Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

A Decentralized Latency-Aware Task Allocation And Group Formation Approach With Fault Tolerance For Iot Applications, Muhammad Mudassar, Yanlong Zhai, Lejian Liao, Jun Shen

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Development of internet of things (IoT) and smart devices eased life by offering numerous applications targeting to provide real-time low latency services, but they also brought challenges in handling huge data generated from the powerful computations, to get a job done. Decentralized edge computing could help to achieve latency requirements of the applications by executing them closer to the user at edge of network, but most of the current studies actually deployed centralized approaches for cluster computing at edge, which put extra overhead of cluster formation and management. In this article, we propose to group heterogeneous edge nodes on task …

Transient Response & Electromagnetic Behaviour Of Flexible Bow-Tie Shaped Chip-Less Rfid Tag For General Iot Applications, Muhammad Usman Khan, Raad Raad, Javad Foroughi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper is an extension of Novel Flexible Chip-less Bow-Tie RFID tag in which we presented the design, testing and fabrication of the tag and compared the results with Octagonal Chipless RFID tag. The chipless RFID tag was designed by using simulation software CST microwave studio and fabricated by using laser etching technique on a flexible polymer substrate Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET). The tag operates at frequency ranging from 8 to 18 GHz uses the Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) approach. A series of experiments are performed to measure the Radar Cross Section (RCS) in an anechoic chamber. The tag design is …

Public Key Authenticated Encryption With Designated Equality Test And Its Applications In Diagnostic Related Groups, Yuanhao Wang, Qiong Huang, Hongbo Li, Jianye Huang, Guomin Yang, Willy Susilo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Due to the massive growth of data and security concerns, data of patients would be encrypted and outsourced to the cloud server for feature matching in various medical scenarios, such as personal health record systems, actuarial judgements and diagnostic related groups. Public key encryption with equality test (PKEET) is a useful utility for encrypted feature matching. Authorized tester could perform data matching on encrypted data without decrypting. Unfortunately, due to the limited terminology in medicine, people within institutions may illegally use data, trying to obtain information through traversal methods. In this paper we propose a new PKEET notion, called public-key …

Meta-Moderation For Crowdsourced Disaster Management And Urban Participatory Applications, Robert Ighodaro Ogie, Mehrdad Amirghasemi, Pascal Perez

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper presents the Enterprise Meta-moderation of Innovation (EMI) system, which was designed, developed, and deployed to drive innovation in MTR Corporation, Hong Kong. Although EMI was designed specifically for use in an organisation, the system can potentially be extended to serve other useful functions in society. Hence, an important aspect of this paper involves identifying and discussing key considerations that need to be addressed in order for such a system to be used in crowdsourced disaster management and other urban participatory applications. The study highlights the role of agent-based modelling in better addressing some of the socio-technical challenges identified.

Model Predictive Control (Mpc) For Enhancing Building And Hvac System Energy Efficiency: Problem Formulation, Applications And Opportunities, Gianluca Serale, Massimo Fiorentini, Alfonso Capozzoli, Daniele Bernardini, Alberto Bemporad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In the last few years, the application of Model Predictive Control (MPC) for energy management in buildings has received significant attention from the research community. MPC is becoming more and more viable because of the increase in computational power of building automation systems and the availability of a significant amount of monitored building data. MPC has found successful implementation in building thermal regulation, fully exploiting the potential of building thermal mass. Moreover, MPC has been positively applied to active energy storage systems, as well as to the optimal management of on-site renewable energy sources. MPC also opens up several opportunities …

Investigation Of Track Structure And Condensed History Physics Models For Applications In Radiation Dosimetry On A Micro And Nano Scale In Geant4, Peter Lazarakis, Sebastien Incerti, Vladimir N. Ivanchenko, Ioanna Kyriakou, Dimitris Emfietzoglou, Stephanie Corde, Anatoly B. Rosenfeld, Michael L. F Lerch, Moeava Tehei, Susanna Guatelli

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Monte Carlo methods apply various physical models, either condensed history (CH) or track structure (TS), to simulate the passage of radiation through matter. Both CH and TS models continue to be applied to radiation dosimetry investigations on a micro and nano scale. However, as there has been no systematic comparison of the use of these models for such applications there can be no quantification of the uncertainty that is being introduced by the choice of physics model. A comparison of CH and TS models available in Geant4, along with a quantification of the differences in calculated quantities on a micro …

