Kosovo- A Unique Experiment in Europe- in the International Context at the End of the Cold War?

The question of interethnic and interreligious conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia receives much attention within the framework of the international context created after 1991 because of the impact of these conflicts on the security and the stability of the region of Balkans and of Europe. This paper focuses on the rationales leading to the declaration of independence by Kosovo according to ethnic and religious criteria and analyzes why these same rationales were not applied in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The approach undertaken aims at comparatively examining the cases of Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, it aims at understanding the political decision making of the international community in the case of Kosovo. Specifically, was this a good political decision for the security and the stability of the region of Balkans, of Europe, or even for global security and stability? This research starts with an overview on the European security framework post 1991, paying particular attention to Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It then presents the theoretical and methodological framework and compares the representative cases. Using the constructivism issue and the comparative methodology, it arrives at the results of the study. An important issue of the paper is the thesis that this event modifies the principles of international law and creates dangerous precedents for regional stability in the Balkans.

Distributed Splay Suffix Arrays: A New Structure for Distributed String Search

As a structure for processing string problem, suffix array is certainly widely-known and extensively-studied. But if the string access pattern follows the “90/10" rule, suffix array can not take advantage of the fact that we often find something that we have just found. Although the splay tree is an efficient data structure for small documents when the access pattern follows the “90/10" rule, it requires many structures and an excessive amount of pointer manipulations for efficiently processing and searching large documents. In this paper, we propose a new and conceptually powerful data structure, called splay suffix arrays (SSA), for string search. This data structure combines the features of splay tree and suffix arrays into a new approach which is suitable to implementation on both conventional and clustered computers.

Manufacturing Dispersions Based Simulation and Synthesis of Design Tolerances

The objective of this work which is based on the approach of simultaneous engineering is to contribute to the development of a CIM tool for the synthesis of functional design dimensions expressed by average values and tolerance intervals. In this paper, the dispersions method known as the Δl method which proved reliable in the simulation of manufacturing dimensions is used to develop a methodology for the automation of the simulation. This methodology is constructed around three procedures. The first procedure executes the verification of the functional requirements by automatically extracting the functional dimension chains in the mechanical sub-assembly. Then a second procedure performs an optimization of the dispersions on the basis of unknown variables. The third procedure uses the optimized values of the dispersions to compute the optimized average values and tolerances of the functional dimensions in the chains. A statistical and cost based approach is integrated in the methodology in order to take account of the capabilities of the manufacturing processes and to distribute optimal values among the individual components of the chains.

Helicopter Adaptive Control with Parameter Estimation Based on Feedback Linearization

This paper presents an adaptive feedback linearization approach to derive helicopter. Ideal feedback linearization is defined for the cases when the system model is known. Adaptive feedback linearization is employed to get asymptotically exact cancellation for the inherent uncertainty in the knowledge of the given parameters of system. The control algorithm is implemented using the feedback linearization technique and adaptive method. The controller parameters are unknown where an adaptive control law aims to drive them towards their ideal values for providing perfect model matching between the reference model and the closed-loop plant model. The converged parameters of controller would then provide good estimates for the unknown plant parameters.

Mobility Management Architecture for Transport System

Next generation wireless/mobile networks will be IP based cellular networks integrating the internet with cellular networks. In this paper, we propose a new architecture for a high speed transport system and a mobile management protocol for mobile internet users in a transport system. Existing mobility management protocols (MIPv6, HMIPv6) do not consider real world fast moving wireless hosts (e.g. passengers in a train). For this reason, we define a virtual organization (VO) and proposed the VO architecture for the transport system. We also classify mobility as VO mobility (intra VO) and macro mobility (inter VO). Handoffs in VO are locally managed and transparent to the CH while macro mobility is managed with Mobile IPv6. And, from the features of the transport system, such as fixed route and steady speed, we deduce the movement route and the handoff disruption time of each handoff. To reduce packet loss during handoff disruption time, we propose pre-registration scheme using pre-registration. Moreover, the proposed protocol can eliminate unnecessary binding updates resulting from sequence movement at high speed. The performance evaluations demonstrate our proposed protocol has a good performance at transport system environment. Our proposed protocol can be applied to the usage of wireless internet on the train, subway, and high speed train.

