Engineering Commons^™

Assessing The Usefulness Of Different Feature Sets For Predicting The Comprehension Difficulty Of Text, Brian Mac Namee, John D. Kelleher, Noel Fitzpatrick

Conference papers

Within English second language acquisition there is an enthusiasm for using authentic text as learning materials in classroom and online settings. This enthusiasm, however, is tempered by the difficulty in finding authentic texts at suitable levels of comprehension difficulty for specific groups of learners. An automated way to rate the comprehension difficulty of a text would make finding suitable texts a much more manageable task. While readability metrics have been in use for over 50 years now they only capture a small amount of what constitutes comprehension difficulty. In this paper we examine other features of texts that are related …

Analysing The Behaviour Of Online Investors In Times Of Geopolitical Distress: A Case Study On War Stocks, James Usher, Pierpaolo Dondio

Conference papers

In this paper we analyse how the behavior of an online financial community in time of geopolitical crises. In particular, we studied the behaviour, composition and communication patterns of online investors before and after a military geopolitical event. We selected a set of 23 key-events belonging to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring and the first period of the Ukraine crisis. We restricted our study to a set of eight so called military stocks, which are US-manufacturing companies active in the defence sector. We studied the resilience of the community to information shocks by comparing the community …

Calculating The Envelope Correlation Coefficient Directly From Spherical Modes Spectrum, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, R. Cornelius, D. Heberling

Conference Papers

This paper proposes an improved technique to calculate the Envelope Correlation Coefficient (ECC) by directly using the spherical mode spectrum of the antenna under test. The technique avoids errors due to numerical pattern integration and simplifies post-processing for near-field measurements. The technique is successfully tested on two different antenna types, in the total number of four MIMO configurations.

On The Use Of Wheeler Cap For Mimo Antennas, Florian Reher, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dirk Heberling

Conference Papers

A new equivalent circuit based Wheeler Cap method to calculate MIMO efficiency is introduced. The method works without the necessity for interpolation by avoiding concur of resonating and cavity modes. The method is tested with a set of three differently correlated MIMO antennas. Results are compared with the recently proposed quality factor method for MIMO antennas and efficiency data from spherical near field measurements.

The Evaluation And Implementation Of Magnetic Fields Suitable For Biaxial Cyclic Testing Of Magnetorheological Elastomers, Dave Gorman

Doctoral

This thesis addresses the current lack of specification of magnetic fields currently used in the physical testing of Magnetorheological Elastomers MREs as well as providing the first comparative test results for MREs subject to both biaxial and uniaxial cyclic loading in the same magnetic field. In order to design an electromagnetic array capable of generating a suitable magnetic field for the cyclic biaxial testing of MREs, a review of currently used magnetic fields for uniaxial testing of MREs was carried out and a suitable array was modelled and evaluated with both 2D and 3D FEA software. Once the FEA analysis …

Development And Evaluation Of A New Interior Lighting Design Methodology., Christopher Cuttle

Doctoral

This thesis examines the basis of professional practice involved in providing controlled distributions of artificial lighting to provide for the broad range of human activities conducted within buildings, and makes proposals for a new methodology. Current practice for specifying lighting requirements based on task performance is examined, and shortcomings are identified. Proposals that have been advanced for alternative forms of specification are reviewed, including those initiated by the candidate in the five publications that form the major part of this thesis. In these publications, the candidate proposes a basis for general lighting practice based on how lighting may influence the …

Electrically Small Antenna With Switchless Pattern Reconfiguration, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dirk Heberling

Conference Papers

An electrically small pattern reconfigurable antenna is proposed. It allows adjustment of the radiation pattern by applying a phase shift between its two ports. The structure is a cylinder with λ/5 diameter. Simulated results show good operation at 2.44 GHz and three different radiation patterns are demonstrated by applying three different phase shifts. The antenna's principles of operation and limitations are explained based on the theory of spherical modes.

Compact Antenna For Digital Beamforming With Software Defined Radios, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Marek Plotka, Lukasz Kulas, Krzysztof Nyka, Mateusz Rzymowski

Conference Papers

An adaptive radio system combining compact switchless reconfigurable antenna with Software Defined Radio is proposed. The system allows control of the direction of the transmitted signal solely by adjusting the baseband I and Q components of the modulated signal, while maintaining small antenna size through the use of compact multiport antenna. The system is demonstrated in a line-of-sight configuration with QPSK modulation. Experimental results demonstrate good received power and low error vector magnitude of the demodulated signals.

