Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of asymptotic tracking
control of a linear parabolic partial differential equation with indomain
point actuation. As the considered model is a non-standard
partial differential equation, we firstly developed a map that allows
transforming this problem into a standard boundary control problem
to which existing infinite-dimensional system control methods can
be applied. Then, a combination of energy multiplier and differential
flatness methods is used to design an asymptotic tracking controller.
This control scheme consists of stabilizing state-feedback derived
from the energy multiplier method and feed-forward control based
on the flatness property of the system. This approach represents
a systematic procedure to design tracking control laws for a class
of partial differential equations with in-domain point actuation. The
applicability and system performance are assessed by simulation
studies.
Abstract: In industrial scale of Gas to Liquid (GTL) process in
Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, a part of reactor outlet gases such as
CO2 and CH4 as side reaction products, is usually recycled. In this
study, the influence of CO2 and CH4 on the performance and
selectivity of Co-Ru/Al2O3 catalyst is investigated by injection of
these gases (0-20 vol. % of feed) to the feed stream. The effect of
temperature and feed flow rate, are also inspected. The results show
that low amounts of CO2 in the feed stream, doesn`t change the
catalyst activity significantly but increasing the amount of CO2 (more
than 10 vol. %) cause the CO conversion to decrease and the
selectivity of heavy components to increase. Methane acts as an inert
gas and doesn`t affect the catalyst performance. Increasing feed flow
rate has negative effect on both CO conversion and heavy component
selectivity. By raising the temperature, CO conversion will increase
but there are more volatile components in the product. The effect of
CO2 on the catalyst deactivation is also investigated carefully and a
mechanism is suggested to explain the negative influence of CO2 on
catalyst deactivation.
Abstract: In sport, human resources management gives special
attention to method of applying volunteers, their maintenance, and
participation of volunteers with each other and management
approaches for better operation of events celebrants. The recognition
of volunteers- characteristics and motives is important to notice,
because it makes the basis of their participation and commitment at
sport environment. The motivation and commitment of 281
volunteers were assessed using the organizational commitment scale,
motivation scale and personal characteristics questionnaire.The
descriptive results showed that; 64% of volunteers were women with
age average 21/24 years old. They were physical education student,
single (71/9%), without occupation (53%) and with average of 5
years sport experience. Their most important motivation was career
factor and the most important commitment factor was normative
factor. The results of examining the hypothesized showed that; age,
sport experience and education are effective in the amount of
volunteers- commitment. And the motive factors such as career,
material, purposive and protective factors also have the power to
predict the amount of sports volunteers- commitment value.
Therefore it is recommended to provide possible opportunities for
volunteers and carrying out appropriate instructional courses by
events executive managers.
Abstract: In this research, Forming Limit Diagrams for supertension
sheet metals which are using in automobile industry have
been obtained. The exerted strains to sheet metals have been
measured with four different methods and the errors of each method
have also been represented. These methods have been compared with
together and the most efficient and economic way of extracting of the
exerted strains to sheet metals has been introduced. In this paper total
error and uncertainty of FLD extraction procedures have been
derived. Determination of the measurement uncertainty in extracting
of FLD has a great importance in design and analysis of the sheet
metal forming process.
Abstract: Nowadays, consumption of whole flours and flours
with high extraction rate is recommended, because of their high
amount of fibers, vitamins and minerals. Despite nutritional benefits
of whole flour, concentration of some undesirable components such
as phytic acid is higher than white flour. In this study, effect of
several lactic acid bacteria sourdough on Toast bread is investigated.
Sourdough from lactic acid bacteria (Lb. plantarum, Lb. reuteri) with
different dough yield (250 and 300) is made and incubated at 30°C
for 20 hour, then added to dough in the ratio of 10, 20 and 30%
replacement. Breads that supplemented with Lb. plantarum
sourdough had lower phytic acid. Higher replacement of sourdough
and higher DY cause higher decrease in phytic acid content.
Sourdough from Lb. plantarum, DY = 300 and 30% replacement
cause the highest decrease in phytic acid content (49.63 mg/100g).
