Abstract: Recently studies in area of supply chain network
(SCN) have focused on the disruption issues in distribution systems.
Also this paper extends the previous literature by providing a new biobjective
model for cost minimization of designing a three echelon
SCN across normal and failure scenarios with considering multi
capacity option for manufacturers and distribution centers. Moreover,
in order to solve the problem by means of LINGO software, novel
model will be reformulated through a branch of LP-Metric method
called Min-Max approach.
Abstract: There have been different approaches to compute the
analytic instantaneous frequency with a variety of background reasoning
and applicability in practice, as well as restrictions. This paper presents an adaptive Fourier decomposition and (α-counting) based
instantaneous frequency computation approach. The adaptive Fourier
decomposition is a recently proposed new signal decomposition
approach. The instantaneous frequency can be computed through the so called mono-components decomposed by it. Due to the fast energy
convergency, the highest frequency of the signal will be discarded by the adaptive Fourier decomposition, which represents the noise of
the signal in most of the situation. A new instantaneous frequency
definition for a large class of so-called simple waves is also proposed
in this paper. Simple wave contains a wide range of signals for which
the concept instantaneous frequency has a perfect physical sense.
The α-counting instantaneous frequency can be used to compute the highest frequency for a signal. Combination of these two approaches one can obtain the IFs of the whole signal. An experiment is demonstrated the computation procedure with promising results.
Abstract: This paper describes an optimal approach for feature
subset selection to classify the leaves based on Genetic Algorithm
(GA) and Kernel Based Principle Component Analysis (KPCA). Due
to high complexity in the selection of the optimal features, the
classification has become a critical task to analyse the leaf image
data. Initially the shape, texture and colour features are extracted
from the leaf images. These extracted features are optimized through
the separate functioning of GA and KPCA. This approach performs
an intersection operation over the subsets obtained from the
optimization process. Finally, the most common matching subset is
forwarded to train the Support Vector Machine (SVM). Our
experimental results successfully prove that the application of GA
and KPCA for feature subset selection using SVM as a classifier is
computationally effective and improves the accuracy of the classifier.
Abstract: Recently, neural networks have shown good
results for detection of a certain pattern in a given image. In
our previous papers [1-5], a fast algorithm for pattern
detection using neural networks was presented. Such
algorithm was designed based on cross correlation in the
frequency domain between the input image and the weights
of neural networks. Image conversion into symmetric shape
was established so that fast neural networks can give the
same results as conventional neural networks. Another
configuration of symmetry was suggested in [3,4] to improve
the speed up ratio. In this paper, our previous algorithm for
fast neural networks is developed. The frequency domain
cross correlation is modified in order to compensate for the
symmetric condition which is required by the input image.
Two new ideas are introduced to modify the cross correlation
algorithm. Both methods accelerate the speed of the fast
neural networks as there is no need for converting the input
image into symmetric one as previous. Theoretical and
practical results show that both approaches provide faster
speed up ratio than the previous algorithm.
Abstract: This paper presents a methodology for operational and
economic characteristics based evaluation and selection of a power
plant using Graph theoretic approach. A universal evaluation index
on the basis of Operational and economics characteristics of a plant is
proposed which evaluates and ranks the various types of power plants.
The index thus obtained from the pool of operational characteristics
of the power plant attributes Digraph. The Digraph is developed
considering Operational and economics attributes of the power plants
and their relative importance for their smooth operation, installation
and commissioning and prioritizing their selection. The sensitivity
analysis of the attributes towards the objective has also been carried
out in order to study the impact of attributes over the desired outcome
i.e. the universal operational-economics index of the power plant.
Abstract: There are many debates now regarding undervalued
and overvalued currencies currently traded on the world financial
market. This paper contributes to these debates from a theoretical
point of view. We present the three most commonly used methods of
estimating the equilibrium real effective exchange rate (REER):
macroeconomic balance approach, external sustainability approach
and equilibrium real effective exchange rate approach in the reduced
form. Moreover, we discuss key concepts of the calculation of the
real exchange rate (RER) based on applied explanatory variables:
nominal exchange rates, terms of trade and tradable and non-tradable
goods. Last but not least, we discuss the three main driving forces
behind real exchange rates movements which include terms of trade,
relative productivity growth and the interest rate differential.
Abstract: We present a new approach to evaluation of Cyber Security in Power Systems using the method of modeling the power systems Infrastructure using software agents. Interfaces between module and the home smart meter are recognized as the primary points of intrusion.
Abstract: In the present article, effect of non-uniform excitation
of reservoir bottom on nonlinear response of concrete gravity dams is
considered. Anisotropic damage mechanics approach is used to model nonlinear behavior of mass concrete in 2D space. The tallest
monolith of Pine Flat dam is selected as a case study. The horizontal
and vertical components of 1967 Koyna earthquake is used to excite
the system. It is found that crest response and stresses within the dam body decrease significantly when the reservoir is excited nonuniformly. In addition, the crack profiles within the dam body and in vicinity of the neck decreases.
Abstract: Baseball is unique among other sports in Taiwan.
