Starfruit classification based on linear hue computation

In this paper, a classification process to group starfruit into six maturity indices is proposed based on 1- dimensional color feature called hue, which is extracted from the starfruit image. As the original hue is quantified from the nonlinear transformation of the 3-dimensional Red, Green and Blue color, this paper proposes a linear hue transformation computation based on the 2 colors of Red and Green. The proposed hue computation leads to a reduced computational burden, less computational complexity and better class discriminant capability. The hue is then applied as the input for the maturity classification process. The classification process is based on the hypothesis that for each of the maturity index, certain area of the starfruit surface is supposed to have distinctive value of the hue. In this work, the said starfruit surface area is set as 70% of the total area and based on 600 samples, the proposed technique results in 93% classification accuracy

Adaptive thresholding in dynamic scene analysis for extraction of fine line

This paper presents an adaptive threshold method whereby a fine thin line of one-pixel width lines could be detected in a gray level images. The proposed method uses the percentage difference between the mean of the pixels within a window and the center pixel. The minimum threshold value however is heuristically set to 32. If the percentage difference is greater than 40% then the threshold value will be set to the difference value. This method has been applied in detecting moving objects with fine lines and the results showed that the method was able to pickup straight thin edges that belong to the moving objec

Analysis and classification of myocardial infarction tissue from echocardiography images based on texture analysis

Texture analysis is an important characteristic for automatic visual inspection for surface and object identification from medical images and other type of images. This paper presents an application of wavelet extension and Gray level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM) for diagnosis of myocardial infarction tissue from echocardiography images. Many of applications approach have provided good result in different fields of application, but could not implemented at all when texture samples are small dimensions caused by low quality of images. Wavelet extension procedure is used to determine the frequency bands carrying the most information about the texture by decomposition images into multiple frequency bands and to form an image approximation with higher resolution. Thus, wavelet extension procedure offers the ability to robust feature extraction in images. The gray level co-occurrence matrices are computed for each sub-band. The feature vector of testing image and other feature vector as normal image classified by Mahalanobis distance to decide whether the test image is infarction or not

Menerapkan Model Konstruktivis Untuk Meningkatkan Hasil Belajar Fisika Umum I Mahasiswa Semester I Jurusan Fisika Fmipa Unimed Ta 2012/2013

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan pemahaman konsep Fisika melalui penerapan model konstruktivis pada mahasiswa tingkat pertama bersama pada semester ganjil tahun akademik 2012/1013. Model ini dipilih sebagai salah satu upaya memperbaiki kesalahan-kesalahan konsep yang selama ini masih dirasakan bahkan sampai semester lanjut. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan model konstruktivis dapat meningkatkan pemahaman konsep Fisika yang terbukti dengan perolehan skor pretes dan postes yang meningkat dari siklus I ke siklus II. Rata-rata perolehan skor hasil pretes sebesar 25,0 dengan skor terendah 8 dan tertinggi 58. Pada siklus I rata-rata perolehan skor hasil postes sebesar 34,9 dengan skor terendah 17 dan skor tertinggi sebesar 50. Hal ini menunjukkan telah terjadi peningkatan rata-rata sebesar 9,9 poin dan ditinjau dari gain rata-rata yang diperoleh sangat rendah yaitu sebesar 13. Rata-rata perolehan skor hasil pretes sebesar 13 dengan skor terendah 0 dan tertinggi 25. Rata-rata perolehan skor hasil postes sebesar 85 dengan skor terendah 50 dan skor tertinggi sebesar 100. Hal ini menunjukkan telah terjadi peningkatan yang sangat tinggi rata-rata sebesar 72 poin dan terjadi pada semua mahasiswa. Ditinjau dari gain rata-rata yang diperoleh sangat tinggi yaitu sebesar 83. Dari data yang diperoleh hasil pelaksanaan siklus II dengan kriteria minimum skor 70, hanya 4 orang mahasiswa memiliki skor dibawah 70 dan sisanya (82%) di atas 70 sehingga pembelajaran telah mencapai ketuntasan

Face detection in profile views using fast discrete curvelet transform (FDCT) and support vector machine (SVM)

