Search results for: operators with simple spectra

Authors: Suha I. Al-Nassar, K. M. Adel, F. Zainab

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This work was devoted for producing ZnO nanoparticles by pulsed laser ablation (PLA) of Zn metal plate in the aqueous environment of cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) using Q-Switched Nd:YAG pulsed laser with wavelength= 1064 nm, Rep. rate= 10 Hz, Pulse duration= 6 ns and laser energy 50 mJ. Solution of nanoparticles is found stable in the colloidal form for a long time. The effect of ablation time on the optical and structure of ZnO was studied is characterized by UV-visible absorption. UV-visible absorption spectrum has four peaks at 256, 259, 265, 322 nm for ablation time (5, 10, 15, and 20 sec) respectively, our results show that UV–vis spectra show a blue shift in the presence of CTAB with decrease the ablation time and blue shift indicated to get smaller size of nanoparticles. The blue shift in the absorption edge indicates the quantum confinement property of nanoparticles. Also, FTIR transmittance spectra of ZnO2 nanoparticles prepared in these states show a characteristic ZnO absorption at 435–445cm^−1.

Keywords: zinc oxide nanoparticles, CTAB solution, pulsed laser ablation technique, spectroscopic characterization

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Authors: Francis O. Nwawuru, Jeremiah N. Ezeora

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In this paper, a new algorithm for solving the system of split equilibrium and fixed point problems in real Hilbert spaces is considered. The equilibrium bifunction involves a nite family of pseudo-monotone mappings, which is an improvement over monotone operators. More so, it turns out that the solution of the finite family of nonexpansive mappings. The regularized parameters do not depend on Lipschitz constants. Also, the computations of the stepsize, which plays a crucial role in the convergence analysis of the proposed method, do require prior knowledge of the norm of the involved bounded linear map. Furthermore, to speed up the rate of convergence, an inertial term technique is introduced in the proposed method. Under standard assumptions on the operators and the control sequences, using a modified Halpern iteration method, we establish strong convergence, a desired result in applications. Finally, the proposed scheme is applied to solve some optimization problems. The result obtained improves numerous results announced earlier in this direction.

Keywords: equilibrium, Hilbert spaces, fixed point, nonexpansive mapping, extragradient method, regularized equilibrium

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Authors: Tarek M. Alguhane, Ayman H. Khalil, Nour M. Fayed, Ayman M. Ismail

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An existing RC building in Madinah is seismically evaluated with and without infill wall. Four model systems have been considered i. e. model I (no infill), model IIA (strut infill-update from field test), model IIB (strut infill- ASCE/SEI 41) and model IIC (strut infill-Soft storey-ASCE/SEI 41). Three dimensional pushover analyses have been carried out using SAP 2000 software incorporating inelastic material behavior for concrete, steel and infill walls. Infill wall has been modeled as equivalent strut according to suggested equation matching field test measurements and to the ASCE/SEI 41 equation. The effect of building modeling on the performance point as well as capacity and demand spectra due to EQ design spectrum function in Madinah area has been investigated. The response modification factor (R) for the 5 story RC building is evaluated from capacity and demand spectra (ATC-40) for the studied models. The results are summarized and discussed.

Keywords: infill wall, pushover analysis, response modification factor, seismic assessment

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Authors: Muhammad Rehan Usman, Muhammad Arslan Usman, Soo Young Shin

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The new era of digital communication has brought up many challenges that network operators need to overcome. The high demand of mobile data rates require improved networks, which is a challenge for the operators in terms of maintaining the quality of experience (QoE) for their consumers. In live video transmission, there is a sheer need for live surveillance of the videos in order to maintain the quality of the network. For this purpose objective algorithms are employed to monitor the quality of the videos that are transmitted over a network. In order to test these objective algorithms, subjective quality assessment of the streamed videos is required, as the human eye is the best source of perceptual assessment. In this paper we have conducted subjective evaluation of videos with varying spatial and temporal impairments. These videos were impaired with frame freezing distortions so that the impact of frame freezing on the quality of experience could be studied. We present subjective Mean Opinion Score (MOS) for these videos that can be used for fine tuning the objective algorithms for video quality assessment.

