Abstract: Recent changes in food retailing structure have led to the development of large supercenters in suburban areas of the United States. These changes have led some authors to suggest that there are food deserts in some urban areas, where food is difficult to access, especially for disadvantaged consumers. This study tests the food desert hypothesis by comparing the distance from food retailers to food secure and food insecure households in one urban, Midwest neighborhood. This study utilizes GIS to compare household survey respondent locations against the location of various types of area food retailers. Results of this study indicate no apparent difference between food secure and insecure households in the reported importance of distance on the decision to shop at various retailers. However, there were differences in the spatial relationship between households and retailers. Food insecure households tended to be located slightly farther from large food retailers and slightly closer to convenience stores. Furthermore, food insecure households reported traveling slightly farther to their primary food retailer. The differences between the two groups was, however, relatively small.
Abstract: Functioning of a biometric system in large part
depends on the performance of the similarity measure function.
Frequently a generalized similarity distance measure function such as
Euclidian distance or Mahalanobis distance is applied to the task of
matching biometric feature vectors. However, often accuracy of a
biometric system can be greatly improved by designing a customized
matching algorithm optimized for a particular biometric application.
In this paper we propose a tailored similarity measure function for
behavioral biometric systems based on the expert knowledge of the
feature level data in the domain. We compare performance of a
proposed matching algorithm to that of other well known similarity
distance functions and demonstrate its superiority with respect to the
chosen domain.
Abstract: Linear induction motors are used in various industries
but they have some specific phenomena which are the causes for
some problems. The most important phenomenon is called end effect.
End effect decreases efficiency, power factor and output force and
unbalances the phase currents. This phenomenon is more important
in medium and high speeds machines. In this paper a factor, EEF , is
obtained by an accurate equivalent circuit model, to determine the
end effect intensity. In this way, all of effective design parameters on
end effect is described. Accuracy of this equivalent circuit model is
evaluated by two dimensional finite-element analysis using ANSYS.
The results show the accuracy of the equivalent circuit model.
Abstract: The typical coupled-tanks process that is TITO
plant has the difficulty in controller design because changing
of system dynamics and interacting of process. This paper
presents design methodology of auto-adjustable PI controller
using MRAC technique. The proposed method can adjust the
controller parameters in response to changes in plant and
disturbance real time by referring to the reference model that
specifies properties of the desired control system.
Abstract: Modern culture, based on disinhibition of cultural trends and on heterodirection, is promoting openmindedness attitudes towards ethnic diversity, but on the other hand also new forms of social representations of the foreigner. Social representation is situated between the psychic field and the social one; it is the representation of oneself and of the other one, hanging between social categories and individual inner world. We will produce the results of a research on the representation of the foreigner, built on the type of prejudice prevailing among middle-low or middle-high educational qualification subjects, in which prejudicial attitudes seem to descend from precise mental images of the foreigner.
Abstract: The wavelet transform is one of the most important
method used in signal processing. In this study, we have introduced
frequency-energy characteristics of local earthquakes using discrete
wavelet transform. Frequency-energy characteristic was analyzed
depend on difference between P and S wave arrival time and noise
within records. We have found that local earthquakes have similar
characteristics. If frequency-energy characteristics can be found
accurately, this gives us a hint to calculate P and S wave arrival time.
It can be seen that wavelet transform provides successful
approximation for this. In this study, 100 earthquakes with 500
records were analyzed approximately.
Abstract: Supersonic open and closed cavity flows are investigated experimentally and computationally. Free stream Mach number of two is set. Schlieren imaging is used to visualise the flow behaviour showing stark differences between open and closed. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to simulate open cavity of flow with aspect ratio of 4. A rear wall treatment is implemented in order to pursue a simple passive control approach. Good qualitative agreement is achieved between the experimental flow visualisation and the CFD in terms of the expansion-shock waves system. The cavity oscillations are shown to be dominated by the first and third Rossister modes combining to high fluctuations of non-linear nature above the cavity rear edge. A simple rear wall treatment in terms of a hole shows mixed effect on the flow oscillations, RMS contours, and time history density fluctuations are given and analysed.
Abstract: The distillation process in the general sense is a
relatively simple technique from the standpoints of its principles.
When dedicating distillation to water treatment and specifically
producing fresh water from sea, ocean and/ briny waters it is
interesting to notice that distillation has no limitations or domains of
applicability regarding the nature or the type of the feedstock water.
