Abstract: This paper discusses the development of a qualitative
simulator (abbreviated QRiOM) for predicting the behaviour of
organic chemical reactions. The simulation technique is based on the
qualitative process theory (QPT) ontology. The modelling constructs
of QPT embody notions of causality which can be used to explain the
behaviour of a chemical system. The major theme of this work is
that, in a qualitative simulation environment, students are able to
articulate his/her knowledge through the inspection of explanations
generated by software. The implementation languages are Java and
Prolog. The software produces explanation in various forms that
stresses on the causal theories in the chemical system which can be
effectively used to support learning.
Abstract: In this paper an efficient incomplete factorization preconditioner is proposed for the Least Mean Squares (LMS) adaptive filter. The proposed preconditioner is approximated from a priori knowledge of the factors of input correlation matrix with an incomplete strategy, motivated by the sparsity patter of the upper triangular factor in the QRD-RLS algorithm. The convergence properties of IPLMS algorithm are comparable with those of transform domain LMS(TDLMS) algorithm. Simulation results show efficiency and robustness of the proposed algorithm with reduced computational complexity.
Abstract: Chicken feathers were used as biosorbent for Pb
removal from aqueous solution. In this paper, the kinetics and
equilibrium studies at several pH, temperature, and metal
concentration values are reported. For tested conditions, the Pb
sorption capacity of this poultry waste ranged from 0.8 to 8.3 mg/g.
Optimal conditions for Pb removal by chicken feathers have been
identified. Pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order equations
were used to analyze the experimental data. In addition, the sorption
isotherms were fitted to classical Langmuir and Freundlich models.
Finally, thermodynamic parameters for the sorption process have
been determined. In summary, the results showed that chicken
feathers are an alternative and promising sorbent for the treatment of
effluents polluted by Pb ions.
Abstract: Breast carcinoma is the most common form of cancer
in women. Multicolour fluorescent in-situ hybridisation (m-FISH) is
a common method for staging breast carcinoma. The interpretation
of m-FISH images is complicated due to two effects: (i) Spectral
overlap in the emission spectra of fluorochrome marked DNA probes
and (ii) tissue autofluorescence. In this paper hyper-spectral images of
m-FISH samples are used and spectral unmixing is applied to produce
false colour images with higher contrast and better information
content than standard RGB images. The spectral unmixing is realised
by combinations of: Orthogonal Projection Analysis (OPA), Alterating
Least Squares (ALS), Simple-to-use Interactive Self-Modeling
Mixture Analysis (SIMPLISMA) and VARIMAX. These are applied
on the data to reduce tissue autofluorescence and resolve the spectral
overlap in the emission spectra. The results show that spectral unmixing
methods reduce the intensity caused by tissue autofluorescence by
up to 78% and enhance image contrast by algorithmically reducing
the overlap of the emission spectra.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new image segmentation approach for colour textured images. The proposed method for image segmentation consists of two stages. In the first stage, textural features using gray level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM) are computed for regions of interest (ROI) considered for each class. ROI acts as ground truth for the classes. Ohta model (I1, I2, I3) is the colour model used for segmentation. Statistical mean feature at certain inter pixel distance (IPD) of I2 component was considered to be the optimized textural feature for further segmentation. In the second stage, the feature matrix obtained is assumed to be the degraded version of the image labels and modeled as Markov Random Field (MRF) model to model the unknown image labels. The labels are estimated through maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation criterion using ICM algorithm. The performance of the proposed approach is compared with that of the existing schemes, JSEG and another scheme which uses GLCM and MRF in RGB colour space. The proposed method is found to be outperforming the existing ones in terms of segmentation accuracy with acceptable rate of convergence. The results are validated with synthetic and real textured images.
Abstract: This research was conducted to develop a correlation
between microstructure of HSLA steel and the mechanical properties
that occur as a result of both laser and mechanical forming processes
of the metal. The technique of forming flat metals by applying laser
beams is a relatively new concept in the manufacturing industry.
