Abstract: In view of geological origin, formation of the shallow
gas reservoir of the Hangzhou Bay, northern Zhejiang Province,
eastern China, and original occurrence characteristics of the gassy
sand are analyzed. Generally, gassy sand in scale gas reservoirs is in
the state of residual moisture content and the approximate scope of
initial matric suction of sand ranges about from 0kPa to100kPa.
Results based on GDS triaxial tests show that the classical shear
strength formulas of unsaturated soil can not effectively describe basic
strength characteristics of gassy sand; the relationship between
apparent cohesion and matric suction of gassy sand agrees well with
the power function, which can reasonably be used to describe the
strength of gassy sand. In the stress path of gas release, shear strength
of gassy sand will increase and experimental results show the formula
proposed in this paper can effectively predict the strength increment.
When saturated strength indexes of the sand are used in engineering
design, moderate reduction should be considered.
Abstract: For several high speed networks, providing resilience against failures is an essential requirement. The main feature for designing next generation optical networks is protecting and restoring high capacity WDM networks from the failures. Quick detection, identification and restoration make networks more strong and consistent even though the failures cannot be avoided. Hence, it is necessary to develop fast, efficient and dependable fault localization or detection mechanisms. In this paper we propose a new fault localization algorithm for WDM networks which can identify the location of a failure on a failed lightpath. Our algorithm detects the failed connection and then attempts to reroute data stream through an alternate path. In addition to this, we develop an algorithm to analyze the information of the alarms generated by the components of an optical network, in the presence of a fault. It uses the alarm correlation in order to reduce the list of suspected components shown to the network operators. By our simulation results, we show that our proposed algorithms achieve less blocking probability and delay while getting higher throughput.
Abstract: Today, advantage of biotechnology especially in environmental issues compared to other technologies is irrefragable. Kimia Gharb Gostar Industries Company, as a largest producer of citric acid in Middle East, applies biotechnology for this goal. Citrogypsum is a by–product of citric acid production and it considered as a valid residuum of this company. At this paper summary of acid citric production and condition of Citrogypsum production in company were introduced in addition to defmition of Citrogypsum production and its applications in world. According to these information and evaluation of present conditions about Iran needing to Citrogypsum, the best priority was introduced and emphasized on strategy selection and proper programming for self-sufficiency. The Delphi technique was used to elicit expert opinions about criteria for evaluating the usages. The criteria identified by the experts were profitability, capacity of production, the degree of investment, marketable, production ease and time production. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (ARP) and Expert Choice software were used to compare the alternatives on the criteria derived from the Delphi process.
Abstract: An attempt was made to study of nitrogen
components response of corn (Zea mays L.) to drought stress. A farm
research was done in RCBD as split-plot with four replications in
Khorramabad, west Iran. Drought stress levels as irrigation regimes
after 75 (control), 100, and 120 (stress) mm cumulative evaporation
were in main plots, and four seed corn varieties include 500 (medium
maturity), 647, 700, and 704 (long maturity) were as subplots.
Soluble protein, nitrate and proline amino acid were measured in
shoot and root at flowering stage, and grain yield was measured in
harvesting stage. As the drought progressed, the amount of nitrate
and proline followed an increasing trend, but soluble protein
decreased in shoot and root. The highest amount of nitrate and
proline was observed in longer maturity varieties than shorter ones,
but decrease yield of long maturity varieties was higher than medium
maturity varieties in drought condition, because of long duration of
stress.
Abstract: Titanium oxide films with different morphologies have for the first time been fabricated through hydrothermal reactions between a titanium substrate and iodine powder in water or ethanol. SEM revealed that iodine supported titanium (Ti-I2) surface shows different morphologies with variable treatment conditions. The mean surface roughness (Ra) was increased in the different groups. Use of surfactant has a role to increase the roughness of the film. The surface roughness was in the range of 0.15 μm-0.42 μm. Furthermore, the electrochemical examinations showed that the Ti-I2 surface fabricated in alcoholic medium has high corrosion resistance than in aqueous medium.
Abstract: Various formal and informal brand alliances are being formed in professional service firms. Professional service corporate brand is heavily dependent on brands of professional employees who comprise them, and professional employee brands are in turn dependent on the corporate brand. Prior work provides limited scientific evidence of brand alliance effects in professional service area – i.e., how professional service corporate-employee brand allies are affected by an alliance, what are brand attitude effects after alliance formation and how these effects vary with different strengths of an ally. Scientific literature analysis and theoretical modeling are the main methods of the current study. As a result, a theoretical model is constructed for estimating spillover effects of professional service corporate-employee brand alliances and for comparison among different professional service firm expertise practice models – from “brains" to “procedure" model. The resulting theoretical model lays basis for future experimental studies.
