Search results for: attitude and orbit control systems

Authors: Jasmine Adela Mutang, Alfred Chan Huan Zhi, Norzihan Ayub, Chua Bee Seok, Rosnah Ismail, Ooh Siew Ling, Uichol Kim

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This study aims to investigate how much both son and daughter trust their father and what are the underlying reasons they trust their father. The results revealed five main reasons why Malaysian adolescents trust their father. Those reasons are related to the role of father, father-child relationship, father-s characteristics, father-s nurturing nature and father-s attitude and behavior. A total of 1022 students (males = 241, females = 781) from one of public university in Sabah, Malaysia participated in the study. The participants completed open-ended questionnaires developed by Kim (2008), asking how much the adolescents trust their father, and the reasons why they trust their father. The data was analysed by using the indigenous psychology method proposed by [1] Findings of this study revealed the pattern of trust towards father for both Malaysian male and female adolescents. The results contributed new information about Malaysian adolescents- trust towards their father form the indigenous context. The implications of finding will be discussed.

Keywords: Adolescent, Father-child relationship, Indigenous Psychology, Trust.

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Authors: Mohamed Rashad, Mohamed Hafez, Mohamed Emran, Emad Aboukila, Ibrahim Nassar

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Environment-friendly organic wastes of Brewers' spent grain, a byproduct of the brewing process, have recently used as soil amendment to improve soil fertility and plant production. In this work, treatments of 1% (T1) and 2% (T2) of spent grains, 1% (C1) and 2% (C2) of compost and mix of both sources (C1T1) were used and compared to the control for growing Zea mays L. on sandy soil under arid Mediterranean climate. Soils were previously incubated at 65% saturation capacity for a month. The most relevant soil physical and chemical parameters were analysed. Water holding capacity and soil organic matter (OM) increased significantly along the treatments with the highest values in T2. Soil pH decreased along the treatments and the lowest pH was in C1T1. Bicarbonate decreased by 69% in C1T1 comparing to control. Total nitrogen (TN) and available P varied significantly among all treatments and T2, C1T1 and C2 treatments increased 25, 17 and 11 folds in TN and 1.2, 0.6 and 0.3 folds in P, respectively related to control. Available K showed the highest values in C1T1. Soil micronutrients increased significantly along all treatments with the highest values in T2. After corn germination, significant variation was observed in the velocity of germination coefficients (VGC) among all treatments in the order of C1T1>T2>T1>C2>C1>control. The highest records of final germination and germination index were in C1T1 and T2. The spent grains may compensate deficiencies of macro and micronutrients in newly reclaimed sandy soils without adverse effects to sustain crop production with a rider that excessive or continuous use need to be circumvented.

Keywords: Spent grain, compost, micronutrients, macronutrients, water holding capacity, plant growth.

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Authors: A. Gagat-Matuła

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The aim of this article is to present a relation between family relationships and styles of approach to coping with stress among young people from migrant families with cerebral palsy. The study involved 70 persons (with cerebral palsy in the standard intellectual capacity) from families, in which at least one of parents is a migrant. To measure the level of communication in the family, the Family Relationships Questionnaire (FRQ) was employed, while the styles of coping with stress was investigated with the CISS Questionnaire. The relation between family relationships and styles of coping with stressful situations of the respondents was investigated. It was shown that there is an affiliation between the emotion-oriented style of coping with the stress and the variable of “communication in my family”. Moreover, it was demonstrated that there is a linkage between the task-oriented style of coping with the stress and the variable of “maternal control in mother-child relationship”. Young people with CP subjected to overprotection and control from their mothers in problem situations tend to focus on their own emotions instead of trying to undertake constructive actions. Excessive control in daily life by mothers results in passivity and a lack of motivation to cope with difficult situations.

Keywords: Young people with cerebral palsy, family relationships, styles of coping with stress, migration.

