Search results for: fast neutrons

Authors: Bukra Kalayci, Geraldine Brennan

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Introduction: Over the last decade, a proliferation of literature related to textile and fashion business in the context of sustainable production and consumption has emerged. However, the economic and environmental benefits of solid waste recovery have not been comprehensively searched. Therefore at the end-of-life or end-of-use textile waste management remains a gap. Solid textile waste reuse and recycling principles of the circular economy need to be developed to close the disposal stage of the textile supply chain. The environmental problems associated with the over-production and –consumption of textile products arise. Together with growing population and fast fashion culture the share of solid textile waste in municipal waste is increasing. Focusing on post-consumer textile waste literature, this research explores the opportunities, obstacles and enablers or success factors associated with closed-loop textile business systems. Methodology: A systematic literature review was conducted in order to identify best practices and gaps from the existing body of knowledge related to closed-loop post-consumer textile waste initiatives over the last decade. Selected keywords namely: ‘cradle-to-cradle ‘, ‘circular* economy* ‘, ‘closed-loop* ‘, ‘end-of-life* ‘, ‘reverse* logistic* ‘, ‘take-back* ‘, ‘remanufacture* ‘, ‘upcycle* ‘ with the combination of (and) ‘fashion* ‘, ‘garment* ‘, ‘textile* ‘, ‘apparel* ‘, clothing* ‘ were used and the time frame of the review was set between 2005 to 2017. In order to obtain a broad coverage, Web of Knowledge and Science Direct databases were used, and peer-reviewed journal articles were chosen. The keyword search identified 299 number of papers which was further refined into 54 relevant papers that form the basis of the in-depth thematic analysis. Preliminary findings: A key finding was that the existing literature is predominantly conceptual rather than applied or empirical work. Moreover, the enablers or success factors, obstacles and opportunities to implement closed-loop systems in the textile industry were not clearly articulated and the following considerations were also largely overlooked in the literature. While the circular economy suggests multiple cycles of discarded products, components or materials, most research has to date tended to focus on a single cycle. Thus the calculations of environmental and economic benefits of closed-loop systems are limited to one cycle which does not adequately explore the feasibility or potential benefits of multiple cycles. Additionally, the time period textile products spend between point of sale, and end-of-use/end-of-life return is a crucial factor. Despite past efforts to study closed-loop textile systems a clear gap in the literature is the lack of a clear evaluation framework which enables manufacturers to clarify the reusability potential of textile products through consideration of indicators related too: quality, design, lifetime, length of time between manufacture and product return, volume of collected disposed products, material properties, and brand segment considerations (e.g. fast fashion versus luxury brands).

Keywords: circular fashion, closed loop business, product service systems, solid textile waste elimination

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Authors: S. Nickolas, Shobha K.

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The treatment of incomplete data is an important step in the data pre-processing. Missing values creates a noisy environment in all applications and it is an unavoidable problem in big data management and analysis. Numerous techniques likes discarding rows with missing values, mean imputation, expectation maximization, neural networks with evolutionary algorithms or optimized techniques and hot deck imputation have been introduced by researchers for handling missing data. Among these, imputation techniques plays a positive role in filling missing values when it is necessary to use all records in the data and not to discard records with missing values. In this paper we propose a novel artificial neural network based clustering algorithm, Adaptive Resonance Theory-2(ART2) for imputation of missing values in mixed attribute data sets. The process of ART2 can recognize learned models fast and be adapted to new objects rapidly. It carries out model-based clustering by using competitive learning and self-steady mechanism in dynamic environment without supervision. The proposed approach not only imputes the missing values but also provides information about handling the outliers.

Keywords: ART2, data imputation, clustering, missing data, neural network, pre-processing

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Authors: Aminu Fagge Muhammad

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The digital economy is fast becoming the most innovative and widest reaching economy in the world, especially in developing countries. The paper aimed at examining role of digital economy in the emerging countries like Nigeria. The methodology used in the study is Business Model Perspective: lying between the process and structural perspectives, bring in the idea of the new business models that are being enabled e.g. e-business or e-commerce. The paper concluded that, the policy objectives and measures, and processes and structures necessary to enhance digital economy growth and its contribution to socio-economic development. The finding reveals that, digital infrastructure is in part incomplete, costly and poorly-performing in emerging economies like Nigeria. The wider digital ecosystem suffers a shortfall in human capabilities, weak financing, and poor governance. It is also found that, Growth in the digital economy is exacerbating digital exclusion, inequality, adverse incorporation and other digital harms. It is recommended that, government in partnership with private sector should build strong local infrastructure to enable broadband availability and accessibility and to create an enabling environment for strong competition in the telecom and technology ecosystem.

