Abstract: Color image segmentation plays an important role in
computer vision and image processing areas. In this paper, the
features of Volterra filter are utilized for color image segmentation.
The discrete Volterra filter exhibits both linear and nonlinear
characteristics. The linear part smoothes the image features in
uniform gray zones and is used for getting a gross representation of
objects of interest. The nonlinear term compensates for the blurring
due to the linear term and preserves the edges which are mainly used
to distinguish the various objects. The truncated quadratic Volterra
filters are mainly used for edge preserving along with Gaussian noise
cancellation. In our approach, the segmentation is based on K-means
clustering algorithm in HSI space. Both the hue and the intensity
components are fully utilized. For hue clustering, the special cyclic
property of the hue component is taken into consideration. The
experimental results show that the proposed technique segments the
color image while preserving significant features and removing noise
effects.
Abstract: Complex assemblies of interacting proteins carry out
most of the interesting jobs in a cell, such as metabolism, DNA
synthesis, mitosis and cell division. These physiological properties
play out as a subtle molecular dance, choreographed by underlying
regulatory networks that control the activities of cyclin-dependent
kinases (CDK). The network can be modeled by a set of nonlinear
differential equations and its behavior predicted by numerical
simulation. In this paper, an innovative approach has been proposed
that uses genetic algorithms to mine a set of behavior data output by
a biological system in order to determine the kinetic parameters of
the system. In our approach, the machine learning method is
integrated with the framework of existent biological information in a
wiring diagram so that its findings are expressed in a form of system
dynamic behavior. By numerical simulations it has been illustrated
that the model is consistent with experiments and successfully shown
that such application of genetic algorithms will highly improve the
performance of mathematical model of the cell division cycle to
simulate such a complicated bio-system.
Abstract: The IFRS for Small and Medium-sized Entities
(SMEs) was issued in July 2009 and currently regulators are
considering various implementation strategies of this standard.
Romania is a member of the European Union since 2007, thus
accounting regulations were issued in order to ensure compliance
with the European Accounting Directives. As the European
Commission rejected recently the mandatory use of IFRS for SMEs,
regulatory bodies from the Member States have to decide if the
standard will affect or not the accounting practices of SMEs from
their countries. Recently IASB invited stakeholders to discuss the
revision of IFRS for SMEs. Empirical studies on the differences and
similarities between national standards and IFRS for SMEs could
inform decision makers on the actual level of convergence in
different countries. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical
evidences on the convergence of the Romanian regulations with IFRS
for SMEs analyzing the results in the context of the last revisions
proposed to the EU Accounting Directives.
Abstract: we propose a new normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithm, which gives satisfactory performance in certain applications in comaprison with con-ventional NLMS recursion. This new algorithm can be treated as a block based simplification of NLMS algorithm with significantly reduced number of multi¬ply and accumulate as well as division operations. It is also shown that such a recursion can be easily implemented in block floating point (BFP) arithmetic, treating the implementational issues much efficiently. In particular, the core challenges of a BFP realization to such adaptive filters are mainly considered in this regard. A global upper bound on the step size control parameter of the new algorithm due to BFP implementation is also proposed to prevent overflow in filtering as well as weight updating operations jointly.
Abstract: The compressive strength development through
polymerization process of alkaline solution and fly ash blended with Microwave Incinerated Rice Husk Ash (MIRHA) is described in this
paper. Three curing conditions, which are hot gunny curing, ambient
curing, and external humidity curing are investigated to obtain the suitable curing condition for cast in situ provision. Fly ash was
blended with MIRHA at 3%, 5%, and 7% to identify the effect of blended mixes to the compressive strength and microstructure
properties of geopolymer concrete. Compressive strength results
indicated an improvement in the strength development with external humidity curing concrete samples compared to hot gunny curing and
ambient curing. Blended mixes also presented better performance
than control mixes. Improvement of interfacial transition zone (ITZ)
and micro structure in external humidity concrete samples were also
identified compared to hot gunny and ambient curing.
Abstract: A comprehensive discussion of feasible strategies for sustainable energy supply is urgently needed to achieve a turnaround of the current energy situation. The necessary fundamentals required for the development of a long term energy vision are lacking to a great extent due to the absence of reasonable long term scenarios that fulfill the requirements of climate protection and sustainable energy use. The contribution of the study is based on a search for sustainable energy paths in the long run for Austria. The analysis makes use of secondary data predominantly. The measures developed to avoid CO2 emissions and other ecological risk factors vary to a great extent among all economic sectors. This is shown by the calculation of CO2 cost of abatement curves. In this study it is demonstrated that the most effective technical measures with the lowest CO2 abatement costs yield solutions to the current energy problems. Various scenarios are presented concerning the question how the technological and environmental options for a sustainable energy system for Austria could look like in the long run. It is shown how sustainable energy can be supplied even with today-s technological knowledge and options available. The scenarios developed include an evaluation of the economic costs and ecological impacts. The results are not only applicable to Austria but demonstrate feasible and cost efficient ways towards a sustainable future.
