Search results for: received signal strength
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 2854

Search results for: received signal strength

544 Adaptive Square-Rooting Companding Technique for PAPR Reduction in OFDM Systems

Authors: Wisam F. Al-Azzo, Borhanuddin Mohd. Ali

Abstract:

This paper addresses the problem of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. It also introduces a new PAPR reduction technique based on adaptive square-rooting (SQRT) companding process. The SQRT process of the proposed technique changes the statistical characteristics of the OFDM output signals from Rayleigh distribution to Gaussian-like distribution. This change in statistical distribution results changes of both the peak and average power values of OFDM signals, and consequently reduces significantly the PAPR. For the 64QAM OFDM system using 512 subcarriers, up to 6 dB reduction in PAPR was achieved by square-rooting technique with fixed degradation in bit error rate (BER) equal to 3 dB. However, the PAPR is reduced at the expense of only -15 dB out-ofband spectral shoulder re-growth below the in-band signal level. The proposed adaptive SQRT technique is superior in terms of BER performance than the original, non-adaptive, square-rooting technique when the required reduction in PAPR is no more than 5 dB. Also, it provides fixed amount of PAPR reduction in which it is not available in the original SQRT technique.

Keywords: complementary cumulative distribution function(CCDF), OFDM, peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), adaptivesquare-rooting PAPR reduction technique.

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543 Lactic Acid-Chitosan Films’ Properties and Their in vivo Wound Healing Activity

Authors: T. S. Moe, T. A. Khaing

Abstract:

Chitosan is a derivative of chitin, a compound usually isolated from the shells of some crustaceans such as crab, lobster and shrimp. It has biocompatible, biodegradable, and antimicrobial properties. To use these properties of chitosan in biomedical fields, chitosan films (1%, 2%, 3% and 4%) were prepared by using l% lactic acid as solvent. The effects of chitosan films on tensile strength, elongation at break, degree of swelling, thickness, morphology, allergic and irritation reactions and antibacterial property were evaluated. Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were used as tested microorganisms. In vivo wound healing activities of chitosan films were investigated using mice model. As results, Chitosan films have similar appearance and good swelling properties and 4% chitosan film showed the better swelling activity and the greatest elongation ratio than the other chitosan films. They also showed their good activity of wound healing in mice model. Moreover, the results showed that the films did not produce any unwilling symptoms (allergy or irritation). In conclusion, it is evident that the chitosan film has the potentiality to use as wound healing biofilms in the biomedical fields.

Keywords: Chitosan, wound healing, antibacterial activity.

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542 An Experimental Consideration of the Hybrid Architecture Based on the Situated Action Generator

Authors: Serin Lee, Takashi Kubota, Ichiro Nakatani

Abstract:

The approaches to make an agent generate intelligent actions in the AI field might be roughly categorized into two ways–the classical planning and situated action system. It is well known that each system have its own strength and weakness. However, each system also has its own application field. In particular, most of situated action systems do not directly deal with the logical problem. This paper first briefly mentions the novel action generator to situatedly extract a set of actions, which is likely to help to achieve the goal at the current situation in the relaxed logical space. After performing the action set, the agent should recognize the situation for deciding the next likely action set. However, since the extracted action is an approximation of the action which helps to achieve the goal, the agent could be caught into the deadlock of the problem. This paper proposes the newly developed hybrid architecture to solve the problem, which combines the novel situated action generator with the conventional planner. The empirical result in some planning domains shows that the quality of the resultant path to the goal is mostly acceptable as well as deriving the fast response time, and suggests the correlation between the structure of problems and the organization of each system which generates the action.

Keywords: Situated reasoning, situated action, planning, hybrid architecture

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541 Design Neural Network Controller for Mechatronic System

Authors: Ismail Algelli Sassi Ehtiwesh, Mohamed Ali Elhaj

Abstract:

The main goal of the study is to analyze all relevant properties of the electro hydraulic systems and based on that to make a proper choice of the neural network control strategy that may be used for the control of the mechatronic system. A combination of electronic and hydraulic systems is widely used since it combines the advantages of both. Hydraulic systems are widely spread because of their properties as accuracy, flexibility, high horsepower-to-weight ratio, fast starting, stopping and reversal with smoothness and precision, and simplicity of operations. On the other hand, the modern control of hydraulic systems is based on control of the circuit fed to the inductive solenoid that controls the position of the hydraulic valve. Since this circuit may be easily handled by PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) signal with a proper frequency, the combination of electrical and hydraulic systems became very fruitful and usable in specific areas as airplane and military industry. The study shows and discusses the experimental results obtained by the control strategy of neural network control using MATLAB and SIMULINK [1]. Finally, the special attention was paid to the possibility of neuro-controller design and its application to control of electro-hydraulic systems and to make comparative with other kinds of control.

