Abstract: Eight steel reinforced concrete beams (SRC), were
fabricated and tested under earthquake type cyclic loading. The
effectiveness of intermediate stiffeners, such as mid-span stiffener and
plastic hinge zone stiffeners, in enhancing composite action and
ductility of SRC beams was investigated. The effectiveness of
strengthened beam-to-column (SBC) and weakened beam-to-column
(WBC) connections in enhancing beam ductility was also studied. It
was found that: (1) All the specimens possessed fairly high flexural
ductility and were found adequate for structures in high seismic zones.
(2) WBC connections induced stress concentration which caused extra
damage to concrete near the flange tapering zone. This extra damage
inhibited the flexural strength development and the ductility of the
specimens with WBC connections to some extent. (3) Specimens with
SBC connections demonstrated higher flexural strength and ductility
compared to specimens with WBC connections. (4) The intermediate
stiffeners, especially combination of plastic hinge zone stiffener and
mid span stiffeners, have an obvious effect in enhancing the ductility
of the beams with SBC connection.
Abstract: This paper presents an information retrieval model on
XML documents based on tree matching. Queries and documents are
represented by extended trees. An extended tree is built starting from
the original tree, with additional weighted virtual links between each
node and its indirect descendants allowing to directly reach each
descendant. Therefore only one level separates between each node
and its indirect descendants. This allows to compare the user query
and the document with flexibility and with respect to the structural
constraints of the query. The content of each node is very important to
decide weither a document element is relevant or not, thus the content
should be taken into account in the retrieval process. We separate
between the structure-based and the content-based retrieval processes.
The content-based score of each node is commonly based on the
well-known Tf × Idf criteria. In this paper, we compare between
this criteria and another one we call Tf × Ief. The comparison
is based on some experiments into a dataset provided by INEX1 to
show the effectiveness of our approach on one hand and those of
both weighting functions on the other.
Abstract: Detection and recognition of the Human Body Composition and extraction their measures (width and length of human body) in images are a major issue in detecting objects and the important field in Image, Signal and Vision Computing in recent years. Finding people and extraction their features in Images are particularly important problem of object recognition, because people can have high variability in the appearance. This variability may be due to the configuration of a person (e.g., standing vs. sitting vs. jogging), the pose (e.g. frontal vs. lateral view), clothing, and variations in illumination. In this study, first, Human Body is being recognized in image then the measures of Human Body extract from the image.
Abstract: Use of the Internet and the World-Wide-Web
(WWW) has become widespread in recent years and mobile agent
technology has proliferated at an equally rapid rate. In this scenario
load balancing becomes important for P2P systems. Beside P2P
systems can be highly heterogeneous, i.e., they may consists of peers
that range from old desktops to powerful servers connected to
internet through high-bandwidth lines. There are various loads
balancing policies came into picture. Primitive one is Message
Passing Interface (MPI). Its wide availability and portability make it
an attractive choice; however the communication requirements are
sometimes inefficient when implementing the primitives provided by
MPI. In this scenario we use the concept of mobile agent because
Mobile agent (MA) based approach have the merits of high
flexibility, efficiency, low network traffic, less communication
latency as well as highly asynchronous. In this study we present
decentralized load balancing scheme using mobile agent technology
in which when a node is overloaded, task migrates to less utilized
nodes so as to share the workload. However, the decision of which
nodes receive migrating task is made in real-time by defining certain
load balancing policies. These policies are executed on PMADE (A
Platform for Mobile Agent Distribution and Execution) in
decentralized manner using JuxtaNet and various load balancing
metrics are discussed.
Abstract: According to investigating impact of complexity of
stereoscopic frame pairs on stereoscopic video coding and
transmission, a new rate control algorithm is presented. The proposed
rate control algorithm is performed on three levels: stereoscopic group
of pictures (SGOP) level, stereoscopic frame (SFrame) level and
frame level. A temporal-spatial frame complexity model is firstly
established, in the bits allocation stage, the frame complexity, position
significance and reference property between the left and right frames
are taken into account. Meanwhile, the target buffer is set according to
the frame complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed
method can efficiently control the bitrates, and it outperforms the fixed
quantization parameter method from the rate distortion perspective,
and average PSNR gain between rate-distortion curves (BDPSNR) is
0.21dB.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider a risk model involving two independent classes of insurance risks and random premium income. We assume that the premium income process is a Poisson Process, and the claim number processes are independent Poisson and generalized Erlang(n) processes, respectively. Both of the Gerber- Shiu functions with zero initial surplus and the probability generating functions (p.g.f.) of the Gerber-Shiu functions are obtained.
