Integrating E-learning Environments with Computational Intelligence Assessment Agents

In this contribution an innovative platform is being presented that integrates intelligent agents in legacy e-learning environments. It introduces the design and development of a scalable and interoperable integration platform supporting various assessment agents for e-learning environments. The agents are implemented in order to provide intelligent assessment services to computational intelligent techniques such as Bayesian Networks and Genetic Algorithms. The utilization of new and emerging technologies like web services allows integrating the provided services to any web based legacy e-learning environment.

The Socio-Technical Indicator Model: Socially-Sensitive CMC Technology, with an Implementation of Representative Moderation

Computer-mediated communication technologies which provide for virtual communities have typically evolved in a cross-dichotomous manner, such that technical constructs of the technology have evolved independently from the social environment of the community. The present paper analyses some limitations of current implementations of computer-mediated communication technology that are implied by such a dichotomy, and discusses their inhibiting effects on possible developments of virtual communities. A Socio-Technical Indicator Model is introduced that utilizes integrated feedback to describe, simulate and operationalise increasing representativeness within a variety of structurally and parametrically diverse systems. In illustration, applications of the model are briefly described for financial markets and for eco-systems. A detailed application is then provided to resolve the aforementioned technical limitations of moderation on the evolution of virtual communities. The application parameterises virtual communities to function as self-transforming social-technical systems which are sensitive to emergent and shifting community values as products of on-going communications within the collective.

A Specification-Based Approach for Retrieval of Reusable Business Component for Software Reuse

Software reuse can be considered as the most realistic and promising way to improve software engineering productivity and quality. Automated assistance for software reuse involves the representation, classification, retrieval and adaptation of components. The representation and retrieval of components are important to software reuse in Component-Based on Software Development (CBSD). However, current industrial component models mainly focus on the implement techniques and ignore the semantic information about component, so it is difficult to retrieve the components that satisfy user-s requirements. This paper presents a method of business component retrieval based on specification matching to solve the software reuse of enterprise information system. First, a business component model oriented reuse is proposed. In our model, the business data type is represented as sign data type based on XML, which can express the variable business data type that can describe the variety of business operations. Based on this model, we propose specification match relationships in two levels: business operation level and business component level. In business operation level, we use input business data types, output business data types and the taxonomy of business operations evaluate the similarity between business operations. In the business component level, we propose five specification matches between business components. To retrieval reusable business components, we propose the measure of similarity degrees to calculate the similarities between business components. Finally, a business component retrieval command like SQL is proposed to help user to retrieve approximate business components from component repository.

A Study on Integrated Performance of Tap-Changing Transformer and SVC in Association with Power System Voltage Stability

Electricity market activities and a growing demand for electricity have led to heavily stressed power systems. This requires operation of the networks closer to their stability limits. Power system operation is affected by stability related problems, leading to unpredictable system behavior. Voltage stability refers to the ability of a power system to sustain appropriate voltage levels through large and small disturbances. Steady-state voltage stability is concerned with limits on the existence of steady-state operating points for the network. FACTS devices can be utilized to increase the transmission capacity, the stability margin and dynamic behavior or serve to ensure improved power quality. Their main capabilities are reactive power compensation, voltage control and power flow control. Among the FACTS controllers, Static Var Compensator (SVC) provides fast acting dynamic reactive compensation for voltage support during contingency events. In this paper, voltage stability assessment with appropriate representations of tap-changer transformers and SVC is investigated. Integrating both of these devices is the main topic of this paper. Effect of the presence of tap-changing transformers on static VAR compensator controller parameters and ratings necessary to stabilize load voltages at certain values are highlighted. The interrelation between transformer off nominal tap ratios and the SVC controller gains and droop slopes and the SVC rating are found. P-V curves are constructed to calculate loadability margins.

