Search results for: Applied linguistics

Authors: Hyunchul Ahn, William X. S. Wong

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Corporate credit rating prediction is one of the most important topics, which has been studied by researchers in the last decade. Over the last decade, researchers are pushing the limit to enhance the exactness of the corporate credit rating prediction model by applying several data-driven tools including statistical and artificial intelligence methods. Among them, multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) has been widely applied due to its good predictability. However, heuristics, for example, parameters of a kernel function, appropriate feature and instance subset, has become the main reason for the critics on MSVM, as they have dictate the MSVM architectural variables. This study presents a hybrid MSVM model that is intended to optimize all the parameter such as feature selection, instance selection, and kernel parameter. Our model adopts genetic algorithm (GA) to simultaneously optimize multiple heterogeneous design factors of MSVM.

Keywords: Corporate credit rating prediction, feature selection, genetic algorithms, instance selection, multiclass support vector machines.

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Authors: H. Elomari, M. Fallah, A. Elmousadik

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This work was conducted in the Souss region, known by severe water scarcity and a high agricultural activity dominated by the citrus (representing 40% of the area of Morocco's citrus). The objective of this work is to diagnose the current situation of the water efficiency in citrus irrigation and analyze the impact of various production factors on water productivity and its sustainability in the context of climate change. A field survey was conducted on 65 farms with areas varying from 0.5 to 350 ha. The stratification method was adopted as a sampling frame. Initial result indicates that the use of water shows a huge shortfall, since 31% of farms in the region are still using the surface irrigation system and 67% of farms are still using only the experience of the manager to control and adjust irrigation. The assessment of water productivity showed a value of 1.2 kg/m³ for surface irrigation and 3.8 kg/m³ for drip irrigation. The use of tools for control and adjustment of irrigation increases the water productivity of drip irrigation by 25%. The availability of the technical staff (internal or external) allows an increase in productivity of 172.4% compared to farms without technical advice.

Keywords: Citrus, irrigation efficiency, water productivity, drip irrigation.

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Authors: F. Atheer, Al-Saoudi, Robin Kalfat, Riadh Al-Mahaidi

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Over the last two decades, externally bonded fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites bonded to concrete substrates has become a popular method for strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) highway and railway bridges. Such structures are exposed to severe cyclic loading throughout their lifetime often resulting in fatigue damage to structural components and a reduction in the service life of the structure. Since experimental and numerical results on the fatigue performance of FRP-to-concrete joints are still limited, the current research focuses on assessing the fatigue performance of externally bonded FRP-to-concrete joints using a direct shear test. Some early results indicate that the stress ratio and the applied cyclic stress level have a direct influence on the fatigue life of the externally bonded FRP. In addition, a calibrated finite element model is developed to provide further insight into the influence of certain parameters such as: concrete strength, FRP thickness, number of cycles, frequency, and stiffness on the fatigue life of the FRP-toconcrete joints.

Keywords: FRP, concrete bond, control, fatigue, finite element model.

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Authors: D. O. Omondi, M. K. Walingo, G. M. Mbagaya, L. O. A. Othuon

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Understanding patient factors related to physical activity behavior is important in the management of Type 2 Diabetes. This study applied the Theory of Planned Behavior model to understand physical activity behavior among sampled Type 2 diabetics in Kenya. The study was conducted within the diabetic clinic at Kisii Level 5 Hospital and adopted sequential mixed methods design beginning with qualitative phase and ending with quantitative phase. Qualitative data was analyzed using grounded theory analysis method. Structural equation modeling using maximum likelihood was used to analyze quantitative data. The common fit indices revealed that the theory of planned behavior fitted the data acceptably well among the Type 2 diabetes and within physical activity behavior {¤ç2 = 213, df = 84, n=230, p = .061, ¤ç2/df = 2.53; TLI = .97; CFI =.96; RMSEA (90CI) = .073(.029, .08)}. This theory proved to be useful in understanding physical activity behavior among Type 2 diabetics.

Keywords: Physical activity, Theory of Planned Behavior, Type2 diabetes, Kenya.

