Abstract: International literature emphasizes on the concern regarding the phenomenon of aggression in hospital. This paper focuses on the reality of aggressive interactions reigning within an emergency triage involving three chaps of protagonists: the professionals, the patients and their carers. The data collection was made from a grid of observation, in which the various variables exposed in the literature were integrated. They observations took place around the clock, for three weeks, at the rate of one week a month. In this research 331 aggressive interactions have been listed and analyzed by means of the software SPSS. This research is one of the very few continuous observation surveys in the literature. It shows the various human factors at play in the emergence of aggressive interaction. The data may be used both for taking steps in primary prevention, thanks to the analysis of interaction modes, and in secondary prevention by integrating the useful results in situational prevention.
Abstract: The choice of finite element to use in order to predict
nonlinear static or dynamic response of complex structures becomes
an important factor. Then, the main goal of this research work is to
focus a study on the effect of the in-plane rotational degrees of
freedom in linear and geometrically non linear static and dynamic
analysis of thin shell structures by flat shell finite elements. In this
purpose: First, simple triangular and quadrilateral flat shell finite
elements are implemented in an incremental formulation based on the
updated lagrangian corotational description for geometrically
nonlinear analysis. The triangular element is a combination of DKT
and CST elements, while the quadrilateral is a combination of DKQ
and the bilinear quadrilateral membrane element. In both elements,
the sixth degree of freedom is handled via introducing fictitious
stiffness. Secondly, in the same code, the sixth degrees of freedom in
these elements is handled differently where the in-plane rotational
d.o.f is considered as an effective d.o.f in the in-plane filed
interpolation. Our goal is to compare resulting shell elements. Third,
the analysis is enlarged to dynamic linear analysis by direct
integration using Newmark-s implicit method. Finally, the linear
dynamic analysis is extended to geometrically nonlinear dynamic
analysis where Newmark-s method is used to integrate equations of
motion and the Newton-Raphson method is employed for iterating
within each time step increment until equilibrium is achieved. The
obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the
interpolation of the in-plane rotational d.o.f. and present deficiencies
of using fictitious stiffness in dynamic linear and nonlinear analysis.
Abstract: In this study, a low temperature sensor highly selective to CO in presence of methane is fabricated by using 4 nm SnO2 quantum dots (QDs) prepared by sonication assisted precipitation. SnCl4 aqueous solution was precipitated by ammonia under sonication, which continued for 2 h. A part of the sample was then dried and calcined at 400°C for 1.5 h and characterized by XRD and BET. The average particle size and the specific surface area of the SnO2 QDs as well as their sensing properties were compared with the SnO2 nano-particles which were prepared by conventional sol-gel method. The BET surface area of sonochemically as-prepared product and the one calcined at 400°C after 1.5 hr are 257 m2/gr and 212 m2/gr respectively while the specific surface area for SnO2 nanoparticles prepared by conventional sol-gel method is about 80m2/gr. XRD spectra revealed pure crystalline phase of SnO2 is formed for both as-prepared and calcined samples of SnO2 QDs. However, for the sample prepared by sol-gel method and calcined at 400°C SnO crystals are detected along with those of SnO2. Quantum dots of SnO2 show exceedingly high sensitivity to CO with different concentrations of 100, 300 and 1000 ppm in whole range of temperature (25- 350°C). At 50°C a sensitivity of 27 was obtained for 1000 ppm CO, which increases to a maximum of 147 when the temperature rises to 225°C and then drops off while the maximum sensitivity for the SnO2 sample prepared by the sol-gel method was obtained at 300°C with the amount of 47.2. At the same time no sensitivity to methane is observed in whole range of temperatures for SnO2 QDs. The response and recovery times of the sensor sharply decreases with temperature, while the high selectivity to CO does not deteriorate.
Abstract: Recent years, adaptive pushover methods have been
developed for seismic analysis of structures. Herein, the accuracy of
the displacement-based adaptive pushover (DAP) method, which is
introduced by Antoniou and Pinho [2004], is evaluated for Irregular
buildings. The results are compared to the force-based procedure.
