Abstract: Many studies have emphasized the importance of
resistive exercise to maintain a healthy human body, particular in
prevention of weakening of physical strength. Recently, some studies
advocated that an application of vibration as a supplementary means in
a regular training was effective in encouraging physical strength. Aim
of the current study was, therefore, to identify if an application of
vibration in a resistive exercise was effective in encouraging physical
strength as that in a regular training. A 3-dimensional virtual lower
extremity model for a healthy male and virtual leg-press model were
generated and synchronized. Dynamic leg-press exercises on a slide
machine with/without extra load and on a footboard with vibration as
well as on a slide machine with extra load were analyzed. The results
of the current indicated that the application of the vibration on the
dynamic leg-press exercise might be not greatly effective in
encouraging physical strength, compared with the dynamic leg press
exercise with extra load. It was, however, thought that the application
of the vibration might be helpful to elderly individuals because the
reduced maximum muscle strength appeared by the effect of the
vibration may avoid a muscular spasm, which can be driven from a
high muscle strength sometimes produced during the leg-press
exercise with extra load.
Abstract: In this study, three strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus
(690, BCRC 13023 and BCRC 13025) were subjected to acid
adaptation at pH 5.5 for 90 min. The survival of acid-adapted and
non-adapted V. parahaemolyticus strains under simulated gastric
condition and their protein expression profiles were investigated.
Results showed that acid adaptation increased the survival of the test
V. parahaemolyticus strains after exposure to simulated gastric juice
(pH 3). Additionally, acid adaptation also affected the protein
expression in these V. parahaemolyticus strains. Nine proteins,
identified as atpA, atpB, DnaK, GroEL, OmpU, enolase,
fructose-bisphosphate aldolase, phosphoglycerate kinase and
triosephosphate isomerase, were induced by acid adaptation in two or
three of the test strains. These acid-adaptive proteins may play
important regulatory roles in the acid tolerance response (ATR) of V.
parahaemolyticus.
Abstract: Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is a widely used
method for material identification for laboratory and industrial applications.
While standard spectrometers only allow measurements at
one sampling point at a time, NIR Spectral Imaging techniques can
measure, in real-time, both the size and shape of an object as well as
identify the material the object is made of. The online classification
and sorting of recovered paper with NIR Spectral Imaging (SI)
is used with success in the paper recycling industry throughout
Europe. Recently, the globalisation of the recycling material streams
caused that water-based flexographic-printed newspapers mainly from
UK and Italy appear also in central Europe. These flexo-printed
newspapers are not sufficiently de-inkable with the standard de-inking
process originally developed for offset-printed paper. This de-inking
process removes the ink from recovered paper and is the fundamental
processing step to produce high-quality paper from recovered paper.
Thus, the flexo-printed newspapers are a growing problem for the
recycling industry as they reduce the quality of the produced paper
if their amount exceeds a certain limit within the recovered paper
material.
This paper presents the results of a research project for the
development of an automated entry inspection system for recovered
paper that was jointly conducted by CTR AG (Austria) and PTS
Papiertechnische Stiftung (Germany). Within the project an NIR
SI prototype for the identification of flexo-printed newspaper has
been developed. The prototype can identify and sort out flexoprinted
newspapers in real-time and achieves a detection accuracy
for flexo-printed newspaper of over 95%. NIR SI, the technology the
prototype is based on, allows the development of inspection systems
for incoming goods in a paper production facility as well as industrial
sorting systems for recovered paper in the recycling industry in the
near future.
Abstract: This study was conducted to investigate the optimum
levels of glutamine (Gln) supplementation in broiler diets. A total of
32 one-day-old male chicks with initial body weight 41.5 g were
segregated into 4 groups (8 chicks per group) and subsequently
distributed to individual cages. Feed and water were provided ad
libitum for 21 days. Four dietary treatments were as follows: control
and supplemented Gln at 1, 2 and 3%, respectively. The results found
that the addition Gln had no negative effects on dry matter, organic
matter, ash digestibility or nitrogen retention. Birds fed with 1% Gln
had significantly higher villi wide and villi height : crypt depth ratio
in duodenum than the control chicks and 2 and 3% Gln chicks. It is
suggested that the addition of Gln at 1% indicated a beneficial effect
on improving small intestinal morphology, in addition Gln may
stimulate immune organ development of broiler chickens.
