Abstract: There are many views on how human decision makers behave. In this work, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court will be viewed in terms of constrained maximization and cognitivecybernetic theory. This paper will integrate research in such fields as law, political science, psychology, economics and decision making theory. It will be argued that due to its heavy workload, the Supreme Court is forced to make decisions in a boundedly rational manner. The ideas and theory put forward here will be tested in the area of the Court’s decisions involving religion. Therefore, the cases involving the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause and Establishment Clause will be analyzed. Also, variables such as the U.S. government’s involvement in these cases will be considered. The years to be studied will be 1987-2011.
Abstract: Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP) is currently
being widely investigated because of its potential to produce ultrafine
grained microstructures in metals and alloys. A sound
knowledge of the plastic deformation and strain distribution is
necessary for understanding the relationships between strain
inhomogeneity and die geometry. Considerable research has been
reported on finite element analysis of this process, assuming threedimensional
plane strain condition. However, the two-dimensional
models are not suitable due to the geometry of the dies, especially in
cylindrical ones. In the present work, three-dimensional simulation of
ECAP process was carried out for six outer corner radii (sharp to 10
mm in steps of 2 mm), with channel angle 105¶Çü▒, for strain hardening
aluminium alloy (AA 6101) using ABAQUS/Standard software.
Strain inhomogeneity is presented and discussed for all cases. Pattern
of strain variation along selected radial lines in the body of the workpiece
is presented. It is found from the results that the outer corner
has a significant influence on the strain distribution in the body of
work-piece. Based on inhomogeneity and average strain criteria,
there is an optimum outer corner radius.
Abstract: This paper shows the potential system benefits of
simple tracking solar system using a stepper motor and light sensor.
This method is increasing power collection efficiency by developing
a device that tracks the sun to keep the panel at a right angle to its
rays. A solar tracking system is designed, implemented and
experimentally tested. The design details and the experimental results
are shown.
Abstract: Architecture education was based on apprenticeship
models and its nature has not changed much during long period but
the Source of changes was its evaluation process and system. It is
undeniable that art and architecture education is completely based on
transmitting knowledge from instructor to students. In contrast to
other majors this transmitting is by iteration and practice and studio
masters try to control the design process and improving skills in the
form of supervision and criticizing. Also the evaluation will end by
giving marks to students- achievements. Therefore the importance of
the evaluation and assessment role is obvious and it is not irrelevant
to say that if we want to know about the architecture education
system, we must first study its assessment procedures. The evolution
of these changes in western countries has literate and documented
well. However it seems that this procedure has unregarded in
Malaysia and there is a severe lack of research and documentation in
this area. Malaysia as an under developing and multicultural country
which is involved different races and cultures is a proper origin for
scrutinizing and understanding the evaluation systems and
acceptability amount of current implemented models to keep the
evaluation and assessment procedure abreast with needs of different
generations, cultures and even genders. This paper attempts to
answer the questions of how evaluation and assessments are
performed and how students perceive this evaluation system in the
context Malaysia. The main advantage of this work is that it
contributes in international debate on evaluation model.
Abstract: An algorithm for learning an overcomplete dictionary
using a Cauchy mixture model for sparse decomposition of an underdetermined
mixing system is introduced. The mixture density
function is derived from a ratio sample of the observed mixture
signals where 1) there are at least two but not necessarily more
mixture signals observed, 2) the source signals are statistically
independent and 3) the sources are sparse. The basis vectors of the
dictionary are learned via the optimization of the location parameters
of the Cauchy mixture components, which is shown to be more
accurate and robust than the conventional data mining methods
usually employed for this task. Using a well known sparse
decomposition algorithm, we extract three speech signals from two
mixtures based on the estimated dictionary. Further tests with
additive Gaussian noise are used to demonstrate the proposed
algorithm-s robustness to outliers.
Abstract: Management is required to understand all information security risks within an organization, and to make decisions on which information security risks should be treated in what level by allocating how much amount of cost. However, such decision-making is not usually easy, because various measures for risk treatment must be selected with the suitable application levels. In addition, some measures may have objectives conflicting with each other. It also makes the selection difficult. Therefore, this paper provides a model which supports the selection of measures by applying multi-objective analysis to find an optimal solution. Additionally, a list of measures is also provided to make the selection easier and more effective without any leakage of measures.
