Abstract: Carbon dioxide is one of the major green house gases.
It is removed from different streams using amine absorption process.
Sterically hindered amines are suggested as good CO2 absorbers.
Solubility of carbon dioxide (CO2) was measured in aqueous
solutions of 2-Amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) at temperatures 30
oC, 40 oC and 60 oC. The effect of pressure and temperature was
studied over various concentrations of AMP. It has been found that
pressure has positive effect on CO2 solubility where as solubility
decreased with increasing temperature. Absorption performance of
AMP increased with increasing pressure. Solubility of aqueous AMP
was compared with mo-ethanolamine (MEA) and the absorption
capacity of aqueous solutions of AMP was found to be better.
Abstract: The understanding of the system level of biological behavior and phenomenon variously needs some elements such as gene sequence, protein structure, gene functions and metabolic pathways. Challenging problems are representing, learning and reasoning about these biochemical reactions, gene and protein structure, genotype and relation between the phenotype, and expression system on those interactions. The goal of our work is to understand the behaviors of the interactions networks and to model their evolution in time and in space. We propose in this study an ontological meta-model for the knowledge representation of the genetic regulatory networks. Ontology in artificial intelligence means the fundamental categories and relations that provide a framework for knowledge models. Domain ontology's are now commonly used to enable heterogeneous information resources, such as knowledge-based systems, to communicate with each other. The interest of our model is to represent the spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal knowledge. We validated our propositions in the genetic regulatory network of the Aarbidosis thaliana flower
Abstract: Nanofluids are novel fluids that are going to have an
important role in future industrial thermal device designs. Studies are
being predominantly conducted on the mechanism of these heat
transfers. The key to this attraction is in the increase in thermal
conductivity brought about by the Nanofluids compared with the
base fluid. Different models have been proposed for calculation of
effective thermal conduction that has been gradually modified. In this
investigation effect of nanolayer structure and Brownian motion of
particles are studied and a new modified thermal conductivity model
is proposed. Temperature, concentration, nanolayer thickness and
particle size are taken as variables and their effect are studied
simultaneously on the thermal conductivity of the fluids, showing the
concentration of the nanoparticles to affect the nanolayer thickness
which also affects the Brownian motion.
Abstract: The most influential programming paradigm today
is object oriented (OO) programming and it is widely used in
education and industry. Recognizing the importance of equipping
students with OO knowledge and skills, it is not surprising that most
Computer Science degree programs offer OO-related courses. How
do we assess whether the students have acquired the right objectoriented
skills after they have completed their OO courses? What are
object oriented skills? Currently none of the current assessment
techniques would be able to provide this answer. Traditional forms of
OO programming assessment provide a ways for assigning numerical
scores to determine letter grades. But this rarely reveals information
about how students actually understand OO concept. It appears
reasonable that a better understanding of how to define and assess
OO skills is needed by developing a criterion referenced model. It is
even critical in the context of Malaysia where there is currently a
growing concern over the level of competency of Malaysian IT
graduates in object oriented programming. This paper discussed the
approach used to develop the criterion-referenced assessment model.
The model can serve as a guideline when conducting OO
programming assessment as mentioned. The proposed model is
derived by using Goal Questions Metrics methodology, which helps
formulate the metrics of interest. It concluded with a few suggestions
for further study.
Abstract: Variable Structure Control (VSC) is one of the most useful tools handling the practical system with uncertainties and disturbances. Up to now, unfortunately, not enough studies on the input-saturated system with linear-growth-bound disturbances via VSC have been presented. Therefore, this paper proposes an asymp¬totic stability condition for the system via VSC. The designed VSC controller consists of two control parts. The linear control part plays a role in stabilizing the system, and simultaneously, the nonlinear control part in rejecting the linear-growth-bound disturbances perfectly. All conditions derived in this paper are expressed with Linear Matrices Inequalities (LMIs), which can be easily solved with an LMI toolbox in MATLAB.
