Search results for: life change

Authors: Lukáš Plošek, Jaroslav Hynšt, Jaroslav Záhora, Jakub Elbl, Antonín Kintl, Ivana Charousová, Silvia Kovácsová

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Compost can influence soil fertility and plant health. At the same time compost can play an important role in the nitrogen cycle and it can influence leaching of mineral nitrogen from soil to underground water.

This paper deals with the influence of compost addition and mineral nitrogen fertilizer on leaching of mineral nitrogen, nitrogen availability in microbial biomass and plant biomass production in the lysimetric experiment. Twenty one lysimeters were filed with topsoil and subsoil collected in the area of protection zone of underground source of drinking water - Březová nad Svitavou. The highest leaching of mineral nitrogen was detected in the variant fertilized only mineral nitrogen fertilizer (624.58 mg m^-2), the lowest leaching was recorded in the variant with high addition of compost (315.51 mg m^-2). On the other hand, losses of mineral nitrogen are not in connection with the losses of available form of nitrogen in microbial biomass. Because lost of mineral nitrogen was detected in variant with the least change in the availability of N in microbial biomass.

The leaching of mineral nitrogen, yields as well as the results concerning nitrogen availability from the first year of long term experiment suggest that compost can positive influence the leaching of nitrogen into underground water.

Keywords: Nitrogen, Compost, Biomass production, Lysimeter.

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Authors: M. K. Bhuyan

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The use of human hand as a natural interface for humancomputer interaction (HCI) serves as the motivation for research in hand gesture recognition. Vision-based hand gesture recognition involves visual analysis of hand shape, position and/or movement. In this paper, we use the concept of object-based video abstraction for segmenting the frames into video object planes (VOPs), as used in MPEG-4, with each VOP corresponding to one semantically meaningful hand position. Next, the key VOPs are selected on the basis of the amount of change in hand shape – for a given key frame in the sequence the next key frame is the one in which the hand changes its shape significantly. Thus, an entire video clip is transformed into a small number of representative frames that are sufficient to represent a gesture sequence. Subsequently, we model a particular gesture as a sequence of key frames each bearing information about its duration. These constitute a finite state machine. For recognition, the states of the incoming gesture sequence are matched with the states of all different FSMs contained in the database of gesture vocabulary. The core idea of our proposed representation is that redundant frames of the gesture video sequence bear only the temporal information of a gesture and hence discarded for computational efficiency. Experimental results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme for key frame extraction, subsequent gesture summarization and finally gesture recognition.

Keywords: Hand gesture, MPEG-4, Hausdorff distance, finite state machine.

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Authors: Supannee Chaiumporn

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This article is to introduce the meaning and form of social quality moving process as indicated by members of two suburb communities with different social and cultural contexts. The form of social quality moving process is very significant for the community and social development, because it will make the people living together with sustainable happiness. This is a qualitative study involving 30 key-informants from two suburb communities. Data were collected though key-informant interviews, and analyzed using logical content description and descriptive statistics. This research found that on the social quality component, the people in both communities stressed the procedure for social qualitymaking. This includes the generousness, sharing and assisting among people in the communities. These practices helped making people to live together with sustainable happiness. Living as a family or appear to be a family is the major social characteristic of these two communities. This research also found that form of social quality’s moving process of both communities stress relation of human and nature; “nature overpower humans” paradigm and influence of religious doctrine that emphasizes relations among humans. Both criteria make the form of social’s moving process simple, adaptive to nature and caring for opinion sharing and understanding among each other before action. This form of social quality’s moving process is composed of 4 steps; (1) awareness building, (2) motivation to change, (3) participation from every party which is concerned (4) self-reliance.

Keywords: Social quality, form of social quality moving process, happiness, different social and cultural context.

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Authors: Khodamorad Nabaki, Jianhu Shen, Xiaodong Huang

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This paper develops a method for considering the critical fatigue stress as a constraint in the Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) method. Our aim is to reach an optimal design in which high cycle fatigue failure does not occur for a specific life time. The critical fatigue stress is calculated based on modified Goodman criteria and used as a stress constraint in our topology optimization problem. Since fatigue generally does not occur for compressive stresses, we use the p-norm approach of the stress measurement that considers the highest tensile principal stress in each point as stress measure to calculate the sensitivity numbers. The BESO method has been extended to minimize volume an object subjected to the critical fatigue stress constraint. The optimization results are compared with the results from the compliance minimization problem which shows clearly the merits of our newly developed approach.

