Abstract: The general idea behind the filter is to average a pixel
using other pixel values from its neighborhood, but simultaneously to
take care of important image structures such as edges. The main
concern of the proposed filter is to distinguish between any variations
of the captured digital image due to noise and due to image structure.
The edges give the image the appearance depth and sharpness. A
loss of edges makes the image appear blurred or unfocused.
However, noise smoothing and edge enhancement are traditionally
conflicting tasks. Since most noise filtering behaves like a low pass
filter, the blurring of edges and loss of detail seems a natural
consequence. Techniques to remedy this inherent conflict often
encompass generation of new noise due to enhancement.
In this work a new fuzzy filter is presented for the noise reduction
of images corrupted with additive noise. The filter consists of three
stages. (1) Define fuzzy sets in the input space to computes a fuzzy
derivative for eight different directions (2) construct a set of IFTHEN
rules by to perform fuzzy smoothing according to
contributions of neighboring pixel values and (3) define fuzzy sets in
the output space to get the filtered and edged image.
Experimental results are obtained to show the feasibility of the
proposed approach with two dimensional objects.
Abstract: Social resilience has role to govern the local community and coastal fisheries resources toward sustainable fisheries development in tsunami affected area. This paper asses, explore and investigates of indigenous institutions, external and internal facilitators toward strengthening social resilience. Identification of the genuine organizations role had been conducted twice by using Rapid Assessment Appraisal, Focus Group Discussion, and in-depth interview for collecting primary and secondary data. Local wisdom had a contribution and adaptable to rebound social resilience. The Panglima Laot Lhok (sea commander) had determined and adapted role on recovery of the fishing community, particularly facilitated aid delivery to fishermen, as shown in anchovy fisheries relief case in Krueng Raya Bay. Toke Bangku (financial trader) had stimulated for reinforcement of advance payment and market channel. The other institutions supported upon linking and bridging connectivity among stakeholders. Collaborative governance can avoid conflict, reduce donor dependency and strengthen social resilience within fishing community.
Abstract: The fast growing accessibility and capability of emerging technologies have fashioned enormous possibilities of designing, developing and implementing innovative teaching methods in the classroom. The global technological scenario has paved the way to new pedagogies in teaching-learning process focusing on technology based learning environment and its impact on student achievement. The present experimental study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of technology based learning environment on student achievement in English as a foreign language. The sample of the study was 90 students of 10th grade of a public school located in Islamabad. A pretest- posttest equivalent group design was used to compare the achievement of the two groups. A Pretest and A posttest containing 50 items each from English textbook were developed and administered. The collected data were statistically analyzed. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of Experimental group and the Control group. The performance of Experimental group was better on posttest scores that indicted that teaching through technology based learning environment enhanced the achievement level of the students. On the basis of the results, it was recommended that teaching and learning through information and communication technologies may be adopted to enhance the language learning capability of the students.
Abstract: This study investigates a voltage-controllable liquid crystals lens with a Fresnel zone electrode. When applying a proper voltage on the liquid crystal cell, a Fresnel-zone-distributed electric field is induced to direct liquid crystals aligned in a concentric structure. Owing to the concentrically aligned liquid crystals, a Fresnel lens is formed. We probe the Fresnel liquid crystal lens using a polarized incident beam with a wavelength of 632.8 nm, finding that the diffraction efficiency depends on the applying voltage. A remarkable diffraction efficiency of ~39.5 % is measured at the voltage of 0.9V. Additionally, a dual focus lens is fabricated by attaching a plane-convex lens to the Fresnel liquid crystals cell. The Fresnel LC lens and the dual focus lens may be applied for DVD/CD pick-up head, confocal microscopy system, or electrically-controlling optical systems.
