Abstract: Weather disaster events were frequent and caused loss
of lives and property in Taiwan recently. Excessive concentration of
population and lacking of integrated planning led to Taiwanese coastal
zone face the impacts of climate change directly. Comparing to many
countries which have already set up legislation, competent authorities
and national adaptation strategies, the ability of coastal management
adapting to climate change is still insufficient in Taiwan. Therefore, it
is necessary to establish a complete institutional arrangement for
coastal management due to climate change in order to protect
environment and sustain socio-economic development. This paper
firstly reviews the impact of climate change on Taiwanese coastal
zone. Secondly, development of Taiwanese institutional arrangement
of coastal management is introduced. Followed is the analysis of four
dimensions of legal basis, competent authority, scientific and financial
support and international cooperations of institutional arrangement.
The results show that Taiwanese government shall: 1) integrate climate
change issue into Coastal Act, Wetland Act and territorial planning
Act and pass them; 2) establish the high level competent authority for
coastal management; 3) set up the climate change disaster coordinate
platform; 4) link scientific information and decision markers; 5)
establish the climate change adjustment fund; 6) participate in
international climate change organizations and meetings actively; 7)
cooperate with near countries to exchange experiences.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are currently
receiving significant attention due to their unlimited potential. These
networks are used for various applications, such as habitat
monitoring, automation, agriculture, and security. The efficient nodeenergy
utilization is one of important performance factors in wireless
sensor networks because sensor nodes operate with limited battery
power. In this paper, we proposed the MiSense hierarchical cluster
based routing algorithm (MiCRA) to extend the lifetime of sensor
networks and to maintain a balanced energy consumption of nodes.
MiCRA is an extension of the HEED algorithm with two levels of
cluster heads. The performance of the proposed protocol has been
examined and evaluated through a simulation study. The simulation
results clearly show that MiCRA has a better performance in terms of
lifetime than HEED. Indeed, MiCRA our proposed protocol can
effectively extend the network lifetime without other critical
overheads and performance degradation. It has been noted that there
is about 35% of energy saving for MiCRA during the clustering
process and 65% energy savings during the routing process compared
to the HEED algorithm.
Abstract: Synthesis gas manufacturing by steam reforming of hydrocarbons is an important industrial process. High endothermic nature of the process makes it one of the most cost and heat intensive processes. In the present work, composite effect of different inert gases on synthesis gas yield, feed gas conversion and temperature distribution along the reactor length has been studied using a heterogeneous model. Mathematical model was developed as a first stage and validated against the existing process models. With the addition of inert gases, a higher yield of synthesis gas is observed. Simultaneously the rector outlet temperature drops to as low as 810 K. It was found that Xenon gives the highest yield and conversion while Helium gives the lowest temperature. Using Xenon inert gas 20 percent reduction in outlet temperature was observed compared to traditional case.
Abstract: This paper presents two simplified models to
determine nodal voltages in power distribution networks. These
models allow estimating the impact of the installation of reactive
power compensations equipments like fixed or switched capacitor
banks. The procedure used to develop the models is similar to the
procedure used to develop linear power flow models of transmission
lines, which have been widely used in optimization problems of
operation planning and system expansion. The steady state non-linear
load flow equations are approximated by linear equations relating the
voltage amplitude and currents. The approximations of the linear
equations are based on the high relationship between line resistance
and line reactance (ratio R/X), which is valid for power distribution
networks. The performance and accuracy of the models are evaluated
through comparisons with the exact results obtained from the
solution of the load flow using two test networks: a hypothetical
network with 23 nodes and a real network with 217 nodes.
Abstract: As a result of urbanization, the unpredictable growth of industry and transport, production of chemicals, military activities, etc. the concentration of anthropogenic toxicants spread in nature exceeds all the permissible standards. Most dangerous among these contaminants are organic compounds having great persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity along with our awareness of their prominent occurrence in the environment and food chain. Among natural ecological tools, plants still occupying above 40% of the world land, until recently, were considered as organisms having only a limited ecological potential, accumulating in plant biomass and partially volatilizing contaminants of different structure. However, analysis of experimental data of the last two decades revealed the essential role of plants in environment remediation due to ability to carry out intracellular degradation processes leading to partial or complete decomposition of carbon skeleton of different structure contaminants. Though, phytoremediation technologies still are in research and development, their various applications have been successfully used. The paper aims to analyze mechanisms of organic contaminants uptake and detoxification in plants, being the less studied issue in evaluation and exploration of plants potential for environment remediation.
