Abstract: As the remedy used music becomes active and
meditation effect through the music is verified, people take a growing
interest about psychological balance or remedy given by music. From
traditional studies, it is verified that the music of which spectral
envelop varies approximately as 1/f (f is frequency) down to a
frequency of low frequency bandwidth gives psychological balance.
In this paper, we researched signal properties of music which gives
psychological balance. In order to find this, we derived the property
from voice. Music composed by voice shows large value in NCSD.
We confirmed the degree of deference between music by curvature of
normalized cumulative spectral distribution. In the music that gives
psychological balance, the curvature shows high value, otherwise, the
curvature shows low value.
Abstract: Autofluorescence (AF) bronchoscopy is an
established method to detect dysplasia and carcinoma in situ (CIS).
For this reason the “Sotiria" Hospital uses the Karl Storz D-light
system. However, in early tumor stages the visualization is not that
obvious. With the help of a PC, we analyzed the color images we
captured by developing certain tools in Matlab®. We used statistical
methods based on texture analysis, signal processing methods based
on Gabor models and conversion algorithms between devicedependent
color spaces. Our belief is that we reduced the error made
by the naked eye. The tools we implemented improve the quality of
patients' life.
Abstract: A horizontal anaerobic digester was developed and
tested in pilot scale for Korean food waste with high water contents
(>80%). The hydrogen sulfide in the biogas was removed by a
biological desulfurization equipment integrated in the horizontal
digester. A mixer of the horizontal digester was designed to easily
remove the sediment in the bottom and scum layers on surface in the
digester. Experimental result for 120 days of operation of the pilot
plant showed a high removal efficiency of 81.2% for organic
substance and high stability during the whole operation period were
acquired. Also food waste was treated at high organic loading rates
over 4 kg•VS/m3∙day and a methane gas production rate of 0.62
m3/kg•VSremoved was accomplished.
The biological desulfurization equipment inside the horizontal
digester was proven to be an economic and effective method to reduce
the biogas desulfurization cost by removing hydrogen sulfide more
than 90% without external desulfurization equipments.
Abstract: In the present study, a numerical analysis is carried
out to investigate unsteady MHD (magneto-hydrodynamic) flow and
heat transfer of a non-Newtonian second grade viscoelastic fluid
over an oscillatory stretching sheet. The flow is induced due to an
infinite elastic sheet which is stretched oscillatory (back and forth) in
its own plane. Effect of viscous dissipation and joule heating are
taken into account. The non-linear differential equations governing
the problem are transformed into system of non-dimensional
differential equations using similarity transformations. A newly
developed meshfree numerical technique Element free Galerkin
method (EFGM) is employed to solve the coupled non linear
differential equations. The results illustrating the effect of various
parameters like viscoelastic parameter, Hartman number, relative
frequency amplitude of the oscillatory sheet to the stretching rate and
Eckert number on velocity and temperature field are reported in
terms of graphs and tables. The present model finds its application in
polymer extrusion, drawing of plastic films and wires, glass, fiber
and paper production etc.
Abstract: Today due to rising levels of housing- necessities,
several problems have been raised regarding to urban quality of life.
The aim of the research is to study social and spatial aspects of
housing environment and to find out their interaction with the urban
quality of life. As a case of study two pilot areas of Famagusta city in
North Cyprus, were selected: Baykal, considered as an established
urban district and Tuzla, a newly developed peri-urban district. In
order to determine urban quality of life in planning and developing of
housing areas, social and spatial aspects of selected areas have been
examined, differences between them according to the planning policy
have been pointed out, advantages and disadvantages of housing
planning have been found. As a practical implementation of the
research a number of households in each selected area have been
interviewed in order to draw a conclusion.
Abstract: The possibility of producing drinking water from
brackish ground water using Vacuum membrane distillation (VMD)
process was studied. It is a rising technology for seawater or brine
desalination process. The process simply consists of a flat sheet
hydrophobic micro porous PTFE membrane and diaphragm vacuum
pump without a condenser for the water recovery or trap. In this
work, VMD performance was investigated for aqueous NaCl solution
and natural ground water. The influence of operational parameters
such as feed flow rate (30 to 55 l/h), feed temperature (313 to 333 K),
feed salt concentration (5000 to 7000 mg/l) and permeate pressure
(1.5 to 6 kPa) on the membrane distillation (MD) permeation flux
have been investigated. The maximum flux reached to 28.34 kg/m2 h
at feed temperature, 333 K; vacuum pressure, 1.5 kPa; feed flow rate,
55 l/h and feed salt concentration, 7000 mg/l. The negligible effects
in the reduction of permeate flux found over 150 h experimental run
for salt water. But for the natural ground water application over 75 h,
scale deposits observed on the membrane surface and 29% reduction
in the permeate flux over 75 h. This reduction can be eliminated by
acidification of feed water. Hence, promote the research attention in
apply of VMD for the ground water purification over today-s
conventional RO operation.
