Abstract: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has emerged as a cost-effective transport system for urban mobility. However its ability to stimulate land development remains largely unexplored. The study makes use of qualitative (interview method) and quantitative analysis (questionnaire survey and longitudinal analysis of property data) to investigate land development impact resulting from BRT in Beijing, China. The empirical analysis suggests that BRT has a positive impact on the residential and commercial property attractiveness along the busway corridor. The statistical analysis suggests that accessibility advantage conferred by BRT is capitalized into higher property price. The average price of apartments adjacent to a BRT station has gained a relatively faster increase than those not served by the BRT system. The capitalization effect mostly occurs after the full operation of BRT, and is more evident over time and particularly observed in areas which previously lack alternative mobility opportunity.
Abstract: Chikungunya virus (CHICKV) is an arboviruses belonging to family Tagoviridae and is transmitted to human through by mosquito (Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus) bite. A large outbreak of chikungunya has been reported in India between 2006 and 2007, along with several other countries from South-East Asia and for the first time in Europe. It was for the first time that the CHICKV outbreak has been reported with mortality from Reunion Island and increased mortality from Asian countries. CHICKV affects all age groups, and currently there are no specific drugs or vaccine to cure the disease. The need of antiviral agents for the treatment of CHICKV infection and the success of virtual screening against many therapeutically valuable targets led us to carry out the structure based drug design against Chikungunya nSP2 protease (PDB: 3TRK). Highthroughput virtual screening of publicly available databases, ZINC12 and BindingDB, has been carried out using the Openeye tools and Schrodinger LLC software packages. Openeye Filter program has been used to filter the database and the filtered outputs were docked using HTVS protocol implemented in GLIDE package of Schrodinger LLC. The top HITS were further used for enriching the similar molecules from the database through vROCS; a shape based screening protocol implemented in Openeye. The approach adopted has provided different scaffolds as HITS against CHICKV protease. Three scaffolds: Indole, Pyrazole and Sulphone derivatives were selected based on the docking score and synthetic feasibility. Derivatives of Pyrazole were synthesized and submitted for antiviral screening against CHICKV.
Abstract: Pre-germinated parboiled brown rice or Khao hang (in Thai) is paddy which undergoing the processes of soaking, steaming, drying and dehusking to obtain the edible form for consumption. The objectives of this research were to study the kinetic of pre-germinated parboiled brown rice drying using fluidization technique and to study the properties of pre-germinated parboiled brown rice after drying. The dryings were performed at the different temperatures of 110, 120 and 130 oC at the bed depth of 2 cm with the air velocity of 1.98 m/s. The results found that the higher drying temperature led to the faster moisture reduction. After drying until the moisture content of pre-germinated parboiled brown rice was lower than 14%wet basis, samples were taken to determine various qualities such as percentage of head rice and L* a* b* color values. The shade drying was used as a control. The results found that the higher drying temperature resulted in the decrease of head rice percentage. For the color assessment, the trend of L* and a* values was increased with the drying temperature, while the b* value was not significantly difference (p › 0.05) by drying temperatures. However, the b value of drying by fluidized bed dryer was higher than the control.
Abstract: In Geographic Information System, one of the sources
of obtaining needed geographic data is digitizing analog maps and
evaluation of aerial and satellite photos. In this study, a method will
be discussed which can be used to extract vectorial features and
creating vectorized drawing files for aerial photos. At the same time
a software developed for these purpose. Converting from raster to
vector is also known as vectorization and it is the most important step
when creating vectorized drawing files. In the developed algorithm,
first of all preprocessing on the aerial photo is done. These are;
converting to grayscale if necessary, reducing noise, applying some
filters and determining the edge of the objects etc. After these steps,
every pixel which constitutes the photo are followed from upper left
to right bottom by examining its neighborhood relationship and one
pixel wide lines or polylines obtained. The obtained lines have to be
erased for preventing confusion while continuing vectorization
because if not erased they can be perceived as new line, but if erased
it can cause discontinuity in vector drawing so the image converted
from 2 bit to 8 bit and the detected pixels are expressed as a different
bit. In conclusion, the aerial photo can be converted to vector form
which includes lines and polylines and can be opened in any CAD
application.
Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate the adaptive
least-mean-square (LMS) filter modeling using SystemC. SystemC is
a modeling language that allows designer to model both hardware and
software component and makes it possible to design from high level
system of abstraction to low level system of abstraction. We produced
five adaptive least-mean-square filter models that are classed as five
abstraction levels using SystemC proceeding from the abstract model
to the more concrete model.
Abstract: This paper proposes a low-voltage and low-power
fully integrated digitally tuned continuous-time channel selection
filter for WiMAX applications. A 5th-order elliptic low-pass filter is
realized in a Gm-C topology. The bandwidth of the fully differential
filter is reconfigurable from 2.5MHz to 20MHz (8x) for different
requirements in WiMAX applications. The filter is simulated in a
standard 90nm CMOS process. Simulation results show the THD
(@Vout =100mVpp) is less than -66dB. The in-band ripple of the
filter is about 0.15dB. The filter consumes 1.5mW from a supply
voltage of 0.9V.
Abstract: For decades, the defense business has been plagued by
not having a reliable, deterministic method to know when the Kalman
filter solution for passive ranging application is reliable for use by the
fighter pilot. This has made it hard to accurately assess when the
ranging solution can be used for situation awareness and weapons
use. To date, we have used ad hoc rules-of-thumb to assess when we
think the estimate of the Kalman filter standard deviation on range is
reliable. A reliable algorithm has been developed at BAE Systems
Electronics & Integrated Solutions that monitors the Kalman gain
matrix elements – and a patent is pending. The “settling" of the gain
matrix elements relates directly to when we can assess the time when
the passive ranging solution is within the 10 percent-of-truth value.
The focus of the paper is on surface-based passive ranging – but the
method is applicable to airborne targets as well.
Abstract: In this paper, a new model order reduction
phenomenon is introduced at the design stage of linear phase digital
IIR filter. The complexity of a system can be reduced by adopting the
model order reduction method in their design. In this paper a mixed
method of model order reduction is proposed for linear IIR filter. The
proposed method employs the advantages of factor division technique
to derive the reduced order denominator polynomial and the reduced
order numerator is obtained based on the resultant denominator
polynomial. The order reduction technique is used to reduce the delay
units at the design stage of IIR filter. The validity of the proposed
method is illustrated with design example in frequency domain and
stability is also examined with help of nyquist plot.
Abstract: Financial forecasting using machine learning techniques has received great efforts in the last decide . In this ongoing work, we show how machine learning of graphical models will be able to infer a visualized causal interactions between different banks in the Saudi equities market. One important discovery from such learned causal graphs is how companies influence each other and to what extend. In this work, a set of graphical models named Gaussian graphical models with developed ensemble penalized feature selection methods that combine ; filtering method, wrapper method and a regularizer will be shown. A comparison between these different developed ensemble combinations will also be shown. The best ensemble method will be used to infer the causal relationships between banks in Saudi equities market.
Abstract: This paper introduces the effective speckle reduction of
synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images using inner product spaces in
undecimated wavelet domain. There are two major areas in projection
onto span algorithm where improvement can be made. First is the use
of undecimated wavelet transformation instead of discrete wavelet
transformation. And second area is the use of smoothing filter namely
directional smoothing filter which is an additional step. Proposed
method does not need any noise estimation and thresholding
technique. More over proposed method gives good results on both
single polarimetric and fully polarimetric SAR images.
