Abstract: There have been numerous implementations of
security system using biometric, especially for identification and
verification cases. An example of pattern used in biometric is the iris
pattern in human eye. The iris pattern is considered unique for each
person. The use of iris pattern poses problems in encoding the human
iris.
In this research, an efficient iris recognition method is proposed.
In the proposed method the iris segmentation is based on the
observation that the pupil has lower intensity than the iris, and the
iris has lower intensity than the sclera. By detecting the boundary
between the pupil and the iris and the boundary between the iris and
the sclera, the iris area can be separated from pupil and sclera. A step
is taken to reduce the effect of eyelashes and specular reflection of
pupil. Then the four levels Coiflet wavelet transform is applied to the
extracted iris image. The modified Hamming distance is employed to
measure the similarity between two irises.
This research yields the identification success rate of 84.25% for
the CASIA version 1.0 database. The method gives an accuracy of
77.78% for the left eyes of MMU 1 database and 86.67% for the
right eyes. The time required for the encoding process, from the
segmentation until the iris code is generated, is 0.7096 seconds.
These results show that the accuracy and speed of the method is
better than many other methods.
Abstract: This research project aims to investigate difference in
relative rates concerning phosphoryl transfer relevant to biological
catalysis of DNA and RNA in the pH-independent reactions.
Activated Models of DNA and RNA for alkyl-aryl phosphate diesters
(with 4-nitrophenyl as a good leaving group) have successfully been
prepared to gather kinetic parameters. Eyring plots for the pH–
independent hydrolysis of 1 and 2 were established at different
temperatures in the range 100–160 °C. These measurements have
been used to provide a better estimate for the difference in relative
rates between the reactivity of DNA and RNA cleavage. Eyring plot
gave an extrapolated rate of kH2O = 1 × 10-10 s -1 for 1 (RNA model)
and 2 (DNA model) at 25°C. Comparing the reactivity of RNA
model and DNA model shows that the difference in relative rates in
the pH-independent reactions is surprisingly very similar at 25°. This
allows us to obtain chemical insights into how biological catalysts
such as enzymes may have evolved to perform their current
functions.
Abstract: This paper presents a new method for estimating the nonstationary
noise power spectral density given a noisy signal. The
method is based on averaging the noisy speech power spectrum using
time and frequency dependent smoothing factors. These factors are
adjusted based on signal-presence probability in individual frequency
bins. Signal presence is determined by computing the ratio of the
noisy speech power spectrum to its local minimum, which is updated
continuously by averaging past values of the noisy speech power
spectra with a look-ahead factor. This method adapts very quickly to
highly non-stationary noise environments. The proposed method
achieves significant improvements over a system that uses voice
activity detector (VAD) in noise estimation.
Abstract: This paper presents performance analysis of the
Evolutionary Programming-Artificial Neural Network (EPANN)
based technique to optimize the architecture and training parameters
of a one-hidden layer feedforward ANN model for the prediction of
energy output from a grid connected photovoltaic system. The ANN
utilizes solar radiation and ambient temperature as its inputs while the
output is the total watt-hour energy produced from the grid-connected
PV system. EP is used to optimize the regression performance of the
ANN model by determining the optimum values for the number of
nodes in the hidden layer as well as the optimal momentum rate and
learning rate for the training. The EPANN model is tested using two
types of transfer function for the hidden layer, namely the tangent
sigmoid and logarithmic sigmoid. The best transfer function, neural
topology and learning parameters were selected based on the highest
regression performance obtained during the ANN training and testing
process. It is observed that the best transfer function configuration for
the prediction model is [logarithmic sigmoid, purely linear].
Abstract: Drought is one of the most damaging climate-related
hazards, it is generally considered as a prolonged absence of
precipitation. This normal and recurring climate phenomenon had
plagued civilization throughout history because of the negative
impacts on economical, environmental and social sectors. Drought
characteristics are thus recognized as important factors in water
resources planning and management. The purpose of this study is to
detect the changes in drought frequency, persistence and severity
in the Ruhr river basin. The frequency of drought events was
calculated using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). Used
data are daily precipitation records from seven meteorological
stations covering the period 1961-2007. The main benefit of the
application of this index is its versatility, only rainfall data is required
to deliver five major dimensions of a drought : duration, intensity,
severity, magnitude, and frequency. Furthermore, drought can be
calculated in different time steps. In this study SPI was calculated for
1, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months. Several drought events were detected
in the covered period, these events contain mild, moderate and severe
droughts. Also positive and negative trends in the SPI values were
observed.
