Archives-April 2011

Making recognition more reliable under uncontrolled lighting conditions is one of the most important challenges for practical face recognition systems This paper proposes a system which can handle illumination problem of face recognition systems by using “Retinex and color constancy” algorithm. The Retinex and color constancy approach has been plugged with Elastic Bunch Graph Matching (EBGM). The proposed system has been tested on FERET database having more than 1000 face images. The experimental results demonstrate that performance of the proposed system is superior to the known systems with the increase in accuracy.

This paper presents the effect of five dissolved inorganic salts (NaCl, CaCl2, ZnCl2, CdCl2 and NH4Cl) on the endothermic enthalpy of mixing of the binary methanol + ethyl acetate system has been investigated at 303.15 K, using an isothermal batch calorimeter with vapour space. The endothermic excess enthalpies of mixing values are significantly increases for the addition of ZnCl2, CdCl2 and CaCl2. For the addition of NaCl and NH4Cl salts are insignificantly decreases the endothermic excess enthalpy values. The experimental values of the enthalpy of mixing were fitted into a Redlich – Kister equation, the deviations and parameters were reported. The experimental and correlation results reveals that the importance of the solvent- solvent and solute-solvent interaction by the enhanced excess enthalpy of mixing (HE) values in the positive direction with increasing concentration of the salts.

This paper presents a novel method for detecting human faces in an image with complex backgrounds. The approach is based on visual information of the face from the template image and is commenced with the estimation of the face area in the given image. As the genetic algorithm is a computationally expensive process, the searching space for possible face regions is limited to possible facial features such as eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows so that the required timing is greatly reduced. In addition, the lighting effect and orientation of the faces are considered and solved in this method. Experiments demonstrate that this face detector provides promising results for the images of individuals which contain quite a high degree of variability in expression, pose, and facial details. Hybrid algorithm is proposed to solve combinatorial optimization problem by using Ant Colony and Genetic programming algorithms. Evolutionary process of Ant Colony Optimization algorithm adapts genetic operations to enhance ant movement towards solution state. The algorithm converges to the optimal final solution, by accumulating the most effective sub-solutions.

A study of breast cancer cases using hospital clinical data was conducted in the state of Bihar, India. It was found that in the past ten years breast cancer incidence increased cumulatively by 642%. In this investigation main emphasis has been given on breast cancer patients. Five districts (Khagaria, Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, Sitamarhi and Vaishal) in the state of Bihar were selected for residual DDT analysis in serum and tissue of a sample population. Pesticides were estimated by using High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Total DDT level in serum samples ranged from 5 ppb to 25 ppb and in the tissue samples it ranged from 900 ppb to 4300 ppb. Maximum accumulated DDT residue in tissue was recorded in the district of Samastipur. Highest accumulation of pp’-DDE was found in the both serum and tissue samples followed by pp-DDT, op-DDT, and pp’-DDD. Increasing concentration of DDT residues in tissues was found to be directly proportional to the effect on estrogen receptors in tissues. This study demonstrates that high accumulation of DDT or DDE and negative effects on estrogen receptor is strongly correlated to carcinogenicity in breast cancer patients.

The role of growing financial sectors is already marked with good attention of the policy makers, investors, academicians and researchers in Bangladesh. To accelerate and sustain the economic growth, the dimension of finance research is very critical which subsequently results diversified types of researches being conducted continuously in this area. At the same time, assessing the directions of researches is also very important to find out the gap in the research vicinity and to explore uncovered issues keeping in mind that the world of finance is vast and there is little success in Bangladesh in terms of area wise research conducted. Moreover, the financial crisis of the world allows us to think further and look back on the finance researches being conducted and its evolution. This paper is an attempt to analyze the dimensions of financial researches that published in Bangladesh from 1973 to 2006. This study analyzes 549 papers covering from available issues (612 issues out of 750) of 18 journals published by well reputed academic institutions in Bangladesh. This paper categorizes the existing finance publications into different major areas and sub-areas. The category of finance researches is also segmented in three time periods based on the research trend in three decades. Finally the paper highlights the most focused areas and its outcomes, where most of the researches have been conducted but still need to do further study, and unexplored areas, where research works is highly required. This paper will be helpful for the financial institutions, researchers and policy makers.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the different perspectives of the roles played by the maquiladora in Central America as a lever of economic growth and social development in the region. Maquiladoras are industries that import materials and equipment, perform assembly or manufacturing processes, then re-export the finished goods to other countries. After a brief historical review of the maquiladoras emergence in the Central America region, the context is analyzed to underline the legal regime of temporal import and legal regime of managerial oriented free zone or fiscal precinct. Afterwards, the impacts that the maquiladoras have had in the regional economic growth and employment generation under the variable of the Asian competence is analyzed. After the discussion, prospective scenarios are analyzed and several strategies are recommended, including the promoting and creation of maquiladoras that go beyond the competitive advantage of cheap human labor. The Central America countries must design and implement strategies of diversification of the maquiladora development process in industrial sectors that require greater added value and technological innovation.

