Comprehensive Studies on Mechanical Stress Analysis of Functionally Graded Plates

Stress analysis of functionally graded composite plates composed of ceramic, functionally graded material and metal layers is investigated using 3-D finite element method. In FGM layer, material properties are assumed to be varied continuously in the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution in terms of the volume fraction of a ceramic and metal. The 3-D finite element model is adopted by using an 18-node solid element to analyze more accurately the variation of material properties in the thickness direction. Numerical results are compared for three types of materials. In the analysis, the tensile and the compressive stresses are summarized for various FGM thickness ratios, volume fraction distributions, geometric parameters and mechanical loads.

Auto Regressive Tree Modeling for Parametric Optimization in Fuzzy Logic Control System

The advantage of solving the complex nonlinear problems by utilizing fuzzy logic methodologies is that the experience or expert-s knowledge described as a fuzzy rule base can be directly embedded into the systems for dealing with the problems. The current limitation of appropriate and automated designing of fuzzy controllers are focused in this paper. The structure discovery and parameter adjustment of the Branched T-S fuzzy model is addressed by a hybrid technique of type constrained sparse tree algorithms. The simulation result for different system model is evaluated and the identification error is observed to be minimum.

Replacement of Commercial Anti-Corrosion Material with a More Effective and Cost Efficient Compound Based on Electrolytic System Simulation

There was a high rate of corrosion in Pyrolysis Gasoline Hydrogenation (PGH) unit of Arak Petrochemical Company (ARPC), and it caused some operational problem in this plant. A commercial chemical had been used as anti-corrosion in the depentanizer column overhead in order to control the corrosion rate. Injection of commercial corrosion inhibitor caused some operational problems such as fouling in some heat exchangers. It was proposed to replace this commercial material with another more effective trouble free, and well-known additive by R&D and operation specialists. At first, the system was simulated by commercial simulation software in electrolytic system to specify low pH points inside the plant. After a very comprehensive study of the situation and technical investigations ,ammonia / monoethanol amine solution was proposed as neutralizer or corrosion inhibitor to be injected in a suitable point of the plant. For this purpose, the depentanizer column and its accessories system was simulated again in case of this solution injection. According to the simulation results, injection of new anticorrosion substance has no any side effect on C5 cut product and operating conditions of the column. The corrosion rate will be cotrolled, if the pH remains at the range of 6.5 to 8 . Aactual plant test run was also carried out by injection of ammonia / monoethanol amine solution at the rate of 0.6 Kg/hr and the results of iron content of water samples and corrosion test coupons confirmed the simulation results. Now, ammonia / monoethanol amine solution is injected to a suitable pint inside the plant and corrosion rate has decreased significantly.

The Social Area Disclosure to Reduce Conflicts between Community and the State: A Case of Mahakan Fortress, Bangkok

The purposes of this study are 1) to study the over 20-year attempt of Mahakan fort community to negotiate with Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to remain in their residential area belonging to the state, and 2) to apply the new social and cultural dimension between the state and the community as an alternative for local participation in keeping their residential area. This is a qualitative research, and the findings reveal that the community claimed their ancestors’ right as owners of this piece of land for over 200 years. The community, therefore, requested to take part in the preservation of land, culture and local intellect and the area management in terms of being a learning resource on the cultural road in Rattanakosin Island. However, BMA imposed the law concerning the community area relocation in Rattanakosin Island. The result of law enforcement led to the failure of the area relocation, and the hard hit on physical structure of the area including the overall deterioration of the cultural road renovated in the year 1982, the 200 years’ celebration of Bangkok. The enforcement of law by the state required the move of the community, and the landscape improvement based on the capital city plan. However, this enforcement resulted in the unending conflicts between the community and the state, and the solution of this problem was unclear. At the same time the community has spent a long time opposing the state’s action, and preparing themselves by administrating the community behind Mahakan fortress with community administrative committee under the suggestion of external organization by registering all community members, providing funds for community administration. At the meantime the state lacked the continuation of the enforcement due to political problem and BMA’s administration problem. It is, therefore, suggested that an alternative solution to this problem lie at the negotiation between the state and the community with the purpose of the collaboration between the two to develop the area under the protective law of each side.

Multiple Soliton Solutions of (2+1)-dimensional Potential Kadomtsev-Petviashvili Equation

We employ the idea of Hirota-s bilinear method, to obtain some new exact soliton solutions for high nonlinear form of (2+1)-dimensional potential Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation. Multiple singular soliton solutions were obtained by this method. Moreover, multiple singular soliton solutions were also derived.

