Wind-tunnel Measurement of the Drag-reducing Effect of Compliant Coating

A specially designed flat plate was mounted vertically over the axial line in the wind tunnel of the Aerospace Department of the Pusan National University. The plate is 2 m long, 0.8 m high and 8 cm thick. The measurements were performed in velocity range from 15 to 60 m/s. A sand paper turbulizer was placed close to the plate nose to provide fully developed turbulent boundary layer over the most part of the plate. Strain balances were mounted in the trailing part of the plate to measure the skin friction drag over removable insertions of 0.55×0.25m2 size. A set of the insertions was designed and manufactured: 3mm thick polished metal surface and three compliant surfaces. The compliant surfaces were manufactured of a silicone rubber Silastic® S2 (Dow Corning company). To modify the viscoelastic properties of the rubber, its composition was varied: 90% of the rubber + 10% catalyst (standard), 92.5% + 7.5% (weak), 85% + 15% (strong). Modulus of elasticity and the loss tangent were measured accurately for these materials in the frequency range from 40 Hz to 3 KHz using the unique proposed technique.

Extracting Road Signs using the Color Information

In this paper, we propose a method to extract the road signs. Firstly, the grabbed image is converted into the HSV color space to detect the road signs. Secondly, the morphological operations are used to reduce noise. Finally, extract the road sign using the geometric property. The feature extraction of road sign is done by using the color information. The proposed method has been tested for the real situations. From the experimental results, it is seen that the proposed method can extract the road sign features effectively.

Optimization of Petroleum Refinery Configuration Design with Logic Propositions

This work concerns the topological optimization problem for determining the optimal petroleum refinery configuration. We are interested in further investigating and hopefully advancing the existing optimization approaches and strategies employing logic propositions to conceptual process synthesis problems. In particular, we seek to contribute to this increasingly exciting area of chemical process modeling by addressing the following potentially important issues: (a) how the formulation of design specifications in a mixed-logical-and-integer optimization model can be employed in a synthesis problem to enrich the problem representation by incorporating past design experience, engineering knowledge, and heuristics; and (b) how structural specifications on the interconnectivity relationships by space (states) and by function (tasks) in a superstructure should be properly formulated within a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model. The proposed modeling technique is illustrated on a case study involving the alternative processing routes of naphtha, in which significant improvement in the solution quality is obtained.

Toward Integrative Stormwater Design in Urban Spaces

The design requirements for successful human accommodation in urban spaces are well known; and the range of facilities available for meeting urban water quality and quantity requirements is also well established. Their competing requirements must be reconciled in order for urban spaces to be successful for both. This paper outlines the separate human and water imperatives and their interactions in urban spaces. Stormwater management facilities- relative potential contributions to urban spaces are contrasted, and design choices for achieving those potentials are described. This study uses human success of urban space as the evaluative criterion of stormwater amenity: human values call on stormwater facilities to contribute to successful human spaces. Placing water-s contribution under the overall idea of successful urban space is an evolution from previous subjective evaluations. The information is based on photographs and notes from approximately 1,000 stormwater facilities and urban sites collected during the last 35 years in North America and overseas, and the author-s experience on multi-disciplinary design teams. This conceptual study combines the disciplinary roles of engineering, landscape architecture, and sociology in effecting successful urban design.

In-Situ Monitoring the Thermal Forming of Glass and Si Foils for Space X-Ray Telescopes

We developed a non-contact method for the in-situ monitoring of the thermal forming of glass and Si foils to optimize the manufacture of mirrors for high-resolution space x-ray telescopes. Their construction requires precise and light-weight segmented optics with angular resolution better than 5 arcsec. We used 75x25 mm Desag D263 glass foils 0.75 mm thick and 0.6 mm thick Si foils. The glass foils were shaped by free slumping on a frame at viscosities in the range of 109.3-1012 dPa·s, the Si foils by forced slumping above 1000°C. Using a Nikon D80 digital camera, we took snapshots of a foil-s shape every 5 min during its isothermal heat treatment. The obtained results we can use for computer simulations. By comparing the measured and simulated data, we can more precisely define material properties of the foils and optimize the forming technology.

