Abstract: Recent research on seeds of bio-diesel plants like
Jatropha curcas, constituting 40-50% bio-crude oil indicates its
potential as one of the most promising alternatives to conventional
sources of energy. Also, limited studies on utilization of de-oiled cake
have revealed that Jatropha bio-waste has good potential to be used as
organic fertilizers produced via aerobic and anaerobic treatment.
However, their commercial exploitation has not yet been possible. The
present study aims at developing appropriate bio-processes and
formulations utilizing Jatropha seed cake as organic fertilizer, for
improving the growth of Polianthes tuberose L. (Tuberose). Pot
experiments were carried out by growing tuberose plants on soil
treated with composted formulations of Jatropha de-oiled cake, Farm
Yard Manure (FYM) and inorganic fertilizers were also blended in
soil. The treatment was carried out through soil amendment as well as
foliar spray. The growth and morphological parameters were
monitored for entire crop cycle.
The growth Length and number of leaves, spike length, rachis
length, number of bulb per plant and earliness of sprouting of bulb and
yield enhancement were comparable to that achieved under inorganic
fertilizer. Furthermore, performance of inorganic fertilizer also showed
an improvement when blended with composted bio-waste. These
findings would open new avenues for Jatropha based bio-wastes to be
composted and used as organic fertilizers for commercial floriculture.
Abstract: Both the minimum energy consumption and
smoothness, which is quantified as a function of jerk, are generally
needed in many dynamic systems such as the automobile and the
pick-and-place robot manipulator that handles fragile equipments.
Nevertheless, many researchers come up with either solely
concerning on the minimum energy consumption or minimum jerk
trajectory. This research paper proposes a simple yet very interesting
relationship between the minimum direct and indirect jerks
approaches in designing the time-dependent system yielding an
alternative optimal solution. Extremal solutions for the cost functions
of direct and indirect jerks are found using the dynamic optimization
methods together with the numerical approximation. This is to allow
us to simulate and compare visually and statistically the time history
of control inputs employed by minimum direct and indirect jerk
designs. By considering minimum indirect jerk problem, the
numerical solution becomes much easier and yields to the similar
results as minimum direct jerk problem.
Abstract: This paper presents an integrated model that
automatically measures the change of rivers, damage area of bridge
surroundings, and change of vegetation. The proposed model is on the
basis of a neurofuzzy mechanism enhanced by SOM optimization
algorithm, and also includes three functions to deal with river imagery.
High resolution imagery from FORMOSAT-2 satellite taken before
and after the invasion period is adopted. By randomly selecting a
bridge out of 129 destroyed bridges, the recognition results show that
the average width has increased 66%. The ruined segment of the
bridge is located exactly at the most scour region. The vegetation
coverage has also reduced to nearly 90% of the original. The results
yielded from the proposed model demonstrate a pinpoint accuracy rate
at 99.94%. This study brings up a successful tool not only for
large-scale damage assessment but for precise measurement to
disasters.
Abstract: In wireless communication system, a Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE) to cancel the intersymbol interference (ISI) is required. In this paper, an exact convergence analysis of the (DFE) adapted by the Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm during the training phase is derived by taking into account the finite alphabet context of data transmission. This allows us to determine the shortest training sequence that allows to reach a given Mean Square Error (MSE). With the intention of avoiding the problem of ill-convergence, the paper proposes an initialization strategy for the blind decision directed (DD) algorithm. This then yields a semi-blind DFE with high speed and good convergence.
Abstract: The Maximum Weighted Independent Set (MWIS)
problem is a classic graph optimization NP-hard problem. Given an
undirected graph G = (V, E) and weighting function defined on the
vertex set, the MWIS problem is to find a vertex set S V whose total
weight is maximum subject to no two vertices in S are adjacent. This
paper presents a novel approach to approximate the MWIS of a graph
using minimum weighted vertex cover of the graph. Computational
experiments are designed and conducted to study the performance
of our proposed algorithm. Extensive simulation results show that
the proposed algorithm can yield better solutions than other existing
algorithms found in the literature for solving the MWIS.
Abstract: This paper presents a controller design technique for
Synchronous Reluctance Motor to improve its dynamic performance
with fast response and high accuracy. The sliding mode control is the
most attractive and suitable method to use for this purpose, since it is
simple in design and for its insensitivity to parameter variations or
external disturbances. When this method implemented it yields fast
dynamic response without overshoot and a zero steady-state error.
The current loop control with decentralized sliding mode is presented
in this paper. The mathematical model for the synchronous machine,
the inverter and the controller is developed. The stability of the
sliding mode controller is analyzed. Simulation of synchronous
reluctance motor and the controller with PWM-inverter has been
curried out, using the SIMULINK software package of MATLAB.
Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the
approach.
Abstract: Offset Double-Disk Opener (DDO) is a popular
furrow opener in conservation tillage. It has some limitations such as
negative suction to penetrate in the soil, hair pinning and mixing seed
and fertilizer in the slot. Because of importance of separation of seed
and fertilizer in the slot, by adding two horizontal mini disks to DDO
a modified opener was made (MDO) which placed the fertilizer
between and under two rows of seed. To consider performance of
novel opener an indoor comparison test between DDO and MDO was
performed at soil bin. The experiment was conducted with three
working speeds (3, 6 and 8 km h-1), two bulk densities of soil (1.1
and 1.4 Mg m-3) and two levels of residues (1 and 2 ton ha-1). The
experimental design consisted in a (3×2×2) complete randomized
factorial with three replicates for each test. Moisture of seed furrow,
separation of seed and fertilizer, hair pinning and resultant forces
acting on the openers were used as assessing indexes. There was no
significant difference between soil moisture content in slots created
by DDO and MDO at 0-4 cm depth, but at 4-8 cm the in the slot
created by MDO moisture content was higher about 9%. Horizontal
force for both openers increased with increasing speed and soil bulk
density. Vertical force for DDO was negative so it needed additional
weight for penetrating in the soil, but vertical force for MDO was
positive and, which can solve the challenge of penetration in the soil
in DDO. In soft soil with heavy residues some trash was pushed by
DDO into seed furrow (hair pinning) but at MDO seed were placed at
clean groove. Lateral and vertical separation of seed and fertilizer
was performed effectively by MDO (4.5 and 5 cm, respectively)
while DDO put seed and fertilizer close to each other. Overall, the
Modified Offset Double-disks (MDO) had better performance. So by
adapting this opener with no-tillage drillers it would possible to have
higher yield in conservation tillage where the most appropriate
opener is disk type.
Abstract: One of the most growing areas in the embedded community is multimedia devices. Multimedia devices incorporate a number of complicated functions for their operation, like motion estimation. A multitude of different implementations have been proposed to reduce motion estimation complexity, such as spiral search. We have studied the implementations of spiral search and identified areas of improvement. We propose a modified spiral search algorithm, with lower computational complexity compared to the original spiral search. We have implemented our algorithm on an embedded ARM based architecture, with custom memory hierarchy. The resulting system yields energy consumption reduction up to 64% and performance increase up to 77%, with a small penalty of 2.3 dB, in average, of video quality compared with the original spiral search algorithm.
Abstract: The critical period for weed control (CPWC) is the period in the crop growth cycle during which weeds must be controlled to prevent unacceptable yield losses. Field studies were conducted in 2005 and 2006 in the University of Birjand at the south east of Iran to determine CPWC of corn using a randomized complete block design with 14 treatments and four replications. The treatments consisted of two different periods of weed interference, a critical weed-free period and a critical time of weed removal, were imposed at V3, V6, V9, V12, V15, and R1 (based on phonological stages of corn development) with a weedy check and a weed-free check. The CPWC was determined with the use of 2.5, 5, 10, 15 and 20% acceptable yield loss levels by non-linear Regression method and fitting Logistic and Gompertz nonlinear equations to relative yield data. The CPWC of corn was from 5- to 15-leaf stage (19-55 DAE) to prevent yield losses of 5%. This period to prevent yield losses of 2.5, 10 and 20% was 4- to 17-leaf stage (14-59 DAE), 6- to 12-leaf stage (25-47 DAE) and 8- to 9-leaf stage (31-36 DAE) respectively. The height and leaf area index of corn were significantly decreased by weed competition in both weed free and weed infested treatments (P
Abstract: Four phenylurea herbicides (isoproturon, chlortoluron, diuron and linuron) were dissolved in different water matrices in order to study their chemical degradation by using UV radiation, ozone and some advanced oxidation processes (UV/H2O2, O3/H2O2, Fenton reagent and the photo- Fenton system). The waters used were: ultra-pure water, a commercial mineral water, a groundwater and a surface water taken from a reservoir. Elimination levels were established for each herbicide and for several global quality parameters, and a kinetic study was performed in order to determine basic kinetic parameters of each reaction between the target phenylureas and these oxidizing systems.
Abstract: Enzymatic hydrolysis of starch from natural sources
finds potential application in commercial production of alcoholic
beverage and bioethanol. In this study the effect of starch
concentration, temperature, time and enzyme concentration were
studied and optimized for hydrolysis of Potato starch powder (of
mesh 80/120) into glucose syrup by immobilized (using Sodium
arginate) α-amylase using central composite design. The
experimental result on enzymatic hydrolysis of Potato starch was
subjected to multiple linear regression analysis using MINITAB 14
software. Positive linear effect of starch concentration, enzyme
concentration and time was observed on hydrolysis of Potato starch
by α-amylase. The statistical significance of the model was validated
by F-test for analysis of variance (p ≤ 0.01). The optimum value of
starch concentration, enzyme concentration, temperature, time and
were found to be 6% (w/v), 2% (w/v), 40°C and 80min respectively.
