Search results for: fault detection and classification
Commenced in January 2007
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Paper Count: 2653

Search results for: fault detection and classification

193 Detection of Arcobacter and Helicobacter pylori Contamination in Organic Vegetables by Cultural and PCR Methods

Authors: Miguel García-Ferrús, Ana González, María A. Ferrús

Abstract:

The most demanded organic foods worldwide are those that are consumed fresh, such as fruits and vegetables. However, there is a knowledge gap about some aspects of organic food microbiological quality and safety. Organic fruits and vegetables are more exposed to pathogenic microorganisms due to surface contact with natural fertilizers such as animal manure, wastes and vermicompost used during farming. Therefore, the objective of this work was to study the contamination of organic fresh green leafy vegetables by two emergent pathogens, Arcobacter spp. and Helicobacter pylori. For this purpose, a total of 24 vegetable samples, 13 lettuce and 11 spinach were acquired from 10 different ecological supermarkets and greengroceries and analyzed by culture and PCR. Arcobacter spp. was detected in five samples (20%) by PCR, four spinach and one lettuce. One spinach sample was found to be also positive by culture. For H. pylori, the H. pylori VacA gene-specific band was detected in 12 vegetable samples (50%), 10 lettuces and two spinach. Isolation in the selective medium did not yield any positive result, possibly because of low contamination levels together with the presence of the organism in its viable but non-culturable form. Results showed significant levels of H. pylori and Arcobacter contamination in organic vegetables that are generally consumed raw, which seems to confirm that these foods can act as transmission vehicles to humans.

Keywords: Arcobacter spp., Helicobacter pylori, organic vegetables, Polymerase Chain Reaction, PCR.

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192 An Efficient Architecture for Interleaved Modular Multiplication

Authors: Ahmad M. Abdel Fattah, Ayman M. Bahaa El-Din, Hossam M.A. Fahmy

Abstract:

Modular multiplication is the basic operation in most public key cryptosystems, such as RSA, DSA, ECC, and DH key exchange. Unfortunately, very large operands (in order of 1024 or 2048 bits) must be used to provide sufficient security strength. The use of such big numbers dramatically slows down the whole cipher system, especially when running on embedded processors. So far, customized hardware accelerators - developed on FPGAs or ASICs - were the best choice for accelerating modular multiplication in embedded environments. On the other hand, many algorithms have been developed to speed up such operations. Examples are the Montgomery modular multiplication and the interleaved modular multiplication algorithms. Combining both customized hardware with an efficient algorithm is expected to provide a much faster cipher system. This paper introduces an enhanced architecture for computing the modular multiplication of two large numbers X and Y modulo a given modulus M. The proposed design is compared with three previous architectures depending on carry save adders and look up tables. Look up tables should be loaded with a set of pre-computed values. Our proposed architecture uses the same carry save addition, but replaces both look up tables and pre-computations with an enhanced version of sign detection techniques. The proposed architecture supports higher frequencies than other architectures. It also has a better overall absolute time for a single operation.

Keywords: Montgomery multiplication, modular multiplication, efficient architecture, FPGA, RSA

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191 Land Suitability Prediction Modelling for Agricultural Crops Using Machine Learning Approach: A Case Study of Khuzestan Province, Iran

Authors: Saba Gachpaz, Hamid Reza Heidari

Abstract:

The sharp increase in population growth leads to more pressure on agricultural areas to satisfy the food supply. This necessitates increased resource consumption and underscores the importance of addressing sustainable agriculture development along with other environmental considerations. Land-use management is a crucial factor in obtaining optimum productivity. Machine learning is a widely used technique in the agricultural sector, from yield prediction to customer behavior. This method focuses on learning and provides patterns and correlations from our data set. In this study, nine physical control factors, namely, soil classification, electrical conductivity, normalized difference water index (NDWI), groundwater level, elevation, annual precipitation, pH of water, annual mean temperature, and slope in the alluvial plain in Khuzestan (an agricultural hotspot in Iran) are used to decide the best agricultural land use for both rainfed and irrigated agriculture for 10 different crops. For this purpose, each variable was imported into Arc GIS, and a raster layer was obtained. In the next level, by using training samples, all layers were imported into the python environment. A random forest model was applied, and the weight of each variable was specified. In the final step, results were visualized using a digital elevation model, and the importance of all factors for each one of the crops was obtained. Our results show that despite 62% of the study area being allocated to agricultural purposes, only 42.9% of these areas can be defined as a suitable class for cultivation purposes.

Keywords: Land suitability, machine learning, random forest, sustainable agriculture.

