bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mobile Strategy for E-Business Solution
Authors: Atkins Anthony S.
Published: September 2010

It is becoming evident that mobile technology can enhance a current e-business system to provide competitive advantage in business activities. These enhancements in mobile device applications such as in mobile hotel checkin system, m-payment system for parking tickets, and mobile donor transplant system are evolving with usage of wireless technology such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access). Other examples include wearable mobile technologies used in military observation tactics and civilian clothing accessories for entertainment purposes. The lack of current mobile strategies, can cause some businesses to over spend or under utilize potential mobile applications. The use of a mobile strategic framework will help provide the insights to improving companies in their commercial operations and examples of these mobile solutions are outlined in relation to commercial applications which have been implemented in hospitals, retail Supply Chain Management (SCM), and in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). These types of systems are known to improve quality of service and provide competitive advantage. A mobile framework is presented to introduce the application of user mobility to mobile usage as an extension of existing Intranet, Extranet, and Internet e-business application. This Mobile Business Application Framework could assist practitioners in identifying the financial and competitive aspects in relation to mobile technology applications into their business infrastructure.
Managing Temporal Data
Authors: Tansel Abdullah Uz
Published: September 2010

In general, databases store current data. However,the capability to maintain temporal data is a crucial requirement for many organizations and provides the base for organizational intelligence. A temporal database maintains time-varying data, that is, past, present, and future data. In this chapter, we focus on the relational data model and address the subtle issues in modeling and designing temporal databases. A common approach to handle temporal data within the traditional relational databases is the addition of time columns to a relation. Though this appears to be a simple and intuitive solution, it does not address many subtle issues peculiar to temporal data, that is, comparing database states at two different time points, capturing the periods for concurrent events and accessing times beyond these periods, handling multi-valued attributes, coalescing and restructuring temporal data, and so forth, [Gadia 1988, Tansel and Tin 1997]. There is a growing interest in temporal databases. A first book dedicated to temporal databases [Tansel at al 1993] followed by others addressing issues in handling time-varying data [Betini, Jajodia and Wang 1988, Date, Darwen and Lorentzos 2002, Snodgrass 1999].
A Relational Based-View of Intellectual Capital in High-Tech Firms
Authors: De Castro G. Martín , Sáez P. López , López J.E. Navas , Delgado-Verde M.
Published: September 2010

The Resource-Based View (RBV) has tried to test the role of strategic resources on sustained competitive advantage and superior performance. Although this theory has found several flaws in order to reach its objective effectively (Priem & Butler, 2001), recent proposals have suggested that these problems can be overcome (Peteraf & Barney, 2003). This solution requires paying a greater attention to the analysis of knowledge stocks, developing a mid-range theory: the Intellectual Capital-Based View (Reed, Lubatkin & Srinivasan, 2006). This mid-range and pracmatic theory allows the hypotheses development and empirical testing in a more effective way that the RBV. There is a certain degree of general agreement about the presence of human capital and organizational capital as the main components of intellectual capital, as well as about the fact that the configuration of knowledge stocks will vary from one industry and firm to another one. Taking these assumptions as a starting point, this paper explores the configuration of intellectual capital that can be empirically found on a sample of high-technology firms. Our findings highlight the importance of relational capital, which must be divided into business and alliance capital, so the strategic alliances play a relevance role in the type of firms that have been included in our research.
Epistemological Framework and Mathematical Learning
Authors: Fregola Cesare
Published: September 2010

The aim of this chapter is to provide some indications on the background of our research regarding the use of simulation games for learning geometry and arithmetic. We reinterpret certain educational goals from the perspective of the anthropology of the virtual. Within this context, a number of important international commissions on math teaching are analyzed with particular reference to the difficulties involved in finding the right balance between the need for a formal mathematical language and teaching solutions to guide learning.
Simulation Games for the Learning and Teaching of Mathematics
Authors: Piu Angela
Published: September 2010

The chapter presents the educational perspective within which the simulation games for learning mathematics are presented, as well as a number of considerations on the implementation of teaching course and environments. The main decisions taken for the design of simulation games are introduced, whereas the methodological aspects will be studied in greater depth in later chapters.
A Framework to Detect Disguised Missing Data
Authors: Belen Rahime , Temizel Tugba Taskaya
Published: September 2010

Many manually populated very large databases suffer from data quality problems such as missing, inaccurate data and duplicate entries. A recently recognized data quality problem is that of disguised missing data which arises when an explicit code for missing data such as NA (Not Available) is not provided and a legitimate data value is used instead. Presence of these values may affect the outcome of data mining tasks severely such that association mining algorithms or clustering techniques may result in biased inaccurate association rules and invalid clusters respectively. Detection and elimination of these values are necessary but burdensome to be carried out manually. In this chapter, the methods to detect disguised missing values by visual inspection are explained first. Then, the authors describe the methods used to detect these values automatically. Finally, the framework to detect disguised missing data is proposed and a demonstration of the framework on spatial and categorical data sets is provided.
Secure and Private Service Discovery in Pervasive Computing Environments
Authors: Zhu Feng , Zhu Wei
Published: September 2010

