Search results for: real time qPCR

Authors: Ludmila Polechonska, Agnieszka Klink

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The biogeochemical studies of macrophytes shed light on elements bioavailability, transfer through the food webs and their possible effects on the biota, and provide a basis for their practical application in aquatic monitoring and remediation. Measuring the accumulation of elements in plants can provide time-integrated information about the presence of chemicals in aquatic ecosystems. The aim of the study was to determine and compare the contents of micro- and macroelements in two cosmopolitan macrophytes, submerged Ceratophyllum demersum (hornworth) and free-floating Hydrocharis morsus-ranae (European frog-bit), in order to assess their bioaccumulation potential, elements stock accumulated in each plant and their role in nutrients cycling in small water reservoirs. Sampling sites were designated in 25 oxbow lakes in urban areas in Lower Silesia (SW Poland). In each sampling site, fresh whole plants of C. demersum and H. morsus-ranae were collected from squares of 1x1 meters each where the species coexisted. European frog-bit was separated into leaves, stems and roots. For biomass measurement all plants growing on 1 square meter were collected, dried and weighed. At the same time, water samples were collected from each reservoir and their pH and EC were determined. Water samples were filtered and acidified and plant samples were digested in concentrated nitric acid. Next, the content of Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Ni and Zn was determined using atomic absorption method (AAS). Statistical analysis showed that C. demersum and organs of H. morsus-ranae differed significantly in respect of metals content (Kruskal-Wallis Anova, p<0.05). Contents of Cu, Mn, Ni and Zn were higher in hornwort, while European frog-bit contained more Ca, Fe, K, Mg. Bioaccumulation Factors (BCF=content in plant/concentration in water) showed similar pattern of metal bioaccumulation – microelements were more intensively accumulated by hornwort and macroelements by frog-bit. Based on BCF values both species may be positively evaluated as good accumulators of Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni and Zn. However, the distribution of metals in H. morsus-ranae was uneven – the majority of studied elements were retained in roots, which may indicate to existence of physiological barriers developed for dealing with toxicity. Some percent of Ca and K was actively transported to stems, but to leaves Mg only. Although the biomass of C. demersum was two times greater than biomass of H. morsus-ranae, the element off-take was greater only for Cu, Mn, Ni and Zn. Nevertheless, it can be stated that despite a relatively small biomass, compared to other macrophytes, both species may have an influence on the removal of trace elements from aquatic ecosystems and, as they serve as food for some animals, also on the incorporation of toxic elements into food chains. There was a significant positive correlation between content of Mn and Fe in water and roots of H. morus-ranae (R=0.51 and R=0.60, respectively) as well as between Cu concentration in water and in C. demersum (R=0.41) (Spearman rank correlation, p<0.05). High bioaccumulation rates and correlation between plants and water elements concentrations point to their possible use as passive biomonitors of aquatic pollution.

Keywords: aquatic plants, bioaccumulation, biomonitoring, macroelements, phytoremediation, trace metals

Procedia PDF Downloads 165

Authors: Laetitia Lemiere, Marie Gosme, Gerard Subsol, Marc Jaeger

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Agroforestry is recognized as a way of developing sustainable and resilient agriculture that can fight against climate change. However, the number of species combinations, spatial configurations, and management options for trees and crops is vast. These choices must be adapted to the pedoclimatic and socio-economic contexts and to the objectives of the farmer, who therefore needs support in designing his system. Participative design workshops are a good way to integrate the knowledge of several experts in order to design such complex systems. The design of agroforestry systems should take into account both spatial aspects (e.g., spacing of trees within the lines and between lines, tree line orientation, tree-crop distance, species spatial patterns) and temporal aspects (e.g., crop rotations, tree thinning and pruning, tree planting in the case of successional agroforestry). Furthermore, the interactions between trees and crops evolve as the trees grow. However, agroforestry design workshops generally emphasize the spatial aspect only through the use of static tokens to represent the different species when designing the spatial configuration of the system. Augmented reality (AR) may overcome this limitation, allowing to visualize dynamic representations of trees and crops, and also their interactions, while at the same time retaining the possibility to physically interact with the system being designed (i.e., move trees, add or remove species, etc.). We propose an ergonomic digital solution capable of assisting a group of agroforestry experts to design an agroforestry system and to represent it. We investigated the use of web-based marker-based AR that does not require specific hardware and does not require specific installation so that all users could use their own smartphones right out of the pocket. We developed a prototype mobilizing the AR.js, ArToolKit.js, and Three.js open source libraries. In our implementation, we gradually build a virtual agroforestry system pattern scene from the users' interactions. A specific set of markers initialize the scene properties, and the various plant species are added and located during the workshop design session. The full virtual scene, including the trees positions with their neighborhood, are saved for further uses, such as virtual, augmented instantiation in the farmer fields. The number of tree species available in the application is gradually increasing; we mobilize 3D digital models for walnut, poplar, wild cherry, and other popular species used in agroforestry systems. The prototype allows shadow computations and the representation of trees at various growth stages, as well as different tree generations, and is thus able to visualize the dynamics of the system over time. Future work will focus on i) the design of complex patterns mobilizing several tree/shrub organizations, not restricted to lines; ii) the design of interfaces related to cultural practices, such as clearing or pruning; iii) the representation of tree-crop interactions. Beside tree shade (light competition), our objective is to represent also below-ground competitions (water, nitrogen) or other variables of interest for the design of agroforestry systems (e.g., predicted crop yield).

