Abstract: A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for SI applications. However, due to the structure of its filter bank, it captures vocal tract characteristics more effectively in the lower frequency regions. This paper proposes a new set of features using a complementary filter bank structure which improves distinguishability of speaker specific cues present in the higher frequency zone. Unlike high level features that are difficult to extract, the proposed feature set involves little computational burden during the extraction process. When combined with MFCC via a parallel implementation of speaker models, the proposed feature set outperforms baseline MFCC significantly. This proposition is validated by experiments conducted on two different kinds of public databases namely YOHO (microphone speech) and POLYCOST (telephone speech) with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) as a Classifier for various model orders.
Abstract: Multiphase flow transport in porous medium is very common and significant in science and engineering applications. For example, in CO2 Storage and Enhanced Oil Recovery processes, CO2 has to be delivered to the pore spaces in reservoirs and aquifers. CO2 storage and enhance oil recovery are actually displacement processes, in which oil or water is displaced by CO2. This displacement is controlled by pore size, chemical and physical properties of pore surfaces and fluids, and also pore wettability. In this study, a technique was developed to measure the pressure profile for driving gas/liquid to displace water in pores. Through this pressure profile, the impact of pore size on the multiphase flow transport and displacement can be analyzed. The other rig developed can be used to measure the static and dynamic pore wettability and investigate the effects of pore size, surface tension, viscosity and chemical structure of liquids on pore wettability.
Abstract: Most routing protocols (DSR, AODV etc.) that have
been designed for wireless adhoc networks incorporate the broadcasting
operation in their route discovery scheme. Probabilistic broadcasting
techniques have been developed to optimize the broadcast operation
which is otherwise very expensive in terms of the redundancy
and the traffic it generates. In this paper we have explored percolation
theory to gain a different perspective on probabilistic broadcasting
schemes which have been actively researched in the recent years.
This theory has helped us estimate the value of broadcast probability
in a wireless adhoc network as a function of the size of the network.
We also show that, operating at those optimal values of broadcast
probability there is at least 25-30% reduction in packet regeneration
during successful broadcasting.
Abstract: Complex engineering design problems consist of
numerous factors of varying criticalities. Considering fundamental features of design and inferior details alike will result in an extensive
waste of time and effort. Design parameters should be introduced gradually as appropriate based on their significance relevant to the
problem context. This motivates the representation of design parameters at multiple levels of an abstraction hierarchy. However, developing abstraction hierarchies is an area that is not well
understood. Our research proposes a novel hierarchical abstraction methodology to plan effective engineering designs and processes. It
provides a theoretically sound foundation to represent, abstract and stratify engineering design parameters and tasks according to causality and criticality. The methodology creates abstraction
hierarchies in a recursive and bottom-up approach that guarantees no
backtracking across any of the abstraction levels. The methodology consists of three main phases, representation, abstraction, and layering to multiple hierarchical levels. The effectiveness of the
developed methodology is demonstrated by a design problem.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to present a non invasive
method for the marginal adaptation evaluation in class V composite
restorations. Standardized class V cavities, prepared in human
extracted teeth, were filled with Premise (Kerr) composite. The
specimens were thermo cycled. The interfaces were examined by
Optical Coherence Tomography method (OCT) combined with the
confocal microscopy and fluorescence. The optical configuration
uses two single mode directional couplers with a superluminiscent
diode as the source at 1300 nm. The scanning procedure is similar to
that used in any confocal microscope, where the fast scanning is enface
(line rate) and the depth scanning is much slower (at the frame
rate). Gaps at the interfaces as well as inside the composite resin
materials were identified. OCT has numerous advantages which
justify its use in vivo as well as in vitro in comparison with
conventional techniques.
Abstract: Corporate credit rating prediction using statistical and
artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has been one of the attractive
research topics in the literature. In recent years, multiclass
classification models such as artificial neural network (ANN) or
multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) have become a very
appealing machine learning approaches due to their good
performance. However, most of them have only focused on classifying
samples into nominal categories, thus the unique characteristic of the
credit rating - ordinality - has been seldom considered in their
approaches. This study proposes new types of ANN and MSVM
classifiers, which are named OMANN and OMSVM respectively.
OMANN and OMSVM are designed to extend binary ANN or SVM
classifiers by applying ordinal pairwise partitioning (OPP) strategy.
These models can handle ordinal multiple classes efficiently and
effectively. To validate the usefulness of these two models, we applied
them to the real-world bond rating case. We compared the results of
our models to those of conventional approaches. The experimental
results showed that our proposed models improve classification
accuracy in comparison to typical multiclass classification techniques
with the reduced computation resource.
