Abstract: Computed tomography (CT) dosimetry normally uses
an ionization chamber 100 mm long to estimate the computed
tomography dose index (CTDI), however some reports have already
indicated that small devices could replace the long ion chamber to
improve quality assurance procedures in CT dosimetry. This paper
presents a novel dosimetry system based in a commercial
phototransistor evaluated for CT dosimetry. Three detector
configurations were developed for this system: with a single, two and
four devices. Dose profile measurements were obtained with them
and their angular response were evaluated. The results showed that
the novel dosimetry system with the phototransistor could be an
alternative for CT dosimetry. It allows to obtain the CT dose profile
in details and also to estimate the CTDI in longer length than the
100 mm pencil chamber. The angular response showed that the one
device detector configuration is the most adequate among the three
configurations analyzed in this study.
Abstract: This paper investigates experimentally and
analytically the torsion behavior of steel fibered high strength self
compacting concrete beams reinforced by GFRP bars. Steel fibered
high strength self compacting concrete (SFHSSCC) and GFRP bars
became in the recent decades a very important materials in the
structural engineering field. The use of GFRP bars to replace steel
bars has emerged as one of the many techniques put forward to
enhance the corrosion resistance of reinforced concrete structures.
High strength concrete and GFRP bars attract designers and
architects as it allows improving the durability as well as the esthetics
of a construction. One of the trends in SFHSSCC structures is to
provide their ductile behavior and additional goal is to limit
development and propagation of macro-cracks in the body of
SFHSSCC elements. SFHSSCC and GFRP bars are tough, improve
the workability, enhance the corrosion resistance of reinforced
concrete structures, and demonstrate high residual strengths after
appearance of the first crack. Experimental studies were carried out
to select effective fiber contents. Three types of volume fraction from
hooked shape steel fibers are used in this study, the hooked steel
fibers were evaluated in volume fractions ranging between 0.0%,
0.75% and 1.5%. The beams shape is chosen to create the required
forces (i.e. torsion and bending moments simultaneously) on the test
zone. A total of seven beams were tested, classified into three groups.
All beams, have 200cm length, cross section of 10×20cm,
longitudinal bottom reinforcement of 3
Abstract: In reality, the process observations are away from the assumption that are normal distributed. The observations could be skew distributions which should use an asymmetric chart rather than symmetric chart. Consequently, this research aim to study the robustness of the asymmetric Tukey’s control chart for skew and non-skew distributions as Lognormal and Laplace distributions. Furthermore, the performances in detecting of a change in parameter of asymmetric and symmetric Tukey’s control charts are compared by Average ARL (AARL). The results found that the asymmetric performs better than symmetric Tukey’s control chart for both cases of skew and non-skew process observation.
Abstract: Inthis paper, design and fabrication of vertical
micromirror for optical switching applications of single mode optical
fibers are proposed. The structure of micromirror will be created
from negative photoresist (SU-8) on X-ray lithography using X-ray
from synchrotron light source. The properties of X-ray from
synchrotron light source are high-energy electrons which can
construct materials that have a high aspect ratio. In addition, the
technique of gold coating of reflective material has been used for
change direction of light between two pairs of optical fibers. At a
wavelength of 1310 nm with minimum average loss of 5.305 dB is
obtained.
Abstract: This hypothesis shows that the induction and the
remanent of magnetic properties govern the mechanism processes of
DNA replication and the shortening of the telomere.
The solenoid–like formation of each parental DNA strand, which
exists at the initial stage of the replication process, enables an electric
charge transformation through the strand to produce a magnetic field.
The magnetic field, in turn, induces the surrounding medium to form
a new (replicated) strand by a remanent magnetisation. Through the
remanent [residual] magnetisation process, the replicated strand
possesses a similar information pattern to that of the parental strand.
In the same process, the remanent amount of magnetisation forms the
medium in which it has less of both repetitive and pattern
magnetisation than that of the parental strand, therefore the replicated
strand shows a shortening in the length of its telomeres.