Abstract: In some real applications of Statistical Process Control
it is necessary to design a control chart to not detect small process
shifts, but keeping a good performance to detect moderate and large
shifts in the quality. In this work we develop a new quality control
chart, the synthetic T2 control chart, that can be designed to cope with
this objective. A multi-objective optimization is carried out employing
Genetic Algorithms, finding the Pareto-optimal front of
non-dominated solutions for this optimization problem.
Abstract: Fly ash is a significant waste that is released of
thermal power plants and defined as very fine particles that are drifted upward with up taken by the flue gases due to the burning of
used coal [1]. The fly-ash is capable of removing organic
contaminants in consequence of high carbon content, a large surface area per unit volume and contained heavy metals. Therefore, fly ash
is used as an effective coagulant and adsorbent by pelletization [2, 3].
In this study, the possibility of use of fly ash taken from Turkey like low-cost adsorbent for adsorption of zinc ions found in waste
water was investigated. The fly ash taken from Turkey was pelletized with bentonite and molass to evaluate the adsorption capaticity. For
this purpose; analyses such as sieve analysis, XRD, XRF, FTIR and SEM were performed. As a result, it was seen that pellets prepared
from fly ash, bentonite and molass would be used for zinc adsorption.
Abstract: This research was conducted for the first time at the
southeastern coasts of the Caspian Sea in order to evaluate the
performance of osteichthyes cooperatives through production (catch)
function. Using one of the indirect valuation methods in this research,
contributory factors in catch were identified and were inserted into
the function as independent variables. In order to carry out this
research, the performance of 25 Osteichthyes catching cooperatives
in the utilization year of 2009 which were involved in fishing in
Miankale wildlife refuge region. The contributory factors in catch
were divided into groups of economic, ecological and biological
factors. In the mentioned function, catch rate of the cooperative were
inserted into as the dependant variable and fourteen partial variables
in terms of nine general variables as independent variables. Finally,
after function estimation, seven variables were rendered significant at
99 percent reliably level. The results of the function estimation
indicated that human resource (fisherman quantity) had the greatest
positive effect on catch rate with an influence coefficient of 1.7 while
weather conditions had the greatest negative effect on the catch rate
of cooperatives with an influence coefficient of -2.07. Moreover,
factors like member's share, experience and fisherman training and
fishing effort played the main roles in the catch rate of cooperative
with influence coefficients of 0.81, 0.5 and 0.21, respectively.
Abstract: A 10bit, 40 MSps, sample and hold, implemented in 0.18-μm CMOS technology with 3.3V supply, is presented for application in the front-end stage of an analog-to-digital converter. Topology selection, biasing, compensation and common mode feedback are discussed. Cascode technique has been used to increase the dc gain. The proposed opamp provides 149MHz unity-gain bandwidth (wu), 80 degree phase margin and a differential peak to peak output swing more than 2.5v. The circuit has 55db Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), using the improved fully differential two stage operational amplifier of 91.7dB gain. The power dissipation of the designed sample and hold is 4.7mw. The designed system demonstrates relatively suitable response in different process, temperature and supply corners (PVT corners).
Abstract: This paper describes a CMOS four-quadrant
multiplier intended for use in the front-end receiver by utilizing the
square-law characteristic of the MOS transistor in the saturation
region. The circuit is based on 0.35 um CMOS technology simulated
using HSPICE software. The mixer has a third-order inter the power
consumption is 271uW from a single 1.2V power supply. One of the
features of the proposed design is using two MOS transistors
limitation to reduce the supply voltage, which leads to reduce the
power consumption. This technique provides a GHz bandwidth
response and low power consumption.