Abstract: With the explosive growth of data available on the
Internet, personalization of this information space become a
necessity. At present time with the rapid increasing popularity of the
WWW, Websites are playing a crucial role to convey knowledge and
information to the end users. Discovering hidden and meaningful
information about Web users usage patterns is critical to determine
effective marketing strategies to optimize the Web server usage for
accommodating future growth. The task of mining useful information
becomes more challenging when the Web traffic volume is enormous
and keeps on growing. In this paper, we propose a intelligent model
to discover and analyze useful knowledge from the available Web
log data.
Abstract: The evaluation of conversational agents or chatterbots question answering systems is a major research area that needs much attention. Before the rise of domain-oriented conversational agents based on natural language understanding and reasoning, evaluation is never a problem as information retrieval-based metrics are readily available for use. However, when chatterbots began to become more domain specific, evaluation becomes a real issue. This is especially true when understanding and reasoning is required to cater for a wider variety of questions and at the same time to achieve high quality responses. This paper discusses the inappropriateness of the existing measures for response quality evaluation and the call for new standard measures and related considerations are brought forward. As a short-term solution for evaluating response quality of conversational agents, and to demonstrate the challenges in evaluating systems of different nature, this research proposes a blackbox approach using observation, classification scheme and a scoring mechanism to assess and rank three example systems, AnswerBus, START and AINI.
Abstract: The antioxidant compounds are needed for the food, beverages, and pharmaceuticals industry. For this purpose, an appropriate method is required to measure the antioxidant properties in various types of samples. Spectrophotometric method usually used has some weaknesses, including the high price, long sample preparation time, and less sensitivity. Among the alternative methods developed to overcome these weaknesses is antioxidant biosensor based on superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme. Therefore, this study was carried out to measure the SOD activity originating from Deinococcus radiodurans and to determine its kinetics properties. Carbon paste electrode modified with ferrocene and immobilized SOD exhibited anode and cathode current peak at potential of +400 and +300mv respectively, in both pure SOD and SOD of D. radiodurans. This indicated that the current generated was from superoxide catalytic dismutation reaction by SOD. Optimum conditions for SOD activity was at pH 9 and temperature of 27.50C for D. radiodurans SOD, and pH 11 and temperature of 200C for pure SOD. Dismutation reaction kinetics of superoxide catalyzed by SOD followed the Lineweaver-Burk kinetics with D. radiodurans SOD KMapp value was smaller than pure SOD. The result showed that D. radiodurans SOD had higher enzyme-substrate affinity and specificity than pure SOD. It concluded that D. radiodurans SOD had a great potential as biological recognition component for antioxidant biosensor.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose the variational approach to solve single image defogging problem. In the inference process of the atmospheric veil, we defined new functional for atmospheric veil that satisfy edge-preserving regularization property. By using the fundamental lemma of calculus of variations, we derive the Euler-Lagrange equation foratmospheric veil that can find the maxima of a given functional. This equation can be solved by using a gradient decent method and time parameter. Then, we can have obtained the estimated atmospheric veil, and then have conducted the image restoration by using inferred atmospheric veil. Finally we have improved the contrast of restoration image by various histogram equalization methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves rather good defogging results.
Abstract: Global temperature had increased by about 0.5oC over
the past century, increasing temperature leads to a loss or a decrease
of soil organic matter (SOM). Whereas soil organic matter in many
tropical soils is less stable than that of temperate soils, and it will be
easily affected by climate change. Therefore, conservation of soil
organic matter is urgent issue nowadays. This paper presents the
effect of different doses (5%, 15%) of Ca-type zeolite in conjunction
with organic manure, applied to soil samples from Philippines,
Paraguay and Japan, on the decomposition resistance of soil organic
matter under high temperature. Results showed that a remain or
slightly increase the C/N ratio of soil. There are an increase in
percent of humic acid (PQ) that extracted with Na4P2O7. A decrease
of percent of free humus (fH) after incubation was determined. A
larger the relative color intensity (RF) value and a lower the color
coefficient (6logK) value following increasing zeolite rates leading
to a higher degrees of humification. The increase in the aromatic
condensation of humic acid (HA) after incubation, as indicates by the
decrease of H/C and O/C ratios of HA. This finding indicates that the
use of zeolite could be beneficial with respect to SOM conservation
under global warming condition.
