Sound Absorption of Arenga Pinnata Natural Fiber

Arenga pinnata is an abundantly natural fiber that can be used for sound proof material. However, the scientific data of acoustics properties of Arenga pinnata was not available yet. In this study the sound absorption of pure arenga pinnata was measured. The thickness of Arenga pinnata was varied in 10 mm, 20 mm, 30mm, and 40mm. This work was carried out to investigate the potential of using Arenga pinnata fiber as raw material for sound absorbing material. Impedance Tube Method was used to measure sound absorption coefficient (α). The Measurements was done in accordance with ASTM E1050-98, that is the standard test method for impedance and absorption of acoustical materials using a tube, two microphones and a digital frequency analysis system . The results showed that sound absorption coefficients of Arenga pinnata were good from 2000 Hz to 5000 Hz within the range of 0.75 – 0.90. The optimum sound absorption coefficient was obtained from the thickness of 40 mm. These results indicated that Arenga pinnata fiber is promising to be used as raw material of sound absorbing material with low cost, light, and biodegradable.

SAĞLIK-NET Project in Turkey and HL7 v3 Implementation

This paper describes Clinical Document Architecture Release Two (CDA R2) standard and a client application for messaging with SAĞLIK-NET project developed by The Ministry of Health of Turkey. CDA R2 , developed by Health Level 7 (HL7) organization and approved by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2004, to standardize medical information to be able to share semantically and syntactically. In this study, a client application compatible with HL7 V3 for a project named SAĞLIKNET, aimed to build a National Health Information System by Turkey. Moreover, CDA conformance of this application will also be evaluated.

Lower Bound of Time Span Product for a General Class of Signals in Fractional Fourier Domain

Fractional Fourier Transform is a generalization of the classical Fourier Transform which is often symbolized as the rotation in time- frequency plane. Similar to the product of time and frequency span which provides the Uncertainty Principle for the classical Fourier domain, there has not been till date an Uncertainty Principle for the Fractional Fourier domain for a generalized class of finite energy signals. Though the lower bound for the product of time and Fractional Fourier span is derived for the real signals, a tighter lower bound for a general class of signals is of practical importance, especially for the analysis of signals containing chirps. We hence formulate a mathematical derivation that gives the lower bound of time and Fractional Fourier span product. The relation proves to be utmost importance in taking the Fractional Fourier Transform with adaptive time and Fractional span resolutions for a varied class of complex signals.

Internet: a New Medium to Promote Traditional Dances in Indonesia

As a multicultural country, Indonesia has many subcultures with unique performing arts. Some of them are well-known to international tourists, such as music ensemble (known as gamelan) in Bali and Java, shadow puppet play (wayang) in Java, and martial arts (known as pencak silat) in Sumatra. Some examples of famous traditional dances in Indonesia are Srimpi from Yogyakarta and Solo, Legong from Bali, and Gong dance from Kalimantan. Performing arts show the identity of a nation. However, they are a complex subject, especially when they are addressed to children. The performing arts, e.g. music, dance theatre, and opera are experiential, experimental, and emotionally charged. Therefore, the right strategy and promotion need to be developed to engage children to appreciate and preserve traditional dances. This study aims to explore and identify possibilities of internet usage as a medium to promote traditional dances, especially to children in Indonesia.

Forecasting Tala-AUD and Tala-USD Exchange Rates with ANN

The focus of this paper is to construct daily time series exchange rate forecast models of Samoan Tala/USD and Tala/AUD during the year 2008 to 2012 with neural network The performance of the models was measured by using varies error functions such as Root Square mean error (RSME), Mean absolute error (MAE), and Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). Our empirical findings suggest that AR (1) model is an effective tool to forecast the Tala/USD and Tala/AUD.

Transient Thermal Modeling of an Axial Flux Permanent Magnet (AFPM) Machine Using a Hybrid Thermal Model

This paper presents the development of a hybrid thermal model for the EVO Electric AFM 140 Axial Flux Permanent Magnet (AFPM) machine as used in hybrid and electric vehicles. The adopted approach is based on a hybrid lumped parameter and finite difference method. The proposed method divides each motor component into regular elements which are connected together in a thermal resistance network representing all the physical connections in all three dimensions. The element shape and size are chosen according to the component geometry to ensure consistency. The fluid domain is lumped into one region with averaged heat transfer parameters connecting it to the solid domain. Some model parameters are obtained from Computation Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation and empirical data. The hybrid thermal model is described by a set of coupled linear first order differential equations which is discretised and solved iteratively to obtain the temperature profile. The computation involved is low and thus the model is suitable for transient temperature predictions. The maximum error in temperature prediction is 3.4% and the mean error is consistently lower than the mean error due to uncertainty in measurements. The details of the model development, temperature predictions and suggestions for design improvements are presented in this paper.

