Improvements in Material Handling: A Case Study of Cement Manufacturing Plant

The globalization of the Indian economy has thrown a great challenge to the Indian industries in respect of productivity, quality, cost, delivery etc. Achieving success• the global market has required fundamental shift in the way business is conducted and has dramatically affected virtually every aspect of process industry. The internal manufacturing process and supporting infrastructure should be such that it can compete successfully in global markets with better flexibility and delivery. The paper deals with a case study of a reputed process industry, some changes in the process has been suggested, which leads to reduction in labor cost and production cost.

Novel Adaptive Channel Equalization Algorithms by Statistical Sampling

In this paper, novel statistical sampling based equalization techniques and CNN based detection are proposed to increase the spectral efficiency of multiuser communication systems over fading channels. Multiuser communication combined with selective fading can result in interferences which severely deteriorate the quality of service in wireless data transmission (e.g. CDMA in mobile communication). The paper introduces new equalization methods to combat interferences by minimizing the Bit Error Rate (BER) as a function of the equalizer coefficients. This provides higher performance than the traditional Minimum Mean Square Error equalization. Since the calculation of BER as a function of the equalizer coefficients is of exponential complexity, statistical sampling methods are proposed to approximate the gradient which yields fast equalization and superior performance to the traditional algorithms. Efficient estimation of the gradient is achieved by using stratified sampling and the Li-Silvester bounds. A simple mechanism is derived to identify the dominant samples in real-time, for the sake of efficient estimation. The equalizer weights are adapted recursively by minimizing the estimated BER. The near-optimal performance of the new algorithms is also demonstrated by extensive simulations. The paper has also developed a (Cellular Neural Network) CNN based approach to detection. In this case fast quadratic optimization has been carried out by t, whereas the task of equalizer is to ensure the required template structure (sparseness) for the CNN. The performance of the method has also been analyzed by simulations.

Multimachine Power System Stabilizers Design Using PSO Algorithm

In this paper, multiobjective design of multi-machine Power System Stabilizers (PSSs) using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is presented. The stabilizers are tuned to simultaneously shift the lightly damped and undamped electro-mechanical modes of all machines to a prescribed zone in the s-plane. A multiobjective problem is formulated to optimize a composite set of objective functions comprising the damping factor, and the damping ratio of the lightly damped electromechanical modes. The PSSs parameters tuning problem is converted to an optimization problem which is solved by PSO with the eigenvalue-based multiobjective function. The proposed PSO based PSSs is tested on a multimachine power system under different operating conditions and disturbances through eigenvalue analysis and some performance indices to illustrate its robust performance.

Prediction of Protein Subchloroplast Locations using Random Forests

Protein subchloroplast locations are correlated with its functions. In contrast to the large amount of available protein sequences, the information of their locations and functions is less known. The experiment works for identification of protein locations and functions are costly and time consuming. The accurate prediction of protein subchloroplast locations can accelerate the study of functions of proteins in chloroplast. This study proposes a Random Forest based method, ChloroRF, to predict protein subchloroplast locations using interpretable physicochemical properties. In addition to high prediction accuracy, the ChloroRF is able to select important physicochemical properties. The important physicochemical properties are also analyzed to provide insights into the underlying mechanism.

Switching Rule for the Exponential Stability and Stabilization of Switched Linear Systems with Interval Time-varying Delays

This paper is concerned with exponential stability and stabilization of switched linear systems with interval time-varying delays. The time delay is any continuous function belonging to a given interval, in which the lower bound of delay is not restricted to zero. By constructing a suitable augmented Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional combined with Leibniz-Newton-s formula, a switching rule for the exponential stability and stabilization of switched linear systems with interval time-varying delays and new delay-dependent sufficient conditions for the exponential stability and stabilization of the systems are first established in terms of LMIs. Numerical examples are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the results.

On Adaptive Optimization of Filter Performance Based on Markov Representation for Output Prediction Error

This paper addresses the problem of how one can improve the performance of a non-optimal filter. First the theoretical question on dynamical representation for a given time correlated random process is studied. It will be demonstrated that for a wide class of random processes, having a canonical form, there exists a dynamical system equivalent in the sense that its output has the same covariance function. It is shown that the dynamical approach is more effective for simulating and estimating a Markov and non- Markovian random processes, computationally is less demanding, especially with increasing of the dimension of simulated processes. Numerical examples and estimation problems in low dimensional systems are given to illustrate the advantages of the approach. A very useful application of the proposed approach is shown for the problem of state estimation in very high dimensional systems. Here a modified filter for data assimilation in an oceanic numerical model is presented which is proved to be very efficient due to introducing a simple Markovian structure for the output prediction error process and adaptive tuning some parameters of the Markov equation.