However, the effects of laser energy on the stability of metal alloy
phases have not yet been elucidated in terms of phase
transformations and microhardness. In this work, CO2 laser source
was used to irradiate the surface of a flat metal then the
microstructure and microhardness of the metal were studied on the
formed specimen. The extent to which the microstructure changed
depended on the heat inputs of up to 1000 J/cm2 with cooling rates of
about 4.8E+02 K/s. Experimental results revealed that the irradiated
surface of a HSLA steel had transformed to austenitic structure
during the heating process.
Abstract: Gas hydrates form when a number of factors co-exist:
free water, hydrocarbon gas, cold temperatures and high pressures are typical of the near mud-line conditions in a deepwater drilling
operation. Subsequently, when drilling with water based muds, particularly on exploration wells, the risk of hydrate formation
associated with a gas influx is high. The consequences of gas hydrate
formation while drilling are severe, and as such, every effort should be made to ensure the risk of hydrate formation is either eliminated
or significantly reduced. Thermodynamic inhibitors are used to reduce the free water content of a drilling mud, and thus suppress the
hydrate formation temperature. Very little experimental work has
been performed by oil and gas research companies on the evaluation
of gas hydrate formation in a water-based drilling mud. The main
objective of this paper is to investigate the experimental gas hydrate
formation for a mixture of methane, carbon dioxide & nitrogen in a
water-based drilling mud with or without presence of different
concentrations of thermodynamic inhibitors including pure salt and a
combination of salt with methanol or ethylene glycol at different
concentrations in a static loop apparatus. The experiments were
performed using a static loop apparatus consisting of a 2.4307 cm
inside diameter and 800 cm long pipe. All experiments were conducted at 2200 psia. The temperature in the loop was decreased at
a rate of 3.33 °F/h from initial temperature of 80 °F.
Abstract: In this paper, we study the cooperative communications where multiple cognitive radio (CR) transmit-receive pairs competitive maximize their own throughputs. In CR networks, the influences of primary users and the spectrum availability are usually different among CR users. Due to the existence of multiple relay nodes and the different spectrum availability, each CR transmit-receive pair should not only select the relay node but also choose the appropriate channel. For this distributed problem, we propose a game theoretic framework to formulate this problem and we apply a regret-matching learning algorithm which is leading to correlated equilibrium. We further formulate a modified regret-matching learning algorithm which is fully distributed and only use the local information of each CR transmit-receive pair. This modified algorithm is more practical and suitable for the cooperative communications in CR network. Simulation results show the algorithm convergence and the modified learning algorithm can achieve comparable performance to the original regretmatching learning algorithm.
Abstract: The improvement of quality of life is the main visible
integrated indicator of state well-being. More and more states pay
attention to define and to achieve social standards of quality of life as
social-economic strategy of development. These standards are
determinate by state features, complex of needs and interests of
individual, family and society.
It still remains in open question: “What is middle class" in
contemporary Kazakhstan. Appearance of new social standards of
quality of life is important indicator of its successful establishment.
The middle class as agent of social, politic and economic reforms
promotes to improve the quality of life of the country. But if consider
a low and a middle stratums of middle class, we can see that high
social expectations and real achievements are still significantly
different.
The article relies on the sociological data, collected during of
search of household-s standards of living in Almaty city and Almaty
region, and case-study of cottage city “Jana Kuat".
Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate whether there
is the promotion of product ecodesign measures as a result of
adopting ISO 14001 certification in manufacturing companies in the
Republic of Slovenia. Companies gave the most of their product
development attention to waste and energy reduction during
manufacturing process and reduction of material consumption per
unit of product. Regarding the importance of different ecodesign
criteria reduction of material consumption per unit of product was
reported as the most important criterion. Less attention is paid to endof-
life issues considering recycling or packaging. Most
manufacturing enterprises considered ISO 14001 standard as a very
useful tool or at least a useful tool helping them to accelerate and
establish product ecodesign activities. Two most frequently
considered ecodesign drivers are increased competitive advantage
and legal requirements and two most important barriers are high
development costs and insufficient market demand.
Abstract: An epidemiological cross sectional study was
undertaken in Yaoundé in 2002 and updated in 2005. Focused on
health within the city, the objectives were to measure diarrheal
prevalence and to identify the risk factors associated with them.
