Search results for: Yeoh Chun Yeow

Authors: Ishak Suleiman, Ahmad Kamsani Samingan, Yeoh Chun Yeow, Abdul Aziz Bin Abdul Rahman

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In this paper, we evaluate the benefits of distributed 4x4 MIMO LTE downlink systems compared to that of the co-located 4x4 MIMO LTE downlink system. The performance evaluation was carried out experimentally by using Wireless Open-Access Research Platform (WARP), where the comparison between the 4x4 MIMO LTE transmission downlink system in distributed and co-located techniques was examined. The measured Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) results showed that the distributed technique achieved better system performance compared to the co-located arrangement.

Keywords: multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), distributed MIMO, co-located MIMO, LTE

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Authors: Sui Yan Wong, Keat Ping Yeoh, Chi Wai Hui

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In this study, supercritical steam is introduced to Combined Cycle Power Plant (CCPP) in an attempt to further optimize energy recovery. Subcritical steam is commonly used in the CCPP, operating at maximum pressures around 150-160 bar. Supercritical steam is an alternative to increase heat recovery during vaporization period of water. The idea of improvement using supercritical steam is further examined with the use of exergy, pinch analysis and Aspen Plus simulation.

Keywords: exergy, pinch, combined cycle power plant, supercritical steam

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Authors: Amaraja Taur, Pankaj Doshi, Hak Koon Yeoh

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The dripping modes for a Newtonian liquid of viscosity µ emanating from an inclined nozzle at flow rate Q is investigated experimentally. As the liquid flow rate Q increases, starting with period-1 with satellite drops, the system transitions to period-1 dripping without satellite, then to limit cycle before showing chaotic responses. Phase diagrams shows the changes in the transitions between the different dripping modes for different nozzle inclination angle θ is constructed in the dimensionless (Q, µ) space.

Keywords: dripping, inclined nozzle, phase diagram, satellite

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Authors: Chien-Chun Hung, Chun-Fong Wu

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It is important for a commander to have real-time information to aware situations and to make decision in the battlefield. Results of modern technique developments have brought in this kind of information for military purposes. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is one of the means to gather intelligence owing to its widespread applications. It is still not clear whether or not the mini UAV with short-range wireless transmission system is used as a reconnaissance system in Taiwanese. In this paper, previous experience on the research of the sort of aerial vehicles has been applied with a data-relay system using the ZigBee modulus. The mini UAV developed is expected to be able to collect certain data in some appropriate theaters. The omni-directional antenna with high gain is also integrated into mini UAV to fit the size-reducing trend of airborne sensors. Two advantages are so far obvious. First, mini UAV can fly higher than usual to avoid being attacked from ground fires. Second, the data will be almost gathered during all maneuvering attitudes.

Keywords: mini UAV, reconnaissance, wireless transmission, ZigBee modulus

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Authors: Chien-Hung Chen, Yan-Chun Hsing, Yung-Chun Chang

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The Internet has grown into a powerful medium for information dispersion and social interaction that leads to a rapid growth of social media which allows users to easily post their emotions and perspectives regarding certain topics online. Our research aims at using natural language processing and text mining techniques to explore the public emotions expressed on Twitter by analyzing the sentiment behind tweets. In this paper, we propose a composite kernel method that integrates tree kernel with the linear kernel to simultaneously exploit both the tree representation and the distributed emotion keyword representation to analyze the syntactic and content information in tweets. The experiment results demonstrate that our method can effectively detect public emotion of tweets while outperforming the other compared methods.

Keywords: emotion recognition, natural language processing, composite kernel, sentiment analysis, text mining

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Authors: Kun Chun, Jin-Chun Heo, Sang-Han Lee

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Asthma is a chronic airway inflammatory disease characterized by the infiltration of inflammatory cells and tissue remodeling. In this study, we examined the anti-asthmatic activity of a derivative of L-allo threonine by in vitro and in vivo anti-asthmatic assays. Ovalbumin (OVA)-induced C57BL/6 mice were used to analyze lung inflammation and cytokine expressions for exhibiting anti-atopic activity of the derivative. LX519290, a derivative of L-allo threonine, induced an increased IFN-γ and a decreased IL-10 mRNA level. This compound exhibited potent anti-asthmatic activity by decreasing immune cell infiltration in the lung, and IL-4 and IL-13 cytokine levels in the serum of OVA-induced mice. These results indicated that chronic airway injury was decreased by LX519290. We also assessed that LX519290 inhibits infiltration of immune cell, mucus release and cytokine expression in an in vivo model. Our results collectively suggest that the L-allo threonine is effective in alleviating asthmatic symptoms by treating inflammatory factors in the lung.

