Probability of Globality

The objective of global optimization is to find the globally best solution of a model. Nonlinear models are ubiquitous in many applications and their solution often requires a global search approach; i.e. for a function f from a set A ⊂ Rn to the real numbers, an element x0 ∈ A is sought-after, such that ∀ x ∈ A : f(x0) ≤ f(x). Depending on the field of application, the question whether a found solution x0 is not only a local minimum but a global one is very important. This article presents a probabilistic approach to determine the probability of a solution being a global minimum. The approach is independent of the used global search method and only requires a limited, convex parameter domain A as well as a Lipschitz continuous function f whose Lipschitz constant is not needed to be known.

Simulations of Routing Protocols of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network is widely used in electronics. Wireless sensor networks are now used in many applications including military, environmental, healthcare applications, home automation and traffic control. We will study one area of wireless sensor networks, which is the routing protocol. Routing protocols are needed to send data between sensor nodes and the base station. In this paper, we will discuss two routing protocols, such as datacentric and hierarchical routing protocol. We will show the output of the protocols using the NS-2 simulator. This paper will compare the simulation output of the two routing protocol using Nam. We will simulate using Xgraph to find the throughput and delay of the protocol.

Digital Narrative as a Change Agent to Teach Reading to Media-Centric Students

Because today-s media centric students have adopted digital as their native form of communication, teachers are having increasingly difficult time motivating reluctant readers to read and write. Our research has shown these text-averse individuals can learn to understand the importance of reading and writing if the instruction is based on digital narratives. While these students are naturally attracted to story, they are better at consuming them than creating them. Therefore, any intervention that utilizes story as its basis needs to include instruction on the elements of story making. This paper presents a series of digitally-based tools to identify potential weaknesses of visually impaired visual learners and to help motivate these and other media-centric students to select and complete books that are assigned to them

Weight-Based Query Optimization System Using Buffer

Fast retrieval of data has been a need of user in any database application. This paper introduces a buffer based query optimization technique in which queries are assigned weights according to their number of execution in a query bank. These queries and their optimized executed plans are loaded into the buffer at the start of the database application. For every query the system searches for a match in the buffer and executes the plan without creating new plans.

Research on Weakly Hard Real-Time Constraints and Their Boolean Combination to Support Adaptive QoS

Advances in computing applications in recent years have prompted the demand for more flexible scheduling models for QoS demand. Moreover, in practical applications, partly violated temporal constraints can be tolerated if the violation meets certain distribution. So we need extend the traditional Liu and Lanland model to adapt to these circumstances. There are two extensions, which are the (m, k)-firm model and Window-Constrained model. This paper researches on weakly hard real-time constraints and their combination to support QoS. The fact that a practical application can tolerate some violations of temporal constraint under certain distribution is employed to support adaptive QoS on the open real-time system. The experiment results show these approaches are effective compared to traditional scheduling algorithms.

Quality of Life: Expectations and Achievements of Middle Class in Kazakhstan

The improvement of quality of life is the main visible integrated indicator of state well-being. More and more states pay attention to define and to achieve social standards of quality of life as social-economic strategy of development. These standards are determinate by state features, complex of needs and interests of individual, family and society. It still remains in open question: “What is middle class" in contemporary Kazakhstan. Appearance of new social standards of quality of life is important indicator of its successful establishment. The middle class as agent of social, politic and economic reforms promotes to improve the quality of life of the country. But if consider a low and a middle stratums of middle class, we can see that high social expectations and real achievements are still significantly different. The article relies on the sociological data, collected during of search of household-s standards of living in Almaty city and Almaty region, and case-study of cottage city “Jana Kuat".

Validation of Reverse Engineered Web Application Models

Web applications have become complex and crucial for many firms, especially when combined with areas such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering). The scientific community has focused attention to Web application design, development, analysis, testing, by studying and proposing methodologies and tools. Static and dynamic techniques may be used to analyze existing Web applications. The use of traditional static source code analysis may be very difficult, for the presence of dynamically generated code, and for the multi-language nature of the Web. Dynamic analysis may be useful, but it has an intrinsic limitation, the low number of program executions used to extract information. Our reverse engineering analysis, used into our WAAT (Web Applications Analysis and Testing) project, applies mutational techniques in order to exploit server side execution engines to accomplish part of the dynamic analysis. This paper studies the effects of mutation source code analysis applied to Web software to build application models. Mutation-based generated models may contain more information then necessary, so we need a pruning mechanism.

