Abstract: This paper presents an efficient emission constrained
hydrothermal scheduling algorithm that deals with nonlinear
functions such as the water discharge characteristics, thermal cost,
and transmission loss. It is then incorporated into the hydrothermal
coordination program. The program has been tested on a practical
utility system having 32 thermal and 12 hydro generating units. Test
results show that a slight increase in production cost causes a
substantial reduction in emission.
Abstract: A reliable estimate of the average bond stress within
the anchorage of steel reinforcing bars in tension is critically
important for the design of reinforced concrete member. This paper
describes part of a recently completed experimental research program
in the Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety (CIES) at the
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia aimed at
assessing the effects of different factors on the anchorage
requirements of modern high strength steel reinforcing bars. The
study found that an increase in the anchorage length and bar diameter
generally leads to a reduction of the average ultimate bond stress. By
the extension of a well established analytical model of bond and
anchorage, it is shown here that the differences in the average
ultimate bond stress for different anchorage lengths is associated with
the variable degree of plastic deformation in the tensile zone of the
concrete surrounding the bar.
Abstract: Global climate change has become the preeminent
threat to human security in the 21st century. From mitigation perspective, this study aims to evaluate the performance of biogas
renewable project under clean development mechanism activities
(namely Korat-Waste-to-Energy) in Thailand and to assess local perceptions towards the significance of climate change mitigation and
sustainability of such project in their community. Questionnaire was
developed based on the national sustainable development criteria and
was distributed among systematically selected households within
project boundaries (n=260). Majority of the respondents strongly agreed with the reduction of odor problems (81%) and air pollution
(76%). However, they were unsure about greenhouse gas reduction from such project and ignorant about the key issues of climate change. A lesson learned suggested that there is a need to further
investigate the possible socio-psychological barriers may significantly shape public perception and understandings of climate
change in the local context.
Abstract: The simulation of external aerodynamics is one of the most challenging and important automotive CFD applications. With the rapid developments of digital computers, CFD is used as a practical tool in modern fluid dynamics research. It integrates fluid mechanics disciplines, mathematics and computer science. In this study, two different types of simulations were made, one for the flow around a simplified high speed passenger car with a rear-spoiler and the other for the flow without a rear-spoiler. The standard k-ε model is selected to numerically simulate the external flow field of the simplified Camry model with or without a rear-spoiler. Through an analysis of the simulation results, a new rear spoiler is designed and it shows a mild reduction of the vehicle aerodynamics drag. This leads to less vehicle fuel consumption on the road.
Abstract: Traffic enforcement units (the Police) are partly
responsible for the severity and frequency of the traffic accidents via
the effectiveness of their safety measures. The Police claims that the
reductions in accidents and their severities occur largely by their
timely interventions at the black spots, through traffic management
or temporary changes in the road design (guiding, reducing speeds
and eliminating sight obstructions, etc.). Yet, some other external
factors than the Police measures may intervene into which such
claims require a statistical confirmation. In order to test the net
impact of the Police contribution in the reduction of the number of
crashes, Chi square test was applied for 25 spots (streets and
intersections) and an average evaluation was achieved for general
conclusion in the case study of Izmir city. Separately, the net impact
of economic crisis in the reduction of crashes is assessed by the
trend analysis for the case of the economic crisis with the probable
reduction effects on the trip generation or modal choice. Finally, it
was proven that the Police measures were effective to some degree as
they claimed, though the economic crisis might have only negligible
contribution to the reductions in the same period observed.
Abstract: This paper presents a pulse doubling technique in a 12-pulse ac-dc converter which supplies direct torque controlled motor drives (DTCIMD-s) in order to have better power quality conditions at the point of common coupling. The proposed technique increases the number of rectification pulses without significant changes in the installations and yields in harmonic reduction in both ac and dc sides. The 12-pulse rectified output voltage is accomplished via two paralleled six-pulse ac-dc converters each of them consisting of three-phase diode bridge rectifier. An autotransformer is designed to supply the rectifiers. The design procedure of magnetics is in a way such that makes it suitable for retrofit applications where a six-pulse diode bridge rectifier is being utilized. Independent operation of paralleled diode-bridge rectifiers, i.e. dc-ripple re-injection methodology, requires a Zero Sequence Blocking Transformer (ZSBT). Finally, a tapped interphase reactor is connected at the output of ZSBT to double the pulse numbers of output voltage up to 24 pulses. The aforementioned structure improves power quality criteria at ac mains and makes them consistent with the IEEE-519 standard requirements for varying loads. Furthermore, near unity power factor is obtained for a wide range of DTCIMD operation. A comparison is made between 6- pulse, 12-pulse, and proposed converters from view point of power quality indices. Results show that input current total harmonic distortion (THD) is less than 5% for the proposed topology at various loads.
