Abstract: In the present article, effect of non-uniform excitation
of reservoir bottom on nonlinear response of concrete gravity dams is
considered. Anisotropic damage mechanics approach is used to model nonlinear behavior of mass concrete in 2D space. The tallest
monolith of Pine Flat dam is selected as a case study. The horizontal
and vertical components of 1967 Koyna earthquake is used to excite
the system. It is found that crest response and stresses within the dam body decrease significantly when the reservoir is excited nonuniformly. In addition, the crack profiles within the dam body and in vicinity of the neck decreases.
Abstract: Baseball is unique among other sports in Taiwan.
Baseball has become a “symbol of the Taiwanese spirit and Taiwan-s
national sport". Taiwan-s first professional sports league, the Chinese
Professional Baseball League (CPBL), was established in 1989.
Starters pitch many more innings over the course of a season and for
a century teams have made all their best pitchers starters. In this
study, we attempt to determine the on-field performance these
pitchers and which won the most CPBL games in 2009. We utilize
the discriminate analysis approach to solve the problem, examining
winning pitchers and their statistics, to reliably find the best starting
pitcher. The data employed in this paper include innings pitched (IP),
earned runs allowed (ERA) and walks plus hits per inning pitched
(WPHIP) provided by the official website of the CPBL. The results
show that Aaron Rakers was the best starting pitcher of the CPBL.
The top 10 CPBL starting pitchers won 14 games to 8 games in the
2009 season. Though Fisher Discriminant Analysis, predicted to top
10 CPBL starting pitchers probably won 20 games to 9 games, more
1 game to 7 games in actually counts in 2009 season.
Abstract: For any country the project management has been a
vital part for its development. The highly competitive business world
has created tremendous pressure on the project managers to achieve
success. The pressure is derived from survival and profit building in
business organizations which compels the project managers to pursue
unethical practices. As a result unethical activities in business
projects can be found easily where situations or issues arise due to
dubious business practice, high corruption, or absolute violation of
the law. The recent spur on Commonwealth games to be organized in
New Delhi indicates towards the same. It has been seen that the
project managers mainly focus on cost, time, and quality rather than
social impact and long term effects of the project. Surprisingly the
literature as well as the practitioner-s perspective also does not
identify the role of ethics in project success. This paper identifies
ethics as the fourth most important dimension in the project based
organizations. The paper predicts that the approach of considering
ethics will result in sustainability of the project. It will increase
satisfaction and loyalty of the customers as well as create harmony,
trust, brotherhood, values and morality among the team members.
This paper is conceptual in nature as inadequate literature exists
linking the project success with an ethical approach.
Abstract: The objective of this research was to investigate the efficiency of the light emitting diode (LED) tube in various color lights used to lure the adult coconut hispine beetle. The research was conducted by setting the forward bias on LED tubes, and the next step was to test luminous efficacy and quantity of electricity used to power each LED tube in different color lights. Finally, the researcher examined the efficiency of each color-light LED tube to lure the adult coconut hispine beetle.
The results showed that the ultraviolet LED tubes had the most capacity to allure the adult coconut hispine beetles with the percentage of 82.92, followed by the blue LED tubes with the percentage of 59.76. Whereas the yellow, pink, red and warm white LED tubes had no influence to the adult coconut hispine beetles.
Abstract: Many environment specific methods and systems for Robot Navigation exist. However vast strides in the evolution of navigation technologies and system techniques create the need for a general unified framework that is scalable, modular and dynamic. In this paper a Unified Framework for a Robust Conflict-free Robot Navigation System that can be used for either a structured or unstructured and indoor or outdoor environments has been proposed. The fundamental design aspects and implementation issues encountered during the development of the module are discussed. The results of the deployment of three major peripheral modules of the framework namely the GSM based communication module, GIS Module and GPS module are reported in this paper.
Abstract: During the year 1999, Serbia (ex Yugoslavia) and their northern province, Vojvodina, has been bombarded. Because of that general public believe is that this region was contaminated by depleted uranium and that there is a potential contaminant of agricultural products due to soil radioactivity. This paper presents the repeated analysis of agricultural soil samples in Vojvodina. The same investigation was carried out during the year 2001, and it was concluded that, based on the gamma-spectrometric analysis of 50 soil samples taken from the region of Vojvodina, there haven-t been registered any increase of radioactivity that could endanger the food production. We continue with the monitoring of this region. The comparison between those two sets of results is presented.
