Abstract: Simulation is a very powerful method used for highperformance
and high-quality design in distributed system, and now
maybe the only one, considering the heterogeneity, complexity and
cost of distributed systems. In Grid environments, foe example, it is
hard and even impossible to perform scheduler performance
evaluation in a repeatable and controllable manner as resources and
users are distributed across multiple organizations with their own
policies. In addition, Grid test-beds are limited and creating an
adequately-sized test-bed is expensive and time consuming.
Scalability, reliability and fault-tolerance become important
requirements for distributed systems in order to support distributed
computation. A distributed system with such characteristics is called
dependable. Large environments, like Cloud, offer unique
advantages, such as low cost, dependability and satisfy QoS for all
users. Resource management in large environments address
performant scheduling algorithm guided by QoS constrains. This
paper presents the performance evaluation of scheduling heuristics
guided by different optimization criteria. The algorithms for
distributed scheduling are analyzed in order to satisfy users
constrains considering in the same time independent capabilities of
resources. This analysis acts like a profiling step for algorithm
calibration. The performance evaluation is based on simulation. The
simulator is MONARC, a powerful tool for large scale distributed
systems simulation. The novelty of this paper consists in synthetic
analysis results that offer guidelines for scheduler service
configuration and sustain the empirical-based decision. The results
could be used in decisions regarding optimizations to existing Grid
DAG Scheduling and for selecting the proper algorithm for DAG
scheduling in various actual situations.
Abstract: This study describes a micro device integrated with
multi-chamber for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with different
annealing temperatures. The device consists of the reaction
polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip, a cover glass chip, and is
equipped with cartridge heaters, fans, and thermocouples for
temperature control. In this prototype, commercial software is utilized
to determine the geometric and operational parameters those are
responsible for creating the denaturation, annealing, and extension
temperatures within the chip. Two cartridge heaters are placed at two
sides of the chip and maintained at two different temperatures to
achieve a thermal gradient on the chip during the annealing step. The
temperatures on the chip surface are measured via an infrared imager.
Some thermocouples inserted into the reaction chambers are used to
obtain the transient temperature profiles of the reaction chambers
during several thermal cycles. The experimental temperatures
compared to the simulated results show a similar trend. This work
should be interesting to persons involved in the high-temperature
based reactions and genomics or cell analysis.
Abstract: One astonishing capability of humans is to recognize thousands of different objects visually, and to learn the semantic association between those objects and words referring to them. This work is an attempt to build a computational model of such capacity,simulating the process by which infants learn how to recognize objects and words through exposure to visual stimuli and vocal sounds.One of the main fact shaping the brain of a newborn is that lights and colors come from entities of the world. Gradually the visual system learn which light sensations belong to same entities, despite large changes in appearance. This experience is common between humans and several other mammals, like non-human primates. But humans only can recognize a huge variety of objects, most manufactured by himself, and make use of sounds to identify and categorize them. The aim of this model is to reproduce these processes in a biologically plausible way, by reconstructing the essential hierarchy of cortical circuits on the visual and auditory neural paths.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with propagation of thermoelastic longitudinal vibrations of an infinite circular cylinder, in the context of the linear theory of generalized thermoelasticity with two relaxation time parameters (Green and Lindsay theory). Three displacement potential functions are introduced to uncouple the equations of motion. The frequency equation, by using the traction free boundary conditions, is given in the form of a determinant involving Bessel functions. The roots of the frequency equation give the value of the characteristic circular frequency as function of the wave number. These roots, which correspond to various modes, are numerically computed and presented graphically for different values of the thermal relaxation times. It is found that the influences of the thermal relaxation times on the amplitudes of the elastic and thermal waves are remarkable. Also, it is shown in this study that the propagation of thermoelastic longitudinal vibrations based on the generalized thermoelasticity can differ significantly compared with the results under the classical formulation. A comparison of the results for the case with no thermal effects shows well agreement with some of the corresponding earlier results.
