Abstract: The motivation of this work was to find a suitable 3D
scanner for human body parts digitalization in the field of prosthetics
and orthotics. The main project objective is to compare the three
hand-held portable scanners (two optical and one laser) and two
optical tripod scanners. The comparison was made with respect of
scanning detail, simplicity of operation and ability to scan directly on
the human body. Testing was carried out on a plaster cast of the
upper limb and directly on a few volunteers. The objective monitored
parameters were time of digitizing and post-processing of 3D data
and resulting visual data quality. Subjectively, it was considered level
of usage and handling of the scanner. The new tripod was developed
to improve the face scanning conditions. The results provide an
overview of the suitability of different types of scanners.
Abstract: This paper deals with an on-line identification method
of continuous-time Hammerstein systems by using the radial basis
function (RBF) networks and immune algorithm (IA). An unknown
nonlinear static part to be estimated is approximately represented
by the RBF network. The IA is efficiently combined with the
recursive least-squares (RLS) method. The objective function for the
identification is regarded as the antigen. The candidates of the RBF
parameters such as the centers and widths are coded into binary bit
strings as the antibodies and searched by the IA. On the other hand,
the candidates of both the weighting parameters of the RBF network
and the system parameters of the linear dynamic part are updated
by the RLS method. Simulation results are shown to illustrate the
proposed method.
Abstract: This paper deals with the simulation of a Boost Power Factor Correction (PFC) Converter with Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) Filter. The diode rectifier with output capacitor gives poor power factor. The Boost Converter of PFC Circuit is analyzed and then simulated with diode rectifier. The Boost PFC Converter with EMI Filter is simulated for resistive load. The power factor is improved using the proposed converter.
Abstract: The advancement of smartphones, wireless
networking and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology have
opened up a new approach to indoor navigation. Although NFC
technology has been used to support electronic commerce, access
control, and ticketing, there is a lack of research work on building
NFC-based indoor navigation system for smartphone users. This
paper presents an indoor interactive navigation system (named
I2Navi) based on NFC technology for users to navigate within a
building with ease using their smartphones. The I2Navi system has
been implemented at the Faculty of Engineering (FOE), Multimedia
University (MMU) to enable students, parents, visitors who own
NFC-enabled Android smartphones to navigate themselves within the
faculty. An evaluation is carried out and the results show positive
response to the proposed indoor navigation system using NFC and
smartphone technologies.
Abstract: The aged are faced with increasing risk for falls. The
aged have the easily fragile bones than others. When falls have
occurred, it is important to detect this emergency state because such
events often lead to more serious illness or even death. A
implementation of PDA system, for detection of emergency situation,
was developed using 3-axis accelerometer in this paper as follows.
The signals were acquired from the 3-axis accelerometer, and then
transmitted to the PDA through Bluetooth module. This system can
classify the human activity, and also detect the emergency state like
falls. When the fall occurs, the system generates the alarm on the
PDA. If a subject does not respond to the alarm, the system determines
whether the current situation is an emergency state or not, and then
sends some information to the emergency center in the case of urgent
situation. Three different studies were conducted on 12 experimental
subjects, with results indicating a good accuracy. The first study was
performed to detect the posture change of human daily activity. The
second study was performed to detect the correct direction of fall. The
third study was conducted to check the classification of the daily
physical activity. Each test was lasted at least 1 min. in third study.
The output of acceleration signal was compared and evaluated by
changing a various posture after attaching a 3-axis accelerometer
module on the chest. The newly developed system has some important
features such as portability, convenience and low cost. One of the
main advantages of this system is that it is available at home
healthcare environment. Another important feature lies in low cost to
manufacture device. The implemented system can detect the fall
accurately, so will be widely used in emergency situation.
Abstract: A new, simple and highly sensitive kinetic
spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of
trace amounts of Ru(III) in the range of 0.06-20 ng/ml .The method
is based on the inhibitory effect of ruthenium(III) on the oxidation of
Rhodamine B by bromate in acidic and micellar medium. The
reaction was monitored spectrophotometrically by measuring the
decreasing in absorbance of Rhodamine B at 554 nm with a fixedtime
method..The limit of detection is 0.04 ng/ml Ru(III).The relative
standard deviation of 5 and 10 ng/ml Ru(III) was 2.3 and 2.7 %,
respectively. The method was applied to the determination of
ruthenium in real water samples
Abstract: Analysis of reciprocating equipment piston rod leads
to nonlinear elastic-plastic deformation analysis of rod with initial
imperfection under axial dynamic load. In this paper a new and
effective model and analytical formulations are presented to evaluate
dynamic deformation and elastic-plastic stresses of reciprocating
machine piston rod. This new method has capability to account for
geometric nonlinearity, elastic-plastic deformation and dynamic
effects. Proposed method can be used for evaluation of piston rod
performance for various reciprocating machines under different
operation situations. Rod load curves and maximum allowable rod
load are calculated with presented method for a refinery type
reciprocating compressor. Useful recommendations and guidelines
for rod load, rod load reversal and rod drop monitoring are also
addressed.