A Particle Swarm Optimization Approach for the Earliness-Tardiness No-Wait Flowshop Scheduling Problem

In this researcha particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposedfor no-wait flowshopsequence dependent setuptime scheduling problem with weighted earliness-tardiness penalties as the criterion (|, |Σ   " ).The smallestposition value (SPV) rule is applied to convert the continuous value of position vector of particles in PSO to job permutations.A timing algorithm is generated to find the optimal schedule and calculate the objective function value of a given sequence in PSO algorithm. Twodifferent neighborhood structures are applied to improve the solution quality of PSO algorithm.The first one is based on variable neighborhood search (VNS) and the second one is a simple one with invariable structure. In order to compare the performance of two neighborhood structures, random test problems are generated and solved by both neighborhood approaches.Computational results show that the VNS algorithmhas better performance than the other one especially for the large sized problems.

Database Placement on Large-Scale Systems

Large-scale systems such as Grids offer infrastructures for both data distribution and parallel processing. The use of Grid infrastructures is a more recent issue that is already impacting the Distributed Database Management System industry. In DBMS, distributed query processing has emerged as a fundamental technique for ensuring high performance in distributed databases. Database placement is particularly important in large-scale systems because it reduces communication costs and improves resource usage. In this paper, we propose a dynamic database placement policy that depends on query patterns and Grid sites capabilities. We evaluate the performance of the proposed database placement policy using simulations. The obtained results show that dynamic database placement can significantly improve the performance of distributed query processing.

1Malaysia: National Education Challenge and Nation Building

The main issue discussed is on the role of education system in the process of nation building as a means in uniting different community ethnics which later on, hoped to shape the future ethnic relation of this country. It is generally known that political socialization experienced by each ethnic community has given birth to a vernacular education system, separated along the ethnic line. Every community shapes their own education system based on their respective mother tongue language, however all are based on the same curriculum. As a result the role of education as a uniting force is not significantly effective. Historically, it has been shown that government efforts to unite the country education system under the wing of national education system (national school) is not that successful since every community (Chinese) will defend the existence of their community education system because they want to spur their mother tongue language. The clash between national education system and vernacular education system is the root cause of stalemate in the ethnic relation in Malaysia and it always becomes a flash point when the issue is raised. The question now is what is the best solution to enhance the national education system in multiethnic Malaysia?

Hydropriming and Osmopriming Effects on Cumin(Cuminum Cyminum L.) Seeds Germination

In production of medicinal plants, seed germination is very important problem. The treated seeds (control, hydro priming and ZnSO4) of Cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) were evaluated at germination and seedling growth for tolerance to salt (NaCl and Na2SO4) conditions at the same water potentials of 0.0, -0.3, -0.6, - 0.9 and -1.2MPa. Electrical conductivity (EC) values of the NaCl solutions were 0.0, 6.5, 12.7, 18.4 and 23.5 dSm-1, respectively. The objective of the study was to determine factors responsible for germination and early seedling growth due to salt toxicity or osmotic effect and to optimize the best priming treatment for these stress conditions. Results revealed that germination delayed in both solutions, having variable germination with different priming treatments. Germination, shoot and weight, root and shoot length were higher but mean germination time and abnormal germination percentage were lower in NaCl than Na2SO4 at the same water potential. The root / shoot weight and R/S length increased with increase in osmotic potential in both NaCl and Na2SO4 solutions. NaCl had less inhibitor effect on seedling growth than the germination. It was concluded that inhibition of germination at the same water potential of NaCl and Na2SO4 resulted from salt toxicity rather than osmotic effect. Hydro priming increased germination and seedling growth under salt stress. This protocol has practical importance and could be recommended to farmers to achieve higher germination and uniform emergence under field conditions.

The Role of Online Social Networks in Social Movements: Social Polarization and Violations against Social Unity and Privacy of Individuals in Turkey

As a matter of the fact that online social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace have experienced an extensive growth in recent years. Social media offers individuals with a tool for communicating and interacting with one another. These social networks enable people to stay in touch with other people and express themselves. This process makes the users of online social networks active creators of content rather than being only consumers of traditional media. That’s why millions of people show strong desire to learn the methods and tools of digital content production and necessary communication skills. However, the booming interest in communication and interaction through online social networks and high level of eagerness to invent and implement the ways to participate in content production raise some privacy and security concerns. This presentation aims to open the assumed revolutionary, democratic and liberating nature of the online social media up for discussion by reviewing some recent political developments in Turkey. Firstly, the role of Internet and online social networks in mobilizing collective movements through social interactions and communications will be questioned. Secondly, some cases from Gezi and Okmeydanı Protests and also December 17-25 period will be presented in order to illustrate misinformation and manipulation in social media and violation of individual privacy through online social networks in order to damage social unity and stability contradictory to democratic nature of online social networking.

