Search results for: industrial scale nano-CaCO3

Authors: Honey Bryant, Elvina Chu

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Stroke is the leading cause of disability in adults in Canada and directly related to depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders; with an estimated annual cost of $50 billion in health care. Strokes not only impact the individual but society as a whole. Current stroke rehabilitation does not include Music Therapy, although it has success in clinical research in the use of stroke rehabilitation. This study examines the use of neurologic music therapy (NMT) in conjunction with stroke rehabilitation to improve sleep quality, reduce stress levels, and promote neurogenesis. Existing research on NMT in stroke is limited, which means any conclusive information gathered during this study will be significant. My novel hypotheses are a.) stroke patients will become less depressed and less anxious with improved sleep following NMT. b.) NMT will reduce stress levels and promote neurogenesis in stroke patients admitted for rehabilitation. c.) Beneficial effects of NMT will be sustained at least short-term following treatment. Participants were recruited from the in-patient stroke rehabilitation program at Providence Care Hospital in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. All participants-maintained stroke rehabilitation treatment as normal. The study was spilt into two groups, the first being Passive Music Listening (PML) and the second Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT). Each group underwent 10 sessions of intensive music therapy lasting 45 minutes for 10 consecutive days, excluding weekends. Psychiatric Assessments, Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Hospital Anxiety & Depression Rating Scale (HADS), and Music Engagement Questionnaire (MusEQ), were completed, followed by a general feedback interview. Physiological markers of stress were measured through blood pressure measurements and heart rate variability. Serum collections reviewed neurogenesis via Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and stress markers of cortisol levels. As this study is still on-going, a formal analysis of data has not been fully completed, although trends are following our hypotheses. A decrease in sleepiness and anxiety is seen upon the first cohort of PML. Feedback interviews have indicated most participants subjectively felt more relaxed and thought PML was useful in their recovery. If the hypothesis is supported, larger external funding which will allow for greater investigation of the use of NMT in stroke rehabilitation. As we know, NMT is not covered under Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), so there is limited scientific data surrounding its uses as a clinical tool. This research will provide detailed findings of the treatment of neuropsychiatric aspects of stroke. Concurrently, a passive music listening study is being designed to further review the use of PML in rehabilitation as well.

Keywords: music therapy, psychotherapy, neurologic music therapy, passive music listening, neuropsychiatry, counselling, behavioural, stroke, stroke rehabilitation, rehabilitation, neuroscience

Procedia PDF Downloads 114

Authors: M. Benbouzid, Q. Bresson, A. Duclos, K. Longo, Q. Morel

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Currently, electricity suppliers must predict the consumption of their customers in order to deduce the power they need to produce. It is, then, important in a first step to optimize household consumption to obtain more constant curves by limiting peaks in energy consumption. Here centralized real time scheduling is proposed to manage the equipment's starting in parallel. The aim is not to exceed a certain limit while optimizing the power consumption across a habitat. The Raspberry Pi is used as a box; this scheduler interacts with the various sensors in 6LoWPAN. At the scale of a single dwelling, household consumption decreases, particularly at times corresponding to the peaks. However, it would be wiser to consider the use of a residential complex so that the result would be more significant. So, the ceiling would no longer be fixed. The scheduling would be done on two scales, firstly, per dwelling, and secondly, at the level of a residential complex.

Keywords: smart grid, energy box, scheduling, Gang Model, energy consumption, energy management system, wireless sensor network

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Authors: Endah Mastuti, Prihastuti Sudaryono

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The rapid development of Internet usage and technology influences the academic behavior of students in high schools. One of the consequences is the emergence of academic procrastination behavior. Academic procrastination behavior is students’ procrastinate behavior in completing assignments. This study aimed to see whether there are differences in the duration of using the internet with academic procrastinate behavior among high school students in Surabaya. The number of research subject is 498 high school students. Instruments of the research are academic procrastination scale and duration of the internet usage questionnaire. The results from One Way Anova shows F value 0.241 with a significance level of 0.868 This demonstrates that there is no difference between the duration of the use of the Internet with academic procrastination behavior in high school students.

