Search results for: local mass transfer rate

Authors: Jingming Wu, Ruikang Hu, Junqi Yue, Zhaoguang Yang, Lifeng Zhang

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Fecal sterol has been proposed as a chemical indicator of human fecal pollution even when fecal coliform populations have diminished due to water chlorination or toxic effects of industrial effluents. This paper describes an improved derivatization procedure for simultaneous determination of four fecal sterols including coprostanol, epicholestanol, cholesterol and cholestanol using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), via optimization study on silylation procedures using N-O-bis (trimethylsilyl)-trifluoroacetamide (BSTFA), and N-(tert-butyldimethylsilyl)-N-methyltrifluoroacetamide (MTBSTFA), which lead to the formation of trimethylsilyl (TMS) and tert-butyldimethylsilyl (TBS) derivatives, respectively. Two derivatization processes of injection-port derivatization and water bath derivatization (60 oC, 1h) were inspected and compared. Furthermore, the methylation procedure at 25 oC for 2h with trimethylsilydiazomethane (TMSD) for fecal sterols analysis was also studied. It was found that most of TMS derivatives demonstrated the highest sensitivities, followed by methylated derivatives. For BSTFA or MTBSTFA derivatization processes, the simple injection-port derivatization process could achieve the same efficiency as that in the tedious water bath derivatization procedure.

Keywords: Fecal Sterols, Methylation, Silylation, BSTFA, MTBSTFA, TMSD, GC-MS.

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Authors: V. Gomathi, Dr. K. Ramar, A. Santhiyaku Jeevakumar

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Facial expression analysis plays a significant role for human computer interaction. Automatic analysis of human facial expression is still a challenging problem with many applications. In this paper, we propose neuro-fuzzy based automatic facial expression recognition system to recognize the human facial expressions like happy, fear, sad, angry, disgust and surprise. Initially facial image is segmented into three regions from which the uniform Local Binary Pattern (LBP) texture features distributions are extracted and represented as a histogram descriptor. The facial expressions are recognized using Multiple Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (MANFIS). The proposed system designed and tested with JAFFE face database. The proposed model reports 94.29% of classification accuracy.

Keywords: Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, Facialexpression, Local binary pattern, Uniform Histogram

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Authors: Muhammad Liaquat Ali, Nasir-uddin Khan, Mushtaq Hussain, Asif Mansoor, Muhammad Shahid

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Population in rural areas are scattered in the form of different villages or settlements. The proper selection of land to launch any educational or health activities to equally facilitate both the genders is the sticky situation, both for Govt. and Private organizations. Govt. spends substantial funds for the establishment of education institution/health centre at the place which is feasible and accessible to general public. However for specific gender, the gender population is also considered so that both the gender may be benefited equally. In this research, efforts have been made to illustrate how one can choose or locate the best central place/ area in Taluka Kunri of district Umerkot Sindh Pakistan where the Educational or Health activity is to be initiated. For the purpose the concept of centre of mass theorem is used as a tool to develop mathematical model, subsequently utilize in achieving the objectives.

Keywords: Centre of mass theorem, Establishment of technical/ vocational/ health care centre, Gender population of taluka Kunri of District Umerkot, Graphical interpretation of town committee/villages.

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Authors: Palang Wongtanasuporn

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Rural villagers in Thailand have unique skill for producing craft using local materials. However, the appearance and function of their products are not suited to the demand of international market. The Thai government policy on sustainable economy emphasises the necessity to incorporate a design strategy that will draw out the unique qualities and add value to the products, while raising the satisfaction of international consumer. As an industrial designer, the author sees opportunities that design can enhance sustainability of Thai local products through the potentials that available in village-based enterprises. This research attempts to address, how best use design to practically solve the problems in the development of Thais product in. The privilege solution is expressed through the design of design strategy that supports sustain economic development of microenterprise in Thailand in the way that aligns with product design development. This consideration integrates together with global business outlook in the development of products from rural communities.

Keywords: Community Development, Sufficiency Economy Philosophy, Product Design, Strategy Management.