With the convergence of embedded computers and wireless communication, pervasive computing has become the inevitable future of computing. Every year, billions of computing devices are built. They are ubiquitously deployed and are gracefully integrated with people and their environments. Service discovery is an essential step for the devices to properly discover, configure, and communicate with each other. Authentication for pervasive service discovery is difficult. In this chapter, we introduce a user-centric service discovery model, called PrudentExposure, which automates authentication processes. It encodes hundreds of authentication messages in a novel code word form. Perhaps the most serious challenge for pervasive service discovery is the integration of computing devices with people. A critical privacy challenge can be expressed as a “chicken-and-egg problem”: both users and service providers want the other parties to expose sensitive information first. We discuss how a progressive and probabilistic model can protect both users’ and service providers’ privacy.
Preventative Healthcare
Authors: Barrientos James , Barry Michele
Published: September 2010

Australia’s ageing population has escalated the demand for current health services and the trend could compound to unsustainable levels under the current health system. This chapter proposes a preventative healthcare model based on assistive technology to strengthen wellbeing at the individual and community level. The proposed model could minimise premature and inappropriate admission of Australians to care facilities while enhancing their independence and self care. It could also present a cost effective approach for policy makers by helping to alleviate the escalating costs of the health system. Importantly, this program offers an effective and sustainable alternative for delivering future health services.
BDD-Based Combinatorial Keyword Query Processing under a Taxonomy Model
Authors: Minato Shin-ichi , Spyratos Nicolas
Published: September 2010

Digital libraries are one of the key systems for an IT society, and supporting easy access to them is an important technical issue between a human and an intelligent system. Here we consider a publish/subscribe system for digital libraries which continuously evaluates queries over a large repository containing document descriptions. The subscriptions, the query expressions and the document descriptions, all rely on a taxonomy that is a hierarchically organized set of keywords, or terms. The digital library supports insertion, update and removal of a document. Each of these operations is seen as an event that must be notified only to those users whose subscriptions match the document‘s description. In this chapter, the authors present a novel method of processing such keyword queries. Our method is based on Binary Decision Diagram (BDD), an efficient data structure for manipulating large-scale Boolean functions. The authors compile the given keyword queries into a BDD under a taxonomy model. The number of possible keyword sets can be exponentially large, but the compiled BDD gives a compact representation, and enabling a highly efficient matching process. In addition, our method can deal with any Boolean combination of keywords from the taxonomy, while the previous result considered only a conjunctive keyword set. In this chapter, they describe the basic idea of their new method, and then the authors show their preliminary experimental result applying to a document set with large-scale keyword domain under a real-life taxonomy structure.
Electronic Mentoring in the Classroom
Authors: Shpigelman Carmit-Noa , Reiter Shunit
Published: September 2010

In recent years, we have witnessed a process of growing awareness and increased activity among persons with disabilities toward improvements in their living conditions and their full inclusion into society. Still, persons with disabilities experience difficulty in achieving the interpersonal competencies needed to develop adaptive social behaviors, to achieve and maintain close relationships, and to fulfill their potential. Mentoring appears to promote interpersonal development when it is conducted via traditional face-to-face methods or via electronic means. In particular, electronic mentoring programs that nurture relationships between persons with disabilities appear to have considerable potential for their empowerment. In this chapter we discuss the relevance, feasibility and utility of e-mentoring intervention programs designed especially for young people with disabilities.
A Common Sense Approach to Interoperability
Authors: Taylor Kate
Published: September 2010

E-learning promotes the use of structured learning materials which extend the book based metaphor of chapters, lists and diagrams using markup languages based on HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Educators working with eXtended Markup Language (XML) have a variety of XML based technologies to choose from: Moodle, Resource Definition Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL). Another option is to use XML to generate web resources from a relational database, such as MySQL, or with a knowledge database, such as Prolog. This chapter looks at how these three technologies can interchange information with the help of new intelligent resources such as the OpenMind project that are beginning to model the world around us. Advances in these areas pave the way for more automatic acquisition of knowledge from existing texts using tools such as MontyLingua to provide a basic semantic understanding of the material and promote interoperability. Examples of the technologies are used to illustrate the benefits of structuring new learning materials, and options for integrating heritage materials are examined.
Open Educational Resources in E-Learning
Authors: Rejas-Muslera Ricardo J. , García-Tejedor Alvaro J. , Rodriguez Olga Peñalba
Published: September 2010