Abstract: Bottle water is getting very popular all through the
world; especially in the gulf countries as the main source of drinking
water. However, concerns over leaching of toxic chemicals are
increasing. In this study, a health risk assessment was conducted in
accordance with the guidelines indicated by United States
Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). It is conducted based on
leaching of Diethyl Phthalate (DEP) from Polyethylene terephthalate
(PET). The toxicity and exposure assessment of diethyl phthalate was
conducted to characterize its risk on human health. Risk management
is also discussed.
Abstract: The need for reputation assessment is particularly strong in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems because the peers' personal site autonomy is amplified by the inherent technological decentralization of the environment. However, the decentralization notion makes the problem of designing a peer-to-peer based reputation assessment substantially harder in P2P networks than in centralized settings.Existing reputation systems tackle the reputation assessment process in an ad-hoc manner. There is no systematic and coherent way to derive measures and analyze the current reputation systems. In this paper, we propose a reputation assessment process and use it to classify the existing reputation systems. Simulation experiments are conducted and focused on the different methods in selecting the recommendation sources and retrieving the recommendations. These two phases can contribute significantly to the overall performance due to communication cost and coverage.
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: Grid scheduling is the process of mapping grid jobs to resources over multiple administrative domains. Traditionally, application-level schedulers have been tightly integrated with the application itself and were not easily applied to other applications. This design is generic that decouples the scheduler core (the search procedure) from the application-specific (e.g. application performance models) and platform-specific (e.g. collection of resource information) components used by the search procedure. In this decoupled approach the application details are not revealed completely to broker, but customer will give the application to resource provider for execution. In a decoupled approach, apart from scheduling, the resource selection can be performed independently in order to achieve scalability.
Abstract: To simulate heating systems in buildings, a research oriented computer code has been developed in Sharif University of Technology in Iran where the climate, existing heating equipment in buildings, consumer behavior and their interactions are considered for simulating energy consumption in conventional systems such as heaters, radiators and fan-coils. In order to validate the computer code, the available data of five buildings was used and the computed consumed energy was compared with the estimated energy extracted from monthly bills. The initial heating system was replaced by the alternative system and the effect of this change was observed on the energy consumption. As a result, the effect of changing heating equipment on energy consumption was investigated in different climates. Changing heater to radiator renders energy conservation up to 50% in all climates and changing radiator to fan-coil decreases energy consumption in climates with cold and dry winter.
Abstract: The Mahin area is a part of Tarom- Hashtjin zone that
located in west of Qazvin province in northwest of Iran. Many copper
and base metals ore deposits are hosted by this zone. High potential
localities identification in this area is very necessary. The objective of
this research, is finding hydrothermal alteration zones by remote
sensing methods and best processing technique of Advanced
Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER)
data. Different methods such as band ratio, Principal Component
Analysis (PCA), Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) and Least Square
Fit (LS-Fit) were used for mapping hydrothermal alteration zones.
Abstract: Indian telecom services industry has been witnessing
a stupendous growth since 1990s. Over the years, subscriber base has
grown steadily and it crossed 950 million marks in March 2012.
India with second largest subscriber base also offers one of the
lowest call tariffs in the world. But in the euphoria of high growth in
services, the equipment manufacturing received least priority. India
mainly depends on imported components from China. Of late, it is
realized that lack of domestic manufacturing may pose a serious
challenge to India-s continued success in the telecom sector.
Therefore, the National Telecom Policy 2012 aims at developing a
strong equipment manufacturing base within India. This paper
realistically assesses India-s true potential in equipment
manufacturing and seeks to identify the emerging issues and
challenges before the Indian telecom equipment manufacturing sector
while it tries to make a transition from an import-dependent industry
to a global manufacturing hub.
Abstract: This research presents the development of simulation
modeling for WIP management in semiconductor fabrication.
