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Summary This study investigates the effect of using fly ash (FA) in asphalt mixture as replacement of common filler. In view of the same, samples were prepared for different bitumen content (3.5−6.5% at 0.5% increments) by using 2% hydrated lime (HL) in control mix as well as varying percentage of FA ranging from 2 to 8% as alternative filler in modified mixes. The optimum bitumen content (OBC) was then determined for all the mix by Marshall mix design. Experimental results indicated higher stability value with lower OBC for the mixture having 4% FA as optimum filler content in comparison with conventional mix and standard specification. So this study discuss the feasibility of using FA as alternative filler instead of HL in asphalt concrete mix by satisfying the standard specification.

Summary Production of fatty acid methyl esters from waste cotton seed oil through transesterification was reported. The GC–MS analysis of WCCO oil was studied and the major fatty acids were found to be palmitic acid (27.76%) and linoleic acid (42.84%). The molecular weight of the oil was 881.039 g/mol. A maximum yield of 92% biodiesel was reported when the reaction temperature, time, methanol/oil ratio and catalyst loading rate were 60 °C, 50 min, 12:1 and 3% (wt.%), respectively. The calcined egg shell catalyst was prepared and characterized. Partial purification of the fatty acid methyl esters was proposed for increasing the purity of the biodiesel and better engine performance. The flash point and the fire point of the biodiesel were found to be 128 °C and 136 °C, respectively. The Brake thermal efficiency of WCCO B10 biodiesel was 26.04% for maximum load, specific fuel consumption for diesel was 0.32 kg/kW h at maximum load. The use of biodiesel blends showed a reduction of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions and a marginal increase in nitrogen oxides (NO x ) emissions improved emission characteristics.

Summary Coagulation–flocculation as pre-treatment option for co-treatment of landfill leachate (LL) and municipal wastewater (MW) was investigated using ferric chloride as coagulant along with a novel flocculant namely polyacrylamide grafted gum ghatti (GGI-g-PAM). Experiment at different coagulant doses with constant flocculant dose was performed at different LL to MW at ratios of 1:20, 1:10, 1:7 and 1:5. Pre-treatment process's efficiency evaluation was based on removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), turbidity and colour. LL and MW characterization revealed that LL was old with low BOD 5 /COD ratio, high ammonia and TSS concentration while MW had moderate COD concentration. FeCl 3 optimum dose was 970 mg/L with 100 mg/L of GGI-g-PAM flocculant. Best pre-treatment was at a ratio of 1:7 where 79% COD, 93% turbidity and 90% TSS removal was recorded. Colour removal was found to decrease with increase in FeCl 3 dose at all the ratios tested except at 1:20. Results indicated that coagulation–flocculation can be useful pre-treatment option for LL and MW co-treatment.

Summary Fault detection and diagnosis is the most important technology in condition-based maintenance (CBM) system for rotating machinery. This paper experimentally explores the development of a random forest (RF) classifier, a recently emerged machine learning technique, for multi-class mechanical fault diagnosis in bearing of an induction motor. Firstly, the vibration signals are collected from the bearing using accelerometer sensor. Parameters from the vibration signal are extracted in the form of statistical features and used as input feature for the classification problem. These features are classified through RF classifiers for four class problems. The prime objective of this paper is to evaluate effectiveness of random forest classifier on bearing fault diagnosis. The obtained results compared with the existing artificial intelligence techniques, neural network. The analysis of results shows the better performance and higher accuracy than the well existing techniques.

Summary In the present paper, the airgap eccentricity fault of the induction motor has been diagnosed by digital signal processing transformative techniques in the inverter driven induction motor drives. The airgap eccentricity fault has been diagnosed in the transient condition by time domain as well as time-frequency domain techniques with the help of a proposed dynamic simulation model. In the past, many signal processing techniques had been used for various induction motor fault detection purpose such as fast Fourier transform, Hilbert transform, short term Fourier transform, etc. But, all techniques faced some sort of disadvantages. Therefore, in this paper, all shortcomings of the previous used signal processing techniques have been solved by newly wavelet transform's approximation signal. The low frequency approximation signal has been used to diagnose the eccentricity fault in the transient condition. Therefore, early fault diagnosis of the motor is possible and averted the motor before reaching in the ruinous conditions. As a result, the industries may save large revenues and unexpected failure conditions. The obtained results clearly demonstrate that the developed diagnostic technique may reliably separate airgap eccentricity fault in many stages.

Summary Main aim of this paper is to compare the classification accuracies of glacier change detection by following classifiers: sub-pixel classification algorithm, indices based supervised classification and object based algorithm using Landsat imageries. It was observed that shadow effect was not removed in sub-pixel based classification which was removed by the indices method. Further the accuracy was improved by object based classification. Objective of the paper is to analyse different classification algorithms and interpret which one gives the best results in mountainous regions. The study showed that object based method was best in mountainous regions as optimum results were obtained in the shadowed covered regions.