Keywords: Neural-Network controller, Mechatronic, electrohydraulic

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540 Slope Stability of an Earthen Levee Strengthened by HPTRM under Turbulent Overtopping Conditions

Authors: Fashad Amini, Lin Li

Abstract:

High performance turf reinforcement mat (HPTRM) is one of the most advanced flexible armoring technologies for severe erosion challenges. The effect of turbulence on the slope stability of an earthen levee strengthened by high performance turf reinforcement mat (HPTRM) is investigated in this study for combined storm surge and wave overtopping conditions. The results show that turbulence has strong influence on the slope stability during the combined storm surge and wave overtopping conditions. Among the surge height, peak wave force and turbulent force. The turbulent force has the ability to stabilize the earthen levee at the large wave force the turbulent force has strongest effect on the FS. The surge storm acts as an independent force on the slope stability of the earthen levee. It just adds to the effects of the turbulent force and wave force on the slope stability of HPTRM strengthened levee.

Keywords: Slope stability, strength reduction method, HPTRM, levee, overtopping.

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539 Theoretical Analysis of Capacities in Dynamic Spatial Multiplexing MIMO Systems

Authors: Imen Sfaihi, Noureddine Hamdi

Abstract:

In this paper, we investigate the study of techniques for scheduling users for resource allocation in the case of multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) packet transmission systems. In these systems, transmit antennas are assigned to one user or dynamically to different users using spatial multiplexing. The allocation of all transmit antennas to one user cannot take full advantages of multi-user diversity. Therefore, we developed the case when resources are allocated dynamically. At each time slot users have to feed back their channel information on an uplink feedback channel. Channel information considered available in the schedulers is the zero forcing (ZF) post detection signal to interference plus noise ratio. Our analysis study concerns the round robin and the opportunistic schemes. In this paper, we present an overview and a complete capacity analysis of these schemes. The main results in our study are to give an analytical form of system capacity using the ZF receiver at the user terminal. Simulations have been carried out to validate all proposed analytical solutions and to compare the performance of these schemes.

Keywords: MIMO, scheduling, ZF receiver, spatial multiplexing, round robin scheduling, opportunistic.

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538 NDENet: End-to-End Nighttime Dehazing and Enhancement

Authors: H. Baskar, A. S. Chakravarthy, P. Garg, D. Goel, A. S. Raj, K. Kumar, Lakshya, R. Parvatham, V. Sushant, B. Kumar Rout

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a computer vision task called nighttime dehaze-enhancement. This task aims to jointly perform dehazing and lightness enhancement. Our task fundamentally differs from nighttime dehazing – our goal is to jointly dehaze and enhance scenes, while nighttime dehazing aims to dehaze scenes under a nighttime setting. In order to facilitate further research on this task, we release a benchmark dataset called Reside-β Night dataset, consisting of 4122 nighttime hazed images from 2061 scenes and 2061 ground truth images. Moreover, we also propose a network called NDENet (Nighttime Dehaze-Enhancement Network), which jointly performs dehazing and low-light enhancement in an end-to-end manner. We evaluate our method on the proposed benchmark and achieve Structural Index Similarity (SSIM) of 0.8962 and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) of 26.25. We also compare our network with other baseline networks on our benchmark to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. We believe that nighttime dehaze-enhancement is an essential task particularly for autonomous navigation applications, and hope that our work will open up new frontiers in research. The code for our network is made publicly available.

Keywords: Dehazing, image enhancement, nighttime, computer vision.

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537 Properties Modification of Fiber Metal Laminates by Nanofillers

Authors: R. Eslami-Farsani, S. M. S. Mousavi Bafrouyi

Abstract:

During past decades, increasing demand of modified Fiber Metal Laminates (FMLs) has stimulated a strong trend towards the development of these structures. FMLs contain several thin layers of metal bonded with composite materials. Characteristics of FMLs such as low specific mass, high bearing strength, impact resistance, corrosion resistance and high fatigue life are attractive. Nowadays, increasing development can be observed to promote the properties of polymer-based composites by nanofillers. By dispersing strong, nanofillers in polymer matrix, modified composites can be developed and tailored to individual applications. On the other hand, the synergic effects of nanoparticles such as graphene and carbon nanotube can significantly improve the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of nanocomposites. In present paper, the modifying of FMLs by nanofillers and the dispersing of nanoparticles in the polymers matrix are discussed. The evaluations have revealed that this approach is acceptable. Finally, a prospect is presented. This paper will lead to further work on these modified FML species.

