Abstract: Traditionally, VLSI implementations of spiking
neural nets have featured large neuron counts for fixed computations
or small exploratory, configurable nets. This paper presents the
system architecture of a large configurable neural net system
employing a dedicated mapping algorithm for projecting the targeted
biology-analog nets and dynamics onto the hardware with its
attendant constraints.
Abstract: This paper reports our analysis of 163 ks observations
of PSR J0538+2817 with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer
(RXTE).The pulse profiles, detected up to 60 keV, show a single
peak asin the case for radio frequency. The profile is well described
by one Gaussians function with full width at half maximum (FWHM)
0.04794. We compared the difference of arrival time between radio
and X-ray pulse profiles for the first time. It turns out that the phase
of radio emits precede the X-ray by 8.7 ± 4.5 ms. Furthermore we
obtained the pulse profiles in the energy ranges of 2.29-6.18 keV,
6.18-12.63 keV and 12.63-17.36 keV. The intensity of pulses
decreases with the increasing energy range. We discuss the emission
geometry in our work.
Abstract: An attempt in this paper proposes a re-modification to
the minimum moment approach of resource leveling which is a modified minimum moment approach to the traditional method by
Harris. The method is based on critical path method. The new approach suggests the difference between the methods in the
selection criteria of activity which needs to be shifted for leveling resource histogram. In traditional method, the improvement factor
found first to select the activity for each possible day of shifting. In
modified method maximum value of the product of Resources Rate
and Free Float was found first and improvement factor is then
calculated for that activity which needs to be shifted. In the proposed
method the activity to be selected first for shifting is based on the largest value of resource rate. The process is repeated for all the
remaining activities for possible shifting to get updated histogram.
The proposed method significantly reduces the number of iterations
and is easier for manual computations.
Abstract: Ireland developed a National Strategy 2030 that
argued for the creation of a new form of higher education institution,
a Technological University. The research reported here reviews the
first stage of this partnership development. The study found that
national policy can create system capacity and change, but that
individual partners may have more to gain or lose in collaborating.
When presented as a zero-sum activity, fear among partners is high.
The level of knowledge and networking within the higher education
system possessed by each partner contributed to decisions to
participate or not in a joint proposal for collaboration. Greater
success resulted when there were gains for all partners. This research
concludes that policy mandates can provide motivation to
collaborate, but that the partnership needs to be built more on shared
values versus coercion by mandates.
Abstract: The ARMrayan Multimedia Mobile CMS (Content
Management System) is the first mobile CMS that gives the
opportunity to users for creating multimedia J2ME mobile
applications with their desired content, design and logo; simply,
without any need for writing even a line of code. The low-level
programming and compatibility problems of the J2ME, along with
UI designing difficulties, makes it hard for most people –even
programmers- to broadcast their content to the widespread mobile
phones used by nearly all people. This system provides user-friendly,
PC-based tools for creating a tree index of pages and inserting
multiple multimedia contents (e.g. sound, video and picture) in each
page for creating a J2ME mobile application. The output is a standalone
Java mobile application that has a user interface, shows texts
and pictures and plays music and videos regardless of the type of
devices used as long as the devices support the J2ME platform.
Bitmap fonts have also been used thus Middle Eastern languages can
be easily supported on all mobile phone devices. We omitted
programming concepts for users in order to simplify multimedia
content-oriented mobile applictaion designing for use in educational,
cultural or marketing centers. Ordinary operators can now create a
variety of multimedia mobile applications such as tutorials,
catalogues, books, and guides in minutes rather than months.
Simplicity and power has been the goal of this CMS. In this paper,
we present the software engineered-designed concepts of the
ARMrayan MCMS along with the implementation challenges faces
and solutions adapted.
