Abstract: Nano-MgO was successfully deposited on titania using deposition-precipitation method. The catalyst produced was characterised using FTIR, XRD, BET and XRF and its activity was tested on the transesterification reaction of soybean oil to biodiesel. The catalyst activity improved when the reaction temperature was increasedfrom 150 and 225 OC. It was also observed that increasing the reaction time above 1h had no significant benefit on conversion. The stability fixed MgO on TiO2 was investigated using XRF and ICP-OES. It was observed that MgO loss during the reaction was between 0.5-2.3 percent and that there was no correlation between the reaction temperature and the MgO loss.
Abstract: Identifying parameters in an epidemic model is one
of the important aspect of modeling. In this paper, we suggest a
method to identify the transmission rate by using the multistage
Adomian decomposition method. As a case study, we use the data of
the reported dengue fever cases in the city of Shah Alam, Malaysia.
The result obtained fairly represents the actual situation. However, in
the SIR model, this method serves as an alternative in parameter
identification and enables us to make necessary analysis for a smaller
interval.
Abstract: This paper discusses a systematic design of a Σ-Δ fractional-N Phase-Locked Loop based on HDL behavioral modeling. The proposed design consists in describing the mixed behavior of this PLL architecture starting from the specifications of each building block. The HDL models of critical PLL blocks have been described in VHDL-AMS to predict the different specifications of the PLL. The effect of different noise sources has been efficiently introduced to study the PLL system performances. The obtained results are compared with transistor-level simulations to validate the effectiveness of the proposed models for wireless applications in the frequency range around 2.45 GHz.
Abstract: The determination of sugars in foods is very
significant. Their relation in fact, can affect the chemical and
sensorial quality of the matrix (e.g., sweetness, pH, total acidity,
microbial stability, global acceptability) and can provide information
on food to optimize several selected technological processes. Three
stages of ripeness (green, yellow and red) of tomatoes (Lycopersicon
Esculentum cv. Elegance) at different harvest dates were evaluated.
Fruit from all harvests were exposed to different of ozone doses
(0.25, 0.50 and 1 mg O3/g tomatoes) and clean air for 5 day at 15
°C±2 and 90-95 % relative humidity. Then, fruits were submitted for
extraction and analysis after a day from the finish of exposure of each
stage. The concentrations of the glucose and fructose increased in the
tomatoes which were subjected to ozone treatments.
Abstract: Article 5(3) of the Brussels I Regulation provides that a person domiciled in a Member State may be sued in another Member State in matters relating to tort, delict or quasi-delict, in the courts for the place where the harmful events occurred or may occur. For a number of years Article 5 (3) of the Brussels I Regulation has been at the centre of the debate regarding the intellectual property rights infringement over the Internet. Nothing has been done to adapt the provisions relating to non-internet cases of infringement of intellectual property rights to the context of the Internet. The author’s findings indicate that in the case of intellectual property rights infringement on the Internet, the plaintiff has the option to sue either: the court of the Member State of the event giving rise to the damage: where the publisher of the newspaper is established; the court of the Member State where the damage occurred: where defamatory article is distributed. However, it must be admitted that whilst infringement over the Internet has some similarity to multi-State defamation by means of newspapers, the position is not entirely analogous due to the cross-border nature of the Internet. A simple example which may appropriately illustrate its contentious nature is a defamatory statement published on a website accessible in different Member States, and available in different languages. Therefore, we need to answer the question: how these traditional jurisdictional rules apply in the case of intellectual property rights infringement over the Internet? Should these traditional jurisdictional rules be modified?