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190 Effect of L-Arginine on Neuromuscular Transmission of the Chick Biventer Cervicis Muscle

Authors: S. Asadzadeh Vostakolaei

Abstract:

In this study, the effect of L-arginine was examined at the neuromuscular junction of the chick biventer cervicis muscle. LArginine at 500 μg/ ml, decreased twitch response to electerical stimulation, and produced rightward shift of the dose- response curve for acetylcholine or carbachol. L-Arginine at 1000μg/ ml produced a strong shift to the right of the dose – response curve for acetylcholine or carbachol with a reduction in the efficacy. The inhibitory effect of L-arginine on the twitch response was blocked by caffeine (200μg/ ml). NO levels were also measured in the chick biventer cervicis muscle homogenates, using spectrophotometric method for the direct detection of NO, nitrite and nitrate. Total nitrite (nitrite + nitrate) was measured by a spectrophotometer at 540 nm after the conversion of nitrate to nitrite by copperized cadmium granules. NO levels were found to be significantly increased in concentrations 500 and 1000μg/ ml of L-arginine in comparison with the control group (p<0.001). These findings indicate a possible role of increased NO levels in the suppressive action of L-arginine on the twitch response. In addition, the results indicate that the post- junctional antagonistic action of L-arginine is probably the result of impaired sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca+2 releases.

Keywords: Chick, L-Arginine, Nitric Oxide, Skeletal muscle.

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189 A Study on the Developing Method of the BIM (Building Information Modeling) Software Based On Cloud Computing Environment

Authors: Byung-Kon Kim

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According as the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry projects have grown more complex and larger, the number of utilization of BIM for 3D design and simulation is increasing significantly. Therefore, typical applications of BIM such as clash detection and alternative measures based on 3-dimenstional planning are expanded to process management, cost and quantity management, structural analysis, check for regulation, and various domains for virtual design and construction. Presently, commercial BIM software is operated on single-user environment, so initial cost is so high and the investment may be wasted frequently. Cloud computing that is a next-generation internet technology enables simple internet devices (such as PC, Tablet, Smart phone etc) to use services and resources of BIM software. In this paper, we suggested developing method of the BIM software based on cloud computing environment in order to expand utilization of BIM and reduce cost of BIM software. First, for the benchmarking, we surveyed successful case of BIM and cloud computing. And we analyzed needs and opportunities of BIM and cloud computing in AEC Industry. Finally, we suggested main functions of BIM software based on cloud computing environment and developed a simple prototype of cloud computing BIM software for basic BIM model viewing.

Keywords: Construction IT, BIM(Building Information Modeling), Cloud Computing, BIM Service Based Cloud Computing, Viewer Based BIM Server, 3D Design.

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188 The Role of Velocity Map Quality in Estimation of Intravascular Pressure Distribution

Authors: Ali Pashaee, Parisa Shooshtari, Gholamreza Atae, Nasser Fatouraee

Abstract:

Phase-Contrast MR imaging methods are widely used for measurement of blood flow velocity components. Also there are some other tools such as CT and Ultrasound for velocity map detection in intravascular studies. These data are used in deriving flow characteristics. Some clinical applications are investigated which use pressure distribution in diagnosis of intravascular disorders such as vascular stenosis. In this paper an approach to the problem of measurement of intravascular pressure field by using velocity field obtained from flow images is proposed. The method presented in this paper uses an algorithm to calculate nonlinear equations of Navier- Stokes, assuming blood as an incompressible and Newtonian fluid. Flow images usually suffer the lack of spatial resolution. Our attempt is to consider the effect of spatial resolution on the pressure distribution estimated from this method. In order to achieve this aim, velocity map of a numerical phantom is derived at six different spatial resolutions. To determine the effects of vascular stenoses on pressure distribution, a stenotic phantom geometry is considered. A comparison between the pressure distribution obtained from the phantom and the pressure resulted from the algorithm is presented. In this regard we also compared the effects of collocated and staggered computational grids on the pressure distribution resulted from this algorithm.

Keywords: Flow imaging, pressure distribution estimation, phantom, resolution.

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187 A Case Study of Applying Virtual Prototyping in Construction

Authors: Stephen C. W. Kong

Abstract:

The use of 3D computer-aided design (CAD) models to support construction project planning has been increasing in the previous year. 3D CAD models reveal more planning ideas by visually showing the construction site environment in different stages of the construction process. Using 3D CAD models together with scheduling software to prepare construction plan can identify errors in process sequence and spatial arrangement, which is vital to the success of a construction project. A number of 4D (3D plus time) CAD tools has been developed and utilized in different construction projects due to the awareness of their importance. Virtual prototyping extends the idea of 4D CAD by integrating more features for simulating real construction process. Virtual prototyping originates from the manufacturing industry where production of products such as cars and airplanes are virtually simulated in computer before they are built in the factory. Virtual prototyping integrates 3D CAD, simulation engine, analysis tools (like structural analysis and collision detection), and knowledgebase to streamline the whole product design and production process. In this paper, we present the application of a virtual prototyping software which has been used in a few construction projects in Hong Kong to support construction project planning. Specifically, the paper presents an implementation of virtual prototyping in a residential building project in Hong Kong. The applicability, difficulties and benefits of construction virtual prototyping are examined based on this project.

Keywords: construction project planning, prefabrication, simulation, virtual prototyping.

