Search results for: Response Surface Method (RSM)

Authors: Gadiri Sabiha

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Introduction : IgE-dependent cow's milk protein allergy (APLV) is one of the most common allergies in children and is one of the three most common allergies observed in children under 6 years of age. Its natural evolution is most often towards healing. The objective is to determine the sensitization profile of patients allergic to cow's milk (VL). Material and method :A retrospective study carried out on a pediatric population (age < 12 years) over a period of four years (2018-2021) in the context of a suspected food allergy to cow's milk proteins carried out on 121 children aged between 8 months -12 years The search for specific IgE was carried out by immunodot (EUROLINE Pediatric; EUROIMMUN) test which allows a semi-quantitative determination of specific IgE. Results 36 patients (29.7%) had a cow's milk protein allergy (ALPV) with a slight female predominance (58.33% girls vs 41.66% boys) The main clinical signs were: acute diarrhoea; vomiting; Intense abdominal pain, and cutaneous signs (pruritus/urticaria) with respective frequencies of 72%; 58%; 44% and 19%. The 3 major and specific VL allergens identified were beta-lactoglobulin 59% caseins 51% and alpha-lactalbumin 29.7%, The profile of sensitization to LV varies according to age, in infants before 1 year of anti-casein, IgE are predominant 83.3%, followed by beta-lactoglobulin 66.66% and alpha-lactolbumin 50% Conclusion CMPA is a frequent pathology which ranks among the three most common food allergies in children. This is the first to appear, most often starting in infants under 6 months old.

Keywords: specific Ige, food allergy, cow 's milk, child

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Authors: Dian Nur Amalia, Rifqi Dhiemas Aji, Tri Septa Wahyuningsih, Endang Wahyuni

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Kepel fruit (Stelechocarpus burahol) is a scarce fruit that belongs as a logogram of Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta. Kepel fruit can be used as substance of beauty treatment product, such as deodorant and good for skin health, and also contains antioxidant compound. Otherwise, this fruit is scarcely cultivated by people because of its image as a palace fruit and also the flesh percentage just a little, so it has low economic value. The flesh of kepel fruit is about 49% of its whole fruit. This little part as supporting point why kepel fruit has to be extracted and processed with the other product. Yoghurt is milk processing product that also have a role as functional food. Economically, the price of yoghurt is higher than whole milk or other milk processing product. Yoghurt is usually added with flavor of dye from plant or from chemical substance. Kepel fruit has a role as flavor in yoghurt, besides as product that good for digestion, yoghurt with kepel also has function as “beauty” food. Writing method that used is literature study by looking for the potential of kepel fruit as a local fruit of Yogyakarta and yoghurt as milk processing product. The process just like making common yoghurt because kepel fruit just have a role as flavor substance, so it does not affect to the other processing of yoghurt. Food diversification can be done as an effort to increase the value of local resources that proper to compete in Asean Economic Community (AEC), one of the way is producing kepel yoghurt.

Keywords: kepel, yoghurt, Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, functional food

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Authors: Mariam Aref Mahmoud

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A myth surrounding the development of Cairo bases itself in the Fatimid era when the city, as we know it today, was built. Surrounding the city was a wall meant to protect the main center from any possible attack. The effects of global hierarchies of power extend further than labor regulations and trade statistics. Beyond that, they form dialectical oppositions between local and global identities within urban space. As such, those in power often aim to claim national identity as what they perceive to be the most nationally beneficial strategy. These claims over perceptions of national identity take over the streets, the advertisements, and the parks and eventually make their way into the different forms of media. Often, these claims take over the main planning goals of the city. Whether it is through the control over which sounds are allowed to be produced in public space, what type of people are encouraged to enter which spaces, or other forms of performing local and national identity, public space, property, and land have often been used as a method to present to both the public and the global population what people in power wish for these spaces to represent. In Egypt, these developments have been changing since the end of colonial rule. In particular, this paper will analyze how Hosni Mubarak, and to a certain extent Anwar el-Sadat, enacted neoliberal designs dedicated towards modernization in order to present an image of a Cairo that is not uniquely Egyptian but essentially Western cosmopolitan - a Cairo that belongs to a globalized world.

Keywords: Egypt, imperialism, westernization, housing

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Authors: Daniel Vaati Nzioka, John Oredo, Dorothy Muthoni Njiraine

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The service delivery in academic libraries has been regressing due to the failure of Digital Librarians (DLns) to perform optimally. This study aimed at developing a proposed framework for digital librarianship in academic libraries with special emphasis to three selected public academic institutional libraries. The study’s specific objectives were to determine the roles played by the current DLns’ in academic libraries, establish job description of DLns’ in various academic libraries, ascertain DLns best practices, and to implement a viable digital librarianship conceptual framework. The study used a survey research with open-ended questionnaire designed as per the objectives of the study. A purposively selected sample of 30 Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals from the three selected academic libraries in charge of Digital Information Services (DIS) and managing electronic resources were selected and interviewed. A piloted self-administered questionnaire was used to gather information from these respondents. A total of thirty (30) questionnaires to the LIS professionals-ten from each of the three selected academic libraries were administered. The study developed a proposed conceptual framework for DLns’ that details the pertinent issues currently facing academic libraries when hiring DLns. The study recommended that the provided framework be adopted to guide library managers in identifying the needs of staff training and selecting the most adequate training method as well as settling on the best practices to be sent to staff for training and development.