Keywords: agroforestry system design, augmented reality, marker-based AR, participative design, web-based AR

Procedia PDF Downloads 153

Authors: Sungyani Tripathy, Atul Desai

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Turbo machinery Frame Foundation is very important for power generation, gas, steam, hydro, geothermal and nuclear power plants. The Turbo machinery Foundation system was simulated in SAP: 2000 software and dynamic response of foundation was analysed. In this paper, the detailed study of turbo machinery foundation with different running speed has considered. The different revolution per minute considered in this study is 4000 rpm, 6000 rpm, 8000 rpm, 1000 rpm and 12000 rpm. The above analysis has been carried out considering Winkler spring soil model, solid finite element modelling and dynamic analysis of Turbo machinery foundations. The comparison of frequency and time periods at various mode shapes are addressed in this study. Current work investigates the effect of damping on the response spectra curve at the foundation top deck, considering the dynamic machine load. It has been found that turbo generator foundation with haunches remains more elastic during seismic action for different running speeds.

Keywords: turbo machinery, SAP: 2000, response spectra, running speeds

Procedia PDF Downloads 234

Authors: Gudelj Petra, Franic Ema, Kolega Maja

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Mental health is crucial for personal, social, and socio-economic development, becoming an increasingly relevant topic, especially in the post-global pandemic era. One vulnerable demographic comprises students who, during the pandemic, faced challenges such as adapting to new educational methods, societal or residential changes, heightened stress, responsibilities, and entering the job market. These life challenges proved insurmountable for some individuals during this phase. This research aimed to examine students' attitudes towards individuals seeking psychological help. By gaining a better understanding of young people's perceptions of seeking psychological assistance, a clearer insight into how to make psychological support more accessible and acceptable can be achieved. A questionnaire was completed by 210 students from various disciplines at the University of Zagreb. At the same time, the majority of students express a positive attitude towards seeking psychological help, a very small percentage reported having sought it. One of the most common obstacles to seeking appropriate help was a lack of financial means, with the most significant motivators being the positive experiences of those who sought help and an affordable cost.

Keywords: mental health, students, psychological support, attitudes

Procedia PDF Downloads 52

Authors: M. Jayandran

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Continual professional development is an important concept for safety professionals to strengthen the knowledge base and to achieve the required qualifications or international memberships in a given time. But the main problems which have observed among most of the safety aspirants are as follows: lack of focus, inferiority complex, superiority complex, lack of interest and lethargy, family and off job stress, health issues, usage of drugs and alcohol, and absenteeism. A HSE trainer should be an expert in soft skills and other stress, emotional handling techniques, so as to manage the above aspirants during training. To do this practice, a trainer has to brainstorm himself of few of the soft skills like personnel resilience, mnemonic techniques, mind healing, and subconscious suggestion techniques by integrating with an emotional intelligence quotient of the aspirants. By adopting these techniques, a trainer can successfully deliver the course and influence the different types of audience to achieve success in training.

Keywords: personnel resilience, mnemonic techniques, mind healing, sub conscious suggestion techniques

Procedia PDF Downloads 287

Authors: Nishtha Madaan, Prateek Chaudhury, Nishant Kumar, Srikanta Bedathur

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In modern NLP applications, word embeddings are a crucial backbone that can be readily shared across a number of tasks. However, as the text distributions change and word semantics evolve over time, the downstream applications using the embeddings can suffer if the word representations do not conform to the data drift. Thus, maintaining word embeddings to be consistent with the underlying data distribution is a key problem. In this work, we tackle this problem and propose TransDrift, a transformer-based prediction model for word embeddings. Leveraging the flexibility of the transformer, our model accurately learns the dynamics of the embedding drift and predicts future embedding. In experiments, we compare with existing methods and show that our model makes significantly more accurate predictions of the word embedding than the baselines. Crucially, by applying the predicted embeddings as a backbone for downstream classification tasks, we show that our embeddings lead to superior performance compared to the previous methods.

