Abstract: Coal tar is a liquid by-product of the process of coal
gasification and carbonation. This liquid oil mixture contains various
kinds of useful compounds such as phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol.
These compounds are widely used as raw material for insecticides,
dyes, medicines, perfumes, coloring matters, and many others.
This research needed to be done that given the optimum conditions
for the separation of phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol from the coal tar
by solvent extraction process. The aim of the present work was to
study the effect of two kinds of aqueous were used as solvents:
methanol and acetone solutions, the effect of temperature (298, 306,
and 313K) and mixing (30, 35, and 40rpm) for the separation of
phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol from coal tar by solvent extraction.
Results indicated that phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol in coal tar
were selectivity extracted into the solvent phase and these
components could be separated by solvent extraction. The aqueous
solution of methanol, mass ratio of solvent to feed, Eo/Ro=1,
extraction temperature 306K and mixing 35 rpm were the most
efficient for extraction of phenol, o-cresol, and p-cresol from coal tar.
Abstract: The significant effects of the interactions between the
system boundaries and the near wall molecules in miniaturized
gaseous devices lead to the formation of the Knudsen layer in which
the Navier-Stokes-Fourier (NSF) equations fail to predict the correct
associated phenomena. In this paper, the well-known lattice
Boltzmann method (LBM) is employed to simulate the fluid flow and
heat transfer processes in rarefied gaseous micro media. Persuaded
by the problematic deficiency of the LBM in capturing the Knudsen
layer phenomena, present study tends to concentrate on the effective
molecular mean free path concept the main essence of which is to
compensate the incapability of this mesoscopic method in dealing
with the momentum and energy transport within the above mentioned
kinetic boundary layer. The results show qualitative and quantitative
accuracy comparable to the solutions of the linearized Boltzmann
equation or the DSMC data for the Knudsen numbers of O (1) .
Abstract: Natural gas usually includes H2S component which is
very toxic, hazardous and corrosive to environment, human being and
process equipments, respectively. Therefore, sweetening of the gas
(separation of H2S) is inevitable. To achieve this purpose, using
packed-bed columns with liquid absorbents such as MEA or DEA is
very common. Due to some problems of usual packed columns
especially high pressure drop of gas phase, a novel kind of them
called wetted-wire column (WWC) has been invented. The column
decreases the pressure drop significantly and improves the absorption
efficiency. The packings are very thin rods (like wire) and as long as
column. The column has 100 wires with a triangular arrangement and
counter current flows of gas and liquid phases. The observation
showed that at the same conditions, the absorption performance was
quite comparable to conventional packed-bed towers and a very low
pressure drop.
Abstract: Designing and implementing intelligent systems has become a crucial factor for the innovation and development of better products of space technologies. A neural network is a parallel system, capable of resolving paradigms that linear computing cannot. Field programmable gate array (FPGA) is a digital device that owns reprogrammable properties and robust flexibility. For the neural network based instrument prototype in real time application, conventional specific VLSI neural chip design suffers the limitation in time and cost. With low precision artificial neural network design, FPGAs have higher speed and smaller size for real time application than the VLSI and DSP chips. So, many researchers have made great efforts on the realization of neural network (NN) using FPGA technique. In this paper, an introduction of ANN and FPGA technique are briefly shown. Also, Hardware Description Language (VHDL) code has been proposed to implement ANNs as well as to present simulation results with floating point arithmetic. Synthesis results for ANN controller are developed using Precision RTL. Proposed VHDL implementation creates a flexible, fast method and high degree of parallelism for implementing ANN. The implementation of multi-layer NN using lookup table LUT reduces the resource utilization for implementation and time for execution.
Abstract: This paper details a new concept of using compressed air as a potential zero pollution power source for motorbikes. In place of an internal combustion engine, the motorbike is equipped with an air turbine transforms the energy of the compressed air into shaft work. The mathematical modeling and performance evaluation of a small capacity compressed air driven vaned type novel air turbine is presented in this paper. The effect of isobaric admission and adiabatic expansion of high pressure air for different rotor diameters, casing diameters and ratio of rotor to casing diameters of the turbine have been considered and analyzed. It is concluded that the work output is found optimum for some typical values of rotor / casing diameter ratios. In this study, the maximum power works out to 3.825 kW (5.20 HP) for casing diameter of 200 mm and rotor to casing diameter ratio of 0.65 to 0.60 which is sufficient to run motorbike.
Abstract: This study investigated the relationship between urban
and rural ozone concentrations and quantified the extent to which
ambient rural conditions and the concentrations of other pollutants
can be used to predict urban ozone concentrations. The study
describes the variations of ozone in weekday and weekends as well as
the daily maximum recorded at selected monitoring stations. The
results showed that Putrajaya station had the highest concentrations
of O3 on weekend due the titration of NO during the weekday.
