Abstract: Over the past four decades, the fatigue behavior of
nickel-based alloys has been widely studied. However, in recent
years, significant advances in the fabrication process leading to grain
size reduction have been made in order to improve fatigue properties
of aircraft turbine discs. Indeed, a change in particle size affects the
initiation mode of fatigue cracks as well as the fatigue life of the
material. The present study aims to investigate the fatigue behavior of
a newly developed nickel-based superalloy under biaxial-planar
loading. Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) tests are performed at different
stress ratios so as to study the influence of the multiaxial stress state
on the fatigue life of the material. Full-field displacement and strain
measurements as well as crack initiation detection are obtained using
Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques. The aim of this
presentation is first to provide an in-depth description of both the
experimental set-up and protocol: the multiaxial testing machine, the
specific design of the cruciform specimen and performances of the
DIC code are introduced. Second, results for sixteen specimens
related to different load ratios are presented. Crack detection, strain
amplitude and number of cycles to crack initiation vs. triaxial stress
ratio for each loading case are given. Third, from fractographic
investigations by scanning electron microscopy it is found that the
mechanism of fatigue crack initiation does not depend on the triaxial
stress ratio and that most fatigue cracks initiate from subsurface
carbides.
Abstract: The present study is an attempt to provide a relatively
comprehensive preview of the Iranian English translators’ perception
on Machine Translation. Furthermore, the study tries to shed light on
the status of implementation of Machine Translation among the
Iranian English Translators. To reach the aforementioned objectives,
the Localization Industry Standards Association’s questioner for
measuring perceptions with regard to the adoption of a technology
innovation was adapted and used to investigate the perception and
implementation of Machine Translation applications by the Iranian
English language translators. The participants of the study were 224
last-year undergraduate Iranian students of English translation at 10
universities across the country. The study revealed a very low level of
adoption and a very high level of willingness to get familiar with and
learn about Machine Translation, as well as a positive perception of
and attitude toward Machine Translation by the Iranian English
translators.
Abstract: The development of allometric models is crucial to
accurate forest biomass/carbon stock assessment. The aim of this
study was to develop a set of biomass prediction models that will
enable the determination of total tree aboveground biomass for
savannah woodland area in Niger State, Nigeria. Based on the data
collected through biometric measurements of 1816 trees and
destructive sampling of 36 trees, five species specific and one site
specific models were developed. The sample size was distributed
equally between the five most dominant species in the study site
(Vitellaria paradoxa, Irvingia gabonensis, Parkia biglobosa,
Anogeissus leiocarpus, Pterocarpus erinaceous). Firstly, the
equations were developed for five individual species. Secondly these
five species were mixed and were used to develop an allometric
equation of mixed species. Overall, there was a strong positive
relationship between total tree biomass and the stem diameter. The
coefficient of determination (R2 values) ranging from 0.93 to 0.99 P
< 0.001 were realised for the models; with considerable low standard
error of the estimates (SEE) which confirms that the total tree above
ground biomass has a significant relationship with the dbh. F-test
values for the biomass prediction models were also significant at p
Abstract: The detection of moving objects from a video image
sequences is very important for object tracking, activity recognition,
and behavior understanding in video surveillance.
The most used approach for moving objects detection / tracking is
background subtraction algorithms. Many approaches have been
suggested for background subtraction. But, these are illumination
change sensitive and the solutions proposed to bypass this problem
are time consuming.
In this paper, we propose a robust yet computationally efficient
background subtraction approach and, mainly, focus on the ability to
detect moving objects on dynamic scenes, for possible applications in
complex and restricted access areas monitoring, where moving and
motionless persons must be reliably detected. It consists of three
main phases, establishing illumination changes invariance,
background/foreground modeling and morphological analysis for
noise removing.
We handle illumination changes using Contrast Limited Histogram
Equalization (CLAHE), which limits the intensity of each pixel to
user determined maximum. Thus, it mitigates the degradation due to
scene illumination changes and improves the visibility of the video
signal. Initially, the background and foreground images are extracted
from the video sequence. Then, the background and foreground
images are separately enhanced by applying CLAHE.
In order to form multi-modal backgrounds we model each channel
of a pixel as a mixture of K Gaussians (K=5) using Gaussian Mixture
Model (GMM). Finally, we post process the resulting binary
foreground mask using morphological erosion and dilation
transformations to remove possible noise.
For experimental test, we used a standard dataset to challenge the
efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method on a diverse set of
dynamic scenes.
