Salient object detection using the phase information and object model

Multimedia Tools and Applications - One of the most important features of saliency detection algorithms is to reduce the size of processing data for algorithms with higher processing size such as...     

Removal of Arsenic and Copper from Water Solution Using Magnetic Iron/Bentonite Nanoparticles (Fe3O4/Bentonite)

Silicon - Heavy metal pollution is one problem in the water purification industry, which causes extreme risk aversion. The purpose of this study was to investigate the removal of arsenic (As) and...     

Agent-Based Modeling for Evaluation of Crop Pattern and Water Management Policies

Water Resources Management - The objective of the present paper is to propose a framework for development of an optimal cropping pattern aimed at ground water recovery using an agent based...     

Mechanical properties of SiC-C-B4C composites with different carbon additives produced by pressureless sintering

In this research, carbon sources (Resin Phenolic, Carbon Black and Graphite) and Boron Carbide (B₄C) were used to improve the mechanical properties of Silicon Carbide (SiC) composite. For this purpose, carbon sources of 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, and 5 wt% as well as 0.5 wt% B₄C were added to SiC powder, respectively. The sample containing SiC—2.5 wt% Resin Phenolic—0.5 wt% B₄C had the best properties with relative density, hardness, and fracture toughness values of 98.5%, 2820 GPa, and 3.9 MPa.√m, respectively. Examination of SEM images showed that by increasing carbon from 0.5 to 2.5 wt%, the fracture changes from intergranular to transgranular.     

Remaining fatigue life assessment of aging fixed steel offshore jacket platforms

Actual fatigue life of an existing offshore platform typically deviates from that intended by its designer because aging platforms commonly experience some degradations, mechanical damages, repairs and modifications, and come across demands for the service extension. The current multidisciplinary paper focuses on different aspects of the remaining fatigue life assessment of an aging offshore platform. In the course of a case study, it describes a hindcasting technique for quantitative estimation of the long-term wave climatology, methods for geotechnical/structural modelling of the platform foundation to evaluate the piles fatigue damages accumulated during their driving and in-place service and the outlines for a spectral fatigue modelling and analysis of the fatigue damages to welded structural joints. Potential limitations in the available codes of practice, regarding the fatigue life assessment of existing offshore structures, are highlighted. The reliability of the fatigue life evaluations, possible remedy measures and some fatigue integrity monitoring techniques are discussed.     

Simulation of novel hybrid method to improve dynamic responses with PSS and UPFC by fuzzy logic controller

In this paper, a hybrid method is proposed to damp frequency and power oscillations in the power system equipped with unified power flow controller (UPFC) and power system stabilizer (PSS) controllers. The method is robust with respect to operating point’s changes. This hybrid method consists of two stages: offline and online. In the offline stage, the coefficients of PSS and UPFC controllers for different operating points have been found by PSO algorithm; then in the second stage, online new fuzzy controller is proposed to select the best PSS and UPFC coefficients according to operating point. The proposed method is simulated for single machine infinite bus system-associated PSS and UPFC for three different operating points in MATLAB software, and results of proposed method simulation are investigated and compared with conventional PSS (CPSS) + UPFC, CPSS controllers. Simulation results show that the proposed method has a better performance.

     

Studying optical and nonlinear optical properties of synthesized azo dyes doped in polymer and liquid crystal using birefringence and Z‐ scan techniques

The authors report the effect of the structure of new synthesized photo‐responsive azo dyes, based on N‐benzyl‐N‐ethyl‐aniline on their optical and nonlinear optical properties, when doped in polymer and liquid crystal (LC) hosts. Anisotropic response of dyes doped with polymer polymethyl methacrylate is studied using photo‐induced birefringence experiment and the optical nonlinearity of dyes doped in LC 5CB is measured using z‐scan technique. A correlation is established between dipole moment and optical/nonlinear optical response, which makes it possible to develop molecular design strategies to create structures with suitable anisotropic response and nonlinearity in various host systems for different applications. It is also shown how very little change in the structure of the dye may cause severe changes in the dipole moment and its nonlinear response. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Operand Width Aware Hardware Reuse: A low cost fault-tolerant approach to ALU design in embedded processors

This paper presents a low cost fault-tolerant technique so called OWHR (Operand Width Aware Hardware Reuse) to ALU design in embedded processors. The OWHR technique is motivated by two facts: (1) Many of the produced and consumed values are narrow-width values in the embedded processors, i.e. they have leading zeros or ones in their most significant bits. This indicates that only a fraction of the circuit is performing useful operations when a particular arithmetic or logic circuit in the ALU is operating on narrow-width values; (2) other circuits of the ALU are not used, when a particular arithmetic or logic circuit is being utilized to perform a specific operation in the ALU in the embedded processors. To exploit the first fact for fault tolerance purpose, the unused parts of a particular arithmetic or logic circuit can be used to provide redundant computations. The second fact also offers us assisting the other unused arithmetic circuits of the ALU to provide redundant computation while a particular arithmetic circuit is being used to perform a specific operation. In this paper, we have implemented a 32-bit ALU protected by the OWHR technique using VHDL and we have extracted the results of power and performance overheads using Synopsis Design and Power Compiler. To do this, we have profiled the input operands of the adder and multiplier units by running some programs of MiBench embedded suite benchmark on an ARM processor performance mode. We have then applied the profiled operands to the implemented ALU to extract the power and performance overheads. The simulation results show that the proposed technique is capable of correcting about 56% of errors in the adder circuit and about 88% of errors in multiplier circuit while having the ability of detecting 100% of errors in the both of the circuits. Beside its high level of reliability, it offers the benefits of low power, and area overheads.     

Incorporating supplier selection and order allocation into the vehicle routing and multi-cross-dock scheduling problem

In the vehicle routing problem with cross-docking (VRPCD), it is assumed that the selected suppliers and the quantity of the products purchased from each supplier are known. This paper presents an MILP model which incorporates supplier selection and order allocation into the VRPCD in a multi-cross-dock system minimising the total costs, including purchasing, transportation, cross-docking, inventory and early/tardy delivery penalty costs. The sensitivity of the model on the key parameters of the objective function is analysed and the supply decisions are evaluated when the coefficients of the distribution cost are changed. A two-stage solution algorithm (TSSA) is proposed and the results of the TSSA for small-sized instances are compared with the exact solutions. Finally, a large-sized real case of an urban freight transport is solved using the TSSA.