Search results for: distribution of resources

Authors: Oliver Echezona Ngwu

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The research was conducted in 2011 cropping season at the Teaching and Research farm of the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources Management, Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Enugu, Nigeria to study the effect of organic and inorganic fertilizers on the growth and yield of physic Nut (Jatropha curcas). There were five treatments namely, control, (no application of treatment), NPK 20:10:10, NPK 15:15;15, poultry droppings and goat dung. The treatments were laid out in a Randomized complete Block Design (RCBD) with five replications. The total land area used was 228m2 (19x12m) while the plot size was 3mx2 (6m2). The growth parameters measured were plant height, number of leaves, and leaf area, index (LAI). The results obtained showed that there were significant differences at P=0.05 among the different treatments in 30, to and 90 DAP. Based on the results T4 (poultry droppings) had higher effect at P=0.05 at 30, 60, 90 DAP than the other treatments when compared and is hereby recommended as the best type of fertilizer for the optimum growth and production of physic Nut (Jatropha Curcas) in South Eastern Nigeria.

Keywords: organic, inorganic fertilizers, growth, yield, Jatropha curcas

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Authors: Azin Shakibabarough, Mojtaba Valinejadshoubi, Ashutosh Bagchi

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Structural vibration means repetitive motion that causes fatigue and reduction of the performance of a structure. An earthquake may release high amount of energy that can have adverse effect on all components of a structure. Therefore, decreasing of vibration or maintaining performance of structures such as bridges, dams, roads and buildings is important for life safety and reducing economic loss. When earthquake or any vibration happens, investigation on parts of a structure which sustain the seismic loads is mandatory to provide a safe condition for the occupants. One of the solutions for reducing the earthquake vibration in a structure is using of vibration control devices such as dampers and base isolators. The objective of this study is to investigate the optimal positions of friction dampers and base isolators for better seismic response of 2D frame. For this purpose, a two bay and six story frame with different distribution formats was modeled and some of their responses to earthquake such as inter-story drift, max joint displacement, max axial force and max bending moment were determined and compared using non-linear dynamic analysis.

Keywords: fast nonlinear analysis, friction damper, base isolator, seismic vibration control, seismic response

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Authors: Manojkumar Sabanayagam

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The Riemann hypothesis is an unsolved millennium problem and the search for a solution to the Riemann hypothesis is to study the pattern of prime number distribution. The scope of this paper is to identify the solution for the critical strip and the critical line axis, which has the non-trivial zero solutions using complex plane functions. The Riemann graphical plot is constructed using a linear complex variable function (X+iY) and is applicable only when X>1. But the investigation shows that complex variable behavior has two zones. The first zone is the transformation zone, where the definition of the complex plane should be a non-linear variable which is the critical strip zone in the graph (X=0 to 1). The second zone is the transformed zone (X>1) defined using linear variables conventionally. This paper deals with the Non-linear function in the transformation zone derived using cosine and sinusoidal time lag w.r.t imaginary number ‘i’. The alternate complex variable (Cosθ+i Sinθ) is used to understand the variables in the critical strip zone. It is concluded that the non-trivial zeros present in the Real part 0.5 are because the linear function is not the correct approach in the critical strip. This paper provides the solution to Reimann's hypothesis.

Keywords: Reimann hypothesis, critical strip, complex plane, transformation zone

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Authors: Guilherme Reis Ranieri, Guilherme Leite Gaudereto, Michele Toledo, Luis Fernando Amato-Lourenco, Thais Mauad

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Given the importance to urban sustainability and the growing relevance of the term ‘community garden’, this paper aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the term. Using SCOPUS as database, we analyzed 105 articles that contained the keywords ‘community garden’, and conducted a cluster analysis with the associated keywords. As results, we found 205 articles and 404 different keywords. Among the keywords, 334 are not repeated anytime, 44 are repeated 2 times and 9 appear 3 times. The most frequent keywords are: community food systems (74), urban activism (14), Communities of practice (6), food production (6) and public rethoric (5). Within the areas, which contains more articles are: social sciences (74), environmental science (29) and agricultural and biological sciences (24).The three main countries that concentrated the papers are United States (54), Canada (15) and Australia (12). The main journal with these keywords is Local Environment (10). The first publication was in 1999, and by 2010 concentrated 30,5% of the publications. The other 69,5% occurred 2010 to 2015, indicating an increase in frequency. We can conclude that the papers, based on the distribution of the keywords, are still scattered in various research topics and presents high variability between subjects.

