Abstract: Multispectral screening systems are becoming more
popular because of their very interesting properties and applications.
One of the most significant applications of multispectral screening
systems is prevention of terrorist attacks. There are many kinds of
threats and many methods of detection. Visual detection of objects
hidden under clothing of a person is one of the most challenging
problems of threats detection. There are various solutions of the
problem; however, the most effective utilize multispectral
surveillance imagers. The development of imaging devices and
exploration of new spectral bands is a chance to introduce new
equipment for assuring public safety. We investigate the possibility
of long lasting detection of potentially dangerous objects covered
with various types of clothing. In the article we present the results of
comparative studies of passive imaging in three spectrums – visible,
infrared and terahertz.
Abstract: Bone properties and response behavior after static or
dynamic activation (loading) are still interesting topics in many fields
of the science especially in the biomechanical problems such as bone
loss of astronauts in space, osteoporosis, bone remodeling after
fracture or remodeling after surgery (endoprosthesis and implants)
and in osteointegration. This contribution deals with the relation
between physiological, demineralized and deproteinized state of the
turkey long bone – tibia. Three methods for comparison were used: 1)
densitometry, 2) three point bending and 3) frequency analysis. The
main goal of this work was to describe the decrease of the protein
(collagen) or mineral of the bone with relation to the fracture in three
point bending. The comparison is linked to the problem of different
bone mechanical behavior in physiological and osteoporotic state.
Abstract: Folic acid (FA) is known to be an important
supplement to prevent neural tube defect (NTD) in pregnant women.
Similar to some commercial formulations, sodium bicarbonate
solution is used as a solvent for FA. This work uses the antisolvent
vapour precipitation (AVP), incorporating ethanol vapour as the
convective drying medium in place of air to produce branch-like
micro-structure FA particles. Interestingly, the dissolution rate of the
resultant particle is 2-3 times better than the particle produce from
conventional air drying due to the higher surface area of particles
produced. The higher dissolution rate could possibly improve the
delivery and absorption of FA in human body. This application could
potentially be extended to other commercial products, particularly in
less soluble drugs to improve its solubility.
Abstract: The parameters of a two-layer soil can be determined by
processing resistivity data obtained from resistivity measurements
carried out on the soil of interest. The processing usually entails
applying the resistivity data as inputs to an optimisation function.
This paper proposes an algorithm which utilises the square error as an
optimisation function. Resistivity data from previous works were
applied to test the accuracy of the new algorithm developed and the
result obtained conforms significantly to results from previous works.
Abstract: The purpose of the present work is to review some
data for the management challenges that the aquaculture industry in
Greece is currently facing. The results indicate that Greek
aquaculture fish farms apply Human Resources Management (HRM)
practices which can increase motivation, commitment and job
satisfaction of their personnel. In turn, these practices can increase
the productivity of the business. The Greek fish farms appear to
invest in research and technological innovation with a good record in
research activities and the generation of patents. Interestingly, the
results of the present work were carried out during the period of the
recent economic crisis in Greece. Several sectors of the Greek
economy were severely affected by the financial problems of the
Greek government and the Greek banks. Under the adverse
economical conditions created by the Greek economic crisis, even the
Greek aquaculture industry, which historically is considered as a
thriving national exporting business sector, experienced harsh
economic and market conditions. As a result of the global, European
and national economic crisis, consumption of fish dropped while
companies had to hold most of their stocked fish in order to regulated
the flow to the market and the price. This occurred at a time where
Banks in Greece had their own financial crisis – banking crisis -
which resulted in limited access to lending for the all business sectors
of the national economy including the Greek aquaculture industry. In
spite of these economic conditions, the Greek aquaculture industry,
after a series of mergers and acquisitions, has now stabilized
production and exhibits very good prospects for future growth.
Evidently, the firms had to cut salaries and on some occasions even
pay their staff in arrears. Nevertheless, the results presented in this
paper indicate that during the economic crisis, the surveyed fish
farms maintained their HRM practices, investing in their human
capital and technological input. In fact, human capital and
technological input are the ticket for future success of companies in
any business sector.
Abstract: Identification and selection of appropriate product and
manufacturing technologies are key factors for competitiveness and
market success of technology-based companies. Therefore, many
companies perform technology intelligence (TI) activities to ensure
the identification of evolving technologies at the right time.
