Abstract: Finger spelling is an art of communicating by signs
made with fingers, and has been introduced into sign language to serve
as a bridge between the sign language and the verbal language.
Previous approaches to finger spelling recognition are classified into
two categories: glove-based and vision-based approaches. The
glove-based approach is simpler and more accurate recognizing work
of hand posture than vision-based, yet the interfaces require the user to
wear a cumbersome and carry a load of cables that connected the
device to a computer. In contrast, the vision-based approaches provide
an attractive alternative to the cumbersome interface, and promise
more natural and unobtrusive human-computer interaction. The
vision-based approaches generally consist of two steps: hand
extraction and recognition, and two steps are processed independently.
This paper proposes real-time vision-based Korean finger spelling
recognition system by integrating hand extraction into recognition.
First, we tentatively detect a hand region using CAMShift algorithm.
Then fill factor and aspect ratio estimated by width and height
estimated by CAMShift are used to choose candidate from database,
which can reduce the number of matching in recognition step. To
recognize the finger spelling, we use DTW(dynamic time warping)
based on modified chain codes, to be robust to scale and orientation
variations. In this procedure, since accurate hand regions, without
holes and noises, should be extracted to improve the precision, we use
graph cuts algorithm that globally minimize the energy function
elegantly expressed by Markov random fields (MRFs). In the
experiments, the computational times are less than 130ms, and the
times are not related to the number of templates of finger spellings in
database, as candidate templates are selected in extraction step.
Abstract: Dielectric sheet perturbation to the dominant TE111
mode resonant frequency of a circular cavity is studied and presented
in this paper. The dielectric sheet, placed at the middle of the airfilled
cavity, introduces discontinuities and disturbs the configuration
of electromagnetic fields in the cavity. For fixed dimensions of cavity
and fixed thickness of the loading dielectric, the dominant resonant
frequency varies quite linearly with the permittivity of the dielectric.
This quasi-linear relationship is plotted using Maple software and
verified using 3D electromagnetic simulations. Two probes are used
in the simulation for wave excitation into and from the cavity. The
best length of probe is found to be 3 mm, giving the closest resonant
frequency to the one calculated using Maple. A total of fourteen
different dielectrics of permittivity ranging from 1 to 12.9 are tested
one by one in the simulation. The works show very close agreement
between the results from Maple and the simulation. A constant
difference of 0.04 GHz is found between the resonant frequencies
collected during simulation and the ones from Maple. The success of
this project may lead to the possibility of using the middle loaded
cavity at TE111 mode as a microwave non-destructive testing of solid
materials.
Abstract: Company strategy expresses a basic idea of how to reach company objectives. A whole range of models of strategic management are used in practice. The concept of strategic management should fulfill some basic requirements to make it applicable for both the typical, but also more specific company environment. The financial strategy plays an important role in corporate strategy. The paper develops a methodology of strategic model implementing into the category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the methodology recommends procedures while solving an up-to-date worldwide task of the definition of the company strategy and its financial strategy.
Abstract: Social bookmarking is an environment in which
the user gradually changes interests over time so that the tag
data associated with the current temporal period is usually more
important than tag data temporally far from the current period.
This implies that in the social tagging system, the newly tagged
items by the user are more relevant than older items. This study
proposes a novel recommender system that considers the users-
recent tag preferences. The proposed system includes the
following stages: grouping similar users into clusters using an
E-M clustering algorithm, finding similar resources based on
the user-s bookmarks, and recommending the top-N items to
the target user. The study examines the system-s information
retrieval performance using a dataset from del.icio.us, which is
a famous social bookmarking web site. Experimental results
show that the proposed system is better and more effective than
traditional approaches.
Abstract: The control of sprayer boom undesired vibrations pose a great challenge to investigators due to various disturbances and conditions. Sprayer boom movements lead to reduce of spread efficiency and crop yield. This paper describes the design of a novel control method for an active suspension system applying proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller with an active force control (AFC) scheme integration of an iterative learning algorithm employed to a sprayer boom. The iterative learning as an intelligent method is principally used as a method to calculate the best value of the estimated inertia of the sprayer boom needed for the AFC loop. Results show that the proposed AFC-based scheme performs much better than the standard PID control technique. Also, this shows that the system is more robust and accurate.
