Abstract: During last decades, worldwide researchers dedicated
efforts to develop machine-based seismic Early Warning systems,
aiming at reducing the huge human losses and economic damages.
The elaboration time of seismic waveforms is to be reduced in order
to increase the time interval available for the activation of safety
measures. This paper suggests a Data Mining model able to correctly
and quickly estimate dangerousness of the running seismic event.
Several thousand seismic recordings of Japanese and Italian
earthquakes were analyzed and a model was obtained by means of a
Bayesian Network (BN), which was tested just over the first
recordings of seismic events in order to reduce the decision time and
the test results were very satisfactory.
The model was integrated within an Early Warning System
prototype able to collect and elaborate data from a seismic sensor
network, estimate the dangerousness of the running earthquake and
take the decision of activating the warning promptly.
Abstract: Feed is one of the factors which play an important role in determining a successful development of an aquaculture industry. It is always critical to produce the best aquaculture diet at a minimum cost in order to trim down the operational cost and gain more profit. However, the feed mix problem becomes increasingly difficult since many issues need to be considered simultaneously. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to review the current techniques used by nutritionist and researchers to tackle the issues. Additionally, this paper introduce an enhance algorithm which is deemed suitable to deal with all the issues arise. The proposed technique refers to Hybrid Genetic Algorithm which is expected to obtain the minimum cost diet for farmed animal, while satisfying nutritional requirements. Hybrid GA technique with artificial bee algorithm is expected to reduce the penalty function and provide a better solution for the feed mix problem.
Abstract: Accumulation of dust from the outdoor environment
on the panels of solar photovoltaic (PV) system is natural. There
were studies that showed that the accumulated dust can reduce the
performance of solar panels, but the results were not clearly
quantified. The objective of this research was to study the effects of
dust accumulation on the performance of solar PV panels.
Experiments were conducted using dust particles on solar panels with
a constant-power light source, to determine the resulting electrical
power generated and efficiency. It was found from the study that the
accumulated dust on the surface of photovoltaic solar panel can
reduce the system-s efficiency by up to 50%.
Abstract: Usually, the solid-fuel flow of an iron ore sinter plant
consists of different types of the solid-fuels, which differ from each
other. Information about the composition of the solid-fuel flow
usually comes every 8-24 hours. It can be clearly seen that this
information cannot be used to control the sintering process in real
time. Due to this, we propose an expert system which uses indirect
measurements from the process in order to obtain the composition of
the solid-fuel flow by solving an optimization task. Then this
information can be used to control the sintering process. The
proposed technique can be successfully used to improve sinter
quality and reduce the amount of solid-fuel used by the process.
Abstract: In this paper, the effects of radiation, chemical
reaction and double dispersion on mixed convection heat and mass
transfer along a semi vertical plate are considered. The plate is
embedded in a Newtonian fluid saturated non - Darcy (Forchheimer
flow model) porous medium. The Forchheimer extension and first
order chemical reaction are considered in the flow equations. The
governing sets of partial differential equations are nondimensionalized
and reduced to a set of ordinary differential
equations which are then solved numerically by Fourth order Runge–
Kutta method. Numerical results for the detail of the velocity,
temperature, and concentration profiles as well as heat transfer rates
(Nusselt number) and mass transfer rates (Sherwood number) against
various parameters are presented in graphs. The obtained results are
checked against previously published work for special cases of the
problem and are found to be in good agreement.
Abstract: A dual-reciprocity boundary element method is presented
for the numerical solution of a class of axisymmetric elastodynamic
problems. The domain integrals that arise in the integrodifferential
formulation are converted to line integrals by using the
dual-reciprocity method together suitably constructed interpolating
functions. The second order time derivatives of the displacement
in the governing partial differential equations are suppressed by
using Laplace transformation. In the Laplace transform domain, the
problem under consideration is eventually reduced to solving a system
of linear algebraic equations. Once the linear algebraic equations are
solved, the displacement and stress fields in the physical domain can
be recovered by using a numerical technique for inverting Laplace
transforms.
Abstract: This study presents an active vibration control
technique to reduce the earthquake responses of a retained structural
system. The proposed technique is a synthesis of the adaptive input
estimation method (AIEM) and linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG)
controller. The AIEM can estimate an unknown system input online.
The LQG controller offers optimal control forces to suppress
wall-structural system vibration. The numerical results show robust
performance in the active vibration control technique.
Abstract: In literature, there are metrics for identifying the
quality of reusable components but the framework that makes use of
these metrics to precisely predict reusability of software components
is still need to be worked out. These reusability metrics if identified
in the design phase or even in the coding phase can help us to reduce
the rework by improving quality of reuse of the software component
and hence improve the productivity due to probabilistic increase in
the reuse level. As CK metric suit is most widely used metrics for
extraction of structural features of an object oriented (OO) software;
So, in this study, tuned CK metric suit i.e. WMC, DIT, NOC, CBO
and LCOM, is used to obtain the structural analysis of OO-based
software components. An algorithm has been proposed in which the
inputs can be given to K-Means Clustering system in form of
tuned values of the OO software component and decision tree is
formed for the 10-fold cross validation of data to evaluate the in
terms of linguistic reusability value of the component. The developed
reusability model has produced high precision results as desired.
