Abstract: Avoidable unscheduled maintenance events and unnecessary
spare parts deliveries are mostly caused by an incorrect choice
of the underlying maintenance strategy. For a faster and more efficient
supply of spare parts for aircrafts of an airline we examine options for
improving the underlying logistics network integrated in an existing
aviation industry network. This paper presents a dynamic prediction
model as decision support for maintenance method selection considering
requirements of an entire flight network. The objective is
to guarantee a high supply of spare parts by an optimal interaction
of various network levels and thus to reduce unscheduled maintenance
events and minimize total costs. By using a prognostics-based
preventive maintenance strategy unscheduled component failures are
avoided for an increase in availability and reliability of the entire
system. The model is intended for use in an aviation company that
utilizes a structured planning process based on collected failures data
of components.
Abstract: The study of non-equilibrium systems has attracted
increasing interest in recent years, mainly due to the lack of
theoretical frameworks, unlike their equilibrium counterparts.
Studying the steady state and/or simple systems is thus one of the
main interests. Hence in this work we have focused our attention on
the driven lattice gas model (DLG model) consisting of interacting
particles subject to an external field E. The dynamics of the system
are given by hopping of particles to nearby empty sites with rates
biased for jumps in the direction of E. Having used small two
dimensional systems of DLG model, the stochastic properties at nonequilibrium
steady state were analytically studied. To understand the
non-equilibrium phenomena, we have applied the analytic approach
via master equation to calculate probability function and analyze
violation of detailed balance in term of the fluctuation-dissipation
theorem. Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to validate
the analytic results.
Abstract: This paper aims to present knowledge management for solving economic problem and poverty in Thai community. A community in Thailand is studied as a case study for master plan or social and economic plan which derived form the research people conducted by themselves in their community. The result shows that community uses knowledge management in recording income and expense, analyzing their consumption, and then systematic planning of the production, distribution and consumption in the community. Besides, community enterprises, that people create as the by-products of master plan, can facilitate diverse economic activities which are able to reduce economic problem and poverty. The knowledge that people gain from solving their problem through building community enterprises are both tacit and explicit knowledge. Four styles of knowledge conversion: socialization,externalization, combination and internalization, are used. Besides, knowledge sharing inside the organization, between organizations and its environment are found. Keywordsknowledge management, community enterprise, Thailand.
Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to investigate thelong-run equilibrium and short-run dynamics of international housing prices when macroeconomic variables change. We apply the Pedroni’s, panel cointegration, using the unbalanced panel data analysis of 33 countries over the period from 1980Q1 to 2013Q1, to examine the relationships among house prices and macroeconomic variables. Our empirical results of panel data cointegration tests support the existence of a cointegration among these macroeconomic variables and house prices. Besides, the empirical results of panel DOLS further present that a 1% increase in economic activity, long-term interest rates, and construction costs cause house prices to respectively change 2.16%, -0.04%, and 0.22% in the long run.Furthermore, the increasing economic activity and the construction cost would cause strongerimpacts on the house prices for lower income countries than higher income countries.The results lead to the conclusion that policy of house prices growth can be regarded as economic growth for lower income countries. Finally, in America region, the coefficient of economic activity is the highest, which displays that increasing economic activity causes a faster rise in house prices there than in other regions. There are some special cases whereby the coefficients of interest rates are significantly positive in America and Asia regions.
Abstract: Rainfall records of rainfall station including the
rainfall potential per hour and rainfall mass of five heavy storms are
explored, respectively from 2001 to 2010. The rationalization formula
is to investigate the capability of flood peak duration of flood
detention pond in different rainfall conditions. The stable flood
detention model is also proposed by using system dynamic control
theory to get the message of flood detention pond in this research.
When rainfall frequency of one hour rainfall duration is more than
100-year frequency which exceeds the flood detention standard of
20-year frequency for the flood detention pond, the flood peak
duration of flood detention pond is 1.7 hours at most even though the
flood detention pond with maximum drainage potential about 15.0
m3/s of pumping system is constructed. If the rainfall peak current is
more than maximum drainage potential, the flood peak duration of
flood detention pond is about 1.9 hours at most. The flood detention
pond is the key factor of stable drainage control and flood prevention.
The critical factors of flood disaster is not only rainfall mass, but also
rainfall frequency of heavy storm in different rainfall duration and
flood detention frequency of flood detention system.