Abstract: Transportation is of great importance in the current
life of human beings. The transportation system plays many roles,
from economical development to after-catastrophe aids such as
rescue operation in the first hours and days after an earthquake. In
after earthquakes response phase, transportation system acts as a
basis for ground operations including rescue and relief operation,
food providing for victims and etc. It is obvious that partial or
complete obstruction of this system results in the stop of these
operations. Bridges are one of the most important elements of
transportation network. Failure of a bridge, in the most optimistic
case, cuts the relation between two regions and in more developed
countries, cuts the relation of numerous regions. In this paper, to
evaluate the vulnerability and estimate the damage level of Tehran
bridges, HAZUS method, developed by Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) with the aid of National Institute of
Building Science (NIBS), is used for the first time in Iran. In this
method, to evaluate the collapse probability, fragility curves are
used. Iran is located on seismic belt and thus, it is vulnerable to
earthquakes. Thus, the study of the probability of bridge collapses, as
an important part of transportation system, during earthquakes is of
great importance. The purpose of this study is to provide fragility
curves for Gisha Bridge, one of the longest steel bridges in Tehran,
as an important lifeline element. Besides, the damage probability for
this bridge during a specific earthquake, introduced as scenario
earthquakes, is calculated. The fragility curves show that for the
considered scenario, the probability of occurrence of complete
collapse for the bridge is 8.6%.
Abstract: In this study, participants with adjustment disorder with depressed mood (aged 18-54 years) with mild depression (N=18), severe depression (N=12) were compared with healthy controls (N=20) on the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB) a cognitive performance test. Using One Way Analysis of Variance and Matched Sample t-test. The results of the analysis shows that severely depressed participants performed poorly on the cognitive performance test relative to controls, however there were no significant differences on the cognitive performance test scores between the severely depressed and the mildly depressed. In addition, performance on the non-verbal performance subtest was poorer than that of the verbal subtest, suggesting that depression affects the executive functions of the person.
Abstract: Non-Destructive evaluation of in-service power
transformer condition is necessary for avoiding catastrophic failures.
Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) is one of the important methods.
Traditional, statistical and intelligent DGA approaches have been
adopted for accurate classification of incipient fault sources.
Unfortunately, there are not often enough faulty patterns required for
sufficient training of intelligent systems. By bootstrapping the
shortcoming is expected to be alleviated and algorithms with better
classification success rates to be obtained. In this paper the
performance of an artificial neural network, K-Nearest Neighbour
and support vector machine methods using bootstrapped data are
detailed and shown that while the success rate of the ANN algorithms
improves remarkably, the outcome of the others do not benefit so
much from the provided enlarged data space. For assessment, two
databases are employed: IEC TC10 and a dataset collected from
reported data in papers. High average test success rate well exhibits
the remarkable outcome.
Abstract: Many measures have been proposed for machine
translation evaluation (MTE) while little research has been done on
the performance of MTE methods. This paper is an effort for MTE
performance analysis. A general frame is proposed for the description
of the MTE measure and the test suite, including whether the
automatic measure is consistent with human evaluation, whether
different results from various measures or test suites are consistent,
whether the content of the test suite is suitable for performance
evaluation, the degree of difficulty of the test suite and its influence
on the MTE, the relationship of MTE result significance and the size
of the test suite, etc. For a better clarification of the frame, several
experiment results are analyzed relating human evaluation, BLEU
evaluation, and typological MTE. A visualization method is
introduced for better presentation of the results. The study aims for
aid in construction of test suite and method selection in MTE
practice.
