Abstract: Nowadays Multilevel inverters are widely using in various applications. Modulation strategy at fundamental switching frequency like, SHEPWM is prominent technique to eliminate lower order of harmonics with less switching losses and better harmonic profile. The equations which are formed by SHE are highly nonlinear transcendental in nature, there may exist single, multiple or even no solutions for a particular MI. However, some loads such as electrical drives, it is required to operate in whole range of MI. In order to solve SHE equations for whole range of MI, intelligent techniques are well suited to solve equations so as to produce lest %THDV. Hence, this paper uses Continuous genetic algorithm for minimising harmonics. This paper also presents wavelet based analysis of harmonics. The developed algorithm is simulated and %THD from FFT analysis and Wavelet analysis are compared. MATLAB programming environment and SIMULINK models are used whenever necessary.
Abstract: Quantitative characterization of nonlinear directional
couplings between stochastic oscillators from data is considered. We
suggest coupling characteristics readily interpreted from a physical
viewpoint and their estimators. An expression for a statistical
significance level is derived analytically that allows reliable coupling
detection from a relatively short time series. Performance of the
technique is demonstrated in numerical experiments.
Abstract: Identifying and classifying intersections according to
severity is very important for implementation of safety related
counter measures and effective models are needed to compare and
assess the severity. Highway safety organizations have considered
intersection safety among their priorities. In spite of significant
advances in highways safety, the large numbers of crashes with high
severities still occur in the highways. Investigation of influential
factors on crashes enables engineers to carry out calculations in order
to reduce crash severity. Previous studies lacked a model capable of
simultaneous illustration of the influence of human factors, road,
vehicle, weather conditions and traffic features including traffic
volume and flow speed on the crash severity. Thus, this paper is
aimed at developing the models to illustrate the simultaneous
influence of these variables on the crash severity in urban highways.
The models represented in this study have been developed using
binary Logit Models. SPSS software has been used to calibrate the
models. It must be mentioned that backward regression method in
SPSS was used to identify the significant variables in the model.
Consider to obtained results it can be concluded that the main
factor in increasing of crash severity in urban highways are driver
age, movement with reverse gear, technical defect of the vehicle,
vehicle collision with motorcycle and bicycle, bridge, frontal impact
collisions, frontal-lateral collisions and multi-vehicle crashes in
urban highways which always increase the crash severity in urban
highways.
Abstract: Educational games (EG) seem to have lots of potential due to digital games popularity and preferences of our younger generations of learners. However, most studies focus on game design and its effectiveness while little has been known about the factors that can affect users to accept or to reject EG for their learning. User acceptance research try to understand the determinants of information systems (IS) adoption among users by investigating both systems factors and users factors. Upon the lack of knowledge on acceptance factors for educational games, we seek to understand the issue. This study proposed a model of acceptance factors based on Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). We use original model (performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence) together with two new determinants (learning opportunities and enjoyment). We will also investigate the effect of gender and gaming experience that moderate the proposed factors.
Abstract: Visualizing “Courses – Pre – Required -
Architecture" on the screen has proven to be useful and helpful for
university actors and specially for students. In fact, these students
can easily identify courses and their pre required, perceive the
courses to follow in the future, and then can choose rapidly the
appropriate course to register in. Given a set of courses and their prerequired,
we present an algorithm for visualization a graph entitled
“Courses-Pre-Required-Graph" that present courses and their prerequired
in order to help students to recognize, lonely, what courses
to take in the future and perceive the contain of all courses that they
will study. Our algorithm using “Force Directed Placement"
technique visualizes the “Courses-Pre-Required-Graph" in such way
that courses are easily identifiable. The time complexity of our
drawing algorithm is O (n2), where n is the number of courses in the
“Courses-Pre-Required-Graph".
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a high capacity image hiding
technology based on pixel prediction and the difference of modified histogram. This approach is used the pixel prediction and the
difference of modified histogram to calculate the best embedding point.
This approach can improve the predictive accuracy and increase the pixel difference to advance the hiding capacity. We also use the
histogram modification to prevent the overflow and underflow. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method within the
same average hiding capacity can still keep high quality of image and low distortion
Abstract: Optical burst switching(OBS) is considered as one of
preferable network technologies for the next generation Internet. The
Internet has two traffic classes, i.e. real-time bursts and reliable bursts.
It is an important subject for OBS to achieve cooperated operation of
real-time bursts and reliable bursts. In this paper, we proposes a new
effective traffic control method named Separate TB+LB (Token
Bucket + Leaky Bucket : TB+LB) method. The proposed method
presents a new Token Bucket scheme for real-time bursts called as
RBO-TB (Real-time Bursts Oriented Token Bucket). The method also
applies the LB method to reliable bursts for obtaining better
performance. This paper verifies the effectiveness of the Separate
TB+LB method through the performance evaluation.
