Search results for: Nigeria industrial standard

Authors: Weikang Gong, Chunhua Li

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Dynamics plays an essential role in function exertion of proteins. Elastic network model (ENM), a harmonic potential-based and cost-effective computational method, is a valuable and efficient tool for characterizing the intrinsic dynamical properties encoded in biomacromolecule structures and has been widely used to detect the large-amplitude collective motions of proteins. Gaussian network model (GNM) and anisotropic network model (ANM) are the two often-used ENM models. In recent years, many ENM variants have been proposed. Here, we propose a small but effective modification (denoted as modified mENM) to the multiscale ENM (mENM) where fitting weights of Kirchhoff/Hessian matrixes with the least square method (LSM) is modified since it neglects the details of pairwise interactions. Then we perform its comparisons with the original mENM, traditional ENM, and parameter-free ENM (pfENM) on reproducing dynamical properties for the six representative proteins whose molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories are available in http://mmb.pcb.ub.es/MoDEL/. In the results, for B-factor prediction, mENM achieves the best performance among the four ENM models. Additionally, it is noted that with the weights of the multiscale Kirchhoff/Hessian matrixes modified, interestingly, the modified mGNM/mANM still has a much better performance than the corresponding traditional ENM and pfENM models. As to dynamical cross-correlation map (DCCM) calculation, taking the data obtained from MD trajectories as the standard, mENM performs the worst while the results produced by the modified mENM and pfENM models are close to those from MD trajectories with the latter a little better than the former. Generally, ANMs perform better than the corresponding GNMs except for the mENM. Thus, pfANM and the modified mANM, especially the former, have an excellent performance in dynamical cross-correlation calculation. Compared with GNMs (except for mGNM), the corresponding ANMs can capture quite a number of positive correlations for the residue pairs nearly largest distances apart, which is maybe due to the anisotropy consideration in ANMs. Furtherly, encouragingly the modified mANM displays the best performance in capturing the functional motional modes, followed by pfANM and traditional ANM models, while mANM fails in all the cases. This suggests that the consideration of long-range interactions is critical for ANM models to produce protein functional motions. Based on the analyses, the modified mENM is a promising method in capturing multiple dynamical characteristics encoded in protein structures. This work is helpful for strengthening the understanding of the elastic network model and provides a valuable guide for researchers to utilize the model to explore protein dynamics.

Keywords: elastic network model, ENM, multiscale ENM, molecular dynamics, parameter-free ENM, protein structure

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Authors: A. Hakem, Y. Bouafia

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Characterization of materials used for various mechanical components is of great importance in their design. Several studies were conducted by various authors in order to improve their physical and/or chemical properties in general and mechanical or metallurgical properties in particular. The foundry alloy AlSi7Zn3Cu2Mg is one of the main components constituting the various mechanisms for the implementation of applications and various industrial projects. Obtaining a reliable product is not an easy task; several results proposed by different authors show sometimes results that can contradictory. Due to their high mechanical characteristics, these alloys are widely used in engineering. Silicon improves casting properties and magnesium allows heat treatment. It is thus possible to obtain various degrees of hardening and therefore interesting compromise between tensile strength and yield strength, on one hand, and elongation, on the other hand. These mechanical characteristics can be further enhanced by a series of mechanical treatments or heat treatments. Their light weight coupled with high mechanical characteristics, aluminum alloys are very much used in cars and aircraft industry. The present study is focused on the influence of heat treatments which cause significant micro structural changes, usually hardening by variation of annealing temperatures by increments of 10°C and 20°C on the evolution of the main elastic characteristics, the resistance, the ductility and the structural characteristics of AlSi7Zn3Cu2Mg foundry alloy cast in sand by gravity. These elastic properties are determined in three directions for each specimen of dimensions 200x150x20 mm³ by the ultrasonic method based on acoustic or elastic waves. The hardness, the micro hardness and the structural characteristics are evaluated by a non-destructive method. The aim of this work is to study the hardening ability of AlSi7Zn3Cu2Mg alloy by considering ten states. To improve the mechanical properties obtained with the raw casting, one should use heat treatment for structural hardening; the addition of magnesium is necessary to increase the sensitivity to this specific heat treatment: Treatment followed by homogenization which generates a diffusion of atoms in a substitution solid solution inside a hardening furnace at 500°C during 8h, followed immediately by quenching in water at room temperature 20 to 25°C, then an ageing process for 17h at room temperature and at different annealing temperature (150, 160, 170, 180, 190, 240, 200, 220 and 240°C) for 20h in an annealing oven. The specimens were allowed to cool inside the oven.

Keywords: aluminum, foundry alloy, magnesium, mechanical characteristics, silicon

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Authors: Nkwachukwu Chukwuchekwa, Joy Ulumma Chukwuchekwa

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Magnetic characteristics of grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) are usually measured at high flux densities suitable for its typical applications in power transformers. There are limited magnetic data at low flux densities which are relevant for the characterization of GOES for applications in metering instrument transformers and low frequency magnetic shielding in magnetic resonance imaging medical scanners. Magnetic properties such as coercivity, B-H loop, AC relative permeability and specific power loss of conventional grain oriented (CGO) and high permeability grain oriented (HGO) electrical steels were measured and compared at high and low flux densities at power magnetising frequency. 40 strips comprising 20 CGO and 20 HGO, 305 mm x 30 mm x 0.27 mm from a supplier were tested. The HGO and CGO strips had average grain sizes of 9 mm and 4 mm respectively. Each strip was singly magnetised under sinusoidal peak flux density from 8.0 mT to 1.5 T at a magnetising frequency of 50 Hz. The novel single sheet tester comprises a personal computer in which LabVIEW version 8.5 from National Instruments (NI) was installed, a NI 4461 data acquisition (DAQ) card, an impedance matching transformer, to match the 600  minimum load impedance of the DAQ card with the 5 to 20  low impedance of the magnetising circuit, and a 4.7 Ω shunt resistor. A double vertical yoke made of GOES which is 290 mm long and 32 mm wide is used. A 500-turn secondary winding, about 80 mm in length, was wound around a plastic former, 270 mm x 40 mm, housing the sample, while a 100-turn primary winding, covering the entire length of the plastic former was wound over the secondary winding. A standard Epstein strip to be tested is placed between the yokes. The magnetising voltage was generated by the LabVIEW program through a voltage output from the DAQ card. The voltage drop across the shunt resistor and the secondary voltage were acquired by the card for calculation of magnetic field strength and flux density respectively. A feedback control system implemented in LabVIEW was used to control the flux density and to make the induced secondary voltage waveforms sinusoidal to have repeatable and comparable measurements. The low noise NI4461 card with 24 bit resolution and a sampling rate of 204.8 KHz and 92 KHz bandwidth were chosen to take the measurements to minimize the influence of thermal noise. In order to reduce environmental noise, the yokes, sample and search coil carrier were placed in a noise shielding chamber. HGO was found to have better magnetic properties at both high and low magnetisation regimes. This is because of the higher grain size of HGO and higher grain-grain misorientation of CGO. HGO is better CGO in both low and high magnetic field applications.

Keywords: flux density, electrical steel, LabVIEW, magnetization

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Authors: S.Kauroo, J. Govinden Soulange, D. Marie

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Psiadia species from the Asteraceae are traditionally used in the folk medicine of Mauritius to treat cutaneous and bronchial infections. The present study aimed at validating the phytomedicinal properties of the selected species from the Asteraceae family, namely Psiadia arguta, Psiadia viscosa, Psiadia lithospermifolia, and Distephanus populifolius. Dried hexane, ethyl acetate, and methanol leaf extracts were studied for their antioxidant properties using the DPPH (1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl), FRAP (Ferric Reducing Ability of Plasma), and Deoxyribose assays. Antibacterial activity against human pathogenic bacteria namely Escherichia coli (ATCC 27853), Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 29213), Enterococcus faecalis (ATCC 29212), Klebsiella pneumonia (ATCC27853), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853), and Bacillus cereus (ATCC 11778) was measured using the broth microdilution assay. Qualitative phytochemical screening using standard methods revealed the presence of coumarins, tannins, leucoanthocyanins, and steroids in all the tested extracts. The measured phenolics level of the selected plant extracts varied from 24.0 to 231.6 mg GAE/g with the maximum level in methanol extracts in all four species. The highest flavonoids and proanthocyanidins content was noted in Psiadia arguta methanolic extracts with 65.7±1.8 mg QE/g and 5.1±0.0 mg CAT/g dry weight (DW) extract, respectively. The maximum free radical scavenging activity was measured in Psiadia arguta methanol and ethyl acetate extracts with IC50 11.3±0.2 and 11.6± 0.2 µg/mL, respectively and followed by Distephanus populifolius methanol extracts with an IC50 of 11.3± 0.8 µg/mL. The maximum ferric reducing antioxidant potential was noted in Psiadia lithospermifolia methanol extracts with a FRAP value of 18.8 ± 0.4 µmol Fe2+/L/g DW. The antioxidant capacity based on DPPH and Deoxyribose values were negatively related to total phenolics, flavonoid and proanthocyanidins content while the ferric reducing antioxidant potential were strongly correlated to total phenolics, flavonoid and proanthocyanidins content. All four species exhibited antimicrobial activity against the tested bacteria (both Gram-negative and Gram-positive). Interestingly, the hexane and ethyl acetate extracts of Psiadia viscosa and Psiadia lithospermifolia were more active than the control antibiotic Chloramphenicol. The Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values for hexane and ethyl acetate extracts of Psiadia viscosa and Psiadia lithospermifolia against the tested bacteria ranged from (62.5 to 500 µg/ml). These findings validate the use of these tested Asteraceae in the traditional medicine of Mauritius and also highlight their pharmaceutical potential as prospective phytomedicines.

