Abstract: Software Reusability is primary attribute of software
quality. There are metrics for identifying the quality of reusable
components but the function that makes use of these metrics to find
reusability of software components is still not clear. These metrics if
identified in the design phase or even in the coding phase can help us
to reduce the rework by improving quality of reuse of the component
and hence improve the productivity due to probabilistic increase in
the reuse level. In this paper, we have devised the framework of
metrics that uses McCabe-s Cyclometric Complexity Measure for
Complexity measurement, Regularity Metric, Halstead Software
Science Indicator for Volume indication, Reuse Frequency metric
and Coupling Metric values of the software component as input
attributes and calculated reusability of the software component. Here,
comparative analysis of the fuzzy, Neuro-fuzzy and Fuzzy-GA
approaches is performed to evaluate the reusability of software
components and Fuzzy-GA results outperform the other used
approaches. The developed reusability model has produced high
precision results as expected by the human experts.
Abstract: The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is one of the most important methods used to solve many combinatorial optimization problems. Therefore, many researchers have tried to improve the GA by using different methods and operations in order to find the optimal solution within reasonable time. This paper proposes an improved GA (IGA), where the new crossover operation, population reformulates operation, multi mutation operation, partial local optimal mutation operation, and rearrangement operation are used to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem. The proposed IGA was then compared with three GAs, which use different crossover operations and mutations. The results of this comparison show that the IGA can achieve better results for the solutions in a faster time.
Abstract: Information systems practitioners are frequently
required to master new technology, often without the aid of formal
training. They require the skill to manage their own learning and,
when this skill is developed in their formal training, their adaptability
to new technology may be improved. Self- directed learning is the
ability of the learner to manage his or her own learning experience
with some guidance from a facilitator. Self-directed learning skills
are best improved when practiced. This paper reflects on a critical
social research project to improve the self-directed learning skills of
fourth year Information Systems students. Critical social research
differs from other research paradigms in that the researcher is viewed
as the agent of change to achieve the desired outcome in the problem
situation.
Abstract: This paper discusses the implementation of a fuzzy logic based coordinated voltage control for a distribution system connected with distributed generations (DGs). The connection of DGs has created a challenge for the distribution network operators to keep the voltage in the system within its acceptable limits. Intelligent centralized or coordinated voltage control schemes have proven to be more reliable due to its ability to provide more control and coordination with the communication with other network devices. In this work, voltage control using fuzzy logic by coordinating three methods of control, power factor control, on load tap changer and generation curtailment is implemented on a distribution network test system. The results show that the fuzzy logic based coordination is able to keep the voltage within its allowable limits.
Abstract: Automotive suspension system is important part of car
comfort and safety. In this article automotive active suspension with
linear motor as actuator is designed using H-infinity control. This
paper is focused on comparison of different controller designed for
quart, half or full-car model (and always used for “full" car). Special
attention is placed on energy demand of the whole system. Each
controller configuration is simulated and then verified on the
hydraulic quarter car test bed.
Abstract: To achieve competitive advantage nowadays, most of
the industrial companies are considering that success is sustained to
great product development. That is to manage the product throughout
its entire lifetime ranging from design, manufacture, operation and
destruction. Achieving this goal requires a tight collaboration
between partners from a wide variety of domains, resulting in various
product data types and formats, as well as different software tools. So
far, the lack of a meaningful unified representation for product data
semantics has slowed down efficient product development. This
paper proposes an ontology based approach to enable such semantic
interoperability. Generic and extendible product ontology is
described, gathering main concepts pertaining to the mechanical field
and the relations that hold among them. The ontology is not
exhaustive; nevertheless, it shows that such a unified representation
is possible and easily exploitable. This is illustrated thru a case study
with an example product and some semantic requests to which the
ontology responds quite easily. The study proves the efficiency of
ontologies as a support to product data exchange and information
sharing, especially in product development environments where
collaboration is not just a choice but a mandatory prerequisite.
Abstract: Assassination of politicians, school mass murders, purported suicides, aircraft crash, mass shootings by police, sinking of sea ferries, mysterious car accidents, mass fire deaths and horrificterror attacks are some of the cases that bring forth scientific and legal conflicts. Questions about truth, justice and human rights are raised by both victims and perpetrators/offenders as they seek to understand why and how it happened to them. This kind of questioning manifests itself in medical-criminological-legalpsychological and scientific realms. An agreement towards truthinvestigations for possible legal-political-psychological transitory issues such as prosecution, victim-offender mediation, healing, reconciliation, amnesty, reparation, restitution, and policy formulations is seen as one way of transforming these conflicts. Forensic scientists and pathologists in particular have formed professional groups where the complexities between legal truth and scientific truth are dramatized and elucidated within the anatomy of courtrooms. This paper focuses on how pathological truth and legal truth interact with each other in Kenya’s criminal justice system.
