Abstract: This paper proposes the stochastic tabu search (STS)
for improving the measurement scheme for power system state
estimation. If the original measured scheme is not observable, the
additional measurements with minimum number of measurements are
added into the system by STS so that there is no critical measurement
pair. The random bit flipping and bit exchanging perturbations are
used for generating the neighborhood solutions in STS. The Pδ
observable concept is used to determine the network observability.
Test results of 10 bus, IEEE 14 and 30 bus systems are shown that
STS can improve the original measured scheme to be observable
without critical measurement pair. Moreover, the results of STS are
superior to deterministic tabu search (DTS) in terms of the best
solution hit.
Abstract: In this study, the ability of Aspergillus niger and
Penicillium simplicissimum to extract heavy metals from a spent
refinery catalyst was investigated. For the first step, a spent
processing catalyst from one of the oil refineries in Iran was
physically and chemically characterized. Aspergillus niger and
Penicillium simplicissimum were used to mobilize Al/Co/Mo/Ni from
hazardous spent catalysts. The fungi were adapted to the mixture of
metals at 100-800 mg L-1 with increments in concentration of 100 mg
L-1. Bioleaching experiments were carried out in batch cultures. To
investigate the production of organic acids in sucrose medium,
analyses of the culture medium by HPLC were performed at specific
time intervals after inoculation. The results obtained from Inductive
coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) showed
that after the one-step bioleaching process using Aspergillus niger,
maximum removal efficiencies of 27%, 66%, 62% and 38% were
achieved for Al, Co, Mo and Ni, respectively. However, the highest
removal efficiencies using Penicillium simplicissimum were of 32%,
67%, 65% and 38% for Al, Co, Mo and Ni, respectively
Abstract: In this article we present a change point detection algorithm based on the continuous wavelet transform. At the beginning of the article we describe a necessary transformation of a signal which has to be made for the purpose of change detection. Then case study related to iron ore sinter production which can be solved using our proposed technique is discussed. After that we describe a probabilistic algorithm which can be used to find changes using our transformed signal. It is shown that our algorithm works well with the presence of some noise and abnormal random bursts.
Abstract: In the visual servoing systems, the data obtained by
Visionary is used for controlling robots. In this project, at first the
simulator which was proposed for simulating the performance of a
6R robot before, was examined in terms of software and test, and in
the proposed simulator, existing defects were obviated. In the first
version of simulation, the robot was directed toward the target object only in a Position-based method using two cameras in the
environment. In the new version of the software, three cameras were used simultaneously. The camera which is installed as eye-inhand on the end-effector of the robot is used for visual servoing in a
Feature-based method. The target object is recognized according to
its characteristics and the robot is directed toward the object in compliance with an algorithm similar to the function of human-s
eyes. Then, the function and accuracy of the operation of the robot are examined through Position-based visual servoing method using
two cameras installed as eye-to-hand in the environment. Finally, the obtained results are tested under ANSI-RIA R15.05-2 standard.
Abstract: Insect pests are the major source of crop
damage, yield and quality reduction in Pakistan and else
where in the world. Cotton crop is the most hit crop in
Pakistan followed by rice and the second most important
foreign exchange earning crop. A wide variety of staple,
horticultural and cash crops grown, reflect serious problems of
many types of insect pests. To overcome the insect pest
problem, pesticide use in Pakistan has increased substantially
which has now been further intensified. Pesticides worth more
than billions of rupees are imported every year. This paper
reviews the over all pesticide use in Pakistan in relation to
pesticide prices, support price of cotton and rice, pesticide use
in different provinces of Pakistan on different crops and their
impact on crop productivity. The environmental pollution
caused by the use of pesticides, contamination of soil and
water resources and the danger associated with the disposal of
their empty containers is also discussed in detail.