Performance Analysis of Learning Automata-Based Routing Algorithms in Sparse Graphs

A number of routing algorithms based on learning automata technique have been proposed for communication networks. How ever, there has been little work on the effects of variation of graph scarcity on the performance of these algorithms. In this paper, a comprehensive study is launched to investigate the performance of LASPA, the first learning automata based solution to the dynamic shortest path routing, across different graph structures with varying scarcities. The sensitivity of three main performance parameters of the algorithm, being average number of processed nodes, scanned edges and average time per update, to variation in graph scarcity is reported. Simulation results indicate that the LASPA algorithm can adapt well to the scarcity variation in graph structure and gives much better outputs than the existing dynamic and fixed algorithms in terms of performance criteria.

Granularity Analysis for Spatio-Temporal Web Sensors

In recent years, many researches to mine the exploding Web world, especially User Generated Content (UGC) such as weblogs, for knowledge about various phenomena and events in the physical world have been done actively, and also Web services with the Web-mined knowledge have begun to be developed for the public. However, there are few detailed investigations on how accurately Web-mined data reflect physical-world data. It must be problematic to idolatrously utilize the Web-mined data in public Web services without ensuring their accuracy sufficiently. Therefore, this paper introduces the simplest Web Sensor and spatiotemporallynormalized Web Sensor to extract spatiotemporal data about a target phenomenon from weblogs searched by keyword(s) representing the target phenomenon, and tries to validate the potential and reliability of the Web-sensed spatiotemporal data by four kinds of granularity analyses of coefficient correlation with temperature, rainfall, snowfall, and earthquake statistics per day by region of Japan Meteorological Agency as physical-world data: spatial granularity (region-s population density), temporal granularity (time period, e.g., per day vs. per week), representation granularity (e.g., “rain" vs. “heavy rain"), and media granularity (weblogs vs. microblogs such as Tweets).

How the Conversations in Social Media Concern in Sales in the Automobile Industry in Spain

Automobile Industry has great importance in the Spanish economy (8,7 % of the active Spanish population is employed in this sector).The above mentioned sector has been one of the principal sectors affected by the current economic crisis, consistently, the budgets in advertising have been severely limited (46,9 % less in the period of reference), these needs of reduction have originated a substantial change in the advertising strategy (from 2007 the increase of the advertising investment in Internet is 251,6 %), and increase profitability. The growing use of social media by consumers therefore makes online consumer conversations an attractive additional format for Automobile firms to promote products at a lower cost. This research analyzes the relation between the activity in Social Media and the design in the car industry, looking for relations between strategies of design based on Social Media and sales and a channel of information for companies to know what the consumer preferences. For this ongoing research we used a longitudinal withdrawal of information has been used using information of panel. Managerial and research implications of the finding are discussed.

Sustainable and Ecological Designs of the Built Environment

This paper reviews designs of the built environment from a sustainability perspective, emphasizing their importance in achieving ecological and sustainable economic objectives. The built environment has traditionally resulted in loss of biodiversity, extinction of some species, climate change, excessive water use, land degradation, space depletion, waste accumulation, energy consumption and environmental pollution. Materials used like plastics, metals, bricks, concrete, cement, natural aggregates, glass and plaster have wreaked havoc on the earth´s resources, since they have high levels of embodied energy hence not sustainable. Additional resources are consumed during use and disposal phases. Proposed designs for sustainability solutions include: ecological sanitation and eco-efficiency systems that ensure social, economic, environmental and technical sustainability. Renewable materials and energy systems, passive cooling and heating systems and material and energy reduction, reuse and recycling can improve the sector. These ideas are intended to inform the field of ecological design of the built environment.

Deformation of Water Waves by Geometric Transitions with Power Law Function Distribution

In this work, we analyze the deformation of surface waves in shallow flows conditions, propagating in a channel of slowly varying cross-section. Based on a singular perturbation technique, the main purpose is to predict the motion of waves by using a dimensionless formulation of the governing equations, considering that the longitudinal variation of the transversal section obey a power-law distribution. We show that the spatial distribution of the waves in the varying cross-section is a function of a kinematic parameter,κ , and two geometrical parameters εh and w ε . The above spatial behavior of the surface elevation is modeled by an ordinary differential equation. The use of single formulas to model the varying cross sections or transitions considered in this work can be a useful approximation to natural or artificial geometrical configurations.