Easy-To-Deploy Lc-Loaded Dipole And Monopole Antennas For Cubesat, Korbinian Schraml, Adam Narbudowicz, Suramate Chalermwisutkul, Dirk Heberling, Max Ammann

Conference Papers

This paper proposes a new approach to reduce weight and complexity of VHF/UHF cubesat antennas by utilizing a dual band antenna, rather than standard two-antenna system routinely implemented in cubesats. Three systems are compared: A standard system with separate transmit/receive dipoles, a dual-band dipole for both transmit and receive and a dual-band monopole, which uses the body of 1U cubesat (10 × 10 × 10cm) as a “groundplane”. Additionally it is demonstrated that with appropriate feed the dipole might be used in monopole configuration in case of deployment system malfunction.

Directional Modulation For Compact Devices, Adam Narbudowicz, Max Ammann, Dirk Heberling

Articles

A new directional modulation system which uses radiation pattern data for modulation encoding is proposed. The approach allows compact multiport antennas (e.g. MIMO capable antennas) to be used for directional modulation, replacing extensive arrays. The modulation weighting coefficients are calculated with a fixed, antenna specific equation, thus reducing computational complexity. The solution is intended to enhance privacy in small, battery-operated wireless devices, required for “Internet of Things” applications.

Design Of A Compact, Fully-Autonomous 433 Mhz Tunable Antenna For Wearable Wireless Sensor Applications, John Buckley, Kevin Mccarthy, Domenico Gaetano, Loizos Loizou, Brendan O'Flynn, Cian O'Mathuna

Articles

The authors present the design of a tunable 433 MHz antenna that is tailored for wearable wireless sensor applications. This study first presents a detailed analysis of the measured impedance characteristics of a chosen antenna under test (AUT) in varying proximity to a human test subject. Instead of limiting the analysis to the head and hand only, this analysis measures the AUT impedance at varying distances from 11 different body positions. A novel antenna equivalent circuit model is then developed that enables both the free-space and total on-body AUT impedance variation to be rapidly computed using a circuit simulator instead …

Strain-Induced Spectral Tuning Of The Whispering Gallery Modes In A Cylindrical Micro-Resonator Formed By A Polymer Optical Fiber, Vishnu Kavungal, Arun Mallik, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Yuliya Semenova

Conference Papers

A mechanical strain assisted technique for spectral tuning of whispering gallery modes (WGM) in a cylindrical micro-resonator formed by a polymer optical fiber (POF) is investigated. WGMs in the POF-based micro-cylinder are excited by evanescent light coupling using a tapered single mode silica fiber. WGMs observed in the transmission spectrum of the silica fiber taper have a high extinction ratio of up to 19 dB and a quality factor (Q-factor) of up to 2.64 × 104. The application of tensile axial strain (με) in the range from 0 to 1746 με (0.17%) to the POF micro-resonator results in a linear …

Efficacy And Mechanistic Insights Into Endocrine Disruptor Degradation Using Atmospheric Air Plasma, Chaitanya Sarangapani, M. Danaher, Brijesh Tiwari, Peng Lu, Paula Bourke, Patrick J. Cullen

Articles

Endocrine disruptors are a class of contaminants found in water and process effluents at low concentrations. They are of concern due to their high estrogenic potency. Their presence in the environment has led to the search for effective techniques for their removal in wastewater. For this purpose, an atmospheric air plasma reactor was employed for the study of the degradation of three endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDC) namely; bisphenol A (BPA), estrone (E1) and 17β-estradiol (E2) within a model dairy effluent. Identification of the plasma induced active species both in the gas and liquid phases were performed. Also studied was the …

Development And Characterisation Of A Bath-Based Vertical Blackbody Cavity Calibration Source For The Range −30 °C To 150 °C, Sam Boles, Igor Pušnik, Dubhaltach Mac Lochlainn, David Fleming, Izabela Naydenova, Suzanne Martin

Articles

Industrial use of Radiation Thermometers (RTs) is becoming increasingly common due to the perceived advantages and wide market availability. Blackbody Cavity Radiation Sources (BCRSs) are typically used for calibration of these instruments, and these cavities are oriented horizontally in most cases. For BCRSs based in thermal baths, this necessitates the use of custom-built baths with side openings. This paper presents a unique design of vertical bath-based BCRS that may be immersed in conventional calibration baths without modifications to the baths. The method, results, and analysis of an international comparison comparing this vertical BCRS, standard horizontal BCRSs, and a previous iteration …

An Evaluation Of The Safety Of The Cycling In Dublin City For Dit Students, Niamh O' Reilly

