Search results for: dynamic formative evaluation

Authors: Babak Mirzashahi, Arvin Najafi, Pejman Mansouri, Mahmoud Farzan

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Background: The most effective treatment of posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) tears and the consequence of untreated PCL injuries remain controversial. Objectives: The aim of this study is to assess outcomes of fixation of tibial posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) avulsion fractures via a modified technique. Patients and Methods: From January, 2009 to March, 2012, there were 45 cases of PCL tibial avulsion fractures that were referred to our hospital and were managed through a modified open posterior approach. Fixation of Tibial PCL avulsion fractures were fixed by means of a lag screw and washer placed through our modified open posterior approach. Range of motion was begun on the first postoperative day. Clinical stability, range of motion, gastrocnemius muscle strength, radiographic investigation, and patient’s overall quality of life was analyzed at final follow up visit. Results: The average of overall musculoskeletal functional evaluation scores was 15 (range 3–35). All patients achieved union of their fracture and had clinically stable knees at the latest follow-up. The mean preoperative Lysholm score for 15 knees was 62 ± 8 (range, 50-75); the mean postoperative Lysholm score was 92± 7 (range, 75-101). A significant difference in Lysholm scores between preoperative and final follow-up evaluations was found (P < .05). At first-year follow-up, 42 (93%) patients revealed a difference of less than 10 mm in thigh circumference between their injured and healthy knees. Conclusions: The management of displaced large PCL avulsion fractures with placement of a cancellous lag screw with washer by means of the modified open posterior approach leads to satisfactory clinical, radiographic, and functional results and reduces the operation time and less blood loss. Level of evidence: IV.

Keywords: posterior cruciate ligament, tibial fracture, lysholm knee score, patient outcome assessment

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Authors: Alla Mariseva, Ilze Beitane

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Daily intake of products rich in antioxidants that scavenge free radicals in cell membranes is an effective way to combat oxidative stress. Last year there was noticed higher interest towards the identification and utilization of plants rich in antioxidant compounds as they may behave as preventive medicine. Amaranth seeds due to polyphenols, anthocyanins, flavonoids, and tocopherols are characterized by high antioxidant activity. The study aimed to evaluate the total phenolic content and radical scavenging activity of amaranth seeds cultivated in 2020 in two farms in Latvia. One sample of amaranth seeds came from an organic farm, the other – from a conventional farm. The total phenol content of amaranth seed extracts was measured with the Folin-Ciocalte spectrophotometric method. The total phenols were expressed as gallic acid equivalents (GAE) per 100 g dry weight (DW) of the samples. The antioxidant activity of amaranth seed extracts was calculated based on scavenging activities of the stable 2.2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH˙) radical, the radical scavenging capacity (ABTS) was demonstrated as Trolox mM equivalents (TE) per 100 g-1 dry weight. Three parallel measurements were performed on all samples. There were significant differences between organic and conventional amaranth seeds in terms of total phenolic content and antioxidant activity. Organic amaranth seeds showed higher total phenolic content compared to conventional amaranth seeds, 65.4±6.0 mg GAE 100 g⁻¹ DW and 43.4±7.8 mg GAE 100 g⁻¹ DW respectively. Organic amaranth seeds were also characterized by higher DPPH radical scavenging activity (7.9±0.4 mM TE 100 g⁻¹ of dry matter) and ABTS radical scavenging capacity (13.2±1.5 mM TE 100 g⁻¹ of dry matter). The results obtained on total phenolic content and antioxidant activity of amaranth seeds grown in Latvia confirmed that the samples have a high biological value; therefore, it would be necessary to promote their consumption by including them in various food products, including vegan products, increasing their nutritional value.

Keywords: ABTS, amaranth seeds, antioxidant activity, DPPH, total phenolic content

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Authors: Julian Jaegers, Siegmar Wirtz, Viktor Scherer

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Wood pellets belong to the most established trade formats of wood-based fuels. Especially, because of the transportability and the storage properties, but also due to low moisture content, high energy density, and the homogeneous particle size and shape, wood pellets are well suited for power generation in power plants and for the use in automated domestic firing systems. Before they are thermally converted, wood pellets pass various transport and storage procedures. There they undergo different mechanical impacts, which leads to pellet breakage and abrasion and to an increase in fines. The fines lead to operational problems during storage, charging, and discharging of pellets, they can increase the risk of dust explosions and can lead to pollutant emissions during combustion. In the current work, the dependence of the formation of fines caused by breakage during pneumatic transport is analyzed experimentally and numerically. The focus lies on the influence of conveying velocity, pellet loading, pipe diameter, and the shape of pipe components like bends or couplings. A test rig has been built, which allows the experimental evaluation of the pneumatic transport varying the above-mentioned parameters. Two high-speed cameras are installed for the quantitative optical access to the particle-particle and particle-wall contacts. The particle size distribution of the bulk before and after a transport process is measured as well as the amount of fines produced. The experiments will be compared with results of corresponding DEM/CFD simulations to provide information on contact frequencies and forces. The contribution proposed will present experimental results and report on the status of the DEM/CFD simulations. The final goal of the project is to provide a better insight into pellet breakage during pneumatic transport and to develop guidelines ensuring a more gentle transport.

Keywords: DEM/CFD-simulation of pneumatic conveying, mechanical impact on wood pellets during transportation, pellet breakage, pneumatic transport of wood pellets

Procedia PDF Downloads 125

Authors: Benjamin Bressolette, S´ebastien Denjean, Vincent Roussarie, Mitsuko Aramaki, Sølvi Ystad, Richard Kronland-Martinet

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New sensors and technologies – such as microphones, touchscreens or infrared sensors – are currently making their appearance in the automotive sector, introducing new kinds of Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs). The interactions with such tools might be cognitively expensive, thus unsuitable for driving tasks. It could for instance be dangerous to use touchscreens with a visual feedback while driving, as it distracts the driver’s visual attention away from the road. Furthermore, new technologies in car cockpits modify the interactions of the users with the central system. In particular, touchscreens are preferred to arrays of buttons for space improvement and design purposes. However, the buttons’ tactile feedback is no more available to the driver, which makes such interfaces more difficult to manipulate while driving. Gestures combined with an auditory feedback might therefore constitute an interesting alternative to interact with the HMI. Indeed, gestures can be performed without vision, which means that the driver’s visual attention can be totally dedicated to the driving task. In fact, the auditory feedback can both inform the driver with respect to the task performed on the interface and on the performed gesture, which might constitute a possible solution to the lack of tactile information. As audition is a relatively unused sense in automotive contexts, gesture sonification can contribute to reducing the cognitive load thanks to the proposed multisensory exploitation. Our approach consists in using a virtual object (VO) to sonify the consequences of the gesture rather than the gesture itself. This approach is motivated by an ecological point of view: Gestures do not make sound, but their consequences do. In this experiment, the aim was to identify efficient sound strategies, to transmit dynamic information of VOs to users through sound. The swipe gesture was chosen for this purpose, as it is commonly used in current and new interfaces. We chose two VO parameters to sonify, the hand-VO distance and the VO velocity. Two kinds of sound parameters can be chosen to sonify the VO behavior: Spectral or temporal parameters. Pitch and brightness were tested as spectral parameters, and amplitude modulation as a temporal parameter. Performances showed a positive effect of sound compared to a no-sound situation, revealing the usefulness of sounds to accomplish the task.

