Abstract: Fatigue cracking continues to be the main challenges in
improving the performance of bituminous mixture pavements. The
purpose of this paper is to look at some aspects of the effects of fine
aggregate properties on the fatigue behaviour of hot mixture asphalt.
Two types of sand (quarry and mining sand) with two conventional
bitumen (PEN 50/60 & PEN 80/100) and four polymers modified
bitumen PMB (PM1_82, PM1_76, PM2_82 and PM2_76) were used.
Physical, chemical and mechanical tests were performed on the sands
to determine their effect when incorporated with a bituminous
mixture. According to the beam fatigue results, quarry sand that has
more angularity, rougher, higher shear strength and a higher
percentage of Aluminium oxide presented higher resistance to
fatigue. Also a PMB mixture gives better fatigue results than
conventional mixtures, this is due to the PMB having better viscosity
property than that of the conventional bitumen.
Abstract: This paper presents a hybrid fuzzy-PD plus PID
(HFPP) controller and its application to steam distillation process for
essential oil extraction system. Steam temperature is one of the most
significant parameters that can influence the composition of essential
oil yield. Due to parameter variations and changes in operation
conditions during distillation, a robust steam temperature controller becomes nontrivial to avoid the degradation of essential oil quality.
Initially, the PRBS input is triggered to the system and output of steam temperature is modeled using ARX model structure. The
parameter estimation and tuning method is adopted by simulation
using HFPP controller scheme. The effectiveness and robustness of
proposed controller technique is validated by real time
implementation to the system. The performance of HFPP using 25 and 49 fuzzy rules is compared. The experimental result demonstrates the proposed HFPP using 49 fuzzy rules achieves a
better, consistent and robust controller compared to PID when considering the test on tracking the set point and the effects due to disturbance.
Abstract: This paper argues that networks, such as the ECN and the American network, are affected by certain small events which are inherent to path dependence and preclude the full evolution towards efficiency. It is advocated that the American network is superior to the ECN in many respects due to its greater flexibility and longer history. This stems in particular from the creation of the American network, which was based on a small number of cases. Such a structure encourages further changes and modifications which are not necessarily radical. The ECN, by contrast, was established by legislative action, which explains its rigid structure and resistance to change. This paper is an attempt to transpose the superiority of the American network on to the ECN. It looks at concepts such as judicial cooperation, harmonisation of procedure, peer review and regulatory impact assessments (RIAs), and dispute resolution procedures.
Abstract: We introduce an adaptive technique for the joint mitigation of transients and continuous-wave radio-frequency co-channel interference (CW RFI) in high-frequency (HF) over-the-horizon radars (OTHRs). The performance of this technique is illustrated using data from an operational surface-wave radar (SECAR) and from recent experimental trials with sky-wave (SW) and sky-wave–line-of-sight (SKYLOS) HF OTHRs.
Abstract: In this study, a longitudinal joint connection was
proposed for the short-span slab-type modular bridges with rapid
construction. The slab-type modular bridge consists of a number of
precast slab modules and has the joint connection between the
modules in the longitudinal direction of the bridge. A finite element
based parameter analysis was conducted to design the shape and the
dimensions of the longitudinal joint connection. Numbers of shear
keys within the joint, height and depth of the shear key, tooth angle,
and the spacing were considered as the design parameters. Using the
local cracking load at the corner of the shear key and the
cross-sectional area of the joint, an efficiency factor was proposed to
evaluate the effectiveness of the longitudinal joint connection. The
dimensions of shear key were determined by comparing the cracking
loads and the efficiency factors obtained from the finite element
analysis.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the strategic stochastic air traffic flow management problem which seeks to balance airspace capacity and demand under weather disruptions. The goal is to reduce the need for myopic tactical decisions that do not account for probabilistic knowledge about the NAS near-future states. We present and discuss a scenario-based modeling approach based on a time-space stochastic process to depict weather disruption occurrences in the NAS. A solution framework is also proposed along with a distributed implementation aimed at overcoming scalability problems. Issues related to this implementation are also discussed.
Abstract: Crime is a major societal problem for most of the
world's nations. Consequently, the police need to develop new
methods to improve their efficiency in dealing with these ever increasing crime rates. Two of the common difficulties that the police
face in crime control are crime investigation and the provision of crime information to the general public to help them protect themselves. Crime control in police operations involves the use of
spatial data, crime data and the related crime data from different organizations (depending on the nature of the analysis to be made).