Keywords: NLP applications, transformers, Word2vec, drift, word embeddings

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Authors: Nikolaos Georgoulopoulos, Alkis Hatzopoulos, Konstantinos Karamitsios, Konstantinos Kotrotsios, Alexandros I. Metsai

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In modern server systems, business critical applications run in different types of infrastructure, such as cloud systems, physical machines and virtualization. Often, due to high load and over time, various hardware faults occur in servers that translate to errors, resulting to malfunction or even server breakdown. CPU, RAM and hard drive (HDD) are the hardware parts that concern server administrators the most regarding errors. In this work, selected RAM, HDD and CPU errors, that have been observed or can be simulated in kernel ring buffer log files from two groups of Linux servers, are investigated. Moreover, a severity characterization is given for each error type. Better understanding of such errors can lead to more efficient analysis of kernel logs that are usually exploited for fault diagnosis and prediction. In addition, this work summarizes ways of simulating hardware errors in RAM and HDD, in order to test the error detection and correction mechanisms of a Linux server.

Keywords: hardware errors, Kernel logs, Linux servers, RAM, hard disk, CPU

Procedia PDF Downloads 140

Authors: Shireen Simon

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Cyberbullying among schoolchildren and teenagers became a hot issue discussed by Malaysian society. Cyberbullying is a new age of bullying because it uses the modern digital technology intentionally to hurt and degrade someone in the cyber world. Cyberbullying is a problem affecting many teenagers as they embrace online communication and interaction whereby virtual world with no borders. By adopting a qualitative approach, this study has captured 8 cyberbullied victims’ school experience. Even years after leaving school, these 8 cyberbullied victims remember how it feels to be bullied in the cyber world. The principal investigator also tries to identify the possibility factors that contribute to cyberbullying among these 8 victims. The result shows that these victims were bullied differently in cyber world. This study not just primarily focuses on cyberbullying issues among schoolchildren and teenagers; it also addresses the motives and causes of cyberbullying. Lastly, this article will be served as guidance for school teachers, parents and teenagers to prepare to tackle cyberbullying together. Cyberbullying is no laughing matter in our community, and it is time to spread the seeds of peace inspires others to do the same.

Keywords: cyberbullying, cyber victimization, internet, school experience, teenagers

Procedia PDF Downloads 272

Authors: Fadilah Fadilah, Sperisa Distantina, Santi T. Wijayanti, Rahmawati Andayani

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Chemical modification process on glucomannan from porang via carboxymethylation have been conducted. The process was done in two stages, the alkalization, and the carboxymethylation. The alkalization was done by adding NaOH solution into the medium which was contained glucomannan and then stirred it in ambient temperature for thirty minutes. The carboxymethylation process was done by adding sodium mono chloroacetate solution into the alkalization product. The carboxymethylation process was conducted for a certain time, and the product was then analyzed for determining the degree of substitution. In this research, the influence of medium to the degree of substitution was studied. Three different medium were used, namely water, 70% ethanol, and 90% ethanol. The results show that 70% ethanol was a better medium than two others because give a higher degree of substitution. Using 70% ethanol as a medium, the experiments for studying the influence of temperature on the carboxymethylation stages were conducted. The results show that the degree of substitution at 65°C is higher than at 45°C.

Keywords: carboxymethylation, degree of substitution, ethanol medium, glucomannan

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Authors: Aliasghar Baziar, Hassan Masoumi, Alireza Ale Saadi

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The control of the response of electric motors plays a significant role in the damping of transient responses. In this regard, this paper presents a static VAR compensator (SVC) based on a fuzzy logic which is applied to an industrial power network consisting of three phase synchronous, asynchronous and DC motor loads. The speed and acceleration variations of a specific machine are the inputs of the proposed fuzzy logic controller (FLC). In order to verify the effectiveness and proficiency of the proposed Fuzzy Logic based SVC (FLSVC), several non-linear time-domain digital simulation tests are performed. The proposed fuzzy model can properly control the response of electric motors. The results show that the FLSVC is successful to improve the voltage profile significantly over a wide range of operating conditions and disturbances thus improving the overall dynamic performance of the network.

Keywords: fuzzy logic controller, VAR compensator, single cage asynchronous motor, DC motor

Procedia PDF Downloads 608

Authors: Abhigyan Hedau, Priya Shelke, Riddhi Mirajkar, Shreyash Chaple, Mrunali Gadekar, Himanshu Akula

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The heart is the coordinating centre of the major endocrine glandular structure of the body, which produces hormones that profoundly affect the operations of the body, and diagnosing cardiovascular disease is a difficult but critical task. By extracting knowledge and information about the disease from patient data, data mining is a more practical technique to help doctors detect disorders. We use a variety of machine learning methods here, including logistic regression and support vector classifiers (SVC), K-nearest neighbours Classifiers (KNN), Decision Tree Classifiers, Random Forest classifiers and Gradient Boosting classifiers. These algorithms are applied to patient data containing 13 different factors to build a system that predicts heart disease in less time with more accuracy.

