In the present paper we provide a construction of Quantum Markov chain on a Cayley tree. Moreover, we give a concrete example of such chains, which is shift invariant and has the clustering property
Mass valuation of properties is important for purposes like property tax, price indices construction, and understanding market dynamics. There are several ways that the mass valuation can be carried out. This paper reviews the conventional MRA and several other advanced methods such as SAR, Kriging, GWR, and MWR. SAR and Kriging are good for modeling spatial dependence while GWR and MWR are good for modeling spatial heterogeneity. The difference between SAR and Kriging is the calculation of weights. Kriging weights are based on the spatial dependence or so called the semi-variogram analysis of the price data whereas the weights in SAR are based on the spatial contiguity between the sample data. MWR and GWR are special types of regression where study region is subdivided into local sections to increase the accuracy of prediction through neutralizing the heterogeneity of autocorrelations. MWR assigns equal weights for observations within a window while GWR uses distance decay functions. The merits and drawbacks of each method are discussed.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and three dimensional (3D) World Wide Web (WWW) applications usage are on the rise. The demand for online 3D terrain visualization for GIS data has increased. Current users demand for more complex data which have higher accuracy and realism. This is aided by the emergence of geo-browsers in the market which provide free service and also cater for the commercialized market. Other new technology driving the market is the use of software such as CityGML, Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML)/ Entensive 3D (X3D), geoVRML, and Keyhole Markup Language (KML). These technologies also play an important role for this new era of online 3D terrain visualization. The aim of this paper is to implement the online 3D terrain visualization for GIS data by using VRML technology and launching the system into three different web servers. The data used for this system are contour data and high resolution satellite image (QUICKBIRD) for Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) area. Testing was done only for satellite image overlaid to 3D terrain data. The web servers used in this experiment were the Spatial Research Group Server in UPM, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) web server, and ruzinoor.my web server. The comparison was based on the performance of web servers in terms of accessibility, uploading time, CPU usage, frame rate per second (fps), and number of users. The results from this experiment will be of help and guidance to the developers in finding the right web servers for the best performance on implementing online 3D terrain visualization for GIS data.
This paper presents the evaluation of integrated partial match query in Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR). To facilitate the evaluation, Kuala Lumpur tourist related data is used as test collection and is stored in SuperWeb, a map server. Then the map server is customized to enhance its query capability to recognize word in partial or case sensitive between layers of spatial data. Query keyword is tested using the system and results are evaluated using experiments on sample data. Findings show that integrated partial match query provides more flexibility to tourist in determining search results.
Normally, topographic map is produced using aerial photogrammetry. The recent development in aerial photogrammetry is the use of large format digital aerial camera for producing topographic map, however, the cost of the camera is too expensive and many mapping organization around the world could not afford to purchase it. In certain application, there is a need to map small area with limited budget. This issue has been solved by using small format camera (i.e. conventional or digital) to produce digital map. This study concentrates on the use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for producing digital map. UAV has been widely used in military for reconnaissance, planning, combat, and etc. Today, UAV can be used by civilian for reconnaissance, monitoring, mapping, and others. The objectives of this study are to investigate the capability of UAV in producing digital map and assess the accuracy of mapping using UAV. In this study, a light weight fixed wing UAV was used as a platform and a high resolution digital camera was used to acquire aerial digital images of the study area. The aerial digital images were acquired at low altitude. After capturing the aerial digital images, ground control points and check points were established using GPS. Then the aerial digital images were processed using photogrammetric software. The output of the study is a digital map and digital orthophoto. For accuracy assessment, the root mean square error (RMSE) is used. Based on the assessment, the results showed that accuracy of sub-meter can be obtained using the procedure and method used in the study. In conclusion, this study shows that UAV can be used for producing digital map at sub-meter accuracy and it can also be used for diversified applications.
Eshtehard aquifer located in southwest of Tehran province, Iran, provides a large amount of water requirement for inhabitants of Eshtehard district. Monitoring and analyzing of groundwater quality are important for protecting groundwater as sustainable water resource. One of the most advanced techniques for groundwater quality interpolation and mapping is geostatistics methods. The purposes of this study are (1) to investigate major ions concentration and their relative abundance to provide an overview of present groundwater chemistry and (2) to map the groundwater quality in the study area using geostatistics techniques. In this investigation, ArcGIS 9.2 was used for predicting spatial distribution of some groundwater characteristics such as: Chloride, Sulfate, pH, and Conductivity. These methods are applied for data from 44 wells within the study area. The final maps show that the south parts of the Eshtehard aquifer have suitable groundwater quality for human consumption and in general, the groundwater quality degrades south to north and west to east of the Eshtehard plain along the groundwater flow path.
