Satellite Data Classification Accuracy Assessment Based from Reference Dataset

In order to develop forest management strategies in tropical forest in Malaysia, surveying the forest resources and monitoring the forest area affected by logging activities is essential. There are tremendous effort has been done in classification of land cover related to forest resource management in this country as it is a priority in all aspects of forest mapping using remote sensing and related technology such as GIS. In fact classification process is a compulsory step in any remote sensing research. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to assess classification accuracy of classified forest map on Landsat TM data from difference number of reference data (200 and 388 reference data). This comparison was made through observation (200 reference data), and interpretation and observation approaches (388 reference data). Five land cover classes namely primary forest, logged over forest, water bodies, bare land and agricultural crop/mixed horticultural can be identified by the differences in spectral wavelength. Result showed that an overall accuracy from 200 reference data was 83.5 % (kappa value 0.7502459; kappa variance 0.002871), which was considered acceptable or good for optical data. However, when 200 reference data was increased to 388 in the confusion matrix, the accuracy slightly improved from 83.5% to 89.17%, with Kappa statistic increased from 0.7502459 to 0.8026135, respectively. The accuracy in this classification suggested that this strategy for the selection of training area, interpretation approaches and number of reference data used were importance to perform better classification result.

A Thought on Exotic Statistical Distributions

The statistical distributions are modeled in explaining nature of various types of data sets. Although these distributions are mostly uni-modal, it is quite common to see multiple modes in the observed distribution of the underlying variables, which make the precise modeling unrealistic. The observed data do not exhibit smoothness not necessarily due to randomness, but could also be due to non-randomness resulting in zigzag curves, oscillations, humps etc. The present paper argues that trigonometric functions, which have not been used in probability functions of distributions so far, have the potential to take care of this, if incorporated in the distribution appropriately. A simple distribution (named as, Sinoform Distribution), involving trigonometric functions, is illustrated in the paper with a data set. The importance of trigonometric functions is demonstrated in the paper, which have the characteristics to make statistical distributions exotic. It is possible to have multiple modes, oscillations and zigzag curves in the density, which could be suitable to explain the underlying nature of select data set.

A Microcontroller Implementation of Model Predictive Control

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is increasingly being proposed for real time applications and embedded systems. However comparing to PID controller, the implementation of the MPC in miniaturized devices like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and microcontrollers has historically been very small scale due to its complexity in implementation and its computation time requirement. At the same time, such embedded technologies have become an enabler for future manufacturing enterprises as well as a transformer of organizations and markets. Recently, advances in microelectronics and software allow such technique to be implemented in embedded systems. In this work, we take advantage of these recent advances in this area in the deployment of one of the most studied and applied control technique in the industrial engineering. In fact in this paper, we propose an efficient framework for implementation of Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) in the performed STM32 microcontroller. The STM32 keil starter kit based on a JTAG interface and the STM32 board was used to implement the proposed GPC firmware. Besides the GPC, the PID anti windup algorithm was also implemented using Keil development tools designed for ARM processor-based microcontroller devices and working with C/Cµ langage. A performances comparison study was done between both firmwares. This performances study show good execution speed and low computational burden. These results encourage to develop simple predictive algorithms to be programmed in industrial standard hardware. The main features of the proposed framework are illustrated through two examples and compared with the anti windup PID controller.

Fuzzy Logic PID Control of Automatic Voltage Regulator System

The application of a simple microcontroller to deal with a three variable input and a single output fuzzy logic controller, with Proportional – Integral – Derivative (PID) response control built-in has been tested for an automatic voltage regulator. The fuzzifiers are based on fixed range of the variables of output voltage. The control output is used to control the wiper motor of the auto transformer to adjust the voltage, using fuzzy logic principles, so that the voltage is stabilized. In this report, the author will demonstrate how fuzzy logic might provide elegant and efficient solutions in the design of multivariable control based on experimental results rather than on mathematical models.

