Search results for: poor performance

Authors: Khor Khai Ling, Vashnarekha A/P Kumarasuriar, Tan Kok Wei, Ooi Pei Boon

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The food pyramid had been stressed for years and used to promote a healthy diet. Recently, the Ministry of Health in Malaysia has changed the food pyramid structure. They moved fruits and vegetables to the bottom layer and encouraged citizens to consume more fruits and vegetables. Past research has shown that the amount of vegetables and fruits consumption has associated with cognitive health. However, Malaysians have yet to achieve the amount of fruit and vegetable intake as per recommendation. Thus, this study aims to investigate Malaysian’s habitual diet and cognitive functioning via a cross-sectional study. One hundred and ninety-three participants will be recruited via convenient sampling. A Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) measures the habitual diet, and an online cognitive test measures attention, executive functioning, and memory objectively. The collected one hundred samples to the date of abstract submission, and the data collection is still in progress. This study will provide an insight to Malaysian about the diet pattern and its relationship with cognitive performance.

Keywords: attention, cognitive, executive functioning, habitual diet, memory

Procedia PDF Downloads 189

Authors: Temsiri Sapsaman, Anocha Bhocarattanahkul

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The maintenance of work rolls in hot strip processing has been lengthy and difficult tasks for hot strip manufacturer because heavy work rolls have to be taken out of the production line, which could take hours. One way to increase the time between maintenance is to improve the effectiveness of the work roll cooling system such that the wear and tear more slowly occurs, while the operation cost is kept low. Therefore, this study aims to improve the work roll cooling system by providing the manufacturer the relationship between the work-roll temperature reduced by cooling and the water flow that can help manufacturer determining the more effective water flow of the cooling system. The relationship is found using simulation with a systematic process adjustment so that the satisfying quality of product is achieved. Results suggest that the manufacturer could reduce the water flow by 9% with roughly the same performance. With the same process adjustment, the feasibility of finishing-mill-stand reduction is also investigated. Results suggest its possibility.

Keywords: work-roll cooling system, hot strip process adjustment, feasibility study, stand reduction

Procedia PDF Downloads 355

Authors: Raha Bahreini

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This paper discusses the roll-back of women’s sexual and reproductive rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has come in the wake of a striking shift in the country’s official population policies. Since the late 1980s, Iran has won worldwide praise for its sexual and reproductive health and services, which have contributed to a steady decline in the country’s fertility rate–from 7.0 births per women in 1980 to 5.5 in 1988, 2.8 in 1996 and 1.85 in 2014. This is owed to a significant increase in the voluntary use of modern contraception in both rural and urban areas. In 1976, only 37 per cent of women were using at least one method of contraception; by 2014 this figure had reportedly risen to a high of nearly 79 per cent for married girls and women living in urban areas and 73.78 per cent for those living in rural areas. Such progress may soon be halted. In July 2012, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei denounced Iran’s family planning policies as an imitation of Western lifestyle. He exhorted the authorities to increase Iran’s population to 150 to 200 million (from around 78.5 million), including by cutting subsidies for contraceptive methods and dismantling the state’s Family and Population Planning Programme. Shortly thereafter, Iran’s Minister of Health and Medical Education announced the scrapping of the budget for the state-funded Family and Population Planning Programme. Iran’s Parliament subsequently introduced two bills; the Comprehensive Population and Exaltation of Family Bill (Bill 315), and the Bill to Increase Fertility Rates and Prevent Population Decline (Bill 446). Bill 446 outlaws voluntary tubectomies, which are believed to be the second most common method of modern contraception in Iran, and blocks access to information about contraception, denying women the opportunity to make informed decisions about the number and spacing of their children. Coupled with the elimination of state funding for Iran’s Family and Population Programme, the move would undoubtedly result in greater numbers of unwanted pregnancies, forcing more women to seek illegal and unsafe abortions. Bill 315 proposes various discriminatory measures in the areas of employment, divorce, and protection from domestic violence in order to promote a culture wherein wifedom and child-bearing is seen as women’s primary duty. The Bill, for example, instructs private and public entities to prioritize, in sequence, men with children, married men without children and married women with children when hiring for certain jobs. It also bans the recruitment of single individuals as family law lawyers, public and private school teachers and members of the academic boards of universities and higher education institutes. The paper discusses the consequences of these initiatives which would, if continued, set the human rights of women and girls in Iran back by decades, leaving them with a future shaped by increased inequality, discrimination, poor health, limited choices and restricted freedoms, in breach of Iran’s international human rights obligations.