Abstract: This study1 holds for the formation of international financial crisis and political factors for economic crisis in Turkey, are evaluated in chronological order. The international arena and relevant studies conducted in Turkey work in the literature are assessed. The main purpose of the study is to hold the linkage between the crises and political stability in Turkey in details, and to examine the position of Turkey in this regard. The introduction part follows the literature survey on the models explaining causes and results of the crises, the second part of the study. In the third part, the formations of the world financial crises are studied. The fourth part, financial crisis in Turkey in 1994, 2000, 2001 and 2008 are reviewed and their political reasons are analyzed. In the last part of the study the results and recommendations are held. Political administrations have laid the grounds for an economic crisis in Turkey. In this study, the emergence of an economic crisis in Turkey and the developments after the crisis are chronologically examined and an explanation is offered as to the cause and effect relationship between the political administration and economic equilibrium in the country. Economic crises can be characterized as follows: high prices of consumables, high interest rates, current account deficits, budget deficits, structural defects in government finance, rising inflation and fixed currency applications, rising government debt, declining savings rates and increased dependency on foreign capital stock. Entering into the conditions of crisis during a time when the exchange value of the country-s national currency was rising, speculative finance movements and shrinking of foreign currency reserves happened due to expectations for devaluation and because of foreign investors- resistance to financing national debt, and a financial risk occurs. During the February 2001 crisis and immediately following, devaluation and reduction of value occurred in Turkey-s stock market. While changing over to the system of floating exchange rates in the midst of this crisis, the effects of the crisis on the real economy are discussed in this study. Administered politics include financial reforms, such as the rearrangement of banking systems. These reforms followed with the provision of foreign financial support. There have been winners and losers in the imbalance of income distribution, which has recently become more evident in Turkey-s fragile economy.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new class of Volterra series based filters for image enhancement and restoration. Generally the linear filters reduce the noise and cause blurring at the edges. Some nonlinear filters based on median operator or rank operator deal with only impulse noise and fail to cancel the most common Gaussian distributed noise. A class of second order Volterra filters is proposed to optimize the trade-off between noise removal and edge preservation. In this paper, we consider both the Gaussian and mixed Gaussian-impulse noise to test the robustness of the filter. Image enhancement and restoration results using the proposed Volterra filter are found to be superior to those obtained with standard linear and nonlinear filters.
Abstract: In this paper, the estimation of the stress-strength
parameter R = P(Y < X), when X and Y are independent and both
are Lomax distributions with the common scale parameters but
different shape parameters is studied. The maximum likelihood
estimator of R is derived. Assuming that the common scale parameter
is known, the bayes estimator and exact confidence interval of R are
discussed. Simulation study to investigate performance of the
different proposed methods has been carried out.
Abstract: This paper describes a simulation model for analyzing artificial emotion injected to design the game characters. Most of the game storyboard is interactive in nature and the virtual characters of the game are equipped with an individual personality and dynamic emotion value which is similar to real life emotion and behavior. The uncertainty in real expression, mood and behavior is also exhibited in game paradigm and this is focused in the present paper through a fuzzy logic based agent and storyboard. Subsequently, a pheromone distribution or labeling is presented mimicking the behavior of social insects.
Abstract: This paper presents Qmulus- a Cloud Based GPS
Model. Qmulus is designed to compute the best possible route which
would lead the driver to the specified destination in the shortest time
while taking into account real-time constraints. Intelligence
incorporated to Qmulus-s design makes it capable of generating and
assigning priorities to a list of optimal routes through customizable
dynamic updates. The goal of this design is to minimize travel and
cost overheads, maintain reliability and consistency, and implement
scalability and flexibility. The model proposed focuses on
reducing the bridge between a Client Application and a Cloud
service so as to render seamless operations. Qmulus-s system
model is closely integrated and its concept has the potential to be
extended into several other integrated applications making it capable
of adapting to different media and resources.
Abstract: Nowadays, driving support systems, such as car
navigation systems, are getting common, and they support drivers in
several aspects. It is important for driving support systems to detect
status of driver's consciousness. Particularly, detecting driver's
drowsiness could prevent drivers from collisions caused by drowsy
driving. In this paper, we discuss the various artificial detection
methods for detecting driver's drowsiness processing technique. This
system is based on facial images analysis for warning the driver of
drowsiness or in attention to prevent traffic accidents.