Comparison of the Music Sound System between Thailand and Vietnam

Thai and Vietnamese music had been influenced and inspired by the traditional Chinese music. Whereby the differences of the tuning systems as well as the music modes are obviously known . The research examined the character of musical instruments, songs and culture between Thai and Vietnamese. An analyzing of songs and modes and the study of tone vibration as well as timbre had been done accurately. This qualitative research is based on documentary and songs analysis, field study, interviews and focus group discussion of Thai and Vietnamese masters. The research aims are to examine the musical instruments and songs of both Thai and Vietnamese as well as the comparison of the sounding system between Thailand and Vietnam. The finding of the research has revealed that there are similarities in certain kinds of instruments but differences in the sound systems regarding songs and scale of Thailand and Vietnam. Both cultural musical instruments are diverse and synthetic combining native and foreign inspiring. An integral part of Vietnam has been highly impacted by Chinese musical convention. Korea, Mongolia and Japan music have also play an active and effectively influenced as their geographical related. Whereas Thailand has been influenced by Chinese and Indian traditional music. Both Thai and Vietnamese musical instruments can be divided into four groups: plucked strings, bowed strings, winds and percussion. Songs from both countries have their own characteristics. They are playing a role in touching people heart in ceremonies, social functions and an essential element of the native performing arts. The Vietnamese music melodies have been influenced by Chinese music and taken the same character as Chinese songs. Thai song has specific identity and variety showed in its unique melody. Pentatonic scales have effectively been used in composing Thai and Vietnamese songs, but in different implementing concept.

A Transform-Free HOC Scheme for Incompressible Viscous Flow past a Rotationally Oscillating Circular Cylinder

A numerical study is made of laminar, unsteady flow behind a rotationally oscillating circular cylinder using a recently developed higher order compact (HOC) scheme. The stream function vorticity formulation of Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations in cylindrical polar coordinates are considered as the governing equations. The temporal behaviour of vortex formation and relevant streamline patterns of the flow are scrutinized over broad ranges of two externally specified parameters namely dimensionless forced oscillating frequency Sf and dimensionless peak rotation rate αm for the Reynolds-s number Re = 200. Excellent agreements are found both qualitatively and quantitatively with the existing experimental and standard numerical results.

Uncertainty Propagation and Sensitivity Analysis During Calibration of an Integrated Land Use and Transport Model

In this work, propagation of uncertainty during calibration process of TRANUS, an integrated land use and transport model (ILUTM), has been investigated. It has also been examined, through a sensitivity analysis, which input parameters affect the variation of the outputs the most. Moreover, a probabilistic verification methodology of calibration process, which equates the observed and calculated production, has been proposed. The model chosen as an application is the model of the city of Grenoble, France. For sensitivity analysis and uncertainty propagation, Monte Carlo method was employed, and a statistical hypothesis test was used for verification. The parameters of the induced demand function in TRANUS, were assumed as uncertain in the present case. It was found that, if during calibration, TRANUS converges, then with a high probability the calibration process is verified. Moreover, a weak correlation was found between the inputs and the outputs of the calibration process. The total effect of the inputs on outputs was investigated, and the output variation was found to be dictated by only a few input parameters.

Development of Predictive Model for Surface Roughness in End Milling of Al-SiCp Metal Matrix Composites using Fuzzy Logic

Metal matrix composites have been increasingly used as materials for components in automotive and aerospace industries because of their improved properties compared with non-reinforced alloys. During machining the selection of appropriate machining parameters to produce job for desired surface roughness is of great concern considering the economy of manufacturing process. In this study, a surface roughness prediction model using fuzzy logic is developed for end milling of Al-SiCp metal matrix composite component using carbide end mill cutter. The surface roughness is modeled as a function of spindle speed (N), feed rate (f), depth of cut (d) and the SiCp percentage (S). The predicted values surface roughness is compared with experimental result. The model predicts average percentage error as 4.56% and mean square error as 0.0729. It is observed that surface roughness is most influenced by feed rate, spindle speed and SiC percentage. Depth of cut has least influence.