The maximum glucose yield at optimum condition was 2.34 mg/mL.
Abstract: Performance of any continuous speech recognition system is highly dependent on performance of the acoustic models. Generally, development of the robust spoken language technology relies on the availability of large amounts of data. Common way to cope with little data for training each state of Markov models is treebased state tying. This tying method applies contextual questions to tie states. Manual procedure for question generation suffers from human errors and is time consuming. Various automatically generated questions are used to construct decision tree. There are three approaches to generate questions to construct HMMs based on decision tree. One approach is based on misrecognized phonemes, another approach basically uses feature table and the other is based on state distributions corresponding to context-independent subword units. In this paper, all these methods of automatic question generation are applied to the decision tree on FARSDAT corpus in Persian language and their results are compared with those of manually generated questions. The results show that automatically generated questions yield much better results and can replace manually generated questions in Persian language.
Abstract: Regenerative gas turbine engine cycle is presented that yields higher cycle efficiencies than simple cycle operating under the same conditions. The power output, efficiency and specific fuel consumption are simulated with respect to operating conditions. The analytical formulae about the relation to determine the thermal efficiency are derived taking into account the effected operation conditions (ambient temperature, compression ratio, regenerator effectiveness, compressor efficiency, turbine efficiency and turbine inlet temperature). Model calculations for a wide range of parameters are presented, as are comparisons with simple gas turbine cycle. The power output and thermal efficiency are found to be increasing with the regenerative effectiveness, and the compressor and turbine efficiencies. The efficiency increased with increase the compression ratio to 5, then efficiency decreased with increased compression ratio, but in simple cycle the thermal efficiency always increase with increased in compression ratio. The increased in ambient temperature caused decreased thermal efficiency, but the increased in turbine inlet temperature increase thermal efficiency.
Abstract: A simple but effective digital watermarking scheme
utilizing a context adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC) method
is presented for wireless communication system. In the proposed
approach, the watermark bits are embedded in the final non-zero
quantized coefficient of each DCT block, thereby yielding a potential
reduction in the length of the coded block. As a result, the
watermarking scheme not only provides the means to check the
authenticity and integrity of the video stream, but also improves the
compression ratio and therefore reduces both the transmission time
and the storage space requirements of the coded video sequence. The
results confirm that the proposed scheme enables the detection of
malicious tampering attacks and reduces the size of the coded H.264
file. Therefore, the current study is feasible to apply in the video
applications of wireless communication such as 3G system
Abstract: Increasing number of vehicles and lack of awareness among road users may lead to road accidents. However no specific literature was found to rank vehicles involved in accidents based on fuzzy variables of road users. This paper proposes a ranking of four selected motor vehicles involved in road accidents. Human and non-human factors that normally linked with road accidents are considered for ranking. The imprecision or vagueness inherent in the subjective assessment of the experts has led the application of fuzzy sets theory to deal with ranking problems. Data in form of linguistic variables were collected from three authorised personnel of three Malaysian Government agencies. The Multi Criteria Decision Making, fuzzy TOPSIS was applied in computational procedures. From the analysis, it shows that motorcycles vehicles yielded the highest closeness coefficient at 0.6225. A ranking can be drawn using the magnitude of closeness coefficient. It was indicated that the motorcycles recorded the first rank.
Abstract: This paper studied the synthesis of monoacylglycerol (monolaurin) by glycerolysis of coconut oil and crude glycerol, catalyzed by Carica papaya lipase. Coconut oil obtained from cold pressed extraction method and crude glycerol obtained from the biodiesel plant in Department of Chemistry, Uttaradit Rajabhat University, Thailand which used oils were used as raw materials for biodiesel production through transesterification process catalyzed by sodium hydroxide. The influences of the following variables were studied: (i) type of organic solvent, (ii) molar ratio of substrate, (iii) reaction temperature, (iv) reaction time, (v) lipase dosage, and (vi) initial water activity of enzyme. High yields in monoacylglycerol (58.35%) were obtained with molar ratio of glycerol to oil at 8:1 in ethanol, temperature was controlled at 45oC for 36 hours, the amount of enzyme used was 20 wt% of oil and initial water activity of enzyme at 0.53.