Abstract: The efficacy of the separate mixing of four tropical spicy and medicinal plant products: Dennettia tripetala Baker (pepper fruit), Eugenia aromatica Hook (clove), Piper guineense (Schum and Thonn) (black pepper) and Monodora myristica (Dunal) (African nut-meg) with a household vegetable oil was evaluated under tropical storage conditions for the control and reproductive performance of Dermestes maculatus (De Geer) (hide beetle) and Necroba rufipes (De Geer) (copra beetle) on African catfish, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell). Each of the plant materials was pulverized into powder and applied as a mix of 1ml of oil and plant powder at 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0g per 100g of dried fish, and allowed to dry for 6h. Each of the four oil-mixed powder treatments evoked significant (P < 05) mortalities of the two insects compared with the control (oil only) at 1, 3 and 7 days post treatment. The oil-powder mixture dosages did not prevent insect egg hatchability but while the emergent larvae on the treated samples died, the emergent larvae in the control survived into adults. The application of oil-mixed powders effectively suppressed the emergence of the larvae of the beetles. Similarly, each of the oil-powder mixtures significantly reduced weight loss in smoked fish that were exposed to D. maculatus and N. rufipes when compared to the control (P < 05). The results of this study suggest that the plant powders rather than the domestic oil demonstrated protective ability against the fish beetles and confirm the efficacy of the plant products as pest control agents.
Abstract: The Taiwan government has invested approximately
21 billion NT dollars in the construction of bicycle paths since
bicycling has gained huge popularity as a healthy leisure and
recreational activity. This study focuses on the behavior of
recreational bicyclists in Danshuei and Bali, northern Taiwan. Data
were collected from a field investigation carried out along the
Danshuei bicycle path and Bali left-bank bicycle path. A total of 578
questionnaires were gathered for data analysis. Descriptive statistics
and Chi-Square tests were used to assess bicyclists- behaviors. The
frequency shows that, in these areas, Danshuei and Bali, most
bicyclists rented bicycles, rode the bicycle path in the afternoon for
about 2 hours. The used the bicycle path one time per week. For most,
it was the first time to ride these bicycle paths. There were significant
differences in distribution of bicycle ownership, time of day, duration
of ride, ride frequency, and whether riding occurred on weekdays or
weekends. Results indicated that most bicyclists in Danshuei and Bali
were infrequent users.
Abstract: This paper deals with the analysis of active constrained layer damping (ACLD) of doubly curved laminated composite shells using active fiber composite (AFC) materials. The constraining layer of the ACLD treatment has been considered to be made of the AFC materials. A three dimensional energy based finite element model of the smart doubly curved laminated composite shell integrated with a patch of such ACLD treatment has been developed to demonstrate the performance of the patch on enhancing the damping characteristics of the doubly curved laminated composite shells. Particular emphasis has been placed on studying the effect of variation of piezoelectric fiber orientation angle in the constraining AFC layer on the control authority of the ACLD patch.
Abstract: Solar sunspot rotation, latitudinal bands are studied based on intelligent computation methods. A combination of image fusion method with together tree decomposition is used to obtain quantitative values about the latitudes of trajectories on sun surface that sunspots rotate around them. Daily solar images taken with SOlar and Heliospheric (SOHO) satellite are fused for each month separately .The result of fused image is decomposed with Quad Tree decomposition method in order to achieve the precise information about latitudes of sunspot trajectories. Such analysis is useful for gathering information about the regions on sun surface and coordinates in space that is more expose to solar geomagnetic storms, tremendous flares and hot plasma gases permeate interplanetary space and help human to serve their technical systems. Here sunspot images in September, November and October in 2001 are used for studying the magnetic behavior of sun.
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of current municipal
solid waste management in Khoram Abad city.
According to data collected by the local authorities, the waste
generation rate is estimated to be 800 g/cap.d with density of 243
kg/m3. Solid waste is stored in different types of containers at the
source of generation in different areas of the city.
Local Authority is responsible for waste collection, transportation.
Municipality is responsible for waste collection, using private sector
contracts.
At present, both mechanical and manual methods are used to
collect residential waste. Manual methods of collection are the most
commonly used for waste collection in most parts of the city.
Land filling is the main disposal method in this city. But it has
some obvious problem and deficiencies
The current state of solid waste management has been improved
slightly in the last decade. By more actions can reduce the human and
environmental risks.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a fixed formatting method of PPX(Pretty Printer for XML). PPX is a query language for XML database which has extensive formatting capability that produces HTML as the result of a query. The fixed formatting method is to completely specify the combination of variables and layout specification operators within the layout expression of the GENERATE clause of PPX. In the experiment, a quick comparison shows that PPX requires far less description compared to XSLT or XQuery programs doing the same tasks.