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Authors: H. A. Alzomor, B. K. Ouda, A. M. Eldeib

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Successful regional anesthesia depends upon precise location of the peripheral nerve or nerve plexus. Locating peripheral nerves is preferred to be done using nerve stimulation. In order to generate a nerve impulse by electrical means, a minimum threshold stimulus of current “rheobase” must be applied to the nerve. The technique depends on stimulating muscular twitching at a close distance to the nerve without actually touching it. Success rate of this operation depends on the accuracy of current intensity pulses used for stimulation .In this paper, we will discuss a circuit and algorithm for closed loop control for the current, theoretical analysis and test results is discussed and results is compared to previous techniques.

Keywords: Close Loop Control, Constant Current, Nerve Locator.

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Authors: Andrey V. Timofeev, Dmitry V. Egorov

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The practical efficient approach is suggested for estimation of the seismoacoustic sources energy in C-OTDR monitoring systems. This approach is represents the sequential plan for confidence estimation both the seismoacoustic sources energy, as well the absorption coefficient of the soil. The sequential plan delivers the non-asymptotic guaranteed accuracy of obtained estimates in the form of non-asymptotic confidence regions with prescribed sizes. These confidence regions are valid for a finite sample size when the distributions of the observations are unknown. Thus, suggested estimates are non-asymptotic and nonparametric, and also these estimates guarantee the prescribed estimation accuracy in form of prior prescribed size of confidence regions, and prescribed confidence coefficient value.

Keywords: C-OTDR-system, guaranteed estimates, nonparametric estimation, sequential confidence estimation, multichannel monitoring systems.

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Authors: Yogesh Pahariya, Rakesh Saxena, Biswaroop Sarkar

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The selection of control strategy depends on the converters of the drive including power, speed, performance and the possible system costs. A number of attempts were therefore made in recent times to develop novel power electronic converter structures for SRM drives, based on the utilization. Many of the converters with variable speed drives have no input power factor correction circuits. This results in harmonic pollution of the utility supply, which should be avoided. The effect of power factor variation in terms of harmonic content is also analyzed in this study. The proposed topologies were simulated using MATLAB / Simulink software package and the results are obtained.

Keywords: Harmonic Pollution, Power Electronic Converter, Power Quality, Simulation.

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Authors: J. B. V. Subrahmanyam, C. Radhakrishna

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To minimize power losses, it is important to determine the location and size of local generators to be placed in unbalanced power distribution systems. On account of some inherent features of unbalanced distribution systems, such as radial structure, large number of nodes, a wide range of X/R ratios, the conventional techniques developed for the transmission systems generally fail on the determination of optimum size and location of distributed generators (DGs). This paper presents a simple method for investigating the problem of contemporaneously choosing best location and size of DG in three-phase unbalanced radial distribution system (URDS) for power loss minimization and to improve the voltage profile of the system. Best location of the DG is determined by using voltage index analysis and size of DG is computed by variational technique algorithm according to available standard size of DGs. This paper presents the results of simulations for 25-bus and IEEE 37- bus Unbalanced Radial Distribution system.

Keywords: Distributed generator, unbalanced radial distributionsystem, voltage index analysis, variational algorithm.

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Authors: Ho-Ting Wu, Min-Hua Yang, Kai-Wei Ke, Lei Yan

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The quality-of-service (QoS) support for wireless LANs has been a hot research topic during the past few years. In this paper, two QoS provisioning mechanisms are proposed for the employment in 802.11e EDCA MAC scheme. First, the proposed call admission control mechanism can not only guarantee the QoS for the higher priority existing connections but also provide the minimum reserved bandwidth for traffic flows with lower priority. In addition, the adaptive contention window adjustment mechanism can adjust the maximum and minimum contention window size dynamically according to the existing connection number of each AC. The collision probability as well as the packet delay will thus be reduced effectively. Performance results via simulations have revealed the enhanced QoS property achieved by employing these two mechanisms.

