Abstract: This paper focuses on a critical component of the situational awareness (SA), the control of autonomous vertical flight for vectored thrust aerial vehicle (VTAV). With the SA strategy, we proposed a linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) flight control procedure for an unmanned helicopter model with vectored thrust configuration. This LQG control for chosen model of VTAV has been verified by simulation of take-off and landing maneuvers using software package Simulink and demonstrated good performance for fast flight stabilization of model, consequently, fast SA with economy in energy can be asserted during search-and-rescue operations.
Abstract: In this paper, we address the problem of identifying academic reputation of researchers using scientific metrics in different research areas. Due to the characteristics of each area, researchers can present different behaviors. In previous work, we define Rep-Index that makes use of a profile template to individually identify the reputation of researchers. The Rep-Index is comprehensive and adaptive because involves hole trajectory of the researcher built throughout his career and can be used in different areas and in different contexts. Now, we compare our metric (Rep-Index) with the h-index and the g-index through experiments with researchers in the fields of Economics, Dentistry and Computer Science. We analyze the trajectory of 830 Brazilian researchers from the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq), which receive grants research productivity. The grants are aimed at productivity researchers that stand out among their peers, enhancing their scientific normative criteria established by CNPq. Of the 830 researchers, 210 are in the area of Economics, 216 of Dentistry e 404 of Computer Science. The experiments show that our metric is strongly correlated with h-index, g-index and CNPq ranking. We also show good results for our hypothesis that our metric can be used to evaluate research in several areas. We apply our metric (Rep-Index) to compare the behavior of researchers in relation to their h-index and g-index through extensive experiments. The experiments showed that our metric is strongly correlated with h-index, g-index and CNPq ranking.
Abstract: There are various sources of energies available
worldwide and among them, crude oil plays a vital role. Oil recovery
is achieved using conventional primary and secondary recovery
methods. In-order to recover the remaining residual oil, technologies
like Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) are utilized which is also known
as tertiary recovery. Among EOR, Microbial enhanced oil recovery
(MEOR) is a technique which enables the improvement of oil
recovery by injection of bio-surfactant produced by microorganisms.
Bio-surfactant can retrieve unrecoverable oil from the cap rock which
is held by high capillary force. Bio-surfactant is a surface active agent
which can reduce the interfacial tension and reduce viscosity of oil
and thereby oil can be recovered to the surface as the mobility of the
oil is increased. Research in this area has shown promising results
besides the method is echo-friendly and cost effective compared with
other EOR techniques. In our research, on laboratory scale we
produced bio-surfactant using the strain Pseudomonas putida (MTCC
2467) and injected into designed simple sand packed column which
resembles actual petroleum reservoir. The experiment was conducted
in order to determine the efficiency of produced bio-surfactant in oil
recovery. The column was made of plastic material with 10 cm in
length. The diameter was 2.5 cm. The column was packed with fine
sand material. Sand was saturated with brine initially followed by oil
saturation. Water flooding followed by bio-surfactant injection was
done to determine the amount of oil recovered. Further, the injection
of bio-surfactant volume was varied and checked how effectively oil
recovery can be achieved. A comparative study was also done by
injecting Triton X 100 which is one of the chemical surfactant. Since,
bio-surfactant reduced surface and interfacial tension oil can be easily
recovered from the porous sand packed column.
Abstract: This study investigates theoretical model of tourist intention in the context of mobile tourism guide. The research model consists of three constructs: mobile design quality, innovation characteristics, and intention to use mobile tourism guide. In order to investigate the effects of determinants and examine the relationships, partial least squares is employed for data analysis and research model development. The results show that mobile design quality and innovation quality significantly impact on tourists’ intention to use mobile tourism guide. Furthermore, mobile design quality has a strong influence on innovation characteristics, and cannot be the moderator on the relationship between innovation characteristics and tourists’ intention to use mobile tourism guide. Our findings propose theoretical model for mobile research and provide an important guideline for developing mobile application.
Abstract: In this paper, two-sided uniformly normal distribution techniques were used in the derivation of monotone likelihood ratio. The approach mainly employed the parameters of the distribution for a class of all size a. The derivation technique is fast, direct and less burdensome when compared to some existing methods.
Abstract: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has opened up new and robust ways of sending and receiving information at global level. Any type of information including voice and video is sent to the diverse publics, who equally have variety of choices. Thus, the development of any nation is tied to efficient information dissemination. In Nigeria, television broadcasting started in 1959 with the establishment of the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) by the opposition leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Later on, the government took over the station and fully controlled it. Subsequently, regional stations were opened to propagate government policies and programs. The television industry in Nigeria continued to grow in terms of viewership and number with over fifty national television stations and twenty five private ones. Thus, existing documents on digitization of television broadcasting industry and related literature were used as the main source of information. Therefore, this paper analyses the efforts being made by the Nigerian government through its ICT policy towards digitization of its television broadcasting in order to cope with the global trend. Recommendations are proffered with a view to achieving the target goal.
