PEIBM- Perceiving Emotions using an Intelligent Behavioral Model

Computer animation is a widely adopted technique used to specify the movement of various objects on screen. The key issue of this technique is the specification of motion. Motion Control Methods are such methods which are used to specify the actions of objects. This paper discusses the various types of motion control methods with special focus on behavioral animation. A behavioral model is also proposed which takes into account the emotions and perceptions of an actor which in turn generate its behavior. This model makes use of an expert system to generate tasks for the actors which specify the actions to be performed in the virtual environment.

Improving Multi-storey Building Sensor Network with an External Hub

Monitoring and automatic control of building environment is a crucial application of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in which maximizing network lifetime is a key challenge. Previous research into the performance of a network in a building environment has been concerned with radio propagation within a single floor. We investigate the link quality distribution to obtain full coverage of signal strength in a four-storey building environment, experimentally. Our results indicate that the transitional region is of particular concern in wireless sensor network since it accommodates high variance unreliable links. The transitional region in a multi-storey building is mainly due to the presence of reinforced concrete slabs at each storey and the fac┬©ade which obstructs the radio signal and introduces an additional absorption term to the path loss.

Development of Low-Profile Antenna for Mini UAV with Reconnaissance Mission

Microstrip antennas are conformable to planar and nonplanar surfaces, simple and inexpensive to fabricate using modern printed-circuit technology. Circular polarization of low-profile microstrip patch with high bandwidth is achieved in this research through the use of a three-cross-arms branch-line coupler with sequential rotated arrays, another low-profile antenna of hollow cylinder is also proposed and the function of reconnaissance with microstrip antenna on Mini UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) are evaluated in practical flight test.

The Efficiency of Irrigation System and Nitrogen Fixation for inoculated Soybeans by using N15 Tracer Techniques

Repeated additions of the unfertilized bacteria led to increase the activity of Nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the root zone with drip irrigation system compared to traditional manual vaccination to increase the proportion of Nitrogen from 29% to 64%, and the efficiency of adding Nitrogen fertilizer did not exceed 9.5% while dropped to 4%, due to the amount of fertilizer added was not exceed 20kg N/h, and the second was the existence of a large amount of available Nitrogen in the soil by fixation, while the efficiency of irrigation system between 2.08 to 2.26 kg/m3.

Strength Optimization of Induction Hardened Splined Shaft – Material and Geometric Aspects

the current study presents a modeling framework to determine the torsion strength of an induction hardened splined shaft by considering geometry and material aspects with the aim to optimize the static torsion strength by selection of spline geometry and hardness depth. Six different spline geometries and seven different hardness profiles including non-hardened and throughhardened shafts have been considered. The results reveal that the torque that causes initial yielding of the induction hardened splined shaft is strongly dependent on the hardness depth and the geometry of the spline teeth. Guidelines for selection of the appropriate hardness depth and spline geometry are given such that an optimum static torsion strength of the component can be achieved.

Robust Adaptive Vibration Control with Application to a Robot Beam

This paper presents the adaptive control scheme with sliding mode compensator for vibration control problem in the presence of disturbance. The dynamic model of the flexible cantilever beam using finite element modeling is derived. The adaptive control with sliding mode compensator using output feedback for output tracking is developed to reject the external disturbance, and to improve the tracking performance. Satisfactory simulation results verify that the effectiveness of adaptive control scheme with sliding mode compensator.

Difference of Properties on Surface Leakage and Discharge Currents of Porcelain Insulator Material

This paper presents the experimental results of comparison between leakage currents and discharge currents. The leakage currents were obtained on polluted porcelain insulator. Whereas, the discharge currents were obtained on lightly artificial polluted porcelain specimen. The conducted measurements were leakage current or discharge current and applied voltage. The insulator or specimen was in a hermetically sealed chamber, and the current waveforms were analyzed using FFT. The result indicated that the leakage current (LC) on low RH condition the fifth harmonic would be visible, and followed by the seventh harmonic. The insulator had capacitive property. Otherwise, on 99% relative humidity, the fifth harmonic would also be visible, and the phase angle reached up to 12.2 degree. Whereas, on discharge current, the third harmonic would be visible, and followed by fifth harmonic. The third harmonic would increase as pressure reduced. On this condition, the specimen had a non-linear characteristics

Corruption, Economic Growth, and Income Inequality: Evidence from Ten Countries in Asia

This study utilizes the panel vector error correction model (PVECM) to examine the relationship among corruption, economic growth, and income inequality experienced within ten Asian countries over the 1995 to 2010 period. According to the empirical results, we do not support the common perception that corruption decreases economic growth. On the contrary, we found that corruption increases economic growth. Meanwhile, an increase in economic growth will cause an increase in income inequality, although the effect is insignificant. Similarly, an increase in income inequality will cause an increase in economic growth but a decrease in corruption, although the effect is also insignificant.

