Abstract: It has been defined that the “network is the system".
This implies providing levels of service, reliability, predictability and
availability that are commensurate with or better than those that
individual computers provide today. To provide this requires
integrated network management for interconnected networks of
heterogeneous devices covering both the local campus. In this paper
we are addressing a framework to effectively deal with this issue. It
consists of components and interactions between them which are
required to perform the service fault management. A real-world
scenario is used to derive the requirements which have been applied
to the component identification. An analysis of existing frameworks
and approaches with respect to their applicability to the framework is
also carried out.
Abstract: This paper aimed to study the factors that relate to
working behavior of employees at Pakkred Municipality, Nonthaburi
Province. A questionnaire was utilized as the tool in collecting
information. Descriptive statistics included frequency, percentage,
mean and standard deviation. Independent- sample t- test, analysis of
variance and Pearson Correlation were also used. The findings of this
research revealed that the majority of the respondents were female,
between 25- 35 years old, married, with a Bachelor degree. The
average monthly salary of respondents was between 8,001- 12,000
Baht, and having about 4-7 years of working experience. Regarding
the overall working motivation factors, the findings showed that
interrelationship, respect, and acceptance were ranked as highly
important factors, whereas motivation, remunerations & welfare,
career growth, and working conditions were ranked as moderately
important factors. Also, overall working behavior was ranked as high.
The hypotheses testing revealed that different genders had a
different working behavior and had a different way of working as a
team, which was significant at the 0.05 confidence level, Moreover,
there was a difference among employees with different monthly
salary in working behavior, problem- solving and decision making,
which all were significant at the 0.05 confidence level. Employees
with different years of working experience were found to have work
working behavior both individual and as a team at the statistical
significance level of 0.01 and 0.05. The result of testing the
relationship between motivation in overall working revealed that
interrelationship, respect and acceptance from others, career growth,
and working conditions related to working behavior at a moderate
level, while motivation in performing duties and remunerations and
welfares related to working behavior towards the same direction at a
low level, with a statistical significance of 0.01.
Abstract: Creativity is often based on an unorthodox
recombination of knowledge; in fact: 80% of all innovations use
given knowledge and put it into a new combination. Cross-industry
innovations follow this way of thinking and bring together problems
and solution ideas from different industries. Therefore analogies and
search strategies have to be developed. Taking this path, the
questions where to search, what to search and how to search have to
be answered. Afterwards, the gathered information can be used
within a planned search process. Identified solution ideas have to be
assessed and analyzed in detail for the success promising adaption
planning.
Abstract: Face and facial expressions play essential roles in
interpersonal communication. Most of the current works on the facial
expression recognition attempt to recognize a small set of the
prototypic expressions such as happy, surprise, anger, sad, disgust
and fear. However the most of the human emotions are
communicated by changes in one or two of discrete features. In this
paper, we develop a facial expressions synthesis system, based on the
facial characteristic points (FCP's) tracking in the frontal image
sequences. Selected FCP's are automatically tracked using a crosscorrelation
based optical flow. The proposed synthesis system uses a
simple deformable facial features model with a few set of control
points that can be tracked in original facial image sequences.
Abstract: In this work, a special case of the image superresolution
problem where the only type of motion is global
translational motion and the blurs are shift-invariant is investigated.
The necessary conditions for exact reconstruction of the original
image by using finite impulse-response reconstruction filters are
developed. Given that the conditions are satisfied, a method for exact
super-resolution is presented and some simulation results are shown.
Abstract: Oilsands bitumen is an extremely important source of
energy for North America. However, due to the presence of large
molecules such as asphaltenes, the density and viscosity of the
bitumen recovered from these sands are much higher than those of
conventional crude oil. As a result the extracted bitumen has to be
diluted with expensive solvents, or thermochemically upgraded in
large, capital-intensive conventional upgrading facilities prior to
pipeline transport. This study demonstrates that globally abundant
natural zeolites such as clinoptilolite from Saint Clouds, New Mexico
and Ca-chabazite from Bowie, Arizona can be used as very effective
reagents for cracking and visbreaking of oilsands bitumen. Natural
zeolite cracked oilsands bitumen products are highly recoverable (up
to ~ 83%) using light hydrocarbons such as pentane, which indicates
substantial conversion of heavier fractions to lighter components.
