Abstract: Affective adaptation is a creative way for game designers to add an extra layer of engagement to their productions. When player’s emotions are an explicit factor in mechanics design, endless possibilities for imaginative gameplay emerge. Whilst gaining popularity, existing affective game research mostly runs controlled experiments in restrictive settings and rely on one or more specialist devices for measuring player’s emotional state. These conditions albeit effective, are not necessarily realistic. Moreover, the simplified narrative and intrusive wearables may not be suitable for players. This exploratory study investigates delivering an immersive affective experience in the wild with minimal requirements, in an attempt for the average developer to reach the average player. A puzzle game is created with rich narrative and creative mechanics. It employs both explicit and implicit adaptation and only requires a web camera. Participants played the game on their own machines in various settings. Whilst it was rated feasible, very engaging and enjoyable, it remains questionable whether a fully immersive experience was delivered due to the limited sample size.
Abstract: Fire service is responsible for protecting life, assets, and natural resources from fire and other hazardous incidents. Search and rescue in unfamiliar buildings is a vital part of firefighters’ responsibilities. Providing firefighters with precise building information in an easy-to-understand format is a potential solution for mitigating the negative consequences of fire hazards. The negative effect of insufficient knowledge about a building’s indoor environment impedes firefighters’ capabilities and leads to lost property. A data rich building information modeling (BIM) is a potentially useful source in three-dimensional (3D) visualization and data/information storage for fire emergency response. Therefore, this research’s purpose is prioritizing the required information for firefighters from the most important information to the least important. A survey was carried out with firefighters working in the Norman Fire Department to obtain the importance of each building information item. The results show that “the location of exit doors, windows, corridors, elevators, and stairs”, “material of building elements”, and “building data” are the three most important information specified by firefighters. The results also implied that the 2D model of architectural, structural and way finding is more understandable in comparison with the 3D model, while the 3D model of MEP system could convey more information than the 2D model. Furthermore, color in visualization can help firefighters to understand the building information easier and quicker. Sufficient internal consistency of all responses was proven through developing the Pearson Correlation Matrix and obtaining Cronbach’s alpha of 0.916. Therefore, the results of this study are reliable and could be applied to the population.
Abstract: In recent years, the number of document data has been
increasing since the spread of the Internet. Many methods have been
studied for extracting topics from large document data. We proposed
Independent Topic Analysis (ITA) to extract topics independent of
each other from large document data such as newspaper data. ITA is a
method for extracting the independent topics from the document data
by using the Independent Component Analysis. The topic represented
by ITA is represented by a set of words. However, the set of words
is quite different from the topics the user imagines. For example,
the top five words with high independence of a topic are as follows.
Topic1 = {"scor", "game", "lead", "quarter", "rebound"}. This Topic
1 is considered to represent the topic of "SPORTS". This topic name
"SPORTS" has to be attached by the user. ITA cannot name topics.
Therefore, in this research, we propose a method to obtain topics easy
for people to understand by using the web search engine, topics given
by the set of words given by independent topic analysis. In particular,
we search a set of topical words, and the title of the homepage of
the search result is taken as the topic name. And we also use the
proposed method for some data and verify its effectiveness.
Abstract: The aims of this research were twofold: 1) to brand identity design of Creative Agriculture Community Enterprise, Bang Khonthi District, Samut Songkhram Province and 2) to study the level of tourist satisfaction towards brand identity design of Creative Agriculture Community Enterprise, Bang Khonthi District, Samut Songkhram Province. tourist satisfaction was measured using six criteria: clear brand positioning, likeable brand personality, memorable logo, attractive color palette, professional typography and on-brand supporting graphics. The researcher utilized a probability sampling method via simple random sampling. The sample consisted of 30 tourists in the Creative Agriculture Community Enterprise. Statistics utilized for data analysis were percentage, mean, and standard deviation. The results suggest that tourist had high levels of satisfaction towards all six criteria of the brand identity design that was designed to target them. This study proposes that specifically brand identity designed of Creative Agriculture Community Enterprise could also be implemented with other real media already available on the market.