Abstract: Wireless channels are characterized by more serious
bursty and location-dependent errors. Many packet scheduling
algorithms have been proposed for wireless networks to guarantee
fairness and delay bounds. However, most existing schemes do not
consider the difference of traffic natures among packet flows. This
will cause the delay-weight coupling problem. In particular, serious
queuing delays may be incurred for real-time flows. In this paper, it
is proposed a scheduling algorithm that takes traffic types of flows
into consideration when scheduling packets and also it is provided
scheduling flexibility by trading off video quality to meet the
playback deadline.
Abstract: The main goal of the article is to present new model of
application architecture of banking IT solution providing the Internet
Banking services that is particularly outsourced. At first, we propose
business rationale and a SWOT analysis to explain the reasons for the
model in the article. The most important factor for our model is
nowadays- big boom around smart phones and tablet devices. As
next, we focus on IT architecture viewpoint where we design
application, integration and security model. Finally, we propose a
generic governance model that serves as a basis for the specialized
governance model. The specialized instance of governance model is
designed to ensure that the development and the maintenance of
different parts of the IT solution are well governed in time.
Abstract: Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is probably the most
widely used estimation algorithm for nonlinear systems. However,
not only it has difficulties arising from linearization but also many
times it becomes numerically unstable because of computer round off
errors that occur in the process of its implementation. To overcome
linearization limitations, the unscented transformation (UT) was
developed as a method to propagate mean and covariance
information through nonlinear transformations. Kalman filter that
uses UT for calculation of the first two statistical moments is called
Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF). Square-root form of UKF (SRUKF)
developed by Rudolph van der Merwe and Eric Wan to
achieve numerical stability and guarantee positive semi-definiteness
of the Kalman filter covariances. This paper develops another
implementation of SR-UKF for sequential update measurement
equation, and also derives a new UD covariance factorization filter
for the implementation of UKF. This filter is equivalent to UKF but
is computationally more efficient.
Abstract: Professions are concerned about the public image they
have, and this public image is represented by stereotypes. Research is
needed to understand how accountants are perceived by different
actors in the society in different contexts, which would allow
universities, professional bodies and employers to adjust their
strategies to attract the right people to the profession and their
organizations. We aim to develop in this paper a framework to be
used in empirical testing in different environments to determine and
analyze the accountant-s stereotype. This framework will be useful in
analyzing the nuances associated to the accountant-s image and in
understanding the factors that may lead to uniformity in the
profession and of those leading to diversity from one context
(country, type of countries, region) to another.
Abstract: Not all types of mobile phone are successful in entering the market because some types of the mobile phone have a negative perception of user. Therefore, it is important to understand the influence of mobile phone's characteristics in the local user perception. This research investigates the influence of QWERTY mobile phone's forms in the perception of Indonesian user. First, some alternatives of mobile phone-s form are developed based on a certain number of mobile phone's models. At the second stage, some word pairs as design attributes of the mobile phone are chosen to represent the user perception of mobile phone. At the final stage, a survey is conducted to investigate the influence of the developed form alternatives to the user perception. Based on the research, users perceive mobile phone's form with curved top and straight bottom shapes and mobile phone's form with slider and antenna as the most negative form. Meanwhile, mobile phone's form with curved top and bottom shapes and mobile phone-s form without slider and antenna are perceived by the user as the most positive form.
Abstract: Some quality control tools use non metric subjective information coming from experts, who qualify the intensity of relations existing inside processes, but without quantifying them. In this paper we have developed a quality control analytic tool, measuring the impact or strength of the relationship between process operations and product characteristics. The tool includes two models: a qualitative model, allowing relationships description and analysis; and a formal quantitative model, by means of which relationship quantification is achieved. In the first one, concepts from the Graphs Theory were applied to identify those process elements which can be sources of variation, that is, those quality characteristics or operations that have some sort of prelacy over the others and that should become control items. Also the most dependent elements can be identified, that is those elements receiving the effects of elements identified as variation sources. If controls are focused in those dependent elements, efficiency of control is compromised by the fact that we are controlling effects, not causes. The second model applied adapts the multivariate statistical technique of Covariance Structural Analysis. This approach allowed us to quantify the relationships. The computer package LISREL was used to obtain statistics and to validate the model.