Keywords: family planning and reproductive health, gender equality and empowerment of women, human rights, population growth

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Authors: Mohammad Arif Khan

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This paper analyzes and presents the development of Artificial Neural Network based controller of space vector modulation (ANN-SVPWM) for a seven-phase voltage source inverter. At first, the conventional method of producing sinusoidal output voltage by utilizing six active and one zero space vectors are used to synthesize the input reference, is elaborated and then new PWM scheme called Artificial Neural Network Based PWM is presented. The ANN based controller has the advantage of the very fast implementation and analyzing the algorithms and avoids the direct computation of trigonometric and non-linear functions. The ANN controller uses the individual training strategy with the fixed weight and supervised models. A computer simulation program has been developed using Matlab/Simulink together with the neural network toolbox for training the ANN-controller. A comparison of the proposed scheme with the conventional scheme is presented based on various performance indices. Extensive Simulation results are provided to validate the findings.

Keywords: space vector PWM, total harmonic distortion, seven-phase, voltage source inverter, multi-phase, artificial neural network

Procedia PDF Downloads 442

Authors: Mei Xuan Tan, Gim-Yang Maggie Pee, Mei Chee Tan

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Academic performance, in the form of scoring high grades in enrolled subjects, is not the only significant trait in achieving success. Engineering graduates with experience in working on hands-on projects in a team setting are highly sought after in industry upon graduation. Such projects are typically real world problems that require the integration and application of knowledge and skills from several disciplines. In a traditional university setting, subjects are taught in a silo manner with no cross participation from other departments or disciplines. This may lead to knowledge compartmentalization and students are unable to understand and connect the relevance and applicability of the subject. University instructors thus see this integration across disciplines as a challenging task as they aim to better prepare students in understanding and solving problems for work or future studies. To improve students’ academic performance and to cultivate various skills such as critical thinking, there has been a gradual uptake in the use of an active learning approach in introductory science and engineering courses, where lecturing is traditionally the main mode of instruction. This study aims to discuss the implementation and experience of a hands-on, interdisciplinary project that involves all the four core subjects taught during the term at the Singapore University of Technology Design (SUTD). At SUTD, an interdisciplinary design activity, named 2D, is integrated into the curriculum to help students reinforce the concepts learnt. A student enrolled in SUTD experiences his or her first 2D in Term 1. This activity. which spans over one week in Week 10 of Term 1, highlights the application of chemistry, physics, mathematics, humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) in designing an engineering product solution. The activity theme for Term 1 2D revolved around “work and play”. Students, in teams of 4 or 5, used a scaled-down model of a chemical launcher to launch a projectile across the room. It involved the use of a small chemical combustion reaction between ethanol (a highly volatile fuel) and oxygen. This reaction generated a sudden and large increase in gas pressure built up in a closed chamber, resulting in rapid gas expansion and ejection of the projectile out of the launcher. Students discussed and explored the meaning of play in their lives in HASS class while the engineering aspects of a combustion system to launch an object using underlying principles of energy conversion and projectile motion were revisited during the chemistry and physics classes, respectively. Numerical solutions on the distance travelled by the projectile launched by the chemical launcher, taking into account drag forces, was developed during the mathematics classes. At the end of the activity, students developed skills in report writing, data collection and analysis. Specific to this 2D activity, students gained an understanding and appreciation on the application and interdisciplinary nature of science, engineering and HASS. More importantly, students were exposed to design and problem solving, where human interaction and discussion are important yet challenging in a team setting.

Keywords: active learning, collaborative learning, first year undergraduate, interdisciplinary, STEAM

Procedia PDF Downloads 109

Authors: Yuan Yan Tang, Lina Yang, Hong Li

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Harmonic model is a very important approximation for the image transform. The harmanic model converts an image into arbitrary shape; however, this mode cannot be described by any fixed functions in mathematics. In fact, it is represented by partial differential equation (PDE) with boundary conditions. Therefore, to develop an efficient method to solve such a PDE is extremely significant in the image transform. In this paper, a novel Integral Equation-Wavelet based method is presented, which consists of three steps: (1) The partial differential equation is converted into boundary integral equation and representation by an indirect method. (2) The boundary integral equation and representation are changed to plane integral equation and representation by boundary measure formula. (3) The plane integral equation and representation are then solved by a method we call wavelet collocation. Our approach has two main advantages, the shape of an image is arbitrary and the program code is independent of the boundary. The performance of our method is evaluated by numerical experiments.

Keywords: harmonic model, partial differential equation (PDE), integral equation, integral representation, boundary measure formula, wavelet collocation

Procedia PDF Downloads 540

Authors: Kazem Bashirnezhad, Seyed Ahmad Kebriyaee, saeed hoseyngholizadeh moghadam

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The urea–SCR catalyst system has the advantages of high NOx conversion efficiency and a wide range of operating conditions. The key factors for successful implementation of urea–SCR technology is good mixing of urea (ammonia) and gas to reduce ammonia slip. Urea mixer components are required to facilitate evaporation and mixing, because it is difficult to evaporate urea in the liquid state; the injection parameters are the most critical factors affecting mixer performance. In this study, The effect of urea injection on NOx emissions in a six-cylinder, four-stroke internal combustion engine fueled with B80 biodiesel has been experimentally investigated. The results reveal that urea injection leads to a reduction of NOx emissions of B80 biodiesel fuel. Moreover, the influence of injection parameters on NOx reductions has been studied. The findings show that by increasing the injection temperature, more reduction in NOx emissions has been occurred. Also, urea mass flow rate increment leads to more NOx reduction. The same result has been obtained by an increase in spray angle.