Abstract: Beginning from the creator of integro-differential
equations Volterra, many scientists have investigated these
equations. Classic method for solving integro-differential
equations is the quadratures method that is successfully applied up
today. Unlike these methods, Makroglou applied hybrid methods
that are modified and generalized in this paper and applied to the
numerical solution of Volterra integro-differential equations. The
way for defining the coefficients of the suggested method is also
given.
Abstract: In Data mining, Fuzzy clustering algorithms have
demonstrated advantage over crisp clustering algorithms in dealing
with the challenges posed by large collections of vague and uncertain
natural data. This paper reviews concept of fuzzy logic and fuzzy
clustering. The classical fuzzy c-means algorithm is presented and its
limitations are highlighted. Based on the study of the fuzzy c-means
algorithm and its extensions, we propose a modification to the cmeans
algorithm to overcome the limitations of it in calculating the
new cluster centers and in finding the membership values with
natural data. The efficiency of the new modified method is
demonstrated on real data collected for Bhutan-s Gross National
Happiness (GNH) program.
Abstract: Boron minerals are very useful for various industrial
activities, such as glass industry and detergent industry, due to its
mechanical and chemical properties. During the production of boron
compounds, many of these are introduced into the environment in the
form of waste. Boron is also an important micro nutrient for the
plants to vegetate but if it exists in high concentrations, it could have
toxic effects. The maximum boron level in drinking water for human
health is given as 0.3 mg/L in World Health Organization (WHO)
standards. The toxic effects of boron should be noted especially for
dry regions, thus, in recent years, increasing attention has been paid
to remove the boron from waste waters. In this study, boron removal
is implemented by ion exchange process using Amberlite IRA-743
resin. Amberlite IRA-743 resin is a boron specific resin and it
belongs to the polymerizate sorbent group within the aminopolyol
functional group. Batch studies were performed to investigate the
effects of various experimental parameters, such as adsorbent dose,
initial concentration and pH, on the removal of boron. It is found
that, when the adsorbent dose increases removal of boron from the
liquid phase increases. However, an increase in the initial
concentration decreases the removal of boron. The effective pH
values for removal of boron are determined between 8.5 and 9.
Equilibrium isotherms were also analyzed by Langmuir and
Freundlich isotherm models. The Langmuir isotherm is obeyed better
than the Freundlich isotherm.
Abstract: The supported Pd catalysts were analyzed by X-ray
diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy in order to determine
their global and local structure. The average particle size of the
supported Pd catalysts was determined by X-ray diffraction method.
One of the main purposes of the present contribution is to focus on
understanding the specific role of the Pd particle size determined by
X-ray diffraction and that of the support oxide. Based on X-ray
absorption fine structure spectroscopy analysis we consider that the
whole local structure of the investigated samples are distorted
concerning the atomic number but the distances between atoms are
almost the same as for standard Pd sample. Due to the strong
modifications of the Pd cluster local structure, the metal-support
interface may influence the electronic properties of metal clusters
and thus their reactivity for absorption of the reactant molecules.
Abstract: Design of an observer based controller for a class of
fractional order systems has been done. Fractional order mathematics
is used to express the system and the proposed observer. Fractional
order Lyapunov theorem is used to derive the closed-loop asymptotic
stability. The gains of the observer and observer based controller are
derived systematically using the linear matrix inequality approach.
Finally, the simulation results demonstrate validity and effectiveness
of the proposed observer based controller.
Abstract: In the process of polyethylene extrusion polymer
material similar to powder or granule is under compression, melting
and transmission operation and on base of special form, extrudate has
been produced. Twin-screw extruders are applicable in industries
because of their high capacity. The powder mixing with chemical
additives and melting with thermal and mechanical energy in three
zones (feed, compression and metering zone) and because of gear
pump and screw's pressure, converting to final product in latest plate.
Extruders with twin-screw and short distance between screws are
better than other types because of their high capacity and good
thermal and mechanical stress.
In this paper, process of polyethylene extrusion and various tapes
of extruders are studied. It is necessary to have an exact control on
process to producing high quality products with safe operation and
optimum energy consumption.
