Abstract: Conventional concentrically-braced frame (CBF)
systems have limited drift capacity before brace buckling and related
damage leads to deterioration in strength and stiffness. Self-centering
concentrically-braced frame (SC-CBF) systems have been developed
to increase drift capacity prior to initiation of damage and minimize
residual drift. SC-CBFs differ from conventional CBFs in that the
SC-CBF columns are designed to uplift from the foundation at a
specified level of lateral loading, initiating a rigid-body rotation
(rocking) of the frame. Vertically-aligned post-tensioning bars resist
uplift and provide a restoring force to return the SC-CBF columns to
the foundation (self-centering the system). This paper presents a
parametric study of different prototype buildings using SC-CBFs.
The bay widths of the SC-CBFs have been varied in these buildings
to study different geometries. Nonlinear numerical analyses of the
different SC-CBFs are presented to illustrate the effect of frame
geometry on the behavior and dynamic response of the SC-CBF
system.
Abstract: An appropriate project delivery system (PDS) is crucial
to the success of a construction projects. Case-based Reasoning (CBR)
is a useful support for PDS selection. However, the traditional CBR
approach represents cases as attribute-value vectors without taking
relations among attributes into consideration, and could not calculate
the similarity when the structures of cases are not strictly same.
Therefore, this paper solves this problem by adopting the Relational
Case-based Reasoning (RCBR) approach for PDS selection,
considering both the structural similarity and feature similarity. To
develop the feature terms of the construction projects, the criteria and
factors governing PDS selection process are first identified. Then
feature terms for the construction projects are developed. Finally, the
mechanism of similarity calculation and a case study indicate how
RCBR works for PDS selection. The adoption of RCBR in PDS
selection expands the scope of application of traditional CBR method
and improves the accuracy of the PDS selection system.
Abstract: Drought is natural and climate phenomenon and in fact server as a part of climate in an area and also it has significant environmental, social ,and economic consequences .drought differs from the other natural disasters from this viewpoint that it s a creeping phenomenon meaning that it progresses little and its difficult to determine the time of its onset and termination .most of the drought definitions are on based on precipitation shortage and consequently ,the shortage of water some of the activities related to the water such as agriculture In this research ,drought condition in Fars province was evacuated using SPI method within a 37 year – statistical –period(1974-2010)and maps related to the drought were prepared for each of the statistical period years. According to the results obtained from this research, the years 1974, 1976, 1975, 1982 with SPI (-1.03, 0.39, -1.05, -1.49) respectively, were the doughiest years and 1996,1997,2000 with SPI (2.49, 1.49, 1.46, 1.04) respectively, the most humid within the studying time series and the rest are in more normal conditions in the term of drought.
Abstract: Nowadays there is a growing interest in biofuel production in most countries because of the increasing concerns about hydrocarbon fuel shortage and global climate changes, also for enhancing agricultural economy and producing local needs for transportation fuel. Ethanol can be produced from biomass by the hydrolysis and sugar fermentation processes. In this study ethanol was produced without using expensive commercial enzymes from sugarcane bagasse. Alkali pretreatment was used to prepare biomass before enzymatic hydrolysis. The comparison between NaOH, KOH and Ca(OH)2 shows NaOH is more effective on bagasse. The required enzymes for biomass hydrolysis were produced from sugarcane solid state fermentation via two fungi: Trichoderma longibrachiatum and Aspergillus niger. The results show that the produced enzyme solution via A. niger has functioned better than T. longibrachiatum. Ethanol was produced by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with crude enzyme solution from T. longibrachiatum and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast. To evaluate this procedure, SSF of pretreated bagasse was also done using Celluclast 1.5L by Novozymes. The yield of ethanol production by commercial enzyme and produced enzyme solution via T. longibrachiatum was 81% and 50% respectively.
