Abstract: In this paper, a new design technique for enhancing
bandwidth that improves the performance of a conventional
microstrip patch antenna is proposed. This paper presents a novel
wideband probe fed inverted slotted microstrip patch antenna. The
design adopts contemporary techniques; coaxial probe feeding,
inverted patch structure and slotted patch. The composite effect of
integrating these techniques and by introducing the proposed patch,
offer a low profile, broadband, high gain, and low cross-polarization
level. The results for the VSWR, gain and co-and cross-polarization
patterns are presented. The antenna operating the band of 1.80-2.36
GHz shows an impedance bandwidth (2:1 VSWR) of 27% and a gain
of 10.18 dBi with a gain variation of 1.12 dBi. Good radiation
characteristics, including a cross-polarization level in xz-plane less
than -42 dB, have been obtained.
Abstract: Islamic institutions in Malaysia play a variety of
socioeconomic roles such as poverty alleviation. To perform this role,
these institutions face a major task in identifying the poverty group.
Most of these institutions measure and operationalize poverty from
the monetary perspective using variables such as income, expenditure
or consumption. In practice, most Islamic institutions in Malaysia use
the monetary approach in measuring poverty through the
conventional Poverty Line Income (PLI) method and recently, the
had al kifayah (HAK) method using total necessities of a household
from an Islamic perspective. The objective of this paper is to present
the PLI and also the HAK method. This micro-data study would
highlight the similarities and differences of both the methods.A
survey aided by a structured questionnaire was carried out on 260
selected head of households in the state of Selangor. The paper
highlights several demographic factors that are associated with the
three monetary indicators in the study, namely income, PLI and
HAK. In addition, the study found that these monetary variables are
significantly related with each other.
Abstract: This qualitative, quantitative mixed-method study explores how students- motivation and interest in creative hands-on activities affected their conceptual understanding of science. The objectives of this research include developing a greater understanding about how creative activities, incorporated into the classroom as instructional strategies, increase student motivation and their learning or mastery of science concepts. The creative activities are viewed as a motivational tool, a specific type of task, which have an impact on student goals. Pre-and-post tests, pre-and-post interviews, and student responses measure motivational-goal theory variables, interest in the activity, and conceptual change. Implications for education and future research will be discussed.
Abstract: HIV-1 genome is highly heterogeneous. Due to this
variation, features of HIV-I genome is in a wide range. For this
reason, the ability to infection of the virus changes depending on
different chemokine receptors. From this point of view, R5 HIV
viruses use CCR5 coreceptor while X4 viruses use CXCR5 and
R5X4 viruses can utilize both coreceptors. Recently, in
Bioinformatics, R5X4 viruses have been studied to classify by using
the experiments on HIV-1 genome.
In this study, R5X4 type of HIV viruses were classified using
Auto Regressive (AR) model through Artificial Neural Networks
(ANNs). The statistical data of R5X4, R5 and X4 viruses was
analyzed by using signal processing methods and ANNs. Accessible
residues of these virus sequences were obtained and modeled by AR
model since the dimension of residues is large and different from
each other. Finally the pre-processed data was used to evolve various
ANN structures for determining R5X4 viruses. Furthermore ROC
analysis was applied to ANNs to show their real performances. The
results indicate that R5X4 viruses successfully classified with high
sensitivity and specificity values training and testing ROC analysis
for RBF, which gives the best performance among ANN structures.
Abstract: German electricity European options on futures using
Lévy processes for the underlying asset are examined. Implied
volatility evolution, under each of the considered models, is
discussed after calibrating for the Merton jump diffusion (MJD),
variance gamma (VG), normal inverse Gaussian (NIG), Carr, Geman,
Madan and Yor (CGMY) and the Black and Scholes (B&S) model.
Implied volatility is examined for the entire sample period, revealing
some curious features about market evolution, where data fitting
performances of the five models are compared. It is shown that
variance gamma processes provide relatively better results and that
implied volatility shows significant differences through time, having
increasingly evolved. Volatility changes for changed uncertainty, or
else, increasing futures prices and there is evidence for the need to
account for seasonality when modelling both electricity spot/futures
prices and volatility.
