Abstract: The accuracy of estimated stability and control
derivatives of a light aircraft from flight test data were evaluated. The light aircraft, named ChangGong-91, is the first certified aircraft from
the Korean government. The output error method, which is a maximum likelihood estimation technique and considers measurement
noise only, was used to analyze the aircraft responses measures. The
multi-step control inputs were applied in order to excite the short period mode for the longitudinal and Dutch-roll mode for the lateral-directional motion. The estimated stability/control derivatives of Chan Gong-91 were analyzed for the assessment of handling
qualities comparing them with those of similar aircraft. The accuracy of the flight derivative estimates derived from flight test measurement
was examined in engineering judgment, scatter and Cramer-Rao bound, which turned out to be satisfactory with minor defects..
Abstract: This study examines the inelastic behavior of adjacent planar reinforced concrete (R.C.) frames subjected to strong ground motions. The investigation focuses on the effects of vertical ground motion on the seismic pounding. The examined structures are modeled and analyzed by RUAUMOKO dynamic nonlinear analysis program using reliable hysteretic models for both structural members and contact elements. It is found that the vertical ground motion mildly affects the seismic response of adjacent buildings subjected to structural pounding and, for this reason, it can be ignored from the displacement and interstorey drifts assessment. However, the structural damage is moderately affected by the vertical component of earthquakes.
Abstract: Eight heavy metals (Cu, Cr, Zn, Hg, Pb, Cd, Ni and As) were analyzed in sediment samples in the dry and wet seasons from November 2009 to October 2010 in West Port of Peninsular Malaysia. The heavy metal concentrations (mg/kg dry weight) were ranged from 23.4 to 98.3 for Zn, 22.3 to 80 for Pb, 7.4 to 27.6 Cu, 0.244 to 3.53 for Cd, 7.2 to 22.2 for Ni, 20.2 to 162 for As, 0.11 to 0.409 for Hg and 11.5 to 61.5 for Cr. Metals concentrations in dry season were higher than the rainy season except in cupper and chromium. Analysis of variance with Statistical Analysis System (SAS) shows that the mean concentration of metals in the two seasons (α level=0.05) are not significantly different which shows that the metals were held firmly in the matrix of sediment. Also there are significant differences between control point station with other stations. According to the Interim Sediment Quality guidelines (ISQG), the metal concentrations are moderately polluted, except in arsenic which shows the highest level of pollution.
Abstract: Measurements of capacitance C and dissipation
factor tand of the stator insulation system provide useful information
about internal defects within the insulation. The index k is defined as
the proportionality constant between the changes at high voltage of
capacitance DC and of the dissipation factor Dtand . DC and
Dtand values were highly correlated when small flat defects were
within the insulation and that correlation was lost in the presence of
large narrow defects like electrical treeing. The discrimination
between small and large defects is made resorting to partial discharge
PD phase angle analysis. For the validation of the results, C and tand
measurements were carried out in a 15MVA 4160V steam turbine
turbogenerator placed in a sugar mill. In addition, laboratory test
results obtained by other authors were analyzed jointly. In such
laboratory tests, model coil bars subjected to thermal cycling resulted
highly degraded and DC and Dtand values were not correlated. Thus,
the index k could not be calculated.
Abstract: In conventional seedling production, the seedlings are
being grown in the open field under natural conditions. Here they are
susceptible to sudden changes in climate were their quality and yield
is affected. Quality seedlings are essential for good growth and
performance of crops in main field; they serve as a foundation for the
economic returns to the farmer. Producing quality seedling demands
usage of hybrid seeds as they have the ability to result in better yield,
greater uniformity, improved color, disease resistance, and so forth.
