Abstract: When a lightning strike falls near an overhead power
line, the intense electromagnetic field radiated by the current of the
lightning return stroke coupled with power lines and there induced
transient overvoltages, which can cause a back-flashover in electrical
network. The indirect lightning represents a major danger owing to
the fact that it is more frequent than that which results from the direct
strikes.
In this paper we present an analysis of the electromagnetic
coupling between an external electromagnetic field generated by the
lightning and an electrical overhead lines, so we give an important
and original contribution: We are based on our experimental
measurements which we carried in the high voltage laboratories of
EPFL in Switzerland during the last trimester of 2005, on the recent
works of other authors and with our mathematical improvement a
new particular analytical expression of the electromagnetic field
generated by the lightning return stroke was developed and presented
in this paper. The results obtained by this new electromagnetic field
formulation were compared with experimental results and give a
reasonable approach.
Abstract: In order to study the effect of phosphate solubilization
microorganisms (PSM) and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria
(PGPR) on yield and yield components of corn Zea mays (L. cv.
SC604) an experiment was conducted at research farm of Sari
Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Iran during
2007. Experiment laid out as split plot based on randomized
complete block design with three replications. Three levels of
manures (consisted of 20 Mg.ha-1 farmyard manure, 15 Mg.ha-1 green
manure and check or without any manures) as main plots and eight
levels of biofertilizers (consisted of 1-NPK or conventional fertilizer
application; 2-NPK+PSM+PGPR; 3 NP50%K+PSM+PGPR; 4-
N50%PK+PSM +PGPR; 5-N50%P50%K+PSM+ PGPR; 6-PK+PGPR; 7-
NK+PSM and 8-PSM+PGPR) as sub plots were treatments. Results
showed that farmyard manure application increased row number, ear
weight, grain number per ear, grain yield, biological yield and
harvest index compared to check. Furthermore, using of PSM and
PGPR in addition to conventional fertilizer applications (NPK) could
improve ear weight, row number and grain number per row and
ultimately increased grain yield in green manure and check plots.
According to results in all fertilizer treatments application of PSM
and PGPR together could reduce P application by 50% without any
significant reduction of grain yield. However, this treatment could
not compensate 50% reduction of N application.
Abstract: For a determined intermediate band position, the effects of electron filling factor and sunlight concentration on the active region thickness and efficiency of the quantum-dot intermediate band solar cell are calculated. For each value of electron filling factor, the maximum point of efficiency obtained and resulted in the optimum thickness of the cell under three different sunlight concentrations. We show the importance of filling factor as a parameter to be more considered. The photon recycling effect eliminated in all calculations.
Abstract: Bead-on-plate welds were carried out on AISI 316L
(N) austenitic stainless steel (ASS) using flux cored arc welding
(FCAW) process. The bead on plates weld was conducted as per L25
orthogonal array. In this paper, the weld bead geometry such as depth
of penetration (DOP), bead width (BW) and weld reinforcement (R)
of AISI 316L (N) ASS are investigated. Taguchi approach is used as
statistical design of experiment (DOE) technique for optimizing the
selected welding input parameters. Grey relational analysis and
desirability approach are applied to optimize the input parameters
considering multiple output variables simultaneously. Confirmation
experiment has also been conducted to validate the optimized
parameters.
Abstract: Climate change could lead to changes in cultural
environments and landscapes as we know them.Climate change
presents an immediate and significant threat to our natural and built
environments and to the ways of life which co-exist with these
environments. In most traditional buildings, the harmony of texture
with nature and environment has been ever considered; so houses and
cities have been mixed with their natural environment so
astonishingly and the selection and usage of materials have been in
such a way that they have provided the utmost conformity with the
environment, as the result the created areas have a unique beauty and
attraction.The extent to which climate change contributes to
destruction procedure on Iran-s historic buildings.is a subject of
current discussion. Cities, towns and built-up areas also have their
own characteristics that might make them particularly vulnerable to
climate change.
Abstract: There have been numerous implementations of
security system using biometric, especially for identification and
verification cases. An example of pattern used in biometric is the iris
pattern in human eye. The iris pattern is considered unique for each
person. The use of iris pattern poses problems in encoding the human
iris.
In this research, an efficient iris recognition method is proposed.
