Abstract: Multi-loop (De-centralized) Proportional-Integral-
Derivative (PID) controllers have been used extensively in process
industries due to their simple structure for control of multivariable
processes. The objective of this work is to design multiple-model
adaptive multi-loop PID strategy (Multiple Model Adaptive-PID)
and neural network based multi-loop PID strategy (Neural Net
Adaptive-PID) for the control of multivariable system. The first
method combines the output of multiple linear PID controllers,
each describing process dynamics at a specific level of operation.
The global output is an interpolation of the individual multi-loop
PID controller outputs weighted based on the current value of the
measured process variable. In the second method, neural network
is used to calculate the PID controller parameters based on the
scheduling variable that corresponds to major shift in the process
dynamics. The proposed control schemes are simple in structure with
less computational complexity. The effectiveness of the proposed
control schemes have been demonstrated on the CSTR process,
which exhibits dynamic non-linearity.
Abstract: THEOS is the first earth observation spacecraft of Thailand which was launched on the 1st October 2008 and is currently operated by GISTDA. The transfer phase has been performed by Astrium Flight Dynamics team leading to a hand over to GISTDA teams starting mid-October 2008. The THEOS spacecraft-s orbit is LEO and has the same repetitivity (14+5/26) as the SPOT spacecraft, i.e. the same altitude of 822 km but it has a different mean local solar time (LST). Ground track maintenance manoeuvres are performed to maintain the ground track within a predefined control band around the reference ground track and the band is ±40 km for THEOS spacecraft. This paper presents the first ground track maintenance manoeuvre of THEOS spacecraft and the detailed results. In addition, it also includes one and a half year of operation as seen by GISTDA operators. It finally describes the foreseenable activities for the next orbit control manoeuvre (OCM) preparation.
Abstract: Stability of functionally graded beams with piezoelectric layers subjected to axial compressive load that is simply supported at both ends is studied in this paper. The displacement field of beam is assumed based on first order shear deformation beam theory. Applying the Hamilton's principle, the governing equation is established. The influences of applied voltage, dimensionless geometrical parameter, functionally graded index and piezoelectric thickness on the critical buckling load of beam are presented. To investigate the accuracy of the present analysis, a compression study is carried out with a known data.
Abstract: We study a long-range percolation model in the hierarchical
lattice ΩN of order N where probability of connection between
two nodes separated by distance k is of the form min{αβ−k, 1},
α ≥ 0 and β > 0. The parameter α is the percolation parameter,
while β describes the long-range nature of the model. The ΩN is
an example of so called ultrametric space, which has remarkable
qualitative difference between Euclidean-type lattices. In this paper,
we characterize the sizes of large clusters for this model along the
line of some prior work. The proof involves a stationary embedding
of ΩN into Z. The phase diagram of this long-range percolation is
well understood.
Abstract: In the 21. century it comes true, that competitiveness of the firm is - to a considerable level - influenced by its participation in the chain of suppliers, customers and partners and by the way how the subject cooperates in the chain. This is valid also for new forms of enterprise such as virtual organization or virtual firm. In the first part of the paper there are determined the differences between these forms of enterprise. Another part will bring methodological framework for analysis of the factors, that influence the competitiveness of the virtual organization from spontaneity and order point of view.
Abstract: Abrasive waterjet cutting (AWJ) is a highly efficient
method for cutting almost any type of material. When holes shall be
cut the waterjet first needs to pierce the material.This paper presents a
vast experimental analysis of piercing parameters effect on piercing
time. Results from experimentation on feed rates, work piece
thicknesses, abrasive flow rates, standoff distances and water
pressure are also presented as well as studies on three methods for
dynamic piercing. It is shown that a large amount of time and
resources can be saved by choosing the piercing parameters in a
correct way. The large number of experiments puts demands on the
experimental setup. An automated experimental setup including
piercing detection is presented to enable large series of experiments
to be carried out efficiently.
Abstract: The mountain road slope failures triggered by
earthquake activities and torrential rain namely to create the disaster.
