Abstract: This paper discusses site selection process for
biological soil conservation planning. It was supported by a valuefocused
approach and spatial multi-criteria evaluation techniques. A
first set of spatial criteria was used to design a number of potential
sites. Next, a new set of spatial and non-spatial criteria was
employed, including the natural factors and the financial costs,
together with the degree of suitability for the Bonkuh watershed to
biological soil conservation planning and to recommend the most
acceptable program. The whole process was facilitated by a new
software tool that supports spatial multiple criteria evaluation, or
SMCE in GIS software (ILWIS). The application of this tool,
combined with a continual feedback by the public attentions, has
provided an effective methodology to solve complex decisional
problem in biological soil conservation planning.
Abstract: Network on a chip (NoC) has been proposed as a viable solution to counter the inefficiency of buses in the current VLSI on-chip interconnects. However, as the silicon chip accommodates more transistors, the probability of transient faults is increasing, making fault tolerance a key concern in scaling chips. In packet based communication on a chip, transient failures can corrupt the data packet and hence, undermine the accuracy of data communication. In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of transient fault tolerant techniques including end-to-end, node-by-node, and stochastic communication based on flooding principle.
Abstract: Aiming the application of localized hyperthermia, a
magnetic induction system with new approaches is proposed. The techniques in this system for improving the effectiveness of localized hyperthermia are that using magnetic circuit and the multiple-coil array instead of a giant coil for generating magnetic field. Specially, amorphous metal is adopted as the material of magnetic circuit. Detail
design parameters of hardware are well described. Simulation tool is
employed for this work and experiment result is reported as well.
Abstract: Coloured Petri net (CPN) has been widely adopted in various areas in Computer Science, including protocol specification, performance evaluation, distributed systems and coordination in multi-agent systems. It provides a graphical representation of a system and has a strong mathematical foundation for proving various properties. This paper proposes a novel representation of a coloured Petri net using an extension of logic programming called abductive logic programming (ALP), which is purely based on classical logic. Under such a representation, an implementation of a CPN could be directly obtained, in which every inference step could be treated as a kind of equivalence preserved transformation. We would describe how to implement a CPN under such a representation using common meta-programming techniques in Prolog. We call our framework CPN-LP and illustrate its applications in modeling an intelligent agent.
Abstract: Although the level crossing concept has been the subject of intensive investigation over the last few years, certain problems of great interest remain unsolved. One of these concern is distribution of threshold levels. This paper presents a new threshold level allocation schemes for level crossing based on nonuniform sampling. Intuitively, it is more reasonable if the information rich regions of the signal are sampled finer and those with sparse information are sampled coarser. To achieve this objective, we propose non-linear quantization functions which dynamically assign the number of quantization levels depending on the importance of the given amplitude range. Two new approaches to determine the importance of the given amplitude segment are presented. The proposed methods are based on exponential and logarithmic functions. Various aspects of proposed techniques are discussed and experimentally validated. Its efficacy is investigated by comparison with uniform sampling.
Abstract: Image mosaicing techniques are usually employed to offer researchers a wider field of view of microscopic image of biological samples. a mosaic is commonly achieved using automated microscopes and often with one “color" channel, whether it refers to natural or fluorescent analysis. In this work we present a method to achieve three subsequent mosaics of the same part of a stem cell culture analyzed in phase contrast and in fluorescence, with a common non-automated inverted microscope. The mosaics obtained are then merged together to mark, in the original contrast phase images, nuclei and cytoplasm of the cells referring to a mosaic of the culture, rather than to single images. The experiments carried out prove the effectiveness of our approach with cultures of cells stained with calcein (green/cytoplasm and nuclei) and hoechst (blue/nuclei) probes.
Abstract: Porcine production in China represents approximately
the 50% of the worldwide pig production. Information about pig
husbandry characteristics in China and manure properties from sows
to fatteners in intensive pig farms are not broadly available for
scientific studies as it is a time consuming, expensive task and highly
inaccessible. This study provides a report about solid pig manures
(28% dry matter) in a commercial pig farm located in the peri-urban
area of Beijing as well as a general overview of the current pig
husbandry techniques including pig breeds, feeds, diseases, housing as
well as pig manure and wastewater disposal. The main results are
intended to serve as a literature source for young scientists in order to
understand the main composition of pig manures as well as to identify
the husbandry techniques applied in an intensive pig farm in Beijing.
Abstract: Geopolymer cement was evaluated as wellbore sealing material for carbon dioxide geosequestration application. Curing of cement system in saline water and strength testing in triaxial stress state condition under lateral confinement is relevant to primary cementing in CO2 geosequestration wellbore in saline aquifer. Geopolymer cement was cured in saline water (both at ambient conditions for 28 days and heated (60°C) conditions for 12 hours) and tested for triaxial strength at different levels of lateral confinement. Normal water and few other curing techniques were also studied both for geopolymer and API ‘G’ cement. Results reported were compared to evaluate the suitability of saline water for curing of geopolymer cement. Unconfined compression test results showed higher strength for curing in saline water than normal water. Besides, testing strength under lateral confinement demonstrated the material failure behavior from brittle to plastic.
