Abstract: Sweet potato products are necessary for the provision
of essential nutrients in every household, regardless of their poverty
status. Their consumption appears to be highly influenced by socioeconomic
factors, such as malnutrition, food insecurity and
unemployment. Therefore, market availability is crucial for these
cultivars to resolve some of the socio-economic factors. The aim of
the study was to investigate market availability of sweet potato
cultivars in the North West Province. In this study, both qualitative
and quantitative research methodologies were used. Qualitative
methodology was used to explain the quantitative outcomes of the
variables. On the other hand, quantitative results were used to test the
hypothesis. The study used SPSS software to analyse the data. Crosstabulation
and Chi-square statistics were used to obtain the
descriptive and inferential analyses, respectively. The study found
that the Blesbok cultivar is dominating the markets of the North West
Province, with the Monate cultivar dominating in the Bojanala
Platinum (75%) and Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati (25%) districts. It
is also found that a unit increase in the supply of sweet potato
cultivars in both local and district municipal markets is accompanied
by a reduced demand of 28% and 33% at district and local markets,
respectively. All these results were found to be significant at p
Abstract: This paper looks into areas not covered by prominent
Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies.
Extensive paper review led to the identification of two issues, first
most of these methodologies almost neglect semantic web and
ontology. Second, as expected, each one has its strength and
weakness and may focus on some phases of the development
lifecycle but not all of the phases. The work presented here builds
extensions to a highly regarded AOSE methodology (MaSE) in order
to cover the areas that this methodology does not concentrate on. The
extensions include introducing an ontology stage for semantic
representation and integrating early requirement specification from a
methodology which mainly focuses on that. The integration involved
developing transformation rules (with the necessary handling of nonmatching
notions) between the two sets of representations and
building the software which automates the transformation. The
application of this integration on a case study is also presented in the
paper. The main flow of MaSE stages was changed to smoothly
accommodate the new additions.
Abstract: The prediction of long-term deformations of concrete and reinforced concrete structures has been a field of extensive research and several different creep models have been developed so far. Most of the models were developed for constant concrete stresses, thus, in case of varying stresses a specific superposition principle or time-integration, respectively, is necessary. Nowadays, when modeling concrete creep the engineering focus is rather on the application of sophisticated time-integration methods than choosing the more appropriate creep model. For this reason, this paper presents a method to quantify the uncertainties of creep prediction originating from the selection of creep models or from the time-integration methods. By adapting variance based global sensitivity analysis, a methodology is developed to quantify the influence of creep model selection or choice of time-integration method. Applying the developed method, general recommendations how to model creep behavior for varying stresses are given.
Abstract: this scientific article considers the peculiarities of
ecology of culture and ecological outlook from cultural and
anthropological aspect of Turkic languages speaking peoples in the
Central Asia. The ecology of culture of Turkic languages speaking
peoples in the Central Asia, formed under the influence of climatic,
geographical, economic, religious, ethno cultural and political factors
and defining the originality of traditions which have laid down in its
basis and functioned, as its components, causes an interest and
urgency simultaneously, representing the sample of life of the Person
in the World by which it is necessary to be guided today.
Abstract: The myocardial sintigraphy is an imaging modality which provides functional informations. Whereas, coronarography modality gives useful informations about coronary arteries anatomy. In case of coronary artery disease (CAD), the coronarography can not determine precisely which moderate lesions (artery reduction between 50% and 70%), known as the “gray zone", are haemodynamicaly significant. In this paper, we aim to define the relationship between the location and the degree of the stenosis in coronary arteries and the observed perfusion on the myocardial scintigraphy. This allows us to model the impact evolution of these stenoses in order to justify a coronarography or to avoid it for patients suspected being in the gray zone. Our approach is decomposed in two steps. The first step consists in modelling a coronary artery bed and stenoses of different location and degree. The second step consists in modelling the left ventricle at stress and at rest using the sphercical harmonics model and myocardial scintigraphic data. We use the spherical harmonics descriptors to analyse left ventricle model deformation between stress and rest which permits us to conclude if ever an ischemia exists and to quantify it.
Abstract: The pollution of sediments sampled from the North
Port by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was investigated.
Concentrations of PAHs estimated in the port sediments ranged from
199 to 2851.2 μg/kg dw. The highest concentration was found which
is closed to the Berth line, this locations affected by intensive
shipping activities and Land based runoff and they were dominated
by the high molecular weight PAHs (4–6- rings). Source
identification showed that PAHs originated mostly from the
pyrogenic source either from the combustion of fossil fuels, grass,
wood and coal (majority of the samples). Ecological Risk Assessment
on the port sediments presented that slightly adverse ecological
effects to biological community are expected to occur at the vicinity
of the stations 1 and 4. Thus PAHs are not considered as pollutants of
concern in the North Port.
