Search results for: finite word length

Authors: Ainur Sharip, Jose E. Perez, Nouf Alsharif, Aldo I. M. Bandeas, Enzo D. Fabrizio, Timothy Ravasi, Jasmeen S. Merzaban, Jürgen Kosel

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Bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are attractive candidates for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, due to their ability to differentiate into osteoblasts, chondrocytes or adipocytes. Differentiation is influenced by biochemical and biophysical stimuli provided by the microenvironment of the cell. Thus, altering the mechanical characteristics of a cell culture scaffold can directly influence a cell’s microenvironment and lead to stem cell differentiation. Mesenchymal stem cells were cultured on densely packed, vertically aligned magnetic iron nanowires (NWs) and the effect of NWs on the cell cytoskeleton rearrangement and differentiation were studied. An electrochemical deposition method was employed to fabricate NWs into nanoporous alumina templates, followed by a partial release to reveal the NW array. This created a cell growth substrate with free-standing NWs. The Fe NWs possessed a length of 2-3 µm, with each NW having a diameter of 33 nm on average. Mechanical stimuli generated by the physical movement of these iron NWs, in response to a magnetic field, can stimulate osteogenic differentiation. Induction of osteogenesis was estimated using an osteogenic marker, osteopontin, and a reduction of stem cell markers, CD73 and CD105. MSCs were grown on the NWs, and fluorescent microscopy was employed to monitor the expression of markers. A magnetic field with an intensity of 250 mT and a frequency of 0.1 Hz was applied for 12 hours/day over a period of one week and two weeks. The magnetically activated substrate enhanced the osteogenic differentiation of the MSCs compared to the culture conditions without magnetic field. Quantification of the osteopontin signal revealed approximately a seven-fold increase in the expression of this protein after two weeks of culture. Immunostaining staining against CD73 and CD105 revealed the expression of antibodies at the earlier time point (two days) and a considerable reduction after one-week exposure to a magnetic field. Overall, these results demonstrate the application of a magnetic NW substrate in stimulating the osteogenic differentiation of MSCs. This method significantly decreases the time needed to induce osteogenic differentiation compared to commercial biochemical methods, such as osteogenic differentiation kits, that usually require more than two weeks. Contact-free stimulation of MSC differentiation using a magnetic field has potential uses in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and bone formation therapies.

Keywords: cell substrate, magnetic nanowire, mesenchymal stem cell, stem cell differentiation

Procedia PDF Downloads 172

Authors: O. V. Jurieva, O. U. Jurieva, R. H. Yagudin, P. B. Chursin

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In the recent scientific researches on the problems of public service the idea of the use of innovative technologies of management of personnel processes is accurately formulated. Authors made an attempt to analyze the changes in the public service organizations and to understand how the studied situation is interpreted by the government employees themselves. For this purpose the strategy of sociological research was carried out on the basis of application of questionnaire developed by M. Rokich and focus group research. For the research purposes it was necessary to get to microlevel in order to include daily activities of employees of an organization, their life experience and values in the focus of the analysis. Based on P. Bourdieu's methodology, authors investigated the established patterns of consciousness and behavior of officials (doxa) and also analyzed the tendencies of re-thinking (change) of the settled content of values (heterodoxy) by them. The distinctive feature of the conducted research is that the public servants who have different length of service in the public service took part in the research procedure. The obtained data helped to answer the following question: what are the specifics of doxs of the public servants who work in the public civil service more than 7-10 years and what perception of values of civil service have junior experts whose work experience doesn't exceed 3 years. Respondents were presented by two groups: (1) public servants of the level of main positions in the public civil service of the Republic of Tatarstan. (2) Public servants of the level of lower positions in the ministries and departments of the Republic of Tatarstan. For the study of doxa or of the existing values of public servants, the research with use of the questionnaire based on M. Rokich's system is conducted. Two types of values are emphasised: terminal and instrumental, which are united by us in the collective concept doxa. Doxa: the instrument of research of the established patterns of consciousness and behavior which can either resist to changes in the organization or, on the contrary, support their implementation. In the following stage an attempt to deepen our understanding of the essence and specifics of doxa of officials by means of the applied sociological research which is carried out by focus group method is made. Information obtained by authors during the research convinces that for the success of policy of changes in the organizations of public service it is necessary to develop special technologies of informing employees about the essence and inevitability of the developed innovations, to involve them in the process of changes, to train and to develop the younger generation of civil servants, seriously to perceive additional training and retraining of officials.

Keywords: innovative technologies, public service organizations, public servants

Procedia PDF Downloads 249

Authors: Alexander Buhr, Klaus Ehrenfried

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Trackside induced airflow velocities, also known as slipstream velocities, are an important criterion for the design of high-speed trains. The maximum permitted values are given by the Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) and have to be checked in the approval process. For train manufactures it is of great interest to know in advance, how new train geometries would perform in TSI tests. The Reynolds number in moving model experiments is lower compared to full-scale. Especially the limited model length leads to a thinner boundary layer at the rear end. The hypothesis is that the boundary layer rolls up to characteristic flow structures in the train wake, in which the maximum flow velocities can be observed. The idea is to enlarge the boundary layer using roughness elements at the train model head so that the ratio between the boundary layer thickness and the car width at the rear end is comparable to a full-scale train. This may lead to similar flow structures in the wake and better prediction accuracy for TSI tests. In this case, the design of the roughness elements is limited by the moving model rig. Small rectangular roughness shapes are used to get a sufficient effect on the boundary layer, while the elements are robust enough to withstand the high accelerating and decelerating forces during the test runs. For this investigation, High-Speed Particle Image Velocimetry (HS-PIV) measurements on an ICE3 train model have been realized in the moving model rig of the DLR in Göttingen, the so called tunnel simulation facility Göttingen (TSG). The flow velocities within the boundary layer are analysed in a plain parallel to the ground. The height of the plane corresponds to a test position in the EN standard (TSI). Three different shapes of roughness elements are tested. The boundary layer thickness and displacement thickness as well as the momentum thickness and the form factor are calculated along the train model. Conditional sampling is used to analyse the size and dynamics of the flow structures at the time of maximum velocity in the train wake behind the train. As expected, larger roughness elements increase the boundary layer thickness and lead to larger flow velocities in the boundary layer and in the wake flow structures. The boundary layer thickness, displacement thickness and momentum thickness are increased by using larger roughness especially when applied in the height close to the measuring plane. The roughness elements also cause high fluctuations in the form factors of the boundary layer. Behind the roughness elements, the form factors rapidly are approaching toward constant values. This indicates that the boundary layer, while growing slowly along the second half of the train model, has reached a state of equilibrium.

Keywords: boundary layer, high-speed PIV, ICE3, moving train model, roughness elements

Procedia PDF Downloads 280

Authors: El Khaddam Safaa, Soulaymani Abdelmajid, Mokhtari Abdelghani, Ouammi Lahcen, Rachida Soulaymani-Beincheikh

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The poisonings represent a problem of health in the world and Morocco, The exact dimensions of this phenomenon are still poorly recorded that we see the lack of exhaustive statistical data. The objective of this retrospective study of a series of cases of the poisonings declared at the level of the region of Tadla-Azilal and collected by the Moroccan Poison Control and Pharmacovigilance Center. An epidemiological profile of the poisonings was to raise, to determine the risk factors influencing the vital preview of the poisoned And to follow the evolution of the incidence, the lethality, and the mortality. During the period of study, we collected and analyzed 9303 cases of poisonings by different incriminated toxic products with the exception of the scorpion poisonings. These poisonings drove to 99 deaths. The epidemiological profile which we raised, showed that the poisoned were of any age with an average of 24.62±16.61 years, The sex-ratio (woman/man) was 1.36 in favor of the women. The difference between both sexes is highly significant (χ2 = 210.5; p<0,001). Most of the poisoned which declared to be of urban origin (60.5 %) (χ2=210.5; p<0,001). Carbon monoxide was the most incriminated among the cases of poisonings (24.15 %), them putting in head, followed by some pesticides and farm produces (21.44 %) and food (19.95 %). The analysis of the risk factors showed that the grown-up patients whose age is between 20 and 74 years have twice more risk of evolving towards the death (RR=1,57; IC95 % = 1,03-2,38) than the other age brackets, so the male genital organ was the most exposed (explained) to the death that the female genital organ (RR=1,59; IC95 % = 1,07-2,38) The patients of rural origin had presented 5 times more risk (RR=4,713; IC95 % = 2,543-8,742). Poisoned by the mineral products had presented the maximum of risk on the vital preview death (RR=23,19, IC95 % = 2,39-224,1). The poisonings by pesticides produce a risk of 9 (RR=9,31; IC95 % = 6,10-14,18). The incidence was 3,3 cases of 10000 inhabitants, and the mortality was 0,004 cases of 1000 inhabitants (that is 4 cases by 1000 000 inhabitants). The rate of lethality registered annually was 10.6 %. The evolution of the indicators of health according to the years showed that the rate of statement measured by the incidence increased by a significant way. We also noted an improvement in the coverage which (who) ended up with a decrease in the rate of the lethality and the mortality during last years. The fight anti-toxic is a work of length time. He asks for a lot of work various levels. It is necessary to attack the delay accumulated by our country on the various legal, institutional and technical aspects. The ideal solution is to develop and to set up a national strategy.

