Search results for: average daily gain

Authors: Nurul' Ain Ab Jalil, Hassan Basri

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This paper reviews the objectives, methods and results of previous studies on biodrying of solid waste in several countries. Biodrying of solid waste is a novel technology in developing countries such as in Malaysia where high moisture content in organic waste makes the segregation process for recycling purposes complicated and diminishes the calorific value for the use of fuel source. In addition, the high moisture content also encourages the breeding of vectors and disease-bearing animals. From the laboratory results, the average moisture content of organic waste, paper, plastics and metals are 58.17%, 37.93%, 29.79% and 1.03% respectively for UKM campus. Biodrying of solid waste is a simple method of waste treatment as well as a cost-efficient technology to dry the solid waste. The process depends on temperature monitoring and air flow control along with the natural biodegradable process of organic waste. This review shows that the biodrying of solid waste method has high potential in treatment and recycling of solid waste, be useful for biodrying study and implementation in Malaysia.

Keywords: Biodrying of solid waste, Organic waste, Fuel source.

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Authors: K. Paisal

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The purposes of this research were (1) to create a learning activity for constructivism, (2) study the Mathematical Analysis courses learning achievement, and (3) study students’ attitude toward the learning activity for constructivism. The samples in this study were divided into 2 parts including 3 Mathematical Analysis courses instructors of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University who provided basic information and attended the seminar and 17 Mathematical Analysis courses students who were studying in the academic and engaging in the learning activity for constructivism. The research instruments were lesson plans constructivism, subjective Mathematical Analysis courses achievement test with reliability index of 0.8119, and an attitude test concerning the students’ attitude toward the Mathematical Analysis courses learning activity for constructivism. The result of the research show that the efficiency of the Mathematical Analysis courses learning activity for constructivism is 73.05/72.16, which is more than expected criteria of 70/70. The research additionally find that the average score of learning achievement of students who engaged in the learning activities for constructivism are equal to 70% and the students’ attitude toward the learning activity for constructivism are at the medium level.

Keywords: Constructivism, learning management, Mathematical Analysis courses.

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Authors: W. J. Strydom, K. Puren

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Place-making is viewed here as an empowering process in which people represent, improve and maintain their spatial (natural or built) environment. With the above-mentioned in mind, place-making is multi-dimensional and include a spatial dimension (including visual properties or the end product/plan), a procedural dimension during which (negotiation/discussion of ideas with all relevant stakeholders in terms of end product/plan) and a psychological dimension (inclusion of intrinsic values and meanings related to a place in the end product/plan). These three represent dimensions of place-making. The purpose of this paper is to explore these dimensions of place-making in a case study of a local community in Ikageng, Potchefstroom, North-West Province, South Africa. This case study represents an inclusive process that strives to empower a local community (forcefully relocated due to Apartheid legislation in South Africa). This case study focussed on the inclusion of participants in the decision-making process regarding their daily environment. By means of focus group discussions and a collaborative design workshop, data is generated and ultimately creates a linkage with the theoretical dimensions of place-making. This paper contributes to the field of spatial planning due to the exploration of the dimensions of place-making and the relevancy of this process on spatial planning (especially in a South African setting).

Keywords: Case study, place-making, spatial planning, spatial dimension, procedural dimension, psychological dimension.

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Authors: Sh. Yasini, M. B. Naghibi-Sistani, A. Karimpour

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This paper employs a new approach to regulate the blood glucose level of type I diabetic patient under an intensive insulin treatment. The closed-loop control scheme incorporates expert knowledge about treatment by using reinforcement learning theory to maintain the normoglycemic average of 80 mg/dl and the normal condition for free plasma insulin concentration in severe initial state. The insulin delivery rate is obtained off-line by using Qlearning algorithm, without requiring an explicit model of the environment dynamics. The implementation of the insulin delivery rate, therefore, requires simple function evaluation and minimal online computations. Controller performance is assessed in terms of its ability to reject the effect of meal disturbance and to overcome the variability in the glucose-insulin dynamics from patient to patient. Computer simulations are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed technique and to show its superiority in controlling hyperglycemia over other existing algorithms

Keywords: Insulin Delivery rate, Q-learning algorithm, Reinforcement learning, Type I diabetes.

