Analysis of the Communication Methods of an iCIM 3000 System within the Frame of Research Purpose

Current trends in manufacturing are characterized by production broadening, innovation cycle shortening, and the products having a new shape, material and functions. The production strategy focused on time needed change from the traditional functional production structure to flexible manufacturing cells and lines. Production by automated manufacturing system (AMS) is one of the most important manufacturing philosophies in the last years. The main goals of the project we are involved in lies on building a laboratory in which will be located a flexible manufacturing system consisting of at least two production machines with NC control (milling machines, lathe). These machines will be linked to a transport system and they will be served by industrial robots. Within this flexible manufacturing system a station for the quality control consisting of a camera system and rack warehouse will be also located. The design, analysis and improvement of this manufacturing system, specially with a special focus on the communication among devices constitute the main aims of this paper. The key determining factors for the manufacturing system design are: the product, the production volume, the used machines, the disposable manpower, the disposable infrastructure and the legislative frame for the specific cases.

Could Thermal Oceanic Hotspot Increase Climate Changes Activities in North Tropical Atlantic: Example of the 2005 Caribbean Coral Bleaching Hotspot and Hurricane Katrina Interaction

This paper reviews recent studies and particularly the effects of Climate Change in the North Tropical Atlantic by studying atmospheric conditions that prevailed in 2005 ; Coral Bleaching HotSpot and Hurricane Katrina. In the aim to better understand and estimate the impact of the physical phenomenon, i.e. Thermal Oceanic HotSpot (TOHS), isotopic studies of δ18O and δ13C on marine animals from Guadeloupe (French Caribbean Island) were carried out. Recorded measures show Sea Surface Temperature (SST) up to 35°C in August which is much higher than data recorded by NOAA satellites 32°C. After having reviewed the process that led to the creation of Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in August 29, 2005, it will be shown that the climatic conditions in the Caribbean from August to October 2005 have influenced Katrina evolution. This TOHS is a combined effect of various phenomenon which represent an additional factor to estimate future climate changes.

On the Solution of Fully Fuzzy Linear Systems

A linear system is called a fully fuzzy linear system (FFLS) if quantities in this system are all fuzzy numbers. For the FFLS, we investigate its solution and develop a new approximate method for solving the FFLS. Observing the numerical results, we find that our method is accurate than the iterative Jacobi and Gauss- Seidel methods on approximating the solution of FFLS.

Software Architecture and Support for Patient Tracking Systems in Critical Scenarios

In this work a new platform for mobile-health systems is presented. System target application is providing decision support to rescue corps or military medical personnel in combat areas. Software architecture relies on a distributed client-server system that manages a wireless ad-hoc networks hierarchy in which several different types of client operate. Each client is characterized for different hardware and software requirements. Lower hierarchy levels rely in a network of completely custom devices that store clinical information and patient status and are designed to form an ad-hoc network operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band and complying with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard (ZigBee). Medical personnel may interact with such devices, that are called MICs (Medical Information Carriers), by means of a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) or a MDA (Medical Digital Assistant), and transmit the information stored in their local databases as well as issue a service request to the upper hierarchy levels by using IEEE 802.11 a/b/g standard (WiFi). The server acts as a repository that stores both medical evacuation forms and associated events (e.g., a teleconsulting request). All the actors participating in the diagnostic or evacuation process may access asynchronously to such repository and update its content or generate new events. The designed system pretends to optimise and improve information spreading and flow among all the system components with the aim of improving both diagnostic quality and evacuation process.

Unipolar Anamorphosis and its use in Accessibility Analyses

The paper deals with cartographic visualisation of results of transport accessibility monitoring with the use of a semiautomated method of unipolar anamorphosis, developed by the authors in the GIS environment. The method is based on transformation of distance in the map to values of a geographical phenomenon. In the case of time accessibility it is based on transformation of isochrones converted into the form of concentric circles, taking into account selected topographic and thematic elements in the map. The method is most suitable for analyses of accessibility to or from a centre and for modelling its long-term context. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the procedures and functionality of the method, discussing the issues of coordinates, transformation, scale and visualisation. It also offers a discussion of possible problems and inaccuracies. A practical application of the method is illustrated by previous research results by the authors in the filed of accessibility in Czechia.