Keywords: academic procrastination, duration of internet usage, students, senior high school

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Authors: Tatjana Stefanovic Stanojevic, Milica Tosic Radev, Aleksandra Bogdanovic

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Depression is considered to be a leading cause of death and disability in the female population, and that is the reason why understanding the dynamics of the onset of depressive symptomatology is important. A review of the literature indicates the relationship between depressive symptoms and insecure attachment patterns, but very few studies have examined the mechanism underlying this relation. The aim of the study was to examine the pathway from the preoccupied attachment pattern to depressive symptomatology, as well as to test the mediation effect of mentalization, social anxiety and rumination in this relationship using a serial mediation model. The research was carried out on a geographical cluster sample from the general population of Serbia included within the project ‘Indicators and models of family and work roles harmonization’ funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. This research was carried out on a subsample of 791 working-age female adults from 37 urban and rural locations distributed through 20 administrative districts of Serbia. The respondents filled in a battery of instruments, including Relationship Questionnaire - Clinical Version (RQ - CV), The Mentalization Scale (MentS), Scale of Social Anxiety (SA), Patient Ruminative Thought Style Questionnaire (RTSQ), Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). The results confirm our assumption that the total indirect effect of the preoccupied attachment pattern to depressive symptoms is significant across all mediators separately. More importantly, this effect is still present in a model with a sequential mediator relationship, where social anxiety, rumination, and mentalization were perceived as serial mediators of a relationship between preoccupied attachment and depressive symptoms (estimated indirect effect=0.004, boot-strapped 95% CI=0.002 to 0.007). Our findings suggest that there is a significant specific indirect effect of the preoccupied attachment pattern to depressive symptoms, occurring through mentalization, social anxiety and rumination, indicating that preoccupied attachment cause decrease of a self related mentalization, which in turn causes increasing of social anxiety and rumination, concluding in depressive symptoms as a final consequence. The finding that the path from the preoccupied attachment pattern to depressive symptoms is typical in women is understandable from the perspective of both evolutionary and culturally conditioned gender differences. The practical implications of the study are reflected in the recommendations for the prevention and forehand psychotherapy response among preoccupied women with depressive symptomatology. Treatment of this specific group of depressed patients should be focused on strengthening mentalization, learning to accept and to understand herself better, reducing anxiety in situations where mistakes are visible to others, and replacing the rumination strategy with more constructive coping strategies.

Keywords: preoccupied attachment, depression, serial mediation model, mentalization, rumination

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Authors: Adedayo Oke Adelakun

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The chaotic dynamics of periodically forced oscillators with smooth potential has been extensively investigated via theoretical, numerical and experimental simulations. With the advent of the study of chaotic dynamics by means of method of multiple time scale analysis, Melnikov theory, bifurcation diagram, Poincare's map, bifurcation diagrams and Lyapunov exponents, it has become necessary to seek for a better understanding of nonlinear oscillator with noisy term. In this paper, we examine the influence of noise on complex dynamical behaviour of periodically forced F6 - Duffing oscillator for specific choice of noisy parameters. The inclusion of noisy term improves the dynamical behaviour of the oscillator which may have wider application in secure communication than smooth potential.

Keywords: hierarchical structure, periodically forced oscillator, noisy parameters, dynamical behaviour, F6 - duffing oscillator

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Authors: Chil-Chyuan Kuo, Chen-Hsuan Tsai

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This study presents a cost-effective approach for rapid fabricating modeling platforms utilized in fused deposition modeling system. A small-batch production of modeling platforms about 20 pieces can be obtained economically through silicone rubber mold using vacuum casting without applying the plastic injection molding. The air venting systems is crucial for fabricating modeling platform using vacuum casting. Modeling platforms fabricated can be used for building rapid prototyping model after sandblasting. This study offers industrial value because it has both time-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Keywords: vacuum casting, fused deposition modeling, modeling platform, sandblasting, surface roughness

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Authors: M. Mohammed Raoof, A. Enkhtaivan, H. Aljuaid

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This study follows the design science research methodology to design and implement a smartphone application artifact. The developed artifact was evaluated through three phases. The System Usability Scale (SUS) metric was used for the evaluation. The designed artifact aims to spread awareness about reducing air pollution, decreasing lung cancer development, and checking the air quality status in Southern California Counties. Participants have been drawn for a pilot study to facilitate awareness of air pollution. The study found that smartphone applications have a beneficial effect on the study’s aims.

Keywords: air pollution, design science research, indoor air pollution, lung cancer, outdoor air pollution, smartphone application

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Authors: Abolfazl Mohammadijoo

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In this paper, we are investigating the sliding mode control approach for trajectory tracking of a two-link-manipulator with a wheeled mobile robot in its base. The main challenge of this work is the dynamic interaction between mobile base and manipulator, which makes trajectory tracking more difficult than n-link manipulators with a fixed base. Another challenging part of this work is to avoid from chattering phenomenon of sliding mode control that makes lots of damages for actuators in real industrial cases. The results show the effectiveness of the sliding mode control approach for the desired trajectory.