According to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar‘s definition (Deshpande & Mugridge, 1994), Open Educational Resources (OER) are based on the philosophical view of knowledge as a collective, social product. In the last years the relevance of OER has been widely acknowledged and a high magnitude impact is to be expected for OER in the near future (Atkins et al, 2007), (Wiley & Gurrell, 2009), especially as a masterpiece in e-learning development. The aim of this chapter is to present an overview of OER in e-learning, focused on two fundamental aspects: (i) technical issues, mainly standards, and (ii) socio-economic and legal questions. This way the chapter deals with the most relevant issues in this matter: Which is the OER´s role in education, especially for e-learning performance? Which are the technical resources and current standards needed for them? Which socio-economics and legal aspects influence the diffusion and use of OER?
Affective Facial Expressions Using Auto-Associative Neural Network in Kansei Robot ‘‘Ifbot’’
Authors: Kanoh Masayoshi , Nakamura Tsuyoshi , Kato Shohei , Itoh Hidenori
Published: September 2010

The authors propose three methods of enabling a Kansei robot, Ifbot, to convey affective expressions using an emotion space composed of an auto-associative neural network. First, the authors attempt to extract the characteristics of Ifbot‘s facial expressions by mapping them to its emotion space using an auto-associative neural network, and create its emotion regions. They then propose a method for generating affective facial expressions using these emotion regions. The authors also propose an emotion-transition method using a path that minimizes the amount of change in an emotion space. Finally, they propose a method for creating personality using the face.
Achieving Realism in 3D Interactive Systems
Authors: Gukasyan Arman , Ilyina Nadezhda , Lavrov Alexander
Published: September 2010

Web 2.0 has demonstrated how new technologies can change the structure of the customer-provider relationship. This is evident in the many new business opportunities that have arisen including the growth of 3D environments and virtual worlds. The development of more specialized services and consumer integration creates new marketplaces with new rules of the game. As these new opportunities come to the scene, they will change the face of the world into 3D environments and a multi-agent collaboration. The adoption of virtual worlds depends a great deal on the user experience. The challenges of providing the user with virtual realism is a challenge as many supporting technologies are still in the early development phase. This chapter will discuss several of the issues and tradeoffs involved in developing Real Virtual Worlds.
Learning Space in Virtual Environments
Authors: Kyritsis M. , Gulliver S. R. , Morar S.
Published: September 2010

Learning the spatial layout of an environment is essential in application domains including military and emergency personnel training. Traditionally, whilst learning space from a Virtual Environment (VE), identical training time was used for all users - a one size fits all approach to exposure / training time. This chapter, however, identifies both environmental and individual user differences that influence the training time required to ensure effective virtual environment spatial knowledge acquisition (SKA). We introduce the problem of contradicting literature in the area of SKA, and discuss how the amount of exposure time given to a person during VE training is responsible for the feasibility of SKA. We then show how certain individual user differences, as well as environmental factors, impact on the required exposure time that a particular person needs within a specific VE. Individual factors discussed include: the importance of knowledge and experience; the importance of gender; the importance of aptitude and spatial orientation skills; and the importance of cognitive styles. Environmental factors discussed include: Size, Spatial layout complexity and landmark distribution. Since people are different, a one-size fits all approach to training time does not seem logical. The impact of this research domain is important to VE training in general, however within service and military domains ensuring appropriate spatial training is critical in order to ensure that disorientation does not occur in a life / death scenario.
Citizen-Centric Service Dimensions of Indian Rural E-Governance Systems
Authors: Misra Harekrishna
Published: September 2010

E-governance systems in India have witnessed prolific advancement over the years. India has strategically adopted e-governance as a part of its policy. In recent times each state has its own e-governance plan to deliver services as planned. National policy also aims to provide formalized services across the nation while recognizing the importance of state specific services. This approach includes various mission mode projects under national e-governance plan (NeGP). Manifestation of such approach has resulted in 100,000 common service centers (CSC) in rural areas. It is expected that rural citizens would find them useful and it may contribute for effective governance. In this chapter it is argued that such an initiative would be successful if rural citizens find these CSCs useful for their livelihood security. Various dimensions of this phenomenon are also examined through some cases in this chapter to understand their contributions to successful CSCs in India.
Methods for Software Complexity and Development Effort Estimation and its Importance in the Area of ICT Governance
Authors: Struska Zdenek , Vanícek Jirí , Závodný Martin
Published: September 2010