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Authors: Chi Jung Kim, Mincheol Whang, Eui Chul Lee

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In this paper, we propose a new method to distinguish between arousal and relaxation states by using multiple features acquired from a photoplethysmogram (PPG) and support vector machine (SVM). To induce arousal and relaxation states in subjects, 2 kinds of sound stimuli are used, and their corresponding biosignals are obtained using the PPG sensor. Two features–pulse to pulse interval (PPI) and pulse amplitude (PA)–are extracted from acquired PPG data, and a nonlinear classification between arousal and relaxation is performed using SVM. This methodology has several advantages when compared with previous similar studies. Firstly, we extracted 2 separate features from PPG, i.e., PPI and PA. Secondly, in order to improve the classification accuracy, SVM-based nonlinear classification was performed. Thirdly, to solve classification problems caused by generalized features of whole subjects, we defined each threshold according to individual features. Experimental results showed that the average classification accuracy was 74.67%. Also, the proposed method showed the better identification performance than the single feature based methods. From this result, we confirmed that arousal and relaxation can be classified using SVM and PPG features.

Keywords: Support Vector Machine, PPG, Emotion Recognition, Arousal, Relaxation

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Authors: N. Southiseng, J. Walsh

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Prior to 1975, women in Laos suffered from having reduced levels of power over decision-making in their families and in their communities. This has had a negative impact on their ability to develop their own identities. Their roles were identified as being responsible for household activities and making preparations for their marriage. Many women lost opportunities to get educated and access the outdoor work that might have empowered them to improve their situations. So far, no accurate figures of either emigrants or return migrants have been compiled but it appears that most of them were women, and it was women who most and more frequently remitted money home. However, very few recent studies have addressed the relationship between remittances and the roles of women in Laos. This study, therefore, aims at redressing to some extent the deficiencies in knowledge. Qualitative techniques were used to gather data, including individual in-depth interviews and direct observation in combination with the content analysis method. Forty women in Vientiane Municipality and Savannakhet province were individually interviewed. It was found that the monetary remittance was typically used for family security and well-being; on fungible activities; on economic and business activities; and on community development, especially concerning hospitality and providing daily household necessities. Remittances played important roles in improving many respondents- livelihoods and positively changed their identities in families and communities. Women became empowered as they were able to start commercial businesses, rather than taking care of (just) housework, children and elders. Interviews indicated that 92.5% of the respondents their quality of lives improved, 90% felt happier in their families and 82.5% felt conflicts in their families were reduced.

Keywords: Laos, Monetary Remittances, Social Remittance, Women's Empowerment.

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Authors: R. Bhuvenesh, M.H. Norizaman, M.S. Abdul Manan

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Industrial surveys shows that manufacturing companies define the qualities of thermal removing process based on the dimension and physical appearance of the cutting material surface. Therefore, the roughness of the surface area of the material cut by the plasma arc cutting process and the rate of the removed material by the manual plasma arc cutting machine was importantly considered. Plasma arc cutter Selco Genesis 90 was used to cut Standard AISI 1017 Steel of 200 mm x100 mm x 6 mm manually based on the selected parameters setting. The material removal rate (MRR) was measured by determining the weight of the specimens before and after the cutting process. The surface roughness (SR) analysis was conducted using Mitutoyo CS-3100 to determine the average roughness value (Ra). Taguchi method was utilized to achieve optimum condition for both outputs studied. The microstructure analysis in the region of the cutting surface is performed using SEM. The results reveal that the SR values are inversely proportional to the MRR values. The quality of the surface roughness depends on the dross peak that occurred after the cutting process.

Keywords: Material removal rate, plasma arc cutting, surface roughness, Taguchi method

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Authors: JiEun Jeong, Se-Won Kang, Hee-Ju Hwang, Sung-Hwa Chae, Sang-Haeng Choi, Hong-SeogPark, YeonSoo Han, Bok-Reul Lee, Dae-Hyun Seog, Yong Seok Lee

