Abstract: In this research work, poly (acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene)/
polypropylene (ABS/PP) blends were processed by melt
compounding in a twin-screw extruder. Upgrading of the thermal
characteristics of the obtained materials was attempted by the
incorporation of organically modified montmorillonite (OMMT), as
well as, by the addition of two types of compatibilizers;
polypropylene grafted with maleic anhydride (PP-g-MAH) and ABS
grafted with maleic anhydride (ABS-g-MAH). The effect of the
above treatments was investigated separately and in combination.
Increasing the PP content in ABS matrix seems to increase the
thermal stability of their blend and the glass transition temperature
(Tg) of SAN phase of ABS. From the other part, the addition of ABS
to PP promotes the formation of its β-phase, which is maximum at 30
wt% ABS concentration, and increases the crystallization temperature
(Tc) of PP. In addition, it increases the crystallization rate of PP.The
β-phase of PP in ABS/PP blends is reduced by the addition of
compatibilizers or/and organoclay reinforcement. The incorporation
of compatibilizers increases the thermal stability of PP and reduces
its melting (ΔΗm) and crystallization (ΔΗc) enthalpies. Furthermore it
decreases slightly the Tgs of PP and SAN phases of ABS/PP blends.
Regarding the storage modulus of the ABS/PP blends, it presents a
change in their behavior at about 10°C and return to their initial
behavior at ~110°C. The incorporation of OMMT to no compatibilized
and compatibilized ABS/PP blends enhances their storage modulus.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to study in depth some methodological aspects of social interventation, focusing on desirable passage from social maternage method to peer advocacy method. For this purpose, we intend analyze social and organizative components, that affect operator's professional action and that are part of his psychological environment, besides the physical and social one. In fact, operator's interventation should not be limited to a pure supply of techniques, nor to take shape as improvised action, but “full of good purposes".
Abstract: Buyer coalition with a combination of items is a group of buyers joining together to purchase a combination of items with a larger discount. The primary aim of existing buyer coalition with a combination of items research is to generate a large total discount. However, the aim is hard to achieve because this research is based on the assumption that each buyer completely knows other buyers- information or at least one buyer knows other buyers- information in a coalition by exchange of information. These assumption contrast with the real world environment where buyers join a coalition with incomplete information, i.e., they concerned only with their expected discounts. Therefore, this paper proposes a new buyer community coalition formation with a combination of items scheme, called the Community Compromised Combinatorial Coalition scheme, under such an environment of incomplete information. In order to generate a larger total discount, after buyers who want to join a coalition propose their minimum required saving, a coalition structure that gives a maximum total retail prices is formed. Then, the total discount division of the coalition is divided among buyers in the coalition depending on their minimum required saving and is a Pareto optimal. In mathematical analysis, we compare concepts of this scheme with concepts of the existing buyer coalition scheme. Our mathematical analysis results show that the total discount of the coalition in this scheme is larger than that in the existing buyer coalition scheme.
Abstract: The modern queueing theory is one of the powerful
tools for a quantitative and qualitative analysis of communication systems, computer networks, transportation systems, and many other technical systems. The paper is designated to the analysis of queueing
systems, arising in the networks theory and communications theory
(called open queueing network). The authors of this research in the
sphere of queueing theory present the theorem about the law of the iterated logarithm (LIL) for the queue length of a customers in open
queueing network and its application to the mathematical model of
the open message switching system.
Abstract: With China's urbanization continuing to accelerate, a amount of rural people flood into China's cities in recent years, and the issue of agriculture, rural areas and farmers is getting more and more serious. In 2005, the Chinese government put forward a plan for “the construction of new rural village", in order to coordinate the development of both urban and rural areas. The planning method of rural region differs sharply from that of urban areas, as same as village social structure and habits of farmer-s life, so the studies which can consider the special needs of village construction in China are absolutely essential. This paper expresses explore current situation and problems existing in the construction of China-s new rural village, such as bigger gap between urban and rural areas, excessive new construction projects, extinct traditional village style and so on. It tries to analyze the deep reason of the present situation of the village from law system, industrial structure, financial sources and planning method. Then it also provides a guide for developing policies and procedures promoting the development of china-s rural areas.