Keywords: bibliometrics, community garden, metrics, urban agriculture

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Authors: S. Thomet, S. De-Paoli, F. Ghaffari, J. M. Daveau, P. Roche, O. Romain

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In this paper, we present a hardware module dedicated to understanding the fail reason of a System on Chip (SoC) exposed to a particle beam. Impact of Single-Event Effects (SEE) on processor-based SoCs is a concern that has increased in the past decade, particularly for terrestrial applications with automotive safety increasing requirements, as well as consumer and industrial domains. The SEE created by the impact of a particle on an SoC may have consequences that can end to instability or crashes. Specific hardening techniques for hardware and software have been developed to make such systems more reliable. SoC is then qualified using cosmic ray Accelerated Soft-Error Rate (ASER) to ensure the Soft-Error Rate (SER) remains in mission profiles. Understanding where errors are occurring is another challenge because of the complexity of operations performed in an SoC. Common techniques to monitor an SoC running under a beam are based on non-intrusive debug, consisting of recording the program counter and doing some consistency checking on the fly. To detect and understand SEE, we have developed a module embedded within the SoC that provide support for recording probes, hardware watchpoints, and a memory mapped register bank dedicated to software usage. To identify CPU failure modes and the most important resources to probe, we have carried out a fault injection campaign on the RTL model of the SoC. Probes are placed on generic CPU registers and bus accesses. They highlight the propagation of errors and allow identifying the failure modes. Typical resulting errors are bit-flips in resources creating bad addresses, illegal instructions, longer than expected loops, or incorrect bus accesses. Although our module is processor agnostic, it has been interfaced to a RISC-V by probing some of the processor registers. Probes are then recorded in a ring buffer. Associated hardware watchpoints are allowing to do some control, such as start or stop event recording or halt the processor. Finally, the module is also providing a bank of registers where the firmware running on the SoC can log information. Typical usage is for operating system context switch recording. The module is connected to a dedicated debug bus and is interfaced to a remote controller via a debugger link. Thus, a remote controller can interact with the monitoring module without any intrusiveness on the SoC. Moreover, in case of CPU unresponsiveness, or system-bus stall, the recorded information can still be recovered, providing the fail reason. A preliminary version of the module has been integrated into a test chip currently being manufactured at ST in 28-nm FDSOI technology. The module has been triplicated to provide reliable information on the SoC behavior. As the primary application domain is automotive and safety, the efficiency of the module will be evaluated by exposing the test chip under a fast-neutron beam by the end of the year. In the meantime, it will be tested with alpha particles and electromagnetic fault injection (EMFI). We will report in the paper on fault-injection results as well as irradiation results.

Keywords: fault injection, SoC fail reason, SoC soft error rate, terrestrial application

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Authors: M. Aruna

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Emphasis on the advancement of new materials and technology has been there for the past few decades. The global development towards using cheap and durable materials from renewable resources contributes to sustainable development. An experimental investigation of mechanical behaviour of sisal fiber-reinforced concrete is reported for making a suitable building material in terms of reinforcement. Fibre reinforced composite is one such material, which has reformed the concept of high strength. Sisal fibres are abundantly available in the hot areas. The sisal fiber has emerged as a reinforcing material for concretes, used in civil structures. In this work, properties such as hardness and tensile strength of sisal fibre reinforced cement composites with 6, 12, 18, and 24% by weight of sisal fibres were assessed. Sisal fiber reinforced cement composite slabs with long sisal fibers were manufactured using a cast hand layup technique. Mechanical response was measured under tension. The high energy absorption capacity of the developed composite system was reflected in high toughness values under tension respectively.

Keywords: sisal fibre, fiber-reinforced concrete, mechanical behaviour, composite materials

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Authors: Claudineia Brazil, Luciane Salvi, Margareth Haubrich

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The research aims to understand the determinants of Quality of Life at Work (QWL) and the main indicators that influence the productivity of employees working in construction. The methodology is based on the qualitative theoretical approach, in which information is collected in works that have already been carried out, providing a more detailed compression of the research from the point of view of other authors. In this research, pioneering models for assessing Quality of Life at Work (QWL) were investigated, seeking to find the best quality of life indicators in the work environment. The elements investigated in the research were classified into three main groups: Organizational, Environmental and Behavioral. In order to obtain the results, the information obtained through bibliographic research was compared and it was possible to conclude that the focus on the quality of life at work influences the individual and collective productivity of employees, causing the company to be positively impacted. This advocates the need for strategic actions in the area of people management, which will meet these needs. Therefore, it is hoped that this study can contribute to the more effective management of human resources in organizations, reflecting on increased productivity.

