Effect of Load Orientation on the Stability of a Three-Lobe Bearing Supporting Rigid and Flexible Rotors

Multilobe bearings are found to be more stable than circular bearings. A three lobe bearing also possesses good stability characteristics. Sometimes the line of action of the load does not pass through the axis of a bearing and is shifted on either side by a few degrees. Load orientation is one of the factors that affect the stability of a three lobe bearing. The effect of load orientation on the stability of a three-lobe has been discussed in this paper. The results show that stability of a three-lobe bearing supporting either rigid or flexible rotor is increased for the positive values of load orientation i.e. when the load line is shifted in the opposite direction of rotation.

A New Correlation for Overall Sherwood Number in Packed Liquid-Liquid Extraction Column

Using plug flow model in conjunction with experimental solute concentration profiles, overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient based on continuous phase (Koca), in a packed liquid-liquid extraction column has been optimized. Number of 12 experiments has been done using standard system of water/acid acetic/toluene in a 6 cm diameter, 120 cm height column. Thorough consideration of influencing parameters we intended to correlate dimensionless parameters in term of overall Sherwood number which has an acceptable average error of about 15.8%.

Trustworthy in Virtual Organization

In open settings, the participants in virtual organization are autonomous and there is no central authority to ensure the felicity of their interactions. When agents interact in such settings, each relies upon being able to model the trustworthiness of the agents with whom it interacts. Fundamentally, such models must consider the past behavior of the other parties in order to predict their future behavior. Further, it is sensible for the agents to share information via referrals to trustworthy agents. In this article, trust is a bet on the future contingent actions of others" and enumerates six major factors supporting it: (1) reputation, (2) performance, (3) appearance, (4) accountability, (5) precommitment, and (6) contextual facilitation.

Design and Control Strategy of Diffused Air Aeration System

During the past decade, pond aeration systems have been developed which will sustain large quantities of fish and invertebrate biomass. Dissolved Oxygen (DO) is considered to be among the most important water quality parameters in fish culture. Fishponds in aquaculture farms are usually located in remote areas where grid lines are at far distance. Aeration of ponds is required to prevent mortality and to intensify production, especially when feeding is practical, and in warm regions. To increase pond production it is necessary to control dissolved oxygen. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are becoming useful as alternate approaches to conventional techniques or as components of integrated systems. They have been used to solve complicated practical problems in various areas and are becoming more and more popular nowadays. This paper presents a new design of diffused aeration system using fuel cell as a power source. Also fuzzy logic control Technique (FLC) is used for controlling the speed of air flow rate from the blower to air piping connected to the pond by adjusting blower speed. MATLAB SIMULINK results show high performance of fuzzy logic control (FLC).

The Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ) with Turkish Sample: Confirmatory and Exploratory Factor Analysis

The propose of this study is to investigate the factor structures of the W-DEQ, originally developed on UK and Swedish women, were confirmed in Turkish samples, and to obtain a new modified factor structure appropriate to Turkish culture. Statistical analyses of the data obtained were performed using SPSS© for Windows version 13.0 and the SAS statistical software Version 9.1. Both confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis of W-DEQ were performed in the study. Factor analysis yielded four factors related to hope, fear, lack of positive anticipation and riskiness. The alpha estimates of the total W-DEQ score were somewhat higher, being 0.92 for the parous and 0.90 for the nulliparous sample. These are well above the accepted limit of 0.70 and indicate excellent levels of internal reliability, thus showing that the questions were appropriate to the Turkish culture and useful scale for the evaluation of fear of childbirth in Turkish pregnants.

Boria in Malaysia

This article is investigating Boria which is a kind of common performance in Malaysia. Boria has been known as Boria and Borea and both are correct, but Boria is more common. Boria is a folk performance unique to Penang. This theatre style reached Penang in the mid-19th century and is believed to be derived from the Shia Islamic Passion play performed during the Muslim month of Muharram to commemorate the martyrs of Kerbela. These days in Malaysia (especially Penang) Boria mentions to a choral street performance performed annually by a number of groups composed mostly of Sunni Malaysian. Boria are performed for entertainment and often include an annual singing competition. The size, membership, themes and movements of each Boria troupe may vary from year to year. Similarly, the themes and contents of the Boria performed by the different troupes also changes each year and can have a comical, political or satirical notion. It is common to most groups during the first ten days of Muharram Boria generally is done.

