Assessing Mobile Robotic Telepresence Based On Measures of Social Telepresence

The feedbacks obtained regarding the sense of presence from pilot users operating a Mobile Robotic presence (MRP) system to visit a simulated museum are reported in this paper. The aim is to investigate how much the perception of system’s usefulness and ease of use is affected by operators’ sense of social telepresence (presence) in the remote location. Therefore, scenarios of visiting a museum are simulated and the user operators are supposed to perform some regular tasks inside the remote environment including interaction with local users, navigation and visiting the artworks. Participants were divided into two groups, those who had previous experience of operation and interaction with a MRP system and those who never had experience. Based on the results, both groups provided different feedbacks. Moreover, there was a significant association between user’s sense of presence and their perception of system usefulness and ease of use.

Security over OFDM Fading Channels with Friendly Jammer

In this paper, we investigate the effect of friendly jamming power allocation strategies on the achievable average secrecy rate over a bank of parallel fading wiretap channels. We investigate the achievable average secrecy rate in parallel fading wiretap channels subject to Rayleigh and Rician fading. The achievable average secrecy rate, due to the presence of a line-of-sight component in the jammer channel is also evaluated. Moreover, we study the detrimental effect of correlation across the parallel sub-channels, and evaluate the corresponding decrease in the achievable average secrecy rate for the various fading configurations. We also investigate the tradeoff between the transmission power and the jamming power for a fixed total power budget. Our results, which are applicable to current orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communications systems, shed further light on the achievable average secrecy rates over a bank of parallel fading channels in the presence of friendly jammers.

The Effect of CPU Location in Total Immersion of Microelectronics

Meeting the growth in demand for digital services such as social media, telecommunications, and business and cloud services requires large scale data centres, which has led to an increase in their end use energy demand. Generally, over 30% of data centre power is consumed by the necessary cooling overhead. Thus energy can be reduced by improving the cooling efficiency. Air and liquid can both be used as cooling media for the data centre. Traditional data centre cooling systems use air, however liquid is recognised as a promising method that can handle the more densely packed data centres. Liquid cooling can be classified into three methods; rack heat exchanger, on-chip heat exchanger and full immersion of the microelectronics. This study quantifies the improvements of heat transfer specifically for the case of immersed microelectronics by varying the CPU and heat sink location. Immersion of the server is achieved by filling the gap between the microelectronics and a water jacket with a dielectric liquid which convects the heat from the CPU to the water jacket on the opposite side. Heat transfer is governed by two physical mechanisms, which is natural convection for the fixed enclosure filled with dielectric liquid and forced convection for the water that is pumped through the water jacket. The model in this study is validated with published numerical and experimental work and shows good agreement with previous work. The results show that the heat transfer performance and Nusselt number (Nu) is improved by 89% by placing the CPU and heat sink on the bottom of the microelectronics enclosure.

A Simple Device for in-situ Direct Shear and Sinkage Tests

This work introduces a simple device designed to perform in-situ direct shear and sinkage tests on granular materials as sand, clays, or regolith. It consists of a box nested within a larger box. Both have open bottoms, allowing them to be lowered into the material. Afterwards, two rotating plates on opposite sides of the outer box will rotate outwards in order to clear regolith on either side, providing room for the inner box to move relative to the plates and perform a shear test without the resistance of the surrounding soil. From this test, Coulomb parameters, including cohesion and internal friction angle, as well as, Bekker parameters can be inferred. This device has been designed for a laboratory setting, but with few modifications, could be put on the underside of a rover for use in a remote location. The goal behind this work is to ultimately create a compact, but accurate measuring tool to put onto a rover or any kind of exploratory vehicle to test for regolith properties of celestial bodies.

Non-Destructive Visual-Statistical Approach to Detect Leaks in Water Mains

In this paper, an effective non-destructive, noninvasive approach for leak detection was proposed. The process relies on analyzing thermal images collected by an IR viewer device that captures thermo-grams. In this study a statistical analysis of the collected thermal images of the ground surface along the expected leak location followed by a visual inspection of the thermo-grams was performed in order to locate the leak. In order to verify the applicability of the proposed approach the predicted leak location from the developed approach was compared with the real leak location. The results showed that the expected leak location was successfully identified with an accuracy of more than 95%.

