A Reliable FPGA-based Real-time Optical-flow Estimation

Optical flow is a research topic of interest for many years. It has, until recently, been largely inapplicable to real-time applications due to its computationally expensive nature. This paper presents a new reliable flow technique which is combined with a motion detection algorithm, from stationary camera image streams, to allow flow-based analyses of moving entities, such as rigidity, in real-time. The combination of the optical flow analysis with motion detection technique greatly reduces the expensive computation of flow vectors as compared with standard approaches, rendering the method to be applicable in real-time implementation. This paper describes also the hardware implementation of a proposed pipelined system to estimate the flow vectors from image sequences in real time. This design can process 768 x 576 images at a very high frame rate that reaches to 156 fps in a single low cost FPGA chip, which is adequate for most real-time vision applications.

Status and Requirements of Counter-Cyberterrorism

The number of intrusions and attacks against critical infrastructures and other information networks is increasing rapidly. While there is no identified evidence that terrorist organizations are currently planning a coordinated attack against the vulnerabilities of computer systems and network connected to critical infrastructure, and origins of the indiscriminate cyber attacks that infect computers on network remain largely unknown. The growing trend toward the use of more automated and menacing attack tools has also overwhelmed some of the current methodologies used for tracking cyber attacks. There is an ample possibility that this kind of cyber attacks can be transform to cyberterrorism caused by illegal purposes. Cyberterrorism is a matter of vital importance to national welfare. Therefore, each countries and organizations have to take a proper measure to meet the situation and consider effective legislation about cyberterrorism.

Evolved Disease Avoidance Mechanisms, Generalized Prejudice, Modern Attitudes towards Individuals with Intellectual Disability

Previous research has demonstrated that negative attitudes towards people with physical disabilities and obesity are predicted by a component of perceived vulnerability to disease; germ aversion. These findings have been suggested as illustrations of an evolved but over-active mechanism which promotes the avoidance of pathogen-carrying individuals. To date, this interpretation of attitude formation has not been explored with regard to people with intellectual disability, and no attempts have been made to examine possible mediating factors. This study examined attitudes in 333 adults and demonstrated that the moderate positive relationship between germ aversion and negative attitudes toward people with intellectual disability is fully mediated by social dominance orientation, a general preference for hierarchies and inequalities among social groups. These findings have implications for the design of programs which attempt to promote community acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities.

Electrical and Magnetic Modelling of a Power Transformer: A Bond Graph Approach

Bond graph models of an electrical transformer including the nonlinear saturation are presented. The transformer using electrical and magnetic circuits are modelled. These models determine the relation between self and mutual inductances, and the leakage and magnetizing inductances of power transformers with two windings using the properties of a bond graph. The equivalence between electrical and magnetic variables is given. The modelling and analysis using this methodology to three phase power transformers can be extended.

Differences in Stress and Total Deformation Due to Muscle Attachment to the Femur

To achieve accurate and precise results of finite element analysis (FEA) of bones, it is important to represent the load/boundary conditions as identical as possible to the human body such as the bone properties, the type and force of the muscles, the contact force of the joints, and the location of the muscle attachment. In this study, the difference in the Von-Mises stress and the total deformation was compared by classifying them into Case 1, which shows the actual anatomical form of the muscle attached to the femur when the same muscle force was applied, and Case 2, which gives a simplified representation of the attached location. An inverse dynamical musculoskeletal model was simulated using data from an actual walking experiment to complement the accuracy of the muscular force, the input value of FEA. The FEA method using the results of the muscular force that were calculated through the simulation showed that the maximum Von-Mises stress and the maximum total deformation in Case 2 were underestimated by 8.42% and 6.29%, respectively, compared to Case 1. The torsion energy and bending moment at each location of the femur occurred via the stress ingredient. Due to the geometrical/morphological feature of the femur of having a long bone shape when the stress distribution is wide, as shown in Case 1, a greater Von-Mises stress and total deformation are expected from the sum of the stress ingredients. More accurate results can be achieved only when the muscular strength and the attachment location in the FEA of the bones and the attachment form are the same as those in the actual anatomical condition under the various moving conditions of the human body.

The Influence of the Commons Structure Modification on the Allocation

The tracing methods determine the contribution the power system sources have in their supplying. The methods can be used to assess the transmission prices, but also to recover the transmission fixed cost. In this paper is presented the influence of the modification of commons structure has on the specific price of transfer. The operator must make use of a few basic principles about allocation. Most tracing methods are based on the proportional sharing principle. In this paper Kirschen method is used. In order to illustrate this method, the 25- bus test system is used, elaborated within the Electrical Power Engineering Department, from Timisoara, Romania.

