Abstract: The empirical mode decomposition (EMD) represents any time series into a finite set of basis functions. The bases are termed as intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) which are mutually orthogonal containing minimum amount of cross-information. The EMD successively extracts the IMFs with the highest local frequencies in a recursive way, which yields effectively a set low-pass filters based entirely on the properties exhibited by the data. In this paper, EMD is applied to explore the properties of the multi-year air temperature and to observe its effects on climate change under global warming. This method decomposes the original time-series into intrinsic time scale. It is capable of analyzing nonlinear, non-stationary climatic time series that cause problems to many linear statistical methods and their users. The analysis results show that the mode of EMD presents seasonal variability. The most of the IMFs have normal distribution and the energy density distribution of the IMFs satisfies Chi-square distribution. The IMFs are more effective in isolating physical processes of various time-scales and also statistically significant. The analysis results also show that the EMD method provides a good job to find many characteristics on inter annual climate. The results suggest that climate fluctuations of every single element such as temperature are the results of variations in the global atmospheric circulation.
Abstract: The design of distributed systems involves dividing the system into partitions (or components) and then allocating these partitions to physical nodes. There have been several techniques proposed for both the partitioning and allocation processes. These existing techniques suffer from a number of limitations including lack of support for replication. Replication is difficult to use effectively but has the potential to greatly improve the performance of a distributed system. This paper presents a new technique technique for allocating objects in order to improve performance in a distributed system that supports replication. The performance of the proposed technique is demonstrated and tested on an example system. The performance of the new technique is compared with the performance of an existing technique in order to demonstrate both the validity and superiority of the new technique when developing a distributed system that can utilise object replication.
Abstract: This paper aims to address the new trend of social
commerce as electronic commerce leverages Web 2.0 technologies
and online social media. The infusions of new technologies on the
World Wide Web connect users in their homes and workplaces,
thus transforming social formations and business transactions. An
in-depth study of the growth and success of a social commerce site,
Facebook was conducted. The investigation is finalized with a triad
relational model which reflects socioeconomic life in the Internet
today. The following three concepts work jointly to form a global
community that has already started to take the place of traditional
commerce and socialization: Web 2.0 technology, E-commerce,
and online social media. A discussion of the research findings
indicates that social commerce networks are sustainable because of
the various incentives given to users as they collaborate with others
regardless of their identity and location. The focus of this article is
to increase understanding on quickly developing Web 2.0 based
social media and their subsequent effects on the emerging social
commerce.
Abstract: Landscape connectivity combines a description of the
physical structure of the landscape with special species- response to
that structure, which forms the theoretical background of applying
landscape connectivity principles in the practices of landscape
planning and design. In this study, a residential development project in
the southern United States was used to explore the meaning of
landscape connectivity and its application in town planning. The vast
rural landscape in the southern United States is conspicuously
characterized by the hedgerow trees or groves. The patchwork
landscape of fields surrounded by high hedgerows is a traditional and
familiar feature of the American countryside. Hedgerows are in effect
linear strips of trees, groves, or woodlands, which are often critical
habitats for wildlife and important for the visual quality of the
landscape. Based on geographic information system (GIS) and
statistical analysis (FRAGSTAT), this study attempts to quantify the
landscape connectivity characterized by hedgerows in south Alabama
where substantial areas of authentic hedgerow landscape are being
urbanized due to the ever expanding real estate industry and high
demand for new residential development. The results of this study
shed lights on how to balance the needs of new urban development and
biodiversity conservation by maintaining a higher level of landscape
connectivity, thus will inform the design intervention.
Abstract: In nature, electromagnetic fields always appear like
atmosphere static electric field, the earth's static magnetic field and
the wide-rang frequency electromagnetic field caused by lightening.
However, besides natural electromagnetic fields (EMF), today human
beings are mostly exposed to artificial electromagnetic fields due to
technology progress and outspread use of electrical devices. To
evaluate nuisance of EMF, it is necessary to know field intensity for
every frequency which appears and compare it with allowed values.
Low frequency EMF-s around transmission and distribution lines are
time-varying quasi-static electromagnetic fields which have
conservative component of low frequency electrical field caused by
charges and eddy component of low frequency magnetic field caused
by currents. Displacement current or field delay are negligible, so
energy flow in quasi-static EMF involves diffusion, analog like heat
transfer. Electrical and magnetic field can be analyzed separately.