Keywords: Fiber metal laminate, nanofiller, polymer matrix, property modification.

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536 A Numerical Description of a Fibre Reinforced Concrete Using a Genetic Algorithm

Authors: Henrik L. Funke, Lars Ulke-Winter, Sandra Gelbrich, Lothar Kroll

Abstract:

This work reports about an approach for an automatic adaptation of concrete formulations based on genetic algorithms (GA) to optimize a wide range of different fit-functions. In order to achieve the goal, a method was developed which provides a numerical description of a fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) mixture regarding the production technology and the property spectrum of the concrete. In a first step, the FRC mixture with seven fixed components was characterized by varying amounts of the components. For that purpose, ten concrete mixtures were prepared and tested. The testing procedure comprised flow spread, compressive and bending tensile strength. The analysis and approximation of the determined data was carried out by GAs. The aim was to obtain a closed mathematical expression which best describes the given seven-point cloud of FRC by applying a Gene Expression Programming with Free Coefficients (GEP-FC) strategy. The seven-parametric FRC-mixtures model which is generated according to this method correlated well with the measured data. The developed procedure can be used for concrete mixtures finding closed mathematical expressions, which are based on the measured data.

Keywords: Concrete design, fibre reinforced concrete, genetic algorithms, GEP-FC.

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535 Performance Analysis of a Combined Ordered Successive and Interference Cancellation Using Zero-Forcing Detection over Rayleigh Fading Channels in MIMO Systems

Authors: Jamal R. Elbergali

Abstract:

Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems are wireless systems with multiple antenna elements at both ends of the link. Wireless communication systems demand high data rate and spectral efficiency with increased reliability. MIMO systems have been popular techniques to achieve these goals because increased data rate is possible through spatial multiplexing scheme and diversity. Spatial Multiplexing (SM) is used to achieve higher possible throughput than diversity. In this paper, we propose a Zero- Forcing (ZF) detection using a combination of Ordered Successive Interference Cancellation (OSIC) and Zero Forcing using Interference Cancellation (ZF-IC). The proposed method used an OSIC based on Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) ordering to get the estimation of last symbol, then the estimated last symbol is considered to be an input to the ZF-IC. We analyze the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of the proposed MIMO system over Rayleigh Fading Channel, using Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation scheme. The results show better performance than the previous methods.

Keywords: SNR, BER, BPSK, MIMO, Modulation, Zero forcing (ZF), OSIC, ZF-IC, Spatial Multiplexing (SM).

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534 Environmental Management in Arid Regions:The Question of Water

Authors: Yousef Bakhbakhi, Mourad Boumaza

Abstract:

Only recently have water ethics received focused interest in the international water community. Because water is metabolically basic to life, an ethical dimension persists in every decision related to water. Water ethics at once express human society-s approach to water and act as guidelines for behaviour. Ideas around water are often implicit and embedded as assumptions. They can be entrenched in behaviour and difficult to contest because they are difficult to “see". By explicitly revealing the ethical ideas underlying water-related decisions, human society-s relationship with water, and with natural systems of which water is part, can be contested and shifted or be accepted with conscious intention by human society. In recent decades, improved understanding of water-s importance for ecosystem functioning and ecological services for human survival is moving us beyond this growth-driven, supplyfocused management paradigm. Environmental ethics challenge this paradigm by extending the ethical sphere to the environment and thus water or water Resources management per se. An ethical approach is a legitimate, important, and often ignored approach to effect change in environmental decision making. This qualitative research explores principles of water ethics and examines the underlying ethical precepts of selected water policy examples. The constructed water ethic principles act as a set of criteria against which a policy comparison can be established. This study shows that water Resources management is a progressive issue by embracing full public participation and a new planning model, and knowledgegeneration initiatives.

Keywords: water resources, environmental management, publicparticipation.

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533 Quad Tree Decomposition Based Analysis of Compressed Image Data Communication for Lossy and Lossless Using WSN

Authors: N. Muthukumaran, R. Ravi

Abstract:

The Quad Tree Decomposition based performance analysis of compressed image data communication for lossy and lossless through wireless sensor network is presented. Images have considerably higher storage requirement than text. While transmitting a multimedia content there is chance of the packets being dropped due to noise and interference. At the receiver end the packets that carry valuable information might be damaged or lost due to noise, interference and congestion. In order to avoid the valuable information from being dropped various retransmission schemes have been proposed. In this proposed scheme QTD is used. QTD is an image segmentation method that divides the image into homogeneous areas. In this proposed scheme involves analysis of parameters such as compression ratio, peak signal to noise ratio, mean square error, bits per pixel in compressed image and analysis of difficulties during data packet communication in Wireless Sensor Networks. By considering the above, this paper is to use the QTD to improve the compression ratio as well as visual quality and the algorithm in MATLAB 7.1 and NS2 Simulator software tool.

