Abstract: In this paper, we propose a practical digital music matching system that is robust to variation in sound qualities. The proposed system is subdivided into two parts: client and server. The client part consists of the input, preprocessing and feature extraction modules. The preprocessing module, including the music onset module, revises the value gap occurring on the time axis between identical songs of different formats. The proposed method uses delta-grouped Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) to extract music features that are robust to changes in sound quality. According to the number of sound quality formats (SQFs) used, a music server is constructed with a feature database (FD) that contains different sub feature databases (SFDs). When the proposed system receives a music file, the selection module selects an appropriate SFD from a feature database; the selected SFD is subsequently used by the matching module. In this study, we used 3,000 queries for matching experiments in three cases with different FDs. In each case, we used 1,000 queries constructed by mixing 8 SQFs and 125 songs. The success rate of music matching improved from 88.6% when using single a single SFD to 93.2% when using quadruple SFDs. By this experiment, we proved that the proposed method is robust to various sound qualities.
Abstract: Antiseismic property of telecommunication equipment
is very important for the grasp of the damage and the restoration after
earthquake. Telecommunication business operators are regulating
seismic standard for their equipments. These standards are organized
to simulate the real seismic situations and usually define the minimum
value of first natural frequency of the equipments or the allowable
maximum displacement of top of the equipments relative to bottom.
Using the finite element analysis, natural frequency can be obtained
with high accuracy but the relative displacement of top of the
equipments is difficult to predict accurately using the analysis.
Furthermore, in the case of simulating the equipments with access
floor, predicting the relative displacement of top of the equipments
become more difficult.
In this study, using enormous experimental datum, an empirical
formula is suggested to forecast the relative displacement of top of the
equipments. Also it can be known that which physical quantities are
related with the relative displacement.
Abstract: When designing satellites, one of the major issues aside for designing its primary subsystems is to devise its thermal. The thermal management of satellites requires solving different sets of issues with regards to modelling. If the satellite is well conditioned all other parts of the satellite will have higher temperature no matter what. The main issue of thermal modelling for satellite design is really making sure that all the other points of the satellite will be within the temperature limits they are designed. The insertion of power electronics in aerospace technologies is becoming widespread and the modern electronic systems used in space must be reliable and efficient with thermal management unaffected by outer space constraints. Many advanced thermal management techniques have been developed in recent years that have application in high power electronic systems. This paper presents a Three-Dimensional Modal Transmission Line Matrix (3D-TLM) implementation of transient heat flow in space power electronics. In such kind of components heat dissipation and good thermal management are essential. Simulation provides the cheapest tool to investigate all aspects of power handling. The 3DTLM has been successful in modeling heat diffusion problems and has proven to be efficient in terms of stability and complex geometry. The results show a three-dimensional visualisation of self-heating phenomena in the device affected by outer space constraints, and will presents possible approaches for increasing the heat dissipation capability of the power modules.
Abstract: The paper proposes a methodology to process the signals coming from the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in order to identify the pathology and evaluate the therapy to treat the patients affected by demency diseases. In particular, a fuzzy model is developed to identify the demency of the patients affected by Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Dementia (SIVD) and to measure the effect of a repetitive TMS on their motor performances. A tool is also presented to support the mentioned analysis.
Abstract: The aim of this qualitative case study is to examine how school principals perform their new roles and responsibilities defined in accordance with the new curriculum. Of ten primary schools that the new curriculum was piloted in Istanbul in school year of 2004-2005, one school was randomly selected as the sample of the study. The participants of the study were comprised of randomly-selected 26 teachers working in the case school. To collect data, an interview schedule was developed based on the new role definitions for school principals by the National Ministry of Education. Participants were interviewed on one-to-one basis in February and March 2007. Overall results showed that the school principal was perceived to be successful in terms of the application of the new curriculum in school. According to the majority of teachers, the principal has done his best to establish the infrastructure that is necessary for successful application of the new program. In addition to these, the principal was reported to adopt a collegial and participatory leadership style by creating a positive school atmosphere that enables the school community (teachers, parents and students) to involve school more than before. Keywordscase study, curriculum implementation, school principals and curriculum
Abstract: As the demand and prices of various petroleum products have been on the rise in recent years, there is a growing need for alternative fuels. Biodiesel, which consists of alkyl monoesters of fatty acids from vegetable oils and animal fats, is considered as an alternative to petroleum diesel. Biodiesel has comparable performance with that of diesel and has lower brake specific fuel consumption than diesel with significant reduction in emissions of CO, hydrocarbons (HC) and smoke with however, a slight increase in NOx emissions. This paper analyzes the effect of cooled exhaust gas recirculation in the combustion characteristics of a direct injection compression ignition engine using biodiesel blended fuel as opposed to the conventional system. The combustion parameters such as cylinder pressure, heat release rate, delay period and peak pressure were analyzed at various loads. The maximum cylinder pressure reduces as the fraction of biodiesel increases in the blend the maximum rate of pressure rise was found to be higher for diesel at higher engine loads.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel, principled approach to resolve the remained problems of substitution technique of audio steganography. Using the proposed genetic algorithm, message bits are embedded into multiple, vague and higher LSB layers, resulting in increased robustness. The robustness specially would be increased against those intentional attacks which try to reveal the hidden message and also some unintentional attacks like noise addition as well.