Keywords: asthma, L -allo threonine, LX519290, mice

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Authors: Chun-Lang Chang, Chun-Kai Liu

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In this study, the patients that have undergone total knee replacement surgery from the 2010 National Health Insurance database were adopted as the study participants. The important factors were screened and selected through literature collection and interviews with physicians. Through the Cross Entropy Method (CE), Genetic Algorithm Logistic Regression (GALR), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), the weights of the factors were obtained. In addition, the weights of the respective algorithms, coupled with the Excel VBA were adopted to construct the Case Based Reasoning (CBR) system. The results through statistical tests show that the GALR and PSO produced no significant differences, and the accuracy of both models were above 97%. Moreover, the area under the curve of ROC for these two models also exceeded 0.87. This study shall serve as a reference for medical staff as an assistance for clinical assessment of infections in order to effectively enhance medical service quality and efficiency, avoid unnecessary medical waste, and substantially contribute to resource allocations in medical institutions.

Keywords: Case Based Reasoning, Cross Entropy Method, Genetic Algorithm Logistic Regression, Particle Swarm Optimization, Total Knee Replacement Surgery

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Authors: Swee Guat Yeoh, Yung Ling Tseng

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Malaysia is comprised of three major ethnic groups: The Malay, Chinese and Indian as well as a small number of indigenous peoples. With the influences of the multiple races, Malaysia is a multi-cultural country. In the era of globalization, culture has become an important soft power for a race or a country. At the same time, it provides endless inspirational source of ideas for creative business. Although jewelries are decorative objects, they function and exist as the emblems of power, wealth and contract in certain cultural systems. In the meantime, they also record the lifestyle and ideology of everyday life. Therefore, in a creative cultural industry, jewelry with cultural aspects and cultural contents are deemed to be highly important. With the three major ethnic groups in Malaysia as objects, this research aims to find out the relationships between the cultures and decorations of the three major ethnic groups in the aspects of customs, religions and lifestyles.

Keywords: ethnicity, multi-cultural, jewelry, craft technique

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Authors: Wei Xu, Abdo S. Haidar, Jianxin Gao

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Prosthetic socket is a component that connects the residual limb of an amputee with an artificial prosthesis. It is widely recognized as the most critical component that determines the comfort of a patient when wearing the prosthesis in his/her daily activities. Through the socket, the body weight and its associated dynamic load are distributed and transmitted to the prosthesis during walking, running or climbing. In order to achieve a good-fit socket for an individual amputee, it is essential to obtain the biomechanical properties of the residual limb. In current clinical practices, this is achieved by a touch-and-feel approach which is highly subjective. Although there have been significant advancements in prosthetic technologies such as microprocessor controlled knee and ankle joints in the last decade, the progress in designing a comfortable socket has been rather limited. This means that the current process of socket design is still very time-consuming, and highly dependent on the expertise of the prosthetist. Supported by the state-of-the-art sensor technologies and numerical simulations, a new socket design system is being developed to help prosthetists achieve rapid design of comfortable sockets for above knee amputees. This paper reports the research work related to establishing biomechanical models for socket design. Through numerical simulation using finite element method, comprehensive relationships between pressure on residual limb and socket geometry were established. This allowed local topological adjustment for the socket so as to optimize the pressure distributions across the residual limb. When the full body weight of a patient is exerted on the residual limb, high pressures and shear forces between the residual limb and the socket occur. During numerical simulations, various hyperplastic models, namely Ogden, Yeoh and Mooney-Rivlin, were used, and their effectiveness in representing the biomechanical properties of soft tissues of the residual limb was evaluated. This also involved reverse engineering, which resulted in an optimal representative model under compression test. To validate the simulation results, a range of silicone models were fabricated. They were tested by an indentation device which yielded the force-displacement relationships. Comparisons of results obtained from FEA simulations and experimental tests showed that the Ogden model did not fit well the soft tissue material indentation data, while the Yeoh model gave the best representation of the soft tissue mechanical behavior under indentation. Compared with hyperplastic model, the result showed that elastic model also had significant errors. In addition, normal and shear stress distributions on the surface of the soft tissue model were obtained. The effect of friction in compression testing and the influence of soft tissue stiffness and testing boundary conditions were also analyzed. All these have contributed to the overall goal of designing a good-fit socket for individual above knee amputees.

