Abstract: For this study, this researcher conducted a precision
network adjustment with QOCA, the precision network adjustment
software developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to perform an
integrated network adjustment on the Unified Control Points managed
by the National Geographic Information Institute. Towards this end,
275 Unified Control Points observed in 2008 were selected before a
network adjustment is performed on those 275 Unified Control Points.
The RMSE on the discrepancies of coordinates as compared to the
results of GLOBK was ±6.07mm along the N axis, ±2.68mm along the
E axis and ±6.49mm along the U axis.
Abstract: In order to provide and maintain effective pedagogy for the burgeoning virtual reality community, it is vital to have trained faculty in the institutions of higher education who will teach these courses and be able to make full use of their academic knowledge and expertise. As the number of online courses continues to grow, there is a need for these institutions to establish mentoring programs that will support the novice online instructor. The environment in which this takes place and the factors that ensure its success are critical to the adoption of the new instructional delivery format taught by both seasoned educators and adjunct instructors. Effective one-on-one mentoring promotes a professional, compassionate and collegial faculty who will provide a consistent and rigorous academic program for students online.
Abstract: Nowadays, OCR systems have got several
applications and are increasingly employed in daily life. Much
research has been done regarding the identification of Latin,
Japanese, and Chinese characters. However, very little investigation
has been performed regarding Farsi/Arabic characters recognition.
Probably the reason is difficulty and complexity of those characters
identification compared to the others and limitation of IT activities in
Farsi and Arabic speaking countries. In this paper, a technique has
been employed to identify isolated Farsi/Arabic characters. A chain
code based algorithm along with other significant peculiarities such
as number and location of dots and auxiliary parts, and the number of
holes existing in the isolated character has been used in this study to
identify Farsi/Arabic characters. Experimental results show the
relatively high accuracy of the method developed when it is tested on
several standard Farsi fonts.
Abstract: Over a million tonnes of cigarette butts (CBs) are produced worldwide annually. These CBs accumulate in the environment due to the poor biodegradability of the cellulose acetate filters and pose a serious environmental risk. This paper presents some of the results from a continuing study on recycling CBs into fired clay bricks. Properties including compressive strength, flexural strength, density, water absorption and thermal conductivity of fired clay bricks are reported and discussed. Furthermore, leaching of heavy metals from the manufactured clay bricks was tested. The results show that the density of fired bricks was reduced by about 8 – 30 %, depending on the percentage of CBs incorporated into the raw materials. The compressive strength of bricks tested was 12.57, 5.22 and 3.00 MPa for 2.5, 5.0 and 10 % CB content respectively. Water absorption and initial rate of absorption values increased as density, and hence porosity, of bricks decreased with increasing CB volume. The leaching test results revealed trace amounts of heavy metals.
Abstract: In this study, the powders of Ni and Ti with 50.5 at.%
Ni for 12 h were blended and cold pressed at the different pressures
(50, 75 and100 MPa).The porous product obtained after Ni-Ti
compacts were synthesized by SHS (self-propagating hightemperature
synthesis) in the different preheating temperatures (200,
250 and 300oC) and heating rates (30, 60 and 90oC/min). The effects
of the pressure, preheating temperature and heating rate were
investigated on biocompatibility in vivo. The porosity in the
synthesized products was in the range of 50.7–59.7 vol. %. The
pressure, preheating temperature and heating rate were found to have
an important effect on the biocompatibility in-vivo of the synthesized
products. Max. fibrotic tissue within the porous implant was found in
vivo periods (6 months), in which compacting pressure 100MPa.
Abstract: Enhancement of the performance of a reverse osmosis
(RO) unit through periodic control is studied. The periodic control
manipulates the feed pressure and flow rate of the RO unit. To ensure
the periodic behavior of the inputs, the manipulated variables (MV)
are transformed into the form of sinusoidal functions. In this case, the
amplitude and period of the sinusoidal functions become the
surrogate MV and are thus regulated via nonlinear model predictive
control algorithm. The simulation results indicated that the control
system can generate cyclic inputs necessary to enhance the closedloop
performance in the sense of increasing the permeate production
and lowering the salt concentration. The proposed control system can
attain its objective with arbitrary set point for the controlled outputs.
Successful results were also obtained in the presence of modeling
errors.
Abstract: We report on the development of a model to
understand why the range of experience with respect to HIV
infection is so diverse, especially with respect to the latency period.
To investigate this, an agent-based approach is used to extract highlevel
behaviour which cannot be described analytically from the set
of interaction rules at the cellular level. A network of independent
matrices mimics the chain of lymph nodes. Dealing with massively
multi-agent systems requires major computational effort. However,
parallelisation methods are a natural consequence and advantage of
the multi-agent approach and, using the MPI library, are here
implemented, tested and optimized. Our current focus is on the
various implementations of the data transfer across the network.
