Search results for: Run-time extraction of execution path of BPEL.

Authors: M. Jazouli, S. Elhoufi, A. Majda, A. Zarghili, R. Aalouane

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Autism spectrum disorder is a complex developmental disability. It is defined by a certain set of behaviors. Persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) frequently engage in stereotyped and repetitive motor movements. The objective of this article is to propose a method to automatically detect this unusual behavior. Our study provides a clinical tool which facilitates for doctors the diagnosis of ASD. We focus on automatic identification of five repetitive gestures among autistic children in real time: body rocking, hand flapping, fingers flapping, hand on the face and hands behind back. In this paper, we present a gesture recognition system for children with autism, which consists of three modules: model-based movement tracking, feature extraction, and gesture recognition using artificial neural network (ANN). The first one uses the Microsoft Kinect sensor, the second one chooses points of interest from the 3D skeleton to characterize the gestures, and the last one proposes a neural connectionist model to perform the supervised classification of data. The experimental results show that our system can achieve above 93.3% recognition rate.

Keywords: ASD, stereotypical motor movements, repetitive gesture, kinect, artificial neural network.

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Authors: Yun-Yao Chi, Chieh-Kai Tsai, Dai-Ling Li

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In this paper, a method of fast 3D topography modeling using the high-resolution camera images is studied based on the characteristics of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system for low altitude aerial photogrammetry and the need of three dimensional (3D) urban landscape modeling. Firstly, the existing high-resolution digital camera with special design of overlap images is designed by reconstructing and analyzing the auto-flying paths of UAVs, which improves the self-calibration function to achieve the high precision imaging by software, and further increased the resolution of the imaging system. Secondly, several-angle images including vertical images and oblique images gotten by the UAV system are used for the detail measure of urban land surfaces and the texture extraction. Finally, the aerial photography and 3D topography construction are both developed in campus of Chang-Jung University and in Guerin district area in Tainan, Taiwan, provide authentication model for construction of 3D topography based on combined UAV-based camera images from system. The results demonstrated that the UAV system for low altitude aerial photogrammetry can be used in the construction of 3D topography production, and the technology solution in this paper offers a new, fast, and technical plan for the 3D expression of the city landscape, fine modeling and visualization.

Keywords: 3D, topography, UAV, images.

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Authors: Elina Bakhtieva

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The variety of available digital tools, strategies and activities might confuse and disorient even an experienced marketer. This applies in particular to B2B companies, which are usually less flexible in uptaking of digital technology than B2C companies. B2B companies are lacking a framework that corresponds to the specifics of the B2B business, and which helps to evaluate a company’s capabilities and to choose an appropriate path. A B2B digital marketing maturity model helps to fill this gap. However, modern marketing offers no widely approved digital marketing maturity model, and thus, some marketing institutions provide their own tools. The purpose of this paper is building an optimized B2B digital marketing maturity model based on a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of existing models. The current study provides an analytical review of the existing digital marketing maturity models with open access. The results of the research are twofold. First, the provided SWOT analysis outlines the main advantages and disadvantages of existing models. Secondly, the strengths of existing digital marketing maturity models, helps to identify the main characteristics and the structure of an optimized B2B digital marketing maturity model. The research findings indicate that only one out of three analyzed models could be used as a separate tool. This study is among the first examining the use of maturity models in digital marketing. It helps businesses to choose between the existing digital marketing models, the most effective one. Moreover, it creates a base for future research on digital marketing maturity models. This study contributes to the emerging B2B digital marketing literature by providing a SWOT analysis of the existing digital marketing maturity models and suggesting a structure and main characteristics of an optimized B2B digital marketing maturity model.

Keywords: B2B digital marketing strategy, digital marketing, digital marketing maturity model, SWOT analysis.

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Authors: H. A. Lopez-Aguilar, E. A. Huerta-Reynoso, J. A. Gomez, J. A. Duarte-Moller, A. Perez-Hernandez

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Environmental performance of artisanal brick manufacture was studied by Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis in Mexico. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the environmental impact during artisanal brick manufacture. LCA cradle-to-gate approach was complemented with CFD analysis to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The lifecycle includes the stages of extraction, baking and transportation to the gate. The functional unit of this study was the production of a single brick in Chihuahua, Mexico and the impact categories studied were carcinogens, respiratory organics and inorganics, climate change radiation, ozone layer depletion, ecotoxicity, acidification/ eutrophication, land use, mineral use and fossil fuels. Laboratory techniques for fuel characterization, gas measurements in situ, and AP42 emission factors were employed in order to calculate gas emissions for inventory data. The results revealed that the categories with greater impacts are ecotoxicity and carcinogens. The CFD analysis is helpful in predicting the thermal diffusion and contaminants from a defined source. LCA-CFD synergy complemented the EIA and allowed us to identify the problem of thermal efficiency within the system.

