Abstract: There are reports of gas and oil wells fire due to different accidents. Many different methods are used for fire fighting in gas and oil industry. Traditional fire extinguishing techniques are mostly faced with many problems and are usually time consuming and needs lots of equipments. Besides, they cause damages to facilities, and create health and environmental problems. This article proposes innovative approach in fire extinguishing techniques in oil and gas industry, especially applicable for burning oil wells located offshore. Fire extinguishment employing a turbojet is a novel approach which can help to extinguishment the fire in short period of time. Divergent and convergent turbojets modeled in laboratory scale along with a high pressure flame were used. Different experiments were conducted to determine the relationship between output discharges of trumpet and oil wells. The results were corrected and the relationship between dimensionless parameters of flame and fire extinguishment distances and also the output discharge of turbojet and oil wells in specified distances are demonstrated by specific curves.
Abstract: The modeling of water transfer in the unsaturated zone
uses techniques and methods of the soil physics to solve the
Richards-s equation. However, there is a disaccord between the size
of the measurements provided by the soil physics and the size of the
fields of hydrological modeling problem, to which is added the
strong spatial variability of soil hydraulic properties. The objective of
this work was to develop a methodology to estimate the
hydrodynamic parameters for modeling water transfers at different
hydrological scales in the soil-plant atmosphere systems.
Abstract: This paper presents an automatic feature recognition
method based on center-surround difference detecting and fuzzy logic
that can be applied in ground-penetrating radar (GPR) image
processing. Adopted center-surround difference method, the salient
local image regions are extracted from the GPR images as features of
detected objects. And fuzzy logic strategy is used to match the
detected features and features in template database. This way, the
problem of objects detecting, which is the key problem in GPR image
processing, can be converted into two steps, feature extracting and
matching. The contributions of these skills make the system have the
ability to deal with changes in scale, antenna and noises. The results of
experiments also prove that the system has higher ratio of features
sensing in using GPR to image the subsurface structures.
Abstract: The brain MR imaging-based clinical research and analysis system were specifically built and the development for a large-scale data was targeted. We used the general clinical data available for building large-scale data. Registration period for the selection of the lesion ROI and the region growing algorithm was used and the Mesh-warp algorithm for matching was implemented. The accuracy of the matching errors was modified individually. Also, the large ROI research data can accumulate by our developed compression method. In this way, the correctly decision criteria to the research result was suggested. The experimental groups were age, sex, MR type, patient ID and smoking which can easily be queries. The result data was visualized of the overlapped images by a color table. Its data was calculated by the statistical package. The evaluation for the utilization of this system in the chronic ischemic damage in the area has done from patients with the acute cerebral infarction. This is the cause of neurologic disability index location in the center portion of the lateral ventricle facing. The corona radiate was found in the position. Finally, the system reliability was measured both inter-user and intra-user registering correlation.
Abstract: Cities denote instantaneously a challenge and an
opportunity for climate change policy. Cities are the place where
most energy services are needed because urbanization is closely
linked to high population densities and concentration of economic
activities and production (Urban energy demand). Consequently, it is
critical to explain about the role of cities within the world-s energy
systems and its correlation with the climate change issue. With more
than half of the world-s population already living in urban areas, and
that percentage expected to rise to 75 per cent by 2050, it is clear that
the path to sustainable development must pass through cities. Cities
expanding in size and population pose increased challenges to the
environment, of which energy is part as a natural resource, and to the
quality of life. Nowadays, most cities have already understood the
importance of sustainability, both at their local scale as in terms of
their contribution to sustainability at higher geographical scales. It
requires the perception of a city as a complex and dynamic
ecosystem, an open system, or cluster of systems, where the energy
as well as the other natural resources is transformed to satisfy the
needs of the different urban activities. In fact, buildings and
transportation generally represent most of cities direct energy
demand, i.e., between 60 per cent and 80 per cent of the overall
consumption. Buildings, both residential and services are usually
influenced by the local physical and social conditions. In terms of
transport, the energy demand is also strongly linked with the specific
characteristics of a city (urban mobility).The concept of a “smart
city" builds on statistics as seven key axes of a city-s success in
moving towards common platform (brain nerve)of sustainable urban
energy systems.