Keywords: Digital Economy, Emerging Countries, Business Model , Nigeria

Procedia PDF Downloads 102

Authors: Hamad Almohamadi, Abdulrahman AlKassem, Majed Alamoudi

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Dumping Aluminum (Al) waste into landfills causes several health and environmental problems. The pyrolysis process could treat Al waste to produce AlCl₃ and H₂. Using the Aspen Plus software, a techno-economic and feasibility assessment has been performed for Al waste pyrolysis. The Aspen Plus simulation was employed to estimate the plant's mass and energy balance, which was assumed to process 100 dry metric tons of Al waste per day. This study looked at two cases of Al waste treatment. The first case produces 355 tons of AlCl₃ per day and 9 tons of H₂ per day without recycling. The conversion rate must be greater than 50% in case 1 to make a profit. In this case, the MSP for AlCl₃ is $768/ton. The plant would generate $25 million annually if the AlCl₃ were sold at $1000 per ton. In case 2 with recycling, the conversion has less impact on the plant's profitability than in case 1. Moreover, compared to case 1, the MSP of AlCl₃ has no significant influence on process profitability. In this scenario, if AlCl₃ were sold at $1000/ton, the process profit would be $58 million annually. Case 2 is better than case 1 because recycling Al generates a higher yield than converting it to AlCl₃ and H₂.

Keywords: aluminum waste, aspen plus, process modelling, fast pyrolysis, techno-economic assessment

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Authors: Yung-Chih Kuo, I-Hsuan Lee

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Solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) conjugated with aprotinin (Apr) and melanotransferrin antibody (Anti-MTf) were used to carry doxorubicin (Dox) across the blood–brain barrier (BBB) for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) chemotherapy. Dox-entrapped SLNs with grafted Apr and Anti-MTf (Apr-Anti-MTf-Dox-SLNs) were applied to a cultured monolayer comprising human brain-microvascular endothelial cells (HBMECs) with regulation of human astrocyte (HAs) and to a proliferated colony of U87MG cells. Based on the average particle diameter, zeta potential, entrapping efficiency of Dox, and grafting efficiency of Apr and Anti-MTf, we found that 40% (w/w) 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine in lipids were appropriate for fabricating Apr-Anti-MTf-Dox-SLNs. In addition, Apr-Anti-MTf-Dox-SLNs could prevent Dox from fast dissolution and did not induce a serious cytotoxicity to HBMECs and HAs when compared with free Dox. Moreover, the treatments with Apr-Anti-MTf-Dox-SLNs enhanced the ability of Dox to infuse the BBB and to inhibit the growth of GBM. The current Apr-Anti-MTf-Dox-SLNs can be a promising pharmacotherapeutic preparation to penetrate the BBB for malignant brain tumor treatment.

Keywords: solid lipid nanoparticle, glioblastoma multiforme, blood–brain barrier, doxorubicin

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Authors: Holly Sandberg, Christina McCoy, Khaled Mansy

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Eucalyptus Cloeziana, commonly known as Gympie Messmate, is a fast-growing hardwood native to Australia. Its quick growth makes it advantageous for carbon sequestering, while its strength class lends itself to structural applications. Market research shows that the demand for timber is growing, especially mass timber. An environmental product declaration, or EPD, for eucalyptus Cloeziana in the Australian market has been evaluated and compared to the EPD’s of steel and Douglas fir of the same region. An EPD follows a product throughout its life cycle, stating values for global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, and abiotic depletion potential. This paper highlights the market potential, as well as the environmental benefits and challenges to using Gympie Messmate as a structural building material. In addition, a case study is performed to compare steel, Douglas fir, and eucalyptus in terms of embodied carbon and structural weight within a single structural bay. Comparisons among the three materials highlight both the differences in structural capabilities as well as environmental impact.

