Abstract: This paper presented two new efficient algorithms
for contour approximation. The proposed algorithm is compared
with Ramer (good quality), Triangle (faster) and Trapezoid (fastest)
in this work; which are briefly described. Cartesian co-ordinates of
an input contour are processed in such a manner that finally
contours is presented by a set of selected vertices of the edge of the
contour. In the paper the main idea of the analyzed procedures for
contour compression is performed. For comparison, the mean
square error and signal-to-noise ratio criterions are used.
Computational time of analyzed methods is estimated depending on
a number of numerical operations. Experimental results are
obtained both in terms of image quality, compression ratios, and
speed. The main advantages of the analyzed algorithm is small
numbers of the arithmetic operations compared to the existing
algorithms.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to remove the two principal
noises which disturb the surface electromyography signal
(Diaphragm). These signals are the electrocardiogram ECG artefact
and the power line interference artefact. The algorithm proposed
focuses on a new Lean Mean Square (LMS) Widrow adaptive
structure. These structures require a reference signal that is correlated
with the noise contaminating the signal. The noise references are
then extracted : first with a noise reference mathematically
constructed using two different cosine functions; 50Hz (the
fundamental) function and 150Hz (the first harmonic) function for
the power line interference and second with a matching pursuit
technique combined to an LMS structure for the ECG artefact
estimation. The two removal procedures are attained without the use
of supplementary electrodes. These techniques of filtering are
validated on real records of surface diaphragm electromyography
signal. The performance of the proposed methods was compared with
already conducted research results.
Abstract: This study was conducted to determine the
effect of abdominal exercises versus abdominal supporting
belt on abdominal efficiency and inter-recti separation
following vaginal delivery.30 primiparous post-natal women
participated in this study. Their age ranged from (25 - 35)
years and their BMI < 30 Kg/m2. Participants were assigned
randomly into 2groups, participants of group (A) used
abdominal belt from the 2nd day following delivery, till the end
of puerperium (6 weeks), while participants of group (B)
engaged into abdominal exercises program from the 2nd day
following delivery for 6 weeks. The results of the present
study revealed that although there was no statistical difference
in waist circumference between both groups, participation in
abdominal exercise program produced a pronounced reduction
in waist/hip ratio, and inter-recti separation and also caused
significant increase in abdominal muscles strength (peak
torque, maximum repetition total work and average power)
higher than the use of abdominal belt.
Abstract: Self-compacting concrete (SCC), a new kind of high
performance concrete (HPC) have been first developed in Japan in
1986. The development of SCC has made casting of dense
reinforcement and mass concrete convenient, has minimized noise.
Fresh self-compacting concrete (SCC) flows into formwork and
around obstructions under its own weight to fill it completely and
self-compact (without any need for vibration), without any
segregation and blocking. The elimination of the need for
compaction leads to better quality concrete and substantial
improvement of working conditions. SCC mixes generally have a
much higher content of fine fillers, including cement, and produce
excessively high compressive strength concrete, which restricts its
field of application to special concrete only. To use SCC mixes in
general concrete construction practice, requires low cost materials to
make inexpensive concrete.
Rice husk ash (RHA) has been used as a highly reactive
pozzolanic material to improve the microstructure of the interfacial
transition zone (ITZ) between the cement paste and the aggregate in
self compacting concrete. Mechanical experiments of RHA blended
Portland cement concretes revealed that in addition to the pozzolanic
reactivity of RHA (chemical aspect), the particle grading (physical
aspect) of cement and RHA mixtures also exerted significant
influences on the blending efficiency.
The scope of this research was to determine the usefulness of Rice
husk ash (RHA) in the development of economical self compacting
concrete (SCC). The cost of materials will be decreased by reducing
the cement content by using waste material like rice husk ash instead
of.
This paper presents a study on the development of Mechanical
properties up to 180 days of self compacting and ordinary concretes
with rice-husk ash (RHA), from a rice paddy milling industry in
Rasht (Iran). Two different replacement percentages of cement by
RHA, 10%, and 20%, and two different water/cementicious material
ratios (0.40 and 0.35), were used for both of self compacting and
normal concrete specimens. The results are compared with those of
the self compacting concrete without RHA, with compressive,
flexural strength and modulus of elasticity. It is concluded that RHA
provides a positive effect on the Mechanical properties at age after
60 days.
Base of the result self compacting concrete specimens have higher
value than normal concrete specimens in all test except modulus of
elasticity. Also specimens with 20% replacement of cement by RHA
have the best performance.
