Abstract: This paper describes a prototype aircraft that can fly
slowly, safely and transmit wireless video for tasks like reconnaissance,
surveillance and target acquisition. The aircraft is designed to
fly in closed quarters like forests, buildings, caves and tunnels which
are often spacious but GPS reception is poor. Envisioned is that a
small, safe and slow flying vehicle can assist in performing dull,
dangerous and dirty tasks like disaster mitigation, search-and-rescue
and structural damage assessment.
Abstract: A total of 33,680 nuclear power plants (NPPs) workers were monitored and recorded from 1990 to 2007. According to the record, the average individual radiation dose has been decreasing continually from it 3.20 mSv/man in 1990 to 1.12 mSv/man at the end of 2007. After the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) 60 recommendation was generalized in South Korea, no nuclear power plant workers received above 20 mSv radiation, and the numbers of relatively highly exposed workers have been decreasing continuously. The age distribution of radiation workers in nuclear power plants was composed of mainly 20-30- year-olds (83%) for 1990 ~ 1994 and 30-40-year-olds (75%) for 2003 ~ 2007. The difference in individual average dose by age was not significant. Most (77%) of NPP radiation exposures from 1990 to 2007 occurred mostly during the refueling period. With regard to exposure type, the majority of exposures were external exposures, representing 95% of the total exposures, while internal exposures represented only 5%. External effective dose was affected mainly by gamma radiation exposure, with an insignificant amount of neutron exposure. As for internal effective dose, tritium (3H) in the pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) was the biggest cause of exposure.
Abstract: In this paper, a multi-agent robot system is presented. The system consists of four robots. The developed robots are able to automatically enter and patrol a harmful environment, such as the building infected with virus or the factory with leaking hazardous gas. Further, every robot is able to perform obstacle avoidance and search for the victims. Several operation modes are designed: remote control, obstacle avoidance, automatic searching, and so on.
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: 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.
Abstract: Developing a supply chain management (SCM) system is costly, but important. However, because of its complicated nature, not many of such projects are considered successful. Few research publications directly relate to key success factors (KSFs) for implementing a SCM system. Motivated by the above, this research proposes a hierarchy of KSFs for SCM system implementation in the semiconductor industry by using a two-step approach. First, the literature review indicates the initial hierarchy. The second step includes a focus group approach to finalize the proposed KSF hierarchy by extracting valuable experiences from executives and managers that actively participated in a project, which successfully establish a seamless SCM integration between the world's largest semiconductor foundry manufacturing company and the world's largest assembly and testing company. Future project executives may refer the resulting KSF hierarchy as a checklist for SCM system implementation in semiconductor or related industries.
Abstract: This paper presented the technique of robot control by event-related potentials (ERPs) of brain waves. Based on the proposed technique, severe physical disabilities can free browse outside world. A specific component of ERPs, N2P3, was found and used to control the movement of robot and the view of camera on the designed brain-computer interface (BCI). Users only required watching the stimuli of attended button on the BCI, the evoked potentials of brain waves of the target button, N2P3, had the greatest amplitude among all control buttons. An experimental scene had been constructed that the robot required walking to a specific position and move the view of camera to see the instruction of the mission, and then completed the task. Twelve volunteers participated in this experiment, and experimental results showed that the correct rate of BCI control achieved 80% and the average of execution time was 353 seconds for completing the mission. Four main contributions included in this research: (1) find an efficient component of ERPs, N2P3, for BCI control, (2) embed robot's viewpoint image into user interface for robot control, (3) design an experimental scene and conduct the experiment, and (4) evaluate the performance of the proposed system for assessing the practicability.
Abstract: This hypothesis shows that the induction and the
remanent of magnetic properties govern the mechanism processes of
DNA replication and the shortening of the telomere.
The solenoid–like formation of each parental DNA strand, which
exists at the initial stage of the replication process, enables an electric
charge transformation through the strand to produce a magnetic field.
The magnetic field, in turn, induces the surrounding medium to form
a new (replicated) strand by a remanent magnetisation. Through the
remanent [residual] magnetisation process, the replicated strand
possesses a similar information pattern to that of the parental strand.
In the same process, the remanent amount of magnetisation forms the
medium in which it has less of both repetitive and pattern
magnetisation than that of the parental strand, therefore the replicated
strand shows a shortening in the length of its telomeres.