Keywords: digital, academic, libraries, framework

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Authors: Ndje Ndje Mireille

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The improvement in the physical aspects of hysterectomy has tended to make us forget the psychological burden of this operation for many women. African women closely associate fertility and femininity, and they fear that their desire will diminish, that they will be less desirable after having undergone a hysterectomy. Medicine may be tempted to trivialize this surgical intervention by relying on the evolution of current surgery that leaves little or no marks. It is possible to think that the uterus is useless for a nun who has decided to freely disregard her motherhood. We used the clinical research method for this study. Through a semi-directive interview guide, we collected the verbatims of an hysterectomized catholic nun. The verbatims were transcribed and analyzed with the thematic content analysis. This analysis shows that the medical reality does not always correspond to the subjective experience of women, for whom hysterectomy can imply strong symbolic damage. The uterus is not essential to life, but it is essential to give life, and this lack can reactivate a desire for motherhood. The experience of hysterectomy is unique for each woman in relation to her history. This operation will eliminate all hope of pregnancy; it will be felt as intimate mutilation and an attack on femininity, it will bring up concerns about sexuality. Even if a woman has past the age of having children, has gone through menopause, or has freely decided not to have children, she still find it difficult to accept this procedure. The lack of uterus make a woman feel useless.

Keywords: hysterectomy, symbolic damage, desire for motherhood, feminity, nun

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Authors: Tony Ngoy Mbodi, Christophe Muanda

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Textile industry is considered as one of the most polluting sectors in terms of effluent volume of discharge and wastewater composition, such as dye, which represents an environmental hazard when discharged without any proper treatment. A study was conducted to investigate the capability of the use of recycled alum sludge (RAS) as an alternative treatment for the reduction of colour, chemical oxygen demand (COD), total dissolved solids (TDS) and pH adjustment from dye based synthetic textile industry wastewater. The coagulation/flocculation process was studied for coagulants of Alum:RAS ratio of, 1:1, 2:1, 1:2 and 0:1. Experiments on treating the synthetic wastewater using membrane filtration and adsorption with corn cobs were also conducted. Results from the coagulation experiment were compared to those from adsorption with corn cobs and membrane filtration experiments conducted on the same synthetic wastewater. The results of the RAS experiments were also evaluated against standard guidelines for industrial effluents treated for discharge purposes in order to establish its level of compliance. Based on current results, it can be concluded that reusing the alum sludge as a low-cost material pretreatment method into the coagulation/flocculation process can offer some advantages such as high removal efficiency for disperse dye and economic savings on overall treatment of the industry wastewater.

Keywords: alum, coagulation/flocculation, dye, recycled alum sludge, textile wastewater

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Authors: Rifa’ah Mahmudah Bulu’

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MRSA is an important nosocomial pathogen in the world. Therefore, the prevention and effort to control MRSA is still very important to conduct. One of the preventions of MRSA, which have been reported by several studies, is Cefriaxone and Ethanol Extract of Ant Plant. This research is an experimental test to determine the potency of MRSA’s anti-bacterial with Cefriaxone (30 μg) and Ethanol Extract of Ant Plant (13 mg/ml) based on inhibition zone on LAB (Lempeng Agar Biasa). The size of inhibition zone that is formed on Cefriaxone is adjusted with CSLI criteria, which ≥ 21 mm of inhibition zone is called sensitive; ≤13 mm is called resistance and between 14-20 mm is called intermediate. This research is conducted three times. Comparative test between Cefriaxone and Ethanol Extract of Ant Plant is analyzed by Maan Whitney’s statistic method. The Result of Cefriaxone anti-bacterial potency shows the variety of inhibition zone. Cefriaxone forms approximately 16,5-20 mm with average 18,22mm of inhibition zone that make Cefriaxone’s criteria to MRSA’s inhibition is intermediate. Anti-bacterial potency of Ethanol Extract of Ant Plant is about 0,5-2 mm with average 1,17 mm of inhibition zone that prove MRSA is sensitive to Ant Plant. The conclusion of this research shows that Cefriaxone is intermediate to MRSA’s inhibition, while MRSA is sensitive to Ethanol Extract of Ant Plant, which at the end; it creates different potency of anti-bacterial between Cefriaxone and Ethanol Extract of Ant Plant.

Keywords: MRSA, cefriaxone, ant plant, CSLI, mann whitney

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Authors: Zhiwu Zheng, Prakhar Kumar, Sigurd Wagner, Naveen Verma, James C. Sturm