Abstract: The submitted paper deals with the problems of
trapping and enriching the gases and aerosols of the substances to be
determined in the ambient atmosphere. Further, the paper is focused
on the working principle of the miniaturized portable continuous
concentrator we have designed and the possibilities of its
application in air sampling and accumulation of organic and
inorganic substances with which the air is contaminated. The stress is
laid on trapping vapours and aerosols of solid substances with the
comparatively low vapour tension such as explosive compounds.
Abstract: Dextran is a D-glucose polymer which is produced by
Leuconostoc mesenteroides grown in a sucrose-rich media. The
organism was obtained from the Persian Type Culture Collection
(PTCC) and was transferred in MRS broth medium at 30°C and pH
6.8 for 24 h. After preparation of inoculums, organisms were
inoculated into five liquid fermentation media containing either
molasses or cheese whey or different combinations of cheese whey
and molasses. After certain fermentation period, the produced
dextran was separated and dried. Dextran yield was calculated and
significant differences in different media were observed.
Furthermore, FT-IR analysis was performed and the results showed
that there were no significant differences in the produced dextran
structures.
Abstract: In this paper, vapour-liquid critical locus for the
binary system acetone + chloroform was determined experimentally
over the whole range of composition. The critical property
measurements were carried out using a dynamic-synthetic apparatus,
employed in the dynamic mode. The critical points are visually
determined by observing the critical opalescence and the
simultaneous disappearance and reappearance of the meniscus in the
middle of a high-pressure view cell which withstands operations up
to 673K and 20MPa. The experimental critical points measured in
this work were compared to those available in literature.
Abstract: This paper proposes an innovative methodology for
Acceptance Sampling by Variables, which is a particular category of
Statistical Quality Control dealing with the assurance of products
quality. Our contribution lies in the exploitation of machine learning
techniques to address the complexity and remedy the drawbacks of
existing approaches. More specifically, the proposed methodology
exploits Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to aid decision making
about the acceptance or rejection of an inspected sample. For any
type of inspection, ANNs are trained by data from corresponding
tables of a standard-s sampling plan schemes. Once trained, ANNs
can give closed-form solutions for any acceptance quality level and
sample size, thus leading to an automation of the reading of the
sampling plan tables, without any need of compromise with the
values of the specific standard chosen each time. The proposed
methodology provides enough flexibility to quality control engineers
during the inspection of their samples, allowing the consideration of
specific needs, while it also reduces the time and the cost required for
these inspections. Its applicability and advantages are demonstrated
through two numerical examples.
Abstract: The ferroelectric behavior of barium strontium
titanate (BST) in thin film form has been investigated in order to
study the possibility of using BST for ferroelectric gate-field effect
transistor (FeFET) for memory devices application. BST thin films
have been fabricated as Al/BST/Pt/SiO2/Si-gate configuration. The
variation of the dielectric constant (ε) and tan δ with frequency have
been studied to ensure the dielectric quality of the material. The
results show that at low frequencies, ε increases as the Ba content
increases, whereas at high frequencies, it shows the opposite
variation, which is attributed to the dipole dynamics. tan δ shows low
values with a peak at the mid-frequency range. The ferroelectric
behavior of the Al/BST/Pt/SiO2/Si has been investigated using C-V
characteristics. The results show that the strength of the ferroelectric
hysteresis loop increases as the Ba content increases; this is attributed
to the grain size and dipole dynamics effect.
Abstract: The design of an active leg orthosis for tumble
protection is proposed in this paper. The orthosis would be applied to
assist elders or invalids in rebalancing while they fall unexpectedly.
We observe the regain balance motion of healthy and youthful people,
and find the difference to elders or invalids. First, the physical model
of leg would be established, and we consider the leg motions are
achieve through four joints (phalanx stem, ankle, knee, and hip joint)
and five links (phalanges, talus, tibia, femur, and hip bone). To
formulate the dynamic equations, the coordinates which can clearly
describe the position in 3D space are first defined accordance with the
human movement of leg, and the kinematics and dynamics of the leg
movement can be formulated based on the robotics. For the purpose,
assisting elders and invalids in avoiding tumble, the posture variation
of unbalance and regaining balance motion are recorded by the
motion-capture image system, and the trajectory is taken as the desire
one. Then we calculate the force and moment of each joint based on
the leg motion model through programming MATLAB code. The
results would be primary information of the active leg orthosis design
for tumble protection.