Keywords: antibacterial, antioxidant, DPPH, flavonoids, FRAP, Psiadia spp

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Authors: Ana Beltran Sanahuja, A. Valdés García, Saray Lopez De Pablo Gallego, Maria Soledad Prats Moya

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Tomato consumption has greatly increased worldwide in the last few years, mostly due to a growing demand for products like sofrito. In this sense, regular consumption of tomato-based products has been consistently associated with a reduction in the incidence of chronic degenerative diseases. The sofrito is a homemade tomato sauce typical of the Mediterranean area, which contains as main ingredients: tomato, onion, garlic and olive oil. There are also sofrito’s variations by adding other spices which bring at the same time not only color, flavor, smell and or aroma; they also provide medicinal properties, due to their antioxidant power. This protective effect has mainly been attributed to the predominant bioactive compounds present in sofrito, such as lycopene and other carotenoids as well as more than 40 different polyphenols. Regarding the cooking process, it is known that it can modify the properties and the availability of nutrients in sofrito; however, there is not enough information regarding this issue. For this reason, the aim of the present work is to evaluate the cooking effect on the antioxidant capacity of different variants of tomato-based sofrito combined with other spices, through the analysis of total phenols content (TPC) and to evaluate the antioxidant capacity by using the method of free radical 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). Based on the results obtained, it can be confirmed that the basic sofrito composed of tomato, onion, garlic and olive oil and the sofrito with 1 g of rosemary added, are the ones with the highest content of phenols presenting greater antioxidant power than other industrial sofrito, and that of other variables of sofrito with added thyme or higher amounts of garlic. Moreover, it has been observed that in the elaboration of the tomato-based sofrito, it is possible to cook until 60 minutes, since the cooking process increases the bioavailability of the carotenoids when breaking the cell walls, which weakens the binding forces between the carotenoids and increases the levels of antioxidants present, confirmed both with the TPC and DPPH methods. It can be concluded that the cooking process of different variants of tomato-based sofrito, including spices, can improve the antioxidant capacity. The synergistic effects of different antioxidants may have a greater protective effect; increasing, also, the digestibility of proteins. In addition, the antioxidants help to deactivate the free radicals of diseases such as atherosclerosis, aging, immune suppression, cancer, and diabetes.

Keywords: antioxidants, cooking process, phenols sofrito

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Authors: Szymon Rutkowski, Tomasz Korbak

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We present a reinforcement-learning-based method of training neural machine translation models without parallel corpora. The standard encoder-decoder approach to machine translation suffers from two problems we aim to address. First, it needs parallel corpora, which are scarce, especially for low-resource languages. Second, it lacks psychological plausibility of learning procedure: learning a foreign language is about learning to communicate useful information, not merely learning to transduce from one language’s 'encoding' to another. We instead pose the problem of learning to translate as learning a policy in a communication game between two agents: the translator and the classifier. The classifier is trained beforehand on a natural language inference task (determining the entailment relation between a premise and a hypothesis) in the target language. The translator produces a sequence of actions that correspond to generating translations of both the hypothesis and premise, which are then passed to the classifier. The translator is rewarded for classifier’s performance on determining entailment between sentences translated by the translator to disciple’s native language. Translator’s performance thus reflects its ability to communicate useful information to the classifier. In effect, we train a machine translation model without the need for parallel corpora altogether. While similar reinforcement learning formulations for zero-shot translation were proposed before, there is a number of improvements we introduce. While prior research aimed at grounding the translation task in the physical world by evaluating agents on an image captioning task, we found that using a linguistic task is more sample-efficient. Natural language inference (also known as recognizing textual entailment) captures semantic properties of sentence pairs that are poorly correlated with semantic similarity, thus enforcing basic understanding of the role played by compositionality. It has been shown that models trained recognizing textual entailment produce high-quality general-purpose sentence embeddings transferrable to other tasks. We use stanford natural language inference (SNLI) dataset as well as its analogous datasets for French (XNLI) and Polish (CDSCorpus). Textual entailment corpora can be obtained relatively easily for any language, which makes our approach more extensible to low-resource languages than traditional approaches based on parallel corpora. We evaluated a number of reinforcement learning algorithms (including policy gradients and actor-critic) to solve the problem of translator’s policy optimization and found that our attempts yield some promising improvements over previous approaches to reinforcement-learning based zero-shot machine translation.

Keywords: agent-based language learning, low-resource translation, natural language inference, neural machine translation, reinforcement learning

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Authors: Marie-Claude Roy, David Locky, Ermias Azeria, Jim Schieck

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It is estimated that up to 70% of the wetlands in the Parkland and Grassland natural regions of Alberta have been lost due to various land-use activities. These losses include ecosystem function and services they once provided. Those wetlands remaining are often embedded in a matrix of human-modified habitats and despite efforts taken to protect them the effects of land-uses on wetland condition and function remain largely unknown. We used biophysical field data and remotely-sensed human footprint data collected at 322 open-water wetlands by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) to evaluate the impact of surrounding land use on the physico-chemistry characteristics and plant functional traits of wetlands. Eight physio-chemistry parameters were assessed: wetland water depth, water temperature, pH, salinity, dissolved oxygen, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, and dissolved organic carbon. Three plant functional traits were evaluated: 1) origin (native and non-native), 2) life history (annual, biennial, and perennial), and 3) habitat requirements (obligate-wetland and obligate-upland). Intensity land-use was quantified within a 250-meter buffer around each wetland. Ninety-nine percent of wetlands in the Grassland and Parkland regions of Alberta have land-use activities in their surroundings, with most being agriculture-related. Total phosphorus in wetlands increased with the cover of surrounding agriculture, while salinity, total nitrogen, and dissolved organic carbon were positively associated with the degree of soft-linear (e.g. pipelines, trails) land-uses. The abundance of non-native and annual/biennial plants increased with the amount of agriculture, while urban-industrial land-use lowered abundance of natives, perennials, and obligate wetland plants. Our study suggests that land-use types surrounding wetlands affect the physicochemical and biological conditions of wetlands. This research suggests that reducing human disturbances through reclamation of wetland buffers may enhance the condition and function of wetlands in agricultural landscapes.

