Abstract: At the previous study of new metal gasket, contact
width and contact stress were important design parameter for
optimizing metal gasket performance. However, the range of contact
stress had not been investigated thoroughly. In this study, we
conducted a gasket design optimization based on an elastic and plastic
contact stress analysis considering forming effect using FEM. The
gasket model was simulated by using two simulation stages which is
forming and tightening simulation. The optimum design based on an
elastic and plastic contact stress was founded. Final evaluation was
determined by helium leak quantity to check leakage performance of
both type of gaskets. The helium leak test shows that a gasket based
on the plastic contact stress design better than based on elastic stress
design.
Abstract: A generalization of the concepts of Feistel Networks (FN), known as Extended Feistel Network (EFN) is examined. EFN splits the input blocks into n > 2 sub-blocks. Like conventional FN, EFN consists of a series of rounds whereby at least one sub-block is subjected to an F function. The function plays a key role in the diffusion process due to its completeness property. It is also important to note that in EFN the F-function is the most computationally expensive operation in a round. The aim of this paper is to determine a suitable type of EFN for a scalable cipher. This is done by analyzing the threshold number of rounds for different types of EFN to achieve the completeness property as well as the number of F-function required in the network. The work focuses on EFN-Type I, Type II and Type III only. In the analysis it is found that EFN-Type II and Type III diffuses at the same rate and both are faster than Type-I EFN. Since EFN-Type-II uses less F functions as compared to EFN-Type III, therefore Type II is the most suitable EFN for use in a scalable cipher.
Abstract: In this research, an anaerobic co-digestion using decanter cake from palm oil mill industry to improve the biogas production from frozen seafood wastewater is studied using Continuously Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) process. The experiments were conducted in laboratory-scale. The suitable Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT) was observed in CSTR experiments with 24 hours of mixing time using the mechanical mixer. The HRT of CSTR process impacts on the efficiency of biogas production. The best performance for biogas production using CSTR process was the anaerobic codigestion for 20 days of HRT with the maximum methane production rate of 1.86 l/d and the average maximum methane production of 64.6%. The result can be concluded that the decanter cake can improve biogas productivity of frozen seafood wastewater.
Abstract: Employing a recently introduced unified adaptive filter
theory, we show how the performance of a large number of important
adaptive filter algorithms can be predicted within a general framework
in nonstationary environment. This approach is based on energy conservation
arguments and does not need to assume a Gaussian or white
distribution for the regressors. This general performance analysis can
be used to evaluate the mean square performance of the Least Mean
Square (LMS) algorithm, its normalized version (NLMS), the family
of Affine Projection Algorithms (APA), the Recursive Least Squares
(RLS), the Data-Reusing LMS (DR-LMS), its normalized version
(NDR-LMS), the Block Least Mean Squares (BLMS), the Block
Normalized LMS (BNLMS), the Transform Domain Adaptive Filters
(TDAF) and the Subband Adaptive Filters (SAF) in nonstationary
environment. Also, we establish the general expressions for the
steady-state excess mean square in this environment for all these
adaptive algorithms. Finally, we demonstrate through simulations that
these results are useful in predicting the adaptive filter performance.
Abstract: This article provides partial evaluation index and its
standard of sports aerobics, including the following 12 indexes: health
vitality, coordination, flexibility, accuracy, pace, endurance, elasticity,
self-confidence, form, control, uniformity and musicality. The
three-layer BP artificial neural network model including input layer,
hidden layer and output layer is established. The result shows that the
model can well reflect the non-linear relationship between the
performance of 12 indexes and the overall performance. The predicted
value of each sample is very close to the true value, with a relative
error fluctuating around of 5%, and the network training is successful.
It shows that BP network has high prediction accuracy and good
generalization capacity if being applied in sports aerobics performance
evaluation after effective training.