With the aforesaid knowledge, the authors have suggested a frame
work to role of cities, as energy actors for smart city management.
The authors have discusses the potential elements needed for energy
in smart cities and also identified potential energy actions and
relevant barriers. Furthermore, three levels of city smartness in cities
actions to overcome market /institutional failures with a local
approach are distinguished. The authors have made an attempt to
conceive and implement concepts of city smartness by adopting the
city or local government as nerve center through an integrated
planning approach. Finally, concluding with recommendations for
the organization of the Smart Sustainable Cities for positive changes
of urban India.
Abstract: In this paper, we establish several oscillation criteria for the nonlinear second-order damped delay dynamic equation r(t)|xΔ(t)|β-1xΔ(t)Δ + p(t)|xΔσ(t)|β-1xΔσ(t) + q(t)f(x(τ (t))) = 0 on an arbitrary time scale T, where β > 0 is a constant. Our results generalize and improve some known results in which β > 0 is a quotient of odd positive integers. Some examples are given to illustrate our main results.
Abstract: Increased physical fitness participation has been
paralleled by increasedoveruse injuries such as insertional Achilles
tendinosis (AT). Treatment has provided inconsistentresults. The use
of extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ECSWT) offers a new
treatment consideration.The purpose of this study was to assess the
effects of ECSWTon pain, function, range of motion (ROM), joint
mobility and strength in patients with AT. Thirty subjects were
treated with ECSWT and measures were takenbefore and three
months after treatment. There was significant differences in visual
analog scale (VAS) scores for pain at rest (p=0.002); after activity
(p= 0.0001); overall improvement(p=0.0001); Lower Extremity
Functional Scale (LEFS) scores (p=0.002); dorsiflexion range of
motion (ROM) (p=0.0001); plantarflexion strength (p=0.025);
talocrural joint anterior glide (p=0.046); and subtalar joint medial and
lateral glide (p=0.025).ECSWT offers a new intervention that may
limit the progression of the disorder and the long term healthcare
costs associated with AT.
Abstract: Air infiltration in mass scale industrial applications of
bio char production is inevitable. The presence of oxygen during the
carbonization process is detrimental to the production of biochar yield
and properties. The experiment was carried out on several wood
species in a fixed-bed pyrolyser under various fractions of oxygen
ranging from 0% to 11% by varying nitrogen and oxygen composition
in the pyrolysing gas mixtures at desired compositions. The bed
temperature and holding time were also varied. Process optimization
was carried out by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) by
employing Central Composite Design (CCD) using Design Expert 6.0
Software. The effect of oxygen ratio and holding time on biochar yield
within the range studied were statistically significant. From the
analysis result, optimum condition of 15.2% biochar yield of
mangrove wood was predicted at pyrolysis temperature of 403 oC,
oxygen percentage of 2.3% and holding time of two hours. This
prediction agreed well with the experiment finding of 15.1% biochar
yield.
Abstract: This paper reports the study results on neural network
training algorithm of numerical optimization techniques multiface
detection in static images. The training algorithms involved are scale
gradient conjugate backpropagation, conjugate gradient
backpropagation with Polak-Riebre updates, conjugate gradient
backpropagation with Fletcher-Reeves updates, one secant
backpropagation and resilent backpropagation. The final result of
each training algorithms for multiface detection application will also
be discussed and compared.
Abstract: Protective coatings that resist oxide scale growth and
decrease chromium evaporation are necessary to make stainless steel
interconnect materials for long-term durable operation of solid oxide
fuel cells (SOFCs). In this study a layer of cobalt was electroplated
on the surface of AISI 441 ferritic stainless steel which is used in
solid oxide fuel cells for interconnect applications. The oxidation
behavior of coated substrates was studied as a function of time at
operating conditions of SOFCs. Cyclic oxidation has been also tested
at 800ºC for 100 cycles. Cobalt coating during isothermal oxidation
caused to the oxide growth resistance by limiting the outward
diffusion of Cr cation and the inward diffusion of oxygen anion.
Results of cyclic oxidation exhibited that coated substrates
demonstrate an excellent resistance against the spallation and
cracking.
