An Efficient Active Contour Model Through Curvature Scale Space Filtering

Active contour models can be successfully used in multimedia database retrieval systems if they have good accuracy and high speed. The majority of existing active contour models do not lock on to interest objects very accurately and quickly especially in complex images. The behavior of the active contour is generally controlled by its internal and external energies. Internal energy is composed of two parts; the first part acts to shorten the active contour as it iterates towards the interest object, while the second part is the curvature of the active contour and forces smoothness of active contour during its movement towards interest object. In this paper, first a reformulated internal energy is proposed to improve the computation of curvature at point v _i by making use of the three points v _{i – 1}, v _i and v _{i + 1}. Second, an accurate and high speed active contour model, SAC is proposed based on reformulating internal energy by removing the curvature part and using Gaussian filtering with low scale of smoothing. The SAC model has only one parameter that affects the internal energy of active contour and as a result of using the Curvature Scale Space (CSS)¹ technique for smoothing, the SAC model is more independent of model parameter setting and the initial snake.     

Influence of silicoating,etching and heated glaze treatment on the surface of Y-TZP and its impact on bonding with veneering ceramic

The study aimed to investigate the influence of surface treatments of Y-TZP on its topography and their impact on shear bond strength (SBS) of Y-TZP to veneering porcelain. Thirty-four zirconia cubes (Cercon) (10 × 10 × 10 mm³) were divided randomly into 3 groups (n = 11) according to the different surface treatments, Silica Coating (SC); Hot Solution Etching (HE); and Heat Treatment after porcelain glaze and powder application (GP). Porcelain application (IPs e.max) was performed after surface treatment using a standardized technique. Porcelain application (Ceramco-3) was also performed on 10 metal cubes (I BOND 2) as controls (MC). Specimens were subjected to thermocycling (5–55 °C, 20,000 cycles) followed by SBS testing in a universal testing machine. Surface topography was assessed by scanning electron microscopy and surface roughness (Image J). SC developed significantly higher SBS (42.10 ± 5.84 MPa) of Y-TZP to veneering ceramics compared to treatment by HE (24.0 ± 6.4 MPa), GP (23.30 ± 4.72), and the MC (29.3 ± 5.4 MPa) control (p < 0.05). SBS among HE, GP and MC specimens was comparable (p > 0.05). Y-TZP specimens treated with SC and HE showed high surface roughness compared to GP. Silicoating of Y-TZP prior to veneering can potentially reduce the high failure rates of zirconia-based restorations by enhancing the chemical bond between the core and the veneer materials.     

Improved cuckoo search for reliability optimization problems

An efficient approach to solve engineering optimization problems is the cuckoo search algorithm. It is a recently developed meta-heuristic optimization algorithm. Normally, the parameters of the cuckoo search are kept constant. This may result in decreasing the efficiency of the algorithm. To cope with this issue, the cuckoo search parameters should be tuned properly. In this paper, an improved cuckoo search algorithm, enhancing the accuracy and convergence rate of the cuckoo search algorithm, is presented. Then, the performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on some complex engineering optimization problems. They are four well-known reliability optimization problems, a large-scale reliability optimization problem as well as a complex system, which is a 15-unit system reliability optimization problem. Finally, the results are compared with those given by several well-known methods. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

Stress measurements of fibers and preforms

The authors point out the formation mechanism of axial stress, describes the method and the apparatus used for measurements, and presents the results obtained during a study of loss reduction on trapezoidal core 1.55-μm dispersion-shifted fibers manufactured by the MCVD technique. It is concluded that the stress measurements on fiber are less accurate than those on preform (experimental dispersion reaches 15% instead of 5%). The various observations made from measurements on preform show that the axial stress is related to the index profile and that the core axial stress increases with the GeO₂ content. The measurements performed on fiber show that the level of stress is linearly dependent on the drawing tension and that the stress profile is related to the glass-transition temperature of the different materials. Furthermore, this method of stress measurement is complementary to the more standard index profile measurement on fiber or on preform     

A Novel Energy-Aware Target Tracking Method by Reducing Active Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy consumption is one of the main challenges in wireless sensor networks. Additionally, in target tracking algorithms, it is expected to have a longer lifetime for the network, when a better prediction algorithm is employed, since it activates fewer sensors in the network. Most target tracking methods activate a large number of nodes in sensor networks. This paper proposes a new tracking algorithm reducing the number of active nodes in both positioning and tracking by predicting the target deployment area in the next time interval according to some factors including the previous location of the target, the current speed and acceleration of the target without reducing the tracking performance. The proposed algorithm activates the sensor nodes available in the target area by predicting the target position in the next time interval. The problem of target loss is also considered and solved in the proposed tracking algorithm. In the numerical analysis, the number of nodes involved in target tracking, energy consumption and the network lifetime are compared with other tracking algorithms to show superiority of the proposed algorithm.     

Presenting an Optimal Energy-Aware Locating Structure Using the Internet of Things and Device-to-Device Communications on Smartphones

Wireless Personal Communications - Recently, Device-To-Device (D2D) communications as a novel technology for improving the capacity and reducing power consumption in wireless networks have been...     

A cross-cultural study of structured groups with unpopular central members.

"This paper reports an experiment on the performance of small social groups with restricted channels of communication." Central members of 2 kinds of group structures, "wheel" and "circle," were selected on the basis of being either popular or unpopular. Groups that are formed on the basis of a "wheel" seem to function better than "circle" groups or wheel groups with unpopular leaders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relaxation of internal stresses in optical fibers

A method for measuring the relaxation of internal stresses of optical fibers is developed. The authors discuss a few principal previous publications on the subject of annealing and relaxation of glass. The internal stress measurement setup is explained, and useful relations are given. It is pointed out that the relaxation of internal stresses of optical fibers can be represented by the equations of J. De Bast and P. Gilard (1963) σ=σ_oexp-(at) ^b (b is constant in the annealing region and a depends on temperature). It is shown that the internal stress profile change is negligible at temperatures of use after 25 years. Hence, the initial internal stress profile, i.e. the refractive index profile, of a high-tension MCVD fiber is not modified during the optical-fiber cable lifetime