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Soft robots have drawn great interest recently due to a rich range of possible shapes and motions they can take on to address new applications, compared to traditional rigid robots. Large-area electronics (LAE) provides a unique platform for creating soft robots by leveraging thin-film technology to enable the integration of a large number of actuators, sensors, and control circuits on flexible sheets. However, the rich shapes and motions possible, especially when interacting with complex environments, pose significant challenges to forming well-generalized and robust models necessary for robot design and control. In this work, we describe an analytical model for predicting the shape and locomotion of a flexible (steel-foil-based) piezoelectric-actuated 2D robot based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. It is nominally (unpowered) lying flat on the ground, and when powered, its shape is controlled by an array of piezoelectric thin-film actuators. Key features of the models are its ability to incorporate the significant effects of gravity on the shape and to precisely predict the spatial distribution of friction against the contacting surfaces, necessary for determining inchworm-type motion. We verified the model by developing a distributed discrete element representation of a continuous piezoelectric actuator and by comparing its analytical predictions to discrete-element robot simulations using PyBullet. Without gravity, predicting the shape of a sheet with a linear array of piezoelectric actuators at arbitrary voltages is straightforward. However, gravity significantly distorts the shape of the sheet, causing some segments to flatten against the ground. Our work includes the following contributions: (i) A self-consistent approach was developed to exactly determine which parts of the soft robot are lifted off the ground, and the exact shape of these sections, for an arbitrary array of piezoelectric voltages and configurations. (ii) Inchworm-type motion relies on controlling the relative friction with the ground surface in different sections of the robot. By adding torque-balance to our model and analyzing shear forces, the model can then determine the exact spatial distribution of the vertical force that the ground is exerting on the soft robot. Through this, the spatial distribution of friction forces between ground and robot can be determined. (iii) By combining this spatial friction distribution with the shape of the soft robot, in the function of time as piezoelectric actuator voltages are changed, the inchworm-type locomotion of the robot can be determined. As a practical example, we calculated the performance of a 5-actuator system on a 50-µm thick steel foil. Piezoelectric properties of commercially available thin-film piezoelectric actuators were assumed. The model predicted inchworm motion of up to 200 µm per step. For independent verification, we also modelled the system using PyBullet, a discrete-element robot simulator. To model a continuous thin-film piezoelectric actuator, we broke each actuator into multiple segments, each of which consisted of two rigid arms with appropriate mass connected with a 'motor' whose torque was set by the applied actuator voltage. Excellent agreement between our analytical model and the discrete-element simulator was shown for both for the full deformation shape and motion of the robot.

Keywords: analytical modeling, piezoelectric actuators, soft robot locomotion, thin-film technology

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Authors: Ali Afaghi, Sehraneh Ghaemi

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The coordination of the multi-agent systems has been one of the interesting topic in recent years, because of its potential applications in many branches of science and engineering such as sensor networks, flocking, underwater vehicles and etc. In the most of the related studies, it is assumed that the dynamics of the multi-agent systems are integer-order and linear and the multi-agent systems with the fractional-order nonlinear dynamics are rarely considered. However many phenomena in nature cannot be described within integer-order and linear characteristics. This paper investigates the leader-following consensus problem for a class of nonlinear fractional-order multi-agent systems based on observer-based cooperative control. In the system, the dynamics of each follower and leader are nonlinear. For a multi-agent system with fixed directed topology firstly, an observer-based consensus protocol is proposed based on the relative observer states of neighboring agents. Secondly, based on the property of the stability theory of fractional-order system, some sufficient conditions are presented for the asymptotical stability of the observer-based fractional-order control systems. The proposed method is applied on a five-agent system with the fractional-order nonlinear dynamics and unavailable states. The simulation example shows that the proposed scenario results in the good performance and can be used in many practical applications.

Keywords: fractional-order multi-agent systems, leader-following consensus, nonlinear dynamics, directed graphs

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Authors: Heba Kamal, Ghada Saudi

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Due to The rapid expansion of energy and growing number of wind turbines construction in earthquake areas, a design method for simple and accurate evaluation of seismic load to ensure structural integrity is required. In Egypt, there are some appropriate places to build wind turbine towers lie in active seismically regions, so accurate analysis is necessary for prediction of seismic loads with consideration of intensity of the earthquake, soil and structural characteristics. In this research, seismic behavior of wind turbine towers Gamesa Type G52 in Zafarana Wind Farm Egypt is investigated using experimental work by ambient vibration test, and fully dynamic analysis based on time history from El Aqaba Earthquake 1995 using 3D by PLAXIS 3D software, including the soil structure interaction effect. The results obtained from dynamic analyses are discussed. From this study, it is concluded that, the fully dynamic seismic analysis based on used PLAXIS 3D with the aid of the full scale ambient vibration test gives almost good simulation for the seismic loads that can be applied to wind turbine tower design in Egypt.

Keywords: Wind turbine towers, Zafarana Wind Farm, Gamesa Type G52, ambient vibration test

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Authors: Nowshin Nabila Siddique, S. M. Mustafizur Rahman

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There is evidence of cyclonic events in Bay of Bengal (BoB) throughout the year. These cyclones cause a variety of fluctuations along its track including the is the influence in Chlorophyll-a (chl-a) concentration. The main purpose of this paper is to justify this variation pattern. Six Tropical Cyclones (TC) are studied using observational method. The result suggests that there is a noticeable change in productivity after a cyclone passes, when the pre cyclonic and post cyclonic condition is observed. In case of Cyclone Amphan, it shows 1.79 mg/m3 of chlorophyll-a concentration increase after a week of cyclonic occurrence. This change is affected by several attributes such as translation speed, intensity and Ocean Pre-condition, specifically Mixed Layer Depth (MLD). Translation Speed and MLD shows a strong negative correlation with the induced chlorophyll concentration. Whereas the effect of the intensity on a cyclone is not that prominent. It is also found that the period of starting an induction is not same for all cyclone such as in case of Cyclone Amphan, the changes started to occur after one day however for Cyclone Sidr and Cyclone Mora it started after three days. Furthermore, a slightly increase in overall productivity is also observed after a cyclone. In the case of Cyclone Amphan, Hudhud, Phailin it shows a rise up to 0.12 mg/m3 in productivity which decreases gradually taking around the period of two months. On a whole this paper signifies the changes in chlorophyll concentration caused by numerous cyclones and its different characteristics that regulates these changes.

