Search results for: fusion facilities

Authors: Yen-Jong Chen, Jei-An Su

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Public use facilities provide the basic infrastructure supporting the needs of urban sustainable development. These facilities include roads (streets), parking areas, green spaces, public schools, and city parks. However, how to acquire land with the proper location and size still remains uncertain in a capitalist economy where land is largely privately owned, such as in cities in Taiwan. The issue concerning the proper acquisition of reserved land for local public facilities (RLPF) policies has been continuously debated by the Taiwanese government for more than 30 years. Lately, the government has been re-evaluating projects connected with existing RLPF policies from the viewpoints of the needs of local residents, including the living environments of older adults. This challenging task includes addressing the requests of official bureau administrators, citizens whose property rights and current use status are affected, and other stakeholders, along with the means of development. To simplify the decision to acquire or release public land, we selected only public facilities that are needed for living in the local community, including parks, green spaces, plaza squares, and land for kindergartens, schools, and local stadiums. This study categorized these spaces as the community’s “leisure public facilities” (LPF). By constructing an accessibility index of the services of such multi-function facilities, we computed and produced a GIS map of spatial buffer zones for each LPF. Through these procedures, the service needs provided by each LPF were clearly identified. We then used spatial buffer zone envelope mapping to evaluate these service areas. The results obtained can help decide which RLPF should be acquired or released so that community services can be maximized under a limited budget.

Keywords: urban public facilities, community demand, accessibility, spatial buffer zone, Taiwan

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Authors: Ijaz Ahamad Tatlah

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The justification of this study was to identify about physical facilities as encouragement to Quality Assurance Practices (QAP) in the Universities of Pakistan concerning the views of students, teachers and Directors of Quality Enhancement Cells’ (QEC’s) and to differentiate the views of students, teachers and Directors of QECs in relation to physical facilities about quality assurance practices in the universities of Pakistan. It was a quantitative and qualitative research study. This study was conducted on a sample of 28 universities (public and private sector) of Pakistan by using random and purposive sampling technique. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were planned to gather information from students, teachers and Directors of QECs in relation to physical facilities about quality assurance practices in the universities of Pakistan. The data was analyzed by using Descriptive, inferential statistics, and thematic coding. The study revealed that students, teachers and Directors of QEC’s faced a lot of problems and issues without physical facilities. Quality assurance Agency (QAA), Quality Assurance Department (QAD) and Higher Education commission (HEC) all are relevant Pakistani Agencies, which are working consistently of both sectors i.e. public and private to supervise, guide and facilitate the universities of Pakistan for developing quality assurance practices. Majority of the students teachers and Directors’ of QECs opined that books, research journals, manuals for use of science laboratories, equipment for experiments and update computers were available for teachers and students’ in the universities. It was suggested by the students teachers and Directors of QECs of universities that Quality Assurance Practices (QAP) can be accelerated by thinking the following steps: provision of sufficient resources, add the latest software for computers laboratories and new edition of books.

Keywords: physical facilities, quality assurance practices, library, laboratory

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Authors: Hao-Jun Hong, Jung-Tang Huang

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The world is gradually becoming an aging society, and with the lack of laboring forces, this phenomenon is affecting the nation’s economy growth. Although nursing centers are booming in recent years, the lack of medical resources are yet to be resolved, thus creating an innovative wearable medical device could be a vital solution. This research is focused on the design and development of a wearable device which obtains a more precise heart failure measurement than products on the market. The method used by the device is based on the sensor fusion and big data algorithm. From the test result, the modified structure of wearable device can significantly decrease the MA (Motion Artifact) and provide users a more cozy and accurate physical monitor experience.

Keywords: big data, heart failure, motion artifact, sensor fusion, wearable medical device

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Authors: Upamanyu Majumder, Angshuman Das

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Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a Solid-State joining process. Unlike fusion welding techniques it does not involve operation above the melting point temperature of metals, but above the re-crystallization temperature. FSW also does not involve fusion of other material. FSW of ALUMINIUM has been commercialized and recent studies on joining dissimilar metals have been studied. Friction stir welding was introduced and patented in 1991 by The Welding Institute. For this paper, a total of nine samples each of copper and ALUMINIUM(Dissimilar metals) were welded using FSW process and Vickers Hardness were conducted on each of the samples.