Abstract: A mobile Ad-hoc network consists of wireless nodes
communicating without the need for a centralized administration. A
user can move anytime in an ad hoc scenario and, as a result, such a
network needs to have routing protocols which can adopt
dynamically changing topology. To accomplish this, a number of ad
hoc routing protocols have been proposed and implemented, which
include DSR, OLSR and AODV. This paper presents a study on the
QoS parameters for MANET application traffics in large-scale
scenarios with 50 and 120 nodes. The application traffics analyzed in
this study is File Transfer Protocol (FTP). In large scale networks
(120 nodes) OLSR shows better performance and in smaller scale
networks (50 nodes)AODV shows less packet drop rate and OLSR
shows better throughput.
Abstract: Integrated fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks are a viable solution that can deliver the high profile quadruple play services. Passive optical networks (PON) networks integrated with wireless access networks provide ubiquitous characteristics for high bandwidth applications. Operation of PON improves by employing a variety of multiplexing techniques. One of it is time division/wavelength division multiplexed (TDM/WDM) architecture that improves the performance of optical-wireless access networks. This paper proposes a novel feedback-based TDM/WDM-PON architecture and introduces a model of integrated PON-FiWi networks. Feedback-based link architecture is an efficient solution to improves the performance of optical-line-terminal (OLT) and interlink optical-network-units (ONUs) communication. Furthermore, the feedback-based WDM/TDM-PON architecture is compared with existing architectures in terms of capacity of network throughput.
Abstract: Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is widely used today in the areas of geodesy and topography as well as in aeronautics mainly for military purposes. Due to the military usage of GPS, full access and use of this technology is being denied to the civilian user who must then work with a less accurate version. In this paper we focus on the estimation of the receiver coordinates ( X, Y, Z ) and its clock bias ( δtr ) of a fixed point based on pseudorange measurements of a single GPS receiver. Utilizing the instantaneous coordinates of just 4 satellites and their clock offsets, by taking into account the atmospheric delays, we are able to derive a set of pseudorange equations. The estimation of the four unknowns ( X, Y, Z , δtr ) is achieved by introducing an extended Kalman filter that processes, off-line, all the data collected from the receiver. Higher performance of position accuracy is attained by appropriate tuning of the filter noise parameters and by including other forms of biases.
Abstract: Hearing impairment is the number one chronic
disability affecting many people in the world. Background noise is
particularly damaging to speech intelligibility for people with
hearing loss especially for sensorineural loss patients. Several
investigations on speech intelligibility have demonstrated
sensorineural loss patients need 5-15 dB higher SNR than the normal
hearing subjects. This paper describes Discrete Hartley Transform
Power Normalized Least Mean Square algorithm (DHT-LMS) to
improve the SNR and to reduce the convergence rate of the Least
Means Square (LMS) for sensorineural loss patients. The DHT
transforms n real numbers to n real numbers, and has the convenient
property of being its own inverse. It can be effectively used for noise
cancellation with less convergence time. The simulated result shows
the superior characteristics by improving the SNR at least 9 dB for
input SNR with zero dB and faster convergence rate (eigenvalue ratio
12) compare to time domain method and DFT-LMS.
Abstract: Dexamethasone (Dex) is a synthetic glucocorticoid
that is used in therapy. However prolonged treatments with high
doses are often required. This causes side effects that interfere with
the activity of several endocrine systems, including the gonadotropic
axis.
The aim of our study is to determine the effect of Dex on testicular
function in prepubertal Wistar rats.
Newborn Wistar rats are submitted to intraperitoneal injection of
Dex (1μg of Dex dissolved in NaCl 0.9% / 5g bw) for 20 days and
then sacrificed at the age of 40days. A control group received NaCl
0.9%. The rat is weighed daily. The plasmatic levels of testosterone,
LH and FSH were measured by radioimmunoassay. A histomorphometric
study was performed on sections of testis.
Treated groups showed a significant decrease in body weight (p
Abstract: Understanding the number of people and the flow of
the persons is useful for efficient promotion of the institution
managements and company-s sales improvements. This paper
introduces an automated method for counting passerby using virtualvertical
measurement lines. The process of recognizing a passerby is
carried out using an image sequence obtained from the USB camera.