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Authors: Hui-Yu Huang, Shih-Hang Hsu

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In this paper, we propose a robust scheme to work face alignment and recognition under various influences. For face representation, illumination influence and variable expressions are the important factors, especially the accuracy of facial localization and face recognition. In order to solve those of factors, we propose a robust approach to overcome these problems. This approach consists of two phases. One phase is preprocessed for face images by means of the proposed illumination normalization method. The location of facial features can fit more efficient and fast based on the proposed image blending. On the other hand, based on template matching, we further improve the active shape models (called as IASM) to locate the face shape more precise which can gain the recognized rate in the next phase. The other phase is to process feature extraction by using principal component analysis and face recognition by using support vector machine classifiers. The results show that this proposed method can obtain good facial localization and face recognition with varied illumination and local distortion.

Keywords: Gabor filter, improved active shape model (IASM), principal component analysis (PCA), face alignment, face recognition, support vector machine (SVM)

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Authors: D. Abdul Budan, T.S. Manjunatha

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This paper demonstrates the feasibility of replacing the metal coil spring with the composite coil spring. Three different types of springs were made using glass fiber, carbon fiber and combination of glass fiber and carbon fiber. The objective of the study is to reduce the weight of the spring. According to the experimental results the spring rate of the carbon fiber spring is 34% more than the glass fiber spring and 45% more than the glass fiber/carbon fiber spring. The weight of the carbon fiber spring is 18% less than the glass fiber spring, 15% less than the Glass fiber/carbon fiber spring and 80% less than the steel spring.

Keywords: Carbon fiber, Glass fiber, Helical composite spring, spring rate.

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Authors: Wanatchapong Kongkaew

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This paper proposes an application of probabilistic technique, namely Gaussian process regression, for estimating an optimal sequence of the single machine with total weighted tardiness (SMTWT) scheduling problem. In this work, the Gaussian process regression (GPR) model is utilized to predict an optimal sequence of the SMTWT problem, and its solution is improved by using an iterated local search based on simulated annealing scheme, called GPRISA algorithm. The results show that the proposed GPRISA method achieves a very good performance and a reasonable trade-off between solution quality and time consumption. Moreover, in the comparison of deviation from the best-known solution, the proposed mechanism noticeably outperforms the recently existing approaches.

 

Keywords: Gaussian process regression, iterated local search, simulated annealing, single machine total weighted tardiness.

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Authors: Mahdi Sharifian, Mohammad Ali Fanaei

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Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker-s yeast) can exhibit sustained oscillations during the operation in a continuous bioreactor that adversely affects its stability and productivity. Because of heterogeneous nature of cell populations, the cell population balance models can be used to capture the dynamic behavior of such cultures. In this paper an unstructured, segregated model is used which is based on population balance equation(PBE) and then in order to simulation, the 4th order Rung-Kutta is used for time dimension and three methods, finite difference, orthogonal collocation on finite elements and Galerkin finite element are used for discretization of the cell mass domain. The results indicate that the orthogonal collocation on finite element not only is able to predict the oscillating behavior of the cell culture but also needs much little time for calculations. Therefore this method is preferred in comparison with other methods. In the next step two controllers, a globally linearizing control (GLC) and a conventional proportional-integral (PI) controller are designed for controlling the total cell mass per unit volume, and performances of these controllers are compared through simulation. The results show that although the PI controller has simpler structure, the GLC has better performance.

Keywords: Bioreactor, cell population balance, finite difference, orthogonal collocation on finite elements, Galerkin finite element, feedback linearization, PI controller.

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Authors: N. Zainul Abidin, N. Yusof, H. Awang

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Bringing change to the housing industry requires multiple efforts from various angles especially to overcome any resistances in the form of technology, human aspects, financial and resources. The transition from conventional to sustainable approach consumes time as it requires changes from different facets in the industry ranging from individual, organisational to industry level. In Malaysia, there are various efforts to bring green into the industry but the progress is low-moderate. Will the current efforts bear larger fruits in the near future? This study examines the perceptions of the developers in Malaysia on the future of the green housing sector for the next 5 years. The introduction of GBI rating system, improvement of awareness and knowledge among the stakeholders, support from the government and local industry and the effect of competitive advantage would support brighter future. Meanwhile, the status quo in rules and regulation, lack of public interest and demand, organization disinterest, local authority enforcement and project cost escalation would hinder a faster progress.