Analysis of the Communication Methods of an iCIM 3000 System within the Frame of Research Purpose

Current trends in manufacturing are characterized by production broadening, innovation cycle shortening, and the products having a new shape, material and functions. The production strategy focused on time needed change from the traditional functional production structure to flexible manufacturing cells and lines. Production by automated manufacturing system (AMS) is one of the most important manufacturing philosophies in the last years. The main goals of the project we are involved in lies on building a laboratory in which will be located a flexible manufacturing system consisting of at least two production machines with NC control (milling machines, lathe). These machines will be linked to a transport system and they will be served by industrial robots. Within this flexible manufacturing system a station for the quality control consisting of a camera system and rack warehouse will be also located. The design, analysis and improvement of this manufacturing system, specially with a special focus on the communication among devices constitute the main aims of this paper. The key determining factors for the manufacturing system design are: the product, the production volume, the used machines, the disposable manpower, the disposable infrastructure and the legislative frame for the specific cases.

Biogas Yield Potential Research of Tithonia diversifolia in Mesophilic Anaerobic Fermentation in China

BioEnergy is an archetypal appropriate technology and alternate source of energy in rural areas of China, and can meet the basic need for cooking fuel in rural areas. The paper introduces with an alternate mean of research that can accelerate the biogas energy production. Tithonia diversifolia or the Tree marigold can be hailed as mesophillic anaerobic digestion to increase the production of more Bioenergy. Tithonia diversifolia is very native to Mexico and Central America, which can be served as ornamental plants- green manure and can prevent soil erosion. Tithonia diversifolia is widely grown and known to Asia, Africa, America and Australia as well. Nowadays, Considering China’s geographical condition it is found that Tithonia diversifolia is widely growing plant in the many tropical and subtropical regions of southern Yunnan- which can have great usage in accelerating and increasing the Bioenergy production technology. The paper discussed aiming at proving possibility that Tithonia diversifolia can be applied in biogas fermentation and its biogas production potential, the research carried experiment on Tithonia diversifolia biogas fermentation under the mesophilic condition (35 Celsius Degree). The result revealed that Tithonia diversifolia can be used as biogas fermentative material, and 6% concentration can get the best biogas production, with the TS biogas production rate 656mL/g and VS biogas production rate 801mL/g. It is well addressed that Tithonia diversifolia grows wildly in 53 Counties and 9 cities of Yunnan Province, which mainly grows in form of the road side plants, the edge of the field, countryside, forest edge, open space; of which demersum-natures can form dense monospecific beds -causing serious harm to agricultural production landforms threatening the ecological system as a potentially harmful exotic plant. There are also found the three types of invasive daisy alien plants -Eupatorium adenophorum, Eupatorium Odorata and Tithonia diversifolia in Yunnan Province of China-among them the Tithonia diversifolia is responsible for causing serious harm to agricultural production. In this paper we have designed the experimental explanation of Biogas energy production that requires anaerobic environment and some microbes; Tithonia diversifolia plant has been taken into consideration while carrying experiments and with successful resulting of generating more BioEnergy emphasizing on the practical applications of Tithonia diversifolia. This paper aims at- to find a new mechanism to provide a more scientific basis for the development of this plant herbicides in Biogas energy and to improve the utilization throughout the world as well.

Energy-Efficient Sensing Concept for a Micromachined Yaw Rate Sensor

The need for micromechanical inertial sensors is increasing in future electronic stability control (ESC) and other positioning, navigation and guidance systems. Due to the rising density of sensors in automotive and consumer devices the goal is not only to get high performance, robustness and smaller package sizes, but also to optimize the energy management of the overall sensor system. This paper presents an evaluation concept for a surface micromachined yaw rate sensor. Within this evaluation concept an energy-efficient operation of the drive mode of the yaw rate sensor is enabled. The presented system concept can be realized within a power management subsystem.