Baseball has become a “symbol of the Taiwanese spirit and Taiwan-s
national sport". Taiwan-s first professional sports league, the Chinese
Professional Baseball League (CPBL), was established in 1989.
Starters pitch many more innings over the course of a season and for
a century teams have made all their best pitchers starters. In this
study, we attempt to determine the on-field performance these
pitchers and which won the most CPBL games in 2009. We utilize
the discriminate analysis approach to solve the problem, examining
winning pitchers and their statistics, to reliably find the best starting
pitcher. The data employed in this paper include innings pitched (IP),
earned runs allowed (ERA) and walks plus hits per inning pitched
(WPHIP) provided by the official website of the CPBL. The results
show that Aaron Rakers was the best starting pitcher of the CPBL.
The top 10 CPBL starting pitchers won 14 games to 8 games in the
2009 season. Though Fisher Discriminant Analysis, predicted to top
10 CPBL starting pitchers probably won 20 games to 9 games, more
1 game to 7 games in actually counts in 2009 season.
Abstract: For any country the project management has been a
vital part for its development. The highly competitive business world
has created tremendous pressure on the project managers to achieve
success. The pressure is derived from survival and profit building in
business organizations which compels the project managers to pursue
unethical practices. As a result unethical activities in business
projects can be found easily where situations or issues arise due to
dubious business practice, high corruption, or absolute violation of
the law. The recent spur on Commonwealth games to be organized in
New Delhi indicates towards the same. It has been seen that the
project managers mainly focus on cost, time, and quality rather than
social impact and long term effects of the project. Surprisingly the
literature as well as the practitioner-s perspective also does not
identify the role of ethics in project success. This paper identifies
ethics as the fourth most important dimension in the project based
organizations. The paper predicts that the approach of considering
ethics will result in sustainability of the project. It will increase
satisfaction and loyalty of the customers as well as create harmony,
trust, brotherhood, values and morality among the team members.
This paper is conceptual in nature as inadequate literature exists
linking the project success with an ethical approach.
Abstract: The photonic component industry is a highly
innovative industry with a large value chain. In order to ensure the
growth of the industry much effort must be devoted to road mapping
activities. In such activities demand and price evolution forecasting
tools can prove quite useful in order to help in the roadmap
refinement and update process. This paper attempts to provide useful
guidelines in roadmapping of optical components and considers two
models based on diffusion theory and the extended learning curve for
demand and price evolution forecasting.
Abstract: Hierarchical high-level PNs (HHPNs) with time
versions are a useful tool to model systems in a variety of application
domains, ranging from logistics to complex workflows. This paper
addresses an application domain which is receiving more and more
attention: procedure that arranges the final inpatient charge in
payment-s office and their management. We shall prove that Petri net
based analysis is able to improve the delays during the procedure, in
order that inpatient charges could be more reliable and on time.
Abstract: This study proposes a materials procurement contracts
model to which the zero-cost collar option is applied for heading price
fluctuation risks in construction.The material contract model based on
the collar option that consists of the call option striking zone of the
construction company(the buyer) following the materials price
increase andthe put option striking zone of the material vendor(the
supplier) following a materials price decrease. This study first
determined the call option strike price Xc of the construction company
by a simple approach: it uses the predicted profit at the project starting
point and then determines the strike price of put option Xp that has an
identical option value, which completes the zero-cost material
contract.The analysis results indicate that the cost saving of the
construction company increased as Xc decreased. This was because the
critical level of the steel materials price increasewas set at a low level.
However, as Xc decreased, Xpof a put option that had an identical
option value gradually increased. Cost saving increased as Xc
decreased. However, as Xp gradually increased, the risk of loss from a
construction company increased as the steel materials price decreased.
Meanwhile, cost saving did not occur for the construction company,
because of volatility. This result originated in the zero-cost features of
the two-way contract of the collar option. In the case of the regular
one-way option, the transaction cost had to be subtracted from the cost
saving. The transaction cost originated from an option value that
fluctuated with the volatility. That is, the cost saving of the one-way
option was affected by the volatility. Meanwhile, even though the
collar option with zero transaction cost cut the connection between
volatility and cost saving, there was a risk of exercising the put option.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a hardware and software
design method for automotive Electronic Control Units (ECU)
considering the functional safety. The proposed ECU is considered for
the application to Electro-Mechanical Actuator systems and the
validity of the design method is shown by the application to the
Electro-Mechanical Brake (EMB) control system which is used as a
brake actuator in Brake-By-Wire (BBW) systems. The importance of a
functional safety-based design approach to EMB ECU design has been
emphasized because of its safety-critical functions, which are executed
with the aid of many electric actuators, sensors, and application
software. Based on hazard analysis and risk assessment according to
ISO26262, the EMB system should be ASIL-D-compliant, the highest
ASIL level. To this end, an external signature watchdog and an
Infineon 32-bit microcontroller TriCore are used to reduce risks
considering common-cause hardware failure. Moreover, a software
design method is introduced for implementing functional
safety-oriented monitoring functions based on an asymmetric dual
core architecture considering redundancy and diversity. The validity
of the proposed ECU design approach is verified by using the EMB
Hardware-In-the-Loop (HILS) system, which consists of the EMB
assembly, actuator ECU, a host PC, and a few debugging devices.