Abstract: This is a conceptual paper on the application of open
innovation in three case examples of Apple, Nintendo, and Nokia.
Utilizing key concepts from research into managerial and
organizational cognition, we describe how each company overcame
barriers to utilizing open innovation strategy in R&D and
commercialization projects. We identify three levels of barriers:
cognitive, behavioral, and institutional, and describe the companies
balanced between internal and external resources to launch products
that were instrumental in companies reinventing themselves in
mature markets.
Abstract: Short message integrated distributed monitoring systems (SM-DMS) are growing rapidly in wireless communication applications in various areas, such as electromagnetic field (EMF) management, wastewater monitoring, and air pollution supervision, etc. However, delay in short messages often makes the data embedded in SM-DMS transmit unreliably. Moreover, there are few regulations dealing with this problem in SMS transmission protocols. In this study, based on the analysis of the command and data requirements in the SM-DMS, we developed a processing model for the control center to solve the delay problem in data transmission. Three components of the model: the data transmission protocol, the receiving buffer pool method, and the timer mechanism were described in detail. Discussions on adjusting the threshold parameter in the timer mechanism were presented for the adaptive performance during the runtime of the SM-DMS. This model optimized the data transmission reliability in SM-DMS, and provided a supplement to the data transmission reliability protocols at the application level.
Abstract: Many electronic voting systems, classified mainly as homomorphic cryptography based, mix-net based and blind signature based, appear after the eighties when zero knowledge proofs were introduced. The common ground for all these three systems is that none of them works without real time cryptologic calculations that should be held on a server. As far as known, the agent-based approach has not been used in a secure electronic voting system. In this study, an agent-based electronic voting schema, which does not contain real time calculations on the server side, is proposed. Conventional cryptologic methods are used in the proposed schema and some of the requirements of an electronic voting system are constructed within the schema. The schema seems quite secure if the used cryptologic methods and agents are secure. In this paper, proposed schema will be explained and compared with already known electronic voting systems.
Abstract: Self-organizing map (SOM) is a well known data reduction technique used in data mining. Data visualization can reveal structure in data sets that is otherwise hard to detect from raw data alone. However, interpretation through visual inspection is prone to errors and can be very tedious. There are several techniques for the automatic detection of clusters of code vectors found by SOMs, but they generally do not take into account the distribution of code vectors; this may lead to unsatisfactory clustering and poor definition of cluster boundaries, particularly where the density of data points is low. In this paper, we propose the use of a generic particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for finding cluster boundaries directly from the code vectors obtained from SOMs. The application of our method to unlabeled call data for a mobile phone operator demonstrates its feasibility. PSO algorithm utilizes U-matrix of SOMs to determine cluster boundaries; the results of this novel automatic method correspond well to boundary detection through visual inspection of code vectors and k-means algorithm.
Abstract: Particulate reinforced metal matrix composites
(MMCs) are potential materials for various applications due to their
advantageous of physical and mechanical properties. This paper
presents a study on the performance of stir cast Al2O3 SiC reinforced
metal matrix composite materials. The results indicate that the
composite materials exhibit improved physical and mechanical
properties, such as, low coefficient of thermal expansion, high
ultimate tensile strength, high impact strength, and hardness. It has
been found that with the increase of weight percentage of
reinforcement particles in the aluminium metal matrix, the new
material exhibits lower wear rate against abrasive wearing. Being
extremely lighter than the conventional gray cast iron material, the
Al-Al2O3 and Al-SiC composites could be potential green materials
for applications in the automobile industry, for instance, in making
car disc brake rotors.