Abstract: The fluid flow and the properties of the hydraulic
fluid inside a torque converter are the main topics of interest in this
research. The primary goal is to investigate the applicability of
various viscous fluids inside the torque converter. The Taguchi
optimization method is adopted to analyse the fluid flow in a torque
converter from a design perspective. Calculations are conducted in
maximizing the pressure since greater the pressure, greater the torque
developed. Using the values of the S/N ratios obtained, graphs are
plotted. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is also
conducted.
Abstract: This study presents energy saving in general-purpose
pumps widely used in industrial applications. Such pumps are
normally driven by a constant-speed electrical motor which in most
applications must support varying load conditions. This is equivalent
to saying the loading conditions mismatch the designed optimal
energy consumption requirements of the intended application thus
resulting in substantial energy losses. In the held experiments it was
indicated that combination of mechanical and electrical speed drives
can contribute to lower energy consumption in the pump without
negatively distorting the required performance indices of a typical
centrifugal pump at substantially lower energy consumption. The
registered energy savings were recorded to be within the 15-40%
margin. It was also indicated that although VSDs are installed at a
cost, the financial burden is balanced against the earnings resulting
from the associated energy savings.
Abstract: Based on the sources- smoothed rank profile (SRP) and modified minimum description length (MMDL) principle, a method for estimation of the source coherency structure (SCS) and the number of wideband sources is proposed in this paper. Instead of focusing, we first use a spatial smoothing technique to pre-process the array covariance matrix of each frequency for de-correlating the sources and then use smoothed rank profile to determine the SCS and the number of wideband sources. We demonstrate the availability of the method by numerical simulations.
Abstract: This paper deals with stability analysis for synchronous reluctance motors drive. Special attention is paid to the transient performance with variations in motor's parameters such as Ld and Rs. A study of the dynamic control using d-q model is presented first in order to clarify the stability of the motor drive system. Based on the experimental parameters of the synchronous reluctance motor, this paper gives some simulation results using MATLAB/SIMULINK software packages. It is concluded that the motor parameters, especially Ld, affect the estimator stability and hence the whole drive system.
Abstract: A new reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) method with fluorescent detector (FLD) was developed and optimized for Norfloxacin determination in human plasma. Mobile phase specifications, extraction method and excitation and emission wavelengths were varied for optimization. HPLC system contained a reverse phase C18 (5 μm, 4.6 mm×150 mm) column with FLD operated at excitation 330 nm and emission 440 nm. The optimized mobile phase consisted of 14% acetonitrile in buffer solution. The aqueous phase was prepared by mixing 2g of citric acid, 2g sodium acetate and 1 ml of triethylamine in 1 L of Milli-Q water was run at a flow rate of 1.2 mL/min. The standard curve was linear for the range tested (0.156–20 μg/mL) and the coefficient of determination was 0.9978. Aceclofenac sodium was used as internal standard. A detection limit of 0.078 μg/mL was achieved. Run time was set at 10 minutes because retention time of norfloxacin was 0.99 min. which shows the rapidness of this method of analysis. The present assay showed good accuracy, precision and sensitivity for Norfloxacin determination in human plasma with a new internal standard and can be applied pharmacokinetic evaluation of Norfloxacin tablets after oral administration in human.
Abstract: this paper presents an auto-regressive network called the Auto-Regressive Multi-Context Recurrent Neural Network (ARMCRN), which forecasts the daily peak load for two large power plant systems. The auto-regressive network is a combination of both recurrent and non-recurrent networks. Weather component variables are the key elements in forecasting because any change in these variables affects the demand of energy load. So the AR-MCRN is used to learn the relationship between past, previous, and future exogenous and endogenous variables. Experimental results show that using the change in weather components and the change that occurred in past load as inputs to the AR-MCRN, rather than the basic weather parameters and past load itself as inputs to the same network, produce higher accuracy of predicted load. Experimental results also show that using exogenous and endogenous variables as inputs is better than using only the exogenous variables as inputs to the network.
