ALD HfO2 Based RRAM with Ti Capping

HfOx based Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) is one of the most widely studied material stack due to its promising performances as an emerging memory technology. In this work, we systematically investigated the effect of metal capping layer by preparing sample devices with varying thickness of Ti cap and comparing their operating parameters with the help of an Agilent-B1500A analyzer.

The Impact of Copper and Zinc Deficiency on Milk Production Performances of Intensively Grazed Dairy Cows on the North-East of Romania

The influence of copper and zinc supplements on milk production performances and health indicators was tested in a 20- week feeding trial, with 40 Holstein-Friesian lactating cows, devided in four groups (copper, zinc, copper-zinc and control). Correlations of the Cu and Zn plasma values with some animal performance criteria of health (body condition score and somatic cell counts) and production (milk yield, peak milk yield, fat and crude protein content) were done. During the 140 days of the experiment, the two added minerals caused a statistically significant increase (p < 0.05) of their plasma values after the peak of the cows’ lactations. It was also observed that subjects that have received copper and zinc supplements had the lowest number of somatic cell counts in milk. The Pearson correlation test showed a positive corellation (p = 0.007, r = + 0.851) between the plasma Zn and the milk production. The improvement of the nutritional status improved the milk production performances of the cows as well as their health performances.

A Fast Block-based Evolutional Algorithm for Combinatorial Problems

The problems with high complexity had been the challenge in combinatorial problems. Due to the none-determined and polynomial characteristics, these problems usually face to unreasonable searching budget. Hence combinatorial optimizations attracted numerous researchers to develop better algorithms. In recent academic researches, most focus on developing to enhance the conventional evolutional algorithms and facilitate the local heuristics, such as VNS, 2-opt and 3-opt. Despite the performances of the introduction of the local strategies are significant, however, these improvement cannot improve the performance for solving the different problems. Therefore, this research proposes a meta-heuristic evolutional algorithm which can be applied to solve several types of problems. The performance validates BBEA has the ability to solve the problems even without the design of local strategies.

Reformulations of Big Bang-Big Crunch Algorithm for Discrete Structural Design Optimization

In the present study the efficiency of Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) algorithm is investigated in discrete structural design optimization. It is shown that a standard version of the BB-BC algorithm is sometimes unable to produce reasonable solutions to problems from discrete structural design optimization. Two reformulations of the algorithm, which are referred to as modified BB-BC (MBB-BC) and exponential BB-BC (EBB-BC), are introduced to enhance the capability of the standard algorithm in locating good solutions for steel truss and frame type structures, respectively. The performances of the proposed algorithms are experimented and compared to its standard version as well as some other algorithms over several practical design examples. In these examples, steel structures are sized for minimum weight subject to stress, stability and displacement limitations according to the provisions of AISC-ASD.

Novel Direct Flux and Torque Control of Optimally Designed 6 Phase Reluctance Machine with Special Current Waveform

In this paper the principle, basic torque theory and design optimisation of a six-phase reluctance dc machine are considered. A trapezoidal phase current waveform for the machine drive is proposed and evaluated to minimise ripple torque. Low cost normal laminated salient-pole rotors with and without slits and chamfered poles are investigated. The six-phase machine is optimised in multi-dimensions by linking the finite-element analysis method directly with an optimisation algorithm; the objective function is to maximise the torque per copper losses of the machine. The armature reaction effect is investigated in detail and found to be severe. The measured and calculated torque performances of a 35 kW optimum designed six-phase reluctance dc machine drive are presented.

NOHIS-Tree: High-Dimensional Index Structure for Similarity Search

In Content-Based Image Retrieval systems it is important to use an efficient indexing technique in order to perform and accelerate the search in huge databases. The used indexing technique should also support the high dimensions of image features. In this paper we present the hierarchical index NOHIS-tree (Non Overlapping Hierarchical Index Structure) when we scale up to very large databases. We also present a study of the influence of clustering on search time. The performance test results show that NOHIS-tree performs better than SR-tree. Tests also show that NOHIS-tree keeps its performances in high dimensional spaces. We include the performance test that try to determine the number of clusters in NOHIS-tree to have the best search time.