Loss Analysis of Half Bridge DC-DC Converters in High-Current and Low-Voltage Applications

In this paper, half bridge DC-DC converters with transformer isolation presented in the literature are analyzed for highcurrent and low-voltage applications under the same operation conditions, and compared in terms of losses and efficiency. The conventional and improved half-bridge DC-DC converters are simulated, and current and voltage waveforms are obtained for input voltage Vdc=500V, output current IO=450A, output voltage VO=38V and switching frequency fS=20kHz. IGBTs are used as power semiconductor switches. The power losses of the semiconductor devices are calculated from current and voltage waveforms. From simulation results, it is seen that the capacitor switched half bridge converter has the best efficiency value, and can be preferred at high power and high frequency applications.

Enhanced Data Access Control of Cooperative Environment used for DMU Based Design

Through the analysis of the process digital design based on digital mockup, the fact indicates that a distributed cooperative supporting environment is the foundation conditions to adopt design approach based on DMU. Data access authorization is concerned firstly because the value and sensitivity of the data for the enterprise. The access control for administrators is often rather weak other than business user. So authors established an enhanced system to avoid the administrators accessing the engineering data by potential approach and without authorization. Thus the data security is improved.

Seamless Multicast Handover in Fmipv6-Based Networks

This paper proposes a fast tree join scheme to provide seamless multicast handover in the mobile networks based on the Fast Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6). In the existing FMIPv6-based multicast handover scheme, the bi-directional tunnelling or the remote subscription is employed with the packet forwarding from the previous access router (AR) to the new AR. In general, the remote subscription approach is preferred to the bi-directional tunnelling one, since in the remote subscription scheme we can exploit an optimized multicast path from a multicast source to many mobile receivers. However, in the remote subscription scheme, if the tree joining operation takes a long time, the amount of data packets to be forwarded and buffered for multicast handover will increase, and thus the corresponding buffer may overflow, which results in severe packet losses. In order to reduce these costs associated with packet forwarding and buffering, this paper proposes the fast join to multicast tree, in which the new AR will join the multicast tree as fast as possible, so that the new multicast data packets can also arrive at the new AR, by which the packet forwarding and buffering costs can be reduced. From numerical analysis, it is shown that the proposed scheme can give better performance than the existing FMIPv6-based multicast handover schemes in terms of the multicast packet delivery costs.

Evaluation of Texture of Packhams Pears

The textural parameters, together with appearance and flavor, are sensory attributes of great importance for the product to be accepted by the consumer. The objective of the present study was the evaluation of the textural attributes of Packhams pears in the fresh state, after drying in a chamber with forced convection at 50ºC, lyophilized and re-hydrated. In texture analysis it was used the method of Texture Profile Analysis (TPA). The parameters analyzed were hardness, cohesiveness, adhesiveness, elasticity and chewiness. From the results obtained is possible to see that the drying operation greatly affected some textural properties of the pears, so that the hardness diminished very much with drying, for both drying methods.

Increasing Lifetime of Target Tracking Wireless Sensor Networks

A model to identify the lifetime of target tracking wireless sensor network is proposed. The model is a static clusterbased architecture and aims to provide two factors. First, it is to increase the lifetime of target tracking wireless sensor network. Secondly, it is to enable good localization result with low energy consumption for each sensor in the network. The model consists of heterogeneous sensors and each sensing member node in a cluster uses two operation modes–active mode and sleep mode. The performance results illustrate that the proposed architecture consumes less energy and increases lifetime than centralized and dynamic clustering architectures, for target tracking sensor network.

Concurrent Testing of ADC for Embedded System

Compaction testing methods allow at-speed detecting of errors while possessing low cost of implementation. Owing to this distinctive feature, compaction methods have been widely used for built-in testing, as well as external testing. In the latter case, the bandwidth requirements to the automated test equipment employed are relaxed which reduces the overall cost of testing. Concurrent compaction testing methods use operational signals to detect misbehavior of the device under test and do not require input test stimuli. These methods have been employed for digital systems only. In the present work, we extend the use of compaction methods for concurrent testing of analog-to-digital converters. We estimate tolerance bounds for the result of compaction and evaluate the aliasing rate.