Keywords: construction, management, productivity, quality of life at work

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Authors: Adeline Meriaux, Claire Gaiani, Jennifer Burgain, Frantz Fournier, Lionel Muniglia, Jérémy Petit

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Spray-drying process is widely used for the production of dairy powders for food and pharmaceuticals industries. It involves the atomization of a liquid feed into fine droplets, which are subsequently dried through contact with a hot air flow. The resulting powders permit transportation cost reduction and shelf life increase but can also exhibit various interesting functionalities (flowability, solubility, protein modification or acid gelation), depending on operating conditions and milk composition. Indeed, particles porosity, surface composition, lactose crystallization, protein denaturation, protein association or crust formation may change. Links between spray-drying conditions and physicochemical and functional properties of powders were investigated by a design of experiment methodology and analyzed by principal component analysis. Quadratic models were developed, and multicriteria optimization was carried out by the use of genetic algorithm. At the time of abstract submission, verification spray-drying trials are ongoing. To perform experiments, milk from dairy farm was collected, skimmed, froze and spray-dried at different air pressure (between 1 and 3 bars) and outlet temperature (between 75 and 95 °C). Dry matter, minerals content and proteins content were determined by standard method. Solubility index, absorption index and hygroscopicity were determined by method found in literature. Particle size distribution were obtained by laser diffraction granulometry. Location of the powder color in the Cielab color space and water activity were characterized by a colorimeter and an aw-value meter, respectively. Flow properties were characterized with FT4 powder rheometer; in particular compressibility and shearing test were performed. Air pressure and outlet temperature are key factors that directly impact the drying kinetics and powder characteristics during spray-drying process. It was shown that the air pressure affects the particle size distribution by impacting the size of droplet exiting the nozzle. Moreover, small particles lead to more cohesive powder and less saturated color of powders. Higher outlet temperature results in lower moisture level particles which are less sticky and can explain a spray-drying yield increase and the higher cohesiveness; it also leads to particle with low water activity because of the intense evaporation rate. However, it induces a high hygroscopicity, thus, powders tend to get wet rapidly if they are not well stored. On the other hand, high temperature provokes a decrease of native serum proteins which is positively correlated to gelation properties (gel point and firmness). Partial denaturation of serum proteins can improve functional properties of powder. The control of air pressure and outlet temperature during the spray-drying process significantly affects the physicochemical and functional properties of powder. This study permitted to better understand the links between physicochemical and functional properties of powder, to identify correlations between air pressure and outlet temperature. Therefore, mathematical models have been developed and the use of genetic algorithm will allow the optimization of powder functionalities.

Keywords: dairy powders, spray-drying, powders functionalities, design of experiment

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Authors: Azizah Hashim, Rohana Ngah

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Transformation of Economic Development is aimed to transform Malaysia to become a high-income developed nation with a knowledge-based economy by 2020. To achieve this national agenda, the country needs to further strengthen its economic development, growth and well-being. Therefore, this study aspires to examine the relationship between market orientation, human resource management and adoption of information communication technology and SMEs performance and cash management as a mediator. This study will employ quantitative approaches. Questionnaires will be distributed to managers and owners in service sectors. The data collected will be analyzed using SPSS and Structural Equation Modelling. Resource Based Theory (RBT) adopts as an integral part of management literature that explains the performance of organizations through building resources and implement of their strategies.

Keywords: small medium enterprises (SMEs), market orientation, human resource management, adoption of information communication technology

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Authors: A. G. Back

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Urban planning is a relevant tool to address, in a systemic way, several sectoral policies capable of linking the urban agenda with the reduction of socio-environmental risks. The Sao Paulo’s master plan (2014) presents innovations capable of promoting the transition to sustainability in the urban space, with a view to its regulatory instruments related to i) promotion of density in the axes of mass transport involving the mixture of commercial, residential, services, and leisure uses (principles related to the compact city); ii) vulnerabilities reduction based on housing policies including regular sources of funds for social housing and land reservation in urbanized areas; iii) reserve of green areas in the city to create parks and environmental regulations for new buildings focused on reducing the effects of heat island and improving urban drainage. However, its long-term implementation involves distributive conflicts and can undergo changes in different political, economic, and social contexts over time. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the dynamics of conflicts of interest between social groups in the implementation of Sao Paulo’s urban development policy, particularly in relation to recent attempts at a (re) interpretation of the Master Plan guidelines, in view of the proposals for revision of the urban zoning law. In this sense, we seek to identify the demands, narratives of urban actors, including the real estate market, middle-class neighborhood associations ('not in my backyard' movements), and social housing rights movements. And we seek to analyze the power resources that these actors mobilize to influence the decision-making process, involving five categories: social capital, political access; discursive resource; media, juridical resource. The major findings of this research suggest that the interests and demands of the real estate market do not always prevail in urban regulation. After all, other actors also press for the definition of urban law with interests opposite to those of the real estate market. This is the case of associations of middle-class neighborhoods, which work to protect the characteristics of the locality, acting, in general, to prevent constructive and population densification in neighborhoods well located near the center, in São Paulo. One of the main demands of these “not in my backyard” movements is the delimitation of exclusively residential areas in the central region of the city, which is not only contrary to the interests of the real state market but also contrary to the principles of the compact city. On the other hand, social housing rights movements have also made progress in delimiting special areas of social interest in well-located and valued areas in the city dedicated to building social housing, also contrary to the interests of the real estate market. An urban development that follows the principles of the compact city must take into account the insertion of low-income populations in well-located regions; otherwise, such a development model may continue to push the less favored to the peripheries towards the preservation areas and/or risk areas.