Keywords: mobile manipulator, sliding mode control, dynamic interaction, mobile robotics

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Authors: Nidhi Vijay, A. K. Sharma

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Many industrial applications require power from dc source. DC-DC boost converters are now being used all over the world for rapid transit system. Although these provide high efficiency, smooth control, fast response and regeneration, conventional DC-DC boost converters are unable to provide high step up voltage gain due to effect of power switches, rectifier diodes and equivalent series resistance of inductor and capacitor. This paper proposes new transformerless dc-dc converters to achieve high step up voltage gain as compared to the conventional converter without an extremely high duty ratio. Only one power stage is used in this converter. Steady-state analysis of voltage gain is discussed in brief. Finally, a comparative analysis is given in order to verify the results.

Keywords: MATLAB, DC-DC boost converter, voltage gain, voltage stress

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Authors: Matt Fullmer, Carol Wilkinson, Keven Prusak, Dennis Eggett, Todd Pennington

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Obesity and chronic health issues are linked to physical inactivity. Physical education (PE) programs in school can play a major role in combating these health-related issues. This study focused on supporting competence through keeping a leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) record as part of PE. Keeping a daily LTPA record may be an effective intervention helping students feel more competent toward exercise, and thus, self-determined (within the context of self-determination theory) to exercise. Little is known about the relationship between daily LTPA records and perceived competence, motivational profiles, and LTPA levels of students enrolled in PE. This study examined the relationship between keeping a daily, online LTPA record and adolescent (a) motivational profiles toward LTPA, (b) perceived competence toward LTPA, and (c) LTPA behaviors. Secondary students (N = 124) in physical education classes completed a baseline questionnaire which consisted of the Behavioural Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire–2, the Perceived Competence Scale, and the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire. For three weeks, the students were assigned to keep the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award Challenge (PALAC) as their online LTPA record. They completed the questionnaire after each week. A 2 (gender) x 4 (trials) repeated measures ANCOVA examined the relationships between recording compliance and motivation, perceived competence, and physical activity. Results showed that recording compliance was not a significant predictor of perceived competence to participate in LTPA. Examining motivational factors, a significant interaction between recording compliance and introjected regulation was found. The more students recorded the less motivated they were by guilt or obligation to exercise in their leisure-time. Also, a significant interaction was found between recording compliance and intrinsic regulation, indicating that the more students recorded the more intrinsically motivated they were to exercise in their leisure-time. Lastly, there was a significant interaction between recording compliance and LTPA. As students kept the LTPA record, girls’ LTPA levels significantly decreased and boys’ LTPA levels significantly increased. The key findings are that, as implemented in this study: a) the lack of PALAC compliance suggests that daily LTPA records may NOT be the most effective intervention for this population, b) keeping a daily LTPA record did NOT help students feel more competent to exercise in their leisure-time, c) a daily LTPA record may help students move towards being more self-determined in their feelings towards LTPA, and d) the outcome of keeping a LTPA record on LTPA behavior is statistically significant, although actual differences may not be practically important.

Keywords: behavioural regulation in exercise questionnaire–2, Godin leisure–time exercise questionnaire, online physical activity log, perceived competence scale, self-determination theory

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Authors: Manotar Tampubolon

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Although the Indonesian human rights protection has increased in recent years, but human rights violations still occur in the industrial sector. Crimes against human rights continue to occur and go unnoticed in spite of the government's legislation on human rights, employment law in addition to an international treaty that has been ratified by Indonesia. The increasing number of garment companies in Bekasi, also give rise to increased human rights violations since the government does not have a commitment to protect it. The Indonesian government and industry owners should pay attention to and protect the human rights of workers and treat them accordingly. This paper will review the human rights violations experienced by workers at garment factories in the context of the law, as well as ideas to improve the protection of workers' rights.

