Showing papers by "Chung Yuan Christian University published in 2005"
TL;DR: The results of comparative study show that the proposed PCAES index has high ability in producing a good cluster number estimate and in addition, it provides a new point of view for cluster validity in a noisy environment.
473 citations
TL;DR: The present study adds the importance of quality attributes to Kano's model and develops an importance–satisfaction (I–S) model, so that firms can obtain a more accurate understanding of the quality attributes from the customer's perspective, and can thus make more precise quality decisions.
Abstract: Kano's model of five categories of quality attributes – attractive, one-dimensional, must-be, indifferent, and reverse quality – is widely used by industries and researchers. However, the model has a deficiency that prevents firms from precisely evaluating the influences of quality attributes. The weakness is a failure to take account of the degree of importance accorded to certain quality elements by customers. Kano's model can be refined. The present study adds the importance of quality attributes and, in so doing, the refined model divides Kano's first four categories into eight categories – highly attractive and less attractive, high value-added and low value-added, critical and necessary, and potential and care-free. Based on the refined model, firms can obtain a more accurate understanding of the quality attributes from the customer's perspective, and can thus make more precise quality decisions. In addition to modifying Kano's model, the present study also develops an importance–satisfacti...
248 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, 3-furfuryl-3,4-dihydro-2H-1,3-benzoxazine (P-FBz) and bis(3-furmuryl)-3, 4-Dihydron (2H)-1, 3-Benzoxazinylisopropane (BPA-FBZ) are derived using furfurylamine as a raw material.
Abstract: Furan-containing benzoxazine monomers, 3-furfuryl-3,4-dihydro-2H-1,3-benzoxazine (P-FBz) and bis(3-furfuryl-3,4-dihydro-2H-1,3-benzoxazinyl)isopropane (BPA-FBz), were prepared using furfurylamine as a raw material. The chemical structures of P-FBz and BPA-FBz were characterized with FTIR, 1 H NMR, elemental analysis, and mass spectrometry. Formation of furfurylamine Mannich bridge networks in the polymerizations of P-FBz and BPA-FBz increased the cross-linking densities and thermal stability of the resulting polybenzoxazines. P-FBz- and BPA-FBz-based polymers also exhibited high glass transition temperatures above 300 °C, high char yields, and low flammability with limited oxygen index values of 31. The dielectric (D k = 3.21-3.39) and mechanical properties (high storage modulus of 3.0-3.9 GPa and low coefficient of thermal expansion of 37.7-45.4 ppm) of the P-FBz-and BPA-FBz-based polymers were superior or comparable to other polybenzoxazines.
238 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a fuzzy multiobjective problem is formulated to determine the feeder configuration of a distribution system, taking both the normal condition and the contingencies (faults) into account, and the switch statuses are considered as preventive controls for multiple individual balanced faults.
Abstract: Determination of feeder configuration involving the switch statuses is important for the operation in the distribution system. Minimization of the megawatt loss is crucial if the system is in a normal condition; the voltage drop is expected to be as low as possible while a fault occurs in the system. This paper presents a method based on genetic algorithms (GAs) to determine the network configuration. The proposed method, formulated as a fuzzy multiobjective problem, takes both the normal condition and the contingencies (faults) into account. The switch statuses are considered as preventive controls for multiple individual balanced faults. A vertex encoding based on the Prufer number is used in GA for encoding the chromosomes (strings). The Prufer number ensures that the system structure will be radial for the distribution system. The simulation results from two distribution systems are used to show the applicability of the proposed method.
216 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the reaction kinetics of the absorption of CO2 into aqueous solutions of piperazine (PZ) and into mixed amine solutions of 2-amino-2-methyl-l-propanol (AMP) and PZ were investigated by wetted wall column at 30-40°C.
210 citations
TL;DR: The silica nanoparticles in the membranes served as spacers for polymer chains to provide extra space for water permeation, so as to bring high permeation rates to the complex membranes.
186 citations
TL;DR: The effect of ultrasound at various energy levels on the conduction properties of neural tissue is explored in this in vitro study and it is shown that the effect of lower energy ultrasound increases both the CV and theCAP amplitude and that the reduction in the CAP amplitude for higher energy ultrasound is associated largely with ultrasonic thermal effects.
