Abstract: Every commercial bank optimises its asset portfolio
depending on the profitability of assets and chosen or imposed
constraints. This paper proposes and applies a stylized model for
optimising banks' asset and liability structure, reflecting profitability
of different asset categories and their risks as well as costs associated
with different liability categories and reserve requirements. The level
of detail for asset and liability categories is chosen to create a
suitably parsimonious model and to include the most important
categories in the model. It is shown that the most appropriate
optimisation criterion for the model is the maximisation of the ratio
of net interest income to assets. The maximisation of this ratio is
subject to several constraints. Some are accounting identities or
dictated by legislative requirements; others vary depending on the
market objectives for a particular bank. The model predicts variable
amount of assets allocated to loan provision.
Abstract: The value of overall oxygen transfer Coefficient
(KLa), which is the best measure of oxygen transfer in water through
aeration, is obtained by a simple approach, which sufficiently
explains the utility of the method to eliminate the discrepancies due
to inaccurate assumption of saturation dissolved oxygen
concentration. The rate of oxygen transfer depends on number of
factors like intensity of turbulence, which in turns depends on the
speed of rotation, size, and number of blades, diameter and
immersion depth of the rotor, and size and shape of aeration tank, as
well as on physical, chemical, and biological characteristic of water.
An attempt is made in this paper to correlate the overall oxygen
transfer Coefficient (KLa), as an independent parameter with other
influencing parameters mentioned above. It has been estimated that
the simulation equation developed predicts the values of KLa and
power with an average standard error of estimation of 0.0164 and
7.66 respectively and with R2 values of 0.979 and 0.989 respectively,
when compared with experimentally determined values. The
comparison of this model is done with the model generated using
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and both the models were
found to be in good agreement with each other.
Abstract: The zinc and iron environments in different growth
stages have been studied with EXAFS and XANES with Brookhaven
Synchrotron Light Source. Tissue samples included meat, organ,
vegetable, leaf, and yeast. The project studied the EXAFS and
XANES of tissue samples using Zn and Fe K-edges. Duck embryo
samples show that brain and intestine would contain shorter EXFAS
determined Zn-N/O bond; as with the cases of fresh yeast versus
reconstituted live yeast and green leaf versus yellow leaf. The
XANES Fourier transform characteristic-length would be useful as a
functionality index for selected types of tissue samples in various
physical states. The extension to the development of functional
synchrotron imaging for tissue engineering application based on
spectroscopic technique is discussed.
Abstract: For most image fusion algorithms separate
relationship by pixels in the image and treat them more or less
independently. In addition, they have to be adjusted different
parameters in different time or weather. In this paper, we propose a
region–based image fusion which combines aspects of feature and
pixel-level fusion method to replace only by pixel. The basic idea is
to segment far infrared image only and to add information of each
region from segmented image to visual image respectively. Then we
determine different fused parameters according different region. At
last, we adopt artificial neural network to deal with the problems of
different time or weather, because the relationship between fused
parameters and image features are nonlinear. It render the fused
parameters can be produce automatically according different states.
The experimental results present the method we proposed indeed
have good adaptive capacity with automatic determined fused
parameters. And the architecture can be used for lots of applications.
Abstract: The Beshar River is one aquatic ecosystem, which is
located next to the city of Yasuj in southern Iran. The Beshar river
has been contaminated by industrial factories such as effluent of
sugar factory, agricultural and other activities in this region such as,
Imam Sajjad hospital, drainage from agricultural farms, Yasuj urban
surface runoff and effluent of wastewater treatment plants ,specially
Yasuj waste water treatment plant. In order to evaluate the effects of
these pollutants on the quality of the Beshar river, five monitoring
stations were selected along its course. The first station is located
upstream of Yasuj near the Dehnow village; stations 2 to 4 are
located east, south and west of city; and the 5th station is located
downstream of Yasuj. Several water quality parameters were
sampled. These include pH, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen
demand (BOD), temperature, conductivity, turbidity, total dissolved
solids and discharge or flow measurements. Water samples from the
five stations were collected and analyzed to determine the following
physicochemical parameters: EC, pH, T.D.S, T.H, No2, DO, BOD5,
COD during 2008 to 2010. The study shows that the BOD5 value of
station 1 is at a minimum (1.7 ppm) and increases downstream from
stations 2 to 4 to a maximum (11.6 ppm), and then decreases at
station 5. The DO values of station 1 is a maximum (8.45 ppm),
decreases downstream to stations 2 - 4 which are at a minimum (3.1
ppm), before increasing at station 5. The amount of BOD and TDS
are highest at the 4th station and the amount of DO is lowest at this
station, marking the 4th station as more highly polluted than the
other stations .This study shows average amount of the water quality
parameters in first year of sampling (2008) have had a better quality
relation to third year in 2010 because of recent drought in this region
and pollutant increasing .As the Beshar river path after 5th station
goes through the mountain area with more slope and flow velocity
,so the physicochemical parameters improve at the 5th station due to
pollutant degradation and dilution. Finally the point and nonpoint
pollutant sources of Beshar river were determined and compared to
the monitoring results.