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Tofurther advance research on immune-related genes from T. molitor, we constructed acDNA library and analyzed expressed sequence taq (EST) sequences from 1,056 clones. After removing vector sequence and quality checkingthrough thePhred program (trim_alt 0.05 (P-score>20), 1039 sequences were generated. The average length of insert was 792 bp. In addition, we identified 162 clusters, 167 contigs and 391 contigs after clustering and assembling process using a TGICL package. EST sequences were searchedagainst NCBI nr database by local BLAST (blastx, EKeywords: EST, Innate immunity, Tenebriomolitor

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Authors: Michalis D. Galanis, Gregory Dimitroulakos, Costas E. Goutis

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Speedups from mapping four real-life DSP applications on an embedded system-on-chip that couples coarsegrained reconfigurable logic with an instruction-set processor are presented. The reconfigurable logic is realized by a 2-Dimensional Array of Processing Elements. A design flow for improving application-s performance is proposed. Critical software parts, called kernels, are accelerated on the Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Array. The kernels are detected by profiling the source code. For mapping the detected kernels on the reconfigurable logic a prioritybased mapping algorithm has been developed. Two 4x4 array architectures, which differ in their interconnection structure among the Processing Elements, are considered. The experiments for eight different instances of a generic system show that important overall application speedups have been reported for the four applications. The performance improvements range from 1.86 to 3.67, with an average value of 2.53, compared with an all-software execution. These speedups are quite close to the maximum theoretical speedups imposed by Amdahl-s law.

Keywords: Reconfigurable computing, Coarse-grained reconfigurable array, Embedded systems, DSP, Performance

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Authors: M. Byzedi, B. Saghafian

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Droughts are complex, natural hazards that, to a varying degree, affect some parts of the world every year. The range of drought impacts is related to drought occurring in different stages of the hydrological cycle and usually different types of droughts, such as meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomical are distinguished. Streamflow drought was analyzed by the method of truncation level (at 70% level) on daily discharges measured in 54 hydrometric stations in southwestern Iran. Frequency analysis was carried out for annual maximum series (AMS) of drought deficit volume and duration series. Some factors including physiographic, climatic, geologic, and vegetation cover were studied as influential factors in the regional analysis. According to the results of factor analysis, six most effective factors were identified as area, rainfall from December to February, the percent of area with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) <0.1, the percent of convex area, drainage density and the minimum of watershed elevation that explained 90.9% of variance. The homogenous regions were determined by cluster analysis and discriminate function analysis. Suitable multivariate regression models were evaluated for streamflow drought deficit volume with 2 years return period. The significance level of regression models was 0.01. The results showed that the watershed area is the most effective factor with high correlation with deficit volume. Also, drought duration was not a suitable drought index for regional analysis.

Keywords: Iran, Streamflow drought, truncation level method, regional analysis.

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Authors: Rania Alshikhe, Vinita Jindal

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Digital innovation has played a crucial role in managing smart transportation. For this, big trajectory data collected from trav-eling vehicles, such as taxis through installed global positioning sys-tem (GPS)-enabled devices can be utilized. It offers an unprecedented opportunity to trace the movements of vehicles in fine spatiotemporal granularity. This paper aims to explore big trajectory data to measure the travel efficiency of road networks using the proposed statistical travel efficiency measure (STEM) across an entire city. Further, it identifies the cause of low travel efficiency by proposed least square approximation network-based causality exploration (LANCE). Finally, the resulting data analysis reveals the causes of low travel efficiency, along with the road segments that need to be optimized to improve the traffic conditions and thus minimize the average travel time from given point A to point B in the road network. Obtained results show that our proposed approach outperforms the baseline algorithms for measuring the travel efficiency of the road network.

Keywords: GPS trajectory, road network, taxi trips, digital map, big data, STEM, LANCE

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Authors: Lei Yao, Jia Hao Cheong, Rui-Feng Xue, Minkyu Je

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A closed-loop controlled wireless power transmission circuit block for implantable biomedical applications is described in this paper. The circuit consists of one front-end rectifier, power management sub-block including bandgap reference and low drop-out regulators (LDOs) as well as transmission power detection / feedback circuits. Simulation result shows that the front-end rectifier achieves 80% power efficiency with 750-mV single-end peak-to-peak input voltage and 1.28-V output voltage under load current of 4 mA. The power management block can supply 1.8mA average load current under 1V consuming only 12μW power, which is equivalent to 99.3% power efficiency. The wireless power transmission block described in this paper achieves a maximum power efficiency of 80%. The wireless power transmission circuit block is designed and implemented using UMC 65-nm CMOS/RF process. It occupies 1 mm × 1.2 mm silicon area.

