Abstract: This paper presents the experimental results of silicone rubber polymer insulators for 22 kV systems under salt water dip wheel test based on IEC 62217. Straight shed silicone rubber polymer insulators having leakage distance 685 mm were tested continuously 30,000 cycles. One test cycle includes 4 positions, energized, de-energized, salt water dip and deenergized, respectively. For one test cycle, each test specimen remains stationary for about 40 second in each position and takes 8 second for rotate to next position. By visual observation, sever surface erosion was observed on the trunk near the energized end of tested specimen. Puncture was observed on the upper shed near the energized end. In addition, decreasing in hydrophobicity and increasing in hardness were measured on tested specimen comparing with new specimen. Furthermore, chemical analysis by ATR-FTIR was conducted in order to elucidate the chemical change of tested specimens comparing with new specimen.
Abstract: A new conceptual architecture for low-level neural
pattern recognition is presented. The key ideas are that the brain
implements support vector machines and that support vectors are
represented as memory patterns in competitive queuing memories. A
binary classifier is built from two competitive queuing memories
holding positive and negative valence training examples respectively.
The support vector machine classification function is calculated in
synchronized evaluation cycles. The kernel is computed by bisymmetric
feed-forward networks feed by sensory input and by
competitive queuing memories traversing the complete sequence of
support vectors. Temporary summation generates the output
classification. It is speculated that perception apparatus in the brain
reuses structures that have evolved for enabling fluent execution of
prepared action sequences so that pattern recognition is built on
internalized motor programmes.
Abstract: An efficient parallel form in digital signal processor can improve the algorithm performance. The butterfly structure is an important role in fast Fourier transform (FFT), because its symmetry form is suitable for hardware implementation. Although it can perform a symmetric structure, the performance will be reduced under the data-dependent flow characteristic. Even though recent research which call as novel memory reference reduction methods (NMRRM) for FFT focus on reduce memory reference in twiddle factor, the data-dependent property still exists. In this paper, we propose a parallel-computing approach for FFT implementation on digital signal processor (DSP) which is based on data-independent property and still hold the property of low-memory reference. The proposed method combines final two steps in NMRRM FFT to perform a novel data-independent structure, besides it is very suitable for multi-operation-unit digital signal processor and dual-core system. We have applied the proposed method of radix-2 FFT algorithm in low memory reference on TI TMSC320C64x DSP. Experimental results show the method can reduce 33.8% clock cycles comparing with the NMRRM FFT implementation and keep the low-memory reference property.
Abstract: Prolonged immobilization leads to significant
weakness and atrophy of the skeletal muscle and can also impair the
recovery of muscle strength following injury. Therefore, it is
important to minimize the period under immobilization and accelerate
the return to normal activity. This study examined the effects of heat
treatment and rest-inserted exercise on the muscle activity of the lower
limb during knee flexion/extension. Twelve healthy subjects were
assigned to 4 groups that included: (1) heat treatment + rest-inserted
exercise; (2) heat + continuous exercise; (3) no heat + rest-inserted
exercise; and (4) no heat + continuous exercise. Heat treatment was
applied for 15 mins prior to exercise. Continuous exercise groups
performed knee flexion/extension at 0.5 Hz for 300 cycles without rest
whereas rest-inserted exercise groups performed the same exercise but
with 2 mins rest inserted every 60 cycles of continuous exercise.
Changes in the rectus femoris and hamstring muscle activities were
assessed at 0, 1, and 2 weeks of treatment by measuring the
electromyography signals of isokinetic maximum voluntary
contraction. Significant increases in both the rectus femoris and
hamstring muscles were observed after 2 weeks of treatment only
when both heat treatment and rest-inserted exercise were performed.
These results suggest that combination of various treatment techniques,
such as heat treatment and rest-inserted exercise, may expedite the
recovery of muscle strength following immobilization.