Keywords: friction stir welding (FSW), recrystallization temperature, dissimilar metals, aluminium-copper, Vickers hardness test

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Authors: Xingyu Peng, Qingyuan Hu, Xuebin Zhu, Xi Yuan

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Neutron spectrometry has contributed much to the development of nuclear physics since 1932 and has also become an importance tool in several other fields, notably nuclear technology, fusion plasma diagnostics and radiation protection. Compared with neutron fluxes, neutron spectra can provide more detailed information on the internal physical process of neutron sources, such as fast neutron reactors, fusion plasma, fission-fusion hybrid reactors, and so on. However, high performance neutron spectrometer is not so commonly available as it requires the use of large and complex instrumentation. This work describes the development and characterization of a compact magnetic proton recoil (MPR) spectrometer for high-resolution measurements of fast neutron spectra. The compact MPR spectrometer is featured by its large recoil angle, small size permanent analysis magnet, short beam transport line and dual-purpose detector array for both steady state and pulsed neutron spectra measurement. A 3-dimensional electromagnetic particle transport code is developed to simulate the response function of the spectrometer. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the spectrometer is mainly determined by n-p recoil foil and proton apertures, and an overall energy resolution of 3% is achieved for 14 MeV neutrons. Dedicated experiments using alpha source and mono-energetic neutron beam are employed to verify the simulated response function of the compact MPR spectrometer. These experimental results show a good agreement with the simulated ones, which indicates that the simulation code possesses good accuracy and reliability. The compact MPR spectrometer described in this work is a valuable tool for fast neutron spectra measurements for the fission or fusion devices.

Keywords: neutron spectrometry, magnetic proton recoil spectrometer, neutron spectra, fast neutron

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Authors: David L. Olson, Stephen B. H. Bruder, Adam S. Watkins, Cleon E. Davis

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In global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), denied settings such as indoor environments, autonomous mobile robots are often limited to dead-reckoning navigation techniques to determine their position, velocity, and attitude (PVA). Localization is typically accomplished by employing an inertial measurement unit (IMU), which, while precise in nature, accumulates errors rapidly and severely degrades the localization solution. Standard sensor fusion methods, such as Kalman filtering, aim to fuse precise IMU measurements with accurate aiding sensors to establish a precise and accurate solution. In indoor environments, where GNSS and no other a priori information is known about the environment, effective sensor fusion is difficult to achieve, as accurate aiding sensor choices are sparse. However, an opportunity arises by employing a depth camera in the indoor environment. A depth camera can capture point clouds of the surrounding floors and walls. Extracting attitude from these surfaces can serve as an accurate aiding source, which directly combats errors that arise due to gyroscope imperfections. This configuration for sensor fusion leads to a dramatic reduction of PVA error compared to traditional aiding sensor configurations. This paper provides the theoretical basis for the depth camera aiding sensor method, initial expectations of performance benefit via simulation, and hardware implementation, thus verifying its veracity. Hardware implementation is performed on the Quanser Qbot 2™ mobile robot, with a Vector-Nav VN-200™ IMU and Kinect™ camera from Microsoft.

Keywords: autonomous mobile robotics, dead reckoning, depth camera, inertial navigation, Kalman filtering, localization, sensor fusion

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Authors: Iqbal Felani

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A Coal-Fired Power Plant has some integrated facilities to handle coal from three separated coal yards to eight units power plant’s bunker. But nowadays the facilities are not reliable enough for supporting the system. Management planned to invest some facilities to increase the reliability. They also had a plan to make single spesification of coal used all of the units, called Single Quality Coal (SQC). This simulation would compare before and after improvement with two scenarios i.e First In First Out (FIFO) and Last In First Out (LIFO). Some parameters like stay time, reorder point and safety stock is determined by the simulation. Discrete event simulation based software, Flexsim 5.0, is used to help the simulation. Based on the simulation, Single Quality Coal with FIFO scenario has the shortest staytime with 8.38 days.

Keywords: Coal Yard Management, Discrete event simulation First In First Out, Last In First Out.

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Authors: Syed Kashif Ali, Usman Javaid, Abdullah Chohan

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In large enterprises multiple departments use different sort of information systems and databases according to their needs. These systems are independent and heterogeneous in nature and sharing information/data between these systems is not an easy task. The usage of middleware technologies have made data sharing between systems very easy. However, monitoring the exchange of data/information for verification purposes between target and source systems is often complex or impossible for maintenance department due to security/access privileges on target and source systems. In this paper, we are intended to present our experience of an end to end data monitoring approach at middle ware level implemented in Oracle BPEL for data verification without any help of monitoring tool.

Keywords: service level agreement, SOA, BPEL, oracle fusion middleware, web service monitoring

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Authors: Asifa Fitriani, Galih Prakoso

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This study aims to improve the design layout of a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to minimize material handling and redesigning the layout of production facilities based on the safety and health and standards of food production facilities. Problems layout in the one of chip making industry mushrooms in Indonesia is cross movement between work stations, work accidents, and the standard of facilities that do not conform with the standards of the food industry. Improvement layout design using CORELAP and 5S method to give recommendation and implementation of occupational health and safety standards of food production facilities. From the analysis, improved layout using CORELAP provide a smaller displacement distance is 155.84 meters from the initial displacement distance of 335.9 meters, and providing a shorter processing time than the original 112.726 seconds to 102.831 seconds. 5S method also has recommended the completion of occupational health and safety issues as well as the standard means of food production by changing the working environment better.