Keywords: eucalyptus, timber, construction, structural, material

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Authors: Vinod Kumar Jatav, Dr. Vrijendra Singh

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WiMAX is an emerging wireless technology designed by WiMAX forum. WiMAX technology delivers broadband internet access with QoS, mobility and robust security. WiMAX is among the prominent mobile broadband wireless technology which laid the foundation for the next generation networks (NGN). The next-generation communication system for railway should facilitate high level network availability, fast mobility for high speed trains with reliability, high handover rate, the firmness of train operations, and high QoS. The system should also be capable to provide various railway services by transmitting big data efficiently. One of the most promising technologies for the next generation railway wireless communication is Mobile WiMAX. This paper analyses some of the network architectures for railway wireless communication and considers the elementary concepts to facilitate the users with broadband internet access on trains. The paper aims to recognize the suitability of Mobile WiMAX technology for the special requirements of broadband internet facilities and wireless telecommunication services of Railways.

Keywords: Broadband internet, IEEE 802.16e, mobile WiMAX, Railway wireless communication

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Authors: Yawen Wang, Hongchang Chen, Shaomei Li, Chao Gao, Jiangpeng Zhang

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As the main challenge for target tracking is accounting for target scale change and real-time, we combine Mean-Shift and PCA-SIFT algorithm together to solve the problem. We introduce similarity comparison method to determine how the target scale changes, and taking different strategies according to different situation. For target scale getting larger will cause location error, we employ backward tracking to reduce the error. Mean-Shift algorithm has poor performance when tracking scale-changing target due to the fixed bandwidth of its kernel function. In order to overcome this problem, we introduce PCA-SIFT matching. Through key point matching between target and template, that adjusting the scale of tracking window adaptively can be achieved. Because this algorithm is sensitive to wrong match, we introduce RANSAC to reduce mismatch as far as possible. Furthermore target relocating will trigger when number of match is too small. In addition we take comprehensive consideration about target deformation and error accumulation to put forward a new template update method. Experiments on five image sequences and comparison with 6 kinds of other algorithm demonstrate favorable performance of the proposed tracking algorithm.

Keywords: target tracking, PCA-SIFT, mean-shift, scale-adaptive

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Authors: A. Bayle, F. Plouraboué

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Water Distribution Network (WDN) still suffers from a lack of knowledge about fast pressure transient events prediction, although the latter may considerably impact their durability. Accidental or planned operating activities indeed give rise to complex pressure interactions and may drastically modified the local pressure value generating leaks and, in rare cases, pipe’s break. In this context, a numerical predictive analysis is conducted to prevent such event and optimize network management. A couple of Python/FORTRAN 90, home-made software, has been developed using Method Of Characteristic (MOC) solving for water-hammer equations. The solver is validated by direct comparison with theoretical and experimental measurement in simple configurations whilst afterward extended to network analysis. The algorithm's most costly steps are designed for parallel computation. A various set of boundary conditions and energetic losses models are considered for the network simulations. The results are analyzed in both real and frequencies domain and provide crucial information on the pressure distribution behavior within the network.

Keywords: energetic losses models, method of characteristic, numerical predictive analysis, water distribution network, water hammer

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Authors: Alessandro Marzucchini, Yie Sue Chua, Andrew Lian, Richard Shonn Mills

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A unique, fast and easy installed inter-module connection named Candle-Loc was developed and applied in several high-rise steel and reinforced concrete modular buildings in Singapore and Hong Kong, China. However, its effect on the global behaviour of modular buildings in high seismic zones was not studied. Therefore, the design concept and the structural performance of each component in this connection was investigated through analytical approach. Response spectrum, linear time-history, and nonlinear time-history analyses were conducted to investigate the effects of the different joint models of the Candle-Loc in the global analysis of high-rise buildings under high seismic loads. It is found that it is important to assess the level of plasticity developed in the inter-module connection under high seismic loads. The ductility of the lateral force resisting system influences the amount of load taken by the inter-module connections.