DJess A Knowledge-Sharing Middleware to Deploy Distributed Inference Systems

In this paper DJess is presented, a novel distributed production system that provides an infrastructure for factual and procedural knowledge sharing. DJess is a Java package that provides programmers with a lightweight middleware by which inference systems implemented in Jess and running on different nodes of a network can communicate. Communication and coordination among inference systems (agents) is achieved through the ability of each agent to transparently and asynchronously reason on inferred knowledge (facts) that might be collected and asserted by other agents on the basis of inference code (rules) that might be either local or transmitted by any node to any other node.

Motion Control of a Ball Throwing Robot with a Flexible Robotic Arm

Motion control of flexible arms is more difficult than that of rigid arms, however utilizing its dynamics enables improved performance such as a fast motion in short operation time. This paper investigates a ball throwing robot with one rigid link and one flexible link. This robot throws a ball at a set speed with a proper control torque. A mathematical model of this ball throwing robot is derived through Hamilton’s principle. Several patterns of torque input are designed and tested through the proposed simulation models. The parameters of each torque input pattern is optimized and determined by chaos embedded vector evaluated particle swarm optimization (CEVEPSO). Then, the residual vibration of the manipulator after throwing is suppressed with input shaping technique. Finally, a real experiment is set up for the model checking.

Piezomechanical Systems for Algae Cell Ultrasonication

Nowadays for algae cell ultrasonication the longitudinal ultrasonic piezosystems are used. In this paper a possibility of creating unique ultrasonic piezoelectric system, which would allow reducing energy losses and concentrating this energy to a small closed volume are proposed. The current vibrating systems whose ultrasonic energy is concentrated inside of hollow cylinder in which water-algae mixture is flowing. Two, three or multiply ultrasonic composite systems to concentrate total energy into a hollow cylinder to creating strong algae cell ultrasonication are used. The experiments and numerical FEM analysis results using diskshaped transducer and the first biological test results on algae cell disruption by ultrasonication are presented as well.

Allelopathic Effects of Sisymbrium irio L. and Descurainia sophia (L.) Schur on the Germination of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

An experiment was conducted under controlled conditions to study the effect of water extract of leaves, shoots and roots of either Sisymbrium irio L. =SISIR and/or Descurainia sophia (L.) Schur =DESSO on the germination and primary growth of wheat. A split-split plot experiment in CRD with three replications was used. The main plots were the type of weed: i.e. SISIR and DESSO and the sub-plots were type of organ: i.e. leaf, stem and root and, the sub-sub plots were concentration of the water extract of each organ of the weeds: i.e. 0, 2, 4 and 8 % w/v. The plant materials were cut in 2-3 cm pieces and then were ground in a blender. The crushed materials were weighed according to experimental protocol and the final volume was reached to 100 ml in distilled water in dark bottles. All bottles were put on a shaker for 24 hours. The solutions were filtered by muslin cloth. Whatman paper, 9 cm in diameter, were put in petri dishes and twenty seeds of wheat were put on it and 5 ml distilled water or water extract of weeds were added to each petri dish. All petri dishes were put in constant temperature of 15 0C incubator. The results showed that the SISIR water extract had a greater inhibitory effects on germination and primary growth of wheat than those of DESSO water extract. The water extracts of the leaves of both weeds had the greatest inhibitory effects on germination and primary growth of wheat, compared to those of stems and roots. Increasing the concentration of water extract of leaves, stems and roots of both weeds up to 8 % caused the greatest inhibitory effects to wheat and reduced the germination rate and primary growth of it linearly.

Optimal Path Planner for Autonomous Vehicles

In this paper a real-time trajectory generation algorithm for computing 2-D optimal paths for autonomous aerial vehicles has been discussed. A dynamic programming approach is adopted to compute k-best paths by minimizing a cost function. Collision detection is implemented to detect intersection of the paths with obstacles. Our contribution is a novel approach to the problem of trajectory generation that is computationally efficient and offers considerable gain over existing techniques.

