Abstract: Cognitive Dissonance can be conceived both as a concept related to the tendency to avoid internal contradictions in certain situations, and as a higher order theory about information processing in the human mind. In the last decades, this last sense has been strongly surpassed by the former, as nearly all experiment on the matter discuss cognitive dissonance as an output of motivational contradictions. In that sense, the question remains: is cognitive dissonance a process intrinsically associated with the way that the mind processes information, or is it caused by such specific contradictions? Objective: To evaluate the effects of cognitive dissonance in the absence of rewards or any mechanisms to manipulate motivation. Method: To solve this question, we introduce a new task, the hypothetical social arrays paradigm, which was applied to 50 undergraduate students. Results: Our findings support the perspective that the human mind shows a tendency to avoid internal dissonance even when there are no rewards or punishment involved. Moreover, our findings also suggest that this principle works outside the conscious level.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel, principled approach to resolve the remained problems of substitution technique of audio steganography. Using the proposed genetic algorithm, message bits are embedded into multiple, vague and higher LSB layers, resulting in increased robustness. The robustness specially would be increased against those intentional attacks which try to reveal the hidden message and also some unintentional attacks like noise addition as well.
Abstract: This study investigates CO2 mitigation by methanol
synthesis from flue gas CO2 and H2 generation through water
electrolysis. Electrolytic hydrogen generation is viable provided that
the required electrical power is supplied from renewable energy
resources; whereby power generation from renewable resources is yet
commercial challenging. This approach contribute to zero-emission,
moreover it produce oxygen which could be used as feedstock for
chemical process. At ZPC, however, oxygen would be utilized
through partial oxidation of methane in autothermal reactor (ATR);
this makes ease the difficulties of O2 delivery and marketing. On the
other hand, onboard hydrogen storage and consumption; in methanol
plant; make the project economically more competitive.
Abstract: Frequent pattern discovery over data stream is a hard
problem because a continuously generated nature of stream does not
allow a revisit on each data element. Furthermore, pattern discovery
process must be fast to produce timely results. Based on these
requirements, we propose an approximate approach to tackle the
problem of discovering frequent patterns over continuous stream.
Our approximation algorithm is intended to be applied to process a
stream prior to the pattern discovery process. The results of
approximate frequent pattern discovery have been reported in the
paper.
Abstract: We study the problem of reconstructing a three dimensional binary matrices whose interiors are only accessible through few projections. Such question is prominently motivated by the demand in material science for developing tool for reconstruction of crystalline structures from their images obtained by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Various approaches have been suggested to reconstruct 3D-object (crystalline structure) by reconstructing slice of the 3D-object. To handle the ill-posedness of the problem, a priori information such as convexity, connectivity and periodicity are used to limit the number of possible solutions. Formally, 3Dobject (crystalline structure) having a priory information is modeled by a class of 3D-binary matrices satisfying a priori information. We consider 3D-binary matrices with periodicity constraints, and we propose a polynomial time algorithm to reconstruct 3D-binary matrices with periodicity constraints from two orthogonal projections.
Abstract: This paper presents a linear stability analysis of
natural convection in a horizontal layer of a viscoelastic
nanofluid. The Oldroyd B model was utilized to describe the
rheological behavior of a viscoelastic nanofluid. The model
used for the nanofluid incorporated the effects of Brownian
motion and thermophoresis. The onset criterion for stationary
and oscillatory convection was derived analytically. The effects
of the Deborah number, retardation parameters, concentration
Rayleigh number, Prandtl number, and Lewis number on the
stability of the system were investigated. Results indicated that
there was competition among the processes of thermophoresis,
Brownian diffusion, and viscoelasticity which caused
oscillatory rather than stationary convection to occur.
Oscillatory instability is possible with both bottom- and
top-heavy nanoparticle distributions. Regimes of stationary and
oscillatory convection for various parameters were derived and
are discussed in detail.
Abstract: Many systems in the natural world exhibit chaos or non-linear behavior, the complexity of which is so great that they appear to be random. Identification of chaos in experimental data is essential for characterizing the system and for analyzing the predictability of the data under analysis. The Lyapunov exponents provide a quantitative measure of the sensitivity to initial conditions and are the most useful dynamical diagnostic for chaotic systems. However, it is difficult to accurately estimate the Lyapunov exponents of chaotic signals which are corrupted by a random noise. In this work, a method for estimation of Lyapunov exponents from noisy time series using unscented transformation is proposed. The proposed methodology was validated using time series obtained from known chaotic maps. In this paper, the objective of the work, the proposed methodology and validation results are discussed in detail.