Abstract: Antioxidant activities of ethanolic extracts of Ardisia
japonica Blume., Ageartum conyzoides Linn., and Cocculus hirsutus
Linn Diels. leaves was determined qualitatively and quantitatively in
this research. 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical
solution was used to investigate free radical scavenging activity of
these leaves extracts. Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) was used as the
standard. In the present investigation, it is found that all of these
extracts have remarkable antioxidant activities. The EC50 values of
these ethanolic extracts were 12.72 μg/ml for A. japonica, 15.19
μg/ml for A. conyzoides, 10.68 μg/ml for C. hirsutus respectively.
Among these Myanmar medicinal plants, C. hirsutus showed higher
antioxidant activities as well as free radical scavenging activity than
black tea (Camellia sinensis), the famous antioxidant, and A.
japonica and A. conyzoides showed a rather lower antioxidant
activity than tea extracts. According to results from bioassay with
carrot discs infected with Agrobacterium tumefaciens, all extracts
showed anti-tumor activity after 3 weeks of incubation. No gall was
detected in carrot disks treated with C. hirsutus and A. japonica
extracts in the dose of 100ppm and in carrot discs treated with A.
conyzoides extract in the dose of 1000 ppm. Therefore, the research
clearly indicates that these weedy plants of dry farm land are
exceptionally advantageous for human health.
Abstract: Lignocellulosic materials are new targeted source to
produce second generation biofuels like biobutanol. However, this
process is significantly resisted by the native structure of biomass.
Therefore, pretreatment process is always essential to remove
hemicelluloses and lignin prior to the enzymatic hydrolysis.
The goals of pretreatment are removing hemicelluloses and
lignin, increasing biomass porosity, and increasing the enzyme
accessibility. The main goal of this research is to study the important
variables such as pretreatment temperature and time, which can give
the highest total sugar yield in pretreatment step by using dilute
phosphoric acid. After pretreatment, the highest total sugar yield of
13.61 g/L was obtained under an optimal condition at 140°C for 10
min of pretreatment time by using 1.75% (w/w) H3PO4 and at 15:1
liquid to solid ratio. The total sugar yield of two-stage process
(pretreatment+enzymatic hydrolysis) of 27.38 g/L was obtained.
Abstract: In this paper we study the transformation of Euler equations 1 , u u u Pf t (ρ ∂) + ⋅∇ = − ∇ + ∂ G G G G ∇⋅ = u 0, G where (ux, t) G G is the velocity of a fluid, P(x, t) G is the pressure of a fluid andρ (x, t) G is density. First of all, we rewrite the Euler equations in terms of new unknown functions. Then, we introduce new independent variables and transform it to a new curvilinear coordinate system. We obtain the Euler equations in the new dependent and independent variables. The governing equations into two subsystems, one is hyperbolic and another is elliptic.
Abstract: To solve the problem of multisensor data fusion under
non-Gaussian channel noise. The advanced M-estimates are known
to be robust solution while trading off some accuracy. In order to
improve the estimation accuracy while still maintaining the equivalent
robustness, a two-stage robust fusion algorithm is proposed using
preliminary rejection of outliers then an optimal linear fusion. The
numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm is equivalent
to the M-estimates in the case of uncorrelated local estimates and
significantly outperforms the M-estimates when local estimates are
correlated.
Abstract: The use of magnetic and magnetic/gold core/shell
nanoparticles in biotechnology or medicine has shown good promise
due to their hybrid nature which possesses superior magnetic and
optical properties. Some of these potential applications include
hyperthermia treatment, bio-separations, diagnostics, drug delivery
and toxin removal. Synthesis refinement to control geometric and
magnetic/optical properties, and finding functional surfactants for
biomolecular attachment, are requirements to meet application
specifics.
Various high-temperature preparative methods were used for the
synthesis of iron oxide and gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles.
Different surface functionalities, such as 11-aminoundecanoic and
11-mercaptoundecanoic acid, were introduced on the surface of the
particles to facilitate further attachment of biomolecular functionality
and drug-like molecules. Nanoparticle thermal stability, composition,
state of aggregation, size and morphology were investigated and the
results from techniques such as Fourier Transform-Infra Red
spectroscopy (FT-IR), Ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV-vis),
Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and thermal analysis are
discussed.
Abstract: This paper presents the DC voltage control design of D-STATCOM when the D-STATCOM is used for load voltage regulation. Although, the DC voltage can be controlled by active current of the D-STATCOM, reactive current still affects the DC voltage. To eliminate this effect, the control strategy with elimination effect of the reactive current is proposed and the results of the control with and without the elimination the effect of the reactive current are compared. For obtaining the proportional and integral gains of the PI controllers, the symmetrical optimum and genetic algorithms methods are applied. The stability margin of these methods are obtained and discussed in detail. In addition, the performance of the DC voltage control based on symmetrical optimum and genetic algorithms methods are compared. Effectiveness of the controllers designed was verified through computer simulation performed by using Power System Tool Block (PSB) in SIMULINK/MATLAB. The simulation results demonstrated that the DC voltage control proposed is effective in regulating DC voltage when the DSTATCOM is used for load voltage regulation.
