Abstract: A multicriteria linear programming problem with integer variables and parameterized optimality principle "from lexicographic to Slater" is considered. A situation in which initial coefficients of penalty cost functions are not fixed but may be potentially a subject to variations is studied. For any efficient solution, appropriate measures of the quality are introduced which incorporate information about variations of penalty cost function coefficients. These measures correspond to the so-called stability and accuracy functions defined earlier for efficient solutions of a generic multicriteria combinatorial optimization problem with Pareto and lexicographic optimality principles. Various properties of such functions are studied and maximum norms of perturbations for which an efficient solution preserves the property of being efficient are calculated.
Abstract: Process capability index Cpk is the most widely
used index in making managerial decisions since it provides bounds
on the process yield for normally distributed processes. However,
existent methods for assessing process performance which
constructed by statistical inference may unfortunately lead to fine
results, because uncertainties exist in most real-world applications.
Thus, this study adopts fuzzy inference to deal with testing of Cpk .
A brief score is obtained for assessing a supplier’s process instead of
a severe evaluation.
Abstract: In an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems, the Peak to Average power Ratio (PAR) is high. The clipping signal scheme is a useful and simple method to reduce the PAR. However, it introduces additional noise that degrades the systems performance. We propose an oversampling scheme to deal with the received signal in order to reduce the clipping noise by using Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. Coefficients of filter are obtained by correlation function of the received signal and the oversampling information at receiver. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated for frequency selective channel. Results show that the proposed scheme can mitigate the clipping noise significantly for OFDM systems and in order to maintain the system's capacity, the clipping ratio should be larger than 2.5.
Abstract: Cenozoic basalts found in Jiangsu province of eastern
China include tholeiites and alkali basalts. The present paper analyzed
the major, trace elements, rare earth elements of these Cenozoic
basalts and combined with Sr-Nd isotopic compositions proposed by
Chen et al. (1990)[1] in the literatures to discuss the petrogenesis of
these basalts and the geochemical characteristics of the source mantle.
Based on major, trace elements and fractional crystallization model
established by Brooks and Nielsen (1982)[2] we suggest that the
basaltic magma has experienced olivine + clinopyroxene fractionation
during its evolution. The chemical compositions of basaltic rocks from
Jiangsu province indicate that these basalts may belong to the same
magmatic system. Spidergrams reveal that Cenozoic basalts from
Jiangsu province have geochemical characteristics similar to those of
ocean island basalts(OIB). The slight positive Nb and Ti anomalies
found in basaltic rocks of this study suggest the presence of Ti-bearing
minerals in the mantle source and these Ti-bearing minerals had
contributed to basaltic magma during partial melting, indicating a
metasomatic event might have occurred before the partial melting.
Based on the Sr vs. Nd isotopic ratio plots, we suggest that Jiangsu
basalts may be derived from partial melting of mantle source which
may represent two-end members mixing of DMM and EM-I. Some
Jiangsu basaltic magma may be derived from partial melting of EM-I
heated by the upwelling asthenospheric mantle or asthenospheric
diapirism.
Abstract: This paper aims to (1) analyze the profiles of
transgressors (detected evaders); (2) examine reason(s) that triggered a
tax audit, causes of tax evasion, audit timeframe and tax penalty
charged; and (3) to assess if tax auditors followed the guidelines as
stated in the 'Tax Audit Framework' when conducting tax audits. In
2011, the Inland Revenue Board Malaysia (IRBM) had audited and
finalized 557 company cases. With official permission, data of all the
557 cases were obtained from the IRBM. Of these, a total of 421 cases
with complete information were analyzed. About 58.1% was small and
medium corporations and from the construction industry (32.8%). The
selection for tax audit was based on risk analysis (66.8%), information
from third party (11.1%), and firm with low profitability or fluctuating
profit pattern (7.8%). The three persistent causes of tax evasion by
firms were over claimed expenses (46.8%), fraudulent reporting of
income (38.5%) and overstating purchases (10.5%). These findings
are consistent with past literature. Results showed that tax auditors
took six to 18 months to close audit cases. More than half of tax
evaders were fined 45% on additional tax raised during audit for the
first offence. The study found tax auditors did follow the guidelines in
the 'Tax Audit Framework' in audit selection, settlement and penalty
imposition.
Abstract: Two-dimensional Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS)
of high Schmidt number mass transfer in a convective flow environment
(Rayleigh-B'enard) is carried out and results are compared to
experimental data. A fourth-order accurate WENO-scheme has been
used for scalar transport in order to aim for a high accuracy in areas
of high concentration gradients. It was found that the typical spatial
distance between downward plumes of cold high concentration water
and the eddy size are in good agreement with experiments using a
combined PIV-LIF technique for simultaneous and spatially synoptic
measurements of 2D velocity and concentration fields.
Abstract: This paper addresses issues of integral steering of
vehicles with two steering axles, where the rear wheels are pivoted in
the direction of the front wheels, but also in the opposite direction.
