Abstract: The nearly 21-year-old Jiujiang Bridge, which is suffering from uneven line shape, constant great downwarping of the main beam and cracking of the box girder, needs reinforcement and cable adjustment. It has undergone cable adjustment for twice with incomplete data. Therefore, the initial internal force state of the Jiujiang Bridge is identified as the key for the cable adjustment project. Based on parameter identification by means of static force test data, this paper suggests determining the initial internal force state of the cable-stayed bridge according to the cable force-displacement relationship parameter identification method. That is, upon measuring the displacement and the change in cable forces for twice, one can identify the parameters concerned by means of optimization. This method is applied to the cable adjustment, replacement and reinforcement project for the Jiujiang Bridge as a guidance for the cable adjustment and reinforcement project of the bridge.
Abstract: In studying the possibility of using plants as
rhizoremediators, barley and grass mixture which showed resistance
to various concentrations of oil were selected. The minimum
inhibitory effect of oil on these plants by morphological parameters
such as survival of plants, length and biomass of shoot and root
compared with the control was showed. In determining physiological
parameters, a slight decrease in the number of chlorophyll a and b in
the leaves of plants was noted. The differences in the ratio of the total
surface of the roots to the work surface with the growth of plants in
soil with oil in the study of adsorption of the root surface were
showed.
Abstract: Inconel718 has been widely used as a super alloy in aerospace application due to the high strength at elevated temperatures, satisfactory oxidation resistance and heat corrosion resistance. In this study, the Inconel718 has been fabricated using high technology of Metal Injection Molding (MIM) process due to the cost effective technique for producing small, complex and precision parts in high volume compared with conventional method through machining. Through MIM, the binder system is one of the most important criteria in order to successfully fabricate the Inconel718. Even though, the binder system is a temporary, but failure in the selection and removal of the binder system will affect on the final properties of the sintered parts. Therefore, the binder system based on palm oil derivative which is palm stearin has been formulated and developed to replace the conventional binder system. The rheological studies of the mixture between the powder and binders system have been determined properly in order to be successful during injection into injection molding machine. After molding, the binder holds the particles in place. The binder system has to be removed completely through debinding step. During debinding step, solvent debinding and thermal pyrolysis has been used to remove completely of the binder system. The debound part is then sintered to give the required physical and mechanical properties. The results show that the properties of the final sintered parts fulfill the Standard Metal Powder Industries Federation (MPIF) 35 for MIM parts.
Abstract: This paper describes the evolution of language
politics and the part played by political leaders with reference to
the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu. It explores the interesting
evolution from separatism to coalition in sustaining the values of
parliamentary democracy and federalism. It seems that the
appropriation of language politics is fully ascribed to the DMK
leadership under Annadurai and Karunanidhi. For them, the Tamil
language is a self-determining power, a terrain of nationhood, and
a perennial source of social and political powers. The DMK
remains a symbol of Tamil nationalist party playing language
politics in the interest of the Tamils. Though electoral alliances
largely determine the success, the language politics still has
significant space in the politics of Tamil Nadu. Ironically, DMK
moves from the periphery to centre for getting national recognition
for the Tamils as well as for its own maximization of power. The
evolution can be seen in two major phases as: language politics for
party building; and language politics for state building with three
successive political processes, namely, language politics in the
process of separatism, representative politics and coalition. The
much pronounced Dravidian Movement is radical enough to
democratize the party ideology to survive the spirit of
parliamentary democracy. This has secured its own rewards in
terms of political power. The political power provides the means to
achieve the social and political goal of the political party.
Language politics and leadership pattern actualized this trend
though the movement is shifted from separatism to coalition.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a methodology for finding
authoritative researchers by analyzing academic Web sites. We show
a case study in which we concentrate on a set of Czech computer
science departments- Web sites. We analyze the relations between
them via hyperlinks and find the most important ones using several
common ranking algorithms. We then examine the contents of the
research papers present on these sites and determine the most
authoritative Czech authors.