Health Risk Assessment in Lead Battery Smelter Factory: A Bayesian Belief Network Method

This paper proposes the use of Bayesian belief networks (BBN) as a higher level of health risk assessment for a dumping site of lead battery smelter factory. On the basis of the epidemiological studies, the actual hospital attendance records and expert experiences, the BBN is capable of capturing the probabilistic relationships between the hazardous substances and their adverse health effects, and accordingly inferring the morbidity of the adverse health effects. The provision of the morbidity rates of the related diseases is more informative and can alleviate the drawbacks of conventional methods.

Supercompression for Full-HD and 4k-3D (8k)Digital TV Systems

In this work, we developed the concept of supercompression, i.e., compression above the compression standard used. In this context, both compression rates are multiplied. In fact, supercompression is based on super-resolution. That is to say, supercompression is a data compression technique that superpose spatial image compression on top of bit-per-pixel compression to achieve very high compression ratios. If the compression ratio is very high, then we use a convolutive mask inside decoder that restores the edges, eliminating the blur. Finally, both, the encoder and the complete decoder are implemented on General-Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) cards. Specifically, the mentio-ned mask is coded inside texture memory of a GPGPU.

Heat Exchanger Design

This paper is intended to assist anyone with some general technical experience, but perhaps limited specific knowledge of heat transfer equipment. A characteristic of heat exchanger design is the procedure of specifying a design, heat transfer area and pressure drops and checking whether the assumed design satisfies all requirements or not. The purpose of this paper is how to design the oil cooler (heat exchanger) especially for shell-and-tube heat exchanger which is the majority type of liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger. General design considerations and design procedure are also illustrated in this paper and a flow diagram is provided as an aid of design procedure. In design calculation, the MatLAB and AutoCAD software are used. Fundamental heat transfer concepts and complex relationships involved in such exchanger are also presented in this paper. The primary aim of this design is to obtain a high heat transfer rate without exceeding the allowable pressure drop. This computer program is highly useful to design the shell-and-tube type heat exchanger and to modify existing deign.

A Proposal for Federation Technology for Authenticated Information between Terminals

Recently, various services such as television and the Internet have come to be received through various terminals. However, we could gain greater convenience by receiving these services through cellular phone terminals when we go out and then continuing to receive the same services through a large screen digital television after we have come home. However, it is necessary to go through the same authentication processing again when using TVs after we have come home. In this study, we have developed an authentication method that enables users to switch terminals in environments in which the user receives service from a server through a terminal. Specifically, the method simplifies the authentication of the server side when switching from one terminal to another terminal by using previously authenticated information.

High Performance VLSI Architecture of 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform with Scalable Lattice Structure

In this paper, we propose a fully-utilized, block-based 2D DWT (discrete wavelet transform) architecture, which consists of four 1D DWT filters with two-channel QMF lattice structure. The proposed architecture requires about 2MN-3N registers to save the intermediate results for higher level decomposition, where M and N stand for the filter length and the row width of the image respectively. Furthermore, the proposed 2D DWT processes in horizontal and vertical directions simultaneously without an idle period, so that it computes the DWT for an N×N image in a period of N2(1-2-2J)/3. Compared to the existing approaches, the proposed architecture shows 100% of hardware utilization and high throughput rates. To mitigate the long critical path delay due to the cascaded lattices, we can apply the pipeline technique with four stages, while retaining 100% of hardware utilization. The proposed architecture can be applied in real-time video signal processing.

Clamped-clamped Boundary Conditions for Analysis Free Vibration of Functionally Graded Cylindrical Shell with a Ring based on Third Order Shear Deformation Theory

In this paper a study on the vibration of thin cylindrical shells with ring supports and made of functionally graded materials (FGMs) composed of stainless steel and nickel is presented. Material properties vary along the thickness direction of the shell according to volume fraction power law. The cylindrical shells have ring supports which are arbitrarily placed along the shell and impose zero lateral deflections. The study is carried out based on third order shear deformation shell theory (T.S.D.T). The analysis is carried out using Hamilton-s principle. The governing equations of motion of FGM cylindrical shells are derived based on shear deformation theory. Results are presented on the frequency characteristics, influence of ring support position and the influence of boundary conditions. The present analysis is validated by comparing results with those available in the literature.