Numerical Optimization Design of PEM Fuel Cell Performance Applying the Taguchi Method

The purpose of this paper is applied Taguchi method on the optimization for PEMFC performance, and a representative Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is selectively performed for statistical analysis. The studied factors in this paper are pressure of fuel cell, operating temperature, the relative humidity of anode and cathode, porosity of gas diffusion electrode (GDE) and conductivity of GDE. The optimal combination for maximum power density is gained by using a three-level statistical method. The results confirmed that the robustness of the optimum design parameters influencing the performance of fuel cell are founded by pressure of fuel cell, 3atm; operating temperature, 353K; the relative humidity of anode, 50%; conductivity of GDE, 1000 S/m, but the relative humidity of cathode and porosity of GDE are pooled as error due to a small sum of squares. The present simulation results give designers the ideas ratify the effectiveness of the proposed robust design methodology for the performance of fuel cell.

Member Investment Willingness in Agricultural Cooperatives in Shaanxi (China)

This study analyzes characteristics determining member’s willingness to invest in cooperatives using ordered logit model. The data were collected in a field survey among 122 cooperative members in north-central China. The descriptive analysis of survey evidence suggests that cooperatives in China generally having poor ability to deliver the processing services related to product package, grading, and storage, performing worse in profitability, inability of providing returns to capital and obtaining agricultural loan. The regression results demonstrate that members’ farm size, their satisfaction with cooperative price preferential services, attitudes toward cooperative operational scale and development potential have statistically significant impact on willingness to invest.

Ductile Crack Growth in Surface Cracked Pressure Vessels

Pressure vessels are usually operating at temperatures where the conditions of linear elastic fracture mechanics are no longer met because massive plasticity precedes crack propagation. In this work the development of a surface crack in a pressure vessel subject to bending and tension under elastic-plastic fracture mechanics conditions was investigated. Finite element analysis was used to evaluate the hydrostatic stress, the J-integral and crack growth for semi-elliptical surface-breaking cracks. The results showed non-uniform stress triaxiality and crack driving force around the crack front at large deformation levels. Different ductile crack extensions were observed which emphasis the dependent of ductile tearing on crack geometry and type of loading. In bending the crack grew only beneath the surface, and growth was suppressed at the deepest segment. This contrasts to tension where the crack breaks through the thickness with uniform growth along the entire crack front except at the free surface. Current investigations showed that the crack growth developed under linear elastic fracture mechanics conditions will no longer be applicable under ductile tearing scenarios.

Cultivating Focal Firm-s Supply Chain Process Integration Capabilities: The Investigation of Critical Determinants and Consequences

In today-s competitive global business environment, the concept of supply chain management (SCM) continues to become increasingly market-oriented, shifting the primary driver of the value chain from supply to demand. Recent recommendations encourage researchers to focus investigations on the supply chain process integration (SCPI) capabilities that integrate a focal firm with its network of suppliers and business customers to create value for it. However, theoretical and empirical researches pertaining to the antecedents and consequences of a focal firm-s SCPI capabilities have been limited and piecemeal. The purpose of this study is to investigate the critical determinants and consequences of a focal firm-s SCPI capabilities. We test our proposed research framework using a sample of 139 sales managers of manufacturing industries in Taiwan, our research findings show that (1) both perceived business customer-s power and focal firm-s market-oriented culture positively influences a focal firm-s SCPI capabilities, and (2) SCPI capabilities positively influence a focal firm-s SCM performance, both operational and strategic benefits. Implications for practitioners and researchers and suggestions for future research are also addressed in this study.

Intrinsic Kinetics of Methanol Dehydration over Al2O3 Catalyst

Dehydration of methanol to dimethyl ether (DME) over a commercial Al2O3 catalyst was studied in an isothermal integral fixed bed reactor. The experiments were performed on the temperature interval 513-613 K, liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV) of 0.9-2.1h-1, pressures between 0.1 and 1.0 MPa. The effect of different operation conditions on the dehydration of methanol was investigated in a laboratory scale experiment. A new intrinsic kinetics equation based on the mechanism of Langmuir-Hinshelwood dissociation adsorption was developed for the dehydration reaction by fitting the expressions to the experimental data. An activation energy of 67.21 kJ/mol was obtained for the catalyst with the best performance. Statistic test showed that this new intrinsic kinetics equation was acceptable.