Community Participation for Sustainable Development Tourism in Bang Noi Floating Market, Bangkonti District, Samutsongkhram Province

The purpose is to study the model and characteristic of participation of the suitable community to lead to develop permanent water marketing in Bang Noi Floating Market, Bangkonti District, Samutsongkhram Province. A total of 342 survey questionnaire was administered to potential respondents. The researchers interviewed the leader of the community. Appreciation Influence Control (AIC) was used to talk with 20 villagers on arena. The findings revealed that overall, most people had the middle level of the participation in developing the durable Bang Noi Floating Market, Bangkonti, Samutsongkhram Province and in aspects of gaining benefits from developing it with atmosphere and a beautiful view for tourism. For example, the landscape is beautiful with public utilities. The participation in preserving and developing Bang Noi Floating Market remains in the former way of life. The basic factor of person affects to the participation of people such as age, level of education, career, and income per month. Most participants are the original hosts that have houses and shops located in the marketing and neighbor. These people involve with the benefits and have the power to make a water marketing strategy, the major role to set the information database. It also found that the leader and the villagers play the important role in setting a five-physical database. Data include level of information such as position of village, territory of village, road, river, and premises. Information of culture consists of a two-level of information, interesting point, and Itinerary. The information occurs from presenting and practicing by the leader and villagers in the community.All of phases are presented for listening and investigating database together in both the leader and villagers in the process of participation.

Tongue Diagnosis System Based on PCA and SVM

In this study, we propose a tongue diagnosis method which detects the tongue from face image and divides the tongue area into six areas, and finally generates tongue coating ratio of each area. To detect the tongue area from face image, we use ASM as one of the active shape models. Detected tongue area is divided into six areas widely used in the Korean traditional medicine and the distribution of tongue coating of the six areas is examined by SVM(Support Vector Machine). For SVM, we use a 3-dimensional vector calculated by PCA(Principal Component Analysis) from a 12-dimentional vector consisting of RGB, HIS, Lab, and Luv. As a result, we detected the tongue area stably using ASM and found that PCA and SVM helped raise the ratio of tongue coating detection.

Further Investigation of Elastic Scattering of 16O on 12C at Different Energies

The aim of this work is to study the elastic transfer phenomenon which takes place in the elastic scattering of 16O on 12C at energies near the Coulomb barrier. Where, the angular distribution decrease steadily with increasing the scattering angle, then the cross section will increase at backward angles due to the α-transfer process. This reaction was also studied at different energies for tracking the nuclear rainbow phenomenon. The experimental data of the angular distribution at these energies were compared to the calculation predictions. The optical potential codes such as SPIVAL and Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWUCK5) were used in analysis.

Characterization for Post-treatment Effect of Bagasse Ash for Silica Extraction

Utilization of bagasse ash for silica sources is one of the most common application for agricultural wastes and valuable biomass byproducts in sugar milling. The high percentage silica content from bagasse ash was used as silica source for sodium silicate solution. Different heating temperature, time and acid treatment were studies for silica extraction. The silica was characterized using various techniques including X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, Scanning electron microscopy, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy method,. The synthesis conditions were optimized to obtain the bagasse ash with the maximum silica content. The silica content of 91.57 percent was achieved from heating of bagasse ash at 600°C for 3 hours under oxygen feeding and HCl treatment. The result can be used as value added for bagasse ash utilization and minimize the environmental impact of disposal problems.

Using Ferry Access Points to Improve the Performance of Message Ferrying in Delay-Tolerant Networks

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are sparse, wireless networks where disconnections are common due to host mobility and low node density. The Message Ferrying (MF) scheme is a mobilityassisted paradigm to improve connectivity in DTN-like networks. A ferry or message ferry is a special node in the network which has a per-determined route in the deployed area and relays messages between mobile hosts (MHs) which are intermittently connected. Increased contact opportunities among mobile hosts and the ferry improve the performance of the network, both in terms of message delivery ratio and average end-end delay. However, due to the inherent mobility of mobile hosts and pre-determined periodicity of the message ferry, mobile hosts may often -miss- contact opportunities with a ferry. In this paper, we propose the combination of stationary ferry access points (FAPs) with MF routing to increase contact opportunities between mobile hosts and the MF and consequently improve the performance of the DTN. We also propose several placement models for deploying FAPs on MF routes. We evaluate the performance of the FAP placement models through comprehensive simulation. Our findings show that FAPs do improve the performance of MF-assisted DTNs and symmetric placement of FAPs outperforms other placement strategies.

