Search results for: unique speech characteristics

Authors: R. Ziaie Moayed, A. Mahigir

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Stone column technique has been successfully employed to improve the load-settlement characteristics of foundations. A series of finite element numerical analyses of harmonic dynamic loading have been conducted on strengthened raft footing to study the effects of single and group stone columns on settlement of circular footings. The settlement of circular raft footing that improved by single and group of stone columns are studied under harmonic dynamic loading. This loading is caused by heavy machinery foundations. A detailed numerical investigation on behavior of single column and group of stone columns is carried out by varying parameters like weight of machinery, loading frequency and period. The result implies that presence of single and group of stone columns enhanced dynamic behavior of the footing so that the maximum and residual settlement of footing significantly decreased. 

Keywords: finite element analysis, harmonic loading, settlement, stone column

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Authors: Md. Rifad Chowdhury

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This research study investigates employees' conception of work motivation to perform at the municipal corporation in Bangladesh. The municipal corporation is one of the key administrative bodies of Bangladesh’s local government. Municipal corporation employees provide essential public services in the country’s semi-urban areas. Work motivation has been defined as a result of interaction between the individual and the environment. Local government studies indicate the work environment of the municipal corporation is unique because of its key colonial and political history, several reform attempts, non-western social perspectives, job functions, and traditional governance. The explorative purpose of this study is to find and analyse the conceptions of employees’ work motivation within this environment to expand a better understanding of work motivation. According to the purpose of this study, a qualitative method has been adopted, which has remained a very unpopular method among work motivational researchers in Bangladesh. Twenty-two semi-structured online interviews were conducted in this study. Phenomenographic research methodology has been adopted to describe the limited number of qualitatively different ways of experiencing work motivation. During the analysis of the semi-structured interview transcripts, the focus was on the employees' perspectives as employees experience work motivation or the second-order perspective to explore and analyse the conceptions. Based on the participants' collective experiences and dimensions of variation across the different ways of experiencing, six conceptions of employee work motivation to perform at the municipal corporation were identified in this study. The relationships between conceptions were further elaborated in terms of critical variations across the conceptions. Six dimensions of critical variations have emerged within and between the conceptions. In the outcome space, the relationships between conceptions and dimensions of critical variations are presented in a logical structure. The findings of this research study show significance to expand the understanding of work motivation and the research context of phenomenography. The findings of this research will contribute to the ongoing attention of contextual work motivational understanding from a Bangladeshi perspective and phenomenographic research conceptions in organisational behaviour studies.

Keywords: work motivation, qualitative, phenomenography, local government

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Authors: Jianxin Zhu, Na Liu

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Entry strategies play a vital role in the development of new enterprises in the catering industry. Different entry strategies will have different effects on the development of new enterprise. Based on the research of scholars at home and abroad, and combining the characteristics of the catering industry, the entry strategies are divided into low-price entry strategies and high-quality entry strategies. Facing the entry of new enterprise, the strategies of incumbent enterprises are divided into response strategies and non-response strategies. This paper uses evolutionary game theory to study the strategic interaction mechanism between incumbent companies and new enterprises. When different initial values and parameter values are set, which strategy will the two-game subjects choose, respectively? Using matlab2016 for numerical simulation, the results show that the choice of strategies for new enterprise and incumbent enterprise is influenced by more than one factor, and the system has different evolution trends under different circumstances. When the parameters were set, the choice of two subjects' strategies mainly depends on the net profit between the strategies.

Keywords: catering industry, entry strategy, evolutionary game, strategic interaction mechanism

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Authors: Siamak Dawazdah Emami, Amin Khodaei, Harith Bin Ahmad, Hairul A. Adbul-Rashid

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The Fano resonance effect on plasmonic nanoparticle materials results in such materials possessing a number of unique optical properties, and the potential applicability for sensing, nonlinear devices and slow-light devices. A Fano resonance is a consequence of coherent interference between superradiant and subradiant hybridized plasmon modes. Incident light on subradiant modes will initiate excitation that results in superradiant modes, and these superradient modes possess zero or finite dipole moments alongside a comparable negligible coupling with light. This research work details the derivation of an electrodynamics coupling model for the interaction of dipolar transitions and radiation via plasmonic nanoclusters such as quadrimers, pentamers and heptamers. The directivity calculation is analyzed in order to qualify the redirection of emission. The geometry of a configured array of nanostructures strongly influenced the transmission and reflection properties, which subsequently resulted in the directivity of each antenna being related to the nanosphere size and gap distances between the nanospheres in each model’s structure. A well-separated configuration of nanospheres resulted in the structure behaving similarly to monomers, with spectra peaks of a broad superradiant mode being centered within the vicinity of 560 nm wavelength. Reducing the distance between ring nanospheres in pentamers and heptamers to 20~60 nm caused the coupling factor and charge distributions to increase and invoke a subradiant mode centered within the vicinity of 690 nm. Increasing the outside ring’s nanosphere distance from the centered nanospheres caused the coupling factor to decrease, with the coupling factor being inversely proportional to cubic of the distance between nanospheres. This phenomenon led to a dramatic decrease of the superradiant mode at a 200 nm distance between the central nanosphere and outer rings. Effects from a superradiant mode vanished beyond a 240 nm distance between central and outer ring nanospheres.