Summary The stable operation of a bottom ash cooler is vital for the operation of the circulating fluidized bed boiler. To assess, the stability of the ash cooler, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the flow behaviour. Although, many experimental results been reported in literature, CFD modelling of the ash cooler has not been carried out. In this paper, the transient computational analysis of a novel stripper ash cooler has been carried out using the Eulerian–Eulerian multiphase approach. The phase coupled SIMPLE algorithm has been used to solve the multiphase equations and the Gidaspow drag model has been employed to model the interaction between the fluidized air and ash. Two cases have been analysed in this paper. In the first case, the filling of the ash in the cooler has been analysed and in the second case, the phenomenon of fluidized bed bubbling in the ash cooler has been simulated. The study the of flow characteristics of hot ash has been studied. The contours of temperature, phase volume and bubbling have been analyzed in this paper.

Summary Among the different modulation techniques, pulse width modulation is one of the major renowned modulation strategies, because the pulses are generated based on reference signal and the reference signal is sinusoidal. Many modifications are made in this strategy since the PWM era starts in the area of power electronics; the modifications are related with the reference or carrier. This paper also discusses about the analysis with performance parameters when the carrier is modified with the impact of hysteresis band structures. The modified carrier is abridged towards the zero line of actual carrier; this type of carrier supports the reduction of the switching losses at the edge of pulse train and also reduces the total harmonic distortions from the converter output signal. The lower switching losses and better harmonic profile elevate the inverter performance; in this paper, Symmetrical Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter is analysed with the proposed enervate carrier associated to level shift pulse width modulation.

Summary There have been many papers recently (both theoretical and empirical) analyzing the problem of income inequality in China. Most of them usually state that the income inequality in China is growing in two dimensions – among the regions and between the urban and rural areas. Moreover, an opinion that reducing the inequality must be connected with sacrificing some part of economic growth prevails. These results seem to be widely accepted also by the media and politicians. In this paper we provide evidence that the income inequality remains stable in last years and that its relationship with economic growth is very ambiguous. Using the comparison with some other countries, we document that the inequality in both dimensions mentioned above does not change significantly faster than in other countries.

Summary The paper discussed numerical approach for an estimation of initial elastic material properties for homogenised models of masonry. The tensor scale parameter is utilised. The paper discusses the principles of the use of the tensor scale for such task and it also discusses current limitations of the procedure. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the practical use of the proposed method.

Summary This paper aims at the valuation of real options with changing volatility. Volatility change is a typical feature of real investment projects, where the riskiness of cash flow generated by the project can change significantly during the project life span. In this paper, there is explained how the problem of changing volatility can be considered if binomial lattice and replication strategy is used for real option valuation. There are recombining and non-recombining lattice used and constant and increasing volatility are analysed and results compared. In situation when volatility is changing, two approaches overcoming this problem are employed and compared.

Summary The design of ID-based cryptography has received much attention from researchers. However, how to revoke the misbehaviour/compromised user in ID-based public key cryptosystem becomes an important research issue. Recently, Tseng and Tsai proposed a novel public key cryptosystem called revocable ID-based public key cryptosystem (RIBE) to solve the revocation problem. Later on, numerous research papers based on the Tseng-Tsai key RIBE were proposed. In this paper, we brief review Tseng and Tsai's RIBE. We hope this review can help the readers to understand the Tseng and Tsai's revocable ID-based public key cryptosystem.

Summary Numerical analysis of cooling assessment in hot vertical fuel rod is carryout using ANSYS 14.0 – CFX Solver. Rewetting is the process of re-establishment of coolants with hot surfaces. Numerical validation exercise carried out with number of turbulence and shear stress turbulence model fairly predict the experimental data and used for further investigation. In the present paper, dispersed fluid is simulating with CFX solver to investigate the flow boiling process in emergency cooling of vertical fuel rod. When coolants come in contact on the hot surface this may not initiated the wetting patch. However, this paper introduces the unique jet impingement direction to remove the heat from the hot surface. In this report, the rewetting temperature and wetting delay also described during in progress of wetting front movement in hot vertical rod.