Abstract: In the globalization context and competitiveness, the role of a university is further enhanced. University is no longer confined to traditional roles. Universities need to interact with others in order to be relevant and progressive. Symbiosis relationships between the university and industry are very significant because the relationship between those two can foster economic development of a nation. In a world of fast changing technology and competition, it is necessary for the university to collaborate with industry to combine efforts fostering the diffusion of knowledge, increasing research and development, patenting innovation and commercializing products. It has become increasingly accepted that the necessity of close university-industry interactions as a mean of national economic prosperity. Therefore, this paper is aim to examine the level of linkages in university-industry interactions to which promotes the regional economic growth and development. This paper will explore the formation of linkages between the Higher Education Institution (University Technology MARA) and industries located in the Klang Valley region of Malaysia. It will present the university-industry linkages with emphasis on the type of linkages existed, the benefits of having such linkages to promote regional economic development and finally the constraints that might impede the linkages and potentials to enhance the linkages towards economic growth and development.
Abstract: In this paper, a new reversible watermarking method is presented that reduces the size of a stereoscopic image sequence while keeping its content visible. The proposed technique embeds the residuals of the right frames to the corresponding frames of the left sequence, halving the total capacity. The residual frames may result in after a disparity compensated procedure between the two video streams or by a joint motion and disparity compensation. The residuals are usually lossy compressed before embedding because of the limited embedding capacity of the left frames. The watermarked frames are visible at a high quality and at any instant the stereoscopic video may be recovered by an inverse process. In fact, the left frames may be exactly recovered whereas the right ones are slightly distorted as the residuals are not embedded intact. The employed embedding method reorders the left frame into an array of consecutive pixel pairs and embeds a number of bits according to their intensity difference. In this way, it hides a number of bits in intensity smooth areas and most of the data in textured areas where resulting distortions are less visible. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed scheme is quite effective.
Abstract: Erwinia carotovora var. carotovora is the main cause of soft rot in potatoes. Hyphaene thebaica was studied for biocontrol of E. carotovora which inhibited growth of E. carotovora on solid medium, a comparative study of classical and ultrasound-assisted extractions of Hyphaene thebaica fruit. The use of ultrasound decreased significant the total time of treatment and increase the total amount of crude extract. The crude extract was subjected to determine the in vitro, by a bioassay technique revealed that the treatment of paper disks with ultrasound extraction of Hyphaene thebaica reduced the growth of pathogen and produced inhibition zones up to 38mm in diameter. The antioxidant activity of ultrasound-ethanolic extract of Doum fruits (Hyphaene thebaica) was determined. Data obtained showed that the extract contains the secondary metabolites such as Tannins, Saponin, Flavonoids, Phenols, Steroids, Terpenoids, Glycosides and Alkaloids.
Abstract: This paper presents a tested research concept that
implements a complex evolutionary algorithm, genetic algorithm
(GA), in a multi-microcontroller environment. Parallel Distributed
Genetic Algorithm (PDGA) is employed in adaptive beam forming
technique to reduce power usage of adaptive antenna at WCDMA
base station. Adaptive antenna has dynamic beam that requires more
advanced beam forming algorithm such as genetic algorithm which
requires heavy computation and memory space. Microcontrollers are
low resource platforms that are normally not associated with GAs,
which are typically resource intensive. The aim of this project was to
design a cooperative multiprocessor system by expanding the role of
small scale PIC microcontrollers to optimize WCDMA base station
transmitter power. Implementation results have shown that PDGA
multi-microcontroller system returned optimal transmitted power
compared to conventional GA.
Abstract: The interaction among information and communication technology (ICT) industries is a recently ubiquitous phenomenon through fixed-mobile integration. To monitor the impact of interaction, previous research has mainly focused on measuring spillover effect among ICT industries using various methods. Among others, inter-industry analysis is one of the useful methods for examining spillover effect between industries. However, more complex ICT industries become, more important the impact within an industry is. Inter-industry analysis is limited in mirroring intra-relationships within an industry. Thus, this study applies the analytic network process (ANP) to measure the spillover effect, capturing all of the intra and inter-relationships. Using ANP-based intra and inter-industry analysis, the spillover effect is effectively measured, mirroring the complex structure of ICT industries. A main ICT industry and its linkages are also explored to show the current structure of ICT industries. The proposed approach is expected to allow policy makers to understand interactions of ICT industries and their impact.
Abstract: This paper reports on the results of experimental investigations on the performance of a jet pump operated under selected primary flows to optimize the related parameters. For this purpose a two-phase flow jet pump was used employing various profiles of nozzles as the primary device which was designed, fabricated and used along with the combination of mixing tube and diffuser. The profiles employed were circular, conical, and elliptical. The diameter of the nozzle used was 4 mm. The area ratio of the jet pump was 0.16. The test facility created for this purpose was an open loop continuous circulation system. Performance of the jet pump was obtained as iso-efficiency curves on characteristic curves drawn for various water flow rates. To perform the suction capability, evacuation test was conducted at best efficiency point for all the profiles.
Abstract: Over the past few years, XML (eXtensible Mark-up
Language) has emerged as the standard for information
representation and data exchange over the Internet. This paper
provides a kick-start for new researches venturing in XML databases
field. We survey the storage representation for XML document,
review the XML query processing and optimization techniques with
respect to the particular storage instance. Various optimization
technologies have been developed to solve the query retrieval and
updating problems. Towards the later year, most researchers
proposed hybrid optimization techniques. Hybrid system opens the
possibility of covering each technology-s weakness by its strengths.