Keywords: Topology optimization, BESO method, p-norm, fatigue constraint.

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Authors: Vasanthi Muniasamy, Intisar Magboul Ejalani, M. Anandhavalli, K. Gauthaman

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Social Media (SM) is websites increasingly popular and built to allow people to express themselves and to interact socially with others. Most SMT are dominated by youth particularly College students. The proliferation of popular social media tools, which can accessed from any communication devices has become pervasive in the lives of today’s student life. Connecting traditional education to social media tools are a relatively new era and any collaborative tool could be used for learning activities. This study focuses (i) how the social media tools are useful for the learning activities of the students of faculty of medicine in King Khalid University (ii) whether the social media affects the collaborative learning with interaction among students, among course instructor, their engagement, perceived ease of use and perceived ease of usefulness (TAM) (iii) overall, the students satisfy with this collaborative learning through Social media.

Keywords: Social Media, Web 2.0, Perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, Collaborative Learning.

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Authors: Rachel Hurdley, Jane Hopkinson

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This article is based on observation of a cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional team that worked on an intervention called ‘Memory Mate’ for use in a UK Cancer Centre. This aimed to improve treatment outcomes for patients who had comorbid dementia or other memory impairment. Comorbid patients present ambiguous, spoiled identities, problematising the boundaries of health specialisms and frames of understanding. Memory Mate is theorised as a boundary object facilitating service transformation by changing relations between oncology and mental health care practice. It crosses the boundaries between oncology and mental health. Its introduction signifies an important step in reconfiguring relations between the specialisms. As a boundary object, it contains parallel, even contesting worlds, with potential to enable an eventual synthesis of the double stigma of cancer and dementia. Memory Mate comprises physical things, such as an animation, but its principal value is in the interaction it initiates across disciplines and services. It supports evolution of practices to address a newly emergent challenge for health service provision, namely the cancer patient with comorbid dementia/cognitive impairment. Getting clinicians from different disciplines working together on a practical solution generates a dialogue that can shift professional identity and change the culture of practice.

Keywords: Boundary object, cancer, dementia, interdisciplinary teams.

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Authors: H. Aldousari, T. Buchacher, N. M. Spyrou

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Cerium-doped lanthanum bromide LaBr3:Ce(5%) crystals are considered to be one of the most advanced scintillator materials used in PET scanning, combining a high light yield, fast decay time and excellent energy resolution. Apart from the correct choice of scintillator, it is also important to optimise the detector geometry, not least in terms of source-to-detector distance in order to obtain reliable measurements and efficiency. In this study a commercially available 25 mm x 25 mm BrilLanCeTM 380 LaBr3: Ce (5%) detector was characterised in terms of its efficiency at varying source-to-detector distances. Gamma-ray spectra of 22Na, 60Co, and 137Cs were separately acquired at distances of 5, 10, 15, and 20cm. As a result of the change in solid angle subtended by the detector, the geometric efficiency reduced in efficiency with increasing distance. High efficiencies at low distances can cause pulse pile-up when subsequent photons are detected before previously detected events have decayed. To reduce this systematic error the source-to-detector distance should be balanced between efficiency and pulse pile-up suppression as otherwise pile-up corrections would need to be necessary at short distances. In addition to the experimental measurements Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out for the same setup, allowing a comparison of results. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach have been highlighted.

Keywords: BrilLanCeTM380 LaBr3:Ce(5%), Coincidence summing, GATE simulation, Geometric efficiency

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Authors: Madhuri Bhavsar, Anupam K Singh, Shrikant Pradhan

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Long term rainfall analysis and prediction is a challenging task especially in the modern world where the impact of global warming is creating complications in environmental issues. These factors which are data intensive require high performance computational modeling for accurate prediction. This research paper describes a prototype which is designed and developed on grid environment using a number of coupled software infrastructural building blocks. This grid enabled system provides the demanding computational power, efficiency, resources, user-friendly interface, secured job submission and high throughput. The results obtained using sequential execution and grid enabled execution shows that computational performance has enhanced among 36% to 75%, for decade of climate parameters. Large variation in performance can be attributed to varying degree of computational resources available for job execution. Grid Computing enables the dynamic runtime selection, sharing and aggregation of distributed and autonomous resources which plays an important role not only in business, but also in scientific implications and social surroundings. This research paper attempts to explore the grid enabled computing capabilities on weather indices from HOAPS data for climate impact modeling and change detection.