Abstract: Multicarrier transmission system such as Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising technique
for high bit rate transmission in wireless communication system.
OFDM is a spectrally efficient modulation technique that can achieve
high speed data transmission over multipath fading channels without
the need for powerful equalization techniques. However the price
paid for this high spectral efficiency and less intensive equalization
is low power efficiency. OFDM signals are very sensitive to nonlinear
effects due to the high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR),
which leads to the power inefficiency in the RF section of the
transmitter. This paper investigates the effect of PAPR reduction on
the performance parameter of multicarrier communication system.
Performance parameters considered are power consumption of Power
Amplifier (PA) and Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC), power amplifier
efficiency, SNR of DAC and BER performance of the system.
From our analysis it is found that irrespective of PAPR reduction
technique being employed, the power consumption of PA and DAC
reduces and power amplifier efficiency increases due to reduction in
PAPR. Moreover, it has been shown that for a given BER performance
the requirement of Input-Backoff (IBO) reduces with reduction in
PAPR.
Abstract: In this study, effects of EGR on CO and HC emissions
of a dual fuel HCCI-DI engine are investigated. Tests were
conducted on a single-cylinder variable compression ratio (VCR)
diesel engine with compression ratio of 17.5. Premixed gasoline is
provided by a carburetor connected to intake manifold and equipped
with a screw to adjust premixed air-fuel ratio, and diesel fuel is
injected directly into the cylinder through an injector at pressure of
250 bars. A heater placed at inlet manifold is used to control the
intake charge temperature. Optimal intake charge temperature was
110-115ºC due to better formation of a homogeneous mixture
causing HCCI combustion. Timing of diesel fuel injection has a great
effect on stratification of in-cylinder charge in HCCI combustion.
Experiments indicated 35 BTDC as the optimum injection timing.
Coolant temperature was maintained 50ºC during the tests. Results
show that increasing engine speed at a constant EGR rate leads to
increase in CO and UHC emissions due to the incomplete
combustion caused by shorter combustion duration and less
homogeneous mixture. Results also show that increasing EGR
reduces the amount of oxygen and leads to incomplete combustion
and therefore increases CO emission due to lower combustion
temperature. HC emission also increases as a result of lower
combustion temperatures.
Abstract: Due to availability of powerful image processing software
and improvement of human computer knowledge, it becomes
easy to tamper images. Manipulation of digital images in different
fields like court of law and medical imaging create a serious problem
nowadays. Copy-move forgery is one of the most common types
of forgery which copies some part of the image and pastes it to
another part of the same image to cover an important scene. In
this paper, a copy-move forgery detection method proposed based
on Fourier transform to detect forgeries. Firstly, image is divided to
same size blocks and Fourier transform is performed on each block.
Similarity in the Fourier transform between different blocks provides
an indication of the copy-move operation. The experimental results
prove that the proposed method works on reasonable time and works
well for gray scale and colour images. Computational complexity
reduced by using Fourier transform in this method.
Abstract: Shadows add great amount of realism to a scene and
many algorithms exists to generate shadows. Recently, Shadow
volumes (SVs) have made great achievements to place a valuable
position in the gaming industries. Looking at this, we concentrate on
simple but valuable initial partial steps for further optimization in SV
generation, i.e.; model simplification and silhouette edge detection
and tracking. Shadow volumes (SVs) usually takes time in generating
boundary silhouettes of the object and if the object is complex then
the generation of edges become much harder and slower in process.
The challenge gets stiffer when real time shadow generation and
rendering is demanded. We investigated a way to use the real time
silhouette edge detection method, which takes the advantage of
spatial and temporal coherence, and exploit the level-of-details
(LOD) technique for reducing silhouette edges of the model to use
the simplified version of the model for shadow generation speeding
up the running time. These steps highly reduce the execution time of
shadow volume generations in real-time and are easily flexible to any
of the recently proposed SV techniques. Our main focus is to exploit
the LOD and silhouette edge detection technique, adopting them to
further enhance the shadow volume generations for real time
rendering.
Abstract: In this work a dual laser triangulation system is presented for fast building of 2.5D textured models of objects within a production line. This scanner is designed to produce data suitable for 3D completeness inspection algorithms. For this purpose two laser projectors have been used in order to considerably reduce the problem of occlusions in the camera movement direction. Results of reconstruction of electronic boards are presented, together with a comparison with a commercial system.
Abstract: One of the main problems of suspended cable structures is initial shape change under the action of non uniform load. The problem can be solved by increasing of weight of construction or by using of prestressing. But this methods cause increasing of materials consumption of suspended cable structure. The cable truss usage is another way how the problem of shape change under the action of non uniform load can be fixed. The cable trusses with the vertical and inclined suspensions, cross web and single cable were analyzed as the main load-bearing structures of suspension bridge. It was shown, that usage of cable truss allows to reduce the vertical displacements up to 32% in comparison with the single cable in case of non uniformly distributed load. In case of uniformly distributed load single cable is preferable.