Abstract: Ranong province has the best kaolin, and it is the most
useful of all the clay types used in ceramic making. Until recently,
there has been only one community business making ceramics in
Ranong province. And this business could not build the mix of body
and glaze from their raw material without assistance. Considering
these problems, this research is aimed to test the composition of
ceramic body and glaze which suit. Kaolin from Ranong is the raw
material which these search focuses on. All other raw materials use in
the investigation will come from southern Thailand, kaolin and
limestone from Ranong province, ball clay from Surat Thani
province, white sand from Songkhla province, and feldspar from
Nakhon Si Thammarat province. Results can be used to develop the
efficiency of industrial production which in return will enhance the
business process.
Abstract: System testing is actually done to the entire system
against the Functional Requirement Specification and/or the System
Requirement Specification. Moreover, it is an investigatory testing
phase, where the focus is to have almost a destructive attitude and
test not only the design, but also the behavior and even the believed
expectations of the customer. It is also intended to test up to and
beyond the bounds defined in the software/hardware requirements
specifications. In Motorola®, Automated Testing is one of the testing
methodologies uses by GSG-iSGT (Global Software Group - iDEN
TM
Subcriber Group-Test) to increase the testing volume, productivity
and reduce test cycle-time in iDEN
TM
phones testing. Testing is able
to produce more robust products before release to the market. In this
paper, iHopper is proposed as a tool to perform stress test on iDEN
TM
phonse. We will discuss the value that automation has brought to
iDEN
TM
Phone testing such as improving software quality in the
iDEN
TM
phone together with some metrics. We will also look into
the advantages of the proposed system and some discussion of the
future work as well.
Abstract: In this paper, we have focused on study of swelling kinetics and salt-sensitivity behavior of a superabsorbing hydrogel based on carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and acrylic acid and 2- Buthyl methacrylate. The swelling kinetics of the hydrogels with various particle sizes was preliminary investigated as well. The swelling of the hydrogel showed a second order kinetics of swelling in water. In addition, swelling measurements of the synthesized hydrogels in various chloride salt solutions was measured. Results indicated that a swelling-loss with an increase in the ionic strength of the salt solutions.
Abstract: Amongst the consistently fluctuating conditions
prevailing today, changeability represents a strategic key factor for a
manufacturing company to achieve success on the international
markets. In order to cope with turbulences and the increasing level of
incalculability, not only the flexible design of production systems but
in particular the employee as enabler of change provide the focus
here. It is important to enable employees from manufacturing
companies to participate actively in change events and in change
decisions. To this end, the learning factory has been created, which is
intended to serve the development of change-promoting competences
and the sensitization of employees for the necessity of changes.
Abstract: This paper applies an anthropological approach to illuminate the dynamic cultural geography of Kazakhstani Korean ethnicity focusing on its turning point, the historic “Seoul Olympic Games in 1988." The Korean ethnic group was easily considered as a harmonious and homogeneous community by outsiders, but there existed deep-seated conflicts and hostilities within the ethnic group. The majority-s oppositional dichotomy of superiority and inferiority toward the minority was continuously reorganized and reinforced by difference in experience, memory and sentiment. However, such a chronic exclusive boundary was collapsed following the patriotism ignited by the Olympics held in their mother country. This paper explores the fluidity of subject by formation of the boundary in which constructed cultural differences are continuously essentialized and reproduced, and by dissolution of cultural barrier in certain contexts.
Abstract: The paper deals with the perspectives and possibilities
of "smart solutions" to critical infrastructure protection. It means that
common computer aided technologies are used from the perspective
of new, better protection of selected infrastructure objects. The paper
is focused on the co-product of the Czech Defence Research Project -
ADAPTIV. This project is carrying out by the University of Defence,
Faculty of Economics and Management at the Department of Civil
Protection. The project creates system and technology for adaptive
cybernetic camouflage of armed forces objects, armaments, vehicles
and troops and of mobilization infrastructure. These adaptive
camouflage system and technology will be useful for army tactic
activities protection and for decoys generation also. The fourth
chapter of the paper concerns the possibilities of using the introduced
technology to the protection of selected civil (economically
important), critical infrastructure objects. The aim of this section
is to introduce the scientific capabilities and potential of the
University of Defence research results and solutions for the practice.
