Abstract: This research work proposed a study of fruit bruise detection by means of a biospeckle method, selecting the papaya fruit (Carica papaya) as testing body. Papaya is recognized as a fruit of outstanding nutritional qualities, showing high vitamin A content, calcium, carbohydrates, exhibiting high popularity all over the world, considering consumption and acceptability. The commercialization of papaya faces special problems which are associated to bruise generation during harvesting, packing and transportation. Papaya is classified as climacteric fruit, permitting to be harvested before the maturation is completed. However, by one side bruise generation is partially controlled once the fruit flesh exhibits high mechanical firmness. By the other side, mechanical loads can set a future bruise at that maturation stage, when it can not be detected yet by conventional methods. Mechanical damages of fruit skin leave an entrance door to microorganisms and pathogens, which will cause severe losses of quality attributes. Traditional techniques of fruit quality inspection include total soluble solids determination, mechanical firmness tests, visual inspections, which would hardly meet required conditions for a fully automated process. However, the pertinent literature reveals a new method named biospeckle which is based on the laser reflectance and interference phenomenon. The laser biospeckle or dynamic speckle is quantified by means of the Moment of Inertia, named after its mechanical counterpart due to similarity between the defining formulae. Biospeckle techniques are able to quantify biological activities of living tissues, which has been applied to seed viability analysis, vegetable senescence and similar topics. Since the biospeckle techniques can monitor tissue physiology, it could also detect changes in the fruit caused by mechanical damages. The proposed technique holds non invasive character, being able to generate numerical results consistent with an adequate automation. The experimental tests associated to this research work included the selection of papaya fruit at different maturation stages which were submitted to artificial mechanical bruising tests. Damages were visually compared with the frequency maps yielded by the biospeckle technique. Results were considered in close agreement.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the production of an Arabic word semantic similarity benchmark dataset. It is the first of its kind for Arabic which was particularly developed to assess the accuracy of word semantic similarity measurements. Semantic similarity is an essential component to numerous applications in fields such as natural language processing, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and psychology. Most of the reported work has been done for English. To the best of our knowledge, there is no word similarity measure developed specifically for Arabic. In this paper, an Arabic benchmark dataset of 70 word pairs is presented. New methods and best possible available techniques have been used in this study to produce the Arabic dataset. This includes selecting and creating materials, collecting human ratings from a representative sample of participants, and calculating the overall ratings. This dataset will make a substantial contribution to future work in the field of Arabic WSS and hopefully it will be considered as a reference basis from which to evaluate and compare different methodologies in the field.
Abstract: Application of flexible structures has been
significantly, increased in industry and aerospace missions due to
their contributions and unique advantages over the rigid counterparts.
In this paper, vibration analysis of a flexible structure i.e., automobile
wiper blade is investigated and controlled. The wiper generates
unwanted noise and vibration during the wiping the rain and other
particles on windshield which may cause annoying noise in different
ranges of frequency. A two dimensional analytical modeled wiper
blade whose model accuracy is verified by numerical studies in
literature is considered in this study. Particle swarm optimization
(PSO) is employed in alliance with input shaping (IS) technique in
order to control or to attenuate the amplitude level of unwanted
noise/vibration of the wiper blade.
Abstract: The performance of sensor-less controlled induction
motor drive depends on the accuracy of the estimated speed.
Conventional estimation techniques being mathematically complex
require more execution time resulting in poor dynamic response. The
nonlinear mapping capability and powerful learning algorithms of
neural network provides a promising alternative for on-line speed
estimation. The on-line speed estimator requires the NN model to be
accurate, simpler in design, structurally compact and computationally
less complex to ensure faster execution and effective control in real
time implementation. This in turn to a large extent depends on the
type of Neural Architecture. This paper investigates three types of
neural architectures for on-line speed estimation and their
performance is compared in terms of accuracy, structural
compactness, computational complexity and execution time. The
suitable neural architecture for on-line speed estimation is identified
and the promising results obtained are presented.
Abstract: Sickle cell anemia is a recessive genetic disease
caused by the presence in the red blood cell, of abnormal hemoglobin
called hemoglobin S. It results from the replacement in the beta chain
of the acid glutamic acid by valin at position 6. Topics may be
homozygous (SS) or heterozygous (AS) most often
asymptomatic. Other mutations result in compound heterozygous:
- Synthesis of hemoglobin C mutation in the sixth leucin codon
(heterozygous SC);
- ß-thalassemia (heterozygous S-ß thalassemia).
SS homozygous, heterozygous SC and S- ß -thalassemia are grouped
under the major sickle cell syndromes.
To make a laboratory diagnosis of hemoglobinopathies in a
portion of the population in region of Batna, our study was
conducted on 115 patients with suspected sickle cell anemia, all cases
have benefited from hematological tests as blood count (count RBC,
calculated erythrocyte indices, MCV and MCHC, measuring the
hemoglobin concentration) and a biochemical test in this case
electrophoresis CAPILLARYS HEMOGLOBIN (E).
