Search results for: Palm kernel oil-based monoester polyol
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 279

Search results for: Palm kernel oil-based monoester polyol

189 Metal Streak Analysis with different Acquisition Settings in Postoperative Spine Imaging: A Phantom Study

Authors: N. D. Osman, M. S. Salikin, M. I. Saripan

Abstract:

CT assessment of postoperative spine is challenging in the presence of metal streak artifacts that could deteriorate the quality of CT images. In this paper, we studied the influence of different acquisition parameters on the magnitude of metal streaking. A water-bath phantom was constructed with metal insertion similar with postoperative spine assessment. The phantom was scanned with different acquisition settings and acquired data were reconstructed using various reconstruction settings. Standardized ROIs were defined within streaking region for image analysis. The result shows increased kVp and mAs enhanced SNR values by reducing image noise. Sharper kernel enhanced image quality compared to smooth kernel, but produced more noise in the images with higher CT fluctuation. The noise between both kernels were significantly different (P <0.05) with increment of noise in the bone kernel images (mean difference = 54.78). The technical settings should be selected appropriately to attain the acceptable image quality with the best diagnostic value.

Keywords: Computed tomography, metal streak, noise, CT fluctuation.

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188 The Open Knowledge Kernel

Authors: Adrian Perreau de Pinninck, David Dupplaw, Spyros Kotoulas, Ronny Siebes

Abstract:

Web services are pieces of software that can be invoked via a standardized protocol. They can be combined via formalized taskflow languages. The Open Knowledge system is a fully distributed system using P2P technology, that allows users to publish the setaskflows, and programmers to register their web services or publish implementations of them, for the roles described in these workflows.Besides this, the system offers the functionality to select a peer that could coordinate such an interaction model and inform web services when it is their 'turn'. In this paper we describe the architecture and implementation of the Open Knowledge Kernel which provides the core functionality of the Open Knowledge system.

Keywords: Architecture, P2P, Web Services, Semantic Web

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187 A Robust LS-SVM Regression

Authors: József Valyon, Gábor Horváth

Abstract:

In comparison to the original SVM, which involves a quadratic programming task; LS–SVM simplifies the required computation, but unfortunately the sparseness of standard SVM is lost. Another problem is that LS-SVM is only optimal if the training samples are corrupted by Gaussian noise. In Least Squares SVM (LS–SVM), the nonlinear solution is obtained, by first mapping the input vector to a high dimensional kernel space in a nonlinear fashion, where the solution is calculated from a linear equation set. In this paper a geometric view of the kernel space is introduced, which enables us to develop a new formulation to achieve a sparse and robust estimate.

Keywords: Support Vector Machines, Least Squares SupportVector Machines, Regression, Sparse approximation.

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186 A New Algorithm for Determining the Leading Coefficient of in the Parabolic Equation

Authors: Shiping Zhou, Minggen Cui

Abstract:

This paper investigates the inverse problem of determining the unknown time-dependent leading coefficient in the parabolic equation using the usual conditions of the direct problem and an additional condition. An algorithm is developed for solving numerically the inverse problem using the technique of space decomposition in a reproducing kernel space. The leading coefficients can be solved by a lower triangular linear system. Numerical experiments are presented to show the efficiency of the proposed methods.

Keywords: parabolic equations, coefficient inverse problem, reproducing kernel.

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185 Structural Characteristics of Batch Processed Agro-Waste Fibres

Authors: E. I. Akpan, S. O. Adeosun, G. I. Lawal, S. A. Balogun, X. D. Chen

Abstract:

The characterisation of agro-wastes fibres for composite applications from Nigeria using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) has been done. Fibres extracted from groundnut shell, coconut husk, rice husk, palm fruit bunch and palm fruit stalk are processed using two novel cellulose fibre production methods developed by the authors. Cellulose apparent crystallinity calculated using the deconvolution of the diffractometer trace shows that the amorphous portion of cellulose was permeable to hydrolysis yielding high crystallinity after treatment. All diffratograms show typical cellulose structure with well-defined 110, 200 and 040 peaks. Palm fruit fibres had the highest 200 crystalline cellulose peaks compared to others and it is an indication of rich cellulose content. Surface examination of the resulting fibres using SEM indicates the presence of regular cellulose network structure with some agglomerated laminated layer of thin leaves of cellulose microfibrils. The surfaces were relatively smooth indicating the removal of hemicellulose, lignin and pectin.