Abstract: A self-association model has been used to understand
the concentration dependence of free energy of mixing (GM), heat of
mixing (HM), entropy of mixing (SM), activity (a) and microscopic
structures, such as concentration fluctuation in long wavelength limit
(Scc(0)) and Warren-Cowley short range order parameter ( 1
α )for Cu-
Tl molten alloys at 1573K. A comparative study of surface tension of
the alloys in the liquid state at that temperature has also been carried
out theoretically as function of composition in the light of Butler-s
model, Prasad-s model and quasi-chemical approach. Most of the
computed thermodynamic properties have been found in agreement
with the experimental values. The analysis reveals that the Cu-Tl
molten alloys at 1573K represent a segregating system at all
concentrations with moderate interaction. Surface tensions computed
from different approaches have been found to be comparable to each
other showing increment with the composition of copper.
Abstract: Microbubbbles incorporating ultrasound have been used to increase the efficacy of targeted drug delivery, because microstreaming induced by cavitating bubbles affects the drug perfusion into the target cells and tissues. In order to clarify the physical effects of microstreaming on drug perfusion into tissues, a preliminary experimental study of perfusion enhancement by a stably oscillating microbubble was performed. Microstreaming was induced by an oscillating bubble at 15 kHz, and perfusion of dye into an agar phantom was optically measured by histology on agar phantom. Surface color intensity and the penetration length of dye in the agar phantom were increased more than 70% and 30%, respectively, due to the microstreaming induced by an oscillating bubble. The mass of dye perfused into a tissue phantom for 30 s was increased about 80% in the phantom with an oscillating bubble. This preliminary experiment shows the physical effects of steady streaming by an oscillating bubble can enhance the drug perfusion into the tissues while minimizing the biological effects.
Abstract: On-line handwritten scripts are usually dealt with pen tip traces from pen-down to pen-up positions. Time evaluation of the pen coordinates is also considered along with trajectory information. However, the data obtained needs a lot of preprocessing including filtering, smoothing, slant removing and size normalization before recognition process. Instead of doing such lengthy preprocessing, this paper presents a simple approach to extract the useful character information. This work evaluates the use of the counter- propagation neural network (CPN) and presents feature extraction mechanism in full detail to work with on-line handwriting recognition. The obtained recognition rates were 60% to 94% using the CPN for different sets of character samples. This paper also describes a performance study in which a recognition mechanism with multiple thresholds is evaluated for counter-propagation architecture. The results indicate that the application of multiple thresholds has significant effect on recognition mechanism. The method is applicable for off-line character recognition as well. The technique is tested for upper-case English alphabets for a number of different styles from different peoples.
Abstract: 115 samples of Labeo calbasu ranged 8.0-17.9cm
length with mean11.90±1.96 and 4.9-68.5g weight with mean
22.25±12.54 from the River Chenab, Southern Punjab, Pakistan were
analyzed to investigate length-weight relationships (LWR) of fish in
relation to condition factor (K). Standard length (SL), fork length
(FL), head length (HL) head width (HW), body girth (BG), dorsal fin
length (DFL), dorsal fin base (DFB), pectoral fin length (PcFL),
pelvic fin length (PvFL) and anal fin length (AFL) are found to be
highly correlated with increasing total length and wet body weight (r
> 0.500). Wet body weight has positive (r=0.540) and total length
has no correlation (r=0.344) with calculated Condition factor (K).
The slope “b" in the relationship is 3.27 and intercepts -2.2258.
Abstract: Horizontal continuous casting is widely used to
produce semi-finished non-Ferrous products. Homogeneity in the
metallurgical characteristics and mechanical properties for this
product is vital for industrial application. In the present work, the
microstructure and mechanical properties of a horizontal continuous
cast two-phase brass billet have been studied. Impact strength and
hardness variations were examined and the phase composition and
porosity studied with image analysis software. Distinct differences in
mechanical properties were observed between the upper, middle and
lower parts of the billet, which are explained in terms of the
morphology and size of the phase in the microstructure. Hardness
variation in the length of billet is higher in upper area but impact
strength is higher in lower areas.
Abstract: Cost contribution arrangements (CCAs) and Cost
sharing agreements (CCAs) belong to the tools of modern finance
management. Costs spend by associated enterprises on developing
producing or obtaining assets, services or rights (in general -
benefits) are used for tax optimizing too. The main purpose of joint
research and development, producing or obtaining benefits is to
lower these costs as much as possible or to maximize the benefits. In
this article is mentioned the problematic of transfer pricing and arm's
length principle with connection of CCAs, CSAs. Next, there is
mentioned how to settle participation shares of the total cost and
benefits contributions with respect to the OECD Transfer pricing for
MNEs Guidelines and with respect to other significant regulations.
