Abstract: The subcellular organelles called oil bodies (OBs) are lipid-filled quasi-spherical droplets produced from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and then released into the cytoplasm during seed development. It is believed that an OB grows by coalescence with other OBs and that its stability depends on the composition of oleosins, major proteins inserted in the hemi membrane that covers OBs. In this study, we measured the OB-volume distribution from different genotypes of A. thaliana after 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 days of seed development. In order to test the hypothesis of OBs dynamics, we developed a simple mathematical model using non-linear differential equations inspired from the theory of coagulation. The model describes the evolution of OB-volume distribution during the first steps of seed development by taking into consideration the production of OBs, the increase of triacylglycerol volume to be stored, and the growth by coalescence of OBs. Fitted parameters values show an increase in the OB production and coalescence rates in A. thaliana oleosin mutants compared to wild type.
Abstract: In literatures, many researches proposed various
methods to reduce PAPR (Peak to Average Power Ratio). Among
those, DSI (Dummy Sequence Insertion) is one of the most attractive
methods for WiMAX systems because it does not require side
information transmitted along with user data. However, the
conventional DSI methods find dummy sequence by performing an
iterative procedure until achieving PAPR under a desired threshold.
This causes a significant delay on finding dummy sequence and also
effects to the overall performances in WiMAX systems. In this paper,
the new method based on DSI is proposed by finding dummy
sequence without the need of iterative procedure. The fast DSI
method can reduce PAPR without either delays or required side
information. The simulation results confirm that the proposed method
is able to carry out PAPR performances as similar to the other
methods without any delays. In addition, the simulations of WiMAX
system with adaptive modulations are also investigated to realize the
use of proposed methods on various fading schemes. The results
suggest the WiMAX designers to modify a new Signal to Noise Ratio
(SNR) criteria for adaptation.
Abstract: In recent years, we see an increase of interest for efficient tracking systems in surveillance applications. Many of the proposed techniques are designed for static cameras environments. When the camera is moving, tracking moving objects become more difficult and many techniques fail to detect and track the desired targets. The problem becomes more complex when we want to track a specific object in real-time using a moving Pan and Tilt camera system to keep the target within the image. This type of tracking is of high importance in surveillance applications. When a target is detected at a certain zone, the possibility of automatically tracking it continuously and keeping it within the image until action is taken is very important for security personnel working in very sensitive sites. This work presents a real-time tracking system permitting the detection and continuous tracking of targets using a Pan and Tilt camera platform. A novel and efficient approach for dealing with occlusions is presented. Also a new intelligent forget factor is introduced in order to take into account target shape variations and avoid learning non desired objects. Tests conducted in outdoor operational scenarios show the efficiency and robustness of the proposed approach.
Abstract: A series of Ti based shape memory alloys with
composition of Ti50Ni49Cr1, Ti50Ni47Cr3 and Ti50Ni45Cr5 were
developed by vacuum arc-melting under a purified argon atmosphere.
The histometric and corrosion evaluation of Ti-Ni-Cr shape memory
alloys have been considered in this research work. The alloys were
developed by vacuum arc melting and implanted subcutaneously in
rabbits for 4, 8 and 12 weeks. Metallic implants were embedded in
order to determine the outcome of implantation on histometric and
corrosion evaluation of Ti-Ni-Cr metallic strips. Encapsulating
membrane formation around the alloys was minimal in the case of all
materials. After histomorphometric analyses it was possible to
demonstrate that there were no statistically significant differences
between the materials. Corrosion rate was also determined in this
study which is within acceptable range. The results showed the Ti-
Ni-Cr alloy was neither cytotoxic, nor have any systemic reaction on
living system in any of the test performed. Implantation shows good
compatibility and a potential of being used directly in vivo system.
Abstract: This research investigates the factors that influence moral judgments when dealing with ethical dilemmas in the organizational context. It also investigates the antecedents of individual ethical ideology (idealism and relativism). A mixed method study, which combines qualitative (field study) and quantitative (survey) approaches, was used in this study. An initial model was developed first, which was then fine-tuned based on field studies. Data were collected from managers in Malaysian large organizations. The results of this study reveal that in-group collectivism culture, power distance culture, parental values, and religiosity were significant as antecedents of ethical ideology. However, direct effects of these variables on moral judgment were not significant. Furthermore, the results of this study confirm the significant effects of ethical ideology on moral judgment. This study provides valuable insight into evaluating the validity of existing theory as proposed in the literature and offers significant practical implications.