Keywords: wetlands, biophysical assessment, land use, grassland and parkland natural regions

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Authors: Valeria Dilcheva, Svetlozara Petkova, Ivelin Vladov

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Nemathodes of the genus Trichinella are zoonotic parasites with a cosmopolitan distribution. More than 100 species of mammals, birds and reptiles are involved in the natural cycle of this nematode. At present, T. spiralis, T. pseudospiralis, and T. britovi have been found in Bulgaria. The existence of natural wildlife and domestic reservoirs of Trichinella spp. can be a serious threat to human health. Three trichinella isolates caused human trichinella infection outbreaks from three regions of Sofia City Province were used for the research: sample No. 1 - Ratus norvegicus, sample No. 2 – domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica), sample No. 3 - domestic pig (Sus scrofa domestica). Trichinella larvae of the studied species were isolated via digestive method (pepsin, hydrochloric acid, water) at 37ºC by standard procedure and were determined by gender (male and female) based on their morphological characteristics. As a reference trichinella species were used: T. spiralis, T. pseudospiralis, T. nativa and T. britovi. Single male and female larvae of the three isolates were crossed with single male and female larvae of the reference trichinella species as well as reciprocally. As a result of cross-breeding, offspring of muscular larvae with T. spiralis and T. britovi were obtained, while in experiments with T. pseudospiralis and T. nativa, trichinella larvae were not found in the laboratory mice. The results obtained in the control groups indicate that the trichinella larvae used from the isolates and the four trichinella species are infective. Also, the infective ability of the F1 offspring from the successful cross-breeding between isolates and reference species was investigated. Through the data obtained in the experiment was found that isolates No. 1 and No. 2 belong to the species T. spiralis, and isolate No. 3 belongs to the species T. britovi. The results were confirmed by PCR and real-time PCR analysis. Thus the presence and circulation of the species T. spiralis and T. britovi in Bulgaria was confirmed. Probably the rodents (rats) are involved in the distribution of T. spiralis in urban environment. The species T. britovi found in a domestic pig speaks of some contact with wild animals for which T. britovi is characteristic. The probable reason is that a large number of farmers in Bulgaria practice the free-range breeding of domestic pigs. Part of the farmers also used as food for domestic pigs waste products from the game (foxes, jackals, bears, wolves) and probably thus the infection was obtained. The distribution range of trichinella species in Bulgaria is not strictly outlined. It is believed that T. spiralis is most common in domestic animals and T. britovi and T. pseudospiralis are characteristic of wildlife. To answer the question whether wild and synanthropic animals are infected with the same or different trichinella species, which species predominate in nature and what their distribution among different hosts is, further research is required.

Keywords: cross-breeding, Sofia, trichinellosis, Trichinella britovi, Trichinella spiralis

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Authors: K. Alafogiannis, E. E. Houssos, E. Anagnostou, G. Kouvarakis, N. Mihalopoulos, A. Fotiadi

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The Mediterranean basin is an area where different aerosol types coexist, including urban/industrial, desert dust, biomass burning and marine particles. Particularly, mineral dust aerosols, mostly originated from North African deserts, significantly contribute to high aerosol loads above the Mediterranean. Dust transport, controlled by the variation of the atmospheric circulation throughout the year, results in a strong spatial and temporal variability of aerosol properties. In this study, the synoptic conditions which favor dust transport over the Eastern Mediterranean are thoroughly investigated. For this reason, three datasets are employed. Firstly, ground-based daily data of aerosol properties, namely Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT), Ångström exponent (α440-870) and fine fraction from the FORTH-AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) station along with measurements of PM10 concentrations from Finokalia station, for the period 2003-2011, are used to identify days with high coarse aerosol load (episodes) over Crete. Then, geopotential height at 1000, 850 and 700 hPa levels obtained from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project, are utilized to depict the atmospheric circulation during the identified episodes. Additionally, air-mass back trajectories, calculated by HYSPLIT, are used to verify the origin of aerosols from neighbouring deserts. For the 227 identified dust episodes, the statistical methods of Factor and Cluster Analysis are applied on the corresponding atmospheric circulation data to reveal the main types of the synoptic conditions favouring dust transport towards Crete (Eastern Mediterranean). The 227 cases are classified into 11 distinct types (clusters). Dust episodes in Eastern Mediterranean, are found to be more frequent (52%) in spring with a secondary maximum in autumn. The main characteristic of the atmospheric circulation associated with dust episodes, is the presence of a low-pressure system at surface, either in southwestern Europe or western/central Mediterranean, which induces a southerly air flow favouring dust transport from African deserts. The exact position and the intensity of the low-pressure system vary notably among clusters. More rarely dust may originate from deserts of Arabian Peninsula.

Keywords: aerosols, atmospheric circulation, dust particles, Eastern Mediterranean

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Authors: Paulina Zavistanaviciute, Vita Krungleviciute, Elena Bartkiene

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Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are microbial supplements that increase the nutritional, therapeutic, and safety value of food and feed. Often LAB strains are incubated in an expensive commercially available de Man-Rogosa-Sharpe (MRS) medium; the cultures are centrifuged, and the cells are washing with sterile water. Potato juice and apple juice industry bio-products are industrial wastes which may constitute a source of digestible nutrients for microorganisms. Due to their low cost and good chemical composition, potato juice and apple juice production bio- products could have a potential application in LAB encapsulation. In this study, pure LAB (P. acidilactici and P. pentosaceus) were multiplied in a crushed potato juice and apple juice industry bio-products medium. Before using, bio-products were sterilized and filtered. No additives were added to mass, except apple juice industry bioproducts were diluted with sterile water (1/5; v/v). The tap of sterilised mass, and LAB cell suspension (5 mL), containing of 8.9 log10 colony-forming units (cfu) per mL of the P. acidilactici and P. pentosaceus was used to multiply the LAB for 72 h. The final colony number in the potato juice and apple juice bio- products substrate was on average 9.60 log10 cfu/g. In order to stabilize the LAB, several methods of dehydration have been tested: lyophilisation (MilrockKieffer Lane, Kingston, USA) and dehydration in spray drying system (SD-06, Keison, Great Britain). Into the spray drying system multiplied LAB in a crushed potato juice and apple juice bio-products medium was injected in peristaltic way (inlet temperature +60 °C, inlet air temperature +150° C, outgoing air temperature +80 °C, air flow 200 m3/h). After lyophilisation (-48 °C) and spray drying (+150 °C) the viable cell concentration in the fermented potato juice powder was 9.18 ± 0.09 log10 cfu/g and 9.04 ± 0.07 log10 cfu/g, respectively, and in apple mass powder 8.03 ± 0.04 log10 cfu/g and 7.03 ± 0.03 log10 cfu/g, respectively. Results indicated that during the storage (after 12 months) at room temperature (22 +/- 2 ºC) LAB count in dehydrated products was 5.18 log10 cfu/g and 7.00 log10 cfu/g (in spray dried and lyophilized potato juice powder, respectively), and 3.05 log10 cfu/g and 4.10 log10 cfu/g (in spray dried and lyophilized apple juice industry bio-products powder, respectively). According to obtained results, potato juice could be used as alternative substrate for P. acidilactici and P. pentosaceus cultivation, and by drying received powders can be used in food/feed industry as the LAB starters. Therefore, apple juice industry by- products before spray drying and lyophilisation should be modified (i. e. by using different starches) in order to improve its encapsulation.

Keywords: bio-products, encapsulation, lactic acid bacteria, sustainability

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Authors: Dino Carpentras, Paul J. Maher, Caoimhe O'Reilly, Michael Quayle

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Opinion dynamics is a sub-field of agent-based modeling that focuses on people’s opinions and their evolutions over time. Despite the rapid increase in the number of publications in this field, it is still not clear how to apply these models to real-world scenarios. Indeed, there is no agreement on how people update their opinion while interacting. Furthermore, it is not clear if different topics will show the same dynamics (e.g., more polarized topics may behave differently). These problems are mostly due to the lack of experimental validation of the models. Some previous studies started bridging this gap in the literature by directly measuring people’s opinions before and after the interaction. However, these experiments force people to express their opinion as a number instead of using natural language (and then, eventually, encoding it as numbers). This is not the way people normally interact, and it may strongly alter the measured dynamics. Another limitation of these studies is that they usually average all the topics together, without checking if different topics may show different dynamics. In our work, we collected data from 200 participants on 5 unpolarized topics. Participants expressed their opinions in natural language (“agree” or “disagree”). We also measured the certainty of their answer, expressed as a number between 1 and 10. However, this value was not shown to other participants to keep the interaction based on natural language. We then showed the opinion (and not the certainty) of another participant and, after a distraction task, we repeated the measurement. To make the data compatible with opinion dynamics models, we multiplied opinion and certainty to obtain a new parameter (here called “continuous opinion”) ranging from -10 to +10 (using agree=1 and disagree=-1). We firstly checked the 5 topics individually, finding that all of them behaved in a similar way despite having different initial opinions distributions. This suggested that the same model could be applied for different unpolarized topics. We also observed that people tend to maintain similar levels of certainty, even when they changed their opinion. This is a strong violation of what is suggested from common models, where people starting at, for example, +8, will first move towards 0 instead of directly jumping to -8. We also observed social influence, meaning that people exposed with “agree” were more likely to move to higher levels of continuous opinion, while people exposed with “disagree” were more likely to move to lower levels. However, we also observed that the effect of influence was smaller than the effect of random fluctuations. Also, this configuration is different from standard models, where noise, when present, is usually much smaller than the effect of social influence. Starting from this, we built an opinion dynamics model that explains more than 80% of data variance. This model was also able to show the natural conversion of polarization from unpolarized states. This experimental approach offers a new way to build models grounded on experimental data. Furthermore, the model offers new insight into the fundamental terms of opinion dynamics models.