The resultant liquid products are much less viscous, and have lighter
product distribution compared to those produced from pure thermal
treatment. These natural minerals impart similar effect on industrially
extracted Athabasca bitumen.
Abstract: Ever increasing capacities of contemporary storage devices
inspire the vision to accumulate (personal) information without
the need of deleting old data over a long time-span. Hence the target
of SemanticLIFE project is to create a Personal Information Management
system for a human lifetime data. One of the most important
characteristics of the system is its dedication to retrieve information
in a very efficient way. By adopting user demands regarding the
reduction of ambiguities, our approach aims at a user-oriented and
yet powerful enough system with a satisfactory query performance.
We introduce the query system of SemanticLIFE, the Virtual Query
System, which uses emerging Semantic Web technologies to fulfill
users- requirements.
Abstract: In IETF RFC 2002, Mobile-IP was developed to
enable Laptobs to maintain Internet connectivity while moving
between subnets. However, the packet loss that comes from
switching subnets arises because network connectivity is lost while
the mobile host registers with the foreign agent and this encounters
large end-to-end packet delays. The criterion to initiate a simple and
fast full-duplex connection between the home agent and foreign
agent, to reduce the roaming duration, is a very important issue to be
considered by a work in this paper. State-transition Petri-Nets of the
modeling scenario-based CIA: communication inter-agents procedure
as an extension to the basic Mobile-IP registration process was
designed and manipulated to describe the system in discrete events.
The heuristic of configuration file during practical Setup session for
registration parameters, on Cisco platform Router-1760 using IOS
12.3 (15)T and TFTP server S/W is created. Finally, stand-alone
performance simulations from Simulink Matlab, within each subnet
and also between subnets, are illustrated for reporting better end-toend
packet delays. Results verified the effectiveness of our Mathcad
analytical manipulation and experimental implementation. It showed
lower values of end-to-end packet delay for Mobile-IP using CIA
procedure-based early registration. Furthermore, it reported packets
flow between subnets to improve losses between subnets.
Abstract: Artificial Intelligence based gaming is an interesting topic in the state-of-art technology. This paper presents an automation of a tradition Omani game, called Al-Hawalees. Its related issues are resolved and implemented using artificial intelligence approach. An AI approach called mini-max procedure is incorporated to make a diverse budges of the on-line gaming. If number of moves increase, time complexity will be increased in terms of propositionally. In order to tackle the time and space complexities, we have employed a back propagation neural network (BPNN) to train in off-line to make a decision for resources required to fulfill the automation of the game. We have utilized Leverberg- Marquardt training in order to get the rapid response during the gaming. A set of optimal moves is determined by the on-line back propagation training fashioned with alpha-beta pruning. The results and analyses reveal that the proposed scheme will be easily incorporated in the on-line scenario with one player against the system.
Abstract: The presented work is motivated by a French law
regarding nuclear waste management. A new conceptual Accelerator
Driven System (ADS) designed for the Minor Actinides (MA)
transmutation has been assessed by numerical simulation. The
MUltiple Spallation Target (MUST) ADS combines high thermal power (up to 1.4 GWth) and high specific power. A 30 mA and 1
GeV proton beam is divided into three secondary beams transmitted on three liquid lead-bismuth spallation targets. Neutron and thermalhydraulic
simulations have been performed with the code MURE, based on the Monte-Carlo transport code MCNPX. A methodology has been developed to define characteristic of the MUST ADS concept according to a specific transmutation scenario. The reference
scenario is based on a MA flux (neptunium, americium and curium)
providing from European Fast Reactor (EPR) and a plutonium multireprocessing
strategy is accounted for. The MUST ADS reference
concept is a sodium cooled fast reactor. The MA fuel at equilibrium is mixed with MgO inert matrix to limit the core reactivity and
improve the fuel thermal conductivity. The fuel is irradiated over five
years. Five years of cooling and two years for the fuel fabrication are
taken into account. The MUST ADS reference concept burns about 50% of the initial MA inventory during a complete cycle. In term of
mass, up to 570 kg/year are transmuted in one concept. The methodology to design the MUST ADS and to calculate fuel
composition at equilibrium is precisely described in the paper. A detailed fuel evolution analysis is performed and the reference scenario is compared to a scenario where only americium transmutation is performed.