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Authors: Fátima Gonçalves, Joaquim Brigas, Jorge Gonçalves

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The proliferation of mobile devices in society enables the media to disseminate information and knowledge more rapidly. Higher education students access these contents and share them with each other, in the most diverse platforms, allowing the ubiquity in access to information. This article presents the results and respective quantitative analysis of a survey applied to communication students of two higher education institutions: one in Portugal and another in Spain. The results show that, in this sample, higher education students regularly access news content believing traditional news sources to be more credible. Regarding online sources, it was verified that the access was mostly to free news contents. This study intends to promote the knowledge about the changes that occur in the relationship of higher education students with the media, characterizing how news consumption is processed by these students, considering the resulting effects of the digital media evolution. It is intended to present not only the news sources they use, but also to know some of their habits and relationship with the news media.

Keywords: Students’ perceptions, communication design, mass media, higher education, digital media.

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Authors: S. Raissi

Abstract:

Response surface methodology (RSM) is a very efficient tool to provide a good practical insight into developing new process and optimizing them. This methodology could help engineers to raise a mathematical model to represent the behavior of system as a convincing function of process parameters. Through this paper the sequential nature of the RSM surveyed for process engineers and its relationship to design of experiments (DOE), regression analysis and robust design reviewed. The proposed four-step procedure in two different phases could help system analyst to resolve the parameter design problem involving responses. In order to check accuracy of the designed model, residual analysis and prediction error sum of squares (PRESS) described. It is believed that the proposed procedure in this study can resolve a complex parameter design problem with one or more responses. It can be applied to those areas where there are large data sets and a number of responses are to be optimized simultaneously. In addition, the proposed procedure is relatively simple and can be implemented easily by using ready-made standard statistical packages.

Keywords: Response Surface Methodology (RSM), Design of Experiments (DOE), Process modeling, Process setting, Process optimization.

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Authors: Su-Hyun Cho, Chang-U Chae

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Environmental impact assessment techniques have been developed as a result of the worldwide efforts to reduce the environmental impact of global warming. By using the quantification method in the construction industry, it is now possible to manage the greenhouse gas is to systematically evaluate the impact on the environment over the entire construction process. In particular, the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions at the production stage of construction material occupied is high, and efforts are needed in particular in the construction field. In this research, intended for concrete products for the construction materials, by using the LCA method, we compared the results of environmental impact assessment and carbon emissions of developing products that have been applied low-carbon technologies compared to existing products. As a results, by introducing a raw material of industrial waste, showed carbon reduction. Through a comparison of the carbon emission reduction effect of low carbon technologies, it is intended to provide academic data for the evaluation of greenhouse gases in the construction sector and the development of low carbon technologies of the future.

Keywords: CO2 Emissions, CO2 Reduction, Ready-mixed Concrete, Environmental Impact Assessment.

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Authors: N. Z. A. Hamid, M. S. M. Noorani

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This study is focused on the development of prediction models of the Ozone concentration time series. Prediction model is built based on chaotic approach. Firstly, the chaotic nature of the time series is detected by means of phase space plot and the Cao method. Then, the prediction model is built and the local linear approximation method is used for the forecasting purposes. Traditional prediction of autoregressive linear model is also built. Moreover, an improvement in local linear approximation method is also performed. Prediction models are applied to the hourly Ozone time series observed at the benchmark station in Malaysia. Comparison of all models through the calculation of mean absolute error, root mean squared error and correlation coefficient shows that the one with improved prediction method is the best. Thus, chaotic approach is a good approach to be used to develop a prediction model for the Ozone concentration time series.

Keywords: Chaotic approach, phase space, Cao method, local linear approximation method.

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Authors: Ploysai Ohama, Nattida Tumpat

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Natural dye extracted from Caesalpinia sappan Linn. was applied to a cotton fabric and silk yarn by dyeing process. The dyestuff component of Caesalpinia sappan Linn. was extracted using water and ethanol. Analytical studies such as UV–VIS spectrophotometry and gravimetric analysis were performed on the extracts. Brazilein, the major dyestuff component of Caesalpinia sappan Linn. was confirmed in both aqueous and ethanolic extracts by UV–VIS spectrum. The color of each dyed material was investigated in terms of the CIELAB (L*, a* and b*) and K/S values. Cotton fabric dyed without mordant had a shade of reddish-brown, while those post-mordanted with aluminum potassium sulfate, ferrous sulfate and copper sulfate produced a variety of wine red to dark purple color shades. Cotton fabric and silk yarn dyeing was studied using aluminum potassium sulfate as a mordant. The observed color strength was enhanced with increase in mordant concentration.