Hybrid seed production poses major operational challenge and its
seed use efficiency plays an important role. Thus in order to
overcome the difficulties currently present in conventional seedling
production and to efficiently use hybrid seeds, ITC Limited Agri
Business Divisions - Sustainability Cell as conceptualized a novel
method of seedling production unit for farmers in West Godavari
District of Andhra Pradesh. The “Green House based Float Seedling"
methodology aims at a protected cultivation technique wherein the
micro climate surrounding the plant/seedling body is controlled
partially or fully as per the requirement of the species. This paper
reports on the techno economic evaluation of green house for
cultivation of float based seedling production with experimental
results that was attained from the pilot implementation in West
Godavari District, Rajahmundry region of India.
Abstract: Turbine blade cooling is considered as the most
effective way of maintaining high operating temperature making use
of the available materials, and turbine systems with wet compression
have a potential for future power generation because of high efficiency
and high specific power with a relatively low cost. In this paper
performance analysis of wet-compression gas turbine cycle with
turbine blade cooling is carried out. The wet compression process is
analytically modeled based on non-equilibrium droplet evaporation.
Special attention is paid for the effects of pressure ratio and water
injection ratio on the important system variables such as ratio of
coolant fluid flow, fuel consumption, thermal efficiency and specific
power. Parametric studies show that wet compression leads to
insignificant improvement in thermal efficiency but significant
enhancement of specific power in gas turbine systems with turbine
blade cooling.
Abstract: In this paper three different approaches for person
verification and identification, i.e. by means of fingerprints, face and
voice recognition, are studied. Face recognition uses parts-based
representation methods and a manifold learning approach. The
assessment criterion is recognition accuracy. The techniques under
investigation are: a) Local Non-negative Matrix Factorization
(LNMF); b) Independent Components Analysis (ICA); c) NMF with
sparse constraints (NMFsc); d) Locality Preserving Projections
(Laplacianfaces). Fingerprint detection was approached by classical
minutiae (small graphical patterns) matching through image
segmentation by using a structural approach and a neural network as
decision block. As to voice / speaker recognition, melodic cepstral
and delta delta mel cepstral analysis were used as main methods, in
order to construct a supervised speaker-dependent voice recognition
system. The final decision (e.g. “accept-reject" for a verification
task) is taken by using a majority voting technique applied to the
three biometrics. The preliminary results, obtained for medium
databases of fingerprints, faces and voice recordings, indicate the
feasibility of our study and an overall recognition precision (about
92%) permitting the utilization of our system for a future complex
biometric card.
Abstract: this article proposed a methodology for computer
numerical control (CNC) machine scoring. The case study company
is a manufacturer of hard disk drive parts in Thailand. In this
company, sample of parts manufactured from CNC machine are
usually taken randomly for quality inspection. These inspection data
were used to make a decision to shut down the machine if it has
tendency to produce parts that are out of specification. Large amount
of data are produced in this process and data mining could be very
useful technique in analyzing them. In this research, data mining
techniques were used to construct a machine scoring model called
'machine priority assessment model (MPAM)'. This model helps to
ensure that the machine with higher risk of producing defective parts
be inspected before those with lower risk. If the defective prone
machine is identified sooner, defective part and rework could be
reduced hence improving the overall productivity. The results
showed that the proposed method can be successfully implemented
and approximately 351,000 baht of opportunity cost could have
saved in the case study company.
Abstract: Protecting is the sources of drinking water is the first
barrier of contamination of drinking water. The Feitsui Reservoir
watershed of Taiwan supplies domestic water for around 5 million
people in the Taipei metropolitan area. Understanding the spatial
patterns of water quality trends in this watershed is an important
agenda for management authorities. This study examined 7 sites in the
watershed for water quality parameters regulated in the standard for
drinking water source. The non-parametric seasonal Mann-Kendall-s
test was used to determine significant trends for each parameter.
Significant trends of increasing pH occurred at the sampling station in
the uppermost stream watershed, and in total phosphorus at 4 sampling
stations in the middle and downstream watershed. Additionally, the
multi-scale land cover assessment and average land slope were used to
explore the influence on the water quality in the watershed. Regression
models for predicting water quality were also developed.
