Lightweight Mirrors for Space X-Ray Telescopes

Future astronomical projects on large space x-ray imaging telescopes require novel substrates and technologies for the construction of their reflecting mirrors. The mirrors must be lightweight and precisely shaped to achieve large collecting area with high angular resolution. The new materials and technologies must be cost-effective. Currently, the most promising materials are glass or silicon foils. We focused on precise shaping these foils by thermal forming process. We studied free and forced slumping in the temperature region of hot plastic deformation and compared the shapes obtained by the different slumping processes. We measured the shapes and the surface quality of the foils. In the experiments, we varied both heat-treatment temperature and time following our experiment design. The obtained data and relations we can use for modeling and optimizing the thermal forming procedure.

An Automatic Sleep Spindle Detector based on WT, STFT and WMSD

Sleep spindles are the most interesting hallmark of stage 2 sleep EEG. Their accurate identification in a polysomnographic signal is essential for sleep professionals to help them mark Stage 2 sleep. Sleep Spindles are also promising objective indicators for neurodegenerative disorders. Visual spindle scoring however is a tedious workload. In this paper three different approaches are used for the automatic detection of sleep spindles: Short Time Fourier Transform, Wavelet Transform and Wave Morphology for Spindle Detection. In order to improve the results, a combination of the three detectors is presented and comparison with human expert scorers is performed. The best performance is obtained with a combination of the three algorithms which resulted in a sensitivity and specificity of 94% when compared to human expert scorers.

Enabling Remote Desktop in a Virtualized Environment for Cloud Services

Cloud computing is the innovative and leading information technology model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort. This paper presents our development on enabling an individual user's desktop in a virtualized environment, which is stored on a remote virtual machine rather than locally. We present the initial work on the integration of virtual desktop and application sharing with virtualization technology. Given the development of remote desktop virtualization, this proposed effort has the potential to positively provide an efficient, resilience and elastic environment for online cloud service. Users no longer need to burden the cost of software licenses and platform maintenances. Moreover, this development also helps boost user productivity by promoting a flexible model that lets users access their desktop environments from virtually anywhere.

The Hybrid Socio-Technical Approach as a Strategic Program for Social Development in Geo-disaster Prone Area in Indonesia

This paper highlights the importance of integrating social and technical approach (which is so called a “hybrid socio-technical approach") as one innovative and strategic program to support the social development in geodisaster prone area in Indonesia. Such program mainly based on public education and community participation as a partnership program by the University, local government and may also with the private company and/ or local NGO. The indigenous, simple and low cost technology has also been introduced and developed as a part of the hybrid sociotechnical system, in order to ensure the life and environmental protection, with respect to the sustainable human and social development.

Price Quoting Method for Contract Manufacturer

This is an applied research to propose the method for price quotation for a contract electronics manufacturer. It has had a precise price quoting method but such method could not quickly provide a result as the customer required. This reduces the ability of company to compete in this kind of business. In this case, the cause of long time quotation process was analyzed. A lot of product features have been demanded by customer. By checking routine processes, it was found that high fraction of quoting time was used for production time estimating which has effected to the manufacturing or production cost. Then the historical data of products including types, number of components, assembling method, and their assembling time were used to analyze the key components affecting to production time. The price quoting model then was proposed. The implementation of proposed model was able to remarkably reduce quoting time with an acceptable required precision.

A Novel Approach of Power Transformer Diagnostic Using 3D FEM Parametrical Model

This paper deals with a novel approach of power transformers diagnostics. This approach identifies the exact location and the range of a fault in the transformer and helps to reduce operation costs related to handling of the faulty transformer, its disassembly and repair. The advantage of the approach is a possibility to simulate healthy transformer and also all faults, which can occur in transformer during its operation without its disassembling, which is very expensive in practice. The approach is based on creating frequency dependent impedance of the transformer by sweep frequency response analysis measurements and by 3D FE parametrical modeling of the fault in the transformer. The parameters of the 3D FE model are the position and the range of the axial short circuit. Then, by comparing the frequency dependent impedances of the parametrical models with the measured ones, the location and the range of the fault is identified. The approach was tested on a real transformer and showed high coincidence between the real fault and the simulated one.

