Search results for: hospital information system

Authors: Bernard Bladergroen, David Vlotman, Bradley Cerff

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The agricultural sector is one which requires and consumes large amounts of water globally. Commercial wine production, in particular, uses extensive volumes of fresh water and generates significant volumes of wastewater through various processes. The wastewater produced by wineries typically exhibits elevated levels of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), total dissolved solids (TDS), acidic pH and varying salinity and nutrient contents. This study investigates the performance of a shear-enhanced flotation separation (SEFS) pilot plant as a primary treatment stage during winery wastewater processing by modifying a conventional Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) system. The SEFS pilot plant achieved a 99% reduction in both turbidity and TSS in comparison to the 97% achieved with the conventional DAF system. The COD was reduced by 66% and 51% for the SEFS and DAF systems, respectively. SEFS shows the advantages of hydrodynamic shear to enhance the coagulation and subsequent flocculation processes with a significant reduction of coagulant and flocculant (36% and 31%, respectively).

Keywords: shear enhanced flotation, suspended solids, primary wastewater treatment, zeta potential

Procedia PDF Downloads 58

Authors: Hanwei Gao, Louis Jezequel, Eric Cabrol, Bernard Vitry

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The chassis system is composed of complex elements that take up all the loads from the tire-ground contact area and thus it plays an important role in numerous specifications such as durability, comfort, crash, etc. During the development of new vehicle projects in Renault, durability validation is always the main focus while deployment of comfort comes later in the project. Therefore, sometimes design choices have to be reconsidered because of the natural incompatibility between these two specifications. Besides, robustness is also an important point of concern as it is related to manufacturing costs as well as the performance after the ageing of components like shock absorbers. In this paper an approach is proposed aiming to realize a multi-objective optimization between chassis endurance and comfort while taking the random factors into consideration. The adaptive-sparse polynomial chaos expansion method (PCE) with Chebyshev polynomial series has been applied to predict responses’ uncertainty intervals of a system according to its uncertain-but-bounded parameters. The approach can be divided into three steps. First an initial design of experiments is realized to build the response surfaces which represent statistically a black-box system. Secondly within several iterations an optimum set is proposed and validated which will form a Pareto front. At the same time the robustness of each response, served as additional objectives, is calculated from the pre-defined parameter intervals and the response surfaces obtained in the first step. Finally an inverse strategy is carried out to determine the parameters’ tolerance combination with a maximally acceptable degradation of the responses in terms of manufacturing costs. A quarter car model has been tested as an example by applying the road excitations from the actual road measurements for both endurance and comfort calculations. One indicator based on the Basquin’s law is defined to compare the global chassis durability of different parameter settings. Another indicator related to comfort is obtained from the vertical acceleration of the sprung mass. An optimum set with best robustness has been finally obtained and the reference tests prove a good robustness prediction of Chebyshev PCE method. This example demonstrates the effectiveness and reliability of the approach, in particular its ability to save computational costs for a complex system.

Keywords: chassis durability, Chebyshev polynomials, multi-objective optimization, polynomial chaos expansion, ride comfort, robust design

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Authors: Peter I. I. Ikokwu

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Recent developments in the world, both in the health and education sectors, have further popularized the importance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT is available for many purposes, including teaching and learning, and its use in education is believed to empower both teachers and students by making the educational process more effective and interactive. The study examined the perceptions of teachers on the factors affecting the use of ICT in the teaching and learning of chemistry and the mitigating factors. The study involved all the lecturers (herein referred to as teachers) in the Colleges of Education in South Eastern Nigeria. The survey design was employed. 35 teachers were selected by stratified random sampling from about 78 chemistry teachers in these Colleges. However, 34 questionnaires were recovered, comprising 13 males and 21 females. 3 research questions and 3 hypotheses guided the study. Results show that the teachers have a clear perception of the factors militating against the use of ICT in the teaching and learning of chemistry, with a pooled mean of 2.96. But there was no significant difference in the perceptions of male and female teachers. Also, they identified the mitigating factors highlighted with no significant difference between the perceptions of the males and females with pooled means of 3.23 and 3.11, respectively. In all, it is noteworthy that lack of funds, irregular and inadequate power supply, and inadequate time in the school timetable was among the militating factors. Recommendations were made for the consideration of the government, the teachers, and the Institutions.

Keywords: chemistry, teachers, perception, ICT, learning

Procedia PDF Downloads 80

Authors: Truong Nguyen Luan Vu, Le Hieu Giang, Le Linh

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The FOPI controller is proposed based on the main properties of the decoupling control scheme, as well as the fractional calculus. By using the simplified decoupling technique, the transfer function of decoupled apparent process is firstly separated into a set of n equivalent independent processes in terms of a ratio of the diagonal elements of original open-loop transfer function to those of dynamic relative gain array and the fraction – order PI controller is then developed for each control loops due to the Bode’s ideal transfer function that gives the desired fractional closed-loop response in the frequency domain. The simulation studies were carried out to evaluate the proposed design approach in a fair compared with the other existing methods in accordance with the structured singular value (SSV) theory that used to measure the robust stability of control systems under multiplicative output uncertainty. The simulation results indicate that the proposed method consistently performs well with fast and well-balanced closed-loop time responses.

