Abstract: In this paper a Pattern Recognition algorithm based on
a constrained version of the k-means clustering algorithm will be
presented. The proposed algorithm is a non parametric supervised
statistical pattern recognition algorithm, i.e. it works under very mild
assumptions on the dataset. The performance of the algorithm will
be tested, togheter with a feature extraction technique that captures
the information on the closed two-dimensional contour of an image,
on images of industrial mineral ores.
Abstract: Strong law of large numbers and complete convergence for sequences of *-mixing random variables are investigated. In particular, Teicher-s strong law of large numbers for independent random variables are generalized to the case of *-mixing random sequences and extended to independent and identically distributed Marcinkiewicz Law of large numbers for *-mixing.
Abstract: In this paper, we summarize recent work of the authors on nanocomputing memory devices. We investigate two memory devices, each comprising a charged metallofullerene and carbon nanotubes. The first device involves two open nanotubes of the same radius that are joined by a centrally located nanotube of a smaller radius. A metallofullerene is then enclosed inside the structure. The second device also involves a etallofullerene that is located inside a closed carbon nanotube. Assuming the Lennard-Jones interaction energy and the continuum approximation, for both devices, the metallofullerene has two symmetrically placed equal minimum energy positions. On one side the metallofullerene represents the zero information state and by applying an external electrical field, it can overcome the energy barrier, and pass from one end of the tube to the other, where the metallofullerene then represents the one information state.
Abstract: This paper presents a new algorithm which yields a nonlinear state estimator called iterated unscented Kalman filter. This state estimator makes use of both statistical and analytical linearization techniques in different parts of the filtering process. It outperforms the other three nonlinear state estimators: unscented Kalman filter (UKF), extended Kalman filter (EKF) and iterated extended Kalman filter (IEKF) when there is severe nonlinearity in system equation and less nonlinearity in measurement equation. The algorithm performance has been verified by illustrating some simulation results.
Abstract: The story of Alibaba demonstrates a credible example of how a small start-up company can eventually make it big in the global economy through the Internet. This case study does not attempt to present Alibaba as a perfect formula; rather, it discusses the strategies carried out by the firm and, in the process, culls out the important lessons that can guide start-ups and aspiring entrepreneurs in the complex world of online trading. Similar to the interesting and exotic Asian cuisine that continuously evolves from the diversity of Asia-s people and their unique culture and personality, Alibaba has successfully transformed itself over the years, adapting to the changes in and demands of online businessto- business (B2B) commerce.
Abstract: High-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) thermal spraying
uses a combustion process to heat the gas flow and coating material.
A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed to
predict gas dynamic behavior in a HVOF thermal spray gun in which
premixed oxygen and propane are burnt in a combustion chamber
linked to a parallel-sided nozzle. The CFD analysis is applied to
investigate axisymmetric, steady-state, turbulent, compressible,
chemically reacting, subsonic and supersonic flow inside and outside
the gun. The gas velocity, temperature, pressure and Mach number
distributions are presented for various locations inside and outside
the gun. The calculated results show that the most sensitive
parameters affecting the process are fuel-to-oxygen gas ratio and
total gas flow rate. Gas dynamic behavior along the centerline of the
gun depends on both total gas flow rate and fuel-to-oxygen gas ratio.
The numerical simulations show that the axial gas velocity and Mach
number distribution depend on both flow rate and ratio; the highest
velocity is achieved at the higher flow rate and most fuel-rich ratio.
In addition, the results reported in this paper illustrate that the
numerical simulation can be one of the most powerful and beneficial
tools for the HVOF system design, optimization and performance
analysis.
Abstract: A numerical prediction of flow in a tube bank is reported. The flow regimes considered cover a wide range of Reynolds numbers, which range from 380 to 99000 and which are equivalent to a range of inlet velocities from very low (0.072 m/s) to very high (60 m/s). In this study, calculations were made using the standard k-e model with standard wall function. The drag coefficient, skin friction drag, pressure drag, and pressure distribution around a tube were investigated. As the velocity increased, the drag coefficient decreased until the velocity exceeded 45 m/s, after which it increased. Furthermore, the pressure drag and skin friction drag depend on the velocity.
Abstract: This paper aims to scale up Dye-sensitized Solar Cell
(DSSC) production using a commonly available industrial material –
stainless steel - and industrial plasma equipment. A working DSSC
electrode formed by (1) coating titania nanotube (TiO2 NT) film on
304 stainless steel substrate using a plasma spray technique; then, (2)
filling the nano-pores of the TiO2 NT film using a TiF4 sol-gel method.
A DSSC device consists of an anode absorbed photosensitive dye
(N3), a transparent conductive cathode with platinum (Pt)
nano-catalytic particles adhered to its surface, and an electrolytic
solution sealed between the anode and the transparent conductive
cathode. The photo-current conversion efficiency of the DSSC sample
was tested under an AM 1.5 Solar Simulator. The sample has a short
current (Isc) of 0.83 mA cm-2, open voltage (Voc) of 0.81V, filling
factor (FF) of 0.52, and conversion efficiency (η) of 2.18% on a 0.16
cm2 DSSC work-piece.
