Abstract: Due to some reasons, observed images are degraded which are mainly caused by noise. Recently image denoising using the wavelet transform has been attracting much attention. Waveletbased approach provides a particularly useful method for image denoising when the preservation of edges in the scene is of importance because the local adaptivity is based explicitly on the values of the wavelet detail coefficients. In this paper, we propose several methods of noise removal from degraded images with Gaussian noise by using adaptive wavelet threshold (Bayes Shrink, Modified Bayes Shrink and Normal Shrink). The proposed thresholds are simple and adaptive to each subband because the parameters required for estimating the threshold depend on subband data. Experimental results show that the proposed thresholds remove noise significantly and preserve the edges in the scene.
Abstract: Non-uniform current distribution in polymer
electrolyte membrane fuel cells results in local over-heating,
accelerated ageing, and lower power output than expected. This
issue is very critical when fuel cell experiences water flooding. In
this work, the performance of a PEM fuel cell is investigated under
cathode flooding conditions. Two-dimensional partially flooded
GDL models based on the conservation laws and electrochemical
relations are proposed to study local current density distributions
along flow fields over a wide range of cell operating conditions.
The model results show a direct association between cathode inlet
humidity increases and that of average current density but the
system becomes more sensitive to flooding. The anode inlet
relative humidity shows a similar effect. Operating the cell at
higher temperatures would lead to higher average current densities
and the chance of system being flooded is reduced. In addition,
higher cathode stoichiometries prevent system flooding but the
average current density remains almost constant. The higher anode
stoichiometry leads to higher average current density and higher
sensitivity to cathode flooding.
Abstract: Many water supply systems in Australia are currently
undergoing significant reconfiguration due to reductions in long term
average rainfall and resulting low inflows to water supply reservoirs
since the second half of the 20th century. When water supply systems
undergo change, it is necessary to develop new operating rules,
which should consider climate, because the climate change is likely
to further reduce inflows. In addition, water resource systems are
increasingly intended to be operated to meet complex and multiple
objectives representing social, economic, environmental and
sustainability criteria. This is further complicated by conflicting
preferences on these objectives from diverse stakeholders. This paper
describes a methodology to develop optimum operating rules for
complex multi-reservoir systems undergoing significant change,
considering all of the above issues. The methodology is demonstrated
using the Grampians water supply system in northwest Victoria,
Australia. Initial work conducted on the project is also presented in
this paper.
Abstract: This paper provides a flexible way of controlling
Variable-Bit-Rate (VBR) of compressed digital video, applicable to
the new H264 video compression standard. The entire video
sequence is assessed in advance and the quantisation level is then set
such that bit rate (and thus the frame rate) remains within
predetermined limits compatible with the bandwidth of the
transmission system and the capabilities of the remote end, while at
the same time providing constant quality similar to VBR encoding.
A process for avoiding buffer starvation by selectively eliminating
frames from the encoded output at times when the frame rate is slow
(large number of bits per frame) will be also described. Finally, the
problem of buffer overflow will be solved by selectively eliminating
frames from the received input to the decoder. The decoder detects
the omission of the frames and resynchronizes the transmission by
monitoring time stamps and repeating frames if necessary.
Abstract: The aim of this work was to detect genetic variability among the set of 40 castor genotypes using 8 RAPD markers. Amplification of genomic DNA of 40 genotypes, using RAPD analysis, yielded in 66 fragments, with an average of 8.25 polymorphic fragments per primer. Number of amplified fragments ranged from 3 to 13, with the size of amplicons ranging from 100 to 1200 bp. Values of the polymorphic information content (PIC) value ranged from 0.556 to 0.895 with an average of 0.784 and diversity index (DI) value ranged from 0.621 to 0.896 with an average of 0.798. The dendrogram based on hierarchical cluster analysis using UPGMA algorithm was prepared and analyzed genotypes were grouped into two main clusters and only two genotypes could not be distinguished. Knowledge on the genetic diversity of castor can be used for future breeding programs for increased oil production for industrial uses.
Abstract: Heart sound is an acoustic signal and many techniques
used nowadays for human recognition tasks borrow speech recognition
techniques. One popular choice for feature extraction of accoustic
signals is the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) which
maps the signal onto a non-linear Mel-Scale that mimics the human
hearing. However the Mel-Scale is almost linear in the frequency
region of heart sounds and thus should produce similar results with
the standard cepstral coefficients (CC). In this paper, MFCC is
investigated to see if it produces superior results for PCG based
human identification system compared to CC. Results show that the
MFCC system is still superior to CC despite linear filter-banks in
the lower frequency range, giving up to 95% correct recognition rate
for MFCC and 90% for CC. Further experiments show that the high
recognition rate is due to the implementation of filter-banks and not
from Mel-Scaling.
