Abstract: The excessive consumption of fossil energies (electrical energy) during summer caused by the technological development involves more and more climate warming.
In order to reduce the worst impact of gas emissions produced from classical air conditioning, heat driven solar absorption chiller is pretty promising; it consists on using solar as motive energy which is clean and environmentally friendly to provide cold.
Solar absorption machine is composed by four components using Lithium Bromide /water as a refrigerating couple. LiBr- water is the most promising in chiller applications due to high safety, high volatility ratio, high affinity, high stability and its high latent heat. The lithium bromide solution is constitute by the salt lithium bromide which absorbs water under certain conditions of pressure and temperature however if the concentration of the solution is high in the absorption chillers; which exceed 70%, the solution will crystallize.
The main aim of this article is to study the phenomena of the crystallization and to evaluate how the dependence between the electric conductivity and the concentration which should be controlled.
Abstract: Vision based tracking problem is solved through a
combination of optical flow, MACH filter and log r-θ mapping.
Optical flow is used for detecting regions of movement in video
frames acquired under variable lighting conditions. The region of
movement is segmented and then searched for the target. A template
is used for target recognition on the segmented regions for detecting
the region of interest. The template is trained offline on a sequence of
target images that are created using the MACH filter and log r-θ
mapping. The template is applied on areas of movement in
successive frames and strong correlation is seen for in-class targets.
Correlation peaks above a certain threshold indicate the presence of
target and the target is tracked over successive frames.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to emphasize and alleviate the effect of phase noise due to imperfect local oscillators on the performances of a Multi-Carrier CDMA system. After the cancellation of Common Phase Error (CPE), an iterative approach is introduced which iteratively estimates Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) components in the frequency domain and cancels their contribution in the time domain. Simulation are conducted in order to investigate the achievable performances for several parameters, such as the spreading factor, the modulation order, the phase noise power and the transmission Signal-to-Noise Ratio.
Abstract: Characterized as rich mineral substances, low
temperature, few bacteria, and stability with numerous implementation
aspects on aquaculture, food, drinking, and leisure, the deep sea water
(DSW) development has become a new industry in the world. It has
been report that marine algae contain various biologically active
compounds. This research focued on the affections in cultivating
Sagrassum cristaefolium with different concentration of deep sea
water(DSW) and surface sea water(SSW). After two and four weeks,
the total phenolic contents were compared in Sagrassum cristaefolium
culturing with different ways, and the reductive activity of them was
also be tried with potassium ferricyanide. Those fresh seaweeds were
dried with oven and were ground to powder. Progressively, the marine
algae we cultured was extracted by water under the condition with
heating them at 90Ôäâ for 1hr.The total phenolic contents were be
executed using Folin–Ciocalteu method. The results were explaining
as follows: the highest total phenolic contents and the best reductive
ability of all could be observed on the 1/4 proportion of DSW to SSW
culturing in two weeks. Furthermore, the 1/2 proportion of DSW to
SSW also showed good reductive ability and plentiful phenolic
compositions. Finally, we confirmed that difference proportion of
DSW and SSW is the major point relating to ether the total phenolic
components or the reductive ability in the Sagrassum cristaefolium. In
the future, we will use this way to mass production the marine algae or
other micro algae on industry applications.
Abstract: Most paddy rice fields in East Asia are small parcels,
and the weather conditions during the growing season are usually
cloudy. FORMOSAT-2 multi-spectral images have an 8-meter
resolution and one-day recurrence, ideal for mapping paddy rice fields
in East Asia. To map rice fields, this study first determined the
transplanting and the most active tillering stages of paddy rice and
then used multi-temporal images to distinguish different growing
characteristics between paddy rice and other ground covers. The
unsupervised ISODATA (iterative self-organizing data analysis
techniques) and supervised maximum likelihood were both used to
discriminate paddy rice fields, with training areas automatically
derived from ten-year cultivation parcels in Taiwan. Besides original
bands in multi-spectral images, we also generated normalized
difference vegetation index and experimented with object-based
pre-classification and post-classification. This paper discusses results
of different image classification methods in an attempt to find a
precise and automatic solution to mapping paddy rice in Taiwan.
Abstract: The production of activated carbon from low or zero cost of agricultural by-products or wastes has received great attention from academics and practitioners due to its economic and environmental benefits. In the production of bamboo furniture, a significant amount of bamboo waste is inevitably generated. Therefore, this research aimed to prepare activated carbons from bamboo furniture waste by chemical (KOH) activation and determine their properties and adsorption capacities for water treatment. The influence of carbonization time on the properties and adsorption capacities of activated carbons was also investigated. The finding showed that the bamboo-derived activated carbons had microporous characteristics. They exhibited high tendency for the reduction of impurities present in effluent water. Their adsorption capacities were comparable to the adsorption capacity of a commercial activated carbon regarding to the reduction in COD, TDS and turbidity of the effluent water.
