Abstract: In this paper, transversal vibration of buried pipelines
during loading induced by underground explosions is analyzed. The
pipeline is modeled as an infinite beam on an elastic foundation, so
that soil-structure interaction is considered by means of transverse
linear springs along the pipeline. The pipeline behavior is assumed to
be ideal elasto-plastic which an ultimate strain value limits the plastic
behavior. The blast loading is considered as a point load, considering
the affected length at some point of the pipeline, in which the
magnitude decreases exponentially with time. A closed-form solution
for the quasi-static problem is carried out for both elastic and elasticperfect
plastic behaviors of pipe materials. At the end, a comparative
study on steel and polyethylene pipes with different sizes buried in
various soil conditions, affected by a predefined underground
explosion is conducted, in which effect of each parameter is
discussed.
Abstract: Parallel programming models exist as an abstraction
of hardware and memory architectures. There are several parallel
programming models in commonly use; they are shared memory
model, thread model, message passing model, data parallel model,
hybrid model, Flynn-s models, embarrassingly parallel computations
model, pipelined computations model. These models are not specific
to a particular type of machine or memory architecture. This paper
expresses the model program for concurrent approach to data parallel
model through java programming.
Abstract: The aluminum bronze matrix alumina composites using hot press and resin infiltration were investigated to study their porosities, hardness, bending strengths, and microstructures. The experiment results show that the hardness of the sintered composites with the decrease of porosity increases. The composites without and with resin infiltration have about HRF 42-61 of about 34-40% of porosity and about HRF 62-83 of about 30-36% of porosity, respectively. Besides, the alumina composites contain a more amount of iron and nickel powders would cause a lower bending strength due to forming some weaker bonding among the iron, nickel, copper, aluminum under this hot pressing of shorter time.
Abstract: This paper presents a compact thermoelectric power generator system based on temperature difference across the element. The system can transfer the burning heat energy to electric energy directly. The proposed system has a thermoelectric generator and a power control box. In the generator, there are 4 thermoelectric modules (TEMs), each of which uses 2 thermoelectric chips (TEs) and 2 cold sinks, 1 thermal absorber, and 1 thermal conduction flat board. In the power control box, there are 1 storing energy device, 1 converter, and 1 inverter. The total net generating power is about 11W. This system uses commercial portable gas stoves or burns timber or the coal as the heat source, which is easily obtained. It adopts solid-state thermoelectric chips as heat inverter parts. The system has the advantages of being light-weight, quite, and mobile, requiring no maintenance, and havng easily-supplied heat source. The system can be used a as long as burning is allowed. This system works well for highly-mobilized outdoors situations by providing a power for illumination, entertainment equipment or the wireless equipment at refuge. Under heavy storms such as typhoon, when the solar panels become ineffective and the wind-powered machines malfunction, the thermoelectric power generator can continue providing the vital power.
Abstract: Histogram equalization is often used in image enhancement, but it can be also used in auto exposure. However, conventional histogram equalization does not work well when many pixels are concentrated in a narrow luminance range.This paper proposes an auto exposure method based on 2-way histogram equalization. Two cumulative distribution functions are used, where one is from dark to bright and the other is from bright to dark. In this paper, the proposed auto exposure method is also designed and implemented for image signal processors with full-HD images.
Abstract: This study performs a comparative analysis of the 21 Greek Universities in terms of their public funding, awarded for covering their operating expenditure. First it introduces a DEA/MCDM model that allocates the fund into four expenditure factors in the most favorable way for each university. Then, it presents a common, consensual assessment model to reallocate the amounts, remaining in the same level of total public budget. From the analysis it derives that a number of universities cannot justify the public funding in terms of their size and operational workload. For them, the sufficient reduction of their public funding amount is estimated as a future target. Due to the lack of precise data for a number of expenditure criteria, the analysis is based on a mixed crisp-ordinal data set.
Abstract: Text categorization is the problem of classifying text
documents into a set of predefined classes. In this paper, we
investigated three approaches to build a meta-classifier in order to
increase the classification accuracy. The basic idea is to learn a metaclassifier
to optimally select the best component classifier for each
data point. The experimental results show that combining classifiers
can significantly improve the accuracy of classification and that our
meta-classification strategy gives better results than each individual
classifier. For 7083 Reuters text documents we obtained a
classification accuracies up to 92.04%.
