Abstract: An ultrasound-assisted activation method for
electroless silver plating is presented in this study. When the
ultrasound was applied during the activation step, the amount of the Pd
species adsorbed on substrate surfaces was higher than that of sample
pretreated with a conventional activation process without ultrasound
irradiation. With this activation method, it was also shown that the
adsorbed Pd species with a size of about 5 nm were uniformly
distributed on the surfaces, thus a smooth and uniform coating on the
surfaces was obtained by subsequent electroless silver plating. The
samples after each step were characterized by AFM, XPS, FIB, and
SEM.
Abstract: The paper reviews the relationship between spatial
and transportation planning in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) region of Sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that
most urbanisation in the region has largely occurred subsequent to
the 1950s and, accordingly, urban development has been
profoundly and negatively affected by the (misguided) spatial and
institutional tenets of modernism. It demonstrates how a
considerable amount of the poor performance of these settlements
can be directly attributed to this. Two factors in particular about the
planning systems are emphasized: the way in which programmatic
land-use planning lies at the heart of both spatial and transportation
planning; and the way on which transportation and spatial planning
have been separated into independent processes. In the final
section, the paper identifies ways of improving the planning
system. Firstly, it identifies the performance qualities which
Southern African settlements should be seeking to achieve.
Secondly, it focuses on two necessary arenas of change: the need to
replace programmatic land-use planning practices with structuralspatial
approaches; and it makes a case for making urban corridors
a spatial focus of integrated planning, as a way of beginning the
restructuring and intensification of settlements which are currently
characterised by sprawl, fragmentation and separation
Abstract: NFκB activation plays a crucial role in anti-apoptotic responses in response to the apoptotic signaling during tumor necrosis factor (TNFa) stimulation in Multiple Myeloma (MM). Although several drugs have been found effective for the treatment of MM by mainly inhibiting NFκB pathway, there are no any quantitative or qualitative results of comparison assessment on inhibition effect between different single drugs or drug combinations. Computational modeling is becoming increasingly indispensable for applied biological research mainly because it can provide strong quantitative predicting power. In this study, a novel computational pathway modeling approach is employed to comparably assess the inhibition effects of specific single drugs and drug combinations on the NFκB pathway in MM, especially the prediction of synergistic drug combinations.
Abstract: Weather disaster events were frequent and caused loss
of lives and property in Taiwan recently. Excessive concentration of
population and lacking of integrated planning led to Taiwanese coastal
zone face the impacts of climate change directly. Comparing to many
countries which have already set up legislation, competent authorities
and national adaptation strategies, the ability of coastal management
adapting to climate change is still insufficient in Taiwan. Therefore, it
is necessary to establish a complete institutional arrangement for
coastal management due to climate change in order to protect
environment and sustain socio-economic development. This paper
firstly reviews the impact of climate change on Taiwanese coastal
zone. Secondly, development of Taiwanese institutional arrangement
of coastal management is introduced. Followed is the analysis of four
dimensions of legal basis, competent authority, scientific and financial
support and international cooperations of institutional arrangement.
The results show that Taiwanese government shall: 1) integrate climate
change issue into Coastal Act, Wetland Act and territorial planning
Act and pass them; 2) establish the high level competent authority for
coastal management; 3) set up the climate change disaster coordinate
platform; 4) link scientific information and decision markers; 5)
establish the climate change adjustment fund; 6) participate in
international climate change organizations and meetings actively; 7)
cooperate with near countries to exchange experiences.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are currently
receiving significant attention due to their unlimited potential. These
networks are used for various applications, such as habitat
monitoring, automation, agriculture, and security. The efficient nodeenergy
utilization is one of important performance factors in wireless
sensor networks because sensor nodes operate with limited battery
power. In this paper, we proposed the MiSense hierarchical cluster
based routing algorithm (MiCRA) to extend the lifetime of sensor
networks and to maintain a balanced energy consumption of nodes.