Keywords: auditory feedback, gesture sonification, sound perception, virtual object

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Authors: Anastasios Manos, Despina Elisabeth Filippidou

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Introduction: Historical buildings are an inte-gral part of the cultural heritage of every place, and beyond the obvious need for protection against risks, they have specific requirements regarding the handling of hazards and disasters such as fire, floods, earthquakes, etc. Ensuring high levels of protection and safety for these buildings is impera-tive for two distinct but interconnected reasons: a) they themselves constitute cultural heritage, and b) they are often used as museums/cultural spaces, necessitating the protection of both human life (vis-itors and workers) and the cultural treasures they house. However, these buildings present serious constraints in implementing the necessary measures to protect them from destruction due to their unique architecture, construction methods, and/or the structural materials used in the past, which have created an existing condition that is sometimes challenging to reshape and operate within the framework of modern regulations and protection measures. One of the most devastating risks that threaten historical buildings is fire. Catastrophic fires demonstrate the need for timely evaluation of fire safety measures in historical buildings. Recog-nizing the criticality of protecting historical build-ings from the risk of fire, the Confederation of Fire Protection Associations in Europe (CFPA E) issued specific guidelines in 2013 (CFPA-E Guideline No 30:2013 F) for the fire protection of historical buildings at the European level. However, until now, few actions have been implemented towards leveraging modern technologies in the field of con-struction and maintenance of buildings, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the Inter-net of Things (IoT), for the protection of historical buildings from risks like fires, floods, etc. The pro-ject BIM4Cult has bee developed in order to fill this gap. It is a tool for timely assessing and monitoring of the fire safety level of historical buildings using BIM and IoT technologies in an integrated manner. The tool serves as a decision support expert system for improving the fire safety of historical buildings by continuously monitoring, controlling and as-sessing critical risk factors for fire.

Keywords: Iot, fire, BIM, expert system

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Authors: K. Sridhar Reddy, M. Amaranatha Reddy, Nilanjan Mitra

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Short paneled concrete pavement (SPCP) with shorter panel size can be an alternative to the conventional jointed plain concrete pavements (JPCP) at the same cost as the asphalt pavements with all the advantages of concrete pavement with reduced thickness, less chance of mid-slab cracking and or dowel bar locking so common in JPCP. Cast-in-situ short concrete panels (short slabs) laid on a strong foundation consisting of a dry lean concrete base (DLC), and cement treated subbase (CTSB) will reduce the thickness of the concrete slab to the order of 180 mm to 220 mm, whereas JPCP was with 280 mm for the same traffic. During the construction of SPCP test sections on two Indian National Highways (NH), it was observed that the joints remain uncracked after a year of traffic. The undoweled and uncracked joints load transfer variability and joint behavior are of interest with anticipation on its long-term performance of the SPCP. To investigate the effects of undoweled and uncracked joints on short slabs, the present study was conducted. A multilayer linear elastic analysis using 3D finite element package for different panel sizes with different thicknesses resting on different types of solid elastic foundation with and without temperature gradient was developed. Surface deflections were obtained from 3D FE model and validated with measured field deflections from falling weight deflectometer (FWD) test. Stress analysis indicates that flexural stresses in short slabs are decreased with a decrease in panel size and increase in thickness. Detailed evaluation of stress analysis with the effects of curling behavior, the stiffness of the base layer and a variable degree of load transfer, is underway.

Keywords: joint behavior, short slabs, uncracked joints, undoweled joints, 3D numerical simulation

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Authors: Y. Smirlis, G. Koronakos, S. Plitsos

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Shipbrokers assist the ship companies in chartering or selling and buying vessels, acting as intermediates between them and the market. They facilitate deals, providing their expertise, negotiating skills, and knowledge about ship market bargains. Their role is very important as it affects the profitability and market position of a shipping company. Due to their significant contribution, the shipping companies have to employ systematic procedures to evaluate the shipbrokers’ services in order to select the best and, consequently, to achieve the best deals. Towards this, in this paper, we consider shipbrokers as financial service providers, and we formulate the problem of evaluating and selecting shipbrokers’ services as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) procedure. The proposed methodology comprises a first normalization step to adjust different scales and orientations of the criteria and a second step that includes the mathematical model to evaluate the performance of the shipbrokers’ services involved in the assessment. The criteria along which the shipbrokers are assessed may refer to their size and reputation, the potential efficiency of the services, the terms and conditions imposed, the expenses (e.g., commission – brokerage), the expected time to accomplish a chartering or selling/buying task, etc. and according to our modelling approach these criteria may be assigned different importance. The mathematical programming model performs a comparative assessment and estimates for the shipbrokers involved in the evaluation, a relative score that ranks the shipbrokers in terms of their potential performance. To illustrate the proposed methodology, we present a case study in which a shipping company evaluates and selects the most suitable among a number of sale and purchase (S&P) brokers. Acknowledgment: This study is supported by the OptiShip project, implemented within the framework of the National Recovery Plan and Resilience “Greece 2.0” and funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU programme.

Keywords: shipbrokers, multi-criteria decision making, mathematical programming, service-provider selection

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Authors: S. Zhang, L. Zhang, X. Chen

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Due to the large uncertainty on the mechanical properties of FRP (fibre reinforced plastic), the reliability evaluation of FRP structures are currently receiving much attention in industry. However, possible statistical correlation between ply mechanical properties has been so far overlooked, and they are mostly assumed to be independent random variables. In this study, the statistical correlation between ply mechanical properties of uni-directional and plain weave composite is firstly analyzed by a combination of Monte-Carlo simulation and finite element modeling of the FRP unit cell. Large linear correlation coefficients between the in-plane mechanical properties are observed, and the correlation coefficients are heavily dependent on the uncertainty of the fibre volume ratio. It is also observed that the correlation coefficients related to Poisson’s ratio are negative while others are positive. To experimentally achieve the statistical correlation coefficients between in-plane mechanical properties of FRP, all concerned in-plane mechanical properties of the same specimen needs to be known. In-plane shear modulus of FRP is experimentally derived by the approach suggested in the ASTM standard D5379M. Tensile tests are conducted using the same specimens used for the shear test, and due to non-uniform tensile deformation a modification factor is derived by a finite element modeling. Digital image correlation is adopted to characterize the specimen non-uniform deformation. The preliminary experimental results show a good agreement with the numerical analysis on the statistical correlation. Then, failure probability of laminate plates is calculated in cases considering and not considering the statistical correlation, using the Monte-Carlo and Markov Chain Monte-Carlo methods, respectively. The results highlight the importance of accounting for the statistical correlation between ply mechanical properties to achieve accurate failure probability of laminate plates. Furthermore, it is found that for the multi-layer laminate plate, the statistical correlation between the ply elastic properties significantly affects the laminate reliability while the effect of statistical correlation between the ply strength is minimal.