Keywords: fano resonance, optical antenna, plasmonic, nano-clusters

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Authors: Kudakwashe Diana Nyamugure

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Engine design has evolved to suit new industry standards of smaller compact designs that operate at high temperatures and even higher stress loads. Research has proven that the interaction of the bearing surface and the lubrication film is affected by the bearing's surface texture, geometry, and dimensional tolerances. The challenge now for the automotive manufacturing industry is to understand which processes can be applied on bearing surfaces to reduce the 65% energy loss in engines, 15% of which is caused by friction. This paper will discuss a post grinding process known as microfinishing which optimises the characteristics of a manufactured surface such as roughness, profile, and waviness. Microfinishing is becoming an increasing trend within the automotive industry and has so far been applied on high performance and mass production crank or cam bearing surfaces in bid of friction reduction and extended engine service life. In the near future, microfinishing will be applied to more engine components because of the stringent environmental regulations demands on fuel consumption, reliability, power, and service life of engine components.

Keywords: bearings, tribology, friction reduction, energy efficiency

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Authors: Niloofar Hooman

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The present study aims at investigating the positive and negative effects of using Smartphones on couples committed relationships. Despite the fact that many couples may benefit from the positive aspects of Smartphones, it is not clear how their feeling of trust, intimacy and connection in their relationships get affected by Smartphones. This is important as it highlights the ambivalent influences of Smartphones on couple’s relationships. On the one hand, Smartphones can enhance their social and emotional interactions and on the other hand, they can cause mistrust and isolation between them. Trust, intimacy and honesty are of important factors through which a stable relationship can be constructed. Nevertheless, some characteristics of Smartphones such as being fluid and personalized can harm the relationship and consequently destroy it. Thus, it is necessary to investigate how Iranian couples in committed relationships use Smartphone to manage their relationship and how couples feel Smartphone have enhanced or detracted a sense of trust, intimacy and connection with their partner? In the first phase of the study, in-depth-interview will be conducted with 30 couples and data will be analyzed using NVIVO software. In the next phase of the study, 1500 participants aged 20 and above will be selected based on cluster sampling. Data will be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Keywords: couple, family, internet, intimacy, Smartphone, trust

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Authors: Jiashu Shen

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This study aims at exploring the characteristics of sexual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of Chinese college students from the 'one-child' families compared with those with siblings. This study utilized the data from the 'National College Student Survey on Sexual and Reproductive Health 2019'. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between the 'only-child' and their sexual knowledge, sexual attitudes, sexual behaviors, and risky sexual behaviors (RSB) stratified by sex and home regions, respectively. Compared with students with siblings, the 'only-child' students scored higher in sex-related knowledge (only-child students: 4.49 ± 2.28, students with siblings: 3.60 ± 2.27). Stronger associations between only-child and more liberal sexual attitudes were found in urban areas, including the approval of premarital sexual intercourse (OR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.50-1.65) and multiple sexual partners (OR: 1.85, 95% CI: 1.72-1.99). For risky sexual behaviors, being only-child is more likely to use condoms in first sexual intercourse, especially among male students (OR: 0.68, 95% CI: 0.58-0.80). Only-child students are more likely to have more sexual knowledge, more liberal sexual attitude, and less risky sexual behavior. Further health policy and sex education should focus more on students with siblings.

Keywords: attitudes and behaviors, only-child students, sexual knowledge, students with siblings

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Authors: Mohamad Reza Khodabakhsh

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Violence against women is a historical phenomenon; although its form and type are common in various societies and cultures, this type of violence occurs in terms of physical, psychological, financial, and sexual dimensions. This is the cause of many social deviations and endangers the center of the family as the most important institution. This research seeks to investigate the relationship between personality characteristics and the tendency to addiction to domestic violence. One hundred fifty women and one hundred fifty men were selected by the available sampling method. One hundred fifty men were admitted to drug addiction camps, and women included domestic violence cases. A questionnaire on addiction tendency, Five Personality Traits (NEO), and attitudes toward violence against women was used. Data were analyzed in descriptive and inferential statistics. The data were analyzed at the level of descriptive mean, mean, and standard deviation and analyzed using SPSS 20 software using correlation and analysis of variance at the level of inferential level. And the data were analyzed at the p≤0.05 significance level. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between personality traits and a tendency to addiction and domestic violence.

