Abstract: The importance of good requirements engineering is well documented. Agile practices, promoting collaboration and communications, facilitate the elicitation and management of volatile requirements. However, current Agile practices work in a well-defined environment. It is necessary to have a co-located customer. With distributed development it is not always possible to realize this co-location. In this environment a suitable process, possibly supported by tools, is required to support changing requirements. This paper introduces the issues of concern when managing requirements in a distributed environment and describes work done at the Software Technology Research Centre as part of the NOMAD project.
Abstract: In this paper, penalized power-divergence test statistics have been defined and their exact size properties to test a nested sequence of log-linear models have been compared with ordinary power-divergence test statistics for various penalization, λ and main effect values. Since the ordinary and penalized power-divergence test statistics have the same asymptotic distribution, comparisons have been only made for small and moderate samples. Three-way contingency tables distributed according to a multinomial distribution have been considered. Simulation results reveal that penalized power-divergence test statistics perform much better than their ordinary counterparts.
Abstract: A passive system "Qanat" is collection of some
underground wells. A mother-well was dug in a place far from the
city where they could reach to the water table maybe 100 meters
underground, they dug other wells to direct water toward the city,
with minimum possible gradient. Using the slope of the earth they
could bring water close to the surface in the city. The source of water
or the appearance of Qanat, land slope and the ownership lines are
the important and effective factors in the formation of routes and the
segment division of lands to the extent that making use of Qanat as
the techniques of extracting underground waters creates a channel of
routes with an organic order and hierarchy coinciding the slope of
land and it also guides the Qanat waters in the tradition texture of salt
desert and border provinces of it. Qanats are excavated in a specified
distinction from each other. The quantity of water provided by
Qanats depends on the kind of land, distance from mountain,
geographical situation of them and the rate of water supply from the
underground land. The rate of underground waters, possibility of
Qanat excavation, number of Qanats and rate of their water supply
from one hand and the quantity of cultivable fertile lands from the
other hand are the important natural factors making the size of cities.
In the same manner the cities with several Qanats have multi central
textures. The location of cities is in direct relation with land quality,
soil fertility and possibility of using underground water by excavating
Qanats. Observing the allowable distance for Qanat watering is a
determining factor for distance between villages and cities.
Topography, land slope, soil quality, watering system, ownership,
kind of cultivation, etc. are the effective factors in directing Qanats
for excavation and guiding water toward the cultivable lands and it
also causes the formation of different textures in land division of
farming provinces. Several divisions such as orderly and wide, inorderly,
thin and long, comb like, etc. are the introduction to organic
order. And at the same time they are complete coincidence with
environmental conditions in the typical development of ecological
architecture and planning in the traditional cities and settlements
order.
Abstract: This study aims to segment objects using the K-means
algorithm for texture features. Firstly, the algorithm transforms color
images into gray images. This paper describes a novel technique for
the extraction of texture features in an image. Then, in a group of
similar features, objects and backgrounds are differentiated by using
the K-means algorithm. Finally, this paper proposes a new object
segmentation algorithm using the morphological technique. The
experiments described include the segmentation of single and multiple
objects featured in this paper. The region of an object can be
accurately segmented out. The results can help to perform image
retrieval and analyze features of an object, as are shown in this paper.
Abstract: Recent developments in Soft computing techniques,
power electronic switches and low-cost computational hardware have
made it possible to design and implement sophisticated control
strategies for sensorless speed control of AC motor drives. Such an
attempt has been made in this work, for Sensorless Speed Control of
Induction Motor (IM) by means of Direct Torque Fuzzy Control
(DTFC), PI-type fuzzy speed regulator and MRAS speed estimator
strategy, which is absolutely nonlinear in its nature. Direct torque
control is known to produce quick and robust response in AC drive
system. However, during steady state, torque, flux and current ripple
occurs. So, the performance of conventional DTC with PI speed
regulator can be improved by implementing fuzzy logic techniques.
Certain important issues in design including the space vector
modulated (SVM) 3-Ф voltage source inverter, DTFC design,
generation of reference torque using PI-type fuzzy speed regulator
and sensor less speed estimator have been resolved. The proposed
scheme is validated through extensive numerical simulations on
MATLAB. The simulated results indicate the sensor less speed
control of IM with DTFC and PI-type fuzzy speed regulator provides
satisfactory high dynamic and static performance compare to
conventional DTC with PI speed regulator.