Keywords: urea, NOx emissions, diesel engines, biodiesels

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Authors: B. D. Polat, Ö. Keleş

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Physical vapor deposition under conditions of an obliquely incident flux results in a film formation with an inclined columnar structure. These columns will be oriented toward the vapor source because of the self-shadowing effect, and they are homogenously distributed on the substrate surface because of the limited surface diffusion ability of ad-atoms when there is no additional substrate heating. In this work, the oblique angle electron beam evaporation technique is used to fabricate thin films containing inclined nanorods. The results demonstrate that depending on the thin film composition, the morphology of the nanorods changed as well. The galvanostatic analysis of these thin film anodes reveals that a composite CuSn nanorods having approximately 900mAhg-1 of initial discharge capacity, performs higher electrochemical performance compared to pure Sn nanorods containing anode material. The long cycle life and the advanced electrochemical properties of the nano-structured composite electrode might be attributed to its improved mechanical tolerance and enhanced electrical conductivity depending on the Cu presence in the nanorods.

Keywords: Cu-Sn thin film, oblique angle deposition, lithium ion batteries, anode

Procedia PDF Downloads 331

Authors: Imran Badshah

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Pedestrian service time reflects the performance of the facility, and it’s a key parameter to analyze the capability of facilities provided to serve pedestrians. The level of service of pedestrians (LOS) mainly depends on pedestrian time and safety. The pedestrian time utilized by taking a service is mainly influenced by the number of available services and the time utilized by each pedestrian in receiving a service; that is called a delay time. In this paper, we analyzed the simulated pedestrian service time with different delay times. A simulation is performed in AnyLogic by developing a model that reflects the real scenario of pedestrian services such as ticket machine gates at rail stations, airports, shopping malls, and cinema halls. The simulated pedestrian time is determined for various delay values. The simulated result shows how pedestrian time changes with the delay pattern. The histogram and time plot graph of a model gives the mean, maximum and minimum values of the pedestrian time. This study helps us to check the behavior of pedestrian time at various services such as subway stations, airports, shopping malls, and cinema halls.

Keywords: agent-based simulation, anylogic model, pedestrian behavior, time delay

Procedia PDF Downloads 196

Authors: Mingxin Li, Liya Ni

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Autonomous parking is a valuable feature applicable to many robotics applications such as tour guide robots, UV sanitizing robots, food delivery robots, and warehouse robots. With auto-parking, the robot will be able to park at the charging zone and charge itself without human intervention. As compared to self-driving vehicles, auto-parking is more challenging for a small-scale mobile robot only equipped with a front camera due to the camera view limited by the robot’s height and the narrow Field of View (FOV) of the inexpensive camera. In this research, auto-parking of a small-scale mobile robot with a front camera only was achieved in a four-step process: Firstly, transfer learning was performed on the AlexNet, a popular pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN). It was trained with 150 pictures of empty parking slots and 150 pictures of occupied parking slots from the view angle of a small-scale robot. The dataset of images was divided into a group of 70% images for training and the remaining 30% images for validation. An average success rate of 95% was achieved. Secondly, the image of detected empty parking space was processed with edge detection followed by the computation of parametric representations of the boundary lines using the Hough Transform algorithm. Thirdly, the positions of the entrance point and center of available parking space were predicted based on the robot kinematic model as the robot was driving closer to the parking space because the boundary lines disappeared partially or completely from its camera view due to the height and FOV limitations. The robot used its wheel speeds to compute the positions of the parking space with respect to its changing local frame as it moved along, based on its kinematic model. Lastly, the predicted entrance point of the parking space was used as the reference for the motion control of the robot until it was replaced by the actual center when it became visible again by the robot. The linear and angular velocities of the robot chassis center were computed based on the error between the current chassis center and the reference point. Then the left and right wheel speeds were obtained using inverse kinematics and sent to the motor driver. The above-mentioned four subtasks were all successfully accomplished, with the transformed learning, image processing, and target prediction performed in MATLAB, while the motion control and image capture conducted on a self-built small scale differential drive mobile robot. The small-scale robot employs a Raspberry Pi board, a Pi camera, an L298N dual H-bridge motor driver, a USB power module, a power bank, four wheels, and a chassis. Future research includes three areas: the integration of all four subsystems into one hardware/software platform with the upgrade to an Nvidia Jetson Nano board that provides superior performance for deep learning and image processing; more testing and validation on the identification of available parking space and its boundary lines; improvement of performance after the hardware/software integration is completed.