Keywords: personality, addiction, domestic violence, family

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Authors: A. Goodarzian, A. Ghasemipanah, R. Ziaie Moayed, H. Niroumand

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The problem of soil stabilization has been one of the important issues in geotechnical engineering. Nowadays, nanomaterials have revolutionized many industries. In this research, improvement of the Kerman fine-grained soil by nanozeolite and nanobentonite additives separately has been investigated using Atterberg Limits and unconfined compression test. In unconfined compression test, the samples were prepared with 3, 5 and 7% nano additives, with 1, 7 and 28 days curing time with strain control method. Finally, the effect of different percentages of nanozeolite and nanobentonite on the geotechnical behavior and characteristics of Kerman fine-grained soil was investigated. The results showed that with increasing the amount of nanozeolite and also nanobentonite to fine-grained soil, the soil exhibits more compression strength. So that by adding 7% nanozeolite and nanobentonite with 1 day curing, the unconfined compression strength is 1.18 and 2.1 times higher than the unstabilized soil. In addition, the failure strain decreases in samples containing nanozeolite, whereas it increases in the presence of nanobentonite. Increasing the percentage of nanozeolite and nanobentonite also increased the elasticity modulus of soil.

Keywords: nanoparticles, soil improvement, clayey soil, unconfined compression stress

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Authors: M. Sadique, S. Ainane, Y. F. Yap, P. Rostron, E. Al Hajri

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The presence of sand in production lines in the oil and gas industries causes material degradation due to erosion-corrosion. The material degradation caused by erosion-corrosion in pipelines can result in a high cost of monitoring and maintenance and in major accidents. The process of erosion-corrosion consists of erosion, corrosion, and their interactions. Investigating and understanding how the erosion-corrosion process affects the degradation process in certain materials will allow for a reduction in economic loss and help prevent accidents. In this study, material loss due to erosion-corrosion of mild steel under impingement of sand-laden water at 90˚ impingement angle is investigated using a submerged impingement jet (SIJ) test. In particular, effects of jet velocity and sand loading on TWL due to erosion-corrosion, weight loss due to pure erosion and erosion-corrosion interactions, at a temperature of 29-33 °C in sea water environment (3.5% NaCl), are analyzed. The results show that the velocity and sand loading have a great influence on the removal of materials, and erosion is more dominant under all conditions studied. Changes in the surface characteristics of the specimen after impingement test are also discussed.

Keywords: erosion-corrosion, flow velocity, jet impingement, sand loading

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Authors: Vikrant Gupta, Amrit Goswami

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The fixed income market forms the basis of the modern financial market. All other assets in financial markets derive their value from the bond market. Owing to its over-the-counter nature, corporate bonds have relatively less data publicly available and thus is researched upon far less compared to Equities. Bond price prediction is a complex financial time series forecasting problem and is considered very crucial in the domain of finance. The bond prices are highly volatile and full of noise which makes it very difficult for traditional statistical time-series models to capture the complexity in series patterns which leads to inefficient forecasts. To overcome the inefficiencies of statistical models, various machine learning techniques were initially used in the literature for more accurate forecasting of time-series. However, simple machine learning methods such as linear regression, support vectors, random forests fail to provide efficient results when tested on highly complex sequences such as stock prices and bond prices. hence to capture these intricate sequence patterns, various deep learning-based methodologies have been discussed in the literature. In this study, a recurrent neural network-based deep learning model using long short term networks for prediction of corporate bond prices has been discussed. Long Short Term networks (LSTM) have been widely used in the literature for various sequence learning tasks in various domains such as machine translation, speech recognition, etc. In recent years, various studies have discussed the effectiveness of LSTMs in forecasting complex time-series sequences and have shown promising results when compared to other methodologies. LSTMs are a special kind of recurrent neural networks which are capable of learning long term dependencies due to its memory function which traditional neural networks fail to capture. In this study, a simple LSTM, Stacked LSTM and a Masked LSTM based model has been discussed with respect to varying input sequences (three days, seven days and 14 days). In order to facilitate faster learning and to gradually decompose the complexity of bond price sequence, an Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) has been used, which has resulted in accuracy improvement of the standalone LSTM model. With a variety of Technical Indicators and EMD decomposed time series, Masked LSTM outperformed the other two counterparts in terms of prediction accuracy. To benchmark the proposed model, the results have been compared with traditional time series models (ARIMA), shallow neural networks and above discussed three different LSTM models. In summary, our results show that the use of LSTM models provide more accurate results and should be explored more within the asset management industry.

