Abstract: Spherical shaped magnetite (Fe3O4) and Au@Fe3O4
nanoparticles were successfully synthesized from Fe electrodes
immersed in water with CTAB surfactant and HAuCl4 solution using
simple method-pulsed plasma in liquid, without the use of dopants or
special conditions for stabilization. Vibrating sample magnetometer
indicated ferromagnetic behavior of particles at room temperature with
coercivity and saturation magnetization of (Hc=105 Oe, Ms=6.83
emu/g) for Fe3O4 and (Hc=175, Ms=3.56emu/g) for Au@Fe3O4
nanoparticles. Structure and morphology of nanoparticles were
characterized by X-ray Diffraction analysis and HR-TEM
measurements. The cytotoxicity of nanoparticles was indicated using a
XTT assay to be very low (cell viability: 98-89% with Fe3O4 and
99-91% for Au@Fe3O4 NPs).
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: The need for multilingual communication in Japan has
increased due to an increase in the number of foreigners in the
country. When people communicate in their nonnative language,
the differences in language prevent mutual understanding among
the communicating individuals. In the medical field, communication
between the hospital staff and patients is a serious problem. Currently,
medical translators accompany patients to medical care facilities, and
the demand for medical translators is increasing. However, medical
translators cannot necessarily provide support, especially in cases in
which round-the-clock support is required or in case of emergencies.
The medical field has high expectations from information technology.
Hence, a system that supports accurate multilingual communication is
required. Despite recent advances in machine translation technology,
it is very difficult to obtain highly accurate translations. We have
developed a support system called M3 for multilingual medical
reception. M3 provides support functions that aid foreign patients in
the following respects: conversation, questionnaires, reception procedures,
and hospital navigation; it also has a Q&A function. Users
can operate M3 using a touch screen and receive text-based support.
In addition, M3 uses accurate translation tools called parallel texts
to facilitate reliable communication through conversations between
the hospital staff and the patients. However, if there is no parallel
text that expresses what users want to communicate, the users cannot
communicate. In this study, we have developed a circulating support
environment for multilingual medical communication using parallel
texts. The proposed environment can circulate necessary parallel texts
through the following procedure: (1) a user provides feedback about
the necessary parallel texts, following which (2) these parallel texts
are created and evaluated.
Abstract: With the advent of digital cinema and digital
broadcasting, copyright protection of video data has been one of the
most important issues.
We present a novel method of watermarking for video image data
based on the hardware and digital wavelet transform techniques and
name it as “traceable watermarking" because the watermarked data is
constructed before the transmission process and traced after it has been
received by an authorized user.
In our method, we embed the watermark to the lowest part of each
image frame in decoded video by using a hardware LSI.
Digital Cinema is an important application for traceable
watermarking since digital cinema system makes use of watermarking
technology during content encoding, encryption, transmission,
decoding and all the intermediate process to be done in digital cinema
systems. The watermark is embedded into the randomly selected
movie frames using hash functions.
Embedded watermark information can be extracted from the
decoded video data. For that, there is no need to access original movie
data. Our experimental results show that proposed traceable
watermarking method for digital cinema system is much better than the
convenient watermarking techniques in terms of robustness, image
quality, speed, simplicity and robust structure.
Abstract: This paper describes the study of cryptographic hash functions, one of the most important classes of primitives used in recent techniques in cryptography. The main aim is the development of recent crypt analysis hash function. We present different approaches to defining security properties more formally and present basic attack on hash function. We recall Merkle-Damgard security properties of iterated hash function. The Main aim of this paper is the development of recent techniques applicable to crypt Analysis hash function, mainly from SHA family. Recent proposed attacks an MD5 & SHA motivate a new hash function design. It is designed not only to have higher security but also to be faster than SHA-256. The performance of the new hash function is at least 30% better than that of SHA-256 in software. And it is secure against any known cryptographic attacks on hash functions.
Abstract: This study describes analysis of tower grounding
resistance effected the back flashover voltage across insulator string
in a transmission system. This paper studies the 500 kV transmission
lines from Mae Moh, Lampang to Nong Chok, Bangkok, Thailand,
which is double circuit in the same steel tower with two overhead
ground wires. The factor of this study includes magnitude of
lightning stroke, and front time of lightning stroke. Steel tower uses
multistory tower model. The assumption of studies based on the
return stroke current ranged 1-200 kA, front time of lightning stroke
between 1 μs to 3 μs. The simulations study the effect of varying
tower grounding resistance that affect the lightning current.