Keywords: X-ray diffraction, SEM, cellulose, deconvolution, crystallinity.

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184 Medical Image Segmentation and Detection of MR Images Based on Spatial Multiple-Kernel Fuzzy C-Means Algorithm

Authors: J. Mehena, M. C. Adhikary

Abstract:

In this paper, a spatial multiple-kernel fuzzy C-means (SMKFCM) algorithm is introduced for segmentation problem. A linear combination of multiples kernels with spatial information is used in the kernel FCM (KFCM) and the updating rules for the linear coefficients of the composite kernels are derived as well. Fuzzy cmeans (FCM) based techniques have been widely used in medical image segmentation problem due to their simplicity and fast convergence. The proposed SMKFCM algorithm provides us a new flexible vehicle to fuse different pixel information in medical image segmentation and detection of MR images. To evaluate the robustness of the proposed segmentation algorithm in noisy environment, we add noise in medical brain tumor MR images and calculated the success rate and segmentation accuracy. From the experimental results it is clear that the proposed algorithm has better performance than those of other FCM based techniques for noisy medical MR images.

Keywords: Clustering, fuzzy C-means, image segmentation, MR images, multiple kernels.

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183 Identification of Printed Punjabi Words and English Numerals Using Gabor Features

Authors: Rajneesh Rani, Renu Dhir, G. S. Lehal

Abstract:

Script identification is one of the challenging steps in the development of optical character recognition system for bilingual or multilingual documents. In this paper an attempt is made for identification of English numerals at word level from Punjabi documents by using Gabor features. The support vector machine (SVM) classifier with five fold cross validation is used to classify the word images. The results obtained are quite encouraging. Average accuracy with RBF kernel, Polynomial and Linear Kernel functions comes out to be greater than 99%.

Keywords: Script identification, gabor features, support vector machines.

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182 Application of Tocopherol as Antioxidant to Reduce Decomposition Process on Palm Oil Biodiesel

Authors: Supriyono, Sumardiyono, Rendy J. Pramono

Abstract:

Biodiesel is one of the alternative fuels promising for substituting petrodiesel as energy source which has an advantage as it is sustainable and eco-friendly. Due to the raw material that tends to decompose during storage, biodiesel also has the same characteristic that tends to decompose during storage. Biodiesel decomposition will form higher acid value as the result of oxidation to double bond on a fatty acid compound on biodiesel. Thus, free fatty acid value could be used to evaluate degradation of biodiesel due to the oxidation process. High free fatty acid on biodiesel could impact on the engine performance. Decomposition of biodiesel due to oxidation reaction could prevent by introducing a small amount of antioxidant. The origin of raw materials and the process for producing biodiesel will determine the effectiveness of antioxidant. Biodiesel made from high free fatty acid (FFA) crude palm oil (CPO) by using two steps esterification is vulnerable to oxidation process which is resulted in increasing on the FFA value. Tocopherol also known as vitamin E is one of the antioxidant that could improve the stability of biodiesel due to decomposition by the oxidation process. Tocopherol 0.5% concentration on palm oil biodiesel could reduce 13% of increasing FFA under temperature 80 °C and exposing time 180 minute.

Keywords: Antioxidant, biodiesel, decomposition, oxidation, tocopherol.