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186 Adaptive Block State Update Method for Separating Background

Authors: Youngsuck Ji, Youngjoon Han, Hernsoo Hahn

Abstract:

In this paper, we proposed the robust mobile object detection method for light effect in the night street image block based updating reference background model using block state analysis. Experiment image is acquired sequence color video from steady camera. When suddenly appeared artificial illumination, reference background model update this information such as street light, sign light. Generally natural illumination is change by temporal, but artificial illumination is suddenly appearance. So in this paper for exactly detect artificial illumination have 2 state process. First process is compare difference between current image and reference background by block based, it can know changed blocks. Second process is difference between current image-s edge map and reference background image-s edge map, it possible to estimate illumination at any block. This information is possible to exactly detect object, artificial illumination and it was generating reference background more clearly. Block is classified by block-state analysis. Block-state has a 4 state (i.e. transient, stationary, background, artificial illumination). Fig. 1 is show characteristic of block-state respectively [1]. Experimental results show that the presented approach works well in the presence of illumination variance.

Keywords: Block-state, Edge component, Reference backgroundi, Artificial illumination.

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185 A Holographic Infotainment System for Connected and Driverless Cars: An Exploratory Study of Gesture Based Interaction

Authors: Nicholas Lambert, Seungyeon Ryu, Mehmet Mulla, Albert Kim

Abstract:

In this paper, an interactive in-car interface called HoloDash is presented. It is intended to provide information and infotainment in both autonomous vehicles and ‘connected cars’, vehicles equipped with Internet access via cellular services. The research focuses on the development of interactive avatars for this system and its gesture-based control system. This is a case study for the development of a possible human-centred means of presenting a connected or autonomous vehicle’s On-Board Diagnostics through a projected ‘holographic’ infotainment system. This system is termed a Holographic Human Vehicle Interface (HHIV), as it utilises a dashboard projection unit and gesture detection. The research also examines the suitability for gestures in an automotive environment, given that it might be used in both driver-controlled and driverless vehicles. Using Human Centred Design methods, questions were posed to test subjects and preferences discovered in terms of the gesture interface and the user experience for passengers within the vehicle. These affirm the benefits of this mode of visual communication for both connected and driverless cars.

Keywords: Holographic interface, human-computer interaction, user-centered design, Gesture.

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184 End-to-End Spanish-English Sequence Learning Translation Model

Authors: Vidhu Mitha Goutham, Ruma Mukherjee

Abstract:

The low availability of well-trained, unlimited, dynamic-access models for specific languages makes it hard for corporate users to adopt quick translation techniques and incorporate them into product solutions. As translation tasks increasingly require a dynamic sequence learning curve; stable, cost-free opensource models are scarce. We survey and compare current translation techniques and propose a modified sequence to sequence model repurposed with attention techniques. Sequence learning using an encoder-decoder model is now paving the path for higher precision levels in translation. Using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) encoder and a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) decoder background, we use Fairseq tools to produce an end-to-end bilingually trained Spanish-English machine translation model including source language detection. We acquire competitive results using a duo-lingo-corpus trained model to provide for prospective, ready-made plug-in use for compound sentences and document translations. Our model serves a decent system for large, organizational data translation needs. While acknowledging its shortcomings and future scope, it also identifies itself as a well-optimized deep neural network model and solution.

Keywords: Attention, encoder-decoder, Fairseq, Seq2Seq, Spanish, translation.

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183 Influence of Compactive Efforts on Cement- Bagasse Ash Treatment of Expansive Black Cotton Soil

Authors: Moses, G, Osinubi, K. J.

Abstract:

A laboratory study on the influence of compactive effort on expansive black cotton specimens treated with up to 8% ordinary Portland cement (OPC) admixed with up to 8% bagasse ash (BA) by dry weight of soil and compacted using the energies of the standard Proctor (SP), West African Standard (WAS) or “intermediate” and modified Proctor (MP) were undertaken. The expansive black cotton soil was classified as A-7-6 (16) or CL using the American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Unified Soil Classification System (USCS), respectively. The 7day unconfined compressive strength (UCS) values of the natural soil for SP, WAS and MP compactive efforts are 286, 401 and 515kN/m2 respectively, while peak values of 1019, 1328 and 1420kN/m2 recorded at 8% OPC/ 6% BA, 8% OPC/ 2% BA and 6% OPC/ 4% BA treatments, respectively were less than the UCS value of 1710kN/m2 conventionally used as criterion for adequate cement stabilization. The soaked California bearing ratio (CBR) values of the OPC/BA stabilized soil increased with higher energy level from 2, 4 and 10% for the natural soil to Peak values of 55, 18 and 8% were recorded at 8% OPC/4% BA 8% OPC/2% BA and 8% OPC/4% BA, treatments when SP, WAS and MP compactive effort were used, respectively. The durability of specimens was determined by immersion in water. Soils treatment at 8% OPC/ 4% BA blend gave a value of 50% resistance to loss in strength value which is acceptable because of the harsh test condition of 7 days soaking period specimens were subjected instead of the 4 days soaking period that specified a minimum resistance to loss in strength of 80%. Finally An optimal blend of is 8% OPC/ 4% BA is recommended for treatment of expansive black cotton soil for use as a sub-base material.

Keywords: Bagasse ash, California bearing ratio, Compaction, Durability, Ordinary Portland cement, Unconfined compressive strength.

