Sinusoidal bends have been analyzed as elements for True-Time-Delay in Integrated Optics applications. The curve length of a sinusoidal bend as a function of its amplitude and wavelength has been calculated using a piecewise-linear model. The length calculated by this approach has been compared with the theoretically calculated length. The curve length of a sinusoidal bend can be used to determine the phase-shift introduced by it in an Integrated Optic environment.

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In this study, trans-consonantal vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Chinese is investigated. The target words are in the form of "bV1.ba‟, and the subjects are eight native speakers of standard Chinese. Vowel formants are examined at the onset, middle and offset points of the target vowel. Results show that trans-segmental coarticulation exists in Chinese, especially for the second formant value of the vowel, and in Chinese, coarticulatory effect does not extend to the offset point of the vowel.

Speech, coarticulation, vowel, formant, syllable.

[1] W. F. Katz, "Anticipatory coarticulation and aphasia implications for phonetic theories", Journal of Phonetics, (28), pp. 313–334, 2000.
[2] S. Y. Manuel, "Cross-language studies: relating language-particular coarticulation patterns to other language-particular facts", in W. J. Hardcastle and N. Hewlett (eds), Coarticulation: theory, data and techniques, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., pp. 179–198, 1999.
[3] S. E. G. Öhman, "Coarticulation in VCV utterances: spectrographic measurements," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 39, pp. 151–168, 1966.
[4] P. S. Beddor, J. D. Harnsberger and S. Lindemann, "Language-specific patterns of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: acoustic structures and their perceptual correlates," Journal of Phonetics (30), pp. 591–627, 2002.

[5] S.Y. Manuel and R. A. Krakow, "Universal and language particular aspects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation," Haskins Laboratories Status Reports on Speech Research, SR-77/78, pp. 69–78, 1984......

This paper presents the compressive strength of PET fibre reinforced recycles aggregate concrete. The Natural Aggregate (NC) was replaced by recycle aggregate (RA) in the proportion of 25, 50, 75 and 100%. PET fibres were added to the Recycle Aggregate Concrete (RAC) by 1 and 2% volume. Total 45 cubes were cast and tested. The results showed that as the % of RA and volume fraction of PET fibre content increases the strength was decreased. For obtained experimental results three simple Regression Models (RMs) were synthesized and the same are presented in this article.

RAC, PET fibres, Compressive strength, Cube, Regression Models.

[1] Marzouk O Y, Dheilly RM Queneudec M, Valorization of post consumer waste plastic in cementitious concrete composites,Waste Manage,27,pp310-318,2007.
[2] Siddique R,Khatib J, Kaur I ,"Use of recycled plastic in concrete, A review waste management" 28,pp1835-1852,2008.
[3] Kou SC,Poon CS ,"Properties of light weight aggregate concrete prepared with PVC granules drived form scraped PVC pipes", Waste manage (Oxf),29(2),pp621-628,2009.
[4] Akcaozoglu S,Atis CD,Akcaozoglu K, "An investigation on the use of shreadded waste PET bottles as aggregate in light weight concrete",Waste manage (Oxf),32(2),pp258-290,2010......

This paper presents the Telemedicine programme being run by Orissa State in India. The study sought to understand eHealth implementation in low resource settings through the lens of actor-network theory. Part of this theory is made up of the sociology of translations, which was employed as a crucial framework for exploring the Orissa State Telemedicine Network Set-up. Data was collected between April – June 2012. Data collection has been through triangulation of qualitative methods: interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. A total of 28 human and non-human actors‟ were identified and semi-structured interviews conducted with the human actors using Face to Face (15) and Video Conference (13). Findings included the use of physician leaders to spearhead such project, much awareness should be created among the various actors and all the actors should be identified and brought on board the project. It can be deduced from the above that, the network has successfully undergone all the moments of translation. The key factors that ensured this success include state government‟s involvement, availability of a project champion in the person of the nodal officer. Further research should be carried into unresolved issues in implementing and integrating eHealth solutions which are include issues of diagnostic/therapeutic efficacy, privacy and security of information transmission, clinical standards and guidelines for practice, technical interoperability of systems and Human resource planning.

[1]. Alvarez RC (2002) The promise of e-Health – a Canadian perspective. Ehealth International. Available: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ picrender.fcgi?artid = 135525&blobtype = pdf. Accessed 14 August 2011.
[2]. Benbasat, I., Goldstein, D.K. and Mead, M. "The Case Research Strategy in Studies of Information Systems," MIS Quarterly (11:3) 1987, pp. 369-386.
[3]. Commission of the European Communities (2004) e-Health – making healthcare better for European citizens: An action plan for a European e-Health Area. Available: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2004: 356:FIN:EN:PDF. Accessed 14 August 2011.
[4]. Pagliari C, Sloan D, Gregor P, Sullivan F, Detmer D, et al. (2005) What Is eHealth (4): A Scoping Exercise to Map the Field. J Med Internet Res 7: e9. Available: http://www.jmir.org/2005/1/e9/. Accessed 14 August 2011.
[5]. Ouma, S and M. E. Herselman, 2008; E-health in Rural Areas: Case of Developing Countries. International Journal of Biological and Life Sciences 4:4 2.....