The Emerging Central Business District (CBD) in Lafia Town, Nigeria, and its Related Urban Planning Problems

A spatial analysis of a large 20th century urban settlement (town/city) easily presents the celebrated central Business District (CBD). Theories of Urban Land Economics have easily justified and attempted to explain the existence of such a district activity area within the cityscape. This work examines the gradual emergence and development of the CBD in Lafia Town, Nigeria over 20 years and the attended urban problems caused by its emergence. Personal knowledge and observation of land use change are the main sources of data for the work, with unstructured interview with residents. The result are that the absence of a co-ordinate land use plan for the town, multi-nuclei nature, and regional location of surrounding towns have affected the growth pattern, hence the CBD. Traffic congestion, dispersed CBD land uses are some of the urban planning problems. The work concludes by advocating for integrating CBD uses.

Simulation of Lid Cavity Flow in Rectangular, Half-Circular and Beer Bucket Shapes using Quasi-Molecular Modeling

We developed a new method based on quasimolecular modeling to simulate the cavity flow in three cavity shapes: rectangular, half-circular and bucket beer in cgs units. Each quasi-molecule was a group of particles that interacted in a fashion entirely analogous to classical Newtonian molecular interactions. When a cavity flow was simulated, the instantaneous velocity vector fields were obtained by using an inverse distance weighted interpolation method. In all three cavity shapes, fluid motion was rotated counter-clockwise. The velocity vector fields of the three cavity shapes showed a primary vortex located near the upstream corners at time t ~ 0.500 s, t ~ 0.450 s and t ~ 0.350 s, respectively. The configurational kinetic energy of the cavities increased as time increased until the kinetic energy reached a maximum at time t ~ 0.02 s and, then, the kinetic energy decreased as time increased. The rectangular cavity system showed the lowest kinetic energy, while the half-circular cavity system showed the highest kinetic energy. The kinetic energy of rectangular, beer bucket and half-circular cavities fluctuated about stable average values 35.62 x 103, 38.04 x 103 and 40.80 x 103 ergs/particle, respectively. This indicated that the half-circular shapes were the most suitable shape for a shrimp pond because the water in shrimp pond flows best when we compared with rectangular and beer bucket shape.

Application of RP Technology with Polycarbonate Material for Wind Tunnel Model Fabrication

Traditionally, wind tunnel models are made of metal and are very expensive. In these years, everyone is looking for ways to do more with less. Under the right test conditions, a rapid prototype part could be tested in a wind tunnel. Using rapid prototype manufacturing techniques and materials in this way significantly reduces time and cost of production of wind tunnel models. This study was done of fused deposition modeling (FDM) and their ability to make components for wind tunnel models in a timely and cost effective manner. This paper discusses the application of wind tunnel model configuration constructed using FDM for transonic wind tunnel testing. A study was undertaken comparing a rapid prototyping model constructed of FDM Technologies using polycarbonate to that of a standard machined steel model. Testing covered the Mach range of Mach 0.3 to Mach 0.75 at an angle-ofattack range of - 2° to +12°. Results from this study show relatively good agreement between the two models and rapid prototyping Method reduces time and cost of production of wind tunnel models. It can be concluded from this study that wind tunnel models constructed using rapid prototyping method and materials can be used in wind tunnel testing for initial baseline aerodynamic database development.

Performance Evaluation of Popular Hash Functions

This paper describes the results of an extensive study and comparison of popular hash functions SHA-1, SHA-256, RIPEMD-160 and RIPEMD-320 with JERIM-320, a 320-bit hash function. The compression functions of hash functions like SHA-1 and SHA-256 are designed using serial successive iteration whereas those like RIPEMD-160 and RIPEMD-320 are designed using two parallel lines of message processing. JERIM-320 uses four parallel lines of message processing resulting in higher level of security than other hash functions at comparable speed and memory requirement. The performance evaluation of these methods has been done by using practical implementation and also by using step computation methods. JERIM-320 proves to be secure and ensures the integrity of messages at a higher degree. The focus of this work is to establish JERIM-320 as an alternative of the present day hash functions for the fast growing internet applications.

