Search results for: Potential Performance

Authors: Nyambayar Davaadorj, Ichiro Koshijima

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Safety or the state of being safe can be described as a condition of being not dangerous or not harmful. It is necessary for an individual to avoid dangerous situations every day. Also, an organization is subject to legal requirements for the health and safety of persons inside and around the immediate workplace, or who are exposed to the workplace activities. Although it might be difficult to keep a situation where complete safety is ensured, efforts must nonetheless be made to consider ways of removing any potential danger within an organization. In order to ensure a safe working environment, the capability of responding (i.e., resilience) to signals (i.e., information concerning events that could pose future problems that must be taken into account) that occur in and around corporations is necessary. The ability to evaluate this essential point is thus one way in which safety and security can be managed. This study focuses on OHSAS18001, an internationally applied standard for the construction and operation of occupational health and safety management systems, by using IDEF0 for Function Modeling (IDEF0) and the Resilience Matrix originally made by Bracco. Further, this study discusses a method for evaluating a manner in which Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) systematically functions within corporations. Based on the findings, this study clarifies the potential structural objection for corporations when implementing and operating the OHSAS standard.

Keywords: OHSAS18001, IDEF0, safety culture, resilience engineering.

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Authors: Sana Hamdi, Emna Bouazizi, Sami Faiz

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In recent years, real-time spatial applications, like location-aware services and traffic monitoring, have become more and more important. Such applications result dynamic environments where data as well as queries are continuously moving. As a result, there is a tremendous amount of real-time spatial data generated every day. The growth of the data volume seems to outspeed the advance of our computing infrastructure. For instance, in real-time spatial Big Data, users expect to receive the results of each query within a short time period without holding in account the load of the system. But with a huge amount of real-time spatial data generated, the system performance degrades rapidly especially in overload situations. To solve this problem, we propose the use of data partitioning as an optimization technique. Traditional horizontal and vertical partitioning can increase the performance of the system and simplify data management. But they remain insufficient for real-time spatial Big data; they can’t deal with real-time and stream queries efficiently. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel data partitioning approach for real-time spatial Big data named VPA-RTSBD (Vertical Partitioning Approach for Real-Time Spatial Big data). This contribution is an implementation of the Matching algorithm for traditional vertical partitioning. We find, firstly, the optimal attribute sequence by the use of Matching algorithm. Then, we propose a new cost model used for database partitioning, for keeping the data amount of each partition more balanced limit and for providing a parallel execution guarantees for the most frequent queries. VPA-RTSBD aims to obtain a real-time partitioning scheme and deals with stream data. It improves the performance of query execution by maximizing the degree of parallel execution. This affects QoS (Quality Of Service) improvement in real-time spatial Big Data especially with a huge volume of stream data. The performance of our contribution is evaluated via simulation experiments. The results show that the proposed algorithm is both efficient and scalable, and that it outperforms comparable algorithms.

Keywords: Real-Time Spatial Big Data, Quality Of Service, Vertical partitioning, Horizontal partitioning, Matching algorithm, Hamming distance, Stream query.

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Authors: Woo Young Jung, Bu Seog Ju

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This study described the seismic performance evaluation of bridge structures, located near Daegu metropolitan city in Korea. The structural design code or regulatory guidelines is focusing on the protection of brittle failure or collapse in bridges’ lifetime during an earthquake. This paper illustrated the procedure in terms of the safety evaluation of bridges using simple linear elastic 3D Finite Element (FE) model in ABAQUS platform. The design response spectra based on KBC 2009 were then developed, in order to understand the seismic behavior of bridge structures. Besides, the multiple directional earthquakes were applied and it revealed that the most dominated earthquake direction was transverse direction of the bridge. Also, the bridge structure under the compressive stress was more fragile than the tensile stress and the vertical direction of seismic ground motions was not significantly affected to the structural system.

Keywords: Bridge, Finite Element, 3D model, Earthquake, Spectrum.

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Authors: P. Jomsri

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Currently, web usage make a huge data from a lot of user attention. In general, proxy server is a system to support web usage from user and can manage system by using hit rates. This research tries to improve hit rates in proxy system by applying data mining technique. The data set are collected from proxy servers in the university and are investigated relationship based on several features. The model is used to predict the future access websites. Association rule technique is applied to get the relation among Date, Time, Main Group web, Sub Group web, and Domain name for created model. The results showed that this technique can predict web content for the next day, moreover the future accesses of websites increased from 38.15% to 85.57 %. This model can predict web page access which tends to increase the efficient of proxy servers as a result. In additional, the performance of internet access will be improved and help to reduce traffic in networks.

Keywords: Association rule, proxy server, data mining.