Keywords: high-rise, inter-module connection, nonlinear, seismic, time-history analysis

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Authors: Roza Afarin, Saeed Mozaffari

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The aim of this paper is image encryption using Genetic Algorithm (GA). The proposed encryption method consists of two phases. In modification phase, pixels locations are altered to reduce correlation among adjacent pixels. Then, pixels values are changed in the diffusion phase to encrypt the input image. Both phases are performed by GA with binary chromosomes. For modification phase, these binary patterns are generated by Local Binary Pattern (LBP) operator while for diffusion phase binary chromosomes are obtained by Bit Plane Slicing (BPS). Initial population in GA includes rows and columns of the input image. Instead of subjective selection of parents from this initial population, a random generator with predefined key is utilized. It is necessary to decrypt the coded image and reconstruct the initial input image. Fitness function is defined as average of transition from 0 to 1 in LBP image and histogram uniformity in modification and diffusion phases, respectively. Randomness of the encrypted image is measured by entropy, correlation coefficients and histogram analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed method is fast enough and can be used effectively for image encryption.

Keywords: correlation coefficients, genetic algorithm, image encryption, image entropy

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Authors: Olivia Meeschaert

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The Conference of the Parties (COP) refers to the countries that signed on to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This annual conference provides a platform for countries to voice their major climate concerns, negotiate on a number of global issues, and come to agreements with the world’s largest emitters on how to make incremental changes that will achieve global climate goals. Historically, the outcome of COP includes major climate pledges and international agreements. COP27 will take place in Egypt at the beginning of November 2022. The 197 parties will come together to develop solutions to the dire consequences of climate change that many people around the world are already experiencing. The war in Ukraine will require a different tone from last year’s COP, particularly given that major impacts of the war are being felt throughout Europe and have had a detrimental effect on the region’s progress in achieving the benchmarks set in their climate pledges. Last year’s COP opened with many climate advocates feeling optimistic but the commitments made in Glasgow have so far remained empty promises, and the main contributors to climate change – China, the European Union, and the United States of America – have not moved fast enough.

Keywords: environment, law and policy, china, European union, united states, greenhouse gas, climate change

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Authors: Wei Feilong

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In this study, an local invariant generalized Houghtransform (LI-GHT) method is proposed for integrated circuit (IC) visual positioning. The original generalized Hough transform (GHT) is robust to external noise; however, it is not suitable for visual positioning of IC chips due to the four-dimensionality (4D) of parameter space which leads to the substantial storage requirement and high computational complexity. The proposed LI-GHT method can reduce the dimensionality of parameter space to 2D thanks to the rotational invariance of local invariant geometric feature and it can estimate the accuracy position and rotation angle of IC chips in real-time under noise and blur influence. The experiment results show that the proposed LI-GHT can estimate position and rotation angle of IC chips with high accuracy and fast speed. The proposed LI-GHT algorithm was implemented in IC visual positioning system of radio frequency identification (RFID) packaging equipment.

Keywords: Integrated Circuit Visual Positioning, Generalized Hough Transform, Local invariant Generalized Hough Transform, ICpacking equipment

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Authors: Yung Gi Wu

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With the growing of computer and network, digital data can be spread to anywhere in the world quickly. In addition, digital data can also be copied or tampered easily so that the security issue becomes an important topic in the protection of digital data. Digital watermark is a method to protect the ownership of digital data. Embedding the watermark will influence the quality certainly. In this paper, Vector Quantization (VQ) is used to embed the watermark into the image to fulfill the goal of data hiding. This kind of watermarking is invisible which means that the users will not conscious the existing of embedded watermark even though the embedded image has tiny difference compared to the original image. Meanwhile, VQ needs a lot of computation burden so that we adopt a fast VQ encoding scheme by partial distortion searching (PDS) and mean approximation scheme to speed up the data hiding process. The watermarks we hide to the image could be gray, bi-level and color images. Texts are also can be regarded as watermark to embed. In order to test the robustness of the system, we adopt Photoshop to fulfill sharpen, cropping and altering to check if the extracted watermark is still recognizable. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can resist the above three kinds of tampering in general cases.

