Abstract: Repairing of the cracks by fiber metal laminates
(FMLs) was first done by some aeronautical laboratories in early
1970s. In this study, experimental investigations were done on the
effect of repairing the center-cracked aluminum plates using the FML
patches. The repairing processes were conducted to characterize the
response of the repaired structures to tensile tests. The composite
patches were made of one aluminum layer and two woven glassepoxy
composite layers. Three different crack lengths in three crack
angles and different patch lay-ups were examined. It was observed
for the lengthen cracks, the effect of increasing the crack angle on
ultimate tensile load in the structure was increase. It was indicated
that the situation of metal layer in the FML patches had an important
effect on the tensile response of the tested specimens. It was found
when the aluminum layer is farther, the ultimate tensile load has the
highest amount.
Abstract: The selective recovery of heavy metals of Cu, Zn, Ni and Cr from a mixed plating sludge by sulfidation and oxidation treatment was targeted in this study. At first, the mixed plating sludge was simultaneously subjected to an extraction and Cu sulfidation process at pH=1.5 to dissolve heavy metals and to precipitate Cu2+ as CuS. In the next step, the sulfidation treatment of Zn was carried out at pH=4.5 and the residual solution was subjected to an oxidation treatment of chromium with H2O2 at pH=10.0. After the experiments, the selectivity of metal precipitation and the chromium oxidation ratio were evaluated. As results, it was found that the filter cake obtained after selective sulfidation of Cu was composed of 96.6% of Cu (100% equals to the sum of Cu, Zn, Ni and Cr contents). Such findings confirmed that almost complete extraction of heavy metals was achieved at pH=1.5 and also that Cu could be selectively recovered as CuS. Further, the filter cake obtained at pH=4.5 was composed of 91.5% Zn and 6.83% of Cr. Regarding the chromium oxidation step, the chromium oxidation ratio was found to increase with temperature and the addition of oxidation agent of H2O2, but only oxidation ratio of 59% was achieved at a temperature of 60°C and H2O2 to Cr3+ equivalent ratio of 180.
Abstract: Heterogeneous catalysis is vital for a number of
chemical, refinery and pollution control processes. The use of
catalyst pellets of hollow cylindrical shape provide several distinct
advantages over other common shapes, and can therefore help to
enhance conversion levels in reactors. A better utilization of the
catalytic material is probably most notable of these features due to
the absence of the pellet core, which helps to significantly lower the
effect of the internal transport resistance. This is reflected in the
enhancement of the effectiveness factor. For the case of the first order
irreversible kinetics, a substantial increase in the effectiveness factor
can be obtained by varying shape parameters. Important shape
parameters of a finite hollow cylinder are the ratio of the inside to the
outside radii (κ) and the height to the diameter ratio (γ). A high value
of κ the generally helps to enhance the effectiveness factor. On the
other hand, lower values of the effectiveness factors are obtained
when the dimension of the height and the diameter are comparable.
Thus, the departure of parameter γ from the unity favors higher
effectiveness factor. Since a higher effectiveness factor is a measure
of a greater utilization of the catalytic material, higher conversion
levels can be achieved using the hollow cylindrical pellets possessing
optimized shape parameters.
Abstract: Properly sized capacitor banks are connected across induction motors for several reasons including power factor correction, reducing distortions, increasing capacity, etc. Total harmonic distortion (THD) and power factor (PF) are used in such cases to quantify the improvements obtained through connection of the external capacitor banks. On the other hand, one of the methods for assessing the motor internal condition is by the use of Park-s pattern analysis. In spite of taking adequate precautionary measures, the capacitor banks may sometimes malfunction. Such a minor fault in the capacitor bank is often not apparently discernible. This may however, give rise to substantial degradation of power factor correction performance and may also damage the supply profile. The case is more severe with the fact that the Park-s pattern gets distorted due to such external capacitor faults, and can give anomalous results about motor internal fault analyses. The aim of this paper is to present simulation and hardware laboratory test results to have an understanding of the anomalies in harmonic distortion and Park-s pattern analyses in induction motors due to capacitor bank defects.
Abstract: Wrist pulse analysis for identification of health status
is found in Ancient Indian as well as Chinese literature. The preprocessing
of wrist pulse is necessary to remove outlier pulses and
fluctuations prior to the analysis of pulse pressure signal. This paper
discusses the identification of irregular pulses present in the pulse
series and intricacies associated with the extraction of time domain
pulse features. An approach of Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) has
been utilized for the identification of outlier pulses in the wrist pulse
series. The ambiguity present in the identification of pulse features is
resolved with the help of first derivative of Ensemble Average of
wrist pulse series. An algorithm for detecting tidal and dicrotic notch
in individual wrist pulse segment is proposed.