Keywords: 802.11e, admission control, contention window, EDCA

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Authors: Mai. M. Toughan, Ahmed A. A. Sallam, Ashraf O. Abd El-Latif

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Termites are eusocial insects that are found on all continents except Antarctica. Termites have serious destructive impact, damaging local huts and crops of poor subsistence. The annual cost of termite damage and its control is determined in the billions globally. In Egypt, most of these damages are due to the subterranean termite species especially the sand termite, P. hypostoma. Pyrethroids became the primary weapon for subterranean termite control, after the use of chlorpyrifos as a soil termiticide was banned. Despite the important role of pyrethroids in termite control, its extensive use in pest control led to the eventual rise of insecticide resistance which may make many of the pyrethroids ineffective. The ability to diagnose the precise mechanism of pyrethroid resistance in any insect species would be the key component of its management at specified location for a specific population. In the present study, detailed toxicological and biochemical studies was conducted on the mechanism of pyrethroid resistance in P. hypostoma. The susceptibility of field populations of P. hypostoma against deltamethrin, α-cypermethrin and ƛ-cyhalothrin was evaluated. The obtained results revealed that the workers of P. hypostoma have developed high resistance level against the tested pyrethroids. Studies carried out through estimation of detoxification enzyme activity indicated that enhanced esterase and cytochrome P450 activities were probably important mechanisms for pyrethroid resistance in field populations. Elevated esterase activity and also additional esterase isozyme were observed in the pyrethroid-resistant populations compared to the susceptible populations. Strong positive correlation between cytochrome P450 activity and pyrethroid resistance was also reported. |Deltamethrin could be recommended as a resistance-breaking pyrethroid that is active against resistant populations of P. hypostoma.

Keywords: Psammotermes hypostoma, pyrethroid resistance, esterase, cytochrome P450.

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Authors: G. Martemucci, D. Casamassima, A. G. D'Alessandro

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The study aimed to evaluated the reproductive performance response to short term oestrus synchronization during the transition period. One hundred and sixty-five indigenous multiparous non-lactating goats were subdivided into the following six treatment groups for oestrus synchronization: NT control Group (N= 30), Fe-21d, FGA vaginal sponge for 21days+eCG at 19thd; FPe- 11d, FGA 11d + PGF2α and eCG at 9th d; FPe-10d, FGA 10d+ PGF2α and eCG at 8th d; FPe-9d, FGA 9d +PGF2α and eCG at 7thd; PFe-5d, PGF2α at d0 + FGA 5d + eCG at 5thd. The goats were natural mated (1 male/6 females). Fecundity rates (n. births /n. females treated x 100) were statistically higher (P < 0.05) in short term FPe-9d (157.9%), FPe- 11d (115.4%), FPe-10d (111.1%) and PFe-5d (107.7%) groups compared to the NT control Group (66.7%).

Keywords: Goats, oestrus synchronization, short-term protocols.

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Authors: S. S. Ghodsi, M. H. Mehrabi, Zainah Ibrahim, Meldi Suhatril

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This research examines the performance of a hybrid passive control device for enhancing the seismic response of steel frame structures. The device design comprises a damper which employs a viscoelastic material to control both shear and axial strain. In the design, energy is dissipated through the shear strain of a two-layer system of viscoelastic pads which are located between steel plates. In addition, viscoelastic blocks have been included on either side of the main shear damper which obtains compressive strains in the viscoelastic blocks. These dampers not only dissipate energy but also increase the stiffness of the steel frame structure, and the degree to which they increase the stiffness may be controlled by the size and shape. In this research, the cyclical behavior of the damper was examined both experimentally and numerically with finite element modeling. Cyclic loading results of the finite element modeling reveal fundamental characteristics of this hybrid viscoelastic damper. The results indicate that incorporating a damper of the design can significantly improve the seismic performance of steel frame structures.