Keywords: logistic regression, support vector classifier, k-nearest neighbour, decision tree, random forest and gradient boosting

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Authors: Lombuso P. Shabalala

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This research paper investigates the importance of community involvement in tourism development activities from the initial stage. Community is defined as a group of people living in the same area and practicing common ownership and practices or with a commonality such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Globalisation has restructured economic, political, and social relationships at the local level, which impacts community involvement in activities taking place in their own space. Although social relationships and interests are no longer limited to local communities, the power of place remains. Whereas, tourism is considered as an activity essential to the life of nations because of its direct effects on the social, cultural, educational, and economic sectors of national societies and their international relations. The existing literature has indicated that the four types of motivation in community involvement are best differentiated by identifying the unique ultimate goal for each motivation. In a nutshell, the ultimate goal for egoism is to increase one's own welfare; altruism is to increase the welfare of another individual or individuals; collectivism is aimed at increasing the welfare of a group, and the principlism is to uphold one or more moral principles. As a base of community involvement, each of these four forms of motivation exhibits its own strengths and weaknesses to be acknowledged. Purposive sampling was suitable to select the fourteen descendant group representatives. The representatives included chief/s, headman, senior descendants’ member, and members of the traditional council who descends from MWCHS. The qualitative research design was adopted for the study in the form of semi-structured interviews. Community development is a social process involving residents in activities designed to improve their quality of life. The key finding of the research is the importance of involving communities, in particular, the immediate community members from the initial stage of any proposed tourism development activity. Without a doubt, the immediate communities are well informed about the dynamics of the area (economically, politically, and socially). Therefore, the finding suggests that communities are in a better position to advise project managers on possible potential tourism developments activities that can address the real needs and benefit the community, instead of investing resources in a development that will not benefit or add any value in the lives of the targeted communities. It must be noted that the power of the place where the development will be implemented remains with the community. Furthermore, community support and buy-in are crucial to the success of prospective tourism development. In conclusion, it cannot be denied that community involvement comes with its own challenges, contrary to greater sustainable benefits that can be realized prior to articulation. The study suggests for project managers to ensure a fair and transparent community involvement process. Fair distribution of meaningful roles could secure trust and result in these communities to view the proposed development as their own.

Keywords: communities, development, involvement, tourism

Procedia PDF Downloads 170

Authors: Chander Kant, Arun Kumar

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Biometric systems automatically recognize an individual based on his/her physiological and behavioral characteristics. There are also some traits like weight, age, height etc. that may not provide reliable user recognition because of there common and temporary nature. These traits are called soft bio metric traits. Although soft bio metric traits are lack of permanence to uniquely and reliably identify an individual, yet they provide some beneficial evidence about the user identity and may improve the system performance. Here in this paper, we have proposed an approach for integrating the soft bio metrics with fingerprint and face to improve the performance of personal authentication system. In our approach we have proposed a combined architecture of three different sensors to elevate the system performance. The approach includes, soft bio metrics, fingerprint and face traits. We have also proven the efficiency of proposed system regarding FAR (False Acceptance Ratio) and total response time, with the help of MUBI (Multimodal Bio metrics Integration) software.

Keywords: FAR, minutiae point, multimodal bio metrics, primary bio metric, soft bio metric

Procedia PDF Downloads 326

Authors: Jakub Berčík, Elena Horská, Ľudmila Nagyová

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Nowadays, the point of sale remains one of the few channels of communication which is not oversaturated yet and has great potential for the future. The fact that purchasing decisions are significantly affected by emotions, while up to 75 % of them are implemented at the point of sale, only demonstrates its importance. The share of impulsive purchases is about 60-75 %, depending on the particular product category. Nevertheless, habits predetermine the content of the shopping cart above all and hence in this regard the role of in-store communication is to disrupt the routine and compel the customer to try something new. This is the reason why it is essential to know how to work with this relatively young branch of marketing communication as efficiently as possible. New global trend in this discipline is evaluating the effectiveness of particular tools in the in-store communication. To increase the efficiency it is necessary to become familiar with the factors affecting the customer both consciously and unconsciously, and that is a task for neuromarketing and sensory marketing. It is generally known that the customer remembers the negative experience much longer and more intensely than the positive ones, therefore it is essential for marketers to avoid this negative experience. The final effect of POP (Point of Purchase) or POS (Point of Sale) tools is conditional not only on their quality and design, but also on the location at the point of sale which contributes to the overall positive atmosphere in the store. Therefore, in-store advertising is increasingly in the center of attention and companies are willing to spend even a third of their marketing communication budget on it. The paper deals with a comprehensive, interdisciplinary research of the impact of traditional as well as innovative tools of in-store communication on the attention and emotional state (valence and arousal) of consumers on the food market. The research integrates measurements with eye camera (Eye tracker) and electroencephalograph (EEG) in real grocery stores as well as in laboratory conditions with the purpose of recognizing attention and emotional response among respondents under the influence of selected tools of in-store communication. The object of the research includes traditional (e.g. wobblers, stoppers, floor graphics) and innovative (e.g. displays, wobblers with LED elements, interactive floor graphics) tools of in-store communication in the fresh unpackaged food segment. By using a mobile 16-channel electroencephalograph (EEG equipment) from the company EPOC, a mobile eye camera (Eye tracker) from the company Tobii and a stationary eye camera (Eye tracker) from the company Gazepoint, we observe the attention and emotional state (valence and arousal) to reveal true consumer preferences using traditional and new unusual communication tools at the point of sale of the selected foodstuffs. The paper concludes with suggesting possibilities for rational, effective and energy-efficient combination of in-store communication tools, by which the retailer can accomplish not only captivating and attractive presentation of displayed goods, but ultimately also an increase in retail sales of the store.