Abstract: This paper presents a new adaptive impedance control
strategy, based on Function Approximation Technique (FAT) to
compensate for unknown non-flat environment shape or time-varying
environment location. The target impedance in the force controllable
direction is modified by incorporating adaptive compensators and the
uncertainties are represented by FAT, allowing the update law to be
derived easily. The force error feedback is utilized in the estimation
and the accurate knowledge of the environment parameters are not
required by the algorithm. It is shown mathematically that the
stability of the controller is guaranteed based on Lyapunov theory.
Simulation results presented to demonstrate the validity of the
proposed controller.
Abstract: The institutions seek to improve their performance
and quality of service, so that their patients are satisfied. This
research project aims, conduct a time study program in the area of
gynecological surgery, to determine the current level of capacity and
optimize the programming time in order to adequately respond to
demand. The system is analyzed by waiting lines and uses the
simulation using ARENA to evaluate proposals for improvement and
optimization programming time each of the surgeries.
Abstract: Views on therapists- attraction have influenced the ethical and professional development of the mental health fields. Because the majority of therapist attraction literature (63.6%) has been conducted from a psychoanalytic standpoint, approaches to attraction from feminist perspectives have not been adequately developed. Considering the lack of a feminist voice regarding attraction, this article attempts to offer a feminist perspective on this issue. The purpose of this article is to offer a feminist perspective on the phenomenon of attraction in order to raise awareness about the importance of power inequalities, intersectionalities, contextual variables and the need for action in the field.
Abstract: Batteries and fuel cells contain a great potential to back up severe photovoltaic power fluctuations under inclement weather conditions. In this paper comparison between batteries and fuel cells is carried out in detail only for their PV power backup options, so their common attributes and different attributes is discussed. Then, the common and different attributes are compared; accordingly, the fuel cell is selected as the backup of Photovoltaic system. Finally, environmental evaluation of the selected hybrid plant was made in terms of plant-s land requirement and lifetime CO2 emissions, and then compared with that of the conventional fossilfuel power generating forms.
Abstract: Heterogeneity has to be taken into account when
integrating a set of existing information sources into a distributed
information system that are nowadays often based on Service-
Oriented Architectures (SOA). This is also particularly applicable to
distributed services such as event monitoring, which are useful in the
context of Event Driven Architectures (EDA) and Complex Event
Processing (CEP). Web services deal with this heterogeneity at a
technical level, also providing little support for event processing. Our
central thesis is that such a fully generic solution cannot provide
complete support for event monitoring; instead, source specific
semantics such as certain event types or support for certain event
monitoring techniques have to be taken into account. Our core result
is the design of a configurable event monitoring (Web) service that
allows us to trade genericity for the exploitation of source specific
characteristics. It thus delivers results for the areas of SOA, Web
services, CEP and EDA.
Abstract: Hybrid algorithm is the hot issue in Computational
Intelligence (CI) study. From in-depth discussion on Simulation
Mechanism Based (SMB) classification method and composite patterns,
this paper presents the Mamdani model based Adaptive Neural
Fuzzy Inference System (M-ANFIS) and weight updating formula in
consideration with qualitative representation of inference consequent
parts in fuzzy neural networks. M-ANFIS model adopts Mamdani
fuzzy inference system which has advantages in consequent part.
Experiment results of applying M-ANFIS to evaluate traffic Level
of service show that M-ANFIS, as a new hybrid algorithm in computational
intelligence, has great advantages in non-linear modeling,
membership functions in consequent parts, scale of training data and
amount of adjusted parameters.
Abstract: On the basis of questionnaires and interviews of two samples of subjects (French and Anglo-Saxon) for which two food products were presented (one of the subject’s country and one of the foreign country), we have shown how consumers could be sensitive to the label or brand written on the package of the food product. Furthermore, in the light of Intersubjectivity theory, we have shown the necessity for the consumer to find congruence between the direct and meta perspective towards the product for which the producer and especially the marketer is responsible. Taking into account these findings may help to avoid the commercial failure of a brand while exported abroad.