Space-time image is representing the human regions which are
treated using the segmentation process. To handle the problem of
mismatching, different color space are used to perform the template
matching which chose automatically the best matching to determine
passerby direction and speed. A relation between passerby speed and
the human-pixel area is used to distinguish one or two passersby. In
the experiment, the camera is fixed at the entrance door of the hall in
a side viewing position. Finally, experimental results verify the
effectiveness of the presented method by correctly detecting and
successfully counting them in order to direction with accuracy of
97%.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to estimate the frequency of
EBV infection in Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) and non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma (NHL) occurring in Jordanian patients. A total of 55
patients with lymphoma were examined in this study. Of 55 patients,
30 and 25 were diagnosed as HL and NHL, respectively. The four
HL subtypes were observed with the majority of the cases exhibited
the mixed cellularity (MC) subtype followed by the nodular sclerosis
(NS). The high grade was found to be the commonest subtype of
NHL in our sample, followed by the low grade. The presence of EBV
virus was detected by immunostating for expression of latent
membrane protein-1 (LMP-1). The frequency of LMP-1 expression
occurred more frequent in patients with HL (60.0%) than in patients
with NHL (32.0%). The frequency of LMP-1 expression was also
higher in patients with MC subtype (61.11%) than those patients with
NS (28.57%). No age or gender difference in occurrence of EBV
infection was observed among patient with HL. By contrast, the
prevalence of EBV infection in NHL patients aged below 50 was
lower (16.66%) than in NHL patients aged 50 or above (46.15%). In
addition, EBV infection was more frequent in females with NHL
(38.46%) than in male with NHL (25%). In NHL cases, the
frequency of EBV infection in intermediate grade (60.0%) was high
when compared with frequency of low (25%) or high grades (25%).
In conclusion, analysis of LMP-1 expression indicates an important
role for this viral oncogene in the pathogenesis of EBV-associated
malignant lymphomas. These data also support the previous findings
that people with EBV may develop lymphoma and that efforts to
maintain low lymphoma should be considered for people with EBV
infection.
Abstract: Organizations are supposed to be systems and
consequently require defining the notion of equilibrium within.
However, organizations comprise people and unavoidably entail their
irrational aspects. Then, the question is what is the organizational
equilibrium and equilibrating mechanisms considering these aspects.
Hence, some arguments are provided here to conceptualize human
unconsciousness, irrationalities and consequent uncertainties within
organizations in the form of a system of psychic dynamism. The
assumption is this dynamism maintains the psychic balance of the
organization through a psychodynamic point of view. The resultant
conceptualization expected to promote the understanding of such
aspects in different organizational settings by hypothesizing
organizational equilibration from this perspective. As a result, the
main expectation is, if it is known that how the organization
equilibrates in this sense, we can explain and deal with such
irrationalities and unconsciousness by rational and, of course
conscious, planning and accomplishing.
Abstract: The use of the mechanical simulation (in particular the finite element analysis) requires the management of assumptions in order to analyse a real complex system. In finite element analysis (FEA), two modeling steps require assumptions to be able to carry out the computations and to obtain some results: the building of the physical model and the building of the simulation model. The simplification assumptions made on the analysed system in these two steps can generate two kinds of errors: the physical modeling errors (mathematical model, domain simplifications, materials properties, boundary conditions and loads) and the mesh discretization errors. This paper proposes a mesh adaptive method based on the use of an h-adaptive scheme in combination with an error estimator in order to choose the mesh of the simulation model. This method allows us to choose the mesh of the simulation model in order to control the cost and the quality of the finite element analysis.
Abstract: Advances in technology (e.g. the internet,
telecommunication) and political changes (fewer trade barriers and an
enlarged European Union, ASEAN, NAFTA and other organizations)
have led to develop international competition and expand into new
markets. Companies in Thailand, Asia and around the globe are
increasingly being pressured on price and for faster time to enter the
market. At the same time, new markets are appearing and many
companies are looking for changes and shifts in their domestic
markets. These factors have enabled the rapid growth for companies
and globalizing many different business activities during the product
development process from research and development (R&D) to
production.
This research will show and clarify methods how to develop
global product. Also, it will show how important is a global product
impact into Thai Economy development.
Abstract: Sleep stage scoring is the process of classifying the
stage of the sleep in which the subject is in. Sleep is classified into
two states based on the constellation of physiological parameters.