Keywords: human rights protection, human rights violations, workers’ rights, justice, security

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Authors: Shivayogi Charantimath

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Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are effective for treating malignancies but are associated with side effects like oral mucositis. Chlorhexidine gluconate is one of the most commonly used mouthwash in prevention of signs and symptoms of mucositis. Evidence shows that chlorhexidine gluconate has side effects in terms of colonization of bacteria, bad breadth and less healing properties. Thus, it is essential to find a suitable alternative therapy which is more effective with minimal side effects. Curcumin, an extract of turmeric is gradually being studied for its wide-ranging therapeutic properties such as antioxidant, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, antimicrobial, antiseptic, chemo sensitizing and radio sensitizing properties. The present study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of topical curcumin gel on radio-chemotherapy induced oral mucositis in cancer patients. The aim of the study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of curcumin gel in the management of oral mucositis in cancer patients undergoing radio chemotherapy and compare with chlorhexidine. The study was conducted in K.L.E. Society’s Belgaum cancer hospital. 40 oral cancer patients undergoing the radiochemotheraphy with oral mucositis was selected and randomly divided into two groups of 20 each. The study group A [20 patients] was advised Cure next gel for 2 weeks. The control group B [20 patients] was advised chlorhexidine gel for 2 weeks. The NRS, Oral Mucositis Assessment scale and WHO mucositis scale were used to determine the grading. The results obtained were calculated by using SPSS 20 software. The comparison of grading was done by applying Mann-Whitney U test and intergroup comparison was calculated by Wilcoxon matched pairs test. The NRS scores observed from baseline to 1^st and 2^nd week follow up in both the group showed significant difference. The percentage of change in erythema in respect to group A was 63.3% for first week and for second week, changes were 100.0% with p = 0.0003. The changes in Group A in respect to erythema was 34.6% for 1^st week and 57.7% in second week. The intergroup comparison was significant with p value of 0.0048 and 0.0006 in relation to group A and group B respectively. The size of the ulcer score was measured which showed 35.5% [P=0.0010] of change in Group A for 1^st and 2^nd week showed totally reduction i.e. 103.4% [P=0.0001]. Group B showed 24.7% change from baseline to 1^st week and 53.6% for 2^nd week follow up. The intergroup comparison with Wilcoxon matched pair test was significant with p=0.0001 in group A. The result obtained by WHO mucositis score in respect to group A shows 29.6% [p=0.0004] change in first week and 75.0% [p=0.0180] change in second week which is highly significant in comparison to group B. Group B showed minimum changes i.e. 20.1% in 1^st week and 33.3% in 2^nd week. The p value with Wilcoxon was significant with 0.0025 in Group A for 1^st week follow up and 0.000 for 2^nd week follow up. Curcumin gel appears to an effective and safer alternative to chlorhexidine gel in treatment of oral mucositis.

Keywords: curcumin, chemotheraphy, mucositis, radiotheraphy

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Authors: Qian Sun, Dannie Dai, Vivian Lou

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Background: Changes in population structure and modernization have left traditional channels of achieving intergenerational solidarity in crisis. Policies and projects purposefully structuring intergenerational interaction are regarded as effective ways to enhance positive attitude changes between generations. However, few inter-generational interaction program has put equal emphasis on promoting positive changes on both attitude and behavior across generational groups. Objective: This study evaluated the effectiveness of an intergenerational interaction program which aims to facilitate positive attitude and behavioral interaction between both young and old individuals in Hong Kong. Method: A quasi-experimental design was adopted with the sample of 150 older participants and 161 young participants. Among 73 older and 78 young participants belong to experiment groups while 77 older participants and 84 young participants belong to control groups. The Age Group Evaluation and Description scale (AGED) was adopted to measure attitude toward young people by older participants and the Chinese version of Kogan’s Attitude towards Older People (KAOP) as well as Polizzi’s refined version of the Ageing Semantic Differential Scale (ASD) were used to measure attitude toward older people by the younger generation. The interpersonal behaviour of participants was assessed using Beglgrave’s behavioural observation tool. Six primary verbal or non-verbal interpersonal behaviours including smiles, looks, touches, encourages, initiated conversations and assists were identified and observed. Findings Effectiveness of attitude and behavior changes on both younger and older participants was confirmed in results. Compared with participants from the control group, experimental participants of elderly showed significant positive changes of attitudes toward the younger generation as assessed by AGED (F=138.34, p < .001). Moreover, older participants showed significant positive changes on three out of six behaviours (visual attention: t=2.26, p<0.05; initiate conversation: t=3.42, p<0.01; and touch: t=2.28, p<0.05). For younger participants, participants from experimental group showed significant positive changes in attitude toward older people (with F-score of 47.22 for KAOP and 72.75 for ASD, p<.001). Young participants also showed significant positive changes in two out of six behaviours (visual attention: t=3.70, p<0.01; initiate conversation: t=2.04, p<0.001). There is no significant relationship between attitude change and behaviour change in both older (p=0.86) and younger (p=0.22) groups. Conclusion: This study has brought practical implications for social work. The effective model of this program could assist social workers and allied professionals to design relevant projects for nurture intergenerational solidarity. Furthermore, insignificant results between attitude and behavior changes revealed that attitude change was not a strong predictor for behavior change, hence, intergenerational programs against age-stereotype should put equal emphasis on both attitudinal and behavioral aspects.