Abstract: Biochemical and molecular analysis of some
antioxidant enzyme genes revealed different level of gene expression
on oilseed (Brassica napus). For molecular and biochemical
analysis, leaf tissues were harvested from plants at eight different
developmental stages, from young to senescence. The levels of total
protein and chlorophyll were increased during maturity stages of
plant, while these were decreased during the last stages of plant
growth. Structural analysis (nucleotide and deduced amino acid
sequence, and phylogenic tree) of a complementary DNA revealed a
high level of similarity for a family of Catalase genes. The
expression of the gene encoded by different Catalase isoforms was
assessed during different plant growth phase. No significant
difference between samples was observed, when Catalase activity
was statistically analyzed at different developmental stages. EST
analysis exhibited different transcripts levels for a number of other
relevant antioxidant genes (different isoforms of SOD and
glutathione). The high level of transcription of these genes at
senescence stages was indicated that these genes are senescenceinduced
genes.
Abstract: Titanium oxide films with different morphologies have for the first time been fabricated through hydrothermal reactions between a titanium substrate and iodine powder in water or ethanol. SEM revealed that iodine supported titanium (Ti-I2) surface shows different morphologies with variable treatment conditions. The mean surface roughness (Ra) was increased in the different groups. Use of surfactant has a role to increase the roughness of the film. The surface roughness was in the range of 0.15 μm-0.42 μm. Furthermore, the electrochemical examinations showed that the Ti-I2 surface fabricated in alcoholic medium has high corrosion resistance than in aqueous medium.
Abstract: Solving Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) by
using Partitioning Block Intervalwise (PBI) technique is our aim in
this paper. The PBI technique is based on Block Adams Method and
Backward Differentiation Formula (BDF). Block Adams Method
only use the simple iteration for solving while BDF requires Newtonlike
iteration involving Jacobian matrix of ODEs which consumes a
considerable amount of computational effort. Therefore, PBI is
developed in order to reduce the cost of iteration within acceptable
maximum error
Abstract: Environmental micro-organisms include a large number of taxa and some species that are generally considered nonpathogenic, but can represent a risk in certain conditions, especially for elderly people and immunocompromised individuals. Chemotaxonomic identification techniques are powerful tools for environmental micro-organisms, and cellular fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) content is a powerful fingerprinting identification technique. A system based on an unsupervised artificial neural network (ANN) was set up using the fatty acid profiles of standard bacterial strains, obtained by gas-chromatography, used as learning data. We analysed 45 certified strains belonging to Acinetobacter, Aeromonas, Alcaligenes, Aquaspirillum, Arthrobacter, Bacillus, Brevundimonas, Enterobacter, Flavobacterium, Micrococcus, Pseudomonas, Serratia, Shewanella and Vibrio genera. A set of 79 bacteria isolated from a drinking water line (AMGA, the major water supply system in Genoa) were used as an example for identification compared to standard MIDI method. The resulting ANN output map was found to be a very powerful tool to identify these fresh isolates.
Abstract: Various formal and informal brand alliances are being formed in professional service firms. Professional service corporate brand is heavily dependent on brands of professional employees who comprise them, and professional employee brands are in turn dependent on the corporate brand. Prior work provides limited scientific evidence of brand alliance effects in professional service area – i.e., how professional service corporate-employee brand allies are affected by an alliance, what are brand attitude effects after alliance formation and how these effects vary with different strengths of an ally. Scientific literature analysis and theoretical modeling are the main methods of the current study. As a result, a theoretical model is constructed for estimating spillover effects of professional service corporate-employee brand alliances and for comparison among different professional service firm expertise practice models – from “brains" to “procedure" model. The resulting theoretical model lays basis for future experimental studies.