Keywords: Implantable biomedical devices, wireless power transfer, LDO, rectifier, closed-loop power control

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Authors: Eduardo F. Mello, Peter H. Bauer

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The primary focus of this paper is the generation of energy-optimal speed trajectories for heterogeneous electric vehicle platoons in urban driving conditions. Optimal speed trajectories are generated for individual vehicles and for an entire platoon under the assumption that they can be executed without errors, as would be the case for self-driving vehicles. It is then shown that the optimization for the “average vehicle in the platoon” generates similar transportation energy savings to optimizing speed trajectories for each vehicle individually. The introduced approach only requires the lead vehicle to run the optimization software while the remaining vehicles are only required to have adaptive cruise control capability. The achieved energy savings are typically between 30% and 50% for stop-to-stop segments in cities. The prime motivation of urban platooning comes from the fact that urban platoons efficiently utilize the available space and the minimization of transportation energy in cities is important for many reasons, i.e., for environmental, power, and range considerations.

Keywords: Electric vehicles, energy efficiency, optimization, platooning, self-driving vehicles, urban traffic.

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Authors: Sylvia Tumelo Nthutang, Nehemiah Mavetera

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Educational institutions are under pressure from their competitors. Regulators and community groups need educational institutions to adopt appropriate business and organizational practices. Globally, educational institutions are now using e-learning as the best teaching and learning approach. E-learning is becoming the center of attention to the learning institutions, educational systems and software inventors. North-West University (NWU) is currently using eFundi, a Learning Management System (LMS). LMS are all information systems and procedures that adds value to students learning and support the learning material in text or any multimedia files. With various e-learning tools, students would be able to access all the materials related to the course in electronic copies. The study was tasked with identifying the e-learning components at the NWU, Mafikeng campus. Quantitative research methodology was considered in data collection and descriptive statistics for data analysis. The Activity Theory (AT) was used as a theory to guide the study. AT outlines the limitations amongst e-learning at the macro-organizational level (plan, guiding principle, campus-wide solutions) and micro-organization (daily functioning practice, collaborative transformation, specific adaptation). On a technological environment, AT gives people an opportunity to change from concentrating on computers as an area of concern but also understand that technology is part of human activities. The findings have identified the university’s current IT tools and knowledge on e-learning elements. It was recommended that university should consider buying computer resources that consumes less power and practice e-learning effectively.

Keywords: E-learning, information and communication technology, teaching, and virtual learning environment.

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Authors: F. Ammari, M. Chenouf

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Synthesis of gold nanoparticles has attracted much attention since the pioneering discovery of the high catalytic activity of supported gold nanoparticles in the reaction of CO oxidation at low temperature. In this research field, we used Na-montmorillonite for gold nanoparticles stabilization; various gold loading percentage 1, 2 and 5% were used for gold nanoparticles preparation. The gold nanoparticles were obtained using chemical reduction method using NaBH4 as reductant agent. The obtained gold nanoparticles stabilized in Na-montmorillonite were used as catalysts for the reduction of 4- nitrophenol to aminophenol with sodium borohydride at room temperature. The UV-Vis results confirmed directly the gold nanoparticles formation. The XRD and N2 adsorption results showed the formation of gold nanoparticles in the pores of montmorillonite with an average size of 5 nm obtained on samples with 2% gold loading percentage. The gold particles size increased with the increase of gold loading percentage. The reduction reaction of 4- nitrophenol into 4-aminophenol with NaBH4 catalyzed by Au-Namontmorillonite catalyst exhibits remarkably a high activity; the reaction was completed within 9 min for 1%Au-Na-montmorillonite and within 3 min for 2%Au-Na-montmorillonite.

Keywords: Chemical reduction, gold, montmorillonite, nanoparticles, 4-nitrophenol.