Keywords: frame freezing, mean opinion score, objective assessment, subjective evaluation

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Authors: A. Hamadelnil, Z. Razak, E. Matsoom

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Boat landings on fixed offshore structure are designed to absorb the impact energy from the boats approaching the platform for crew transfer. As the size and speed of operating boats vary, the design and maintenance of the boat landings become more challenging. Different oil and gas operators adopting different design criteria for the boat landing design in the region of South East Asia. Rubber strip is used to increase the capacity of the boat landing in absorbing bigger impact energy. Recently, it has been reported that all the rubber strips peel off the boat landing frame within one to two years, and replacement is required to avoid puncturing of the boat’s hull by the exposed sharp edges and bolts used to secure the rubber strip. The capacity of the boat landing in absorbing the impact energy is reduced after the failure of the rubber strip and results in failure of the steel members. The replacement of the rubber strip is costly as it requires a diving spread. The objective of this study is to propose the most practicable criteria to be adopted by oil and gas operators in the design of the boat landings in the region of South East Asia to improve the performance of the boat landing and assure safe operation and cheaper maintenance. This study explores the current design and maintenance challenges of boat landing and compares between the criteria adopted by different operators. In addition, this study explains the reasons behind the denting of many of the boat landing. It also evaluates the effect of grout and rubber strip in the capacity of the boat landing and jacket legs and highlight. Boat landing model and analysis using USFOS and SACS software are carried out and presented in this study considering different design criteria. This study proposes the most practicable criteria to be used in designing the boat landing in South East Asia region to save cost and achieve better performance, safe operation and less cost and maintenance.

Keywords: boat landing, grout, plastic hinge, rubber strip

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Authors: R. Gounina-Allouane, I. Moussaoui, N. Boukahel

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Bacillus antimicrobial metabolites, especially those of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), are of great interest for research because of health risks generated by the excessive use of chemical additives as well as the propagation of resistant microbial strains, caused by the massive treatment with antibiotics. The objective of this study was the selection of Bt strains producing antimicrobial peptides (bacteriocins), and the partial purification of the most powerful bacteriocins, then the determination of their spectra of antimicrobial action. A collection of twenty one Bt strains isolated from soil at Boumerdès (northern Algeria) was used for screening strains having an antagonistic activity against phylogenetically closed bacteria. Spectra of antagonistic activity of two selected strains was determined against other Bt strains, Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial strains of clinical origin and others from ATCC collection as well as yeasts isolated in human dermatology. Bacteriocins of these two strains were partially purified and their effect on the kinetics of growth of the most sensitive microbial strains was studied. The bacteriocinogenic strains were biochemically characterized and their sensitivity to antibiotics was studied.

Keywords: antimicrobial peptides, Bacillus thuringiensis, bacteriocin, partial purification

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Authors: Hong Zhang

Abstract:

Photocatalytic degradation is an appealing process to remove organic contaminants from industrial wastewater, but usually impeded by less effective photocatalysts. Here, we successfully synthesized Ag doped La₂Ti₂O₇ via a simple sol-gel route for photocatalytic methyl orange (MO) degradation. Their crystal structures, morphology, surface area and optical absorption activity were systematically characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, BET N₂ adsorption-desorption study, and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra. The photocatalytic activity was evaluated by MO photodegradation under a 300 W xenon lamp. The results indicate that the doping of Ag has effectively narrowed the band gap, increased the specific area of La2Ti2O7, and supressed the recombination of photogenerated carriers. Compared with the pristine La₂Ti₂O₇, La₁.₉Ag₀.₁Ti₂O₇-δ revealed a superior performance for MO degradation with a degradation rate of 97% in only 60 min. Also, the pseudo-first order kinetic constant for La₁.₉Ag₀.₁Ti₂O₇-δ is ~ 11 times higher than that of undoped sample. The outstanding performance of Ag modified La₂Ti₂O₇ is probably attributed to the integrated factors. Active species trapping experiments indicated that h+ plays a critical role in MO degradation, while •O₂− has slight effect on the photocatalytic activity and the function of •OH can almost be neglected.

Keywords: Ag doped La₂Ti₂O₇, methyl orange, photodegradation, surface plasmon resonance

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Authors: Joshua van Staden, Dane Brown, Karen Bradshaw

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Gun violence is a significant problem in modern-day society. Early detection of carried handguns through closed-circuit television (CCTV) can aid in preventing potential gun violence. However, CCTV operators have a limited attention span. Machine learning approaches to automating the detection of dangerous gun carriers provide a way to aid CCTV operators in identifying these individuals. This study provides insight into the relationship between human key points extracted using human pose estimation (HPE) and their intention to fire a weapon. We examine the feature importance of each keypoint and their correlations. We use principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the feature space and optimize detection. Finally, we run a set of classifiers to determine what form of classifier performs well on this data. We find that hips, shoulders, and knees tend to be crucial aspects of the human pose when making these predictions. Furthermore, the horizontal position plays a larger role than the vertical position. Of the 66 key points, nine principal components could be used to make nonlinear classifications with 86% accuracy. Furthermore, linear classifications could be done with 85% accuracy, showing that there is a degree of linearity in the data.