Keywords: Cyclic loading, energy dissipation, hybrid damper, passive control system, viscoelastic damper.

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Authors: Ziraguen O. Williams, Shield B. Lin, Fouad N. Matari, Leslie J. Quiocho

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Simulation for seated row exercise was a continued task to assist NASA in analyzing a one-dimensional vibration isolation and stabilization system for astronaut’s exercise platform. Feedback delay and signal noise were added to the simulation model. Simulation runs for this study were conducted in two software simulation tools, Trick and MBDyn, software simulation environments developed at the NASA Johnson Space Center. The exciter force in the simulation was calculated from motion capture of an exerciser during a seated aerobic row exercise. The simulation runs include passive control, active control using a Proportional, Integral, Derivative (PID) controller, and active control using a Piecewise Linear Integral Derivative (PWLID) controller. Output parameters include displacements of the exercise platform, the exerciser, and the counterweight; transmitted force to the wall of spacecraft; and actuator force to the platform. The simulation results showed excellent force reduction in the active controlled system compared to the passive controlled system, which showed less force reduction.

Keywords: Simulation, counterweight, exercise, vibration.

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Authors: Isari Pairoa, Proud Arunrangsiwed

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Brand mascots are the cartoon characters, which are mainly designed for advertising or other related marketing purposes. Many brand mascots are extremely popular, since they were presented in commercial advertisements and Line Stickers. Brand Line Stickers could lead the users to identify with the brand and brand mascots, where might influence users to become loyal customers, and share the identity with the brand. The objective of the current study is to examine the effect of brand mascots on consumers’ decision and consumers’ intention to purchase the product. This study involved 400 participants, using cluster sampling from 50 districts in Bangkok metropolitan area. The descriptive analysis shows that using brand mascot causes consumers' positive attitude toward the products, and also heightens the possibility to purchasing the products. The current study suggests the new type of marketing strategy, which is brand fandom. This study has also contributed the knowledge to the area of integrated marketing communication and identification theory.

Keywords: Brand mascot, consumers’ behavior, marketing communication, purchasing.

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Authors: G. Parmar, S. Mukherjee, R. Prasad

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The authors present an algorithm for order reduction of linear time invariant dynamic systems using the combined advantages of the eigen spectrum analysis and the error minimization by particle swarm optimization technique. Pole centroid and system stiffness of both original and reduced order systems remain same in this method to determine the poles, whereas zeros are synthesized by minimizing the integral square error in between the transient responses of original and reduced order models using particle swarm optimization technique, pertaining to a unit step input. It is shown that the algorithm has several advantages, e.g. the reduced order models retain the steady-state value and stability of the original system. The algorithm is illustrated with the help of two numerical examples and the results are compared with the other existing techniques.

Keywords: Eigen spectrum, Integral square error, Orderreduction, Particle swarm optimization, Stability.

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Authors: Zoaib Mirza

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Half of the Muslim countries in the world have declared Islam the state religion in their constitutions. Yet, none of these countries have implemented authentic Islamic laws in line with the Quran (Holy Book), practices of Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) called the Sunnah, and his four successors known as the Rightly Guided - Khalifa. Since their independence, these countries have adopted different government systems like Democracy, Dictatorship, Republic, Communism, and Monarchy. Instead of benefiting the people, these government systems have put these countries into political, social, and economic crises. These Islamic countries do not have equal representation and membership in worldwide political forums. Western countries lead these forums. Therefore, it is now imperative for the Muslim leaders of all these countries to collaborate, reset, and implement the original Islamic form of government, which led to the prosperity and success of people, including non-Muslims, 1400 years ago. They should unite as one nation under Khalifat, which means establishing the authority of Allah (SWT) and following the divine commandments related to the social, political, and economic systems. As they have declared Islam in their constitution, they should work together to apply the divine framework of the governance revealed by Allah (SWT) and implemented by Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) and his four successors called Khalifas. This paper provides an overview of the downfall and the end of the Khalifat system by 1924, the ways in which the West caused political, social, and economic crises in the Muslim countries, and finally, a summary of the social, political, and economic systems implemented by the Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) and his successors, Khalifas, called the Rightly Guided – Hazrat Abu Bakr (RA), Hazrat Omar (RA), Hazrat Usman (RA), and Hazrat Ali (RA).