Inertial Microfluidics: Mechanisms And Applications, Jun Zhang, Weihua Li, Gursel Alici

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In microfluidics, the typical sample volume is in the order of nL, which is incompatible with the common biosample volume in biochemistry and clinical diagnostics (usually ranging from 1 μL to approximately 1 mL). The recently emerged inertial microfluidic technology offers the possibility to process large volume (∼mL) of biosample by well-defined micro-structures. In contrast to conventional microfluidic technologies, where fluid inertia is negligible and flow remains almost within Stokes flow region with very low Reynolds number Re≪1 (Re=ρfUfH/μ, where ρ f, Ū f and μ are fluid density, average velocity and dynamic viscosity, respectively, and H is channel hydraulic …

Fundamentals And Applications Of Inertial Microfluidics: A Review, Jun Zhang, Sheng Yan, Dan Yuan, Gursel Alici, Nam-Trung Nguyen, Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani, Weihua Li

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In the last decade, inertial microfluidics has attracted significant attention and a wide variety of channel designs that focus, concentrate and separate particles and fluids have been demonstrated. In contrast to conventional microfluidic technologies, where fluid inertia is negligible and flow remains almost within the Stokes flow region with very low Reynolds number (Re < 1), inertial microfluidics works in the intermediate Reynolds number range (~1 < Re < ~100) between Stokes and turbulent regimes. In this intermediate range, both inertia and fluid viscosity are finite and bring about several intriguing effects that form the basis of inertial microfluidics including (i) inertial migration and (ii) secondary flow. Due to the superior features of high-throughput, simplicity, precise manipulation and low cost, inertial microfluidics is a very promising candidate for cellular sample processing, especially for samples with low abundant targets. In this review, we first discuss the fundamental kinematics of particles in microchannels to familiarise readers with the mechanisms and underlying physics in inertial microfluidic systems. We then present a comprehensive review of recent developments and key applications of inertial microfluidic systems according to their microchannel structures. Finally, we discuss the perspective of employing fluid inertia in microfluidics for particle manipulation. Due to the superior benefits of inertial microfluidics, this promising technology will still be an attractive topic in the near future, with more novel designs and further applications in biology, medicine and industry on the horizon.

Orthogonal Experimental Design Of Titanium Dioxide - Poly(Methyl Methacrylate) Electrospun Nanocomposite Membranes For Photocatalytic Applications, Andrew Vild, Sara Teixeira, Klaus Kuhn, Gianaurelio Cuniberti, Vitor Sencadas

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

An orthogonal experimental method was designed to assess the influence of the electrospinning processing parameters on average diameter and distribution of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) fibers. Based on the orthogonal experimental design analysis, electrospun TiO2-PMMA nanocomposites were processed with the optimal polymer processing conditions to obtain thin fibers with a high overall surface area. Further it was found that the average fiber diameter decreases from 2.0 ± 0.5 down to 1.2 ± 0.2 μm with increasing photocatalyst content. Moreover, the wettability of samples was independent of the filler amount, and showed strong hydrophobic behavior. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that for polymer solutions …

Persuasive Technology In Mobile Applications Promoting Physical Activity: A Systematic Review, John Matthews, Khin Than Win, Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Mark Freeman

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Persuasive technology in mobile applications can be used to influence the behaviour of users. A framework known as the Persuasive Systems Design model has been developed for designing and evaluating systems that influence the attitudes or behaviours of users. This paper reviews the current state of mobile applications for health behavioural change with an emphasis on applications that promote physical activity. The inbuilt persuasive features of mobile applications were evaluated using the Persuasive Systems Design model. A database search was conducted to identify relevant articles. Articles were then reviewed using the Persuasive Systems Design model as a framework for analysis. …

Biodegradable Polymers For Medical Applications, Anezka Lengalova, Alenka Vesel, Yakai Feng, Vitor Sencadas

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Biodegradable polymers have a long history which, however, is difficult to be traced as some of them are natural products. The concept of synthetic biodegradable polymers, the topic of this special issue, was introduced in the 1980s. Since then the field has experienced a steady and stable growth as its outcomes are potentially relevant to the majority of population. This interdisciplinary field encompasses elements of materials science, biology, chemistry, medicine, tissue engineering, and others.