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182 Thermographic Tests of Curved GFRP Structures with Delaminations: Numerical Modelling vs. Experimental Validation

Authors: P. D. Pastuszak

Abstract:

The present work is devoted to thermographic studies of curved composite panels (unidirectional GFRP) with subsurface defects. Various artificial defects, created by inserting PTFE stripe between individual layers of a laminate during manufacturing stage are studied. The analysis is conducted both with the use finite element method and experiments. To simulate transient heat transfer in 3D model with embedded various defect sizes, the ANSYS package is used. Pulsed Thermography combined with optical excitation source provides good results for flat surfaces. Composite structures are mostly used in complex components, e.g., pipes, corners and stiffeners. Local decrease of mechanical properties in these regions can have significant influence on strength decrease of the entire structure. Application of active procedures of thermography to defect detection and evaluation in this type of elements seems to be more appropriate that other NDT techniques. Nevertheless, there are various uncertainties connected with correct interpretation of acquired data. In this paper, important factors concerning Infrared Thermography measurements of curved surfaces in the form of cylindrical panels are considered. In addition, temperature effects on the surface resulting from complex geometry and embedded and real defect are also presented.

Keywords: Active thermography, finite element analysis, composite, curved structures, defects.

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181 Use of Caffeine and Human Pharmaceutical Compounds to Identify Sewage Contamination

Authors: Jingming Wu, Junqi Yue, Ruikang Hu, Zhaoguang Yang, Lifeng Zhang

Abstract:

Fecal coliform bacteria are widely used as indicators of sewage contamination in surface water. However, there are some disadvantages in these microbial techniques including time consuming (18-48h) and inability in discriminating between human and animal fecal material sources. Therefore, it is necessary to seek a more specific indicator of human sanitary waste. In this study, the feasibility was investigated to apply caffeine and human pharmaceutical compounds to identify the human-source contamination. The correlation between caffeine and fecal coliform was also explored. Surface water samples were collected from upstream, middle-stream and downstream points respectively, along Rochor Canal, as well as 8 locations of Marina Bay. Results indicate that caffeine is a suitable chemical tracer in Singapore because of its easy detection (in the range of 0.30-2.0 ng/mL), compared with other chemicals monitored. Relative low concentrations of human pharmaceutical compounds (< 0.07 ng/mL) in Rochor Canal and Marina Bay water samples make them hard to be detected and difficult to be chemical tracer. However, their existence can help to validate sewage contamination. In addition, it was discovered the high correlation exists between caffeine concentration and fecal coliform density in the Rochor Canal water samples, demonstrating that caffeine is highly related to the human-source contamination.

Keywords: Caffeine, Human Pharmaceutical Compounds, Chemical Tracer, Sewage Contamination.

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180 Skin Lesion Segmentation Using Color Channel Optimization and Clustering-based Histogram Thresholding

Authors: Rahil Garnavi, Mohammad Aldeen, M. Emre Celebi, Alauddin Bhuiyan, Constantinos Dolianitis, George Varigos

Abstract:

Automatic segmentation of skin lesions is the first step towards the automated analysis of malignant melanoma. Although numerous segmentation methods have been developed, few studies have focused on determining the most effective color space for melanoma application. This paper proposes an automatic segmentation algorithm based on color space analysis and clustering-based histogram thresholding, a process which is able to determine the optimal color channel for detecting the borders in dermoscopy images. The algorithm is tested on a set of 30 high resolution dermoscopy images. A comprehensive evaluation of the results is provided, where borders manually drawn by four dermatologists, are compared to automated borders detected by the proposed algorithm, applying three previously used metrics of accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity and a new metric of similarity. By performing ROC analysis and ranking the metrics, it is demonstrated that the best results are obtained with the X and XoYoR color channels, resulting in an accuracy of approximately 97%. The proposed method is also compared with two state-of-theart skin lesion segmentation methods.

Keywords: Border detection, Color space analysis, Dermoscopy, Histogram thresholding, Melanoma, Segmentation.

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179 Certain Data Dimension Reduction Techniques for application with ANN based MCS for Study of High Energy Shower

Authors: Gitanjali Devi, Kandarpa Kumar Sarma, Pranayee Datta, Anjana Kakoti Mahanta

Abstract:

Cosmic showers, from their places of origin in space, after entering earth generate secondary particles called Extensive Air Shower (EAS). Detection and analysis of EAS and similar High Energy Particle Showers involve a plethora of experimental setups with certain constraints for which soft-computational tools like Artificial Neural Network (ANN)s can be adopted. The optimality of ANN classifiers can be enhanced further by the use of Multiple Classifier System (MCS) and certain data - dimension reduction techniques. This work describes the performance of certain data dimension reduction techniques like Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Self Organizing Map (SOM) approximators for application with an MCS formed using Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN). The data inputs are obtained from an array of detectors placed in a circular arrangement resembling a practical detector grid which have a higher dimension and greater correlation among themselves. The PCA, ICA and SOM blocks reduce the correlation and generate a form suitable for real time practical applications for prediction of primary energy and location of EAS from density values captured using detectors in a circular grid.

Keywords: EAS, Shower, Core, ANN, Location.