Keywords: Image compression, Compression Ratio, Quad tree decomposition, Wireless sensor networks, NS2 simulator.

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532 Effect of Copper Ions Doped-Hydroxyapatite 3D Fiber Scaffold

Authors: Adil Elrayah, Jie Weng, Esra Suliman

Abstract:

The mineral in human bone is not pure stoichiometric calcium phosphate (Ca/P) as it is partially substituted by in organic elements. In this study, the copper ions (Cu2+) substituted hydroxyapatite (CuHA) powder has been synthesized by the co-precipitation method. The CuHA powder has been used to fabricate CuHA fiber scaffolds by sol-gel process and the following sinter process. The resulted CuHA fibers have slightly different microstructure (i.e. porosity) compared to HA fiber scaffold, which is denser. The mechanical properties test was used to evaluate CuHA, and the results showed decreases in both compression strength and hardness tests. Moreover, the in vitro used endothelial cells to evaluate the angiogenesis of CuHA. The result illustrated that the viability of endothelial cell on CuHA fiber scaffold surfaces tends to antigenic behavior. The results obtained with CuHA scaffold give this material benefit in biological applications such as antimicrobial, antitumor, antigens, compacts, filling cavities of the tooth and for the deposition of metal implants anti-tumor, anti-cancer, bone filler, and scaffold.

Keywords: Fiber scaffold, copper ions, hydroxyapatite, hardness, in vitro, mechanical properties.

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531 Measuring the Relationship between Customers- Satisfaction and Cognitions: A Case of Janfusun Fancyworld in Taiwan

Authors: Wan-Yu Liu, Yen-Hsiang Liu, Shing-Yi Huang, Hao-Zhi Wen

Abstract:

The private theme parks are gradually surpassing public-owned scenic areas after many years of development and have become a mainstream choice for domestic tourists. Previous studies show that visitors from different backgrounds differ in consumer behavior and satisfaction factors. An understanding of visitor satisfaction is therefore of extreme importance to operators of privately-owned theme parks. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) is used to measure consumer's potential satisfaction with services and has become a widely used management tool for strength and weakness analysis for brands, products, services and point of sales. As IPA has so far not been used to evaluate the visitor satisfaction with privately-owned theme parks, in this study the IPA method is used to analyze visitor satisfaction with Janfusun Fancyworld (one of the most popular private theme parks in Taiwan) and to rank visitor focus and satisfaction on/in theme park facilities and services. Results of the analysis provide private theme park operators with an understanding of user or consumer demands as well as an assessment of the quality of services currently offered.

Keywords: Satisfaction, Importance-Performance Analysis, Theme Parks, Janfusun Fancyworld.

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530 Optimization of Fiber Rich Gluten-Free Cookie Formulation by Response Surface Methodology

Authors: Bahadur Singh Hathan, B. L. Prassana

Abstract:

Most of the commercial gluten free products are nutritionally inferior when compared to gluten containing counterparts as manufacturers most often use the refined flours and starches. So it is possible that people on gluten free diet have low intake of fibre content. The foxtail millet flour and copra meal are gluten free and have high fibre and protein contents. The formulation of fibre rich gluten free cookies was optimized by response surface methodology considering independent process variables as proportion of Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) flour in mixed flour, fat content and guar gum. The sugar, sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonates and water were added in fixed proportion as 60, 1.0, 0.4 and 20% of mixed flour weight, respectively. Optimum formulation obtained for maximum spread ratio, fibre content, surface L-value, overall acceptability and minimum breaking strength were 80% foxtail millet flour in mixed flour, 42.8 % fat content and 0.05% guar gum.

Keywords: Copra meal flour, Fiber rich gluten-free cookies, Foxtail millet flour, Optimization

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529 Effect of Crashed Stone on Properties of Fly Ash Based-Geopolymer Concrete with Local Alkaline Activator in Egypt

Authors: O. M. Omar, G. D. Abd Elhameed, A. M. Heniegal H. A. Mohamadien

Abstract:

Green concrete are generally composed of recycling materials as hundred or partial percent substitutes for aggregate, cement, and admixture in concrete. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, efforts are needed to develop environmentally friendly construction materials. Using of fly ash based geopolymer as an alternative binder can help reduce CO2 emission of concrete. The binder of geopolymer concrete is different from the ordinary Portland cement concrete. Geopolymer Concrete specimens were prepared with different concentration of NaOH solution M10, M14, and, M16 and cured at 60ºC in duration of 24 hours and 8 hours, in addition to the curing in direct sunlight. Thus, it is necessary to study the effects of the geopolymer binder on the behavior of concrete. Concrete is made by using geopolymer technology is environmental friendly and could be considered as part of the sustainable development. In this study, the Local Alkaline Activator in Egypt and crashed stone as coarse aggregate in fly ash based-geopolymer concrete was investigated. This paper illustrates the development of mechanical properties. Since the gained compressive strength for geopolymer concrete at 28 days was in the range of 22.5MPa – 43.9MPa.