Abstract: Due to availability of powerful image processing software
and improvement of human computer knowledge, it becomes
easy to tamper images. Manipulation of digital images in different
fields like court of law and medical imaging create a serious problem
nowadays. Copy-move forgery is one of the most common types
of forgery which copies some part of the image and pastes it to
another part of the same image to cover an important scene. In
this paper, a copy-move forgery detection method proposed based
on Fourier transform to detect forgeries. Firstly, image is divided to
same size blocks and Fourier transform is performed on each block.
Similarity in the Fourier transform between different blocks provides
an indication of the copy-move operation. The experimental results
prove that the proposed method works on reasonable time and works
well for gray scale and colour images. Computational complexity
reduced by using Fourier transform in this method.
Abstract: Web usage mining is an interesting application of data
mining which provides insight into customer behaviour on the Internet. An important technique to discover user access and navigation trails is based on sequential patterns mining. One of the
key challenges for web access patterns mining is tackling the problem
of mining richly structured patterns. This paper proposes a novel
model called Web Access Patterns Graph (WAP-Graph) to represent all of the access patterns from web mining graphically. WAP-Graph
also motivates the search for new structural relation patterns, i.e. Concurrent Access Patterns (CAP), to identify and predict more
complex web page requests. Corresponding CAP mining and modelling methods are proposed and shown to be effective in the
search for and representation of concurrency between access patterns
on the web. From experiments conducted on large-scale synthetic
sequence data as well as real web access data, it is demonstrated that
CAP mining provides a powerful method for structural knowledge discovery, which can be visualised through the CAP-Graph model.
Abstract: Measurement of the quality of image compression is important for image processing application. In this paper, we propose an objective image quality assessment to measure the quality of gray scale compressed image, which is correlation well with subjective quality measurement (MOS) and least time taken. The new objective image quality measurement is developed from a few fundamental of objective measurements to evaluate the compressed image quality based on JPEG and JPEG2000. The reliability between each fundamental objective measurement and subjective measurement (MOS) is found. From the experimental results, we found that the Maximum Difference measurement (MD) and a new proposed measurement, Structural Content Laplacian Mean Square Error (SCLMSE), are the suitable measurements that can be used to evaluate the quality of JPEG200 and JPEG compressed image, respectively. In addition, MD and SCLMSE measurements are scaled to make them equivalent to MOS, given the rate of compressed image quality from 1 to 5 (unacceptable to excellent quality).
Abstract: The use of new technologies such internet (e-mail, chat
rooms) and cell phones has steeply increased in recent years.
Especially among children and young people, use of technological
tools and equipments is widespread. Although many teachers and
administrators now recognize the problem of school bullying, few are
aware that students are being harassed through electronic
communication. Referred to as electronic bullying, cyber bullying, or
online social cruelty, this phenomenon includes bullying through email,
instant messaging, in a chat room, on a website, or through
digital messages or images sent to a cell phone. Cyber bullying is
defined as causing deliberate/intentional harm to others using internet
or other digital technologies. It has a quantitative research design nd
uses relational survey as its method. The participants consisted of
300 secondary school students in the city of Konya, Turkey. 195
(64.8%) participants were female and 105 (35.2%) were male. 39
(13%) students were at grade 1, 187 (62.1%) were at grade 2 and 74
(24.6%) were at grade 3. The “Cyber Bullying Question List"
developed by Ar─▒cak (2009) was given to students. Following
questions about demographics, a functional definition of cyber
bullying was provided. In order to specify students- human values,
“Human Values Scale (HVS)" developed by Dilmaç (2007) for
secondary school students was administered. The scale consists of 42
items in six dimensions. Data analysis was conducted by the primary
investigator of the study using SPSS 14.00 statistical analysis
software. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the analysis of
students- cyber bullying behaviour and simple regression analysis was
conducted in order to test whether each value in the scale could
explain cyber bullying behaviour.
Abstract: The risk sphere in business is fast changing and expanding. Almost anything has become a risk factor that will have potent, direct, and far reaching impacts on business. This paper examines the intensity of enterprise risk management (ERM) practices among the Malaysian public listed companies. The paper espouses a ERM framework comprising fourteen important implementation elements and processes. Results of the analysis indicate that the intensity of ERM implementation among the respondents is in the ‘good’ category of the semantic scale, which is deemed encouraging vis-à-vis the country’s regulatory regime.