Abstract: The issue of unintentional islanding in PV grid
interconnection still remains as a challenge in grid-connected
photovoltaic (PV) systems. This paper discusses the overview of
popularly used anti-islanding detection methods, practically applied
in PV grid-connected systems. Anti-islanding methods generally can
be classified into four major groups, which include passive methods,
active methods, hybrid methods and communication base methods.
Active methods have been the preferred detection technique over the
years due to very small non-detected zone (NDZ) in small scale
distribution generation. Passive method is comparatively simpler
than active method in terms of circuitry and operations. However, it
suffers from large NDZ that significantly reduces its performance.
Communication base methods inherit the advantages of active and
passive methods with reduced drawbacks. Hybrid method which
evolved from the combination of both active and passive methods
has been proven to achieve accurate anti-islanding detection by many
researchers. For each of the studied anti-islanding methods, the
operation analysis is described while the advantages and
disadvantages are compared and discussed. It is difficult to pinpoint a
generic method for a specific application, because most of the
methods discussed are governed by the nature of application and
system dependent elements. This study concludes that the setup and
operation cost is the vital factor for anti-islanding method selection in
order to achieve minimal compromising between cost and system
quality.
Abstract: This paper proposes a method, combining color and
layout features, for identifying documents captured from lowresolution
handheld devices. On one hand, the document image color
density surface is estimated and represented with an equivalent
ellipse and on the other hand, the document shallow layout structure
is computed and hierarchically represented. The combined color and
layout features are arranged in a symbolic file, which is unique for
each document and is called the document-s visual signature. Our
identification method first uses the color information in the
signatures in order to focus the search space on documents having a
similar color distribution, and finally selects the document having the
most similar layout structure in the remaining search space. Finally,
our experiment considers slide documents, which are often captured
using handheld devices.
Abstract: This study reveals that anti-immigrant policies in
Europe result from a process of securitization, and that, within this
process, radical right parties have been formulating discourses and
approaches through a construction process by using some common
security themes. These security themes can be classified as national
security, economic security, cultural security and internal security.
The frequency with which radical right parties use these themes may
vary according to the specific historical, social and cultural
characteristics of a particular country.
Abstract: This paper presents a simplified version of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) - a conventional approach to evaluating the performance and ranking of competitive objects characterized by two groups of factors acting in opposite directions: inputs and outputs. DEA with a Perfect Object (DEA PO) augments the group of actual objects with a virtual Perfect Object - the one having greatest outputs and smallest inputs. It allows for obtaining an explicit analytical solution and making a step to an absolute efficiency. This paper develops this approach further and introduces a DEA model with Partially Perfect Objects. DEA PPO consecutively eliminates the smallest relative inputs or greatest relative outputs, and applies DEA PO to the reduced collections of indicators. The partial efficiency scores are combined to get the weighted efficiency score. The computational scheme remains simple, like that of DEA PO, but the advantage of the DEA PPO is taking into account all of the inputs and outputs for each actual object. Firm evaluation is considered as an example.
Abstract: This paper presents a new steganography approach suitable for Arabic texts. It can be classified under steganography feature coding methods. The approach hides secret information bits within the letters benefiting from their inherited points. To note the specific letters holding secret bits, the scheme considers the two features, the existence of the points in the letters and the redundant Arabic extension character. We use the pointed letters with extension to hold the secret bit 'one' and the un-pointed letters with extension to hold 'zero'. This steganography technique is found attractive to other languages having similar texts to Arabic such as Persian and Urdu.
Abstract: A conventional binding method for low power in a
high-level synthesis mainly focuses on finding an optimal binding for
an assumed input data, and obtains only one binding table. In this
paper, we show that a binding method which uses multiple binding
tables gets better solution compared with the conventional methods
which use a single binding table, and propose a dynamic bus binding
scheme for low power using multiple binding tables. The proposed
method finds multiple binding tables for the proper partitions of an
input data, and switches binding tables dynamically to produce the
minimum total switching activity. Experimental result shows that the
proposed method obtains a binding solution having 12.6-28.9%
smaller total switching activity compared with the conventional
methods.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to estimate realistic
principal extrusion process parameters by means of artificial neural
network. Conventionally, finite element analysis is used to derive
process parameters. However, the finite element analysis of the
extrusion model does not consider the manufacturing process
constraints in its modeling. Therefore, the process parameters
obtained through such an analysis remains highly theoretical.