Abstract: This paper aims to propose a novel, robust, and simple method for obtaining a human 3D face model and camera pose (position and orientation) from a video sequence. Given a video sequence of a face recorded from an off-the-shelf digital camera, feature points used to define facial parts are tracked using the Active- Appearance Model (AAM). Then, the face-s 3D structure and camera pose of each video frame can be simultaneously calculated from the obtained point correspondences. This proposed method is primarily based on the combined approaches of Gradient Descent and Powell-s Multidimensional Minimization. Using this proposed method, temporarily occluded point including the case of self-occlusion does not pose a problem. As long as the point correspondences displayed in the video sequence have enough parallax, these missing points can still be reconstructed.
Abstract: This paper presents the analysis of similarity between local decisions, in the process of alphanumeric hand-prints classification. From the analysis of local characteristics of handprinted numerals and characters, extracted by a zoning method, the set of classification decisions is obtained and the similarity among them is investigated. For this purpose the Similarity Index is used, which is an estimator of similarity between classifiers, based on the analysis of agreements between their decisions. The experimental tests, carried out using numerals and characters from the CEDAR and ETL database, respectively, show to what extent different parts of the patterns provide similar classification decisions.
Abstract: The rapid development of the BlackBerry games industry and its development goals were not just for entertainment, but also used for educational of students interactively. Unfortunately the development of adaptive educational games on BlackBerry in Indonesian language that interesting and entertaining for learning process is very limited. This paper shows the research of development of novel adaptive educational games for students who can adjust the difficulty level of games based on the ability of the user, so that it can motivate students to continue to play these games. We propose a method where these games can adjust the level of difficulty, based on the assessment of the results of previous problems using neural networks with three inputs in the form of percentage correct, the speed of answer and interest mode of games (animation / lessons) and 1 output. The experimental results are presented and show the adaptive games are running well on mobile devices based on BlackBerry platform
Abstract: Avionics software is safe-critical embedded software
and its architecture is evolving from traditional federated architectures
to Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) to improve resource usability.
ARINC 653 (Avionics Application Standard Software Interface) is a
software specification for space and time partitioning in Safety-critical
avionics Real-time operating systems. Arinc653 uses two-level
scheduling strategies, but current modeling tools only apply to simple
problems of Arinc653 two-level scheduling, which only contain time
property. In avionics industry, we are always manually allocating
tasks and calculating the timing table of a real-time system to ensure
it-s running as we design. In this paper we represent an automatically
generating strategy which applies to the two scheduling problems with
dependent constraints in Arinc653 partition run-time environment. It
provides the functionality of automatic generation from the task and partition models to scheduling policy through allocating the tasks to the partitions while following the constraints, and then we design a simulating mechanism to check whether our policy is schedulable or
not
Abstract: The automatic construction of large, high-resolution
image vistas (mosaics) is an active area of research in the fields of
photogrammetry [1,2], computer vision [1,4], medical image
processing [4], computer graphics [3] and biometrics [8]. Image
stitching is one of the possible options to get image mosaics. Vista
Creation in image processing is used to construct an image with a
large field of view than that could be obtained with a single
photograph. It refers to transforming and stitching multiple images
into a new aggregate image without any visible seam or distortion in
the overlapping areas. Vista creation process aligns two partial
images over each other and blends them together. Image mosaics
allow one to compensate for differences in viewing geometry. Thus
they can be used to simplify tasks by simulating the condition in
which the scene is viewed from a fixed position with single camera.
While obtaining partial images the geometric anomalies like rotation,
scaling are bound to happen. To nullify effect of rotation of partial
images on process of vista creation, we are proposing rotation
invariant vista creation algorithm in this paper. Rotation of partial
image parts in the proposed method of vista creation may introduce
some missing region in the vista. To correct this error, that is to fill
the missing region further we have used image inpainting method on
the created vista. This missing view regeneration method also
overcomes the problem of missing view [31] in vista due to cropping,
irregular boundaries of partial image parts and errors in digitization
[35]. The method of missing view regeneration generates the missing
view of vista using the information present in vista itself.