Articles

Cycling as a mode of transport offers many benefits including a cheap, cost effective, healthy, fast, mainly congestion free and environmentally friendly means of getting to and from places of employment and education. Given the central location of Technological University Dublin campus buildings this would seem an ideal option for its third level students, but on the contrary, a DIT online travel survey conducted in March 2014 found that only 7% of students chose cycling as their primary mode of transport. Concerns about cyclist safety were a major factor cited by students who chose alternative modes of transport. Based on …

Adaptive Environments For Enabling Senior Citizens: An Holistic Assessment Tool For Housing Design And Iot-Based Technologies, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry, Niccolò Casiddu

Conference papers

The population of older adults will continuously increase over the coming decades. As they get older, people will require assistance and regular monitoring, with higher costs for welfare system and families. Two vital aspects of a healthy lifestyle, are domestic autonomy and maintenance of relationships within the neighborhood. This leads to an interesting research issue: “Could houses and appliances have the potential to improve autonomy and quality of life of citizens? Which methods and tools could enhance wellbeing and healthy conditions? The house has the potential to be a safe, adaptive environment, integrated with technologies for life support. This work …

Investigating The Impact Of Unsupervised Feature-Extraction From Multi-Wavelength Image Data For Photometric Classification Of Stars, Galaxies And Qsos, Annika Lindh

Conference papers

Accurate classification of astronomical objects currently relies on spectroscopic data. Acquiring this data is time-consuming and expensive compared to photometric data. Hence, improving the accuracy of photometric classification could lead to far better coverage and faster classification pipelines. This paper investigates the benefit of using unsupervised feature-extraction from multi-wavelength image data for photometric classification of stars, galaxies and QSOs. An unsupervised Deep Belief Network is used, giving the model a higher level of interpretability thanks to its generative nature and layer-wise training. A Random Forest classifier is used to measure the contribution of the novel features compared to a set …

Bim Innovation Capability Programme: An Irish Bim Study, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Articles

In 2011 the Royal Institute of Architects Ireland (RIAI) conducted a survey which found that BIM adoption within Ireland was quite low at 16%. Over the last five years these figures have risen significantly, with the 2016 Irish Digital Transition Survey reporting that 76% of respondents possess confidence in their organisation’s BIM skills and knowledge. This represents a significant shift of BIM adoption in Ireland over the last five years.

The BIM Innovation Capability Programme (BICP) Irish BIM study, builds on the findings from the BICP Global BIM Study by providing an in depth review of BIM in Ireland with …

Bs News November/December

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Microbial Enzyme Production Using Lignocellulosic Food Industry Wastes As Feedstock: A Review, Amit Jaiswal, Rajeev Ravindran

Articles

Enzymes are of great importance in the industry due to their substrate and product specificity, moderate reaction conditions, minimal by-product formation and high yield. They are important ingredients in several products and production processes. Up to 30% of the total production cost of enzymes is attributed to the raw materials costs. The food industry expels copious amounts of processing waste annually, which is mostlylignocellulosicin nature. Upon proper treatment,lignocellulosecan replace conventional carbon sources in media preparations for industrial microbial processes, such as enzyme production. However, wild strains of microorganisms that produce industrially important enzymes show low yield and cannot thrive on …

A Dual Band 450lte/Gsm900 Pifa For Portable Devices, Abraham Loutridis, Kansheng Yang, Matthias John, Max Ammann

Conference Papers

A dual band PIFA antenna for portable devices is presented. It operates in the 450 LTE (449 − 461 MHz) and GSM 900 (876 – 922 MHz) frequency bands. The proposed antenna which has a very compact size of 7 (0.01λ0) × 7 × 70 (0.1λ0) mm3 and is suitable to integrate in small envelopes, consists of two branches and a metallic patch. The low cost and easily fabricated antenna offers high total efficiency and gain in both bands. Measured and simulated results are provided.

Power-Weighted Divergences For Relative Attenuation And Delay Estimation, Ruairí De Fréin, Scott T. Rickard Prof

Articles

Power-weighted estimators have recently been proposed for relative attenuation and delay estimation in blind source separation. Their provenance lies in the observation that speech is approximately windowed-disjoint orthogonal (WDO) in the time-frequency (TF) domain; it has been reported that using WDO, derived from TF representations of speech, improves mixing parameter estimation. We show that power-weighted relative attenuation and delay estimators can be derived from a particular case of a weighted Bregman divergence. We then propose a wider class of estimators, which we tune to give better parameter estimates for speech.

