Performances Analysis of Linear and Circular Microstrip Methods for Determination of Moisture Content in Rubber Latex

Following a review of methods for measuring the microwave properties of dielectric materials and moisture measurement methods, majority of the thesis is concerned with the design, construction, and calibration of two different types of microstrip sensors for the determination of moisture content in rubber latex. The Microwave Office 2002 (MWO) was used to design both sensors the linear path and circular ring microstrip lines operating in the frequency range between 2 GHz and 3 GHz which gave the high correlation between dielectric properties and moisture content of latex. S-parameters of the sensors were measured using Professional Network Analyzer (PNA). The microwave properties of interests were attenuation and Q-factor, the main focus of this thesis was to establish the relationship between the microwave properties of the sensors and moisture content in the rubber latex. The actual moisture content was found from standard oven drying method. The theoretical part described the variation in attenuation with frequency for various percentages of moisture content of the sample. The analysis was used to determine the optimum permittivity, width, height and impedance of the microwave substrate for a wide dynamic input range of the sensors. The sensors were fabricated and tested for a range of moisture content. All the sensors were calibrated using standard microwave calibration techniques. Additionally, calibration equations were developed to establish the empirical relationship between the measured attenuation and Q-factors with the actual moisture content. All the results were validated with the actual moisture content. The microstrip ring and line sensor were successfully developed in prediction of moisture content for rubber latex. Both sensors give a different performance in term of sensitivity and mean error. The microstrip line sensor gives a good sensitivity compared to microstrip ring sensor with sensitivity for microstrip linear and microstrip ring sensors are 13.698 %/dB and 3.0697 %/dB respectively. While the microstrip ring sensor gives a smaller mean error compared to microstrip line sensor with mean error for microstrip ring and line sensor are 0.023 and 0.095 respectively

Self-Aware Monitoring Based Adaptive Systems

Monitoring based computer system should be self-aware first because self-aware computer systems will be capable of adjusting and adapting their behavior and resources thousands of times in a second automatically to find the best way for the achievement of an assigned goal. Such an ability can benefits a wide range of computer systems from embedded systems to supercomputers and is especially helpful for meeting power, performance, and resource-metering challenges in monitoring and many other fields like mobile computing, cloud computing, multicore computing and parallel operating systems.Here a framework is being proposed, called Application Pulse-rate that offers a general, standardized approach for applications to observe their performance and provides that information to external observers. Through a deep view of a self-optimizing synchronization library called Smartlocks, a controlling technique can be determined that systems use to decide which optimization actions should be taken for monitoring of environment

Development of Cluster Computing –A Review

This paper presents the review work of “Cluster Computing” in depth and detail.  Cluster Computing: A Mobile Code Approach by R.B.Patel and Manpreet Singh (2006); Performance Evaluation of Parallel Applications Using Message Passing Interface In Network of Workstations Of Different Computing Powers by Rajkumar Sharma, Priyesh Kanungo and Manohar Chandwani (2011); On the Performance of MPI-OpenMP on a 12 nodes Multi-core Cluster by Abdelgadir Tageldin, Al-Sakib Khan Pathan , Mohiuddin Ahmed (2011); Dynamic Load Balancing in Parallel Processing on Non-Homogeneous Clusters by Armando E. De Giusti, Marcelo R. Naiouf, Laura C. De Giusti, Franco Chichizola (2005); Performance Evaluation of Computation Intensive Tasks in Grid by P.Raghu, K. Sriram (2011); Automatic Distribution of Vision-Tasks on Computing Clusters by Thomas Muller, Binh An Tran and Alois Knoll (2011); Terminology And Taxonomy Parallel Computing Architecture by Amardeep Singh, Satinder Pal Singh, Vandana, Sukhnandan Kaur (2011); Research of Distributed Algorithm based on Parallel Computer Cluster System by Xu He-li, Liu Yan (2010); Cluster Computing Using Orders Based Transparent Parallelizing by Vitaliy D. Pavlenko, Victor V. Burdejnyj (2007) and VCE: A New Personated Virtual Cluster Engine for Cluster Computing by Mohsen Sharifi, Masoud Hassani, Ehsan Mousavi Khaneghah, Seyedeh Leili Mirtaheri (2008). Keywords:Cluster computing, Cluster Architectures, Dynamic and Static Load Balancing, Distributed Systems, Homogeneous and Non-Homogeneous Processors, Multicore clusters, Parallel computing, Parallel Computer Vision, Task parallelism, Terminology and taxonomy, Virtualization, Virtual Cluster