Keywords: failure probability, FRP, reliability, statistical correlation

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Authors: V. Manjunath, C. V. Chandrashekara

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Ecosystem authority calls for the use of lubricants with less effect on the nature in terms of exhaust emission, while engine user demands more mileage per liter of fuel without any compromise on engine durability. From this viewpoint, engine manufacturers require the optimum combination of materials and lubricant additive package to minimize friction and wear in the engine components like piston, crankshaft and valve train etc. The demands are placed for requirements to operate at higher speeds, loads, temperature and for extended replacement intervals of engine oil. Besides, it is necessary to accurately predict the lubricant life or the replacement interval to prevent lubrication and valve-train components failure. Experimental tribology evaluation of new engine oils requires large amount of time and energy. Hence low cost bench test is necessary for industries and original equipment manufacturing companies (OEM) to study the performance of lubricants. The present work outlines the procedure for the design and development of a valve train wear rig (MCR) to simulate the ASTMD-6891 and to develop new engine test for Indian automobile sector to evaluate lubricants for Indian automobile market. In order to improve the lubrication between cam and follower of internal combustion engine, the influence of materials or oils viscosity and additives on the friction and wear characteristics are examined with test rig by increasing the contact load at two different revolution speed. From the experimentation following results are made obvious. Temperature, Torque, speed and wear plots are used to validate the data obtained from the newly developed multi-cam cam rig (MCR) with follower against a cast iron camshaft. Camshaft lobe wear is measured at seven different locations on cam profile. Tribofilm formed using 5W-30 oil is evaluated and correlated with the standard test results.

Keywords: ASTMD-6891, multi-cam rig (MCR), 5W-30, cam-profile

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Authors: Ahmed Chetouani

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Corrosion is a natural occurring process where it can be defined as the deterioration of materials properties due to its interaction with its environment. Corrosion can lead to failures in plant infrastructure and machines which are usually costly to repair. In terms of loss of contaminated products which will cause environmental damage and possibly costly in terms of human health. The driving force that causes metals to corrode is due to the natural consequence of their temporary existence in metallic form. There is a growing trend in utilizing plant extracts and pharmaceutical compounds as corrosion inhibitors. Exquisite identification of the essential oil of aerial parts of Pelargonium was obtained using hydrodistillation and identification using GC (gas chromatography) and GC/MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry). The oil was predominated by Citronellol (22.8%). The inhibitory effect of essential oil and extract of Pelargonium was estimated on the corrosion of mild steel in 1M hydrochloric acid (HCl) using weight loss, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and Tafel polarization curves. Inhibition was found to increase with increasing concentration of the essential oil and extract of Pelargonium. The effect of temperature on the corrosion behaviour of mild steel in 1M HCl with addition of essential oil and extract was also studied and the thermodynamic parameters were determined and discussed. Values of inhibition efficiency were calculated from weight loss, Tafel polarization curves, and EIS. All results are in good agreement. Polarization curves showed that essential oil and extract of Pelargonium behave as mixed type inhibitors in hydrochloric acid. The results obtained showed that the essential oil and extract of Pelargonium could serve as an effective inhibitor of the corrosion of mild steel in Hydrochloric acid solution. To avoid any surprise of toxicity, the majority compounds have been studied by using POM analyses.

Keywords: corrosion inhibition, mild steel, pelargonium oil, extract, electrochemical system, hydrodistillation, side effects, POM Analyses

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Authors: Nirmala Lama

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The construction of high dams has led to significant challenges in managing flow rates discharging over spillways, resulting in cavitation damages on hydraulic surfaces. To address this, aerator devices were designed and installed to promote fore aeration, thereby controlling and mitigating damages caused by cavitation. Consequently, these aerator types, three-dimensional aerators (3DAEs), have demonstrated superior efficiency in introducing forced air into the flow.This research focuses on the installation and evaluation of three-dimensional aerator devices at the high discharge spillway surface. In the laboratory, the air concentration downstream of the hydraulic structures was extensively measured, and the data were analyzed in details.Multiple flow scenarios and structural arrangements of the aerators were adopted for the study. The outcomes of these experiments are listed as In terms of air concentration value, the comparison between 3 DAE (three-dimensional aerator) with offset only and offset with ramp reveals significant differences. The concentration value on the side wall was justified. The side cavity length was found to increase with higher approach Froude numbers and lateral enlargement widths. Furthermore, 3DAE exhibited shorter side cavity lengths compared to three-dimensional aerator devices without ramps (3DAD), a beneficial features for controlling water fins. An empirical formula to express the side cavity length was derived from the measured data. Also, the comparison were made on the basis of water fin formation between the different arrangements of 3D aerators. In conclusion, this research provides valuable insights into the performance of three-dimensional aerators in mitigating cavitation damages and controlling water fins in high dam spillways. The findings offer practical implications for designers and engineers seeking to enhance the efficiency and safety of hydraulic structures subjected to high flow rates.

Keywords: three-dimension aerator, cavity, water fin, air entrainment

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Authors: Vibhuti Amarnath Madhu Agrawal

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intellectual Property are two emerging concepts that are growing at a fast pace and have the potential of having a huge impact on the economy in the coming times. In simple words, AI is nothing but work done by a machine without any human intervention. It is a coded software embedded in a machine, which over a period of time, develops its own intelligence and begins to take its own decisions and judgments by studying various patterns of how people think, react to situations and perform tasks, among others. Intellectual Property, especially Copyright Law, on the other hand, protects the rights of individuals and Companies in content creation that primarily deals with application of intellect, originality and expression of the same in some tangible form. According to some of the reports shared by the media lately, ChatGPT, an AI powered Chatbot, has been involved in the creation of a wide variety of original content, including but not limited to essays, emails, plays and poetry. Besides, there have been instances wherein AI technology has given creative inputs for background, lights and costumes, among others, for films. Copyright Law offers protection to all of these different kinds of content and much more. Considering the two key parameters of Copyright – application of intellect and originality, the question, therefore, arises that will awarding Copyright protection to a person who has not directly invested his / her intellect in the creation of that content go against the basic spirit of Copyright laws? This study aims to analyze the current scenario and provide answers to the following questions: a. If the content generated by AI technology satisfies the basic criteria of originality and expression in a tangible form, why should such content be denied protection in the name of its creator, i.e., the specific AI tool / technology? B. Considering the increasing role and development of AI technology in our lives, should it be given the status of a ‘Legal Person’ in law? C. If yes, what should be the modalities of awarding protection to works of such Legal Person and management of the same? Considering the current trends and the pace at which AI is advancing, it is not very far when AI will start functioning autonomously in the creation of new works. Current data and opinions on this issue globally reflect that they are divided and lack uniformity. In order to fill in the existing gaps, data obtained from Copyright offices from the top economies of the world have been analyzed. The role and functioning of various Copyright Societies in these countries has been studied in detail. This paper provides a roadmap that can be adopted to satisfy various objectives, constraints and dynamic conditions related AI technology and its protection under Copyright Law.