Abstract: In face recognition, feature extraction techniques
attempts to search for appropriate representation of the data. However,
when the feature dimension is larger than the samples size, it brings
performance degradation. Hence, we propose a method called
Normalization Discriminant Independent Component Analysis
(NDICA). The input data will be regularized to obtain the most
reliable features from the data and processed using Independent
Component Analysis (ICA). The proposed method is evaluated on
three face databases, Olivetti Research Ltd (ORL), Face Recognition
Technology (FERET) and Face Recognition Grand Challenge
(FRGC). NDICA showed it effectiveness compared with other
unsupervised and supervised techniques.
Abstract: Measuring the complexity of software has been an
insoluble problem in software engineering. Complexity measures can
be used to predict critical information about testability, reliability,
and maintainability of software systems from automatic analysis of
the source code. During the past few years, many complexity
measures have been invented based on the emerging Cognitive
Informatics discipline. These software complexity measures,
including cognitive functional size, lend themselves to the approach
of the total cognitive weights of basic control structures such as loops
and branches. This paper shows that the current existing calculation
method can generate different results that are algebraically
equivalence. However, analysis of the combinatorial meanings of this
calculation method shows significant flaw of the measure, which also
explains why it does not satisfy Weyuker's properties. Based on the
findings, improvement directions, such as measures fusion, and
cumulative variable counting scheme are suggested to enhance the
effectiveness of cognitive complexity measures.
Abstract: Glutathione S-transferase was purified from human
erythrocytes and effects of some polyphenols were investigated on
the enzyme activity. The purification procedure was performed on
Glutathione-Agarose affinity chromatography after preparation of
erythrocytes hemolysate with a yield of 81%. The purified enzyme
showed a single band on the SDS-PAGE. The effects of some
poliphenolic compounds such as catechin, dopa, dopamine, progallol
and catechol were examined on the in vitro GST activity. Catechin
was determined to be inhibitor for the enzyme, but others were not
effective on the enzyme as inhibitors or activators. IC50 value -the
concentration of inhibitor which reduces enzyme activity by 50%-
was estimated to be 10 mM. Ki constants were also calculated as 6.38
± 0,70 mM with GSH substrate, and 3.86 ± 0,78 mM with CDNB
substrate using the equations of graphs for the inhibitor, and its
inhibition type was determined as non-competitive.
Abstract: A precision CMOS chopping amplifier is adopted in this work to improve a CMOS temperature sensor high sensitive enough for intracranial temperature monitoring. An amplified temperature sensitivity of 18.8 ± 3*0.2 mV/oC is attained over the temperature range from 20 oC to 80 oC from a given 10 samples of the same wafer. The analog frontend design outputs the temperature dependent and the temperature independent signals which can be directly interfaced to a 10 bit ADC to accomplish an accurate temperature instrumentation system.
Abstract: We fabricated the inverted-staggered etch stopper
structure oxide-based TFT and investigated the characteristics of oxide
TFT under the 400 nm wavelength light illumination. When 400 nm
light was illuminated, the threshold voltage (Vth) decreased and
subthreshold slope (SS) increased at forward sweep, while Vth and SS
were not altered when larger wavelength lights, such as 650 nm, 550
nm and 450 nm, were illuminated. At reverse sweep, the transfer curve
barely changed even under 400 nm light. Our experimental results
support that photo-induced hole carriers are captured by donor-like
interface trap and it caused the decrease of Vth and increase of SS. We
investigated the interface trap density increases proportionally to the
photo-induced hole concentration at active layer.
Abstract: This paper investigates the occurrence of regenerative
chatter vibrations in facing and turning processes. Orthogonal turning
(facing) and normal turning experiments are carried out under stable
as well as in the presence of controlled chatter vibrations. The effects
of chatter vibrations on various sensor signals are captured and
analyzed using frequency domain methods, which successfully
detected the chatter vibrations close to the dominant mode of the
machine tool system.