In the proposed method the iris segmentation is based on the
observation that the pupil has lower intensity than the iris, and the
iris has lower intensity than the sclera. By detecting the boundary
between the pupil and the iris and the boundary between the iris and
the sclera, the iris area can be separated from pupil and sclera. A step
is taken to reduce the effect of eyelashes and specular reflection of
pupil. Then the four levels Coiflet wavelet transform is applied to the
extracted iris image. The modified Hamming distance is employed to
measure the similarity between two irises.
This research yields the identification success rate of 84.25% for
the CASIA version 1.0 database. The method gives an accuracy of
77.78% for the left eyes of MMU 1 database and 86.67% for the
right eyes. The time required for the encoding process, from the
segmentation until the iris code is generated, is 0.7096 seconds.
These results show that the accuracy and speed of the method is
better than many other methods.
Abstract: This paper presents a new method for estimating the nonstationary
noise power spectral density given a noisy signal. The
method is based on averaging the noisy speech power spectrum using
time and frequency dependent smoothing factors. These factors are
adjusted based on signal-presence probability in individual frequency
bins. Signal presence is determined by computing the ratio of the
noisy speech power spectrum to its local minimum, which is updated
continuously by averaging past values of the noisy speech power
spectra with a look-ahead factor. This method adapts very quickly to
highly non-stationary noise environments. The proposed method
achieves significant improvements over a system that uses voice
activity detector (VAD) in noise estimation.
Abstract: Over the past several years, there has been a
considerable amount of research within the field of Quality of
Service (QoS) support for distributed multimedia systems. One of the
key issues in providing end-to-end QoS guarantees in packet
networks is determining a feasible path that satisfies a number of
QoS constraints. The problem of finding a feasible path is NPComplete
if number of constraints is more than two and cannot be
exactly solved in polynomial time. We proposed Feasible Path
Selection Algorithm (FPSA) that addresses issues with pertain to
finding a feasible path subject to delay and cost constraints and it
offers higher success rate in finding feasible paths.
Abstract: Generation of electricity from coal has increased over
the years in the United States and around the world. Burning of coal
results in annual production of upwards of 100 millions tons (United
States only) of coal combustion products (CCPs). Only about a third
of these products are being used to create new products while the
remainder goes to landfills. Application of CCPs mixed with
composted organic materials onto soil can improve the soil-s
physico-chemical conditions and provide essential plant nutritients.
Our objective was to create plant growth media utilizing CCPs and
compost in way which maximizes the use of these products and, at
the same time, maintain good plant growth. Media were formulated
by adding composted organic matter (COM) to CCPs at ratios
ranging from 2:8 to 8:2 (v/v). The quality of these media was
evaluated by measuring their physical and chemical properties and
their effect on plant growth. We tested the media by 1) measuring
their physical and chemical properties and 2) the growth of three
plant species in the experimental media: wheat (Triticum sativum),
tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum) and marigold (Tagetes patula).
We achieved significantly (p < 0.001) higher growth (7-130%) in the
experimental media containing CCPs compared to a commercial mix.
The experimental media supplied adequate plant nutrition as no
fertilization was provided during the experiment. Based on the
results, we recommend the use of CCPs and composts for the
creation of plant growth media.
Abstract: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is implicated in the pathogenesis of the endemic Burkitt-s lymphoma (BL). The EBVpositive BL-derived cell lines initially maintain the original tumor phenotype of EBV infection (latency I, LatI), but most of them drift toward a lymphoblast phenotype of EBV latency III (LatIII) during in vitro culturing. The aim of the present work was to characterize the B-cell subsets in EBV-positive BL cell lines and to verify whether a particular cell subset correlates with the type of EBV infection. The phenotype analysis of two EBV-negative and eleven EBV-positive (three of LatI and eight of LatIII) BL cell lines was performed by polychromatic flow cytomery, based on expression pattern of CD19, CD10, CD38, CD27, and CD5 markers. Two cell subsets, CD19+CD10+ and CD19+CD10-, were defined in LatIII BL cell lines. In both subsets, the CD27 and CD5 cell surface expression was detected in a proportion of the cells.
Abstract: The demand for autonomous resource
management for distributed systems has increased in recent
years. Distributed systems require an efficient and powerful
communication mechanism between applications running on
different hosts and networks. The use of mobile agent
technology to distribute and delegate management tasks
promises to overcome the scalability and flexibility limitations
of the currently used centralized management approach. This
work proposes a multiagent system that adopts mobile agents
as a technology for tasks distribution, results collection, and
management of resources in large-scale distributed systems. A
new mobile agent-based approach for collecting results from
distributed system elements is presented. The technique of
artificial intelligence based on intelligent agents giving the
system a proactive behavior. The presented results are based
on a design example of an application operating in a mobile
environment.
