Abstract: A lightpipe is an about 99 percent specular reflective
mirror pipe or duct that is used for the transmission of the daylight
from the outside into a building. The lightpipes are usually used in
the daylighting buildings, in the residential, industrial and
commercial sectors. This paper is about the performances of a
lightpipe installed in a laboratory (3 m x 2.6 m x 3 m) without
windows. The aim is to analyse the luminous intensity distribution
for several sky/sun conditions. The lightpipe was monitored during
the year 2006. The lightpipe is 1 m long and the diameter of the top
collector and of the internal diffuser device is 0.25 m. In the
laboratory there are seven illuminance sensors: one external is
located on the roof of the laboratory and six internal sensors are
connected to a data acquisition system. The internal sensors are
positioned under the internal diffusive device at an height of 0.85 m
from the floor to simulate a working plane. The numerical data are
obtained through a simulation software. This paper shows the
comparison between the experimental and numerical results
concerning the behavior of the lightpipe.
Abstract: Innovations, especially technological, are considered
key-drivers for sustainable economic growth and competitiveness in
the globalised world. As such they should also play an important role
in the process of economical convergence inside the EU.
Unfortunately, the problem of insufficient innovation performance
concerns around half of the EU countries. Poland shows that a lack of
a consistent high-tech financing system constitutes a serious obstacle
for the development of innovative firms. In this article we will
evaluate these questions referring to the example of Ammono S.A., a
Polish company established to develop and commercialise an original
technology for the production of bulk GaN crystals. We will focus on
its efforts to accumulate the financial resources necessary at different
stages of its development. The purpose of this article is to suggest
possible ways to improve the national innovative system, which
would make it more competent in generating high-tech leaders.
Abstract: We present a subband adaptive infinite-impulse response (IIR) filtering method, which is based on a polyphase decomposition of IIR filter. Motivated by the fact that the polyphase structure has benefits in terms of convergence rate and stability, we introduce the polyphase decomposition to subband IIR filtering, i.e., in each subband high order IIR filter is decomposed into polyphase IIR filters with lower order. Computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed method has improved convergence rate over conventional IIR filters.
Abstract: An Advance Driver Assistance System (ADAS) is a computer system on board a vehicle which is used to reduce the risk of vehicular accidents by monitoring factors relating to the driver, vehicle and environment and taking some action when a risk is identified. Much work has been done on assessing vehicle and environmental state but there is still comparatively little published work that tackles the problem of driver state. Visual attention is one such driver state. In fact, some researchers claim that lack of attention is the main cause of accidents as factors such as fatigue, alcohol or drug use, distraction and speeding all impair the driver-s capacity to pay attention to the vehicle and road conditions [1]. This seems to imply that the main cause of accidents is inappropriate driver behaviour in cases where the driver is not giving full attention while driving. The work presented in this paper proposes an ADAS system which uses an image based template matching algorithm to detect if a driver is failing to observe particular windscreen cells. This is achieved by dividing the windscreen into 24 uniform cells (4 rows of 6 columns) and matching video images of the driver-s left eye with eye-gesture templates drawn from images of the driver looking at the centre of each windscreen cell. The main contribution of this paper is to assess the accuracy of this approach using Receiver Operating Characteristic analysis. The results of our evaluation give a sensitivity value of 84.3% and a specificity value of 85.0% for the eye-gesture template approach indicating that it may be useful for driver point of regard determinations.
Abstract: The plant world is the source of many medicines.
Recently, researchers have estimated that there are approximately
400,000 plant species worldwide, of which about a quarter or a third
have been used by societies for medicinal purposes. The human uses
of plants for thousands of years to treat various ailments, in many
developing countries, much of the population trust in traditional
doctors and their collections of medicinal plants to treat them.
