In this paper, a robust adaptive backstepping-based controller is developed for positioning the spool valve of Electro-Hydraulic Servo System (EHSS) with parameter fluctuations. Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm is utilized to drive the parameters of the proposed controller to a good neighborhood in the solution space. The optimization problem is formulated such that both the tracking error...

This article considers the impact that peak oil and climate change may have on the future of higher education. In particular, it questions the role of technology in supporting the provision of a higher education which is resilient to a scenario both of energy depletion and the need to adapt to the effects of global warming. One emerging area of interest from this future scenario might be the ro...

................................................................................................................................... 2 Summary of Past Accomplishments ........................................................................................ 3 Local-Scale Model Evaluation Studies ................................................................................ 3 Studies of the Tapaj...

Depletion of fossil fuels and environmental considerations have led engineers and scientists to anticipate the need to develop a clean, renewable and sustainable energy system. In general, they agree that in such a system hydrogen will be used as an energy carrier. One of the areas in which hydrogen will be replacing fossil fuels is air transportation, an area that has been under research for s...

The reduction of environmental burdens is required to mitigate global warming, ozone layer depletion and etc. in manufacturing fields. Hence, prediction system of environmental burden for machining operation has been developed based on LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) policy in this research. The prediction system can evaluate cutting conditions from the view points of environmental burden due to el...

In spring 2004 and 2005 we performed two sets of experiments with Baltic sprat (Sprattus sprattus balticus Schneider) eggs and larvae from the Bornholm Basin simulating ten different temperature scenarios. The goal of the present study was to analyse and parameterise temperature effects on the duration of developmental stages, on the timing of important ontogenetic transitions, growth during th...

Fossil fuel depletion and attempts of global warming mitigation have motivated the development of biofuels. Several feedstock and transformation pathways into biofuel have been proposed as an alternative to usual fuels. Recently, microalgae have attracted a lot of attention because of the promise of reduced competition with food crop and lowered environmental impacts. Over the last years, sever...

The human eye is a biomechanical system. Orbital fat plays an important rol in the working of this system, but its behaviour during eye movement is not well understood. To give insight into this behaviour, visualisation is a useful tool. This paper presents a complete pipeline for interactive particle-based visualisation and exploration of orbital fat deformation from MRI data. Sensible 3D part...

In this paper a solution algorithm for a class of generalized linear multiplicative programs having a polyhedral feasible region is proposed. The algorithm is based on the so called optimal level solutions method. Some optimality conditions are used to improve the performance of the proposed algorithm. Results of a computational test are provided.

Segmentation of the left myocardium in four-dimensional (space-time) cardiac MRI data sets is a prerequisite of many diagnostic tasks. We propose a fully automatic method based on global minimization of an energy functional by means of the graphcut algorithm. Starting from automatically obtained segmentations of the left and right ventricles and a cardiac region of interest, a spatial model is ...