Keywords: epidemiology, poisoning, risk factors, indicators of health, Tadla-Azilal grated by anti-toxic fight

Procedia PDF Downloads 341

Authors: Haiu-Lan Chin, Yu-Fen Hsiao, Hua-Ying Chuang, Wei Lee

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An adult with intellectual disability generally has insufficient physical activity which is an important factor leading to premature weakness. Studies in recent years on frailty syndrome have accumulated substantial data about indicators of human aging, including unintentional weight loss, self-reported exhaustion, weakness, slow walking speed, and low physical activity. Of these indicators, hand-grip strength can be seen as a predictor of mortality, disability, complications, and increased length of hospital stay. Hand-grip strength in fact provides a comprehensive overview of one’s vitality. The research is about the investigation on hand-grip strength of adults with intellectual disabilities in facilities, institutions and workshops. The participants are 197 male adults (M=39.09±12.85 years old), and 114 female ones (M=35.80±8.2 years old) so far. The aim of the study is to figure out the performance of their hand-grip strength, and initiate the setting of training on hand-grip strength in their daily life which will decrease the weakening on their physical condition. Test items include weight, bone density, basal metabolic rate (BMR), static body balance except hand-grip strength. Hand-grip strength was measured by a hand dynamometer and classified as normal group ( ≧ 30 kg for male and ≧ 20 kg for female) and weak group ( < 30 kg for male, < 20 kg for female)The analysis includes descriptive statistics, and the indicators of grip strength fo the adults with intellectual disability. Though the research is still ongoing and the participants are increasing, the data indicates: (1) The correlation between hand-grip strength and degree of the intellectual disability (p ≦. 001), basal metabolic rate (p ≦ .001), and static body balance (p ≦ .01) as well. Nevertheless, there is no significant correlation between grip strength and basal metabolic rate which had been having significant correlation with hand-grip strength. (2) The difference between male and female subjects in hand-grip strength is significant, the hand-grip strength of male subjects (25.70±12.81 Kg) is much higher than female ones (16.30±8.89 Kg). Compared to the female counterparts, male participants indicate greater individual differences. And the proportion of weakness between male and female subjects is also different. (3) The regression indicates the main factors related to grip strength performance include degree of the intellectual disability, height, static body balance, training and weight sequentially. (4) There is significant difference on both hand-grip and static body balance between participants in facilities and workshops. The study supports the truth about the sex and gender differences in health. Nevertheless, the average hand-grip strength of left hand is higher than right hand in both male and female subjects. Moreover, 71.3% of male subjects and 64.2% of female subjects have better performance in their left hand-grip which is distinctive features especially in low degree of the intellectual disability.

Keywords: adult with intellectual disability, frailty syndrome, grip strength, physical condition

Procedia PDF Downloads 155

Authors: Jutta Ransmayr

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The digital age has long arrived at Austrian schools, so both society and educationalists demand that digital means should be integrated accordingly to day-to-day school routines. Therefore, the Austrian school-leaving exam (A-levels) can now be written either by hand or by using a computer. However, the choice of writing medium (pen and paper or computer) for written examination papers, which are considered 'high-stakes' exams, raises a number of questions that have not yet been adequately investigated and answered until recently, such as: What effects do the different conditions of text production in the written German A-levels have on the component of normative linguistic accuracy? How do the spelling skills of German A-level papers written with a pen differ from those that the students wrote on the computer? And how is the teacher's assessment related to this? Which practical desiderata for German didactics can be derived from this? In a trilateral pilot project of the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities (ACDH) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna in cooperation with the Austrian Ministry of Education and the Council for German Orthography, these questions were investigated. A representative Austrian learner corpus, consisting of around 530 German A-level papers from all over Austria (pen and computer written), was set up in order to subject it to a quantitative (corpus-linguistic and statistical) and qualitative investigation with regard to the spelling and punctuation performance of the high school graduates and the differences between pen- and computer-written papers and their assessments. Relevant studies are currently available mainly from the Anglophone world. These have shown that writing on the computer increases the motivation to write, has positive effects on the length of the text, and, in some cases, also on the quality of the text. Depending on the writing situation and other technical aids, better results in terms of spelling and punctuation could also be found in the computer-written texts as compared to the handwritten ones. Studies also point towards a tendency among teachers to rate handwritten texts better than computer-written texts. In this paper, the first comparable results from the German-speaking area are to be presented. Research results have shown that, on the one hand, there are significant differences between handwritten and computer-written work with regard to performance in orthography and punctuation. On the other hand, the corpus linguistic investigation and the subsequent statistical analysis made it clear that not only the teachers' assessments of the students’ spelling performance vary enormously but also the overall assessments of the exam papers – the factor of the production medium (pen and paper or computer) also seems to play a decisive role.

Keywords: exam paper assessment, pen and paper or computer, learner corpora, linguistics

Procedia PDF Downloads 142

Authors: Nicholas McNamara, John Brookes, Michael Williams, Manish Mathew, Elizabeth Brookes, Tristan Yan, Paul Bannon

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Objective: Pericardial effusions are an uncommon but potentially fatal complication after cardiac surgery. The goal of this study was to describe the incidence and risk factors associated with the development of pericardial effusion requiring drainage after coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG). Methods: A retrospective analysis was undertaken using prospectively collected data. All adult patients who underwent CABG at our institution between 1st January 2017 and 31st December 2018 were included. Pericardial effusion was diagnosed using transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) performed for clinical suspicion of pre-tamponade or tamponade. Drainage was undertaken if considered clinically necessary and performed via a sub-xiphoid incision, pericardiocentesis, or via re-sternotomy at the discretion of the treating surgeon. Patient demographics, operative characteristics, anticoagulant exposure, and postoperative outcomes were examined to identify those variables associated with the development of pericardial effusion requiring drainage. Tests of association were performed using the Fischer exact test for dichotomous variables and the Student t-test for continuous variables. Logistic regression models were used to determine univariate predictors of pericardial effusion requiring drainage. Results: Between January 1st, 2017, and December 31st, 2018, a total of 408 patients underwent CABG at our institution, and eight (1.9%) required drainage of pericardial effusion. There was no difference in age, gender, or the proportion of patients on preoperative therapeutic heparin between the study and control groups. Univariate analysis identified preoperative atrial arrhythmia (37.5% vs 8.8%, p = 0.03), reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (47% vs 56%, p = 0.04), longer cardiopulmonary bypass (130 vs 84 min, p < 0.01) and cross-clamp (107 vs 62 min, p < 0.01) times, higher drain output in the first four postoperative hours (420 vs 213 mL, p <0.01), postoperative atrial fibrillation (100% vs 32%, p < 0.01), and pleural effusion requiring drainage (87.5% vs 12.5%, p < 0.01) to be associated with development of pericardial effusion requiring drainage. Conclusion: In this study, the incidence of pericardial effusion requiring drainage was 1.9%. Several factors, mainly related to preoperative or postoperative arrhythmia, length of surgery, and pleural effusion requiring drainage, were identified to be associated with developing clinically significant pericardial effusions. High clinical suspicion and low threshold for transthoracic echo are pertinent to ensure this potentially lethal condition is not missed.