The results showed:
27 cases of sickle cell anemia were found on 115 suspected cases,
73,03% homozygous sickle cell disease and 59,25% sickle cell trait.
Finally, the double heterozygous S/C, represent the incidence rate of
3, 70%.
Abstract: Investigation of soil properties like Cation Exchange
Capacity (CEC) plays important roles in study of environmental
reaserches as the spatial and temporal variability of this property
have been led to development of indirect methods in estimation of
this soil characteristic. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) provide an
alternative by estimating soil parameters from more readily available
soil data. 70 soil samples were collected from different horizons of
15 soil profiles located in the Ziaran region, Qazvin province, Iran.
Then, multivariate regression and neural network model (feedforward
back propagation network) were employed to develop a
pedotransfer function for predicting soil parameter using easily
measurable characteristics of clay and organic carbon. The
performance of the multivariate regression and neural network model
was evaluated using a test data set. In order to evaluate the models,
root mean square error (RMSE) was used. The value of RMSE and
R2 derived by ANN model for CEC were 0.47 and 0.94 respectively,
while these parameters for multivariate regression model were 0.65
and 0.88 respectively. Results showed that artificial neural network
with seven neurons in hidden layer had better performance in
predicting soil cation exchange capacity than multivariate regression.
Abstract: Materials added to the matrix help improving operating properties of a composite. This experimental study has targeted to investigate this aim where Silicon Oxide particles were added to glass fibre and epoxy resin at an amount of 15% to the main material to obtain a sort of new composite material. Erosive wear behavior of epoxy-resin dipped composite materials reinforced with glass fibre and Silicon Oxide under three different impingement angles (30°, 60° and 90°), three different impact velocities (23, 34 and 53 m/s), two different angular Aluminum abrasive particle sizes (approximately 200 and 400 μm) and the fibre orientation of 45° (45/-45) were investigated. In the test results, erosion rates were obtained as functions of impingement angles, impact velocities, particle sizes and fibre orientation. Moreover, materials with addition of Silicon Oxide filler material exhibited lower wear as compared to neat materials with no added filler material. In addition, SEM views showing worn out surfaces of the test specimens were scrutinized.
Abstract: A three-dimensional finite element modeling for austenitic stainless steel AISI 304 annealed condition sheets of 1.0 mm thickness are developed using ABAQUS® software. This includes spot welded and weld bonded joints models. Both models undergo thermal heat caused by spot welding process and then are subjected to axial load up to the failure point. The properties of elastic and plastic regions, modulus of elasticity, fracture limit, nugget and heat affected zones are determined. Complete loaddisplacement curve for each joining model is obtained and compared with the experiment data and with the finite element models without including the effect of thermal process. In general, the results obtained for both spot welded and weld-bonded joints affected by thermal process showed an excellent agreement with the experimental data.
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: The objective of this study was to determine the accuracy to estimation fetal weight by Johnson-s method and compares it with actual birth weight. The sample group was 126 infants delivered in Dan KhunThot hospital from January March 2012. Fetal weight was estimated by measuring fundal height according to Johnson-s method. The information was collected by studying historical delivery records and then analyzed by using the statistics of frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. Finally, the difference was analyzed by a paired t-test.The results showed had an average birth weight was 3093.57 ± 391.03 g (mean ± SD) and 3,455 ± 454.55 g average estimated fetal weight by Johnson-s method higher than average actual birth weight was 384.09 grams. When classifying the infants according to birth weight found that low birth weight ( 4000 g) actual birth weight was more than estimated fetal weight. The difference was found between actual birth weight and estimation fetal weight of the minimum weight in high birth weight ( > 4000 g) , the appropriate birth weight (2500-3999g) and low birth weight (
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the
motivation factors to influence the decision to choose Thai Fabric. A
multiple-stage sample was utilized to collect 400 samples from
working women who had diverse occupations all over Thailand. This
research was a quantitative analysis and questionnaire was used a tool
to collect data. Descriptive statistics used in this research included
percentage, average, and standard deviation and inferential statistics
included hypothesis testing of one way ANOVA.
The research findings revealed that demographic factors and social
factors had an influence to the positive idea of wearing Thai fabric (F
= 5.377, P value < 0.05). The respondents who had the age over 41
years old had a better positive idea of wearing Thai fabric than other
groups. Moreover, the findings revealed that age had influenced the
positive idea of wearing Thai fabric (F = 3.918, P value < 0.05). The
respondents who had the age over 41 years old also had stronger
believe that wearing Thai fabric to work and social gatherings are
socially acceptable than other groups.
Abstract: Creation of information society, or in other words, a
society based on knowledge, has wide consequences, both on
individual and complete society, and in general – on a economy of
one country. Development and implementation of ICT represents a
stimulant for economic growth. On individual level, knowledge,
skills and information gathered using ICT, are expanding individual
possibilities of persons, enabling them to have access to timely
sensitive information, such as market prices or investment
conditions, possibilities to access Government-s or private
development funds, etc. By doing so, productivity is increased both
on individual and national level and therefore social wellbeing in
general. In one word, creation of information society - a knowledge
society is happening.
