Abstract: This paper investigates the activity of the
gastrocnemius (Gas) muscle in healthy subjects during salat (ruku-
position) and specific exercise [Unilateral Plantar Flexion Exercise
(UPFE)] using electromyography (EMG). Both lateral and medial
Gas muscles were assessed. A group of undergraduates aged between
19 to 25 years voluntarily participated in this study. The myoelectric
activity of the muscles were recorded and analyzed. The finding
indicated that there were contractions of the muscles during the salat
and exercise with almost same EMG-s level. From the result,
Wilcoxon-s Rank Sum test showed no significant difference between
ruku- and UPFE for both medial (p=0.082) and lateral (p=0.226) of
GAS muscles. Therefore, salat may be useful in strengthening
exercise and also in rehabilitation programs for lower limb activities.
Abstract: This paper presents recent work on the improvement
of the robotics vision based control strategy for underwater pipeline
tracking system. The study focuses on developing image processing
algorithms and a fuzzy inference system for the analysis of the
terrain. The main goal is to implement the supervisory fuzzy learning
control technique to reduce the errors on navigation decision due to
the pipeline occlusion problem. The system developed is capable of
interpreting underwater images containing occluded pipeline, seabed
and other unwanted noise. The algorithm proposed in previous work
does not explore the cooperation between fuzzy controllers,
knowledge and learnt data to improve the outputs for underwater
pipeline tracking. Computer simulations and prototype simulations
demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. The system accuracy
level has also been discussed.
Abstract: Early supplier involvement (ESI) benefits new
product development projects several ways. Nevertheless, many castuser
companies do not know the advantages of ESI and therefore do
not utilize it. This paper presents reasons why to utilize ESI in
casting industry and how that can be done. Further, this paper
presents advantages and challenges related to ESI in casting industry,
and introduces a Casting-Network Collaboration Model. The model
presents practices for companies to build advantageous collaborative
relationships. More detailed, the model describes three levels for
company-network relationships in casting industry with different
degrees of collaboration, and requirements for operating in each
level. In our research, ESI was found to influence, for example, on
project time, component cost, and quality. In addition, challenges
related to ESI, such as, a lack of mutual trust and unawareness about
the advantages were found. Our research approach was a case study
including four cases.
Abstract: In this study, hydroxyapatite (HA) composites are
prepared on addition of 30%CaO-30%P2O5-40%Na2 O based glass to
pure HA, in proportion of 2, 5, and 10 wt %. Each composition was
sintered over a range of temperatures. The quantitative phase
analysis was carried out using XRD and the microstructures were
studied using SEM. The density, microhardness, and compressive
strength have shown increase with the increasing amount of glass
addition. The resulting composites have chemical compositions that
are similar to the inorganic constituent of the mineral part of bone,
and constitutes trace elements like Na. X-ray diffraction showed no
decomposition of HA to secondary phases, however, the glass
reinforced-HA composites contained a HA phase and variable
amounts of tricalcium phosphate phase, depending on the amount of
bioglass added. The HA-composite material exhibited higher
compressive strength compared to sintered HA. The HA composite
reinforced with 10 wt % bioglass showed highest bioactivity level.
Abstract: The presence of heavy metals in the environment
could constitute a hazard to food security and public health. These
can be accumulated in aquatic animals such as fish. Samples of four
popular brands of canned fish in the Iranian market (yellowfin tuna,
common Kilka, Kawakawa and longtail tuna) were analyzed for level
of Cr after wet digestion with acids using graphite furnace atomic
absorption spectrophotometry. The mean concentrations for Cr in the
different brands were: 2.57, 3.24, 3.16 and 1.65 μg/g for brands A, B,
C and D respectively. Significant differences were observed in the Cr
levels between all of the different brands of canned fish evaluated in
this study. The Cr concentrations for the varieties of canned fishes
were generally within the FAO/WHO, U.S. FDA and U.S. EPA
recommended limits for fish.
Abstract: With the rapid growth in business size, today's businesses orient towards electronic technologies. Amazon.com and e-bay.com are some of the major stakeholders in this regard. Unfortunately the enormous size and hugely unstructured data on the web, even for a single commodity, has become a cause of ambiguity for consumers. Extracting valuable information from such an everincreasing data is an extremely tedious task and is fast becoming critical towards the success of businesses. Web content mining can play a major role in solving these issues. It involves using efficient algorithmic techniques to search and retrieve the desired information from a seemingly impossible to search unstructured data on the Internet. Application of web content mining can be very encouraging in the areas of Customer Relations Modeling, billing records, logistics investigations, product cataloguing and quality management. In this paper we present a review of some very interesting, efficient yet implementable techniques from the field of web content mining and study their impact in the area specific to business user needs focusing both on the customer as well as the producer. The techniques we would be reviewing include, mining by developing a knowledge-base repository of the domain, iterative refinement of user queries for personalized search, using a graphbased approach for the development of a web-crawler and filtering information for personalized search using website captions. These techniques have been analyzed and compared on the basis of their execution time and relevance of the result they produced against a particular search.
