Abstract: This article describes Uruk, the virtual museum of
Iraq that we developed for visual exploration and retrieval of image
collections. The system largely exploits the loosely-structured
hierarchy of XML documents that provides a useful representation
method to store semi-structured or unstructured data, which does not
easily fit into existing database. The system offers users the
capability to mine and manage the XML-based image collections
through a web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). Typically, at an
interactive session with the system, the user can browse a visual
structural summary of the XML database in order to select interesting
elements. Using this intermediate result, queries combining structure
and textual references can be composed and presented to the system.
After query evaluation, the full set of answers is presented in a visual
and structured way.
Abstract: A chord of a simple polygon P is a line segment [xy]
that intersects the boundary of P only at both endpoints x and y. A
chord of P is called an interior chord provided the interior of [xy] lies
in the interior of P. P is weakly visible from [xy] if for every point v
in P there exists a point w in [xy] such that [vw] lies in P. In this
paper star-shaped, L-convex, and convex polygons are characterized
in terms of weak visibility properties from internal chords and starshaped
subsets of P. A new Krasnoselskii-type characterization of
isothetic star-shaped polygons is also presented.
Abstract: The steady-state operation of maintaining voltage
stability is done by switching various controllers scattered all over
the power network. When a contingency occurs, whether forced or
unforced, the dispatcher is to alleviate the problem in a minimum
time, cost, and effort. Persistent problem may lead to blackout. The
dispatcher is to have the appropriate switching of controllers in terms
of type, location, and size to remove the contingency and maintain
voltage stability. Wrong switching may worsen the problem and that
may lead to blackout. This work proposed and used a Fuzzy CMeans
Clustering (FCMC) to assist the dispatcher in the decision
making. The FCMC is used in the static voltage stability to map
instantaneously a contingency to a set of controllers where the types,
locations, and amount of switching are induced.
Abstract: A parallel block method based on Backward
Differentiation Formulas (BDF) is developed for the parallel solution
of stiff Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). Most common
methods for solving stiff systems of ODEs are based on implicit
formulae and solved using Newton iteration which requires repeated
solution of systems of linear equations with coefficient matrix, I -
hβJ . Here, J is the Jacobian matrix of the problem. In this paper,
the matrix operations is paralleled in order to reduce the cost of the
iterations. Numerical results are given to compare the speedup and
efficiency of parallel algorithm and that of sequential algorithm.
Abstract: This paper presents preliminary results on modeling
and control of a quadrotor UAV. With aerodynamic concepts, a
mathematical model is firstly proposed to describe the dynamics
of the quadrotor UAV. Parameters of this model are identified by
experiments with Matlab Identify Toolbox. A group of PID controllers
are then designed based on the developed model. To verify
the developed model and controllers, simulations and experiments for
altitude control, position control and trajectory tracking are carried
out. The results show that the quadrotor UAV well follows the
referenced commands, which clearly demonstrates the effectiveness
of the proposed approach.
Abstract: The Spiral development model has been used
successfully in many commercial systems and in a good number of
defense systems. This is due to the fact that cost-effective
incremental commitment of funds, via an analogy of the spiral model
to stud poker and also can be used to develop hardware or integrate
software, hardware, and systems. To support adaptive, semantic
collaboration between domain experts and knowledge engineers, a
new knowledge engineering process, called Spiral_OWL is proposed.
This model is based on the idea of iterative refinement, annotation
and structuring of knowledge base. The Spiral_OWL model is
generated base on spiral model and knowledge engineering
methodology. A central paradigm for Spiral_OWL model is the
concentration on risk-driven determination of knowledge engineering
process. The collaboration aspect comes into play during knowledge
acquisition and knowledge validation phase. Design rationales for the
Spiral_OWL model are to be easy-to-implement, well-organized, and
iterative development cycle as an expanding spiral.
Abstract: This paper describes the speed sensorless vector control method of the parallel connected induction motor drive fed by a single inverter. Speed and rotor fluxes of the induction motor are estimated by natural observer with load torque adaptation and adaptive rotor flux observer. The performance parameters speed and rotor fluxes are estimated from the measured terminal voltages and currents. Fourth order induction motor model is used and speed is considered as a parameter. The performance of the natural observer is similar to the conventional observer. The speed of an induction motor is estimated by MATLAB simulation under different speed and load conditions. Estimated values along with other measured states are used for closed loop control. The simulation results show that the natural observer is also effective for parallel connected induction motor drive.
Abstract: The aim of this research is to design a collaborative
framework that integrates risk analysis activities into the geospatial
database design (GDD) process. Risk analysis is rarely undertaken
iteratively as part of the present GDD methods in conformance to
requirement engineering (RE) guidelines and risk standards.