MiCRA is an extension of the HEED algorithm with two levels of
cluster heads. The performance of the proposed protocol has been
examined and evaluated through a simulation study. The simulation
results clearly show that MiCRA has a better performance in terms of
lifetime than HEED. Indeed, MiCRA our proposed protocol can
effectively extend the network lifetime without other critical
overheads and performance degradation. It has been noted that there
is about 35% of energy saving for MiCRA during the clustering
process and 65% energy savings during the routing process compared
to the HEED algorithm.
Abstract: Synthesis gas manufacturing by steam reforming of hydrocarbons is an important industrial process. High endothermic nature of the process makes it one of the most cost and heat intensive processes. In the present work, composite effect of different inert gases on synthesis gas yield, feed gas conversion and temperature distribution along the reactor length has been studied using a heterogeneous model. Mathematical model was developed as a first stage and validated against the existing process models. With the addition of inert gases, a higher yield of synthesis gas is observed. Simultaneously the rector outlet temperature drops to as low as 810 K. It was found that Xenon gives the highest yield and conversion while Helium gives the lowest temperature. Using Xenon inert gas 20 percent reduction in outlet temperature was observed compared to traditional case.
Abstract: Choosing the right metadata is a critical, as good
information (metadata) attached to an image will facilitate its
visibility from a pile of other images. The image-s value is enhanced
not only by the quality of attached metadata but also by the technique
of the search. This study proposes a technique that is simple but
efficient to predict a single human image from a website using the
basic image data and the embedded metadata of the image-s content
appearing on web pages. The result is very encouraging with the
prediction accuracy of 95%. This technique may become a great
assist to librarians, researchers and many others for automatically and
efficiently identifying a set of human images out of a greater set of
images.
Abstract: Nowadays, engineering ceramics have significant
applications in different industries such as; automotive, aerospace,
electrical, electronics and even martial industries due to their
attractive physical and mechanical properties like very high hardness
and strength at elevated temperatures, chemical stability, low friction
and high wear resistance. However, these interesting properties plus
low heat conductivity make their machining processes too hard,
costly and time consuming. Many attempts have been made in order
to make the grinding process of engineering ceramics easier and
many scientists have tried to find proper techniques to economize
ceramics' machining processes. This paper proposes a new diamond
plunge grinding technique using ultrasonic vibration for grinding
Alumina ceramic (Al2O3). For this purpose, a set of laboratory
equipments have been designed and simulated using Finite Element
Method (FEM) and constructed in order to be used in various
measurements. The results obtained have been compared with the
conventional plunge grinding process without ultrasonic vibration
and indicated that the surface roughness and fracture strength
improved and the grinding forces decreased.
Abstract: This study applied Theory of Planned Behaviour
(TPB) to explain the knowledge sharing behaviour among academic
staff at a Public Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Malaysia. The
main objectives of this study are; to identify the components that
influence knowledge sharing behaviour and to determine the levels of
knowledge sharing behaviour among academic staff. A total of 200
respondents were participated in answering questionnaires. The
findings of this study revealed that level of perceiving and
implementing knowledge sharing behaviour among academic staff at
a Public HEI in Malaysia exist but not openly or strongly practiced.
The findings were discussed and recommendations for the future
research were also addressed.
Abstract: High speed networks provide realtime variable bit rate
service with diversified traffic flow characteristics and quality
requirements. The variable bit rate traffic has stringent delay and
packet loss requirements. The burstiness of the correlated traffic
makes dynamic buffer management highly desirable to satisfy the
Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. This paper presents an
algorithm for optimization of adaptive buffer allocation scheme for
traffic based on loss of consecutive packets in data-stream and buffer
occupancy level. Buffer is designed to allow the input traffic to be
partitioned into different priority classes and based on the input
traffic behavior it controls the threshold dynamically. This algorithm
allows input packets to enter into buffer if its occupancy level is less
than the threshold value for priority of that packet. The threshold is
dynamically varied in runtime based on packet loss behavior. The
simulation is run for two priority classes of the input traffic –
realtime and non-realtime classes. The simulation results show that
Adaptive Partial Buffer Sharing (ADPBS) has better performance
than Static Partial Buffer Sharing (SPBS) and First In First Out
(FIFO) queue under the same traffic conditions.
