Abstract: In cellular networks, limited availability of resources
has to be tapped to its fullest potential. In view of this aspect, a
sophisticated averaging and voting technique has been discussed in
this paper, wherein the radio resources available are utilized to the
fullest value by taking into consideration, several network and radio
parameters which decide on when the handover has to be made and
thereby reducing the load on Base station .The increase in the load
on the Base station might be due to several unnecessary handover
taking place which can be eliminated by making judicious use of the
radio and network parameters.
Abstract: Emergence of smartphones brings to live the concept
of converged devices with the availability of web amenities. Such
trend also challenges the mobile devices manufactures and service
providers in many aspects, such as security on mobile phones,
complex and long time design flow, as well as higher development
cost. Among these aspects, security on mobile phones is getting more
and more attention. Microkernel based virtualization technology will
play a critical role in addressing these challenges and meeting mobile
market needs and preferences, since virtualization provides essential
isolation for security reasons and it allows multiple operating systems
to run on one processor accelerating development and cutting development
cost. However, virtualization benefits do not come for free.
As an additional software layer, it adds some inevitable virtualization
overhead to the system, which may decrease the system performance.
In this paper we evaluate and analyze the virtualization performance
cost of L4 microkernel based virtualization on a competitive mobile
phone by comparing the L4Linux, a para-virtualized Linux on top of
L4 microkernel, with the native Linux performance using lmbench
and a set of typical mobile phone applications.
Abstract: Biofuels, like biobutanol, have been recognized for
being renewable and sustainable fuels which can be produced from
lignocellulosic biomass. To convert lignocellulosic biomass to
biofuel, pretreatment process is an important step to remove
hemicelluloses and lignin to improve enzymatic hydrolysis. Dilute
acid pretreatment has been successful developed for pretreatment of
corncobs and the optimum conditions of dilute sulfuric and
phosphoric acid pretreatment were obtained at 120 °C for 5 min with
15:1 liquid to solid ratio and 140 °C for 10 min with 10:1 liquid to
solid ratio, respectively. The result shows that both of acid
pretreatments gave the content of total sugar approximately 34–35
g/l. In case of inhibitor content (furfural), phosphoric acid
pretreatment gives higher than sulfuric acid pretreatment.
Characterizations of corncobs after pretreatment indicate that both of
acid pretreatments can improve enzymatic accessibility and the better
results present in corncobs pretreated with sulfuric acid in term of
surface area, crystallinity, and composition analysis.
Abstract: Recent trends in building constructions in Libya are
more toward tall (high-rise) building projects. As a consequence, a
better estimation of the lateral loading in the design process is
becoming the focal of a safe and cost effective building industry. Byin-
large, Libya is not considered a potential earthquake prone zone,
making wind is the dominant design lateral loads. Current design
practice in the country estimates wind speeds on a mere random
bases by considering certain factor of safety to the chosen wind
speed. Therefore, a need for a more accurate estimation of wind
speeds in Libya was the motivation behind this study. Records of
wind speed data were collected from 22 metrological stations in
Libya, and were statistically analysed. The analysis of more than four
decades of wind speed records suggests that the country can be
divided into four zones of distinct wind speeds. A computer “survey"
program was manipulated to draw design wind speeds contour map
for the state of Libya.