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181 Application of Tocopherol as Antioxidant to Reduce Decomposition Process on Palm Oil Biodiesel

Authors: Supriyono, Sumardiyono, Rendy J. Pramono

Abstract:

Biodiesel is one of the alternative fuels promising for substituting petrodiesel as energy source which has an advantage as it is sustainable and eco-friendly. Due to the raw material that tends to decompose during storage, biodiesel also has the same characteristic that tends to decompose during storage. Biodiesel decomposition will form higher acid value as the result of oxidation to double bond on a fatty acid compound on biodiesel. Thus, free fatty acid value could be used to evaluate degradation of biodiesel due to the oxidation process. High free fatty acid on biodiesel could impact on the engine performance. Decomposition of biodiesel due to oxidation reaction could prevent by introducing a small amount of antioxidant. The origin of raw materials and the process for producing biodiesel will determine the effectiveness of antioxidant. Biodiesel made from high free fatty acid (FFA) crude palm oil (CPO) by using two steps esterification is vulnerable to oxidation process which is resulted in increasing on the FFA value. Tocopherol also known as vitamin E is one of the antioxidant that could improve the stability of biodiesel due to decomposition by the oxidation process. Tocopherol 0.5% concentration on palm oil biodiesel could reduce 13% of increasing FFA under temperature 80 °C and exposing time 180 minute.

Keywords: Antioxidant, biodiesel, decomposition, oxidation, tocopherol.

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180 L1-Convergence of Modified Trigonometric Sums

Authors: Sandeep Kaur Chouhan, Jatinderdeep Kaur, S. S. Bhatia

Abstract:

The existence of sine and cosine series as a Fourier series, their L1-convergence seems to be one of the difficult question in theory of convergence of trigonometric series in L1-metric norm. In the literature so far available, various authors have studied the L1-convergence of cosine and sine trigonometric series with special coefficients. In this paper, we present a modified cosine and sine sums and criterion for L1-convergence of these modified sums is obtained. Also, a necessary and sufficient condition for the L1-convergence of the cosine and sine series is deduced as corollaries.

Keywords: Conjugate Dirichlet kernel, Dirichlet kernel, L1-convergence, modified sums.

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179 Coefficients of Some Double Trigonometric Cosine and Sine Series

Authors: Jatinderdeep Kaur

Abstract:

In this paper, the results of Kano from one dimensional cosine and sine series are extended to two dimensional cosine and sine series. To extend these results, some classes of coefficient sequences such as class of semi convexity and class R are extended from one dimension to two dimensions. Further, the function f(x, y) is two dimensional Fourier Cosine and Sine series or equivalently it represents an integrable function or not, has been studied. Moreover, some results are obtained which are generalization of Moricz’s results.

Keywords: Conjugate Dirichlet kernel, conjugate Fejer kernel, Fourier series, Semi-convexity.

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178 Parametric Analysis on Hydrogen Production using Mixtures of Pure Cellulosic and Calcium Oxide

Authors: N.A. Rashidi, S. Yusup, M.M. Ahmad

Abstract:

As the fossil fuels kept on depleting, intense research in developing hydrogen (H2) as the alternative fuel has been done to cater our tremendous demand for fuel. The potential of H2 as the ultimate clean fuel differs with the fossil fuel that releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the surrounding and leads to the global warming. The experimental work was carried out to study the production of H2 from palm kernel shell steam gasification at different variables such as heating rate, steam to biomass ratio and adsorbent to biomass ratio. Maximum H2 composition which is 61% (volume basis) was obtained at heating rate of 100oCmin-1, steam/biomass of 2:1 ratio, and adsorbent/biomass of 1:1 ratio. The commercial adsorbent had been modified by utilizing the alcoholwater mixture. Characteristics of both adsorbents were investigated and it is concluded that flowability and floodability of modified CaO is significantly improved.

Keywords: Biomass gasification, Calcium oxide, Carbon dioxide capture, Sorbent flowability

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177 A Kernel Classifier using Linearised Bregman Iteration

Authors: K. A. D. N. K Wimalawarne

Abstract:

In this paper we introduce a novel kernel classifier based on a iterative shrinkage algorithm developed for compressive sensing. We have adopted Bregman iteration with soft and hard shrinkage functions and generalized hinge loss for solving l1 norm minimization problem for classification. Our experimental results with face recognition and digit classification using SVM as the benchmark have shown that our method has a close error rate compared to SVM but do not perform better than SVM. We have found that the soft shrinkage method give more accuracy and in some situations more sparseness than hard shrinkage methods.