Abstract: The coastal sediments of West Port of Malaysia was monitored from Nov. 2009 to Oct. 2010 to assess spatial distribution of heavy metals As, Cu, Cd, Cr, Hg, Ni, Zn and Pb. Sediment samples were collected from 10 stations in dry and rainy season in West Port. The range concentrations measured (Mg/g dry weight ) were from 23.4 to 98.3 for Zn, 22.3 to 80 for Pb, 7.4 to 27.6 Cu, 0.244 to 3.53 for Cd, 7.2 to 22.2 for Ni, 20.2 to 162 for As, 0.11 to 0.409 for Hg and 11.5 to 61.5 for Cr. The geochemical indexes used in this study were Geoaccumulation (Igeo), Contamination Factor (CF) and Pollution Load Index (PLI); these indexes were used to evaluate the levels of sediment contaminations. The results of these indexes show that, the status of West Port sediment quality are moderately polluted by heavy metals except in arsenic which shows the high level of pollution.
Abstract: Today, the working areas put forward the administration of change. In order to provide this; it is required from the organizations to be creative. Professional creativity in offices depends on an environment that enables the development of the organization only after the individual or collective exertions within the organization. By providing this environment, the organization will gain efficiency, productivity, and work pleasure. In order to bring up the workforce appropriate to the related expectations, the professional creativity of the office management and secretarial profession candidates should be evaluated, education programs appropriate to this and related directly with the service quality should be prepared and the future of this profession should be directed. The aim of this study is to ensure the attention to improve the prepared education program as well as the creative thoughts and their applications, when carrying out an office management and secretarial training. 144 students took place in this research and a questionnaire of 48 questions was carried out.
Abstract: Decision support based upon risk analysis into
comparison of the electricity generation from different renewable
energy technologies can provide information about their effects on
the environment and society. The aim of this paper is to develop the
assessment framework regarding risks to health and environment,
and the society-s benefits of the electric power plant generation from
different renewable sources. The multicriteria framework to
multiattribute risk analysis technique and the decision analysis
interview technique are applied in order to support the decisionmaking
process for the implementing renewable energy projects to
the Bangkok case study. Having analyses the local conditions and
appropriate technologies, five renewable power plants are postulated
as options. As this work demonstrates, the analysis can provide a tool
to aid decision-makers for achieving targets related to promote
sustainable energy system.
Abstract: Water vapour transport properties of gypsum block
are studied in dependence on relative humidity using inverse analysis
based on genetic algorithm. The computational inverse analysis is
performed for the relative humidity profiles measured along the
longitudinal axis of a rod sample. Within the performed transient
experiment, the studied sample is exposed to two environments with
different relative humidity, whereas the temperature is kept constant.
For the basic gypsum characterisation and for the assessment of input
material parameters necessary for computational application of
genetic algorithm, the basic material properties of gypsum are
measured as well as its thermal and water vapour storage parameters.
On the basis of application of genetic algorithm, the relative
humidity dependent water vapour diffusion coefficient and water
vapour diffusion resistance factor are calculated.
Abstract: Although face recognition seems as an easy task for
human, automatic face recognition is a much more challenging task
due to variations in time, illumination and pose. In this paper, the
influence of time-lapse on visible and thermal images is examined.
Orthogonal moment invariants are used as a feature extractor to
analyze the effect of time-lapse on thermal and visible images and the
results are compared with conventional Principal Component
Analysis (PCA). A new triangle square ratio criterion is employed
instead of Euclidean distance to enhance the performance of nearest
neighbor classifier. The results of this study indicate that the ideal
feature vectors can be represented with high discrimination power
due to the global characteristic of orthogonal moment invariants.
Moreover, the effect of time-lapse has been decreasing and enhancing
the accuracy of face recognition considerably in comparison with
PCA. Furthermore, our experimental results based on moment
invariant and triangle square ratio criterion show that the proposed
approach achieves on average 13.6% higher in recognition rate than
PCA.