Abstract: This study proposes a materials procurement contracts
model to which the zero-cost collar option is applied for heading price
fluctuation risks in construction.The material contract model based on
the collar option that consists of the call option striking zone of the
construction company(the buyer) following the materials price
increase andthe put option striking zone of the material vendor(the
supplier) following a materials price decrease. This study first
determined the call option strike price Xc of the construction company
by a simple approach: it uses the predicted profit at the project starting
point and then determines the strike price of put option Xp that has an
identical option value, which completes the zero-cost material
contract.The analysis results indicate that the cost saving of the
construction company increased as Xc decreased. This was because the
critical level of the steel materials price increasewas set at a low level.
However, as Xc decreased, Xpof a put option that had an identical
option value gradually increased. Cost saving increased as Xc
decreased. However, as Xp gradually increased, the risk of loss from a
construction company increased as the steel materials price decreased.
Meanwhile, cost saving did not occur for the construction company,
because of volatility. This result originated in the zero-cost features of
the two-way contract of the collar option. In the case of the regular
one-way option, the transaction cost had to be subtracted from the cost
saving. The transaction cost originated from an option value that
fluctuated with the volatility. That is, the cost saving of the one-way
option was affected by the volatility. Meanwhile, even though the
collar option with zero transaction cost cut the connection between
volatility and cost saving, there was a risk of exercising the put option.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a hardware and software
design method for automotive Electronic Control Units (ECU)
considering the functional safety. The proposed ECU is considered for
the application to Electro-Mechanical Actuator systems and the
validity of the design method is shown by the application to the
Electro-Mechanical Brake (EMB) control system which is used as a
brake actuator in Brake-By-Wire (BBW) systems. The importance of a
functional safety-based design approach to EMB ECU design has been
emphasized because of its safety-critical functions, which are executed
with the aid of many electric actuators, sensors, and application
software. Based on hazard analysis and risk assessment according to
ISO26262, the EMB system should be ASIL-D-compliant, the highest
ASIL level. To this end, an external signature watchdog and an
Infineon 32-bit microcontroller TriCore are used to reduce risks
considering common-cause hardware failure. Moreover, a software
design method is introduced for implementing functional
safety-oriented monitoring functions based on an asymmetric dual
core architecture considering redundancy and diversity. The validity
of the proposed ECU design approach is verified by using the EMB
Hardware-In-the-Loop (HILS) system, which consists of the EMB
assembly, actuator ECU, a host PC, and a few debugging devices.
Furthermore, it is shown that the existing sensor fault tolerant control
system can be used more effectively for mitigating the effects of
hardware and software faults by applying the proposed ECU design
method.
Abstract: In this paper, a new approach for target recognition based on the Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm of Huang etal. [11] and the energy tracking operator of Teager [13]-[14] is introduced. The conjunction of these two methods is called Teager-Huang analysis. This approach is well suited for nonstationary signals analysis. The impulse response (IR) of target is first band pass filtered into subsignals (components) called Intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) with well defined Instantaneous frequency (IF) and Instantaneous amplitude (IA). Each IMF is a zero-mean AM-FM component. In second step, the energy of each IMF is tracked using the Teager energy operator (TEO). IF and IA, useful to describe the time-varying characteristics of the signal, are estimated using the Energy separation algorithm (ESA) algorithm of Maragos et al .[16]-[17]. In third step, a set of features such as skewness and kurtosis are extracted from the IF, IA and IMF energy functions. The Teager-Huang analysis is tested on set of synthetic IRs of Sonar targets with different physical characteristics (density, velocity, shape,? ). PCA is first applied to features to discriminate between manufactured and natural targets. The manufactured patterns are classified into spheres and cylinders. One hundred percent of correct recognition is achieved with twenty three echoes where sixteen IRs, used for training, are free noise and seven IRs, used for testing phase, are corrupted with white Gaussian noise.