Keywords: artificial intelligence technology, copyright law, copyright societies, intellectual property

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Authors: Jiping Cai, Ningzhi Wangyang, Jun Shao

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality that leads to structural and functional damage in several parts of the brain, such as cranial nerves, optic nerve tract or other circuitry involved in vision and occipital lobe, depending on its location and severity. As a result, the function associated with vision processing and perception are significantly affected and cause blurred vision, double vision, decreased peripheral vision and blindness. Here two cases complaining of monocular vision loss (actually temporal hemianopia) due to traumatic chiasmal syndrome after frontal head injury were reported, and were compared the findings with individual case reports published in the literature. Reported cases of traumatic chiasmal syndrome appear to share some common features, such as injury to the frontal bone and fracture of the anterior skull base. The degree of bitemporal hemianopia and visual loss acuity have a variable presentation and was not necessarily related to the severity of the craniocerebral trauma. Chiasmal injury may occur even in the absence bony chip impingement. Isolated bitemporal hemianopia is rare and clinical improvement usually may not occur. Mechanisms of damage to the optic chiasm after trauma include direct tearing, contusion haemorrhage and contusion necrosis, and secondary mechanisms such as cell death, inflammation, edema, neurogenesis impairment and axonal damage associated with TBI. Beside visual field test, MRI evaluation of optic pathways seems to the strong objective evidence to demonstrate the impairment of the integrity of visual systems following TBI. Therefore, traumatic chiasmal syndrome should be considered as a differential diagnosis by both neurosurgeons and ophthalmologists in patients presenting with visual impairment, especially bitemporal hemianopia after head injury causing frontal and anterior skull base fracture.

Keywords: bitemporal hemianopia, brain injury, optic chiasma, traumatic chiasmal syndrome.

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Authors: Chang Li Yu

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Resistances commonly happened during sexual offenders treatment program (SOTP), and removing resistances was one of the treatment goals on it. Studies concerning treatment effectiveness relied on pre- and post-treatment evaluations, however, no significant difference on resistance revealed after treatment, and the above consequences generally contributed to the low motivation for change instead. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the resistance across each stage of change among sexual offenders (SO). The present study recruited prisoned SO in Taiwan, excluding those with literacy difficulties; finally, 272 participants were included. Of all participants completed revised version of URICA (University of Rhode Island Change Assessment) and resistance scale specifically for SO. The former included four stages of change: pre-contemplation (PC), contemplation (C), action (A), and maintain (M); the later composed eight types of resistance: system blaming, victims blaming, problems with treatment alliance, social justification, hopelessness, isolation, psychological reactance, and passive reactance. Both of the instruments were with well reliability and validity. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA were performed. All of 272 participants, age under 25 were 18(6.6%), 25-39 were 133(48.9%), 40-54 were 102(37.5%), and age over 55 were 19(7.0%); college level and above were 53(19.5%), high school level were 110(40.4%), and under high school level were 109(40.1%); first offended were 117(43.0%), and recidivist were 23(8.5%). Further deleting data with missing values and invalid questionnaires, SO with stage of change on PC were 43(18.9%), C were 109(47.8%), A were 70(30.7%), and on M were 6(2.6%). One-way ANOVA showed significant differences on every kind of resistances, excepting isolation and passive reactance. Post-hoc analysis showed that SO with different stages had their main resistance. There are two contributions to the present study. First, this study provided a clinical and theoretical measurement of evaluation that was never used in the past. Second, this study used an evidence-based methodology to prove a clinical perspective differed from the past, suggesting that resistances to treatment on SO appear the whole therapeutic process, when SO progress into the next stage of change, clinicians have to deal with their main resistance for working through the therapy.

Keywords: resistance, sexual offenders treatment program (SOTP), motivation for change, prisoned sexual offender

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Authors: Omowunmi Amao

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Sansevieria liberica belongs to the family Agavaceae (Ruscaceae or Dracaenaceae). They are widely distributed throughout the tropics. Literature review suggests that in Nigeria, the leaves and roots of Sansevieria liberica are used in traditional medicine for the treatment of asthma, abdominal pains, colic, diarrhea, eczema, gonorrhea, hemorrhoids, hypertension, monorrhagia, piles, sexual weakness, snake bites, and wounds of the foot. In this context, the standardized Methanolic extract of roots of Sansevieria liberica is hypothesized for the evaluation of the hypoglycemic activity. Material and Methods: Inbreed adult male sprague-Dawley albino rats were used in the experiment. The suspension of standardized Methanol extract (ME) of Sansevieria liberica was treated for hypoglycemic activity in oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) method. The suspension of standardized Methanolic extract (ME) of Sansevieria liberica was also treated for hypoglycemic activity in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Results: The Methanolic extract (ME) of Sanseviera liberica root (100 mg/kg, 200mg/kg, and 400 mg/kg) showed potential hypoglycemic activity in diabetic rats, and further in OGTT method. Furthermore, Methanolic extract of Sanseviera liberica root showed significant (P<0.05) increase in final body weight, total hemoglobin, insulin, albumin and high-density lipoprotein levels, however, decrease in fluid intake, glycosylated hemoglobin, urea, creatinine, total cholesterol, triglyceride and low-density lipoprotein levels. Additionally, it improved oxidative stress in terms of reducing lipid peroxidase and superoxide dismutase, and elevating catalase activity. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the Methanolic extract of Sanseviera liberica root was found to be potential hypoglycemic, and would be a promising candidate for the treatment of diabetes.