The paper presents the statistical analysis of Libya-s recorded
wind speed data and proposes design wind speed values for a 50-year
return period that covers the entire country.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a face recognition algorithm
using AAM and Gabor features. Gabor feature vectors which are well
known to be robust with respect to small variations of shape, scaling,
rotation, distortion, illumination and poses in images are popularly
employed for feature vectors for many object detection and
recognition algorithms. EBGM, which is prominent among face
recognition algorithms employing Gabor feature vectors, requires
localization of facial feature points where Gabor feature vectors are
extracted. However, localization method employed in EBGM is based
on Gabor jet similarity and is sensitive to initial values. Wrong
localization of facial feature points affects face recognition rate. AAM
is known to be successfully applied to localization of facial feature
points. In this paper, we devise a facial feature point localization
method which first roughly estimate facial feature points using AAM
and refine facial feature points using Gabor jet similarity-based facial
feature localization method with initial points set by the rough facial
feature points obtained from AAM, and propose a face recognition
algorithm using the devised localization method for facial feature
localization and Gabor feature vectors. It is observed through
experiments that such a cascaded localization method based on both
AAM and Gabor jet similarity is more robust than the localization
method based on only Gabor jet similarity. Also, it is shown that the
proposed face recognition algorithm using this devised localization
method and Gabor feature vectors performs better than the
conventional face recognition algorithm using Gabor jet
similarity-based localization method and Gabor feature vectors like
EBGM.
Abstract: The so-called all-pass filter circuits are commonly
used in the field of signal processing, control and measurement.
Being connected to capacitive loads, these circuits tend to loose their
stability; therefore the elaborate analysis of their dynamic behavior is
necessary. The compensation methods intending to increase the
stability of such circuits are discussed in this paper, including the socalled
lead-lag compensation technique being treated in detail. For
the dynamic modeling, a two-port network model of the all-pass filter
is being derived. The results of the model analysis show, that
effective lead-lag compensation can be achieved, alone by the
optimization of the circuit parameters; therefore the application of
additional electric components are not needed to fulfill the stability
requirement.
Abstract: This paper presents a computational methodology
based on matrix operations for a computer based solution to the
problem of performance analysis of software reliability models
(SRMs). A set of seven comparison criteria have been formulated to
rank various non-homogenous Poisson process software reliability
models proposed during the past 30 years to estimate software
reliability measures such as the number of remaining faults, software
failure rate, and software reliability. Selection of optimal SRM for
use in a particular case has been an area of interest for researchers in
the field of software reliability. Tools and techniques for software
reliability model selection found in the literature cannot be used with
high level of confidence as they use a limited number of model
selection criteria. A real data set of middle size software project from
published papers has been used for demonstration of matrix method.
The result of this study will be a ranking of SRMs based on the
Permanent value of the criteria matrix formed for each model based
on the comparison criteria. The software reliability model with
highest value of the Permanent is ranked at number – 1 and so on.
Abstract: 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 SI applications. However, due to the structure of its filter bank, it captures vocal tract characteristics more effectively in the lower frequency regions. This paper proposes a new set of features using a complementary filter bank structure which improves distinguishability of speaker specific cues present in the higher frequency zone. Unlike high level features that are difficult to extract, the proposed feature set involves little computational burden during the extraction process. When combined with MFCC via a parallel implementation of speaker models, the proposed feature set outperforms baseline MFCC significantly. This proposition is validated by experiments conducted on two different kinds of public databases namely YOHO (microphone speech) and POLYCOST (telephone speech) with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) as a Classifier for various model orders.
Abstract: Manufacturing processes demand tight dimensional
tolerances. The paper concerns a transducer for precise measurement
of displacement, based on a camera containing a linescan chip.
When tests were conducted using a track of black and white stripes
with a 2mm pitch, errors in measuring on individual cycle amounted
to 1.75%, suggesting that a precision of 35 microns is achievable.
Abstract: Multiphase flow transport in porous medium is very common and significant in science and engineering applications. For example, in CO2 Storage and Enhanced Oil Recovery processes, CO2 has to be delivered to the pore spaces in reservoirs and aquifers. CO2 storage and enhance oil recovery are actually displacement processes, in which oil or water is displaced by CO2. This displacement is controlled by pore size, chemical and physical properties of pore surfaces and fluids, and also pore wettability. In this study, a technique was developed to measure the pressure profile for driving gas/liquid to displace water in pores. Through this pressure profile, the impact of pore size on the multiphase flow transport and displacement can be analyzed. The other rig developed can be used to measure the static and dynamic pore wettability and investigate the effects of pore size, surface tension, viscosity and chemical structure of liquids on pore wettability.