Abstract: Optical flow is a research topic of interest for many
years. It has, until recently, been largely inapplicable to real-time
applications due to its computationally expensive nature. This paper
presents a new reliable flow technique which is combined with a
motion detection algorithm, from stationary camera image streams,
to allow flow-based analyses of moving entities, such as rigidity, in
real-time. The combination of the optical flow analysis with motion
detection technique greatly reduces the expensive computation of
flow vectors as compared with standard approaches, rendering the
method to be applicable in real-time implementation. This paper
describes also the hardware implementation of a proposed pipelined
system to estimate the flow vectors from image sequences in real
time. This design can process 768 x 576 images at a very high frame
rate that reaches to 156 fps in a single low cost FPGA chip, which is
adequate for most real-time vision applications.
Abstract: The ability to recognize humans and their activities by computer vision is a very important task, with many potential application. Study of human motion analysis is related to several research areas of computer vision such as the motion capture, detection, tracking and segmentation of people. In this paper, we describe a segmentation method for extracting human body contour in modified HLS color space. To estimate a background, the modified HLS color space is proposed, and the background features are estimated by using the HLS color components. Here, the large amount of human dataset, which was collected from DV cameras, is pre-processed. The human body and its contour is successfully extracted from the image sequences.
Abstract: Business scenario is an important technique that may be used at various stages of the enterprise architecture to derive its characteristics based on the high-level requirements of the business. In terms of wireless deployments, they are used to help identify and understand business needs involving wireless services, and thereby to derive the business requirements that the architecture development has to address by taking into account of various wireless challenges. This study assesses the deployment of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) solutions for several business scenarios in Asia Pacific region. This paper focuses on the overview of the business and technology environments, whereby examples of existing (or suggested) wireless solutions (to be) adopted in Asia Pacific region will be discussed. Interactions of several players, enabling technologies, and key processes in the wireless environments are studied. The analysis and discussions associated to this study are divided into two divisions: healthcare and education, where the merits of wireless solutions in improving living quality are highlighted.
Abstract: In this paper, we have compared the performance of a Turbo and Trellis coded optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) system. The comparison of the two codes has been accomplished by employing optical orthogonal codes (OOCs). The Bit Error Rate (BER) performances have been compared by varying the code weights of address codes employed by the system. We have considered the effects of optical multiple access interference (OMAI), thermal noise and avalanche photodiode (APD) detector noise. Analysis has been carried out for the system with and without double optical hard limiter (DHL). From the simulation results it is observed that a better and distinct comparison can be drawn between the performance of Trellis and Turbo coded systems, at lower code weights of optical orthogonal codes for a fixed number of users. The BER performance of the Turbo coded system is found to be better than the Trellis coded system for all code weights that have been considered for the simulation. Nevertheless, the Trellis coded OCDMA system is found to be better than the uncoded OCDMA system. Trellis coded OCDMA can be used in systems where decoding time has to be kept low, bandwidth is limited and high reliability is not a crucial factor as in local area networks. Also the system hardware is less complex in comparison to the Turbo coded system. Trellis coded OCDMA system can be used without significant modification of the existing chipsets. Turbo-coded OCDMA can however be employed in systems where high reliability is needed and bandwidth is not a limiting factor.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to study motivation
factors affecting job performance effectiveness. This paper drew
upon data collected from an Internal Audit Staffs of Internal Audit
Line of Head Office of Krung Thai Public Company Limited.
Statistics used included frequency, percentage, mean and standard
deviation, t-test, and one-way ANOVA test. The finding revealed that
the majority of the respondents were female of 46 years of age and
over, married and live together, hold a bachelor degree, with an
average monthly income over 70,001 Baht. The majority of
respondents had over 15 years of work experience. They generally
had high working motivation as well as high job performance
effectiveness.
The hypotheses testing disclosed that employees with different
working status had different level of job performance effectiveness at
a 0.01 level of significance. Working motivation factors had an effect
on job performance in the same direction with high level. Individual
working motivation included working completion, reorganization,
working progression, working characteristic, opportunity,
responsibility, management policy, supervision, relationship with
their superior, relationship with co-worker, working position,
working stability, safety, privacy, working conditions, and payment.
All of these factors related to job performance effectiveness in the
same direction with medium level.
Abstract: An important step in three-dimensional reconstruction
and computer vision is camera calibration, whose objective is to
estimate the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of each camera. In this
paper, two linear methods based on the different planes are given. In
both methods, the general plane is used to replace the calibration
object with very good precision. In the first method, after controlling
the camera to undergo five times- translation movements and taking
pictures of the orthogonal planes, a set of linear constraints of the
camera intrinsic parameters is then derived by means of homography
matrix. The second method is to get all camera parameters by taking
only one picture of a given radius circle. experiments on simulated
data and real images,indicate that our method is reasonable and is a
good supplement to camera calibration.
Abstract: This paper presents a mark-up approach to service creation in Next Generation Networks. The approach allows deriving added value from network functions exposed by Parlay/OSA (Open Service Access) interfaces. With OSA interfaces service logic scripts might be executed both on callrelated and call-unrelated events. To illustrate the approach XMLbased language constructions for data and method definitions, flow control, time measuring and supervision and database access are given and an example of OSA application is considered.