This study presents space vector-based quasi-two-level operation of a diode-clamped multilevel inverter which improves dc link utilisation and output voltage quality, and avoids the dc link capacitor voltage balancing problem experienced with standard multilevel operation. Beside a review of quasi-two-level operation and the capacitor voltage balancing method, the study presents a detailed discussion on the implementation of space vector modulation and the selection of switching sequence for a five-level inverter. Additionally, the condition for maximum theoretical modulation index for space vector modulation is established. A prototype five-level diode-clamped inverter is to experimentally validate the approach. Also this study extends the concept of quasi-two-level-to-three-level operation of the diode-clamped multilevel inverter in order to address the shortcomings experienced with quasi-two-level operation, such as low waveform quality and high switching losses. The validity of three-level inverter operation is confirmed experimentally on a prototype of a five-level diode-clamped inverter. The study also highlights the limitations of three-level operation of a diode-clamped multilevel inverter.

Quasi-Three-Level and Five-Level Operation of A Diode-Clamped Multilevel Inverter Using Space Vector Modulation.

[1] Saeedifard, M., Iravani, R., Pou, J.: 'Analysis and control of DC- capacitor-voltage-drift phenomenon of a passive front-end five- level converter', IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., 2007, 54, pp. 3255– 3266.
[2] Flourentzou, N., Agelidis, V.G., Demetriades, G.D.: 'VSC-based HVDC power transmission systems: an overview', IEEE Trans. Power Electron., 2009, 24, pp. 592 –602.
[3] Newton, C., Sumner, M., Alexander, T.: 'Multi-level converters: a real solution to high voltage drives?'. IEE Colloquium on Update on New Power Electronic Techniques (Digest No: 1997/091), 1997, pp. 3/ 1 –3/5.
[4] Franquelo, L.G., Rodriguez, J., Leon, J.I., Kouro, S., Portillo, M.A.M.: 'The age of multilevel converters arrives', IEEE Ind. Electron. Mag., 2008, 2, pp. 28–39.
[5] Abu-Rub, H., Holtz, J., Rodriguez, J., Ge, B.: 'Medium- oltage multilevel converters – state of the art, challenges, and requirements in industrial applications', IEEE Trans. Ind.Electron., 2010, 57, pp. 2581– 2596......

The concept of productivity has been debated for several decades without finding common definitions that are generally accepted in the construction sector. In addition, there are still some other challenges originated from various sources that negatively affect productivity in construction. In this paper, by means of a thorough literature review, it is tried to highlight the major issues regarding construction productivity to give construction managers and practitioners a broader insight about the problems associated with construction productivity and increase their awareness about the productivity challenges in construction. This paper indicates that due to the presence of a large number of challenges concerning construction productivity originated from various sources, it is necessary to use different solutions and approaches to tackle them.

Construction productivity, Construction management, Productivity challenges, Productivity definitions, Construction industry.

[1]. J. J. Adrian, "Construction productivity Improvement". New York: Elsevier, 1987.
[2]. A. O. Amadi, "Recipe for Productivity Improvement," in Umeh, P.O.C. et al, "Increasing Productivity in Nigeria" in Proc. the First National Conference on Productivity 1sty-3rd December 1987, National Productivity Centre, Macmillan, Nigeria, p. 98 -106.
[3]. P. M. Bosch-Sijtsema, and Theo J.B.M. Postma, "Knowledge transfer in project-based environments: a study on innovation projects in the construction industry," In Proc. OLKC, 2006, Warwick, UK.
[4]. D. N. Card, "The Challenge of Productivity Measurement," In Proc. Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, 2006, Portland, OR.
[5]. P. Crawford, and B. Vogl, "Measuring productivity in the construction industry," Building Research and Information., vol. 34, no. 3, p. 208-219, 2006.....

This paper presents a medical image retrieval frameworkthat uses visual concepts in a feature space employing statisticalmodels built using a probabilistic multi-class supportvector machine (SVM). The images are represented usingconcepts that comprise color and texture patches fromlocal image regions in a multi-dimensional feature space.A major limitation of concept feature representation is thatthe structural relationship or spatial ordering between conceptsare ignored. We present a feature representationscheme as visual concept structure descriptor (VCSD) thatovercomes this challenge and captures both the concept frequencysimilar to a color histogram and the local spatialrelationships of the concepts. A probabilistic frameworkmakes the descriptor robust against classification and quantizationerrors. Evaluation of the proposed image retrievalframework on a biomedical image dataset with differentimaging modalities validates its benefits.When inspecting an image for the first time,how does the viewer decide where to look next? The saliencymap hypothesis proposes that viewers initiallyanalyse the image for variations in low-level visual featuresincluding intensity, colour, and edge orientation, and thattheir eyes are guided towards the most salient region. Thesaliency of objects in scenes may provide an explanation ofwhy some experiments find that incongruent objects attractattention whilst other studies do not find this effect.Experiments that have monitored eye movements duringscene inspection have found some support for the saliencymap hypothesis, particularly when pictures are inspected inanticipation of a memory test. Under some circumstancesthe hypothesis fails to account for inspection patterns.When scenes are inspected to check the presence orabsence of a named object, or when two images are comparedto determine whether they are identical, or when theviewer has specialised domain knowledge of the scenedepicted, then saliency has little influence. This paperevaluates the saliency map hypothesis of scene perceptionusing evidence of eye movements made when images arefirst inspected, and concludes that visual saliency can beused by viewers, but that its use is both task-dependent andknowledge-dependent.