Keywords: tropical cyclone, chlorophyll-a concentration, mixed layer depth, translation speed

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Authors: Waode Nurmayani, Nikmatul Riswanda

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Broilers are chickens which are kept with the most efficient time and hoped get a good body weight. All things are done, for example with the improvement of feed and use antibiotics. Feed cost is the most cost to be spent. Nearly 80% of the cost is spent just for buy feed. Earthworm (Lumbricus rubellus) is a good choice to reduce the cost of feed protein source. The Earthworm has a high crude protein content of about 48.5%-61.9%, rich with proline amino acid about 15% of the 62 amino acids. Not only about protein, this earthworm also has a role in disease prevention. Prevention of disease in livestock usual with use feed supplement. Earthworm (Lumbricus rubellus) is one of the natural materials used as feed. In addition, several types of earthworms that have been known to contain active substances about antibacterial pathogens namely Lumbricus rubellus. The earthworm could be used as an antibiotic because it contain the antibody of Lumbricine active substance. So that, this animal feed from Lumbricus rubellus could improve the performance of broilers. Bioactive of anti-bacterial is called Lumbricine able to inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the intestinal wall so that the population of pathogenic bacteria is reduced. The method of write in this scientific writing is divided into 3 techniques, namely data completion, data analysis, and thinking pan from various literature about earthworm (Lumbricus rubellus) as broiler feed. It is expected that innovation of feed material of earthworm (Lumbricus rubellus) could reduce the cost of protein feed and the use of chemical antibiotics.

Keywords: earthworm, broiler, protein, antibiotic

Procedia PDF Downloads 137

Authors: M. S. Lu, Y. P. Tsai, H. Shu, K. F. Chen, L. L. Lai

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This study used sodium hypochlorite/sodium dodecyl sulfate method to successfully extract polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) from the wasted sludge of a husbandry industry wastewater treatment plant. We investigated the optimum operational conditions of three key factors with respect to effectively extract PHAs from husbandry industry wastewater sludge, including the sodium hypochlorite concentration, liquid-solid ratio, and reaction time. The experimental results showed the optimum operational conditions for polyhydroxyalkanoate recovery as follows: (1) being digested by the sodium hypochlorite/sodium dodecyl sulfate solution with 15% (v/v) of hypochlorite concentration, (2) being operated at the condition of 1.25 mLmg-1 of liquid-solid ratio, and (3) being reacted for more than 60 min. Under these conditions, the content of the recovered PHAs was about 53.2±0.66 mgPHAs/gVSS, and the purity of the recovered PHAs was about 78.5±6.91 wt%. The recovered PHAs were further used to produce biodegradable plastics for decomposition test buried in soils. The decomposition test showed 66.5% of the biodegradable plastics produced in the study remained after being buried in soils for 49 days. The cost for extracting PHAs is about 10.3 US$/kgPHAs and is lower than those produced by pure culture methods (12-15 US$/kgPHAs).

Keywords: biodegradable plastic, biopolymers, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), waste sludge

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Authors: Aussara Panya, Nunghathai Sawasdee, Mutita Junking, Chatchawan Srisawat, Kiattawee Choowongkomon, Pa-Thai Yenchitsomanus

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Dengue virus (DENV) infection is a global public health problem with approximately 100 million infected cases a year. Presently, there is no approved vaccine or effective drug available; therefore, the development of anti-DENV drug is urgently needed. The clinical reports revealing the positive association between the disease severity and viral titer has been reported previously suggesting that the anti-DENV drug therapy can possibly ameliorate the disease severity. Although several anti-DENV agents showed inhibitory activities against DENV infection, to date none of them accomplishes clinical use in the patients. The surface envelope (E) protein of DENV is critical for the viral entry step, which includes attachment and membrane fusion; thus, the blocking of envelope protein is an attractive strategy for anti-DENV drug development. To search the safe anti-DENV agent, this study aimed to search for novel peptide inhibitors to counter DENV infection through the targeting of E protein using a structure-based in silico design. Two selected strategies has been used including to identify the peptide inhibitor which interfere the membrane fusion process whereby the hydrophobic pocket on the E protein was the target, the destabilization of virion structure organization through the disruption of the interaction between the envelope and membrane proteins, respectively. The molecular docking technique has been used in the first strategy to search for the peptide inhibitors that specifically bind to the hydrophobic pocket. The second strategy, the peptide inhibitor has been designed to mimic the ectodomain portion of membrane protein to disrupt the protein-protein interaction. The designed peptides were tested for the effects on cell viability to measure the toxic to peptide to the cells and their inhibitory assay to inhibit the DENV infection in Vero cells. Furthermore, their antiviral effects on viral replication, intracellular protein level and viral production have been observed by using the qPCR, cell-based flavivirus immunodetection and immunofluorescence assay. None of tested peptides showed the significant effect on cell viability. The small peptide inhibitors achieved from molecular docking, Glu-Phe (EF), effectively inhibited DENV infection in cell culture system. Its most potential effect was observed for DENV2 with a half maximal inhibition concentration (IC50) of 96 μM, but it partially inhibited other serotypes. Treatment of EF at 200 µM on infected cells also significantly reduced the viral genome and protein to 83.47% and 84.15%, respectively, corresponding to the reduction of infected cell numbers. An additional approach was carried out by using peptide mimicking membrane (M) protein, namely MLH40. Treatment of MLH40 caused the reduction of foci formation in four individual DENV serotype (DENV1-4) with IC50 of 24-31 μM. Further characterization suggested that the MLH40 specifically blocked viral attachment to host membrane, and treatment with 100 μM could diminish 80% of viral attachment. In summary, targeting the hydrophobic pocket and M-binding site on the E protein by using the peptide inhibitors could inhibit DENV infection. The results provide proof of-concept for the development of antiviral therapeutic peptide inhibitors to counter DENV infection through the use of a structure-based design targeting conserved viral protein.