Comparison of Finite Difference Schemes for Water Flow in Unsaturated Soils

Flow movement in unsaturated soil can be expressed by a partial differential equation, named Richards equation. The objective of this study is the finding of an appropriate implicit numerical solution for head based Richards equation. Some of the well known finite difference schemes (fully implicit, Crank Nicolson and Runge-Kutta) have been utilized in this study. In addition, the effects of different approximations of moisture capacity function, convergence criteria and time stepping methods were evaluated. Two different infiltration problems were solved to investigate the performance of different schemes. These problems include of vertical water flow in a wet and very dry soils. The numerical solutions of two problems were compared using four evaluation criteria and the results of comparisons showed that fully implicit scheme is better than the other schemes. In addition, utilizing of standard chord slope method for approximation of moisture capacity function, automatic time stepping method and difference between two successive iterations as convergence criterion in the fully implicit scheme can lead to better and more reliable results for simulation of fluid movement in different unsaturated soils.

Experimental Study of the Metal Foam Flow Conditioner for Orifice Plate Flowmeters

The sensitivity of orifice plate metering to disturbed flow (either asymmetric or swirling) is a subject of great concern to flow meter users and manufacturers. The distortions caused by pipe fittings and pipe installations upstream of the orifice plate are major sources of this type of non-standard flows. These distortions can alter the accuracy of metering to an unacceptable degree. In this work, a multi-scale object known as metal foam has been used to generate a predetermined turbulent flow upstream of the orifice plate. The experimental results showed that the combination of an orifice plate and metal foam flow conditioner is broadly insensitive to upstream disturbances. This metal foam demonstrated a good performance in terms of removing swirl and producing a repeatable flow profile within a short distance downstream of the device. The results of using a combination of a metal foam flow conditioner and orifice plate for non-standard flow conditions including swirling flow and asymmetric flow show this package can preserve the accuracy of metering up to the level required in the standards.

Towards Growing Self-Organizing Neural Networks with Fixed Dimensionality

The competitive learning is an adaptive process in which the neurons in a neural network gradually become sensitive to different input pattern clusters. The basic idea behind the Kohonen-s Self-Organizing Feature Maps (SOFM) is competitive learning. SOFM can generate mappings from high-dimensional signal spaces to lower dimensional topological structures. The main features of this kind of mappings are topology preserving, feature mappings and probability distribution approximation of input patterns. To overcome some limitations of SOFM, e.g., a fixed number of neural units and a topology of fixed dimensionality, Growing Self-Organizing Neural Network (GSONN) can be used. GSONN can change its topological structure during learning. It grows by learning and shrinks by forgetting. To speed up the training and convergence, a new variant of GSONN, twin growing cell structures (TGCS) is presented here. This paper first gives an introduction to competitive learning, SOFM and its variants. Then, we discuss some GSONN with fixed dimensionality, which include growing cell structures, its variants and the author-s model: TGCS. It is ended with some testing results comparison and conclusions.

Entrepreneurial Promotion among Farmers: the Early Impacts

The development of entrepreneurial competences of farmers has been pointed out as a necessary condition for the modernization of land in facing the phenomenon of globalization. However, the educational processes involved in such a development have been studied little, especially in emerging economies. This research aims to enlighten some of the critical issues behind the early stages of the transformation of farmers into entrepreneurs, through in depth interviews with farmers, entrepreneurial promoters and public officials participating in a public pilot project in Mexico. Although major impacts were expected only in the long run, important positive changes in the mind set of farmers and other participants were found in early stages of the intervention. Apparently, the farmers started a process of becoming more conscious about the importance of preserving the aquiferous resources, as well as more market and entrepreneurial oriented.

Analysis of Lightning Surge Condition Effect on Surge Arrester in Electrical Power System by using ATP/EMTP Program