Keywords: coronary artery bypass, pericardial effusion, pericardiocentesis, tamponade, sub-xiphoid drainage

Procedia PDF Downloads 143

Authors: Weeradej Cheewapattananuwong, Keeree Srivichian, Godchamon Somchai, Wasin Phusanong, Nontawat Yoddamnern

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Natural rubber used for traffic devices in Thailand has been developed and researched for several years. When compared with Dry Rubber Content (DRC), the quality of Rib Smoked Sheet (RSS) is better. However, the cost of admixtures, especially CaCO₃ and sulphur, is higher than the cost of RSS itself. In this research, Flexible Guideposts and Rubber Fender Barriers (RFB) are taken into consideration. In case of flexible guideposts, the materials used are both RSS and DRC60%, but for RFB, only RSS is used due to the controlled performance tests. The objective of flexible guideposts and RFB is to decrease a number of accidents, fatal rates, and serious injuries. Functions of both devices are to save road users and vehicles as well as to absorb impact forces from vehicles so as to decrease of serious road accidents. This leads to the mitigation methods to remedy the injury of motorists, form severity to moderate one. The solution is to find the best practice of traffic devices using natural rubber under the engineering concepts. In addition, the performances of materials, such as tensile strength and durability, are calculated for the modulus of elasticity and properties. In the laboratory, the simulation of crashes, finite element of materials, LRFD, and concrete technology methods are taken into account. After calculation, the trials' compositions of materials are mixed and tested in the laboratory. The tensile test, compressive test, and weathering or durability test are followed and based on ASTM. Furthermore, the Cycle-Repetition Test of Flexible Guideposts will be taken into consideration. The final decision is to fabricate all materials and have a real test section in the field. In RFB test, there will be 13 crash tests, 7 Pickup Truck tests, and 6 Motorcycle Tests. The test of vehicular crashes happens for the first time in Thailand, applying the trial and error methods; for example, the road crash test under the standard of NCHRP-TL3 (100 kph) is changed to the MASH 2016. This is owing to the fact that MASH 2016 is better than NCHRP in terms of speed, types, and weight of vehicles and the angle of crash. In the processes of MASH, Test Level 6 (TL-6), which is composed of 2,270 kg Pickup Truck, 100 kph, and 25 degree of crash-angle is selected. The final test for real crash will be done, and the whole system will be evaluated again in Korea. The researchers hope that the number of road accidents will decrease, and Thailand will be no more in the top tenth ranking of road accidents in the world.

Keywords: LRFD, load and resistance factor design, ASTM, american society for testing and materials, NCHRP, national cooperation highway research program, MASH, manual for assessing safety hardware

Procedia PDF Downloads 100

Authors: Sara Ignoto, Elena M. Scalisi, Carmen Sica, Martina Contino, Greta Ferruggia, Antonio Salvaggio, Santi C. Pavone, Gino Sorbello, Loreto Di Donato, Roberta Pecoraro, Maria V. Brundo

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The new fifth generation technology (5G), which should favor high data-rate connections (1Gbps) and latency times lower than the current ones (<1ms), has the characteristic of working on different frequency bands of the radio wave spectrum (700 MHz, 3.6-3.8 GHz and 26.5-27.5 GHz), thus also exploiting higher frequencies than previous mobile radio generations (1G-4G). The higher frequency waves, however, have a lower capacity to propagate in free space and therefore, in order to guarantee the capillary coverage of the territory for high reliability applications, it will be necessary to install a large number of repeaters. Following the introduction of this new technology, there has been growing concern in recent years about the possible harmful effects on human health and several studies were published using several animal models. This study aimed to observe the possible short-term effects induced by 5G-millimeter waves on heartbeat of early life stages of Danio rerio using DanioScope software (Noldus). DanioScope is the complete toolbox for measurements on zebrafish embryos and larvae. The effect of substances can be measured on the developing zebrafish embryo by a range of parameters: earliest activity of the embryo’s tail, activity of the developing heart, speed of blood flowing through the vein, length and diameters of body parts. Activity measurements, cardiovascular data, blood flow data and morphometric parameters can be combined in one single tool. Obtained data are elaborate and provided by the software both numerical as well as graphical. The experiments were performed at 27 GHz by a no commercial high gain pyramidal horn antenna. According to OECD guidelines, exposure to 5G-millimeter waves was tested by fish embryo toxicity test within 96 hours post fertilization, Observations were recorded every 24h, until the end of the short-term test (96h). The results have showed an increase of heartbeat rate on exposed embryos at 48h hpf than control group, but this increase has not been shown at 72-96 h hpf. Nowadays, there is a scant of literature data about this topic, so these results could be useful to approach new studies and also to evaluate potential cardiotoxic effects of mobile radiofrequency.

Keywords: Danio rerio, DanioScope, cardiotoxicity, millimeter waves.

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Bambang Antoro, Lasito Soebari, Geoffrey de Jong, Fernandy Meiriyanto, Michael Siahaan, Eko Wibowo, Pormando Silalahi, Ruswanto, Adi Budirumantyo

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The Ertsberg East Skarn System (EESS) is located in the Ertsberg Mining District, Papua, Indonesia. EESS is a sub-vertical zone of copper-gold mineralization hosted in both diorite (vein-style mineralization) and skarn (disseminated and vein style mineralization). Deep Mill Level Zone (DMLZ) is a mining zone in the lower part of East Ertsberg Skarn System (EESS) that product copper and gold. The Deep Mill Level Zone deposit is located below the Deep Ore Zone deposit between the 3125m to 2590m elevation, measures roughly 1,200m in length and is between 350 and 500m in width. DMLZ planned start mined on Q2-2015, being mined at an ore extraction rate about 60,000 tpd by the block cave mine method (the block cave contain 516 Mt). Mineralization and associated hydrothermal alteration in the DMLZ is hosted and enclosed by a large stock (The Main Ertsberg Intrusion) that is barren on all sides and above the DMLZ. Late porphyry dikes that cut through the Main Ertsberg Intrusion are spatially associated with the center of the DMLZ hydrothermal system. DMLZ orebody hosted in diorite and skarn, both dominantly by vein style mineralization. Percentage Material Mined at DMLZ compare with current Reserves are diorite 46% (with 0.46% Cu; 0.56 ppm Au; and 0.83% EqCu); Skarn is 39% (with 1.4% Cu; 0.95 ppm Au; and 2.05% EqCu); Hornfels is 8% (with 0.84% Cu; 0.82 ppm Au; and 1.39% EqCu); and Marble 7 % possible mined waste. Correlation between Ertsberg intrusion, major structure, and vein style mineralization is important to determine characteristic orebody in DMLZ Mine. Generally Deep Mill Level Zone has 2 type of vein filling mineralization from both hosted (diorite and skarn), in diorite hosted the vein system filled by chalcopyrite-bornite-quartz and pyrite, in skarn hosted the vein filled by chalcopyrite-bornite-pyrite and magnetite without quartz. Based on orientation the stockwork vein at diorite hosted and shallow vein in skarn hosted was generally NW-SE trending and NE-SW trending with shallow-moderate dipping. Deep Mill Level Zone control by two main major faults, geologist founded and verified local structure between major structure with NW-SE trending and NE-SW trending with characteristics slickenside, shearing, gauge, water-gas channel, and some has been re-healed.

Keywords: copper-gold, DMLZ, skarn, structure

Procedia PDF Downloads 480

Authors: Ewuola E. O., Sokunbi O. A., Oyedemi O. M., Sanni K. M

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Moringa oleifera leaf has been traditionally used in the local medicine as an ingredient in some herbal formulations for blood purifier, cholesterol reducing agent, immune and reproductive enhancers. Twenty-four pubertal rabbit are divided equally into four groups were administered with varied concentrations of crude extract of the leaves of Moringa oleifera gavage at doses of 2.5ml/kg body weight (BW) in every 48 hours for 63 days. These rabbits were allotted into four treatments and each treatment was replicated six times to investigate the effect of administered crude Moringa oleifera leaf extract (CMOLE) on haematology and reproductive performance of pubertal rabbit does. Four experimental treatments were used. The animals on the control (T1) were administered water only. Rabbits on treatments 2, 3, and 4 were administered 100ml CMOLE/L, 200ml CMOLE/L, and 300ml CMOLE/L, respectively. The does were placed on extract two weeks before mating, five weeks after mating and continued for another two weeks after kindling. Six proven untreated bucks were used for the mating of the twenty-four treated does and these bucks were randomly allotted to the does such that each buck mated at least one treated does in each treatment. The same management practices and experimental diets were given ad libitum to all animals. Blood was sampled from the gestating does at the third trimester for haematological analysis. The haematology results showed that treated rabbits with 100ml CMOLE/L with mean corpuscular volume value of 93.38fl significantly (p < 0.05) higher than those on the control which is water only (82.24fl) but not significantly different from T3 (200ml CMOLE/L) and T4 (300ml CMOLE/L) which had mean values of 91.69fl and 91.49fl, respectively. While the erythrocyte counts, leukocyte counts, haematocrit, haemoglobin concentration, mean corpuscular haemoglobin, mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration, lymphocyte, neutrophil, monocyte, and eosinophil count were not significantly different across the treatments. For platelets, treated animals on T2 (100ml CMOLE/L) had the highest numerical value of 148.80 x 109/L which was identical with those on T3 (200ml CMOLE/L) with mean value of 141.50x109/L but significantly (p < 0.05) higher than those on T4 (300ml CMOLE/L) with mean value of 135.00 x 109/L and those on the control which had the least mean value of 126.60 x 109/L. The percentage conception rate of the treated animals was higher than those in the control group. The animals administered 300ml CMOLE/L had the apparently highest litter size of 5.75, while gestation length and litter weight tended to decline with increase in CMOLE concentrations The investigation demonstrated the potential effect of crude Moringa oleifera leaf extract on pubertal rabbit does. The administration of up to 300ml crude Moringa oleifera leaf extract per liter did not adversely affect but improved the haematological response and reproductive potential in gestating rabbit does.

