Neuro-Fuzzy Networks for Identification of Mathematical Model Parameters of Geofield

The new technology of fuzzy neural networks for identification of parameters for mathematical models of geofields is proposed and checked. The effectiveness of that soft computing technology is demonstrated, especially in the early stage of modeling, when the information is uncertain and limited.

Fears of Strangers: Causes of Anonymity Rejection on Virtual World

This research is a collaborative narrative research, which is mixed with issues of selected papers and researcher's experience as an anonymous user on social networking sites. The objective of this research is to understand the reasons of the regular users who reject to contact with anonymous users, and to study the communication traditions used in the selected studies. Anonymous users are rejected by regular users, because of the fear of cyber bully, the fear of unpleasant behaviors, and unwillingness of changing communication norm. The suggestion for future research design is to use longitudinal design or quantitative design; and the theory in rhetorical tradition should be able to help develop a strong trust message.

The Development of New Technologies for Medicine and Agroecology by Using Spherosomes

Article devoted to the development of technologies for medicine and agroecology by using plant organelle – spherosome. Technological method of purification and isolation of this organelle by using novel nanostructured carbon sorbent – “nanocarbosorb" ARK type are presented. Also the methods of preparation of nanocontainers based on using of spherosome with loaded isosorbide dinitrate, piroxicam or diclofenak are exhibited. We found that the spherosome could be applied for ecological aims as bioregulator and also as biosensor for determination of ammonia ions in water reservoirs at concentration range 1mM to 100mM.

Decision Support System for Farm Management

The emergence of information technology has resulted in an ever-increasing demand to use computers for the efficient management and dissemination of information. Keeping in view the strong need of farmers to collect important and updated information for interactive, flexible and quick decision-making, a model of Decision Support System for Farm Management is developed. The paper discusses the use of Internet technology for the farmers to take decisions. A model is developed for the farmers to access online interactive and flexible information for their farm management. The workflow of the model is presented highlighting the information transfer between different modules.

Automated Segmentation of ECG Signals using Piecewise Derivative Dynamic Time Warping

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.

Observers Design for Systems Modelled by Bond Graphs with Multivariable Monotone Nonlinearities

A methodology to design a nonlinear observer in a bond graph approach is proposed. The class of nonlinear observer with multivariable nonlinearities is considered. A junction structure of the bond graph observer is proposed. The proposed methodology to an electrical transformer and a DC motor including the nonlinear saturation is applied. Nonlinear observers for the transformer and DC motor based on multivariable circle criterion in the physical domain are proposed. In order to show the saturation effects on the transformer and DC motor, simulation results are obtained. Finally, the paper describes that convergence of the estimates to the true states is achieved.

Feature Extraction of Dorsal Hand Vein Pattern Using a Fast Modified PCA Algorithm Based On Cholesky Decomposition and Lanczos Technique

Dorsal hand vein pattern is an emerging biometric which is attracting the attention of researchers, of late. Research is being carried out on existing techniques in the hope of improving them or finding more efficient ones. In this work, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) , which is a successful method, originally applied on face biometric is being modified using Cholesky decomposition and Lanczos algorithm to extract the dorsal hand vein features. This modified technique decreases the number of computation and hence decreases the processing time. The eigenveins were successfully computed and projected onto the vein space. The system was tested on a database of 200 images and using a threshold value of 0.9 to obtain the False Acceptance Rate (FAR) and False Rejection Rate (FRR). This modified algorithm is desirable when developing biometric security system since it significantly decreases the matching time.

Revea Ling Casein Micelle Dispersion under Various Ranges of Nacl: Evolution of Particles Size and Structure

Dispersions of casein micelles (CM) were studied at a constant protein concentration of 5 wt % in high NaCl environment ranging from 0% to 12% by Dynamic light scattering (DLS) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR). The rehydration profiles obtained were interpreted in term of wetting, swelling and dispersion stages by using a turbidity method. Two behaviours were observed depending on the salt concentration. The first behaviour (low salt concentration) presents a typical rehydration profile with a significant change between 3 and 6% NaCl indicating quick wetting, swelling and long dispersion stage. On the opposite, the dispersion stage of the second behaviour (high salt concentration) was significantly shortened indicating a strong modification of the protein backbone. A salt increase result to a destabilization of the micelle and the formation of mini-micelles more or less aggregated indicating an average micelles size ranging from 100 to 200 nm. For the first time, the estimations of secondary structural elements (irregular, ß-sheet, α-helix and turn) by the Amide III assignments were correlated with results from Amide I.

