Abstract: Malaysia is aggressive in promoting the usage of ICT
to its mass population through the support by the government
policies and programs targeting the general population. However,
with the uneven distribution of the basic telecommunication
infrastructure between the urban and rural area, cost for being
“interconnected" that is considered high among the poorer rural
population and the lack of local contents that suit the rural population
needs or lifestyles, it is still a challenge for Malaysia to achieve its
Vision 2020 Agenda moving the nation towards an information
society by the year 2020. Among the existing programs that have
been carried out by the government to encourage the usage of ICT by
the rural population is “Kedaikom", a community telecenter with the
general aim is to engage the community to get exposed and to use the
ICT, encouraging the diffusion of the ICT technology to the rural
population. The research investigated by using a questionnaire
survey of how Kedaikom, as a community telecenter could play a
role in encouraging the rural or underserved community to use the
ICT. The result from the survey has proven that the community
telecenter could bridge the digital divide between the underserved
rural population and the well-accessed urban population in Malaysia.
More of the rural population, especially from the younger generation
and those with higher educational background are using the
community telecenter to be connected to the ICT.
Abstract: Added stresses due to adjacent structure should be
considered in foundation design and stress control in soil under the structure. This case is considered less than other cases in design and
calculation whereas stresses in implementation are greater than analytical stress.
Structure load are transmitted to earth by foundation and role of foundation is propagation of load on the continuous and half extreme
soil. This act cause that, present stresses lessen to allowable strength
of soil. Some researchers such as Boussinesq and westergaurd by
using of some assumption studied on this issue, theorically. Target of
this paper is study and evaluation of added stresses under structure
due to adjacent structure. For this purpose, by using of assumption, theoric relation and numeral methods, effects of adjacent structure
with 4 to 10 storeys on the main structure with 4 storeys are studied
and effect of parameters and sensitivity of them are evaluated.
Abstract: This article presents the results using a parametric approach and a Wavelet Transform in analysing signals emitting from the sperm whale. The extraction of intrinsic characteristics of these unique signals emitted by marine mammals is still at present a difficult exercise for various reasons: firstly, it concerns non-stationary signals, and secondly, these signals are obstructed by interfering background noise. In this article, we compare the advantages and disadvantages of both methods: Auto Regressive models and Wavelet Transform. These approaches serve as an alternative to the commonly used estimators which are based on the Fourier Transform for which the hypotheses necessary for its application are in certain cases, not sufficiently proven. These modern approaches provide effective results particularly for the periodic tracking of the signal's characteristics and notably when the signal-to-noise ratio negatively effects signal tracking. Our objectives are twofold. Our first goal is to identify the animal through its acoustic signature. This includes recognition of the marine mammal species and ultimately of the individual animal (within the species). The second is much more ambitious and directly involves the intervention of cetologists to study the sounds emitted by marine mammals in an effort to characterize their behaviour. We are working on an approach based on the recordings of marine mammal signals and the findings from this data result from the Wavelet Transform. This article will explore the reasons for using this approach. In addition, thanks to the use of new processors, these algorithms once heavy in calculation time can be integrated in a real-time system.
Abstract: The basis of examines is survey of 500 in the years
2002-2010, which was selected according to homogeneity of land
cover and where 1090 revenues were evaluated. For achieved yields
of winter wheat is obtained multicriterial regression function
depending on the major factors influencing the consumption of
nitrogen. The coefficient of discrimination of the established model is
0.722. The increase in efficiency of fertilization is involved in supply
of organic nutrients, tillage, soil pH, past weather, the humus content
in the subsoil and grain content to 0.001 mm. The decrease in
efficiency was mainly influenced by the total dose of mineral
nitrogen, although it was divided into multiple doses, the proportion
loamy particles up to 0.01 mm, rainy, or conversely dry weather
during the vegetation. The efficiency of nitrogen was found to be the
smallest on undeveloped soils and the highest on chernozem and
alluvial soils.
Abstract: Morphological operators transform the original image
into another image through the interaction with the other image of
certain shape and size which is known as the structure element.
Mathematical morphology provides a systematic approach to analyze
the geometric characteristics of signals or images, and has been
applied widely too many applications such as edge detection,
objection segmentation, noise suppression and so on. Fuzzy
Mathematical Morphology aims to extend the binary morphological
operators to grey-level images. In order to define the basic
morphological operations such as fuzzy erosion, dilation, opening
and closing, a general method based upon fuzzy implication and
inclusion grade operators is introduced. The fuzzy morphological
operations extend the ordinary morphological operations by using
fuzzy sets where for fuzzy sets, the union operation is replaced by a
maximum operation, and the intersection operation is replaced by a
minimum operation.
In this work, it consists of two articles. In the first one, fuzzy set
theory, fuzzy Mathematical morphology which is based on fuzzy
logic and fuzzy set theory; fuzzy Mathematical operations and their
properties will be studied in details. As a second part, the application
of fuzziness in Mathematical morphology in practical work such as
image processing will be discussed with the illustration problems.
