Abstract: Self-organizing map (SOM) is a well known data
reduction technique used in data mining. It can reveal structure in
data sets through data visualization that is otherwise hard to detect
from raw data alone. However, interpretation through visual
inspection is prone to errors and can be very tedious. There are
several techniques for the automatic detection of clusters of code
vectors found by SOM, but they generally do not take into account
the distribution of code vectors; this may lead to unsatisfactory
clustering and poor definition of cluster boundaries, particularly
where the density of data points is low. In this paper, we propose the
use of an adaptive heuristic particle swarm optimization (PSO)
algorithm for finding cluster boundaries directly from the code
vectors obtained from SOM. The application of our method to
several standard data sets demonstrates its feasibility. PSO algorithm
utilizes a so-called U-matrix of SOM to determine cluster boundaries;
the results of this novel automatic method compare very favorably to
boundary detection through traditional algorithms namely k-means
and hierarchical based approach which are normally used to interpret
the output of SOM.
Abstract: Nowadays, the demand for high product quality
focuses extensive attention to the quality of machined surface. The
(CNC) milling machine facilities provides a wide variety of
parameters set-up, making the machining process on the glass
excellent in manufacturing complicated special products compared to
other machining processes. However, the application of grinding
process on the CNC milling machine could be an ideal solution to
improve the product quality, but adopting the right machining
parameters is required. In glass milling operation, several machining
parameters are considered to be significant in affecting surface
roughness. These parameters include the lubrication pressure, spindle
speed, feed rate and depth of cut. In this research work, a fuzzy logic
model is offered to predict the surface roughness of a machined
surface in glass milling operation using CBN grinding tool. Four
membership functions are allocated to be connected with each input
of the model. The predicted results achieved via fuzzy logic model
are compared to the experimental result. The result demonstrated
settlement between the fuzzy model and experimental results with the
93.103% accuracy.
Abstract: The present paper develops and validates a numerical procedure for the calculation of turbulent combustive flow in converging and diverging ducts and throuh simulation of the heat transfer processes, the amount of production and spread of Nox pollutant has been measured. A marching integration solution procedure employing the TDMA is used to solve the discretized equations. The turbulence model is the Prandtl Mixing Length method. Modeling the combustion process is done by the use of Arrhenius and Eddy Dissipation method. Thermal mechanism has been utilized for modeling the process of forming the nitrogen oxides. Finite difference method and Genmix numerical code are used for numerical solution of equations. Our results indicate the important influence of the limiting diverging angle of diffuser on the coefficient of recovering of pressure. Moreover, due to the intense dependence of Nox pollutant to the maximum temperature in the domain with this feature, the Nox pollutant amount is also in maximum level.
Abstract: The problem of mapping tasks onto a computational grid with the aim to minimize the power consumption and the makespan subject to the constraints of deadlines and architectural requirements is considered in this paper. To solve this problem, we propose a solution from cooperative game theory based on the concept of Nash Bargaining Solution. The proposed game theoretical technique is compared against several traditional techniques. The experimental results show that when the deadline constraints are tight, the proposed technique achieves superior performance and reports competitive performance relative to the optimal solution.
Abstract: Food mileage is one of the important issues concerning environmental sustainability. In this research we have utilized a prototype platform with iterative user-centered testing. With these findings we successfully demonstrate the use of the context of persuasive methods to influence users- attitudes towards the sustainable concept.
Abstract: In the present research, a finite element model is
presented to study the geometrical and material nonlinear behavior of
reinforced concrete plane frames considering soil-structure
interaction. The nonlinear behaviors of concrete and reinforcing steel
are considered both in compression and tension up to failure. The
model takes account also for the number, diameter, and distribution
of rebar along every cross section. Soil behavior is taken into
consideration using four different models; namely: linear-, nonlinear
Winkler's model, and linear-, nonlinear continuum model. A
computer program (NARC) is specially developed in order to
perform the analysis. The results achieved by the present model show
good agreement with both theoretical and experimental published
literature. The nonlinear behavior of a rectangular frame resting on
soft soil up to failure using the proposed model is introduced for
demonstration.
Abstract: This research is to study the types of products and
services that employs 'ambient media and respective techniques in its
advertisement materials. Data collection has been done via analyses of a total of 62 advertisements that employed ambient media
approach in Thailand during the years 2004 to 2011. The 62 advertisement were qualifying advertisements of the Adman Awards
& Symposium under the category of Outdoor & Ambience. Analysis
results reveal that there is a total of 14 products and services that
chooses to utilize ambient media in its advertisement. Amongst all ambient media techniques, 'intrusion' uses the value of a medium in
its representation of content most often. Following intrusion is 'interaction', where consumers are invited to participate and interact
with the advertising materials. 'Illusion' ranks third in its ability to subject the viewers to distortions of reality that makes the division
between reality and fantasy less clear.