Keywords: LCA, CFD, brick, artisanal.

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Authors: Somnath Dey, Debasis Samanta

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Iris-based biometric authentication is gaining importance in recent times. Iris biometric processing however, is a complex process and computationally very expensive. In the overall processing of iris biometric in an iris-based biometric authentication system, feature processing is an important task. In feature processing, we extract iris features, which are ultimately used in matching. Since there is a large number of iris features and computational time increases as the number of features increases, it is therefore a challenge to develop an iris processing system with as few as possible number of features and at the same time without compromising the correctness. In this paper, we address this issue and present an approach to feature extraction and feature matching process. We apply Daubechies D4 wavelet with 4 levels to extract features from iris images. These features are encoded with 2 bits by quantizing into 4 quantization levels. With our proposed approach it is possible to represent an iris template with only 304 bits, whereas existing approaches require as many as 1024 bits. In addition, we assign different weights to different iris region to compare two iris templates which significantly increases the accuracy. Further, we match the iris template based on a weighted similarity measure. Experimental results on several iris databases substantiate the efficacy of our approach.

Keywords: Iris recognition, biometric, feature processing, patternrecognition, pattern matching.

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Authors: Marinelle El-Khoury, Lina Bouhaya, Nivine Abbas, Hassan Sleiman

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The road network in the north of Lebanon is a prime example of the lack of pavement design and execution in Lebanon.  These roads show major distresses and hence, should be tested and evaluated. The aim of this research is to investigate and determine the deficiencies in road surface design in Lebanon, and to propose an environmentally friendly asphalt mix design. This paper consists of several parts: (i) evaluating pavement performance and structural behavior, (ii) identifying the distresses using visual examination followed by laboratory tests, (iii) deciding the optimal solution where rehabilitation or reconstruction is required and finally, (iv) identifying a sustainable method, which uses recycled material in the proposed mix. The asphalt formula contains Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in the base course layer and in the asphalt layer. Visual inspection of the roads in Tripoli shows that these roads face a high level of distress severity. Consequently, the pavement should be reconstructed rather than simply rehabilitated. Coring was done to determine the pavement layer thickness. The results were compared to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) design methodology and showed that the existing asphalt thickness is lower than the required asphalt thickness. Prior to the pavement reconstruction, the road materials were tested according to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) specification to identify whether the materials are suitable. Accordingly, the ASTM tests that were performed on the base course are Sieve analysis, Atterberg limits, modified proctor, Los Angeles, and California Bearing Ratio (CBR) tests. Results show a CBR value higher than 70%. Hence, these aggregates could be used as a base course layer. The asphalt layer was also tested and the results of the Marshall flow and stability tests meet the ASTM specifications. In the last section, an environmentally friendly mix was proposed. An optimal RAP percentage of 30%, which produced a well graded base course and asphalt mix, was determined through a series of trials.

Keywords: Asphalt mix, reclaimed asphalt pavement, California bearing ratio, sustainability.

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Authors: Billel Kenidra, Mohamed Benmohammed

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Data mining technique used in the field of clustering is a subject of active research and assists in biological pattern recognition and extraction of new knowledge from raw data. Clustering means the act of partitioning an unlabeled dataset into groups of similar objects. Each group, called a cluster, consists of objects that are similar between themselves and dissimilar to objects of other groups. Several clustering methods are based on partitional clustering. This category attempts to directly decompose the dataset into a set of disjoint clusters leading to an integer number of clusters that optimizes a given criterion function. The criterion function may emphasize a local or a global structure of the data, and its optimization is an iterative relocation procedure. The K-Means algorithm is one of the most widely used partitional clustering techniques. Since K-Means is extremely sensitive to the initial choice of centers and a poor choice of centers may lead to a local optimum that is quite inferior to the global optimum, we propose a strategy to initiate K-Means centers. The improved K-Means algorithm is compared with the original K-Means, and the results prove how the efficiency has been significantly improved.

Keywords: Microarray data mining, biological pattern recognition, partitional clustering, k-means algorithm, centroid initialization.

