Abstract: Self-efficacy, self-reliance, and motivation were
examined in a quasi-experimental study with 178 sophomore
university students. Participants used an interactive cardiovascular
anatomy and physiology CD-ROM, and completed a 15-item
questionnaire. Reliability of the questionnaire was established using
Cronbach-s alpha. Post-tests and course grades were examined using
a t-test, demonstrating no significance. Results of an item-to-item
analysis of the questionnaire showed overall satisfaction with the
teaching methodology and varied results for self-efficacy, selfreliance,
and motivation. Kendall-s Tau was calculated for all items
in the questionnaire.
Abstract: Earthquakes produce some of the most violent loading
situations that a structure can be subjected to and if a structure fails
under these loads then inevitably human life is put at risk. One of the
most common methods by which a structure fails under seismic
loading is at the connection of structural elements. The research
presented in this paper investigates the interlock systems as a novel
method for building structures. The main objective of this
experimental study wasto determine the dynamic characteristics and
the seismic behaviour of the proposed structures compared to
conventional structural systemsduring seismic motions. Results of
this study indicate that the interlock mechanism of the panels
influences the behaviour of lateral load-resisting systems of the
structures during earthquakes, contributing to better structural
flexibility and easier maintenance.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the performance of a triboelectric separator of plastic mixtures used for recycling. The separator consists of four cylindrical electrodes. The principle behind the separation technique is based on the difference in the Coulomb force acting on the plastic particles after triboelectric charging. The separation of mixtures of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polystyrene (PS) using this method was studied. The effects of the triboelectric charging time and applied voltage on the separation efficiency were investigated. The experimental results confirm that it is possible to obtain a high purity and recovery rate for the initial compositions considered in this study.
Abstract: The study of the generated defects on manufactured
parts shows the difficulty to maintain parts in their positions during
the machining process and to estimate them during the pre-process
plan. This work presents a contribution to the development of 3D
models for the optimization of the manufacturing tolerances. An
experimental study allows the measurement of the defects of part
positioning for the determination of ε and the choice of an optimal
setup of the part. An approach of 3D tolerance based on the small
displacements method permits the determination of the
manufacturing errors upstream. A developed tool, allows an
automatic generation of the tolerance intervals along the three axes.
Abstract: In this paper, a parametric experimental study for producing paving blocks using fine and coarse waste glass is presented. Some of the physical and mechanical properties of paving blocks having various levels of fine glass (FG) and coarse glass (CG) replacements with fine aggregate (FA) are investigated. The test results show that the replacement of FG by FA at level of 20% by weight has a significant effect on the compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength and abrasion resistance of the paving blocks as compared with the control sample because of puzzolanic nature of FG. The compressive strength, flexural strength, splitting tensile strength and abrasion resistance of the paving block samples in the FG replacement level of 20% are 69%, 90%, 47% and 15 % higher as compared with the control sample respectively. It is reported in the earlier works the replacement of FG by FA at level of 20% by weight suppress the alkali-silica reaction (ASR) in the concrete. The test results show that the FG at level of 20% has a potential to be used in the production of paving blocks. The beneficial effect on these properties of CG replacement with FA is little as compared with FG.
Abstract: This study is to evaluate the behavior of integral and
segmental specimens through static and cyclic tests. Integral
specimens were made with the same size to be compared with
segmental specimens that were made by connected precast members.
To evaluate its bending performance and serviceability, 1 integral and
3 segmental specimens were tested under static load. And 1 integral
and 2 segmental specimens were tested under cyclic load, respectively.
Different load ranges were considered in the cyclic tests to evaluate the
safety and serviceability. The test results showed that under static
loading, segmental specimens had about 94% of the integral
specimen's maximum moment, averagely. Under cyclic loading, the
segmental specimens showed that had enough safety in the range of
higher than service load and enough serviceability. In conclusion, the
maximum crack width (0.16mm) satisfied the allowable crack width
(0.30mm) in the range of service load.
Abstract: Problems on algebraical polynomials appear in many fields of mathematics and computer science. Especially the task of determining the roots of polynomials has been frequently investigated.Nonetheless, the task of locating the zeros of complex polynomials is still challenging. In this paper we deal with the location of zeros of univariate complex polynomials. We prove some novel upper bounds for the moduli of the zeros of complex polynomials. That means, we provide disks in the complex plane where all zeros of a complex polynomial are situated. Such bounds are extremely useful for obtaining a priori assertations regarding the location of zeros of polynomials. Based on the proven bounds and a test set of polynomials, we present an experimental study to examine which bound is optimal.