Abstract: The coastal sediments of West Port of Malaysia was monitored from Nov. 2009 to Oct. 2010 to assess spatial distribution of heavy metals As, Cu, Cd, Cr, Hg, Ni, Zn and Pb. Sediment samples were collected from 10 stations in dry and rainy season in West Port. The range concentrations measured (Mg/g dry weight ) were from 23.4 to 98.3 for Zn, 22.3 to 80 for Pb, 7.4 to 27.6 Cu, 0.244 to 3.53 for Cd, 7.2 to 22.2 for Ni, 20.2 to 162 for As, 0.11 to 0.409 for Hg and 11.5 to 61.5 for Cr. The geochemical indexes used in this study were Geoaccumulation (Igeo), Contamination Factor (CF) and Pollution Load Index (PLI); these indexes were used to evaluate the levels of sediment contaminations. The results of these indexes show that, the status of West Port sediment quality are moderately polluted by heavy metals except in arsenic which shows the high level of pollution.
Abstract: Ranked set sampling (RSS) was first suggested to increase the efficiency of the population mean. It has been shown that this method is highly beneficial to the estimation based on simple random sampling (SRS). There has been considerable development and many modifications were done on this method. When a concomitant variable is available, ratio estimation based on ranked set sampling was proposed. This ratio estimator is more efficient than that based on SRS. In this paper some ratio type estimators of the population mean based on RSS are suggested. These estimators are found to be more efficient than the estimators of similar form using simple random sample.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to discuss the effect of the
intervention of exercise behavior change plan for high school students
on study subjects- social and psychological factors and exercise
stages. This research uses the transtheoretical model as the research
framework. One experiment group and one control group were used in
a quasi-experimental design research. The experimental group
accepted health-related physical fitness course and the traditional
course; the control group accepted traditional physical education
course. There is a significant difference before and after the
intervention in the experimental group. Karl-s test shows the
experimental group gained a better improvement than that in the
control group. The Analysis of Covariance had shown the exercise
stages (F=7.62, p
Abstract: The present paper represent the efforts undertaken for
the development of an semi-automatic robot that may be used for
various post-disaster rescue operation planning and their subsequent
execution using one-way communication of video and data from the
robot to the controller and controller to the robot respectively.
Wireless communication has been used for the purpose so that the
robot may access the unapproachable places easily without any
difficulties. It is expected that the information obtained from the
robot would be of definite help to the rescue team for better planning
and execution of their operations.
Abstract: Power consumption of nodes in ad hoc networks is a
critical issue as they predominantly operate on batteries. In order to
improve the lifetime of an ad hoc network, all the nodes must be
utilized evenly and the power required for connections must be
minimized. In this project a link layer algorithm known as Power
Aware medium Access Control (PAMAC) protocol is proposed
which enables the network layer to select a route with minimum total
power requirement among the possible routes between a source and a
destination provided all nodes in the routes have battery capacity
above a threshold. When the battery capacity goes below a
predefined threshold, routes going through these nodes will be
avoided and these nodes will act only as source and destination.
Further, the first few nodes whose battery power drained to the set
threshold value are pushed to the exterior part of the network and the
nodes in the exterior are brought to the interior. Since less total
power is required to forward packets for each connection. The
network layer protocol AOMDV is basically an extension to the
AODV routing protocol. AOMDV is designed to form multiple
routes to the destination and it also avoid the loop formation so that it
reduces the unnecessary congestion to the channel. In this project, the
performance of AOMDV is evaluated using PAMAC as a MAC layer
protocol and the average power consumption, throughput and
average end to end delay of the network are calculated and the results
are compared with that of the other network layer protocol AODV.