Keywords: bond prices, long short-term memory, time series forecasting, empirical mode decomposition

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Authors: Neşe Taşci, Soner Çubuk, Ece Kök Yetimoğlu, M. Vezir Kahraman

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Bisphenol-A (BPA), 2,2-bis(4-hydroxyphenly)propane, is one of the highest usage volume chemicals in the world. Studies showed that BPA maybe has negative effects on the central nervous system, immune and endocrine systems. Several of analytical methods for the analysis of BPA have been reported including electrochemical processes, chemical oxidation, ozonization, spectrophotometric, chromatographic techniques. Compared with other conventional analytical techniques, optic sensors are reliable, providing quick results, low cost, easy to use, stands out as a much more advantageous method because of the high precision and sensitivity. In this work, a new photocured polymeric fluorescence sensor was prepared and characterized for Bisphenol-A (BPA) analysis. Characterization of the membrane was carried out by Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) techniques. The response characteristics of the sensor including dynamic range, pH effect and response time were systematically investigated. Acknowledgment: This work was supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under Grant 115Y469.

Keywords: bisphenol-a, fluorescence, photopolymerization, polymeric sensor

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Authors: Safee Chaudhary, Mahnoor Naseer Gondal, Hira Anees Awan, Abdul Rehman, Ammar Arif, Risham Hussain, Huma Khawar, Zainab Arshad, Muhammad Faizyab Ali Chaudhary, Waleed Ahmed, Muhammad Umer Sultan, Bibi Amina, Salaar Khan, Muhammad Moaz Ahmad, Osama Shiraz Shah, Hadia Hameed, Muhammad Farooq Ahmad Butt, Muhammad Ahmad, Sameer Ahmed, Fayyaz Ahmed, Omer Ishaq, Waqar Nabi, Wim Vanderbauwhede, Bilal Wajid, Huma Shehwana, Muhammad Tariq, Amir Faisal

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Cancer is a manifestation of multifactorial deregulations in biomolecular pathways. These deregulations arise from the complex multi-scale interplay between cellular and extracellular factors. Such multifactorial aberrations at gene, protein, and extracellular scales need to be investigated systematically towards decoding the underlying mechanisms and orchestrating therapeutic interventions for patient treatment. In this work, we propose ‘TISON’, a next-generation web-based multiscale modeling platform for clinical systems oncology. TISON’s unique modeling abstraction allows a seamless coupling of information from biomolecular networks, cell decision circuits, extra-cellular environments, and tissue geometries. The platform can undertake multiscale sensitivity analysis towards in silico biomarker identification and drug evaluation on cellular phenotypes in user-defined tissue geometries. Furthermore, integration of cancer expression databases such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Human Proteome Atlas (HPA) facilitates in the development of personalized therapeutics. TISON is the next-evolution of multiscale cancer modeling and simulation platforms and provides a ‘zero-code’ model development, simulation, and analysis environment for application in clinical settings.

Keywords: systems oncology, cancer systems biology, cancer therapeutics, personalized therapeutics, cancer modelling

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Authors: Jingwen Shan

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In order to explore the key factors affecting the robot program learning intention of school students, this study takes the technology acceptance model as the theoretical basis and invites 167 students from Jiading District of Shanghai as the research subjects. In the robot course, the model of school students on their learning behavior is constructed. By verifying the causal path relationship between variables, it is concluded that teachers can enhance students’ perceptual usefulness to robotics courses by enhancing subjective norms, entertainment perception, and reducing technical anxiety, such as focusing on the gradual progress of programming and analyzing learner characteristics. Students can improve perceived ease of use by enhancing self-efficacy. At the same time, robot hardware designers can optimize in terms of entertainment and interactivity, which will directly or indirectly increase the learning intention of the robot course. By changing these factors, the learning behavior of primary and secondary school students can be more sustainable.

Keywords: TAM, learning behavior intentions, robot courses, primary and secondary school students

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Authors: Seul-Ki Park, Jong-Chun Park, Gyu-Mok Jeon, Dae-Kyung Ock, Seung-Gyu Jeong

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Rogue waves cause frequent accidents of ships and offshore structures, which can result in severe damage to the structures. The Rogue waves, which are also known as big waves, freak waves, extreme waves, monster waves, focused waves, giant waves and abnormal waves, are unexpected and suddenly appearing, and can have a breaking force to destroy the structure even though modern structures are designed to tolerate a breaking wave. In the present study, a series of focused waves are numerically reproduced by concentrating nonlinear multi-directional waves into a target point using a commercial CFD software, Star-CCM+. A flow analysis for investigating the physical characteristics of the focused waves is performed using the Star-CCM+, while it has several difficulties to examine the inner properties of the waves in existing potential theory and experiments. Additionally, the 6-DOF (Degree of Freedom) motion of a floating body interacting with the focused waves are simulated, and the dynamic response of the body are discussed.