Abstract: Ecological ponds can be a good teaching tool for
science teachers, but they must be built and maintained properly to
provide students with a safe and suitable learning environment.
Hence, many schools do not have the ability to build an ecological
pond. This study used virtual reality technology to develop a webbased
virtual ecological pond. Supported by situated learning theory
and the instructional design of “Aquatic Life" learning unit,
elementary school students can actively explore in the virtual
ecological pond to observe aquatic animals and plants and learn
about the concept of ecological conservation. A teaching experiment
was conducted to investigate the learning effectiveness and
practicability of this instructional design, and the results showed that
students improved a great deal in learning about aquatic life. They
found the virtual ecological pond interesting, easy to operate and
helpful to understanding the aquatic ecological system. Therefore, it
is useful in elementary science education.
Abstract: A data warehouse (DW) is a system which has value and role for decision-making by querying. Queries to DW are critical regarding to their complexity and length. They often access millions of tuples, and involve joins between relations and aggregations. Materialized views are able to provide the better performance for DW queries. However, these views have maintenance cost, so materialization of all views is not possible. An important challenge of DW environment is materialized view selection because we have to realize the trade-off between performance and view maintenance. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a new approach aimed to solve this challenge based on Two-Phase Optimization (2PO), which is a combination of Simulated Annealing (SA) and Iterative Improvement (II), with the use of Multiple View Processing Plan (MVPP). Our experiments show that 2PO outperform the original algorithms in terms of query processing cost and view maintenance cost.
Abstract: In a pilot plant scale of a fluidized bed reactor, a
reduction reaction of sodium sulfate by natural gas has been
investigated. Natural gas is applied in this study as a reductant. Feed
density, feed mass flow rate, natural gas and air flow rate
(independent parameters)and temperature of bed and CO
concentration in inlet and outlet of reactor (dependent parameters)
were monitored and recorded at steady state. The residence time was
adjusted close to value of traditional reaction [1]. An artificial neural
network (ANN) was established to study dependency of yield and
carbon gradient on operating parameters. Resultant 97% accuracy of
applied ANN is a good prove that natural gas can be used as a
reducing agent. Predicted ANN model for relation between other
sources carbon gradient (accuracy 74%) indicates there is not a
meaningful relation between other sources carbon variation and
reduction process which means carbon in granule does not have
significant effect on the reaction yield.
Abstract: A rare phenomenon of SDS-induced activation of a latent protease activity associated with the purified silkworm excretory red fluorescent protein (SE-RFP) was noticed. SE-RFP aliquots incubated with SDS for different time intervals indicated that the protein undergoes an obligatory breakdown into a number of subunits which exhibit autoproteolytic (acting upon themselves) and/or heteroproteolytic (acting on other proteins) activities. A strong serine protease activity of SE-RFP subunits on Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) polyhedral protein was detected by zymography technique. A complete inhibition of BmNPV infection to silkworms was observed by the oral administration assay of the SE-RFP. Here, it is proposed that the SE-RFP prevents the initial infection of BmNPV to silkworms by obliterating the polyhedral protein. This is the first report on a silkworm red fluorescent protein that exhibits a protease activity on exposure to SDS. The present studies would help in understanding the antiviral mechanism of silkworm red fluorescent proteins.
Abstract: Developments in communication technologies
especially in wireless have enabled the progress of low-cost and lowpower
wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The features of such WSN
are holding minimal energy, weak computational capabilities,
wireless communication and an open-medium nature where sensors
are deployed. WSN is underpinned by application driven such as
military applications, the health sector, etc. Due to the intrinsic nature
of the network and application scenario, WSNs are vulnerable to
many attacks externally and internally. In this paper we have focused
on the types of internal attacks of WSNs based on OSI model and
discussed some security requirements, characterizers and challenges
of WSNs, by which to contribute to the WSN-s security research.
Abstract: This paper explores transformation of higher
education system in Kazakhstan since 1991. The research unravels
successful experience in the field and challenges. It covers issues of institutional change, faculty, research, university, funding, standards
and leadership. The paper offers recommendations in improving state of art in higher educational institutions of Kazakhstan based on
international approaches and local realities.