The problem of difficulty in obtaining cloud-free scene at the equatorial region from satellite platforms can be
overcome by using airborne imagery as an attempt for introducing an economical method of remote sensing
data; which only requires a digital camera to provide near time data. Forty three digital images were captured
using a high resolution digital camera model pentax optio A40 (12 megapixels)at a selected location in the same day in Penang Island from a low-altitude flying autopilot aircraft (CropCam) to generate land use/land cover (LULC) map of the test area. The CropCam was flown at an average altitude of 320 meters over the ground while capturing images which were taken during two flying missions for the duration of approximately 15 and 20 minutes respectively. The CropCam was equipped with a digital camera as a sensor to capture the GPS points based digital images according to the present time to ensure the mosaic of the digital images. Forty one images were used in providing a mosaic image of a bigger coverage of area (full panorama). Training samples were collected simultaneously when the CropCam captured the images by using hand held GPS. Supervised classification techniques, such as the maximum likelihood, minimum-to-distance, and parallelepiped were applied to the panoramic image to generate LULC map for the study area. It was found that the maximum likelihood classifier produce superior results and achieved a high degree of accuracy. The results indicated that the CropCam equipped with a high resolution digital camera can be useful and suitable tool for the tropical region, and this technique could reduce the cost and time of acquiring images for LULC mapping.
Digital elevation model (DEM) generation from stereo images is an effective and economical method in topography mapping. This paper used the stereo pair methodology to generate the digital elevation model (DEM) from PRISM (Panchromatic Remote-Sensing Instrument Satellite) sensor which is onboard of ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite). The pair of forward-backward is used as stereoscopic imagery in this study. Ten ground control points (GCPs) are collected with residual error 0.49 pixels to generate an absolute DEM. This generated DEM with 2.5 m spatial resolution is then matched with the 90 m spatial resolution of
SRTM (Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) DEM to compare the result. Although SRTM-DEM has a much coarser resolution, the positional accuracy of the matching is found. The difference of the height from the mean sea level (MSL) between the SRTM-DEM and the PRISM-DEM is analyzed and the correlation between the two DEMs is R²=0.8083. The accuracy of the DEM generated is given by the RMSE value of 0.8991 meter.
Microwave Remote sensing data have been widely used in land cover and land use classification. The objective of this research paper is to investigate the feasibility of the multi-polarized ALOS-PALSAR data for land cover mapping. This paper presents the methodology and preliminary result including data acquisitions, data processing and data analysis. Standard supervised classification techniques such as the maximum likelihood, minimum distance-to-mean, and parallelepiped were applied to the ALOS-PALSAR images in the land cover mapping analysis. The PALSAR data training areas were chosen based on the information obtained from
optical satellite imagery. The best supervise classifier was selected based on the highest overall accuracy and
kappa coefficient. This study indicated that the land cover of Butterworth, Malaysia can be mapped accurately
using ALOS PALSAR data.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a ubiquitous, an indoor and outdoor air pollutant. It is not a significant greenhouse gas as it absorbs little infrared radiation from the Earth. It is produced by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, and biomass burning. The CO data are obtained from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) onboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The AIRS provides information for several greenhouse gases, CO2, CH4, CO, and O3 as a one goal of the AIRS instrument (included on the EOS Aqua satellite launched, May 4, 2002) as well as to improve weather prediction of the water and energy cycle. The results of the analysis of the retrieved CO total column amount (CO_total_column_A) as well as effective of the CO volume mixing ratio (CO_VMR_eff_A), Level-3 monthly (AIR*3STM) 1º*1º spatial resolution, ascending are used to study the CO distribution over the East and West Malaysia for the year 2003. The CO maps over the study area were generated by using Kriging Interpolation technique and analyzed by using Photoshop CS. Variations in the biomass burning and the CO emissions where noted, while the highest CO occurred at late dry season in the region which has experienced extensive biomass burning and greater draw down of CO occurred in the pristine continental environment (East Malaysia). In all cases, the CO concentration at West Malaysia is higher than East Malaysia. The southeastern Sarawak (lat. 3.5˚ - long. 115.5˚) is less polluted regions and less the CO in most of times in the year. Examining satellite measurements revealed that the enhanced CO emission correlates with occasions of less rainfall during the dry season.