Keywords: multidirectional waves, focused waves, rogue waves, wave-structure interaction, numerical wave tank, computational fluid dynamics

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Authors: Shatirah Akib, Hossein Basser, Hojat Karami, Afshin Jahangirzadeh

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Bridge piers which are constructed in the track of high water rivers cause some variations in the flow patterns. This variation mostly is a result of the changes in river sections. Decreasing the river section, bridge piers significantly impress the flow patterns. Once the flow approaches the piers, the stream lines change their order, causing the appearance of different flow patterns around the bridge piers. New flow patterns are created following the geometry and the other technical characteristics of the piers. One of the most significant consequences of this event is the scour generated around the bridge piers which threatens the safety of the structure. In order to determine the properties of scour holes, to find maximum depth of the scour is an important factor. In this manuscript a numerical simulation of the scour around Marand-Soofian route bridge piers has been carried out via SSIIM 2.0 Software and the amount of maximum scour has been achieved subsequently. Eventually the methods for retrofitting of bridge piers against scours and also the methods for decreasing the amount of scour have been offered.

Keywords: scour, bridge pier, numerical simulation, SSIIM 2.0

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Authors: A. Hassannia, S. Ramezani

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The technology of superconductivity has developed in many power system devices such as transmission cable, transformer, current limiter, motor and generator. Superconducting wires can carry high density current without loss, which is the capability that is used to design the compact, lightweight and more efficient electrical machines. Superconducting motors have found applications in marine and air propulsion systems as well as superconducting generators are considered in low power hydraulic and wind generators. This paper presents a rim-driven superconducting synchronous generator for hydraulic power plant. The rim-driven concept improves the performance of hydro turbine. Furthermore, high magnetic field that is produced by superconducting windings allows replacing the rotor core. As a consequent, the volume and weight of the machine is decreased significantly. In this paper, a 1 MW coreless rim-driven superconducting synchronous generator is designed. Main performance characteristics of the proposed machine are then evaluated using finite elements method and compared to an ordinary similar size synchronous generator.

Keywords: coreless machine, electrical machine design, hydraulic generator, rim-driven machine, superconducting generator

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Authors: Hanan Rizk

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A heat exchanger is a device used to mix liquids having different temperatures. In this case, the temperature control becomes a critical objective. This research work presents the temperature control of the double-pipe heat exchanger (multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system), which is modeled as first-order coupled hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs), using conventional and advanced control techniques and develops appropriate robust control strategy to meet stability requirements and performance objectives. We designed a PID controller and H-infinity controller for a heat exchanger (HE) system. Frequency characteristics of sensitivity functions and open-loop and closed-loop time responses are simulated using MATLAB software, and the stability of the system is analyzed using Kalman's test. The simulation results have demonstrated that the H-infinity controller is more efficient than PID in terms of robustness and performance.

Keywords: heat exchanger, multi-input multi-output system, MATLAB simulation, partial differential equations, PID controller, robust control

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Authors: J. Shamash

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The high-school curriculum in algebra deals mainly with the solution of different types of equations. However, modern algebra has a completely different viewpoint and is concerned with algebraic structures and operations. A question then arises: What might be the relevance and contribution of an abstract algebra course for developing expertise and mathematical perspective in secondary school mathematics instruction? This is the focus of this paper. The course Algebra: From Equations to Structures is a carefully designed abstract algebra course for Israeli secondary school mathematics teachers. The course provides an introduction to algebraic structures and modern abstract algebra, and links abstract algebra to the high-school curriculum in algebra. It follows the historical attempts of mathematicians to solve polynomial equations of higher degrees, attempts which resulted in the development of group theory and field theory by Galois and Abel. In other words, algebraic structures grew out of a need to solve certain problems, and proved to be a much more fruitful way of viewing them. This theorems in both group theory and field theory. Along the historical ‘journey’, many other major results in algebra in the past 150 years are introduced, and recent directions that current research in algebra is taking are highlighted. This course is part of a unique master’s program – the Rothschild-Weizmann Program – offered by the Weizmann Institute of Science, especially designed for practicing Israeli secondary school teachers. A major component of the program comprises mathematical studies tailored for the students at the program. The rationale and structure of the course Algebra: From Equations to Structures are described, and its relevance to teaching school algebra is examined by analyzing three kinds of data sources. The first are position papers written by the participating teachers regarding the relevance of advanced mathematics studies to expertise in classroom instruction. The second data source are didactic materials designed by the participating teachers in which they connected the mathematics learned in the mathematics courses to the school curriculum and teaching. The third date source are final projects carried out by the teachers based on material learned in the course.

Keywords: abstract algebra , linking abstract algebra and school mathematics, school algebra, secondary school mathematics, teacher professional development

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Authors: Sireethorn Nimitvilai, Ussanee Poolvivatchaikarn, Nuchanart Tomeun

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Objective: To determine the simple laboratory parameters to predict disease severity among COVID-19 patients in resource-limited settings. Material and methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted at Nakhonpathom Hospital, a 722-bed tertiary care hospital, with an average of 50,000 admissions per year, during April 15 and May 15, 2021. Eligible patients were adults aged ≥ 15 years who were hospitalized with COVID-19. Baseline characteristics, comorbid conditions ad laboratory findings at admission were collected. Predictive factors for severe COVID-19 infection were analyzed. Result: There were 207 patients (79 male and 128 female) and the mean age was 46.7 (16.8) years. Of these, 39 cases (18.8%) were severe and 168 (81.2%) cases were non-severe. Factors associated with severe COVID-19 were neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio ≥ 4 (OR 8.1, 95%CI 2.3-20.3, P < 0.001) and C-reactive protein to albumin ratio ≥ 10 (OR 3.49, 95%CI 1.3-9.1, p 0.01). Conclusions: Complete blood counts, C-reactive protein and albumin are simple, inexpensive, widely available tests and can be used to predict severe COVID-19 in resource-limited settings.