Abstract: In this study, three subtypes of influenza A viruses (pH1N1, H5N1 and H3N2) which naturally infected human were analyzed by bioinformatic approaches to find candidate human cellular miRNAs targeting viral genomes. There were 76 miRNAs targeting influenza A viruses. Among these candidates, 70 miRNAs were subtypes specifically targeting each subtype of influenza A virus including 21 miRNAs targeted subtype H1N1, 27 miRNAs targeted subtype H5N1 and 22 miRNAs targeted subtype H3N2. The remaining 6 miRNAs target on multiple subtypes of influenza A viruses. Uniquely, hsa-miR-3145 is the only one candidate miRNA targeting PB1 gene of all three subtypes. Obviously, most of the candidate miRNAs are targeting on polymerase complex genes (PB2, PB1 and PA) of influenza A viruses. This study predicted potential human miRNAs targeting on different subtypes of influenza A viruses which might be useful for inhibition of viral replication and for better understanding of the interaction between virus and host cell.
Abstract: In this paper, we first give the representation of the general solution of the following inverse eigenvalue problem (IEP): Given X ∈ Rn×p and a diagonal matrix Λ ∈ Rp×p, find nontrivial real-valued symmetric arrow-head matrices A and B such that AXΛ = BX. We then consider an optimal approximation problem: Given real-valued symmetric arrow-head matrices A, ˜ B˜ ∈ Rn×n, find (A, ˆ Bˆ) ∈ SE such that Aˆ − A˜2 + Bˆ − B˜2 = min(A,B)∈SE (A−A˜2 +B −B˜2), where SE is the solution set of IEP. We show that the optimal approximation solution (A, ˆ Bˆ) is unique and derive an explicit formula for it.
Abstract: Dengue fever has become a major concern for health
authorities all over the world particularly in the tropical countries.
These countries, in particular are experiencing the most worrying
outbreak of dengue fever (DF) and dengue haemorrhagic fever
(DHF). The DF and DHF epidemics, thus, have become the main
causes of hospital admissions and deaths in Malaysia. This paper,
therefore, attempts to examine the environmental factors that may
influence the recent dengue outbreak. The aim of this study is twofold,
firstly is to establish a statistical model to describe the
relationship between the number of dengue cases and a range of
explanatory variables and secondly, to identify the lag operator for
explanatory variables which affect the dengue incidence the most.
The explanatory variables involved include the level of cloud cover,
percentage of relative humidity, amount of rainfall, maximum
temperature, minimum temperature and wind speed. The Poisson and
Negative Binomial regression analyses were used in this study. The
results of the analyses on the 915 observations (daily data taken from
July 2006 to Dec 2008), reveal that the climatic factors comprising of
daily temperature and wind speed were found to significantly
influence the incidence of dengue fever after 2 and 3 weeks of their
occurrences. The effect of humidity, on the other hand, appears to be
significant only after 2 weeks.
Abstract: This study adopts a qualitative approach, which
engages in the dialectical discussion on two levels of dyad opposite
views. The first level of the dyad opposite views is the Western
strategic perspective and the Eastern Tai-Chi thinking. The second
level of the dyad opposite views is resource-based view and resource
dependence theory. This study concludes the resource-oriented actions
for competitive advantage as the metaphor of Tai-Chi consisted of yin
and yang. This study argues that the focal firm should adopt bridging
strategy during the core competence development period because its
core competence development is likely to meet its competitor’s needs
of exploring strategy during the competitor’s external resource
development stage. In addition, the focal firm should adopt buffering
strategy during the external resource development period to prevent its
competitor’s the exploiting strategy from attack during the
competitor’s core competence development stage. Consequently, this
study takes a significant first step toward a novel contextualize
understanding of resource development based on strategic perspective
and Tai-Chi thinking providing more fully sustainable strategy for
competitive advantage.
Abstract: This paper proposes a modeling method of the laws controlling manufacturing systems with temporal and non temporal constraints. A methodology of robust control construction generating the margins of passive and active robustness is being elaborated. Indeed, two paramount models are presented in this paper. The first utilizes the P-time Petri Nets which is used to manage the flow type disturbances. The second, the quality model, exploits the Intervals Constrained Petri Nets (ICPN) tool which allows the system to preserve its quality specificities. The redundancy of the robustness of the elementary parameters between passive and active is also used. The final model built allows the correlation of temporal and non temporal criteria by putting two paramount models in interaction. To do so, a set of definitions and theorems are employed and affirmed by applicator examples.