The area of applications development for government purposes can be characterized to be task specific. In this context, development projects are usually more complex and there are some differences in comparison with commercial projects. The mission of the proposed chapter is an explanation of methods of project complexity evaluation based on analogy, crisp and fuzzy expert estimation and measure models. The selected methods for aggregation of expert’s estimations are also presented. Further the chapter introduces selected methods designed for complexity estimation. All the introduced methods are widely known except one that was designed by the lead author of the chapter. The method is called BORM Points and is developed for an IS project designed in BORM method (Business Object Relation Modeling). Each method is introduced first, then its step-by-step computation procedure is described and finally suggestion of software, which is supported method computation procedure. The results of the methods are in non-dimensional numbers and it is necessary to set up the relationship between complexity and effort, and introduces COCOMO model and its variants. Efforts are given about the implementation of this form of estimation approach in the area of ICT governance, especially at the grass roots e-governance.
Using Web Sites to Improve Fiscal Transparency
Authors: Demirbas Tolga
Published: September 2010

Fiscal transparency today is considered as an essential element of both good governance and e-governance. Therefore, in the new public management and budgeting reforms made by governments, it is clearly observed that fiscal transparency is one of the key elements. E-government technologies and especially the internet are supportive to the efforts on the part of governments offering unprecedented opportunities to public administrations enabling the dissemination of fiscal information and improving the e-governance system. In Turkey, where there is the tradition of Continental Europe, the reforms made through new laws in early 2000 contain various legal and institutional regulations to improve fiscal transparency and encourage the public administrators to use websites in an attempt to enhance fiscal transparency. This chapter, within the context of evaluating the endeavors in question, examines the websites of municipalities in Turkey in terms of fiscal transparency and eventually presents some suggestions for the improvement of the e-governance system.-
Virtual Worlds
Authors: Lithgow Catherine M. J. , Wolf Judi L. Davidson , Berge Zane L.
Published: September 2010

Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), the most popular of which is Second Life, have great potential to provide engaging, interactive content to today’s students using both synchronous and asynchronous delivery. Educators, as well as several forward-thinking corporations and military organizations, have proven to be early adopters of MUVEs as a training delivery medium, paving the way to begin evaluating the medium for use in professional development. The use of MUVEs for education will definitely grow. Corporations considering venturing into this arena would do well to consider the lessons learned by the early adopters, paying particular attention to the barriers that need to be overcome for successful implementation.
Sound for Fantasy and Freedom
Authors: Liljedahl Mats
Published: September 2010

Sound is an integral part of our everyday lives. Sound tells us about physical events in the environment, and we use our voices to share ideas and emotions through sound. When navigating the world on a day-to-day basis, most of us use a balanced mix of stimuli from our eyes, ears and other senses to get along. We do this totally naturally and without effort. In the design of computer game experiences, traditionally, most attention has been given to vision rather than the balanced mix of stimuli from our eyes, ears and other senses most of us use to navigate the world on a day to day basis. The risk is that this emphasis neglects types of interaction with the game needed to create an immersive experience. This chapter summarizes the relationship between sound properties, GameFlow and immersive experience and discusses two projects in which Interactive Institute, Sonic Studio has balanced perceptual stimuli and game mechanics to inspire and create new game concepts that liberate users and their imagination.
Perceived Quality in Game Audio
Authors: Reiter Ulrich
Published: September 2010

This chapter reviews game audio from a Quality of Experience point of view. It describes cross-modal interaction of auditory and visual stimuli, re-introduces the concept of plausibility, and discusses issues of interactivity and attention as the basis for the qualitative, high-level salience model being suggested here. The model is substantiated by experimental results indicating that interaction or task located in the audio domain clearly influences the perceived audio quality. Cross-modal influence, with interaction or task located in a different (for example, visual) domain, is possible, but is significantly harder to predict and evaluate.
Digital Marketplaces as a Viable Model for SME Networking
Authors: Ndou Valentina , Sadguy Nezha
Published: September 2010

In the networked world supply chain, integration and networking is being echoed in various industries as a strategic imperative solution for firms. Firms are recognizing the power of the Internet as a platform for creating different forms of relationships and collaborations aimed to enhance value and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Digital Marketplaces represent one of the most powerful solutions adopted by firms to manage their supply chains and to support the networking practices among firms, especially among SMEs. In fact they enable firms to more efficiently buy, sell, and manage their supply chain processes on a global scale. However, SMEs Supply chains may differ in the modalities of coordination and collaboration, in the intensity of relations between actor and more specifically in the technological infrastructure and competencies available. These factors may affect the success of digital marketplaces and their potentialities for firms networking. The authors suggest that digital marketplaces could provide a viable model for SME networking; however, successful path toward networking requires a harmonization of digital marketplace business model with supply chain characteristics.
Supply Chain Knowledge Integration in Emerging Economies
Authors: Atkins Ryan
Published: September 2010