Keywords: electroencephalograph (EEG), emotion, eye tracker, in-store communication

Procedia PDF Downloads 375

Authors: K. Menad, A. Feddag, M. A. Hassnaoui

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We are living in a time and in a world heavily polluted. In the list of the great dangers awaiting the man can be placed on top of the list pollution by heavy metals: lead, mercury, cadmium, etc. Fatigue, Depression, Thyroid disorder, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Cancer, are some of the health problems caused by heavy metal pollution. The environmental protection has long since become a major political and economic issue. Among the priorities, include safeguarding water resources. All countries of the world are concerned either because they lack water or because they pollute it. There are several ways to remove these heavy metals; ion exchange by zeolites is one of these ways, which our work is based on. Zeolites were among the main clean up materials by either adsorption, ion exchange and catalysis. Lead and cadmium, heavy metals, is one of the main dangers fulminate the flora and fauna of our small planet, so many resources are deployed to remedy them. The elimination of lead and cadmium by ion exchange has been extensively studied. However, exchange capacity of more and larger formed a major challenge for researchers and industry.

Keywords: composite, ion excahnge, zeolite LTA, zeolite x

Procedia PDF Downloads 254

Authors: Kemal Comakli, Meryem Terhan

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In this study, the potential of heat recovery from waste flue gas was examined in 60 MW district heating system of a university, and fuel saving was aimed by using the recovered heat in the system as a source again. Various scenarios are intended to make use of waste heat. For this purpose, actual operation data of the system were taken. Besides, the heat recovery units that consist of heat exchangers such as flue gas condensers, economizers or air pre-heaters were designed theoretically for each scenario. Energy analysis of natural gas-fired boiler’s exhaust flue gas in the system, and economic analysis of heat recovery units to predict payback periods were done. According to calculation results, the waste heat loss ratio from boiler flue gas in the system was obtained as average 16%. Thanks to the heat recovery units, thermal efficiency of the system can be increased, and fuel saving can be provided. At the same time, a huge amount of green gas emission can be decreased by installing the heat recovery units.

Keywords: heat recovery from flue gas, energy analysis of flue gas, economical analysis, payback period

Procedia PDF Downloads 268

Authors: Sabri Serkan Güllüoğlu

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Analysis can be defined as the process of gathering, recording and researching data related to products and services, in order to learn something. But for marketers, analyses are not only used for learning but also an essential and critical part of the business, because this allows companies to offer products or services which are focused and well targeted. Market analysis also identify market trends, demographics, customer’s buying habits and important information on the competition. Data mining is used instead of traditional research, because it extracts predictive information about customer and sales from large databases. In contrast to traditional research, data mining relies on information that is already available. Simply the goal is to improve the efficiency of supermarkets. In this study, the purpose is to find dependency on products. For instance, which items are bought together, using association rules in data mining. Moreover, this information will be used for improving the profitability of customers such as increasing shopping time and sales of fewer sold items.

Keywords: data mining, association rule mining, market basket analysis, purchasing

Procedia PDF Downloads 470

Authors: Harun Bozna

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MOOC (massive open online course) is a groundbreaking education platform and a current buzzword in higher education. Although MOOCs offer many appreciated learning experiences to learners from various universities and institutions, they have considerably higher dropout rates than traditional education. Only about 10% of the learners who enroll in MOOCs actually complete the course. In this case, perceptions of participants and a comprehensive analysis of MOOCs have become an essential part of the research in this area. This study aims to explore the MOOCs in detail for better understanding its content, purpose and primarily drop out issues. The researcher conducted an online questionnaire to get perceptions of graduate students on their learning experiences in MOOCs and arranged a semi- structured oral interview with some participants. The participants are Turkish graduate level students doing their MA and Ph.D. in various programs. The findings show that participants are more likely to drop out courses due to lack of time and lack of pressure.