Abstract: Under the variation of crude oil price and the impact of
greenhouse effect, it is urgent to find a potential alternative fuel.
Among these alternative fuels, non edible plant oils are the most
potential ones, because they don-t have the problem of food and
cropland competitions. Among the non-edible plant oils, Jatropha oil
is the most potential one. Jatropha oil is non-eatable oil and has good
oil quality and low temperature performance. It has potential to
become one of the most competitive biomass crude oils. The crude
plant oil will be blended with diesel fuel to be tested in a power
generator. The international collaboration between Taiwan and
Indonesia on the production of Jatropha in Indonesia will also be
presented in this study.
Abstract: The optimal control is one of the possible controllers
for a dynamic system, having a linear quadratic regulator and using
the Pontryagin-s principle or the dynamic programming method .
Stochastic disturbances may affect the coefficients (multiplicative
disturbances) or the equations (additive disturbances), provided that
the shocks are not too great . Nevertheless, this approach encounters
difficulties when uncertainties are very important or when the probability
calculus is of no help with very imprecise data. The fuzzy
logic contributes to a pragmatic solution of such a problem since it
operates on fuzzy numbers. A fuzzy controller acts as an artificial
decision maker that operates in a closed-loop system in real time.
This contribution seeks to explore the tracking problem and control
of dynamic macroeconomic models using a fuzzy learning algorithm.
A two inputs - single output (TISO) fuzzy model is applied to the
linear fluctuation model of Phillips and to the nonlinear growth model
of Goodwin.
Abstract: Optimization of a microwave-assisted extraction of cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) fruit using methanol was studied. The influence of process parameters (microwave power, plant material-to-solvent ratio and the extraction time) on the extraction efficiency were optimized by using response surface methodology. The predicted maximum yield of extractive substances (41.85 g/100 g fresh plant material) was obtained at microwave power of 600 W and plant material to solvent ratio of 0.2 g/cm3 after 26 minutes of extraction, while a mean value of 40.80±0.41 g/100 g fresh plant material was obtained from laboratory experiments. This proves applicability of the model in predicting optimal extraction conditions with minimal laborious and time consuming. The results indicated that all process parameters were effective on the extraction efficiency, while the most important factor was extraction time. In order to rationalize production the optimal economical condition which gave a large total extract yield with minimal energy and solvent consumption was found.
Abstract: In all industries which are related to heat, suitable
thermal ranges are defined for each device to operate well.
Consideration of these limits requires a thermal control unit beside
the main system. The Satellite Thermal Control Unit exploits from
different methods and facilities individually or mixed. For enhancing
heat transfer between primary surface and the environment,
utilization of radiating extended surfaces are common. Especially for
large temperature differences; variable thermal conductivity has a
strong effect on performance of such a surface .In most literatures,
thermo-physical properties, such as thermal conductivity, are
assumed as constant. However, in some recent researches the
variation of these parameters is considered. This may be helpful for
the evaluation of fin-s temperature distribution in relatively large
temperature differences. A new method is introduced to evaluate
temperature-dependent thermal conductivity values. The finite
volume method is employed to simulate numerically the temperature
distribution in a space radiating fin. The present modeling is carried
out for Aluminum as fin material and compared with previous
method. The present results are also compared with those of two
other analytical methods and good agreement is shown.
Abstract: Non-isothermal stagnation-point flow with consideration of thermal radiation is studied numerically. A set of partial differential equations that governing the fluid flow and energy is converted into a set of ordinary differential equations which is solved by Runge-Kutta method with shooting algorithm. Dimensionless wall temperature gradient and temperature boundary layer thickness for different combinaton of values of Prandtl number Pr and radiation parameter NR are presented graphically. Analyses of results show that the presence of thermal radiation in the stagnation-point flow is to increase the temperature boundary layer thickness and decrease the dimensionless wall temperature gradient.
Abstract: RFID system, in which we give identification number to each item and detect it with radio frequency, supports more variable service than barcode system can do. For example, a refrigerator with RFID reader and internet connection will automatically notify expiration of food validity to us. But, in spite of its convenience, RFID system has some security threats, because anybody can get ID information of item easily. One of most critical threats is privacy invasion. Existing privacy protection schemes or systems have been proposed, and these schemes or systems defend normal users from attempts that any attacker tries to get information using RFID tag value. But, these systems still have weakness that attacker can get information using analogous value instead of original tag value. In this paper, we mention this type of attack more precisely and suggest 'Tag Broker Model', which can defend it. Tag broker in this model translates original tag value to random value, and user can only get random value. Attacker can not use analogous tag value, because he/she is not able to know original one from it.
