Robust Power System Stabilizer Design Using Particle Swarm Optimization Technique

Power system stabilizers (PSS) are now routinely used in the industry to damp out power system oscillations. In this paper, particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is applied to design a robust power system stabilizer (PSS). The design problem of the proposed controller is formulated as an optimization problem and PSO is employed to search for optimal controller parameters. By minimizing the time-domain based objective function, in which the deviation in the oscillatory rotor speed of the generator is involved; stability performance of the system is improved. The non-linear simulation results are presented under wide range of operating conditions; disturbances at different locations as well as for various fault clearing sequences to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller and their ability to provide efficient damping of low frequency oscillations. Further, all the simulations results are compared with a conventionally designed power system stabilizer to show the superiority of the proposed design approach.

Performance Improvement in Internally Finned Tube by Shape Optimization

Predictions of flow and heat transfer characteristics and shape optimization in internally finned circular tubes have been performed on three-dimensional periodically fully developed turbulent flow and thermal fields. For a trapezoidal fin profile, the effects of fin height h, upper fin widths d1, lower fin widths d2, and helix angle of fin ? on transport phenomena are investigated for the condition of fin number of N = 30. The CFD and mathematical optimization technique are coupled in order to optimize the shape of internally finned tube. The optimal solutions of the design variables (i.e., upper and lower fin widths, fin height and helix angle) are numerically obtained by minimizing the pressure loss and maximizing the heat transfer rate, simultaneously, for the limiting conditions of d1 = 0.5~1.5 mm, d2 = 0.5~1.5 mm, h= 0.5~1.5mm, ? = 10~30 degrees. The fully developed flow and thermal fields are predicted using the finite volume method and the optimization is carried out by means of the multi-objective genetic algorithm that is widely used in the constrained nonlinear optimization problem.

Simulation and Optimization of Mechanisms made of Micro-molded Components

The Institute of Product Development is dealing with the development, design and dimensioning of micro components and systems as a member of the Collaborative Research Centre 499 “Design, Production and Quality Assurance of Molded micro components made of Metallic and Ceramic Materials". Because of technological restrictions in the miniaturization of conventional manufacturing techniques, shape and material deviations cannot be scaled down in the same proportion as the micro parts, rendering components with relatively wide tolerance fields. Systems that include such components should be designed with this particularity in mind, often requiring large clearance. On the end, the output of such systems results variable and prone to dynamical instability. To save production time and resources, every study of these effects should happen early in the product development process and base on computer simulation to avoid costly prototypes. A suitable method is proposed here and exemplary applied to a micro technology demonstrator developed by the CRC499. It consists of a one stage planetary gear train in a sun-planet-ring configuration, with input through the sun gear and output through the carrier. The simulation procedure relies on ordinary Multi Body Simulation methods and subsequently adds other techniques to further investigate details of the system-s behavior and to predict its response. The selection of the relevant parameters and output functions followed the engineering standards for regular sized gear trains. The first step is to quantify the variability and to reveal the most critical points of the system, performed through a whole-mechanism Sensitivity Analysis. Due to the lack of previous knowledge about the system-s behavior, different DOE methods involving small and large amount of experiments were selected to perform the SA. In this particular case the parameter space can be divided into two well defined groups, one of them containing the gear-s profile information and the other the components- spatial location. This has been exploited to explore the different DOE techniques more promptly. A reduced set of parameters is derived for further investigation and to feed the final optimization process, whether as optimization parameters or as external perturbation collective. The 10 most relevant perturbation factors and 4 to 6 prospective variable parameters are considered in a new, simplified model. All of the parameters are affected by the mentioned production variability. The objective functions of interest are based on scalar output-s variability measures, so the problem becomes an optimization under robustness and reliability constrains. The study shows an initial step on the development path of a method to design and optimize complex micro mechanisms composed of wide tolerated elements accounting for the robustness and reliability of the systems- output.

Interactive Concept-based Search using MOEA:The Hierarchical Preferences Case

An IEC technique is described for a multi-objective search of conceptual solutions. The survivability of solutions is influenced by both model-based fitness and subjective human preferences. The concepts- preferences are articulated via a hierarchy of sub-concepts. The suggested method produces an objectivesubjective front. Academic example is employed to demonstrate the proposed approach.

A Study of Gas Metal Arc Welding Affecting Mechanical Properties of Austenitic Stainless Steel AISI 304

The objective of this research was to study influence parameters affecting to mechanical property of austenitic stainless steel grade 304 (AISI 304) with Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW). The research was applying factorial design experiment, which have following interested parameters: welding current at 80, 90, and 100 Amps, welding speeds at 250, 300, and 350 mm/min, and shield gas of 75% Ar + 25% CO2, 70% Ar + 25% CO2 + 5% O2 and 69.5% Ar + 25% CO2 + 5% O2 + 0.5% He gas. The study was done in following aspects: ultimate tensile strength and elongation. A research study of ultimate tensile strength found that main factor effect, which had the highest strength to AISI 304 welding was shield gas of 70% Ar + 25% CO2 + 5% O2 at average of 954.81 N/mm2. Result of the highest elongation was showed significantly different at interaction effect between shield gas of 69.5%Ar+25%CO2+5%O2+.5%He and welding speed at 250 mm/min at 47.94%.