Keywords: ideal transfer function of bode, fractional calculus, fractional order proportional integral (FOPI) controller, decoupling control system

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Authors: Dipti Chand, Riya Saboo

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OBJECTIVES: Early and correct diagnosis may present a significant clinical challenge in diagnosis of patients presenting to Emergency Department with Acute Dyspnoea. The common cause of acute dyspnoea and respiratory distress in Emergency Department are Decompensated Heart Failure (HF), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Asthma, Pneumonia, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), Pulmonary Embolism (PE), and other causes like anaemia. The aim of the study was to measure NT-pro Brain Natriuretic Peptide (BNP) and exhaled End-Tidal Carbon dioxide (ETCO2) in patients presenting with dyspnoea. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This prospective, cross-sectional and observational study was performed at the Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur, between October 2019 and October 2021 in patients admitted to the Medicine Intensive Care Unit. Three groups of patients were compared: (1) HFrelated acute dyspnoea group (n = 52), (2) pulmonary (COPD/PE)-related acute dyspnoea group (n = 31) and (3) sepsis with ARDS-related dyspnoea group (n = 13). All patients underwent initial clinical examination with a recording of initial vital parameters along with on-admission ETCO2 measurement, NT-proBNP testing, arterial blood gas analysis, lung ultrasound examination, 2D echocardiography, chest X-rays, and other relevant diagnostic laboratory testing. RESULTS: 96 patients were included in the study. Median NT-proBNP was found to be high for the Heart Failure group (11,480 pg/ml), followed by the sepsis group (780 pg/ml), and pulmonary group had an Nt ProBNP of 231 pg/ml. The mean ETCO2 value was maximum in the pulmonary group (48.610 mmHg) followed by Heart Failure (31.51 mmHg) and the sepsis group (19.46 mmHg). The results were found to be statistically significant (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: NT-proBNP has high diagnostic accuracy in differentiating acute HF-related dyspnoea from pulmonary (COPD and ARDS)-related acute dyspnoea. The higher levels of ETCO2 help in diagnosing patients with COPD.

Keywords: NT PRO BNP, ETCO2, dyspnoea, lung USG

Procedia PDF Downloads 73

Authors: Pedro A. Marques, Francisco Monteiro, Alessandra Zumbo, Alessia Simonini, Miguel A. Mendez

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Cryogenic fuels such as Liquid Hydrogen (LH₂) must be transported and stored at extremely low temperatures. Without expensive active cooling solutions, preventing fuel boil-off over time is impossible. Hence, one must resort to venting systems at the cost of significant energy and fuel mass loss. These losses increase significantly in propellant tanks installed on vehicles, as the presence of external accelerations induces sloshing. Sloshing increases heat and mass transfer rates and leads to significant pressure oscillations, which might further trigger propellant venting. To make LH₂ economically viable, it is essential to minimize these factors by using advanced control techniques. However, these require accurate modelling and a full understanding of the tank's thermodynamics. The present research aims to implement a simple thermodynamic model capable of predicting the state of a cryogenic fuel tank under different operating conditions (i.e., filling, pressurization, fuel extraction, long-term storage, and sloshing). Since this model relies on a set of closure parameters to drive the system's transient response, it must be calibrated using experimental or numerical data. This work focuses on the former approach, wherein the model is calibrated through an experimental campaign carried out on a reduced-scale model of a cryogenic tank. The thermodynamic model of the system is composed of three control volumes: the ullage, the liquid, and the insulating walls. Under this lumped formulation, the governing equations are derived from energy and mass balances in each region, with mass-averaged properties assigned to each of them. The gas-liquid interface is treated as an infinitesimally thin region across which both phases can exchange mass and heat. This results in a coupled system of ordinary differential equations, which must be closed with heat and mass transfer coefficients between each control volume. These parameters are linked to the system evolution via empirical relations derived from different operating regimes of the tank. The derivation of these relations is carried out using an inverse method to find the optimal relations that allow the model to reproduce the available data. This approach extends classic system identification methods beyond linear dynamical systems via a nonlinear optimization step. Thanks to the data-driven assimilation of the closure problem, the resulting model accurately predicts the evolution of the tank's thermodynamics at a negligible computational cost. The lumped model can thus be easily integrated with other submodels to perform complete system simulations in real time. Moreover, by setting the model in a dimensionless form, a scaling analysis allowed us to relate the tested configurations to a representative full-size tank for naval applications. It was thus possible to compare the relative importance of different transport phenomena between the laboratory model and the full-size prototype among the different operating regimes.

Keywords: destratification, hydrogen, modeling, pressure-drop, pressurization, sloshing, thermodynamics

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Authors: Mais Haj Qasem, Maen M. Al Assaf, Ali Rodan

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Parallel hybrid storage systems consist of a hierarchy of different storage devices that vary in terms of data reading speed performance. As we ascend in the hierarchy, data reading speed becomes faster. Thus, migrating the application’ important data that will be accessed in the near future to the uppermost level will reduce the application I/O waiting time; hence, reducing its execution elapsed time. In this research, we implement trace-driven two-levels parallel hybrid storage system prototype that consists of HDDs and SSDs. The prototype uses data mining techniques to classify application’ data in order to determine its near future data accesses in parallel with the its on-demand request. The important data (i.e. the data that the application will access in the near future) are continuously migrated to the uppermost level of the hierarchy. Our simulation results show that our data migration approach integrated with data mining techniques reduces the application execution elapsed time when using variety of traces in at least to 22%.

