Abstract: With today's fast lifestyles and busy schedule, nuclear
families are becoming popular. Thus, the elderly members of these
families are often neglected. This has lead to the popularity of the
concept of Community living for the aged. The elders reside at a
centre, which is controlled by the MANAGER. The manager takes
responsibility of the functioning of the centre which includes taking
care of 'residents' at the centre along with managing the daily chores
of the centre, which he accomplishes with the help of a number of
staff members and volunteers Often the Manager is not an employee
but a volunteer. In such cases especially, time is an important
constraint. A system, which provides an easy and efficient manner of
managing the working of an old age home in detail, will prove to be
of great benefit. We have developed a P.C. based organizer used to
monitor the various activities of an old age home. It is an effective
and easy-to-use system which will enable the manager to keep an
account of all the residents, their accounts, staff members, volunteers,
the centre-s logistic requirements etc. It is thus, a comprehensive
'Organizer' for Old Age Homes.
Abstract: The transformation of vocal characteristics aims at
modifying voice such that the intelligibility of aphonic voice is
increased or the voice characteristics of a speaker (source speaker) to
be perceived as if another speaker (target speaker) had uttered it. In
this paper, the current state-of-the-art voice characteristics
transformation methodology is reviewed. Special emphasis is placed
on voice transformation methodology and issues for improving the
transformed speech quality in intelligibility and naturalness are
discussed. In particular, it is suggested to use the modulation theory
of speech as a base for research on high quality voice transformation.
This approach allows one to separate linguistic, expressive, organic
and perspective information of speech, based on an analysis of how
they are fused when speech is produced. Therefore, this theory
provides the fundamentals not only for manipulating non-linguistic,
extra-/paralinguistic and intra-linguistic variables for voice
transformation, but also for paving the way for easily transposing the
existing voice transformation methods to emotion-related voice
quality transformation and speaking style transformation. From the
perspectives of human speech production and perception, the popular
voice transformation techniques are described and classified them
based on the underlying principles either from the speech production
or perception mechanisms or from both. In addition, the advantages
and limitations of voice transformation techniques and the
experimental manipulation of vocal cues are discussed through
examples from past and present research. Finally, a conclusion and
road map are pointed out for more natural voice transformation
algorithms in the future.
Abstract: In very narrow pathways, the speed of sound propagation and the phase of sound waves change due to the air viscosity. We have developed a new finite element method (FEM) that includes the effects of air viscosity for modeling a narrow sound pathway. This method is developed as an extension of the existing FEM for porous sound-absorbing materials. The numerical calculation results for several three-dimensional slit models using the proposed FEM are validated against existing calculation methods.
Abstract: A numerical study is presented on convective heat transfer in enclosures. The results are addressed to automotive headlights containing new-age light sources like Light Emitting Diodes (LED). The heat transfer from the heat source (LED) to the enclosure walls is investigated for mixed convection as interaction of the forced convection flow from an inlet and an outlet port and the natural convection at the heat source. Unlike existing studies, inlet and outlet port are thermally coupled and do not serve to remove hot fluid. The input power of the heat source is expressed by the Rayleigh number. The internal position of the heat source, the aspect ratio of the enclosure, and the inclination angle of one wall are varied. The results are given in terms of the global Nusselt number and the enclosure Nusselt number that characterize the heat transfer from the source and from the interior fluid to the enclosure walls, respectively. It is found that the heat transfer from the source to the fluid can be maximized if the source is placed in the main stream from the inlet to the outlet port. In this case, the Reynolds number and heat source position have the major impact on the heat transfer. A disadvantageous position has been found where natural and forced convection compete each other. The overall heat transfer from the source to the wall increases with increasing Reynolds number as well as with increasing aspect ratio and decreasing inclination angle. The heat transfer from the interior fluid to the enclosure wall increases upon decreasing the aspect ratio and increasing the inclination angle. This counteracting behaviour is caused by the variation of the area of the enclosure wall. All mixed convection results are compared to the natural convection limit.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of an analytical study
on the seismic response of a Multi-Span-Simply-Supported precast
bridge in Washington State. The bridge was built in the early 1960's
along Interstate 5 and was widened the first time in 1979 and the
second time in 2001. The primary objective of this research project
is to determine the seismic vulnerability of the bridge in order to
develop the required retrofit measure. The seismic vulnerability of
the bridge is evaluated using two seismic evaluation methods
presented in the FHWA Seismic Retrofitting Manual for Highway
Bridges, Method C and Method D2. The results of the seismic
analyses demonstrate that Method C and Method D2 vary markedly
in terms of the information they provide to the bridge designer
regarding the vulnerability of the bridge columns.
