Abstract: Multi-agent system approach has proven to be an effective and appropriate abstraction level to construct whole models of a diversity of biological problems, integrating aspects which can be found both in "micro" and "macro" approaches when modeling this type of phenomena. Taking into account these considerations, this paper presents the important computational characteristics to be gathered into a novel bioinformatics framework built upon a multiagent architecture. The version of the tool presented herein allows studying and exploring complex problems belonging principally to structural biology, such as protein folding. The bioinformatics framework is used as a virtual laboratory to explore a minimalist model of protein folding as a test case. In order to show the laboratory concept of the platform as well as its flexibility and adaptability, we studied the folding of two particular sequences, one of 45-mer and another of 64-mer, both described by an HP model (only hydrophobic and polar residues) and coarse grained 2D-square lattice. According to the discussion section of this piece of work, these two sequences were chosen as breaking points towards the platform, in order to determine the tools to be created or improved in such a way to overcome the needs of a particular computation and analysis of a given tough sequence. The backwards philosophy herein is that the continuous studying of sequences provides itself important points to be added into the platform, to any time improve its efficiency, as is demonstrated herein.
Abstract: Investment in a constructed facility represents a cost in
the short term that returns benefits only over the long term use of the
facility. Thus, the costs occur earlier than the benefits, and the owners
of facilities must obtain the capital resources to finance the costs of
construction. A project cannot proceed without an adequate
financing, and the cost of providing an adequate financing can be
quite large. For these reasons, the attention to the project finance is an
important aspect of project management. Finance is also a concern to
the other organizations involved in a project such as the general
contractor and material suppliers. Unless an owner immediately and
completely covers the costs incurred by each participant, these
organizations face financing problems of their own. At a more
general level, the project finance is the only one aspect of the general
problem of corporate finance. If numerous projects are considered
and financed together, then the net cash flow requirements constitute
the corporate financing problem for capital investment. Whether
project finance is performed at the project or at the corporate level
does not alter the basic financing problem .In this paper, we will first
consider facility financing from the owner's perspective, with due
consideration for its interaction with other organizations involved in a
project. Later, we discuss the problems of construction financing
which are crucial to the profitability and solvency of construction
contractors. The objective of this paper is to present the steps utilized
to determine the best combination of minimum project financing.
The proposed model considers financing; schedule and maximum net
area .The proposed model is called Project Financing and Schedule
Integration using Genetic Algorithms "PFSIGA". This model
intended to determine more steps (maximum net area) for any project
with a subproject. An illustrative example will demonstrate the
feature of this technique. The model verification and testing are put
into consideration.
Abstract: Today, the Internet based communication has widen
the opportunity of event monitoring system in the medical field.
There is always a need of analyzing and designing secure and reliable
mobile communication between the hospital and biomedical
engineers mobile units. This study has been carried out to find
possible solution using SIP-based event notification for alerting the
technical staff about the Biomedical Device (BMD) status and
Patients treatment session. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can
be used to create a medical event notification system. SIP can work
on a variety of devices. Its adoption as the protocol of choice for third
generation wireless networks allows for a robust and scalable
environment. One of the advantages of SIP is that it supports personal
mobility through the separation of user addressing and device
addressing. The solution for Telemed alert notification system is
based on SIP - Specific Event Notification. The aim of this project is
to extend mobility service to the hospital technicians who are using
Telemedicine system.
Abstract: To improve the classification rate of the face
recognition, features combination and a novel non-linear kernel are
proposed. The feature vector concatenates three different radius of
local binary patterns and Gabor wavelet features. Gabor features are
the mean, standard deviation and the skew of each scaling and
orientation parameter. The aim of the new kernel is to incorporate
the power of the kernel methods with the optimal balance between
the features. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method,
numerous methods are tested by using four datasets, which are
consisting of various emotions, orientations, configuration,
expressions and lighting conditions. Empirical results show the
superiority of the proposed technique when compared to other
methods.
Abstract: This paper explains a project based learning method where autonomous mini-robots are developed for research, education and entertainment purposes. In case of remote systems wireless sensors are developed in critical areas, which would collect data at specific time intervals, send the data to the central wireless node based on certain preferred information would make decisions to turn on or off a switch or control unit. Such information transfers hardly sums up to a few bytes and hence low data rates would suffice for such implementations. As a robot is a multidisciplinary platform, the interfacing issues involved are discussed in this paper. The paper is mainly focused on power supply, grounding and decoupling issues.
Abstract: Perspective of food security in 21 century showed
shortage of food that production is faced to vital problem. Food
security strategy is applied longtime method to assess required food.
Meanwhile, nanotechnology revolution changes the world face.
Nanotechnology is adequate method utilize of its characteristics to
decrease environmental problems and possible further access to food
for small farmers. This article will show impact of production and
adoption of nanocrops on food security. Population is researchers of
agricultural research center of Esfahan province. The results of study
show that there was a relationship between uses, conversion,
distribution, and production of nanocrops, operative human
resources, operative circumstance, and constrains of usage of
nanocrops and food security. Multivariate regression analysis by
enter model shows that operative circumstance, use, production and
constrains of usage of nanocrops had positive impact on food security
and they determine in four steps 20 percent of it.