Firms in developed economies have been purchasing from firms in emerging economies for years, but they typically purchase low value, low margin items. Opportunities have arisen for emerging economy manufacturers to supply higher value products and services to firms in developed economies. In today’s global, knowledge based economy, suppliers must have cutting edge knowledge, and they must constantly upgrade their knowledge to maintain a competitive advantage. When supplying high-value products, complex knowledge based interactions between the buyer and supplier are necessary. A conceptual model is developed in this chapter, proposing that if suppliers in emerging economies are committed to long term relationships with developed economy customers, they can increase the level of knowledge integration in the relationship, and in turn, improve performance. The primary contribution of this chapter is to show that firms in emerging economies can achieve sales growth by becoming critical links in today’s global, knowledge based supply chains.
Web 2.0 and the Actualization of the Ideals of Adult Education
Authors: Weinstein Marc G. , Rocco Tonette S. , Plakhotnik Maria S.
Published: September 2010

This chapter explores how the emergent information ecosystem relates to assumptions about adult learners articulated in andragogy (Knowles, 1970, 1984) and adult education concepts. The chapter discusses the evolution of the information ecosystem and how its defining attributes relate to access, voluntary participation, self-direction, and learning webs. The new opportunities offered by this information ecosystem emerged in the same social and intellectual milieu as the foundational principles of adult education. Current developments in adult education indicate that new innovations in the use of interactive and communication technologies are emerging in a transformed information ecosystem.
Teaching Adults across Cultures, Distance, and Learning Preferences
Authors: Strohschen Gabriele
Published: September 2010

This chapter focuses on the underlying principles of instructional design and delivery as means for adult education practitioners to discern which instructional methods and strategies are suited to learners and learning tasks. The considerations here are intended to assist the educator in grasping key elements of ISD that work across cultures, distance, and learning needs, styles, and preferences of adults. It offers a strategy for determining key components of instructional technology. As such, this chapter is a foundation that provides data points for decision-making about instructional design and delivery for today’s adult educators.
Participatory and Appreciative Action and Reflection in Adult Learning
Authors: Marchi Simona
Published: September 2010

Participatory and Appreciative Action and Reflection (PAAR) is a specific approach to learning, reflection and change. In this chapter we are going to identify the characteristics of PAAR approach within the adult learning context. Starting from the relationship between types of learning and types of reflection, we will analyze in particular the differences between critical and appreciative reflection and transformative and generative learning. Then we will explain some theoretical and methodological origins of PAAR approach: Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and Participatory Action Research (PAR) highlighting, in particular, four important shifts that characterize this approach: from deficit-based to strengths based discourses; from self-learning to collective learning; from a one way of knowing to a more pluralistic one; from cycles and spirals of reflection to reflective learning framework with specific intentions of learning, action and change. Finally, we will consider a possible coexistence of critical and appreciative reflection, generally considered antithetical, or difficult to put in practice, in PAAR approach.
Integrating Technology for Effective Adult Education
Authors: Wang Victor X.
Published: September 2010

Teaching and learning anytime anyplace involves integrating technology into teaching and learning. Effective adult education would not occur without integrating technology into teaching and learning. Technological integration involves not only course instructors, adult learners, but also institutions. In addition, this chapter covers the evolution of technology, ranging from correspondence education to Web 2.0 technologies. By reading this chapter, readers will get to know under what circumstances integration of technology is possible and how to integrate technology into teaching and learning. More importantly, readers will change their mentality about integration into teaching and learning in the new century. They will come to the realization that integration of technology into teaching and learning will facilitate learning, not inhibit learning.
Virtual Collaboration
Authors: Hai-Jew Shalin
Published: September 2010

A key construct in e-learning involves virtual collaborations through computer-mediated communications tools. These collaborations may be synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (non-real-time). Learners work together to learn; conceptualize ideas and designs; solve problems; co-create learning and presentations; develop plans, designs, and models; simulate role-plays in various contexts; develop and maintain professional relationships, and coordinate their actions in response to particular situations and contingencies. A range of technological tools are used to promote rich virtual collaborations: knowledge structures and digital repositories, learning / course management systems (L/CMSes), web logs, wikis, immersive synthetic worlds, web conferencing software, mobile devices, live video link-ups, collaboratories, web laboratories, mixed-reality collaborative spaces, physical-digital tabletops, and electronic mail and electronic mailing lists. This chapter highlights the various types of virtual collaborations used in e-learning in higher education.
A Note on a Class of Optimization Problems in System Engineering
Authors: Jiao Hong Wei , Li Kun , Yin Jing Ben , Chen Yong Qiang
Published: September 2010