Abstract: To compute dynamic characteristics of nonlinear viscoelastic springs with elastic structures having huge degree-of-freedom, Yamaguchi proposed a new fast numerical method using finite element method [1]-[2]. In this method, restoring forces of the springs are expressed using power series of their elongation. In the expression, nonlinear hysteresis damping is introduced. In this expression, nonlinear complex spring constants are introduced. Finite element for the nonlinear spring having complex coefficients is expressed and is connected to the elastic structures modeled by linear solid finite element. Further, to save computational time, the discrete equations in physical coordinate are transformed into the nonlinear ordinary coupled equations using normal coordinate corresponding to linear natural modes. In this report, the proposed method is applied to simulation for impact responses of a viscoelastic shock absorber with an elastic structure (an S-shaped structure) by colliding with a concentrated mass. The concentrated mass has initial velocities and collides with the shock absorber. Accelerations of the elastic structure and the concentrated mass are measured using Levitation Mass Method proposed by Fujii [3]. The calculated accelerations from the proposed FEM, corresponds to the experimental ones. Moreover, using this method, we also investigate dynamic errors of the S-shaped force transducer due to elastic mode in the S-shaped structure.
Abstract: Microorganisms isolated from water and soil of
Kazakhstan to identify potential high-effective producers of the
arachidonic acid, exhibiting a wide range of physiological activity
and having practical applications were screened. Based on the results
of two independent tests (the test on the sensitivity of the growth
processes of microorganisms to acetylsalicylic acid - an irreversible
inhibitor of PGH-synthase involved in the metabolism of arachidonic
acid and its derivatives, the test for inhibition of peroxidase activity
of membrane-bounding fraction of PGH - synthase by acetylsalicylic
acid) were selected microbial cultures which are potential highproducer
of arachidonic acid. They are characterized by a stable
strong growth in the laboratory conditions. Identification of
microorganism cultures based on morphological, physiological,
biochemical and molecular genetic characteristics was performed.
Abstract: MOC (method of cell) is a new method of investigating
wave propagating in material with periodic microstructure, and can
reflect the effect of microstructure. Wave propagation in periodically
laminated medium consisting of linearly elastic layers can be treated
as a special application of this method. In this paper, it was used to
simulate the dynamic response of carbon-phenolic to impulsive
loading under certain boundary conditions. From the comparison
between the results obtained from this method and the exact results
based on propagator matrix theory, excellent agreement is achieved.
Conclusion can be made that the oscillation periodicity is decided by
the thickness of sub-cells. In the end, the NHDMOC method, which
permits studying stress wave propagation with one dimensional strain,
was applied to study the one-dimensional stress wave propagation. In
this paper, the ZWT nonlinear visco-elastic constitutive relationship
with 7 parameters, NHDMOC, and corresponding equations were
deduced. The equations were verified, comparing the elastic stress
wave propagation in SHPB with, respectively, the elastic and the
visco-elastic bar. Finally the dispersion and attenuation of stress wave
in SHPB with visco-elastic bar was studied.
Abstract: Knowledge capabilities are increasingly important for
the innovative technology enterprises to enhance the business
performance in terms of product competitiveness, innovation and
sales. Recognition of the company capability by auditing allows them
to further pursue advancement, strategic planning and hence gain
competitive advantages. This paper attempts to develop an
Organizations- Knowledge Capabilities Assessment (OKCA) method
to assess the knowledge capabilities of technology companies. The
OKCA is a questionnaire-based assessment tool which has been
developed to uncover the impact of various knowledge capabilities on
different organizational performance. The collected data is then
analyzed to find out the crucial elements for different technological
companies. Based on the results, innovative technology enterprises are
able to recognize the direction for further improvement on business
performance and future development plan. External environmental
factors affecting organization performance can be found through the
further analysis of some selected reference companies.
Abstract: High performance Resistive Random Access Memory
(RRAM) based on HfOx has been prepared and its temperature
instability has been investigated in this work. With increasing
temperature, it is found that: leakage current at high resistance state
increases, which can be explained by the higher density of traps
inside dielectrics (related to trap-assistant tunneling), leading to a
smaller On/Off ratio; set and reset voltages decrease, which may be
attributed to the higher oxygen ion mobility, in addition to the
reduced potential barrier to create / recover oxygen ions (or oxygen
vacancies); temperature impact on the RRAM retention degradation
is more serious than electrical bias.
Abstract: This paper discusses a qualitative simulator QRiOM
that uses Qualitative Reasoning (QR) technique, and a process-based
ontology to model, simulate and explain the behaviour of selected
organic reactions. Learning organic reactions requires the application
of domain knowledge at intuitive level, which is difficult to be
programmed using traditional approach. The main objective of
QRiOM is to help learners gain a better understanding of the
fundamental organic reaction concepts, and to improve their
conceptual comprehension on the subject by analyzing the multiple
forms of explanation generated by the software. This paper focuses
on the generation of explanation based on causal theories to explicate
various phenomena in the chemistry subject. QRiOM has been tested
with three classes problems related to organic chemistry, with
encouraging results. This paper also presents the results of
preliminary evaluation of QRiOM that reveal its explanation
capability and usefulness.