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178 A Pairwise-Gaussian-Merging Approach: Towards Genome Segmentation for Copy Number Analysis

Authors: Chih-Hao Chen, Hsing-Chung Lee, Qingdong Ling, Hsiao-Jung Chen, Sun-Chong Wang, Li-Ching Wu, H.C. Lee

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Segmentation, filtering out of measurement errors and identification of breakpoints are integral parts of any analysis of microarray data for the detection of copy number variation (CNV). Existing algorithms designed for these tasks have had some successes in the past, but they tend to be O(N2) in either computation time or memory requirement, or both, and the rapid advance of microarray resolution has practically rendered such algorithms useless. Here we propose an algorithm, SAD, that is much faster and much less thirsty for memory – O(N) in both computation time and memory requirement -- and offers higher accuracy. The two key ingredients of SAD are the fundamental assumption in statistics that measurement errors are normally distributed and the mathematical relation that the product of two Gaussians is another Gaussian (function). We have produced a computer program for analyzing CNV based on SAD. In addition to being fast and small it offers two important features: quantitative statistics for predictions and, with only two user-decided parameters, ease of use. Its speed shows little dependence on genomic profile. Running on an average modern computer, it completes CNV analyses for a 262 thousand-probe array in ~1 second and a 1.8 million-probe array in 9 seconds

Keywords: Cancer, pathogenesis, chromosomal aberration, copy number variation, segmentation analysis.

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177 An Efficient Watermarking Method for MP3 Audio Files

Authors: Dimitrios Koukopoulos, Yiannis Stamatiou

Abstract:

In this work, we present for the first time in our perception an efficient digital watermarking scheme for mpeg audio layer 3 files that operates directly in the compressed data domain, while manipulating the time and subband/channel domain. In addition, it does not need the original signal to detect the watermark. Our scheme was implemented taking special care for the efficient usage of the two limited resources of computer systems: time and space. It offers to the industrial user the capability of watermark embedding and detection in time immediately comparable to the real music time of the original audio file that depends on the mpeg compression, while the end user/audience does not face any artifacts or delays hearing the watermarked audio file. Furthermore, it overcomes the disadvantage of algorithms operating in the PCMData domain to be vulnerable to compression/recompression attacks, as it places the watermark in the scale factors domain and not in the digitized sound audio data. The strength of our scheme, that allows it to be used with success in both authentication and copyright protection, relies on the fact that it gives to the users the enhanced capability their ownership of the audio file not to be accomplished simply by detecting the bit pattern that comprises the watermark itself, but by showing that the legal owner knows a hard to compute property of the watermark.

Keywords: Audio watermarking, mpeg audio layer 3, hard instance generation, NP-completeness.

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176 Obesity and Bone Mineral Density in Patients with Large Joint Osteoarthritis

Authors: Vladyslav Povoroznyuk, Anna Musiienko, Nataliia Zaverukha, Roksolana Povoroznyuk

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Along with the global aging of population, the number of people with somatic diseases is increasing, including such interrelated pathologies as obesity, osteoarthritis (OA) and osteoporosis (OP). The objective of the study is to examine the connection between body mass index (BMI), OA and bone mineral density (BMD) of lumbar spine, femoral neck and trabecular bone score (TBS) in postmenopausal women with OA. We have observed 359 postmenopausal women (50-89 years old) and divided them into four groups by age: 50-59 yrs, 60-69 yrs, 70-79 yrs and over 80 years old. In addition, according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Clinical classification criteria for knee and hip OA, we divided them into 2 groups: group I – 117 females with symptomatic OA (including 89 patients with knee OA, 28 patients with hip OA) and group II –242 women with a normal functional activity of large joints. Analysis of data was performed taking into account their BMI, classified by World Health Organization (WHO). Diagnosis of obesity was established when BMI was above 30 kg/m2. In woman with obesity, a symptomatic OA was detected in 44 postmenopausal women (41.1%), a normal functional activity of large joints - in 63 women (58.9%). However, in women with normal BMI – 73 women, who account for 29.0% of cases, a symptomatic OA was detected. According to a chi-squared (χ2) test, a significantly higher level of BMI was detected in postmenopausal women with OA (χ2 = 5.05, p = 0.02). Women with a symptomatic OA had a significantly higher BMD of lumbar spine compared with women who had a normal functional activity of large joints. No significant differences of BMD of femoral necks or TBS were detected in either the group with OA or with a normal functional activity of large joints.

Keywords: Bone mineral density, BMD, body mass index, BMI, obesity, overweight, postmenopausal women, osteoarthritis.

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175 Event Information Extraction System (EIEE): FSM vs HMM

Authors: Shaukat Wasi, Zubair A. Shaikh, Sajid Qasmi, Hussain Sachwani, Rehman Lalani, Aamir Chagani

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Automatic Extraction of Event information from social text stream (emails, social network sites, blogs etc) is a vital requirement for many applications like Event Planning and Management systems and security applications. The key information components needed from Event related text are Event title, location, participants, date and time. Emails have very unique distinctions over other social text streams from the perspective of layout and format and conversation style and are the most commonly used communication channel for broadcasting and planning events. Therefore we have chosen emails as our dataset. In our work, we have employed two statistical NLP methods, named as Finite State Machines (FSM) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for the extraction of event related contextual information. An application has been developed providing a comparison among the two methods over the event extraction task. It comprises of two modules, one for each method, and works for both bulk as well as direct user input. The results are evaluated using Precision, Recall and F-Score. Experiments show that both methods produce high performance and accuracy, however HMM was good enough over Title extraction and FSM proved to be better for Venue, Date, and time.