Piezoelectric Polymers As Biomaterials For Tissue Engineering Applications, Clarisse Ribeiro, Vitor Sencadas, Daniela M. Correia, Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Tissue engineering often rely on scaffolds for supporting cell differentiation and growth. Novel paradigms for tissue engineering include the need of active or smart scaffolds in order to properly regenerate specific tissues. In particular, as electrical and electromechanical clues are among the most relevant ones in determining tissue functionality in tissues such as muscle and bone, among others, electroactive materials and, in particular, piezoelectric ones, show strong potential for novel tissue engineering strategies, in particular taking also into account the existence of these phenomena within some specific tissues, indicating their requirement also during tissue regeneration. This referee reports on piezoelectric …

Excellent Melt Lubrication Of Alkali Metal Polyphosphate Glass For High Temperature Applications, A Kiet Tieu, Shanhong Wan, Ning Kong, Qiang Zhu, Hongtao Zhu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

A new class of high temperature lubricant of inorganic alkali metal polyphosphate was developed for hot metal forming, which involved a fundamental knowledge of melt lubrication. At elevated temperature a 55% reduction in friction and a 50% decrease in wear were achieved by the presence of the molten polyphosphate lubrication, as well as the excellent anti-oxidation capability at the rubbing steel/steel interface, which closely correlated with the tribo-induced hierarchical structure at the rubbing interface. This inorganic polyphosphate lubricant can be called a smart polymeric material, which will be an eco-friendly alternative for high temperature applications. This journal is

Density Maximization For Improving Graph Matching With Its Applications, Chao Wang, Lei Wang, Lingqiao Liu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Graph matching has been widely used in both image processing and computer vision domain due to its powerful performance for structural pattern representation. However, it poses three challenges to image sparse feature matching: 1) the combinatorial nature limits the size of the possible matches; 2) it is sensitive to outliers because its objective function prefers more matches; and 3) it works poorly when handling many-to-many object correspondences, due to its assumption of one single cluster of true matches. In this paper, we address these challenges with a unified framework called density maximization (DM), which maximizes the values of a proposed …

Applications Of Magnetorheological Technology To Semiactive Vibration Control Systems, Miao Yu, Seung-Bok Choi, Norman M. Wereley, Weihua Li, Jeong-Hoi Koo, Xinchun Guan

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Semiactive vibration control systems possess both the simplicity and inherent reliability of passive systems while maintaining the adaptability of active vibration control systems integrated with an appropriate control algorithm. One of the recent and promising technologies in semiactive vibration control is to utilize magnetorheological (MR) fluids (MRFs) and MR elastomers (MREs). The well-known remarkable feature of MR materials is the continuous controllability of stiffness and damping properties under external magnetic field. The unique controllable characteristic of MR materials has catalyzed comprehensive research and development focusing on vibration control systems including vehicle dampers, engine mounts, adaptive tuned vibration absorber, and seismic …

Quality Of Experience-Based Image Feature Selection For Mobile Augmented Reality Applications, Yi Cao, Christian H. Ritz, Raad Raad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Mobile augmented reality applications rely on automatically recognising a visual scene through matching of derived image features. To ensure the Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by users, such applications should achieve high matching accuracy meanwhile minimizing the waiting time to meet real-time requirement. An efficient solution is to develop an effective feature selection method to select the most robust features against distortions caused by camera capture to achieve high matching accuracy whilst transmission and matching process of the features are significant reduced. Feature selection is also beneficial to reducing the computational complexities of the matching system so that waiting time …

Two-Party (Blind) Ring Signatures And Their Applications, Man Ho Au, Willy Susilo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

No abstract provided.

Magnetization Curves Of Sintered Heavy Tungsten Alloys For Applications In Mri-Guided Radiotherapy, Stefan Kolling, Bradley Oborn, Paul Keall, Josip Horvat

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Purpose: Due to the current interest in MRI-guided radiotherapy, the magnetic properties of the materials commonly used in radiotherapy are becoming increasingly important. In this paper, mea- surement results for the magnetization (BH) curves of a range of sintered heavy tungsten alloys used in radiation shielding and collimation are presented.