Abstract: Machine Translation (MT) between the Thai and English languages has been a challenging research topic in natural language processing. Most research has been done on English to Thai machine translation, but not the other way around. This paper presents a Thai to English Machine Translation System that translates a Thai sentence into interlingua of a Thai LFG tree using LFG grammar and a bottom up parser. The Thai LFG tree is then transformed into the corresponding English LFG tree by pattern matching and node transformation. Finally, an equivalent English sentence is created using structural information prescribed by the English LFG tree. Based on results of experiments designed to evaluate the performance of the proposed system, it can be stated that the system has been proven to be effective in providing a useful translation from Thai to English.
Abstract: Students with high level skills are in demand, especially in scare skill environments. If universities wish to be successful and competitive, its students need to be adequately equipped with the necessary tools. Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is an essential component of the education of a student. The relevance of higher education should be assessed in terms of how it meets the needs of society and the world of work in a global economy. This paper demonstrates how to use Habermas's theory of communicative action to reflect on students- perceptions on their integration in the work environment to achieve social integration and financial justification. Interpretive questionnaires are used to determine the students- view of how they are integrated into society, and contributing to the economy. This paper explores the use of Habermas-s theory of communicative action to give theoretical and methodological guidance for the practice of social findings obtained in this inquiry.
Abstract: To respond to the Kyoto Protocol, the policy of Payment for Environmental Service (PES), which was entitled “Plain Landscape Afforestation Program (PLAP)", was certified by Executive Yuan in Taiwan on 31 August 2001 and has been implementing for six years since 1 January 2002. Although the PLAP has received a lot of positive comments, there are still many difficulties during the process of implementation, such as insufficient technology for afforestation, private landowners- low interests in participating in PLAP, insufficient subsidies, and so on, which are potential threats that hinder the PLAP from moving forward in future. In this paper, selecting Ping-Tung County in Taiwan as a sample region and targeting those private landowners with and without intention to participate in the PLAP, respectively, we conduct an empirical analysis based on the Logit model to investigate the factors that determine whether those private landowners join the PLAP, so as to realize the incentive effects of the PLAP upon the personal decision on afforestation. The possible factors that might determine private landowner-s participation in the PLAP include landowner-s characteristics, cropland characteristics, as well as policy factors. Among them, the policy factors include afforestation subsidy amount (+), duration of afforestation subsidy (+), the rules on adjoining and adjacent areas (+), and so on, which do not reach the remarkable level in statistics though, but the directions of variable signs are consistent with the intuition behind the policy. As for the landowners- characteristics, each of age (+), education level (–), and annual household income (+) variables reaches 10% of the remarkable level in statistics; as for the cropland characteristics, each of cropland area (+), cropland price (–), and the number of cropland parcels (–) reaches 1% of the remarkable level in statistics. In light of the above, the cropland characteristics are the dominate factor that determines the probability of landowner-s participation in the PLAP. In the Logit model established by this paper, the probability of correctly estimating nonparticipants is 98%, the probability of correctly estimating the participants is 71.8%, and the probability for the overall estimation is 95%. In addition, Hosmer-Lemeshow test and omnibus test also revealed that the Logit model in this paper may provide fine goodness of fit and good predictive power in forecasting private landowners- participation in this program. The empirical result of this paper expects to help the implementation of the afforestation programs in Taiwan.
Abstract: Excessive ductility demand on shorter piers is a
common problem for irregular bridges subjected to strong ground
motion. Various techniques have been developed to reduce the
likelihood of collapse of bridge due to failure of shorter piers. This
paper presents the new approach to improve the seismic behavior of
such bridges using Nitinol shape memory alloys (SMAs).
Superelastic SMAs have the ability to remain elastic under very large
deformation due to martensitic transformation. This unique property
leads to enhanced performance of controlled bridge compared with
the performance of the reference bridge. To evaluate the effectiveness
of the devices, nonlinear time history analysis is performed on a RC
single column bent highway bridge using a suite of representative
ground motions. The results show that this method is very effective in
limiting the ductility demand of shorter pier.
Abstract: A welded structure must be inspected to guarantee that the weld quality meets the design requirements to assure safety and reliability. However, X-ray image analyses and defect recognition with the computer vision techniques are very complex. Most difficulties lie in finding the small, irregular defects in poor contrast images which requires pre processing to image, extract, and classify features from strong background noise. This paper addresses the issue of designing methodology to extract defect from noisy background radiograph with image processing. Based on the use of actives contours this methodology seems to give good results
Abstract: In this work, we study the problem of determining
the minimum scheduling length that can satisfy end-to-end (ETE)
traffic demand in scheduling-based multihop WSNs with cooperative
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission scheme. Specifically,
we present a cross-layer formulation for the joint routing,
scheduling and stream control problem by incorporating various
power and rate adaptation schemes, and taking into account an
antenna beam pattern model and the signal-to-interference-and-noise
(SINR) constraint at the receiver. In the context, we also propose
column generation (CG) solutions to get rid of the complexity
requiring the enumeration of all possible sets of scheduling links.
