Abstract: In electronegative-electropositive gas mixtures plasma, at a total pressure varying in the range of ten to hundred Torr, the appearance of a quasi-mochromatization effect of the emitted radiation was reported. This radiation could be the result of the generating mechanisms at molecular level, which is the case of the excimer radiation but also at atomic level. Thus, in the last case, in (Ne+1%Ar/Xe+H2) gas mixtures plasma in a dielectric barrier discharge, this effect, called M-effect, consists in the reduction of the discharge emission spectrum practice at one single, strong spectral line with λ = 585.3 nm. The present paper is concerned with the characteristics comparative investigation of the principal reaction mechanisms involved in the quasi-monochromatization effect existence in the case of the excimer radiation, respectively of the Meffect. Also, the paper points out the role of the metastable electronegative atoms in the appearance of the monochromatization – effect at atomic level.
Abstract: This paper examines ethical and social issues which
have proved important when initiating and creating educational spaces within a virtual environment. It focuses on one project, identifying the key decisions made, the barriers to new practice
encountered and the impact these had on the project. It demonstrates
the importance of the 'backstage' ethical and social issues involved in
the creation of a virtual education community and offers conclusions,
and questions, which will inform future research and practice in this
area. These ethical issues are considered using Knobel-s framework
of front-end, in-process and back-end concerns, and include
establishing social practices for the islands, allocating access rights,
considering personal safety and supporting researchers appropriately
within this context.
Abstract: Insulation used in transformer is mostly oil pressboard insulation. Insulation failure is one of the major causes of catastrophic failure of transformers. It is established that partial discharges (PD) cause insulation degradation and premature failure of insulation. Online monitoring of PDs can reduce the risk of catastrophic failure of transformers. There are different techniques of partial discharge measurement like, electrical, optical, acoustic, opto-acoustic and ultra high frequency (UHF). Being non invasive and non interference prone, acoustic emission technique is advantageous for online PD measurement. Acoustic detection of p.d. is based on the retrieval and analysis of mechanical or pressure signals produced by partial discharges. Partial discharges are classified according to the origin of discharges. Their effects on insulation deterioration are different for different types. This paper reports experimental results and analysis for classification of partial discharges using acoustic emission signal of laboratory simulated partial discharges in oil pressboard insulation system using three different electrode systems. Acoustic emission signal produced by PD are detected by sensors mounted on the experimental tank surface, stored on an oscilloscope and fed to computer for further analysis. The measured AE signals are analyzed using discrete wavelet transform analysis and wavelet packet analysis. Energy distribution in different frequency bands of discrete wavelet decomposed signal and wavelet packet decomposed signal is calculated. These analyses show a distinct feature useful for PD classification. Wavelet packet analysis can sort out any misclassification arising out of DWT in most cases.
Abstract: The current research paper is an implementation of
Eigen Faces and Karhunen-Loeve Algorithm for face recognition.
The designed program works in a manner where a unique
identification number is given to each face under trial. These faces
are kept in a database from where any particular face can be matched
and found out of the available test faces. The Karhunen –Loeve
Algorithm has been implemented to find out the appropriate right
face (with same features) with respect to given input image as test
data image having unique identification number. The procedure
involves usage of Eigen faces for the recognition of faces.
Abstract: In this research, a 2-D computational analysis of
steady state free convection in a rectangular enclosure filled with an
electrically conducting fluid under Effect of Magnetic Field has been
performed. The governing equations (mass, momentum, and energy)
are formulated and solved by a finite volume method (FVM)
subjected to different boundary conditions. A parametric study has
been conducted to consider the influence of Grashof number (Gr),
Prantdl number (Pr) and the orientation of magnetic field on the flow
and heat transfer characteristics. It is observed that Nusselt number
(Nu) and heat flux will increase with increasing Grashof and Prandtl
numbers and decreasing the slope of the orientation of magnetic field.
Abstract: The cup method is applied for the measurement of water vapor transport properties of porous materials worldwide. However, in practical applications the experimental results are often used without taking into account some secondary effects which can play an important role under specific conditions. In this paper, the effect of temperature on water vapor transport properties of cellular concrete is studied, together with the influence of sample thickness. At first, the bulk density, matrix density, total open porosity and sorption and desorption isotherms are measured for material characterization purposes. Then, the steady state cup method is used for determination of water vapor transport properties, whereas the measurements are performed at several temperatures and for three different sample thicknesses.