Abstract: Public procurement is one of the most
important areas in the public sector that introduces a possibility for a
corruption. Due to the volume of the funds that are
allocated through this institution (in the EU countries it is between 10
– 15% of GDP), it has very serious implications for the efficiency of
public expenditures and the overall economic efficiency as
well. Indicators that are usually used for the measurement of the
corruption (such as Corruption Perceptions Index - CPI) show that
the worst situation is in the post-communist countries
and Mediterranean countries.
The presented paper uses the Czech Republic as an example of a
post-communist country and analyses the factors which influence
the scope of corruption in public procurement. Moreover, the
paper discusses indicators that could point at the public procurement
market inefficiency. The presented results show that post-communist
states use the institute of public contracts significantly more than the
old member countries of the continental Europe. It has a very
important implication because it gives more space for corruption.
Furthermore, it appears that the inefficient functioning of public
procurement market is clearly manifested in the low number of bids,
low level of market transparency and an ineffective control
system. Some of the observed indicators are statistically significantly
correlated with the CPI.
Abstract: A numerical study has been conducted to investigate the influence of fin pitch and relative humidity on the heat transfer performance of the fin-and-tube heat exchangers having plain fin geometry under dehumidifying conditions. The analysis is done using the ratio between the heat transfer coefficients in totally wet conditions and those in totally dry conditions using the appropriate correlations for both dry and wet conditions. For a constant relative humidity, it is found that the heat transfer coefficient increases with the increase of the air frontal velocity. By contrast, the fin efficiency decreases when the face velocity is increased. Apparently, this phenomenon is attributed to the path of condensate drainage. For the influence of relative humidity, the results showed an increase in heat transfer performance and a decrease in wet fin efficiency when relative humidity increases. This is due to the higher amount of mass transfer encountered at higher relative humidity. However, it is found that the effect of fin pitch on the heat transfer performance depends strongly on the face velocity. At lower frontal velocity the heat transfer increases with fin pitch. Conversely, an increase in fin pitch gives lower heat transfer coefficients when air velocity is increased.
Abstract: Mammalian genomes contain large number of
retroelements (SINEs, LINEs and LTRs) which could affect
expression of protein coding genes through associated transcription
factor binding sites (TFBS). Activity of the retroelement-associated
TFBS in many genes is confirmed experimentally but their global
functional impact remains unclear. Human SINEs (Alu repeats) and
mouse SINEs (B1 and B2 repeats) are known to be clustered in GCrich
gene rich genome segments consistent with the view that they
can contribute to regulation of gene expression. We have shown
earlier that Alu are involved in formation of cis-regulatory modules
(clusters of TFBS) in human promoters, and other authors reported
that Alu located near promoter CpG islands have an increased
frequency of CpG dinucleotides suggesting that these Alu are
undermethylated. Human Alu and mouse B1/B2 elements have an
internal bipartite promoter for RNA polymerase III containing
conserved sequence motif called B-box which can bind basal
transcription complex TFIIIC. It has been recently shown that TFIIIC
binding to B-box leads to formation of a boundary which limits
spread of repressive chromatin modifications in S. pombe. SINEassociated
B-boxes may have similar function but conservation of
TFIIIC binding sites in SINEs located near mammalian promoters
has not been studied earlier. Here we analysed abundance and
distribution of retroelements (SINEs, LINEs and LTRs) in annotated
sequences of the Database of mammalian transcription start sites
(DBTSS). Fractions of SINEs in human and mouse promoters are
slightly lower than in all genome but >40% of human and mouse
promoters contain Alu or B1/B2 elements within -1000 to +200 bp
interval relative to transcription start site (TSS). Most of these SINEs
is associated with distal segments of promoters (-1000 to -200 bp
relative to TSS) indicating that their insertion at distances >200 bp
upstream of TSS is tolerated during evolution. Distribution of SINEs
in promoters correlates negatively with the distribution of CpG
sequences. Using analysis of abundance of 12-mer motifs from the
B1 and Alu consensus sequences in genome and DBTSS it has been
confirmed that some subsegments of Alu and B1 elements are poorly
conserved which depends in part on the presence of CpG
dinucleotides. One of these CpG-containing subsegments in B1
elements overlaps with SINE-associated B-box and it shows better
conservation in DBTSS compared to genomic sequences. It has been
also studied conservation in DBTSS and genome of the B-box
containing segments of old (AluJ, AluS) and young (AluY) Alu
repeats and found that CpG sequence of the B-box of old Alu is
better conserved in DBTSS than in genome. This indicates that Bbox-
associated CpGs in promoters are better protected from
methylation and mutation than B-box-associated CpGs in genomic
SINEs. These results are consistent with the view that potential
TFIIIC binding motifs in SINEs associated with human and mouse
promoters may be functionally important. These motifs may protect
promoters from repressive histone modifications which spread from
adjacent sequences. This can potentially explain well known
clustering of SINEs in GC-rich gene rich genome compartments and
existence of unmethylated CpG islands.
