Convolutional neural network with joint stepwise character/word modeling based system for scene text recognition

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Text recognition in the wild is a challenging task in the field of computer vision and machine learning. Existing optical character recognition engines cannot...     

Study of planar structure applying reciprocity technique combined with MGEC and analysis of discontinuity

The 3D structure electromagnetic computation presents several difficulties related to the volume mesh. In fact, the entire volume space must be taken into account even the smallest details. In this article, we propose a formulation based on the reciprocity theorem combined with the generalized equivalent circuit method to model a planar 3D structure with both coaxial and planar excitation. The major advantage of this formulation is the fact to reduce the computational volume into 2D ones in the discontinuity plane. In addition, we focused on the calculation of the discontinuity between the excitation source and the planar structure to determine the exact behavior of the electric coaxial excitation model. The obtained current density, electric field distributions, and the input impedance are presented and discussed in the following sections. An approximately good agreement of input impedance with those obtained by the simulator and measurement is shown.     

Design of a retention tank: comparison of stormwater quality models with various levels of complexity.

Stormwater quality simulation models are useful tools for the design and management of sewer systems. Modelling results are highly sensitive to experimental data used for calibration. This sensitivity is examined for three modelling approaches of various complexities (site mean concentration approach, event mean concentration approach and build-up, washoff and transport modelling approach) applied to a typical case study (design of a dry detention tank), accounting for the variability of calibration data and their effect on simulation results. Calibrated models with different calibration data sets were used to simulate 3 years of rainfall with different retention tank specific volumes. Annual pollutant load interception efficiencies were determined. Simulations results revealed (i) that there is no advantage in using the EMC model compared to the SMC model and (ii) that the BWT model resulted in higher design ratios than those given by the SMC/hydraulic approach. For both EMC and BWT models, using an increasing number n of events for calibration leads to narrower confidence intervals for the design ratios. It is crucial for design ratios to account for successive storm events in chronological order and to account for the maximum allowable flow to be transferred to the downstream WWTP.     

Use of pyrogenic silicas for petroleum oil polar fraction characterisation. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and microelectrophoresis studies

In the power transformer, the presence of polar or charged species in the insulating oil can cause failure and electric discharges. Solid substrates such as silica can be used to extract the polar species and to refine the oil in order to prevent future failure in the power transformer. However, the use of silica for petroleum oil separation and refining will depend on the silica characteristics such as surface charge, surface composition, specific surface area and particle size.Various pyrogenic silicas having various specific surface areas (49-200 m² g⁻¹) and particle sizes (207-500 nm) were used to extract the polar fractions from the neat transformer insulating oils (a new, NO, and used, UO2, oils). The oil covered silica samples were investigated by diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectroscopy in the range 4000-600 cm⁻¹. The bare silica surfaces present two main hydroxyl components, a sharper peak at 3745 cm⁻¹, I₃₇₄₅, due to isolated silanols and a second broad, which spreads over 3745-3000 cm⁻¹, I_3745-3000, due to H-bonded silanols. The relative intensities of the two components, I₃₇₄₅/I_3745-3000, varied for the bare and the oil covered silicas depending on the solid surface characteristics. The adsorption of the NO polar fraction onto silica leads to strong reduction in intensity of the sharper peak in favour of the broad one. However, the adsorption of the UO2 polar fraction onto silica leads in all cases to the decrease in the intensity of the both silica OH components. Further, the UO2 adsorption on the silica leads to the apparition of a broad peak at low frequency in the region 3250-3300 cm⁻¹ which, is due to the associated phenolic groups of UO2 oil polar fraction. The analysis of the DRIFT spectra for various samples indicates that the oil polar fraction resembles to asphaltenes compounds.The microelectrophoresis method used to investigate the surface charge at the water/oil polar fraction covered silica interface, indicates negatively charged particles. Further, the negative charge increased with the pH, as resulting from the increase of the ionisation and/or the amount of the oil polar carboxylic and phenolic groups. The oil polar fraction, i.e. the asphaltene components, in contact with both the silica surface and water at high pH values rearrange, due to their amphiphilic character.Finally, the use of the silica substrates seems to be suited to extract and analyse polar species present in petroleum oil. A correlation is found between the nature of the oil, its functionalities, and the magnitude of its zeta potential value at the water/oil covered silica interface.     