Abstract: In this paper, the performance and emission characteristics of a Single Cylinder Spark Ignition engine have been investigated. The research is based on micro emulsion application as fuel in a gasoline engine. We have analyzed many micro emulsion compositions in various proportions, for predicting the performance of the Spark Ignition engine. This new technology of fuel modifications is emerging very rapidly as lot of research is going on in the field of micro emulsion fuels in Compression Ignition engines, but the micro emulsion fuel used in a Gasoline engine is very rare. The use of micro emulsion as fuel in a Spark Ignition engine is virtually unexplored. So, our main goal is to see the performance and emission characteristics of micro emulsions as fuel, in Spark Ignition engines, and finding which composition is more efficient. In this research, we have used various micro emulsion fuels whose composition varies for all the three blends, and their performance and emission characteristic were predicted in AVL Boost software. Conventional Gasoline fuel 90%, 80% and 85% were blended with co-surfactant Ethanol in different compositions, and water was used as an additive for making it crystal clear transparent micro emulsion fuel, which is thermodynamically stable. By comparing the performances of engines, the power has shown similarity for micro emulsion fuel and conventional Gasoline fuel. On the other hand, Torque and BMEP shows increase for all the micro emulsion fuels. Micro emulsion fuel shows higher thermal efficiency and lower Specific Fuel Consumption for all the compositions as compared to the Gasoline fuel. Carbon monoxide and Hydro carbon emissions were also measured. The result shows that emissions decrease for all the composition of micro emulsion fuels, and proved to be the most efficient fuel both in terms of performance and emission characteristics.
Abstract: Cities are complex systems of diverse and inter-tangled activities. These activities and their complex interrelationships create diverse urban phenomena. And such urban phenomena have considerable influences on the lives of citizens. This research aimed to develop a method to reveal the causes and effects among diverse urban elements in order to enable better understanding of urban activities and, therefrom, to make better urban planning strategies. Specifically, this study was conducted to solve a data-recommendation problem found on a Korean public data homepage. First, a correlation analysis was conducted to find the correlations among random urban data. Then, based on the results of that correlation analysis, the weighted data network of each urban data was provided to people. It is expected that the weights of urban data thereby obtained will provide us with insights into cities and show us how diverse urban activities influence each other and induce feedback.
Abstract: Through progress in pavement design developments, a pavement design method was developed, which is titled the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). Nowadays, the evolution in roads network and highways is observed in Saudi Arabia as a result of increasing in traffic volume. Therefore, the MEPDG currently is implemented for flexible pavement design by the Saudi Ministry of Transportation. Implementation of MEPDG for local pavement design requires the calibration of distress models under the local conditions (traffic, climate, and materials). This paper aims to prepare data for calibration of MEPDG in Central Saudi Arabia. Thus, the first goal is data collection for the design of flexible pavement from the local conditions of the Riyadh region. Since, the modifying of collected data to input data is needed; the main goal of this paper is the analysis of collected data. The data analysis in this paper includes processing each: Trucks Classification, Traffic Growth Factor, Annual Average Daily Truck Traffic (AADTT), Monthly Adjustment Factors (MAFi), Vehicle Class Distribution (VCD), Truck Hourly Distribution Factors, Axle Load Distribution Factors (ALDF), Number of axle types (single, tandem, and tridem) per truck class, cloud cover percent, and road sections selected for the local calibration. Detailed descriptions of input parameters are explained in this paper, which leads to providing of an approach for successful implementation of MEPDG. Local calibration of MEPDG to the conditions of Riyadh region can be performed based on the findings in this paper.
Abstract: We aim to develop a full-body interaction game that could let children cooperate and interact with other children in small groups. As the first step for our aim, the objective of the full-body interaction game developed in this study is to make interaction between children. The game requires two children to jump together with the same timing. We let children experience the game and answer the questionnaires. The children using several strategies to coordinate the timing of their jumps were observed. These included shouting time, watching each other, and jumping in a constant rhythm as if they were skipping rope. In this manner, we observed the children playing the game while cooperating with each other. The results of a questionnaire to evaluate the proposed interactive game indicate that the jumping game was a very enjoyable experience in which the participants could immerse themselves. Therefore, the game enabled children to experience cooperation with others by using body movements.