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Authors: Chandrakala Varatharajoo, Adelina Binti Asmawi, Nabeel Abdallah Mohammad Abedalaziz

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This study investigated the impact of inflectional and derivational morphemic analysis awareness on ESL secondary school students’ vocabulary learning strategy. The quasi-experimental study was conducted with 106 low proficiency secondary school students in two experimental groups (inflectional and derivational) and one control group. The students’ vocabulary acquisition was assessed through two measures: Morphemic Analysis Test and Vocabulary- Morphemic Test in the pretest and posttest before and after an intervention programme. Results of ANCOVA revealed that both the experimental groups achieved a significant score in Morphemic Analysis Test and Vocabulary-Morphemic Test. However, the inflectional group obtained a fairly higher score than the derivational group. Thus, the results indicated that ESL low proficiency secondary school students performed better on inflectional morphemic awareness as compared to derivatives. The results also showed that the awareness of inflectional morphology contributed more on the vocabulary acquisition. Importantly, learning inflectional morphology can help ESL low proficiency secondary school students to develop both morphemic awareness and vocabulary gain. Theoretically, these findings show that not all morphemes are equally useful to students for their language development. Practically, these findings indicate that morphological instruction should at least be included in remediation and instructional efforts with struggling learners across all grade levels, allowing them to focus on meaning within the word before they attempt the text in large for better comprehension. Also, by methodologically, by conducting individualized intervention and assessment this study provided fresh empirical evidence to support the existing literature on morphemic analysis awareness and vocabulary learning strategy. Thus, a major pedagogical implication of the study is that morphemic analysis awareness strategy is a definite boon for ESL secondary school students in learning English vocabulary.

Keywords: ESL, instruction, morphemic analysis, vocabulary.

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Authors: Feyza Eda Akyurek, Bayram Sahin, Kadir Gelis, Eyuphan Manay, Murat Ceylan

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Turbulent forced convection heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of Al₂O₃–water nanofluid flowing through a concentric tube heat exchanger with and without coiled wire turbulators were studied experimentally. The experiments were conducted in the Reynolds number ranging from 4000 to 20000, particle volume concentrations of 0.8 vol.% and 1.6 vol.%. Two turbulators with the pitches of 25 mm and 39 mm were used. The results of nanofluids indicated that average Nusselt number increased much more with increasing Reynolds number compared to that of pure water. Thermal conductivity enhancement by the nanofluids resulted in heat transfer enhancement. Once the pressure drop of the alumina/water nanofluid was analyzed, it was nearly equal to that of pure water at the same Reynolds number range. It was concluded that nanofluids with the volume fractions of 0.8 and 1.6 did not have a significant effect on pressure drop change. However, the use of wire coils in heat exchanger enhanced heat transfer as well as the pressure drop.

Keywords: Turbulators, heat exchanger, nanofluids, heat transfer enhancement.

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Authors: Ali Reza Tahavvor, Saeed Hosseini, Afshin Karimzadeh Fard

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In this paper the effect of wall waviness of side walls in a two-dimensional wavy enclosure is numerically investigated. Two vertical wavy walls and straight top wall are kept isothermal and the bottom wall temperature is higher and spatially varying with cosinusoidal temperature distribution. A computational code based on Finite-volume approach is used to solve governing equations and SIMPLE method is used for pressure velocity coupling. Test is performed for several different numbers of undulations. The Prandtl number was kept constant and the Ra number denotes that the flow is laminar. Temperature and velocity fields are determined. Therefore, according to the obtained results a correlation is proposed for average Nusselt number as a function of number of side wall waves. The results indicate that the Nusselt number is highly affected by number of waves and increasing it decreases the wavy walls Nusselt number; although the Nusselt number is not highly affected by surface waviness when the number of undulations is below one.

Keywords: Cavity, natural convection, Nusselt number, wavy wall.

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Authors: A. Sabzali, M. Nikaeen, B. Bina

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The purpose of the experiments described in this article was the comparison of integrated fixed film activated sludge (IFAS) and activated sludge (AS) system. The IFAS applied system consists of the cigarette filter rods (wasted filter in tobacco factories) as a biofilm carrier. The comparison with activated sludge was performed by two parallel treatment lines. Organic substance, ammonia and TP removal was investigated over four month period. Synthetic wastewater was prepared with ordinary tap water and glucose as the main sources of carbon and energy, plus balanced macro and micro nutrients. COD removal percentages of 94.55%, and 81.62% were achieved for IFAS and activated sludge system, respectively. Also, ammonia concentration significantly decreased by increasing the HRT in both systems. The average ammonia removal of 97.40 % and 96.34% were achieved for IFAS and activated sludge system, respectively. The removal efficiency of total phosphorus (TP-P) was 60.64%, higher than AS process by 56.63% respectively.

