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In the Internet of Things (IoT), many devices are connected and accumulate a sheer amount of data. These Internet-driven raw data need to be transferred securely to the end-users via dependable networks. Consequently, the challenges of IoT security in various IoT domains are paramount. Cryptography is being applied to secure the networks for authentication, confidentiality, data integrity and access control. However, due to the resource constraint properties of IoT devices, the conventional cipher may not be suitable in all IoT networks. This paper designs a robust and effective lightweight cipher to secure the IoT environment and meet the resource-constrained nature of IoT devices. We also propose a symmetric and block-cipher based lightweight cryptographic algorithm. The proposed algorithm increases the complexity of the block cipher, maintaining the lowest computational requirements possible. The proposed algorithm efficiently constructs the key register updating technique, reduces the number of encryption rounds, and adds a layer between the encryption and decryption processes.

The practice of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in China generally faces the contradiction of “abundant exogenous motivation and insufficient endogenous motivation”, which seriously affects the effect of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to clarify the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism. This paper tries to borrow the force analysis method of the slope model in physics, constructs a general theoretical model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and compares and analyzes the characteristics of the models of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under two different models: government-led and community-led practice. On this basis, through a case analysis of the generating and evolution process of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in Liangjiahe village, Yanchuan County, Shaanxi Province, which is a typical example of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism in China, we propose a new model of the motivation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism under the mode of tourism empowerment. The study has some theoretical insights to clarify the dynamic operation mechanism of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, promote the sustainability of precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism, and realize an effective connection between precise poverty alleviation in rural tourism and rural revitalization in China.

Melanoma skin cancer is one of the most dangerous and life-threatening cancer. Exposure to ultraviolet rays may damage the skin cell's DNA, which causes melanoma skin cancer. However, it is difficult to detect and classify melanoma and nevus mole at the immature stages. In this work, an automatic deep learning system is developed based on the intensity value estimation with a convolutional neural network model (CNN) to detect and classify melanoma and nevus mole more accurately. Since intensity levels are the most distinctive features for object or region of interest identification, the high-intensity pixel values are selected from the extracted lesion images. Incorporating those high-intensity features into the CNN improves the overall performance of the proposed model than the state-of-the-art methods for detecting melanoma skin cancer. To evaluate the system, we used 5-fold cross-validation. Experimental results show that a superior percentage of accuracy (92.58%), sensitivity (93.76%), specificity (91.56%), and precision (90.68%) are achieved., The paper has been accepted for publication in Computer Science journal: http://journals.agh.edu.pl/csci

生活歯髄切断法は，冠部歯髄を除去し根部歯髄を保存する方法で，通常乳歯や幼若永久歯に用いられる． 歯根完成後の永久歯の歯髄に不可逆的な炎症が生じると，抜髄処置の適応となることが多い．乳歯や幼若永久歯は， 歯髄細胞の増殖活性が高く，血液循環が良好であるため生活歯髄切断法の成功率が高いと考えられている．しかし， 歯根完成後は歯髄の修復に重要な血流量の減少や，歯髄幹細胞の存在が期待できないことから，生活歯髄切断法に よる治療は困難であると考えられる．したがって，歯髄修復作用のある材料を用いた生活歯髄切断法の開発は永久 歯の歯髄保存療法における重要な課題となっている． そこで本研究では，塩基性線維芽細胞増殖因子（FGF2）と新規ケイ酸カルシウム系材料（WPPT）を覆髄材として 使用し，ラットの生活歯髄切断後の歯髄修復に及ぼす作用を組織学的に検討した． 生活歯髄切断後の歯髄の炎症性変化を経時的に観察したところ，7 日目ではFGF2とWPPTを併用した群で高度 な好中球浸潤がみられたが，他の群ではほとんど好中球浸潤はみられなかった．30日目では，FGF2とWPPTを併 用した群では炎症性変化が認められなかったが，他の群では歯髄壊死や好中球浸潤がみられた． 形成されたデンティンブリッジの面積は，7日目，14日目ではすべての群で同程度であったが，30日目では FGF2を含む群で他の群と比較して大きく，FGF2がデンティンブリッジの形成を促進した可能性が考えられた． 残存歯髄の血管について評価したところ，FGF2とWPPTを併用した群では7 日目で血管新生がみられ，30日 目で歯髄の炎症が消退したことが示唆された．他の群では30日目にも炎症が持続していることが示唆された． 以上の結果より，FGF2とWPPTの併用は，残存歯髄の正常な修復を促進し，歯髄保存を可能とすることが示唆 された． 本研究により，FGF2とWPPTを併用することで，歯根完成後の永久歯にも生活歯髄切断法を応用できる可能性が示唆された．