Abstract: Among neural models the Support Vector Machine
(SVM) solutions are attracting increasing attention, mostly because
they eliminate certain crucial questions involved by neural network
construction. The main drawback of standard SVM is its high
computational complexity, therefore recently a new technique, the
Least Squares SVM (LS–SVM) has been introduced. In this paper we
present an extended view of the Least Squares Support Vector
Regression (LS–SVR), which enables us to develop new
formulations and algorithms to this regression technique. Based on
manipulating the linear equation set -which embodies all information
about the regression in the learning process- some new methods are
introduced to simplify the formulations, speed up the calculations
and/or provide better results.
Abstract: Turbine blade cooling is considered as the most
effective way of maintaining high operating temperature making use
of the available materials, and turbine systems with wet compression
have a potential for future power generation because of high efficiency
and high specific power with a relatively low cost. In this paper
performance analysis of wet-compression gas turbine cycle with
turbine blade cooling is carried out. The wet compression process is
analytically modeled based on non-equilibrium droplet evaporation.
Special attention is paid for the effects of pressure ratio and water
injection ratio on the important system variables such as ratio of
coolant fluid flow, fuel consumption, thermal efficiency and specific
power. Parametric studies show that wet compression leads to
insignificant improvement in thermal efficiency but significant
enhancement of specific power in gas turbine systems with turbine
blade cooling.
Abstract: At present time, competition, unpredictable fluctuations have made communication engineering education in the global sphere really difficult. Confront with new situation in the engineering education sector. Communication engineering education has to be reformed and ready to use more advanced technologies. We realized that one of the general problems of student`s education is that after graduating from their universities, they are not prepared to face the real life challenges and full skilled to work in industry. They are prepared only to think like engineers and professionals but they also need to possess some others non-technical skills. In today-s environment, technical competence alone is not sufficient for career success. Employers want employees (graduate engineers) who have good oral and written communication (soft) skills. It does require for team work, business awareness, organization, management skills, responsibility, initiative, problem solving and IT competency. This proposed curriculum brings interactive, creative, interesting, effective learning methods, which includes online education, virtual labs, practical work, problem-based learning (PBL), and lectures given by industry experts. Giving short assignments, presentations, reports, research papers and projects students can significantly improve their non-technical skills. Also, we noticed the importance of using ICT technologies in engineering education which used by students and teachers, and included that into proposed teaching and learning methods. We added collaborative learning between students through team work which builds theirs skills besides course materials. The prospective on this research that we intent to update communication engineering curriculum in order to get fully constructed engineer students to ready for real industry work.
Abstract: Recently, Northeast Asia has become one of the three
largest trade areas, covering approximately 30% of the total trade
volume of the world. However, the distribution facilities are saturated
due to the increase in the transportation volume within the area and
with the European countries. In order to accommodate the increase of
the transportation volume, the transportation networking with the
major countries in Northeast Asia and Europe is absolutely necessary.
The Eurasian Logistics Network will develop into an international
passenger transportation network covering the Northeast Asian region
and an international freight transportation network connecting across
Eurasia Continent. This paper surveys the changes and trend of the
distribution network in the Eurasian Region according to the political,
economic and environmental changes of the region, analyses the
distribution network according to the changes in the transportation
policies of the related countries, and provides the direction of the
development of composite transportation on the basis of the present
conditions of transportation means. The transportation means optimal
for the efficiency of transportation system are suggested to be train
ferries, sea & rail or sea & rail & sea. It is suggested to develop
diversified composite transportation means and routes within the
boundary of international cooperation system.
Abstract: This paper proposes an architecture of dynamically
reconfigurable arithmetic circuit. Dynamic reconfiguration is a
technique to realize required functions by changing hardware
construction during operations. The proposed circuit is based on a
complex number multiply-accumulation circuit which is used
frequently in the field of digital signal processing. In addition, the
proposed circuit performs real number double precision arithmetic
operations. The data formats are single and double precision floating
point number based on IEEE754. The proposed circuit is designed
using VHDL, and verified the correct operation by simulations and
experiments.
Abstract: Westudy a dual-channel supply chain under
decentralized setting in which manufacturer sells to retailer and to
customers directly usingan online channel. A customer chooses the
purchase-channel based on price and service quality. Also, to buy
product from the retail store, the customer incurs a transportation cost
influenced by the fluctuating gasoline cost. Both companies are under
the revenue sharing contract. In this contract the retailer share a
portion of the revenue to the manufacturer while the manufacturer
will charge the lower wholesales price. The numerical result shows
that the effects of gasoline costs, the revenue sharing ratio and the
wholesale price play an important role in determining optimal prices.
The result shows that when the gasoline price fluctuatesthe optimal
on-line priceis relatively stable while the optimal retail price moves
in the opposite direction of the gasoline prices.
Abstract: Renewable energy resources are inexhaustible, clean as compared with conventional resources. Also, it is used to supply regions with no grid, no telephone lines, and often with difficult accessibility by common transport. Satellite earth stations which located in remote areas are the most important application of renewable energy. Neural control is a branch of the general field of intelligent control, which is based on the concept of artificial intelligence. This paper presents the mathematical modeling of satellite earth station power system which is required for simulating the system.Aswan is selected to be the site under consideration because it is a rich region with solar energy. The complete power system is simulated using MATLAB–SIMULINK.An artificial neural network (ANN) based model has been developed for the optimum operation of earth station power system. An ANN is trained using a back propagation with Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. The best validation performance is obtained for minimum mean square error. The regression between the network output and the corresponding target is equal to 96% which means a high accuracy. Neural network controller architecture gives satisfactory results with small number of neurons, hence better in terms of memory and time are required for NNC implementation. The results indicate that the proposed control unit using ANN can be successfully used for controlling the satellite earth station power system.