Both concrete and steel frame structures, asymmetric in plan and
elevation are analyzed and also torsional effects are taking into the
account. These analyses are performed using both near fault and far
fault records. In order to verify the results, the Incremental Dynamic
Analysis (IDA) is performed.
Abstract: In this paper, a Smart Home Service Robot, McBot II,
which performs mess-cleanup function etc. in house, is designed much
more optimally than other service robots. It is newly developed in
much more practical system than McBot I which we had developed
two years ago. One characteristic attribute of mobile platforms
equipped with a set of dependent wheels is their omni- directionality
and the ability to realize complex translational and rotational
trajectories for agile navigation in door. An accurate coordination of
steering angle and spinning rate of each wheel is necessary for a
consistent motion. This paper develops trajectory controller of
3-wheels omni-directional mobile robot using fuzzy azimuth estimator.
A specialized anthropomorphic robot manipulator which can be
attached to the housemaid robot McBot II, is developed in this paper.
This built-in type manipulator consists of both arms with 3 DOF
(Degree of Freedom) each and both hands with 3 DOF each. The
robotic arm is optimally designed to satisfy both the minimum
mechanical size and the maximum workspace. Minimum mass and
length are required for the built-in cooperated-arms system. But that
makes the workspace so small. This paper proposes optimal design
method to overcome the problem by using neck joint to move the arms
horizontally forward/backward and waist joint to move them
vertically up/down. The robotic hand, which has two fingers and a
thumb, is also optimally designed in task-based concept. Finally, the
good performance of the developed McBot II is confirmed through
live tests of the mess-cleanup task.
Abstract: This paper proposes a method for speckle reduction in
medical ultrasound imaging while preserving the edges with the
added advantages of adaptive noise filtering and speed. A nonlinear
image diffusion method that incorporates local image parameter,
namely, scatterer density in addition to gradient, to weight the
nonlinear diffusion process, is proposed. The method was tested for
the isotropic case with a contrast detail phantom and varieties of
clinical ultrasound images, and then compared to linear and some
other diffusion enhancement methods. Different diffusion parameters
were tested and tuned to best reduce speckle noise and preserve
edges. The method showed superior performance measured both
quantitatively and qualitatively when incorporating scatterer density
into the diffusivity function. The proposed filter can be used as a
preprocessing step for ultrasound image enhancement before
applying automatic segmentation, automatic volumetric calculations,
or 3D ultrasound volume rendering.
Abstract: Construction cost in India is increasing at around 50
per cent over the average inflation levels. It have registered increase
of up to 15 per cent every year, primarily due to cost of basic
building materials such as steel, cement, bricks, timber and other
inputs as well as cost of labour. As a result, the cost of construction
using conventional building materials and construction is becoming
beyond the affordable limits particularly for low-income groups of
population as well as a large cross section of the middle - income
groups. Therefore, there is a need to adopt cost-effective construction
methods either by up-gradation of traditional technologies using local
resources or applying modern construction materials and techniques
with efficient inputs leading to economic solutions. This has become
the most relevant aspect in the context of the large volume of housing
to be constructed in both rural and urban areas and the consideration
of limitations in the availability of resources such as building
materials and finance. This paper makes an overview of the housing
status in India and adoption of appropriate and cost effective
technologies in the country.
Abstract: Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a well-known
hepatotoxin and exposure to this chemical is known to induce
oxidative stress and causes liver injury by the formation of free
radicals. Flacourtia indica commonly known as 'Baichi' has been
reported as an effective remedy for the treatment of a variety of
diseases. The objective of this study was to investigate the
hepatoprotective activity of aqueous extract of leaves of Flacourtia
indica against CCl4 induced hepatotoxicity. Animals were pretreated
with the aqueous extract of Flacourtia indica (250 & 500 mg/kg
body weight) for one week and then challenged with CCl4 (1.5 ml/kg
bw) in olive oil (1:1, v/v) on 7th day. Serum marker enzymes (ALP,
AST, ALT, Total Protein & Total Bilirubin) and TBARS level
(Marker for oxidative stress) were estimated in all the study groups.
