Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new class of Volterra series based filters for image enhancement and restoration. Generally the linear filters reduce the noise and cause blurring at the edges. Some nonlinear filters based on median operator or rank operator deal with only impulse noise and fail to cancel the most common Gaussian distributed noise. A class of second order Volterra filters is proposed to optimize the trade-off between noise removal and edge preservation. In this paper, we consider both the Gaussian and mixed Gaussian-impulse noise to test the robustness of the filter. Image enhancement and restoration results using the proposed Volterra filter are found to be superior to those obtained with standard linear and nonlinear filters.
Abstract: The objective of this research was to study the career
success and the satisfaction of female executives working for schools
in Bangkok, Thailand. This paper drew upon the survey data
collected from 68 female executives. The survey conducted in on
Bangkok schools. The statistics utilized in this paper included
percentage, mean, standard deviation as well as t-test. The findings
revealed that the majority of samples had more than 30 years of
experience, held a master degree, and had an average income of less
than 40,000 baht. The majority of respondents worked not more than
50 hours per week. In addition, the mean score revealed career
development was ranked as their number one career satisfaction and
having a job related to education was ranked as their number one job
satisfaction. Also, the mean score of all categories of satisfaction was
4.61 with standard deviation of 1.677 which indicated that female
executive level of satisfaction was high. In terms of the subjectivity
career success, the hypothesis testing’s result disclosed that female
executives with different married status had a difference in their job
satisfaction which was significant at the 0.05 confidence level.
Abstract: Clearance in the joints of multibody mechanical
systems such as linkage mechanisms and robots is a main source of
vibration, and noise of the whole system, and wear of the joints
themselves. This clearance is an inevitable matter and cannot be
eliminated, since it allows the relative motion between joint
components and make them assemblage. This paper presents an
experimental verification of the obtained simulation results of a slider
– crank mechanism of one clearance revolute joint. The simulation
results are obtained with the aid of CAD and dynamic simulation
softwares, which is an effective method of simulation multibody
systems with clearance joints and have many advantages. The
comparison between both simulation and experimental results shows
that the simulation results are so close to the experimental ones which
proves the accuracy and efficiency of this method of modeling and
simulation of mechanical systems with clearance joints.
Abstract: The abnormal increase in the number of applications available for download in Android markets is a good indication that they are being reused. However, little is known about their real reusability potential. A considerable amount of these applications is reported as having a poor quality or being malicious. Hence, in this paper, an approach to measure the reusability potential of classes in Android applications is proposed. The approach is not meant specifically for this particular type of applications. Rather, it is intended for Object-Oriented (OO) software systems in general and aims also to provide means to discard the classes of low quality and defect prone applications from being reused directly through inheritance and instantiation. An empirical investigation is conducted to measure and rank the reusability potential of the classes of randomly selected Android applications. The results obtained are thoroughly analyzed in order to understand the extent of this potential and the factors influencing it.
Abstract: The rate of nitrate adsorption by a nitrate selective ion
exchange resin was investigated in a well-stirred batch experiments.
The kinetic experimental data were simulated with diffusion models including external mass transfer, particle diffusion and chemical
adsorption. Particle pore volume diffusion and particle surface diffusion were taken into consideration separately and simultaneously
in the modeling. The model equations were solved numerically using the Crank-Nicholson scheme. An optimization technique was
employed to optimize the model parameters. All nitrate concentration
decay data were well described with the all diffusion models. The
results indicated that the kinetic process is initially controlled by external mass transfer and then by particle diffusion. The external
mass transfer coefficient and the coefficients of pore volume diffusion and surface diffusion in all experiments were close to each
other with the average value of 8.3×10-3 cm/S for external mass
transfer coefficient. In addition, the models are more sensitive to the
mass transfer coefficient in comparison with particle diffusion. Moreover, it seems that surface diffusion is the dominant particle
diffusion in comparison with pore volume diffusion.