Thermal Load Calculations of Multilayered Walls

Thermal load calculations have been performed for multi-layered walls that are composed of three different parts; a common (sand and cement) plaster, and two types of locally produced soft and hard bricks. The masonry construction of these layered walls was based on concrete-backed stone masonry made of limestone bricks joined by mortar. These multilayered walls are forming the outer walls of the building envelope of a typical Libyan house. Based on the periodic seasonal weather conditions, within the Libyan cost region during summer and winter, measured thermal conductivity values were used to implement such seasonal variation of heat flow and the temperature variations through the walls. The experimental measured thermal conductivity values were obtained using the Hot Disk technique. The estimation of the thermal resistance of the wall layers ( R-values) is based on measurements and calculations. The numerical calculations were done using a simplified analytical model that considers two different wall constructions which are characteristics of such houses. According to the obtained results, the R-values were quite low and therefore, several suggestions have been proposed to improve the thermal loading performance that will lead to a reasonable human comfort and reduce energy consumption.

Removal of Cibacron Brilliant Yellow 3G-P Dye from Aqueous Solutions Using Coffee Husks as Non-Conventional Low-Cost Sorbent

The purpose of this research is to establish the experimental conditions for removal of Cibacron Brilliant Yellow 3G-P dye (CBY) from aqueous solutions by sorption onto coffee husks as a low-cost sorbent. The effects of various experimental parameters (e.g. initial CBY dye concentration, sorbent mass, pH, temperature) were examined and the optimal experimental conditions were determined. The results indicated that the removal of the dye was pH dependent and at initial pH of 2, the dye was removed effectively. The CBY dye sorption data were fitted to Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich equilibrium models. The maximum sorption capacity of CBY dye ions onto coffee husks increased from 24.04 to 35.04 mg g-1 when the temperature was increased from 293 to 313 K. The calculated sorption thermodynamic parameters including ΔG°, ΔH°, and ΔS° indicated that the CBY dye sorption onto coffee husks is a spontaneous, endothermic and mainly physical in nature.

Optimum Conditions for Effective Decomposition of Toluene as VOC Gas by Pilot-Scale Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer

Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO) is one of the best solutions for removal of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) from industrial processes. In the RTO, VOC in a raw gas are usually decomposed at 950-1300 K and the combustion heat of VOC is recovered by regenerative heat exchangers charged with ceramic honeycombs. The optimization of the treatment of VOC leads to the reduction of fuel addition to VOC decomposition, the minimization of CO2 emission and operating cost as well. In the present work, the thermal efficiency of the RTO was investigated experimentally in a pilot-scale RTO unit using toluene as a typical representative of VOC. As a result, it was recognized that the radiative heat transfer was dominant in the preheating process of a raw gas when the gas flow rate was relatively low. Further, it was found that a minimum heat exchanger volume to achieve self combustion of toluene without additional heating of the RTO by fuel combustion was dependent on both the flow rate of a raw gas and the concentration of toluene. The thermal efficiency calculated from fuel consumption and the decomposed toluene ratio, was found to have a maximum value of 0.95 at a raw gas mass flow rate of 1810 kg·h-1 and honeycombs height of 1.5m.

Impulse Response Shortening for Discrete Multitone Transceivers using Convex Optimization Approach

In this paper we propose a new criterion for solving the problem of channel shortening in multi-carrier systems. In a discrete multitone receiver, a time-domain equalizer (TEQ) reduces intersymbol interference (ISI) by shortening the effective duration of the channel impulse response. Minimum mean square error (MMSE) method for TEQ does not give satisfactory results. In [1] a new criterion for partially equalizing severe ISI channels to reduce the cyclic prefix overhead of the discrete multitone transceiver (DMT), assuming a fixed transmission bandwidth, is introduced. Due to specific constrained (unit morm constraint on the target impulse response (TIR)) in their method, the freedom to choose optimum vector (TIR) is reduced. Better results can be obtained by avoiding the unit norm constraint on the target impulse response (TIR). In this paper we change the cost function proposed in [1] to the cost function of determining the maximum of a determinant subject to linear matrix inequality (LMI) and quadratic constraint and solve the resulting optimization problem. Usefulness of the proposed method is shown with the help of simulations.