Content- Based Image Retrieval (CBIR),Attention _ Scene perception ,Saliency map models ,Eye movements ,Fixation scanpaths.

[1] H. M¨uller, N. Michoux, D. Bandon, and A. Geissbuhler,―A Review of Content-Based Image Retrieval Systemsin Medical Applications Clinical Benefits andFuture Directions,‖ International Journal of MedicalInformatics, vol. 73, pp. 1–23, 2004.
[2] R.H. Choplin, J.M. Boehme, and C.D. Maynard,―Picture archiving and communication systems: anoverview,‖ RadioGraphics, vol. 12, pp. 127–129,1992.
[3] Y. Liua, D. Zhang, G. Lu, and W.Y. Ma, ―A survey ofcontent-based image retrieval with high-level semantics,‖Pattern Recogntion, vol. 40, pp. 262–282, 2007.
[4] W. Hsu, S. Antani, L.R. Long, L. Neve, and G.R.Thoma, ―SPIRS: a Web-based Image Retrieval SystemFor Large Biomedical Databases,‖ InternationalJournal of Medical Informatics, vol. 78, pp. 13–24,2008.
[5] H. M¨uller, T. Deselaers, E. Kim, C. Kalpathy, D.Jayashree, M. Thomas, P. Clough, and W. Hersh,―Overview of the ImageCLEFmed 2007 Medical Retrievaland Annotation Tasks,‖ 8th Workshop of theCross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2007),Proceedings of LNCS, vol. 5152, 2008......

Inrush currents generated by unloaded power transformer often reduce power quality on the system. To improve this situation, this paper proposes an active inrush current compensator that is capable of reducing the inrush current effectively during startup mode. The proposed compensator is based on an inverter-based series compensator which is comprised of a single-phase inverter and series transformer. Voltage sags are very frequent events with energization of transformer or starting of large motors although their duration is very short. Hence, during voltage stabilizer mode, the existing series compensator is controlled by a voltage stabilizer controller and superimposes a compensating voltage on the inverter output whenever the load voltage deviate from the nominal value. This strategy is easier to implement because it requires no information of the transformer parameters, power on angle of circuit breaker and measurement of residual flux. Some simulations results show satisfactory performance of the proposed technique on both inrush current reduction and correcting voltage sags.

series compensator, transformer, inrush current, voltage sag.

[1] D. L. Brooks and D. D. Sabin, ―An assessment of distribution system power quality,‖ Elect. Power Res. Inst., Palo Alto, CA, EPRI Final Rep.TR-106249-V2, May 1996, vol. 2.
[2] W. E. Brumsickle, R. S. Schneider, G. A. Luckjiff, D. M. Divan, and M. F. McGranaghan, ―Dynamic sag correctors: Cost-effective industrial power line conditioning,‖ IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 212–217, Jan./Feb. 2001.
[3] N. H. Woodley, ―Field experience with dynamic voltage restorer (DVRTMMV) systems,‖ in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc. Winter Meeting, Jan. 23–27, 2000, vol. 4, pp. 2864–2871.
[4] R. Affolter and B. Connell, ―Experience with a dynamic voltage restorer for a critical manufacturing facility,‖ in Proc. IEEE Transmiss. Distrib. Conf. Expo., 2003, vol. 3, pp. 937–939.
[5] C. N.-M. Ho, H. S. H. Chung, and K. T. K. Au, ―Design and implementation of a fast dynamic control scheme for capacitor-supported dynamic voltage restorers,‖ IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 237–251, Jan. 2008.....

The corrosion inhibitive action of flower extracts of Clitoria ternata flower on mild steel corrosion in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution was studied using weight loss method, potentiodynamic polarization and EIS measurements. The results obtained indicate that the extracts functioned as good inhibitors in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution. Inhibition efficiency was found to increase with extract concentration. The adsorption of constituents in the plant extract on the surface of the metal is proposed for the inhibition behavior.

Inhibitor, Mass loss, Impedance, Polarization, Clitoria ternata.

[1]. H. Ashassi-Sorkhabi, M. R. Majidi and K. Seyyedi, Applied Surface Science,225(2004)176
[2]. A.Y. El-Etre, Corrosion Science,45(2003)2485
[3]. A.Y. El-Etre, Corrosion Science,40 (1998)1845
[4]. H. Ashassi-Sorkhabi, Z. Ghasemi and D. Seifzadeh, Applied Surface Science,249 (2005)408
[5]. M. Bethencourt, F.J. Botana, J.J. Calvino and M. Marcos,Corrosion Science,40(1998)1803.....