Abstract: The proposed paper examines strategies whose aim is
to counter the all too often sighted process of abandonment that
characterizes contemporary cities. The city of Nicosia in Cyprus is
used as an indicative case study, whereby several recent projects are
presented as capitalizing on traditional cultural assets to revive the
downtown. The reuse of existing building stock as museums,
performing arts centers and theaters but also as in the form of various
housing typologies is geared to strengthen the ranks of local residents
and to spur economic growth. Unlike the examples from the 1960s,
the architecture of more recent adaptive reuse for urban regeneration
seems to be geared in reinforcing a connection to the city where the
buildings often reflect the characteristics of their urban context.
Abstract: We evaluated the effect of sensory (direct current
(DC), 600μA) and motor (monophasic current, pulse duration 300μs,
100 Hz, 2.5-3mA) intensities of cathodal electrical stimulation (ES)
current to release VEGF and biomechanical properties of wound. 54
male Sprague-dawley rats were randomly assigned into one control
and two experimental groups. A full thickness skin incision was
made on animals- dorsal region. The experimental groups received
ES for 1h/day and every other day. VEGF expression was measured
in skin on the 7th day after surgical incision and tensile strength was
measured on 21st day. On the 7th day, the values of skin VEGF in the
sensory group were significantly greater than those of the other
groups (p < 0.05). Sensory and Motor intensity stimulation, can not
improve the biomechanical properties of the repaired wounds.
It seems the mechanical environment induced by sensory and
motor intensity of electrical stimulation, could not simulate the role
of normal daily stress and strain to maturation of collagen fibers and
their cross links. Further work is needed to determine the relationship
between VEGF expression after ES and its effect on tensile strength
of healed wound.
Abstract: Some physico-chemical characteristics and mineral
composition of 'Karayemis' (Prunus laurocerasus L.) fruits which
grown naturally in Norteast Turkey was studied. 28 minerals ( Al,
Mg, B, Mn, Co, Na, Ca, Ni, Cd, P, Cr, Pb, Cu, S, Fe, Zn, K, Sr, Li,
As, V, Ag, Ba, Br, Ga, In, Se, Ti) were analyzed and 19 minerals
were present at ascertainable levels. Karayemis fruit was richest in
potassium (7938.711 ppm), magnesium (1242.186 ppm) and calcium
(1158.853 ppm). And some physico-chemical characteristics of
Karayemis fruit was investigated. Fruit length, fruit width, fruit
thickness, fruit weight, total soluble solids, colour, protein, crude ash,
crude fiber, crude oil values were determined as 2.334 cm, 1.884 cm,
2.112 cm, 5.35 g, 20.1 %, S99M99Y99, 0.29 %, 0.22 %, 6.63 % and
0.001 %, respectively. The seed of fruit mean weight, length, width
and thickness were found to be 0.41 g, 1.303 cm, 0.921 cm and
0.803, respectively.
Abstract: In a world of climate change and limited fossil fuel resources, renewable energy sources are playing an increasingly important role. Due to industrializations and population growth our economy and technologies today largely depend upon natural resources, which are not replaceable. Approximately 90% of our energy consumption comes from fossil fuels (viz. coal, oil and natural gas). The irony is that these resources are depleting. Also, the huge consumption of fossil fuels has caused visible damage to the environment in various forms viz. global warming, acid rains etc.
Abstract: This work explores blind image deconvolution by recursive function approximation based on supervised learning of neural networks, under the assumption that a degraded image is linear convolution of an original source image through a linear shift-invariant (LSI) blurring matrix. Supervised learning of neural networks of radial basis functions (RBF) is employed to construct an embedded recursive function within a blurring image, try to extract non-deterministic component of an original source image, and use them to estimate hyper parameters of a linear image degradation model. Based on the estimated blurring matrix, reconstruction of an original source image from a blurred image is further resolved by an annealed Hopfield neural network. By numerical simulations, the proposed novel method is shown effective for faithful estimation of an unknown blurring matrix and restoration of an original source image.
