Abstract: Design for Disassembly (DfD) aims to reuse the
structural components instead of demolition followed by recycling of
the demolition debris. This concept preserves the invested embodied
energy of materials, thus reducing inputs of new embodied energy
during materials reprocessing or remanufacturing. Both analytical and
experimental research on a proposed DfD beam-column connection
for use in residential apartments is currently investigated at the
National University of Singapore in collaboration with the Housing
and Development Board of Singapore. The present study reports on
the results of a numerical analysis of the proposed connection utilizing
finite element analysis. The numerical model was calibrated and
validated by comparison against experimental results. Results of a
parametric study will also be presented and discussed.
Abstract: This paper presents a time control liquids mixing
system in the tanks as an application of fuzzy time control discrete
model. The system is designed for a wide range of industrial
applications. The simulation design of control system has three
inputs: volume, viscosity, and selection of product, along with the
three external control adjustments for the system calibration or to
take over the control of the system autonomously in local or
distributed environment. There are four controlling elements: rotatory
motor, grinding motor, heating and cooling units, and valves
selection, each with time frame limit. The system consists of three
controlled variables measurement through its sensing mechanism for
feed back control. This design also facilitates the liquids mixing
system to grind certain materials in tanks and mix with fluids under
required temperature controlled environment to achieve certain
viscous level. Design of: fuzzifier, inference engine, rule base,
deffuzifiers, and discrete event control system, is discussed. Time
control fuzzy rules are formulated, applied and tested using
MATLAB simulation for the system.
Abstract: Installation of power compensation equipment in
some cases places additional buses into the system. Therefore, a total
number of power flow equations and voltage unknowns increase due
to additional locations of installed devices. In this circumstance, power flow calculation is more complicated. It may result in a
computational convergence problem. This paper presents a power flow calculation by using Newton-Raphson iterative method together
with the proposed load transfer technique. This concept is to eliminate additional buses by transferring installed loads at the new buses to existing two adjacent buses. Thus, the total number of power
flow equations is not changed. The overall computational speed is
expectedly shorter than that of solving the problem without applying the load transfer technique. A 15-bus test system is employed for test
to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed load transfer technique. As a result, the total number of iteration required and execution time
is significantly reduced.
Abstract: Recently, as information industry and mobile
communication technology are developing, this study is conducted on
the new concept of intelligent structures and maintenance techniques
that applied wireless sensor network, USN (Ubiquitous Sensor
Network), to social infrastructures such as civil and architectural
structures on the basis of the concept of Ubiquitous Computing that
invisibly provides human life with computing, along with mutually
cooperating, compromising and connecting networks each other by
having computers within all objects around us.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the capability
of wireless communication of sensor node embedded in reinforced
concrete structure with a basic experiment on an electric wave
permeability of sensor node by fabricating molding with variables of
concrete thickness and steel bars that are mostly used in constructing
structures to determine the feasibility of application to constructing
structures with USN.
At this time, with putting the pitches of steel bars, the thickness of
concrete placed, and the intensity of RF signal of a
transmitter-receiver as variables and when wireless communication
module was installed inside, the possible communication distance of
plain concrete and the possible communication distance by the pitches
of steel bars was measured in the horizontal and vertical direction
respectively. Besides, for the precise measurement of diminution of an
electric wave, the magnitude of an electric wave in the range of used
frequencies was measured by using Spectrum Analyzer. The
phenomenon of diminution of an electric wave was numerically
analyzed and the effect of the length of wavelength of frequencies was
analyzed by the properties of a frequency band area.
As a result of studying the feasibility of an application to
constructing structures with wireless sensor, in case of plain concrete,
it shows 45cm for the depth of permeability and in case of reinforced
concrete with the pitches of 5cm, it shows 37cm and 45cm for the
pitches of 15cm.
Abstract: The major aim of this paper is to investigate the opposition politics in Africa. The paper also examines the status and the role, the contributions and the weaknesses of opposition1 political parties in Africa, particularly in transitional democracies that emerged in the 1990s. In Africa, many of the opposition parties appear or become active only during an election, and disappear when the election is over. It is found out that most of the opposition parties in Africa are established around the personalities of individuals, lack internal democracy, suffer from inter-party and intra-party conflicts, have severe shortage of finance, and lack strong base and experience. Their weaknesses also include bad organization and weak connection with the popular constituencies. The paper concludes that most of the weaknesses of the African opposition parties emanate from the incumbents- hostile policies, which are mostly aimed at fragmenting and weakening the opposition groups.