Simulation results are analyzed lightning over voltage that causes
back flashover at insulator strings. This study helps to know causes
of problems of back flashover the transmission line system, and also
be as a guideline solving the problem for 500 kV transmission line
systems, as well.
Abstract: In the present study, a procedure was developed to
determine the optimum reaction rate constants in generalized
Arrhenius form and optimized through the Nelder-Mead method. For
this purpose, a comprehensive mathematical model of a fixed bed
reactor for dehydrogenation of heavy paraffins over Pt–Sn/Al2O3
catalyst was developed. Utilizing appropriate kinetic rate expressions
for the main dehydrogenation reaction as well as side reactions and
catalyst deactivation, a detailed model for the radial flow reactor was
obtained. The reactor model composed of a set of partial differential
equations (PDE), ordinary differential equations (ODE) as well as
algebraic equations all of which were solved numerically to
determine variations in components- concentrations in term of mole
percents as a function of time and reactor radius. It was demonstrated
that most significant variations observed at the entrance of the bed
and the initial olefin production obtained was rather high. The
aforementioned method utilized a direct-search optimization
algorithm along with the numerical solution of the governing
differential equations. The usefulness and validity of the method was
demonstrated by comparing the predicted values of the kinetic
constants using the proposed method with a series of experimental
values reported in the literature for different systems.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for the effective implementation of Six Sigma in non-formal service Sectors.
Based on the survey of literature, the critical success factors (CSFs) for Six Sigma have been identified and are assessed for their importance in Non-formal service sector using Delphi Technique. These selected CSFs were put forth to the panel of expert to cluster them and prepare cognitive map to establish their relationship.
All the critical success factors examined and obtained from the review of literature have been assessed for their importance with respect to their contribution to Six Sigma effectiveness in non formal service sector.
The study is limited to the non-formal service sectors involved in the organization of religious festival only. However, the similar exercise can be conducted for broader sample of other non-formal service sectors like temple/ashram management, religious tours management etc.
The research suggests an approach to identify CSFs of Six Sigma for Non-formal service sector. All the CSFs of the formal service sector will not be applicable to Non-formal services, hence opinion of experts was sought to add or delete the CSFs. In the first round of Delphi, the panel of experts has suggested, two new CSFs-“competitive benchmarking (F19) and resident’s involvement (F28)”, which were added for assessment in the next round of Delphi. One of the CSFs-“fulltime six sigma personnel (F15)” has been omitted in proposed clusters of CSFs for non-formal organization, as it is practically impossible to deploy full time trained Six Sigma recruits.
Abstract: In this paper, we proposed a method for detecting consistency violation between state machine diagrams and a sequence diagram defined in UML 2.0 using SMV. We extended a method expressing these diagrams defined in UML 1.0 with boolean formulas so that it can express a sequence diagram with combined fragments introduced in UML 2.0. This extension made it possible to represent three types of combined fragment: alternative, option and parallel. As a result of experiment, we confirmed that the proposed method could detect consistency violation correctly with SMV.
Abstract: Proxy signature helps the proxy signer to sign
messages on behalf of the original signer. It is very useful when
the original signer (e.g. the president of a company) is not
available to sign a specific document. If the original signer can
not forge valid proxy signatures through impersonating the proxy
signer, it will be robust in a virtual environment; thus the original
signer can not shift any illegal action initiated by herself to the
proxy signer. In this paper, we propose a new proxy signature
scheme. The new scheme can prevent the original signer from
impersonating the proxy signer to sign messages. The proposed
scheme is based on the regular ElGamal signature. In addition,
the fair privacy of the proxy signer is maintained. That means,
the privacy of the proxy signer is preserved; and the privacy can
be revealed when it is necessary.