Keywords: Climate model, Computational Grid, GridApplication, Heterogeneous Grid

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Authors: Urska Cvek, Marjan Trutschl, Randolph Stone II, Zanobia Syed, John L. Clifford, Anita L. Sabichi

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Expression data analysis is based mostly on the statistical approaches that are indispensable for the study of biological systems. Large amounts of multidimensional data resulting from the high-throughput technologies are not completely served by biostatistical techniques and are usually complemented with visual, knowledge discovery and other computational tools. In many cases, in biological systems we only speculate on the processes that are causing the changes, and it is the visual explorative analysis of data during which a hypothesis is formed. We would like to show the usability of multidimensional visualization tools and promote their use in life sciences. We survey and show some of the multidimensional visualization tools in the process of data exploration, such as parallel coordinates and radviz and we extend them by combining them with the self-organizing map algorithm. We use a time course data set of transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder in our examples. Analysis of data with these tools has the potential to uncover additional relationships and non-trivial structures.

Keywords: microarrays, visualization, parallel coordinates, radviz, self-organizing maps.

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Authors: Pamela L. Knox, Linda R. Guthrie

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Trauma in early life is widely regarded as a cause for adult mental health problems. This study explores the role of secondary trauma on later functioning in a sample of 359 university students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes in the United States. Participants were initially divided into four groups based on 1) having directly experienced trauma (assaultive violence), 2) having directly experienced trauma and secondary traumatization through the unanticipated death of a close friend or family member or witnessing of an injury or shocking even), 3) having no experience of direct trauma but having experienced indirect trauma (secondary trauma), or 4) reporting no exposure. Participants completed a battery of measures on concepts associated with psychological functioning which included measures of psychological well-being, problem solving, coping and resiliency. Findings discuss differences in psychological functioning and resilience based on participants who experienced secondary traumatization and assaultive violence versus secondary traumatization alone.

Keywords: Psychological Functioning, Resiliency, Trauma, Abuse

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Authors: J. Šindler, A. Suleng, T. Jelstad Olsen, P. Bárta

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A subsea hydrocarbon production system can undergo planned and unplanned shutdowns during the life of the field. The thermal FEA is used to simulate the cool down to verify the insulation design of the subsea equipment, but it is also used to derive an acceptable insulation design for the cold spots. The driving factors of subsea analyses require fast responding and accurate models of the equipment cool down. This paper presents cool down analysis carried out by a Krylov subspace reduction method, and compares this approach to the commonly used FEA solvers. The model considered represents a typical component of a subsea production system, a closed valve on a dead leg. The results from the Krylov reduction method exhibits the least error and requires the shortest computational time to reach the solution. These findings make the Krylov model order reduction method very suitable for the above mentioned subsea applications.

Keywords: Model order reduction, Krylov subspace, subsea production system, finite element.

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Authors: Ernawati Mustafa Kamal, Hasnanywati Hassan, Atasya Osmadi

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The housing industry is crucial for sustainable development of every country. Housing is a basic need that can enhance the quality of life. Owning a house is therefore the main aim of individuals. However, affordability has become a critical issue towards homeownership. In recent years, housing price in the main cities has increased tremendously to unaffordable level. This paper investigates factors influencing the housing price from developer’s perspective and provides recommendation on strategies to tackle this issue. Online and face-to-face survey was conducted on housing developers operating in Penang, Malaysia. The results indicate that (1) location; (2) macroeconomics factor; (3) demographic factors; (4) land/zoning and; (5) industry factors are the main factors influencing the housing price. This paper contributes towards better understanding on developers’ view on how the housing price is determined and form a basis for government to help tackle the housing affordability issue.

Keywords: Factors influencing house price, housing affordability, housing developers, Malaysia.