Optoelectronic Automated System for Length and Profile Measurements

In this work the design and characterization of an optoelectronic automated measurement system it is presented. The optoelectronic devices of this system are an optical transmitter, the optical components and the optical receiver, which were selected for a great precision of the system. The mechanical system allows free displacement of the components as well as the devices that generate the movement. The results, length and profile of the objects are display in Lab View.

Synergies between Physical and Electronic Developments: A Case Study of Taipei City

It is claimed that a new style of urban planning and policy intertwined with ICT is emerging and urban planning and ICT policy are no longer considered as separate disciplines. The interactions between electronic spaces and urban spaces are so complex and uncertain that confront urban planners and policy makers with great challenges. However, the assumption about the relationship between ICT and urban planning is mainly based on North American and European experiences. In the light of empirical evidence from Taipei City, this paper shows that this new type of urban planning and policy intertwined with ICT has existed in Asian city for a decade as well. Based on these results, this paper further reviews how the Taipei City government implements this new type of urban ICT planning and the validity and realism of its underlying assumptions. Finally, it also explores the extent to which urban ICT planning could promote positive synergies between physical and electronic developments.

A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Sequence Dependent Flow-Shop Scheduling Problem

Flow-shop scheduling problem (FSP) deals with the scheduling of a set of jobs that visit a set of machines in the same order. The FSP is NP-hard, which means that an efficient algorithm for solving the problem to optimality is unavailable. To meet the requirements on time and to minimize the make-span performance of large permutation flow-shop scheduling problems in which there are sequence dependent setup times on each machine, this paper develops one hybrid genetic algorithms (HGA). Proposed HGA apply a modified approach to generate population of initial chromosomes and also use an improved heuristic called the iterated swap procedure to improve initial solutions. Also the author uses three genetic operators to make good new offspring. The results are compared to some recently developed heuristics and computational experimental results show that the proposed HGA performs very competitively with respect to accuracy and efficiency of solution.

Vulnerability Assessment of Blida City

The seismic vulnerability of an urban area is of a great deal for local authorities especially those facing earthquakes. So, it is important to have an efficient tool to assess the vulnerability of existing buildings. The use of the VIP (Vulnerability Index Program) and the GIS (Geographic Information System) let us to identify the most vulnerable districts of an urban area. The use of the vulnerability index method lets us to assess the vulnerability of the center town of Blida (Algeria) which is a historical town and which has grown enormously during the last decades. In this method, three levels of vulnerability are defined. The GIS has been used to build a data base in order to perform different thematic analyses. These analyses show the seismic vulnerability of Blida.

Study of the Vertical Handoff in Heterogeneous Networks and Implement Based On Opnet

In this document we studied more in detail the Performances of the vertical handover in the networks WLAN, WiMAX, UMTS before studying of it the Procedure of Handoff Vertical, the whole buckled by simulations putting forward the performances of the handover in the heterogeneous networks. The goal of Vertical Handover is to carry out several accesses in real-time in the heterogeneous networks. This makes it possible a user to use several networks (such as WLAN UMTS andWiMAX) in parallel, and the system to commutate automatically at another basic station, without disconnecting itself, as if there were no cut and with little loss of data as possible.

Process Optimization for Enhanced Production of Cell Biomass and Metabolites of Fluorescent Pseudomonad R81

The fluorescent pseudomonad strain R81 is a root colonizing rhizobacteria which promotes the growth of many plants by various mechanisms. Its broth containing siderophore (ironchelating compound) and 2,4- diacetyl phloroglucinol (DAPG) is used for preparing bioinoculant formulations for agronomical applications. Glycerol was found to be the best carbon source for improved biomass production. Splitting of nitrogen source to NH4Cl and urea had a stabilizing effect on pH during batch cultivation. Ltryptophan at 0.5 % in the medium increased the siderophore production to 850 mg/l. During batch cultivation of the strain in a bioreactor, a maximum of 4 g/l of dry cell mass, 1.8 g/l of siderophore and 20 mg/l of DAPG was achieved when glycerol was 15 g/l and C/N ratio was maintained at 12.5. In case of intermittent feeding of fresh medium during fed-batch cultivation, the dry cell mass was increased to 25 g/l with improved production of DAPG to 70 mg/l.

Image Sensor Matrix High Speed Simulation

This paper presents a new high speed simulation methodology to solve the long simulation time problem of CMOS image sensor matrix. Generally, for integrating the pixel matrix in SOC and simulating the system performance, designers try to model the pixel in various modeling languages such as VHDL-AMS, SystemC or Matlab. We introduce a new alternative method based on spice model in cadence design platform to achieve accuracy and reduce simulation time. The simulation results indicate that the pixel output voltage maximum error is at 0.7812% and time consumption reduces from 2.2 days to 13 minutes achieving about 240X speed-up for the 256x256 pixel matrix.

