Abstract: The literature has argued that firms based in industrial districts enjoy advantages for creating internal knowledge and absorbing external knowledge as a consequence of to the knowledge flows and spillovers that exist in the district. However, empirical evidence to show how belonging to an industrial district affects the business processes of creation and absorption of knowledge is scarce and, moreover, empirical research has not taken into account the influence of variations in the flows of knowledge circulating in each cluster. This study aims to extend empirical evidence on the effect that the stock of shared competencies in industrial districts has on the business processes of creation and absorption of knowledge, through data from an initial study on 952 firms and 35 industrial districts in Spain.
Abstract: Protein residue contact map is a compact
representation of secondary structure of protein. Due to the
information hold in the contact map, attentions from researchers in
related field were drawn and plenty of works have been done
throughout the past decade. Artificial intelligence approaches have
been widely adapted in related works such as neural networks,
genetic programming, and Hidden Markov model as well as support
vector machine. However, the performance of the prediction was not
generalized which probably depends on the data used to train and
generate the prediction model. This situation shown the importance
of the features or information used in affecting the prediction
performance. In this research, support vector machine was used to
predict protein residue contact map on different combination of
features in order to show and analyze the effectiveness of the
features.
Abstract: This paper analyses the non linear properties
exhibited by a drill string system under various un balanced mass
conditions. The drill string is affected by continuous friction in the
form of drill bit and well bore hole interactions. This paper proves
the origin of limit cycling and increase of non linearity with increase
in speed of the drilling in the presence of friction. The spectrum of
the frequency response is also studied to detect the presence of
vibration abnormalities arising during the drilling process.
Abstract: In this paper, we focused primarily on Istanbul data
that is gathered by using intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and
considered the developments in traffic information delivery and
future applications that are being planned for implementation. Since
traffic congestion is increasing and travel times are becoming less
consistent and less predictable, traffic information delivery has
become a critical issue. Considering the fuel consumption and wasted
time in traffic, advanced traffic information systems are becoming
increasingly valuable which enables travelers to plan their trips more
accurately and easily.
Abstract: Non-uniform current distribution in polymer
electrolyte membrane fuel cells results in local over-heating,
accelerated ageing, and lower power output than expected. This
issue is very critical when fuel cell experiences water flooding. In
this work, the performance of a PEM fuel cell is investigated under
cathode flooding conditions. Two-dimensional partially flooded
GDL models based on the conservation laws and electrochemical
relations are proposed to study local current density distributions
along flow fields over a wide range of cell operating conditions.
The model results show a direct association between cathode inlet
humidity increases and that of average current density but the
system becomes more sensitive to flooding. The anode inlet
relative humidity shows a similar effect. Operating the cell at
higher temperatures would lead to higher average current densities
and the chance of system being flooded is reduced. In addition,
higher cathode stoichiometries prevent system flooding but the
average current density remains almost constant. The higher anode
stoichiometry leads to higher average current density and higher
sensitivity to cathode flooding.
Abstract: Many water supply systems in Australia are currently
undergoing significant reconfiguration due to reductions in long term
average rainfall and resulting low inflows to water supply reservoirs
since the second half of the 20th century. When water supply systems
undergo change, it is necessary to develop new operating rules,
which should consider climate, because the climate change is likely
to further reduce inflows. In addition, water resource systems are
increasingly intended to be operated to meet complex and multiple
objectives representing social, economic, environmental and
sustainability criteria. This is further complicated by conflicting
preferences on these objectives from diverse stakeholders. This paper
describes a methodology to develop optimum operating rules for
complex multi-reservoir systems undergoing significant change,
considering all of the above issues. The methodology is demonstrated
using the Grampians water supply system in northwest Victoria,
Australia. Initial work conducted on the project is also presented in
this paper.
Abstract: At present time, competition, unpredictable fluctuations have made communication engineering education in the global sphere really difficult. Confront with new situation in the engineering education sector. Communication engineering education has to be reformed and ready to use more advanced technologies. We realized that one of the general problems of student`s education is that after graduating from their universities, they are not prepared to face the real life challenges and full skilled to work in industry. They are prepared only to think like engineers and professionals but they also need to possess some others non-technical skills. In today-s environment, technical competence alone is not sufficient for career success. Employers want employees (graduate engineers) who have good oral and written communication (soft) skills. It does require for team work, business awareness, organization, management skills, responsibility, initiative, problem solving and IT competency. This proposed curriculum brings interactive, creative, interesting, effective learning methods, which includes online education, virtual labs, practical work, problem-based learning (PBL), and lectures given by industry experts. Giving short assignments, presentations, reports, research papers and projects students can significantly improve their non-technical skills. Also, we noticed the importance of using ICT technologies in engineering education which used by students and teachers, and included that into proposed teaching and learning methods. We added collaborative learning between students through team work which builds theirs skills besides course materials. The prospective on this research that we intent to update communication engineering curriculum in order to get fully constructed engineer students to ready for real industry work.