Energy and Exergy Analysis of Dual Purpose Solar Collector

Energy and exergy study of air-water combined solar collector which is called dual purpose solar collector (DPSC) is investigated. The method of ε - NTU is used. Analysis is performed for triangle channels. Parameters like the air flow rate and water inlet temperature are studied. Results are shown that DPSC has better energy and exergy efficiency than single collector. In addition, the triangle passage with water inlet temperature of 60O C has shown better exergy and energy efficiency.

Analytical Model of Connection Establishment Duration Calculation in Wireless Networks

It is important to provide possibility of so called “handover" for the mobile subscriber from GSM network to Wi-Fi network and back. To solve specified problem it is necessary to estimate connection time between base station and wireless access point. Difficulty to estimate this parameter is that it doesn-t described in specifications of the standard and, hence, no recommended value is given. In this paper, the analytical model is presented that allows the estimating connection time between base station and IEEE 802.11 access point.

Pseudo Last Useful Instant Queuing Strategy for Handovers in Low Earth Orbit Mobile Satellite Networks

This paper presents an alternative strategy of queuing handover called Pseudo Last Useful Instant PLUI scheme for Low Earth Orbit Mobile Satellite Systems LEO MSSs. The PLUI scheme uses the same approach as the Last Useful Instant LUI scheme previously proposed in literature, with less complex implementation. Simulation tests were carried out using Dynamic Channel Allocation DCA in order to evaluate the performance of this scheme and also an analytical approach has been presented to allow the performance evaluation of Fixed Channel Allocation FCA, with different handover queuing disciplines. The results show that performances achieved by the proposed strategy are close to those achieved using the LUI scheme.

Transonic Flutter Analysis Using Euler Equation and Reduced Order Modeling Technique

A new method identifies coupled fluid-structure system with a reduced set of state variables is presented. Assuming that the structural model is known a priori either from an analysis or a test and using linear transformations between structural and aeroelastic states, it is possible to deduce aerodynamic information from sampled time histories of the aeroelastic system. More specifically given a finite set of structural modes the method extracts generalized aerodynamic force matrix corresponding to these mode shapes. Once the aerodynamic forces are known, an aeroelastic reduced-order model can be constructed in discrete-time, state-space format by coupling the structural model and the aerodynamic system. The resulting reduced-order model is suitable for constant Mach, varying density analysis.

Identification of Most Frequently Occurring Lexis in Body-enhancement Medicinal Unsolicited Bulk e-mails

e-mail has become an important means of electronic communication but the viability of its usage is marred by Unsolicited Bulk e-mail (UBE) messages. UBE consists of many types like pornographic, virus infected and 'cry-for-help' messages as well as fake and fraudulent offers for jobs, winnings and medicines. UBE poses technical and socio-economic challenges to usage of e-mails. To meet this challenge and combat this menace, we need to understand UBE. Towards this end, the current paper presents a content-based textual analysis of more than 2700 body enhancement medicinal UBE. Technically, this is an application of Text Parsing and Tokenization for an un-structured textual document and we approach it using Bag Of Words (BOW) and Vector Space Document Model techniques. We have attempted to identify the most frequently occurring lexis in the UBE documents that advertise various products for body enhancement. The analysis of such top 100 lexis is also presented. We exhibit the relationship between occurrence of a word from the identified lexis-set in the given UBE and the probability that the given UBE will be the one advertising for fake medicinal product. To the best of our knowledge and survey of related literature, this is the first formal attempt for identification of most frequently occurring lexis in such UBE by its textual analysis. Finally, this is a sincere attempt to bring about alertness against and mitigate the threat of such luring but fake UBE.

Bond Graph and Bayesian Networks for Reliable Diagnosis

Bond Graph as a unified multidisciplinary tool is widely used not only for dynamic modelling but also for Fault Detection and Isolation because of its structural and causal proprieties. A binary Fault Signature Matrix is systematically generated but to make the final binary decision is not always feasible because of the problems revealed by such method. The purpose of this paper is introducing a methodology for the improvement of the classical binary method of decision-making, so that the unknown and identical failure signatures can be treated to improve the robustness. This approach consists of associating the evaluated residuals and the components reliability data to build a Hybrid Bayesian Network. This network is used in two distinct inference procedures: one for the continuous part and the other for the discrete part. The continuous nodes of the network are the prior probabilities of the components failures, which are used by the inference procedure on the discrete part to compute the posterior probabilities of the failures. The developed methodology is applied to a real steam generator pilot process.

