Abstract: This paper discusses a new, systematic approach to
the synthesis of a NP-hard class of non-regenerative Boolean
networks, described by FON[FOFF]={mi}[{Mi}], where for every
mj[Mj]∈{mi}[{Mi}], there exists another mk[Mk]∈{mi}[{Mi}], such
that their Hamming distance HD(mj, mk)=HD(Mj, Mk)=O(n), (where
'n' represents the number of distinct primary inputs). The method
automatically ensures exact minimization for certain important selfdual
functions with 2n-1 points in its one-set. The elements meant for
grouping are determined from a newly proposed weighted incidence
matrix. Then the binary value corresponding to the candidate pair is
correlated with the proposed binary value matrix to enable direct
synthesis. We recommend algebraic factorization operations as a post
processing step to enable reduction in literal count. The algorithm
can be implemented in any high level language and achieves best
cost optimization for the problem dealt with, irrespective of the
number of inputs. For other cases, the method is iterated to
subsequently reduce it to a problem of O(n-1), O(n-2),.... and then
solved. In addition, it leads to optimal results for problems exhibiting
higher degree of adjacency, with a different interpretation of the
heuristic, and the results are comparable with other methods.
In terms of literal cost, at the technology independent stage, the
circuits synthesized using our algorithm enabled net savings over
AOI (AND-OR-Invert) logic, AND-EXOR logic (EXOR Sum-of-
Products or ESOP forms) and AND-OR-EXOR logic by 45.57%,
41.78% and 41.78% respectively for the various problems.
Circuit level simulations were performed for a wide variety of
case studies at 3.3V and 2.5V supply to validate the performance of
the proposed method and the quality of the resulting synthesized
circuits at two different voltage corners. Power estimation was
carried out for a 0.35micron TSMC CMOS process technology. In
comparison with AOI logic, the proposed method enabled mean
savings in power by 42.46%. With respect to AND-EXOR logic, the
proposed method yielded power savings to the tune of 31.88%, while
in comparison with AND-OR-EXOR level networks; average power
savings of 33.23% was obtained.
Abstract: From past many decades human beings are suffering
from plethora of natural disasters. Occurrence of disasters is a
frequent process; it changes conceptual myths as more and more
advancement are made. Although we are living in technological era
but in developing countries like Pakistan disasters are shaped by
socially constructed roles. The need is to understand the most
vulnerable group of society i.e. females; their issues are complex in
nature because of undermined gender status in the society. There is a
need to identify maximum issues regarding females and to enhance
the achievement of millennium development goals (MDGs). Gender
issues are of great concern all around the globe including Pakistan.
Here female visibility in society is low, and also during disasters, the
failure to understand the reality that concentrates on double burden
including productive and reproductive care. Women have to
contribute a lot in society so we need to make them more disaster
resilient. For this non-structural measures like awareness, trainings
and education must be carried out. In rural and in urban settings in
any disaster like earthquake or flood, elements like gender
perspective, their age, physical health, demographic issues contribute
towards vulnerability. In Pakistan the gender issues in disasters were
of less concern before 2005 earthquake and 2010 floods. Significant
achievements are made after 2010 floods when gender and child cell
was created to provide all facilities to women and girls. The aim of
the study is to highlight all necessary facilities in a disaster to build
coping mechanism in females from basic rights till advance level
including education.
Abstract: Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) has many
applications in traffic systems (highway electronic toll collection, red
light violation enforcement, border and customs checkpoints, etc.).
License Plate Recognition is an effective form of AVI systems. In
this study, a smart and simple algorithm is presented for vehicle-s
license plate recognition system. The proposed algorithm consists of
three major parts: Extraction of plate region, segmentation of
characters and recognition of plate characters. For extracting the
plate region, edge detection algorithms and smearing algorithms are
used. In segmentation part, smearing algorithms, filtering and some
morphological algorithms are used. And finally statistical based
template matching is used for recognition of plate characters. The
performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested on real
images. Based on the experimental results, we noted that our
algorithm shows superior performance in car license plate
recognition.