Main Elements of Soft Cost in Green Buildings

Green buildings have been commonly cited to be more expensive than conventional buildings. However, limited research has been conducted to clearly identify elements that contribute to this cost differential. The construction cost of buildings can be typically divided into “hard" costs and “soft" cost elements. Using a review analysis of existing literature, the study identified six main elements in green buildings that contribute to the general cost elements that are “soft" in nature. The six elements found are insurance, developer-s experience, design cost, certification, commissioning and energy modeling. Out of the six elements, most literatures have highlighted the increase in design cost for green design as compared to conventional design due to additional architectural and engineering costs, eco-charettes, extra design time, and the further need for a green consultant. The study concluded that these elements of soft cost contribute to the green premium or cost differential of green buildings.

Concept for a Multidisciplinary Design Process–An Application on High Lift Systems

Presents a concept for a multidisciplinary process supporting effective task transitions between different technical domains during the architectural design stage. A system configuration challenge is the multifunctional driven increased solution space. As a consequence, more iteration is needed to find a global optimum, i.e. a compromise between involved disciplines without negative impact on development time. Since state of the art standards like ISO 15288 and VDI 2206 do not provide a detailed methodology on multidisciplinary design process, higher uncertainties regarding final specifications arise. This leads to the need of more detailed and standardized concepts or processes which could mitigate risks. The performed work is based on analysis of multidisciplinary interaction, of modeling and simulation techniques. To demonstrate and prove the applicability of the presented concept, it is applied to the design of aircraft high lift systems, in the context of the engineering disciplines kinematics, actuation, monitoring, installation and structure design.

Effect of White Kwao Extract (Pueraria mirifica) on in vitro Development and Implantation Rate of Mouse Embryo

The White Kwao (Pueraria mirifica), a potent phytoestrogenic medicinal plant, has long been use in Thailand as a traditional folkmedicine. However, no scientific information of the direct effect of White Kwao on the development of mammalian embryo was available. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of White Kwao extract on the in vitro development and implantation rate of mouse embryos. This study was designed into two experiments. In the first experiment, the two-cell stage mouse embryos were collected from the oviduct of superovulated mature female mice, and randomly cultured in three different media, the M16, M16 supplemented with 0.52μg esthinylestradiol-17β, and M16 supplemented with 10 mg/ml White Kwao extract. The culture was incubated in CO2 incubator at 37 oC . After the embryos were cultivated, the developments of embryos were observed every 24 hours for 5 days. The development rate of embryos from the two-cell stage to blastocyst stage in the media was with White Kwao was significantly higher (p

Computer - based Systems for High Speed Vessels Navigators – Engineers Training

With high speed vessels getting ever more sophisti-cated, travelling at higher and higher speeds and operating in With high speed vessels getting ever more sophisticated, travelling at higher and higher speeds and operating in areas of high maritime traffic density, training becomes of the highest priority to ensure that safety levels are maintained, and risks are adequately mitigated. Training onboard the actual craft on the actual route still remains the most effective way for crews to gain experience. However, operational experience and incidents during the last 10 years demonstrate the need for supplementary training whether in the area of simulation or man to man, man/ machine interaction. Training and familiarisation of the crew is the most important aspect in preventing incidents. The use of simulator, computer and web based training systems in conjunction with onboard training focusing on critical situations will improve the man machine interaction and thereby reduce the risk of accidents. Today, both ship simulator and bridge teamwork courses are now becoming the norm in order to improve further emergency response and crisis management skills. One of the main causes of accidents is the human factor. An efficient way to reduce human errors is to provide high-quality training to the personnel and to select the navigators carefully.areas of high maritime traffic density, training becomes of the highest priority to ensure that safety levels are maintained, and risks are adequately mitigated. Training onboard the actual craft on the actual route still remains the most effective way for crews to gain experience. How-ever, operational experience and incidents during the last 10 years demonstrate the need for supplementary training whether in the area of simulation or man to man, man/ machine interaction. Training and familiarisation of the crew is the most important aspect in preventing incidents. The use of simulator, computer and web based training systems in conjunction with onboard training focusing on critical situations will improve the man machine interaction and thereby reduce the risk of accidents. Today, both ship simulator and bridge teamwork courses are now becoming the norm in order to improve further emergency response and crisis management skills. One of the main causes of accidents is the human factor. An efficient way to reduce human errors is to provide high-quality training to the person-nel and to select the navigators carefully. KeywordsCBT - WBT systems, Human factors.