Abstract: The output beam quality of multi transverse modes of
laser, are relatively poor. In order to obtain better beam quality, one
may use an aperture inside the laser resonator. In this case, various
transverse modes can be selected. We have selected various
transverse modes both by simulation and doing experiment. By
inserting a circular aperture inside the diode end-pumped Nd:YAG
pulsed laser resonator, we have obtained 00 TEM , 01 TEM
, 20 TEM and have studied which parameters, can change the mode
shape. Then, we have determined the beam quality factor of TEM00
gaussian mode.
Abstract: In this paper is presented a Geographic Information System (GIS) approach in order to qualify and monitor the broadband lines in efficient way. The methodology used for interpolation is the Delaunay Triangular Irregular Network (TIN). This method is applied for a case study in ISP Greece monitoring 120,000 broadband lines.
Abstract: In this paper, a new approach based on the extent of
friendship between the nodes is proposed which makes the nodes to
co-operate in an ad hoc environment. The extended DSR protocol is
tested under different scenarios by varying the number of malicious
nodes and node moving speed. It is also tested varying the number of
nodes in simulation used. The result indicates the achieved
throughput by extended DSR is greater than the standard DSR and
indicates the percentage of malicious drops over total drops are less
in the case of extended DSR than the standard DSR.
Abstract: The response surface methodology (RSM) is a
collection of mathematical and statistical techniques useful in the
modeling and analysis of problems in which the dependent variable
receives the influence of several independent variables, in order to
determine which are the conditions under which should operate these
variables to optimize a production process. The RSM estimated a
regression model of first order, and sets the search direction using the
method of maximum / minimum slope up / down MMS U/D.
However, this method selects the step size intuitively, which can
affect the efficiency of the RSM. This paper assesses how the step
size affects the efficiency of this methodology. The numerical
examples are carried out through Monte Carlo experiments,
evaluating three response variables: efficiency gain function, the
optimum distance and the number of iterations. The results in the
simulation experiments showed that in response variables efficiency
and gain function at the optimum distance were not affected by the
step size, while the number of iterations is found that the efficiency if
it is affected by the size of the step and function type of test used.
Abstract: Speedups from mapping four real-life DSP
applications on an embedded system-on-chip that couples coarsegrained
reconfigurable logic with an instruction-set processor are
presented. The reconfigurable logic is realized by a 2-Dimensional
Array of Processing Elements. A design flow for improving
application-s performance is proposed. Critical software parts, called
kernels, are accelerated on the Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable
Array. The kernels are detected by profiling the source code. For
mapping the detected kernels on the reconfigurable logic a prioritybased
mapping algorithm has been developed. Two 4x4 array
architectures, which differ in their interconnection structure among
the Processing Elements, are considered. The experiments for eight
different instances of a generic system show that important overall
application speedups have been reported for the four applications.
The performance improvements range from 1.86 to 3.67, with an
average value of 2.53, compared with an all-software execution.
These speedups are quite close to the maximum theoretical speedups
imposed by Amdahl-s law.
Abstract: Concerns about low levels of children-s physical activity and motor skill development, prompted the Ministry of Education to trial a physical activity pilot project (PAPP) in 16 New Zealand primary schools. The project comprised professional development and training in physical education for lead teachers and introduced four physical activity coordinators to liaise with and increase physical activity opportunities in the pilot schools. A survey of generalist teachers (128 baseline, 155 post-intervention) from these schools looked at timetabled physical activity sessions and issues related to teaching physical education. The authors calculated means and standard deviations of data relating to timetabled PE sessions and used a one-way analysis of variance to determine significant differences. Results indicated time devoted to physical activity related subjects significantly increased over the course of the intervention. Teacher-s reported improved confidence and competence, which resulted in an improvement in quality physical education delivered more often.
Abstract: Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is one of the essential
problems of several types of manufacturing and service sector. It is
an optimization problem on which the main objective is to obtain the
efficient locations, arrangement and order of the facilities. In the
literature, there are numerous facility layout problem research
presented and have used meta-heuristic approaches to achieve
optimal facility layout design. This paper presented genetic algorithm
to solve facility layout problem; to minimize total cost function. The
performance of the proposed approach was verified and compared
using problems in the literature.
Abstract: This paper presents an effective framework for Chinesesyntactic parsing, which includes two parts. The first one is a parsing framework, which is based on an improved bottom-up chart parsingalgorithm, and integrates the idea of the beam search strategy of N bestalgorithm and heuristic function of A* algorithm for pruning, then get multiple parsing trees. The second is a novel evaluation model, which integrates contextual and partial lexical information into traditional PCFG model and defines a new score function. Using this model, the tree with the highest score is found out as the best parsing tree. Finally,the contrasting experiment results are given. Keywords?syntactic parsing, PCFG, pruning, evaluation model.