Keywords: diabetes, Sanseviera liberica, hypoglycemic activity, diabetes and metabolism

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Authors: Maryam Hajibaba, Mohsen Soltanpour, Mehrnoosh Abbasian, S. Abbas Haghshenas

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This paper aims to evaluate the main role of mangroves forests on the unique hydrodynamic characteristics of the Khuran Strait (KS) in the Persian Gulf. Investigation of hydrodynamic conditions of KS is vital to predict and estimate sedimentation and erosion all over the protected areas north of Qeshm Island. KS (or Tang-e-Khuran) is located between Qeshm Island and the Iranian mother land and has a minimum width of approximately two kilometers. Hydrodynamics of the strait is dominated by strong tidal currents of up to 2 m/s. The bathymetry of the area is dynamic and complicated as 1) strong currents do exist in the area which lead to seemingly sand dune movements in the middle and southern parts of the strait, and 2) existence a vast area with mangrove coverage next to the narrowest part of the strait. This is why ordinary modeling schemes with normal mesh resolutions are not capable for high accuracy estimations of current fields in the KS. A comprehensive set of measurements were carried out with several components, to investigate the hydrodynamics and morpho-dynamics of the study area, including 1) vertical current profiling at six stations, 2) directional wave measurements at four stations, 3) water level measurements at six stations, 4) wind measurements at one station, and 5) sediment grab sampling at 100 locations. Additionally, a set of periodic hydrographic surveys was included in the program. The numerical simulation was carried out by using Delft3D – Flow Module. Model calibration was done by comparing water levels and depth averaged velocity of currents against available observational data. The results clearly indicate that observed data and simulations only fit together if a realistic perspective of the mangrove area is well captured by the model bathymetry data. Generating unstructured grid by using RGFGRID and QUICKIN, the flow model was driven with water level time-series at open boundaries. Adopting the available field data, the key role of mangrove area on the hydrodynamics of the study area can be studied. The results show that including the accurate geometry of the mangrove area and consideration of its sponge-like behavior are the key aspects through which a realistic current field can be simulated in the KS.

Keywords: Khuran Strait, Persian Gulf, tide, current, Delft3D

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Authors: Amit Kumar Happy

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This paper is motivated by the importance of multi-sensor image fusion with a specific focus on infrared (IR) and visual image (VI) fusion for various applications, including military reconnaissance. Image fusion can be defined as the process of combining two or more source images into a single composite image with extended information content that improves visual perception or feature extraction. These images can be from different modalities like visible camera & IR thermal imager. While visible images are captured by reflected radiations in the visible spectrum, the thermal images are formed from thermal radiation (infrared) that may be reflected or self-emitted. A digital color camera captures the visible source image, and a thermal infrared camera acquires the thermal source image. In this paper, some image fusion algorithms based upon multi-scale transform (MST) and region-based selection rule with consistency verification have been proposed and presented. This research includes the implementation of the proposed image fusion algorithm in MATLAB along with a comparative analysis to decide the optimum number of levels for MST and the coefficient fusion rule. The results are presented, and several commonly used evaluation metrics are used to assess the suggested method's validity. Experiments show that the proposed approach is capable of producing good fusion results. While deploying our image fusion algorithm approaches, we observe several challenges from the popular image fusion methods. While high computational cost and complex processing steps of image fusion algorithms provide accurate fused results, they also make it hard to become deployed in systems and applications that require a real-time operation, high flexibility, and low computation ability. So, the methods presented in this paper offer good results with minimum time complexity.

Keywords: image fusion, IR thermal imager, multi-sensor, multi-scale transform

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Authors: M. S. Riyazulla

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Since the dawn of the 21st century, there has been a perceptible decline in Islamic supremacy in world affairs, apart from the gradual waning of the amiable relations and relevance of Islamic countries in the International political arena. For a long, Islamic countries have been marginalised by the superpowers in the global conflicting issues. This was evident in the context of their recent invasions and interference in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. The leading International Islamic organizations like the Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Gulf Cooperation Council, and Muslim World League did not play any prominent role there in resolving the crisis that ensued due to the exogenous and endogenous causes. Hence, there is a need for Islamic countries to create a credible International Islamic organization that could dictate its terms and shape a new Islamic world order. The prominent Islamic countries are divided on ideological and religious fault lines. Their concord is indispensable to enhance their image and placate the relations with other countries and communities. The massive boon of oil and gas could be synergistically utilised to exhibit their omnipotence and eminence through constructive ways. The prevailing menace of Islamophobia could be abated through syncretic messages, discussions, and deliberations by the sagacious Islamic scholars with the other community leaders. Presently, as Muslims are at a crossroads, a dynamic leadership could navigate the agitated Muslim community on the constructive path and herald political stability around the world. The present political disorder, chaos, and economic challenges necessities a paradigm shift in approach to worldly affairs. This could also be accomplished through the advancement in science and technology, particularly space exploration, for peaceful purposes. The Islamic world, in order to regain its lost preeminence, should rise to the occasion in promoting peace and tranquility in the world and should evolve a rational and human-centric solution to global disputes and concerns. As a splendid contribution to humanity and for amicable international relations, they should devote all their resources and scientific intellect towards space exploration and should safely transport man from the Earth to the nearest and most accessible cosmic body, the Moon, within one hundred years as the mankind is facing the existential threat on the planet.

Keywords: carboniferous period, Earth, extinction, fossil fuels, global leaders, Islamic glory, international order, life, marginalization, Moon, natural catastrophes

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Authors: Andreev V. A., Kovalenko T. N., Privolnev V. V., Chernavin A. V., Knyazeva E. R.

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Aim: To evaluate the antagonistic activity of Streptococcus salivarius K12 (SsK12) against ENT and oral cavity infection pathogens (S. pneumoniae, S. pyogenes, S. aureus), gram-negative bacteria (E. coli, P. aeruginosa) and C. albicans. Materials and methods: The probiotic strain SsK12 was isolated from the dietary supplement containing at least 1 × 109 CFU per tablet. The tablet was dissolved in the enrichment broth. The resulting suspension was seeded on 5% blood agar and incubated at 35°C in 4-6% CO2 for 48 hours. The raised culture was identified as Streptococcus salivarius with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry method. The evaluation of SsK12 antagonistic activity was carried out using a perpendicular streak technique. The daily SsK12 culture was inoculated as heavy streaks with a loop at one side of Petri dish with the Muller-Hinton agar (MHA) and incubated for 24 hours at 350 C in anaerobic conditions. It was supposed that bacteriocins would diffuse over the whole area of the agar media. On the next day S. pneumoniae, S. pyogenes, S. aureus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa and C. albicans clinical isolates were streaked at the clear side of MHA Petri dish. MHA Petri dish inoculated with SsK12 (one part) and with the respective clinical isolates (another part) streaked perpendicularly on the same day was used as the control. Results: There was no growth of S. pyogenes on the Petri dish with SsK12 daily culture; the growth of a few colonies of S. pneumonia was noted. The growth of S. aureus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa and C. albicans was noted along the inoculated streak. On the control Petri dish with simultaneous inoculating of the SsK12 strain and the test cultures, the growth of all the testes isolates was noted. Conclusions: (1) SsK12 possesses perfect antagonistic activity against S. pyogenes and good activity against S. pneumoniae. (2) There was no antagonistic activity of SsK12 against S. aureus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa and C. albicans. (3) SsK12 antagonistic properties make it possible to use this probiotic strain for prophylaxis of recurrent ENT infections.