Multi-Objective Planning and Operation of Water Supply Systems Subject to Climate Change

Many water supply systems in Australia are currently undergoing significant reconfiguration due to reductions in long term average rainfall and resulting low inflows to water supply reservoirs since the second half of the 20th century. When water supply systems undergo change, it is necessary to develop new operating rules, which should consider climate, because the climate change is likely to further reduce inflows. In addition, water resource systems are increasingly intended to be operated to meet complex and multiple objectives representing social, economic, environmental and sustainability criteria. This is further complicated by conflicting preferences on these objectives from diverse stakeholders. This paper describes a methodology to develop optimum operating rules for complex multi-reservoir systems undergoing significant change, considering all of the above issues. The methodology is demonstrated using the Grampians water supply system in northwest Victoria, Australia. Initial work conducted on the project is also presented in this paper.

Integrated Subset Split for Balancing Network Utilization and Quality of Routing

The overlay approach has been widely used by many service providers for Traffic Engineering (TE) in large Internet backbones. In the overlay approach, logical connections are set up between edge nodes to form a full mesh virtual network on top of the physical topology. IP routing is then run over the virtual network. Traffic engineering objectives are achieved through carefully routing logical connections over the physical links. Although the overlay approach has been implemented in many operational networks, it has a number of well-known scaling issues. This paper proposes a new approach to achieve traffic engineering without full-mesh overlaying with the help of integrated approach and equal subset split method. Traffic engineering needs to determine the optimal routing of traffic over the existing network infrastructure by efficiently allocating resource in order to optimize traffic performance on an IP network. Even though constraint-based routing [1] of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is developed to address this need, since it is not widely tested or debugged, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) resort to TE methods under Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), which is the most commonly used intra-domain routing protocol. Determining OSPF link weights for optimal network performance is an NP-hard problem. As it is not possible to solve this problem, we present a subset split method to improve the efficiency and performance by minimizing the maximum link utilization in the network via a small number of link weight modifications. The results of this method are compared against results of MPLS architecture [9] and other heuristic methods.

Analysis of the Genetic Sequences of PCV2 Virus in Mexico

These All pig-producing countries from around the world report the presence of Postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS.) In America, PCV2 has been recognized in Canada, United States and Brazil. Knowledge concerning the genetic sequences of PMWS has been very important. In Mexico, there is no report describing the genetic sequences and variations of the PCV2 virus present around the country. For this reason, the main objective was to describe the homology and genetic sequences of the PCV2 virus obtained from different regions of Mexico. The results show that in Mexico are present both subgenotypes \"a\" and \"b\" of this virus and the homologies are from 89 to 99%. Regarding with the aminoacid sequence, three major heterogenic regions were present in the position 59-91, 123–136 and 185–210. This study presents the results of the first genetic characterization of PCV2 in production herds from Mexico.

Strategies for Developing e-LMS for Tanzania Secondary Schools

Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated, hence face a number of problems in getting learning materials resulting in poor performance in National examinations. E-learning as defined to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. There has been effort to improve secondary school education using ICT through several projects. ICT for e-learning to Tanzania rural secondary school is one of the research projects conceived by the University of Dar-es-Salaam through its College of Engineering and Technology. The main objective of the project is to develop a tool to enable ICT support rural secondary school. The project is comprehensive with a number of components, one being development of e-learning management system (e-LMS) for Tanzania secondary schools. This paper presents strategies of developing e-LMS. It shows the importance of integrating action research methodology with the modeling methods as presented by model driven architecture (MDA) and the usefulness of Unified Modeling Language (UML) on the issue of modeling. The benefit of MDA will go along with the development based on software development life cycle (SDLC) process, from analysis and requirement phase through design and implementation stages as employed by object oriented system analysis and design approach. The paper also explains the employment of open source code reuse from open source learning platforms for the context sensitive development of the e-LMS for Tanzania secondary schools.

Multimedia E-Books for Digital Mechanism and Gear Library

This paper presents a digital engineering library – the Digital Mechanism and Gear Library, DMG-Lib – providing a multimedia collection of e-books, pictures, videos and animations in the domain of mechanisms and machines. The specific characteristic about DMG-Lib is the enrichment and cross-linking of the different sources. DMG-Lib e-books not only present pages as pixel images but also selected figures augmented with interactive animations. The presentation of animations in e-books increases the clearness of the information. To present the multimedia e-books and make them available in the DMG-Lib internet portal a special e-book reader called StreamBook was developed for optimal presentation of digitized books and to enable reading the e-books as well as working efficiently and individually with the enriched information. The objective is to support different user tasks ranging from information retrieval to development and design of mechanisms.

