Abstract: This paper proposes an algorithm which automatically aligns and stitches the component medical images (fluoroscopic) with varying degrees of overlap into a single composite image. The alignment method is based on similarity measure between the component images. As applied here the technique is intensity based rather than feature based. It works well in domains where feature based methods have difficulty, yet more robust than traditional correlation. Component images are stitched together using the new triangular averaging based blending algorithm. The quality of the resultant image is tested for photometric inconsistencies and geometric misalignments. This method cannot correct rotational, scale and perspective artifacts.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to investigate the
enhancement of power system stability via coordinated tuning of
Power System Stabilizers (PSSs) in a multi-machine power system.
The design problem of the proposed controllers is formulated as an
optimization problem. Chaotic catfish particle swarm optimization
(C-Catfish PSO) algorithm is used to minimize the ITAE objective
function. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on a two-area, 4-
machines system. The robustness of the proposed algorithm is
verified on this system under different operating conditions and
applying a three-phase fault. The nonlinear time-domain simulation
results and some performance indices show the effectiveness of the
proposed controller in damping power system oscillations and this
novel optimization algorithm is compared with particle swarm
optimization (PSO).
Abstract: This paper presents a study of laminar to turbulent transition on a profile specifically designed for wind turbine blades, the DU91-W2-250, which belongs to a class of wind turbine dedicated airfoils, developed by Delft University of Technology. A comparison between the experimental behavior of the airfoil studied at Delft wind tunnel and the numerical predictions of the commercial CFD solver ANSYS FLUENT® has been performed. The prediction capabilities of the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model and of the γ-θ Transitional model have been tested. A sensitivity analysis of the numerical results to the spatial domain discretization has also been performed using four different computational grids, which have been created using the mesher GAMBIT®. The comparison between experimental measurements and CFD results have allowed to determine the importance of the numerical prediction of the laminar to turbulent transition, in order not to overestimate airfoil friction drag due to a fully turbulent-regime flow computation.
Abstract: Policy management in organizations became rising issue in the last decade. It’s because of today’s regulatory requirements in the organizations. To manage policies in large organizations is an imperative work. However, major challenges facing organizations in the last decade is managing all the policies in the organization and making them an active documents rather than simple (inactive) documents stored in computer hard drive or on a shelf. Because of this challenge, organizations need policy management program. This policy management program can be either manual or automated. This paper presents suggestions towards managing policies in organizations. As well as possible policy management solution or program to be utilized, manual or automated. The research first examines the models and frameworks used for managing policies from various perspectives in the literature of the research area/domain. At the end of this paper, a policy management framework is proposed for managing enterprise policies effectively and in a simplified manner.
Abstract: The growing interest on national heritage
preservation has led to intensive efforts on digital documentation of
cultural heritage knowledge. Encapsulated within this effort is the
focus on ontology development that will help facilitate the
organization and retrieval of the knowledge. Ontologies surrounding
cultural heritage domain are related to archives, museum and library
information such as archaeology, artifacts, paintings, etc. The growth
in number and size of ontologies indicates the well acceptance of its
semantic enrichment in many emerging applications. Nowadays,
there are many heritage information systems available for access.
Among others is community-based e-museum designed to support the
digital cultural heritage preservation. This work extends previous
effort of developing the Traditional Malay Textile (TMT) Knowledge
Model where the model is designed with the intention of auxiliary
mapping with CIDOC CRM. Due to its internal constraints, the
model needs to be transformed in advance. This paper addresses the
issue by reviewing the previous harmonization works with CIDOC
CRM as exemplars in refining the facets in the model particularly
involving TMT-Artifact class. The result is an extensible model
which could lead to a common view for automated mapping with
CIDOC CRM. Hence, it promotes integration and exchange of
textile information especially batik-related between communities in
e-museum applications.
Abstract: In aircraft applications, according to the nature of
electrical equipment its location may be in unpressurized area or very
close to the engine; thus, the environmental conditions may change
from atmospheric pressure to less than 100 mbar, and the temperature
may be higher than the ambient one as in most real working
conditions of electrical equipment. Then, the classical Paschen curve
has to be replotted since these parameters may affect the discharge
ignition voltage. In this paper, we firstly investigate the domain of
validity of two corrective expressions on the Paschen-s law found in
the literature, in case of changing the air environment and known as
Peek and Dunbar corrections. Results show that these corrections are
no longer valid for combined variation of temperature and pressure.
After that, a new empirical expression for breakdown voltage is
proposed and is validated in the case of combined variations of
temperature and pressure.
Abstract: This paper presents an on-going research work on the
implementation of feature-based machining via macro programming.
Repetitive machining features such as holes, slots, pockets etc can
readily be encapsulated in macros. Each macro consists of methods
on how to machine the shape as defined by the feature. The macro
programming technique comprises of a main program and
subprograms. The main program allows user to select several
subprograms that contain features and define their important
parameters. With macros, complex machining routines can be
implemented easily and no post processor is required. A case study
on machining of a part that comprised of planar face, hole and pocket
features using the macro programming technique was carried out. It
is envisaged that the macro programming technique can be extended
to other feature-based machining fields such as the newly developed
STEP-NC domain.