136 citations
TL;DR: The hypothesis that curcumin inhibits MG‐induced apoptosis in mouse ESC‐B5 cells and blastocysts by blocking ROS formation and subsequent apoptotic biochemical events is supported.
Abstract: Methylglyoxal (MG) is a reactive dicarbonyl compound endogenously produced mainly from glycolytic intermediates. Elevated MG levels in diabetes patients are believed to contribute to diabetic complications. MG is cytotoxic through induction of apoptosis. Curcumin, the yellow pigment of Curcuma longa, is known to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. In the present study, we examined the effect of curcumin on apoptotic biochemical events caused by incubation of ESC-B5 cells with MG. Curcumin inhibited the MG-induced DNA fragmentation, caspase-3 activation, cleavage of PARP, mitochondrial cytochrome c release, and JNK activation. Importantly, curcumin also inhibited the MG-stimulated increase of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in these cells. In addition, we demonstrated that curcumin prevented the MG-induced apoptosis of mouse blastocysts isolated from pregnant mice. Moreover, curcumin significantly reduced the MG-mediated impairment of blastocyst development from mouse morulas. The results support the hypothesis that curcumin inhibits MG-induced apoptosis in mouse ESC-B5 cells and blastocysts by blocking ROS formation and subsequent apoptotic biochemical events.
128 citations
TL;DR: This work unify several alternative FCM algorithms into one model, called the generalized fuzzy c-means (GFCM), and constructs a general optimality test for GFCM fixed points, which is applied to theoretically choose the parameters in the G FCM model.
Abstract: In cluster analysis, the fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm is the best known and most widely used method. It was proven to converge to either a local minimum or saddle points by Bezdek et al. Wei and Mendel produced efficient optimality tests for FCM fixed points. Recently, a weighting exponent selection for FCM was proposed by Yu et al. Inspired by these results, we unify several alternative FCM algorithms into one model, called the generalized fuzzy c-means (GFCM). This GFCM model presents a wide variation of FCM algorithms and can easily lead to new and interesting clustering algorithms. Moreover, we construct a general optimality test for GFCM fixed points. This is applied to theoretically choose the parameters in the GFCM model. The experimental results demonstrate the precision of the theoretical analysis.
121 citations
TL;DR: Six quadrature oscillator (QO) circuits are proposed through the proposed second-generation current conveyors (CCIIs) based high input impedance first-order allpass filters and the integrators as the building blocks.
121 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, three third-order quadrature oscillators are proposed and the output of two sinusoids with 90° phase difference are available in each quadratures oscillator circuit.
Abstract: Three third-order quadrature oscillators are proposed. Outputs of two sinusoids with 90° phase difference are available in each quadrature oscillator circuit. The oscillation condition and oscillation frequency of each proposed quadrature oscillator are orthogonal controllable. All proposed circuits employ only grounded capacitors. The use of only grounded capacitors is ideal for integration. Experimental results are included to confirm the theoretical analysis.
TL;DR: In this paper, poly(methylmethacrylate)-silica nanocomposite films were prepared from copolymerizing methylmetha-rylate with allylglycidylether-functionalized silica nanoparticles.
TL;DR: The statistical correlation coefficient approach is a simple mechanism for recognizing these unnatural control chart patterns with good performance and is also an effective method for the control chart pattern recognition without a tedious training process.
TL;DR: In the third proposed protocol, three-level Bell states are exploited for qutrit preparation via nonlocality swapping and the security and some possible eavesdropping strategies are considered.
Abstract: This study proposes quantum secret sharing protocols using product states. The first two protocols adopt the quantum key distribution protocol using product states [Guo et al.Phys. Rev. A 64, 042301 (2001)]. In these two protocols, the sender does not reveal any information about the qutrits until confirming that each receiver has received a qutrit. This study also considers the security and some possible eavesdropping strategies. In the third proposed protocol, three-level Bell states are exploited for qutrit preparation via nonlocality swapping.
TL;DR: The effect of silicon source on the mechanism and efficiency of silicon-phosphorus synergism of flame retardation was studied in this paper, where the studied systems composed of a phosphorus-containing epoxy resin and various types of silicon additives including nanoscale colloidal silica (CS), tetraethoxysilane (TEOS), and diglycidylether terminated polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS-DG).