This work will describe challenges and strategies that will follow
the development as well as obstacles in creating information society
– knowledge society in Montenegro.
Abstract: Suppose G(V,E) is a graph, a function f : V \cup E \to \{1, 2, 3, \cdots, k\} is called the total edge(vertex) irregular k-labelling for G such that for each two edges are different having distinct weights. The total edge(vertex) irregularity strength of G, denoted by tes(G)(tvs(G), is the smallest k positive integers such that G has a total edge(vertex) irregular k-labelling. In this paper, we determined the total edge(vertex) irregularity strength of an amalgamation of two isomorphic cycles. The total edge irregularity strength and the total vertex irregularity strength of two isomorphic cycles on n vertices are \lceil (2n+2)/3 \rceil and \lceil 2n/3 \rceil for n \geq 3, respectively.
Abstract: Eight Etawah cross bred does were divided into two
groups based on body condition score (BCS). Group I (BSC 2, body
weight 25-30 kg; n = 4), and Group II (BSC 3, body weight, 35-40 kg, n=4). All does received intravaginal controlled internal drug
release devices (CIDR) for 10 days, and a prostaglandin F2α at 48 h before CIDR removal. Estrus detection was carried out using
vasectomized buck. Vaginal epithelium was taken to determine estrus cycle. Blood samples were taken every 3-6 hours, started from
moment of CIDR removal until the end of estrus. The results showed vaginal histological indicated estrus occurred at the hours of 25 to 60
and 30 to 70 post CIDR removal in BCS 2 and 3, respectively. Progesterone peak of BCS 2 and BCS 3 were 0.18±0.31 and
0.48±0.31 ng/mL on the hour 0 post CIDR removal. Estradiol -17ß
peak of each group was 53.25±35.08 and 89.91±92.84 pg/mL at 48
post CIDR removal. LH surge only occurred on BCS 3 groups, the LH concentrations were 9.9± 9.1; 4.5± 4.0; and 18.2± 9.1 ng/mL at
45, 48 and 51 hours post CIDR removal, respectively. It was concluded that the BCS had effects on vaginal histological changes
and LH surge.
Abstract: This research gathered local wisdom towards career building of people in Kamchanoad Community, Baan Muang sub-district, Baan Dung district, Udon Thani province. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with village headmen, community board, teachers, monks, Kamchanoad forest managers and revered elderly aged over 60 years old. All of these 30 interviewees have resided in Kamchanoad Community for more than 40. Descriptive data analysis result revealed that the most prominent local wisdom of Kamchanoad community is their beliefs and religion. Most people in the community have strongly maintained local tradition, the festival of appeasing Chao Pu Sri Suttho on the middle of the 6th month of Thai lunar calendar which falls on the same day with Vesak Day. 100 percent of the people in this community are Buddhist. They believe that Naga, an entity or being, taking the form of a serpent, named “Sri Suttho” lives in Kamchanoad forest. The local people worship the serpent and ask for blessings. Another local wisdom of this community is Sinh fabric weaving.
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 study aims to investigate the impact on board and
audit committee characteristics and firm performance before and
after the revision of MCCG (2007) on GLCs over the period 2005-2010. We used Return on Assets (ROA) as a proxy for firm performance. The data consists of two groups; data collected before
and after the amendments of MCCG (2007). Findings show that
boards of directors with accounting / finance qualifications (BEXP)
are statistically significant with performance for period before the amendments. As for audit committee members with accounting or
finance qualifications (ACEXP), correlation results indicate a
negative association and non-significant results for the years before
amendments. However, the years after the amendments show
positive relationship with highly significant correlations (1%) to ROA. This indicates that the amendments of MCCG 2007 on the
audit committee members- literacy in accounting have impacted the governance structures and performance of GLCs.
Abstract: We develop a new interface for Bus-Net which is
optimized for a smartphone. We are continuing to develop the shortest
path planning system of public transportation called "Bus-Net" in
Tottori prefecture as web application to improve the usability of
public transportation. Recent trend of computing platform, however
has shifted to an advanced mobile device called a smartphone such as
iPhone and Android in Japan. A smartphone has different characters
with existing feature phone in terms of OS, large touche panel, and
several other features. We derive a guideline to design the new interface
for a smartphone to full use of the functionality. The guideline is
about simplicity of user-s operation, location awareness and usability.
We developed the new interface for “Bus-Net" on iPhone referring
to the guideline. Due to the evaluation, the application interface we
developed is better than the existing web-based interface in terms of
the usability.
Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a research
conducted to evaluate the ownership and usage of technology devices
within Distance Education students- according to their age. This
research involved 45 Distance Education students from USM
Universiti Sains Malaysia (DEUSM) as its respondents. Data was
collected through questionnaire that had been developed by the
researchers based on some literature review. The data was analyzed
to find out the frequencies of respondents agreements towards
ownership of technology devices and the use of technology devices.
The findings shows that all respondents own mobile phone and
majority of them reveal that they use mobile on regular basis. The
student in the age 30-39 has the heist ownership of the technology
devices.
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.