Additionally, Jerantut had the lowest average concentration with a
reading value high on Wednesdays. The comparisons of average and
maximum concentrations of ozone for the three stations showed that
the strongest significant correlation is recorded in Jerantut station
with the value R2= 0.769. Ozone concentrations originating from a
neighbouring urban site form a better predictor to the urban ozone
concentrations than widespread rural ozone at some levels of
temporal averaging. It is found that in urban and rural of Malaysian
peninsular, the concentration of ozone depends on the concentration
of NOx and seasonal meteorological factors. The HYSPLIT Model
(the northeast monsoon) showed that the wind direction can also
influence the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere in the studied
areas.
Abstract: Social Business Process Management (SBPM)
promises to overcome limitations of traditional BPM by allowing
flexible process design and enactment through the involvement of
users from a social community. This paper proposes a meta-model
and architecture for socially driven business process management
systems. It discusses the main facets of the architecture such as goalbased
role assignment that combines social recommendations with
user profile, and process recommendation, through a real example of
a charity organization.
Abstract: The main aim of this paper was to investigate the
existing architecture in Cyprus, and thus identify and describe the
overall architectural rationale of the built environment. In Cyprus,
where individuals live in a society that reflects postmodern
paradigms rather than modern ones, the existing built environment
has many different reflections of the structure of its society.
Abstract: In this work, we present a comparison between
different techniques of image compression. First, the image is
divided in blocks which are organized according to a certain scan.
Later, several compression techniques are applied, combined or
alone. Such techniques are: wavelets (Haar's basis), Karhunen-Loève
Transform, etc. Simulations show that the combined versions are the
best, with minor Mean Squared Error (MSE), and higher Peak Signal
to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and better image quality, even in the presence
of noise.
Abstract: The purposes of this study are 1) to identify
learning styles of university students in Bangkok, and 2) to study
the frequency of the relevant instructional context of the identified
learning styles. Learning Styles employed in this study are those of
Honey and Mumford, which include 1) Reflectors, 2) Theorists, 3)
Pragmatists, and 4) Activists. The population comprises 1383
students and 5 lecturers. Research tools are 2 questionnaires – one
used for identifying students- learning styles, and the other used for
identifying the frequency of the relevant instructional context of
the identified learning styles.
The research findings reveal that 32.30 percent - are Activists,
while 28.10 percent are Theorists, 20.10 are Reflectors, and 19.50
are Pragmatists. In terms of the relevant instructional context of the
identified 4 learning styles, it is found that the frequency level of
the instructional context is totally in high level. Moreover, 2 lists of
the context being conducted most frequently are 'Lead'in activity
to review background knowledge,- and 'Information retrieval
report.' And these two activities serve the learning styles of
theorists and activists. It is, therefore, suggested that more
instructional context supporting the activists, the majority of the
population, learning best by doing, as well as emotional learning
situation should be added.
Abstract: A hybrid learning automata-genetic algorithm (HLGA) is proposed to solve QoS routing optimization problem of next generation networks. The algorithm complements the advantages of the learning Automato Algorithm(LA) and Genetic Algorithm(GA). It firstly uses the good global search capability of LA to generate initial population needed by GA, then it uses GA to improve the Quality of Service(QoS) and acquiring the optimization tree through new algorithms for crossover and mutation operators which are an NP-Complete problem. In the proposed algorithm, the connectivity matrix of edges is used for genotype representation. Some novel heuristics are also proposed for mutation, crossover, and creation of random individuals. We evaluate the performance and efficiency of the proposed HLGA-based algorithm in comparison with other existing heuristic and GA-based algorithms by the result of simulation. Simulation results demonstrate that this paper proposed algorithm not only has the fast calculating speed and high accuracy but also can improve the efficiency in Next Generation Networks QoS routing. The proposed algorithm has overcome all of the previous algorithms in the literature.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to provide an efficient tool for delineating brain tumors in three-dimensional magnetic resonance images. To achieve this goal, we use basically a level-sets approach to delineating three-dimensional brain tumors. Then we introduce a compression plan of 3D brain structures based for the meshes simplification, adapted for time to the specific needs of the telemedicine and to the capacities restricted by network communication. We present here the main stages of our system, and preliminary results which are very encouraging for clinical practice.
Abstract: The main criteria of designing in the most hydraulic
constructions essentially are based on runoff or discharge of water. Two of those important criteria are runoff and return period. Mostly,
these measures are calculated or estimated by stochastic data.
Another feature in hydrological data is their impreciseness.
Therefore, in order to deal with uncertainty and impreciseness, based
on Buckley-s estimation method, a new fuzzy method of evaluating hydrological measures are developed. The method introduces
triangular shape fuzzy numbers for different measures in which both
of the uncertainty and impreciseness concepts are considered. Besides, since another important consideration in most of the
hydrological studies is comparison of a measure during different
months or years, a new fuzzy method which is consistent with special form of proposed fuzzy numbers, is also developed. Finally, to
illustrate the methods more explicitly, the two algorithms are tested on one simple example and a real case study.
