Abstract: In this paper, a comparative study of application of
supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms on illumination
invariant face recognition has been carried out. The supervised
learning has been carried out with the help of using a bi-layered
artificial neural network having one input, two hidden and one output
layer. The gradient descent with momentum and adaptive learning
rate back propagation learning algorithm has been used to implement
the supervised learning in a way that both the inputs and
corresponding outputs are provided at the time of training the
network, thus here is an inherent clustering and optimized learning of
weights which provide us with efficient results.. The unsupervised
learning has been implemented with the help of a modified
Counterpropagation network. The Counterpropagation network
involves the process of clustering followed by application of Outstar
rule to obtain the recognized face. The face recognition system has
been developed for recognizing faces which have varying
illumination intensities, where the database images vary in lighting
with respect to angle of illumination with horizontal and vertical
planes. The supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms have
been implemented and have been tested exhaustively, with and
without application of histogram equalization to get efficient results.
Abstract: The issue of real-time and reliable report delivery is extremely important for taking effective decision in a real world mission critical Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based application. The sensor data behaves differently in many ways from the data in traditional databases. WSNs need a mechanism to register, process queries, and disseminate data. In this paper we propose an architectural framework for data placement and management. We propose a reliable and real time approach for data placement and achieving data integrity using self organized sensor clusters. Instead of storing information in individual cluster heads as suggested in some protocols, in our architecture we suggest storing of information of all clusters within a cell in the corresponding base station. For data dissemination and action in the wireless sensor network we propose to use Action and Relay Stations (ARS). To reduce average energy dissipation of sensor nodes, the data is sent to the nearest ARS rather than base station. We have designed our architecture in such a way so as to achieve greater energy savings, enhanced availability and reliability.
Abstract: The mechanical deformation and the electrical conductivity of lanthanum strontium cobalt ferrite oxide under uniaxial compression were investigated at various temperatures up to 1073 K. The material reveals a rather complex mechanical behaviour related to its ferroelasticity and completely different stress-strain curves are obtained during the 1st and 2nd loading cycles. A distinctive ferroelastic creep was observed at 293 K whilst typical ferroelastic stress-strain curve were obtained in the temperature range from 473 K to 873 K. At 1073 K, on the other hand, high-temperature creep deformation was observed instead of ferroelastic deformation. The conductivity increases with increasing compressive stress at all the temperatures. The increase in conductivity is related to both geometrical and piezoelectric effects. From 293 K to 873 K, where the material exhibits ferroelastic behaviour, the variation in the total conductivity decreases with increasing temperature. The contribution of the piezoelectric effect to the total conductivity variation also decreases with increasing temperature and the maximum in piezoconductivity has a value of about 0.75 % at 293 K for a compressive stress of 100 MPa. There is no effect of domain switching on conductivity except for the geometric effect. At 1073 K, the conductivity is simply proportional to the compressive strain.
Abstract: Image clustering is a process of grouping images
based on their similarity. The image clustering usually uses the color
component, texture, edge, shape, or mixture of two components, etc.
This research aims to explore image clustering using color
composition. In order to complete this image clustering, three main
components should be considered, which are color space, image
representation (feature extraction), and clustering method itself. We
aim to explore which composition of these factors will produce the
best clustering results by combining various techniques from the
three components. The color spaces use RGB, HSV, and L*a*b*
method. The image representations use Histogram and Gaussian
Mixture Model (GMM), whereas the clustering methods use KMeans
and Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering algorithm. The
results of the experiment show that GMM representation is better
combined with RGB and L*a*b* color space, whereas Histogram is
better combined with HSV. The experiments also show that K-Means
is better than Agglomerative Hierarchical for images clustering.
Abstract: The Navier Stokes Equations (NSE) for an incompressible fluid of variable viscosity in the presence of an unknown external force in Von-Mises system x,\ are transformed, and some new exact solutions for a class of flows characterized by equation y f x a\b for an arbitrary state equation are determined, where f x is a function, \ the stream function, a z 0 and b are the arbitrary constants. In three, out of four cases, the function f x is arbitrary, and the solutions are the solutions of the flow equations for all the flows characterized by the equationy f x a\b. Streamline patterns for some forms of f x in unbounded and bounded regions are given.
Abstract: Factor analysis was applied to two stages biogas
production from banana stem waste allowing a screening of the
experimental variables second stage temperature (T), organic loading
rates (OLR) and hydraulic retention times (HRT). Biogas production
was found to be strongly influenced by all the above experimental
variables. Results from factorial analysis have shown that all
variables which were HRT, OLR and T have significant effect to
biogas production. Increased in HRT and OLR could increased the
biogas yield. The performance was tested under the conditions of
various T (35oC-60oC), OLR (0.3 g TS/l.d–1.9 gTS/l.d), and HRT (3
d–15 d). Conditions for temperature, OLR and HRT in this study
were based on the best range obtained from literature review.