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Authors: Vinay Agrawal, Suyash Garg, Ravindra Nagar, Vinay Chandwani

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Open ground storey with floating columns is a typical feature in the modern multistory constructions in urban India. Such features are very much undesirable in buildings built in seismically active areas. The present study proposes a feasible solution to mitigate the effects caused due to non-uniformity of stiffness and discontinuity in load path and to simultaneously hold the functional use of the open storey particularly under the floating column, through a combination of various lateral strengthening systems. An investigation is performed on an example building with nine different analytical models to bring out the importance of recognising the presence of open ground storey and floating columns. Two separate analyses on various models of the building namely, the equivalent static analysis and the response spectrum analysis as per IS: 1893-2002 were performed. Various measures such as incorporation of Chevron bracings and shear walls, strengthening the columns in the open ground storey, and their different combinations were examined. The analysis shows that, in comparison to two short ones separated by interconnecting beams, the structural walls are most effective when placed at the periphery of the buildings and used as one long structural wall. Further, it can be shown that the force transfer from floating columns becomes less horizontal when the Chevron Bracings are placed just below them, thereby reducing the shear forces in the beams on which the floating column rests.

Keywords: Equivalent static analysis, floating column, open ground storey, response spectrum analysis, shear wall, stiffness irregularity.

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Authors: Ioannis I. Αngeli

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Worldwide and mainly in the European Union, many standards, regulations, models and systems exists for the evaluation and identification of stakeholders’ requirements of individual universities and higher education (HE) in general. All systems are targeting to measure or evaluate the Universities’ Quality Assurance Systems and the services offered to the recipients of HE, mainly the students. Numerous surveys were conducted in the past either by each university or by organized bodies to identify the students’ satisfaction or to evaluate to what extent these requirements are fulfilled. In this paper, the main results of an ongoing 6-year joint research will be presented very briefly. This research deals with an in depth investigation of student’s satisfaction, students personal requirements, a cup analysis among these two parameters and compares different universities. Through this research an attempt will be made to address four very important questions in higher education establishments (HEE): (1) Are there any common requirements, parameters, good practices or questions that apply to a large number of universities that will assure that students’ requirements are fulfilled? (2) Up to what extent the individual programs of HEE fulfil the requirements of the stakeholders? (3) Are there any similarities on specific programs among European HEE? (4) To what extent the knowledge acquired in a specific course program is utilized or used in a specific country? For the execution of the research an internationally accepted questionnaire(s) was used to evaluate up to what extent the students’ requirements and satisfaction were fulfilled in 2012 and five years later (2017). Samples of students and or universities were taken from many European Universities. The questionnaires used, the sampling method and methodology adopted, as well as the comparison tables and results will be very valuable to any university that is willing to follow the same route and methodology or compare the results with their own HHE. Apart from the unique methodology, valuable results are demonstrated from the four case studies. There is a great difference between the student’s expectations or importance from what they are getting from their universities (in all parameters they are getting less). When there is a crisis or budget cut in HEE there is a direct impact to students. There are many differences on subjects taught in European universities.

Keywords: Quality in higher education, students’ requirements, education standards, student’s survey, stakeholder’s requirements, Mechanical Engineering courses.

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Authors: Deepti Tamrakar, Pritee Khanna

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This manuscript presents, palmprint recognition by combining different texture extraction approaches with high accuracy. The Region of Interest (ROI) is decomposed into different frequencytime sub-bands by wavelet transform up-to two levels and only the approximate image of two levels is selected, which is known as Approximate Image ROI (AIROI). This AIROI has information of principal lines of the palm. The Competitive Index is used as the features of the palmprint, in which six Gabor filters of different orientations convolve with the palmprint image to extract the orientation information from the image. The winner-take-all strategy is used to select dominant orientation for each pixel, which is known as Competitive Index. Further, PCA is applied to select highly uncorrelated Competitive Index features, to reduce the dimensions of the feature vector, and to project the features on Eigen space. The similarity of two palmprints is measured by the Euclidean distance metrics. The algorithm is tested on Hong Kong PolyU palmprint database. Different AIROI of different wavelet filter families are also tested with the Competitive Index and PCA. AIROI of db7 wavelet filter achievs Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.0152% and Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR) of 99.67% on the palm database of Hong Kong PolyU.

Keywords: DWT, EER, Euclidean Distance, Gabor filter, PCA, ROI.

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Authors: Marios Poulos, George Bokos

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This paper makes an attempt to solve the problem of searching and retrieving of similar MRI photos via Internet services using morphological features which are sourced via the original image. This study is aiming to be considered as an additional tool of searching and retrieve methods. Until now the main way of the searching mechanism is based on the syntactic way using keywords. The technique it proposes aims to serve the new requirements of libraries. One of these is the development of computational tools for the control and preservation of the intellectual property of digital objects, and especially of digital images. For this purpose, this paper proposes the use of a serial number extracted by using a previously tested semantic properties method. This method, with its center being the multi-layers of a set of arithmetic points, assures the following two properties: the uniqueness of the final extracted number and the semantic dependence of this number on the image used as the method-s input. The major advantage of this method is that it can control the authentication of a published image or its partial modification to a reliable degree. Also, it acquires the better of the known Hash functions that the digital signature schemes use and produces alphanumeric strings for cases of authentication checking, and the degree of similarity between an unknown image and an original image.