Keywords: hybrid storage system, data mining, recurrent neural network, support vector machine

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Authors: Ali Kadivar, Kaveh Niayesh

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The integration of green energy resources is a major focus, and the role of Medium Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) systems is exponentially expanding. However, the protection of MVDC systems against DC faults is a challenge that can have consequences on reliable and safe grid operation. This challenge reveals the need for MVDC circuit breakers (MVDC CB), which are in infancies of their improvement. Therefore will be a lack of MVDC CBs standards, including thresholds for acceptable power losses and operation speed. To establish a baseline for comparison purposes, a benchmark system for testing future MVDC CBs is vital. The literatures just give the timing sequence of each switch and the emphasis is on the topology, without in-depth study on the control algorithm of DCCB, as the circuit breaker control system is not yet systematic. A digital testing benchmark is designed for the Proof-of-concept of simulation studies using software models. It can validate studies based on real-time digital simulators and Transient Network Analyzer (TNA) models. The proposed experimental setup utilizes data accusation from the accurate sensors installed on the tested MVDC CB and through general purpose input/outputs (GPIO) from the microcontroller and PC Prototype studies in the laboratory-based models utilizing Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) equipment connected to real-time digital simulators is achieved. The improved control algorithm of the circuit breaker can reduce the peak fault current and avoid arc resignation, helping the coordination of DCCB in relay protection. Moreover, several research gaps are identified regarding case studies and evaluation approaches.

Keywords: DC circuit breaker, hardware-in-the-loop, real time digital simulation, testing benchmark

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Authors: Ibrahim Aliyu Isah, Mohd Mansor Ismail, Salim Hassan, Norsida Man, Oluwatoyin Olagunju

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Stingless beekeeping is not only a profitable activity for Malaysian beekeepers but also for the Malaysian economy. However, natural honey has faced some difficulties, which resulted in low production due to a lack of information on improved technology as well as the capacity and potential building of stingless beekeeping farmers, which depend mostly on information received from the extension agents. Hence, it is the responsibility of the extension agents to give useful information on the available technology and develop the capacity of the farmers to make the right decision that will improve their level of production. This study assessed how technology transfer and human resource development skills influence the work performance of the extension agents toward sustainable beekeeping production among beekeepers. The study sought to establish the role of relevant technology transfer and human resource development skills in effective performance. The research design was a descriptive and quantitative survey of stingless beekeepers on technology transfer and human resource development by the extension agent. Data was obtained from 54 beekeeping farmers and was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that technology skill, technology dissemination skill, technology evaluation skill, Decision-making process skill, Leadership development skill and work performance were rated moderate by stingless beekeeping farmers, while Social skill was rated high. A significant and positive correlation (P<0.01) existed between all variables and performance. Regression results showed that leadership development skills, Decision-making process skills, and social skills are significant (P=.05), while technology skills, technology dissemination skills, and technology evaluation skills are not significant. The highest contributing factor is social skill (β=.446). Beekeeping is a profitable project in Malaysia and can be sustained if the extension services and programs are well carried out by competent extension agents and relevant agricultural government agencies.

Keywords: beekeeping, extension agents, human resource development, sustainable, technology transfer, work performance

Procedia PDF Downloads 55

Authors: Desmond Young

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In building services electrical design, a key element of any project will be assessing the electrical load requirements. This needs to be done early in the design process to allow the selection of infrastructure that would be required to meet the electrical needs of the type of building. The type of building will define the type of assessment made, and the values applied in defining the maximum demand for the building, and ultimately the size of supply or infrastructure required, and the application that needs to be made to the distribution network operator, or alternatively to an independent network operator. The fact that this assessment needs to be undertaken early in the design process provides limits on the type of assessment that can be used, as different methods require different types of information, and sometimes this information is not available until the latter stages of a project. A common method applied in the earlier design stages of a project, typically during stages 1,2 & 3, is the use of benchmarks. It is a possibility that some of the benchmarks applied are excessive in relation to the current loads that exist in a modern installation. This lack of accuracy is based on information which does not correspond to the actual equipment loads that are used. This includes lighting and small power loads, where the use of more efficient equipment and lighting has reduced the maximum demand required. The electrical load can be used as part of the process to assess the heat generated from the equipment, with the heat gains from other sources, this feeds into the sizing of the infrastructure required to cool the building. Any overestimation of the loads would contribute to the increase in the design load for the heating and ventilation systems. Finally, with the new policies driving the industry to decarbonise buildings, a prime example being the recently introduced London Plan, loads are potentially going to increase. In addition, with the advent of the pandemic and changes to working practices, and the adoption of electric heating and vehicles, a better understanding of the loads that should be applied will aid in ensuring that infrastructure is not oversized, as a cost to the client, or undersized to the detriment of the building. In addition, more accurate benchmarks and methods will allow assessments to be made for the incorporation of energy storage and renewable technologies as these technologies become more common in buildings new or refurbished.