A Schur Method for Solving Projected Continuous-Time Sylvester Equations

In this paper, we propose a direct method based on the real Schur factorization for solving the projected Sylvester equation with relatively small size. The algebraic formula of the solution of the projected continuous-time Sylvester equation is presented. The computational cost of the direct method is estimated. Numerical experiments show that this direct method has high accuracy.

Reduction of Power Losses in Distribution Systems

Losses reduction initiatives in distribution systems have been activated due to the increasing cost of supplying electricity, the shortage in fuel with ever-increasing cost to produce more power, and the global warming concerns. These initiatives have been introduced to the utilities in shape of incentives and penalties. Recently, the electricity distribution companies in Oman have been incentivized to reduce the distribution technical and non-technical losses with an equal annual reduction rate for 6 years. In this paper, different techniques for losses reduction in Mazoon Electricity Company (MZEC) are addressed. In this company, high numbers of substation and feeders were found to be non-compliant with the Distribution System Security Standard (DSSS). Therefore, 33 projects have been suggested to bring non-complying 29 substations and 28 feeders to meet the planed criteria and to comply with the DSSS. The largest part of MZEC-s network (South Batinah region) was modeled by ETAP software package. The model has been extended to implement the proposed projects and to examine their effects on losses reduction. Simulation results have shown that the implementation of these projects leads to a significant improvement in voltage profile, and reduction in the active and the reactive power losses. Finally, the economical analysis has revealed that the implementation of the proposed projects in MZEC leads to an annual saving of about US$ 5 million.

Effect of Distributed Generators on the Optimal Operation of Distribution Networks

This paper presents an approach for daily optimal operation of distribution networks considering Distributed Generators (DGs). Due to private ownership of DGs, a cost based compensation method is used to encourage DGs in active and reactive power generation. The objective function is summation of electrical energy generated by DGs and substation bus (main bus) in the next day. A genetic algorithm is used to solve the optimal operation problem. The approach is tested on an IEEE34 buses distribution feeder.

Cost Optimized CO2 Pipeline Transportation Grid: A Case Study from Italian Industries

This paper presents the feasibility study of CO2 sequestration from the sources to the sinks in the prospective of Italian Industries. CO2 produced at these sources captured, compressed to supercritical pressures, transported via pipelines and stored in underground geologic formations such as depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs, un-minable coal seams and deep saline aquifers. In this work, we present the optimized pipeline infrastructure for the CO2 with appropriate constraints to find lower cost system by the use of nonlinear optimization software LINGO 11.0. This study was conducted on CO2 transportation complex network of Italian Industries, to find minimum cost network for transporting the CO2 from sources to the sinks.

Accelerating Integer Neural Networks On Low Cost DSPs

In this paper, low end Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) are applied to accelerate integer neural networks. The use of DSPs to accelerate neural networks has been a topic of study for some time, and has demonstrated significant performance improvements. Recently, work has been done on integer only neural networks, which greatly reduces hardware requirements, and thus allows for cheaper hardware implementation. DSPs with Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) that support floating or fixed point arithmetic are generally more expensive than their integer only counterparts due to increased circuit complexity. However if the need for floating or fixed point math operation can be removed, then simpler, lower cost DSPs can be used. To achieve this, an integer only neural network is created in this paper, which is then accelerated by using DSP instructions to improve performance.

MAP-Based Image Super-resolution Reconstruction

From a set of shifted, blurred, and decimated image , super-resolution image reconstruction can get a high-resolution image. So it has become an active research branch in the field of image restoration. In general, super-resolution image restoration is an ill-posed problem. Prior knowledge about the image can be combined to make the problem well-posed, which contributes to some regularization methods. In the regularization methods at present, however, regularization parameter was selected by experience in some cases and other techniques have too heavy computation cost for computing the parameter. In this paper, we construct a new super-resolution algorithm by transforming the solving of the System stem Є=An into the solving of the equations X+A*X-1A=I , and propose an inverse iterative method.