Keywords: Computational Geometry, MRI photos, Image processing, pattern Recognition.

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Authors: Consalva J. Msigwa, Beda J. Kundy, Bakari M. M. Mwinyiwiwa

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In this paper the reference current for Voltage Source Converter (VSC) of the Shunt Active Power Filter (SAPF) is generated using Synchronous Reference Frame method, incorporating the PI controller with anti-windup scheme. The proposed method improves the harmonic filtering by compensating the winding up phenomenon caused by the integral term of the PI controller. Using Reference Frame Transformation, the current is transformed from om a - b - c stationery frame to rotating 0 - d - q frame. Using the PI controller, the current in the 0 - d - q frame is controlled to get the desired reference signal. A controller with integral action combined with an actuator that becomes saturated can give some undesirable effects. If the control error is so large that the integrator saturates the actuator, the feedback path becomes ineffective because the actuator will remain saturated even if the process output changes. The integrator being an unstable system may then integrate to a very large value, the phenomenon known as integrator windup. Implementing the integrator anti-windup circuit turns off the integrator action when the actuator saturates, hence improving the performance of the SAPF and dynamically compensating harmonics in the power network. In this paper the system performance is examined with Shunt Active Power Filter simulation model.

Keywords: Phase Locked Loop (PLL), Voltage SourceConverter (VSC), Shunt Active Power Filter (SAPF), PI, Pulse WidthModulation (PWM).

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Authors: Sandipan Chakroborty, Goutam Saha

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A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for speech related applications. On a recent contribution by authors, it has been shown that the Inverted Mel- Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (IMFCC) is useful feature set for SI, which contains complementary information present in high frequency region. This paper introduces the Gaussian shaped filter (GF) while calculating MFCC and IMFCC in place of typical triangular shaped bins. The objective is to introduce a higher amount of correlation between subband outputs. The performances of both MFCC & IMFCC improve with GF over conventional triangular filter (TF) based implementation, individually as well as in combination. With GMM as speaker modeling paradigm, the performances of proposed GF based MFCC and IMFCC in individual and fused mode have been verified in two standard databases YOHO, (Microphone Speech) and POLYCOST (Telephone Speech) each of which has more than 130 speakers.

Keywords: Gaussian Filter, Triangular Filter, Subbands, Correlation, MFCC, IMFCC, GMM.

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Authors: K. Amudha, C. Nelson Kennedy Babu, S. Balu

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The security of the medical images and its related data is the major research area which is to be concentrated in today’s era. Security in the medical image indicates that the physician may hide patients’ related data in the medical image and transfer it safely to a defined location using reversible watermarking. Many reversible watermarking methods had proposed over the decade. This paper enhances the security level in brain tumor images to hide the patient’s detail, which has to be conferred with other physician’s suggestions. The details or the information will be hidden in Non-ROI area of the image by using the block cipher algorithm. The block cipher uses different keys to extract the details that are difficult for the intruder to detect all the keys and to spot the details, which are the key advantage of this method. The ROI is the tumor area and Non-ROI is the area rest of ROI. The Non-ROI should not be spoiled in any cause and the details in the Non-ROI should be extracted correctly. The reversible watermarking method proposed in this paper performs well when compared to existing methods in the process of extraction of an original image and providing information security.

Keywords: Brain tumor images, Block Cipher, Reversible watermarking, ROI.

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Authors: Elijah Acquah-Andoh

Abstract:

The UK has had its fair share of the shale gas revolutionary waves blowing across the global oil and gas industry at present. Although, its exploitation is widely agreed to have been delayed, shale gas was looked upon favorably by the UK Parliament when they recognized it as genuine energy source and granted licenses to industry to search and extract the resource. This, although a significant progress by industry, there yet remains another test the UK fracking resource must pass in order to render shale gas extraction feasible – it must be economically extractible and sustainably so. Developing unconventional resources is much more expensive and risky, and for shale gas wells, producing in commercial volumes is conditional upon drilling horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing, techniques which increase CAPEX. Meanwhile, investment in shale gas development projects is sensitive to gas price and technical and geological risks. Using a Two-Factor Model, the economics of the Bowland shale wells were analyzed and the operational conditions under which fracking is profitable in the UK was characterized. We find that there is a great degree of flexibility about Opex spending; hence Opex does not pose much threat to the fracking industry in the UK. However, we discover Bowland shale gas wells fail to add value at gas price of $8/ Mmbtu. A minimum gas price of $12/Mmbtu at Opex of no more than $2/ Mcf and no more than $14.95M Capex are required to create value within the present petroleum tax regime, in the UK fracking industry.