Keywords: autonomous parking, convolutional neural network, image processing, kinematics-based prediction, transfer learning

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Authors: Shrikant V. Sangludkar, Dilip I. Sangotra, Sachin T. Bagde, Abhijeet A. Khandagale

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The paper discloses a controlled tracked humanoid robot moving platform. A driving and driven wheel are controlled by a control module to drive a robot body to move according to data signals of a monitoring module, in addition, remote transmission can be achieved, and a certain remote control function can be realized. A power management module circuit board looks after in used for providing electric drive for moving of the robot body and distribution of separate power source to be used in internal of robot system. An external port circuit board is arranged, the tracked robot moving platform can be used immediately for any data acquisition. The moving platform is simple and compact in structure, strong in adaptation performance, stable in operation and suitable for being operated in severe environments. Meanwhile, a layered modular installation structure is adopted, and therefore the moving platform is convenient to assemble and disassemble.

Keywords: moving platform, humanoid robot, embedded controlled drive, mobile robot, museum robots, self-localization, obstacle avoidance, communication

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Authors: Seonaid Hume, Gordon Dobie, Graeme West

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Detecting and localizing radioactive sources is a necessity for safe and secure decommissioning of nuclear facilities. An important aspect for the management of the sort-and-segregation process is establishing the spatial distributions and quantities of the waste radionuclides, their type, corresponding activity, and ultimately classification for disposal. The data received from surveys directly informs decommissioning plans, on-site incident management strategies, the approach needed for a new cell, as well as protecting the workforce and the public. Manual classification of nuclear waste from a nuclear cell is time-consuming, expensive, and requires significant expertise to make the classification judgment call. Also, in-cell decommissioning is still in its relative infancy, and few techniques are well-developed. As with any repetitive and routine tasks, there is the opportunity to improve the task of classifying nuclear waste using autonomous systems. Hence, this paper proposes a new framework for the automatic classification of nuclear waste. This framework consists of five main stages; 3D spatial mapping and object detection, object classification, radiological mapping, source localisation based on gathered evidence and finally, waste classification. The first stage of the framework, 3D visual mapping, involves object detection from point cloud data. A review of related applications in other industries is provided, and recommendations for approaches for waste classification are made. Object detection focusses initially on cylindrical objects since pipework is significant in nuclear cells and indeed any industrial site. The approach can be extended to other commonly occurring primitives such as spheres and cubes. This is in preparation of stage two, characterizing the point cloud data and estimating the dimensions, material, degradation, and mass of the objects detected in order to feature match them to an inventory of possible items found in that nuclear cell. Many items in nuclear cells are one-offs, have limited or poor drawings available, or have been modified since installation, and have complex interiors, which often and inadvertently pose difficulties when accessing certain zones and identifying waste remotely. Hence, this may require expert input to feature match objects. The third stage, radiological mapping, is similar in order to facilitate the characterization of the nuclear cell in terms of radiation fields, including the type of radiation, activity, and location within the nuclear cell. The fourth stage of the framework takes the visual map for stage 1, the object characterization from stage 2, and radiation map from stage 3 and fuses them together, providing a more detailed scene of the nuclear cell by identifying the location of radioactive materials in three dimensions. The last stage involves combining the evidence from the fused data sets to reveal the classification of the waste in Bq/kg, thus enabling better decision making and monitoring for in-cell decommissioning. The presentation of the framework is supported by representative case study data drawn from an application in decommissioning from a UK nuclear facility. This framework utilises recent advancements of the detection and mapping capabilities of complex radiation fields in three dimensions to make the process of classifying nuclear waste faster, more reliable, cost-effective and safer.

Keywords: nuclear decommissioning, radiation detection, object detection, waste classification

Procedia PDF Downloads 186

Authors: B. S. Premalatha, Kausalya Sahani

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Background: Glomus jugulare tumors arise within the jugular foramen and are commonly seen in females particularly on the left side. Surgical excision of the tumor may cause lower cranial nerve deficits. Cranial nerve involvement produces hoarseness of voice, slurred speech, and dysphagia along with other physical symptoms, thereby affecting the quality of life of individuals. Though oncological clearance is mainly emphasized on while treating these individuals, little importance is given to their communication, voice and swallowing problems, which play a crucial part in daily functioning. Objective: To examine the functions of voice, speech and swallowing outcomes of the subjects, following excision of glomus jugulare tumor. Methods: Two female subjects aged 56 and 62 years had come with a complaint of change in voice, inability to swallow and reduced clarity of speech following surgery for left glomus jugulare tumor were participants of the study. Their surgical information revealed multiple cranial nerve palsies involving the left facial, left superior and recurrent branches of the vagus nerve, left pharyngeal, left soft palate, left hypoglossal and vestibular nerves. Functional outcomes of voice, speech and swallowing were evaluated by perceptual and objective assessment procedures. Assessment included the examination of oral structures and functions, dysarthria by Frenchey dysarthria assessment, cranial nerve functions and swallowing functions. MDVP and Dr. Speech software were used to evaluate acoustic parameters of voice and quality of voice respectively. Results: The study revealed that both the subjects, subsequent to excision of glomus jugulare tumor, showed a varied picture of affected oral structure and functions, articulation, voice and swallowing functions. The cranial nerve assessment showed impairment of the vagus, hypoglossal, facial and glossopharyngeal nerves. Voice examination indicated vocal cord paralysis associated with breathy quality of voice, weak voluntary cough, reduced pitch and loudness range, and poor respiratory support. Perturbation parameters as jitter, shimmer were affected along with s/z ratio indicative of voice fold pathology. Reduced MPD(Maximum Phonation Duration) of vowels indicated that disturbed coordination between respiratory and laryngeal systems. Hypernasality was found to be a prominent feature which reduced speech intelligibility. Imprecise articulation was seen in both the subjects as the hypoglossal nerve was affected following surgery. Injury to vagus, hypoglossal, gloss pharyngeal and facial nerves disturbed the function of swallowing. All the phases of swallow were affected. Aspiration was observed before and during the swallow, confirming the oropharyngeal dysphagia. All the subsystems were affected as per Frenchey Dysarthria Assessment signifying the diagnosis of flaccid dysarthria. Conclusion: There is an observable communication and swallowing difficulty seen following excision of glomus jugulare tumor. Even with complete resection, extensive rehabilitation may be necessary due to significant lower cranial nerve dysfunction. The finding of the present study stresses the need for involvement of as speech and swallowing therapist for pre-operative counseling and assessment of functional outcomes.