Province Road No. 24 is a main route to the Wutai Township. The area
of the study is located at the mileages between 46K and 47K along the
road. However, the road has been suffered frequent damages as a result
of landslide and slope failures during typhoon seasons. An
understanding of the sliding behaviors in the area appears to be
necessary. Slope failures triggered by earthquake activities and heavy
rainfalls occur frequently. The study is to understand the mechanism
of slope failures and to look for the way to deal with the situation. In
order to achieve these objectives, this paper is based on theoretical and
structural geology data interpretation program to assess the potential
slope sliding behavior. The study showed an intimate relationship
between the landslide behavior of the slopes and the stratum materials,
based on structural geology analysis method to analysis slope stability
and finds the slope safety coefficient to predict the sites of destroyed
layer. According to the case study and parameter analyses results, the
slope mainly slips direction compared to the site located in the
southeast area. Find rainfall to result in the rise of groundwater level is
main reason of the landslide mechanism. Future need to set up
effective horizontal drain at corrective location, that can effective
restrain mountain road slope failures and increase stability of slope.
Abstract: In this paper, gate leakage current has been mitigated
by the use of novel nanoscale MOSFET with Source/Drain-to-Gate
Non-overlapped and high-k spacer structure for the first time. A
compact analytical model has been developed to study the gate
leakage behaviour of proposed MOSFET structure. The result
obtained has found good agreement with the Sentaurus Simulation.
Fringing gate electric field through the dielectric spacer induces
inversion layer in the non-overlap region to act as extended S/D
region. It is found that optimal Source/Drain-to-Gate Non-overlapped
and high-k spacer structure has reduced the gate leakage current to
great extent as compared to those of an overlapped structure. Further,
the proposed structure had improved off current, subthreshold slope
and DIBL characteristic. It is concluded that this structure solves the
problem of high leakage current without introducing the extra series
resistance.
Abstract: Ringing effect is one of the most annoying visual
artifacts in digital video. It is a significant factor of subjective quality
deterioration. However, there is a widely-accepted misunderstanding
of its cause. In this paper, we propose a reasonable interpretation of the
cause of ringing effect. Based on the interpretation, we suggest further
two methods to reduce ringing effect in DCT-based video coding. The
methods adaptively adjust quantizers according to video features. Our
experiments proved that the methods could efficiently improve
subjective quality with acceptable additional computing costs.
Abstract: The Expert Witness Testimony in the Battered
Woman Syndrome Expert witness testimony (EWT) is a kind of
information given by an expert specialized in the field (here in BWS)
to the jury in order to help the court better understand the case. EWT
does not always work in favor of the battered women. Two main
decision-making models are discussed in the paper: the Mathematical
model and the Explanation model. In the first model, the jurors
calculate ″the importance and strength of each piece of evidence″
whereas in the second model they try to integrate the EWT with the
evidence and create a coherent story that would describe the crime.
The jury often misunderstands and misjudges battered women for
their action (or in this case inaction). They assume that these women
are masochists and accept being mistreated for if a man abuses a
woman constantly, she should and could divorce him or simply leave
at any time. The research in the domain found that indeed, expert
witness testimony has a powerful influence on juror’s decisions thus
its quality needs to be further explored. One of the important factors
that need further studies is a bias called the dispositionist worldview
(a belief that what happens to people is of their own doing). This
kind of attributional bias represents a tendency to think that a
person’s behavior is due to his or her disposition, even when the
behavior is clearly attributed to the situation. Hypothesis The
hypothesis of this paper is that if a juror has a dispositionist
worldview then he or she will blame the rape victim for triggering the
assault. The juror would therefore commit the fundamental
attribution error and believe that the victim’s disposition caused the
rape and not the situation she was in. Methods The subjects in the
study were 500 randomly sampled undergraduate students from
McGill, Concordia, Université de Montréal and UQAM.