Abstract: Most routing protocols (DSR, AODV etc.) that have
been designed for wireless adhoc networks incorporate the broadcasting
operation in their route discovery scheme. Probabilistic broadcasting
techniques have been developed to optimize the broadcast operation
which is otherwise very expensive in terms of the redundancy
and the traffic it generates. In this paper we have explored percolation
theory to gain a different perspective on probabilistic broadcasting
schemes which have been actively researched in the recent years.
This theory has helped us estimate the value of broadcast probability
in a wireless adhoc network as a function of the size of the network.
We also show that, operating at those optimal values of broadcast
probability there is at least 25-30% reduction in packet regeneration
during successful broadcasting.
Abstract: Complex engineering design problems consist of
numerous factors of varying criticalities. Considering fundamental features of design and inferior details alike will result in an extensive
waste of time and effort. Design parameters should be introduced gradually as appropriate based on their significance relevant to the
problem context. This motivates the representation of design parameters at multiple levels of an abstraction hierarchy. However, developing abstraction hierarchies is an area that is not well
understood. Our research proposes a novel hierarchical abstraction methodology to plan effective engineering designs and processes. It
provides a theoretically sound foundation to represent, abstract and stratify engineering design parameters and tasks according to causality and criticality. The methodology creates abstraction
hierarchies in a recursive and bottom-up approach that guarantees no
backtracking across any of the abstraction levels. The methodology consists of three main phases, representation, abstraction, and layering to multiple hierarchical levels. The effectiveness of the
developed methodology is demonstrated by a design problem.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to present a non invasive
method for the marginal adaptation evaluation in class V composite
restorations. Standardized class V cavities, prepared in human
extracted teeth, were filled with Premise (Kerr) composite. The
specimens were thermo cycled. The interfaces were examined by
Optical Coherence Tomography method (OCT) combined with the
confocal microscopy and fluorescence. The optical configuration
uses two single mode directional couplers with a superluminiscent
diode as the source at 1300 nm. The scanning procedure is similar to
that used in any confocal microscope, where the fast scanning is enface
(line rate) and the depth scanning is much slower (at the frame
rate). Gaps at the interfaces as well as inside the composite resin
materials were identified. OCT has numerous advantages which
justify its use in vivo as well as in vitro in comparison with
conventional techniques.
Abstract: Corporate credit rating prediction using statistical and
artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has been one of the attractive
research topics in the literature. In recent years, multiclass
classification models such as artificial neural network (ANN) or
multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) have become a very
appealing machine learning approaches due to their good
performance. However, most of them have only focused on classifying
samples into nominal categories, thus the unique characteristic of the
credit rating - ordinality - has been seldom considered in their
approaches. This study proposes new types of ANN and MSVM
classifiers, which are named OMANN and OMSVM respectively.
OMANN and OMSVM are designed to extend binary ANN or SVM
classifiers by applying ordinal pairwise partitioning (OPP) strategy.
These models can handle ordinal multiple classes efficiently and
effectively. To validate the usefulness of these two models, we applied
them to the real-world bond rating case. We compared the results of
our models to those of conventional approaches. The experimental
results showed that our proposed models improve classification
accuracy in comparison to typical multiclass classification techniques
with the reduced computation resource.
Abstract: The response surface methodology (RSM) is a
collection of mathematical and statistical techniques useful in the
modeling and analysis of problems in which the dependent variable
receives the influence of several independent variables, in order to
determine which are the conditions under which should operate these
variables to optimize a production process. The RSM estimated a
regression model of first order, and sets the search direction using the
method of maximum / minimum slope up / down MMS U/D.
However, this method selects the step size intuitively, which can
affect the efficiency of the RSM. This paper assesses how the step
size affects the efficiency of this methodology. The numerical
examples are carried out through Monte Carlo experiments,
evaluating three response variables: efficiency gain function, the
optimum distance and the number of iterations. The results in the
simulation experiments showed that in response variables efficiency
and gain function at the optimum distance were not affected by the
step size, while the number of iterations is found that the efficiency if
it is affected by the size of the step and function type of test used.
