Abstract: This paper proposed the comparison made between
Multi-Carrier Pulse Width Modulation, Sinusoidal Pulse Width
Modulation and Selective Harmonic Elimination Pulse Width
Modulation technique for minimization of Total Harmonic Distortion
in Cascaded H-Bridge Multi-Level Inverter. In Multicarrier Pulse
Width Modulation method by using Alternate Position of Disposition
scheme for switching pulse generation to Multi-Level Inverter.
Another carrier based approach; Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation
method is also implemented to define the switching pulse generation
system in the multi-level inverter. In Selective Harmonic Elimination
method using Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization
algorithm for define the required switching angles to eliminate low
order harmonics from the inverter output voltage waveform and
reduce the total harmonic distortion value. So, the results validate that
the Selective Harmonic Elimination Pulse Width Modulation method
does capably eliminate a great number of precise harmonics and
minimize the Total Harmonic Distortion value in output voltage
waveform in compared with Multi-Carrier Pulse Width Modulation
method, Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation method. In this paper,
comparison of simulation results shows that the Selective Harmonic
Elimination method can attain optimal harmonic minimization
solution better than Multi-Carrier Pulse Width Modulation method,
Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation method.
Abstract: Hemoglobin (HB) indicates anemia level and by
extension may reflect the nutritional level and perhaps the immunity
of an individual. Some antiretroviral drugs like Zidovudine are
known to cause anemia in people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA).
A cross sectional study using demographic data and blood specimen
from 218 female commercial sex workers attending antiretroviral
therapy (ART) clinics was conducted between December, 2009 and
July, 2011 to assess the effect of zidovudine on hematologic, and
RNA viral load of female sex workers receiving antiretroviral
treatment in north western Nigeria. Anemia is a common and serious
complication of both HIV infection and its treatment. In the setting of
HIV infection, anemia has been associated with decreased quality of
life, functional status, and survival. Antiretroviral therapy,
particularly the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), has
been associated with a decrease in the incidence and severity of
anemia in HIV-infected patients who have received a HAART
regimen for at least 1 year. In this study, result has shown that of the
218 patients, 26 with hemoglobin count between 5.1 – 10g/dl were
observed to have the highest viral load count of 300,000 –
350,000copies/ml. It was also observed that most patients (190) with
HB of 10.1 – 15.0g/dl had viral load count of 200,000 – 250,000
copies /ml. An inverse relationship therefore exists i.e. the lower the
hemoglobin level, the higher the viral load count even though the test
statistics did not show any significance between the two (P = 0.206).
This shows that multivariate logistic regression analysis
demonstrated that anemia was associated with a CD4 + cell count
below 50/μL, female sex workers with a viral load above 100,000
copies/mL, who use zidovudine.
Severe anemia was less prevalent in this study population than in
historical comparators; however, mild to moderate anemia rates
remain high. The study therefore recommends that hematological and
virologic parameters be monitored closely in patients receiving first
line ART regimen.
Abstract: The numerical simulation has made tremendous
advances in investigating the blood flow phenomenon through elastic
arteries. Such study can be useful in demonstrating the disease
progression and hemodynamics of cardiovascular diseases such as
atherosclerosis. In the present study, patient specific case diagnosed
with partially stenosed complete right ICA and normal left carotid
bifurcation without any atherosclerotic plaque formation is
considered. 3D patient specific carotid bifurcation model is generated
based on CT scan data using MIMICS-4.0 and numerical analysis is
performed using FSI solver in ANSYS-14.5. The blood flow is
assumed to be incompressible, homogenous and Newtonian, while
the artery wall is assumed to be linearly elastic. The two-way
sequentially coupled transient FSI analysis is performed using FSI
solver for three pulse cycles. The hemodynamic parameters such as
flow pattern, Wall Shear Stress, pressure contours and arterial wall
deformation are studied at the bifurcation and critical zones such as
stenosis. The variation in flow behavior is studied throughout the
pulse cycle. Also, the simulation results reveal that there is a
considerable increase in the flow behavior in stenosed carotid in
contrast to the normal carotid bifurcation system. The investigation
also demonstrates the disturbed flow pattern especially at the
bifurcation and stenosed zone elevating the hemodynamics,
particularly during peak systole and later part of the pulse cycle. The
results obtained agree well with the clinical observation and
demonstrates the potential of patient specific numerical studies in
prognosis of disease progression and plaque rupture.