Summary The increasing demand for ultra-low power electronic systems has motivated research in device technology and hardware design techniques. Experimental studies have proved that the hardware innovations for power reduction are fully exploited only with the proper design of upper layer software. Also, the software power and energy modelling and analysis – the first step towards energy reduction is complex due to the inter and intra dependencies of processors, operating systems, application software, programming languages and compilers. The subject is too vast; the paper aims to give a consolidated view to researchers in arriving at solutions to power optimization problems from a software perspective. The review emphasizes the fact that software design and implementation is to be viewed from system energy conservation angle rather than as an isolated process. After covering a global view of end to end software based power reduction techniques for micro sensor nodes to High Performance Computing systems, specific design aspects related to battery powered Embedded computing for mobile and portable systems are addressed in detail. The findings are consolidated into 2 major categories – those related to research directions and those related to existing industry practices. The emerging concept of Green Software with specific focus on mainframe computing is also discussed in brief. Empirical results on power saving are included wherever available. The paper concludes that only with the close co-ordination between hardware architect, software architect and system architect low energy systems can be realized.

Summary This paper includes the importance of performance testing of web applications and analyses the application's bottleneck based on hardware, software and resource utilization. The main focus of this paper is performance testing based on load test. It has been seen that everyone wants a very fast application, but at the same time, reliability of the application takes an important role; so, customer's satisfaction is the push for performance testing of a given application. Performance testing determines how fast some aspects of the system perform under a pre-defined workload. The performance testing is calculated by analyzing the production, which comes from the application hosted on the server. The main performance is calculated when business is at its peak by its hits.

Summary Traditional learning techniques creates stability problem in infinite impulse response (IIR) systems identification. Additionally the performance significantly degrades if reduced order adaptive models are used for such identification. In this paper identification of IIR system is formulated as an optimization problem. This paper also proposes a modification to the cat swarm optimization algorithm i.e. crossover cat swarm optimization which always tries to explore the search space for improved solutions without getting trapped in the local optima and diverse situations. The results of actual and reduced order identification for standard system by new method exhibit superior performance as compared to cat swarm optimization and particle swarm optimization in terms of mean square error, convergence speed and estimation of coefficients.

Summary Determining the time to reach any incident location by an emergency service is a very important aspect for emergency management. In most of the developing countries road network is considered as a main infrastructure for transporting emergency services. Therefore in order to predict the response time consideration must be given to the characteristics of road segments and driving behaviour of emergency vehicle drivers. In this paper real time driving data by Fire emergency service of Allahabad city is collected using GPS logger HOLUX M1000C. The spatial trajectories collected from GPS logger are analysed in GIS along with road network, population density and landuse data to determine the driver's route deciding behaviour. Based on the integrated analysis the Fire Emergency Vehicle Agent is designed. The Agent based model is simulated to determine the response time which is subsequently compared with the real response time.

Summary This paper aims to develop a method that optimize the multi-performance characteristics (MPCs), i.e. micro-hardness (μ-H) and surface roughness (SR) for the powder mixed electrical discharge machining (PMEDM) of Tungsten Carbide (WC-Co) alloy. Initially, authors successfully achieved the optimal parameter selection for PM-EDM of WC alloy by using grey relational analysis ( Sharma and Singh, 2014a ). There is a still chance of presence of uncertainty/fuzziness in GRA results as it has “higher-the-better” and “lower-the-better” characteristics. Therefore, authors established the grey-fuzzy and grey-ANFIS approach to handle that uncertainty and discreteness present in the data, this study also shows the comparison between these methods. Theoretical prediction of grey-fuzzy approach shows that the proposed approaches can prove useful for optimizing MPCs. It is observed that experiment no. 24 with pulse-on time, 100 μs (A 3 ); pulse-off, 50 μs (B 2 ); current, 9 A (C 3 ) and powder, C (D 1 ) factor combination provides best MPC'S amongst 27 experiments. This study shows that the use of graphite powder is found to be more suitable for improvement in surface characteristics of WC-Co. Results shows that pulse-on time is the dominating factor comparative to others factors which affect the study.

Summary Pattern matching is a fundamental machine vision problem that deals with searching an object in a comparatively large scene. It can use to solve many vision problems ranging from typical human detection to searching defective parts in industrial automation. This paper reports a fast pattern matching technique which makes use of cumulative subtraction and cumulative division operations based on Image Integral model. The idea is to use both the cumulative subtraction and division operations to evaluate the image values on a very small rectangular region of the image scene as well as on the input pattern to be searched for. Image values are transformed to Haar Projection Values (HPVs) using Haar transform in order to achieve pattern matching on sliding window of the image scene. Computation of HPV needs seven arithmetic operations, including two addition and five subtraction operations, which are found to be same as that of Image Integral technique. Besides, the proposed pattern matching technique is identified as computationally effective in terms of both time and memory.

Summary Dynamic voltage scaling contributes to a significant amount of power saving, especially in the energy constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existing dynamic voltage scaling techniques make the system slower and ignore the event miss rate. This results in degradation of the system performance when there is non-stationary workload at input. The overhead due to transition between voltage level and discrete voltage levels are also the limitations of available dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) techniques at sensor node (SN). This paper proposes a workload dependent DVS based MSP430 controller model used for SN. An online gradient estimation technique has been used to optimize power and performance trade-offs. The analytical results are validated with the simulation results obtained using simulation tool “SimEvents” and compared with the available AT9OS8535 controller. Based on the stochastic workload, the controller's input voltage, operational frequency, utilization, and average wait time of events are obtained.

