Abstract: We measured the major and trace element contents
and Rb-Sr isotopic compositions of 12 tektites from the Maoming
area, Guandong province (south China). All the samples studied are
splash-form tektites which show pitted or grooved surfaces with
schlieren structures on some surfaces. The trace element ratios Ba/Rb
(avg. 4.33), Th/Sm (avg. 2.31), Sm/Sc (avg. 0.44), Th/Sc (avg. 1.01) ,
La/Sc (avg. 2.86), Th/U (avg. 7.47), Zr/Hf (avg. 46.01) and the rare
earth elements (REE) contents of tektites of this study are similar to the
average upper continental crust. From the chemical composition, it is
suggested that tektites in this study are derived from similar parental
terrestrial sedimentary deposit which may be related to post-Archean
upper crustal rocks. The tektites from the Maoming area have high
positive εSr(0) values-ranging from 176.9~190.5 which indicate that
the parental material for these tektites have similar Sr isotopic
compositions to old terrestrial sedimentary rocks and they were not
dominantly derived from recent young sediments (such as soil or
loess). The Sr isotopic data obtained by the present study support the
conclusion proposed by Blum et al. (1992)[1] that the depositional age
of sedimentary target materials is close to 170Ma (Jurassic). Mixing
calculations based on the model proposed by Ho and Chen (1996)[2]
for various amounts and combinations of target rocks indicate that the
best fit for tektites from the Maoming area is a mixture of 40% shale,
30% greywacke, 30% quartzite.
Abstract: Traffic management in an urban area is highly facilitated by the knowledge of the traffic conditions in every street or highway involved in the vehicular mobility system. Aim of the paper is to propose a neuro-fuzzy approach able to compute the main parameters of a traffic system, i.e., car density, velocity and flow, by using the images collected by the web-cams located at the crossroads of the traffic network. The performances of this approach encourage its application when the traffic system is far from the saturation. A fuzzy model is also outlined to evaluate when it is suitable to use more accurate, even if more time consuming, algorithms for measuring traffic conditions near to saturation.
Abstract: As a tool for human spatial cognition and thinking, the map has been playing an important role. Maps are perhaps as fundamental to society as language and the written word. Economic and social development requires extensive and in-depth understanding of their own living environment, from the scope of the overall global to urban housing. This has brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges for traditional cartography . This paper first proposed the concept of scaleless-map and its basic characteristics, through the analysis of the existing multi-scale representation techniques. Then some strategies are presented for automated mapping compilation. Taking into account the demand of automated map compilation, detailed proposed the software - WJ workstation must have four technical features, which are generalization operators, symbol primitives, dynamically annotation and mapping process template. This paper provides a more systematic new idea and solution to improve the intelligence and automation of the scaleless cartography.
Abstract: To analyze the behavior of Petri nets, the accessibility
graph and Model Checking are widely used. However, if the
analyzed Petri net is unbounded then the accessibility graph becomes
infinite and Model Checking can not be used even for small Petri
nets. ECATNets [2] are a category of algebraic Petri nets. The main
feature of ECATNets is their sound and complete semantics based on
rewriting logic [8] and its language Maude [9]. ECATNets analysis
may be done by using techniques of accessibility analysis and Model
Checking defined in Maude. But, these two techniques supported by
Maude do not work also with infinite-states systems. As a category
of Petri nets, ECATNets can be unbounded and so infinite systems.
In order to know if we can apply accessibility analysis and Model
Checking of Maude to an ECATNet, we propose in this paper an
algorithm allowing the detection if the ECATNet is bounded or not.
Moreover, we propose a rewriting logic based tool implementing this
algorithm. We show that the development of this tool using the
Maude system is facilitated thanks to the reflectivity of the rewriting
logic. Indeed, the self-interpretation of this logic allows us both the
modelling of an ECATNet and acting on it.
Abstract: New lead-free ferroelectric relaxor ceramics were
prepared by conventional solid-state synthesis in the BaTiO3-Bi2O3-
Y2O3 systems. Some of these ceramics present a ferroelectric relaxor
with transition temperature close to room temperature. These new
materials are very interesting for applications and can replace leadbased
ceramic to prevent the toxic pollutions during the preparation
state. In the other hand, the energy band diagram shows the
potentiality of these compounds for the solar energy conversion.