Abstract: This paper focuses on a technique for identifying the geological boundary of the ground strata in front of a tunnel excavation site using the first order adjoint method based on the optimal control theory. The geological boundary is defined as the boundary which is different layers of elastic modulus. At tunnel excavations, it is important to presume the ground situation ahead of the cutting face beforehand. Excavating into weak strata or fault fracture zones may cause extension of the construction work and human suffering. A theory for determining the geological boundary of the ground in a numerical manner is investigated, employing excavating blasts and its vibration waves as the observation references. According to the optimal control theory, the performance function described by the square sum of the residuals between computed and observed velocities is minimized. The boundary layer is determined by minimizing the performance function. The elastic analysis governed by the Navier equation is carried out, assuming the ground as an elastic body with linear viscous damping. To identify the boundary, the gradient of the performance function with respect to the geological boundary can be calculated using the adjoint equation. The weighed gradient method is effectively applied to the minimization algorithm. To solve the governing and adjoint equations, the Galerkin finite element method and the average acceleration method are employed for the spatial and temporal discretizations, respectively. Based on the method presented in this paper, the different boundary of three strata can be identified. For the numerical studies, the Suemune tunnel excavation site is employed. At first, the blasting force is identified in order to perform the accuracy improvement of analysis. We identify the geological boundary after the estimation of blasting force. With this identification procedure, the numerical analysis results which almost correspond with the observation data were provided.
Abstract: With the extensive inclusion of document, especially
text, in the business systems, data mining does not cover the full
scope of Business Intelligence. Data mining cannot deliver its impact
on extracting useful details from the large collection of unstructured
and semi-structured written materials based on natural languages.
The most pressing issue is to draw the potential business intelligence
from text. In order to gain competitive advantages for the business, it
is necessary to develop the new powerful tool, text mining, to expand
the scope of business intelligence.
In this paper, we will work out the strong points of text mining in
extracting business intelligence from huge amount of textual
information sources within business systems. We will apply text
mining to each stage of Business Intelligence systems to prove that
text mining is the powerful tool to expand the scope of BI. After
reviewing basic definitions and some related technologies, we will
discuss the relationship and the benefits of these to text mining. Some
examples and applications of text mining will also be given. The
motivation behind is to develop new approach to effective and
efficient textual information analysis. Thus we can expand the scope
of Business Intelligence using the powerful tool, text mining.
Abstract: This study presents the numerical simulation of
optimum pin-fin heat sink with air impinging cooling by using
Taguchi method. 9 L ( 4 3 ) orthogonal array is selected as a plan for
the four design-parameters with three levels. The governing
equations are discretized by using the
control-volume-based-finite-difference method with a power-law
scheme on the non-uniform staggered grid. We solved the coupling of
the velocity and the pressure terms of momentum equations using
SIMPLEC algorithm. We employ the k −ε two-equations
turbulence model to describe the turbulent behavior. The parameters
studied include fin height H (35mm-45mm), inter-fin spacing a , b ,
and c (2 mm-6.4 mm), and Reynolds number ( Re = 10000- 25000).
The objective of this study is to examine the effects of the fin
spacings and fin height on the thermal resistance and to find the
optimum group by using the Taguchi method. We found that the fin
spacings from the center to the edge of the heat sink gradually
extended, and the longer the fin’s height the better the results. The
optimum group is 3 1 2 3 H a b c . In addition, the effects of parameters are
ranked by importance as a , H , c , and b .
Abstract: Inner class is a specialized class that defined within a
regular outer class. It is used in some programming languages such as
Java to carry out the task which is related to its outer class. The
functional relatedness between inner class and outer class is always
the main concern of defining an inner class. However, excessive use
of inner class could sabotage the class cohesiveness. In addition,
excessive inner class leads to the difficulty of software maintenance
and comprehension. Our research aims at determining the minimum
threshold for the functional relatedness of inner-outer class. Such
minimum threshold is a guideline for removing or relocating the
excessive inner class. Our research provides a feasible way for
software developers to define inner classes which are functionally
related to the outer class.
Abstract: There are many studies in the literature on
institutional investors- efforts to improve corporate governance,
generally focused on the role of pension funds and private equity
firms. There are only a few studies that analyze the influence of
development banks in the governance of investee companies. The
objective of this research is to examine the role of the Brazilian
Development Bank (BNDES) in the governance of listed companies.
Our analysis provides evidence that companies in which BNDES is a
shareholder have better governance.
Abstract: In a recent year usage of VoIP subscription has increased tremendously as compare to Public Switching Telephone System(PSTN). A VoIP subscriber would like to know the exact tariffs of the calls made using VoIP. As the usage increases, the rate of fraud is also increases, causing users complain about excess billing. This in turn hampers the growth of VoIP .This paper describe the common frauds and attack on VoIP based system and make an attempt to solve the billing attack by creating secured channel between caller and callee.
