Abstract: Organic farming systems still depend on intensive, mechanical soil tillage. Frequent passes by machinery traffic cause substantial soil compaction that threatens soil health. Adopting practices as reduced tillage and organic matter retention on the soil surface are considered effective ways to control soil compaction. In tropical regions, however, the acceleration of soil organic matter decomposition and soil carbon turnover on the topsoil layer is influenced more rapidly by the oscillation process of drying and wetting. It is hypothesized therefore, that rapid reduction in soil organic matter hastens the potential for compaction to occur in organic farming systems. Compaction changes soil physical properties and as a consequence it has been implicated as a causal agent in the inhibition of natural disease suppression in soils. Here we describe relationships between soil management in organic vegetable systems, soil compaction, and declining soil capacity to suppress pathogenic microorganisms.
Abstract: Turbulence of the incoming wind field is of paramount
importance to the dynamic response of civil engineering structures. Hence reliable stochastic models of the turbulence should be available from which time series can be generated for dynamic response and
structural safety analysis. In the paper an empirical cross spectral
density function for the along-wind turbulence component over the wind field area is taken as the starting point. The spectrum is spatially
discretized in terms of a Hermitian cross-spectral density matrix for the turbulence state vector which turns out not to be positive
definite. Since the succeeding state space and ARMA modelling of
the turbulence rely on the positive definiteness of the cross-spectral
density matrix, the problem with the non-positive definiteness of such
matrices is at first addressed and suitable treatments regarding it are proposed. From the adjusted positive definite cross-spectral density
matrix a frequency response matrix is constructed which determines the turbulence vector as a linear filtration of Gaussian white noise.
Finally, an accurate state space modelling method is proposed which allows selection of an appropriate model order, and estimation of a state space model for the vector turbulence process incorporating its phase spectrum in one stage, and its results are compared with a conventional ARMA modelling method.
Abstract: Abai Kunanbayev (1845-1904) was a great Kazakh
poet, composer and philosopher. Abai's main contribution to Kazakh
culture and folklore lies in his poetry, which expresses great
nationalism and grew out of Kazakh folk culture. Before him, most
Kazakh poetry was oral, echoing the nomadic habits of the people of
the Kazakh steppes. We want to introduce to abroad our country, its
history, tradition and culture. We can introduce it only through
translations. Only by reading the Kazakh works can foreign people
know who are kazakhs, the style of their life, their thoughts and so
on. All information comes only through translation. The main
requirement to a good translation is that it should be natural or that it
should read as smoothly as the original. Literary translation should
be adequate, should follow the original to the fullest. Translators
have to be loyal to original text, they shouldn-t give the way to
liberty.
Abstract: The research on two-wheels balancing robot has
gained momentum due to their functionality and reliability when
completing certain tasks. This paper presents investigations into the
performance comparison of Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) and
PID-PID controllers for a highly nonlinear 2–wheels balancing robot.
The mathematical model of 2-wheels balancing robot that is highly
nonlinear is derived. The final model is then represented in statespace
form and the system suffers from mismatched condition. Two
system responses namely the robot position and robot angular
position are obtained. The performances of the LQR and PID-PID
controllers are examined in terms of input tracking and disturbances
rejection capability. Simulation results of the responses of the
nonlinear 2–wheels balancing robot are presented in time domain. A
comparative assessment of both control schemes to the system
performance is presented and discussed.
Abstract: Bumpers play an important role in preventing the
impact energy from being transferred to the automobile and
passengers. Saving the impact energy in the bumper to be released in
the environment reduces the damages of the automobile and
passengers.
The goal of this paper is to design a bumper with minimum weight
by employing the Glass Material Thermoplastic (GMT) materials.
This bumper either absorbs the impact energy with its deformation or
transfers it perpendicular to the impact direction.
To reach this aim, a mechanism is designed to convert about 80%
of the kinetic impact energy to the spring potential energy and
release it to the environment in the low impact velocity according to
American standard1. In addition, since the residual kinetic energy
will be damped with the infinitesimal elastic deformation of the
bumper elements, the passengers will not sense any impact. It should
be noted that in this paper, modeling, solving and result-s analysis
are done in CATIA, LS-DYNA and ANSYS V8.0 software
respectively.
Abstract: The information on the Web increases tremendously.