Abstract: With the increasing number of on-chip components and the critical requirement for processing power, Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) has gained wide acceptance in both academia and industry during the last decade. However, the conventional bus-based onchip communication schemes suffer from very high communication delay and low scalability in large scale systems. Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proposed to solve the bottleneck of parallel onchip communications by applying different network topologies which separate the communication phase from the computation phase. Observing that the memory bandwidth of the communication between on-chip components and off-chip memory has become a critical problem even in NoC based systems, in this paper, we propose a novel 3D NoC with on-chip Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) in which different layers are dedicated to different functionalities such as processors, cache or memory. Results show that, by using our proposed architecture, average link utilization has reduced by 10.25% for SPLASH-2 workloads. Our proposed design costs 1.12% less execution cycles than the traditional design on average.
Abstract: Resistance spot welding process comprises of electric,
thermal and mechanical phenomenon, which makes this process
complex and highly non-linear and thus, it becomes difficult to model
it. In order to obtain good weld nugget during spot welding, hit and
trial welds are usually done which is very costly. Therefore the
numerical simulation research has been conducted to understand the
whole process. In this paper three different cases were analyzed by
varying the tip contact area and it was observed that, with the
variation of tip contact area the nugget formation at the faying
surface is affected. The tip contact area of the welding electrode
becomes large with long welding cycles. Therefore in order to
maintain consistency of nugget formation during the welding process,
the current compensation in control feedback is required. If the
contact area of the welding electrode tip is reduced, a large amount of
current flows through the faying surface, as a result of which
sputtering occurs.
Abstract: The strong international competition as the factor of rising economic development efficiency should not turn into destructive force for models of social orientation. What result Europe received from the accelerated integration without a long transition period of the accepted countries. Correlative relationship between the research and development expenditure and labor productivity, inflation and the rate economy's growth of the USA and the euro zone, employment and gross value added between Old and New Europe is analyzed in this article. The article estimates the differences in economic growth of Old and New Europe. Correlation rate between cycles of the euro area and the countries of Central and the Eastern Europe very much differs, though some of these countries have high correlation as members of the Economic and Monetary Union. Besides, the majority of the countries of Central and the Eastern Europe does not correspond to criteria of an optimum currency area.
Abstract: Bicycle configuration is not as large as those of motorcycles or automobiles, while it indeed composes a complicated dynamic system. People-s requirements on comfortability, controllability and safety grow higher as the research and development technologies improve. The shock absorber affects the vehicle suspension performances enormously. The absorber takes the vibration energy and releases it at a suitable time, keeping the wheel under a proper contact condition with road surface, maintaining the vehicle chassis stability. Suspension design for mountain bicycles is more difficult than that of city bikes since it encounters dynamic variations on road and loading conditions. Riders need a stiff damper as they exert to tread on the pedals when climbing, while a soft damper when they descend downhill. Various switchable shock absorbers are proposed in markets, however riders have to manually switch them among soft, hard and lock positions. This study proposes a novel design of the bicycle shock absorber, which provides automatic smooth tuning of the damping coefficient, from a predetermined lower bound to theoretically unlimited. An automatic quick releasing valve is involved in this design so that it can release the peak pressure when the suspension fork runs into a square-wave type obstacle and prevent the chassis from damage, avoiding the rider skeleton from injury. This design achieves the automatic tuning process by innovative plunger valve and fluidic passage arrangements without any electronic devices. Theoretical modelling of the damper and spring are established in this study. Design parameters of the valves and fluidic passages are determined. Relations between design parameters and shock absorber performances are discussed in this paper. The analytical results give directions to the shock absorber manufacture.
Abstract: The crossed cube is one of the most notable variations of hypercube, but some properties of the former are superior to those of the latter. For example, the diameter of the crossed cube is almost the half of that of the hypercube. In this paper, we focus on the problem embedding a Hamiltonian cycle through an arbitrary given edge in the crossed cube. We give necessary and sufficient condition for determining whether a given permutation with n elements over Zn generates a Hamiltonian cycle pattern of the crossed cube. Moreover, we obtain a lower bound for the number of different Hamiltonian cycles passing through a given edge in an n-dimensional crossed cube. Our work extends some recently obtained results.
Abstract: Unlike general-purpose processors, digital signal
processors (DSP processors) are strongly application-dependent. To
meet the needs for diverse applications, a wide variety of DSP
processors based on different architectures ranging from the
traditional to VLIW have been introduced to the market over the
years. The functionality, performance, and cost of these processors
vary over a wide range. In order to select a processor that meets the
design criteria for an application, processor performance is usually
the major concern for digital signal processing (DSP) application
developers. Performance data are also essential for the designers of
DSP processors to improve their design. Consequently, several DSP
performance benchmarks have been proposed over the past decade or
so. However, none of these benchmarks seem to have included recent
new DSP applications.