Abstract: Feature selection has recently been the subject of intensive research in data mining, specially for datasets with a large number of attributes. Recent work has shown that feature selection can have a positive effect on the performance of machine learning algorithms. The success of many learning algorithms in their attempts to construct models of data, hinges on the reliable identification of a small set of highly predictive attributes. The inclusion of irrelevant, redundant and noisy attributes in the model building process phase can result in poor predictive performance and increased computation. In this paper, a novel feature search procedure that utilizes the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is presented. The ACO is a metaheuristic inspired by the behavior of real ants in their search for the shortest paths to food sources. It looks for optimal solutions by considering both local heuristics and previous knowledge. When applied to two different classification problems, the proposed algorithm achieved very promising results.
Abstract: This paper presents a new strategy of identification
and classification of pathological voices using the hybrid method
based on wavelet transform and neural networks. After speech
acquisition from a patient, the speech signal is analysed in order to
extract the acoustic parameters such as the pitch, the formants, Jitter,
and shimmer. Obtained results will be compared to those normal and
standard values thanks to a programmable database. Sounds are
collected from normal people and patients, and then classified into
two different categories. Speech data base is consists of several
pathological and normal voices collected from the national hospital
“Rabta-Tunis". Speech processing algorithm is conducted in a
supervised mode for discrimination of normal and pathology voices
and then for classification between neural and vocal pathologies
(Parkinson, Alzheimer, laryngeal, dyslexia...). Several simulation
results will be presented in function of the disease and will be
compared with the clinical diagnosis in order to have an objective
evaluation of the developed tool.
Abstract: The purpose of this work is to present a method for
rigid registration of medical images using 1D binary projections
when a part of one of the two images is missing. We use 1D binary
projections and we adjust the projection limits according to the
reduced image in order to perform accurate registration. We use the
variance of the weighted ratio as a registration function which we
have shown is able to register 2D and 3D images more accurately and
robustly than mutual information methods. The function is computed
explicitly for n=5 Chebyshev points in a [-9,+9] interval and it is
approximated using Chebyshev polynomials for all other points. The
images used are MR scans of the head. We find that the method is
able to register the two images with average accuracy 0.3degrees for
rotations and 0.2 pixels for translations for a y dimension of 156 with
initial dimension 256. For y dimension 128/256 the accuracy
decreases to 0.7 degrees for rotations and 0.6 pixels for translations.
Abstract: Segmentation, filtering out of measurement errors and
identification of breakpoints are integral parts of any analysis of
microarray data for the detection of copy number variation (CNV).
Existing algorithms designed for these tasks have had some successes
in the past, but they tend to be O(N2) in either computation time or
memory requirement, or both, and the rapid advance of microarray
resolution has practically rendered such algorithms useless. Here we
propose an algorithm, SAD, that is much faster and much less thirsty
for memory – O(N) in both computation time and memory requirement
-- and offers higher accuracy. The two key ingredients of SAD are the
fundamental assumption in statistics that measurement errors are
normally distributed and the mathematical relation that the product of
two Gaussians is another Gaussian (function). We have produced a
computer program for analyzing CNV based on SAD. In addition to
being fast and small it offers two important features: quantitative
statistics for predictions and, with only two user-decided parameters,
ease of use. Its speed shows little dependence on genomic profile.
Running on an average modern computer, it completes CNV analyses
for a 262 thousand-probe array in ~1 second and a 1.8 million-probe
array in 9 seconds
Abstract: Aluminum/Copper clad sheet has been fabricated using
asymmetric extrusion method, which caused severe shear deformation
between Al and Cu plate to easily bond to each other. Interfacial
microstructure and mechanical properties of Al/Cu clad were studied
by scanning electron microscope equipped with energy dispersive
X-ray detector, micro-hardness, and tension tests. The asymmetric
extrusion bonding was very effective to provide a good interface for
atoms diffusion during subsequent annealing. The strength of bonding
was higher with the increasing extrusion ratio.