Abstract: In the recent years, functionally gradient materials (FGMs) have gained considerable attention in the high temperature environment applications. In this paper, free vibration of thin functionally graded cylindrical shell with hole composed of stainless steel and zirconia is studied. The mechanical properties vary smoothly and continuously from one surface to the other according to a volume fraction power-law distribution. The Influence of shell geometrical parameters, variations of volume fractions and boundary conditions on natural frequency is considered. The equations of motion are based on strains-displacement relations from Love-s shell theory and Rayleigh method. The results have been obtained for natural frequencies of cylindrical shell with holes for different shape, number and location in this paper.
Abstract: The advances in multimedia and networking technologies
have created opportunities for Internet pirates, who can easily
copy multimedia contents and illegally distribute them on the Internet,
thus violating the legal rights of content owners. This paper describes
how a simple and well-known watermarking procedure based on a
spread spectrum method and a watermark recovery by correlation can
be improved to effectively and adaptively protect MPEG-2 videos
distributed on the Internet. In fact, the procedure, in its simplest
form, is vulnerable to a variety of attacks. However, its security
and robustness have been increased, and its behavior has been
made adaptive with respect to the video terminals used to open
the videos and the network transactions carried out to deliver them
to buyers. In fact, such an adaptive behavior enables the proposed
procedure to efficiently embed watermarks, and this characteristic
makes the procedure well suited to be exploited in web contexts,
where watermarks usually generated from fingerprinting codes have
to be inserted into the distributed videos “on the fly", i.e. during the
purchase web transactions.
Abstract: Annotation of a protein sequence is pivotal for the understanding of its function. Accuracy of manual annotation provided by curators is still questionable by having lesser evidence strength and yet a hard task and time consuming. A number of computational methods including tools have been developed to tackle this challenging task. However, they require high-cost hardware, are difficult to be setup by the bioscientists, or depend on time intensive and blind sequence similarity search like Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. This paper introduces a new method of assigning highly correlated Gene Ontology terms of annotated protein sequences to partially annotated or newly discovered protein sequences. This method is fully based on Gene Ontology data and annotations. Two problems had been identified to achieve this method. The first problem relates to splitting the single monolithic Gene Ontology RDF/XML file into a set of smaller files that can be easy to assess and process. Thus, these files can be enriched with protein sequences and Inferred from Electronic Annotation evidence associations. The second problem involves searching for a set of semantically similar Gene Ontology terms to a given query. The details of macro and micro problems involved and their solutions including objective of this study are described. This paper also describes the protein sequence annotation and the Gene Ontology. The methodology of this study and Gene Ontology based protein sequence annotation tool namely extended UTMGO is presented. Furthermore, its basic version which is a Gene Ontology browser that is based on semantic similarity search is also introduced.
Abstract: Considering complexity of products, new geometrical
design and investment tolerances that are necessary, measuring and
dimensional controlling involve modern and more precise methods.
Photo digitizing method using two cameras to record pictures and
utilization of conventional method named “cloud points" and data
analysis by the use of ATOUS software, is known as modern and
efficient in mentioned context. In this paper, benefits of photo
digitizing method in evaluating sampling of machining processes
have been put forward. For example, assessment of geometrical
integrity surface in 5-axis milling process and measurement of
carbide tool wear in turning process, can be can be brought forward.
Advantages of this method comparing to conventional methods have
been expressed.
Abstract: Text data mining is a process of exploratory data
analysis. Classification maps data into predefined groups or classes.
It is often referred to as supervised learning because the classes are
determined before examining the data. This paper describes proposed
radial basis function Classifier that performs comparative crossvalidation
for existing radial basis function Classifier. The feasibility
and the benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated by means
of data mining problem: direct Marketing. Direct marketing has
become an important application field of data mining. Comparative
Cross-validation involves estimation of accuracy by either stratified
k-fold cross-validation or equivalent repeated random subsampling.