Abstract: To model the human visual system (HVS) in the region of interest, we propose a new objective metric evaluation adapted to wavelet foveation-based image compression quality measurement, which exploits a foveation setup filter implementation technique in the DWT domain, based especially on the point and region of fixation of the human eye. This model is then used to predict the visible divergences between an original and compressed image with respect to this region field and yields an adapted and local measure error by removing all peripheral errors. The technique, which we call foveation wavelet visible difference prediction (FWVDP), is demonstrated on a number of noisy images all of which have the same local peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), but visibly different errors. We show that the FWVDP reliably predicts the fixation areas of interest where error is masked, due to high image contrast, and the areas where the error is visible, due to low image contrast. The paper also suggests ways in which the FWVDP can be used to determine a visually optimal quantization strategy for foveation-based wavelet coefficients and to produce a quantitative local measure of image quality.
Abstract: Pipeline infrastructures normally represent high cost of investment and the pipeline must be free from risks that could cause environmental hazard and potential threats to personnel safety. Pipeline integrity such monitoring and management become very crucial to provide unimpeded transportation and avoiding unnecessary production deferment. Thus proper cleaning and inspection is the key to safe and reliable pipeline operation and plays an important role in pipeline integrity management program and has become a standard industry procedure. In view of this, understanding the motion (dynamic behavior), prediction and control of the PIG speed is important in executing pigging operation as it offers significant benefits, such as estimating PIG arrival time at receiving station, planning for suitable pigging operation, and improves efficiency of pigging tasks. The objective of this paper is to review recent developments in speed control system of pipeline PIGs. The review carried out would serve as an industrial application in a form of quick reference of recent developments in pipeline PIG speed control system, and further initiate others to add-in/update the list in the future leading to knowledge based data, and would attract active interest of others to share their view points.
Abstract: In face recognition, feature extraction techniques
attempts to search for appropriate representation of the data. However,
when the feature dimension is larger than the samples size, it brings
performance degradation. Hence, we propose a method called
Normalization Discriminant Independent Component Analysis
(NDICA). The input data will be regularized to obtain the most
reliable features from the data and processed using Independent
Component Analysis (ICA). The proposed method is evaluated on
three face databases, Olivetti Research Ltd (ORL), Face Recognition
Technology (FERET) and Face Recognition Grand Challenge
(FRGC). NDICA showed it effectiveness compared with other
unsupervised and supervised techniques.
Abstract: Porcelain specimens were fired at 6C/min to 1250C (dwell time 0.5-3h) and cooled at 6C/min to room temperature. Additionally, three different slower firing/cooling cycles were tried. Sintering profile and effects on MOR, crystalline phase content and morphology were investigated using dilatometry, 4-point bending strength, XRD and FEG-SEM respectively. Industrial-sized specimens prepared using the promising cycle were tested basing on the ANSI standards. Increasing dwell time from 1h to 3h at peak temperature of 1250C resulted in neither a significant effect on the quartz and mullite content nor MOR. Reducing the firing/cooling rate to below 6C/min, for peak temperature of 1250C (dwell time of 1h) does not result in improvement of strength of porcelain. The industrial sized specimen exhibited flashover voltages of 20.3kV (dry) and 9.3kV (wet) respectively, transverse strength of 12.5kN and bulk density of 2.27g/cm3, which are satisfactory. There was however dye penetration during porosity test. KeywordsDwell time, Microstructure, Porcelain, Strength.
Abstract: Measuring the complexity of software has been an
insoluble problem in software engineering. Complexity measures can
be used to predict critical information about testability, reliability,
and maintainability of software systems from automatic analysis of
the source code. During the past few years, many complexity
measures have been invented based on the emerging Cognitive
Informatics discipline. These software complexity measures,
including cognitive functional size, lend themselves to the approach
of the total cognitive weights of basic control structures such as loops
and branches. This paper shows that the current existing calculation
method can generate different results that are algebraically
equivalence. However, analysis of the combinatorial meanings of this
calculation method shows significant flaw of the measure, which also
explains why it does not satisfy Weyuker's properties. Based on the
findings, improvement directions, such as measures fusion, and
cumulative variable counting scheme are suggested to enhance the
effectiveness of cognitive complexity measures.
Abstract: Within the realm of e-government, the development has moved towards testing new means for democratic decisionmaking, like e-panels, electronic discussion forums, and polls. Although such new developments seem promising, they are not problem-free, and the outcomes are seldom used in the subsequent formal political procedures. Nevertheless, process models offer promising potential when it comes to structuring and supporting transparency of decision processes in order to facilitate the integration of the public into decision-making procedures in a reasonable and manageable way. Based on real-life cases of urban planning processes in Sweden, we present an outline for an integrated framework for public decision making to: a) provide tools for citizens to organize discussion and create opinions; b) enable governments, authorities, and institutions to better analyse these opinions; and c) enable governments to account for this information in planning and societal decision making by employing a process model for structured public decision making.
Abstract: Several combinations of the preprocessing algorithms,
feature selection techniques and classifiers can be applied to the data
classification tasks. This study introduces a new accurate classifier,
the proposed classifier consist from four components: Signal-to-
Noise as a feature selection technique, support vector machine,
Bayesian neural network and AdaBoost as an ensemble algorithm.
