Blast resistance of FRP composites and polymer strengthened concrete and masonry structures – A state-of-the-art review

Recent world events such as bombings in London, Madrid and Istanbul have highlighted the susceptibility of many civilian structures to terrorist attack. Explosives directed towards vulnerable structures may cause considerable damage and loss of life. As a result, there is now a desire to increase the blast resistance of many types of existing structures. This has led to experimental and finite element (FE) research in retrofitting concrete and masonry structures with fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composites for blast protection. This paper presents a review of the publicly available literature and highlights areas where research is lacking.     

基于ARToolkit Plus的增强现实系统实现及框架研究

文章首先对基于ARToolkit Plus和WPF的增强现实系统实现的关键技术问题进行了描述,具体讨论了在MVC框架下如何将数据采集层与呈现层进行分划,在保证可用性的同时提供较强的扩展能力,并基于上述框架实现了一个应用于住房装修的实例。     

Time series forecasting by neural networks: A knee point-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm approach

In this paper, we investigate the problem of time series forecasting using single hidden layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs), which is optimized via multiobjective evolutionary algorithms. By utilizing the adaptive differential evolution (JADE) and the knee point strategy, a nondominated sorting adaptive differential evolution (NSJADE) and its improved version knee point-based NSJADE (KP-NSJADE) are developed for optimizing SLFNs. JADE aiming at refining the search area is introduced in nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II). The presented NSJADE shows superiority on multimodal problems when compared with NSGA-II. Then NSJADE is applied to train SLFNs for time series forecasting. It is revealed that individuals with better forecasting performance in the whole population gather around the knee point. Therefore, KP-NSJADE is proposed to explore the neighborhood of the knee point in the objective space. And the simulation results of eight popular time series databases illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm in comparison with several popular algorithms.     

Beauty is more than screen deep: Improving the web survey respondent experience through socially-present and aesthetically-pleasing user interfaces

Web surveys are rapidly becoming standard issue in many researchers’ toolkits; however, measurement error has been shown to affect web surveys to a greater extent than paper-and-pencil surveys (Couper, 2000, Manfreda and Vehovar, 2002). Principles of aesthetic design and social presence have been applied to web surveys to reduce the prevalence of such error with promising results, which were further investigated in this research. A sample of 181 first-year psychology undergraduate students participated in this study. Participants were randomly allocated to view one of eight web survey interfaces, which varied by aesthetic quality and social presence. Exploratory structural equation modeling using the partial least squares method revealed that classical aesthetic quality and social presence were both positively related to perceived ease of use of the web survey interface and positive state affect; social presence and perceived ease of use were positively related to trust in the web survey researcher; classical aesthetic quality was negatively related to negative state affect; and, expressive aesthetic quality was negatively related to perceived ease of use and positively related to positive state affect. Interestingly, expressive aesthetic quality was also positively related to negative state affect. These relationships between aesthetic quality and social presence should inform best practice web survey design recommendations, and future empirical work should extend and test the generalizability of these findings.     

Improved migration for mobile computing in distributed networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a special type of wireless network in which a collection of mobile nodes with wireless network interfaces may form a temporary network, without the aids of any fixed infrastructure. Security has become a hot research topic in mobile ad hoc networks. In 1998, Volker and Mehrdad proposed a tree-based key management and access control scheme for the mobile agents to manage rights to access its own resources for the visited mobile nodes. Latter, Huang et al. showed that Volker and Mehrdad's scheme needs a large amount of storage and costs for managing and storing secret keys. Huang et al. further proposed a new and efficient scheme based on the elliptic curve cryptosystems to reduce costs and gain better efficiency. However, there is a security leak inherent in Huang et al.'s scheme that the malicious node can overstep his authority to access unauthorized information. This paper will propose a secure, robust, and efficient hierarchical key management scheme for MANETs. Some practical issues and solutions about dynamic key management are also considered and proposed. As compared with Huang et al.'s scheme, our proposed scheme can provide better security assurance, while requiring smaller key-size, lower computational complexities, and constant key management costs which is independent on the number of the confidential files and the visited nodes.     

A fuzzy neural network approach for online fault detection in waste water treatment process

In this paper, an effective strategy for fault detection of sludge volume index (SVI) sensor is proposed and tested on an experimental hardware setup in waste water treatment process (WWTP). The main objective of this fault detection strategy is to design a system which consists of the online sensors, the SVI predicting plant and fault diagnosis method. The SVI predicting plant is designed utilizing a fuzzy neural network (FNN), which is trained by a historical set of data collected during fault-free operation of WWTP. The fault diagnosis method, based on the difference between the measured concentration values and FNN predictions, allows a quick revealing of the faults. Then this proposed fault detection method is applied to a real WWTP and compared with other approaches. Experimental results show that the proposed fault detection strategy can obtain the fault signals of the SVI sensor online.     

Approximations to auctions of digital goods with share-averse bidders

We consider the case of a digital product for share-averse bidders, where the product can be sold to multiple buyers who experience some disutility from other firms or consumers owning the same product. We model the problem of selling a digital product to share-averse bidders as an auction and apply a Bayesian optimal mechanism design. We also design constant-approximation algorithms in the prior-free setting including both average- and worst-case analyses.     

Online gait programming of humanoid walking via NMPC

In order to satisfy the requirement of realtime gait programming of humanoid walking with foot rotation,a kind of modified Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) scheme was proposed. Based on setting suitable kinetic and kinematic virtual constraints of Single Support Phase (SSP) and three subphases of Double Support Phase (DSP) ,complex realtime gait programming problem was simplified to four online NMPC dynamic optimization problems. A numerical approach was proposed to transform the dynamical optimization problem to the finite dimensional static optimization problem which can be solved by Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) . It can be concluded from simulation that using this method on BIP model can realize online gait programming of dynamic walking with foot rotation and the biped stability can be satisfied such that there is no sliding during walking.     

悬挂式重力补偿系统精密跟踪方法

介绍了一种用于研究空间机器人微重力条件下的工作特性的悬挂系统——悬挂式重力补偿系统,并给出了悬挂模块的动力学模型.通过数值求解与仿真,运用非线性规化求出了一定条件下的最优控制参数;用正交试验寻优、基于时间最优控制的试凑法证明了优化模型的解正确性.该研究为空间机器人地面试验系统模拟微重力环境下精密跟踪运动提供了最优控制方法.     

HP nonlinear guidance law design based on smooth sliding mode control

To eliminate the perturbation of interceptor detection induced by aerodynamic heating,the head pursuit (HP) guidance law for three-dimensional interception was presented. The guidance law positioned the interceptor ahead of the target on its flight trajectory,and the speed of interceptor was required to be lower than that of the target. On the basis of a novel head pursuit three-dimensional guidance model,a nonlinear guidance law was developed based on smooth sliding mode control theory. At the same time,a special observer was designed to estimate the target acceleration,and a numerical example on maneuvering ballistic target interception verified the effectiveness of the presented guidance law.