Abstract: This paper represents the results of experimental work to investigate the suitability of a waste material (WM) for soft soil stabilisation. In addition, the effect of particle size distribution (PSD) of the waste material on its performance as a soil stabiliser was investigated. The WM used in this study is produced from the incineration processes in domestic energy power plant and it is available in two different grades of fineness (coarse waste material (CWM) and fine waste material (FWM)). An intermediate plasticity silty clayey soil with medium organic matter content has been used in this study. The suitability of the CWM and FWM to improve the physical and engineering properties of the selected soil was evaluated dependant on the results obtained from the consistency limits, compaction characteristics (optimum moisture content (OMC) and maximum dry density (MDD)); along with the unconfined compressive strength test (UCS). Different percentages of CWM were added to the soft soil (3, 6, 9, 12 and 15%) to produce various admixtures. Then the UCS test was carried out on specimens under different curing periods (zero, 7, 14, and 28 days) to find the optimum percentage of CWM. The optimum and other two percentages (either side of the optimum content) were used for FWM to evaluate the effect of the fineness of the WM on UCS of the stabilised soil. Results indicated that both types of the WM used in this study improved the physical properties of the soft soil where the index of plasticity (IP) was decreased significantly. IP was decreased from 21 to 13.64 and 13.10 with 12% of CWM and 15% of FWM respectively. The results of the unconfined compressive strength test indicated that 12% of CWM was the optimum and this percentage developed the UCS value from 202kPa to 500kPa for 28 days cured samples, which is equal, approximately 2.5 times the UCS value for untreated soil. Moreover, this percentage provided 1.4 times the value of UCS for stabilized soil-CWA by using FWM which recorded just under 700kPa after 28 days curing.
Abstract: Given the limited research on Small and Mediumsized
Enterprises’ (SMEs) contribution to Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) and even scarcer research on Swiss SMEs, this
paper helps to fill these gaps by enabling the identification of supranational
SME parameters. Thus, the paper investigates the current
state of SME practices in Switzerland and across 15 other countries.
Combining the degree to which SMEs demonstrate an explicit (or
business case) approach or see CSR as an implicit moral activity with
the assessment of their attributes for “variety of capitalism” defines
the framework of this comparative analysis. To outline Swiss small
business CSR patterns in particular, 40 SME owner-managers were
interviewed. A secondary data analysis of studies from different
countries laid groundwork for this comparative overview of small
business CSR. The paper identifies Swiss small business CSR as
driven by norms, values, and by the aspiration to contribute to
society, thus, as an implicit part of the day-to-day business. Similar to
most Central European, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Asian countries,
explicit CSR is still very rare in Swiss SMEs. Astonishingly, also
British and American SMEs follow this pattern in spite of their strong
and distinctly liberal market economies. Though other findings show
that nationality matters this research concludes that SME culture and
an informal CSR agenda are strongly formative and superseding even
forces of market economies, nationally cultural patterns, and
language. Hence, classifications of countries by their market system,
as found in the comparative capitalism literature, do not match the
CSR practices in SMEs as they do not mirror the peculiarities of their
business. This raises questions on the universality and
generalisability of unmediated, explicit management concepts,
especially in the context of small firms.
Abstract: In this study, three robust predicting methods, namely artificial neural network (ANN), adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and support vector machine (SVM) were used for computing the resonant frequency of A-shaped compact microstrip antennas (ACMAs) operating at UHF band. Firstly, the resonant frequencies of 144 ACMAs with various dimensions and electrical parameters were simulated with the help of IE3D™ based on method of moment (MoM). The ANN, ANFIS and SVM models for computing the resonant frequency were then built by considering the simulation data. 124 simulated ACMAs were utilized for training and the remaining 20 ACMAs were used for testing the ANN, ANFIS and SVM models. The performance of the ANN, ANFIS and SVM models are compared in the training and test process. The average percentage errors (APE) regarding the computed resonant frequencies for training of the ANN, ANFIS and SVM were obtained as 0.457%, 0.399% and 0.600%, respectively. The constructed models were then tested and APE values as 0.601% for ANN, 0.744% for ANFIS and 0.623% for SVM were achieved. The results obtained here show that ANN, ANFIS and SVM methods can be successfully applied to compute the resonant frequency of ACMAs, since they are useful and versatile methods that yield accurate results.
Abstract: Obesity and osteoporosis are the two diseases whose
increasing prevalence and high impact on the global morbidity and
mortality, during the two recent decades, have gained a status of
major health threats worldwide. Obesity purports to affect the bone
metabolism through complex mechanisms. Debated data on the
connection between the bone mineral density and fracture prevalence
in the obese patients are widely presented in literature. There is
evidence that the correlation of weight and fracture risk is sitespecific.