Abstract: The necessity of accurate and timely field data is
shared among organizations engaged in fundamentally different
activities, public services or commercial operations. Basically, there
are three major components in the process of the qualitative research:
data collection, interpretation and organization of data, and analytic
process. Representative technological advancements in terms of
innovation have been made in mobile devices (mobile phone, PDA-s,
tablets, laptops, etc). Resources that can be potentially applied on the
data collection activity for field researches in order to improve this
process.
This paper presents and discuss the main features of a mobile
phone based solution for field data collection, composed of basically
three modules: a survey editor, a server web application and a client
mobile application. The data gathering process begins with the
survey creation module, which enables the production of tailored
questionnaires. The field workforce receives the questionnaire(s) on
their mobile phones to collect the interviews responses and sending
them back to a server for immediate analysis.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a Perceptually Optimized Foveation based Embedded ZeroTree Image Coder (POEFIC) that introduces a perceptual weighting to wavelet coefficients prior to control SPIHT encoding algorithm in order to reach a targeted bit rate with a perceptual quality improvement with respect to a given bit rate a fixation point which determines the region of interest ROI. The paper also, introduces a new objective quality metric based on a Psychovisual model that integrates the properties of the HVS that plays an important role in our POEFIC quality assessment. Our POEFIC coder is based on a vision model that incorporates various masking effects of human visual system HVS perception. Thus, our coder weights the wavelet coefficients based on that model and attempts to increase the perceptual quality for a given bit rate and observation distance. The perceptual weights for all wavelet subbands are computed based on 1) foveation masking to remove or reduce considerable high frequencies from peripheral regions 2) luminance and Contrast masking, 3) the contrast sensitivity function CSF to achieve the perceptual decomposition weighting. The new perceptually optimized codec has the same complexity as the original SPIHT techniques. However, the experiments results show that our coder demonstrates very good performance in terms of quality measurement.
Abstract: Increasing growth of information volume in the
internet causes an increasing need to develop new (semi)automatic
methods for retrieval of documents and ranking them according to
their relevance to the user query. In this paper, after a brief review
on ranking models, a new ontology based approach for ranking
HTML documents is proposed and evaluated in various
circumstances. Our approach is a combination of conceptual,
statistical and linguistic methods. This combination reserves the
precision of ranking without loosing the speed. Our approach
exploits natural language processing techniques to extract phrases
from documents and the query and doing stemming on words. Then
an ontology based conceptual method will be used to annotate
documents and expand the query. To expand a query the spread
activation algorithm is improved so that the expansion can be done
flexible and in various aspects. The annotated documents and the
expanded query will be processed to compute the relevance degree
exploiting statistical methods. The outstanding features of our
approach are (1) combining conceptual, statistical and linguistic
features of documents, (2) expanding the query with its related
concepts before comparing to documents, (3) extracting and using
both words and phrases to compute relevance degree, (4) improving
the spread activation algorithm to do the expansion based on
weighted combination of different conceptual relationships and (5)
allowing variable document vector dimensions. A ranking system
called ORank is developed to implement and test the proposed
model. The test results will be included at the end of the paper.
Abstract: We propose that Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) should be designed by taking into account the characteristics, the special needs and the specific operating rules of the academic institutions in which they are employed. In this context, we describe a VLE module that extends the support of the organization and delivery of course material by including administration activities related to the various stages of teaching. These include the co-ordination, collaboration and monitoring of the course material development process and institution-specific course material delivery modes. Our specialized module, which enhances VLE capabilities by Helping Educators and Learners through a Laboratory Assistance System, is willing to assist the Greek tertiary technological sector, which includes Technological Educational Institutes (T.E.I.).