Abstract: Protective effect of ethanolic extract of polyherbal formulation (PHF) was studied on carbon tetrachloride induced liver damage on carbon tetrachloride induced liver damage. Treatment of rats with 250mg /kg body weight of ethanolic extract of PHF protected rats against carbon tetrachloride liver injury by significant lowerering 5’ nucleotidase (5’NT), Gamma Glutamyl transferase (GGT), Glutamate dehdyrogenasse (GDH) and Succinate Dehydrogenase (SDH) levels compared to control. Normalization in these enzyme levels indicates strong hepatoprotective property of PHF extract.
Abstract: In vitro gastro-duodenal digestion model was used to investigate the changes of emulsions under digestion conditions. Oil in water emulsions stabilized by whey proteins (2%) and stabilized by whey proteins (2%) with addition of carboxymethyl cellulose (0.75%) as gelling agent of continuous phase were prepared at pH7. Both emulsions were destabilized under gastric conditions; however the protective role of carboxymethyl cellulose was indicated by recording delay of fat digestibility of this emulsion. In the presence of carboxymethyl cellulose whey proteins on the interfacial surface of droplets were more resistant to gastric degradation causing limited hydrolysis of fat due to the poor acceptability of lipids for the enzymes. Studies of emulsions using in vivo model supported results from in vitro studies. Lower content of triglycerides in blood serum and higher amount of fecal fat of rats were determined when rats were fed by diet containing emulsion made with whey proteins and carboxymethyl cellulose.
Abstract: Real world Speaker Identification (SI) application
differs from ideal or laboratory conditions causing perturbations that
leads to a mismatch between the training and testing environment
and degrade the performance drastically. Many strategies have been
adopted to cope with acoustical degradation; wavelet based Bayesian
marginal model is one of them. But Bayesian marginal models
cannot model the inter-scale statistical dependencies of different
wavelet scales. Simple nonlinear estimators for wavelet based
denoising assume that the wavelet coefficients in different scales are
independent in nature. However wavelet coefficients have significant
inter-scale dependency. This paper enhances this inter-scale
dependency property by a Circularly Symmetric Probability Density
Function (CS-PDF) related to the family of Spherically Invariant
Random Processes (SIRPs) in Log Gabor Wavelet (LGW) domain
and corresponding joint shrinkage estimator is derived by Maximum
a Posteriori (MAP) estimator. A framework is proposed based on
these to denoise speech signal for automatic speaker identification
problems. The robustness of the proposed framework is tested for
Text Independent Speaker Identification application on 100 speakers
of POLYCOST and 100 speakers of YOHO speech database in three
different noise environments. Experimental results show that the
proposed estimator yields a higher improvement in identification
accuracy compared to other estimators on popular Gaussian Mixture
Model (GMM) based speaker model and Mel-Frequency Cepstral
Coefficient (MFCC) features.
Abstract: Mutations of the telomeric copy of the survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene cause spinal muscular atrophy. A deletion of the Eef1a2 gene leads to lower motor neuron degeneration in wasted mice. Indirect evidences have been shown that the eEF1A protein family may interact with SMN, and our previous study showed that abnormalities of neuromuscular junctions in wasted mice were similar to those of Smn mutant mice. To determine potential colocalization between SMN and tissue-specific translation elongation factor 1A2 (eEF1A2), an immunochemical analysis of HeLa cells transfected with the plasmid pcDNA3.1(+)C-hEEF1A2- myc and a new quantitative test of colocalization by intensity correlation analysis (ICA) was used to explore the association of SMN and eEF1A2. Here the results showed that eEF1A2 redistributed from the cytoplasm to the nucleus in response to serum and epidermal growth factor. In the cytoplasm, compelling evidence showed that staining for myc-tagged eEF1A2 varied in synchrony with that for SMN, consistent with the formation of a SMN-eEF1A2 complex in the cytoplasm of HeLa cells. These findings suggest that eEF1A2 may colocalize with SMN in the cytoplasm and may be a component of the SMN complex. However, the limitation of the ICA method is an inability to resolve colocalization in components of small organelles such as the nucleus.
Abstract: This paper presents a new and efficient approach for capacitor placement in radial distribution systems that determine the optimal locations and size of capacitor with an objective of improving the voltage profile and reduction of power loss. The solution methodology has two parts: in part one the loss sensitivity factors are used to select the candidate locations for the capacitor placement and in part two a new algorithm that employs Plant growth Simulation Algorithm (PGSA) is used to estimate the optimal size of capacitors at the optimal buses determined in part one. The main advantage of the proposed method is that it does not require any external control parameters. The other advantage is that it handles the objective function and the constraints separately, avoiding the trouble to determine the barrier factors. The proposed method is applied to 9, 34, and 85-bus radial distribution systems. The solutions obtained by the proposed method are compared with other methods. The proposed method has outperformed the other methods in terms of the quality of solution.