To verify the effectiveness of the proposed classifier, seven well
known classifiers are applied to four datasets. The experiments show
that using the suggested classifier enhances the classification rates for
all datasets.
Abstract: Changing in consumers lifestyles and food
consumption patterns provide a great opportunity in developing the
functional food sector in Malaysia. There is only a little knowledge
about whether Malaysian consumers are aware of functional food and
if so what image consumers have of this product. The objective of
this research is to determine the extent to which selected socioeconomic
characteristics and attitudes influence consumers-
awareness of functional food. A survey was conducted in the Klang
Valley, Malaysia where 439 respondents were interviewed using a
structured questionnaire. The result shows that most respondents
have a positive attitude towards functional food. For the binary
logistic estimation, the results indicate that age, income and other
factors such as concern about food safety, subscribing to cooking or
health magazines, being a vegetarian and consumers who have been
involved in a food production company significantly influence
Malaysian consumers- awareness towards functional food.
Abstract: This paper investigates the occurrence of regenerative
chatter vibrations in facing and turning processes. Orthogonal turning
(facing) and normal turning experiments are carried out under stable
as well as in the presence of controlled chatter vibrations. The effects
of chatter vibrations on various sensor signals are captured and
analyzed using frequency domain methods, which successfully
detected the chatter vibrations close to the dominant mode of the
machine tool system.
Abstract: Volume rendering is widely used in medical CT image
visualization. Applying 3D image visualization to diagnosis
application can require accurate volume rendering with high
resolution. Interpolation is important in medical image processing
applications such as image compression or volume resampling.
However, it can distort the original image data because of edge
blurring or blocking effects when image enhancement procedures
were applied. In this paper, we proposed adaptive tension control
method exploiting gradient information to achieve high resolution
medical image enhancement in volume visualization, where restored
images are similar to original images as much as possible. The
experimental results show that the proposed method can improve
image quality associated with the adaptive tension control efficacy.
Abstract: The experiment was conducted to study the effect of
rearing systems on fatty acid composition and cholesterol content of
Thai indigenous chicken meat. Three hundred and sixty chicks were
allocated to 2 different rearing systems: conventional, housing in an
indoor pen (5 birds/m2); free-range, housing in an indoor pen (5
birds/m2) with access to a grass paddock (1 bird/m2) from 8 wk of age
until slaughter. All birds were provided with the same diet during the
experimental period. At 16 wk of age, 24 birds per group were
slaughtered to evaluate the fatty acid composition and cholesterol
content of breast and thigh meat. The results showed that the
proportion of SFA, MUFA and PUFA in breast and thigh meat were
not different among groups (P>0.05). However, the proportion of n-3
fatty acids was higher and the ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids was lower
in free-range system than in conventional system (P0.05). The data indicated that the free-range system
could increase the proportion of n-3 fatty acids, but no effect on
cholesterol content in Thai indigenous chicken meat.
Abstract: The effects of seawater and slurry ice bleeding methods on the sensory, microbiological and chemical quality changes of cod fillets during chilled storage were examined in this study. The results from sensory evaluation showed that slurry ice bleeding method prolonged the shelf life of cod fillets up to 13-14 days compared to 10-11 days for fish bled in seawater. Slurry ice bleeding method also led to a slower microbial growth and biochemical developments, resulting lower total plate count (TPC), H2S-producing bacteria count, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), trimethylamine (TMA), free fatty acid (FFA) content and higher phospholipid content (PL) compared to those of samples bled in seawater. The results of principle component analysis revealed that TPC, H2S-producing bacteria, TVB-N, TMA and FFA were in significant correlation. They were also in negative correlation with sensory evaluation (Torry score), PL and water holding capacity (WHC).
Abstract: Weblogs are resource of social structure to discover and track the various type of information written by blogger. In this paper, we proposed to use mining weblogs technique for identifying the trends of influenza where blogger had disseminated their opinion for the anomaly disease. In order to identify the trends, web crawler is applied to perform a search and generated a list of visited links based on a set of influenza keywords. This information is used to implement the analytics report system for monitoring and analyzing the pattern and trends of influenza (H1N1). Statistical and graphical analysis reports are generated. Both types of the report have shown satisfactory reports that reflect the awareness of Malaysian on the issue of influenza outbreak through blogs.
Abstract: We consider a cooperative game played by n players against a referee. The players names are randomly distributed among n lockers, with one name per locker. Each player can open up to half the lockers and each player must find his name. Once the game starts the players may not communicate. It has been previously shown that, quite surprisingly, an optimal strategy exists for which the success probability is never worse than 1 − ln 2 ≈ 0.306. In this paper we consider an extension where the number of lockers is greater than the number of players, so that some lockers are empty. We show that the players may still win with positive probability even if there are a constant k number of empty lockers. We show that for each fixed probability p, there is a constant c so that the players can win with probability at least p if they are allowed to open cn lockers.