Evaluation Of Ultrasound Assisted Potassium Permanganate Pre-Treatment Of Spent Coffee Waste, Rajeev Ravindran, Swarna Jaiswal, Nissreen Abu-Ghannam, Amit Jaiswal

Articles

In the present study, novel pre-treatment for spent coffee waste (SCW) has been proposed which utilises the superior oxidising capacity of alkaline KMnO₄ assisted by ultra-sonication. The pre-treatment was conducted for different exposure times (10, 20, 30 and 40 min) using different concentrations of KMnO₄ (1,2, 3, 4, 5% w/v) at room temperature with solid/liquid ratio of 1:10. Pretreating SCW with 4% KMnO₄ and exposing it to ultrasound for 20 min resulted in 98% cellulose recovery and a maximum lignin removal of 46%. 1.7fold increase in reducing sugar yield was obtained after enzymatic hydrolysis of KMnO_{4 …}

Development Of Traceable Capabilities In Non-Contact Thermal Metrology, Sam Boles

Masters

Accurate temperature measurement is crucial in industry to reduce waste and environmental impact. Industrial use of Radiation Thermometers (RTs) is becoming increasingly common due to their wide market availability, fast response time, large temperature ranges, and their ability to measure temperature without contact. With this growth in use, accurate RT measurements that are traceable to the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) are a growing requirement. Traceable calibrations are usually performed using horizontal Blackbody Cavity Radiation Sources (BCRSs). In the work presented, a unique vertical bath-based BCRS, constructed in-house at the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), was compared over …

Recording Of High Efficiency Volume Bragg Gratings In A Photopolymer Using Diffraction From Very Weak Pre-Recorded Gratings, Denis Bade

Articles

No abstract provided.

Behaviour Of A Spd Switchable Glazing In An Outdoor Test Cell With Heat Removal Under Varying Weather Conditions, Aritra Ghosh, Brian Norton, Aidan Duffy

Articles

Suspended particle device (SPD) switchable glazing has potential to control transmission of solar radiation in the visible range by changing its transparency from 55% to 5%. Outdoor test cell characterisation of a SPD switchable glazing offered the dynamic solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) which varied between 0.05 (when opaque) and 0.38 (when transparent). Reduction of maximum temperature rise of 11% and 15% was possible using SPD “transparent” and “opaque” state compared to same area double-glazing. Insulated test cell with water flow heat exchanger was employed to measure the cooling load reduction potential of SPD glazing while its transmission changed from …

Reflecting Societal Values In Designing Flood Risk Management Strategies, Mark Adamson, John O'Sullivan, Zeinab Bedri

Conference papers

In 2006, the Office of Public Works (OPW) began the National Catchment-based Flood Risk Assessment and Management (CFRAM) Programme through a series of pilot studies. A Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) Framework was developed through the pilot studies that integrated a number of objectives related to a wide range of potential impacts and benefits into the core of process of appraising and selecting suitable flood risk management measures for a given area or location, and then for prioritising national investments for different schemes and projects. This MCA Framework, that provides a systematic process of developing a non-monetised but numerical indicator of benefit …

Evaluation Of Slope Stability Quantifying The Effect Of Vegetation, Roberto José Marín, Juan Pablo Osorio

Conference papers

The present study evaluates the shallow landslides susceptibility triggered by rainfall by means of multiple numerical simulations. The simulations integrate a transient rainfall infiltration model with an infinite slope stability model, both of them developed for unsaturated soils in a basin scale. TRIGRS’ infiltration model is used to calculate pore water pressure. The geotechnical model includes the evaluation of two parameters related to vegetation: root reinforcement and tree surcharge due to the weight of the vegetation. These simulations were carried out using multiple values of these parameters so that their behavior is analyzed for the topographic conditions of the watershed …

Support Vector Machines And Artificial Neural Networks: Assessing The Validity Of Using Technical Features For Security Forecasting, James Dipadua

Dissertations

Stock forecasting is an enticing and well-studied problem in both finance and machine learning literature with linear-based models such as ARIMA and ARCH to non-linear Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). However, these forecasting techniques also use very different input features, some of which are seen by economists as irrational and theoretically unjustified. In this comparative study using ANNs and SVMs for 12 publicly traded companies, derivative price “technicals” are evaluated against macro- and microeconomic fundamentals to evaluate the efficacy of model performance. Despite the efficient market hypothesis positing the ill-suitability of technicals as model inputs, this …

Pattern Reconfigurable Back-To-Back Microstrip Patch Antenna, Kansheng Yang, Xiulong Bao, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

Articles

A back-to- back microstrip patch antenna with a switchable pattern is proposed for WLAN applications. The patch elements, printed on FR-4 substrates with a common ground plane, are switched with a single-pole double-throw PIN diode circuit. Switching the feed selects either of two identical radiation patterns in the opposing hemispheres for spatial diversity that would benefit a distributed network.