Abstract: Ambiguities in effects of earthquake on various
structures in all earthquake codes would necessitate more study and
research concerning influential factors on dynamic behavior.
Previous studies which were done on different features in different
buildings play a major role in the type of response a structure makes
to lateral vibrations. Diagnosing each of these irregularities can help
structure designers in choosing appropriate setbacks for decreasing
possible damages. Therefore vertical setback is one of the irregularity
factors in the height of the building where can be seen in skyscrapers
and hotels. Previous researches reveal notable changes in the place of
these setbacks showing dynamic response of the structure.
Consequently analyzing 48 models of concrete frames for 3, 6 and 9
stories heights with three different bays in general shape of a surface
decline by height have been constructed in ETABS2000 software,
and then the shape effect of each and every one of these frames in
period scale has been discussed. The result of this study reveals that
not only mass, stiffness and height but also shape of the frame is
influential.
Abstract: Because nodes are usually battery-powered, the energy
presents a very scarce resource in wireless sensor networks. For this
reason, the design of medium access control had to take energy
efficiency as one of its hottest concerns. Accordingly, in order to
improve the energy performance of MAC schemes in wireless sensor
networks, several ways can be followed. In fact, some researchers try
to limit idle listening while others focus on mitigating overhearing
(i.e. a node can hear a packet which is destined to another node)
or reducing the number of the used control packets. We, in this
paper, propose a new hybrid MAC protocol termed ELE-MAC
(i.e. Energy Latency Efficient MAC). The ELE-MAC major design
goals are energy and latency efficiencies. It adopts less control
packets than SMAC in order to preserve energy. We carried out ns-
2 simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol.
Thus, our simulation-s results prove the ELE-MAC energy efficiency.
Additionally, our solution performs statistically the same or better
latency characteristic compared to adaptive SMAC.
Abstract: This work concerns the measurements of a Bulk
Acoustic Waves (BAW) emission filter S parameters and compare
with prototypes simulated types. Thanks to HP-ADS, a co-simulation
of filters- characteristics in a digital radio-communication chain is
performed. Four cases of modulation schemes are studied in order to
illustrate the impact of the spectral occupation of the modulated
signal. Results of simulations and co-simulation are given in terms of
Error Vector Measurements to be useful for a general sensibility
analysis of 4th/3rd Generation (G.) emitters (wideband QAM and
OFDM signals)
Abstract: Citizens are increasingly are provided with choice and
customization in public services and this has now also become a key
feature of higher education in terms of policy roll-outs on personal
development planning (PDP) and more generally as part of the
employability agenda. The goal here is to transform people, in this
case graduates, into active, responsible citizen-workers. A key part of
this rhetoric and logic is the inculcation of graduate attributes within
students. However, there has also been a concern with the issue of
student lack of engagement and perseverance with their studies. This
paper sets out to explore some of these conceptions that link graduate
attributes with citizenship as well as the notion of how identity is
forged through the higher education process. Examples are drawn
from a quality enhancement project that is being operated within the
context of the Scottish higher education system. This is further
framed within the wider context of competing and conflicting
demands on higher education, exacerbated by the current worldwide
economic climate. There are now pressures on students to develop
their employability skills as well as their capacity to engage with
global issues such as behavioural change in the light of
environmental concerns. It is argued that these pressures, in effect,
lead to a form of personalization that is concerned with how
graduates develop their sense of identity as something that is
engineered and re-engineered to meet these demands.
Abstract: Human pose estimation can be executed using Active Shape Models. The existing techniques for applying to human-body research using Active Shape Models, such as human detection, primarily take the form of silhouette of human body. This technique is not able to estimate accurately for human pose to concern two arms and legs, as the silhouette of human body represents the shape as out of round. To solve this problem, we applied the human body model as stick-figure, “skeleton". The skeleton model of human body can give consideration to various shapes of human pose. To obtain effective estimation result, we applied background subtraction and deformed matching algorithm of primary Active Shape Models in the fitting process. The images which were used to make the model were 600 human bodies, and the model has 17 landmark points which indicate body junction and key features of human pose. The maximum iteration for the fitting process was 30 times and the execution time was less than .03 sec.