Abstract: This paper describes the pipeline architecture of
high-speed modified Booth multipliers. The proposed multiplier
circuits are based on the modified Booth algorithm and the pipeline
technique which are the most widely used to accelerate the
multiplication speed. In order to implement the optimally pipelined
multipliers, many kinds of experiments have been conducted. The
speed of the multipliers is greatly improved by properly deciding the
number of pipeline stages and the positions for the pipeline registers to
be inserted. We described the proposed modified Booth multiplier
circuits in Verilog HDL and synthesized the gate-level circuits using
0.13um standard cell library. The resultant multiplier circuits show
better performance than others. Since the proposed multipliers operate
at GHz ranges, they can be used in the systems requiring very high
performance.
Abstract: A new estimator for evolutionary spectrum (ES) based
on short time Fourier transform (STFT) and modified group delay
function (MGDF) by signal decomposition (SD) is proposed. The
STFT due to its built-in averaging, suppresses the cross terms and the
MGDF preserves the frequency resolution of the rectangular window
with the reduction in the Gibbs ripple. The present work overcomes
the magnitude distortion observed in multi-component non-stationary
signals with STFT and MGDF estimation of ES using SD. The SD is
achieved either through discrete cosine transform based harmonic
wavelet transform (DCTHWT) or perfect reconstruction filter banks
(PRFB). The MGDF also improves the signal to noise ratio by
removing associated noise. The performance of the present method is
illustrated for cross chirp and frequency shift keying (FSK) signals,
which indicates that its performance is better than STFT-MGDF
(STFT-GD) alone. Further its noise immunity is better than STFT.
The SD based methods, however cannot bring out the frequency
transition path from band to band clearly, as there will be gap in the
contour plot at the transition. The PRFB based STFT-SD shows good
performance than DCTHWT decomposition method for STFT-GD.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of corrosion fatigue
crack growth behaviour of a Ni-Cr-Mn steel commonly used in
marine applications. The effect of mechanical variables such as
frequency and load ratio on fatigue crack growth rate at various
stages has been studied using compact tension (C(T)) specimens
along the rolling direction of steel plate under 3.5% saturated NaCl
aqueous environment. The significance of crack closure on corrosion
fatigue, and the validity of Elber-s empirical linear crack closure
model with the ASTM compliance offset method have been
examined.
Fatigue crack growth rate is higher and threshold stress intensities
are lower in aqueous environment compared to the lab air conditions.
It is also observed that the crack growth rate increases at lower
frequencies. The higher stress ratio promotes the crack growth. The
effect of oxidization and corrosion pit formation is very less as the
stress ratio is increased. It is observed that as stress ratios are
increased, the Elber-s crack closure model agrees well with the crack
closure estimated by the ASTM compliance offset method for tests
conducted at 5Hz frequency compared to tests conducted at 1Hz in
corrosive environment.
Abstract: In this paper, the sum of squares in linear regression is
reduced to sum of squares in semi-parametric regression. We
indicated that different sums of squares in the linear regression are
similar to various deviance statements in semi-parametric regression.
In addition to, coefficient of the determination derived in linear
regression model is easily generalized to coefficient of the
determination of the semi-parametric regression model. Then, it is
made an application in order to support the theory of the linear
regression and semi-parametric regression. In this way, study is
supported with a simulated data example.
Abstract: Laboratory experiments have been performed to investigate photocatalytic detoxification by using TiO2 photocatalyst for treating dairy effluent. Various operational parameters such as catalyst concentration, initial concentration, angle of tilt of solar flat plate reactor and flow rate were investigated. Results indicated that the photocatalytic detoxification process can efficiently treat dairy effluent. Experimental runs with dairy wastewater can be used to identify the optimum operational parameters to perform wastewater degradation on large scale for recycling purpose. Also effect of two different types of reactors on degradation process was analyzed.