Abstract: In this paper, a fibre laser at 546 nm has been studied
for a signal power of -30 dB. Er3+-doped ZBLAN fibre has been used
by upconversion pumping of a 980 nm laser diode. Gain saturation
effect has been investigated in detail. Laser performance has also been
discussed. An efficiency of 35% has been calculated with a length of 5
mm fibre laser. Results show that Er3+-doped ZBLAN is a promising
candidate for optical amplification at 546 nm.
Abstract: In this work, a radial basis function (RBF) neural network is developed for the identification of hyperbolic distributed parameter systems (DPSs). This empirical model is based only on process input-output data and used for the estimation of the controlled variables at specific locations, without the need of online solution of partial differential equations (PDEs). The nonlinear model that is obtained is suitably transformed to a nonlinear state space formulation that also takes into account the model mismatch. A stable robust control law is implemented for the attenuation of external disturbances. The proposed identification and control methodology is applied on a long duct, a common component of thermal systems, for a flow based control of temperature distribution. The closed loop performance is significantly improved in comparison to existing control methodologies.
Abstract: Effects of bio-nitrogen fertilizer (bio-N), as a partial
alternative to mineral-nitrogen fertilizer (mineral-N), on growth,
yield and yield quality of broccoli plants were investigated. Bio-N
was applied at 1, 2 or 3 doses in combination with 65% of the
recommended dose of mineral-N (bio-N1, bio-N2 or bio-N3 +
⅔mineral-N). However, 100% of the recommended dose of mineral-
N was applied as a control. Significant positive influences of the bio-
N3 + ⅔mineral-N treatment were observed on growth traits, leaf
contents of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, nitrate and nitrite, and
yield quality when compared to the other two combined treatments.
In contrast, there were no significant differences in these parameters
between the bio-N3 + ⅔mineral-N and the control treatments, except
for leaf contents of nitrate and nitrite. They showed lower contents in
the bio-N3 + ⅔mineral-N treatment than the control. Therefore, we
recommend using bio-N as a partial alternative to mineral-N for
healthy nutrition.
Abstract: The purpose of this research is to study motivation
factors and also to study factors relation to job performance to
compare motivation factors under the personal factor classification
such as gender, age, income, educational level, marital status, and
working duration; and to study the relationship between Motivation
Factors and Job Performance with job satisfactions. The sample
groups utilized in this research were 400 Suan Sunandha Rajabhat
University employees. This research is a quantitative research using
questionnaires as research instrument. The statistics applied for data
analysis including percentage, mean, and standard deviation. In
addition, the difference analysis was conducted by t value computing,
one-way analysis of variance and Pearson’s correlation coefficient
computing. The findings of the study results were as follows the
findings showed that the aspects of job promotion and salary were at
the moderate levels. Additionally, the findings also showed that the
motivations that affected the revenue branch chiefs’ job performance
were job security, job accomplishment, policy and management, job
promotion, and interpersonal relation.
Abstract: Repeated observation of a given area over time yields
potential for many forms of change detection analysis. These
repeated observations are confounded in terms of radiometric
consistency due to changes in sensor calibration over time,
differences in illumination, observation angles and variation in
atmospheric effects.
This paper demonstrates applicability of an empirical relative
radiometric normalization method to a set of multitemporal cloudy
images acquired by Resourcesat1 LISS III sensor. Objective of this
study is to detect and remove cloud cover and normalize an image
radiometrically. Cloud detection is achieved by using Average
Brightness Threshold (ABT) algorithm. The detected cloud is
removed and replaced with data from another images of the same
area. After cloud removal, the proposed normalization method is
applied to reduce the radiometric influence caused by non surface
factors. This process identifies landscape elements whose reflectance
values are nearly constant over time, i.e. the subset of non-changing
pixels are identified using frequency based correlation technique. The
quality of radiometric normalization is statistically assessed by R2
value and mean square error (MSE) between each pair of analogous
band.
Abstract: Malaria is transmitted to the human by biting of
infected Anopheles mosquitoes. This disease is a serious, acute and
chronic relapsing infection to humans. Fever, nausea, vomiting, back
pain, increased sweating anemia and splenomegaly (enlargement of
the spleen) are the symptoms of the patients who infected with this
disease. It is caused by the multiplication of protozoa parasite of the
genus Plasmodium. Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax,
Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale are the four types of
Plasmodium malaria. A mathematical model for the transmission of
Plasmodium Malaria is developed in which the human and vector
population are divided into two classes, the susceptible and the
infectious classes. In this paper, we formulate the dynamical model
of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria. The
standard dynamical analysis is used for analyzing the behavior for
the transmission of this disease. The Threshold condition is found
and numerical results are shown to confirm the analytical results.