Error Rate Probability for Coded MQAM with MRC Diversity in the Presence of Cochannel Interferers over Nakagami-Fading Channels

Exact expressions for bit-error probability (BEP) for coherent square detection of uncoded and coded M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) using an array of antennas with maximal ratio combining (MRC) in a flat fading channel interference limited system in a Nakagami-m fading environment is derived. The analysis assumes an arbitrary number of independent and identically distributed Nakagami interferers. The results for coded MQAM are computed numerically for the case of (24,12) extended Golay code and compared with uncoded MQAM by plotting error probabilities versus average signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) for various values of order of diversity N, number of distinct symbols M, in order to examine the effect of cochannel interferers on the performance of the digital communication system. The diversity gains and net gains are also presented in tabular form in order to examine the performance of digital communication system in the presence of interferers, as the order of diversity increases. The analytical results presented in this paper are expected to provide useful information needed for design and analysis of digital communication systems with space diversity in wireless fading channels.

Fuzzy Ideology based Long Term Load Forecasting

Fuzzy Load forecasting plays a paramount role in the operation and management of power systems. Accurate estimation of future power demands for various lead times facilitates the task of generating power reliably and economically. The forecasting of future loads for a relatively large lead time (months to few years) is studied here (long term load forecasting). Among the various techniques used in forecasting load, artificial intelligence techniques provide greater accuracy to the forecasts as compared to conventional techniques. Fuzzy Logic, a very robust artificial intelligent technique, is described in this paper to forecast load on long term basis. The paper gives a general algorithm to forecast long term load. The algorithm is an Extension of Short term load forecasting method to Long term load forecasting and concentrates not only on the forecast values of load but also on the errors incorporated into the forecast. Hence, by correcting the errors in the forecast, forecasts with very high accuracy have been achieved. The algorithm, in the paper, is demonstrated with the help of data collected for residential sector (LT2 (a) type load: Domestic consumers). Load, is determined for three consecutive years (from April-06 to March-09) in order to demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm and to forecast for the next two years (from April-09 to March-11).

Non-equilibrium Statistical Mechanics of a Driven Lattice Gas Model: Probability Function, FDT-violation, and Monte Carlo Simulations

The study of non-equilibrium systems has attracted increasing interest in recent years, mainly due to the lack of theoretical frameworks, unlike their equilibrium counterparts. Studying the steady state and/or simple systems is thus one of the main interests. Hence in this work we have focused our attention on the driven lattice gas model (DLG model) consisting of interacting particles subject to an external field E. The dynamics of the system are given by hopping of particles to nearby empty sites with rates biased for jumps in the direction of E. Having used small two dimensional systems of DLG model, the stochastic properties at nonequilibrium steady state were analytically studied. To understand the non-equilibrium phenomena, we have applied the analytic approach via master equation to calculate probability function and analyze violation of detailed balance in term of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to validate the analytic results.

A Study on Use of User Demand Evaluation in Interactive Interface – Using Virtual Fitting-Room as an Example

The purpose of this study is to research on thoughts transmitted from virtual fitting-room and to deduce discussion in an auxiliary narrative way. The research structure is based on 3D virtual fitting-room as the research subject. Initially, we will discuss the principles of narrate study, User Demand and so on by using a narrative design pattern to transmit their objective indications of “people-situation-reason-object", etc, and then to analyze the virtual fitting-room examples that are able to provide a new thinking for designers who engaged in clothing related industry – which comes in “story telling" and “user-centered design" forms. Clothing designs are not just to cover up the body to keep warm but to draw closer to people-s demand physiologically and psychologically through interactive designs so as to achieve cognition between people and environment. In the “outside" goal of clothing-s functional designs, we use tribal group-s behavior characteristics to “transform" the existing personal cultural stories, and “reform" them to design appropriate interactive products. Synthesizing the above matters, apart from being able to regard “narrate" as a kind of functional thinking process, we are also able to regard it as a kind of choice, arrangement and an activity of story expression, allowing interactive design-s spirit, product characteristics and experience ideas be transmitted to target tribal group in a visual image performance method. It is a far more confident and innovative attempt, and meanwhile, able to achieve entertainment, joyful and so forth fundamental interactive transmissions. Therefore, this study takes “user-centered design" thinking as a basis to establish a set of clothing designs with interactive experience patterns and to assist designers to examine the five sensual feeling of interactive demands in order to initiate a new value in textile industry.