Abstract: Environment-assisted cracking (EAC) is one of the most serious causes of structural failure over a broad range of industrial applications including offshore structures. In EAC condition there is not a definite relation such as Paris equation in Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM). According to studying and searching a lot what the researchers said either a material has contact with hydrogen or any other corrosive environment, phenomenon of electrical and chemical reactions of material with its environment will be happened. In the literature, there are many different works to consider fatigue crack growing and solve it but they are experimental works. Thus, in this paper, authors have an aim to evaluate mathematically the pervious works in LEFM. Obviously, if an environment is more sour and corrosive, the changes of stress intensity factor is more and the calculation of stress intensity factor is difficult. A mathematical relation to deal with the stress intensity factor during the diffusion of sour environment especially hydrogen in a marine pipeline is presented. By using this relation having and some experimental relation an analytical formulation will be presented which enables the fatigue crack growth and critical crack length under cyclic loading to be predicted. In addition, we can calculate KSCC and stress intensity factor in the pipeline caused by EAC.
Abstract: Petrology and geochemical characteristics of granitic
rocks from South Sulawesi, especially from Polewaliand Masamba
area are presented in order to elucidate their origin of magma and
geodynamic setting. The granitic rocks in these areas are dominated by
granodiorite and granite in composition. Quartz, K-feldspar and
plagioclase occur as major phases with hornblende and biotite as
major ferromagnesian minerals. All of the samples were plotted in
calc-alkaline field, show metaluminous affinity and typical of I-type
granitic rock. Harker diagram indicates that granitic rocks experienced
fractional crystallization during magmatic evolution. Both groups
displayed an extreme enrichment of LILE, LREE and a slight negative
Eu anomaly which resemble upper continental crust affinity. They
were produced from partial melting of upper continental crust and
have close relationship of sources composition within a suite. The
geochemical characteristics explained the arc related subduction
environment which later give an evidence of continent-continent
collision between Australia-derived microcontinent and Sundalandto
form continental arc environment.
Abstract: The study investigated the 2011 TPGA Ever Rich
Championship – North Bay Open spectators- on-the-site spectating
motivations, experiences, and satisfactions. The research was
conducted on a convenience sample of the on-the-spot spectators at the
North Bay Golf and Country Club. A total of 200 questionnaires were
distributed, of which 185 valid questionnaires were collected,
approaching a 92.5% response rate. The data obtained was analyzed
with statistical techniques. First, the data showed significant
differences in motivations, experiences, and satisfactions relative to
demographic variables among the on-the-spot spectators. Second,
spectating motivation, experience, and satisfaction were significantly
related to one another.
Abstract: Interest in Human Consciousness has been revived in the late 20th century from different scientific disciplines. Consciousness studies involve both its understanding and its application. In this paper, a computational model of the minimum consciousness functions necessary in my point of view for Artificial Intelligence applications is presented with the aim of improving the way computations will be made in the future. In section I, human consciousness is briefly described according to the scope of this paper. In section II, a minimum set of consciousness functions is defined - based on the literature reviewed - to be modelled, and then a computational model of these functions is presented in section III. In section IV, an analysis of the model is carried out to describe its functioning in detail.
Abstract: In order to provide and maintain effective pedagogy for the burgeoning virtual reality community, it is vital to have trained faculty in the institutions of higher education who will teach these courses and be able to make full use of their academic knowledge and expertise. As the number of online courses continues to grow, there is a need for these institutions to establish mentoring programs that will support the novice online instructor. The environment in which this takes place and the factors that ensure its success are critical to the adoption of the new instructional delivery format taught by both seasoned educators and adjunct instructors. Effective one-on-one mentoring promotes a professional, compassionate and collegial faculty who will provide a consistent and rigorous academic program for students online.
Abstract: Nowadays, OCR systems have got several
applications and are increasingly employed in daily life. Much
research has been done regarding the identification of Latin,
Japanese, and Chinese characters. However, very little investigation
has been performed regarding Farsi/Arabic characters recognition.
Probably the reason is difficulty and complexity of those characters
identification compared to the others and limitation of IT activities in
Farsi and Arabic speaking countries. In this paper, a technique has
been employed to identify isolated Farsi/Arabic characters. A chain
code based algorithm along with other significant peculiarities such
as number and location of dots and auxiliary parts, and the number of
holes existing in the isolated character has been used in this study to
identify Farsi/Arabic characters. Experimental results show the
relatively high accuracy of the method developed when it is tested on
several standard Farsi fonts.