Keywords: probiotics, SsK12, streptococcus salivarius K12, antagonistic activity

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Authors: Ahmed Saeed Mohamed, Sadok Sassi, Mohammad Roshun Paurobally

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Gears are important machine components that are widely used to transmit power and change speed in many rotating machines. Any breakdown of these vital components may cause severe disturbance to production and incur heavy financial losses. One of the most common causes of gear failure is the tooth fatigue crack. Early detection of teeth cracks is still a challenging task for engineers and maintenance personnel. So far, to analyze the vibration behavior of gears, different approaches have been tried based on theoretical developments, numerical simulations, or experimental investigations. The objective of this study was to develop a numerical model that could be used to simulate the effect of teeth cracks on the resulting vibrations and hence to permit early fault detection for gear transmission systems. Unlike the majority of published papers, where only one single crack has been considered, this work is more realistic, since it incorporates the possibility of multiple simultaneous cracks with different lengths. As cracks significantly alter the gear mesh stiffness, we performed a finite element analysis using SolidWorks software to determine the stiffness variation with respect to the angular position for different combinations of crack lengths. A simplified six degrees of freedom non-linear lumped parameter model of a one-stage gear system is proposed to study the vibration of a pair of spur gears, with and without tooth cracks. The model takes several physical properties into account, including variable gear mesh stiffness and the effect of friction, but ignores the lubrication effect. The vibration simulation results of the gearbox were obtained via Matlab and Simulink. The results were found to be consistent with the results from previously published works. The effect of one crack with different levels was studied and very similar changes in the total mesh stiffness and the vibration response, both were observed and compared to what has been found in previous studies. The effect of the crack length on various statistical time domain parameters was considered and the results show that these parameters were not equally sensitive to the crack percentage. Multiple cracks are introduced at different locations and the vibration response and the statistical parameters were obtained.

Keywords: dynamic simulation, gear mesh stiffness, simultaneous tooth cracks, spur gear, vibration-based fault detection

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Authors: Guem-Jae Chung, Jin-Hui Lee, Myung-Min Oh

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Environmental control of in vitro-propagated apple plantlets is required for successful acclimation to ex vitro due to its low survival rate. This study aimed to determine the proper lighting condition for ex vitro acclimation of the apple plantlets in plant factories. In vitro-propagated M9 apple plantlets treated with pre-acclimatization for 1 week were exposed to following light treatments for additional 6 weeks; 60 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ (A), 100 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ (B), 140 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ (C), 180 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ (D), 60 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ → 100 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ at 2 weeks (E) or 4 weeks (F), 60 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ → 100 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ at 2 weeks → 140 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ at 4 weeks (G) and 60 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ → 140 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ at 4 weeks (H). Shoot height, total leaf area, soil-plant analysis development (SPAD) value, root length, fresh and dry weights of shoots and roots were measured every 2 weeks after transplanting. In addition, the photosynthetic rate was measured at 5 weeks after transplanting. At 6 weeks after transplanting, shoot height of B was significantly higher than the other treatments. SPAD value, total leaf area and root length of B and F were relatively higher than the other treatments. Root fresh weights of B, D, F, and G were relatively higher than those in the other treatments. D induced the highest value in shoot fresh weight probably due to stem hardening, but it also resulted in shoot damage in the early stage of acclimation. Photosynthetic rate at 5 weeks after the transplanting was significantly increased as the light intensity increased. These results suggest that 100 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ for 6 weeks (B) or gradually increased treatment from 60 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ to 140 μmol·m⁻²·s⁻¹ at 2 weeks interval (F) were the proper lighting conditions for successful acclimation of in vitro-propagated apple plantlets. Acknowledgment: This work was supported by Korea Institute of Planning and Evaluation for Technology in Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (IPET) through Agri-Bio industry Technology Development Program, funded by Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) (315003051SB020).

Keywords: acclimation, in vitro-propagated apple plantlets, light intensity, plant factory

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Authors: Y. H. Chen, P. Y. Chiang, T. Sugiarto, I. Karsuna, Y. J. Lin, C. C. Chang, W. C. Hsu

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Task-specific training with intense practice of functional tasks has been emphasized for the approaches in motor rehabilitation in patients with hemiplegic strokes. Although reciprocal actions which may increase demands on motor control during seated stepping exercise, motor control is not explicitly trained with emphasis and instruction focused on traditional strengthening. Apart from cycling and treadmill, various forms of seated exerciser are becoming available for the lower extremity exercise. The benefit of seated exerciser has been focused on the effect on the cardiopulmonary system. Thus, the aim of current study is to investigate the effect of seated distance on muscle activation during seated strengthening in patients with stroke with extensor synergy pattern in the lower extremities. Electrodes were placed on the surface of lower limbs muscles, including rectus femoris (RF), vastus lateralis (VL), biceps femoris (BF) and gastrocnemius (GT) of both sides. Maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) of the muscles were obtained to normalize the EMG amplitude obtained during dynamic trials with analog raw data digitized with a sampling frequency of 2000 Hz, fully rectified and the linear enveloped. Movement cycle was separated into two phases by pushing (PP) and Return (RP). Integral EMG (iEMG) is then used to quantify level of activation during each of the phases. Subjects performed strengthening with moderate resistance with speed of 60 rpm in two different distances (D1, short) and (D2, long). The results showed greater iEMG in RF and smaller iEMG in VL and BF with obvious increase range of motion of hip flexion in D1 condition. On the contrary, no significant involvement of RF while greater level of muscular activation in VL and BF during RP was found during PP in D2 condition. In addition, greater hip internal rotation was observed in D2 condition. In patients with stroke with abnormal tone revealed by extensor synergy in the lower extremities, shorter seated distance is suggested to facilitate hip flexor muscle activation while avoid inducing hyper extensor tone which may prevent a smooth repetitive motion. Repetitive muscular contraction exercise of hip flexor may be helpful for further gait training as it may assist hip flexion during swing phase of the walking.

Keywords: seated strengthening, patients with stroke, electromyography, synergy pattern

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Authors: Govinda Pathak

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In modern agriculture, the sustainable enhancement of crop productivity while minimizing environmental impacts remains a paramount challenge. Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) have emerged as a promising solution to address this challenge. The rhizosphere, the dynamic interface between plant roots and soil, hosts intricate microbial interactions crucial for plant health and nutrient acquisition. PGPR, a subset of rhizospheric microorganisms, exhibit multifaceted beneficial effects on plants. Their abilities to stimulate growth, confer stress tolerance, enhance nutrient availability, and suppress pathogens make them invaluable contributors to sustainable agriculture. This work examines the pivotal role of free living nitrogen fixer in optimizing agricultural practices. We delve into the intricate mechanisms underlying PGPR-mediated plant-microbe interactions, encompassing quorum sensing, root exudate modulation, and signaling molecule exchange. Furthermore, we explore the diverse strategies employed by PGPR to enhance plant resilience against abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, and metal toxicity. Additionally, we highlight the role of PGPR in augmenting nutrient acquisition and soil fertility through mechanisms such as nitrogen fixation, phosphorus solubilization, and mineral mobilization. Furthermore, we discuss the potential of PGPR in minimizing the reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, thereby contributing to environmentally friendly agriculture. However, harnessing the full potential of PGPR requires a comprehensive understanding of their interactions with host plants and the surrounding microbial community. We also address challenges associated with PGPR application, including formulation, compatibility, and field efficacy. As the quest for sustainable agriculture intensifies, harnessing the remarkable attributes of PGPR offers a holistic approach to propel agricultural productivity while maintaining ecological balance. This work underscores the promising prospect of free living nitrogen fixer as a panacea for addressing critical agricultural challenges regarding chemical urea in an era of sustainable and resilient food production.