Abstract: Security has been an important issue and concern in the
smart home systems. Smart home networks consist of a wide range of
wired or wireless devices, there is possibility that illegal access to
some restricted data or devices may happen. Password-based
authentication is widely used to identify authorize users, because this
method is cheap, easy and quite accurate. In this paper, a neural
network is trained to store the passwords instead of using verification
table. This method is useful in solving security problems that
happened in some authentication system. The conventional way to
train the network using Backpropagation (BPN) requires a long
training time. Hence, a faster training algorithm, Resilient
Backpropagation (RPROP) is embedded to the MLPs Neural
Network to accelerate the training process. For the Data Part, 200
sets of UserID and Passwords were created and encoded into binary
as the input. The simulation had been carried out to evaluate the
performance for different number of hidden neurons and combination
of transfer functions. Mean Square Error (MSE), training time and
number of epochs are used to determine the network performance.
From the results obtained, using Tansig and Purelin in hidden and
output layer and 250 hidden neurons gave the better performance. As
a result, a password-based user authentication system for smart home
by using neural network had been developed successfully.
Abstract: Super-quadrics can represent a set of implicit surfaces,
which can be used furthermore as primitive surfaces to construct a
complex object via Boolean set operations in implicit surface
modeling. In fact, super-quadrics were developed to create a
parametric surface by performing spherical product on two parametric
curves and some of the resulting parametric surfaces were also
represented as implicit surfaces. However, because not every
parametric curve can be redefined implicitly, this causes only implicit
super-elliptic and super-hyperbolic curves are applied to perform
spherical product and so only implicit super-ellipsoids and
hyperboloids are developed in super-quadrics. To create implicit
surfaces with more diverse shapes than super-quadrics, this paper
proposes an implicit representation of spherical product, which
performs spherical product on two implicit curves like super-quadrics
do. By means of the implicit representation, many new implicit curves
such as polygonal, star-shaped and rose-shaped curves can be used to
develop new implicit surfaces with a greater variety of shapes than
super-quadrics, such as polyhedrons, hyper-ellipsoids, superhyperboloids
and hyper-toroids containing star-shaped and roseshaped
major and minor circles. Besides, the newly developed implicit
surfaces can also be used to define new primitive implicit surfaces for
constructing a more complex implicit surface in implicit surface
modeling.
Abstract: For the electrical metrics that describe photovoltaic
cell performance are inherently multivariate in nature, use of a
univariate, or one variable, statistical process control chart can have
important limitations. Development of a comprehensive process
control strategy is known to be significantly beneficial to reducing
process variability that ultimately drives up the manufacturing cost
photovoltaic cells. The multivariate moving average or MMA chart,
is applied to the electrical metrics of photovoltaic cells to illustrate
the improved sensitivity on process variability this method of control
charting offers. The result show the ability of the MMA chart to
expand to as any variables as needed, suggests an application
with multiple photovoltaic electrical metrics being used in
concert to determine the processes state of control.
Abstract: We consider a typical problem in the assembly of
printed circuit boards (PCBs) in a two-machine flow shop system to
simultaneously minimize the weighted sum of weighted tardiness and
weighted flow time. The investigated problem is a group scheduling
problem in which PCBs are assembled in groups and the interest is to
find the best sequence of groups as well as the boards within each
group to minimize the objective function value. The type of setup
operation between any two board groups is characterized as carryover
sequence-dependent setup time, which exactly matches with the real
application of this problem. As a technical constraint, all of the
boards must be kitted before the assembly operation starts (kitting
operation) and by kitting staff. The main idea developed in this paper
is to completely eliminate the role of kitting staff by assigning the
task of kitting to the machine operator during the time he is idle
which is referred to as integration of internal (machine) and external
(kitting) setup times. Performing the kitting operation, which is a
preparation process of the next set of boards while the other boards
are currently being assembled, results in the boards to continuously
enter the system or have dynamic arrival times. Consequently, a
dynamic PCB assembly system is introduced for the first time in the
assembly of PCBs, which also has characteristics similar to that of
just-in-time manufacturing. The problem investigated is
computationally very complex, meaning that finding the optimal
solutions especially when the problem size gets larger is impossible.
Thus, a heuristic based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed. An
example problem on the application of the GA developed is
demonstrated and also numerical results of applying the GA on
solving several instances are provided.