Abstract: This paper presents a mathematical model and a
methodology to analyze the losses in transmission expansion
planning (TEP) under uncertainty in demand. The methodology is
based on discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO). DPSO is a
useful and powerful stochastic evolutionary algorithm to solve the
large-scale, discrete and nonlinear optimization problems like TEP.
The effectiveness of the proposed idea is tested on an actual
transmission network of the Azerbaijan regional electric company,
Iran. The simulation results show that considering the losses even for
transmission expansion planning of a network with low load growth
is caused that operational costs decreases considerably and the
network satisfies the requirement of delivering electric power more
reliable to load centers.
Abstract: Reliability is one of the most important quality attributes of software. Based on the approach of Reussner and the approach of Cheung, we proposed the reliability prediction model of component-based software architectures. Also, the value of the model is shown through the experimental evaluation on a web server system.
Abstract: As in other countries from Central and Eastern Europe,
the economic restructuring occurred in the last decade of the
twentieth century affected the mining industry in Romania, an
oversize and heavily subsidized sector before 1989. After more than
a decade since the beginning of mining restructuring, an evaluation
of current social implications of the process it is required, together
with an efficiency analysis of the adaptation mechanisms developed
at governmental level. This article aims to provide an insight into
these issues through case studies conducted in the most important
coal basin of Romania, Petroşani Depression.
Abstract: In the current research, neuro-fuzzy model and regression model was developed to predict Material Removal Rate in Electrical Discharge Machining process for AISI D2 tool steel with copper electrode. Extensive experiments were conducted with various levels of discharge current, pulse duration and duty cycle. The experimental data are split into two sets, one for training and the other for validation of the model. The training data were used to develop the above models and the test data, which was not used earlier to develop these models were used for validation the models. Subsequently, the models are compared. It was found that the predicted and experimental results were in good agreement and the coefficients of correlation were found to be 0.999 and 0.974 for neuro fuzzy and regression model respectively
Abstract: In this paper, some practical solid transportation models are formulated considering per trip capacity of each type of conveyances with crisp and rough unit transportation costs. This is applicable for the system in which full vehicles, e.g. trucks, rail coaches are to be booked for transportation of products so that transportation cost is determined on the full of the conveyances. The models with unit transportation costs as rough variables are transformed into deterministic forms using rough chance constrained programming with the help of trust measure. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the proposed models in crisp environment as well as with unit transportation costs as rough variables.
Abstract: Soil washing process with a surfactant solution is a potential technology for the rapid removal of hydrophobic organic compound (HOC) from soil. However, large amount of washed water would be produced during operation and this should be treated effectively by proper methods. The soil washed water for complex contaminated site with HOC and heavy metals might contain high amount of pollutants such as HOC and heavy metals as well as used surfactant. The heavy metals in the soil washed water have toxic effects on microbial activities thus these should be removed from the washed water before proceeding to a biological waste-water treatment system. Moreover, the used surfactant solutions are necessary to be recovered for reducing the soil washing operation cost. In order to simultaneously remove the heavy metals and HOC from soil-washed water, activated carbon (AC) was used in the present study. In an anionic-nonionic surfactant mixed solution, the Cd(II) and phenanthrene (PHE) were effectively removed by adsorption on activated carbon. The removal efficiency for Cd(II) was increased from 0.027 mmol-Cd/g-AC to 0.142 mmol-Cd/g-AC as the mole ratio of SDS increased in the presence of PHE. The adsorptive capacity of PHE was also increased according to the SDS mole ratio due to the decrement of molar solubilization ratios (MSR) for PHE in an anionic-nonionic surfactant mixture. The simultaneous adsorption of HOC and cationic heavy metals using activated carbon could be a useful method for surfactant recovery and the reduction of heavy metal toxicity in a surfactant-enhanced soil washing process.