The two states are the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and the
rapid eye movement (REM). The NREM sleep is also classified into
four stages (1-4). These states and the state wakefulness are
distinguished from each other based on the brain activity. In this
work, a classification method for automated sleep stage scoring
based on a single EEG recording using wavelet packet decomposition
was implemented. Thirty two ploysomnographic recording from the
MIT-BIH database were used for training and validation of the
proposed method. A single EEG recording was extracted and
smoothed using Savitzky-Golay filter. Wavelet packets
decomposition up to the fourth level based on 20th order Daubechies
filter was used to extract features from the EEG signal. A features
vector of 54 features was formed. It was reduced to a size of 25 using
the gain ratio method and fed into a classifier of regression trees. The
regression trees were trained using 67% of the records available. The
records for training were selected based on cross validation of the
records. The remaining of the records was used for testing the
classifier. The overall correct rate of the proposed method was found
to be around 75%, which is acceptable compared to the techniques in
the literature.
Abstract: Heavy metal pollution is an environmental concern.
Phytoremediation is a low-cost, environmental-friendly approach to
solve this problem. Mustard has the potential in reducing heavy metal
contents in soils. Among mustard (Brassica juncea (L.) Czern &
Coss) genotypes in Sri Lanka, accessions 7788, 8831 and 5088 give
significantly a high yield. Therefore, present study was conducted to
quantify the phytoextractive potential among these local mustard
accessions and to assess the interaction of heavy metals, Pb, Co, Mn
on phytoextraction. A pot experiment was designed with acid washed
sand (quartz) and a series of heavy metal solutions of 0, 25, 50, 75
and 100 μg/g. Experiment was carried out with factorial
experimental design. Mustard accessions were tolerant to heavy
metals and could be successfully used in removal of Pb, Co and Mn
and they are capable of accumulating significant quantities of heavy
metals in vegetative and reproductive organs. The order of the
accumulative potential of Pb, Co and Mn in mustard accessions is,
root > shoot >seed.
Abstract: The heavy metal contamination of the technogenous
sediments and soils at the investigated dump-field show irregular
planar distribution. Also the heavy metal content in the surface water,
drainage water and in the groundwater was studied both in the dry as
well as during the rainy periods. The cementation process causes
substitution of iron by copper. Natural installation and development
of plant species was observed at the old mine waste dumps, specific
to the local chemical conditions such as low content of essential
nutrients and high content of heavy metals. The individual parts of
the plant tissues (roots, branches/stems, leaves/needles, flowers/
fruits) are contaminated by heavy metals and tissues are damaged
differently, respectively.
Abstract: The surface water used in this study was collected from the Chao Praya River at the lower part at the Nonthaburi bridge. It was collected and used throughout the experiment. TOC (also known as DOC) in the range between 2.5 to 5.6 mg/l were investigated in this experiment. The use of conventional treatment methods such as FeCl3 and PAC showed that TOC removal was 65% using FeCl3 and 78% using PAC (powder activated carbon). The advanced oxidation process alone showed only 35% removal of TOC. Coupling advanced oxidation with a small amount of PAC (0.05g/L) increased efficiency by upto 55%. The combined BAC with advanced oxidation process and small amount of PAC demonstrated the highest efficiency of up to 95% of TOC removal and lower sludge production compared with other methods.
Abstract: In developing countries located in monsoon areas like
Thailand where rainwater is currently of no value for urban dwellers
due to easily access to piped water supply at each household, studies
in rainwater harvesting for domestic use are of low interest. However
it is needed to undertake research to find out appropriate rainwater
harvesting systems particularly for small urban communities that are
recently developed from a full rural structure to urban context. As a
matter of fact, in such transitional period, relying on only common
water resources is risky. With some specific economic settings, land
use patterns, and historical and cultural context that dominate
perceptions of water users in the study area, the level of service in
this study may certainly be different from megacities or cities located
in industrial zone. The overviews of some available technologies and
background of rainwater harvesting including alternate resource are
included in this paper. Among other sources of water supply, ground
water use as the water resource of Thailand and also in the study area.