Abstract: In order to study the influence of different methods of controlling weeds such as mechanical weeding and mechanical weeder efficiency analysis in mechanical cultivation conditions, in farming year of 2011 an experiment was done in a farm in coupling and development of technology center in Haraz,Iran. The treatments consisted of (I) control treatment: where no weeding was done, (II) use of mechanical weeding without engine and (III) power mechanical weeding. Results showed that experimental treatments had significantly different effects (p=0.05) on yield traits and number of filled grains per panicle, while treatments had the significant effects on grain weight and dry weight of weeds in the first, second and third weeding methods at 1% of confidence level. Treatment (II) had its most significant effect on number of filled grains per panicle and yield performance standpoint, which was 3705.97 kg ha-1 in its highest peak. Treatment (III) was ranked as second influential with 3559.8 kg ha-1. In addition, under (I) treatments, 2364.73 kg ha-1 of yield produced. The minimum dry weights of weeds in all weeding methods were related to the treatment (II), (III) and (I), respectively. The correlation coefficient analysis showed that total yield had a significant positive correlation with the panicle grain yield per plant (r= 0.55*) and the number of grains per panicle-1 (r= 0.57*) and the number of filled grains (r= 0.63*). Total rice yield also had negative correlation of r= -0. 64* with weed dry weight at second weed sampling time (17 DAT). The weed dry weight at third and fourth sampling times (24 and 40 DAT) had negative correlations of -0.65** and r=-0.61* with rice yield, respectively.
Abstract: The two agro-ecological zones became the focus of
the study because of violent nature of the incessant conflict in the
zones. The available register of farmers association was the sampling
frame work where ten percent (61) farmers per state were randomly
sampled. Data were collected and analysed using z-test. The research
findings revealed tree crops and grains production enterprises ranked
higher in Osun (rain fed zones) and Taraba states (savannah zones)
respectively. Osun state entrepreneur felt the effect of the conflict on
their enterprises more than Tarba state. The reasons adduced for
severity of the conflict on enterprises are majority (77.0%) migrated
and (75.5%) of them were not allowed to enter their farms during and
when conflict deescalated unlike situation in Taraba state. The
different in enterprises production level between the two agroecological
zone was statistically significant at p
Abstract: The quality improvements of the environmental
elements could increase the recreational opportunities in a certain
area (destination). The technique of the need for recreation focuses
on choosing certain destinations for recreational purposes. The basic
exchange taken into consideration is the one between the satisfaction
gained after staying in that area and the value expressed in money
and time allocated. The number of tourists in the respective area, the
duration of staying and the money spent including transportation
provide information on how individuals rank the place or certain
aspects of the area (such as the quality of the environmental
elements).
For the statistical analysis of the environmental benefits offered by
an area through the need of recreation technique, the following stages
are suggested:
- characterization of the reference area based on the
statistical variables considered;
- estimation of the environmental benefit through
comparing the reference area with other similar areas
(having the same environmental characteristics), from
the perspective of the statistical variables considered.
The model compared in recreation technique faced with a series of
difficulties which refers to the reference area and correct
transformation of time in money.
Abstract: Home is important for Chinese people. Because the
information regarding the house attributes and surrounding
environments is incomplete in most real estate agency, most house
buyers are difficult to consider the overall factors effectively and only
can search candidates by sorting-based approach. This study aims to
develop a decision support system for housing purchasing, in which
surrounding facilities of each house are quantified. Then, all
considered house factors and customer preferences are incorporated
into Simple Multi-Attribute Ranking Technique (SMART) to support
the housing evaluation. To evaluate the validity of proposed approach,
an empirical study was conducted from a real estate agency. Based on
the customer requirement and preferences, the proposed approach can
identify better candidate house with consider the overall house
attributes and surrounding facilities.
Abstract: Numerical analysis of flow characteristics and
separation efficiency in a high-efficiency cyclone has been performed.