Keywords: Natural dyes, Plant materials, Dyeing, Mordant.

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Authors: I. R. Farah, I. B. Ismail, M. B. Ahmed

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The huge development of new technologies and the apparition of open communication system more and more sophisticated create a new challenge to protect digital content from piracy. Digital watermarking is a recent research axis and a new technique suggested as a solution to these problems. This technique consists in inserting identification information (watermark) into digital data (audio, video, image, databases...) in an invisible and indelible manner and in such a way not to degrade original medium-s quality. Moreover, we must be able to correctly extract the watermark despite the deterioration of the watermarked medium (i.e attacks). In this paper we propose a system for watermarking satellite images. We chose to embed the watermark into frequency domain, precisely the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). We applied our algorithm on satellite images of Tunisian center. The experiments show satisfying results. In addition, our algorithm showed an important resistance facing different attacks, notably the compression (JEPG, JPEG2000), the filtering, the histogram-s manipulation and geometric distortions such as rotation, cropping, scaling.

Keywords: Digital data watermarking, Spatial Database, Satellite images, Discrete Wavelets Transform (DWT).

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Authors: Sandra Muizniece-Brasava, Aija Ruzaike, Lija Dukalska, Ilze Stokmane, Liene Strauta

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Experiments have been carried out at the Latvia University of Agriculture Department of Food Technology. The aim of this work was to assess the effect of thermal treatment in flexible retort pouch packaging on the quality of potatoes’ produce during the storage time. Samples were evaluated immediately after retort thermal treatment; and following 1; 2; 3 and 4 storage months at the ambient temperature of +18±2ºC in vacuum packaging from polyamide/polyethylene (PA/PE) and aluminum/polyethylene (Al/PE) film pouches with barrier properties. Experimentally the quality of the potatoes’ produce in dry butter and mushroom dressings was characterized by measuring pH, hardness, color, microbiological properties and sensory evaluation. The sterilization was effective in protecting the produce from physical, chemical, and microbial quality degradation. According to the study of obtained data, it can be argued that the selected product processing technology and packaging materials could be applied to provide the safety and security during four-month storage period.

Keywords: Potatoes’ produce, shelf life, retort thermal treatment and packaging.

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Authors: Eileen Chih-Ying Yang, Liang-Han Wu, Chieh-Min Chang

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The design of an active leg orthosis for tumble protection is proposed in this paper. The orthosis would be applied to assist elders or invalids in rebalancing while they fall unexpectedly. We observe the regain balance motion of healthy and youthful people, and find the difference to elders or invalids. First, the physical model of leg would be established, and we consider the leg motions are achieve through four joints (phalanx stem, ankle, knee, and hip joint) and five links (phalanges, talus, tibia, femur, and hip bone). To formulate the dynamic equations, the coordinates which can clearly describe the position in 3D space are first defined accordance with the human movement of leg, and the kinematics and dynamics of the leg movement can be formulated based on the robotics. For the purpose, assisting elders and invalids in avoiding tumble, the posture variation of unbalance and regaining balance motion are recorded by the motion-capture image system, and the trajectory is taken as the desire one. Then we calculate the force and moment of each joint based on the leg motion model through programming MATLAB code. The results would be primary information of the active leg orthosis design for tumble protection.

Keywords: Active leg orthosis, Tumble protection

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Authors: T. Patrice Nna Nna, S. Ndjakomo Essiane, S. Pérabi Ngoffé, F. Amigue Fissou

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This paper deals with the harmonic decontamination of current in an electrical grid by an active shunt filter in order to improve power quality. The contribution of this paper is mainly based on the proposal of a control strategy for an active filter based on Duty Cycle Modulation (DCM). First, three-monophase method is applied for the identification of disturbing currents. A Simulink model of this method is given for one phase of the grid. Secondly, two orders were designed: the first one is the Hysteresis Control and the second one is the DCM Control. Finally, a comparative study of the two controls was performed. The results obtained show a significant improvement in the rate of harmonic distortion for both controls. The harmonic distortion for the Hysteresis control is limited by the non-controllability of the switching frequencies of the inverter's switches and reduces the harmonic distortion rate (THD) to 3.12% as opposed to the DCM control which limits the THD to 2.82% which makes it better.