Keywords: above knee amputee, finite element simulation, hyperplastic model, prosthetic socket

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Authors: Chun-Wei Huang, Jyh-Cherng Gu, Ming-Ta Yang

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Non-synchronous breakage or line failure in power systems with light or no loads can lead to core saturation in transformers or potential transformers. This can cause component and capacitance matching resulting in the formation of resonant circuits, which trigger ferroresonance. This study employed a wavelet transform for the detection of ferroresonance. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.

Keywords: ferroresonance, wavelet transform, intelligent electronic device, transformer

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Authors: Hsien Hwa Kuo, Lin Wen Chun, Lin Wen Chun, Hsien Wen Kuo

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Objective: Nurses represent an important occupational group frequently affected by wrist musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) due to a heavy workload, working shifts, poor posture, giving shots, making beds, lifting patients, bending their waist and insufficient rest time every day. However, lack of research reported nurses whether workload in household correlated with the severity of WMSDs. Methods: 550 nurses from a hospital in Taoyuan were interviewed using a modified standardized Nordic Musculoskeletal (NMQ) questionnaire including the demographic information, workplace condition and nine body parts of musculoskeletal disorders. Results: 17.9% and 23.9% of severity and symptoms in WMSDs among nurses with children were significant higher than among nurses without children (1​2.4% and 15.9%). Based on multiple logistic regression models adjusted for age, work duration, job title and body mass index (BMI), we found that heavy workload in hospital had higher odds ratio (OR) of the severity and symptoms of WMSD among nurses with children (OR= 8.67 and OR= 4.30, p<0.05) compared to nurses without children (OR= 1.94 and OR= 1.70). Conclusion: The severity and symptoms of WMSDs among nurses significantly correlated with workload in hospital among nurses with children. If women are at greater risk because of the combination of their work and family demands, synergistic effect of WMSDs was found among nurses. Comment: Women's domestic work, especially once they become mothers, they invest more time and energy caring for children, helping others, and doing housework. Thus domestic work, per se, may be a risk factor for wrist musculoskeletal problems, and, more importantly, it may constrain women's ability to protect themselves from the effects of their paid work. If nurses with more domestic work periodically make efforts to physical activity or modify inappropriate posture, their WMSDs symptoms will be alleviated.

Keywords: musculoskeletal disorders, nurse, NMQ, WMSDs

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Authors: Beng Zhen Yeow

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In most work that involves children, the voice of the children is often not heard. This is ironic since a lot of discussions might involve their welfare and safety. It might seem natural that the professionals should hear from them about what they wish for instead of deciding what is best for them. However, this, unfortunately, might be more the exception than the norm in most case and hence in many instances, children are merely 'subjects' in conversations about safety instead of active participants in the construction or creation of safety in the family. There might be many reasons why it does not happen in our work. Firstly, professionals have learnt how to 'socialise' into their professional roles and hence in the process become 'un-childlike'. Secondly, there is also a lack of professional training with regards to how to talk with children. Finally, there might be also a lack of concrete tools and techniques that are developed to facilitate the process. In this paper, the case study method is used to show how the idea of safety could be concretised and discussed with children and their family members, and hence making them active participants and co-creators of their own safety. Specific skills and techniques are highlighted through the case study. In this case, there was improvement in outcomes like no repeated offence or abuse. In addition, children were also able to advocate for their own safety after six months of intervention and how the family members were able to explicitly say what they can do to improve safety. The professionals in the safety network reported significant improvements. On top of that, the abused child who was removed due to child protection concerns, had verbalized observations of change in mother’s parenting abilities, and has requested for home leave to begin due to ownership of safety planning and having confidence to co-create safety for her siblings and herself together with the professionals in the safety network. Children becoming active participants in the co-creation of safety not only serve the purpose in allowing them to own a 'voice' but at the same time, give them greater confidence to protect themselves at home and in other contexts outside of home.