Technology monitoring is one of the three base activities of TI,
besides scanning and scouting.
As the technological progress is accelerating, more and more
technologies are being developed. Against the background of limited
resources it is therefore necessary to focus TI activities. In this paper
we propose a concept for defining appropriate search fields for
technology monitoring. This limitation of search space leads to more
concentrated monitoring activities. The concept will be introduced
and demonstrated through an anonymized case study conducted
within an industry project at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production
Technology IPT.
The described concept provides a customized monitoring
approach, which is suitable for use in technology-oriented companies.
It is shown in this paper that the definition of search fields and search
tasks are suitable methods to define topics of interest and thus to
align monitoring activities. Current as well as planned product,
production and material technologies and existing skills, capabilities
and resources form the basis for derivation of relevant search areas.
To further improve the concept of technology monitoring the
proposed concept should be extended during future research e.g. by
the definition of relevant monitoring parameters.
Abstract: This paper presents a comparison between using a
desktop web application and a mobile application for students
enrolling in courses at Rangsit University, Thailand. In addition,
Rangsit University has enhanced the enrollment process by
leveraging its information systems, which allows students to choose
to enroll in courses online. In order to use the system, students must
provide their identification and personal documents for registration.
The reason to have a mobile application is to support students’ ability
to access the system at anytime, anywhere and anyplace. The
objective of this paper was to: 1. Evaluate the success of developing a
user friendly mobile device system and 2. Measure user interest in
future mobile development.
Abstract: In this work, we propose the application of Japanese
“Origami” art for a floating function of a small aerial vehicle such as a
hexarotor. A preliminary experiment was conducted using Origami
magic balls mounted under a hexarotor. This magic ball can expand
and shrink using an air pump during free flying. Using this interesting
and functional concept, it promises to reduce the resistance of wind as
well as reduce the energy consumption when the Origami balls are
deflated. This approach can be particularly useful in rescue emergency
situations. Furthermore, there are many unexpected reasons that may
cause the multi-rotor has to land on the surface of water due to
problems with the communication between the aircraft and the ground
station. In addition, a complementary experiment was designed to
prove that the hexarotor can fly maintaining the stability and also,
takes off and lands on the surface of water using air balloons.
Abstract: The main objective of this study was to identify
factors and conditions that motivated and encouraged students
towards the math class and the factors that made this class an
attractive and lovely one. To do this end, questionnaires consisting of
15 questions were distributed among 85 math teachers working in
schools of Zahedan. Having collected and reviewed these
questionnaires, it was shown that doing activity in math class
(activity of students while teaching) and previous math teachers'
behaviors have had much impact on encouraging the students
towards mathematics. Separation of educational classroom of
mathematics from the main classroom (which is decorated with crafts
created by students themselves with regard to math book including
article, wall newspaper, figures and formulas), peers, size and
appearance of math book, first grade teachers in each educational
level, among whom the Elementary first grade teachers had more
importance and impact, were among the most influential and
important factors in this regard. Then, school environment, family,
conducting research related to mathematics, its application in daily
life and other courses and studying the history of mathematics were
categorized as important factors that would increase the students’
interest in mathematics.
Abstract: Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an ancient fruit of great medical interest and rich source of antioxidants. Pesticides as dimethoate play a crucial role in the occurrence many diseases in plants, animal and human. Therefore the ability of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) to alleviate hepatotoxicity induced by organophosphate pesticide dimethoate was investigated. Albino male rats were divided randomly into 4 groups and kept at 7 animals per group in an environmentally controlled condition for 6 weeks. The first group was served as a control group (basal diet), the second group fed on basal diet supplemented with 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds, the third group fed on 20 ppm dimethoate contaminated diet and the last group fed on dimethoate contaminated diet supplemented with 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds. The results revealed that administration of dimethoate caused high significant increased in liver functions: alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activities as well as lipid peroxide (malonaldhyde, MDA); on the other hand high significant decreased on glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), albumin and total protein were observed. However addition of 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds significantly improved all previously mentioned parameters. These results indicate the dimethoate induced hepatotoxicity and highlight the protective effect of pomegranate seeds as a potential protective agent against dimethoate induced hepatotoxicity. This may be attributed to the powerful antioxidants (polyphenols, total phenols, and total flavonoids) which present in high levels in pomegranate as well as improving the immunity by activation of antioxidant enzymes GSH and GPx.