Keywords: Capex, economical, investment, profitability, shale gas development, sustainable.

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Authors: Padmanabhan Balasubramanian, C. Ardil

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In this paper, we consider the problem of logic simplification for a special class of logic functions, namely complementary Boolean functions (CBF), targeting low power implementation using static CMOS logic style. The functions are uniquely characterized by the presence of terms, where for a canonical binary 2-tuple, D(mj) ∪ D(mk) = { } and therefore, we have | D(mj) ∪ D(mk) | = 0 [19]. Similarly, D(Mj) ∪ D(Mk) = { } and hence | D(Mj) ∪ D(Mk) | = 0. Here, 'mk' and 'Mk' represent a minterm and maxterm respectively. We compare the circuits minimized with our proposed method with those corresponding to factored Reed-Muller (f-RM) form, factored Pseudo Kronecker Reed-Muller (f-PKRM) form, and factored Generalized Reed-Muller (f-GRM) form. We have opted for algebraic factorization of the Reed-Muller (RM) form and its different variants, using the factorization rules of [1], as it is simple and requires much less CPU execution time compared to Boolean factorization operations. This technique has enabled us to greatly reduce the literal count as well as the gate count needed for such RM realizations, which are generally prone to consuming more cells and subsequently more power consumption. However, this leads to a drawback in terms of the design-for-test attribute associated with the various RM forms. Though we still preserve the definition of those forms viz. realizing such functionality with only select types of logic gates (AND gate and XOR gate), the structural integrity of the logic levels is not preserved. This would consequently alter the testability properties of such circuits i.e. it may increase/decrease/maintain the same number of test input vectors needed for their exhaustive testability, subsequently affecting their generalized test vector computation. We do not consider the issue of design-for-testability here, but, instead focus on the power consumption of the final logic implementation, after realization with a conventional CMOS process technology (0.35 micron TSMC process). The quality of the resulting circuits evaluated on the basis of an established cost metric viz., power consumption, demonstrate average savings by 26.79% for the samples considered in this work, besides reduction in number of gates and input literals by 39.66% and 12.98% respectively, in comparison with other factored RM forms.

Keywords: Reed-Muller forms, Logic function, Hammingdistance, Algebraic factorization, Low power design.

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Authors: Xiang Yu, Chuntao Feng, Lu Yang, Meiyang Song, Wenhao Zhou

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The existing two-dimensional micro-Doppler features extraction ignores the correlation information between the spatial and temporal dimension features. For the range-Doppler map, the time dimension is introduced, and a frequency modulation continuous wave (FMCW) radar human fall detection algorithm based on time-varying range-Doppler features is proposed. Firstly, the range-Doppler sequence maps are generated from the echo signals of the continuous motion of the human body collected by the radar. Then the three-dimensional data cube composed of multiple frames of range-Doppler maps is input into the three-dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (3D CNN). The spatial and temporal features of time-varying range-Doppler are extracted by the convolution layer and pool layer at the same time. Finally, the extracted spatial and temporal features are input into the fully connected layer for classification. The experimental results show that the proposed fall detection algorithm has a detection accuracy of 95.66%.

Keywords: FMCW radar, fall detection, 3D CNN, time-varying range-Doppler features.

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Authors: Mpho A. Mbeo, Patient Rambe

Abstract:

The 13th year of the Central University of Technology, Free State’s (CUT) transition from a vocational and professional training orientation institution (i.e. a technikon) into a university with a strong research focus has neither been a smooth nor an easy one. At the heart of this transition was the need to transform the psychological faculties of academic and research staffs compliment who were accustomed to training graduates for industrial placement. The lack of a research culture that fully embraces the strong solid ethos of conducting cutting-edge research needs to be addressed. The induction and socialisation of academic staff into the development and execution of cutting-edge research also required the provision of research support and the creation of a conducive academic environment for research, both for emerging and non-research active academics. Drawing on ten cases, consisting of four heads of departments, three seasoned researchers, and three novice researchers, this study explores the challenges faced in establishing a strong research culture at the university. Furthermore, it gives an account of the extent to which the current research interventions have addressed the perceivably “missing research culture”, and the implications of these interventions for knowledge management. Evidence suggests that the capability of an ideal institutional research environment, consisting of mentorship of novice researchers by seasoned researchers, balanced effort into teaching and research responsibilities, should be supported by strong research-oriented leadership. Furthermore, recruitment of research passionate staff, adoption of a salary structure that encourages the retention of excellent scholars should be matched by a coherent research incentive culture to growth research publication outputs. This is critical for building new knowledge and entrenching knowledge management founded on communities of practice and scholarly networking through the documentation and communication of research findings. The study concludes that the multiple policy documents set for the different domains of research may be creating pressure on researchers to engage research activities and increase output at the expense of research quality.