Keywords: energy, ADMD, electrical load assessment, energy benchmarks

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Authors: Latha Krishnan, Andrew Cobley

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Epoxy resin is most widely used as matrices for composites of aerospace, automotive and electronic applications due to its outstanding mechanical properties. These properties are chiefly predetermined by the chemical structure of the prepolymer and type of hardener but can also be varied by the processing conditions such as prepolymer and hardener mixing, degassing and curing conditions. In this research, the effect of degassing on the curing behaviour and the void occurrence is experimentally evaluated for epoxy /anhydride resin system. The epoxy prepolymer was mixed with an anhydride hardener and accelerator in an appropriate quantity. In order to investigate the effect of degassing on the curing behaviour and void content of the resin, the uncured resin samples were prepared using three different methods: 1) no degassing 2) degassing on prepolymer and 3) degassing on mixed solution of prepolymer and hardener with an accelerator. The uncured resins were tested in differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) to observe the changes in curing behaviour of the above three resin samples by analysing factors such as gel temperature, peak cure temperature and heat of reaction/heat flow in curing. Additionally, the completely cured samples were tested in DSC to identify the changes in the glass transition temperature (Tg) between the three samples. In order to evaluate the effect of degassing on the void content and morphology changes in the cured epoxy resin, the fractured surfaces of cured epoxy resin were examined under the scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, the amount of void, void geometry and void fraction were also investigated using an optical microscope and image J software (image analysis software). It was found that degassing at different stages of resin mixing had significant effects on properties such as glass transition temperature, the void content and void size of the epoxy/anhydride resin system. For example, degassing (vacuum applied on the mixed resin) has shown higher glass transition temperature (Tg) with lower void content.

Keywords: anhydride epoxy, curing behaviour, degassing, void occurrence

Procedia PDF Downloads 212

Authors: Shadab Shishegar, Sophie Duchesne, Genevieve Pelletier

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Sustainability as one of the key elements of Smart cities, can be realized by employing Real Time Control Strategies for city’s infrastructures. Nowadays Stormwater management systems play an important role in mitigating the impacts of urbanization on natural hydrological cycle. These systems can be managed in such a way that they meet the smart cities standards. In fact, there is a huge potential for sustainable management of urban stormwater and also its adaptability to global challenges like climate change. Hence, a dynamically managed system that can adapt itself to instability of the environmental conditions is desirable. A Global Predictive Real Time Control approach is proposed in this paper to optimize the performance of stormwater management basins in terms of flooding prevention. To do so, a mathematical optimization model is developed then solved using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Results show an improved performance at system-level for the stormwater basins in comparison to static strategy.

Keywords: environmental sustainability, optimization, real time control, storm water management

Procedia PDF Downloads 169

Authors: John Justo Ambuchi, Zhaohan Zhang, Yujie Feng

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Quick development and usage of nanotechnology have resulted to massive use of various nanoparticles, such as iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Thus, this study investigated the role of IONPs and MWCNTs in enhancing bioenergy recovery. Results show that IONPs at a concentration of 750 mg/L and MWCNTs at a concentration of 1500 mg/L induced faster substrate utilization and biogas production rates than the control. IONPs exhibited higher carbon oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency than MWCNTs while on the contrary, MWCNT performance on biogas generation was remarkable than IONPs. Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) investigation revealed extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) excretion from AGS had an interaction with nanoparticles. This interaction created a protective barrier to microbial consortia hence reducing their cytotoxicity. Microbial community analyses revealed genus predominance of bacteria of Anaerolineaceae and Longilinea. Their role in biodegradation of the substrate could have highly been boosted by nanoparticles. The archaea predominance of the genus level of Methanosaeta and Methanobacterium enhanced methanation process. The presence of bacteria of genus Geobacter was also reported. Their presence might have significantly contributed to direct interspecies electron transfer in the system. Exposure of AGS to nanoparticles promoted direct interspecies electron transfer among the anaerobic fermenting bacteria and their counterpart methanogens during the anaerobic digestion process. This results provide useful insightful information in understanding the response of microorganisms to IONPs and MWCNTs in the complex natural environment.

Keywords: anaerobic granular sludge, extracellular polymeric substances, iron oxide nanoparticles, multi-wall carbon nanotubes

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Authors: Wera Supa, Panita Wannapiroon

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This paper is a report on the designing of the social collaborative learning model based on proactive involvement to Promote the global merit principle in cultivating youths’ morality. The research procedures into two phases, the first phase is to design the social collaborative learning model based on proactive involvement to promote the global merit principle in cultivating youths’ morality, and the second is to evaluate the social collaborative learning model based on proactive involvement. The sample group in this study consists of 15 experts who are dominant in proactive participation, moral merit principle and youths’ morality cultivation from executive level, lecturers and the professionals in information and communication technology expertise selected using the purposive sampling method. Data analyzed by arithmetic mean and standard deviation. This study has explored that there are four significant factors in promoting the hands-on collaboration of global merit scheme in order to implant virtues to adolescences which are: 1) information and communication Technology Usage; 2) proactive involvement; 3) morality cultivation policy, and 4) global merit principle. The experts agree that the social collaborative learning model based on proactive involvement is highly appropriate.

