TanSSe-L System PIM Manual Transformation to Moodle as a TanSSe-L System Specific PIM

Tanzania Secondary Schools e-Learning (TanSSe-L) system is a customized learning management system (LMS) developed to enable ICT support in teaching and learning functions. Methodologies involved in the development of TanSSe-L system are Object oriented system analysis and design with UML to create and model TanSSe-L system database structure in the form of a design class diagram, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) to provide a well defined process in TanSSe-L system development, where MDA conceptual layers were integrated with system development life cycle and customization of open source learning management system which was used during implementation stage to create a timely functional TanSSe-L system. Before customization, a base for customization was prepared. This was the manual transformation from TanSSe-L system platform independent models (PIM) to TanSSe-L system specific PIM. This paper presents how Moodle open source LMS was analyzed and prepared to be the TanSSe-L system specific PIM as applied by MDA.

An Educational Data Mining System for Advising Higher Education Students

Educational  data mining  is  a  specific  data   mining field applied to data originating from educational environments, it relies on different  approaches to discover hidden knowledge  from  the  available   data. Among these approaches are   machine   learning techniques which are used to build a system that acquires learning from previous data. Machine learning can be applied to solve different regression, classification, clustering and optimization problems. In  our  research, we propose  a “Student  Advisory  Framework” that  utilizes  classification  and  clustering  to  build  an  intelligent system. This system can be used to provide pieces of consultations to a first year  university  student to  pursue a  certain   education   track   where  he/she  will  likely  succeed  in, aiming  to  decrease   the  high  rate   of  academic  failure   among these  students.  A real case study  in Cairo  Higher  Institute  for Engineering, Computer  Science  and  Management  is  presented using  real  dataset   collected  from  2000−2012.The dataset has two main components: pre-higher education dataset and first year courses results dataset. Results have proved the efficiency of the suggested framework.

Using Smartphones as an Instrument of Early Warning and Emergency Localization

This paper suggests using smartphones and community GPS application to make alerts more accurate and therefore positively influence the entire warning process. The paper is based on formerly published paper describing a Radio-HELP system. It summarizes existing methods and lists the advantages of proposed solution. The paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of each possible input, processing and output of the warning system.

A Moving Human-Object Detection for Video Access Monitoring

In this paper, a simple moving human detection method is proposed for video surveillance system or access monitoring system. The frame difference and noise threshold are used for initial detection of a moving human-object, and simple labeling method is applied for final human-object segmentation. The simulated results show that the applied algorithm is fast to detect the moving human-objects by performing 95% of correct detection rate. The proposed algorithm has confirmed that can be used as an intelligent video access monitoring system.

Roles of Early Warning in Sea and Coast Guard Activity in Indonesia: Bakorkamla Integrated Information System

This paper will define the system that minimize the risk of the ship accidents because of high or dangerous waves namely early warning system. Since Indonesia is located in a strategic position, many internasional vessels pass by the Indonesian Sea Lanes. Therefore many issues often occur in Indonesian waters, one of the issues is the shipwreck because of dangerous waves. In order to do the preventive action for the vessels that indicated exposed the dangerous waves, Indonesian Maritime Security Coordinating Board or Bakorkamla, has built up and implemented an early warning system through integrated system, called Bakorkamla Integrated Information System (BIIS). By implementing BIIS means that Bakorkamla has already done one of the Five Principles of Sea and Coast Guard Agency, which is safety and security, and Bakorkamla also has already saved the lives of many people on the ship that will have an accident due to high waves. 

Turning Thin-Walled Workpieces with Variable Depth of Cut

The article deals with the possibilities of increasing the efficiency of turning thin-walled workpieces. It proposes a new strategy for turning and it proposes new implementation of roughing cycles where a variable depth of cut is applied. Proposed roughing cycles are created in the CAD/CAM system. These roughing cycles are described in relation to their further use in practice. The experimental research has focused on monitoring the durability of cutting tool and increases its tool life. It compares the turning where the standard roughing cycle is used and the turning where the proposed roughing cycle with variable depth of cut is applied. In article are monitored tool wear during cutting with the sintered carbide cutting edge. The result verifies theoretical prerequisites of tool wear.

A Study of Fatty Acid Production in the Batch Reactor via the Carbohydrate Fermentation by C. butyricum

Carbohydrate can be used as a substrate that can be consumed by C. butyricum and converted to useful chemicals such as acetic and butyric acid. Influence of concentration and types of carbohydrate to cell growth, carbohydrate consumed, productivity and carbon balance have been explored. Batch reactor was selected in this study to avoid contamination due to simpler operation system. Glucose was preferred as first types of carbohydrate to be tested. Six concentrations were studied from 0 to 28g/L. Eventually, 15g/L has shown the best concentration for glucose in term of growth rate (2.63h-1) and carbon balance (99.76% recovery). Comparison for types of carbohydrate was also conducted. 15g/L of xylose (monosaccharide) and starch (complex carbohydrate) was tested.  In term of growth rate and productivity, glucose showed the best carbohydrates. Results for this study showed that glucose and xylose produced more than 80% of acetic acid and less than 20% of butyric acid. Meanwhile, 63.1% of acetic acid and 36.9% of butyric acid were produced from starch. 