Abstract: This paper features the trajectory planning design of a indigenously developed 4-Axis SCARA robot which is used for doing successful robotic manipulation task in the laboratory. Once, a trajectory is being designed and given as input to the robot, the robot's gripper tip moves along that specified trajectory. Trajectories have to be designed in the work space only. The main idea of this paper is to design a continuous path trajectory model for the indigenously developed SCARA robot arm during its maneuvering from one point to another point (during pick and place operations) in a workspace avoiding all the obstacles in its path of motion.
Abstract: A new and cost effective RP-HPLC method was
developed and validated for simultaneous analysis of non steroidal
anti inflammatory dugs Diclofenac sodium (DFS), Flurbiprofen
(FLP) and an opioid analgesic Tramadol (TMD) in advanced drug
delivery systems (Liposome and Microcapsules), marketed brands
and human plasma. Isocratic system was employed for the flow of
mobile phase consisting of 10 mM sodium dihydrogen phosphate
buffer and acetonitrile in molar ratio of 67: 33 with adjusted pH of
3.2. The stationary phase was hypersil ODS column (C18, 250×4.6
mm i.d., 5 μm) with controlled temperature of 30 C°. DFS in
liposomes, microcapsules and marketed drug products was
determined in range of 99.76-99.84%. FLP and TMD in
microcapsules and brands formulation were 99.78 - 99.94 % and
99.80 - 99.82 %, respectively. Single step liquid-liquid extraction
procedure using combination of acetonitrile and trichloroacetic acid
(TCA) as protein precipitating agent was employed. The detection
limits (at S/N ratio 3) of quality control solutions and plasma samples
were 10, 20, and 20 ng/ml for DFS, FLP and TMD, respectively.
The Assay was acceptable in linear dynamic range. All other
validation parameters were found in limits of FDA and ICH method
validation guidelines. The proposed method is sensitive, accurate and
precise and could be applicable for routine analysis in
pharmaceutical industry as well as in human plasma samples for
bioequivalence and pharmacokinetics studies.
Abstract: This paper proposes an adaptive sliding mode
controller which combines adaptive control and sliding
mode control to control a nonlinear robotic manipulator
with uncertain parameters. We use an adaptive algorithm
based on the concept of sliding mode control to alleviate the
chattering phenomenon of control input. Adaptive laws are
developed to obtain the gain of switching input and the
boundary layer parameters. The stability and convergence
of the robotic manipulator control system are guaranteed
by applying the Lyapunov theorem. Simulation results
demonstrate that the chattering of control input can be
alleviated effectively. The proposed controller scheme can
assure robustness against a large class of uncertainties and
achieve good trajectory tracking performance.
Abstract: We present a preliminary x-ray study on human-hair
microstructures for a health-state indicator, in particular a cancer
case. As an uncomplicated and low-cost method of x-ray technique,
the human-hair microstructure was analyzed by wide-angle x-ray
diffractions (XRD) and small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS). The
XRD measurements exhibited the simply reflections at the d-spacing
of 28 Å, 9.4 Å and 4.4 Å representing to the periodic distance of the
protein matrix of the human-hair macrofibrous and the diameter and
the repeated spacing of the polypeptide alpha helixes of the
photofibrils of the human-hair microfibrous, respectively. When
compared to the normal cases, the unhealthy cases including to the
breast- and ovarian-cancer cases obtained higher normalized ratios of
the x-ray diffracting peaks of 9.4 Å and 4.4 Å. This likely resulted
from the varied distributions of microstructures by a molecular
alteration. As an elemental analysis by x-ray fluorescence (XRF), the
normalized quantitative ratios of zinc(Zn)/calcium(Ca) and
iron(Fe)/calcium(Ca) were determined. Analogously, both Zn/Ca and
Fe/Ca ratios of the unhealthy cases were obtained higher than both of
the normal cases were. Combining the structural analysis by XRD
measurements and the elemental analysis by XRF measurements
exhibited that the modified fibrous microstructures of hair samples
were in relation to their altered elemental compositions. Therefore,
these microstructural and elemental analyses of hair samples will be
benefit to associate with a diagnosis of cancer and genetic diseases.
This functional method would lower a risk of such diseases by the
early diagnosis. However, the high-intensity x-ray source, the highresolution
x-ray detector, and more hair samples are necessarily
desired to develop this x-ray technique and the efficiency would be
enhanced by including the skin and fingernail samples with the
human-hair analysis.