Abstract: Mung bean starches were subjected to heat-moisture treatment (HMT) by different moisture contents (15%, 20%, 25%, 30% and 35%) at 120Ôäâ for 12h. The impact on the yields of resistant starch (RS), microstructure, physicochemical and functional properties was investigated. Compared to native starch, the RS content of heat-moisture treated starches increased significantly. The RS level of HMT-20 was the highest of all the starches. Birefringence was displayed clear at the center of native starch. For HMT starches, pronounced birefringence was exhibited on the periphery of starch granules; however, birefringence disappeared at the centre of some starch granules. The shape of HMT starches hadn-t been changed and the integrity of starch granules was preserved for all the conditions. Concavity could be observed on HMT starches under scanning electronic microscopy. After HMT, apparent amylose contents were increased and starch macromolecule was degraded in comparison with those of native starch. There was a reduction in swelling power on HMT starches, but the solubility of HMT starches was higher than that of native starch. Both of native and HMT starches showed A-type X-ray diffraction pattern. Furthermore, there is a higher intensity at the peak of 15.0 and 22.9 Å than those of native starch.
Abstract: An application framework provides a reusable design
and implementation for a family of software systems. If the
framework contains defects, the defects will be passed on to the
applications developed from the framework. Framework defects are
hard to discover at the time the framework is instantiated. Therefore,
it is important to remove all defects before instantiating the
framework. In this paper, two measures for the adequacy of an
object-oriented system-based testing technique are introduced. The
measures assess the usefulness and uniqueness of the testing
technique. The two measures are applied to experimentally compare
the adequacy of two testing techniques introduced to test objectoriented
frameworks at the system level. The two considered testing
techniques are the New Framework Test Approach and Testing
Frameworks Through Hooks (TFTH). The techniques are also
compared analytically in terms of their coverage power of objectoriented
aspects. The comparison study results show that the TFTH
technique is better than the New Framework Test Approach in terms
of usefulness degree, uniqueness degree, and coverage power.
Abstract: Software complexity metrics are used to predict
critical information about reliability and maintainability of software
systems. Object oriented software development requires a different
approach to software complexity metrics. Object Oriented Software
Metrics can be broadly classified into static and dynamic metrics.
Static Metrics give information at the code level whereas dynamic
metrics provide information on the actual runtime. In this paper we
will discuss the various complexity metrics, and the comparison
between static and dynamic complexity.
Abstract: Electronic Government is one of the special concepts
which has been performed successfully within recent decades.
Electronic government is a digital, wall-free government with a
virtual organization for presenting of online governmental services
and further cooperation in different political/social activities. In order
to have a successful implementation of electronic government
strategy and benefiting from its complete potential and benefits and
generally for establishment and applying of electronic government, it
is necessary to have different infrastructures as the basics of
electronic government with lack of which it is impossible to benefit
from mentioned services. For this purpose, in this paper we have
managed to recognize relevant obstacles for establishment of
electronic government in Iran. All required data for recognition of
obstacles were collected from statistical society of involved
specialists of Ministry of Communications & Information
Technology of Iran and Information Technology Organization of
Tehran Municipality through questionnaire. Then by considering of
five-point Likert scope and μ =3 as the index of relevant factors of
proposed model, we could specify current obstacles against
electronic government in Iran along with some guidelines and
proposal in this regard. According to the results, mentioned obstacles
for applying of electronic government in Iran are as follows:
Technical & technological problems, Legal, judicial & safety
problems, Economic problems and Humanistic Problems.
Abstract: One of the major, difficult tasks in automated video
surveillance is the segmentation of relevant objects in the scene.
Current implementations often yield inconsistent results on average
from frame to frame when trying to differentiate partly occluding
objects. This paper presents an efficient block-based segmentation
algorithm which is capable of separating partly occluding objects and
detecting shadows. It has been proven to perform in real time with a
maximum duration of 47.48 ms per frame (for 8x8 blocks on a
720x576 image) with a true positive rate of 89.2%. The flexible
structure of the algorithm enables adaptations and improvements with
little effort. Most of the parameters correspond to relative differences
between quantities extracted from the image and should therefore not
depend on scene and lighting conditions. Thus presenting a
performance oriented segmentation algorithm which is applicable in
all critical real time scenarios.