Keywords: Geopolymer, molarity, sodium hydroxide, sodium silicate.

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528 Effect of Different Moisture States of Surface-Treated Recycled Concrete Aggregate on Properties of Fresh and Hardened Concrete

Authors: Sallehan Ismail, Mahyuddin Ramli

Abstract:

This study examined the properties of fresh and hardened concretes as influenced by the moisture state of the coarse recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) after surface treatment. Surface treatment was performed by immersing the coarse RCA in a calcium metasilicate (CM) solution. The treated coarse RCA was maintained in three controlled moisture states, namely, air-dried, oven-dried, and saturated surface-dried (SSD), prior to its use in a concrete mix. The physical properties of coarse RCA were evaluated after surface treatment during the first phase of the experiment to determine the density and the water absorption characteristics of the RCA. The second phase involved the evaluation of the slump, slump loss, density, and compressive strength of the concretes that were prepared with different proportions of natural and treated coarse RCA. Controlling the moisture state of the coarse RCA after surface treatment was found to significantly influence the properties of the fresh and hardened concretes. 

Keywords: Moisture state, recycled concrete aggregate, surface treatment.

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527 Unsupervised Classification of DNA Barcodes Species Using Multi-Library Wavelet Networks

Authors: Abdesselem Dakhli, Wajdi Bellil, Chokri Ben Amar

Abstract:

DNA Barcode provides good sources of needed information to classify living species. The classification problem has to be supported with reliable methods and algorithms. To analyze species regions or entire genomes, it becomes necessary to use the similarity sequence methods. A large set of sequences can be simultaneously compared using Multiple Sequence Alignment which is known to be NP-complete. However, all the used methods are still computationally very expensive and require significant computational infrastructure. Our goal is to build predictive models that are highly accurate and interpretable. In fact, our method permits to avoid the complex problem of form and structure in different classes of organisms. The empirical data and their classification performances are compared with other methods. Evenly, in this study, we present our system which is consisted of three phases. The first one, is called transformation, is composed of three sub steps; Electron-Ion Interaction Pseudopotential (EIIP) for the codification of DNA Barcodes, Fourier Transform and Power Spectrum Signal Processing. Moreover, the second phase step is an approximation; it is empowered by the use of Multi Library Wavelet Neural Networks (MLWNN). Finally, the third one, is called the classification of DNA Barcodes, is realized by applying the algorithm of hierarchical classification.

Keywords: DNA Barcode, Electron-Ion Interaction Pseudopotential, Multi Library Wavelet Neural Networks.

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526 A Normalization-based Robust Image Watermarking Scheme Using SVD and DCT

Authors: Say Wei Foo, Qi Dong

Abstract:

Digital watermarking is one of the techniques for copyright protection. In this paper, a normalization-based robust image watermarking scheme which encompasses singular value decomposition (SVD) and discrete cosine transform (DCT) techniques is proposed. For the proposed scheme, the host image is first normalized to a standard form and divided into non-overlapping image blocks. SVD is applied to each block. By concatenating the first singular values (SV) of adjacent blocks of the normalized image, a SV block is obtained. DCT is then carried out on the SV blocks to produce SVD-DCT blocks. A watermark bit is embedded in the highfrequency band of a SVD-DCT block by imposing a particular relationship between two pseudo-randomly selected DCT coefficients. An adaptive frequency mask is used to adjust local watermark embedding strength. Watermark extraction involves mainly the inverse process. The watermark extracting method is blind and efficient. Experimental results show that the quality degradation of watermarked image caused by the embedded watermark is visually transparent. Results also show that the proposed scheme is robust against various image processing operations and geometric attacks.

Keywords: Image watermarking, Image normalization, Singularvalue decomposition, Discrete cosine transform, Robustness.