Abstract: Springback is a significant problem in the sheet metal
forming process. When the tools are released after the stage of
forming, the product springs out, because of the action of the internal
stresses. In many cases the deviation of form is too large and the
compensation of the springback is necessary. The precise prediction
of the springback of product is increasingly significant for the design
of the tools and for compensation because of the higher ratio of the
yield stress to the elastic modulus.
The main object in this paper was to study the effect of the
anisotropy on the springback for three directions of rolling: 0°, 45°
and 90°. At the same time, we highlighted the influence of three
different metallic materials: Aluminum, Steel and Galvanized steel.
The original of our purpose consist on tests which are ensured by
adapting a U-type stretching-bending device on a tensile testing
machine, where we studied and quantified the variation of the
springback according to the direction of rolling. We also showed the
role of lubrication in the reduction of the springback.
Moreover, in this work, we have studied important characteristics
in deep drawing process which is a springback. We have presented
defaults that are showed in this process and many parameters
influenced a springback.
Finally, our results works lead us to understand the influence of
grains orientation with different metallic materials on the springback
and drawing some conclusions how to concept deep drawing tools. In
addition, the conducted work represents a fundamental contribution
in the discussion the industry application.
Abstract: At present, it is very common to find renewable
energy resources, especially wind power, connected to distribution
systems. The impact of this wind power on voltage distribution levels
has been addressed in the literature. The majority of this works deals
with the determination of the maximum active and reactive power
that is possible to be connected on a system load bus, until the
voltage at that bus reaches the voltage collapse point. It is done by the
traditional methods of PV curves reported in many references.
Theoretical expression of maximum power limited by voltage
stability transfer through a grid is formulated using an exact
representation of distribution line with ABCD parameters. The
expression is used to plot PV curves at various power factors of a
radial system. Limited values of reactive power can be obtained. This
paper presents a method to study the relationship between the active
power and voltage (PV) at the load bus to identify the voltage
stability limit. It is a foundation to build a permitted working
operation region in complying with the voltage stability limit at the
point of common coupling (PCC) connected wind farm.
Abstract: Traditionally, Internet has provided best-effort service to every user regardless of its requirements. However, as Internet becomes universally available, users demand more bandwidth and applications require more and more resources, and interest has developed in having the Internet provide some degree of Quality of Service. Although QoS is an important issue, the question of how it will be brought into the Internet has not been solved yet. Researches, due to the rapid advances in technology are proposing new and more desirable capabilities for the next generation of IP infrastructures. But neither all applications demand the same amount of resources, nor all users are service providers. In this way, this paper is the first of a series of papers that presents an architecture as a first step to the optimization of QoS in the Internet environment as a solution to a SMSE's problem whose objective is to provide public service to internet with certain Quality of Service expectations. The service provides new business opportunities, but also presents new challenges. We have designed and implemented a scalable service framework that supports adaptive bandwidth based on user demands, and the billing based on usage and on QoS. The developed application has been evaluated and the results show that traffic limiting works at optimum and so it does exceeding bandwidth distribution. However, some considerations are done and currently research is under way in two basic areas: (i) development and testing new transfer protocols, and (ii) developing new strategies for traffic improvements based on service differentiation.