Keywords: dengue virus, dengue virus infection, drug design, peptide inhibitor

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Authors: Satyam Raikwar, Thomas Herlitzius, Jens Fehrmann

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In recent years, the autonomous navigation of orchard and field robots is an emerging technology of the mobile robotics in agriculture. One of the core aspects of autonomous navigation builds upon path planning, which is still a crucial issue. Generally, for simple representation, the path planning for a mobile robot is performed in a two-dimensional space, which creates a path between the start and goal point. This paper presents the automatic path planning approach for robots used in orchards and vineyards using occupancy grid maps with field consideration. The orchards and vineyards are usually structured environment and their topology is assumed to be constant over time; therefore, in this approach, an RGB image of a field is used as a working environment. These images undergone different image processing operations and then discretized into two-dimensional grid matrices. The individual grid or cell of these grid matrices represents the occupancy of the space, whether it is free or occupied. The grid matrix represents the robot workspace for motion and path planning. After the grid matrix is described, a probabilistic roadmap (PRM) path algorithm is used to create the obstacle-free path over these occupancy grids. The path created by this method was successfully verified in the test area. Furthermore, this approach is used in the navigation of the orchard robot.

Keywords: orchard robots, automatic path planning, occupancy grid, probabilistic roadmap

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Authors: Sevil Inal, Leman Yantiri, Meral Kelleci

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Aim: In this study, it was aimed to qualitatively analyze the feelings, thoughts and meanings of the nurses who had experience in child hematology in the past. Method: In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 nurses between 29 and 53 years of age who had previously worked in child hematology-oncology unit. Interviews were conducted with a semi-structured interview form. Each interview lasted 20-30 minute. Some of the questions are: ‘What kind of experiences do you experience when you think about the periods you are working in hematology-oncology service?’ ‘Do you explain the reason for living these feelings?’ The data were analyzed with QSR NVivo 7 software. Results: From the perspective of the nurses who had experience working in the pediatric hematology-oncology service in the past, five main themes and sub-themes related to emotions and thoughts towards this experiment were identified in the study. 1) Positive and negative emotions: (a) fear and anxiety, (b) desperation, pity, guilt, (c) burnout, (d) longing; 2) Being coping 3) Professional implications 4) Meaning of life 5) Unmet needs and suggestions. Conclusions: Working in hematology should be viewed as a multidimensional situation that affects the way nurses view their profession and life, leading to a wide range of emotional lives. Data obtained from this study can be used to strengthen hematologic nurses.

Keywords: cancer, child, care, hematology, nursing

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Authors: Jawid Ahmad Baktash, Tadashi Shiroma, Tomokazu Nagata, Yuji Taniguchi, Morikazu Nakamura

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The goal of this paper is to explore the use of formal methods for Dynamic Routing, The purpose of network communication with dynamic routing is sending a massage from one node to others by using pacific protocols. In dynamic routing connections are possible based on protocols of Distance vector (Routing Information Protocol, Border Gateway protocol), Link State (Open Shortest Path First, Intermediate system Intermediate System), Hybrid (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol). The responsibility for proper verification becomes crucial with Dynamic Routing. Formal methods can play an essential role in the Routing, development of Networks and testing of distributed systems. Event-B is a formal technique consists of describing rigorously the problem; introduce solutions or details in the refinement steps to obtain more concrete specification, and verifying that proposed solutions are correct. The system is modeled in terms of an abstract state space using variables with set theoretic types and the events that modify state variables. Event-B is a variant of B, was designed for developing distributed systems. In Event-B, the events consist of guarded actions occurring spontaneously rather than being invoked. The invariant state properties must be satisfied by the variables and maintained by the activation of the events.