A Generalized Framework for Working with Multiagent Systems

The present paper discusses the basic concepts and the underlying principles of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) along with an interdisciplinary exploitation of these principles. It has been found that they have been utilized for lots of research and studies on various systems spanning across diverse engineering and scientific realms showing the need of development of a proper generalized framework. Such framework has been developed for the Multi-Agent Systems and it has been generalized keeping in mind the diverse areas where they find application. All the related aspects have been categorized and a general definition has been given where ever possible.

Development of Vibration Sensor with Wide Frequency Range Based on Condenser Microphone -Estimation System for Flow Rate in Water Pipes-

Water leakage is a serious problem in the maintenance of a waterworks facility. Monitoring the water flow rate is one way to locate leakage. However, conventional flowmeters such as the wet-type flowmeter and the clamp-on type ultrasonic flowmeter require additional construction for their installation and are therefore quite expensive. This paper proposes a novel estimation system for the flow rate in a water pipeline, which employs a vibration sensor. This assembly can be attached to any water pipeline without the need for additional high-cost construction. The vibration sensor is designed based on a condenser microphone. This sensor detects vibration caused by water flowing through a pipeline. It is possible to estimate the water flow rate by measuring the amplitude of the output signal from the vibration sensor. We confirmed the validity of the proposed sensing system experimentally.

Identification of Ductile Damage Parameters for Austenitic Steel

The modeling of inelastic behavior of plastic materials requires measurements providing information on material response to different multiaxial loading conditions. Different triaxiality conditions and values of Lode parameters have to be covered for complex description of the material plastic behavior. Samples geometries providing material plastic behavoiur over the range of interest are proposed with the use of FEM analysis. Round samples with 3 different notches and smooth surface are used together with butterfly type of samples tested at angle ranging for 0 to 90°. Identification of ductile damage parameters is carried out on the basis of obtained experimental data for austenitic stainless steel. The obtained material plastic damage parameters are subsequently applied to FEM simulation of notched CT normally samples used for fracture mechanics testing and results from the simulation are compared with real tests.

Animal-Assisted Therapy for Persons with Disabilities Based on Canine Tail Language Interpretation via Gaussian-Trapezoidal Fuzzy Emotional Behavior Model

In order to alleviate the mental and physical problems of persons with disabilities, animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is one of the possible modalities that employs the merit of the human-animal interaction. Nevertheless, to achieve the purpose of AAT for persons with severe disabilities (e.g. spinal cord injury, stroke, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), real-time animal language interpretation is desirable. Since canine behaviors can be visually notable from its tail, this paper proposes the automatic real-time interpretation of canine tail language for human-canine interaction in the case of persons with severe disabilities. Canine tail language is captured via two 3-axis accelerometers. Directions and frequencies are selected as our features of interests. The novel fuzzy rules based on Gaussian-Trapezoidal model and center of gravity (COG)-based defuzzification method are proposed in order to interpret the features into four canine emotional behaviors, i.e., agitate, happy, scare and neutral as well as its blended emotional behaviors. The emotional behavior model is performed in the simulated dog and has also been evaluated in the real dog with the perfect recognition rate.

Delay and Energy Consumption Analysis of Conventional SRAM

The energy consumption and delay in read/write operation of conventional SRAM is investigated analytically as well as by simulation. Explicit analytical expressions for the energy consumption and delay in read and write operation as a function of device parameters and supply voltage are derived. The expressions are useful in predicting the effect of parameter changes on the energy consumption and speed as well as in optimizing the design of conventional SRAM. HSPICE simulation in standard 0.25μm CMOS technology confirms precision of analytical expressions derived from this paper.

A New Method for Identifying Broken Rotor Bars in Squirrel Cage Induction Motor Based on Particle Swarm Optimization Method

Detection of squirrel cage induction motor (SCIM) broken bars has long been an important but difficult job in the detection area of motor faults. Early detection of this abnormality in the motor would help to avoid costly breakdowns. A new detection method based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) is presented in this paper. Stator current in an induction motor will be measured and characteristic frequency components of faylted rotor will be detected by minimizing a fitness function using pso. Supply frequency and side band frequencies and their amplitudes can be estimated by the proposed method. The proposed method is applied to a faulty motor with one and two broken bars in different loading condition. Experimental results prove that the proposed method is effective and applicable.

Hand Vein Image Enhancement With Radon Like Features Descriptor

Nowadays, hand vein recognition has attracted more attentions in identification biometrics systems. Generally, hand vein image is acquired with low contrast and irregular illumination. Accordingly, if you have a good preprocessing of hand vein image, we can easy extracted the feature extraction even with simple binarization. In this paper, a proposed approach is processed to improve the quality of hand vein image. First, a brief survey on existing methods of enhancement is investigated. Then a Radon Like features method is applied to preprocessing hand vein image. Finally, experiments results show that the proposed method give the better effective and reliable in improving hand vein images.