Abstract: A set of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based methods
for the design of an effective system of speech recognition of
numerals of Assamese language captured under varied recording
conditions and moods is presented here. The work is related to
the formulation of several ANN models configured to use Linear
Predictive Code (LPC), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
other features to tackle mood and gender variations uttering numbers
as part of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system in
Assamese. The ANN models are designed using a combination of
Self Organizing Map (SOM) and Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP)
constituting a Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) block trained in a
cooperative environment to handle male and female speech samples
of numerals of Assamese- a language spoken by a sizable population
in the North-Eastern part of India. The work provides a comparative
evaluation of several such combinations while subjected to handle
speech samples with gender based differences captured by a microphone
in four different conditions viz. noiseless, noise mixed, stressed
and stress-free.
Abstract: Airbag deployment has been known to be responsible
for huge death, incidental injuries and broken bones due to low crash
severity and wrong deployment decisions. Therefore, the authorities
and industries have been looking for more innovative and intelligent
products to be realized for future enhancements in the vehicle safety
systems (VSSs). Although the VSSs technologies have advanced
considerably, they still face challenges such as how to avoid
unnecessary and untimely airbag deployments that can be hazardous
and fatal. Currently, most of the existing airbag systems deploy
without regard to occupant size and position. As such, this paper will
focus on the occupant and crash sensing performances due to frontal
collisions for the new breed of so called smart airbag systems. It
intends to provide a thorough discussion relating to the occupancy
detection, occupant size classification, occupant off-position
detection to determine safe distance zone for airbag deployment,
crash-severity analysis and airbag decision algorithms via a computer
modeling. The proposed system model consists of three main
modules namely, occupant sensing, crash severity analysis and
decision fusion. The occupant sensing system module utilizes the
weight sensor to determine occupancy, classify the occupant size,
and determine occupant off-position condition to compute safe
distance for airbag deployment. The crash severity analysis module is
used to generate relevant information pertinent to airbag deployment
decision. Outputs from these two modules are fused to the decision
module for correct and efficient airbag deployment action. Computer
modeling work is carried out using Simulink, Stateflow,
SimMechanics and Virtual Reality toolboxes.
Abstract: The paper describes a self supervised parallel self organizing neural network (PSONN) architecture for true color image segmentation. The proposed architecture is a parallel extension of the standard single self organizing neural network architecture (SONN) and comprises an input (source) layer of image information, three single self organizing neural network architectures for segmentation of the different primary color components in a color image scene and one final output (sink) layer for fusion of the segmented color component images. Responses to the different shades of color components are induced in each of the three single network architectures (meant for component level processing) by applying a multilevel version of the characteristic activation function, which maps the input color information into different shades of color components, thereby yielding a processed component color image segmented on the basis of the different shades of component colors. The number of target classes in the segmented image corresponds to the number of levels in the multilevel activation function. Since the multilevel version of the activation function exhibits several subnormal responses to the input color image scene information, the system errors of the three component network architectures are computed from some subnormal linear index of fuzziness of the component color image scenes at the individual level. Several multilevel activation functions are employed for segmentation of the input color image scene using the proposed network architecture. Results of the application of the multilevel activation functions to the PSONN architecture are reported on three real life true color images. The results are substantiated empirically with the correlation coefficients between the segmented images and the original images.
Abstract: In situ observation of absorption spectral change of
heptil viologen cation radical (HV+.) was performed by slab optical
waveguide (SOWG) spectroscopy utilizing indium-tin-oxide (ITO)
electrodes. Synchronizing with electrochemical techniques, we
observed the adsorption process of HV+.on the ITO electrode. In this
study, we carried out the ITO-SOWG observations using KBr aqueous
solution containing different concentration of HV to investigate the
concentration dependent spectral change. A few specific absorption
bands, which indicated HV+.existed as both monomer and dimer on
ITO electrode surface with a monolayer or a few layers deposition,
were observed in UV-visible region. The change in the peak position
of the absorption spectra from adsorption species of HV+. were
correlated with the concentration of HV as well as the electrode
potential.