Abstract: The technical realization of data transmission using
glass fiber began after the development of diode laser in year 1962.
The erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA's) in high speed networks
allow information to be transmitted over longer distances without
using of signal amplification repeaters. These kinds of fibers are
doped with erbium atoms which have energy levels in its atomic
structure for amplifying light at 1550nm. When a carried signal wave
at 1550nm enters the erbium fiber, the light stimulates the excited
erbium atoms which pumped with laser beam at 980nm as additional
light. The wavelength and intensity of the semiconductor lasers
depend on the temperature of active zone and the injection current.
The present paper shows the effect of the diode lasers temperature
and injection current on the optical amplification. From the results of
in- and output power one may calculate the max. optical gain by
erbium doped fiber amplifier.
Abstract: This study aims to demonstrate the quantification of
peptides based on isotope dilution surface enhanced Raman
scattering (IDSERS). SERS spectra of phenylalanine (Phe), leucine
(Leu) and two peptide sequences TGQIFK (T13) and
YSFLQNPQTSLCFSESIPTPSNR (T6) as part of the 22-kDa
human growth hormone (hGH) were obtained on Ag-nanoparticle
covered substrates. On the basis of the dominant Phe and Leu
vibrational modes, precise partial least squares (PLS) prediction
models were built enabling the determination of unknown T13 and
T6 concentrations. Detection of hGH in its physiological
concentration in order to investigate the possibility of protein
quantification has been achieved.
Abstract: Ren et al. presented an efficient carrier frequency offset
(CFO) estimation method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM), which has an estimation range as large as the
bandwidth of the OFDM signal and achieves high accuracy without
any constraint on the structure of the training sequence. However,
its detection probability of the integer frequency offset (IFO) rapidly
varies according to the fractional frequency offset (FFO) change. In
this paper, we first analyze the Ren-s method and define two criteria
suitable for detection of IFO. Then, we propose a novel method for
the IFO estimation based on the maximum-likelihood (ML) principle
and the detection criteria defined in this paper. The simulation results
demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the Ren-s method
in terms of the IFO detection probability irrespective of a value of
the FFO.
Abstract: The main aim of this research is to investigate a novel technique for implementing a more natural and intelligent conversation system. Conversation systems are designed to converse like a human as much as their intelligent allows. Sometimes, we can think that they are the embodiment of Turing-s vision. It usually to return a predetermined answer in a predetermined order, but conversations abound with uncertainties of various kinds. This research will focus on an integrated natural language processing approach. This approach includes an integrated knowledge-base construction module, a conversation understanding and generator module, and a state manager module. We discuss effectiveness of this approach based on an experiment.
Abstract: The necessity of updating the numerical models inputs, because of geometrical and resistive variations in rivers subject to solid transport phenomena, requires detailed control and monitoring activities. The human employment and financial resources of these activities moves the research towards the development of expeditive methodologies, able to evaluate the outflows through the measurement of more easily acquirable sizes. Recent studies highlighted the dependence of the entropic parameter on the kinematical and geometrical flow conditions. They showed a meaningful variability according to the section shape, dimension and slope. Such dependences, even if not yet well defined, could reduce the difficulties during the field activities, and also the data elaboration time. On the basis of such evidences, the relationships between the entropic parameter and the geometrical and resistive sizes, obtained through a large and detailed laboratory experience on steady free surface flows in conditions of macro and intermediate homogeneous roughness, are analyzed and discussed.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present a methodology in
three steps to forecast supply chain demand. In first step, various data
mining techniques are applied in order to prepare data for entering
into forecasting models. In second step, the modeling step, an
artificial neural network and support vector machine is presented
after defining Mean Absolute Percentage Error index for measuring
error. The structure of artificial neural network is selected based on
previous researchers' results and in this article the accuracy of
network is increased by using sensitivity analysis. The best forecast
for classical forecasting methods (Moving Average, Exponential
Smoothing, and Exponential Smoothing with Trend) is resulted based
on prepared data and this forecast is compared with result of support
vector machine and proposed artificial neural network. The results
show that artificial neural network can forecast more precisely in
comparison with other methods. Finally, forecasting methods'
stability is analyzed by using raw data and even the effectiveness of
clustering analysis is measured.
Abstract: The turbulent mixing of coolant streams of different
temperature and density can cause severe temperature fluctuations in
piping systems in nuclear reactors. In certain periodic contraction
cycles these conditions lead to thermal fatigue. The resulting aging
effect prompts investigation in how the mixing of flows over a sharp
temperature/density interface evolves. To study the fundamental
turbulent mixing phenomena in the presence of density gradients,
isokinetic (shear-free) mixing experiments are performed in a square
channel with Reynolds numbers ranging from 2-500 to 60-000.
Sucrose is used to create the density difference. A Wire Mesh Sensor
(WMS) is used to determine the concentration map of the flow in the
cross section. The mean interface width as a function of velocity,
density difference and distance from the mixing point are analyzed
based on traditional methods chosen for the purposes of
atmospheric/oceanic stratification analyses. A definition of the
mixing layer thickness more appropriate to thermal fatigue and based
on mixedness is devised. This definition shows that the thermal
fatigue risk assessed using simple mixing layer growth can be
misleading and why an approach that separates the effects of large
scale (turbulent) and small scale (molecular) mixing is necessary.