Keywords: attitude and behaviour changes, intergenerational interaction, intergenerational solidarity, program design

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Authors: Zhemi Xu, Dewei Chu, Sean Li

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Well self-assembled pure and Mn-doped SnO2 nanocubes were synthesized by interface thermodynamic method, which is ideal for highly homogeneous large scale thin film deposition on flexible substrates for various electric devices. Mn-doped SnO2 shows very good resistive switching with high On/Off ratio (over 103), endurance and retention characteristics. More important, the resistive state can be tuned by multi-layer fabrication by alternate pure SnO2 and Mn-doped SnO2 nanocube layer, which improved the memory capacity of resistive switching effectively. Thus, such a method provides transparent, multi-level resistive switching for next generation non-volatile memory applications.

Keywords: metal oxides, self-assembly nanoparticles, multi-level resistive switching, multi-layer thin film

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Authors: Hammad Aziz

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Intumescent fire retardant coating (IFRC) is applied on the surface of material requiring fire protection. In this research work, IFRC’s were developed using ammonium polyphosphate, expandable graphite, melamine, boric acid, zinc borate, mica, magnesium oxide, and bisphenol A BE-188 with polyamide polyamine H-4014 as curing agent. Formulations were prepared using nano size MgO and compared with control formulation i.e. without nano size MgO. Small scale hydrocarbon fire test was conducted to scrutinize the thermal performance of the coating. Char and coating were further characterized by using FESEM, FTIR, EDS, TGA and DTGA. Thus, Intumescent coatings reinforced with 2 wt. % of nano-MgO (rod shaped particles) provide superior thermal performance and uniform microstructure of char due to well dispersion of nano particles.

Keywords: intumescent coating, char, SEM, TGA

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Authors: Osama Terra, Hatem Hussein, Adriaan Van Brakel

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Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology requires tight specification and therefore measurement of wavelength accuracy and stability of the telecommunication lasers. Thus, calibration of the used Optical Spectrum Analyzers (OSAs) that are used to measure wavelength is of a great importance. Proficiency testing must be performed on such measuring activity to insure the accuracy of the measurement results. In this paper, a new comparison scheme is introduced to test the performance of such calibrations. This comparison scheme is implemented between NIS-Egypt and NMISA-South Africa for the calibration of the wavelength scale of an OSA. Both institutes employ reference gas cell to calibrate OSA according to the standard IEC/ BS EN 62129 (2006). The result of this comparison is compiled in this paper.

Keywords: OSA calibration, HCN gas cell, DWDM technology, wavelength measurement

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Authors: Zheming Cao

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Control loops are the most important components in the wind turbine system. Product quality, operation safety, and the economic performance are directly or indirectly connected to the performance of control systems. This paper proposed a performance evaluation method based on minimum-variance for wind turbine control system. This method can be applied on PID controller for pitch control system in the wind turbine. The good performance result demonstrated in the paper was achieved by retuning and optimizing the controller settings based on the evaluation result. The concepts presented in this paper are illustrated with the actual data of the industrial wind farm.

Keywords: control performance, evaluation, minimum-variance, wind turbine

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Authors: Bagher Aziz Kalantari, Javad Rafiei, Mohamad Reza Talei Bavil Olyai

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Disclosed is a method of preparing a pigmentary chromium oxide nano particles having 50 percent particle size less than about 100nm. According to the disclosed method, a substantially dry solid composition of potassium dichromate and carbon active is heated in CO2 atmosphere to a temperature of about 600ºc for 1hr. Thereafter, the solid Cr2O3 product was washed twice with distilled water. The other aim of this study is to assess both the colouring performance and the potential of nano-pigments in the ceramic tile decoration. The rationable consists in nano-pigment application in several ceramics, including a comparison of colour performance with conventional micro-pigments.

