Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new seed projection method for solving shifted systems with multiple right-hand sides. This seed projection method uses a seed selection strategy. Numerical experiments are presented to show the efficiency of the newly method.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks is an emerging technology
that serves as environment monitors in many applications. Yet
these miniatures suffer from constrained resources in terms of
computation capabilities and energy resources. Limited energy
resource in these nodes demands an efficient consumption of that
resource either by developing the modules itself or by providing
an efficient communication protocols. This paper presents a
comprehensive summarization and a comparative study of the
available MAC protocols proposed for Wireless Sensor Networks
showing their capabilities and efficiency in terms of energy
consumption and delay guarantee.
Abstract: Because nodes are usually battery-powered, the energy
presents a very scarce resource in wireless sensor networks. For this
reason, the design of medium access control had to take energy
efficiency as one of its hottest concerns. Accordingly, in order to
improve the energy performance of MAC schemes in wireless sensor
networks, several ways can be followed. In fact, some researchers try
to limit idle listening while others focus on mitigating overhearing
(i.e. a node can hear a packet which is destined to another node)
or reducing the number of the used control packets. We, in this
paper, propose a new hybrid MAC protocol termed ELE-MAC
(i.e. Energy Latency Efficient MAC). The ELE-MAC major design
goals are energy and latency efficiencies. It adopts less control
packets than SMAC in order to preserve energy. We carried out ns-
2 simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol.
Thus, our simulation-s results prove the ELE-MAC energy efficiency.
Additionally, our solution performs statistically the same or better
latency characteristic compared to adaptive SMAC.
Abstract: novel and simple method is introduced for rapid and
highly efficient water treatment by reverse osmosis (RO) method using
multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) / polyacrylonitrile (PAN)
polymer as a flexible, highly efficient, reusable and semi-permeable
mixed matrix membrane (MMM). For this purpose, MWCNTs were
directly synthesized and on-line purified by chemical vapor deposition
(CVD) process, followed by directing the MWCNT bundles towards an
ultrasonic bath, in which PAN polymer was simultaneously suspended
inside a solid porous silica support in water at temperature to ~70 οC.
Fabrication process of MMM was finally completed by hot isostatic
pressing (HIP) process. In accordance with the analytical figures of
merit, the efficiency of fabricated MMM was ~97%. The rate of water
treatment process was also evaluated to 6.35 L min-1. The results reveal
that, the CNT-based MMM is suitable for rapid treatment of different
forms of industrial, sea, drinking and well water samples.
Abstract: In order to study the influence of different methods of controlling weeds such as mechanical weeding and mechanical weeder efficiency analysis in mechanical cultivation conditions, in farming year of 2011 an experiment was done in a farm in coupling and development of technology center in Haraz,Iran. The treatments consisted of (I) control treatment: where no weeding was done, (II) use of mechanical weeding without engine and (III) power mechanical weeding. Results showed that experimental treatments had significantly different effects (p=0.05) on yield traits and number of filled grains per panicle, while treatments had the significant effects on grain weight and dry weight of weeds in the first, second and third weeding methods at 1% of confidence level. Treatment (II) had its most significant effect on number of filled grains per panicle and yield performance standpoint, which was 3705.97 kg ha-1 in its highest peak. Treatment (III) was ranked as second influential with 3559.8 kg ha-1. In addition, under (I) treatments, 2364.73 kg ha-1 of yield produced. The minimum dry weights of weeds in all weeding methods were related to the treatment (II), (III) and (I), respectively. The correlation coefficient analysis showed that total yield had a significant positive correlation with the panicle grain yield per plant (r= 0.55*) and the number of grains per panicle-1 (r= 0.57*) and the number of filled grains (r= 0.63*). Total rice yield also had negative correlation of r= -0. 64* with weed dry weight at second weed sampling time (17 DAT). The weed dry weight at third and fourth sampling times (24 and 40 DAT) had negative correlations of -0.65** and r=-0.61* with rice yield, respectively.
