The Comparison of Finite Difference Methods for Radiation Diffusion Equations

In this paper, the difference between the Alternating Direction Method (ADM) and the Non-Splitting Method (NSM) is investigated, while both methods applied to the simulations for 2-D multimaterial radiation diffusion issues. Although the ADM have the same accuracy orders with the NSM on the uniform meshes, the accuracy of ADM will decrease on the distorted meshes or the boundary of domain. Numerical experiments are carried out to confirm the theoretical predication.

Asymmetric and Kind of Bracing Effects on Steel Frames Under Earthquake Loads

Because of architectural condition and structure application, sometimes mass source and stiffness source are not coincidence, and the structure is irregular. The structure is also might be asymmetric as an asymmetric bracing in plan which leads to unbalance distribution of stiffness or because of unbalance distribution of the mass. Both condition lead to eccentricity and torsion in the structure. The deficiency of ordinary code to evaluate the performance of steel structures against earthquake has been caused designing based on performance level or capacity spectrum be used. By using the mentioned methods it is possible to design a structure that its behavior against different earthquakes be predictive. In this article 5- story buildings with different percentage of asymmetric which is because of stiffness changes and kind of bracing (x and chevron bracing) have been designed. The static and dynamic nonlinear analysis under three acceleration recording has been done. Finally performance level of the structure has been evaluated.

Numerical Method Based On Initial Value-Finite Differences for Free Vibration of Stepped Thickness Plates

The main objective of the present paper is to derive an easy numerical technique for the analysis of the free vibration through the stepped regions of plates. Based on the utilities of the step by step integration initial values IV and Finite differences FD methods, the present improved Initial Value Finite Differences (IVFD) technique is achieved. The first initial conditions are formulated in convenient forms for the step by step integrations while the upper and lower edge conditions are expressed in finite difference modes. Also compatibility conditions are created due to the sudden variation of plate thickness. The present method (IVFD) is applied to solve the fourth order partial differential equation of motion for stepped plate across two different panels under the sudden step compatibility in addition to different types of end conditions. The obtained results are examined and the validity of the present method is proved showing excellent efficiency and rapid convergence.

Digital Forensics for Electronic Commerce on the Web

On existing online shopping on the web, SSL and password are usually used to achieve the secure trades. SSL shields communication from the third party who is not related with the trade, and indicates that the trader's web site is authenticated by one of the certification authority. Password certifies a customer as the same person who has visited the trader's web site before, and protects the customer's privacy such as what the customer has bought on the site. However, there is no forensics for the trades in those cased above. With existing methods, no one can prove what is ordered by customers, how many products are ordered and even whether customers have ordered or not. The reason is that the third party has to guess what were traded with logs that are held by traders and by customers. The logs can easily be created, deleted and forged since they are electronically stored. To enhance security with digital forensics for electronic commerce on the web, I indicate a secure method with cellular phones.

VoIP Networks Performance Analysis with Encryption Systems

The VoIP networks as alternative method to traditional PSTN system has been implemented in a wide variety of structures with multiple protocols, codecs, software and hardware–based distributions. The use of cryptographic techniques let the users to have a secure communication, but the calculate throughput as well as the QoS parameters are affected according to the used algorithm. This paper analyzes the VoIP throughput and the QoS parameters with different commercial encryption methods. The measurement–based approach uses lab scenarios to simulate LAN and WAN environments. Security mechanisms such as TLS, SIAX2, SRTP, IPSEC and ZRTP are analyzed with μ-LAW and GSM codecs.

A New Approach to Steganography using Sinc-Convolution Method

Both image steganography and image encryption have advantages and disadvantages. Steganograhy allows us to hide a desired image containing confidential information in a covered or host image while image encryption is decomposing the desired image to a non-readable, non-comprehended manner. The encryption methods are usually much more robust than the steganographic ones. However, they have a high visibility and would provoke the attackers easily since it usually is obvious from an encrypted image that something is hidden! The combination of steganography and encryption will cover both of their weaknesses and therefore, it increases the security. In this paper an image encryption method based on sinc-convolution along with using an encryption key of 128 bit length is introduced. Then, the encrypted image is covered by a host image using a modified version of JSteg steganography algorithm. This method could be applied to almost all image formats including TIF, BMP, GIF and JPEG. The experiment results show that our method is able to hide a desired image with high security and low visibility.