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525 Software Vulnerability Markets: Discoverers and Buyers

Authors: Abdullah M. Algarni, Yashwant K. Malaiya

Abstract:

Some of the key aspects of vulnerability—discovery, dissemination, and disclosure—have received some attention recently. However, the role of interaction among the vulnerability discoverers and vulnerability acquirers has not yet been adequately addressed. Our study suggests that a major percentage of discoverers, a majority in some cases, are unaffiliated with the software developers and thus are free to disseminate the vulnerabilities they discover in any way they like. As a result, multiple vulnerability markets have emerged. In some of these markets, the exchange is regulated, but in others, there is little or no regulation. In recent vulnerability discovery literature, the vulnerability discoverers have remained anonymous individuals. Although there has been an attempt to model the level of their efforts, information regarding their identities, modes of operation, and what they are doing with the discovered vulnerabilities has not been explored.

Reports of buying and selling of the vulnerabilities are now appearing in the press; however, the existence of such markets requires validation, and the natures of the markets need to be analyzed. To address this need, we have attempted to collect detailed information. We have identified the most prolific vulnerability discoverers throughout the past decade and examined their motivation and methods. A large percentage of these discoverers are located in Eastern and Western Europe and in the Far East. We have contacted several of them in order to collect firsthand information regarding their techniques, motivations, and involvement in the vulnerability markets. We examine why many of the discoverers appear to retire after a highly successful vulnerability-finding career. The paper identifies the actual vulnerability markets, rather than the hypothetical ideal markets that are often examined. The emergence of worldwide government agencies as vulnerability buyers has significant implications. We discuss potential factors that can impact the risk to society and the need for detailed exploration.

Keywords: Risk management, software security, vulnerability discoverers, vulnerability markets.

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524 Three Dimensional Dynamic Analysis of Water Storage Tanks Considering FSI Using FEM

Authors: S. Mahdi S. Kolbadi, Ramezan Ali Alvand, Afrasiab Mirzaei

Abstract:

In this study, to investigate and analyze the seismic behavior of concrete in open rectangular water storage tanks in two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces, the Finite Element Method has been used. Through this method, dynamic responses can be investigated together in fluid storages system. Soil behavior has been simulated using tanks boundary conditions in linear form. In this research, in addition to flexibility of wall, the effects of fluid-structure interaction on seismic response of tanks have been investigated to account for the effects of flexible foundation in linear boundary conditions form, and a dynamic response of rectangular tanks in two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces using finite element method has been provided. The boundary conditions of both rigid and flexible walls in two-dimensional finite element method have been considered to investigate the effect of wall flexibility on seismic response of fluid and storage system. Furthermore, three-dimensional model of fluid-structure interaction issue together with wall flexibility has been analyzed under the three components of earthquake. The obtained results show that two-dimensional model is also accurately near to the results of three-dimension as well as flexibility of foundation leads to absorb received energy and relative reduction of responses.

Keywords: Dynamic behavior, water storage tank, fluid-structure interaction, flexible wall.

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523 Evaluation on Mechanical Stabilities of Clay-Sand Mixtures Used as Engineered Barrier for Radioactive Waste Disposal

Authors: Ahmet E. Osmanlioglu

Abstract:

In this study, natural bentonite was used as natural clay material and samples were taken from the Kalecik district in Ankara. In this research, bentonite is the subject of an analysis from standpoint of assessing the basic properties of engineered barriers with respect to the buffer material. Bentonite and sand mixtures were prepared for tests. Some of clay minerals give relatively higher hydraulic conductivity and lower swelling pressure. Generally, hydraulic conductivity of these type clays is lower than <10-12 m/s. The hydraulic properties of clay-sand mixtures are evaluated to design engineered barrier specifications. Hydraulic conductivities of bentonite-sand mixture were found in the range of 1.2x10-10 to 9.3x10-10 m/s. Optimum B/S mixture ratio was determined as 35% in terms of hydraulic conductivity and mechanical stability. At the second stage of this study, all samples were compacted into cylindrical shape molds (diameter: 50 mm and length: 120 mm). The strength properties of compacted mixtures were better than the compacted bentonite. In addition, the larger content of the quartz sand in the mixture has the greater thermal conductivity.

Keywords: Bentonite, hydraulic conductivity, clay, nuclear waste disposal.

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522 3D Locomotion and Fractal Analysis of Goldfish for Acute Toxicity Bioassay

Authors: Kittiwann Nimkerdphol, Masahiro Nakagawa

Abstract:

Biological reactions of individuals of a testing animal to toxic substance are unique and can be used as an indication of the existing of toxic substance. However, to distinguish such phenomenon need a very complicate system and even more complicate to analyze data in 3 dimensional. In this paper, a system to evaluate in vitro biological activities to acute toxicity of stochastic self-affine non-stationary signal of 3D goldfish swimming by using fractal analysis is introduced. Regular digital camcorders are utilized by proposed algorithm 3DCCPC to effectively capture and construct 3D movements of the fish. A Critical Exponent Method (CEM) has been adopted as a fractal estimator. The hypothesis was that the swimming of goldfish to acute toxic would show the fractal property which related to the toxic concentration. The experimental results supported the hypothesis by showing that the swimming of goldfish under the different toxic concentration has fractal properties. It also shows that the fractal dimension of the swimming related to the pH value of FD Ôëê 0.26pH + 0.05. With the proposed system, the fish is allowed to swim freely in all direction to react to the toxic. In addition, the trajectories are precisely evaluated by fractal analysis with critical exponent method and hence the results exhibit with much higher degree of confidence.