Abstract: Thousands of masters athletes participate
quadrennially in the World Masters Games (WMG), yet this cohort
of athletes remains proportionately under-investigated. Due to a
growing global obesity pandemic in context of benefits of physical
activity across the lifespan, the BMI trends for this unique population
was of particular interest. The nexus between health, physical
activity and aging is complex and has raised much interest in recent
times due to the realization that a multifaceted approach is necessary
in order to counteract the obesity pandemic. By investigating age
based trends within a population adhering to competitive sport at
older ages, further insight might be gleaned to assist in understanding
one of many factors influencing this relationship.BMI was derived
using data gathered on a total of 6,071 masters athletes (51.9% male,
48.1% female) aged 25 to 91 years ( =51.5, s =±9.7), competing at
the Sydney World Masters Games (2009). Using linear and loess
regression it was demonstrated that the usual tendency for prevalence
of higher BMI increasing with age was reversed in the sample. This
trend in reversal was repeated for both male and female only sub-sets
of the sample participants, indicating the possibility of improved
prevalence of BMI with increasing age for both the sample as a
whole and these individual sub-groups.This evidence of improved
classification in one index of health (reduced BMI) for masters
athletes (when compared to the general population) implies there are
either improved levels of this index of health with aging due to
adherence to sport or possibly the reduced BMI is advantageous and
contributes to this cohort adhering (or being attracted) to masters
sport at older ages.
Abstract: This paper presents data annotation models at five levels of granularity (database, relation, column, tuple, and cell) of relational data to address the problem of unsuitability of most relational databases to express annotations. These models do not require any structural and schematic changes to the underlying database. These models are also flexible, extensible, customizable, database-neutral, and platform-independent. This paper also presents an SQL-like query language, named Annotation Query Language (AnQL), to query annotation documents. AnQL is simple to understand and exploits the already-existent wide knowledge and skill set of SQL.
Abstract: Natural Language Understanding Systems (NLU) will not be widely deployed unless they are technically mature and cost effective to develop. Cost effective development hinges on the availability of tools and techniques enabling the rapid production of NLU applications through minimal human resources. Further, these tools and techniques should allow quick development of applications in a user friendly way and should be easy to upgrade in order to continuously follow the evolving technologies and standards. This paper presents a visual tool for the structuring and editing of dialog forms, the key element of driving conversation in NLU applications based on IBM technology. The main focus is given on the basic component used to describe Human – Machine interactions of that kind, the Dialogue Manager. In essence, the description of a tool that enables the visual representation of the Dialogue Manager mainly during the implementation phase is illustrated.
Abstract: Business and IT alignment has continued as a
top concern for business and IT executives for almost three
decades. Many researchers have conducted empirical studies on
the relationship between business-IT alignment and performance.
Yet, these approaches, lacking a social perspective, have had little
impact on sustaining performance and competitive advantage. In
addition to the limited alignment literature that explores
organisational learning that is represented in shared understanding,
communication, cognitive maps and experiences.
Hence, this paper proposes an integrated process that enables
social and intellectual dimensions through the concept of
organisational learning. In particular, the feedback and feedforward
process which provide a value creation across dynamic
multilevel of learning. This mechanism enables on-going
effectiveness through development of individuals, groups and
organisations, which improves the quality of business and IT
strategies and drives to performance.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the existence of a linear copositive Lyapunov function(LCLF) for a special class of switched positive linear systems(SPLSs) composed of continuousand discrete-time subsystems. Firstly, by using system matrices, we construct a special kind of matrices in appropriate manner. Secondly, our results reveal that the Hurwitz stability of these matrices is equivalent to the existence of a common LCLF for arbitrary finite sets composed of continuous- and discrete-time positive linear timeinvariant( LTI) systems. Finally, a simple example is provided to illustrate the implication of our results.