Methods: Sintered heavy tungsten alloys typically contain > 90% tungsten and < 10% of a combina- tion of iron, nickel, and copper binders. Samples of eight different grades of sintered heavy tungsten alloys with varying binder content were investigated. Using a superconducting quantum interference detector magnetometer, the induced magnetic moment m was measured for each sample as a function of applied external field H₀and the BH curve derived.

Results: The iron content of the alloys was found to play a dominant role, directly influencing the magnetization M and thus the nonlinearity of the BH curve. Generally, the saturation magnetization increased with …

Applications Of Controllable Smart Fluids To Mechanical Systems, Seung-Bok Choi, Norman Wereley, Weihua Li, Miao Yu, Jeong-Hoi Koo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

For this special issue, 20 papers have been received, and three of which have been withdrawn. After strict review processes by the world-wide experts on the smart fluids technology, 10 papers have been accepted and are published here.The published papers cover various application devices and systems, which can be controllable to achieve desired performances by applying the external fields to the smart fluid domains. A brief summary of each application item proposed in the published papers is given as follows.

Adaptive And Robust Feature Selection For Low Bitrate Mobile Augmented Reality Applications, Yi Cao, Christian H. Ritz, Raad Raad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Mobile augmented reality applications rely on automatically matching a captured visual scene to an image in a database. This is typically achieved by deriving a set of features for the captured image, transmitting them through a network and then matching with features derived for a database of reference images. A fundamental problem is to select as few and robust features as possible such that the matching accuracy is invariant to distortions caused by camera capture whilst minimising the bit rate required for their transmission. In this paper, novel feature selection methods are proposed, based on the entropy of the image …

Ionic Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscles In Space Applications, Andres Punning, Kwang J. Kim, Viljar Palmre, Frederic Vidal, Cedric Plesse, Nicolas Festin, Ali Maziz, Kinji Asaka, Takushi Sugino, Gursel Alici, Geoffrey M. Spinks, Gordon G. Wallace, Indrek Must, Inga Poldsalu, Veiko Vunder, Rauno Temmer, Karl Kruusamae, Janno Torop, Friedrich Kaasik, Pille Rinne, Urmas Johanson, Anna Liisa Peikolainen, Tarmo Tamm, Alvo Aabloo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

A large-scale effort was carried out to test the performance of seven types of ionic electroactive polymer (IEAP) actuators in space-hazardous environmental factors in laboratory conditions. The results substantiate that the IEAP materials are tolerant to long-term freezing and vacuum environments as well as ionizing Gamma-, X-ray, and UV radiation at the levels corresponding to low Earth orbit (LEO) conditions. The main aim of this material behaviour investigation is to understand and predict device service time for prolonged exposure to space environment.

Ozonation Of N-Nitrosamines In The Reverse Osmosis Concentrate From Water Recycling Applications, Takahiro Fujioka, Stuart Khan, James Mcdonald, Long Nghiem

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This study aims to evaluate the performance of ozone treatment for removing N-nitrosamines from reverse osmosis (RO) concentrate in water recycling applications. In the absence of any N-nitrosamine precursors, the destruction efficiency of N-nitrosamines was dependent on their molecular weight or the length of the alkyl chain in their molecular structure. Experiments conducted with RO concentrate showed that ozonation could lead to the formation of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA), resulting in an increase in concentrations of these N-nitrosamines. Nevertheless, ozonation was effective for destruction of N-nitrosamines with molecular weight greater than that of NDEA (102 g/mol). 2014 Copyright 2014 …

Displacement Profile Estimation Using Low Cost Inertial Motion Sensors With Applications To Sporting And Rehabilitation Exercises, James Coyte, David A. Stirling, Montserrat Ros, Haiping Du, Andrew Gray

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper investigates two methods of displacement estimation using sampled acceleration and orientation data from a 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), with the application to sporting training and rehabilitation. Currently, the use of low cost IMUs for this particular application is very impractical due to the accumulation of errors from various sources. Previous studies and projects that have applied IMUs to similar applications have used a lower number of DOF, or have used higher accuracy navigational grade IMUs. Solutions to the acceleration noise accumulation and gyroscope angle error problem are proposed in this paper. A zero …