Design of Walking Beam Pendle Axle Suspension System

This paper deals with design of walking beam pendel axle suspension system. This axles and suspension systems are mainly required for transportation of heavy duty and Over Dimension Consignment (ODC) cargo, which is exceeding legal limit in terms of length, width and height. Presently, in Indian transportation industry, ODC movement growth rate has increased in transportation of bridge sections (pre-cast beams), transformers, heavy machineries, boilers, gas turbines, windmill blades etc. However, current Indian standard road transport vehicles are facing lot of service and maintenance issues due to non availability of suitable axle and suspension to carry the ODC cargoes. This in turn will lead to increased number of road accidents, bridge collapse and delayed deliveries, which finally result in higher operating cost. Understanding these requirements, this work was carried out. These axles and suspensions are designed for optimum self – weight with maximum payload carrying capacity with better road stability.

Optimizing Hadoop Block Placement Policy and Cluster Blocks Distribution

The current Hadoop block placement policy do not fairly and evenly distributes replicas of blocks written to datanodes in a Hadoop cluster. This paper presents a new solution that helps to keep the cluster in a balanced state while an HDFS client is writing data to a file in Hadoop cluster. The solution had been implemented, and test had been conducted to evaluate its contribution to Hadoop distributed file system. It has been found that, the solution has lowered global execution time taken by Hadoop balancer to 22 percent. It also has been found that, Hadoop balancer respectively over replicate 1.75 and 3.3 percent of all re-distributed blocks in the modified and original Hadoop clusters. The feature that keeps the cluster in a balanced state works as a core part to Hadoop system and not just as a utility like traditional balancer. This is one of the significant achievements and uniqueness of the solution developed during the course of this research work.

Computation of Global Voltage Stability Margin in a Practical Power Network Incorporating FACTS in the OPF Frame Work

This paper presents a methodology to assess the voltage stability status combined with optimal power flow technique using an instantaneous two-bus equivalent model of power system incorporating static var compensator (SVC) and thyristor controlled series compensator (TCSC) controllers. There by, a generalized global voltage stability indicator being developed has been applied to a robust practical Indian Eastern Grid 203-bus system. Simulation results have proved that the proposed methodology is promising to assess voltage stability of any power system at any operating point in global scenario. Voltage stability augmentation with the application of SVC at the weakest bus and TCSC at critical line connected to the weakest bus is compared with the system having no compensation. In the proposed network equivalent model the generators have been modeled more accurately considering economic criteria.

Modeling Studies for Electrocoagulation

Synthetic oily wastewaters were prepared from metal working fluids (MWF). Electrocoagulation experiments were performed under constant voltage application. The current, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen concentration and temperature were recorded on line at every 5 seconds during the experiments. Effects of applied voltage differences, electrode materials and distance between electrodes on removal efficiency have been investigated. According to the experimental results, the treatment of MWF wastewaters by iron electrodes rather than aluminum and stainless steel was much quicker; and the distance between electrodes should be less than 1cm. The electrocoagulation process was modeled by using block oriented approach and found out that it can be modeled as a single input and multiple output system. Modeling studies indicates that the electrocoagulation process has a nonlinear model structure.

Uniform Solution on the Effect of Internal Heat Generation on Rayleigh-Benard Convection in Micropolar Fluid

The effect of internal heat generation is applied to the Rayleigh-Benard convection in a horizontal micropolar fluid layer. The bounding surfaces of the liquids are considered to be rigid-free, rigid-rigid and free-free with the combination of isothermal on the spin-vanishing boundaries. A linear stability analysis is used and the Galerkin method is employed to find the critical stability parameters numerically. It is shown that the critical Rayleigh number decreases as the value of internal heat generation increase and hence destabilize the system.

Elicitation of Requirements for a Knowledge Management Concept in Decentralized Production Planning

The planning in manufacturing system is becoming complicated day by day due to the expanding networks and shortage of skilled people to manage change. Consequently, faster lead time and rising demands for eco-efficient evaluation of manufacturing products and processes need exploitation of new and intelligent knowledge management concepts for manufacturing planning. This paper highlights motivation for incorporation of new features in the manufacturing planning system. Furthermore, it elaborates requirements for the development of intelligent knowledge management concept to support planning related decisions. Afterwards, the derived concept is presented in this paper considering two case studies. The first case study is concerned with the automotive ramp-up planning. The second case study specifies requirements for knowledge management system to support decisions in eco-efficient evaluation of manufacturing products and processes

Optimising Data Transmission in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

The transfer rate of messages in distributed sensor network applications is a critical factor in a system's performance. The Sensor Abstraction Layer (SAL) is one such system. SAL is a middleware integration platform for abstracting sensor specific technology in order to integrate heterogeneous types of sensors in a network. SAL uses Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) as its connection method, which has unsatisfying transfer rates, especially for streaming data.  This paper analyses different connection methods to optimize data transmission in SAL by replacing RMI.  Our results show that the most promising Java-based connections were frameworks for Java New Input/Output (NIO) including Apache MINA, JBoss Netty, and xSocket. A test environment was implemented to evaluate each respective framework based on transfer rate, resource usage, and scalability. Test results showed the most suitable connection method to improve data transmission in SAL JBoss Netty as it provides a performance enhancement of 68%.