Abstract: Communication is an important factor and a prop in
directing corporate activities efficiently, in ensuring the flow of
knowledge which is necessary for the continuity of the institution, in
creating a common language in the institution, in transferring
corporate culture and ultimately in corporate success. The idea of
transmitting the knowledge among the workers in a healthy manner
has revived knowledge communication. Knowledge communication
can be defined as the act of mutual creation and communication of
intuitions, assessments, experiences and capabilities, as long as
maintained effectively, can provide advantages such as corporate
continuity, access to corporate objectives and making true
administrative decisions. Although the benefits of the knowledge
communication to corporations are known, and the necessary worth
and care is given, some hardships may arise which makes it difficult
or even block it. In this article, difficulties that prevent knowledge
communication will be discussed and solutions will be proposed.
Abstract: The goal of this work is to improve the efficiency and the reliability of the automatic artifact rejection, in particular from the Electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. Artifact rejection is a key topic in signal processing. The artifacts are unwelcome signals that may occur during the signal acquisition and that may alter the analysis of the signals themselves. A technique for the automatic artifact rejection, based on the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) for the artifact extraction and on some high order statistics such as kurtosis and Shannon-s entropy, was proposed some years ago in literature. In this paper we enhance this technique introducing the Renyi-s entropy. The performance of our method was tested exploiting the Independent Component scalp maps and it was compared to the performance of the method in literature and it showed to outperform it.
Abstract: Fatigue tests of specimen-s with numerous holes are
presented. The tests were made up till fatigue cracks have been
created on both sides of the hole. Their extension was stopping with
pressed plastic deformation at the mouth of the detected crack. It is
shown that the moments of occurrence of cracks on holes are
stochastically dependent. This dependence has positive and negative
correlation relations. Shown that the positive correlation is formed
across of the applied force, while negative one – along it. The
negative relationship extends over a greater distance. The
mathematical model of dependence area formation is represented as
well as the estimating of model parameters. The positive correlation
of fatigue cracks origination can be considered as an extension of one
main crack. With negative correlation the first crack locates the place
of its origin, leading to the appearance of multiple cracks; do not
merge with each other.
Abstract: Never has a revolution affected all aspects of
humanity as the communication revolution during the past two
decades. This revolution, with all its advances and utilities, swept the
world thus becoming an integral part of our lives, hence giving way
to emerging applications at the social, economic, political, and
educational levels. More specifically, such applications have changed
the delivery system through which learning is acquired by students.
Interaction with educators, accessibility to content, and creative
delivery options are but a few facets of the new learning experience
now being offered through the use of technology in the educational
field. With different success rates, third world countries have tried to
pace themselves with use of educational technology in advanced
parts of the world. One such country is the small rich-oil state of
Kuwait which has tried to adopt the e-educational model, however,
an evaluation of such trial is yet to be done. This study aimed to fill
the void of research conducted around that topic. The study explored
students' acceptance of incorporating communication technologies in
higher education in Kuwait. Students' responses to survey questions
presented an overview of the e-learning experience in this country,
and drew a framework through which implications and suggestions
for future research were discussed to better serve the advancement of
e-education in developing countries.
Abstract: Transmission and distribution lines are vital links between the generating unit and consumers. They are exposed to atmosphere, hence chances of occurrence of fault in transmission line is very high which has to be immediately taken care of in order to minimize damage caused by it. In this paper Discrete wavelet transform of voltage signals at the two ends of transmission lines have been analyzed. The transient energy of the detail information of level five is calculated for different fault conditions. It is observed that the variation of transient energy of healthy and faulted line can give important information which can be very useful in classifying and locating the fault.