Abstract: Flight management system (FMS) is a specialized
computer system that automates a wide variety of in-flight tasks,
reducing the workload on the flight crew to the point that modern
aircraft no longer carry flight engineers or navigators. The primary
function of FMS is to perform the in-flight management of the flight
plan using various sensors (such as GPS and INS often backed up by
radio navigation) to determine the aircraft's position. From the
cockpit FMS is normally controlled through a Control Display Unit
(CDU) which incorporates a small screen and keyboard or touch
screen. This paper investigates the performance of GPS/ INS
integration techniques in which the data fusion process is done using
Kalman filtering. This will include the importance of sensors
calibration as well as the alignment of the strap down inertial
navigation system. The limitations of the inertial navigation systems
are investigated in order to understand why INS sometimes is
integrated with other navigation aids and not just operating in standalone
mode. Finally, both the loosely coupled and tightly coupled
configurations are analyzed for several types of situations and
operational conditions.
Abstract: The increasing industrialization and motorization of the world has led to a steep rise for the demand of petroleum-based fuels. Petroleum-based fuels are obtained from limited reserves. These finite reserves are highly concentrated in certain regions of the world. Therefore, those countries not having these resources are facing energy/foreign exchange crisis, mainly due to the import of crude petroleum. Hence, it is necessary to look for alternative fuels which can be produced from resources available locally within the country such as alcohol, biodiesel, vegetable oils etc. Biodiesel is a renewable, domestically produced fuel that has been shown to reduce particulate, hydrocarbon, and carbon monoxide emissions from combustion. In the present study an experimental investigation on emission characteristic of a liquid burner system operating on several percentage of biodiesel and gas oil is carried out. Samples of exhaust gas are analysed with Testo 350 Xl. The results show that biodiesel can lower some pollutant such as CO, CO2 and particulate matter emissions while NOx emission would increase in comparison with gas oil. The results indicate there may be benefits to using biodiesel in industrial processes.
Abstract: We successfully developed a new straw combustion
technology that efficiently reduces problems with unmanageable deposits inside straw fueled boilers in Zluticka Heating Plant. The
deposits are mainly created by glass-forming melts. We plotted straw compositions in K2O-CaO-SiO2 phase diagram and illustrated
they are in the area of low-melting eutectic poi
melting of ash and the formation of deposits
compositions by injecting additives into biomass fuel
ueled points. To prevent the
deposits, we modified ash
fuel.
Abstract: In this paper we investigate how wide-ranging
organizational support and the more specific form of support,
namely management support, may influence on tourism workers
satisfaction with a cash transaction system. The IS continuance
theory, proposed by Bhattacherjee in 2001, is utilized as a
theoretical framework. This implies that both perceived usefulness
and ease of use is included in the research model, in addition to
organizational and management support. The sample consists of
500 workers from 10 cruise and tourist ferries in Scandinavia that
use a cash transaction system to perform their work tasks. Using
structural equation modelling, results indicate that organizational
support and ease of use perceptions is critical for the users- level of
satisfaction with the cash transaction system.The findings have
implications for business managers and IS practitioners that want
to increase the quality of IT-based business processes within the
tourism industry.
Abstract: This paper aims to establish a delayed dynamical relationship between payoffs of players in a zero-sum game. By introducing Markovian chain and time delay in the network model, a delayed game network model with sector bounds and slope bounds restriction nonlinear function is first proposed. As a result, a direct dynamical relationship between payoffs of players in a zero-sum game can be illustrated through a delayed singular system. Combined with Finsler-s Lemma and Lyapunov stable theory, a sufficient condition guaranteeing the unique existence and stability of zero-sum game-s Nash equilibrium is derived. One numerical example is presented to illustrate the validity of the main result.
Abstract: The study was conducted to evaluate the quality
characteristics of cookies produced from sweet potato-fermented
soybean flour. Cookies were subjected to proximate and sensory
analysis to determine the acceptability of the product. Protein, fat and
ash increased as the proportion of soybean flour increased, ranging
from 13.8-21.7, 1.22-5.25 and 2.20-2.57 respectively. The crude fibre
content was within the range of 3.08-4.83%. The moisture content of
the cookies decreased with increase in soybean flour from 3.42-
2.13%. Cookies produced from whole sweet potato flour had the
highest moisture content of 3.42% while 30% substitution had the
lowest moisture content 2.13%. A nine point hedonic scale was used
to evaluate the organoleptic characteristics of the cookies. The
sensory analysis indicated that there was no significant difference
between the cookies produced even when compared to the control
100% sweet potato cookies. The overall acceptance of the cookies
was ranked to 20% soybean flour substitute.