Essential oils have many therapeutic properties. In herbal medicine,
they are used for their antiseptic properties against infectious
diseases of fungal origin, against dermatophytes, those of bacterial
origin. The aim of our study is to determine the antimicrobial effect
of essential oils of the plant Trigonella focnum greacum on some
pathogenic bacteria, it is a medicinal plant used in traditional
therapy. The test adopted is based on the diffusion method on solid
medium (Antibiogram), this method determines the sensitivity or
resistance of a microorganism vis-à-vis the extract studied. Our study
reveals that the essential oil of the plant Trigonella focnum greacum
has a different effect on the resistance of germs. For staphiloccocus
Pseudomonnas aeroginosa and Krebsilla, are moderately sensitive
strains, also Escherichia coli and Candida albicans represents a high
sensitivity. By against Proteus is a strain that represents a weak
sensitivity.
Abstract: power-line networks are promise infrastructure for
broadband services provision to end users. However, the network
performance is affected by stochastic channel changing which is due
to load impedances, number of branches and branched line lengths. It
has been proposed that multi-carrier modulations techniques such as
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), Multi-Carrier
Spread Spectrum (MC-SS), wavelet OFDM can be used in such
environment. This paper investigates the performance of different
indoor topologies of power-line networks that uses MC-SS
modulation scheme.It is observed that when a branch is added in the
link between sending and receiving end of an indoor channel an
average of 2.5dB power loss is found. In additional, when the branch
is added at a node an average of 1dB power loss is found.
Additionally when the terminal impedances of the branch change
from line characteristic impedance to impedance either higher or
lower values the channel performances were tremendously improved.
For example changing terminal load from characteristic impedance
(85 .) to 5 . the signal to noise ratio (SNR) required to attain the
same performances were decreased from 37dB to 24dB respectively.
Also, changing the terminal load from channel characteristic
impedance (85 .) to very higher impedance (1600 .) the SNR
required to maintain the same performances were decreased from
37dB to 23dB. The result concludes that MC-SS performs better
compared with OFDM techniques in all aspects and especially when
the channel is terminated in either higher or lower impedances.
Abstract: With the resource exhaustion, bad affections of human
activities and the awakening of the human rights, the corporate social
responsibility became popular corporate strategy achieving
sustainable development of both corporation and society. The issue of
Guideline of Chinese Corporate Social Responsibility Report
promotes greatly corporation to take social responsibility. This paper
built the index system according to this guideline and takes the textile
industry as an example, uses the analytical hierarchy process to
identify the weightings of different responsibilities of corporation to
guide the corporate social responsibility performance assessment.
Abstract: The gel-supported precipitation (GSP) process can be
used to make spherical particles (spherules) of nuclear fuel,
particularly for very high temperature reactors (VHTR) and even for
implementing the process called SPHEREPAC. In these different
cases, the main characteristics are the sphericity of the particles to be
manufactured and the control over their grain size. Nonetheless,
depending on the specifications defined for these spherical particles,
the GSP process has intrinsic limits, particularly when fabricating
very small particles. This paper describes the use of secondary
fragmentation (water, water/PVA and uranyl nitrate) on solid
surfaces under varying temperature and vibration conditions to assess
the relevance of using this new technique to manufacture very small
spherical particles by means of a modified GSP process. The
fragmentation mechanisms are monitored and analysed, before the
trends for its subsequent optimised application are described.
Abstract: We propose an integral tracking control method for a piezoelectric actuator system. The proposed method achieves the output tracking without requiring any hysteresis observer or schemes to compensate the hysteresis effect. With the proposed control law, the system is converted into the standard singularly perturbed model. Using Tikhonov-s theorem, we guarantee that the tracking error can be reduced to arbitrarily small bound. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Abstract: The major focus of this work was to characterize hydrodynamics in a packed-bed with and without static mixer by using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD). The commercial software: COMSOL MULTIPHYSICSTM Version 3.3 was used to simulate flow fields of mixed-gas reactants i.e. CO and H2. The packed-bed was a single tube with the inside diameter of 0.8 cm and the length of 1.2 cm. The static mixer was inserted inside the tube. The number of twisting elements was 1 with 0.8 cm in diameter and 1.2 cm in length. The packed-bed with and without static mixer were both packed with approximately 700 spherical structures representing catalyst pellets. Incompressible Navier-Stokes equations were used to model the gas flow inside the beds at steady state condition, in which the inlet Reynolds Number (Re) was 2.31. The results revealed that, with the insertion of static mixer, the gas was forced to flow radially inward and outward between the central portion of the tube and the tube wall. This could help improving the overall performance of the packed-bed, which could be utilized for heterogeneous catalytic reaction such as reforming and Fischer- Tropsch reactions.