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Authors: Walid M. Saad

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techniques are examined to overcome the performance degradation caused by the channel dispersion using slow frequency hopping (SFH) with dynamic frequency hopping (DFH) pattern adaptation. In DFH systems, the frequency slots are selected by continuous quality monitoring of all frequencies available in a system and modification of hopping patterns for each individual link based on replacing slots which its signal to interference ratio (SIR) measurement is below a required threshold. Simulation results will show the improvements in BER obtained by DFH in comparison with matched frequency hopping (MFH), random frequency hopping (RFH) and multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) in multipath slowly fading dispersive channels using a generalized bandpass two-path transfer function model, and will show the improvement obtained according to the threshold selection.

Keywords: code division multiple access (CDMA), dynamic channel allocation (DCA), dynamic channel assignment, frequency hopping, matched frequency hopping (MFH).

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Authors: Ying-Chang Yu, Yuan-Lung Lo

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Building ventilation performance is an important indicator of indoor comfort. However, in addition to the geometry of the building or the proportion of the opening, the ventilation performance is also very much related to the actual wind pressure of the building. There are more and more contemporary building designs built with multi-layer exterior envelope. Due to ventilation and view observatory requirement, the porous outer layer of the building is commonly adopted and has a significant wind damping effect, causing the phenomenon of actual wind pressure loss. However, the relationship between the wind damping effect and the actual wind pressure is not linear. This effect can make the indoor ventilation of the building rationalized to reasonable range under the condition of high wind pressure, and also maintain a good amount of ventilation performance under the condition of low wind pressure. In this study, wind tunnel experiments were carried out to simulate the different wind pressures flow through the porous outer layer, and observe the actual wind pressure strength engage with the window layer to find the decreasing relationship between the damping effect of the porous shell and the wind pressure. Experiment specimen scale was designed to be 1:50 for testing real-world building conditions; the study found that the porous enclosure has protective shielding without affecting low-pressure ventilation. Current study observed the porous skin may damp more wind energy to ease the wind pressure under high-speed wind. Differential wind speed may drop the pressure into similar pressure level by using porous skin. The actual mechanism and value of this phenomenon will need further study in the future.

Keywords: Renault number, porous media, wind damping, wind tunnel test, building ventilation.

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Authors: Alexander Dao, Oscar Wambuguh

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Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a heterogeneous functional bowel disease that is characterized by chronic visceral abdominal pain and abnormal bowel function and habits. Its multifactorial pathophysiology and mechanisms are still largely a mystery to the contemporary biomedical community, although there are many hypotheses to try to explain IBS’s presumed physiological, psychosocial, genetic, and environmental etiologies. IBS’s symptomatic presentation is varied and divided into four major subtypes: IBS-C, IBS-D, IBS-M, and IBS-U. Given its diverse presentation and unclear mechanisms, diagnosis is done through a combination of positive identification utilizing the “Rome IV Irritable Bowel Syndrome Criteria'' (Rome IV) diagnostic criteria while also excluding other potential conditions with similar symptoms. Treatment of IBS is focused on the management of symptoms using an assortment of pharmaceuticals, lifestyle changes, and dietary changes, with future potential in microbial treatment and psychotherapy as other therapy methods. Its chronic, heterogeneous nature and disruptive gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are negatively impactful on patients’ daily lives, health systems, and society. However, with a better understanding of the gaps in knowledge and technological advances in IBS’s pathophysiology, management, and treatment options, there is optimism for the millions of people worldwide who are suffering from the debilitating effects of IBS.

Keywords: Irritable bowel syndrome, lifestyle, diet, functional gastrointestinal disorder.

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Authors: N. Šarlija, S. Pfeifer, M. Jeger, A. Bilandžić

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Enterprise growth is generally considered as a key driver of competitiveness, employment, economic development and social inclusion. As such, it is perceived to be a highly desirable outcome of entrepreneurship for scholars and decision makers. The huge academic debate resulted in the multitude of theoretical frameworks focused on explaining growth stages, determinants and future prospects. It has been widely accepted that enterprise growth is most likely nonlinear, temporal and related to the variety of factors which reflect the individual, firm, organizational, industry or environmental determinants of growth. However, factors that affect growth are not easily captured, instruments to measure those factors are often arbitrary, causality between variables and growth is elusive, indicating that growth is not easily modeled. Furthermore, in line with heterogeneous nature of the growth phenomenon, there is a vast number of measurement constructs assessing growth which are used interchangeably. Differences among various growth measures, at conceptual as well as at operationalization level, can hinder theory development which emphasizes the need for more empirically robust studies. In line with these highlights, the main purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to compare structure and performance of three growth prediction models based on the main growth measures: Revenues, employment and assets growth. Secondly, to explore the prospects of financial indicators, set as exact, visible, standardized and accessible variables, to serve as determinants of enterprise growth. Finally, to contribute to the understanding of the implications on research results and recommendations for growth caused by different growth measures. The models include a range of financial indicators as lag determinants of the enterprises’ performances during the 2008-2013, extracted from the national register of the financial statements of SMEs in Croatia. The design and testing stage of the modeling used the logistic regression procedures. Findings confirm that growth prediction models based on different measures of growth have different set of predictors. Moreover, the relationship between particular predictors and growth measure is inconsistent, namely the same predictor positively related to one growth measure may exert negative effect on a different growth measure. Overall, financial indicators alone can serve as good proxy of growth and yield adequate predictive power of the models. The paper sheds light on both methodology and conceptual framework of enterprise growth by using a range of variables which serve as a proxy for the multitude of internal and external determinants, but are unlike them, accessible, available, exact and free of perceptual nuances in building up the model. Selection of the growth measure seems to have significant impact on the implications and recommendations related to growth. Furthermore, the paper points out to potential pitfalls of measuring and predicting growth. Overall, the results and the implications of the study are relevant for advancing academic debates on growth-related methodology, and can contribute to evidence-based decisions of policy makers.