Abstract: In this work, we are interested in developing a speech denoising tool by using a discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT). This speech denoising tool will be employed for applications of recognition, coding and synthesis. For noise reduction, instead of applying the classical thresholding technique, some wavelet packet nodes are set to zero and the others are thresholded. To estimate the non stationary noise level, we employ the spectral entropy. A comparison of our proposed technique to classical denoising methods based on thresholding and spectral subtraction is made in order to evaluate our approach. The experimental implementation uses speech signals corrupted by two sorts of noise, white and Volvo noises. The obtained results from listening tests show that our proposed technique is better than spectral subtraction. The obtained results from SNR computation show the superiority of our technique when compared to the classical thresholding method using the modified hard thresholding function based on u-law algorithm.
Abstract: The current education system in India is adept in
equipping and assessing the scholastic development of children.
However, there is an immediate need to strengthen co-scholastic
areas like life-skills, values and attitudes to equip students to face real
life challenges. Audio-visual technology and their respective media
can make a significant contribution to a value based learning
curriculum. Thus, co-scholastic skills need to be effectively nurtured
by a medium that is entertaining and impactful. Films in general have
a tremendous impact in our society. Films with a positive message
make a formidable learning experience that can influence and inspire
generations of learners. Leveraging on this powerful medium,
EduMedia India Pvt. Ltd. has introduced School Cinema a well
researched film-based learning module supported by a fun and
exciting workbook, designed to introduce and reaffirm life-skills and
values to children, thereby having a positive influence on their
attitudes.
Abstract: It is important problems to increase the detection rates
and reduce false positive rates in Intrusion Detection System (IDS).
Although preventative techniques such as access control and
authentication attempt to prevent intruders, these can fail, and as a
second line of defence, intrusion detection has been introduced. Rare
events are events that occur very infrequently, detection of rare
events is a common problem in many domains. In this paper we
propose an intrusion detection method that combines Rough set and
Fuzzy Clustering. Rough set has to decrease the amount of data and
get rid of redundancy. Fuzzy c-means clustering allow objects to
belong to several clusters simultaneously, with different degrees of
membership. Our approach allows us to recognize not only known
attacks but also to detect suspicious activity that may be the result of
a new, unknown attack. The experimental results on Knowledge
Discovery and Data Mining-(KDDCup 1999) Dataset show that the
method is efficient and practical for intrusion detection systems.
Abstract: The presented article deals with the description of a
numerical model of a corridor at a Central Interim Spent Fuel Storage
Facility (hereinafter CISFSF). The model takes into account the
effect of air flows on the temperature of stored waste. The
computational model was implemented in the ANSYS/CFX
programming environment in the form of a CFD task solution, which
was compared with an approximate analytical calculation. The article
includes a categorization of the individual alternatives for the
ventilation of such underground systems. The aim was to evaluate a
ventilation system for a CISFSF with regard to its stability and
capacity to provide sufficient ventilation for the removal of heat
produced by stored casks with spent nuclear fuel.
Abstract: The study of interaction among the grain, moisture,
and the surrounding space (air) is key to understanding the graindrying
process. In Iran, rice (mostly Indica type) is dried by flat
bed type dryer until the final MC reaches to 6 to 8%. The
experiments were conducted to examine the effect of application of
discharge fan with different heights of paddy on the drying
efficiency. Experiments were designed based on two different
configurations of the drying methods; with and without discharge
fan with three different heights of paddy including; 5, 10, and 15
cm. The humid heated air will be going out immediately by the
suction of discharge fan. The drying time is established upon the
average final MC to achieve about 8%. To save energy and reduce
the drying time, the distribution of temperature between layers
should be fast and uniform with minimum difference; otherwise
the difference of MC gradient between layers will be high and will
induce grain breakage. The difference of final MC between layers
in the two methods was 48-73%. The steady state of temperature
between the two methods has saved time in the range of 10-20%,
and the efficiency of temperature distribution increased 17-26% by
the use of discharge fan.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the flow unsteady behavior for moving plug in convergent-divergent variable thrust nozzle. Compressible axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations are used to study this physical phenomenon. Different velocities are set for plug to investigate the effect of plug movement on flow unsteadiness. Variation of mass flow rate and thrust are compared under two conditions: First, the plug is placed at different positions and flow is simulated to reach the steady state (quasi steady simulation) and second, the plug is moved with assigned velocity and flow simulation is coupled with plug movement (unsteady simulation). If plug speed is high enough and its movement time scale is at the same order of the flow time scale, variation of the mass flow rate and thrust level versus plug position demonstrate a vital discrepancy under the quasi steady and unsteady conditions. This phenomenon should be considered especially from response time viewpoints in thrusters design.