Abstract: This article deals with the conceptual modeling under uncertainty. First, the division of information systems with their definition will be described, focusing on those where the construction of a conceptual model is suitable for the design of future information system database. Furthermore, the disadvantages of the traditional approach in creating a conceptual model and database design will be analyzed. A comprehensive methodology for the creation of a conceptual model based on analysis of client requirements and the selection of a suitable domain model is proposed here. This article presents the expert system used for the construction of a conceptual model and is a suitable tool for database designers to create a conceptual model.
Abstract: This research aims to study the preferable tourism and
the elements of choosing tourist destination from domestic tourist in
Bangkok and the nearby areas in Thailand.The data were collected by
using 1249 set of questionnaires, in mid-August 2012. The result
illustrates that religious destinations are the most preferable places
for the tourist. The average expense per travel is approximately 47
USD a time. Travellers travel based on the advertisement in the
television and internet and their decisions is based on the reputation
of the destinations.
The result on a place dimension demonstrates the neatness and
well managed location play a crucial role on tourist destination.
Gender, age, marriage status and their origins are affecting their
spending and travelling behaviour. The researcher reckon that
providing the area of arcade, selling the souvenir and promoting
tourism among a young professional group would be an important
key follow the income distribution policy, including managing the
destination to welcome the family group, which the result is to
identified as the highest spending.
Abstract: In the micro and nano-technology industry, the
«clean-rooms» dedicated to manufacturing chip, are equipped with
the most sophisticated equipment-tools. There use a large number of
resources in according to strict specifications for an optimum
working and result. The distribution of «utilities» to the production is
assured by teams who use a supervision tool.
The studies show the interest to control the various parameters of
production or/and distribution, in real time, through a reliable and
effective supervision tool. This document looks at a large part of the
functions that the supervisor must assure, with complementary
functionalities to help the diagnosis and simulation that prove very
useful in our case where the supervised installations are complexed
and in constant evolution.
Abstract: Along with the increased morbidity of glaucoma or
diabetic retinitis pigmentosa, etc., number of people with vision loss is
also increasing in Japan. It is difficult for the visually impaired to learn
and acquire braille because most of them are middle-aged. In addition,
number of braille teachers are not sufficient and reducing in Japan, and
this situation makes more difficult for the visually impaired. Therefore,
we research and develop a Web-based e-learning program for tactile
braille, that cooperate with braille display and voice assistance.
Abstract: The world of wireless telecommunications is rapidly evolving. Technologies under research and development promise to deliver more services to more users in less time. This paper presents the emerging technologies helping wireless systems grow from where we are today into our visions of the future. This paper will cover the applications and characteristics of emerging wireless technologies: Wireless Local Area Networks (WiFi-802.11n), Wireless Personal Area Networks (ZigBee) and Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WiMAX). The purpose of this paper is to explain the impending 802.11n standard and how it will enable WLANs to support emerging media-rich applications. The paper will also detail how 802.11n compares with existing WLAN standards and offer strategies for users considering higher-bandwidth alternatives. The emerging IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) standard aims to provide low data rate wireless communications with high-precision ranging and localization, by employing UWB technologies for a low-power and low cost solution. WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a standard for wireless data transmission covering a range similar to cellular phone towers. With high performance in both distance and throughput, WiMAX technology could be a boon to current Internet providers seeking to become the leader of next generation wireless Internet access. This paper also explores how these emerging technologies differ from one another.
Abstract: This essay endeavors to read Ama Ata Aidoo-s Our Sister Killjoy with a postocolonially-inflected consciousness. It aims at demonstrating how her work could be read as a sophisticated postcolonial revision of the colonial travel narrative whereby the protagonist-s black-eyed squint operates as 'the all-seeing-eye' to subvert the historically unbroken legacy of the Orientalist ideology. It tries to demonstrate how Sissie assumes authority and voice in an act that destabilizes the traditionally established modes of western representation. It is also an investigation into how Aidoo-s text adopts processes which disengage the Eurocentric view produced by the discursive itineraries of western institutions through diverse acts of resistance and 'various strategies of subversion and appropriation'. Her counter discursive strategies of resistance are shaped up in various ways by a feminist consciousness that attempts to articulate a distinct African version of identity and preserve cultural distinctiveness.
Abstract: Selected Mapping (SLM) is a PAPR reduction technique, which converts the OFDM signal into several independent signals by multiplication with the phase sequence set and transmits one of the signals with lowest PAPR. But it requires the index of the selected signal i.e. side information (SI) to be transmitted with each OFDM symbol. The PAPR reduction capability of the SLM scheme depends on the selection of phase sequence set. In this paper, we have proposed a new phase sequence set generation scheme based on M-ary chaotic sequence and a mapping scheme to map quaternary data to concentric circle constellation (CCC) is used. It is shown that this method does not require SI and provides better SER performance with good PAPR reduction capability as compared to existing SLMOFDM methods.