Abstract: Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks (MRMC-WMNs) operate at the backbone to access and route high volumes of traffic simultaneously. Such roles demand high network capacity, and long “online" time at the expense of accelerated transmission energy depletion and poor connectivity. This is the problem of transmission power control. Numerous power control methods for wireless networks are in literature. However, contributions towards MRMC configurations still face many challenges worth considering. In this paper, an energy-efficient power selection protocol called PMMUP is suggested at the Link-Layer. This protocol first divides the MRMC-WMN into a set of unified channel graphs (UCGs). A UCG consists of multiple radios interconnected to each other via a common wireless channel. In each UCG, a stochastic linear quadratic cost function is formulated. Each user minimizes this cost function consisting of trade-off between the size of unification states and the control action. Unification state variables come from independent UCGs and higher layers of the protocol stack. The PMMUP coordinates power optimizations at the network interface cards (NICs) of wireless mesh routers. The proposed PMMUP based algorithm converges fast analytically with a linear rate. Performance evaluations through simulations confirm the efficacy of the proposed dynamic power control.
Abstract: Careful design and selection of daylighting systems can greatly help in reducing not only artificial lighting use, but also decrease cooling energy consumption and, therefore, potential for downsizing air-conditioning systems. This paper aims to evaluate the energy performance of two types of top-light daylighting systems due to the integration of daylight together with artificial lighting in an existing examinaton hall in University Kebangsaan Malaysia, based on a hot and humid climate. Computer simulation models have been created for building case study (base case) and the two types of toplight daylighting designs for building energy performance evaluation using the VisualDOE 4.0 building energy simulation program. The finding revealed that daylighting through top-light systems is a very beneficial design strategy in reducing annual lighting energy consumption and the overall total annual energy consumption.
Abstract: This paper presents a new problem solving approach
that is able to generate optimal policy solution for finite-state
stochastic sequential decision-making problems with high data
efficiency. The proposed algorithm iteratively builds and improves
an approximate Markov Decision Process (MDP) model along with
cost-to-go value approximates by generating finite length trajectories
through the state-space. The approach creates a synergy between an
approximate evolving model and approximate cost-to-go values to
produce a sequence of improving policies finally converging to the
optimal policy through an intelligent and structured search of the
policy space. The approach modifies the policy update step of the
policy iteration so as to result in a speedy and stable convergence to
the optimal policy. We apply the algorithm to a non-holonomic
mobile robot control problem and compare its performance with
other Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches, e.g., a) Q-learning,
b) Watkins Q(λ), c) SARSA(λ).
Abstract: Researches show that probability-statistical methods application, especially at the early stage of the aviation Gas Turbine Engine (GTE) technical condition diagnosing, when the flight information has property of the fuzzy, limitation and uncertainty is unfounded. Hence the efficiency of application of new technology Soft Computing at these diagnosing stages with the using of the Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks methods is considered. According to the purpose of this problem training with high accuracy of fuzzy multiple linear and non-linear models (fuzzy regression equations) which received on the statistical fuzzy data basis is made. For GTE technical condition more adequate model making dynamics of skewness and kurtosis coefficients- changes are analysed. Researches of skewness and kurtosis coefficients values- changes show that, distributions of GTE work parameters have fuzzy character. Hence consideration of fuzzy skewness and kurtosis coefficients is expedient. Investigation of the basic characteristics changes- dynamics of GTE work parameters allows drawing conclusion on necessity of the Fuzzy Statistical Analysis at preliminary identification of the engines' technical condition. Researches of correlation coefficients values- changes shows also on their fuzzy character. Therefore for models choice the application of the Fuzzy Correlation Analysis results is offered. At the information sufficiency is offered to use recurrent algorithm of aviation GTE technical condition identification (Hard Computing technology is used) on measurements of input and output parameters of the multiple linear and non-linear generalised models at presence of noise measured (the new recursive Least Squares Method (LSM)). The developed GTE condition monitoring system provides stageby- stage estimation of engine technical conditions. As application of the given technique the estimation of the new operating aviation engine technical condition was made.