Human face detection is an indispensable component in face processing applications, including automatic face recognition, security surveillance, facial expression recognition, and the like. This paper presents a profile face detection algorithm based on curvelet features, as curvelet transform offers good directional representation and can capture edge information in human face from different angles. First, a simple skin color segmentation scheme based on HSV (Hue - Saturation - Value) and YCgCr (luminance - green chrominance - red chrominance) color models is used to extract skin blocks. The segmentation scheme utilizes only the S and CgCr components, and is therefore luminance independent. Features extracted from three frequency bands from curvelet decomposition are used to detect face in each block. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier is trained for the classification task. In the performance test, the results showed that the proposed algorithm can detect profile faces in color images with good detection rate and low misdetection rate

Hydrophobic silica thin films by sol-gel processing and spin coating technique at low temperature

Hydrophobic silica thin films were prepared by sol-gel processing and self-assembly by chemical vapor reaction with Trimethylchlorosilane (TMCS) at low temperature. The sols were divided into Sol A with ethanol, Polyethylene glycol (PEG) and water (H2O) while Sol B were contain precursor of silica Tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) hydrolyze with ethanol which was stirred for 15 minutes. HCl was added into the mixture and stirred for another 10 minutes. After deposition on 1 x 1 cm corning glass using spin coating technique (two-step timer), the films were heated at 60˚C for 10 minutes and finally annealed at 150°C for 1 hour. The films were characterized by using Rudolph/Auto EL Ellipsometer, Shimadzu Spectrophotometer, Perkin Elmer Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). The results showed that the films thickness and refractive index were in the range of 105.2 to 112.4 nm and 1.35 to 1.38, respectively. The films were transmitted 70-80% of light (in visible range) with various bondings of C-H, Si-O-Si, Si-C and Si-OH. Surface roughness of the films was increased from 30.6 nm (silica thin film) to 140.5 nm (hydrophobic silica thin films) after modification have been done on the films by using TMCS (heated at 40˚C). It was found that the water contact angles increased when time of reaction increased from 109° to 124

Understanding factors influencing employee engagement: a study of the financial sector in Malaysia

This thesis examines the factors that influence and shape employee engagement in the context of the financial sector in Malaysia. It does this by studying multilevel factors at three levels, the individual, organisational and societal levels. Specifically, the thesis focuses on three increasingly prominent concepts: empowering leaders’ behaviour, high-performance work practices (HPWP) and the possible role of religiosity. Drawing on institutional theory, an important argument in this thesis is the limitation of the mainstream single-level conceptualisations of employee engagement, which fail to capture the relational interplay of the contextual factors and the multilevel nature of engagement. Earlier research in HRM, particularly on employee engagement, has been conducted primarily from a micro-perspective that has focused on a specific function with little acknowledgement of contextual setting. This study uses a framework that bridges the macro- and micro-institutional levels of analysis in understanding employee engagement. To achieve this objective, this study adopted a mixed-method approach. The first method, a qualitative study of 41 interviews with employees in the financial sector, was designed to explore the most salient factors in the employees’ levels of engagement. The second method, a quantitative survey of 278 employees, was designed to investigate the associations between the studied variables. Findings from both analyses suggest that empowering leadership behaviour has the largest effect on employee engagement. In particular, employees experience a significant level of engagement when their leader shows concern. At the organisational level, HPWP do seems to be practised in the organisations and to have an effect on engagement. However, problems that occur within the organisations cause the ineffectiveness of HPWP implementation. Interestingly, religiosity was found to play a crucial role in engaging employees at work among the Malay Muslims. The key findings of this study suggest that both macro- and micro-institutions have pertinent roles in stimulating employee engagement. Organisations and managers need to understand the changing role of leaders, the introduction of HPWP and the practice of religious belief in the workplace as sources which enhance engagement. The expectation is that, through a better understanding of the relationships between these factors and the potential effectiveness of HPWP adoption, the selection of leaders and the development of employees may be conducted more effectively

A noninvasive molecular approach: exploiting species-locus-specific PCR primers in defeating numts and DNA cross-contamination of cercopithecidae