Abstract: Hyperglycaemia is a key factor that contributes to the
development of diabetes-related microvascular disease and a major
risk factor for endothelial dysfunction. In the current study, we have
explored glucose-induced abnormal intracellular calcium (Ca2+
i)
homeostasis in mouse microvessel endothelial cells (MMECs) in
high glucose (HG) (40mmol/L) versus control (low glucose, LG) (11
mmol/L). We demonstrated that the exposure of MMECs to HG for 3
days did not change basal Ca2+
i, however, there was a significant
increase of acetylcholine-induced Ca2+ entry. Western blots
illustrated that exposure to HG also increased STIM1 (Stromal
Interaction Molecule 1), but not Orai1 (the pore forming subunit),
protein expression levels. Although the link between HG-induced
changes in STIM1 expression, enhanced Ca2+ entry and endothelial
dysfunction requires further study, the current data are suggestive
that targeting these pathways may reduce the impact of HG on
endothelial function.
Abstract: IEEE 802.15.4a impulse radio-time hopping ultra wide
band (IR-TH UWB) physical layer, due to small duty cycle and very
short pulse widths is robust against multipath propagation. However,
scattering and reflections with the large number of obstacles in indoor
channel environments, give rise to dense multipath fading. It imposes
serious problem to optimum Rake receiver architectures, for which
very large number of fingers are needed. Presence of strong noise
also affects the reception of fine pulses having extremely low power
spectral density. A robust SRake receiver for IEEE 802.15.4a IRTH
UWB in dense multipath and additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) is proposed to efficiently recover the weak signals with
much reduced complexity. It adaptively increases the signal to noise
(SNR) by decreasing noise through a recursive least square (RLS)
algorithm. For simulation, dense multipath environment of IEEE
802.15.4a industrial non line of sight (NLOS) is employed. The power
delay profile (PDF) and the cumulative distribution function (CDF)
for the respective channel environment are found. Moreover, the error
performance of the proposed architecture is evaluated in comparison
with conventional SRake and AWGN correlation receivers. The
simulation results indicate a substantial performance improvement
with very less number of Rake fingers.
Abstract: Online Communities are an example of sociallyaware,
self-organising, complex adaptive computing systems.
The multi-agent systems (MAS) paradigm coordinated by
self-organisation mechanisms has been used as an effective
way for the simulation and modeling of such systems. In this
paper, we propose a model for simulating an online health
community using a situated multi-agent system approach,
governed by the co-evolution of the social and spatial
organisations of the agents.
Abstract: This paper examines the modeling and analysis of a
cruise control system using a Petri net based approach, task graphs,
invariant analysis and behavioral properties. It shows how the
structures used can be verified and optimized.
Abstract: This paper presents a new color face image database
for benchmarking of automatic face detection algorithms and human
skin segmentation techniques. It is named the VT-AAST image
database, and is divided into four parts. Part one is a set of 286 color
photographs that include a total of 1027 faces in the original format
given by our digital cameras, offering a wide range of difference in
orientation, pose, environment, illumination, facial expression and
race. Part two contains the same set in a different file format. The
third part is a set of corresponding image files that contain human
colored skin regions resulting from a manual segmentation
procedure. The fourth part of the database has the same regions
converted into grayscale. The database is available on-line for
noncommercial use. In this paper, descriptions of the database
development, organization, format as well as information needed for
benchmarking of algorithms are depicted in detail.
Abstract: In the last few years, the Semantic Web gained scientific acceptance as a means of relationships identification in knowledge base, widely known by semantic association. Query about complex relationships between entities is a strong requirement for many applications in analytical domains. In bioinformatics for example, it is critical to extract exchanges between proteins. Currently, the widely known result of such queries is to provide paths between connected entities from data graph. However, they do not always give good results while facing the user need by the best association or a set of limited best association, because they only consider all existing paths but ignore the path evaluation. In this paper, we present an approach for supporting association discovery queries. Our proposal includes (i) a query language PmSPRQL which provides a multiparadigm query expressions for association extraction and (ii) some quantification measures making easy the process of association ranking. The originality of our proposal is demonstrated by a performance evaluation of our approach on real world datasets.
Abstract: QoS routing is an important component of Traffic
Engineering in networks that provide QoS guarantees. QoS routing is dependent on the link state information which is typically flooded across the network. This affects both the quality
of the routing and the utilization of the network resources. In
this paper, we examine establishing QoS routes with partial state
updates in wired sensor networks.
Abstract: Various solar energy technologies exist and they have
different application techniques in the generation of electrical power.
The widespread use of photovoltaic (PV) modules in such
technologies has been limited by relatively high costs and low
efficiencies. The efficiency of PV panels decreases as the operating
temperatures increase. This is due to the affect of solar intensity and
ambient temperature. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) was used to model the heat transfer from a standard PV panel
and thus determine the rate of dissipation of heat. To accurately
model the specific climatic conditions of the United Arab Emirates
(UAE), a case study of a new build green building in Dubai was
used. A finned heat pipe arrangement is proposed and analyzed to
determine the improved heat dissipation and thus improved
performance efficiency of the PV panel. A prototype of the
arrangement is built for experimental testing to validate the CFD
modeling and proof of concept.