Abstract: Modern manufacturing facilities are large scale,
highly complex, and operate with large number of variables under
closed loop control. Early and accurate fault detection and diagnosis
for these plants can minimise down time, increase the safety of plant
operations, and reduce manufacturing costs. Fault detection and
isolation is more complex particularly in the case of the faulty analog
control systems. Analog control systems are not equipped with
monitoring function where the process parameters are continually
visualised. In this situation, It is very difficult to find the relationship
between the fault importance and its consequences on the product
failure. We consider in this paper an approach to fault detection and
analysis of its effect on the production quality using an adaptive
centring and scaling in the pickling process in cold rolling. The fault
appeared on one of the power unit driving a rotary machine, this
machine can not track a reference speed given by another machine.
The length of metal loop is then in continuous oscillation, this affects
the product quality. Using a computerised data acquisition system,
the main machine parameters have been monitored. The fault has
been detected and isolated on basis of analysis of monitored data.
Normal and faulty situation have been obtained by an artificial neural
network (ANN) model which is implemented to simulate the normal
and faulty status of rotary machine. Correlation between the product
quality defined by an index and the residual is used to quality
classification.
Abstract: Mass-mail type worms have threatened to become a large problem for the Internet. Although many researchers have analyzed such worms, there are few studies that consider worm propagation via mailing lists. In this paper, we present a mass-mailing type worm propagation model including the mailing list effect on the propagation. We study its propagation by simulation with a real e¬mail social network model. We show that the impact of the mailing list on the mass-mail worm propagation is significant, even if the mailing list is not large.
Abstract: This paper outlines the development of a learning retrieval agent. Task of this agent is to extract knowledge of the Active Semantic Network in respect to user-requests. Based on a reinforcement learning approach, the agent learns to interpret the user-s intention. Especially, the learning algorithm focuses on the retrieval of complex long distant relations. Increasing its learnt knowledge with every request-result-evaluation sequence, the agent enhances his capability in finding the intended information.
Abstract: Liquidity risk management ranks to key concepts
applied in finance. Liquidity is defined as a capacity to obtain
funding when needed, while liquidity risk means as a threat to this
capacity to generate cash at fair costs. In the paper we present
challenges of liquidity risk management resulting from the 2007-
2009 global financial upheaval. We see five main regulatory
liquidity risk management issues requiring revision in coming
years: liquidity measurement, intra-day and intra-group liquidity
management, contingency planning and liquidity buffers, liquidity
systems, controls and governance, and finally models testing the
viability of business liquidity models.
Abstract: It is necessary to incorporate technological advances
achieved in the field of engineering into dentistry in order to enhance
the process of diagnosis, treatment planning and enable the doctors to
render better treatment to their patients. To achieve this ultimate goal
long distance collaborations are often necessary. This paper discusses
the various collaborative tools and their applications to solve a few
burning problems confronted by the dentists. Customization is often
the solution to most of the problems. But rapid designing,
development and cost effective manufacturing is a difficult task to
achieve. This problem can be solved using the technique of digital
manufacturing. Cases from 6 major branches of dentistry have been
discussed and possible solutions with the help of state of art
technology using rapid digital manufacturing have been proposed in
the present paper. The paper also entails the usage of existing tools in
collaborative and digital manufacturing area.
Abstract: The security of computer networks plays a strategic
role in modern computer systems. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)
act as the 'second line of defense' placed inside a protected
network, looking for known or potential threats in network traffic
and/or audit data recorded by hosts. We developed an Intrusion
Detection System using LAMSTAR neural network to learn patterns
of normal and intrusive activities, to classify observed system
activities and compared the performance of LAMSTAR IDS with
other classification techniques using 5 classes of KDDCup99 data.
LAMSAR IDS gives better performance at the cost of high
Computational complexity, Training time and Testing time, when
compared to other classification techniques (Binary Tree classifier,
RBF classifier, Gaussian Mixture classifier). we further reduced the
Computational Complexity of LAMSTAR IDS by reducing the
dimension of the data using principal component analysis which in
turn reduces the training and testing time with almost the same
performance.
