Abstract: Management is required to understand all information security risks within an organization, and to make decisions on which information security risks should be treated in what level by allocating how much amount of cost. However, such decision-making is not usually easy, because various measures for risk treatment must be selected with the suitable application levels. In addition, some measures may have objectives conflicting with each other. It also makes the selection difficult. Therefore, this paper provides a model which supports the selection of measures by applying multi-objective analysis to find an optimal solution. Additionally, a list of measures is also provided to make the selection easier and more effective without any leakage of measures.
Abstract: The automatic discrimination of seismic signals is an important practical goal for earth-science observatories due to the large amount of information that they receive continuously. An essential discrimination task is to allocate the incoming signal to a group associated with the kind of physical phenomena producing it. In this paper, two classes of seismic signals recorded routinely in geophysical laboratory of the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research in Morocco are considered. They correspond to signals associated to local earthquakes and chemical explosions. The approach adopted for the development of an automatic discrimination system is a modular system composed by three blocs: 1) Representation, 2) Dimensionality reduction and 3) Classification. The originality of our work consists in the use of a new wavelet called "modified Mexican hat wavelet" in the representation stage. For the dimensionality reduction, we propose a new algorithm based on the random projection and the principal component analysis.
Abstract: This paper proposes an application of the differential
evolution (DE) algorithm for solving the economic dispatch problem
(ED). Furthermore, the regenerating population procedure added to
the conventional DE in order to improve escaping the local minimum
solution. To test performance of DE algorithm, three thermal
generating units with valve-point loading effects is used for testing.
Moreover, investigating the DE parameters is presented. The
simulation results show that the DE algorithm, which had been
adjusted parameters, is better convergent time than other optimization
methods.
Abstract: The Mahin area is a part of Tarom- Hashtjin zone that
located in west of Qazvin province in northwest of Iran. Many copper
and base metals ore deposits are hosted by this zone. High potential
localities identification in this area is very necessary. The objective of
this research, is finding hydrothermal alteration zones by remote
sensing methods and best processing technique of Advanced
Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER)
data. Different methods such as band ratio, Principal Component
Analysis (PCA), Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) and Least Square
Fit (LS-Fit) were used for mapping hydrothermal alteration zones.
Abstract: The concept of housing affordability is a contested
issue, but a pressing and widespread problem for many countries.
Simple ratio measures based on housing expenditure and income are
habitually used to defined and assess housing affordability. However,
conceptualising and measuring affordability in this manner focuses
only on financial attributes and fails to deal with wider issues such as
housing quality, location and access to services and facilities.
The research is based on the notion that the housing affordability
problem encompasses more than the financial costs of housing and a
households ability to meet such costs and must address larger issues
such as social and environmental sustainability and the welfare of
households. Therefore, the need arises for a broad and more
encompassing set of attributes by which housing affordability can be
assessed. This paper presents a system of criteria by which the
affordability of different housing locations could be assessed in a
comprehensive and sustainable manner. Moreover, the paper explores
the way in which such criteria could be measured.
Abstract: Ant colony optimization (ACO) and its variants are
applied extensively to resolve various continuous optimization
problems. As per the various diversification and intensification
schemes of ACO for continuous function optimization, researchers
generally consider components of multidimensional state space to
generate the new search point(s). However, diversifying to a new
search space by updating only components of the multidimensional
vector may not ensure that the new point is at a significant distance
from the current solution. If a minimum distance is not ensured
during diversification, then there is always a possibility that the
search will end up with reaching only local optimum. Therefore, to
overcome such situations, a Mahalanobis distance-based
diversification with Nelder-Mead simplex-based search scheme for
each ant is proposed for the ACO strategy. A comparative
computational run results, based on nine nonlinear standard test
problems, confirms that the performance of ACO is improved
significantly with the integration of the proposed schemes in the
ACO.
