Application of TOC embedded ILP for increasing throughput of production lines

Under fairly special circumstances, there are some special methods that can be used to attempt to increase the production rate of some production line systems. In this paper an attempt has been made to use the theory of constraint (TOC) approach to identify the critical machines. Various design alternatives are considered to increase throughput of the critical machine. This process is continued till the required throughput is achieved for the entire system. For large production line systems this approach will be tedious and time consuming. Hence we have attempted to generalize the TOC approach by integer linear programming (ILP) to increase the throughput. Data has been collected from an automobile ancillary manufacturing industry to validate the model. The TOC embedded ILP has been used to increase the throughput with minimum investment.     

Positive Implications of Hand-Dug Wells in Water Resources Planning and Management in A Developing Economy Such as in Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Hand-dug wells are circular holes. about one metre (m) in diameter and 10 to 30 m in depth, dug with human labour. The wells tap water from shallow aquifers for domestic water supply, small-scale industries, and small irrigation schemes. Many hand-dug wells exist in Nigeria and in many developing countries. They are important in both urban and rural communities.

The wells are dug with hoes, shovels, pickaxes and diggers. Water and cuttings are removed from the hole using a human-powered bucket-rope-pulley arrangement. Three to four men dig the well in shifts. Well construction cost is cheap, as low-scale technology and manpower are used.

Problems with hand-dug wells include susceptibility to pollution/contamination; drastic declines in water level during the dry season; low well yields; silting-up of wells, and caving-in or collapsing of well walls, etc.

New designs are suggested to improve the efficiency and performance of this ancient technology. In Nigeria, wells should be completed in March when the water level is deepest. Well yield is improved by using slotted concrete rings to screen the aquifer. Anti-pollution devices are also proposed for better water quality. Such wells would provide more potable water to the urban and rural poor.

An improved type of slotted concrete ring has been designed for use in the screened portion of the well. Non-perforated concrete rings are used in the non-productive portions of the aquifers or above the water table, to prevent caving or collapsing of Well walls. A convex cover forms a protective rim extending beyond the circumference of the well, to prevent the entrance of surface contaminants. Water from the dug-wells is pumped through an external filtration system into an overhead storage/treatment tank using an inexpensive pumping system.

All of these designs are suggested to improve the efficiency of the wells; to provide stability to the wells and better well yield, and to lessen the incidence of pollution/contamination within the well and its surrounding environment.     

Grape leaf segmentation for disease identification through adaptive Snake algorithm model

Fruits are the eminent export agriculture product for any country, especially grape, it is used for making wines and developing raisins. Moreover, Viticulture has proven to be one of the highly profitable industry from the economic point of view. However, in viticulture grape quality should be of top-notch quality, moreover throughout the research it is observed that grape quality is degraded mainly due to the plant disease. In past several researcher have tried their efforts to detect the early identification of disease. Segmentation plays bigger role identifying the disease, Hence in this paper we propose an Adaptive Snake Model for segmentation and region identification. ASA (Adaptive Snake Model) is two phase segmentation model namely common segmentation and absolute segmentation. Through common segmentation, we achieve the fast segmentation and through the absolute segmentation, we achieve the better accuracy. Moreover for evaluation of Adaptive Snake Algorithm two standard dataset i.e. PlantLevel and PlantVillage dataset, for further evaluation we have compared with various state-of-art technique in terms of various performance metric such as PSNR, Dice, Manhattan, Recall and Jaccard. Adaptive Snake Algorithm performs better than the other existing methodology.

     

Granulation,rough entropy and spatiotemporal moving object detection

A new spatio-temporal segmentation approach for moving object(s) detection and tracking from a video sequence is described. Spatial segmentation is carried out using rough entropy maximization, where we use the quad-tree decomposition, resulting in unequal image granulation which is closer to natural granulation. A three point estimation based on Beta Distribution is formulated for background estimation during temporal segmentation. Reconstruction and tracking of the object in the target frame is performed after combining the two segmentation outputs using its color and shift information. The algorithm is more robust to noise and gradual illumination change, because their presence is less likely to affect both its spatial and temporal segments inside the search window. The proposed methods for spatial and temporal segmentation are seen to be superior to several related methods. The accuracy of reconstruction has been significantly high.     

Optimized Model Based Controller with Model Plant Mismatch for NMP Mitigation in Boost Converter

In this paper, an optimized Genetic Algorithm (GA) based internal model controller-proportional integral derivative (IMC-PID) controller has been designed for the control variable to output variable transfer function of dc-dc boost converter to mitigate the effect of non-minimum phase (NMP) behavior due to the presence of a right-half plane zero (RHPZ). This RHPZ limits the dynamic performance of the converter and leads to internal instability. The IMC PID is a streamlined counterpart of the standard feedback controller and easily achieves optimal set point and load change performance with a single filter tuning parameter λ. Also, this paper addresses the influences of the model-based controller with model plant mismatch on the closed-loop control. The conventional IMC PID design is realized as an optimization problem with a resilient controller being determined through a genetic algorithm. Computed results suggested that GA–IMC PID coheres to the optimum designs with a fast convergence rate and outperforms conventional IMC PID controllers.     