Keywords: experimental validation, micro-dynamics rule, opinion dynamics, update rule

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Authors: Jagannath Koravadi, Archith Gupta

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In a world with constantly growing energy prices, and growing concerns about the global climate changes caused by increased energy consumption, it is becoming more and more essential to save energy wherever possible. Refrigeration systems are one of the major and bulk energy consuming systems now-a-days in industrial sectors, residential sectors and household environment. Refrigeration systems with considerable cooling requirements consume a large amount of electricity and thereby contribute greatly to the running costs. Therefore, a great deal of attention is being paid towards improvement of the performance of the refrigeration systems in this regard throughout the world. The Coefficient of Performance (COP) of a refrigeration system is used for determining the system's overall efficiency. The operating cost to the consumer and the overall environmental impact of a refrigeration system in turn depends on the COP or efficiency of the system. The COP of a refrigeration system should therefore be as high as possible. Slight modifications in the technical elements of the modern refrigeration systems have the potential to reduce the energy consumption, and improvements in simple operational practices with minimal expenses can have beneficial impact on COP of the system. Thus, the challenge is to determine the changes that can be made in a refrigeration system in order to improve its performance, reduce operating costs and power requirement, improve environmental outcomes, and achieve a higher COP. The opportunity here, and a better solution to this challenge, will be to incorporate modifications in conventional refrigeration systems for saving energy. Energy efficiency, in addition to improvement of COP, can deliver a range of savings such as reduced operation and maintenance costs, improved system reliability, improved safety, increased productivity, better matching of refrigeration load and equipment capacity, reduced resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, better working environment, and reduced energy costs. The present work aims at fabricating a working model of a refrigerator that will provide for effective heat recovery from superheated refrigerant with the help of an efficient de-superheater. The temperature of the refrigerant and water in the de-super heater at different intervals of time are measured to determine the quantity of waste heat recovered. It is found that the COP of the system improves by about 6% with the de-superheater and the power input to the compressor decreases by 4 % and also the refrigeration capacity increases by 4%.

Keywords: coefficiency of performance, de-superheater, refrigerant, refrigeration capacity, heat recovery

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Authors: Sree Sanyal

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Research in ageing often highlights the age-related health dimension more than the psycho-social characteristics of the elderly, which also influences and challenges the health outcomes. Multimorbidity is defined as the person having more than one chronic non-communicable diseases and their prevalence increases with ageing. The study aims to evaluate the influence of social ties on self-reported prevalence of multimorbidity (selected chronic non-communicable diseases) among the selected states of elderly population in India. The data is accessed from Building Knowledge Base on Population Ageing in India (BKPAI), collected in 2011 covering the self-reported chronic non-communicable diseases like arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, lung disease with asthma, hypertension, cataract, depression, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer. The data of the above diseases were taken together and categorized as: ‘no disease’, ‘one disease’ and ‘multimorbidity’. The predicted variables were demographic, socio-economic, residential types, and the variable of social ties includes social support, social engagement, perceived support, connectedness, and importance of the elderly. Predicted probability for multiple logistic regression was used to determine the background characteristics of the old in association with chronic morbidities showing multimorbidity. The finding suggests that 24.35% of the elderly are suffering from multimorbidity. Research shows that with reference to ‘no disease’, according to the socio-economic characteristics of the old, the female oldest old (80+) from others in caste and religion, widowed, never had any formal education, ever worked in their life, coming from the second wealth quintile standard, from rural Maharashtra are more prone with ‘one disease’. From the social ties background, the elderly who perceives they are important to the family, after getting older their decision-making status has been changed, prefer to stay with son and spouse only, satisfied with the communication from their children are more likely to have less single morbidity and the results are significant. Again, with respect to ‘no disease’, the female oldest old (80+), who are others in caste, Christian in religion, widowed, having less than 5 years of education completed, ever worked, from highest wealth quintile, residing in urban Kerala are more associated with multimorbidity. The elderly population who are more socially connected through family visits, public gatherings, gets support in decision making, who prefers to spend their later years with son and spouse only but stays alone shows lesser prevalence of multimorbidity. In conclusion, received and perceived social integration and support from associated neighborhood in the older days, knowing about their own needs in life facilitates better health and wellbeing of the elderly population in selected states of India.

Keywords: morbidity, multi-morbidity, prevalence, social ties

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Authors: Laura Kupers, Julie Piérard, Niki Cauberg

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The use of exposed concrete (sometimes referred to as architectural concrete), keeps gaining popularity. Exposed concrete has the advantage to combine the structural properties of concrete with an aesthetic finish. However, for a successful aesthetic finish, much attention needs to be paid to the execution (formwork, release agent, curing, weather conditions…), the concrete composition (choice of the raw materials and mix proportions) as well as to its fresh properties. For the latter, a simple on-site pass/fail test could halt the casting of concrete not suitable for architectural concrete and thus avoid expensive repairs later. When architects opt for an exposed concrete, they usually want a smooth, uniform and nearly blemish-free surface. For this choice, a standard ‘construction’ concrete does not suffice. An aesthetic surface finishing requires the concrete to contain a minimum content of fines to minimize the risk of segregation and to allow complete filling of more complex shaped formworks. The concrete may neither be too viscous as this makes it more difficult to compact and it increases the risk of blow holes blemishing the surface. On the other hand, too much bleeding may cause color differences on the concrete surface. An easy pass/fail test, which can be performed on the site just before the casting, could avoid these problems. In case the fresh concrete fails the test, the concrete can be rejected. Only in case the fresh concrete passes the test, the concrete would be cast. The pass/fail tests are intended for a concrete with a consistency class S4. Five tests were selected as possible onsite pass/fail test. Two of these tests already exist: the K-slump test (ASTM C1362) and the Bauer Filter Press Test. The remaining three tests were developed by the BBRI in order to test the segregation resistance of fresh concrete on site: the ‘dynamic sieve stability test’, the ‘inverted cone test’ and an adapted ‘visual stability index’ (VSI) for the slump and flow test. These tests were inspired by existing tests for self-compacting concrete, for which the segregation resistance is of great importance. The suitability of the fresh concrete mixtures was also tested by means of a laboratory reference test (resistance to segregation) and by visual inspection (blow holes, structure…) of small test walls. More than fifteen concrete mixtures of different quality were tested. The results of the pass/fail tests were compared with the results of this laboratory reference test and the test walls. The preliminary laboratory results indicate that concrete mixtures ‘suitable’ for placing as exposed concrete (containing sufficient fines, a balanced grading curve etc.) can be distinguished from ‘inferior’ concrete mixtures. Additional laboratory tests, as well as tests on site, will be conducted to confirm these preliminary results and to set appropriate pass/fail values.

Keywords: exposed concrete, testing fresh concrete, segregation resistance, bleeding, consistency

Procedia PDF Downloads 413

Authors: Sri E. Wati, D. Roswidyatmoko, N. Maslahatun, Gunawan, Andhika B. Taji

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Natural resource is the main sources to fulfill human needs. Its utilization must consider not only human prosperity but also sustainability. Balance of natural resources is a tool to manage natural wealth and to control land use change. This tool is needed to organize land use planning as stated on spatial plan in a certain region. Balance of natural resources can be calculated by comparing two-series of natural resource data obtained at different year. In this case, four years data period of land and forest were used (2010 and 2014). Land use data were acquired through satellite image interpretation and field checking. By means of GIS analysis, its result was then assessed with land use plan. It is intended to evaluate whether existing land use is suitable with land use plan. If it is improper, what kind of efforts and policies must be done to overcome the situation. Subosukawonosraten is rapid developed areas in Central Java Province. This region consists of seven regencies/cities which are Sukoharjo Regency, Boyolali Regency, Surakarta City, Karanganyar Regency, Wonogiri Regency, Sragen Regency, and Klaten Regency. This region is regarding to several former areas under Karasidenan Surakarta and their location is adjacent to Surakarta. Balance of forest resources show that width of forest area is not significantly changed. Some land uses within the area are slightly changed. Some rice field areas are converted into settlement (0.03%) whereas water bodies become vacant areas (0.09%). On the other hand, balance of land resources state that there are many land use changes in this region. Width area of rice field decreases 428 hectares and more than 50% of them have been transformed into settlement area and 11.21% is converted into buildings such as factories, hotels, and other infrastructures. It occurs mostly in Sragen, Sukoharjo, and Karanganyar Regency. The results illustrate that land use change in this region is mostly influenced by increasing of population number. Some agricultural lands have been converted into built-up area since demand of settlement, industrial area, and other infrastructures also increases. Unfortunately, recent utilization of more than a half of total area is not appropriate with land use plan declared in spatial planning document. It means, local government shall develop a strict regulation and law enforcement related to any violation in land use management.

Keywords: balance, forest, land, spatial plan

Procedia PDF Downloads 305

Authors: F. A. Thomas, M. Schrafl-Altermatt, R. Treier, S. Kaufmann

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Stroke is the main cause of adult disability. Especially upper limb function is affected in most patients. Recently, cooperative hand movements have been shown to be a promising type of upper limb training in stroke rehabilitation. In these movements, which are frequently found in activities of daily living (e.g. opening a bottle, winding up a blind), the force of one upper limb has to be equally counteracted by the other limb to successfully accomplish a task. The use of standardized and reliable clinical assessments is essential to evaluate the efficacy of therapy and the functional outcome of a patient. Many assessments for upper limb function or impairment are available. However, the evaluation of cooperative hand movement tasks are rarely included in those. Thus, the aim of this study was (i) to develop a novel clinical assessment (CASA - Cooperative Activity Stroke Assessment) for the evaluation of patients’ capacity to perform cooperative hand movements and (ii) to test its inter- and interrater reliability. Furthermore, CASA scores were compared to current gold standard assessments for upper extremity in stroke patients (i.e. Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Box & Blocks Test). The CASA consists of five cooperative activities of daily living including (1) opening a jar, (2) opening a bottle, (3) open and closing of a zip, (4) unscrew a nut and (5) opening a clipbox. Here, the goal is to accomplish the tasks as fast as possible. In addition to the quantitative rating (i.e. time) which is converted to a 7-point scale, also the quality of the movement is rated in a 4-point scale. To test the reliability of CASA, fifteen stroke subjects were tested within a week twice by the same two raters. Intra-and interrater reliability was calculated using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for total CASA score and single items. Furthermore, Pearson-correlation was used to compare the CASA scores to the scores of Fugl-Meyer upper limb assessment and the box and blocks test, which were assessed in every patient additionally to the CASA. ICC scores of the total CASA score indicated an excellent- and single items established a good to excellent inter- and interrater reliability. Furthermore, the CASA score was significantly correlated to the Fugl-Meyer and Box & Blocks score. The CASA provides a reliable assessment for cooperative hand movements which are crucial for many activities of daily living. Due to its non-costly setup, easy and fast implementation, we suggest it to be well suitable for clinical application. In conclusion, the CASA is a useful tool in assessing the functional status and therapy related recovery in cooperative hand movement capacity in stroke patients.

Keywords: activitites of daily living, clinical assessment, cooperative hand movements, reliability, stroke

Procedia PDF Downloads 307

Authors: Ines Antunes, Andrea Massari, Concetta Bartucca

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Greenhouse gasses (GHG) role in the atmosphere has been well known since the 19th century; however, researchers have begun to relate them to climate changes only in the second half of the following century. From this moment, scientists started to correlate the presence of GHG such as CO₂ with the global warming phenomena. This has raised the awareness not only of those who were experts in this field but also of public opinion, which is becoming more and more sensitive to environmental pollution and sustainability issues. Nowadays the reduction of GHG emissions is one of the principal objectives of EU nations. The target is an 80% reduction of emissions in 2050 and to reach the important goal of carbon neutrality. Road sector is responsible for an important amount of those emissions (about 20%). The most part is due to traffic, but a good contribution is also given directly or indirectly from road construction and maintenance. Raw material choice and reuse of post-consumer plastic rather than a cleverer design of roads have an important contribution to reducing carbon footprint. Bituminous membranes can be successfully used as reinforcement systems in asphalt layers to improve road pavement performance against cracking. Composite materials coupling membranes with grids and/or fabrics should be able to combine improved tensile properties of the reinforcement with stress absorbing and waterproofing effects of membranes. Polyglass, with its brand dedicated to road construction and maintenance called Polystrada, has done more than this. The company's target was not only to focus sustainability on the final application but also to implement a greener mentality from the cradle to the grave. Starting from production, Polyglass has made important improvements finalized to increase efficiency and minimize waste. The installation of a trigeneration plant and the usage of selected production scraps inside the products as well as the reduction of emissions into the environment, are one of the main efforts of the company to reduce impact during final product build-up. Moreover, the benefit given by installing Polystrada products brings a significant improvement in road lifetime. This has an impact not only on the number of maintenance or renewal that needs to be done (build less) but also on traffic density due to works and road deviation in case of operations. During the end of the life of a road, Polystrada products can be 100% recycled and milled with classical systems used without changing the normal maintenance procedures. In this work, all these contributions were quantified in terms of CO₂ emission thanks to an LCA analysis. The data obtained were compared with a classical system or a standard production of a membrane. What it is possible to see is that the usage of Polyglass products for street maintenance and building gives a significant reduction of emissions in case of membrane installation under the road wearing course.

Keywords: CO₂ emission, LCA, maintenance, sustainability

Procedia PDF Downloads 49

Authors: Martin Pellon Consunji

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Due to the rise in popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto assets as a store of wealth and speculative investment, there is an ever-growing demand for automated trading tools, such as bots, in order to gain an advantage over the market. Traditionally, trading in the stock market was done by professionals with years of training who understood patterns and exploited market opportunities in order to gain a profit. However, nowadays a larger portion of market participants are at minimum aided by market-data processing bots, which can generally generate more stable signals than the average human trader. The rise in trading bot usage can be accredited to the inherent advantages that bots have over humans in terms of processing large amounts of data, lack of emotions of fear or greed, and predicting market prices using past data and artificial intelligence, hence a growing number of approaches have been brought forward to tackle this task. However, the general limitation of these approaches can still be broken down to the fact that limited historical data doesn’t always determine the future, and that a lot of market participants are still human emotion-driven traders. Moreover, developing markets such as those of the cryptocurrency space have even less historical data to interpret than most other well-established markets. Due to this, some human traders have gone back to the tried-and-tested traditional technical analysis tools for exploiting market patterns and simplifying the broader spectrum of data that is involved in making market predictions. This paper proposes a method which uses neuro evolution techniques on both sentimental data and, the more traditionally human-consumed, technical analysis data in order to gain a more accurate forecast of future market behavior and account for the way both automated bots and human traders affect the market prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This study’s approach uses evolutionary algorithms to automatically develop increasingly improved populations of bots which, by using the latest inflows of market analysis and sentimental data, evolve to efficiently predict future market price movements. The effectiveness of the approach is validated by testing the system in a simulated historical trading scenario, a real Bitcoin market live trading scenario, and testing its robustness in other cryptocurrency and stock market scenarios. Experimental results during a 30-day period show that this method outperformed the buy and hold strategy by over 260% in terms of net profits, even when taking into consideration standard trading fees.

Keywords: neuro-evolution, Bitcoin, trading bots, artificial neural networks, technical analysis, evolutionary algorithms

Procedia PDF Downloads 107

Authors: Saqib Rasool, Adnan N. Mian

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Web components are introduced as the latest standard of HTML5 for writing modular web interfaces for ensuring maintainability through the isolated scope of web components. Reusability can also be achieved by sharing plug-and-play web components that can be used as off-the-shelf components by other developers. A web component encapsulates all the required HTML, CSS and JavaScript code as a standalone package which must be imported for integrating a web component within an existing web interface. It is then followed by the integration of web component with the web services for dynamically populating its content. Since web components are reusable as off-the-shelf components, these must be equipped with some mechanism for ensuring their proper integration with web services. The consistency of a service behavior can be verified through type-checking. This is one of the popular solutions for improving the quality of code in many programming languages. However, HTML does not provide type checking as it is a markup language and not a programming language. The contribution of this work is to introduce a new extension of HTML called Service Type-checking Markup Language (STML) for adding support of type checking in HTML for JSON based REST services. STML can be used for defining the expected data types of response from JSON based REST services which will be used for populating the content within HTML elements of a web component. Although JSON has five data types viz. string, number, boolean, object and array but STML is made to supports only string, number and object. This is because of the fact that both object and array are considered as string, when populated in HTML elements. In order to define the data type of any HTML element, developer just needs to add the custom STML attributes of st-string, st-number and st-boolean for string, number and boolean respectively. These all annotations of STML are used by the developer who is writing a web component and it enables the other developers to use automated type-checking for ensuring the proper integration of their REST services with the same web component. Two utilities have been written for developers who are using STML based web components. One of these utilities is used for automated type-checking during the development phase. It uses the browser console for showing the error description if integrated web service is not returning the response with expected data type. The other utility is a Gulp based command line utility for removing the STML attributes before going in production. This ensures the delivery of STML free web pages in the production environment. Both of these utilities have been tested to perform type checking of REST services through STML based web components and results have confirmed the feasibility of evaluating service behavior only through HTML. Currently, STML is designed for automated type-checking of integrated REST services but it can be extended to introduce a complete service testing suite based on HTML only, and it will transform STML from Service Type-checking Markup Language to Service Testing Markup Language.

