Multi-objective reliability-based optimization of prestressed concrete beams

A general approach to the multiobjective reliability-based optimum (MORBO) designs of prestressed concrete beams (PCB) is presented in this paper. The proposed approach incorporates all behavior and side constraints specified by the American Concrete Institute (ACI) code for prestressed concrete. Loading, material properties, prestressing force and the models used to predict structural performance at various stages—initial, final and ultimate—are all treated as random variables. A general MORBO methodology is solved by integrating PCB design and reliability analysis computer programs with an automated design optimization package. Only bi- and tri- multiobjective (MO) formulations, subjected to eleven reliability constraints and four geometrical constraints, are considered. The competing objectives in the multiobjective optimization of PCB are selected from, minimization of the overall cost of the PCB, maximization of the system reliability index, maximization of the flexural strength reliability index, and maximization of the tensile stress reliability index at service stage. The design variables consist of six geometrical dimensions that shape the PCB cross section and one that represents the amount of prestressing steel. Numerical examples illustrate the application of the proposed approach to the MORBO of PCB are presented. The -constraint (trade-off) approach is used for the solution of the MORBO.     

An industrial engineering technique applied to pest management

Simulation of continuous systems has become a widely used tool for design and analysis in Industrial Engineering. This paper presents an application of the technique and the concept of systems dynamics to predict the status of bark beetle infestation in southern pine forests and to provide an estimate of subsequent timber loss. Such predictions are vital to the formulation of effective strategies for pest management.     

Chlorotetracycline and Sodium Chloride Treatment Effects on Some Micro-Organisms and Unsaponifiables of Bolti Fish Fillets

The effects of chlorotetracycline (CTC),brine (NaCI) and combination of them on Bolti unsaponifiables and associated micro-organisms were studied under different storage conditions. Lipolytic and psychrophilic bacterial counts in cold stored fillets with combined employment of NaCl and CTC were much lower than either NaCl or CTC. The data for partial freezing indicated that lipolytic bacteria increased much lower than that of psychrophilic bacteria. NaCl had a synergistic effect on CTC and this phenomenon was superior in decreasing lipolytic bacterial counts to that of psychrophilic bacteria. The hydrocarbons of the fresh Bolti fillets were fractionated by GLC into 10 different components of which 7 were completely characterized. The detected sterols were cholesterol, campesterol and β-sitosterol with cholesterol being the most predominant. With cold storage, slight interconversion might occur between hydrocarbons or sterols and not between these lipid classes. On the contrary, remarkable amounts of sterols were converted to hydrocarbons in partially frozen fillets. The employment of NaCl, CTC and in combination lead to enormous, slight and noticeable conversions from hydrocarbons to sterols of Bolti fillets, respectively.     

Cytoenzymology of benign and malignant tumours of the corpus uteri. III. Alkaline phosphatase, non-specific esterase and leucine aminopeptidase

The localization and enzymatic activity of alkaline phosphatase, non-specific esterase and leucine aminopeptidase were studied in normal menopausal corpus uterine tissues and its benign (fibromyoma and cellular fibromyoma) and malignant tumours (endometrium adenocarcinomata and spindle cell sarcoma). Alkaline phosphatase was localized in the cytoplasm and nuclear structures and showed the highest intense activity in well-differentiated papillary adenocarcinoma. Non-specific esterase was confined to the cytoplasm and was particularly marked in undifferentiated adenocarcinoma cells. Leucine aminopeptidase was considerably higher in spindle cell sarcoma than endometrium adenocarcinoma. Generally, the aforementioned enzymes were increased in neoplastic tumour tissues of the uterus than the homologous normal tissues.     