Alteration in the levels of biochemical markers of hepatic damage
like AST, ALT, ALP, Total Protein, Total Bilirubin and lipid
peroxides (TBARS) were tested in both CCl4 treated and extract
treated groups. CCl4 has enhanced the AST, ALT, ALP and the
Lipid peroxides (TBARS) in liver. Treatment of aqueous extract of
Flacourtia indica leaves (250 & 500 mg/kg) exhibited a significant
protective effect by altering the serum levels of AST, ALT, ALP,
Total Protein, Total Bilirubin and liver TBARS. These biochemical
observations were supported by histopathological study of liver
sections. From this preliminary study it has been concluded that the
aqueous extract of the leaves of Flacourtia indica protects liver
against oxidative damages and could be used as an effective protector
against CCl4 induced hepatic damage. Our findings suggested that
Flacourtia indica possessed good hepatoprotective activity
Abstract: Cognitive Science appeared about 40 years ago,
subsequent to the challenge of the Artificial Intelligence, as common
territory for several scientific disciplines such as: IT, mathematics,
psychology, neurology, philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. The
new born science was justified by the complexity of the problems
related to the human knowledge on one hand, and on the other by the
fact that none of the above mentioned sciences could explain alone
the mental phenomena. Based on the data supplied by the
experimental sciences such as psychology or neurology, models of
the human mind operation are built in the cognition science. These
models are implemented in computer programs and/or electronic
circuits (specific to the artificial intelligence) – cognitive systems –
whose competences and performances are compared to the human
ones, leading to the psychology and neurology data reinterpretation,
respectively to the construction of new models. During these
processes if psychology provides the experimental basis, philosophy
and mathematics provides the abstraction level utterly necessary for
the intermission of the mentioned sciences.
The ongoing general problematic of the cognitive approach
provides two important types of approach: the computational one,
starting from the idea that the mental phenomenon can be reduced to
1 and 0 type calculus operations, and the connection one that
considers the thinking products as being a result of the interaction
between all the composing (included) systems. In the field of
psychology measurements in the computational register use classical
inquiries and psychometrical tests, generally based on calculus
methods. Deeming things from both sides that are representing the
cognitive science, we can notice a gap in psychological product
measurement possibilities, regarded from the connectionist
perspective, that requires the unitary understanding of the quality –
quantity whole. In such approach measurement by calculus proves to
be inefficient. Our researches, deployed for longer than 20 years,
lead to the conclusion that measuring by forms properly fits to the
connectionism laws and principles.
Abstract: Robots- visual perception is a field that is gaining
increasing attention from researchers. This is partly due to emerging
trends in the commercial availability of 3D scanning systems or
devices that produce a high information accuracy level for a variety of
applications. In the history of mining, the mortality rate of mine workers
has been alarming and robots exhibit a great deal of potentials to
tackle safety issues in mines. However, an effective vision system
is crucial to safe autonomous navigation in underground terrains.
This work investigates robots- perception in underground terrains
(mines and tunnels) using statistical region merging (SRM) model.
SRM reconstructs the main structural components of an imagery
by a simple but effective statistical analysis. An investigation is
conducted on different regions of the mine, such as the shaft, stope
and gallery, using publicly available mine frames, with a stream of
locally captured mine images. An investigation is also conducted on a
stream of underground tunnel image frames, using the XBOX Kinect
3D sensors. The Kinect sensors produce streams of red, green and
blue (RGB) and depth images of 640 x 480 resolution at 30 frames per
second. Integrating the depth information to drivability gives a strong
cue to the analysis, which detects 3D results augmenting drivable and
non-drivable regions in 2D. The results of the 2D and 3D experiment
with different terrains, mines and tunnels, together with the qualitative
and quantitative evaluation, reveal that a good drivable region can be
detected in dynamic underground terrains.