Abstract: This paper presents a robust proportionalderivative
(PD) based cerebellar model articulation
controller (CMAC) for vertical take-off and landing flight
control systems. Successful on-line training and recalling
process of CMAC accompanying the PD controller is
developed. The advantage of the proposed method is mainly
the robust tracking performance against aerodynamic
parametric variation and external wind gust. The
effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated through
the application of a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft
control system.
Abstract: In this paper, FinFET devices are analyzed with
emphasis on sub-threshold leakage current control. This is achieved
through proper biasing of the back gate, and through the use of
asymmetric work functions for the four terminal FinFET devices. We
are also examining different configurations of multiplexers and XOR
gates using transistors of symmetric and asymmetric work functions.
Based on extensive characterization data for MUX circuits, our
proposed configuration using symmetric devices lead to leakage
current and delay improvements of 65% and 47% respectively
compared to results in the literature. For XOR gates, a 90%
improvement in the average leakage current is achieved by using
asymmetric devices. All simulations are based on a 25nm FinFET
technology using the University of Florida UFDG model.
Abstract: A DC-to-DC converter for applications involving a
source with widely varying voltage conditions with loads requiring
constant voltage from full load down to no load is presented.
The switching regulator considered is a Buck converter with Pulse
Skipping Modulation control whereby pulses applied to the switch
are blocked or released on output voltage crossing a predetermined
value. Results of the study on the performance of regulator circuit
are presented. The regulator regulates over a wide input voltage range
with slightly higher ripple content and good transient response. Input
current spectrum indicates a good EMI performance with crowding
of components at low frequency range.
Abstract: Calcium [Ca2+] dynamics is studied as a potential form
of neuron excitability that can control many irregular processes like
metabolism, secretion etc. Ca2+ ion enters presynaptic terminal and
increases the synaptic strength and thus triggers the neurotransmitter
release. The modeling and analysis of calcium dynamics in neuron
cell becomes necessary for deeper understanding of the processes
involved. A mathematical model has been developed for cylindrical
shaped neuron cell by incorporating physiological parameters like
buffer, diffusion coefficient, and association rate. Appropriate initial
and boundary conditions have been framed. The closed form solution
has been developed in terms of modified Bessel function. A computer
program has been developed in MATLAB 7.11 for the whole
approach.
Abstract: In this paper, the effect of transmission codes on the
performance of coherent square M-ary quadrature amplitude
modulation (CSMQAM) under hybrid selection/maximal-ratio
combining (H-S/MRC) diversity is analysed. The fading channels are
modeled as frequency non-selective slow independent and identically
distributed Rayleigh fading channels corrupted by additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN). The results for coded MQAM are
computed numerically for the case of (24,12) extended Golay code
and compared with uncoded MQAM under H-S/MRC diversity by
plotting error probabilities versus average signal to noise ratio (SNR)
for various values L and N in order to examine the improvement in
the performance of the digital communications system as the number
of selected diversity branches is increased. The results for no
diversity, conventional SC and Lth order MRC schemes are also
plotted for comparison. Closed form analytical results derived in this
paper are sufficiently simple and therefore can be computed
numerically without any approximations. The analytical results
presented in this paper are expected to provide useful information
needed for design and analysis of digital communication systems
over wireless fading channels.