Abstract: In order to answer the general question: “What does a simple agent with a limited life-time require for constructing a useful representation of the environment?" we propose a robot platform including the simplest probabilistic sensory and motor layers. Then we use the platform as a test-bed for evaluation of the navigational capabilities of the robot with different “brains". We claim that a protocognitive behavior is not a consequence of highly sophisticated sensory–motor organs but instead emerges through an increment of the internal complexity and reutilization of the minimal sensory information. We show that the most fundamental robot element, the short-time memory, is essential in obstacle avoidance. However, in the simplest conditions of no obstacles the straightforward memoryless robot is usually superior. We also demonstrate how a low level action planning, involving essentially nonlinear dynamics, provides a considerable gain to the robot performance dynamically changing the robot strategy. Still, however, for very short life time the brainless robot is superior. Accordingly we suggest that small organisms (or agents) with short life-time does not require complex brains and even can benefit from simple brain-like (reflex) structures. To some extend this may mean that controlling blocks of modern robots are too complicated comparative to their life-time and mechanical abilities.
Abstract: Performance of vehicle depends on driving patterns
and vehicle drive train configuration. Driving patterns depends on
traffic condition, road condition and driver behavior. HEV design is
carried out under certain constrain like vehicle operating range,
acceleration, decelerations, maximum speed and road grades which
are directly related to the driving patterns. Therefore the detailed
study on HEV performance over a different drive cycle is required
for selection and sizing of HEV components. A simple hardware is
design to measured velocity v/s time profile of the vehicle by
operating vehicle on Indian roads under real traffic conditions. To
size the HEV components, a detailed dynamic model of the vehicle is
developed considering the effect of inertia of rotating components
like wheels, drive chain, engine and electric motor. Using vehicle
model and different Indian drive cycles data, total tractive power
demanded by vehicle and power supplied by individual components
has been calculated.Using above information selection and estimation
of component sizing for HEV is carried out so that HEV performs
efficiently under hostile driving condition. Complete analysis is
carried out in LABVIEW.
Abstract: Rhizopus oligosporus was used in the present study
for the production of protease enzyme under SSF. Sunflower meal
was used as by-product of oil industry incorporated with organic salts
was employed for the production of protease enzyme. The main
purpose of the present was to study different parameters of protease
productivity, its yields and to optimize basal fermentation conditions.
The optimal conditions found for protease production using
sunflower meal as a substrate in the present study were inoculum size
(1%), substrate (Sunflower meal), substrate concentration (20 g), pH
(3), cultivation period (72 h), incubation temperature (35oC),
substrate to diluent-s ratio (1:2) and tween 81 (1 mL). The maximum
production of protease in the presence of cheaper substrate at low
concentration and stability at acidic pH, these characteristics make
the strain and its enzymes useful in different industry.
Abstract: With increasing data in medical databases, medical
data retrieval is growing in popularity. Some of this analysis
including inducing propositional rules from databases using many
soft techniques, and then using these rules in an expert system.
Diagnostic rules and information on features are extracted from
clinical databases on diseases of congenital anomaly. This paper
explain the latest soft computing techniques and some of the
adaptive techniques encompasses an extensive group of methods
that have been applied in the medical domain and that are used for
the discovery of data dependencies, importance of features,
patterns in sample data, and feature space dimensionality
reduction. These approaches pave the way for new and interesting
avenues of research in medical imaging and represent an important
challenge for researchers.
Abstract: Iran has diverse climates and each have established distinct properties in their area. The extent and intensity of climatic factors effects on the lives of people living in various regions of Iran is so great that it cannot be simply ignored. In a large part of Iran known as the Central Plateau there is no precipitation for more than half of the year and dry weather and scarcity of fresh water pose an ever present problem for the people of these regions while in north of Iran upon the southern shores of the Caspian Sea the people face 80% humidity caused by the sea and 2 meters of annual precipitation. This article tries to review the past experiences of local architecture of Iran-s various regions so that they can be used to reshape and redirect the urban areas and structure of Iran-s current cities to provide environmental comfort by minimum use of fossil fuels.