Abstract: In this paper, by using Mawhin-s continuation theorem of coincidence degree and a method based on delay differential inequality, some sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence and global exponential stability of periodic solutions of cellular neural networks with distributed delays and impulses on time scales. The results of this paper generalized previously known results.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to assess the effect of LAB
isolated from Iranian native olives on the opportunistic skin
pathogens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus.
Lactic Acid Bacteria were isolated from the brine of each sample in
the prior of time. The samples were spread on MRS agar for isolation
of lactobacillus and for lactococcus. 28 strains of labs were isolated.
The labs were centrifuged, the supernatant was strewed and pellet
was used to inoculation in wells or at blank disks. 20μl of each pellet
was inoculated to blank disks and 40μl of each pellet was inoculated
to each well. The result of disk and well diffusion agar against these
pathogens were confirmed each other. The size of inhibition zone
was different according to the type of bacteria, the method and the
concentrations of labs.
Abstract: In this paper we propose a new approach for flexible document categorization according to the document type or genre instead of topic. Our approach implements two homogenous classifiers: contextual classifier and logical classifier. The contextual classifier is based on the document URL, whereas, the logical classifier use the logical structure of the document to perform the categorization. The final categorization is obtained by combining contextual and logical categorizations. In our approach, each document is assigned to all predefined categories with different membership degrees. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach is best than other genre categorization approaches.
Abstract: This paper proposes a method that discovers sequential patterns corresponding to user-s interests from sequential data. This method expresses the interests as constraint patterns. The constraint patterns can define relationships among attributes of the items composing the data. The method recursively decomposes the constraint patterns into constraint subpatterns. The method evaluates the constraint subpatterns in order to efficiently discover sequential patterns satisfying the constraint patterns. Also, this paper applies the method to the sequential data composed of stock price indexes and verifies its effectiveness through comparing it with a method without using the constraint patterns.
Abstract: Software and applications are subjected to serious and damaging security threats, these threats are increasing as a result of increased number of potential vulnerabilities. Security testing is an indispensable process to validate software security requirements and to identify security related vulnerabilities. In this paper we analyze and compare different available vulnerabilities testing techniques based on a pre defined criteria using analytical hierarchy process (AHP). We have selected five testing techniques which includes Source code analysis, Fault code injection, Robustness, Stress and Penetration testing techniques. These testing techniques have been evaluated against five criteria which include cost, thoroughness, Ease of use, effectiveness and efficiency. The outcome of the study is helpful for researchers, testers and developers to understand effectiveness of each technique in its respective domain. Also the study helps to compare the inner working of testing techniques against a selected criterion to achieve optimum testing results.
Abstract: The modeling of water transfer in the unsaturated zone
uses techniques and methods of the soil physics to solve the
Richards-s equation. However, there is a disaccord between the size
of the measurements provided by the soil physics and the size of the
fields of hydrological modeling problem, to which is added the
strong spatial variability of soil hydraulic properties. The objective of
this work was to develop a methodology to estimate the
hydrodynamic parameters for modeling water transfers at different
hydrological scales in the soil-plant atmosphere systems.
Abstract: Cerium oxide is to be recovered from monazite,
which contains about 27.35% CeO2. The principal objective
of this study is to be able to extract cerium oxide from
monazite of Moemeik Myitsone Area. The treatment of
monazite in this study involves three main steps; extraction
of cerium hydroxide from monazite, solvent extraction of
cerium hydroxide, and precipitation with oxalic acid and
calcination of cerium oxalate.
Abstract: The inherent flexibilities of XML in both structure
and semantics makes mining from XML data a complex task with
more challenges compared to traditional association rule mining in
relational databases. In this paper, we propose a new model for the
effective extraction of generalized association rules form a XML
document collection. We directly use frequent subtree mining
techniques in the discovery process and do not ignore the tree
structure of data in the final rules. The frequent subtrees based on the
user provided support are split to complement subtrees to form the
rules. We explain our model within multi-steps from data preparation
to rule generation.
Abstract: Supplier selection, in real situation, is affected by
several qualitative and quantitative factors and is one of the most
important activities of purchasing department. Since at the time of
evaluating suppliers against the criteria or factors, decision makers
(DMS) do not have precise, exact and complete information, supplier
selection becomes more difficult. In this case, Grey theory helps us
to deal with this problem of uncertainty. Here, we apply Technique
for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)
method to evaluate and select the best supplier by using interval
fuzzy numbers. Through this article, we compare TOPSIS with some
other approaches and afterward demonstrate that the concept of
TOPSIS is very important for ranking and selecting right supplier.
