Abstract: Concrete strength evaluated from compression tests
on cores is affected by several factors causing differences from the
in-situ strength at the location from which the core specimen was
extracted. Among the factors, there is the damage possibly occurring
during the drilling phase that generally leads to underestimate the
actual in-situ strength. In order to quantify this effect, in this study
two wide datasets have been examined, including: (i) about 500 core
specimens extracted from Reinforced Concrete existing structures,
and (ii) about 600 cube specimens taken during the construction of
new structures in the framework of routine acceptance control. The
two experimental datasets have been compared in terms of
compression strength and specific weight values, accounting for the
main factors affecting a concrete property, that is type and amount of
cement, aggregates' grading, type and maximum size of aggregates,
water/cement ratio, placing and curing modality, concrete age. The
results show that the magnitude of the strength reduction due to
drilling damage is strongly affected by the actual properties of
concrete, being inversely proportional to its strength. Therefore, the
application of a single value of the correction coefficient, as generally
suggested in the technical literature and in structural codes, appears
inappropriate. A set of values of the drilling damage coefficient is
suggested as a function of the strength obtained from compressive
tests on cores.
Abstract: Intermetallic Ni3Al – based alloys belong to a group
of advanced materials characterized by good chemical and physical
properties (such as structural stability, corrosion resistance) which
offer advenced technological applications. The paper presents the
study of catalytic properties of Ni3Al foils (thickness approximately
50 &m) in the methanol and hexane decomposition. The egzamined
material posses microcrystalline structure without any additional
catalysts on the surface. The better catalytic activity of Ni3Al foils
with respect to quartz plates in both methanol and hexane
decomposition was confirmed. On thin Ni3Al foils the methanol
conversion reaches approximately 100% above 480 oC while the
hexane conversion reaches approximately 100% (98,5%) at 500 oC.
Deposit formed during the methanol decomposition is built up of
carbon nanofibers decorated with metal-like nanoparticles.
Abstract: To illustrate diversity of methods used to extract relevant (where the concept of relevance can be differently defined for different applications) visual data, the paper discusses three groups of such methods. They have been selected from a range of alternatives to highlight how hardware and software tools can be complementarily used in order to achieve various functionalities in case of different specifications of “relevant data". First, principles of gated imaging are presented (where relevance is determined by the range). The second methodology is intended for intelligent intrusion detection, while the last one is used for content-based image matching and retrieval. All methods have been developed within projects supervised by the author.
Abstract: In this study, a synthetic pathway was created by
assembling genes from Clostridium butyricum and Escherichia coli
in different combinations. Among the genes were dhaB1 and dhaB2
from C. butyricum VPI1718 coding for glycerol dehydratase (GDHt)
and its activator (GDHtAc), respectively, involved in the conversion
of glycerol to 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde (3-HPA). The yqhD gene
from E.coli BL21 was also included which codes for an NADPHdependent
1,3-propanediol oxidoreductase isoenzyme (PDORI)
reducing 3-HPA to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PD). Molecular modeling
analysis indicated that the conformation of fusion protein of YQHD
and DHAB1 was favorable for direct molecular channeling of the
intermediate 3-HPA. According to the simulation results, the yqhD
and dhaB1 gene were assembled in the upstream of dhaB2 to express
a fusion protein, yielding the recombinant strain E. coliBL21
(DE3)//pET22b+::yqhD-dhaB1_dhaB2 (strain BP41Y3). Strain
BP41Y3 gave 10-fold higher 1,3-PD concentration than E. coliBL21
(DE3)//pET22b+::yqhD-dhaB1_dhaB2 (strain BP31Y2) expressing
the recombinant enzymes simultaneously but in a non-fusion mode.
This is the first report using a gene fusion approach to enhance the
biological conversion of glycerol to the value added compound 1,3-
PD.
Abstract: Voltage flicker problems have long existed in several
of the distribution areas served by the Taiwan Power Company. In
the past, those research results indicating that the estimated ΔV10
value based on the conventional method is significantly smaller than
the survey value. This paper is used to study the relationship between
the voltage flicker problems and harmonic power variation for the
power system with electric arc furnaces. This investigation discussed
thought the effect of harmonic power fluctuation with flicker
estimate value. The method of field measurement, statistics and
simulation is used. The survey results demonstrate that 10 ΔV
estimate must account for the effect of harmonic power variation.
Abstract: Grid computing is a group of clusters connected over
high-speed networks that involves coordinating and sharing
computational power, data storage and network resources operating
across dynamic and geographically dispersed locations. Resource
management and job scheduling are critical tasks in grid computing.