Keywords: interest groups, Sao Paulo, sustainable urban development, urban policies implementation

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Authors: Ruth Donkoh, Wing On Lee, Solomon A. Boateng, Portia Oware Twerefoo, Josephine Donkor

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In this paper we defend the value of theories and approaches to educational policy and planning in enhancing the educational developments in Ghana. This mission is achieved by enumerating the recent educational developments in Ghana and juxtaposing it with some educational theories, approaches to policy making, and policy planning to see if the educational developments conform with the theory principles as well as policy making and planning processes. Data collection for the research was made through textual analysis of policy documents as well as review of relevant literatures. The findings reveled that educational developments in Ghana are unable to attain its objectives due to the policies not conforming with the policy formation and planning principles. In addition, was that education planning in Ghana does not follow the policy-administration dichotomy theory principles and likewise the distribution of educational needs goes contrary to the equity theory. We recommend that educational policies in Ghana should be in conformity with the principles of theories as well as the approaches to educational policy making and planning to help meet the needs of learners, attain educational quality, and to help in the accomplishment of educational development objectives.

Keywords: Ghana education, equity theories, politics- administration dichotomy theory, educational policies, educational planning

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Authors: Hussain Ali Bekhet, Endang Jati Mat Sahid

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For the past few decades, the Malaysian economy has expanded at an impressive pace, whilst, the Malaysian population has registered a relatively high growth rate. These factors had driven the growth of final energy demand. The ballooning energy demand coupled with the country’s limited indigenous energy resources have resulted in an increased of the country’s net import. Therefore, acknowledging the precarious position of the country’s energy self-sufficiency, this study has identified three main concerns regarding energy security, namely; over-dependence on fossil fuel, increasing energy import dependency, and increasing energy consumption per capita. This paper discusses the recent energy demand and supply trends, highlights the policies that are affecting energy security in Malaysia and suggests strategic options towards achieving energy security. The paper suggested that diversifying energy sources, reducing carbon content of energy, efficient utilization of energy and facilitating low-carbon industries could further enhance the effectiveness of the measures as the introduction of policies and initiatives will be more holistic.

Keywords: electricity, energy policy, energy security, Malaysia

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Authors: Olakunle Felix Adekunle

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In the recent years several non-tariff provisions have been regarded as means holding back transboundary environmental damages. Affected countries have then increasingly come up with trade policies to compensate for or to In recent years, several non‐tariff trade provisions have been regarded as means of holding back transboundary environmental damages. Affected countries have then increasingly come up with trade policies to compensate for or to enforce the adoption of environmental policies elsewhere. These non‐tariff trade constraints are claimed to threaten the freedom of trading across nations, as well as the harmonization sought towards the distribution of income and policy measures. Therefore the ‘greening’ of world trade issues essentially ranges over whether there ought or ought not to be a trade‐off between trade and environmental policies. The impacts of free trade and environmental policies on major economic variables (such as trade flows, balances of trade, resource allocation, output, consumption and welfare) are thus studied here, and so is the EKC hypothesis, when such variables are played against the resulting emission levels. The policy response is seen as a political game, played here by two representative parties named North and South. Whether their policy choices, simulated by four scenarios, are right or wrong depends on their policy goals, split into economic and environmental ones.

Keywords: environmental, policies, strategies, constraint

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Authors: Ryu Wonjin, Choi Hyeok, Park Joonhong

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Overlay welding for improving surface properties is a method of the surface treatments which improve surface properties of material by welding materials of alloy having corrosion resistance on the basic material surface. Overlay welding affects contents of chemical components and weld hardness from different parts by dilution of the lamination layer thickness, and it determines surface properties. Therefore, overlay welding has to take into account thickness of the lamination layers with the process. As a result in this study examined contents of Fe, weldability of the base metal and monel materials, hardness and surface flatness from different parts according to each the lamination layer parameters by overlay welding monel materials with corrosion resources to the base material of carbon steel. Through this, evaluated effect by the lamination layer parameters of welding and presented decision methods of the lamination layer parameters of the overlay welding by the purpose of use.

Keywords: clad pipe, lamination layer parameters, monel, overlay welding

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Authors: M. Tehranizadeh, E. Shoushtari Rezvani

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Seismic performance of steel moment-resisting frame structures is investigated considering nonlinear soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects. 10-, 15-, and 20-story planar building frames with aspect ratio of 3 are designed in accordance with current building codes. Inelastic seismic demands of the superstructure are considered using concentrated plasticity model. The raft foundation system is designed for different soil types. Beam-on-nonlinear Winkler foundation (BNWF) is used to represent dynamic impedance of the underlying soil. Two sets of pulse-like as well as no-pulse near-fault earthquakes are used as input ground motions. The results show that the reduction in drift demands due to nonlinear SSI is characterized by a more uniform distribution pattern along the height when compared to the fixed-base and linear SSI condition. It is also concluded that beneficial effects of nonlinear SSI on displacement demands is more significant in case of pulse-like ground motions and performance level of the steel moment-resisting frames can be enhanced.