The lack of a standardized, noninvasive molecular approach to studying genetic aspects of primates has made it hard for primatologists to decode the evolutionary history of these species. Researchers must optimize their own techniques to fully exploit the available samples. Lack of species-locus-specific primers also contributes to difficulties in using noninvasive genetic samples. Thus, the objectives of this study were to develop a standardized technique to collecting samples noninvasively, propose newly designed species-locus-specific primers, and optimize conditions for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for Macaca fascicularis, M. nemestrina, Trachypithecus cristatus, and T. obscurus. Nine new species-locus-specific primers for three different loci of mitochondrial DNA, namely D-loop, cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI), and cytochrome b, were successfully designed. These primers proved to be efficient in amplifying larger datasets (up to ~1,000 bp) of the targeted species in the optimized PCR conditions. The species-locus-specific primers are able to anneal to host DNA alone in highly contaminated feces of highlighted species. They can also offer alternatives measures in avoiding contamination related to nuclear insertion of mitochondrial pseudogenes (numts)

Process analytical technology based approaches for the monitoring and control of size and polymorphic form in pharmaceutical crystallisation processes

Pharmaceutical crystallisation operation is often critical because it determines product properties, such as the crystal size distribution (CSD) and polymorphic form, that can influence the subsequent downstream operations and the product therapeutic performance. Driven by the United States Food and Drug Administration s (FDA) Process Analytical Technology (PAT) initiative and the Quality-by-Design (QbD) concept, the development of control approaches, which can improve the manufacturing of products with desired properties, has become of significant interest. This thesis presents the development and application of PAT-based approaches for the monitoring and control of pharmaceutical crystallisation operations that will ensure consistent production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) with the desired size and polymorphic form. The approaches utilised Lasentec focused beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) and attenuated total reflectance ultraviolet (ATR-UV) spectroscopy as the in situ monitoring and control tools. Crystallisations of the APIs that posses multiple polymorphs are both critical and challenging. This was illustrated in this work by the crystallisations of sulfathiazole polymorphs using literature methods. The processes were monitored using FBRM and ATR-UV spectroscopy to define the design range of the process parameters. The defined range could be used as a recipe to reproduce the same quality of crystals. The obtained crystals were characterised using various techniques (optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetry, hot-stage microscopy (HSM), Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy and powder X-ray diffractometry) to assess the success of the crystallisation processes. The combined results of the techniques showed that all methods were able to produce the desired pure polymorphs. As a contribution to the technique of investigating polymorphism, a combined approach of DSC-HSM with image analysis, was introduced. Results show the capability of the approach to provide a unique insight into the polymorphic transformations and thermal behaviour exhibited by the model compound. The novel direct nucleation control (DNC) approach was introduced to control the CSD. The approach utilises information on nucleation, provided by FBRM, in a feedback control strategy that adapts the process variables, so that the desired CSD of product is achieved. It also provides in situ fines removal through the operating policy, rather than having additional equipment and external recycle loops. The approach does not require concentration measurement and has the advantage of being a model-free approach, requiring no information on nucleation or growth kinetics in order to design an operating curve; the system automatically and adaptively detects the boundary of the operating curve. Experimental results, using glycine in water-ethanol mixture as a model system, show the benefits of DNC to produce larger crystals with narrower CSD compared to uncontrolled operations. The capability of seeded cooling crystallization with temperature cycling approach to control crystal size uniformity and polymorphic purity was evaluated. Using sulfathiazole in n-propanol and in water as model systems, the method was found to accelerate the growth and enhance the size uniformity of the crystals, in comparison with runs using a linear temperature profile, by promoting Ostwald ripening. Although the approach is conceptually capable of controlling polymorphic purity of a system, the effect of solvent-mediated nucleation/growth can be more dominant, as shown by the results of the experiments. The insights into this behaviour of sulfathiazole crystals were captured very well by the FBRM. The study also demonstrated the successful use of a simple non-linear function as a calibration model to relate temperature and absorbance data, obtained using the ATR-UV spectroscopy, to solute concentration during the crystallisation process. The effect of temperature cycling, performed during seeded cooling crystallisation, on the surface features of sulfathiazole crystals was investigated using FBRM and ex situ optical microscopy, SEM and atomic force microscopy. It was observed during the initial stage of the process, the heating phases produced crystals with smooth surfaces, whilst the cooling phases promoted growth of features on the surfaces. These changes detected by the FBRM as an increase in the number of coarse counts during heating and a drop during cooling. Laser beam spreading caused by the surface roughness, and signal/chord splitting due to sharp edges are offered as an explanation for the FBRM results. This shows the capability of the FBRM to provide useful information about the changes on the surface of the crystalline products. The information can be used to avoid problems in the downstream operations, or in the final product property due to variations in flowability and friability, which are influenced by the surface property.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo