Abstract: Success is a European project that will implement several clean transport offers in three European cities and evaluate the environmental impacts. The goal of these measures is to improve urban mobility or the displacement of residents inside cities. For e.g. park and ride, electric vehicles, hybrid bus and bike sharing etc. A list of 28 criteria and 60 measures has been established for evaluation of these transport projects. The evaluation criteria can be grouped into: Transport, environment, social, economic and fuel consumption. This article proposes a decision support system based that encapsulates a hybrid approach based on fuzzy logic, multicriteria analysis and belief theory for the evaluation of impacts of urban mobility solutions. A web-based tool called DeSSIA (Decision Support System for Impacts Assessment) has been developed that treats complex data. The tool has several functionalities starting from data integration (import of data), evaluation of projects and finishes by graphical display of results. The tool development is based on the concept of MVC (Model, View, and Controller). The MVC is a conception model adapted to the creation of software's which impose separation between data, their treatment and presentation. Effort is laid on the ergonomic aspects of the application. It has codes compatible with the latest norms (XHTML, CSS) and has been validated by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). The main ergonomic aspect focuses on the usability of the application, ease of learning and adoption. By the usage of technologies such as AJAX (XML and Java Script asynchrones), the application is more rapid and convivial. The positive points of our approach are that it treats heterogeneous data (qualitative, quantitative) from various information sources (human experts, survey, sensors, model etc.).
Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of lubrication on
the quantity of heat emission of two spur gear. System with and
without lubrication effected on the quantity of heat induced on the
gear box (oil - bearings – gears). Both of lubrication and speed of
motor are affected on the performance of gears. Research investigated
the lubrication on the system with and without loading as well as the
wear of gears and bearing's conditions. Gear box investigated
includes the motor, pump, two spur gears, two shafts; speed change
used pulleys and belts. Load used equal one weight ones of gear.
Lubrication mechanism used jet system (upper and lower jet). Gear
box we used system of jet lubrication is perpendicular direction of
the contact line between two teeth. Results appeared in this work that
the lubrication is the vital parameter which is affected on the
performance and durability of gears and bearings. In macroscopic
observation, we noted that damage of bearings happened during the
absence of lubrication as well as abrasive of wear of teeth. Higher
speed of motor without lubrication increased the noise, but in the
presence of lubrication was decreased.
Abstract: This paper regards the phenomena of intensive suburbanization and urbanization in Olomouc city and in Olomouc region in general for the period of 1986–2009. A Remote Sensing approach that involves tracking of changes in Land Cover units is proposed to quantify the urbanization state and trends in temporal and spatial aspects. It actually consisted of two approaches, Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 which implied two different image classification solutions in order to provide Land Cover maps for each 1986–2009 time split available in the Landsat image set. Experiment 1 dealt with the unsupervised classification, while Experiment 2 involved semi- supervised classification, using a combination of object-based and pixel-based classifiers. The resulting Land Cover maps were subsequently quantified for the proportion of urban area unit and its trend through time, and also for the urban area unit stability, yielding the relation of spatial and temporal development of the urban area unit. Some outcomes seem promising but there is indisputably room for improvements of source data and also processing and filtering.
Abstract: The use of plastic materials in agriculture causes
serious hazards to the environment. The introduction of biodegradable materials, which can be disposed directly into the soil
can be one possible solution to this problem. In the present research results of experimental tests carried out on biodegradable film
fabricated from natural waste (corn husk) are presented. The film was
characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR),
differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), thermal gravimetric analysis
(TGA) and atomic force microscope (AFM) observation. The film is
shown to be readily degraded within 7-9 months under controlled soil
conditions, indicating a high biodegradability rate. The film
fabricated was use to produce biodegradable pot (BioPot) for
seedlings plantation. The introduction and the expanding use of
biodegradable materials represent a really promising alternative for
enhancing sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural
activities.