Keywords: Developers, Green Concept, Housing Industry, Sustainable Construction

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Authors: Yao-Tien Wang, Hsiang-Fu Yu, Dung Chen Chiou

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In wireless and mobile communications, this progress provides opportunities for introducing new standards and improving existing services. Supporting multimedia traffic with wireless networks quality of service (QoS). In this paper, a grey-fuzzy controller for radio resource management (GF-RRM) is presented to maximize the number of the served calls and QoS provision in wireless networks. In a wireless network, the call arrival rate, the call duration and the communication overhead between the base stations and the control center are vague and uncertain. In this paper, we develop a method to predict the cell load and to solve the RRM problem based on the GF-RRM, and support the present facility has been built on the application-level of the wireless networks. The GF-RRM exhibits the better adaptability, fault-tolerant capability and performance than other algorithms. Through simulations, we evaluate the blocking rate, update overhead, and channel acquisition delay time of the proposed method. The results demonstrate our algorithm has the lower blocking rate, less updated overhead, and shorter channel acquisition delay.

Keywords: radio resource management, grey prediction, fuzzylogic control, wireless networks, quality of service.

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Authors: Chen Zhang, Wei Yaping

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With the rapid expansion of city scale and the excessive concentration of population, achieving relative equality of extracurricular education resources and improving spatial service performance of relevant facilities become necessary arduous tasks. In urban space, extracurricular education facilities should offer better service to its targeted area and promote the equality and efficiency of education, which is accomplished by the allocation of facilities. Based on questionnaire and survey for local students in Hangzhou City in 2009, this study classifies extracurricular education facilities in meg-city and defines the equalization of these facilities. Then it is suggested to establish extracurricular education facilities system according to the development level of city and demands of local students, and to introduce a spatial analysis method into urban planning through the aspects of spatial distribution, travel cost and spatial service scope. Finally, the practice of nine sub-districts of Hangzhou is studied.

Keywords: extracurricular education facilities, equalization, spatial service performance, meg-city

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Authors: Efstratios Doukakis, Nikolaos Petrelis

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All climate models agree that the temperature in Greece will increase in the range of 1° to 2°C by the year 2030 and mean sea level in Mediterranean is expected to rise at the rate of 5 cm/decade. The aim of the present paper is the estimation of the coastline displacement driven by the climate change and sea level rise. In order to achieve that, all known statistical and non-statistical computational methods are employed on some Greek coastal areas. Furthermore, Kalman filtering techniques are for the first time introduced, formulated and tested. Based on all the above, shoreline change signals and noises are computed and an inter-comparison between the different methods can be deduced to help evaluating which method is most promising as far as the retrieve of shoreline change rate is concerned.

Keywords: Climate Change, Coastal Displacement, KalmanFilter

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Authors: Z. Mazrouei-Sebdani, A. Khoddami, H. Hadadzadeh, M. Zarrebini

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In this research, waterglass based aerogel powder was prepared by sol–gel process and ambient pressure drying. Inspired by limited dust releasing, aerogel powder was introduced to the PET electrospinning solution in an attempt to create required bulk and surface structure for the nanofibers to improve their hydrophobic and insulation properties. The samples evaluation was carried out by measuring density, porosity, contact angle, heat transfer, FTIR, BET, and SEM. According to the results, porous silica aerogel powder was fabricated with mean pore diameter of 24 nm and contact angle of 145.9º. The results indicated the usefulness of the aerogel powder confined into nanofibers to control surface roughness for manipulating superhydrophobic nanowebs with water contact angle of 147º. It can be due to a multi-scale surface roughness which was created by nanowebs structure itself and nanofibers surface irregularity in presence of the aerogels while a layer of fluorocarbon created low surface energy. The wettability of a solid substrate is an important property that is controlled by both the chemical composition and geometry of the surface. Also, a decreasing trend in the heat transfer was observed from 22% for the nanofibers without any aerogel powder to 8% for the nanofibers with 4% aerogel powder. The development of thermal insulating materials has become increasingly more important than ever in view of the fossil energy depletion and global warming that call for more demanding energysaving practices.

Keywords: Superhydrophobicity, Insulation, Sol-gel, Surface energy, Roughness.