Keywords: social collaborative learning, proactive involvement, global merit principle, morality

Procedia PDF Downloads 379

Authors: Bander Alzahrani, Mohammed Alreshoodi

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Information-centric networking (ICN) using architectures such as the Publish-Subscribe Internet Technology (PURSUIT) has been proposed as a new networking model that aims at replacing the current used end-centric networking model of the Internet. This emerged model focuses on what is being exchanged rather than which network entities are exchanging information, which gives the control plane functions such as routing and host location the ability to be specified according to the content items. The forwarding plane of the PURSUIT ICN architecture uses a simple and light mechanism based on Bloom filter technologies to forward the packets. Although this forwarding scheme solve many problems of the today’s Internet such as the growth of the routing table and the scalability issues, it is vulnerable to brute force attacks which are starting point to distributed- denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In this work, we design and analyze a novel source-routing and information delivery technique that keeps the simplicity of using Bloom filter-based forwarding while being able to deter different attacks such as denial of service attacks at the ingress of the network. To achieve this, special forwarding nodes called Edge-FW are directly attached to end user nodes and used to perform a security test for malicious injected random packets at the ingress of the path to prevent any possible attack brute force attacks at early stage. In this technique, a core entity of the PURSUIT ICN architecture called topology manager, that is responsible for finding shortest path and creating a forwarding identifiers (FId), uses a cryptographically secure hash function to create a 64-bit hash, h, over the formed FId for authentication purpose to be included in the packet. Our proposal restricts the attacker from injecting packets carrying random FIds with a high amount of filling factor ρ, by optimizing and reducing the maximum allowed filling factor ρm in the network. We optimize the FId to the minimum possible filling factor where ρ ≤ ρm, while it supports longer delivery trees, so the network scalability is not affected by the chosen ρm. With this scheme, the filling factor of any legitimate FId never exceeds the ρm while the filling factor of illegitimate FIds cannot exceed the chosen small value of ρm. Therefore, injecting a packet containing an FId with a large value of filling factor, to achieve higher attack probability, is not possible anymore. The preliminary analysis of this proposal indicates that with the designed scheme, the forwarding function can detect and prevent malicious activities such DDoS attacks at early stage and with very high probability.

Keywords: forwarding identifier, filling factor, information centric network, topology manager

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Authors: Fatmah Almathkour

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Managing and controlling the construction supply chain (CSC) are very important components of effective construction project execution. The goals of managing the CSC are to reduce uncertainty and optimize the performance of a construction project by improving efficiency and reducing project costs. The heart of much SC activity is addressing risk, and the CSC is no different. The delivery and consumption of construction materials is highly variable due to the complexity of construction operations, rapidly changing demand for certain components, lead time variability from suppliers, transportation time variability, and disruptions at the job site. Current notions of managing and controlling CSC, involve focusing on one project at a time with a push-based material ordering system based on the initial construction schedule and, then, holding a tremendous amount of inventory. A two-stage methodology was proposed to coordinate the feed-forward control of advanced order placement with a supplier to a feedback local control in the form of adding the ability to transship materials between projects to improve efficiency and reduce costs. It focused on the single supplier integrated production and transshipment problem with multiple products. The methodology is used as a design tool for the CSC because it includes an external storage site not associated with one of the projects. The idea is to add this feature to a highly constrained environment to explore its effectiveness in buffering the impact of variability and maintaining project schedule at low cost. The methodology uses deterministic optimization models with objectives that minimizing the total cost of the CSC. To illustrate how this methodology can be used in practice and the types of information that can be gleaned, it is tested on a number of cases based on the real example of multiple construction projects in Kuwait.

Keywords: construction supply chain, inventory control supply chain, transshipment

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Authors: Xu Rumin, Chen Jianyi, Yue Ti, Wang Yaan

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With the rapid development of subsea oil and gas exploitation, the demand for the related underwater process equipment is increasing fast. In order to reduce the energy consuming, people tend to separate the gas and oil phase directly on the seabed. Accordingly, an advanced separator is needed. In this paper, the pressure drop of a new type of separator named Gas Liquid Cylindrical Cyclone (GLCC) which is used in the subsea system is investigated by both experiments and numerical simulation. In the experiments, the single phase flow and gas-liquid two phase flow in GLCC were tested. For the simulation, the performance of GLCC under both laboratory and industrial conditions was calculated. The Eulerian model was implemented to describe the mixture flow field in the GLCC under experimental conditions and industrial oil-natural gas conditions. Furthermore, a relationship among Euler number (Eu), Reynolds number (Re), and Froude number (Fr) is generated according to similarity analysis and simulation data, which can present the GLCC separation performance of pressure drop. These results can give reference to the design and application of GLCC in deep sea.

Keywords: dimensionless analysis, gas-liquid cylindrical cyclone, numerical simulation, pressure drop

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Authors: Chung-Ming Lo, Kevin Li-Chun Hsieh

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The central nervous system in the World Health Organization defines grade 2, 3, 4 gliomas according to the aggressiveness. For brain tumors, using image examination would have a lower risk than biopsy. Besides, it is a challenge to extract relevant tissues from biopsy operation. Observing the whole tumor structure and composition can provide a more objective assessment. This study further proposed a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system based on a convolutional neural network to quantitatively evaluate a tumor's malignancy from brain magnetic resonance imaging. A total of 30 grade 2, 43 grade 3, and 57 grade 4 gliomas were collected in the experiment. Transferred parameters from AlexNet were fine-tuned to classify the target brain tumors and achieved an accuracy of 98% and an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (Az) of 0.99. Without pre-trained features, only 61% of accuracy was obtained. The proposed convolutional neural network can accurately and efficiently classify grade 2, 3, and 4 gliomas. The promising accuracy can provide diagnostic suggestions to radiologists in the clinic.