Abstract: Recently electric vehicles are becoming popular as an
alternative of conventional fossil fuel vehicles. Conventional Internal
Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle uses fossil fuel which contributing
a major part of overall carbon emission in the environment. Carbon
and other green house gas emission are responsible for global
warming and resulting climate change. It becomes vital to evaluate
performance of vehicle based on emission. In this paper an effort has
been made to depict the picture of emission caused by vehicle and
scenario of Australia has taken into account. Effort has been made to
compare the fossil based vehicle with electric vehicle in phases. The
study also evaluates advancement in electric vehicle technology,
required infrastructure for sustainability and future scope of
developments. This paper also includes the evaluation of electric
vehicle concept for pollution control and sustainable transport
systems in future. This study can be a benchmark for development of
electric vehicle as low carbon emission alternative for the cities of
tomorrow.
Abstract: The right to housing is a basic need while good
quality and affordable housing is a reflection of a high quality of life.
However, housing remains a major problem for most, especially for
the bottom billions. Satisfaction on housing and neighbourhood
conditions are one of the important indicators that reflect quality of
life. These indicators are also important in the process of evaluating
housing policy with the objective to increase the quality of housing
and neighbourhood. The research method is purely based on a
quantitative method, using a survey. The findings show that housing
purchasing trend in urban Malaysia is determined by demographic
profiles, mainly by education level, age, gender and income. The
period of housing ownership also influenced the socio-cultural
interactions and satisfaction of house owners with their
neighbourhoods. The findings also show that the main concerns for
house buyers in urban areas are price and location of the house.
Respondents feel that houses in urban Malaysia is too expensive and
beyond their affordability. Location of houses and distance from
work place are also regarded as the main concern. However,
respondents are fairly satisfied with religious and socio-cultural
facilities in the housing areas and most importantly not many regard
ethnicity as an issue in their decision-making, when buying a house.
Abstract: Tea is consumed by a big part of the world-s
population. It has an enormous importance for the Turkish culture.
Nearly it is brewed every morning and evening at the all houses. Also it is consumed with lemon wedge. Habitual drinking of tea
infusions may significantly contribute to daily dietary requirements of elements.
Different instrumental techniques are used for determination of
these elements. But atomic and mass spectroscopic methods are preferred most. In these study chromium, iron and selenium contents
after the hot water brewing of black and green tea were determined
by Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Furthermore, effect
of lemon addition on chromium, iron and selenium concentration tea
infusions is investigated.
Results of the investigation showed that concentration of
chromium, iron and selenium increased in black tea with lemon addition. On the other hand only selenium is increased with lemon
addition in green tea. And iron concentration is not detected in green
tea but its concentration is determined as 1.420 ppm after lemon addition.
Abstract: In this paper, a new K-means clustering based
approach for identification of voltage control areas is developed.
Voltage control areas are important for efficient reactive power
management in power systems operating under deregulated
environment. Although, voltage control areas are formed using
conventional hierarchical clustering based method, but the present
paper investigate the capability of K-means clustering for the
purpose of forming voltage control areas. The proposed method is
tested and compared for IEEE 14 bus and IEEE 30 bus systems. The
results show that this K-means based method is competing with
conventional hierarchical approach
Abstract: Power flow (PF) study, which is performed to
determine the power system static states (voltage magnitudes and
voltage angles) at each bus to find the steady state operating
condition of a system, is very important and is the most frequently
carried out study by power utilities for power system planning,
operation and control. In this paper, a counterpropagation neural
network (CPNN) is proposed to solve power flow problem under
different loading/contingency conditions for computing bus voltage
magnitudes and angles of the power system. The counterpropagation
network uses a different mapping strategy namely
counterpropagation and provides a practical approach for
implementing a pattern mapping task, since learning is fast in this
network. The composition of the input variables for the proposed
neural network has been selected to emulate the solution process of a
conventional power flow program. The effectiveness of the proposed
CPNN based approach for solving power flow is demonstrated by
computation of bus voltage magnitudes and voltage angles for
different loading conditions and single line-outage contingencies in
IEEE 14-bus system.