Melaleuca cajuputi and Acacia auriculiformis trees are major sources of nectar and pollen for Apis dorsata and the colonies are a major source of honey to the rural poor, honey hunters. Honey is a supplementary income to many of these people (including school children) in the Marang district, Terengganu. In this study, Marang area with 270 square kilometers was chosen as pilot study area in Terengganu state for mapping M. cajuputi and A. auriculiformis as two dominant species in low land secondary forest in Terengganu state.To inventory and produce land use map of Melaleuca forest in Marang area, in this study SPOT-5 satellite image in multispectral mode with 10 meter resolution which is acquired in 2007 as optical satellite was utilized. Most images from optical satellites have some null data from ground because of clouds and shadow of clouds. To solve this problem, Hue, Saturation and value (HSV) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used as fusion techniques to replace null data with microwave data which taken from Radarsat-1 image in C-band with 25 meter resolution image. Accordingly, fusion technique which was used in this research not only was a technique to improve information but also caused the accuracy increasing than land use map by just only SPOT-5 image. Also between two different fusion techniques, PCA shows the better result than HSV as two different fusion techniques.
This paper presents a new approach to identify fatigue damaging potential locations using the Morlet wavelet coefficients. For solving the subject matter, the 122.4 second SAESUS strain signal was selected for the simulation purpose. As the result, the Morlet wavelet coefficients predicted that the maximum fatigue damage occurs at 40.4 - 42.6 seconds and 67.4 - 70 seconds. For the validation purpose, the Morrow’s fatigue damaging value was calculated and was obtained that the maximum fatigue damage occurs at 0 seconds and 99.7 seconds. The fatigue damaging value at the points was 0.0047 cycles to failure. Since both the plots had similar pattern, the Morlet wavelet coefficients could be used as the early warning of the fatigue damaging potential locations, although the locations were not entirely correct.
Breast cancer is one of the most important diseases among females. According to the Malaysian Oncological Society (Wahid, 2007), about 4% of women who are 40 years old and above are suffering from breast cancer. Masses and microcalcifications are two important signs for breast cancer diagnosis on mammography. In this research, the effects of different image processing techniques which include enhancement, restoration, segmentation, and hybrid methods on phantom images were studied. Three different phantom images, which were obtained at 25kv (63.2 MAS), 28kv (29.8 MAS) and 35kv (9.5 MAS), were manipulated using image processing methods. The images were scored by two expert radiologists and the results were compared to explore any significant improvements. Meanwhile, the Wilcoxen Rank test was used to compare the quality of the manipulated images with the original one (alpha=0.05). Each image processing method was found to be effective on some particular criteria for image quality. Some methods were effective on just one criterion while some others were effective on a few criteria. The statistical test showed that there was an average improvement of 41 percent when the images were manipulated using the histogram modification methods. It could be concluded that different image processing methods have different effects on phantom images which generally improve radiologists’ visualization. The results confirm that the histogram stretching and histogram equation methods lead to higher improvement in image quality as compared to the original image (p < 0.05).
This study of the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) in a customer driven environment analyzes the critical success factors throughout the initialization phase. The dynamic and stochastic nature of customer driven environments results in a massive workload of product structure configuration tasks related to new arrivals on one hand and a constant updating process on the other. Meanwhile, the development and implementation of an ERP system was studied from the very first step (i.e. the feasibly study for implementing an ERP) to the last step (i.e. testing the outputs of the implemented system) in an office furniture company for three years. The study involved analyzing of the data collected that were from a series of interviews, as well as direct observations and reviewing of the company’s documents. Based on the output of the analysis phase, a top-down hierarchical analysis of goals and CSFs were carried out according to the CSF analysis method. Three top level objectives included reducing project failure risk, project cost, and project time. Analysing the primary results of the study (i.e. activity model, data flow diagram DFD of different levels, system problems and potential solutions descriptions, etc.) revealed that the critical phase of the implementation project would be product structure initialization and this should be taken into consideration as the bottleneck of production planning in customer driven environment, which dramatically reduced the ERP efficiency in this kind of environment. Moreover, initializing issues of the same process is the main obstacle to the success of the ERP implementation, as it considerably raises the project failure risk and cost. Therefore, the simplification, facilitation, and automation of the PSCM process, which lead to acceleration of this process, are the most significant success factors for the ERP implementation projects in customer driven environment.
Surface sediments were collected from the north western intertidal area (14 sites), drainage (3 sites), and rivers (3 sites) of Peninsular Malaysia in April 2005. The samples were analyzed for their concentrations of Cd, Ni, and Zn. The ranges for the total concentrations (µg/g dry weight) of Cd, Ni, and Zn were found to be 0.79-2.48, 6.46-73.92, and 33.6-484.14, respectively. Factory drainage site at Juru exceeded the established sediment quality values (Effect Range Median-ERM) for Zn and Ni, while the concentrations of Zn were also found to have exceeded the ERM at drainages at Kuala Kurau Town and Sg. Juru sites. The geochemical study, based on the sequential extraction technique on the sediments, revealed that the metal percentages of non-resistant fractions of the drainage at Kuala Kurau Town (drainage), Sg. Juru (river), Kuala Juru (intertidal), and factory drainage site at Juru were higher than the resistant fractions of the metals. These indicated that the sites (intertidal, river, and drainages) received anthropogenic inputs of these metals. Therefore, the point source of anthropogenic input in these sites should be given attention in future in order to mitigate the environmental problem on the living resources in the north western of Peninsular Malaysia. The present monitoring data are useful for future establishment of sediment quality guideline for Malaysian aquatic environment.
