In this paper we investigate the capability of harvesting the electric energy from mechanical vibrations in a dynamic environment through a unimorph piezoelectric membrane transducer. Due to the impedance matrices connecting the efforts and flows of the membrane, we have established the dynamic electric equivalent circuit of the transducer. In a first study and in order to validate theoretical ...

Statistical Machine Translation (MT) systems have achieved impressive results in recent years, due in large part to the increasing availability of parallel text for system training and development. This paper describes recent efforts at Linguistic Data Consortium to create linguistic resources for MT, including corpora, specifications and resource infrastructure. We review LDC's three-pronged a...

Harvesting rain-fed chickpeas (Cicer arietinum L.) from fallow fields in developing countries is currently a manual process performed by laborers in a tedious manner at a low level of efficiency. A tractor-pulled harvester was built in which a chain conveyor transfer harvested material. A tractor-mounted harvester was then redesigned, which incorporated a modified stripper header to detach pods...

These effects on tree growth, which may persist for several decades (Hatchell et al. 1970, Butt 1987, Miller et al. 1996), may lead to shortand long-term reductions in tree growth and forest productivity. The level of soil disturbance will vary with soil texture, forest floor thickness, and soil water content at time of harvest (Miller and Sirois 1986, Corns 1988). In addition, machine type, si...

Upscaling an operation typically results in economies of scale, i.e., cost advantages business, especially when the production unit’s utilization rate can be improved. According to economic studies mechanized timber harvesting, large wood harvesting entrepreneurs tend more successful business than small entrepreneurs. What are factors that influence costs, and how great is their effect on costs...