Abstract: The detection of outliers is very essential because of
their responsibility for producing huge interpretative problem in
linear as well as in nonlinear regression analysis. Much work has
been accomplished on the identification of outlier in linear
regression, but not in nonlinear regression. In this article we propose
several outlier detection techniques for nonlinear regression. The
main idea is to use the linear approximation of a nonlinear model and
consider the gradient as the design matrix. Subsequently, the
detection techniques are formulated. Six detection measures are
developed that combined with three estimation techniques such as the
Least-Squares, M and MM-estimators. The study shows that among
the six measures, only the studentized residual and Cook Distance
which combined with the MM estimator, consistently capable of
identifying the correct outliers.
Abstract: The effects of the transport sector on the environment are a well-recognized issue in the European Union and around the world. This area is a subject of much discussion as to how these negative effects could be minimized, especially with regards to impacts contributing to climate change. This paper aims to investigate the results of the economic crisis and how its consequences could be exploited to combat air pollution.
Abstract: Evaporator is an important and widely used heat
exchanger in air conditioning and refrigeration industries. Different
methods have been used by investigators to increase the heat transfer
rates in evaporators. One of the passive techniques to enhance heat
transfer coefficient is the application of microfin tubes. The
mechanism of heat transfer augmentation in microfin tubes is
dependent on the flow regime of two-phase flow. Therefore many
investigations of the flow patterns for in-tube evaporation have been
reported in literatures. The gravitational force, surface tension and
the vapor-liquid interfacial shear stress are known as three dominant
factors controlling the vapor and liquid distribution inside the tube. A
review of the existing literature reveals that the previous
investigations were concerned with the two-phase flow pattern for
flow boiling in horizontal tubes [12], [9]. Therefore, the objective of
the present investigation is to obtain information about the two-phase
flow patterns for evaporation of R-134a inside horizontal smooth and
microfin tubes. Also Investigation of heat transfer during flow
boiling of R-134a inside horizontal microfin and smooth tube have
been carried out experimentally The heat transfer coefficients for
annular flow in the smooth tube is shown to agree well with Gungor
and Winterton-s correlation [4]. All the flow patterns occurred in the
test can be divided into three dominant regimes, i.e., stratified-wavy
flow, wavy-annular flow and annular flow. Experimental data are
plotted in two kinds of flow maps, i.e., Weber number for the vapor
versus weber number for the liquid flow map and mass flux versus
vapor quality flow map. The transition from wavy-annular flow to
annular or stratified-wavy flow is identified in the flow maps.
Abstract: Successive event of explosion earthquake and harmonic tremor recorded at Semeru volcano were analyzed to investigate the dynamical system regarding to their eruptive mechanism. The eruptive activity at Semeru volcano East Java, Indonesia is intermittent emission of ash and bombs with Strombolian style which occurred at interval of 15 to 45 minutes. The explosive eruptions accompanied by explosion earthquakes and followed by volcanic tremor which generated by continuous emission of volcanic ash. The spectral and Lyapunov exponent of successive event of explosion and harmonic tremor were analyzed. Peak frequencies of explosion earthquakes range 1.2 to 1.9 Hz and those of the harmonic tremor have peak frequency range 1.5 — 2.2 Hz. The phase space is reconstructed and evaluated based on the Lyapunov exponents. Harmonic tremors have smaller Lyapunov exponent than explosion earthquakes. It can be considerably as correlated complexity of the mechanism from the variance of spectral and fractal dimension and can be concluded that the successive event of harmonic tremor and explosions are chaotic.
Abstract: Currently, one of the main directions is developing of
development based on the clustering of economic operations of
Kazakhstan, providing for the organization and concentration of
production capacity in one region or the most optimal system. In the
modern economic literature clustering is regarded as one of the most
effective tools to ensure competitive businesses, and improve their
business itself.
Abstract: Equipment miniaturisation offers several opportunities such as an increased surface-to-volume ratio and higher heat transfer coefficients. However, moving towards small-diameter channels demands extra attention to fouling, reliability and stable operation of the system. The present investigation explores possibilities to enhance the stability of the once-through micro evaporator by reducing its flow boiling induced pressure fluctuations. Experimental comparison shows that the measured reduction factor approaches a theoretically derived value. Pressure fluctuations are reduced by a factor of ten in the solid conical channel and a factor of 15 in the porous conical channel. This presumably leads to less backflow and therefore to a better flow control.
Abstract: The occurrence of missing values in database is a serious problem for Data Mining tasks, responsible for degrading data quality and accuracy of analyses. In this context, the area has shown a lack of standardization for experiments to treat missing values, introducing difficulties to the evaluation process among different researches due to the absence in the use of common parameters. This paper proposes a testbed intended to facilitate the experiments implementation and provide unbiased parameters using available datasets and suited performance metrics in order to optimize the evaluation and comparison between the state of art missing values treatments.
