Abstract: Real-time hand tracking is a challenging task in many
computer vision applications such as gesture recognition. This paper
proposes a robust method for hand tracking in a complex environment
using Mean-shift analysis and Kalman filter in conjunction with 3D
depth map. The depth information solve the overlapping problem
between hands and face, which is obtained by passive stereo measuring
based on cross correlation and the known calibration data of
the cameras. Mean-shift analysis uses the gradient of Bhattacharyya
coefficient as a similarity function to derive the candidate of the hand
that is most similar to a given hand target model. And then, Kalman
filter is used to estimate the position of the hand target. The results
of hand tracking, tested on various video sequences, are robust to
changes in shape as well as partial occlusion.
Abstract: Waste lubricating oil re-refining adsorption process by
different adsorbent materials was investigated. Adsorbent materials
such as oil adsorbent, egg shale powder, date palm kernel powder,
and acid activated date palm kernel powder were used. The
adsorption process over fixed amount of adsorbent at ambient
conditions was investigated. The adsorption/extraction process was
able to deposit the asphaltenic and metallic contaminants from the
waste oil to lower values. It was found that the date palm kernel
powder with contact time of 4 h was able to give the best conditions
for treating the waste oil. The recovered solvent could be also reused.
It was also found that the activated bentonite gave the best
physical properties followed by the date palm kernel powder.
Abstract: A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system
requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker
modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features.
Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC)
modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard
acoustic feature set for speech related applications. On a recent
contribution by authors, it has been shown that the Inverted Mel-
Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (IMFCC) is useful feature set for
SI, which contains complementary information present in high
frequency region. This paper introduces the Gaussian shaped filter
(GF) while calculating MFCC and IMFCC in place of typical
triangular shaped bins. The objective is to introduce a higher
amount of correlation between subband outputs. The performances
of both MFCC & IMFCC improve with GF over conventional
triangular filter (TF) based implementation, individually as well as
in combination. With GMM as speaker modeling paradigm, the
performances of proposed GF based MFCC and IMFCC in
individual and fused mode have been verified in two standard
databases YOHO, (Microphone Speech) and POLYCOST
(Telephone Speech) each of which has more than 130 speakers.
Abstract: Size based filtration is one of the common methods
employed to isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole
blood. It is well known that this method suffers from isolation
efficiency to purity tradeoff. However, this tradeoff is poorly
understood. In this paper, we present the design and manufacturing
of a special rectangular slit filter. The filter was designed to retain
maximal amounts of nucleated cells, while minimizing the pressure
on cells, thereby preserving their morphology. The key parameter,
namely, input pressure, was optimized to retain the maximal number
of tumor cells, whilst maximizing the depletion of normal blood cells
(red and white blood cells and platelets). Our results indicate that for
a slit geometry of 5 × 40 μm on a 13 mm circular membrane with a
fill factor of 21%, a pressure of 6.9 mBar yields the optimum for
maximizing isolation of MCF-7 and depletion of normal blood cells.
Abstract: This paper reports on a receding horizon filtering for
mobile robot systems with cross-correlated sensor noises and
uncertainties. Also, the effect of uncertain parameters in the state of
the tracking error model performance is considered. A distributed
fusion receding horizon filter is proposed. The distributed fusion
filtering algorithm represents the optimal linear combination of the
local filters under the minimum mean square error criterion. The
derivation of the error cross-covariances between the local receding
horizon filters is the key of this paper. Simulation results of the
tracking mobile robot-s motion demonstrate high accuracy and
computational efficiency of the distributed fusion receding horizon
filter.
Abstract: In this paper, the feasibility study of using a hybrid
system of ground heat exchangers (GHE) and direct evaporative
cooling system in arid weather condition has been performed. The
model is applied for Yazd and Kerman, two cities with arid weather
condition in Iran. The system composed of three sections: Ground-
Coupled-Circuit (GCC), Direct Evaporative Cooler (DEC) and
Cooling Coil Unite (CCU). The GCC provides the necessary precooling
for DEC. The GCC includes four vertical GHE which are
designed in series configuration. Simulation results show that
hybridization of GCC and DEC could provide comfort condition
whereas DEC alone did not. Based on the results the cooling
effectiveness of a hybrid system is more than unity. Thus, this novel
hybrid system could decrease the air temperature below the ambient
wet-bulb temperature. This environmentally clean and energy
efficient system can be considered as an alternative to the mechanical
vapor compression systems.
Abstract: This paper develops an unscented grid-based filter
and a smoother for accurate nonlinear modeling and analysis
of time series. The filter uses unscented deterministic sampling
during both the time and measurement updating phases, to approximate
directly the distributions of the latent state variable. A
complementary grid smoother is also made to enable computing
of the likelihood. This helps us to formulate an expectation
maximisation algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation of
the state noise and the observation noise. Empirical investigations
show that the proposed unscented grid filter/smoother compares
favourably to other similar filters on nonlinear estimation tasks.