Abstract: As the resources for naturally occurring aggregates
diminished at an ever increasing rate, researchers are keen to utilize
recycled materials in road construction in harmony with sustainable
development. Steel slag, a waste product from the steel making
industry, is one of the recycled materials reported to exhibit great
potential to replace naturally occurring aggregates in asphalt
mixtures. This paper presents the resilient modulus properties of
steel slag asphalt mixtures subjected to short term oven ageing
(STOA). The resilient modulus test was carried out to evaluate the
stiffness of asphalt mixtures at 10ºC, 25ºC and 40ºC. Previous
studies showed that stiffness changes in asphalt mixture played an
important role in inflicting pavement distress particularly cracking
and rutting that are common at low and high temperatures
respectively. Temperature was found to significantly influence the
resilient modulus of asphalt mixes. The resilient modulus of the
asphalt specimens tested decreased by more than 90% when the test
temperature increased from 10°C to 40°C.
Abstract: Meshing is the process of discretizing problem
domain into many sub domains before the numerical calculation can
be performed. One of the most popular meshes among many types of meshes is tetrahedral mesh, due to their flexibility to fit into almost
any domain shape. In both 2D and 3D domains, triangular and tetrahedral meshes can be generated by using Delaunay triangulation.
The quality of mesh is an important factor in performing any Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations as the results is
highly affected by the mesh quality. Many efforts had been done in
order to improve the quality of the mesh. The paper describes a mesh
generation routine which has been developed capable of generating
high quality tetrahedral cells in arbitrary complex geometry. A few
test cases in CFD problems are used for testing the mesh generator.
The result of the mesh is compared with the one generated by a
commercial software. The results show that no sliver exists for the
meshes generated, and the overall quality is acceptable since the percentage of the bad tetrahedral is relatively small. The boundary
recovery was also successfully done where all the missing faces are
rebuilt.
Abstract: Introduction: Visual performance is an important factor in sport excellence. Visual involvement in a sport varies according to environmental demands associated with that sport. These environmental demands are matched by a task specific motor response. The purpose of this study was to determine if sport specific exercises will improve the visual performance of male rugby players, in order to achieve maximal results on the sports field. Materials & Methods: Twenty six adult male rugby players, aged 16-22, were chosen as subjects. In order to evaluate the effect of sport specific exercises on visual skills, a pre-test - post-test experimental group design was adopted for the study. Results: Significant differences (p≤0.05) were seen in the focussing, tracking, vergence, sequencing, eye-hand coordination and visualisation components Discussion & Conclusions: Sport specific exercises improved visual skills in rugby players which may provide them with an advantage over their opponents. This study suggests that these training programs and participation in regular on-line EyeDrills sports vision exercises (www.eyedrills.co.za) aimed at improving the athlete-s visual coordination, concentration, focus, hand-eye co-ordination, anticipation and motor response should be incorpotated in the rugby players exercise regime.
Abstract: There is significant interest in achieving technology
innovation through new product development activities. It is
recognized, however, that traditional project management practices
focused only on performance, cost, and schedule attributes, can often
lead to risk mitigation strategies that limit new technology
innovation. In this paper, a new approach is proposed for formally
managing and quantifying technology innovation. This approach uses
a risk-based framework that simultaneously optimizes innovation
attributes along with traditional project management and system
engineering attributes. To demonstrate the efficacy of the new riskbased
approach, a comprehensive product development experiment
was conducted. This experiment simultaneously managed the
innovation risks and the product delivery risks through the proposed
risk-based framework. Quantitative metrics for technology
innovation were tracked and the experimental results indicate that the
risk-based approach can simultaneously achieve both project
deliverable and innovation objectives.
Abstract: Cobalt was acid nitric leached from a mixed cobaltcopper
oxide with variable acid concentration. Resulting
experimental data were used to analyze effects of increase in acid
concentration, based on a shrinking core model of the process. The
mathematical simulation demonstrated that the time rate of the
dissolution mechanism is an increasing function of acid
concentration. It was also shown that the magnitude of the acid
concentration effect is time dependent and the increase in acid
concentration is more effective at earlier stage of the dissolution than
at later stage. The remaining process parameters are comprehensively
affected by acid concentration and their interaction is synergetic.
Abstract: This study examined a habitat-suitability assessment method namely the Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA). A virtual species was created and then dispatched in a geographic information system model of a real landscape in three historic scenarios: (1) spreading, (2) equilibrium, and (3) overabundance. In each scenario, the virtual species was sampled and these simulated data sets were used as inputs for the ENFA to reconstruct the habitat suitability model. The 'equilibrium' scenario gives the highest quantity and quality among three scenarios. ENFA was sensitive to the distribution scenarios but not sensitive to sample sizes. The use of a virtual species proved to be a very efficient method, allowing one to fully control the quality of the input data as well as to accurately evaluate the predictive power of the analyses.