Keywords: functional outcome, glomus jugulare tumor excision, multiple cranial nerve impairment, speech and swallowing

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Authors: A. Mondaca, E. Mendoza, D. Jackson-Maldonado, A. García-Obregón

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Deaf signers usually show lower scores in Auditory Working Memory (AWM) tasks and higher scores in Visual Working Memory (VWM) tasks than their hearing pairs. Further, Working Memory has been correlated with reading abilities and vocabulary in Deaf and Hearing individuals. The aim of the present study is to compare the performance of Mexican Deaf signers and hearing adults in VWM, reading and Vocabulary tasks and observe if the latter are correlated to the former. 15 Mexican Deaf signers were assessed using the Corsi block test for VWM, four different subtests of PROLEC (Batería de Evaluación de los Procesos Lectores) for reading abilities, and the LexTale in its Spanish version for vocabulary. T-tests show significant differences between groups for VWM and Vocabulary but not for all the PROLEC subtests. A significant Pearson correlation was found between VWM and Vocabulary but not between VWM and reading abilities. This work is part of a larger research study and results are not yet conclusive. A discussion about the use of PROLEC as a tool to explore reading abilities in a Deaf population is included.

Keywords: deaf signers, visual working memory, reading, Mexican sign language

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Authors: Yagya Raj Pandeya, Joonwhoan Lee

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The dynamic behavior of music and video makes it difficult to evaluate musical instrument playing in a video by computer system. Any television or film video clip with music information are rich sources for analyzing musical instruments using modern machine learning technologies. In this research, we integrate the audio and video information sources using convolutional neural network (CNN) and pass network learned features through recurrent neural network (RNN) to preserve the dynamic behaviors of audio and video. We use different pre-trained CNN for music and video feature extraction and then fine tune each model. The music network use 2D convolutional network and video network use 3D convolution (C3D). Finally, we concatenate each music and video feature by preserving the time varying features. The long short term memory (LSTM) network is used for long-term dynamic feature characterization and then use late fusion with generalized mean. The proposed network performs better performance to recognize the musical instrument using audio-video multimodal neural network.

Keywords: multimodal, 3D convolution, music-video feature extraction, generalized mean

Procedia PDF Downloads 198

Authors: Vijay K. Tomer, Ritu Malik, Satya P. Nehra, Anshu Sharma

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Highly ordered mesoporous WO₃-TiO₂ nanohybrids with large intrinsic surface area and highly ordered pore channels were synthesized using mesoporous silica, KIT-6 as hard template using a nanocasting strategy. The nanohybrid samples were characterized by a variety of physico-chemical techniques including X-ray diffraction, Nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms, and high resolution transmission electron microscope. The nanohybrids were tested for detection of important indoor Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) including acetone, ethanol, n-butanol, toluene, and xylene. The sensing result illustrates that the nanocomposite sensor was highly responsive towards xylene gas at relatively lower operating temperature. A rapid response and recovery time, highly linear response and excellent stability in the concentration ranges from 1 to 100 ppm was observed for xylene gas. It is believed that the promising results of this study can be utilized in the synthesis of ordered mesoporous nanostructures which can extend its configuration for the development of new age e-nose type sensors with enhanced gas-sensing performance.

Keywords: nanohybrids, response, sensor, VOCs, xylene

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Authors: Xiao-Li Liu, Ling-Yun Zhao, Xing-Jie Liang, Hai-Ming Fan

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Owing to their unique properties, magnetic nanoparticles have been used as diagnostic and therapeutic agents for biomedical applications. Highly monodispersed magnetic nanoparticles with controlled particle size and surface coating have been successfully synthesized as a model system to investigate the effect of surface coating on the T2 relaxivity and specific absorption rate (SAR) under an alternating magnetic field, respectively. Amongst, by using mPEG-g-PEI to solubilize oleic-acid capped 6 nm magnetic nanoparticles, the T2 relaxivity could be significantly increased by up to 4-fold as compared to PEG coated nanoparticles. Moreover, it largely enhances the cell uptake with a T2 relaxivity of 92.6 mM-1s-1 for in vitro cell MRI. As for hyperthermia agent, SAR value increase with the decreased thickness of PEG surface coating. By elaborate optimization of surface coating and particle size, a significant increase of SAR (up to 74%) could be achieved with a minimal variation on the saturation magnetization (<5%). The 19 nm magnetic nanoparticles with 2000 Da PEG exhibited the highest SAR of 930 W•g-1 among the samples, which can be maintained in various simulated physiological conditions. This systematic work provides a general strategy for the optimization of surface coating of magnetic core for high performance MRI contrast agent and hyperthermia agent.

Keywords: magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic hyperthermia, magnetic resonance imaging, surface modification

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Authors: Woosik Jang, Seung H. Han

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The optimal partner selection is one of the most important factors to pursue the project’s success. However, in practice, there is a gaps in perception of success depending on the role of the enterprises for the projects. This frequently makes a relations between the partner evaluation results and the project’s final performances, insufficiently. To meet this challenges, this study proposes a strategic partner evaluation model considering the perception gaps between enterprises. A total 3 times of survey was performed; factor selection, perception gap analysis, and case application. After then total 8 factors are extracted from independent sample t-test and Borich model to set-up the evaluation model. Finally, through the case applications, only 16 enterprises are re-evaluated to “Good” grade among the 22 “Good” grade from existing model. On the contrary, 12 enterprises are re-evaluated to “Good” grade among the 19 “Bad” grade from existing model. Consequently, the perception gaps based evaluation model is expected to improve the decision making quality and also enhance the probability of project’s success.

Keywords: partner evaluation model, project based enterprise, decision making, perception gap, project performance

Procedia PDF Downloads 143

Authors: W. Oudad, H. Fikirini, K. Boulenouar

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Material fracture by opening (mode I) is not alone responsible for fracture propagation. Many industrial examples show the presence of mode II and mixed mode I + II. In the present work the three-dimensional and non-linear finite element method is used to estimate the performance of the bonded composite repair of metallic aircraft structures by analyzing the plastic zone size ahead of repaired cracks under mixed mode loading. The computations are made according to Von Mises and Tresca criteria. The extension of the plastic zone which takes place at the tip of a crack strictly depends on many variables, such as the yield stress of the material, the loading conditions, the crack size and the thickness of the cracked component, The obtained results show that the presence of the composite patch reduces considerably the size of the plastic zone ahead of the crack. The effects of the composite orientation layup (adhesive properties) and the patch thickness on the plastic zone size ahead of repaired cracks were analyzed.

Keywords: crack, elastic-plastic, J integral, patch, plastic zone

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Authors: Seonggil Kim, Jeonghun Nam, Chae Seung Lim

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Rapid diagnosis of fungal infections is critical for rapid antifungal therapy. However, it is difficult to detect extremely low concentration fungi in blood sample. To address the limitation, separation and concentration of fungi in blood sample are required to enhance the sensitivity of PCR analysis. In this study, we demonstrated a sheathless separation and concentration of fungi, candida cells using a viscoelastic fluid. To validate the performance of the device, microparticle mixture (2 and 13 μm) was used, and those particles were successfully separated based on the size difference at high flow rate of 100 μl/min. For the final application, successful separation of the Candida cells from the white blood cells (WBCs) was achieved. Based on the viscoelastic lateral migration toward the equilibrium position, Candida cells were separated and concentrated by center focusing, while WBCs were removed by patterning into two streams between the channel center and the sidewalls. By flow cytometric analysis, the separation efficiency and the purity were evaluated as ~99% and ~ 97%, respectively. From the results, the device can be the powerful tool for detecting extremely rare disease-related cells.

Keywords: candida cells, concentration, separation, viscoelastic fluid

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Authors: Siao-Wei Jiang, Boy-Young Hsieh, Ching-Liang Hsieh, Cheng-Yung Lin

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The problems of multiple drug resistance in the pig farming industry have been emphasized in recent years. Diarrhea syndrome is common in weaning piglets and often treated with antibiotics as a feed additive, leading to the rapid spread of antibiotic resistance and posing high health risks to humans. The study aimed to alleviate diarrhea syndrome with traditional herbal medicine, Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi Tang, whose effects enhanced digestive function. Piglets at 4 weeks old with stool classified to Bristol stool classification type 6 or type 7 were randomly divided into the control group, group A (1% of Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi Tang) and group B (0.1% Colistin). The piglets were administrated for 7 days, and their weight, feed intake, and stool score were recorded daily before and after the trial. The results showed that the diarrhea index score in group A and group B improved significantly compared to the control group, indicating that Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi Tang may have the same effect on alleviating diarrhea syndrome as Colistin, and it may be another replacement for antibiotics.