Abstract: The availability of broadband internet and increased
access to computers has been instrumental in the rise of internet
literacy in Malaysia. This development has led to the adoption of
online shopping by many Malaysians. On another note, the
Government has supported the development and production of local
herbal products. This has resulted in an increase in the production and
diversity of products by SMEs. The purpose of this study is to
evaluate the influence of the Malaysian demographic factors and
selected attitudinal characteristics in relation to the online purchasing
of herbal products. In total, 1054 internet users were interviewed
online and Chi-square analysis was used to determine the relationship
between demographic variables and different aspects of online
shopping for herbal products. The overall results show that the
demographic variables such as age, gender, education level, income
and ethnicity were significant when considering the online shopping
antecedents of trust, quality of herbal products, perceived risks and
perceived benefits.
Abstract: Within the last years, several technologies have been developed to help building e-learning portals. Most of them follow approaches that deliver a vast amount of functionalities, suitable for class-like learning. The SuGI project, as part of the D-Grid (funded by the BMBF), targets on delivering a highly scalable and sustainable learning solution to provide materials (e.g. learning modules, training systems, webcasts, tutorials, etc.) containing knowledge about Grid computing to the D-Grid community. In this article, the process of the development of an e-learning portal focused on the requirements of this special user group is described. Furthermore, it deals with the conceptual and technical design of an e-learning portal, addressing the special needs of heterogeneous target groups. The main focus lies on the quality management of the software development process, Web templates for uploading new contents, the rich search and filter functionalities which will be described from a conceptual as well as a technical point of view. Specifically, it points out best practices as well as concepts to provide a sustainable solution to a relatively unknown and highly heterogeneous community.
Abstract: Field experiments were conducted at Annamalai University Experimental Farm, Department of Agronomy; to device suitable weed control measures for direct seeded puddled rice and to study the effect of the weed control measures on the soil microbial population. The treatments comprised of incorporation of pressmud @ 6.25 t ha-1 and application of herbicide butachlor @1.5 kg a. i. ha- 1 with and without safener 4 days after sowing (DAS), 8 DAS alone and also in conjunction with hand weeding at 30 DAS. Hand weeding twice and a weedy check were also maintained. At maximum tillering stage, the population of bacteria was significantly reduced by butachlor application. The injury to microbes caused by herbicide disappeared with the advancement of crop's age and at flowering stage of crop, there was no significant difference among the treatments. The fungal and actinomycetes population remained unaltered by weed control treatments at both the stages of observation.
Abstract: To investigate the behavior of sheet metals during
forming tailor welded blanks (TWB) of various thickness made via
Co2 Laser welding are under consideration. These blanks are formed
used two different forming methods of rubber as well as the
conventional punch and die methods. The main research objective is
the effects of using a rubber die instead of a solid one the
displacement of the weld line and the press force needed for forming.
Specimens with thicknesses of 0.5, 0.6, 0.8 and 1mm are subjected to
Erichsen two dimensional tests and the resulted force for each case
are compared. This is followed by a theoretical and numerical study
of press force and weld line displacement. It is concluded that using
rubber pad forming (RPF) causes a reduction in weld line
displacement and an increase in the press force.
Abstract: A major challenge in biomaterials research is the
regulation of protein adsorption which is a key factor for controlling
the subsequent cell adhesion at implant surfaces. The aim of the
present study was to control the adsorption of fibronectin (FN) and
the attachment of MG-63 osteoblasts with an electronic
nanostructure. Shallow doping line lattices with a period of 260 nm
were produced for this purpose by implantation of phosphorous in
silicon wafers. Protein coverage was determined after incubating the
substrate with FN by means of an immunostaining procedure and the
measurement of the fluorescence intensity with a TECAN analyzer.
We observed an increased amount of adsorbed FN on the
nanostructure compared to control substrates. MG-63 osteoblasts
were cultivated for 24h on FN-incubated substrates and their
morphology was assessed by SEM. Preferred orientation and
elongation of the cells in direction of the doping lattice lines was
observed on FN-coated nanostructures.