Abstract: In the recent works related with mixture discriminant
analysis (MDA), expectation and maximization (EM) algorithm is
used to estimate parameters of Gaussian mixtures. But, initial values
of EM algorithm affect the final parameters- estimates. Also, when
EM algorithm is applied two times, for the same data set, it can be
give different results for the estimate of parameters and this affect the
classification accuracy of MDA. Forthcoming this problem, we use
Self Organizing Mixture Network (SOMN) algorithm to estimate
parameters of Gaussians mixtures in MDA that SOMN is more robust
when random the initial values of the parameters are used [5]. We
show effectiveness of this method on popular simulated waveform
datasets and real glass data set.
Abstract: Three-dimensional reconstruction of small objects has
been one of the most challenging problems over the last decade.
Computer graphics researchers and photography professionals have
been working on improving 3D reconstruction algorithms to fit the
high demands of various real life applications. Medical sciences,
animation industry, virtual reality, pattern recognition, tourism
industry, and reverse engineering are common fields where 3D
reconstruction of objects plays a vital role. Both lack of accuracy and
high computational cost are the major challenges facing successful
3D reconstruction. Fringe projection has emerged as a promising 3D
reconstruction direction that combines low computational cost to both
high precision and high resolution. It employs digital projection,
structured light systems and phase analysis on fringed pictures.
Research studies have shown that the system has acceptable
performance, and moreover it is insensitive to ambient light.
This paper presents an overview of fringe projection approaches. It
also presents an experimental study and implementation of a simple
fringe projection system. We tested our system using two objects
with different materials and levels of details. Experimental results
have shown that, while our system is simple, it produces acceptable
results.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the experimental impacts of
ultrasonic, carbonate and a combination of them on the quality of
fresh kiwi juice. Today, non-thermal methods like ultrasonic, which
have imperceptible effects on some properties of the juice such as
taste, flavor and color, are commonly used for killing
microorganisms.In this paper, some properties of kiwi fruit juice
under ultrasonic, carbonate and a combination of them has been
researched. Those properties include pH, acidity, transparency and
Brix. Its impact on microorganisms has been studied as well.The
results show that using a combination of carbonate and sonicate make
the cavitation more severe without a perceptible effect on nonactivation
of microorganisms.
Abstract: Degradation of polymeric insulation systems of
electrical equipments increases the space charge density and the
concentration of electrical dipoles. By consequence, the maximum
values and the slopes of absorption/resorption (A/R) currents can
change with insulation systems ageing. In this paper, an analysis of
the nature of the A/R currents and the importance of their
components, especially the polarization current and the current given
by the space charge, is presented. The experimental study concerns
the A/R currents measurements of plane samples (made from
CALMICAGLAS tapes), virgin and thermally accelerated aged. The
obtained results show that the ageing process produces an increase of
the values and a decrease of shapes of the A/R currents. Finally, the
possibility of estimating insulations ageing state and lifetime from
A/R currents measurements is discussed.
Abstract: This paper investigates the issue of building decision
trees from data with imprecise class values where imprecision is
encoded in the form of possibility distributions. The Information
Affinity similarity measure is introduced into the well-known gain
ratio criterion in order to assess the homogeneity of a set of
possibility distributions representing instances-s classes belonging to
a given training partition. For the experimental study, we proposed an
information affinity based performance criterion which we have used
in order to show the performance of the approach on well-known
benchmarks.
Abstract: This paper presents comparative emission study of
newly introduced gasoline/LPG bifuel automotive engine in Indian
market. Emissions were tested as per LPG-Bharat stage III driving
cycle. Emission tests were carried out for urban cycle and extra urban
cycle. Total time for urban and extra urban cycle was 1180 sec.
Engine was run in LPG mode by using conversion system. Emissions
were tested as per standard procedure and were compared. Corrected
emissions were computed by deducting ambient reading from sample
reading. Paper describes detail emission test procedure and results
obtained. CO emissions were in the range of38.9 to 111.3 ppm. HC
emissions were in the range of 18.2 to 62.6 ppm. Nox emissions were
08 to 3.9 ppm and CO2 emissions were from 6719.2 to 8051 ppm.
Paper throws light on emission results of LPG vehicles recently
introduced in Indian automobile market. Objectives of this
experimental study were to measure emissions of engines in gasoline
& LPG mode and compare them.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a modified version of the
Constant Modulus Algorithm (CMA) tailored for blind Decision
Feedback Equalizer (DFE) of first order Markovian time varying
channels. The proposed NonStationary CMA (NSCMA) is designed
so that it explicitly takes into account the Markovian structure of
the channel nonstationarity. Hence, unlike the classical CMA, the
NSCMA is not blind with respect to the channel time variations.
This greatly helps the equalizer in the case of realistic channels, and
avoids frequent transmissions of training sequences.