Abstract: The Time-Domain Boundary Element Method (TDBEM)
is a well known numerical technique that handles quite
properly dynamic analyses considering infinite dimension media.
However, when these analyses are also related to nonlinear behavior,
very complex numerical procedures arise considering the TD-BEM,
which may turn its application prohibitive. In order to avoid this
drawback and model nonlinear infinite media, the present work
couples two BEM formulations, aiming to achieve the best of two
worlds. In this context, the regions expected to behave nonlinearly
are discretized by the Domain Boundary Element Method (D-BEM),
which has a simpler mathematical formulation but is unable to deal
with infinite domain analyses; the TD-BEM is employed as in the
sense of an effective non-reflexive boundary. An iterative procedure
is considered for the coupling of the TD-BEM and D-BEM, which is
based on a relaxed renew of the variables at the common interfaces.
Elastoplastic models are focused and different time-steps are allowed
to be considered by each BEM formulation in the coupled analysis.
Abstract: A bond graph model of an electrical transformer
including the nonlinear saturation is presented. A nonlinear observer for the transformer based on multivariable circle
criterion in the physical domain is proposed. In order to show the saturation and hysteresis effects on the electrical transformer,
simulation results are obtained. Finally, the paper describes that convergence of the estimates to the true states is achieved.
Abstract: The various types of frequent pattern discovery
problem, namely, the frequent itemset, sequence and graph mining
problems are solved in different ways which are, however, in certain
aspects similar. The main approach of discovering such patterns can
be classified into two main classes, namely, in the class of the levelwise
methods and in that of the database projection-based methods.
The level-wise algorithms use in general clever indexing structures
for discovering the patterns. In this paper a new approach is proposed
for discovering frequent sequences and tree-like patterns efficiently
that is based on the level-wise issue. Because the level-wise
algorithms spend a lot of time for the subpattern testing problem, the
new approach introduces the idea of using automaton theory to solve
this problem.
Abstract: Textile structures are engineered and fabricated to
meet worldwide structural applications. Nevertheless, research
varying textile structure on natural fibre as composite reinforcement
was found to be very limited. Most of the research is focusing on
short fibre and random discontinuous orientation of the reinforcement
structure. Realizing that natural fibre (NF) composite had been
widely developed to be used as synthetic fibre composite
replacement, this research attempted to examine the influence of
woven and cross-ply laminated structure towards its mechanical
performances. Laminated natural fibre composites were developed
using hand lay-up and vacuum bagging technique. Impact and
flexural strength were investigated as a function of fibre type (coir
and kenaf) and reinforcement structure (imbalanced plain woven,
0°/90° cross-ply and +45°/-45° cross-ply). Multi-level full factorial
design of experiment (DOE) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was
employed to impart data as to how fibre type and reinforcement
structure parameters affect the mechanical properties of the
composites. This systematic experimentation has led to determination
of significant factors that predominant influences the impact and
flexural properties of the textile composites. It was proven that both
fibre type and reinforcement structure demonstrated significant
difference results. Overall results indicated that coir composite and
woven structure exhibited better impact and flexural strength. Yet,
cross-ply composite structure demonstrated better fracture resistance.
Abstract: The image segmentation method described in this
paper has been developed as a pre-processing stage to be used in
methodologies and tools for video/image indexing and retrieval by
content. This method solves the problem of whole objects extraction
from background and it produces images of single complete objects
from videos or photos. The extracted images are used for calculating
the object visual features necessary for both indexing and retrieval
processes.
The segmentation algorithm is based on the cooperation among an
optical flow evaluation method, edge detection and region growing
procedures. The optical flow estimator belongs to the class of
differential methods. It permits to detect motions ranging from a
fraction of a pixel to a few pixels per frame, achieving good results in
presence of noise without the need of a filtering pre-processing stage
and includes a specialised model for moving object detection.
The first task of the presented method exploits the cues from
motion analysis for moving areas detection. Objects and background
are then refined using respectively edge detection and seeded region
growing procedures. All the tasks are iteratively performed until
objects and background are completely resolved.