Abstract: In the area where the high quality water is not
available, unconventional water sources are used to irrigate.
Household leachate is one of the sources which are used in dry and
semi dry areas in order to water the barer trees and plants. It meets
the plants needs and also has some effects on the soil, but at the same
time it might cause some problems as well. This study in order to
evaluate the effect of using Compost leachate on the density of soil
iron in form of a statistical pattern called ''Split Plot'' by using two
main treatments, one subsidiary treatment and three repetitions of the
pattern in a three month period. The main N treatments include:
irrigation using well water as a blank treatments and the main I
treatments include: irrigation using leachate and well water
concurrently. Some subsidiary treatments were DI (Drop Irrigation)
and SDI (Sub Drop Irrigation). Then in the established plots, 36
biannual pine and cypress shrubs were randomly grown. Two months
later the treatment begins. The results revealed that there was a
significant variation between the main treatment and the instance
regarding pH decline in the soil which was related to the amount of
leachate injected into the soil. After some time and using leachate the
pH level fell, as much as 0.46 and also increased due to the great
amounts of leachate. The underneath drop irrigation ends in better
results than sub drop irrigation since it keeps the soil texture fixed.
Abstract: As part of national epidemiological survey on bovine
viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), a total of 274 dejecta samples were
collected from 14 cattle farms in 8 areas of Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region in northwestern China. Total RNA was extracted
from each sample, and 5--untranslated region (UTR) of BVDV
genome was amplified by using two-step reverse
transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The PCR products
were subsequently sequenced to study the genetic variations of BVDV
in these areas. Among the 274 samples, 33 samples were found
virus-positive. According to sequence analysis of the PCR products,
the 33 samples could be arranged into 16 groups. All the sequences,
however, were highly conserved with BVDV Osloss strains. The virus
possessed theses sequences belonged to BVDV-1b subtype by
phylogenetic analysis. Based on these data, we established a typing
tree for BVDV in these areas. Our results suggested that BVDV-1b
was a predominant subgenotype in northwestern China and no
correlation between the genetic and geographical distances could be
observed above the farm level.
Abstract: Using logarithmic mean Divisia decomposition technique, this paper analyzes the change in industrial energy intensity of Fujian Province in China, based on data sets of added value and energy consumption for 35 selected industrial sub-sectors from 1999 to 2009. The change in industrial energy intensity is decomposed into intensity effect and structure effect. Results show that the industrial energy intensity of Fujian Province has achieved a reduction of 51% over the past ten years. The structural change, a shift in the mix of industrial sub-sectors, made overwhelming contribution to the reduction. The impact of energy efficiency’s improvement was relatively small. However, the aggregate industrial energy intensity was very sensitive to both the changes in energy intensity and in production share of energy-intensive sub-sectors, such as production and supply of electric power, steam and hot water. Pathway to reduce industrial energy intensity for energy conservation in Fujian Province is proposed in the end.
Abstract: Decomposition processes take place in landfill
generate leachates that can be categorized mainly of acetogenic and
methanogenic in nature. BOD:COD ratio computed in this study for a
landfill site over a 3 years duration revealed as a good indicator to
identify acetogenic leachate from methanogenic leachate. Correlation
relationships to predict pollutant level taking into consideration of
climatic condition are derived.
Abstract: Demolitions of buildings have created a lot of waste
and one of it is clay bricks. The waste clay bricks were ground to
roughly cement fineness and used to partially replaced cement at
10%, 20% and 30% with w/b ratio of 0.6 and tested at 7, 28, 60, 90
and 120 days. The result shows that the compressive strength of GCB
concrete increases over age however, decreases as the level of
replacements increases. It was also found that 10% replacement of
GCB gave the highest compressive strength, however for optimum
replacement, 30% was chosen as it still attained strength of grade 30
concrete. In terms of durability performances, results show that GCB
replacement up to 30% was found to be efficient in reducing water
absorption as well as water permeability. These studies show that
GCB has the potential to be used as partial cement replacement in
making concrete.