This paper reviews the advantages and limitations of optimization
techniques.
Abstract: Turbulence modeling of large-scale flow over a vegetated surface is complex. Such problems involve large scale computational domains, while the characteristics of flow near the surface are also involved. In modeling large scale flow, surface roughness including vegetation is generally taken into account by mean of roughness parameters in the modified law of the wall. However, the turbulence structure within the canopy region cannot be captured with this method, another method which applies source/sink terms to model plant drag can be used. These models have been developed and tested intensively but with a simple surface geometry. This paper aims to compare the use of roughness parameter, and additional source/sink terms in modeling the effect of plant drag on wind flow over a complex vegetated surface. The RNG k-ε turbulence model with the non-equilibrium wall function was tested with both cases. In addition, the k-ω turbulence model, which is claimed to be computationally stable, was also investigated with the source/sink terms. All numerical results were compared to the experimental results obtained at the study site Mason Bay, Stewart Island, New Zealand. In the near-surface region, it is found that the results obtained by using the source/sink term are more accurate than those using roughness parameters. The k-ω turbulence model with source/sink term is more appropriate as it is more accurate and more computationally stable than the RNG k-ε turbulence model. At higher region, there is no significant difference amongst the results obtained from all simulations.
Abstract:
Innovation is becoming more and more important in
modern society. There are a lot of researches on different kinds of
innovation but marketing innovation is one kind of innovation that
has not been studied frequently before. Marketing innovation is
defined as a new way in which companies can market themselves to
potential or existing customers.
The study shows some key elements for marketing innovation that
are worth paying attention to when implementing marketing
innovation projects. Examples of such key elements are: paying
attention to the neglected market, suitable market segmentatio
reliable market information, public relationship, increased customer
value, combination of market factors, explore different marketing
channels and the use of technology in combination with what? Beside
the key elements for marketing innovation, we also present some
risks that may occur, such as cost, market uncertainty, information
leakage, imitation and overdependence on experience.
By proposing a set of indicators to measure marketing innovation,
the article offers solutions for marketing innovation implementation
so that any organization can achieve optimal results.
Abstract: The paper compares different channel models used for
modeling Broadband Power-Line Communication (BPLC) system.
The models compared are Zimmermann and Dostert, Philipps,
Anatory et al and Anatory et al generalized Transmission Line (TL)
model. The validity of each model was compared in time domain
with ATP-EMTP software which uses transmission line approach. It
is found that for a power-line network with minimum number of
branches all the models give similar signal/pulse time responses
compared with ATP-EMTP software; however, Zimmermann and
Dostert model indicates the same amplitude but different time delay.
It is observed that when the numbers of branches are increased only
generalized TL theory approach results are comparable with ATPEMTP
results. Also the Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS)
system was applied to check the implication of such behavior on the
modulation schemes. It is observed that using Philipps on the
underground cable can predict the performance up to 25dB better
than other channel models which can misread the actual performance
of the system. Also modified Zimmermann and Dostert under
multipath can predict a better performance of about 5dB better than
the actual predicted by Generalized TL theory. It is therefore
suggested for a realistic BPLC system design and analyses the model
based on generalized TL theory be used.
Abstract: The paper reflects current state of popularization of
static elasticity modulus of concrete. This parameter is undoubtedly
very important for designing of concrete structures, and very often
neglected and rarely determined before designing concrete
technology itself. The paper describes assessment and comparison of
four mix designs with almost constant dosage of individual
components. The only difference is area of origin of small size
fraction of aggregate 0/4. Development of compressive strength and
static elasticity modulus at the age of 7, 28 and 180 days were
observed. As the experiment showed, designing of individual
components and their quality are the basic factor influencing
elasticity modulus of current concrete.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a technical and an economic
assessment of several sources of renewable energy in Saudi Arabia;
mainly solar, wind, hydro and biomass. We analyze the
environmental and climatic conditions in relation to these sources
and give an overview of some of the existing clean energy
technologies. Using standardized cost and efficiency data, we carry
out a cost benefit analysis to understand the economic factors
influencing the sustainability of energy production from renewable
sources in light of the energy cost and demand in the Saudi market.
Finally, we take a look at the Saudi petroleum industry and the
existing sources of conventional energy and assess the potential of
building a successful market for renewable energy under the
constraints imposed by the flow of subsidized cheap oil. We show
that while some renewable energy resources are well suited for
distributed or grid connected generation in the kingdom, their
viability is greatly undercut by the well developed and well
capitalized oil industry.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a robust and secure
algorithm for watermarking, the watermark is first transformed into
the frequency domain using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT).
Then the entire DWT coefficient except the LL (Band) discarded,
these coefficients are permuted and encrypted by specific mixing.
The encrypted coefficients are inserted into the most significant
spectral components of the stego-image using a chaotic system. This
technique makes our watermark non-vulnerable to the attack (like
compression, and geometric distortion) of an active intruder, or due
to noise in the transmission link.