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: Manufacturing Industries face a crucial change as products and processes are required to, easily and efficiently, be reconfigurable and reusable. In order to stay competitive and flexible, situations also demand distribution of enterprises globally, which requires implementation of efficient communication strategies. A prototype system called the “Broadcaster" has been developed with an assumption that the control environment description has been engineered using the Component-based system paradigm. This prototype distributes information to a number of globally distributed partners via an adoption of the circular-based data processing mechanism. The work highlighted in this paper includes the implementation of this mechanism in the domain of the manufacturing industry. The proposed solution enables real-time remote propagation of machine information to a number of distributed supply chain client resources such as a HMI, VRML-based 3D views and remote client instances regardless of their distribution nature and/ or their mechanisms. This approach is presented together with a set of evaluation results. Authors- main concentration surrounds the reliability and the performance metric of the adopted approach. Performance evaluation is carried out in terms of the response times taken to process the data in this domain and compared with an alternative data processing implementation such as the linear queue mechanism. Based on the evaluation results obtained, authors justify the benefits achieved from this proposed implementation and highlight any further research work that is to be carried out.
Abstract: Learning programming is difficult for many learners. Some researches have found that the main difficulty relates to cognitive load. Cognitive overload happens in programming due to the nature of the subject which is intrinisicly over-bearing on the working memory. It happens due to the complexity of the subject itself. The problem is made worse by the poor instructional design methodology used in the teaching and learning process. Various efforts have been proposed to reduce the cognitive load, e.g. visualization softwares, part-program method etc. Use of many computer based systems have also been tried to tackle the problem. However, little success has been made to alleviate the problem. More has to be done to overcome this hurdle. This research attempts at understanding how cognitive load can be managed so as to reduce the problem of overloading. We propose a mechanism to measure the cognitive load during pre instruction, post instruction and in instructional stages of learning. This mechanism is used to help the instruction. As the load changes the instruction is made to adapt itself to ensure cognitive viability. This mechanism could be incorporated as a sub domain in the student model of various computer based instructional systems to facilitate the learning of programming.
Abstract: Rolling element bearings are widely used in industry,
especially where high load capacity is required. The diagnosis of
their conditions is essential matter for downtime reduction and saving
cost of maintenance. Therefore, an intensive analysis of frequency
spectrum of their faults must be carried out in order to determine the
main reason of the fault. This paper focus on a beating phenomena
observed in the waveform (time domain) of a cylindrical rolling
element bearing. The beating frequencies were not related to any
sources nearby the machine nor any other malfunctions (unbalance,
misalignment ...etc). More investigation on the spike energy and the
frequency spectrum indicated a problem with races of the bearing.
Multi-harmonics of the fundamental defects frequencies were
observed. Two of them were close to each other in magnitude those
were the source of the beating phenomena.
Abstract: In this paper, an approach to reduce the computation steps required by fast neural networksfor the searching process is presented. The principle ofdivide and conquer strategy is applied through imagedecomposition. Each image is divided into small in sizesub-images and then each one is tested separately usinga fast neural network. The operation of fast neuralnetworks based on applying cross correlation in thefrequency domain between the input image and theweights of the hidden neurons. Compared toconventional and fast neural networks, experimentalresults show that a speed up ratio is achieved whenapplying this technique to locate human facesautomatically in cluttered scenes. Furthermore, fasterface detection is obtained by using parallel processingtechniques to test the resulting sub-images at the sametime using the same number of fast neural networks. Incontrast to using only fast neural networks, the speed upratio is increased with the size of the input image whenusing fast neural networks and image decomposition.
Abstract: Many studies have applied the Theory of Planned
Behavior (TPB) in predicting health behaviors among unique
populations. However, a new paradigm is emerging where focus is
now directed to modification and expansion of the TPB model rather
than utilization of the traditional theory. This review proposes new
models modified from the Theory of Planned Behavior and suggest
an appropriate study design that can be used to test the models within
physical activity and dietary practice domains among Type 2
diabetics in Kenya. The review was conducted by means of literature
search in the field of nutrition behavior, health psychology and
mixed methods using predetermined key words. The results identify
pre-intention and post intention gaps within the TPB model that need
to be filled. Additional psychosocial factors are proposed to be
included in the TPB model to generate new models and the efficacy
of these models tested using mixed methods design.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate dynamics of 2n almost periodic attractors for Cohen-Grossberg neural networks (CGNNs) with variable and distribute time delays. By imposing some new assumptions on activation functions and system parameters, we split invariant basin of CGNNs into 2n compact convex subsets. Then the existence of 2n almost periodic solutions lying in compact convex subsets is attained due to employment of the theory of exponential dichotomy and Schauder-s fixed point theorem. Meanwhile, we derive some new criteria for the networks to converge toward these 2n almost periodic solutions and exponential attracting domains are also given correspondingly.