Abstract: The Block Sorting problem is to sort a given
permutation moving blocks. A block is defined as a substring
of the given permutation, which is also a substring of the
identity permutation. Block Sorting has been proved to be
NP-Hard. Until now two different 2-Approximation algorithms
have been presented for block sorting. These are the best known
algorithms for Block Sorting till date. In this work we present
a different characterization of Block Sorting in terms of a
transposition cycle graph. Then we suggest a heuristic,
which we show to exhibit a 2-approximation performance
guarantee for most permutations.
Abstract: Within the domain of Systems Engineering the need
to perform property aggregation to understand, analyze and manage
complex systems is unequivocal. This can be seen in numerous
domains such as capability analysis, Mission Essential Competencies
(MEC) and Critical Design Features (CDF). Furthermore, the need
to consider uncertainty propagation as well as the sensitivity of
related properties within such analysis is equally as important when
determining a set of critical properties within such a system.
This paper describes this property breakdown in a number of
domains within Systems Engineering and, within the area of CDFs,
emphasizes the importance of uncertainty analysis. As part of this, a
section of the paper describes possible techniques which may be used
within uncertainty propagation and in conclusion an example is
described utilizing one of the techniques for property and uncertainty
aggregation within an aircraft system to aid the determination of
Critical Design Features.
Abstract: Transaction management is one of the most crucial requirements for enterprise application development which often require concurrent access to distributed data shared amongst multiple application / nodes. Transactions guarantee the consistency of data records when multiple users or processes perform concurrent operations. Existing Fault Tolerance Infrastructure for Mobile Agents (FTIMA) provides a fault tolerant behavior in distributed transactions and uses multi-agent system for distributed transaction and processing. In the existing FTIMA architecture, data flows through the network and contains personal, private or confidential information. In banking transactions a minor change in the transaction can cause a great loss to the user. In this paper we have modified FTIMA architecture to ensure that the user request reaches the destination server securely and without any change. We have used triple DES for encryption/ decryption and MD5 algorithm for validity of message.
Abstract: A lateral trench-gate power metal-oxide-semiconductor on 4H-SiC is proposed. The device consists of two separate trenches in which two gates are placed on both sides of P-body region resulting two parallel channels. Enhanced current conduction and reduced-surface-field effect in the structure provide substantial improvement in the device performance. Using two dimensional simulations, the performance of proposed device is evaluated and compare of with that of the conventional device for same cell pitch. It is demonstrated that the proposed structure provides two times higher output current, 11% decrease in threshold voltage, 70% improvement in transconductance, 70% reduction in specific ON-resistance, 52% increase in breakdown voltage, and nearly eight time improvement in figure-of-merit over the conventional device.
Abstract: The challenge for software development house in
Bangladesh is to find a path of using minimum process rather than CMMI or ISO type gigantic practice and process area. The small and medium size organization in Bangladesh wants to ensure minimum
basic Software Process Improvement (SPI) in day to day operational
activities. Perhaps, the basic practices will ensure to realize their company's improvement goals. This paper focuses on the key issues in basic software practices for small and medium size software
organizations, who are unable to effort the CMMI, ISO, ITIL etc. compliance certifications. This research also suggests a basic software process practices model for Bangladesh and it will show the mapping of our suggestions with international best practice. In this IT
competitive world for software process improvement, Small and medium size software companies that require collaboration and
strengthening to transform their current perspective into inseparable global IT scenario. This research performed some investigations and analysis on some projects- life cycle, current good practice, effective approach, reality and pain area of practitioners, etc. We did some
reasoning, root cause analysis, comparative analysis of various
approach, method, practice and justifications of CMMI and real life. We did avoid reinventing the wheel, where our focus is for minimal
practice, which will ensure a dignified satisfaction between
organizations and software customer.
Abstract: The world-s largest Pre-stressed Concrete Cylinder
Pipe (PCCP) water supply project had a series of pipe failures which
occurred between 1999 and 2001. This has led the Man-Made River
Authority (MMRA), the authority in charge of the implementation
and operation of the project, to setup a rehabilitation plan for the
conveyance system while maintaining the uninterrupted flow of
water to consumers. At the same time, MMRA recognized the need
for a long term management tool that would facilitate repair and
maintenance decisions and enable taking the appropriate preventive
measures through continuous monitoring and estimation of the
remaining life of each pipe. This management tool is known as the
Pipe Risk Management System (PRMS) and now in operation at
MMRA. Both the rehabilitation plan and the PRMS require the
availability of complete and accurate pipe construction and
manufacturing data
This paper describes a systematic approach of data collection,
analysis, evaluation and correction for the construction and
manufacturing data files of phase I pipes which are the platform for
the PRMS database and any other related decision support system.