Keywords: partnering for safety, collaborative social work, family and systemic psychotherapy, child protection

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Authors: Chun-Ming Huang, Yi-Jun Liu, Yi-Jie Hsieh, Jin-Ju Chue, Wei-Lin Lai, Chun-Yu Chen, Chih-Chyau Yang, Chien-Ming Wu

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The market of wearable devices has been growing rapidly in two years. The integration of sensors and wearable devices has become the trend of the next technology products. Thus, the academics and industries are eager to cultivate talented persons in sensing technology. Currently, academic and industries have more and more demands on the integrations of versatile sensors and applications, especially for the teams who focus on the development of sensor circuit architectures. These teams tape-out many MEMs sensors chips through the chip fabrication service from National Chip Implementation Center (CIC). However, most of these teams are only able to focus on the circuit design of MEMs sensors; they lack the key support of further system demonstration. This paper follows the CIC’s main mission of promoting the chip/system advanced design technology and aims to establish the environments of the modularized sensing system platform and the system design flow with the measurement and calibration technology. These developed environments are used to support these research teams and help academically advanced sensor designs to perform the system demonstration. Thus, the research groups can promote and transfer their advanced sensor designs to industrial and further derive the industrial economic values. In this paper, the modularized sensing platform is proposed to enable the system demonstration for advanced sensor chip design. The environment of sensor measurement and calibration is established for academic to achieve an accurate sensor result. Two reference sensor designs cooperated with the modularized sensing platform are given to show the sensing system integration and demonstration. These developed environments and platforms are currently provided to academics in Taiwan, and so that the academics can obtain a better environment to perform the system demonstration and improve the research and teaching quality.

Keywords: modularized sensing platform, sensor design and calibration, sensor system, sensor system design flow

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Authors: S. Khakurel, R. P. Dhakal, T. Z. Yeow

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Downtime is one of the major sources (alongside damage and injury/death) of financial loss incurred by a structure in an earthquake. The length of downtime associated with a building after an earthquake varies depending on the time taken for the reaction (to the earthquake), decision (on the future course of action) and execution (of the decided course of action) phases. Post-earthquake assessment of buildings is a key step in the decision making process to decide the appropriate safety placarding as well as to decide whether a damaged building is to be repaired or demolished. The aim of the present study is to develop a model to quantify downtime associated with the post-earthquake building-assessment phase in terms of two parameters; i) duration of the different assessment phase; and ii) probability of different colour tagging. Post-earthquake assessment of buildings includes three stages; Level 1 Rapid Assessment including a fast external inspection shortly after the earthquake, Level 2 Rapid Assessment including a visit inside the building and Detailed Engineering Evaluation (if needed). In this study, the durations of all three assessment phases are first estimated from the total number of damaged buildings, total number of available engineers and the average time needed for assessing each building. Then, probability of different tag colours is computed from the 2010-11 Canterbury earthquake Sequence database. Finally, a downtime model for the post-earthquake building inspection phase is proposed based on the estimated phase length and probability of tag colours. This model is expected to be used for rapid estimation of seismic downtime within the Loss Optimisation Seismic Design (LOSD) framework.

Keywords: assessment, downtime, LOSD, Loss Optimisation Seismic Design, phase length, tag color

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Authors: Li-Fang CHou, Chun-Jung Tseng, Sung-Chun Tsai

