Fiber Optic Sensors

Fiber optic sensor technology offers the possibility of sensing different parameters like strain, temperature, pressure in harsh environment and remote locations. these kinds of sensors modulates some features of the light wave in an optical fiber such an intensity and phase or use optical fiber as a medium for transmitting the measurement information. The advantages of fiber optic sensors in contrast to conventional electrical ones make them popular in different applications and now a day they consider as a key component in improving industrial processes, quality control systems, medical diagnostics, and preventing and controlling general process abnormalities. This paper is an introduction to fiber optic sensor technology and some of the applications that make this branch of optic technology, which is still in its early infancy, an interesting field.

Categorical Clustering By Converting Associated Information

Lacking an inherent “natural" dissimilarity measure between objects in categorical dataset presents special difficulties in clustering analysis. However, each categorical attributes from a given dataset provides natural probability and information in the sense of Shannon. In this paper, we proposed a novel method which heuristically converts categorical attributes to numerical values by exploiting such associated information. We conduct an experimental study with real-life categorical dataset. The experiment demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.

Representation of Coloured Petri Net in Abductive Logic Programming (CPN-LP) and Its Application in Modeling an Intelligent Agent

Coloured Petri net (CPN) has been widely adopted in various areas in Computer Science, including protocol specification, performance evaluation, distributed systems and coordination in multi-agent systems. It provides a graphical representation of a system and has a strong mathematical foundation for proving various properties. This paper proposes a novel representation of a coloured Petri net using an extension of logic programming called abductive logic programming (ALP), which is purely based on classical logic. Under such a representation, an implementation of a CPN could be directly obtained, in which every inference step could be treated as a kind of equivalence preserved transformation. We would describe how to implement a CPN under such a representation using common meta-programming techniques in Prolog. We call our framework CPN-LP and illustrate its applications in modeling an intelligent agent.

The Use of Complex Contourlet Transform on Fusion Scheme

Image fusion aims to enhance the perception of a scene by combining important information captured by different sensors. Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet (DT-CWT) has been thouroughly investigated for image fusion, since it takes advantages of approximate shift invariance and direction selectivity. But it can only handle limited direction information. To allow a more flexible directional expansion for images, we propose a novel fusion scheme, referred to as complex contourlet transform (CCT). It successfully incorporates directional filter banks (DFB) into DT-CWT. As a result it efficiently deal with images containing contours and textures, whereas it retains the property of shift invariance. Experimental results demonstrated that the method features high quality fusion performance and can facilitate many image processing applications.

Effect of Shell Dimensions on Buckling Behavior and Entropy Generation of Thin Welded Shells

Among all mechanical joining processes, welding has been employed for its advantage in design flexibility, cost saving, reduced overall weight and enhanced structural performance. However, for structures made of relatively thin components, welding can introduce significant buckling distortion which causes loss of dimensional control, structural integrity and increased fabrication costs. Different parameters can affect buckling behavior of welded thin structures such as, heat input, welding sequence, dimension of structure. In this work, a 3-D thermo elastic-viscoplastic finite element analysis technique is applied to evaluate the effect of shell dimensions on buckling behavior and entropy generation of welded thin shells. Also, in the present work, the approximated longitudinal transient stresses which produced in each time step, is applied to the 3D-eigenvalue analysis to ratify predicted buckling time and corresponding eigenmode. Besides, the possibility of buckling prediction by entropy generation at each time is investigated and it is found that one can predict time of buckling with drawing entropy generation versus out of plane deformation. The results of finite element analysis show that the length, span and thickness of welded thin shells affect the number of local buckling, mode shape of global buckling and post-buckling behavior of welded thin shells.

A Stereo Image Processing System for Visually Impaired

This paper presents a review on vision aided systems and proposes an approach for visual rehabilitation using stereo vision technology. The proposed system utilizes stereo vision, image processing methodology and a sonification procedure to support blind navigation. The developed system includes a wearable computer, stereo cameras as vision sensor and stereo earphones, all moulded in a helmet. The image of the scene infront of visually handicapped is captured by the vision sensors. The captured images are processed to enhance the important features in the scene in front, for navigation assistance. The image processing is designed as model of human vision by identifying the obstacles and their depth information. The processed image is mapped on to musical stereo sound for the blind-s understanding of the scene infront. The developed method has been tested in the indoor and outdoor environments and the proposed image processing methodology is found to be effective for object identification.

Organizational Decision Based on Business Intelligence

Nowadays, obtaining traditional statistics and reports is not adequate for the needs of organizational managers. The managers need to analyze and to transform the raw data into knowledge in the world filled with information. Therefore in this regard various processes have been developed. In the meantime the artificial intelligence-based processes are used and the new topics such as business intelligence and knowledge discovery have emerged. In the current paper it is sought to study the business intelligence and its applications in the organizations.

