Abstract: Process planning and production scheduling play
important roles in manufacturing systems. In this paper a multiobjective
mixed integer linear programming model is presented for
the integrated planning and scheduling of multi-product. The aim is
to find a set of high-quality trade-off solutions. This is a
combinatorial optimization problem with substantially large solution
space, suggesting that it is highly difficult to find the best solutions
with the exact search method. To account for it, a PSO-based
algorithm is proposed by fully utilizing the capability of the
exploration search and fast convergence. To fit the continuous PSO
in the discrete modeled problem, a solution representation is used in
the algorithm. The numerical experiments have been performed to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Abstract: Evidence-based medicine is a new direction in modern healthcare. Its task is to prevent, diagnose and medicate diseases using medical evidence. Medical data about a large patient population is analyzed to perform healthcare management and medical research. In order to obtain the best evidence for a given disease, external clinical expertise as well as internal clinical experience must be available to the healthcare practitioners at right time and in the right manner. External evidence-based knowledge can not be applied directly to the patient without adjusting it to the patient-s health condition. We propose a data warehouse based approach as a suitable solution for the integration of external evidence-based data sources into the existing clinical information system and data mining techniques for finding appropriate therapy for a given patient and a given disease. Through integration of data warehousing, OLAP and data mining techniques in the healthcare area, an easy to use decision support platform, which supports decision making process of care givers and clinical managers, is built. We present three case studies, which show, that a clinical data warehouse that facilitates evidence-based medicine is a reliable, powerful and user-friendly platform for strategic decision making, which has a great relevance for the practice and acceptance of evidence-based medicine.
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the
influence of learning efficiency on local accountants’ job
performance effectiveness. This paper drew upon the survey data
collected from 335 local accountants survey conducted at Nakhon
Ratchasima province, Thailand. The statistics utilized in this paper
included percentage, mean, standard deviation, and regression
analysis. The findings revealed that the majority of samples were
between 31-40 years old, married, held an undergraduate degree, and
had an average income between 10,000-15,000 baht. The majority of
respondents had less than five years of accounting experience and
worked for local administrations. The overall learning efficiency
score was in the highest level while the local accountants’ job
performance effectiveness score was also in the high level. The
hypothesis testing’s result disclosed that learning efficiency factors
which were knowledge, Skill, and Attitude had an influence on local
accountants’ job the performance effectiveness.
Abstract: This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of
gibberellic acid and 2,4- dichlorophenoxyacetic acid on flower
number, fruit growth and fruit quality of wax apple. GA3 and 2,4-D
were applied at small bud and petal fall stage. Number of flower,
fruit set, fruit drop, fruit crack, fruit growth and fruit quality were
recorded. Results indicated that spraying with 10 ppm GA3 had the
best results in number of flower. GA3 spray at 30 ppm gave the
faster rate of fruit growth than the other treatments. Fruit set, fruit
size as well as fruit weight markedly improved by spraying 30 ppm
GA3, followed by 10 ppm GA3 compared to untreated control.
Moreover, spray GA3 at 30 ppm was the most effective and
increased total soluble solids, reduced titratable acidity and fruit
drop. On the other hand, it was noticed that with 10 ppm 2,4-D
application also enhanced the fruit growth rate, improved
physiological and biochemical characters of fruit compared to
untreated control. It was concluded that both GA3 and 2,4-D spray
have positive effects on fruit development, reduced fruit drop, fruit
crack and improved fruit quality of wax apple under field conditions.