Keywords: distance education, MOOCs, drop out, perception of graduate students

Procedia PDF Downloads 225

Authors: Chia-Feng Lu, Yuh-Jen Wang, Yu-Te Wu, Sui-Hing Yan

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This study aimed at investigating whether the functional brain networks constructed using the initial EEG (obtained when patients first visited hospital) can be correlated with the progression of cognitive decline calculated as the changes of mini-mental state examination (MMSE) scores between the latest and initial examinations. We integrated the time–frequency cross mutual information (TFCMI) method to estimate the EEG functional connectivity between cortical regions, and the network analysis based on graph theory to investigate the organization of functional networks in aMCI. Our finding suggested that higher integrated functional network with sufficient connection strengths, dense connection between local regions, and high network efficiency in processing information at the initial stage may result in a better prognosis of the subsequent cognitive functions for aMCI. In conclusion, the functional connectivity can be a useful biomarker to assist in prediction of cognitive declines in aMCI.

Keywords: cognitive decline, functional connectivity, MCI, MMSE

Procedia PDF Downloads 366

Authors: Guru P. S. Rangasamy

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In the cutting edge period of globalization, it has turned into a test to keep the clients and also shoppers in overlay and even keep our regular habitat safe and that is the greatest need of the time. Purchasers are likewise mindful of the ecological issues like a dangerous atmospheric deviation and the effect of natural contamination. Green showcasing is a marvel which has created specific critical in the present day advertise and has risen as an imperative idea in India, as in different parts of the creating and created world and is viewed as an essential procedure of encouraging practical improvement. In this exploration paper, primary accentuation has been made of idea, need, and significance of green promoting. It investigates the principle issues in reception of green showcasing hones. The paper portrays the present situation of Indian market and investigates the difficulties and openings organizations have with green advertising, why organizations are receiving it and eventual fate of green promoting and presumes that green showcasing is something that will consistently develop in both practice and request.

Keywords: environmental pollution, green marketing, globalization, global warming, sustainable development

Procedia PDF Downloads 274

Authors: Faisal Alshammari, Abdulmajid Addali, Mosab Alrashed, Taihiret Alhashan

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The application of acoustic emission techniques is gaining popularity, as it can monitor the condition of gears and bearings and detect early symptoms of a defect in the form of pitting, wear, and flaking of surfaces. Early detection of these defects is essential as it helps to avoid major failures and the associated catastrophic consequences. Signal processing techniques are required for early defect detection – in this article, a time domain technique called the Energy Index (EI) is used. This article presents an investigation into the Energy Index’s effectiveness to detect early-stage defect initiation and deterioration, and compares it with the common r.m.s. index, Kurtosis, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical test. It is concluded that EI is a more effective technique for monitoring defect initiation and development than other statistical parameters.

Keywords: acoustic emission, signal processing, kurtosis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test

Procedia PDF Downloads 339

Authors: Maria Magdy Danial Riad

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The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is activated by the adaptation stress, and this might result in the alteration of certain behavioral signs. The primary purpose of this paper is the adaptive stress effect on dietary behavior, which is directly correlated with changes in plasma cortisol levels. Physiological factors have a role in systems of adaptation and stress. Objectives: Ten clinically healthy cats were included in the study, and they were all kept in the same setting. Methods: On days 1, 5, 9, and 10 of the stay, each cat's behavior was observed through ethograms, and the serum cortisol levels were also measured at the same time. Significant behavioral changes in terms of nutrition were seen on the first day, with 50% of the participants not feeding and all participants not watering. Toward the study's conclusion, between days 5 and 9, there were no longer any discernible changes in the dietary habits, which might be attributed to the adaptation to the new living conditions. Cortisol variations in serological levels were consistent with behavioral changes; in 50% of the participants under observation, there was a substantial increase in values (p<0.05), which gradually declined as the study came to an end.

Keywords: domestic cats, ewes, nutritional behavior, adjustment stress, plasma cortisol levels

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Authors: Can Hu, Huixia Shi, Hongcheng Mei, Jun Zhu, Hongling Guo

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Textile fibers are important trace evidence and frequently encountered in criminal investigations. A significant aspect of fiber evidence examination is the determination of fiber dyes. Although several instrumental methods have been developed for dyes detection, the analysis speed is not fast enough yet. A rapid dye analysis method is still needed to further improve the efficiency of case handling. Capillary electrophoresis has the advantages of high separation speed and high separation efficiency and is an ideal method for the rapid analysis of fiber dyes. In this paper, acid dyes used for protein fiber dyeing were determined by a developed short-end injection capillary electrophoresis technique. Five acid red dyes with similar structures were successfully baseline separated within 5 min. The separation reproducibility is fairly good for the relative standard deviation of retention time is 0.51%. The established method is rapid and accurate which has great potential to be applied in forensic setting.