Abstract: This paper investigates the nature of the development
of two-dimensional laminar flow of an incompressible fluid at the
reversed stagnation-point. ". In this study, we revisit the problem
of reversed stagnation-point flow over a flat plate. Proudman and
Johnson (1962) first studied the flow and obtained an asymptotic
solution by neglecting the viscous terms. This is no true in neglecting
the viscous terms within the total flow field. In particular it is pointed
out that for a plate impulsively accelerated from rest to a constant
velocity V0 that a similarity solution to the self-similar ODE is
obtained which is noteworthy completely analytical.
Abstract: Five vegetables (spinach, lettuce, cabbage, tomato, and onion) were freshly harvested from the Alau Dam and Gongulong agricultural areas for the determination of some organochlorine pesticide residues (o, p-DDE, p,p’-DDD, o,p’-DDD, p,p’-DDT, α-BHC, γ-BHC, metoxichlor, lindane, endosulfan dieldrin, and aldrin.) Soil samples were also collected at different depths for the determination of the above pesticides. Samples collection and preparation were conducted using standard procedures. The concentrations of all the pesticides in the soil and vegetable samples were determined using GC/MS SHIMADZU (GC-17A) equipped with electron capture detector (ECD). The highest concentration was that of p,p’-DDD (132.4±13.45µg/g) which was observed in the leaf of cabbage, while the lowest concentration was that of p,p’-DDT (2.34µg/g) was observed in the root of spinach. Similar trends were observed at the Gongulong agricultural area, with p,p’-DDD having the highest concentration of 153.23µg/g in the leaf of cabbage, while the lowest concentration was that of p,p’-DDT (12.45µg/g) which was observed in the root of spinach. α-BHC, γ-BHC, Methoxychlor, and lindane were detected in all the vegetable samples studied. The concentrations of all the pesticides in the soil samples were observed to be higher at a depth of 21-30cm, while the lowest concentrations were observed at a depth of 0-10cm. The concentrations of all the pesticides in the vegetables and soil samples from the two agricultural sites were observed to be at alarming levels, much higher than the maximum residue limits (MRLs) and acceptable daily intake values (ADIs) .The levels of the pesticides observed in the vegetables and soil samples investigated, are of such a magnitude that calls for special attention and laws to regulate the use and circulation of such chemicals. Routine monitoring of pesticide residues in these study areas is necessary for the prevention, control and reduction of environmental pollution, so as to minimize health risks.
Abstract: Although there are many theories and discussion of leadership, the necessity of having a new leadership paradigm was emphasized. The existing leadership characteristic of instruction and control revealed its limitations. Market competition becomes fierce and economic recession never ends worldwide. Of the leadership theories, servant leadership was introduced recently and is in line with the environmental changes of the organization. Servant leadership is a combination of two words, 'servant' and 'leader' and can be defined as the role of the leader who focuses on doing voluntary work for others with altruistic ethics, makes members, customers, and local communities a priority, and makes a commitment to satisfying their needs. This leadership received attention as one field of leadership in the late 1990s and secured its legitimacy. This study discusses the existing research trends of leadership, the concept, behavior characteristics, and lower dimensions of servant leadership, compares servant leadership with the existing leadership researches and diagnoses if servant leadership is a useful concept for further leadership researches. Finally, this study criticizes the limitations in the existing researches on servant leadership.
Abstract: The subject of the paper is comparative analysis of the hotel guest-s contractual liability for breaching the obligation for non-payment of hotel services in the hotel-keeper-s contract. The paper is methodologically conceived of six chapters (1. introduction, 2. comparative law sources of the hotel-keeper-s contract, 3. the guest-s obligation for payment of hotel services, 4. hotel guest's liability for non-payment, 5. the hotel-keeper-s rights due to nonpayment and 6. conclusion), which analyzes the guest-s liability for non-payment of hotel services through the international law, European law, euro-continental national laws (France, Germany, Italy, Croatia) and Anglo-American national laws (UK, USA). The paper-s results are the synthesis of answers to the set hypothesis and comparative review of hotel guest-s contractual liability for nonpayment of hotel services provided. In conclusion, it is necessary to adopt an international convention on the hotel-keeper-s contract, which would unify the institute of the hotel guest-s contractual liability for non-payment of hotel services at the international level.