The steering box of the rear axle is presented with simple linkages
(single contour) that correlate the pivoting of the rear wheels
according to the direction of the front wheels, respectively to the
rotation angle of the steering wheel. The functionality of the system
is analyzed – the extent to which the requirements of the integral
steering are met by the considered/proposed mechanisms. The paper
highlights the quality of the single contour linkages, with two driving
elements for meeting these requirements, emphasizing diagrams of
mechanisms with 2 driving elements. Cam variants are analyzed and
proposed for the rear axle steering box. Cam profiles are determined
by various factors.
Abstract: The algorithm represents the DCT coefficients to concentrate signal energy and proposes combination and dictator to eliminate the correlation in the same level subband for encoding the DCT-based images. This work adopts DCT and modifies the SPIHT algorithm to encode DCT coefficients. The proposed algorithm also provides the enhancement function in low bit rate in order to improve the perceptual quality. Experimental results indicate that the proposed technique improves the quality of the reconstructed image in terms of both PSNR and the perceptual results close to JPEG2000 at the same bit rate.
Abstract: The paper presents a computational tool developed for
the evaluation of technical and economic advantages of an innovative
cleaning and conditioning technology of fluidized bed steam/oxygen
gasifiers outlet product gas. This technology integrates into a single
unit the steam gasification of biomass and the hot gas cleaning and
conditioning system. Both components of the computational tool,
process flowsheet and economic evaluator, have been developed
under IPSEpro software. The economic model provides information
that can help potential users, especially small and medium size
enterprises acting in the regenerable energy field, to decide the
optimal scale of a plant and to better understand both potentiality and
limits of the system when applied to a wide range of conditions.
Abstract: Stable nonzero populations without random deaths
caused by the Verhulst factor (Verhulst-free) are a rarity. Majority
either grow without bounds or die of excessive harmful mutations.
To delay the accumulation of bad genes or diseases, a new
environmental parameter Γ is introduced in the simulation. Current
results demonstrate that stability may be achieved by setting Γ = 0.1.
These steady states approach a maximum size that scales inversely
with reproduction age.
Abstract: Effective knowledge support relies on providing
operation-relevant knowledge to workers promptly and accurately. A
knowledge flow represents an individual-s or a group-s
knowledge-needs and referencing behavior of codified knowledge
during operation performance. The flow has been utilized to facilitate
organizational knowledge support by illustrating workers-
knowledge-needs systematically and precisely. However,
conventional knowledge-flow models cannot work well in cooperative
teams, which team members usually have diverse knowledge-needs in
terms of roles. The reason is that those models only provide one single
view to all participants and do not reflect individual knowledge-needs
in flows. Hence, we propose a role-based knowledge-flow view model
in this work. The model builds knowledge-flow views (or virtual
knowledge flows) by creating appropriate virtual knowledge nodes
and generalizing knowledge concepts to required concept levels. The
customized views could represent individual role-s knowledge-needs
in teamwork context. The novel model indicates knowledge-needs in
condensed representation from a roles perspective and enhances the
efficiency of cooperative knowledge support in organizations.
Abstract: Based on assumptions of neo-classical economics and
rational choice / public choice theory, this paper investigates the
regulation of industrial land use in Taiwan by homeowners
associations (HOAs) as opposed to traditional government
administration. The comparison, which applies the transaction cost
theory and a polynomial regression analysis, manifested that HOAs
are superior to conventional government administration in terms of
transaction costs and overall efficiency. A case study that compares
Taiwan-s commonhold industrial park, NangKang Software Park, to
traditional government counterparts using limited data on the costs
and returns was analyzed. This empirical study on the relative
efficiency of governmental and private institutions justified the
important theoretical proposition. Numerical results prove the
efficiency of the established model.
Abstract: The operation performance of a valveless micro-pump
is strongly dependent on the shape of connected nozzle/diffuser and
Reynolds number. The aims of present work are to compare the
performance curves of micropump with the original straight
nozzle/diffuser and contoured nozzle/diffuser under different back
pressure conditions. The tested valveless micropumps are assembled
of five pieces of patterned PMMA plates with hot-embracing
technique. The structures of central chamber, the inlet/outlet
reservoirs and the connected nozzle/diffuser are fabricated with laser
cutting machine. The micropump is actuated with circular-type PZT
film embraced on the bottom of central chamber. The deformation of
PZT membrane with various input voltages is measured with a
displacement laser probe. A simple testing facility is also constructed
to evaluate the performance curves for comparison.
In order to observe the evaluation of low Reynolds number
multiple vortex flow patterns within the micropump during suction
and pumping modes, the unsteady, incompressible laminar
three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are
solved. The working fluid is DI water with constant thermo-physical
properties. The oscillating behavior of PZT film is modeled with the
moving boundary wall in way of UDF program. With the dynamic
mesh method, the instants pressure and velocity fields are obtained
and discussed.Results indicated that the volume flow rate is not
monotony increased with the oscillating frequency of PZT film,
regardless of the shapes of nozzle/diffuser. The present micropump
can generate the maximum volume flow rate of 13.53 ml/min when
the operation frequency is 64Hz and the input voltage is 140 volts.