Abstract: Salinity is a measure of the amount of salts in the
water. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) as salinity parameter are often
determined using laborious and time consuming laboratory tests, but
it may be more appropriate and economical to develop a method
which uses a more simple soil salinity index. Because dissolved ions
increase salinity as well as conductivity, the two measures are
related. The aim of this research was determine of constant
coefficients for predicting of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) based on
Electrical Conductivity (EC) with Statistics of Correlation
coefficient, Root mean square error, Maximum error, Mean Bias
error, Mean absolute error, Relative error and Coefficient of residual
mass. For this purpose, two experimental areas (S1, S2) of Khuzestan
province-IRAN were selected and four treatments with three
replications by series of double rings were applied. The treatments
were included 25cm, 50cm, 75cm and 100cm water application. The
results showed the values 16.3 & 12.4 were the best constant
coefficients for predicting of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) based on
EC in Pilot S1 and S2 with correlation coefficient 0.977 & 0.997 and
191.1 & 106.1 Root mean square errors (RMSE) respectively.
Abstract: This paper studies the duration or survival time of commercial banks active in the Moscovian three month Rouble deposits market, during the 1994-1997 period. The privatization process of the Russian commercial banking industry, after the 1988 banking reform, caused a massive entry of new banks followed by a period of high rates of exit. As a consequence, many firms went bankrupt without refunding their deposits. Therefore, both for the banks and for the banks- depositors, it is of interest to analyze which are the significant characteristics that motivate the exit or the closing of the bank. We propose a different methodology based on penalized weighted least squares which represents a very general, flexible and innovative approach for this type of analysis. The more relevant results are that smaller banks exit sooner, banks that enter the market in the last part of the study have shorter durations. As expected, the more experienced banks have a longer duration in the market. In addition, the mean survival time is lower for banks which offer extreme interest rates.
Abstract: Several methods have been proposed for color image
compression but the reconstructed image had very low signal to noise
ratio which made it inefficient. This paper describes a lossy
compression technique for color images which overcomes the
drawbacks. The technique works on spatial domain where the pixel
values of RGB planes of the input color image is mapped onto two
dimensional planes. The proposed technique produced better results
than JPEG2000, 2DPCA and a comparative study is reported based
on the image quality measures such as PSNR and MSE.Experiments
on real time images are shown that compare this methodology with
previous ones and demonstrate its advantages.
Abstract: Isobaric vapor-liquid equilibrium measurements are
reported for binary mixture of 2-Methyltetrahydrofuran and Cumene
at 97.3 kPa. The data were obtained using a vapor recirculating type
(modified Othmer's) equilibrium still. The mixture shows slight
negative deviation from ideality. The system does not form an
azeotrope. The experimental data obtained in this study are
thermodynamically consistent according to the Herington test. The
activity coefficients have been satisfactorily correlated by means of
the Margules, and NRTL equations. Excess Gibbs free energy has
been calculated from the experimental data. The values of activity
coefficients have also been obtained by the UNIFAC group
contribution method.
Abstract: Water is the main component of biological processes.
Water management is important to obtain higher productivity. In this
study, some of the yield components were investigated together with
different drought levels. Four chickpea genotypes (CDC Frontier,
CDC Luna, Sawyer and Sierra) were grown in pots with 3 different
irrigation levels (a dose of 17.5 ml, 35 ml and 70 ml for each pot per
day) after three weeks from sowing. In the research, flowering, pod
set, pod per plant, fertile pod, double seed/pod, stem diameter, plant
weight, seed per plant, 1000 seed weight, seed diameter, vegetation
length and weekly plant height were measured. Consequently,
significant differences were observed on all the investigated
characteristics owing to genotypes (except double seed/pod and stem
diameter), water levels (except first pod, seed weight and height on
3rd week) and genotype x water level interaction (except first pod,
double seed/pod, seed weight and height).
Abstract: This paper presents the possibilities of using Weibull statistical distribution in modeling the distribution of defects in ERP systems. There follows a case study, which examines helpdesk records of defects that were reported as the result of one ERP subsystem upgrade. The result of the applied modeling is in modeling the reliability of the ERP system from a user perspective with estimated parameters like expected maximum number of defects in one day or predicted minimum of defects between two upgrades. Applied measurement-based analysis framework is proved to be suitable in predicting future states of the reliability of the observed ERP subsystems.