Abstract: Among all FACTS devices, the unified power flow
controller (UPFC) is considered to be the most versatile device.
This is due to its capability to control all the transmission system
parameters (impedance, voltage magnitude, and phase angle). With
the growing interest in UPFC, the attention to develop a mathematical
model has increased. Several models were introduced for UPFC in
literature for different type of studies in power systems. In this paper
a novel comparison study between two dynamic models of UPFC
with their proposed control strategies.
Abstract: Recent perceived climate variability raises concerns
with unprecedented hydrological phenomena and extremes.
Distribution and circulation of the waters of the Earth become
increasingly difficult to determine because of additional uncertainty
related to anthropogenic emissions. The world wide observed
changes in the large-scale hydrological cycle have been related to an
increase in the observed temperature over several decades. Although
the effect of change in climate on hydrology provides a general
picture of possible hydrological global change, new tools and
frameworks for modelling hydrological series with nonstationary
characteristics at finer scales, are required for assessing climate
change impacts. Of the downscaling techniques, dynamic
downscaling is usually based on the use of Regional Climate Models
(RCMs), which generate finer resolution output based on atmospheric
physics over a region using General Circulation Model (GCM) fields
as boundary conditions. However, RCMs are not expected to capture
the observed spatial precipitation extremes at a fine cell scale or at a
basin scale. Statistical downscaling derives a statistical or empirical
relationship between the variables simulated by the GCMs, called
predictors, and station-scale hydrologic variables, called predictands.
The main focus of the paper is on the need for using statistical
downscaling techniques for projection of local hydrometeorological
variables under climate change scenarios. The projections can be then
served as a means of input source to various hydrologic models to
obtain streamflow, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and other
hydrological variables of interest.
Abstract: In many communication and signal processing
systems, it is highly desirable to implement an efficient narrow-band
filter that decimate or interpolate the incoming signals. This paper
presents hardware efficient compensated CIC filter over a narrow
band frequency that increases the speed of down sampling by using
multiplierless decimation filters with polyphase FIR filter structure.
The proposed work analyzed the performance of compensated CIC
filter on the bases of the improvement of frequency response with
reduced hardware complexity in terms of no. of adders and
multipliers and produces the filtered results without any alterations.
CIC compensator filter demonstrated that by using compensation
with CIC filter improve the frequency response in passed of interest
26.57% with the reduction in hardware complexity 12.25%
multiplications per input sample (MPIS) and 23.4% additions per
input sample (APIS) w.r.t. FIR filter respectively.
Abstract: Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs)
possess immunomodulatory properties. The effect of MSCs on the
crucial cellular immunity compartment – T-cells is of a special
interest. It is known that MSC tissue niche and expected milieu of
their interaction with T- cells are characterized by low oxygen
concentration, whereas the in vitro experiments usually are carried
out at a much higher ambient oxygen (20%). We firstly evaluated
immunomodulatory effects of MSCs on T-cells at tissue-related
oxygen (5%) after interaction implied cell-to-cell contacts and
paracrine factors only. It turned out that MSCs under reduced oxygen
can effectively suppress the activation and proliferation of PHAstimulated
T-cells and can provoke decrease in the production of
proinflammatory and increase in anti-inflammatory cytokines. In
hypoxia some effects were amplified (inhibition of proliferation, antiinflammatory
cytokine profile shift). This impact was more evident
after direct cell-to-cell interaction; lack of intercellular contacts could
revoke the potentiating effect of hypoxia.
Abstract: ‘Steganalysis’ is one of the challenging and attractive interests for the researchers with the development of information hiding techniques. It is the procedure to detect the hidden information from the stego created by known steganographic algorithm. In this paper, a novel feature based image steganalysis technique is proposed. Various statistical moments have been used along with some similarity metric. The proposed steganalysis technique has been designed based on transformation in four wavelet domains, which include Haar, Daubechies, Symlets and Biorthogonal. Each domain is being subjected to various classifiers, namely K-nearest-neighbor, K* Classifier, Locally weighted learning, Naive Bayes classifier, Neural networks, Decision trees and Support vector machines. The experiments are performed on a large set of pictures which are available freely in image database. The system also predicts the different message length definitions.