Abstract: This paper presents an improved image segmentation
model with edge preserving regularization based on the
piecewise-smooth Mumford-Shah functional. A level set formulation
is considered for the Mumford-Shah functional minimization in
segmentation, and the corresponding partial difference equations are
solved by the backward Euler discretization. Aiming at encouraging
edge preserving regularization, a new edge indicator function is
introduced at level set frame. In which all the grid points which is used
to locate the level set curve are considered to avoid blurring the edges
and a nonlinear smooth constraint function as regularization term is
applied to smooth the image in the isophote direction instead of the
gradient direction. In implementation, some strategies such as a new
scheme for extension of u+ and u- computation of the grid points and
speedup of the convergence are studied to improve the efficacy of the
algorithm. The resulting algorithm has been implemented and
compared with the previous methods, and has been proved efficiently
by several cases.
Abstract: Genetic Folding (GF) a new class of EA named as is
introduced for the first time. It is based on chromosomes composed
of floating genes structurally organized in a parent form and
separated by dots. Although, the genotype/phenotype system of GF
generates a kernel expression, which is the objective function of
superior classifier. In this work the question of the satisfying
mapping-s rules in evolving populations is addressed by analyzing
populations undergoing either Mercer-s or none Mercer-s rule. The
results presented here show that populations undergoing Mercer-s
rules improve practically models selection of Support Vector
Machine (SVM). The experiment is trained multi-classification
problem and tested on nonlinear Ionosphere dataset. The target of this
paper is to answer the question of evolving Mercer-s rule in SVM
addressed using either genetic folding satisfied kernel-s rules or not
applied to complicated domains and problems.
Abstract: Thin linear-elastic cylindrical circular shells having a
micro-periodic structure along two directions tangent to the shell
midsurface (biperiodic shells) are object of considerations. The aim
of this paper is twofold. First, we formulate an averaged nonasymptotic
model for the analysis of parametric vibrations or dynamical
stability of periodic shells under consideration, which has constant
coefficients and takes into account the effect of a cell size on the
overall shell behavior (a length-scale effect). This model is derived
employing the tolerance modeling procedure. Second we apply the
obtained model to derivation of frequency equation being a starting
point in the analysis of parametric vibrations. The effect of the microstructure
length oh this frequency equation is discussed.
Abstract: In this work we evaluate the possibility of predicting
the emotional state of a person based on the EEG. We investigate
the problem of classifying valence from EEG signals during
the presentation of affective pictures, utilizing the "frontal EEG
asymmetry" phenomenon. To distinguish positive and negative
emotions, we applied the Common Spatial Patterns algorithm.
In contrast to our expectations, the affective pictures did not
reliably elicit changes in frontal asymmetry. The classifying task
thereby becomes very hard as reflected by the poor classifier
performance. We suspect that the masking of the source of the
brain activity related to emotions, coming mostly from deeper
structures in the brain, and the insufficient emotional engagement
are among main reasons why it is difficult to predict the emotional
state of a person.
Abstract: Sarkhoon gas plant, located in south of Iran, has been installed to removal H2S contained in a high pressure natural gas stream. The solvent used for the H2S removal from gaseous stream is 34% by weight (wt%) Di-ethanol amine (DEA) solutions. Due to increasing concentration of heat stable salt (HSS) in solvent, corrosivity of amine solution had been increased. Reports indicated that there was corrosion on the shell of regeneration column. Because source formation of HSS was unknown, we decided to control the amount of HSS at the limit less than 3% wt amine solvent. Therefore, two small columns were filled by strong anionic base and carbon active, and then polluted amine was passed through beds. Finally a temporary amine recovery package on industrial scale was made based on laboratory’s results. From economical point of view we could save $700000 beside corrosion occurrence of the stripping column has been vigorously decreased.
Abstract: Characterization of radio communication signals aims
at automatic recognition of different characteristics of radio signals in
order to detect their modulation type, the central frequency, and the
level. Our purpose is to apply techniques used in image processing in
order to extract pertinent characteristics. To the single analysis, we
add several rules for checking the consistency of hypotheses using
fuzzy logic. This allows taking into account ambiguity and
uncertainty that may remain after the extraction of individual
characteristics. The aim is to improve the process of radio
communications characterization.
Abstract: The amount of urban artificial heat which affects the
urban temperature rise in urban meteorology was investigated in order
to clarify the relationships between urbanization and urban
meteorology in this study.
The results of calculation to identify how urban temperate was
increased through the establishment of a model for measuring the
amount of urban artificial heat and theoretical testing revealed that the
amount of urban artificial heat increased urban temperature by plus or
minus 0.23 ˚ C in 2007 compared with 1996, statistical methods
(correlation and regression analysis) to clarify the relationships
between urbanization and urban weather were as follows.
New design techniques and urban growth management are
necessary from urban growth management point of view suggested
from this research at city design phase to decrease urban temperature
rise and urban torrential rain which can produce urban disaster in terms
of urban meteorology by urbanization.