Abstract: The increments of aromatic structures are widely used to monitor the degree of humification. Compost derived from mix manures mixed with agricultural wastes was studied. The compost collected at day 0, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 49, 77, 91, 105, and 119 was divided into 3 stages, initial stage at day 0, thermophilic stage during day 1-48, and mature stage during day 49-119. The change of highest absorptions at wavelength range between 210-235 nm during day 0- 49 implied that small molecules such as nitrates and carboxylic occurred faster than the aromatic molecules that were found at wavelength around 280 nm. The ratio of electron-transfer band at wavelength 253 nm by the benzonoid band at wavelength 230 nm (E253/E230) also gradually increased during the fermenting period indicating the presence of O-containing functional groups. This was in agreement with the shift change from aliphatic to aromatic structures as shown by the relationship with C/N and H/C ratios (r = - 0.631 and -0.717, p< 0.05) since both were decreasing. Although the amounts of humic acid (HA) were not different much during the humification process, the UV spectral deconvolution showed better qualitative characteristics to help in determining the compost quality. From this study, the compost should be used at day 49 and should not be kept longer than 3 months otherwise the quality of HA would decline regardless of the amounts of HA that might be rising. This implied that other processes, such as mineralization had an influence on the humification process changing HA-s structure and its qualities.
Abstract: Manufacturing Industries face a crucial change as products and processes are required to, easily and efficiently, be reconfigurable and reusable. In order to stay competitive and flexible, situations also demand distribution of enterprises globally, which requires implementation of efficient communication strategies. A prototype system called the “Broadcaster" has been developed with an assumption that the control environment description has been engineered using the Component-based system paradigm. This prototype distributes information to a number of globally distributed partners via an adoption of the circular-based data processing mechanism. The work highlighted in this paper includes the implementation of this mechanism in the domain of the manufacturing industry. The proposed solution enables real-time remote propagation of machine information to a number of distributed supply chain client resources such as a HMI, VRML-based 3D views and remote client instances regardless of their distribution nature and/ or their mechanisms. This approach is presented together with a set of evaluation results. Authors- main concentration surrounds the reliability and the performance metric of the adopted approach. Performance evaluation is carried out in terms of the response times taken to process the data in this domain and compared with an alternative data processing implementation such as the linear queue mechanism. Based on the evaluation results obtained, authors justify the benefits achieved from this proposed implementation and highlight any further research work that is to be carried out.
Abstract: Suppose KY and KX are large sets of observed and
reference signals, respectively, each containing N signals. Is it possible to construct a filter F : KY → KX that requires a priori
information only on few signals, p N, from KX but performs better than the known filters based on a priori information on every
reference signal from KX? It is shown that the positive answer is
achievable under quite unrestrictive assumptions. The device behind
the proposed method is based on a special extension of the piecewise
linear interpolation technique to the case of random signal sets. The proposed technique provides a single filter to process any signal from
the arbitrarily large signal set. The filter is determined in terms of pseudo-inverse matrices so that it always exists.
Abstract: For evaluating the severity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), one is interested in inspecting the airway wall thickening due to inflammation. Although airway segmentations have being well developed to reconstruct in high order, airway wall segmentation remains a challenge task. While tackling such problem as a multi-surface segmentation, the interrelation within surfaces needs to be considered. We propose a new method for three-dimensional airway wall segmentation using spring structural active contour model. The method incorporates the gravitational field of the image and repelling force field of the inner lumen as the soft constraint and the geometric spring structure of active contour as the hard constraint to approximate a three-dimensional coupled surface readily for thickness measurements. The results show the preservation of topology constraints of coupled surfaces. In conclusion, our springy, soft-tissue-like structure ensures the globally optimal solution and waives the shortness following by the inevitable improper inner surface constraint.
Abstract: It is important to retain customer satisfaction in
information technology services. When a service failure occurs,
companies need to take service recovery action to recover their
customer satisfaction. Although companies cannot avoid all problems
and complaints, they should try to make up. Therefore, service failure
and service recovery have become an important and challenging issue
for companies. In this paper, the literature and the problems in the
information technology services were reviewed. An integrated model
of profit driven for the service failure and service recovery was
established in view of the benefit of customer and enterprise.
Moreover, the interaction between service failure and service recovery
strategy was studied, the result of which verified the matching
principles of the service recovery strategy and the type of service
failure. In addition, the relationship between the cost of service
recovery and customer-s cumulative value of service after recovery
was analyzed with the model. The result attributes to managers in
deciding on appropriate resource allocations for recovery strategies.
Abstract: Riprap is mostly used to prevent erosion by flows
down the steep slopes in river engineering. A total of 53 stability tests
performed on angular riprap with a median stone size ranging from
15 to 278 mm and slope ranging from 1 to 40% are used in this study.