A Contribution to 3D Modeling of Manufacturing Tolerance Optimization

The study of the generated defects on manufactured parts shows the difficulty to maintain parts in their positions during the machining process and to estimate them during the pre-process plan. This work presents a contribution to the development of 3D models for the optimization of the manufacturing tolerances. An experimental study allows the measurement of the defects of part positioning for the determination of ε and the choice of an optimal setup of the part. An approach of 3D tolerance based on the small displacements method permits the determination of the manufacturing errors upstream. A developed tool, allows an automatic generation of the tolerance intervals along the three axes.

Trace Emergence of Ants- Traffic Flow, based upon Exclusion Process

Biological evolution has generated a rich variety of successful solutions; from nature, optimized strategies can be inspired. One interesting example is the ant colonies, which are able to exhibit a collective intelligence, still that their dynamic is simple. The emergence of different patterns depends on the pheromone trail, leaved by the foragers. It serves as positive feedback mechanism for sharing information. In this paper, we use the dynamic of TASEP as a model of interaction at a low level of the collective environment in the ant-s traffic flow. This work consists of modifying the movement rules of particles “ants" belonging to the TASEP model, so that it adopts with the natural movement of ants. Therefore, as to respect the constraints of having no more than one particle per a given site, and in order to avoid collision within a bidirectional circulation, we suggested two strategies: decease strategy and waiting strategy. As a third work stage, this is devoted to the study of these two proposed strategies- stability. As a final work stage, we applied the first strategy to the whole environment, in order to get to the emergence of traffic flow, which is a way of learning.

Biodegradation of PCP by the Rhizobacteria Isolated from Pentachlorophenol-tolerant Crop Species

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) is a polychlorinated aromatic compound that is widespread in industrial effluents and is considered to be a serious pollutant. Among the variety of industrial effluents encountered, effluents from tanning industry are very important and have a serious pollution potential. PCP is also formed unintentionally in effluents of paper and pulp industries. It is highly persistent in soils and is lethal to a wide variety of beneficial microorganisms and insects, human beings and animals. The natural processes that breakdown toxic chemicals in the environment have become the focus of much attention to develop safe and environmentfriendly deactivation technologies. Microbes and plants are among the most important biological agents that remove and degrade waste materials to enable their recycling in the environment. The present investigation was carried out with the aim of developing a microbial system for bioremediation of PCP polluted soils. A number of plant species were evaluated for their ability to tolerate different concentrations of pentachlorophenol (PCP) in the soil. The experiment was conducted for 30 days under pot culture conditions. The toxic effect of PCP on plants was studied by monitoring seed germination, plant growth and biomass. As the concentration of PCP was increased to 50 ppm, the inhibition of seed germination, plant growth and biomass was also increased. Although PCP had a negative effect on all plant species tested, maize and groundnut showed the maximum tolerance to PCP. Other tolerating crops included wheat, safflower, sunflower, and soybean. From the rhizosphere soil of the tolerant seedlings, as many as twenty seven PCP tolerant bacteria were isolated. From soybean, 8; sunflower, 3; safflower 8; maize 2; groundnut and wheat, 3 each isolates were made. They were screened for their PCP degradation potentials. HPLC analyses of PCP degradation revealed that the isolate MAZ-2 degraded PCP completely. The isolate MAZ-1 was the next best isolate with 90 per cent PCP degradation. These strains hold promise to be used in the bioremediation of PCP polluted soils.

Probability of Globality

The objective of global optimization is to find the globally best solution of a model. Nonlinear models are ubiquitous in many applications and their solution often requires a global search approach; i.e. for a function f from a set A ⊂ Rn to the real numbers, an element x0 ∈ A is sought-after, such that ∀ x ∈ A : f(x0) ≤ f(x). Depending on the field of application, the question whether a found solution x0 is not only a local minimum but a global one is very important. This article presents a probabilistic approach to determine the probability of a solution being a global minimum. The approach is independent of the used global search method and only requires a limited, convex parameter domain A as well as a Lipschitz continuous function f whose Lipschitz constant is not needed to be known.

Lattice Boltzmann Method for Turbulent Heat Transfer in Wavy Channel Flows

The hydrodynamic and thermal lattice Boltzmann methods are applied to investigate the turbulent convective heat transfer in the wavy channel flows. In this study, the turbulent phenomena are modeling by large-eddy simulations with the Smagorinsky model. As a benchmark, the laminar and turbulent backward-facing step flows are simulated first. The results give good agreement with other numerical and experimental data. For wavy channel flows, the distribution of Nusselt number and the skin-friction coefficients are calculated to evaluate the heat transfer effect and the drag force. It indicates that the vortices at the trough would affect the magnitude of drag and weaken the heat convection effects on the wavy surface. In turbulent cases, if the amplitude of the wavy boundary is large enough, the secondary vortices would be generated at troughs and contribute to the heat convection. Finally, the effects of different Re on the turbulent transport phenomena are discussed.