A number of search engines have been developed for searching Web
information and retrieving relevant documents that satisfy the
inquirers needs. Search engines provide inquirers irrelevant
documents among search results, since the search is text-based rather
than semantic-based. Information retrieval research area has
presented a number of approaches and methodologies such as
profiling, feedback, query modification, human-computer interaction,
etc for improving search results. Moreover, information retrieval has
employed artificial intelligence techniques and strategies such as
machine learning heuristics, tuning mechanisms, user and system
vocabularies, logical theory, etc for capturing user's preferences and
using them for guiding the search based on the semantic analysis
rather than syntactic analysis. Although a valuable improvement has
been recorded on search results, the survey has shown that still
search engines users are not really satisfied with their search results.
Using ontologies for semantic-based searching is likely the key
solution. Adopting profiling approach and using ontology base
characteristics, this work proposes a strategy for finding the exact
meaning of the query terms in order to retrieve relevant information
according to user needs. The evaluation of conducted experiments
has shown the effectiveness of the suggested methodology and
conclusion is presented.
Abstract: Lean manufacturing is a production philosophy made
popular by Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC). It is globally known as
the Toyota Production System (TPS) and has the ultimate aim of
reducing cost by thoroughly eliminating wastes or muda. TPS
embraces the Just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing; achieving cost
reduction through lead time reduction. JIT manufacturing can be
achieved by implementing Pull system in the production.
Furthermore, TPS aims to improve productivity and creating
continuous flow in the production by arranging the machines and
processes in cellular configurations. This is called as Cellular
Manufacturing Systems (CMS). This paper studies on integrating the
CMS with the Pull system to establish a Big Island-Pull system
production for High Mix Low Volume (HMLV) products in an
automotive component industry. The paper will use the build-in JIT
system steps adapted from TMC to create the Pull system production
and also create a shojinka line which, according to takt time, has the
flexibility to adapt to demand changes simply by adding and taking
out manpower. This will lead to optimization in production.
Abstract: The strawberry jam is rich in bioactive compounds. It
is economically and commercially important and widely consumed.
Different strawberries cultivars can be used for its preparation,
however, a careful selection should be performed to guarantee the
preservation of bioactive compounds during jam storage. Two
strawberry cultivars (Camarosa and American 13) were analyzed by
HPLC, three anthocyanins: cyanidin-3-glucoside, pelargonidin-3-
glucoside and pelargonidin-3-rutinoside were quantified. Camarosa
strawberries presented significantly higher concentration of
anthocyanins (p
Abstract: We consider a typical problem in the assembly of
printed circuit boards (PCBs) in a two-machine flow shop system to
simultaneously minimize the weighted sum of weighted tardiness and
weighted flow time. The investigated problem is a group scheduling
problem in which PCBs are assembled in groups and the interest is to
find the best sequence of groups as well as the boards within each
group to minimize the objective function value. The type of setup
operation between any two board groups is characterized as carryover
sequence-dependent setup time, which exactly matches with the real
application of this problem. As a technical constraint, all of the
boards must be kitted before the assembly operation starts (kitting
operation) and by kitting staff. The main idea developed in this paper
is to completely eliminate the role of kitting staff by assigning the
task of kitting to the machine operator during the time he is idle
which is referred to as integration of internal (machine) and external
(kitting) setup times. Performing the kitting operation, which is a
preparation process of the next set of boards while the other boards
are currently being assembled, results in the boards to continuously
enter the system or have dynamic arrival times. Consequently, a
dynamic PCB assembly system is introduced for the first time in the
assembly of PCBs, which also has characteristics similar to that of
just-in-time manufacturing. The problem investigated is
computationally very complex, meaning that finding the optimal
solutions especially when the problem size gets larger is impossible.
Thus, a heuristic based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed. An
example problem on the application of the GA developed is
demonstrated and also numerical results of applying the GA on
solving several instances are provided.
Abstract: Real-time embedded systems should benefit from
component-based software engineering to handle complexity and
deal with dependability. In these systems, applications should not
only be logically correct but also behave within time windows.
However, in the current component based software engineering
approaches, a few of component models handles time properties in
a manner that allows efficient analysis and checking at the
architectural level. In this paper, we present a meta-model for
component-based software description that integrates timing
issues. To achieve a complete functional model of software
components, our meta-model focuses on four functional aspects:
interface, static behavior, dynamic behavior, and interaction
protocol. With each aspect we have explicitly associated a time
model. Such a time model can be used to check a component-s
design against certain properties and to compute the timing
properties of component assemblies.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose the Modified Synchronous Detection (MSD) Method for determining the reference compensating currents of the shunt active power filter under non sinusoidal voltages conditions. For controlling the inverter switching we used the PI regulator. The numerical simulation results, using Power System Blockset Toolbox PSB of Matlab, from a complete structure, are presented and discussed.