Abstract: Circular tubes have been widely used as structural
members in engineering application. Therefore, its collapse behavior
has been studied for many decades, focusing on its energy absorption
characteristics. In order to predict the collapse behavior of members,
one could rely on the use of finite element codes or experiments.
These tools are helpful and high accuracy but costly and require
extensive running time. Therefore, an approximating model of tubes
collapse mechanism is an alternative for early step of design. This
paper is also aimed to develop a closed-form solution of thin-walled
circular tube subjected to bending. It has extended the Elchalakani et
al.-s model (Int. J. Mech. Sci.2002; 44:1117-1143) to include the
rate of energy dissipation of rolling hinge in the circumferential
direction. The 3-D geometrical collapse mechanism was analyzed by
adding the oblique hinge lines along the longitudinal tube within the
length of plastically deforming zone. The model was based on the
principal of energy rate conservation. Therefore, the rates of internal
energy dissipation were calculated for each hinge lines which are
defined in term of velocity field. Inextensional deformation and
perfect plastic material behavior was assumed in the derivation of
deformation energy rate. The analytical result was compared with
experimental result. The experiment was conducted with a number of
tubes having various D/t ratios. Good agreement between analytical
and experiment was achieved.
Abstract: In order to investigate a PROX microreactor
performance, two-dimensional modeling of the reacting flow
between two parallel plates is performed through a finite volume
method using an improved SIMPLE algorithm. A three-step surface
kinetics including hydrogen oxidation, carbon monoxide oxidation
and water-gas shift reaction is applied for a Pt-Fe/γ-Al2O3 catalyst
and operating temperatures of about 100ºC. Flow pattern, pressure
field, temperature distribution, and mole fractions of species are
found in the whole domain for all cases. Also, the required reactive
length for removing carbon monoxide from about 2% to less than 10
ppm is found. Furthermore, effects of hydraulic diameter, wall
temperature, and inlet mole fraction of air and water are investigated
by considering carbon monoxide selectivity and conversion. It is
found that air and water addition may improve the performance of
the microreactor in carbon monoxide removal in such operating
conditions; this is in agreement with the pervious published results.
Abstract: One of the major problems in genomic field is to perform sequence comparison on DNA and protein sequences. Executing sequence comparison on the DNA and protein data is a computationally intensive task. Sequence comparison is the basic step for all algorithms in protein sequences similarity. Parallel computing is an attractive solution to provide the computational power needed to speedup the lengthy process of the sequence comparison. Our main research is to enhance the protein sequence algorithm using dynamic programming method. In our approach, we parallelize the dynamic programming algorithm using multithreaded program to perform the sequence comparison and also developed a distributed protein database among many PCs using Remote Method Interface (RMI). As a result, we showed how different sizes of protein sequences data and computation of scoring matrix of these protein sequence on different number of processors affected the processing time and speed, as oppose to sequential processing.
Abstract: The bridge vibration due to traffic loading has been a
subject of extensive research during the last decades. A number of
these studies are concerned with the effects of the unevenness of
roadways on the dynamic responses of highway bridges. The road
unevenness is often described as a random process that constitutes
of different wavelengths. Thus, the study focuses on examining
the effects of the random description of roadways on the dynamic
response and its variance. A new setting of variance based sensitivity
analysis is proposed and used to identify and quantify the
contributions of the roadway-s wavelengths to the variance of the
dynamic response. Furthermore, the effect of the vehicle-s speed on
the dynamic response is studied.