Optimization of Kinematics for Birds and UAVs Using Evolutionary Algorithms

The aim of this work is to present a multi-objective optimization method to find maximum efficiency kinematics for a flapping wing unmanned aerial vehicle. We restrained our study to rectangular wings with the same profile along the span and to harmonic dihedral motion. It is assumed that the birdlike aerial vehicle (whose span and surface area were fixed respectively to 1m and 0.15m2) is in horizontal mechanically balanced motion at fixed speed. We used two flight physics models to describe the vehicle aerodynamic performances, namely DeLaurier-s model, which has been used in many studies dealing with flapping wings, and the model proposed by Dae-Kwan et al. Then, a constrained multi-objective optimization of the propulsive efficiency is performed using a recent evolutionary multi-objective algorithm called є-MOEA. Firstly, we show that feasible solutions (i.e. solutions that fulfil the imposed constraints) can be obtained using Dae-Kwan et al.-s model. Secondly, we highlight that a single objective optimization approach (weighted sum method for example) can also give optimal solutions as good as the multi-objective one which nevertheless offers the advantage of directly generating the set of the best trade-offs. Finally, we show that the DeLaurier-s model does not yield feasible solutions.

Design a Low Voltage- Low Offset Class AB Op-Amp

A new design approach for three-stage operational amplifiers (op-amps) is proposed. It allows to actually implement a symmetrical push-pull class-AB amplifier output stage for wellestablished three-stage amplifiers using a feedforward transconductance stage. Compared with the conventional design practice, the proposed approach leads to a significant improvement of the symmetry between the positive and the negative op-amp step response, resulting in similar values of the positive/negative settling time. The new approach proves to be very useful in order to fully exploit the potentiality allowed by the op-amp in terms of speed performances. Design examples in a commercial 0.35-μm CMOS prove the effectiveness of theproposed strategy.

Analysis and Classification of Hiv-1 Sub- Type Viruses by AR Model through Artificial Neural Networks

HIV-1 genome is highly heterogeneous. Due to this variation, features of HIV-I genome is in a wide range. For this reason, the ability to infection of the virus changes depending on different chemokine receptors. From this point of view, R5 HIV viruses use CCR5 coreceptor while X4 viruses use CXCR5 and R5X4 viruses can utilize both coreceptors. Recently, in Bioinformatics, R5X4 viruses have been studied to classify by using the experiments on HIV-1 genome. In this study, R5X4 type of HIV viruses were classified using Auto Regressive (AR) model through Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). The statistical data of R5X4, R5 and X4 viruses was analyzed by using signal processing methods and ANNs. Accessible residues of these virus sequences were obtained and modeled by AR model since the dimension of residues is large and different from each other. Finally the pre-processed data was used to evolve various ANN structures for determining R5X4 viruses. Furthermore ROC analysis was applied to ANNs to show their real performances. The results indicate that R5X4 viruses successfully classified with high sensitivity and specificity values training and testing ROC analysis for RBF, which gives the best performance among ANN structures.

Low-Cost and Highly Accurate Motion Models for Three-Dimensional Local Landmark-based Autonomous Navigation

Recently, the Spherical Motion Models (SMM-s) have been introduced [1]. These new models have been developed for 3D local landmark-base Autonomous Navigation (AN). This paper is revealing new arguments and experimental results to support the SMM-s characteristics. The accuracy and the robustness in performing a specific task are the main concerns of the new investigations. To analyze their performances of the SMM-s, the most powerful tools of estimation theory, the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF), which give the best estimations in noisy environments, have been employed. The Monte Carlo validation implementations used to test the stability and robustness of the models have been employed as well.