Dynamic Portfolio Selection to Counter Terrorism by using Quantum Neural Network Approach

Not only Pakistan but the whole world is facing the problems of prevailing terrorist activities and attacks in many forms. Terrorism has diverse aspects and to eradicate this growing problem a hybrid model of quantum and classical neurons is suggested for the prediction of the risk involved and returns of investments in recommended areas to minimize terrorism. These areas are recommended on the basis of the findings of Crime analysts and professionals from other related domains after a deep analysis of the situation of the country and terrorist activities. The identification of the areas which causes terrorism is a core step towards counter the terrorism. Hopfield neural network is used to predict best possible portfolio from available resources. The recommended multilayer hybrid Quantum Neural Network holds hidden layer of quantum neurons while the visible layer is of classical neurons. With the help of QNN an appropriate portfolio can be selected whose risk factor will be minimum and the output generated from investments in identified areas will be maximum.  Keywords:Quantum neural network, Portfolio selection, Resource allocation, Quantum back propagation, Quantum computation

Copyright Protection for Surveillance System Multimedia Stream with Cellular Automata Watermarking

Intelligent Surveillance Systems are attracting extraordinary attention from research and industry. Security and privacy protection are critical issues for public acceptance of security camera networks. Existing approaches, however, only address isolated aspects without considering the integration with established security technologies and the underlying platform. Easy availability of internet, together with relatively inexpensive digital recording and storage peripherals has created an era where duplication, unauthorized use and misdistribution of digital content has become easier. The ease of availability made digital video popular over analog media like film or tape. At the same time it demands a sharp attention regarding the ownership issue. The ownership and integrity can easily be violated using different audio and video editing softwares. To prevent unauthorized use, misappropriation, misrepresentation; authentication of multimedia contents achieved a broad attention in recent days and to achieve secure copyright protection we embedded some information in audio and videos and that audio or video is called copyright protected. Digital watermarking is a technology to embed additional information into the host signal to ensure security and protection of multimedia data. The embedded information can’t be detected by human but some attacks and operations can tamper that information to breach protection. So in order to find a secure technique of copyright protection, we have analyzed different techniques. After having a good understanding of these techniques we have proposed a novel algorithm that generates results with high effectiveness, additionally we can use self-extracted watermark technique to increase the security and automate the process of watermarking. Forensic digital watermarking is a promising tool in the fight against piracy of copyrighted motion imagery content, but to be effective it must be (1) imperceptibly embedded in high-definition motion picture source, (2) reliably retrieved, even from degraded copies as might result from camcorder capture and subsequent very-low-bitrate compression and distribution on the Internet, and (3) secure against unauthorized removal. Audio and video watermarking enables the copyright protection with owner or customer authentication and the detection of media manipulations. The available watermarking technology concentrates on single media like audio or video. But the typical multimedia stream consists of both video and audio data. Our goal is to provide a solution with robust and fragile aspects to guarantee authentication and integrity by using watermarks in combination with content information. We show two solutions for the protection of audio and video data with a combined robust and fragile watermarking approach. The first solution is to insert a time code into the data: We embed a signal as a watermark to detect gaps or changes in the flow of time. The second solution is more complex: We use watermarks to embed information in each media about the content of the other media. In our paper we present the problem of copyright protection and integrity checks for combined video and audio data. Both the solutions depend upon cellular automata, cellular automata are a powerful computation model that provides a simple way to simulate and solve many difficult problems in different fields. The most widely known example of Cellular Automata is the Game-of-Life. Cellular automaton growth is controlled by predefined rule or programs .The rule describes how the cell will interact with its neighborhood. Once the automaton is started it will work on its own according to the rule specified.

