An Efficient Prefix-Tree Algorithm for Recognizing Pre-Registered RFIDs

[[abstract]]In the past, it was necessary to scan products one by one to record information about usage or the number of items in stock. Now, to reduce the scanning time, we want to recognize multiple products with only one scan. To this end, we implement a wireless technique called radio frequency identification (RFID), which allows multi-access. Our objective is twofold. First, we must ensure that the system can recognize every product without loss of information. Second, we need to improve the recognition (scanning) speed. In this thesis, we take Easy Card (issued by Taipei Smart Card Corporation) as an example of RFID, where the reader takes 0.4 seconds to scan a card. Information would lost if the card is moved over the reader in less than 0.4 seconds, so we have to reduce the time required for recognition. We follow the 900MHz Class 0 Protocol Standard of Electronic Product Code (EPC), which implements a binary tree algorithm for anti-collision to prevent information loss. The system has to read an ID code completely (as a string of binary digits) to ensure recognition. Without changing whole architecture of the standard protocol, we modify the algorithm, which interacts with the reader and the tag. To speed up the recognition time, we improve the binary tree to prefix-tree. First, the process pre-registers the tags which need to be recognized to build a prefix-tree. Second, when the tags need to be recognized, we operate the prefix-tree for recognition. Our approach does not need to read the whole ID code. It only receives bits of the code that we need, and then the reader can get the IDs of the tags.

In vitro propagation of Gentiana scabra Bunge – an important medicinal plant in the Chinese system of medicines

Background: Gentiana scabra Bunge commonly known as `Long dan cao\u27 in China has been used in traditional Chinese medicines for more than 2000 years. Dry roots and rhizome of the herb have been used for the treatment of inflammation, anorexia, indigestion and gastric infections. Iridoids and secoiridoids are the main bioactive compounds which attribute to the pharmacological properties of this plant. The species is difficult to mass propagate by seed due to the low percentage of germination and limited dormancy period. Wild populations in some locations are considered to be in the endangered category due to over exploitation. Results: In the present study, we report an efficient micropropagation system. Shoot apices of six weeks old in vitro grown G. scabra plants were used as explants for the in vitro propagation. Induction of multiple shoots (9.1/explant) was achieved on the culture of shoot apices on half strength Murashige and Skoog\u27s basal medium (MSBM) containing 2.0 mg/L 1 6-benzylaminopurine (BA), 3% sucrose and 0.9% Difco agar. In vitro shoots induced profuse rooting on half strength of MSBM supplemented with 0.1 mg/L 1 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), 3% sucrose and 0.3% gelrite. A two-stage ventilation closure procedure during the in vitro culture, and transparent sachet technique enhanced the survival rate of G. scabra plantlets to 96% in the greenhouse. Tissue culture plants flowered after 5 months of transfer to pots. Conclusions: A simple and an efficient in vitro propagation protocol of Gentiana scabra Bunge by optimizing the medium composition and ventilation closure treatments has been developed. The protocol can be very useful in germplasm conservation and commercial cultivation of G. scabra plants

A SMIL-Based Catalog Presentation System in Electronic Commerce

Web-based catalog presentations play the key-enabling role in E-commerce in recent years. Existing catalog systems often acquire proprietary platforms, cannot deal with TV-like media objects, or consume network bandwidth inefficiently. With the emergence of advanced technologies of Web and multimedia, such hurdles can be removed. The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), proposed by W3C allows Web designers to design complicated and vivid multimedia presentations in a declarative manner. These presentations are then rendered on a general-purpose browser by a SMIL player. Since the SMIL specification is quite new to the Internet and E-commerce societies, the functionality and applications of players is limited. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture based on Java JMF technology for tackling with such constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed system is validated through an experiment on product catalog presentations