Keywords: Growth measurement constructs, logistic regression, prediction of growth potential, small and medium-sized enterprises.

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Authors: Abdolghani Ebrahimi, Diego Klabjan, Chenxi Ge, Daniela Ladner, Parker Stride

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In this work, we use machine learning and data analysis techniques to predict the one-year mortality of cirrhotic patients. Data from 2,322 patients with liver cirrhosis are collected at a single medical center. Different machine learning models are applied to predict one-year mortality. A comprehensive feature space including demographic information, comorbidity, clinical procedure and laboratory tests is being analyzed. A temporal pattern mining technic called Frequent Subgraph Mining (FSM) is being used. Model for End-stage liver disease (MELD) prediction of mortality is used as a comparator. All of our models statistically significantly outperform the MELD-score model and show an average 10% improvement of the area under the curve (AUC). The FSM technic itself does not improve the model significantly, but FSM, together with a machine learning technique called an ensemble, further improves the model performance. With the abundance of data available in healthcare through electronic health records (EHR), existing predictive models can be refined to identify and treat patients at risk for higher mortality. However, due to the sparsity of the temporal information needed by FSM, the FSM model does not yield significant improvements. Our work applies modern machine learning algorithms and data analysis methods on predicting one-year mortality of cirrhotic patients and builds a model that predicts one-year mortality significantly more accurate than the MELD score. We have also tested the potential of FSM and provided a new perspective of the importance of clinical features.

Keywords: machine learning, liver cirrhosis, subgraph mining, supervised learning

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Authors: Feng-Tsai Weng, Dong- Syuan Cai, Tsochu-Lin

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A vehicle gasoline engine converts gasoline into power so that the car can move, and lubricants are important for engines and also gear boxes. Manufacturers have produced numbers of engine oils, and gear oils for engines and gear boxes to SAE International Standards. Some products not only can improve the lubrication of both the engine and gear box but also can raise power of vehicle this can be easily seen in the advertisement declared by the manufacturers. To observe the lubrication performance, a multi-leveled (heavy duty) gear oil was added to a gasoline engine as the oil in the vehicle. The oil was checked at about every 10,000 kilometers. The engine was detailed disassembled, cleaned, and parts were measured. The wear of components of the engine parts were checked and recorded finally. Based on the experiment results, some gear oil seems possible to be used as engine oil in particular vehicles. Vehicle owners should change oil periodically in about every 6,000 miles (or 10,000 kilometers). Used car owners may change engine oil in even longer distance.

Keywords: Multi-level gear oil, engine oil, viscosity, abrasion.

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Authors: A. Almasi

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Reciprocating compressors are flexible to handle wide capacity and condition swings, offer a very efficient method of compressing almost any gas mixture in wide range of pressure, can generate high head independent of density, and have numerous applications and wide power ratings. These make them vital component in various units of industrial plants. In this paper optimum reciprocating compressor configuration regarding interstage pressures, low suction pressure, non-lubricated cylinder, speed of machine, capacity control system, compressor valve, lubrication system, piston rod coating, cylinder liner material, barring device, pressure drops, rod load, pin reversal, discharge temperature, cylinder coolant system, performance, flow, coupling, special tools, condition monitoring (including vibration, thermal and rod drop monitoring), commercial points, delivery and acoustic conditions are presented.

Keywords: Design, optimum, reciprocating compressor.