The Effects of Associative Interference, Stimulus Type, and Item Familiarity on Associative Recognition Memory

This study investigated whether recognition memory requires two retrieval processes (i.e., familiarity and recognition) as stated by the Dual process theory or requires one retrieval process (i.e., familiarity) as stated by the Single process theory. The first experiment investigated the effects of A-B, A-C, A-D-, A-E interference on both word and picture pair recognition. As expected, it was found that a picture superiority effect was present in the baseline condition, but was reduced in the interference condition. Moreover, in the baseline condition, a non-mirror pattern (i.e., hits higher for picture pairs, but false alarm rates were the same) was present indicating picture pairs were encoding better than word pairs, however recall to reject strategy was the same. Furthermore, for both types of stimuli, false alarm rates and estimates of familiarity-based hit rates increased in the interference condition. The second experiment investigated the effects of interference on false alarm rates occurred not due to the fan effect, but due to the familiarity of items in the overlapping pairs. Familiarity increased hit rates but did not affect false alarm rates for word pairs. Interestingly, familiarity had an effect on false alarm rates for picture pairs. In Experiment 3, a more extreme manipulation of item familiarity was used in Experiment 3 provided more conclusive findings than Experiment 2 supporting the theory that the effects of interference on hit rates and false alarm rates were in accordance with Kelley and Wixted’s (2001) “some-or-none” model. Experiment 4 was similar in design and procedure as Experiment 1, however the two conditions were general and specific sentence conditions. The general sentence condtiion contained a general noun and specific location (i.e. the furniture is in the jungle). And the specific sentence condition contained a specific subject noun which was an instantiation of teh general subject noun (i.e., the desk is in the jungle). Supporting the Dual process theory and similar to Experiment 1, there was a non-mirror pattern present in baseline condition. There were significantly higher hit rates present in the specific sentence condition than the general sentence condition. However, false alarm rates were the same for both sentence conditions. In addition, similar to Experiment 1, estimates of familiarity significantly increased in the interference condition for both types of stimuli. Overall, the results provide strong support for the theory that item familiarity eliminated the advantage in recognition performance for distinctive stimuli in associative recognition

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INCREASED RELIANCE ON FAMILIARITY IN ASSOCIATIVE RECOGNITION OF UNITIZED COMPOUND WORD PAIRS

Unitization refers to when two components are integrated or combined into a single unit. So the whole is more familiar than the parts (Graf & Schacter, 1989). Previous researchers have shown unitization of unrelated word pairs can occur by the use of compound definition. As support, they have found unitization to increase reliance on familiarity in associative recognition. The purpose of this PhD dissertation was to examine the effects of unitization of preexperimental associations on associative recognition. The effects of associative recognition of unitized compound word (CW) pairs can serve as a useful benchmark to compare to that of other methods of unitization. In Chapter 2, I present findings from Manuscript 1 consisting of five experiments in which I investigated the effects of unitization of CW pairs on associative recognition. In Experiment 1, I found a CW effect as in higher hit rates and false alarm rates for CW compared to noncompound word (NCW) pairs. In addition, there was no discrimination difference between CW and NCW pairs. In Experiments 2a and 2b, I show from both a non-speeded and speeded forced-choice test that when response bias is minimized, participants show a discrimination advantage for CW pairs. In Experiments 3a and 3b, I show that item recognition is reduced for CW compared to NCW pairs, but when components of the CW and NCW pairs are emphasized at encoding, similar item recognition is shown for both pair types. Lastly, in Experiment 5, I show from receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves that there is a discrimination advantage for repeated NCW pairs compared to CW and NCW pairs. In Chapter 3, I present findings from Manuscript 2 consisting of three experiments in which I investigated the effects of unitization of CW pairs on associative recognition in older adults. In Experiment 1, older adults showed a discrimination advantage for CW pairs. Moreover, when presentation time was reduced young adults still did not show a discrimination advantage for CW pairs. Finally, in Experiment 3, I found both young and older adults showed a discrimination advantage for CW pairs in the forced-choice test. Thus, unitization of CW pairs benefited older adults because of ease of encoding and allowing increased use of familiarity during recognition. In addition, test format influences younger adults’ use of familiarity. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I present findings from Manuscript 3 consisting of three experiments examining whether processing fluency of unitized CW pairs was associated with the greater use of familiarity. In Experiment 1, minimizing perceptual fluency did not influence the CW effect. In Experiment 2B, I found there was no difference in CW effect between the more conceptual fluent transparent CW than opaque CW pairs. In conclusion, I show there are many effects of unitization of preexperimental associations on associative recognition and there are a number of factors that can determine if there is a benefit of unitization to associative memory. The results provide a set of benchmarks that can be used in the evaluation of different procedures designed to unitize random word pairs