Keywords: feature engineering, human pose, machine learning, security

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Authors: R. Gounina-Allouane, I. Moussaoui, N. Boukahel

Abstract:

Bacillus antimicrobial metabolites, especially those of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), are of great interest for research because of health risks generated by the excessive use of chemical additives as well as the propagation of resistant microbial strains, caused by the massive treatment with antibiotics. The objective of this study was the selection of Bt strains producing antimicrobial peptides (bacteriocins), and the partial purification of the most powerful bacteriocins, then the determination of their spectra of antimicrobial action. A collection of twenty one Bt strains isolated from soil at Boumerdès (northern of Algeria) was used for screening strains having an antagonistic activity against phylogenetically closed bacteria. Spectra of antagonistic activity of two selected strains was determined against other Bt strains, Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial strains of clinical origin and others from ATCC collection as well as yeasts isolated in human dermatology. Bacteriocins of these two strains were partially purified and their effect on the kinetics of growth of the most sensitive microbial strains was studied. The bacteriocinogenic strains were biochemically characterized and their sensitivity to antibiotics was studied.

Keywords: antimicrobial peptides, Bacillus thuringiensis, bacteriocin, partial purification

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Authors: HyunSu Seo, HoYoung Son, Sungjin Kim, WooYoung Jung

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In order to understand the seismic behavior of steel frame structure with infill FRP composite panel, simple models for simulation on the steel frame with the panel systems were developed in this study. To achieve the simple design method of the steel framed structure with the damping panel system, 2-D finite element analysis with the springs and dashpots models was conducted in ABAQUS. Under various applied spring stiffness and dashpot coefficient, the expected hysteretic energy responses of the steel frame with damping panel systems we re investigated. Using the proposed simple design method which decides the stiffness and the damping, it is possible to decide the FRP and damping materials on a steel frame system.

Keywords: numerical analysis, FEM, infill, GFRP, damping

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Authors: Khaled Ahmed Kadouh, Kamal Ali Albashiri

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This paper presents a designed algorithm involves improvement of transferring data over Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The aim of this work is to establish whether using SOAP in exchanging XML messages has any added advantages or not. The results showed that XML messages without SOAP take longer time and consume more memory, especially with binary data.

Keywords: JAX-WS, SMTP, SOAP, web service, XML

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Authors: Gianni Blasi, Daniele Perrone, Maria Antonietta Aiello

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The seismic vulnerability of non-structural components is nowadays recognized to be a key issue in performance-based earthquake engineering. Recent loss estimation studies, as well as the damage observed during past earthquakes, evidenced how non-structural damage represents the highest rate of economic loss in a building and can be in many cases crucial in a life-safety view during the post-earthquake emergency. The procedures developed to evaluate the seismic demand on non-structural components have been constantly improved and recent studies demonstrated how the existing formulations provided by main Standards generally ignore features which have a sensible influence on the definition of the seismic acceleration/displacements subjecting non-structural components. Since the influence of the infills on the dynamic behaviour of RC structures has already been evidenced by many authors, it is worth to be noted that the evaluation of the seismic demand on non-structural components should consider the presence of the infills as well as their mechanical properties. This study focuses on the evaluation of time-history floor acceleration in RC buildings; which is a useful mean to perform seismic vulnerability analyses of non-structural components through the well-known cascade method. Dynamic analyses are performed on an 8-storey RC frame, taking into account the presence of the infills; the influence of the elastic modulus of the panel on the results is investigated as well as the presence of openings. Floor accelerations obtained from the analyses are used to evaluate the floor response spectra, in order to define the demand on non-structural components depending on the properties of the infills. Finally, the results are compared with formulations provided by main International Standards, in order to assess the accuracy and eventually define the improvements required according to the results of the present research work.