Abstract: Random Access Memory (RAM) is an important
device in computer system. It can represent the snapshot on how the
computer has been used by the user. With the growth of its
importance, the computer memory has been an issue that has been
discussed in digital forensics. A number of tools have been developed
to retrieve the information from the memory. However, most of the
tools have their limitation in the ability of retrieving the important
information from the computer memory. Hence, this paper is aimed
to discuss the limitation and the setback for two main techniques such
as process signature search and process enumeration. Then, a new
hybrid approach will be presented to minimize the setback in both
individual techniques. This new approach combines both techniques
with the purpose to retrieve the information from the process block
and other objects in the computer memory. Nevertheless, the basic
theory in address translation for x86 platforms will be demonstrated
in this paper.
Abstract: Today, incorrect use of lands and land use changes,
excessive grazing, no suitable using of agricultural farms, plowing on
steep slopes, road construct, building construct, mine excavation etc
have been caused increasing of soil erosion and sediment yield. For
erosion and sediment estimation one can use statistical and empirical
methods. This needs to identify land unit map and the map of
effective factors. However, these empirical methods are usually time
consuming and do not give accurate estimation of erosion. In this
study, we applied GIS techniques to estimate erosion and sediment of
Menderjan watershed at upstream Zayandehrud river in center of
Iran. Erosion faces at each land unit were defined on the basis of land
use, geology and land unit map using GIS. The UTM coordinates of
each erosion type that showed more erosion amounts such as rills and
gullies were inserted in GIS using GPS data. The frequency of
erosion indicators at each land unit, land use and their sediment yield
of these indices were calculated. Also using tendency analysis of
sediment yield changes in watershed outlet (Menderjan hydrometric
gauge station), was calculated related parameters and estimation
errors. The results of this study according to implemented watershed
management projects can be used for more rapid and more accurate
estimation of erosion than traditional methods. These results can also
be used for regional erosion assessment and can be used for remote
sensing image processing.
Abstract: This paper investigates vortex shedding processes
occurring at the end of a stack of parallel plates, due to an oscillating
flow induced by an acoustic standing wave within an acoustic
resonator. Here, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is used to quantify
the vortex shedding processes within an acoustic cycle
phase-by-phase, in particular during the “ejection" of the fluid out of
the stack. Standard hot-wire anemometry measurement is also applied
to detect the velocity fluctuations near the end of the stack.
Combination of these two measurement techniques allowed a detailed
analysis of the vortex shedding phenomena. The results obtained show
that, as the Reynolds number varies (by varying the plate thickness
and drive ratio), different flow patterns of vortex shedding are
observed by the PIV measurement. On the other hand, the
time-dependent hot-wire measurements allow obtaining detailed
frequency spectra of the velocity signal, used for calculating
characteristic Strouhal numbers. The impact of the plate thickness and
the Reynolds number on the vortex shedding pattern has been
discussed. Furthermore, a detailed map of the relationship between the
Strouhal number and Reynolds number has been obtained and
discussed.
Abstract: The iris recognition technology is the most accurate,
fast and less invasive one compared to other biometric techniques
using for example fingerprints, face, retina, hand geometry, voice or
signature patterns. The system developed in this study has the
potential to play a key role in areas of high-risk security and can
enable organizations with means allowing only to the authorized
personnel a fast and secure way to gain access to such areas. The
paper aim is to perform the iris region detection and iris inner and
outer boundaries localization. The system was implemented on
windows platform using Visual C# programming language. It is easy
and efficient tool for image processing to get great performance
accuracy. In particular, the system includes two main parts. The first
is to preprocess the iris images by using Canny edge detection
methods, segments the iris region from the rest of the image and
determine the location of the iris boundaries by applying Hough
transform. The proposed system tested on 756 iris images from 60
eyes of CASIA iris database images.
Abstract: Model mapping and transformation are important processes in high level system abstractions, and form the cornerstone of model-driven architecture (MDA) techniques. Considerable research in this field has devoted attention to static system abstraction, despite the fact that most systems are dynamic with high frequency changes in behavior. In this paper we provide an overview of work that has been done with regard to behavior model mapping and transformation, based on: (1) the completeness of the platform independent model (PIM); (2) semantics of behavioral models; (3) languages supporting behavior model transformation processes; and (4) an evaluation of model composition to effect the best approach to describing large systems with high complexity.