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

Abstract:

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

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

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Authors: Ana-Marija Stjepić, Dalia Suša Vugec

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Today, digital transformation is one of the leading topics that occupy the attention of scientific circles and business experts. Organizational success is most often reflected through the successful managing of business processes. Given the growing market for digital innovations and its ever-increasing impact on business, organizations need to be prepared for organizational changes that come with the digital era. In order to maintain their competitive advantage in the global market, organizations must adapt their processes to new digitalization conditions. The main goal of this study is to point out the link between the digital transformation and the business process management concept. Therefore, in order to contribute to the scientific field that explores the potential relation between business process management concept and digital transformation, a literature review has been conducted. Papers have been searched within the Business Process Management Journal by keywords related to the term digital transformation. Selected papers have been analyzed according to the topic, type of publication, year of publication, keywords, etc. The results reveal a growing number of papers published on the topic of digital transformation to the Business Process Management Journal, but the lack of case studies. This paper contributes to the extension of academic literature in this important, yet insufficiently researched, scientific field that creates the bond between two strong concepts of digital transformation and business process management.

Keywords: Business process management, digital transformation, digitalization, process change.

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Authors: Lee Bih Ni, Elvis Fung

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This article is to review and understand the new generation of students to understand their expectations and attitudes. There are a group of students on school projects, creative work, educational software and digital signal source, the use of social networking tools to communicate with friends and a part in the competition. Today's students have been described as the new millennium students. They use information and communication technology in a more creative and innovative at home than at school, because the information and communication technologies for different purposes, in the home, usually occur in school. They collaborate and communicate more effectively when they are at home. Most children enter school, they will bring about how to use information and communication technologies, some basic skills and some tips on how to use information and communication technology will provide a more advanced than most of the school's expectations. Many teachers can help students, however, still a lot of work, "tradition", without a computer, and did not see the "new social computing networks describe young people to learn and new ways of working life in the future", in the education system of the benefits of using a computer.

Keywords: ICT Education, Digital History.

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Authors: D. M. S. Bandara, Yunqi Lei, Ye Luo

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Fingerprints are suitable as long-term markers of human identity since they provide detailed and unique individual features which are difficult to alter and durable over life time. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to encrypt and decrypt fingerprint images by using a specially designed Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) procedure based on block ciphers. In addition, to increase the confusing effect of fingerprint encryption, we also utilize a chaotic-behaved method called Arnold Cat Map (ACM) for a 2D scrambling of pixel locations in our method. Experimental results are carried out with various types of efficiency and security analyses. As a result, we demonstrate that the proposed fingerprint encryption/decryption algorithm is advantageous in several different aspects including efficiency, security and flexibility. In particular, using this algorithm, we achieve a margin of about 0.1% in the test of Number of Pixel Changing Rate (NPCR) values comparing to the-state-of-the-art performances.

Keywords: Arnold cat map, biometric encryption, block cipher, elliptic curve cryptography, fingerprint encryption, Koblitz’s Encoding.

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Authors: Jaramillo G. Maria Luisa, Turriago H. Álvaro, Thoene Ulf

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Financial inclusion has become a crucially important factor in debates on economic inequality posing challenges to the financial systems of countries around the world. Nowadays governments and banks are concerned about creating products that allow access to wide sectors of the population. The creation of banking products by the financial sector for people with low incomes tends to lead to improvements in the quality of life of vulnerable parts of the population. In countries with notable social and economic inequalities, financial inclusion is a key aspect for equitable economic growth. This study is based on the case of Colombia, which is a country with a strong record of economic growth over the past decade. Nevertheless, corruption, unemployment, and poverty contribute to uncertainty regarding the country’s future growth prospects. This study wants to explain the situation of financial exclusion and financial inclusion with respect to the Colombian case. Financial inclusion is going to be studied from the perspective of social innovation.

Keywords: Colombia, financial exclusion, financial inclusion, social innovation.

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Authors: Florian Gschösser, Walter Purrer

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The paper shows examples for the (environmental) optimization of production processes for asphalt mixtures applied for typical road pavements in Austria and Switzerland. The conducted “from-cradle-to-gate” LCA firstly analyzes the production one cubic meter of asphalt and secondly all material production processes for exemplary highway pavements applied in Austria and Switzerland. It is shown that environmental impacts can be reduced by the application of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and by the optimization of specific production characteristics, e.g. the reduction of the initial moisture of the mineral aggregate and the reduction of the mixing temperature by the application of low-viscosity and foam bitumen. The results of the LCA study demonstrate reduction potentials per cubic meter asphalt of up to 57 % (Global Warming Potential–GWP) and 77 % (Ozone depletion–ODP). The analysis per square meter of asphalt pavement determined environmental potentials of up to 40 % (GWP) and 56 % (ODP).