Abstract: Phase locked loops (PLL) and delay locked loops (DLL) play an important role in establishing coherent references (phase of carrier and symbol timing) in digital communication systems. Fully digital receiver including digital carrier synchronizer and symbol timing synchronizer fulfils the conditions for universal multi-mode communication receiver with option of symbol rate setting over several digit places and long-term stability of requirement parameters. Afterwards it is necessary to realize PLL and DLL in synchronizer in digital form and to approach to these subsystems as a discrete representation of analog template. Analysis of discrete phase locked loop (DPLL) or discrete delay locked loop (DDLL) and technique to determine their characteristics based on analog (continuous-time) template is performed in this posed paper. There are derived transmission response and error function for 1st order discrete locked loop and resulting equations and graphical representations for 2nd order one. It is shown that the spectrum translation due to sampling takes effect at frequency characteristics computing for specific values of loop parameters.
Abstract: Coagulation of water involves the use of coagulating
agents to bring the suspended matter in the raw water together for
settling and the filtration stage. Present study is aimed to examine the
effects of aluminum sulfate as coagulant in conjunction with Moringa
Oleifera Coagulant Protein as coagulant aid on turbidity, hardness,
and bacteria in turbid water. A conventional jar test apparatus was
employed for the tests. The best removal was observed at a pH of 7
to 7.5 for all turbidities. Turbidity removal efficiency was resulted
between % 80 to % 99 by Moringa Oleifera Coagulant Protein as
coagulant aid. Dosage of coagulant and coagulant aid decreased with
increasing turbidity. In addition, Moringa Oleifera Coagulant Protein
significantly has reduced the required dosage of primary coagulant.
Residual Al+3 in treated water were less than 0.2 mg/l and meets the
environmental protection agency guidelines. The results showed that
turbidity reduction of % 85.9- % 98 paralleled by a primary
Escherichia coli reduction of 1-3 log units (99.2 – 99.97%) was
obtained within the first 1 to 2 h of treatment. In conclusions,
Moringa Oleifera Coagulant Protein as coagulant aid can be used for
drinking water treatment without the risk of organic or nutrient
release. We demonstrated that optimal design method is an efficient
approach for optimization of coagulation-flocculation process and
appropriate for raw water treatment.
Abstract: Fully customized hardware based technology provides high performance and low power consumption by specializing the tasks in hardware but lacks design flexibility since any kind of changes require re-design and re-fabrication. Software based solutions operate with software instructions due to which a great flexibility is achieved from the easy development and maintenance of the software code. But this execution of instructions introduces a high overhead in performance and area consumption. In past few decades the reconfigurable computing domain has been introduced which overcomes the traditional trades-off between flexibility and performance and is able to achieve high performance while maintaining a good flexibility. The dramatic gains in terms of chip performance and design flexibility achieved through the reconfigurable computing systems are greatly dependent on the design of their computational units being integrated with reconfigurable logic resources. The computational unit of any reconfigurable system plays vital role in defining its strength. In this research paper an RFU based computational unit design has been presented using the tightly coupled, multi-threaded reconfigurable cores. The proposed design has been simulated for VLIW based architectures and a high gain in performance has been observed as compared to the conventional computing systems.
Abstract: The traditional method for essential oil extraction from agarwood (Aquilaria Crassna) is to soak it in water and follow with hydrodistillation. The effect of various agarwood pretreatments: ethanol, acid, alkaline, enzymes, and ultrasound, and the effect of subcritical water extraction(SWE) was studied to compare with the traditional method. The major compositions of agarwood oil from hydrodistillation were aroma compounds as follow: aristol-9-en-8- one (21.53%), selina-3, 7(11)-diene (12.96%), τ-himachalene (9.28%), β-guaiene (5.79%), hexadecanoic acid (4.90%) and guaia- 3,9-diene (4.21%). Whereas agarwood oil from pretreatments with ethanol and ultrasound, and SWE got fatty acid compounds. Extraction of agarwood oil using these pretreatments could improve the agarwood oil yields up to 2 times that of the traditional method. The components of the pretreated sample with diluted acid (H2SO4) at pH 4 gave quite similar results as the traditional method. Therefore, the enhancement of essential oil from agarwood depends on requirement of type of extracted oil that involved extraction methods.
Abstract: Image data holds a large amount of different context
information. However, as of today, these resources remain largely
untouched. It is thus the aim of this paper to present a basic technical
framework which allows for a quick and easy exploitation of context
information from image data especially by non-expert users.