Abstract: In this paper, the energy performance of a selected
UHDE Ammonia plant is optimized by conducting heat integration through waste heat recovery and the synthesis of a heat exchange
network (HEN). Minimum hot and cold utility requirements were estimated through IChemE spreadsheet. Supporting simulation was
carried out using HYSYS software. The results showed that there is
no need for heating utility while the required cold utility was found to
be around 268,714 kW. Hence a threshold pinch case was faced. Then, the hot and cold streams were matched appropriately. Also,
waste heat recovered resulted with savings in HP and LP steams of
approximately 51.0% and 99.6%, respectively. An economic analysis
on proposed HEN showed very attractive overall payback period not
exceeding 3 years. In general, a net saving approaching 35% was
achieved in implementing heat optimization of current studied UHDE Ammonia process.
Abstract: A new, combinatorial model for analyzing and inter-
preting an electrocardiogram (ECG) is presented. An application of
the model is QRS peak detection. This is demonstrated with an
online algorithm, which is shown to be space as well as time efficient.
Experimental results on the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database show that
this novel approach is promising. Further uses for this approach are
discussed, such as taking advantage of its small memory requirements
and interpreting large amounts of pre-recorded ECG data.
Abstract: Fishbone of Nile Tilapia (Tilapia nilotica), waste from the frozen Nile Tilapia fillet factory, is one of calcium sources. In order to increase fish bone powder value, this study aimed to investigate the effect of Tilapia bone flour (TBF) addition (5, 10, 15% by flour weight) on cooking quality, texture and sensory attributes of noodles. The results indicated that tensile strength, color value (a*) and water absorption of noodles significantly decreased (p£0.05) as the levels of TBF increased from 0-15%. While cooking loss, cooking time and color values (L* and b*) of noodles significantly increased (p£0.05). Sensory evaluation indicated that noodles with 5% TBF received the highest overall acceptability score.
Abstract: Group key management is an important functional
building block for any secure multicast architecture.
Thereby, it has been extensively studied in the literature.
In this paper we present relevant group key management
protocols. Then, we compare them against some pertinent
performance criteria.
Abstract: The present study examines the mediating effect of
online flow experience on the relationship between extraversionintroversion,
locus of control and loneliness, and depression and
satisfaction with life. The data was obtained using a structured
questionnaire prepared by adapting standardized scales available from
a sample of 102 engineering students from different technical
institutions at Bhubaneswar, India. The results indicate that there is a
positive significant relationship between introversion, external locus
of control, loneliness, depression and online flow experience, and
extraversion, internal locus of control and satisfaction with life. The
results also suggest that online flow experience mediates the
relationship between the aforementioned variables.
Abstract: Promoting critical thinking (CT) in an educational
setting has been appraised in order to enhance learning and
intellectual skills. In this study, a pedagogical course in a vocational
teacher education program in Turkey was designed by integrating CT
skill-based strategies/activities into the course content and CT skills
were means leading to intended course objectives. The purpose of the
study was to evaluate the importance of the course objectives, the
attainment of the objectives, and the effectiveness of teachinglearning
strategies/activities from prospective teachers- points of
view. The results revealed that although the students mostly
considered the course objectives important, they did not feel
competent in the attainment of all objectives especially in those
related to the main topic of Learning and those requiring higher order
thinking skills. On the other hand, the students considered the course
activities effective for learning and for the development of thinking
skills, especially, in interpreting, comparing, questioning,
contrasting, and forming relationships.
Abstract: The balancing numbers are natural numbers n satisfying
the Diophantine equation 1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + (n - 1) = (n + 1) +
(n + 2) + · · · + (n + r); r is the balancer corresponding to the
balancing number n.The nth balancing number is denoted by Bn
and the sequence {Bn}1
n=1 satisfies the recurrence relation Bn+1 =
6Bn-Bn-1. The balancing numbers posses some curious properties,
some like Fibonacci numbers and some others are more interesting.
This paper is a study of recurrent sequence {xn}1
n=1 satisfying the
recurrence relation xn+1 = Axn - Bxn-1 and possessing some
curious properties like the balancing numbers.
Abstract: Solar energy is not only sustainable but also a clean
alternative to be used as source of high temperature heat for many
processes and power generation. However, the major drawback of
solar energy is its transient nature. Especially in solar
thermochemical processing, it is crucial to maintain constant or semiconstant
temperatures inside the solar reactor. In our laboratory, we
have developed a mechanism allowing us to achieve semi-constant
temperature inside the solar reactor. In this paper, we introduce the
concept along with some updated designs and provide the optical
analysis of the concept under various incoming flux.
Abstract: In this paper, a novel corner detection method is
presented to stably extract geometrically important corners.
Intensity-based corner detectors such as the Harris corner can detect
corners in noisy environments but has inaccurate corner position and
misses the corners of obtuse angles. Edge-based corner detectors such
as Curvature Scale Space can detect structural corners but show
unstable corner detection due to incomplete edge detection in noisy
environments. The proposed image-based direct curvature estimation
can overcome limitations in both inaccurate structural corner detection
of the Harris corner detector (intensity-based) and the unstable corner
detection of Curvature Scale Space caused by incomplete edge
detection. Various experimental results validate the robustness of the
proposed method.