Abstract: Meeting the growth in demand for digital services
such as social media, telecommunications, and business and cloud
services requires large scale data centres, which has led to an increase
in their end use energy demand. Generally, over 30% of data centre
power is consumed by the necessary cooling overhead. Thus energy
can be reduced by improving the cooling efficiency. Air and liquid
can both be used as cooling media for the data centre. Traditional
data centre cooling systems use air, however liquid is recognised as a
promising method that can handle the more densely packed data
centres. Liquid cooling can be classified into three methods; rack heat
exchanger, on-chip heat exchanger and full immersion of the
microelectronics. This study quantifies the improvements of heat
transfer specifically for the case of immersed microelectronics by
varying the CPU and heat sink location. Immersion of the server is
achieved by filling the gap between the microelectronics and a water
jacket with a dielectric liquid which convects the heat from the CPU
to the water jacket on the opposite side. Heat transfer is governed by
two physical mechanisms, which is natural convection for the fixed
enclosure filled with dielectric liquid and forced convection for the
water that is pumped through the water jacket. The model in this
study is validated with published numerical and experimental work
and shows good agreement with previous work. The results show that
the heat transfer performance and Nusselt number (Nu) is improved
by 89% by placing the CPU and heat sink on the bottom of the
microelectronics enclosure.
Abstract: MSMEs are regarded as the sunrise sector of the
Indian economy in view of its large potential for growth and likely
socio economic impact specifically on employment and income
generation. In today’s competitive business environment, global
competition forces companies to continuously seek ways of
improving their products and services. The pressure on organizations
to adapt to new technologies and external threats requires
resourcefulness, creativity and innovation. Market has become more
open, competitive and customers more demanding. Without
continuous technology innovation, no organization can ever remain
competitive. Innovations reflect a critical way in which organizations
respond to either technological or market challenges. The need of the
market is to deliver high quality products through continuous
changing in features in product, improve existing products, reduce
their cost, and improve employee skills, training, technology
infrastructure and financial policies. Therefore, the key factor of
organization’s ability to change is innovation. The study presents a
detailed review of literature on the role of technology innovation in
improving manufacturing performance of industries.
Abstract: Power systems are operating under stressed condition
due to continuous increase in demand of load. This can lead to
voltage instability problem when face additional load increase or
contingency. In order to avoid voltage instability suitable size of
reactive power compensation at optimal location in the system is
required which improves the load margin. This work aims at
obtaining optimal size as well as location of compensation in the 39-
bus New England system with the help of Bacteria Foraging and
Genetic algorithms. To reduce the computational time the work
identifies weak candidate buses in the system, and then picks only
two of them to take part in the optimization. The objective function is
based on a recently proposed voltage stability index which takes into
account the weighted average sensitivity index is a simpler and faster
approach than the conventional CPF algorithm. BFOA has been
found to give better results compared to GA.
Abstract: A well designed and executed Production Planning
and Control (PPC) system is one of the key levers for superior
performance in the current manufacturing set-up. Hence, measuring
the PPC system performance has become a necessity for long term
success. The present study examined PPC related issues which
impact the production capacity and productivity of leather companies
with special focus on Kombolcha Tannery Share Company (KTSC),
Ethiopia. Physical observation, interview, and questionnaire were
used to generate necessary information from the respondents and
reach valid conclusions. Company annual reports were referred and
analyzed to triangulate primary data. Consequently, the study
revealed that KTSC runs below its capacity due to its inefficient PPC
system being in use for which the root causes were identified. The
study thereby conceptualizes a PPC system improvement framework
comprising three pillars viz., management culture, internal capability
and performance measurement together with key considerations in
each case. The study findings enable the company to recognize the
importance of efficient PPC system as a source of competitive
advantage. It also aid managers in evaluating various PPC execution
schemes to enhance productivity.
Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of the autonomous
mobile robot (AMR) navigation task based on the hybrid control
modes. The novel hybrid control mode, based on multi-sensors
information by using the fuzzy approach, has been presented in this
research. The system operates in real time, is robust, enables the robot
to operate with imprecise knowledge, and takes into account the
physical limitations of the environment in which the robot moves,
obtaining satisfactory responses for a large number of different
situations. An experiment is simulated and carried out with a pioneer
mobile robot. From the experimental results, the effectiveness and
usefulness of the proposed AMR obstacle avoidance and navigation
scheme are confirmed. The experimental results show the feasibility,
and the control system has improved the navigation accuracy. The
implementation of the controller is robust, has a low execution time,
and allows an easy design and tuning of the fuzzy knowledge base.
Abstract: Activated carbons (M4P0, M4P2, and M5P2) used in
this research were produced from palm shell and polyetherether
ketone (PEEK) via carbonization, impregnation and microwave
activation. The adsorption/desorption process was carried out using
static volumetric adsorption. Regeneration is important in the overall
economy of the process and waste minimization. This work focuses
on the thermal regeneration of the CO2 exhausted microwave
activated carbons. The regeneration strategy adopted was thermal
with nitrogen purge desorption with N2 feed flow rate of 20 ml/min
for 1 h at atmospheric pressure followed by drying at 150oC.Seven
successive adsorption/regeneration processes were carried out on the
material. It was found that after seven adsorption regeneration cycles;
the regeneration efficiency (RE) for CO2 activated carbon from palm
shell only (M4P0) was more than 90% while that of hybrid palm
shell-PEEK (M4P2, M5P2) was above 95%. The cyclic adsorption
and regeneration shows the stability of the adsorbent materials.