The existing equations for the prediction of medium size of angular
stones are checked for their accuracy using the available data.
Predictions of median size using these equations are not satisfactory
and results show deviation by more than ±20% from the observed
values. A multivariable power regression analysis is performed to
propose a new equation relating the median size with unit discharge,
bed slope, riprap thickness and coefficient of uniformity. The
proposed relationship satisfactorily predicts the median angular stone
size with ±20% error. Further, the required size of the rounded stone
is more than the angular stone for the same unit discharge and the
ratio increases with unit discharge and also with embankment slope
of the riprap.
Abstract: An optimal mean-square fusion formulas with scalar
and matrix weights are presented. The relationship between them is
established. The fusion formulas are compared on the continuous-time
filtering problem. The basic differential equation for cross-covariance
of the local errors being the key quantity for distributed fusion is
derived. It is shown that the fusion filters are effective for multi-sensor
systems containing different types of sensors. An example
demonstrating the reasonable good accuracy of the proposed filters is
given.
Abstract: In this paper, zigbee communication based wireless energy surveillance system is presented. The proposed system consists of multiple energy surveillance devices and an energy surveillance monitor. Each different standby power-off value of electric device is set automatically by using learning function of energy surveillance device. Thus adaptive standby power-off function provides user convenience and it maximizes the energy savings. Also, power consumption monitoring function is helpful to reduce inefficient energy consumption in home. The zigbee throughput simulator is designed to evaluate minimum transmission power and maximum allowable information quantity in the proposed system. The test result of prototype has been satisfied all the requirements. The proposed system has confirmed that can be used as an intelligent energy surveillance system for energy savings in home or office.
Abstract: In the hardening energy context, the transport sector
which constitutes a large worldwide energy demand has to be
improving for decrease energy demand and global warming impacts.
In a controversial situation where subsists an increasing demand for
long-distance and high-speed travels, high-speed trains offer many
advantages, as consuming significantly less energy than road or air
transports.
At the project phase of new rail infrastructures, it is nowadays
important to characterize accurately the energy that will be induced
by its operation phase, in addition to other more classical criteria as
construction costs and travel time.
Current literature consumption models used to estimate railways
operation phase are obsolete or not enough accurate for taking into
account the newest train or railways technologies.
In this paper, an updated model of consumption for high-speed is
proposed, based on experimental data obtained from full-scale tests
performed on a new high-speed line. The assessment of the model
is achieved by identifying train parameters and measured power
consumptions for more than one hundred train routes. Perspectives
are then discussed to use this updated model for accurately assess
the energy impact of future railway infrastructures.
Abstract: In the framework of adaptive parametric modelling of images, we propose in this paper a new technique based on the Chandrasekhar fast adaptive filter for texture characterization. An Auto-Regressive (AR) linear model of texture is obtained by scanning the image row by row and modelling this data with an adaptive Chandrasekhar linear filter. The characterization efficiency of the obtained model is compared with the model adapted with the Least Mean Square (LMS) 2-D adaptive algorithm and with the cooccurrence method features. The comparison criteria is based on the computation of a characterization degree using the ratio of "betweenclass" variances with respect to "within-class" variances of the estimated coefficients. Extensive experiments show that the coefficients estimated by the use of Chandrasekhar adaptive filter give better results in texture discrimination than those estimated by other algorithms, even in a noisy context.
Abstract: In this work the characteristics of spatial signal detec¬tion from an antenna array in various sample cases are investigated. Cases for a various number of available prior information about the received signal and the background noise are considered. The spatial difference between a signal and noise is only used. The performance characteristics and detecting curves are presented. All test-statistics are obtained on the basis of the generalized likelihood ratio (GLR). The received results are correct for a short and long sample.