Keywords: floor spectra, infilled RC frames, non-structural components, seismic demand

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Authors: Hyeon Mi Noh, Ju Hyun Oh, Jung Hyun Jeong, Haeyoung Choi, Jung Hwan Kim

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The Er³⁺/Yb³⁺/Tm³⁺ tri-doped Y₂O₃ nanophosphors were synthesized by solvothermal method and its temperature dependence of the white upconversion emission has been studied by using 975 nm laser diode. The upconversion emission spectra in 1 mol% Er³⁺/5 mol% Yb³⁺/xTm³ tri-doped Y₂O₃ nanophosphors sintered at 1000 °C with x from 0 to 0.5 mol%. The blue emission intensity increase with Tm³⁺ concentration from 0 to 0.5 mol%, it is due to the 2F7/2→2F5/2 transition of Yb³⁺ around 10,000 cm-1 could easily reach the Tm³⁺ sates. The white light is composed with the blue (1G4→3H6 of Tm³⁺), green (2H11/2, 4S3/2→4I15/2 of Er³⁺), and red (4F9/2→4I15/2 of Er³⁺) upconversion radiations. The Y₂O₃: Er³⁺/Yb³⁺/Tm³⁺ nanophosphors show from white to green upconversion emission at power of 600 mW/cm² as sintering temperature increased. The calculated Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates can be located in the white area with various sintering temperatures, in sintered at 1000 °C, and their color coordinates are very close to the standard white-light emission (0.33, 0.33). Their upconversion processes were explained by measuring the upconversion luminescence spectra and pump power dependence and energy level diagram.

Keywords: white upconversion emission, nanophosphors, energy transfer, solvothermal method

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Authors: Fakhrosadat Sajjadian, Ramin Ghasemi Shayan

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The tumor microenvironment plays an fundamental part in tumor start, movement, metastasis, and treatment resistance. It varies from ordinary tissue in terms of its extracellular network, vascular and lymphatic arrange, as well as physiological conditions. The clinical application of atomic cancer imaging is regularly prevented by the tall commercialization costs of focused on imaging operators as well as the constrained clinical applications and little showcase measure of a few operators. . Since numerous cancer types share comparable characteristics of the tumor microenvironment, the capacity to target these biomarkers has the potential to supply clinically translatable atomic imaging advances for numerous types encompassing cancer and broad clinical applications. Noteworthy advance has been made in focusing on the tumor microenvironment for atomic cancer imaging. In this survey, we summarize the standards and methodologies of later progresses in atomic imaging of the tumor microenvironment, utilizing distinctive imaging modalities for early discovery and conclusion of cancer. To conclude, The tumor microenvironment (TME) encompassing tumor cells could be a profoundly energetic and heterogeneous composition of safe cells, fibroblasts, forerunner cells, endothelial cells, flagging atoms and extracellular network (ECM) components.

Keywords: molecular, imaging, TME, medicine

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Authors: Courret Gilles, Pidoux Damien

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Considering that sunshine is the ultimate reference in lighting, we have examined the spectral correlation between a series of electric light sources and sunlight. As the latter is marked by fluctuations, we have taken two spectra of reference: on the one hand, the CIE daylight standard illuminant, and on the other hand, the global illumination by the clear sky with the sun at 30° above the horizon. We determined the coefficients of correlation between the spectra filtered by the sensitivity of the CIE standard observer for photopic vision. We also calculated the luminous efficiency of the radiation in order to compare the ideal energy performances as well as the CIE color indexes Ra, Ra14, and Rf, since the choice of a light source requires a trade-off between color rendering and luminous efficiency. The benchmarking includes the most commonly used bulbs, various white LED (Lighting Emitting Diode) of warm white or cold white types, incandescent halogen as well as two HID lamps (High-Intensity Discharge) and two plasma lamps of different types, a solar simulator and a new version of the sulfur lamp. The latter obtains the best correlation, whether in comparison with the solar spectrum or that of the standard illuminant.

Keywords: electric light sources, plasma lamp, daylighting, sunlight, spectral correlation

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Authors: Qingqing Gai, Junxing Shen, Yu Luo

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Due to the hardware architecture characteristics, some operators tend to acquire better performance if the input/output tensor dimensions are aligned to a certain minimum granularity, such as convolution and deconvolution commonly used in deep learning. Furthermore, if the requirements are not met, the general strategy is to pad with 0 to satisfy the requirements, potentially leading to the under-utilization of the hardware resources. Therefore, for the convolution and deconvolution whose input and output channels do not meet the minimum granularity alignment, we propose to transfer the W-dimensional data to the C-dimension for computation (W2C) to enable the C-dimension to meet the hardware requirements. This scheme also reduces the number of computations in the W-dimension. Although this scheme substantially increases computation, the operator’s speed can improve significantly. It achieves remarkable speedups on multiple hardware accelerators, including Nvidia Tensor cores, Qualcomm digital signal processors (DSPs), and Huawei neural processing units (NPUs). All you need to do is modify the network structure and rearrange the operator weights offline without retraining. At the same time, for some operators, such as the Reducemax, we observe that transferring the Cdimensional data to the W-dimension(C2W) and replacing the Reducemax with the Maxpool can accomplish acceleration under certain circumstances.