Abstract: Simultaneous effects of temperature, immersion time, salt concentration, sucrose concentration, pressure and convective dryer temperature on the combined osmotic dehydration - convective drying of edible button mushrooms were investigated. Experiments were designed according to Central Composite Design with six factors each at five different levels. Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to determine the optimum processing conditions that yield maximum water loss and rehydration ratio and minimum solid gain and shrinkage in osmotic-convective drying of edible button mushrooms. Applying surfaces profiler and contour plots optimum operation conditions were found to be temperature of 39 °C, immersion time of 164 min, salt concentration of 14%, sucrose concentration of 53%, pressure of 600 mbar and drying temperature of 40 °C. At these optimum conditions, water loss, solid gain, rehydration ratio and shrinkage were found to be 63.38 (g/100 g initial sample), 3.17 (g/100 g initial sample), 2.26 and 7.15%, respectively.
Abstract: Sensor networks are often deployed in unattended
environments, thus leaving these networks vulnerable to false data
injection attacks in which an adversary injects forged reports into the
network through compromised nodes, with the goal of deceiving the
base station or depleting the resources of forwarding nodes. Several
research solutions have been recently proposed to detect and drop such
forged reports during the forwarding process. Each design can provide
the equivalent resilience in terms of node compromising. However,
their energy consumption characteristics differ from each other. Thus,
employing only a single filtering scheme for a network is not a
recommendable strategy in terms of energy saving. It's very important
the threshold determination for message authentication to identify. We
propose the recursive contract net protocols which less energy level of
terminal node in wireless sensor network.
Abstract: Using Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBN) to model genetic regulatory networks from gene expression data is one of the major paradigms for inferring the interactions among genes. Averaging a collection of models for predicting network is desired, rather than relying on a single high scoring model. In this paper, two kinds of model searching approaches are compared, which are Greedy hill-climbing Search with Restarts (GSR) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The GSR is preferred in many papers, but there is no such comparison study about which one is better for DBN models. Different types of experiments have been carried out to try to give a benchmark test to these approaches. Our experimental results demonstrated that on average the MCMC methods outperform the GSR in accuracy of predicted network, and having the comparable performance in time efficiency. By proposing the different variations of MCMC and employing simulated annealing strategy, the MCMC methods become more efficient and stable. Apart from comparisons between these approaches, another objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using DBN modeling approaches for inferring gene networks from few snapshots of high dimensional gene profiles. Through synthetic data experiments as well as systematic data experiments, the experimental results revealed how the performances of these approaches can be influenced as the target gene network varies in the network size, data size, as well as system complexity.
Abstract: In rail vehicles, air springs are very important isolating component, which guarantee good ride comfort for passengers during their trip. In the most new rail–vehicle models, developed by researchers, the thermo–dynamical effects of air springs are ignored and secondary suspension is modeled by simple springs and dampers. As the performance of suspension components have significant effects on rail–vehicle dynamics and ride comfort of passengers, a complete nonlinear thermo–dynamical air spring model, which is a combination of two different models, is introduced. Result from field test shows remarkable agreement between proposed model and experimental data. Effects of air suspension parameters on the system performances are investigated here and then these parameters are tuned to minimize Sperling ride comfort index during the trip. Results showed that by modification of air suspension parameters, passengers comfort is improved and ride comfort index is reduced about 10%.
Abstract: This paper suggests an algorithm for the evaluation
and selection of suppliers. At the beginning, all the needed materials and services used by the organization were identified and categorized
with regard to their nature by ABC method. Afterwards, in order to reduce risk factors and maximize the organization's profit, purchase strategies were determined. Then, appropriate criteria were identified for primary evaluation of suppliers applying to the organization. The output of this stage was a list of suppliers qualified by the organization to participate in its tenders. Subsequently, considering a material in particular, appropriate criteria on the ordering of the
mentioned material were determined, taking into account the particular materials' specifications as well as the organization's needs. Finally, for the purpose of validation and verification of the
proposed model, it was applied to Mobarakeh Steel Company (MSC), the qualified suppliers of this Company are ranked by the means of a Hierarchical Fuzzy TOPSIS method. The obtained results
show that the proposed algorithm is quite effective, efficient and easy to apply.