Abstract: Nowadays, cardiac disease is one of the most common
cause of death. Each year almost one million of angioplasty interventions and stents implantations are made all over the world.
Unfortunately, in 20-30% of cases neointimal proliferations leads to
restenosis occurring within the following period of 3-6 months. Three major factors are believed to contribute mostly to the edge
restenosis: (a) mechanical damage of the artery-s wall caused by the
stent implantation, (b) interaction between the stent and the blood constituents and (c) endothelial growth stimulation by small (lower
that 1.5 Pa) and oscillating wall shear stress. Assuming that this last actor is particularly important, a numerical model of restenosis
basing on wall shear stress distribution in the stented artery was elaborated. A numerical simulations of the development of in-stent
restenosis have been performed and realistic geometric patterns of a
progressing lumen reduction have been obtained
Abstract: Presently and in line with the United Nations (EPA),
human thinking system has shifted towards clean fuels so as to
maintain a cleaner environment and to save our planet earth.
One of the most successful studies in order to achieve new
energies includes the use of animal wastes and their organic residues,
and the result of these researches has been represented in the form of
very simple and cheap methods called biogas technology. Biogas
technology has developed a lot in the recent decades; its reason is the
high cost of fossil fuels and the greater attention of countries to the
environmental pollutions due to the consumption of this kind of
fuels.
IRAN is ready for the optimized application of renewable
energies, having much enriched resources of this kind of energies; so
a special place could be considered for it when making programs.
The purpose of biogas technology is the recovery of energy and
finally the protection of the environment, which is much appropriate
for the third world farmers with respect to their technical abilities and
economic potentials. Studies show that the production and
consumption of biogas is appropriate and economic in IRAN,
because of the high amount of waste in the agriculture sector, the
significant amount of animal and human excrement production, the
great volume of garbage produced and the most important the
specific social, climatic and agricultural conditions in IRAN, in order
to proceed towards the reduction of pollution due to the use of fossil
fuels.
Abstract: An important goal of parboiling is a decrease of rice broken percentage and at the beginning Selected paddy of variety of rice Tarom and soaked at three different temperatures 45 Cº, 65 Cº and 80 Cº orderly for 5 hours, 4 hours and 1.5 hours to moisture of 40 % and then in steaming stage to operate these action two steaming methods are selected steaming under pressure condition and steaming in atmosphere pressure and In the first method after exerting air, the steam pressure is increase to 1 Kg/Cm2 which is done in two different duration times of 2.5 and 5 minutes and in second method used of three times of 5,10 and 15 minutes and dry to 8% moisture and decreases of rice broken percentage at best condition in variety of Tarom of 37.2 % to 7.3 % and increases yield percentage at best condition in variety of Tarom of 69.4 % to 75.93 % and bran percentage decreased in variety of Tarom of 9.53 % to 2.2-3.2 % and this issue cause increases yield percentage in rice and use of This method is very significant for our country because broken percentage of rice in our country is 23-33 %.
Abstract: Multiplication algorithms have considerable effect on
processors performance. A new high-speed, low-power
multiplication algorithm has been presented using modified Dadda
tree structure. Three important modifications have been implemented
in inner product generation step, inner product reduction step and
final addition step. Optimized algorithms have to be used into basic
computation components, such as multiplication algorithms. In this
paper, we proposed a new algorithm to reduce power, delay, and
transistor count of a multiplication algorithm implemented using low
power modified counter. This work presents a novel design for
Dadda multiplication algorithms. The proposed multiplication
algorithm includes structured parts, which have important effect on
inner product reduction tree. In this paper, a 1.3V, 64-bit carry hybrid
adder is presented for fast, low voltage applications. The new 64-bit
adder uses a new circuit to implement the proposed carry hybrid
adder. The new adder using 80 nm CMOS technology has been
implemented on 700 MHz clock frequency. The proposed
multiplication algorithm has achieved 14 percent improvement in
transistor count, 13 percent reduction in delay and 12 percent
modification in power consumption in compared with conventional
designs.