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Authors: Mohamed Sanad, Noha Hassan

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A broadband resonant terminal antenna has been developed. It can be used in different MIMO arrangements such as 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, or even 12x12 MIMO configurations. The antenna covers the whole LTE and WiFi bands besides the existing 2G/3G bands (700-5800 MHz), without using any matching/tuning circuits. Matching circuits significantly reduce the efficiency of any antenna and reduce the battery life. They also reduce the bandwidth because they are frequency dependent. The antenna can be implemented in smartphone handsets, tablets, laptops, notebooks or any other terminal. It is also suitable for different IoT and vehicle applications. The antenna is manufactured from a flexible material and can be bent or folded and shaped in any form to fit any available space in any terminal. It is self-contained and does not need to use the ground plane, the chassis or any other component of the terminal. Hence, it can be mounted on any terminal at different positions and configurations. Its performance does not get affected by the terminal, regardless of its type, shape or size. Moreover, its performance does not get affected by the human body of the terminal’s users. Because of all these unique features of the antenna, multiples of them can be simultaneously used for MIMO diversity coverage in any terminal device with a high isolation and a low correlation factor between them.

Keywords: IOT, LTE, MIMO, terminal antenna, WiFi.

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Authors: R. Nayak, T. Panwar, R. Padhye

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Protective textiles get soiled, stained and even worn during their use, which may not be usable after a certain period due to the loss of protective performance. They need regular cleaning and maintenance, which helps to extend the durability of the clothing, retains their useful properties and ensures that fresh clothing is ready to wear when needed. Generally, the cleaning processes used for various protective clothing include dry-cleaning (using solvents) or wet cleaning (using water). These cleaning processes can alter the fabric surface properties, dimensions, and physical, mechanical and performance properties. The technology of laundering and dry-cleaning has undergone several changes. Sustainable methods and products are available for faster, safer and improved cleaning of protective textiles. We performed a comprehensive and systematic review of green technologies and eco-friendly products for sustainable cleaning of protective textiles. Special emphasis is given on the care and maintenance procedures of protective textiles for protection from fire, bullets, chemical and other types of protective clothing.

Keywords: Sustainable cleaning, protective textiles, eco-friendly cleaning, ozone laundering, ultrasonic cleaning.

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Authors: S. Raja Balachandar, K. Kannan

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A new Meta heuristic approach called "Randomized gravitational emulation search algorithm (RGES)" for solving large size set covering problems has been designed. This algorithm is found upon introducing randomization concept along with the two of the four primary parameters -velocity- and -gravity- in physics. A new heuristic operator is introduced in the domain of RGES to maintain feasibility specifically for the set covering problem to yield best solutions. The performance of this algorithm has been evaluated on a large set of benchmark problems from OR-library. Computational results showed that the randomized gravitational emulation search algorithm - based heuristic is capable of producing high quality solutions. The performance of this heuristic when compared with other existing heuristic algorithms is found to be excellent in terms of solution quality.

Keywords: Set covering problem, velocity, gravitational force, Newton's law, meta heuristic, combinatorial optimization.

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Authors: Chokri Slim

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The neural network's performance can be measured by efficiency and accuracy. The major disadvantages of neural network approach are that the generalization capability of neural networks is often significantly low, and it may take a very long time to tune the weights in the net to generate an accurate model for a highly complex and nonlinear systems. This paper presents a novel Neuro-fuzzy architecture based on Extended Kalman filter. To test the performance and applicability of the proposed neuro-fuzzy model, simulation study of nonlinear complex dynamic system is carried out. The proposed method can be applied to an on-line incremental adaptive learning for the prediction of financial time series. A benchmark case studie is used to demonstrate that the proposed model is a superior neuro-fuzzy modeling technique.

Keywords: Neuro-fuzzy, Extended Kalman filter, nonlinear systems, financial time series.

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Authors: Suresh Lokiah, Samarth Suresh, Yashaswini Vismaya, Sudha Jamthe

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The emerging trend of integrating robots into elderly care, particularly for assisting patients with dementia, holds the potential to greatly transform the sector. Assisted living facilities, which house a significant number of elderly individuals and dementia patients, constantly strive to engage their residents in stimulating activities. However, due to staffing shortages, they often rely on volunteers to introduce new activities. Despite the availability of social interaction, the residents are in desperate need of additional support. Robots designed for elder care are categorized based on their design and functionality. These categories include Companion Robots, Telepresence Robots, Health Monitoring Robots, and Rehab Robots. However, the integration of such robots raises significant ethical concerns, notably regarding privacy, autonomy, and the risk of dehumanization. Privacy issues arise when robots need to continually monitor patient activities. There is also a risk of patients becoming overly dependent on these robots, potentially undermining patients’ autonomy. Furthermore, the replacement of human touch with robotic interaction can lead to the dehumanization of care. This positional paper delves into the ethical considerations of incorporating robotic assistance in eldercare. It proposes a series of guidelines and strategies to ensure the ethical deployment of these robots. These guidelines suggest involving patients in the design and development process of robots and emphasize the critical need for human oversight to respect the dignity and rights of elderly and dementia patients. The paper also recommends implementing robust privacy measures, including secure data transmission and data anonymization. In conclusion, this paper offers a thorough examination of the ethical implications of using robotic assistance in elder care. It provides a strategic roadmap to ensure this technology is utilized ethically, thereby maximizing its potential benefits and minimizing any potential harm.