Keywords: convolution, deconvolution, W2C, C2W, alignment, hardware accelerator

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Authors: Federico Valenzuela-Beltran, Sonia E. Ruiz, Alfredo Reyes-Salazar, Juan Bojorquez

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A reliability-based methodology which uses structural demand hazard curves to consider the increment of the ductility demands of structures with tilting is proposed. The approach considers the effect of two orthogonal components of the ground motions as well as the influence of soil-structure interaction. The approach involves the calculation of ductility demand hazard curves for symmetric systems and, alternatively, for systems with different degrees of asymmetry. To get this objective, demand hazard curves corresponding to different global ductility demands of the systems are calculated. Next, Uniform Exceedance Rate Spectra (UERS) are developed for a specific mean annual rate of exceedance value. Ratios between UERS corresponding to asymmetric and to symmetric systems located in soft soil of the valley of Mexico are obtained. Results indicate that the ductility demands corresponding to tilted structures may be several times higher than those corresponding to symmetric structures, depending on several factors such as tilting angle and vibration period of structure and soil.

Keywords: asymmetric yielding, seismic performance, structural reliability, tilted structures

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Authors: V. Pérez-Herranz, M. Pinel, E. M. Ortega, M. García-Gabaldón

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In the present work, Electrochemical Impedance Spectrocopy (EIS) is applied to study the transport of different metal cations through a cation-exchange membrane. This technique enables the identification of the ionic-transport characteristics and to distinguish between different transport mechanisms occurring at different current density ranges. The impedance spectra are dependent on the applied dc current density, on the type of cation and on the concentration. When the applied dc current density increases, the diameter of the impedance spectra loops increases because all the components of membrane system resistance increase. The diameter of the impedance plots decreases in the order of Na(I), Ni(II) and Cr(III) due to the increased interactions between the negatively charged sulfonic groups of the membrane and the cations with greater charge. Nyquist plots are shifted towards lower values of the real impedance, and its diameter decreases with the increase of concentration due to the decrease of the solution resistance.

Keywords: ion-exchange membranes, Electrochemical Impedance Spectrocopy, multivalent metal cations, membrane system

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Authors: Shola Haruna Adeosun, F. Adebiyi Ajoke, Odedeji Adeoye

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Video billboard advertising by networks and brand switching was conceived out of inquisition at the huge billboard advertising expenditures made by the three major GSM network operators in Nigeria. The study was anchored on Lagos State Metropolis with a current census population over 1,000,000. From this population, a purposive sample of 400 was adopted, and the questionnaire designed for the survey was carefully allocated to members of this ample in the five geographical zones of the city so that each rung of the society was well represented. The data obtained were analyzed using tables and simple percentages. The results obtained showed that subscribers of these networks were hardly influenced by the video billboard advertisements. They overwhelmingly showed that rather than the slogans of the GSM networks carried on the video billboards, it was the incentives to subscribers as well as the promotional strategies of these organizations that moved them to switch from one network to another. These switching lasted only as long as the incentives and promotions were in effect. The results of the study also seemed to rekindle the age-old debate on media effects, by the unyielding schools of the theory of ‘all-powerful media’, ‘the limited effects media’, ‘the controlled effects media’ and ‘the negotiated media influence’.

Keywords: evaluation, impact, video billboard, marketing, services

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Authors: I. Filikhin, B. Vlahovic

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We focus on a novel type of detection based on electron tunneling properties of double nanoscale structures in semiconductor materials. Semiconductor heterostructures as quantum wells (QWs), quantum dots (QDs), and quantum rings (QRs) may have energy level structure of several hundred of electron confinement states. The single electron spectra of the double quantum objects (DQW, DQD, and DQR) were studied in our previous works with relation to the electron localization and tunneling between the objects. The wave function of electron may be localized in one of the QDs or be delocalized when it is spread over the whole system. The localizing-delocalizing tunneling occurs when an electron transition between both states is possible. The tunneling properties of spectra differ strongly for “regular” and “chaotic” systems. We have shown that a small violation of the geometry drastically affects localization of electron. In particular, such violations lead to the elimination of the delocalized states of the system. The same symmetry violation effect happens if electrical or magnetic fields are applied. These phenomena could be used to propose a new type of detection based on the high sensitivity of charge transport between double nanostructures and small violations of the shapes. It may have significant technological implications.