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Authors: Sanaz Seraj, Shohre Rouhani

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Recently, graphene has gained much attention because of its unique optical, mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. Graphene has been used as a key material in the technological applications in various areas such as sensors, drug delivery, super capacitors, transparent conductor, and solar cell. It has a superior quenching efficiency for various fluorophores. Based on these unique properties, the optical sensors with graphene materials as the energy acceptors have demonstrated great success in recent years. During quenching, the emission of a fluorophore is perturbed by a quencher which can be a substrate or biomolecule, and due to this phenomenon, fluorophore-quencher has been used for selective detection of target molecules. Among fluorescence dyes, 1,8-naphthalimide is well known for its typical intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) and photo-induced charge transfer (PET) fluorophore, strong absorption and emission in the visible region, high photo stability, and large Stokes shift. Derivatives of 1,8-naphthalimides have found applications in some areas, especially fluorescence sensors. Herein, the fluorescence quenching of graphene oxide has been carried out on a naphthalimide dye as a fluorescent probe model. The quenching ability of graphene oxide on naphthalimide dye was studied by UV-VIS and fluorescence spectroscopy. This study showed that graphene is an efficient quencher for fluorescent dyes. Therefore, it can be used as a suitable candidate sensing platform. To the best of our knowledge, studies on the quenching and absorption of naphthalimide dyes by graphene oxide are rare.

Keywords: Fluorescence, graphene oxide, naphthalimide dye, quenching.

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

Abstract:

This paper presents a weighted approach to unconstrained iris recognition. In nowadays, commercial systems are usually characterized by strong acquisition constraints based on the subject’s cooperation. However, it is not always achievable for real scenarios in our daily life. Researchers have been focused on reducing these constraints and maintaining the performance of the system by new techniques at the same time. With large variation in the environment, there are two main improvements to develop the proposed iris recognition system. For solving extremely uneven lighting condition, statistic based illumination normalization is first used on eye region to increase the accuracy of iris feature. The detection of the iris image is based on Adaboost algorithm. Secondly, the weighted approach is designed by Gaussian functions according to the distance to the center of the iris. Furthermore, local binary pattern (LBP) histogram is then applied to texture classification with the weight. Experiment showed that the proposed system provided users a more flexible and feasible way to interact with the verification system through iris recognition.

Keywords: Authentication, iris recognition, Adaboost, local binary pattern.

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Authors: T. Niknam, M. Nayeripour, B.Bahmani Firouzi

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Clustering techniques have received attention in many areas including engineering, medicine, biology and data mining. The purpose of clustering is to group together data points, which are close to one another. The K-means algorithm is one of the most widely used techniques for clustering. However, K-means has two shortcomings: dependency on the initial state and convergence to local optima and global solutions of large problems cannot found with reasonable amount of computation effort. In order to overcome local optima problem lots of studies done in clustering. This paper is presented an efficient hybrid evolutionary optimization algorithm based on combining Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), called PSO-ACO, for optimally clustering N object into K clusters. The new PSO-ACO algorithm is tested on several data sets, and its performance is compared with those of ACO, PSO and K-means clustering. The simulation results show that the proposed evolutionary optimization algorithm is robust and suitable for handing data clustering.

Keywords: Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), Data clustering, Hybrid evolutionary optimization algorithm, K-means clustering, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).

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Authors: Jenan Shakoor

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Obesity prevalence is increasing worldwide. University life is a challenging period especially for students who have to leave their familiar surroundings and settle in a new environment. The current study aimed to assess the diet and exercise habits and their association with body mass index (BMI) among nursing college students living at Kirkuk University residence. This was a descriptive study. A non-probability (purposive) sample of 101 students living in Kirkuk University residence was recruited during the period from the 15^th November 2015 to the 5^th May 2016. A questionnaire was constructed for the purpose of the study which consisted of four parts: the demographic characteristics of the study sample, eating habits, eating at college and healthy habits. The data were collected by interviewing the study sample and the weight and height were measured by a trained researcher at the college. Descriptive statistical analysis was undertaken. Data were prepared, organized and entered into the computer file; the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 20) was used for data analysis. A p value≤ 0.05 was accepted as statistical significant. A total of 63 (62.4%) of the sample were aged20-21with a mean age of 22.1 (SD±0.653). A third of the sample 38 (37.6%) were from level four at college, 67 (66.3%) were female and 46 45.5% of participants were from a middle socio-economic status. 14 (13.9%) of the study sample were overweight (BMI =25-29.9kg/m²) and 6 (5.9%) were obese (BMI≥30kg/m²) compared to 73 (72.3%) were of normal weight (BMI =18.5-24.9kg/m²). With regard to eating habits and exercise, 42 (41.6%) of the students rarely ate breakfast, 79 (78.2%) eat lunch at university residence, 77 (78.2%) of the students reported rarely doing exercise and 62 (61.4%) of them were sleeping for less than eight hours. No significant association was found between the variables age, sex, level of college and socio-economic status and BMI, while there was a significant association between eating lunch at university and BMI (p =0.03). No significant association was found between eating habits, healthy habits and BMI. The prevalence of overweight and obesity among the study sample was 19.8% with female students being more obese than males. Further studies are needed to identify BMI among residence students in other colleges and increasing the awareness of undergraduate students to healthy food habits.