CFD Analysis of Oil Distribution in Oil-injected Screw Compressor

Oil-injected screw compressor has been used in various industries. After decades of continuous research efforts by research teams around the world, the computer tools for rotor profile design, thermodynamic analysis, CFD/CAE calculation, and moving grid generation have been well developed and widely employed in design works. With assistance from the computer tools in performance simulation, designers could clearly understand internal phenomena of a screw compressor, as a reference for performance optimization design, and systematically carry out research works. One important issue inside an oil-injected screw compressor is about oil distribution. Different oil-injected positions and quantities cause different oil distribution inside the compressor. Therefore, the effects of oil sealing and lubrication change. Designers must understand how oil distribution is to deal with oil issues. In this study, CFD analysis was done with dynamic grid technology. Basic performance of screw compressor was calculated and compared with experiment data. Besides, three CFD models with different oil-injected paths were designed and analyzed. The influence of varying oil-injected conditions on oil distribution near contact line, sealing lines, blow holes, and end sides of inlet and outlet are shown in this study. They are used to explain how volumetric efficiency is affected. Especially for oil distribution near contact line, it not only affects volumetric efficiency, but also acts on the lubrication as rotor meshing

Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics to the Lubrication Study of an Oil-injected Screw Compressor

Computational fluid dynamics and mesh generation tools have been well developed, and could be used to calculate the performance of an oil-injected screw compressor. Designers could now effectively obtain reliable results of efficiency, temperature, force and torque. Some physical phenomena inside a screw compressor are not easy to be observed through experiments, such as the oil distribution and the oil film thickness on the rotor surface. Under the ideal lubrication condition, the oil film of proper thickness should be maintained on the local surfaces which are going to contact with each other. This could be numerically explored by computational fluid dynamics. The first case in this study showed the effect of centrifugal force on a thin free surface flow on the rotor surface. Designers could graphically understand how the oil film flows on the rotor surface when rotors separately rotate without meshing with each other and doing the compression work. The second case in this study was the rotor lubrication. The clearance distribution between rotors in the actual contact area was designed by the minimum film thickness and was 1 μm. The pressure gradient on the rotor surface was used to see if the hydrodynamic pressure appeared. Designers could optimize the design of oil injection not only by considering efficiencies, but also by analyzing the pressure gradient and the oil film distribution on rotor surfaces

THE ACUTE EFFECT OF UPPER EXTREMITY PLYOMETRIC TRAINING

The purpose of this study was to probe the acute effect of the performance of upper extremity muscle groups after the plyometric training intervention. The participants were 13 healthy male college students. The force transducers (300kg, 200 Hz) and EMG sensor (1000 Hz) were taken to diagnose the acute effects of strength and muscle activation done by upper extremity pre and post plyometric training (load :24kg, 12 repetiiion times Iset, 3 set), and pair t-test was taken to test the significance(a=.05). The result showed that the strength after the upper extremity plyometric training intervention obviously had decreased 8% (

Ontology-based Fuzzy Markup Language Agent for Student and Robot Co-Learning

An intelligent robot agent based on domain ontology, machine learning mechanism, and Fuzzy Markup Language (FML) for students and robot co-learning is presented in this paper. The machine-human co-learning model is established to help various students learn the mathematical concepts based on their learning ability and performance. Meanwhile, the robot acts as a teacher's assistant to co-learn with children in the class. The FML-based knowledge base and rule base are embedded in the robot so that the teachers can get feedback from the robot on whether students make progress or not. Next, we inferred students' learning performance based on learning content's difficulty and students' ability, concentration level, as well as teamwork sprit in the class. Experimental results show that learning with the robot is helpful for disadvantaged and below-basic children. Moreover, the accuracy of the intelligent FML-based agent for student learning is increased after machine learning mechanism.Comment: This paper is submitted to IEEE WCCI 2018 Conference for revie

Effects of cord pretension and stiffness of the Dynesys system spacer on the biomechanics of spinal decompression- a finite element study