Keywords: green chromium oxide, nano particles, colour performances, particle size

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Authors: Ali H. Daraji, Jack M. Hale, Ye Jianqiao

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With the extensive use of high specific strength structures to optimise the loading capacity and material cost in aerospace and most engineering applications, much effort has been expended to develop intelligent structures for active vibration reduction and structural health monitoring. These structures are highly flexible, inherently low internal damping and associated with large vibration and long decay time. The modification of such structures by adding lightweight piezoelectric sensors and actuators at efficient locations integrated with an optimal control scheme is considered an effective solution for structural vibration monitoring and controlling. The size and location of sensor and actuator are important research topics to investigate their effects on the level of vibration detection and reduction and the amount of energy provided by a controller. Several methodologies have been presented to determine the optimal location of a limited number of sensors and actuators for small-scale structures. However, these studies have tackled this problem directly, measuring the fitness function based on eigenvalues and eigenvectors achieved with numerous combinations of sensor/actuator pair locations and converging on an optimal set using heuristic optimisation techniques such as the genetic algorithms. This is computationally expensive for small- and large-scale structures subject to optimise a number of s/a pairs to suppress multiple vibration modes. This paper proposes an efficient method to determine optimal locations for a limited number of sensor/actuator pairs for active vibration reduction of a flexible structure based on finite element method and Hamilton’s principle. The current work takes the simplified approach of modelling a structure with sensors at all locations, subjecting it to an external force to excite the various modes of interest and noting the locations of sensors giving the largest average percentage sensors effectiveness measured by dividing all sensor output voltage over the maximum for each mode. The methodology was implemented for a cantilever plate under external force excitation to find the optimal distribution of six sensor/actuator pairs to suppress the first six modes of vibration. It is shown that the results of the optimal sensor locations give good agreement with published optimal locations, but with very much reduced computational effort and higher effectiveness. Furthermore, it is shown that collocated sensor/actuator pairs placed in these locations give very effective active vibration reduction using optimal linear quadratic control scheme.

Keywords: optimisation, plate, sensor effectiveness, vibration control

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Authors: Felicia Orah Rein Moshe

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Soil erosion has become a priority global concern, impairing water quality and degrading ecosystem services. In Mediterranean climates, following a long dry period, the onset of rain occurs when agricultural soils are often bare and most vulnerable to erosion. Early storms transport sediments and sediment-bound pollutants into streams, along with dissolved chemicals. This results in loss of valuable topsoil, water quality degradation, and potentially expensive dredged-material disposal costs. Information on the provenance of fine sediment and priority sources of adsorbed pollutants represents a critical need for developing effective control strategies aimed at source reduction. Modifying sediment traps designed for marine systems, this study tested a cost-effective method to collect suspended sediments on a catchment scale to characterize stream water quality during first-flush storm events in a flashy Eastern Mediterranean coastal perennial stream. This study investigated the Kishon Basin, deploying sediment traps in 23 locations, including 4 in the mainstream and one downstream in each of 19 tributaries, enabling the characterization of sediment as a vehicle for transporting chemicals. Further, it enabled direct comparison of sediment-bound pollutants transported during the first-flush winter storms of 2020 from each of 19 tributaries, allowing subsequent ecotoxicity ranking. Sediment samples were successfully captured in 22 locations. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals, nutrients, and metal concentrations were quantified, identifying a total of 50 pesticides, 15 pharmaceuticals, and 22 metals, with 16 pesticides and 3 pharmaceuticals found in all 23 locations, demonstrating the importance of this transport pathway. Heavy metals were detected in only one tributary, identifying an important watershed pollution source with immediate potential influence on long-term dredging costs. Simultaneous sediment sampling at first flush storms enabled clear identification of priority tributaries and their chemical contributions, advancing a new national watershed monitoring approach, facilitating strategic plan development based on source reduction, and advancing the goal of improving the farm-stream interface, conserving soil resources, and protecting water quality.