Abstract: A conventional image posterization method
occasionally fails to preserve the shape and color of objects due to the
uneffective color reduction. This paper proposes a new image
posterizartion method by using modified color quantization for
preserving the shape and color of objects and color contrast
enhancement for improving lightness contrast and saturation.
Experiment results show that our proposed method can provide
visually more satisfactory posterization result than that of the
conventional method.
Abstract: In this study, we illustrated the performance and
microbial community of single- and two-phase systems anaerobically
co-digesting cassava pulp and pig manure. The results showed that
the volatile solid reduction and biogas productivity of two-phase
CSTR were 66 ± 4% and 2000 ± 210 ml l-1 d-1, while those of singlephase
CSTR were 59 ± 1% and 1670 ± 60 ml l-1 d-1, respectively. Codigestion
in two-phase CSTR gave higher 12% solid degradation and
25% methane production than single-phase CSTR. Phylogenetic
analysis of 16S rDNA clone library revealed that the Bacteroidetes
were the most abundant group, followed by the Clostridia in singlephase
CSTR. In hydrolysis/acidification reactor of two-phase system,
the bacteria within the phylum Firmicutes, especially Clostridium,
Eubacteriaceae and Lactobacillus were the dominant phylogenetic
groups. Among the Archaea, Methanosaeta sp. was the exclusive
predominant in both digesters while the relative abundance of
Methanosaeta sp. and Methanospirillum hungatei differed between
the two systems.
Abstract: Truncated multiplier is a good candidate for digital
signal processing (DSP) applications including finite impulse
response (FIR) and discrete cosine transform (DCT). Through
truncated multiplier a significant reduction in Field Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) resources can be achieved. This paper presents
for the first time a comparison of resource utilization of Spartan-3AN
and Virtex-5 implementation of standard and truncated multipliers
using Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description
Language (VHDL). The Virtex-5 FPGA shows significant
improvement as compared to Spartan-3AN FPGA device. The
Virtex-5 FPGA device shows better performance with a percentage
ratio of number of occupied slices for standard to truncated
multipliers is increased from 40% to 73.86% as compared to Spartan-
3AN is decreased from 68.75% to 58.78%. Results show that the
anomaly in Spartan-3AN FPGA device average connection and
maximum pin delay have been efficiently reduced in Virtex-5 FPGA
device.
Abstract: In the various working field, vibration may cause injurious to human body. Especially, in case of the vibration which is constantly and repeatedly transferred to the human. That gives serious physical problem, so called, Reynaud phenomenon. In this paper, we propose a vibration transmissibility reduction module with flexure mechanism for personal tools. At first, we select a target personal tool, grass cutter, and measure the level of vibration transmissibility on the hand. And then, we develop the concept design of the module that has stiffness for reduction the vibration transmissibility more than 20%, where the vibration transmissibility is measured with an accelerometer. In addition, the vibration reduction can be enhanced when the interior gap between inner and outer body is filled with silicone gel. This will be verified by the further experiment.
Abstract: The automatic discrimination of seismic signals is an important practical goal for earth-science observatories due to the large amount of information that they receive continuously. An essential discrimination task is to allocate the incoming signal to a group associated with the kind of physical phenomena producing it. In this paper, two classes of seismic signals recorded routinely in geophysical laboratory of the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research in Morocco are considered. They correspond to signals associated to local earthquakes and chemical explosions. The approach adopted for the development of an automatic discrimination system is a modular system composed by three blocs: 1) Representation, 2) Dimensionality reduction and 3) Classification. The originality of our work consists in the use of a new wavelet called "modified Mexican hat wavelet" in the representation stage. For the dimensionality reduction, we propose a new algorithm based on the random projection and the principal component analysis.
Abstract: The information systems with incomplete attribute
values and fuzzy decisions commonly exist in practical problems. On
the base of the notion of variable precision rough set model for
incomplete information system and the rough set model for
incomplete and fuzzy decision information system, the variable rough
set model for incomplete and fuzzy decision information system is
constructed, which is the generalization of the variable precision
rough set model for incomplete information system and that of rough
set model for incomplete and fuzzy decision information system. The
knowledge reduction and heuristic algorithm, built on the method and
theory of precision reduction, are proposed.