Abstract: In the past decade, artificial neural networks (ANNs)
have been regarded as an instrument for problem-solving and
decision-making; indeed, they have already done with a substantial
efficiency and effectiveness improvement in industries and businesses.
In this paper, the Back-Propagation neural Networks (BPNs) will be
modulated to demonstrate the performance of the collaborative
forecasting (CF) function of a Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and
Replenishment (CPFR®) system. CPFR functions the balance between
the sufficient product supply and the necessary customer demand in a
Supply and Demand Chain (SDC). Several classical standard BPN will
be grouped, collaborated and exploited for the easy implementation of
the proposed modular ANN framework based on the topology of a
SDC. Each individual BPN is applied as a modular tool to perform the
task of forecasting SKUs (Stock-Keeping Units) levels that are
managed and supervised at a POS (point of sale), a wholesaler, and a
manufacturer in an SDC. The proposed modular BPN-based CF
system will be exemplified and experimentally verified using lots of
datasets of the simulated SDC. The experimental results showed that a
complex CF problem can be divided into a group of simpler
sub-problems based on the single independent trading partners
distributed over SDC, and its SKU forecasting accuracy was satisfied
when the system forecasted values compared to the original simulated
SDC data. The primary task of implementing an autonomous CF
involves the study of supervised ANN learning methodology which
aims at making “knowledgeable" decision for the best SKU sales plan
and stocks management.
Abstract: Optical 3D measurement of objects is meaningful in
numerous industrial applications. In various cases shape acquisition
of weak textured objects is essential. Examples are repetition parts
made of plastic or ceramic such as housing parts or ceramic bottles as
well as agricultural products like tubers. These parts are often
conveyed in a wobbling way during the automated optical inspection.
Thus, conventional 3D shape acquisition methods like laser scanning
might fail. In this paper, a novel approach for acquiring 3D shape of
weak textured and moving objects is presented. To facilitate such
measurements an active stereo vision system with structured light is
proposed. The system consists of multiple camera pairs and auxiliary
laser pattern generators. It performs the shape acquisition within one
shot and is beneficial for rapid inspection tasks. An experimental
setup including hardware and software has been developed and
implemented.
Abstract: In this paper we propose an NLP-based method for
Ontology Population from texts and apply it to semi automatic
instantiate a Generic Knowledge Base (Generic Domain Ontology) in
the risk management domain. The approach is semi-automatic and
uses a domain expert intervention for validation. The proposed
approach relies on a set of Instances Recognition Rules based on
syntactic structures, and on the predicative power of verbs in the
instantiation process. It is not domain dependent since it heavily
relies on linguistic knowledge.
A description of an experiment performed on a part of the
ontology of the PRIMA1 project (supported by the European
community) is given. A first validation of the method is done by
populating this ontology with Chemical Fact Sheets from
Environmental Protection Agency2. The results of this experiment
complete the paper and support the hypothesis that relying on the
predicative power of verbs in the instantiation process improves the
performance.
Abstract: The association between emotional inhibition strategies linked to depression has been showed inconsistent among studies. Mild emotional inhibition maybe benefit for social interaction, especially for female among East Asian cultures. The present study aimed to examine whether the inhibition–depression relationship is dependent on level of emotion inhibition and gender context, given differing value of suppressing emotional displays. We hypothesized that the negative associations between inhibition and adolescent depression would not directly, in which affected by interaction between emotion inhibition and gender. To test this hypothesis, we asked 309 junior high school students which age range from 12 to14 years old to report on their use of emotion inhibition and depression syndrome. A multiple regressions analysis revealed that significant interaction that gender as a moderator to the relationships between emotion inhibition and adolescent depression. The group with the highest level of depression was girls with high levels of emotion inhibition, whose depression score was higher than that of boys with high levels of emotion inhibition. The result highlights that the importance of context in understanding the inhibition-depression relationship.