Geospatial Network Analysis Using Particle Swarm Optimization

The shortest path (SP) problem concerns with finding the shortest path from a specific origin to a specified destination in a given network while minimizing the total cost associated with the path. This problem has widespread applications. Important applications of the SP problem include vehicle routing in transportation systems particularly in the field of in-vehicle Route Guidance System (RGS) and traffic assignment problem (in transportation planning). Well known applications of evolutionary methods like Genetic Algorithms (GA), Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) have come up to solve complex optimization problems to overcome the shortcomings of existing shortest path analysis methods. It has been reported by various researchers that PSO performs better than other evolutionary optimization algorithms in terms of success rate and solution quality. Further Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have emerged as key information systems for geospatial data analysis and visualization. This research paper is focused towards the application of PSO for solving the shortest path problem between multiple points of interest (POI) based on spatial data of Allahabad City and traffic speed data collected using GPS. Geovisualization of results of analysis is carried out in GIS.

Investigating the Effectiveness of Iranian Architecture on Sustainable Space Creation

lack of convenience condition is one of the problems in open spaces in hot and dry regions. Nowadays parks and green landscapes was designed and constructed without any attention to convenience condition. If this process continues, Citizens will encounter with some problems. Harsh climatic condition decreases the efficiency of people-s activities. However there is hard environment condition in hot and dry regions, Convenience condition has been provided in Iranian traditional architecture by using techniques and methods. In this research at the first step characteristics of Iranian garden that can effect on creating sustainable spaces were investigated through observation method. Pleasure space in cities will be created with using these methods and techniques in future cities. Furthermore the comparison between Iranian garden and landscape in today-s cities demonstrate the effectiveness of Iranian garden characteristics on sustainable spaces. Iranian architects used simple and available methods for creating open architectural spaces. In addition desirable conditions were provided with taking in to account both physically and spiritually. Parks and landscapes in future cities can be designed and constructed with respect to architectural techniques that used in Iranian gardens in hot and arid regions.

Throughput Enhancement in AUDTWMN Using Throwboxes – An Overview

Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking is part of the Inter Planetary Internet with primary application being Deep Space Networks. Its Terrestrial form has interesting research applications such as Alagappa University Delay Tolerant Water Monitoring Network which doubles as test beds for improvising its routing scheme. DTNs depend on node mobility to deliver packets using a store-carry-and forward paradigm. Throwboxes are small and inexpensive stationary devices equipped with wireless interfaces and storage. We propose the use of Throwboxes to enhance the contact opportunities of the nodes and hence improve the Throughput. The enhancement is evaluated using Alunivdtnsim, a desktop simulator in C language and the results are graphically presented.

A New Heuristic Approach for Large Size Zero-One Multi Knapsack Problem Using Intercept Matrix

This paper presents a heuristic to solve large size 0-1 Multi constrained Knapsack problem (01MKP) which is NP-hard. Many researchers are used heuristic operator to identify the redundant constraints of Linear Programming Problem before applying the regular procedure to solve it. We use the intercept matrix to identify the zero valued variables of 01MKP which is known as redundant variables. In this heuristic, first the dominance property of the intercept matrix of constraints is exploited to reduce the search space to find the optimal or near optimal solutions of 01MKP, second, we improve the solution by using the pseudo-utility ratio based on surrogate constraint of 01MKP. This heuristic is tested for benchmark problems of sizes upto 2500, taken from literature and the results are compared with optimum solutions. Space and computational complexity of solving 01MKP using this approach are also presented. The encouraging results especially for relatively large size test problems indicate that this heuristic can successfully be used for finding good solutions for highly constrained NP-hard problems.

Text Retrieval Relevance Feedback Techniques for Bag of Words Model in CBIR

The state-of-the-art Bag of Words model in Content- Based Image Retrieval has been used for years but the relevance feedback strategies for this model are not fully investigated. Inspired from text retrieval, the Bag of Words model has the ability to use the wealth of knowledge and practices available in text retrieval. We study and experiment the relevance feedback model in text retrieval for adapting it to image retrieval. The experiments show that the techniques from text retrieval give good results for image retrieval and that further improvements is possible.