Keywords: convolutional neural network, computer-aided diagnosis, glioblastoma, magnetic resonance imaging

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Authors: Reshma P. Nuri, Ebenezer Dassah

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Introduction: Raising a child with a disability can affect family members in different ways. However, this can be determined by the way in which a family member copes with the situation. There is little research that explores how families develop coping strategies to overcome barriers in raising CWDs. Objective: This study explored family members’ coping mechanism in raising a child with disability in Bangladesh. Method: A qualitative approach that involved 20 interviews with family members of CWDs. A purposive sampling procedure was used in selecting the study participants. A digital recorder was used to record all the interviews. Transcriptions were done in Bengali, translated into English, and then imported to NVivo software 12 for analysis. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: The study revealed that family members adopted different coping strategies for their CWDs, including seeking support from formal (e.g., service providers) and informal sources (family members and friends); relying on religious beliefs; accepting the situation. Additionally, to cope with extra cost in raising CWDs, family members strategies included relying on overtime work; borrowing money from financial institutions; selling or mortgaging assets; and replying on donations from community members. Finally, some families had to reduce spending on food and buying toys for their CWDs. Conclusion: This qualitative study highlighted a range of coping mechanism adopted by family members in Bangladesh. The information provided in this study is potentially important to policy makers and service providers as it presents evidence on the coping mechanism of families in raising their CWDs. This underscores the need for policy design and service delivery in government support system in Bangladesh and potentially in other low- and middle-income contexts.

Keywords: Bangladesh, children with disabilities, coping mechanism, family members

Procedia PDF Downloads 187

Authors: Bin Liu, Weijie Liu, Bin Sun, Yihui Luo

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In order to solve the problem of lower spatial resolution and block effect in the fusion method based on separable wavelet transform in the resulting fusion image, a new sampling mode based on multi-resolution analysis of two-channel non separable wavelet transform, whose dilation matrix is [1,1;1,-1], is presented and a multispectral image fusion method based on this kind of sampling mode is proposed. Filter banks related to this kind of wavelet are constructed, and multiresolution decomposition of the intensity of the MS and panchromatic image are performed in the sampled mode using the constructed filter bank. The low- and high-frequency coefficients are fused by different fusion rules. The experiment results show that this method has good visual effect. The fusion performance has been noted to outperform the IHS fusion method, as well as, the fusion methods based on DWT, IHS-DWT, IHS-Contourlet transform, and IHS-Curvelet transform in preserving both spectral quality and high spatial resolution information. Furthermore, when compared with the fusion method based on nonsubsampled two-channel non separable wavelet, the proposed method has been observed to have higher spatial resolution and good global spectral information.

Keywords: image fusion, two-channel sampled nonseparable wavelets, multispectral image, panchromatic image

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Authors: K. Doi, T. Nishimura, H. Fujimoto, T. Tanaka

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It has been known that visually impaired persons have some problems in getting visual information. Therefore, information accessibility for the visually impaired persons is very important in a current information society. Some application software with read-aloud function for using personal computer and smartphone are getting more and more popular among visually impaired persons in the world. On the other hand, it is also very important for being able to learn how to read and write characters such as Braille and Visual character. Braille typewriter has been widely used in learning Braille. And also raised-line drawing kits as writing material has been used for decades for especially acquired visually impaired persons. However, there are some drawbacks such as the drawn line cannot be erased. Moreover, visibility of drawing lines is not so good for visually impaired with low vision. We had significant number of requests for developing new writing material for especially acquired visually impaired persons instead of raised-line drawing kits. For conducting development research of novel writing material, we could receive a research grant from ministry of health, labor and welfare in Japanese government. In this research, we developed writing material typed pens and pencils with Beeswax-discharge instead of conventional raised-line drawing kits. This writing material was equipped with cartridge heater for melting beeswax and its heat controller. When this pen users held down the pen tip on the regular paper such as fine paper and so on, the melted beeswax could be discharged from pen tip with valve structure. The beeswax was discharged at 100 gf of holding down force based on results of our previous trial study. The shape of pen tip was semispherical for becoming low friction between pen tip and surface of paper. We conducted one basic experiment to evaluate influence of the curvature of pen tip on ease to write. Concretely, the conditions of curvature was 0.15, 0.35, 0.50, 1.00 mm. The following four interval scales were used as indexes of subjective assessment during writing such as feeling of smooth motion of pen, feeling of comfortable writing, sense of security and feeling of writing fatigue. Ten subjects were asked to participate in this experiment. The results reveal that subjects could draw easily when the radius of the pen tip was 1.00 mm, and lines drawn with beeswax-discharge writing material were easy to perceive.

Keywords: beeswax-discharge writing material, raised-line drawing kits, visually impaired persons, pen tip

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Authors: Çiğdem Avcı Karataş

Abstract:

Mitigation of structural damage caused by earthquake and reduction of fatality is one of the main concerns of engineers in seismic prone zones of the world. To achieve this aim many technologies have been developed in the last decades and applied in construction and retrofit of structures. On the one hand Turkey is well-known a country of high level of seismicity; on the other hand steel-composite structures appear competitive today in this country by comparison with other types of structures, for example only-steel or concrete structures. Composite construction is the dominant form of construction for the multi-storey building sector. The reason why composite construction is often so good can be expressed in one simple way - concrete is good in compression and steel is good in tension. By joining the two materials together structurally these strengths can be exploited to result in a highly efficient design. The reduced self-weight of composite elements has a knock-on effect by reducing the forces in those elements supporting them, including the foundations. The floor depth reductions that can be achieved using composite construction can also provide significant benefits in terms of the costs of services and the building envelope. The scope of this paper covers analysis, materials take-off, cost analysis and economic comparisons of a multi-storey building with composite and steel frames. The aim of this work is to show that designing load carrying systems as composite is more economical than designing as steel. Design of the nine stories building which is under consideration is done according to the regulation of the 2007, Turkish Earthquake Code and by using static and dynamic analysis methods. For the analyses of the steel and composite systems, plastic analysis methods have been used and whereas steel system analyses have been checked in compliance with EC3 and composite system analyses have been checked in compliance with EC4. At the end of the comparisons, it is revealed that composite load carrying systems analysis is more economical than the steel load carrying systems analysis considering the materials to be used in the load carrying system and the workmanship to be spent for this job.