Summary Alarming situation of toxic substances such as benzene and its analogs in the environment and workplaces, making it important to monitor these chemicals and their metabolites in order to evaluate risk hazards and potential problems caused by exposure to toxic compounds. Benzene is omnipresent in usage across industries. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) which is a part of World Health Organization (WHO) has classified Benzene as a human carcinogen. trans-trans Muconic acid (ttMA) is the most important biomarker of benzene for biomonitoring of its low level exposure. In this paper the sensing ability of polyaniline (PANI) to ttMA is investigated for development of cheap, portable and effective electrochemical biosensor. To take this ahead for biosensor device application, successful self-assembling of PANI nanofibers of 40–70 nm range on SS 304 working electrode was achieved. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction was used to characterize the chemical structure of PANI. Morphology of sample was observed by field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM). The detection potential of ttMA in phosphate buffer solution of pH 5.8 acting as a supporting electrolyte was found to be at 0.26 V by linear sweep voltammetry.

Summary Inverted pendulum on cart belongs to a class of highly non-linear, multivariable and complex system which is currently a keen area of interest for researchers in the field of control engineering and robotics. This paper considers stabilisation and control of inverted pendulum on cart moving on an inclined surface. The task of controlling inverted pendulum on inclined surface is much difficult as compared to that moving on horizontal surface. An offline control of the proposed system has been successfully achieved using proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and fuzzy controllers. A Matlab-Simulink model of the proposed system has been built using mathematical equations derived from Newton's second law. The study compares the proposed techniques in terms of settling time, overshoot, undershoot and steady state error. The simulation results are illustrated with the help of graphs and tables which confirms the validity of the proposed techniques.

Summary Ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs) are relatively new smart materials that exhibit a bidirectional electromechanical coupling. IPMCs have large number of important engineering applications such as micro robotics, biomedical devices, biomimetic robotics etc. This paper presents a comparison between tapered and uniform cantilevered Nafion based IPMCs transducer. Electromechanical modelling is done for the tapered beam. Thickness can be varied according to the requirement of force and deflection. Numerical results pertaining to the force and deflection characteristics of both type IPMCs transducer are obtained. It is shown that the desired amount of force and deflections for tapered IPMCs can be achieved for a given voltage. Different fixed end (t0) and free end (t1) thickness values have been taken to justify the results using MATLAB.

Summary Security of data, especially in clouds, has become immensely essential for present-day applications. Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is a great way to secure data which is used and manipulated by untrusted applications or systems. In this paper, we propose a symmetric FHE scheme based on polynomial over ring of integers. This scheme is somewhat homomorphic due to accumulation of noise after few operations, which is made fully homomorphic using a refresh procedure. After certain amount of homomorphic computations, large ciphertexts are refreshed for proper decryption. The hardness of the scheme is based on the difficulty of factorizing large integers. Also, it requires polynomial addition which is computationally cost effective. Experimental results are shown to support our claim.

Summary This investigation examines two-body abrasive wear behaviour of ferrite–pearlite (FP), ferrite–bainite (FB) and ferrite–martensite (FM) microstructures of a microalloyed steel with nearly same amount of second phase/phase mixture to understand the role microstructure on high-stress abrasive wear performance of steel. Wear tests of differently heat treated specimens against SiC abrasive paper have been conducted over a wide range of sliding distance and normal load. This has been supplemented by the examinations of worn surfaces and generated wear debris in addition to the characterization of microstructures and evaluation of mechanical properties. It has been observed that for all type of microstructures, wear rate increases with increasing load but remains constant with sliding distance. Interestingly, the magnitude of wear rate at any particular wear condition is found to decrease considerably in the order of FP, FB and FM structure due to increased resistance to plastic deformation and microcutting encountered during the course of abrasion.

Summary Moulded Case Circuit Breaker (MCCB) is a protective device used for low voltage protection in the range of 12–1250 A. It is having fast breaking and making ability due to special contact structure. In case of transformer it is generally placed in secondary side and in case of motor protection it is used as backup protection. The existing design is suffering from chattering of contact tip which lead to erosion and in turn affect electrical life. It also reduces interrupting/breaking capacity of MCCB. In this paper, detailed study of the factors and constraints related to repulsion threshold current ( I rp ) and consistency of magnetic release for 630 A MCCB is carried out using Finite Element tool JMAG to find out limitations and scope of design improvements in existing design. The proposed suggestion is validated by testing.