Abstract: The problem of Small Area Estimation (SAE) is complex because of various information sources and insufficient data. In this paper, an approach for SAE is presented for decision-making at national, regional and local level. We propose an Empirical Best Linear Unbiased Predictor (EBLUP) as an estimator in order to combine several information sources to evaluate various indicators. First, we present the urban audit project and its environmental, social and economic indicators. Secondly, we propose an approach for decision making in order to estimate indicators. An application is used to validate the theoretical proposal. Finally, a decision support system is presented based on open-source environment.
Abstract: Purpose of this work is to develop an automatic classification system that could be useful for radiologists in the breast cancer investigation. The software has been designed in the framework of the MAGIC-5 collaboration. In an automatic classification system the suspicious regions with high probability to include a lesion are extracted from the image as regions of interest (ROIs). Each ROI is characterized by some features based generally on morphological lesion differences. A study in the space features representation is made and some classifiers are tested to distinguish the pathological regions from the healthy ones. The results provided in terms of sensitivity and specificity will be presented through the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves. In particular the best performances are obtained with the Neural Networks in comparison with the K-Nearest Neighbours and the Support Vector Machine: The Radial Basis Function supply the best results with 0.89 ± 0.01 of area under ROC curve but similar results are obtained with the Probabilistic Neural Network and a Multi Layer Perceptron.
Abstract: TiO2 supported nano-ZnO catalyst was prepared by
deposition-precipitation and tested for the trans-esterification
reaction of soybean oil to biodiesel. The TiO2 support stabilized the
nano-ZnO in a dispersed form with limited crystallite size compared
to the unsupported ZnO. The final ZnO dispersion and crystallite size
and the material transfer resistance in the catalyst significantly
influenced the supported nano-ZnO catalyst performance.
Abstract: Traffic density, an indicator of traffic
conditions, is one of the most critical characteristics to
Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This paper investigates
recursive traffic density estimation using the information
provided from inductive loop detectors. On the basis of the
phenomenological relationship between speed and density, the
existing studies incorporate a state space model and update the
density estimate using vehicular speed observations via the
extended Kalman filter, where an approximation is made
because of the linearization of the nonlinear observation
equation. In practice, this may lead to substantial estimation
errors. This paper incorporates a suitable transformation to
deal with the nonlinear observation equation so that the
approximation is avoided when using Kalman filter to
estimate the traffic density. A numerical study is conducted. It
is shown that the developed method outperforms the existing
methods for traffic density estimation.
Abstract: An electronic portal image device (EPID) has become
a method of patient-specific IMRT dose verification for radiotherapy.
Research studies have focused on pre and post-treatment verification,
however, there are currently no interventional procedures using EPID
dosimetry that measure the dose in real time as a mechanism to
ensure that overdoses do not occur and underdoses are detected as
soon as is practically possible. As a result, an EPID-based real time
dose verification system for dynamic IMRT was developed and was
implemented with MATLAB/Simulink. The EPID image acquisition
was set to continuous acquisition mode at 1.4 images per second. The
system defined the time constraint gap, or execution gap at the image
acquisition time, so that every calculation must be completed before
the next image capture is completed. In addition, the
Abstract: Mercury adsorption on soil was investigated at
different ionic strengths using Ca(NO3)2 as a background electrolyte.
Results fitted the Langmuir equation and the adsorption isotherms
reached a plateau at higher equilibrium concentrations. Increasing
ionic strength decreased the sorption of mercury, due to the
competition of Ca ions for the sorption sites in the soils. The
influence of ionic strength was related to the mechanisms of heavy
metal sorption by the soil. These results can be of practical
importance both in the agriculture and contaminated soils since the
solubility of mercury in soils are strictly dependent on the adsorption
and release process.
Abstract: The last years have seen an increasing use of image analysis techniques in the field of biomedical imaging, in particular in microscopic imaging. The basic step for most of the image analysis techniques relies on a background image free of objects of interest, whether they are cells or histological samples, to perform further analysis, such as segmentation or mosaicing. Commonly, this image consists of an empty field acquired in advance. However, many times achieving an empty field could not be feasible. Or else, this could be different from the background region of the sample really being studied, because of the interaction with the organic matter. At last, it could be expensive, for instance in case of live cell analyses. We propose a non parametric and general purpose approach where the background is built automatically stemming from a sequence of images containing even objects of interest. The amount of area, in each image, free of objects just affects the overall speed to obtain the background. Experiments with different kinds of microscopic images prove the effectiveness of our approach.