Keywords: Compressive sensing, Bregman iteration, Generalisedhinge loss, sparse, kernels, shrinkage functions

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176 Empirical Process Monitoring Via Chemometric Analysis of Partially Unbalanced Data

Authors: Hyun-Woo Cho

Abstract:

Real-time or in-line process monitoring frameworks are designed to give early warnings for a fault along with meaningful identification of its assignable causes. In artificial intelligence and machine learning fields of pattern recognition various promising approaches have been proposed such as kernel-based nonlinear machine learning techniques. This work presents a kernel-based empirical monitoring scheme for batch type production processes with small sample size problem of partially unbalanced data. Measurement data of normal operations are easy to collect whilst special events or faults data are difficult to collect. In such situations, noise filtering techniques can be helpful in enhancing process monitoring performance. Furthermore, preprocessing of raw process data is used to get rid of unwanted variation of data. The performance of the monitoring scheme was demonstrated using three-dimensional batch data. The results showed that the monitoring performance was improved significantly in terms of detection success rate of process fault.

Keywords: Process Monitoring, kernel methods, multivariate filtering, data-driven techniques, quality improvement.

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175 Synthesis and Properties of Biobased Polyurethane/Montmorillonite Nanocomposites

Authors: Teuku Rihayat, Suryani

Abstract:

Polyurethanes (PURs) are very versatile polymeric materials with a wide range of physical and chemical properties. PURs have desirable properties such as high abrasion resistance, tear strength, shock absorption, flexibility and elasticity. Although they have relatively poor thermal stability, this can be improved by using treated clay. Polyurethane/clay nanocomposites have been synthesized from renewable sources. A polyol for the production of polyurethane by reaction with an isocyanate was obtained by the synthesis of palm oil-based oleic acid with glycerol. Dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid (DBSA) was used as catalyst and emulsifier. The unmodified clay (kunipia-F) was treated with cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB-mont) and octadodecylamine (ODAmont). The d-spacing in CTAB-mont and ODA-mont were 1.571 nm and 1.798 nm respectively and larger than that of the pure-mont (1.142 nm). The organoclay was completely intercalated in the polyurethane, as confirmed by a wide angle x-ray diffraction (WAXD) pattern. The results showed that adding clay demonstrated better thermal stability in comparison with the virgin polyurethane. Onset degradation of pure PU is at 200oC, and is lower than that of the CTAB-mont PU and ODA-mont PU which takes place at about 318oC and 330oC, respectively. The mechanical properties (including the dynamic mechanical properties) of pure polyurethane (PU) and PU/clay nanocomposites, were measured. The modified organoclay had a remarkably beneficial effect on the strength and elongation at break of the nanocomposites, which both increased with increasing clay content with the increase of the tensile strength of more than 214% and 267% by the addition of only 5 wt% of the montmorillonite CTAB-mont PU and ODA-mont PU, respectively.

Keywords: Polyurethane, Clay nanocomposites, Biobase

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174 Probability Density Estimation Using Advanced Support Vector Machines and the Expectation Maximization Algorithm

Authors: Refaat M Mohamed, Ayman El-Baz, Aly A. Farag

Abstract:

This paper presents a new approach for the prob-ability density function estimation using the Support Vector Ma-chines (SVM) and the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithms.In the proposed approach, an advanced algorithm for the SVM den-sity estimation which incorporates the Mean Field theory in the learning process is used. Instead of using ad-hoc values for the para-meters of the kernel function which is used by the SVM algorithm,the proposed approach uses the EM algorithm for an automatic optimization of the kernel. Experimental evaluation using simulated data set shows encouraging results.

Keywords: Density Estimation, SVM, Learning Algorithms, Parameters Estimation.