Abstract: In this paper a novel method for multiple one dimensional real valued sinusoidal signal frequency estimation in the presence of additive Gaussian noise is postulated. A computationally simple frequency estimation method with efficient statistical performance is attractive in many array signal processing applications. The prime focus of this paper is to combine the subspace-based technique and a simple peak search approach. This paper presents a variant of the Propagator Method (PM), where a collaborative approach of SUMWE and Propagator method is applied in order to estimate the multiple real valued sine wave frequencies. A new data model is proposed, which gives the dimension of the signal subspace is equal to the number of frequencies present in the observation. But, the signal subspace dimension is twice the number of frequencies in the conventional MUSIC method for estimating frequencies of real-valued sinusoidal signal. The statistical analysis of the proposed method is studied, and the explicit expression of asymptotic (large-sample) mean-squared-error (MSE) or variance of the estimation error is derived. The performance of the method is demonstrated, and the theoretical analysis is substantiated through numerical examples. The proposed method can achieve sustainable high estimation accuracy and frequency resolution at a lower SNR, which is verified by simulation by comparing with conventional MUSIC, ESPRIT and Propagator Method.
Abstract: Properties of cement pastes with fine-ground ceramics
used as an alternative binder replacing Portland cement up to 20% of
its mass are investigated. At first, the particle size distribution of
cement and fine-ground ceramics is measured using laser analyser.
Then, the material properties are studied in the early hardening
period up to 28 days. The hydration process of studied materials is
monitored by electrical conductivity measurement using TDR
sensors. The changes of materials- structures within the hardening are
observed using pore size distribution measurement. The compressive
strength measurements are done as well. Experimental results show
that the replacement of Portland cement by fine-ground ceramics in
the amount of up to 20% by mass is acceptable solution from the
mechanical point of view. One can also assume similar physical
properties of designed materials to the reference material with only
Portland cement as binder.
Abstract: A CFD study on heat flux reduction in hypersonic flow with opposing jet has been conducted. Flowfield parameters, reattachment point position, surface pressure distributions and heat flux distributions are obtained and validated with experiments. The physical mechanism of heat reduction has been analyzed. When the opposing jet blows, the freestream is blocked off, flows to the edges and not interacts with the surface to form aerodynamic heating. At the same time, the jet flows back to form cool recirculation region, which reduces the difference in temperature between the surface and the nearby gas, and then reduces the heat flux. As the pressure ratio increases, the interface between jet and freestream is gradually pushed away from the surface. Larger the total pressure ratio is, lower the heat flux is. To study the effect of the intensity of opposing jet more reasonably, a new parameter RPA has been introduced by combining the flux and the total pressure ratio. The study shows that the same shock wave position and total heat load can be obtained with the same RPA with different fluxes and the total pressures, which means the new parameter could stand for the intensity of opposing jet and could be used to analyze the influence of opposing jet on flow field and aerodynamic heating.
Abstract: In the analysis of structures, the nonlinear effects due to large displacement, large rotation and materially-nonlinear are very important and must be considered for the reliable analysis. The non-linear fmite element analysis has potential as usable and reliable means for analyzing of civil structures with the availability of computer technology. In this research the large displacements and materially nonlinear behavior of shear wall is presented with developing of fmite element code using the standard Galerkin weighted residual formulation. Two-dimensional plane stress model was carried out to present the shear wall response. Total Lagangian formulation, which is computationally more effective, is used in the formulation of stiffness matrices and the Newton-Raphson method is applied for the solution of nonlinear transient equations. The details of the program formulation are highlighted and the results of the analyses are presented, along with a comparison of the response of the structure with Ansys software results. The presented model in this paper can be developed for nonlinear analysis of civil engineering structures with different material behavior and complicated geometry.
Abstract: The burst noise is a kind of noises that are destructive
and frequently found in semiconductor devices and ICs, yet detecting
and removing the noise has proved challenging for IC designers or users. According to the properties of burst noise, a methodological
approach is presented (proposed) in the paper, by which the burst noise
can be analysed and detected in time domain. In this paper, principles
and properties of burst noise are expounded first, Afterwards,
feasibility (viable) of burst noise detection by means of wavelet
transform in the time domain is corroborated in the paper, and the multi-resolution characters of Gaussian noise, burst noise and blurred
burst noise are discussed in details by computer emulation. Furthermore, the practical method to decide parameters of wavelet
transform is acquired through a great deal of experiment and data statistics. The methodology may yield an expectation in a wide variety of applications.
Abstract: Several different cements have been tested to evaluate
their potential to leach calcium, chromium and aluminum ions in soft
water environment. The research allows comparing some different
cements in order to the potential risk of water contamination. This
can be done only in the same environment. To reach the results in
reasonable short time intervals and to make heavy metals
measurements with high accuracy, demineralized water was used. In
this case the conditions of experiments are far away from the water
supply practice, but short time experiments and measurably high
concentrations of elements in the water solution are an important
advantage. Moreover leaching mechanisms can be recognized, our
experiments reported here refer to this kind of cements evaluation.