Abstract: Proximate (moisture, protein, total fat, total ash) and mineral (K, P, Na, Mg, Ca, Zn, Fe, Cu and Mn) composition of chicken giblets (heart, liver and gizzard) were investigated. Phosphorous content, as well as proximate composition, were determined according to recommended ISO methods. The content of all elements, except phosphorus, of the giblets tissues were determined using inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), after dry ashing mineralization. Regarding proximate composition heart was the highest in total fat content, and the lowest in protein content. Liver was the highest in protein and total ash content, while gizzard was the highest in moisture and the lowest in total fat content. Regarding mineral composition liver was the highest for K, P, Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu, and Mn, while heart was the highest for Na content. The contents of almost all investigated minerals in analysed giblets tissues of chickens from Vojvodina were similar to values reported in the literature, i.e. in national food composition databases of other countries.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to compare the time
specification performance between conventional controller PID and
modern controller SMC for an inverted pendulum system. The goal is
to determine which control strategy delivers better performance with
respect to pendulum-s angle and cart-s position. The inverted
pendulum represents a challenging control problem, which
continually moves toward an uncontrolled state. Two controllers are
presented such as Sliding Mode Control (SMC) and Proportional-
Integral-Derivatives (PID) controllers for controlling the highly
nonlinear system of inverted pendulum model. Simulation study has
been done in Matlab Mfile and simulink environment shows that both
controllers are capable to control multi output inverted pendulum
system successfully. The result shows that Sliding Mode Control
(SMC) produced better response compared to PID control strategies
and the responses are presented in time domain with the details
analysis.
Abstract: The present work was conducted for Arsenic (III)
removal, which one of the most poisonous groundwater pollutants, by
synthetic nano size zerovalent iron (nZVI). Batch experiments were
performed to investigate the influence of As (III), nZVI
concentration, pH of solution and contact time on the efficiency of As
(III) removal. nZVI was synthesized by reduction of ferric chloride
by sodium borohydrid. SEM and XRD were used to determine
particle size and characterization of produced nanoparticles. Up to
99.9% removal efficiency for arsenic (III) was obtained by nZVI
dosage of 1 g/L at time equal to 10 min. and pH=7. It could be
concluded that the removal efficiency were enhanced with increasing
of ZVI dosage and reaction time, but decreased with increasing of
arsenic concentration and pH for nano sized ZVI. nZVI presented an
outstanding ability to remove As (III) due to not only a high surface
area and low particle size but also to high inherent activity.
Abstract: This paper presents the decoder design for the single error correcting and double error detecting code proposed by the authors in an earlier paper. The speed of error detection and correction of a code is largely dependent upon the associated encoder and decoder circuits. The complexity and the speed of such circuits are determined by the number of 1?s in the parity check matrix (PCM). The number of 1?s in the parity check matrix for the code proposed by the authors are fewer than in any currently known single error correcting/double error detecting code. This results in simplified encoding and decoding circuitry for error detection and correction.
Abstract: Structural behavior of ring stiffened thick walled
cylinders made of functionally graded materials (FGMs) is
investigated in this paper. Functionally graded materials are inhomogeneous composites which are usually made from a mixture
of metal and ceramic. The gradient compositional variation of the
constituents from one surface to the other provides an elegant solution to the problem of high transverse shear stresses that are
induced when two dissimilar materials with large differences in material properties are bonded. FGM formation of the cylinder is
modeled by power-law exponent and the variation of characteristics is supposed to be in radial direction.
A finite element formulation is derived for the analysis. According to the property variation of the constituent materials in the radial
direction of the wall, it is not convenient to use conventional elements to model and analyze the structure of the stiffened FGM
cylinders. In this paper a new cylindrical super-element is used to model the finite element formulation and analyze the static and
modal behavior of stiffened FGM thick walled cylinders. By using
this super-element the number of elements, which are needed for
modeling, will reduce significantly and the process time is less in comparison with conventional finite element formulations. Results for static and modal analysis are evaluated and verified by
comparison to finite element formulation with conventional
elements. Comparison indicates a good conformity between results.