This paper analysis the numerical calculations in ELF-400 software
of EMF in distribution substation in shopping center. Analyzing the
results it is possible to specify locations exposed to the fields and
give useful suggestion to eliminate electromagnetic effect or reduce it
on acceptable level within the non-ionizing radiation norms and
norms of protection from EMF.
Abstract: The tray/multi-tray distillation process is a topic that
has been investigated to great detail over the last decade by many
teams such as Jubran et al. [1], Adhikari et al. [2], Mowla et al. [3],
Shatat et al. [4] and Fath [5] to name a few. A significant amount of
work and effort was spent focusing on modeling and/simulation of
specific distillation hardware designs. In this work, we have focused
our efforts on investigating and gathering experimental data on
several engineering and design variables to quantify their influence
on the yield of the multi-tray distillation process. Our goals are to
generate experimental performance data to bridge some existing gaps
in the design, engineering, optimization and theoretical modeling
aspects of the multi-tray distillation process.
Abstract: Engineered nanoparticles’ usage rapidly increased in
various applications in the last decade due to their unusual properties.
However, there is an ever increasing concern to understand their
toxicological effect in human health. Particularly, metal and metal
oxide nanoparticles have been used in various sectors including
biomedical, food and agriculture. But their impact on human health is
yet to be fully understood. In this present investigation, we assessed
the toxic effect of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) including Ag,
MgO and Co3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) on human mesenchymal stem
cells (hMSC) adopting cell viability and cellular morphological
changes as tools The results suggested that silver NPs are more toxic
than MgO and Co3O4NPs. The ENPs induced cytotoxicity and
nuclear morphological changes in hMSC depending on dose. The cell
viability decreases with increase in concentration of ENPs. The
cellular morphology studies revealed that ENPs damaged the cells.
These preliminary findings have implications for the use of these
nanoparticles in food industry with systematic regulations.
Abstract: The Boundary Representation of a 3D manifold contains
FACES (connected subsets of a parametric surface S : R2 -!
R3). In many science and engineering applications it is cumbersome
and algebraically difficult to deal with the polynomial set and
constraints (LOOPs) representing the FACE. Because of this reason, a
Piecewise Linear (PL) approximation of the FACE is needed, which is
usually represented in terms of triangles (i.e. 2-simplices). Solving the
problem of FACE triangulation requires producing quality triangles
which are: (i) independent of the arguments of S, (ii) sensitive to the
local curvatures, and (iii) compliant with the boundaries of the FACE
and (iv) topologically compatible with the triangles of the neighboring
FACEs. In the existing literature there are no guarantees for the point
(iii). This article contributes to the topic of triangulations conforming
to the boundaries of the FACE by applying the concept of parameterindependent
Gabriel complex, which improves the correctness of the
triangulation regarding aspects (iii) and (iv). In addition, the article
applies the geometric concept of tangent ball to a surface at a point to
address points (i) and (ii). Additional research is needed in algorithms
that (i) take advantage of the concepts presented in the heuristic
algorithm proposed and (ii) can be proved correct.
Abstract: Video watermarking is usually considered as watermarking of a set of still images. In frame-by-frame watermarking approach, each video frame is seen as a single watermarked image, so collusion attack is more critical in video watermarking. If the same or redundant watermark is used for embedding in every frame of video, the watermark can be estimated and then removed by watermark estimate remodolulation (WER) attack. Also if uncorrelated watermarks are used for every frame, these watermarks can be washed out with frame temporal filtering (FTF). Switching watermark system or so-called SS-N system has better performance against WER and FTF attacks. In this system, for each frame, the watermark is randomly picked up from a finite pool of watermark patterns. At first SS-N system will be surveyed and then a new collusion attack for SS-N system will be proposed using a new algorithm for separating video frame based on watermark pattern. So N sets will be built in which every set contains frames carrying the same watermark. After that, using WER attack in every set, N different watermark patterns will be estimated and removed later.
Abstract: Most, if not all, public hospitals in Thailand have encountered a common problem regarding the increasing demand for medical services. The increasing number of patients causes so much strain on the hospital-s services, over-crowded, overloaded working hours, staff fatigue, medical error and long waiting time. This research studied the characteristics of operational processes of the medical care services at the medicine department in a large public university hospital. The research focuses on details regarding methods, procedures, processes, resources, and time management in overall processes. The simulation model is used as a tool to analyze the impact of various improvement strategies.