As indicated by panelists, Lb. reuteri sourdough can present the
greatest effect on overall quality score of the breads. DY reduction
cause a decrease in bread quality score. Sensory score of Toast bread
is 81.71 in the samples that treated with Lb. reuteri sourdough with
DY = 250 and 20% replacement.
Abstract: A total of twenty tensile biopsies were collected from
children undergoing tonsillectomy from teaching hospital ENT
department and Kurdistan private hospital in sulaimani city. All
biopsies were homogenized and cultured; the obtained bacterial
isolates were purified and identified by biochemical tests and VITEK
2 compact system. Among the twenty studied samples, only one
Pseudomonas putida with probability of 99% was isolated.
Antimicrobial susceptibility was carried out by disk diffusion
method, Pseudomonas putida showed resistance to all antibiotics
used except vancomycin. The isolate further subjected to PCR and
DNA sequence analysis of blaVIM gene using different set of primers
for different regions of VIM gene. The results were found to be PCR
positive for the blaVIM gene. To determine the sequence of blaVIM
gene, DNA sequencing performed. Sequence alignment of blaVIM
gene with previously recorded blaVIM gene in NCBI- database showed
that P. putida isolate have different blaVIM gene.
Abstract: The effect of different combinations of response
feedback on the performance of active control system on nonlinear
frames has been studied in this paper. To this end different feedback
combinations including displacement, velocity, acceleration and full
response feedback have been utilized in controlling the response of
an eight story bilinear hysteretic frame which has been subjected to a
white noise excitation and controlled by eight actuators which could
fully control the frame. For active control of nonlinear frame
Newmark nonlinear instantaneous optimal control algorithm has been
used which a diagonal matrix has been selected for weighting
matrices in performance index. For optimal design of active control
system while the objective has been to reduce the maximum drift to
below the yielding level, Distributed Genetic Algorithm (DGA) has
been used to determine the proper set of weighting matrices. The
criteria to assess the effect of each combination of response feedback
have been the minimum required control force to reduce the
maximum drift to below the yielding drift. The results of numerical
simulation show that the performance of active control system is
dependent on the type of response feedback where the velocity
feedback is more effective in designing optimal control system in
comparison with displacement and acceleration feedback. Also using
full feedback of response in controller design leads to minimum
control force amongst other combinations. Also the distributed
genetic algorithm shows acceptable convergence speed in solving the
optimization problem of designing active control systems.
Abstract: Within the last years, several technologies have been developed to help building e-learning portals. Most of them follow approaches that deliver a vast amount of functionalities, suitable for class-like learning. The SuGI project, as part of the D-Grid (funded by the BMBF), targets on delivering a highly scalable and sustainable learning solution to provide materials (e.g. learning modules, training systems, webcasts, tutorials, etc.) containing knowledge about Grid computing to the D-Grid community. In this article, the process of the development of an e-learning portal focused on the requirements of this special user group is described. Furthermore, it deals with the conceptual and technical design of an e-learning portal, addressing the special needs of heterogeneous target groups. The main focus lies on the quality management of the software development process, Web templates for uploading new contents, the rich search and filter functionalities which will be described from a conceptual as well as a technical point of view. Specifically, it points out best practices as well as concepts to provide a sustainable solution to a relatively unknown and highly heterogeneous community.
Abstract: The birdhouses and dovecotes, which are the indicator
of naturalness and human-animal relationship, are one of the
traditional cultural values of Turkey. With their structures compatible
with nature and respectful to humans the bird houses and dovecotes,
which have an important position in local urbanization models as a
representative of the civil architecture with their unique form and
function are important subjects that should be evaluated in a wide
frame comprising from architecture to urbanism, from ecologic
agriculture to globalization. The traditional bird houses and
dovecotes are disregarded due to the insensitivity affecting the city
life and the change in the public sense of art. In this study, the
characteristic properties of traditional dovecotes and birdhouses,
started in 13th century and ended in 19th century in Anatolia, are
tried to be defined for the sustainability of the tradition and for giving
a new direction to the designers.
