Abstract: Previous studies have shown that there are arguments
regarding the reliability and validity of the Ashworth and Modified
Ashworth Scale towards evaluating patients diagnosed with upper
limb disorders. These evaluations depended on the raters’ experiences.
This initiated us to develop an upper limb disorder part-task trainer
that is able to simulate consistent upper limb disorders, such as
spasticity and rigidity signs, based on the Modified Ashworth Scale to
improve the variability occurring between raters and intra-raters
themselves. By providing consistent signs, novice therapists would be
able to increase training frequency and exposure towards various
levels of signs. A total of 22 physiotherapists and occupational
therapists participated in the study. The majority of the therapists
agreed that with current therapy education, they still face problems
with inter-raters and intra-raters variability (strongly agree 54%; n =
12/22, agree 27%; n = 6/22) in evaluating patients’ conditions. The
therapists strongly agreed (72%; n = 16/22) that therapy trainees
needed to increase their frequency of training; therefore believe that
our initiative to develop an upper limb disorder training tool will help
in improving the clinical education field (strongly agree and agree
63%; n = 14/22).
Abstract: Compare to western cultures, women who smoke in Korea are not tolerated. Korean people are prejudiced against women smoking. In spite of the relative prevalence of sexual equality in South Korea, women too often feel obliged to confine their smoking to only a few public spaces, such as designated smoking rooms, coffee shops or pubs. Korean Confucianism classifies people according to gender and social status. According to Confucian culture, cigarettes convey clear social meanings as well as reinforcing status, age and gender, beyond personal preferences. For these reasons, the significant of people smoking in Korea varies according to their gender. This study will determine reasons for the ongoing sexual discrimination against female Korean smokers thorough analyzing Korean films. Since film is a medium reflects social phenomenon. Roland Barthes- Mythology Theory will be used to analyze films.
Abstract: IEEE has designed 802.11i protocol to address the
security issues in wireless local area networks. Formal analysis is
important to ensure that the protocols work properly without having
to resort to tedious testing and debugging which can only show the
presence of errors, never their absence. In this paper, we present
the formal verification of an abstract protocol model of 802.11i.
We translate the 802.11i protocol into the Strand Space Model and
then prove the authentication property of the resulting model using
the Strand Space formalism. The intruder in our model is imbued
with powerful capabilities and repercussions to possible attacks are
evaluated. Our analysis proves that the authentication of 802.11i is
not compromised in the presented model. We further demonstrate
how changes in our model will yield a successful man-in-the-middle
attack.
Abstract: This paper presents the solution of power economic dispatch (PED) problem of generating units with valve point effects and multiple fuel options using Self-Adaptive Differential Evolution (SDE) algorithm. The global optimal solution by mathematical approaches becomes difficult for the realistic PED problem in power systems. The Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is found to be a powerful evolutionary algorithm for global optimization in many real problems. In this paper the key parameters of control in DE algorithm such as the crossover constant CR and weight applied to random differential F are self-adapted. The PED problem formulation takes into consideration of nonsmooth fuel cost function due to valve point effects and multi fuel options of generator. The proposed approach has been examined and tested with the numerical results of PED problems with thirteen-generation units including valve-point effects, ten-generation units with multiple fuel options neglecting valve-point effects and ten-generation units including valve-point effects and multiple fuel options. The test results are promising and show the effectiveness of proposed approach for solving PED problems.
Abstract: Traffic management in an urban area is highly facilitated by the knowledge of the traffic conditions in every street or highway involved in the vehicular mobility system. Aim of the paper is to propose a neuro-fuzzy approach able to compute the main parameters of a traffic system, i.e., car density, velocity and flow, by using the images collected by the web-cams located at the crossroads of the traffic network. The performances of this approach encourage its application when the traffic system is far from the saturation. A fuzzy model is also outlined to evaluate when it is suitable to use more accurate, even if more time consuming, algorithms for measuring traffic conditions near to saturation.
