Abstract: Nowadays, quasi-continuous wave diode lasers are
used in a widespread variety of applications. Temperature effects in
these lasers can strongly influence their performance. In this paper,
the effects of temperature have been experimentally investigated on
different features of a 60W-QCW diode laser. The obtained results
indicate that the conversion efficiency and operation voltage of diode
laser decrease with the augmentation of the working temperature
associated with a redshift in the laser peak wavelength. Experimental
results show the emission peak wavelength of laser shifts 0.26 nm
and the conversion efficiency decreases 1.76 % with the increase of
temperature from 40 to 50 ̊C. Present study also shows the slope
efficiency decreases gradually at low temperatures and rapidly at
higher temperatures. Regarding the close dependence of the
mentioned parameters to the operating temperature, it is of great
importance to carefully control the working temperature of diode
laser, particularly for medical applications.
Abstract: A new and novel approach in medicine is the use of
cold plasma for various applications such as sterilization blood
coagulation and cancer cell treatment. In this paper a pin-to-hole
plasma jet suitable for biological applications is investigated and
characterized and the possibility and feasibility of cancer cell
treatment is evaluated. The characterization includes power
consumption via Lissajous method, thermal behavior of plasma using
Infra-red camera as a novel method, Optical Emission Spectroscopy
(OES) to determine the species that are generated. Treatment of
leukemia cancer cells is also implemented and MTT assay is used to
evaluate viability.
Abstract: Nowadays there are lots of applications of power and
free conveyors in logistics. They are the most frequently used
conveyor systems worldwide. Overhead conveyor technologies like
power and free systems are used in the most intra-logistics
applications in trade and industry. The automotive, food, beverage
and textile industry as well as aeronautic catering or engineering are
among the applications. Power and free systems employ different
manufacturing intervals in manufacturing as well as in production as
temporary store and buffer. Depending on the application area, power
and free conveyors are equipped with target controls enabling
complex distribution-and sorting tasks. This article introduces a new
power and free conveyor design in intra-logistics and explains its
components. According to the explanation of the components, a
model is created by means of their technical characteristics. Through
the CAD software, the model is visualized. After that, the static
analysis is evaluated. This analysis helps the calculation of the
mandatory state of structures under force action. This powerful model
helps companies achieve lower development costs as well as quicker
market maturity.
Abstract: Atmospheric plasma is emerging as a promising
technology for many industrial sectors, because of its ecological and
economic advantages respect to the traditional production processes.
For textile industry, atmospheric plasma is becoming a valid
alternative to the conventional wet processes, but the plasma
machines realized so far do not allow the treatment of fibrous
mechanically weak material.
Novel atmospheric plasma machine for industrial applications,
developed by VenetoNanotech SCpA in collaboration with Italian
producer of corona equipment ME.RO SpA is presented. The main
feature of this pre-industrial scale machine is the possibility of the inline
plasma treatment of delicate fibrous substrates such as fibre
sleeves, for example wool tops, cotton fibres, polymeric tows,
mineral fibers and so on, avoiding burnings and disruption of the
faint materials.
Abstract: Overhead conveyor systems satisfy by their simple
construction, wide application range and their full compatibility with
other manufacturing systems, which are designed according to
international standards. Ultra-light overhead conveyor systems are
rope-based conveying systems with individually driven vehicles. The
vehicles can move automatically on the rope and this can be realized
by energy and signals. Crossings are realized by switches. Overhead
conveyor systems are particularly used in the automotive industry but
also at post offices. Overhead conveyor systems always must be
integrated with a logistical process by finding the best way for a
cheaper material flow and in order to guarantee precise and fast
workflows. With their help, any transport can take place without
wasting ground and space, without excessive company capacity, lost
or damaged products, erroneous delivery, endless travels and without
wasting time. Ultra-light overhead conveyor systems provide optimal
material flow, which produces profit and saves time. This article
illustrates the advantages of the structure of the ultra-light overhead
conveyor systems in logistics applications and explains the steps of
their system design. After an illustration of the steps, currently
available systems on the market will be shown by means of their
technical characteristics. Due to their simple construction, demands
to an ultra-light overhead conveyor system will be illustrated.