Abstract: This study is concerned with the investigation of the
suitability of several empirical and semi-empirical drying models
available in the literature to define drying behavior of viscose yarn
bobbins. For this purpose, firstly, experimental drying behaviour of
viscose bobbins was determined on an experimental dryer setup
which was designed and manufactured based on hot-air bobbin
dryers used in textile industry. Afterwards, drying models considered
were fitted to the experimentally obtained moisture ratios. Drying
parameters were drying temperature and bobbin diameter. The fit
was performed by selecting the values for constants in the models in
such a way that these values make the sum of the squared differences
between the experimental and the model results for moisture ratio
minimum. Suitability of fitting was specified as comparing the
correlation coefficient, standard error and mean square deviation.
The results show that the most appropriate model in describing the
drying curves of viscose bobbins is the Page model.
Abstract: Current OCR technology does not allow to
accurately recognizing small text images, such as those found
in web images. Our goal is to investigate new approaches to
recognize very low resolution text images containing antialiased
character shapes.
This paper presents a preliminary study on the variability of
such characters and the feasibility to discriminate them by
using geometrical features. In a first stage we analyze the
distribution of these features. In a second stage we present a
study on the discriminative power for recognizing isolated
characters, using various rendering methods and font
properties. Finally we present interesting results of our
evaluation tests leading to our conclusion and future focus.
Abstract: The ability of the brain to organize information and generate the functional structures we use to act, think and communicate, is a common and easily observable natural phenomenon. In object-oriented analysis, these structures are represented by objects. Objects have been extensively studied and documented, but the process that creates them is not understood. In this work, a new class of discrete, deterministic, dissipative, host-guest dynamical systems is introduced. The new systems have extraordinary self-organizing properties. They can host information representing other physical systems and generate the same functional structures as the brain does. A simple mathematical model is proposed. The new systems are easy to simulate by computer, and measurements needed to confirm the assumptions are abundant and readily available. Experimental results presented here confirm the findings. Applications are many, but among the most immediate are object-oriented engineering, image and voice recognition, search engines, and Neuroscience.
Abstract: The impact of noise upon live quality has become an
important aspect to make both urban and environmental policythroughout
Europe and in Turkey. Concern over the quality of urban
environments, including noise levels and declining quality of green
space, is over the past decade with increasing emphasis on designing
livable and sustainable communities. According to the World Health
Organization, noise pollution is the third most hazardous
environmental type of pollution which proceeded by only air (gas
emission) and water pollution. The research carried out in two
phases, the first stage of the research noise and plant types providing
the suction of noise was evaluated through literature study and at the
second stage, definite types (Juniperus horizontalis L., Spirea
vanhouetti Briot., Cotoneaster dammerii C.K., Berberis thunbergii
D.C., Pyracantha coccinea M. etc.) were selected for the city of
Konya. Trials were conducted on the highway of Konya. The biggest
value of noise reduction was 6.3 dB(A), 4.9 dB(A), 6.2 dB(A) value
with compared to the control which includes the group that formed
by the bushes at the distance of 7m, 11m, 20m from the source and
5m, 9m, 20m of plant width, respectively. In this paper, definitions
regarding to noise and its sources were made and the precautions
were taken against to noise that mentioned earlier with the adverse
effects of noise. Plantation design approaches and suggestions
concerning to the diversity to be used, which are peculiar to roadside,
were developed to discuss the role and the function of plant material
to reduce the noise of the traffic.
Abstract: Much time series data is generally from continuous dynamic system. Firstly, this paper studies the detection of the nonlinearity of time series from continuous dynamics systems by applying the Phase-randomized surrogate algorithm. Then, the Delay Vector Variance (DVV) method is introduced into nonlinearity test. The results show that under the different sampling conditions, the opposite detection of nonlinearity is obtained via using traditional test statistics methods, which include the third-order autocovariance and the asymmetry due to time reversal. Whereas the DVV method can perform well on determining nonlinear of Lorenz signal. It indicates that the proposed method can describe the continuous dynamics signal effectively.