Gypseous Soil Improvement using Fuel Oil

This research investigates the suitability of fuel oil in improving gypseous soil. A detailed laboratory tests were carried-out on two soils (soil I with 51.6% gypsum content, and soil II with 26.55%), where the two soils were obtained from Al-Therthar site (Al-Anbar Province-Iraq). This study examines the improvement of soil properties using the gypsum material which is locally available with low cost to minimize the effect of moisture on these soils by using the fuel oil. This study was conducted on two models of the soil gypsum, from the Tharthar area. The first model was sandy soil with Gypsum content of (51.6%) and the second is clayey soil and the content of Gypsum is (26.55%). The program included tests measuring the permeability and compressibility of the soil and their collapse properties. The shear strength of the soil and the amounts of weight loss of fuel oil due to drying had been found. These tests have been conducted on the treated and untreated soils to observe the effect of soil treatment on the engineering properties when mixed with varying degrees of fuel oil with the equivalent of the water content. The results showed that fuel oil is a good material to modify the basic properties of the gypseous soil of collapsibility and permeability, which are the main problems of this soil and retained the soil by an appropriate amount of the cohesion suitable for carrying the loads from the structure.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices and Partisanship: Support for the President and Solicitor General

This paper analyzes the extent to which the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court cast votes that support the positions of the president, or more generally the Executive Branch. Can presidents count on such deference from those justices they nominate or those whom are nominated by other presidents of the same party? Or, do the justices demonstrate judicial independence and impartiality such that they are not so predisposed to vote in favor of arguments of their nominating president-s party? The results suggest that while in general the justices do not exhibit any marked tendency to partisan support of presidents, more recent and conservative Supreme Court justices are significantly more likely to support Republican presidents.

Virtual Assembly in a Semi-Immersive Environment

Virtual Assembly (VA) is one of the key technologies in advanced manufacturing field. It is a promising application of virtual reality in design and manufacturing field. It has drawn much interest from industries and research institutes in the last two decades. This paper describes a process for integrating an interactive Virtual Reality-based assembly simulation of a digital mockup with the CAD/CAM infrastructure. The necessary hardware and software preconditions for the process are explained so that it can easily be adopted by non VR experts. The article outlines how assembly simulation can improve the CAD/CAM procedures and structures; how CAD model preparations have to be carried out and which virtual environment requirements have to be fulfilled. The issue of data transfer is also explained in the paper. The other challenges and requirements like anti-aliasing and collision detection have also been explained. Finally, a VA simulation has been carried out for a ball valve assembly and a car door assembly with the help of Vizard virtual reality toolkit in a semi-immersive environment and their performance analysis has been done on different workstations to evaluate the importance of graphical processing unit (GPU) in the field of VA.

Memory Effects in Randomly Perturbed Nematic Liquid Crystals

We study the typical domain size and configuration character of a randomly perturbed system exhibiting continuous symmetry breaking. As a model system we use rod-like objects within a cubic lattice interacting via a Lebwohl–Lasher-type interaction. We describe their local direction with a headless unit director field. An example of such systems represents nematic LC or nanotubes. We further introduce impurities of concentration p, which impose the random anisotropy field-type disorder to directors. We study the domain-type pattern of molecules as a function of p, anchoring strength w between a neighboring director and impurity, temperature, history of samples. In simulations we quenched the directors either from the random or homogeneous initial configuration. Our results show that a history of system strongly influences: i) the average domain coherence length; and ii) the range of ordering in the system. In the random case the obtained order is always short ranged (SR). On the contrary, in the homogeneous case, SR is obtained only for strong enough anchoring and large enough concentration p. In other cases, the ordering is either of quasi long range (QLR) or of long range (LR). We further studied memory effects for the random initial configuration. With increasing external ordering field B either QLR or LR is realized.

Flexible, Adaptable and Scaleable Business Rules Management System for Data Validation

The policies governing the business of any organization are well reflected in her business rules. The business rules are implemented by data validation techniques, coded during the software development process. Any change in business policies results in change in the code written for data validation used to enforce the business policies. Implementing the change in business rules without changing the code is the objective of this paper. The proposed approach enables users to create rule sets at run time once the software has been developed. The newly defined rule sets by end users are associated with the data variables for which the validation is required. The proposed approach facilitates the users to define business rules using all the comparison operators and Boolean operators. Multithreading is used to validate the data entered by end user against the business rules applied. The evaluation of the data is performed by a newly created thread using an enhanced form of the RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) algorithm.