Abstract: The objective of this research is to investigate the
advantages of using large-diameter 0.7 inch prestressing strands in
pretention applications. The advantages of large-diameter strands are
mainly beneficial in the heavy construction applications. Bridges and
tunnels are subjected to a higher daily traffic with an exponential
increase in trucks ultimate weight, which raise the demand for higher
structural capacity of bridges and tunnels. In this research, precast
prestressed I-girders were considered as a case study. Flexure
capacities of girders fabricated using 0.7 inch strands and different
concrete strengths were calculated and compared to capacities of 0.6
inch strands girders fabricated using equivalent concrete strength.
The effect of bridge deck concrete strength on composite deck-girder
section capacity was investigated due to its possible effect on final
section capacity. Finally, a comparison was made to compare the
bridge cross-section of girders designed using regular 0.6 inch strands
and the large-diameter 0.7 inch. The research findings showed that
structural advantages of 0.7 inch strands allow for using fewer bridge
girders, reduced material quantity, and light-weight members. The
structural advantages of 0.7 inch strands are maximized when high
strength concrete (HSC) are used in girder fabrication, and concrete
of minimum 5ksi compressive strength is used in pouring bridge
decks. The use of 0.7 inch strands in bridge industry can partially
contribute to the improvement of bridge conditions, minimize
construction cost, and reduce the construction duration of the project.
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: Fuzzy fingerprint vault is a recently developed cryptographic construct based on the polynomial reconstruction problem to secure critical data with the fingerprint data. However, the previous researches are not applicable to the fingerprint having a few minutiae since they use a fixed degree of the polynomial without considering the number of fingerprint minutiae. To solve this problem, we use an adaptive degree of the polynomial considering the number of minutiae extracted from each user. Also, we apply multiple polynomials to avoid the possible degradation of the security of a simple solution(i.e., using a low-degree polynomial). Based on the experimental results, our method can make the possible attack difficult 2192 times more than using a low-degree polynomial as well as verify the users having a few minutiae.
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: 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: 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: ICT and supply chain management (SCM) are two
notions, which have attracted much attention among both
academicians and practitioners during the last decade. However, the
discussion of the relationship between the two notions has been
limited and fragmented. In this paper, we will present a summary of
the discussion of ICT components and SCM on an extensive
literature review. Then, we will discuss the interrelation between ICT
and SCM from some major components and applications of ICT
perspective. After all, we can introduce e-SCM concept, that arisen
recently in management literature, in order to cover the whole topic.
The authors look at all of the major components of electronic supply
chain management and demonstrate that the future holds tremendous
opportunity for those firms that take advantage of all of its
possibilities.
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: this article conducts a research about the relationship between cash dividend policy and enterprise value based on the data coming from the A-share listed companies over period 2005-2009. In conclusion, the enterprise value has a negative correlation with the incremental and the degressive cash dividend per share, and has a positive correlation with the stable cash dividend per share.
Abstract: This work presents a new algorithm based on a combination of fuzzy (FUZ), Dynamic Programming (DP), and Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach for capacitor allocation in distribution feeders. The problem formulation considers two distinct objectives related to total cost of power loss and total cost of capacitors including the purchase and installation costs. The novel formulation is a multi-objective and non-differentiable optimization problem. The proposed method of this article uses fuzzy reasoning for sitting of capacitors in radial distribution feeders, DP for sizing and finally GA for finding the optimum shape of membership functions which are used in fuzzy reasoning stage. The proposed method has been implemented in a software package and its effectiveness has been verified through a 9-bus radial distribution feeder for the sake of conclusions supports. A comparison has been done among the proposed method of this paper and similar methods in other research works that shows the effectiveness of the proposed method of this paper for solving optimum capacitor planning problem.
Abstract: The main objective of this research was to investigate
the biosorption capacity for biofilms of sulphate reducing bacteria
(SRB) to remove heavy metals, such as Zn, Pb and Cd from
rainwater using laboratory-scale reactors containing mixed support
media. Evidence showed that biosorption had contributed to removal
of heavy metals including Zn, Pb and Cd in presence of SRB and
SRB were also found in the aqueous samples from reactors.
However, the SRB and specific families (Desulfobacteriaceae and
Desulfovibrionaceae) were found mainly in the biomass samples
taken from all reactors at the end of the experiment. EDX-analysis
of reactor solids at end of experiment showed that heavy metals Zn,
Pb and Cd had also accumulated in these precipitates.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology
based on market orientation (MO) and innovation orientation (IO),
and to illustrate to what extent housing companies in Sweden fit
within this framework. A qualitative study on 11 public housing
companies in the central part of Sweden has been conducted by the
help of open and semi-structured questions for data collection. Four
public housing company types- i.e. reactive prospector, proactive
prospector, reactive defender and proactive defender have been
identified by the combination of MO-IO dimensions. Future research
can include other dimensions like entrepreneurship and network to
observe how it particularly affects MO. An empirical study can
compare public and private housing companies on the basis of MO
and IO dimensions. One major contribution of the paper is the
proposition of typology which can be used to describe public housing
companies and deciding their future course of actions.
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.