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Zhong-Yong represents unique values and cognitive beliefs of Chinese culture. Zhong-Yong thinking emphasizes (a) holistic thinking and perspective taking, (b) tolerance of contradictions, and (c) pursuance of a person’s interpersonal and inner harmony. With a unique way of naïve dialectical thinking based on Chinese culture, previous studies have found that people with higher Zhong-Yong thinking have more cognitive resources and resilience to make decision for dilemmas and cope stresses. Creativity is defined as the behavior to create novel and value products and viewed as the most important capital for individuals and enterprises. However, the relationship between Zhong-Yong thinking and creativity is still remaining to be unexplored. Three studies were conducted to explore the effects of Zhong-Yong thinking on creativity. In Study1, with 87 undergraduate students from a university in southern Taiwan as participants, we used questionnaire to measure Zhong-Yong thinking and processed creative task (unusual uses task) to get indicators of fluency and flexibility. After controlling background and openness to experience of Big five, the results showed that Zhong-Yong thinking had significant positive effects on fluency and flexibility. In Study 2, 97 undergraduate students were recruited to do Zhong-Yong thinking task and creative task. The result showed that, compared with control group, the participants had higher creative performance after being primed with Zhong-Yong thinking. In Study 3, we adopted questionnaire survey and took 397 employees from private enterprises in Taiwan as sample. Besides the main effects of Zhong-Yong thinking, the moderating effects on the relationship between leadership behavior and employee’s creative performance were also investigated. We found that (a) Zhong-Yong thinking was positively associated to creative performance; (b) Zhong-Yong thinking strengthened the positive effects of transformational and authoritative leadership on creative performance. Finally, the implications of theory/practice and limitations/future directions were also discussed.

Keywords: Zhong-Yong thinking, creativity and creative performance, unusual uses task, transformational leadership, authoritative leadership

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Authors: Yi Hu, Chun-Chi Lin, Shau-En Yeh, Shin Lee

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In this study, p–n heterojunctions with La0.5Sr0.5CoO3 (LSCO) and W-doped VO2 thin films were fabricated by the radio frequency (r.f.) magnetron sputtering technique and sol-gel process, respectively. The thickness of VO2 and LSCO thin films are about 40 nm and 400 nm, respectively. Good crystalline match between LSCO and VO2 films was observed from the SEM. The built-in voltages for the junction are about 1.1 V and 2.3 V for the sample in the metallic and insulating state, respectively. The sample can undergo the current induced MIT during applying field when the sample was heated at 40 and 50ºC. This is in agreement with the value obtained from the difference in the work functions of LSCO and VO2. The band structure of the heterojunction was proposed based on the results of analysis.

Keywords: hetrojection, Mott transition, switching , VO2

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Authors: Sung-Chun Tsai, Li-Fang Chou, Chun-Jung Tseng

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How relational identity of leader-subordinate relationship affects behavior of both parties is getting more and more attentions in recent years. Different from past studies on leader-subordinate relationship taking viewpoint of self-concept or interaction between categories, we took perspective of social cognitive schema with special focus on the cognition structure and category content of the vertical leader-subordinate relationship. This study firstly clarified the dimensions and contents of cognitive structure of vertical leader-subordinate relationship. By using two dimensions of “equal/unequal” and “close/distant”, the contents of the leader-subordinate relational identity (LSRI) are classified into four categories: communal affection RI (equal and close), instrumental exchange RI (equal but distant), care-repay RI (unequal but close), and authority-obedience RI (unequal and distant). Furthermore, according to the four dimensions of leader-subordinate relational identity, we explored: (1) how a leader’s LSRI leads to paternalistic leadership; and (2) how paternalistic leadership affects subordinate’s LSRI. Using 59 work group as sample (59 leaders and 251 subordinates), the results of HLM and regression analysis showed: (1) leader’s LSRI significantly affects leadership behavior: instrumental exchange RI is positively relates to authoritarian leadership behavior, but significantly has negative relationship with benevolent leadership; care-repay RI has significantly positive relationship with authoritative leadership; authority-obedience RI has significantly positive relationship with authoritarian leadership; (2) paternalistic leadership is significantly related to subordinates’ LSRI: benevolent leadership is positively related to subordinate’s communal affection and care-repay RI; authoritative leadership has significantly positive relationship with care-repay and authority-obedience RI; authoritarian leadership has significantly positive relationship with subordinate’s instrumental exchange RI. Finally, the main findings, contributions and limits, future research directions, and implications were also discussed.

Keywords: relational identity, leader-subordinate relational identity (LSRI), relational schema, paternalistic leadership

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Authors: Chun-Shien Lu

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Privacy-preserving query has recently received considerable attention in the signal processing and multimedia community. It is also a critical step in wireless sensor network for retrieval of sensitive data. The purposes of privacy-preserving query in both the areas of signal processing and sensor network are the same, but the similarity and difference of the adopted technologies are not fully explored. In this paper, we first review the recently developed methods of privacy-preserving query, and then describe in a comprehensive manner what we can learn from the mutual of both areas.

