Abstract: The increasing demand for sufficient and clean
energy forces industrial and service companies to align their strategies towards efficient consumption. This trend refers also to the
residential building sector. There, large amounts of energy consumption are caused by house and facility heating. Many of the
operated hot water heating systems lack hydraulic balanced working
conditions for heat distribution and –transmission and lead to
inefficient heating. Through hydraulic balancing of heating systems,
significant energy savings for primary and secondary energy can be
achieved. This paper addresses the use of KNX-technology (Smart
Buildings) in residential buildings to ensure a dynamic adaption of
hydraulic system's performance, in order to increase the heating
system's efficiency. In this paper, the procedure of heating system
segmentation into hydraulically independent units (meshes) is
presented. Within these meshes, the heating valve are addressed and
controlled by a central facility server. Feasibility criteria towards
such drivers will be named. The dynamic hydraulic balance is
achieved by positioning these valves according to heating loads, that
are generated from the temperature settings in the corresponding
rooms. The energetic advantages of single room heating control
procedures, based on the application FacilityManager, is presented.
Abstract: With the advance of information technology in the
new era the applications of Internet to access data resources has
steadily increased and huge amount of data have become accessible
in various forms. Obviously, the network providers and agencies,
look after to prevent electronic attacks that may be harmful or may
be related to terrorist applications. Thus, these have facilitated the
authorities to under take a variety of methods to protect the special
regions from harmful data. One of the most important approaches is
to use firewall in the network facilities. The main objectives of
firewalls are to stop the transfer of suspicious packets in several
ways. However because of its blind packet stopping, high process
power requirements and expensive prices some of the providers are
reluctant to use the firewall. In this paper we proposed a method to
find a discriminate function to distinguish between usual packets and
harmful ones by the statistical processing on the network router logs.
By discriminating these data, an administrator may take an approach
action against the user. This method is very fast and can be used
simply in adjacent with the Internet routers.
Abstract: Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) has been
proposed to provide reliable transport of real-time communications.
Due to its attractive features, such as multi-streaming and multihoming,
the SCTP is often expected to be an alternative protocol
for TCP and UDP. In the original SCTP standard, the secondary path
is mainly regarded as a redundancy. Recently, most of researches
have focused on extending the SCTP to enable a host to send its
packets to a destination over multiple paths simultaneously. In order
to transfer packets concurrently over the multiple paths, the SCTP
should be well designed to avoid unnecessary fast retransmission
and the mis-estimation of congestion window size through the paths.
Therefore, we propose an Enhanced Cooperative ACK SCTP (ECASCTP)
to improve the path recovery efficiency of multi-homed host
which is under concurrent multiple transfer mode. We evaluated the
performance of our proposed scheme using ns-2 simulation in terms
of cwnd variation, path recovery time, and goodput. Our scheme
provides better performance in lossy and path asymmetric networks.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of
perceived social support and stress on the coping capability and level
of depression of foreign and local students in Malaysia. Using
convenience sampling, 200 students from three universities in
Selangor, Malaysia participated in the study. The results of this study
revealed that there was a significant relationship between perceived
social support and coping capability. It is also found that there is a
negative relationship between coping capability and depression.
Further, stress and depression are positively related whereas stress
and coping capability are negatively related. Lastly, there is no
significant difference for the stress level and coping capability
amongst local and foreign students.
Abstract: A new dual-fluid concept was studied that could eventually find application for cold-gas propulsion for small space satellites or other constant flow applications. In basic form, the concept uses two different refrigerant working fluids, each having a different saturation vapor pressure. The higher vapor pressure refrigerant remains in the saturation phase and is used to pressurize the lower saturation vapor pressure fluid (the propellant) which remains in the compressed liquid phase. A demonstration thruster concept based on this principle was designed and built to study its operating characteristics. An automotive-type electronic fuel injector was used to meter and deliver the propellant. Ejected propellant mass and momentum were measured for several combinations of refrigerants and hydrocarbon fluids. The thruster has the advantage of delivering relatively large total impulse at low tank pressure within a small volume.
Abstract: Today, the working areas put forward the administration of change. In order to provide this; it is required from the organizations to be creative. Professional creativity in offices depends on an environment that enables the development of the organization only after the individual or collective exertions within the organization. By providing this environment, the organization will gain efficiency, productivity, and work pleasure. In order to bring up the workforce appropriate to the related expectations, the professional creativity of the office management and secretarial profession candidates should be evaluated, education programs appropriate to this and related directly with the service quality should be prepared and the future of this profession should be directed. The aim of this study is to ensure the attention to improve the prepared education program as well as the creative thoughts and their applications, when carrying out an office management and secretarial training. 144 students took place in this research and a questionnaire of 48 questions was carried out.
