Voltage-Controllable Liquid Crystals Lens

This study investigates a voltage-controllable liquid crystals lens with a Fresnel zone electrode. When applying a proper voltage on the liquid crystal cell, a Fresnel-zone-distributed electric field is induced to direct liquid crystals aligned in a concentric structure. Owing to the concentrically aligned liquid crystals, a Fresnel lens is formed. We probe the Fresnel liquid crystal lens using a polarized incident beam with a wavelength of 632.8 nm, finding that the diffraction efficiency depends on the applying voltage. A remarkable diffraction efficiency of ~39.5 % is measured at the voltage of 0.9V. Additionally, a dual focus lens is fabricated by attaching a plane-convex lens to the Fresnel liquid crystals cell. The Fresnel LC lens and the dual focus lens may be applied for DVD/CD pick-up head, confocal microscopy system, or electrically-controlling optical systems.

Simulating Action Potential as a Linear Combination of Gating Dynamics

In this research we show that the dynamics of an action potential in a cell can be modeled with a linear combination of the dynamics of the gating state variables. It is shown that the modeling error is negligible. Our findings can be used for simplifying cell models and reduction of computational burden i.e. it is useful for simulating action potential propagation in large scale computations like tissue modeling. We have verified our finding with the use of several cell models.

An Improved Algorithm of SPIHT based on the Human Visual Characteristics

Because of excellent properties, people has paid more attention to SPIHI algorithm, which is based on the traditional wavelet transformation theory, but it also has its shortcomings. Combined the progress in the present wavelet domain and the human's visual characteristics, we propose an improved algorithm based on human visual characteristics of SPIHT in the base of analysis of SPIHI algorithm. The experiment indicated that the coding speed and quality has been enhanced well compared to the original SPIHT algorithm, moreover improved the quality of the transmission cut off.

TOSOM: A Topic-Oriented Self-Organizing Map for Text Organization

The self-organizing map (SOM) model is a well-known neural network model with wide spread of applications. The main characteristics of SOM are two-fold, namely dimension reduction and topology preservation. Using SOM, a high-dimensional data space will be mapped to some low-dimensional space. Meanwhile, the topological relations among data will be preserved. With such characteristics, the SOM was usually applied on data clustering and visualization tasks. However, the SOM has main disadvantage of the need to know the number and structure of neurons prior to training, which are difficult to be determined. Several schemes have been proposed to tackle such deficiency. Examples are growing/expandable SOM, hierarchical SOM, and growing hierarchical SOM. These schemes could dynamically expand the map, even generate hierarchical maps, during training. Encouraging results were reported. Basically, these schemes adapt the size and structure of the map according to the distribution of training data. That is, they are data-driven or dataoriented SOM schemes. In this work, a topic-oriented SOM scheme which is suitable for document clustering and organization will be developed. The proposed SOM will automatically adapt the number as well as the structure of the map according to identified topics. Unlike other data-oriented SOMs, our approach expands the map and generates the hierarchies both according to the topics and their characteristics of the neurons. The preliminary experiments give promising result and demonstrate the plausibility of the method.

Human Detection using Projected Edge Feature

The purpose of this paper is to detect human in images. This paper proposes a method for extracting human body feature descriptors consisting of projected edge component series. The feature descriptor can express appearances and shapes of human with local and global distribution of edges. Our method evaluated with a linear SVM classifier on Daimler-Chrysler pedestrian dataset, and test with various sub-region size. The result shows that the accuracy level of proposed method similar to Histogram of Oriented Gradients(HOG) feature descriptor and feature extraction process is simple and faster than existing methods.

Modeling and Control of a Quadrotor UAV with Aerodynamic Concepts

This paper presents preliminary results on modeling and control of a quadrotor UAV. With aerodynamic concepts, a mathematical model is firstly proposed to describe the dynamics of the quadrotor UAV. Parameters of this model are identified by experiments with Matlab Identify Toolbox. A group of PID controllers are then designed based on the developed model. To verify the developed model and controllers, simulations and experiments for altitude control, position control and trajectory tracking are carried out. The results show that the quadrotor UAV well follows the referenced commands, which clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

WebGD: A CORBA-based Document Classification and Retrieval System on the Web

This paper presents the design and implementation of the WebGD, a CORBA-based document classification and retrieval system on Internet. The WebGD makes use of such techniques as Web, CORBA, Java, NLP, fuzzy technique, knowledge-based processing and database technology. Unified classification and retrieval model, classifying and retrieving with one reasoning engine and flexible working mode configuration are some of its main features. The architecture of WebGD, the unified classification and retrieval model, the components of the WebGD server and the fuzzy inference engine are discussed in this paper in detail.

Health Risk Assessment in Lead Battery Smelter Factory: A Bayesian Belief Network Method

This paper proposes the use of Bayesian belief networks (BBN) as a higher level of health risk assessment for a dumping site of lead battery smelter factory. On the basis of the epidemiological studies, the actual hospital attendance records and expert experiences, the BBN is capable of capturing the probabilistic relationships between the hazardous substances and their adverse health effects, and accordingly inferring the morbidity of the adverse health effects. The provision of the morbidity rates of the related diseases is more informative and can alleviate the drawbacks of conventional methods.