Sampling of Variables in Discrete-Event Simulation using the Example of Inventory Evolutions in Job-Shop-Systems Based on Deterministic and Non-Deterministic Data

Time series analysis often requires data that represents the evolution of an observed variable in equidistant time steps. In order to collect this data sampling is applied. While continuous signals may be sampled, analyzed and reconstructed applying Shannon-s sampling theorem, time-discrete signals have to be dealt with differently. In this article we consider the discrete-event simulation (DES) of job-shop-systems and study the effects of different sampling rates on data quality regarding completeness and accuracy of reconstructed inventory evolutions. At this we discuss deterministic as well as non-deterministic behavior of system variables. Error curves are deployed to illustrate and discuss the sampling rate-s impact and to derive recommendations for its wellfounded choice.

Migration and Unemployment Duration: The Case of the OECD Countries

This paper examines whether or not immigration has a positive influence on the duration of unemployment, in a macroeconomic perspective. We analyse also whether the degree of labor market integration can influence migration. The integration of immigrants into the labor market is a recurrence theme in the work on the economic consequences of immigration. However, to our knowledge, no researchers have studied the impact of immigration on unemployment duration, and vice versa. With two methodology of research (panel estimations (OLS and 2SLS) and panel cointegration techniques), we show that migration seems to influence positively the short-term unemployment and negatively long-term unemployment, for 14 OECD destination countries. In addition, immigration seems to be conditioned by the structural and institutional characteristics of the labour market.

On Quantum BCH Codes and Its Duals

Classical Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes C that contain their dual codes can be used to construct quantum stabilizer codes this chapter studies the properties of such codes. It had been shown that a BCH code of length n which contains its dual code satisfies the bound on weight of any non-zero codeword in C and converse is also true. One impressive difficulty in quantum communication and computation is to protect informationcarrying quantum states against undesired interactions with the environment. To address this difficulty, many good quantum errorcorrecting codes have been derived as binary stabilizer codes. We were able to shed more light on the structure of dual containing BCH codes. These results make it possible to determine the parameters of quantum BCH codes in terms of weight of non-zero dual codeword.

Energy Efficient In-Network Data Processing in Sensor Networks

The Sensor Network consists of densely deployed sensor nodes. Energy optimization is one of the most important aspects of sensor application design. Data acquisition and aggregation techniques for processing data in-network should be energy efficient. Due to the cross-layer design, resource-limited and noisy nature of Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs), it is challenging to study the performance of these systems in a realistic setting. In this paper, we propose optimizing queries by aggregation of data and data redundancy to reduce energy consumption without requiring all sensed data and directed diffusion communication paradigm to achieve power savings, robust communication and processing data in-network. To estimate the per-node power consumption POWERTossim mica2 energy model is used, which provides scalable and accurate results. The performance analysis shows that the proposed methods overcomes the existing methods in the aspects of energy consumption in wireless sensor networks.

Towards Automatic Recognition and Grading of Ganoderma Infection Pattern Using Fuzzy Systems

This paper deals with the extraction of information from the experts to automatically identify and recognize Ganoderma infection in oil palm stem using tomography images. Expert-s knowledge are used as rules in a Fuzzy Inference Systems to classify each individual patterns observed in he tomography image. The classification is done by defining membership functions which assigned a set of three possible hypotheses : Ganoderma infection (G), non Ganoderma infection (N) or intact stem tissue (I) to every abnormalities pattern found in the tomography image. A complete comparison between Mamdani and Sugeno style,triangular, trapezoids and mixed triangular-trapezoids membership functions and different methods of aggregation and defuzzification is also presented and analyzed to select suitable Fuzzy Inference System methods to perform the above mentioned task. The results showed that seven out of 30 initial possible combination of available Fuzzy Inference methods in MATLAB Fuzzy Toolbox were observed giving result close to the experts estimation.

Interactive Methods of Design Education as the Principles of Social Implications of Modern Communities

The term interactive education indicates the meaning related with multidisciplinary aspects of distance education following contemporary means around a common basis with different functional requirements. The aim of this paper is to reflect the new techniques in education with the new methods and inventions. These methods are better supplied by interactivity. The integration of interactive facilities in the discipline of education with distance learning is not a new concept but in addition the usage of these methods on design issue is newly being adapted to design education. In this paper the general approach of this method and after the analysis of different samples, the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches are being identified. The method of this paper is to evaluate the related samples and then analyzing the main hypothesis. The main focus is to mention the formation processes of this education. Technological developments in education should be filtered around the necessities of the design education and the structure of the system could then be formed or renewed. The conclusion indicates that interactive methods of education in design issue is a meaning capturing not only technical and computational intelligence aspects but also aesthetical and artistic approaches coming together around the same purpose.