Abstract: Estimating the lifetime distribution of computer networks in which nodes and links exist in time and are bound for failure is very useful in various applications. This problem is known to be NP-hard. In this paper we present efficient combinatorial approaches to Monte Carlo estimation of network lifetime distribution. We also present some simulation results.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to develop a new two dimensional time accurate Euler solver for shock tube applications. The solver was developed to study the performance of a newly built short-duration hypersonic test facility at Universiti Tenaga Nasional “UNITEN" in Malaysia. The facility has been designed, built, and commissioned for different values of diaphragm pressure ratios in order to get wide range of Mach number. The developed solver uses second order accurate cell-vertex finite volume spatial discretization and forth order accurate Runge-Kutta temporal integration and it is designed to simulate the flow process for similar driver/driven gases (e.g. air-air as working fluids). The solver is validated against analytical solution and experimental measurements in the high speed flow test facility. Further investigations were made on the flow process inside the shock tube by using the solver. The shock wave motion, reflection and interaction were investigated and their influence on the performance of the shock tube was determined. The results provide very good estimates for both shock speed and shock pressure obtained after diaphragm rupture. Also detailed information on the gasdynamic processes over the full length of the facility is available. The agreements obtained have been reasonable.
Abstract: Zeolite A and MCM-41 have extensive applications in basic science, petrochemical science, energy conservation/storage, medicine, chemical sensor, air purification, environmentally benign composite structure and waste remediation. However, the use of zeolite A and MCM-41 in these areas, especially environmental remediation, are restricted due to prohibitive production cost. Efficient recycling of and resource recovery from coal fly ash has been a major topic of current international research interest, aimed at achieving sustainable development of human society from the viewpoints of energy, economy, and environmental strategy. This project reported an original, novel, green and fast methods to produce nano-porous zeolite A and MCM-41 materials from coal fly ash. For zeolite A, this novel production method allows a reduction by half of the total production time while maintaining a high degree of crystallinity of zeolite A which exists in a narrower particle size distribution. For MCM-41, this remarkably green approach, being an environmentally friendly process and reducing generation of toxic waste, can produce pure and long-range ordered MCM-41 materials from coal fly ash. This approach took 24 h at 25 oC to produce 9 g of MCM-41 materials from 30 g of the coal fly ash, which is the shortest time and lowest reaction temperature required to produce pure and ordered MCM-41 materials (having the largest internal surface area) compared to the values reported in the literature. Performance evaluation of the produced zeolite A and MCM-41 materials in wastewater treatment and air pollution control were reported. The residual fly ash was also converted to zeolite Na-P1 which showed good performance in removal of multi-metal ions in wastewater. In wastewater treatment, compared to commercial-grade zeolite A, adsorbents produced from coal fly ash were effective in removing multi heavy metal ions in water and could be an alternative material for treatment of wastewater. In methane emission abatement, the zeolite A (produced from coal fly ash) achieved similar methane removal efficiency compared to the zeolite A prepared from pure chemicals. This report provides the guidance for production of zeolite A and MCM-41 from coal fly ash by a cost-effective approach which opens potential applications of these materials in environmental industry. Finally, environmental and economic aspects of production of zeolite A and MCM-41 from coal fly ash were discussed.
Abstract: Privacy issues commonly discussed among
researchers, practitioners, and end-users in pervasive healthcare.
Pervasive healthcare systems are applications that can support
patient-s need anytime and anywhere. However, pervasive healthcare
raises privacy concerns since it can lead to situations where patients
may not be aware that their private information is being shared and
becomes vulnerable to threat. We have systematically analyzed the
privacy issues and present a summary in tabular form to show the
relationship among the issues. The six issues identified are medical
information misuse, prescription leakage, medical information
eavesdropping, social implications for the patient, patient difficulties
in managing privacy settings, and lack of support in designing
privacy-sensitive applications. We narrow down the issues and chose
to focus on the issue of 'lack of support in designing privacysensitive
applications' by proposing a privacy-sensitive architecture
specifically designed for pervasive healthcare monitoring systems.
Abstract: Yam starch obtained from the water yam (munlued)
by the wet milling process was studied for some physicochemical
properties. Yam starch film was prepared by casting using glycerol as
a plasticizer. The effect of different glycerol (1.30, 1.65 and
2.00g/100g of filmogenic solution) and starch concentrations (3.30,
3.65 and 4.00g /100g of filmogenic solution) were evaluated on some
characteristics of the film. The temperature for obtaining the
gelatinized starch solution was 70-80°C and then dried at 45°C for 4
hours. The resulting starch from munlued granular morphology was
triangular and the average size of the granule was 26.68 μm. The
amylose content by colorimetric method was 26 % and the gelatinize
temperature was 70-80°C. The appearance of the film was smooth,
transparent, and glossy with average moisture content of 25.96% and
thickness of 0.01mm. Puncture deformation and flexibility increased
with glycerol content. The starch and glycerol concentration were a
significant factor of the yam starch film characteristics. Yam starch
film can be described as a biofilm providing many applications and
developments with the advantage of biodegradability.