In this technical note, we develop an approach to globally solve a class of optimization problems in system engineering based on the recent paper ([1]). Actually the problem we investigated is more general, since we extend numerators and denominators of linear ratios to generalized polynomial functions. And we give a new linear relaxation method for obtaining the lower bound of problems. Our approach is easy to be implemented, since it need not additional special program to the upper and lower bound for numerator and denominator of each generalized polynomial ratio.
Parameter Optimization of Hydraulic Hybrid Vehicle Based on Genetic Algorithm
Authors: Liu Tao , Ju Xue Zhen
Published: September 2010

The working principle of hydrostatic hybrid vehicles(HHV) is discussed. A number of factors affecting the efficiency of hydrostatic transmission hybrid system are discussed. The mathematical model is established by using braking energy recovery capacity, power, fuel economy and vehicle cost as objective function, system parameters are used as the independent variables, and the multi-objective optimization process is compiled in MATLAB. The process takes the genetic algorithm (GA) as the optimization method, obtains the best system parameters through computing, and verifies the accuracy of optimization results through simulation.
Damage Effect of Shock Wave on Ventilation Structures during Gas Explosion
Authors: Qu Zhi Ming
Published: September 2010

When the gas accumulation position, volume and concentration are basically determined, the gas explosion is ignited with the minimum ignition power. The main task is to study the damage effects by explosion shock wave on the roadway structures or barriers within the roadway. That the roadway and its ventilation structures are damaged will have an important impact on some lanes, mine ventilation system as well as the whole mine, which will influence the decision-making during disasters relief. As the experimental studies of damage effect by gas explosion is more difficult, therefore, the numerical simulation and analysis is important and useful. In conclusion, simulation can not only use low-cost way to reproduce gas explosion shock wave propagation and the damage of roadway structures, but also obtain the relationship between explosion damage effect and the volume and concentration.
The Algorithm Research of Coin Detection Based on DSP
Authors: Chen Zi Wei , Yun Jin Tian , Gu Jun Bao
Published: September 2010

With the widespread using of coins, in order to solve the troubles brought by counterfeit money, it is of great significance to develop a system for real-time identification of coins. In the analysis of image processing technology, the hardware and software in this field, this paper has verified the recognition algorithm in the MATLAB and VC, and it had set up an coin image processing system with the DSP chip as a platform. In this system not only the surface information of the coin can be achieved and processed in real time, but also a practical hardware and software basis for the further application of DSP for image processing can be built.
Dynamical Behaviors of Asphalt Pavement under Vehicle Loads
Authors: Zhang Nian Mei , Wang Xu Dong
Published: September 2010

The dynamical responses of asphalt pavement structures subjected to the vehicles are studied considering the effect of horizontal forces. Based on the elasticity, the stress distribution and deformations of asphalt pavement structures under nonaxisymmetric loads are investigated. Integral transform method is used to obtain the stress response function. And the maximum shear stress distribution and Mises stress is studied analytically and numerically. The influence of the horizontal forces and material parameters of the pavement structures on the dynamic behaviors of the structure is analyzed. The results show that the horizontal force plays important roles on the maximum shear stress and Mises stresses in structures.
The Simulation Study on 3D Gas Flow Field and Structure Improvement with Tower Continuous Vacuum Dryer
Authors: Zhang Zhi Jun , Zhang Shi Wei , Xu Cheng Hai
Published: September 2010

The 3D gas flow field, including the gas pressure and gas velocity was studied by computer fluid dynamics simulation (CFD). The tower continuous vacuum dryer’s structure was improved and the pumping gas sketch was also optimized. The model was resoled by standard turbulence model. The porous medium zone was adopted to the material zone. The Darcy law, Ergun equation and porous medium interface jump boundary condition was applied. The effect of the drying intensity, vacuum pumping pipes setting and vacuum degree of gas outlet was analyzed. The result shows that the pressure of gas outlet should be maintained lower at 8000 Pa, and the pressure of grain inlet and outlet should be maintained at 9000 Pa. The vacuum pumping pipes should be set at the bottom of last drying stage of the drying room in order to improve the gas flowing direction, and to improve vacuum performance. The pressure and velocity of gas along height of dryer is not the main effect factor of drying quality. On the top of each drying stage of the vacuum dryer, two horny pumping pipelines were set. It has good velocity uniformity, but more simple compared with three horny pumping pipelines.
Profile Surface Construction and Pressure Angle Analysis of a New Type of Globoidal Indexing Cam
Authors: Li Lei , Feng Xian Ying , Zhang Zi Ping , Han Xing Chang , Song Ya Qing
Published: September 2010