Abstract: The main aim of this study is to identify the most
influential variables that cause defects on the items produced by a
casting company located in Turkey. To this end, one of the items
produced by the company with high defective percentage rates is
selected. Two approaches-the regression analysis and decision treesare
used to model the relationship between process parameters and
defect types. Although logistic regression models failed, decision tree
model gives meaningful results. Based on these results, it can be
claimed that the decision tree approach is a promising technique for
determining the most important process variables.
Abstract: At the previous study of new metal gasket, contact
width and contact stress were important design parameter for
optimizing metal gasket performance. However, the range of contact
stress had not been investigated thoroughly. In this study, we
conducted a gasket design optimization based on an elastic and plastic
contact stress analysis considering forming effect using FEM. The
gasket model was simulated by using two simulation stages which is
forming and tightening simulation. The optimum design based on an
elastic and plastic contact stress was founded. Final evaluation was
determined by helium leak quantity to check leakage performance of
both type of gaskets. The helium leak test shows that a gasket based
on the plastic contact stress design better than based on elastic stress
design.
Abstract: A generalization of the concepts of Feistel Networks (FN), known as Extended Feistel Network (EFN) is examined. EFN splits the input blocks into n > 2 sub-blocks. Like conventional FN, EFN consists of a series of rounds whereby at least one sub-block is subjected to an F function. The function plays a key role in the diffusion process due to its completeness property. It is also important to note that in EFN the F-function is the most computationally expensive operation in a round. The aim of this paper is to determine a suitable type of EFN for a scalable cipher. This is done by analyzing the threshold number of rounds for different types of EFN to achieve the completeness property as well as the number of F-function required in the network. The work focuses on EFN-Type I, Type II and Type III only. In the analysis it is found that EFN-Type II and Type III diffuses at the same rate and both are faster than Type-I EFN. Since EFN-Type-II uses less F functions as compared to EFN-Type III, therefore Type II is the most suitable EFN for use in a scalable cipher.
Abstract: This article provides partial evaluation index and its
standard of sports aerobics, including the following 12 indexes: health
vitality, coordination, flexibility, accuracy, pace, endurance, elasticity,
self-confidence, form, control, uniformity and musicality. The
three-layer BP artificial neural network model including input layer,
hidden layer and output layer is established. The result shows that the
model can well reflect the non-linear relationship between the
performance of 12 indexes and the overall performance. The predicted
value of each sample is very close to the true value, with a relative
error fluctuating around of 5%, and the network training is successful.
It shows that BP network has high prediction accuracy and good
generalization capacity if being applied in sports aerobics performance
evaluation after effective training.
Abstract: Integrated fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks are a viable solution that can deliver the high profile quadruple play services. Passive optical networks (PON) networks integrated with wireless access networks provide ubiquitous characteristics for high bandwidth applications. Operation of PON improves by employing a variety of multiplexing techniques. One of it is time division/wavelength division multiplexed (TDM/WDM) architecture that improves the performance of optical-wireless access networks. This paper proposes a novel feedback-based TDM/WDM-PON architecture and introduces a model of integrated PON-FiWi networks. Feedback-based link architecture is an efficient solution to improves the performance of optical-line-terminal (OLT) and interlink optical-network-units (ONUs) communication. Furthermore, the feedback-based WDM/TDM-PON architecture is compared with existing architectures in terms of capacity of network throughput.
Abstract: Dexamethasone (Dex) is a synthetic glucocorticoid
that is used in therapy. However prolonged treatments with high
doses are often required. This causes side effects that interfere with
the activity of several endocrine systems, including the gonadotropic
axis.
The aim of our study is to determine the effect of Dex on testicular
function in prepubertal Wistar rats.
Newborn Wistar rats are submitted to intraperitoneal injection of
Dex (1μg of Dex dissolved in NaCl 0.9% / 5g bw) for 20 days and
then sacrificed at the age of 40days. A control group received NaCl
0.9%. The rat is weighed daily. The plasmatic levels of testosterone,
LH and FSH were measured by radioimmunoassay. A histomorphometric
study was performed on sections of testis.
Treated groups showed a significant decrease in body weight (p
Abstract: Understanding the number of people and the flow of
the persons is useful for efficient promotion of the institution
managements and company-s sales improvements. This paper
introduces an automated method for counting passerby using virtualvertical
measurement lines. The process of recognizing a passerby is
carried out using an image sequence obtained from the USB camera.