Abstract: Speedups from mapping four real-life DSP
applications on an embedded system-on-chip that couples coarsegrained
reconfigurable logic with an instruction-set processor are
presented. The reconfigurable logic is realized by a 2-Dimensional
Array of Processing Elements. A design flow for improving
application-s performance is proposed. Critical software parts, called
kernels, are accelerated on the Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable
Array. The kernels are detected by profiling the source code. For
mapping the detected kernels on the reconfigurable logic a prioritybased
mapping algorithm has been developed. Two 4x4 array
architectures, which differ in their interconnection structure among
the Processing Elements, are considered. The experiments for eight
different instances of a generic system show that important overall
application speedups have been reported for the four applications.
The performance improvements range from 1.86 to 3.67, with an
average value of 2.53, compared with an all-software execution.
These speedups are quite close to the maximum theoretical speedups
imposed by Amdahl-s law.
Abstract: We introduce the notion of strongly ω -Gorenstein modules, where ω is a faithfully balanced self-orthogonal module. This gives a common generalization of both Gorenstein projective (injective) modules and ω-Gorenstein modules. We investigate some characterizations of strongly ω -Gorenstein modules. Consequently, some properties under change of rings are obtained.
Abstract: Concerns about low levels of children-s physical activity and motor skill development, prompted the Ministry of Education to trial a physical activity pilot project (PAPP) in 16 New Zealand primary schools. The project comprised professional development and training in physical education for lead teachers and introduced four physical activity coordinators to liaise with and increase physical activity opportunities in the pilot schools. A survey of generalist teachers (128 baseline, 155 post-intervention) from these schools looked at timetabled physical activity sessions and issues related to teaching physical education. The authors calculated means and standard deviations of data relating to timetabled PE sessions and used a one-way analysis of variance to determine significant differences. Results indicated time devoted to physical activity related subjects significantly increased over the course of the intervention. Teacher-s reported improved confidence and competence, which resulted in an improvement in quality physical education delivered more often.
Abstract: Non-saturated soils that while saturation greatly
decrease their volume, have sudden settlement due to increasing
humidity, fracture and structural crack are called loess soils. Whereas
importance of civil projects including: dams, canals and
constructions bearing this type of soil and thereof problems, it is
required for carrying out more research and study in relation to loess
soils. This research studies shear strength parameters by using
grading test, Atterberg limit, compression, direct shear and
consolidation and then effect of using cement and lime additives on
stability of loess soils is studied. In related tests, lime and cement are
separately added to mixed ratios under different percentages of soil
and for different times the stabilized samples are processed and effect
of aforesaid additives on shear strength parameters of soil is studied.
Results show that upon passing time the effect of additives and
collapsible potential is greatly decreased and upon increasing
percentage of cement and lime the maximum dry density is
decreased; however, optimum humidity is increased. In addition,
liquid limit and plastic index is decreased; however, plastic index
limit is increased. It is to be noted that results of direct shear test
reveal increasing shear strength of soil due to increasing cohesion
parameter and soil friction angle.
Abstract: Time varying network induced delays in networked
control systems (NCS) are known for degrading control system-s
quality of performance (QoP) and causing stability problems. In
literature, a control method employing modeling of communication
delays as probability distribution, proves to be a better method. This
paper focuses on modeling of network induced delays as probability
distribution.
CAN and MIL-STD-1553B are extensively used to carry periodic
control and monitoring data in networked control systems.
In literature, methods to estimate only the worst-case delays for
these networks are available. In this paper probabilistic network
delay model for CAN and MIL-STD-1553B networks are given.
A systematic method to estimate values to model parameters from
network parameters is given. A method to predict network delay in
next cycle based on the present network delay is presented. Effect of
active network redundancy and redundancy at node level on network
delay and system response-time is also analyzed.