Abstract: Multi-energy systems will enhance the system
reliability and power quality. This paper presents an integrated
approach for the design and operation of distributed energy resources
(DER) systems, based on energy hub modeling. A multi-objective
optimization model is developed by considering an integrated view of
electricity and natural gas network to analyze the optimal design and
operating condition of DER systems, by considering two conflicting
objectives, namely, minimization of total cost and the minimization
of environmental impact which is assessed in terms of CO2
emissions. The mathematical model considers energy demands of the
site, local climate data, and utility tariff structure, as well as technical
and financial characteristics of the candidate DER technologies. To
provide energy demands, energy systems including photovoltaic, and
co-generation systems, boiler, central power grid are considered. As
an illustrative example, a hotel in Iran demonstrates potential
applications of the proposed method. The results prove that
increasing the satisfaction degree of environmental objective leads to
increased total cost.
Abstract: Embedded systems need to respect stringent real
time constraints. Various hardware components included in such
systems such as cache memories exhibit variability and therefore
affect execution time. Indeed, a cache memory access from an
embedded microprocessor might result in a cache hit where the
data is available or a cache miss and the data need to be fetched
with an additional delay from an external memory. It is therefore
highly desirable to predict future memory accesses during
execution in order to appropriately prefetch data without incurring
delays. In this paper, we evaluate the potential of several artificial
neural networks for the prediction of instruction memory
addresses. Neural network have the potential to tackle the nonlinear
behavior observed in memory accesses during program
execution and their demonstrated numerous hardware
implementation emphasize this choice over traditional forecasting
techniques for their inclusion in embedded systems. However,
embedded applications execute millions of instructions and
therefore millions of addresses to be predicted. This very
challenging problem of neural network based prediction of large
time series is approached in this paper by evaluating various neural
network architectures based on the recurrent neural network
paradigm with pre-processing based on the Self Organizing Map
(SOM) classification technique.
Abstract: Partitioning is a critical area of VLSI CAD. In order to build complex digital logic circuits its often essential to sub-divide multi -million transistor design into manageable Pieces. This paper looks at the various partitioning techniques aspects of VLSI CAD, targeted at various applications. We proposed an evolutionary time-series model and a statistical glitch prediction system using a neural network with selection of global feature by making use of clustering method model, for partitioning a circuit. For evolutionary time-series model, we made use of genetic, memetic & neuro-memetic techniques. Our work focused in use of clustering methods - K-means & EM methodology. A comparative study is provided for all techniques to solve the problem of circuit partitioning pertaining to VLSI design. The performance of all approaches is compared using benchmark data provided by MCNC standard cell placement benchmark net lists. Analysis of the investigational results proved that the Neuro-memetic model achieves greater performance then other model in recognizing sub-circuits with minimum amount of interconnections between them.
Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used to monitor/observe vast inaccessible regions through deployment of large number of sensor nodes in the sensing area. For majority of WSN applications, the collected data needs to be combined with geographic information of its origin to make it useful for the user; information received from remote Sensor Nodes (SNs) that are several hops away from base station/sink is meaningless without knowledge of its source. In addition to this, location information of SNs can also be used to propose/develop new network protocols for WSNs to improve their energy efficiency and lifetime. In this paper, range free localization protocols for WSNs have been proposed. The proposed protocols are based on weighted centroid localization technique, where the edge weights of SNs are decided by utilizing fuzzy logic inference for received signal strength and link quality between the nodes. The fuzzification is carried out using (i) Mamdani, (ii) Sugeno, and (iii) Combined Mamdani Sugeno fuzzy logic inference. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed protocols provide better accuracy in node localization compared to conventional centroid based localization protocols despite presence of unintentional radio frequency interference from radio frequency (RF) sources operating in same frequency band.
Abstract: This paper presents an approach for an unequal error
protection of facial features of personal ID images coding. We
consider unequal error protection (UEP) strategies for the efficient
progressive transmission of embedded image codes over noisy
channels. This new method is based on the progressive image
compression embedded zerotree wavelet (EZW) algorithm and UEP
technique with defined region of interest (ROI). In this case is ROI
equal facial features within personal ID image. ROI technique is
important in applications with different parts of importance. In ROI
coding, a chosen ROI is encoded with higher quality than the
background (BG). Unequal error protection of image is provided by
different coding techniques and encoding LL band separately. In our
proposed method, image is divided into two parts (ROI, BG) that
consist of more important bytes (MIB) and less important bytes
(LIB). The proposed unequal error protection of image transmission
has shown to be more appropriate to low bit rate applications,
producing better quality output for ROI of the compresses image.