Abstract: The mineral having chemical compositional formula MgAl2O4 is called “spinel". The ferrites crystallize in spinel structure are known as spinel-ferrites or ferro-spinels. The spinel structure has a fcc cage of oxygen ions and the metallic cations are distributed among tetrahedral (A) and octahedral (B) interstitial voids (sites). The X-ray diffraction (XRD) intensity of each Bragg plane is sensitive to the distribution of cations in the interstitial voids of the spinel lattice. This leads to the method of determination of distribution of cations in the spinel oxides through XRD intensity analysis. The computer program for XRD intensity analysis has been developed in C language and also tested for the real experimental situation by synthesizing the spinel ferrite materials Mg0.6Zn0.4AlxFe2- xO4 and characterized them by X-ray diffractometry. The compositions of Mg0.6Zn0.4AlxFe2-xO4(x = 0.0 to 0.6) ferrites have been prepared by ceramic method and powder X-ray diffraction patterns were recorded. Thus, the authenticity of the program is checked by comparing the theoretically calculated data using computer simulation with the experimental ones. Further, the deduced cation distributions were used to fit the magnetization data using Localized canting of spins approach to explain the “recovery" of collinear spin structure due to Al3+ - substitution in Mg-Zn ferrites which is the case if A-site magnetic dilution and non-collinear spin structure. Since the distribution of cations in the spinel ferrites plays a very important role with regard to their electrical and magnetic properties, it is essential to determine the cation distribution in spinel lattice.
Abstract: In this article a modification of the algorithm of the fuzzy ART network, aiming at returning it supervised is carried out. It consists of the search for the comparison, training and vigilance parameters giving the minimum quadratic distances between the output of the training base and those obtained by the network. The same process is applied for the determination of the parameters of the fuzzy ARTMAP giving the most powerful network. The modification consist in making learn the fuzzy ARTMAP a base of examples not only once as it is of use, but as many time as its architecture is in evolution or than the objective error is not reached . In this way, we don-t worry about the values to impose on the eight (08) parameters of the network. To evaluate each one of these three networks modified, a comparison of their performances is carried out. As application we carried out a classification of the image of Algiers-s bay taken by SPOT XS. We use as criterion of evaluation the training duration, the mean square error (MSE) in step control and the rate of good classification per class. The results of this study presented as curves, tables and images show that modified fuzzy ARTMAP presents the best compromise quality/computing time.
Abstract: Efficient preprocessing is very essential for automatic
recognition of handwritten documents. In this paper, techniques on
segmenting words in handwritten Arabic text are presented. Firstly,
connected components (ccs) are extracted, and distances among
different components are analyzed. The statistical distribution of this
distance is then obtained to determine an optimal threshold for words
segmentation. Meanwhile, an improved projection based method is
also employed for baseline detection. The proposed method has been
successfully tested on IFN/ENIT database consisting of 26459
Arabic words handwritten by 411 different writers, and the results
were promising and very encouraging in more accurate detection of
the baseline and segmentation of words for further recognition.
Abstract: Perth will run out of available sustainable natural
water resources by 2015 if nothing is done to slow usage rates,
according to a Western Australian study [1]. Alternative water
technology options need to be considered for the long-term
guaranteed supply of water for agricultural, commercial, domestic
and industrial purposes. Seawater is an alternative source of water for
human consumption, because seawater can be desalinated and
supplied in large quantities to a very high quality.
While seawater desalination is a promising option, the technology
requires a large amount of energy which is typically generated from
fossil fuels. The combustion of fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases
(GHG) and, is implicated in climate change. In addition to
environmental emissions from electricity generation for desalination,
greenhouse gases are emitted in the production of chemicals and
membranes for water treatment. Since Australia is a signatory to the
Kyoto Protocol, it is important to quantify greenhouse gas emissions
from desalinated water production.
A life cycle assessment (LCA) has been carried out to determine
the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of 1 gigalitre (GL)
of water from the new plant. In this LCA analysis, a new desalination
plant that will be installed in Bunbury, Western Australia, and known
as Southern Seawater Desalinization Plant (SSDP), was taken as a
case study. The system boundary of the LCA mainly consists of three
stages: seawater extraction, treatment and delivery. The analysis
found that the equivalent of 3,890 tonnes of CO2 could be emitted
from the production of 1 GL of desalinated water. This LCA analysis
has also identified that the reverse osmosis process would cause the
most significant greenhouse emissions as a result of the electricity
used if this is generated from fossil fuels
Abstract: Wastages such as grated coconut meat, spent tea and used sugarcane had contributed negative impacts to the environment. Vermicomposting method is fully utilized to manage the wastes towards a more sustainable approach. The worms that are used in the vermicomposting are Eisenia foetida and Eudrillus euginae. This research shows that the vermicompost of wastages has voltage of electrical energy and is able to light up the Light-Emitting Diode (LED) device. Based on the experiment, the use of replicated and double compartments of the component will produce double of voltage. Hence, for conclusion, this harmless and low cost technology of vermicompost can act as a dry cell in order to reduce the usage of hazardous chemicals that can contaminate the environment.