Abstract: In order to implement flexibility as well as survivable
capacities over passive optical network (PON), a new automatic
random fault-recovery mechanism with array-waveguide-grating
based (AWG-based) optical switch (OSW) is presented. Firstly,
wavelength-division-multiplexing and optical code-division
multiple-access (WDM/OCDMA) scheme are configured to meet the
various geographical locations requirement between optical network
unit (ONU) and optical line terminal (OLT). The AWG-base optical
switch is designed and viewed as central star-mesh topology to
prohibit/decrease the duplicated redundant elements such as fiber and
transceiver as well. Hence, by simple monitoring and routing switch
algorithm, random fault-recovery capacity is achieved over
bi-directional (up/downstream) WDM/OCDMA scheme. When error
of distribution fiber (DF) takes place or bit-error-rate (BER) is higher
than 10-9 requirement, the primary/slave AWG-based OSW are
adjusted and controlled dynamically to restore the affected ONU
groups via the other working DFs immediately.
Abstract: The most reliable and accurate description of the actual behavior of a software system is its source code. However, not all questions about the system can be answered directly by resorting to this repository of information. What the reverse engineering methodology aims at is the extraction of abstract, goal-oriented “views" of the system, able to summarize relevant properties of the computation performed by the program. While concentrating on reverse engineering we had modeled the C++ files by designing the translator.
Abstract: This report shows the performance of composite
biodegradable film from chitosan, starch and sawdust fiber. The main
objectives of this research are to fabricate and characterize composite
biodegradable film in terms of morphology and physical properties.
The film was prepared by casting method. Sawdust fiber was used as
reinforcing agent and starch as polymer matrix in the casting
solution. The morphology of the film was characterized using atomic
force microscope (AFM). The result showed that the film has
smooth structure. Chemical composition of the film was investigated
using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) where the result revealed
present of starch in the film. The thermal properties were
characterized using thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) and
differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) where the results showed
that the film has small difference in melting and degradation
temperature.
Abstract: We consider optimal channel equalization for MIMO
(multi-input/multi-output) time-varying channels in the sense of
MMSE (minimum mean-squared-error), where the observation noise
can be non-stationary. We show that all ZF (zero-forcing) receivers
can be parameterized in an affine form which eliminates completely
the ISI (inter-symbol-interference), and optimal channel equalizers
can be designed through minimization of the MSE (mean-squarederror)
between the detected signals and the transmitted signals,
among all ZF receivers. We demonstrate that the optimal channel
equalizer is a modified Kalman filter, and show that under the AWGN
(additive white Gaussian noise) assumption, the proposed optimal
channel equalizer minimizes the BER (bit error rate) among all
possible ZF receivers. Our results are applicable to optimal channel
equalization for DWMT (discrete wavelet multitone), multirate transmultiplexers,
OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing),
and DS (direct sequence) CDMA (code division multiple access)
wireless data communication systems. A design algorithm for optimal
channel equalization is developed, and several simulation examples
are worked out to illustrate the proposed design algorithm.
Abstract: This paper describes studies carried out to investigate
the viability of using wireless cameras as a tool in monitoring
changes in air quality. A camera is used to monitor the change in
colour of a chemically responsive polymer within view of the camera
as it is exposed to varying chemical species concentration levels. The
camera captures this image and the colour change is analyzed by
averaging the RGB values present. This novel chemical sensing
approach is compared with an established chemical sensing method
using the same chemically responsive polymer coated onto LEDs. In
this way, the concentration levels of acetic acid in the air can be
tracked using both approaches. These approaches to chemical plume
tracking have many applications for air quality monitoring.
Abstract: An enhanced particle swarm optimization algorithm
(PSO) is presented in this work to solve the non-convex OPF
problem that has both discrete and continuous optimization variables.
The objective functions considered are the conventional quadratic
function and the augmented quadratic function. The latter model
presents non-differentiable and non-convex regions that challenge
most gradient-based optimization algorithms. The optimization
variables to be optimized are the generator real power outputs and
voltage magnitudes, discrete transformer tap settings, and discrete
reactive power injections due to capacitor banks. The set of equality
constraints taken into account are the power flow equations while the
inequality ones are the limits of the real and reactive power of the
generators, voltage magnitude at each bus, transformer tap settings,
and capacitor banks reactive power injections. The proposed
algorithm combines PSO with Newton-Raphson algorithm to
minimize the fuel cost function. The IEEE 30-bus system with six
generating units is used to test the proposed algorithm. Several cases
were investigated to test and validate the consistency of detecting
optimal or near optimal solution for each objective. Results are
compared to solutions obtained using sequential quadratic
programming and Genetic Algorithms.
Abstract: Variable speed drives are growing and varying. Drives expanse depend on progress in different part of science like power system, microelectronic, control methods, and so on. Artificial intelligent contains hard computation and soft computation. Artificial intelligent has found high application in most nonlinear systems same as motors drive. Because it has intelligence like human but there are no sentimental against human like angriness and.... Artificial intelligent is used for various points like approximation, control, and monitoring. Because artificial intelligent techniques can use as controller for any system without requirement to system mathematical model, it has been used in electrical drive control. With this manner, efficiency and reliability of drives increase and volume, weight and cost of them decrease.