Keywords: acid dyes, capillary electrophoresis, fiber evidence, rapid determination

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Kamel Al-Khaled

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A comparative study of the Sinc-Galerkin and Sinc-Collocation methods for solving the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation is given. Both approaches depend on using Sinc basis functions. Firstly, a numerical scheme using Sinc-Galerkin method is developed to approximate the solution of Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. Sinc approximations to both derivatives and indefinite integrals reduces the solution to an explicit system of algebraic equations. The error in the solution is shown to converge to the exact solution at an exponential. The convergence proof of the solution for the discrete system is given using fixed-point iteration. Secondly, a combination of a Crank-Nicolson formula in the time direction, with the Sinc-collocation in the space direction is presented, where the derivatives in the space variable are replaced by the necessary matrices to produce a system of algebraic equations. The methods are tested on two examples. The demonstrated results show that both of the presented methods more or less have the same accuracy.

Keywords: Sinc-Collocation, nonlinear PDEs, numerical methods, fixed-point

Procedia PDF Downloads 459

Authors: Hycham Aboutaleb, Bruno Monsuez

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Current systems' complexity has reached a degree that requires addressing conception and design issues while taking into account environmental, operational, social, legal, and financial aspects. Therefore, one of the main challenges is the way complex systems are specified and designed. The exponentially growing effort, cost, and time investment of complex systems in modeling phase emphasize the need for a paradigm, a framework, and an environment to handle the system model complexity. For that, it is necessary to understand the expectations of the human user of the model and his limits. This paper presents a generic framework for designing complex systems, highlights the requirements a system model needs to fulfill to meet human user expectations, and suggests a graph-based formalism for modeling complex systems. Finally, a set of transformations are defined to handle the model complexity.

Keywords: higraph-based, formalism, system engineering paradigm, modeling requirements, graph-based transformations

Procedia PDF Downloads 387

Authors: Soumava Boral, Sanjay K. Chaturvedi, Ian Howard, Kristoffer McKee, V. N. A. Naikan

Abstract:

Due to strict regulations from government to enhance the possibilities of sustainability practices in industries, and noting the advances in sustainable manufacturing practices, it is necessary that the associated processes are also sustainable. Maintenance of large scale and complex machines is a pivotal task to maintain the uninterrupted flow of manufacturing processes. Appropriate maintenance practices can prolong the lifetime of machines, and prevent associated breakdowns, which subsequently reduces different cost heads. Selection of the best maintenance strategies for such machines are considered as a burdensome task, as they require the consideration of multiple technical criteria, complex mathematical calculations, previous fault data, maintenance records, etc. In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, organizations are rapidly changing their way of business, and they are giving their utmost importance to sensor technologies, artificial intelligence, data analytics, automations, etc. In this work, the effectiveness of several maintenance strategies (e.g., preventive, failure-based, reliability centered, condition based, total productive maintenance, etc.) related to a large scale and complex gearbox, operating in a steel processing plant is evaluated in terms of economic, social, environmental and technical criteria. As it is not possible to obtain/describe some criteria by exact numerical values, these criteria are evaluated linguistically by cross-functional experts. Fuzzy sets are potential soft-computing technique, which has been useful to deal with linguistic data and to provide inferences in many complex situations. To prioritize different maintenance practices based on the identified sustainable criteria, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches can be considered as potential tools. Multi-Attributive Ideal Real Comparative Analysis (MAIRCA) is a recent addition in the MCDM family and has proven its superiority over some well-known MCDM approaches, like TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and ELECTRE (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité). It has a simple but robust mathematical approach, which is easy to comprehend. On the other side, due to some inherent drawbacks of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets (IFS) and Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets (PFS), recently, the use of Fermatean Fuzzy Sets (FFSs) has been proposed. In this work, we propose the novel concept of FF-MAIRCA. We obtain the weights of the criteria by experts’ evaluation and use them to prioritize the different maintenance practices according to their suitability by FF-MAIRCA approach. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to highlight the robustness of the approach.