Selecting Materialized Views Using Two-Phase Optimization with Multiple View Processing Plan

A data warehouse (DW) is a system which has value and role for decision-making by querying. Queries to DW are critical regarding to their complexity and length. They often access millions of tuples, and involve joins between relations and aggregations. Materialized views are able to provide the better performance for DW queries. However, these views have maintenance cost, so materialization of all views is not possible. An important challenge of DW environment is materialized view selection because we have to realize the trade-off between performance and view maintenance cost. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a new approach aimed at solve this challenge based on Two-Phase Optimization (2PO), which is a combination of Simulated Annealing (SA) and Iterative Improvement (II), with the use of Multiple View Processing Plan (MVPP). Our experiments show that our method provides a further improvement in term of query processing cost and view maintenance cost.

The Advent of Electronic Logbook Technology - Reducing Cost and Risk to Both Marine Resources and the Fishing Industry

Fisheries management all around the world is hampered by the lack, or poor quality, of critical data on fish resources and fishing operations. The main reasons for the chronic inability to collect good quality data during fishing operations is the culture of secrecy common among fishers and the lack of modern data gathering technology onboard most fishing vessels. In response, OLRAC-SPS, a South African company, developed fisheries datalogging software (eLog in short) and named it Olrac. The Olrac eLog solution is capable of collecting, analysing, plotting, mapping, reporting, tracing and transmitting all data related to fishing operations. Olrac can be used by skippers, fleet/company managers, offshore mariculture farmers, scientists, observers, compliance inspectors and fisheries management authorities. The authors believe that using eLog onboard fishing vessels has the potential to revolutionise the entire process of data collection and reporting during fishing operations and, if properly deployed and utilised, could transform the entire commercial fleet to a provider of good quality data and forever change the way fish resources are managed. In addition it will make it possible to trace catches back to the actual individual fishing operation, to improve fishing efficiency and to dramatically improve control of fishing operations and enforcement of fishing regulations.

An Efficient and Optimized Multi Constrained Path Computation for Real Time Interactive Applications in Packet Switched Networks

Quality of Service (QoS) Routing aims to find path between source and destination satisfying the QoS requirements which efficiently using the network resources and underlying routing algorithm and to fmd low-cost paths that satisfy given QoS constraints. One of the key issues in providing end-to-end QoS guarantees in packet networks is determining feasible path that satisfies a number of QoS constraints. We present a Optimized Multi- Constrained Routing (OMCR) algorithm for the computation of constrained paths for QoS routing in computer networks. OMCR applies distance vector to construct a shortest path for each destination with reference to a given optimization metric, from which a set of feasible paths are derived at each node. OMCR is able to fmd feasible paths as well as optimize the utilization of network resources. OMCR operates with the hop-by-hop, connectionless routing model in IP Internet and does not create any loops while fmding the feasible paths. Nodes running OMCR not necessarily maintaining global view of network state such as topology, resource information and routing updates are sent only to neighboring nodes whereas its counterpart link-state routing method depend on complete network state for constrained path computation and that incurs excessive communication overhead.

Decision Tree-based Feature Ranking using Manhattan Hierarchical Cluster Criterion

Feature selection study is gaining importance due to its contribution to save classification cost in terms of time and computation load. In search of essential features, one of the methods to search the features is via the decision tree. Decision tree act as an intermediate feature space inducer in order to choose essential features. In decision tree-based feature selection, some studies used decision tree as a feature ranker with a direct threshold measure, while others remain the decision tree but utilized pruning condition that act as a threshold mechanism to choose features. This paper proposed threshold measure using Manhattan Hierarchical Cluster distance to be utilized in feature ranking in order to choose relevant features as part of the feature selection process. The result is promising, and this method can be improved in the future by including test cases of a higher number of attributes.