Uncommon Oral Manifestations of Neurofibromatosis Type I – A Case Report

Neurofibromatosis type I is an autosomal dominant genetic disorder. It is related to a mutation in the long arm of chromosome 17; however, it shows variable penetrance and about half of the cases have no family history of the disease. These patients present skin lesions such as cafe-au-lait spots, multiple neurofibromas, bone malformations, and central nervous system tumors as well. Diagnosis of NF-I NF-II is based on clinical criteria. It is progressive in nature and one of its unique characters is the diversity of clinical expression from one patient to another and even within a family. NF-I also presents with certain oral manifestations which confers to the dentists a major responsibility for accurate diagnosis and report of the disease. We, herein, report a case of 35 year old female patient who was diagnosed incidentally for NF–I with unusual oral manifestations such as large tongue mass and hypo-plastic ramus body of the right side of mandible

Treatment of Obstructive sleep apnea- A Review

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious disease with neurocognitive and cardiovascular sequelae.  Various population-based studies show that 2% of women and 4% of men are affected with symptomatic OSA; however, the prevalence of asymptomatic OSA is quite high which affect 20%–30% of the middle-aged population. It can be diagnosed on the basis of characteristic history (snoring, daytime sleepiness) and physical examination (increased neck circumference); nevertheless, overnight polysomnography is the gold standard to confirm the presence of the disorder. Many treatment modalities have been evolved to address the disease, which includes lifestyle modification; medical therapy; CPAP; oral appliances; and surgical correction. Although the initial choice of treatment is CPAP in most of the patients, it can be tailored according to Apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and the need of the individual patient. In addition, surgical interventions are the preferred option in certain cases which not only provide a quick cure of OSA but also correct many facial anomalies

Profiling The Salivary Microbiome In The Qatari Population

Humans are living ecosystems composed of human cells and microbes. The microbiome is the collection of microbes and their genes. Recent breakthrough in the high throughput sequencing technologies made it possible for us to understand the composition of the human microbiome. Launched by the National Institutes of Health in USA, the human microbiome project indicated that our bodies harbor a wide array of microbes, specific to each body site with inter and intra-personal variabilities. Numerous studies have indicated that, the microbiome composition plays an important role in health and disease, thus highlighting the significance of microbiome research in human health. Saliva is a biofluid secreted from salivary glands composed of water, electrolytes, mucus, DNA, RNA, proteins, enzymes and microbes. Several studies assessed the role of the salivary microbiome in many conditions ranging from local diseases of the oral cavity such as dental carries and gingivitis to neurodevelopmental disease such as autism, indicating the potential of applying the knowledge generated from the salivary microbiome projects towards a better understanding of various pathological conditions. In this study, we aim to profile the salivary microbiome of the Qatari population and identify the oral microbial communities in individuals with diabetes or obesity. 100 saliva samples collected from Qatari participants, selected randomly, were retrieved from Qatar Biobank repository. Samples were collected by spitting in a tube. After microbial DNA extraction, 16S rRNA gene was sequenced using Illumina Miseq. Microbial profiles were then correlated with the individual phenotypic and clinical data to identify the microbial signatures associated with health and disease conditions, with special focus on diabetes and obesity due to the increasing prevalence rate of both conditions in Qatar