Abstract: Drop-in of R-22 alternatives in refrigeration and air conditioning systems requires a redesign of system components to improve system performance and reliability with the alternative refrigerants. The present paper aims at design adiabatic capillary tubes for R-22 alternatives such as R-417A, R-422D and R-438A. A theoretical model has been developed and validated with the available experimental data from literature for R-22 over a wide range of both operating and geometrical parameters. Predicted lengths of adiabatic capillary tube are compared with the lengths of the capillary tube needed under similar experimental conditions and majority of predictions are found to be within 4.4% of the experimental data. Hence, the model has been applied for R-417A, R- 422D and R-438A and capillary tube selection charts and correlations have been computed. Finally a comparison between the selected refrigerants and R-22 has been introduced and the results showed that R-438A is the closest one to R-22.
Abstract: Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation (SSF) of sugarcane bagasse by cellulase and Pachysolen tannophilus MTCC *1077 were investigated in the present study. Important process variables for ethanol production form pretreated bagasse were optimized using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD) experiments. A 23 five level CCD experiments with central and axial points was used to develop a statistical model for the optimization of process variables such as incubation temperature (25–45°) X1, pH (5.0–7.0) X2 and fermentation time (24–120 h) X3. Data obtained from RSM on ethanol production were subjected to the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analyzed using a second order polynomial equation and contour plots were used to study the interactions among three relevant variables of the fermentation process. The fermentation experiments were carried out using an online monitored modular fermenter 2L capacity. The processing parameters setup for reaching a maximum response for ethanol production was obtained when applying the optimum values for temperature (32°C), pH (5.6) and fermentation time (110 h). Maximum ethanol concentration (3.36 g/l) was obtained from 50 g/l pretreated sugarcane bagasse at the optimized process conditions in aerobic batch fermentation. Kinetic models such as Monod, Modified Logistic model, Modified Logistic incorporated Leudeking – Piret model and Modified Logistic incorporated Modified Leudeking – Piret model have been evaluated and the constants were predicted.
Abstract: Markov games are a generalization of Markov
decision process to a multi-agent setting. Two-player zero-sum
Markov game framework offers an effective platform for designing
robust controllers. This paper presents two novel controller design
algorithms that use ideas from game-theory literature to produce
reliable controllers that are able to maintain performance in presence
of noise and parameter variations. A more widely used approach for
controller design is the H∞ optimal control, which suffers from high
computational demand and at times, may be infeasible. Our approach
generates an optimal control policy for the agent (controller) via a
simple Linear Program enabling the controller to learn about the
unknown environment. The controller is facing an unknown
environment, and in our formulation this environment corresponds to
the behavior rules of the noise modeled as the opponent. Proposed
controller architectures attempt to improve controller reliability by a
gradual mixing of algorithmic approaches drawn from the game
theory literature and the Minimax-Q Markov game solution
approach, in a reinforcement-learning framework. We test the
proposed algorithms on a simulated Inverted Pendulum Swing-up
task and compare its performance against standard Q learning.
Abstract: Over the past decades, automatic face recognition has become a highly active research area, mainly due to the countless application possibilities in both the private as well as the public sector. Numerous algorithms have been proposed in the literature to cope with the problem of face recognition, nevertheless, a group of methods commonly referred to as appearance based have emerged as the dominant solution to the face recognition problem. Many comparative studies concerned with the performance of appearance based methods have already been presented in the literature, not rarely with inconclusive and often with contradictory results. No consent has been reached within the scientific community regarding the relative ranking of the efficiency of appearance based methods for the face recognition task, let alone regarding their susceptibility to appearance changes induced by various environmental factors. To tackle these open issues, this paper assess the performance of the three dominant appearance based methods: principal component analysis, linear discriminant analysis and independent component analysis, and compares them on equal footing (i.e., with the same preprocessing procedure, with optimized parameters for the best possible performance, etc.) in face verification experiments on the publicly available XM2VTS database. In addition to the comparative analysis on the XM2VTS database, ten degraded versions of the database are also employed in the experiments to evaluate the susceptibility of the appearance based methods on various image degradations which can occur in "real-life" operating conditions. Our experimental results suggest that linear discriminant analysis ensures the most consistent verification rates across the tested databases.
Abstract: A property-s selling price is described as the result of
sequential bargaining between a buyer and a seller in an environment
of asymmetric information. Hedonic housing prices are estimated
based upon 17,333 records of New Zealand residential properties
sold during the years 2006 and 2007.
Abstract: Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated, hence face a number of problems in getting learning materials resulting in poor performance in National examinations. E-learning as defined to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. There has been effort to improve secondary school education using ICT through several projects. ICT for e-learning to Tanzania rural secondary school is one of the research projects conceived by the University of Dar-es-Salaam through its College of Engineering and Technology. The main objective of the project is to develop a tool to enable ICT support rural secondary school. The project is comprehensive with a number of components, one being development of e-learning management system (e-LMS) for Tanzania secondary schools. This paper presents strategies of developing e-LMS. It shows the importance of integrating action research methodology with the modeling methods as presented by model driven architecture (MDA) and the usefulness of Unified Modeling Language (UML) on the issue of modeling. The benefit of MDA will go along with the development based on software development life cycle (SDLC) process, from analysis and requirement phase through design and implementation stages as employed by object oriented system analysis and design approach. The paper also explains the employment of open source code reuse from open source learning platforms for the context sensitive development of the e-LMS for Tanzania secondary schools.