This study is aimed at determining the connection between
the bone mineral density (BMD) and trabecular bone score (TBS)
parameters in Ukrainian women suffering from obesity. We
examined 1025 40-89-year-old women, divided them into the groups
according to their body mass index: Group A included 360 women
with obesity whose BMI was ≥30 kg/m2, and Group B – 665 women
with no obesity and BMI of
Abstract: This paper reviews the model-based qualitative and
quantitative Operations Management research in the context of
Construction Supply Chain Management (CSCM). Construction
industry has been traditionally blamed for low productivity, cost and
time overruns, waste, high fragmentation and adversarial
relationships. The construction industry has been slower than other
industries to employ the Supply Chain Management (SCM) concept
and develop models that support the decision-making and planning.
However the last decade there is a distinct shift from a project-based
to a supply-based approach of construction management. CSCM
comes up as a new promising management tool of construction
operations and improves the performance of construction projects in
terms of cost, time and quality. Modeling the Construction Supply
Chain (CSC) offers the means to reap the benefits of SCM, make
informed decisions and gain competitive advantage. Different
modeling approaches and methodologies have been applied in the
multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous research field of CSCM. The
literature review reveals that a considerable percentage of the CSC
modeling research accommodates conceptual or process models
which present general management frameworks and do not relate to
acknowledged soft Operations Research methods. We particularly
focus on the model-based quantitative research and categorize the
CSCM models depending on their scope, objectives, modeling
approach, solution methods and software used. Although over the last
few years there has been clearly an increase of research papers on
quantitative CSC models, we identify that the relevant literature is
very fragmented with limited applications of simulation,
mathematical programming and simulation-based optimization. Most
applications are project-specific or study only parts of the supply
system. Thus, some complex interdependencies within construction
are neglected and the implementation of the integrated supply chain
management is hindered. We conclude this paper by giving future
research directions and emphasizing the need to develop optimization
models for integrated CSCM. We stress that CSC modeling needs a
multi-dimensional, system-wide and long-term perspective. Finally,
prior applications of SCM to other industries have to be taken into
account in order to model CSCs, but not without translating the
generic concepts to the context of construction industry.
Abstract: Supply chains are the backbone of trade and
commerce. Their logistics use different transport corridors on regular
basis for operational purpose. The international supply chain
transport corridors include different infrastructure elements (e.g.
weighbridge, package handling equipments, border clearance
authorities, and so on). This paper presents the use of multi-agent
systems (MAS) to model and simulate some aspects of transportation
corridors, and in particular the area of weighbridge resource
optimization for operational profit. An underlying multi-agent model
provides a means of modeling the relationships among stakeholders
in order to enable coordination in a transport corridor environment.
Simulations of the costs of container unloading, reloading, and
waiting time for queuing up tracks have been carried out using data
sets. Results of the simulation provide the potential guidance in
making decisions about optimal service resource allocation in a trade
corridor.
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a decline in physical
activity among adults. Motivation has been shown to be a crucial
factor in maintaining physical activity. The purpose of this study was
to whether PA motives measured by the Physical Activity and
Leisure Motivation Scale PALMS predicted the actual amount of PA
at a later time to provide evidence for the construct validity of the
PALMS. A quantitative, cross-sectional descriptive research design
was employed. The Demographic Form, PALMS, and International
Physical Activity Questionnaire Short form (IPAQ-S) questionnaires
were used to assess motives and amount for physical activity in
adults on two occasions. A sample of 489 male undergraduate
students aged 18 to 25 years (mean ±SD; 22.30±8.13 years) took part
in the study. Participants were divided into three types of activities,
namely exercise, racquet sport, and team sports and female
participants only took part in one type of activity, namely team
sports. After 14 weeks, all 489 undergraduate students who had filled
in the initial questionnaire (Occasion 1) received the questionnaire
via email (Occasion 2). Of the 489 students, 378 males emailed back
the completed questionnaire. The results showed that not only were
pertinent sub-scales of PALMS positively related to amount of
physical activity, but separate regression analyses showed the
positive predictive effect of PALMS motives for amount of physical
activity for each type of physical activity among participants. This
study supported the construct validity of the PALMS by showing that
the motives measured by PALMS did predict amount of PA. This
information can be obtained to match people with specific sport or
activity which in turn could potentially promote longer adherence to
the specific activity.
Abstract: The main objective of this article is to examine the
impact of interest rates on investments in Poland in the context of
financial crisis. The paper also investigates the dependence of bank
loans to enterprises on interbank market rates. The article studies the
impact of interbank market rate on the level of investments in Poland.
