Comparison of two tools for the measurement of interfragmentary movement in femoral neck fractures stabilised by cannulated screws

Achieving stability at the site of femoral neck fracture is an important factor for callus formation in the post-operative period. However, measuring interfragmentary movement in vivo is not currently possible as telemetric screws have not been manufactured for surgical use. Understanding how the implantation of the screws can affect the stability of the fracture allows the surgeon to tailor the procedure to the patient and produce the best possible outcome. Two techniques have been developed that measure interfragmentary movement between fractured surfaces. The first was a FEA model of the proximal femur with screws represented by nodal links. Movement was quantified by the amount of relative motion occurring between paired nodes either side of the fracture. The second was a mechanical compression test of a composite femur that allowed the motion analysis of paired markers on the external surface of the femur. Movement was digitised with markers selected and displacements calculated by transforming the global coordinate system to a local system relative to the fracture plane.     

Sustainability assessment of Iranian petrochemical companies in stock exchange: A data envelopment analysis-based approach

The assessment of efficiency is always of particular importance according to different indicators from different perspectives. There are various techniques for evaluating petrochemical companies, among which the data envelopment analysis technique is one of the best techniques that can be used to calculate the relative efficiency of a set of decision-making units with network structures. In the present paper, seven petrochemical companies listed in the Iranian stock exchange were analysed. These companies were evaluated in terms of financial performance and sustainable development, and their relative efficiency was calculated during 2015–2016. According to the obtained results, only Marun Petrochemical Co. was found to be efficient in all areas and years. The results also showed that four companies were efficient in financial terms over the period under study. In the general conclusion regarding the companies' performance, Marun was ranked first, Jam was ranked second, and Zagros was ranked third.     

Analysis of a three-phase to seven-phase transformer under unbalanced input

Microsystem Technologies - In the recent past, multiphase power generation, power transmission, and multiphase drive system are the main focus of research due to their several advantages over...     

Two‐Layer Terminal Sliding Mode Attitude Control of Satellites Equipped with Reaction Wheels

This paper addresses the global stability and robust attitude tracking problem of a near polar orbit satellite subject to unknown disturbances and uncertainties. It is assumed that the satellite is fully actuated by a set of reaction wheels (RW) as control actuators because of their relative simplicity, versatility and high accuracy. The terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) approach is utilized in a two‐level architecture to achieve control objectives. In the lower layer a detumbling‐like controller is designed which guarantees the finite‐time detumbling and tracking of the desired angular velocities and based on this result a robust attitude tracking controller is designed in the upper layer to achieve 3‐axis attitude tracking in the presence of unknown disturbances and bounded uncertainties. Robust stability and tracking properties of designed controllers are proved using the Lyapunov theory. Finally, a set of numerical simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed control method.     

Design of explicit model predictive control for constrained linear systems with disturbances

On-line model predictive control approaches require the online solution of an optimization problem. In contrast, the explicit model predictive control moves major part of computation offline. Therefore, eMPC enables one to implement a MPC in real time for wide range of fast systems. The eMPC approach requires the exact system model and results a piecewise affine control law defined on a polyhedral partition in the state space. As an important limitation, disturbances may reduce performance of the explicit model predictive control. This paper presents efficient approach for handling the problem of using eMPC for constrained systems with disturbances. It proposes an approach to improve performance of the closed loop system by designing a suitable state and disturbance estimator. Conditions for observability of the disturbances are considered and it is depicted that applying the disturbance’s estimation leads to rejection of the response error. It is also shown that the proposed approach prevents the reduction of feasible space. Simulation results illustrate the advantages of this approach.     

An architecture framework for an adaptive extensible processor

To improve the performance of embedded processors, an effective technique is collapsing critical computation subgraphs as application-specific instruction set extensions and executing them on custom functional units. The problem with this approach is the immense cost and the long times required to design a new processor for each application. As a solution to this issue, we propose an adaptive extensible processor in which custom instructions (CIs) are generated and added after chip-fabrication. To support this feature, custom functional units are replaced by a reconfigurable matrix of functional units (FUs). A systematic quantitative approach is used for determining the appropriate structure of the reconfigurable functional unit (RFU). We also introduce an integrated framework for generating mappable CIs on the RFU. Using this architecture, performance is improved by up to 1.33, with an average improvement of 1.16, compared to a 4-issue in-order RISC processor. By partitioning the configuration memory, detecting similar/subset CIs and merging small CIs, the size of the configuration memory is reduced by 40%.     