Intention Recognition using a Graph Representation

The human friendly interaction is the key function of a human-centered system. Over the years, it has received much attention to develop the convenient interaction through intention recognition. Intention recognition processes multimodal inputs including speech, face images, and body gestures. In this paper, we suggest a novel approach of intention recognition using a graph representation called Intention Graph. A concept of valid intention is proposed, as a target of intention recognition. Our approach has two phases: goal recognition phase and intention recognition phase. In the goal recognition phase, we generate an action graph based on the observed actions, and then the candidate goals and their plans are recognized. In the intention recognition phase, the intention is recognized with relevant goals and user profile. We show that the algorithm has polynomial time complexity. The intention graph is applied to a simple briefcase domain to test our model.

Learning Human-Like Color Categorization through Interaction

Human perceives color in categories, which may be identified using color name such as red, blue, etc. The categorization is unique for each human being. However despite the individual differences, the categorization is shared among members in society. This allows communication among them, especially when using color name. Sociable robot, to live coexist with human and become part of human society, must also have the shared color categorization, which can be achieved through learning. Many works have been done to enable computer, as brain of robot, to learn color categorization. Most of them rely on modeling of human color perception and mathematical complexities. Differently, in this work, the computer learns color categorization through interaction with humans. This work aims at developing the innate ability of the computer to learn the human-like color categorization. It focuses on the representation of color categorization and how it is built and developed without much mathematical complexity.

Bullies and Their Mothers: Who Influence Whom?

Even though most researchers would agree that in symbiotic relationships, like the one between parent and child, influences become reciprocal over time, empirical evidence supporting this claim is limited. The aim of the current study was to develop and test a model describing the reciprocal influence between characteristics of the parent-child relationship, such as closeness and conflict, and the child-s bullying and victimization experiences at school. The study used data from the longitudinal Study of Early Child-Care, conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The participants were dyads of early adolescents (5th and 6th graders during the two data collection waves) and their mothers (N=1364). Supporting our hypothesis, the findings suggested a reciprocal association between bullying and positive parenting, although this association was only significant for boys. Victimization and positive parenting were not significantly interrelated.

Dispersion of a Solute in Peristaltic Motion of a Couple Stress Fluid through a Porous Medium with Slip Condition

The paper presents an analytical solution for dispersion of a solute in the peristaltic motion of a couple stress fluid through a porous medium with slip condition in the presence of both homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical reactions. The average effective dispersion coefficient has been found using Taylor-s limiting condition and long wavelength approximation. The effects of various relevant parameters on the average coefficient of dispersion have been studied. The average effective dispersion coefficient tends to increase with permeability parameter but tends to decrease with homogeneous chemical reaction rate parameter, couple stress parameter, slip parameter and heterogeneous reaction rate parameter.

Compact Model of Dual-Drain MAGFETs Simulation

This work offers a study of new simple compact model of dual-drain Magnetic Field Effect Transistor (MAGFET) including geometrical effects and biasing dependency. An explanation of the sensitivity is investigated, involving carrier deflection as the dominant operating principle. Finally, model verification with simulation results is introduced to ensure that acceptable error of 2% is achieved.

Theoretical Analysis of a Crossed-Electrode 2D Array for 3D Imaging

Planar systems of electrodes arranged on both sides of dielectric piezoelectric layer are applied in numerous transducers. They are capable of electronic beam-steering of generated wave both in azimuth and elevation. The wave-beam control is achieved by addressable driving of two-dimensional transducer through proper voltage supply of electrodes on opposite surfaces of the layer. In this paper a semi-analytical method of analysis of the considered transducer is proposed, which is a generalization of the well-known BIS-expansion method. It was earlier exploited with great success in the theory of interdigital transducers of surface acoustic waves, theory of elastic wave scattering by cracks and certain advanced electrostatic problems. The corresponding nontrivial electrostatic problem is formulated and solved numerically.

An Optical Flow Based Segmentation Method for Objects Extraction

This paper describes a segmentation algorithm based on the cooperation of an optical flow estimation method with edge detection and region growing procedures. The proposed method has been developed as a pre-processing stage to be used in methodologies and tools for video/image indexing and retrieval by content. The addressed problem consists in extracting whole objects from background for producing images of single complete objects from videos or photos. The extracted images are used for calculating the object visual features necessary for both indexing and retrieval processes. The first task of the algorithm exploits the cues from motion analysis for moving area detection. Objects and background are then refined using respectively edge detection and region growing procedures. These tasks are iteratively performed until objects and background are completely resolved. The developed method has been applied to a variety of indoor and outdoor scenes where objects of different type and shape are represented on variously textured background.

Determination of the Characteristics for Ferroresonance Phenomenon in Electric Power Systems

Ferroresonance is an electrical phenomenon in nonlinear character, which frequently occurs in power system due to transmission line faults and single or more-phase switching on the lines as well as usage of the saturable transformers. In this study, the ferroresonance phenomena are investigated under the modeling of the West Anatolian Electric Power Network of 380 kV in Turkey. The ferroresonance event is observed as a result of removing the loads at the end of the lines. In this sense, two different cases are considered. At first, the switching is applied at 2nd second and the ferroresonance affects are observed between 2nd and 4th seconds in the voltage variations of the phase-R. Hence the ferroresonance and nonferroresonance parts of the overall data are compared with each others using the Fourier transform techniques to show the ferroresonance affects.