Biogas Yield Potential Research of Tithonia diversifolia in Mesophilic Anaerobic Fermentation in China

BioEnergy is an archetypal appropriate technology and alternate source of energy in rural areas of China, and can meet the basic need for cooking fuel in rural areas. The paper introduces with an alternate mean of research that can accelerate the biogas energy production. Tithonia diversifolia or the Tree marigold can be hailed as mesophillic anaerobic digestion to increase the production of more Bioenergy. Tithonia diversifolia is very native to Mexico and Central America, which can be served as ornamental plants- green manure and can prevent soil erosion. Tithonia diversifolia is widely grown and known to Asia, Africa, America and Australia as well. Nowadays, Considering China’s geographical condition it is found that Tithonia diversifolia is widely growing plant in the many tropical and subtropical regions of southern Yunnan- which can have great usage in accelerating and increasing the Bioenergy production technology. The paper discussed aiming at proving possibility that Tithonia diversifolia can be applied in biogas fermentation and its biogas production potential, the research carried experiment on Tithonia diversifolia biogas fermentation under the mesophilic condition (35 Celsius Degree). The result revealed that Tithonia diversifolia can be used as biogas fermentative material, and 6% concentration can get the best biogas production, with the TS biogas production rate 656mL/g and VS biogas production rate 801mL/g. It is well addressed that Tithonia diversifolia grows wildly in 53 Counties and 9 cities of Yunnan Province, which mainly grows in form of the road side plants, the edge of the field, countryside, forest edge, open space; of which demersum-natures can form dense monospecific beds -causing serious harm to agricultural production landforms threatening the ecological system as a potentially harmful exotic plant. There are also found the three types of invasive daisy alien plants -Eupatorium adenophorum, Eupatorium Odorata and Tithonia diversifolia in Yunnan Province of China-among them the Tithonia diversifolia is responsible for causing serious harm to agricultural production. In this paper we have designed the experimental explanation of Biogas energy production that requires anaerobic environment and some microbes; Tithonia diversifolia plant has been taken into consideration while carrying experiments and with successful resulting of generating more BioEnergy emphasizing on the practical applications of Tithonia diversifolia. This paper aims at- to find a new mechanism to provide a more scientific basis for the development of this plant herbicides in Biogas energy and to improve the utilization throughout the world as well.

Economic Development, Environmental Conflicts and Citizen Participation in Latin America

Environmental conflicts produced by economic development and natural resources exploitation, are discussed. Main causes of conflicts in developing countries were shown to arise from geographically external investments, inefficiency of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), and the lack of communication between government and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Citizen participation can only intervene during late stages of the EIA, which is considered as one of the main shortcomings in satisfying demands of local people.

Study on Microbial Pretreatment for Enhancing Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Corncob

The complex structure of lignocellulose leads to great difficulties in converting it to fermentable sugars for the ethanol production. The major hydrolysis impediments are the crystallinity of cellulose and the lignin content. To improve the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis, microbial pretreatment of corncob was investigated using two bacterial strains of Bacillus subtilis A 002 and Cellulomonas sp. TISTR 784 (expected to break open the crystalline part of cellulose) and lignin-degrading fungus, Phanerochaete sordida SK7 (expected to remove lignin from lignocellulose). The microbial pretreatment was carried out with each strain under its optimum conditions. The pretreated corncob samples were further hydrolyzed to produce reducing glucose with low amounts of commercial cellulase (25 U·g-1 corncob) from Aspergillus niger. The corncob samples were determined for composition change by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and scanning electron microscope (SEM). According to the results, the microbial pretreatment with fungus, P. sordida SK7 was the most effective for enhancing enzymatic hydrolysis, approximately, 40% improvement.