Abstract: Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) was used as a
solvent to extract oil from wheat bran. Extractions were carried out in a
semi-batch process at temperatures ranging from 40 to 60ºC and
pressures ranging from 10 to 30 MPa, with a carbon dioxide (CO2)
flow rate of 26.81 g/min. The oil obtained from wheat bran at different
extraction conditions was quantitatively measured to investigate the
solubility of oil in SC-CO2. The solubility of wheat bran oil was found
to be enhanced in high temperature and pressure. The composition of
fatty acids in wheat bran oil was measured by gas chromatography
(GC). Linoleic, palmitic, oleic and γ-linolenic acid were the major
fatty acids of wheat bran oil. Tocopherol contents in oil were analyzed
by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The highest
amount of phenolics and tocopherols (α and β) were found at
temperature of 60ºC and pressure of 30 MPa.
Abstract: In this paper, a new robust audio fingerprinting
algorithm in MP3 compressed domain is proposed with high
robustness to time scale modification (TSM). Instead of simply
employing short-term information of the MP3 stream, the new
algorithm extracts the long-term features in MP3 compressed domain
by using the modulation frequency analysis. Our experiment has
demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve a hit rate of
above 95% in audio retrieval and resist the attack of 20% TSM. It has
lower bit error rate (BER) performance compared to the other
algorithms. The proposed algorithm can also be used in other
compressed domains, such as AAC.
Abstract: Traditional object segmentation methods are time consuming and computationally difficult. In this paper, onedimensional object detection along the secant lines is applied. Statistical features of texture images are computed for the recognition process. Example matrices of these features and formulae for calculation of similarities between two feature patterns are expressed. And experiments are also carried out using these features.
Abstract: For the first time since 1940 and presentation of
theodorson-s theory, distribution of thrust, torque and efficiency
along the blade of a counter rotating propeller axial fan was studied
with a novel method in this research. A constant chord, constant
pitch symmetric fan was investigated with Reynolds Stress
Turbulence method in this project and H.E.S. method was utilized to
obtain distribution profiles from C.F.D. tests outcome. C.F.D. test
results were validated by estimation from Playlic-s analytical method.
Final results proved ability of H.E.S. method to obtain distribution
profiles from C.F.D test results and demonstrated interesting facts
about effects of solidity and differences between distributions in front
and rear section.
Abstract: This paper presents the characterization and design of a capacitive pressure sensor with LC-based 0.35 µm CMOS readout circuit. SPICE is employed to evaluate the characteristics of the readout circuit and COMSOL multiphysics structural analysis is used to simulate the behavior of the pressure sensor. The readout circuit converts the capacitance variation of the pressure sensor into the frequency output. Simulation results show that the proposed pressure sensor has output frequency from 2.50 to 2.28 GHz in a pressure range from 0.1 to 2 MPa almost linearly. The sensitivity of the frequency shift with respect to the applied pressure load is 0.11 GHz/MPa.
Abstract: Thermal water hammer is a special type of water
hammer which rarely occurs in heat exchangers. In biphasic fluids, if
steam bubbles are surrounded by condensate, regarding lower
condensate temperature than steam, they will suddenly collapse. As a
result, the vacuum caused by an extreme change in volume lead to
movement of the condensates in all directions and their collision the
force produced by this collision leads to a severe stress in the pipe
wall. This phenomenon is a special type of water hammer. According
to fluid mechanics, this phenomenon is a particular type of transient
flows during which abrupt change of fluid leads to sudden pressure
change inside the tube. In this paper, the mechanism of abrupt failure
of 80 tubes of 481 tubes of a methanol heat exchanger is discussed.
Initially, due to excessive temperature differences between heat
transfer fluids and simultaneous failure of 80 tubes, thermal shock
was presupposed as the reason of failure. Deeper investigation on
cross-section of failed tubes showed that failure was, ductile type of
failure, so the first hypothesis was rejected. Further analysis and more
accurate experiments revealed that failure of tubes caused by thermal
water hammer. Finally, the causes of thermal water hammer and
various solutions to avoid such mechanism are discussed.
Abstract: The research focuses on the effects of polyphenols
extracted from Sambucus nigra fruit, using an experimental arterial
hypertension pattern, as well as their influence on the oxidative
stress. The results reveal the normalization of the reduced glutathion
concentration, as well as a considerable reduction in the
malondialdehide serum concentration by the polyphenolic protection.
The rat blood pressure values were recorded using a CODATM
system, which uses a non-invasive blood pressure measuring method.