Automatic Recognition of Emotionally Coloured Speech

Emotion in speech is an issue that has been attracting the interest of the speech community for many years, both in the context of speech synthesis as well as in automatic speech recognition (ASR). In spite of the remarkable recent progress in Large Vocabulary Recognition (LVR), it is still far behind the ultimate goal of recognising free conversational speech uttered by any speaker in any environment. Current experimental tests prove that using state of the art large vocabulary recognition systems the error rate increases substantially when applied to spontaneous/emotional speech. This paper shows that recognition rate for emotionally coloured speech can be improved by using a language model based on increased representation of emotional utterances.

Influence of Degradative Enzymatic Activities on the Shelf Life of Ready-to-Eat Prickly Pear Fruits

Prickly pear fruit (Opuntia ficus indica L. Miller) belongs to the Cactaceae family. This species is very sensitive to low storage temperatures (< 5°C) which cause damages. The fruits can be peeled, suitably packaged and successfully commercialized as a ready-to-eat product. The main limit to the extension of the shelf life is the production of off-flavors due to different factors, the growth of microorganisms and the action of endogenous enzymes. Lipoxygenase (LOX) and Pectinesterase (PE) are involved in fruit degradation. In particular, LOX pathway is directly responsible for lipid oxidation, and the subsequent production of off-flavours, while PE causes the softening of fruit during maturation. They act on the texture and shelf-life of post-harvest, packaged fruits, as a function of the the grown of microorganisms and packaging technologies used. The aim of this work is to compare the effect of different packaging technologies on the shelf life extension of ready-to-eat prickly pear fruits with regards for the enzymes activities.

Fuzzy Logic Speed Controller with Reduced Rule Base for Dual PMSM Drives

Dual motor drives fed by single inverter is purposely designed to reduced size and cost with respect to single motor drives fed by single inverter. Previous researches on dual motor drives only focus on the modulation and the averaging techniques. Only a few of them, study the performance of the drives based on different speed controller other than Proportional and Integrator (PI) controller. This paper presents a detailed comparative study on fuzzy rule-base in Fuzzy Logic speed Controller (FLC) for Dual Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) drives. Two fuzzy speed controllers which are standard and simplified fuzzy speed controllers are designed and the results are compared and evaluated. The standard fuzzy controller consists of 49 rules while the proposed controller consists of 9 rules determined by selecting the most dominant rules only. Both designs are compared for wide range of speed and the robustness of both controllers over load disturbance changes is tested to demonstrate the effectiveness of the simplified/reduced rulebase.

Model Order Reduction of Discrete-Time Systems Using Fuzzy C-Means Clustering

A computationally simple approach of model order reduction for single input single output (SISO) and linear timeinvariant discrete systems modeled in frequency domain is proposed in this paper. Denominator of the reduced order model is determined using fuzzy C-means clustering while the numerator parameters are found by matching time moments and Markov parameters of high order system.

Synthesis and Electrochemical Characterization of Iron Oxide / Activated Carbon Composite Electrode for Symmetrical Supercapacitor