Abstract: As current business environment is demanding a
constant adaptation of companies, the planning and strategic
management should be an ongoing and natural process in all kind of
organizations. The use of management and monitoring strategic
performance tools such as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) have been
popular; even to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. This paper
aims to investigate whether the BSC is being used in monitoring the
performance of small businesses, particularly in small fuel retailers
companies, which are competing in co-branding; and if not, it aims to
identify its strategic orientation in order to recommend a possible
strategy map for those managers that are willing to adopt this model
as an alternative to traditional ones for organizational performance
evaluation, which often focus only on evaluation of the
organizational financial performance.
Abstract: The urbanization phenomenon in Yogyakarta Special
Province, Indonesia, encouraged people move to the city for getting
jobs in the informal sectors. They live in some temporary houses in
the three main riverbanks: Gadjahwong, Code, and Winongo.
Triggered by its independent status they use it as the space for
accommodating domestic, social and economy activities because of
the non standardized room size of their houses, where are recognized
as the environmental hazards. This recognition makes the ambivalent
perception when was related to the twelfth point of the philosophy of
community development concept: the empowering individuals and
communities. Its spatial implication have actually described the
territory and the place making phenomena. By analyzing some data
collected the author-s fundamental research funded by The General
Directorate of Higher Education of Indonesia, this paper will discuss
how do the spatial implications of the occupants- behavior and the
numerous perceptions of those phenomena.
Abstract: This paper presents a low cost design of heart beat monitoring device using reflectance mode PhotoPlethysmography (PPG). PPG is known for its simple construction, ease of use and cost effectiveness and can provide information about the changes in cardiac activity as well as aid in earlier non-invasive diagnostics. The proposed device is divided into three phases. First is the detection of pulses through the fingertip. The signal is then passed to the signal processing unit for the purpose of amplification, filtering and digitizing. Finally the heart rate is calculated and displayed on the computer using parallel port interface. The paper is concluded with prototyping of the device followed by verification procedure of the heartbeat signal obtained in laboratory setting.
Abstract: Recently there has been a growing interest in the field
of bio-mimetic robots that resemble the behaviors of an insect or an
aquatic animal, among many others. One of various bio-mimetic robot
applications is to explore pipelines, spotting any troubled areas or
malfunctions and reporting its data. Moreover, the robot is able to
prepare for and react to any abnormal routes in the pipeline. Special
types of mobile robots are necessary for the pipeline monitoring tasks.
In order to move effectively along a pipeline, the robot-s movement
will resemble that of insects or crawling animals. When situated in
massive pipelines with complex routes, the robot places fixed sensors
in several important spots in order to complete its monitoring. This
monitoring task is to prevent a major system failure by preemptively
recognizing any minor or partial malfunctions. Areas uncovered by
fixed sensors are usually impossible to provide real-time observation
and examination, and thus are dependent on periodical offline
monitoring. This paper proposes a monitoring system that is able to
monitor the entire area of pipelines–with and without fixed
sensors–by using the bio-mimetic robot.
Abstract: Biofuels, like biobutanol, have been recognized for
being renewable and sustainable fuels which can be produced from
lignocellulosic biomass. To convert lignocellulosic biomass to
biofuel, pretreatment process is an important step to remove
hemicelluloses and lignin to improve enzymatic hydrolysis. Dilute
acid pretreatment has been successful developed for pretreatment of
corncobs and the optimum conditions of dilute sulfuric and
phosphoric acid pretreatment were obtained at 120 °C for 5 min with
15:1 liquid to solid ratio and 140 °C for 10 min with 10:1 liquid to
solid ratio, respectively. The result shows that both of acid
pretreatments gave the content of total sugar approximately 34–35
g/l. In case of inhibitor content (furfural), phosphoric acid
pretreatment gives higher than sulfuric acid pretreatment.
Characterizations of corncobs after pretreatment indicate that both of
acid pretreatments can improve enzymatic accessibility and the better
results present in corncobs pretreated with sulfuric acid in term of
surface area, crystallinity, and composition analysis.
Abstract: This study proposes a conceptual model and
empirically tests the relationships between customers and librarians
(i.e. tangibles, responsiveness, assurance, reliability and empathy)
with a dependent variable (customer satisfaction) regarding library
services. The SERVQUAL instrument was administered to 100
respondents which comprises of staff and students at a public higher
learning institution in the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia.
They were public university library users. Results revealed that all
service quality dimensions tested were significant and influenced
customer satisfaction of visitors to a public university library.
Assurance is the most important factor that influences customer
satisfaction with the services rendered by the librarian. It is
imperative for the library management to take note that the top five
service attributes that gained greatest attention from library visitors-
perspective includes employee willingness to help customers,
availability of customer representatives online for response to
queries, library staff actively and promptly provide services, signs in
the building are clear and library staff are friendly and courteous.
This study provides valuable results concerning the determinants of
the service quality and customer satisfaction of public university
library services from the users' perspective.