This paper develops a theoretical analysis of the steady state
performance of the CMA and the NSCMA for DFEs within a time
varying context. Therefore, approximate expressions of the mean
square errors are derived. We prove that in the steady state, the
NSCMA exhibits better performance than the classical CMA. These
new results are confirmed by simulation.
Through an experimental study, we demonstrate that the Bit Error
Rate (BER) is reduced by the NSCMA-DFE, and the improvement
of the BER achieved by the NSCMA-DFE is as significant as the
channel time variations are severe.
Abstract: The most severe damage of the turbine rotor is its
distortion. The rotor straightening process must lead, at the first
stage, to removal of the stresses from the material by annealing and
next, to straightening of the plastic distortion without leaving any
stress by hot spotting. The straightening method does not produce
stress accumulations and the heating technique, developed
specifically for solid forged rotors and disks, enables to avoid local
overheating and structural changes in the material. This process also
does not leave stresses in the shaft material. An experimental study
of hot spotting is carried out on a large turbine rotor and some of the
most important effective parameters that must be considered on
annealing and hot spotting processes are investigated in this paper.
Abstract: An experimental study of anaerobic treatment was performed by hybrid upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (HUASB) reactor to treat produced water (PW) of an onshore crude oil terminal (COD: 1597 mg/L, NH3-N: 14.7 mg/L, phenol: 13.8 mg/L, BOD5: 862 mg/L, sodium: 6240 mg/L and chloride 9530 mg/L). The produced water with high salinity and other toxic substances will inhibit the methanogens performance if there is no adaptation on biomass before anaerobic digestion. COD removal from produced water was investigated at five different dilutions of produced water and tap water (TW) without any nutrient addition and pre-treatment. The dilution ratios were 1PW:4TW, 2PW:3TW, 3PW:2TW, 4PW:1TW and 5PW:0TW. The reactor was evaluated at mesophilic operating condition (35 ± 2 °C) at 5 days of HRT for 250 days continuous feed. The average COD removals for 1PW:4TW, 2PW:3TW, 3PW:2TW, 4PW:1TW and 5PW:0TW were found to be approximately 76.1%, 73.8%, 70.3%, 46.3% and 61.82% respectively, with final average effluent COD of 123.7 mg/L, 240 mg/L, 294 mg/L, 589 mg/L and 738 mg/L, respectively.
Abstract: The paper presents the brief information on particular results of experimental study focused to the problems of behavior of structural plated components made of fiber-cement-based materials and used in building constructions, exposed to atmospheric physical effects given by the weather changes in the summer period. Weather changes represented namely by temperature and rain cause also the changes of the temperature and moisture of the investigated structural components. This can affect their static behavior that means stresses and deformations, which have been monitored as the main outputs of tests performed. Experimental verification is based on the simulation of the influence of temperature and rain using the defined procedure of warming and water sprinkling with respect to the corresponding weather conditions during summer period in the South Moravian region at the Czech Republic, for which the application of these structural components is mainly planned. Two types of components have been tested: (i) glass-fiber-concrete panels used for building façades and (ii) fiber-cement slabs used mainly for claddings, but also as a part of floor structures or lost shuttering, and so on.
Abstract: Following harvest, fresh produce needs to be cooled
immediately in a room where the air temperature and the relative air
humidity are controlled to maintain the produce quality. In this paper,
an experimental study for forced air cooling of fresh produce
(cauliflower) is performed using a pilot developed within our
laboratory. Furthermore, a numerical simulation of spherical
produces, taking into account the aerodynamic aspect and also the
heat transfer in the produce and in the air, was carried out using a
finite element method. At the end of this communication,
experimental results are presented and compared with the simulation.
Abstract: The experimental study of position control of a light
weight and small size robotic finger during non-contact motion is
presented in this paper. The finger possesses fingertip pinching and
self adaptive grasping capabilities, and is made of a seven bar linkage
mechanism with a slider in the middle phalanx. The control system is
tested under the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) control
algorithm and Recursive Least Square (RLS) based Feedback Error
Learning (FEL) control scheme to overcome the uncertainties present
in the plant. The experiments conducted in Matlab Simulink and xPC
Target environments show that the overall control strategy is efficient
in controlling the finger movement.
Abstract: Bidding is a very important business function to find
latent contractors of construction projects. Moreover, bid markup is
one of the most important decisions for a bidder to gain a reasonable
profit. Since the bidding system is a complex adaptive system, bidding
agent need a learning process to get more valuable knowledge for a bid,
especially from past public bidding information. In this paper, we
proposed an iterative agent leaning model for bidders to make markup
decisions. A classifier for public bidding information named PIBS is
developed to make full use of history data for classifying new bidding
information. The simulation and experimental study is performed to
show the validity of the proposed classifier. Some factors that affect
the validity of PIBS are also analyzed at the end of this work.