Abstract: Factor analysis was applied to two stages biogas
production from banana stem waste allowing a screening of the
experimental variables second stage temperature (T), organic loading
rates (OLR) and hydraulic retention times (HRT). Biogas production
was found to be strongly influenced by all the above experimental
variables. Results from factorial analysis have shown that all
variables which were HRT, OLR and T have significant effect to
biogas production. Increased in HRT and OLR could increased the
biogas yield. The performance was tested under the conditions of
various T (35oC-60oC), OLR (0.3 g TS/l.d–1.9 gTS/l.d), and HRT (3
d–15 d). Conditions for temperature, OLR and HRT in this study
were based on the best range obtained from literature review.
Abstract: Real world Speaker Identification (SI) application
differs from ideal or laboratory conditions causing perturbations that
leads to a mismatch between the training and testing environment
and degrade the performance drastically. Many strategies have been
adopted to cope with acoustical degradation; wavelet based Bayesian
marginal model is one of them. But Bayesian marginal models
cannot model the inter-scale statistical dependencies of different
wavelet scales. Simple nonlinear estimators for wavelet based
denoising assume that the wavelet coefficients in different scales are
independent in nature. However wavelet coefficients have significant
inter-scale dependency. This paper enhances this inter-scale
dependency property by a Circularly Symmetric Probability Density
Function (CS-PDF) related to the family of Spherically Invariant
Random Processes (SIRPs) in Log Gabor Wavelet (LGW) domain
and corresponding joint shrinkage estimator is derived by Maximum
a Posteriori (MAP) estimator. A framework is proposed based on
these to denoise speech signal for automatic speaker identification
problems. The robustness of the proposed framework is tested for
Text Independent Speaker Identification application on 100 speakers
of POLYCOST and 100 speakers of YOHO speech database in three
different noise environments. Experimental results show that the
proposed estimator yields a higher improvement in identification
accuracy compared to other estimators on popular Gaussian Mixture
Model (GMM) based speaker model and Mel-Frequency Cepstral
Coefficient (MFCC) features.
Abstract: Pyrolysis of waste tire is one of alternative technique
to produce petrochemicals, such as light olefins, mixed C4, and monoaromatics.
Noble metals supported on acid zeolite catalysts were
reported as potential catalysts to produce the high valuable products
from waste tire pyrolysis. Especially, Pd supported on HBeta gave a
high yield of olefins, mixed C4, and mono-aromatics. Due to the high
prices of noble metals, the objective of this work was to investigate
whether or not a non-noble Ni metal can be used as a substitute of a
noble metal, Pd, supported on HBeta as a catalyst for waste tire pyrolysis.
Ni metal was selected in this work because Ni has high activity
in cracking, isomerization, hydrogenation and the ring opening of
hydrocarbons Moreover, Ni is an element in the same group as Pd
noble metal, which is VIIIB group, aiming to produce high valuable
products similarly obtained from Pd. The amount of Ni was varied as
5, 10, and 20% by weight, for comparison with a fixed 1 wt% Pd,
using incipient wetness impregnation. The results showed that as a
petrochemical-producing catalyst, 10%Ni/HBeta performed better
than 1%Pd/HBeta because it did not only produce the highest yield of
olefins and cooking gases, but the yields were also higher than
1%Pd/HBeta. 5%Ni/HBeta can be used as a substitute of
1%Pd/HBeta for similar crude production because its crude contains
the similar amounts of naphtha and saturated HCs, although it gave
no concentration of light mono-aromatics (C6-C11) in the oil. Additionally,
10%Ni/HBeta that gave high olefins and cooking gases was
found to give a fairly high concentration of the light mono-aromatics
in the oil.
Abstract: Ozone (O3) is considered as one of the most
phytotoxic pollutants with deleterious effects on living and non living
components of Ecosystems. It reduces growth and yield of many
crops as well as alters the physiology and crop quality. The present
study described series of experiments to investigate the effects of
ambient O3 at different locations with different ambient levels of O3
depending on proximity to pollutant source and ranged between 17
ppb/h in control experiment to 112 ppb/h in industrial area
respectively. The ambient levels in other three locations (King Saud
University botanical garden, King Fahd Rd, and Almanakh Garden)
were 61,61,77 ppb/h respectively. Tow legume crops species (vicia
vaba L ; and Pisum sativum) differ in their phenology and sensitivity
were used. The results showed a significant negative effect to ozone
on morphology, number of injured leaves, growth and productivity
with a difference in the degree of response depending on the plant
type. Visia Faba showed sensitivity to ozone to number and leaf area
and the degree of injury leaves 3, pisum sativum show higher
sensitivity for the gas for degree of injury 1,The relative growth rate
and seed weight, it turns out there is no significant difference
between the two plants in plant height and number of seeds.