Abstract: Noise causes significant sensibility changes on a human. This study investigated the effect of five different noises on electroencephalogram (EEG) and subjective evaluation. Six human subjects were exposed to classic piano, ocean wave, alarm in army, ambulance, mosquito noise and EEG data were collected during the experimental session. Alpha band activity in the mosquito noise was smaller than that in the classic piano. Alpha band activity decreased 43.4 ± 8.2 % in the mosquito noise. On the other hand, Beta band activity in the mosquito noise was greater than that in the classic piano. Beta band activity increased 60.1 ± 10.7 % in the mosquito noise. The advances from this study may aid the product design process with human sensibility engineering. This result may provide useful information in designing a human-oriented product to avoid the stress.
Abstract: This paper present a new way to find the aerodynamic characteristic equation of missile for the numerical trajectories prediction more accurate. The goal is to obtain the polynomial equation based on two missile characteristic parameters, angle of attack (α ) and flight speed (╬¢ ). First, the understudied missile is modeled and used for flow computational model to compute aerodynamic force and moment. Assume that performance range of understudied missile where range -10< α
Abstract: Thermodynamics characterization Sesame oil
extraction by Acetone, Hexane and Benzene has been evaluated. The
120 hours experimental Data were described by a simple
mathematical model. According to the simulation results and the
essential criteria, Acetone is superior to other solvents but under
certain conditions where oil extraction takes place Hexane is superior
catalyst.
Abstract: This paper presents an optimized algorithm for robot localization which increases the correctness and accuracy of the estimating position of mobile robot to more than 150% of the past methods [1] in the uncertain and noisy environment. In this method the odometry and vision sensors are combined by an adapted well-known discrete kalman filter [2]. This technique also decreased the computation process of the algorithm by DKF simple implementation. The experimental trial of the algorithm is performed on the robocup middle size soccer robot; the system can be used in more general environments.
Abstract: The paper focuses on the implementation phase of the
strategy of the European Union and the national strategy of the
Czech Republic to promote academic and research staff with the
potential to produce results that provide innovation useful for
economic growth. It deals with the use of financial resources of the
Operational Program Education for Competitiveness at the
University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. The author presents an
example of two strategic projects in the field of human resources –
Excellence in Human Resources as a Source of Competitiveness and
New Excellence of Human Resources. The subject of this paper is the
potential contribution of newly recruited postdoctoral within these
projects for the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and its internal
environment.
Abstract: In Thailand, both the 1997 and the current 2007 Thai Constitutions have mentioned the establishment of independent organizations as a new mechanism to play a key role in proposing policy recommendations to national decision-makers in the interest of collective consumers. Over the last ten years, no independent organizations have yet been set up. Evidently, nobody could point out who should be key players in establishing provincial independent consumer bodies. The purpose of this study was to find definitive stakeholders in establishing and developing independent consumer bodies in a Thai context. This was a cross-sectional study between August and September 2007, using a postal questionnaire with telephone follow-up. The questionnaire was designed and used to obtain multiple stakeholder assessment of three key attributes (power, interest and influence). Study population was 153 stakeholders associated with policy decision-making, formulation and implementation processes of civil-based consumer protection in pilot provinces. The population covered key representatives from five sectors (academics, government officers, business traders, mass media and consumer networks) who participated in the deliberative forums at 10 provinces. A 49.7% response rate was achieved. Data were analyzed, comparing means of three stakeholder attributes and classification of stakeholder typology. The results showed that the provincial health officers were the definitive stakeholders as they had legal power, influence and interest in establishing and sustaining the independent consumer bodies. However, only a few key representatives of the provincial health officers expressed their own paradigm on the civil-based consumer protection. Most provincial health officers put their own standpoint of building civic participation at only a plan-implementation level. For effective policy implementation by the independent consumer bodies, the Thai government should provide budgetary support for the operation of the provincial health officers with their paradigm shift as well as their own clarified standpoint on corporate governance.