Abstract: Polynomial maps offer analytical properties used to obtain better performances in the scope of chaos synchronization under noisy channels. This paper presents a new method to simplify equations of the Exact Polynomial Kalman Filter (ExPKF) given in [1]. This faster algorithm is compared to other estimators showing that performances of all considered observers vanish rapidly with the channel noise making application of chaos synchronization intractable. Simulation of ExPKF shows that saturation drawn on the emitter to keep it stable impacts badly performances for low channel noise. Then we propose a particle filter that outperforms all other Kalman structured observers in the case of noisy channels.
Abstract: Acoustical properties of speech have been shown to
be related to mental states of speaker with symptoms: depression
and remission. This paper describes way to address the issue of
distinguishing depressed patients from remitted subjects based on
measureable acoustics change of their spoken sound. The vocal-tract
related frequency characteristics of speech samples from female
remitted and depressed patients were analyzed via speech
processing techniques and consequently, evaluated statistically by
cross-validation with Support Vector Machine. Our results
comparatively show the classifier's performance with effectively
correct separation of 93% determined from testing with the subjectbased
feature model and 88% from the frame-based model based on
the same speech samples collected from hospital visiting interview
sessions between patients and psychiatrists.
Abstract: Buildings are one of the valuable assets to provide
people with shelters for work, leisure and rest. After years of
attacks by weather, buildings will deteriorate which need proper
maintenance in order to fulfill the requirements and satisfaction of
the users. Poorly managed buildings not just give a negative image
to the city itself, but also pose potential risk hazards to the health
and safety of the general public. As a result, the management of
maintenance projects has played an important role in cities like
Hong Kong where the problem of urban decay has drawn much
attention. However, most research has focused on managing new
construction, and little research effort has been put on maintenance
projects. Given the short duration and more diversified nature of
work, repair and maintenance works are found to be more difficult
to monitor and regulate when compared with new works. Project
participants may face with problems in running maintenance
projects which should be investigated so that proper strategies can
be established. This paper aims to provide a thorough analysis on
the problems of running maintenance projects. A review of
literature on the characteristics of building maintenance projects
was firstly conducted, which forms a solid basis for the empirical
study. Results on the problems and difficulties of running
maintenance projects from the viewpoints of industry practitioners
will also be delivered with a view to formulating effective
strategies for managing maintenance projects successfully.
Abstract: Although e-mail is the most efficient and popular communication method, unwanted and mass unsolicited e-mails, also called spam mail, endanger the existence of the mail system. This paper proposes a new algorithm called Dynamic Weighted Majority Concept Drift Detection (DWM-CDD) for content-based filtering. The design purposes of DWM-CDD are first to accurate the performance of the previously proposed algorithms, and second to speed up the time to construct the model. The results show that DWM-CDD can detect both sudden and gradual changes quickly and accurately. Moreover, the time needed for model construction is less than previously proposed algorithms.
Abstract: Most of the drugs used for pharmaceutical purposes
are poorly water-soluble drugs. About 40% of all newly discovered
drugs are lipophilic and the numbers of lipophilic drugs seem to
increase more and more. Drug delivery systems such as
nanoparticles, micelles or liposomes are applied to improve their
solubility and thus their bioavailability. Besides various techniques of
solubilization, oil-in-water emulsions are often used to incorporate
lipophilic drugs into the oil phase. To stabilize emulsions surface
active substances (surfactants) are generally used. An alternative
method to avoid the application of surfactants was of great interest.
One possibility is to develop O/W-emulsion without any addition of
surface active agents or the so called “surfactant-free emulsion or
SFE”. The aim of this study was to develop and characterize SFE as a
drug carrier by varying the production conditions. Lidocaine base
was used as a model drug. The injection method was developed.
Effects of ultrasound as well as of temperature on the properties of
the emulsion were studied. Particle sizes and release were
determined. The long-term stability up to 30 days was performed.
The results showed that the surfactant-free O/W emulsions with
pharmaceutical oil as drug carrier can be produced.