Keywords: dynamic rout RIP, formal method, event-B, pro-B

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Authors: Amir Hossein Hejazi, Nima Amjady

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In recent years, due to environmental issues traditional energy sources had been replaced by renewable ones. Wind energy as the fastest growing renewable energy shares a considerable percent of energy in power electricity markets. With this fast growth of wind energy worldwide, owners and operators of wind farms, transmission system operators, and energy traders need reliable and secure forecasts of wind energy production. In this paper, a new forecasting strategy is proposed for short-term wind power prediction based on Echo State Networks (ESN). The forecast engine utilizes state-of-the-art training process including dynamical reservoir with high capability to learn complex dynamics of wind power or wind vector signals. The study becomes more interesting by incorporating prediction of wind direction into forecast strategy. The Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) evolutionary optimization algorithm is adopted for adjusting free parameters of ESN-based forecaster. The proposed method is tested by real-world hourly data to show the efficiency of the forecasting engine for prediction of both wind vector and wind power output of aggregated wind power production.

Keywords: wind power forecasting, echo state network, big bang-big crunch, evolutionary optimization algorithm

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Authors: Amr Ali Bayoumi, Ola Ali Bayoumi

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The aim of this research is enhancing one of the main aspects (Social Aspect) for developing an eco-lodge in Siwa oasis in Egyptian Western Desert. According to credible weightings built in this research through formal and informal questionnaires, the researcher detected one of the highest credible aspects, 'Social Aspect': through which it carries the maximum priorities among the total environmental and economic categories. From here, the researcher suggested the usage of ethnographic design approach and Space Syntax as observational and computational methods for developing future Eco-lodge in Siwa Oasis. These methods are used to study social spaces of Babenshal eco-lodge as a case study. This hybrid method is considered as a beginning of building Social Assessment Tool (SAT) for ecological tourism buildings located in Siwa as a case of Egyptian Western desert community. Towards livable social spaces, the proposed SAT was planned to be the optimum measurable weightings for social aspect's priorities of future Siwan eco-lodge(s). Finally, recommendations are proposed for enhancing SAT to be more correlated with sensitive desert biome (Siwa Oasis) to be adapted with the continuous social and environmental changes of the oasis.

Keywords: ecolodge, social aspect, space syntax, Siwa Oasis

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Authors: Ghodhbani Salah, Jemili Farah

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With the growth of cyber attacks, information safety has become an important issue all over the world. Many firms rely on security technologies such as intrusion detection systems (IDSs) to manage information technology security risks. IDSs are considered to be the last line of defense to secure a network and play a very important role in detecting large number of attacks. However the main problem with today’s most popular commercial IDSs is generating high volume of alerts and huge number of false positives. This drawback has become the main motivation for many research papers in IDS area. Hence, in this paper we present a data mining technique to assist network administrators to analyze and reduce false positive alarms that are produced by an IDS and increase detection accuracy. Our data mining technique is unsupervised clustering method based on hybrid ANT algorithm. This algorithm discovers clusters of intruders’ behavior without prior knowledge of a possible number of classes, then we apply K-means algorithm to improve the convergence of the ANT clustering. Experimental results on real dataset show that our proposed approach is efficient with high detection rate and low false alarm rate.

Keywords: intrusion detection system, alarm filtering, ANT class, ant clustering, intruders’ behaviors, false alarms

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Authors: Ganesh B. Shinde, Vijaya B. Musande

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Cotton crop identification based on the timely information has significant advantage to the different implications of food, economic and environment. Due to the significant advantages, the accurate detection of cotton crop regions using supervised learning procedure is challenging problem in remote sensing. Here, classifiers on the direct image are played a major role but the results are not much satisfactorily. In order to further improve the effectiveness, variety of vegetation indices are proposed in the literature. But, recently, the major challenge is to find the better vegetation indices for the cotton crop identification through the proposed methodology. Accordingly, fuzzy c-means clustering is combined with neural network algorithm, trained by Levenberg-Marquardt for cotton crop classification. To experiment the proposed method, five LISS-III satellite images was taken and the experimentation was done with six vegetation indices such as Simple Ratio, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Enhanced Vegetation Index, Green Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index, Wide-Dynamic Range Vegetation Index, Green Chlorophyll Index. Along with these indices, Green Leaf Area Index is also considered for investigation. From the research outcome, Green Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index outperformed with all other indices by reaching the average accuracy value of 95.21%.

Keywords: Fuzzy C-Means clustering (FCM), neural network, Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm, vegetation indices

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Authors: Strahinja Z. Kovačević, Lidija R. Jevrić, Sanja O. Podunavac Kuzmanović

Abstract:

The relationship between antibacterial activity of eighteen different substituted benzimidazole derivatives and their molecular characteristics was studied using chemometric QSAR (Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships) approach. QSAR analysis has been carried out on inhibitory activity towards Staphylococcus aureus, by using molecular descriptors, as well as minimal inhibitory activity (MIC). Molecular descriptors were calculated from the optimized structures. Principal component analysis (PCA) followed by hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and multiple linear regression (MLR) was performed in order to select molecular descriptors that best describe the antibacterial behavior of the compounds investigated, and to determine the similarities between molecules. The HCA grouped the molecules in separated clusters which have the similar inhibitory activity. PCA showed very similar classification of molecules as the HCA, and displayed which descriptors contribute to that classification. MLR equations, that represent MIC as a function of the in silico molecular descriptors were established. The statistical significance of the estimated models was confirmed by standard statistical measures and cross-validation parameters (SD = 0.0816, F = 46.27, R = 0.9791, R2CV = 0.8266, R2adj = 0.9379, PRESS = 0.1116). These parameters indicate the possibility of application of the established chemometric models in prediction of the antibacterial behaviour of studied derivatives and structurally very similar compounds.