Abstract: I/O workload is a critical and important factor to
analyze I/O pattern and file system performance. However tracing I/O
operations on the fly distributed parallel file system is non-trivial due
to collection overhead and a large volume of data. In this paper, we
design and implement a parallel file system logging method for high
performance computing using shared memory-based multi-layer
scheme. It minimizes the overhead with reduced logging operation
response time and provides efficient post-processing scheme through
shared memory. Separated logging server can collect sequential logs
from multiple clients in a cluster through packet communication.
Implementation and evaluation result shows low overhead and high
scalability of this architecture for high performance parallel logging
analysis.
Abstract: Aluminum salt that is generally presents as a solid
phase in the water purification sludge (WPS) can be dissolved,
recovering a liquid phase, by adding strong acid to the sludge solution.
According to the reaction kinetics, when reactant is in the form of
small particles with a large specific surface area, or when the reaction
temperature is high, the quantity of dissolved aluminum salt or
reaction rate, respectively are high. Therefore, in this investigation,
water purification sludge (WPS) solution was treated with ultrasonic
waves to break down the sludge, and different acids (1 N HCl and 1 N
H2SO4) were used to acidify it. Acid dosages that yielded the solution
pH of less than two were used. The results thus obtained indicate that
the quantity of dissolved aluminum in H2SO4-acidified solution
exceeded that in HCl-acidified solution. Additionally, ultrasonic
treatment increased the rate of dissolution of aluminum and the
amount dissolved. The quantity of aluminum dissolved at 60℃ was 1.5
to 2.0 times higher than that at 25℃.
Abstract: Food control measures are critical in fostering food safety management of a nation. However, no academic study has been undertaken to assess the food control system of Myanmar up to now. The objective of this research paper was to assess the food control system with in depth examination of five key components using desktop analysis and short survey from related food safety program organizations including regulators and inspectors. Study showed that the existing food control system is conventional, mainly focusing on primary health care approach while relying on reactive measures. The achievements of food control work have been limited to a certain extent due to insufficienttechnical capacity that is needed to upgrade staffs, laboratory equipment and technical assistance etc. associated with various sectors. Assessing food control measures is the first step in the integration of food safety management, this paper could assist policy makers in providing information for enhancing the safety and quality of food produced and consumed in Myanmar.
Abstract: The visualization of geographic information on mobile devices has become popular as the widespread use of mobile Internet. The mobility of these devices brings about much convenience to people-s life. By the add-on location-based services of the devices, people can have an access to timely information relevant to their tasks. However, visual analysis of geographic data on mobile devices presents several challenges due to the small display and restricted computing resources. These limitations on the screen size and resources may impair the usability aspects of the visualization applications. In this paper, a variable-scale visualization method is proposed to handle the challenge of small mobile display. By merging multiple scales of information into a single image, the viewer is able to focus on the interesting region, while having a good grasp of the surrounding context. This is essentially visualizing the map through a fisheye lens. However, the fisheye lens induces undesirable geometric distortion in the peripheral, which renders the information meaningless. The proposed solution is to apply map generalization that removes excessive information around the peripheral and an automatic smoothing process to correct the distortion while keeping the local topology consistent. The proposed method is applied on both artificial and real geographical data for evaluation.
Abstract: In the study the influence of the physical-chemical properties of a liquid, the width of a channel gap and the superficial liquid and gas velocities on the patterns formed during two phase flows in vertical, narrow mini-channels was investigated. The research was performed in the channels of rectangular cross-section and of dimensions: 15 x 0.65 mm and 7.5 x 0.73 mm. The experimental data were compared with the published criteria of the transitions between the patterns of two-phase flows.
Abstract: This study proposes a new recommender system based on the collaborative folksonomy. The purpose of the proposed system is to recommend Internet resources (such as books, articles, documents, pictures, audio and video) to users. The proposed method includes four steps: creating the user profile based on the tags, grouping the similar users into clusters using an agglomerative hierarchical clustering, finding similar resources based on the user-s past collections by using content-based filtering, and recommending similar items to the target user. This study examines the system-s performance for the dataset collected from “del.icio.us," which is a famous social bookmarking website. Experimental results show that the proposed tag-based collaborative and content-based filtering hybridized recommender system is promising and effectiveness in the folksonomy-based bookmarking website.