Abstract: In practice, wireless networks has the property that
the signal strength attenuates with respect to the distance from the
base station, it could be better if the nodes at two hop away are
considered for better quality of service. In this paper, we propose a
procedure to identify delay preserving substructures for a given
wireless ad-hoc network using a new graph operation G 2 – E (G) =
G* (Edge difference of square graph of a given graph and the
original graph). This operation helps to analyze some induced
substructures, which preserve delay in communication among them.
This operation G* on a given graph will induce a graph, in which 1-
hop neighbors of any node are at 2-hop distance in the original
network. In this paper, we also identify some delay preserving
substructures in G*, which are (i) set of all nodes, which are mutually
at 2-hop distance in G that will form a clique in G*, (ii) set of nodes
which forms an odd cycle C2k+1 in G, will form an odd cycle in G*
and the set of nodes which form a even cycle C2k in G that will form
two disjoint companion cycles ( of same parity odd/even) of length k
in G*, (iii) every path of length 2k+1 or 2k in G will induce two
disjoint paths of length k in G*, and (iv) set of nodes in G*, which
induces a maximal connected sub graph with radius 1 (which
identifies a substructure with radius equal 2 and diameter at most 4 in
G). The above delay preserving sub structures will behave as good
clusters in the original network.
Abstract: The soil ecology of the organic and mineral soil layers
of laurel-leaved and Cryptomeria japonica forest in the Kasuga-yama
Hill Primeval Forest (Nara, Japan) was assessed. The number of
bacteria obtained by the dilution plate count method was less than
0.05% of those counted by the direct microscopic count. We therefore
found that forest soil contains large numbers of non-culturable
bacteria compared with agricultural soils. The numbers of bacteria and
fungi obtained by both the dilution plate count and the direct
microscopic count were larger in the deeper horizons (F and H) of the
organic layer than in the mineral soil layer. This suggests that active
microbial metabolism takes place in the organic layer. The numbers of
bacteria and the length of fungal hyphae obtained by the direct count
method were greater in the H horizon than in the F horizon. The direct
microscopic count revealed numerous non-culturable bacteria and
fungi in the soil. The ratio of fungal to bacterial biomass was lower in
the laurel-leaved forest soil. The fungal biomass was therefore
relatively low in the laurel-leaved forest soil due to differences in
forest vegetation.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel algorithm for path planning of mobile robots in known 3D environments using Binary Integer Programming (BIP). In this approach the problem of path planning is formulated as a BIP with variables taken from 3D Delaunay Triangulation of the Free Configuration Space and solved to obtain an optimal channel made of connected tetrahedrons. The 3D channel is then partitioned into convex fragments which are used to build safe and short paths within from Start to Goal. The algorithm is simple, complete, does not suffer from local minima, and is applicable to different workspaces with convex and concave polyhedral obstacles. The noticeable feature of this algorithm is that it is simply extendable to n-D Configuration spaces.
Abstract: Since supply chains highly impact the financial
performance of companies, it is important to optimize and analyze
their Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The synergistic combination
of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Monte Carlo simulation is
applied to determine the optimal reorder point of warehouses in
supply chains. The goal of the optimization is the minimization of the
objective function calculated as the linear combination of holding and
order costs. The required values of service levels of the warehouses
represent non-linear constraints in the PSO. The results illustrate that
the developed stochastic simulator and optimization tool is flexible
enough to handle complex situations.
Abstract: Many works have been carried out to compare the
efficiency of several goodness of fit procedures for identifying
whether or not a particular distribution could adequately explain a
data set. In this paper a study is conducted to investigate the power
of several goodness of fit tests such as Kolmogorov Smirnov (KS),
Anderson-Darling(AD), Cramer- von- Mises (CV) and a proposed
modification of Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test which
incorporates a variance stabilizing transformation (FKS). The
performances of these selected tests are studied under simple
random sampling (SRS) and Ranked Set Sampling (RSS). This
study shows that, in general, the Anderson-Darling (AD) test
performs better than other GOF tests. However, there are some
cases where the proposed test can perform as equally good as the
AD test.
Abstract: Preliminary results for a new flat plate test
facility are presented here in the form of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), flow visualisation, pressure measurements and thermal anemometry. The results from the CFD and flow
visualisation show the effectiveness of the plate design, with the trailing edge flap anchoring the stagnation point on the working surface and reducing the extent of the leading edge separation. The flow visualization technique demonstrates the
two-dimensionality of the flow in the location where the
thermal anemometry measurements are obtained.
Measurements of the boundary layer mean velocity profiles compare favourably with the Blasius solution, thereby allowing for comparison of future measurements with the
wealth of data available on zero pressure gradient Blasius
flows. Results for the skin friction, boundary layer thickness,
frictional velocity and wall shear stress are shown to agree well with the Blasius theory, with a maximum experimental deviation from theory of 5%. Two turbulence generating grids
have been designed and characterized and it is shown that the turbulence decay downstream of both grids agrees with established correlations. It is also demonstrated that there is
little dependence of turbulence on the freestream velocity.