Keywords: composite analysis, earthquake, steel, multi-storey building

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Authors: Liu Junzhu

Abstract:

In contemporary China,city is expanding with an amazing speed. And because of the unexpected events’ interference, spatial structure could change itself in a short time, That will lead to the new urban district livingness and unfortunately, this phenomenon is very common.On the one hand,it fail to achieve the goal of city planning, On the other hand,it is unfavourable to the sustainable development of city. Bill Hillier’stheory Space Syntax shows organzation pattern of each space,it explains the characteristics of urban spatial patterns and its transformation regulation from the point of self-organization in system and also, it gives confirmatory and predictive ways to the building and city. This paper used axial model to summarize Hangzhou City’s special structure and enhanced comprehensive understanding of macroscopic space and environment, space structure,developing trend, ect, by computer analysis of Space Syntax. From that, it helps us to know the operation law in the urban system and to understand Hangzhou City’s spatial pattern and indirect social effect it has mad more clearly, Thus, it could comply with the tendency of cities development in process and planning of policy and plan our cities’ future sustainably.

Keywords: sustainable urban design, space syntax, spatial network, segment angular analysis, social inclusion

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Authors: J. J. Mathew

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Pulmonary tuberculosis is highly prevalent in the Indian subcontinent. Most cases of pulmonary tuberculosis are diagnosed with sputum examinations and the vast majority of these are undertaken by the government run establishments. However, mycobacterial cultures are not routinely done, unless drug resistance is detected based on clinical response. Modern diagnostic tests like bronchoscopy and Genexpert are not routinely employed in the government institutions for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis, but have been accepted widely by good private institutions. The utility of these investigations in the private sector is not yet well recognized. This retrospective study aims to assess the usefulness of bronchoscopy and Genexpert in the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in quaternary care private hospital in India. 30 patients with respiratory symptoms raising the possibility of tuberculosis based on clinical and radiological features, but without any significant sputum production, were subject to bronchoscopy and BAL samples taken for microbiological studies, including Genexpert. 6 out of the 30 patients were found to be Genexpert positive and none of them showed Rifampicin resistance. All the 6 cases had upper zone predominant disease. One of the 6 cases of tuberculosis had another co-existent bacterial infection according to the routine culture studies. 6 other cases were proven to be due to other bacterial infections alone, 2 had a malignant diagnosis and the remaining cases were thought to be non-infective pathologies. The Genexpert results were made available within 48 hours in the 6 positive cases. All of them were commenced on standard anti-tuberculous regimen with excellent clinical response. The other infective cases were also managed successfully based on the drug susceptibilities. The study has shown the usefulness of these investigations as early intervention enabled diagnosis facilitating treatment and prevention of any clinical deterioration. The study lends support to early bronchoscopy and Genexpert testing in suspected cases of pulmonary tuberculosis without significant sputum production, in a high prevalence country which normally relies on sputum examination for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Keywords: pulmonary, tuberculosis, bronchoscopy, genexpert

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Authors: Chao Yu, Qing-Guo Wang, Dan Zhang

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The outlier detection problem for dynamic systems is formulated as a matrix decomposition problem with low-rank, sparse matrices and further recast as a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. A fast algorithm is presented to solve the resulting problem while keeping the solution matrix structure and it can greatly reduce the computational cost over the standard interior-point method. The computational burden is further reduced by proper construction of subsets of the raw data without violating low rank property of the involved matrix. The proposed method can make exact detection of outliers in case of no or little noise in output observations. In case of significant noise, a novel approach based on under-sampling with averaging is developed to denoise while retaining the saliency of outliers and so-filtered data enables successful outlier detection with the proposed method while the existing filtering methods fail. Use of recovered “clean” data from the proposed method can give much better parameter estimation compared with that based on the raw data.

Keywords: outlier detection, system identification, matrix decomposition, low-rank matrix, sparsity, semidefinite programming, interior-point methods, denoising

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Authors: Giles Balbinotti, Lucas Balbinotti, Paula Hembecker

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The management of the productive process project activities, for the conception of future work and for the financial health of the companies, is an important condition in an organizational model that corroborates the management of the human aspects and their variabilities existing in the work. It is important to seek, at all levels of the organization, understanding and consequent cultural change, and so that factors associated with human aspects are considered and prioritized in the projects. In this scenario, the central question of research for this study is placed from the context of the work, in which the managers and project coordinators are inserted, as follows: How is the top management convinced, in the design stages, to take The ‘Ergonomics’ as strategy for the performance and sustainability of the business? In this perspective, this research has as general objective to analyze how the application of the management of the human aspects in a real project of productive process in the automotive industry, including the activity of the manager and coordinator of the project beyond the strategies of convincing to act in the ergonomics of design. For this, the socio-technical and ergonomic approach is adopted, given its anthropocentric premise in the sense of acting on the social system simultaneously to the technical system, besides the support of the Modapts system that measures the non-value-added times and the correlation with the Critical positions. The methodological approach adopted in this study is based on a review of the literature and the analysis of the activity of the project coordinators of an industry, including the management of human aspects in the context of work variability and the strategies applied in project activities. It was observed in the study that the loss of performance of the serial production lines reaches the important number of the order of 30%, which can make the operation with not value-added, and this loss has as one of the causes, the ergonomic problems present in the professional activity.