The method has been applied to a variety of indoor and outdoor
scenes where objects of different type and shape are represented on
variously textured background.
Abstract: The occurrence and removal of trace organic
contaminants in the aquatic environment has become a focus of
environmental concern. For the selective removal of carbamazepine
from loaded waters molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) were
synthesized with carbamazepine as template. Parameters varied were
the type of monomer, crosslinker, and porogen, the ratio of starting
materials, and the synthesis temperature. Best results were obtained
with a template to crosslinker ratio of 1:20, toluene as porogen, and
methacrylic acid (MAA) as monomer. MIPs were then capable to
recover carbamazepine by 93% from a 10-5 M landfill leachate
solution containing also caffeine and salicylic acid. By comparison,
carbamazepine recoveries of 75% were achieved using a nonimprinted
polymer (NIP) synthesized under the same conditions, but
without template. In landfill leachate containing solutions
carbamazepine was adsorbed by 93-96% compared with an uptake of
73% by activated carbon. The best solvent for desorption was
acetonitrile, with which the amount of solvent necessary and dilution
with water was tested. Selected MIPs were tested for their reusability
and showed good results for at least five cycles. Adsorption
isotherms were prepared with carbamazepine solutions in the
concentration range of 0.01 M to 5*10-6 M. The heterogeneity index
showed a more homogenous binding site distribution.
Abstract: The paper explores the development of an optimization of method and apparatus for retrieving extended high dynamic range from digital negative image. Architectural photo imaging can benefit from high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) technique for preserving and presenting sufficient luminance in the shadow and highlight clipping image areas. The HDRI technique that requires multiple exposure images as the source of HDRI rendering may not be effective in terms of time efficiency during the acquisition process and post-processing stage, considering it has numerous potential imaging variables and technical limitations during the multiple exposure process. This paper explores an experimental method and apparatus that aims to expand the dynamic range from digital negative image in HDRI environment. The method and apparatus explored is based on a single source of RAW image acquisition for the use of HDRI post-processing. It will cater the optimization in order to avoid and minimize the conventional HDRI photographic errors caused by different physical conditions during the photographing process and the misalignment of multiple exposed image sequences. The study observes the characteristics and capabilities of RAW image format as digital negative used for the retrieval of extended high dynamic range process in HDRI environment.
Abstract: Fine alignment of main ship power plants mechanisms
and shaft lines provides long-term and failure-free performance of
propulsion system while fast and high-quality installation of
mechanisms and shaft lines decreases common labor intensity. For
checking shaft line allowed stress and setting its alignment it is
required to perform calculations considering various stages of life
cycle. In 2012 JSC SSTC developed special software complex
“Shaftline” for calculation of alignment of having its own I/O
interface and display of shaft line 3D model. Alignment of shaft line
as per bearing loads is rather labor-intensive procedure. In order to
decrease its duration, JSC SSTC developed automated alignment
system from ship power plants mechanisms. System operation
principle is based on automatic simulation of design load on bearings.
Initial data for shaft line alignment can be exported to automated
alignment system from PC “Shaft line”.
Abstract: Program slicing is the task of finding all statements in
a program that directly or indirectly influence the value of a variable
occurrence. The set of statements that can affect the value of a
variable at some point in a program is called a program backward
slice. In several software engineering applications, such as program
debugging and measuring program cohesion and parallelism, several
slices are computed at different program points. The existing
algorithms for computing program slices are introduced to compute a
slice at a program point. In these algorithms, the program, or the
model that represents the program, is traversed completely or
partially once. To compute more than one slice, the same algorithm
is applied for every point of interest in the program. Thus, the same
program, or program representation, is traversed several times.
In this paper, an algorithm is introduced to compute all forward
static slices of a computer program by traversing the program
representation graph once. Therefore, the introduced algorithm is
useful for software engineering applications that require computing
program slices at different points of a program. The program
representation graph used in this paper is called Program Dependence
Graph (PDG).