Abstract: The ever-growing usage of aspect-oriented
development methodology in the field of software engineering
requires tool support for both research environments and industry. So
far, tool support for many activities in aspect-oriented software
development has been proposed, to automate and facilitate their
development. For instance, the AJaTS provides a transformation
system to support aspect-oriented development and refactoring. In
particular, it is well established that the abstract interpretation of
programs, in any paradigm, pursued in static analysis is best served
by a high-level programs representation, such as Control Flow Graph
(CFG). This is why such analysis can more easily locate common
programmatic idioms for which helpful transformation are already
known as well as, association between the input program and
intermediate representation can be more closely maintained.
However, although the current researches define the good concepts
and foundations, to some extent, for control flow analysis of aspectoriented
programs but they do not provide a concrete tool that can
solely construct the CFG of these programs. Furthermore, most of
these works focus on addressing the other issues regarding Aspect-
Oriented Software Development (AOSD) such as testing or data flow
analysis rather than CFG itself. Therefore, this study is dedicated to
build an aspect-oriented control flow graph construction tool called
AJcFgraph Builder. The given tool can be applied in many software
engineering tasks in the context of AOSD such as, software testing,
software metrics, and so forth.
Abstract: Designing, implementing, and debugging concurrency
control algorithms in a real system is a complex, tedious, and errorprone
process. Further, understanding concurrency control
algorithms and distributed computations is itself a difficult task.
Visualization can help with both of these problems. Thus, we have
developed an exploratory environment in which people can prototype
and test various versions of concurrency control algorithms, study
and debug distributed computations, and view performance statistics
of distributed systems. In this paper, we describe the exploratory
environment and show how it can be used to explore concurrency
control algorithms for the interactive steering of distributed
computations.
Abstract: Evolutionary Programming (EP) represents a
methodology of Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) in which mutation is
considered as a main reproduction operator. This paper presents a
novel EP approach for Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) learning.
The proposed strategy consists of two components: the self-adaptive,
which contains phenotype information and the dynamic, which is
described by genotype. Self-adaptation is achieved by the addition of
a value, called the network weight, which depends on a total number
of hidden layers and an average number of neurons in hidden layers.
The dynamic component changes its value depending on the fitness
of a chromosome, exposed to mutation. Thus, the mutation step size
is controlled by two components, encapsulated in the algorithm,
which adjust it according to the characteristics of a predefined ANN
architecture and the fitness of a particular chromosome. The
comparative analysis of the proposed approach and the classical EP
(Gaussian mutation) showed, that that the significant acceleration of
the evolution process is achieved by using both phenotype and
genotype information in the mutation strategy.
Abstract: Although oil-based drilling fluids are of paramount practical and economical interest, they represent a serious source of pollution, once released into the environment as drill cuttings. The aim of this study is to assess the capability of isolated microorganisms to degrade gasoil fuel. The commonly used physicochemical and biodegradation remediation techniques of petroleum contaminated soil were both investigated. The study revealed that natural biodegradation is favorable. Even though, the presence of heavy metals, the moisture level of (8.55%) and nutrient deficiencies put severe constrains on microorganisms- survival ranges inhibiting the biodegradation process. The selected strains were able to degrade the diesel fuel at significantly high rates (around 98%).
Abstract: A new genetic algorithm, termed the 'optimum individual monogenetic genetic algorithm' (OIMGA), is presented whose properties have been deliberately designed to be well suited to hardware implementation. Specific design criteria were to ensure fast access to the individuals in the population, to keep the required silicon area for hardware implementation to a minimum and to incorporate flexibility in the structure for the targeting of a range of applications. The first two criteria are met by retaining only the current optimum individual, thereby guaranteeing a small memory requirement that can easily be stored in fast on-chip memory. Also, OIMGA can be easily reconfigured to allow the investigation of problems that normally warrant either large GA populations or individuals many genes in length. Local convergence is achieved in OIMGA by retaining elite individuals, while population diversity is ensured by continually searching for the best individuals in fresh regions of the search space. The results given in this paper demonstrate that both the performance of OIMGA and its convergence time are superior to those of a range of existing hardware GA implementations.