Keywords: conception, haematology, moringa leaf extract, rabbit does

Procedia PDF Downloads 482

Authors: Rahul Jain, Jagdish Chander, Anish Gupta

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Introduction: Laparoscopic common bile duct exploration (LCBDE) allows cholecystectomy and the removal of common bile duct (CBD) stones to be performed during the same sitting, thereby decreasing hospital stay. CBD exploration through choledochotomy can be closed primarily with an absorbable suture material, but can lead to biliary leakage postoperatively. In this study we tried to find a solution to further lower the incidence of bile leakage by using fibrin glue to reinforce the sutures put on choledochotomy suture line. It has haemostatic and sealing action, through strengthening the last step of the physiological coagulation and biostimulation, which favours the formation of new tissue matrix. Methodology: This study was conducted at a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi, India, from 2011 to 2013. 20 patients with CBD stones documented on MRCP with CBD diameter of 9 mm or more were included in this study. Patients were randomized into two groups namely Group A in which choledochotomy was closed with polyglactin 4-0 suture and suture line reinforced with fibrin glue, and Group ‘B’ in which choledochotomy was closed with polyglactin 4-0 suture alone. Both the groups were evaluated and compared on clinical parameters such as operative time, drain content, drain output, no. of days drain was required, blood loss & transfusion requirements, length of postoperative hospital stay and conversion to open surgery. Results: The operative time for Group A ranged from 60 to 210 min (mean 131.50 min) and Group B 65 to 300 min (mean 140 minutes). The blood loss in group A ranged from 10 to 120 ml (mean 51.50 ml), in group B it ranged from 10 to 200 ml (mean 53.50 ml). In Group A, there was no case of bile leak but there was bile leak in 2 cases in Group B, minimum 0 and maximum 900 ml with a mean of 97 ml and p value of 0.147 with no statistically significant difference in bile leak in test and control groups. The minimum and maximum serous drainage in Group A was nil & 80 ml (mean 11 ml) and in Group B was nil & 270 ml (mean 72.50 ml). The p value came as 0.028 which is statistically significant. Thus serous leakage in Group A was significantly less than in Group B. The drains in Group A were removed from 2 to 4 days (mean: 3 days) while in Group B from 2 to 9 days (mean: 3.9 days). The patients in Group A stayed in hospital post operatively from 3 to 8 days (mean: 5.30) while in Group B it ranged from 3 to 10 days with a mean of 5 days. Conclusion: Fibrin glue application on CBD decreases bile leakage but in statistically insignificant manner. Fibrin glue application on CBD can significantly decrease post operative serous drainage after LCBDE. Fibrin glue application on CBD is safe and easy technique without any significant adverse effects and can help less experienced surgeons performing LCBDE.

Keywords: bile leak, fibrin glue, LCBDE, serous leak

Procedia PDF Downloads 191

Authors: Olga Kononova, Sergey Lyapin

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Global information society requirements are transparency and reliability of data, as well as ability to manage information resources independently; particularly to search, to analyze, to evaluate information, thereby obtaining new expertise. Moreover, it is satisfying the society information needs that increases the efficiency of the enterprise management and public administration. The study of structurally organized thematic and semantic contexts of different types, automatically extracted from unstructured data, is one of the important tasks for the application of information technologies in education, science, culture, governance and business. The objectives of this study are the contextual knowledge typologization, selection or creation of effective tools for extracting and analyzing contextual knowledge. Explication of various kinds and forms of the contextual knowledge involves the development and use full-text search information systems. For the implementation purposes, the authors use an e-library 'Humanitariana' services such as the contextual search, different types of queries (paragraph-oriented query, frequency-ranked query), automatic extraction of knowledge from the scientific texts. The multifunctional e-library «Humanitariana» is realized in the Internet-architecture in WWS-configuration (Web-browser / Web-server / SQL-server). Advantage of use 'Humanitariana' is in the possibility of combining the resources of several organizations. Scholars and research groups may work in a local network mode and in distributed IT environments with ability to appeal to resources of any participating organizations servers. Paper discusses some specific cases of the contextual knowledge explication with the use of the e-library services and focuses on possibilities of new types of the contextual knowledge. Experimental research base are science texts about 'e-government' and 'computer games'. An analysis of the subject-themed texts trends allowed to propose the content analysis methodology, that combines a full-text search with automatic construction of 'terminogramma' and expert analysis of the selected contexts. 'Terminogramma' is made out as a table that contains a column with a frequency-ranked list of words (nouns), as well as columns with an indication of the absolute frequency (number) and the relative frequency of occurrence of the word (in %% ppm). The analysis of 'e-government' materials showed, that the state takes a dominant position in the processes of the electronic interaction between the authorities and society in modern Russia. The media credited the main role in these processes to the government, which provided public services through specialized portals. Factor analysis revealed two factors statistically describing the used terms: human interaction (the user) and the state (government, processes organizer); interaction management (public officer, processes performer) and technology (infrastructure). Isolation of these factors will lead to changes in the model of electronic interaction between government and society. In this study, the dominant social problems and the prevalence of different categories of subjects of computer gaming in science papers from 2005 to 2015 were identified. Therefore, there is an evident identification of several types of contextual knowledge: micro context; macro context; dynamic context; thematic collection of queries (interactive contextual knowledge expanding a composition of e-library information resources); multimodal context (functional integration of iconographic and full-text resources through hybrid quasi-semantic algorithm of search). Further studies can be pursued both in terms of expanding the resource base on which they are held, and in terms of the development of appropriate tools.

Keywords: contextual knowledge, contextual search, e-library services, frequency-ranked query, paragraph-oriented query, technologies of the contextual knowledge extraction

Procedia PDF Downloads 329

Authors: Bencherif Kada

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In the forest management practice, landscape and Mediterranean forest are never posed as linked objects. But sustainable forestry requires the valorization of the forest landscape, and this aim involves assessing the spatial distribution of biodiversity by mapping forest landscaped units and subunits and by monitoring the environmental trends. This contribution aims to highlight, through object-oriented classifications, the landscaped biodiversity of the National Park of Tlemcen (Algeria). The methodology used is based on ground data and on the basic processing units of object-oriented classification, that are segments, so-called image-objects, representing a relatively homogenous units on the ground. The classification of Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) imagery is performed on image objects and not on pixels. Advantages of object-oriented classification are to make full use of meaningful statistic and texture calculation, uncorrelated shape information (e.g., length-to-width ratio, direction, and area of an object, etc.), and topological features (neighbor, super-object, etc.), and the close relation between real-world objects and image objects. The results show that per object classification using the k-nearest neighbor’s method is more efficient than per pixel one. It permits to simplify of the content of the image while preserving spectrally and spatially homogeneous types of land covers such as Aleppo pine stands, cork oak groves, mixed groves of cork oak, holm oak, and zen oak, mixed groves of holm oak and thuja, water plan, dense and open shrub-lands of oaks, vegetable crops or orchard, herbaceous plants, and bare soils. Texture attributes seem to provide no useful information, while spatial attributes of shape and compactness seem to be performant for all the dominant features, such as pure stands of Aleppo pine and/or cork oak and bare soils. Landscaped sub-units are individualized while conserving the spatial information. Continuously dominant dense stands over a large area were formed into a single class, such as dense, fragmented stands with clear stands. Low shrublands formations and high wooded shrublands are well individualized but with some confusion with enclaves for the former. Overall, a visual evaluation of the classification shows that the classification reflects the actual spatial state of the study area at the landscape level.