Abstract: The human head representations usually are based on
the morphological – structural components of a real model. Over the
time became more and more necessary to achieve full virtual models
that comply very rigorous with the specifications of the human
anatomy. Still, making and using a model perfectly fitted with the
real anatomy is a difficult task, because it requires large hardware
resources and significant times for processing. That is why it is
necessary to choose the best compromise solution, which keeps the
right balance between the details perfection and the resources
consumption, in order to obtain facial animations with real-time
rendering. We will present here the way in which we achieved such a
3D system that we intend to use as a base point in order to create
facial animations with real-time rendering, used in medicine to find
and to identify different types of pathologies.
Abstract: In the present investigation, H13 tool steel has been
deposited on copper alloy substrate using both CO2 and diode laser.
A detailed parametric analysis has been carried out in order to find
out optimum processing zone for coating defect free H13 tool steel
on copper alloy substrate. Followed by parametric optimization, the
microstructure and microhardness of the deposited clads have been
evaluated. SEM micrographs revealed dendritic microstructure in
both clads. However, the microhardness of CO2 laser deposited clad
was much higher compared to diode laser deposited clad.
Abstract: This paper addresses the development of an intelligent vision system for human-robot interaction. The two novel contributions of this paper are 1) Detection of human faces and 2) Localizing the eye. The method is based on visual attributes of human skin colors and geometrical analysis of face skeleton. This paper introduces a spatial domain filtering method named ?Fuzzily skewed filter' which incorporates Fuzzy rules for deciding the gray level of pixels in the image in their neighborhoods and takes advantages of both the median and averaging filters. The effectiveness of the method has been justified over implementing the eye tracking commands to an entertainment robot, named ''AIBO''.
Abstract: Covering-based rough sets is an extension of rough
sets and it is based on a covering instead of a partition of the
universe. Therefore it is more powerful in describing some practical
problems than rough sets. However, by extending the rough sets,
covering-based rough sets can increase the roughness of each model
in recognizing objects. How to obtain better approximations from
the models of a covering-based rough sets is an important issue.
In this paper, two concepts, determinate elements and indeterminate
elements in a universe, are proposed and given precise definitions
respectively. This research makes a reasonable refinement of the
covering-element from a new viewpoint. And the refinement may
generate better approximations of covering-based rough sets models.
To prove the theory above, it is applied to eight major coveringbased
rough sets models which are adapted from other literature.
The result is, in all these models, the lower approximation increases
effectively. Correspondingly, in all models, the upper approximation
decreases with exceptions of two models in some special situations.
Therefore, the roughness of recognizing objects is reduced. This
research provides a new approach to the study and application of
covering-based rough sets.
Abstract: In this work, are discussed two formulations of the boundary element method - BEM to perform linear bending analysis of plates reinforced by beams. Both formulations are based on the Kirchhoff's hypothesis and they are obtained from the reciprocity theorem applied to zoned plates, where each sub-region defines a beam or a slab. In the first model the problem values are defined along the interfaces and the external boundary. Then, in order to reduce the number of degrees of freedom kinematics hypothesis are assumed along the beam cross section, leading to a second formulation where the collocation points are defined along the beam skeleton, instead of being placed on interfaces. On these formulations no approximation of the generalized forces along the interface is required. Moreover, compatibility and equilibrium conditions along the interface are automatically imposed by the integral equation. Thus, these formulations require less approximation and the total number of the degree s of freedom is reduced. In the numerical examples are discussed the differences between these two BEM formulations, comparing as well the results to a well-known finite element code.
Abstract: Blind signatures enable users to obtain valid signatures for a message without revealing its content to the signer. This paper presents a new blind signature scheme, i.e. identity-based blind signature scheme with message recovery. Due to the message recovery property, the new scheme requires less bandwidth than the identitybased blind signatures with similar constructions. The scheme is based on modified Weil/Tate pairings over elliptic curves, and thus requires smaller key sizes for the same level of security compared to previous approaches not utilizing bilinear pairings. Security and efficiency analysis for the scheme is provided in this paper.
Abstract: In the proposed method for Web page-ranking, a
novel theoretic model is introduced and tested by examples of order
relationships among IP addresses. Ranking is induced using a
convexity feature, which is learned according to these examples
using a self-organizing procedure. We consider the problem of selforganizing
learning from IP data to be represented by a semi-random
convex polygon procedure, in which the vertices correspond to IP
addresses. Based on recent developments in our regularization
theory for convex polygons and corresponding Euclidean distance
based methods for classification, we develop an algorithmic
framework for learning ranking functions based on a Computational
Geometric Theory. We show that our algorithm is generic, and
present experimental results explaining the potential of our approach.
In addition, we explain the generality of our approach by showing its
possible use as a visualization tool for data obtained from diverse
domains, such as Public Administration and Education.
Abstract: Photoselective plastic films with thermic properties
are now available so that greenhouses clad with such plastics exhibit
a higher degree of “Greenhouse Effect” with a consequent increase in
night time temperature. In this study, we investigate the potential
benefits of a range of thermic plastic films used as greenhouse cover
materials on the vegetative and reproductive growth and development
of Iceberg lettuce (Lactuca sativa L). Transplants were grown under
thermic films and destructively harvested 4, 5, and 6 weeks after
transplanting. Thermic films can increase night temperatures up to 2
⁰C reducing the wide fluctuation in greenhouse temperature during
winter compared to the standard commercial film and consequently
increased the yield (leaf number, fresh weight, and dry weight) of
lettuce plants. Lettuce plants grown under Clear film respond to cold
stress by the accumulation of secondary products (phenolics, and
flavonoids).
Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of International
Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on the frequency of
earnings managements towards small positive profits. We focus on
two emerging markets IFRS adopters: South Africa and Turkey.
We tested our logistic regression using appropriate panelestimation
techniques over a sample of 330 South African and 210
Turkish firm-year observations over the period 2002-2008. Our
results document that mandatory adoption of IFRS is not associated
with a reduction in earnings management towards small positive
profits in emerging markets. These results contradict most of the
previous findings of the studies conducted in developed countries.
Based on the legal system factor, we compare the intensity of
earnings management between a code law country (Turkey) and a
common law country (South Africa) over the pre and post-adoption
periods. Our findings show that the frequency of such earnings
management practice increases significantly for the code law
country.
Abstract: Little research has examined working memory
capacity (WMC) in signed language interpreters and deaf signers.
This paper presents the findings of a study that investigated WMC in
professional Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters
and deaf signers. Thirty-one professional Auslan/English interpreters
(14 hearing native signers and 17 hearing non-native signers)
completed an English listening span task and then an Auslan working
memory span task, which tested their English WMC and their Auslan
WMC, respectively. Moreover, 26 deaf signers (6 deaf native signers
and 20 deaf non-native signers) completed the Auslan working
memory span task. The results revealed a non-significant difference
between the hearing native signers and the hearing non-native signers
in their English WMC, and a non-significant difference between the
hearing native signers and the hearing non-native signers in their
Auslan WMC. Moreover, the results yielded a non-significant
difference between the hearing native signers- English WMC and
their Auslan WMC, and a non-significant difference between the
hearing non-native signers- English WMC and their Auslan WMC.
Furthermore, a non-significant difference was found between the deaf
native signers and the deaf non-native signers in their Auslan WMC.
Abstract: A large amount of valuable information is available in
plain text clinical reports. New techniques and technologies are
applied to extract information from these reports. In this study, we
developed a domain based software system to transform 600
Otorhinolaryngology discharge notes to a structured form for
extracting clinical data from the discharge notes. In order to decrease
the system process time discharge notes were transformed into a data
table after preprocessing. Several word lists were constituted to
identify common section in the discharge notes, including patient
history, age, problems, and diagnosis etc. N-gram method was used
for discovering terms co-Occurrences within each section. Using this
method a dataset of concept candidates has been generated for the
validation step, and then Predictive Apriori algorithm for Association
Rule Mining (ARM) was applied to validate candidate concepts.
Abstract: Microarray data profiles gene expression on a whole
genome scale, therefore, it provides a good way to study associations
between gene expression and occurrence or progression of cancer.
More and more researchers realized that microarray data is helpful
to predict cancer sample. However, the high dimension of gene
expressions is much larger than the sample size, which makes this
task very difficult. Therefore, how to identify the significant genes
causing cancer becomes emergency and also a hot and hard research
topic. Many feature selection algorithms have been proposed in
the past focusing on improving cancer predictive accuracy at the
expense of ignoring the correlations between the features. In this
work, a novel framework (named by SGS) is presented for stable gene
selection and efficient cancer prediction . The proposed framework
first performs clustering algorithm to find the gene groups where
genes in each group have higher correlation coefficient, and then
selects the significant genes in each group with Bayesian Lasso and
important gene groups with group Lasso, and finally builds prediction
model based on the shrinkage gene space with efficient classification
algorithm (such as, SVM, 1NN, Regression and etc.). Experiment
results on real world data show that the proposed framework often
outperforms the existing feature selection and prediction methods,
say SAM, IG and Lasso-type prediction model.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to know the sociodemographic
and operational-financial determinants of the services
quality perceived by users of the national health services. Through
the use of an inquiry conducted by the Ministry of Health,
comprehending 16.936 interviews in 2006, we intend to find out if
there is any characteristic that determines the 2006 inquiry results.
With the revision of the literature we also want to know if the
operational-financial results have implications in hospitals users-
perception on the quality of the received services. In order to achieve
our main goals we will make use of the regression analysis to find out
the possible dimensions that determine those results.
Abstract: In this paper, we address the problem of reducing the
switching activity (SA) in on-chip buses through the use of a bus
binding technique in high-level synthesis. While many binding
techniques to reduce the SA exist, we present yet another technique for
further reducing the switching activity. Our proposed method
combines bus binding and data sequence reordering to explore a wider
solution space. The problem is formulated as a multiple traveling
salesman problem and solved using simulated annealing technique.
The experimental results revealed that a binding solution obtained
with the proposed method reduces 5.6-27.2% (18.0% on average) and
2.6-12.7% (6.8% on average) of the switching activity when compared
with conventional binding-only and hybrid binding-encoding
methods, respectively.