Abstract: 20 years of dentistry was a period of transition from
communist to market economy but Romanian doctors have
insufficient management knowledge. Recently, the need for modern
management has increased due to technologies and superior materials
appearance, as patient-s demands.
Research goal is to increase efficiency by evaluating dental
medical office cost categories in real pricing procedures.
Empirical research is based on guided study that includes
information about the association between categories of cost
perception and therapeutic procedures commonly used in dental
offices.
Due to the obtained results to identify all the labours that make up
a settled procedure costs were determined for each procedure.
Financial evaluation software was created with the main functions:
introducing and maintaining patient records, treatment and
appointments made, procedures cost and monitoring office
productivity.
We believe that the study results can significantly improve the
financial management of dental offices, increasing the effectiveness
and quality of services.
Abstract: The high temperature degree and uniform
Temperature Distribution (TD) on surface of cookware which contact
with food are effective factors for improving cookware application.
Additionally, the ability of pan material in retaining the heat and nonreactivity
with foods are other significant properties. It is difficult for
single material to meet a wide variety of demands such as superior
thermal and chemical properties. Multi-Layer Plate (MLP) makes
more regular TD. In this study the main objectives are to find the best
structure (single or multi-layer) and materials to provide maximum
temperature degree and uniform TD up side surface of pan. And also
heat retaining of used metals with goal of improving the thermal
quality of pan to economize the energy. To achieve this aim were
employed Finite Element Method (FEM) for analyzing transient
thermal behavior of applied materials. The analysis has been
extended for different metals, we achieved the best temperature
profile and heat retaining in Copper/ Stainless Steel MLP.
Abstract: A new generation of manufacturing machines
so-called MIMCA (modular and integrated machine control
architecture) capable of handling much increased complexity in
manufacturing control-systems is presented. Requirement for more
flexible and effective control systems for manufacturing machine
systems is investigated and dimensioned-which highlights a need for
improved means of coordinating and monitoring production
machinery and equipment used to- transport material. The MIMCA
supports simulation based on machine modeling, was conceived by
the authors to address the issues. Essentially MIMCA comprises an
organized unification of selected architectural frameworks and
modeling methods, which include: NISTRCS, UMC and Colored
Timed Petri nets (CTPN). The unification has been achieved; to
support the design and construction of hierarchical and distributed
machine control which realized the concurrent operation of reusable
and distributed machine control components; ability to handle
growing complexity; and support requirements for real- time control
systems. Thus MIMCA enables mapping between 'what a machine
should do' and 'how the machine does it' in a well-defined but
flexible way designed to facilitate reconfiguration of machine
systems.
Abstract: High strength concrete has been used in situations
where it may be exposed to elevated temperatures. Numerous authors
have shown the significant contribution of polypropylene fiber to the
spalling resistance of high strength concrete.
When cement-based composite that reinforced by polypropylene
fibers heated up to 170 °C, polypropylene fibers readily melt and
volatilize, creating additional porosity and small channels in to the
matrix that cause the poor structure and low strength.
This investigation develops on the mechanical properties of mortar
incorporating polypropylene fibers exposed to high temperature.
Also effects of different pozzolans on strength behaviour of samples
at elevated temperature have been studied.
To reach this purpose, the specimens were produced by partial
replacement of cement with finely ground glass, silica fume and rice
husk ash as high reactive pozzolans. The amount of this replacement
was 10% by weight of cement to find the effects of pozzolans as a
partial replacement of cement on the mechanical properties of
mortars. In this way, lots of mixtures with 0%, 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% of
polypropylene fibers were cast and tested for compressive and
flexural strength, accordance to ASTM standard. After that
specimens being heated to temperatures of 300, 600 °C, respectively,
the mechanical properties of heated samples were tested.
Mechanical tests showed significant reduction in compressive
strength which could be due to polypropylene fiber melting. Also
pozzolans improve the mechanical properties of sampels.
Abstract: Use of fly ash as a supplementary cementing material
in large volumes can bring both technological and economic benefits
for concrete industry. In this investigation mix proportions for high
volume fly ash concrete were determined at cement replacement
levels of 50%, 55%, 60% and 65% with low calcium fly ash. Flexural
and compressive strengths of different mixes were measured at ages
of 7, 28 and 90 days. Flexural strength of composite section prepared
from pavement quality and lean high volume fly ash concrete was
determined at the age of 28 days. High volume fly ash concrete mixes
exhibited higher rate of strength gain and age factors than
corresponding reference concrete mixes. The optimum cement
replacement level for pavement quality concrete was found to be
60%. The consideration of bond between pavement quality and lean
of high volume fly ash concrete will be beneficial in design of rigid
pavements.