Keywords: Body mass index, diet, obesity, university residence.

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Authors: Samraj Andrews, Ramaswamy Palaniappan, Nidal Kamel

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In single trial analysis, when using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to extract Visual Evoked Potential (VEP) signals, the selection of principal components (PCs) is an important issue. We propose a new method here that selects only the appropriate PCs. We denote the method as selective eigen-rate (SER). In the method, the VEP is reconstructed based on the rate of the eigen-values of the PCs. When this technique is applied on emulated VEP signals added with background electroencephalogram (EEG), with a focus on extracting the evoked P3 parameter, it is found to be feasible. The improvement in signal to noise ratio (SNR) is superior to two other existing methods of PC selection: Kaiser (KSR) and Residual Power (RP). Though another PC selection method, Spectral Power Ratio (SPR) gives a comparable SNR with high noise factors (i.e. EEGs), SER give more impressive results in such cases. Next, we applied SER method to real VEP signals to analyse the P3 responses for matched and non-matched stimuli. The P3 parameters extracted through our proposed SER method showed higher P3 response for matched stimulus, which confirms to the existing neuroscience knowledge. Single trial PCA using KSR and RP methods failed to indicate any difference for the stimuli.

Keywords: Electroencephalogram, P3, Single trial VEP.

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Authors: Hari Singh, Abhishek Kamboj, Sudhir Kumar

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This investigation proposes a grey-based Taguchi method to solve the multi-response problems. The grey-based Taguchi method is based on the Taguchi’s design of experimental method, and adopts grey relational analysis (GRA) to transfer multi-response problems into single-response problems. In this investigation, an attempt has been made to optimize the drilling process parameters considering weighted output response characteristics using grey relational analysis. The output response characteristics considered are surface roughness, burr height and hole diameter error under the experimental conditions of cutting speed, feed rate, step angle, and cutting environment. The drilling experiments were conducted using L27 orthogonal array. A combination of orthogonal array, design of experiments and grey relational analysis was used to ascertain best possible drilling process parameters that give minimum surface roughness, burr height and hole diameter error. The results reveal that combination of Taguchi design of experiment and grey relational analysis improves surface quality of drilled hole. 

Keywords: Metal matrix composite, Drilling, Optimization, step drill, Surface roughness, burr height, hole diameter error.

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Authors: Hamid Mohammadi Makerani

Abstract:

In recent years, “Bottom-up Planning Approach" has been widely accepted and expanded from planning theorists. Citizen participation becomes more important in decision-making in informal settlements. Many of previous projects and strategies due to ignorance of citizen participation, have been failed facing with informal settlements and in some cases lead physical expansion of these neighbourhoods. According to recent experiences, the new participatory approach was in somehow successful. This paper focuses on local experiences in Iran. A considerable amount of people live in informal settlements in Iran. With the previous methods, the government could not solve the problems of these settlements. It is time to examine new methods such as empowerment of the local citizens and involve them to solve the current physical, social, and economic problems. The paper aims to address the previous and new strategies facing with informal settlements, the conditions under which citizens could be involved in planning process, limits and potentials of this process, the main actors and issues and finally motivations that are able to promote citizen participation. Documentary studies, observation, interview and questionnaire have been used to achieve the above mentioned objectives. Nearly 80 percent of responder in Saadi Community are ready to participate in regularising their neighbourhoods, if pre-conditions of citizen involvement are being provided. These pre-conditions include kind of problem and its severity, the importance of issue, existence of a short-term solution, etc. Moreover, confirmation of dweller-s ownership can promote the citizen engagement in participatory projects.

Keywords: Bottom-up Planning, Citizen Participation, Informal Settlements, Local Resources.

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

Abstract:

This paper presents an efficient fusion algorithm for iris images to generate stable feature for recognition in unconstrained environment. Recently, iris recognition systems are focused on real scenarios in our daily life without the subject’s cooperation. Under large variation in the environment, the objective of this paper is to combine information from multiple images of the same iris. The result of image fusion is a new image which is more stable for further iris recognition than each original noise iris image. A wavelet-based approach for multi-resolution image fusion is applied in the fusion process. The detection of the iris image is based on Adaboost algorithm and then local binary pattern (LBP) histogram is then applied to texture classification with the weighting scheme. Experiment showed that the generated features from the proposed fusion algorithm can improve the performance for verification system through iris recognition.