Abstract: Packet switched data network like Internet, which has
traditionally supported throughput sensitive applications such as email
and file transfer, is increasingly supporting delay-sensitive
multimedia applications such as interactive video. These delaysensitive
applications would often rather sacrifice some throughput
for better delay. Unfortunately, the current packet switched network
does not offer choices, but instead provides monolithic best-effort
service to all applications. This paper evaluates Class Based Queuing
(CBQ), Coordinated Earliest Deadline First (CEDF), Weighted
Switch Deficit Round Robin (WSDRR) and RED-Boston scheduling
schemes that is sensitive to delay bound expectations for variety of
real time applications and an enhancement of WSDRR is proposed.
Abstract: Carbon steel is used in boilers, pressure vessels, heat
exchangers, piping, structural elements and other moderatetemperature
service systems in which good strength and ductility are
desired. ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section II Part A
(2004) provides specifications of ferrous materials for construction of
pressure equipment, covering wide range of mechanical properties
including high strength materials for power plants application.
However, increased level of springback is one of the major problems
in fabricating components of high strength steel using bending.
Presented work discuss the springback simulations for five different
steels (i.e. SA-36, SA-299, SA-515 grade 70, SA-612 and SA-724
grade B) using finite element analysis of air V-bending. Analytical
springback simulations of hypothetical layered materials are
presented. Result shows that; (i) combination of the material property
parameters controls the springback, (ii) layer of the high ductility
steel on the high strength steel greatly suppresses the springback.
Abstract: The study is aimed to test causal relationship between
growth and unemployment, using time series data for Pakistan from
1972 to 2006. Growth is considered to be a pathway to decrease the
level of unemployment. Unemployment is a social and political
issue. It is a phenomenon where human resources are wasted leading
to deacceleration in growth. Johanson Cointegration shows that there
is long run relationship between growth and unemployment. For
short run dynamics and causality, the study utilizes Vector Error
Correction Model (VECM). The results of VECM indicate that there
is short and long run causal relation between growth and
unemployment including capital, labor and human capital as
explanatory variables.
Abstract: In online context, the design and implementation of
effective remote laboratories environment is highly challenging on
account of hardware and software needs. This paper presents the
remote laboratory software framework modified from ilab shared
architecture (ISA). The ISA is a framework which enables students to
remotely acccess and control experimental hardware using internet
infrastructure. The need for remote laboratories came after
experiencing problems imposed by traditional laboratories. Among
them are: the high cost of laboratory equipment, scarcity of space,
scarcity of technical personnel along with the restricted university
budget creates a significant bottleneck on building required
laboratory experiments. The solution to these problems is to build
web-accessible laboratories. Remote laboratories allow students and
educators to interact with real laboratory equipment located
anywhere in the world at anytime. Recently, many universities and
other educational institutions especially in third world countries rely
on simulations because they do not afford the experimental
equipment they require to their students. Remote laboratories enable
users to get real data from real-time hand-on experiments. To
implement many remote laboratories, the system architecture should
be flexible, understandable and easy to implement, so that different
laboratories with different hardware can be deployed easily. The
modifications were made to enable developers to add more
equipment in ISA framework and to attract the new developers to
develop many online laboratories.
Abstract: In this paper static and dynamic response of a
varactor of a micro-phase shifter to DC, step DC and AC
voltages have been studied. By presenting a mathematical
modeling Galerkin-based step by step linearization method
(SSLM) and Galerkin-based reduced order model have been
used to solve the governing static and dynamic equations,
respectively. The calculated static and dynamic pull-in
voltages have been validated by previous experimental and
theoretical results and a good agreement has been achieved.
Then the frequency response and phase diagram of the system
has been studied. It has been shown that applying the DC
voltage shifts down the phase diagram and frequency
response. Also increasing the damping ratio shifts up the
phase diagram.