Abstract: Optical emission based on excitonic scattering processes becomes important in dense exciton systems in which the average distance between excitons is of the order of a few Bohr radii but still below the exciton screening threshold. The phenomena due to interactions among excited states play significant role in the emission near band edge of the material. The theory of two-exciton collisions for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well systems is a mild attempt to understand the physics associated with the optical spectra due to excitonic scattering processes in these novel systems. The four typical processes considered give different spectral shape, peak position and temperature dependence of the emission spectra. We have used the theory of scattering together with the second order perturbation theory to derive the radiative power spontaneously emitted at an energy ħω by these processes. The results arrived at are purely qualitative in nature. The intensity of emitted light in quantum well systems varies inversely to the square of temperature, whereas in case of bulk materials it simply decreases with the temperature.
Abstract: Sensory input plays an important role to human
posture control system to initiate strategy in order to counterpart any
unbalance condition and thus, prevent fall. In previous study, joint
stiffness was observed able to describe certain issues regarding to
movement performance. But, correlation between balance ability and
joint stiffness is still remains unknown. In this study, joint stiffening
strategy at ankle and hip were observed under different sensory
manipulations and its correlation with conventional clinical test
(Functional Reach Test) for balance ability was investigated. In order
to create unstable condition, two different surface perturbations (tilt
up-tilt (TT) down and forward-backward (FB)) at four different
frequencies (0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 Hz) were introduced. Furthermore,
four different sensory manipulation conditions (include vision and
vestibular system) were applied to the subject and they were asked to
maintain their position as possible. The results suggested that joint
stiffness were high during difficult balance situation. Less balance
people generated high average joint stiffness compared to balance
people. Besides, adaptation of posture control system under repetitive
external perturbation also suggested less during sensory limited
condition. Overall, analysis of joint stiffening response possible to
predict unbalance situation faced by human
Abstract: The voltage/current characteristics and the effect of
NO2 gas on the electrical conductivity of a PbPc gas sensor array is
investigated. The gas sensor is manufactured using vacuum
deposition of gold electrodes on sapphire substrate with the leadphathalocyanine
vacuum sublimed on the top of the gold electrodes.
Two versions of the PbPc gas sensor array are investigated. The
tested types differ in the gap sizes between the deposited gold
electrodes. The sensors are tested at different temperatures to account
for conductivity changes as the molecular adsorption/desorption rate
is affected by heat. The obtained results found to be encouraging as
the sensors shoed stability and sensitivity towards low concentration
of applied NO2 gas.
Abstract: The nonlinear damping behavior is usually ignored in
the design of a miniature moving-coil loudspeaker. But when the
loudspeaker operated in air, the damping parameter varies with the
voice-coil displacement corresponding due to viscous air flow. The
present paper presents an identification model as inverse problem to
identify the nonlinear damping parameter in the lumped parameter
model for the loudspeaker. Theoretical results for the nonlinear
damping are verified by using laser displacement measurement
scanner. These results indicate that the damping parameter has the
greatly different nonlinearity between in air and vacuum. It is believed
that the results of the present work can be applied in diagnosis and
sound quality improvement of a miniature loudspeaker.
Abstract: Never has a revolution affected all aspects of
humanity as the communication revolution during the past two
decades. This revolution, with all its advances and utilities, swept the
world thus becoming an integral part of our lives, hence giving way
to emerging applications at the social, economic, political, and
educational levels. More specifically, such applications have changed
the delivery system through which learning is acquired by students.
Interaction with educators, accessibility to content, and creative
delivery options are but a few facets of the new learning experience
now being offered through the use of technology in the educational
field. With different success rates, third world countries have tried to
pace themselves with use of educational technology in advanced
parts of the world. One such country is the small rich-oil state of
Kuwait which has tried to adopt the e-educational model, however,
an evaluation of such trial is yet to be done. This study aimed to fill
the void of research conducted around that topic. The study explored
students' acceptance of incorporating communication technologies in
higher education in Kuwait. Students' responses to survey questions
presented an overview of the e-learning experience in this country,
and drew a framework through which implications and suggestions
for future research were discussed to better serve the advancement of
e-education in developing countries.