Keywords: data hiding, vector quantization, watermark, color image

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Esmaili

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After the occurrence of blackouts, the most important subject is how fast the electric service is restored. Power system restoration is an immensely complex issue and there should be a plan to be executed within the shortest time period. This plan has three main stages of black start, network reconfiguration and load restoration. In the black start stage, operators and experts may face several problems, for instance, the unsuccessful connection of the long high-voltage transmission line connected to the electrical source. In this situation, the generator may be tripped because of the unsuitable setting of its line charging mode or high absorbed reactive power. In order to solve this problem, the line charging process is defined as a nonlinear programming problem, and it is optimized by using GAMS software in this paper. The optimized process is performed on a grid that includes a 250 MW hydroelectric unit and a 400 KV transmission system. Simulations and field test results show the effectiveness of optimal planning.

Keywords: power system restoration, black start, line charging mode, nonlinear programming

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Authors: Jianhua Wang

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To obtain key information quickly from long texts on small screens of mobile devices, sight-interpreters need to establish optimized summarization model for fast information retrieval. Four summarization models based on previous studies were studied including title+key words (TKW), title+topic sentences (TTS), key words+topic sentences (KWTS) and title+key words+topic sentences (TKWTS). Psychological experiments were conducted on the four models for three different genres of interpreting texts to establish the optimized summarization model for sight-interpreters. This empirical study shows that the optimized summarization model for sight-interpreters to quickly grasp the key information of the texts they interpret is title+key words (TKW) for cultural texts, title+key words+topic sentences (TKWTS) for economic texts and topic sentences+key words (TSKW) for political texts.

Keywords: different genres, mobile screens, optimized summarization models, sight-interpreters

Procedia PDF Downloads 295

Authors: C. Temaneh-Nyah

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Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is the ability of a Radio Communication Equipment (RCE) to operate with a desired quality of service in a given Electromagnetic Environment (EME) and not to create harmful interference with other RCE. This paper presents an algorithm which improves the simulation speed of estimating EMC of RCE in a complex EME, based on a stage by stage frequency-energy criterion of filtering. This algorithm considers different interference types including: Blocking and intermodulation. It consist of the following steps: simplified energy criterion where filtration is based on comparing the free space interference level to the industrial noise, frequency criterion which checks whether the interfering emissions characteristic overlap with the receiver’s channels characteristic and lastly the detailed energy criterion where the real channel interference level is compared to the noise level. In each of these stages, some interference cases are filtered out by the relevant criteria. This reduces the total number of dual and different combinations of RCE involved in the tedious detailed energy analysis and thus provides an improved simulation speed.

Keywords: electromagnetic compatibility, electromagnetic environment, simulation of communication network

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Authors: Ahmed Noor Al-Qayyim

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During the past decades, the bridge structures are considered very important portions of transportation networks, due to the fast urban sprawling. With the failure of bridges that under operating conditions lead to focus on updating the default bridge inspection methodology. The structures health monitoring (SHM) using the vibration response appeared as a promising method to evaluate the condition of structures. The rapid development in the sensors technology and the condition assessment techniques based on the vibration-based damage detection made the SHM an efficient and economical ways to assess the bridges. SHM is set to assess state and expects probable failures of designated bridges. In this paper, a presentation for Frequency Response function method that uses the captured vibration test information of structures to evaluate the structure condition. Furthermore, the main steps of the assessment of bridge using the vibration information are presented. The Frequency Response function method is applied to the experimental data of a full-scale bridge.

Keywords: bridge assessment, health monitoring, damage detection, frequency response function (FRF), signal processing, structure identification

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Authors: Salisu Umar

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Fruits are a seasonal crop and get spoiled quickly. They are dried to be preserved for a long period. The natural drying process requires more time. The investment on space requirement and infrastructure is large, and cannot be afforded by a middle class farmer. Therefore there is a need for a comparatively small unit with reduced drying times, which can be afforded by a middle class farmer. A controlled environment suitable for fruit drying is developed within a closed chamber and is a three step process. Firstly, the infrared light is used internally to preheated the fruit to speedily remove the water content inside the fruit for fast drying. Secondly, hot air of a specified temperature is blown inside the chamber to maintain the humidity below a specified level and exhaust the humid air of the chamber. Thirdly the microcontroller idles disconnecting the power to the chamber after the weight of the fruits is reduced to a known value of its original weight. This activates a buzzer for duration of ten seconds to indicate the end of the drying process. The results obtained indicate that the system is significantly reducing the drying time without affecting the quality of the fruits compared with the existing dryers.