Furthermore, the proposed framework is discussed in detail
concerning important social and ethical issues which demand special
requirements in system design. Finally, a first sensor prototype is
presented which meets the identified requirements. Additionally,
necessary implications for the software and hardware design of the
system are discussed, rendering a sensor system which could be
regarded as a good, acceptable and justifiable technical and thereby
enabling the extraction of context information from image data.
Abstract: Microwave energy is a superior alternative to several other thermal treatments. Extraction techniques are widely employed for the isolation of bioactive compounds and vegetable oils from oil seeds. Among the different and new available techniques, microwave pretreatment of seeds is a simple and desirable method for production of high quality vegetable oils. Microwave pretreatment for oil extraction has many advantages as follow: improving oil extraction yield and quality, direct extraction capability, lower energy consumption, faster processing time and reduced solvent levels compared with conventional methods. It allows also for better retention and availability of desirable nutraceuticals, such as phytosterols and tocopherols, canolol and phenolic compounds in the extracted oil such as rapeseed oil. This can be a new step to produce nutritional vegetable oils with improved shelf life because of high antioxidant content.
Abstract: Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a recent class of statistical classification and regression techniques playing an increasing role in applications to detection problems in various engineering problems, notably in statistical signal processing, pattern recognition, image analysis, and communication systems. In this paper, SVM is applied to an infrared (IR) binary communication system with different types of channel models including Ricean multipath fading and partially developed scattering channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the receiver. The structure and performance of SVM in terms of the bit error rate (BER) metric is derived and simulated for these channel stochastic models and the computational complexity of the implementation, in terms of average computational time per bit, is also presented. The performance of SVM is then compared to classical binary signal maximum likelihood detection using a matched filter driven by On-Off keying (OOK) modulation. We found that the performance of SVM is superior to that of the traditional optimal detection schemes used in statistical communication, especially for very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ranges. For large SNR, the performance of the SVM is similar to that of the classical detectors. The implication of these results is that SVM can prove very beneficial to IR communication systems that notoriously suffer from low SNR at the cost of increased computational complexity.
Abstract: Speed estimation is one of the important and practical tasks in machine vision, Robotic and Mechatronic. the availability of high quality and inexpensive video cameras, and the increasing need for automated video analysis has generated a great deal of interest in machine vision algorithms. Numerous approaches for speed estimation have been proposed. So classification and survey of the proposed methods can be very useful. The goal of this paper is first to review and verify these methods. Then we will propose a novel algorithm to estimate the speed of moving object by using fuzzy concept. There is a direct relation between motion blur parameters and object speed. In our new approach we will use Radon transform to find direction of blurred image, and Fuzzy sets to estimate motion blur length. The most benefit of this algorithm is its robustness and precision in noisy images. Our method was tested on many images with different range of SNR and is satisfiable.
Abstract: Nowadays, people are going more and more mobile, both in terms of devices and associated applications. Moreover, services that these devices are offering are getting wider and much more complex. Even though actual handheld devices have considerable computing power, their contexts of utilization are different. These contexts are affected by the availability of connection, high latency of wireless networks, battery life, size of the screen, on-screen or hard keyboard, etc. Consequently, development of mobile applications and their associated mobile Web services, if any, should follow a concise methodology so they will provide a high Quality of Service. The aim of this paper is to highlight and discuss main issues to consider when developing mobile applications and mobile Web services and then propose a framework that leads developers through different steps and modules toward development of efficient and secure mobile applications. First, different challenges in developing such applications are elicited and deeply discussed. Second, a development framework is presented with different modules addressing each of these challenges. Third, the paper presents an example of a mobile application, Eivom Cinema Guide, which benefits from following our development framework.
Abstract: The need to evaluate and understand the natural
drainage pattern in a flood prone, and fast developing environment is
of paramount importance. This information will go a long way to
help the town planners to determine the drainage pattern, road
networks and areas where prominent structures are to be located. This
research work was carried out with the aim of studying the Bayelsa
landscape topography using digitized topographic information, and to
model the natural drainage flow pattern that will aid the
understanding and constructions of workable drainages. To achieve
this, digitize information of elevation and coordinate points were
extracted from a global imagery map. The extracted information was
modeled into 3D surfaces. The result revealed that the average
elevation for Bayelsa State is 12 m above sea level. The highest
elevation is 28 m, and the lowest elevation 0 m, along the coastline.