Abstract: After the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 in
U.S., the container security issue got high attention, especially by U.S.
government, which deployed a lot of measures to promote or improve
security systems. U.S. government not only enhances its national
security system, but allies with other countries against the potential
terrorist attacks in the future. For example CSI (Container Security
Initiative), it encourages foreign ports outside U.S. to become CSI
ports as a part of U.S. anti-terrorism network. Although promotion of
the security could partly reach the goal of anti-terrorism, that will
influence the efficiency of container supply chain, which is the main
concern when implementing the inspection measurements. This paper
proposes a quick estimation methodology for an inspection service
rate by a berth allocation heuristic such that the inspection activities
will not affect the original container supply chain. Theoretical and
simulation results show this approach is effective.
Abstract: In this paper, we present the 2006 survey study origin destination and price that we carried out during 2006 fall in the area in the Moroccan region of Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaer. The survey concerns the people-s characteristics, their displacements behavior and the price that they will be able to pay for a tramway ticket. The main objective is to study a set of relative features to the households and to their displacement's habits and to their choices among public and privet transport modes. A comparison between this survey results and that of the 1996's is made. A pricing scheme is also given according to the tram capacity. (The Rabat-Salé tramway is under construction right now and it will be operational beginning 2010).
Abstract: The concerns about clean environment and high oil
prices driving forces for the research on alternative fuels. The
research efforts directed towards improving the performance of C.I
engines using vegetable oil as fuel. The paper deals results of
performance of a four stroke, single cylinder C.I. engine by preheated
neat Karanja oil is done from 30
o
C to 100
o
C. The performance of the
engine was studied for a speed range between 1500 to 4000 rpm, with
the engine operated under full load conditions. The performance
parameters considered for comparing are brake specific fuel
consumption, thermal efficiency, brake power, Nox emission of the
engine. The engine offers lower thermal efficiency when it is
powered by preheated neat Karanja oil at higher speed. The power
developed and Nox emission increase with the increase in the fuel
inlet temperature and the specific fuel consumption is higher than
diesel fuel operation at all elevated fuel inlet temperature.
Abstract: The productivity of software development is one of the major concerns for project managers. Given the increasing complexity of the software being developed and the concomitant rise in the typical project size, the productivity has not consistently improved. By analyzing the latest release of ISBSG data repository with 4106 projects ever developed, we report on the factors found to significantly influence productivity, and present an original model for the estimation of productivity during project design. We further illustrate that software development productivity has experienced irregular variations between the years 1995 and 2005. Considering the factors significant to productivity, we found its variations are primarily caused by the variations of average team size for the development and the unbalanced use of the less productive development language 3GL.
Abstract: The present work is concerned with the free
convective two dimensional flow and heat transfer, in isotropic fluid
filled porous rectangular enclosure with differentially heated walls for
steady state incompressible flow have been investigated for non-
Darcy flow model. Effects of Darcy number (0.0001 £Da£ 10),
Rayleigh number (10 £Ra£ 5000), and aspect ratio (0.25 £AR£ 4), for
a range of porosity (0.4 £e£ 0.9) with and without moving lower wall
have been studied. The cavity was insulated at the lower and upper
surfaces. The right and left heated surfaces allows convective
transport through the porous medium, generating a thermal
stratification and flow circulations. It was found that the Darcy
number, Rayleigh number, aspect ratio, and porosity considerably
influenced characteristics of flow and heat transfer mechanisms. The
results obtained are discussed in terms of the Nusselt number,
vectors, contours, and isotherms.
Abstract: The increasing divorce and fertility rates outside of marriage, the changing values in the last decades have led to a high prevalence of single parent families. Currently, worldwide, singleparent families represent about a quarter of all families. Recent changes occurring in the structure of single-parent families and also the multitude of factors that influence the quality of life of these families require the development of new research tools in order to provide foundations for social policies addressed to this type of family. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis concerning the quality of life for single parent families in Romania, based on data collected through a research methodology developed by the authors within a scientific research project funded by a national grant called Partnerships in priority areas.