Abstract: the objective of this study is to measure the levels of
cellulas activity of ostrich GI microorganisms, and comparing it with
the levels of cellulas activity of rumen-s microorganisms, and also to
estimate the probability of increasing enzyme activity with injecting
different dosages (30%, 50% and 70%) of pure anaerobic goat rumen
fungi. The experiment was conducted in laboratory and under a
complete anaerobic condition (in vitro condition). 40 ml of
“CaldWell" medium and 1.4g wheat straw were placed in incubator
for an hour. The cellulase activity of ostrich microorganisms was
compared with other treatments, and then different dosages (30%,
50% and 70%) of pure anaerobic goat rumen fungi were injected to
ostrich microorganism-s media. Due to the results, cattle and goat
with 2.13 and 2.08 I.U (international units) respectively showed the
highest activity and ostrich with 0.91 (I.U) had the lowest cellulose
activity (p < 0.05). Injecting 30% and 50% of anaerobic fungi had no
significant incensement in enzyme activity, but with injecting 70% of
rumen fungi to ostrich microorganisms culture a significant increase
was observed 1.48 I.U. (p < 0.05).
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the
influence of learning efficiency on local accountants’ job
performance effectiveness. This paper drew upon the survey data
collected from 335 local accountants survey conducted at Nakhon
Ratchasima province, Thailand. The statistics utilized in this paper
included percentage, mean, standard deviation, and regression
analysis. The findings revealed that the majority of samples were
between 31-40 years old, married, held an undergraduate degree, and
had an average income between 10,000-15,000 baht. The majority of
respondents had less than five years of accounting experience and
worked for local administrations. The overall learning efficiency
score was in the highest level while the local accountants’ job
performance effectiveness score was also in the high level. The
hypothesis testing’s result disclosed that learning efficiency factors
which were knowledge, Skill, and Attitude had an influence on local
accountants’ job the performance effectiveness.
Abstract: The paper describes a self supervised parallel self organizing neural network (PSONN) architecture for true color image segmentation. The proposed architecture is a parallel extension of the standard single self organizing neural network architecture (SONN) and comprises an input (source) layer of image information, three single self organizing neural network architectures for segmentation of the different primary color components in a color image scene and one final output (sink) layer for fusion of the segmented color component images. Responses to the different shades of color components are induced in each of the three single network architectures (meant for component level processing) by applying a multilevel version of the characteristic activation function, which maps the input color information into different shades of color components, thereby yielding a processed component color image segmented on the basis of the different shades of component colors. The number of target classes in the segmented image corresponds to the number of levels in the multilevel activation function. Since the multilevel version of the activation function exhibits several subnormal responses to the input color image scene information, the system errors of the three component network architectures are computed from some subnormal linear index of fuzziness of the component color image scenes at the individual level. Several multilevel activation functions are employed for segmentation of the input color image scene using the proposed network architecture. Results of the application of the multilevel activation functions to the PSONN architecture are reported on three real life true color images. The results are substantiated empirically with the correlation coefficients between the segmented images and the original images.
Abstract: For evaluating the severity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), one is interested in inspecting the airway wall thickening due to inflammation. Although airway segmentations have being well developed to reconstruct in high order, airway wall segmentation remains a challenge task. While tackling such problem as a multi-surface segmentation, the interrelation within surfaces needs to be considered. We propose a new method for three-dimensional airway wall segmentation using spring structural active contour model. The method incorporates the gravitational field of the image and repelling force field of the inner lumen as the soft constraint and the geometric spring structure of active contour as the hard constraint to approximate a three-dimensional coupled surface readily for thickness measurements. The results show the preservation of topology constraints of coupled surfaces. In conclusion, our springy, soft-tissue-like structure ensures the globally optimal solution and waives the shortness following by the inevitable improper inner surface constraint.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to understand how peers can
influence adolescent girls- dieting behaviour and their body image.
Departing from imitation and social learning theories, we study
whether adolescent girls tend to model their peer group dieting
behaviours, thus influencing their body image construction. Our
study was conducted through an enquiry applied to a cluster sample
of 466 adolescent high school girls in Lisbon city public schools. Our
main findings point to an association between girls- and peers-
dieting behaviours, thus reinforcing the modelling hypothesis.