Alternatively, process development in industrial extrusion is to a
great extent based on trial and error and often involves full-size
experiments, which are both expensive and time-consuming. The
artificial neural network-based estimation of the extrusion process
parameters prior to plant execution helps to make the actual extrusion
operation more efficient because more realistic parameters may be
obtained. And so, it bridges the gap between simulation and real
manufacturing execution system. In this work, a suitable neural
network is designed which is trained using an appropriate learning
algorithm. The network so trained is used to predict the
manufacturing process parameters.
Abstract: Sharing the manufacturing facility through remote
operation and monitoring of a machining process is challenge for
effective use the production facility. Several automation tools in term
of hardware and software are necessary for successfully remote
operation of a machine. This paper presents a prototype of workpiece
holding attachment for remote operation of milling process by self
configuration the workpiece setup. The prototype is designed with
mechanism to reorient the work surface into machining spindle
direction with high positioning accuracy. Variety of parts geometry
is hold by attachment to perform single setup machining. Pin type
with array pattern additionally clamps the workpiece surface from
two opposite directions for increasing the machining rigidity.
Optimum pins configuration for conforming the workpiece geometry
with minimum deformation is determined through hybrid algorithms,
Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).
Prototype with intelligent optimization technique enables to hold
several variety of workpiece geometry which is suitable for
machining low of repetitive production in remote operation.
Abstract: Electrospinning is a broadly used technology to obtain
polymeric nanofibers ranging from several micrometers down to
several hundred nanometers for a wide range of applications. It offers
unique capabilities to produce nanofibers with controllable porous
structure. With smaller pores and higher surface area than regular
fibers, electrospun fibers have been successfully applied in various
fields, such as, nanocatalysis, tissue engineering scaffolds, protective
clothing, filtration, biomedical, pharmaceutical, optical electronics,
healthcare, biotechnology, defense and security, and environmental
engineering. In this study, polyurethane nanofibers were obtained
under different electrospinning parameters. Fiber morphology and
diameter distribution were investigated in order to understand them
as a function of process parameters.
Abstract: Statistical learning theory was developed by Vapnik. It
is a learning theory based on Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension. It also
has been used in learning models as good analytical tools. In general, a
learning theory has had several problems. Some of them are local
optima and over-fitting problems. As well, statistical learning theory
has same problems because the kernel type, kernel parameters, and
regularization constant C are determined subjectively by the art of
researchers. So, we propose an evolutionary statistical learning theory
to settle the problems of original statistical learning theory.
Combining evolutionary computing into statistical learning theory,
our theory is constructed. We verify improved performances of an
evolutionary statistical learning theory using data sets from KDD cup.
Abstract: An optical fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer (FFPI) is
proposed and demonstrated for dynamic measurements in a
mechanical vibrating target. A polishing metal with a low reflectance
value adhered to a mechanical vibrator was excited via a function
generator at various excitation frequencies. Output interference
fringes were generated by modulating the reference and sensing
signal at the output arm. A fringe-counting technique was used for
interpreting the displacement information on the dedicated computer.
The fiber interferometer has been found the capability of the
displacement measurements of 1.28 μm – 96.01 μm. A commercial
displacement sensor was employed as a reference sensor for
investigating the measurement errors from the fiber sensor. A
maximum percentage measurement error of approximately 1.59 %
was obtained.
Abstract: This paper reports a case study on how a conceptual
and analytical thinking approach was used in Art and Design Department at Multimedia University (Malaysia) in addressing the
issues of one nation and its impact in the society through artworks. The art project was designed for students to increase the know-how
and develop creative thinking in design and communication. Goals of the design project were: (1) to develop creative thinking in design
and communication, (2) to increase student understanding on the
process of problem solving for design work, and (3) to use design
elements and principles to generate interest, attention and emotional responses. An exhibition entitled "One Nation" was showcased to
local and international viewers consisting of the general public, professionals, academics, artists and students. Findings indicate that the project supported several visual art standards, as well as
generated awareness in the society. This project may be of interest to
current and future art educators and others interested in the potential
of utilizing global issues as content for art, community and environment studies for the purpose of educational art.
Abstract: This paper introduces a temporal epistemic logic
CBCTL that updates agent-s belief states through communications
in them, based on computational tree logic (CTL). In practical
environments, communication channels between agents may not be
secure, and in bad cases agents might suffer blackouts. In this study,
we provide inform* protocol based on ACL of FIPA, and declare the
presence of secure channels between two agents, dependent on time.
Thus, the belief state of each agent is updated along with the progress
of time. We show a prover, that is a reasoning system for a given
formula in a given a situation of an agent ; if it is directly provable
or if it could be validated through the chains of communications, the
system returns the proof.