Several models based on the experimental observation for a design
purpose were proposed. However, the model is only estimated the
cyclone's performance under the limited environments; it is difficult to
obtain a general model for all types of cyclones. The purpose of this
study is to find out the flow characteristics and separation efficiency
numerically. The Reynolds stress model (RSM) was employed instead
of a standard k-ε or a k-ω model which was suitable for isotropic
turbulence and it could predict the pressure drop and the Rankine
vortex very well. For small particles, there were three significant
components (entrance of vortex finder, cone, and dust collector) for
the particle separation. In the present work, the particle re-entraining
phenomenon from the dust collector to the cyclone body was observed
after considerable time. This re-entrainment degraded the separation
efficiency and was one of the significant factors for the separation
efficiency of the cyclone.
Abstract: Linear convolutive filters are fast in calculation and in application, and thus, often used for real-time processing of continuous data streams. In the case of transient signals, a filter has not only to detect the presence of a specific waveform, but to estimate its arrival time as well. In this study, a measure is presented which indicates the performance of detectors in achieving both of these tasks simultaneously. Furthermore, a new sub-class of linear filters within the class of filters which minimize the quadratic response is proposed. The proposed filters are more flexible than the existing ones, like the adaptive matched filter or the minimum power distortionless response beamformer, and prove to be superior with respect to that measure in certain settings. Simulations of a real-time scenario confirm the advantage of these filters as well as the usefulness of the performance measure.
Abstract: For collecting data from all sensor nodes, some
changes in Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol is proposed. At
each hop level, route-ranking technique is used for distributing
packets to different selected routes dynamically. For calculating rank
of a route, different parameters like: delay, residual energy and
probability of packet loss are used. A hybrid topology of
DMPR(Disjoint Multi Path Routing) and MMPR(Meshed Multi Path
Routing) is formed, where braided topology is used in different
faulty zones of network. For reducing energy consumption, variant
transmission ranges is used instead of fixed transmission range. For
reducing number of packet drop, a fuzzy logic inference scheme is
used to insert different types of delays dynamically. A rule based
system infers membership function strength which is used to
calculate the final delay amount to be inserted into each of the node
at different clusters.
In braided path, a proposed 'Dual Line ACK Link'scheme is
proposed for sending ACK signal from a damaged node or link to a
parent node to ensure that any error in link or any node-failure
message may not be lost anyway. This paper tries to design the
theoretical aspects of a model which may be applied for collecting
data from any large hanging iron structure with the help of wireless
sensor network. But analyzing these data is the subject of material
science and civil structural construction technology, that part is out
of scope of this paper.
Abstract: The purposes of this research were to study the citizen
participation in preventing illegal drugs in one of a poor and small
community of Bangkok, Thailand and to compare the level of
participation and concern of illegal drugs problem by using
demographic variables. This paper drew upon data collected from a
local citizens survey conducted in Bangkok, Thailand during summer
of 2012. A total of 200 respondents were elicited as data input for,
and one way ANOVA test. The findings revealed that the overall
citizen participation was in the level of medium. The mean score
showed that benefit from the program was ranked as the highest and
the decision to participate was ranked as second while the follow-up
of the program was ranked as the lowest.
In terms of the difference in demographic such as gender, age,
level of education, income, and year of residency, the hypothesis
testing’s result disclosed that there were no difference in their level
of participation. However, difference in occupation showed a
difference in their level of participation and concern which was
significant at the 0.05 confidence level.
Abstract: Solution to unsteady Navier-Stokes equation by Splitting method in physical orthogonal algebraic curvilinear coordinate system, also termed 'Non-linear grid system' is presented. The linear terms in Navier-Stokes equation are solved by Crank- Nicholson method while the non-linear term is solved by the second order Adams-Bashforth method. This work is meant to bring together the advantage of Splitting method as pressure-velocity solver of higher efficiency with the advantage of consuming Non-linear grid system which produce more accurate results in relatively equal number of grid points as compared to Cartesian grid. The validation of Splitting method as a solution of Navier-Stokes equation in Nonlinear grid system is done by comparison with the benchmark results for lid driven cavity flow by Ghia and some case studies including Backward Facing Step Flow Problem.