Keywords: Khalifat, Khilafat-e-Rashida, The Rightly Guided, colonization, capitalism, neocolonization, government systems.

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Authors: Mohamed Omar

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Steel bracing members are widely used in steel  structures to reduce lateral displacement and dissipate energy during  earthquake motions. Concentric steel bracing provide an excellent  approach for strengthening and stiffening steel buildings. Using these  braces the designer can hardly adjust the stiffness together with  ductility as needed because of buckling of braces in compression. In  this study the use of SMA bracing and steel bracing (Mega) utilized  in steel frames are investigated. The effectiveness of these two  systems in rehabilitating a mid-rise eight-storey steel frames were  examined using time-history nonlinear analysis utilizing seismostruct  software. Results show that both systems improve the strength and  stiffness of the original structure but due to excellent behavior of  SMA in nonlinear phase and under compressive forces this system  shows much better performance than the rehabilitation system of  Mega bracing.

 

Keywords: Finite element analysis, seismic response, shapes memory alloy, steel frame, mega bracing.

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Authors: SeHun Lim, Sanghoon Kim, Sun-Tae Chung, Seongwon Cho

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Face authentication for access control is a face membership authentication which passes the person of the incoming face if he turns out to be one of an enrolled person based on face recognition or rejects if not. Face membership authentication belongs to the two class classification problem where SVM(Support Vector Machine) has been successfully applied and shows better performance compared to the conventional threshold-based classification. However, most of previous SVMs have been trained using image feature vectors extracted from face images of each class member(enrolled class/unenrolled class) so that they are not robust to variations in illuminations, poses, and facial expressions and much affected by changes in member configuration of the enrolled class In this paper, we propose an effective face membership authentication method based on SVM using class discriminating features which represent an incoming face image-s associability with each class distinctively. These class discriminating features are weakly related with image features so that they are less affected by variations in illuminations, poses and facial expression. Through experiments, it is shown that the proposed face membership authentication method performs better than the threshold rule-based or the conventional SVM-based authentication methods and is relatively less affected by changes in member size and membership.

Keywords: Face Authentication, Access control, member ship authentication, SVM.

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Authors: Antonio Vitale, Nicola Genito, Giovanni Cuciniello, Ferdinando Montemari

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The introduction of tilt-rotor aircraft into the existing civilian air transportation system will provide beneficial effects due to tilt-rotor capability to combine the characteristics of a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft into one vehicle. The disposability of reliable tilt-rotor simulation models supports the development of such vehicle. Indeed, simulation models are required to design automatic control systems that increase safety, reduce pilot's workload and stress, and ensure the optimal aircraft configuration with respect to flight envelope limits, especially during the most critical flight phases such as conversion from helicopter to aircraft mode and vice versa. This article presents a process to build a simplified tilt-rotor simulation model, derived from the analysis of flight data. The model aims to reproduce the complex dynamics of tilt-rotor during the in-flight conversion phase. It uses a set of scheduled linear transfer functions to relate the autopilot reference inputs to the most relevant rigid body state variables. The model also computes information about the rotor flapping dynamics, which are useful to evaluate the aircraft control margin in terms of rotor collective and cyclic commands. The rotor flapping model is derived through a mixed theoretical-empirical approach, which includes physical analytical equations (applicable to helicopter configuration) and parametric corrective functions. The latter are introduced to best fit the actual rotor behavior and balance the differences existing between helicopter and tilt-rotor during flight. Time-domain system identification from flight data is exploited to optimize the model structure and to estimate the model parameters. The presented model-building process was applied to simulated flight data of the ERICA Tilt-Rotor, generated by using a high fidelity simulation model implemented in FlightLab environment. The validation of the obtained model was very satisfying, confirming the validity of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Flapping Dynamics, Flight Dynamics, System Identification, Tilt-Rotor Modeling and Simulation.