Accordingly, when risk analysis is performed during the GDD, some
foreseeable risks may be overlooked and not reach the output
specifications especially when user intentions are not systematically
collected. This may lead to ill-defined requirements and ultimately in
higher risks of geospatial data misuse. The adopted approach consists
of 1) reviewing risk analysis process within the scope of RE and
GDD, 2) analyzing the challenges of risk analysis within the context
of GDD, and 3) presenting the components of a risk-based
collaborative framework that improves the collection of the
intended/forbidden usages of the data and helps geo-IT experts to
discover implicit requirements and risks.
Abstract: Construction projects generally take place in
uncontrolled and dynamic environments where construction waste is
a serious environmental problem in many large cities. The total
amount of waste and carbon dioxide emissions from transportation
vehicles are still out of control due to increasing construction
projects, massive urban development projects and the lack of
effective tools for minimizing adverse environmental impacts in
construction. This research is about utilization of the integrated
applications of automated advanced tracking and data storage
technologies in the area of environmental management to monitor
and control adverse environmental impacts such as construction
waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) integrated with the Global Position System (GPS) provides
an opportunity to uniquely identify materials, components, and
equipments and to locate and track them using minimal or no worker
input. The transmission of data to the central database will be carried
out with the help of Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM).
Abstract: Model Predictive Control (MPC) is increasingly being
proposed for real time applications and embedded systems. However
comparing to PID controller, the implementation of the MPC in
miniaturized devices like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA)
and microcontrollers has historically been very small scale due to its
complexity in implementation and its computation time requirement.
At the same time, such embedded technologies have become an
enabler for future manufacturing enterprises as well as a transformer
of organizations and markets. Recently, advances in microelectronics
and software allow such technique to be implemented in embedded
systems. In this work, we take advantage of these recent advances
in this area in the deployment of one of the most studied and
applied control technique in the industrial engineering. In fact in
this paper, we propose an efficient framework for implementation
of Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) in the performed STM32
microcontroller. The STM32 keil starter kit based on a JTAG interface
and the STM32 board was used to implement the proposed GPC
firmware. Besides the GPC, the PID anti windup algorithm was
also implemented using Keil development tools designed for ARM
processor-based microcontroller devices and working with C/Cµ
langage. A performances comparison study was done between both
firmwares. This performances study show good execution speed and
low computational burden. These results encourage to develop simple
predictive algorithms to be programmed in industrial standard hardware.
The main features of the proposed framework are illustrated
through two examples and compared with the anti windup PID
controller.
Abstract: The application of a simple microcontroller to deal
with a three variable input and a single output fuzzy logic controller,
with Proportional – Integral – Derivative (PID) response control
built-in has been tested for an automatic voltage regulator. The
fuzzifiers are based on fixed range of the variables of output voltage.
The control output is used to control the wiper motor of the auto
transformer to adjust the voltage, using fuzzy logic principles, so that
the voltage is stabilized. In this report, the author will demonstrate
how fuzzy logic might provide elegant and efficient solutions in the
design of multivariable control based on experimental results rather
than on mathematical models.
Abstract: This paper proposes the use of Bayesian belief
networks (BBN) as a higher level of health risk assessment for a
dumping site of lead battery smelter factory. On the basis of the
epidemiological studies, the actual hospital attendance records and
expert experiences, the BBN is capable of capturing the probabilistic
relationships between the hazardous substances and their adverse
health effects, and accordingly inferring the morbidity of the adverse
health effects. The provision of the morbidity rates of the related
diseases is more informative and can alleviate the drawbacks of
conventional methods.
Abstract: Image enhancement is the most important challenging preprocessing for almost all applications of Image Processing. By now, various methods such as Median filter, α-trimmed mean filter, etc. have been suggested. It was proved that the α-trimmed mean filter is the modification of median and mean filters. On the other hand, ε-filters have shown excellent performance in suppressing noise. In spite of their simplicity, they achieve good results. However, conventional ε-filter is based on moving average. In this paper, we suggested a new ε-filter which utilizes α-trimmed mean. We argue that this new method gives better outcomes compared to previous ones and the experimental results confirmed this claim.
Abstract: An envelope echo signal measurement is proposed in
this paper using echo signal observation from the 200 kHz echo
sounder receiver. The envelope signal without any object is compared
with the envelope signal of the sphere. Two diameter size steel ball
(3.1 cm & 2.2 cm) and two diameter size air filled stainless steel ball
(4.8 cm & 7.4 cm) used in this experiment. The target was positioned
about 0.5 m and 1.0 meter from the transducer face using nylon rope.