Abstract: In the traditional concept of product life cycle management, the activities of design, manufacturing, and assembly are performed in a sequential way. The drawback is that the considerations in design may contradict the considerations in manufacturing and assembly. The different designs of components can lead to different assembly sequences. Therefore, in some cases, a good design may result in a high cost in the downstream assembly activities. In this research, an integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model is presented. Given a product requirement, there may be several design alternative cases to design the components for the same product. If a different design case is selected, the assembly sequence for constructing the product can be different. In this paper, first, the designed components are represented by using graph based models. The graph based models are transformed to assembly precedence constraints and assembly costs. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach is presented by encoding a particle using a position matrix defined by the design cases and the assembly sequences. The PSO algorithm simultaneously performs design evaluation and assembly sequence planning with an objective of minimizing the total assembly costs. As a result, the design cases and the assembly sequences can both be optimized. The main contribution lies in the new concept of integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model and the new PSO solution method. The test results show that the presented method is feasible and efficient for solving the integrated design evaluation and assembly planning problem. In this paper, an example product is tested and illustrated.
Abstract: M. Kemal Ataturk was a great leader who was fond of art and he had displayed his being fond of art many times. In his speeches and writings you can see that he had showed his approval to art and the importance of artists and art for the society. During the foundation of republic, he also wanted renovation in art as in other fields and ordered many novelties both in art and society. One of the greatest steps in realizing this was to prepare a national Turkish opera. In this study, it was studied how a Turkish opera, Özsoy was prepared in the context of social and political conditions of that time and what kind of processes it passed. As a result, it is seen that there was two main aims for Ataturk with this opera. First, Ataturk wanted to abolish the sectarian conflict between Iran and Turkey going on for centuries. The second and maybe the most important is that he wanted to make a revolution in the field of art and aimed to reach the level of civilized countries.
Abstract: This research aims at development of the Multiple
Intelligences Measurement of Elementary Students. The structural
accuracy test and normality establishment are based on the Multiple
Intelligences Theory of Gardner. This theory consists of eight aspects
namely linguistics, logic and mathematics, visual-spatial relations,
body and movement, music, human relations, self-realization/selfunderstanding
and nature. The sample used in this research consists
of elementary school students (aged between 5-11 years). The size of
the sample group was determined by Yamane Table. The group has
2,504 students. Multistage Sampling was used. Basic statistical
analysis and construct validity testing were done using confirmatory
factor analysis. The research can be summarized as follows; 1.
Multiple Intelligences Measurement consisting of 120 items is
content-accurate. Internal consistent reliability according to the
method of Kuder-Richardson of the whole Multiple Intelligences
Measurement equals .91. The difficulty of the measurement test is
between .39-.83. Discrimination is between .21-.85. 2). The Multiple
Intelligences Measurement has construct validity in a good range,
that is 8 components and all 120 test items have statistical
significance level at .01. Chi-square value equals 4357.7; p=.00 at the
degree of freedom of 244 and Goodness of Fit Index equals 1.00.
Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index equals .92. Comparative Fit Index
(CFI) equals .68. Root Mean Squared Residual (RMR) equals 0.064
and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation equals 0.82. 3). The
normality of the Multiple Intelligences Measurement is categorized
into 3 levels. Those with high intelligence are those with percentiles
of more than 78. Those with moderate/medium intelligence are those
with percentiles between 24 and 77.9. Those with low intelligence
are those with percentiles from 23.9 downwards.
Abstract: The main objectif of this paper is to present a tool that
we have developed subject to characterize and modelling indoor radio
channel propagation at millimetric wave. The tool is based on the
ray tracing technique (RTT). As, in realistic environment we cannot
neglect the significant impact of Human Body Shadowing and other
objects in motion on indoor 60 GHz propagation channel. Hence,
our proposed model allows a simulation of propagation in a dynamic
indoor environment. First, we describe a model of human body.
Second, RTT with this model is used to simulate the propagation
of millimeter waves in the presence of persons in motion. Results
of the simulation show that this tool gives results in agreement with
those reported in the literature. Specially, the effects of people motion
on temporal channel properties.
Abstract: Some of the students' problems in writing skill stem
from inadequate preparation for the writing assignment. Students
should be taught how to write well when they arrive in language
classes. Having selected a topic, the students examine and explore the
theme from as large a variety of viewpoints as their background and
imagination make possible. Another strategy is that the students
prepare an Outline before writing the paper. The comparison between
the two mentioned thought provoking techniques was carried out
between the two class groups –students of Islamic Azad University of
Dezful who were studying “Writing 2" as their main course. Each
class group was assigned to write five compositions separately in
different periods of time. Then a t-test for each pair of exams between
the two class groups showed that the t-observed in each pair was
more than the t-critical. Consequently, the first hypothesis which
states those who utilize Brainstorming as a thought provoking
technique in prewriting phase are more successful than those who
outline the papers before writing was verified.