Thus, some compositions have been tested successfully for H2
production upon visible light. The best activity occurs in alkaline
media with a rate evolution of about 0.15 mL g-1 mn-1 and a quantum
yield of 1% under polychromatic light.
Abstract: This article is devoted to the analysis of results of
sociological researches carried out by authors directed on studying of
opinion of representatives of small, medium and big business on
formation of the Customs Union, Common Free Market Zone with
participation of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus.
It-s forecasted that companies, their branches will interpenetrate
with registration and moving their businesses to regions with more
beneficial conditions. They say that in Kazakhstan there are more
profitable geo-strategic operating environment for business and lower
taxes. Russia using this opportunity will create new conditions for
expansion into other countries of Central Asia and China. Opinions
of participants of questionnaire and expert poll different in estimation
of value of these two integration mechanisms since market segments
on the one hand extend, but also on the other hand - loss of exclusive
influence in certain fields of activity.
Abstract: In this paper, a study on the modes of collapse of
compress- expand members are presented. Compress- expand member
is a compact, multiple-combined cylinders, to be proposed as energy
absorbers. Previous studies on the compress- expand member have
clarified its energy absorption efficiency, proposed an approximate
equation to describe its deformation characteristics and also
highlighted the improvement that it has brought. However, for the
member to be practical, the actual range of geometrical dimension that
it can maintain its applicability must be investigated. In this study,
using a virtualized materials that comply the bilinear hardening law,
Finite element Method (FEM) analysis on the collapse modes of
compress- expand member have been conducted. Deformation maps
that plotted the member's collapse modes with regards to the member's
geometric and material parameters were then presented in order to
determine the dimensional range of each collapse modes.
Abstract: In this paper, based on a novel synthesis, a set of new simplified circuit design to implement the linguistic-hedge operations for adjusting the fuzzy membership function set is presented. The circuits work in current-mode and employ floating-gate MOS (FGMOS) transistors that operate in weak inversion region. Compared to the other proposed circuits, these circuits feature severe reduction of the elements number, low supply voltage (0.7V), low power consumption (60dB). In this paper, a set of fuzzy linguistic hedge circuits, including absolutely, very, much more, more, plus minus, more or less and slightly, has been implemented in 0.18 mm CMOS process. Simulation results by Hspice confirm the validity of the proposed design technique and show high performance of the circuits.
Abstract: Rambutan is a tropical fruit which peel possesses antioxidant properties. This work was conducted to optimize extraction conditions of phenolic compounds from rambutan peel. Response surface methodology (RSM) was adopted to optimize subcritical water extraction (SWE) on temperature, extraction time and percent solvent mixture. The results demonstrated that the optimum conditions for SWE were as follows: temperature 160°C, extraction time 20min. and concentration of 50% ethanol. Comparison of the phenolic compounds from the rambutan peels in maceration 6h, soxhlet 4h, and SWE 20min., it indicated that total phenolic content (using Folin-Ciocalteu-s phenol reagent) was 26.42, 70.29, and 172.47mg of tannic acid equivalent (TAE) per g dry rambutan peel, respectively. The comparative study concluded that SWE was a promising technique for phenolic compounds extraction from rambutan peel, due to much more two times of conventional techniques and shorter extraction times.
Abstract: In this paper some procedures for building confidence intervals for the reliability in stress-strength models are discussed and empirically compared. The particular case of a bivariate normal setup is considered. The confidence intervals suggested are obtained employing approximations or asymptotic properties of maximum likelihood estimators. The coverage and the precision of these intervals are empirically checked through a simulation study. An application to real paired data is also provided.