Keywords: encryption, privacy-preserving, search, security

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Authors: Xi Gu, Guan Heng Yeoh, Victoria Timchenko

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In the current work, a three-dimensional geometry of a 75% stenosed blood vessel is analysed. Large eddy simulation (LES) with the help of a dynamic subgrid scale Smagorinsky model is applied to model the turbulent pulsatile flow. The geometry, the transmural pressure and the properties of the blood and the elastic boundary were based on clinical measurement data. For the flexible wall model, a thin solid region is constructed around the 75% stenosed blood vessel. The deformation of this solid region was modelled as a deforming boundary to reduce the computational cost of the solid model. Fluid-structure interaction is realised via a two-way coupling between the blood flow modelled via LES and the deforming vessel. The information of the flow pressure and the wall motion was exchanged continually during the cycle by an arbitrary lagrangian-eulerian method. The boundary condition of current time step depended on previous solutions. The fluctuation of the velocity in the post-stenotic region was analysed in the study. The axial velocity at normalised position Z=0.5 shows a negative value near the vessel wall. The displacement of the elastic boundary was concerned in this study. In particular, the wall displacement at the systole and the diastole were compared. The negative displacement at the stenosis indicates a collapse at the maximum velocity and the deceleration phase.

Keywords: Large Eddy Simulation, Fluid Structural Interaction, constricted artery, Computational Fluid Dynamics

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Authors: Myung Hwan Na, Ho- Chun Song, EunHee Hong

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We widely use normal linear mixed-effects model to analysis data in repeated measurement. In case of detecting heteroscedasticity and the non-normality of the population distribution at the same time, normal linear mixed-effects model can give improper result of analysis. To achieve more robust estimation, we use heavy tailed linear mixed-effects model which gives more exact and reliable analysis conclusion than standard normal linear mixed-effects model.

Keywords: reliability, tires, field data, linear mixed-effects model

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Authors: Ren-Jieh Kuo, Chun-Shou Huang

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The research of juice flavor forecasting has become more important in China. Due to the fast economic growth in China, many different kinds of juices have been introduced to the market. If a beverage company can understand their customers’ preference well, the juice can be served more attractively. Thus, this study intends to introduce the basic theory and computing process of grapes juice flavor forecasting based on support vector regression (SVR). Applying SVR, BPN and LR to forecast the flavor of grapes juice in real data, the result shows that SVR is more suitable and effective at predicting performance.

Keywords: flavor forecasting, artificial neural networks, Support Vector Regression, China

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Authors: Yao-Hui Huang, Ming-Chun Yen, Jui-Yen Lin, Yu-Jen Shih

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This work investigated the reclamation of boron in industrial wastewaters by a chemical oxo-precipitation (COP) technique at room temperature. In COP, the boric acid was pretreated with H₂O₂, yielding various perborate anions. Afterwards, calcium chloride was used to efficiently remove boron through precipitation of calcium perborate. The important factors included reacted pH and the molar ratio of [Ca]/[B]. Under conditions of pH 11 and [Ca]/[B] of 1, the boron concentration could be reduced immediately from 600 ppm to 50 ppm in 10 minutes. The boron removal was enhanced with a higher [Ca]/[B], which further reduced boron to 20 ppm in 10 minutes. Nevertheless, the dissolution of carbon dioxide potentially affected the efficacy of COP and increased the boron concentration after 10 minutes.

Keywords: chemical oxo-precipitation, boron, carbon dioxide, hydrogen peroxide

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Authors: Pui Hong Chung, Wing Chi Ho, Jun Li, Cyrus Leung, Ek Yeoh