In this paper, we use a new benchmark that we recently developed
to compare the performance of popular DSP processors from Texas
Instruments and StarCore. The new benchmark is based on the
Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV), a speech-coding program from the
recent third generation (3G) wireless voice applications. All
benchmark kernels are compiled by the compilers of the respective
DSP processors and run on their simulators. Weighted arithmetic
mean of clock cycles and arithmetic mean of code size are used to
compare the performance of five DSP processors.
In addition, we studied how the performance of a processor is
affected by code structure, features of processor architecture and
optimization of compiler. The extensive experimental data gathered,
analyzed, and presented in this paper should be helpful for DSP
processor and compiler designers to meet their specific design goals.
Abstract: The reduction in vehicle exhaust emissions achieved
in the last two decades is offset by the growth in traffic, as well as by
changes in the composition of emitted pollutants. The present
investigation illustrates the emissions of in-use gasoline and diesel
passenger cars using the official European driving cycle and the
ARTEMIS real-world driving cycle. It was observed that some of the
vehicles do not comply with the corresponding regulations.
Significant differences in emissions were observed between driving
cycles. Not all pollutants showed a tendency to decrease from Euro 3
to Euro 5.
Abstract: A decomposition of a graph G is a collection ψ of subgraphs H1,H2, . . . , Hr of G such that every edge of G belongs to exactly one Hi. If each Hi is either an induced path or an induced cycle in G, then ψ is called an induced path decomposition of G. The minimum cardinality of an induced path decomposition of G is called the induced path decomposition number of G and is denoted by πi(G). In this paper we initiate a study of this parameter.
Abstract: This research paper presents the CFD analysis of
oscillating airfoil during pitch cycle. Unsteady subsonic flow is
simulated for pitching airfoil at Mach number 0.283 and Reynolds
number 3.45 millions. Turbulent effects are also considered for this
study by using K-ω SST turbulent model. Two-dimensional unsteady
compressible Navier-Stokes code including two-equation turbulence
model and PISO pressure velocity coupling is used. Pressure based
implicit solver with first order implicit unsteady formulation is used.
The simulated pitch cycle results are compared with the available
experimental data. The results have a good agreement with the
experimental data. Aerodynamic characteristics during pitch cycles
have been studied and validated.
Abstract: This paper develops the fiscal health index of 21 local
governments in Taiwan over the 1984 to 2010 period. A quantile
regression analysis was used to explore the extent that economic
variables, political budget cycles, and legislative checks and balances,
impact different quantiles of fiscal health index for a country over a
sample period of time. Our findings suggest that local governments at
the lower quantile are significantly benefited from political budget
cycles and the increase in central government revenues, while
legislative effective checks and balances and the increase in central
government expenditures have a significantly negative effect on local
fiscal health. When local governments are in the upper tail of the
distribution, legislative checks and balances and growth in
macroeconomics have significant and adverse effects on the fiscal
health of local governments. However, increases in central
government revenues have significant and positive effects on the
health status of local government in Taiwan.
Abstract: The culture of riding heavy motorcycles originates
from advanced countries and mainly comes from Europe, North
America, and Japan. Heavy duty motorcycle riders are different from
people who view motorcycles as a convenient mean of transportation.
They regard riding them as a kind of enjoyment and high-level taste.
The activities of riding heavy duty motorcycles have formes a
distinctive landscape in domestic land in Taiwan. Previous studies
which explored motorcycle culture in Taiwan still focused on the
objects of motorcycle engine displacement under 50 cc.. The study
aims to study the heavy duty motorcycles of engine displacement over
550 cc. and explores where their attractiveness is. For finding the
attractiveness of heavy duty motorcycle, the study chooses Miryoku
Engineering (Preference-Based Design) approach. Two steps are
adopted to proceed the research. First, through arranging the letters
obtained from interviewing experts, EGM (The Evaluation Grid
Method) was applied to find out the structure of attractiveness. The
attractive styles are eye-dazzling, leisure, classic, and racing
competitive styles. Secondarily, Quantification Theory Type I analysis
was adopted as a tool for analyzing the importance of attractiveness.