Abstract: Kepsut-Dursunbey volcanic field (KDVF) is located
in NW Turkey and contains various products of the post-collisional
Neogene magmatic activity. Two distinct volcanic suites have been
recognized; the Kepsut volcanic suite (KVS) and the Dursunbey
volcanic suite (DVS). The KVS includes basaltic trachyandesitebasaltic
andesite-andesite lavas and associated pyroclastic rocks. The
DVS consists of dacite-rhyodacite lavas and extensive pumice-ash
fall and flow deposits. Petrographical features (i.e. existence of
xenocrysts, glomerocrysts, and mixing-compatible textures) and
mineral chemistry of phenocryst assemblages of both suites provide
evidence for magma mixing/AFC. Calculated crystallization
pressures and temperatures give values of 5.7–7.0 kbar and 927–982
°C for the KVS and 3.7–5.3 kbar and 783-787°C for the DVS,
indicating separate magma reservoirs and crystallization in magma
chambers at deep and mid crustal levels, respectively. These
observations support the establishment and evolution of KDVF
magma system promoted by episodic basaltic inputs which may
generate and mix with crustal melts.
Abstract: Levan, an exopolysaccharide, was produced by
Microbacterium laevaniformans and its yield was characterized as a
function of concentrations of date syrup, sucrose and the fermentation
time. The optimum condition for levan production from sucrose was
at concentration of 20% sucrose for 48 h and for date syrup was 25%
for 48 h. The results show that an increase in fermentation time
caused a decrease in the levan production at all concentrations of date
syrup tested. Under these conditions after 48 h in sucrose medium,
levan production reached 48.9 g/L and for date syrup reached 10.48
g/L . The effect of pH on the yield of the purified levan was examined
and the optimum pH for levan production was determined to be 6.0.
Levan was composed mainly of fructose residues when analyzed by
TLC and FT-IR spectroscopy. Date syrup is a cheap substrate widely
available in Iran and has potential for levan production. The thermal
stability of levan was assessed by Thermo Gravimetric Analysis
(TGA) that revealed the onset of decomposition near to 49°C for the
levan produced from sucrose and 51°C for the levan from date syrup.
DSC results showed a single Tg at 98°C for levan produced from
sucrose and 206 °C for levan from date syrup.
Abstract: In the recent past Learning Classifier Systems have
been successfully used for data mining. Learning Classifier System
(LCS) is basically a machine learning technique which combines
evolutionary computing, reinforcement learning, supervised or
unsupervised learning and heuristics to produce adaptive systems. A
LCS learns by interacting with an environment from which it
receives feedback in the form of numerical reward. Learning is
achieved by trying to maximize the amount of reward received. All
LCSs models more or less, comprise four main components; a finite
population of condition–action rules, called classifiers; the
performance component, which governs the interaction with the
environment; the credit assignment component, which distributes the
reward received from the environment to the classifiers accountable
for the rewards obtained; the discovery component, which is
responsible for discovering better rules and improving existing ones
through a genetic algorithm. The concatenate of the production rules
in the LCS form the genotype, and therefore the GA should operate
on a population of classifier systems. This approach is known as the
'Pittsburgh' Classifier Systems. Other LCS that perform their GA at
the rule level within a population are known as 'Mitchigan' Classifier
Systems. The most predominant representation of the discovered
knowledge is the standard production rules (PRs) in the form of IF P
THEN D. The PRs, however, are unable to handle exceptions and do
not exhibit variable precision. The Censored Production Rules
(CPRs), an extension of PRs, were proposed by Michalski and
Winston that exhibit variable precision and supports an efficient
mechanism for handling exceptions. A CPR is an augmented
production rule of the form: IF P THEN D UNLESS C, where
Censor C is an exception to the rule. Such rules are employed in
situations, in which conditional statement IF P THEN D holds
frequently and the assertion C holds rarely. By using a rule of this
type we are free to ignore the exception conditions, when the
resources needed to establish its presence are tight or there is simply
no information available as to whether it holds or not. Thus, the IF P
THEN D part of CPR expresses important information, while the
UNLESS C part acts only as a switch and changes the polarity of D
to ~D. In this paper Pittsburgh style LCSs approach is used for
automated discovery of CPRs. An appropriate encoding scheme is
suggested to represent a chromosome consisting of fixed size set of
CPRs. Suitable genetic operators are designed for the set of CPRs
and individual CPRs and also appropriate fitness function is proposed
that incorporates basic constraints on CPR. Experimental results are
presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed learning
classifier system.
Abstract: 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) is a synthetic estrogen
used as a key ingredient in an oral contraceptives pill. EE2 is an
endocrine disrupting compound, high in estrogenic potency.
Although EE2 exhibits low degree of biodegradability with common
microorganisms in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), this
compound can be biotransformed by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria
(AOB) via a co-metabolism mechanism in WWTPs. This study
aimed to investigate the effect of real wastewater on
biotransformation of EE2 by AOB. A preliminary experiment on the
effect of nitrite and pH levels on abiotic transformation of EE2
suggested that the abiotic transformation occurred at only pH