Abstract: The application of agro-industrial waste in Aluminum
Metal Matrix Composites has been getting more attention as they
can reinforce particles in metal matrix which enhance the strength
properties of the composites. In addition, by applying these agroindustrial
wastes in useful way not only save the manufacturing cost
of products but also reduce the pollutions on environment. This
paper represents a literature review on a range of industrial wastes
and their utilization in metal matrix composites. The paper describes
the synthesis methods of agro-industrial waste filled metal matrix
composite materials and their mechanical, wear, corrosion, and
physical properties. It also highlights the current application and
future potential of agro-industrial waste reinforced composites in
aerospace, automotive and other construction industries.
Abstract: Most buildings have been using anchor bolts
commonly for installing outdoor advertising structures. Anchor bolts
of common carbon steel are widely used and often installed
indiscriminately by inadequate installation standards. In the area
where strong winds frequently blow, falling accidents of outdoor
advertising structures can occur and cause a serious disaster, which is
very dangerous and to be prevented. In this regard, the development of
high-performance anchor bolts is urgently required. In the present
study, 25Cr-8Ni-1.5Si-1Mn-0.4C alloy was produced by traditional
vacuum induction melting (VIM) for the application of anchor bolt.
The alloy composition is revealed as a duplex microstructure from
thermodynamic phase analysis by FactSage® and confirmed by
metallographic experiment. Addition of Nitrogen to the alloy was
found to reduce the ferritic phase domain and significantly increase the
hardness and the tensile strength. Microstructure observation revealed
mixed structure of austenite and ferrite with fine carbide distributed
along the grain and phase boundaries.
Abstract: The present paper represent the efforts undertaken for
the development of an semi-automatic robot that may be used for
various post-disaster rescue operation planning and their subsequent
execution using one-way communication of video and data from the
robot to the controller and controller to the robot respectively.
Wireless communication has been used for the purpose so that the
robot may access the unapproachable places easily without any
difficulties. It is expected that the information obtained from the
robot would be of definite help to the rescue team for better planning
and execution of their operations.
Abstract: The ARMrayan Multimedia Mobile CMS (Content
Management System) is the first mobile CMS that gives the
opportunity to users for creating multimedia J2ME mobile
applications with their desired content, design and logo; simply,
without any need for writing even a line of code. The low-level
programming and compatibility problems of the J2ME, along with
UI designing difficulties, makes it hard for most people –even
programmers- to broadcast their content to the widespread mobile
phones used by nearly all people. This system provides user-friendly,
PC-based tools for creating a tree index of pages and inserting
multiple multimedia contents (e.g. sound, video and picture) in each
page for creating a J2ME mobile application. The output is a standalone
Java mobile application that has a user interface, shows texts
and pictures and plays music and videos regardless of the type of
devices used as long as the devices support the J2ME platform.
Bitmap fonts have also been used thus Middle Eastern languages can
be easily supported on all mobile phone devices. We omitted
programming concepts for users in order to simplify multimedia
content-oriented mobile applictaion designing for use in educational,
cultural or marketing centers. Ordinary operators can now create a
variety of multimedia mobile applications such as tutorials,
catalogues, books, and guides in minutes rather than months.
Simplicity and power has been the goal of this CMS. In this paper,
we present the software engineered-designed concepts of the
ARMrayan MCMS along with the implementation challenges faces
and solutions adapted.
Abstract: Sharing consistent and correct master data among
disparate applications in a reverse-logistics chain has long been
recognized as an intricate problem. Although a master data
management (MDM) system can surely assume that responsibility,
applications that need to co-operate with it must comply with
proprietary query interfaces provided by the specific MDM system. In
this paper, we present a RFID-ready MDM system which makes
master data readily available for any participating applications in a
reverse-logistics chain. We propose a RFID-wrapper as a part of our
MDM. It acts as a gateway between any data retrieval request and
query interfaces that process it. With the RFID-wrapper, any
participating applications in a reverse-logistics chain can easily
retrieve master data in a way that is analogous to retrieval of any other
RFID-based logistics transactional data.
