Abstract: Iterative learning control aims to achieve zero tracking
error of a specific command. This is accomplished by iteratively
adjusting the command given to a feedback control system, based on
the tracking error observed in the previous iteration. One would like
the iterations to converge to zero tracking error in spite of any error
present in the model used to design the learning law. First, this need
for stability robustness is discussed, and then the need for robustness
of the property that the transients are well behaved. Methods of
producing the needed robustness to parameter variations and to
singular perturbations are presented. Then a method involving
reverse time runs is given that lets the world behavior produce the
ILC gains in such a way as to eliminate the need for a mathematical
model. Since the real world is producing the gains, there is no issue
of model error. Provided the world behaves linearly, the approach
gives an ILC law with both stability robustness and good transient
robustness, without the need to generate a model.
Abstract: The research object was wheat bread. Experiments
were carried out at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia
University of Agriculture. An active packaging in combination with
modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2 60% and N2 40%) was examined
and compared with traditional packaging in air ambiance. Polymer
Multibarrier 60, PP and OPP bags were used. Influence of iron based
oxygen absorber in sachets of 100 cc obtained from Mitsubishi Gas
Chemical Europe Ageless® was tested on the quality during the shelf
of wheat bread. Samples of 40±4 g were packaged in polymer
pouches (110 mm x 120 mm), hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC
C300 vacuum chamber machine, and stored in room temperature
+21.0±0.5 °C. The physiochemical properties – weight losses,
moisture content, hardness, pH, colour, changes of atmosphere
content (CO2 and O2) in headspace of packs, and microbial
conditions were analysed before packaging and in the 7th, 14th, 21st
and 28th days of storage.
Abstract: Electrocardiogram (ECG) segmentation is necessary to help reduce the time consuming task of manually annotating ECG's. Several algorithms have been developed to segment the ECG automatically. We first review several of such methods, and then present a new single lead segmentation method based on Adaptive piecewise constant approximation (APCA) and Piecewise derivative dynamic time warping (PDDTW). The results are tested on the QT database. We compared our results to Laguna's two lead method. Our proposed approach has a comparable mean error, but yields a slightly higher standard deviation than Laguna's method.
Abstract: This paper presents a new true RMS-to-DC converter
circuit based on a square-root-domain squarer/divider. The circuit is
designed by employing up-down translinear loop and using of
MOSFET transistors that operate in strong inversion saturation
region. The converter offer advantages of two-quadrant input current,
low circuit complexity, low supply voltage (1.2V) and immunity
from the body effect. The circuit has been simulated by HSPICE.
The simulation results are seen to conform to the theoretical analysis
and shows benefits of the proposed circuit.
Abstract: The purpose of this article applies the monthly final
energy yield and failure data of 202 PV systems installed in Taiwan to
analyze the PV operational performance and system availability. This
data is collected by Industrial Technology Research Institute through
manual records. Bad data detection and failure data estimation
approaches are proposed to guarantee the quality of the received
information. The performance ratio value and system availability are
then calculated and compared with those of other countries. It is
indicated that the average performance ratio of Taiwan-s PV systems
is 0.74 and the availability is 95.7%. These results are similar with
those of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.
Abstract: In this paper, a watermarking algorithm that uses the wavelet transform with Multiple Description Coding (MDC) and Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) concepts is introduced. Also, the paper investigates the role of Contourlet Transform (CT) versus Wavelet Transform (WT) in providing robust image watermarking. Two measures are utilized in the comparison between the waveletbased and the contourlet-based methods; Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC). Experimental results reveal that the introduced algorithm is robust against different attacks and has good results compared to the contourlet-based algorithm.
Abstract: In this paper, a new descent-projection method with a
new search direction for monotone structured variational inequalities
is proposed. The method is simple, which needs only projections
and some function evaluations, so its computational load is very tiny.
Under mild conditions on the problem-s data, the method is proved to
converges globally. Some preliminary computational results are also
reported to illustrate the efficiency of the method.