Abstract: As a tool for human spatial cognition and thinking, the map has been playing an important role. Maps are perhaps as fundamental to society as language and the written word. Economic and social development requires extensive and in-depth understanding of their own living environment, from the scope of the overall global to urban housing. This has brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges for traditional cartography . This paper first proposed the concept of scaleless-map and its basic characteristics, through the analysis of the existing multi-scale representation techniques. Then some strategies are presented for automated mapping compilation. Taking into account the demand of automated map compilation, detailed proposed the software - WJ workstation must have four technical features, which are generalization operators, symbol primitives, dynamically annotation and mapping process template. This paper provides a more systematic new idea and solution to improve the intelligence and automation of the scaleless cartography.
Abstract: Hypersonic flows around spatial vehicles during their
reentry phase in planetary atmospheres are characterized by intense
aerothermal phenomena. The aim of this work is to analyze high
temperature flows around an axisymmetric blunt body taking into
account chemical and vibrational non-equilibrium for air mixture
species. For this purpose, a finite volume methodology is employed
to determine the supersonic flow parameters around the axisymmetric
blunt body, especially at the stagnation point and along the wall of
spacecraft for several altitudes. This allows the capture shock wave
before a blunt body placed in supersonic free stream. The numerical
technique uses the Flux Vector Splitting method of Van Leer. Here,
adequate time stepping parameter, along with CFL coefficient and
mesh size level are selected to ensure numerical convergence, sought
with an order of 10-8
Abstract: A new numerical scheme based on the H1-Galerkin mixed finite element method for a class of second-order pseudohyperbolic equations is constructed. The proposed procedures can be split into three independent differential sub-schemes and does not need to solve a coupled system of equations. Optimal error estimates are derived for both semidiscrete and fully discrete schemes for problems in one space dimension. And the proposed method dose not requires the LBB consistency condition. Finally, some numerical results are provided to illustrate the efficacy of our method.
Abstract: The paper presents the study of synthetic transmit
aperture method applying the Golay coded transmission for medical
ultrasound imaging. Longer coded excitation allows to increase the
total energy of the transmitted signal without increasing the peak
pressure. Signal-to-noise ratio and penetration depth are improved
maintaining high ultrasound image resolution.
In the work the 128-element linear transducer array with 0.3 mm
inter-element spacing excited by one cycle and the 8 and 16-bit
Golay coded sequences at nominal frequencies 4 MHz was used.
Single element transmission aperture was used to generate a spherical
wave covering the full image region and all the elements received the
echo signals. The comparison of 2D ultrasound images of the wire
phantom as well as of the tissue mimicking phantom is presented to
demonstrate the benefits of the coded transmission. The results were
obtained using the synthetic aperture algorithm with transmit and
receive signals correction based on a single element directivity
function.
Abstract: It is not easy to imagine how the existing city can be
converted to the principles of sustainability, however, the need for
innovation, requires a pioneering phase which must address the main
problems of rehabilitation of the operating models of the city. Today,
however, there is a growing awareness that the identification and
implementation of policies and measures to promote the adaptation,
resilience and reversibility of the city, require the contribution of our
discipline. This breakthrough is present in some recent international
experiences of Climate Plans, in which the envisaged measures are
closely interwoven with those of urban planning. These experiences,
provide some answers principle questions, such as: how the strategies
to combat climate can be integrated in the instruments of the local
government; what new and specific analysis must be introduced in
urban planning in order to understand the issues of urban
sustainability, and how the project compares with different spatial
scales.
Abstract: Setting up of rural telecentres, popularly referred to as
Common Service Centres (CSCs), are considered one of the initial
forerunners of rural e-Governance initiatives under the Government
of India-s National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). CSCs are
implemented on public-private partnership (PPP) – where State
governments play a major role in facilitating the establishment of
CSCs and investments are made by private companies referred to as
Service Centre Agencies (SCAs). CSC implementation is expected to
help in improving public service delivery in a transparent and
efficient manner. However, there is very little research undertaken to
study the actual impact of CSC implementation at the grassroots
level. This paper addresses the gap by identifying the circumstances,
concerns and expectations from the point-of-view of citizens and
examining the finer aspects of social processes in the context of rural
e-Governance.