These types of data are collected from several heterogeneous sources
in different formats and from different platforms, resulting in a lack of standardization. Moreover, there is no standard framework for
crime data collection, integration and dissemination through mobile
devices. An investigation into the current situation in crime control was carried out to identify the needs to resolve these issues. This
paper proposes and investigates the use of service oriented
architecture (SOA) and the mobile spatial information service in crime control. SOA plays an important role in crime control as an
appropriate way to support data exchange and model sharing from
heterogeneous sources. Crime control also needs to facilitate mobile
spatial information services in order to exchange, receive, share and release information based on location to mobile users anytime and
anywhere.
Abstract: PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) polymer is a suitable material for biological and MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) designers, because of its biocompatibility, transparency and high resistance under plasma treatment. PDMS round channel is always been of great interest due to its ability to confine the liquid with membrane type micro valves. In this paper we are presenting a very simple way to form round shapemicrofluidic channel, which is based on reflow of positive photoresist AZ® 40 XT. With this method, it is possible to obtain channel of different height simply by varying the spin coating parameters of photoresist.
Abstract: Recently, a great amount of interest has been shown
in the field of modeling and controlling hybrid systems. One of the
efficient and common methods in this area utilizes the mixed logicaldynamical
(MLD) systems in the modeling. In this method, the
system constraints are transformed into mixed-integer inequalities by
defining some logic statements. In this paper, a system containing
three tanks is modeled as a nonlinear switched system by using the
MLD framework. Comparing the model size of the three-tank system
with that of a two-tank system, it is deduced that the number of
binary variables, the size of the system and its complexity
tremendously increases with the number of tanks, which makes the
control of the system more difficult. Therefore, methods should be
found which result in fewer mixed-integer inequalities.
Abstract: Tool Tracker is a client-server based application. It is essentially a catalogue of various network monitoring and management tools that are available online. There is a database maintained on the server side that contains the information about various tools. Several clients can access this information simultaneously and utilize this information. The various categories of tools considered are packet sniffers, port mappers, port scanners, encryption tools, and vulnerability scanners etc for the development of this application. This application provides a front end through which the user can invoke any tool from a central repository for the purpose of packet sniffing, port scanning, network analysis etc. Apart from the tool, its description and the help files associated with it would also be stored in the central repository. This facility will enable the user to view the documentation pertaining to the tool without having to download and install the tool. The application would update the central repository with the latest versions of the tools. The application would inform the user about the availability of a newer version of the tool currently being used and give the choice of installing the newer version to the user. Thus ToolTracker provides any network administrator that much needed abstraction and ease-ofuse with respect to the tools that he can use to efficiently monitor a network.
Abstract: EGOTHOR is a search engine that indexes the Web
and allows us to search the Web documents. Its hit list contains URL
and title of the hits, and also some snippet which tries to shortly
show a match. The snippet can be almost always assembled by an
algorithm that has a full knowledge of the original document (mostly
HTML page). It implies that the search engine is required to store
the full text of the documents as a part of the index.
Such a requirement leads us to pick up an appropriate compression
algorithm which would reduce the space demand. One of the solutions
could be to use common compression methods, for instance gzip or
bzip2, but it might be preferable if we develop a new method which
would take advantage of the document structure, or rather, the textual
character of the documents.
There already exist a special compression text algorithms and
methods for a compression of XML documents. The aim of this
paper is an integration of the two approaches to achieve an optimal
level of the compression ratio
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to express the input-output
matrix as a linear ordering problem which is classified as an NP-hard
problem. We then use a Tabu search algorithm to find the best
permutation among sectors in the input-output matrix that will give
an optimal solution. This optimal permutation can be useful in
designing policies and strategies for economists and government in
their goal of maximizing the gross domestic product.
Abstract: In order to study pressed pile test and ultimate bearing
capacity character of large-diameter steel pipe pile, based on two high-piled wharfs of Zhanjiang Port, pressed pile test and numerical simulation of three large-diameter steel pipe piles are analyzed in this
paper. Anchored pile method is used to pressed pile test, and the
curves of Q-s and ultimate bearing capacity are attained. Then the three piles are numerically simulated by ABAQUS, and results of numerical simulation and those of field test are comparatively analyzed. The results show that settlement value of numerical
simulation is larger than that of field test in the process of loading, the difference value is widening with the increasing of load, and the
ultimate difference value of settlement is 20% to 30%.
Abstract: Air pollution is a major environmental health
problem, affecting developed and developing countries around the
world. Increasing amounts of potentially harmful gases and
particulate matter are being emitted into the atmosphere on a global
scale, resulting in damage to human health and the environment.
Petroleum-related air pollutants can have a wide variety of adverse
environmental impacts. In the crude oil production sectors, there is a
strong need for a thorough knowledge of gaseous emissions resulting
from the flaring of associated gas of known composition on daily
basis through combustion activities under several operating
conditions. This can help in the control of gaseous emission from
flares and thus in the protection of their immediate and distant
surrounding against environmental degradation.