Abstract: Location selection is one of the most important
decision making process which requires to consider several criteria
based on the mission and the strategy. This study-s object is to
provide a decision support model in order to help the bank selecting
the most appropriate location for a bank-s branch considering a case
study in Turkey. The object of the bank is to select the most
appropriate city for opening a branch among six alternatives in the
South-Eastern of Turkey. The model in this study was consisted of
five main criteria which are Demographic, Socio-Economic, Sectoral
Employment, Banking and Trade Potential and twenty one subcriteria
which represent the bank-s mission and strategy. Because of
the multi-criteria structure of the problem and the fuzziness in the
comparisons of the criteria, fuzzy AHP is used and for the ranking of
the alternatives, TOPSIS method is used.
Abstract: The agriculture lignocellulosic by-products are receiving increased attention, namely in the search for filter materials that retain contaminants from water. These by-products, specifically almond and hazelnut shells are abundant in Portugal once almond and hazelnuts production is a local important activity. Hazelnut and almond shells have as main constituents lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses, water soluble extractives and tannins. Along the adsorption of heavy metals from contaminated waters, water soluble compounds can leach from shells and have a negative impact in the environment. Usually, the chemical characterization of treated water by itself may not show environmental impact caused by the discharges when parameters obey to legal quality standards for water. Only biological systems can detect the toxic effects of the water constituents. Therefore, the evaluation of toxicity by biological tests is very important when deciding the suitability for safe water discharge or for irrigation applications.
The main purpose of the present work was to assess the potential impacts of waters after been treated for heavy metal removal by hazelnut and almond shells adsorption systems, with short term acute toxicity tests.
To conduct the study, water at pH 6 with 25 mg.L-1 of lead, was treated with 10 g of shell per litre of wastewater, for 24 hours. This procedure was followed for each bark. Afterwards the water was collected for toxicological assays; namely bacterial resistance, seed germination, Lemna minor L. test and plant grow. The effect in isolated bacteria strains was determined by disc diffusion method and the germination index of seed was evaluated using lettuce, with temperature and humidity germination control for 7 days. For aquatic higher organism, Lemnas were used with 4 days contact time with shell solutions, in controlled light and temperature. For terrestrial higher plants, biomass production was evaluated after 14 days of tomato germination had occurred in soil, with controlled humidity, light and temperature.
Toxicity tests of water treated with shells revealed in some extent effects in the tested organisms, with the test assays showing a close behaviour as the control, leading to the conclusion that its further utilization may not be considered to create a serious risk to the environment.
Abstract: UK breweries generate extensive by products in the
form of spent grain, slurry and yeast. Much of the spent grain is
produced by large breweries and processed in bulk for animal feed.
Spent brewery grains contain up to 20% protein dry weight and up to
60% fiber and are useful additions to animal feed. Bulk processing is
economic and allows spent grain to be sold so providing an income
to the brewery. A proportion of spent grain, however, is produced by
small local breweries and is more variably distributed to farms or
other users using intermittent collection methods. Such use is much
less economic and may incur losses if not carefully assessed for
transport costs. This study reports an economic returns of using wet
brewery spent grain (WBSG) in animal feed using the Co-product
Optimizer Decision Evaluator model (Cattle CODE) developed by
the University of Nebraska to predict performance and economic
returns when byproducts are fed to finishing cattle. The results
indicated that distance from brewery to farm had a significantly
greater effect on the economics of use of small brewery spent grain
and that alternative uses than cattle feed may be important to
develop.
Abstract: In this paper we are interested in Moufang-Klingenberg
planesM(A) defined over a local alternative ring A of dual numbers.
We introduce two new collineations of M(A).
Abstract: In this paper, a predator-prey model with time delay and habitat complexity is investigated. By analyzing the characteristic equations, the local stability of each feasible equilibria of the system is discussed and the existence of a Hopf bifurcation at the coexistence equilibrium is established. By choosing the sum of two delays as a bifurcation parameter, we show that Hopf bifurcations can occur as crosses some critical values. By deriving the equation describing the flow on the center manifold, we can determine the direction of the Hopf bifurcations and the stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions. Numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate the main theoretical results.