Abstract: Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR)
approach for discovering novel more active Calanone derivative as
anti-leukemia compound has been conducted. There are 6
experimental activities of Calanone compounds against leukemia cell
L1210 that are used as material of the research. Calculation of
theoretical predictors (independent variables) was performed by
AM1 semiempirical method. The QSAR equation is determined by
Principle Component Regression (PCR) analysis, with Log IC50 as
dependent variable and the independent variables are atomic net
charges, dipole moment (μ), and coefficient partition of noctanol/
water (Log P). Three novel Calanone derivatives that
obtained by this research have higher activity against leukemia cell
L1210 than pure Calanone.
Abstract: This paper presents a digital engineering library – the
Digital Mechanism and Gear Library, DMG-Lib – providing a multimedia collection of e-books, pictures, videos and animations in the domain of mechanisms and machines. The specific characteristic
about DMG-Lib is the enrichment and cross-linking of the different
sources. DMG-Lib e-books not only present pages as pixel images
but also selected figures augmented with interactive animations. The
presentation of animations in e-books increases the clearness of the
information.
To present the multimedia e-books and make them available in the
DMG-Lib internet portal a special e-book reader called StreamBook
was developed for optimal presentation of digitized books and to
enable reading the e-books as well as working efficiently and individually with the enriched information. The objective is to support different user tasks ranging from information retrieval to
development and design of mechanisms.
Abstract: High Strength Concrete (HSC) is defined as concrete
that meets special combination of performance and uniformity
requirements that cannot be achieved routinely using conventional
constituents and normal mixing, placing, and curing procedures. It is
a highly complex material, which makes modeling its behavior a very
difficult task. This paper aimed to show possible applicability of
Neural Networks (NN) to predict the slump in High Strength
Concrete (HSC). Neural Network models is constructed, trained and
tested using the available test data of 349 different concrete mix
designs of High Strength Concrete (HSC) gathered from a particular
Ready Mix Concrete (RMC) batching plant. The most versatile
Neural Network model is selected to predict the slump in concrete.
The data used in the Neural Network models are arranged in a format
of eight input parameters that cover the Cement, Fly Ash, Sand,
Coarse Aggregate (10 mm), Coarse Aggregate (20 mm), Water,
Super-Plasticizer and Water/Binder ratio. Furthermore, to test the
accuracy for predicting slump in concrete, the final selected model is
further used to test the data of 40 different concrete mix designs of
High Strength Concrete (HSC) taken from the other batching plant.
The results are compared on the basis of error function (or
performance function).
Abstract: Protecting is the sources of drinking water is the first
barrier of contamination of drinking water. The Feitsui Reservoir
watershed of Taiwan supplies domestic water for around 5 million
people in the Taipei metropolitan area. Understanding the spatial
patterns of water quality trends in this watershed is an important
agenda for management authorities. This study examined 7 sites in the
watershed for water quality parameters regulated in the standard for
drinking water source. The non-parametric seasonal Mann-Kendall-s
test was used to determine significant trends for each parameter.
Significant trends of increasing pH occurred at the sampling station in
the uppermost stream watershed, and in total phosphorus at 4 sampling
stations in the middle and downstream watershed. Additionally, the
multi-scale land cover assessment and average land slope were used to
explore the influence on the water quality in the watershed. Regression
models for predicting water quality were also developed.
Abstract: In this study, numerical simulations on laminar flow in
sinusoidal wavy shaped tubes were conducted for mean Reynolds
number of 250, which is in the range of physiological flow-rate and
investigated flow structures, pressure distribution and particle
trajectories both in steady and periodic inflow conditions. For
extensive comparisons, various wave lengths and amplitudes of sine
function for geometry of tube models were employed. The results
showed that small amplitude secondary curvature has significant
influence on the nature of flow patterns and particle mixing
mechanism. This implies that characterizing accurate geometry is
essential in accurate predicting of in vivo hemodynamics and may
motivate further study on any possibility of reflection of secondary
flow on vascular remodeling and pathophysiology.
Abstract: In this work, simulation algorithms for contact drying
of agitated particulate materials under vacuum and at atmospheric
pressure were developed. The implementation of algorithms gives a
predictive estimation of drying rate curves and bulk bed temperature
during contact drying. The calculations are based on the penetration
model to describe the drying process, where all process parameters
such as heat and mass transfer coefficients, effective bed properties,
gas and liquid phase properties are estimated with proper
correlations. Simulation results were compared with experimental
data from the literature. In both cases, simulation results were in good
agreement with experimental data. Few deviations were identified
and the limitations of the predictive capabilities of the models are
discussed. The programs give a good insight of the drying behaviour
of the analysed powders.