Abstract: The current speech interfaces in many military
applications may be adequate for native speakers. However,
the recognition rate drops quite a lot for non-native speakers
(people with foreign accents). This is mainly because the nonnative
speakers have large temporal and intra-phoneme
variations when they pronounce the same words. This
problem is also complicated by the presence of large
environmental noise such as tank noise, helicopter noise, etc.
In this paper, we proposed a novel continuous acoustic feature
adaptation algorithm for on-line accent and environmental
adaptation. Implemented by incremental singular value
decomposition (SVD), the algorithm captures local acoustic
variation and runs in real-time. This feature-based adaptation
method is then integrated with conventional model-based
maximum likelihood linear regression (MLLR) algorithm.
Extensive experiments have been performed on the NATO
non-native speech corpus with baseline acoustic model trained
on native American English. The proposed feature-based
adaptation algorithm improved the average recognition
accuracy by 15%, while the MLLR model based adaptation
achieved 11% improvement. The corresponding word error
rate (WER) reduction was 25.8% and 2.73%, as compared to
that without adaptation. The combined adaptation achieved
overall recognition accuracy improvement of 29.5%, and
WER reduction of 31.8%, as compared to that without
adaptation.
Abstract: In this study, we present an advanced detection
technique for mass type breast cancer based on texture information
of organs. The proposed method detects the cancer areas in three
stages. In the first stage, the midpoints of mass area are determined
based on AHE (Adaptive Histogram Equalization). In the second
stage, we set the threshold coefficient of homogeneity by using
MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimation) to compute the uniformity
of texture. Finally, mass type cancer tissues are extracted from the
original image. As a result, it was observed that the proposed
method shows an improved detection performance on dense breast
tissues of Korean women compared with the existing methods. It is
expected that the proposed method may provide additional
diagnostic information for detection of mass-type breast cancer.
Abstract: Today-s business has inevitably been set in the global supply chain management environment. International transportation has never played such an important role in the global supply chain network, because movement of shipments from one country to another tends to be more frequent than ever before. This paper studies international transportation problems experienced by an international transportation company. Because of the limited fleet capacity, the transportation company has to hire additional trucks from two countries in advance. However, customer-s shipment information is uncertain, and decisions have to be made before accurate information can be obtained. This paper proposes a stochastic mixed 0-1 programming model to solve the international transportation problems under uncertain demand. A series of experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed stochastic model.
Abstract: This paper makes a contribution to the on-going
debate on conceptualization and lexicalization of cutting and
breaking (C&B) verbs by discussing data from Telugu, a language of
India belonging to the Dravidian family. Five Telugu native speakers-
verbalizations of agentive actions depicted in 43 short video-clips
were analyzed. It was noted that verbalization of C&B events in
Telugu requires formal units such as simple lexical verbs, explicator
compound verbs, and other complex verb forms. The properties of
the objects involved, the kind of instruments used, and the manner of
action had differential influence on the lexicalization patterns.
Further, it was noted that all the complex verb forms encode 'result'
and 'cause' sub-events in that order. Due to the polysemy associated
with some of the verb forms, our data does not support the
straightforward bipartition of this semantic domain.
Abstract: The use of technology is increasingly adopted to
support flexible learning in Higher Education institutions. The
adoption of more sophisticated technologies offers a broad range of
facilities for communication and resource sharing, thereby creating a
flexible learning environment that facilitates and even encourages
students not to physically attend classes. However this emerging
trend seems to contradict class attendance requirements within
universities, inevitably leading to a dilemma between amending
traditional regulations and creating new policies for the higher
education institutions. This study presents an investigation into
student engagement in a technology enhanced/driven flexible
environment along with its relationship to attainment. We propose an
approach to modelling engagement from different perspectives in
terms of indicators and then consider what impact these indicators
have on student academic performance. We have carried out a case
study on the relation between attendance and attainment in a flexible
environment. Although our preliminary results show attendance is
quantitatively correlated with successful student development and
learning outcomes, our results also indicate there is a cohort that did
not follow such a pattern. Nevertheless the preliminary results could
provide an insight into pilot studies in the wider deployment of new
technology to support flexible learning.
Abstract: This paper considers a robust recovery of sparse frequencies
from partial phase-only measurements. With the proposed
method, sparse frequencies can be reconstructed, which makes full
use of the sparse distribution in the Fourier representation of the
complex-valued time signal. Simulation experiments illustrate the
proposed method-s advantages over conventional methods in both
noiseless and additive white Gaussian noise cases.