Abstract: In mechanical and environmental engineering, mixed
convection is a frequently encountered thermal fluid phenomenon
which exists in atmospheric environment, urban canopy flows, ocean
currents, gas turbines, heat exchangers, and computer chip cooling
systems etc... . This paper deals with a numerical investigation of
mixed convection in a vertical heated channel. This flow results from
the mixing of the up-going fluid along walls of the channel with the
one issued from a flat nozzle located in its entry section. The fluiddynamic
and heat-transfer characteristics of vented vertical channels
are investigated for constant heat-flux boundary conditions, a
Rayleigh number equal to 2.57 1010, for two jet Reynolds number
Re=3 103 and 2104 and the aspect ratio in the 8-20 range. The system
of governing equations is solved with a finite volumes method and an
implicit scheme. The obtained results show that the turbulence and
the jet-wall interaction activate the heat transfer, as does the drive of
ambient air by the jet. For low Reynolds number Re=3 103, the
increase of the aspect Ratio enhances the heat transfer of about 3%,
however; for Re=2 104, the heat transfer enhancement is of about
12%. The numerical velocity, pressure and temperature fields are
post-processed to compute the quantities of engineering interest such
as the induced mass flow rate, and average Nusselt number, in terms
of Rayleigh, Reynolds numbers and dimensionless geometric
parameters are presented.
Abstract: There are many sources trough which the soil get
enriched and contaminated with REEs. The determination of REEs in
environmental samples has been limited because of the lack of
sensitive analytical techniques. Soil samples were collected from
four sites including open cast coal mine, natural coal burning, coal
washery and control in the coal field located in Dhanbad, India.
Total concentrations of rare earth elements (REEs) were determined
using the inductively coupled plasma atomic absorption spectrometry
in order to assess enrichment status in the coal field. Results showed
that the mean concentrations of La, Pr, Eu, Tb, Ho, and Tm in open
cast mine and natural coal burning sites were elevated compared to
the reference concentrations, while Ce, Nd, Sm, and Gd were
elevated in coal washery site. When compared to reference soil,
heavy REEs (HREEs) were enriched in open cast mines and natural
coal burning affected soils, however, the HREEs were depleted in the
coal washery sites. But, the Chondrite-normalization diagram showed
significant enrichment for light REEs (LREEs) in all the soils. High
concentration of Pr, Eu, Tb, Ho, Tm, and Lu in coal mining and coal
burning sites may pose human health risks. Factor analysis showed
that distribution and relative abundance of REEs of the coal washery
site is comparable with the control. Eventually washing or cleaning
of coal could significantly decrease the emission of REEs from coal
into the environment.
Abstract: The ability of information systems to operate in conjunction with each other encompassing communication protocols, hardware, software, application, and data compatibility layers. There has been considerable work in industry on the development of component interoperability models, such as CORBA, (D)COM and JavaBeans. These models are intended to reduce the complexity of software development and to facilitate reuse of off-the-shelf components. The focus of these models is syntactic interface specification, component packaging, inter-component communications, and bindings to a runtime environment. What these models lack is a consideration of architectural concerns – specifying systems of communicating components, explicitly representing loci of component interaction, and exploiting architectural styles that provide well-understood global design solutions. The development of complex business applications is now focused on an assembly of components available on a local area network or on the net. These components must be localized and identified in terms of available services and communication protocol before any request. The first part of the article introduces the base concepts of components and middleware while the following sections describe the different up-todate models of communication and interaction and the last section shows how different models can communicate among themselves.
Abstract: In this experimental investigation shake table tests
were conducted on two reduced models that represent normal single
room building constructed by Compressed Stabilized Earth Block
(CSEB) from locally available soil. One model was constructed with
earthquake resisting features (EQRF) having sill band, lintel band and
vertical bands to control the building vibration and another one was
without Earthquake Resisting Features. To examine the seismic
capacity of the models particularly when it is subjected to long-period
ground motion by large amplitude by many cycles of repeated
loading, the test specimen was shaken repeatedly until the failure.