Abstract: Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a holistic documentation process for operational visualization, design coordination, estimation and project scheduling. BIM software defines objects parametrically and it is a tool for virtual reality. Primary advantage of implementing BIM is the visual coordination of the building structure and systems such as Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) and it also identifies the possible conflicts between the building systems. This paper is an attempt to develop a risk based BIM model which would highlight the primary advantages of application of BIM pertaining to urban infrastructure transportation project. It has been observed that about 40% of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) companies use BIM but primarily for their outsourced projects. Also, 65% of the respondents agree that BIM would be used quiet strongly for future construction projects in India. The 3D models developed with Revit 2015 software would reduce co-ordination problems amongst the architects, structural engineers, contractors and building service providers (MEP). Integration of risk management along with BIM would provide enhanced co-ordination, collaboration and high probability of successful completion of the complex infrastructure transportation project within stipulated time and cost frame.
Abstract: This paper presents the local mesh co-occurrence
patterns (LMCoP) using HSV color space for image retrieval system.
HSV color space is used in this method to utilize color, intensity and
brightness of images. Local mesh patterns are applied to define the
local information of image and gray level co-occurrence is used to
obtain the co-occurrence of LMeP pixels. Local mesh co-occurrence
pattern extracts the local directional information from local mesh
pattern and converts it into a well-mannered feature vector using gray
level co-occurrence matrix. The proposed method is tested on three
different databases called MIT VisTex, Corel, and STex. Also, this
algorithm is compared with existing methods, and results in terms of
precision and recall are shown in this paper.
Abstract: Phthalates are ubiquitous environmental pollutants
well known because of their endocrine disrupting activity in human
organism. The aim of our study was, by biological monitoring,
investigate exposure to phthalates of Roma ethnicity group i.e.
children and adults from 5 families (n=29, average age 11.8 ± 7.6
years) living in western Slovakia. Additionally, we analysed some
associations between anthropometric measures, questionnaire data
i.e. socio-economic status, eating and drinking habits, practise of
personal care products and household conditions in comparison with
concentrations of phthalate metabolites. We used for analysis of urine
samples high performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass
spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) to determine concentrations of
phthalate metabolites monoethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-n-butyl
phthalate (MnBP), mono-iso-butyl phthalate (MiBP), mono(2-ethyl-
5-hydroxyhexyl) phthalate (5OH-MEHP), mono(2-ethyl-5-oxohexyl)
phthalate (5oxo-MEHP) and mono(2-etylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP).
Our results indicate that ethnicity, lower socioeconomic status and
different housing conditions in Roma population can affect urinary
concentration of phthalate metabolites.
Abstract: The turbocharger and turbocharging have been the
inherent component of diesel engines, so that critical parameters of
such engines, as BSFC (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption) or
thermal efficiency, fuel consumption, BMEP (Brake Mean Effective
Pressure), the power density output and emission level have been
improved extensively. In general, the turbocharger can be considered
as the most complex component of diesel engines, because it has
closely interrelated turbomachinery concepts of the turbines and the
compressors to thermodynamic fundamentals of internal combustion
engines and stress analysis of all components.
In this paper, a waste gate for a conventional single stage radial
turbine is investigated by consideration of turbochargers operation
constrains and engine operation conditions, without any detail
designs in the turbine and the compressor. Amount of opening waste
gate which extended between the ranges of full opened and closed
valve, is demonstrated by limiting compressor boost pressure ratio.
Obtaining of an optimum point by regard above mentioned items is
surveyed by three linked meanline modeling programs together
which consist of Turbomatch®, Compal®, Rital® madules in concepts
NREC® respectively.
Abstract: This paper presents small signal stability study carried
over the 140-Bus, 31-Machine, 5-Area MEPE system and validated
on free and open source software: PSAT. Well-established linearalgebra
analysis, eigenvalue analysis, is employed to determine the
small signal dynamic behavior of test system. The aspects of local
and interarea oscillations which may affect the operation and
behavior of power system are analyzed. Eigenvalue analysis is carried
out to investigate the small signal behavior of test system and the
participation factors have been determined to identify the
participation of the states in the variation of different mode shapes.
Also, the variations in oscillatory modes are presented to observe the
damping performance of the test system.
Abstract: This paper presents an evolutionary algorithm for
solving multi-objective optimization problems-based artificial neural
network (ANN). The multi-objective evolutionary algorithm used in
this study is genetic algorithm while ANN used is radial basis
function network (RBFN). The proposed algorithm named memetic
elitist Pareto non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-based RBFN
(MEPGAN). The proposed algorithm is implemented on medical
diseases problems. The experimental results indicate that the
proposed algorithm is viable, and provides an effective means to
design multi-objective RBFNs with good generalization capability
and compact network structure. This study shows that MEPGAN
generates RBFNs coming with an appropriate balance between
accuracy and simplicity, comparing to the other algorithms found in
literature.