Keywords: antibacterial, benzimidazole, molecular descriptors, QSAR

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Authors: Bagus Hanindhito, Fariz Azmi Pratama, Ulfah Nadiya

Abstract:

Nowadays, digital system including, but not limited to, computer and internet have penetrated the education system widely. Critical information such as students’ academic records is stored in a server off- or on-campus. Although several countermeasures have been taken to protect the vital resources from outsider attack, the defense from insiders threat is not getting serious attention. At the end of 2017, a security incident that involved academic information system in one of the most respected universities in Indonesia affected not only the reputation of the institution and its academia but also academic integrity in Indonesia. In this paper, we will explain our efforts in investigating this security incident where we have implemented a novel rapid evidence remote acquisition method in high-availability server and storage system thus our data collection efforts do not disrupt the academic information system and can be conducted remotely minutes after incident report has been received. The acquired evidence is analyzed during digital forensic by constructing the model of the system in an isolated environment which allows multiple investigators to work together. In the end, the suspect is identified as a student (insider), and the investigation result is used by prosecutors to charge the suspect as an academic crime.

Keywords: academic information system, academic crime, digital forensic, high-availability server and storage, rapid evidence remote acquisition, security incident

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Authors: Z. Ž. Lazarević, D. L. Sekulić, V. N. Ivanovski, N. Ž. Romčević

Abstract:

NiFe2O4 (nickel ferrite), ZnFe2O4 (zinc ferrite) and Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 (nickel-zinc ferrite) were prepared by mechanochemical route in a planetary ball mill starting from mixture of the appropriate quantities of the Ni(OH)2/Fe(OH)3, Zn(OH)2/Fe(OH)3 and Ni(OH)2/Zn(OH)2/Fe(OH)3 hydroxide powders. In order to monitor the progress of chemical reaction and confirm phase formation, powder samples obtained after 25 h, 18 h and 10 h of milling were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), IR, Raman and Mössbauer spectroscopy. It is shown that the soft mechanochemical method, i.e. mechanochemical activation of hydroxides, produces high quality single phase ferrite samples in much more efficient way. From the IR spectroscopy of single phase samples it is obvious that energy of modes depends on the ratio of cations. It is obvious that all samples have more than 5 Raman active modes predicted by group theory in the normal spinel structure. Deconvolution of measured spectra allows one to conclude that all complex bands in the spectra are made of individual peaks with the intensities that vary from spectrum to spectrum. The deconvolution of Raman spectra allows to separate contributions of different cations to a particular type of vibration and to estimate the degree of inversion.

Keywords: ferrites, Raman spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy, Mössbauer measurements

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Authors: R. Ruslee, H. Gollee

Abstract:

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a commonly used technique in rehabilitation and often associated with rapid muscle fatigue which becomes the limiting factor in its applications. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects on the onset of fatigue of conventional synchronous stimulation, as well as asynchronous stimulation that mimic voluntary muscle activation targeting different motor units which are activated sequentially or randomly via multiple pairs of stimulation electrodes. We investigate three different approaches with various electrode configurations, as well as different patterns of stimulation applied to the gastrocnemius muscle: Conventional Synchronous Stimulation (CSS), Asynchronous Sequential Stimulation (ASS) and Asynchronous Random Stimulation (ARS). Stimulation was applied repeatedly for 300 ms followed by 700 ms of no-stimulation with 40 Hz effective frequency for all protocols. Ten able-bodied volunteers (28±3 years old) participated in this study. As fatigue indicators, we focused on the analysis of Normalized Fatigue Index (NFI), Fatigue Time Interval (FTI) and pre-post Twitch-Tetanus Ratio (ΔTTR). The results demonstrated that ASS and ARS give higher NFI and longer FTI confirming less fatigue for asynchronous stimulation. In addition, ASS and ARS resulted in higher ΔTTR than conventional CSS. In this study, we proposed a randomly distributed stimulation method for the application of FES and investigated its suitability for reducing muscle fatigue compared to previously applied methods. The results validated that asynchronous stimulation reduces fatigue, and indicates that random stimulation may improve fatigue resistance in some conditions.

Keywords: asynchronous stimulation, electrode configuration, functional electrical stimulation (FES), muscle fatigue, pattern stimulation, random stimulation, sequential stimulation, synchronous stimulation

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Authors: YingWei Tan, XueFeng Ding

Abstract:

Attention-based voice activity detection models have gained significant attention in recent years due to their fast training speed and ability to capture a wide contextual range. The inclusion of multi-head style and position embedding in the attention architecture are crucial. Having multiple attention heads allows for differential focus on different parts of the sequence, while position embedding provides guidance for modeling dependencies between elements at various positions in the input sequence. In this work, we propose an approach by considering each head as a node, enabling the application of graph neural networks (GNN) to identify correlations among the different nodes. In addition, we adopt an implementation named rotary position embedding (RoPE), which encodes absolute positional information into the input sequence by a rotation matrix, and naturally incorporates explicit relative position information into a self-attention module. We evaluate the effectiveness of our method on a synthetic dataset, and the results demonstrate its superiority over the baseline CRNN in scenarios with low signal-to-noise ratio and noise, while also exhibiting robustness across different noise types. In summary, our proposed framework effectively combines the strengths of CNN and RNN (LSTM), and further enhances detection performance through the integration of graph neural networks and rotary position embedding.