Keywords: PGPR, nitrogen fixer, quorum sensing, Rhizobacteria, pesticides

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Authors: Freya Willicks

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The society of the 21st century is characterized by dynamic and complexity, developments that also shape universities and university life. The Bologna reform, for example, has led to restructuring at many European universities. Today's university teachers, therefore, have to meet many expectations: Their tasks include not only teaching but also the general improvement of the quality of teaching, good research, the management of various projects or the development of their own personal skills. This requires a high degree of flexibility and openness to change. The resulting pressure can often lead to exhaustion. Coaching can be a way for university teachers to cope with these pressures because it gives them the opportunity to discuss stressful situations with a coach and self-reflect on them. As a result, more and more universities in Europe offer to coach to their teachers. An analysis of the services provided at universities in Germany, however, quickly reveals an immense disagreement with regard to the understanding of ‘coaching’. A variety of terms is used, such as coaching, counselling or supervision. In addition, each university defines its offer individually, from process-oriented consulting to expert consulting, from group training to individual coaching. The biographic backgrounds of those who coach are also very divergent, both external and internal coaches can be suitable. These findings lead to the following questions: Which structural characteristics for coaching at universities have been proven successful? What competencies should a good coach for university lecturers have? In order to answer these questions, a qualitative study was carried out. In a first step, qualitative semi-structured interviews (N = 14) were conducted, on the one hand with coaches for university teachers and on the other hand with university teachers who have been coached. In a second step, the interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Mayring's qualitative content analysis. The study shows how great the potential of coaching can be for university teachers, who otherwise have little opportunity to talk about their teaching in a private setting. According to the study, the coach should neither be a colleague nor a superior of the coachee but should take an independent perspective, as this is the only way for the coachee to openly reflect on himself/herself. In addition, the coach should be familiar with the university system, i.e., be an academic himself/herself. Otherwise, he/she cannot fully understand the complexity of the teaching situation and the role expectations. However, internal coaches do not necessarily have much coaching experience or explicit coaching competencies. They often come from the university's own didactics department, are experts in didactics, but do not necessarily have a certified coaching education. Therefore, it is important to develop structures and guidelines for internal coaches to support their coaching. In further analysis, such guidelines will be developed on the basis of these interviews.

Keywords: coaching, university coaching, university didactics, qualitative interviews

Procedia PDF Downloads 93

Authors: Daniel Botero, Oscar Rubiano, Pedro P. Barragan, Jaime Baron, Leonardo Rodriguez Perdomo, Jaime Rodriguez

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In the last decade interval training (IT) has gained importance when is compare with strength training (ST). However, there are few studies analyzing the impact of these training over the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This work has aimed to compare the activity of the autonomic nervous system, when is expose to an IT or ST indoor cycling mode. After approval by the ethics committee, a cross-over clinical trial with 22 healthy participants (age 21 ± 3 years) was implemented. The selection of participants for the groups with sequence force-interval (F-I) and interval-force (I-F) was made randomly with assignation of 11 participants for each group. The temporal series of heart rate was obtained before and after each training using the POLAR TEAM® heart monitor. The evaluation of the ANS was performed with spectral analysis of the heart rate variability (HRV) using the fast Fourier transform (Kubios software). A training of 8 weeks in each sequence (4 weeks with each training) with an intermediate period of two weeks of washout was implemented for each group. The power parameter of the HRV in the low frequency band (LF = 0.04-0.15Hz related to the sympathetic nervous system), high frequency (HF = 0.15-0.4Hz, related to the parasympathetic) and LF/HF (with reference to a modulation of parasympathetic over the sympathetic), were calculated. Afterward, the difference between the parameters before and after was realized. Then, to evaluate statistical differences between each training was implemented the method of Wellek (Wellek and Blettner, 2012, Medicine, 109 (15), 276-81). To determine the difference of effect over parasympathetic when FT and IT are used, the T test is implemented obtaining a T value of 0.73 with p-value ≤ 0.1. For the sympathetic was obtained a T of 0.33 with p ≤ 0.1 and for LF/HF the T was 1.44 with a p ≥ 0.1. Then, the carry over effect was evaluated and was not present. Significant changes over autonomic activity with strength or interval training were not observed. However, a modulation of the parasympathetic over the sympathetic can be observed. Probably, these findings should be explained because the sample is little and/or the time of training was insufficient to generate changes.

Keywords: autonomic nervous, force training, indoor cycling, interval training

Procedia PDF Downloads 196

Authors: Vinicius G. Goecks, Gregory M. Gremillion, William D. Nothwang

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Modern approaches to train intelligent agents rely on prolonged training sessions, high amounts of input data, and multiple interactions with the environment. This restricts the application of these learning algorithms in robotics and real-world applications, in which there is low tolerance to inadequate actions, interactions are expensive, and real-time processing and action are required. This paper addresses this issue introducing CyberSteer, a novel approach to efficiently design intrinsic reward functions based on human intention to guide deep reinforcement learning agents with no environment-dependent rewards. CyberSteer uses non-expert human operators for initial demonstration of a given task or desired behavior. The trajectories collected are used to train a behavior cloning deep neural network that asynchronously runs in the background and suggests actions to the deep reinforcement learning module. An intrinsic reward is computed based on the similarity between actions suggested and taken by the deep reinforcement learning algorithm commanding the agent. This intrinsic reward can also be reshaped through additional human demonstration or critique. This approach removes the need for environment-dependent or hand-engineered rewards while still being able to safely shape the behavior of autonomous robotic agents, in this case, based on human intention. CyberSteer is tested in a high-fidelity unmanned aerial vehicle simulation environment, the Microsoft AirSim. The simulated aerial robot performs collision avoidance through a clustered forest environment using forward-looking depth sensing and roll, pitch, and yaw references angle commands to the flight controller. This approach shows that the behavior of robotic systems can be shaped in a reduced amount of time when guided by a non-expert human, who is only aware of the high-level goals of the task. Decreasing the amount of training time required and increasing safety during training maneuvers will allow for faster deployment of intelligent robotic agents in dynamic real-world applications.