Keywords: Harmonic pollution, shunt active filter, hysteresis, Duty Cycle Modulation.

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Authors: Mohanad Alhabo, Naveed Nawaz

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The ongoing call or data session must be maintained to ensure a good quality of service. This can be accomplished by performing handover procedure while the user is on the move. However, dense deployment of small cells in 5G networks is a challenging issue due to the extensive number of handovers. In this paper, a neighbour cell list method is proposed to reduce the number of target small cells and hence minimizing the number of handovers. The neighbour cell list is built by omitting cells that could cause an unnecessary handover and/or handover failure because of short time of stay of a user in these cells. A multi-attribute decision making technique, simple additive weighting, is then applied to the optimized neighbour cell list. The performance of the proposed method is analysed and compared with that of the existing methods. Results disclose that our method decreases the candidate small cell list, unnecessary handovers, handover failure and short time of stay cells compared to the competitive method.

Keywords: Handover, HetNets, MADM, small cells.

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Authors: Jagath Samarabandu, Xiaoqing Liu

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Using bottom-up image processing algorithms to predict human eye fixations and extract the relevant embedded information in images has been widely applied in the design of active machine vision systems. Scene text is an important feature to be extracted, especially in vision-based mobile robot navigation as many potential landmarks such as nameplates and information signs contain text. This paper proposes an edge-based text region extraction algorithm, which is robust with respect to font sizes, styles, color/intensity, orientations, and effects of illumination, reflections, shadows, perspective distortion, and the complexity of image backgrounds. Performance of the proposed algorithm is compared against a number of widely used text localization algorithms and the results show that this method can quickly and effectively localize and extract text regions from real scenes and can be used in mobile robot navigation under an indoor environment to detect text based landmarks.

Keywords: Landmarks, mobile robot navigation, scene text, text localization and extraction.

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Authors: Gabriela R. Fernandes, Renato F. Denadai, Guido J. Denipotti

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In this work, are discussed two formulations of the boundary element method - BEM to perform linear bending analysis of plates reinforced by beams. Both formulations are based on the Kirchhoff's hypothesis and they are obtained from the reciprocity theorem applied to zoned plates, where each sub-region defines a beam or a slab. In the first model the problem values are defined along the interfaces and the external boundary. Then, in order to reduce the number of degrees of freedom kinematics hypothesis are assumed along the beam cross section, leading to a second formulation where the collocation points are defined along the beam skeleton, instead of being placed on interfaces. On these formulations no approximation of the generalized forces along the interface is required. Moreover, compatibility and equilibrium conditions along the interface are automatically imposed by the integral equation. Thus, these formulations require less approximation and the total number of the degree s of freedom is reduced. In the numerical examples are discussed the differences between these two BEM formulations, comparing as well the results to a well-known finite element code.

Keywords: Boundary elements, Building floor structures, Platebending.

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Authors: Zhao Jing, Bai Yongqing, Shi Qiaofang, Zang Yang, Zhang Huaihao

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Advances in software technology enable the computational chemistry to be commonly applied in various research fields, especially in pedagogy. Thus, in order to expand and improve experimental instructions of computational chemistry for undergraduates, we designed an introductory experiment—research on acrylamide molecular structure and physicochemical properties. Initially, students construct molecular models of acrylamide and polyacrylamide in Gaussian and Materials Studio software respectively. Then, the infrared spectral data, atomic charge and molecular orbitals of acrylamide as well as solvation effect of polyacrylamide are calculated to predict their physicochemical performance. At last, rheological experiments are used to validate these predictions. Through the combination of molecular simulation (performed on Gaussian, Materials Studio) with experimental verification (rheology experiment), learners have deeply comprehended the chemical nature of acrylamide and polyacrylamide, achieving good learning outcomes.

Keywords: Upper-division undergraduate, computer-based learning, laboratory instruction, amides, molecular modeling, spectroscopy.