While the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques with improved information technology systems ensured enormous benefits to the Internet of Vehicles (IoVs) systems, it also introduced an increased amount of security and privacy threats. To ensure the security of IoVs data, privacy preservation methodologies have gained significant attention in the literature. However, these strategies also need specific adjustments and modifications to cope with the advances in IoVs design. In the interim, Federated Learning (FL) has been proven as an emerging idea to protect IoVs data privacy and security. On the other hand, Blockchain technology is showing prominent possibilities with secured, dispersed, and auditable data recording and sharing schemes. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on the application and implementation of Blockchain-Enabled Federated Learning frameworks for IoVs. Besides, probable issues, challenges, solutions, and future research directions for BC-Enabled FL frameworks for IoVs are also presented. This survey can further be used as the basis for developing modern BC-Enabled FL solutions to resolve different data privacy issues and scenarios of IoVs.

Blockchain (BC) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are some of the most prominent emerging technologies in recent research. These technologies provide security, integrity, as well as confidentiality in their respective applications. Cloud computing has also been a popular comprehensive technology for several years. Confidential information is often shared with the cloud infrastructure to give customers access to remote resources, such as computation and storage operations. However, cloud computing also presents substantial security threats, issues, and challenges. Therefore, to overcome these difficulties, we propose integrating Blockchain and SDN in the cloud computing platform. In this research, we introduce the architecture to better secure clouds. Moreover, we leverage a distributed Blockchain approach to convey security, confidentiality, privacy, integrity, adaptability, and scalability in the proposed architecture. BC provides a distributed or decentralized and efficient environment for users. Also, we present an SDN approach to improving the reliability, stability, and load balancing capabilities of the cloud infrastructure. Finally, we provide an experimental evaluation of the performance of our SDN and BC-based implementation using different parameters, also monitoring some attacks in the system and proving its efficacy., Comment: 12 Pages 16 Figures 3 Tables

This article on the floating drug delivery system (FDDS) was written with the primary goal of organizing recent literature with the fundamental process of flotation in achieving gastric retention. The two approaches taken in the development of FDDS by creating both effervescent and non-effervescent floating tablets with a buoyancy mechanism as its foundation. With a limited window for absorption in the upper gastrointestinal tract, instability in the lower intestine environment, and low solubility at higher pH levels, FDDS is a way for delivering drugs. Physiological and formulation variability affecting gastric retention, and the utilization of recently produced and invented polymers are some examples of the novel methodologies in FDDS. This review also focuses on different in vivo and in vitro methods in relation to the functionality and use of floating systems. Floating dosage forms can be administered in conventional forms like tablets or capsules by including the gas-generating agent and the proper ingredients. This paper also discusses several methods for creating floating dosage forms, as well as recent and innovative developments.

This chapter summarizes the co-design, co-production, and co-evaluation processes of a mobile health check-up research project in Jaipur, India, from March 2016 to June 2020. It is the continuation of our previous paper which was published in November 2018 at Sustainability. The main focus of this chapter is to describe the processes of co-production, co-implementation, and co-evaluation research activities after November 2018. To accomplish this, all documents and materials related to the research processes of co-design, co-production, and co-evaluation were thoroughly reviewed, including minutes from meetings, consultations, workshops, trainings, presentation slides, pictures, and reports. After reviewing the past 4 year’s research process, the road map of a sustainable mobile health check-up project in India was proposed.

Introduction: New methods and tools in healthcare sector are growing gradually due to the continuing innovation in medicine and technologies. Health care technology system adoption varies among health care professionals (doctors, nurses), patients, and potential users. Therefore, for increasing number of technologies in the health care field, the use of technology acceptance model is needed to guide implementation process across health care contexts and user groups. Therefore, understanding and creating the conditions under which information system will be grasped by human remains a high priority research issue of information systems research and practice. Moreover, due to the scarcity of medical infrastructure including doctors and hospitals, remote healthcare services by using advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is getting popular around the world. Due to potential benefits and the various eHealth initiatives in place, many recent studies have been done to enhance acceptance of eHealth services by all citizens. / Objective: Therefore, the purpose of this review is to systematically review all published studies on investigating the users' adoption of eHealth to summarize results of previous studies and to show future direction for further research. This study reviews all published research on acceptance model in e-health. / Method: This study conducted a systematic search of the web of science database and google scholar to collect studies about the adoption of eHealth technology. The author selected 19 articles to review. This literature review is conducted to identify currently available eHealth adoption framework. / Conclusion: The result showed that understanding and creating the conditions under which information system will be grasped by human is a high priority research issue of information systems research and practice. Based on the identified adoption factors in different eHealth technological context, it is suggested that the common investigated factors in the previous studies for each technological context and user group, need to be tested empirically in real settings. The confirmed factors are then recommended for apply as a basic model in each technological context and user group. / Originality: This study inform scope for future research by identifying gaps in literature in this field. To our knowledge this is the first study to systematically review to identify influencing factors, and future directions of adoption of ICT based health services.