Keywords: forest, oaks, remote sensing, diversity, shrublands

Procedia PDF Downloads 94

Authors: Anukul K. Thakur, Ram Bilash Choudhary, Mandira Majumder

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In this technologically driven world, it is requisite to develop better, faster and smaller electronic devices for various applications to keep pace with fast developing modern life. In addition, it is also required to develop sustainable and clean sources of energy in this era where the environment is being threatened by pollution and its severe consequences. Supercapacitor has gained tremendous attention in the recent years because of its various attractive properties such as it is essentially maintenance-free, high specific power, high power density, excellent pulse charge/discharge characteristics, exhibiting a long cycle-life, require a very simple charging circuit and safe operation. Binary and ternary composites of conducting polymers with carbon and other layered transition metal dichalcogenides have shown tremendous progress in the last few decades. Compared with bulk conducting polymer, these days conducting polymers have gained more attention because of their high electrical conductivity, large surface area, short length for the ion transport and superior electrochemical activity. These properties make them very suitable for several energy storage applications. On the other hand, carbon materials have also been studied intensively, owing to its rich specific surface area, very light weight, excellent chemical-mechanical property and a wide range of the operating temperature. These have been extensively employed in the fabrication of carbon-based energy storage devices and also as an electrode material in supercapacitors. Incorporation of carbon materials into the polymers increases the electrical conductivity of the polymeric composite so formed due to high electrical conductivity, high surface area and interconnectivity of the carbon. Further, polymeric composites based on layered transition metal dichalcogenides such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) are also considered important because they are thin indirect band gap semiconductors with a band gap around 1.2 to 1.9eV. Amongst the various 2D materials, MoS2 has received much attention because of its unique structure consisting of a graphene-like hexagonal arrangement of Mo and S atoms stacked layer by layer to give S-Mo-S sandwiches with weak Van-der-Waal forces between them. It shows higher intrinsic fast ionic conductivity than oxides and higher theoretical capacitance than the graphite.

Keywords: supercapacitor, layered transition-metal dichalcogenide, conducting polymer, ternary, carbon

Procedia PDF Downloads 230

Authors: Haifeng Zhou, Tsungyang Liow, Xiaoguang Tu, Eujin Lim, Chao Li, Junfeng Song, Xianshu Luo, Ying Huang, Lianxi Jia, Lianwee Luo, Kim Dowon, Qing Fang, Mingbin Yu, Guoqiang Lo

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Several Germanium photodetectors (PD) built on silicon micro-disks are fabricated on the standard Si photonics multiple project wafers (MPW) and demonstrated to exhibit very low dark current, satisfactory operation bandwidth and moderate responsivity. Among them, a vertical p-i-n Ge PD based on a 2.0 µm-radius micro-disk has a dark current of as low as 35 nA, compared to a conventional PD current of 1 µA with an area of 100 µm2. The operation bandwidth is around 15 GHz at a reverse bias of 1V. The responsivity is about 0.6 A/W. Microdisk is a striking planar structure in integrated optics to enhance light-matter interaction and construct various photonics devices. The disk geometries feature in strongly and circularly confining light into an ultra-small volume in the form of whispering gallery modes. A laser may benefit from a microdisk in which a single mode overlaps the gain materials both spatially and spectrally. Compared to microrings, micro-disk removes the inner boundaries to enable even better compactness, which also makes it very suitable for some scenarios that electrical connections are needed. For example, an ultra-low power (≈ fJ) athermal Si modulator has been demonstrated with a bit rate of 25Gbit/s by confining both photons and electrically-driven carriers into a microscale volume.In this work, we study Si-based PDs with Ge selectively grown on a microdisk with the radius of a few microns. The unique feature of using microdisk for Ge photodetector is that mode selection is not important. In the applications of laser or other passive optical components, microdisk must be designed very carefully to excite the fundamental mode in a microdisk in that essentially the microdisk usually supports many higher order modes in the radial directions. However, for detector applications, this is not an issue because the local light absorption is mode insensitive. Light power carried by all modes are expected to be converted into photo-current. Another benefit of using microdisk is that the power circulation inside avoids any introduction of the reflector. A complete simulation model with all involved materials taken into account is established to study the promise of microdisk structures for photodetector by using finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. By viewing from the current preliminary data, the directions to further improve the device performance are also discussed.

Keywords: integrated optical devices, silicon photonics, micro-resonator, photodetectors

Procedia PDF Downloads 384

Authors: Amir Nazemi, Milad Ramezankhani, Marian Kӧrber, Abbas S. Milani

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The excellent strength to weight ratio of woven fabric composites, along with their high formability, is one of the primary design parameters defining their increased use in modern manufacturing processes, including those in aerospace and automotive. However, for emerging automated preform processes under the smart manufacturing paradigm, complex geometries of finished components continue to bring several challenges to the designers to cope with manufacturing defects on site. Wrinklinge. g. is a common defectoccurring during the forming process and handling of semi-finished textile composites. One of the main reasons for this defect is the weak bending stiffness of fibers in unconsolidated state, causing excessive relative motion between them. Further challenges are represented by the automated handling of large-area fiber blanks with specialized gripper systems. For fabric composites forming simulations, the finite element (FE)method is a longstanding tool usedfor prediction and mitigation of manufacturing defects. Such simulations are predominately meant, not only to predict the onset, growth, and shape of wrinkles but also to determine the best processing condition that can yield optimized positioning of the fibers upon forming (or robot handling in the automated processes case). However, the need for use of small-time steps via explicit FE codes, facing numerical instabilities, as well as large computational time, are among notable drawbacks of the current FEtools, hindering their extensive use as fast and yet efficient digital twins in industry. This paper presents a novel woven fabric simulation technique through the application of the material point method (MPM), which enables the use of much larger time steps, facing less numerical instabilities, hence the ability to run significantly faster and efficient simulationsfor fabric materials handling and forming processes. Therefore, this method has the ability to enhance the development of automated fiber handling and preform processes by calculating the physical interactions with the MPM fiber models and rigid tool components. This enables the designers to virtually develop, test, and optimize their processes based on either algorithmicor Machine Learning applications. As a preliminary case study, forming of a hemispherical plain weave is shown, and the results are compared to theFE simulations, as well as experiments.

Keywords: material point method, woven fabric composites, forming, material handling

Procedia PDF Downloads 156

Authors: Kristina Pflug, Markus Busch

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Being able to predict polymer properties and processing behavior based on the applied operating reaction conditions in one of the key challenges in modern polymer reaction engineering. Especially, for cost-intensive processes such as the high-pressure polymerization of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) with high safety-requirements, the need for simulation-based process optimization and product design is high. A multi-scale modelling approach was set-up and validated via a series of high-pressure mini-plant autoclave reactor experiments. The approach starts with the numerical modelling of the complex reaction network of the LDPE polymerization taking into consideration the actual reaction conditions. While this gives average product properties, the complex polymeric microstructure including random short- and long-chain branching is calculated via a hybrid Monte Carlo-approach. Finally, the processing behavior of LDPE -its melt flow behavior- is determined in dependence of the previously determined polymeric microstructure using the branch on branch algorithm for randomly branched polymer systems. All three steps of the multi-scale modelling approach can be independently validated against analytical data. A triple-detector GPC containing an IR, viscosimetry and multi-angle light scattering detector is applied. It serves to determine molecular weight distributions as well as chain-length dependent short- and long-chain branching frequencies. 13C-NMR measurements give average branching frequencies, and rheological measurements in shear and extension serve to characterize the polymeric flow behavior. The accordance of experimental and modelled results was found to be extraordinary, especially taking into consideration that the applied multi-scale modelling approach does not contain parameter fitting of the data. This validates the suggested approach and proves its universality at the same time. In the next step, the modelling approach can be applied to other reactor types, such as tubular reactors or industrial scale. Moreover, sensitivity analysis for systematically varying process conditions is easily feasible. The developed multi-scale modelling approach finally gives the opportunity to predict and design LDPE processing behavior simply based on process conditions such as feed streams and inlet temperatures and pressures.

Keywords: low-density polyethylene, multi-scale modelling, polymer properties, reaction engineering, rheology

Procedia PDF Downloads 106

Authors: Yasser R. Tawfic, Mohamed A. Eid

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Foundation differential settlement and supported structure tilting is an occasionally occurred engineering problem. This may be caused by overloading, changes in ground soil properties or unsupported nearby excavations. Engineering thinking points directly toward the logic solution for such problem by uplifting the settled side. This can be achieved with deep foundation elements such as micro-piles and macro-piles™, jacked piers and helical piers, jet grouted soil-crete columns, compaction grout columns, cement grouting or with chemical grouting, or traditional pit underpinning with concrete and mortar. Although, some of these techniques offer economic, fast and low noise solutions, many of them are quite the contrary. For tilted structures, with limited inclination, it may be much easier to cause a balancing settlement on the less-settlement side which shall be done carefully in a proper rate. This principal has been applied in Leaning Tower of Pisa stabilization with soil extraction from the ground surface. In this research, the authors attempt to introduce a new solution with a different point of view. So, micro-tunneling technique is presented in here as an intended ground deformation cause. In general, micro-tunneling is expected to induce limited ground deformations. Thus, the researchers propose to apply the technique to form small size ground unsupported holes to produce the target deformations. This shall be done in four phases: •Application of one or more micro-tunnels, regarding the existing differential settlement value, under the raised side of the tilted structure. •For each individual tunnel, the lining shall be pulled out from both sides (from jacking and receiving shafts) in slow rate. •If required, according to calculations and site records, an additional surface load can be applied on the raised foundation side. •Finally, a strengthening soil grouting shall be applied for stabilization after adjustment. A finite element based numerical model is presented to simulate the proposed construction phases for different tunneling positions and tunnels group. For each case, the surface settlements are calculated and induced plasticity points are checked. These results show the impact of the suggested procedure on the tilted structure and its feasibility. Comparing results also show the importance of the position selection and tunnels group gradual effect. Thus, a new engineering solution is presented to one of the structural and geotechnical engineering challenges.