Abstract: The preparation of good-quality Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) reports contribute to enhancing overall effectiveness of EIA. This component of the EIA process becomes more important in situation where public participation is weak and there is lack of expertise on the part of the competent authority. In Pakistan, EIA became mandatory for every project likely to cause adverse environmental impacts from July 1994. The competent authority also formulated guidelines for preparation and review of EIA reports in 1997. However, EIA is yet to prove as a successful decision support tool to help in environmental protection. One of the several reasons of this ineffectiveness is the generally poor quality of EIA reports. This paper critically reviews EIA reports of some randomly selected projects. Interviews of EIA consultants, project proponents and concerned government officials have also been conducted to underpin the root causes of poor quality of EIA reports. The analysis reveals several inadequacies particularly in areas relating to identification, evaluation and mitigation of key impacts and consideration of alternatives. The paper identifies some opportunities and suggests measures for improving the quality of EIA reports and hence making EIA an effective tool to help in environmental protection.
Abstract: Evaluation of educational portals is an important
subject area that needs more attention from researchers. A university
that has an educational portal which is difficult to use and interact by
teachers or students or management staff can reduce the position and
reputation of the university. Therefore, it is important to have the
ability to make an evaluation of the quality of e-services the
university provide to improve them over time.
The present study evaluates the usability of the Information
Technology Faculty portal at University of Benghazi. Two evaluation
methods were used: a questionnaire-based method and an online
automated tool-based method. The first method was used to measure
the portal's external attributes of usability (Information, Content and
Organization of the portal, Navigation, Links and Accessibility,
Aesthetic and Visual Appeal, Performance and Effectiveness and
educational purpose) from users' perspectives, while the second
method was used to measure the portal's internal attributes of
usability (number and size of HTML files, number and size of images,
load time, HTML check errors, browsers compatibility problems,
number of bad and broken links), which cannot be perceived by the
users. The study showed that some of the usability aspects have been
found at the acceptable level of performance and quality, and some
others have been found otherwise. In general, it was concluded that
the usability of IT faculty educational portal generally acceptable.
Recommendations and suggestions to improve the weakness and
quality of the portal usability are presented in this study.
Abstract: Nowadays, biometrical characterizations of Artemia
cysts are used as one of the most important factors in the study of
Artemia populations and intraspecific particularity; meanwhile these
characters can be used as economical indices. For example, typically
high hatching efficiency is possible due to the small diameter of
cysts (high number per gram); therefore small diameter of cysts
show someway high quality of cysts. This study was performed
during a ten year period, including two different ecological
conditions: rainy and drought. It is important from two different
aspects because it covers alteration of A. urmiana during ten years
also its variation in the best and worst environmental situations in
which salinity increased from 173.8 ppt in 1994 to 280.8 ppt in
2003/4. In this study the biometrical raw data of Artemia urmiana
cysts at seven stations from the Urmia Lake in 1994 and their seven
identical locations at 26 studied stations in 2003/4 were reanalyzed
again and compared together. Biometrical comparison of untreated
and decapsulated cysts in each of the seven similar stations showed a
highly significant variation between 1994 and 2003/4. Based on this
study, in whole stations the untreated and decapsulated cysts from
1994 were larger than cysts of 2003/4 without any exception. But
there was no logical relationship between salinity and chorion
thickness in the Urmia Lake. With regard to PCA analyses the
stations of two different studied years certainly have been separated
with factor 1 from each other. In conclusion, the interaction between
genetic and environmental factors can determine and explain
variation in the range of cysts diameter in Artemia.
Abstract: Natural Disasters have always occurred through earth life. As human life developed on earth, he faced with different disasters. Since disasters would destroy his living areas and ruin his life, he learned how to respond and overcome to these matters. Nowadays, in the era of industrialized world and informatics, the man kind seeks for stages and classification of pre and post disaster process in order to identify a framework in these circumstances. Because too many parameters complicate these frameworks and proceedings, it seems that this goal has not been properly established yet and the only resource is guidelines of UNDRO (1982) [1]. This paper will discuss about temporary housing as one of an approved stage in disaster management field and investigate the affects of disapproval or dismissal of this at two earthquakes which took place in Iran.