Abstract: Traffic flow in adverse weather conditions have been investigated in this study for general traffic, week day and week end traffic. The empirical evidence is strong in support of the view that rainfall affects macroscopic traffic flow parameters. Data generated from a basic highway section along J5 in Johor Bahru, Malaysia was synchronized with 161 rain events over a period of three months. This revealed a 4.90%, 6.60% and 11.32% reduction in speed for light rain, moderate rain and heavy rain conditions respectively. The corresponding capacity reductions in the three rainfall regimes are 1.08% for light rain, 6.27% for moderate rain and 29.25% for heavy rain. In the week day traffic, speed drops of 8.1% and 16.05% were observed for light and heavy conditions. The moderate rain condition speed increased by 12.6%. The capacity drops for week day traffic are 4.40% for light rain, 9.77% for moderate rain and 45.90% for heavy rain. The weekend traffic indicated speed difference between the dry condition and the three rainy conditions as 6.70% for light rain, 8.90% for moderate rain and 13.10% for heavy rain. The capacity changes computed for the weekend traffic were 0.20% in light rain, 13.90% in moderate rain and 16.70% in heavy rain. No traffic instabilities were observed throughout the observation period and the capacities reported for each rain condition were below the norain condition capacity. Rainfall has tremendous impact on traffic flow and this may have implications for shock wave propagation.
Abstract: In the present research, two nutraceuticals made from
red grape and walnut that showed previously to improve kidney
dysfunction were incorporated separately into functional foods' bread
made from barley and rice bran. The functional foods were evaluated
in rats in which chronic renal failure was induced through feeding
diet rich in adenine and phosphate (APD). The evaluation based on
assessing kidney function, oxidative stress, inflammatory biomarkers
and body weight gain. Results showed induction of chronic kidney
failure reflected in significant increase in plasma urea, creatinine,
malondialdehyde, tumor necrosis factor- α and low density
lipoprotein cholesterol along with significant reduction of plasma
albumin, and total antioxidant and creatinine clearance and body
weight gain on feeding APD compared to control healthy group.
Feeding the functional foods produced amelioration in the different
biochemical parameters and body weight gain indicating
improvement in kidney function.
Abstract: Multicarrier transmission system such as Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising technique
for high bit rate transmission in wireless communication system.
OFDM is a spectrally efficient modulation technique that can achieve
high speed data transmission over multipath fading channels without
the need for powerful equalization techniques. However the price
paid for this high spectral efficiency and less intensive equalization
is low power efficiency. OFDM signals are very sensitive to nonlinear
effects due to the high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR),
which leads to the power inefficiency in the RF section of the
transmitter. This paper investigates the effect of PAPR reduction on
the performance parameter of multicarrier communication system.
Performance parameters considered are power consumption of Power
Amplifier (PA) and Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC), power amplifier
efficiency, SNR of DAC and BER performance of the system.
From our analysis it is found that irrespective of PAPR reduction
technique being employed, the power consumption of PA and DAC
reduces and power amplifier efficiency increases due to reduction in
PAPR. Moreover, it has been shown that for a given BER performance
the requirement of Input-Backoff (IBO) reduces with reduction in
PAPR.
Abstract: Absorptive characteristics of polyaniline synthesized
in mixture of water and acetonitrile in 50/50 volume ratio was
studied. Synthesized polyaniline in powder shape is used as an
adsorbent to remove toxic hexavalent chromium from aqueous
solutions. Experiments were conducted in batch mode with different
variables such as agitation time, solution pH and initial concentration
of hexavalent chromium. Removal mechanism is the combination of
surface adsorption and reduction. The equilibrium time for removal
of Cr(T) and Cr(VI) was about 2 and 10 minutes respectively. The
optimum pH for total chromium removal occurred at pH 7 and
maximum hexavalent chromium removal took place under acidic
condition at pH 3. Investigating the isothermal characteristics showed
that the equilibrium adsorption data fitted both Freundlich-s and
Langmuir-s isotherms. The maximum adsorption of chromium was
calculated 36.1 mg/g for polyaniline