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Authors: K. Sudprasert, M. Precharattana, N. Nuttavut, D. Triampo, B. Pattanasiri, Y. Lenbury, W. Triampo

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The study of non-equilibrium systems has attracted increasing interest in recent years, mainly due to the lack of theoretical frameworks, unlike their equilibrium counterparts. Studying the steady state and/or simple systems is thus one of the main interests. Hence in this work we have focused our attention on the driven lattice gas model (DLG model) consisting of interacting particles subject to an external field E. The dynamics of the system are given by hopping of particles to nearby empty sites with rates biased for jumps in the direction of E. Having used small two dimensional systems of DLG model, the stochastic properties at nonequilibrium steady state were analytically studied. To understand the non-equilibrium phenomena, we have applied the analytic approach via master equation to calculate probability function and analyze violation of detailed balance in term of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to validate the analytic results.

Keywords: Non-equilibrium, lattice gas, stochastic process

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Authors: Ł. Kiedrowski, H. Gierszal, W. Hołubowicz

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This paper presents the H-ARQ techniques comparison for OFDM systems with a new family of non-binary LDPC codes which has been developed within the EU FP7 DAVINCI project. The punctured NB-LDPC codes have been used in a simulated model of the transmission system. The link level performance has been evaluated in terms of spectral efficiency, codeword error rate and average number of retransmissions. The NB-LDPC codes can be easily and effective implemented with different methods of the retransmission needed if correct decoding of a codeword failed. Here the Optimal Symbol Selection method is proposed as a Chase Combining technique.

Keywords: H-ARQ, LDPC, Non-Binary, Punctured Codes.

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Authors: U. Schmidt, D. Dannehl, I. Schuch, J. Suhl, T. Rocksch, R. Salazar-Moreno, E. Fitz-Rodrigues, A. Rojano Aquilar, I. Lopez Cruz, G. Navas Gomez, R. A. Abraham, L. C. Irineo, N. G. Gilberto

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The integration of agricultural production systems into urban areas is a challenge for the coming decades. Because of increasing greenhouse gas emission and rising resource consumption as well as costs in animal husbandry, the dietary habits of people in the 21st century have to focus on herbal foods. Intensive plant cultivation systems in large cities and megacities require a smart coupling of information, material and energy flow with the urban infrastructure in terms of Horticulture 4.0. In recent years, many puzzle pieces have been developed for these closed processes at the Humboldt University. To compile these for an urban plant production, it has to be optimized and networked with urban infrastructure systems. In the field of heat energy production, it was shown that with closed greenhouse technology and patented heat exchange and storage technology energy can be provided for heating and domestic hot water supply in the city. Closed water circuits can be drastically reducing the water requirements of plant production in urban areas. Ion sensitive sensors and new disinfection methods can help keep circulating nutrient solutions in the system for a longer time in urban plant production greenhouses.

Keywords: Semi closed, greenhouses, urban farming, solar heat collector, closed water cycles, aquaponics.

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Authors: Beata Czarnacka-Chrobot

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Majority of Business Software Systems (BSS) Development and Enhancement Projects (D&EP) fail to meet criteria of their effectiveness, what leads to the considerable financial losses. One of the fundamental reasons for such projects- exceptionally low success rate are improperly derived estimates for their costs and time. In the case of BSS D&EP these attributes are determined by the work effort, meanwhile reliable and objective effort estimation still appears to be a great challenge to the software engineering. Thus this paper is aimed at presenting the most important synthetic conclusions coming from the author-s own studies concerning the main factors of effective BSS D&EP work effort estimation. Thanks to the rational investment decisions made on the basis of reliable and objective criteria it is possible to reduce losses caused not only by abandoned projects but also by large scale of overrunning the time and costs of BSS D&EP execution.