In the present work, we have developed a symmetric electrochemical capacitor based on the nanostructured iron oxide (Fe3O4)-activated carbon (AC) nanocomposite materials. The physical properties of the nanocomposites were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis. The electrochemical performances of the composite electrode in 1.0 M Na2SO3 and 1.0 M Na2SO4 aqueous solutions were evaluated using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The composite electrode with 4 wt% of iron oxide nanomaterials exhibits the highest capacitance of 86 F/g. The experimental results clearly indicate that the incorporation of iron oxide nanomaterials at low concentration to the composite can improve the capacitive performance, mainly attributed to the contribution of the pseudocapacitance charge storage mechanism and the enhancement on the effective surface area of the electrode. Nevertheless, there is an optimum threshold on the amount of iron oxide that needs to be incorporated into the composite system. When this optimum threshold is exceeded, the capacitive performance of the electrode starts to deteriorate, as a result of the undesired particle aggregation, which is clearly indicated in the SEM analysis. The electrochemical performance of the composite electrode is found to be superior when Na2SO3 is used as the electrolyte, if compared to the Na2SO4 solution. It is believed that Fe3O4 nanoparticles can provide favourable surface adsorption sites for sulphite (SO3 2-) anions which act as catalysts for subsequent redox and intercalation reactions.

Effect of Cement-kiln Dust Pollution on The Vegetation in The Western Mediterranean Desert of Egypt

This study investigated the ecological effects of particulate pollution from a cement factory on the vegetation in the western Mediterranean coastal desert of Egypt. Variations in vegetation, soil chemical characters, and some responses of Atriplex halimus, as a dominant species in the study area, were investigated in some sites located in different directions from the cement factory between Burg El-Arab in the east and El-Hammam in the west. The results showed an obvious decrease in vegetation diversity, in response to cement-kiln dust pollution, that accompanied by a high dominance attributed to the high contribution of Atriplex halimus. Annual species were found to be more sensitive to cement dust pollution as they all failed to persist in highly disturbed sites. It is remarkable that cover and phytomass of Atriplex halimus were increased greatly in response to cement dust pollution, and this was accompanied by a reduction in the mature seeds and leaf-area of the plant. The few seeds of the affected individuals seemed to be more fertile and attained higher germination percentages and exhibited hardening against drought stress.

Automat Control of the Aircrafts- Lateral Movement using the Dynamic Inversion

The paper presents a new system for the automat control of the aircrafts- flight in lateral plane using the cinematic model and the dynamic inversion. Starting from the equations of the aircrafts- lateral movement, the authors use two axes systems and obtained a control law that cancels the lateral deviation of the flying objects from the runway line. This system makes the aircrafts- direction angle to follow the direction angle of the runway line. Simulations in Matlab/Simulink have been done for different aircraft-s initial points and direction angles. The inconvenience of this system is the long duration of the “transient regime". That is why this system can be used independently, but the results are not very good; thus, it can be a part (subsystem) of other systems. The main system that cancels the lateral deviation from the runway line is based on dynamic inversion and uses, as subsystem, the control system for the lateral movement using the cinematic model. Using complex Matlab/Simulink models, the authors obtained the time evolution of the direction angle and the time evolution of the aircraft lateral deviation with respect to the runway line, for different values of the initial direction angle and for different wind types. The system has a very good behavior for all initial direction angles and wind types.

Determination of Critical Source Areas for Sediment Loss: Sarrath River Basin, Tunisia

The risk of water erosion is one of the main environmental concerns in the southern Mediterranean regions. Thus, quantification of soil loss is an important issue for soil and water conservation managers. The objective of this paper is to examine the applicability of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model in The Sarrath river catchment, North of Tunisia, and to identify the most vulnerable areas in order to help manager implement an effective management program. The spatial analysis of the results shows that 7 % of the catchment experiences very high erosion risk, in need for suitable conservation measures to be adopted on a priority basis. The spatial distribution of erosion risk classes estimated 3% high, 5,4% tolerable, and 84,6% low. Among the 27 delineated subcatchments only 4 sub-catchments are found to be under high and very high soil loss group, two sub-catchments fell under moderate soil loss group, whereas other sub-catchments are under low soil loss group.