Abstract: Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a noninvasive
technique that registers signals originating from the firing of neurons
in the brain. The Emotiv EEG Neuroheadset is a consumer product
comprised of 14 EEG channels and was used to record the reactions
of the neurons within the brain to two forms of stimuli in 10
participants. These stimuli consisted of auditory and visual formats
that provided directions of ‘right’ or ‘left.’ Participants were
instructed to raise their right or left arm in accordance with the
instruction given. A scenario in OpenViBE was generated to both
stimulate the participants while recording their data. In OpenViBE,
the Graz Motor BCI Stimulator algorithm was configured to govern
the duration and number of visual stimuli. Utilizing EEGLAB under
the cross platform MATLAB®, the electrodes most stimulated during
the study were defined. Data outputs from EEGLAB were analyzed
using IBM SPSS Statistics® Version 20. This aided in determining
the electrodes to use in the development of a brain-machine interface
(BMI) using real-time EEG signals from the Emotiv EEG
Neuroheadset. Signal processing and feature extraction were
accomplished via the Simulink® signal processing toolbox. An
Arduino™ Duemilanove microcontroller was used to link the Emotiv
EEG Neuroheadset and the right and left Mecha TE™ Hands.
Abstract: This paper presents two techniques, local feature
extraction using image spectrum and low frequency spectrum
modelling using GMM to capture the underlying statistical
information to improve the performance of face recognition
system. Local spectrum features are extracted using overlap sub
block window that are mapped on the face image. For each of this
block, spatial domain is transformed to frequency domain using
DFT. A low frequency coefficient is preserved by discarding high
frequency coefficients by applying rectangular mask on the
spectrum of the facial image. Low frequency information is non-
Gaussian in the feature space and by using combination of several
Gaussian functions that has different statistical properties, the best
feature representation can be modelled using probability density
function. The recognition process is performed using maximum
likelihood value computed using pre-calculated GMM components.
The method is tested using FERET datasets and is able to achieved
92% recognition rates.
Abstract: In this study, several crossplots of the P-impedance
with the lithology logs (gamma ray, neutron porosity, deep resistivity,
water saturation and Vp/Vs curves) were made in three available
wells, which were drilled in central part of the Blue Nile basin in
depths varies from 1460m to 1600m. These crossplots were
successful to discriminate between sand and shale when using PImpedance
values, and between the wet sand and the pay sand when
using both P-impedance and Vp/Vs together. Also some impedance
sections were converted to porosity sections using linear formula to
characterize the reservoir in terms of porosity. The used crossplots
were created on log resolution, while the seismic resolution can
identify only the reservoir, unless a 3D seismic angle stacks were
available; then it would be easier to identify the pay sand with great
confidence; through high resolution seismic inversion and
geostatistical approach when using P-impedance and Vp/Vs volumes.
Abstract: Today, the pollution due to non-degradable material
such as plastics, has led to studies about the development of
environmental-friendly material. Because of biodegradability
obtained from natural sources, polylactid acid (PLA) and ijuk fiber
are interesting to modify into a composite. This material is also
expected to reduce the impact of environmental pollution. Surface
modification of ijuk fiber through alkalinization with 0.25 M NaOH
solution for 30 minutes was aimed to enhance its compatibility to
PLA, in order to improve properties of the composite such as the
mechanical properties. Alkalinization of the ijuk fibers annihilates
some surface components such as lignin, wax and hemicelloluse, so
the pore on the surface clearly appeared, decreasing of the density
and diameter of the ijuk fibers. The change of the ijuk fiber properties
leads to increase the mechanical properties of PLA composites
reinforced the ijuk fibers through strengthening of the mechanical
interlocking with the PLA matrix. An addition to enhance the
distribution of the fibers in the PLA matrix, the stirring during DCM
solvent evaporation from the mixture of the ijuk fibers and the
dissolved-PLA can reduce amount of the trapped-voids and fibers
pull-out phenomena, which can decrease the mechanical properties of
the composite.
Abstract: This paper examines international marketing in
business practice of Czech exporting small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) with regard to the strategic perspectives.
Research was focused on Czech exporting SMEs from Moravian-
Silesia region and their behavior on international markets. For
purpose of collecting data, a questionnaire was given to 262 SMEs
involved in international business. Statistics utilized in this research
included frequency, mean, percentage, and chi-square test. Data were
analyzed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software. The
research analysis disclosed that there is certain space for
improvement in strategic marketing especially in a marketing
research, perception of cultural and social differences, product
adaptation and usage of marketing communication tools.