Keywords: double quantum dots, single electron levels, tunneling, electron localizations

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Authors: BenedictI Ita, Etido P. Inyang

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In this work, the resolutions of the N-dimensional Schrödinger equation with the screened modified Kratzerplus inversely quadratic Yukawa potential (SMKIQYP) have been obtained with the Greene-Aldrich approximation scheme using the Nikiforov-Uvarov method. The eigenvalues and the normalized eigenfunctions are obtained. We then apply the energy spectrum to study four (HCl, N₂, NO, and CO) diatomic molecules. The results show that the energy spectra of these diatomic molecules increase as quantum numbers increase. The energy equation was also used to calculate the partition function and other thermodynamic properties. We predicted the partition function of CO and NO. To check the accuracy of our work, the special case (Modified Kratzer and screened Modified Kratzer potentials) of the collective potential energy eigenvalues agrees excellently with the existing literature.

Keywords: Schrödinger equation, Nikiforov-Uvarov method, modified screened Kratzer, inversely quadratic Yukawa potential, diatomic molecules

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Authors: Li Qian, Jinchao Tong, Daohua Zhang, Weijun Fan, Fei Suo

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Photonic applications based on group IV semiconductors have always been an interest but also a challenge for the research community. We report manufacturing group IV Ge₁₋ₓSnₓ alloys with tuneable energy band gap on (100) GaAs substrate by a modified radio frequency magnetron co-sputtering. Images were taken by atomic force microscope, and scanning electron microscope clearly demonstrates a smooth surface profile, and Ge₁₋ₓSnₓ nano clusters are with the size of several tens of nanometers. Transmittance spectra were measured by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy that showed changing energy gaps with the variation in elementary composition. Calculation results by 8-band k.p method are consistent with measured gaps. Our deposition system realized direct growth of Ge₁₋ₓSnₓ thin film on GaAs (100) substrate by sputtering. This simple deposition method was modified to be able to grow high-quality photonic materials with tuneable energy gaps. This work provides an alternative and successful method for fabricating Group IV photonic semiconductor materials.

Keywords: GeSn, crystal growth, sputtering, photonic

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Authors: Andreas Rüdiger

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The selection of appropriate wastewater treatment technology for decentralized coastal tourist areas is an important engineering challenge. The local situation in coastal tourist cities and villages is characterized by important daily and seasonal fluctuations in hydraulic flow and pollution, high annual temperature variations, scarcity of building area and high housing density. At the same time, coastal zones have to meet stringent effluent limits all over the year and need simple and easy technologies to operate. This article presents the innovative technology of standardized modular aerated up-flow biofiltration SMBF as an adapted solution for decentralized wastewater treatment in sensitive touristic coastal areas. As modular technology with several biofiltration units, the system is able to treat low and high loads with low energy consumption and low demands for operators. The article focuses on the climatic and tourist situation in Croatia. Full-scale plants in Eastern Europe and Croatia have presented as well as dimensioning parameters and outlet concentrations. Energy consumption as a function of load is demonstrated.

Keywords: wastewater treatment, biofiltration, touristic areas, energy saving

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Authors: Ahmed Ashit

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Image fusion is a significant and efficient image processing method used for detecting different types of tumors. This method has been used as an effective combination technique for obtaining high quality images that combine anatomy and physiology of an organ. It is the main key in the huge biomedical machines for diagnosing cancer such as PET-CT machine. This thesis aims to develop an image analysis system for the detection of the eye tumor. Different image processing methods are used to extract the tumor and then mark it on the original image. The images are first smoothed using median filtering. The background of the image is subtracted, to be then added to the original, results in a brighter area of interest or tumor area. The images are adjusted in order to increase the intensity of their pixels which lead to clearer and brighter images. once the images are enhanced, the edges of the images are detected using canny operators results in a segmented image comprises only of the pupil and the tumor for the abnormal images, and the pupil only for the normal images that have no tumor. The images of normal and abnormal images are collected from two sources: “Miles Research” and “Eye Cancer”. The computerized experimental results show that the developed image fusion based eye tumor detection system is capable of detecting the eye tumor and segment it to be superimposed on the original image.