The condition of lightning surge causes the traveling waves and the temporary increase in voltage in the transmission line system. Lightning is the most harmful for destroying the transmission line and setting devices so it is necessary to study and analyze the temporary increase in voltage for designing and setting the surge arrester. This analysis describes the figure of the lightning wave in transmission line with 115 kV voltage level in Thailand by using ATP/EMTP program to create the model of the transmission line and lightning surge. Because of the limit of this program, it must be calculated for the geometry of the transmission line and surge parameter and calculation in the manual book for the closest value of the parameter. On the other hand, for the effects on surge protector when the lightning comes, the surge arrester model must be right and standardized as metropolitan electrical authority's standard. The candidate compared the real information to the result from calculation, also. The results of the analysis show that the temporary increase in voltage value will be rise to 326.59 kV at the line which is done by lightning when the surge arrester is not set in the system. On the other hand, the temporary increase in voltage value will be 182.83 kV at the line which is done by lightning when the surge arrester is set in the system and the period of the traveling wave is reduced, also. The distance for setting the surge arrester must be as near to the transformer as possible. Moreover, it is necessary to know the right distance for setting the surge arrester and the size of the surge arrester for preventing the temporary increase in voltage, effectively.

Learning Factory for Changeability

Amongst the consistently fluctuating conditions prevailing today, changeability represents a strategic key factor for a manufacturing company to achieve success on the international markets. In order to cope with turbulences and the increasing level of incalculability, not only the flexible design of production systems but in particular the employee as enabler of change provide the focus here. It is important to enable employees from manufacturing companies to participate actively in change events and in change decisions. To this end, the learning factory has been created, which is intended to serve the development of change-promoting competences and the sensitization of employees for the necessity of changes.

Identity Politics of Former Soviet Koreans: One of the Most Prominent Heritages of the 1988 Seoul Olympics

This paper applies an anthropological approach to illuminate the dynamic cultural geography of Kazakhstani Korean ethnicity focusing on its turning point, the historic “Seoul Olympic Games in 1988." The Korean ethnic group was easily considered as a harmonious and homogeneous community by outsiders, but there existed deep-seated conflicts and hostilities within the ethnic group. The majority-s oppositional dichotomy of superiority and inferiority toward the minority was continuously reorganized and reinforced by difference in experience, memory and sentiment. However, such a chronic exclusive boundary was collapsed following the patriotism ignited by the Olympics held in their mother country. This paper explores the fluidity of subject by formation of the boundary in which constructed cultural differences are continuously essentialized and reproduced, and by dissolution of cultural barrier in certain contexts.

Problems and Possible Solutions with the Development of a Computer Model of Quantum Theory

A computer model of Quantum Theory (QT) has been developed by the author. Major goal of the computer model was support and demonstration of an as large as possible scope of QT. This includes simulations for the major QT (Gedanken-) experiments such as, for example, the famous double-slit experiment. Besides the anticipated difficulties with (1) transforming exacting mathematics into a computer program, two further types of problems showed up, namely (2) areas where QT provides a complete mathematical formalism, but when it comes to concrete applications the equations are not solvable at all, or only with extremely high effort; (3) QT rules which are formulated in natural language and which do not seem to be translatable to precise mathematical expressions, nor to a computer program. The paper lists problems in all three categories and describes also the possible solutions or circumventions developed for the computer model.

Infrastructure means for Adaptive Camouflage

The paper deals with the perspectives and possibilities of "smart solutions" to critical infrastructure protection. It means that common computer aided technologies are used from the perspective of new, better protection of selected infrastructure objects. The paper is focused on the co-product of the Czech Defence Research Project - ADAPTIV. This project is carrying out by the University of Defence, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Department of Civil Protection. The project creates system and technology for adaptive cybernetic camouflage of armed forces objects, armaments, vehicles and troops and of mobilization infrastructure. These adaptive camouflage system and technology will be useful for army tactic activities protection and for decoys generation also. The fourth chapter of the paper concerns the possibilities of using the introduced technology to the protection of selected civil (economically important), critical infrastructure objects. The aim of this section is to introduce the scientific capabilities and potential of the University of Defence research results and solutions for the practice.

Quantitative Analysis of PCA, ICA, LDA and SVM in Face Recognition

Face recognition is a technique to automatically identify or verify individuals. It receives great attention in identification, authentication, security and many more applications. Diverse methods had been proposed for this purpose and also a lot of comparative studies were performed. However, researchers could not reach unified conclusion. In this paper, we are reporting an extensive quantitative accuracy analysis of four most widely used face recognition algorithms: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) using AT&T, Sheffield and Bangladeshi people face databases under diverse situations such as illumination, alignment and pose variations.