Abstract: In this paper, performances of shuffled frog leaping
algorithm was investigated on the stealth laser dicing process. Effect
of problem on the performance of the algorithm was based on the
tolerance of meandering data. From the customer specification it
could be less than five microns with the target of zero microns.
Currently, the meandering levels are unsatisfactory when compared
to the customer specification. Firstly, the two-level factorial design
was applied to preliminarily study the statistically significant effects
of five process variables. In this study one influential process variable
is integer. From the experimental results, the new operating condition
from the algorithm was superior when compared to the current
manufacturing condition.
Abstract: Iron is an essential nutrient with limited
bioavailability. Nutritional anemia caused mainly by iron deficiency
is the most recognized nutritional problem in both countries as well
as affluent societies. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) has become the most
important cereal crop for the improvement of human health due to the
starch, protein, oil, and the majority of micronutrients, particularly in
Asian countries. In this study, the iron availability and profile lipid
were evaluated for the extracts from Cibeusi varieties (black rices) of
ancient rice brans.
Results: The quality of K, B, R, E diets groups shows the same
effect on the growth of rats. Hematocrit and MCHC levels of rats fed
K, B, R and E diets were not significantly (P
Abstract: Chitosan has been an attractive biopolymer for
decades, but its processability is lowered by its poor solubility,
especially in physiological pH values. Freeze concentrated reactions
of chitosan with several organic acids including acrylic, citraconic,
itaconic, and maleic acid revealed improved solubility and
morphological properties. Solubility traits were assessed with a
modified ninhydrin test. Chitosan derivatives were characterized by
ATR-FTIR and morphological characteristics were determined by
SEM. This study is a unique approach to chemically modify chitosan
to enhance water solubility.
Abstract: This research aimed to study the characteristics of a
community in the social, economic and cultural context. This
research used interviews and surveys of the members in the Patthana
Soi Ranongklang community, Dusit District, Bangkok. The results
are as follows: In terms of overall conditions and characteristics, the
Patthana Soi Ranongklang community is located on the property of
the Treasury Department. 50 years ago, the location of this
community consisted of paddy fields with limited convenience in
terms of transportation. Rama V Road was only a small narrow road
accessed only by three-wheelers there were no buses. The majority of
community members moved in from Mak Khawan Rangsan Bridge.
Thus, most community members were either workers or government
officials as they were routers not the owners of the land. Therefore,
there were no primary occupations within the 7 acres of this
community. The development of the community started in 1981. At
present, the community is continuously being developed and
modernization is rapidly flowing in. One of the reasons was because
the main roads were widened, especially Rama V Road that allows
more convenient transportation, leading to heightened citizens’
convenience. In terms of the economy and society, Rama V Road
causes the research to find out the development and expansion of
change in the conditions of the area and buildings. Some buildings
were improved and changed along the time, as well as the
development of new facilities that caused the community members to
continually become more materialistic. In the community, it has well
organized and managed jobs to each part of community members,
and areas were improved to allow the new buildings and apartments.
The trend of jobs became more varied, in terms of both jobs at home,
such as workers, merchandizing and small own businesses, and the
community jobs outside, which became much more convenient to car
drivers as they got used to the narrow roads inside the community.
The location of the community next to Rama V Road also allows
assistance from government agencies to reach the community with
ease. Moreover, the welfare of the community was well taken care of
by the community committee. In terms of education, the research
found that there are two schools: Wat Pracharabuedham School and
Wat Noi Noppakun School that are providing education within the
community. The majority in the community have received Bachelor
degrees. In areas of culture, the research found that the culture,
traditions and beliefs of people in the community were mainly
transferred from the old community: the majorities are Buddhists, so
especially beliefs in Buddhism; the main reason for this is because
the old community was situated near Wat Makut Kasattriyaram.
Therefore, the community members have always had Buddhist
temples as the centre of the community. Later years, more citizens
moved along culture in and bring traditions and beliefs with them.
The community members also took part in building a Dharma hall
named Wat Duang Jai which is 72 year old.
Abstract: Game theory is the study of how people interact and
make decisions to handle competitive situations. It has mainly been
developed to study decision making in complex situations. Humans
routinely alter their behaviour in response to changes in their social
and physical environment. As a consequence, the outcomes of
decisions that depend on the behaviour of multiple decision makers
are difficult to predict and require highly adaptive decision-making
strategies. In addition to the decision makers may have preferences
regarding consequences to other individuals and choose their actions
to improve or reduce the well-being of others. Nash equilibrium is a
fundamental concept in the theory of games and the most widely used
method of predicting the outcome of a strategic interaction in the
social sciences. A Nash Equilibrium exists when there is no unilateral
profitable deviation from any of the players involved. On the other
hand, no player in the game would take a different action as long as
every other player remains the same.