Abstract: The concentrations of aliphatic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) were determined in atmospheric aerosol samples collected at a rural site in Hungary (K-puszta, summer 2008), a boreal forest (Hyytiälä,
April 2007) and a polluted rural area in Italy (San Pietro Capofiume, Po Valley, April 2008). A clear distinction between “clean" and “polluted" periods was observed. Concentrations obtained for Hyytiälä are significantly lower than those for the other two sites. Source reconciliation was performed using diagnostic parameters, such as the carbon preference index and ratios between PAH. The presence of an unresolved complex mixture of hydrocarbons, especially for the Finnish and Italian samples, is indicative of petrogenic inputs. In K-puszta, the aliphatic hydrocarbons are dominated by leaf wax n-alkanes. The long range transport of anthropogenic pollution contributed to the Finnish aerosol. Industrial activities and vehicular emissions represent major sources in San Pietro Capofiume. PAH in K-puszta consist of both pyrogenic and petrogenic compounds.
Abstract: This paper presents an application of 5S lean technology to a production facility. Due to increased demand, high product variety, and a push production system, the plant has suffered from excessive wastes, unorganized workstations, and unhealthy work environment. This has translated into increased production cost, frequent delays, and low workers morale. Under such conditions, it has become difficult, if not impossible, to implement effective continuous improvement studies. Hence, the lean project is aimed at diagnosing the production process, streamlining the workflow, removing/reducing process waste, cleaning the production environment, improving plant layout, and organizing workstations. 5S lean technology is utilized for achieving project objectives. The work was a combination of both culture changes and tangible/physical changes on the shop floor. The project has drastically changed the plant and developed the infrastructure for a successful implementation of continuous improvement as well as other best practices and quality initiatives.
Abstract: This paper presents a wrap-around view system with 4
smart cameras module and remote motion mobile robot control equipped with smart camera module system. The two-level scheme for
remote motion control with smart-pad(IPAD) is introduced on this
paper. In the low-level, the wrap-around view system is controlled or operated to keep the reference points lying around top view image
plane. On the higher level, a robot image based motion controller is utilized to drive the mobile platform to reach the desired position or
track the desired motion planning through image feature feedback. The
design wrap-around view system equipped on presents such advantages as follows: 1) a satisfactory solution for the FOV and affine
problem; 2) free of any complex and constraint with robot pose. The performance of the wrap-around view equipped on mobile robot
remote control is proven by experimental results.
Abstract: This paper attempts to establish the fact that Multi
State Network Classification is essential for performance
enhancement of Transport protocols over Satellite based Networks. A
model to classify Multi State network condition taking into
consideration both congestion and channel error is evolved. In order
to arrive at such a model an analysis of the impact of congestion and
channel error on RTT values has been carried out using ns2. The
analysis results are also reported in the paper. The inference drawn
from this analysis is used to develop a novel statistical RTT based
model for multi state network classification.
An Adaptive Multi State Proactive Transport Protocol consisting
of Proactive Slow Start, State based Error Recovery, Timeout Action
and Proactive Reduction is proposed which uses the multi state
network state classification model. This paper also confirms through
detail simulation and analysis that a prior knowledge about the
overall characteristics of the network helps in enhancing the
performance of the protocol over satellite channel which is
significantly affected due to channel noise and congestion.
The necessary augmentation of ns2 simulator is done for
simulating the multi state network classification logic. This
simulation has been used in detail evaluation of the protocol under
varied levels of congestion and channel noise. The performance
enhancement of this protocol with reference to established protocols
namely TCP SACK and Vegas has been discussed. The results as
discussed in this paper clearly reveal that the proposed protocol
always outperforms its peers and show a significant improvement in
very high error conditions as envisaged in the design of the protocol.
Abstract: In this paper, the C1-conforming finite element method is analyzed for a class of nonlinear fourth-order hyperbolic partial differential equation. Some a priori bounds are derived using Lyapunov functional, and existence, uniqueness and regularity for the weak solutions are proved. Optimal error estimates are derived for both semidiscrete and fully discrete schemes.