Keywords: REST, STML, type checking, web component

Procedia PDF Downloads 238

Authors: Rafael do Amaral Teodoro, Leandro Augusto da Silva

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Originated from graphite, graphene is a two-dimensional (2D) material that promises to revolutionize technology in many different areas, such as energy, telecommunications, civil construction, aviation, textile, and medicine. This is possible because its structure, formed by carbon bonds, provides desirable optical, thermal, and mechanical characteristics that are interesting to multiple areas of the market. Thus, several research and development centers are studying different manufacturing methods and material applications of graphene, which are often compromised by the scarcity of more agile and accurate methodologies to characterize the material – that is to determine its composition, shape, size, and the number of layers and crystals. To engage in this search, this study proposes a computational methodology that applies deep learning to identify graphene oxide crystals in order to characterize samples by crystal sizes. To achieve this, a fully convolutional neural network called U-net has been trained to segment SEM graphene oxide images. The segmentation generated by the U-net is fine-tuned with a standard deviation technique by classes, which allows crystals to be distinguished with different labels through an object delimitation algorithm. As a next step, the characteristics of the position, area, perimeter, and lateral measures of each detected crystal are extracted from the images. This information generates a database with the dimensions of the crystals that compose the samples. Finally, graphs are automatically created showing the frequency distributions by area size and perimeter of the crystals. This methodological process resulted in a high capacity of segmentation of graphene oxide crystals, presenting accuracy and F-score equal to 95% and 94%, respectively, over the test set. Such performance demonstrates a high generalization capacity of the method in crystal segmentation, since its performance considers significant changes in image extraction quality. The measurement of non-overlapping crystals presented an average error of 6% for the different measurement metrics, thus suggesting that the model provides a high-performance measurement for non-overlapping segmentations. For overlapping crystals, however, a limitation of the model was identified. To overcome this limitation, it is important to ensure that the samples to be analyzed are properly prepared. This will minimize crystal overlap in the SEM image acquisition and guarantee a lower error in the measurements without greater efforts for data handling. All in all, the method developed is a time optimizer with a high measurement value, considering that it is capable of measuring hundreds of graphene oxide crystals in seconds, saving weeks of manual work.

Keywords: characterization, graphene oxide, nanomaterials, U-net, deep learning

Procedia PDF Downloads 150

Authors: Narjis Kahtoon

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The issue of the wage discrimination on the basis of gender and social problem has been a significant research problem for several decades. Whereas lots of have explored reasons for the persistence of an inequality in the wages of male and female, none has successfully explained away the entire differentiation. The wage discrimination on the basis of gender and social problem of working women is a global issue. Although inequality in political and economic and social make-up of countries all over the world, the gender wage discrimination, and social constraint is present. The aim of the research is to examine the gender wage discrimination and social constraint from an international perspective and to determine whether any pattern exists among cultural dimensions of a country and the man and women remuneration gap in Readymade Garment Sector of Pakistan. Population growth rate is significant indicator used to explain the change in population and play a crucial point in the economic development of a country. In Pakistan, readymade garment sector consists of small, medium and large sized firms. With an estimated 30 percent of the workforce in textile- Garment is females’. Readymade garment industry is a labor intensive industry and relies on the skills of individual workers and provides highest value addition in the textile sector. In the Garment sector, female workers are concentrated in poorly paid, labor-intensive down-stream production (readymade garments, linen, towels, etc.), while male workers dominate capital- intensive (ginning, spinning and weaving) processes. Gender wage discrimination and social constraint are reality in Pakistan Labor Market. This research allows us not only to properly detect the size of gender wage discrimination and social constraint but to also fully understand its consequences in readymade garment sector of Pakistan. Furthermore, research will evaluated this measure for the three main clusters like Lahore, Karachi, and Faisalabad. These data contain complete details of male and female workers and supervisors in the readymade garment sector of Pakistan. These sources of information provide a unique opportunity to reanalyze the previous finding in the literature. The regression analysis focused on the standard 'Mincerian' earning equation and estimates it separately by gender, the research will also imply the cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede (2001) to profile a country’s cultural status and compare those cultural dimensions to the wage inequalities. Readymade garment of Pakistan is one of the important sectors since its products have huge demand at home and abroad. These researches will a major influence on the measures undertaken to design a public policy regarding wage discrimination and social constraint in readymade garment sector of Pakistan.

Keywords: gender wage differentials, decomposition, garment, cultural

Procedia PDF Downloads 195

Authors: Stephanie Zuba-Bates

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Purpose: This qualitative research study explored the lived experience of people with functional movement disorder (FMD) including how it impacts their quality of life and participation in life activities. It aims to educate health care professionals about FMD from the perspective of those living with the disorder. Background: Functional movement disorder is characterized by abnormal motor movements including tremors, abnormal gait, paresis, and dystonia with no known underlying pathophysiological cause. Current research estimates that FMD may account for 2-20% of clients seen by neurologists. Getting a diagnosis of FMD is typically long and difficult. In addition, many healthcare professionals are unfamiliar with the disorder which may delay treatment. People living with FMD face great disruption in major areas of life including activities of daily living (ADLs), work, leisure, and community participation. OT practitioners have expertise in working with people with both physical disabilities as well as mental illness and this expertise has the potential to guide treatment and become part of the standard of care. In order for occupational therapists to provide these services, they must be aware of the disorder and must advocate for clients to be referred to OT services. In addition, referring physicians and other health professionals need to understand how having FMD impacts the daily functioning of people living with the disorder and how OT services can intervene to improve their quality of life. This study aimed to answer the following research questions: 1) What is the lived experience of individuals with FMD?; 2) How has FMD impacted their participation in major areas of life?; and, 3) What treatment have they found to be effective in improving their quality of life? Method: A naturalistic approach was used to collect qualitative data through semi-structured telephone interviews of five individuals living with FMD. Subjects were recruited from social media websites and resources for people with FMD. Data was analyzed for common themes among participants. Results: Common themes including the variability of symptoms of the disorder; challenges to receiving a diagnosis; frustrations with and distrust of health care professionals; the impact of FMD on the participant’s ability to perform daily activities; and, strategies for living with the symptoms of FMD. Conclusion: All of the participants in the study had to modify their daily activities, roles and routines as a result of the disorder. This is an area where occupational therapists may intervene to improve the quality of life of these individuals. Additionally, participants reported frustration with the medical community regarding the awareness of the disorder and how they were treated by medical professionals. Much more research and awareness of the disorder is in order.

Keywords: functional movement disorder, occupational therapy, participation, quality of life

Procedia PDF Downloads 153

Authors: Feng-Ming Fan, Xiu-Hui Wen

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Shortage of water resources is a crucial problem to be solved in Taiwan. However, lack of effective and mandatory regulation on water recovery and recycling leads to no effective water resource controls currently. Although existing legislation sets standards regarding water recovery, implementation and enforcement of legislation are facing challenges. In order to break through the dilemma, this study aims to find enforcement tools, improve inspection skills, develop an inspection system, to achieve sustainable development of precious water resources. The Taiwan Environmental Impact Assessment Act (EIA Act) was announced on 1994. The aim of EIA Act is to protect the environment by preventing and mitigating the adverse impact of development activity on the environment. During the EIA process, we can set standards that require enterprises to reach a certain percentage of water recycling based on different case characteristics, to promote sewage source reduction and water saving benefits. Next, we have to inspect how the enterprises handle their waste water and perform water recovery based on environmental assessment commitments, for the purpose of reviewing and measuring the implementation efficiency of water recycling and reuse, an eco-friendly measure. We invited leading experts in related fields to provide lecture on water recycling, strengthen law enforcement officials’ inspection knowledge, and write inspection reference manual to be used as basis of enforcement. Then we finalized the manual by reaching mutual agreement between the experts and relevant agencies. We then inspected 65 high-tech companies whose daily water consumption is over 1,000 tons individually, located at 3 science parks, set up by Ministry of Science and Technology. Great achievement on water recycling was achieved at an amount of 400 million tons per year, equivalent to 2.5 months water usage for general public in Taiwan. The amount is equal to 710 billion bottles of 600 ml cola, 170 thousand international standard swimming pools of 2,500 tons, irrigation water applied to 40 thousand hectares of rice fields, or 1.7 Taipei Feitsui Reservoir of reservoir storage. This study demonstrated promoting effects of environmental impact assessment commitments on water recycling, and therefore water resource sustainable development. It also confirms the value of EIA Act for environmental protection. Economic development should go hand in hand with environmental protection, and it’s a mainstream. It clearly shows the EIA regulation can minimize harmful effects caused by development activity to the environment, as well as pursuit water resources sustainable development.