Keywords: Robots for eldercare, ethics, human-robot interaction, assisted living.

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Authors: Yasufumi Yoshimoto, Enkhjargal Tserenochir, Eiji Kinoshita, Takeshi Otaka

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Next generation bio-alcohols produced from non-food based sources like cellulosic biomass are promising renewable energy sources. The present study investigates engine performance, combustion characteristics, and emissions of a small single cylinder direct injection diesel engine fueled by four kinds of next generation bio-alcohol isomer and diesel fuel blends with a constant blending ratio of 3:7 (mass). The tested bio-alcohol isomers here are n-butanol and iso-butanol (C₄ alcohol), and n-pentanol and iso-pentanol (C₅ alcohol). To obtain simultaneous reductions in NOx and smoke emissions, the experiments employed supercharging combined with EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation). The boost pressures were fixed at two conditions, 100 kPa (naturally aspirated operation) and 120 kPa (supercharged operation) provided with a roots blower type supercharger. The EGR rates were varied from 0 to 25% using a cooled EGR technique. The results showed that both with and without supercharging, all the bio-alcohol blended diesel fuels improved the trade-off relation between NOx and smoke emissions at all EGR rates while maintaining good engine performance, when compared with diesel fuel operation. It was also found that regardless of boost pressure and EGR rate, the ignition delays of the tested bio-alcohol isomer blends are in the order of iso-butanol > n-butanol > iso-pentanol > n-pentanol. Overall, it was concluded that, except for the changes in the ignition delays the influence of bio-alcohol isomer blends on the engine performance, combustion characteristics, and emissions are relatively small.

Keywords: Alternative fuel, 　Butanol, Diesel engine, EGR, Next generation bio-alcohol isomer blended fuel, Pentanol, Supercharging.

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Authors: Kerstin Grunden, Ann Svensson, Berit Forsman, Christina Karlsson, Ayman Obeid

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The research question of the article is to explore whether the dialogue meetings method could be relevant for reflective learning among researchers and practitioners when welfare technology should be implemented in municipalities, or not. A testbed was planned to be implemented in a retirement home in a Swedish municipality, and the practitioners worked with a pre-study of that testbed. In the article, the dialogue between the researchers and the practitioners in the dialogue meetings is described and analyzed. The potential of dialogue meetings as an arena for learning and reflection among researchers and practitioners is discussed. The research methodology approach is participatory action research with mixed methods (dialogue meetings, focus groups, participant observations). The main findings from the dialogue meetings were that the researchers learned more about the use of traditional research methods, and the practitioners learned more about how they could improve their use of the methods to facilitate change processes in their organization. These findings have the potential both for the researchers and the practitioners to result in more relevant use of research methods in change processes in organizations. It is concluded that dialogue meetings could be relevant for reflective learning among researchers and practitioners when welfare technology should be implemented in a health care organization.

Keywords: Dialogue meetings, implementation, reflection, test bed, welfare technology, participatory action research.

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Authors: Ambalika Ekka

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In today’s world, the growing demand for urban built forms has resulted in the production and consumption of building materials i.e. embodied energy in building construction, leading to pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, new buildings will offer a unique opportunity to implement more energy efficient building without compromising on building performance of the building. Embodied energy of building materials forms major contribution to embodied energy in buildings. The paper results in an approach towards designing an energy efficient apartment building through embodied energy assessment. This paper discusses the trend of residential development in Rourkela, which includes three case studies of the contemporary houses, followed by architectural elements, number of storeys, predominant material use and plot sizes using primary data. It results in identification of predominant material used and other characteristics in urban area. Further, the embodied energy coefficients of various dominant building materials and alternative materials manufactured in Indian Industry is taken in consideration from secondary source i.e. literature study. The paper analyses the embodied energy by estimating materials and operational energy of proposed building followed by altering the specifications of the materials based on the building components i.e. walls, flooring, windows, insulation and roof through res build India software and comparison of different options is assessed with consideration of sustainable parameters. This paper results that autoclaved aerated concrete block only reaches the energy performance Index benchmark i.e. 69.35 kWh/m² yr i.e. by saving 4% of operational energy and as embodied energy has no particular index, out of all materials it has the highest EE 23206202.43  MJ.

Keywords: Energy efficient, embodied energy, energy performance index, building materials.