Keywords: Emails, Event Extraction, Event Detection, Finite state machines, Hidden Markov Model.

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174 A Four-Year Study of Thyroid Carcinoma in Hail Region: Increased Incidence

Authors: Laila Seada, Hanan Oreiby, Fawaz Al Rashid, Ashraf Negm

Abstract:

Background and Objective: In most areas of the world, the incidence of thyroid cancer has been increasing over the last decade, mostly due to a combination of early detection of the neoplasm resulting from sensitive procedures and increased population exposure to radiation and unrecognized carcinogens. Methods: Cases of thyroid cancer have been retrieved from the cancer registry at King Khalid Hospital during the period from August 2012 to April 2016. Age, gender and histopathologic types have been recorded. Results: Thyroid carcinoma ranked as the second most common malignancy in females (25%) after breast cancer (31%). It constituted 20.8% of all newly diagnosed cancer cases. As for males, it ranked the 4th type of malignancy after gastrointestinal cancer, lymphomas and soft tissue sarcomas. Mean age for females and males was 38.7 +/- 13.2 and 60.25 +/- 11.5 years, respectively, and the difference between the two groups was statistically significant (p value = 0.0001). Fifty-five (82%) were papillary carcinomas including 10 follicular variant of papillary (FVPC), and eight papillary micro carcinomas (PMC) and two tall cell/oncocytic variants. Follicular carcinomas constituted two (3.1%), while two (3.1%) were anaplastic, and two (3.1%) were medullary. Conclusion: Thyroid cancer incidence in Hail is ranking as the 2nd most common female malignancy similar to other regions in the Kingdom. However, this high incidence contrasts with much lower rates worldwide.

Keywords: Thyroid, Hail, papillary, micro carcinoma.

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173 Customer Churn Prediction Using Four Machine Learning Algorithms Integrating Feature Selection and Normalization in the Telecom Sector

Authors: Alanoud Moraya Aldalan, Abdulaziz Almaleh

Abstract:

A crucial part of maintaining a customer-oriented business in the telecommunications industry is understanding the reasons and factors that lead to customer churn. Competition between telecom companies has greatly increased in recent years, which has made it more important to understand customers’ needs in this strong market. For those who are looking to turn over their service providers, understanding their needs is especially important. Predictive churn is now a mandatory requirement for retaining customers in the telecommunications industry. Machine learning can be used to accomplish this. Churn Prediction has become a very important topic in terms of machine learning classification in the telecommunications industry. Understanding the factors of customer churn and how they behave is very important to building an effective churn prediction model. This paper aims to predict churn and identify factors of customers’ churn based on their past service usage history. Aiming at this objective, the study makes use of feature selection, normalization, and feature engineering. Then, this study compared the performance of four different machine learning algorithms on the Orange dataset: Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Decision Tree, and Gradient Boosting. Evaluation of the performance was conducted by using the F1 score and ROC-AUC. Comparing the results of this study with existing models has proven to produce better results. The results showed the Gradients Boosting with feature selection technique outperformed in this study by achieving a 99% F1-score and 99% AUC, and all other experiments achieved good results as well.

Keywords: Machine Learning, Gradient Boosting, Logistic Regression, Churn, Random Forest, Decision Tree, ROC, AUC, F1-score.

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172 Oral Examination: An Important Adjunct to the Diagnosis of Dermatological Disorders

Authors: Sanjay Saraf

Abstract:

The oral cavity can be the site for early manifestations of mucocutaneous disorders (MD) or the only site for occurrence of these disorders. It can also exhibit oral lesions with simultaneous associated skin lesions. The MD involving the oral mucosa commonly presents with signs such as ulcers, vesicles and bullae. The unique environment of the oral cavity may modify these signs of the disease, thereby making the clinical diagnosis an arduous task. In addition to the unique environment of oral cavity, the overlapping of the signs of various mucocutaneous disorders, also makes the clinical diagnosis more intricate. The aim of this review is to present the oral signs of dermatological disorders having common oral involvement and emphasize their   importance in   early detection of the systemic disorders. The aim is also to highlight the necessity of oral examination by a dermatologist while examining the skin lesions. Prior to the oral examination, it must be imperative for the dermatologists and the dental clinicians to have the knowledge of oral anatomy. It is also important to know the impact of various diseases on oral mucosa, and the characteristic features of various oral mucocutaneous lesions. An initial clinical oral examination is may help in the early diagnosis of the MD. Failure to identify the oral manifestations may reduce the likelihood of early treatment and lead to more serious problems. This paper reviews the oral manifestations of immune mediated dermatological disorders with common oral manifestations.

Keywords: Vesiculobullous lesions, Desquamative gingivitis, Nikolsky’s sign, Erythema.