The micropump with contoured nozzle/diffuser can provide 7ml/min
flow rate even when the back pressure is up to 400 mm-H2O. CFD
results revealed that the flow central chamber was occupied with
multiple pairs of counter-rotating vortices during suction and
pumping modes. The net volume flow rate over a complete
oscillating periodic of PZT
Abstract: 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMGR) catalyzes the conversion of HMG-CoA to mevalonate using NADPH and the enzyme is involved in rate-controlling step of mevalonate. Inhibition of HMGR is considered as effective way to lower cholesterol levels so it is drug target to treat hypercholesterolemia, major risk factor of cardiovascular disease. To discover novel HMGR inhibitor, we performed structure-based pharmacophore modeling combined with molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Four HMGR inhibitors were used for MD simulation and representative structure of each simulation were selected by clustering analysis. Four structure-based pharmacophore models were generated using the representative structure. The generated models were validated used in virtual screening to find novel scaffolds for inhibiting HMGR. The screened compounds were filtered by applying drug-like properties and used in molecular docking. Finally, four hit compounds were obtained and these complexes were refined using energy minimization. These compounds might be potential leads to design novel HMGR inhibitor.
Abstract: The P-Bigram method is a string comparison methods
base on an internal two characters-based similarity measure. The edit
distance between two strings is the minimal number of elementary
editing operations required to transform one string into the other. The
elementary editing operations include deletion, insertion, substitution
two characters. In this paper, we address the P-Bigram method to
sole the similarity problem in DNA sequence. This method provided
an efficient algorithm that locates all minimum operation in a string.
We have been implemented algorithm and found that our program
calculated that smaller distance than one string. We develop PBigram
edit distance and show that edit distance or the similarity and
implementation using dynamic programming. The performance of
the proposed approach is evaluated using number edit and percentage
similarity measures.
Abstract: Using vision based solution in intelligent vehicle application often needs large memory to handle video stream and image process which increase complexity of hardware and software. In this paper, we present a FPGA implement of a vision based lane departure warning system. By taking frame of videos, the line gradient of line is estimated and the lane marks are found. By analysis the position of lane mark, departure of vehicle will be detected in time. This idea has been implemented in Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA. The lane departure warning system used 39% logic resources and no memory of the device. The average availability is 92.5%. The frame rate is more than 30 frames per second (fps).
Abstract: The performance of adaptive beamforming degrades
substantially in the presence of steering vector mismatches. This
degradation is especially severe in the near-field, for the
3-dimensional source location is more difficult to estimate than the
2-dimensional direction of arrival in far-field cases. As a solution, a
novel approach of near-field robust adaptive beamforming (RABF) is
proposed in this paper. It is a natural extension of the traditional
far-field RABF and belongs to the class of diagonal loading
approaches, with the loading level determined based on worst-case
performance optimization. However, different from the methods
solving the optimal loading by iteration, it suggests here a simple
closed-form solution after some approximations, and consequently,
the optimal weight vector can be expressed in a closed form. Besides
simplicity and low computational cost, the proposed approach reveals
how different factors affect the optimal loading as well as the weight
vector. Its excellent performance in the near-field is confirmed via a
number of numerical examples.
Abstract: Concept maps can be generated manually or
automatically. It is important to recognize differences of the two
types of concept maps. The automatically generated concept maps
are dynamic, interactive, and full of associations between the terms
on the maps and the underlying documents. Through a specific
concept mapping system, Visual Concept Explorer (VCE), this paper
discusses how automatically generated concept maps are different
from manually generated concept maps and how different
applications and learning opportunities might be created with the
automatically generated concept maps. The paper presents several
examples of learning strategies that take advantages of the
automatically generated concept maps for concept learning and
exploration.
Abstract: The research object was wheat bread. Experiments
were carried out at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia
University of Agriculture. An active packaging in combination with
modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2 60% and N2 40%) was examined
and compared with traditional packaging in air ambiance. Polymer
Multibarrier 60, PP and OPP bags were used. Influence of iron based
oxygen absorber in sachets of 100 cc obtained from Mitsubishi Gas
Chemical Europe Ageless® was tested on the quality during the shelf
of wheat bread. Samples of 40±4 g were packaged in polymer
pouches (110 mm x 120 mm), hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC
C300 vacuum chamber machine, and stored in room temperature
+21.0±0.5 °C. The physiochemical properties – weight losses,
moisture content, hardness, pH, colour, changes of atmosphere
content (CO2 and O2) in headspace of packs, and microbial
conditions were analysed before packaging and in the 7th, 14th, 21st
and 28th days of storage.
Abstract: In this paper, by utilizing the coincidence degree theorem a predator-prey model with modified Leslie-Gower Hollingtype II schemes and a deviating argument is studied. Some sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence of positive periodic solutions of the model.