Keywords: 3D locomotion, bioassay, critical exponent method, CEM, fractal analysis, goldfish.

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521 Using Thinking Blocks to Encourage the Use of Higher Order Thinking Skills among Students When Solving Problems on Fractions

Authors: Abdul Halim Abdullah, Nur Liyana Zainal Abidin, Mahani Mokhtar

Abstract:

Problem-solving is an activity which can encourage students to use Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Learning fractions can be challenging for students since empirical evidence shows that students experience difficulties in solving the fraction problems. However, visual methods can help students to overcome the difficulties since the methods help students to make meaningful visual representations and link abstract concepts in Mathematics. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were any changes in students’ HOTS at the four highest levels when learning the fractions by using Thinking Blocks. 54 students participated in a quasi-experiment using pre-tests and post-tests. Students were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=32) received a treatment to improve the students’ HOTS and the other group acted as the control group (n=22) which used a traditional method. Data were analysed by using Mann-Whitney test. The results indicated that during post-test, students who used Thinking Blocks showed significant improvement in their HOTS level (p=0.000). In addition, the results of post-test also showed that the students’ performance improved significantly at the four highest levels of HOTS; namely, application (p=0.001), analyse (p=0.000), evaluate (p=0.000), and create (p=0.000). Therefore, it can be concluded that Thinking Blocks can effectively encourage students to use the four highest levels of HOTS which consequently enable them to solve fractions problems successfully.

Keywords: Thinking blocks, higher order thinking skills, fractions, problem solving.

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520 Finite Element Application to Estimate Inservice Material Properties using Miniature Specimen

Authors: G. Partheepan, D.K. Sehgal, R.K. Pandey

Abstract:

This paper presents a method for determining the uniaxial tensile properties such as Young-s modulus, yield strength and the flow behaviour of a material in a virtually non-destructive manner. To achieve this, a new dumb-bell shaped miniature specimen has been designed. This helps in avoiding the removal of large size material samples from the in-service component for the evaluation of current material properties. The proposed miniature specimen has an advantage in finite element modelling with respect to computational time and memory space. Test fixtures have been developed to enable the tension tests on the miniature specimen in a testing machine. The studies have been conducted in a chromium (H11) steel and an aluminum alloy (AR66). The output from the miniature test viz. load-elongation diagram is obtained and the finite element simulation of the test is carried out using a 2D plane stress analysis. The results are compared with the experimental results. It is observed that the results from the finite element simulation corroborate well with the miniature test results. The approach seems to have potential to predict the mechanical properties of the materials, which could be used in remaining life estimation of the various in-service structures.

Keywords: ABAQUS, finite element, miniature test, tensileproperties

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519 Effects of Double Delta Doping on Millimeter and Sub-millimeter Wave Response of Two-Dimensional Hot Electrons in GaAs Nanostructures

Authors: N. Basanta Singh, Sanjoy Deb, G. P Mishra, Subir Kumar Sarkar

Abstract:

Carrier mobility has become the most important characteristic of high speed low dimensional devices. Due to development of very fast switching semiconductor devices, speed of computer and communication equipment has been increasing day by day and will continue to do so in future. As the response of any device depends on the carrier motion within the devices, extensive studies of carrier mobility in the devices has been established essential for the growth in the field of low dimensional devices. Small-signal ac transport of degenerate two-dimensional hot electrons in GaAs quantum wells is studied here incorporating deformation potential acoustic, polar optic and ionized impurity scattering in the framework of heated drifted Fermi-Dirac carrier distribution. Delta doping is considered in the calculations to investigate the effects of double delta doping on millimeter and submillimeter wave response of two dimensional hot electrons in GaAs nanostructures. The inclusion of delta doping is found to enhance considerably the two dimensional electron density which in turn improves the carrier mobility (both ac and dc) values in the GaAs quantum wells thereby providing scope of getting higher speed devices in future.

Keywords: Carrier mobility, Delta doping, Hot carriers, Quantum wells.