Keywords: Layout Design, Corelap, 5S

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Authors: Elham Taghizadeh, Mostafa Abedzadeh, Mostafa Setak

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Logistics network is expected that opened facilities work continuously for a long time horizon without any failure; but in real world problems, facilities may face disruptions. This paper studies a reliable joint inventory location problem to optimize cost of facility locations, customers’ assignment, and inventory management decisions when facilities face failure risks and doesn’t work. In our model we assume when a facility is out of work, its customers may be reassigned to other operational facilities otherwise they must endure high penalty costs associated with losing service. For defining the model closer to real world problems, the model is proposed based on p-median problem and the facilities are considered to have limited capacities. We define a new binary variable (Z_is) for showing that customers are not assigned to any facilities. Our problem involve a bi-objective model; the first one minimizes the sum of facility construction costs and expected inventory holding costs, the second one function that mention for the first one is minimizes maximum expected customer costs under normal and failure scenarios. For solving this model we use NSGAII and MOSS algorithms have been applied to find the pareto- archive solution. Also Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is applied for optimizing the NSGAII Algorithm Parameters. We compare performance of two algorithms with three metrics and the results show NSGAII is more suitable for our model.

Keywords: joint inventory-location problem, facility location, NSGAII, MOSS

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Authors: Simon Ayorinde Okanlawon

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The youths’ prevalent negative attitude to farming is partly due to amenities and facilities found in the urban centers at the expense of the rural areas. Hence, there is the need to create a befitting and conducive farm environment to retain farm employees and attract the youth to farming. This can be achieved through the provision of services and amenities that will ensure a comfortable standard of living higher than that obtained by a person of equal status in other forms of employment in urban centers, thereby eliminating the psychological feeling of lowered self-esteem associated with farming. This study assessed farm settlements’ facilities and patronage in Oyo State with a view to using the information to encourage sustainable agriculture in Nigeria. The study becomes necessary because of the dearth of information on the state of facilities in the farm settlements as it affects patronage of farm settlements for sustainable agriculture in the developing countries like Nigeria. The study utilized three purposely selected farm settlements- Ogbomoso, Fasola and Ilora out of the seven existing ones n Oyo State. One hundred percent (100%) of the 262 residential buildings in the three settlements were sampled, from where a household head from each of the buildings was randomly chosen. This translates to 262 household heads served with questionnaire out of which 47.7% of the questionnaires were recovered. Information obtained included respondents’ residency categories, residents’ status, residency years, housing types, types of holding and number of acres/holding. Others include the socio-economic attributes such as age, gender, income, educational status of respondents, assessment of existing facilities in the selected sites, the level of patronage of the farm settlements including perceived pull factors that can enhance farm settlements patronage. The study revealed that the residents were not satisfied with the adequacy and quality of all the facilities available in their settlements. Residents’ satisfaction with infrastructural facilities cannot be statistically linked with location across the study area. Findings suggested that residents of Ogbomoso farm settlements were not enjoying adequate provision of water supply and road as much as those from Ilora and Fasola. Patronage of the farm settlements were largely driven by farming activities and sale of farm produce. The respondents agreed that provision of farm resort centers, standard recreational and tourism facilities, vacation employment opportunities for youths, functional internet and communication networks among others are likely to boost the level of patronage of the farm settlements. The study concluded that improvement of the facilities both in quality and quantity will encourage the youths in going back to farming. It then recommends that maintenance of existing facilities and provision of more facilities such as resort centers be ensured.

Keywords: encourage, farm settlements' facilities, Oyo state, patronage

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Authors: Ujjal Chattaraj, M. Raviteja, Chaitanya Aemala

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Over the years vehicular traffic has been given priority over pedestrian traffic. With the increase of population in cities, pedestrian traffic is increasing day by day. Pedestrian safety has become a matter of concern for the Traffic Engineers. Pedestrian comfort is primary important for the Engineers who design different pedestrian facilities. Pedestrian comfort and safety can be measured in terms of different level of service (LOS) of the facilities. In this study video data on pedestrian movement have been collected from different railway foot over bridges (FOB) in India. The level of service of those facilities has been analyzed. A cellular automata based model has been formulated to mimic the route choice behaviour of the pedestrians on the foot over bridges.