Semi-Finite Noncommutative Geometry And Some Applications, Alan L. Carey, Adam C. Rennie, John Phillips

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

These notes are a summary of talks given in Shonan, Japan in February 2008 with modifications from a later series of talks at the Hausdorff Institute for Mathematics in Bonn in July 2008 and at the Erwin Schr¨odinger Institute in October 2008. The intention is to give a short discussion of recent results in noncommutative geometry (NCG) where one extends the usual point of view of [22] by replacing the bounded operators B(H) on a Hilbert space H by certain sub-algebras; namely semi-finite von Neumann algebras. These are weakly closed subalgebras of the bounded operators on a Hilbert space that …

Tuning Performance Of E-Business Applications Through Automatic Transformation Of Persistent Database Structures, Janusz R. Getta

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Performance of e-business applications strongly depends on internal implementations of persistent database structures and on effective algorithms processing these structures. Commercial database systems, which are the basis of e-business applications typically implement logical database structures with one-size-fits-all persistent storage structure. This work investigates a new class of database systems where a conceptual and logical view of a database can be implemented in many different ways depending on the performance requirements of database applications. We consider the improvements to performance of e-business applications through automatic changes of the persistent database structures in the ways indicated by the performance statistics obtained from …

Coastal Reservoir Strategy And Its Applications, Shu-Qing Yang, Jianli Liu, Pengzhi Lin, Changbo Jiang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

While the world's population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold [1]. It is estimated that the world population will enlarge by another 40 to 50 % in the following fifty years. The demand for water will be increasing resulted by the population growth combined with industrialization and urbanization, which will have serious consequences on the environment. According to WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) (2012 Update), 780 million people lack access to an improved water source; approximately one in nine people [2]. Water stress causes deterioration of fresh water resources in terms of …

A Mathematical Function To Represent S-Shaped Relationships For Geotechnical Applications, Martin D. Liu, K J. Xu, Suksun Horpibulsuk

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In this paper a new mathematical function is proposed for describing the S-shape relationship in both normal x and y scale and the semi-logarithmic x and y scale. Basic features of the proposed function have been demonstrated. The proposed function has then been used to simulate the S-shape relationship for seven categories of engineering phenomena. It is seen that the proposed mathematical function has a great potential for representing various S-shape relationships and provides a powerful tool for characterising properties of materials or response of systems; it is thus useful for further numerical analysis.

Two-Stage Fuzzy Fusion With Applications To Through-The-Wall Radar Imaging, Cher Hau Seng, Abdesselam Bouzerdoum, Moeness G. Amin, Son Lam Phung

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

A two-stage fuzzy image fusion approach, which combines multiple radar images of the same scene, is proposed to produce a more informative image. In this approach, two different image fusion methods are first applied. Then, a fuzzy logic fusion method is applied to the outputs of the first fusion stage. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated on through-the-wall radar images obtained using different polarizations. Experimental results show that the proposed approach enhances image quality by producing outputs with high target intensity values and low clutter. © 2012 IEEE.

Membership Encryption And Its Applications, Fuchun Guo, Yi Mu, Willy Susilo, Vijay Varadharajan

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

We propose a new encryption primitive called Membership Encryption. Let P(G) be a privacy-preserving token on a group attribute/identity G, such that given P(G) it is hard to know the attributes in G. In this membership encryption, if an encryption takes as input an attribute A and the token P(G) , the decryption requires holding the membership A ∈ G, i.e., A belongs to this group attribute. Membership encryption is applicable in constructing membership proof A∈P(G) with privacy preserving on group attribute and the membership. Membership encryption can be also utilized to construct an efficient two-round K-out-of-N oblivious transfer protocol. …

Magnetorheological Elastomers And Their Applications, W H. Li, X Z. Zhang, H Du

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) are smart materials whose modulus or mechanical performances can be controlled by an external magnetic field. In this chapter, the current research on the MRE materials fabrication, performance characterisation, modelling and applications is reviewed and discussed. Either anistropic or isotropic or MRE materials are fabricated by different curing conditions where magnetic field is applied or not. Anistropic MREs exhibit higher MR effects than isotropic MREs. Both steady-state and dynamic performances were studied through both experimental and theoretical approaches. The modelling approaches were developed to predict mechanical performances of MREs with both simple and complex structures. The sensing …