Abstract: Prediction of benzene transport in soil and volatilization from soil to the atmosphere is important for the preservation of human health and management of contaminated soils. The adequacy of a simple numerical model, assuming two-phase diffusion and equilibrium of liquid/solid adsorption, was investigated by experimental data of benzene concentration in a flux chamber (with headspace) where Andosol and sand were filled. Adsorption experiment for liquid phase was performed to determine an adsorption coefficient. Furthermore, adequacy of vapor phase adsorption was also studied through two runs of experiment using sand with different water content. The results show that the model adequately predicted benzene transport and volatilization from Andosol and sand with water content of 14.0%. In addition, the experiment additionally revealed that vapor phase adsorption should be considered in diffusion model for sand with very low water content.
Abstract: The crystallization kinetics and phase transformation
of SiO2.Al2O3.0,56P2O5.1,8CaO.0,56CaF2 glass have been
investigated using differential thermal analysis (DTA), x-ray
diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Glass
samples were obtained by melting the glass mixture at 14500С/120
min. in platinum crucibles. The mixture were prepared from
chemically pure reagents: SiO2, Al(OH)3, H3PO4, CaCO3 and CaF2.
The non-isothermal kinetics of crystallization was studied by
applying the DTA measurements carried out at various heating rates.
The activation energies of crystallization and viscous flow were
measured as 348,4 kJ.mol–1 and 479,7 kJ.mol–1 respectively. Value of
Avrami parameter n ≈ 3 correspond to a three dimensional of crystal
growth mechanism. The major crystalline phase determined by XRD
analysis was fluorapatite (Ca(PO4)3F) and as the minor phases –
fluormargarite (CaAl2(Al2SiO2)10F2) and vitlokite (Ca9P6O24). The
resulting glass-ceramic has a homogeneous microstructure, composed
of prismatic crystals, evenly distributed in glass phase.
Abstract: This report shows the performance of composite
biodegradable film from chitosan, starch and sawdust fiber. The main
objectives of this research are to fabricate and characterize composite
biodegradable film in terms of morphology and physical properties.
The film was prepared by casting method. Sawdust fiber was used as
reinforcing agent and starch as polymer matrix in the casting
solution. The morphology of the film was characterized using atomic
force microscope (AFM). The result showed that the film has
smooth structure. Chemical composition of the film was investigated
using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) where the result revealed
present of starch in the film. The thermal properties were
characterized using thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) and
differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) where the results showed
that the film has small difference in melting and degradation
temperature.
Abstract: In this research work, investigations are carried out on
Continuous Wave (CW) Nd:YAG laser welding system after
preliminary experimentation to understand the influencing parameters
associated with laser welding of AISI 304. The experimental
procedure involves a series of laser welding trials on AISI 304
stainless steel sheets with various combinations of process parameters
like beam power, beam incident angle and beam incident angle. An
industrial 2 kW CW Nd:YAG laser system, available at Welding
Research Institute (WRI), BHEL Tiruchirappalli, is used for
conducting the welding trials for this research. After proper tuning of
laser beam, laser welding experiments are conducted on AISI 304
grade sheets to evaluate the influence of various input parameters on
weld bead geometry i.e. bead width (BW) and depth of penetration
(DOP). From the laser welding results, it is noticed that the beam
power and welding speed are the two influencing parameters on
depth and width of the bead. Three dimensional finite element
simulation of high density heat source have been performed for laser
welding technique using finite element code ANSYS for predicting
the temperature profile of laser beam heat source on AISI 304
stainless steel sheets. The temperature dependent material properties
for AISI 304 stainless steel are taken into account in the simulation,
which has a great influence in computing the temperature profiles.
The latent heat of fusion is considered by the thermal enthalpy of
material for calculation of phase transition problem. A Gaussian
distribution of heat flux using a moving heat source with a conical
shape is used for analyzing the temperature profiles. Experimental
and simulated values for weld bead profiles are analyzed for stainless
steel material for different beam power, welding speed and beam
incident angle. The results obtained from the simulation are
compared with those from the experimental data and it is observed
that the results of numerical analysis (FEM) are in good agreement
with experimental results, with an overall percentage of error
estimated to be within ±6%.