Abstract: The localized corrosion behavior of laser surface
melted 304L austenitic stainless steel was studied by
potentiodynamic polarization test. The extent of improvement in
corrosion resistance was governed by the preferred orientation and
the percentage of delta ferrite present on the surface of the laser
melted sample. It was established by orientation imaging microscopy
that the highest pitting potential value was obtained when grains were
oriented in the most close- packed [101] direction compared to the
random distribution of the base metal and other laser surface melted
samples oriented in [001] direction. The sample with lower
percentage of ferrite had good pitting resistance.
Abstract: Throughout this paper, a relatively new technique, the Tabu search variable selection model, is elaborated showing how it can be efficiently applied within the financial world whenever researchers come across the selection of a subset of variables from a whole set of descriptive variables under analysis. In the field of financial prediction, researchers often have to select a subset of variables from a larger set to solve different type of problems such as corporate bankruptcy prediction, personal bankruptcy prediction, mortgage, credit scoring and the Arbitrage Pricing Model (APM). Consequently, to demonstrate how the method operates and to illustrate its usefulness as well as its superiority compared to other commonly used methods, the Tabu search algorithm for variable selection is compared to two main alternative search procedures namely, the stepwise regression and the maximum R 2 improvement method. The Tabu search is then implemented in finance; where it attempts to predict corporate bankruptcy by selecting the most appropriate financial ratios and thus creating its own prediction score equation. In comparison to other methods, mostly the Altman Z-Score model, the Tabu search model produces a higher success rate in predicting correctly the failure of firms or the continuous running of existing entities.
Abstract: In process control applications, above 90% of the
controllers are of PID type. This paper proposed a robust PI
controller with fractional-order integrator. The PI parameters were
obtained using classical Ziegler-Nichols rules but enhanced with the
application of error filter cascaded to the fractional-order PI. The
controller was applied on steam temperature process that was
described by FOPDT transfer function. The process can be classified
as lag dominating process with very small relative dead-time. The
proposed control scheme was compared with other PI controller
tuned using Ziegler-Nichols and AMIGO rules. Other PI controller
with fractional-order integrator known as F-MIGO was also
considered. All the controllers were subjected to set point change and
load disturbance tests. The performance was measured using Integral
of Squared Error (ISE) and Integral of Control Signal (ICO). The
proposed controller produced best performance for all the tests with
the least ISE index.
Abstract: Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, is one of the
densely populated cities in the world. Due to rapid urbanization 60%
of its population lives in slum and squatter settlements. The reason
behind this poverty is low economic growth, inequitable distribution
of income, unequal distribution of productive assets, unemployment
and underemployment, high rate of population growth, low level of
human resource development, natural disasters, and limited access to
public services. Along with poverty, creating pressure on urban land,
shelter, plots, open spaces this creates environmental and ecological
degradation. These constraints are mostly resulted from the failures
of the government policies and measures and only Government can
solve this problem. This is now prime time to establish planning and
environmental management policy and sustainable urban
development for the city and for the urban slum dwellers which are
free from eviction, criminals, rent seekers and other miscreants.
Abstract: Liver segmentation is the first significant process for
liver diagnosis of the Computed Tomography. It segments the liver
structure from other abdominal organs. Sophisticated filtering techniques
are indispensable for a proper segmentation. In this paper, we
employ a 3D anisotropic diffusion as a preprocessing step. While
removing image noise, this technique preserve the significant parts
of the image, typically edges, lines or other details that are important
for the interpretation of the image. The segmentation task is done
by using thresholding with automatic threshold values selection and
finally the false liver region is eliminated using 3D connected component.
The result shows that by employing the 3D anisotropic filtering,
better liver segmentation results could be achieved eventhough simple
segmentation technique is used.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a morphing method by which face color images can be freely transformed. The main focus of this work is the transformation of one face image to another. This method is fully automatic in that it can morph two face images by automatically detecting all the control points necessary to perform the morph. A face detection neural network, edge detection and medium filters are employed to detect the face position and features. Five control points, for both the source and target images, are then extracted based on the facial features. Triangulation method is then used to match and warp the source image to the target image using the control points. Finally color interpolation is done using a color Gaussian model that calculates the color for each particular frame depending on the number of frames used. A real coded Genetic algorithm is used in both the image warping and color blending steps to assist in step size decisions and speed up the morphing. This method results in ''very smooth'' morphs and is fast to process.
Abstract: Accurate timing alignment and stability is important
to maximize the true counts and minimize the random counts in
positron emission tomography So signals output from detectors must
be centering with the two isotopes to pre-operation and fed signals
into four units of pulse-processing units, each unit can accept up to
eight inputs. The dual source computed tomography consist two units
on the left for 15 detector signals of Cs-137 isotope and two units on
the right are for 15 detectors signals of Co-60 isotope. The gamma
spectrum consisting of either single or multiple photo peaks. This
allows for the use of energy discrimination electronic hardware
associated with the data acquisition system to acquire photon counts
data with a specific energy, even if poor energy resolution detectors
are used. This also helps to avoid counting of the Compton scatter
counts especially if a single discrete gamma photo peak is emitted by
the source as in the case of Cs-137. In this study the polyenergetic
version of the alternating minimization algorithm is applied to the
dual energy gamma computed tomography problem.