Furthermore, it is shown that the existing sensor fault tolerant control
system can be used more effectively for mitigating the effects of
hardware and software faults by applying the proposed ECU design
method.
Abstract: In this paper, a new approach for target recognition based on the Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm of Huang etal. [11] and the energy tracking operator of Teager [13]-[14] is introduced. The conjunction of these two methods is called Teager-Huang analysis. This approach is well suited for nonstationary signals analysis. The impulse response (IR) of target is first band pass filtered into subsignals (components) called Intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) with well defined Instantaneous frequency (IF) and Instantaneous amplitude (IA). Each IMF is a zero-mean AM-FM component. In second step, the energy of each IMF is tracked using the Teager energy operator (TEO). IF and IA, useful to describe the time-varying characteristics of the signal, are estimated using the Energy separation algorithm (ESA) algorithm of Maragos et al .[16]-[17]. In third step, a set of features such as skewness and kurtosis are extracted from the IF, IA and IMF energy functions. The Teager-Huang analysis is tested on set of synthetic IRs of Sonar targets with different physical characteristics (density, velocity, shape,? ). PCA is first applied to features to discriminate between manufactured and natural targets. The manufactured patterns are classified into spheres and cylinders. One hundred percent of correct recognition is achieved with twenty three echoes where sixteen IRs, used for training, are free noise and seven IRs, used for testing phase, are corrupted with white Gaussian noise.
Abstract: In this work, we are interested in developing a speech denoising tool by using a discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT). This speech denoising tool will be employed for applications of recognition, coding and synthesis. For noise reduction, instead of applying the classical thresholding technique, some wavelet packet nodes are set to zero and the others are thresholded. To estimate the non stationary noise level, we employ the spectral entropy. A comparison of our proposed technique to classical denoising methods based on thresholding and spectral subtraction is made in order to evaluate our approach. The experimental implementation uses speech signals corrupted by two sorts of noise, white and Volvo noises. The obtained results from listening tests show that our proposed technique is better than spectral subtraction. The obtained results from SNR computation show the superiority of our technique when compared to the classical thresholding method using the modified hard thresholding function based on u-law algorithm.
Abstract: This Paper proposes a new facial feature extraction approach, Wash-Hadamard Transform (WHT). This approach is based on correlation between local pixels of the face image. Its primary advantage is the simplicity of its computation. The paper compares the proposed approach, WHT, which was traditionally used in data compression with two other known approaches: the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) using the face database of Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL). In spite of its simple computation, the proposed algorithm (WHT) gave very close results to those obtained by the PCA and DCT. This paper initiates the research into WHT and the family of frequency transforms and examines their suitability for feature extraction in face recognition applications.
Abstract: It is important problems to increase the detection rates
and reduce false positive rates in Intrusion Detection System (IDS).
Although preventative techniques such as access control and
authentication attempt to prevent intruders, these can fail, and as a
second line of defence, intrusion detection has been introduced. Rare
events are events that occur very infrequently, detection of rare
events is a common problem in many domains. In this paper we
propose an intrusion detection method that combines Rough set and
Fuzzy Clustering. Rough set has to decrease the amount of data and
get rid of redundancy. Fuzzy c-means clustering allow objects to
belong to several clusters simultaneously, with different degrees of
membership. Our approach allows us to recognize not only known
attacks but also to detect suspicious activity that may be the result of
a new, unknown attack. The experimental results on Knowledge
Discovery and Data Mining-(KDDCup 1999) Dataset show that the
method is efficient and practical for intrusion detection systems.
Abstract: Coverage is one of the main research interests in wireless sensor networks (WSN), it is used to determine the quality of service (QoS) of the networks. Therefore this paper aims to review the common strategies use in solving coverage problem in WSN. The strategies studied are used during deployment phase where the coverage is calculated based on the placement of the sensors on the region of interest (ROI). The strategies reviewed are categorized into three groups based on the approaches used, namely; force based, grid based or computational geometry based approach.
Abstract: In the past many uneconomic solutions for limitation
and interruption of short-circuit currents in low power applications
have been introduced, especially polymer switch based on the
positive temperature coefficient of resistance (PCTR) concept.
However there are many limitations in the active material, which
consists of conductive fillers. This paper presents a significantly
improved and simplified approach that replaces the existing current
limiters with faster switching elements. Its elegance lies in the
remarkable simplicity and low-cost processes of producing the device
using polyaniline (PANI) doped with methane-sulfonic acid (MSA).
Samples characterized as lying in the metallic and critical regimes of
metal insulator transition have been studied by means of electrical
performance in the voltage range from 1V to 5 V under different
environmental conditions. Moisture presence is shown to increase the
resistivity and also improved its current limiting performance.
Additionally, the device has also been studied for electrical resistivity
in the temperature range 77 K-300 K. The temperature dependence of
the electrical conductivity gives evidence for a transport mechanism
based on variable range hopping in three dimensions.