Resource selection becomes challenging due to heterogeneity and
dynamic availability of resources. Job scheduling is a NP-complete
problem and different heuristics may be used to reach an optimal or
near optimal solution. This paper proposes a model for resource and
job scheduling in dynamic grid environment. The main focus is to
maximize the resource utilization and minimize processing time of
jobs. Grid resource selection strategy is based on Max Heap Tree
(MHT) that best suits for large scale application and root node of
MHT is selected for job submission. Job grouping concept is used to
maximize resource utilization for scheduling of jobs in grid
computing. Proposed resource selection model and job grouping
concept are used to enhance scalability, robustness, efficiency and
load balancing ability of the grid.
Abstract: We present a method for fast volume rendering using
graphics hardware (GPU). To our knowledge, it is the first implementation
on the GPU. Based on the Shear-Warp algorithm, our
GPU-based method provides real-time frame rates and outperforms
the CPU-based implementation. When the number of slices is not
sufficient, we add in-between slices computed by interpolation. This
improves then the quality of the rendered images. We have also
implemented the ray marching algorithm on the GPU. The results
generated by the three algorithms (CPU-based and GPU-based Shear-
Warp, GPU-based Ray Marching) for two test models has proved that
the ray marching algorithm outperforms the shear-warp methods in
terms of speed up and image quality.
Abstract: “Web of Trust" is one of the recognized goals for
Web 2.0. It aims to make it possible for the people to take
responsibility for what they publish on the web, including
organizations, businesses and individual users. These objectives,
among others, drive most of the technologies and protocols recently
standardized by the governing bodies. One of the great advantages of
Web infrastructure is decentralization of publication. The primary
motivation behind Web 2.0 is to assist the people to add contents for
Collective Intelligence (CI) while providing mechanisms to link
content with people for evaluations and accountability of
information. Such structure of contents will interconnect users and
contents so that users can use contents to find participants and vice
versa. This paper proposes conceptual information storage and
linking model, based on decentralized information structure, that
links contents and people together. The model uses FOAF, Atom,
RDF and RDFS and can be used as a blueprint to develop Web 2.0
applications for any e-domain. However, primary target for this
paper is online trust evaluation domain. The proposed model targets
to assist the individuals to establish “Web of Trust" in online trust
domain.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to explain how features of attacks could be extracted from the packets. It also explains how vectors could be built and then applied to the input of any analysis stage. For analyzing, the work deploys the Feedforward-Back propagation neural network to act as misuse intrusion detection system. It uses ten types if attacks as example for training and testing the neural network. It explains how the packets are analyzed to extract features. The work shows how selecting the right features, building correct vectors and how correct identification of the training methods with nodes- number in hidden layer of any neural network affecting the accuracy of system. In addition, the work shows how to get values of optimal weights and use them to initialize the Artificial Neural Network.
Abstract: In general, image-based 3D scenes can now be found in many popular vision systems, computer games and virtual reality tours. So, It is important to segment ROI (region of interest) from input scenes as a preprocessing step for geometric stricture detection in 3D scene. In this paper, we propose a method for segmenting ROI based on tensor voting and Dirichlet process mixture model. In particular, to estimate geometric structure information for 3D scene from a single outdoor image, we apply the tensor voting and Dirichlet process mixture model to a image segmentation. The tensor voting is used based on the fact that homogeneous region in an image are usually close together on a smooth region and therefore the tokens corresponding to centers of these regions have high saliency values. The proposed approach is a novel nonparametric Bayesian segmentation method using Gaussian Dirichlet process mixture model to automatically segment various natural scenes. Finally, our method can label regions of the input image into coarse categories: “ground", “sky", and “vertical" for 3D application. The experimental results show that our method successfully segments coarse regions in many complex natural scene images for 3D.
Abstract: Electrocardiogram (ECG) segmentation is necessary to help reduce the time consuming task of manually annotating ECG's. Several algorithms have been developed to segment the ECG automatically. We first review several of such methods, and then present a new single lead segmentation method based on Adaptive piecewise constant approximation (APCA) and Piecewise derivative dynamic time warping (PDDTW). The results are tested on the QT database. We compared our results to Laguna's two lead method. Our proposed approach has a comparable mean error, but yields a slightly higher standard deviation than Laguna's method.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationships between and
among the various drivers of climate change that have both climatic
and ecological consequences for vegetation and land cover change in
arctic areas, particularly in arctic Alaska. It discusses the various
processes that have created spatial and climatic structures that have
facilitated observable vegetation and land cover changes in the
Arctic. Also, it indicates that the drivers of both climatic and
ecological changes in the Arctic are multi-faceted and operate in a
system with both positive and negative feedbacks that largely results
in further increases or decreases of the initial drivers of climatic and
vegetation change mainly at the local and regional scales. It
demonstrates that the impact of arctic warming on land cover change
and the Arctic ecosystems is not unidirectional and one dimensional
in nature but it represents a multi-directional and multi-dimensional
forces operating in a feedback system.