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518 Review and Evaluation of Trending Canonical Correlation Analyses-Based Brain-Computer Interface Methods

Authors: Bayar Shahab

Abstract:

The fast development of technology that has advanced neuroscience and human interaction with computers has enabled solutions to various problems and issues of this new era. The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) has opened the door to several new research areas and have been able to provide solutions to critical and vital issues such as supporting a paralyzed patient to interact with the outside world, controlling a robot arm, playing games in VR with the brain, driving a wheelchair. This review presents the state-of-the-art methods and improvements of canonical correlation analyses (CCA), an SSVEP-based BCI method. These are the methods used to extract EEG signal features or, to be said differently, the features of interest that we are looking for in the EEG analyses. Each of the methods from oldest to newest has been discussed while comparing their advantages and disadvantages. This would create a great context and help researchers understand the most state-of-the-art methods available in this field, their pros and cons, and their mathematical representations and usage. This work makes a vital contribution to the existing field of study. It differs from other similar recently published works by providing the following: (1) stating most of the main methods used in this field in a hierarchical way, (2) explaining the pros and cons of each method and their performance, (3) presenting the gaps that exist at the end of each method that can improve the understanding and open doors to new researches or improvements. 

Keywords: BCI, CCA, SSVEP, EEG

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517 Analysis of Vocal Fold Vibrations from High-Speed Digital Images Based On Dynamic Time Warping

Authors: A. I. A. Rahman, Sh-Hussain Salleh, K. Ahmad, K. Anuar

Abstract:

Analysis of vocal fold vibration is essential for understanding the mechanism of voice production and for improving clinical assessment of voice disorders. This paper presents a Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) based approach to analyze and objectively classify vocal fold vibration patterns. The proposed technique was designed and implemented on a Glottal Area Waveform (GAW) extracted from high-speed laryngeal images by delineating the glottal edges for each image frame. Feature extraction from the GAW was performed using Linear Predictive Coding (LPC). Several types of voice reference templates from simulations of clear, breathy, fry, pressed and hyperfunctional voice productions were used. The patterns of the reference templates were first verified using the analytical signal generated through Hilbert transformation of the GAW. Samples from normal speakers’ voice recordings were then used to evaluate and test the effectiveness of this approach. The classification of the voice patterns using the technique of LPC and DTW gave the accuracy of 81%.

Keywords: Dynamic Time Warping, Glottal Area Waveform, Linear Predictive Coding, High-Speed Laryngeal Images, Hilbert Transform.

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516 An Image Enhancement Method Based on Curvelet Transform for CBCT-Images

Authors: Shahriar Farzam, Maryam Rastgarpour

Abstract:

Image denoising plays extremely important role in digital image processing. Enhancement of clinical image research based on Curvelet has been developed rapidly in recent years. In this paper, we present a method for image contrast enhancement for cone beam CT (CBCT) images based on fast discrete curvelet transforms (FDCT) that work through Unequally Spaced Fast Fourier Transform (USFFT). These transforms return a table of Curvelet transform coefficients indexed by a scale parameter, an orientation and a spatial location. Accordingly, the coefficients obtained from FDCT-USFFT can be modified in order to enhance contrast in an image. Our proposed method first uses a two-dimensional mathematical transform, namely the FDCT through unequal-space fast Fourier transform on input image and then applies thresholding on coefficients of Curvelet to enhance the CBCT images. Consequently, applying unequal-space fast Fourier Transform leads to an accurate reconstruction of the image with high resolution. The experimental results indicate the performance of the proposed method is superior to the existing ones in terms of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Effective Measure of Enhancement (EME).

Keywords: Curvelet transform, image enhancement, CBCT, image denoising.

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515 A Study of Student Satisfaction of the Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University Radio Station

Authors: Prapoj Na Bangchang

Abstract:

The research aimed to study the satisfaction of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students towards the university radio station which broadcasts in both analog on FM 97.25 MHz and online via the university website. The sample used in this study consists of undergraduate students year 1 to year 4 from 6 faculties i.e. Faculty of Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Management Science and Faculty of Industrial Technology, and Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts totaling 200 students. The tools used for data collection is survey. Data analysis applied statistics that are percentage, mean and standard deviation. The results showed that Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students were satisfied to the place of listening service, followed by channels of broadcasting that cover both analog signals on 97.25 MHz FM and online via the Internet. However, the satisfaction level of the content offered was very low. Most of the students want the station to improve the content. Entertainment content was requested the most, followed by sports content. The lowest satisfaction level is with the broadcasting quality through analog signal. Most students asked the station to improve on the issue. However, overall, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University students were satisfied with the university radio station broadcasted online via the university website.

Keywords: Satisfaction, students, radio station, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University.

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