Real time detection of acoustic anomalies in industrial processes using sequential autoencoders

Development of intelligent systems with the pursuit of detecting abnormal events in real world and in real time is challenging due to difficult environmental conditions, hardware limitations, and computational algorithmic restrictions. As a result, degradation of detection performance in dynamically changing environments is often encountered. However, in the next‐generation factories, an anomaly detection system based on acoustic signals is especially required to quickly detect and interfere with the abnormal events during the industrial processes due to the increased cost of complex equipment and facilities. In this study we propose a real time Acoustic Anomaly Detection (AAD) system with the use of sequence‐to‐sequence Autoencoder (AE) models in the industrial environments. The proposed processing pipeline makes use of the audio features extracted from the streaming audio signal captured by a single‐channel microphone. The reconstruction error generated by the AE model is calculated to measure the degree of abnormality of the sound event. The performance of Convolutional Long Short‐Term Memory AE (Conv‐LSTMAE) is evaluated and compared with sequential Convolutional AE (CAE) using sounds captured from various industrial manufacturing processes. In the experiments conducted with the real time AAD system, it is shown that the Conv‐LSTMAE‐based AAD demonstrates better detection performance than CAE model‐based AAD under different signal‐to‐noise ratio conditions of sound events such as explosion, fire and glass breaking.     

Numerical simulation of a UC–PBG lens for gain enhancement of microstrip antennas

Because of their versatility and ease of fabrication, Uniplanar Compact–Photonic Band Gap (UC–PBG) structures have been recently applied to microstrip antenna design. However, when the PBG structure is embodied on the ground plane of a conventional microstrip antenna, the resulting configuration suffers from strong backward radiation and reduced efficiency. In this article, a combined UC–PBG/ antenna structure is proposed to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks. The performance characteristics of a microstrip antenna positioned below a UC–PBG are examined using CST and Ansoft commercial software packages, which are based on the Finite Integration Technique (FIT) and the Finite Element Method (FEM), respectively. The proposed antenna demonstrates a remarkable improvement in the bore‐sight gain, about 7.8 dBi at 2.64 GHz, compared with the corresponding conventional microstrip antenna and front‐to‐back ratio in excess of 22.8 dBi. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.     

Multi-view fast object detection by using extended haar filters in uncontrolled environments

In this paper, we propose multi-view object detection methodology by using specific extended class of haar-like filters, which apparently detects the object with high accuracy in the unconstraint environments. There are several object detection techniques, which work well in restricted environments, where illumination is constant and the view angle of the object is restricted. The proposed object detection methodology successfully detects faces, cars, logo objects at any size and pose with high accuracy in real world conditions. To cope with angle variation, we propose a multiple trained cascades by using the proposed filters, which performs even better detection by spanning a different range of orientation in each cascade. We tested the proposed approach by still images by using image databases and conducted some evaluations by using video images from an IP camera placed in outdoor. We tested the method for detecting face, logo, and vehicle in different environments. The experimental results show that the proposed method yields higher classification performance than Viola and Jones’s detector, which uses a single feature for each weak classifier. Given the less number of features, our detector detects any face, object, or vehicle in 15 fps when using 4 megapixel images with 95% accuracy on an Intel i7 2.8 GHz machine.     

Regression-based intensity estimation of facial action units

Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is the de facto standard in the analysis of facial expressions. FACS describes expressions in terms of the configuration and strength of atomic units called Action Units: AUs. FACS defines 44 AUs and each AU intensity is defined on a nonlinear scale of five grades. There has been significant progress in the literature on the detection of AUs. However, the companion problem of estimating the AU strengths has not been much investigated. In this work we propose a novel AU intensity estimation scheme applied to 2D luminance and/or 3D surface geometry images. Our scheme is based on regression of selected image features. These features are either non-specific, that is, those inherited from the AU detection algorithm, or are specific in that they are selected for the sole purpose of intensity estimation. For thoroughness, various types of local 3D shape indicators have been considered, such as mean curvature, Gaussian curvature, shape index and curvedness, as well as their fusion. The feature selection from the initial plethora of Gabor moments is instrumented via a regression that optimizes the AU intensity predictions. Our AU intensity estimator is person-independent and when tested on 25 AUs that appear singly or in various combinations, it performs significantly better than the state-of-the-art method which is based on the margins of SVMs designed for AU detection. When evaluated comparatively, one can see that the 2D and 3D modalities have relative merits per upper face and lower face AUs, respectively, and that there is an overall improvement if 2D and 3D intensity estimations are used in fusion.