Abstract: Pattern recognition is the research area of Artificial
Intelligence that studies the operation and design of systems that
recognize patterns in the data. Important application areas are image
analysis, character recognition, fingerprint classification, speech
analysis, DNA sequence identification, man and machine
diagnostics, person identification and industrial inspection. The
interest in improving the classification systems of data analysis is
independent from the context of applications. In fact, in many
studies it is often the case to have to recognize and to distinguish
groups of various objects, which requires the need for valid
instruments capable to perform this task. The objective of this article
is to show several methodologies of Artificial Intelligence for data
classification applied to biomedical patterns. In particular, this work
deals with the realization of a Computer-Aided Detection system
(CADe) that is able to assist the radiologist in identifying types of
mammary tumor lesions. As an additional biomedical application of
the classification systems, we present a study conducted on blood
samples which shows how these methods may help to distinguish
between carriers of Thalassemia (or Mediterranean Anaemia) and
healthy subjects.
Abstract: Resource Discovery in Grids is critical for efficient
resource allocation and management. Heterogeneous nature and
dynamic availability of resources make resource discovery a
challenging task. As numbers of nodes are increasing from tens to
thousands, scalability is essentially desired. Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
techniques, on the other hand, provide effective implementation of
scalable services and applications. In this paper we propose a model
for resource discovery in Condor Middleware by using the four axis
framework defined in P2P approach. The proposed model enhances
Condor to incorporate functionality of a P2P system, thus aim to
make Condor more scalable, flexible, reliable and robust.
Abstract: Due to memory leaks, often-valuable system memory
gets wasted and denied for other processes thereby affecting the
computational performance. If an application-s memory usage
exceeds virtual memory size, it can leads to system crash. Current
memory leak detection techniques for clusters are reactive and
display the memory leak information after the execution of the
process (they detect memory leak only after it occur).
This paper presents a Dynamic Memory Monitoring Agent
(DMMA) technique. DMMA framework is a dynamic memory leak
detection, that detects the memory leak while application is in
execution phase, when memory leak in any process in the cluster is
identified by DMMA it gives information to the end users to enable
them to take corrective actions and also DMMA submit the affected
process to healthy node in the system. Thus provides reliable service
to the user. DMMA maintains information about memory
consumption of executing processes and based on this information
and critical states, DMMA can improve reliability and
efficaciousness of cluster computing.
Abstract: Based on statistics released by Islamic Republic of
Iran Police (IRIP), from among the total 9555 motorcycle accidents
that happened in 2007, 857 riders died and 11219 one got injured. If
we also consider the death toll and injuries of other vehicles'
accidents resulted from traffic violation by motorcycle riders, then
paying attention to the motorcycle accidents seems to be very
necessary. Therefore, in this study we tried to investigate the traits
and issues related to production, application, and training, along with
causes of motorcycle accidents from 4 perspectives of road, human,
environment and vehicle and also based on statistical and
geographical analysis of accident-sheets prepared by Iran Road
Patrol Department (IRPD). Unfamiliarity of riders with regulations
and techniques of motorcycling, disuse of safety equipments,
inefficiency of roads and design of junctions for safe trafficking of
motorcycles and finally the lack of sufficient control of responsible
organizations are among the major causes which lead to these
accidents.
Abstract: A new analysis of perceptual speech enhancement is
presented. It focuses on the fact that if only noise above the masking
threshold is filtered, then noise below the masking threshold, but
above the absolute threshold of hearing, can become audible after the
masker filtering. This particular drawback of some perceptual filters,
hereafter called the maskee-to-audible-noise (MAN) phenomenon,
favours the emergence of isolated tonals that increase musical noise.
Two filtering techniques that avoid or correct the MAN phenomenon
are proposed to effectively suppress background noise without introducing
much distortion. Experimental results, including objective
and subjective measurements, show that these techniques improve
the enhanced speech quality and the gain they bring emphasizes the
importance of the MAN phenomenon.
Abstract: Fault-proneness of a software module is the
probability that the module contains faults. To predict faultproneness
of modules different techniques have been proposed which
includes statistical methods, machine learning techniques, neural
network techniques and clustering techniques. The aim of proposed
study is to explore whether metrics available in the early lifecycle
(i.e. requirement metrics), metrics available in the late lifecycle (i.e.
code metrics) and metrics available in the early lifecycle (i.e.
requirement metrics) combined with metrics available in the late
lifecycle (i.e. code metrics) can be used to identify fault prone
modules using Genetic Algorithm technique. This approach has been
tested with real time defect C Programming language datasets of
NASA software projects. The results show that the fusion of
requirement and code metric is the best prediction model for
detecting the faults as compared with commonly used code based
model.
Abstract: Data Warehousing tools have become very popular and currently many of them have moved to Web-based user interfaces to make it easier to access and use the tools. The next step is to enable these tools to be used within a portal framework. The portal framework consists of pages having several small windows that contain individual data warehouse query results. There are several issues that need to be considered when designing the architecture for a portal enabled data warehouse query tool. Some issues need special techniques that can overcome the limitations that are imposed by the nature of data warehouse queries. Issues such as single sign-on, query result caching and sharing, customization, scheduling and authorization need to be considered. This paper discusses such issues and suggests an architecture to support data warehouse queries within Web portal frameworks.