TL;DR: Experimental results show that the proposed codec improves the direct SPIHT approach and the prior work by about 33% and 26%, respectively.
Abstract: In a prior work, a wavelet-based vector quantization (VQ) approach was proposed to perform lossy compression of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. We investigate and fix its coding inefficiency problem in lossless compression and extend it to allow both lossy and lossless compression in a unified coding framework. The well-known 9/7 filters and 5/3 integer filters are used to implement the wavelet transform (WT) for lossy and lossless compression, respectively. The codebook updating mechanism, originally designed for lossy compression, is modified to allow lossless compression as well. In addition, a new and cost-effective coding strategy is proposed to enhance the coding efficiency of set partitioning in hierarchical tree (SPIHT) at the less significant bit representation of a WT coefficient. ECG records from the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia and European ST-T Databases are selected as test data. In terms of the coding efficiency for lossless compression, experimental results show that the proposed codec improves the direct SPIHT approach and the prior work by about 33% and 26%, respectively.
TL;DR: A method using fuzzy reasoning and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for forecasting Locational marginal prices (LMPs) and it is found that the proposed neuro-fuzzy method is capable of forecasting LMP values efficiently.
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that curcumin significantly attenuates MG‐induced ROS formation, and it is suggested that ROS triggers cytochrome c release, caspase activation, and subsequent apoptotic biochemical changes.
Abstract: Methylglyoxal (MG) is a reactive dicarbonyl compound endogenously produced mainly from glycolytic intermediates. Elevated MG levels in diabetes patients are believed to contribute to diabetic complications. MG is cytotoxic through induction of apoptosis. Curcumin, the yellow pigment of Curcuma longa, is known to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. In the present study, we investigated the effect of curcumin on MG-induced apoptotic events in human hepatoma G2 cells. We report that curcumin prevented MG-induced cell death and apoptotic biochemical changes such as mitochondrial release of cytochrome c, caspase-3 activation, and cleavage of PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase). Using the cell permeable dye 2',7'-dichlorofluorescein diacetate (DCF-DA) as an indicator of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, we found that curcumin abolished MG-stimulated intracellular oxidative stress. The results demonstrate that curcumin significantly attenuates MG-induced ROS formation, and suggest that ROS triggers cytochrome c release, caspase activation, and subsequent apoptotic biochemical changes.
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that PEMF with different intensities could regulate osteoclastogenesis, bone resorption, OPG, RANKL, and M‐CSF concentrations in marrow culture system.
TL;DR: A series of aromatic polyimide membranes were synthesized using direct polycondensation of various diamines containing flexible ether groups and bulky substituents with various aromatic dianhydrides as mentioned in this paper.
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of the thickness of silica gel on the metal substrate and the particle size of the consolidated layer on the mass and heat transfer performance of the Silica gel-coated bed are discussed.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed an automatic optical inspection for detecting defects on the printed circuit board inner layer, which can recognize eight defect types, open, mouse bite, pinhole, missing conductor, short, spur, excess copper and missing hole.
Abstract: This paper studies automatic optical inspection for detecting defects on the printed circuit board inner layer. The development of this study can be divided into five stages, they are reference image rebuilding, inspection image normalization, image subtraction, defects separation and defect classification. In the image subtraction stage, the difference between the reference image from the printed circuit board design and the inspected image is checked for defects. Each defect region is separated using a defect outer boundary tracing method. A boundary state transition method is proposed to classify the defect types. This system can recognize eight defect types, open, mouse bite, pinhole, missing conductor, short, spur, excess copper and missing hole. In addition, a comparison with the methods described in the literature is made, proving that the proposed method produces better results .
TL;DR: In this paper, a montmorillonite clay has been modified with two quaternary ammonium salts, dilauryldimethylammonium bromide (LD) and 4,4′-diaminodiphenylmethane (AP), to form the corresponding organophilic clays, LDM and APM.