Abstract: Discharges in hydrogen, ignited by wire explosion, with current amplitude up to 1.5 MA were investigated. Channel diameter oscillations were observed on the photostreaks. Voltage and current curves correlated with the photostreaks. At initial gas pressure of 5-35 MPa the oscillation period was proportional to square root of atomic number of the initiating wire material. These oscillations were associated with aligned magnetic and gas-kinetic pressures. At initial pressure of 80-160 MPa acoustic pressure fluctuations on the discharge chamber wall were increased up to 150 MPa and there were the growth of voltage fluctuations on the discharge gap up to 3 kV simultaneously with it. In some experiments it was observed abrupt increase in the oscillation amplitude, which can be caused by the resonance of the acoustic oscillations in discharge chamber volume and the oscillations connected with alignment of the gaskinetic pressure and the magnetic pressure, as far as frequencies of these oscillations are close to each other in accordance with the estimates and the experimental data. Resonance of different type oscillations can produce energy density increasing in the discharge channel. Thus, the appropriate initial conditions in the experiment allow to increase the energy density in the discharge channel
Abstract: The automatic discrimination of seismic signals is an important practical goal for the earth-science observatories due to the large amount of information that they receive continuously. An essential discrimination task is to allocate the incoming signal to a group associated with the kind of physical phenomena producing it. In this paper, we present new techniques for seismic signals classification: local, regional and global discrimination. These techniques were tested on seismic signals from the data base of the National Geophysical Institute of the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (Morocco) by using the Moroccan software for seismic signals analysis.
Abstract: Low temperature (LT) is one of the most abiotic
stresses causing loss of yield in wheat (T. aestivum). Four major
genes in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) with the dominant alleles
designated Vrn–A1,Vrn–B1,Vrn–D1 and Vrn4, are known to have
large effects on the vernalization response, but the effects on cold
hardiness are ambiguous. Poor cold tolerance has restricted winter
wheat production in regions of high winter stress [9]. It was known
that nearly all wheat chromosomes [5] or at least 10 chromosomes of
21 chromosome pairs are important in winter hardiness [15]. The
objective of present study was to clarify the role of each chromosome
in cold tolerance. With this purpose we used 20 isogenic lines of
wheat. In each one of these isogenic lines only a chromosome from
‘Bezostaya’ variety (a winter habit cultivar) was substituted to
‘Capple desprez’ variety. The plant materials were planted in
controlled conditions with 20º C and 16 h day length in moderately
cold areas of Iran at Karaj Agricultural Research Station in 2006-07
and the acclimation period was completed for about 4 weeks in a
cold room with 4º C. The cold hardiness of these isogenic lines was
measured by LT50 (the temperature in which 50% of the plants are
killed by freezing stress).The experimental design was completely
randomized block design (RCBD)with three replicates. The results
showed that chromosome 5A had a major effect on freezing
tolerance, and then chromosomes 1A and 4A had less effect on this
trait. Further studies are essential to understanding the importance of
each chromosome in controlling cold hardiness in wheat.
Abstract: This paper studies the duration or survival time of commercial banks active in the Moscovian three month Rouble deposits market, during the 1994-1997 period. The privatization process of the Russian commercial banking industry, after the 1988 banking reform, caused a massive entry of new banks followed by a period of high rates of exit. As a consequence, many firms went bankrupt without refunding their deposits. Therefore, both for the banks and for the banks- depositors, it is of interest to analyze which are the significant characteristics that motivate the exit or the closing of the bank. We propose a different methodology based on penalized weighted least squares which represents a very general, flexible and innovative approach for this type of analysis. The more relevant results are that smaller banks exit sooner, banks that enter the market in the last part of the study have shorter durations. As expected, the more experienced banks have a longer duration in the market. In addition, the mean survival time is lower for banks which offer extreme interest rates.
Abstract: The combustion of liquid fuel in the porous burner
(PB) was experimented to investigate evaporation mechanism and
combustion behavior. The diesel oil was used as fuel and the pebbles
carefully chosen in the same size like the solid sphere homogeneously
was adopted as the porous media. Two structures of the liquid porous
burner, i.e. the PB without and with installation of porous emitter
(PE), were performed. PE was installed by lower than PB with
distance of 20 cm. The pebbles having porosity (φ) of 0.45 and 0.52
were, respectively, used in PB and PE. The fuel was supplied dropwise
from the top through the PB and the combustion was occurred between
PB and PE. Axial profiles of temperature along the burner length were
measured to clarify the evaporation and combustion phenomena. The
pollutant emission characteristics were monitored at the burner exit.