Keywords: soil-structure interaction, uplifting, soil plasticity, near-fault earthquake, tall building

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Authors: Pablo Chico De Guzman, Cesar Sanchez

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Microservice architectures are increasingly in distributed cloud applications due to the advantages on the software composition, development speed, release cycle frequency and the business logic time to market. On the other hand, these architectures also introduce some challenges on the testing and release phases of applications. Container technology solves some of these issues by providing reproducible environments, easy of software distribution and isolation of processes. However, there are other issues that remain unsolved in current container technology when dealing with multiple machines, such as networking for multi-host communication, service discovery, load balancing or data persistency (even though some of these challenges are already solved by traditional cloud vendors in a very mature and widespread manner). Container cluster management tools, such as Kubernetes, Mesos or Docker Swarm, attempt to solve these problems by introducing a new control layer where the unit of deployment is the container (or the pod — a set of strongly related containers that must be deployed on the same machine). These tools are complex to configure and manage and they do not follow a pure immutable infrastructure approach since servers are reused between deployments. Indeed, these tools introduce dependencies at execution time for solving networking or service discovery problems. If an error on the control layer occurs, which would affect running applications, specific expertise is required to perform ad-hoc troubleshooting. As a consequence, it is not surprising that container cluster support is becoming a source of revenue for consulting services. This paper presents i2kit, a deployment tool based on the immutable infrastructure pattern, where the virtual machine is the unit of deployment. The input for i2kit is a declarative definition of a set of microservices, where each microservice is defined as a pod of containers. Microservices are built into machine images using linuxkit —- a tool for creating minimal linux distributions specialized in running containers. These machine images are then deployed to one or more virtual machines, which are exposed through a cloud vendor load balancer. Finally, the load balancer endpoint is set into other microservices using an environment variable, providing service discovery. The toolkit i2kit reuses the best ideas from container technology to solve problems like reproducible environments, process isolation, and software distribution, and at the same time relies on mature, proven cloud vendor technology for networking, load balancing and persistency. The result is a more robust system with no learning curve for troubleshooting running applications. We have implemented an open source prototype that transforms i2kit definitions into AWS cloud formation templates, where each microservice AMI (Amazon Machine Image) is created on the fly using linuxkit. Even though container cluster management tools have more flexibility for resource allocation optimization, we defend that adding a new control layer implies more important disadvantages. Resource allocation is greatly improved by using linuxkit, which introduces a very small footprint (around 35MB). Also, the system is more secure since linuxkit installs the minimum set of dependencies to run containers. The toolkit i2kit is currently under development at the IMDEA Software Institute.

Keywords: container, deployment, immutable infrastructure, microservice

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Authors: Jatinder Kumar, Ajay Bansal

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Simulation of a photocatalytic reactor helps in understanding the complex behavior of the photocatalytic degradation. Simulation also aids the designing and optimization of the photocatalytic reactor. Lack of simulation strategies is a huge hindrance in the commercialization of the photocatalytic technology. With the increased performance of computational resources, and development of simulation software, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming an affordable engineering tool to simulate and optimize reactor designs. In the present paper, a CFD (Computational fluid dynamics) model for simulating the performance of an immobilized-titanium dioxide based annular photocatalytic reactor was developed. The computational model integrates hydrodynamics, species mass transport, and chemical reaction kinetics using a commercial CFD code Fluent 6.3.26. The CFD model was based on the intrinsic kinetic parameters determined experimentally in a perfectly mixed batch reactor. Rhodamine B, a complex organic compound, was selected as a test pollutant for photocatalytic degradation. It was observed that CFD could become a valuable tool to understand and improve the photocatalytic systems.

Keywords: simulation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), annular photocatalytic reactor, titanium dioxide

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Authors: Tienfuan Kerh, Hsienchang Lu, Rob Saunders

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Shoreline erosion problems caused by global warming and sea level rising may result in losing of land areas, so it should be examined regularly to reduce possible negative impacts. Initially in this study, three sets of survey images obtained from the years of 1990, 2001, and 2010, respectively, are digitalized by using graphical software to establish the spatial coordinates of six major beaches around the island of Taiwan. Then, by overlaying the known multi-period images, the change of shoreline can be observed from their distribution of coordinates. In addition, the neural network approximation is used to develop a model for predicting shoreline variation in the years of 2015 and 2020. The comparison results show that there is no significant change of total sandy area for all beaches in the three different periods. However, the prediction results show that two beaches may exhibit an increasing of total sandy areas under a statistical 95% confidence interval. The proposed method adopted in this study may be applicable to other shorelines of interest around the world.