Thiopental-Fentanyl versus Midazolam-Fentanyl for Emergency Department Procedural Sedation and Analgesia in Patients with Shoulder Dislocation and Distal Radial Fracture-Dislocation: A Randomized Double-Blind Controlled Trial

Background and aim: It has not been well studied whether fentanyl-thiopental (FT) is effective and safe for PSA in orthopedic procedures in Emergency Department (ED). The aim of this trial was to evaluate the effectiveness of intravenous FT versus fentanyl-midazolam (FM) in patients who suffered from shoulder dislocation or distal radial fracture-dislocation. Methods: In this randomized double-blinded study, Seventy-six eligible patients were entered the study and randomly received intravenous FT or FM. The success rate, onset of action and recovery time, pain score, physicians’ satisfaction and adverse events were assessed and recorded by treating emergency physicians. The statistical analysis was intention to treat. Results: The success rate after administrating loading dose in FT group was significantly higher than FM group (71.7% vs. 48.9%, p=0.04); however, the ultimate unsuccessful rate after 3 doses of drugs in the FT group was higher than the FM group (3 to 1) but it did not reach to significant level (p=0.61). Despite near equal onset of action time in two study group (P=0.464), the recovery period in patients receiving FT was markedly shorter than FM group (P

A Novel Approach to Allocate Channels Dynamically in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networking is rapidly gaining in popularity with a variety of users: from municipalities to enterprises, from telecom service providers to public safety and military organizations. This increasing popularity is based on two basic facts: ease of deployment and increase in network capacity expressed in bandwidth per footage; WMNs do not rely on any fixed infrastructure. Many efforts have been used to maximizing throughput of the network in a multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh network. Current approaches are purely based on either static or dynamic channel allocation approaches. In this paper, we use a hybrid multichannel multi radio wireless mesh networking architecture, where static and dynamic interfaces are built in the nodes. Dynamic Adaptive Channel Allocation protocol (DACA), it considers optimization for both throughput and delay in the channel allocation. The assignment of the channel has been allocated to be codependent with the routing problem in the wireless mesh network and that should be based on passage flow on every link. Temporal and spatial relationship rises to re compute the channel assignment every time when the pattern changes in mesh network, channel assignment algorithms assign channels in network. In this paper a computing path which captures the available path bandwidth is the proposed information and the proficient routing protocol based on the new path which provides both static and dynamic links. The consistency property guarantees that each node makes an appropriate packet forwarding decision and balancing the control usage of the network, so that a data packet will traverse through the right path.

A Simulation Modeling Approach for Optimization of Storage Space Allocation in Container Terminal

Container handling problems at container terminals are NP-hard problems. This paper presents an approach using discrete-event simulation modeling to optimize solution for storage space allocation problem, taking into account all various interrelated container terminal handling activities. The proposed approach is applied on a real case study data of container terminal at Alexandria port. The computational results show the effectiveness of the proposed model for optimization of storage space allocation in container terminal where 54% reduction in containers handling time in port is achieved.

Allocation of Mobile Units in an Urban Emergency Service System

In an urban area the location allocation of emergency services mobile units, such as ambulances, police patrol cars must be designed so as to achieve a prompt response to demand locations. In this paper the partition of a given urban network into distinct sub-networks is performed such that the vertices in each component are close and simultaneously the sums of the corresponding population in the sub-networks are almost uniform. The objective here is to position appropriately in each sub-network a mobile emergency unit in order to reduce the response time to the demands. A mathematical model in framework of graph theory is developed. In order to clarify the corresponding method a relevant numerical example is presented on a small network.

Ultra Wideband Breast Cancer Detection by Using SAR for Indication the Tumor Location

This paper presents breast cancer detection by observing the specific absorption rate (SAR) intensity for identification tumor location, the tumor is identified in coordinates (x,y,z) system. We examined the frequency between 4-8 GHz to look for the most appropriate frequency. Results are simulated in frequency 4-8 GHz, the model overview include normal breast with 50 mm radian, 5 mm diameter of tumor, and ultra wideband (UWB) bowtie antenna. The models are created and simulated in CST Microwave Studio. For this simulation, we changed antenna to 5 location around the breast, the tumor can be detected when an antenna is close to the tumor location, which the coordinate of maximum SAR is approximated the tumor location. For reliable, we experiment by random tumor location to 3 position in the same size of tumor and simulation the result again by varying the antenna position in 5 position again, and it also detectable the tumor position from the antenna that nearby tumor position by maximum value of SAR, which it can be detected the tumor with precision in all frequency between 4-8 GHz.

ANFIS Approach for Locating Faults in Underground Cables

This paper presents a fault identification, classification and fault location estimation method based on Discrete Wavelet Transform and Adaptive Network Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) for medium voltage cable in the distribution system. Different faults and locations are simulated by ATP/EMTP, and then certain selected features of the wavelet transformed signals are used as an input for a training process on the ANFIS. Then an accurate fault classifier and locator algorithm was designed, trained and tested using current samples only. The results obtained from ANFIS output were compared with the real output. From the results, it was found that the percentage error between ANFIS output and real output is less than three percent. Hence, it can be concluded that the proposed technique is able to offer high accuracy in both of the fault classification and fault location.