Abstract: Slag sample from copper smelting operation in a
water jacket furnace from DRC plant was used. The study intends to
determine the effect of cooling in the extraction of base metals. The
cooling methods investigated were water quenching, air cooling and
furnace cooling. The latter cooling ways were compared to the
original as received slag. It was observed that, the cooling rate of the
slag affected the leaching of base metals as it changed the phase
distribution in the slag and the base metals distribution within the
phases. It was also found that fast cooling of slag prevented
crystallization and produced an amorphous phase that encloses the
base metals. The amorphous slags from the slag dumps were more
leachable in acidic medium (HNO3) which leached 46%Cu, 95% Co,
85% Zn, 92% Pb and 79% Fe with no selectivity at pH0, than in
basic medium (NH4OH). The leachability was vice versa for the
modified slags by quenching in water which leached 89%Cu with a
high selectivity as metal extractions are less than 1% for Co, Zn, Pb
and Fe at ambient temperature and pH12. For the crystallized slags,
leaching of base metals increased with the increase of temperature
from ambient temperature to 60°C and decreased at the higher
temperature of 80°C due to the evaporation of the ammonia solution
used for basic leaching, the total amounts of base metals that were
leached in slow cooled slags were very low compared to the
quenched slag samples.
Abstract: Evapotranspiration (ET) is a major component of the hydrologic cycle and its accurate estimation is essential for hydrological studies. In past, various estimation methods have been developed for different climatological data, and the accuracy of these methods varies with climatic conditions. Reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0) is a key variable in procedures established for estimating evapotranspiration rates of agricultural crops. Values of ET0 are used with crop coefficients for many aspects of irrigation and water resources planning and management. Numerous methods are used for estimating ET0. As per internationally accepted procedures outlined in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization-s Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 56(FAO-56), use of Penman-Monteith equation is recommended for computing ET0 from ground based climatological observations. In the present study, seven methods have been selected for performance evaluation. User friendly software has been developed using programming language visual basic. The visual basic has ability to create graphical environment using less coding. For given data availability the developed software estimates reference evapotranspiration for any given area and period for which data is available. The accuracy of the software has been checked by the examples given in FAO-56.The developed software is a user friendly tool for estimating ET0 under different data availability and climatic conditions.
Abstract: In this paper, we study statistical multiplexing of VBR
video in ATM networks. ATM promises to provide high speed realtime
multi-point to central video transmission for telemedicine
applications in rural hospitals and in emergency medical services.
Video coders are known to produce variable bit rate (VBR) signals
and the effects of aggregating these VBR signals need to be
determined in order to design a telemedicine network infrastructure
capable of carrying these signals. We first model the VBR video
signal and simulate it using a generic continuous-data autoregressive
(AR) scheme. We carry out the queueing analysis by the Fluid
Approximation Model (FAM) and the Markov Modulated Poisson
Process (MMPP). The study has shown a trade off: multiplexing
VBR signals reduces burstiness and improves resource utilization,
however, the buffer size needs to be increased with an associated
economic cost. We also show that the MMPP model and the Fluid
Approximation model fit best, respectively, the cell region and the
burst region. Therefore, a hybrid MMPP and FAM completely
characterizes the overall performance of the ATM statistical
multiplexer. The ramifications of this technology are clear: speed,
reliability (lower loss rate and jitter), and increased capacity in video
transmission for telemedicine. With migration to full IP-based
networks still a long way to achieving both high speed and high
quality of service, the proposed ATM architecture will remain of
significant use for telemedicine.
Abstract: A robust still image face localization algorithm
capable of operating in an unconstrained visual environment is
proposed. First, construction of a robust skin classifier within a
shifted HSV color space is described. Then various filtering
operations are performed to better isolate face candidates and
mitigate the effect of substantial non-skin regions. Finally, a novel
Bhattacharyya-based face detection algorithm is used to compare
candidate regions of interest with a unique illumination-dependent
face model probability distribution function approximation.
Experimental results show a 90% face detection success rate despite
the demands of the visually noisy environment.