Keywords: Asphalt mixtures, environmental potentials, life cycle assessment, material production.

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Authors: Kang-Gyu Park, Sun-Jong Park, Hong Jae Yim, Hyo-Gyung Kwak

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This paper attempts to evaluate the effect of fire damage on concrete by using nonlinear resonance vibration method, one of the nonlinear nondestructive method. Concrete exhibits not only nonlinear stress-strain relation but also hysteresis and discrete memory effect which are contained in consolidated materials. Hysteretic materials typically show the linear resonance frequency shift. Also, the shift of resonance frequency is changed according to the degree of micro damage. The degree of the shift can be obtained through nonlinear resonance vibration method. Five exposure scenarios were considered in order to make different internal micro damage. Also, the effect of post-fire-curing on fire-damaged concrete was taken into account to conform the change in internal damage. Hysteretic nonlinearity parameter was obtained by amplitudedependent resonance frequency shift after specific curing periods. In addition, splitting tensile strength was measured on each sample to characterize the variation of residual strength. Then, a correlation between the hysteretic nonlinearity parameter and residual strength was proposed from each test result.

Keywords: Fire damaged concrete, nonlinear resonance vibration method, nonlinearity parameter, post-fire-curing, splitting tensile strength.

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Authors: A. Al-Mosawe, R. Al-Mahaidi

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Carbon fiber reinforced polymersarewidely used to strengthen steel structural elements. These structural elements are normally subjected to static, dynamic and fatigue loadings during their life-time. CFRP laminate is commonly used to strengthen these structures under the subjected loads. A number of studies have focused on the characteristics of CFRP sheets bonded to steel members under static, dynamic and fatigue loadings. However, there is a gap in understanding the bonding behavior between CFRP laminates and steel members under impact loading. This paper shows the effect of high load rates on this bond. CFRP laminate CFK 150/2000 was used to strengthen steel joints using Araldite 420 epoxy. The results show that applying a high load rate significantly affects the bond strength but has little influence on the effective bond length.

Keywords: Adhesively-bonded joints, Bond strength, CFRP laminate, Impact tensile loading.

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Authors: Khaled Elbehiery, Hussam Elbehiery

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Smart cities are a framework of technologies along with sustainable infrastructure to provide their citizens an improved quality of life, safer environment, affordability, and more, which in turn helps with the society's economic growth. The proposed research will focus on the primary building block of the smart city; the infrastructure of the house itself. The traditional method of building houses has been, for a long time, nothing but a costly manufacturing process, and consequently, buying a house becomes not an option for everyone anymore. The smart cities' Modular Houses are not using traditional building construction materials; the design reduces the common lengthy construction times and associated high costs. The Modular Houses are technological homes, low-cost and customizable based on a family's requirements. In addition, the Modular Houses are environmentally friendly and healthy enough to assist with the pandemic situation.

Keywords: Smart cities, modular houses, single-unit property, multi-unit property, mobility features, chain-supply, livable environment, carbon footprint.

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

Abstract:

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

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

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Authors: Guoliang Fan, Aiping Li, Xuemei Liu, Liyun Xu

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The performance of the tightening equipment will decline with the working process in manufacturing system. The main manifestations are the randomness and discretization degree increasing of the tightening performance. To evaluate the degradation tendency of the tightening performance accurately, a complexity measurement approach based on Kolmogorov entropy is presented. At first, the states of performance index are divided for calibrating the discrete degree. Then the complexity measurement model based on Kolmogorov entropy is built. The model describes the performance degradation tendency of tightening equipment quantitatively. At last, a study case is applied for verifying the efficiency and validity of the approach. The research achievement shows that the presented complexity measurement can effectively evaluate the degradation tendency of the tightening equipment. It can provide theoretical basis for preventive maintenance and life prediction of equipment.

Keywords: Complexity measurement, Kolmogorov entropy, manufacturing system, performance evaluation, tightening equipment.