Keywords: Central University of Technology, performance, publication, research culture, university.

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Authors: Z. Didar, A. Pourfarzad, M. H. Haddad Khodaparast

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Nowadays, consumption of whole flours and flours with high extraction rate is recommended, because of their high amount of fibers, vitamins and minerals. Despite nutritional benefits of whole flour, concentration of some undesirable components such as phytic acid is higher than white flour. In this study, effect of several lactic acid bacteria sourdough on Toast bread is investigated. Sourdough from lactic acid bacteria (Lb. plantarum, Lb. reuteri) with different dough yield (250 and 300) is made and incubated at 30°C for 20 hour, then added to dough in the ratio of 10, 20 and 30% replacement. Breads that supplemented with Lb. plantarum sourdough had lower phytic acid. Higher replacement of sourdough and higher DY cause higher decrease in phytic acid content. Sourdough from Lb. plantarum, DY = 300 and 30% replacement cause the highest decrease in phytic acid content (49.63 mg/100g). As indicated by panelists, Lb. reuteri sourdough can present the greatest effect on overall quality score of the breads. DY reduction cause a decrease in bread quality score. Sensory score of Toast bread is 81.71 in the samples that treated with Lb. reuteri sourdough with DY = 250 and 20% replacement.

Keywords: Phytic Acid, Sourdough, Toast Bread, Whole Wheat Flour, Lactic Acid Bacteria.

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Authors: Hesam Sedaghat Nejad, Navid Hosseini, Arash Nikvar Hassani

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Determination of the optimum block size with high profitability is one of the significant parameters in designation of the building stone mines. The aim of this study was to determine the optimum dimensions of building stone blocks in Delichai travertine mine of Damavand in Tehran province through combining the effective parameters proven in determination of the optimum dimensions in building stones such as the spacing of joints and gaps, extraction tools constraints with the help of modeling by Gemcom software. To this end, following simulation of the topography of the mine, the block model was prepared and then in order to use spacing joints and discontinuities as a limiting factor, the existing joints set was added to the model. Since only one almost horizontal joint set with a slope of 5 degrees was available, this factor was effective only in determining the optimum height of the block, and thus to determine the longitudinal and transverse optimum dimensions of the extracted block, the power of available loader in the mine was considered as the secondary limiting factor. According to the aforementioned factors, the optimal block size in this mine was measured as 3.4×4×7 meter.

Keywords: Building stone, optimum block size, Delichai Travertine Mine, loader power.

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Authors: C. Yaiprasert, K. Jaroensutasinee, M. Jaroensutasinee

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To develop a process of extracting pixel values over the using of satellite remote sensing image data in Thailand. It is a very important and effective method of forecasting rainfall. This paper presents an approach for forecasting a possible rainfall area based on pixel values from remote sensing satellite images. First, a method uses an automatic extraction process of the pixel value data from the satellite image sequence. Then, a data process is designed to enable the inference of correlations between pixel value and possible rainfall occurrences. The result, when we have a high averaged pixel value of daily water vapor data, we will also have a high amount of daily rainfall. This suggests that the amount of averaged pixel values can be used as an indicator of raining events. There are some positive associations between pixel values of daily water vapor images and the amount of daily rainfall at each rain-gauge station throughout Thailand. The proposed approach was proven to be a helpful manual for rainfall forecasting from meteorologists by which using automated analyzing and interpreting process of meteorological remote sensing data.

Keywords: Pixel values, satellite image, water vapor, rainfall, image processing.