Abstract: Does open ended creative technology give positive impact in learning design? Although there are many researchers had examined on the impact of technology on design education but there are very few conclusive researches done on the impact of open ended used of software to learning design. This paper sought to investigate a group of student-s experience on relatively wider range of software application within the context of design project. A typography design project was used to create a learning environment with the aim of inculcate design skills into the learners and increase their creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills. The methods used in this study were questionnaire survey and personal observation which will be focus on the individual and group response during the completion of the task.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to analyze Green IT industry in major developed countries and to suggest overall directions for IT-Energy convergence industry. Recently, IT industry is pointed out as a problem such as environmental pollution, energy exhaustion, and high energy consumption. Therefore, Green IT gets focused which concerns as solution of these problems. However, since it is a beginning stage of this convergence area, there are only a few studies of IT-Energy convergence industry. According to this, this study examined the major developed countries in terms of institution arrangements, resources, markets and companies based on Van de Ven(1999)'s social system framework that shows relationship among key components of industrial infrastructure. Subsequently, the direction of the future study of convergence on IT and Energy industry is proposed.
Abstract: This paper presents the design and implements the prototype of an intelligent data processing framework in ubiquitous sensor networks. Much focus is put on how to handle the sensor data stream as well as the interoperability between the low-level sensor data and application clients. Our framework first addresses systematic middleware which mitigates the interaction between the application layer and low-level sensors, for the sake of analyzing a great volume of sensor data by filtering and integrating to create value-added context information. Then, an agent-based architecture is proposed for real-time data distribution to efficiently forward a specific event to the appropriate application registered in the directory service via the open interface. The prototype implementation demonstrates that our framework can host a sophisticated application on the ubiquitous sensor network and it can autonomously evolve to new middleware, taking advantages of promising technologies such as software agents, XML, cloud computing, and the like.
Abstract: Neighborhood Rough Sets (NRS) has been proven to
be an efficient tool for heterogeneous attribute reduction. However,
most of researches are focused on dealing with complete and noiseless
data. Factually, most of the information systems are noisy, namely,
filled with incomplete data and inconsistent data. In this paper, we
introduce a generalized neighborhood rough sets model, called
VPTNRS, to deal with the problem of heterogeneous attribute
reduction in noisy system. We generalize classical NRS model with
tolerance neighborhood relation and the probabilistic theory.
Furthermore, we use the neighborhood dependency to evaluate the
significance of a subset of heterogeneous attributes and construct a
forward greedy algorithm for attribute reduction based on it.
Experimental results show that the model is efficient to deal with noisy
data.
Abstract: Information technology managers nowadays are
facing with tremendous pressure to plan, implement, and adopt new
technology solution due to the rapidity of technology changes.
Resulted from a lack of study that have been done in this topic, the
aim of this paper is to provide a comparison review on current tools
that are currently being used in order to respond to technological
changes. The study is based on extensive literature review of
published works with majority of them are ranging from 2000 to the
first part of 2011. The works were gathered from journals, books,
and other information sources available on the Web. Findings show
that, each tools has different focus and none of the tools are
providing a framework in holistic view, which should include
technical, people, process, and business environment aspect. Hence,
this result provides potential information about current available
tools that IT managers could use to manage changes in technology.
Further, the result reveals a research gap in the area where the
industries a short of such framework.
Abstract: This paper focuses on sovereign credit risk meaning a
hot topic related to the current Eurozone crisis. In the light of the
recent financial crisis, market perception of the creditworthiness of
individual sovereigns has changed significantly. Before the outbreak
of the financial crisis, market participants did not differentiate
between credit risk born by individual states despite different levels
of public indebtedness. In the proceeding of the financial crisis, the
market participants became aware of the worsening fiscal situation in
the European countries and started to discriminate among
government issuers. Concerns about the increasing sovereign risk
were reflected in surging sovereign risk premium. The main of this
paper is to shed light on the characteristics of the sovereign risk with
the special attention paid to the mutual relation between credit spread
and the CDS premium as the main measures of the sovereign risk
premium.