Abstract: The Cluster Dimension of a network is defined as, which is the minimum cardinality of a subset S of the set of nodes having the property that for any two distinct nodes x and y, there exist the node Si, s2 (need not be distinct) in S such that ld(x,s1) — d(y, s1)1 > 1 and d(x,s2) < d(x,$) for all s E S — {s2}. In this paper, strictly non overlap¬ping clusters are constructed. The concept of LandMarks for Unique Addressing and Clustering (LMUAC) routing scheme is developed. With the help of LMUAC routing scheme, It is shown that path length (upper bound)PLN,d < PLD, Maximum memory space requirement for the networkMSLmuAc(Az) < MSEmuAc < MSH3L < MSric and Maximum Link utilization factor MLLMUAC(i=3) < MLLMUAC(z03) < M Lc
Abstract: Larval rearing and seed production of most of tetra fishes (Family: Characidae) is critical due to their small size larvae and limited numbers of spawning attempts. During the present study the effect of different live foods on growth and survival of neon tetra, Paracheirodon innesi larvae (length 3.1 ± 0.012mm, weight 0.048 ± 0.00015mg) and early fry (length = 6.44 ± 0.025mm, weight = 0.64 ± 0.003mg and 13 days old) was determined in two experiments. Experiment I was conducted for rearing the larvae by using mixed green water and Infusoria whereas, in Experiment II, early fry were fed with mixed zooplankton, decapsulated Artemia cyst and Artemia nauplii. The larvae fed on mixed green water showed significant (p
Abstract: In the modern manufacturing systems, the use of
thermal cutting techniques using oxyfuel, plasma and laser have
become indispensable for the shape forming of high quality complex
components; however, the conventional chip removal production
techniques still have its widespread space in the manufacturing
industry. Both these types of machining operations require the
positioning of end effector tool at the edge where the cutting process
commences. This repositioning of the cutting tool in every machining
operation is repeated several times and is termed as non-productive
time or airtime motion. Minimization of this non-productive
machining time plays an important role in mass production with high
speed machining. As, the tool moves from one region to the other by
rapid movement and visits a meticulous region once in the whole
operation, hence the non-productive time can be minimized by
synchronizing the tool movements. In this work, this problem is
being formulated as a general travelling salesman problem (TSP) and
a genetic algorithm approach has been applied to solve the same. For
improving the efficiency of the algorithm, the GA has been
hybridized with a noble special heuristic and simulating annealing
(SA). In the present work a novel heuristic in the combination of GA
has been developed for synchronization of toolpath movements
during repositioning of the tool. A comparative analysis of new Meta
heuristic techniques with simple genetic algorithm has been
performed. The proposed metaheuristic approach shows better
performance than simple genetic algorithm for minimization of nonproductive
toolpath length. Also, the results obtained with the help of
hybrid simulated annealing genetic algorithm (HSAGA) are also
found better than the results using simple genetic algorithm only.
Abstract: In this paper, a Smart Home Service Robot, McBot II,
which performs mess-cleanup function etc. in house, is designed much
more optimally than other service robots. It is newly developed in
much more practical system than McBot I which we had developed
two years ago. One characteristic attribute of mobile platforms
equipped with a set of dependent wheels is their omni- directionality
and the ability to realize complex translational and rotational
trajectories for agile navigation in door. An accurate coordination of
steering angle and spinning rate of each wheel is necessary for a
consistent motion. This paper develops trajectory controller of
3-wheels omni-directional mobile robot using fuzzy azimuth estimator.
A specialized anthropomorphic robot manipulator which can be
attached to the housemaid robot McBot II, is developed in this paper.
This built-in type manipulator consists of both arms with 3 DOF
(Degree of Freedom) each and both hands with 3 DOF each. The
robotic arm is optimally designed to satisfy both the minimum
mechanical size and the maximum workspace. Minimum mass and
length are required for the built-in cooperated-arms system. But that
makes the workspace so small. This paper proposes optimal design
method to overcome the problem by using neck joint to move the arms
horizontally forward/backward and waist joint to move them
vertically up/down. The robotic hand, which has two fingers and a
thumb, is also optimally designed in task-based concept. Finally, the
good performance of the developed McBot II is confirmed through
live tests of the mess-cleanup task.
Abstract: In this study, The physico-chemical and nutritional
properties of `Musmula` Medlar (Mespilus germanica L.) fruit and
seed grown in Northeast Anatolia was investigated. In the fruit,
length, width, thickness, weight, total soluble solids, colour (1),
colour (2) [L, a, b values], protein, crude ash, crude fiber, crude oil,
texture and pH were determinated as 4.34 cm, 4.22 cm, 3.67 cm,
38.36 g, 23.97 %, S60O60Y41,, [53.85, 17.15, 33.75], 1.06 %, 0.79 %,
4.24 %, 0.005 %, 1.21 kg/cm2 and 4.26 respectively. Also, pulp ratio,
seed ratio and pulp/seed ratio were found to be 92.88 %, 7.11 % and
14.07 %, respectively. In addition, the mineral composition of medlar
fruit in Northeast Anatolia was studied. In the fruit, 23 minerals were
analyzed and 19 minerals were present at detectable levels. The
medlar fruit was richest in potassium (6962 ppm), calcium (1186.378
ppm), magnesium (1070.08 ppm) and phosphor (763.425 ppm).