The Applications of Quantum Mechanics Simulation for Solvent Selection in Chemicals Separation

The quantum mechanics simulation was applied for calculating the interaction force between 2 molecules based on atomic level. For the simple extractive distillation system, it is ternary components consisting of 2 closed boiling point components (A,lower boiling point and B, higher boiling point) and solvent (S). The quantum mechanics simulation was used to calculate the intermolecular force (interaction force) between the closed boiling point components and solvents consisting of intermolecular between A-S and B-S. The requirement of the promising solvent for extractive distillation is that solvent (S) has to form stronger intermolecular force with only one component than the other component (A or B). In this study, the systems of aromatic-aromatic, aromatic-cycloparaffin, and paraffindiolefin systems were selected as the demonstration for solvent selection. This study defined new term using for screening the solvents called relative interaction force which is calculated from the quantum mechanics simulation. The results showed that relative interaction force gave the good agreement with the literature data (relative volatilities from the experiment). The reasons are discussed. Finally, this study suggests that quantum mechanics results can improve the relative volatility estimation for screening the solvents leading to reduce time and money consuming

Lightweight Robotic Material Handling in Photovoltaic Module Manufacturing-Silicon Wafer and Thin Film Technologies

Today, the central role of industrial robots in automation in general and in material handling in particular is crystal clear. Based on the current status of Photovoltaics and by focusing on lightweight material handling, PV industry has turned into a potential candidate for introducing a fresh “pick and place" robot technology. Thus, to examine the industry needs in this regard, firstly the best suited applications for such robotic automation,and then the essential prerequisites in PV industry should be identified. The objective of this paper is to present holistic views on the industry trends, general automation status and existing challenges facing lightweight robotic material handling in PV Silicon Wafer and Thin Film technologies. The results of this study show that currently no uniform pick and place solution prevails among PV Silicon Wafer manufacturers and the industry calls for a new robot solution to satisfy its needs in new directions.

Fatty Acids Composition of Elk, Deer, Roe Deer and Wild Boar Meat Hunted in Latvia

A game animals – elk (Alces alces), deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) or wild boar (Sus scrofa scrofa) - every autumn and winter period provide an excellent investment, diversification of many consumer meals. In last years consumption and assortiment of game meat products significantly increase. Investigations about biochemical composition of game meat are not very much. The meat of wild animals is more favourable for human health because it has lower saturated fatty acids content, but higher content of protein. Therefore the aim of investigations was to compare biochemical composition of ungulates obtained in Latvia.Investigations were carried out in wild animals different regions of Latvia. In the studied samples protein, intramuscular fat, fatty acids and cholesterol were determined. The biochemical analysis of 54 samples were done. Results of analysis showed that protein content 22.36 – 22.92% of all types of meat samples is not different statistically, significantly lower fat content 1.33 ± 0.88% had elk meat samples and 1.59 ± 0.59% roe deer samples. Content of cholesterol was various 64.41 – 95.07% in the ruminant meat samples of different species. From the dietetic point of view the best composition of fatty acids has meat samples of roe deer.

Successful Management of a Boy with Mild Persistent Asthma (A Longitudinal Case)

Asthma is a condition that causing chronic health problems in children. In addition to basic therapy against disease, we must try to reduce the impact of chronic health problems and also optimize their medical aspect of growth and development. A boy with mild asthma attack frequent episode did not showed any improvement with medical treatment and his asthma control test was 11. From radiologic examination he got hyperaerated lung and billateral sinusitis maxillaris; skin test results were house dust, food and pet allergy; an overweight body; bad school grades; psychological and environmental problem. We followed and evaluated this boy in 6 months, treated holistically. Even we could not do much on environmental but no more psychological and school problems, his on a good bodyweight and his asthma control test was 22. A case of a child with mild asthma attack frequent episode was reported. Asthma clinical course show no significant improvement when other predisposing factor is not well-controlled and a child’s growth and development may be affected. Improving condition of the patient can be created with the help of loving and caring way of nurturing from the parents and supportive peer group. Therefore, continuous and consistent monitoring is required because prognosis of asthma is generally good when regularly and properly controlled.