Abstract: Nagaland, the 16th state of India in order of
statehood, is situated between 25° 6' and 27° 4' latitude north and
between 93º 20' E and 95º 15' E longitude of equator in the North
Eastern part of the India. Endowed with varied topography, soil and
agro climatic conditions it is known for its potentiality to grow all
most all kinds of horticultural crops. Pineapple being grown since
long organically by default is one of the most promising crops of the
state with emphasis being laid for commercialization by the
government of Nagaland. In light of commercialization, globalization
and scope of setting small-scale industries, a research study was
undertaken to examine the socio-economic and personal
characteristics, entrepreneurial characteristics and attitude of the
pineapple growers towards improved package of practices of
pineapple cultivation. The study was conducted in Medziphema
block of Dimapur district of the Nagaland state of India following ex
post facto research design. Ninety pineapple growers were selected
from four different villages of Medziphema block based on
proportionate random selection procedure. Findings of the study
revealed that majority of the respondents had medium level of
entrepreneurial characteristics in terms of knowledge level, risk
orientation, self confidence, management orientation, farm decision
making ability and leadership ability and most of them had
favourable attitude towards improved package of practices of
pineapple cultivation. The variables age, education, farm size, risk
orientation, management orientation and sources of information
utilized were found important to influence the attitude of the
respondents. The study revealed that favourable attitude and
entrepreneurial characteristics of the pineapple cultivators might be
harnessed for increased production of pineapple in the state thereby
bringing socio economic upliftment of the marginal and small-scale
farmers.
Abstract: The study was performed to evaluate the effect of Sgirdling,
fruit thinning plus bagging with 2,4-D application, fruit
thinning plus bagging on growth and quality of wax apple fruit.
Girdling was applied three week before flowering. The 2,4-D was
sprayed at the small bud and petal fall stage. The effect of all
treatments on fruit growth was measured weekly. The physical and
biochemical quality characteristics of the fruits were recorded. The
results showed that no significant effect on number of bud among
treatments. S-girdling, 2,4-D application produced the lowest bud
drop, fruit drop compared to untreated control. Moreover, S-girdling
enhanced faster fruit growth producing the best final fruit length and
diameter than the control treatment. It was also observed that Sgirdling
greatly increased fruit set, fruit weight as well as total
soluble solid, reduced fruit crack, and titratable acidity. In
conclusion, S-girdling had a distinctive and significant effect on most
of the fruit quality characteristics assessed. Application 2,4-D was
also recommended as the industry norm to increase fruit set, and fruit
quality in wax apple.
Abstract: As in today's semiconductor industries test costs can make up to 50 percent of the total production costs, an efficient test error detection becomes more and more important. In this paper, we present a new machine learning approach to test error detection that should provide a faster recognition of test system faults as well as an improved test error recall. The key idea is to learn a classifier ensemble, detecting typical test error patterns in wafer test results immediately after finishing these tests. Since test error detection has not yet been discussed in the machine learning community, we define central problem-relevant terms and provide an analysis of important domain properties. Finally, we present comparative studies reflecting the failure detection performance of three individual classifiers and three ensemble methods based upon them. As base classifiers we chose a decision tree learner, a support vector machine and a Bayesian network, while the compared ensemble methods were simple and weighted majority vote as well as stacking. For the evaluation, we used cross validation and a specially designed practical simulation. By implementing our approach in a semiconductor test department for the observation of two products, we proofed its practical applicability.
Abstract: The impact of noise upon live quality has become an
important aspect to make both urban and environmental policythroughout
Europe and in Turkey. Concern over the quality of urban
environments, including noise levels and declining quality of green
space, is over the past decade with increasing emphasis on designing
livable and sustainable communities. According to the World Health
Organization, noise pollution is the third most hazardous
environmental type of pollution which proceeded by only air (gas
emission) and water pollution. The research carried out in two
phases, the first stage of the research noise and plant types providing
the suction of noise was evaluated through literature study and at the
second stage, definite types (Juniperus horizontalis L., Spirea
vanhouetti Briot., Cotoneaster dammerii C.K., Berberis thunbergii
D.C., Pyracantha coccinea M. etc.) were selected for the city of
Konya. Trials were conducted on the highway of Konya. The biggest
value of noise reduction was 6.3 dB(A), 4.9 dB(A), 6.2 dB(A) value
with compared to the control which includes the group that formed
by the bushes at the distance of 7m, 11m, 20m from the source and
5m, 9m, 20m of plant width, respectively. In this paper, definitions
regarding to noise and its sources were made and the precautions
were taken against to noise that mentioned earlier with the adverse
effects of noise. Plantation design approaches and suggestions
concerning to the diversity to be used, which are peculiar to roadside,
were developed to discuss the role and the function of plant material
to reduce the noise of the traffic.
Abstract: In this paper, an improvement of PDLZW implementation
with a new dictionary updating technique is proposed. A
unique dictionary is partitioned into hierarchical variable word-width
dictionaries. This allows us to search through dictionaries in parallel.