Keywords: Benchmarking data, business software systems development and enhancement projects, effort estimation, software engineering economics, software functional size measurement.

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Authors: Makram Ben Jeddou

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ABC classification is widely used by managers for inventory control. The classical ABC classification is based on Pareto principle and according to the criterion of the annual use value only. Single criterion classification is often insufficient for a closely inventory control. Multi-criteria inventory classification models have been proposed by researchers in order to consider other important criteria. From these models, we will consider a specific model in order to make a sensitive analysis on the composite score calculated for each item. In fact, this score, based on a normalized average between a good and a bad optimized index, can affect the ABC-item classification. We will focus on items differently assigned to classes and then propose a classification compromise.

Keywords: ABC classification, Multi criteria inventory classification models, ZF-model.

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Authors: Berna Eren Tokgoz, Mahdi Safa, Seokyon Hwang

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Power distribution systems are essential and crucial infrastructures for the development and maintenance of a sustainable society. These systems are extremely vulnerable to various types of natural and man-made disasters. The assessment of resilience focuses on preparedness and mitigation actions under pre-disaster conditions. It also concentrates on response and recovery actions under post-disaster situations. The aim of this study is to present a methodology to assess the resilience of electric power distribution poles against wind-related events. The proposed methodology can improve the accuracy and rapidity of the evaluation of the conditions and the assessment of the resilience of poles. The methodology provides a metric for the evaluation of the resilience of poles under pre-disaster and post-disaster conditions. The metric was developed using mathematical expressions for physical forces that involve various variables, such as physical dimensions of the pole, the inclination of the pole, and wind speed. A three-dimensional imaging technology (photogrammetry) was used to determine the inclination of poles. Based on expert opinion, the proposed metric was used to define zones to visualize resilience. Visual representation of resilience is helpful for decision makers to prioritize their resources before and after experiencing a wind-related disaster. Multiple electric poles in the City of Beaumont, TX were used in a case study to evaluate the proposed methodology.  

Keywords: Photogrammetry, power distribution systems, resilience metric, system resilience, wind-related disasters.

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Kangavari, Samira Ghandchi, Manak Golpour

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Most of the Question Answering systems composed of three main modules: question processing, document processing and answer processing. Question processing module plays an important role in QA systems. If this module doesn't work properly, it will make problems for other sections. Moreover answer processing module is an emerging topic in Question Answering, where these systems are often required to rank and validate candidate answers. These techniques aiming at finding short and precise answers are often based on the semantic classification. This paper discussed about a new model for question answering which improved two main modules, question processing and answer processing. There are two important components which are the bases of the question processing. First component is question classification that specifies types of question and answer. Second one is reformulation which converts the user's question into an understandable question by QA system in a specific domain. Answer processing module, consists of candidate answer filtering, candidate answer ordering components and also it has a validation section for interacting with user. This module makes it more suitable to find exact answer. In this paper we have described question and answer processing modules with modeling, implementing and evaluating the system. System implemented in two versions. Results show that 'Version No.1' gave correct answer to 70% of questions (30 correct answers to 50 asked questions) and 'version No.2' gave correct answers to 94% of questions (47 correct answers to 50 asked questions).

Keywords: Answer Processing, Classification, QuestionAnswering and Query Reformulation.