Keywords: cellular automata model, foot over bridge, level of service, pedestrian

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Authors: Iulianna Taritsa, Kuldeep Neote, Eric Fossel

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Lysosome-induced immunogenic cell death (LIICD) is a powerful mechanism of targeting cancer cells that kills circulating malignant cells and primes the host’s immune cells against future remission. Current immunotherapies for cancer are limited in preventing recurrence – a gap that can be bridged by training the immune system to recognize cancer neoantigens. Lysosomal leakage can be induced therapeutically to traffic antigens from dying cells to dendritic cells, which can later present those tumorigenic antigens to T cells. Previous research has shown that oxidative agents administered in the tumor microenvironment can initiate LIICD. We generated a fusion protein between an oxidative agent known as xanthine oxidase (XO) and a mini-antibody specific for EGFR/HER2-sensitive breast tumor cells. The anti-EGFR single domain antibody fragment is uniquely sourced from llama, which is functional without the presence of a light chain. These llama micro-antibodies have been shown to be better able to penetrate tissues and have improved physicochemical stability as compared to traditional monoclonal antibodies. We demonstrate that the fusion protein created is stable and can induce early markers of immunogenic cell death in an in vitro human breast cancer cell line (SkBr3). Specifically, we measured overall cell death, as well as surface-expressed calreticulin, extracellular ATP release, and HMGB1 production. These markers are consensus indicators of ICD. Flow cytometry, luminescence assays, and ELISA were used respectively to quantify biomarker levels between treated versus untreated cells. We also included a positive control group of SkBr3 cells dosed with doxorubicin (a known inducer of LIICD) and a negative control dosed with cisplatin (a known inducer of cell death, but not of the immunogenic variety). We looked at each marker at various time points after cancer cells were treated with the XO/antibody fusion protein, doxorubicin, and cisplatin. Upregulated biomarkers after treatment with the fusion protein indicate an immunogenic response. We thus show the potential for this fusion protein to induce an anticancer effect paired with an adaptive immune response against EGFR/HER2+ cells. Our research in human cell lines here provides evidence for the success of the same therapeutic method for patients and serves as the gateway to developing a new treatment approach against breast cancer.

Keywords: apoptosis, breast cancer, immunogenic cell death, lysosome

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Authors: YU Kaijun, Liang Dong, Zhang Yarong, Jin Zhenzhou, Yang Zhaobao

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For the impact monitoring of distributed structures, the traditional positioning methods are based on the time difference, which includes the four-point arc positioning method and the triangulation positioning method. But in the actual operation, these two methods have errors. In this paper, the Multi-Agent Blackboard Coordination Principle is used to combine the two methods. Fusion steps: (1) The four-point arc locating agent calculates the initial point and records it to the Blackboard Module.(2) The triangulation agent gets its initial parameters by accessing the initial point.(3) The triangulation agent constantly accesses the blackboard module to update its initial parameters, and it also logs its calculated point into the blackboard.(4) When the subsequent calculation point and the initial calculation point are within the allowable error, the whole coordination fusion process is finished. This paper presents a Multi-Agent collaboration method whose agent framework is JADE. The JADE platform consists of several agent containers, with the agent running in each container. Because of the perfect management and debugging tools of the JADE, it is very convenient to deal with complex data in a large structure. Finally, based on the data in Jade, the results show that the impact location method based on Multi-Agent coordination fusion can reduce the error of the two methods.

Keywords: impact monitoring, structural health monitoring(SHM), multi-agent system(MAS), black-board coordination, JADE

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Authors: Amit Bhattacharyya

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The economic scenario of any region does not show the real picture for the measurement of overall development. Therefore, economic development must be accompanied by social development to be able to make an assessment to measure the level of development. The spatial variation with respect to social development has been discussed taking into account the quality of functioning of a social system in a specific area. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the spatial distribution of social infrastructural facilities and analyze the magnitude of regional disparities at inter- block level in Barddhman district. It starts with the detailed account of the selection process of social infrastructure indicators and describes the methodology employed in the empirical analysis. Analyzing the block level data, this paper tries to identify the disparity among the blocks in the levels of social development. The results have been subsequently explained using both statistical analysis and geo spatial technique. The paper reveals that the social development is not going on at the same rate in every part of the district. Health facilities and educational facilities are concentrated at some selected point. So overall development activities come to be concentrated in a few centres and the disparity is seen over the blocks.