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171 An Inter-banking Auditing Security Solution for Detecting Unauthorised Financial Transactions entered by Authorised Insiders

Authors: C. A. Corzo, N. Zhang, F. Corzo

Abstract:

Insider abuse has recently been reported as one of the more frequently occurring security incidents, suggesting that more security is required for detecting and preventing unauthorised financial transactions entered by authorised users. To address the problem, and based on the observation that all authorised interbanking financial transactions trigger or are triggered by other transactions in a workflow, we have developed a security solution based on a redefined understanding of an audit workflow. One audit workflow where there is a log file containing the complete workflow activity of financial transactions directly related to one financial transaction (an electronic deal recorded at an e-trading system). The new security solution contemplates any two parties interacting on the basis of financial transactions recorded by their users in related but distinct automated financial systems. In the new definition interorganizational and intra-organization interactions can be described in one unique audit trail. This concept expands the current ideas of audit trails by adapting them to actual e-trading workflow activity, i.e. intra-organizational and inter-organizational activity. With the above, a security auditing service is designed to detect integrity drifts with and between organizations in order to detect unauthorised financial transactions entered by authorised users.

Keywords: Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Authentica-transtionand Identification.

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170 Enhancement of Environmental Security by the Application of Wireless Sensor Network in Nigeria

Authors: Ahmadu Girgiri, Lawan Gana Ali, Mamman M. Baba

Abstract:

Environmental security clearly articulates the perfections and developments of various communities around the world irrespective of the region, culture, religion or social inclination. Although, the present state of insecurity has become serious issue devastating the peace, unity, stability and progress of man and his physical environment particularly in developing countries. Recently, measure of security and it management in Nigeria has been a bottle-neck to the effectiveness and advancement of various sectors that include; business, education, social relations, politics and above all an economy. Several measures have been considered on mitigating environment insecurity such as surveillance, demarcation, security personnel empowerment and the likes, but still the issue remains disturbing. In this paper, we present the application of new technology that contributes to the improvement of security surveillance known as “Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)”. The system is new, smart and emerging technology that provides monitoring, detection and aggregation of information using sensor nodes and wireless network. WSN detects, monitors and stores information or activities in the deployed area such as schools, environment, business centers, public squares, industries, and outskirts and transmit to end users. This will reduce the cost of security funding and eases security surveillance depending on the nature and the requirement of the deployment.

Keywords: Wireless sensor network, node, application, monitoring, insecurity, environment.

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169 Gas Detection via Machine Learning

Authors: Walaa Khalaf, Calogero Pace, Manlio Gaudioso

Abstract:

We present an Electronic Nose (ENose), which is aimed at identifying the presence of one out of two gases, possibly detecting the presence of a mixture of the two. Estimation of the concentrations of the components is also performed for a volatile organic compound (VOC) constituted by methanol and acetone, for the ranges 40-400 and 22-220 ppm (parts-per-million), respectively. Our system contains 8 sensors, 5 of them being gas sensors (of the class TGS from FIGARO USA, INC., whose sensing element is a tin dioxide (SnO2) semiconductor), the remaining being a temperature sensor (LM35 from National Semiconductor Corporation), a humidity sensor (HIH–3610 from Honeywell), and a pressure sensor (XFAM from Fujikura Ltd.). Our integrated hardware–software system uses some machine learning principles and least square regression principle to identify at first a new gas sample, or a mixture, and then to estimate the concentrations. In particular we adopt a training model using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) approach with linear kernel to teach the system how discriminate among different gases. Then we apply another training model using the least square regression, to predict the concentrations. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed multiclassification and regression scheme is effective in the identification of the tested VOCs of methanol and acetone with 96.61% correctness. The concentration prediction is obtained with 0.979 and 0.964 correlation coefficient for the predicted versus real concentrations of methanol and acetone, respectively.

Keywords: Electronic nose, Least square regression, Mixture ofgases, Support Vector Machine.

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168 Temporal Signal Processing by Inference Bayesian Approach for Detection of Abrupt Variation of Statistical Characteristics of Noisy Signals

Authors: Farhad Asadi, Hossein Sadati

Abstract:

In fields such as neuroscience and especially in cognition modeling of mental processes, uncertainty processing in temporal zone of signal is vital. In this paper, Bayesian online inferences in estimation of change-points location in signal are constructed. This method separated the observed signal into independent series and studies the change and variation of the regime of data locally with related statistical characteristics. We give conditions on simulations of the method when the data characteristics of signals vary, and provide empirical evidence to show the performance of method. It is verified that correlation between series around the change point location and its characteristics such as Signal to Noise Ratios and mean value of signal has important factor on fluctuating in finding proper location of change point. And one of the main contributions of this study is related to representing of these influences of signal statistical characteristics for finding abrupt variation in signal. There are two different structures for simulations which in first case one abrupt change in temporal section of signal is considered with variable position and secondly multiple variations are considered. Finally, influence of statistical characteristic for changing the location of change point is explained in details in simulation results with different artificial signals.

Keywords: Time series, fluctuation in statistical characteristics, optimal learning.