Keywords: differential settlement, micro-tunneling, soil-structure interaction, tilted structures

Procedia PDF Downloads 186

Authors: Mrinalini Ranjan, Sudheesh Chethil

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Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder characterised by the recurrence of seizures. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are complex biomedical signals which exhibit nonlinear and nonstationary behavior. We use two methods 1) Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and 2) Recurrence Plots (RP) to capture this complex behavior of EEG signals. DFA considers fluctuation from local linear trends. Scale invariance of these signals is well captured in the multifractal characterisation using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Analysis of long-range correlations is vital for understanding the dynamics of EEG signals. Correlation properties in the EEG signal are quantified by the calculation of a scaling exponent. We report the existence of two scaling behaviours in the epileptic EEG signals which quantify short and long-range correlations. To illustrate this, we perform DFA on extant ictal (seizure) and interictal (seizure free) datasets of different patients in different channels. We compute the short term and long scaling exponents and report a decrease in short range scaling exponent during seizure as compared to pre-seizure and a subsequent increase during post-seizure period, while the long-term scaling exponent shows an increase during seizure activity. Our calculation of long-term scaling exponent yields a value between 0.5 and 1, thus pointing to power law behaviour of long-range temporal correlations (LRTC). We perform this analysis for multiple channels and report similar behaviour. We find an increase in the long-term scaling exponent during seizure in all channels, which we attribute to an increase in persistent LRTC during seizure. The magnitude of the scaling exponent and its distribution in different channels can help in better identification of areas in brain most affected during seizure activity. The nature of epileptic seizures varies from patient-to-patient. To illustrate this, we report an increase in long-term scaling exponent for some patients which is also complemented by the recurrence plots (RP). RP is a graph that shows the time index of recurrence of a dynamical state. We perform Recurrence Quantitative analysis (RQA) and calculate RQA parameters like diagonal length, entropy, recurrence, determinism, etc. for ictal and interictal datasets. We find that the RQA parameters increase during seizure activity, indicating a transition. We observe that RQA parameters are higher during seizure period as compared to post seizure values, whereas for some patients post seizure values exceeded those during seizure. We attribute this to varying nature of seizure in different patients indicating a different route or mechanism during the transition. Our results can help in better understanding of the characterisation of epileptic EEG signals from a nonlinear analysis.

Keywords: detrended fluctuation, epilepsy, long range correlations, recurrence plots

Procedia PDF Downloads 155

Authors: Y. Teterin, S. Suleymanova, I. Dmitriev, P. Yartcev

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Introduction: One of the most common complications after pancreas transplantation are pancreatic fluid collections (PFCs), which are often complicated not only by infection and subsequent disfunction of the pancreatoduodenal graft (PDG), but also with a rather high mortality rate of recipients. Drainage is not always effective and often requires repeated open surgical interventions, which worsens the outcome of the surgery. Percutaneous drainage of PFCs combined with endoscopic stenting of the main pancreatic duct of the pancreatoduodenal graft (MPDPDG) showed high efficiency in the treatment of PFCs. Aims & Methods: From 01.01.2012 to 31.12.2021 at the Sklifosovsky Research Institute for Emergency Medicine were performed 64 transplantations of PDG. In 11 cases (17.2%), the early postoperative period was complicated by the formation of PFCs. Of these, 7 patients underwent percutaneous drainage of pancreonecrosis with high efficiency and did not required additional methods of treatment. In the remaining 4 patients, drainage was ineffective and was an indication for endoscopic stenting of the MPDPDG. They were the ones who made up the study group. Among them were 3 men and 1 woman. The mean age of the patients was 36,4 years.PFCs in these patients formed on days 1, 12, 18, and 47 after PDG transplantation. We used a gastroscope to stent the MPDPDG, due to anatomical features of the location of the duodenoduodenal anastomosis after PDG transplantation. Through the endoscope channel was performed selective catheterization of the MPDPDG, using a catheter and a guidewire, followed by its contrasting with a water-soluble contrast agent. Due to the extravasation of the contrast, was determined the localization of the defect in the PDG duct system. After that, a plastic pancreatic stent with a diameter of 7 Fr. and a length of 7 cm. was installed along guidewire. The stent was installed in such a way that its proximal edge completely covered the defect zone, and the distal one was determined in the intestinal lumen. Results: In all patients PDG pancreaticography revealed extravasation of a contrast in the area of the isthmus and body of the pancreas, which required stenting of the MPDPDG. In 1 (25%) case, the patient had a dislocation of the stent into the intestinal lumen (III degree according to Clavien-Dindo (2009)). This patient underwent repeated endoscopic stenting of the MPDPDG. On average 23 days after endoscopic stenting of the MPDPDG, the drainage tubes were removed and after approximately 40 days all patients were discharged in a satisfactory condition with follow-up endocrinologist and surgeon consultation. Pancreatic stents were removed after 6 months ± 7 days. Conclusion: Endoscopic stenting of the main pancreatic duct of the donor pancreas is by far the most highly effective and minimally invasive method in the treatment of PFCs after transplantation of the pancreatoduodenal complex.

Keywords: pancreas transplantation, endoscopy surgery, diabetes, stenting, main pancreatic duct

Procedia PDF Downloads 64

Authors: P. Viduthalai, A. K. Divakar, V. Natarajan

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Media is one of the powerful tools that manipulate the world in numerous aspects especially in the form of a communication process. For instance, the concept of the public sphere, which was earlier represented by landlords and elites has now transformed into a virtual public sphere, which is also represented by marginalized people. Unfortunately, this acquisition is still paradoxical. Though the media proliferation and its effects are humongous, still it has not been the same throughout the world. Inequality in access to media has created a technological divide among people. Finally, globalization and approach by the government towards using media for development communication has significantly changed the way in which the media reaches every nook and corner. Monarchy, oligarchy, republic and democracy together form the basis of most governments of the world. Of which, democracy is the one with the highest involvement and participation of the people. Ideally, the participation of the people is what, that keeps the democracy running. A healthy democracy is possible only when people are able to access information that makes citizens responsible and serves to check the functioning of their elected representatives. On one side the media consumption of people plays a crucial role in the formation of the public sphere, and on the other side, big media conglomerates are a serious threat to community participation, which is a goal that the media should strive for in a country like India. How different people consume these different media, differs greatly from length and breadth of the country. Another aspect of this media consumption is that it isn’t passive. People usage and consumption of media are related with the gratification that they derive from the particular media. This aspect varies from person to person and from society to society according to both internal and external factors. This article sets out from the most underlying belief that Malayali Tribes have adopted television and becomes a part of daily life and a day never passes without it especially after the introduction of Free Television Scheme by the past state government. Though they are living in hilly and socially isolated places, they too have started accessing media for understanding about the people of the plains and their culture, dictated by their interest. Many of these interests appear to have a social and psychological origin. The present research attempts to study how gratification of these needs lead Malayali Tribes to form such a virtual public sphere where they could communicate with people of the plains. Data was collected through survey method, from 300 respondents on “Exposure towards Television and their perception”. Conventional anthropological methods like unstructured interviews were also used to supplement the data collection efforts in the three taluks namely Yercaud, Pethanayankkanpalayam and Panamaraththuppatty in Salem district of TamilNadu. The results highlight the role of Television in gratifying needs of the Malayali Tribes.