Dispositional Worldview was scored on the Dispositionist
Worldview Questionnaire. After reading the Rape Scenarios, each
student was asked to play the role of a juror and answer a
questionnaire consisting of 7 questions about the responsibility,
causality and fault of the victim. Results The results confirm the
hypothesis which states that if a juror has a dispositionist worldview
then he or she will blame the rape victim for triggering the assault.
By doing so, the juror commits the fundamental attribution error
because he will believe that the victim’s disposition, and not the
constraints or opportunities of the situation, caused the rape scenario.
Abstract: In order to protect original data, watermarking is first consideration direction for digital information copyright. In addition, to achieve high quality image, the algorithm maybe can not run on embedded system because the computation is very complexity. However, almost nowadays algorithms need to build on consumer production because integrator circuit has a huge progress and cheap price. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm which efficient inserts watermarking on digital image and very easy to implement on digital signal processor. In further, we select a general and cheap digital signal processor which is made by analog device company to fit consumer application. The experimental results show that the image quality by watermarking insertion can achieve 46 dB can be accepted in human vision and can real-time execute on digital signal processor.
Abstract: Educating effective architect designers is an important
goal of architectural education. But what contributes to students-
performance, and to critical and creative thinking in architectural
design education? Besides teaching architecture students how to
understand logical arguments, eliminate the inadequate solutions and
focus on the correct ones, it is also crucial to teach students how to
focus on exploring ideas and the alternative solutions and seeking for
other right answers rather than one. This paper focuses on the
enhancing architectural design education and may provide
implications for enhancing teaching design.
Abstract: A feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effect
of periodically use of garlic on performance and carcass
characteristics in broiler chickens. 240 1-day-old Ross broiler chicks
randomly allocated into the 10 dietary treatments (A, B, C, D, E, F,
G, H, I and J) for 6 wk. Treatment A or control group, received basal
diet (based on standards of Ross management guidelines) without
supplementation of garlic powder while B, C and D dietary
treatments were basal diet supplemented with 0.5, 1 and 3% garlic
powder, respectively for the whole time of experiment (6 weeks).
Birds in group E, F and G were fed control diet supplemented with
0.5, 1 and 3% garlic powder, respectively just in their starter diet (0-
21d). Birds in three other treatments (H, I and J) received control diet
for the first 21 days and 0.5, 1 and 3% of garlic powder was added to
their finisher diets, respectively. 1 and 3% supplemented groups in
finisher period had better performance as compared with other
groups. Since present study conducted in optimum and antiseptic
conditions, it seems that better or more responses could be expected
in performance if the raising conditions would not be healthy.
Abstract: Geographic Profiling has successfully assisted investigations for serial crimes. Considering the multi-cluster feature of serial criminal spots, we propose a Multi-point Centrography model as a natural extension of Single-point Centrography for geographic profiling. K-means clustering is first performed on the data samples and then Single-point Centrography is adopted to derive a probability distribution on each cluster. Finally, a weighted combinations of each distribution is formed to make next-crime spot prediction. Experimental study on real cases demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed model.
Abstract: It is an important problem to compute the geodesics on
a surface in many fields. To find the geodesics in practice, however,
the traditional discrete algorithms or numerical approaches can only
find a list of discrete points. The first author proposed in 2010 a new,
elegant and accurate method, the geodesic-like method, for
approximating geodesics on a regular surface. This paper will present
by use of this method a computation of the Bezier geodesic-like curves
on spheres.
Abstract: Real options theory suggests that managerial flexibility embedded within irreversible investments can account for a significant value in project valuation. Although the argument has become the dominant focus of capital investment theory over decades, yet recent survey literature in capital budgeting indicates that corporate practitioners still do not explicitly apply real options in investment decisions. In this paper, we explore how real options decision criteria can be transformed into equivalent capital budgeting criteria under the consideration of uncertainty, assuming that underlying stochastic process follows a geometric Brownian motion (GBM), a mixed diffusion-jump (MX), or a mean-reverting process (MR). These equivalent valuation techniques can be readily decomposed into conventional investment rules and “option impacts", the latter of which describe the impacts on optimal investment rules with the option value considered. Based on numerical analysis and Monte Carlo simulation, three major findings are derived. First, it is shown that real options could be successfully integrated into the mindset of conventional capital budgeting. Second, the inclusion of option impacts tends to delay investment. It is indicated that the delay effect is the most significant under a GBM process and the least significant under a MR process. Third, it is optimal to adopt the new capital budgeting criteria in investment decision-making and adopting a suboptimal investment rule without considering real options could lead to a substantial loss in value.