(主査) 教授 佐野 英彦, 教授 吉田 靖弘, 教授 井上 哲, 歯学院（口腔医学専攻）

The properties of a pulp capping material play a major role in the prognosis of pulp capping treatment. A pulp capping material is considered ideal when it exhibits favourable pulpal response, good sealing ability, excellent biocompatibility, effective antibacterial property, and ease of manipulation. In these regards, performance of several materials has already been evaluated. A new biomaterial, Phosphorylated Pullulan (PPL) has recently gained attention in this field because of its bioadhesive behavior, high biocompatibility, and dentin regeneration ability. Based on PPL's above-mentioned advantageous properties, an innovative Mineral Trioxide Aggregate based material was introduced by adding phosphorylated pullulan (MTAPPL). This study aimed to evaluate the dental pulp responses to novel mineral trioxide aggregate containing Phosphorylated Pullulan (MTAPPL) pulp capping material after direct pulp capping. Ninety-six cavities were prepared from fifty-six male Wister rat’s maxillary first molar teeth. The pulps were intentionally exposed and randomly divided into four groups according to pulp capping materials: an experimental pulp capping material containing Mineral Trioxide Aggregate with Phosphorylated Pullulan (MTAPPL, GC, Tokyo, Japan), an another experimental material containing Phosphorylated Pullulan (PPL, GC, Tokyo, Japan), conventional Nex-Cem MTA (NCMTA, GC, Tokyo, Japan) and Super Bond (SB, Sun Medical, Shiga, Japan). The rats were observed postoperatively after direct pulp capping at four observational time intervals of 1, 3, 7, and 28 days. Six teeth were allocated for each time interval. The maxillary sections, together with molar teeth were dissected and fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde solution for 24 hours at 4oC. The tissues were demineralized in 10% EDTA solution and embedded in paraffin. The 5 μm-thick serial sections were cut in the mesiodistal 2 direction and prepared according to routine histological techniques to observe pulpal reactions with a scoring system. DMP1 and CD34 antigen were used to check odontoblast differentiation and pulpal vascularization, respectively. Statistical analysis was performed using the KruskalWallis test and the Bonferroni corrected Mann?Whitney U test, for evaluating differences between the groups during each observation period. The level of significance was set at .05. On day 1, mild inflammatory cells were present in MTAPPL and NCMTA groups, few inflammatory cells were present in PPL group, whereas SB showed mild to a moderate inflammatory response. Significant difference was observed between PPL and SB groups (p < 0.05). On day 3, moderate to severe inflammatory cells were present in PPL and SB group, whereas MTAPPL and NCMTA groups showed a mild inflammatory response. No significant difference was observed between all the groups (p ? 0.05). On day 7, a thin layer of mineralized tissue formation was observed in all tested groups with no or mild inflammatory response. No significant difference was observed between the groups (p ? 0.05). On day 28, no inflammatory responses were observed in the group MTAPPL and NCMTA, whereas PPL and SB groups showed a mild inflammatory response. significant difference was observed between MTAPPL and SB groups (p < 0.05). Complete mineralized tissue barrier formation was observed in the group MTAPPL, NCMTA and PPL with no significant difference (p > 0.05). the SB group exhibited incomplete mineralized tissue barrier formation, which was significantly different from NCMTA, MTAPPL, and PPL (p < 0.05). Positive staining of CD34 and DMP1 was observed in all the group. This study demonstrated that MTAPPL material showed similar favourable cellular and inflammatory pulp responses and mineralized tissue formation as pulp capping material. Therefore, MTAPPL can be considered as promising direct pulp capping material., (主査) 教授 佐野 英彦, 教授 吉田 靖弘, 教授 井上 哲, 歯学院（口腔医学専攻）