“How do you know that I don’t understand?” A look at the future of intelligent tutoring systems

Many software systems would significantly improve performance if they could adapt to the emotional state of the user, for example if Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs), ATM’s, ticketing machines could recognise when users were confused, frustrated or angry they could guide the user back to remedial help systems so improving the service. Many researchers now feel strongly that ITSs would be significantly enhanced if computers could adapt to the emotions of students. This idea has spawned the developing field of affective tutoring systems (ATSs): ATSs are ITSs that are able to adapt to the affective state of students. The term “affective tutoring system” can be traced back as far as Rosalind Picard’s book Affective Computing in 1997.This paper presents research leading to the development of Easy with Eve, an ATS for primary school mathematics. The system utilises a network of computer systems, mainly embedded devices to detect student emotion and other significant bio-signals. It will then adapt to students and displays emotion via a lifelike agent called Eve. Eve’s tutoring adaptations are guided by a case-based method for adapting to student states; this method uses data that was generated by an observational study of human tutors. This paper presents the observational study, the case-based method, the ATS itself and its implementation on a distributed computer systems for real-time performance, and finally the implications of the findings for Human Computer Interaction in general and e-learning in particular. Web-based applications of the technology developed in this research are discussed throughout the paper.     

Hamshahri: A standard Persian text collection

The Persian language is one of the dominant languages in the Middle East, so there are significant amount of Persian documents available on the Web. Due to the different nature of the Persian language compared to the other languages such as English, the design of information retrieval systems in Persian requires special considerations. However, there are relatively few studies on retrieval of Persian documents in the literature and one of the main reasons is the lack of a standard test collection. In this paper, we introduce a standard Persian text collection, named Hamshahri, which is built from a large number of newspaper articles according to TREC specifications. Furthermore, statistical information about documents, queries and their relevance judgments are presented in this paper. We believe that this collection is the largest Persian text collection, so far.     

A collaborative platform for buyer coalition: Introducing the Awareness-based Buyer Coalition (ABC) system

A variety of buyer coalition schemes already exist in the current e-Commerce literature by which buyers form some sort of coalition in order to enjoy added discounts as a result of purchasing in larger bundles. One major problem in all existing schemes is that none of those schemes explicitly treat the coalition process as a collaborative business process; and as a result, the awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements are not explicitly recognized in the design process of the existing systems. This study proposes a conceptual framework for a buyer coalition system called the Awareness-based Buyer Coalition (ABC) system that allows a buyer to bid on the basis of various levels of awareness that s/he may have about other roles’ actions/intentions. The study is an early attempt for explicitly considering awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of various roles within the buyer coalition process. The theoretical foundations of the study are rooted in the fields of Game Theory, e-Commerce, and Knowledge Management. The research methodology adopted for the study is design science. Various existing buyer coalition algorithms were reviewed and their strengths and weaknesses identified in terms of addressing the information-sharing needs of collaborating buyers. Furthermore, the existing literature on Knowledge Management was reviewed in order to identify an appropriate process model for the proposed buyer coalition framework with specific emphasis on awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of its collaborating actors. For validation of the proposed conceptual model simulation software was developed to demonstrate results of a variety of simulations for the proof of the concept.     

Prediction of the Brisance of Energetic Materials

The brisance parameter can be used to show the shattering power of an energetic compound and the speed to reach its peak pressure. It determines the effectiveness with which an explosive can fragment a shell. Nowadays, the sand test or sand crushing test is the preferred method for brisance measurements but there is no reliable method for the prediction of the brisance parameter. In this paper, a method for the prediction of the brisance through sand test for pure and mixed energetic materials as well as aluminized explosives is reported. It is based on the molecular structure of the desired compound and once the conclusion is established any experimental data is redundant. The calculated brisance relative to 2,4,6‐trinitrotoluene (=100) shows good agreement with the measured values.