amino acid – L-phenylalanine. The obtained copolymer formed micelles of 70±4 nm size at 10 mg/mL concentration.

Keywords: Amino acids, biodegradable poly(ester amide), amphiphilic triblock-copolymer, micelles.

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Authors: O. Maklouf, Ahmed Abdulla

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A general decline in the cost, size, and power requirements of electronics is accelerating the adoption of integrated GPS/INS technologies in consumer applications such Land Vehicle Navigation. Researchers have looking for ways to eliminate additional components from product designs. One possibility is to drop one or more of the relatively expensive gyroscopes from microelectromechanical system (MEMS) versions of inertial measurement units (IMUs). For land vehicular use, the most important gyroscope is the vertical gyro that senses the heading of the vehicle and two horizontal accelerometers for determining the velocity of the vehicle. This paper presents a simplified integration algorithm for strap down (ParIMU)\GPS combination, with data post processing for the determination of 2-D components of position (trajectory), velocity and heading. In the present approach we have neglected earth rotation and gravity variations, because of the poor gyroscope sensitivities of the low-cost IMU and because of the relatively small area of the trajectory.

Keywords: GPS, ParIMU, INS, Kalman Filter.

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Authors: Elham Farahmand, Fatimah Ibrahim, Samira Hosseini, Ivan Djordjevic, Leo. H. Koole

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Compositions of different molar ratios of polymethylmethacrylate-co-methacrylic acid (PMMA-co-MAA) were synthesized via free-radical polymerization. Polymer coated surfaces have been produced on silicon wafers. Coated samples were analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results have shown that the roughness of the surfaces have increased by increasing the molar ratio of monomer methacrylic acid (MAA). This study reveals that the gradual increase in surface roughness is due to the fact that carboxylic functional groups have been generated by MAA segments. Such surfaces can be desirable platforms for fabrication of the biosensors for detection of the viruses and diseases.

Keywords: Polymethylmethacrylate-co-methacrylic acid (PMMA-co-MAA), Polymeric material, Atomic Force Microscopy, roughness, carboxylic functional groups.

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Authors: Waleed Abohamad, Amr Arisha

Abstract:

Owing the fact that optimization of business process is a crucial requirement to navigate, survive and even thrive in today-s volatile business environment, this paper presents a framework for selecting a best-fit optimization package for solving complex business problems. Complexity level of the problem and/or using incorrect optimization software can lead to biased solutions of the optimization problem. Accordingly, the proposed framework identifies a number of relevant factors (e.g. decision variables, objective functions, and modeling approach) to be considered during the evaluation and selection process. Application domain, problem specifications, and available accredited optimization approaches are also to be regarded. A recommendation of one or two optimization software is the output of the framework which is believed to provide the best results of the underlying problem. In addition to a set of guidelines and recommendations on how managers can conduct an effective optimization exercise is discussed.

Keywords: Complex Business Problems, Optimization, Selection Criteria, Software Evaluation.

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Authors: M. R. Gad El- Kareem, A. M. K. Abdel Aal, A. Y. Mohamed

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During 2011 and 2012 seasons, Zaghloul date palms received four sprays of silicon (Si) at 0.05 to 0.1% and selenium (Se) at 0.01 to 0.02%. Growth, nutritional status, yield as well as physical and chemical characteristics of the fruits in response to application of silicon and selenium were investigated. Single and combined applications of silicon at 0.05 to 0.1% and selenium at 0.01 to 0.02% was very effective in enhancing the leaf area, total chlorophylls, percentages of N, P and K in the leaves, yield, bunch weight as well as physical and chemical characteristics of the fruits in relative to the check treatment. Silicon was superior to selenium in this respect. Combined application was favorable than using each alone in this connection. Treating Zaghloul date palms four times with a mixture of silicon at 0.05% + selenium at 0.01% resulted in an economical yield and producing better fruit quality.

Keywords: Date Palms, Zaghloul, Silicon, Selenium, leaf area.

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