Summary Breast cancer is significant health problem diagnosed mostly in women worldwide. Therefore, early detection of breast cancer is performed with the help of digital mammography, which can reduce mortality rate. This paper presents wrapper based feature selection approach for wavelet co-occurrence feature (WCF) using Genetic Fuzzy System (GFS) in mammogram classification problem. The performance of GFS algorithm is explained using mini-MIAS database. WCF features are obtained from detail wavelet coefficients at each level of decomposition of mammogram image. At first level of decomposition, 18 features are applied to GFS algorithm, which selects 5 features with an average classification success rate of 39.64%. Subsequently, at second level it selects 9 features from 36 features and the classification success rate is improved to 56.75%. For third level, 16 features are selected from 54 features and average success rate is improved to 64.98%. Lastly, at fourth level 72 features are applied to GFS, which selects 16 features and thereby increasing average success rate to 89.47%. Hence, GFS algorithm is the effective way of obtaining optimal set of feature in breast cancer diagnosis.

Summary With the advent of deep-submicron technologies, leakage power dissipation is a major concern for scaling down portable devices that have burst-mode type integrated circuits. In this paper leakage reduction technique HTLCT (High Threshold Leakage Control Transistor) is discussed. Using high threshold transistors at the place of low threshold leakage control transistors, result in more leakage power reduction as compared to LCT (leakage control transistor) technique but at the scarifies of area and delay. Further, analysis of effect of parametric variation on leakage current and propagation delay in CMOS circuits is performed. It is found that the leakage power dissipation increases with increasing temperature, supply voltage and aspect ratio. However, opposite pattern is noticed for the propagation delay. Leakage power dissipation for LCT NAND gate increases up to 14.32%, 6.43% and 36.21% and delay decreases by 22.5%, 42% and 9% for variation of temperature, supply voltage and aspect ratio. Maximum peak of equivalent output noise is obtained as 127.531 nV/Sqrt(Hz) at 400 mHz.

Summary This paper focuses on corrosion characteristics of cast and forged aluminium 6061 based composites reinforced with TiB 2 particles. Composites were synthesised by in situ technique using potassium hexafluorotitanate salt (K 2 TiF 6 ) and potassium tetrafluroborate (KBF 4 ) halide salts by stir casting route at a temperature of 850 °C. Cast aluminium alloy and its in situ composites were subjected to open die drop forging at a temperature of 500 °C. Both cast and forged alloy 6061 and in situ composites were then subjected to microstructure studies, salt spray test. Salt spray test was conducted as per ASTM B117 standard test procedure using 5% sodium chloride test solution. Result reveals that, forged alloy and its in situ composites exhibited improved corrosion resistance compared to cast ones.

Summary In this paper, we proposed superscalar pipelined inner product computation unit for signed-unsigned number operating at 16 GHz. This is designed using five stage pipelined operation with four 8 × 8 multipliers operating in parallel. Superscalar pipelined is designed to compute four 8 × 8 products in parallel in three clock cycles. In the fourth clock cycle of the pipeline operation, two inner products are computed using two adders in parallel. Fifth stage of the pipeline is designed to compute the final product by adding two inner partial products. Upon the pipeline is filled up, every clock cycle the new product of 16 × 16-bit signed unsigned number is obtained. The worst delay measured among the pipeline stage is 0.062 ns, and this delay is considered as the clock cycle period. With the delay of 0.062 ns clock cycle period, the pipeline stage can be operated with 16 GHz synchronous clock signal. Each superscalar pipeline stage is implemented using 45 nm CMOS process technology, and the comparison of results shows that the delay is decreased by 38%, area is reduced by 45% and power dissipation is saved by 32%.

Summary Due to high performance demands of the consumer electronics and processing systems, like servers, the number of cores is increasing on System-on-Chip (SoC). Network-on-Chip (NoC) is suitable approach for reducing the communication bottleneck of multicore System-on-Chip. With the integration of 3D IC technology, the 3D Network-on-Chip design enhances the execution rate and decreases power utilisation by replacing long flat interconnects with short vertical ones. New compact architectures are possible by arranging the cores in three-dimensions. Optimised routing algorithms can provide higher execution speed along with reduced energy consumption. In this paper an efficient routing algorithm for 3D Torus topology architecture is proposed. A modified quadrant-based routing algorithm for 3D torus NoC architecture is proposed which is primarily based on division of space into different quadrants and also adopting a path which encounters least hops to connect to the destination node. The proposed algorithm is compared with other 3D routing algorithms like XYZ dimension order routing and the simulated results shows that the proposed algorithm has least latency.