While the proposed method may have high bias; its performance
(accuracy estimation in our case) may be poor due to high variance.
Thus the accuracy with proposed radial basis function Classifier was
less than with the existing radial basis function Classifier. However
there is smaller the improvement in runtime and larger improvement
in precision and recall. In the proposed method Classification
accuracy and prediction accuracy are determined where the
prediction accuracy is comparatively high.
Abstract: The objective of the present work is to conduct
investigations leading to a more complete explanation of single phase
natural convective heat transfer in an enclosure with fin utilizing
nano fluids. The nano fluid used, which is composed of Aluminum
oxide nano particles in suspension of Ethylene glycol, is provided at
various volume fractions. The study is carried out numerically for a
range of Rayleigh numbers, fin heights and aspect ratio. The flow and
temperature distributions are taken to be two-dimensional. Regions
with the same velocity and temperature distributions are identified as
symmetry of sections. One half of such a rectangular region is chosen
as the computational domain taking into account the symmetry about
the fin. Transport equations are modeled by a stream functionvorticity
formulation and are solved numerically by finite-difference
schemes. Comparisons with previously published works on the basis
of special cases are done. Results are presented in the form of
streamline, vector and isotherm plots as well as the variation of local
Nusselt number along the fin under different conditions.
Abstract: Network exchange is now widely used. However, it still
cannot avoid the problems evolving from network exchange. For
example. A buyer may not receive the order even if he/she makes the
payment. For another example, the seller possibly get nothing even
when the merchandise is sent. Some studies about the fair exchange
have proposed protocols for the design of efficiency and exploited the
signature property to specify that two parties agree on the exchange.
The information about purchased item and price are disclosed in
this way. This paper proposes a new fair network payment protocol
with off-line trusted third party. The proposed protocol can protect
the buyers- purchase message from being traced. In addition, the
proposed protocol can meet the proposed requirements. The most
significant feature is Non-transfer property we achieved.
Abstract: Mobile learning (M-learning) is the current technology that is becoming more popular. It uses the current mobile and wireless computing technology to complement the effectiveness of traditional learning process. The objective of this paper is presents a survey from 90 undergraduate students of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), to identify the students- perception on Mlearning. From the results, the students are willing to use M-learning. The acceptance level of the students is high, and the results obtained revealed that the respondents almost accept M-learning as one method of teaching and learning process and also able to improve the educational efficiency by complementing traditional learning in UTP.
Abstract: An active suspension system has been proposed to
improve the ride comfort. A quarter-car 2 degree-of-freedom (DOF)
system is designed and constructed on the basis of the concept of a
four-wheel independent suspension to simulate the actions of an
active vehicle suspension system. The purpose of a suspension
system is to support the vehicle body and increase ride comfort. The
aim of the work described in the paper was to illustrate the
application of fuzzy logic technique to the control of a continuously
damping automotive suspension system. The ride comfort is
improved by means of the reduction of the body acceleration caused
by the car body when road disturbances from smooth road and real
road roughness.
The paper describes also the model and controller used in the
study and discusses the vehicle response results obtained from a
range of road input simulations. In the conclusion, a comparison of
active suspension fuzzy control and Proportional Integration
derivative (PID) control is shown using MATLAB simulations.
Abstract: This paper describes an enhanced cookie-based
method for counting the visitors of web sites by using a web log
processing system that aims to cope with the ambitious goal of
creating countrywide statistics about the browsing practices of real
human individuals. The focus is put on describing a new more
efficient way of detecting human beings behind web users by placing
different identifiers on the client computers. We briefly introduce our
processing system designed to handle the massive amount of data
records continuously gathered from the most important content
providers of the Hungary. We conclude by showing statistics of
different time spans comparing the efficiency of multiple visitor
counting methods to the one presented here, and some interesting
charts about content providers and web usage based on real data
recorded in 2007 will also be presented.