Abstract: The processing of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal consists essentially in the detection of the characteristic points of
signal which are an important tool in the diagnosis of heart diseases. The most suitable are the detection of R waves. In this paper, we
present various mathematical tools used for filtering ECG using digital filtering and Discreet Wavelet Transform (DWT) filtering. In
addition, this paper will include two main R peak detection methods
by applying a windowing process: The first method is based on calculations derived, the second is a time-frequency method based on
Dyadic Wavelet Transform DyWT.
Abstract: Religion revival including Islam in Kazakhstan represents reaction, first of all on internal social and political change, events after disintegration of the USSR. Process of revival of Kazakhstan Islam was accompanied as positive, so by negative tendencies. Old mosques were restored, were under construction new, Islamic schools and high schools were created, was widely studied religious the dogmatic person, the corresponding literature was published, expanded contacts with foreign Muslim brothers in the faith, the centers of the Arab-Muslim culture extended. At the same time in Kazakhstan, there are religious-political parties and movements, pursuing radical goals down to change the spiritual and cultural identity of Muslims of Kazakhstan by the forcible introduction of non-traditional religious and political, ethnic and cultural values.
Abstract: Induction machine models used for steady-state and
transient analysis require machine parameters that are usually
considered design parameters or data. The knowledge of induction
machine parameters is very important for Indirect Field Oriented
Control (IFOC). A mismatched set of parameters will degrade the
response of speed and torque control. This paper presents an
improvement approach on rotor time constant adaptation in IFOC for
Induction Machines (IM). Our approach tends to improve the
estimation accuracy of the fundamental model for flux estimation.
Based on the reduced order of the IM model, the rotor fluxes and
rotor time constant are estimated using only the stator currents and
voltages. This reduced order model offers many advantages for real
time identification parameters of the IM.
Abstract: This paper proposes improved delay-dependent stability conditions of the linear time-delay systems of neutral type. The proposed methods employ a suitable Lyapunov-Krasovskii’s functional and a new form of the augmented system. New delay-dependent stability criteria for the systems are established in terms of Linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) which can be easily solved by various effective optimization algorithms. Numerical examples showed that the proposed method is effective and can provide less conservative results.
Abstract: A multi-agent system is developed here to predict
monthly details of the upcoming peak of the 24th solar magnetic
cycle. While studies typically predict the timing and magnitude of
cycle peaks using annual data, this one utilizes the unsmoothed
monthly sunspot number instead. Monthly numbers display more
pronounced fluctuations during periods of strong solar magnetic
activity than the annual sunspot numbers. Because strong magnetic
activities may cause significant economic damages, predicting
monthly variations should provide different and perhaps helpful
information for decision-making purposes. The multi-agent system
developed here operates in two stages. In the first, it produces twelve
predictions of the monthly numbers. In the second, it uses those
predictions to deliver a final forecast. Acting as expert agents, genetic
programming and neural networks produce the twelve fits and
forecasts as well as the final forecast. According to the results
obtained, the next peak is predicted to be 156 and is expected to
occur in October 2011- with an average of 136 for that year.
Abstract: The Brazilian legislation has only established
diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) in terms of Multiple Scan
Average Dose (MSAD) as a quality control parameter for computed
tomography (CT) scanners. Compliance with DRLs can be verified
by measuring the Computed Tomography Kerma Index (Ca,100) with
a pencil ionization chamber or by obtaining the kerma distribution in
CT scans with radiochromic films or rod shape lithium fluoride
termoluminescent dosimeters (TLD-100). TL dosimeters were used
to record kerma profiles and to determine MSAD values of a Bright
Speed model GE CT scanner. Measurements were done with
radiochromic films and TL dosimeters distributed in cylinders
positioned in the center and in four peripheral bores of a standard
polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) body CT dosimetry phantom.
Irradiations were done using a protocol for adult chest. The
maximum values were found at the midpoint of the longitudinal axis.
The MSAD values obtained with three dosimetric techniques were
compared.
Abstract: This paper proposes a power-controlled scheduling scheme for devices using a directional antenna in smart home. In the case of the home network using directional antenna, devices can concurrently transmit data in the same frequency band. Accordingly, the throughput increases compared to that of devices using omni-directional antenna in proportional to the number of concurrent transmissions. Also, the number of concurrent transmissions depends on the beamwidth of antenna, the number of devices operating in the network , transmission power, interference and so on. In particular, the less transmission power is used, the more concurrent transmissions occur due to small transmission range. In this paper, we considered sub-optimal scheduling scheme for throughput maximization and power consumption minimization. In the scheme, each device is equipped with a directional antenna. Various beamwidths, path loss components, and antenna radiation efficiencies are considered. Numerical results show that the proposed schemes outperform the scheduling scheme using directional antennas without power control.
Abstract: This paper presents a method for functional projective H∞ synchronization problem of chaotic systems with external disturbance. Based on Lyapunov theory and linear matrix inequality (LMI) formulation, the novel feedback controller is established to not only guarantee stable synchronization of both drive and response systems but also reduce the effect of external disturbance to an H∞ norm constraint.