Abstract: Text categorization techniques are widely used to many Information Retrieval (IR) applications. In this paper, we proposed a simple but efficient method that can automatically find the relationship between any pair of terms and documents, also an indexing matrix is established for text categorization. We call this method Indexing Matrix Categorization Machine (IMCM). Several experiments are conducted to show the efficiency and robust of our algorithm.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the
response of the newly released Gafchromic HD-V2 film for alpha
particle of 5.5 MeV. Gafchromic HD-V2 was exposed to alpha
particles of energy 5 MeV from 241Am for different durations. Then
the films were scanned with a flatbed scanner. The dose response
curve up to 2200 Gy has been achieved. The film’s reproducibility
and sensitivity were evaluated. The results obtained show that the net
optical density increases almost exponentially with the increase in the
exposure time, and it becomes saturated after prolonged exposure
times. The red channel shows the highest sensitivity, with a value of
4 x 10-3 Gy-1 at netOD of 0.4. The inter-film reproducibility was
measured and the relative uncertainty found was 1.7 %, 2.1 % and 2.3
% for grey, red and green channels, respectively.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel concept of relative
distance measurement using Stereo Vision Technology and discuss
its implementation on a FPGA based real-time image processor. We
capture two images using two CCD cameras and compare them.
Disparity is calculated for each pixel using a real time dense disparity
calculation algorithm. This algorithm is based on the concept of
indexed histogram for matching. Disparity being inversely
proportional to distance (Proved Later), we can thus get the relative
distances of objects in front of the camera. The output is displayed on
a TV screen in the form of a depth image (optionally using pseudo
colors). This system works in real time on a full PAL frame rate (720
x 576 active pixels @ 25 fps).
Abstract: In this present study, experimental work was
conducted to study the effectiveness of newly innovated steel-CFRP
composite (CFRP laminates sandwiched between two steel strips) as
stirrups. A total numbers of eight concrete beams were tested under
four point loads. Each beam measured 1600 mm long, 160mm width
and 240 mm depth. The beams were reinforced with different shear
reinforcements; one without stirrups, one with steel stirrups and six
with different types and numbers of steel-CRFR stirrups. Test results
indicated that the steel-CFRP stirrups had enhanced the shear
strength capacity of beams. Moreover, the tests revealed that steel-
CFRP stirrups reached to their ultimate tensile strength unlike FRP
stirrups which rupture at much lower level than their ultimate
strength as werereported in various researches.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to compare the time
specification performance between conventional controller PID and
modern controller SMC for an inverted pendulum system. The goal is
to determine which control strategy delivers better performance with
respect to pendulum-s angle and cart-s position. The inverted
pendulum represents a challenging control problem, which
continually moves toward an uncontrolled state. Two controllers are
presented such as Sliding Mode Control (SMC) and Proportional-
Integral-Derivatives (PID) controllers for controlling the highly
nonlinear system of inverted pendulum model. Simulation study has
been done in Matlab Mfile and simulink environment shows that both
controllers are capable to control multi output inverted pendulum
system successfully. The result shows that Sliding Mode Control
(SMC) produced better response compared to PID control strategies
and the responses are presented in time domain with the details
analysis.
Abstract: This paper presents the fundamentals of Origami engineering and its application in nowadays as well as future industry. Several main cores of mathematical approaches such as Huzita- Hatori axioms, Maekawa and Kawasaki-s theorems are introduced briefly. Meanwhile flaps and circle packing by Robert Lang is explained to make understood the underlying principles in designing crease pattern. Rigid origami and its corrugation patterns which are potentially applicable for creating transformable or temporary spaces is discussed to show the transition of origami from paper to thick material. Moreover, some innovative applications of origami such as eyeglass, origami stent and high tech origami based on mentioned theories and principles are showcased in section III; while some updated origami technology such as Vacuumatics, self-folding of polymer sheets and programmable matter folding which could greatlyenhance origami structureare demonstrated in Section IV to offer more insight in future origami.
Abstract: This paper describes vibration analysis using the finite
element method for a small earphone, especially for the diaphragm
shape with a low-rigidity. The viscoelastic diaphragm is supported by
multiple nonlinear concentrated springs with linear hysteresis
damping. The restoring forces of the nonlinear springs have cubic
nonlinearity. The finite elements for the nonlinear springs with
hysteresis are expressed and are connected to the diaphragm that is
modeled by linear solid finite elements in consideration of a complex
modulus of elasticity. Further, the discretized equations in physical
coordinates are transformed into the nonlinear ordinary coupled
equations using normal coordinates corresponding to the linear natural
modes. We computed the nonlinear stationary and non-stationary
responses due to the internal resonance between modes with large
amplitude in the nonlinear springs and elastic modes in the diaphragm.
The non-stationary motions are confirmed as the chaos due to the
maximum Lyapunov exponents with a positive number. From the time
histories of the deformation distribution in the chaotic vibration, we
identified nonlinear modal couplings.