Abstract: The purpose of this article applies the monthly final
energy yield and failure data of 202 PV systems installed in Taiwan to
analyze the PV operational performance and system availability. This
data is collected by Industrial Technology Research Institute through
manual records. Bad data detection and failure data estimation
approaches are proposed to guarantee the quality of the received
information. The performance ratio value and system availability are
then calculated and compared with those of other countries. It is
indicated that the average performance ratio of Taiwan-s PV systems
is 0.74 and the availability is 95.7%. These results are similar with
those of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.
Abstract: Termination Mechanism is an indispensible part of the
emergency management mechanism. Despite of its importance in both
theory and practice, it is almost a brand new field for researching. The
concept of termination mechanism is proposed firstly in this paper,
and the design and implementation which are helpful to guarantee the
effect and integrity of emergency management are discussed secondly.
Starting with introduction of the problems caused by absent
termination and incorrect termination, the essence of termination
mechanism is analyzed, a model based on Optimal Stopping Theory is
constructed and the termination index is given. The model could be
applied to find the best termination time point.. Termination decision
should not only be concerned in termination stage, but also in the
whole emergency management process, which makes it a dynamic
decision making process. Besides, the main subjects and the procedure
of termination are illustrated after the termination time point is given.
Some future works are discussed lastly.
Abstract: Primary and secondary data from the Bauchi abattoir were utilized to determine the relative contributions of different livestock species to meat supply in Bauchi Metropolis. Daily livestock slaughter figures for five months (June – October 2011) indicated that more goats (64.0) were slaughtered than either sheep (47.3) or cattle (41.30) each day (P
Abstract: In this paper, a watermarking algorithm that uses the wavelet transform with Multiple Description Coding (MDC) and Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) concepts is introduced. Also, the paper investigates the role of Contourlet Transform (CT) versus Wavelet Transform (WT) in providing robust image watermarking. Two measures are utilized in the comparison between the waveletbased and the contourlet-based methods; Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC). Experimental results reveal that the introduced algorithm is robust against different attacks and has good results compared to the contourlet-based algorithm.
Abstract: Iron oxide nanoparticle was synthesized by reactive-precipitation method followed by high speed centrifuge and phase transfer in order to stabilized nanoparticles in the solvent. Particle size of SPIO was 8.2 nm by SEM, and the hydraulic radius was 17.5 nm by dynamic light scattering method. Coercivity and saturated magnetism were determined by VSM (vibrating sample magnetometer), coercivity of nanoparticle was lower than 10 Hc, and the saturated magnetism was higher than 65 emu/g. Stabilized SPIO was then transferred to aqueous phase by reacted with excess amount of poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) silane. After filtration and dialysis, the SPIO T2 contrast agent was ready to use. The hydraulic radius of final product was about 70~100 nm, the relaxation rates R2 (1/T2) measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was larger than 200(sec-1).
Abstract: In this paper effect of stator slots structure and
switching angle on a cylindrical single-phase brushless direct current
motor (BLDC) is analyzed. BLDC motor with three different
structures for stator slots is designed by using RMxprt software and
efficiency of BLDC motor for different structures in full-load
condition has been presented. Then the BLDC motor in different
conditions by using Maxwell 3D software is designed and with finite
element method is analyzed electromagnetically. At the end with the
use of MATLAB software influence of switching angle on motor
performance investigated and optimal angle has been determined.
The results indicate that with correct choosing of stator slots structure
and switching angle, maximum efficiency can be found.
Abstract: In this paper we describe a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for automated detection of pulmonary nodules in computed-tomography (CT) images. After extracting the pulmonary parenchyma using a combination of image processing techniques, a region growing method is applied to detect nodules based on 3D geometric features. We applied the CAD system to CT scans collected in a screening program for lung cancer detection. Each scan consists of a sequence of about 300 slices stored in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) format. All malignant nodules were detected and a low false-positive detection rate was achieved.
Abstract: This paper proposes a smart design strategy for a sequential detector to reliably detect the primary user-s signal, especially in fast fading environments. We study the computation of the log-likelihood ratio for coping with a fast changing received signal and noise sample variances, which are considered random variables. First, we analyze the detectability of the conventional generalized log-likelihood ratio (GLLR) scheme when considering fast changing statistics of unknown parameters caused by fast fading effects. Secondly, we propose an efficient sensing algorithm for performing the sequential probability ratio test in a robust and efficient manner when the channel statistics are unknown. Finally, the proposed scheme is compared to the conventional method with simulation results with respect to the average number of samples required to reach a detection decision.