Abstract: There are various overlay structures that provide
efficient and scalable solutions for point and range query in a peer-topeer
network. Overlay structure based on m-Binary Search Tree
(BST) is one such popular technique. It deals with the division of the
tree into different key intervals and then assigning the key intervals to
a BST. The popularity of the BST makes this overlay structure
vulnerable to different kinds of attacks. Here we present four such
possible attacks namely index poisoning attack, eclipse attack,
pollution attack and syn flooding attack. The functionality of BST is
affected by these attacks. We also provide different security
techniques that can be applied against these attacks.
Abstract: The influence of eccentric discharge of stored solids in
squat silos has been highly valued by many researchers. However,
calculation method of lateral pressure under eccentric flowing still
needs to be deeply studied. In particular, the lateral pressure
distribution on vertical wall could not be accurately recognized
mainly because of its asymmetry. In order to build mechanical model
of lateral pressure, flow channel and flow pattern of stored solids in
squat silo are studied. In this passage, based on Janssen-s theory, the
method for calculating lateral static pressure in squat silos after
eccentric discharge is proposed. Calculative formulae are deduced for
each of three possible cases. This method is also focusing on
unsymmetrical distribution characteristic of silo wall normal
pressure. Finite element model is used to analysis and compare the
results of lateral pressure and the numerical results illustrate the
practicability of the theoretical method.
Abstract: Performance of a limited Round-Robin (RR) rule is
studied in order to clarify the characteristics of a realistic sharing
model of a processor. Under the limited RR rule, the processor
allocates to each request a fixed amount of time, called a quantum, in a
fixed order. The sum of the requests being allocated these quanta is
kept below a fixed value. Arriving requests that cannot be allocated
quanta because of such a restriction are queued or rejected. Practical
performance measures, such as the relationship between the mean
sojourn time, the mean number of requests, or the loss probability and
the quantum size are evaluated via simulation. In the evaluation, the
requested service time of an arriving request is converted into a
quantum number. One of these quanta is included in an RR cycle,
which means a series of quanta allocated to each request in a fixed
order. The service time of the arriving request can be evaluated using
the number of RR cycles required to complete the service, the number
of requests receiving service, and the quantum size. Then an increase
or decrease in the number of quanta that are necessary before service is
completed is reevaluated at the arrival or departure of other requests.
Tracking these events and calculations enables us to analyze the
performance of our limited RR rule. In particular, we obtain the most
suitable quantum size, which minimizes the mean sojourn time, for the
case in which the switching time for each quantum is considered.
Abstract: This paper proposes a solution to the motion planning
and control problem of a point-mass robot which is required to move
safely to a designated target in a priori known workspace cluttered
with fixed elliptical obstacles of arbitrary position and sizes. A
tailored and unique algorithm for target convergence and obstacle
avoidance is proposed that will work for any number of fixed
obstacles. The control laws proposed in this paper also ensures that
the equilibrium point of the given system is asymptotically stable.
Computer simulations with the proposed technique and applications
to a planar (RP) manipulator will be presented.
Abstract: Due to a high unemployment rate among local people
and a high reliance on expatriate workers, the governments in the
Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries have been implementing
programmes of localisation (replacing foreign workers with GCC
nationals). These programmes have been successful in the public
sector but much less so in the private sector. However, there are now
insufficient jobs for locals in the public sector and the onus to provide
employment has fallen on the private sector. This paper is concerned
with a study, which is a work in progress (certain elements are
complete but not the whole study), investigating the effective
implementation of localisation policies in four- and five-star hotels in
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE). The purpose of the paper is to identify the research gap, and
to present the need for the research. Further, it will explain how this
research was conducted.
Studies of localisation in the GCC countries are under-represented
in scholarly literature. Currently, the hotel sectors in KSA and UAE
play an important part in the countries’ economies. However, the
total proportion of Saudis working in the hotel sector in KSA is
slightly under 8%, and in the UAE, the hotel sector remains highly
reliant on expatriates. There is therefore a need for research on
strategies to enhance the implementation of the localisation policies
in general and in the hotel sector in particular.
Further, despite the importance of the hotel sector to their
economies, there remains a dearth of research into the
implementation of localisation policies in this sector. Indeed, as far as
the researchers are aware, there is no study examining localisation in
the hotel sector in KSA, and few in the UAE. This represents a
considerable research gap.
Regarding how the research was carried out, a multiple case study
strategy was used. The four- and five-star hotel sector in KSA is one
of the cases, while the four- and five-star hotel sector in the UAE is
the other case. Four- and five-star hotels in KSA and the UAE were
chosen as these countries have the longest established localisation
policies of all the GCC states and there are more hotels of these
classifications in these countries than in any of the other Gulf
countries. A literature review was carried out to underpin the
research. The empirical data were gathered in three phases. In order
to gain a pre-understanding of the issues pertaining to the research
context, Phase I involved eight unstructured interviews with officials
from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (three
interviewees); the Saudi Human Resources Development Fund (one);
the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (three); and the Abu
Dhabi Development Fund (one).