Abstract: A computational platform is presented in this
contribution. It has been designed as a virtual laboratory to be used
for exploring optimization algorithms in biological problems. This
platform is built on a blackboard-based agent architecture. As a test
case, the version of the platform presented here is devoted to the
study of protein folding, initially with a bead-like description of the
chain and with the widely used model of hydrophobic and polar
residues (HP model). Some details of the platform design are
presented along with its capabilities and also are revised some
explorations of the protein folding problems with different types of
discrete space. It is also shown the capability of the platform to
incorporate specific tools for the structural analysis of the runs in
order to understand and improve the optimization process.
Accordingly, the results obtained demonstrate that the ensemble of
computational tools into a single platform is worthwhile by itself,
since experiments developed on it can be designed to fulfill different
levels of information in a self-consistent fashion. By now, it is being
explored how an experiment design can be useful to create a
computational agent to be included within the platform. These
inclusions of designed agents –or software pieces– are useful for the
better accomplishment of the tasks to be developed by the platform.
Clearly, while the number of agents increases the new version of the
virtual laboratory thus enhances in robustness and functionality.
Abstract: There are two common types of operational research techniques, optimisation and metaheuristic methods. The latter may be defined as a sequential process that intelligently performs the exploration and exploitation adopted by natural intelligence and strong inspiration to form several iterative searches. An aim is to effectively determine near optimal solutions in a solution space. In this work, a type of metaheuristics called Ant Colonies Optimisation, ACO, inspired by a foraging behaviour of ants was adapted to find optimal solutions of eight non-linear continuous mathematical models. Under a consideration of a solution space in a specified region on each model, sub-solutions may contain global or multiple local optimum. Moreover, the algorithm has several common parameters; number of ants, moves, and iterations, which act as the algorithm-s driver. A series of computational experiments for initialising parameters were conducted through methods of Rigid Simplex, RS, and Modified Simplex, MSM. Experimental results were analysed in terms of the best so far solutions, mean and standard deviation. Finally, they stated a recommendation of proper level settings of ACO parameters for all eight functions. These parameter settings can be applied as a guideline for future uses of ACO. This is to promote an ease of use of ACO in real industrial processes. It was found that the results obtained from MSM were pretty similar to those gained from RS. However, if these results with noise standard deviations of 1 and 3 are compared, MSM will reach optimal solutions more efficiently than RS, in terms of speed of convergence.
Abstract: National Biodiversity Database System (NBIDS) has
been developed for collecting Thai biodiversity data. The goal of this
project is to provide advanced tools for querying, analyzing,
modeling, and visualizing patterns of species distribution for
researchers and scientists. NBIDS data record two types of datasets:
biodiversity data and environmental data. Biodiversity data are
specie presence data and species status. The attributes of biodiversity
data can be further classified into two groups: universal and projectspecific
attributes. Universal attributes are attributes that are common
to all of the records, e.g. X/Y coordinates, year, and collector name.
Project-specific attributes are attributes that are unique to one or a
few projects, e.g., flowering stage. Environmental data include
atmospheric data, hydrology data, soil data, and land cover data
collecting by using GLOBE protocols. We have developed webbased
tools for data entry. Google Earth KML and ArcGIS were used
as tools for map visualization. webMathematica was used for simple
data visualization and also for advanced data analysis and
visualization, e.g., spatial interpolation, and statistical analysis.
NBIDS will be used by park rangers at Khao Nan National Park, and
researchers.