Keywords: Wastewater, biofilm carrier, cigarette filters rods, Activated Sludge, IFAS, nitrification.

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Authors: Maruto Masserie Sardadi, Mohd Shafry bin Mohd Rahim, Zahabidin Jupri, Daut bin Daman

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The latest Geographic Information System (GIS) technology makes it possible to administer the spatial components of daily “business object," in the corporate database, and apply suitable geographic analysis efficiently in a desktop-focused application. We can use wireless internet technology for transfer process in spatial data from server to client or vice versa. However, the problem in wireless Internet is system bottlenecks that can make the process of transferring data not efficient. The reason is large amount of spatial data. Optimization in the process of transferring and retrieving data, however, is an essential issue that must be considered. Appropriate decision to choose between R-tree and Quadtree spatial data indexing method can optimize the process. With the rapid proliferation of these databases in the past decade, extensive research has been conducted on the design of efficient data structures to enable fast spatial searching. Commercial database vendors like Oracle have also started implementing these spatial indexing to cater to the large and diverse GIS. This paper focuses on the decisions to choose R-tree and quadtree spatial indexing using Oracle spatial database in mobile GIS application. From our research condition, the result of using Quadtree and R-tree spatial data indexing method in one single spatial database can save the time until 42.5%.

Keywords: Indexing, Mobile GIS, MapViewer, Oracle SpatialDatabase.

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Authors: Ryuji Yamazaki, Masahiro Kochi, Weiran Zhu, Hiroko Kase

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In care for older adults, behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) like agitation and aggression are distressing for patients and their caretakers, often resulting in premature institutionalization with increased costs of care. To improve mood and mitigate symptoms, as a non-pharmaceutical approach, emotion-oriented therapy like reminiscence work is adopted in face-to-face communication. Telecommunication support is expected to be provided by robotic media as a bridge for digital divide for those with dementia and facilitate social interaction both verbally and nonverbally. The purpose of this case study is to explore the conditions in which robotic media can effectively attract attention from older adults with dementia and promote their well-being. As a pilot study, we introduced the pillow-phone Hugvie^®, a huggable humanly shaped communication medium to five residents with dementia at a care facility, to investigate how the following conditions work for the elderly when they use the medium; 1) no sound, 2) radio, non-interactive, 3) daily conversation, and 4) reminiscence work. As a result, under condition 4, reminiscence work, the five participants kept concentration in interacting with the medium for a longer duration than other conditions. In condition 4, they also showed larger amount of utterances than under other conditions. These results indicate that providing topics related to personal histories through robotic media could affect communication positively and should, therefore, be further investigated. In addition, the issue of ethical implications by using persuasive technology that affects emotions and behaviors of older adults is also discussed.

Keywords: BPSD, reminiscence, tactile telecommunication, utterances.

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Authors: Zeljana Aljinovic Barac, Marina Granic, Tina Vuko

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Study investigates the level and extent of voluntary disclosure practice in Croatia. The research was conducted on the sample of 130 medium and large companies. Findings indicate that two thirds of the companies analyzed disclose below-average number of additional information. The explanatory analyses has shown that firm size, listing status and industrial sector significantly and positively affect the level and extent of voluntary disclosure in the annual report of Croatian companies. On the other hand, profitability and ownership structure were found statistically insignificant. Unlike previous studies, this paper deals with level of voluntary disclosure of medium and large companies, as well as companies whose shares are not listed on the organized capital market, which can be found as our contribution. Also, the research makes contribution by providing the insights into voluntary disclosure practices in Croatia, as a case of macro-oriented accounting system economy, i.e. bank oriented economy with an emerging capital market.

Keywords: Annual report, Croatian companies, Disclosure index, Voluntary disclosure.