In Phase II, a questionnaire was administered to 24 managers and
24 employees in four- and five-star hotels in each country to obtain
their beliefs, attitudes, opinions, preferences and practices concerning
localisation.
Unstructured interviews were carried out in Phase III with six
managers in each country in order to allow them to express opinions
that may not have been explored in sufficient depth in the
questionnaire. The interviews in Phases I and III were analysed using
thematic analysis and SPSS will be used to analyse the questionnaire
data.
It is recommended that future research be undertaken on a larger
scale, with a larger sample taken from all over KSA and the UAE
rather than from only four cities (i.e., Riyadh and Jeddah in KSA and
Abu Dhabi and Sharjah in the UAE), as was the case in this research.
Abstract: This paper proposes a new approach for image encryption
using a combination of different permutation techniques.
The main idea behind the present work is that an image can be
viewed as an arrangement of bits, pixels and blocks. The intelligible
information present in an image is due to the correlations among the
bits, pixels and blocks in a given arrangement. This perceivable information
can be reduced by decreasing the correlation among the bits,
pixels and blocks using certain permutation techniques. This paper
presents an approach for a random combination of the aforementioned
permutations for image encryption. From the results, it is observed
that the permutation of bits is effective in significantly reducing the
correlation thereby decreasing the perceptual information, whereas
the permutation of pixels and blocks are good at producing higher
level security compared to bit permutation. A random combination
method employing all the three techniques thus is observed to be
useful for tactical security applications, where protection is needed
only against a casual observer.
Abstract: In this paper, a Bayesian Network (BN) based system
is presented for providing clinical decision support to healthcare
practitioners in rural or remote areas of India for young infants or
children up to the age of 5 years. The government is unable to
appoint child specialists in rural areas because of inadequate number
of available pediatricians. It leads to a high Infant Mortality Rate
(IMR). In such a scenario, Intelligent Pediatric System provides a
realistic solution. The prototype of an intelligent system has been
developed that involves a knowledge component called an Intelligent
Pediatric Assistant (IPA); and User Agents (UA) along with their
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). The GUI of UA provides the
interface to the healthcare practitioner for submitting sign-symptoms
and displaying the expert opinion as suggested by IPA. Depending
upon the observations, the IPA decides the diagnosis and the
treatment plan. The UA and IPA form client-server architecture for
knowledge sharing.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose the low-MAC FEC controller for practical implementation of JPEG2000 image transmission using IEEE 802.15.4. The proposed low-MAC FEC controller has very small HW size and spends little computation to estimate channel state. Because of this advantage, it is acceptable to apply IEEE 802.15.4 which has to operate more than 1 year with battery. For the image transmission, we integrate the low-MAC FEC controller and RCPC coder in sensor node of LR-WPAN. The modified sensor node has increase of 3% hardware size than conventional zigbee sensor node.
Abstract: Natural convection heat transfer from a heated
horizontal semi-circular cylinder (flat surface upward) has been
investigated for the following ranges of conditions; Grashof number,
and Prandtl number. The governing partial differential equations
(continuity, Navier-Stokes and energy equations) have been solved
numerically using a finite volume formulation. In addition, the role of
the type of the thermal boundary condition imposed at cylinder
surface, namely, constant wall temperature (CWT) and constant heat
flux (CHF) are explored. Natural convection heat transfer from a
heated horizontal semi-circular cylinder (flat surface upward) has
been investigated for the following ranges of conditions; Grashof
number, and Prandtl number, . The governing partial differential
equations (continuity, Navier-Stokes and energy equations) have
been solved numerically using a finite volume formulation. In
addition, the role of the type of the thermal boundary condition
imposed at cylinder surface, namely, constant wall temperature
(CWT) and constant heat flux (CHF) are explored. The resulting flow
and temperature fields are visualized in terms of the streamline and
isotherm patterns in the proximity of the cylinder. The flow remains
attached to the cylinder surface over the range of conditions spanned
here except that for and ; at these conditions, a separated flow
region is observed when the condition of the constant wall
temperature is prescribed on the surface of the cylinder. The heat
transfer characteristics are analyzed in terms of the local and average
Nusselt numbers. The maximum value of the local Nusselt number
always occurs at the corner points whereas it is found to be minimum
at the rear stagnation point on the flat surface. Overall, the average
Nusselt number increases with Grashof number and/ or Prandtl
number in accordance with the scaling considerations. The numerical
results are used to develop simple correlations as functions of
Grashof and Prandtl number thereby enabling the interpolation of the
present numerical results for the intermediate values of the Prandtl or
Grashof numbers for both thermal boundary conditions.