Keywords: voice activity detection, CRNN, graph neural networks, rotary position embedding

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Authors: Olawuyi Sikiru Owolabi

Abstract:

A research was carried out to assess the biochemical effects of crude oil contaminated cat fish on selected rat kidney function tests. Thirty-six (36) albino rats (rattus novergicus) were grouped into six (6) of (6) in each group. The rats in group one served as control and they were placed on feed formulated with catfish cultured in borehole water while those ones from group 2 to group 6 were placed on feed formulated with catfish exposed to various concentrations of crude oil (0.1%,0.25%,0.5%,0.75% and 1% respectively).The results obtained showed that there was a significant increase in serum concentration of creatinine, Urea, sodium and potassium ions in the kidney of experimental rats when compared with the control. This may be interpreted to mean possible adverse effects on the kidney. Several studies have been done especially on the biological effects of crude oil in fish. These include Direct Lethal Toxicity, Sub-Lethal disruption of physiological and behavioral activities, interference with feeding and reproduction, direct coating or tainting of fish, effect of entry of hydrocarbons into the food web as well as alteration of biological habitat. The present study attempts to assess the effects of crude oil contaminated diet on rat kidney by carrying out some kidney function tests like determination of serum sodium and potassium ions by flame photometry method, determination of serum urea and determination of serum creatinine.

Keywords: crude oil, serum urea, creatinine, wistar rats

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Authors: Shweta Maheshwari, Anish Dua

Abstract:

Hematological changes reflect the adverse effects of heavy metals on fish. Hematology is a valuable tool to evaluate pathological condition of the fish. It helps in diagnosing the structural and functional status of fish exposed to toxicants. Morphological alteration in erythrocytes due to environmental stress can be studied through ultra-structural analysis. The aim of the present study was to assess the toxicity of mercuric chloride on red blood cells of an air breathing fish, Channa punctatus. Fish were subjected to chronic experiments using three sublethal concentration of mercuric chloride (0.020mg/L, 0.027mg/L, 0.040mg/L) for a period of 15, 30 and 60 days. Exposed fish of all the three concentrations were subjected to a recovery period of 30 days. A control was maintained in tap water simultaneously. For SEM analysis, blood from caudal vein of fish was taken and examined at an accelerating voltage of 20kV. Scanning electron micrographs revealed elliptical shaped erythrocytes of control fish. Alterations in the erythrocyte morphology such as presence of spherocytes, membrane internalization, crenation of membrane and development of lobopodial projections were observed in the exposed fish. The study revealed that ultra-structural analysis appears to be a sensitive method to evaluate the toxicity of various toxicants to fish.

Keywords: Channa punctatus, erythrocytes, mercuric chloride, scanning electron microscopy

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Authors: Rajat Mittal, Harshal Raut, Jung Hee Seo

Abstract:

Wave-assisted propulsion (WAP) systems convert wave energy into thrust using elastically mounted hydrofoils. We employ sharp-interface immersed boundary simulations to examine the effect of two key parameters on the flow physics, the fluid-structure interaction, as well as thrust performance of these systems - the stiffness of the torsional spring and the location of the rotational center. The variation in spring stiffness leads to different amplitude of pitch motion, phase difference with respect to heaving motion and thrust coefficient and we show the utility of ‘maps’ of energy exchange between the flow and the hydrofoil system, as a way to understand and predict this behavior. The Force Partitioning Method (FPM) is used to decompose the pressure forces into individual components and understand the mechanism behind increase in thrust. Next, a scaling law is presented for the thrust coefficient generated by heaving and pitching foil. The parameters within the scaling law are calculated based on direct-numerical simulations based parametric study utilized to generate the energy maps. The predictions of the proposed scaling law are then compared with those of a similar model from the literature, showing a noticeable improvement in the prediction of the thrust coefficient.

Keywords: propulsion, flapping foils, hydrodynamics, wave power

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Authors: Davit Khachatryan, Shuo Xiang

Abstract:

Numerous published studies on the use of prazosin in the treatment of PTSD-related sleep disturbances in adult population have resulted in updates to the recommendation for prazosin for nightmares that showed its strength of evidence elevated from C to B in the US Department of Veterans Affairs clinical practice guideline. In addition, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline gave prazosin a level-A recommendation for the treatment of PTSD-associated nightmares. The aim of this review is to summarize the available literature for prazosin use for nightmares and other sleep disturbances in children and adolescents with PTSD. Method: A comprehensive search for studies on prazosin use for sleep disturbances in child and adolescent population with PTSD has been performed. We looked at MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, AMED, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane CENTRAL databases. Results: Compared to adult population with similar psychopathology, the available literature in child and adolescent population is scarce. Despite increased interest in prazosin in the management of PTSD, only six studies investigating this medication in children and adolescents have been published. Conclusion: A large randomized control trial on this topic is needed for more definite evidence on the efficacy and safety of prazosin in the treatment of nightmares in children and adolescents with PTSD.

Keywords: guidelines, prazosin, PTSD, sleep disturbance

Procedia PDF Downloads 364