Modelling Dengue Fever (DF) and Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) Outbreak Using Poisson and Negative Binomial Model

Dengue fever has become a major concern for health authorities all over the world particularly in the tropical countries. These countries, in particular are experiencing the most worrying outbreak of dengue fever (DF) and dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF). The DF and DHF epidemics, thus, have become the main causes of hospital admissions and deaths in Malaysia. This paper, therefore, attempts to examine the environmental factors that may influence the recent dengue outbreak. The aim of this study is twofold, firstly is to establish a statistical model to describe the relationship between the number of dengue cases and a range of explanatory variables and secondly, to identify the lag operator for explanatory variables which affect the dengue incidence the most. The explanatory variables involved include the level of cloud cover, percentage of relative humidity, amount of rainfall, maximum temperature, minimum temperature and wind speed. The Poisson and Negative Binomial regression analyses were used in this study. The results of the analyses on the 915 observations (daily data taken from July 2006 to Dec 2008), reveal that the climatic factors comprising of daily temperature and wind speed were found to significantly influence the incidence of dengue fever after 2 and 3 weeks of their occurrences. The effect of humidity, on the other hand, appears to be significant only after 2 weeks.

Assessment of Vulnerability and Risk of Taijiang Coastal Areas to Climatic Changes

This study aims to assess the vulnerability and risk of the coastal areas of Taijiang to abnormal oceanographic phenomena. In addition, this study aims to investigate and collect data regarding the disaster losses, land utilization, and other social, economic, and environmental issues in these coastal areas to construct a coastal vulnerability and risk map based on the obtained climate-change risk assessment results. Considering the indexes of the three coastal vulnerability dimensions, namely, man-made facilities, environmental geography, and social economy, this study adopted the equal weighting process and Analytic Hierarchy Process to analyze the vulnerability of these coastal areas to disasters caused by climatic changes. Among the areas with high coastal vulnerability to climatic changes, three towns had the highest coastal vulnerability and four had the highest relative vulnerability. Areas with lower disaster risks were found to be increasingly vulnerable to disasters caused by climatic changes as time progresses.

A Case Study on the Efficacy of Technical Laboratory Safety in Polytechnic

Technical laboratories are typically considered as highly hazardous places in the polytechnic institution when addressing the problems of high incidences and fatality rates. In conjunction with several topics covered in the technical curricular, safety and health precaution should be highlighted in order to connect to few key ideas of being safe. Therefore the assessment of safety awareness in terms of safety and health about hazardous and risks at laboratories is needed and has to be incorporated with technical education and other training programmes. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of technical laboratory safety in one of the polytechnics in northern region. The study examined three related issues that were; the availability of safety material and equipment, safety practice adopted by technical teachers and administrator-s safety attitudes in enforcing safety to the students. A model of efficacy technical laboratory was developed to test the linear relationship between existing safety material and equipment, teachers- safety practice and administrators- attitude in enforcing safety and to identify which of technical laboratory safety issues was the most pertinent factor to realize safety in technical laboratory. This was done by analyzing survey-based data sets particularly those obtained from samples of 210 students in the polytechnic. The Pearson Correlation was used to measure the association between the variables and to test the research hypotheses. The result of the study has found that there was a significant correlation between existing safety material and equipment, safety practice adopted by teacher and administrator-s attitude. There was also a significant relationship between technical laboratory safety and safety practice adopted by teacher and between technical laboratory safety and administrator attitude. Hence, safety practice adopted by teacher and administrator attitude is vital in realizing technical laboratory safety.

Performance Evaluation of a Neural Network based General Purpose Space Vector Modulator

Space Vector Modulation (SVM) is an optimum Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique for an inverter used in a variable frequency drive applications. It is computationally rigorous and hence limits the inverter switching frequency. Increase in switching frequency can be achieved using Neural Network (NN) based SVM, implemented on application specific chips. This paper proposes a neural network based SVM technique for a Voltage Source Inverter (VSI). The network proposed is independent of switching frequency. Different architectures are investigated keeping the total number of neurons constant. The performance of the inverter is compared for various switching frequencies for different architectures of NN based SVM. From the results obtained, the network with minimum resource and appropriate word length is identified. The bit precision required for this application is identified. The network with 8-bit precision is implemented in the IC XCV 400 and the results are presented. The performance of NN based general purpose SVM with higher bit precision is discussed.

Authenticated Mobile Device Proxy Service

In the current study we present a system that is capable to deliver proxy based differentiated service. It will help the carrier service node to sell a prepaid service to clients and limit the use to a particular mobile device or devices for a certain time. The system includes software and hardware architecture for a mobile device with moderate computational power, and a secure protocol for communication between it and its carrier service node. On the carrier service node a proxy runs on a centralized server to be capable of implementing cryptographic algorithms, while the mobile device contains a simple embedded processor capable of executing simple algorithms. One prerequisite is needed for the system to run efficiently that is a presence of Global Trusted Verification Authority (GTVA) which is equivalent to certifying authority in IP networks. This system appears to be of great interest for many commercial transactions, business to business electronic and mobile commerce, and military applications.