Abstract: Cogeneration may be defined as a system which
contains electricity production and regain of the thermo value of
exhaust gases simultaneously. The examination is based on the data-s
of an active cogeneration plant. This study, it is aimed to determine
which component of the system should be revised first to raise the
efficiency and decrease the loss of exergy. For this purpose, second
law analysis of thermodynamics is applied to each component due to
consider the effects of environmental conditions and take the quality
of energy into consideration as well as the quantity of it. The exergy
balance equations are produced and exergy loss is calculated for each
component. 44,44 % loss of exergy in heat exchanger, 29,59 % in
combustion chamber, 18,68 % in steam boiler, 5,25 % in gas turbine
and 2,03 % in compressor is calculated.
Abstract: Agricultural waste is mainly composed of cellulose
and hemicelluloses which can be converted to sugars. The
inexpensive reducing sugar from durian peel was obtained by
hydrolysis with HCl concentration at 0.5-2.0% (v/v). The hydrolysis
range of time was for 15-60 min when the mixture was autoclaved at
121 °C. The result showed that acid hydrolysis efficiency (AHE)
highest to 80.99% at condition is 2.0%concentration for 15 min.
Reducing sugar highest to 56.07 g/litre at condition is 2.0%
concentration for 45min. Total sugar highest to 59.83 g/litre at
condition is 2.0%concentration for 45min, which was not significant
(p < 0.05) with condition 2.0% concentration for 30 min and 1.5 %
concentration for 45 and 60 min. The increase in concentration
increased AHE, reducing sugar and total sugar. The hydrolysis time
had no effect on AHE, reducing sugar and total sugar. The maximum
reducing sugars of each concentration were at hydrolysis time 45
min .The hydrolysated were analysis by HPLC, the results revealed
that the principle of sugar were glucose, fructose and xylose.
Abstract: Combining energy efficiency with renewable energy
sources constitutes a key strategy for a sustainable future. The wind
power sector stands out as a fundamental element for the
achievement of the European renewable objectives and Portugal is no
exception to the increase of the wind energy for the electricity
generation. This work proposes an optimization model for the long
range electricity power planning in a system similar to the
Portuguese one, where the expected impacts of the increasing
installed wind power on the operating performance of thermal power
plants are taken into account. The main results indicate that the
increasing penetration of wind power in the electricity system will
have significant effects on the combined cycle gas power plants
operation and on the theoretically expected cost reduction and
environmental gains. This research demonstrated the need to address
the impact that energy sources with variable output may have, not
only on the short-term operational planning, but especially on the
medium to long range planning activities, in order to meet the
strategic objectives for the energy sector.
Abstract: This study investigated possible ways to improve the
efficiency of the platinum precipitation process using ammonium
chloride by reducing the platinum content reporting to the effluent.
The ore treated consist of five platinum group metals namely,
ruthenium, rhodium, iridium, platinum, palladium and a precious
metal gold. Gold, ruthenium, rhodium and iridium were extracted
prior the platinum precipitation process. Temperature, reducing
agent, flow rate and potential difference were the variables controlled
to determine the operation conditions for optimum platinum
precipitation efficiency. Hydrogen peroxide was added as the
oxidizing agent at the temperature of 85-90oC and potential
difference of 700-850mV was the variable used to check the
oxidizing state of platinum. The platinum was further purified at
temperature between 60-65oC, potential difference above 700 mV,
ammonium chloride of 200 l, and at these conditions the platinum
content reporting to the effluent was reduced to less than 300ppm,
resulting in optimum platinum precipitation efficiency and purity of
99.9%.