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167 Real Time Classification of Political Tendency of Twitter Spanish Users based on Sentiment Analysis

Authors: Marc Solé, Francesc Giné, Magda Valls, Nina Bijedic

Abstract:

What people say on social media has turned into a rich source of information to understand social behavior. Specifically, the growing use of Twitter social media for political communication has arisen high opportunities to know the opinion of large numbers of politically active individuals in real time and predict the global political tendencies of a specific country. It has led to an increasing body of research on this topic. The majority of these studies have been focused on polarized political contexts characterized by only two alternatives. Unlike them, this paper tackles the challenge of forecasting Spanish political trends, characterized by multiple political parties, by means of analyzing the Twitters Users political tendency. According to this, a new strategy, named Tweets Analysis Strategy (TAS), is proposed. This is based on analyzing the users tweets by means of discovering its sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) and classifying them according to the political party they support. From this individual political tendency, the global political prediction for each political party is calculated. In order to do this, two different strategies for analyzing the sentiment analysis are proposed: one is based on Positive and Negative words Matching (PNM) and the second one is based on a Neural Networks Strategy (NNS). The complete TAS strategy has been performed in a Big-Data environment. The experimental results presented in this paper reveal that NNS strategy performs much better than PNM strategy to analyze the tweet sentiment. In addition, this research analyzes the viability of the TAS strategy to obtain the global trend in a political context make up by multiple parties with an error lower than 23%.

Keywords: Political tendency, prediction, sentiment analysis, Twitter.

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166 Implementation of an Improved Secure System Detection for E-passport by using EPC RFID Tags

Authors: A. Baith Mohamed, Ayman Abdel-Hamid, Kareem Youssri Mohamed

Abstract:

Current proposals for E-passport or ID-Card is similar to a regular passport with the addition of tiny contactless integrated circuit (computer chip) inserted in the back cover, which will act as a secure storage device of the same data visually displayed on the photo page of the passport. In addition, it will include a digital photograph that will enable biometric comparison, through the use of facial recognition technology at international borders. Moreover, the e-passport will have a new interface, incorporating additional antifraud and security features. However, its problems are reliability, security and privacy. Privacy is a serious issue since there is no encryption between the readers and the E-passport. However, security issues such as authentication, data protection and control techniques cannot be embedded in one process. In this paper, design and prototype implementation of an improved E-passport reader is presented. The passport holder is authenticated online by using GSM network. The GSM network is the main interface between identification center and the e-passport reader. The communication data is protected between server and e-passport reader by using AES to encrypt data for protection will transferring through GSM network. Performance measurements indicate a 19% improvement in encryption cycles versus previously reported results.

Keywords: RFID "Radio Frequency Identification", EPC"Electronic Product Code", ICAO "International Civil Aviation Organization", IFF "Identify Friend or Foe"

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165 Author Profiling: Prediction of Learners’ Gender on a MOOC Platform Based on Learners’ Comments

Authors: Tahani Aljohani, Jialin Yu, Alexandra. I. Cristea

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The more an educational system knows about a learner, the more personalised interaction it can provide, which leads to better learning. However, asking a learner directly is potentially disruptive, and often ignored by learners. Especially in the booming realm of MOOC Massive Online Learning platforms, only a very low percentage of users disclose demographic information about themselves. Thus, in this paper, we aim to predict learners’ demographic characteristics, by proposing an approach using linguistically motivated Deep Learning Architectures for Learner Profiling, particularly targeting gender prediction on a FutureLearn MOOC platform. Additionally, we tackle here the difficult problem of predicting the gender of learners based on their comments only – which are often available across MOOCs. The most common current approaches to text classification use the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, considering sentences as sequences. However, human language also has structures. In this research, rather than considering sentences as plain sequences, we hypothesise that higher semantic - and syntactic level sentence processing based on linguistics will render a richer representation. We thus evaluate, the traditional LSTM versus other bleeding edge models, which take into account syntactic structure, such as tree-structured LSTM, Stack-augmented Parser-Interpreter Neural Network (SPINN) and the Structure-Aware Tag Augmented model (SATA). Additionally, we explore using different word-level encoding functions. We have implemented these methods on Our MOOC dataset, which is the most performant one comparing with a public dataset on sentiment analysis that is further used as a cross-examining for the models' results.

Keywords: Deep learning, data mining, gender predication, MOOCs.

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164 Content and Resources based Mobile and Wireless Video Transcoding

Authors: Ashraf M. A. Ahmad

Abstract:

Delivering streaming video over wireless is an important component of many interactive multimedia applications running on personal wireless handset devices. Such personal devices have to be inexpensive, compact, and lightweight. But wireless channels have a high channel bit error rate and limited bandwidth. Delay variation of packets due to network congestion and the high bit error rate greatly degrades the quality of video at the handheld device. Therefore, mobile access to multimedia contents requires video transcoding functionality at the edge of the mobile network for interworking with heterogeneous networks and services. Therefore, to guarantee quality of service (QoS) delivered to the mobile user, a robust and efficient transcoding scheme should be deployed in mobile multimedia transporting network. Hence, this paper examines the challenges and limitations that the video transcoding schemes in mobile multimedia transporting network face. Then handheld resources, network conditions and content based mobile and wireless video transcoding is proposed to provide high QoS applications. Exceptional performance is demonstrated in the experiment results. These experiments were designed to verify and prove the robustness of the proposed approach. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the results of various video clips with different bit rate and frame rate have been provided.

Keywords: Content, Object detection, Transcoding, Texture, Temporal, Video.

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