Keywords: adsorbed pollution, dredged material, heavy metals, suspended sediment, water quality monitoring

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Authors: S. Masud, J. Merson, D. F. Robinson

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The management of environmental resources requires engagement of a range of stakeholders including public/private agencies and different community groups to implement sustainable conservation practices. The challenge which is often ignored is the analysis of agencies involved and their power relations. One of the barriers identified is the difference in risk perceptions among the agencies involved that leads to disjointed efforts of assessing and managing risks. Wood et al 2012, explains that it is important to have an integrated approach to risk management where decision makers address stakeholder perspectives. This is critical for an effective risk management policy. This abstract is part of a PhD research that looks into barriers to flood management under a changing climate and intends to identify bottlenecks that create maladaptation. Experiences are drawn from international practices in the UK and examined in the context of Australia through exploring the flood governance in a highly flood-prone region in Australia: the Hawkesbury Ne-pean catchment as a case study. In this research study several aspects of governance and management are explored: (i) the complexities created by the way different agencies are involved in assessing flood risks (ii) different perceptions on acceptable flood risk level; (iii) perceptions on community engagement in defining acceptable flood risk level; (iv) Views on a holistic flood risk management approach; and, (v) challenges of centralised information system. The study concludes that the complexity of managing a large catchment is exacerbated by the difference in the way professionals perceive the problem. This has led to: (a) different standards for acceptable risks; (b) inconsistent attempt to set-up a regional scale flood management plan beyond the jurisdictional boundaries: (c) absence of a regional scale agency with license to share and update information (d) Lack of forums for dialogue with insurance companies to ensure an integrated approach to flood management. The research takes the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment as case example and draws from literary evidence from around the world. In addition, conclusions were extrapolated from eighteen semi-structured interviews from agencies involved in flood risk management in the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment of NSW, Australia. The outcome of this research is to provide a better understanding of complexity in assessing risks against a rapidly changing climate and contribute towards developing effective risk communication strategies thus enabling better management of floods and achieving increased level of support from insurance companies, real-estate agencies, state and regional risk managers and the affected communities.

Keywords: adaptive governance, flood management, flood risk communication, stakeholder risk perceptions

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Authors: Khaled Mohammed

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This paper presents novel face recognition and identification approaches for the real-time attendance management problem in large companies/factories and government institutions. The proposed uses the Minimum Ratio (MR) approach for employee identification. Capturing the authentic face variability from a sequence of video frames has been considered for the recognition of faces and resulted in system robustness against the variability of facial features. Experimental results indicated an improvement in the performance of the proposed system compared to the Previous approaches at a rate between 2% to 5%. In addition, it decreased the time two times if compared with the Previous techniques, such as Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) & Multi-Scale Structural Similarity index (MS-SSIM). Finally, it achieved an accuracy of 99%.

Keywords: attendance management system, face detection and recognition, live face recognition, minimum ratio

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Authors: F. Abbas Pour Khotbehsara, B. Salehpour, A. Kianvash

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Many industrial materials like magnets need to be tested for the radiation environment expected at linear colliders (LC) where the accelerator and detectors will be subjected to large influences of beta, neutron and gamma’s over their life Gamma irradiation of the permanent sample magnets using a 60Co source was investigated up to an absorbed dose of 700Mrad shows a negligible effect on some magnetic properties of Nd-Fe-B. In this work, it has been tried to investigate the change of some important properties of Barium hexa ferrite. Results showed little decreases of magnetic properties at doses rang of 0.5 to 2.5 Mrad. But at the gamma irradiation dose up to 10 Mrad it is showed a few increase of properties. Also study of gamma irradiation of Nd-Fe-B showed considerably increase of magnetic properties.

Keywords: gamma ray irradiation, hard ferrite, magnetic coefficient, magnetic material, radiation dose

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Authors: Binita Shah, Seema Unnikrishnan

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In the recent time, an increasing interest in the analysis and efforts to reduce the environmental impacts generated by man-made activities has been seen widely being discussed and implemented by the society. The industrial processes are expressing their concern and showing keen interest in redesigning and amending the operation process leading to better environmental performance by upgrading technologies and adjusting the financial inputs. There are various tools available for the assessment of process and production of goods on the environment. Most methods look at a particular impact on the ecosystem. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most widely accepted and scientifically founded methodologies to assess the overall environmental impacts of products and processes. This paper looks at the tools used in India for environmental impact assessment.

Keywords: life cycle assessment, ecological footprint, measuring sustainability, India

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Authors: P. Gil, F. Charrua-Santos, A. A. Baptista, S. Azevedo, A. Espirito-Santo, J. Páscoa

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Lean manufacturing is a philosophy of industrial management that aims to identify and eliminate any waste that exists in the companies. The augmented reality is a new technology that stills being developed in terms of software and hardware. This technology consists of an image capture device, a device for data processing and an image visualization equipment to visualize collected and processed images. It is characterized by being a technology that merges the reality with the virtual environment, so there is an instantaneous interaction between the two environments. The present work intends to demonstrate that the use of the augmented reality will contribute to improve some tools and methods used in Lean manufacturing philosophy. Through several examples of application in industry it will be demonstrated that the technological impact of the augmented reality on the Lean Manufacturing philosophy contribute to added value improvements.