Keywords: fruit, fuzzy controller, microcontroller, temperature, weight and humidity

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Authors: Chandra Shekhar Prasad, Ludek Pesek Prasad

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In the present day fan blade of aero engine, turboprop propellers, gas turbine or steam turbine low-pressure blades are getting bigger, lighter and thus, become more flexible. Therefore, flutter, forced blade response and vibration related failure of the high aspect ratio blade are of main concern for the designers, thus need to be address properly in order to achieve successful component design. At the preliminary design stage large number of design iteration is need to achieve the utter free safe design. Most of the numerical method used for aeroelastic analysis is based on field-based methods such as finite difference method, finite element method, finite volume method or coupled. These numerical schemes are used to solve the coupled fluid Flow-Structural equation based on full Naiver-Stokes (NS) along with structural mechanics’ equations. These type of schemes provides very accurate results if modeled properly, however, they are computationally very expensive and need large computing recourse along with good personal expertise. Therefore, it is not the first choice for aeroelastic analysis during preliminary design phase. A reduced order aeroelastic model (ROAM) with acceptable accuracy and fast execution is more demanded at this stage. Similar ROAM are being used by other researchers for aeroelastic and force response analysis of turbomachinery. In the present paper new medium fidelity ROAM is successfully developed and implemented in numerical tool to simulated the aeroelastic stability phenomena in turbomachinery and well as flexible wings. In the present, a hybrid flow solver based on 3D viscous-inviscid coupled 3D panel method (PM) and 3d discrete vortex particle method (DVM) is developed, viscous parameters are estimated using boundary layer(BL) approach. This method can simulate flow separation and is a good compromise between accuracy and speed compared to CFD. In the second phase of the research work, the flow solver (PM) will be coupled with ROM non-linear beam element method (BEM) based FEM structural solver (with multibody capabilities) to perform the complete aeroelastic simulation of a steam turbine bladed disk, propellers, fan blades, aircraft wing etc. The partitioned based coupling approach is used for fluid-structure interaction (FSI). The numerical results are compared with experimental data for different test cases and for the blade cascade test case, experimental data is obtained from in-house lab experiments at IT CAS. Furthermore, the results from the new aeroelastic model will be compared with classical CFD-CSD based aeroelastic models. The proposed methodology for the aeroelastic stability analysis of gas turbine or steam turbine blades, or propellers or fan blades will provide researchers and engineers a fast, cost-effective and efficient tool for aeroelastic (classical flutter) analysis for different design at preliminary design stage where large numbers of design iteration are required in short time frame.

Keywords: aeroelasticity, beam element method (BEM), discrete vortex particle method (DVM), classical flutter, fluid-structure interaction (FSI), panel method, reduce order aeroelastic model (ROAM), turbomachinery, viscous-inviscid coupling

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Authors: Fauzi Jarushi, Sinan Mohsin AlKaabi

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The Standard Penetration Test (SPT) is the most common insitu test for soil investigations. On the other hand, the Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is considered one of the best investigation tools. Due to the fast and accurate results that can be obtained it complaints the SPT in many applications like field explorations, design parameters, and quality control assessments. Many soil index and engineering properties have been correlated to both of SPT and CPT. Various foundation design methods were developed based on the outcome of these tests. Therefore it is vital to correlate these tests to each other so that either one of the tests can be used in the absence of the other, especially for preliminary evaluation and design purposes. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between the SPT and CPT for different types of soil in Florida. Data for this research were collected from number of projects sponsored by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), six sites served as the subject of SPT-CPT correlations. The correlations were established between the cone resistance (qc) and the SPT blows (i.e., N) for various soils. A positive linear relationship was found between fs and N for various soils. In general, qc versus N showed higher correlation coefficients than fs versus N. qc/N ratios were developed for different soil types and compared to literature values, the results of this research revealed higher ratios than literature values.