The test results from Hi-end Data Acquisition system show that
model with EQRF behave better than without EQRF. This modified
masonry model with new material combined with new bands is used
to improve the behavior of masonry building.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel genetic algorithm, termed
the Optimum Individual Monogenetic Algorithm (OIMGA) and
describes its hardware implementation. As the monogenetic strategy
retains only the optimum individual, the memory requirement is
dramatically reduced and no crossover circuitry is needed, thereby
ensuring the requisite silicon area is kept to a minimum.
Consequently, depending on application requirements, OIMGA
allows the investigation of solutions that warrant either larger GA
populations or individuals of greater length. The results given in this
paper demonstrate that both the performance of OIMGA and its
convergence time are superior to those of existing hardware GA
implementations. Local convergence is achieved in OIMGA by
retaining elite individuals, while population diversity is ensured by
continually searching for the best individuals in fresh regions of the
search space.
Abstract: In recent years image watermarking has become an
important research area in data security, confidentiality and image
integrity. Many watermarking techniques were proposed for medical
images. However, medical images, unlike most of images, require
extreme care when embedding additional data within them because
the additional information must not affect the image quality and
readability. Also the medical records, electronic or not, are linked to
the medical secrecy, for that reason, the records must be confidential.
To fulfill those requirements, this paper presents a lossless
watermarking scheme for DICOM images. The proposed a fragile
scheme combines two reversible techniques based on difference
expansion for patient's data hiding and protecting the region of
interest (ROI) with tamper detection and recovery capability.
Patient's data are embedded into ROI, while recovery data are
embedded into region of non-interest (RONI). The experimental
results show that the original image can be exactly extracted from the
watermarked one in case of no tampering. In case of tampered ROI,
tampered area can be localized and recovered with a high quality
version of the original area.
Abstract: Shadoo protein (Sho) was described in 2003 as the newest member of Prion protein superfamily [1]. Sho has similar structural motifs like prion protein (PrP) that is known for its central role in transmissible spongiform enchephalopathies. Although a great number of functions have been proposed, the exact physiological function of PrP is not known yet. Investigation of the function and localization of Sho may help us to understand the function of the Prion protein superfamily. Analyzing the subcellular localization of YFP-tagged forms of Sho, we detected the protein in the plasma membrane and in the nucleus of various cell lines. To reveal the localization of the endogenous protein we generated antibodies against Shadoo as well as employed commercially available anti-Shadoo antibodies: i) EG62 anti-mouse Shadoo antibody generated by Eurogentec Ltd.; ii) S-12 anti-human Shadoo antibody by Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc.; iii) R-12 anti-mouse Shadoo antibody by Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc.; iv) SPRN antibody against human Shadoo by Abgent Inc. We carried out immunocytochemistry on non-transfected HeLa, Zpl 2-1, Zw 3-5, GT1-1, GT1-7 and SHSY5Y cells as well as on YFP-Sho, Sho-YFP, and YFP-GPI transfected HeLa cells. Their specificity (in antibody-peptide competition assay) and co-localization (with the YFP signal) were assessed.
Abstract: Graph coloring is an important problem in computer
science and many algorithms are known for obtaining reasonably
good solutions in polynomial time. One method of comparing
different algorithms is to test them on a set of standard graphs where
the optimal solution is already known. This investigation analyzes a
set of 50 well known graph coloring instances according to a set of
complexity measures. These instances come from a variety of
sources some representing actual applications of graph coloring
(register allocation) and others (mycieleski and leighton graphs) that
are theoretically designed to be difficult to solve. The size of the
graphs ranged from ranged from a low of 11 variables to a high of
864 variables. The method used to solve the coloring problem was
the square of the adjacency (i.e., correlation) matrix. The results
show that the most difficult graphs to solve were the leighton and the
queen graphs. Complexity measures such as density, mobility,
deviation from uniform color class size and number of block
diagonal zeros are calculated for each graph. The results showed that
the most difficult problems have low mobility (in the range of .2-.5)
and relatively little deviation from uniform color class size.
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.