Interactive Chinese Character Learning System though Pictograph Evolution

This paper proposes an Interactive Chinese Character Learning System (ICCLS) based on pictorial evolution as an edutainment concept in computer-based learning of language. The advantage of the language origination itself is taken as a learning platform due to the complexity in Chinese language as compared to other types of languages. Users especially children enjoy more by utilize this learning system because they are able to memories the Chinese Character easily and understand more of the origin of the Chinese character under pleasurable learning environment, compares to traditional approach which children need to rote learning Chinese Character under un-pleasurable environment. Skeletonization is used as the representation of Chinese character and object with an animated pictograph evolution to facilitate the learning of the language. Shortest skeleton path matching technique is employed for fast and accurate matching in our implementation. User is required to either write a word or draw a simple 2D object in the input panel and the matched word and object will be displayed as well as the pictograph evolution to instill learning. The target of computer-based learning system is for pre-school children between 4 to 6 years old to learn Chinese characters in a flexible and entertaining manner besides utilizing visual and mind mapping strategy as learning methodology.

Breaking the Legacy of Silence: A Feminist Perspective on Therapist Attraction to Clients

Views on therapists- attraction have influenced the ethical and professional development of the mental health fields. Because the majority of therapist attraction literature (63.6%) has been conducted from a psychoanalytic standpoint, approaches to attraction from feminist perspectives have not been adequately developed. Considering the lack of a feminist voice regarding attraction, this article attempts to offer a feminist perspective on this issue. The purpose of this article is to offer a feminist perspective on the phenomenon of attraction in order to raise awareness about the importance of power inequalities, intersectionalities, contextual variables and the need for action in the field.

Probabilistic Center Voting Method for Subsequent Object Tracking and Segmentation

In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm for object tracking in video sequence. In order to represent the object to be tracked, we propose a spatial color histogram model which encodes both the color distribution and spatial information. The object tracking from frame to frame is accomplished via center voting and back projection method. The center voting method has every pixel in the new frame to cast a vote on whereabouts the object center is. The back projection method segments the object from the background. The segmented foreground provides information on object size and orientation, omitting the need to estimate them separately. We do not put any assumption on camera motion; the proposed algorithm works equally well for object tracking in both static and moving camera videos.

EU Families and Adolescents Quit Tobacco Focus Group Analysis in Hungary

In the frame of the European Union project entitled EU-Families and Adolescents Quit Tobacco (www.eufaqt.eu) focus group analysis has been carried out in Hungary to acquire qualitative information on attitudes towards smoking in groups of adolescents, parents and educators, respectively. It rendered to identify methods for smoking prevention/ intervention with family approach. The results explored the role of the family in smoking behaviour. Teachers do not feel responsibility in prevention or cessation of smoking. Adolescents are not aware of the addictive effect of the cigarette. Water pipe is popular among adolescent, therefore spreading of more information needed on the harmful effects of water pipe. We outlined the requirement for professionals to provide interventions. Partnership of EU-FAQT project has worked out antismoking interventions for adolescents and their families conducted by psychologists to ensure skill development to prevent and quit tobacco.

The Application of Specialized Memory Manager in Interactive CAD Systems

Interactive CAD systems have to allocate and deallocate memory frequently. Frequent memory allocation and deallocation can play a significant role in degrading application performance. An application may use memory in a very specific way and pay a performance penalty for functionality it does not need. We could counter that by developing specialized memory managers.

Estimated Production Potential Types of Wind Turbines Connected to the Network Using Random Numbers Simulation

Nowadays, power systems, energy generation by wind has been very important. Noting that the production of electrical energy by wind turbines on site to several factors (such as wind speed and profile site for the turbines, especially off the wind input speed, wind rated speed and wind output speed disconnect) is dependent. On the other hand, several different types of turbines in the market there. Therefore, selecting a turbine that its capacity could also answer the need for electric consumers the efficiency is high something is important and necessary. In this context, calculating the amount of wind power to help optimize overall network, system operation, in determining the parameters of wind power is very important. In this article, to help calculate the amount of wind power plant, connected to the national network in the region Manjil wind, selecting the best type of turbine and power delivery profile appropriate to the network using Monte Carlo method has been. In this paper, wind speed data from the wind site in Manjil, as minute and during the year has been. Necessary simulations based on Random Numbers Simulation method and repeat, using the software MATLAB and Excel has been done.