Keywords: democracy, gratification, Malayali Tribes and television, virtual public sphere

Procedia PDF Downloads 231

Authors: Yew Mun Yip, Dawei Zhang

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Proteins are the biological machinery that executes specific vital functions in every cell of the human body by folding into their 3D structures. When a protein misfolds from its native structure, the machinery will malfunction and lead to misfolding diseases. Although in vitro experiments are able to conclude that the mutations of the amino acid sequence lead to incorrectly folded protein structures, these experiments are unable to decipher the folding process. Therefore, molecular dynamic (MD) simulations are employed to simulate the folding process so that our improved understanding of the folding process will enable us to contemplate better treatments for misfolding diseases. MD simulations make use of force fields to simulate the folding process of peptides. Secondary structures are formed via the hydrogen bonds formed between the backbone atoms (C, O, N, H). It is important that the hydrogen bond energy computed during the MD simulation is accurate in order to direct the folding process to the native structure. Since the atoms involved in a hydrogen bond possess very dissimilar electronegativities, the more electronegative atom will attract greater electron density from the less electronegative atom towards itself. This is known as the polarization effect. Since the polarization effect changes the electron density of the two atoms in close proximity, the atomic charges of the two atoms should also vary based on the strength of the polarization effect. However, the fixed atomic charge scheme in force fields does not account for the polarization effect. In this study, we introduce the polarized structure-specific backbone charge (PSBC) model. The PSBC model accounts for the polarization effect in MD simulation by updating the atomic charges of the backbone hydrogen bond atoms according to equations derived between the amount of charge transferred to the atom and the length of the hydrogen bond, which are calculated from quantum-mechanical calculations. Compared to other polarizable models, the PSBC model does not require quantum-mechanical calculations of the peptide simulated at every time-step of the simulation and maintains the dynamic update of atomic charges, thereby reducing the computational cost and time while accounting for the polarization effect dynamically at the same time. The PSBC model is applied to two different β-peptides, namely the Beta3s/GS peptide, a de novo designed three-stranded β-sheet whose structure is folded in vitro and studied by NMR, and the trpzip peptides, a double-stranded β-sheet where a correlation is found between the type of amino acids that constitute the β-turn and the β-propensity.

Keywords: hydrogen bond, polarization effect, protein folding, PSBC

Procedia PDF Downloads 235

Authors: Man Fung Ho, Lap So, Jiaqi Zhang, Yuheng Zhao, Huiyang Lu, Tat Shing Choi, K. Y. Michael Wong

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Nowadays, a tremendous amount of data is available in the transportation system, enabling the development of various machine learning approaches to make short-term latency predictions. A natural question is then the choice of relevant information to enable accurate predictions. Using traffic data collected from the Taiwan Freeway System, we consider the prediction of short-term latency of a freeway segment with a length of 17 km covering 5 measurement points, each collecting vehicle-by-vehicle data through the electronic toll collection system. The processed data include the past latencies of the freeway segment with different time lags, the traffic conditions of the individual segments (the accumulations, the traffic fluxes, the entrance and exit rates), the total accumulations, and the weekday latency profiles obtained by Gaussian process regression of past data. We arrive at several important conclusions about how data should be refined to obtain accurate predictions, which have implications for future system-wide latency predictions. (1) We find that the prediction of median latency is much more accurate and meaningful than the prediction of average latency, as the latter is plagued by outliers. This is verified by machine-learning prediction using XGBoost that yields a 35% improvement in the mean square error of the 5-minute averaged latencies. (2) We find that the median latency of the segment 15 minutes ago is a very good baseline for performance comparison, and we have evidence that further improvement is achieved by machine learning approaches such as XGBoost and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). (3) By analyzing the feature importance score in XGBoost and calculating the mutual information between the inputs and the latencies to be predicted, we identify a sequence of inputs ranked in importance. It confirms that the past latencies are most informative of the predicted latencies, followed by the total accumulation, whereas inputs such as the entrance and exit rates are uninformative. It also confirms that the inputs are much less informative of the average latencies than the median latencies. (4) For predicting the latencies of segments composed of two or three sub-segments, summing up the predicted latencies of each sub-segment is more accurate than the one-step prediction of the whole segment, especially with the latency prediction of the downstream sub-segments trained to anticipate latencies several minutes ahead. The duration of the anticipation time is an increasing function of the traveling time of the upstream segment. The above findings have important implications to predicting the full set of latencies among the various locations in the freeway system.

Keywords: data refinement, machine learning, mutual information, short-term latency prediction

Procedia PDF Downloads 150

Authors: Zipeng Zhang, Yat C. Wong, Arul Arulrajah

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Since automobiles became widely popular around the early 20th century, end-of-life tyres have been one of the major types of waste humans encounter. Every minute, there are considerable quantities of tyres being disposed of around the world. Most end-of-life tyres are simply landfilled or simply stockpiled, other than recycling. To address the potential issues caused by tyre waste, incorporating it into construction materials can be a possibility. This research investigated the viability of manufacturing bricks using mill waste and tyre crumb by alkali-activation at a relatively low temperature. The mill waste was extracted from a brick factory located in Melbourne, Australia, and the tyre crumbs were supplied by a local recycling company. As the main precursor, the mill waste was activated by the alkaline solution, which was comprised of sodium hydroxide (8m) and sodium silicate (liquid). The introduction ratio of alkaline solution (relative to the solid weight) and the weight ratio between sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate was fixed at 20 wt.% and 1:1, respectively. The tyre crumb was introduced to substitute part of the mill waste at four ratios by weight, namely 0, 5, 10 and 15%. The mixture of mill waste and tyre crumbs were firstly dry-mixed for 2 min to ensure the homogeneity, followed by a 2.5-min wet mixing after adding the solution. The ready mixture subsequently was press-moulded into blocks with the size of 109 mm in length, 112.5 mm in width and 76 mm in height. The blocks were cured at 50°C with 95% relative humidity for 2 days, followed by a 110°C oven-curing for 1 day. All the samples were then placed under the ambient environment until the age of 7 and 28 days for testing. A series of tests were conducted to evaluate the linear shrinkage, compressive strength and water absorption of the samples. In addition, the microstructure of the samples was examined via the scanning electron microscope (SEM) test. The results showed the highest compressive strength was 17.6 MPa, found in the 28-day-old group using 5 wt.% tyre crumbs. Such strength has been able to satisfy the requirement of ASTM C67. However, the increasing addition of tyre crumb weakened the compressive strength of samples. Apart from the strength, the linear shrinkage and water absorption of all the groups can meet the requirements of the standard. It is worth noting that the use of tyre crumbs tended to decrease the shrinkage and even caused expansion when the tyre content was over 15 wt.%. The research also found that there was a significant reduction in compressive strength for the samples after water absorption tests. In conclusion, the tyre crumbs have the potential to be used as a filler material in brick manufacturing, but more research needs to be done to tackle the durability problem in the future.

Keywords: bricks, mill waste, tyre crumbs, waste recycling

Procedia PDF Downloads 101

Authors: Ying Li, Rui Hu, Shizhen Chen, Xin Zhou, Yunhuang Yang

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Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death among men. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a specific product of prostatic epithelial cells, is an important indicator of prostate cancer. Though PSA is not a specific serum biomarker for the screening of prostate cancer, it is recognized as an indicator for prostate cancer recurrence and response to therapy for patient’s post-prostatectomy. Since radical prostatectomy eliminates the source of PSA production, serum PSA levels fall below 50 pg/mL, and may be below the detection limit of clinical immunoassays (current clinical immunoassay lower limit of detection is around 10 pg/mL). Many clinical studies have shown that intervention at low PSA levels was able to improve patient outcomes significantly. Therefore, ultra-sensitive and precise assays that can accurately quantify extremely low levels of PSA (below 1-10 pg/mL) will facilitate the assessment of patients for the possibility of early adjuvant or salvage treatment. Currently, the commercially available ultra-sensitive ELISA kit (not used clinically) can only reach a detection limit of 3-10 pg/mL. Other platforms developed by different research groups could achieve a detection limit as low as 0.33 pg/mL, but they relied on sophisticated instruments to get the final readout. Herein we report a microfluidic platform for point-of-care (POC) detection of PSA with a detection limit of 0.5 pg/mL and without the assistance of any equipment. This platform is based on a previously reported volumetric-bar-chart chip (V-Chip), which applies platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs) as the ELISA probe to convert the biomarker concentration to the volume of oxygen gas that further pushes the red ink to form a visualized bar-chart. The length of each bar is used to quantify the biomarker concentration of each sample. We devised a long reading channel V-Chip (LV-Chip) in this work to achieve a wide detection window. In addition, LV-Chip employed a unique enzyme-free ELISA probe that enriched PtNPs significantly and owned 500-fold enhanced catalytic ability over that of previous V-Chip, resulting in a significantly improved detection limit. LV-Chip is able to complete a PSA assay for five samples in 20 min. The device was applied to detect PSA in 50 patient serum samples, and the on-chip results demonstrated good correlation with conventional immunoassay. In addition, the PSA levels in finger-prick whole blood samples from healthy volunteers were successfully measured on the device. This completely stand-alone LV-Chip platform enables convenient POC testing for patient follow-up in the physician’s office and is also useful in resource-constrained settings.