Abstract: In present study the effects of anti-inflammatory and
antinociceptive of vitex hydro-alcoholic extract were evaluated on
male mice. In inflammatory test mice were divided into 7 groups:
first group was control. The second group, positive control group,
received dexamethasone (15 mg/kg) and the other five groups
received different doses of hydroalcohol extract of Vitex fruit (265,
365, 465, 565, and 665 mg/kg). The inflammation was caused by
xylene-induced ear edema. Formalin test was used for evaluation of
antinociceptive effect of extract. In this test, mice were divided into 7
groups: control, morphine (10mg/kg) as positive control group, and
Vitex extract groups ((265, 365, 465, 565, and 665 mg/kg). All drugs
were administered intrapritoneally, 30 min before each test. The data
were analyzed using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey-kramer
multiple comparison test. Results have shown significant antiinflammatory
effects of extract at all dosed as compared with control
(P
Abstract: The characteristics of fluid flow and phase separation
in an oil-water separator were numerically analysed as part of the
work presented herein. Simulations were performed for different
velocities and droplet diameters, and the way this parameters can
influence the separator geometry was studied.
The simulations were carried out using the software package
Fluent 6.2, which is designed for numerical simulation of fluid flow
and mass transfer. The model consisted of a cylindrical horizontal
separator. A tetrahedral mesh was employed in the computational
domain. The condition of two-phase flow was simulated with the
two-fluid model, taking into consideration turbulence effects using
the k-ε model.
The results showed that there is a strong dependency of phase
separation on mixture velocity and droplet diameter. An increase in
mixture velocity will bring about a slow down in phase separation
and as a consequence will require a weir of greater height. An
increase in droplet diameter will produce a better phase separation.
The simulations are in agreement with results reported in literature
and show that CFD can be a useful tool in studying a horizontal oilwater
separator.
Abstract: This paper shows a simple and effective approach to
the design and implementation of Industrial Information Systems
(IIS) oriented to control the characteristics of each individual product manufactured in a production line and also their manufacturing conditions. The particular products considered in this work are large steel strips that are coiled just after their manufacturing. However, the approach is directly applicable to coiled strips in other industries, like
paper, textile, aluminum, etc. These IIS provide very detailed information of each manufactured product, which complement the general information managed by the ERP system of the production line. In spite of the high importance of this type of IIS to guarantee and improve the quality of the products manufactured in many industries, there are very few works about them in the technical literature. For this reason, this paper represents an important contribution to the development of this type of IIS, providing guidelines for their design, implementation and exploitation.
Abstract: The research objective of the project and article “The impact of Structural Funds on the growth of competitiveness of Polish agriculture" is to assess competitiveness of regions in Poland from the perspective of Polish agriculture by analysing the efficiency of the use of Structural Funds, the economic procedure of their distribution and the regulatory and organisational framework under the Rural Development Programme (RDP). It must be stressed that defining the scope of research in the above manner limits the analysis only to the part of Structural Funds directed to support Polish agriculture.
Abstract: We have devised a thermal carpet cloak theoretically
and implemented in silicon using layered metamaterial. The layered
metamaterial is composed of single crystalline silicon and its phononic
crystal. The design is based on a coordinate transformation. We
demonstrate the result with numerical simulation. Great cloaking
performance is achieved as a thermal insulator is well hidden under the
thermal carpet cloak. We also show that the thermal carpet cloak can
even the temperature on irregular surface. Using thermal carpet cloak
to manipulate the heat conduction is effective because of its low
complexity.
Abstract: In this paper we describe a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for automated detection of pulmonary nodules in computed-tomography (CT) images. After extracting the pulmonary parenchyma using a combination of image processing techniques, a region growing method is applied to detect nodules based on 3D geometric features. We applied the CAD system to CT scans collected in a screening program for lung cancer detection. Each scan consists of a sequence of about 300 slices stored in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) format. All malignant nodules were detected and a low false-positive detection rate was achieved.
Abstract: The hydrogen peroxide treatment was able to
remediate chlorophenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, diesel
and transformer oil contaminated soil. Chemical treatment of
contaminants adsorbed in peat resulted in lower contaminants-
removal and required higher addition of chemicals than the treatment
of contaminants in sand. The hydrogen peroxide treatment was found
to be feasible for soil remediation at natural soil pH. Contaminants in
soil could degrade with the addition of hydrogen peroxide only
indicating the ability of transition metals ions and minerals of these
metals presented in soil to catalyse the reaction of hydrogen peroxide
decomposition.