The granule size is depending on granulator motor speed. Results
show at constant feed rate a decrease in granule size was found whit
Increase in motor speed. Relationships between HDPE feed rate and
speed of granulator motor, main motor and gear pump are calculated
following as:
x = HDPE feed flow rate, yM = Main motor speed
yM = (-3.6076e-3) x^4+ (0.24597) x^3+ (-5.49003) x^2+ (64.22092)
x+61.66786 (1)
x = HDPE feed flow rate, yG = Gear pump speed
yG = (-2.4996e-3) x^4+ (0.18018) x^3+ (-4.22794) x^2+ (48.45536)
x+18.78880 (2)
x = HDPE feed flow rate, y = Granulator motor speed
10th Degree Polynomial Fit: y = a+bx+cx^2+dx^3... (3)
a = 1.2751, b = 282.4655, c = -165.2098,
d = 48.3106, e = -8.18715, f = 0.84997
g = -0.056094, h = 0.002358, i = -6.11816e-5
j = 8.919726e-7, k = -5.59050e-9
Abstract: In the present work, we propose a new method for
solving the matrix equation AXB=F . The new method can
be considered as a generalized form of the well-known global full
orthogonalization method (Gl-FOM) for solving multiple linear
systems. Hence, the method will be called extended Gl-FOM (EGl-
FOM). For implementing EGl-FOM, generalized forms of block
Krylov subspace and global Arnoldi process are presented. Finally,
some numerical experiments are given to illustrate the efficiency of
our new method.
Abstract: The Minimum Weighted Vertex Cover (MWVC) problem is a classic graph optimization NP - complete problem. Given an undirected graph G = (V, E) and weighting function defined on the vertex set, the minimum weighted vertex cover problem is to find a vertex set S V whose total weight is minimum subject to every edge of G has at least one end point in S. In this paper an effective algorithm, called Support Ratio Algorithm (SRA), is designed to find the minimum weighted vertex cover of a graph. Computational experiments are designed and conducted to study the performance of our proposed algorithm. Extensive simulation results show that the SRA can yield better solutions than other existing algorithms found in the literature for solving the minimum vertex cover problem.
Abstract: In countries with hot climates, air-conditioning forms
a large proportion of annual peak electrical demand, requiring
expansion of power plants to meet the peak demand, which goes
unused most of the time. Use of well-designed cool storage can offset
the peak demand to a large extent. In this study, an air conditioning
system with naturally stratified storage tank was designed,
constructed and tested. A new type of diffuser was designed and used
in this study. Factors that influence the performance of chilled water
storage tanks were investigated. The results indicated that stratified
storage tank consistently stratified well without any physical barrier.
Investigation also showed that storage efficiency decreased with
increasing flow rate due to increased mixing of warm and chilled
water. Diffuser design and layout primarily affected the mixing near
the inlet diffuser and the extent of this mixing had primary influence
on the shape of the thermocline. The heat conduction through tank
walls and through the thermocline caused widening of mixed volume.
Thermal efficiency of stratified storage tanks was as high as 90
percent, which indicates that stratified tanks can effectively be used
as a load management technique.
Abstract: State tax revenues in most countries started to decrease during the recession. Government of Latvia decided to compensate the decline by increasing rates of several taxes including excise tax on strong alcohol. The total increase in 2009 constituted 42% and the rate increased from 896€ to 1 266€ for 100l of absolute alcohol. Since then this has had a negative impact on consumption volumes and the split between legal and illegal market. The legal alcohol sales decreased by almost 50% (by volume), consequentially having negative effect on the State revenues from VAT and excise tax. Estimated results for 2010 are indicating 54 million € decrease in VAT, excise tax and other taxes versus 2008 (excise tax -19 million €, VAT -30 million €, other taxes -5 million €). The paper aims to analyze impact of the increase in excise tax on consumption patterns, State revenues and competitiveness of the local companies to draw up proposals for the state authorities regarding more effective tax policies. The analysis reveals a relationship between excise tax rate, illegal alcohol market and State revenues. The results can be used to improve excise tax system and effectiveness in Latvia.