Keywords: digitalized shoreline coordinates, survey image overlaying, neural network approximation, total beach sandy areas

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Authors: Lucy Patricia Onundo, Wilfred Njoroge Mwema

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The rapidly diminishing fossil fuel reserves, their exorbitant cost and the increasingly apparent negative effect of fossil fuels to climate changes is a wake-up call to explore renewable energy. Wind, bio-fuel and solar power have already become staples of Kenyan electricity mix. The potential of electric power generation from marine tidal currents is enormous, with oceans covering more than 70% of the earth. However, attempts to harness marine tidal energy in Kenya, has yet to be studied thoroughly due to its promising, cyclic, reliable and predictable nature and the vast energy contained within it. The high load factors resulting from the fluid properties and the predictable resource characteristics make marine currents particularly attractive for power generation and advantageous when compared to others. Global-level resource assessments and oceanographic literature and data have been compiled in an analysis of the technology-specific requirements for tidal energy technologies and the physical resources. Temporal variations in resource intensity as well as the differences between small-scale applications are considered.

Keywords: tidal power, renewable energy, energy assessment, Kenya

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Authors: Giacomo Barbieri

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In soilless culture, the management of the nutrient solution is the most important aspect for crop growing. Fertigation dose, frequency and nutrient concentration must be planned with the objective of reaching an optimal crop growth by limiting the utilized resources and the associated costs. The definition of efficient fertigation strategies is a complex problem since fertigation requirements vary on the basis of different factors, and crops are sensitive to small variations on fertigation parameters. To the best of author knowledge, a small-scale test bench that is flexible for both nutrient solution preparation and precise irrigation is currently missing, limiting the investigations in standard practices for soilless culture. Starting from the analysis of the state of the art, this paper proposes a small-scale system that is potentially able to concurrently test different fertigation strategies. The system will be designed and implemented throughout a three year project started on August 2018. However, due to the importance of the topic within current challenges as food security and climate change, this work is spread considering that may inspire other universities and organizations.

Keywords: soilless culture, fertigation, test bench, small-scale, automation

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Authors: Eny Syatriana

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The purpose of this study is to find out the effective instruction for classroom management, with the main identification of organizing and managing effective learning environments, to identify characteristics of effective lesson planning, identify resources and materials dealing with positive and effective classroom management. Knowing the effective instruction management is one of the characteristics of well managed teacher. The study was carried out in three randomly selected classes of STKIP YPUP in South Sulawesi. The design adopted for the study was a descriptive survey approach. Simple descriptive analysis was used. The major instrument used in this study were student questionnaire, teacher questionnaire, data were gathered with the research instrument and were analyzed, the research question were investigated and two hypothesis were duly tested using t-test statistics. Based on the findings of this research, it was concluded that effective classroom management skills or techniques have strong and positive influence on student achievement.

Keywords: effective classroom management skills, students’ achievement, students academic, effective learning environments

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Authors: Qasim Zafar, Matthew Anderson, Esteban Garcia, Steven Drager

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Software failures can present an enormous detriment to people's lives and cost millions of dollars to repair when they are unexpectedly encountered in the wild. Despite a significant portion of the software development lifecycle and resources are dedicated to testing, software failures are a relatively frequent occurrence. Nevertheless, the evaluation of testing effectiveness remains at the forefront of ensuring high-quality software and software metrics play a critical role in providing valuable insights into quantifiable objectives to assess the level of assurance and confidence in the system. As the selection of appropriate metrics can be an arduous process, the goal of this paper is to shed light on the significance of software metrics by examining a range of testing techniques and metrics as well as identifying key areas for improvement. Additionally, through this investigation, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how metrics can help to drive informed decision-making on delivering high-quality software and facilitate continuous improvement in testing practices.

Keywords: software testing, software metrics, testing effectiveness, black box testing, random testing, adaptive random testing, combinatorial testing, fuzz testing, equivalence partition, boundary value analysis, white box testing

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Authors: Dewi Hardiningtyas Sugiono

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Concerning towards the quality of air comfort and safety to pedestrians in the University area should be increased as Indonesia economics booming. Hence, the University management needs guidelines of thermal comfort to innovate a new layout building. The objectives of this study is to investigate and then to evaluate the distribution of thermal comfort which is indicated by predicted mean vote (PMV) index at the University of Brawijaya (UB), Malang. The PMV figures are used to evaluate and to redesign the UB layout. The research is started with study literature and early survey to collect all information of building layout and building shape at the University of Brawijaya. The information is used to create a 3D model in CAD software. The model is simulated by Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) software to measure the PMV factors of air temperature, relative humidity and air speed in some locations. Validation is done by comparing between PMV value from observation and PMV value from simulation. The resuls of the research shows the most sensitive of microclimatic factors is air temperature surrounding the UB building. Finally, the research is successfully figure out the UB layout and provides further actions to increase the thermal comfort.