BACKGROUND: The Dynesys system provides stability for destabilized spines while preserving segmental motion. However, clinical studies have demonstrated that the Dynesys system does not prevent adjacent segment disease. Moreover, biomechanical studies have revealed that the stiffness of the Dynesys system is comparable to rigid fixation. Our previous studies showed that adjusting the cord pretension of the Dynesys system alleviates stress on the adjacent level during flexion. We also demonstrated that altering the stiffness of Dynesys system spacers can alleviate stress on the adjacent level during extension of the intact spine. In the present study, we hypothesized that omitting the cord preload and changing the stiffness of the Dynesys system spacers would abate stress shielding on adjacent spinal segments. METHODS: Finite element models were developed for - intact spine (INT), facetectomy and laminectomy at L3-4 (DEC), intact spine with Dynesys system (IntDyWL), decompressed spine with Dynesys system (DecDyWL), decompressed spine with Dynesys system without cord preload (DecDyNL), and decompressed spine with Dynesys system assembled using spacers that were 0.8 times the standard diameter without cord pretension (DecDyNL0.8). These models were subjected to hybrid control for flexion, extension, axial rotation; and lateral bending. RESULTS: The greatest decreases in range of motion (ROM) at the L3-4 level occurred for axial rotation and lateral bending in the IntDyWL model and for flexion and extension in the DecDyWL model. The greatest decreases in disc stress occurred for extension and lateral bending in the IntDyWL model and for flexion in the DecDyWL model. The greatest decreases in facet contact force occurred for extension and lateral bending in the DecDyNL model and for axial rotation in the DecDyWL model. The greatest increases in ROMs at L2-3 level occurred for flexion, axial rotation and lateral bending in IntDyWL model and for extension in the DecDyNL model. The greatest increases in disc stress occurred for flexion, axial rotation and lateral bending in the IntDyWL model and for extension in the DecDyNL model. The greatest increases in facet contact force occurred for extension and lateral bending in the DecDyNL model and for axial rotation in the IntDyWL model. CONCLUSIONS: The results reveals that removing the Dynesys system cord pretension attenuates the ROMs, disc stress, and facet joint contact forces at adjacent levels during flexion and axial rotation. Removing cord pretension together with softening spacers abates stress shielding for adjacent segment during four different moments, and it provides enough security while not jeopardizes the stability of spine during axial rotation

Bacteria in the apical root canals of teeth with apical periodontitis

Background/PurposeBacteria in the tooth root canal may cause apical periodontitis. This study examined the bacterial species present in the apical root canal of teeth with apical periodontitis. Antibiotic sensitivity tests were performed to evaluate whether these identified bacterial species were susceptible to specific kinds of antibiotics.MethodsSelective media plating and biochemical tests were used first to detect the bacterial species in samples taken from the apical portion of root canals of 62 teeth with apical periodontitis. The isolated bacterial species were further confirmed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry.ResultsWe found concomitant presence of two (32 teeth) or three species (18 teeth) of bacteria in 50 (80.6%) out of 62 tested teeth. However, only 34 bacterial species were identified. Of a total of 118 bacterial isolates (83 anaerobes and 35 aerobes), Prophyromonas endodontalis was detected in 10; Bacteroides, Dialister invisus or Fusobacterium nucleatum in 9; Treponema denticola or Enterococcus faecalis in 8; Peptostreptococcus or Olsenella uli in 6; and Veillonella in 5 teeth. The other 25 bacterial species were detected in fewer than five teeth. Approximately 80–95% of bacterial isolates of anaerobes were sensitive to ampicillin/sulbactam (Unasyn), amoxicillin/clavulanate (Augmentin), cefoxitin, and clindamycin. For E. faecalis, 85–90% of bacterial isolates were sensitive to gentamicin and linezolid.ConclusionRoot canal infections are usually caused by a mixture of two or three species of bacteria. Specific kinds of antibiotic can be selected to control these bacterial infections after antibiotic sensitivity testing

A Comparison of Thermal Deformation of Scroll Profiles inside Oil-free Scroll Vacuum Pump and Compressor via CAE/CFD Analysis

Scroll machine is simply constructed by fixed and orbit scrolls, rotary shaft, and some mechanical components. It can impressively operate at low noise level with high reliability and high efficiency. Scroll machine achieves oil-free application through reasonable clearance control, cooling solution, and the tip seal application, and has been designed and applied as vacuum pump or compressor. In order to compactly design structure and optimize the gaps or clearances of a scroll machine, the issue of heat deformation must be considered. Deformation inside a scroll machine is not easy to be discovered, but is the necessary information for scroll profile design. In this study, the internal flow fields of oil-free scroll vacuum pump and compressor are obtained by CFD analysis. Based on the results of flow fields, this study shows the basic performance of a scroll machine, including loading on structures, gas torque, volume flow rate, and the pulsation of outlet pressure. The fluid phenomena under sub-atmospheric and positive pressure are quite different. The difference would cause different heat transfer and heat deformation. Therefore, the fluid-thermal-solid coupling analysis is also carried out. The temperature distribution of scroll structures, the thermal deformation, and gap changes are also discussed in this study