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Authors: Ahmet Taşan, Süha Tirkeş, Yavuz Öztürk, Zafer Bingül

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Friction stir welding (FSW) is a joining process in the solid state, which eliminates problems associated with the material melting and solidification, such as cracks, residual stresses and distortions generated during conventional welding. Among the most important advantages of FSW are; easy automation, less distortion, lower residual stress and good mechanical properties in the joining region. FSW is a recent approach to metal joining and although originally intended for aluminum alloys, it is investigated in a variety of metallic materials. The basic concept of FSW is a rotating tool, made of non-consumable material, specially designed with a geometry consisting of a pin and a recess (shoulder). This tool is inserted as spinning on its axis at the adjoining edges of two sheets or plates to be joined and then it travels along the joining path line. The tool rotation axis defines an angle of inclination with which the components to be welded. This angle is used for receiving the material to be processed at the tool base and to promote the gradual forge effect imposed by the shoulder during the passage of the tool. This prevents the material plastic flow at the tool lateral, ensuring weld closure on the back of the pin. In this study, two 4 mm Kevlar^® plates which were produced with the Kevlar^® fabrics, are analyzed with COMSOL Multiphysics in order to investigate the weldability via FSW. Thereafter, some experimental investigation is done with an appropriate workbench in order to compare them with the analysis results.

Keywords: Analytical modeling, composite materials welding, friction stir welding, heat generation.

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Authors: Hui-Yu Huang, Shih-Hang Hsu

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In this paper, we propose a robust scheme to work face alignment and recognition under various influences. For face representation, illumination influence and variable expressions are the important factors, especially the accuracy of facial localization and face recognition. In order to solve those of factors, we propose a robust approach to overcome these problems. This approach consists of two phases. One phase is preprocessed for face images by means of the proposed illumination normalization method. The location of facial features can fit more efficient and fast based on the proposed image blending. On the other hand, based on template matching, we further improve the active shape models (called as IASM) to locate the face shape more precise which can gain the recognized rate in the next phase. The other phase is to process feature extraction by using principal component analysis and face recognition by using support vector machine classifiers. The results show that this proposed method can obtain good facial localization and face recognition with varied illumination and local distortion.

Keywords: Gabor filter, improved active shape model (IASM), principal component analysis (PCA), face alignment, face recognition, support vector machine (SVM)

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Authors: Zuraidasahana Zulkarnain, Mohd Shafry Mohd Rahim, Nor Anita Fairos Ismail, Mohd Azhar M. Arsad

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Handwritten signature is accepted widely as a biometric characteristic for personal authentication. The use of appropriate features plays an important role in determining accuracy of signature verification; therefore, this paper presents a feature based on the geometrical concept. To achieve the aim, triangle attributes are exploited to design a new feature since the triangle possesses orientation, angle and transformation that would improve accuracy. The proposed feature uses triangulation geometric set comprising of sides, angles and perimeter of a triangle which is derived from the center of gravity of a signature image. For classification purpose, Euclidean classifier along with Voting-based classifier is used to verify the tendency of forgery signature. This classification process is experimented using triangular geometric feature and selected global features. Based on an experiment that was validated using Grupo de Senales 960 (GPDS-960) signature database, the proposed triangular geometric feature achieves a lower Average Error Rates (AER) value with a percentage of 34% as compared to 43% of the selected global feature. As a conclusion, the proposed triangular geometric feature proves to be a more reliable feature for accurate signature verification.

Keywords: biometrics, euclidean classifier, feature extraction, offline signature verification, VOTING-based classifier

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Authors: Kjersti Engan, Thor Ole Gulsrud, Karl Fredrik Fretheim, Barbro Furebotten Iversen, Liv Eriksen

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Clusters of microcalcifications in mammograms are an important sign of breast cancer. This paper presents a complete Computer Aided Detection (CAD) scheme for automatic detection of clustered microcalcifications in digital mammograms. The proposed system, MammoScan μCaD, consists of three main steps. Firstly all potential microcalcifications are detected using a a method for feature extraction, VarMet, and adaptive thresholding. This will also give a number of false detections. The goal of the second step, Classifier level 1, is to remove everything but microcalcifications. The last step, Classifier level 2, uses learned dictionaries and sparse representations as a texture classification technique to distinguish single, benign microcalcifications from clustered microcalcifications, in addition to remove some remaining false detections. The system is trained and tested on true digital data from Stavanger University Hospital, and the results are evaluated by radiologists. The overall results are promising, with a sensitivity > 90 % and a low false detection rate (approx 1 unwanted pr. image, or 0.3 false pr. image).