Detecting Remote Protein Evolutionary Relationships via String Scoring Method

The amount of the information being churned out by the field of biology has jumped manifold and now requires the extensive use of computer techniques for the management of this information. The predominance of biological information such as protein sequence similarity in the biological information sea is key information for detecting protein evolutionary relationship. Protein sequence similarity typically implies homology, which in turn may imply structural and functional similarities. In this work, we propose, a learning method for detecting remote protein homology. The proposed method uses a transformation that converts protein sequence into fixed-dimensional representative feature vectors. Each feature vector records the sensitivity of a protein sequence to a set of amino acids substrings generated from the protein sequences of interest. These features are then used in conjunction with support vector machines for the detection of the protein remote homology. The proposed method is tested and evaluated on two different benchmark protein datasets and it-s able to deliver improvements over most of the existing homology detection methods.

New Mitigating Technique to Overcome DDOS Attack

In this paper, we explore a new scheme for filtering spoofed packets (DDOS attack) which is a combination of path fingerprint and client puzzle concepts. In this each IP packet has a unique fingerprint is embedded that represents, the route a packet has traversed. The server maintains a mapping table which contains the client IP address and its corresponding fingerprint. In ingress router, client puzzle is placed. For each request, the puzzle issuer provides a puzzle which the source has to solve. Our design has the following advantages over prior approaches, 1) Reduce the network traffic, as we place a client puzzle at the ingress router. 2) Mapping table at the server is lightweight and moderate.

Analysis of Electrical Installation of a Photovoltaic Power Park in Greece

The scope of this paper is to describe a real electrical installation of renewable energy using photovoltaic cells. The displayed power grid connected network was established in 2007 at area of Northern Greece. The photovoltaic park is composed of 6120 photovoltaic cells able to deliver a total power of 1.101.600 Wp. For the transformation of DC voltage to AC voltage have been used 25 stand alone three phases inverters and for the connection at the medium voltage network of Greek Power Authority have been installed two oil immersed transformer of 630 kVA each one. Due to the wide space area of installation a specific external lightning protection system has been designed. Additionally, due to the sensitive electronics of the control and protection systems of park, surge protection, equipotent bonding and shielding were also of major importance.

Exploiting Silicon-on-Insulator Microring Resonator Bistability Behavior for All Optical Set-Reset Flip-Flop

We propose an all optical flip-flop circuit composedof two Silicon-on-insulator microring resonators coupled to straightwaveguides by exploiting the optical bistability behavior due to thenonlinear Kerr effect. We used the transfer matrix analysis toinvestigate continuous wave propagation through microrings, as wellwe considered the nonlinear switching characteristics of an opticaldevice using a double-coupler silicon ring resonator in presence ofthe Kerr nonlinearity, thus obtaining the bistability behavior of theoutput port, the drop port and also inside the silicon microringresonator. It is shown that the bistability behavior depends on thecontrol of the input wavelength.KeywordsAll optical flip-flops, Kerr effect, microringresonator, optical bistability.

Quadrilateral Decomposition by Two-Ear Property Resulting in CAD Segmentation

The objective is to split a simply connected polygon into a set of convex quadrilaterals without inserting new boundary nodes. The presented approach consists in repeatedly removing quadrilaterals from the polygon. Theoretical results pertaining to quadrangulation of simply connected polygons are derived from the usual 2-ear theorem. It produces a quadrangulation technique with O(n) number of quadrilaterals. The theoretical methodology is supplemented by practical results and CAD surface segmentation.

Effect of Planting Density on Yield and Yield Components of Safflower Cultivars in Spring Planting

This study carried out to determine the effect of plant densities on some agronomic characteristics of four safflower cultivars in spring planting. The experiment was conducted at Yazd, Iran- using a factorial in a randomized complete block design with four replications. Cultivars were including Arak, IL, Asteria and Local and plant densities were 10, 13.3, 20 and 40 plant/m2. Number of seeds/head, number of heads/plant, HI, 1000-seed weight and seed yield significantly decreased as planting density increased. With increasing planting density, LAI, plant height, first branch height and biological yield increased. The highest seed yield was obtained in 13.3 plant/m2 (2167 kg/ha). There were significant differences between cultivars. Local cv. had higher seed yield than the other cultivars mainly due to higher heads/plant and seeds/head.