Abstract: The textile industry produces highly coloured
effluents containing polar and non-polar compounds. The textile mill
run by the Assam Polyester Co-operative Society Limited (APOL) is
situated at Rangia, about 55 km from Guwahati (26011' N, 91047' E)
in the northern bank of the river Brahmaputra, Assam (India). This
unit was commissioned in June 1988 and started commercial
production in November 1988. The installed capacity of the weaving
unit was 8000 m/day and that of the processing unit was 20,000
m/day. The mill has its own dyeing unit with a capacity of 1500-2000
kg/day. The western side of the mill consists of vast agricultural land
and the far northern and southern side of the mill has scattered human
population. The eastern side of the mill has a major road for
thoroughfare. The mill releases its effluents into the agricultural land
in the western side of the mill. The present study was undertaken to
assess the impact of the textile mill on surface soil quality in and
around the mill with particular reference to Cr, Mn, Ni and Zn.
Surface soil samples, collected along different directions at 200, 500
and 1000 m were digested and the metals were estimated with
Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer. The metals were found in the
range of: Cr 50.9 – 105.0 mg kg-1, Mn 19.2- 78.6 mg kg-1, Ni 41.9 –
50.6 mg kg-1 and Zn 187.8 – 1095.8 mg kg-1. The study reveals
enrichment of Cr, Mn, Ni and Zn in the soil near the textile mill.
Abstract: Most parts of the world such as Iran are facing the excessive consumption of fertilizers, that are used to achieve high yield, but increase the cost of production of fertilizer and degradation of soil and water resources. This experiment was carried out to study the effect of PGPR and planting pattern on yield and yield components of rice (Oryza sativa L.) using split plot based on randomized complete block design with three replications in Ilam province, Iran. Bio-fertilizer including Azotobacter, Nitroxin and control treatment (without consumption) were designed as a main plot and planting pattern including 15 × 10, 15 × 15 and 15 × 20 and the number of plant in hill including 3, 4 and 5 plants in hill were considered as a sub-plots. The results showed that the effect of bio-fertilizers, planting pattern and the number of plants in hill were significant affect on yield and yield components. Interaction effect between bio-fertilizer and planting pattern had important difference on the number spikelet of panicle and harvest index. Interaction effect between bio-fertilizer and the number of plants in hill were significant affect on the number of spikelet per panicle. The maximum grain yield was obtained by inoculation with Nitroxin, planting pattern of 15 × 15 and 4 plants in hill with mean of 1110.6 g.m-2, 959.9 g.m-2 and 928.4 g.m-2, respectively.
Abstract: The counting process of cell colonies is always a long
and laborious process that is dependent on the judgment and ability
of the operator. The judgment of the operator in counting can vary in
relation to fatigue. Moreover, since this activity is time consuming it
can limit the usable number of dishes for each experiment. For these
purposes, it is necessary that an automatic system of cell colony
counting is used. This article introduces a new automatic system of
counting based on the elaboration of the digital images of cellular
colonies grown on petri dishes. This system is mainly based on the
algorithms of region-growing for the recognition of the regions of
interest (ROI) in the image and a Sanger neural net for the
characterization of such regions. The better final classification is
supplied from a Feed-Forward Neural Net (FF-NN) and confronted
with the K-Nearest Neighbour (K-NN) and a Linear Discriminative
Function (LDF). The preliminary results are shown.
Abstract: A study was conducted in greenhouse environment to
determine the response of five tissue-cultured date palm cultivars, Al-
Ahamad, Nabusaif, Barhee, Khalas, and Kasab to irrigation water
salinity of 1.6, 5, 10, or 20 dS/ m. The salinity level of 1.6dS/m, was
used as a control. The effects of high salinity on plant survival were
manifested at 360 days after planting (DAP) onwards. Three
cultivars, Khalas, Kasab and Barhee were able to tolerate 10 dS/m
salinity level at 24 months after the start of study. Khalas tolerated
the highest salinity level of 20 dS/ m and 'Nabusaif' was found to be the
least tolerant cv. The average heights of palms and the number of
fronds were decreased with increasing salinity levels as time
progressed.