Keywords: the environmental impact assessment act, water recycling environmental assessment commitment, water resource sustainable development, water recycling, water reuse

Procedia PDF Downloads 233

Authors: Neal Rupani

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Background: A surgical trainee has limited learning opportunities in the operating room in order to gain an ever-increasing standard of surgical skill, competency, and proficiency. These opportunities continue to decline due to numerous factors such as the European Working Time Directive and increasing requirement for service provision. It is therefore imperative to obtain the highest educational value from each educational opportunity. A measure that has yet to be validated in England on surgical trainees called the Operating Room Educational Environment Measure (OREEM) has been developed to identify and evaluate each component of the educational environment with a view to steer future change in optimising educational events in theatre. Aims: The aims of the study are to assess the reliability of the OREEM within England and to evaluate the surgical trainee’s objective perspective of the current operating room educational environment within one region within England. Methods: Using a quantitative study approach, data was collected over one month from surgical trainees within Health Education Thames Valley (Oxford) using an online questionnaire consisting of demographic data, the OREEM, a global satisfaction score. Results: 140 surgical trainees were invited to the study, with an online response of 54 participants (response rate = 38.6%). The OREEM was shown to have good internal consistency (α = 0.906, variables = 40) and unidimensionality, along with all four of its subgroups. The mean OREEM score was 79.16%. The areas highlighted for improvement predominantly focused on improving learning opportunities (average subscale score = 72.9%) and conducting pre- and post-operative teaching (average score = 70.4%). The trainee perception is most satisfactory for the level of supervision and workload (average subscale score = 82.87%). There was no differences found between gender (U = 191.5, p = 0.535) or type of hospital (U = 258.0, p = 0.099), but the learning environment was favoured towards senior trainees (U = 223.5, p = 0.017). There was strong correlation between OREEM and the global satisfaction score (r = 0.755, p<0.001). Conclusions: The OREEM was shown to be reliable in measuring the educational environment in the operating room. This can be used to identify potentially modifiable components for improvement and as an audit tool to ensure high standards are being met. The current perception of the education environment in Health Education Thames Valley is satisfactory, and modifiable internal and external factors such as reducing service provision requirements, empowering trainees to plan lists, creating a team-working ethic between all personnel, and using tools that maximise learning from each operation have been identified to improve learning in the future. There is a favourable attitude to use of such improvement tools, especially for those currently dissatisfied.

Keywords: education environment, surgery, post-graduate education, OREEM

Procedia PDF Downloads 172

Authors: Gilda Santos, Rita Marques, Francisca Marques, João Ribeiro, André Fonseca, João M. Miranda, João B. L. M. Campos, Soraia F. Neves

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Every year, an unacceptable number of firefighters are seriously burned during firefighting operations, with some of them eventually losing their life. Although thermal protective clothing research and development has been searching solutions to minimize firefighters heat load and skin burns, currently commercially available solutions focus in solving isolated problems, for example, radiant heat or water-vapor resistance. Therefore, episodes of severe burns and heat strokes are still frequent. Taking this into account, a consortium composed by Portuguese entities has joined synergies to develop an innovative protective clothing system by following a procedure based on the application of numerical models to optimize the design and using a combinationof protective clothing components disposed in different layers. Recently, it has been shown that Phase Change Materials (PCMs) can contribute to the reduction of potential heat hazards in fire extinguish operations, and consequently, their incorporation into firefighting protective clothing has advantages. The greatest challenge is to integrate these materials without compromising garments ergonomics and, at the same time, accomplishing the International Standard of protective clothing for firefighters – laboratory test methods and performance requirements for wildland firefighting clothing. The incorporation of PCMs into the firefighter's protective jacket will result in the absorption of heat from the fire and consequently increase the time that the firefighter can be exposed to it. According to the project studies and developments, to favor a higher use of the PCM storage capacityand to take advantage of its high thermal inertia more efficiently, the PCM layer should be closer to the external heat source. Therefore, in this stage, to integrate PCMs in firefighting clothing, a mock-up of a vest specially designed to protect the torso (back, chest and abdomen) and to be worn over a fire-resistant jacketwas envisaged. Different configurations of PCMs, as well as multilayer approaches, were studied using suitable joining technologies such as bonding, ultrasound, and radiofrequency. Concerning firefighter’s protective clothing, it is important to balance heat protection and flame resistance with comfort parameters, namely, thermaland water-vapor resistances. The impact of the most promising solutions regarding thermal comfort was evaluated to refine the performance of the global solutions. Results obtained with experimental bench scale model and numerical simulation regarding the integration of PCMs in a vest designed as protective clothing for firefighters will be presented.

Keywords: firefighters, multilayer system, phase change material, thermal protective clothing

Procedia PDF Downloads 145

Authors: Babak Sadeghi, Rony Snyders, Marie-Paule.Delplancke-Ogletree

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Nitrogen fixation (NF) is one of the crucial industrial processes. Many attempts have been made in order to artificially fix nitrogen, and among them, the Haber-Bosch’s (H-B) process is widely used. However, it presents two major drawbacks: huge fossil feedstock consumption and noticeable greenhouse gases emission. It is, therefore, necessary to develop alternatives. Plasma technology, as an inherent “green” technology, is considered to have a great potential for reducing the environmental impacts and improving the energy efficiency of the NF process. In this work, we have studied the catalyst assisted microwave plasma for NF application. Heterogeneous catalysts of MoO₃, with various loads 0, 5, 10, 20, and 30 wt%, supported on γ-alumina were prepared by conventional wet impregnation. Crystallinity, surface area, pore size, and microstructure were obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) adsorption isotherm, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The XRD patterns of calcined alumina confirm the γ- phase. Characteristic picks of MoO₃ could not be observed for low loads (< 20 wt%), likely indicating a high dispersion of metal oxide over the support. The specific surface area along with pores size are decreasing with increasing calcination temperature and MoO₃ loading. The MoO₃ loading does not modify the microstructure. TEM and SEM results for loading inferior to 20 wt% are coherent with a monolayer of MoO₃ on the support as proposed elsewhere. For loading of 20 wt% and more, TEM and Electron diffraction (ED) show nanocrystalline ₃-D MoO₃ particles. The catalytic performances of these catalysts were investigated in the post-discharge of a microwave plasma for NOx formation from N₂/O₂ mixtures. The plasma is sustained by a surface wave launched in a quartz tube via a surfaguide supplied by a 2.45 GHz microwave generator in pulse mode. In-situ identification and quantification of the products were carried out by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) in the post-discharge region. FTIR analysis of the exhausted gas reveal NO and NO₂ bands in presence of catalyst while only NO band were assigned without catalyst. On the other hand, in presence of catalyst, a 10% increase of NOₓ formation and of 20% increase in energy efficiency are observed.

Keywords: γ-Al2O₃-MoO₃, µ-waveplasma, N2 fixation, Plasma-catalysis, Plasma diagnostic

Procedia PDF Downloads 161

Authors: Xianghe Dai, Dennis Lam, Therese Sheehan, Naveed Rehman, Jie Yang

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Concrete is one of the most used construction materials that may be made onsite as fresh concrete and then placed in formwork to produce the desired shapes of structures. It has been recognized that the raw materials and mix proportion of concrete dominate the mechanical characteristics of hardened concrete, and the curing method and environment applied to the concrete in early stages of hardening will significantly influence the concrete properties, such as compressive strength, durability, permeability etc. In construction practice, there are various curing methods to maintain the presence of mixing water throughout the early stages of concrete hardening. They are also beneficial to concrete in hot weather conditions as they provide cooling and prevent the evaporation of water. Such methods include ponding or immersion, spraying or fogging, saturated wet covering etc. Also there are various curing methods that may be implemented to decrease the level of water lost which belongs to the concrete surface, such as putting a layer of impervious paper, plastic sheeting or membrane on the concrete to cover it. In the concrete material laboratory, accelerated strength gain methods supply the concrete with heat and additional moisture by applying live steam, coils that are subject to heating or pads that have been warmed electrically. Currently when determining the mechanical parameters of a concrete, the concrete is usually sampled from fresh concrete on site and then cured and tested in laboratories where standardized curing procedures are adopted. However, in engineering practice, curing procedures in the construction sites after the placing of concrete might be very different from the laboratory criteria, and this includes some standard curing procedures adopted in the laboratory that can’t be applied on site. Sometimes the contractor compromises the curing methods in order to reduce construction costs etc. Obviously the difference between curing procedures adopted in the laboratory and those used on construction sites might over- or under-estimate the real concrete quality. This paper presents the effect of three typical curing methods (air curing, water immersion curing, plastic film curing) and of maintaining concrete in steel moulds on the compressive strength development of normal concrete. In this study, Portland cement with 30% fly ash was used and different curing periods, 7 days, 28 days and 60 days were applied. It was found that the highest compressive strength was observed from concrete samples to which 7-day water immersion curing was applied and from samples maintained in steel moulds up to the testing date. The research results implied that concrete used as infill in steel tubular members might develop a higher strength than predicted by design assumptions based on air curing methods. Wrapping concrete with plastic film as a curing method might delay the concrete strength development in the early stages. Water immersion curing for 7 days might significantly increase the concrete compressive strength.