Keywords: human-robot interaction, intelligent robots, robot learning, semisupervised learning, unmanned aerial vehicles

Procedia PDF Downloads 243

Authors: Archana. S, Usha Rani. G, Anand Balakrishnan, Sanjana.R, Solomon F, Vijayalakshmi. J

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Background: There is evidence that male factors contribute to the infertility of up to 50% of couples, who are evaluated and treated for infertility using advanced assisted reproductive technologies. Genetic abnormalities, including sperm chromosome aneuploidy as well as structural aberrations, are one of the major causes of male infertility. Recent advances in technology expedite the evaluation of sperm aneuploidy. The purpose of the study was to de-termine the prevalence of sperm aneuploidy in infertile males and the degree of association between DNA fragmentation and sperm aneuploidy. Methods: In this study, 75 infertile men were included, and they were divided into four abnormal groups (Oligospermia, Terato-spermia, Asthenospermia and Oligoasthenoteratospermia (OAT)). Men with children who were normozoospermia served as the control group. The Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) method was used to test for sperm aneuploidy, and the Sperm Chromatin Dispersion Assay (SCDA) was used to measure the fragmentation of sperm DNA. Spearman's correla-tion coefficient was used to evaluate the relationship between sperm aneuploidy and sperm DNA fragmentation along with age. P < 0.05 was regarded as significant. Results: 75 partic-ipants' ages varied from 28 to 48 years old (35.5±5.1). The percentage of spermatozoa bear-ing X and Y was determined to be statistically significant (p-value < 0.05) and was found to be 48.92% and 51.18% of CEP X X 1 – nucish (CEP XX 1) [100] and CEP Y X 1 – nucish (CEP Y X 1) [100]. When compared to the rate of DNA fragmentation, it was discovered that infertile males had a greater frequency of sperm aneuploidy. Asthenospermia and OAT groups in sex chromosomal aneuploidy were significantly correlated (p<0.05). Conclusion: Sperm FISH and SCDA assay results showed increased sperm aneuploidy frequency, and DNA fragmentation index in infertile men compared with fertile men. There is a significant relationship observed between sperm aneuploidy and DNA fragmentation in OAT patients. When evaluating male variables and idiopathic infertility, the sperm FISH screening method can be used as a valuable diagnostic tool.

Keywords: ale infertility, dfi (dna fragmentation assay) (scd-sperm chromatin dispersion).art (artificial reproductive technology), trisomy, aneuploidy, fish (fluorescence in-situ hybridization), oat (oligoasthoteratospermia)

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Authors: Zhan Jie How

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With the heightened awareness of workplace learning and its impact on improving organizational performance and developing employee competence, governments and corporations around the world are forced to intensify their cooperation to establish national workplace development programmes to guide these corporations in fostering engaging and collaborative workplace learning cultures. This conceptual paper aims to conduct a comparative study of existing workplace development programmes for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe and Singapore, focusing primarily on the Swedish Production Leap, Finnish TEKES Liideri Programme, and Singapore SkillsFuture SME Mentors Programme. The study carries out a systematic review of the three workplace development programmes to examine the roles of external mentors or coaches in influencing the design and implementation of workplace learning strategies and practices in SMEs. Organizational, personal and external factors that promote or inhibit effective workplace mentorship are also scrutinized, culminating in a critical comparison and evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the aforementioned programmes. Based on the findings from the review and analyses, a heuristic conceptual framework is developed to illustrate the complex interrelationships among external workplace development programmes, internal learning and development initiatives instituted by the organization’s higher management, and employees' continuous learning activities at the workplace. The framework also includes a set of guiding principles that can be used as the basis for internal mediation between the competing perspectives of mentors and mentees (employers and employees of the organization) regarding workplace learning conditions, practices and their intended impact on the organization. The conceptual study provides a theoretical blueprint for future empirical research on organizational workplace learning and the impact of government-initiated workplace development programmes.

Keywords: employee competence, mentorship, organizational performance, workplace development programme, workplace learning culture

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Authors: Hadjer Didouh, Mohammed Hadj Melliani, Izzeddine Sameut Bouhaik

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Corrosion is a serious problem in industrial installations or metallic transport pipes. Corrosion is an interfacial process controlled by several parameters. The presence of microorganisms affects the kinetics of corrosion. This type of corrosion is often referred to as bio-corrosion or corrosion influenced by microorganisms (MIC). The action of a microorganism or a bacterium is carried out by the formation of biofilm following its attachment to the metal surface. The formation of biofilm isolates the metal surface from its environment and allows the bacteria to control the parameters of the metal/bacteria interface. Biofilm formation by sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) X52 steel poses substantial challenges in the oil and gas industry SONATRACH of Algeria. This research delves into the complex attachment mechanisms employed by SRB biofilm on X52 carbon steel and investigates innovative strategies for effective mitigation using biocides. The exploration commences by elucidating the underlying mechanisms facilitating SRB biofilm adhesion to X52 carbon steel, considering factors such as surface morphology, electrostatic interactions, and microbial extracellular substances. Advanced microscopy and spectroscopic techniques provide support to the attachment processes, laying the foundation for targeted mitigation strategies. The use of 100 ppm of Moringa Oleifera extract biocide as a promising approach to control and prevent SRB biofilm formation on X52 carbon steel surfaces. Green extracts undergo evaluation for their effectiveness in disrupting biofilm development while ensuring the integrity of the steel substrate. Systematic analysis is conducted on the biocide's impact on the biofilm's structural integrity, microbial viability, and overall attachment strength. This two-pronged investigation aims to deepen our comprehension of SRB biofilm dynamics and contribute to the development of effective strategies for mitigating its impact on X52 carbon steel.

Keywords: attachment, bio-corrosion, biofilm, metal/bacteria interface

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Authors: Bi̇rsen Tutunis, Zuhal Aydin

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Guided digital learning has attracted many researchers as it leads to autonomous learning.The developments in Guided digital learning have led to changes in teaching and learning in English Language Teaching classes (Jeong-Bae, 2014). This study reports on tasks designed under the principles of learner autonomy in an online learning platform ‘’Webquest’’ with the purpose of teaching English to Turkish tertiary level students at a foundation university in Istanbul. Guided digital learning blog project contents were organized according to work-cycles phases (planning and negotiation phase, decision-making phase, project phase and evaluation phase) which are compatible with the principles of autonomous learning (Legenhausen,2003). The aim of the study was to implement the class blog project to find out its impact on students’ behaviours and beliefs towards autonomous learning. The mixed method research approach was taken. 24 tertiary level students participated in the study on voluntary basis. Data analysis was performed with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. According to the results, students' attitudes towards digital learning did not differ before and after the training application. The learning styles of the students and their knowledge on digital learning scores differed. It has been observed that the students' learning styles and their digital learning scores increased after the training application. Autonomous beliefs, autonomous behaviors, group cohesion and group norms differed before and after the training application. Students' motivation level, strategies for learning English, perceptions of responsibility and out-of-class activity scores differed before and after the training application. It was seen that work-cycles in online classes create student centered learning that fosters autonomy. This paper will display the work cycles in detail and the researchers will give examples of in and beyond class activities and blog projects.

Keywords: guided digital learning, work cycles, english language teaching, autonomous learning

Procedia PDF Downloads 48