Software Architectural Design Ontology

Software Architecture plays a key role in software development but absence of formal description of Software Architecture causes different impede in software development. To cope with these difficulties, ontology has been used as artifact. This paper proposes ontology for Software Architectural design based on IEEE model for architecture description and Kruchten 4+1 model for viewpoints classification. For categorization of style and views, ISO/IEC 42010 has been used. Corpus method has been used to evaluate ontology. The main aim of the proposed ontology is to classify and locate Software Architectural design information.

A Laplace Transform Dual-Reciprocity Boundary Element Method for Axisymmetric Elastodynamic Problems

A dual-reciprocity boundary element method is presented for the numerical solution of a class of axisymmetric elastodynamic problems. The domain integrals that arise in the integrodifferential formulation are converted to line integrals by using the dual-reciprocity method together suitably constructed interpolating functions. The second order time derivatives of the displacement in the governing partial differential equations are suppressed by using Laplace transformation. In the Laplace transform domain, the problem under consideration is eventually reduced to solving a system of linear algebraic equations. Once the linear algebraic equations are solved, the displacement and stress fields in the physical domain can be recovered by using a numerical technique for inverting Laplace transforms.

A Study of Color Transformation on Website Images for the Color Blind

In this paper, we study on color transformation method on website images for the color blind. The most common category of color blindness is red-green color blindness which is viewed as beige color. By transforming the colors of the images, the color blind can improve their color visibility. They can have a better view when browsing through the websites. To transform colors on the website images, we study on two algorithms which are the conversion techniques from RGB color space to HSV color space and self-organizing color transformation. The comparative study focuses on criteria based on the ease of use, quality, accuracy and efficiency. The outcome of the study leads to enhancement of website images to meet the color blinds- vision requirements in perceiving image detailed.

A Phenomic Algorithm for Reconstruction of Gene Networks

The goal of Gene Expression Analysis is to understand the processes that underlie the regulatory networks and pathways controlling inter-cellular and intra-cellular activities. In recent times microarray datasets are extensively used for this purpose. The scope of such analysis has broadened in recent times towards reconstruction of gene networks and other holistic approaches of Systems Biology. Evolutionary methods are proving to be successful in such problems and a number of such methods have been proposed. However all these methods are based on processing of genotypic information. Towards this end, there is a need to develop evolutionary methods that address phenotypic interactions together with genotypic interactions. We present a novel evolutionary approach, called Phenomic algorithm, wherein the focus is on phenotypic interaction. We use the expression profiles of genes to model the interactions between them at the phenotypic level. We apply this algorithm to the yeast sporulation dataset and show that the algorithm can identify gene networks with relative ease.

A new Adaptive Approach for Histogram based Mouth Segmentation

The segmentation of mouth and lips is a fundamental problem in facial image analyisis. In this paper we propose a method for lip segmentation based on rg-color histogram. Statistical analysis shows, using the rg-color-space is optimal for this purpose of a pure color based segmentation. Initially a rough adaptive threshold selects a histogram region, that assures that all pixels in that region are skin pixels. Based on that pixels we build a gaussian model which represents the skin pixels distribution and is utilized to obtain a refined, optimal threshold. We are not incorporating shape or edge information. In experiments we show the performance of our lip pixel segmentation method compared to the ground truth of our dataset and a conventional watershed algorithm.

Mathematical Programming on Multivariate Calibration Estimation in Stratified Sampling

Calibration estimation is a method of adjusting the original design weights to improve the survey estimates by using auxiliary information such as the known population total (or mean) of the auxiliary variables. A calibration estimator uses calibrated weights that are determined to minimize a given distance measure to the original design weights while satisfying a set of constraints related to the auxiliary information. In this paper, we propose a new multivariate calibration estimator for the population mean in the stratified sampling design, which incorporates information available for more than one auxiliary variable. The problem of determining the optimum calibrated weights is formulated as a Mathematical Programming Problem (MPP) that is solved using the Lagrange multiplier technique.

The Direct Updating of Damping and Gyroscopic Matrices using Incomplete Complex Test Data

In this paper we develop an efficient numerical method for the finite-element model updating of damped gyroscopic systems based on incomplete complex modal measured data. It is assumed that the analytical mass and stiffness matrices are correct and only the damping and gyroscopic matrices need to be updated. By solving a constrained optimization problem, the optimal corrected symmetric damping matrix and skew-symmetric gyroscopic matrix complied with the required eigenvalue equation are found under a weighted Frobenius norm sense.