Keywords: COVID-19, predictor of severity, resource-limiting settings, simple laboratory parameters

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Authors: V. Vicente E. Mujica, Gustavo Gonzalez

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The global coverage of broadband multimedia and internet-based services in terrestrial-satellite networks demand particular interests for satellite providers in order to enhance services with low latencies and high signal quality to diverse users. In particular, the delay of on-board processing is an inherent source of latency in a satellite communication that sometimes is discarded for the end-to-end delay of the satellite link. The frame work for this paper includes modelling of an on-orbit satellite payload using an agent model that can reproduce the properties of processing delays. In essence, a comparison of different spatial interpolation methods is carried out to evaluate physical data obtained by an GEO satellite in order to define a discretization function for determining that delay. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed agent and the development of a delay discretization function are together validated by simulating an hybrid satellite and terrestrial network. Simulation results show high accuracy according to the characteristics of initial data points of processing delay for Ku bands.

Keywords: terrestrial-satellite networks, latency, on-orbit satellite payload, simulation

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Authors: Clare Maxwell, Lorna Porcellato, Valerie Fleming, Kate Fleming

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A review of global online forums and social media reveals large numbers of mothers experiencing bottle refusal by their breastfed baby. It is difficult to determine precise numbers due to a lack of data, however, established virtual communities illustrate thousands of posts in relation to the issue. Mothers report various negative consequences of bottle refusal including delaying their return to work, time and financial outlay spent on methods to overcome it and experiencing stress, anxiety, and resentment of breastfeeding. A search of the literature revealed no studies being identified, and due to a lack of epidemiological data, a study investigating mother’s experiences of bottle refusal by their breastfed baby was undertaken. The aim of the study was to investigate UK mothers’ experiences of bottle refusal by their breastfed baby. Data were collected using an online questionnaire collecting quantitative and qualitative data. 841 UK mothers who had experienced or were experiencing bottle refusal by their breastfed baby completed the questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and non-parametric testing. The results showed 61% (516/840) of mothers reported their breastfed baby was still refusing/had never accepted a bottle, with 39% (324/840) reporting their baby had eventually accepted. The most frequently reported reason to introduce a bottle was so partner/family could feed the baby 59% (499/839). 75% (634/841) of mothers intended their baby to feed on a bottle ‘occasionally’. Babies who accepted a bottle were more likely to be older at 1st attempt to introduce one than those babies who refused (Mdn = 12 weeks v 8 weeks, n = 286) (p = <0.001). Length of time taken to acceptance was 9 weeks (Mdn = 9, IQR = 18, R = 103.9, n = 306) with the older the baby was at 1st attempt to introduce a bottle being associated with a shorter length of time to acceptance (p = < 0.002). 60% (500/841) of mothers stated that none of the methods they used had worked. 26% (222/841) of mothers reported bottle refusal had had a negative impact upon their overall breastfeeding experience. 47% (303/604) reported they would have tried to introduce a bottle earlier to prevent refusal. This study provides a unique insight into the scenario of bottle refusal by breastfed babies. It highlights that bottle refusal by breastfed babies is a significant issue, which requires recognition from those communicating breastfeeding information to mothers.

Keywords: bottle feeding, bottle refusal, breastfeeding, infant feeding

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Authors: Deliou Adel, Saadalah Younes, Belkaid Khmissi, Dehbi Meriem

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Composite materials, in the most common sense of the term, are a set of synthetic materials designed and used mainly for structural applications; the mechanical function is dominant. The mechanical behaviors of the composite, as well as the degradation mechanisms leading to its rupture, depend on the nature of the constituents and on the architecture of the fiber preform. The profile is required because it guides the engineer in designing structures with precise properties in relation to the needs. This work is about studying the mechanical behavior of unidirectional composite laminates according to different failure criteria. Varying strength parameter values make it possible to compare the ultimate mechanical characteristics obtained by the criteria of Tsai-Hill, Fisher and maximum stress. The laminate is subjected to uniaxial tensile membrane forces. Estimates of their ultimate strengths and the plotting of the failure envelope constitute the principal axis of this study. Using the theory of maximum stress, we can determine the various modes of damage of the composite. The different components of the deformation are presented for different orientations of fibers.