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Authors: Wei Zhang

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With the rapid development of deep learning, neural network and deep learning algorithms play a significant role in various practical applications. Due to the high accuracy and good performance, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) especially have become a research hot spot in the past few years. However, the size of the networks becomes increasingly large scale due to the demands of the practical applications, which poses a significant challenge to construct a high-performance implementation of deep learning neural networks. Meanwhile, many of these application scenarios also have strict requirements on the performance and low-power consumption of hardware devices. Therefore, it is particularly critical to choose a moderate computing platform for hardware acceleration of CNNs. This article aimed to survey the recent advance in Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based acceleration of CNNs. Various designs and implementations of the accelerator based on FPGA under different devices and network models are overviewed, and the versions of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) are compared to present our own critical analysis and comments. Finally, we give a discussion on different perspectives of these acceleration and optimization methods on FPGA platforms to further explore the opportunities and challenges for future research. More helpfully, we give a prospect for future development of the FPGA-based accelerator.

Keywords: Deep learning, field programmable gate array, FPGA, hardware acceleration, convolutional neural networks, CNN.

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Authors: Meng-Hui Chen, Pei-Chann Chang, Wei-Hsiu Huang

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Artificial Immune System is adopted as a Heuristic Algorithm to solve the combinatorial problems for decades. Nevertheless, many of these applications took advantage of the benefit for applications but seldom proposed approaches for enhancing the efficiency. In this paper, we continue the previous research to develop a Self-evolving Artificial Immune System II via coordinating the T and B cell in Immune System and built a block-based artificial chromosome for speeding up the computation time and better performance for different complexities of problems. Through the design of Plasma cell and clonal selection which are relative the function of the Immune Response. The Immune Response will help the AIS have the global and local searching ability and preventing trapped in local optima. From the experimental result, the significant performance validates the SEAIS II is effective when solving the permutation flows-hop problems.

Keywords: Artificial Immune System, Clonal Selection, Immune Response, Permutation Flow-shop Scheduling Problems

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Authors: Mahshid Talebian Kiakalayeh

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As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can be used by both civilians and soldiers; it is vital to consider the consequences emanating from AI military as well as civilian use. Indeed, many of the same technologies can have a dual-use. This paper will explore the military uses of AI and assess their compliance with international legal norms. AI developments not only have changed the capacity of the military to conduct complex operations but have also increased legal concerns. The existence of a potential legal vacuum in legal principles on the military use of AI indicates the necessity of more study on compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the branch of international law which governs the conduct of hostilities. While capabilities of new means of military AI continue to advance at incredible rates, this body of law is seeking to limit the methods of warfare protecting civilian persons who are not participating in an armed conflict. Implementing AI in the military realm would result in potential issues including ethical and legal challenges. For instance, when intelligence can perform any warfare task without any human involvement, a range of humanitarian debates will be raised as to whether this technology might distinguish between military and civilian targets or not. This is mainly because AI in fully military systems would not seem to carry legal and ethical judgment which can interfere with IHL principles. The paper will take, as a case study, Canada’s compliance with IHL in the area of AI and the related legal issues that are likely to arise as this country continues to develop military uses of AI.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, military use, International Humanitarian Law, the Canadian perspective.

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Authors: Liu Yi, Bao Liyong

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Aiming at the problem of low efficiency of pipelined scheduling in periodic query-qualified service, this paper proposes a system service resource scheduling strategy with parallel optimized qualified service polling control. The paper constructs the polling queuing system and its mathematical model; firstly, the first-order and second-order characteristic parameter equations are obtained by partial derivation of the probability mother function of the system state variables, and the complete mathematical, analytical expressions of each system parameter are deduced after the joint solution. The simulation experimental results are consistent with the theoretical calculated values. The system performance analysis shows that the average captain and average period of the system have been greatly improved, which can better adapt to the service demand of delay-sensitive data in the dense data environment.

Keywords: Polling, parallel scheduling, mean queue length, average cycle time.

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Authors: Muhammad Rehan Khalid, Muhammad Haroon Siddiqui, Danish Ilyas

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This paper explores the implementation of adaptive coding and modulation schemes for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) feedback systems. Adaptive coding and modulation enables robust and spectrally-efficient transmission over time-varying channels. The basic premise is to estimate the channel at the receiver and feed this estimate back to the transmitter, so that the transmission scheme can be adapted relative to the channel characteristics. Two types of codebook based channel feedback techniques are used in this work. The longterm and short-term CSI at the transmitter is used for efficient channel utilization. OFDM is a powerful technique employed in communication systems suffering from frequency selectivity. Combined with multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver, OFDM proves to be robust against delay spread. Moreover, it leads to significant data rates with improved bit error performance over links having only a single antenna at both the transmitter and receiver. The coded modulation increases the effective transmit power relative to uncoded variablerate variable-power MQAM performance for MIMO-OFDM feedback system. Hence proposed arrangement becomes an attractive approach to achieve enhanced spectral efficiency and improved error rate performance for next generation high speed wireless communication systems.