Abstract: Increasing attention has been given in academia to the concept of corporate social responsibility. Also, the number of companies that undertake social responsibility initiatives has been boosting day by day since behaving in a socially responsible manner brings a lot to the companies. Literature provides various benefits of social responsibility and under which situations these benefits could be realized. However, most of these studies focus on one aspect of the consequences of behaving in a socially responsible manner and there is no study that unifies the conditions that a company should fulfill to make customers prefer its brand. This study aims to fill this gap. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to identify the conditions that a socially responsible company should fulfill in order to attract customers. To this end, a scale is developed and its reliability and validity is assessed through the method of Multitrait- Multimethod Matrix.
Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to analyze climbers
involved in motivation and risk perception and analysis of the
predictive ability of the risk perception "mountaineering" involved in
motivation. This study used questionnaires, to have to climb the
3000m high mountain in Taiwan climbers object to carry out an
investigation in order to non-random sampling, a total of 231 valid
questionnaires were. After statistical analysis, the study found that: 1.
Climbers the highest climbers involved in motivation "to enjoy the
natural beauty of the fun. 2 climbers for climbers "risk perception" the
highest: the natural environment of risk. 3. Climbers “seeking
adventure stimulate", “competence achievement" motivation highly
predictive of risk perception. Based on these findings, this study not
only practices the recommendations of the outdoor leisure industry,
and also related research proposals for future researchers.
Abstract: Because of the requirement for low sulfur content of
fuel oils, it is necessary to develop alternative methods for desulfurization of heavy fuel oil. Due to the disadvantages of HDS
technologies such as costs, safety and green environment, new
methods have been developed. Among these methods is ultrasoundassisted
oxidative desulfurization. Using ultrasound-assisted
oxidative desulfurization, compounds such as benzothiophene and
dibenzothiophene can be oxidized. As an alternative method is sulfur
elimination of heavy fuel oil by using of activated carbon in a packed column in batch condition. The removal of sulfur compounds in this
case to reach about 99%. The most important property of activated carbon is ability of it for adsorption, which is due to high surface area
and pore volume of it.
Abstract: Many advanced Routing protocols for wireless sensor networks have been implemented for the effective routing of data. Energy awareness is an essential design issue and almost all of these routing protocols are considered as energy efficient and its ultimate objective is to maximize the whole network lifetime. However, the introductions of video and imaging sensors have posed additional challenges. Transmission of video and imaging data requires both energy and QoS aware routing in order to ensure efficient usage of the sensors and effective access to the gathered measurements. In this paper, the performance of the energy-aware QoS routing Protocol are analyzed in different performance metrics like average lifetime of a node, average delay per packet and network throughput. The parameters considered in this study are end-to-end delay, real time data generation/capture rates, packet drop probability and buffer size. The network throughput for realtime and non-realtime data was also has been analyzed. The simulation has been done in NS2 simulation environment and the simulation results were analyzed with respect to different metrics.
Abstract: A computer cluster is a group of tightly coupled
computers that work together closely so that in many respects they
can be viewed as though they are a single computer. The components
of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other
through fast local area networks. Clusters are usually deployed to
improve performance and/or availability over that provided by a
single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than
single computers of comparable speed or availability. This paper
proposed the way to implement the Beowulf Cluster in order to
achieve high performance as well as high availability.
Abstract: This paper presents a multi-objective formulation for
optimal siting and sizing of distributed generation (DG) resources in
distribution systems in order to minimize the cost of power losses
and energy not supplied. The implemented technique is based on
particle swarm optimization (PSO) and weight method that employed
to obtain the best compromise between these costs. Simulation
results on 33-bus distribution test system are presented to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedure.