Abstract: The study aimed to investigate characteristics of
vegetative tissue for taxonomic purpose and possibly trend of waste
application in industry. Stems and branches of 15 species in Solanum
found in Thailand were prepared for fiber and examined by light
microscopy. Microstructural characteristic data of fiber i.e. fiber
length and width, fiber lumen diameter and fiber cell wall thickness
were recorded. The longest average fiber cell length (>3.9 mm.) were
obtained in S. lycopersicum L. and S. tuberosum L. Fiber cells from
S. lycopersicum also revealed the widest average diameter of whole
cell and its lumen at >45.5 μm and >29 μm respectively. However
fiber cells with thickest wall of > 9.6 μm were belonged to the
ornamental tree species, S. wrightii Benth. The results showed that
the slenderness ratio, Runkel ratio, and flexibility coefficient, with
potentially suitable for feedstock in paper industry fell in 4 exotic
species, i.e. Solanumamericanum L., S. lycopersicum, S.
seaforthianum Andr., and S. tuberosum L
Abstract: Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a
practical non-invasive optical technique to detect characteristic of
hemoglobin density dynamics response during functional activation of
the cerebral cortex. In this paper, fNIRS measurements were made in
the area of motor cortex from C4 position according to international
10-20 system. Three subjects, aged 23 - 30 years, were participated in
the experiment.
The aim of this paper was to evaluate the effects of different motor
activation tasks of the hemoglobin density dynamics of fNIRS signal.
The chaotic concept based on deterministic dynamics is an important
feature in biological signal analysis. This paper employs the chaotic
properties which is a novel method of nonlinear analysis, to analyze
and to quantify the chaotic property in the time series of the
hemoglobin dynamics of the various motor imagery tasks of fNIRS
signal. Usually, hemoglobin density in the human brain cortex is
found to change slowly in time. An inevitable noise caused by various
factors is to be included in a signal. So, principle component analysis
method (PCA) is utilized to remove high frequency component. The
phase pace is reconstructed and evaluated the Lyapunov spectrum, and
Lyapunov dimensions. From the experimental results, it can be
conclude that the signals measured by fNIRS are chaotic.
Abstract: The waves of eGovernment are rising very fast
through almost all public administration, or at least most of the
public administrations around the world, and not only the public
administration, but also the entire government and all of their
organization as a whole. The government uses information
technology, and above all the internet or web network, to facilitate
the exchange of services between government agencies and citizens,
businesses, employees and other non-governmental agencies. With
efficient and transparent information exchange, the information
becomes accessible to the society (citizens, business, employees etc.),
and as a result of these processes the society itself becomes the
information society or knowledge society. This paper discusses the
knowledge management for eGovernment development in
significance and role. Also, the paper reviews the role of virtual
communities as a knowledge management mechanism to support
eGovernment in Montenegro. It explores the need for knowledge
management in eGovernment, identifies knowledge management
technologies, and highlights the challenges for developing countries,
such as Montenegro in the implementation of eGovernment. The
paper suggests that knowledge management is needed to facilitate
information exchange and transaction processing with citizens, as
well as to enable creation of knowledge society.
Abstract: In the current context of globalization, accountability has become a key subject of real interest for both, national and international business areas, due to the need for comparability and transparency of the economic situation, so we can speak about the harmonization and convergence of international accounting. The paper presents a qualitative research through content analysis of several reports concerning the roadmap for convergence. First, we develop a conceptual framework for the evolution of standards’ convergence and further we discuss the degree of standards harmonization and convergence between US GAAP and IAS/IFRS as to October 2012. We find that most topics did not follow the expected progress. Furthermore there are still some differences in the long-term project that are in process to be completed and other that were reassessed as a lower priority project.
Abstract: Automatic reusability appraisal is helpful in
evaluating the quality of developed or developing reusable software
components and in identification of reusable components from
existing legacy systems; that can save cost of developing the
software from scratch. But the issue of how to identify reusable
components from existing systems has remained relatively
unexplored. In this research work, structural attributes of software
components are explored using software metrics and quality of the
software is inferred by different Neural Network based approaches,
taking the metric values as input. The calculated reusability value
enables to identify a good quality code automatically. It is found that
the reusability value determined is close to the manual analysis used
to be performed by the programmers or repository managers. So, the
developed system can be used to enhance the productivity and
quality of software development.
Abstract: Obstructive sleep apnea in patients, between 70 and 80
percent, can be cured with just a posture correcting. The most import
thing to do this is detection of obstructive sleep apnea. Detection of
obstructive sleep apnea can be performed through heart rate variability
analysis using power spectrum density analysis. After HRV analysis
we needed to know the current position information for correcting the
position. The pressure sensors of the array type were used to obtain
position information. These sensors can obtain information from the
experimenter about position. In addition, air cylinder corrected the
position of the experimenter by lifting the bed. The experimenter can
be changed position without breaking during sleep by the system.
Polysomnograph recording were obtained from 10 patients. The
results of HRV analysis were that NLF and LF/HF ratio increased,
while NHF decreased during OSA. Position change had to be done the
periods.