Abstract: Milk from differently fed cows (supplemented with carotenoids from carrots or palm oil product Carotino CAF 100) was obtained in a conventional dairy farm to assess the carotenoid potential to protect milk fat against oxidation. The extracted anhydrous milk fat (AMF) was tested by peroxide value, and Rancimat tests. Temperature, and light stimulation for reaction acceleration was used. The oxidative stability enhancement by carotenoids was detected in peroxide value test – the strongest effect was observed in palm oil, following by carrot supplemented group, compared to control group, whose feed was unchanged. Rancimat accelerated oxidation test results did not show any superiority of the oxidative stability of the AMF samples from milk of the carotenoidsupplemented cow groups. The average oxidation stability of AMF dark-stored samples was 12.59 ± 0.294 h, and it was significantly (p < 0.05) higher than that of AMF light-affected samples, i.e. 2.60 ± 0.191 h.
Abstract: The aim of this work is to study the possible use of
stone cutting sludge waste in concrete production, which would
reduce both the environmental impact and the production cost .Slurry
sludge was used a source of water in concrete production, which was
obtained from Samara factory/Jordan, The physico-chemical and
mineralogical characterization of the sludge was carried out to
identify the major components and to compare it with the typical
sand used to produce concrete. Samples analysis showed that 96% of
slurry sludge volume is water, so it should be considered as an
important source of water. Results indicated that the use of slurry
sludge as water source in concrete production has insignificant effect
on compression strength, while it has a sharp effect on the slump
values. Using slurry sludge with a percentage of 25% of the total
water content obtained successful concrete samples regarding slump
and compression tests. To clarify slurry sludge, settling process can
be used to remove the suspended solid. A settling period of 30 min.
obtained 99% removal efficiency. The clarified water is suitable for
using in concrete mixes, which reduce water consumption, conserve
water recourses, increase the profit, reduce operation cost and save
the environment. Additionally, the dry sludge could be used in the
mix design instead of the fine materials with sizes < 160 um. This
application could conserve the natural materials and solve the
environmental and economical problem caused by sludge
accumulation.
Abstract: Tourism is a phenomenon respected by the human communities since a long time ago. It has been evoloving continually based on a variety of social and economic needs and with respect to increasingly development of communication and considerable increase of tourist-s number and resulted exchange income has attained much out come such as employment for the communities. or the purpose of tourism development in this zone suitable times and locations need to be specified in the zone for the tourist-s attendance. One of the most important needs of the tourists is the knowledge of climate conditions and suitable times for sightseeing. In this survey, the climate trend condition has been identified for attending the tourists in Isfahan province using the modified tourism climate index (TCI) as well as SPSS, GIS, excel, surfer softwares. This index evoluates systematically the climate conditions for tourism affairs and activities using the monthly maximum mean parameters of daily temperature, daily mean temperature, minimum relative humidity, daily mean relative humidity, precipitation (mm), total sunny hours, wind speed and dust. The results obtaind using kendal-s correlation test show that the months January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December are significant and have an increasing trend that indicates the best condition for attending the tourists. S, P, T mean , T max and dust are estimated from 1976-2005 and do kendal-s correlation test again to see which parameter has been effective. Based on the test, we also observed on the effective parameters that the rate of dust in February, March, April, May, June, July, August, October and November is decreasing and precipitation in September and January is increasing and also the radiation rate in May and August is increasing that indicate a better condition of convenience. Maximum temperature in June is also decreasing. Isfahan province has two spring and fall peaks and the best places for tourism are in the north and western areas.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to synthesize the single
walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and determine their hydrogen
storage capacities. SWCNTs were firstly synthesized by chemical
vapor deposition (CVD) of acetylene (C2H2) on a magnesium oxide
(MgO) powder impregnated with an iron nitrate (Fe(NO3)3·9H2O)
solution. The synthesis parameters were selected as: the synthesis
temperature of 800°C, the iron content in the precursor of 5% and the
synthesis time of 30 min. Purification process of SWCNTs was
fulfilled by microwave digestion at three different temperatures (120,
150 and 200 °C), three different acid concentrations (0.5, 1 and 1.5
M) and for three different time intervals (15, 30 and 60 min). Nitric
acid (HNO3) was used in the removal of the metal catalysts. The
hydrogen storage capacities of the purified materials were measured
using volumetric method at the liquid nitrogen temperature and gas
pressure up to 100 bar. The effects of the purification conditions such
as temperature, time and acid concentration on hydrogen adsorption
were investigated.