Abstract: Isobaric vapor-liquid equilibrium measurements are reported for the binary mixtures of n-Butylamine and Triethylamine with Cumene at 97.3 kPa. The measurements have been performed using a vapor recirculating type (modified Othmer's) equilibrium still. The binary mixture of n-Butylamine + Cumene shows positive deviation from ideality. Triethylamine + Cumene mixture shows negligible deviation from ideality. None of the systems form an azeotrope. The activity coefficients have been calculated taking into consideration the vapor phase nonideality. The data satisfy the thermodynamic consistency test of Herington. The activity coefficients have been satisfactorily correlated by means of the Margules, NRTL, and Black equations. The activity coefficient values obtained by the UNIFAC model are also reported.
Abstract: Sedimentation process resulting from soil erosion in
the water basin especially in arid and semi-arid where poor
vegetation cover in the slope of the mountains upstream could
contribute to sediment formation. The consequence of sedimentation
not only makes considerable change in the morphology of the river
and the hydraulic characteristics but would also have a major
challenge for the operation and maintenance of the canal network
which depend on water flow to meet the stakeholder-s requirements.
For this reason mathematical modeling can be used to simulate the
effective factors on scouring, sediment transport and their settling
along the waterways. This is particularly important behind the
reservoirs which enable the operators to estimate the useful life of
these hydraulic structures. The aim of this paper is to simulate the
sedimentation and erosion in the eastern and western water intake
structures of the Dez Diversion weir using GSTARS-3 software. This
is done to estimate the sedimentation and investigate the ways in
which to optimize the process and minimize the operational
problems. Results indicated that the at the furthest point upstream of
the diversion weir, the coarser sediment grains tended to settle. The
reason for this is the construction of the phantom bridge and the
outstanding rocks just upstream of the structure. The construction of
these along the river course has reduced the momentum energy
require to push the sediment loads and make it possible for them to
settle wherever the river regime allows it. Results further indicated a
trend for the sediment size in such a way that as the focus of study
shifts downstream the size of grains get smaller and vice versa. It
was also found that the finding of the GSTARS-3 had a close
proximity with the sets of the observed data. This suggests that the
software is a powerful analytical tool which can be applied in the
river engineering project with a minimum of costs and relatively
accurate results.
Abstract: Oxidative stress and overwhelming free radicals
associated with diabetes mellitus are likely to be linked with
development of certain complication such as retinopathy,
nephropathy and neuropathy. Treatment of diabetic subjects with
antioxidant may be of advantage in attenuating these complications.
Olive leaf (Oleaeuropaea), has been endowed with many beneficial
and health promoting properties mostly linked to its antioxidant
activity. This study aimed to evaluate the significance of
supplementation of Olive leaves extract (OLE) in reducing oxidative
stress, hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia in Sterptozotocin (STZ)-
induced diabetic rats. After induction of diabetes, a significant rise in
plasma glucose, lipid profiles except High density lipoproteincholestrol
(HDLc), malondialdehyde (MDA) and significant decrease
of plasma insulin, HDLc and Plasma reduced glutathione GSH as
well as alteration in enzymatic antioxidants was observed in all
diabetic animals. During treatment of diabetic rats with 0.5g/kg body
weight of Olive leaves extract (OLE) the levels of plasma (MDA)
,(GSH), insulin, lipid profiles along with blood glucose and
erythrocyte enzymatic antioxidant enzymes were significantly
restored to establish values that were not different from normal
control rats. Untreated diabetic rats on the other hand demonstrated
persistent alterations in the oxidative stress marker (MDA), blood
glucose, insulin, lipid profiles and the antioxidant parameters. These
results demonstrate that OLE may be of advantage in inhibiting
hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and oxidative stress induced by
diabetes and suggest that administration of OLE may be helpful in
the prevention or at least reduced of diabetic complications
associated with oxidative stress.