Keywords: pig, diarrhea, herbal medicine, Xiang Sha Liu Jun Zi Tang

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Authors: Brahim Brahmi, Mohammed Hamza Laraki, Mohammad Habibur Rahman, Islam M. Rasedul, M. Assad Uz-Zaman

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The humanoid robot, specifically the NAO robot must be able to provide a highly dynamic performance on the soccer field. Maintaining the balance of the humanoid robot during the required motion is considered as one of a challenging problems especially when the robot is subject to external disturbances, as contact with other robots. In this paper, a dynamic controller is proposed in order to ensure a robust walking (stabilization) and to improve the dynamic balance of the robot during its contact with the environment (external disturbances). The generation of the trajectory of the center of mass (CoM) is done by a model predictive controller (MPC) conjoined with zero moment point (ZMP) technique. Taking into account the properties of the rotational dynamics of the whole-body system, a modified previous control mixed with feedback control is employed to manage the angular momentum and the CoM’s acceleration, respectively. This latter is dedicated to provide a robust gait of the robot in the presence of the external disturbances. Simulation results are presented to show the feasibility of the proposed strategy.

Keywords: preview control, Nao robot, model predictive control

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Authors: Laila Khaled Almawaldi, Hiew Khai Hang, Sugumaran A. l. Nallusamy

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Legacy systems are crucial for organizations, but their intricacy and lack of documentation pose challenges for maintenance and enhancement. Redocumentation of legacy systems is vital for automatically or semi-automatically creating documentation for software lacking sufficient records. It aims to enhance system understandability, maintainability, and knowledge transfer. However, existing redocumentation methods need improvement in data processing performance and document generation efficiency. This stems from the necessity to efficiently handle the extensive and complex code of legacy systems. This paper proposes a method for semi-automatic legacy system re-documentation using semantic parallel processing and ontology. Leveraging parallel processing and ontology addresses current challenges by distributing the workload and creating documentation with logically interconnected data. The paper outlines challenges in legacy system redocumentation and suggests a method of redocumentation using parallel processing and ontology for improved efficiency and effectiveness.

Keywords: legacy systems, redocumentation, big data analysis, parallel processing

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Authors: Harmonis Rante, Rudy Djamaluddin, Herman Parung, Victor Sampebulu

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Many research of FRP strengthening on beam-column joint have been done. They used FRP as a strengthening material but not as a connection method. This paper presents a result of experimental-study on connection method of precast beam-column using CFRP sheet to investigate the possibility of CFRP sheet to be a connecting material. Six specimens were prepared and tested to investigate the behavior of CFRP-s connection capacity. The performance of two-connection method is presented in this paper. Three specimens have been tested so far, they were specimen without belt, specimen using one belt and monolith specimen as a control specimen. Result indicated that FRP joint system without belt reached higher capacity than joint system using one belt, but both are lower than monolith joint. Capacity of joint system without belt is 90.6% and 62.5% for the joint system using one belt, respectively compared to the control specimen.

Keywords: belt, CFRP-s, connection method, strengthening

Procedia PDF Downloads 239

Authors: Sukrit Ghorai

Abstract:

Proof of controlling crack width is a basic condition for securing suitable performance in serviceability limit state. The cracking in concrete can occur at any time from the casting of time to the years after the concrete has been set in place. Most codes struggle with offering procedure for crack width calculation. There is lack in availability of design charts for designers to compute crack width with ease. The focus of the study is to utilize design charts and parametric equations in calculating crack width with minimum error. The paper contains a simplified procedure to calculate crack width for reinforced concrete (RC) sections subjected to bending with axial tensile force following the guidelines of Euro code [DS EN-1992-1-1 & DS EN-1992-1-2]. Numerical examples demonstrate the application of the suggested procedure. Comparison with parallel analytical tools support the validity of result and show the percentage deviation of crack width in both the procedures. The technique is simple, user-friendly and ready to evolve for a greater spectrum of section sizes and materials.

Keywords: concrete structures, crack width calculation, serviceability limit state, structural design, bridge engineering

Procedia PDF Downloads 372

Authors: Aishik Deb, Rituparna Sinha

Abstract:

We have developed an algorithm to detect the abnormal segment/"structural variation in the genome across a number of samples. We have worked on simulated as well as real data from the BAM Files and have designed a segmentation algorithm where abnormal segments are detected. This algorithm aims to improve the accuracy and performance of the existing CNV-CH algorithm. The next-generation sequencing (NGS) approach is very fast and can generate large sequences in a reasonable time. So the huge volume of sequence information gives rise to the need for Big Data and parallel approaches of segmentation. Therefore, we have designed a map-reduce approach for the existing CNV-CH algorithm where a large amount of sequence data can be segmented and structural variations in the human genome can be detected. We have compared the efficiency of the traditional and map-reduce algorithms with respect to precision, sensitivity, and F-Score. The advantages of using our algorithm are that it is fast and has better accuracy. This algorithm can be applied to detect structural variations within a genome, which in turn can be used to detect various genetic disorders such as cancer, etc. The defects may be caused by new mutations or changes to the DNA and generally result in abnormally high or low base coverage and quantification values.