Keywords: disparity, inter-block, social development, spatial variation

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Authors: Ons Slimene, Aroua Taamallah, Maha Khemaja

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In recent years, human activity recognition (HAR) has been a key area of research due to its diverse applications. It has garnered increasing attention in the field of computer vision. HAR plays an important role in people’s daily lives as it has the ability to learn advanced knowledge about human activities from data. In HAR, activities are usually represented by exploiting different types of sensors, such as embedded sensors or visual sensors. However, these sensors have limitations, such as local obstacles, image-related obstacles, sensor unreliability, and consumer concerns. Recently, several deep learning-based approaches have been proposed for HAR and these approaches are classified into two categories based on the type of data used: vision-based approaches and sensor-based approaches. This research paper highlights the importance of multimodal data fusion from skeleton data obtained from videos and data generated by embedded sensors using deep neural networks for achieving HAR. We propose a deep multimodal fusion network based on a twostream architecture. These two streams use the Convolutional Neural Network combined with the Bidirectional LSTM (CNN BILSTM) to process skeleton data and data generated by embedded sensors and the fusion at the feature level is considered. The proposed model was evaluated on a public OPPORTUNITY++ dataset and produced a accuracy of 96.77%.

Keywords: human activity recognition, action recognition, sensors, vision, human-centric sensing, deep learning, context-awareness

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Authors: M. L. Anitha, K. A. Radhakrishna Rao

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With the advent of modern computing technology, there is an increased demand for developing recognition systems that have the capability of verifying the identity of individuals. Recognition systems are required by several civilian and commercial applications for providing access to secured resources. Traditional recognition systems which are based on physical identities are not sufficiently reliable to satisfy the security requirements due to the use of several advances of forgery and identity impersonation methods. Recognizing individuals based on his/her unique physiological characteristics known as biometric traits is a reliable technique, since these traits are not transferable and they cannot be stolen or lost. Since the performance of biometric based recognition system depends on the particular trait that is utilized, the present work proposes a fusion approach which combines Inner knuckle print (IKP) trait of the middle, ring and index fingers with the geometrical features of hand. The hand image captured from a digital camera is preprocessed to find finger IKP as region of interest (ROI) and hand geometry features. Geometrical features are represented as the distances between different key points and IKP features are extracted by applying local binary pattern descriptor on the IKP ROI. The decision level AND fusion was adopted, which has shown improvement in performance of the combined scheme. The proposed approach is tested on the database collected at our institute. Proposed approach is of significance since both hand geometry and IKP features can be extracted from the palm region of the hand. The fusion of these features yields a false acceptance rate of 0.75%, false rejection rate of 0.86% for verification tests conducted, which is less when compared to the results obtained using individual traits. The results obtained confirm the usefulness of proposed approach and suitability of the selected features for developing biometric based recognition system based on features from palmar region of hand.

Keywords: biometrics, hand geometry features, inner knuckle print, recognition

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Authors: Sagar Hedaoo, Fazle Baki, Ahmed Azab

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In supply chain management, network design for scalable manufacturing facilities is an emerging field of research. Facility location allocation assigns facilities to customers to optimize the overall cost of the supply chain. To further optimize the costs, capacities of these facilities can be changed in accordance with customer demands. A mathematical model is formulated to fully express the problem at hand and to solve small-to-mid range instances. A dedicated constraint has been developed to restrict emissions in line with the Kyoto protocol. This problem is NP-Hard; hence, a simulated annealing metaheuristic has been developed to solve larger instances. A case study on the USA-Canada cross border crossing is used.

Keywords: emission, mixed integer linear programming, metaheuristic, simulated annealing

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Authors: L. R. Valencia Pérez, J. M. Peña Aguilar, Valencia Pérez, Héctor Fernando, Lamadrid A. Alberto, Vivanco V. Martín

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Cosmology is a discipline commonly linked to philosophy. In this work, we show cosmology, from a perspective that can provide some proposals to help develop SMB in Mexico. We start from the belief that, in a complex world, the solutions to problems must nurture from different approaches. In order to be able to do this, we need to change our point of reference and use theoretical proposals and methodologies that came from other disciplines; in this case, we will try to show that between philosophy and administration exist dialogs that need to be incentivized. The work is structured in three parts. In the first one, we create a description of cosmology and how it could be applied to business. In the second, we show some of the most common problems that the SMB suffer from and in the third, we present a proposal of how cosmology can help improve the development. Finally, we concluded that better understanding of real needs, integration of knowledge at large scale and using information technologies within the cosmology framework presentment could make a difference.

Keywords: harmonic fusion, national sustainability, financial management, triple helix

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Authors: L. S. Zavodna, J. Zavodny Pospisil

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The aim of this paper is to identify the factors for sustainability in the accommodation sector. Although sustainability is a current trend in tourism, not many facilities know how to apply the concept in practice. This paper presents a model for the implementation of sustainability in hotels, hostels, campgrounds, or other facilities. First, there are identified sections of each accommodation facility, which can contribute to sustainability. Furthermore, concrete steps are presented to transfer this model into reality.