Abstract: How to coordinate the behaviors of the agents through
learning is a challenging problem within multi-agent domains.
Because of its complexity, recent work has focused on how
coordinated strategies can be learned. Here we are interested in using
reinforcement learning techniques to learn the coordinated actions of a
group of agents, without requiring explicit communication among
them. However, traditional reinforcement learning methods are based
on the assumption that the environment can be modeled as Markov
Decision Process, which usually cannot be satisfied when multiple
agents coexist in the same environment. Moreover, to effectively
coordinate each agent-s behavior so as to achieve the goal, it-s
necessary to augment the state of each agent with the information
about other existing agents. Whereas, as the number of agents in a
multiagent environment increases, the state space of each agent grows
exponentially, which will cause the combinational explosion problem.
Profit sharing is one of the reinforcement learning methods that allow
agents to learn effective behaviors from their experiences even within
non-Markovian environments. In this paper, to remedy the drawback
of the original profit sharing approach that needs much memory to
store each state-action pair during the learning process, we firstly
address a kind of on-line rational profit sharing algorithm. Then, we
integrate the advantages of modular learning architecture with on-line
rational profit sharing algorithm, and propose a new modular
reinforcement learning model. The effectiveness of the technique is
demonstrated using the pursuit problem.
Abstract: Obtaining labeled data in supervised learning is often
difficult and expensive, and thus the trained learning algorithm tends
to be overfitting due to small number of training data. As a result,
some researchers have focused on using unlabeled data which may
not necessary to follow the same generative distribution as the labeled
data to construct a high-level feature for improving performance on
supervised learning tasks. In this paper, we investigate the impact of
the relationship between unlabeled and labeled data for classification
performance. Specifically, we will apply difference unlabeled data
which have different degrees of relation to the labeled data for
handwritten digit classification task based on MNIST dataset. Our
experimental results show that the higher the degree of relation
between unlabeled and labeled data, the better the classification
performance. Although the unlabeled data that is completely from
different generative distribution to the labeled data provides the lowest
classification performance, we still achieve high classification performance.
This leads to expanding the applicability of the supervised
learning algorithms using unsupervised learning.
Abstract: This paper deals with the modeling and the evaluation of a multiplicative phase noise influence on the bit error ratio in a general space communication system. Our research is focused on systems with multi-state phase shift keying modulation techniques and it turns out, that the phase noise significantly affects the bit error rate, especially for higher signal to noise ratios. These results come from a system model created in Matlab environment and are shown in a form of constellation diagrams and bit error rate dependencies. The change of a user data bit rate is also considered and included into simulation results. Obtained outcomes confirm theoretical presumptions.
Abstract: An implant elicits a biological response in the
surrounding tissue which determines the acceptance and long-term
function of the implant. Dental implants have become one of the
main therapy methods in clinic after teeth lose. A successful implant
is in contact with bone and soft tissue represent by fibroblasts. In our
study we focused on the interaction between six different chemically
and physically modified titanium implants (Tis-MALP, Tis-O, Tis-
OA, Tis-OPAAE, Tis-OZ, Tis-OPAE) with alveolar fibroblasts as
well as with five type of microorganisms (S. epidermis, S.mutans, S.
gordonii, S. intermedius, C.albicans). The analysis of microorganism
adhesion was determined by CFU (colony forming unite) and biofilm
formation. The presence of α3β1 and vinculin expression on alveolar
fibroblasts was demonstrated using phospho specific cell based
ELISA (PACE). Alveolar fibroblasts have the highest expression of
these proteins on Tis-OPAAE and Tis-OPAE. It corresponds with
results from bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation and it was
related to the lowest production of collagen I by alveolar fibroblasts
on Tis-OPAAE titanium disc.