Keywords: in situ tests, correlation, SPT, CPT

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Authors: Vladimir Veremey

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The paper describes the design and simulation of dual-polarization antennas that use the resonance and radiating properties of the H₀₀ mode of metal open waveguides. The proposed antennas are formed by two orthogonal slots in a finite conducting ground plane. The slots are backed by metal screens connected to the ground plane forming open waveguides. It has been shown that the antenna designs can be efficiently used in mm-wave bands. The antenna single mode operational bandwidth is higher than 10%. The antenna designs are very simple and low-cost. They allow flush installation and can be efficiently used in various communication and remote sensing devices on fast moving carriers. Mutual coupling between antennas of the proposed design is very low. Thus, multiple antenna structures with proposed antennas can be efficiently employed in multi-band and in multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems.

Keywords: antenna, antenna arrays, Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO), millimeter wave bands, slot antenna, flush installation, directivity, open waveguide, conformal antennas

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Authors: J. Suwanprateeb, F. Thammarakcharoen

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Calcium phosphate coating (CaP) has been employed for protein delivery, but the typical direct protein adsorption on the coating led to low incorporation content and fast release of the protein from the coating. By using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a model protein, rapid biomimetic co-precipitation between calcium phosphate and BSA was employed to control the distribution of BSA within calcium phosphate coating during biomimetic formation on titanium surface for only 6 h at 50 oC in an accelerated calcium phosphate solution. As a result, the amount of BSA incorporation and release duration could be increased by using a rapid biomimetic co-precipitation technique. Up to 43 fold increases in the BSA incorporation content and the increase from 6 h to more than 360 h in release duration compared to typical direct adsorption technique were observed depending on the initial BSA concentration used during co-precipitation (1, 10, and 100 microgram/ml). From X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy studies, the coating composition was not altered with the incorporation of BSA by this rapid biomimetic co-precipitation and mainly comprised octacalcium phosphate and hydroxyapatite. However, the microstructure of calcium phosphate crystals changed from straight, plate-like units to curved, plate-like units with increasing BSA content.

Keywords: biomimetic, Calcium Phosphate Coating, protein, titanium

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Authors: Sajeeha Ansar, Asad Ali Safi, Sheikh Ziauddin, Ahmad R. Shahid, Faraz Ahsan

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The most aggressive form of brain tumor is called glioma. Glioma is kind of tumor that arises from glial tissue of the brain and occurs quite often. A fully automatic 2D-CNN model for brain tumor segmentation is presented in this paper. We performed pre-processing steps to remove noise and intensity variances using N4ITK and standard intensity correction, respectively. We used Keras open-source library with Theano as backend for fast implementation of CNN model. In addition, we used BRATS 2015 MRI dataset to evaluate our proposed model. Furthermore, we have used SimpleITK open-source library in our proposed model to analyze images. Moreover, we have extracted random 2D patches for proposed 2D-CNN model for efficient brain segmentation. Extracting 2D patched instead of 3D due to less dimensional information present in 2D which helps us in reducing computational time. Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) is used as performance measure for the evaluation of the proposed method. Our method achieved DSC score of 0.77 for complete, 0.76 for core, 0.77 for enhanced tumor regions. However, these results are comparable with methods already implemented 2D CNN architecture.

Keywords: brain tumor segmentation, convolutional neural networks, deep learning, LGG

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Authors: Gabriela Chmelikova, Ludmila Hurajova, Pavol Bozek

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Current era has brought hand in hand with the vast and fast development of technologies enormous pressure on individuals to keep being well - oriented in their professional fields. Almost all projects in the real world require an interdisciplinary perspective. These days we notice some cases when students face that real requirements for jobs are in contrast to the knowledge and competences they gained at universities. Interlacing labor market and university programs is a big issue these days. Sometimes it seems that higher education only “chases” reality. Simulation-based learning can support students’ touch with real demand on competences and knowledge of job world. The contribution provided a descriptive study of some cases of simulation-based teaching environment in different courses at STU MTF in Trnava and discussed how students and teachers perceive this model of teaching-learning approach. Finally, some recommendations are proposed how to enhance closer relationship between academic world and labor market.