A Study of Performance of Wastewater Treatment Systems for Small Sites

The pollutant removal efficiency of the Intermittently Decanted Extended Aeration (IDEA) wastewater treatment system at Curtin University Sarawak Campus, and conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment system at a local resort, Resort A, is monitored. The influent and effluent characteristics are tested during wet and dry weather conditions, and peak and off peak periods. For the wastewater treatment systems at Curtin Sarawak and Resort A, during dry weather and peak season, it was found that the BOD5 concentration in the influent is 121.7mg/L and 80.0mg/L respectively, and in the effluent, 18.7mg/L and and 18.0mg/L respectively. Analysis of the performance of the IDEA treatment system showed that the operational costs can be minimized by 3%, by decreasing the number of operating cycles. As for the treatment system in Resort A, by utilizing a smaller capacity air blower, a saving of 12% could be made in the operational costs.

Entropy based Expeditive Methodology for Rating Curves Assessment

The river flow forecasting represents a crucial point to employ for improving a management policy addressed to the right use of water resources as well as for conjugating prevention and defense actions against environmental degradation. The difficulties occurring during the field activities encourage the development and implementation of operative computation and measuring methods addressed to time reduction for data acquisition and processing maintaining a good level of accuracy. Therefore, the aim of the present work is to test a new entropy based expeditive methodology for the evaluation of the rating curves on three gauged sections with different geometric and morphological characteristics. The methodology requires the choice of only three verticals along the measure section and the sampling of only the maximum velocity. The results underline how in most conditions the rating curves drawn can replace those built with classic methodologies, simplifying thus the procedures of data monitoring and calculation.

A Comparative Study of Web-pages Classification Methods using Fuzzy Operators Applied to Arabic Web-pages

In this study, a fuzzy similarity approach for Arabic web pages classification is presented. The approach uses a fuzzy term-category relation by manipulating membership degree for the training data and the degree value for a test web page. Six measures are used and compared in this study. These measures include: Einstein, Algebraic, Hamacher, MinMax, Special case fuzzy and Bounded Difference approaches. These measures are applied and compared using 50 different Arabic web-pages. Einstein measure was gave best performance among the other measures. An analysis of these measures and concluding remarks are drawn in this study.

Citizen Participation in Informal Settlements; Potentials & Obstacles - The Case of Iran, Shiraz, Saadi Community

In recent years, “Bottom-up Planning Approach" has been widely accepted and expanded from planning theorists. Citizen participation becomes more important in decision-making in informal settlements. Many of previous projects and strategies due to ignorance of citizen participation, have been failed facing with informal settlements and in some cases lead physical expansion of these neighbourhoods. According to recent experiences, the new participatory approach was in somehow successful. This paper focuses on local experiences in Iran. A considerable amount of people live in informal settlements in Iran. With the previous methods, the government could not solve the problems of these settlements. It is time to examine new methods such as empowerment of the local citizens and involve them to solve the current physical, social, and economic problems. The paper aims to address the previous and new strategies facing with informal settlements, the conditions under which citizens could be involved in planning process, limits and potentials of this process, the main actors and issues and finally motivations that are able to promote citizen participation. Documentary studies, observation, interview and questionnaire have been used to achieve the above mentioned objectives. Nearly 80 percent of responder in Saadi Community are ready to participate in regularising their neighbourhoods, if pre-conditions of citizen involvement are being provided. These pre-conditions include kind of problem and its severity, the importance of issue, existence of a short-term solution, etc. Moreover, confirmation of dweller-s ownership can promote the citizen engagement in participatory projects.

A New Predictor of Coding Regions in Genomic Sequences using a Combination of Different Approaches

Identifying protein coding regions in DNA sequences is a basic step in the location of genes. Several approaches based on signal processing tools have been applied to solve this problem, trying to achieve more accurate predictions. This paper presents a new predictor that improves the efficacy of three techniques that use the Fourier Transform to predict coding regions, and that could be computed using an algorithm that reduces the computation load. Some ideas about the combination of the predictor with other methods are discussed. ROC curves are used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed predictor, based on the computation of 25 DNA sequences from three different organisms.