Abstract: In this paper, the difference between the Alternating
Direction Method (ADM) and the Non-Splitting Method (NSM) is
investigated, while both methods applied to the simulations for 2-D
multimaterial radiation diffusion issues. Although the ADM have the
same accuracy orders with the NSM on the uniform meshes, the
accuracy of ADM will decrease on the distorted meshes or the
boundary of domain. Numerical experiments are carried out to
confirm the theoretical predication.
Abstract: The scroll pump belongs to the category of positive
displacement pump can be used for continuous pumping of gases at
low pressure apart from general vacuum application. The shape of
volume occupied by the gas moves and deforms continuously as the
spiral orbits. To capture flow features in such domain where mesh
deformation varies with time in a complicated manner, mesh less
solver was found to be very useful. Least Squares Kinetic Upwind
Method (LSKUM) is a kinetic theory based mesh free Euler solver
working on arbitrary distribution of points. Here upwind is enforced
in molecular level based on kinetic flux vector splitting scheme
(KFVS). In the present study we extended the LSKUM to moving
node viscous flow application. This new code LSKUM-NS-MN for
moving node viscous flow is validated for standard airfoil pitching
test case. Simulation performed for flow through scroll pump using
LSKUM-NS-MN code agrees well with the experimental pumping
speed data.
Abstract: In this paper, for the understanding of the phytoplankton dynamics in marine ecosystem, a susceptible and an infected class of phytoplankton population is considered in spatiotemporal domain.
Here, the susceptible phytoplankton is growing logistically and the
growth of infected phytoplankton is due to the instantaneous Holling
type-II infection response function. The dynamics are studied in terms of the local and global stabilities for the system and further
explore the possibility of Hopf -bifurcation, taking the half saturation period as (i.e., ) the bifurcation parameter in temporal domain.
It is also observe that the reaction diffusion system exhibits spatiotemporal
chaos and pattern formation in phytoplankton dynamics,
which is particularly important role play for the spatially extended phytoplankton system. Also the effect of the diffusion coefficient
on the spatial system for both one and two dimensional case is obtained. Furthermore, we explore the higher-order stability analysis
of the spatial phytoplankton system for both linear and no-linear system. Finally, few numerical simulations are carried out for pattern
formation.
Abstract: The increasing importance of FlexRay systems in
automotive domain inspires unceasingly relative researches. One
primary issue among researches is to verify the reliability of FlexRay
systems either from protocol aspect or from system design aspect.
However, research rarely discusses the effect of network topology on
the system reliability. In this paper, we will illustrate how to model
the reliability of FlexRay systems with various network topologies by
a well-known probabilistic reasoning technology, Bayesian Network.
In this illustration, we especially investigate the effectiveness of error
containment built in star topology and fault-tolerant midpoint
synchronization algorithm adopted in FlexRay communication
protocol. Through a FlexRay steer-by-wire case study, the influence
of different topologies on the failure probability of the FlexRay steerby-
wire system is demonstrated. The notable value of this research is
to show that the Bayesian Network inference is a powerful and
feasible method for the reliability assessment of FlexRay systems.
Abstract: Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have been used successfully in many scientific, industrial and business domains as a method for extracting knowledge from vast amounts of data. However the use of ANN techniques in the sporting domain has been limited. In professional sport, data is stored on many aspects of teams, games, training and players. Sporting organisations have begun to realise that there is a wealth of untapped knowledge contained in the data and there is great interest in techniques to utilise this data. This study will use player data from the elite Australian Football League (AFL) competition to train and test ANNs with the aim to predict the onset of injuries. The results demonstrate that an accuracy of 82.9% was achieved by the ANNs’ predictions across all examples with 94.5% of all injuries correctly predicted. These initial findings suggest that ANNs may have the potential to assist sporting clubs in the prediction of injuries.
Abstract: This paper describes a paradigmatic approach to develop architecture of secure systems by describing the requirements from four different points of view: that of the owner, the administrator, the user, and the network. Deriving requirements and developing architecture implies the joint elicitation and describing the problem and the structure of the solution. The view points proposed in this paper are those we consider as requirements towards their contributions as major parties in the design, implementation, usage and maintenance of secure systems. The dramatic growth of the technology of Internet and the applications deployed in World Wide Web have lead to the situation where the security has become a very important concern in the development of secure systems. Many security approaches are currently being used in organizations. In spite of the widespread use of many different security solutions, the security remains a problem. It is argued that the approach that is described in this paper for the development of secure architecture is practical by all means. The models representing these multiple points of view are termed the requirements model (views of owner and administrator) and the operations model (views of user and network). In this paper, this multiple view paradigm is explained by first describing the specific requirements and or characteristics of secure systems (particularly in the domain of networks) and the secure architecture / system development methodology.