Keywords: unidirectional kevlar/epoxy composite, failure criterion, membrane stress, deformations, failure envelope

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Authors: Naima Nur, Safa Islam, Saeema Islam, Md. Faridul Alam

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Background: The worldwide increase in pediatric presumptive tuberculosis (TB) is the most life-threatening challenge in effectively controlling TB. The objective of this study was to determine the proportion of presumptive TB and the factors associated with it. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between March and November 2013 at ICDDR-Bangladesh. Two hundred twelve pulmonary and extra-pulmonary specimens were collected from 84 suspected pediatric patients diagnosed with TB based on their clinical symptoms/radiological findings. Presumptive TB and confirmed TB were considered presumptive TB and non-presumptive TB and were isolated by smear-microscopy, culture, and GeneXpert. Logistic regression was used to analyze associations between outcome and predictor variables. Results: The proportion of presumptive TB was 85.7%, and 14.3% of non-presumptive TB. In presumptive TB, vaccine scars, family TB history, and school-going children were 16.6%, 33.3%, and 56.9%, respectively. In contrast, vaccine scars and family TB history were 8.3%, and school-going children were 58.3% in non-presumptive TB. Significant factors did not appear in the logistic regression analysis. Conclusion: Despite the high proportion of presumptive TB, there was no statistically significant between presumptive TB and non-presumptive TB.

Keywords: presumptive tuberculosis, confirmed tuberculosis, patient's characteristics, diagnosis

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Authors: Adilah Shariff, Radin Hakim, Nurhayati Abdullah

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Utilisation of biomass feedstock for biochar has received increasing attention because of their potential for carbon sequestration and soil amendment. The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics of rubber wood as a biomass feedstock for biochar via slow pyrolysis process. This was achieved by using proximate, ultimate, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) as well as heating value, pH and lignocellulosic determination. Rubber wood contains 4.13 mf wt.% moisture, 86.30 mf wt.% volatile matter, 0.60 mf wt.% ash content, and 13.10 mf wt.% fixed carbon. The ultimate analysis shows that rubber wood consists of 44.33 mf wt.% carbon, 6.26 mf wt.% hydrogen, 19.31 mf wt.% nitrogen, 0.31 mf wt.% sulphur, and 29.79 mf wt.% oxygen. The higher heating value of rubber wood is 22.5 MJ/kg, and its lower heating value is 21.2 MJ/kg. At 27 °C, the pH value of rubber wood is 6.83 which is acidic. The lignocellulosic analysis revealed that rubber wood composition consists of 2.63 mf wt.% lignin, 20.13 mf wt.% cellulose, and 65.04 mf wt.% hemicellulose. The volatile matter to fixed carbon ratio is 6.58. This led to a biochar yield of 25.14 wt.% at 500 °C. Rubber wood is an environmental friendly feedstock due to its low sulphur content. Rubber wood therefore is a suitable and a potential feedstock for biochar production via slow pyrolysis.

Keywords: biochar, biomass, rubber wood, slow pyrolysis

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Authors: Caspar S. Carson, Gabriel W. Prather, Nicholas E. Wong, Jeffery R. Anton, William H. McCoy

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Cutibacterium acnes is a commensal bacterium found on human skin that has been linked to acne. C. acnes can also be an opportunistic pathogen when it infiltrates the body during surgery. This pathogen can cause dangerous infections of medical implants, such as shoulder replacements, leading to life-threatening blood infections. Compounding this issue, C. acnes resistance to many antibiotics has become an increasing problem worldwide, creating a need for special forms of treatment. C. acnes expresses the protein RoxP, and it requires this protein to colonize human skin. Though this protein is required for C. acnes skin colonization, its function is not yet understood. Inhibition of RoxP function might be an effective treatment for C. acnes infections. To develop such reagents, the McCoy Laboratory generated four unique anti-RoxP antibodies. Preliminary studies in the McCoy Lab have established that each antibody binds a distinct site on RoxP. To assess the potential of these antibodies as therapeutics, it is necessary to specifically characterize these antibody epitopes and evaluate them in assays that assess their ability to inhibit RoxP-dependent C. acnes growth. To provide material for these studies, an antibody expression construct, Fv-clasp(v2), was adapted to encode anti-RoxP antibody sequences. The author hypothesizes that this expression strategy can produce sufficient amounts of >95% pure antibody fragments for further characterization of these antibodies. Four anti-RoxP Fv-clasp(v2) expression constructs (pET vector-based) were transformed into E. coli BL21-Gold(DE3) cells and a small-scale expression and purification trial was performed for each construct to evaluate anti-RoxP Fv-clasp(v2) yield and purity. Successful expression and purification of these antibody constructs will allow for their use in structural studies, such as protein crystallography and cryogenic electron microscopy. Such studies would help to define the antibody binding sites on RoxP, which could then be leveraged in the development of certain methods to treat C. acnes infection through RoxP inhibition.