An online cost-efficient protection scheme for quick recovery in all-optical WDM mesh networks

Since a single fiber carries a huge amount of data in optical WDM networks, a fiber cut even for a brief period is a very serious event. Designing schemes to prevent disruption of user traffic and recovery techniques from failures is thus an important area of research. Since a single fiber cut is the most common type of fault, in this paper we address the problem of protecting all-optical WDM mesh networks from single link failure. Our proposed online protection scheme is an improvement over an existing approach and is not only cost-efficient in terms of network resource consumption but can also provide quick recovery from a link failure. We first provide an ILP formulation for the problem and then propose a heuristic solution iStreams that can provide near-optimal solution in polynomial time. Performance comparisons with some well-known schemes of protection show that our heuristic algorithm can be a better choice for conserving resource while providing quick recovery from a link failure.     

Oxygen ion conductivity studies of bismuth and bismuth-calcium co-doped ThO2

A series of trivalent (Bi³⁺) doped and divalent (Ca²⁺) co-doped ThO₂ samples i.e., Th_0.50-xCa_xBi_0.50O_2-δ (x = 0.00, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15 and 0.20) have been synthesized by citrate-nitrate solution combustion route and investigated in the context of oxygen ion conductivity and dielectric relaxation phenomena. The Rietveld refinement of the Powder X-ray diffraction data confirmed monophasic fluorite structures (S.G. Fm$\stackrel{￣}{3}$m) for calcium concentrations up to 20 mol %. The optical band gap decreased with the increase in Ca²⁺ concentration up to 10 mol %. In contrast, the defect band's intensity in the Raman spectra increased due to oxygen vacancies on divalent addition. The quantitative aspect of oxygen vacancy and defect concentration was derived from Raman spectra. The crystallographic index application was further employed to interpret the optimum doping concentration to maximize oxide ion conductivity. Remarkably high oxide ion conductivity (~10^?3 S/cm) was observed for Bi³⁺ doped (50 mol %), and Bi³⁺ (50 mol %)-Ca²⁺ (10 mol %) co-doped ThO₂ samples at 773 K. The Nyquist plot exhibited grain contribution for low dopant levels. Both grain and grain boundary contribution were present in the higher dopant concentrations. Conductivity, dielectric, and modulus properties of doped and co-doped samples have been compared, from which 10 mol % of Ca²⁺-doping was identified to be the optimum concentration.     

Evaluation of the potential adulteration of commercial honey distributed in Costa Rica compared with artesanian honey samples coming from specific apiaries

Honey is the principal apiculture product, produced by Apis mellifera bee. This, as any other food product, has to accomplish certain quality standards, including physicochemical, organoleptic and microbiological properties. Within these parameters, different measures are considered as adulteration indicators, including hydroxymethylfurfural and diastase enzyme activity which are associated to overheating, and the sucrose, glucose and fructose content. In this study, a determination of previous parameters, additional to glucose, fructose and fructose/glucose index was performed to 35 artisan samples, obtained directly from beekeeper, previously characterized as having good productive practices and 25 commercial samples. Same time, the results obtained were compared and interpreted, in order to determine the kind of adulteration present in the honey sample. The 89% of artesian samples accomplished the parameters established by the Codex Alimentarius for HMF content, diastase activity, sucrose and simple sugars content. Nevertheless, only 20% (5) of the commercial samples accomplished the international and national normative. 24% of these samples presented succrose addition, 32% overheating or inverted sugar syrup addition, and 24% were adulterated with inverted sugar syrup.     

Biofilms in the Spotlight: Detection,Quantification, and Removal Methods

Microorganisms can colonize and subsequently form biofilms on surfaces, which protect them from adverse conditions and make them more resistant than their planktonic free‐living counterparts. This is a major concern in the food industry because the presence of biofilms has significant implications for microbial food contamination and, therefore, for the transmission of foodborne diseases. Adequate hygienic conditions and various preventive and control strategies have consequently been developed to ensure the provision of safe, good‐quality food with an acceptable shelf‐life. This review focuses on the significance of biofilms in the food industry by describing the factors that favor their formation. The interconnected process among bacteria known as “quorum sensing,” which plays a significant role in biofilm development, is also described. Furthermore, we discuss recent strategic methods to detect, quantify, and remove biofilms formed by pathogenic bacteria associated with food processing environments, focusing on the complexity of these microbial communities.     

一种维吾尔语句子相似度算法的研究

基于实例的机器翻译是一种重要的机器翻译技术,句子相似度的衡量是基于实例机器翻译研究中最重要的一个内容。对于基于实例的维吾尔语机器翻译研究,维吾尔语句子相似度衡量的准确性,直接影响到最后翻译结果的输出。提出了一种维吾尔语句子相似度的计算方法,采用的基于词形特征的粗选算法、散列单词倒排索引能够有效提高算法的查找速度,快速从语料库中筛选出候选句子集合;多策略精选算法中采用基于维吾尔语词频的单词区分度算法、连续单词序列抽取算法,可以有效衡量两个维吾尔语句子的相似程度,实验结果证明算法是有效的。