Abstract: Mobile agent has motivated the creation of a new
methodology for parallel computing. We introduce a methodology
for the creation of parallel applications on the network. The proposed
Mobile-Agent parallel processing framework uses multiple Javamobile
Agents. Each mobile agent can travel to the specified
machine in the network to perform its tasks. We also introduce the
concept of master agent, which is Java object capable of
implementing a particular task of the target application. Master agent
is dynamically assigns the task to mobile agents. We have developed
and tested a prototype application: Mobile Agent Based Parallel
Computing. Boosted by the inherited benefits of using Java and
Mobile Agents, our proposed methodology breaks the barriers
between the environments, and could potentially exploit in a parallel
manner all the available computational resources on the network.
This paper elaborates performance issues of a mobile agent for
parallel computing.
Abstract: Due to the increasing and varying risks that economic units face with, derivative instruments gain substantial importance, and trading volumes of derivatives have reached very significant level. Parallel with these high trading volumes, researchers have developed many different models. Some are parametric, some are nonparametric. In this study, the aim is to analyse the success of artificial neural network in pricing of options with S&P 100 index options data. Generally, the previous studies cover the data of European type call options. This study includes not only European call option but also American call and put options and European put options. Three data sets are used to perform three different ANN models. One only includes data that are directly observed from the economic environment, i.e. strike price, spot price, interest rate, maturity, type of the contract. The others include an extra input that is not an observable data but a parameter, i.e. volatility. With these detail data, the performance of ANN in put/call dimension, American/European dimension, moneyness dimension is analyzed and whether the contribution of the volatility in neural network analysis make improvement in prediction performance or not is examined. The most striking results revealed by the study is that ANN shows better performance when pricing call options compared to put options; and the use of volatility parameter as an input does not improve the performance.
Abstract: In the literature of fuzzy measures, there exist many
well known parametric and non-parametric measures, each with its
own merits and limitations. But our main emphasis is on
applications of these measures to a variety of disciplines. To extend
the scope of applications of these fuzzy measures to geometry, we
need some special fuzzy measures. In this communication, we have
introduced two new fuzzy measures involving trigonometric
functions and simultaneously provided their applications to obtain
the basic results already existing in the literature of geometry.
Abstract: While the problem based learning (PBL) approach promotes unsupervised self-directed learning (SDL), many students experience difficulty juggling the role of being an information recipient and information seeker. Logbooks have been used to assess trainee doctors but not in other areas. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of logbook for assessing SDL during PBL sessions in first year medical students. The log book included a learning checklist and knowledge and skills components. Comparisons with the baseline assessment of student performance in PBL and that at semester end after logbook intervention showed significant improvements in student performance (31.5 ± 8 vs. 17.7 ± 4.4; p
Abstract: Modeling of a heterogeneous industrial fixed bed
reactor for selective dehydrogenation of heavy paraffin with Pt-Sn-
Al2O3 catalyst has been the subject of current study. By applying
mass balance, momentum balance for appropriate element of reactor
and using pressure drop, rate and deactivation equations, a detailed
model of the reactor has been obtained. Mass balance equations have
been written for five different components. In order to estimate
reactor production by the passage of time, the reactor model which is
a set of partial differential equations, ordinary differential equations
and algebraic equations has been solved numerically.
Paraffins, olefins, dienes, aromatics and hydrogen mole percent as
a function of time and reactor radius have been found by numerical
solution of the model. Results of model have been compared with
industrial reactor data at different operation times. The comparison
successfully confirms validity of proposed model.
Abstract: Introducing survivability into embedded real-time system (ERTS) can improve the survivability power of the system. This paper mainly discusses about the survivability of ERTS. The first is the survivability origin of ERTS. The second is survivability analysis. According to the definition of survivability based on survivability specification and division of the entire survivability analysis process for ERTS, a survivability analysis profile is presented. The quantitative analysis model of this profile is emphasized and illuminated in detail, the quantifying analysis of system was showed helpful to evaluate system survivability more accurate. The third is platform design of survivability analysis. In terms of the profile, the analysis process is encapsulated and assembled into one platform, on which quantification, standardization and simplification of survivability analysis are all achieved. The fourth is survivability design. According to character of ERTS, strengthened design method is selected to realize system survivability design. Through the analysis of embedded mobile video-on-demand system, intrusion tolerant technology is introduced in whole survivability design.
Abstract: An ultrasound-assisted activation method for
electroless silver plating is presented in this study. When the
ultrasound was applied during the activation step, the amount of the Pd
species adsorbed on substrate surfaces was higher than that of sample
pretreated with a conventional activation process without ultrasound
irradiation. With this activation method, it was also shown that the
adsorbed Pd species with a size of about 5 nm were uniformly
distributed on the surfaces, thus a smooth and uniform coating on the
surfaces was obtained by subsequent electroless silver plating. The
samples after each step were characterized by AFM, XPS, FIB, and
SEM.