A map on a group is not necessarily an automorphism on the group. In this paper we study the necessary and sufficient conditions for a map on a non-split metacyclic p-group to be an automorphism, where we only consider p as an odd prime number. The metacyclic group can be defined by a presentation and it will be beneficial to have a direct relation between the parameters in the presentation and an automorphism of the group. We consider the action of an automorphism on the generators of the group mentioned. Since any element of a metacyclic group will be mapped to an element of the group by an automorphism, we can conveniently represent the automorphism in a matrix notation. We then use the relations and the regularity of the non-split metacyclic p-group to find conditions on each entry of the matrix in terms of the parameters in its presentation so that such a matrix does indeed represent an automorphism.
Vegetable oil has become more attractive recently because of its environmental benefits and better
quality exhaust emission. A well-known transesterification process made biodiesel, pungam seed oil was selected for biodiesel production. Pungam seed oil is non-edible oil, thus, food versus fuel conflict will not arise if this is used for biodiesel production. A maximum of 75% biodiesel was produced with 20% methanol in the presence of 0.5% sodium hydroxide. The experimental investigations were carried out in an engine that is coupled with an eddy current dynamometer. The engine is a single cylinder water-cooled, direct injection diesel engine developing a power output of 3.7 kW at 1500 rev/min. The crank angle encoder measured the engine speed, whereas the piezo electric sensors measured the cylinder pressure and the fuel injection pressure. The experimental investigations were carried out for bio-diesel and diesel and the results were compared. From the experimental results, it is concluded that the use of bio-diesel as an alternative fuel leads to significant reduction in emissions and improved performance of diesel engines. This paper discusses the production process of biodiesel from Pungam seed oil and its performance in the compression ignition engine.
Adenovirus vector is the most common used vector in clinical gene therapy. The development of adenovirus from the first generation until the helper-dependent adenovirus vector has greatly reduced toxicity and immunogenicity. The helper-dependent adenovirus can also prolong transgene expression. Tissue- or disease-specific approach has been used to improve the specificity of adenoviral vector for cancer gene therapy. This review summarizes some adenoviral gene therapy and targeting approaches available for human cancer as well as animal cancer.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the appearance of active TB lymphadenitis using multimodality imaging apparatus. Multi-modality diagnostic imaging tools, including chest radiograph, Ultrasound (US), Computed Tomographic Scan (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and integrated 18F-FDG Positron Emission Tomography/CT examination, were performed to demonstrate TB lymphadenitis in the neck and superior mediastinum of a 26 year old female patient. There was widening of superior mediastinum on chest radiograph. Meanwhile, the ultrasound carried out detected superficial cystic lesions in the cervical region. The MRI found multiple gadolinium enhanced cervical and mediastinal lymphadenophaties. Contrast enhanced CT found heterogeneous enhancing lymphadenopathies in the same anatomical region. FDG PET/CT demonstrated a high metabolic activity in all lesions, as demonstrated by conventional imaging
modalities. Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated from 1ml aspirate using US guidance. Post treatment FDG PET CT scan demonstrated a complete metabolic remission of active lesions FDG PET CT can be used to demonstrate metabolic activity of active TB lesions in addition to guide clinicians in treating TB lesions.
Vinyl esters combine the best of polyesters and epoxies in terms of properties and processing. Without
complicating presence of reinforcing fibres, this study investigated the effects of catalyst amount, preheating time, molding temperature, and pressure on flexural and water absorption properties of cast vinyl ester (VE) using a factorial experiment. Longer preheating time enhanced the stiffness of VE, while higher molding pressure reduced the flexural modulus. All the four factors did not affect the flexural strength and elongation at the break of molded VE significantly. Using a high molding pressure also caused molded VE to have higher water absorption for a long water exposure period. Meanwhile, greater water absorption at bigger amount of catalyst and higher preheating temperature indicate possible interactions between these factors. The results suggest possible negative effects of high molding pressure through the increase in the network of micro-cracks, and thus lowering the integrity of cast VE sheets. Judicious selection of the process parameters was required in order to obtain good quality molded VE sheets and by extension fibre-reinforced VE composites. Molded VE-unsaturated polyester (UP) blend is a significantly different material which is 1.49 times stronger, 2.38 times more flexible, but it is 0.69 less stiff than neat VE and with significantly higher water absorption. The results obtained warrant for a further investigation in process optimization of VE molding and the use of VE-UP blend as a matrix for natural fibre-reinforced composites.