Abstract: The following study aims to outline, whether the
perceptions of entrepreneurs about their entrepreneurial activities and
the underlying meanings of their activities are universal or whether
they vary systematically across cultures. In contrast to previous
studies, the phenomenographical approach and the resulting findings
of this study provide new insights into what constitutes
entrepreneurship by drawing an inference from the perceptions of
entrepreneurs in the United States and in Germany. Culture is shown
to have an important impact on entrepreneurship, since the
underlying meanings of entrepreneurship vary significantly among
the two sample groups. Furthermore, the study sheds more light on
the culturally contingent 'why' of entrepreneurship by looking at the
internal motivations of individuals instead of exclusively focusing on
character traits or external influences of the respective economic
environments.
Abstract: The use of Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT) implemented in the form of Inverse Fourier Transform (IFFT) is one of the standard method of reconstructing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) from uniformly sampled K-space data. In this tutorial, three of the major problems associated with the use of IFFT in MRI reconstruction are highlighted. The tutorial also gives brief introduction to MRI physics; MRI system from instrumentation point of view; K-space signal and the process of IDFT and IFFT for One and two dimensional (1D and 2D) data.
Abstract: This paper discusses the implementation of the Kalman
Filter along with the Global Positioning System (GPS) for indoor
robot navigation. Two dimensional coordinates is used for the map
building, and refers to the global coordinate which is attached to the
reference landmark for position and direction information the robot
gets. The Discrete Kalman Filter is used to estimate the robot position,
project the estimated current state ahead in time through time update
and adjust the projected estimated state by an actual measurement at
that time via the measurement update. The navigation test has been
performed and has been found to be robust.
Abstract: Appeared toward 1986, the object-oriented databases
management systems had not known successes knew five years after
their birth. One of the major difficulties is the query optimization.
We propose in this paper a new approach that permits to enrich
techniques of query optimization existing in the object-oriented
databases. Seen success that knew the query optimization in the
relational model, our approach inspires itself of these optimization
techniques and enriched it so that they can support the new concepts
introduced by the object databases.
Abstract: It is believed that major account on language diversity must be taken in learning, and especially in learning using ICT. This paper-s objective is to exhibit language and communication barriers in learning, to approach the topic from socioculture and cognitivist perspectives, and to give exploratory solutions of handling such barriers. The review is mainly conducted by approaching the journal Computers & Education, but also an initially broad search was conducted. The results show that not much attention is paid on language and communication barriers in an immediate relation to learning using ICT. The results shows, inter alia, that language and communication barriers are caused because of not enough account is taken on both the individual-s background and the technology.
Abstract: Functional gastrointestinal disorders affect millions of people spread all age regardless of race and sex. There are, however, rare diagnostic methods for the functional gastrointestinal disorders because functional disorders show no evidence of organic and physical causes. Our research group identified recently that the gastrointestinal tract well in the patients with the functional gastrointestinal disorders becomes more rigid than healthy people when palpating the abdominal regions overlaying the gastrointestinal tract. Aim of this study is, therefore, to develop a diagnostic system for the functional gastrointestinal disorders based on ultrasound technique, which can quantify the characteristic above related to the rigidity of the gastrointestinal tract well. Ultrasound system was designed. The system consisted of transmitter, ultrasonic transducer, receiver, TGC, and CPLD, and verified via a phantom test. For the phantom test, ten soft-tissue specimens were harvested from porcine. Five of them were then treated chemically to mimic a rigid condition of gastrointestinal tract well, which was induced by functional gastrointestinal disorders. Additionally, the specimens were tested mechanically to identify if the mimic was reasonable. The customized ultrasound system was finally verified through application to human subjects with/without functional gastrointestinal disorders (Normal and Patient Groups). It was identified from the mechanical test that the chemically treated specimens were more rigid than normal specimen. This finding was favorably compared with the result obtained from the phantom test. The phantom test also showed that ultrasound system well described the specimen geometric characteristics and detected an alteration in the specimens. The maximum amplitude of the ultrasonic reflective signal in the rigid specimens (0.2±0.1Vp-p) at the interface between the fat and muscle layers was explicitly higher than that in the normal specimens (0.1±0.0Vp-p). Clinical tests using our customized ultrasound system for human subject showed that the maximum amplitudes of the ultrasonic reflective signals near to the gastrointestinal tract well for the patient group (2.6±0.3Vp-p) were generally higher than those in normal group (0.1±0.2Vp-p). Here, maximum reflective signals was appeared at 20mm depth approximately from abdominal skin for all human subjects, corresponding to the location of the boundary layer close to gastrointestinal tract well. These results suggest that newly designed diagnostic system based on ultrasound technique may diagnose enough the functional gastrointestinal disorders.
Abstract: In this paper, applying He-s energy balance method to determine frequency formulation relations of nonlinear oscillators with discontinuous term or fractional potential. By calculation and computer simulations, compared with the exact solutions show that the results obtained are of high accuracy.