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173 Segmentation of Noisy Digital Images with Stochastic Gradient Kernel

Authors: Abhishek Neogi, Jayesh Verma, Pinaki Pratim Acharjya

Abstract:

Image segmentation and edge detection is a fundamental section in image processing. In case of noisy images Edge Detection is very less effective if we use conventional Spatial Filters like Sobel, Prewitt, LOG, Laplacian etc. To overcome this problem we have proposed the use of Stochastic Gradient Mask instead of Spatial Filters for generating gradient images. The present study has shown that the resultant images obtained by applying Stochastic Gradient Masks appear to be much clearer and sharper as per Edge detection is considered.

Keywords: Image segmentation, edge Detection, noisy images, spatialfilters, stochastic gradient kernel.

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172 Orthogonal Polynomial Density Estimates: Alternative Representation and Degree Selection

Authors: Serge B. Provost, Min Jiang

Abstract:

The density estimates considered in this paper comprise a base density and an adjustment component consisting of a linear combination of orthogonal polynomials. It is shown that, in the context of density approximation, the coefficients of the linear combination can be determined either from a moment-matching technique or a weighted least-squares approach. A kernel representation of the corresponding density estimates is obtained. Additionally, two refinements of the Kronmal-Tarter stopping criterion are proposed for determining the degree of the polynomial adjustment. By way of illustration, the density estimation methodology advocated herein is applied to two data sets.

Keywords: kernel density estimation, orthogonal polynomials, moment-based methodologies, density approximation.

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171 Using Mean-Shift Tracking Algorithms for Real-Time Tracking of Moving Images on an Autonomous Vehicle Testbed Platform

Authors: Benjamin Gorry, Zezhi Chen, Kevin Hammond, Andy Wallace, Greg Michaelson

Abstract:

This paper describes new computer vision algorithms that have been developed to track moving objects as part of a long-term study into the design of (semi-)autonomous vehicles. We present the results of a study to exploit variable kernels for tracking in video sequences. The basis of our work is the mean shift object-tracking algorithm; for a moving target, it is usual to define a rectangular target window in an initial frame, and then process the data within that window to separate the tracked object from the background by the mean shift segmentation algorithm. Rather than use the standard, Epanechnikov kernel, we have used a kernel weighted by the Chamfer distance transform to improve the accuracy of target representation and localization, minimising the distance between the two distributions in RGB color space using the Bhattacharyya coefficient. Experimental results show the improved tracking capability and versatility of the algorithm in comparison with results using the standard kernel. These algorithms are incorporated as part of a robot test-bed architecture which has been used to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Keywords: Hume, functional programming, autonomous vehicle, pioneer robot, vision.

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170 An Evolutionary Statistical Learning Theory

Authors: Sung-Hae Jun, Kyung-Whan Oh

Abstract:

Statistical learning theory was developed by Vapnik. It is a learning theory based on Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension. It also has been used in learning models as good analytical tools. In general, a learning theory has had several problems. Some of them are local optima and over-fitting problems. As well, statistical learning theory has same problems because the kernel type, kernel parameters, and regularization constant C are determined subjectively by the art of researchers. So, we propose an evolutionary statistical learning theory to settle the problems of original statistical learning theory. Combining evolutionary computing into statistical learning theory, our theory is constructed. We verify improved performances of an evolutionary statistical learning theory using data sets from KDD cup.

Keywords: Evolutionary computing, Local optima, Over-fitting, Statistical learning theory

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169 Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch as a New Organic Filler for Electrical Tree Inhibition

Authors: M. H. Ahmad, A. A. A. Jamil, H. Ahmad, M. A. M. Piah, A. Darus, Y. Z. Arief, N. Bashir

Abstract:

The use of synthetic retardants in polymeric insulated cables is not uncommon in the high voltage engineering to study electrical treeing phenomenon. However few studies on organic materials for the same investigation have been carried. .This paper describes the study on the effects of Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch (OPEFB) microfiller on the tree initiation and propagation in silicone rubber with different weight percentages (wt %) of filler to insulation bulk material. The weight percentages used were 0 wt % and 1 wt % respectively. It was found that the OPEFB retards the propagation of the electrical treeing development. For tree inception study, the addition of 1(wt %) OPEFB has increase the tree inception voltage of silicone rubber. So, OPEFB is a potential retardant to the initiation and growth of electrical treeing occurring in polymeric materials for high voltage application. However more studies on the effects of physical and electrical properties of OPEFB as a tree retardant material are required.