Abstract: The concurrent era is characterised by strengthened interactions among financial markets and increased capital mobility globally. In this frames we examine the effects the international financial integration process has on the European bond markets. We perform a comparative study of the interactions of the European and international bond markets and exploit Cointegration analysis results on the elimination of stochastic trends and the decomposition of the underlying long run equilibria and short run causal relations. Our investigation provides evidence on the relation between the European integration process and that of globalisation, viewed through the bond markets- sector. Additionally the structural formulation applied, offers significant implications of the findings. All in all our analysis offers a number of answers on crucial queries towards the European bond markets integration process.
Abstract: Flows over a harmonically oscillating NACA 0012
airfoil are simulated here using a two-dimensional, unsteady,
incompressibleNavier-Stokes solver.Both pure-plunging and
pitching-plunging combined oscillations are considered at a Reynolds
number of 5000. Special attention is paid to the vortex shedding and
interaction mechanism of the motions. For all the simulations
presented here, the reduced frequency (k) is fixed at a value of 2.5
and plunging amplitude (h) is selected to be in the range of 0.2-0.5.
The simulation results show that the interaction mechanism between
the leading and trailing edge vortices has a decisive effect on the
values of the resulting thrust and propulsive efficiency.
Abstract: Sickness absence represents a major economic and
social issue. Analysis of sick leave data is a recurrent challenge to analysts because of the complexity of the data structure which is
often time dependent, highly skewed and clumped at zero. Ignoring these features to make statistical inference is likely to be inefficient
and misguided. Traditional approaches do not address these problems. In this study, we discuss model methodologies in terms of statistical techniques for addressing the difficulties with sick leave data. We also introduce and demonstrate a new method by performing a longitudinal assessment of long-term absenteeism using
a large registration dataset as a working example available from the Helsinki Health Study for municipal employees from Finland during the period of 1990-1999. We present a comparative study on model
selection and a critical analysis of the temporal trends, the occurrence
and degree of long-term sickness absences among municipal employees. The strengths of this working example include the large
sample size over a long follow-up period providing strong evidence in supporting of the new model. Our main goal is to propose a way to
select an appropriate model and to introduce a new methodology for analysing sickness absence data as well as to demonstrate model
applicability to complicated longitudinal data.
Abstract: Text categorization (the assignment of texts in natural language into predefined categories) is an important and extensively studied problem in Machine Learning. Currently, popular techniques developed to deal with this task include many preprocessing and learning algorithms, many of which in turn require tuning nontrivial internal parameters. Although partial studies are available, many authors fail to report values of the parameters they use in their experiments, or reasons why these values were used instead of others. The goal of this work then is to create a more thorough comparison of preprocessing parameters and their mutual influence, and report interesting observations and results.
Abstract: This paper describes a computer-aided design for
design of the concave globoidal cam with cylindrical rollers and
swinging follower. Four models with different modeling methods are
made from the same input data. The input data are angular input and
output displacements of the cam and the follower and some other
geometrical parameters of the globoidal cam mechanism. The best
cam model is the cam which has no interference with the rollers
when their motions are simulated in assembly conditions. The
angular output displacement of the follower for the best cam is also
compared with that of in the input data to check errors. In this study,
Pro/ENGINEER® Wildfire 2.0 is used for modeling the cam,
simulating motions and checking interference and errors of the
system.
Abstract: This paper proposes a smart design strategy for a sequential detector to reliably detect the primary user-s signal, especially in fast fading environments. We study the computation of the log-likelihood ratio for coping with a fast changing received signal and noise sample variances, which are considered random variables. First, we analyze the detectability of the conventional generalized log-likelihood ratio (GLLR) scheme when considering fast changing statistics of unknown parameters caused by fast fading effects. Secondly, we propose an efficient sensing algorithm for performing the sequential probability ratio test in a robust and efficient manner when the channel statistics are unknown. Finally, the proposed scheme is compared to the conventional method with simulation results with respect to the average number of samples required to reach a detection decision.