From the echo observation in time domain, it is obviously shown that
echo signal structure is different between the size, distance and type
of metal sphere. The amplitude envelope voltage for the bigger
sphere is higher compare to the small sphere and it confirm that the
bigger sphere have higher target strength compare to the small
sphere. Although the structure signal without any object are different
compare to the signal from the sphere, the reflected signal from the
tank floor increase linearly with the sphere size. We considered this
event happened because of the object position approximately to the
tank floor.
Abstract: Metallic micro parts are playing an important role in micro-fabrication industry. Recently, we have demonstrated a new deformation mechanism for micro-formability of polycrystalline materials. Different depressed micro-features smaller than the grain size have been successfully fabricated on 6061 aluminum alloy (AA6061) substrates with good fidelity. To further verify this proposed deformation mechanism that grain size is not a limiting factor, we demonstrate here that in addition of depressed features, protruded micro-features on a polycrystalline substrate can similarly be fabricated.
Abstract: This paper analysed the food security situation among
Nigerian rural farmers. Data collected on 202 rural farmers from
Benue State were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
The study revealed that majority of the respondents (60.83%) had
medium dietary diversity. Furthermore, household daily calorie
requirement for the food secure households was 10,723 and the
household daily calorie consumption was 12,598, with a surplus
index of 0.04. The food security index was 1.16. The Household
daily per capita calorie consumption was 3,221.2. For the food
insecure households, the household daily calorie requirement was
20,213 and the household daily calorie consumption was 17,393. The
shortfall index was 0.14. The food security index was 0.88. The
Household daily per capita calorie consumption was 2,432.8. The
most commonly used coping strategies during food stress included
intercropping (99.2%), reliance on less preferred food (98.1%),
limiting portion size at meal times (85.8%) and crop diversification
(70.8%).
Abstract: In this work a new method for low complexity
image coding is presented, that permits different settings and great
scalability in the generation of the final bit stream. This coding
presents a continuous-tone still image compression system that
groups loss and lossless compression making use of finite arithmetic
reversible transforms. Both transformation in the space of color and
wavelet transformation are reversible. The transformed coefficients
are coded by means of a coding system in depending on a
subdivision into smaller components (CFDS) similar to the bit
importance codification. The subcomponents so obtained are
reordered by means of a highly configure alignment system
depending on the application that makes possible the re-configure of
the elements of the image and obtaining different importance levels
from which the bit stream will be generated. The subcomponents of
each importance level are coded using a variable length entropy
coding system (VBLm) that permits the generation of an embedded
bit stream. This bit stream supposes itself a bit stream that codes a
compressed still image. However, the use of a packing system on the
bit stream after the VBLm allows the realization of a final highly
scalable bit stream from a basic image level and one or several
improvement levels.
Abstract: The purpose of this research is: a) to investigate how
the HR practices influence psychological contracts, b) to examine the
influence of psychological contracts to individual behavior and to
contribute individually, c) to study the psychological contact through
leadership. This research using mixed methods, qualitative and
quantitative research methods were utilized to gather the data
collected using a qualitative method by the HR Manager who is in
charge of the trainings from the staffs and quantitative method
(survey) by using questionnaire was utilized to draw upon and to
elaborate on the recurring themes present during the interviews. The
survey was done to 400 staffs of the company. The study found that
leadership styles supporting the firm’s HR strategy is the key in
making psychological contracts that benefit both the firm and its
members.
Abstract: PARIS (Personal Archiving and Retrieving Image
System) is an experiment personal photograph library, which includes
more than 80,000 of consumer photographs accumulated within a
duration of approximately five years, metadata based on our proposed
MPEG-7 annotation architecture, Dozen Dimensional Digital Content
(DDDC), and a relational database structure. The DDDC architecture
is specially designed for facilitating the managing, browsing and
retrieving of personal digital photograph collections. In annotating
process, we also utilize a proposed Spatial and Temporal Ontology
(STO) designed based on the general characteristic of personal
photograph collections. This paper explains PRAIS system.
Abstract: For higher order multiplications, a huge number of
adders or compressors are to be used to perform the partial product
addition. We have reduced the number of adders by introducing
special kind of adders that are capable to add five/six/seven bits per
decade. These adders are called compressors. Binary counter
property has been merged with the compressor property to develop
high order compressors. Uses of these compressors permit the
reduction of the vertical critical paths. A 16×16 bit multiplier has
been developed using these compressors. These compressors make
the multipliers faster as compared to the conventional design that
have been used 4-2 compressors and 3-2 compressors.