Abstract: Application of neural networks in execution of
programmed pulse width modulation (PPWM) of a voltage source
inverter (VSI) is studied in this paper. Using the proposed method it is
possible to cancel out the desired harmonics in output of VSI in
addition to control the magnitude of fundamental harmonic,
contineously. By checking the non-trained values and a performance
index, the most appropriate neural network is proposed. It is shown
that neural networks may solve the custom difficulties of practical
utilization of PPWM such as large size of memory, complex digital
circuits and controlling the magnitude of output voltage in a discrete
manner.
Abstract: A major challenge in biomaterials research is the
regulation of protein adsorption which is a key factor for controlling
the subsequent cell adhesion at implant surfaces. The aim of the
present study was to control the adsorption of fibronectin (FN) and
the attachment of MG-63 osteoblasts with an electronic
nanostructure. Shallow doping line lattices with a period of 260 nm
were produced for this purpose by implantation of phosphorous in
silicon wafers. Protein coverage was determined after incubating the
substrate with FN by means of an immunostaining procedure and the
measurement of the fluorescence intensity with a TECAN analyzer.
We observed an increased amount of adsorbed FN on the
nanostructure compared to control substrates. MG-63 osteoblasts
were cultivated for 24h on FN-incubated substrates and their
morphology was assessed by SEM. Preferred orientation and
elongation of the cells in direction of the doping lattice lines was
observed on FN-coated nanostructures.
Abstract: Frequently a group of people jointly decide and authorize
a specific person as a representative in some business/poitical
occasions, e.g., the board of a company authorizes the chief executive
officer to close a multi-billion acquisition deal. In this paper, an
integrated proxy multi-signature scheme that allows anonymously
vetoable delegation is proposed. This protocol integrates mechanisms
of private veto, distributed proxy key generation, secure transmission
of proxy key, and existentially unforgeable proxy multi-signature
scheme. First, a provably secure Guillou-Quisquater proxy signature
scheme is presented, then the “zero-sharing" protocol is extended
over a composite modulus multiplicative group, and finally the above
two are combined to realize the GQ proxy multi-signature with
anonymously vetoable delegation. As a proxy signature scheme, this
protocol protects both the original signers and the proxy signer.
The modular design allows simplified implementation with less
communication overheads and better computation performance than
a general secure multi-party protocol.
Abstract: Ratio and regression type estimators have been used by previous authors to estimate a population mean for the principal variable from samples in which both auxiliary x and principal y variable data are available. However, missing data are a common problem in statistical analyses with real data. Ratio and regression type estimators have also been used for imputing values of missing y data. In this paper, six new ratio and regression type estimators are proposed for imputing values for any missing y data and estimating a population mean for y from samples with missing x and/or y data. A simulation study has been conducted to compare the six ratio and regression type estimators with a previous estimator of Rueda. Two population sizes N = 1,000 and 5,000 have been considered with sample sizes of 10% and 30% and with correlation coefficients between population variables X and Y of 0.5 and 0.8. In the simulations, 10 and 40 percent of sample y values and 10 and 40 percent of sample x values were randomly designated as missing. The new ratio and regression type estimators give similar mean absolute percentage errors that are smaller than the Rueda estimator for all cases. The new estimators give a large reduction in errors for the case of 40% missing y values and sampling fraction of 30%.
Abstract: This paper describes the application of a model
predictive controller to the problem of batch reactor temperature
control. Although a great deal of work has been done to improve
reactor throughput using batch sequence control, the control of the
actual reactor temperature remains a difficult problem for many
operators of these processes. Temperature control is important as
many chemical reactions are sensitive to temperature for formation of
desired products. This controller consist of two part (1) a nonlinear
control method GLC (Global Linearizing Control) to create a linear
model of system and (2) a Model predictive controller used to obtain
optimal input control sequence. The temperature of reactor is tuned
to track a predetermined temperature trajectory that applied to the
batch reactor. To do so two input signals, electrical powers and the
flow of coolant in the coil are used. Simulation results show that the
proposed controller has a remarkable performance for tracking
reference trajectory while at the same time it is robust against noise
imposed to system output.