Abstract: A green design for assembly model is presented to
integrate design evaluation and assembly and disassembly sequence
planning by evaluating the three activities in one integrated model. For
an assembled product, an assembly sequence planning model is
required for assembling the product at the start of the product life cycle.
A disassembly sequence planning model is needed for disassembling
the product at the end. In a green product life cycle, it is important to
plan how a product can be disassembled, reused, or recycled, before
the product is actually assembled and produced. Given a product
requirement, there may be several design alternative cases to design
the same product. In the different design cases, the assembly and
disassembly sequences for producing the product can be different. In
this research, a new model is presented to concurrently evaluate the
design and plan the assembly and disassembly sequences. First, the
components are represented by using graph based models. Next, a
particle swarm optimization (PSO) method with a new encoding
scheme is developed. In the new PSO encoding scheme, a particle is
represented by a position matrix defining an assembly sequence and a
disassembly sequence. The assembly and disassembly sequences can
be simultaneously planned with an objective of minimizing the total of
assembly costs and disassembly costs. The test results show that the
presented method is feasible and efficient for solving the integrated
design evaluation and assembly and disassembly sequence planning
problem. An example product is implemented and illustrated in this
paper.
Abstract: Postmenopausal osteoporosis is a disorder
characterized by the progressive bone loss induced by estrogen
deficiency in postmenopausal women. This imbalance affects
calcium–phosphate metabolism and results in secondary
hyperparathyroidism. Purariae Radix (PR), the root of P. lobata
(Wild.) Ohwi, is one of the earliest medicinal herbs employed in
ancient China. PR contains a high quantity of isoflavones and their
glycosides, which are regarded as phytoestrogen. Few investigations
of PR are related to its osteoprotective effects. The present study is
designed to administer PR water extract to ovariectomized (OVX)
female rats, for the investigation of its possibly protective actions on
bone and to delineate the potential mechanisms involved. Our results
demonstrated that long-term treatment of PR could not significantly
improve bone properties, whereas it greatly ameliorated the condition
of secondary hyperparathyroidism induced by ovariectomy in those
animals. PR might be useful as alternative regimen for protecting
against postmenopausal bone loss.
Abstract: Ultrasound is useful in demonstrating bone mineral
density of regenerating osseous tissue as well as structural alterations.
A proposed ultrasound method, which included ultrasonography and
acoustic parameters measurement, was employed to evaluate its
efficacy in monitoring the bone callus changes in a rabbit tibial
distraction osteogenesis (DO) model.
The findings demonstrated that ultrasonographic images depicted
characteristic changes of the bone callus, typical of histology findings,
during the distraction phase. Follow-up acoustic parameters
measurement of the bone callus, including speed of sound, reflection
and attenuation, showed significant linear changes over time during
the distraction phase. The acoustic parameters obtained during the
distraction phase also showed moderate to strong correlation with
consolidated bone callus density and micro-architecture measured by
micro-computed tomography at the end of the consolidation phase.
The results support the preferred use of ultrasound imaging in the
early monitoring of bone callus changes during DO treatment.
Abstract: Applying the idea of soft set theory to lattice implication algebras, the novel concept of (implicative) filteristic soft lattice implication algebras which related to (implicative) filter(for short, (IF-)F-soft lattice implication algebras) are introduced. Basic properties of (IF-)F-soft lattice implication algebras are derived. Two kinds of fuzzy filters (i.e.(2, 2 _qk)((2, 2 _ qk))-fuzzy (implicative) filter) of L are introduced, which are generalizations of fuzzy (implicative) filters. Some characterizations for a soft set to be a (IF-)F-soft lattice implication algebra are provided. Analogously, this idea can be used in other types of filteristic lattice implication algebras (such as fantastic (positive implicative) filteristic soft lattice implication algebras).
Abstract: This research presents a fuzzy multi-objective model
for a machine selection problem in a flexible manufacturing system
of a tire company. Two main objectives are minimization of an
average machine error and minimization of the total setup time.
Conventionally, the working team uses trial and error in selecting a
pressing machine for each task due to the complexity and constraints
of the problem. So, both objectives may not satisfy. Moreover, trial
and error takes a lot of time to get the final decision. Therefore, in
this research preemptive fuzzy goal programming model is developed
for solving this multi-objective problem. The proposed model can
obtain the appropriate results that the Decision Making (DM) is
satisfied for both objectives. Besides, alternative choice can be easily
generated by varying the satisfaction level. Additionally, decision
time can be reduced by using the model, which includes all
constraints of the system to generate the solutions. A numerical
example is also illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed
model.
Abstract: The present paper deals with problems related to the
possibilities to use fractal systems to solve some important scientific
and practical problems connected with filtering and separation of
aqueous phases from organic ones. For this purpose a special
separator have been designed. The reactor was filled with a porous
material with fractal dimension, which is an integral part of the set
for filtration and separation of emulsions. As a model emulsion
hexadecan mixture with water in equal quantities (1:1) was used. We
examined the hydrodynamics of the separation of the emulsion at
different rates of submission of the entrance of the reactor.