Heat Exchanger Design

This paper is intended to assist anyone with some general technical experience, but perhaps limited specific knowledge of heat transfer equipment. A characteristic of heat exchanger design is the procedure of specifying a design, heat transfer area and pressure drops and checking whether the assumed design satisfies all requirements or not. The purpose of this paper is how to design the oil cooler (heat exchanger) especially for shell-and-tube heat exchanger which is the majority type of liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger. General design considerations and design procedure are also illustrated in this paper and a flow diagram is provided as an aid of design procedure. In design calculation, the MatLAB and AutoCAD software are used. Fundamental heat transfer concepts and complex relationships involved in such exchanger are also presented in this paper. The primary aim of this design is to obtain a high heat transfer rate without exceeding the allowable pressure drop. This computer program is highly useful to design the shell-and-tube type heat exchanger and to modify existing deign.

Towards Growing Self-Organizing Neural Networks with Fixed Dimensionality

The competitive learning is an adaptive process in which the neurons in a neural network gradually become sensitive to different input pattern clusters. The basic idea behind the Kohonen-s Self-Organizing Feature Maps (SOFM) is competitive learning. SOFM can generate mappings from high-dimensional signal spaces to lower dimensional topological structures. The main features of this kind of mappings are topology preserving, feature mappings and probability distribution approximation of input patterns. To overcome some limitations of SOFM, e.g., a fixed number of neural units and a topology of fixed dimensionality, Growing Self-Organizing Neural Network (GSONN) can be used. GSONN can change its topological structure during learning. It grows by learning and shrinks by forgetting. To speed up the training and convergence, a new variant of GSONN, twin growing cell structures (TGCS) is presented here. This paper first gives an introduction to competitive learning, SOFM and its variants. Then, we discuss some GSONN with fixed dimensionality, which include growing cell structures, its variants and the author-s model: TGCS. It is ended with some testing results comparison and conclusions.

Image Enhancement using α-Trimmed Mean ε-Filters

Image enhancement is the most important challenging preprocessing for almost all applications of Image Processing. By now, various methods such as Median filter, α-trimmed mean filter, etc. have been suggested. It was proved that the α-trimmed mean filter is the modification of median and mean filters. On the other hand, ε-filters have shown excellent performance in suppressing noise. In spite of their simplicity, they achieve good results. However, conventional ε-filter is based on moving average. In this paper, we suggested a new ε-filter which utilizes α-trimmed mean. We argue that this new method gives better outcomes compared to previous ones and the experimental results confirmed this claim.

Identity Politics of Former Soviet Koreans: One of the Most Prominent Heritages of the 1988 Seoul Olympics

This paper applies an anthropological approach to illuminate the dynamic cultural geography of Kazakhstani Korean ethnicity focusing on its turning point, the historic “Seoul Olympic Games in 1988." The Korean ethnic group was easily considered as a harmonious and homogeneous community by outsiders, but there existed deep-seated conflicts and hostilities within the ethnic group. The majority-s oppositional dichotomy of superiority and inferiority toward the minority was continuously reorganized and reinforced by difference in experience, memory and sentiment. However, such a chronic exclusive boundary was collapsed following the patriotism ignited by the Olympics held in their mother country. This paper explores the fluidity of subject by formation of the boundary in which constructed cultural differences are continuously essentialized and reproduced, and by dissolution of cultural barrier in certain contexts.

Problems and Possible Solutions with the Development of a Computer Model of Quantum Theory

A computer model of Quantum Theory (QT) has been developed by the author. Major goal of the computer model was support and demonstration of an as large as possible scope of QT. This includes simulations for the major QT (Gedanken-) experiments such as, for example, the famous double-slit experiment. Besides the anticipated difficulties with (1) transforming exacting mathematics into a computer program, two further types of problems showed up, namely (2) areas where QT provides a complete mathematical formalism, but when it comes to concrete applications the equations are not solvable at all, or only with extremely high effort; (3) QT rules which are formulated in natural language and which do not seem to be translatable to precise mathematical expressions, nor to a computer program. The paper lists problems in all three categories and describes also the possible solutions or circumventions developed for the computer model.

Creative Technology as Open Ended Learning Tool: A Case Study of Design School in Malaysia

Does open ended creative technology give positive impact in learning design? Although there are many researchers had examined on the impact of technology on design education but there are very few conclusive researches done on the impact of open ended used of software to learning design. This paper sought to investigate a group of student-s experience on relatively wider range of software application within the context of design project. A typography design project was used to create a learning environment with the aim of inculcate design skills into the learners and increase their creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills. The methods used in this study were questionnaire survey and personal observation which will be focus on the individual and group response during the completion of the task.