Space-time image is representing the human regions which are
treated using the segmentation process. To handle the problem of
mismatching, different color space are used to perform the template
matching which chose automatically the best matching to determine
passerby direction and speed. A relation between passerby speed and
the human-pixel area is used to distinguish one or two passersby. In
the experiment, the camera is fixed at the entrance door of the hall in
a side viewing position. Finally, experimental results verify the
effectiveness of the presented method by correctly detecting and
successfully counting them in order to direction with accuracy of
97%.
Abstract: In the present study, development of salbutamol
sulphate nanoparticles that adhere to gastric mucus was investigated.
Salbutamol sulphate has low bioavailability due to short transit time in
gastric. It also has a positive surface charge that provides hurdles to be
encapsulated by the positively strong mucoadhesive polymer of
chitosan. To overcome the difficulties, the surface charge of active
ingredient was modified using several nonionic and anionic
stomach-specific polymers. The nanoparticles were prepared using
ionotropic gelation technique. The evaluation involved determination
of particle size, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency, in vitro drug
release and in vitro mucoadhesion test. Results exhibited that the use
of anionic alginate polymer was more satisfactory than that of
nonionic polymer. Characteristics of the particles was nano-size, high
encapsulation efficiency, fulfilled the drug release requirements and
adhesive towards stomach for around 11 hours. This result shows that
the salbutamol sulphate nanoparticles can be utilized for improvement
its delivery.
Abstract: This experiment was conducted to investigate the
effect of dietary supplementation of different levels of black seed
(Nigella sativa L.) on the performance and immune response of broiler chicks. A total 240 day-old broiler chicks were used and
randomly allotted equally into six experimental groups designated as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 having black seed at the rate of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and
10 g /kg diet respectively. The study was lasted for 42 days. Average body weight, weight gain, relative growth rate, feed
conversion, antibody titer against Newcastle disease, phagocytic activity and phagocytic index, some blood parameters(GOT, GPT,
Glucose, Cholesterol, Triglyceride, Total protein, Albumen, WBCs,
RBCs, Hb and PCV), dressing percentage, weight of different body
organs, abdominal fat weight, were determined. It was found that, N. Sativa significantly improved final body weight, total body gain
and feed conversion ratio of groups 2 and 3 when compared with the control group. Higher levels of N. Sativa did not improve
growth performance of the chicks. Non significant differences were
observed for antibody titer against Newcastle virus, WBCs count,
serum GOT, glucose level, dressing %, relative liver, spleen, heart and head percentages. Lymphoid organs (Bursa and Thymus)
improved significantly with increasing N. Sativa level in all supplemented groups. Serum cholesterol, triglyceride and visible fat
% significantly decreased with Nigella sativa supplementation while
serum GPT level significantly increased with nigella sativa
supplementation.
Abstract: Tourism industry is an important sector in Malaysia economy and this motivates the examination of long-run relationships between tourist arrivals from three selected European countries in Malaysia and four possible determinants; relative prices, exchange rates, transportation cost and relative prices of substitute destination. The study utilizes data from January 1999 to September 2008 and employs standard econometric techniques that include unit root test and cointegration test. The estimated demand model indicates that depreciation of local currency and increases in prices at substitute destination have positive impact on tourist arrivals while increase in transportation cost has negative impact on tourist arrivals. In addition, the model suggests that higher rate of increase in local prices relative to prices at tourist country of origin may not deter tourists from coming to Malaysia
Abstract: The Euler-s equation of motion is extended to include
the viscosity stress tensor leading to the formulation of Navier–
Stokes type equation. The latter is linearized and applied to
investigate the rotational motion or vorticity in a viscous fluid.
Relations for the velocity of viscous waves and attenuation parameter
are obtained in terms of viscosity (μ) and the density (¤ü) of the fluid.
μ and ¤ü are measured experimentally as a function of temperature for
two different samples of light and heavy crude oil. These data
facilitated to determine the activation energy, velocity of viscous
wave and the attenuation parameter. Shear wave velocity in heavy oil
is found to be much larger than the light oil, whereas the attenuation
parameter in heavy oil is quite low in comparison to light one. The
activation energy of heavy oil is three times larger than light oil.