Besides, this article focuses on the research of the correlation
between the level of corporate loans and the amount of investments
in Poland in order to determine the indirect impact of central bank
interest rates through the transmission mechanism of monetary policy
on the real economy. To achieve the objective we have used
econometric and statistical research methods like: econometric model
and Pearson correlation coefficient.
This analysis suggests that the central bank reference rate
inversely proportionally affects the level of investments in Poland
and this dependence is moderate. This is also important issue because
it is related to preparing of Poland to accession to euro area. The
research is important from both theoretical and empirical points of
view. The formulated conclusions and recommendations determine
the practical significance of the paper which may be used in the
decision making process of monetary and economic authorities of the
country.
Abstract: Model transformation, as a pivotal aspect of Modeldriven
engineering, attracts more and more attentions both from
researchers and practitioners. Many domains (enterprise engineering,
software engineering, knowledge engineering, etc.) use model
transformation principles and practices to serve to their domain
specific problems; furthermore, model transformation could also be
used to fulfill the gap between different domains: by sharing and
exchanging knowledge. Since model transformation has been widely
used, there comes new requirement on it: effectively and efficiently
define the transformation process and reduce manual effort that
involved in. This paper presents an automatic model transformation
methodology based on semantic and syntactic comparisons, and
focuses particularly on granularity issue that existed in transformation
process. Comparing to the traditional model transformation
methodologies, this methodology serves to a general purpose: crossdomain
methodology. Semantic and syntactic checking
measurements are combined into a refined transformation process,
which solves the granularity issue. Moreover, semantic and syntactic
comparisons are supported by software tool; manual effort is replaced
in this way.
Abstract: Ontology validation is an important part of web
applications’ development, where knowledge integration and
ontological reasoning play a fundamental role. It aims to ensure the
consistency and correctness of ontological knowledge and to
guarantee that ontological reasoning is carried out in a meaningful
way. Existing approaches to ontology validation address more or less
specific validation issues, but the overall process of validating web
ontologies has not been formally established yet. As the size and the
number of web ontologies continue to grow, more web applications’
developers will rely on the existing repository of ontologies rather
than develop ontologies from scratch. If an application utilizes
multiple independently created ontologies, their consistency must be
validated and eventually adjusted to ensure proper interoperability
between them. This paper presents a validation technique intended to
test the consistency of independent ontologies utilized by a common
application.
Abstract: Under active stress conditions, a rigid cantilever
retaining wall tends to rotate about a pivot point located within the
embedded depth of the wall. For purely granular and cohesive soils, a
methodology was previously reported called minimization of moment
ratio to determine the location of the pivot point of rotation. The
usage of this new methodology is to estimate the rotational stability
safety factor. Moreover, the degree of improvement required in a
backfill to get a desired safety factor can be estimated by the concept
of the shear strength demand. In this article, the accuracy of this
method for another type of cantilever walls called Contiguous Bored
Pile (CBP) retaining wall is evaluated by using physical modeling
technique. Based on observations, the results of moment ratio
minimization method are in good agreement with the results of the
carried out physical modeling.
Abstract: This paper presents an approach for the classification of
an unstructured format description for identification of file formats.
The main contribution of this work is the employment of data mining
techniques to support file format selection with just the unstructured
text description that comprises the most important format features for
a particular organisation. Subsequently, the file format indentification
method employs file format classifier and associated configurations to
support digital preservation experts with an estimation of required file
format. Our goal is to make use of a format specification knowledge
base aggregated from a different Web sources in order to select file
format for a particular institution. Using the naive Bayes method,
the decision support system recommends to an expert, the file format
for his institution. The proposed methods facilitate the selection of
file format and the quality of a digital preservation process. The
presented approach is meant to facilitate decision making for the
preservation of digital content in libraries and archives using domain
expert knowledge and specifications of file formats. To facilitate
decision-making, the aggregated information about the file formats is
presented as a file format vocabulary that comprises most common
terms that are characteristic for all researched formats. The goal is to
suggest a particular file format based on this vocabulary for analysis
by an expert. The sample file format calculation and the calculation
results including probabilities are presented in the evaluation section.