Abstract: Many systems in the natural world exhibit chaos or non-linear behavior, the complexity of which is so great that they appear to be random. Identification of chaos in experimental data is essential for characterizing the system and for analyzing the predictability of the data under analysis. The Lyapunov exponents provide a quantitative measure of the sensitivity to initial conditions and are the most useful dynamical diagnostic for chaotic systems. However, it is difficult to accurately estimate the Lyapunov exponents of chaotic signals which are corrupted by a random noise. In this work, a method for estimation of Lyapunov exponents from noisy time series using unscented transformation is proposed. The proposed methodology was validated using time series obtained from known chaotic maps. In this paper, the objective of the work, the proposed methodology and validation results are discussed in detail.
Abstract: Semilinear elliptic equations are ubiquitous in natural sciences. They give rise to a variety of important phenomena in quantum mechanics, nonlinear optics, astrophysics, etc because they have rich multiple solutions. But the nontrivial solutions of semilinear equations are hard to be solved for the lack of stabilities, such as Lane-Emden equation, Henon equation and Chandrasekhar equation. In this paper, bifurcation method is applied to solving semilinear elliptic equations which are with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions in 2D. Using this method, nontrivial numerical solutions will be computed and visualized in many different domains (such as square, disk, annulus, dumbbell, etc).
Abstract: Huge losses in apple production are caused by pathogens that cannot be seen shortly after harvest. After-harvest thermotherapy treatments can considerably improve control of storage diseases on apples and become an alternative to chemical pesticides. In the years 2010-2012 carried out research in this area. Apples of 'Topaz' cultivar were harvested at optimal maturity time for long storage and subject to water bath treatment at 45, 50, 52, 55°C for 60, 120, 180 and 240 seconds. The control was untreated fruits. After 12 and 24 weeks and during so called simulated trade turnover the fruits were checked for their condition and the originators of diseases were determined by using the standard phytopathological methods. The most common originator of 'Topaz' apple infection during storage were the fungi of genus Gloeosporium. In this paper it was proven that for effective protection of 'Topaz' apples against diseases, thermotherapy by using water treatments at temperature range of 50-52°C is quite sufficient.
Abstract: Rise/span ratio has been mentioned as one of the
reasons which contribute to the lower buckling load as compared to
the Classical theory buckling load but this ratio has not been quantified
in the equation. The purpose of this study was to determine a more
realistic buckling load by quantifying the effect of the rise/span ratio
because experiments have shown that the Classical theory
overestimates the load. The buckling load equation was derived based
on the theorem of work done and strain energy. Thereafter, finite
element modeling and simulation using ABAQUS was done to
determine the variables that determine the constant in the derived
equation. The rise/span was found to be the determining factor of the
constant in the buckling load equation. The derived buckling load
correlates closely to the load obtained from experiments.
Abstract: Many works have been carried out to compare the
efficiency of several goodness of fit procedures for identifying
whether or not a particular distribution could adequately explain a
data set. In this paper a study is conducted to investigate the power
of several goodness of fit tests such as Kolmogorov Smirnov (KS),
Anderson-Darling(AD), Cramer- von- Mises (CV) and a proposed
modification of Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test which
incorporates a variance stabilizing transformation (FKS). The
performances of these selected tests are studied under simple
random sampling (SRS) and Ranked Set Sampling (RSS). This
study shows that, in general, the Anderson-Darling (AD) test
performs better than other GOF tests. However, there are some
cases where the proposed test can perform as equally good as the
AD test.
Abstract: Integrated Total Quality Management (TQM) with
Lean Manufacturing (LM) is a system comprises of TQM with LM
principles and is associated with financial and nonfinancial
performance measurement indicators. The ultimate goal of this
system is to focus on achieving total customer satisfaction by
removing eight wastes available in any process in an organization.
A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 30 highly
active automotive vendors in Malaysia and analyzed by PASW
Statistics 18. It was found out that these vendors have been
practicing and measuring the effectiveness TQM and LM
implementation. More involvement of all Malaysian automotive
vendors will represent the exact status of current Malaysian
automotive industry in implementing TQM and LM and can
determine whether the industry is ready for integrated TQM and
LM system. This is the first study that combined 4 awards
practices, ISO/TS16949, Toyota Production System and
SAEJ4000.
Abstract: The manufacturing transmission line tower parts has
being generated hazardous waste which is required proper disposal
of waste for protection of land pollution. Manufacturing Process in
the manufacturing of steel angle, plates, pipes, channels are passes
through conventional, semi automatic and CNC machines for
cutting, marking, punching, drilling, notching, bending operations.