Moreover, the barrel shifter is adopted for loading a new input string
into the shift register in order to achieve a faster speed. However,
the original PDLZW uses a simple FIFO update strategy, which is
not efficient. Therefore, a new window based updating technique
is implemented to better classify the difference in how often each
particular address in the window is referred. The freezing policy
is applied to the address most often referred, which would not be
updated until all the other addresses in the window have the same
priority. This guarantees that the more often referred addresses would
not be updated until their time comes. This updating policy leads
to an improvement on the compression efficiency of the proposed
algorithm while still keep the architecture low complexity and easy
to implement.
Abstract: The relationship between tropical cyclogenesis and solar activity is addressed in this paper, analyzing the relationship between important parameters in the evolution of tropical cyclones as the CAPE, wind shear and relative vorticity, and the Dst geomagnetic index as a parameter of solar activity. The apparent relationship between all this phenomena has a different response depending on the phase of the solar cycles.
Abstract: Encoded information based on synchronization of coupled chaotic Nd:YAG lasers in master-slave configuration is numerically studied. Encoding, transmission, and decoding of information in optical chaotic communication with a single channel is presented. We analyze the robustness of the encrypted audio transmission in a channel noise. In order to illustrate this synchronization robustness, we present two cases of study: synchronization and transmission with a single channel without and with noise in the channel.
Abstract: A sequential decision problem, based on the task ofidentifying the species of trees given acoustic echo data collectedfrom them, is considered with well-known stochastic classifiers,including single and mixture Gaussian models. Echoes are processedwith a preprocessing stage based on a model of mammalian cochlearfiltering, using a new discrete low-pass filter characteristic. Stoppingtime performance of the sequential decision process is evaluated andcompared. It is observed that the new low pass filter processingresults in faster sequential decisions.
Abstract: Vernonia divergens Benth., commonly known as
“Insulin Plant” (Fam: Asteraceae) is a potent sugar killer. Locally the
leaves of the plant, boiled in water are successfully administered to a
large number of diabetic patients. The present study evaluates the
putative anti-diabetic ingredients, isolated from the in vivo and in
vitro grown plantlets of V. divergens for their antimicrobial and
anticancer activities. Sterilized explants of nodal segments were
cultured on MS (Musashige and Skoog, 1962) medium in presence of
different combinations of hormones. Multiple shoots along with
bunch of roots were regenerated at 1mg l-1 BAP and 0.5 mg l-1 NAA.
Micro-plantlets were separated and sub-cultured on the double
strength (2X) of the above combination of hormones leading to
increased length of roots and shoots. These plantlets were
successfully transferred to soil and survived well in nature. The
ethanol extract of plantlets from both in vivo & in vitro sources were
prepared in soxhlet extractor and then concentrated to dryness under
reduced pressure in rotary evaporator. Thus obtainedconcentrated
extracts showed significant inhibitory activity against gram
negative bacteria like Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas
aeruginosa but no inhibition was found against gram positive
bacteria. Further, these ethanol extracts were screened for in vitro
percentage cytotoxicity at different time periods (24 h, 48 h and 72 h)
of different dilutions. The in vivo plant extract inhibited the growth of
EAC mouse cell lines in the range of 65, 66, 78, and 88% at 100, 50,
25 & 12.5μg mL-1 but at 72 h of treatment. In case of the extract of in
vitro origin, the inhibition was found against EAC cell lines even at
48h. During spectrophotometric scanning, the extracts exhibited
different maxima (ʎ) - four peaks in in vitro extracts as against single
in in vivo preparation suggesting the possible change in the nature of
ingredients during micropropagation through tissue culture
techniques.
Abstract: The study area receives a wide variety of wastes
generated by municipalities and the industries like paints and
pigments, metal processing industries, thermal power plants electroprocessing
industries etc. The Physico-chemical and structural
investigation of water from river Pandu indicated high level of
chlorides and calcium which made the water unsuitable for human
use. Algae like Cyclotella fumida, Asterionella Formosa,
Cladophora glomerata, Pediastrum simplex, Scenedesmus bijuga,
Cladophora glomerata were the dominant pollution tolerant species
recorded under these conditions. The sensitive and less abundant
species of algae included Spirogyra sps., Merismopedia sps. The
predominance colonies of Zygnema sps, Phormidium sps,
Mycrocystis aeruginosa, Merismopedia minima, Pandorina morum,
seems to correlate with high organic contents of Pandu river water.
This study assumes significance as some algae can be used as
bioindicators of water pollution and algal floral of a municipal drain
carrying waste effluents from industrial area Kanpur and discharge
them into the river Pandu flowing onto southern outskirts of Kanpur
city.