Three communications strategies are proposed and tested, showing
that the most efficient approach is communication based on the
natural lymph-network connectivity.
Abstract: New exact three-wave solutions including periodic two-solitary solutions and doubly periodic solitary solutions for the (2+1)-dimensional asymmetric Nizhnik-Novikov- Veselov (ANNV) system are obtained using Hirota's bilinear form and generalized three-wave type of ansatz approach. It is shown that the generalized three-wave method, with the help of symbolic computation, provides an e¤ective and powerful mathematical tool for solving high dimensional nonlinear evolution equations in mathematical physics.
Abstract: Face Recognition has always been a fascinating research area. It has drawn the attention of many researchers because of its various potential applications such as security systems, entertainment, criminal identification etc. Many supervised and unsupervised learning techniques have been reported so far. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Self Organizing Maps (SOM) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) are the three techniques among many others as proposed by different researchers for Face Recognition, known as the unsupervised techniques. This paper proposes integration of the two techniques, SOM and PCA, for dimensionality reduction and feature selection. Simulation results show that, though, the individual techniques SOM and PCA itself give excellent performance but the combination of these two can also be utilized for face recognition. Experimental results also indicate that for the given face database and the classifier used, SOM performs better as compared to other unsupervised learning techniques. A comparison of two proposed methodologies of SOM, Local and Global processing, shows the superiority of the later but at the cost of more computational time.
Abstract: In this work, the plate bending formulation of the boundary element method - BEM, based on the Reissner?s hypothesis, is extended to the analysis of plates reinforced by beams taking into account the membrane effects. The formulation is derived by assuming a zoned body where each sub-region defines a beam or a slab and all of them are represented by a chosen reference surface. Equilibrium and compatibility conditions are automatically imposed by the integral equations, which treat this composed structure as a single body. In order to reduce the number of degrees of freedom, the problem values defined on the interfaces are written in terms of their values on the beam axis. Initially are derived separated equations for the bending and stretching problems, but in the final system of equations the two problems are coupled and can not be treated separately. Finally are presented some numerical examples whose analytical results are known to show the accuracy of the proposed model.
Abstract: We demonstrate a 1×4 coarse wavelength
division-multiplexing (CWDM) planar concave grating
multiplexer/demultiplexer and its application in re-configurable
optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) system in silicon-on-insulator
substrate. The wavelengths of the demonstrated concave grating
multiplexer align well with the ITU-T standard. We demonstrate a
prototype of ROADM comprising two such concave gratings and four
wide-band thermo-optical MZI switches. Undercut technology which
removes the underneath silicon substrate is adopted in optical switches
in order to minimize the operation power. For all the thermal heaters,
the operation voltage is smaller than 1.5 V, and the switch power is
~2.4 mW. High throughput pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS)
data transmission with up to 100 Gb/s is demonstrated, showing the
high-performance ROADM functionality.
Abstract: DS-CDMA system is well known wireless
technology. This system suffers from MAI (Multiple Access
Interference) caused by Direct Sequence users. Multi-User Detection
schemes were introduced to detect the users- data in presence of
MAI. This paper focuses on linear multi-user detection schemes used
for data demodulation. Simulation results depict the performance of
three detectors viz-conventional detector, Decorrelating detector and
Subspace MMSE (Minimum Mean Square Error) detector. It is seen
that the performance of these detectors depends on the number of
paths and the length of Gold code used.
Abstract: In the present communication, we have studied
different variations in the entropy measures in the different states of
queueing processes. In case of steady state queuing process, it has
been shown that as the arrival rate increases, the uncertainty
increases whereas in the case of non-steady birth-death process, it is
shown that the uncertainty varies differently. In this pattern, it first
increases and attains its maximum value and then with the passage of
time, it decreases and attains its minimum value.
Abstract: Periodic vortex shedding in pulsating flow inside wavy
channel and the effect it has on heat transfer are studied using the
finite volume method. A sinusoidally-varying component is superimposed
on a uniform flow inside a sinusoidal wavy channel and
the effects on the Nusselt number is analyzed. It was found that a
unique optimum value of the pulsation frequency, represented by the
Strouhal number, exists for Reynolds numbers ranging from 125 to
1000. Results suggest that the gain in heat transfer is related to the
process of vortex formation, movement about the troughs of the wavy
channel, and subsequent ejection/destruction through the converging
section. Heat transfer is the highest when the frequencies of the
pulsation and vortex formation approach being in-phase. Analysis of
Strouhal number effect on Nu over a period of pulsation substantiates
the proposed physical mechanism for enhancement. The effect of
changing the amplitude of pulsation is also presented over a period
of pulsation, showing a monotonic increase in heat transfer with
increasing amplitude. The 60% increase in Nusselt number suggests
that sinusoidal fluid pulsation can an effective method for enhancing
heat transfer in laminar, wavy-channel flows.