Conceptual Investigation of Short-Columns and Masonary Infill Frames Effect in the Earthquakes

This paper highlights the importance of the selection of the building-s wall material,and the shortcomings of the most commonly used framed structures with masonry infills .The objective of this study is investigating the behavior of infill walls as structural components in existing structures.Structural infill walls are very important in structural behavior under earthquake effects. Structural capacity under the effect of earthquake,displacement and relative story displacement are affected by the structural irregularities .The presence of nonstructural masonry infill walls can modify extensively the global seismic behavior of framed buildings .The stability and integrity of reinforced concrete frames are enhanced by masonry infill walls. Masonry infill walls alter displacement and base shear of the frame as well. Short columns have great importance during earthquakes,because their failure may lead to additional structural failures and result in total building collapse. Consequently the effects of short columns are considered in this study.

Wheat Bran Carbohydrates as Substrate for Bifidobacterium lactis Development

The present study addresses problems and solutions related to new functional food production. Wheat (Triticum aestivum L) bran obtained from industrial mill company “Dobeles dzirnavieks”, was used to investigate them as raw material like nutrients for Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12. Enzymatic hydrolysis of wheat bran starch was carried out by α-amylase from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (Sigma Aldrich). The Viscozyme L purchased from (Sigma Aldrich) were used for reducing released sugar. Bifidibacterium lactis Bb-12 purchased from (Probio-Tec® CHR Hansen) was cultivated in enzymatically hydrolysed wheat bran mash. All procedures ensured the number of active Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12 in the final product reached 105 CFUg-1. After enzymatic and bacterial fermentations sample were freeze dried for analysis of chemical compounds. All experiments were performed at Faculty of Food Technology of Latvia University of Agriculture in January- March 2013. The obtained results show that both types of wheat bran (enzymatically treated and non-treated) influenced the fermentative activity and number of Bifidibacterium lactis Bb-12 viable in wheat bran mash. Amount of acidity strongly increase during the wheat bran mash fermentation. The main objective of this work was to create low-energy functional enzymatically and bacterially treated food from wheat bran using enzymatic hydrolysis of carbohydrates and following cultivation of Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12.

A Semi-Fragile Signature based Scheme for Ownership Identification and Color Image Authentication

In this paper, a novel scheme is proposed for ownership identification and authentication using color images by deploying Cryptography and Digital Watermarking as underlaying technologies. The former is used to compute the contents based hash and the latter to embed the watermark. The host image that will claim to be the rightful owner is first transformed from RGB to YST color space exclusively designed for watermarking based applications. Geometrically YS ÔèÑ T and T channel corresponds to the chrominance component of color image, therefore suitable for embedding the watermark. The T channel is divided into 4×4 nonoverlapping blocks. The size of block is important for enhanced localization, security and low computation. Each block along with ownership information is then deployed by SHA160, a one way hash function to compute the content based hash, which is always unique and resistant against birthday attack instead of using MD5 that may raise the condition i.e. H(m)=H(m'). The watermark payload varies from block to block and computed by the variance factorα . The quality of watermarked images is quite high both subjectively and objectively. Our scheme is blind, computationally fast and exactly locates the tampered region.

Hybrid Control of Networked Multi-Vehicle System Considering Limitation of Communication Range

In this research, we study a control method of a multivehicle system while considering the limitation of communication range for each vehicles. When we control networked vehicles with limitation of communication range, it is important to control the communication network structure of a multi-vehicle system in order to keep the network-s connectivity. From this, we especially aim to control the network structure to the target structure. We formulate the networked multi-vehicle system with some disturbance and the communication constraints as a hybrid dynamical system, and then we study the optimal control problems of the system. It is shown that the system converge to the objective network structure in finite time when the system is controlled by the receding horizon method. Additionally, the optimal control probrems are convertible into the mixed integer problems and these problems are solvable by some branch and bound algorithm.

Effects of pH, Temperature, Enzyme and Substrate Concentration on Xylooligosaccharides Production

Agricultural residue such as oil palm fronds (OPF) is cheap, widespread and available throughout the year. Hemicelluloses extracted from OPF can be hydrolyzed to their monomers and used in production of xylooligosaccharides (XOs). The objective of the present study was to optimize the enzymatic hydrolysis process of OPF hemicellulose by varying pH, temperature, enzyme and substrate concentration for production of XOs. Hemicelluloses was extracted from OPF by using 3 M potassium hydroxide (KOH) at temperature of 40°C for 4 hrs and stirred at 400 rpm. The hemicellulose was then hydrolyzed using Trichoderma longibrachiatum xylanase at different pH, temperature, enzyme and substrate concentration. XOs were characterized based on reducing sugar determination. The optimum conditions to produced XOs from OPF hemicellulose was obtained at pH 4.6, temperature of 40°C , enzyme concentration of 2 U/mL and 2% substrate concentration. The results established the suitability of oil palm fronds as raw material for production of XOs.