Abstract: Flexible macroblock ordering (FMO), adopted in the
H.264 standard, allows to partition all macroblocks (MBs) in a frame
into separate groups of MBs called Slice Groups (SGs). FMO can not
only support error-resilience, but also control the size of video packets
for different network types. However, it is well-known that the number
of bits required for encoding the frame is increased by adopting FMO.
In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm that can reduce the bitrate
overhead caused by utilizing FMO. In the proposed algorithm, all MBs
are grouped in SGs based on the similarity of the transform
coefficients. Experimental results show that our algorithm can reduce
the bitrate as compared with conventional FMO.
Abstract: Plants are rich sources of bioactive compounds. In this study the photochemical screening of hexane, ethanolic and aqueous extracts of roots and latex of jojoba (Simmondsia chinensis) plant revealed the presence of saponins, tannins, alkaloids, steroids and glycosides. Ethanolic extract was found to be richer in these metabolites than hexane, aqueous extracts and latex. The extracts and latex displayed effective antimicrobial activity against Salmonella typhimurium, Bacillus cereus, Clostridium perfringens, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Candida albicans and Aspergillus flavus. The increase in volume of the extracts and latex caused more activity, as shown by zones of inhibition. Candida albicans growth was inhibited only by hexane extract. Jojoba latex was not effective against Candida albicans at 0.1 and 0.5 ml extracts concentration but showed 5mm zone of inhibition at (1.0 ml). Lower volume (0.1ml) of latex encouraged Aspergillus flavus growth, while at (1.00 ml) reduced its mycelial growth. Thus, jojoba root extracts and latex can be of potential natural antimicrobial agents.
Abstract: A new target detection technique is presented in this
paper for the identification of small boats in coastal surveillance. The
proposed technique employs an adaptive progressive thresholding (APT) scheme to first process the given input scene to separate any
objects present in the scene from the background. The preprocessing
step results in an image having only the foreground objects, such as
boats, trees and other cluttered regions, and hence reduces the search
region for the correlation step significantly. The processed image is then fed to the shifted phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform
correlator (SPFJTC) technique which produces single and delta-like
correlation peak for a potential target present in the input scene. A
post-processing step involves using a peak-to-clutter ratio (PCR) to determine whether the boat in the input scene is authorized or unauthorized. Simulation results are presented to show that the
proposed technique can successfully determine the presence of an authorized boat and identify any intruding boat present in the given input scene.
Abstract: Cement, the most widely used construction material
is very brittle and characterized by low tensile strength and strain
capacity. Macro to nano fibers are added to cement to provide
tensile strength and ductility to it. Carbon Nanotube (CNT), one of
the nanofibers, has proven to be a promising reinforcing material in
the cement composites because of its outstanding mechanical
properties and its ability to close cracks at the nano level. The
experimental investigations for CNT reinforced cement is costly,
time consuming and involves huge number of trials. Mathematical
modeling of CNT reinforced cement can be done effectively and
efficiently to arrive at the mechanical properties and to reduce the
number of trials in the experiments. Hence, an attempt is made to
numerically study the effective mechanical properties of CNT
reinforced cement numerically using Representative Volume
Element (RVE) method. The enhancement in its mechanical
properties for different percentage of CNTs is studied in detail.
Abstract: The ability of information systems to operate in conjunction with each other encompassing communication protocols, hardware, software, application, and data compatibility layers. There has been considerable work in industry on the development of component interoperability models, such as CORBA, (D)COM and JavaBeans. These models are intended to reduce the complexity of software development and to facilitate reuse of off-the-shelf components. The focus of these models is syntactic interface specification, component packaging, inter-component communications, and bindings to a runtime environment. What these models lack is a consideration of architectural concerns – specifying systems of communicating components, explicitly representing loci of component interaction, and exploiting architectural styles that provide well-understood global design solutions. The development of complex business applications is now focused on an assembly of components available on a local area network or on the net. These components must be localized and identified in terms of available services and communication protocol before any request. The first part of the article introduces the base concepts of components and middleware while the following sections describe the different up-todate models of communication and interaction and the last section shows how different models can communicate among themselves.
Abstract: In this experimental investigation shake table tests
were conducted on two reduced models that represent normal single
room building constructed by Compressed Stabilized Earth Block
(CSEB) from locally available soil. One model was constructed with
earthquake resisting features (EQRF) having sill band, lintel band and
vertical bands to control the building vibration and another one was
without Earthquake Resisting Features. To examine the seismic
capacity of the models particularly when it is subjected to long-period
ground motion by large amplitude by many cycles of repeated
loading, the test specimen was shaken repeatedly until the failure.
The test results from Hi-end Data Acquisition system show that
model with EQRF behave better than without EQRF. This modified
masonry model with new material combined with new bands is used
to improve the behavior of masonry building.