Abstract: The CMLP building was developed to be a model for
sustainability with strategies to reduce water, energy and pollution,
and to provide a healthy environment for the building occupants. The
aim of this paper is to investigate the environmental effects of energy
used by this building. A LCA (life cycle analysis) was led to measure
the real environmental effects produced by the use of energy. The
impact categories most affected by the energy use were found to be
the human health effects, as well as ecotoxicity. Natural gas
extraction, uranium milling for nuclear energy production, and the
blasting for mining and infrastructure construction are the processes
contributing the most to emissions in the human health effect. Data
comparing LCA results of CMLP building with a conventional
building results showed that energy used by the CMLP building has
less damage for the environment and human health than a
conventional building.
Abstract: In the present paper some recommendations for the
use of software package “Mathematica" in a basic numerical analysis
course are presented. The methods which are covered in the course
include solution of systems of linear equations, nonlinear equations
and systems of nonlinear equations, numerical integration,
interpolation and solution of ordinary differential equations. A set of
individual assignments developed for the course covering all the
topics is discussed in detail.
Abstract: In recent years, the use of vector variance as a
measure of multivariate variability has received much attention in
wide range of statistics. This paper deals with a more economic
measure of multivariate variability, defined as vector variance minus
all duplication elements. For high dimensional data, this will increase
the computational efficiency almost 50 % compared to the original
vector variance. Its sampling distribution will be investigated to make
its applications possible.
Abstract: Modular multiplication is the basic operation
in most public key cryptosystems, such as RSA, DSA, ECC,
and DH key exchange. Unfortunately, very large operands
(in order of 1024 or 2048 bits) must be used to provide
sufficient security strength. The use of such big numbers
dramatically slows down the whole cipher system, especially
when running on embedded processors.
So far, customized hardware accelerators - developed on
FPGAs or ASICs - were the best choice for accelerating
modular multiplication in embedded environments. On the
other hand, many algorithms have been developed to speed
up such operations. Examples are the Montgomery modular
multiplication and the interleaved modular multiplication
algorithms. Combining both customized hardware with
an efficient algorithm is expected to provide a much faster
cipher system.
This paper introduces an enhanced architecture for computing
the modular multiplication of two large numbers X
and Y modulo a given modulus M. The proposed design is
compared with three previous architectures depending on
carry save adders and look up tables. Look up tables should
be loaded with a set of pre-computed values. Our proposed
architecture uses the same carry save addition, but replaces
both look up tables and pre-computations with an enhanced
version of sign detection techniques. The proposed architecture
supports higher frequencies than other architectures.
It also has a better overall absolute time for a single operation.
Abstract: The city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, provides a number of examples of how a growing city can integrate urban planning and water planning to achieve sustainable urban development, environmental protection, liveability and integrated water management outcomes, and move towards becoming a “Water Sensitive City". Three examples are provided - the development at Botanic Ridge, where a 318 hectare residential development is being planned and where integrated water management options are being implemented using a “triple bottom line" sustainability investment approach; the Toolern development, which will capture and reuse stormwater and recycled water to greatly reduce the suburb-s demand for potable water, and the development at Kalkallo where a 1,200 hectare industrial precinct development is planned which will merge design of the development's water supply, sewerage services and stormwater system. The Paper argues that an integrated urban planning and water planning approach is fundamental to creating liveable, vibrant communities which meet social and financial needs while being in harmony with the local environment. Further work is required on developing investment frameworks and risk analysis frameworks to ensure that all possible solutions can be assessed equally.