An Enhanced Key Management Scheme Based on Key Infection in Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose an enhanced key management scheme based on Key Infection, which is lightweight scheme for tiny sensors. The basic scheme, Key Infection, is perfectly secure against node capture and eavesdropping if initial communications after node deployment is secure. If, however, an attacker can eavesdrop on the initial communications, they can take the session key. We use common neighbors for each node to generate the session key. Each node has own secret key and shares it with its neighbor nodes. Then each node can establish the session key using common neighbors- secret keys and a random number. Our scheme needs only a few communications even if it uses neighbor nodes- information. Without losing the lightness of basic scheme, it improves the resistance against eavesdropping on the initial communications more than 30%.

Synthesis of Unconventional Materials Using Chitosan and Crown Ether for Selective Removal of Precious Metal Ions

The polyfunctional and highly reactive bio-polymer, the chitosan was first regioselectively converted into dialkylated chitosan using dimsyl anionic solution(NaH in DMSO) and bromodecane after protecting amino groups by phthalic anhydride. The dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether, on the other hand, was converted into its carbonyl derivatives via Duff reaction prior to incorporate into chitosan by Schiff base formation. Thus formed diformylated dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether was condensed with lipophilic chitosan to prepare the novel solvent extraction reagent. The products were characterized mainly by IR and 1H-NMR. Hence, the multidentate crown ether-embedded polyfunctional bio-material was tested for extraction of Pd(II) and Pt(IV) in aqueous solution.

The Television Morning News for Thai Undergraduate Students: Information Exposure, Uses and Gratifications

The purposes of the study are to study and to investigate the relationship among exposure, uses and gratifications of television morning news among undergraduate students in Bangkok. This study also compares differences in information exposure, uses and gratifications of television morning news among these students. The research methodology employed a questionnaire as a quantitative method. The respondents were undergraduate students at public and private universities in Bangkok. Totally, 400 usable questionnaires were received. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used in data analysis. The results indicated that information exposure of undergraduate students in Bangkok was at a high level. Students’ uses and gratifications were also at high level. Information exposure was positively correlated with uses and gratifications. Uses of information were positively correlated with satisfaction with information. The results also showed that students with differences in sex and type of university were not significantly different in information exposure, and uses and gratifications.

The Determinants of Voluntary Disclosure in Croatia

Study investigates the level and extent of voluntary disclosure practice in Croatia. The research was conducted on the sample of 130 medium and large companies. Findings indicate that two thirds of the companies analyzed disclose below-average number of additional information. The explanatory analyses has shown that firm size, listing status and industrial sector significantly and positively affect the level and extent of voluntary disclosure in the annual report of Croatian companies. On the other hand, profitability and ownership structure were found statistically insignificant. Unlike previous studies, this paper deals with level of voluntary disclosure of medium and large companies, as well as companies whose shares are not listed on the organized capital market, which can be found as our contribution. Also, the research makes contribution by providing the insights into voluntary disclosure practices in Croatia, as a case of macro-oriented accounting system economy, i.e. bank oriented economy with an emerging capital market.

Development of a Semantic Wiki-based Feature Library for the Extraction of Manufacturing Feature and Manufacturing Information

A manufacturing feature can be defined simply as a geometric shape and its manufacturing information to create the shape. In a feature-based process planning system, feature library that consists of pre-defined manufacturing features and the manufacturing information to create the shape of the features, plays an important role in the extraction of manufacturing features with their proper manufacturing information. However, to manage the manufacturing information flexibly, it is important to build a feature library that can be easily modified. In this paper, the implementation of Semantic Wiki for the development of the feature library is proposed.

Influence of Ambiguity Cluster on Quality Improvement in Image Compression

Image coding based on clustering provides immediate access to targeted features of interest in a high quality decoded image. This approach is useful for intelligent devices, as well as for multimedia content-based description standards. The result of image clustering cannot be precise in some positions especially on pixels with edge information which produce ambiguity among the clusters. Even with a good enhancement operator based on PDE, the quality of the decoded image will highly depend on the clustering process. In this paper, we introduce an ambiguity cluster in image coding to represent pixels with vagueness properties. The presence of such cluster allows preserving some details inherent to edges as well for uncertain pixels. It will also be very useful during the decoding phase in which an anisotropic diffusion operator, such as Perona-Malik, enhances the quality of the restored image. This work also offers a comparative study to demonstrate the effectiveness of a fuzzy clustering technique in detecting the ambiguity cluster without losing lot of the essential image information. Several experiments have been carried out to demonstrate the usefulness of ambiguity concept in image compression. The coding results and the performance of the proposed algorithms are discussed in terms of the peak signal-tonoise ratio and the quantity of ambiguous pixels.