Iterative Solutions to Some Linear Matrix Equations

In this paper the gradient based iterative algorithms are presented to solve the following four types linear matrix equations: (a) AXB = F; (b) AXB = F, CXD = G; (c) AXB = F s. t. X = XT ; (d) AXB+CYD = F, where X and Y are unknown matrices, A,B,C,D, F,G are the given constant matrices. It is proved that if the equation considered has a solution, then the unique minimum norm solution can be obtained by choosing a special kind of initial matrices. The numerical results show that the proposed method is reliable and attractive.

Coupled Multifield Analysis of Piezoelectrically Actuated Microfluidic Device for Transdermal Drug Delivery Applications

In this paper, design, fabrication and coupled multifield analysis of hollow out-of-plane silicon microneedle array with piezoelectrically actuated microfluidic device for transdermal drug delivery (TDD) applications is presented. The fabrication process of silicon microneedle array is first done by series of combined isotropic and anisotropic etching processes using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching technology. Then coupled multifield analysis of MEMS based piezoelectrically actuated device with integrated 2×2 silicon microneedle array is presented. To predict the stress distribution and model fluid flow in coupled field analysis, finite element (FE) and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis using ANSYS rather than analytical systems has been performed. Static analysis and transient CFD analysis were performed to predict the fluid flow through the microneedle array. The inlet pressure from 10 kPa to 150 kPa was considered for static CFD analysis. In the lumen region fluid flow rate 3.2946 μL/min is obtained at 150 V for 2×2 microneedle array. In the present study the authors have performed simulation of structural, piezoelectric and CFD analysis on three dimensional model of the piezoelectrically actuated mcirofluidic device integrated with 2×2 microneedle array.

Watermarking Scheme for Color Images using Wavelet Transform based Texture Properties and Secret Sharing

In this paper, a new secure watermarking scheme for color image is proposed. It splits the watermark into two shares using (2, 2)- threshold Visual Cryptography Scheme (V CS) with Adaptive Order Dithering technique and embeds one share into high textured subband of Luminance channel of the color image. The other share is used as the key and is available only with the super-user or the author of the image. In this scheme only the super-user can reveal the original watermark. The proposed scheme is dynamic in the sense that to maintain the perceptual similarity between the original and the watermarked image the selected subband coefficients are modified by varying the watermark scaling factor. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Further, the proposed scheme is able to resist all common attacks even with strong amplitude.

The Quality Maintenance and Extending Storage Life of Mango Fruit after Postharvest Treatments

The quality attributes and storage life of 'Jinhwang' mango fruit can be effectively maintained with 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) application and/or chitosan coating. 'Jinhwang' mango fruit was treated with 5 μl l-1 1-MCP for 12 h, dipped with 0.5 % chitosan, 5 μl l-1 1-MCP combine with 0.5 % chitosan and untreated (control) then stored at 10oC. Mango treated with 1-MCP maintained firmness, sucrose and starch content. Chitosan coating delayed firmness loss, sucrose content and the fruit decay when compare with control. Application of 1-MCP combine with chitosan also delayed firmness loss, sucrose content and starch content during storage. Furthermore, chitosan coating and combine treatment prolonged storage life of mango up to 29 days after storage while 1-MCP extended to 28 days after storage. Therefore, using all application of chitosan coating or 1-MCP combine with chitosan or 1-MCP in mango at 10oC is a feasible technology for maintains quality and prolongs storage life in order to expand marketability and export options.

Simulation of Thermal Storage Phase Change Material in Buildings

One of the potential and effective ways of storing thermal energy in buildings is the integration of brick with phase change materials (PCMs). This paper presents a two-dimensional model for simulating and analyzing of PCM in order to minimize energy consumption in the buildings. The numerical approach has been used with the real weather data of a selected city of Iran (Tehran). Two kinds of brick integrated PCM are investigated and compared base on outdoor weather conditions and the amount of energy consumption. The results show a significant reduction in maximum entering heat flux to building about 32.8% depending on PCM quantity. The results are analyzed by various temperature contour plots. The contour plots illustrated the time dependent mechanism of entering heat flux for a brick integrated with PCM. Further analysis is developed to investigate the effect of PCM location on the inlet heat flux. The results demonstrated that to achieve maximum performance of PCM it is better to locate PCM near the outdoor.