Abstract: In this paper we are to find the optimum
multiwavelet for compression of electrocardiogram (ECG)
signals. At present, it is not well known which multiwavelet is
the best choice for optimum compression of ECG. In this
work, we examine different multiwavelets on 24 sets of ECG
data with entirely different characteristics, selected from MITBIH
database. For assessing the functionality of the different
multiwavelets in compressing ECG signals, in addition to
known factors such as Compression Ratio (CR), Percent Root
Difference (PRD), Distortion (D), Root Mean Square Error
(RMSE) in compression literature, we also employed the
Cross Correlation (CC) criterion for studying the
morphological relations between the reconstructed and the
original ECG signal and Signal to reconstruction Noise Ratio
(SNR). The simulation results show that the cardbal2 by the
means of identity (Id) prefiltering method to be the best
effective transformation.
Abstract: Heavy rains are one of the features of arid and semi
arid climates which result in flood. This kind of rainfall originates
from environmental and synoptic conditions. Mediterranean cyclones
are the major factor in heavy rainfall in Iran, but these cyclones do
not happen in some parts of Iran such as Southern and Southeastern
areas. In this study, it has been tried to pinpoint the synoptic reasons
of heavy rainfall in Isfahan through the analysis of the relationship
between this rainfall in Isfahan and atmospheric system over Iran and
the areas around it. The findings of this study show that the major
factor have is the arrival of Sudanese low pressure system in this
region from the southwest, of course if the ascent local conditions
such as heat occur, the heaviest rains happen in Isfahan. In fact this
kind of rainfall in Isfahan has a Sudanese origin and if it is
accompanied by Mediterranean system, heavier rain falls.
Abstract: The objective of this research was to study the career
success and the satisfaction of female executives working for schools
in Bangkok, Thailand. This paper drew upon the survey data
collected from 68 female executives. The survey conducted in on
Bangkok schools. The statistics utilized in this paper included
percentage, mean, standard deviation as well as t-test. The findings
revealed that the majority of samples had more than 30 years of
experience, held a master degree, and had an average income of less
than 40,000 baht. The majority of respondents worked not more than
50 hours per week. In addition, the mean score revealed career
development was ranked as their number one career satisfaction and
having a job related to education was ranked as their number one job
satisfaction. Also, the mean score of all categories of satisfaction was
4.61 with standard deviation of 1.677 which indicated that female
executive level of satisfaction was high. In terms of the subjectivity
career success, the hypothesis testing’s result disclosed that female
executives with different married status had a difference in their job
satisfaction which was significant at the 0.05 confidence level.
Abstract: Cooperative visual modeling is more and more
necessary in our complicated world. A collaborative environment
which supports interactive operation and communication is required
to increase work efficiency. We present a collaborative visual
modeling framework which collaborative platform could be built on.
On this platform, cooperation and communication is available for
designers from different regions. This framework, which is different
from other collaborative frameworks, contains a uniform message
format, a message handling mechanism and other functions such as
message pretreatment and Role-Communication-Token Access
Control (RCTAC). We also show our implementation of this
framework called Orchestra Designer, which support BPLE
workflow modeling cooperatively online.
Abstract: In this paper we present a full performance analysis of an energy conserving routing protocol in mobile ad hoc network, named ER-AODV (Energy Reverse Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing). ER-AODV is a reactive routing protocol based on a policy which combines two mechanisms used in the basic AODV protocol. AODV and most of the on demand ad hoc routing protocols use single route reply along reverse path. Rapid change of topology causes that the route reply could not arrive to the source node, i.e. after a source node sends several route request messages, the node obtains a reply message, and this increases in power consumption. To avoid these problems, we propose a mechanism which tries multiple route replies. The second mechanism proposes a new adaptive approach which seeks to incorporate the metric "residual energy " in the process route selection, Indeed the residual energy of mobile nodes were considered when making routing decisions. The results of simulation show that protocol ER-AODV answers a better energy conservation.