Abstract: It has often been said that the strength of any country
resides in the strength of its industrial sector, and Progress in
industrial society has been accomplished by the creation of new
technologies. Developments have been facilitated by the increasing
availability of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), in
addition the implementation of advanced manufacturing technology
(AMT) requires careful planning at all levels of the organization to
ensure that the implementation will achieve the intended goals.
Justification and implementation of advanced manufacturing
technology (AMT) involves decisions that are crucial for the
practitioners regarding the survival of business in the present days of
uncertain manufacturing world. This paper assists the industrial
managers to consider all the important criteria for success AMT
implementation, when purchasing new technology. Concurrently,
this paper classifies the tangible benefits of a technology that are
evaluated by addressing both cost and time dimensions, and the
intangible benefits are evaluated by addressing technological,
strategic, social and human issues to identify and create awareness of
the essential elements in the AMT implementation process and
identify the necessary actions before implementing AMT.
Abstract: In recent years, the number of natural disasters in Laos has a trend to increase, especially the disaster of flood. To make a flood plan risk management in the future, it is necessary to understand and analyze the characteristics of the rainfall and Mekong River level data. To reduce the damage, this paper presents the flood risk analysis in Luangprabang and Vientiane, the prefecture of Laos. In detail, the relationship between the rainfall and the Mekong River level has evaluated and appropriate countermeasure for flood was discussed.
Abstract: In the effort to reduce water consumption for resorts,
more water conservation practices need to be implemented. Hence
water audits need to be performed to obtain a baseline of water
consumption, before planning water conservation practices. In this
study, a water audit framework specifically for resorts was created,
and the audit was performed on two resorts: Resort A in Langkawi,
Malaysia; and Resort B in Miri, Malaysia. From the audit, the total
daily water consumption for Resorts A and B were estimated to be
180m3 and 330 m3 respectively, while the actual water consumption
(based on water meter readings) were 175 m3 and 325 m3. This
suggests that the audit framework is reasonably accurate and may be
used to account for most of the water consumption sources in a
resort. The daily water consumption per guest is about 500 litres. The
water consumption of both resorts is poorly rated compared with
established benchmarks. Water conservation measures were
suggested for both resorts.
Abstract: Trends in business intelligence, e-commerce and
remote access make it necessary and practical to store data in
different ways on multiple systems with different operating systems.
As business evolve and grow, they require efficient computerized
solution to perform data update and to access data from diverse
enterprise business applications. The objective of this paper is to
demonstrate the capability of DTS [1] as a database solution for
automatic data transfer and update in solving business problem. This
DTS package is developed for the sales of variety of plants and
eventually expanded into commercial supply and landscaping
business. Dimension data modeling is used in DTS package to
extract, transform and load data from heterogeneous database
systems such as MySQL, Microsoft Access and Oracle that
consolidates into a Data Mart residing in SQL Server. Hence, the
data transfer from various databases is scheduled to run automatically
every quarter of the year to review the efficient sales analysis.
Therefore, DTS is absolutely an attractive solution for automatic data
transfer and update which meeting today-s business needs.
Abstract: This study aimed at assessing whether and to what extent moral judgment and behaviour were: 1. situation-dependent; 2. selectively dependent on cognitive and affective components; 3. influenced by gender and age; 4. reciprocally congruent. In order to achieve these aims, four different types of moral dilemmas were construed and five types of thinking were presented for each of them – representing five possible ways to evaluate the situation. The judgment criteria included selfishness, altruism, sense of justice, and the conflict between selfishness and the two moral issues. The participants were 250 unpaid volunteers (50% male; 50% female) belonging to two age-groups: young people and adults. The study entailed a 2 (gender) x 2 (age-group) x 5 (type of thinking) x 4 (situation) mixed design: the first two variables were betweensubjects, the others were within-subjects. Results have shown that: 1. moral judgment and behaviour are at least partially affected by the type of situations and by interpersonal variables such as gender and age; 2. moral reasoning depends in a similar manner on cognitive and affective factors; 3. there is not a gender polarity between the ethic of justice and the ethic of cure/ altruism; 4. moral reasoning and behavior are perceived as reciprocally congruent even though their congruence decreases with a more objective assessment. Such results were discussed in the light of contrasting theories on morality.