Manufacturing simulation modeling is needed for productivity
optimization analysis due to the complex process flows involved
more than 35 percent re-entrance processing steps more than 15 times
at same equipment. Furthermore, semiconductor fabrication required
to produce high product mixed with total processing steps varies from
300 to 800 steps and cycle time between 30 to 70 days. Besides the
complexity, expansive wafer cost that potentially impact the
company profits margin once miss due date is another motivation to
explore options to experiment any analysis using simulation
modeling. In this paper, the simulation model is developed using
existing commercial software platform AutoSched AP, with
customized integration with Manufacturing Execution Systems
(MES) and Advanced Productivity Family (APF) for data collections
used to configure the model parameters and data source. Model
parameters such as processing steps cycle time, equipment
performance, handling time, efficiency of operator are collected
through this customization. Once the parameters are validated, few
customizations are made to ensure the prior model is executed. The
accuracy for the simulation model is validated with the actual output
per day for all equipments. The comparison analysis from result of
the simulation model compared to actual for achieved 95 percent
accuracy for 30 days. This model later was used to perform various
what if analysis to understand impacts on cycle time and overall
output. By using this simulation model, complex manufacturing
environment like semiconductor fabrication (fab) now have
alternative source of validation for any new requirements impact
analysis.
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: This study reports the preparation of soft magnetic
ribbons of Fe-based amorphous alloys using the single-roller melt-spinning technique. Ribbon width varied from 142 mm to 213
mm and, with a thickness of approximately 22 μm ± 2 μm. The microstructure and magnetic properties of the ribbons were
characterized by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), and electrical resistivity measurements (ERM). The amorphous material
properties dependence of the cooling rate and nozzle pressure have uneven surface in ribbon thicknesses are investigated. Magnetic
measurement results indicate that some region of the ribbon exhibits good magnetic properties, higher saturation induction and lower coercivity. However, due to the uneven surface of 213 mm wide
ribbon, the magnetic responses are not uniformly distributed. To
understand the transformer magnetic performances, this study analyzes the measurements of a three-phase 2 MVA amorphous-cored transformer. Experimental results confirm that the transformer with a
ribbon width of 142 mm has better magnetic properties in terms of lower core loss, exciting power, and audible noise.
Abstract: The concept of housing affordability is a contested
issue, but a pressing and widespread problem for many countries.
Simple ratio measures based on housing expenditure and income are
habitually used to defined and assess housing affordability. However,
conceptualising and measuring affordability in this manner focuses
only on financial attributes and fails to deal with wider issues such as
housing quality, location and access to services and facilities.
The research is based on the notion that the housing affordability
problem encompasses more than the financial costs of housing and a
households ability to meet such costs and must address larger issues
such as social and environmental sustainability and the welfare of
households. Therefore, the need arises for a broad and more
encompassing set of attributes by which housing affordability can be
assessed. This paper presents a system of criteria by which the
affordability of different housing locations could be assessed in a
comprehensive and sustainable manner. Moreover, the paper explores
the way in which such criteria could be measured.
Abstract: Hair is a non homogenous complex material which
can be associated with a polymer. It is made up 95% of Keratin.
Hair has a great social significance for human beings. In the High
Middle Ages, for example, long hairs have been reserved for kings
and nobles.
Most common interest in hair is focused on hair growth, hair types
and hair care, but hair is also an important biomaterial which can
vary depending on ethnic origin or on age, hair colour for example
can be a sign of ethnic ancestry or age (dark hair for Asiatic, blond
hair for Caucasian and white hair for old people in general).
In this context, different approaches have been conducted to
determine the differences in mechanical properties and characterize
the fracture topography at the surface of hair depending on its type
and its age.
A tensile testing machine was especially designed to achieve
tensile tests on hair. This device is composed of a microdisplacement
system and a force sensor whose peak load is limited to
3N. The curves and the values extracted from each experiment, allow
us to compare the evolution of the mechanical properties from one
hair to another.
Observations with a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and
with an interferometer were made on different hairs. Thus, it is
possible to access the cuticle state and the fracture topography for
each category.
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: The Post colonial society in India has witnessed the turmoil to come out from the widespread control and influence of colonialism. The socio-cultural life of a society with all its dynamics is reflected in realistic forms of literature. The social events and human experience are drawn into a new creative form and are given to the reader as a new understanding and perspective of life. It enables the reader to understand the essence of life and motivates him to prepare for a positive change. After India becoming free from the colonial rule in 1947, systematic efforts were made by central and state governments and institutions to limit the role of English and simultaneously enlarge the function of Indian languages by planning in a strategic manner. The eighteen languages recognized as national languages are having very rich literatures. Telugu language is one among the Dravidian language family and is widely spoken by a majority of people. The post colonial socio-cultural factors were very well reflected in Telugu literature. The anti-colonial, reform oriented, progressive, post modernistic trends in Telugu literature are nothing but creative reflections of the post colonial society. This paper examines the major socio-cultural reflections in Telugu literature of the post colonial period.