Abstract: Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSANs) constitute an emerging and pervasive technology that is attracting increasing interest in the research community for a wide range of applications. WSANs have two important requirements: coordination interactions and real-time communication to perform correct and timely actions. This paper introduces a methodology to facilitate the task of the application programmer focusing on the coordination and real-time requirements of WSANs. The methodology proposed in this model uses a real-time component model, UM-RTCOM, which will help us to achieve the design and implementation of applications in WSAN by using the component oriented paradigm. This will help us to develop software components which offer some very interesting features, such as reusability and adaptability which are very suitable for WSANs as they are very dynamic environments with rapidly changing conditions. In addition, a high-level coordination model based on tuple channels (TC-WSAN) is integrated into the methodology by providing a component-based specification of this model in UM-RTCOM; this will allow us to satisfy both sensor-actor and actor-actor coordination requirements in WSANs. Finally, we present in this paper the design and implementation of an application which will help us to show how the methodology can be easily used in order to achieve the development of WSANs applications.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present the design and
instrumentation of a new benchmark multivariable nonlinear control
laboratory. The mathematical model of this system may be used to
test the applicability and performance of various nonlinear control
procedures. The system is a two degree-of-freedom robotic arm with
soft and hard (discontinuous) nonlinear terms. Two novel
mechanisms are designed to allow the implementation of adjustable
Coulomb friction and backlash.
Abstract: A statistical optimization was studied to design a media composition to produce optimum cellulolytic enzyme where palm oil mill effluent (POME) as a basal medium and filamentous fungus, Trichoderma reesei RUT-C30 were used in the liquid state bioconversion(LSB). 2% (w/v) total suspended solid, TSS, of the POME supplemented with 1% (w/v) cellulose, 0.5%(w/v) peptone and 0.02% (v/v) Tween 80 was estimated to produce the optimum CMCase activity of 18.53 U/ml through the statistical analysis followed by the faced centered central composite design(FCCCD). The probability values of cellulose (
Abstract: This paper will present the implementation of QoS
policy based system by utilizing rules on Access Control List (ACL)
over Layer 3 (L3) switch. Also presented is the architecture on that
implementation; the tools being used and the result were gathered.
The system architecture has an ability to control ACL rules which are
installed inside an external L3 switch. ACL rules used to instruct the
way of access control being executed, in order to entertain all traffics
through that particular switch. The main advantage of using this
approach is that the single point of failure could be prevented when
there are any changes on ACL rules inside L3 switches. Another
advantage is that the agent could instruct ACL rules automatically
straight away based on the changes occur on policy database without
configuring them one by one. Other than that, when QoS policy
based system was implemented in distributed environment, the
monitoring process can be synchronized easily due to the automate
process running by agent over external policy devices.
Abstract: The objective of this experiment was to study of water
relations and chlorophyll in different wheat genotypes and their
correlations with grain and biological yields. 21 genotypes of bread
wheat were compared in a field experiment as randomized complete
blocks design with four replications. The results showed that relative
water deficit, relative water loss, excised leaf water retention, cell
membrane stability, chlorophyll-a, chlorophyll-b, total chlorophyll,
grain yield and biological yield were different significantly among
wheat genotypes, but SPAD-chlorophyll index, relative water content
and chlorophyll florescence were not. Significant correlations were
not observed among above mentioned water relations and
chlorophyll characteristics with grain yield, but there was a positive
and significant correlation between biological yield and grain yield.
Abstract: Proton transfer and hydrogen bonding are two aspects
of the chemistry of hydrogen that respectively govern the behaviour
and structure of many molecules, both simple and complex. All the
theoretical enol and keto conformations of 1,3-diphenyl-1,3-
propandion known as dibenzoylmethane (DBM), have been
investigated by means of atoms in molecules (AIM) theory. It was
found that the most stable conformers are those stabilized by
hydrogen bridges.The aim of the present paper is a thorough
conformational analysis of DBM (with special attention on chelated
cis-enol conformers) in order to obtain detailed information on the
geometrical parameters, relative stabilities and rotational motion of
the phenyl groups. It is also important to estimate the barrier height
for ptoton transfer and hydrogen bond strength, which are the main
factors governing conformational stability.