Abstract: In contrast to existing methods which do not take into account multiconnectivity in a broad sense of this term, we develop mathematical models and highly effective combination (BIEM and FDM) numerical methods of calculation of stationary and quasi-stationary temperature field of a profile part of a blade with convective cooling (from the point of view of realization on PC). The theoretical substantiation of these methods is proved by appropriate theorems. For it, converging quadrature processes have been developed and the estimations of errors in the terms of A.Ziqmound continuity modules have been received. For visualization of profiles are used: the method of the least squares with automatic conjecture, device spline, smooth replenishment and neural nets. Boundary conditions of heat exchange are determined from the solution of the corresponding integral equations and empirical relationships. The reliability of designed methods is proved by calculation and experimental investigations heat and hydraulic characteristics of the gas turbine first stage nozzle blade.
Abstract: This paper proposes a new algebraic scheme to design a PID controller for higher order linear time invariant continuous systems. Modified PSO (MPSO) based model order formulation techniques have applied to obtain the effective formulated second order system. A controller is tuned to meet the desired performance specification by using pole-zero cancellation method. Proposed PID controller is attached with both higher order system and formulated second order system. The closed loop response is observed for stabilization process and compared with general PSO based formulated second order system. The proposed method is illustrated through numerical example from literature.
Abstract: IT consultants often take over an important role as an
interface between technological, organizational and managerial
structures. As a result, the services offered are in many cases
assigned to different disciplines which can cause a lack of
transparency on the market for consulting services. However, not all
consulting products are suitable for every company because of
different frameworks and business processes. In this context the
questions arises as to what consulting products are currently offered
and how they can be compared as well as how the market for IT
consulting services is structured on the supply side. The presented
study aims to shed light on the IT consulting market by giving an
overview of the current structure of the supply-side for IT consulting
services as well as proposing a categorization of the currently
available consulting services (consulting fields) in order to provide a
theoretical background for the empirical study. Apart from these
theoretical considerations, the empirical results of field surveys on
the Austrian IT consulting market are presented and analyzed.
Abstract: Morgan-s refinement calculus (MRC) is one of the
well-known methods allowing the formality presented in the program
specification to be continued all the way to code. On the other hand,
Object-Z (OZ) is an extension of Z adding support for classes and
objects. There are a number of methods for obtaining code from OZ
specifications that can be categorized into refinement and animation
methods. As far as we know, only one refinement method exists
which refines OZ specifications into code. However, this method
does not have fine-grained refinement rules and thus cannot be
automated. On the other hand, existing animation methods do not
present mapping rules formally and do not support the mapping of
several important constructs of OZ, such as all cases of operation
expressions and most of constructs in global paragraph. In this paper,
with the aim of providing an automatic path from OZ specifications
to code, we propose an approach to map OZ specifications into their
counterparts in MRC in order to use fine-grained refinement rules of
MRC. In this way, having counterparts of our specifications in MRC,
we can refine them into code automatically using MRC tools such as
RED. Other advantages of our work pertain to proposing mapping
rules formally, supporting the mapping of all important constructs of
Object-Z, and considering dynamic instantiation of objects while OZ
itself does not cover this facility.
Abstract: In April 2009, a new variant of Influenza A virus
subtype H1N1 emerged in Mexico and spread all over the world. The
influenza has three subtypes in human (H1N1, H1N2 and H3N2)
Types B and C influenza tend to be associated with local or regional
epidemics. Preliminary genetic characterization of the influenza
viruses has identified them as swine influenza A (H1N1) viruses.
Nucleotide sequence analysis of the Haemagglutinin (HA) and
Neuraminidase (NA) are similar to each other and the majority of
their genes of swine influenza viruses, two genes coding for the
neuraminidase (NA) and matrix (M) proteins are similar to
corresponding genes of swine influenza. Sequence similarity between
the 2009 A (H1N1) virus and its nearest relatives indicates that its
gene segments have been circulating undetected for an extended
period. Nucleic acid sequence Maximum Likelihood (MCL) and
DNA Empirical base frequencies, Phylogenetic relationship amongst
the HA genes of H1N1 virus isolated in Genbank having high
nucleotide sequence homology.