Port Positions on the Mixing Efficiency of a Rotor-Type Mixer – A Numerical Study

The purpose of this study was to explore the complex flow structure a novel active-type micromixer that based on concept of Wankle-type rotor. The characteristics of this micromixer are two folds; a rapid mixing of reagents in a limited space due to the generation of multiple vortices and a graduate increment in dynamic pressure as the mixed reagents is delivered to the output ports. Present micro-mixer is consisted of a rotor with shape of triangle column, a blending chamber and several inlet and outlet ports. The geometry of blending chamber is designed to make the rotor can be freely internal rotated with a constant eccentricity ratio. When the shape of the blending chamber and the rotor are fixed, the effects of rotating speed of rotor and the relative locations of ports on the mixing efficiency are numerical studied. The governing equations are unsteady, two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equation and the working fluid is the water. The species concentration equation is also solved to reveal the mass transfer process of reagents in various regions then to evaluate the mixing efficiency. The dynamic mesh technique was implemented to model the dynamic volume shrinkage and expansion of three individual sub-regions of blending chamber when the rotor conducted a complete rotating cycle. Six types of ports configuration on the mixing efficiency are considered in a range of Reynolds number from 10 to 300. The rapid mixing process was accomplished with the multiple vortex structures within a tiny space due to the equilibrium of shear force, viscous force and inertial force. Results showed that the highest mixing efficiency could be attained in the following conditions: two inlet and two outlet ports configuration, that is an included angle of 60 degrees between two inlets and an included angle of 120 degrees between inlet and outlet ports when Re=10.

The Effect of a Free -Trade Agreement upon Agricultural Imports

A free-trade agreement is found to increase Thailand-s agricultural imports from New Zealand, despite the short span of time for which the agreement has been operational. The finding is described by autoregressive estimates that correct for possible unit roots in the data. The agreement-s effect upon imports is also estimated while considering an error-correction model of imports against gross domestic product.

Bone Generation through Mechanical Loading

Bones are dynamic and responsive organs, they regulate their strength and mass according to the loads which they are subjected. Because, the Wnt/β-catenin pathway has profound effects on the regulation of bone mass, we hypothesized that mechanical loading of bone cells stimulates Wnt/β-catenin signaling, which results in the generation of new bone mass. Mechanical loading triggers the secretion of the Wnt molecule, which after binding to transmembrane proteins, causes GSK-3β (Glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta) to cease the phosphorylation of β-catenin. β-catenin accumulation in the cytoplasm, followed by its transport into the nucleus, binding to transcription factors (TCF/LEF) that initiate transcription of genes related to bone formation. To test this hypothesis, we used TOPGAL (Tcf Optimal Promoter β-galactosidase) mice in an experiment in which cyclic loads were applied to the forearm. TOPGAL mice are reporters for cells effected by the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. TOPGAL mice are genetically engineered mice in which transcriptional activation of β- catenin, results in the production of an enzyme, β-galactosidase. The presence of this enzyme allows us to localize transcriptional activation of β-catenin to individual cells, thereby, allowing us to quantify the effects that mechanical loading has on the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and new bone formation. The ulnae of loaded TOPGAL mice were excised and transverse slices along different parts of the ulnar shaft were assayed for the presence of β-galactosidase. Our results indicate that loading increases β-catenin transcriptional activity in regions where this pathway is already primed (i.e. where basal activity is already higher) in a load magnitude dependent manner. Further experiments are needed to determine the temporal and spatial activation of this signaling in relation to bone formation.

Analytical Study on a Longitudinal Joints of the Slab-Type Modular Bridges

In this study, a longitudinal joint connection was proposed for the short-span slab-type modular bridges with rapid construction. The slab-type modular bridge consists of a number of precast slab modules and has the joint connection between the modules in the longitudinal direction of the bridge. A finite element based parameter analysis was conducted to design the shape and the dimensions of the longitudinal joint connection. Numbers of shear keys within the joint, height and depth of the shear key, tooth angle, and the spacing were considered as the design parameters. Using the local cracking load at the corner of the shear key and the cross-sectional area of the joint, an efficiency factor was proposed to evaluate the effectiveness of the longitudinal joint connection. The dimensions of shear key were determined by comparing the cracking loads and the efficiency factors obtained from the finite element analysis.

A Scenario-Based Approach for the Air Traffic Flow Management Problem with Stochastic Capacities

In this paper, we investigate the strategic stochastic air traffic flow management problem which seeks to balance airspace capacity and demand under weather disruptions. The goal is to reduce the need for myopic tactical decisions that do not account for probabilistic knowledge about the NAS near-future states. We present and discuss a scenario-based modeling approach based on a time-space stochastic process to depict weather disruption occurrences in the NAS. A solution framework is also proposed along with a distributed implementation aimed at overcoming scalability problems. Issues related to this implementation are also discussed.