Abstract: There has been a growing interest in the oxygenation
by plunging water jets in the last few years due to their inherent
advantages, like energy-efficient, low operation cost, etc. Though a
lot of work has been reported on the oxygen-transfer by single
plunging water jets but very few studies have been carried out using
multiple plunging jets. In this paper, volumetric oxygen-transfer
coefficient and oxygen-transfer efficiency has been studied
experimentally for multiple inclined plunging jets (having jet plunge
angle of 60 0 ) in a pool of water for different configurations, in
terms of varying number of jets and jet diameters. This research
suggests that the volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and oxygentransfer
efficiency of the multiple inclined plunging jets for air-water
system are significantly higher than those of a single vertical as well
as inclined plunging jet for same flow area and other similar
conditions. The study also reveals that the oxygen-transfer increase
with increase in number of multiple jets under similar conditions,
which will be most advantageous and energy-efficient in practical
situations when large volumes of wastewaters are to be treated. A
relationship between volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and jet
parameters is also proposed. The suggested relationship predicts the
volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient for multiple inclined plunging
jet(s) within a scatter of ±15 percent. The relationship will be quite
useful in scale-up and in deciding optimum configuration of multiple
inclined plunging jet aeration system.
Abstract: Feature-based registration is an effective technique for clinical use, because it can greatly reduce computational costs. However, this technique, which estimates the transformation by using feature points extracted from two images, may cause misalignments. To handle with this limitation, we propose to extract the salient edges and extracted control points (CP) of medical images by using efficiency of multiresolution representation of data nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) that finds the best feature points. The MR images were first decomposed using the NSCT, and then Edge and CP were extracted from bandpass directional subband of NSCT coefficients and some proposed rules. After edge and CP extraction, mutual information was adopted for the registration of feature points and translation parameters are calculated by using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The experimental results showed that the proposed method produces totally accurate performance for registration medical CT-MR images.
Abstract: EEG signal is one of the oldest measures of brain
activity that has been used vastly for clinical diagnoses and
biomedical researches. However, EEG signals are highly
contaminated with various artifacts, both from the subject and from
equipment interferences. Among these various kinds of artifacts,
ocular noise is the most important one. Since many applications such
as BCI require online and real-time processing of EEG signal, it is
ideal if the removal of artifacts is performed in an online fashion.
Recently, some methods for online ocular artifact removing have
been proposed. One of these methods is ARMAX modeling of EEG
signal. This method assumes that the recorded EEG signal is a
combination of EOG artifacts and the background EEG. Then the
background EEG is estimated via estimation of ARMAX parameters.
The other recently proposed method is based on adaptive filtering.
This method uses EOG signal as the reference input and subtracts
EOG artifacts from recorded EEG signals. In this paper we
investigate the efficiency of each method for removing of EOG
artifacts. A comparison is made between these two methods. Our
undertaken conclusion from this comparison is that adaptive filtering
method has better results compared with the results achieved by
ARMAX modeling.
Abstract: Taking the provincial capital, labor and energy as
inputs, regional GDP as output from 1995 to 2007, the paper
quantifies the vertical and lateral energy saving potential by
introducing the radial adjustment and slack adjustment of DEA. The
results show that by the vertical, the achievement of energy saving in
2007 is better than their respective historical performances. By
horizontal, in 2007 it can be found that Tianjin, Liaoning, Shanghai
and Yunnan do better in energy saving than other provinces. In
national wide, the higher of energy efficiency, the larger of per capita
GDP and the proportion of the tertiary industry in the national
economy, the more open to the outside, the lower the energy saving
potential demonstrates, while the energy endowment has negative
effect on energy saving potential.
Abstract: With the tremendous growth of World Wide Web
(WWW) data, there is an emerging need for effective information
retrieval at the document level. Several query languages such as
XML-QL, XPath, XQL, Quilt and XQuery are proposed in recent
years to provide faster way of querying XML data, but they still lack of
generality and efficiency. Our approach towards evolving a framework
for querying semistructured documents is based on formal query
algebra. Two elements are introduced in the proposed framework:
first, a generic and flexible data model for logical representation of
semistructured data and second, a set of operators for the manipulation
of objects defined in the data model. In additional to accommodating
several peculiarities of semistructured data, our model offers novel
features such as bidirectional paths for navigational querying and
partitions for data transformation that are not available in other
proposals.