Abstract: Copper based composites reinforced with WC and Ti
particles were prepared using planetary ball-mill. The experiment
was designed by using Taguchi technique and milling was carried out
in an air for several hours. The powder was characterized before and
after milling using the SEM, TEM and X-ray for microstructure and
for possible new phases. Microstructures show that milled particles
size and reduction in particle size depend on many parameters. The
distance d between planes of atoms estimated from X-ray powder
diffraction data and TEM image. X-ray diffraction patterns of the
milled powder did not show clearly any new peak or energy shift, but
the TEM images show a significant change in crystalline structure of
corporate on titanium in the composites.
Abstract: This paper focuses on a critical component of the situational awareness (SA), the control of autonomous vertical flight for tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (TUAV). With the SA strategy, we proposed a two stage flight control procedure using two autonomous control subsystems to address the dynamics variation and performance requirement difference in initial and final stages of flight trajectory for an unmanned helicopter model with coaxial rotor and ducted fan configuration. This control strategy for chosen model of TUAV has been verified by simulation of hovering maneuvers using software package Simulink and demonstrated good performance for fast stabilization of engines in hovering, consequently, fast SA with economy in energy can be asserted during search-and-rescue operations.
Abstract: Alcohol and water extracts of Cymbopogon citratus
was investigated for anti-bacterial properties and phytochemical
constituents. The extract was screened against four gram-negative
bacteria Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas
aeruginosa, Proteus vulgaris) and two grampositive bacteria Bacillus
subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus at four different concentrations
(1:1, 1:5, 1:10 and 1:20) using disc diffusion method. The antibacterial
examination was by disc diffusion techniques, while the
photochemical constituents were investigated using standard
chemical methods. Results showed that the extracts inhibited the
growth of standard and local strains of the organisms used. The
treatments were significantly different (P = 0.05). The minimum
inhibitory concentration of the extracts against the tested
microorganisms ranged between 150mg/ml and 50mg/ml. The
alcohol extracts were found to be generally more effective than the
water extract. The photochemical analysis revealed the presence of
alkaloids and phenol but absence of cardiac and cyanogenic
glycosides. The presence of alkaloid and phenols were inferred as
being responsible for the anti-bacterial properties of the extracts.
Abstract: Dynamics of laser radiation – metal target interaction
in water at 1064 nm by applying Mach-Zehnder interference
technique was studied. The mechanism of generating the well
developed regime of evaporation of a metal surface and a spherical
shock wave in water is proposed. Critical intensities of the NIR for
the well developed evaporation of silver and gold targets were
determined. Dynamics of shock waves was investigated for earlier
(dozens) and later (hundreds) nanoseconds of time. Transparent
expanding plasma-vapor-compressed water object was visualized and
measured. The thickness of compressed layer of water and pressures
behind the front of a shock wave for later time delays were obtained
from the optical treatment of interferograms.
Abstract: A dead leg is a typical subsea production system
component. CFD is required to model heat transfer within the dead
leg. Unfortunately its solution is time demanding and thus not
suitable for fast prediction or repeated simulations. Therefore there is
a need to create a thermal FEA model, mimicking the heat flows and
temperatures seen in CFD cool down simulations.
This paper describes the conventional way of tuning and a new
automated way using parametric model order reduction (PMOR)
together with an optimization algorithm. The tuned FE analyses
replicate the steady state CFD parameters within a maximum error in
heat flow of 6 % and 3 % using manual and PMOR method
respectively. During cool down, the relative error of the tuned FEA
models with respect to temperature is below 5% comparing to the
CFD. In addition, the PMOR method obtained the correct FEA setup
five times faster than the manually tuned FEA.
Abstract: The cup method is applied for the measurement of water vapor transport properties of porous materials worldwide. However, in practical applications the experimental results are often used without taking into account some secondary effects which can play an important role under specific conditions. In this paper, the effect of temperature on water vapor transport properties of cellular concrete is studied, together with the influence of sample thickness. At first, the bulk density, matrix density, total open porosity and sorption and desorption isotherms are measured for material characterization purposes. Then, the steady state cup method is used for determination of water vapor transport properties, whereas the measurements are performed at several temperatures and for three different sample thicknesses.