Deformation and stress characteristics in the upper crust of the fold-and-thrust belt in the Colombian Eastern Cordillera were investigated by numerical analysis. The structural trend of Colombian Eastern Cordillera has long been considered a possible example of a true contraction orogen. The issue of the convergent displacement along an elastic structural body, which controls present-day deformation in this Cordillera is examined here. Modeling results are presented in terms of three parameters: 1) distributions, orientations, and magnitudes of principal stresses; 2) maximum shear stress (_max) contour; and 3) proximity to failure of elements within faults. Mohr-Coulomb failure criteria with bulk rock properties are applied to analyze the faults. The model shows extensional stresses in the crust at shallow crustal levels (from surface to about 6 km) despite overall contraction, and contraction at depth is confirmed. Measurement results indicate that, for homogeneous crustal thickening, extensional stresses are concentrated in the Servita half-gaben and Bucaramanga fault systems, where the vertical thrust faults and thickening processes are located. Our two-dimensional (2D) modeling results emphasize that extensional stresses are still active along the vertical to sub-vertical fault system in the fold-and-thrust belt of the Colombian Eastern Cordillera.

Extrahepatic biliary tract tumors are rare and among them rhabdomyosarcoma is most common. Rhabdomyosarcoma is a soft tissue malignant musculoskeletal tumor and is a very rare malignancy of the common bile duct in children. It usually presents as obstructive jaundice and/or pruritus. If there is no local invasion to the adjacent tissues, the radiological appearance of the tumor lesion is like a choledochal cyst. So the diagnosis is usually made at surgery or by preoperative biopsy. It is important to diagnose early and differentiate it from choledochal cyst and start treatment as early as possible for long time survival of the patient. This case report presented a case of a 10-year-old boy with recurrent onset of obstructive jaundice and fever preoperatively who was diagnosed as choledochal cyst and postoperatively as embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma of the common bile duct. After surgical resection and postoperative chemotherapy, the child had a good prognosis. So it is crucial to know that this rare tumor can mimic congenital choledochal cyst and it should be considered in the differential diagnosis of obstructive jaundice in children.

Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, malicious attacks have become more pervasive and damaging than ever. Malicious intruders have been responsible for most cybercrimes committed recently and are the cause for a growing number of cyber threats, including identity and IP thefts, financial crimes, and cyber-attacks to critical infrastructures. Machine learning (ML) has proven itself as a prominent field of study over the past decade by solving many highly complex and sophisticated real-world problems. This paper proposes an ML-based classification technique to detect the growing number of malicious URLs, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is currently considered a threat to IT users. We have used a large volume of Open Source data and preprocessed it using our developed tool to generate feature vectors and we trained the ML model using the apprehensive malicious threat weight. Our ML model has been tested, with and without entropy to forecast the threatening factors of COVID-19 URLs. The empirical evidence proves our methods to be a promising mechanism to mitigate COVID-19 related threats early in the attack lifecycle.

With the advent of advanced technology, IoT introduces a vast number of devices connecting with each other and collecting a sheer volume of data. Thus, the demands of IoT security is paramount. Cryptography is being used to secure the networks for authentication, confidentiality, data integrity and access control. However, due to the resource constraint nature of IoT devices, the traditional cryptographic protocols may not be suited in all IoT environments. Researchers, as a result, have been proposing various lightweight cryptographic algorithms and protocols. In this paper, we discuss the state of the art lightweight cryptographic protocols for IoT networks and present a comparative analysis of the existing protocols. In doing so, this paper has classified the most current algorithm into two parts, such as symmetric and asymmetric lightweight cryptography. Additionally, we consider several recent developed block cipher and stream cipher algorithms. Furthermore, various research challenges of lightweight cryptography have been addressed., Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures and 6 tables

Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extracranial solid tumor that originates from multipotent neural crest cells. NB cell populations which express embryonic stem cell-associated genes have been identified and shown to retain a multipotent phenotype. However, whether somatic reprogramming of NB cells can produce similar stem-cell like populations is unknown. Here, we sought to reprogram NB cell lines using an integration-free Sendai virus vector system. Of four NB cell lines examined, only SH-IN cells formed induced pluripotent stem cell-like colonies (SH-IN 4F colonies) at approximately 6 weeks following transduction. These SH-IN 4F colonies were alkaline phosphatase-positive. Array comparative genomic hybridization analysis indicated identical genomic aberrations in the SH-IN 4F cells as in the parental cells. SH-IN 4F cells had the ability to differentiate into the three embryonic germ layers in vitro, but rather formed NBs in vivo. Furthermore, SH-IN 4F cells exhibited resistance to cisplatin treatment and differentiated into endothelial-like cells expressing CD31 in the presence of vascular endothelial growth factor. These results suggest that SH-IN 4F cells are partially reprogrammed NB cells, and could be a suitable model for investigating the plasticity of aggressive tumors. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Bangla handwriting recognition is becoming a very important issue nowadays. It is potentially a very important task specially for Bangla speaking population of Bangladesh and West Bengal. By keeping that in our mind we are introducing a comprehensive Bangla handwritten character dataset named BanglaLekha-Isolated. This dataset contains Bangla handwritten numerals, basic characters and compound characters. This dataset was collected from multiple geographical location within Bangladesh and includes sample collected from a variety of aged groups. This dataset can also be used for other classification problems i.e: gender, age, district. This is the largest dataset on Bangla handwritten characters yet., Comment: Bangla Handwriting Dataset, OCR

Objectives: The study aimed to identify the important effects of some selected variables in antenatal care (ANC) seeking behaviour among slum mothers. Methods: The data for the study were collected in 2006 from 700 mothers in the slum areas of Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC), Bangladesh. Results: The results indicate that tetanus toxoid (TT) is relatively widespread in slum areas of RCC. Serious health implications were observed for the mothers and their children who lived in the study areas because more than half of the respondents (56.1%) were not assisted at their last childbirth by any health professional. The respondents were too poor to buy iron tablets/syrup and vitamin tablets/syrup during their last pregnancy. The application of a logistic regression model suggested that demographic and socio-economic factors were associated with ANC seeking behaviour among slum mothers. Conclusion: Respondents’ education, place of treatment, husband’s occupation, family’s income, and exposure to mass media had highly significant effects on mothers seeking medical checkups during their last pregnancy.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an imaging technique used in medical settings for capturing images of the human body or parts of the human body for clinical purposes. The main benefit of this scan is that, it is a non-invasive method because it uses strong magnetic fields and non-ionizing radiation in the radio frequency range. Hence MRI is considered to be safer to the patient when compared with computed tomography (CT) and traditional X-ray scanning methods which involve doses of ionizing radiation that may increase the risk of malignancy. In MRI acquisition, multi-slice MRI approaches are the most widely used and in its acquisition process, multiple 2D slices are captured to form a 3D volume of the desired part of the body. However, the resolution in the slice direction is usually reduced to allow faster acquisition and also reduce the amount of noise. Improving the resolution of MRI images using existing acquisition methods has proven to be challenging and expensive. To deal with this, super resolution (SR) is widely used and is achieved by combining a set of blurred, noisy low resolution (LR) images to improve its resolution. In this thesis, novel SR approaches for MRI are proposed which are capable of taking multiple multi-slice LR MRI image volumes of the same part of the body and combining them together to obtain 3D SR image volumes that are more accurate than any of the original LR volumes. To accommodate this, firstly, a Gaussian scale mixture (GSM) model prior is used. An extension of this prior named as GSM-cTV constraint is then developed by considering the GSM model combined with a total variation constraint. To develop the proposed SR approaches, the priors in a complex wavelet domain are considered as regularization terms because they can reduce noise by using the statistics of the heavy-tailed nature of MRI images and preserve sharp edges while reducing the noise of their more homogeneous regions. A number of quantitative and qualitative measurements are taken to evaluate the performance of the SR algorithms. For real-data analysis, to assess the accuracy of the SR methods, segmented bone from a CT volume and segmented bone from the output from the SR of MRI volumes are compared. Both the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the experimental results demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed SR approaches in terms of improving the resolution of MRI images. The wavelet based priors are considered for use as regularization terms to develop restoration methods for 3D MRI image de-noising and de-blurring. A number of experiments are conducted to validate the priors for MRI image restoration. Experimental results show that using this prior produces good result in terms of MRI image de-blurring and de-noising. These wavelet based priors are also considered for use as regularization priors to reconstruct the multi-slice MRI volume in a compressed sensing framework to allow faster acquisition. Experimental results show that the volumes reconstructed using these approaches are superior, both visually and quantitatively, to those produced by other algorithms.