Abstract: Not many studies have been undertaken on shareholder activism in emerging economies, including Malaysia. Shareholder activism in emerging economies is on the rise. This paper seeks to comprehend the elements of this activism that are unique to Malaysia, specifically with respect to how the agency problem is controlled through shareholder activism in improving corporate governance practices within target companies. Through shareholder activism, shareholders make contact with a target company to voice their dissatisfaction, suggestions, or recommendations. This paper utilises agency theory to explain institutional shareholder activism. This theory has been extensively used within literature on corporate governance with regards to shareholder activism. The effectiveness of shareholder activism in improving corporate governance will be examined as well. This research provides a further understanding of shareholder activism in emerging economies, such as Malaysia; this research also has the potential to enhance shareholder activism and corporate governance practices in general.
Abstract: The electrolyte stirring method of anodization etching
process for manufacturing porous silicon (PS) is reported in this work.
Two experimental setups of nature air stirring (PS-ASM) and
electrolyte stirring (PS-ESM) are employed to clarify the influence of
stirring mechanisms on electrochemical etching process. Compared to
traditional fabrication without any stirring apparatus (PS-TM), a large
plateau region of PS surface structure is obtained from samples with
both stirring methods by the 3D-profiler measurement. Moreover, the
light emission response is also improved by both proposed electrolyte
stirring methods due to the cycling force in electrolyte could
effectively enhance etch-carrier distribution while the electrochemical
etching process is made. According to the analysis of statistical
calculation of photoluminescence (PL) intensity, lower standard
deviations are obtained from PS-samples with studied stirring methods,
i.e. the uniformity of PL-intensity is effectively improved. The
calculated deviations of PL-intensity are 93.2, 74.5 and 64,
respectively, for PS-TM, PS-ASM and PS-ESM.
Abstract: The potential of economically cheaper cellulose
containing natural materials like rice husk was assessed for nickel
adsorption from aqueous solutions. The effects of pH, contact time,
sorbent dose, initial metal ion concentration and temperature on the
uptake of nickel were studied in batch process. The removal of nickel
was dependent on the physico-chemical characteristics of the
adsorbent, adsorbate concentration and other studied process
parameters. The sorption data has been correlated with Langmuir,
Freundlich and Dubinin-Radush kevich (D-R) adsorption models. It
was found that Freundlich and Langmuir isotherms fitted well to the
data. Maximum nickel removal was observed at pH 6.0. The
efficiency of rice husk for nickel removal was 51.8% for dilute
solutions at 20 g L-1 adsorbent dose. FTIR, SEM and EDAX were
recorded before and after adsorption to explore the number and
position of the functional groups available for nickel binding on to
the studied adsorbent and changes in surface morphology and
elemental constitution of the adsorbent. Pseudo-second order model
explains the nickel kinetics more effectively. Reusability of the
adsorbent was examined by desorption in which HCl eluted 78.93%
nickel. The results revealed that nickel is considerably adsorbed on
rice husk and it could be and economic method for the removal of
nickel from aqueous solutions.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to discuss the relationship between tourist awareness of environmental issues and their own recreational behaviors in the Taipei Guandu Wetland. A total of 392 questionnaires were gathered for data analysis using descriptive statistics, t-testing, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and least significant difference (LSD) post hoc comparisons. The results showed that most of the visitors there enjoying the beautiful scenery are 21 to 30 years old with a college education. The means and standard deviations indicate that tourists express a positive degree of cognition of environmental issues and recreational behaviors. They suggest that polluting the environment is harmful to the natural ecosystem and that the natural resources of ecotourism are fragile, as well as expressing a high degree of recognition of the need to protect wetlands. Most of respondents are cognizant of the regulations proposed by the Guandu Wetland administration which asks that users exercise self-control and follow recommended guidelines when traveling the wetland. There were significant differences in the degree of cognition related to the variables of age, number of visits and reasons for visiting. We found that most respondents with relatively high levels of education would like to learn more about the wetland and are supportive of its conservation.
Abstract: In this article, using finite element analysis (FEA)
and an X-ray diffractometer (XRD), cold-sprayed titanium particles
on a steel substrate is investigated in term of cooling time and the
development of residual strains. Three cooling-down models of
sprayed particles after deposition stage are simulated and discussed:
the first model (m1) considers conduction effect to the substrate only,
the second model (m2) considers both conduction as well as
convection effect to the environment, and the third model (m3) which
is the same as the second model but with the substrate heated to a
near particle temperature before spraying. Thereafter, residual strains
developed in the third model is compared with the experimental
measurement of residual strains, which involved a Bruker D8
Advance Diffractometer using CuKa radiation (40kV, 40mA)
monochromatised with a graphite sample monochromator. For
deposition conditions of this study, a good correlation was found to
exist between the FEA results and XRD measurements of residual
strains.