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Background: Cigarette smoking is associated with poor tuberculosis (TB) outcomes in terms of progression of active TB, relapse of TB and TB-related mortality, but the association with latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) is unclear. The systematic review conducted aimed at studying the association between active smoking and LTBI, and likelihood of dose-response relationship. Methods: Two independent reviewers searched three electronic databases comprising PudMed, Medline by EBSCOHOST, ExcerptaMedica Database (EMBASE), from inception up to 31st Dec 2015 for studies reporting data on current smoking and the LTBI with tuberculin skin test (TST) or interferon-γ release assays (IGRAs) results, comparing the odds ratios (ORs) of outcome measure of TST or IGRAs among current smokers with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: Seven studies were identified, including six cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal cohort study. The outcome measures from three studies were in TST, three studies in IGRAs and one for both tests. For TST, OR ranging from 1.39 to 3.40 (95% CI) with all studies shown positive association between cigarette smoking and LTBI. For IGRAs, OR ranging from 0.47 to 1.89 (95% CI) with one study shown the negative association that might be related to impaired interferon-gamma production in immunosuppressive persons. One identified study demonstrated positive dose-response relationship in TST result. Conclusions: Cigarette smoking is likely to be a risk factor of LTBI. There is the important implication for TB and tobacco control program to halt TB by empowering public health policy. Further study is also needed to provide more evidence of the dose-response model/relationship.

Keywords: latent tuberculosis infection, systematic review, active smoking, model

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Authors: Joanne Sin Wei Yeoh, Quynh Lê, Rosa McManamey

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Food security indicates the ability of individuals, households and communities to acquire food that is healthy, sustainable, affordable, appropriate and accessible. Despite Australia’s current ability to produce enough food to feed a population larger than its current population, there has been substantial evidence over the last decades to demonstrate many Australians struggle to feed themselves, including those from a cultural and linguistically diverse (CALD) background. The study aimed to investigate migrants’ perceptions and experiences on food security in Tasmania. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 migrants residing in North, South and North West Tasmania, who were recruited through purposive sampling. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the interview data. Four main themes were identified from the interview data: (1) Understanding of food security; (2) Experiences with the food security in Tasmania; (3) Factors that influence migrants’ food security in Tasmania; and (4) Acculturation strategies. Various sub-themes have emerged under each of these four major themes. Though the findings indicate participants are satisfied with their current food security in Tasmania, they still encounter some challenges in food availability, accessibility, and affordability in Tasmania. Factors that influence migrants’ food security were educational background, language barrier, socioeconomic status, geographical isolation, and cultural background. By using different acculturation strategies, migrants managed to adapt to the new food culture. In addition, social and cultural capitals were also treated as vital roles in improving migrants’ food security. The findings indicate migrants residing in Tasmania face different challenges on food security. They use different strategies for food security while acculturating into a new environment. The findings may provide useful information for migrants in Australia and various private organisations or relevant government departments that address food security for migrants.

Keywords: experiences, food security, migrants, perceptions

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Authors: Machimontorn Promtong, Sherman C. P. Cheung, Guan H. Yeoh, Sara Vahaji, Jiyuan Tu

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The wide range of industrial applications involved with boiling flows promotes the necessity of establishing fundamental knowledge in boiling flow phenomena. For this purpose, a number of experimental and numerical researches have been performed to elucidate the underlying physics of this flow. In this paper, the improved wall boiling models, implemented on ANSYS CFX 14.5, were introduced to study subcooled boiling flow at elevated pressure. At the heated wall boundary, the Fractal model, Force balance approach and Mechanistic frequency model are given for predicting the nucleation site density, bubble departure diameter, and bubble departure frequency. The presented wall heat flux partitioning closures were modified to consider the influence of bubble sliding along the wall before the lift-off, which usually happens in the flow boiling. The simulation was performed based on the Two-fluid model, where the standard k-ω SST model was selected for turbulence modelling. Existing experimental data at around 5 bars were chosen to evaluate the accuracy of the presented mechanistic approach. The void fraction and Interfacial Area Concentration (IAC) are in good agreement with the experimental data. However, the predicted bubble velocity and Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) are over-predicted. This over-prediction may be caused by consideration of only dispersed and spherical bubbles in the simulations. In the future work, the important physical mechanisms of bubbles, such as merging and shrinking during sliding on the heated wall will be incorporated into this mechanistic model to enhance its capability for a wider range of flow prediction.