In Yenagoa the capital city of Bayelsa were a detail survey was
carried out showed that average elevation is 15 m, the highest
elevation is 25 m and lowest is 3 m above the mean sea level. The
regional elevation in Bayelsa, showed a gradation decrease from the
North Eastern zone to the South Western Zone. Yenagoa showed an
observed elevation lineament, were low depression is flanked by high
elevation that runs from the North East to the South west. Hence,
future drainages in Yenagoa should be directed from the high
elevation, from South East toward the North West and from the
North West toward South East, to the point of convergence which is
at the center that flows from South East toward the North West.
Bayelsa when considered on a regional Scale, the flow pattern is from
the North East to the South West, and also North South. It is
recommended that in the event of any large drainage construction at
municipal scale, it should be directed from North East to the South
West or from North to South. Secondly, detail survey should be
carried out to ascertain the local topography and the drainage pattern
before the design and construction of any drainage system in any part
of Bayelsa.
Abstract: In this paper, we have proposed a low cost optimized solution for the movement of a three-arm manipulator using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). A scheme is given for optimizing the movement of robotic arm with the help of Genetic Algorithm so that the minimum energy consumption criteria can be achieved. As compared to Direct Kinematics, Inverse Kinematics evolved two solutions out of which the best-fit solution is selected with the help of Genetic Algorithm and is kept in search space for future use. The Inverse Kinematics, Fitness Value evaluation and Binary Encoding like tasks are simulated and tested. Although, three factors viz. Movement, Friction and Least Settling Time (or Min. Vibration) are used for finding the Fitness Function / Fitness Values, however some more factors can also be considered.
Abstract: This paper presents a design and prototype
implementation of new home automation system that uses WiFi
technology as a network infrastructure connecting its parts. The
proposed system consists of two main components; the first part is
the server (web server), which presents system core that manages,
controls, and monitors users- home. Users and system administrator
can locally (LAN) or remotely (internet) manage and control system
code. Second part is hardware interface module, which provides
appropriate interface to sensors and actuator of home automation
system. Unlike most of available home automation system in the
market the proposed system is scalable that one server can manage
many hardware interface modules as long as it exists on WiFi
network coverage. System supports a wide range of home
automation devices like power management components, and
security components. The proposed system is better from the
scalability and flexibility point of view than the commercially
available home automation systems.
Abstract: Plastic waste is a big issue in Thailand, but the amount of recycled plastic in Thailand is still low due to the high investment and operating cost. Hence, the rest of plastic waste are burnt to destroy or sent to the landfills. In order to be financial viable, an effective reverse logistics infrastructure is required to support the product recovery activities. However, there is a conflict between reducing the cost and raising environmental protection level. The purpose of this study is to build a goal programming (GP) so that it can be used to help analyze the proper planning of the Thailand-s plastic recycling system that involves multiple objectives. This study considers three objectives; reducing total cost, increasing the amount of plastic recovery, and raising the desired plastic materials in recycling process. The results from two priority structures show that it is necessary to raise the total cost budget in order to achieve targets on amount of recycled plastic and desired plastic materials.
Abstract: In this paper, the decomposition-aggregation method
is used to carry out connective stability criteria for general linear
composite system via aggregation. The large scale system is
decomposed into a number of subsystems. By associating directed
graphs with dynamic systems in an essential way, we define the
relation between system structure and stability in the sense of
Lyapunov. The stability criteria is then associated with the stability
and system matrices of subsystems as well as those interconnected
terms among subsystems using the concepts of vector differential
inequalities and vector Lyapunov functions. Then, we show that the
stability of each subsystem and stability of the aggregate model
imply connective stability of the overall system. An example is
reported, showing the efficiency of the proposed technique.
Abstract: The increasing complexity of software development based on peer to peer networks makes necessary the creation of new frameworks in order to simplify the developer-s task. Additionally, some applications, e.g. fire detection or security alarms may require real-time constraints and the high level definition of these features eases the application development. In this paper, a service model based on a component model with real-time features is proposed. The high-level model will abstract developers from implementation tasks, such as discovery, communication, security or real-time requirements. The model is oriented to deploy services on small mobile devices, such as sensors, mobile phones and PDAs, where the computation is light-weight. Services can be composed among them by means of the port concept to form complex ad-hoc systems and their implementation is carried out using a component language called UM-RTCOM. In order to apply our proposals a fire detection application is described.