Abstract: P16/INK4A is tumor suppressor protein that plays a critical role in cell cycle regulation. Loss of P16 protein expression has been implicated in pathogenesis of many cancers, including lymphoma. Therefore, we sought to investigate if loss of P16 protein expression is associated with lymphoma and/or any specific lymphoma subtypes (Hodgkin-s lymphoma (HL) and nonHodgkin-s lymphoma (NHL)). Fifty-five lymphoma cases consisted of 30 cases of HL and 25 cases of NHL, with an age range of 3 to 78 years, were examined for loss of P16 by immunohistochemical technique using a specific antibody reacting against P16. In total, P16 loss was seen in 33% of all lymphoma cases. P16 loss was identified in 47.7% of HL cases. In contrast, only 16% of NHL showed loss of P16. Loss of P16 was seen in 67% of HL patients with 50 years of age or older, whereas P16 loss was found in only 42% of HL patients with less than 50 years of age. P16 loss in HL is somewhat higher in male (55%) than in female (30%). In subtypes of HL, P16 loss was found exclusively in all cases of lymphocyte depletion, lymphocyte predominance and unclassified cases, whereas P16 loss was seen in 39% of mixed cellularity and 29% of nodular sclerosis cases. In low grade NHL patients, P16 loss was seen in approximately one-third of cases, whereas no or very rare of P16 loss was found in intermediate and high grade cases. P16 loss did not show any correlation with age or gender of NHL patients. In conclusion, the high rate of P16 loss seen in our study suggests that loss of P16 expression plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of lymphoma, particularly with HL.
Abstract: this paper focuses on designing of PSS and SVC
controller based on chaos and PSO algorithms to improve the
stability of power system. Single machine infinite bus (SMIB) system
with SVC located at the terminal of generator has been considered to
evaluate the proposed controllers where both SVC and PSS have the
same controller. The coefficients of PSS and SVC controller have
been optimized by chaos and PSO algorithms. Finally the system
with proposed controllers has been simulated for the special
disturbance in input power of generator, and then the dynamic
responses of generator have been presented. The simulation results
showed that the system composed with recommended controller has
outstanding operation in fast damping of oscillations of power system.
Abstract: Nodes in mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) do not
rely on a central infrastructure but relay packets originated by other
nodes. Mobile ad hoc networks can work properly only if the
participating nodes collaborate in routing and forwarding. For
individual nodes it might be advantageous not to collaborate, though.
In this conceptual paper we propose a new approach based on
relationship among the nodes which makes them to cooperate in an
Adhoc environment. The trust unit is used to calculate the trust
values of each node in the network. The calculated trust values are
being used by the relationship estimator to determine the relationship
status of nodes. The proposed enhanced protocol was compared with
the standard DSR protocol and the results are analyzed using the
network simulator-2.
Abstract: Nonlinear solitary structures of electron plasma waves
have been investigated by using nonlinear quantum fluid equations for electrons with an arbitrary temperature. It is shown that the electron degeneracy parameter has significant effects on the linear and nonlinear properties of electron plasma waves. Depending on its
value both compressive and rarefactive solitons can be excited in the model plasma under consideration.
Abstract: Bentonitic material from South Aswan, Egypt was evaluated in terms of mineral-ogy and chemical composition as bleaching clay in refining of transformer oil before and after acid activation and thermal treatment followed by acid leaching using HCl and H2SO4 for different contact times. Structural modification and refining power of bento-nite were investigated during modification by means of X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy. The results revealed that the activated bentonite could be used for refining of transformer oil. The oil parameters such as; dielectric strength, viscosity and flash point had been improved. The dielectric breakdown strength of used oil increased from 29 kV for used oil treated with unactivated bentonite to 74 kV after treatment with activated bentonite. Kinematic Viscosity changed from 19 to 11 mm2 /s after treatment with activated bentonite. However, flash point achieved 149 ºC.