Keywords: thermal comfort, heat index (HI), CFD, layout

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Authors: Vaso K. Kapnopoulou, Piero Caridis

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The fatigue of ship structural details is of major concern in the maritime industry as it can generate fracture issues that may compromise structural integrity. In the present study, a fatigue analysis of the lower hopper knuckle connection of a bulk carrier was conducted using the Finite Element Method by means of ABAQUS/CAE software. The fatigue life was calculated using Miner’s Rule and the long-term distribution of stress range by the use of the two-parameter Weibull distribution. The cumulative damage ratio was estimated using the fatigue damage resulting from the stress range occurring at each load condition. For this purpose, a cargo hold model was first generated, which extends over the length of two holds (the mid-hold and half of each of the adjacent holds) and transversely over the full breadth of the hull girder. Following that, a submodel of the area of interest was extracted in order to calculate the hot spot stress of the connection and to estimate the fatigue life of the structural detail. Two hot spot locations were identified; one at the top layer of the inner bottom plate and one at the top layer of the hopper plate. The IACS Common Structural Rules (CSR) require that specific dynamic load cases for each loading condition are assessed. Following this, the dynamic load case that causes the highest stress range at each loading condition should be used in the fatigue analysis for the calculation of the cumulative fatigue damage ratio. Each load case has a different effect on ship hull response. Of main concern, when assessing the fatigue strength of the lower hopper knuckle connection, was the determination of the maximum, i.e. the critical value of the stress range, which acts in a direction normal to the weld toe line. This acts in the transverse direction, that is, perpendicularly to the ship's centerline axis. The load cases were explored both theoretically and numerically in order to establish the one that causes the highest damage to the location examined. The most severe one was identified to be the load case induced by beam sea condition where the encountered wave comes from the starboard. At the level of the cargo hold model, the model was assumed to be simply supported at its ends. A coarse mesh was generated in order to represent the overall stiffness of the structure. The elements employed were quadrilateral shell elements, each having four integration points. A linear elastic analysis was performed because linear elastic material behavior can be presumed, since only localized yielding is allowed by most design codes. At the submodel level, the displacements of the analysis of the cargo hold model to the outer region nodes of the submodel acted as boundary conditions and applied loading for the submodel. In order to calculate the hot spot stress at the hot spot locations, a very fine mesh zone was generated and used. The fatigue life of the detail was found to be 16.4 years which is lower than the design fatigue life of the structure (25 years), making this location vulnerable to fatigue fracture issues. Moreover, the loading conditions that induce the most damage to the location were found to be the various ballasting conditions.

Keywords: dynamic load cases, finite element method, high cycle fatigue, lower hopper knuckle

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Authors: Ruth Yunji Nange

Abstract:

Tourism has continued to increase as a significant industry, enhancing economic growth and development in Cameroon; due to the tremendous success of this industry, community participation (CP) has enhanced tourism development (TD). While gaining augmented attractiveness, considering how local CP is encouraged in such initiatives has become imperative. It has become essential to examine the importance of CP in the development of policies and planning processes for the equitable distribution of benefits and the effects of TD in the country. This study will exactly explore the cases of CP in the most populated cities in Cameroon (Douala and Yaoundé) and also understand how local CP is incorporated into tourism to enhance development in the tourism industry in particular and Cameroon in general. This paper is based on a qualitative research method, semi-structured interviews, and in-depth, face-to-face interviews carried out with the top administrators of tourism, both in the public and private sectors, such as the minister, provincial and regional delegates of tourism, non-governmental organizations (NGO), leaders of local community associations and tour operators. The forms and surveys were open-ended with a high level of flexibility. The findings of this study will pose implications for the development of CP in tourism initiatives programs in Cameroon and other developing economies.

Keywords: Cameroon, local community, participation and planning, tourism

Procedia PDF Downloads 73

Authors: Hyeong-Gyu Park, Hak-Gon Noh, Beom-Soo Kang, Jeong Kim

Abstract:

Electromagnetic forming (EMF) process is one of a high-speed forming process, which uses an electromagnetic body (Lorentz) force to deform work-piece. Advantages of EMF are summarized as improvement of formability, reduction in wrinkling, non-contact forming. In this study, the spiral coil is considered to evaluate formability in terms of pressure distribution of the forming process. It also is represented forming results of numerical analysis using ANSYS code. In the numerical simulation, RLC circuit coupled with spiral coil was made to consider the design parameters such as system input current and electromagnetic force. The simulation results show that even though input peak currents level are same level in each case, forming condition is certainly different because of frequency of input current and magnitude of current density and magnetic flux density. Finally, the simulation results appear that electromagnetic forming force apparently affected by input current frequency which determines magnitude of current density and magnetic flux density.