Results of microbiological examinations have revealed an urban
average prevalence rate of 14.5%. Access to basic services in the
living environment appears to be an important risk factor for
diarrheas. Statistical and spatial analyses conducted have revealed
that prevalence of diarrheal diseases vary among the two main types
of settlement (informal and planned). More importantly, this study
shows that, diarrhea prevalence rates (notably bacterial and parasitic
diarrheas) vary according to the sub- category of settlements. The
study draws a number of theoretical and policy implications for
researchers and policy decision makers.
Abstract: Moulded parts contribute to more than 70% of
components in products. However, common defects particularly in
plastic injection moulding exist such as: warpage, shrinkage, sink
marks, and weld lines. In this paper Taguchi experimental design
methods are applied to reduce the warpage defect of thin plate
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and are demonstrated in two
levels; namely, orthogonal arrays of Taguchi and the Analysis of
Variance (ANOVA). Eight trials have been run in which the optimal
parameters that can minimize the warpage defect in factorial
experiment are obtained. The results obtained from ANOVA
approach analysis with respect to those derived from MINITAB
illustrate the most significant factors which may cause warpage in
injection moulding process. Moreover, ANOVA approach in
comparison with other approaches like S/N ratio is more accurate and
with the interaction of factors it is possible to achieve higher and the
better outcomes.
Abstract: We introduce an effective approach for automatic offline au- thentication of handwritten samples where the forgeries are skillfully done, i.e., the true and forgery sample appearances are almost alike. Subtle details of temporal information used in online verification are not available offline and are also hard to recover robustly. Thus the spatial dynamic information like the pen-tip pressure characteristics are considered, emphasizing on the extraction of low density pixels. The points result from the ballistic rhythm of a genuine signature which a forgery, however skillful that may be, always lacks. Ten effective features, including these low density points and den- sity ratio, are proposed to make the distinction between a true and a forgery sample. An adaptive decision criteria is also derived for better verification judgements.
Abstract: Cluster analysis is the name given to a diverse collection of techniques that can be used to classify objects (e.g. individuals, quadrats, species etc). While Kohonen's Self-Organizing Feature Map (SOFM) or Self-Organizing Map (SOM) networks have been successfully applied as a classification tool to various problem domains, including speech recognition, image data compression, image or character recognition, robot control and medical diagnosis, its potential as a robust substitute for clustering analysis remains relatively unresearched. SOM networks combine competitive learning with dimensionality reduction by smoothing the clusters with respect to an a priori grid and provide a powerful tool for data visualization. In this paper, SOM is used for creating a toroidal mapping of two-dimensional lattice to perform cluster analysis on results of a chemical analysis of wines produced in the same region in Italy but derived from three different cultivators, referred to as the “wine recognition data" located in the University of California-Irvine database. The results are encouraging and it is believed that SOM would make an appealing and powerful decision-support system tool for clustering tasks and for data visualization.
Abstract: Electrophoretic motion of a liquid droplet within an
uncharged cylindrical pore is investigated theoretically in this study. It
is found that the boundary effect in terms of the reduction of droplet
mobility (droplet velocity per unit strength of the applied electric field)
is very significant when the double layer surrounding the droplet is
thick, and diminishes as it gets very thin. Moreover, the viscosity ratio
of the ambient fluid to the internal one, σ, is a crucial factor in
determining its electrophoretic behavior. The boundary effect is less
significant as the viscosity ratio gets high. Up to 70% mobility
reduction is observed when this ratio is low (σ = 0.01), whereas only
40% reduction when it is high (σ = 100). The results of this study can
be utilized in various fields of biotechnology, such as a biosensor or a
lab-on-a-chip device.
Abstract: The paper presents the influence of the conventional
ploughing tillage technology in comparison with the minimum
tillage, upon the soil properties, weed control and yield in the case of
maize (Zea mays L.), soya-bean (Glycine hispida L.) and winter
wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in a three years crop rotation. A
research has been conducted at the University of Agricultural
Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The use of
minimum soil tillage systems within a three years rotation: maize,
soya-bean, wheat favorites the rise of the aggregates hydro stability
with 5.6-7.5% on a 0-20 cm depth and 5-11% on 20-30 cm depth.