Abstract: Over a million tonnes of cigarette butts (CBs) are produced worldwide annually. These CBs accumulate in the environment due to the poor biodegradability of the cellulose acetate filters and pose a serious environmental risk. This paper presents some of the results from a continuing study on recycling CBs into fired clay bricks. Properties including compressive strength, flexural strength, density, water absorption and thermal conductivity of fired clay bricks are reported and discussed. Furthermore, leaching of heavy metals from the manufactured clay bricks was tested. The results show that the density of fired bricks was reduced by about 8 – 30 %, depending on the percentage of CBs incorporated into the raw materials. The compressive strength of bricks tested was 12.57, 5.22 and 3.00 MPa for 2.5, 5.0 and 10 % CB content respectively. Water absorption and initial rate of absorption values increased as density, and hence porosity, of bricks decreased with increasing CB volume. The leaching test results revealed trace amounts of heavy metals.
Abstract: In this study, the powders of Ni and Ti with 50.5 at.%
Ni for 12 h were blended and cold pressed at the different pressures
(50, 75 and100 MPa).The porous product obtained after Ni-Ti
compacts were synthesized by SHS (self-propagating hightemperature
synthesis) in the different preheating temperatures (200,
250 and 300oC) and heating rates (30, 60 and 90oC/min). The effects
of the pressure, preheating temperature and heating rate were
investigated on biocompatibility in vivo. The porosity in the
synthesized products was in the range of 50.7–59.7 vol. %. The
pressure, preheating temperature and heating rate were found to have
an important effect on the biocompatibility in-vivo of the synthesized
products. Max. fibrotic tissue within the porous implant was found in
vivo periods (6 months), in which compacting pressure 100MPa.
Abstract: We report on the development of a model to
understand why the range of experience with respect to HIV
infection is so diverse, especially with respect to the latency period.
To investigate this, an agent-based approach is used to extract highlevel
behaviour which cannot be described analytically from the set
of interaction rules at the cellular level. A network of independent
matrices mimics the chain of lymph nodes. Dealing with massively
multi-agent systems requires major computational effort. However,
parallelisation methods are a natural consequence and advantage of
the multi-agent approach and, using the MPI library, are here
implemented, tested and optimized. Our current focus is on the
various implementations of the data transfer across the network.
Three communications strategies are proposed and tested, showing
that the most efficient approach is communication based on the
natural lymph-network connectivity.
Abstract: New exact three-wave solutions including periodic two-solitary solutions and doubly periodic solitary solutions for the (2+1)-dimensional asymmetric Nizhnik-Novikov- Veselov (ANNV) system are obtained using Hirota's bilinear form and generalized three-wave type of ansatz approach. It is shown that the generalized three-wave method, with the help of symbolic computation, provides an e¤ective and powerful mathematical tool for solving high dimensional nonlinear evolution equations in mathematical physics.
Abstract: In this paper, a new developed construction model of
the UPFC is proposed. The construction of this model consists of one
shunt compensation block and two series compensation blocks. In
this case, the UPFC with the new construction model will be
investigated when it is installed in multi-machine systems with nonlinear
load model. In addition, the steady–state performance of the
new model operating as impedance compensation will be presented
and compared with that obtained from the system without
compensation.
Abstract: In this paper, a delayed predator–prey system with stage
structure is investigated. Sufficient conditions for the system to have
multiple periodic solutions are obtained when the delay is sufficiently
large by applying Bendixson-s criterion. Further, some numerical
examples are given.
Abstract: DS-CDMA system is well known wireless
technology. This system suffers from MAI (Multiple Access
Interference) caused by Direct Sequence users. Multi-User Detection
schemes were introduced to detect the users- data in presence of
MAI. This paper focuses on linear multi-user detection schemes used
for data demodulation. Simulation results depict the performance of
three detectors viz-conventional detector, Decorrelating detector and
Subspace MMSE (Minimum Mean Square Error) detector. It is seen
that the performance of these detectors depends on the number of
paths and the length of Gold code used.
Abstract: In order to provide existing SOAP (Simple Object
Access Protocol)-based Web services with users who are familiar with
REST (REpresentational State Transfer)-style Web services, this
paper proposes Web service providing method using Web service
transformation. This enables SOAP-based service providers to define
rules for mapping from RESTful Web services to SOAP-based ones.
Using these mapping rules, HTTP request messages for RESTful
services are converted automatically into SOAP-based service
invocations. Web service providers need not develop duplicate
RESTful services and they can avoid programming mediation
modules per service. Furthermore, they need not equip mediation
middleware like ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) only for the purpose of
transformation of two different Web service styles.
Abstract: The Improved Generalized Diversity Index (IGDI)
has been proposed as a tool that can be used to identify areas that
have high conservation value and measure the ecological condition of
an area. IGDI is based on the species relative abundances. This paper
is concerned with particular attention is given to comparisons
involving the MacArthur model of species abundances. The
properties and performance of various species indices were assessed.
Both IGDI and species richness increased with sampling area
according to a power function. IGDI were also found to be acceptable
ecological indicators of conditions and consistently outperformed
coefficient of conservatism indices.