Abstract: All over the world, including the Middle and East
European countries, sustainable tillage and sowing technologies are
applied increasingly broadly with a view to optimising soil resources,
mitigating soil degradation processes, saving energy resources,
preserving biological diversity, etc. As a result, altered conditions of
tillage and sowing technological processes are faced inevitably. The
purpose of this study is to determine the seedbed topsoil hardness
when using a combined sowing coulter in different sustainable tillage
technologies. The research involved a combined coulter consisting
of two dissected blade discs and a shoe coulter. In order to determine
soil hardness at the seedbed area, a multipenetrometer was used. It
was found by experimental studies that in loosened soil, a combined
sowing coulter equally suppresses the furrow bottom, walls and soil
near the furrow; therefore, here, soil hardness was similar at all
researched depths and no significant differences were established. In
loosened and compacted (double-rolled) soil, the impact of a
combined coulter on the hardness of seedbed soil surface was more
considerable at a depth of 2 mm. Soil hardness at the furrow bottom
and walls to a distance of up to 26 mm was 1.1 MPa. At a depth of 10
mm, the greatest hardness was established at the furrow bottom. In
loosened and heavily compacted (rolled for 6 times) soil, at a depth
of 2 and 10 mm a combined coulter most of all compacted the furrow
bottom, which has a hardness of 1.8 MPa. At a depth of 20 mm, soil
hardness within the whole investigated area varied insignificantly and
fluctuated by around 2.0 MPa. The hardness of furrow walls and soil
near the furrow was by approximately 1.0 MPa lower than that at the
furrow bottom
Abstract: The quality and shelf life of foods of containing lipids (fats and oils) significantly reduces due to rancidity.Applications of natural antioxidants are one of the most effective manners to prevent the oxidation of oils and lipids. The antioxidant properties of juice extracted from barberry fruit (Berberris vulgaris.L) using maceration and SWE (10 bars and 120 - 180°C) methods were investigated and compared with conventional method. The amount of phenolic compound and reduction power of all samples were determined and the data were statistically analyzed using multifactor design. The results showed that the total amount of phenolic compound increased with increasing of pressure and temprature from 1861.9 to 2439.1 (mg Gallic acid /100gr Dry matter). The ability of reduction power of SWE obtained antioxidant extract compared with BHA (synthetic antioxidant) and ascorbic acid (natural antioxidant). There were significant differences among reduction power of extracts and there were remarkable difference with BHA and Ascorbic acid (P
Abstract: The compression-absorption heat pump (C-A HP), one
of the promising heat recovery equipments that make process hot
water using low temperature heat of wastewater, was evaluated by
computer simulation. A simulation program was developed based on
the continuity and the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Both
the absorber and desorber were modeled using UA-LMTD method. In
order to prevent an unfeasible temperature profile and to reduce
calculation errors from the curved temperature profile of a mixture,
heat loads were divided into lots of segments. A single-stage
compressor was considered. A compressor cooling load was also
taken into account. An isentropic efficiency was computed from the
map data. Simulation conditions were given based on the system
consisting of ordinarily designed components. The simulation results
show that most of the total entropy generation occurs during the
compression and cooling process, thus suggesting the possibility that
system performance can be enhanced if a rectifier is introduced.
Abstract: This article presents the developments of efficient
algorithms for tablet copies comparison. Image recognition has
specialized use in digital systems such as medical imaging,
computer vision, defense, communication etc. Comparison between
two images that look indistinguishable is a formidable task. Two
images taken from different sources might look identical but due to
different digitizing properties they are not. Whereas small variation
in image information such as cropping, rotation, and slight
photometric alteration are unsuitable for based matching
techniques. In this paper we introduce different matching
algorithms designed to facilitate, for art centers, identifying real
painting images from fake ones. Different vision algorithms for
local image features are implemented using MATLAB. In this
framework a Table Comparison Computer Tool “TCCT" is
designed to facilitate our research. The TCCT is a Graphical Unit
Interface (GUI) tool used to identify images by its shapes and
objects. Parameter of vision system is fully accessible to user
through this graphical unit interface. And then for matching, it
applies different description technique that can identify exact
figures of objects.
Abstract: Medical Tourism is a new development in Taiwan
recently. The willingness and barriers of potential tourists from
China to participate medical tourism are studied. A questionnaire
survey is conducted and the SPSS software is used to analyze data.
The results show that under one fifth of respondents express full
medical tourism participation willingness. Among travel barriers
toward medical tourism, “insufficient information of medical tourism
trip", “not enough time", “no companion", “worrying about
unsatisfied itinerary." are perceived the most important barriers.