Abstract: Contour filter strips planted with perennial vegetation
can be used to improve surface and ground water quality by reducing
pollutant, such as NO3-N, and sediment outflow from cropland to a
river or lake. Meanwhile, the filter strips of perennial grass with biofuel
potentials also have economic benefits of producing ethanol. In
this study, The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was
applied to the Walnut Creek Watershed to examine the effectiveness
of contour strips in reducing NO3-N outflows from crop fields to the
river or lake. Required input data include watershed topography,
slope, soil type, land-use, management practices in the watershed and
climate parameters (precipitation, maximum/minimum air
temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and relative humidity).
Numerical experiments were conducted to identify potential
subbasins in the watershed that have high water quality impact, and
to examine the effects of strip size and location on NO3-N reduction
in the subbasins under various meteorological conditions (dry,
average and wet). Variable sizes of contour strips (10%, 20%, 30%
and 50%, respectively, of a subbasin area) planted with perennial
switchgrass were selected for simulating the effects of strip size and
location on stream water quality. Simulation results showed that a
filter strip having 10%-50% of the subbasin area could lead to 55%-
90% NO3-N reduction in the subbasin during an average rainfall
year. Strips occupying 10-20% of the subbasin area were found to be
more efficient in reducing NO3-N when placed along the contour
than that when placed along the river. The results of this study can
assist in cost-benefit analysis and decision-making in best water
resources management practices for environmental protection.
Abstract: Cancer classification to their corresponding cohorts has been key area of research in bioinformatics aiming better prognosis of the disease. High dimensionality of gene data has been makes it a complex task and requires significance data identification technique in order to reducing the dimensionality and identification of significant information. In this paper, we have proposed a novel approach for classification of oral cancer into metastasis positive and negative patients. We have used significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) for identifying significant genes which constitutes gene signature. 3 different gene signatures were identified using SAM from 3 different combination of training datasets and their classification accuracy was calculated on corresponding testing datasets using k-Nearest Neighbour (kNN), Fuzzy C-Means Clustering (FCM), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN). A final gene signature of only 9 genes was obtained from above 3 individual gene signatures. 9 gene signature-s classification capability was compared using same classifiers on same testing datasets. Results obtained from experimentation shows that 9 gene signature classified all samples in testing dataset accurately while individual genes could not classify all accurately.
Abstract: The energy consumption of home femto base stations
(BSs) can be reduced, by turning off the Wi-Fi radio interface when
there is no mobile station (MS) under the coverage of the BSs or
MSs do not transmit or receive data packet for long time, especially
in late night. In the energy-efficient home femto BSs, if MSs have
any data packet to transmit and the Wi-Fi radio interface in off
state, MSs wake up the Wi-Fi radio interface of home femto BSs
by using additional low power radio interface. In this paper, the
performance of the energy-efficient home femto BSs from the aspect
of energy consumption and cumulative average delay, and show the
effect of various parameters on energy consumption and cumulative
average delay. From the results, the tradeoff relationship between
energy consumption and cumulative average delay is shown and thus,
appropriate operation should be needed to balance the tradeoff.
Abstract: When a high DC voltage is applied to a capacitor with
strongly asymmetrical electrodes, it generates a mechanical force that
affects the whole capacitor. This is caused by the motion of ions generated around the smaller of the two electrodes and their subsequent interaction with the surrounding medium. If one of the electrodes is heated, it changes the conditions around the capacitor
and influences the process of ionisation, thus changing the value of the generated force. This paper describes these changes and gives
reasons behind them. Further the experimental results are given as proof of the ionic mechanism of the phenomenon.
Abstract: Gated community has gained its dominant in residential areas development that it has become the standard development pattern of the newly built residential areas in contemporary China. The form of gated community has its own advantages and rationality that meet the needs of quite a lot of residents, but it-s also believed by researchers that the form has great damage to the urban morphology and development, and has a negative impact on residents- living style. However, there is still a considerable controversy of the origins and outcomes. Though recognized as a global phenomenon, gated community developed in China is greatly to do with the specific local forces, respect to the unique historical, political and socio-cultural momentums. A historical review of the traditional settlements in China and the trends that how Gated community has gained its contemporary form, is indispensable for comprehending the local forces, and provide a new perspective to solve the controversy.
Abstract: The paper presents dynamic programming based model as a planning tool for the maintenance of electric power systems. Every distribution component has an exponential age depending reliability function to model the fault risk. In the moment of time when the fault costs exceed the investment costs of the new component the reinvestment of the component should be made. However, in some cases the overhauling of the old component may be more economical than the reinvestment. The comparison between overhauling and reinvestment is made by optimisation process. The goal of the optimisation process is to find the cost minimising maintenance program for electric power distribution system.