Abstract: The abundance and availability of rice husk, an agricultural waste, make them as a good source for precursor of activated carbon. In this work, rice husk-based activated carbons were prepared via base treated chemical activation process prior the carbonization process. The effect of carbonization temperatures (400, 600 and 800oC) on their pore structure was evaluated through morphology analysis using scanning electron microscope (SEM). Sample carbonized at 800oC showed better evolution and development of pores as compared to those carbonized at 400 and 600oC. The potential of rice husk-based activated carbon as an alternative adsorbent was investigated for the removal of Ni(II), Zn(II) and Pb(II) from single metal aqueous solution. The adsorption studies using rice husk-based activated carbon as an adsorbent were carried out as a function of contact time at room temperature and the metal ions were analyzed using atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). The ability to remove metal ion from single metal aqueous solution was found to be improved with the increasing of carbonization temperature. Among the three metal ions tested, Pb(II) ion gave the highest adsorption on rice husk-based activated carbon. The results obtained indicate the potential to utilize rice husk as a promising precursor for the preparation of activated carbon for removal of heavy metals.
Abstract: This preliminary study attempts to see if a learning
environment influences instructor’s teaching strategies and learners’
in-class activities in a foreign language class at a university in Japan.
The class under study was conducted in a computer room, while the
majority of classes of the same course were offered in traditional
classrooms without computers. The study also sees if the unplanned
blended learning environment, enhanced, or worked against, in
achieving course goals, by paying close attention to in-class artefacts,
such as computers. In the macro-level analysis, the course syllabus
and weekly itinerary of the course were looked at; and in the microlevel
analysis, nonhuman actors in their environments were named
and analyzed to see how they influenced the learners’ task processes.
The result indicated that students were heavily influenced by the
presence of computers, which lead them to disregard some aspects of
intended learning objectives.
Abstract: In this paper by using the port-controlled Hamiltonian
(PCH) systems theory, a full-order nonlinear controlled model is first
developed. Then a nonlinear passivity-based robust adaptive control
(PBRAC) of switched reluctance motor in the presence of external
disturbances for the purpose of torque ripple reduction and
characteristic improvement is presented. The proposed controller
design is separated into the inner loop and the outer loop controller.
In the inner loop, passivity-based control is employed by using
energy shaping techniques to produce the proper switching function.
The outer loop control is employed by robust adaptive controller to
determine the appropriate Torque command. It can also overcome the
inherent nonlinear characteristics of the system and make the whole
system robust to uncertainties and bounded disturbances. A 4KW 8/6
SRM with experimental characteristics that takes magnetic saturation
into account is modeled, simulation results show that the proposed
scheme has good performance and practical application prospects.
Abstract: As product life cycle becomes less and less every day,
having flexible manufacturing processes for any companies seems more demanding. In the assembling of closures, i.e. opening parts in
car body, hemming process is the one which needs more attention. This paper focused on the robot roller hemming process and how to
reduce its cycle time by introducing a fast roller hemming process. A
robot roller hemming process of a tailgate of Saab 93 SportCombi
model is investigated as a case study in this paper. By applying task
separation, robot coordination, and robot cell configuration principles in the roller hemming process, three alternatives are
proposed, developed, and remarkable reduction in cycle times achieved [1].
Abstract: Misalignment and unbalance are the major concerns
in rotating machinery. When the power supply to any rotating system
is cutoff, the system begins to lose the momentum gained during
sustained operation and finally comes to rest. The exact time period
from when the power is cutoff until the rotor comes to rest is called
Coast Down Time. The CDTs for different shaft cutoff speeds were
recorded at various misalignment and unbalance conditions. The
CDT reduction percentages were calculated for each fault and there
is a specific correlation between the CDT reduction percentage and
the severity of the fault. In this paper, radial basis network, a new
generation of artificial neural networks, has been successfully
incorporated for the prediction of CDT for misalignment and
unbalance conditions. Radial basis network has been found to be
successful in the prediction of CDT for mechanical faults in rotating
machinery.