Abstract: Nitrogen loss from irrigated cropland, particularly
sandy soils, significantly contributes to nitrate (NO3
-) levels in
surface and groundwaters. Thus, it is of great interest to use
inexpensive natural products that can increase the fertilizer efficiency
and decrease nitrate leaching. In this study, the ability of natural
Iranian zeolite clinoptilolite (Cp) and surfactant modified zeolite
clinoptilolite (SMZ) to remove NH4
+ and NO3
-, respectively, from
aqueous solutions was determined. The feasibility of using Cp and
SMZ as soil amendment to reduce nitrate leaching from soil using
lysimeters was also investigated. Zeolite showed 10.23% to 88.42%
NH4
+ removal efficiency over a wide range of initial NH4
+
concentrations. Nitrate removal efficiency by SMZ was 32.26% to
82.26%. Field study results showed that Cp and SMZ significantly (p
< 0.05) reduced leachate NO3-N concentration compared to control.
There was no significant difference between maximum and mean
leachate NO3-N concentration of SMZ lysimeters and those of Cp
lysimeters.
Abstract: A pilot plant for continuous flow microwave-assisted
chemical reaction combined with microreactors was developed and
water heating tests were conducted for evaluation of the developed
plant. We developed a microwave apparatus having a single
microwave generator that can heat reaction solutions in four reaction
fields simultaneously in order to increase throughput. We also
designed a four-branch waveguide using electromagnetic simulation,
and found that the transmission efficiency at 99%. Finally, we
developed the pilot plant using the developed microwave apparatus
and conducted water heating tests. The temperatures in the respective
reaction fields were controlled within ±1.1 K at 353.2 K. Moreover,
the energy absorption rates by the water were about 90% in the
respective reaction fields, whereas the energy absorption rate was
about 40% when 100 cm3 of water was heated by a commercially
available multimode microwave chemical reactor.
Abstract: Low-carbon economy means the energy conservation and emission reduction. How to measure and evaluate the regional low-carbon economy is an important problem which should be solved immediately. This paper proposed the eco-efficiency ratio based on the ecological efficiency to evaluate the current situation of the low-carbon economy in Jiangsu province and to analyze the efficiency of the low-carbon economy in Jiangsu and other provinces, compared both advantages and disadvantages. And then this paper put forward some advices for the government to formulate the correct development policy of low-carbon economy, to improve the technology innovation capacity and the efficiency of resource allocation.
Abstract: XML is becoming a de facto standard for online data exchange. Existing XML filtering techniques based on a publish/subscribe model are focused on the highly structured data marked up with XML tags. These techniques are efficient in filtering the documents of data-centric XML but are not effective in filtering the element contents of the document-centric XML. In this paper, we propose an extended XPath specification which includes a special matching character '%' used in the LIKE operation of SQL in order to solve the difficulty of writing some queries to adequately filter element contents using the previous XPath specification. We also present a novel technique for filtering a collection of document-centric XMLs, called Pfilter, which is able to exploit the extended XPath specification. We show several performance studies, efficiency and scalability using the multi-query processing time (MQPT).
Abstract: After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 in
U.S., the container security issue got high attention, especially by U.S.
government, which deployed a lot of measures to promote or improve
security systems. U.S. government not only enhances its national
security system, but allies with other countries against the potential
terrorist attacks in the future. For example CSI (Container Security
Initiative), it encourages foreign ports outside U.S. to become CSI
ports as a part of U.S. anti-terrorism network. Although promotion of
the security could partly reach the goal of anti-terrorism, that will
influence the efficiency of container supply chain, which is the main
concern when implementing the inspection measurements. This paper
proposes a quick estimation methodology for an inspection service
rate by a berth allocation heuristic such that the inspection activities
will not affect the original container supply chain. Theoretical and
simulation results show this approach is effective.
Abstract: Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) is a causal graph, which shows the relations between essential components in complex systems. Experts who are familiar with the system components and their relations can generate a related FCM. There is a big gap when human experts cannot produce FCM or even there is no expert to produce the related FCM. Therefore, a new mechanism must be used to bridge this gap. In this paper, a novel learning method is proposed to construct causal graph based on historical data and by using metaheuristic such Tabu Search (TS). The efficiency of the proposed method is shown via comparison of its results of some numerical examples with those of some other methods.