Dynamic Bayesian Networks Modeling for Inferring Genetic Regulatory Networks by Search Strategy: Comparison between Greedy Hill Climbing and MCMC Methods

Using Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBN) to model genetic regulatory networks from gene expression data is one of the major paradigms for inferring the interactions among genes. Averaging a collection of models for predicting network is desired, rather than relying on a single high scoring model. In this paper, two kinds of model searching approaches are compared, which are Greedy hill-climbing Search with Restarts (GSR) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The GSR is preferred in many papers, but there is no such comparison study about which one is better for DBN models. Different types of experiments have been carried out to try to give a benchmark test to these approaches. Our experimental results demonstrated that on average the MCMC methods outperform the GSR in accuracy of predicted network, and having the comparable performance in time efficiency. By proposing the different variations of MCMC and employing simulated annealing strategy, the MCMC methods become more efficient and stable. Apart from comparisons between these approaches, another objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using DBN modeling approaches for inferring gene networks from few snapshots of high dimensional gene profiles. Through synthetic data experiments as well as systematic data experiments, the experimental results revealed how the performances of these approaches can be influenced as the target gene network varies in the network size, data size, as well as system complexity.

Data Mining on the Router Logs for Statistical Application Classification

With the advance of information technology in the new era the applications of Internet to access data resources has steadily increased and huge amount of data have become accessible in various forms. Obviously, the network providers and agencies, look after to prevent electronic attacks that may be harmful or may be related to terrorist applications. Thus, these have facilitated the authorities to under take a variety of methods to protect the special regions from harmful data. One of the most important approaches is to use firewall in the network facilities. The main objectives of firewalls are to stop the transfer of suspicious packets in several ways. However because of its blind packet stopping, high process power requirements and expensive prices some of the providers are reluctant to use the firewall. In this paper we proposed a method to find a discriminate function to distinguish between usual packets and harmful ones by the statistical processing on the network router logs. By discriminating these data, an administrator may take an approach action against the user. This method is very fast and can be used simply in adjacent with the Internet routers.

An Immunosensor for Bladder Cancer Screening

Nuclear matrix protein 22 (NMP22) is a FDA approved biomarker for bladder cancer. The objective of this study is to develop a simple NMP22 immumosensor (NMP22-IMS) for accurate measurement of NMP22. The NMP22-IMS was constructed with NMP22 antibody immobilized on screen-printed carbon electrodes. The construction procedures and antibody immobilization are simple. Results showed that the NMP22-IMS has an excellent (r2³0.95) response range (20 – 100 ng/mL). In conclusion, a simple and reliable NMP22-IMS was developed, capable of precisely determining urine NMP22 level.

Biodegradation of Cyanide by a Novel Cyanidedegrading Bacterium

The objectives were to identify cyanide-degrading bacteria and study cyanide removal efficiency. Agrobacterium tumefaciens SUTS 1 was isolated. This is a new strain of microorganisms for cyanide degradation. The maximum growth rate of SUTS 1 obtained 4.7 × 108 CFU/ml within 4 days. The cyanide removal efficiency was studied at 25, 50, and 150 mg/L cyanide. The residual cyanide, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH, and cell counts were analyzed. At 25 and 50 mg/L cyanide, SUTS 1 obtained similar removal efficiency approximately 87.50%. At 150 mg/L cyanide, SUTS 1 enhanced the cyanide removal efficiency up to 97.90%. Cell counts of SUTS 1 increased when the cyanide concentration was set at lower. The ammonia increased when the removal efficiency increased. The nitrate increased when the ammonia decreased but the nitrite did not detect in all experiments. pH values also increased when the cyanide concentrations were set at higher.

Foot Anthropometry of Primary School Children in the South of Thailand

The objective of the research was to study of foot anthropometry of children aged 7-12 years in the South of Thailand Thirty-three dimensions were measured on 305 male and 295 female subjects with 3 age ranges (7-12 years old). The instrumentation consists of four types of anthropometer, digital vernier caliper, digital height gauge and measuring tape. The mean values and standard deviations of average age, height, and weight of the male subjects were 9.52(±1.70) years, 137.80(±11.55) cm, and 37.57(±11.65) kg. Female average age, height, and weight subjects were 9.53(±1.70) years, 137.88(±11.55) cm, and 34.90(±11.57) kg respectively. The comparison of the 33 comparison measured anthropometric. Between male and female subjects were sexual differences in size on women in almost all areas of significance (p