All fabricated material Coated with thin layer of Zinc in Galvanizing
plant where molten zinc is used for coating. Prior to Galvanizing,
chemical like 33% concentrated HCl Acid, ammonium chloride and
d-oil being used for pretreatment of iron. The bath of water with
sodium dichromate is used for cooling and protection of the
galvanized steel. For the heating purpose the furnace oil burners are
used. These above process the Zinc dross, Zinc ash, ETP sludge and
waste pickled acid generated as hazardous waste. The RPG has
made captive secured land fill site, since 1997 since then it was
using for disposal of hazardous waste after completion of SLF
(Secured land fill) site. The RPG has raised height from ground
level then now it is being used for disposal of waste as he designed
the SLF after in creasing height of from GL it is functional without
leach ate or adverse impacts in the environment.
Abstract: This research is designed for helping a WAPbased mobile phone-s user in order to analyze of logistics in the traffic area by applying and designing the accessible processes from mobile user to server databases. The research-s design comprises Mysql 4.1.8-nt database system for being the server which there are three sub-databases, traffic light – times of intersections in periods of the day, distances on the road of area-blocks where are divided from the main sample-area and speeds of sample vehicles (motorcycle, personal car and truck) in periods of the day. For interconnections between the server and user, PHP is used to calculate distances and travelling times from the beginning point to destination, meanwhile XHTML applied for receiving, sending and displaying data from PHP to user-s mobile. In this research, the main sample-area is focused at the Huakwang-Ratchada-s area, Bangkok, Thailand where usually the congested point and 6.25 km2 surrounding area which are split into 25 blocks, 0.25 km2 for each. For simulating the results, the designed server-database and all communicating models of this research have been uploaded to www.utccengineering.com/m4tg and used the mobile phone which supports WAP 2.0 XHTML/HTML multimode browser for observing values and displayed pictures. According to simulated results, user can check the route-s pictures from the requiring point to destination along with analyzed consuming times when sample vehicles travel in various periods of the day.
Abstract: Quality costs are the costs associated with preventing,
finding, and correcting defective work. Since the main language of
corporate management is money, quality-related costs act as means of
communication between the staff of quality engineering departments
and the company managers. The objective of quality engineering is to
minimize the total quality cost across the life of product. Quality
costs provide a benchmark against which improvement can be
measured over time. It provides a rupee-based report on quality
improvement efforts. It is an effective tool to identify, prioritize and
select quality improvement projects. After reviewing through the
literature it was noticed that a simplified methodology for data
collection of quality cost in a manufacturing industry was required.
The quantified standard methodology is proposed for collecting data
of various elements of quality cost categories for manufacturing
industry. Also in the light of research carried out so far, it is felt
necessary to standardise cost elements in each of the prevention,
appraisal, internal failure and external failure costs. . Here an attempt
is made to standardise the various cost elements applicable to
manufacturing industry and data is collected by using the proposed
quantified methodology. This paper discusses the case study carried
in luggage manufacturing industry.
Abstract: This paper develops models to analyze the
relationship between leisure time and wage change. Using Thailand-s
Time Use Survey and Labor Force Survey data, the estimation of
wage changes in response to leisure time change indicates that media
receiving, personal care and social participation and volunteer
activities are the ones that significantly raise hourly wages. Thus, the
finding suggests the stimulation in time use for media access to
enhance knowledge and productivity, personal care for attractiveness
and healthiness in order to raise productivity, and social activities to
develop connections for possible future opportunities including wage
increase. These activities should be promoted for productive leisure
time and for welfare improvement.
Abstract: The frequency contents of the non-stationary
signals vary with time. For proper characterization of such
signals, a smart time-frequency representation is necessary.
Classically, the STFT (short-time Fourier transform) is
employed for this purpose. Its limitation is the fixed timefrequency
resolution. To overcome this drawback an enhanced
STFT version is devised. It is based on the signal driven
sampling scheme, which is named as the cross-level sampling.
It can adapt the sampling frequency and the window function
(length plus shape) by following the input signal local
variations. This adaptation results into the proposed technique
appealing features, which are the adaptive time-frequency
resolution and the computational efficiency.
Abstract: We describe a novel method for removing noise (in wavelet domain) of unknown variance from microarrays. The method is based on a smoothing of the coefficients of the highest subbands. Specifically, we decompose the noisy microarray into wavelet subbands, apply smoothing within each highest subband, and reconstruct a microarray from the modified wavelet coefficients. This process is applied a single time, and exclusively to the first level of decomposition, i.e., in most of the cases, it is not necessary a multirresoltuion analysis. Denoising results compare favorably to the most of methods in use at the moment.
Abstract: In this paper, we implement a modern serial backplane
platform for telecommunication inter-rack systems. For combination
high reliability and low cost protocol property, we applied high level
data link control (HDLC) protocol with low voltage differential
signaling (LVDS) bus for card to card communicated over backplane.
HDLC protocol is a high performance with several operation modes
and is famous in telecommunication systems. LVDS bus is a high
reliability with high immunity against electromagnetic interference
(EMI) and noise.