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Authors: Sohrab Mahmoodi, Ali Rahimi

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The critical period for weed control (CPWC) is the period in the crop growth cycle during which weeds must be controlled to prevent unacceptable yield losses. Field studies were conducted in 2005 and 2006 in the University of Birjand at the south east of Iran to determine CPWC of corn using a randomized complete block design with 14 treatments and four replications. The treatments consisted of two different periods of weed interference, a critical weed-free period and a critical time of weed removal, were imposed at V3, V6, V9, V12, V15, and R1 (based on phonological stages of corn development) with a weedy check and a weed-free check. The CPWC was determined with the use of 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20% acceptable yield loss levels by non-linear Regression method and fitting Logistic and Gompertz nonlinear equations to relative yield data. The CPWC of corn was from 5- to 15-leaf stage (19-55 DAE) to prevent yield losses of 5%. This period to prevent yield losses of 2.5, 10 and 20% was 4- to 17-leaf stage (14-59 DAE), 6- to 12-leaf stage (25-47 DAE) and 8- to 9-leaf stage (31-36 DAE) respectively. The height and leaf area index of corn were significantly decreased by weed competition in both weed free and weed infested treatments (P<0.01). Results also showed that there was a significant positive correlation between yield and LAI of corn at silk stage when competing with weeds (r= 0.97).

Keywords: Corn, Critical period, Gompertz, Logistic, Weed control.

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Authors: Somenath Mukherjee, Rajdeep Ray, Raj Kumar Samanta, Mofazzal H. Khondekar, Gautam Sanyal

Abstract:

In next generation wireless networks (i.e., 4G and beyond), one of the main objectives is to ensure highest level of customer satisfaction in terms of data transfer speed, decrease in cost and delay, non-rejection and no drop of calls, availability of ‘always-on’ connectivity and services, continuity of connected services, hastle-free roaming in addition to the convenience of use of network services from anywhere and anytime. To take care of these requirements effectively, internet service providers (ISPs) and network planners have to go for major capacity enhancement of network resources and at the same time these resources are to be used effectively and efficiently to reduce cost and to increase revenue. In this work, the effective bandwidth available in a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) of a wireless network providing multi-class multimedia services is analyzed. Bandwidth requirement of the users for a customized Quality of Service (QoS) is estimated. The findings of the QoS estimation are applied for the capacity planning and admission control of the multi-class traffic flows coming into the MSC.

Keywords: Next generation wireless network, mobile switching center, multi-class traffic, quality of service, admission control, effective bandwidth.

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Authors: Binod Kumar Saha

Abstract:

The objective of the present paper is a numerical analysis of the flow forces acting on spool surfaces of a pressure regulated valve. The transient, compressible and turbulent flow structures inside the valve are simulated using ANSYS FLUENT coupled with a special UDF. Here, valve inlet pressure is varied in a stepwise manner. For every value of inlet pressure, transient analysis leads to a quasi-static flow through the valve. Spool forces are calculated based on different pressures at inlet. From this information of spool forces, pressure characteristic of the passive control circuit has been derived.

Keywords: Pressure Regulating Valve, Spool Opening, Spool Movement, Force Balance, CFD.

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Authors: J.S.C. Prentice

Abstract:

The RK5GL3 method is a numerical method for solving initial value problems in ordinary differential equations, and is based on a combination of a fifth-order Runge-Kutta method and 3-point Gauss-Legendre quadrature. In this paper we describe an effective local error control algorithm for RK5GL3, which uses local extrapolation with an eighth-order Runge-Kutta method in tandem with RK5GL3, and a Hermite interpolating polynomial for solution estimation at the Gauss-Legendre quadrature nodes.

Keywords: RK5GL3, RKrGLm, Runge-Kutta, Gauss-Legendre, Hermite interpolating polynomial, initial value problem, local error.

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Authors: Amin Hajizadeh, Ehsan Hajizadeh

Abstract:

This paper presents a multi-objective formulation for optimal siting and sizing of distributed generation (DG) resources in distribution systems in order to minimize the cost of power losses and energy not supplied. The implemented technique is based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) and weight method that employed to obtain the best compromise between these costs. Simulation results on 33-bus distribution test system are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedure.

Keywords: Distributed generation, distribution networks, particle swarm optimization, reliability, weight method

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