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Authors: Guang Sun, Yong Li, Yuanyuan Zhang, Shijun Lin, Li Su, Depeng Jin, Lieguang zeng

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Network on Chip (NoC) has emerged as a promising on chip communication infrastructure. Three Dimensional Integrate Circuit (3D IC) provides small interconnection length between layers and the interconnect scalability in the third dimension, which can further improve the performance of NoC. Therefore, in this paper, a hierarchical cluster-based interconnect architecture is merged with the 3D IC. This interconnect architecture significantly reduces the number of long wires. Since this architecture only has approximately a quarter of routers in 3D mesh-based architecture, the average number of hops is smaller, which leads to lower latency and higher throughput. Moreover, smaller number of routers decreases the area overhead. Meanwhile, some dual links are inserted into the bottlenecks of communication to improve the performance of NoC. Simulation results demonstrate our theoretical analysis and show the advantages of our proposed architecture in latency, throughput and area, when compared with 3D mesh-based architecture.

Keywords: Network on Chip (NoC), interconnect architecture, performance, area, Three Dimensional Integrate Circuit (3D IC).

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Authors: Ritwik Dutta, Marilyn Wolf

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This paper describes the tradeoffs and the design from scratch of a self-contained, easy-to-use health dashboard software system that provides customizable data tracking for patients in smart homes. The system is made up of different software modules and comprises a front-end and a back-end component. Built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the front-end allows adding users, logging into the system, selecting metrics, and specifying health goals. The backend consists of a NoSQL Mongo database, a Python script, and a SimpleHTTPServer written in Python. The database stores user profiles and health data in JSON format. The Python script makes use of the PyMongo driver library to query the database and displays formatted data as a daily snapshot of user health metrics against target goals. Any number of standard and custom metrics can be added to the system, and corresponding health data can be fed automatically, via sensor APIs or manually, as text or picture data files. A real-time METAR request API permits correlating weather data with patient health, and an advanced query system is implemented to allow trend analysis of selected health metrics over custom time intervals. Available on the GitHub repository system, the project is free to use for academic purposes of learning and experimenting, or practical purposes by building on it.

Keywords: Flask, Java, JavaScript, health monitoring, long term care, Mongo, Python, smart home, software engineering, webserver.

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Authors: Lada-On Lertsuwanakul, Herwig Unger

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This paper objects to extend Jon Kleinberg-s research. He introduced the structure of small-world in a grid and shows with a greedy algorithm using only local information able to find route between source and target in delivery time O(log2n). His fundamental model for distributed system uses a two-dimensional grid with longrange random links added between any two node u and v with a probability proportional to distance d(u,v)-2. We propose with an additional information of the long link nearby, we can find the shorter path. We apply the ant colony system as a messenger distributed their pheromone, the long-link details, in surrounding area. The subsequence forwarding decision has more option to move to, select among local neighbors or send to node has long link closer to its target. Our experiment results sustain our approach, the average routing time by Color Pheromone faster than greedy method.

Keywords: Routing algorithm, Small-World network, Ant Colony Optimization, and Peer-to-peer System.

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Authors: E. N. Sathishkumar, K. Thangavel, T. Chandrasekhar

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Feature selection is a process to select features which are more informative. It is one of the important steps in knowledge discovery. The problem is that all genes are not important in gene expression data. Some of the genes may be redundant, and others may be irrelevant and noisy. Here a novel approach is proposed Hybrid K-Mean-Quick Reduct (KMQR) algorithm for gene selection from gene expression data. In this study, the entire dataset is divided into clusters by applying K-Means algorithm. Each cluster contains similar genes. The high class discriminated genes has been selected based on their degree of dependence by applying Quick Reduct algorithm to all the clusters. Average Correlation Value (ACV) is calculated for the high class discriminated genes. The clusters which have the ACV value as 1 is determined as significant clusters, whose classification accuracy will be equal or high when comparing to the accuracy of the entire dataset. The proposed algorithm is evaluated using WEKA classifiers and compared. The proposed work shows that the high classification accuracy.

Keywords: Clustering, Gene Selection, K-Mean-Quick Reduct, Rough Sets.