Keywords: mammogram, microcalcifications, detection, CAD, MammoScan μCaD, VarMet, dictionary learning, texture, FTCM, classification, adaptive thresholding

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Authors: Carolina Gouveia, José Vieira, Pedro Pinho

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The cardiopulmonary signal monitoring, without the usage of contact electrodes or any type of in-body sensors, has several applications such as sleeping monitoring and continuous monitoring of vital signals in bedridden patients. This system has also applications in the vehicular environment to monitor the driver, in order to avoid any possible accident in case of cardiac failure. Thus, the bio-radar system proposed in this paper, can measure vital signals accurately by using the Doppler effect principle that relates the received signal properties with the distance change between the radar antennas and the person’s chest-wall. Once the bio-radar aim is to monitor subjects in real-time and during long periods of time, it is impossible to guarantee the patient immobilization, hence their random motion will interfere in the acquired signals. In this paper, a mathematical model of the bio-radar is presented, as well as its simulation in MATLAB. The used algorithm for breath rate extraction is explained and a method for DC offsets removal based in a motion detection system is proposed. Furthermore, experimental tests were conducted with a view to prove that the unavoidable random motion can be used to estimate the DC offsets accurately and thus remove them successfully.

Keywords: Bio-signals, DC Component, Doppler Effect, ellipse fitting, radar, SDR.

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

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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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Authors: Muammer Kaya

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The main purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive review of various physical and chemical processes for electronic waste (e-waste) recycling, their advantages and shortfalls towards achieving a cleaner process of waste utilization, with especial attention towards extraction of metallic values. Current status and future perspectives of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) recycling are described. E-waste characterization, dismantling/ disassembly methods, liberation and classification processes, composition determination techniques are covered. Manual selective dismantling and metal-nonmetal liberation at – 150 µm at two step crushing are found to be the best. After size reduction, mainly physical separation/concentration processes employing gravity, electrostatic, magnetic separators, froth floatation etc., which are commonly used in mineral processing, have been critically reviewed here for separation of metals and non-metals, along with useful utilizations of the non-metallic materials. The recovery of metals from e-waste material after physical separation through pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical or biohydrometallurgical routes is also discussed along with purification and refining and some suitable flowsheets are also given. It seems that hydrometallurgical route will be a key player in the base and precious metals recoveries from e-waste. E-waste recycling will be a very important sector in the near future from economic and environmental perspectives.

Keywords: E-waste, WEEE, PCB, recycling, metal recovery, hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy, biohydrometallurgy.

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Authors: R.N.Pise, S.A.Kulkarni, R.V.Pawar

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MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) is an emerging technology that aims to address many of the existing issues associated with packet forwarding in today-s Internetworking environment. It provides a method of forwarding packets at a high rate of speed by combining the speed and performance of Layer 2 with the scalability and IP intelligence of Layer 3. In a traditional IP (Internet Protocol) routing network, a router analyzes the destination IP address contained in the packet header. The router independently determines the next hop for the packet using the destination IP address and the interior gateway protocol. This process is repeated at each hop to deliver the packet to its final destination. In contrast, in the MPLS forwarding paradigm routers on the edge of the network (label edge routers) attach labels to packets based on the forwarding Equivalence class (FEC). Packets are then forwarded through the MPLS domain, based on their associated FECs , through swapping the labels by routers in the core of the network called label switch routers. The act of simply swapping the label instead of referencing the IP header of the packet in the routing table at each hop provides a more efficient manner of forwarding packets, which in turn allows the opportunity for traffic to be forwarded at tremendous speeds and to have granular control over the path taken by a packet. This paper deals with the process of MPLS forwarding mechanism, implementation of MPLS datapath , and test results showing the performance comparison of MPLS and IP routing. The discussion will focus primarily on MPLS IP packet networks – by far the most common application of MPLS today.

Keywords: Forwarding equivalence class, incoming label map, label, next hop label forwarding entry.

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Authors: M. Jayekumar, V. Nagarajan

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Wireless sensor network finds role in environmental monitoring, industrial applications, surveillance applications, health monitoring and other supervisory applications. Sensing devices form the basic operational unit of the network that is self-battery powered with limited life time. Sensor node spends its limited energy for transmission, reception, routing and sensing information. Frequent energy utilization for the above mentioned process leads to network lifetime degradation. To enhance energy efficiency and network lifetime, we propose a modified energy optimization and node recovery post failure method, Energy-Link Failure Recovery Routing (E-LFRR) algorithm. In our E-LFRR algorithm, two phases namely, Monitored Transmission phase and Replaced Transmission phase are devised to combat worst case link failure conditions. In Monitored Transmission phase, the Actuator Node monitors and identifies suitable nodes for shortest path transmission. The Replaced Transmission phase dispatches the energy draining node at early stage from the active link and replaces it with the new node that has sufficient energy. Simulation results illustrate that this combined methodology reduces overhead, energy consumption, delay and maintains considerable amount of alive nodes thereby enhancing the network performance.

Keywords: Actuator node, energy efficient routing, energy hole, link failure recovery, link utilization, wireless sensor network.

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