Abstract: Multicast transmissions allow an host (the source) to send only one flow bound for a group of hosts (the receivers). Any equipment eager to belong to the group may explicitly register itself to that group via its multicast router. This router will be given the responsibility to convey all information relating to the group to all registered hosts. However in an environment in which the final receiver or the source frequently moves, the multicast flows need particular treatment. This constitutes one of the multicast transmissions problems around which several proposals were made in the Mobile IPv6 case in general. In this article, we describe the problems involved in this IPv6 multicast mobility and the existing proposals for their resolution. Then architecture will be proposed aiming to satisfy and optimize these transmissions in the specific case of a mobile multicast receiver in NC-HMIPv6 environment.
Abstract: This study aimed to develop and initially validate an instrument that measures social competency among tertiary level faculty members. A review of extant literature on social competence was done. The review of extant literature led to the writing of the items in the initial instrument which was evaluated by 11 Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The SMEs were either educators or psychologists. The results of the evaluations done by the SMEs served as bases for the creation of the pre-try-out instrument used in the first trial-run. Insights from the first trial-run participants led to the development of the main try-out instrument used in the final test administration. One Hundred Forty-one participants from five private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the National Capital Region (NCR) and five private HEIs in Central Luzon in the Philippines participated in the final test administration. The reliability of the instrument was evaluated using Cronbach-s Coefficient Alpha formula and had a Cronbach-s Alpha of 0.92. On the other hand, Factor Analysis was used to evaluate the validity of the instrument and six factors were identified. The development of the final instrument was based on the results of the evaluation of the instrument-s reliability and validity. For purposes of recognition, the instrument was named “Social Competency Inventory for Tertiary Level Faculty Members (SCI-TLFM)."
Abstract: Supply chain consists of all stages involved, directly
or indirectly, includes all functions involved in fulfilling a customer
demand. In two stage transportation supply chain problem,
transportation costs are of a significant proportion of final product
costs. It is often crucial for successful decisions making approaches
in two stage supply chain to explicit account for non-linear
transportation costs. In this paper, deterministic demand and finite
supply of products was considered. The optimized distribution level
and the routing structure from the manufacturing plants to the
distribution centres and to the end customers is determined using
developed mathematical model and solved by proposed particle
swarm optimization based genetic algorithm. Numerical analysis of
the case study is carried out to validate the model.
Abstract: The rheological properties of light crude oil and its mixture with water were investigated experimentally. These rheological properties include steady flow behavior, yield stress, transient flow behavior, and viscoelastic behavior. A RheoStress RS600 rheometer was employed in all of the rheological examination tests. The light crude oil exhibits a Newtonian and for emulsion exhibits a non-Newtonian shear thinning behavior over the examined shear rate range of 0.1–120 s-1. In first time, a series of samples of crude oil from the Algerian Sahara has been tested and the results expressed in terms of τ=f(γ) have demonstrated their Newtonian character for the temperature included in [20°C, 70°C]. In second time and at T=20°C, the oil-water emulsions (30%, 50% and 70%) by volume of water), thermodynamically stable, have demonstrated a non-Newtonian rheological behavior that is to say, Herschel-Bulkley and Bingham types. For each type of crude oil-water emulsion, the rheological parameters are calculated by numerical treatment of results.
Abstract: The extensive number of engineering drawing will be referred for planning process and the changes will produce a good engineering design to meet the demand in producing a new model. The advantage in reuse of engineering designs is to allow continuous product development to further improve the quality of product development, thus reduce the development costs. However, to retrieve the existing engineering drawing, it is time consuming, a complex process and are expose to errors. Engineering drawing file searching system will be proposed to solve this problem. It is essential for engineer and designer to have some sort of medium to enable them to search for drawing in the most effective way. This paper lays out the proposed research project under the area of information extraction in engineering drawing.