Abstract: The velocity of a moving point in a general path is the vector quantity, which has both magnitude and direction. The magnitude or the direction of the velocity vector can change over time as a result of acceleration that the time rate of velocity changes. Acceleration analysis is important because inertial forces and inertial torques are proportional to rectilinear and angular accelerations accordingly. The loads must be determined in advance to ensure that a machine is adequately designed to handle these dynamic loads. For planar motion, the vector direction of acceleration is commonly separated into two elements: tangential and centripetal or radial components of a point on a rotating body. All textbooks in physics, kinematics and dynamics of machinery consider the magnitude of a radial acceleration at condition when a point rotates with a constant angular velocity and it means without acceleration. The magnitude of the tangential acceleration considered on a basis of acceleration for a rotating point. Such condition of presentation of magnitudes for two components of acceleration logically and mathematically is not correct and may cause further confusion in calculation. This paper presents new analytical expressions of the radial and absolute accelerations of a rotating point with acceleration and covers the gap in theoretical study of acceleration analysis.
Abstract: The combustion of liquid fuel in the porous burner
(PB) was experimented to investigate evaporation mechanism and
combustion behavior. The diesel oil was used as fuel and the pebbles
carefully chosen in the same size like the solid sphere homogeneously
was adopted as the porous media. Two structures of the liquid porous
burner, i.e. the PB without and with installation of porous emitter
(PE), were performed. PE was installed by lower than PB with
distance of 20 cm. The pebbles having porosity (φ) of 0.45 and 0.52
were, respectively, used in PB and PE. The fuel was supplied dropwise
from the top through the PB and the combustion was occurred between
PB and PE. Axial profiles of temperature along the burner length were
measured to clarify the evaporation and combustion phenomena. The
pollutant emission characteristics were monitored at the burner exit.
From the experiment, it was found that the temperature profiles of both
structures decreased with the three ways swirling air flows (QA)
increasing. On the other hand, the temperature profiles increased with
fuel heat input (QF). Obviously, the profile of the porous burner
installed with PE was higher than that of the porous burner without
PE
Abstract: Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) aims at searching image databases for specific images that are similar to a given query image based on matching of features derived from the image content. This paper focuses on a low-dimensional color based indexing technique for achieving efficient and effective retrieval performance. In our approach, the color features are extracted using the mean shift algorithm, a robust clustering technique. Then the cluster (region) mode is used as representative of the image in 3-D color space. The feature descriptor consists of the representative color of a region and is indexed using a spatial indexing method that uses *R -tree thus avoiding the high-dimensional indexing problems associated with the traditional color histogram. Alternatively, the images in the database are clustered based on region feature similarity using Euclidian distance. Only representative (centroids) features of these clusters are indexed using *R -tree thus improving the efficiency. For similarity retrieval, each representative color in the query image or region is used independently to find regions containing that color. The results of these methods are compared. A JAVA based query engine supporting query-by- example is built to retrieve images by color.
Abstract: A wrist-band type biosignal measurement system and its data transfer through human body communication (HBC) were investigated. An HBC method based on pulses of ultra-wide band instead of using frequency or amplitude modulations was studied and implemented since the system became very compact and it was more suited for personal or mobile health monitoring. Our system measured photo-plethysmogram (PPG) and measured PPG signals were transmitted through a finger to a monitoring PC system. The device was compact and low-power consuming. HBC communication has very strongsecurity measures since it does not use wireless network.Furthermore, biosignal monitoring system becomes handy because it does not need to have wire connections.
Abstract: The use of additions in cement in manufacturing,
mortar and concrete offers economic and ecological advantages. Cements with additions such as limestone, slag and natural
pouzzolana are produced in cement factories in Algeria. Several studies analyzed the effect of these additions on the physical and
mechanical properties as well as the durability of concrete. However,
few studies were conducted on the effect of local metakaolin on
mechanical properties and durability of concrete. The main purpose
of this paper is to analyze the performance of mortar and concrete with local metakaolin. The preparation of the metakaolin was carried
out by calcination of kaolin at a temperature of 850 °C for a period of 3 hours. The experimental results have shown that the rates of
substitutions of 10 and 15% metakaolin increases the compressive
strength and flexural strength at both early age and long term. The durability and the permeability were also improved by reducing the
coefficient of sorptivity.