Abstract: In the globalized e-learning environment, students coming from different cultures and countries have different characteristics and require different support designed for their approaches to study and learning styles. This paper explores the ways in which cultural background influences students- approaches to study and learning styles. Participants in the study consisted of 131 eastern students and 54 western students from an Australian university. The students were tested using the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) for assessing their approaches to study and the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (ILS) for assessing their learning styles. The results of the study led to a set of principles being proposed to guide personalization of e-learning system design on the basis of cultural differences.
Abstract: In this paper, an automatic guided mobile robot using a new magnetic position meter is described. In order to measure the lateral position of a mobile robot, a new magnetic position meter is developed. The magnetic position meter can detect the position of a magnetic wire on the center of road. A mobile robot in designed with a sensing system, a steering system and a driving system. The designed mobile robot is tested to verify the performance of automatic guidance.
Abstract: This paper presents the investigation results of UV
measurement at different level of altitudes and the development of a
new portable instrument for measuring UV. The rapid growth of
industrial sectors in developing countries including Malaysia, brings
not only income to the nation, but also causes pollution in various
forms. Air pollution is one of the significant contributors to global
warming by depleting the Ozone layer, which would reduce the
filtration of UV rays. Long duration of exposure to high to UV rays
has many devastating health effects to mankind directly or indirectly
through destruction of the natural resources. This study aimed to
show correlation between UV and altitudes which indirectly can help
predict Ozone depletion. An instrument had been designed to
measure and monitors the level of UV. The instrument comprises of
two main blocks namely data logger and Graphic User Interface
(GUI). Three sensors were used in the data logger to detect changes
in the temperature, humidity and ultraviolet. The system has
undergone experimental measurement to capture data at two different
conditions; industrial area and high attitude area. The performance of
the instrument showed consistency in the data captured and the
results of the experiment drew a significantly high reading of UV at
high altitudes.
Abstract: Field experiments were carried out at Owo, southwest Nigeria to evaluate the effect of different tillage practices (zero tillage with mulch (ZTM), row tillage (RT) and conventional tillage (CT), and with or without oil palm bunch ash plus poultry manure (OBA+PM) on soil chemical properties, growth and yield of ginger. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete plot design with three replications. Soil chemical properties, growth and fresh rhizome yield reduced with frequency/intensity of tillage imposed while application of OBA+PM increased them. Among the tillage practices, the highest fresh rhizome yield (15.0t ha-1) was produced by ZTM which was significantly different from other tillage practices. Among the tillage – OBA+PM combinations, the most satisfactorily yield (20.1t ha-1) was produced by ZTM+OBA+PM while the lowest yield (15.7t ha-1) was in CT+OBA+PM.
Abstract: The evolutionary tree is an important topic in bioinformation. In 2006, Chen and Lindsay proposed a new method to build the mixture tree from DNA sequences. Mixture tree is a new type evolutionary tree, and it has two additional information besides the information of ordinary evolutionary tree. One of the information is time parameter, and the other is the set of mutated sites. In 2008, Lin and Juan proposed an algorithm to compute the distance between two mixture trees. Their algorithm computes the distance with only considering the time parameter between two mixture trees. In this paper, we proposes a method to measure the similarity of two mixture trees with considering the set of mutated sites and develops two algorithm to compute the distance between two mixture trees. The time complexity of these two proposed algorithms are O(n2 × max{h(T1), h(T2)}) and O(n2), respectively
Abstract: In the present work, the performance of the particle
swarm optimization and the genetic algorithm compared as a typical
geometry design problem. The design maximizes the heat transfer
rate from a given fin volume. The analysis presumes that a linear
temperature distribution along the fin. The fin profile generated using
the B-spline curves and controlled by the change of control point
coordinates. An inverse method applied to find the appropriate fin
geometry yield the linear temperature distribution along the fin
corresponds to optimum design. The numbers of the populations, the
count of iterations and time to convergence measure efficiency.
Results show that the particle swarm optimization is most efficient
for geometry optimization.