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Authors: Hitoshi Takata, Tomohiro Hachino, Masaki Horai, Kazuo Komatsu

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In this paper, we are concerned with the design and its simulation studies of a modified extremum seeking control for nonlinear systems. A standard extremum seeking control has a simple structure, but it takes a long time to reach an optimal operating point. We consider a modification of the standard extremum seeking control which is aimed to reach the optimal operating point more speedily than the standard one. In the modification, PD acceleration term is added before an integrator making a principal control, so that it enables the objects to be regulated to the optimal point smoothly. This proposed method is applied to Monod and Williams-Otto models to investigate its effectiveness. Numerical simulation results show that this modified method can improve the time response to the optimal operating point more speedily than the standard one.

Keywords: Extremum seeking control, Monod model, Williams- Otto model, PD acceleration term, Optimal operating point.

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Authors: M. Peña Aguilar Juan, E. Nava Galván Claudia, Pastrana Palma Alberto

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In this work was developed and implemented a thermal fogging disinfection system to counteract pathogens from poultry feces in agribusiness farms, to reduce mortality rates and increase biosafety in them. The control system consists of two phases for the conditioning of the farm during the sanitary break. In the first phase, viral and bacterial inactivation was performed by treating the stool dry cleaning, along with the development of a specialized product that foster the generation of temperatures above 55 °C in less than 24 hr, for virus inactivation. In the second phase, a process for disinfection by fogging was implemented, along with the development of a specialized disinfectant that guarantee no risk for the operators’ health or birds. As a result of this process, it was possible to minimize the level of mortality of chickens on farms from 12% to 5.49%, representing a reduction of 6.51% in the death rate, through the formula applied to the treatment of poultry litter based on oxidising agents used as antiseptics, hydrogen peroxide solutions, glacial acetic acid and EDTA in order to act on bacteria, viruses, micro bacteria and spores.

Keywords: Innovation, triple-helix, innovation, poultry farms.

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Authors: Design of 3-Step Skew BLAC Motor for Better Performance in Electric Power Steering System

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In Electric Power Steering (EPS), spoke type Brushless AC (BLAC) motors offer distinct advantages over other electric motor types in terms torque smoothness, reliability and efficiency. This paper deals with the shape optimization of spoke type BLAC motor, in order to reduce cogging torque. This paper examines 3 steps skewing rotor angle, optimizing rotor core edge and rotor overlap length for reducing cogging torque in spoke type BLAC motor. The methods were applied to existing machine designs and their performance was calculated using finite- element analysis (FEA). Prototypes of the machine designs were constructed and experimental results obtained. It is shown that the FEA predicted the cogging torque to be nearly reduce using those methods.

Keywords: EPS, 3-Step skewing, spoke type BLAC, cogging torque, FEA, optimization.

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Authors: Kalinga Ellen A., Bagile Burchard B.

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Tanzania Secondary Schools e-Learning (TanSSe-L) system is a customized learning management system (LMS) developed to enable ICT support in teaching and learning functions. Methodologies involved in the development of TanSSe-L system are Object oriented system analysis and design with UML to create and model TanSSe-L system database structure in the form of a design class diagram, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) to provide a well defined process in TanSSe-L system development, where MDA conceptual layers were integrated with system development life cycle and customization of open source learning management system which was used during implementation stage to create a timely functional TanSSe-L system. Before customization, a base for customization was prepared. This was the manual transformation from TanSSe-L system platform independent models (PIM) to TanSSe-L system specific PIM. This paper presents how Moodle open source LMS was analyzed and prepared to be the TanSSe-L system specific PIM as applied by MDA.

Keywords: Customization, e-Learning, MDA Transformation, Moodle, Secondary Schools, Tanzania.

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Authors: M.Bilal Bagbanci, Ozlem Koprulu Bagbanci

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Bursa, since the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, being on the important trade roads and having a capital accumulation as a result of silk production, was one of the first cities of modernization activities applied. Bursa maintained its importance even during the Republican Period and became one of the most important cities of the country and today is the fourth biggest and the industrialized city in Turkey. Social, political, economical and cultural changes occured with the reforms starting with the 1839 Edict of Tanzimat that aimed at modernizing the society and the government and centralizing the political power began in the Ottoman Empire. After the Tanzimat Reforms transformation of the city changed and planning processes began in Bursa according to the vision of Governors. The theresholds of the city are very important data for a sustainable planning for the city planners. Main aim of this study is to investigate the changes and transformations of the city according to the changes in the socio-economical and cultural properties for the city planners.