Using Exponential Lévy Models to Study Implied Volatility patterns for Electricity Options

German electricity European options on futures using Lévy processes for the underlying asset are examined. Implied volatility evolution, under each of the considered models, is discussed after calibrating for the Merton jump diffusion (MJD), variance gamma (VG), normal inverse Gaussian (NIG), Carr, Geman, Madan and Yor (CGMY) and the Black and Scholes (B&S) model. Implied volatility is examined for the entire sample period, revealing some curious features about market evolution, where data fitting performances of the five models are compared. It is shown that variance gamma processes provide relatively better results and that implied volatility shows significant differences through time, having increasingly evolved. Volatility changes for changed uncertainty, or else, increasing futures prices and there is evidence for the need to account for seasonality when modelling both electricity spot/futures prices and volatility.

Influence of Laminated Textile Structures on Mechanical Performance of NF-Epoxy Composites

Textile structures are engineered and fabricated to meet worldwide structural applications. Nevertheless, research varying textile structure on natural fibre as composite reinforcement was found to be very limited. Most of the research is focusing on short fibre and random discontinuous orientation of the reinforcement structure. Realizing that natural fibre (NF) composite had been widely developed to be used as synthetic fibre composite replacement, this research attempted to examine the influence of woven and cross-ply laminated structure towards its mechanical performances. Laminated natural fibre composites were developed using hand lay-up and vacuum bagging technique. Impact and flexural strength were investigated as a function of fibre type (coir and kenaf) and reinforcement structure (imbalanced plain woven, 0°/90° cross-ply and +45°/-45° cross-ply). Multi-level full factorial design of experiment (DOE) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to impart data as to how fibre type and reinforcement structure parameters affect the mechanical properties of the composites. This systematic experimentation has led to determination of significant factors that predominant influences the impact and flexural properties of the textile composites. It was proven that both fibre type and reinforcement structure demonstrated significant difference results. Overall results indicated that coir composite and woven structure exhibited better impact and flexural strength. Yet, cross-ply composite structure demonstrated better fracture resistance.

Determination of Non Uniform Sinusoidal Microstrip Leaky-Wave Antenna Radiating Performances in Millimeter Band

Here we have considered non uniform microstrip leaky-wave antenna implemented on a dielectric waveguide by a sinusoidal profile of periodic metallic grating. The non distribution of the attenuation constant α along propagation axis, optimize the radiating characteristics and performances of such antennas. The method developped here is based on an integral method where the formalism of the admittance operator is combined to a BKW approximation. First, the effect of the modeling in the modal analysis of complex waves is studied in detail. Then, the BKW model is used for the dispersion analysis of the antenna of interest. According to antenna theory, a forced continuity of the leaky-wave magnitude at discontinuities of the non uniform structure is established. To test the validity of our dispersion analysis, computed radiation patterns are presented and compared in the millimeter band.

New Robust Approach of Direct Field Oriented Control of Induction Motor

This paper presents a new technique of compensation of the effect of variation parameters in the direct field oriented control of induction motor. The proposed method uses an adaptive tuning of the value of synchronous speed to obtain the robustness for the field oriented control. We show that this adaptive tuning allows having robustness for direct field oriented control to changes in rotor resistance, load torque and rotational speed. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by numerical simulations. The numerical validation results of the proposed scheme have presented good performances compared to the usual direct-field oriented control.

Cluster Analysis for the Statistical Modeling of Aesthetic Judgment Data Related to Comics Artists

We compare three categorical data clustering algorithms with respect to the problem of classifying cultural data related to the aesthetic judgment of comics artists. Such a classification is very important in Comics Art theory since the determination of any classes of similarities in such kind of data will provide to art-historians very fruitful information of Comics Art-s evolution. To establish this, we use a categorical data set and we study it by employing three categorical data clustering algorithms. The performances of these algorithms are compared each other, while interpretations of the clustering results are also given.