Improvement of Model for SIMMER Code for SFR Corium Relocation Studies

The in-depth understanding of severe accident propagation in Generation IV of nuclear reactors is important so that appropriate risk management can be undertaken early in their design process. This paper is focused on model improvements in the SIMMER code in order to perform studies of severe accident mitigation of Sodium Fast Reactor. During the design process of the mitigation devices dedicated to extraction of molten fuel from the core region, the molten fuel propagation from the core up to the core catcher has to be studied. In this aim, analytical as well as the complex thermohydraulic simulations with SIMMER-III code are performed. The studies presented in this paper focus on physical phenomena and associated physical models that influence the corium relocation. Firstly, the molten pool heat exchange with surrounding structures is analyzed since it influences directly the instant of rupture of the dedicated tubes favoring the corium relocation for mitigation purpose. After the corium penetration into mitigation tubes, the fuel-coolant interactions result in formation of debris bed. Analyses of debris bed fluidization as well as sinking into a fluid are presented in this paper.

Study of Explicit Finite Difference Method in One Dimensional System

One of the most important parameters in petroleum reservoirs is the pressure distribution along the reservoir, as the pressure varies with the time and location. A popular method to determine the pressure distribution in a reservoir in the unsteady state regime of flow is applying Darcy’s equation and solving this equation numerically. The numerical simulation of reservoirs is based on these numerical solutions of different partial differential equations (PDEs) representing the multiphase flow of fluids. Pressure profile has obtained in a one dimensional system solving Darcy’s equation explicitly. Changes of pressure profile in three situations are investigated in this work. These situations include section length changes, step time changes and time approach to infinity. The effects of these changes in pressure profile are shown and discussed in the paper.

Effect of Jet Diameter on Surface Quenching at Different Spatial Locations

An experimental investigation has been carried out to study the cooling of a hot horizontal Stainless Steel surface of 3 mm thickness, which has 800±10 C initial temperature. A round water jet of 22 ± 1 oC temperature was injected over the hot surface through straight tube type nozzles of 2.5- 4.8 mm diameter and 250 mm length. The experiments were performed for the jet exit to target surface spacing of 4 times of jet diameter and jet Reynolds number of 5000 -24000. The effect of change in jet Reynolds number on the surface quenching has been investigated form the stagnation point to 16 mm spatial location.  

Adaptive WiFi Fingerprinting for Location Approximation

WiFi has become an essential technology that is widely used nowadays. It is famous due to its convenience to be used with mobile devices. This is especially true for Internet users worldwide that use WiFi connections. There are many location based services that are available nowadays which uses Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) signal fingerprinting. A common example that is gaining popularity in this era would be Foursquare. In this work, the WiFi signal would be used to estimate the user or client’s location. Similar to GPS, fingerprinting method needs a floor plan to increase the accuracy of location estimation. Still, the factor of inconsistent WiFi signal makes the estimation defer at different time intervals. Given so, an adaptive method is needed to obtain the most accurate signal at all times. WiFi signals are heavily distorted by external factors such as physical objects, radio frequency interference, electrical interference, and environmental factors to name a few. Due to these factors, this work uses a method of reducing the signal noise and estimation using the Nearest Neighbour based on past activities of the signal to increase the signal accuracy up to more than 80%. The repository yet increases the accuracy by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) pattern matching. The repository acts as the server cum support of the client side application decision. Numerous previous works has adapted the methods of collecting signal strengths in the repository over the years, but mostly were just static. In this work, proposed solutions on how the adaptive method is done to match the signal received to the data in the repository are highlighted. With the said approach, location estimation can be done more accurately. Adaptive update allows the latest location fingerprint to be stored in the repository. Furthermore, any redundant location fingerprints are removed and only the updated version of the fingerprint is stored in the repository. How the location estimation of the user can be predicted would be highlighted more in the proposed solution section. After some studies on previous works, it is found that the Artificial Neural Network is the most feasible method to deploy in updating the repository and making it adaptive. The Artificial Neural Network functions are to do the pattern matching of the WiFi signal to the existing data available in the repository.