Abstract: In the current work, a numerical parametric study was
performed in order to model the fluid mechanics in the riser of a
bubbling fluidized bed (BFB). The gas-solid flow was simulated by
mean of a multi-fluid Eulerian model incorporating the kinetic theory
for solid particles. The bubbling fluidized bed was simulated two
dimensionally by mean of a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD)
commercial software package, Fluent. The effects of using different
inter-phase drag function (the drag model of Gidaspow, Syamlal and
O-Brien and the EMMS drag model) on the model predictions were
evaluated and compared. The results showed that the drag models of
Gidaspow and Syamlal and O-Brien overestimated the drag force for
the FCC particles and predicted a greater bed expansion in
comparison to the EMMS drag model.
Abstract: Optimization and control of reactive power
distribution in the power systems leads to the better operation of the
reactive power resources. Reactive power control reduces
considerably the power losses and effective loads and improves the
power factor of the power systems. Another important reason of the
reactive power control is improving the voltage profile of the power
system. In this paper, voltage and reactive power control using
Neural Network techniques have been applied to the 33 shines-
Tehran Electric Company. In this suggested ANN, the voltages of PQ
shines have been considered as the input of the ANN. Also, the
generators voltages, tap transformers and shunt compensators have
been considered as the output of ANN. Results of this techniques
have been compared with the Linear Programming. Minimization of
the transmission line power losses has been considered as the
objective function of the linear programming technique. The
comparison of the results of the ANN technique with the LP shows
that the ANN technique improves the precision and reduces the
computation time. ANN technique also has a simple structure and
this causes to use the operator experience.
Abstract: Semantic query optimization consists in restricting the
search space in order to reduce the set of objects of interest for a
query. This paper presents an indexing method based on UB-trees
and a static analysis of the constraints associated to the views of the
database and to any constraint expressed on attributes. The result of
the static analysis is a partitioning of the object space into disjoint
blocks. Through Space Filling Curve (SFC) techniques, each
fragment (block) of the partition is assigned a unique identifier,
enabling the efficient indexing of fragments by UB-trees. The search
space corresponding to a range query is restricted to a subset of the
blocks of the partition. This approach has been developed in the
context of a KB-DBMS but it can be applied to any relational
system.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to explain what a multienterprise tie is, what evidence its analysis provides and how does the cooperation mechanism influence the establishment of a multienterprise tie. The study focuses on businesses of smaller dimension, geographically dispersed and whose businessmen are learning to cooperate in an international environment. The empirical evidence obtained at this moment permits to conclude the following: The tie is not long-lasting, it has an end; opportunism is an opportunity to learn; the multi-enterprise tie is a space to learn about the cooperation mechanism; the local tie permits a businessman to alternate between competition and cooperation strategies; the disappearance of a tie is an experience of learning for a businessman, diminishing the possibility of failure in the next tie; the cooperation mechanism tends to eliminate hierarchical relations; the multienterprise tie diminishes the asymmetries and permits SME-s to have a better position when they negotiate with large companies; the multi-enterprise tie impacts positively on the local system. The collection of empirical evidence was done trough the following instruments: direct observation in a business encounter to which the businesses attended in 2003 (202 Mexican agro industry SME-s), a survey applied in 2004 (129), a questionnaire applied in 2005 (86 businesses), field visits to the businesses during the period 2006-2008 and; a survey applied by telephone in 2008 (55 Mexican agro industry SME-s).
Abstract: A combined three-microphone voice activity detector (VAD) and noise-canceling system is studied to enhance speech recognition in an automobile environment. A previous experiment clearly shows the ability of the composite system to cancel a single noise source outside of a defined zone. This paper investigates the performance of the composite system when there are frequently moving noise sources (noise sources are coming from different locations but are not always presented at the same time) e.g. there is other passenger speech or speech from a radio when a desired speech is presented. To work in a frequently moving noise sources environment, whilst a three-microphone voice activity detector (VAD) detects voice from a “VAD valid zone", the 3-microphone noise canceller uses a “noise canceller valid zone" defined in freespace around the users head. Therefore, a desired voice should be in the intersection of the noise canceller valid zone and VAD valid zone. Thus all noise is suppressed outside this intersection of area. Experiments are shown for a real environment e.g. all results were recorded in a car by omni-directional electret condenser microphones.