Abstract: The aim of this investigation is to elaborate nearinfrared
methods for testing and recognition of chemical components
and quality in “Pannon wheat” allied (i.e. true to variety or variety
identified) milling fractions as well as to develop spectroscopic
methods following the milling processes and evaluate the stability of
the milling technology by different types of milling products and
according to sampling times, respectively. These wheat categories
produced under industrial conditions where samples were collected
versus sampling time and maximum or minimum yields. The changes
of the main chemical components (such as starch, protein, lipid) and
physical properties of fractions (particle size) were analysed by
dispersive spectrophotometers using visible (VIS) and near-infrared
(NIR) regions of the electromagnetic radiation. Close correlation
were obtained between the data of spectroscopic measurement
techniques processed by various chemometric methods (e.g. principal
component analysis [PCA], cluster analysis [CA]) and operation
condition of milling technology. It is obvious that NIR methods are
able to detect the deviation of the yield parameters and differences of
the sampling times by a wide variety of fractions, respectively. NIR
technology can be used in the sensitive monitoring of milling
technology.
Abstract: By the evolvement in technology, the way of
expressing opinions switched direction to the digital world. The
domain of politics, as one of the hottest topics of opinion mining
research, merged together with the behavior analysis for affiliation
determination in texts, which constitutes the subject of this paper.
This study aims to classify the text in news/blogs either as
Republican or Democrat with the minimum number of features. As
an initial set, 68 features which 64 were constituted by Linguistic
Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) features were tested against 14
benchmark classification algorithms. In the later experiments, the
dimensions of the feature vector reduced based on the 7 feature
selection algorithms. The results show that the “Decision Tree”,
“Rule Induction” and “M5 Rule” classifiers when used with “SVM”
and “IGR” feature selection algorithms performed the best up to
82.5% accuracy on a given dataset. Further tests on a single feature
and the linguistic based feature sets showed the similar results. The
feature “Function”, as an aggregate feature of the linguistic category,
was found as the most differentiating feature among the 68 features
with the accuracy of 81% in classifying articles either as Republican
or Democrat.
Abstract: Experimental economics is subject to criticism with
regards to frequently discussed the trade-off between internal and
external validity requirements, which seems to be critically flawed.
This paper evaluates incompatibility of trade-off condition and
condition of internal validity as a prerequisite for external validity. In
addition, it outlines the imprecise concept of artificiality, which is
found to be rather improving the external validity and seems to
strengthen the illusory status of external versus internal validity
tension. Internal validity is further analyzed with regards to Duhem-
Quine problem, where unpredictability argument is significantly
weakened trough application of inductivism within the illustrative
hypothetical-deductive model. Our discussion partially weakens
critical arguments related to the robustness of results in experimental
economics, if the perfectly controlled experimental environment is
secured.
Abstract: In this study, the experiments were carried out to
determine the best coolant for the quenching process among waterbased
silica, alumina, titania and copper oxide nanofluids (0.1 vol%).
A sphere made up off brass material was used in the experiments.
When the spherical test specimen was heated at high temperatures, it
was suddenly immersed into the nanofluids. All experiments were
carried out at saturated conditions and under atmospheric pressure.
After the experiments, the cooling curves were obtained by using the
temperature-time data of the specimen. The experimental results
showed that the cooling performance of test specimen depended on
the type of nanofluids. The silica nanoparticles enhanced the
performance of boiling heat transfer and it is the best coolant for the
quenching among other nanoparticles.
Abstract: Any signal transmitted over a channel is corrupted by noise and interference. A host of channel coding techniques has been proposed to alleviate the effect of such noise and interference. Among these Turbo codes are recommended, because of increased capacity at higher transmission rates and superior performance over convolutional codes. The multimedia elements which are associated with ample amount of data are best protected by Turbo codes. Turbo decoder employs Maximum A-posteriori Probability (MAP) and Soft Output Viterbi Decoding (SOVA) algorithms. Conventional Turbo coded systems employ Equal Error Protection (EEP) in which the protection of all the data in an information message is uniform. Some applications involve Unequal Error Protection (UEP) in which the level of protection is higher for important information bits than that of other bits. In this work, enhancement to the traditional Log MAP decoding algorithm is being done by using optimized scaling factors for both the decoders. The error correcting performance in presence of UEP in Additive White Gaussian Noise channel (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading are analyzed for the transmission of image with Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) as source coding technique. This paper compares the performance of log MAP, Modified log MAP (MlogMAP) and Enhanced log MAP (ElogMAP) algorithms used for image transmission. The MlogMAP algorithm is found to be best for lower Eb/N0 values but for higher Eb/N0 ElogMAP performs better with optimized scaling factors. The performance comparison of AWGN with fading channel indicates the robustness of the proposed algorithm. According to the performance of three different message classes, class3 would be more protected than other two classes. From the performance analysis, it is observed that ElogMAP algorithm with UEP is best for transmission of an image compared to Log MAP and MlogMAP decoding algorithms.