Hybrid GA Tuned RBF Based Neuro-Fuzzy Controller for Robotic Manipulator

In this paper performance of Puma 560 manipulator is being compared for hybrid gradient descent and least square method learning based ANFIS controller with hybrid Genetic Algorithm and Generalized Pattern Search tuned radial basis function based Neuro-Fuzzy controller. ANFIS which is based on Takagi Sugeno type Fuzzy controller needs prior knowledge of rule base while in radial basis function based Neuro-Fuzzy rule base knowledge is not required. Hybrid Genetic Algorithm with generalized Pattern Search is used for tuning weights of radial basis function based Neuro- fuzzy controller. All the controllers are checked for butterfly trajectory tracking and results in the form of Cartesian and joint space errors are being compared. ANFIS based controller is showing better performance compared to Radial Basis Function based Neuro-Fuzzy Controller but rule base independency of RBF based Neuro-Fuzzy gives it an edge over ANFIS

Automatic Light Control in Domotics using Artificial Neural Networks

Home Automation is a field that, among other subjects, is concerned with the comfort, security and energy requirements of private homes. The configuration of automatic functions in this type of houses is not always simple to its inhabitants requiring the initial setup and regular adjustments. In this work, the ubiquitous computing system vision is used, where the users- action patterns are captured, recorded and used to create the contextawareness that allows the self-configuration of the home automation system. The system will try to free the users from setup adjustments as the home tries to adapt to its inhabitants- real habits. In this paper it is described a completely automated process to determine the light state and act on them, taking in account the users- daily habits. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used as a pattern recognition method, classifying for each moment the light state. The work presented uses data from a real house where a family is actually living.

Hybrid Function Method for Solving Nonlinear Fredholm Integral Equations of the Second Kind

A numerical method for solving nonlinear Fredholm integral equations of second kind is proposed. The Fredholm type equations which have many applications in mathematical physics are then considered. The method is based on hybrid function  approximations. The properties of hybrid of block-pulse functions and Chebyshev polynomials are presented and are utilized to reduce the computation of nonlinear Fredholm integral equations to a system of nonlinear. Some numerical examples are selected to illustrate the effectiveness and simplicity of the method.

Vessel Inscribed Trigonometry to Measure the Vessel Progressive Orientations in the Digital Fundus Image

In this paper, the vessel inscribed trigonometry (VITM) for the vessel progression orientation (VPO) is proposed in the two-dimensional fundus image. The VPO is a major factor in the optic disc (OD) detection which is a basic process in the retina analysis. To measure the VPO, skeletons of vessel are used. First, the vessels are classified into three classes as vessel end, vessel branch and vessel stem. And the chain code maps of VS are generated. Next, two farthest neighborhoods of each point on VS are searched by the proposed angle restriction. Lastly, a gradient of the straight line between two farthest neighborhoods is estimated to measure the VPO. VITM is validated by comparing with manual results and 2D Gaussian templates. It is confirmed that VPO of the proposed mensuration is correct enough to detect OD from the results of experiment which applied VITM to detect OD in fundus images.

The Effect of the National Culture on the International Business

The aim for this research is to deliberately discuss how and why the contexts of culture are the main significant factors which need to be considered when conducting the international business oversea. As a consequence of understanding these various factors, the researcher would be able to infer some suggestions to the international organizations. With this in mind, the results of the understanding in a national culture environment can support the organizations to settle its international strategies which may be useful to develop the national export and import effectiveness. This data collecting methods will be concentrated upon 5-10 interviews from the senior members and business officers in the international company in Thailand by e-mail interview and analyses the individual manager’s viewpoint. As well as, focus on the questionnaires which the respondents were selected randomly around 100 samples from UK and Thailand, together with providing a functional sample size and comparable to data. The results of the study question the role of national culture, which contributed to in international business effectiveness and emphasize the positive and negative aspects, as well as suggestions to business investors are informed.

Blind Source Separation Using Modified Gaussian FastICA

This paper addresses the problem of source separation in images. We propose a FastICA algorithm employing a modified Gaussian contrast function for the Blind Source Separation. Experimental result shows that the proposed Modified Gaussian FastICA is effectively used for Blind Source Separation to obtain better quality images. In this paper, a comparative study has been made with other popular existing algorithms. The peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and improved signal to noise ratio (ISNR) are used as metrics for evaluating the quality of images. The ICA metric Amari error is also used to measure the quality of separation.