Abstract: This paper presents an exploration into the structure of the corporate governance network and interlocking directorates in the Czech Republic. First a literature overview and a basic terminology of the network theory is presented. Further in the text, statistics and other calculations relevant to corporate governance networks are presented. For this purpose an empirical data set consisting of 2 906 joint stock companies in the Czech Republic was examined. Industries with the highest average number of interlocks per company were healthcare, and energy and utilities. There is no observable link between the financial performance of the company and the number of its interlocks. Also interlocks with financial companies are very rare.
Abstract: Eye localization is necessary for face recognition and
related application areas. Most of eye localization algorithms reported
so far still need to be improved about precision and computational
time for successful applications. In this paper, we propose an eye
location method based on multi-scale Gabor feature vectors, which is
more robust with respect to initial points. The eye localization based
on Gabor feature vectors first needs to constructs an Eye Model Bunch
for each eye (left or right eye) which consists of n Gabor jets and
average eye coordinates of each eyes obtained from n model face
images, and then tries to localize eyes in an incoming face image by
utilizing the fact that the true eye coordinates is most likely to be very
close to the position where the Gabor jet will have the best Gabor jet
similarity matching with a Gabor jet in the Eye Model Bunch. Similar
ideas have been already proposed in such as EBGM (Elastic Bunch
Graph Matching). However, the method used in EBGM is known to be
not robust with respect to initial values and may need extensive search
range for achieving the required performance, but extensive search
ranges will cause much more computational burden. In this paper, we
propose a multi-scale approach with a little increased computational
burden where one first tries to localize eyes based on Gabor feature
vectors in a coarse face image obtained from down sampling of the
original face image, and then localize eyes based on Gabor feature
vectors in the original resolution face image by using the eye
coordinates localized in the coarse scaled image as initial points.
Several experiments and comparisons with other eye localization
methods reported in the other papers show the efficiency of our
proposed method.
Abstract: Radio frequency identification (RFID) applications have grown rapidly in many industries, especially in indoor location identification. The advantage of using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values as an indoor location measurement method is a cost-effective approach without installing extra hardware. Because the accuracy of many positioning schemes using RSSI values is limited by interference factors and the environment, thus it is challenging to use RFID location techniques based on integrating positioning algorithm design. This study proposes the location estimation approach and analyzes a scheme relying on RSSI values to minimize location errors. In addition, this paper examines different factors that affect location accuracy by integrating the backpropagation neural network (BPN) with the LANDMARC algorithm in a training phase and an online phase. First, the training phase computes coordinates obtained from the LANDMARC algorithm, which uses RSSI values and the real coordinates of reference tags as training data for constructing an appropriate BPN architecture and training length. Second, in the online phase, the LANDMARC algorithm calculates the coordinates of tracking tags, which are then used as BPN inputs to obtain location estimates. The results show that the proposed scheme can estimate locations more accurately compared to LANDMARC without extra devices.
Abstract: World population growth drives food demand, promotes intensification of agriculture, development of new production technologies and varieties more suitable for regional nature conditions. Climate change can affect the length of growing period, biomass and carbon accumulation in winter wheat. The increasing mean air temperature resulting from climate change can reduce the length of growth period of cereals, and without adequate adjustments in growing technologies or varieties, can reduce biomass and carbon accumulation. Deeper understanding and effective measures for monitoring and management of cereal growth process are needed for adaptation to changing climate and technological conditions.