Abstract: Nowadays, engineering ceramics have significant
applications in different industries such as; automotive, aerospace,
electrical, electronics and even martial industries due to their
attractive physical and mechanical properties like very high hardness
and strength at elevated temperatures, chemical stability, low friction
and high wear resistance. However, these interesting properties plus
low heat conductivity make their machining processes too hard,
costly and time consuming. Many attempts have been made in order
to make the grinding process of engineering ceramics easier and
many scientists have tried to find proper techniques to economize
ceramics' machining processes. This paper proposes a new diamond
plunge grinding technique using ultrasonic vibration for grinding
Alumina ceramic (Al2O3). For this purpose, a set of laboratory
equipments have been designed and simulated using Finite Element
Method (FEM) and constructed in order to be used in various
measurements. The results obtained have been compared with the
conventional plunge grinding process without ultrasonic vibration
and indicated that the surface roughness and fracture strength
improved and the grinding forces decreased.
Abstract: The dynamics of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) traffic
over Ethernet between two computers are analyzed using nonlinear
dynamics which shows that there are two clear regimes in the data
flow: free flow and saturated. The two most important variables
affecting this are the packet size and packet flow rate. However,
this transition is due to a transcritical bifurcation rather than phase
transition in models such as in vehicle traffic or theorized large-scale
computer network congestion. It is hoped this model will help lay
the groundwork for further research on the dynamics of networks,
especially computer networks.
Abstract: Developing countries are facing a problem of slums and there appears to be no fool proof solution to eradicate them. For improving the quality of life there are three approaches of slum development and In-situ up-gradation approach is found to be the best one, while the relocation approach has proved to be failure. Factors responsible for failure of relocation projects are needed to be assessed, which is the basic aim of the paper. Factors responsible for failure of relocation projects are loss of livelihood, security of tenure and inefficiency of the Government. These factors are traced out & mapped from the examples of Western & Indian cities. National habitat, Resettlement policy emphasized relationship between shelter and work place. SRA has identified 55 slums for relocation due reservation of land uses, security of tenure and non- notified status of slums. The policy guidelines have been suggested for successful relocation projects. KeywordsLivelihood, Relocation, Slums, Urban poor.
Abstract: High speed networks provide realtime variable bit rate
service with diversified traffic flow characteristics and quality
requirements. The variable bit rate traffic has stringent delay and
packet loss requirements. The burstiness of the correlated traffic
makes dynamic buffer management highly desirable to satisfy the
Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. This paper presents an
algorithm for optimization of adaptive buffer allocation scheme for
traffic based on loss of consecutive packets in data-stream and buffer
occupancy level. Buffer is designed to allow the input traffic to be
partitioned into different priority classes and based on the input
traffic behavior it controls the threshold dynamically. This algorithm
allows input packets to enter into buffer if its occupancy level is less
than the threshold value for priority of that packet. The threshold is
dynamically varied in runtime based on packet loss behavior. The
simulation is run for two priority classes of the input traffic –
realtime and non-realtime classes. The simulation results show that
Adaptive Partial Buffer Sharing (ADPBS) has better performance
than Static Partial Buffer Sharing (SPBS) and First In First Out
(FIFO) queue under the same traffic conditions.
Abstract: The necessity of accurate and timely field data is
shared among organizations engaged in fundamentally different
activities, public services or commercial operations. Basically, there
are three major components in the process of the qualitative research:
data collection, interpretation and organization of data, and analytic
process. Representative technological advancements in terms of
innovation have been made in mobile devices (mobile phone, PDA-s,
tablets, laptops, etc). Resources that can be potentially applied on the
data collection activity for field researches in order to improve this
process.