Keywords: Oil palm empty fruit bunch, electrical tree, siliconerubber, fillers.

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168 A Preliminary Study on Factors Determining the Success of High Conservation Value Area in Oil Palm Plantations

Authors: Yanto Santosa, Rozza Tri Kwatrina

Abstract:

High Conservation Value (HCV) is an area with conservation function within oil palm plantation. Despite the important role of HCV area in biodiversity conservation and various studies on HCV, there was a lack of research studying the factors determining its success. A preliminary study was conducted to identify the determinant factor of HCV that affected the diversity. Line transect method was used to calculate the species diversity of butterfly, birds, mammals, and herpetofauna species as well as their richness. Specifically for mammals, camera traps were also used. The research sites comprised of 12 HCV areas in 3 provinces of Indonesia (Central Kalimantan, Riau, and Palembang). The relationship between the HCV biophysical factor with the species number and species diversity for each wildlife class was identified using Chi-Square analysis with Cross tab (contingency table). Results of the study revealed that species diversity varied by research locations. Four factors determining the success of HCV area in relations to the number and diversity of wildlife species are land cover types for mammals, the width of area and distance to rivers for birds, and distance to settlements for butterflies.

Keywords: Ecological factors, high conservation value area, oil palm plantation, wildlife diversity.

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167 Effect of Different Oils on Quality of Deep-fried Dough Stick

Authors: Nuntaporn Aukkanit

Abstract:

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of oils on chemical, physical, and sensory properties of deep-fried dough stick. Five kinds of vegetable oil which were used for addition and frying consist of: palm oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, rice bran oil, and canola oil. The results of this study showed that using different kinds of oil made significant difference in the quality of deep-fried dough stick. Deep-fried dough stick fried with the rice bran oil had the lowest moisture loss and oil absorption (p≤0.05), but it had some unsatisfactory physical properties (color, specific volume, density, and texture) and sensory characteristics. Nonetheless, deep-fried dough stick fried with the sunflower oil had moisture loss and oil absorption slightly more than the rice bran oil, but it had almost higher physical and sensory properties. Deep-fried dough sticks together with the sunflower oil did not have different sensory score from the palm oil, commonly used for production of deep-fried dough stick. These results indicated that addition and frying with the sunflower oil are appropriate for the production of deep-fried dough stick.

Keywords: Deep-fried dough stick, palm oil, sunflower oil, rice bran oil.

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166 Physical and Rheological Properties of Asphalt Modified with Cellulose Date Palm Fibers

Authors: Howaidi M. Al-Otaibi, Abdulrahman S. Al-Suhaibani, Hamad A. Alsoliman

Abstract:

Fibers are extensively used in civil engineering applications for many years. In this study, empty fruit bunch of date palm trees were used to produce cellulose fiber that were used as additives in the asphalt binder. Two sizes (coarse and fine) of cellulose fibers were pre-blended in PG64-22 binder with various contents of 1.5%, 3%, 4.5%, 6%, and 7.5% by weight of asphalt binder. The physical and rheological properties of fiber modified asphalt binders were tested by using conventional tests such as penetration, softening point and viscosity; and SHRP test such as dynamic shear rheometer. The results indicated that the fiber modified asphalt binders were higher in softening point, viscosity, and complex shear modulus, and lower in penetration compared to pure asphalt. The fiber modified binders showed an improvement in rheological properties since it was possible to raise the control binder (pure asphalt) PG from 64 to 70 by adding 6% (by weight) of either fine or coarse fibers. Such improvement in stiffness of fiber modified binder is expected to improve pavement resistance to rutting.

Keywords: Cellulose date palm fiber, fiber modified asphalt, physical properties, rheological properties.