Keywords: Fermatean fuzzy sets, Fermatean fuzzy MAIRCA, maintenance strategy selection, sustainable manufacturing, MCDM

Procedia PDF Downloads 130

Authors: Lukasz Grabowski, Marcin Szlachetka, Tytus Tulwin

Abstract:

The main task of the engine cooling system is to maintain its average operating temperatures within strictly defined limits. Too high or too low average temperatures result in accelerated wear or even damage to the engine or its individual components. In order to avoid local overheating or significant temperature gradients, leading to high stresses in the component, the aim is to ensure an even flow of air. In the case of analyses related to heat exchange, one of the main problems is the comparison of temperature fields because standard measuring instruments such as thermocouples or thermistors only provide information about the course of temperature at a given point. Thermal imaging tests can be helpful in this case. With appropriate camera settings and taking into account environmental conditions, we are able to obtain accurate temperature fields in the form of thermograms. Emission of heat from the engine to the engine compartment is an important issue when designing a cooling system. Also, in the case of liquid cooling, the main sources of heat in the form of emissions from the engine block, cylinders, etc. should be identified. It is important to redesign the engine compartment ventilation system. Ensuring proper cooling of aircraft reciprocating engine is difficult not only because of variable operating range but mainly because of different cooling conditions related to the change of speed or altitude of flight. Engine temperature also has a direct and significant impact on the properties of engine oil, which under the influence of this parameter changes, in particular, its viscosity. Too low or too high, its value can be a result of fast wear of engine parts. One of the ways to determine the temperatures occurring on individual parts of the engine is the use of thermal imaging measurements. The article presents the results of preliminary thermal imaging tests of aircraft piston diesel engine with a maximum power of about 100 HP. In order to perform the heat emission tests of the tested engine, the ThermaCAM S65 thermovision monitoring system from FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared) together with the ThermaCAM Researcher Professional software was used. The measurements were carried out after the engine warm up. The engine speed was 5300 rpm The measurements were taken for the following environmental parameters: air temperature: 17 °C, ambient pressure: 1004 hPa, relative humidity: 38%. The temperatures distribution on the engine cylinder and on the exhaust manifold were analysed. Thermal imaging tests made it possible to relate the results of simulation tests to the real object by measuring the rib temperature of the cylinders. The results obtained are necessary to develop a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model of heat emission from the engine bay. The project/research was financed in the framework of the project Lublin University of Technology-Regional Excellence Initiative, funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (contract no. 030/RID/2018/19).

Keywords: aircraft, piston engine, heat, emission

Procedia PDF Downloads 104

Authors: D. Moser, D. Pinto, A. Cipriano

Abstract:

A Disaster Management System (DMS) for countries with different disasters is very important. In the world different disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruption, fire or other natural or man-made disasters occurs and have an effect on the population. It is also possible that two or more disasters arisen at the same time, this means to handle multi-risk situations. To handle such a situation a Decision Support System (DSS) based on multiagents is a suitable architecture. The most known DMSs deal with one (in the case of an earthquake-tsunami combination with two) disaster and often with one particular disaster. Nevertheless, a DSS helps for a better realtime response. Analyze the existing systems in the literature and expand them for multi-risk disasters to construct a well-organized system is the proposal of our work. The here shown work is an approach of a multi-risk system, which needs an architecture, and well-defined aims. In this moment our study is a kind of case study to analyze the way we have to follow to create our proposed system in the future.

Keywords: decision support system, disaster management system, multi-risk, multiagent system

Procedia PDF Downloads 403

Authors: S. Totong, P. Daorattanachai, N. Laosiripojana

Abstract:

Lignin depolymerization into phenolic-based chemicals is an interesting process for utilizing and upgrading a benefit and value of lignin. In this study, the depolymerization reaction was performed to convert alkaline lignin into smaller molecule compounds. Fumed SiO₂ was used as a catalyst to improve catalytic activity in lignin decomposition. The important parameters in depolymerization process (i.e., reaction temperature, reaction time, etc.) were also investigated. In addition, gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS), flame-ironized detector (GC-FID), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) were used to analyze and characterize the lignin products. It was found that fumed SiO₂ catalyst led the good catalytic activity in lignin depolymerization. The main products from catalytic depolymerization were guaiacol, syringol, vanillin, and phenols. Additionally, metal supported on fumed SiO₂ such as Cu/SiO₂ and Ni/SiO₂ increased the catalyst activity in terms of phenolic products yield.

Keywords: alkaline lignin, catalytic, depolymerization, fumed SiO₂, phenolic-based chemicals

Procedia PDF Downloads 231

Authors: Mohsen Qasemi

Abstract:

In the international economic order multilateral trading system which established by General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1947 (GATT) was dominant until about two decades ago. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have changed this order and become an important phenomenon. One of the main objectives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a central institution of multilateral trading system is raising standards of living. There are many scholars who suggest that WTO should take steps to protect human rights in its activities. Although it has always been opposing views who declare that since WTO has no explicit rule for human rights, it has no human rights related obligations. At the time that the WTO was established, member states began to join RTAs and since then, the escalating growth of these agreements and their effects on multilateral trading system has been controversial. There are some aspects of RTAs that have received too little attention from scholars. It is important to take a different view and evaluate the RTAs based on non-commercial aspects. The present paper seeks to answer this question: which system could be more useful in protecting human rights, RTAs or WTO?

Keywords: WTO, RTAs, human rights, multilateral trading system, non discrimination

Procedia PDF Downloads 346