Keywords: electromagnetic forming, high-speed forming, RLC circuit, Lorentz force

Procedia PDF Downloads 440

Authors: M. Veeresham

Abstract:

The microstructure, texture, phase stability, and tensile properties of annealed Ta_0.5Nb_0.5Hf_0.5ZrTi_1.5 alloy have been investigated in the present research. The alloy was severely hybrid-rolled up to 93.5% thickness reduction, subsequently rolled samples subjected to an annealing treatment at 800 °C and 1000 °C temperatures for 1 h. Consequently, the rolled condition and both annealed temperatures have a body-centered cubic (BCC) structure. Furthermore, quantitative texture measurements (orientation distribution function (ODF) analysis) and microstructural examinations (analytical electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) maps) permitted to establish a good relationship between annealing texture and microstructure and universal testing machine (UTM) utilized for obtaining the mechanical properties. Impressive room temperature tensile properties combination with the tensile strength (1380 MPa) and (24.7%) elongation is achieved for the 800 °C heat-treated condition. The evolution of the coarse microstructure featured in the case of 1000 °C annealed temperature ascribed to the influence of high thermal energy.

Keywords: refractory high entropy alloys, hybrid-rolling, recrystallization, microstructure, tensile properties

Procedia PDF Downloads 122

Authors: Jaehyun Choi, Hyunjung Kim, Namho Kim

Abstract:

Earthwork is one of the critical civil construction operations that require large-quantities of resources due to its intensive dependency upon construction equipment. Therefore, efficient construction equipment management can highly contribute to productivity improvements and cost savings. Earthwork operation utilizes various combinations of construction equipment in order to meet project requirements such as time and cost. Identification of site condition and construction methods should be performed in advance in order to develop a proper execution plan. The factors to be considered include capacity of equipment assigned, the method of construction, the size of the site, and the surrounding condition. In addition, optimal combination of various construction equipment should be selected. However, in real world practice, equipment utilization plan is performed based on experience and intuition of management. The researchers evaluated the efficiency of various alternatives of construction equipment combinations by utilizing the process simulation model, validated the model from a case study project, and presented a methodology to find optimized plan among alternatives.

Keywords: earthwork operation, construction equipment, process simulation, optimization

Procedia PDF Downloads 410

Authors: Gouga Hadjer, Djerdali Sofia, Benssaci Ettayeb

Abstract:

In order to estimate the evolution of the numbers of the aquatic avifauna and their seasonal variations in Sebkhet of Bazer-Sakhra (Site of the eco-complex wetlands of Setif) a monitoring realized during the period from September 2012 to August 2013 allowed to inventory 54 species are spread over 08 orders, 15 families, 34 genres. To follow the global dynamics and the seasonal distribution of species inventoried at Sebkhet Bazer, an analysis of the variation of the total workforce has been established by ecological indices. The autumn season includes the largest number of birds, it totals 3639 individuals. Accidental species are well represented at the autumn and spring seasons denote the interest of the site with respect to migration passages of aquatic birds. During the fall and spring, the Flamingo and the Belon Shelduck are the most abundant with respectively (500, 883) and (560, 1296) individuals. The ecological analysis of this stand showed us that the highest species richness is recorded in spring, (45 species) and the lowest value is obtained in summer it is 20 species.

Keywords: Sebkhet of BazerSakra, ecology, aquatic avifauna, biodiversity, seasonal evolution, wetland

Procedia PDF Downloads 304

Authors: O. P. Popoola, O. A. Alawode, M. O. Olayiwola, A. M. Oladele

Abstract:

This research work is based on using discriminant analysis to forecast crime rate in Nigeria between 1996 and 2008. The work is interested in how gender (male and female) relates to offences committed against the government, against other properties, disturbance in public places, murder/robbery offences and other offences. The data used was collected from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). SPSS, the statistical package was used to analyse the data. Time plot was plotted on all the 29 offences gotten from the raw data. Eigenvalues and Multivariate tests, Wilks’ Lambda, standardized canonical discriminant function coefficients and the predicted classifications were estimated. The research shows that the distribution of the scores from each function is standardized to have a mean O and a standard deviation of 1. The magnitudes of the coefficients indicate how strongly the discriminating variable affects the score. In the predicted group membership, 172 cases that were predicted to commit crime against Government group, 66 were correctly predicted and 106 were incorrectly predicted. After going through the predicted classifications, we found out that most groups numbers that were correctly predicted were less than those that were incorrectly predicted.

Keywords: discriminant analysis, DA, multivariate analysis of variance, MANOVA, canonical correlation, and Wilks’ Lambda

Procedia PDF Downloads 449