Abstract: Residential self-selection has gained increasing attention in the Western travel behavior research during the past decade. Many studies in the US, UK, and Germany conclude that the role of individuals’ residential location choice on commute travel behavior is more important than that of the built environment or at least it has considerable effects. However the effectiveness of location choice in many countries and cultures like Iran is unclear. This study examines the self-selections in two neighborhoods in Tehran. As a part of a research about the influences of land use on travel behavior information about people’s location preferences was collected by direct questioning. The findings show that the main reasons for selecting the location of residential units are related to socio-economic factors such as rise of house price and affordability of house prices. Transportation has little impacts on location decisions. Moreover, residential self-selection accounts for only 3 to 7.5 percent of the pedestrian, PT, and car trips.
Abstract: This paper presents an application of the Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) methodology to a turret punching machine in an elevators company, in Portugal. The work was developed during five months, in the ambit of a master thesis in Industrial Engineering and Management. The Lean Production tool SMED was applied to reduce setup times in order to improve the production flexibility of the machine. The main results obtained were a reduction of 64% in setup time (from 15.1 to 5.4min), 50% in work-in-process amount (from 12.8 to 6.4 days) and 99% in the distance traveled by the operator during the internal period (from 136.7 to 1.7m). These improvements correspond to gains of about €7,315.38 per year.
Abstract: This paper presents a comparative study of two most popular control strategies for Induction motor (IM) drives: Field-Oriented Control (FOC) and Direct Torque Control (DTC). The comparison is based on various criteria including basic control characteristics,
dynamic performance, and implementation complexity. The study is done by simulation using the Simulink Power System Block set that allows a complete representation of the power section (inverter and IM) and the control system.
Abstract: Stiffness of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) in flexible pavement is largely dependent of temperature, mode of testing and age of pavement. Accurate measurement of HMA stiffness is thus quite challenging. This study determines HMA stiffness based on Finite Element Model (FEM) and validates the results using field data. As a first step, stiffnesses of different layers of a pavement section on Interstate 40 (I-40) in New Mexico were determined by Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) test. Pavement temperature was not measured at that time due to lack of temperature probe. Secondly, a FE model is developed in ABAQUS. Stiffness of the base, subbase and subgrade were taken from the FWD test output obtained from the first step. As HMA stiffness largely varies with temperature it was assigned trial and error approach. Thirdly, horizontal strain and vertical stress at the bottom of the HMA and temperature at different depths of the pavement were measured with installed sensors on the whole day on December 25th, 2012. Fourthly, outputs of FEM were correlated with measured stress-strain responses. After a number of trials a relationship was developed between the trial stiffness of HMA and measured mid-depth HMA temperature. At last, the obtained relationship between stiffness and temperature is verified by further FWD test when pavement temperature was recorded. A promising agreement between them is observed. Therefore, conclusion can be drawn that linear elastic FEM can accurately predict the stiffness and the structural response of flexible pavement.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to survey the incidence, prevalence, types and associated impairments of CP in children at the Tripoli children hospital (T.C.H). The study covered all the cases the hospital had diagnosed in the period between (1.1.2009) and (31.12.2010), during which 38 cases of ages between 2 months to 3 years were diagnosed in the mentioned period. The incidence of CP was (17.42 per one thousand) out of (2143) of different neurological cases and came with a result of 23 cases of spastic CP which represented about (60.53%) out of the total number of cases, and the most associated impairment is convulsion. Medical information was collected from the patients’ files at the registration department from the neurology department. The data has been collected by a questionnaire, which had been set to finely organize the patient’s files.
Abstract: This paper discusses aspects of outages in the electric transmission network in the Kosovo Power System caused by the atmospheric discharges.
Frequency and location of the atmospheric discharges in Kosovo territory will be provided by a lightning location system ALARM (Automated Lightning Alert and Risk Management) and from the data from the Meteorological Department in Prishtina International Airport. These data will be used to make comparisons with the actual outages registered in the Kosovo Power System from the Kosovo Transmission, systems and market operator (KOSTT) during a specific time period.
The lines with the worst performance determined, regarding the atmospheric discharges, will be choose for further discussions in terms of over voltages caused by the direct or indirect lightning strokes.
Recommendations for protection in terms of insulator coordination and surge arresters will be given at the end and in this stage dynamic simulation will take part.
Abstract: Existence of plastic equation of state has been investigated by performing a series of load relaxation tests at various temperatures using an Al-Li alloy. A plastic equation of state is first developed from a simple kinetics consideration for a mechanical activation process of a leading dislocation piled up against grain boundaries. A series of load relaxation test has been conducted at temperatures ranging from 200 to 530oC to obtain the stress-strain rate curves. A plastic equation of state has been derived from a simple consideration of dislocation kinetics and confirmed by experimental results.
Abstract: Automated motion detection and tracking is a challenging task in traffic surveillance. In this paper, a system is developed to gather useful information from stationary cameras for detecting moving objects in digital videos. The moving detection and tracking system is developed based on optical flow estimation together with application and combination of various relevant computer vision and image processing techniques to enhance the process. To remove noises, median filter is used and the unwanted objects are removed by applying thresholding algorithms in morphological operations. Also the object type restrictions are set using blob analysis. The results show that the proposed system successfully detects and tracks moving objects in urban videos.