The impacts of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons emissions
from flaring activities at oil production facilities at Kuwait Oilfields
have been assessed through a screening study using records of flaring
operations taken at the gas and oil production sites, and by analyzing
available meteorological and air quality data measured at stations
located near anthropogenic sources. In the present study the
Industrial Source Complex (ISCST3) Dispersion Model is used to
calculate the ground level concentrations of methane and nonmethane
hydrocarbons emitted due to flaring in all over Kuwait
Oilfields.
The simulation of real hourly air quality in and around oil
production facilities in the State of Kuwait for the year 2006,
inserting the respective source emission data into the ISCST3
software indicates that the levels of non-methane hydrocarbons from
the flaring activities exceed the allowable ambient air standard set by
Kuwait EPA. So, there is a strong need to address this acute problem
to minimize the impact of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons
released from flaring activities over the urban area of Kuwait.
Abstract: In this paper, a one-dimensional numerical approach is
used to study the effect of applying electrohydrodynamics on the
temperature and species mass fraction profiles along the microcombustor.
Premixed mixture is H2-Air with a multi-step chemistry
(9 species and 19 reactions). In the micro-scale combustion because
of the increasing ratio of area-to-volume, thermal and radical
quenching mechanisms are important. Also, there is a significant heat
loss from the combustor walls. By inserting a number of electrodes
into micro-combustor and applying high voltage to them corona
discharge occurs. This leads in moving of induced ions toward
natural molecules and colliding with them. So this phenomenon
causes the movement of the molecules and reattaches the flow to the
walls. It increases the velocity near the walls that reduces the wall
boundary layer. Consequently, applying electrohydrodynamics
mechanism can enhance the temperature profile in the microcombustor.
Ultimately, it prevents the flame quenching in microcombustor.
Abstract: The data exchanged on the Web are of different nature
from those treated by the classical database management systems;
these data are called semi-structured data since they do not have a
regular and static structure like data found in a relational database;
their schema is dynamic and may contain missing data or types.
Therefore, the needs for developing further techniques and
algorithms to exploit and integrate such data, and extract relevant
information for the user have been raised. In this paper we present
the system OSIX (Osiris based System for Integration of XML
Sources). This system has a Data Warehouse model designed for the
integration of semi-structured data and more precisely for the
integration of XML documents. The architecture of OSIX relies on
the Osiris system, a DL-based model designed for the representation
and management of databases and knowledge bases. Osiris is a viewbased
data model whose indexing system supports semantic query
optimization. We show that the problem of query processing on a
XML source is optimized by the indexing approach proposed by
Osiris.
Abstract: Representing objects in a dynamic domain is essential
in commonsense reasoning under some circumstances. Classical logics
and their nonmonotonic consequences, however, are usually not
able to deal with reasoning with dynamic domains due to the fact that
every constant in the logical language denotes some existing object
in the static domain. In this paper, we explore a logical formalization
which allows us to represent nonexisting objects in commonsense
reasoning. A formal system named N-theory is proposed for this
purpose and its possible application in computer security is briefly
discussed.
Abstract: With the rapid development in the field of life
sciences and the flooding of genomic information, the need for faster
and scalable searching methods has become urgent. One of the
approaches that were investigated is indexing. The indexing methods
have been categorized into three categories which are the lengthbased
index algorithms, transformation-based algorithms and mixed
techniques-based algorithms. In this research, we focused on the
transformation based methods. We embedded the N-gram method
into the transformation-based method to build an inverted index
table. We then applied the parallel methods to speed up the index
building time and to reduce the overall retrieval time when querying
the genomic database. Our experiments show that the use of N-Gram
transformation algorithm is an economical solution; it saves time and
space too. The result shows that the size of the index is smaller than
the size of the dataset when the size of N-Gram is 5 and 6. The
parallel N-Gram transformation algorithm-s results indicate that the
uses of parallel programming with large dataset are promising which
can be improved further.
Abstract: Business process modeling has become an accepted
means for designing and describing business operations. Thereby,
consistency of business process models, i.e., the absence of modeling
faults, is of upmost importance to organizations. This paper presents
a concept and subsequent implementation for detecting faults in
business process models and for computing a measure of their
consistency. It incorporates not only syntactic consistency but also
semantic consistency, i.e., consistency regarding the meaning of
model elements from a business perspective.
Abstract: Recurrent event data is a special type of multivariate
survival data. Dynamic and frailty models are one of the approaches
that dealt with this kind of data. A comparison between these two
models is studied using the empirical standard deviation of the
standardized martingale residual processes as a way of assessing the
fit of the two models based on the Aalen additive regression model.
Here we found both approaches took heterogeneity into account and
produce residual standard deviations close to each other both in the
simulation study and in the real data set.