Abstract: In this contribution, the use of a new genetic operator is proposed. The main advantage of using this operator is that it is able to assist the evolution procedure to converge faster towards the optimal solution of a problem. This new genetic operator is called ''intuition'' operator. Generally speaking, one can claim that this operator is a way to include any heuristic or any other local knowledge, concerning the problem, that cannot be embedded in the fitness function. Simulation results show that the use of this operator increases significantly the performance of the classic Genetic Algorithm by increasing the convergence speed of its population.
Abstract: This article is devoted to the numerical solution of
large-scale quadratic eigenvalue problems. Such problems arise in
a wide variety of applications, such as the dynamic analysis of
structural mechanical systems, acoustic systems, fluid mechanics,
and signal processing. We first introduce a generalized second-order
Krylov subspace based on a pair of square matrices and two initial
vectors and present a generalized second-order Arnoldi process for
constructing an orthonormal basis of the generalized second-order
Krylov subspace. Then, by using the projection technique and the
refined projection technique, we propose a restarted generalized
second-order Arnoldi method and a restarted refined generalized
second-order Arnoldi method for computing some eigenpairs of largescale
quadratic eigenvalue problems. Some theoretical results are also
presented. Some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the
effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Abstract: The effects of coatings based on sodium alginate (S.A) and carboxyl methyl cellulose (CMC) on the color and moisture characteristics of potato round slices were investigated. It is the first time that this combination of polysaccharides is used as edible coating which alone had the best performance as inhibitor of potato color discoloration during the storage of 15 days at 4oC. When ascorbic acid (AA) and green tea (GT) were added in the above edible coating its effects on potato round slices changed. The mixtures of sodium alginate and carboxyl methyl cellulose with ascorbic acid or with green tea behave as a potential moisture barrier, resulting to the extent of potato samples self–life. These data suggests that both GT and AA are potential inhibitors of dehydration in potatoes and not only natural antioxidants.
Abstract: Agriculture products are being more demanding in
market today. To increase its productivity, automation to produce
these products will be very helpful. The purpose of this work is to
measure and determine the ripeness and quality of watermelon. The
textures on watermelon skin will be captured using digital camera.
These images will be filtered using image processing technique. All
these information gathered will be trained using ANN to determine
the watermelon ripeness accuracy. Initial results showed that the best
model has produced percentage accuracy of 86.51%, when measured
at 32 hidden units with a balanced percentage rate of training dataset.
Abstract: Task of object localization is one of the major
challenges in creating intelligent transportation. Unfortunately, in
densely built-up urban areas, localization based on GPS only
produces a large error, or simply becomes impossible. New
opportunities arise for the localization due to the rapidly emerging
concept of a wireless ad-hoc network. Such network, allows
estimating potential distance between these objects measuring
received signal level and construct a graph of distances in which
nodes are the localization objects, and edges - estimates of the
distances between pairs of nodes. Due to the known coordinates of
individual nodes (anchors), it is possible to determine the location of
all (or part) of the remaining nodes of the graph. Moreover, road
map, available in digital format can provide localization routines
with valuable additional information to narrow node location search.
However, despite abundance of well-known algorithms for solving
the problem of localization and significant research efforts, there are
still many issues that currently are addressed only partially. In this
paper, we propose localization approach based on the graph mapped
distances on the digital road map data basis. In fact, problem is
reduced to distance graph embedding into the graph representing area
geo location data. It makes possible to localize objects, in some cases
even if only one reference point is available. We propose simple
embedding algorithm and sample implementation as spatial queries
over sensor network data stored in spatial database, allowing
employing effectively spatial indexing, optimized spatial search
routines and geometry functions.
Abstract: Architecture as a form of art, whilst actively
developing, finds new methods and conceptions. Currently,
architectural animation is actively developing as a step, successive to
architectural visualization. Interesting vistas of architectural ideas
were discovered by artists of Japanese animation, in which there are
traditional spirits, kami, and imaginary spaces relating to them.
Anime art should be considered abstract painting, another kind of an
architectural workshop, where new architectural ideas are generated.