Heat-treated or Raw Sunflower Seeds in Lactating Dairy Cows Diets: Effects on Milk Fatty Acids Profile and Milk Production

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with raw or heat-treated sunflower oil seed with two levels of 7.5% or 15% on unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat and performances of high-yielding lactating cows. Twenty early lactating Holstein cows were used in a complete randomized design. Treatments included: 1) CON, control (without sunflower oil seed). 2) LS-UT, 7.5% raw sunflower oil seed. 3) LS-HT, 7.5% heat-treated sunflower oil seed. 4) HS-UT, 15% raw sunflower oil seed. 5) HS-HT, 15% heat-treated sunflower oil seed. Experimental period lasted for 4 wk, with first 2 wk used for adaptation to the diets. Supplementation with 7.5% raw sunflower seed (LS-UT) tended to decrease milk yield, with 28.37 kg/d compared with the control (34.75 kg/d). Milk fat percentage was increased with the HS-UT treatment that obtained 3.71% compared with CON that was 3.39% and without significant different. Milk protein percent was decreased high level sunflower oil seed treatments (15%) with 3.18% whereas CON treatment is caused 3.40% protein. The cows fed added low sunflower heat-treated (LS-HT) produced milk with the highest content of total unsaturated fatty acid with 32.59 g/100g of milk fat compared with the HS-UT with 23.59 g/100g of milk fat. Content of C18 unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat increased from 21.68 g/100g of fat in the HS-UT to 22.50, 23.98, 27.39 and 30.30 g/100g of fat from the cow fed HS-HT, CON, LS-UT and LS-HT treatments, respectively. C18:2 isomers of fatty acid in milk were greater by LSHT supplementation with significant effect (P < 0.05). Total of C18 unsaturated fatty acids content was significantly higher in milk of animal fed added low heat-treated sunflower (7.5%) than those fed with high sunflower. In all, results of this study showed that diet cow's supplementation with sunflower oil seed tended to reduce milk production of lactating cows but can improve C18 UFA (Unsaturated Fatty Acid) content in milk fat. 7.5% level of sunflower oil seed that heated seemed to be the optimal source to increase UFA production.

The Control of a Highly Nonlinear Two-wheels Balancing Robot: A Comparative Assessment between LQR and PID-PID Control Schemes

The research on two-wheels balancing robot has gained momentum due to their functionality and reliability when completing certain tasks. This paper presents investigations into the performance comparison of Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) and PID-PID controllers for a highly nonlinear 2–wheels balancing robot. The mathematical model of 2-wheels balancing robot that is highly nonlinear is derived. The final model is then represented in statespace form and the system suffers from mismatched condition. Two system responses namely the robot position and robot angular position are obtained. The performances of the LQR and PID-PID controllers are examined in terms of input tracking and disturbances rejection capability. Simulation results of the responses of the nonlinear 2–wheels balancing robot are presented in time domain. A comparative assessment of both control schemes to the system performance is presented and discussed.

Clustering Multivariate Empiric Characteristic Functions for Multi-Class SVM Classification

A dissimilarity measure between the empiric characteristic functions of the subsamples associated to the different classes in a multivariate data set is proposed. This measure can be efficiently computed, and it depends on all the cases of each class. It may be used to find groups of similar classes, which could be joined for further analysis, or it could be employed to perform an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis of the set of classes. The final tree can serve to build a family of binary classification models, offering an alternative approach to the multi-class SVM problem. We have tested this dendrogram based SVM approach with the oneagainst- one SVM approach over four publicly available data sets, three of them being microarray data. Both performances have been found equivalent, but the first solution requires a smaller number of binary SVM models.

A Fuzzy Model and Tool to Analyze SIVD Diseases Using TMS

The paper proposes a methodology to process the signals coming from the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in order to identify the pathology and evaluate the therapy to treat the patients affected by demency diseases. In particular, a fuzzy model is developed to identify the demency of the patients affected by Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Dementia and to measure the positive effect, if any, of a repetitive TMS on their motor performances. A tool is also presented to support the mentioned analysis.

Object Tracking System Using Camshift, Meanshift and Kalman Filter

This paper presents a implementation of an object tracking system in a video sequence. This object tracking is an important task in many vision applications. The main steps in video analysis are two: detection of interesting moving objects and tracking of such objects from frame to frame. In a similar vein, most tracking algorithms use pre-specified methods for preprocessing. In our work, we have implemented several object tracking algorithms (Meanshift, Camshift, Kalman filter) with different preprocessing methods. Then, we have evaluated the performance of these algorithms for different video sequences. The obtained results have shown good performances according to the degree of applicability and evaluation criteria.