The relationship between style and attractive parts was also discussed.
The results could contribute to the design and research development of
heavy duty motorcycle industry in Taiwan.
Abstract: Climate change leading to global warming affects the
earth through many different ways such as weather (temperature, precipitation, humidity and the other parameters of weather), snow coverage and ice melting, sea level rise, hydrological cycles, quality of water, agriculture, forests, ecosystems and health. One of the most
affected areas by climate change is hydrology and water resources.
Regions where majority of runoff consists of snow melt are more
sensitive to climate change. The first step of climate change studies
is to establish trends of significant climate variables including precipitation,
temperature and flow data to detect any potential climate
change impacts already happened. Two popular non-parametric trend
analysis methods, Mann-Kendal and Spearman-s Rho were applied
to Upper Euphrates Basin (Turkey) to detect trends of precipitation,
temperatures (maximum, minimum and average) and streamflow.
Abstract: F-actin fibrils are the cytoskeleton of osteocytes. They react in a dynamic manner to mechanical loading, and strength and
reposition their efforts to reinforce the cells structure. We hypothesize that f-actin is temporarly disrupted after loading and repolymerizes
in a new orientation to oppose the applied load. In vitro studies are conducted to determine f-actin disruption after varying mechanical stimulus parameters that are known to affect bone
formation. Results indicate that the f-actin cytoskeleton is disrupted in vitro as a function of applied mechanical stimulus parameters and
that the f-actin bundles reassemble after loading induced disruption
within 3 minutes after cessation of loading. The disruption of the factin
cytoskeleton depends on the magnitude of stretch, the numbers
of loading cycles, frequency, the insertion of rest between loading
cycles and extracellular calcium. In vivo studies also demonstrate
disruption of the f-actin cytoskeleton in cells embedded in the bone
matrix immediately after mechanical loading. These studies suggest
that adaptation of the f-actin fiber bundles of the cytoskeleton in
response to applied loads occurs by disruption and subsequent repolymerization.
Abstract: Due to short product life cycles, increasing variety of
products and short cycles of leap innovations manufacturing
companies have to increase the flexibility of factory structures.
Flexibility of factory structures is based on defined factory planning
processes in which product, process and resource data of various
partial domains have to be considered. Thus factory planning
processes can be characterized as iterative, interdisciplinary and
participative processes [1]. To support interdisciplinary and
participative character of planning processes, a federative factory
data management (FFDM) as a holistic solution will be described.
FFDM is already implemented in form of a prototype. The interim
results of the development of FFDM will be shown in this paper. The
principles are the extracting of product, process and resource data
from documents of various partial domains providing as web services
on a server. The described data can be requested by the factory
planner by using a FFDM-browser.
Abstract: The rapid improvement of the microprocessor and network has made it possible for the PC cluster to compete with conventional supercomputers. Lots of high throughput type of applications can be satisfied by using the current desktop PCs, especially for those in PC classrooms, and leave the supercomputers for the demands from large scale high performance parallel computations. This paper presents our development on enabling an automated deployment mechanism for cluster computing to utilize the computing power of PCs such as reside in PC classroom. After well deployment, these PCs can be transformed into a pre-configured cluster computing resource immediately without touching the existing education/training environment installed on these PCs. Thus, the training activities will not be affected by this additional activity to harvest idle computing cycles. The time and manpower required to build and manage a computing platform in geographically distributed PC classrooms also can be reduced by this development.
Abstract: The Baltic States regained independence and started
the pathway from command economy to market economy and
entered European Union at the same time. Latter internationally
recognized evaluations for the countries are diverse. The present
diversity of the Baltic States -Economic Development is a subject of
interest because of the similarities – all three are small, open
economies, countries have similar geographic location and initially
likewise historical and political backgrounds. This article explains
relationship between social environment, business environment and
economic growth. It argues that the elements of social environment
underlie more successful economic development. It researches the
causes, why Estonia has performed better in economic outcomes and
development. The article analyses selection of socio-economic
indicators of all three Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia
for the time period of ten years to include the influence of economic
cycles.