Keywords: accommodation sector, model, sustainable tourism, sustainability

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Authors: Babak Mirbaha, Mahmoud Saffarzadeh, Fatemeh Mohajeri

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Road traffic accidents lead to a higher rate of death and injury, especially in vulnerable road users such as pedestrians. Improving the safety of facilities for pedestrians is a major concern for policymakers because of the high number of pedestrian fatalities and direct and indirect costs which are imposed to the society. This study focuses on the idea of determining the willingness to pay of pedestrians for increasing their safety while crossing the street. In this study, three different scenarios including crossing the street with zebra crossing facilities, crossing the street with zebra crossing facilities and installing a pedestrian traffic light and constructing a pedestrian bridge with escalator are presented. The research was conducted based on stated preferences method. The required data were collected from a questionnaire that consisted of three parts: pedestrian’s demographic characteristics, travel characteristics and scenarios. Four different payment amounts are presented for each scenario and a logit model has been built for each proposed payment. The results show that sex, age, education, average household income and individual salary have significant effect on choosing a scenario. Among the policies that have been mentioned through the questionnaire scenarios, the scenario of crossing the street with zebra crossing facilities and installing a traffic lights is the most frequent, with willingness to pay 10,000 Rials and the scenario of crossing the street with a zebra crossing with a willingness to pay 100,000 Rials having the least frequency. For all scenarios, as the payment is increasing, the willingness to pay decreases.

Keywords: pedestrians, willingness to pay, safety, immunization

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Authors: Lourdes Yareth Herrera-Chavez, Alberto Ruiz, Victor H. Lopez

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Superalloys are used in components that operate at high temperatures such as pressure vessels and heat exchanger tubing. Design standards for these components must consider creep resistance among other criteria. Fusion welding processes are commonly used in the industry to join such components. Fusion processes commonly generate three distinctive zones, i.e. heat affected zone (HAZ), namely weld metal (WM) and base metal (BM). In nickel-based superalloy, the microstructure developed during fusion welding dictates the mechanical response of the welded component and it is very important to establish these effects in the mechanical response of the component. In this work, two plates of Inconel 600 superalloy were Gas Metal Arc Welded (GMAW). Creep samples were cut and milled to specifications and creep tested at a temperature (650 °C) using stress level of 350, 300, 275, 250 and 200 MPa. Microstructural analysis results showed a progressive creep damage evolution that depends on the stress levels with a preferential accumulation of creep damage at the heat affected zone where the creep rupture preferentially occurs owing to an austenitic matrix with grain boundary precipitated of the type Cr23C6. The fractured surfaces showed dimple patterns of cavity and voids. Results indicated that the damage mechanism is due to cavity growth by the combined effect of the power law and diffusion creep.

Keywords: austenitic microstructure, creep damage evolution, heat affected zone, vickers microhardness

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Authors: Rio Hirakawa, Christian Gundlach, Sven Hartwig

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Aluminium has been used in a wide range of industrial applications due to its numerous advantages, including excellent specific strength, thermal conductivity, corrosion resistance, workability and recyclability. The automotive industry is increasingly adopting multi-materials, including aluminium in structures and components to improve the mechanical usability and performance of individual components. A common method for assembling dissimilar materials is mechanical joining, but mechanical joining requires multiple manufacturing steps, affects the mechanical properties of the base material and increases the weight due to additional metal parts. Fusion bonding is being used in more and more industries as a way of avoiding the above drawbacks. Infusion bonding, and surface pre-treatment of the base material is essential to ensure the long-life durability of the joint. Laser surface treatment of aluminium has been shown to improve the durability of the joint by forming a passive oxide film and roughening the substrate surface. Infusion bonding, the polymer bonds directly to the metal instead of the adhesive, but the sensitivity to interfacial contamination is higher due to the chemical activity and molecular size of the polymer. Laser-treated surfaces are expected to absorb impurities from the storage atmosphere over time, but the effect of such changes in the treated surface over time on the durability of fusion-bonded joints has not yet been fully investigated. In this paper, the effect of the ageing of laser-treated surfaces of aluminum alloys on the corrosion resistance of fusion-bonded joints is therefore investigated. AlMg3 of 1.5 mm thickness was cut using a water-jet cutting machine, cleaned and degreased with isopropanol and surface pre-treated with a pulsed fiber laser at a wavelength of 1060 nm, maximum power of 70 W and repetition rate of 55 kHz. The aluminum surfaces were then stored in air for various periods of time and their corrosion resistance was assessed by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). For the aluminum joints, induction heating was employed as the fusion bonding method and single-lap shear specimens were prepared. The corrosion resistance of the joints was assessed by measuring the lap shear strength before and after neutral salt spray. Cross-sectional observations by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were also carried out to investigate changes in the microstructure of the bonded interface. Finally, the corrosion resistance of the surface and the joint were compared and the differences in the mechanisms of corrosion resistance enhancement between the two were discussed.