Abstract: Alternative energy is any energy source that is an alternative to fossil fuel. These alternatives are intended to address concerns about such fossil fuels. Today, because of the variety of energy choices and differing goals of their advocates, defining some energy types as "alternative" is highly controversial. Most of the recent and existing alternative sources of energy are discussed below
Abstract: This work concerns the evolution and the maintenance
of an ontological resource in relation with the evolution of the corpus
of texts from which it had been built.
The knowledge forming a text corpus, especially in dynamic domains,
is in continuous evolution. When a change in the corpus occurs, the
domain ontology must evolve accordingly. Most methods manage
ontology evolution independently from the corpus from which it is
built; in addition, they treat evolution just as a process of knowledge
addition, not considering other knowledge changes. We propose a
methodology for managing an evolving ontology from a text corpus
that evolves over time, while preserving the consistency and the
persistence of this ontology.
Our methodology is based on the changes made on the corpus to
reflect the evolution of the considered domain - augmented surgery
in our case. In this context, the results of text mining techniques,
as well as the ARCHONTE method slightly modified, are used to
support the evolution process.
Abstract: Proprietary sensor network systems are typically expensive, rigid and difficult to incorporate technologies from other vendors. When using competing and incompatible technologies, a non-proprietary system is complex to create because it requires significant technical expertise and effort, which can be more expensive than a proprietary product. This paper presents the Sensor Abstraction Layer (SAL) that provides middleware architectures with a consistent and uniform view of heterogeneous sensor networks, regardless of the technologies involved. SAL abstracts and hides the hardware disparities and specificities related to accessing, controlling, probing and piloting heterogeneous sensors. SAL is a single software library containing a stable hardware-independent interface with consistent access and control functions to remotely manage the network. The end-user has near-real-time access to the collected data via the network, which results in a cost-effective, flexible and simplified system suitable for novice users. SAL has been used for successfully implementing several low-cost sensor network systems.
Abstract: This paper was to study the clothes dryer using waste
heat from a split type air conditioner with a capacity of 12,648 btu/h.
The drying chamber had a minimum cross section area with the size
of 0.5 x 1.0 m2. The chamber was constructed by sailcloth and was
inside folded with aluminium foil. Then, it was connected to the
condensing unit of an air conditioner. The experiment was carried out
in two aspects which were the clothes drying with and without
auxiliary fan unit. The results showed that the drying rate of clothes
in the chamber installed with and without auxiliary fan unit were
2.26 and 1.1 kg/h, respectively. In case of the chamber installed with
a auxiliary fan unit, the additional power of 0.011 kWh was
consumed and the drying rate was higher than that of clothes drying
without auxiliary fan unit. Without auxiliary fan unit installation, no
energy was required but there was a portion of hot air leaks away
through the punctured holes at the wall of the drying chamber, hence
the drying rate was dropped below. The drying rate of clothes drying
using waste heat was higher than natural indoor drying and
commercial dryer which their drying rate were 0.17 and 1.9 kg/h,
respectively. It was noted that the COP of the air conditioner did not
change during the operating of clothes drying.
Abstract: Stress-strain curve of inter-tube connected carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced polymer composite under axial loading generated from molecular dynamics simulation is presented. Comparison of the response to axial mechanical loading between this composite system with composite systems reinforced by long, continuous CNTs (replicated via periodic boundary conditions) and short, discontinuous CNTs has been made. Simulation results showed that the inter-tube connection improved the mechanical properties of short discontinuous CNTs dramatically. Though still weaker than long CNT/polymer composite, more remarkable increase in the stiffness relative to the polymer was observed in the inter-tube connected CNT/polymer composite than in the discontinuous CNT/polymer composite. The manually introduced bridge break process resulted in a stress-strain curve of ductile fracture mode, which is consistent with the experimental result.
Abstract: The paper presents the results of microhardness and
microstructure of low carbon steel surface melted using carbon
dioxide laser with a wavelength of 10.6μm and a maximum output
power of 2000W. The processing parameters such as the laser power,
and the scanning rate were investigated in this study. After surface
melting two distinct regions formed corresponding to the melted zone
MZ, and the heat affected zone HAZ. The laser melted region
displayed a cellular fine structures while the HAZ displayed
martensite or bainite structure. At different processing parameters,
the original microstructure of this steel (Ferrite+Pearlite) has been
transformed to new phases of martensitic and bainitic structures. The
fine structure and the high microhardness are evidence of the high
cooling rates which follow the laser melting. The melting pool and
the transformed microstructure in the laser surface melted region of
carbon steel showed clear dependence on laser power and scanning
rate.