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165 The Effects of Sodium Chloride in the Formation of Size and Shape of Gold (Au)Nanoparticles by Microwave-Polyol Method for Mercury Adsorption

Authors: Mawarni F. Mohamad, Khairul S.N. Kamarudin, Nik N.F.N.M. Fathilah, Mohamad M. Salleh

Abstract:

Mercury is a natural occurring element and present in various concentrations in the environment. Due to its toxic effects, it is desirable to research mercury sensitive materials to adsorb mercury. This paper describes the preparation of Au nanoparticles for mercury adsorption by using a microwave (MW)-polyol method in the presence of three different Sodium Chloride (NaCl) concentrations (10, 20 and 30 mM). Mixtures of spherical, triangular, octahedral, decahedral particles and 1-D product were obtained using this rapid method. Sizes and shapes was found strongly depend on the concentrations of NaCl. Without NaCl concentration, spherical, triangular plates, octahedral, decahedral nanoparticles and 1D product were produced. At the lower NaCl concentration (10 mM), spherical, octahedral and decahedral nanoparticles were present, while spherical and decahedral nanoparticles were preferentially form by using 20 mM of NaCl concentration. Spherical, triangular plates, octahedral and decahedral nanoparticles were obtained at the highest NaCl concentration (30 mM). The amount of mercury adsorbed using 20 ppm mercury solution is the highest (67.5 %) for NaCl concentration of 30 mM. The high yield of polygonal particles will increase the mercury adsorption. In addition, the adsorption of mercury is also due to the sizes of the particles. The sizes of particles become smaller with increasing NaCl concentrations (size ranges, 5- 16 nm) than those synthesized without addition of NaCl (size ranges 11-32 nm). It is concluded that NaCl concentrations affects the formation of sizes and shapes of Au nanoparticles thus affects the mercury adsorption.

Keywords: Adsorption, Au Nanoparticles, Mercury, SodiumChloride.

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164 Paddy/Rice Singulation for Determination of Husking Efficiency and Damage Using Machine Vision

Authors: M. Shaker, S. Minaei, M. H. Khoshtaghaza, A. Banakar, A. Jafari

Abstract:

In this study a system of machine vision and singulation was developed to separate paddy from rice and determine paddy husking and rice breakage percentages. The machine vision system consists of three main components including an imaging chamber, a digital camera, a computer equipped with image processing software. The singulation device consists of a kernel holding surface, a motor with vacuum fan, and a dimmer. For separation of paddy from rice (in the image), it was necessary to set a threshold. Therefore, some images of paddy and rice were sampled and the RGB values of the images were extracted using MATLAB software. Then mean and standard deviation of the data were determined. An Image processing algorithm was developed using MATLAB to determine paddy/rice separation and rice breakage and paddy husking percentages, using blue to red ratio. Tests showed that, a threshold of 0.75 is suitable for separating paddy from rice kernels. Results from the evaluation of the image processing algorithm showed that the accuracies obtained with the algorithm were 98.36% and 91.81% for paddy husking and rice breakage percentage, respectively. Analysis also showed that a suction of 45 mmHg to 50 mmHg yielding 81.3% separation efficiency is appropriate for operation of the kernel singulation system.

Keywords: Computer vision, rice kernel, husking, breakage.

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163 Machine Vision System for Automatic Weeding Strategy in Oil Palm Plantation using Image Filtering Technique

Authors: Kamarul Hawari Ghazali, Mohd. Marzuki Mustafa, Aini Hussain

Abstract:

Machine vision is an application of computer vision to automate conventional work in industry, manufacturing or any other field. Nowadays, people in agriculture industry have embarked into research on implementation of engineering technology in their farming activities. One of the precision farming activities that involve machine vision system is automatic weeding strategy. Automatic weeding strategy in oil palm plantation could minimize the volume of herbicides that is sprayed to the fields. This paper discusses an automatic weeding strategy in oil palm plantation using machine vision system for the detection and differential spraying of weeds. The implementation of vision system involved the used of image processing technique to analyze weed images in order to recognized and distinguished its types. Image filtering technique has been used to process the images as well as a feature extraction method to classify the type of weed images. As a result, the image processing technique contributes a promising result of classification to be implemented in machine vision system for automated weeding strategy.