Keywords: Image fusion, iris recognition, local binary pattern, wavelet.

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Authors: Yasir Mahmood Qureshi

Abstract:

This paper presents the design and layout of a two stage, high speed operational amplifiers using standard 0.35um CMOS technology. The design procedure involves designing the bias circuit, the differential input pair, and the gain stage using CAD tools. Both schematic and layout of the operational amplifier along with the comparison in the results of the two has been presented. The operational amplifier designed, has a gain of 93.51db at low frequencies. It has a gain bandwidth product of 55.07MHz, phase margin of 51.9º and a slew rate of 22v/us for a load of capacitor of 10pF.

Keywords: Gain bandwidth product, Operational Amplifier, phase margin, slew rate.

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Authors: K. P. Odimayomi, A. G. Adeniyi, S. A. Abdulkareem, F. M. Oladipo Emmanuel, C. A. Adeyanju, M. A Amoloye

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The abundant availability of the local clay/plantain fiber coupled with the various renewable and sustainability advantages has led to their choice as co-fillers in the development of a hybrid polystyrene composite. The prime objective of this study is to evaluate the morphological and dynamic mechanical properties using Scanning Electron Microscopy and Dynamic Mechanical Analysis. The hybrid polystyrene composite development was developed via the hand-lay-up method. All processing including the constituent mixing and curing were achieved at room temperature (25 ± 2 ℃).   The mechanical characteristics of the developed composites via Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) confirm an indirect relationship between time and storage modulus, this pattern becomes more evident at higher frequencies. It is clearly portrayed that the addition of clay and plantain fiber in the polystyrene matrix increases the stiffness of the developed composite.

Keywords: Morphology, DMA, Akerebiata clay, plantain fiber, hybrid polystyrene composites.

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Authors: M. Hadi Kusuma, Nandy Putra, Anhar Riza Antariksawan, Ficky Augusta Imawan

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Heat pipe is considered to be applied as a passive system to remove residual heat that generated from reactor core when incident occur or from spent fuel storage pool. The objectives are to characterized the heat transfer phenomena, performance of heat pipe, and as a model for large heat pipe will be applied as passive cooling system on nuclear spent fuel pool storage. In this experimental wickless heat pipe or two-phase closed thermosyphon (TPCT) is used. Variation of heat flux are 611.24 Watt/m² - 3291.29 Watt/m². Variation of filling ratio are 45 - 70%. Variation of initial pressure are -62 to -74 cm Hg. Demineralized water is used as working fluid in the TPCT. The results showed that increasing of heat load leads to an increase of evaporation of the working fluid. The optimum filling ratio obtained for 60% of TPCT evaporator volume, and initial pressure variation gave different TPCT wall temperature characteristic. TPCT showed best performance with 60% filling ratio and can be consider to be applied as passive residual heat removal system or passive cooling system on spent fuel storage pool.

Keywords: Two-phase closed thermo syphon, heat pipe, passive cooling, spent fuel storage pool.

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Authors: Maléne Maria Magdalena Campbell, Jeremiah Mholo

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Low-income households earning less than 3,500 ZAR (about 175 GBP) per month can apply to the South African government, through the National Housing Subsidy, for fully subsidised houses. An objective of this subsidy is to enable low-income households’ participation in the formal housing market; however, the beneficiaries received houses without title deeds. As such, if the beneficiaries did not have a secured tenure at the time of their death then surviving family may face possible eviction. Therefore, an aim of this research was to determine how these beneficiaries interpret tenure security. The research focused on government subsidised housing in the Dithlake settlement of a rural hamlet named Koffiefontein, in the Letsemeng Local Municipality of South Africa. Quantitative data on the beneficiaries were collected from the local municipality, while qualitative data were collected from a sample of 45 beneficiaries.

Keywords: Low-income families, subsidised housing, titling, housing market, South Africa.

