Persian Heritage Image Binarization Competition (PHIBC 2012)

The first competition on the binarization of historical Persian documents and manuscripts (PHIBC 2012) has been organized in conjunction with the first Iranian conference on pattern recognition and image analysis (PRIA 2013). The main objective of PHIBC 2012 is to evaluate performance of the binarization methodologies, when applied on the Persian heritage images. This paper provides a report on the methodology and performance of the three submitted algorithms based on evaluation measures has been used.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, conferenc

Improving steering system for walking tractor-trailer combination to increase operator’s comfort and ease of control

The aim of present study was to develop the performance of walking tractor-trailer combination, increase the ability of control and steering, maneuverability, reduce the hand transmitted vibration (HTV), discomfort, stress and probability of accident for walking tractor operators.  The location of controls in existing walking tractor with respect to anthropometric suitability of operators and rearrangement for improved operator's ergonomics was analyzed.  To compare existing system with improved system, and find the affects of improved workplace layout over the existing one in terms of physiological cost and discomfort of the walking tractor operator, turning radius, operator hart rate, energy cost and HTV were measured.  The energy cost of riding walking tractor-trailer with improved workplace layout is 9.2% lesser than that of riding unmodified walking tractor-trailer.  The overall discomfort and body part discomfort of operator riding walking tractor-trailer with improved workplace layout were reduced by 38.5 and 17.9% walking tractor-trailer with and without improved work space layout.  The HTV was measured and analyzed as per the guidelines of International Standards ISO 5349 (1986 Vibration was measured using the portable four-channel multi-analyzer system.  The data collection included frequency-unweighted and frequency-weighted vibration in RMS acceleration, frequency response of the vibration.  The HTV reduction of the walking tractor with trailer at the handles for steering system was improved from 10.1 to 11.6% and from 11.9 to 17.3% on farm road and concrete road respectively at selected levels of forward speed of operation.  The turning radius decrease from 6.2 to 2.7, 6.7 to 2.8 and 7 to 3 meters for unmodified and modified walking tractor respectively at the speed of 3, 4 and 5 km/h.  Average operator hart rate has reduction at the rate of 20% for modified compared to unmodified walking tractor.  Reduction in operator heart rate was because of fixing the handle steering and convenience during the operating

Numerical Simulation of Droplet Formation in a Microfluidic Ice Nucleating Particle Measurement Device

Ice nucleating particles have a great impact on weather and climate by affecting the freezing process of water in the atmosphere. Therefore, INP measurements are essential to developing more accurate climate models. Despite of the importance of INP measurements, available measurement techniques are costly, which leads to scarcity of available data. Microfluidic technology offers unique features including small scales and low fabrication costs; thus, can be used to design and develop an INP instrument with lower operation costs, which can enhance the number of INP measurements. In this study, we used a microfluidic platform that can be further developed to an INP instrument. Our initial experiments showed that droplet formation in the microfluidic system can be affected by external factors, such as vibration and heat transfer. We have performed numerical simulations to derive the equations that describe droplet properties (size, generation frequency, and velocity) as a function of flow rate ratio. The derived correlation can be used in designing a future INP measurement device that features a method to keep the consistency of droplet formation. Moreover, the effect of cooling on pressure inside the channel was studied and it was found that cooling increases the pressure inside the channel due to increasing the viscosity of the fluids

A Set of Criteria for Face Detection Preprocessing

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to provide a robust set of preprocessing steps to be used with any face detection system. Usually, the purpose of using preprocessing steps in face detection system is to speed up the detection process and reducing false positives. A preprocessing step should reject an acceptable amount of non-face windows. First proposed criterion is based on linear image transform (LIT) which ignores scanning a number of non-face windows. Second criterion utilizes regional minima (RM) to reject non-face windows. The last one uses a modified adaptive thresholding (ADT) technique to convert input image into a binary representation and perform an exclusion process on the latter form. The proposed criteria have been used in conjunction with a version of Viola-Jones face detector. Experimental results show significant advantage against early exclusion criterion or variance classifier in terms of speed and rejection rate. CMU-MIT and BioID datasets have been used in the experiments

The greatness of Nahj Al-Balagha and the words of Imam Ali from the perspective of modern christian figures

After the words of the Holy Quran and Prophet Muhammad's tradition, the words of Imam Ali have in their own right bestowed upon mankind the finest and the most valuable social, political, and religious wisdom. Ever since a millennium when Sharif ar-Razi compiled Nahj al-Balagha using his unique and meticulous selection of Imam Ali's speeches, letters, aphorisms, this invaluable book has deeply influenced many figures and luminaries among both Shia and Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims, all of whom have embraced and appraised it. In this article, the researchers look into the remarks of twenty one non-Muslim figures on the worth and merits of Nahj al-Balagha. Most of these Christian figures are contemporary Arab poets and thinkers: such individuals as Khalil Farahat, Rocks Bin Zayed Al Uzaizi, Joseph Hashim, and Nasri Salhab to name just a few; however, some orientalists and western thinkers are worth mentioning such as Nursisian and Henry Corbin