Optimizing usage of ICTs and Outsourcing Strategic in Business Models and Customer Satisfaction

Nowadays, under developed countries for progress in science and technology and decreasing the technologic gap with developed countries, increasing the capacities and technology transfer from developed countries. To remain competitive, industry is continually searching for new methods to evolve their products. Business model is one of the latest buzzwords in the Internet and electronic business world. To be successful, organizations must look into the needs and wants of their customers. This research attempts to identify a specific feature of the company with a strong competitive advantage by analyzing the cause of Customer satisfaction. Due to the rapid development of knowledge and information technology, business environments have become much more complicated. Information technology can help a firm aiming to gain a competitive advantage. This study explores the role and effect of Information Communication Technology in Business Models and Customer satisfaction on firms and also relationships between ICTs and Outsourcing strategic.

Preemptive Possibilistic Linear Programming:Application to Aggregate Production Planning

This research proposes a Preemptive Possibilistic Linear Programming (PPLP) approach for solving multiobjective Aggregate Production Planning (APP) problem with interval demand and imprecise unit price and related operating costs. The proposed approach attempts to maximize profit and minimize changes of workforce. It transforms the total profit objective that has imprecise information to three crisp objective functions, which are maximizing the most possible value of profit, minimizing the risk of obtaining the lower profit and maximizing the opportunity of obtaining the higher profit. The change of workforce level objective is also converted. Then, the problem is solved according to objective priorities. It is easier than simultaneously solve the multiobjective problem as performed in existing approach. Possible range of interval demand is also used to increase flexibility of obtaining the better production plan. A practical application of an electronic company is illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Lower energy Gait Pattern Generation in 5-Link Biped Robot Using Image Processing

The purpose of this study is to find natural gait of biped robot such as human being by analyzing the COG (Center Of Gravity) trajectory of human being's gait. It is discovered that human beings gait naturally maintain the stability and use the minimum energy. This paper intends to find the natural gait pattern of biped robot using the minimum energy as well as maintaining the stability by analyzing the human's gait pattern that is measured from gait image on the sagittal plane and COG trajectory on the frontal plane. It is not possible to apply the torques of human's articulation to those of biped robot's because they have different degrees of freedom. Nonetheless, human and 5-link biped robots are similar in kinematics. For this, we generate gait pattern of the 5-link biped robot by using the GA algorithm of adaptation gait pattern which utilize the human's ZMP (Zero Moment Point) and torque of all articulation that are measured from human's gait pattern. The algorithm proposed creates biped robot's fluent gait pattern as that of human being's and to minimize energy consumption because the gait pattern of the 5-link biped robot model is modeled after consideration about the torque of human's each articulation on the sagittal plane and ZMP trajectory on the frontal plane. This paper demonstrate that the algorithm proposed is superior by evaluating 2 kinds of the 5-link biped robot applied to each gait patterns generated both in the general way using inverse kinematics and in the special way in which by considering visuality and efficiency.

Energy Efficient Reliable Cooperative Multipath Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, a reliable cooperative multipath routing algorithm is proposed for data forwarding in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this algorithm, data packets are forwarded towards the base station (BS) through a number of paths, using a set of relay nodes. In addition, the Rayleigh fading model is used to calculate the evaluation metric of links. Here, the quality of reliability is guaranteed by selecting optimal relay set with which the probability of correct packet reception at the BS will exceed a predefined threshold. Therefore, the proposed scheme ensures reliable packet transmission to the BS. Furthermore, in the proposed algorithm, energy efficiency is achieved by energy balancing (i.e. minimizing the energy consumption of the bottleneck node of the routing path) at the same time. This work also demonstrates that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing algorithms in extending longevity of the network, with respect to the quality of reliability. Given this, the obtained results make possible reliable path selection with minimum energy consumption in real time.

Development of NOx Emission Model for a Tangentially Fired Acid Incinerator

This paper aims to develop a NOx emission model of an acid gas incinerator using Nelder-Mead least squares support vector regression (LS-SVR). Malaysia DOE is actively imposing the Clean Air Regulation to mandate the installation of analytical instrumentation known as Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMS) to report emission level online to DOE . As a hardware based analyzer, CEMS is expensive, maintenance intensive and often unreliable. Therefore, software predictive technique is often preferred and considered as a feasible alternative to replace the CEMS for regulatory compliance. The LS-SVR model is built based on the emissions from an acid gas incinerator that operates in a LNG Complex. Simulated Annealing (SA) is first used to determine the initial hyperparameters which are then further optimized based on the performance of the model using Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm. The LS-SVR model is shown to outperform a benchmark model based on backpropagation neural networks (BPNN) in both training and testing data.

Fast Depth Estimation with Filters

Fast depth estimation from binocular vision is often desired for autonomous vehicles, but, most algorithms could not easily be put into practice because of the much time cost. We present an image-processing technique that can fast estimate depth image from binocular vision images. By finding out the lines which present the best matched area in the disparity space image, the depth can be estimated. When detecting these lines, an edge-emphasizing filter is used. The final depth estimation will be presented after the smooth filter. Our method is a compromise between local methods and global optimization.