Abstract: This study analyzes the effect of discretization on
classification of datasets including continuous valued features. Six
datasets from UCI which containing continuous valued features are
discretized with entropy-based discretization method. The
performance improvement between the dataset with original features
and the dataset with discretized features is compared with k-nearest
neighbors, Naive Bayes, C4.5 and CN2 data mining classification
algorithms. As the result the classification accuracies of the six
datasets are improved averagely by 1.71% to 12.31%.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the use of project work as a
pretext for applying the conventions of writing, or the correctness of
mechanics, usage, and sentence formation, in a content-based class in
a Rajabhat University. Its aim was to explore to what extent the
student teachers’ academic achievement of the basic writing features
against the 70% attainment target after the use of project is. The
organization of work around an agreed theme in which the students
reproduce language provided by texts and instructors is expected to
enhance students’ correct writing conventions. The sample of the
study comprised of 38 fourth-year English major students. The data
was collected by means of achievement test and student writing
works. The scores in the summative achievement test were analyzed
by mean score, standard deviation, and percentage. It was found that
the student teachers do more achieve of practicing mechanics and
usage, and less in sentence formation. The students benefited from
the exposure to texts during conducting the project; however, their
automaticity of how and when to form phrases and clauses into
simple/complex sentences had room for improvement.
Abstract: A macroscopic constitutive equation is developed for a high-density cellulose insulation material with emphasis on the outof- plane stress relaxation behavior. A hypothesis is proposed where the total stress is additively composed by an out-of-plane visco-elastic isotropic contribution and an in-plane elastic orthotropic response. The theory is validated against out-of-plane stress relaxation, compressive experiments and in-plane tensile hysteresis, respectively. For large scale finite element simulations, the presented model provides a balance between simplicity and capturing the materials constitutive behaviour.
Abstract: The effectiveness of consuming a nutrient fortified oat drink on iron, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin C status was assessed among a cohort of school-aged Filipino children. Ultimate study implementation permitted only a within-subject comparison of change in nutritional status after four months of consuming a nutrient fortified oat drink. Thirty-eight anemic children (5-8 years) consumed an oat drink fortified with iron as NaFeEDTA, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin C for 120 days. Height, weight, serum nutrient levels, anemia status and dietary intake were assessed pre and post intervention. Thirty-four anemic children completed the intervention. After 4 months of intervention, prevalence of anemia decreased by 68% and significant improvements in iron and vitamin A status were observed. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the fortified oat drink in alleviating anemia in young children and highlight the value of fortification programs
Abstract: The paper presents a multimodal approach for biometric authentication, based on multiple classifiers. The proposed solution uses a post-classification biometric fusion method in which the biometric data classifiers outputs are combined in order to improve the overall biometric system performance by decreasing the classification error rates. The paper shows also the biometric recognition task improvement by means of a carefully feature selection, as much as not all of the feature vectors components support the accuracy improvement.
Abstract: Concatenative speech synthesis is a method that can
make speech sound which has naturalness and high-individuality of a
speaker by introducing a large speech corpus. Based on this method, in
this paper, we propose a voice conversion method whose conversion
speech has high-individuality and naturalness. The authors also have
two subjective evaluation experiments for evaluating individuality and
sound quality of conversion speech. From the results, following three
facts have be confirmed: (a) the proposal method can convert the
individuality of speakers well, (b) employing the framework of unit
selection (especially join cost) of concatenative speech synthesis into
conventional voice conversion improves the sound quality of
conversion speech, and (c) the proposal method is robust against the
difference of genders between a source speaker and a target speaker.
Abstract: This paper describes the crashworthiness assessment and improvement of tlting train made of sandwich composites. The crashworhiness assessment of tilting train was conducted according to four collision scenarios of the Korean railway safety law. Collision analysis was carried out using explicit finite element analysis code LS-DYNA 3D. The finite element model consists of 3-D finite element model and 1-D equivalent model to save the finite element modeling and calculation time. It found that the crashworthiness analysis results were satisfied with the performance requirements except the crash scenario-2. In order to meet the crashworthiness requirements for crash scenario-2, the stiffness reinforcement for the laminate composite cover and metal frames of cabmask structure were proposed. Consequentially, it has satisfied the requirement for crash scenario-2.
Abstract: A design flow of multi-standard down-conversion
CMOS mixers for three modern standards: Global System Mobile,
Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone and Universal Mobile
Telecommunication Systems is presented. Three active mixer-s
structures are studied. The first is based on the Gilbert cell which
gives a tolerable noise figure and linearity with a low conversion
gain. The second and third structures use the current bleeding and
charge injection techniques in order to increase the conversion gain.
An improvement of about 2 dB of the conversion gain is achieved
without a considerable degradation of the other characteristics. The
models used for noise figure, conversion gain and IIP3 used are
studied. This study describes the nature of trade-offs inherent in such
structures and gives insights that help in identifying which structure
is better for given conditions.
Abstract: The Tropical Data Hub (TDH) is a virtual research environment that provides researchers with an e-research infrastructure to congregate significant tropical data sets for data reuse, integration, searching, and correlation. However, researchers often require data and metadata synthesis across disciplines for crossdomain analyses and knowledge discovery. A triplestore offers a semantic layer to achieve a more intelligent method of search to support the synthesis requirements by automating latent linkages in the data and metadata. Presently, the benchmarks to aid the decision of which triplestore is best suited for use in an application environment like the TDH are limited to performance. This paper describes a new evaluation tool developed to analyze both features and performance. The tool comprises a weighted decision matrix to evaluate the interoperability, functionality, performance, and support availability of a range of integrated and native triplestores to rank them according to requirements of the TDH.