Abstract: In the study of honeycomb crushing under quasistatic loading, two parameters are important, the mean crushing stress and the wavelength of the folding mode. The previous theoretical models did not consider the true cylindrical curvature effects and the flow stress in the folding mode of honeycomb material. The present paper introduces a modification on Wierzbicki-s model based on considering two above mentioned parameters in estimating the mean crushing stress and the wavelength through implementation of the energy method. Comparison of the results obtained by the new model and Wierzbicki-s model with existing experimental data shows better prediction by the model presented in this paper.
Abstract: The study of proteomics reached unexpected levels of
interest, as a direct consequence of its discovered influence over
some complex biological phenomena, such as problematic diseases
like cancer. This paper presents a new technique that allows for an
accurate analysis of the human interactome network. It is basically
a two-step analysis process that involves, at first, the detection of
each protein-s absolute importance through the betweenness centrality
computation. Then, the second step determines the functionallyrelated
communities of proteins. For this purpose, we use a community
detection technique that is based on the edge betweenness
calculation. The new technique was thoroughly tested on real biological
data and the results prove some interesting properties of those proteins that are involved in the carcinogenesis process. Apart from its
experimental usefulness, the novel technique is also computationally
effective in terms of execution times. Based on the analysis- results, some topological features of cancer mutated proteins are presented
and a possible optimization solution for cancer drugs design is suggested.
Abstract: Computerized lip reading has been one of the most
actively researched areas of computer vision in recent past because
of its crime fighting potential and invariance to acoustic environment.
However, several factors like fast speech, bad pronunciation,
poor illumination, movement of face, moustaches and beards make
lip reading difficult. In present work, we propose a solution for
automatic lip contour tracking and recognizing letters of English
language spoken by speakers using the information available from
lip movements. Level set method is used for tracking lip contour
using a contour velocity model and a feature vector of lip movements
is then obtained. Character recognition is performed using modified
k nearest neighbor algorithm which assigns more weight to nearer
neighbors. The proposed system has been found to have accuracy
of 73.3% for character recognition with speaker lip movements as
the only input and without using any speech recognition system in
parallel. The approach used in this work is found to significantly
solve the purpose of lip reading when size of database is small.
Abstract: This paper shows a new method for design of fuzzy observers for Takagi-Sugeno systems. The method is based on Linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and it allows to insert H constraint into the design procedure. The speed of estimation can tuned be specification of a decay rate of the observer closed loop system. We discuss here also the influence of parametric uncertainties at the output control system stability.
Abstract: Despite the fact that Arabic language is currently one
of the most common languages worldwide, there has been only a
little research on Arabic speech recognition relative to other
languages such as English and Japanese. Generally, digital speech
processing and voice recognition algorithms are of special
importance for designing efficient, accurate, as well as fast automatic
speech recognition systems. However, the speech recognition process
carried out in this paper is divided into three stages as follows: firstly,
the signal is preprocessed to reduce noise effects. After that, the
signal is digitized and hearingized. Consequently, the voice activity
regions are segmented using voice activity detection (VAD)
algorithm. Secondly, features are extracted from the speech signal
using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) algorithm.
Moreover, delta and acceleration (delta-delta) coefficients have been
added for the reason of improving the recognition accuracy. Finally,
each test word-s features are compared to the training database using
dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm. Utilizing the best set up
made for all affected parameters to the aforementioned techniques,
the proposed system achieved a recognition rate of about 98.5%
which outperformed other HMM and ANN-based approaches
available in the literature.
Abstract: The paper presents the study of synthetic transmit
aperture method applying the Golay coded transmission for medical
ultrasound imaging. Longer coded excitation allows to increase the
total energy of the transmitted signal without increasing the peak
pressure. Signal-to-noise ratio and penetration depth are improved
maintaining high ultrasound image resolution.
In the work the 128-element linear transducer array with 0.3 mm
inter-element spacing excited by one cycle and the 8 and 16-bit
Golay coded sequences at nominal frequencies 4 MHz was used.
Single element transmission aperture was used to generate a spherical
wave covering the full image region and all the elements received the
echo signals. The comparison of 2D ultrasound images of the wire
phantom as well as of the tissue mimicking phantom is presented to
demonstrate the benefits of the coded transmission. The results were
obtained using the synthetic aperture algorithm with transmit and
receive signals correction based on a single element directivity
function.