Keywords: Machine vision, Automatic Weeding Strategy, filter, feature extraction

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162 Feature Selection Methods for an Improved SVM Classifier

Authors: Daniel Morariu, Lucian N. Vintan, Volker Tresp

Abstract:

Text categorization is the problem of classifying text documents into a set of predefined classes. After a preprocessing step, the documents are typically represented as large sparse vectors. When training classifiers on large collections of documents, both the time and memory restrictions can be quite prohibitive. This justifies the application of feature selection methods to reduce the dimensionality of the document-representation vector. In this paper, three feature selection methods are evaluated: Random Selection, Information Gain (IG) and Support Vector Machine feature selection (called SVM_FS). We show that the best results were obtained with SVM_FS method for a relatively small dimension of the feature vector. Also we present a novel method to better correlate SVM kernel-s parameters (Polynomial or Gaussian kernel).

Keywords: Feature Selection, Learning with Kernels, SupportVector Machine, and Classification.

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161 Accelerating Sparse Matrix Vector Multiplication on Many-Core GPUs

Authors: Weizhi Xu, Zhiyong Liu, Dongrui Fan, Shuai Jiao, Xiaochun Ye, Fenglong Song, Chenggang Yan

Abstract:

Many-core GPUs provide high computing ability and substantial bandwidth; however, optimizing irregular applications like SpMV on GPUs becomes a difficult but meaningful task. In this paper, we propose a novel method to improve the performance of SpMV on GPUs. A new storage format called HYB-R is proposed to exploit GPU architecture more efficiently. The COO portion of the matrix is partitioned recursively into a ELL portion and a COO portion in the process of creating HYB-R format to ensure that there are as many non-zeros as possible in ELL format. The method of partitioning the matrix is an important problem for HYB-R kernel, so we also try to tune the parameters to partition the matrix for higher performance. Experimental results show that our method can get better performance than the fastest kernel (HYB) in NVIDIA-s SpMV library with as high as 17% speedup.

Keywords: GPU, HYB-R, Many-core, Performance Tuning, SpMV

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160 Deterioration of Groundwater in Arid Environments: What Impact in Oasis Dynamics? Case Study of Tafilalet, Morocco

Authors: W. EL Khoumsi, A. Hammani, M. Kuper, A. Bouaziz

Abstract:

Oases are complex and fragile agro-ecosystems. They have always existed in environments characterized by an arid climate, scarcity of rainfall, high temperatures and high evaporation. These palms have grown up despite the severity of the physical characteristics thanks to the water's existence and irrigation practice. The oases are generally spread along non-perennial rivers (wadis), shallow water table or deep artesian groundwater. However, the sustainability of oasis system is threatened by water scarcity and declining of water table levels particularly in arid areas. Located in the southern east area of Morocco, Tafilalet plain encompasses one of the largest palm groves in the kingdom. In recent years, this area has become increasingly threatened by water shortage and has seen a sharp deterioration under the effect of several combined anthropogenic and climatic factors. The Bayoud disease, successive years of drought, Hassan Addakhil dam construction etc are all factors that have affected both water and phoenicicole heritage of the area. The objective of this study is to understand the interaction between qualitative and quantitative degradation of groundwater resources, and the palm grove dynamics, while reviewing the assumption that groundwater resources contribute in a direct way to the conservation of this oasis agroecosystem. A historical analysis tracing both the oasis dynamics and the groundwater evolution has been established. Data were collected from satellite images, surveys with different actors (farmers, Regional Office for Agricultural Development, Basin agency...). They were complemented by a synthesis of numerous technical reports in the area. The results showed that within 40 years, the thickness of the groundwater table has dropped in 50 %. Along with this, there has been a downsizing of date palm by 50 %. Areas with higher groundwater level were the least affected by the downsizing. So we can say that the shallow groundwater contribute significantly and directly to the water supply of date palm through its root system, and largely ensures the oasis ecosystem sustainability.

Keywords: Oasis dynamics, Arid environments, Groundwater deterioration, Date palm.

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