Texture segmentation is the process of partitioning an image into regions with different textures containing similar group of pixels. Texture is an important spatial feature, useful for identifying object or region of interest. In texture analysis the foremost task is to extract texture features, which efficiently embody the information about the textural characteristics of the image. This can be used for the segmentation of different textured images. This paper presents a new approach for color texture segmentation using Haralick’s features extracted from color co-occurrence matrices. The originality of this approach is to select the most discriminating color texture features extracted from the color co-occurrence. Symbolic Object Approach is used for achieving texture segmentation.

The molecular vibrations of 1-Naphthol were investigated in polycrystalline sample, at room temperature, by FT- IR and FT-Raman spectroscopy. In parallel, ab initio and various density functional (DFT) methods were used to determine the geometrical, energetic and vibrational characteristics of 1-Naphthol. On the basis of B3LYP/6-31G* and B3LYP/6-311+G** methods and basis set combinations, a normal mode analysis was performed to assign the various fundamental frequencies according to the total energy distribution (TED). The vibrational spectra were interpreted, with the aid of normal coordinate analysis based on a scaled quantum mechanical force field. The Infrared and Raman spectra were also predicted from the calculated intensities. Comparison of simulated spectra with the experimental spectra provides important information about the ability of the computational method to describe the vibrational modes. Simulation of Infrared and Raman spectra, utilizing the results of these calculations led to excellent overall agreement with observed spectral patterns.The investigation is performed using quantum chemical calculations conducted by means of the Gaussian 98W and Guassview set of programs. Further, density functional theory (DFT) combined with quantum chemical calculations to determine the first-order hyperpolarizability.

Web caching and Web prefetching are two important techniques used to reduce the noticeable response time perceived by users. By integrating Web caching and Web prefetching, these two techniques can complement each other since the Web caching technique exploits the temporal locality, whereas Web prefetching technique utilizes the spatial locality of Web objects [30]. In this paper, we develop algorithm Pre-IPGDSF# by integrating Web caching and Web prefetching in Web servers. For caching, we use innovative algorithm Intelligent Predictive Greedy Dual Size Frequency#, IPGDSF#, which is an enhanced version of algorithm GDSF# developed by us [13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. For prefetching, we use a static prefetching method. Using three different Web server logs, we use trace driven analysis to evaluate the effects of different replacement policies on the performance of a Web server. We specifically compare policies like GDSF, GDSF#, and IPGDSF# with the proposed integrated policy Pre-IPGDSF#. Using trace-driven simulations and for various standard cost criteria (hit rate and byte hit rate), we show that our proposed integrated policy outperforms all other algorithms under consideration.

Carburizing, though a widely used industrial thermo chemical diffusion process, it is associated with the problem of shape and size distortion in the carburized parts.  These distortions are troublesome as they adversely affect the performance of the parts in terms of life, and trouble free operation. The main objective of our present work is to optimize the distortion level, optimum case depth, and surface hardness value of the carburized parts made of EN 353 material. Taguchi’s mixed level series Design of Experiment was selected for optimization.  The significance of our study was that all the three stages of carburizing (Pre carburizing, Carburizing and Post carburizing) were considered for optimization.  An orthogonal array and ANOVA were employed to investigate the influence of major parameters on the three response variables namely Distortion level, Surface hardness and Case depth and optimum conditions were arrived at by applying high penetration depth, high hardness and low distortion are better as the strategies.