Investigation of the Neutral Axis in the Positive Moment Region of Composite Beams

Researchers investigate arious strategies to develop composite beams and maximize the structural advantages. This study attempted to conduct experiments and analysis of changes in the neutral axis of positive moments of a Green Beam. Strain compatibility analysis was used, and its efficiency was demonstrated by comparing experimental and analytical values. In the comparison of neutral axis, the difference between experimental and analytical values was found to range from 8.8~26.2%. It was determined that strain compatibility analysis can be useful for predicting the behaviors of composite beams, with the ability to predict the behavior of not only the elastic location of the composite member, but also of the plastic location

Modeling and Verification for the Micropayment Protocol Netpay

There are many virtual payment systems available to conduct micropayments. It is essential that the protocols satisfy the highest standards of correctness. This paper examines the Netpay Protocol [3], provide its formalization as automata model, and prove two important correctness properties, namely absence of deadlock and validity of an ecoin during the execution of the protocol. This paper assumes a cooperative customer and will prove that the protocol is executing according to its description.

Fluid Structure Interaction Induced by Liquid Slosh in Partly Filled Road Tankers

The liquid cargo contained in a partly-filled road tank vehicle is prone to dynamic slosh movement when subjected to external disturbances. The slosh behavior has been identified as a significant factor impairing the safety of liquid cargo transportation. The laboratory experiments have been conducted for analyzing fluid slosh in partly filled tanks. The experiment results measured under forced harmonic excitations reveal the three-dimensional nature of the fluid motion and coupling between the lateral and longitudinal fluid slosh at resonance. Several spectral components are observed for the transient slosh forces, which can be associated with the excitation, resonance, and beat frequencies. The peak slosh forces and moments in the vicinity of resonance are significantly larger than those of the equivalent rigid mass. Due to the nature of coupling between sloshing fluid and vehicle body, the issue of the dynamic fluid-structure interaction is essential in the analysis of tank-vehicle dynamics. A dynamic pitch plane model of a Tridem truck incorporated the fluid slosh dynamics is developed to analyze the fluid-vehicle interaction under the straight-line braking maneuvers. The results show that the vehicle responses are highly associated with the characteristics of fluid slosh force and moment.

Proton-conducting PVA/PMA Hybrid Membranes for Fuel Cell Applications

The hybrid membranes containing inorganic materials in polymer matrix are identified as a remarkable family of proton conducting hybrid electrolytes. In this work, the proton conducting inorganic/organic hybrid membranes for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) were prepared using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), tetraethoxyorthosilane (TEOS) and heteropolyacid (HPA). The synthesized hybrid membranes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Thermogravimetry analysis (TGA). The effects of heteropolyacid incorporation on membrane properties, including morphology and thermal stability were extensively investigated.

Casting Users- Perspectives on Foundries as Suppliers

Global competition is tightening and companies have to think how to remain competitive. The main aim of this paper is to discuss how Finnish foundries will remain competitive. To fulfil the aim, we conducted interviews in nine companies using castings and analysed buyer–supplier relationships, current competitive advantages of Finnish foundries and customer perspectives on how Finnish foundries remain competitive. We found that the customerfoundry relationship is still closer to traditional subcontracting than partnering and general image of foundries is negative. Current competitive advantages of Finnish foundries include designing cooperation, proximity and flexibility. Casting users state that Finnish foundries should sell their know-how and services instead of their capacity, concentrate on prototype, single and short series castings and supply ready-to-install cast components directly to customers- assembly lines.

A New Hybrid RMN Image Segmentation Algorithm

The development of aid's systems for the medical diagnosis is not easy thing because of presence of inhomogeneities in the MRI, the variability of the data from a sequence to the other as well as of other different source distortions that accentuate this difficulty. A new automatic, contextual, adaptive and robust segmentation procedure by MRI brain tissue classification is described in this article. A first phase consists in estimating the density of probability of the data by the Parzen-Rozenblatt method. The classification procedure is completely automatic and doesn't make any assumptions nor on the clusters number nor on the prototypes of these clusters since these last are detected in an automatic manner by an operator of mathematical morphology called skeleton by influence zones detection (SKIZ). The problem of initialization of the prototypes as well as their number is transformed in an optimization problem; in more the procedure is adaptive since it takes in consideration the contextual information presents in every voxel by an adaptive and robust non parametric model by the Markov fields (MF). The number of bad classifications is reduced by the use of the criteria of MPM minimization (Maximum Posterior Marginal).