All the measured blood pressure components revealed a biostatistically
significant (p
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive
spatiotemporal filter that utilizes image sequences in order to remove
noise. The consecutive frames include: current, previous and next
noisy frames. The filter proposed in this paper is based upon the
weighted averaging pixels intensity and noise variance in image
sequences. It utilizes the Appropriate Number of Consecutive Frames
(ANCF) based on the noisy pixels intensity among the frames. The
number of consecutive frames is adaptively calculated for each
region in image and its value may change from one region to another
region depending on the pixels intensity within the region. The
weights are determined by a well-defined mathematical criterion,
which is adaptive to the feature of spatiotemporal pixels of the
consecutive frames. It is experimentally shown that the proposed
filter can preserve image structures and edges under motion while
suppressing noise, and thus can be effectively used in image
sequences filtering. In addition, the AWA filter using ANCF is
particularly well suited for filtering sequences that contain segments
with abruptly changing scene content due to, for example, rapid
zooming and changes in the view of the camera.
Abstract: The paper presents an applied study of a multivariate AR(p) process fitted to daily data from U.S. commodity futures markets with the use of Bayesian statistics. In the first part a detailed description of the methods used is given. In the second part two BVAR models are chosen one with assumption of lognormal, the second with normal distribution of prices conditioned on the parameters. For a comparison two simple benchmark models are chosen that are commonly used in todays Financial Mathematics. The article compares the quality of predictions of all the models, tries to find an adequate rate of forgetting of information and questions the validity of Efficient Market Hypothesis in the semi-strong form.
Abstract: Autoregressive Moving average (ARMA) is a parametric based method of signal representation. It is suitable for problems in which the signal can be modeled by explicit known source functions with a few adjustable parameters. Various methods have been suggested for the coefficients determination among which are Prony, Pade, Autocorrelation, Covariance and most recently, the use of Artificial Neural Network technique. In this paper, the method of using Artificial Neural network (ANN) technique is compared with some known and widely acceptable techniques. The comparisons is entirely based on the value of the coefficients obtained. Result obtained shows that the use of ANN also gives accurate in computing the coefficients of an ARMA system.
Abstract: In this study, an experimental investigation was carried
out to fix CO2 into the electronic arc furnace (EAF) reducing slag from
stainless steelmaking process under wet grinding. The slag was ground
by the vibrating ball mill with the CO2 and pure water. The reaction
behavior was monitored with constant pressure method, and the
change of CO2 volume in the experimental system with grinding time
was measured. It was found that the CO2 absorption occurred as soon
as the grinding started. The CO2 absorption under wet grinding was
significantly larger than that under dry grinding. Generally, the
amount of CO2 absorption increased as the amount of water, the
amount of slag, the diameter of alumina ball and the initial pressure of
CO2 increased. However, the initial absorption rate was scarcely
influenced by the experimental conditions except for the initial CO2
pressure. According to this research, the CO2 reacted with the CaO
inside the slag to form CaCO3.
Abstract: In this paper, we rely on the story of the late British
weapons inspector David Kelly to illustrate how sensemaking can
inform the study of the ethics of suppression of dissent. Using
archival data, we reconstruct Dr. Kelly-s key responsibilities as a
weapons inspector and government employee. We begin by clarifying
the concept of dissent and how it is a useful organizational process.
We identify the various ways that dissent has been discussed in the
organizational literature and reconsider the process of sensemaking.
We conclude that suppression of opinions that deviate from the
majority is part of the identity maintenance of the sensemaking
process. We illustrate the prevention of dissent in organizations
consists of a set of unsatisfactory trade-offs.
Abstract: The Zung self-depression scale and Beck Anxiety Inventory were used to study the depression and anxiety levels of Armenian Crohn's disease patients, as well as to reveal the relation between emotional status and placebo effect of these patients. Despite of registered high levels of depression and anxiety, the high placebo rate during investigations was described. The importance of use of psychotherapies for optimal outcomes during treatments of Crohn's disease is obvious.
Abstract: Polyurethane foam (PUF) is formed by a chemical
reaction of polyol and isocyanate. The aim is to understand the
impact of Silicone on synthesizing polyurethane in differentiate
volume of molding. The method used was one step process, which is
simultaneously caried out a blending polyol (petroleum polyol and
soybean polyol), a TDI (2,4):MDI (4,4-) (80:20), a distilled water,
and a silicone. The properties of the material were measured via a
number of parameters, which are polymer density, compressive
strength, and cellular structures. It is found that density of
polyurethane using silicone with volume of molding either 250 ml or
500 ml is lower than without using silicone.
Abstract: This paper presents the elastic buckling of
homogeneous beams with a pair of piezoelectric layers surface
bonded on both sides of the beams. The displacement field of beam is
assumed based on the Engesser-Timoshenko beam theory.
Applying the Hamilton's principle, the equilibrium equation is
established. The influences of applied voltage, dimensionless
geometrical parameter and piezoelectric thickness on the critical
buckling load of beam are presented. To investigate the accuracy of
the present analysis, a compression study is carried out with a known
data.