Abstract: The rotation of starting pitchers is a strategic issue
which has a significant impact on the performance of a professional
team. Choosing an optimal starting pitcher from among many
alternatives is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In
this study, a model using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and
Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to the Ideal Solution
(TOPSIS) is proposed with which to arrange the starting pitcher
rotation for teams of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. The
AHP is used to analyze the structure of the starting pitcher selection
problem and to determine the weights of the criteria, while the
TOPSIS method is used to make the final ranking. An empirical
analysis is conducted to illustrate the utilization of the model for the
starting pitcher rotation problem. The results demonstrate the
effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model.
Abstract: A Decision Support System/Expert System for stock
portfolio selection presented where at first step, both technical and
fundamental data used to estimate technical and fundamental return
and risk (1st phase); Then, the estimated values are aggregated with
the investor preferences (2nd phase) to produce convenient stock
portfolio.
In the 1st phase, there are two expert systems, each of which is
responsible for technical or fundamental estimation. In the technical
expert system, for each stock, twenty seven candidates are identified
and with using rough sets-based clustering method (RC) the effective
variables have been selected. Next, for each stock two fuzzy rulebases
are developed with fuzzy C-Mean method and Takai-Sugeno-
Kang (TSK) approach; one for return estimation and the other for
risk. Thereafter, the parameters of the rule-bases are tuned with backpropagation
method. In parallel, for fundamental expert systems,
fuzzy rule-bases have been identified in the form of “IF-THEN" rules
through brainstorming with the stock market experts and the input
data have been derived from financial statements; as a result two
fuzzy rule-bases have been generated for all the stocks, one for return
and the other for risk.
In the 2nd phase, user preferences represented by four criteria and
are obtained by questionnaire. Using an expert system, four estimated
values of return and risk have been aggregated with the respective
values of user preference. At last, a fuzzy rule base having four rules,
treats these values and produce a ranking score for each stock which
will lead to a satisfactory portfolio for the user.
The stocks of six manufacturing companies and the period of
2003-2006 selected for data gathering.
Abstract: In this paper, a new method is proposed to find the fuzzy optimal solution of fuzzy assignment problems by representing all the parameters as triangular fuzzy numbers. The advantages of the pro-posed method are also discussed. To illustrate the proposed method a fuzzy assignment problem is solved by using the proposed method and the obtained results are discussed. The proposed method is easy to understand and to apply for finding the fuzzy optimal solution of fuzzy assignment problems occurring in real life situations.
Abstract: As a popular rank-reduced vector space approach,
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) has been used in information
retrieval and other applications. In this paper, an LSI-based content
vector model for text classification is presented, which constructs
multiple augmented category LSI spaces and classifies text by their
content. The model integrates the class discriminative information
from the training data and is equipped with several pertinent feature
selection and text classification algorithms. The proposed classifier
has been applied to email classification and its experiments on a
benchmark spam testing corpus (PU1) have shown that the approach
represents a competitive alternative to other email classifiers based
on the well-known SVM and naïve Bayes algorithms.
Abstract: Increasing number of vehicles and lack of awareness among road users may lead to road accidents. However no specific literature was found to rank vehicles involved in accidents based on fuzzy variables of road users. This paper proposes a ranking of four selected motor vehicles involved in road accidents. Human and non-human factors that normally linked with road accidents are considered for ranking. The imprecision or vagueness inherent in the subjective assessment of the experts has led the application of fuzzy sets theory to deal with ranking problems. Data in form of linguistic variables were collected from three authorised personnel of three Malaysian Government agencies. The Multi Criteria Decision Making, fuzzy TOPSIS was applied in computational procedures. From the analysis, it shows that motorcycles vehicles yielded the highest closeness coefficient at 0.6225. A ranking can be drawn using the magnitude of closeness coefficient. It was indicated that the motorcycles recorded the first rank.
Abstract: Multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods like analytic hierarchy process, ELECTRE and multi-attribute utility theory are critically studied. They have irregularities in terms of the reliability of ranking of the best alternatives. The Routing Decision Support (RDS) algorithm is trying to improve some of their deficiencies. This paper gives a mathematical verification that the RDS algorithm conforms to the test criteria for an effective MCDM method when a linear preference function is considered.