Abstract: Free Hemoglobin promotes the accumulation of
hydroxyl radicals by the heme iron, which can react with endogenous
hydrogen peroxide to produce free radicals which may cause severe
oxidative cell damage. Haptoglobin binds to Hemoglobin strongly
and Haptoglobin-Hemoglobin binding is irreversible. Peroxidase
activity of Haptoglobin(2-2)-Hemoglobin complex was assayed by
following increase of absorption of produced tetraguaiacol as the
second substrate of Haptoglobin-Hemoglobin complex at 470 nm and
42°C by UV-Vis spectrophotometer. The results have shown that
peroxidase activity of Haptoglobin(2-2)-Hemoglobin complex is
modulated via homotropic effect of hydrogen peroxide as allostric
substrate. On the other hand antioxidant property of Haptoglobin(2-
2)-Hemoglobin was increased via heterotropic effect of the two drugs
(especially ampicillin) on peroxidase activity of the complex. Both
drugs also have mild effect on quality of homotropic property of
peroxidase activity of Haptoglobin(2-2)-Hemoglobin complex.
Therefore, in vitro studies show that the two drugs may help Hp-Hb
complex to remove hydrogen peroxide from serum at pathologic
temperature ature (42 C).
Abstract: In the world of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking
different protocols have been developed to make the resource sharing
or information retrieval more efficient. The SemPeer protocol is a
new layer on Gnutella that transforms the connections of the nodes
based on semantic information to make information retrieval more
efficient. However, this transformation causes high clustering in the
network that decreases the number of nodes reached, therefore the
probability of finding a document is also decreased. In this paper we
describe a mathematical model for the Gnutella and SemPeer
protocols that captures clustering-related issues, followed by a
proposition to modify the SemPeer protocol to achieve moderate
clustering. This modification is a sort of link management for the
individual nodes that allows the SemPeer protocol to be more
efficient, because the probability of a successful query in the P2P
network is reasonably increased. For the validation of the models, we
evaluated a series of simulations that supported our results.
Abstract: Software project effort estimation is frequently seen
as complex and expensive for individual software engineers.
Software production is in a crisis. It suffers from excessive costs.
Software production is often out of control. It has been suggested that
software production is out of control because we do not measure.
You cannot control what you cannot measure. During last decade, a
number of researches on cost estimation have been conducted. The
metric-set selection has a vital role in software cost estimation
studies; its importance has been ignored especially in neural network
based studies. In this study we have explored the reasons of those
disappointing results and implemented different neural network
models using augmented new metrics. The results obtained are
compared with previous studies using traditional metrics. To be able
to make comparisons, two types of data have been used. The first
part of the data is taken from the Constructive Cost Model
(COCOMO'81) which is commonly used in previous studies and the
second part is collected according to new metrics in a leading
international company in Turkey. The accuracy of the selected
metrics and the data samples are verified using statistical techniques.
The model presented here is based on Multi-Layer Perceptron
(MLP). Another difficulty associated with the cost estimation studies
is the fact that the data collection requires time and care. To make a
more thorough use of the samples collected, k-fold, cross validation
method is also implemented. It is concluded that, as long as an
accurate and quantifiable set of metrics are defined and measured
correctly, neural networks can be applied in software cost estimation
studies with success
Abstract: One of the main trouble in a steel strip manufacturing
line is the breakage of whatever weld carried out between steel coils,
that are used to produce the continuous strip to be processed. A weld
breakage results in a several hours stop of the manufacturing line. In
this process the damages caused by the breakage must be repaired.
After the reparation and in order to go on with the production it will
be necessary a restarting process of the line. For minimizing this
problem, a human operator must inspect visually and manually each
weld in order to avoid its breakage during the manufacturing process.
The work presented in this paper is based on the Bayesian decision
theory and it presents an approach to detect, on real-time, steel strip
defective welds. This approach is based on quantifying the tradeoffs
between various classification decisions using probability and the
costs that accompany such decisions.