Keywords: laser surface treatment, pre-treatment, bonding, corrosion, durability, interface, automotive, aluminium alloys, joint, fusion bonding

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Authors: Melaku Tsehay

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The Consortium of Christian Relief and Development Associations (CCRDA), and the CORE Group Polio Partners (CGPP) Secretariat have been working with Global Alliance for Vac-cines and Immunization (GAVI) to improve the immunization data quality in Afar and Somali Regional States. The main aim of this study was to compare the quality of immunization data before and after the above interventions in health facilities in the pastoralist communities in Ethiopia. To this end, a comparative-cross-sectional study was conducted on 51 health facilities. The baseline data was collected in May 2019, while the end line data in August 2021. The WHO data quality self-assessment tool (DQS) was used to collect data. A significant improvment was seen in the accuracy of the pentavalent vaccine (PT)1 (p = 0.012) data at the health posts (HP), while PT3 (p = 0.010), and Measles (p = 0.020) at the health centers (HC). Besides, a highly sig-nificant improvment was observed in the accuracy of tetanus toxoid (TT)2 data at HP (p < 0.001). The level of over- or under-reporting was found to be < 8%, at the HP, and < 10% at the HC for PT3. The data completeness was also increased from 72.09% to 88.89% at the HC. Nearly 74% of the health facilities timely reported their respective immunization data, which is much better than the baseline (7.1%) (p < 0.001). These findings may provide some hints for the policies and pro-grams targetting on improving immunization data qaulity in the pastoralist communities.

Keywords: data quality, immunization, verification factor, pastoralist region

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Authors: Chang-Hsing Lee, Cheng-Chang Lien, Chin-Chuan Han

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In this paper, an edge-strength guided multiscale retinex (EGMSR) approach will be proposed for color image contrast enhancement. In EGMSR, the pixel-dependent weight associated with each pixel in the single scale retinex output image is computed according to the edge strength around this pixel in order to prevent from over-enhancing the noises contained in the smooth dark/bright regions. Further, by fusing together the enhanced results of EGMSR and adaptive multiscale retinex (AMSR), we can get a natural fused image having high contrast and proper tonal rendition. Experimental results on several low-contrast images have shown that our proposed approach can produce natural and appealing enhanced images.

Keywords: image enhancement, multiscale retinex, image fusion, EGMSR

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Authors: Rim Frikha, Nouha Bouayed Abdelmoula, Afifa Sellami, Salima Daoud, Tarek Rebai

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Klippel-Feil Syndrome (KFS) is characterized by congenital vertebral fusion of the cervical spine resulting from faulty segmentation along the embryo's developing axis. A wide spectrum of associated anomalies may be present. This heterogeneity has complicated elucidation of the genetic etiology and management of the syndrome. We report a case of an isolated Klippel-Feil Syndrome with C5-C6 fusion on the cervical spine. It‘s the rarest form of congenital fused cervical vertebrae which is predisposed to the risk of spinal cord injury and neurologic problems. The aim of this paper was to review clinical heterogeneity; radiographic abnormalities and genetic etiology in Klippel-Feil Syndrome. We insist in comprehensive evaluation and delineation of diagnostic and prognostic classes.

Keywords: Klippel–Feil anomaly, genetic, clinical heterogeneity, radiographic abnormalities

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Authors: Chidozie Celestine Uzoigwe, Thabelo Ramantswana

Abstract:

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to review the current state of knowledge in Sustainable Management (SM) practices in Facilities Management (FM) for housing estates with a view to identifying gaps and drawbacks in the existing body of knowledge. Integrating SM practices in housing estates is understood and applied in some developed countries, but little is known about the concept by practitioners in developing nations like South Africa. Indeed, South African housing studies and policy documents emphasize the significance of sustainability practices in housing estates, but regrettably, it still remains in unsustainable housing for decades. Method: This is done through a comprehensive literature review in combination with the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines and the Recursive Content Abstraction (RCA) analytical approach. Finding: Findings revealed there are significant challenges to the integration of SM practices in FM for housing estates in South Africa, such as lack of understanding and expertise by practitioners, absence of support from top-level management, lack of appropriate sustainability management framework as well as people management. The review further suggests the need for an enabler to guide practitioners in integrating the SM concept in housing estates. Originality: Integrating SM principles in facilities management for housing estates are required to eliminate the detrimental impact the built environment exerts on the well-being of individuals and organizations. Thus, the study underlines the need for an enabler that will facilitate practitioners embedding sustainable management measures in the management of housing estates in South Africa.