Multi-User MIMO Mobile CDMA Uplink System Employing Turbo Coding and Joint Detection Through a Multipath Rayleigh Fading Channel

In this paper, a generalized multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system that can be fitted to the uplink of a wireless communication system is considered for the general case of multi-user. At the transmitter, the information bits are Turbo coded, then interleaved and passed through a serial-to-parallel converter. The channel is assumed bad urban suffering from multipath Rayleigh fading resulting in inter-symbol and multiple access interferences (ISI and MAI). At the front-end of the receiver, a number of receiving antennas are used followed by a joint multi-user estimator based on the Minimum Mean Square Error Block Linear Equalizer (MMSE-BLE).Computer simulations demonstrate a significant performance improvement in both single user and multi-user cases.This paper depends in parts on that presented at the 11th European Wireless Conference, Cyprus, Nicosia, pp. 187–192, April 2005. Yasmine A. Fahmy was born in Guiza, Egypt, on June 4, 1976. She received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Communication and Electronics engineering from Cairo University, Egypt on 1999, 2001 and 2005 respectively. She is presently an assistant professor at Cairo University, Egypt. Her current field of interest is wireless communication and channel estimation. Hebat-Allah M. Mourad received her B.Sc., M. Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical communication engineering from Cairo University, Egypt, in 1983, 1987 and 1994 respectively. Since 1983, she has been with the Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, and is currently associate professor there. Her research interests include optical fiber communications, mobile and satellite communications. Emad K. Al-Hussaini received his B.Sc degree in Electrical Communication Engineering from Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1964 and his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees from Cairo University, Giza, Egypt, in 1974 and 1977, respectively. From 1964 to 1970, he was with the General Egyptian Aeroorganization. Since 1970, he has been with the Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, and is currently professor there. He was a research fellow at Imperial College, London, UK, and at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, in the academic years 1976/1977 and 1981/1982, respectively. In 1990, he received the Egyptian national encouragement award for outstanding engineering research. He has written several papers for technical international journals and conferences. His research interests include signal processing, fading channel communication, modulation, and cellular mobile radio systems. Dr Al-Hussaini is a senior member of IEEE. He is listed in Marquis Whos Who in the World and in the IBC (International Biographical Center, Cambridge) for outstanding people of the 20th century.     

FHUQI-Miner: Fast high utility quantitative itemset mining

Applied Intelligence - High utility itemset mining is a popular pattern mining task, which aims at revealing all sets of items that yield a high profit in a transaction database. Although this task...     

A meta-modelling framework for knowledge consistency in collaborative design

The design of complex system requires a lot of interactions between experts and then between numerous Computer Aided X software (CAX) (where X can be Design (CAD), Engineering (CAE), Manufacturing (CAM), etc.). In order to improve the consistency of the whole system design and the related data and information, knowledge crossing the expertises must be tracked and formalized regarding a shared reference. That means that instead of defining a large reference models to which each expert refers to, a light collaborative model is defined enabling to connect data from each expert model to adhoc data from other expert models, following the least commitment principle. In this topic, a new meta-model is proposed in a Model-Driven Engineering approach to manage the integration of heterogeneous experts’ knowledge models in a collaborative process. The structure of the proposed knowledge meta-model is defined taking into account the complexity of knowledge definition and the properties of its components. This meta-model is split in a meta-model of data on one hand and a Collaboration Meta-Model in the other hand, to represent the distinction between the core concepts of knowledge and additional elements serving to represent the relation between these concepts, and between concepts of heterogeneous experts’ models. The proposed meta-model is illustrated on an industrial case study to highlight the way to put it in use, and its interests to enable collaboration between experts throughout the design process.     

Characterization of Urine Stem Cell-Derived Extracellular Vesicles Reveals B Cell Stimulating Cargo

Elucidation of the biological functions of extracellular vesicles (EVs) and their potential roles in physiological and pathological processes is an expanding field of research. In this study, we characterized USC–derived EVs and studied their capacity to modulate the human immune response in vitro. We found that the USC–derived EVs are a heterogeneous population, ranging in size from that of micro–vesicles (150 nm–1 μm) down to that of exosomes (60–150 nm). Regarding their immunomodulatory functions, we found that upon isolation, the EVs (60–150 nm) induced B cell proliferation and IgM antibody secretion. Analysis of the EV contents unexpectedly revealed the presence of BAFF, APRIL, IL–6, and CD40L, all known to play a central role in B cell stimulation, differentiation, and humoral immunity. In regard to their effect on T cell functions, they resembled the function of mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)–derived EVs previously described, suppressing T cell response to activation. The finding that USC–derived EVs transport a potent bioactive cargo opens the door to a novel therapeutic avenue for boosting B cell responses in immunodeficiency or cancer.