Keywords: lean manufacturing, augmented reality, case studies, value

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Authors: Soumitra Satapathi, Anubhav Raghav

Abstract:

Perovskite solar cell technology has passed through a phase of unprecedented growth in the efficiency scale from 3.8% to above 22% within a half decade. This technology has drawn tremendous research interest. It has been observed that performances of perovskite based solar cells are extremely dependent on the morphology and crystallinity of the perovskite layer. It has also been observed that device lifetime depends on the perovskite morphology; devices with larger perovskite grains degrade slowly than those of the smaller ones. Various methods of perovskite growth have been applied to achieve the most appropriate morphology necessary for high efficient solar cells. The recent progress in morphology optimization by various methods emphasizing on grain sizes, stoichiometry, and ambient compatibility as well as photophysics study in air-processed perovskite solar cells will be discussed.

Keywords: perovskite solar cells, morphology optimization, photophysics study, air-processed solar cells

Procedia PDF Downloads 164

Authors: Jeonghwan Jeon

Abstract:

Recently, the industry and academia have been planning development through industry/university cooperation (IUC), and the government has been promoting alternative methods to achieve successful IUC. Representatively, business cultivation involves the lead university (regarding IUC), research and development (R&D), company support, professional manpower cultivation, and marketing, etc., and the scale of support expands every year. Research is performed by many academic researchers to achieve IUC and although satisfaction of their results is high, expectations are not being met and study of the main factor is insufficient. Therefore, this research improves on theirs by analysing the main factors influencing their satisfaction. Each factor is analysed by AHP, and portfolio analysis is performed on the importance and current satisfaction level. This will help improve satisfaction of business participants and ensure effective IUC in the future.

Keywords: industry/university cooperation, satisfaction, portfolio analysis, research and development

Procedia PDF Downloads 509

Authors: Hooman Torabifard

Abstract:

In the last few years, with the progress of technology and computers and artificial intelligence entry into all kinds of scientific and industrial fields, the lifestyles of human life have changed and in general, the way of humans live on earth has many changes and development. Until now, some of the changes has occurred in the context of digital images and image processing and still continues. However, besides all the benefits, there have been disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is the multiplicity of images with high volume and data; the focus of this paper is on improving and developing a method for summarizing and enhancing the productivity of these images. The general method used for this purpose in this paper consists of a set of methods based on data obtained from image processing and using the PSO (Particle swarm optimization) algorithm. In the remainder of this paper, the method used is elaborated in detail.

Keywords: image summarization, particle swarm optimization, image threshold, image processing

Procedia PDF Downloads 135

Authors: Ioanna Skoura

Abstract:

Past research shows that personal space has been investigated since the 1950s. Also, personality traits have been found to have a significant relationship with personal space. However, some of these studies have been criticized for being ethically inappropriate. In an attempt to avoid ethical issues, a new scale measuring desire for personal space has been created. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of ethnicity on desire for personal space. Additionally, extraversion and neuroticism are expected to predict significantly desire for personal space. Furthermore, the study is looking for any impact of religiosity on desire for personal space. In order to test the previous hypotheses, 115 participants from three cultural groups (English, Greeks in Greece and Greeks in the UK) are recruited online. Results indicate that only extraversion and religiosity are significant predictors of desire for personal space. Implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.

Keywords: ethnicity, religiosity, personality, personal space

Procedia PDF Downloads 201

Authors: K. Djellabi, M. E. H. Latreche

Abstract:

Induction heating computer simulation is a powerful tool for process design and optimization, induction coil design, equipment selection, as well as education and business presentations. The authors share their vast experience in the practical use of computer simulation for different induction heating and heat treating processes. In this paper deals with mathematical modeling and numerical simulation of induction heating furnaces with axisymmetric geometries. For the numerical solution, we propose finite element methods combined with boundary (FEM) for the electromagnetic model using COMSOL® Multiphysics Software. Some numerical results for an industrial furnace are shown with high frequency.

Keywords: numerical methods, induction furnaces, induction heating, finite element method, Comsol multiphysics software

Procedia PDF Downloads 451