In this paper we used 16 HA nucleotide sequences from NCBI for
computing sequence relationships similarity of swine influenza A
virus using the following method MCL the result is 28%, 36.64% for
Optimal tree with the sum of branch length, 35.62% for Interior
branch phylogeny Neighber – Join Tree, 1.85% for the overall
transition/transversion, and 8.28% for Overall mean distance.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider the design of pulse shaping
filter using orthogonal Hermite-Rodriguez basis functions. The pulse
shaping filter design problem has been formulated and solved as a
quadratic programming problem with linear inequality constraints.
Compared with the existing approaches reported in the literature, the
use of Hermite-Rodriguez functions offers an effective alternative to
solve the constrained filter synthesis problem. This is demonstrated
through a numerical example which is concerned with the design of
an equalization filter for a digital transmission channel.
Abstract: Nowadays wireless technology plays an important
role in public and personal communication. However, the growth of
wireless networking has confused the traditional boundaries between
trusted and untrusted networks. Wireless networks are subject to a
variety of threats and attacks at present. An attacker has the ability to
listen to all network traffic which becoming a potential intrusion.
Intrusion of any kind may lead to a chaotic condition. In addition,
improperly configured access points also contribute the risk to
wireless network. To overcome this issue, a security solution that
includes an intrusion detection and prevention system need to be
implemented. In this paper, first the security drawbacks of wireless
network will be analyzed then investigate the characteristics and also
the limitations on current wireless intrusion detection and prevention
system. Finally, the requirement of next wireless intrusion prevention
system will be identified including some key issues which should be
focused on in the future to overcomes those limitations.
Abstract: Modern applications realized onto FPGAs exhibit high connectivity demands. Throughout this paper we study the routing constraints of Virtex devices and we propose a systematic methodology for designing a novel general-purpose interconnection network targeting to reconfigurable architectures. This network consists of multiple segment wires and SB patterns, appropriately selected and assigned across the device. The goal of our proposed methodology is to maximize the hardware utilization of fabricated routing resources. The derived interconnection scheme is integrated on a Virtex style FPGA. This device is characterized both for its high-performance, as well as for its low-energy requirements. Due to this, the design criterion that guides our architecture selections was the minimal Energy×Delay Product (EDP). The methodology is fully-supported by three new software tools, which belong to MEANDER Design Framework. Using a typical set of MCNC benchmarks, extensive comparison study in terms of several critical parameters proves the effectiveness of the derived interconnection network. More specifically, we achieve average Energy×Delay Product reduction by 63%, performance increase by 26%, reduction in leakage power by 21%, reduction in total energy consumption by 11%, at the expense of increase of channel width by 20%.
Abstract: Impinging jets are used in various industrial areas as a cooling and drying technique. The current research is concerned with the means of improving the heat transfer for configurations with a minimum distance of the nozzle to the impingement surface. The impingement heat transfer is described using numerical methods over a wide range of parameters for an array of planar jets. These parameters include varying jet flow speed, width of nozzle, distance of nozzle, angle of the jet flow, velocity and geometry of the impingement surface. Normal pressure and shear stress are computed as additional parameters. Using dimensionless characteristic numbers the parameters and the results are correlated to gain generalized equations. The results demonstrate the effect of the investigated parameters on the flow.
Abstract: Automatic reading of handwritten cheque is a computationally
complex process and it plays an important role in financial
risk management. Machine vision and learning provide a viable
solution to this problem. Research effort has mostly been focused
on recognizing diverse pitches of cheques and demand drafts with an
identical outline. However most of these methods employ templatematching
to localize the pitches and such schemes could potentially
fail when applied to different types of outline maintained by the
bank. In this paper, the so-called outline problem is resolved by
a cheque information tree (CIT), which generalizes the localizing
method to extract active-region-of-entities. In addition, the weight
based density plot (WBDP) is performed to isolate text entities and
read complete pitches. Recognition is based on texture features using
neural classifiers. Legal amount is subsequently recognized by both
texture and perceptual features. A post-processing phase is invoked
to detect the incorrect readings by Type-2 grammar using the Turing
machine. The performance of the proposed system was evaluated
using cheque and demand drafts of 22 different banks. The test data
consists of a collection of 1540 leafs obtained from 10 different
account holders from each bank. Results show that this approach
can easily be deployed without significant design amendments.