From the experiment, it was found that the temperature profiles of both
structures decreased with the three ways swirling air flows (QA)
increasing. On the other hand, the temperature profiles increased with
fuel heat input (QF). Obviously, the profile of the porous burner
installed with PE was higher than that of the porous burner without
PE
Abstract: Direction of Arrival estimation refers to defining a mathematical function called a pseudospectrum that gives an indication of the angle a signal is impinging on the antenna array. This estimation is an efficient method of improving the quality of service in a communication system by focusing the reception and transmission only in the estimated direction thereby increasing fidelity with a provision to suppress interferers. This improvement is largely dependent on the performance of the algorithm employed in the estimation. Many DOA algorithms exists amongst which are MUSIC, Root-MUSIC and ESPRIT. In this paper, performance of these three algorithms is analyzed in terms of complexity, accuracy as assessed and characterized by the CRLB and memory requirements in various environments and array sizes. It is found that the three algorithms are high resolution and dependent on the operating environment and the array size.
Abstract: As the disfunctions of the information society and
social development progress, intrusion problems such as malicious
replies, spam mail, private information leakage, phishing, and
pharming, and side effects such as the spread of unwholesome
information and privacy invasion are becoming serious social
problems. Illegal access to information is also becoming a problem as
the exchange and sharing of information increases on the basis of the
extension of the communication network. On the other hand, as the
communication network has been constructed as an international,
global system, the legal response against invasion and cyber-attack
from abroad is facing its limit. In addition, in an environment where
the important infrastructures are managed and controlled on the basis
of the information communication network, such problems pose a
threat to national security. Countermeasures to such threats are
developed and implemented on a yearly basis to protect the major
infrastructures of information communication. As a part of such
measures, we have developed a methodology for assessing the
information protection level which can be used to establish the
quantitative object setting method required for the improvement of the
information protection level.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to trace the effects of growth environment on the behaviour of fattening pigs in the farm and outside it. Behavioral manifestations of pigs reared in pens with enriched environment (A lot, n: 22) were different from those of pigs reared in pens with arid environment (B lot, n: 17) in shelter and when the movement to be loaded. Pigs of B lot spent more time on the move (31%) compared to group A pigs (13%), and manifested more aggressive behavior when they were loaded. Salivary cortisol levels also showed high values for pigs in B lot after being removed from their growth environment, as compared to its concentration for A lot pigs. The enriched environment for pigs may determine different responses of behavior. Pigs raised in arid environment, were easier to loaded than pigs reared in enriched environment, but they responded to mixing and loading stress, through increases in cortisol concentrations and impaired behavioral manifestations.
Abstract: A fuzzy predictive pursuit guidance is proposed as an
alternative to the conventional methods. The purpose of this scheme
is to obtain a stable and fast guidance. The noise effects must be
reduced in homing missile guidance to get an accurate control. An
aerodynamic missile model is simulated first and a fuzzy predictive
pursuit control algorithm is applied to reduce the noise effects. The
performance of this algorithm is compared with the performance of
the classical proportional derivative control. Stability analysis of the
proposed guidance method is performed and compared with the
stability properties of other guidance methods. Simulation results
show that the proposed method provides the satisfying performance.
Abstract: Oral health is particular important to the hospitalized
patients with chronic schizophrenia for an extreme high potential of the respiratory infections. Due to the degeneration of physical capability, patients of this kind typically fall dependent in the activity of daily living (ADL). A very high percentage of patients had dental
problems of which mostly could be easily avoid by easy regular tooth brushing. Purpose of the project is to develop a mechanism in helping the schizophrenia patients in rebuilding a tooth-cleaning habit. The
project observed and evaluated the tooth-cleaning behavior of 100
male patients in a psychiatric hospital, and found the majority of them
ignored such an activity in a three-month period of time. In the meantime, the primary care-givers were not aware or not convinced
the importance of such a need of dental hygiene, and thus few if any
tooth cleaning training or knowledge on dental hygiene were given to
the patients. The project then developed a program based on the numerous observations and discussions. The improvement program
included patients- group education, care-givers- training, and a
tool-kit for tooth-brush holding was erected. The project launched
with some incentive package. The outcomes were encouraging with
87% of the patients had rebuilt their tooth-brushing habits against
previous 22%, and the tooth cleaning kits were 100% kept against 22%
in the past. This project had significantly improved the oral health of
the patients. The project, included the procedure and the tool-kit
holder specific for this purpose, was a good examples for psychiatric
hospitals.