Abstract: For today-s and future wireless communications applications,
more and more data traffic has to be transmitted with
growing speed and quality demands. The analog front-end of any
mobile device has to cope with very hard specifications regardless
which transmission standard has to be supported. State-of-the-art
analog front-end implementations are reaching the limit of technical
feasibility. For that reason, alternative front-end architectures could
support a continuing development of mobile communications e.g.,
six-port-based front-ends [1], [2].
In this article we propose an analog front-end with high intermediate
frequency and which utilizes additive mixing instead
of multiplicative mixing. The system architecture is presented and
several spurious effects as well as their influence on the system
dimensioning are discussed. Furthermore, several issues concerning
the technical feasibility are provided and some simulation results
are discussed which show the principle functionality of the proposed
superposition heterodyne receiver.
Abstract: (Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3 doped with 8 mol % BaTiO3 powder
(BNT-BT0.08), prepared by sol-gel method was compacted and
sintered by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) process. The influence of
SPS temperature on the densification of BNT-BT0.08 ceramic was
investigated. Starting from sol-gel nanopowder of BNT-BT
containing 8 mol % BaTiO3 with an average particles size of about
30 nm, were obtained ceramics with density around 98 % of the
theoretical density value when the SPS temperature used was about
850 °C. The average grain size of the resulting ceramics was 80 nm.
The BNT-BT0.08 ceramic sample obtained by SPS method has shown
good electric properties at various frequencies.
Abstract: Culture and family structure provide a sense security.
Further, the chrono, macro and micro contexts of development
influence developmental transitions and timetable particularly owing
to variations in the macrosystem associated with non normative life
events like migration. Migration threatens family links, security and
attachment bonds. Rising migratory trends have prompted an
increased interest in migration consequences on familial bonds,
developmental autonomy, socialization process, and sense of
security. This paper takes a narrative approach and applies the
attachment paradigm from a lifespan perspective, to examine the
settlement experiences of an India-born migrant student in Sydney,
Australia. It focuses on her quest to preserve family ties; her remote
secure base; her continual struggle to balance dependency and
autonomy, a major developmental milestone. As positional parental
power is culturally more potent in the Indian society, the paper
therefore raises some important concerns related to cultural
expectations, adaptation, acculturative stress and sense of security.
Abstract: Design Patterns have gained more and more
acceptances since their emerging in software development world last
decade and become another de facto standard of essential knowledge
for Object-Oriented Programming developers nowadays.
Their target usage, from the beginning, was for regular computers,
so, minimizing power consumption had never been a concern.
However, in this decade, demands of more complicated software for
running on mobile devices has grown rapidly as the much higher
performance portable gadgets have been supplied to the market
continuously. To get along with time to market that is business
reason, the section of software development for power conscious,
battery, devices has shifted itself from using specific low-level
languages to higher level ones. Currently, complicated software
running on mobile devices are often developed by high level
languages those support OOP concepts. These cause the trend of
embracing Design Patterns to mobile world.
However, using Design Patterns directly in software development
for power conscious systems is not recommended because they were
not originally designed for such environment. This paper
demonstrates the adapted Design Pattern for power limitation system.
Because there are numerous original design patterns, it is not possible
to mention the whole at once. So, this paper focuses only in creating
Energy Conscious version of existing regular "Builder Pattern" to be
appropriated for developing low power consumption software.
Abstract: For a variety of safety and economic reasons, engineering undergraduates in Australia have experienced diminishing access to the real hardware that is typically the embodiment of their theoretical studies. This trend will delay the development of practical competence, decrease the ability to model and design, and suppress motivation. The author has attempted to address this concern by creating a software tool that contains both photographic images of real machinery, and sets of graphical modeling 'tools'. Academics from a range of disciplines can use the software to set tutorial tasks, and incorporate feedback comments for a range of student responses. An evaluation of the software demonstrated that students who had solved modeling problems with the aid of the electronic tutor performed significantly better in formal examinations with similar problems. The 2-D graphical diagnostic routines in the Tutor have the potential to be used in a wider range of problem-solving tasks.