Optimal Transmission Network Usage and Loss Allocation Using Matrices Methodology and Cooperative Game Theory

Restructuring of Electricity supply industry introduced many issues such as transmission pricing, transmission loss allocation and congestion management. Many methodologies and algorithms were proposed for addressing these issues. In this paper a power flow tracing based method is proposed which involves Matrices methodology for the transmission usage and loss allocation for generators and demands. This method provides loss allocation in a direct way because all the computation is previously done for usage allocation. The proposed method is simple and easy to implement in a large power system. Further it is less computational because it requires matrix inversion only a single time. After usage and loss allocation cooperative game theory is applied to results for finding efficient economic signals. Nucleolus and Shapely value approach is used for optimal allocation of results. Results are shown for the IEEE 6 bus system and IEEE 14 bus system.

Experimental Study on Quasi-Static Response of Multi-layer Sandwich Composite Structures

In this paper the effects of adding an extra layer within a sandwich panel and core- types in top and bottom cores on quasi- static loading are studied experimentally. The panel includes polymer composite laminated sheets for faces and the internal laminated sheet called extra layer sheet, and two types of crushable foams are selected as the core material. Quasi- static tests were done by ZWICK testing machine on fully backed specimens with two foam cores, Poly Urethane Rigid (PUR) and Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC). It was found that the core material type has made significant role on improving the sandwich panel’s behavior compared with the effect of extra layer location.

A Balanced Scorecard for Identifying Factors of Strategic Fit of National R&D Program on the Creative Economy Policy

As creative economy is important theme for national policy, many countries have been raising investments through national R&D programs. Since not all of programs are aligned with the ultimate vision and R&D investment is one of the most decisive elements, the strategic fit of national R&D programs should be evaluated for effective resource allocation. This study aims at identifying the factors of strategic fit of national R&D program on the creative economy policy. For this purpose, the balanced scorecard (BSC) model for R&D is utilized to translate national strategic objectives into a set of coherent performance factors.

A Study of Priority Evaluation and Resource Allocation for Revitalization of Cultural Heritages in the Urban Development

Proper maintenance and preservation of significant cultural heritages or historic buildings is necessary. It can not only enhance environmental benefits and a sense of community, but also preserve a city's history and people’s memory. It allows the next generation to be able to get a glimpse of our past, and achieve the goal of sustainable preserved cultural assets. However, the management of maintenance work has not been appropriate for many designated heritages or historic buildings so far. The planning and implementation of the reuse has yet to have a breakthrough specification. It leads the heritages to a mere formality of being “reserved”, instead of the real meaning of “conservation”. For the restoration and preservation of cultural heritages study issues, it is very important due to the consideration of historical significance, symbolism, and economic benefits effects. However, the decision makers such as the officials from public sector they often encounter which heritage should be prioritized to be restored first under the available limited budgets. Only very few techniques are available today to determine the appropriately restoration priorities for the diverse historical heritages, perhaps because of a lack of systematized decision-making aids been proposed before. In the past, the discussions of management and maintenance towards cultural assets were limited to the selection of reuse alternatives instead of the allocation of resources. In view of this, this research will adopt some integrated research methods to solve the existing problems that decision-makers might encounter when allocating resources in the management and maintenance of heritages and historic buildings. The purpose of this study is to develop a sustainable decision making model for local governments to resolve these problems. We propose an alternative decision support model to prioritize restoration needs within the limited budgets. The model is constructed based on fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy analysis network process (FANP) and goal programming (GP) methods. In order to avoid misallocate resources; this research proposes a precise procedure that can take multi-stakeholders views, limited costs and resources into consideration. Also, the combination of many factors and goals has been taken into account to find the highest priority and feasible solution results. To illustrate the approach we propose in this research, seven cultural heritages in Taipei city as one example has been used as an empirical study, and the results are in depth analyzed to explain the application of our proposed approach.

Effect of Geographical Co-Ordinates on the Parameters in the Rain Rate Model for Radio Propagation Applications

Rain attenuation plays a lot of roles in the design of satellite and terrestrial microwave radio links, hence a good knowledge of its effect is of great interest to Engineers and scientists in that it is often required to give a high level of accuracy of the rainrate distribution that expresses rainrate from the lowest value to the highest. This study proposes a model to express rainrate parameters alpha (α) and beta (β) as a function of geographical location at 0.01% of the time. The tropical locations used in the development of the effect were Ilorin, Ile-Ife, Douala, Dar-es-Selam, Nairobi, Lusaka, and Brazilia. This expression clearly confirms the variability of rainfall from place to place. When consistency test was carried out using the expression to generate rainrate for each location examined, the result obtained was reliable for rain intensities between 5mm/h and 200mm/h. The variability of α and β with latitude also shows that different latitudes have different cumulative rain distribution. The model proposed in this study would be one of the useful tools to Radio Engineers since the precipitation effect in the design of satellite and terrestrial microwave radio links is among the factors to consider when designing communication systems.