The paper discusses the energy consumption and energy saving potential for a major energy-intensive product in the chemical industry-ammonia, based on technologies currently in use and possible process improvements. The paper consists of four parts. In the first part, mainly references to various ammonia production technologies are given. Energy consumption, emissions and saving potentials are discussed in the second part. Thereby, the situation in Europe, the US and India is highlighted and various data sources are compared. In the third part of the paper, a novel approach for modeling energy efficiency improvements is described that accounts for uncertainties and unobserved heterogeneity in the production processes. Besides new investments, revamping investments are also included in the modeling and the development of the production stock is accounted for. Finally, in the fourth part, this approach is applied to the modeling of energy efficiency improvements and CO2 emission reductions in ammonia production. Thereby, considerable improvements in specific energy use and CO2 emissions are found in the reference scenario, yet under the assumption of high oil and gas prices, a partial switch to coal based technologies is expected which lowers notably the CO2 efficiency. Introduction of a CO2 penalty under a certificate trading or other regime is on contrary found to foster energy efficiency and the use of low carbon technologies.

Co-liquefaction of a Chinese bituminous coal with bagasse — a biomass waste — has been carried out in an autoclave of 300-ml capacity at a temperature range of 350–450°C, reaction time 15–45 min and cool hydrogen pressure 300–700 psig (2.04–4.76 MPa). The addition of baggasse and tetralin are beneficial to liquefaction. Optimization of the co-liquefaction process was carried out with respect to oil yield by the Factorial Experiment Design Method. The oil yield reached 48% at optimum conditions of temperature 420°C, cool hydrogen pressure of 500 psig and reaction time of 40 min. A polynomial mathematical model-second order response surface model has been obtained for correlating the oil yield response factor as well as conversion with the major process variables. The equation derived by us holds well in determining the effect of process variables on response factors for any regime condition in the range of our experimental design within ±5%.

Precipitation was collected on an event basis from July 1994 to August 1995 at towns around the capital Dhaka of Bangladesh. The major chemical components were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, UV-Visible spectrophotometry and ion selective electrode method. The concentrations of nitrate and sulphate were found to be below the minimum detection limit of 1.0 mg L- 1; the concentrations of Cl-, Na+, K+, Ca+2, Mg+2 and NH4+ ranged from

An operational low cost system is developed for mapping daily and monthly mean daily global solar radiation reaching the ground over a big geographical area from APT (Automatic Picture Transmission) images of NOAA polar orbiting satellite. The system is suitable for use in south and southeast Asia and is said to be acceptable for engineering, agricultural, and climatological applications requiring the knowledge of geographical and temporal variation of solar radiation. It is alterable for use in other locations. The system comprises a personal computer attached with a small APT receiver along with other peripherals such as monochrome monitors and simple printer. An improved empirical bispectral method which applies visible and far infrared APT images is used to calculate the cloudiness of the sky. The empirical coefficients obtained by correlating cloudiness with ground measured solar radiation are used to estimate solar radiation at a target on the ground knowing the cloudiness of its sky from a satellite image. The geographical coverage of the map can be as big as 15° latitude by 20° longitude near the Equator. The spatial resolution of the radiation map is 111 km. The mean standard error of estimation of daily global radiation is 12.9% with a range of 6–19% of the measured mean. This accuracy is acceptable and comparable to other similar methods developed so far.

During thermal oil recovery the elevated reservoir temperature and pressure in combination with rock matrix could cause significant changes in oil composition and its physical properties, especially the viscosity. This paper presents the results of static laboratory experiments on the thermal alteration of two heavy crude oils of different chemical compositions (one rich in resin content, the other one rich in asphaltenes) as a function of temperature, pressure and admixture of water and/rock matrix. Especially the effects of heating time and temperature were studied. Thermal cracking at temperatures up to 380 °C led to the formation of a gas phase consisting mainly of methane. The generation of CO 2 , H 2 S and the hydrocarbon gases depended on oil composition. The production of CO 2 was enhanced in the presence of water. During a 24 h test, the resin rich crude oil yielded significant amounts of insoluble organic material (pyrobitumen) at temperatures above 340 °C. For the asphaltene rich crude oil this occurred above 360 °C. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the products formed during the thermal degradation show their dependence on the chemical composition of the crude oils.

Supermarkets play a significant role in modern urban living in developed and developing nations worldwide. Technology has made it possible to provide peoples’ daily needs such as food either fresh, preserved or cooked, at the hand reach in these supermarkets. This easy lifestyle however, comes with a burden to the environment and natural resources. There are growing concerns for the sustainability of modern lifestyle in connection to worldwide population growth, increasing impact of climate change due to human activities, predicted shortage of traditional energy sources and uncertainty in alternative energy resource, New generation supermarket equipments such as refrigeration, air conditioning, lighting and other processes must aim for effectively reducing such sustainability burden in their application, individually and integrally. This paper investigates sustainablity targets for supermarkets and identifies some sensible choices amongst many of that are possible using emerging technologies.