This paper presents a new type of globoidal indexing cam mechanism with steel ball. The characteristic of this mechanism has double circular arc section for cam raceway. Due to this kind of cam raceway section the mechanism can realize approximate rolling transmission. According to rotary transform tensor theory profile surface equation of globoidal cam is established. Meshing equation is built through meshing theory, and profile surface equation is determined by meshing equation. Based on profile surface equation 3D geometric model for globoidal cam is established. MATLAB software is used to calculate three-dimensional coordinate points, these coordinate points are imported into Pro/E software, and finally 3D model for globoidal cam is established by three-dimensional modeling function of Pro/E software. Pressure angle equation of globoidal cam is also established. On the condition that the other parameters remain unchanged the variation law of values of pressure angle depended on cam angle and indexing plate rotary radius is obtained respectively.
Experimental Investigation of Effect of WIB Embedded Depth on Ground Vibration Isolation
Authors: Gao G.Y. , Li N. , Zheng J.G.
Published: September 2010

In this paper, an exploration was presented to access the actual screening effectiveness of concrete wave impeding block (WIB) and the influence of WIB embedded depth on the vertical vibration isolation effect under the continuous vertical loading. Furthermore, the displacements of measuring points were simulated with a semi-analytical boundary element method (BEM) and validated by the measured records. It was found that a concrete WIB with a reasonable embedded depth was able to decrease the ground vibration greatly. It was also proved that decreasing the embedded depth was an efficient measure for WIB to reduce the dynamic response of ground. Besides, the good qualitative agreement between the calculation and the experiment proved the reliability of the numerical method.
An Experimental Investigation on Micro Heat Pipe with a Trapezium-Grooved Wick Structure
Authors: Wang Shi Gang , Li Xi Bing , Tao Bai Rui , Zhang Hong Xia
Published: September 2010

Through combination of experimental investigation with theoretical optimum design, this paper determined the crucial factors in affecting the heat transfer capacity in micro heat pipes with a trapezium-grooved wick structure are capillary limit and entrainment limit, and verified the validity of the heat transfer models thus built.
Loaded Tooth Contact Analysis of Face Gear Drive with Modification
Authors: Zhang Shu Yan , Guo Hui
Published: September 2010

A double direction modification with a grinding worm is applied on tooth surface of face gear drive. The surface equations of the rack cutter, shaper and grinding worm are derived respectively. Loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) with finite element method (FEM) is performed to investigate the meshing performance of face gear drive before modification and after modification. The modification by a grinding worm can obviously reduce the sensitivity of face gear drive to misalignment; the bending stress and the contact stress are reduced with avoiding edge contact; the load transmission error is reduced. This method can obtain a more stable bearing contact in contrast to the method by increasing tooth number of shaper, and the modification magnitude can be controlled freely. The investigation is illustrated with numerical examples.
Study on the Dimensional Stability of Aluminum Alloy Welded Joint under Space Thermal Cycling Conditions
Authors: Jin Cheng , Niu Ji Tai , Shi Chun Yuan
Published: September 2010

Experimental and numerical investigation on the dimensional stability of aluminum alloy welded joint in thermal cycling conditions are presented. Accumulated deformation have been found during the tests. Analytical results demonstrated that the dimensional instability of the welded joint under thermal cycling is governed by the internal plastic flow rather than creep mechanisms. A finite element unit cell model is used to predict the behaviors of dimensional instability.
A Micromechanical Constitutive Model for Porous Shape Memory Alloys
Authors: Liu Bing Fei , Dui Guan Suo , Zhu Yu Ping
Published: September 2010

A micromechanical constitutive model for responding the macroscopic behavior of porous shape memory alloys (SMA) has been proposed in this work. According to the micromechanical method, the stiffness tensor of the porous SMA is obtained. The critical stresses are calculated by elastic mechanics. Based on the general concept of secant moduli method, the effective secant moduli of the porous SMA is given in terms of the secant moduli of dense SMA and the volume fraction of pores. The model takes account of the tensile-compressive asymmetry of SMA materials and the effect of the hydrostatic stress. Only the material parameters of dense SMA are needed for numerical calculation, and can degenerate to dense material. Examples for the uniaxial response of porous SMA materials at constant temperature are then used to illustrate one possible application of the constitutive model. The numerical results have been compared with the experiment data for porous SMA, which show that the modeling results are in good agreement with the experiments.
A Fast Structured Light Matching Method in Robot Stereo Vision
Authors: Gao Gui , Yang Xi Chen , Zhang Hai Ming
Published: September 2010

3D surface reconstruction has been widely used in reverse engineering, remanufacturing and automatic measurement. Binocular stereo imaging technology is the main method to obtain 3D information. Images are acquired from different positions of the object. The 3D coordinates of the point can be calculated according to the point’s coordinates in left and right cameras. The key to ensure the accuracy of 3D reconstruction is high precision and fast matching method of two images. As the image feature was not obvious, structured light is used. For its easy identification and extraction, the method has been more and more widely used. But the former research cannot ensure the matching exactness or matching algorithm takes too much time. In order to improve the precision and efficiency of 3D measurement, a fast and simple structured light matching method is designed based on epipolar geometry. This method can ensure 100% matching accuracy. It does not need other assistant tool except for structured light projector. On the beginning of the measurement, structured light is projected onto the object to be measured. Two images of the object with structured light are captured by two cameras in different positions. Structured lights extracted from the two images are matched by the new algorithm. The 3D coordinate of this structured light is calculated. The position of structured light is changed on the object till completed. From a lot of experiments, the proposed grating matching method is proved and it is a technique with high precision, low costs, easy operation, and an automatically matching method. Furthermore, it can be widely used in most of 3D reconstruction system.
Path Tracking Control for a Wheeled Mobile Robot
Authors: Zhang Yuan Liang
Published: September 2010

In this paper a model algorithm control (MAC) method is proposed to do the path tracking control of a wheeled mobile robot (WMR). This mobile robot is a three-wheel differentially steered wheeled mobile robot subject to nonholonomic constraints. The kinematic model of this mobile robot is presented and used as the mobile robot model to be controlled. Simulations are conducted to show the performance and feasibility of the proposed control strategy for the path tracking of a wheeled mobile robot.
Hybrid Robust Control for Gantry Crane System
Authors: Chen Zhi Mei , Meng Wen Jun , Zhao Ming Hui , Zhang Jing Gang
Published: September 2010

A new hybrid control scheme combining input shaping technique with robust sliding mode control is proposed for a gantry crane system. A cascade sliding-mode controller is designed to control the trolley position and eliminate the sway of load. The transient vibration is reduced further for safety problems by the input shaping technique which utilizes zero-vibration-derivative (ZVD) robust input shapers. This method can not only realize the accurate position of the trolley and eliminate the sway of the load and residual vibration, but also completely eliminate the chattering of conventional sliding mode control and improve the robustness of system. The simulation results proved its effectiveness.
Nonlinear Model of Thin-Walled Composite Beams with Moderate Deflections
Authors: Ren Yong Sheng , Du Xiang Hong
Published: September 2010

A geometrically nonlinear model for thin-walled, single-cell composite beams is developed by using variational formulation and the variational-asympotical method. The structural modeling is split into two parts: a two-dimensional analysis over the cross section, and a geometrically nonlinear analysis of a beam along the beam span. The nonlinear model is based on the assumption of moderate beam deflection, accounting for the pitch angle and extends the linear analysis model for anisotropic thin-walled beams. By employing the Galerkin’s method, an nonlinear algebraic equations is derived and then solved by means of an incremental Newton-Raphson method. Numerical results are obtained for one cantilevered box beam: Circumferentially Uniform Stiffness(CUS), under external load to investigate the effect of geometric nonlinearity and the effects of the fiber orientation, laminate stacking sequence, are also addressed.
MEMS Aided Design Method Based on 3D Features
Authors: Zhang Chang Fu , Wang Li Juan
Published: September 2010

A new design method for surface micromachined devices is proposed to reduce process complexity and improve intuitiveness of traditional design method of mask-to-shape-to-function. In the method, solid geometric models of MEMS devices are efficiently built up by selecting 3D features from the established MEMS feature database. Mask and process flow can be automatically generated with the developed aided design system based on SolidWorks. A practical example shows that the design method can shorten design cycle and improve design success rate.
A New Analytical Model on Lateral Vibration and Impact of Drill String - Choice of Safe and Fast Drilling
Authors: Liu Wei , Zhou Ying Cao , Zhao Qing
Published: September 2010

The severe lateral vibration and impact of drill string will not only cause the damage of drill string but also have bad effects on the quality of directional drilling operation. It is difficult to control lateral vibration amplitude and impact intensity even with advanced measurement apparatus while drilling. So it is feasible to use a theoretic method to analyze and predict lateral vibration of drill string in order to adjust and optimize drilling parameters in real-time. On the basis of beam-column series and spring-concentrated mass model, a new analytical model is established to realize the control of lateral vibration and impact by controlling some key factors, such as under-gauge stabilizer, initial phase angle and initial deformation, WOB (weight on bit) and ROB (rotation of bit).
New Blood Vessel Robot Design and Outside Flow Field Characteristic
Authors: Jiang Fan , Yu Juan , Liang Zhong Wei
Published: September 2010

A new blood vessel robot is designed, which has two fragellas and cylinder, its thrust force and torque equations are given. Through CFD method simulated the outside flow field characteristics of robot, lots of flow parameters could be obtained, these data help us to optimize the outline of robot. From the computation results, the wall shear stress (WSS) should be influent by flow status (steady flow or unsteady flow) and robot outline, along with velocity decreases, the WSS declines, and the WSS, pressure, velocity would vary obviously as the robot outline changes.