Keywords: human aspects in production process project, ergonomics in design, sociotechnical project management, sociotechnical, ergonomic principles, sustainability

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Authors: Dineshsingh Thakur, S. Nagesh, J. Basha

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A lightweight High Speed Flexible Coupling (HSFC) is used to connect the Engine Gear Box (EGB) with an Accessory Gear Box (AGB) of the combat aircraft. The HSFC transmits the power at high speeds ranging from 10000 to 18000 rpm from the EGB to AGB. The HSFC is also accommodates larger misalignments resulting from thermal expansion of the aircraft engine and mounting arrangement. The HSFC has the series of metallic contoured annular thin cross-sectioned flexible plates to accommodate the misalignments. The flexible plates are accommodating the misalignment by the elastic material flexure. As the HSFC operates at higher speed, the flexural and axial resonance frequencies are to be kept away from the operating speed and proper prediction is required to prevent failure in the transmission line of a single engine fighter aircraft. To study the influence of flexible plate’s contour on the lateral critical speed (LCS) of HSFC, a mathematical model of HSFC as a elven rotor system is developed. The flexible plate being the bending member of the system, its bending stiffness which results from the contoured governs the LCS. Using transfer matrix method, Influence of various flexible plate contours on critical speed is analyzed. In the above analysis, the support bearing flexibility on critical speed prediction is also considered. Based on the study, a model is built with the optimum contour of flexible plate, for validation by experimental modal analysis. A good correlation between the theoretical prediction and model behavior is observed. From the study, it is found that the flexible plate’s contour is playing vital role in modification of system’s dynamic behavior and the present model can be extended for the development of similar type of flexible couplings for its computational simplicity and reliability.

Keywords: flexible rotor, critical speed, experimental modal analysis, high speed flexible coupling (HSFC), misalignment

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Authors: Pradapet Krutchangthong, Jirawat Sudsawart

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This research aims to study the health tourism administration and factors related to health tourism promotion at Ban Nam Chieo Community, Laem Ngop, Trat Province. The sample in this research is 361 tourists who use the service and Ban Nam Chieo Community residents who provide the service. Sampling was done from a population size of 3,780 using Taro Yamane’s formula. The tools used in the study were questionnaires and interviews. The statistics used in this research are percentage, mean and standard deviation. The result of Model Development of Health Tourism at Ban Nam Chieo Community, Laem Ngop , Trat Province shows that most of them are female with bachelor degree. They are government officers with an average income between 16,001-20,000 Baht. Suggested health system activities for health tourism development are: 1) health massage, 2) herbal compress, 3) exercise in the water by walking on shell. Meanwhile, factors related to health tourism promotion at Ban Nam Chieo Community, Laem Ngop, Trat Province are: 1) understanding the context of the community and service providers, 2) cooperation from related government and private sectors.

Keywords: health tourism, health system activities, promotion, administration

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Authors: Nassim Bessaad, Qilian Bao, Zhao Jiangkang

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The fiber optics gyroscope in the strap-down inertial navigation system (FOG-SINS) suffers from precision degradation due to the influence of random errors. In this work, an enhanced Allan variance (AV) stochastic modeling method combined with discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for signal denoising is implemented to estimate the random process in the FOG signal. Furthermore, we devise a measurement-based iterative adaptive Sage-Husa nonlinear filter with augmented states to integrate a star tracker sensor with SINS. The proposed filter adapts the measurement noise covariance matrix based on the available data. Moreover, the enhanced stochastic modeling scheme is invested in tuning the process noise covariance matrix and the augmented state Gauss-Markov process parameters. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed filter is investigated by employing the collected data in laboratory conditions. The result shows the filter's improved accuracy in comparison with the conventional Kalman filter (CKF).

Keywords: inertial navigation, adaptive filtering, star tracker, FOG

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Authors: Lokes Parvatha Kumaran S., Sakthi Jay Mahenthar C., Sathyaprakash P., Jayakumar V., Shobanadevi A.

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With the evolution of technology, the need to solve complex computational problems like machine learning and deep learning has shot up. But even the most powerful classical supercomputers find it difficult to execute these tasks. With the recent development of quantum computing, researchers and tech-giants strive for new quantum circuits for machine learning tasks, as present works on Quantum Machine Learning (QML) ensure less memory consumption and reduced model parameters. But it is strenuous to simulate classical deep learning models on existing quantum computing platforms due to the inflexibility of deep quantum circuits. As a consequence, it is essential to design viable quantum algorithms for QML for noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. The proposed work aims to explore Variational Quantum Circuits (VQC) for Deep Reinforcement Learning by remodeling the experience replay and target network into a representation of VQC. In addition, to reduce the number of model parameters, quantum information encoding schemes are used to achieve better results than the classical neural networks. VQCs are employed to approximate the deep Q-value function for decision-making and policy-selection reinforcement learning with experience replay and the target network.

Keywords: quantum computing, quantum machine learning, variational quantum circuit, deep reinforcement learning, quantum information encoding scheme

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