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Authors: Francisco José Plácido da Cunha, Tassio Ferenzini Martins Sirqueira, Marx Leles Viana, Carlos José Pereira de Lucena

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Open Multiagent Systems (MASs) are societies in which heterogeneous and independently designed entities (agents) work towards similar, or different ends. Software agents are autonomous and the diversity of interests among different members living in the same society is a fact. In order to deal with this autonomy, these open systems use mechanisms of social control (norms) to ensure a desirable social order. This paper considers the following types of norms: (i) obligation — agents must accomplish a specific outcome; (ii) permission — agents may act in a particular way, and (iii) prohibition — agents must not act in a specific way. All of these characteristics mean to encourage the fulfillment of norms through rewards and to discourage norm violation by pointing out the punishments. Once the software agent decides that its priority is the satisfaction of its own desires and goals, each agent must evaluate the effects associated to the fulfillment of one or more norms before choosing which one should be fulfilled. The same applies when agents decide to violate a norm. This paper also introduces a framework for the development of MASs that provide support mechanisms to the agent’s decision-making, using norm-based reasoning. The applicability and validation of this approach is demonstrated applying a traffic intersection scenario.

Keywords: BDI aAgent, BDI4JADE framework, multiagent system, normative agents.

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Authors: Joshua S. Valeta, Marc C. Verdegem

Abstract:

A study was undertaken to assess the potential of an Algal Turf Scrubber to remove nitrogen from aquaculture effluent to reduce environmental pollution. High total ammonia nitrogen concentrations were introduced to an Algal Turf Scrubber developed under varying hydraulic surface loading rates of African catfish (Clarius gariepinus) effluent in a recirculating aquaculture system. Nutrient removal rates were not affected at total suspended solids concentration of up to 0.04g TSS/l (P > 0.05). Nitrogen removal rates 0.93-0.99g TAN/m²/d were recorded at very high loading rates 3.76-3.81 g TAN/m²/d. Total ammonia removal showed ½ order kinetics between 1.6 to 2.3mg/l Total Ammonia Nitrogen concentrations. Nitrogen removal increased with its loading, which increased with hydraulic surface loading rate. Total Ammonia Nitrogen removal by Algal turf scrubber was higher than reported values for fluidized bed filters and trickling filters. The algal turf scrubber also effectively removed nitrate thereby reducing the need for water exchange.

Keywords: Algal turf, loading rate, nitrogen, organic matter, removal rate.

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Authors: Kexin Jia, Youxin Lu

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To make the modulation classification system more suitable for signals in a wide range of signal to noise rate (SNR), a novel method of designing combined classifier based on fuzzy neural network (FNN) is presented in this paper. The method employs fuzzy neural network classifiers and interclass distance (ICD) to improve recognition reliability. Experimental results show that the proposed combined classifier has high recognition rate with large variation range of SNR (success rates are over 99.9% when SNR is not lower than 5dB).

Keywords: Modulation classification, combined classifier, fuzzy neural network, interclass distance.

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Authors: L. Hammadi, N. Boudjenane, R. Houdjedje, R. Reffis, M. Belhadri

Abstract:

In this study, we investigated the thixotropic behavior of two clays used in fabrication of ceramic. The structural kinetic model (SKM) was used to characterize the thixotropic behavior of two different kinds of clays used in fabrication of ceramic. The SKM postulates that the change in the rheological behavior is associated with shear-induced breakdown of the internal structure of the clays. This model for the structure decay with time at constant shear rate assumes nth order kinetics for the decay of the material structure with a rate constant.

Keywords: Ceramic, clays, structural kinetic model, thixotropy, viscosity.

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Authors: Dong-Hyung Kim, Ji Yeong Lee, Chang-Soo Han

Abstract:

This paper presents a sensor-based motion planning algorithm for 3-DOF car-like robots with a nonholonomic constraint. Similar to the classic Bug family algorithms, the proposed algorithm enables the car-like robot to navigate in a completely unknown environment using only the range sensor information. The car-like robot uses the local range sensor view to determine the local path so that it moves towards the goal. To guarantee that the robot can approach the goal, the two modes of motion are repeated, termed motion-to-goal and wall-following. The motion-to-goal behavior lets the robot directly move toward the goal, and the wall-following behavior makes the robot circumnavigate the obstacle boundary until it meets the leaving condition. For each behavior, the nonholonomic motion for the car-like robot is planned in terms of the instantaneous turning radius. The proposed algorithm is implemented to the real robot and the experimental results show the performance of proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Motion planning, car-like robot, bug algorithm, autonomous motion planning, nonholonomic constraint.

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