Keywords: Adaptive Coded Modulation, MQAM, MIMO, OFDM, Codebooks, Feedback.

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Authors: Nanh Lovanh, John Loughrin, Kimberly Cook, Phil Silva, Byung-Taek Oh

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In the era of sustainability, utilization of livestock wastes as soil amendment to provide micronutrients for crops is very economical and sustainable. It is well understood that livestock wastes are comparable, if not better, nutrient sources for crops as chemical fertilizers. However, the large concentrated volumes of animal manure produced from livestock operations and the limited amount of available nearby agricultural land areas necessitated the need for volume reduction of these animal wastes. Composting of these animal manures is a viable option for biomass and pathogenic reduction in the environment. Nevertheless, composting also increases the potential loss of available nutrients for crop production as well as unwanted emission of anthropogenic air pollutants due to the loss of ammonia and other compounds via volatilization. In this study, we examine the emission of ammonia and nitrous oxide from swine manure windrows to evaluate the benefit of biomass reduction in conjunction with the potential loss of available nutrients. The feedstock for the windrows was obtained from swine farm in Kentucky where swine manure was mixed with wood shaving as absorbent material. Static flux chambers along with photoacoustic gas analyzer were used to monitor ammonia and nitrous oxide concentrations during the composting process. The results show that ammonia and nitrous oxide fluxes were quite high during the initial composting process and after the turning of each compost pile. Over the period of roughly three months of composting, the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) decreased by about 90%. Although composting of animal waste is quite beneficial for biomass reduction, composting may not be economically feasible from an agronomical point of view due to time, nutrient loss (N loss), and potential environmental pollution (ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions). Therefore, additional studies are needed to assess and validate the economics and environmental impact of animal (swine) manure composting (e.g., crop yield or impact on climate change).

Keywords: Windrow, swine manure, ammonia, nitrous oxide, fluxes, management.

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Authors: P. Panichnumsin, B. K. Ahring, A. Nopharatana, P. Chaipresert

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In this study, we illustrated the performance and microbial community of single- and two-phase systems anaerobically co-digesting cassava pulp and pig manure. The results showed that the volatile solid reduction and biogas productivity of two-phase CSTR were 66 ± 4% and 2000 ± 210 ml l-1 d-1, while those of singlephase CSTR were 59 ± 1% and 1670 ± 60 ml l-1 d-1, respectively. Codigestion in two-phase CSTR gave higher 12% solid degradation and 25% methane production than single-phase CSTR. Phylogenetic analysis of 16S rDNA clone library revealed that the Bacteroidetes were the most abundant group, followed by the Clostridia in singlephase CSTR. In hydrolysis/acidification reactor of two-phase system, the bacteria within the phylum Firmicutes, especially Clostridium, Eubacteriaceae and Lactobacillus were the dominant phylogenetic groups. Among the Archaea, Methanosaeta sp. was the exclusive predominant in both digesters while the relative abundance of Methanosaeta sp. and Methanospirillum hungatei differed between the two systems.

Keywords: Anaerobic co-digestion, Cassava pulp, Microbialdiversity, Pig manure.

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Authors: Pratik Dhabal Deo, Manoj P.

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With the increasing number of social media users, the amount of video content available has also significantly increased. Currently, the number of smartphone users is at its peak, and many are increasingly using their smartphones as their main photography and recording devices. There have been a lot of developments in the field of video quality assessment in since the past years and more research on various other aspects of video and image are being done. Datasets that contain a huge number of videos from different high-end devices make it difficult to analyze the performance of the metrics on the content from most used devices even if they contain contents taken in poor lighting conditions using lower-end devices. These devices face a lot of distortions due to various factors since the spectrum of contents recorded on these devices is huge. In this paper, we have presented an analysis of the objective Video Quality Analysis (VQA) metrics on contents taken only from most used devices and their performance on them, focusing on full-reference metrics. To carry out this research, we created a custom dataset containing a total of 90 videos that have been taken from three most commonly used devices, and Android smartphone, an iOS smartphone and a Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera. On the videos taken on each of these devices, the six most common types of distortions that users face have been applied in addition to already existing H.264 compression based on four reference videos. These six applied distortions have three levels of degradation each. A total of the five most popular VQA metrics have been evaluated on this dataset and the highest values and the lowest values of each of the metrics on the distortions have been recorded. Finally, it is found that blur is the artifact on which most of the metrics did not perform well. Thus, in order to understand the results better the amount of blur in the data set has been calculated and an additional evaluation of the metrics was done using High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec, which is the next version of H.264 compression, on the camera that proved to be the sharpest among the devices. The results have shown that as the resolution increases, the performance of the metrics tends to become more accurate and the best performing metric among them is VQM with very few inconsistencies and inaccurate results when the compression applied is H.264, but when the compression is applied is HEVC, Structural Similarity (SSIM) metric and Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) have performed significantly better.