Keywords: point-of-care detection, microfluidics, PSA, ultra-sensitive

Procedia PDF Downloads 90

Authors: Anupriya Sharma, Sapna Narula

Abstract:

Over the past decade, sustainability has gone mainstream as more people are worried about environment-related issues than ever before. These issues are of even more concern for industries which leave a significant impact on the environment. Following these ecological issues, corporates are beginning to comprehend the impact on their business. Many such initiatives have been made to address these emerging issues in the consumer-driven textile industry. Demand from customers, local communities, government regulations, etc. are considered some of the major factors affecting environmental decision-making. Research also shows that motivations to go green are inevitably determined by the way top managers perceive environmental issues as managers personal values and ethical commitment act as a motivating factor towards corporate social responsibility. Little empirical research has been conducted to examine the relationship between top managers’ personal environmental attitudes and corporate environmental behaviors for the textile industry in the Indian context. The primary purpose of this study is to determine the current state of environmental management in textile industry and whether the attitude of textile firms’ top managers is significantly related to firm’s response to environmental issues and their perceived benefits of environmental management. To achieve the aforesaid objectives of the study, authors used structured questionnaire based on literature review. The questionnaire consisted of six sections with a total length of eight pages. The first section was based on background information on the position of the respondents in the organization, annual turnover, year of firm’s establishment and so on. The other five sections of the questionnaire were based upon (drivers, attitude, and awareness, sustainable business practices, barriers to implementation and benefits achieved). To test the questionnaire, a pretest was conducted with the professionals working in corporate sustainability and had knowledge about the textile industry and was then mailed to various stakeholders involved in textile production thereby covering firms top manufacturing officers, EHS managers, textile engineers, HR personnel and R&D managers. The results of the study showed that most of the textile firms were implementing some type of environmental management practice, even though the magnitude of firm’s involvement in environmental management practices varied. The results also show that textile firms with a higher level of involvement in environmental management were more involved in the process driven technical environmental practices. It also identified that firm’s top managers environmental attitudes were correlated with perceived advantages of environmental management as textile firm’s top managers are the ones who possess managerial discretion on formulating and deciding business policies such as environmental initiatives.

Keywords: attitude and awareness, Environmental management, sustainability, textile industry

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Authors: Cristina Lavilla, Andreas Heise

Abstract:

The synthesis of sequence-controlled polymers has received increasing attention in the last years. Well-defined polyacrylates, polyacrylamides and styrene-maleimide copolymers have been synthesized by sequential or kinetic addition of comonomers. However this approach has not yet been introduced to the synthesis of polypeptides, which are in fact polymers developed by nature in a sequence-controlled way. Polypeptides are natural materials that possess the ability to self-assemble into complex and highly ordered structures. Their folding and properties arise from precisely controlled sequences and compositions in their constituent amino acid monomers. So far, solid-phase peptide synthesis is the only technique that allows preparing short peptide sequences with excellent sequence control, but also requires extensive protection/deprotection steps and it is a difficult technique to scale-up. A new strategy towards sequence control in the synthesis of polypeptides is introduced, based on the sequential addition of α-amino acid-N-carboxyanhydrides (NCAs). The living ring-opening process is conducted to full conversion and no purification or deprotection is needed before addition of a new amino acid. The length of every block is predefined by the NCA:initiator ratio in every step. This method yields polypeptides with a specific sequence and controlled molecular weights. A series of polypeptides with varying block sequences have been synthesized with the aim to identify structure-property relationships. All of them are able to adopt secondary structures similar to natural polypeptides, and display properties in the solid state and in solution that are characteristic of the primary structure. By design the prepared polypeptides allow selective modification of individual block sequences, which has been exploited to introduce functionalities in defined positions along the polypeptide chain. Poly(ethylene glycol)(PEG) was the functionality chosen, as it is known to favor hydrophilicity and also yield thermoresponsive materials. After PEGylation, hydrophilicity of the polypeptides is enhanced, and their thermal response in H2O has been studied. Noteworthy differences in the behavior of the polypeptides having different sequences have been found. Circular dichroism measurements confirmed that the α-helical conformation is stable over the examined temperature range (5-90 °C). It is concluded that PEG units are the main responsible of the changes in H-bonding interactions with H2O upon variation of temperature, and the position of these functional units along the backbone is a factor of utmost importance in the resulting properties of the α-helical polypeptides.

Keywords: α-amino acid N-carboxyanhydrides, multiblock copolymers, poly(ethylene glycol), polypeptides, ring-opening polymerization, sequence control

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Authors: Mounir Baccar, Imen Jmal

Abstract:

Because of the rise in energy costs, thermal storage systems designed for the heating and cooling of buildings are becoming increasingly important. Energy storage can not only reduce the time or rate mismatch between energy supply and demand but also plays an important role in energy conservation. One of the most preferable storage techniques is the Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) by Phase Change Materials (PCM) due to its important energy storage density and isothermal storage process. This paper presents a numerical study of the solidification of a PCM (paraffin RT27) in a rectangular thermal storage exchanger for air conditioning systems taking into account the presence of natural convection. Resolution of continuity, momentum and thermal energy equations are treated by the finite volume method. The main objective of this numerical approach is to study the effect of natural convection on the PCM solidification time and the impact of fins number on heat transfer enhancement. It also aims at investigating the temporal evolution of PCM solidification, as well as the longitudinal profiles of the HTF circling in the duct. The present research undertakes the study of two cases: the first one treats the solidification of PCM in a PCM-air heat exchanger without fins, while the second focuses on the solidification of PCM in a heat exchanger of the same type with the addition of fins (3 fins, 5 fins, and 9 fins). Without fins, the stratification of the PCM from colder to hotter during the heat transfer process has been noted. This behavior prevents the formation of thermo-convective cells in PCM area and then makes transferring almost conductive. In the presence of fins, energy extraction from PCM to airflow occurs at a faster rate, which contributes to the reduction of the discharging time and the increase of the outlet air temperature (HTF). However, for a great number of fins (9 fins), the enhancement of the solidification process is not significant because of the effect of confinement of PCM liquid spaces for the development of thermo-convective flow. Hence, it can be concluded that the effect of natural convection is not very significant for a high number of fins. In the optimum case, using 3 fins, the increasing temperature of the HTF exceeds approximately 10°C during the first 30 minutes. When solidification progresses from the surfaces of the PCM-container and propagates to the central liquid phase, an insulating layer will be created in the vicinity of the container surfaces and the fins, causing a low heat exchange rate between PCM and air. As the solid PCM layer gets thicker, a progressive regression of the field of movements is induced in the liquid phase, thus leading to the inhibition of heat extraction process. After about 2 hours, 68% of the PCM became solid, and heat transfer was almost dominated by conduction mechanism.

Keywords: heat transfer enhancement, front solidification, PCM, natural convection

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Authors: Mehrnaz Mostafavi

Abstract:

Recent advances in single-molecule protein identification (ID) and quantification techniques are poised to revolutionize proteomics, enabling researchers to delve into single-cell proteomics and identify low-abundance proteins crucial for biomedical and clinical research. This paper introduces a different approach to single-molecule protein ID and quantification using tri-color amino acid tags and a plasmonic nanopore device. A comprehensive simulator incorporating various physical phenomena was designed to predict and model the device's behavior under diverse experimental conditions, providing insights into its feasibility and limitations. The study employs a whole-proteome single-molecule identification algorithm based on convolutional neural networks, achieving high accuracies (>90%), particularly in challenging conditions (95–97%). To address potential challenges in clinical samples, where post-translational modifications affecting labeling efficiency, the paper evaluates protein identification accuracy under partial labeling conditions. Solid-state nanopores, capable of processing tens of individual proteins per second, are explored as a platform for this method. Unlike techniques relying solely on ion-current measurements, this approach enables parallel readout using high-density nanopore arrays and multi-pixel single-photon sensors. Convolutional neural networks contribute to the method's versatility and robustness, simplifying calibration procedures and potentially allowing protein ID based on partial reads. The study also discusses the efficacy of the approach in real experimental conditions, resolving functionally similar proteins. The theoretical analysis, protein labeler program, finite difference time domain calculation of plasmonic fields, and simulation of nanopore-based optical sensing are detailed in the methods section. The study anticipates further exploration of temporal distributions of protein translocation dwell-times and the impact on convolutional neural network identification accuracy. Overall, the research presents a promising avenue for advancing single-molecule protein identification and quantification with broad applications in proteomics research. The contributions made in methodology, accuracy, robustness, and technological exploration collectively position this work at the forefront of transformative developments in the field.

Keywords: nano proteomics, nanopore-based optical sensing, deep learning, artificial intelligence

Procedia PDF Downloads 45