Keywords: facilities management, housing estates, sustainable facilities management, sustainable management, south africa

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Authors: D. R. Ambika, K. R. Radhika, D. Seshachalam

Abstract:

Unconstrained authentication is an important component for personal automated systems and human-computer interfaces. Existing solutions mostly use face as the primary object of analysis. The performance of face-based systems is largely determined by the extent of deformation caused in the facial region and amount of useful information available in occluded face images. Periocular region is a useful portion of face with discriminative ability coupled with resistance to deformation. A reliable portion of periocular area is available for occluded images. The present work demonstrates that joint representation of periocular texture and periocular structure provides an effective expression and poses invariant representation. The proposed methodology provides an effective and compact description of periocular texture and shape. The method is tested over four benchmark datasets exhibiting varied acquisition conditions.

Keywords: periocular authentication, Zernike moments, LBP variance, shape and texture fusion

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Authors: Ugochukwu Ejike Akpudo, Jank-Wook Hur

Abstract:

The increasing demand for improved productivity, maintainability, and reliability has prompted rapidly increasing research studies on the emerging condition-based maintenance concept- Prognostics and health management (PHM). Varieties of fuel pumps serve critical functions in several hydraulic systems; hence, their failure can have daunting effects on productivity, safety, etc. The need for condition monitoring and assessment of these pumps cannot be overemphasized, and this has led to the uproar in research studies on standard feature extraction techniques for optimized condition assessment of fuel pumps. By extracting time-based, frequency-based and the more robust time-frequency based features from these vibrational signals, a more comprehensive feature assessment (and selection) can be achieved for a more accurate and reliable condition assessment of these pumps. With the aid of emerging deep classification and regression algorithms like the locally linear embedding (LLE), we propose a method for comprehensive condition assessment of electromagnetic fuel pumps (EMFPs). Results show that the LLE as a comprehensive feature extraction technique yields better feature fusion/dimensionality reduction results for condition assessment of EMFPs against the use of single features. Also, unlike other feature fusion techniques, its capabilities as a fault classification technique were explored, and the results show an acceptable accuracy level using standard performance metrics for evaluation.

Keywords: electromagnetic fuel pumps, comprehensive feature extraction, condition assessment, locally linear embedding, feature fusion

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Authors: Sundaresan Soundararajan, George Ezekiel Silvananthan, Chor Ngee Tan

Abstract:

Introduction: Transforaminal Interbody Fusion (TLIF) has been adopted for many decades now, however, XLIF, still in relative infancy, has grown to be accepted as a new Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) option. There is a paucity of reports directly comparing lateral approach surgery to other MIS options such as TLIF in the treatment of lumbar degenerative disc diseases. Aims/Objectives: The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and clinical outcomes between Minimally Invasive Transforaminal Interbody Fusion (TLIF) and Minimally Invasive Lateral Interbody Fusion (XLIF) in the treatment of patients with degenerative disc disease of the lumbar spine. Methods: A single center, retrospective cohort study involving a total of 38 patients undergoing surgical intervention between 2010 and 2013 for degenerative disc disease of lumbar spine at single L4/L5 level. 18 patients were treated with MIS TLIF, and 20 patients were treated with XLIF. Results: The XLIF group showed shorter duration of surgery compared to the TLIF group (176 mins vs. 208.3 mins, P = 0.03). Length of hospital stay was also significantly shorter in XLIF group (5.9 days vs. 9 days, p = 0.03). Intraoperative blood loss was favouring XLIF as 85% patients had blood loss less than 100cc compared to 58% in the TLIF group (P = 0.03). Radiologically, disc height was significantly improved post operatively in the XLIF group compared to the TLIF group (0.56mm vs. 0.39mm, P = 0.01). Foraminal height increment was also higher in the XLIF group (0.58mm vs. 0.45mm , P = 0.06). Clinically, back pain and leg pain improved in 85% of patients in the XLIF group and 78% in the TLIF group. Post op hip flexion weakness was more common in the XLIF group (40%) than in the TLIF group (0%). However, this weakness resolved within 6 months post operatively. There was one case of dural tear and surgical site infection in the TLIF group respectively and none in the XLIF group. Visual Analog Scale (VAS) score 6 months post operatively showed comparable reduction in both groups. TLIF group had Owsterty Disability Index (ODI) improvement on 67% while XLIF group showed improvement of 70% of its patients. Conclusions: Lateral approach surgery shows comparable clinical outcomes in resolution of back pain and radiculopathy to conventional MIS techniques such as TLIF. With significantly shorter duration of surgical time, minimal blood loss and shorter hospital stay, XLIF seems to be a reasonable MIS option compared to other MIS techniques in treating degenerative lumbar disc diseases.

Keywords: extreme lateral interbody fusion, lateral approach, minimally invasive, XLIF

Procedia PDF Downloads 182