A Strategy Based View of Supply Chain Competitiveness

In this era of competitiveness, there is a growing need for supply chains also to become competitive enough to handle pressures like varying customer’s expectations, low cost high quality products to be delivered at the minimum time and the most important is throat cutting competition at world wide scale. In the recent years, supply chain competitiveness has been, therefore, accepted as one of the most important philosophies in the supply chain literature. Various researchers and practitioners have tried to identify and implement strategies in supply chains which can bring competitiveness in the supply chains i.e. supply chain competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select strategies for supply chain competitiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector using an integrated approach of literature review and exploratory interviews with eminent professionals from the supply chain area in various industries, academia and research. The aim of the paper is to highlight the important area of competitiveness in the supply chain and to suggest recommendations to the industry and managers of manufacturing sector.

Cooperative Data Caching in WSN

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained tremendous attention in recent years due to their numerous applications. Due to the limited energy resource, energy efficient operation of sensor nodes is a key issue in wireless sensor networks. Cooperative caching which ensures sharing of data among various nodes reduces the number of communications over the wireless channels and thus enhances the overall lifetime of a wireless sensor network. In this paper, we propose a cooperative caching scheme called ZCS (Zone Cooperation at Sensors) for wireless sensor networks. In ZCS scheme, one-hop neighbors of a sensor node form a cooperative cache zone and share the cached data with each other. Simulation experiments show that the ZCS caching scheme achieves significant improvements in byte hit ratio and average query latency in comparison with other caching strategies.

A Novel 14 nm Extended Body FinFET for Reduced Corner Effect, Self-Heating Effect, and Increased Drain Current

In this paper, we have proposed a novel FinFET with extended body under the poly gate, which is called EB-FinFET, and its characteristic is demonstrated by using three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulation. We have analyzed and compared it with conventional FinFET. The extended body height dependence on the drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL) and subthreshold swing (S.S) have been also investigated. According to the 3-D numerical simulation, the proposed structure has a firm structure, an acceptable short channel effect (SCE), a reduced series resistance, an increased on state drain current (I on) and a large normalized I DS. Furthermore, the structure can also improve corner effect and reduce self-heating effect due to the extended body. Our results show that the EBFinFET is excellent for nanoscale device.

A Traffic Simulation Package Based on Travel Demand

In this paper we propose a new traffic simulation package, TDMSim, which supports both macroscopic and microscopic simulation on free-flowing and regulated traffic systems. Both simulators are based on travel demands, which specify the numbers of vehicles departing from origins to arrive at different destinations. The microscopic simulator implements the carfollowing model given the pre-defined routes of the vehicles but also supports the rerouting of vehicles. We also propose a macroscopic simulator which is built in integration with the microscopic simulator to allow the simulation to be scaled for larger networks without sacrificing the precision achievable through the microscopic simulator. The macroscopic simulator also enables the reuse of previous simulation results when simulating traffic on the same networks at later time. Validations have been conducted to show the correctness of both simulators.

Stochastic Estimation of Cavity Flowfield

Linear stochastic estimation and quadratic stochastic estimation techniques were applied to estimate the entire velocity flow-field of an open cavity with a length to depth ratio of 2. The estimations were done through the use of instantaneous velocity magnitude as estimators. These measurements were obtained by Particle Image Velocimetry. The predicted flow was compared against the original flow-field in terms of the Reynolds stresses and turbulent kinetic energy. Quadratic stochastic estimation proved to be more superior than linear stochastic estimation in resolving the shear layer flow. When the velocity fluctuations were scaled up in the quadratic estimate, both the time-averaged quantities and the instantaneous cavity flow can be predicted to a rather accurate extent.

Evaluation of Sensitometric Properties of Radiographic Films at Different Processing Solutions

The aim of this study was to compare the sensitometric properties of commonly used radiographic films processed with chemical solutions in different workload hospitals. The effect of different processing conditions on induced densities on radiologic films was investigated. Two accessible double emulsions Fuji and Kodak films were exposed with 11-step wedge and processed with Champion and CPAC processing solutions. The mentioned films provided in both workloads centers, high and low. Our findings displays that the speed and contrast of Kodak filmscreen in both work load (high and low) is higher than Fuji filmscreen for both processing solutions. However there was significant differences in films contrast for both workloads when CPAC solution had been used (p=0.000 and 0.028). The results showed base plus fog density for Kodak film was lower than Fuji. Generally Champion processing solution caused more speed and contrast for investigated films in different conditions and there was significant differences in 95% confidence level between two used processing solutions (p=0.01). Low base plus fog density for Kodak films provide more visibility and accuracy and higher contrast results in using lower exposure factors to obtain better quality in resulting radiographs. In this study we found an economic advantages since Champion solution and Kodak film are used while it makes lower patient dose. Thus, in a radiologic facility any change in film processor/processing cycle or chemistry should be carefully investigated before radiological procedures of patients are acquired.