Abstract: Numerous facts evidence the increasing religiosity of
the population and the intensification of religious movements in
various countries in the last decade of the 20th century. The number
of international religious institutions and foundations; religious
movements; parties and sects operating worldwide is increasing as
well. Some ethnic and inter-state conflicts are obviously of a
religious origin. All of this make a number of analysts to conclude
that the religious factor is becoming an important part of international
life, including the formation and activities of terrorist organizations.
Most of all is said and written about Islam, the second, after
Christianity, world religions professed according to various estimates
by 1.5 bln. individuals in 127 countries.
Abstract: Medical applications are among the most impactful
areas of microrobotics. The ultimate goal of medical microrobots is
to reach currently inaccessible areas of the human body and carry out
a host of complex operations such as minimally invasive surgery
(MIS), highly localized drug delivery, and screening for diseases at
their very early stages. Miniature, safe and efficient propulsion
systems hold the key to maturing this technology but they pose
significant challenges. A new type of propulsion developed recently,
uses multi-flagella architecture inspired by the motility mechanism of
prokaryotic microorganisms. There is a lack of efficient methods for
designing this type of propulsion system. The goal of this paper is to
overcome the lack and this way, a numerical strategy is proposed to
design multi-flagella propulsion systems. The strategy is based on the
implementation of the regularized stokeslet and rotlet theory, RFT
theory and new approach of “local corrected velocity". The effects of
shape parameters and angular velocities of each flagellum on overall
flow field and on the robot net forces and moments are considered.
Then a multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network is designed
and employed to adjust the angular velocities of the motors for
propulsion control. The proposed method applied successfully on a
sample configuration and useful demonstrative results is obtained.
Abstract: The role of corporate governance is to reduce the
divergence of interests between shareholders and managers. The role
of corporate governance is more useful when managers have an
incentive to deviate from shareholders- interests. One example of
management-s deviation from shareholders- interests is the
management of earnings through the use of accounting accruals. This
paper examines the association between corporate governance
internal mechanisms ownership concentration, board independence,
the existence of CEO-Chairman duality and earnings management.
Firm size and leverage are control variables. The population used in
this study comprises firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange
(TSE) between 2004 and 2008, the sample comprises 196 firms.
Panel Data method is employed as technique to estimate the model.
We find that there is negative significant association between
ownership concentration and board independence manage earnings
with earnings management, there is negative significant association
between the existence of CEO-Chairman duality and earnings
management. This study also found a positive significant association
between control variable (firm size and leverage) and earnings
management.
Abstract: The rate of nitrate adsorption by a nitrate selective ion
exchange resin was investigated in a well-stirred batch experiments.
The kinetic experimental data were simulated with diffusion models including external mass transfer, particle diffusion and chemical
adsorption. Particle pore volume diffusion and particle surface diffusion were taken into consideration separately and simultaneously
in the modeling. The model equations were solved numerically using the Crank-Nicholson scheme. An optimization technique was
employed to optimize the model parameters. All nitrate concentration
decay data were well described with the all diffusion models. The
results indicated that the kinetic process is initially controlled by external mass transfer and then by particle diffusion. The external
mass transfer coefficient and the coefficients of pore volume diffusion and surface diffusion in all experiments were close to each
other with the average value of 8.3×10-3 cm/S for external mass
transfer coefficient. In addition, the models are more sensitive to the
mass transfer coefficient in comparison with particle diffusion. Moreover, it seems that surface diffusion is the dominant particle
diffusion in comparison with pore volume diffusion.
Abstract: The environmental impact caused by industries is an issue that, in the last 20 years, has become very important in terms of society, economics and politics in Colombia. Particularly, the tannery process is extremely polluting because of uneffective treatments and regulations given to the dumping process and atmospheric emissions. Considering that, this investigation is intended to propose a management model based on the integration of Lean Supply Chain, Green Supply Chain, Cleaner Production and ISO 14001-2004, that prioritizes the strategic components of the organizations. As a result, a management model will be obtained and it will provide a strategic perspective through a systemic approach to the tanning process. This will be achieved through the use of Multicriteria Decision tools, along with Quality Function Deployment and Fuzzy Logic. The strategic approach that embraces the management model using the alignment of Lean Supply Chain, Green Supply Chain, Cleaner Production and ISO 14001-2004, is an integrated perspective that allows a gradual frame of the tactical and operative elements through the correct setting of the information flow, improving the decision making process. In that way, Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) could improve their productivity, competitiveness and as an added value, the minimization of the environmental impact. This improvement is expected to be controlled through a Dashboard that helps the Organization measure its performance along the implementation of the model in its productive process.