Keywords: subcooled boiling flow, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), mechanistic approach, two-fluid model

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Authors: Lu Gan, Songmin Shang, Marcus Chun Wah Yuen

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A conductive and stretchable cotton fabric was prepared in this study through coating the graphene nanoribbon onto the cotton fabric. The mechanical and electrical properties of the prepared cotton fabric were then investigated. As shown in the results, the graphene nanoribbon coated cotton fabric had an improvement in both mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. Moreover, the resistance of the cotton fabric had a linear dependence on the strain applied to it. The prepared graphene nanoribbon coated cotton fabric has great application potentials in smart textile industry.

Keywords: conductive fabric, graphene nanoribbon, coating, enhanced properties

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Authors: Joanne Sin Wei Yeoh, Quynh Lê, Daniel R. Terry, Rosa Mc Manamey

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Food security is a global issue and one of the concerns in Australia, particularly in regional and rural areas. Despite Australia’s current ability to produce enough food to feed more than its current population, evidence has been accumulating over the last decade to demonstrate many Australians struggle to feed themselves, including immigrants from cultural and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. This study aims to identify the acculturation strategies used by migrants to enhance their approach to food security in Tasmania. The study employed a mixed methods approach that used both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with migrants living in Tasmania. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse data collected from questionnaire, whereas, thematic analysis was employed to analyse the interview data. Migrants (n=301) completed the questionnaire with a response rate of 50.2% and 33 follow-up interviews were conducted. We found that majority of the migrants (70.0%) replaced food ingredients and went without the food they could not buy from shops with similar ingredients. Support and advice from friends were effective ways to improve their food access. Additionally, length of stays in Tasmania and region of origin were significantly associated with the ways migrants dealing with food security. The interview results revealed that migrants managed to adapt to the new food culture by using different acculturation strategies, including access food ingredients from other country; adjusting or adapting; home gardening and access to technology. In addition, social and cultural capitals were also treated as vital roles in improving migrants’ food security. To summarize, migrants employed different strategies for food security while acculturating into the new environment. Our findings could become the guidelines for migrants and relevant government or private sectors that address food security.

Keywords: food security, migrants, strategies, inferential statistics

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Authors: Cheng-Yen Huang, Yu-Jen Shih, Ming-Chun Yen, Yao-Hui Huang

Abstract:

This research developed a fluidized-bed homogeneous crystallization (FBHC) process to remove copper from synthetic wastewater in terms of recovery of highly pure malachite (Cu2(OH)2CO3) pellets. The experimental parameters of FBHC which included pH, molar ratio of copper to carbonate, copper loading, upper flowrate and bed height were tested in the absence of seed particles. Under optimized conditions, both the total copper removal (TR) and crystallization ratio (CR) reached 99%. The malachite crystals were characterized by XRD and SEM. FBHC was capable of treating concentrated copper (1600 ppm) wastewater and minimizing the sludge production.

Keywords: copper, carbonate, fluidized-bed, crystallization, malachite

Procedia PDF Downloads 383

Authors: An-Shik Yang, Chin-Ting Kuo, Yung-Chun Yang, Wen-Hsin Hsieh, Chiang-Ho Cheng

Abstract:

Optical biosensors have become a powerful detection and analysis tool for wide-ranging applications in biomedical research, pharmaceuticals and environmental monitoring. This study carried out the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based simulations to explore the dispersion phenomenon in the microchannel of a optical biosensor. The predicted time sequences of concentration contours were utilized to better understand the dispersion development occurred in different geometric shapes of microchannels. The simulation results showed the surface concentrations at the sensing probe (with the best performance of a grating coupler) in respect of time to appraise the dispersion effect and therefore identify the design configurations resulting in minimum dispersion.

Keywords: CFD simulations, dispersion, microfluidic, optical waveguide sensors

Procedia PDF Downloads 518

Authors: Changsoo Chon, Sangkuy Han, Donghyun Seo, Jihyung Park, Bokku Kang, Hansung Kim, Keyoungjin Chun, Cheolwoong Ko

Abstract:

The purpose of the study is to develop a finite element model based on 3D bone structural images of Micro-CT and to analyze the stress distribution for the osteoporosis mouse femora. In this study, results of finite element analysis show that the early osteoporosis of mouse model decreased a bone density in trabecular region; however, the bone density in cortical region increased.

Keywords: micro-CT, finite element analysis, osteoporosis, bone strength

Procedia PDF Downloads 332