Abstract: The current emission legislations and the large concern about the environment produced very numerous constraints on both governments and car manufacturers. Also the cost of energy increase means a reduction in fuel consumption must be met, without largely affecting the current engine production and performance. It is the intension to contribute towards the development and pursuing, among others on variable valve timing (VVT), for improving the engine performance. The investigation of the effect of (IVO) and (IVC) to optimize engine torque and volumetric efficiency for different engine speeds was considered. Power, BMEP and BSFC were calculated and presented to show the effect of varying inlet valve timing on them for all cases. A special program used to carry out the calculations. The analysis of the results shows that the reduction of 10% of (IVO) angle gave an improvement of around 1.3% in torque, BSFC, and volumetric efficiency, while a 10% decrease in (IVC) caused a 0.1% reduction in power, torque, and volumetric efficiency.
Abstract: Swietenia mahagoni have been used in traditional
medicine for treatment of different diseases. Present study was
performed to evaluate anti-ulcerogenic activity of ethanol seed
extract against ethanol induced gastric mucosal injury in rats. Six
groups of rats were orally pre-treated respectively with
carboxymethyl cellulose, omeprazole 20 mg/kg, 50, 100, 200 and 400
mg/kg plant extract one hour before oral administration of absolute
ethanol to generate gastric mucosal injury. After additional hour, rats
were sacrificed and ulcer areas of gastric walls were determined.
Grossly, carboxymethyl cellulose group exhibited severe mucosal
injury, whereas pre-treatment with plant extract exhibited significant
protection of gastric mucosa. Histology, carboxymethyl cellulose
group exhibited severe damage of gastric mucosa; edema and
leucocytes infiltration of sub mucosa compared to plant extract which
showed gastric protection. Acute toxicity study did not manifest any
toxicological signs in rats. Conclusions, results suggest that S.
mahagoni promotes ulcer protection as ascertained grossly and
histologically.
Abstract: Conventional WBL is effective for meaningful student, because rote student learn by repeating without thinking or trying to understand. It is impossible to have full benefit from conventional WBL. Understanding of rote student-s intention and what influences it becomes important. Poorly designed user interface will discourage rote student-s cultivation and intention to use WBL. Thus, user interface design is an important factor especially when WBL is used as comprehensive replacement of conventional teaching. This research proposes the influencing factors that can enhance student-s intention to use the system. The enhanced TAM is used for evaluating the proposed factors. The research result points out that factors influencing rote student-s intention are Perceived Usefulness of Homepage Content Structure, Perceived User Friendly Interface, Perceived Hedonic Component, and Perceived (homepage) Visual Attractiveness.
Abstract: This paper proposes a neural network weights and
topology optimization using genetic evolution and the
backpropagation training algorithm. The proposed crossover and
mutation operators aims to adapt the networks architectures and
weights during the evolution process. Through a specific inheritance
procedure, the weights are transmitted from the parents to their
offsprings, which allows re-exploitation of the already trained
networks and hence the acceleration of the global convergence of the
algorithm. In the preprocessing phase, a new feature extraction
method is proposed based on Legendre moments with the Maximum
entropy principle MEP as a selection criterion. This allows a global
search space reduction in the design of the networks. The proposed
method has been applied and tested on the well known MNIST
database of handwritten digits.
Abstract: We present a novel construction of 16-QAM codewords of length n = 2k . The number of constructed codewords is 162×[4k-1×k-k+1] . When these constructed codewords are utilized as a code in OFDM systems, their peak-to-mean envelope power ratios (PMEPR) are bounded above by 3.6 . The principle of our scheme is illustrated with a four subcarrier example.
Abstract: This study describes the methodology for the development of a validated in-vitro in-vivo correlation (IVIVC) for metoprolol tartrate modified release dosage forms with distinctive release rate characteristics. Modified release dosage forms were formulated by microencapsulation of metoprolol tartrate into different amounts of ethylcellulose by non-solvent addition technique. Then in-vitro and in-vivo studies were conducted to develop and validate level A IVIVC for metoprolol tartrate. The values of regression co-efficient (R2-values) for IVIVC of T2 and T3 formulations were not significantly (p