Keywords: compressive strength, air curing, water immersion curing, plastic film curing, maintaining in steel mould, comparison

Procedia PDF Downloads 281

Authors: Dino Carpentras, Alejandro Dinkelberg, Michael Quayle

Abstract:

Within agent-based modeling, opinion dynamics is the field that focuses on modeling people's opinions. In this prolific field, most of the literature is dedicated to the exploration of the two 'degrees of freedom' and how they impact the model’s properties (e.g., the average final opinion, the number of final clusters, etc.). These degrees of freedom are (1) the interaction rule, which determines how agents update their own opinion, and (2) the network topology, which defines the possible interaction among agents. In this work, we show that the third degree of freedom exists. This can be used to change a model's output up to 100% of its initial value or to transform two models (both from the literature) into each other. Since opinion dynamics models are representations of the real world, it is fundamental to understand how people’s opinions can be measured. Even for abstract models (i.e., not intended for the fitting of real-world data), it is important to understand if the way of numerically representing opinions is unique; and, if this is not the case, how the model dynamics would change by using different representations. The process of measuring opinions is non-trivial as it requires transforming real-world opinion (e.g., supporting most of the liberal ideals) to a number. Such a process is usually not discussed in opinion dynamics literature, but it has been intensively studied in a subfield of psychology called psychometrics. In psychometrics, opinion scales can be converted into each other, similarly to how meters can be converted to feet. Indeed, psychometrics routinely uses both linear and non-linear transformations of opinion scales. Here, we analyze how this transformation affects opinion dynamics models. We analyze this effect by using mathematical modeling and then validating our analysis with agent-based simulations. Firstly, we study the case of perfect scales. In this way, we show that scale transformations affect the model’s dynamics up to a qualitative level. This means that if two researchers use the same opinion dynamics model and even the same dataset, they could make totally different predictions just because they followed different renormalization processes. A similar situation appears if two different scales are used to measure opinions even on the same population. This effect may be as strong as providing an uncertainty of 100% on the simulation’s output (i.e., all results are possible). Still, by using perfect scales, we show that scales transformations can be used to perfectly transform one model to another. We test this using two models from the standard literature. Finally, we test the effect of scale transformation in the case of finite precision using a 7-points Likert scale. In this way, we show how a relatively small-scale transformation introduces both changes at the qualitative level (i.e., the most shared opinion at the end of the simulation) and in the number of opinion clusters. Thus, scale transformation appears to be a third degree of freedom of opinion dynamics models. This result deeply impacts both theoretical research on models' properties and on the application of models on real-world data.

Keywords: degrees of freedom, empirical validation, opinion scale, opinion dynamics

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Authors: Emily A. Gilbert, Jephte Sompud, Andy R. Mojiol, Cynthia B. Sompud, Alim Biun

Abstract:

Gaya Island of Sabah is known for its wildlife and marine biodiversity. It has marks itself as one of the hot destinations of tourists from all around the world. Gaya Island tourism activities have contributed to Sabah’s economy revenue with the high number of tourists visiting the island. However, it has led to the increased anthropogenic noise derived from tourism activities. This may greatly interfere with the animals such as understory birds that rely on acoustic signals as a tool for communication. Many studies in other parts of the regions reveal that anthropogenic noise does decrease species richness of avian community. However, in Malaysia, published research regarding the impact of anthropogenic noise on the understory birds is still very lacking. This study was conducted in order to fill up this gap. This study aims to investigate the anthropogenic noise’s impact towards understory bird population. There were three sites within the Primary forest of Gaya Island that were chosen to sample the level of anthropogenic noise in relation to the understory bird population. Noise mapping method was used to measure the anthropogenic noise level and identify the zone with high anthropogenic noise level (> 60dB) and zone with low anthropogenic noise level (< 60dB) based on the standard threshold of noise level. The methods that were used for this study was solely mist netting and ring banding. This method was chosen as it can determine the diversity of the understory bird population in Gaya Island. The preliminary study was conducted from 15th to 26th April and 5th to 10th May 2015 whereby there were 2 mist nets that were set up at each of the zones within the selected site. The data was analyzed by using the descriptive analysis, presence and absence analysis, diversity indices and diversity t-test. Meanwhile, PAST software was used to analyze the obtain data. The results from this study present a total of 60 individuals that consisted of 12 species from 7 families of understory birds were recorded in three of the sites in Gaya Island. The Shannon-Wiener index shows that diversity of species in high anthropogenic noise zone and low anthropogenic noise zone were 1.573 and 2.009, respectively. However, the statistical analysis shows that there was no significant difference between these zones. Nevertheless, based on the presence and absence analysis, it shows that the species at the low anthropogenic noise zone was higher as compared to the high anthropogenic noise zone. Thus, this result indicates that there is an impact of anthropogenic noise on the population diversity of understory birds. There is still an urgent need to conduct an in-depth study by increasing the sample size in the selected sites in order to fully understand the impact of anthropogenic noise towards the understory birds population so that it can then be in cooperated into the wildlife management for a sustainable environment in Gaya Island.

Keywords: anthropogenic noise, biodiversity, Gaya Island, understory bird

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Authors: Vivek Bhat, Rohini Kelkar, Sanjay Biswas

Abstract:

Introduction: Cancer patients are at increased risk of bacterial infections. This may due to the disease process itself, the effect of chemotherapeutic drugs or invasive procedures such as catheterization. A wide variety of bacteria including some emerging pathogens are increasingly being reported from these patients. The incidence of multidrug-resistant organisms particularly in the Gram negative group is also increasing, with higher resistance rates seen to cephalosporins, β-lactam/β-lactam inhibitor combinations, and the carbapenems. This study documents the bacteriological spectrum of infections and their resistance patterns in cancer patients. Methods: This study includes all bacterial isolates recovered from infections cancer patients over a period of 18 months. Samples included Blood cultures, Pus/wound swabs, urine, tissue biopsies, body fluids, catheter tips and respiratory specimens such as sputum and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). All samples were processed in the microbiology laboratory as per standard laboratory protocols. Organisms were identified to species level and antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed manually by the disc diffusion technique or in the Vitek-2 (Biomereux, France) instrument. Interpretations were as per Clinical laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. Results: A total of 1150 bacterial isolates were cultured from 884 test samples during the study period. Of these 227 were Gram-positive and 923 were Gram-negative organisms. Staphylococcus aureus (99 isolates) was the commonest Gram-positive isolate followed by Enterococcus (79) and Gr A Streptococcus (30). Among the Gram negatives, E. coli (304), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (201) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (190) were the most common. Of the Staphylococcus aureus isolates 27.2% were methicillin resistant. Only 5.06% enterococci were vancomycin resistant. High rates of resistance to cefotaxime and ciprofloxacin were seen amongst E. coli (84.8% & 83.55%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (71 & 62.1%) respectively. Resistance to carbapenems (meropenem) was high at 70% in Acinetobacter spp.; however all isolates were sensitive to colistin. Among the aminoglycosides, amikacin retained good efficacy against Escherichia coli (82.9%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (78.1%). Occasional isolates of emerging pathogens such as Chryseobacterium indologens, Roseomonas, and Achromobacter xyloxidans were also recovered. Conclusion: The common infections in cancer patients include respiratory, wound, tract infections and sepsis. The commonest isolates include Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococci, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. There is a high level of resistance to the commonly used antibiotics among Gram-negative organisms.

Keywords: bacteria, resistance, infection, cancer

Procedia PDF Downloads 286