The experimental results verify effectiveness of the design. The
results of our method demonstrate the comparison of the UEP of
image transmission with defined ROI with facial features and the
equal error protection (EEP) over additive white gaussian noise
(AWGN) channel.
Abstract: This paper examines the interplay of policy options
and cost-effective technology in providing sustainable distance
education. A case study has been conducted among the learners and
teachers. The emergence of learning technologies through CD,
internet, and mobile is increasingly adopted by distance institutes for
quick delivery and cost-effective factors. Their sustainability is
conditioned by the structure of learners and well as the teaching
community. The structure of learners in terms of rural and urban
background revealed similarity in adoption and utilization of mobile
learning. In other words, the technology transcended the rural-urban
dichotomy. The teaching community was divided into two groups on
policy issues. This study revealed both cost-effective as well as
sustainability impacts on different learners groups divided by rural
and urban location.
Abstract: Data Mining aims at discovering knowledge out of
data and presenting it in a form that is easily comprehensible to
humans. One of the useful applications in Egypt is the Cancer
management, especially the management of Acute Lymphoblastic
Leukemia or ALL, which is the most common type of cancer in
children.
This paper discusses the process of designing a prototype that can
help in the management of childhood ALL, which has a great
significance in the health care field. Besides, it has a social impact
on decreasing the rate of infection in children in Egypt. It also
provides valubale information about the distribution and
segmentation of ALL in Egypt, which may be linked to the possible
risk factors.
Undirected Knowledge Discovery is used since, in the case of this
research project, there is no target field as the data provided is
mainly subjective. This is done in order to quantify the subjective
variables. Therefore, the computer will be asked to identify
significant patterns in the provided medical data about ALL. This
may be achieved through collecting the data necessary for the
system, determimng the data mining technique to be used for the
system, and choosing the most suitable implementation tool for the
domain.
The research makes use of a data mining tool, Clementine, so as to
apply Decision Trees technique. We feed it with data extracted from
real-life cases taken from specialized Cancer Institutes. Relevant
medical cases details such as patient medical history and diagnosis
are analyzed, classified, and clustered in order to improve the disease
management.
Abstract: A novel nanofinishing process using improved ball
end magnetorheological (MR) finishing tool was developed for finishing of flat as well as 3D surfaces of ferromagnetic and non ferromagnetic workpieces. In this process a magnetically controlled
ball end of smart MR polishing fluid is generated at the tip surface of
the tool which is used as a finishing medium and it is guided to
follow the surface to be finished through computer controlled 3-axes
motion controller. The experiments were performed on ferromagnetic
workpiece surface in the developed MR finishing setup to study the effect of finishing time on final surface roughness. The performance
of present finishing process on final finished surface roughness was studied. The surface morphology was observed under scanning
electron microscopy and atomic force microscope. The final surface finish was obtained as low as 19.7 nm from the initial surface
roughness of 142.9 nm. The outcome of newly developed finishing process can be found useful in its applications in aerospace,
automotive, dies and molds manufacturing industries, semiconductor and optics machining etc.
Abstract: Green house effect has becomes a serious concern in
many countries due to the increase consumption of the fossil fuel.
There have been many studies to find an alternative power source.
Wind energy found to be one of the most useful solutions to help in
overcoming the air pollution and global. There is no agreed solution
to conversion of wind energy to electrical energy. In this paper, the
advantages of using a Switched Reluctance Generator (SRG) for
wind energy applications. The theoretical study of the self excitation
of a SRG and the determination of the variable parameters in a SRG
design are discussed. The design parameters for the maximum power
output of the SRG are computed using Matlab simulation. The
designs of the circuit to control the variable parameters in a SRG to
provide the maximum power output are also discussed.
Abstract: Fake finger submission attack is a major problem in fingerprint recognition systems. In this paper, we introduce an aliveness detection method based on multiple static features, which derived from a single fingerprint image. The static features are comprised of individual pore spacing, residual noise and several first order statistics. Specifically, correlation filter is adopted to address individual pore spacing. The multiple static features are useful to reflect the physiological and statistical characteristics of live and fake fingerprint. The classification can be made by calculating the liveness scores from each feature and fusing the scores through a classifier. In our dataset, we compare nine classifiers and the best classification rate at 85% is attained by using a Reduced Multivariate Polynomial classifier. Our approach is faster and more convenient for aliveness check for field applications.