Keywords: image fusion, eye tumor, canny operators, superimposed

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Authors: Jonalee Das Bajpai, Sandeep Shastri

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The Indian Textile and Garment Industry is one of the major contributors to the country’s economy. This industry is also one of the largest labour intensive industries after agriculture and livestock. This Indian garment industry caters to both the domestic and international market. Although this industry comes under the purview of Indian Labour Laws and other voluntary work place standards yet, this industry is often criticized for the undue exploitation of the workers. This paper explored the status of forced labour and discrimination at work place in the garment manufacturing units in Bengaluru. This study is conducted from the perspective of women sewing operators as majority of operators in Bengaluru are women. The research also explored to study the impact of social compliance certification in abolishing forced labour and discrimination at work place. Objectives of the Research: 1. To study the impact of 'Social Compliance Certification' on abolition of forced labour among the women workforce. 2. To study the impact of 'Social Compliance Certification' on abolition of discrimination at workplace among the women workforce. Sample Size and Data Collection Techniques: The main backbone of the data which is the primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire attempted to explore the extent of prevalence of forced labour and discrimination against women workers from the perspective of women workers themselves. The sample size for the same was 600 (n) women sewing operators from the garment industry with minimum one year of work experience. Three hundred samples were selected from units with Social Compliance Certification like SA8000, WRAP, BSCI, ETI and so on. Other three hundred samples were selected from units without Social Compliance Certification. Out of these three hundred samples, one hundred and fifty samples were selected from units with Buyer’s Code of Conduct and another one hundred and fifty were from domestic units that do not come under the purview of any such certification. The responses of the survey were further authenticated through on sight visit and personal interactions. Comparative analysis of the workplace environment between units with Social Compliance certification, units with Buyer’s Code of Conduct and domestic units that do not come under the purview of any such voluntary workplace environment enabled to analyze the impact of Social Compliance certification on abolition of workplace environment and discrimination at workplace. Correlation analysis has been conducted to measure the relationship between impact of forced labour and discrimination at workplace on the level of job satisfaction. The result displayed that abolition of forced labour and abolition of discrimination at workplace have a higher level of job satisfaction among the women workers.

Keywords: discrimination, garment industry, forced labour, social compliance certification

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Authors: Laura Otto

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Sargasso algae currently threatens both livelihoods and marine eco systems along the Riviera Maya in Mexico. While the area was previously known for its white beaches, pristine waters, and intact, colorful reefs, the algae has turned the beaches into ‘stinky stretches of sand,’ made the water brown, and has led to reef degradation causing coral colonies to die off in vast amounts. Drawing on ethnographic research in the area, this paper shows how the reef was exploited for tourism before the Sargasso algae landed, and reef protection played a minor role among hoteliers, tourists, and tour operators. However, since Sargasso began arriving in large quantities, the reef has taken on new significance. Both natural science research and the everyday handling of Sargasso along the coast show that an intact reef provides a natural barrier for the algae and keeps them from reaching the beaches. Clean beaches are important to various local actors–among them, hotel operators, tourists, environmentalists – and against the backdrop of beach commodification, reefs are now taking on new meaning. The paper consequently discusses the commodification of beaches as more-than-human entanglements and illuminates which new human-environment relationships are currently emerging in the Anthropocene.

Keywords: anthropocene, human-environment-relations, fieldwork, mexico

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Authors: V. Sivakumar, R. Neelakantan

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Mineral mapping on the Moon surface provides the clue to understand the origin, evolution, stratigraphy and geological history of the Moon. Recently, reflectance imaging spectroscopy plays a significant role in identifying minerals on the planetary surface in the Visible to NIR region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) onboard Chandrayaan-1 provides unprecedented spectral data of lunar surface to study about the Moon surface. Here we used the M3 sensor data (hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy) for analysing mineralogy of Orientale basin region on the Moon surface. Reflectance spectrums were sampled from different locations of the basin and continuum was removed using ENvironment for Visualizing Images (ENVI) software. Reflectance spectra of unknown mineral composition were compared with known Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB) spectra for discriminating mineralogy. Minerals like olivine, Low-Ca Pyroxene (LCP), High-Ca Pyroxene (HCP) and plagioclase were identified. In addition to these minerals, an unusual type of spectral signature was identified, which indicates the probable Fe-Mg-spinel lithology in the basin region.