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Authors: Inaki Maulida Hakim, Alesandro Romero

Abstract:

This research was conducted in an automotive company in Indonesia to overcome the problem of high logistics cost. The problem causes high of additional truck delivery. From the breakdown of the problem, chosen one route, which has the highest gap value, namely for RE-04. Research methodology will be started from calculating the ideal condition, making simulation, calculating the ideal logistic cost, and proposing an improvement. From the calculation of the ideal condition, box arrangement was done on the truck has efficiency with three trucks delivery per day. Route simulation making uses Tecnomatix Plant Simulation software as a visualization for the company about how the system is occurred on route RE-04 in ideal condition. The last step is proposing improvements on the area of route RE-04. The route arrangement is done by Saving Method and sequence of each supplier with the Nearest Neighbor. The results of the proposed improvements are three new route groups, where was expected to decrease logistics cost and increase the average of the truck efficiency per day.

Keywords: Logistic cost, milkrun, simulation, efficiency.

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Authors: Shashank.B. Thakre, L.B. Bhuyar, Samir.J. Deshmukh

Abstract:

The value of overall oxygen transfer Coefficient (KLa), which is the best measure of oxygen transfer in water through aeration, is obtained by a simple approach, which sufficiently explains the utility of the method to eliminate the discrepancies due to inaccurate assumption of saturation dissolved oxygen concentration. The rate of oxygen transfer depends on number of factors like intensity of turbulence, which in turns depends on the speed of rotation, size, and number of blades, diameter and immersion depth of the rotor, and size and shape of aeration tank, as well as on physical, chemical, and biological characteristic of water. An attempt is made in this paper to correlate the overall oxygen transfer Coefficient (KLa), as an independent parameter with other influencing parameters mentioned above. It has been estimated that the simulation equation developed predicts the values of KLa and power with an average standard error of estimation of 0.0164 and 7.66 respectively and with R2 values of 0.979 and 0.989 respectively, when compared with experimentally determined values. The comparison of this model is done with the model generated using Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and both the models were found to be in good agreement with each other.

Keywords: CFD Model, Overall oxygen transfer coefficient, Power, Mathematical Model, Validation.

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Authors: G. Tanapornraweekit, W. Kulsirikasem

Abstract:

This research paper presents numerical studies of the characteristics of warhead fragmentation in terms of initial velocities, spray angles of fragments and fragment mass distribution of high explosive (HE) warhead. The behavior of warhead fragmentation depends on shape and size of warhead, thickness of casing, type of explosive, number and position of detonator, and etc. This paper focuses on the effects of material properties of warhead casing, i.e. failure strain, initial yield and ultimate strength on the characteristics of warhead fragmentation. It was found that initial yield and ultimate strength of casing has minimal effects on the initial velocities and spray angles of fragments. Moreover, a brittle warhead casing with low failure strain tends to produce higher number of fragments with less average fragment mass.

Keywords: Detonation, Material Properties, Natural Fragment, Warhead

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Authors: Ali Ghaffari, Mansour Nikkhah Bahrami, Hesam Parsa

Abstract:

In this paper a comprehensive model of a fossil fueled power plant (FFPP) is developed in order to evaluate the performance of a newly designed turbine follower controller. Considering the drawbacks of previous works, an overall model is developed to minimize the error between each subsystem model output and the experimental data obtained at the actual power plant. The developed model is organized in two main subsystems namely; Boiler and Turbine. Considering each FFPP subsystem characteristics, different modeling approaches are developed. For economizer, evaporator, superheater and reheater, first order models are determined based on principles of mass and energy conservation. Simulations verify the accuracy of the developed models. Due to the nonlinear characteristics of attemperator, a new model, based on a genetic-fuzzy systems utilizing Pittsburgh approach is developed showing a promising performance vis-à-vis those derived with other methods like ANFIS. The optimization constraints are handled utilizing penalty functions. The effect of increasing the number of rules and membership functions on the performance of the proposed model is also studied and evaluated. The turbine model is developed based on the equation of adiabatic expansion. Parameters of all evaluated models are tuned by means of evolutionary algorithms. Based on the developed model a fuzzy PI controller is developed. It is then successfully implemented in the turbine follower control strategy of the plant. In this control strategy instead of keeping control parameters constant, they are adjusted on-line with regard to the error and the error rate. It is shown that the response of the system improves significantly. It is also shown that fuel consumption decreases considerably.

Keywords: Attemperator, Evolutionary algorithms, Fossil fuelled power plant (FFPP), Fuzzy set theory, Gain scheduling

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