ISSUES AND PROBLEMS IN THE RECOGNITION OF ARABIC PRINTED TEXTS

Nowadays, Arabic text recognition bears witness to a wave of interest after a long period of moderate activity. The reason is the complexity of the problem manifested in both cursive shapes and close similarity of Arabic characters. Optical character recognition this is performed usually by detecting and quantifying isolated characters, which implies that the text is meaningfully segmented into more simple shapes. In this paper we study the properties of the Arabic script and review the problems encountered in its segmentation. To pass by the need for segmentation a new technique, the so-called N-markers, is proposed. It unifies the advantages of both global and structural recognition methods and is intuitively close to the human recognition process. The technique is tailored to single-font printed texts rich in ligatures, a problem encountered in good quality books and journals. It can be extended, in a straightforward way, to other fonts and also to handle degraded texts. Preliminary experiments show encouraging results

Religiusitas Lembaga Pendidikan yang Berwawasan Lingkungan

Hubungan manusia dan lingkungan bagaikan kehidupan ikandalam air, sejak lahir, tumbuh berkembang dan dewasa, manusiasenantiasa berinteraksi dengan lingkungannya, baik lingkunganalam, lingkungan manusia, maupun lingkungan sosial budaya,sehingga wajar jika watak dan prilaku manusia terbentuk olehkeadaan lingkungan. Sekolah sebagai lembaga pendidikan dantempat berkumpulnya manusia yang membentuk komunitas sosialsangat membutuhkan lingkungan yang kondusif sesuai dengantata nilai atau kode etik yang diberlakukannya. Tata nilaitertinggi dan akomodatif dari kebutuhan kejiwaan seluruh wargalembaga pendidikan adalah tatanan yang bersumber dari nilainilaikeagamaan, oleh karena itu, nilai-nilai keagamaan harusterinternalisasi di seluruh aktivitas kelembagaan yangberwawasan lingkungan terutama lingkungan sosialnya

Managing Critical Factors Causing Delays in Public Construction Projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This thesis examines factors contributing to delays in public construction projects in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the implications of applying project management knowledge, tools, and techniques in addressing the problem. Using a triangulation research approach, this study identifies factors influencing public construction delays in KSA and current knowledge of PM concepts for minimising construction delays. Based on the results from qualitative and quantitative studies undertaken, a framework for minimising delays was developed

A STRUCTURED RELIABILITY AND MAINTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT MODEL: AN APPLICATION TO HIGH VOLTAGE MOTORS

Motors are one of the vital equipment and generally the higher in numbers in oil and gas processing facilities. The primary function is to drive the process equipment such as compressors, fans, pumps etc. Unreliability of the motors is a threat to safety but also to production loss and high operating expenditure. Motors experience higher failure rates and maintenance costs with age due to lower focus during useful life periods. In order to properly address the long-term reliability and maintainability of the motors and associated subsystems, this paper aims to propose a structured methodology and set of tools to ensure effective assessment. The proposed model mainly consists of data collection, analysis, assessment, financial analysis and later developed actions to properly address the concerns. Equipment failure and repair data is a challenge to any reliability assessment; hence, proposed methodology was introduced to collect, verify and validate the data. Later, multiple tools such as Pareto Analysis, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Root Cause Analysis were used to perform a detailed assessment. Weibull analysis was also explored to understand the failure modes, which ultimately helped in improving the availability of the motors. The proposed methodology has been applied to high-voltage motors to observe the effectiveness of the tools and proposed model in addressing reliability and maintainability. The results show significant reliability improvements of 12% (from 58% to 70%) and prove that the structured method can be effectively used in complex process facilities with significant benefits

Determination Of Delta 13c Values Of Amphetamine And Methamphetamine Using Gas Chromatography/ Combustion/ Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (Gc/C/Irms)

Drug abuse of amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) has been considered as the most widespread problem around the world and also regarded as a threat to national security. This study is focused on stable carbon isotope analysis by isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to develop and validate a method for amphetamine and methamphetamine analysis. The ability to measure isotope distribution in natural abundance with high accuracy and precision has increased the application of gas chromatography/combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC/C/IRMS) for various applications in recent years. Urine Samples spiked with amphetamine and methamphetamine standards were extracted using liquid–liquid extraction and subsequently, reconstituted with the mobile phase for further purification and separation using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). These fractions were collected and analysed using the GC/C/IRMS. GC/C/IRMS showed δ13C value of -24.72 ±0.6‰ and -28.90 ±0.15‰ for amphetamine methamphetamine, respectively. The solid samples of the same amphetamine and methamphetamine standards were also analysed to determine the δ13C of each standard by using the FLASH elemental analyzer isotope ratio mass spectrometry (EA/IRMS); these were then compared with the results obtained from the GC/C/IRMS. EA/IRMS showed comparable results with those obtained with GC/C/IRMS; amphetamine showed the δ13C value of -24.90 ±0.03‰, while methamphetamine showed δ13C result of -28.99 ±0.03‰

The Ingalls-Thomas Bijections

Given a finite acyclic quiver Q with path algebra kQ, Ingalls and Thomas have exhibited a bijection between the set of Morita equivalence classes of support-tilting modules and the set of thick subcategories of mod kQ and they have collected a large number of further bijections with these sets. We add some additional bijections and show that all these bijections hold for arbitrary hereditary artin algebras. The proofs presented here seem to be of interest also in the special case of the path algebra of a quiver.Comment: This is a modified version of an appendix which was written for the paper "The numbers of support-tilting modules for a Dynkin algebra" (see arXiv:1403.5827v1

Stability of Virus Infection Models with Antibodies and Chronically Infected Cells

Two virus infection models with antibody immune response and chronically infected cells are proposed and analyzed. Bilinear incidence rate is considered in the first model, while the incidence rate is given by a saturated functional response in the second one. One main feature of these models is that it includes both short-lived infected cells and chronically infected cells. The chronically infected cells produce much smaller amounts of virus than the short-lived infected cells and die at a much slower rate. Our mathematical analysis establishes that the global dynamics of the two models are determined by two threshold parameters R0 and R1. By constructing Lyapunov functions and using LaSalle's invariance principle, we have established the global asymptotic stability of all steady states of the models. We have proven that, the uninfected steady state is globally asymptotically stable (GAS) if R0<1, the infected steady state without antibody immune response exists and it is GAS if R11. We check our theorems with numerical simulation in the end

Experimental Study on the Limits of Flow Regimes for Different Configurations of Stepped Spillway

Flow over a stepped spillway can be divided mainly into three flow regimes that are nappe, transition and skimming depending upon the discharge and the dimensions of the stepped spillway. The determination of the flow regime is a very important aspect in the design of stepped spillway due to the different properties for each flow regime. Experimental work on flow regime limits for stepped spillways has been conducted using twelve stepped spillway models. The models were manufactured with three downstream slope angles: 25, 35 and 45°, and four numbers of steps: 5, 10, 15 and 20. Five configurations of steps were tested, which are conventional Flat, pooled, porous end sills, pooled with gabions and porous end sills with gabions. The results revealed that the end sills highly affect flow regime type; this effect is primarily for the lower limits of skimming flow. Using end sills increases the range of transition flow regime (by increasing the lower limit of skimming flow) as well as increases the instabilities that occur in this flow regime. Gabions reduce the effects of end sills on the lower limit of skimming flow regime to near the limit of flat steps. New empirical equations were suggested based upon the experimental results. Keywords: Flow Regimes, Gabions Steps, Nappe Flow Regime, Pooled Steps, Skimming Flow Regime, Stepped Spillway, Transition Flow Regime