Summary In this paper, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system performance is evaluated over composite Weibull–Gamma (WG) fading channel using antenna selection (AS) techniques. WG fading channel is considered to model multipath and shadowing effects. The capacity and error rate performance can be improved by exploiting channel state information on the transmitter side (CSIT) while reducing hardware complexity. Therefore, AS techniques are used to exploit CSIT. Although, optimal AS improves the system performance at the cost of enhanced complexity, sub-optimal AS technique is preferred to improve capacity performance with reduced complexity level. Also, AS is used for orthogonal space time block code (OSTBC) to improve error performance of MIMO system over WG fading channel.

Summary In deregulated rate structure, the performance evaluation of distribution system for energy efficiency includes; loss minimization, improved power quality, loadability limit, reliability and availability of supply. Energy efficiency changes with the variation in loading pattern and the load behaviour. Further, the nature of load at each node is not explicitly of any one type rather their characteristics depend upon the node voltages. In most cases, load is assumed to be constant power (real and reactive). In this paper voltage dependent practical loads are represented with composite load model and the energy efficiency performance of distribution system for practical loads is evaluated in different configurations of 33-node system.

Summary In recent times, use of wearable devices is becoming popular for providing precise ways of rehabilitation. The focus of this paper is to propose a passive lower body mechanism using a four-bar linkage, which can be actuated via the hip joint to move the other two joints at knee and ankle as well. Simulations are performed here by considering an average male human (height six feet) by modelling the gait cycle in CAD software and executing the control strategy in the SimMechanics, which provides a convenient way to study without use of detailed computational mathematics. The study of the controller aspects of the passive mechanism is presented with both PD and PID controllers with auto- and manual-tuned gains. Significant reduction in actuator torques is observed with the manually-tuned PID controller over automatically-tuned PID controller with marginal degradation in the overshoot and settling time.

Summary The paper presents artificial neural networks (ANNs) based methodology for ascertaining the structural parameters of water harvesting structures (WHS) at the conceptual stage of design. The ANN is trained using exemplar patterns generated using an in-house MSExcel based design program, to draw a functional relationship between the five inputs design parameters namely, peak flood discharge, safe bearing capacity of strata, length of structure, height of structure and silt factor and four outputs namely, top width, bottom width, foundation depth and flood lift representing the structural parameters of WHS. The results of the study show that, the structural parameters of the WHS predicted using ANN model are in close agreement with the actual field parameters. The versatility of ANN to map complex or complex unknown relationships has been proven in the study. A parametric sensitivity study is also performed to assess the most significant design parameter. The study holistically presents a neural network based decision support tool that can be used to accurately estimate the major design parameters of the WHS at the conceptual stage of design in quick time, aiding the engineer-in-charge to conveniently forecast the budget requirements and minimize the labor involved during the subsequent phases of analysis and design.

Summary This paper presents a technique that aimed to accomplish an efficient balance between video compression using H.265 protocol and retention of 8K resolution. The study implements multi-level of optimization in the encoding process using H.265 where JPEG2000 standards play a crucial role. The study also applies a novel concept of orthogonal projection that manages pixels metadata required in every frame transition followed by motion compensation. By using multiple file formats of 30 video datasets, the outcome of the study is found to be accomplishing approximately 49% of enhancement in data quality and around 59% of improvement in video compression in comparison to the existing techniques of HEVC-based video compression.

Summary The success in competitive mass market software development depends on the quality of software development and market segments targeted. Market segments are categorized by uncertainties contributed by “Newness” and “turbulences”, making the software success stochastic in nature. Selecting good market segments, delivering high quality software versions in the lowest time than competitors, result in increasing demand in markets and ultimately revenues. Enhanced customer base is beneficial for current product as well as for future products of industry in the form of increased reputation and increased involvement of customers in future development. The case study was conducted with 13 representatives drawing experiences of 14 mass market projects. Results indicate that software solutions are delivered to few investors or in highly competitive markets, as per the survey's findings of the marketing departments. The software organizations are reluctant to deliver relatively complex solutions in new markets unless and until strongly convinced with the probable success. The method for selection of market segments belonging to new and existing markets for undertaking the software delivery is also proposed in this paper. The model will help software industry decide the market segments and high abstract level features that could increase probability of software success. Poor selection of markets or targeting markets of “improper” size affects the market share of the industry to a great extend.

Summary The thermal performance of open earth pan furnace used conventionally for preparing jaggery (gur) is very low. Dry bagasse is used as a fuel to produce heat in a combustion process in the open earth furnace. The energy loss due to inefficient combustion process, the energy loss through exhaust gases and other losses due to furnace wall, convection and radiation bring the thermal efficiency of open earth pan furnace to a low value. Certain quantity of energy produced in combustion process is used to sensibly heat the sugarcane juice to its evaporation temperature. Solar collectors can supply the sensible heat required to raise the sugarcane juice temperature up to its boiling point, thereby reducing the total quantity of heat required in preparing the jaggery. Solar drier can be used to supply hot air required for the combustion process to burn the bagasse in more efficient manner. This paper presents analytical calculations done to study the performance improvement of the jaggery making unit using solar collector and solar drier.