Keywords: interdisciplinary approach, simulation-based learning, students' job readiness, teaching environment in higher education

Procedia PDF Downloads 255

Authors: Mohan L. Jayatiake, Judd Storrs, Jing-Huei Lee

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The optimal MRI resolution relies on a homogeneous magnetic field. However, local susceptibility variations can lead to field inhomogeneities that cause artifacts such as image distortion and signal loss. The effects of local susceptibility variation notoriously increase with magnetic field strength. Active shimming improves homogeneity by applying corrective fields generated from shim coils, but requires calculation of optimal current for each shim coil. FASTMAP (fast automatic shimming technique by mapping along projections) is an effective technique for finding optimal currents works well at high-field, but is restricted to shimming spherical regions of interest. The 3D gradient-echo pulse sequence was modified to reduce sensitivity to eddy currents and used to obtain susceptibility field maps at 4T. Measured fields were projected onto first-and second-order spherical harmonic functions corresponding to shim hardware. A spherical phantom was used to calibrate the shim currents. Susceptibility maps of a volunteer’s brain with and without FASTMAP shimming were obtained. Simulations indicate that optimal shim currents derived from the field map may provide better overall shimming of the human brain.

Keywords: shimming, high-field, active, passive

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Authors: Azin Shakibabarough, Mojtaba Valinejadshoubi, Ashutosh Bagchi

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

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

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Authors: S. Gordon

Abstract:

Dual language immersion is growing fast in language teaching today. This study provides an overview and evaluation of the different models of Dual language immersion programs in US K-12 schools. First, the paper provides a brief current literature review on the theory of Dual Language Immersion (DLI) in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies. Second, examples of several types of DLI language teaching models in US K-12 public schools are presented (including 50/50 models, 90/10 models, etc.). Third, we focus on the unique example of DLI education in the state of Utah, a successful, growing program in K-12 schools that includes: French, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese. The project investigates the theory and practice particularly of the case of public elementary and secondary school children that study half their school day in the L1 and the other half in the chosen L2, from kindergarten (age 5-6) through high school (age 17-18). Finally, the project takes the observations of Utah French DLI elementary through secondary programs as a case study. To conclude, we look at the principal challenges, pedagogical objectives and outcomes, and important implications for other US states and other countries (such as France currently) that are in the process of developing similar language learning programs.

Keywords: dual language immersion, second language acquisition, language teaching, pedagogy, teaching, French

Procedia PDF Downloads 149

Authors: Meruert Serik, Nassipzhan Duisegaliyeva, Danara Tleumagambetova

Abstract:

The article highlights and describes the characteristic features of real-time face detection in images and videos using machine learning algorithms. Students of educational programs reviewed the research work "6B01511-Computer Science", "7M01511-Computer Science", "7M01525- STEM Education," and "8D01511-Computer Science" of Eurasian National University named after L.N. Gumilyov. As a result, the advantages and disadvantages of Haar Cascade (Haar Cascade OpenCV), HoG SVM (Histogram of Oriented Gradients, Support Vector Machine), and MMOD CNN Dlib (Max-Margin Object Detection, convolutional neural network) detectors used for face detection were determined. Dlib is a general-purpose cross-platform software library written in the programming language C++. It includes detectors used for determining face detection. The Cascade OpenCV algorithm is efficient for fast face detection. The considered work forms the basis for the development of machine learning methods by future computer science teachers.

Keywords: algorithm, artificial intelligence, education, machine learning

Procedia PDF Downloads 58

Authors: M. Akhlaque Ahmed, Maliha Afshan Siddiqui

Abstract:

A study has been carried out to see the prospect of wind power potential of southern Sindh namely Karachi, Hawksbay, Norriabad, Hyderabad, Ketibander and Shahbander using local wind speed data. The monthly average wind speed for these area ranges from 4.5m/sec to 8.5m/sec at 30m height from ground. Extractable wind power, wind energy and Weibul parameter for above mentioned areas have been examined. Furthermore, the power output using fast and slow wind machine using different blade diameter along with the 4Kw and 20 Kw aero-generator were examined to see the possible use for deep well pumping and electricity supply to remote villages. The analysis reveals that in this wind corridor of southern Sindh Hawksbay, Ketibander and Shahbander belongs to wind power class-3 Hyderabad and Nooriabad belongs to wind power class-5 and Karachi belongs to wind power class-2. The result shows that the that higher wind speed values occur between June till August. It was found that considering maximum wind speed location, Hawksbay,Noriabad are the best location for setting up wind machines for power generation.

Keywords: wind energy generation, Southern Sindh, seasonal change, Weibull parameter, wind machines

Procedia PDF Downloads 133