Keywords: chandryaan-1, moon mineralogy mapper, mineral, mare orientale, moon

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Authors: Prayas Sharma

Abstract:

This paper proposed a generalized class of estimators, an exponential class of estimators based on the adaption of Sharma and Singh (2015) and Solanki and Singh (2013), and a simple difference estimator for estimating unknown population mean in the case of Poisson distributed population in simple random sampling without replacement. The expressions for mean square errors of the proposed classes of estimators are derived from the first order of approximation. It is shown that the adapted version of Solanki and Singh (2013), the exponential class of estimator, is always more efficient than the usual estimator, ratio, product, exponential ratio, and exponential product type estimators and equally efficient to simple difference estimator. Moreover, the adapted version of Sharma and Singh's (2015) estimator is always more efficient than all the estimators available in the literature. In addition, theoretical findings are supported by an empirical study to show the superiority of the constructed estimators over others with an application to earthquake data of Turkey.

Keywords: auxiliary attribute, point bi-serial, mean square error, simple random sampling, Poisson distribution

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Authors: H. Agbaria, A. Salman, M. Huleihel, G. Beck, D. H. Rich, S. Mordechai, J. Kapelushnik

Abstract:

Viral and bacterial infections are responsible for variety of diseases. These infections have similar symptoms like fever, sneezing, inflammation, vomiting, diarrhea and fatigue. Thus, physicians may encounter difficulties in distinguishing between viral and bacterial infections based on these symptoms. Bacterial infections differ from viral infections in many other important respects regarding the response to various medications and the structure of the organisms. In many cases, it is difficult to know the origin of the infection. The physician orders a blood, urine test, or 'culture test' of tissue to diagnose the infection type when it is necessary. Using these methods, the time that elapses between the receipt of patient material and the presentation of the test results to the clinician is typically too long ( > 24 hours). This time is crucial in many cases for saving the life of the patient and for planning the right medical treatment. Thus, rapid identification of bacterial and viral infections in the lab is of great importance for effective treatment especially in cases of emergency. Blood was collected from 50 patients with confirmed viral infection and 50 with confirmed bacterial infection. White blood cells (WBCs) and plasma were isolated and deposited on a zinc selenide slide, dried and measured under a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microscope to obtain their infrared absorption spectra. The acquired spectra of WBCs and plasma were analyzed in order to differentiate between the two types of infections. In this study, the potential of FTIR microscopy in tandem with multivariate analysis was evaluated for the identification of the agent that causes the human infection. The method was used to identify the infectious agent type as either bacterial or viral, based on an analysis of the blood components [i.e., white blood cells (WBC) and plasma] using their infrared vibrational spectra. The time required for the analysis and evaluation after obtaining the blood sample was less than one hour. In the analysis, minute spectral differences in several bands of the FTIR spectra of WBCs were observed between groups of samples with viral and bacterial infections. By employing the techniques of feature extraction with linear discriminant analysis (LDA), a sensitivity of ~92 % and a specificity of ~86 % for an infection type diagnosis was achieved. The present preliminary study suggests that FTIR spectroscopy of WBCs is a potentially feasible and efficient tool for the diagnosis of the infection type.

Keywords: viral infection, bacterial infection, linear discriminant analysis, plasma, white blood cells, infrared spectroscopy

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Authors: Stephen Orimoloye, Jose Horrillo-Caraballo, Harshinie Karunarathna, Dominic E. Reeve

Abstract:

Prediction of wave overtopping is an essential component of coastal seawall designing and management. Not only that excessive overtopping is reported for impermeable seawalls under bimodal waves, but overtopping is also showing a high sensitivity to the peakedness of the random wave propagation patterns. In the present study, we present a comprehensive analysis of the effects of peakedness of bimodal wave patterns of the overtopping of sloping seawalls. An energy-conserved bimodal spectrum with four different spectra peak periods and swell percentages was applied to estimate wave overtopping in both numerical and experimental flumes. Results of incident surface elevations and bimodal spectra were accurately captured across the flume domain using sets of well-positioned resistant-type wave gauges. Peakedness characteristics of the wave patterns were extracted to derive a relationship between the non-dimensional overtopping and the peakedness across the wave groups in the wave series. The full paper will briefly describe the development of the spectrum and present a comprehensive results analysis leading to the derivation of the relationship between dimensionless overtopping and peakedness of bimodal waves.

Keywords: wave overtopping, peakedness, bimodal waves, swell percentages

Procedia PDF Downloads 152