A New Traffic Pattern Matching for DDoS Traceback Using Independent Component Analysis

Recently, Denial of Service(DoS) attacks and Distributed DoS(DDoS) attacks which are stronger form of DoS attacks from plural hosts have become security threats on the Internet. It is important to identify the attack source and to block attack traffic as one of the measures against these attacks. In general, it is difficult to identify them because information about the attack source is falsified. Therefore a method of identifying the attack source by tracing the route of the attack traffic is necessary. A traceback method which uses traffic patterns, using changes in the number of packets over time as criteria for the attack traceback has been proposed. The traceback method using the traffic patterns can trace the attack by matching the shapes of input traffic patterns and the shape of output traffic pattern observed at a network branch point such as a router. The traffic pattern is a shapes of traffic and unfalsifiable information. The proposed trace methods proposed till date cannot obtain enough tracing accuracy, because they directly use traffic patterns which are influenced by non-attack traffics. In this paper, a new traffic pattern matching method using Independent Component Analysis(ICA) is proposed.

Processing and Assessment of Quality Characteristics of Composite Baby Foods

The usefulness of weaning foods to meet the nutrient needs of children is well recognized, and most of them are precooked roller dried mixtures of cereal and/or legume flours which posses a high viscosity and bulk when reconstituted. The objective of this study was to formulate composite weaning foods using cereals, malted legumes and vegetable powders and analyze them for nutrients, functional properties and sensory attributes. Selected legumes (green gram and lentil) were germinated, dried and dehulled. Roasted wheat, rice, carrot powder and skim milk powder also were used. All the ingredients were mixed in different proportions to get four formulations, made into 30% slurry and dried in roller drier. The products were analyzed for proximate principles, mineral content, functional and sensory qualities. The results of analysis showed following range of constituents per 100g of formulations on dry weight basis, protein, 18.1-18.9 g ; fat, 0.78-1.36 g ; iron, 5.09-6.53 mg; calcium, 265-310 mg. The lowest water absorption capacity was in case of wheat green gram based and the highest was in rice lentil based sample. Overall sensory qualities of all foods were graded as “good" and “very good" with no significant differences. The results confirm that formulated weaning foods were nutritionally superior, functionally appropriate and organoleptically acceptable.

Babbitt Casting and Babbitt Spraying Processes Case Study

In this paper, the babbitting of a bearing in boiler feed pump of an electromotor has been studied. These bearings have an important role in reducing the shut down times in the pumps, compressors and turbines. The most conventional method in babbitting is casting as a melting method. The comparison between thermal spray and casting methods in babbitting shows that the thermal spraying babbitt layer has better performance and tribological behavior. The metallurgical and tribological analysis such as SEM, EDS and wet chemical analysis has been made in the Babbitt alloys and worn surfaces. Two type of babbitt materials: tinbase and lead-base babbitt was used. The benefits of thermally sprayed babbitt layers are completely clear especially in large bearings.

Personalisation of SOA Registry Query Results: Implementation, Performance Analysis and Scalability Evaluation

Service discovery is a very important component of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). This paper presents two alternative approaches to customise the query results of private service registry such as Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI). The customisation is performed based on some pre-defined and/or real-time changing parameters. This work identifies the requirements, designs and additional mechanisms that must be applied to UDDI in order to support this customisation capability. We also detail the implements of the approaches and examine its performance and scalability. Based on our experimental results, we conclude that both approaches can be used to customise registry query results, but by storing personalization parameters in external resource will yield better performance and but less scalable when size of query results increases. We believe these approaches when combined with semantics enabled service registry will enhance the service discovery methods within a private UDDI registry environment.