Keywords: Transportation, urbanization, Tanzimat reforms, modernization.

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Authors: Marco T. C. Faria

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Fixed-geometry hydrodynamic journal bearings are one of the best supporting systems for several applications of rotating machinery. Cylindrical journal bearings present excellent loadcarrying capacity and low manufacturing costs, but they are subjected to the oil-film instability at high speeds. An attempt of overcoming this instability problem has been the development of non-circular journal bearings. This work deals with an analysis of oil-lubricated elliptical journal bearings using the finite element method. Steadystate and dynamic performance characteristics of elliptical bearings are rendered by zeroth- and first-order lubrication equations obtained through a linearized perturbation method applied on the classical Reynolds equation. Four-node isoparametric rectangular finite elements are employed to model the bearing thin film flow. Curves of elliptical bearing load capacity and dynamic force coefficients are rendered at several operating conditions. The results presented in this work demonstrate the influence of the bearing ellipticity on its performance at different loading conditions.

Keywords: Elliptical journal bearings, non-circular journal bearings, hydrodynamic bearings, finite element method.

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Authors: Watchara Songserm, Teeradej Wuttipornpun

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This paper presents a genetic algorithm based permutation and non-permutation scheduling heuristics (GAPNP) to solve a multi-stage finite capacity material requirement planning (FCMRP) problem in automotive assembly flow shop with unrelated parallel machines. In the algorithm, the sequences of orders are iteratively improved by the GA characteristics, whereas the required operations are scheduled based on the presented permutation and non-permutation heuristics. Finally, a linear programming is applied to minimize the total cost. The presented GAPNP algorithm is evaluated by using real datasets from automotive companies. The required parameters for GAPNP are intently tuned to obtain a common parameter setting for all case studies. The results show that GAPNP significantly outperforms the benchmark algorithm about 30% on average.

Keywords: Finite capacity MRP, genetic algorithm, linear programming, flow shop, unrelated parallel machines, application in industries.

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Authors: K. Sontaya, B. Pitiyont, V. Punsuvon

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The objective of this study is to investigate the performance of the electrocoagulation process for color and COD removal in palm oil wastewater using a 10 L batch reactor. Iron was used as electrodes and the distance between electrodes was 2 cm. The effects of operating parameters: current voltage (6, 12 and 18 volt), reaction time (5, 15, 30, 45 and 60 min) and initial pH (4 and 9) of treatment efficiency were examine. The result showed that decolorization and COD removal efficiency increased with the increase in current voltage and reaction time. The proper condition for decolorization achieved at initial pH 4 and 9 were current voltage of 12 volt, reaction time 30 min. The decolorization efficiency reached 90.4% and 88.9%, respectively. COD removal was achiveved at current voltage 12 volt, reaction time 15 min. COD removal efficiency was 89.2 % and 83.0%, respectively. From the results, to show electrocoagulation process can treat palm oil mill wastewater in both acidic and basic condition at high efficiency for color and COD removal. Consequently, electrocoagulation process can be used or applied as a post-treatment step to improve the quality of the final discharge in term of color and residual COD removal.

Keywords: COD removal, decolorizaton, electrocoagulation, iron electrode, palm oil mill wastewater.

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Authors: Junki Miyamoto, Mariko Kiyomi, Yuuki Nagashio, Takuya Suzuki, Soichi Tanabe

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Anti-allergic effects of royal jelly were evaluated in a human-like mouse model of atopic dermatitis. NC/Nga mice were cutaneously applied with royal jelly for 6 weeks. Royal jelly-treated mice exhibited lower levels of serum total immunoglobulin E in comparison with controls. We found that the treatment decreased (11% to the control) expression of mRNA for aquaporin-3, which is involved in the modulation of epidermal hydration. Microarray analysis revealed more than 10-fold changes in the expression of several genes, such as transglutaminase 2, repetin, and keratins. In normal human epidermal keratinocytes, royal jelly extract suppressed interleukin-8 elevation induced by TNF-α and interferon-γ, suggesting direct anti-inflammatory activity in keratinocytes. Collectively, topical application of royal jelly may be useful for amelioration of lesions and inflammation in atopic dermatitis.