Abstract: Optimal routing in communication networks is a
major issue to be solved. In this paper, the application of Tabu Search
(TS) in the optimum routing problem where the aim is to minimize
the computational time and improvement of quality of the solution in
the communication have been addressed. The goal is to minimize the
average delays in the communication. The effectiveness of Tabu
Search method is shown by the results of simulation to solve the
shortest path problem. Through this approach computational cost can
be reduced.
Abstract: In this paper, genetic algorithm (GA) opmization technique is applied to design Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS)-based damping controllers. Two types of controller structures, namely a proportional-integral (PI) and a lead-lag (LL) are considered. The design problem of the proposed controllers is formulated as an optimization problem and GA is employed to search for optimal controller parameters. By minimizing the time-domain based objective function, in which the deviation in the oscillatory rotor speed of the generator is involved; stability performance of the system is improved. The proposed controllers are tested on a weakly connected power system subjected to different disturbances. The non-linear simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller and their ability to provide efficient damping of low frequency oscillations. It is also observed that the proposed SSSC-based controllers improve greatly the voltage profile of the system under severe disturbances. Further, the dynamic performances of both the PI and LL structured FACTS-controller are analyzed at different loading conditions and under various disturbance condition as well as under unbalanced fault conditions..
Abstract: Incremental forming is a complex forming process with
continuously local cumulative deformation taking place during its
process, and springback that forming quality affected by would occur.
The springback evaluation method based on forming error
compensation also was proposed, which it can be defined as the
difference between theory and the actual amount of compensation
along the measured direction. According to forming error
compensation evaluation method, experiments was designed and
implemented. And from the results that obtained it can be show, the
magnitude of springback average (δE) of formed parts was very small,
and the forming precision could be significantly improved by adopting
compensation method. Based on double tensile stress state in the main
deformation area, a hypothesis that there is little springback be arisen
by bending behavior on the formed parts that was proposed.
Abstract: To achieve reliable solutions, today-s numerical and
experimental activities need developing more accurate methods and
utilizing expensive facilities, respectfully in microchannels. The analytical
study can be considered as an alternative approach to alleviate
the preceding difficulties. Among the analytical solutions, those with
high robustness and low complexities are certainly more attractive.
The perturbation theory has been used by many researchers to analyze
microflows. In present work, a compressible microflow with constant
heat flux boundary condition is analyzed. The flow is assumed to be
fully developed and steady. The Mach and Reynolds numbers are also
assumed to be very small. For this case, the creeping phenomenon
may have some effect on the velocity profile. To achieve robustness
solution it is assumed that the flow is quasi-isothermal. In this study,
the creeping term which appears in the slip boundary condition
is formulated by different mathematical formulas. The difference
between this work and the previous ones is that the creeping term
is taken into account and presented in non-dimensionalized form.
The results obtained from perturbation theory are presented based
on four non-dimensionalized parameters including the Reynolds,
Mach, Prandtl and Brinkman numbers. The axial velocity, normal
velocity and pressure profiles are obtained. Solutions for velocities
and pressure for two cases with different Br numbers are compared
with each other and the results show that the effect of creeping
phenomenon on the velocity profile becomes more important when
Br number is less than O(ε).
Abstract: A Finite Volume method based on Characteristic Fluxes for compressible fluids is developed. An explicit cell-centered resolution is adopted, where second and third order accuracy is provided by using two different MUSCL schemes with Minmod, Sweby or Superbee limiters for the hyperbolic part. Few different times integrator is used and be describe in this paper. Resolution is performed on a generic unstructured Cartesian grid, where solid boundaries are handled by a Cut-Cell method. Interfaces are explicitely advected in a non-diffusive way, ensuring local mass conservation. An improved cell cutting has been developed to handle boundaries of arbitrary geometrical complexity. Instead of using a polygon clipping algorithm, we use the Voxel traversal algorithm coupled with a local floodfill scanline to intersect 2D or 3D boundary surface meshes with the fixed Cartesian grid. Small cells stability problem near the boundaries is solved using a fully conservative merging method. Inflow and outflow conditions are also implemented in the model. The solver is validated on 2D academic test cases, such as the flow past a cylinder. The latter test cases are performed both in the frame of the body and in a fixed frame where the body is moving across the mesh. Adaptive Cartesian grid is provided by Paramesh without complex geometries for the moment.
Abstract: In this paper, a new Genetic Algorithm (GA) based
methodology is proposed to optimize the Degree of Hybridization
(DOH) in a passenger parallel hybrid car. At first step, target
parameters for the vehicle are decided and then using ADvanced
VehIcle SimulatOR (ADVISOR) software, the variation pattern of
these target parameters, across the different DOHs, is extracted. At
the next step, a suitable cost function is defined and is optimized
using GA. In this paper, also a new technique has been proposed for
deciding the number of battery modules for each DOH, which leads
to a great improvement in the vehicle performance. The proposed
methodology is so simple, fast and at the same time, so efficient.