This is not the case however for other techniques that are
technologically quite complex, necessitate bigger capital investments
and are limited in their usability. In a previous paper we have
explored some of the effects of temperature on yield. In this paper,
we continue building onto that knowledge base and focus on the
effects of several additional engineering and design variables on
productivity.
Abstract: This paper presents a fuzzy control system for a three degree of freedom (3-DOF) stabilized platform with explicit decoupling scheme. The system under consideration is a system with strong interactions between three channels. By using the concept of decentralized control, a control structure is developed that is composed of three control loops, each of which is associated with a single-variable fuzzy controller and a decoupling unit. Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy control algorithm is used to implement the fuzzy controller. The decoupling units design is based on the adaptive theory reasoning. Simulation tests were established using Simulink of Matlab. The obtained results have demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Simulation results are represented in this paper.
Abstract: Well-developed strategic marketing planning is the essential
prerequisite for establishment of the right and unique competitive
advantage. Typical market, however, is a heterogeneous
and decentralized structure with natural involvement of individual
or group subjectivity and irrationality. These features cannot be
fully expressed with one-shot rigorous formal models based on,
e.g. mathematics, statistics or empirical formulas. We present an
innovative solution, extending the domain of agent based computational
economics towards the concept of hybrid modeling in service
provider and consumer market such as telecommunications. The
behavior of the market is described by two classes of agents -
consumer and service provider agents - whose internal dynamics
are fundamentally different. Customers are rather free multi-state
structures, adjusting behavior and preferences quickly in accordance
with time and changing environment. Producers, on the contrary,
are traditionally structured companies with comparable internal processes
and specific managerial policies. Their business momentum is
higher and immediate reaction possibilities limited. This limitation
underlines importance of proper strategic planning as the main
process advising managers in time whether to continue with more
or less the same business or whether to consider the need for future
structural changes that would ensure retention of existing customers
or acquisition of new ones.
Abstract: A generic and extendible Multi-Agent Data Mining
(MADM) framework, MADMF (the Multi-Agent Data Mining
Framework) is described. The central feature of the framework is that
it avoids the use of agreed meta-language formats by supporting a
framework of wrappers.
The advantage offered is that the framework is easily extendible,
so that further data agents and mining agents can simply be added to
the framework. A demonstration MADMF framework is currently
available. The paper includes details of the MADMF architecture and
the wrapper principle incorporated into it. A full description and
evaluation of the framework-s operation is provided by considering
two MADM scenarios.
Abstract: Desert regions around the Nile valley in Upper Egypt
contain great extent of swelling soil. Many different comment
procedures of treatment of the swelling soils for construction such as
pre-swelling, load balance OR soil replacement. One of the measure
factors which affect the level of the aggressiveness of the swelling
soil is the direction of the infiltration water directions within the
swelling soils. In this paper a physical model was installed to
measure the effect of water on the swelling soil with replacement
using fatty acid distillation residuals (FADR) mixed with sand as
thick sand-FADR mixture to prevent the water pathway arrive to the
swelling soil. Testing program have been conducted on different
artificial samples with different sand to FADR contents ratios (4%,
6%, and 9%) to get the optimum value fulfilling the impermeable
replacement. The tests show that a FADR content of 9% is sufficient
to produce impermeable replacement.
Abstract: The Marangoni convective instability in a horizontal
fluid layer with the insoluble surfactant and nondeformable free
surface is investigated. The surface tension at the free surface is
linearly dependent on the temperature and concentration gradients.
At the bottom surface, the temperature conditions of uniform
temperature and uniform heat flux are considered. By linear stability
theory, the exact analytical solutions for the steady Marangoni
convection are derived and the marginal curves are plotted. The
effects of surfactant or elasticity number, Lewis number and Biot
number on the marginal Marangoni instability are assessed. The
surfactant concentration gradients and the heat transfer mechanism at
the free surface have stabilizing effects while the Lewis number
destabilizes fluid system. The fluid system with uniform temperature
condition at the bottom boundary is more stable than the fluid layer
that is subjected to uniform heat flux at the bottom boundary.
Abstract: Determining how many virtual machines a Linux host
could run can be a challenge. One of tough missions is to find the
balance among performance, density and usability. Now KVM
hypervisor has become the most popular open source full
virtualization solution. It supports several ways of running guests with
more memory than host really has. Due to large differences between
minimum and maximum guest memory requirements, this paper
presents initial results on same-page merging, ballooning and live
migration techniques that aims at optimum memory usage on
KVM-based cloud platform. Given the design of initial experiments,
the results data is worth reference for system administrators. The
results from these experiments concluded that each method offers
different reliability tradeoff.