Abstract: The experiment was conducted to study the effect of
rearing systems on fatty acid composition and cholesterol content of
Thai indigenous chicken meat. Three hundred and sixty chicks were
allocated to 2 different rearing systems: conventional, housing in an
indoor pen (5 birds/m2); free-range, housing in an indoor pen (5
birds/m2) with access to a grass paddock (1 bird/m2) from 8 wk of age
until slaughter. All birds were provided with the same diet during the
experimental period. At 16 wk of age, 24 birds per group were
slaughtered to evaluate the fatty acid composition and cholesterol
content of breast and thigh meat. The results showed that the
proportion of SFA, MUFA and PUFA in breast and thigh meat were
not different among groups (P>0.05). However, the proportion of n-3
fatty acids was higher and the ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids was lower
in free-range system than in conventional system (P0.05). The data indicated that the free-range system
could increase the proportion of n-3 fatty acids, but no effect on
cholesterol content in Thai indigenous chicken meat.
Abstract: The present work was conducted for the synthesis of
nano size zerovalent iron (nZVI) and hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI))
removal as a highly toxic pollutant by using this nanoparticles. Batch
experiments were performed to investigate the effects of Cr(VI),
nZVI concentration, pH of solution and contact time variation on
the removal efficiency of Cr(VI). nZVI was synthesized by
reduction of ferric chloride using sodium borohydrid. SEM and
XRD examinations applied for determination of particle size and
characterization of produced nanoparticles. The results showed that
the removal efficiency decreased with Cr(VI) concentration and pH
of solution and increased with adsorbent dosage and contact time.
The Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were used for the
adsorption equilibrium data and the Langmuir isotherm model was
well fitted. Nanoparticle ZVI presented an outstanding ability to
remove Cr(VI) due to high surface area, low particle size and high
inherent activity.
Abstract: Weblogs are resource of social structure to discover and track the various type of information written by blogger. In this paper, we proposed to use mining weblogs technique for identifying the trends of influenza where blogger had disseminated their opinion for the anomaly disease. In order to identify the trends, web crawler is applied to perform a search and generated a list of visited links based on a set of influenza keywords. This information is used to implement the analytics report system for monitoring and analyzing the pattern and trends of influenza (H1N1). Statistical and graphical analysis reports are generated. Both types of the report have shown satisfactory reports that reflect the awareness of Malaysian on the issue of influenza outbreak through blogs.
Abstract: The aim of this contribution is to present a new
approach in modeling the electrical activity of the human heart. A
recurrent artificial neural network is being used in order to exhibit a
subset of the dynamics of the electrical behavior of the human heart.
The proposed model can also be used, when integrated, as a
diagnostic tool of the human heart system.
What makes this approach unique is the fact that every model is
being developed from physiological measurements of an individual.
This kind of approach is very difficult to apply successfully in many
modeling problems, because of the complexity and entropy of the
free variables describing the complex system. Differences between
the modeled variables and the variables of an individual, measured at
specific moments, can be used for diagnostic purposes. The sensor
fusion used in order to optimize the utilization of biomedical sensors
is another point that this paper focuses on. Sensor fusion has been
known for its advantages in applications such as control and
diagnostics of mechanical and chemical processes.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to study motivation
factors affecting job performance effectiveness. This paper drew
upon data collected from an Internal Audit Staffs of Internal Audit
Line of Head Office of Krung Thai Public Company Limited.
Statistics used included frequency, percentage, mean and standard
deviation, t-test, and one-way ANOVA test. The finding revealed that
the majority of the respondents were female of 46 years of age and
over, married and live together, hold a bachelor degree, with an
average monthly income over 70,001 Baht. The majority of
respondents had over 15 years of work experience. They generally
had high working motivation as well as high job performance
effectiveness.
The hypotheses testing disclosed that employees with different
working status had different level of job performance effectiveness at
a 0.01 level of significance. Working motivation factors had an effect
on job performance in the same direction with high level. Individual
working motivation included working completion, reorganization,
working progression, working characteristic, opportunity,
responsibility, management policy, supervision, relationship with
their superior, relationship with co-worker, working position,
working stability, safety, privacy, working conditions, and payment.
All of these factors related to job performance effectiveness in the
same direction with medium level.