A Previously traditional methods were sufficient to protect the information, since it is simplicity in the past does not need complicated methods but with the progress of information technology, it become easy to attack systems, and detection of encryption methods became necessary to find ways parallel with the differing methods used by hackers, so the embedding methods could be under surveillance from system managers in an organization that requires the high level of security. This fact requires researches on new hiding methods and cover objects which hidden information is embedded in. It is the result from the researches to embed information in executable files, but when will use the executable file for cover they have many challenges must be taken into consideration which is any changes made to the file will be firstly detected by untie viruses, secondly the functionality of the file is not still functioning. In this paper, a new information hiding system is presented. The aim of the proposed system is to hide information (data file) within image page of execution file (EXEfile) to make sure changes made to the file will not be detected by universe and the functionality of the exe.file is still functioning after hiding process. Meanwhile, since the cover file might be used to identify hiding information, the proposed system considers overcoming this dilemma by using the execution file as a cover file., IEEE format, International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, IJCSIS January 2010, ISSN 1947 5500, http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/

In this paper a tuning fork type structure of Ultra Wideband (UWB) antenna is proposed. The antenna offers excellent performance for UWB system, ranging from 3.7 GHz to 13.8 GHz. The antenna exhibits a 10 dB return loss bandwidth over the entire frequency band. The rectangular patch antenna is designed on FR4 substrate and fed with 50 ohms microstrip line by optimizing the width of partial ground, the width and position of the feedline to operate in UWB. The rectangular patch is then modified to tuning fork structure by maintaining UWB frequency range., {"references":["FCC NEWS (FCC 02-48), Feb. 14, 2002. FCC News Release, New\npublic safety applications and broadband internet access among uses\nenvisioned by FCC authorization of ultra-wideband technology.","K. -L. Wong, C. -H. Wu, and S. -W. Su, \"Ultra-wideband square planar\nmetal-plate monopole antenna with a trident-shaped feeding strip,\" IEEE\nTrans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, pp. 1262-1269, Apr. 2005.","K. L Wong, Tseng T. C., and Teng P. L., \"Low-profile ultra-wideband\nantenna for mobile phone applications,\" Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett.,\nVol. 43, 7-9, 2004.","T. Yang, and W.A. Davis, \"Planar half-disk antenna structures for ultrawideband\ncommunications,\" IEEE Antenna Propagat. Soc. Int. Symp.\nDig., Vol. 3, 2508-2511, 2004.","S. H. Lee, Park J. K., and Lee J. N., \"A novel cpw-fed ultra-wideband\nantenna design,\" Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., Vol. 44, 393-396,","L. Lizzi, F. Viani, R. Azaro, and A. Massa, \"Optimization of a Spline-\nShaped UWB Antenna by PSO\", IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propag.\nLett, Vol. 6, 182-185, 2007.","S.S. Su, , J. Chou, and K. Wong, \"Internal Ultrawideband Monopole\nAntenna for Wireless USB Dongle Applications\", IEEE Trans. Antennas\nPropag., Vol. 55, No.4, 1180-1183, Apr. 2007.","Z. N. Chen, \"Novel Bi-Arm Rolled Monopole for UWB Applications,\"\nIEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 53, No.2, Feb. 2005.","N. Telzhensky and Y. Leviatan, \"Novel Method of UWB Antenna\nOptimization for Specified Input Signal Forms by Means of Genetic\nAlgorithm\" IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 54, No.8, 2216-2224,\nAug. 2006."]}

Sand production is a major problem being faced by operating oil companies for many years. Sand problems are known to have increased production costs considerably. To-date, the roles of shear and tensile failure modes have been well thought out in studying sand production, but the contribution of volumetric failure mechanism in this phenomenon has been ignored. Even though volumetric failure mechanism has been well studied in looking into the phenomenon of land subsidence, but its role in sand production has been neglected in the past. In this paper, the contribution of this mechanism in sand production is addressed. In numerical studies, a finite difference based program was used. This program captures the fluid/solid interaction with complete rigor. In the experimental part, uniaxial strain condition was applied on some synthetic samples to examine volumetric failure mechanism, while traditional triaxial tests were performed on the same type of samples to learn about shear characteristic of the material. The mechanical parameters obtained from these tests were used in the numerical model that covers all tensile, shear and volumetric failure mechanisms. By using numerical and experimental means, it was discovered that volumetric failure mode, i.e. pore collapse, has a significant contribution in sanding. Initially at the well face, only shear and tensile failure may take place, but pore collapse can be triggered in a zone very close to the cavity hole. Subsequent to production of shear or tensile failed material from the open face, pore collapse induced disintegrated material may be exposed to cavity face, and potentially massive sanding may take place.