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Authors: Y. Mohammadi, H. M. Ghasemzadeh, T. B. Talari, M. A. Ghorbani

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Concrete pavement has superior durability and longer structural life than asphalt pavement. Concrete pavement requires less maintenance compared to asphalt pavement which requires maintenance and major rehabilitation. Use of the concrete pavement has been grown over the past decade in developing countries. Fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) has been successfully used in design of concrete pavement in past decade. In this research, the effect of fibre volume fraction in modulus of rupture, load-deflection, equivalent flexural strength (fe,3) and the equivalent flexural strength ratio (Re,3) has been used in different fibre volume fraction. Crimped-type flat steel fibre of size 50 x 2.0 x 0.6 mm was used with 1.0%, 1.5% and 2.0% volume fraction. Beam specimens of size 500 x 100 x 100 mm were used for flexural as well as with JCI method for analysis flexural toughness, equivalent flexural strength. It was obtained as the 2% fibre volume fractions; reduce 45% of the concrete pavement thickness.

Keywords: Concrete pavement, Equivalent flexural strength, Fibre, Load-deflection curves.

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Authors: T.A. Adegbola, IEA Aghachi, E.R. Sadiku

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To investigates the effect of fiberglass clamping process improvement on drape simulation prediction. This has great effect on the mould and the fiber during manufacturing process. This also, improves the fiber strain, the quality of the fiber orientation in the area of folding and wrinkles formation during the press-forming process. Drape simulation software tool was used to digitalize the process, noting the formation problems on the contour sensitive part. This was compared with the real life clamping processes using single and double frame set-ups to observe the effects. Also, restrains are introduced by using clips, and the G-clamps with predetermine revolution to; restrain the fabric deformation during the forming process.The incorporation of clamping and fabric restrain deformation improved on the prediction of the simulation tool. Therefore, for effective forming process, incorporation of clamping process into the drape simulation process will assist in the development of fiberglass application in manufacturing process.

Keywords: clamping, fiberglass, drape simulation, pressforming.

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Authors: T. C. B. N. Assunção, J. L. Silvino, P. Resende

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The winding hot-spot temperature is one of the most critical parameters that affect the useful life of the power transformers. The winding hot-spot temperature can be calculated as function of the top-oil temperature that can estimated by using the ambient temperature and transformer loading measured data. This paper proposes the estimation of the top-oil temperature by using a method based on Least Squares Support Vector Machines approach. The estimated top-oil temperature is compared with measured data of a power transformer in operation. The results are also compared with methods based on the IEEE Standard C57.91-1995/2000 and Artificial Neural Networks. It is shown that the Least Squares Support Vector Machines approach presents better performance than the methods based in the IEEE Standard C57.91-1995/2000 and artificial neural networks.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, Hot-spot Temperature, Least Squares Support Vector, Top-oil Temperature.

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Authors: Mildred Moreno Villanueva

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Public space is essential to strengthen the social and urban fabric and the social cohesion; there lies the importance of its study. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyze the quality of public space in the XXI century in both quantitative and qualitative terms. In this article, the concept of public space includes open spaces such as parks, public squares and walking areas. To make this analysis, we take Mexico City as the case study. It has a population of nearly 9 million inhabitants and is composed of sixteen boroughs. For this analysis, we consider both existing public spaces and the government intervention for building and improving new and existent public spaces. Results show that on the one hand, quantitatively there is not an equitable distribution of public spaces due to both the growth of the city itself as well as due to the absence of political will to create public spaces. Another factor is the evolution of this city, which has been growing merely in a “patched pattern”, where public space has played no role at all with a total absence of urban design. On the other hand, qualitatively, even the boroughs with the most public spaces have not shown interest in making these spaces qualitatively inclusive and open to the general population aiming for integration. Therefore, urban projects that privatize public space seem to be the rule, rather than a rehabilitation effort of the existent public spaces. Hence, state intervention should reinforce its role as an agent of social change acting in benefit of the majority of the inhabitants with the promotion of more inclusive public spaces.

Keywords: Exclusion, inclusion, Mexico City, public space.

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Authors: D. Estrella, A. Silva, R. Zapata, H. Rubio

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A total of 100 primary caregivers (mothers, fathers, grandparents) with at least one child or grandchild with a diagnosis of congenital bilateral profound deafness were assessed in order to evaluate the functionality of families with a deaf member, who was evaluated by specialists in audiology, molecular biology, genetics and psychology. After confirmation of the clinical diagnosis, DNA from the patients and parents were analyzed in search of the 35delG deletion of the GJB2 gene to determine who possessed the mutation. All primary caregivers were provided psychological support, regardless of whether or not they had the mutation, and prior and subsequent, the family APGAR test was applied. All parents, grandparents were informed of the results of the genetic analysis during the psychological intervention. The family APGAR, after psychological and genetic counseling, showed that 14% perceived their families as functional, 62% moderately functional and 24% dysfunctional. This shows the importance of psychological support in family functionality that has a direct impact on the quality of life of these families.

Keywords: Deafness, psychological support, family, adaptation to disability.

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Authors: Anders Schou Simonsen, Thomas Condra, Kim Sørensen

Abstract:

Various processes are modelled using a discrete phase, where particles are seeded from a source. Such particles can represent liquid water droplets, which are affecting the continuous phase by exchanging thermal energy, momentum, species etc. Discrete phases are typically modelled using parcel, which represents a collection of particles, which share properties such as temperature, velocity etc. When coupling the phases, the exchange rates are integrated over the cell, in which the parcel is located. This can cause spikes and fluctuating exchange rates. This paper presents an alternative method of coupling a discrete and a continuous plug flow phase. This is done using triangular parcels, which span between nodes following the dynamics of single droplets. Thus, the triangular parcels are propagated using the corner nodes. At each time step, the exchange rates are spatially integrated over the surface of the triangular parcels, which yields a smooth continuous exchange rate to the continuous phase. The results shows that the method is more stable, converges slightly faster and yields smooth exchange rates compared with the steam tube approach. However, the computational requirements are about five times greater, so the applicability of the alternative method should be limited to processes, where the exchange rates are important. The overall balances of the exchanged properties did not change significantly using the new approach.

Keywords: CFD, coupling, discrete phase, parcel.

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Authors: Pibool Waijittragum

Abstract:

This paper has its objectives to reveal contents and personality suitable to women’s newspapers. The research methodology employed in this study is the questionnaire which is derived from a literature review related to newspapers, graphic elements method for print media design and 12 sample sizes of different daily newspapers. In order to acquire an in-depth understanding and comprehensible view of desirable for a women’s newspaper design, graphic elements that related to that personality as well as other preferable elements for a women’s newspaper, including seven editorial Many Thai newspapers were offer a women’s documentary and column space. With its feminine looks, most of them appeared with warm tones and friendly mood through their headlines, contents, illustrations and graphics. The study found that most desirable personalities for a women’s newspaper design in Thailand are: Modern, Chic and Natural. Each personality has significant graphic elements as follows: 1. Modern: significant elements of modern personality comprises of the composition with graduation pattern which creates attractiveness by using an anomalous alignment layout grid and outstanding structure to create focal points and dynamic movement. Dark to black color that has narrowed, limited hue coupled with bright color tones. The round shape of the Thai font style was suitable for this concept. Such Thai fonts have harmonious proportion and consistent stroke with the urban-polite look. 2. Chic: significant elements of chic personality comprises of the proper composition with distinctive scale, using rhythmic repetition and a contrast of scale to draw in reader attention. Vivid and bright color tones with extensive hues coupled with similar color tones and round shape of the Thai font style with a light stroke and consistent line. 3. Natural: significant elements of natural personality comprises of the proper composition using rhythmic repetition that creates a focal point through striking images and harmonious perspective. Warm color tones with restricted hues that appear to look natural. Duo tone color was suitable through the gradually increasing gradient. The Thai style with hand writing font was suitable through the inconsistent stroke. There are 10 types of daily content that were revealed to be the most desirable for Thai women readers, these are: Daily News, Economics News, Education News, Entertainment News, International news, Political News, Public Health News, Scientific News, Social News and Sports News. As well, there are 16 topics identified as very desirable for Thai women readers, such as: Art and Culture, Automobile, Classified, Special Scoop, Editorial, Advertisement, Entertainment, Health and Quality of Life, History, Horoscope, Lifestyle and Fashion, Literature, Nature - Environment and Tourism, Night Life, Stars and Jet Set Gossip, Women’s Issue.

Keywords: Graphic design elements, women newspaper, newspaper design.

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