Keywords: Distortion, metrics, recording, frame rate, video quality assessment.

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Authors: Amir Amiri, Naghmeh Morakabati

Abstract:

During the recent years the six-fold growth of cancer in Iran has led the production of healthy products to become a challenge in the food industry. Due to the young population in the country, the consumption of fast foods is growing. The chemical cancer-causing preservatives are used to produce these products more than the standard; so using an appropriate alternative seems to be important. On the one hand, the plant essential oils show the high antimicrobial potential against pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms and on the other hand they are highly volatile and decomposed under the processing conditions. The study aims to produce the loaded chitosan nanoparticles with different concentrations of savory essential oil to improve the anti-microbial property and increase the resistance of essential oil to oxygen and heat. The encapsulation efficiency was obtained in the range of 32.07% to 39.93% and the particle size distribution of the samples was observed in the range of 159 to 210 nm. The range of Zeta potential was obtained between -11.9 to -23.1 mV. The essential oil loaded in chitosan showed stronger antifungal activity against Rhizopus stolonifer. The results showed that the antioxidant property is directly related to the concentration of loaded essential oil so that the antioxidant property increases by increasing the concentration of essential oil. In general, it seems that the savory essential oil loaded in chitosan particles can be used as a food processor.

Keywords: Chitosan, encapsulation, essential oil, nanogel.

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Authors: Devendra Kumar Pandey, Debabrata Chakraborty

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The advancement in various concrete ingredients like plasticizers, additives and fibers, etc. has enabled concrete technologists to develop many viable varieties of special concretes in recent decades. Such various varieties of concrete have significant enhancement in green as well as hardened properties of concrete. A prudent selection of appropriate type of concrete can resolve many design and application issues in construction projects. This paper focuses on usage of self-compacting concrete, high early strength concrete, structural lightweight concrete, fiber reinforced concrete, high performance concrete and ultra-high strength concrete in the structures. The modified properties of strength at various ages, flowability, porosity, equilibrium density, flexural strength, elasticity, permeability etc. need to be carefully studied and incorporated into the design of the structures. The paper demonstrates various mixture combinations and the concrete properties that can be leveraged. The selection of such products based on the end use of structures has been proposed in order to efficiently utilize the modified characteristics of these concrete varieties. The study involves mapping the characteristics with benefits and savings for the structure from design perspective. Self-compacting concrete in the structure is characterized by high shuttering loads, better finish, and feasibility of closer reinforcement spacing. The structural design procedures can be modified to specify higher formwork strength, height of vertical members, cover reduction and increased ductility. The transverse reinforcement can be spaced at closer intervals compared to regular structural concrete. It allows structural lightweight concrete structures to be designed for reduced dead load, increased insulation properties. Member dimensions and steel requirement can be reduced proportionate to about 25 to 35 percent reduction in the dead load due to self-weight of concrete. Steel fiber reinforced concrete can be used to design grade slabs without primary reinforcement because of 70 to 100 percent higher tensile strength. The design procedures incorporate reduction in thickness and joint spacing. High performance concrete employs increase in the life of the structures by improvement in paste characteristics and durability by incorporating supplementary cementitious materials. Often, these are also designed for slower heat generation in the initial phase of hydration. The structural designer can incorporate the slow development of strength in the design and specify 56 or 90 days strength requirement. For designing high rise building structures, creep and elasticity properties of such concrete also need to be considered. Lastly, certain structures require a performance under loading conditions much earlier than final maturity of concrete. High early strength concrete has been designed to cater to a variety of usages at various ages as early as 8 to 12 hours. Therefore, an understanding of concrete performance specifications for special concrete is a definite door towards a superior structural design approach.

Keywords: High performance concrete, special concrete, structural design, structural lightweight concrete.

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Authors: M. Shahrokhi, F. Rostami, M.A. Md Said, S. Syafalni

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It is essential to have a uniform and calm flow field for a settling tank to have high performance. In general, the recirculation zones always occurred in sedimentation tanks. The presence of these regions may have different effects. The nonuniformity of the velocity field, the short-circuiting at the surface and the motion of the jet at the bed of the tank that occurs because of the recirculation in the sedimentation layer, are affected by the geometry of the tank. There are some ways to decrease the size of these dead zones, which would increase the performance. One of the ways is to use a suitable baffle configuration. In this study, the presence of baffle with different position has been investigated by a finite volume method, with VOF (Volume of Fluid) model. Besides, the k-ε turbulence model is used in the numerical calculations. The results indicate that the best position of the baffle is obtained when the volume of the recirculation region is minimized or is divided to smaller part and the flow field trend to be uniform in the settling zone.

Keywords: Sedimentation tanks, Baffle, Numerical Modeling, VOF, Circulation Zone

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