Abstract: In this paper, a second order autoregressive (AR)
model is proposed to discriminate alcoholics using single trial
gamma band Visual Evoked Potential (VEP) signals using 3 different
classifiers: Simplified Fuzzy ARTMAP (SFA) neural network (NN),
Multilayer-perceptron-backpropagation (MLP-BP) NN and Linear
Discriminant (LD). Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were
recorded from alcoholic and control subjects during the presentation
of visuals from Snodgrass and Vanderwart picture set. Single trial
VEP signals were extracted from EEG signals using Elliptic filtering
in the gamma band spectral range. A second order AR model was
used as gamma band VEP exhibits pseudo-periodic behaviour and
second order AR is optimal to represent this behaviour. This
circumvents the requirement of having to use some criteria to choose
the correct order. The averaged discrimination errors of 2.6%, 2.8%
and 11.9% were given by LD, MLP-BP and SFA classifiers. The
high LD discrimination results show the validity of the proposed
method to discriminate between alcoholic subjects.
Abstract: Displacement measurement was conducted on compact normal and shear specimens made of acrylic homogeneous material subjected to mixed-mode loading by digital image correlation. The intelligent hybrid method proposed by Nishioka et al. was applied to the stress-strain analysis near the crack tip. The accuracy of stress-intensity factor at the free surface was discussed from the viewpoint of both the experiment and 3-D finite element analysis. The surface images before and after deformation were taken by a CMOS camera, and we developed the system which enabled the real time stress analysis based on digital image correlation and inverse problem analysis. The great portion of processing time of this system was spent on displacement analysis. Then, we tried improvement in speed of this portion. In the case of cracked body, it is also possible to evaluate fracture mechanics parameters such as the J integral, the strain energy release rate, and the stress-intensity factor of mixed-mode. The 9-points elliptic paraboloid approximation could not analyze the displacement of submicron order with high accuracy. The analysis accuracy of displacement was improved considerably by introducing the Newton-Raphson method in consideration of deformation of a subset. The stress-intensity factor was evaluated with high accuracy of less than 1% of the error.
Abstract: This paper presents the influence of distributed generation (DG) on congestion and locational marginal price (LMP) in an optimal power flow (OPF) based wholesale electricity market. The problem of optimal placement to manage congestion and reduce LMP is formulated for the objective of social welfare maximization. From competitive electricity market standpoint, DGs have great value when they reduce load in particular locations and at particular times when feeders are heavily loaded. The paper lies on the groundwork that solution to optimal mix of generation and transmission resources can be achieved by addressing congestion and corresponding LMP. Obtained as lagrangian multiplier associated with active power flow equation for each node, LMP gives the short run marginal cost (SRMC) of electricity. Specific grid locations are examined to study the influence of DG penetration on congestion and corresponding shadow prices. The influence of DG on congestion and locational marginal prices has been demonstrated in a modified IEEE 14 bus test system.
Abstract: In recent years, global warming has become a
worldwide problem. The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is a
top priority for many companies in the manufacturing industry. In the
automobile industry as well, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions
is one of the most important issues. Technology to reduce the weight
of automotive parts improves the fuel economy of automobiles, and is
an important technology for reducing carbon dioxide. Also, even if
this weight reduction technology is applied to electric automobiles
rather than gasoline automobiles, reducing energy consumption
remains an important issue. Plastic processing of hollow pipes is one
important technology for realizing the weight reduction of automotive
parts. Ohashi et al. [1],[2] present an example of research on pipe
formation in which a process was carried out to enlarge a pipe
diameter using a lost core, achieving the suppression of wall thickness
reduction and greater pipe expansion than hydroforming.
In this study, we investigated a method to increase the wall
thickness of a pipe through pipe compression using planetary rolls.
The establishment of a technology whereby the wall thickness of a
pipe can be controlled without buckling the pipe is an important
technology for the weight reduction of products. Using the finite
element analysis method, we predicted that it would be possible to
increase the compression of an aluminum pipe with a 3mm wall
thickness by approximately 20%, and wall thickness by approximately
20% by pressing the hollow pipe with planetary rolls.