Privacy in New Mobile Payment Protocol

The increasing development of wireless networks and the widespread popularity of handheld devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones and wireless tablets represents an incredible opportunity to enable mobile devices as a universal payment method, involving daily financial transactions. Unfortunately, some issues hampering the widespread acceptance of mobile payment such as accountability properties, privacy protection, limitation of wireless network and mobile device. Recently, many public-key cryptography based mobile payment protocol have been proposed. However, limited capabilities of mobile devices and wireless networks make these protocols are unsuitable for mobile network. Moreover, these protocols were designed to preserve traditional flow of payment data, which is vulnerable to attack and increase the user-s risk. In this paper, we propose a private mobile payment protocol which based on client centric model and by employing symmetric key operations. The proposed mobile payment protocol not only minimizes the computational operations and communication passes between the engaging parties, but also achieves a completely privacy protection for the payer. The future work will concentrate on improving the verification solution to support mobile user authentication and authorization for mobile payment transactions.

A Norm-based Approach for Profiling Business Knowledge

Knowledge is a key asset for any organisation to sustain competitive advantages, but it is difficult to identify and represent knowledge which is needed to perform activities in business processes. The effective knowledge management and support for relevant business activities definitely gives a huge impact to the performance of the organisation as a whole. This is because that knowledge have the functions of directing, coordinating and controlling actions within business processes. The study has introduced organisational morphology, a norm-based approach by applying semiotic theories which emphasise on the representation of knowledge in norms. This approach is concerned with the identification of activities into three categories: substantive, communication and control activities. All activities are directed by norms; hence three types of norms exist; each is associated to a category of activities. The paper describes the approach briefly and illustrates the application of this approach through a case study of academic activities in higher education institutions. The result of the study shows that the approach provides an effective way to profile business knowledge and the profile enables the understanding and specification of business requirements of an organisation.

A Post Keynesian Environmental Macroeconomic Model for Agricultural Water Sustainability under Climate Change in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

Climate change has profound consequences for the agriculture of south-eastern Australia and its climate-induced water shortage in the Murray-Darling Basin. Post Keynesian Economics (PKE) macro-dynamics, along with Kaleckian investment and growth theory, are used to develop an ecological-economic system dynamics model of this complex nonlinear river basin system. The Murray- Darling Basin Simulation Model (MDB-SM) uses the principles of PKE to incorporate the fundamental uncertainty of economic behaviors of farmers regarding the investments they make and the climate change they face, particularly as regards water ecosystem services. MDB-SM provides a framework for macroeconomic policies, especially for long-term fiscal policy and for policy directed at the sustainability of agricultural water, as measured by socio-economic well-being considerations, which include sustainable consumption and investment in the river basin. The model can also reproduce other ecological and economic aspects and, for certain parameters and initial values, exhibit endogenous business cycles and ecological sustainability with realistic characteristics. Most importantly, MDBSM provides a platform for the analysis of alternative economic policy scenarios. These results reveal the importance of understanding water ecosystem adaptation under climate change by integrating a PKE macroeconomic analytical framework with the system dynamics modelling approach. Once parameterised and supplied with historical initial values, MDB-SM should prove to be a practical tool to provide alternative long-term policy simulations of agricultural water and socio-economic well-being.

Study on Geometric Design of Nay Pyi Taw-Mandalay Expressway and Possible Improvements; Sagarinn-Myinsain Portion

Geometric design is an important part of planning process design for physical highway to fill up basic function of roads, to give good traffic service. It is found that most of the road safety problems occur at the horizontal curves and complex-compound curves. In this paper, review on Sagarinn-Myinsain Portion of Nay Pyi Taw - Mandalay highway has been conducted in aspect of geometric design induced road safety condition. Horizontal alignment of geometric features and curve details are reviewed based on (AASHTO) standard and revised by Autodesk Land Desktop Software. Moreover, 85th Percentile Operation Speeds (V85) with driver confidence on horizontal curves is evaluated in order to obtain the range of highway safety factor (FS). The length of the selected highway portion is 13.65 miles and 8 lanes. The results of this study can be used to investigate the possible hazardous locations in advance and to revise how design radius and super elevation should be for better road safety performance for the selected portion. Moreover, the relationship between highway safety and highway geometry characteristics can also be known.