Use of Vegetation and Geo-Jute in Erosion Control of Slopes in a Sub-Tropical Climate

Protection of slope and embankment from erosion has become an important issue in Bangladesh. The constructions of strong structures require large capital, integrated designing, high maintenance cost. Strong structure methods have negative impact on the environment and sometimes not function for the design period. Plantation of vetiver system along the slopes is an alternative solution. Vetiver not only serves the purpose of slope protection but also adds green environment reducing pollution. Vetiver is available in almost all the districts of Bangladesh. This paper presents the application of vetiver system with geo-jute, for slope protection and erosion control of embankments and slopes. In-situ shear tests have been conducted on vetiver rooted soil system to find the shear strength. The shear strength and effective soil cohesion of vetiver rooted soil matrix are respectively 2.0 times and 2.1 times higher than that of the bared soil. Similar trends have been found in direct shear tests conducted on laboratory reconstituted samples. Field trials have been conducted in road embankment and slope protection with vetiver at different sites. During the time of vetiver root growth the soil protection has been accomplished by geo-jute. As the geo-jute degrades with time, vetiver roots grow and take over the function of geo-jutes. Slope stability analyses showed that vegetation increase the factor of safety significantly.

Groebner Bases Computation in Boolean Rings is P-SPACE

The theory of Groebner Bases, which has recently been honored with the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, has become a crucial building block to computer algebra, and is widely used in science, engineering, and computer science. It is wellknown that Groebner bases computation is EXP-SPACE in a general polynomial ring setting. However, for many important applications in computer science such as satisfiability and automated verification of hardware and software, computations are performed in a Boolean ring. In this paper, we give an algorithm to show that Groebner bases computation is PSPACE in Boolean rings. We also show that with this discovery, the Groebner bases method can theoretically be as efficient as other methods for automated verification of hardware and software. Additionally, many useful and interesting properties of Groebner bases including the ability to efficiently convert the bases for different orders of variables making Groebner bases a promising method in automated verification.

Household Indebtedness Risks in the Czech Republic

In the past 20 years the economy of the Czech Republic has experienced substantial changes. In the 1990s the development was affected by the transformation which sought to establish the right conditions for privatization and creation of elementary market relations. In the last decade the characteristic elements such as private ownership and corresponding institutional framework have been strengthened. This development was marked by the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU. The Czech Republic is striving to reduce the difference between its level of economic development and the quality of institutional framework in comparison with other developed countries. The process of finding the adequate solutions has been hampered by the negative impact of the world financial crisis on the Czech Republic and the standard of living of its inhabitants. This contribution seeks to address the question of whether and to which extent the economic development of the transitive Czech economy is affected by the change in behaviour of households and their tendency to consumption, i.e. in the sense of reduction or increase in demand for goods and services. It aims to verify whether the increasing trend of household indebtedness and decreasing trend of saving pose a significant risk in the Czech Republic. At a general level the analysis aims to contribute to finding an answer to the question of whether the debt increase of Czech households is connected to the risk of "eating through" the borrowed money and whether Czech households risk falling into a debt trap. In addition to household indebtedness risks in the Czech Republic the analysis will focus on identification of specifics of the transformation phase of the Czech economy in comparison with the EU countries, or selected OECD countries.

Linear Cryptanalysis for a Chaos-Based Stream Cipher

Linear cryptanalysis methods are rarely used to improve the security of chaotic stream ciphers. In this paper, we apply linear cryptanalysis to a chaotic stream cipher which was designed by strictly using the basic design criterion of cryptosystem – confusion and diffusion. We show that this well-designed chaos-based stream cipher is still insecure against distinguishing attack. This distinguishing attack promotes the further improvement of the cipher.

Evolutionary Eigenspace Learning using CCIPCA and IPCA for Face Recognition

Traditional principal components analysis (PCA) techniques for face recognition are based on batch-mode training using a pre-available image set. Real world applications require that the training set be dynamic of evolving nature where within the framework of continuous learning, new training images are continuously added to the original set; this would trigger a costly continuous re-computation of the eigen space representation via repeating an entire batch-based training that includes the old and new images. Incremental PCA methods allow adding new images and updating the PCA representation. In this paper, two incremental PCA approaches, CCIPCA and IPCA, are examined and compared. Besides, different learning and testing strategies are proposed and applied to the two algorithms. The results suggest that batch PCA is inferior to both incremental approaches, and that all CCIPCAs are practically equivalent.