Summary Cloud storage, which can be a surrogate for all physical hardware storage devices, is a term which gives a reflection of an enormous advancement in engineering ( Hung et al., 2012 ). However, there are many issues that need to be handled when accessing cloud storage on resource constrained mobile devices due to inherent limitations of mobile devices as limited storage capacity, processing power and battery backup ( Yeo et al., 2014 ). There are many multi cloud storage applications available, which handle issues faced by single cloud storage applications. In this paper, we are providing analysis of different multi cloud storage applications developed for resource constrained mobile devices to check their performance on the basis of parameters as battery consumption, CPU usage, data usage and time consumed by using mobile phone device Sony Xperia ZL (smart phone) on WiFi network. Lastly, conclusion and open research challenges in these multi cloud storage apps are discussed.

Summary Wearable exoskeletons offer interesting possibilities to address the global concerns of the ageing society and hence many researchers and industries are investing significant resources to develop new innovations in the area of physical assistance. An important issue in providing effective physical assistance is how the needed torques can be generated efficiently and effectively. This paper considers this area and explores the use of continuous variable transmissions (CVT) for up-grading/downgrading torques so that the torque variations for performing motions of normal daily living can be provided. The knee joint is focused upon to develop the key stages of the CVT based approach in generating motion torques. From our on-going research to developing assistive exoskeletons for support activities of daily living it has been found that 6.3–20.6 Nm torque is required to provide 10–20% assistance at the knee joint of a healthy elderly person having weight 70–90 kg. The challenge here is to miniaturize conventional CVTs developed for the automobiles where large torques are needed. To achieve the required torque range for supporting human joints in various motions, a CVT is designed and its parameters optimized. Results are validated via a professional optimization software.

Summary In presence of environmental noise, speakers tend to emphasize their vocal effort to improve the audibility of voice. This involuntary adjustment is known as Lombard effect (LE). Due to LE the signal to noise ratio of speech increases, but at the same time the loudness, pitch and duration of phonemes changes. Hence, accuracy of automatic speech recognition systems degrades. In this paper, the effect of unsupervised equalization of Lombard effect is investigated for Hindi vowel classification task using Hindi database designed at TIFR Mumbai, India. Proposed Quantile-based Dynamic Cepstral Normalization MFCC (QCN-MFCC) along with baseline MFCC features have been used for vowel classification. Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is used as classifier. It is observed that QCN-MFCC features have given a maximum improvement of 5.97% and 5% over MFCC features for context-dependent and context-independent cases respectively. It is also observed that QCN-MFCC features have given improvement of 13% and 11.5% over MFCC features for context-dependent and context-independent classification of mid vowels.

Summary This paper presents an optimal placement methodology of energy storage to improve energy loss minimization through peak shaving in the presence of renewable distributed generation. Storage sizing is modelled by considering the load profile and desired peak shaving. This storage is suitably divided into multiple storage units and optimally allocated at multiple sites with suitable charge discharge strategy. Thus the peak shaving for maximum loss reduction is explored here. Renewable distributed generation (RDG) is modelled based on the seasonal variations of renewable resources e.g ., solar or wind and these RDGs are placed at suitable locations. A high-performance Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm is applied to the proposed methodology. The results are compared with the well-known genetic algorithm. The proposed methodology is illustrated by various case studies on a 34-bus test system. Significant loss minimization is obtained by optimal location of multiple energy storage units through peak shaving.

Summary Cryptographic techniques are employed for minimizing security hazards to sensitive information. To make the systems more robust, cyphers or crypts being used need to be analysed for which cryptanalysts require ways to automate the process, so that cryptographic systems can be tested more efficiently. Evolutionary algorithms provide one such resort as these are capable of searching global optimal solution very quickly. Cuckoo Search (CS) Algorithm has been used effectively in cryptanalysis of conventional systems like Vigenere and Transposition cyphers. Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) is a crypto primitive used extensively in design of cryptosystems. In this paper, we analyse LFSR based cryptosystem using Cuckoo Search to find correct initial states of used LFSR. Primitive polynomials of degree 11, 13, 17 and 19 are considered to analyse text crypts of length 200, 300 and 400 characters. Optimal solutions were obtained for the following CS parameters: Levy distribution parameter ( β ) = 1.5 and Alien eggs discovering probability ( p a ) = 0.25.