Control of Braking Force under Loaded and Empty Conditions on Two Wheeler

The Automobile Braking System has a crucial role for safety of the passenger and riding quality of the vehicle. The braking force mainly depends on normal reaction on the wheel and the co-efficient of friction between the tire and the road surface. Whenever a vehicle is loaded, the normal reaction on the rear wheel is increased. Thus the amount of braking force required to halt the vehicle with minimum stopping distance, is based on the pillion load on the vehicle. In this work, in order to vary the braking force in two wheelers, the mechanical leverage which operates the master cylinder is varied based on the pillion load. Thus the amount of braking force developed between ground and tire is varied. This optimum braking force on the disc brake helps in attaining the minimum vehicle stopping distance. In addition to that, it also helps in preventing sliding. Thus the system results in reducing the stopping distance of the two wheelers and providing a better braking efficiency than the conventional braking system.

A Robust Adaptive Congestion Control Strategy for Large Scale Networks with Differentiated Services Traffic

In this paper, a robust decentralized congestion control strategy is developed for a large scale network with Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) traffic. The network is modeled by a nonlinear fluid flow model corresponding to two classes of traffic, namely the premium traffic and the ordinary traffic. The proposed congestion controller does take into account the associated physical network resource limitations and is shown to be robust to the unknown and time-varying delays. Our proposed decentralized congestion control strategy is developed on the basis of Diff-Serv architecture by utilizing a robust adaptive technique. A Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) condition is obtained to guarantee the ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop system. Numerical simulation implementations are presented by utilizing the QualNet and Matlab software tools to illustrate the effectiveness and capabilities of our proposed decentralized congestion control strategy.

Analysis of the Energetic Feature of the Loaded Gait with Variation of the Trunk Flexion Angle

The purpose of the research is to investigate the energetic feature of the backpack load on soldier’s gait with variation of the trunk flexion angle. It is believed that the trunk flexion variation of the loaded gait may cause a significant difference in the energy cost which is often in practice in daily life. To this end, seven healthy Korea military personnel participated in the experiment and are tested under three different walking postures comprised of the small, natural and large trunk flexion. There are around 5 degree differences of waist angle between each trunk flexion. The ground reaction forces were collected from the force plates and motion kinematic data are measured by the motion capture system. Based on these data, the impulses, momentums and mechanical works done on the center of body mass (COM) during the double support phase were computed. The result shows that the push-off and heel strike impulse are not relevant to the trunk flexion change, however the mechanical work by the push-off and heel strike were changed by the trunk flexion variation. It is because the vertical velocity of the COM during the double support phase is increased significantly with an increase in the trunk flexion. Therefore, we can know that the gait efficiency of the loaded gait depends on the trunk flexion angle. Also, even though the gravitational impulse and pre-collision momentum are changed by the trunk flexion variation, the after-collision momentum is almost constant regardless of the trunk flexion variation.

Steady State Simulation of Power Systems with Change in Topology

In power system protection, the need to know the load current together with the fault level detected by a relay is important. This is due to the fact that the relay is required to isolate the equipment being protected if a fault is present and keep the breaker associated with it closed if the current level is lower than the maximum load level. This is not an issue for a radial system. This is not the same however in a looped power system. In a looped power system, the isolation of an equipment system will contribute to a topology change. The change in the power system topology will then influence or change the maximum load current and the fault level detected by each relay. In this paper, a method of data collection for changing topology using matlab and sim-power will be presented. The method will take into consideration the change in topology and collect data for each possible topology.

On using PEMFC for Electrical Power Generation on More Electric Aircraft

The electrical power systems of aircrafts have made serious progress in recent years because the aircrafts depend more and more on the electricity. There is a trend in the aircraft industry to replace hydraulic and pneumatic systems with electrical systems, achieving more comfort and monitoring features and enlarging the energetic efficiency. Thus, was born the concept More Electric Aircraft. In this paper is analyzed the integration of a fuel cell into the existing electrical generation and distribution systems of an aircraft. The dynamic characteristics of fuel cell systems necessitate an adaptation of the electrical power system. The architecture studied in this paper consists of a 50kW fuel cell, a dc to dc converter and several loads. The dc to dc converter is used to step down the fuel cell voltage from about 625Vdc to 28Vdc.

Optimal Controller with Backstepping and BELBIC for Single-Link Flexible Manipulator

In this paper, backstepping method (BM) is proposed for a single-link flexible mechanical manipulator. In each step of this method a positive value is obtained. Selections of the gain factor values are very important because controller will have different behavior for each different set of values. Improper selection of these gains can lead to instability of the system. In order to choose proper values for gains BELBIC method has been used in this work. Finally, to prove the efficiency of this method, the obtained results of proposed model are compared with robust controller one. Results show that the combination of backstepping and BELBIC that is presented here, can stabilized the system with higher speed, shorter settling time and lower overshoot in than robust controller.