Abstract: The purpose of present paper was to investigate
perceptions of Korean secondary school students about social issues
related to biological sciences. Twenty issues were selected based on
topics of articles in the newspaper from 2005 to 2010. The issues were
categorized into biotechnology, health-disease and environment
domains. Subjects were 541 high school students (male 253 and
female 288). On the survey, students were asked to answer on 5-point
Lickert scales how they thought of the effect of biological phenomena
or events related to biological issues on the individual life and the
society. They perceived that the biological issues would be more
effectible on the society than on the individual life. Female students
had a little more perceptions than males.
Abstract: We report a computational study of the spreading
dynamics of a viral infection in a complex (scale-free) network. The
final epidemic size distribution (FESD) was found to be unimodal or
bimodal depending on the value of the basic reproductive
number R0 . The FESDs occurred on time-scales long enough for
intermediate-time epidemic size distributions (IESDs) to be important
for control measures. The usefulness of R0 for deciding on the
timeliness and intensity of control measures was found to be limited
by the multimodal nature of the IESDs and by its inability to inform
on the speed at which the infection spreads through the population. A
reduction of the transmission probability at the hubs of the scale-free
network decreased the occurrence of the larger-sized epidemic events
of the multimodal distributions. For effective epidemic control, an
early reduction in transmission at the index cell and its neighbors was
essential.
Abstract: Previous studies have shown that there are arguments
regarding the reliability and validity of the Ashworth and Modified
Ashworth Scale towards evaluating patients diagnosed with upper
limb disorders. These evaluations depended on the raters’ experiences.
This initiated us to develop an upper limb disorder part-task trainer
that is able to simulate consistent upper limb disorders, such as
spasticity and rigidity signs, based on the Modified Ashworth Scale to
improve the variability occurring between raters and intra-raters
themselves. By providing consistent signs, novice therapists would be
able to increase training frequency and exposure towards various
levels of signs. A total of 22 physiotherapists and occupational
therapists participated in the study. The majority of the therapists
agreed that with current therapy education, they still face problems
with inter-raters and intra-raters variability (strongly agree 54%; n =
12/22, agree 27%; n = 6/22) in evaluating patients’ conditions. The
therapists strongly agreed (72%; n = 16/22) that therapy trainees
needed to increase their frequency of training; therefore believe that
our initiative to develop an upper limb disorder training tool will help
in improving the clinical education field (strongly agree and agree
63%; n = 14/22).
Abstract: Scalability poses a severe threat to the existing
DRAM technology. The capacitors that are used for storing and
sensing charge in DRAM are generally not scaled beyond 42nm.
This is because; the capacitors must be sufficiently large for reliable
sensing and charge storage mechanism. This leaves DRAM memory
scaling in jeopardy, as charge sensing and storage mechanisms
become extremely difficult. In this paper we provide an overview of
the potential and the possibilities of using Phase Change Memory
(PCM) as an alternative for the existing DRAM technology. The
main challenges that we encounter in using PCM are, the limited
endurance, high access latencies, and higher dynamic energy
consumption than that of the conventional DRAM. We then provide
an overview of various methods, which can be employed to
overcome these drawbacks. Hybrid memories involving both PCM
and DRAM can be used, to achieve good tradeoffs in access latency
and storage density. We conclude by presenting, the results of these
methods that makes PCM a potential replacement for the current
DRAM technology.
Abstract: Fine-grained data replication over the Internet allows duplication of frequently accessed data objects, as opposed to entire sites, to certain locations so as to improve the performance of largescale content distribution systems. In a distributed system, agents representing their sites try to maximize their own benefit since they are driven by different goals such as to minimize their communication costs, latency, etc. In this paper, we will use game theoretical techniques and in particular auctions to identify a bidding mechanism that encapsulates the selfishness of the agents, while having a controlling hand over them. In essence, the proposed game theory based mechanism is the study of what happens when independent agents act selfishly and how to control them to maximize the overall performance. A bidding mechanism asks how one can design systems so that agents- selfish behavior results in the desired system-wide goals. Experimental results reveal that this mechanism provides excellent solution quality, while maintaining fast execution time. The comparisons are recorded against some well known techniques such as greedy, branch and bound, game theoretical auctions and genetic algorithms.