Abstract: The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Czech Republic has evolved notably during the last few years and an issue that started as an interest- and motive-based activity for businesses is becoming more commonplace. Governments have a role to play in ensuring that corporations behave according to the rules and norms of society and can legislate, foster, collaborate with businesses and endorse good practice in order to facilitate the development of CSR. The purpose of this paper is to examine the opportunities and options of CSR in government policy and research its relevance to a business sector. An increasing number of companies is engaging in responsible activities, the public awareness of CSR is rising, and customers are giving higher importance to CSR of companies in their choice. By drawing on existing CSR approach in Czech and understanding of CSR are demonstrated. The paper provides an overview, more detailed government approach of CSR.
Abstract: Turbulent flow in complex geometries receives considerable attention due to its importance in many engineering applications. It has been the subject of interest for many researchers. Some of these interests include the design of storm water channels. The design of these channels requires testing through physical models. The main practical limitation of physical models is the so called “scale effect”, that is, the fact that in many cases only primary physical mechanisms can be correctly represented, while secondary mechanisms are often distorted. These observations form the basis of our study, which centered on problems associated with the design of storm water channels near the Dead Sea, in Israel. To help reach a final design decision we used different physical models. Our research showed good coincidence with the results of laboratory tests and theoretical calculations, and allowed us to study different effects of fluid flow in an open channel. We determined that problems of this nature cannot be solved only by means of theoretical calculation and computer simulation. This study demonstrates the use of physical models to help resolve very complicated problems of fluid flow through baffles and similar structures. The study applies these models and observations to different construction and multiphase water flows, among them, those that include sand and stone particles, a significant attempt to bring to the testing laboratory a closer association with reality.
Abstract: This paper proposes a complementary combination scheme of affine projection algorithm (APA) filters with different order of input regressors. A convex combination provides an interesting way to keep the advantage of APA having different order of input regressors. Consequently, a novel APA which has the rapid convergence and the reduced steady-state error is derived. Experimental results show the good properties of the proposed algorithm.
Abstract: Metal matrix composites (MMCs) have gained a
considerable interest in the last three decades. Conventional powder
metallurgy production route often involves the addition of reinforcing
phases into the metal matrix directly, which leads to poor wetting
behavior between ceramic phase and metal matrix and the
segregation of reinforcements. The commonly used elements for
ceramic phase formation in iron based MMCs are Ti, Nb, Mo, W, V
and C, B. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the effect of
sintering temperature and V-B addition on densification, phase
development, microstructure, and hardness of Fe–V-B composites
(Fe-(5-10) wt. %B – 25 wt. %V alloys) prepared by powder
metallurgy process. Metal powder mixes were pressed uniaxial and
sintered at different temperatures (ranging from 1300 to 1400ºC) for
1h. The microstructure of the (V, B) Fe composites was studied with
the help of high magnification optical microscope and XRD.
Experimental results show that (V, B) Fe composites can be produced
by conventional powder metallurgy route.
Abstract: Advances in the field of image processing envision a
new era of evaluation techniques and application of procedures in
various different fields. One such field being considered is the
biomedical field for prognosis as well as diagnosis of diseases. This
plethora of methods though provides a wide range of options to select
from, it also proves confusion in selecting the apt process and also in
finding which one is more suitable. Our objective is to use a series of
techniques on bone scans, so as to detect the occurrence of
rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as accurately as possible. Amongst other
techniques existing in the field our proposed system tends to be more
effective as it depends on new methodologies that have been proved
to be better and more consistent than others. Computer aided
diagnosis will provide more accurate and infallible rate of
consistency that will help to improve the efficiency of the system.
The image first undergoes histogram smoothing and specification,
morphing operation, boundary detection by edge following algorithm
and finally image subtraction to determine the presence of
rheumatoid arthritis in a more efficient and effective way. Using preprocessing
noises are removed from images and using segmentation,
region of interest is found and Histogram smoothing is applied for a
specific portion of the images. Gray level co-occurrence matrix
(GLCM) features like Mean, Median, Energy, Correlation, Bone
Mineral Density (BMD) and etc. After finding all the features it
stores in the database. This dataset is trained with inflamed and noninflamed
values and with the help of neural network all the new
images are checked properly for their status and Rough set is
implemented for further reduction.