Abstract: With increasing complexity in electronic systems
there is a need for system level anomaly detection and fault isolation.
Anomaly detection based on vector similarity to a training set is used
in this paper through two approaches, one the preserves the original
information, Mahalanobis Distance (MD), and the other that
compresses the data into its principal components, Projection Pursuit
Analysis. These methods have been used to detect deviations in
system performance from normal operation and for critical parameter
isolation in multivariate environments. The study evaluates the
detection capability of each approach on a set of test data with known
faults against a baseline set of data representative of such “healthy"
systems.
Abstract: This study was conducted to evaluate factors
regulating groundwater quality in an area with agriculture as main
use. Under this study twelve groundwater samples have been
collected from Padra taluka, Dabhoi taluka and Savli taluka of
Vadodara district. Groundwater samples were chemically analyzed
for major physicochemical parameter in order to understand the
different geochemical processes affecting the groundwater quality.
The analytical results shows higher concentration of total dissolved
solids (16.67%), electrical conductivity (25%) and magnesium
(8.33%) for pre monsoon and total dissolved solids (16.67%),
electrical conductivity (33.3%) and magnesium (8.33%) for post
monsoon which indicates signs of deterioration as per WHO and BIS
standards. On the other hand, 50% groundwater sample is unsuitable
for irrigation purposes based on irrigation quality parameters. The
study revealed that application of fertilizer for agricultural
contributing the higher concentration of ions in aquifer of Vadodara
district.
Abstract: Online news websites are one of the main and wide areas of Mass Media. Since the nineties several Jordanian newspapers were introduced to the World Wide Web to reach various and large numbers of audiances. Examples of these newspapers that have online version are Al-Rai, Ad-Dustor and AlGhad. Other pure online news websites include Ammon and Rum. The main aim of this study is to evaluate online newspaper websites using two assessment measures; usability and web content. This aim is achieved by using a questionnaire based evaluation which is based on the definition of usability and web content in the ISO document as the standard number 9241-part 11. The results are obtained based on 204 audiences- responses. The results of the research showed that the usability factor is relatively good for all Jordanian online newspapers whereas the web content factor is moderate.
Abstract: Inadequate curriculum for software engineering is considered to be one of the most common software risks. A number of solutions, on improving Software Engineering Education (SEE) have been reported in literature but there is a need to collectively present these solutions at one place. We have performed a mapping study to present a broad view of literature; published on improving the current state of SEE. Our aim is to give academicians, practitioners and researchers an international view of the current state of SEE. Our study has identified 70 primary studies that met our selection criteria, which we further classified and categorized in a well-defined Software Engineering educational framework. We found that the most researched category within the SE educational framework is Innovative Teaching Methods whereas the least amount of research was found in Student Learning and Assessment category. Our future work is to conduct a Systematic Literature Review on SEE.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel objective nonreference performance assessment algorithm for image fusion. It takes into account local measurements to estimate how well the important information in the source images is represented by the fused image. The metric is based on the Universal Image Quality Index and uses the similarity between blocks of pixels in the input images and the fused image as the weighting factors for the metrics. Experimental results confirm that the values of the proposed metrics correlate well with the subjective quality of the fused images, giving a significant improvement over standard measures based on mean squared error and mutual information.
Abstract: The essentiality of maintenance assessment and
maintenance optimization in design stage is analyzed, and the existent
problems of conventional maintenance design method are illuminated.
MDMVM (Maintenance Design Method based Virtual Maintenance)
is illuminated, and the process of MDMVM established, and the
MDMVM architecture is given out. The key techniques of MDMVM
are analyzed, and include maintenance design based KBE (Knowledge
Based Engineering) and virtual maintenance based physically
attribute. According to physical property, physically based modeling,
visual object movement control, the simulation of operation force and
maintenance sequence planning method are emphatically illuminated.
Maintenance design system based virtual maintenance is established in
foundation of maintenance design method.