Abstract: The roll center is one of the key parameters for designing a suspension. Several driving characteristics are affected significantly by the migration of the roll center during the suspension-s motion. The strut/SLA (strut/short-long-arm) suspension, which is widely used in production cars, combines the space-saving characteristics of a MacPherson strut suspension with some of the preferred handling characteristics of an SLA suspension. In this study, a front strut/SLA suspension is modeled by ADAMS/Car software. Kinematic roll analysis is then employed to investigate how the rolling characteristics change under the wheel travel and steering input. The related parameters, including the roll center height, roll camber gain, toe change, scrub radius and wheel track width change, are analyzed and discussed. It is found that the strut/SLA suspension clearly has a higher roll center than strut and SLA suspensions do. The variations in the roll center height under roll analysis are very different as the wheel travel displacement and steering angle are added. The results of the roll camber gain, scrub radius and wheel track width change are considered satisfactory. However, the toe change is too large and needs fine-tuning through a sensitivity analysis.
Abstract: This paper presents an authoring tool which makes a
user easily and intuitively design vibrotactile sensation. A mobile
hardware platform powered by ANDROID, a multi-purpose haptic
driver and a linear resonance actuator are used to implement the
system of the presented authoring tool. The tool allows users to easily
and simply create a vibrotactile sensation by drawing vibrotactile
images and to feel the sensation by rubbing drawn images on the touch
screen of a mobile device. The tool supports a graphical interface for
designing, editing and playing vibrotactile images as well as a
pre-defined file format for save and open.
Abstract: Classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals
extracted during mental tasks is a technique that is actively pursued
for Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) designs. In this paper, we
compared the classification performances of univariateautoregressive
(AR) and multivariate autoregressive (MAR) models
for representing EEG signals that were extracted during different
mental tasks. Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) neural network (NN)
trained by the backpropagation (BP) algorithm was used to classify
these features into the different categories representing the mental
tasks. Classification performances were also compared across
different mental task combinations and 2 sets of hidden units (HU): 2
to 10 HU in steps of 2 and 20 to 100 HU in steps of 20. Five different
mental tasks from 4 subjects were used in the experimental study and
combinations of 2 different mental tasks were studied for each
subject. Three different feature extraction methods with 6th order
were used to extract features from these EEG signals: AR
coefficients computed with Burg-s algorithm (ARBG), AR
coefficients computed with stepwise least square algorithm (ARLS)
and MAR coefficients computed with stepwise least square
algorithm. The best results were obtained with 20 to 100 HU using
ARBG. It is concluded that i) it is important to choose the suitable
mental tasks for different individuals for a successful BCI design, ii)
higher HU are more suitable and iii) ARBG is the most suitable
feature extraction method.
Abstract: This paper presents a subjective job scheduler based
on a 3-layer Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN) and a greedy
alignment procedure in order formulates a real-life situation. The
BPNN estimates critical values of jobs based on the given subjective
criteria. The scheduler is formulated in such a way that, at each time
period, the most critical job is selected from the job queue and is
transferred into a single machine before the next periodic job arrives.
If the selected job is one of the oldest jobs in the queue and its
deadline is less than that of the arrival time of the current job, then
there is an update of the deadline of the job is assigned in order to
prevent the critical job from its elimination. The proposed
satisfiability criteria indicates that the satisfaction of the scheduler
with respect to performance of the BPNN, validity of the jobs and the
feasibility of the scheduler.
Abstract: In order to be able to automatically differentiate
between two modes of permanent flow of a liquid simulating blood,
it was imperative to put together a data bank. Thus, the acquisition of
the various amplitude spectra of the Doppler signal of this liquid in
laminar flow and other spectra in turbulent flow enabled us to
establish an automatic difference between the two modes. According
to the number of parameters and their nature, a comparative study
allowed us to choose the best classifier.
Abstract: As we know, most differential equations concerning
physical phenomenon could not be solved by analytical method. Even if we use Series Method, some times we need an appropriate change of variable, and even when we can, their closed form solution may be
so complicated that using it to obtain an image or to examine the structure of the system is impossible. For example, if we consider Schrodinger equation, i.e.,
We come to a three-term recursion relations, which work with it takes, at least, a little bit time to get a series solution[6]. For this
reason we use a change of variable such as or when we consider the orbital angular momentum[1], it will be
necessary to solve. As we can observe, working with this equation is tedious. In this paper, after introducing Clenshaw method, which is a kind of Spectral method, we try to solve some of such equations.