Keywords: structural biology, protein expression, infectious disease, antibody, therapeutics, E. coli

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Authors: Chico Horacio Jose Sambo

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Recently neural network has gained popularity when come to solve complex nonlinear problems. Permeability is one of fundamental reservoir characteristics system that are anisotropic distributed and non-linear manner. For this reason, permeability prediction from well log data is well suited by using neural networks and other computer-based techniques. The main goal of this paper is to predict reservoir permeability from well logs data by using neural network approach. A multi-layered perceptron trained by back propagation algorithm was used to build the predictive model. The performance of the model on net results was measured by correlation coefficient. The correlation coefficient from testing, training, validation and all data sets was evaluated. The results show that neural network was capable of reproducing permeability with accuracy in all cases, so that the calculated correlation coefficients for training, testing and validation permeability were 0.96273, 0.89991 and 0.87858, respectively. The generalization of the results to other field can be made after examining new data, and a regional study might be possible to study reservoir properties with cheap and very fast constructed models.

Keywords: neural network, permeability, multilayer perceptron, well log

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Authors: Siti Mariani, Arwin DW Sumari, Retno Gumilang Dewi

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This paper analyzes the necessity of a structured tariff calculation for geothermal electricity in Indonesia. Indonesia is blessed with abundant natural resources and a choices of energy resources to generate electricity among other are coal, gas, biomass, hydro to geothermal, creating a fierce competition in electricity tariffs. While geothermal is inline with energy security principle and green growth initiative, it requires a huge capital funding. Geothermal electricity development consists of phases of project with each having its own financial characteristics. The Indonesian government has set a support in the form of ceiling price of geothermal electricity tariff by 11 U.S cents / kWh. However, the government did not set a levelized cost of geothermal, as an indication of lower limit capacity class, to which support is given. The government should establish a levelized cost of geothermal energy to reflect its financial capability in supporting geothermal development. Aside of that, the government is also need to establish a structured tariff calculation to reflect a fair and transparent business cooperation.

Keywords: load fator, levelized cost of geothermal, geothermal power plant, structured tariff calculation

Procedia PDF Downloads 446

Authors: Klara Masnicova, Jiri Chaloupek

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Flammability plays an important role in applications such as thermal and acoustic insulation and other technical nonwoven textiles. The study was conducted in an attempt to investigate the flammability behavior of nonwoven textiles in relation to their structural and material characteristics, with emphasis given to the blending ratios of flammable and non-flammable fibers or fibers with reduced flammability. Nonwoven structures made of blends of viscose/oxidized polyacrylonitrile (VS/oxidized PAN fibers and polyethylene terephthalate/oxidized polyacrylonitrile (PET/oxidized PAN) fibers in several bulk densities are evaluated. The VS/oxidized PAN blend is model material. The flammability was studied using a cone calorimeter. Reaction to fire was observed using the small flame test method. Interestingly, the results show some of the blending ratios do not react to the heat in linear response to bulk density. This outcome can have a huge impact on future product development in fire safety and for the general understanding of flammability behavior of nonwovens made of staple fibers.

Keywords: bulk density, cone calorimetry, flammability, nonwoven textiles

Procedia PDF Downloads 311

Authors: Rachel Talbot, Nasuh Malas

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Stigma in child and adolescent psychiatry continues to be a significant barrier for youth to receive much needed psychiatric care. Parents misperceptions regarding mental health may interfere with their child’s care and negatively influence their child’s view of mental health. For some children, their first experience with psychiatry may occur during medical hospitalization when they are seen by the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison (C/L) Service. Despite this unique role, there is limited data on how to address mental health stigma with patients and families within the context of Child and Adolescent C/L Psychiatry. This study explores the use of a brief introductory video with messages from the psychiatry C/L team, families who have accessed mental health consultation in the hospital, as well as clips of family and C/L team interactions to address parental stigma of psychiatry. Common stigmatized concerns shared by parents include concerns about confidentiality, later ramifications of mental healthcare, outsider status, and parental self-blame. There are also stigmatized concerns about psychiatric medication use including overmedication, sedation, long-term effects, medicating ‘real problems’ and personality blunting. Each of these are addressed during the video parents will see with the intent of reducing negative parental perceptions relating to mental healthcare. For this study, families are given a survey highlighting these concerns, prior to and after watching the video. Pre-and post-video responses are compared with the hypothesis that watching the video will effectively reduce parental stigma about psychiatric care. Data collection is currently underway and will be completed by the end of November 2017 with data analysis completed by January 2018. This study will also give vital information about the demographic differences in perceptions of stigma so future interventions can be targeted towards those with higher perceived stigma. This study posits that use of an introductory video is an effective strategy to combat stigma and help educate and empower families. In this way, we will be reducing further barriers for patients and families to seek out mental health resources and supports that are often desperately needed for these youths.

Keywords: child and adolescent psychiatry, consult-liaison psychiatry, media, stigma

Procedia PDF Downloads 197