Keywords: cancer detection, convex hull segmentation, map reduce, next generation sequencing

Procedia PDF Downloads 119

Authors: Perminderjit Singh, Sukhvir Singh

Abstract:

Total Quality Management (TQM) refers to management methods used to enhance quality and productivity in business organizations. Total Quality Management (TQM) has become a frequently used term in discussions concerning quality. Total Quality management has brought rise in demands on the organizations policy and the customers have gained more importance in the organizations focus. TQM is considered as an important management tool, which helps the organizations to satisfy their customers. In present research critical success factors includes management commitment, customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, work culture and environment, supplier quality management, training and development, employee satisfaction and product/process design are studied. A questionnaire is developed to implement these critical success factors in implementation of total quality management in Indian industry. Questionnaires filled by consulting different industrial organizations. Data collected from questionnaires is analyzed by descriptive and importance indexes.

Keywords: total quality management, critical success factor, employee satisfaction, supplier quality management, customer focus, quality information, quality measurement

Procedia PDF Downloads 460

Authors: Rashad Al Araj, Adil K. Tamimi

Abstract:

Concrete, despite being one of the most produced materials in the world, still has weaknesses and drawbacks. Significant concern of the cementitious materials in structural applications is their quasi-brittle behavior, which causes the material to crack and lose its durability. One of the very recently proposed mitigations for this problem is the implementation of nanotechnology in the concrete mix by adding carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to it. CNTs can enhance the critical mechanical properties of concrete as a structural material. Thus, this paper demonstrates a state-of-the-art review of reinforcing concrete with CNTs, emphasizing on the structural performance. It also goes over the properties of CNTs alone, the present methods and costs associated with producing them, the possible special applications of concretes reinforced with CNTs, the key challenges and drawbacks that this new technology still encounters, and the most reliable practices and methodologies to produce CNT-reinforced concrete in the lab. This work has shown that the addition of CNTs to the concrete mix in percentages as low as 0.25% weight of cement could increase the flexural strength and toughness of concrete by more than 45% and 25%, respectively, and enhance other durability-related properties, given that an effective dispersion of CNTs in the cementitious mix is achieved. Since nano reinforcement for cementitious materials is a new technology, many challenges have to be tackled before it becomes practiced at the mass level.

Keywords: sustainability, carbon nano tube, microsilica, concrete

Procedia PDF Downloads 323

Authors: Venkataramana Sovenahalli Badigar, B. M. Suryakanth, Akshar Prasanna, Karthik Veeramalai, Vishwak Ram Vishwak Ram

Abstract:

Technological advances have led to widespread autonomy in vehicles. Empowering these autonomous with the intelligence to cooperate amongst themselves leads to a more efficient use of the resources available to them. This paper proposes a demonstration of a swarm algorithm implemented on a group of autonomous vehicles. The demonstration involves two ground bots and an aerial drone which cooperate amongst them to locate an object of interest. The object of interest is modelled using a high-intensity light source which acts as a beacon. The ground bots are light sensitive and move towards the beacon. The ground bots and the drone traverse in random paths and jointly locate the beacon. This finds application in various scenarios in where human interference is difficult such as search and rescue during natural disasters, delivering crucial packages in perilous situations, etc. Experimental results show that the modified swarm algorithm implemented in this system has better performance compared to fully random based moving algorithm for object localization and tracking.

Keywords: swarm algorithm, object localization, ground bots, drone, beacon

Procedia PDF Downloads 242

Authors: K. Arroudj, M. Lanez, M. N. Oudjit

Abstract:

The introduction of siliceous mineral additions in cement production allows, in addition to the ecological and economic gain, improvement of concrete performance. This improvement is mainly due to the fixing of Portlandite, released during the hydration of cement, by fine siliceous, forming denser calcium silicate hydrates and therefore a more compact cementitious matrix. This research is part of the valuation of the Dune Sand (DS) in the cement industry in Algeria. The high silica content of DS motivated us to study its effect, at ground state, on the properties of mortars in fresh and hardened state. For this purpose, cement pastes and mortars based on ground dune sand (fine quartz) has been analyzed with a replacement to cement of 15%, 20% and 25%. This substitution has reduced the amount of heat of hydration and avoids any risk of initial cracking. In addition, the grinding of the dune sand provides amorphous thin populations adsorbed at the surface of the crystal particles of quartz. Which gives to ground quartz pozzolanic character. This character results an improvement of mechanical strength of mortar (66 MPa in the presence of 25% of ground quartz).

Keywords: mineralogical structure, pozzolanic reactivity, Quartz, mechanical strength

Procedia PDF Downloads 265