Multi-agent On-line Monitor for the Safety of Critical Systems

Operational safety of critical systems, such as nuclear power plants, industrial chemical processes and means of transportation, is a major concern for system engineers and operators. A means to assure that is on-line safety monitors that deliver three safety tasks; fault detection and diagnosis, alarm annunciation and fault controlling. While current monitors deliver these tasks, benefits and limitations in their approaches have at the same time been highlighted. Drawing from those benefits, this paper develops a distributed monitor based on semi-independent agents, i.e. a multiagent system, and monitoring knowledge derived from a safety assessment model of the monitored system. Agents are deployed hierarchically and provided with knowledge portions and collaboration protocols to reason and integrate over the operational conditions of the components of the monitored system. The monitor aims to address limitations arising from the large-scale, complicated behaviour and distributed nature of monitored systems and deliver the aforementioned three monitoring tasks effectively.

Flexible Manufacturing System

Flexible manufacturing system is a system that is able to respond to changed conditions. In general, this flexibility is divided into two key categories and several subcategories. The first category is the so called machine flexibility which enables to make various products by the given machinery. The second category is routing flexibility enabling to execute the same operation by various machines. Flexible manufacturing systems usually consist of three main parts: CNC machine tools, transport system and control system. A higher level of flexible manufacturing systems is represented by the so called intelligent manufacturing systems.

Trust Based Energy Aware Reliable Reactive Protocol in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Trust and Energy consumption is the most challenging issue in routing protocol design for Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), since mobile nodes are battery powered and nodes behaviour are unpredictable. Furthermore replacing and recharging batteries and making nodes co-operative is often impossible in critical environments like military applications. In this paper, we propose a trust based energy aware routing model in MANET. During route discovery, node with more trust and maximum energy capacity is selected as a router based on a parameter called 'Reliability'. Route request from the source is accepted by a node only if its reliability is high. Otherwise, the route request is discarded. This approach forms a reliable route from source to destination thus increasing network life time, improving energy utilization and decreasing number of packet loss during transmission.

Prediction of the Characteristics of Transformer Oil under Different Operation Conditions

Power systems and transformer are intrinsic apparatus, therefore its reliability and safe operation is important to determine their operation conditions, and the industry uses quality control tests in the insulation design of oil filled transformers. Hence the service period effect on AC dielectric strength is significant. The effect of aging on transformer oil physical, chemical and electrical properties was studied using the international testing methods for the evaluation of transformer oil quality. The study was carried out on six transformers operate in the field and for monitoring periods over twenty years. The properties which are strongly time dependent were specified and those which have a great impact on the transformer oil acidity, breakdown voltage and dissolved gas analysis were defined. Several tests on the transformers oil were studied to know the time of purifying or changing it, moreover prediction of the characteristics of it under different operation conditions.

Investigating the Transformer Operating Conditions for Evaluating the Dielectric Response

This paper presents an experimental investigation of transformer dielectric response and solid insulation water content. The dielectric response was carried out on the base of Hybrid Frequency Dielectric Spectroscopy and Polarization Current measurements method (FDS &PC). The calculation of the water content in paper is based on the water content in oil and the obtained equilibrium curves. A reference measurements were performed at equilibrium conditions for water content in oil and paper of transformer at different stable temperatures (25, 50, 60 and 70°C) to prepare references to evaluate the insulation behavior at the not equilibrium conditions. Some measurements performed at the different simulated normal working modes of transformer operation at the same temperature where the equilibrium conditions. The obtained results show that when transformer temperature is mach more than the its ambient temperature, the transformer temperature decreases immediately after disconnecting the transformer from the network and this temperature reduction influences the transformer insulation condition in the measuring process. In addition to the oil temperature at the near places to the sensors, the temperature uniformity in transformer which can be changed by a big change in the load of transformer before the measuring time will influence the result. The investigations have shown that the extremely influence of the time between disconnecting the transformer and beginning the measurements on the results. And the online monitoring for water content in paper measurements, on the basis of the oil water content on line monitoring and the obtained equilibrium curves. The measurements where performed continuously and for about 50 days without any disconnection in the prepared the adiabatic room.