Keywords: Aquaporin 3, immunoglobulin E, NC/Nga, royal jelly.

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Authors: Vickneswaran Jeyabalan, Andrews Samraj, Loo Chu Kiong

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The noteworthy point in the advancement of Brain Machine Interface (BMI) research is the ability to accurately extract features of the brain signals and to classify them into targeted control action with the easiest procedures since the expected beneficiaries are of disabled. In this paper, a new feature extraction method using the combination of adaptive band pass filters and adaptive autoregressive (AAR) modelling is proposed and applied to the classification of right and left motor imagery signals extracted from the brain. The introduction of the adaptive bandpass filter improves the characterization process of the autocorrelation functions of the AAR models, as it enhances and strengthens the EEG signal, which is noisy and stochastic in nature. The experimental results on the Graz BCI data set have shown that by implementing the proposed feature extraction method, a LDA and SVM classifier outperforms other AAR approaches of the BCI 2003 competition in terms of the mutual information, the competition criterion, or misclassification rate.

Keywords: Adaptive autoregressive, adaptive bandpass filter, brain machine Interface, EEG, motor imaginary.

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Authors: N. Fusun Oyman Serteller

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In this paper, the techniques to solve time dependent electromagnetic wave propagation equations based on the Finite Difference Method (FDM) are proposed by comparing the results with Finite Element Method (FEM) in 2D while discussing some special simulation examples.  Here, 2D dynamical wave equations for lossy media, even with a constant source, are discussed for establishing symbolic manipulation of wave propagation problems. The main objective of this contribution is to introduce a comparative study of two suitable numerical methods and to show that both methods can be applied effectively and efficiently to all types of wave propagation problems, both linear and nonlinear cases, by using symbolic computation. However, the results show that the FDM is more appropriate for solving the nonlinear cases in the symbolic solution. Furthermore, some specific complex domain examples of the comparison of electromagnetic waves equations are considered. Calculations are performed through Mathematica software by making some useful contribution to the programme and leveraging symbolic evaluations of FEM and FDM.

Keywords: Finite difference method, finite element method, linear-nonlinear PDEs, symbolic computation, wave propagation equations.

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Authors: Josu Arteche, Jesus Orbe

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The log periodogram regression is widely used in empirical applications because of its simplicity, since only a least squares regression is required to estimate the memory parameter, d, its good asymptotic properties and its robustness to misspecification of the short term behavior of the series. However, the asymptotic distribution is a poor approximation of the (unknown) finite sample distribution if the sample size is small. Here the finite sample performance of different nonparametric residual bootstrap procedures is analyzed when applied to construct confidence intervals. In particular, in addition to the basic residual bootstrap, the local and block bootstrap that might adequately replicate the structure that may arise in the errors of the regression are considered when the series shows weak dependence in addition to the long memory component. Bias correcting bootstrap to adjust the bias caused by that structure is also considered. Finally, the performance of the bootstrap in log periodogram regression based confidence intervals is assessed in different type of models and how its performance changes as sample size increases.

Keywords: bootstrap, confidence interval, log periodogram regression, long memory.

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Authors: M.Machhout, M.Zeghid, W.El hadj youssef, B.Bouallegue, A.Baganne, R.Tourki

Abstract:

Long number multiplications (n ≥ 128-bit) are a primitive in most cryptosystems. They can be performed better by using Karatsuba-Ofman technique. This algorithm is easy to parallelize on workstation network and on distributed memory, and it-s known as the practical method of choice. Multiplying long numbers using Karatsuba-Ofman algorithm is fast but is highly recursive. In this paper, we propose different designs of implementing Karatsuba-Ofman multiplier. A mixture of sequential and combinational system design techniques involving pipelining is applied to our proposed designs. Multiplying large numbers can be adapted flexibly to time, area and power criteria. Computationally and occupation constrained in embedded systems such as: smart cards, mobile phones..., multiplication of finite field elements can be achieved more efficiently. The proposed designs are compared to other existing techniques. Mathematical models (Area (n), Delay (n)) of our proposed designs are also elaborated and evaluated on different FPGAs devices.

Keywords: finite field, Karatsuba-Ofman, long numbers, multiplication, mathematical model, recursivity.

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