Abstract: This paper describes a paradigmatic approach to develop architecture of secure systems by describing the requirements from four different points of view: that of the owner, the administrator, the user, and the network. Deriving requirements and developing architecture implies the joint elicitation and describing the problem and the structure of the solution. The view points proposed in this paper are those we consider as requirements towards their contributions as major parties in the design, implementation, usage and maintenance of secure systems. The dramatic growth of the technology of Internet and the applications deployed in World Wide Web have lead to the situation where the security has become a very important concern in the development of secure systems. Many security approaches are currently being used in organizations. In spite of the widespread use of many different security solutions, the security remains a problem. It is argued that the approach that is described in this paper for the development of secure architecture is practical by all means. The models representing these multiple points of view are termed the requirements model (views of owner and administrator) and the operations model (views of user and network). In this paper, this multiple view paradigm is explained by first describing the specific requirements and or characteristics of secure systems (particularly in the domain of networks) and the secure architecture / system development methodology.
Abstract: This paper addresses a current problem that occurs among Thai internet service providers with regard to bandwidth network quality management. The IPSTAR department of Telecom Organization of Thailand public company (TOT); the largest internet service provider in Thailand, is the case study to analyze the problem that exists. The Internet bandwidth network quality management (iBWQM) framework is mainly applied to the problem that has been found. Bandwidth management policy (BMP) and quality of service (QoS) are two antecedents of iBWQM. This paper investigates internet user behavior, marketing demand and network operation views in order to determine bandwidth management policy (e.g. quota management, scheduling and malicious management). The congestion of bandwidth is also analyzed to enhance quality of service (QoS). Moreover, the iBWQM framework is able to improve the quality of service and increase bandwidth utilization, minimize complaint rate concerns to slow speed, and provide network planning guidelines through Thai Internet services providers.
Abstract: It-s known that incorporating prior knowledge into support
vector regression (SVR) can help to improve the approximation
performance. Most of researches are concerned with the incorporation
of knowledge in form of numerical relationships. Little work,
however, has been done to incorporate the prior knowledge on the
structural relationships among the variables (referred as to Structural
Prior Knowledge, SPK). This paper explores the incorporation of SPK
in SVR by constructing appropriate admissible support vector kernel
(SV kernel) based on the properties of reproducing kernel (R.K).
Three-levels specifications of SPK are studies with the corresponding
sub-levels of prior knowledge that can be considered for the method.
These include Hierarchical SPK (HSPK), Interactional SPK (ISPK)
consisting of independence, global and local interaction, Functional
SPK (FSPK) composed of exterior-FSPK and interior-FSPK. A
convenient tool for describing the SPK, namely Description Matrix
of SPK is introduced. Subsequently, a new SVR, namely Motivated
Support Vector Regression (MSVR) whose structure is motivated
in part by SPK, is proposed. Synthetic examples show that it is
possible to incorporate a wide variety of SPK and helpful to improve
the approximation performance in complex cases. The benefits of
MSVR are finally shown on a real-life military application, Air-toground
battle simulation, which shows great potential for MSVR to
the complex military applications.
Abstract: A lightpipe is an about 99 percent specular reflective
mirror pipe or duct that is used for the transmission of the daylight
from the outside into a building. The lightpipes are usually used in
the daylighting buildings, in the residential, industrial and
commercial sectors. This paper is about the performances of a
lightpipe installed in a laboratory (3 m x 2.6 m x 3 m) without
windows. The aim is to analyse the luminous intensity distribution
for several sky/sun conditions. The lightpipe was monitored during
the year 2006. The lightpipe is 1 m long and the diameter of the top
collector and of the internal diffuser device is 0.25 m. In the
laboratory there are seven illuminance sensors: one external is
located on the roof of the laboratory and six internal sensors are
connected to a data acquisition system. The internal sensors are
positioned under the internal diffusive device at an height of 0.85 m
from the floor to simulate a working plane. The numerical data are
obtained through a simulation software. This paper shows the
comparison between the experimental and numerical results
concerning the behavior of the lightpipe.