The minimum soil tillage systems – paraplow, chisel or rotary grape
– are polyvalent alternatives for basic preparation, germination bed
preparation and sowing, for fields and crops with moderate loose
requirements being optimized technologies for: soil natural fertility
activation and rationalization, reduction of erosion, increasing the
accumulation capacity for water and realization of sowing in the
optimal period. The soil tillage system influences the productivity
elements of cultivated species and finally the productions thus
obtained. Thus, related to conventional working system, the
productions registered in minimum tillage working represented 89-
97% in maize, 103-112% in soya-bean, 93-99% in winter-wheat. The
results of investigations showed that the yield is a conclusion soil
tillage systems influence on soil properties, plant density assurance
and on weed control. Under minimum tillage systems in the case of
winter weat as an option for replacing classic ploughing, the best
results in terms of quality indices were obtained from version worked
with paraplow, followed by rotary harrow and chisel. At variants
worked with paraplow were obtained quality indices close to those of
the variant worked with plow, and protein and gluten content was
even higher. At Ariesan variety, highest protein content, 12.50% and
gluten, 28.6% was obtained for the variant paraplow.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine employee assessments of the usefulness/value of different types of information available to those employees during the process of organizational assimilation. Participants in the study were 247 “new" employees at Bangkok Bank. Bangkok Bank considers employees whose length of stay with the bank has been less than 18 months as new employees. Questionnaires were administered to all of the Bank-s new employees to obtain the data for this study. Repeated measures analysis was used to analyze the data. The data were summed and coded by using Statistical Package for Social Science. Newcomers indicate that social information is the most useful information, followed by job (technical, referent, and appraisal information), political, normative, and organizational information. Essentially, social, job, and political information are evaluated by newcomers as highly useful, while normative and organizational information are rated as moderately useful.
Abstract: The design of a gravity dam is performed through an
interactive process involving a preliminary layout of the structure
followed by a stability and stress analysis. This study presents a
method to define the optimal top width of gravity dam with genetic
algorithm. To solve the optimization task (minimize the cost of the
dam), an optimization routine based on genetic algorithms (GAs) was
implemented into an Excel spreadsheet. It was found to perform well
and GA parameters were optimized in a parametric study. Using the
parameters found in the parametric study, the top width of gravity
dam optimization was performed and compared to a gradient-based
optimization method (classic method). The accuracy of the results
was within close proximity. In optimum dam cross section, the ratio
of is dam base to dam height is almost equal to 0.85, and ratio of dam
top width to dam height is almost equal to 0.13. The computerized
methodology may provide the help for computation of the optimal
top width for a wide range of height of a gravity dam.
Abstract: The customary practice of identifying industrial sickness is a set traditional techniques which rely upon a range of manual monitoring and compilation of financial records. It makes the process tedious, time consuming and often are susceptible to manipulation. Therefore, certain readily available tools are required which can deal with such uncertain situations arising out of industrial sickness. It is more significant for a country like India where the fruits of development are rarely equally distributed. In this paper, we propose an approach based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to deal with industrial sickness with specific focus on a few such units taken from a less developed north-east (NE) Indian state like Assam. The proposed system provides decision regarding industrial sickness using eight different parameters which are directly related to the stages of sickness of such units. The mechanism primarily uses certain signals and symptoms of industrial health to decide upon the state of a unit. Specifically, we formulate an ANN based block with data obtained from a few selected units of Assam so that required decisions related to industrial health could be taken. The system thus formulated could become an important part of planning and development. It can also contribute towards computerization of decision support systems related to industrial health and help in better management.
Abstract: This article is dedicated to the question of regionalism
and regionalization in contemporary international relations, with a
specific focus on Central Asia. The article addresses the question of
whether or not Central Asia can be referred to as a true geopolitical
region. In addressing this question, the authors examine particular
factors that are essential for the formation of a region, including those
tied to the economy, energy, culture, and labor migration.