Summary This paper presents the performance evaluation of a secondary user (SU) in an underlay cognitive dual-hop relaying system considering instantaneous as well as average channel information of the interfering links (from the secondary source and relay to the primary receiver) and the data link from the secondary source to relay, to calculate transmit power and amplifying gain of secondary system. Comparison of above mentioned cases is done for two different scenarios – with direct path and without direct path. We evaluate the performance considering two different diversity techniques namely as selection combining (SC) and maximum ratio combining (MRC). The effect of different fading channels (Rayleigh and Nakagami) on the outage performance of the SU for the two diversity techniques is also shown. The outage probability of the SU is reduced when the diversity techniques are used (with direct path) as compared to the outage probability of SU without direct path. We find that the outage performance is better for instantaneous channel information as compared to average channel information for the links. We observe that MRC provides better performance than SC. Furthermore, this work shows that the outage performance of the SU has been improved when the Nakagami fading channel ( m = 2) is considered instead of Rayleigh fading channel.

Summary Non functional requirements must be selected for implementation together with functional requirements to enhance the success of software projects. Three approaches exist for performing the prioritization of non functional requirements using the suitable prioritization technique. This paper performs experimentation on three different complexity versions of the industrial software project using cost-value prioritization technique employing three approaches. Experimentation is conducted to analyze the accuracy of individual approaches and the variation of accuracy with the complexity of the software project. The results indicate that selecting non functional requirements separately, but in accordance with functionality has higher accuracy amongst the other two approaches. Further, likewise other approaches, it witnesses the decrease in accuracy with increase in software complexity but the decrease is minimal.

Summary In recent decades, high-utility itemset mining (HUIM) has emerging a critical research topic since the quantity and profit factors are both concerned to mine the high-utility itemsets (HUIs). Generally, data mining is commonly used to discover interesting and useful knowledge from massive data. It may, however, lead to privacy threats if private or secure information (e.g., HUIs) are published in the public place or misused. In this paper, we focus on the issues of HUIM and privacy-preserving utility mining (PPUM), and present two evolutionary algorithms to respectively mine HUIs and hide the sensitive high-utility itemsets in PPUM. Extensive experiments showed that the two proposed models for the applications of HUIM and PPUM can not only generate the high quality profitable itemsets according to the user-specified minimum utility threshold, but also enable the capability of privacy preserving for private or secure information (e.g., HUIs) in real-word applications.

Summary Using of timber in civil engineering is increasing at the moment. Main timber elements are used for main supporting structures, typically for buildings, roofs, footbridges or towers. This work studies unique timber trusses as a supporting roof structure of spatial timber building. Timber trusses are used as roof supporting construction for objects with open inside space, especially halls or office buildings. This paper resolved critical joint in roof construction which is created by four timber trusses. The FEM model monitored strain changes in critical places of resolved joint.

Summary Many mining operations produce tailings that dewater very slowly under self-weight consolidation. On way of reducing the water content of such tailings is by coagulation/flocculation processes (C/F processes). This paper describes a study using aluminium chloride and pre-hydrated aluminium salts as aluminium chlorohydrate – ACH (F1.2A, F1AM, FD15, FDM17H, F1S) and polyaluminium chloride – PACl (PAX-18) in dewatering of flotation tailing slurries, resulting from coal flotation in the coal preparation at the Paskov Mine (Czech Republic). Experiments were conducted at different temperature and mixing conditions to simulate full-scale conditions. The results point to a potentially technique for reducing the water content of tailings streams, thus increasing storage space, improving economic and environmental aspects.

Summary In this paper, we present a software tool capable of predicting the final quality of triple play services by using the most common assessment metrics. The quality of speech and video in network environment is a growing concern of all the internet service providers to carry the multimedia traffic without the excessive delays and losses, which degrade the quality of multimedia as it is perceived by the end users. Prediction mathematical model is based on results obtained from many performed testing scenarios simulating real behavior in the network. Based on the proposed model, speech or video quality is calculated with regard to policies applied for packet processing by routers and to the level of total network utilization. The application cannot only predict QoS parameters but also generate the source code of particular QoS policy setting according to the user interaction and apply the policy to the routers in the network. Contribution of the work consists of a new software tool enables network administrators and designers to improve and optimize network traffic efficiently.

Summary A cellular neural network (CNN) is a massively parallel analog array processor capable of solving various complex processing problems by using specific templates that characterize the synaptic connections. The hardware implementation and applications of CNN have attracted a great deal of attention. Recently, memristors with nanometer-scale and variable gradual conductance have been exploited to make compact and programmable electric synapses. This paper proposes and studies a novel memristive CNN (Mt-CNN) with time-variant templates realized by memristor crossbar synaptic circuits. The template parameters are estimated analytically. The Mt-CNN provides a promising solution to hardware realization of real-time template updating processes, which can be used to effectively deal with various complicated problems of cascaded processing. Its effectiveness and advantages are demonstrated by practical examples of edge detection on noisy images.