This paper presents and discuss the main features of a mobile
phone based solution for field data collection, composed of basically
three modules: a survey editor, a server web application and a client
mobile application. The data gathering process begins with the
survey creation module, which enables the production of tailored
questionnaires. The field workforce receives the questionnaire(s) on
their mobile phones to collect the interviews responses and sending
them back to a server for immediate analysis.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a Perceptually Optimized Foveation based Embedded ZeroTree Image Coder (POEFIC) that introduces a perceptual weighting to wavelet coefficients prior to control SPIHT encoding algorithm in order to reach a targeted bit rate with a perceptual quality improvement with respect to a given bit rate a fixation point which determines the region of interest ROI. The paper also, introduces a new objective quality metric based on a Psychovisual model that integrates the properties of the HVS that plays an important role in our POEFIC quality assessment. Our POEFIC coder is based on a vision model that incorporates various masking effects of human visual system HVS perception. Thus, our coder weights the wavelet coefficients based on that model and attempts to increase the perceptual quality for a given bit rate and observation distance. The perceptual weights for all wavelet subbands are computed based on 1) foveation masking to remove or reduce considerable high frequencies from peripheral regions 2) luminance and Contrast masking, 3) the contrast sensitivity function CSF to achieve the perceptual decomposition weighting. The new perceptually optimized codec has the same complexity as the original SPIHT techniques. However, the experiments results show that our coder demonstrates very good performance in terms of quality measurement.
Abstract: Network layer multicast, i.e. IP multicast, even after
many years of research, development and standardization, is not
deployed in large scale due to both technical (e.g. upgrading of
routers) and political (e.g. policy making and negotiation) issues.
Researchers looked for alternatives and proposed application/overlay
multicast where multicast functions are handled by end hosts, not
network layer routers. Member hosts wishing to receive multicast
data form a multicast delivery tree. The intermediate hosts in the tree
act as routers also, i.e. they forward data to the lower hosts in the
tree. Unlike IP multicast, where a router cannot leave the tree until all
members below it leave, in overlay multicast any member can leave
the tree at any time thus disjoining the tree and disrupting the data
dissemination. All the disrupted hosts have to rejoin the tree. This
characteristic of the overlay multicast causes multicast tree unstable,
data loss and rejoin overhead. In this paper, we propose that each node
sets its leaving time from the tree and sends join request to a number
of nodes in the tree. The nodes in the tree will reject the request if
their leaving time is earlier than the requesting node otherwise they
will accept the request. The node can join at one of the accepting
nodes. This makes the tree more stable as the nodes will join the tree
according to their leaving time, earliest leaving time node being at the
leaf of the tree. Some intermediate nodes may not follow their leaving
time and leave earlier than their leaving time thus disrupting the tree.
For this, we propose a proactive recovery mechanism so that disrupted
nodes can rejoin the tree at predetermined nodes immediately. We
have shown by simulation that there is less overhead when joining
the multicast tree and the recovery time of the disrupted nodes is
much less than the previous works. Keywords
Abstract: A model predictive controller based on recursive learning is proposed. In this SISO adaptive controller, a model is automatically updated using simple recursive equations. The identified models are then stored in the memory to be re-used in the future. The decision for model update is taken based on a new control performance index. The new controller allows the use of simple linear model predictive controllers in the control of nonlinear time varying processes.
Abstract: In this paper, a tooth shape optimization method for
cogging torque reduction in Permanent Magnet (PM) motors is
developed by using the Reduced Basis Technique (RBT) coupled by
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Design of Experiments (DOE)
methods. The primary objective of the method is to reduce the
enormous number of design variables required to define the tooth
shape. RBT is a weighted combination of several basis shapes. The
aim of the method is to find the best combination using the weights
for each tooth shape as the design variables. A multi-level design
process is developed to find suitable basis shapes or trial shapes at
each level that can be used in the reduced basis technique. Each level
is treated as a separated optimization problem until the required
objective – minimum cogging torque – is achieved. The process is
started with geometrically simple basis shapes that are defined by
their shape co-ordinates. The experimental design of Taguchi method
is used to build the approximation model and to perform
optimization. This method is demonstrated on the tooth shape
optimization of a 8-poles/12-slots PM motor.
Abstract: The drainage Estimating is an important factor in
dam management. In this paper, we use fuzzy support vector
regression (FSVR) to predict the drainage of the Sirikrit Dam at
Uttaradit province, Thailand. The results show that the FSVR is a
suitable method in drainage estimating.