Abstract: A montmorillonite clay has been modified with two different quaternary ammonium salts, dilauryldimethylammonium bromide (LD) and 4,4′-diaminodiphenylmethane (AP), to form the corresponding organophilic clays, LDM and APM. Two series of PU/clay nanocomposite materials, PU/LDM and PU/APM, were then prepared by the reaction of appropriate amounts of PPG, TDI and 1,4 butandiol, followed by addition of the various amounts of LDM or APM. The X-ray diffraction patterns and transmission electron micrographs of the nanocomposites revealed that the modified clay galleries were exfoliated or intercalated in the polyurethane matrix. In comparison with the corresponding pure PU, the results of the TGA and LOI measurements showed that the thermal stability and the flame retardancy of the PU/clay nanocomposites were significantly enhanced due to the presence of the dispersed nanolayers of the organophilic clay in the PU matrix. Using the Tafel method, the results of the electrochemical measurements, which included the corrosion potential, polarization resistance and corrosion current, showed that all the PU/clay nanocomposites, even with low clay loading, in the form of coating on stainless steel disk (SSD) exhibited better corrosion protection over the pure PU. The SSD coated with the composite containing 2 wt% of APM showed the lowest corrosion rate, which was one order lower than that of the SSD coated with the pure PU.
TL;DR: The findings indicated experimental group achieved higher self-efficacy with the help of multimedia with printed nursing guides, and length of hospitalization was significantly shorter in experimental group than in control group.
14 Dec 2005
TL;DR: In this article, a multiple-input multiple-output DC/DC converter for renewable energy systems is proposed, which can be used to obtain well-regulated output voltage from several power sources, such as wind turbines, photovoltaic arrays, fuel cells, etc.
Abstract: This paper presents a multiple-input DC/DC converter for renewable energy systems. The proposed DC/DC converter can be used to obtain well-regulated output voltage from several power sources, such as wind turbines, photovoltaic arrays, fuel cells, etc. The energy provided by these power sources can be simultaneously transferred into the load. The proposed multiple-input DC/DC converter has the advantages of simple configuration, fewer components, lower cost and high efficiency. The operating principle, theoretical analysis, and design criteria are provided in this paper. A laboratory prototype with two different power sources was successfully implemented and tested. The simulation and experimental results are given to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme
TL;DR: The experimental results show the superiority of AFCN in Taiwanese tea evaluation and the algorithm is more robust than the fuzzy c-numbers (FCN) clustering algorithm presented by Yang and Ko.
TL;DR: In this paper, the tin oxide thin films prepared by the radio frequency sputtering method were used as pH sensors based on the structure of the metal oxide electrode, and the sensing characteristics and the hysteresis effect of tin oxide pH electrode were studied.
Abstract: Tin oxide thin films prepared by the radio frequency sputtering method were used as pH sensors based on the structure of the metal oxide electrode. The sensing characteristics and the hysteresis effect of the tin oxide pH electrode were studied. The hysteresis experiments were carried out under short- and long-loop circles, pH 7–4–7–10–7 and pH 7–2–7–12–6, respectively. Moreover, the hysteresis value was less than 7 mV in short-loop circle and the hysteresis value of pH 7 was 9 mV in acid side ( H A ) and 11 mV in alkali side ( H B ). The sensitivity of the tin oxide pH electrode was investigated between pH 2 and 12, whose pH sensitivity was about 59 mV/pH.
TL;DR: This paper proposes a novel fuzzy clustering algorithm, called the fuzzy compactness and separation (FCS), based on a fuzzy scatter matrix in which the FCS algorithm is derived using compactness measure minimization and separation measure maximization.
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of twisted nematic (TN) cells of pristine and carbon-nanotube-doped liquid crystal were investigated and it was shown that both the threshold de voltage and the ion charge effect are reduced by the addition of either single-walled (SW-) or multilayer (MW-) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a dopant in the TN cell.
Abstract: Electro-optical effects of twisted nematic (TN) cells of pristine and carbon-nanotube-doped liquid crystal were investigated. In comparison with the characteristics of an undoped TN cell, both the threshold de voltage and the ioncharge effect are reduced by the addition of either single-walled (SW-) or multi-walled (MW-) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a dopant in the TN cell. Experimental evidence indicates that MWCNTs are a superior additive to SWCNTs.