Abstract: Chitosan (CH) material reinforced by bioactive glass (46S6) was fabricated. 46S6 containing 17% wt% CH was studied in vitro and in vivo. Physicochemical techniques, such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) analysis were used. The behavior of 46S6CH17 was studied by measuring the in situ pH in a SBF solution. The 46S6CH17 was implanted in the rat femoral condyl. In vitro 46S6CH17 gave an FTIR - spectrum in which three absorption bands with the maxima at 565, 603 and 1039cm-1 after 3 days of soaking in physiological solution. They are assigned to stretching vibrations of PO4^3- group in phosphate crystalline. Moreover, the pH measurement was decreased in the SBF solution. The stability of the calcium phosphate precipitation depended on the pH value. In vivo, a rise in the Ca and phosphate P ions concentrations in the implanted microenvironment was determined.
Abstract: Oxyhydrogen is a mixture of Hydrogen (H2) and Oxygen (O2) gases. Detonative mixtures of oxyhydrogens with various combinations of these two gases were used in Gas Detonation Forming (GDF) to form sheets of mild steel. In die forming experiments, three types of conical dies with apex angles of 60, 90 and 120 degrees were used. Pressure of mixtures inside the chamber before detonation was varied from 3 Bar to 5 Bar to investigate the effect of pre-detonation pressure in the forming process. On each conical die, several experiments with different percentages of Hydrogen were carried out to determine the optimum gaseous mixture. According to our results the best forming process occurred when approximately 50-70%. Hydrogen was employed in the mixture. Furthermore, the experimental results were compared to the ones from FEM analysis. The FEM simulation results of thickness strain, hoop strain, thickness variation and deformed geometry are promising.
Abstract: Project management process starts from the planning stage up to the stage of completion (handover of buildings, preparation of the final accounts and the closing balance). Seeing as this process is not easy to be implemented efficiently and effectively, the issue of unsuccessful delivery as per contract in construction has become a major problem for construction projects. These issues have been blamed mainly on inefficient traditional construction practices that continue to dominate the current industry. This is due to several factors, such as environments of construction technology, sophisticated design and customer demand, that are constantly changing and influencing, either directly or indirectly, to the practice of management. Among the identified influences are physical environment, social environment, information environment, political and moral atmosphere. Therefore, this paper is emerged to determine the fundamental variables in the final account closing success in construction project. This aim can be achieved via its objectives of identifying the key constraints to the closing of final accounts in construction projects in Malaysia, investigating solutions to the identified constraints and analysing the relative levels of impact of the identified constraints. It is expected that this paper provides effective measures to avoid or at least reduce the problems in final account closing to the optimum level. It is also anticipated that the finding or outcome reported in this paper could address the unsuccessful contributors in final account closing and define tools for their mitigation for the better development of construction project.
Abstract: Changes in global economy require changes in firms. They need to adapt to speed producing faster and creating new products, structures and processes. The purpose of the paper is to explore literature about organizational culture and its impact on innovation.
In the paper the method of literature review is used to examine influence of organizational culture on innovation and performance of enterprise.
Organizational culture is crucial for innovation. Literature reveals that research of organizational culture mostly confirm already existing conceptions and models, but those help to make profile of innovation culture.
Research summarize previous research of organizational culture as culture which foster innovation and provide profile of innovation culture, which may be used by managers to improve cultural environment to increase performance of their companies. Research also leads to hypothesis for further research.
Abstract: This paper presents the design and characterization of analog readout interface circuits for ion sensitive field effect transistor (ISFET) and ion selective electrode (ISE) based sensor. These interface circuits are implemented using MIMOS’s 0.35um CMOS technology and experimentally characterized under 24-leads QFN package. The characterization evaluates the circuit’s functionality, output sensitivity and output linearity. Commercial sensors for both ISFET and ISE are employed together with glass reference electrode during testing. The test result shows that the designed interface circuits manage to readout signals produced by both sensors with measured sensitivity of ISFET and ISE sensor are 54mV/pH and 62mV/decade, respectively. The characterized output linearity for both circuits achieves above 0.999 rsquare. The readout also has demonstrated reliable operation by passing all qualifications in reliability test plan.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to test how advanced digital technology enables a more effective training on the handwriting of children with handwriting deficit. This study implemented the graphomotor apparatuses to a computer-assisted instruction system. In a randomized controlled trial, the experiments for verifying the intervention effect were conducted. Forty two children with handwriting deficit were assigned to computer-assisted instruction, sensorimotor training or control (no intervention) group. Handwriting performance was measured using the Elementary reading/writing test and computerized handwriting evaluation before and after 6 weeks of intervention. Analysis of variance of change scores were conducted to show whether statistically significant difference across the three groups. Significant difference was found among three groups. Computer group shows significant difference from the other two groups. Significance was denoted in near-point, far-point copy, dictation test, and writing from phonetic symbols. Writing speed and mean stroke velocity in near-, far-point and short paragraph copy were found significantly difference among three groups. Computer group shows significant improvement from the other groups. For clinicians and school teachers, the results of this study provide a motor control based insight for the improvement of handwriting difficulties.