Medinfo2013-The 14th World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics, August 19-23, 2013, Copenhagen, Denmark

Mobile robots need to automatically generate a safe, goal-oriented, and fast collision-free trajectory in real-time during the movement in an indoor/outdoor environment. A planned trajectory must be adaptable and drivable with environmental changes where various static and moving obstacles may be present. The ultimate goal of a robot is to reach the destination without hitting any obstacles, therefore, a reactive local path planning algorithm is needed. In this paper, a novel local algorithm is proposed by integrating dynamic window approach (DWA) and improved follow the gap method (IFGM) to generate a collision-free trajectory for a mobile robot which is capable to avoid any moving obstacles presenting in the surrounding environment. In this proposed method, first, a safety distance is maintained according to the relative position of obstacles and the robot. Moreover, find a feasible gap to direct the robot toward the desired goal. Besides, the heading angle is calculated to change the direction of the robot for avoiding collision with nearby obstacles. After that, calculate the appropriate velocity for the robot. Finally, a robust, safe, and goal-directed trajectory is generated which does not suffer from global convergence and local minima problems. The performance and effectiveness of this proposed algorithm are evaluated by experimental results. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Visual Place Recognition (VPR) is a fundamental yet challenging task in Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (V-SLAM) problems. The VPR works as a subsystem of the V-SLAM. VPR is the task of retrieving images upon revisiting the same place in different conditions. The problem is even more difficult for agricultural and all-terrain autonomous mobile robots that work in different scenarios and weather conditions. Over the last few years, many state-of-the-art methods have been proposed to solve the limitations of existing VPR techniques. VPR using bag-of-words obtained from local features works well for a large-scale image retrieval problem. However, the aggregation of local features arbitrarily produces a large bag-of-words vector database, limits the capability of efficient feature learning, and aggregation and querying of candidate images. Moreover, aggregating arbitrary features is inefficient as not all local features equally contribute to long-term place recognition tasks. Therefore, a novel VPR architecture is proposed suitable for efficient place recognition with semantically meaningful local features and their 3D geometrical verifications. The proposed end-to-end architecture is fueled by a deep neural network, a bag-of-words database, and 3D geometrical verification for place recognition. This method is aware of meaningful and informative features of images for better scene understanding. Later, 3D geometrical information from the corresponding meaningful features is computed and utilised for verifying correct place recognition. The proposed method is tested on four well-known public datasets, and Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) recorded dataset for experimental validation from Victoria Park, Adelaide, Australia. The extensive experimental results considering standard evaluation metrics for VPR show that the proposed method produces superior performance than the available state-of-the-art methods.

In this paper, a longitudinal and lateral control system of an autonomous vehicle is presented by developing a novel hybrid trajectory tracking algorithm. In this proposed method, the longitudinal control system is developed based on the curvature information of the reference path. The autonomous vehicle modifies the desired speed according to the estimated size and types of the reference trajectory curves. This desired speed is integrated into the PID controller to maintain an optimal speed of the vehicle while following the given path. The lateral control system is designed based on feedforward (preview control) and feedback (LQR) controllers to reduce lateral errors between the trajectory and autonomous vehicle. The feedforward and the feedback controllers generate precise steering angles to eliminate orientation and lateral errors caused by the curvature of the trajectory and external disturbances. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing simulation and experimental results with different trajectory tracking algorithms on simulated and experimented paths. It is proven that the proposed algorithm is capable of significantly minimizing lateral errors on sharp curves compared to other path tracking methods. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Refereed/Peer-reviewed Visual place recognition is a core component for relocalization and loop closure detection of a visual SLAM system. Over the last few years, many state-of-the-art methods have been proposed, which mainly use random feature information. However, not all the features equally contribute to the place recognition task, i.e., dynamic objects, textureless area, repetitive patterns. Therefore in this study, we proposed a semantically aware place recognition method that is suitable for efficient place recognition with the meaningful feature. A deep neural network is used to filter out the most meaningful and informative region of an image for better scene understanding. Finally, meaningful features and their geometrical information are extracted and saved in the database for loop detection. For experimental validation, the proposed method has been tested on four well-known public datasets. The extensive experimental results considering all standard evaluation matrices show our method produces superior performance than the other state-of-the-art methods.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed