Search results for: Cell-centered finite volume method

Authors: Wann-Ming Wey

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In recent years, the problems of global climate change and natural disasters have induced the concerns and attentions of environmental sustainability issues for the public. Aside from the environmental planning efforts done for human environment, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has been widely used as one of the future solutions for the sustainable city development. In order to be more consistent with the urban sustainable development, the development of the built environment planning based on the concept of Green TOD which combines both TOD and Green Urbanism is adapted here. The connotation of the urban development under the green TOD including the design toward environment protect, the maximum enhancement resources and the efficiency of energy use, use technology to construct green buildings and protected areas, natural ecosystems and communities linked, etc. Green TOD is not only to provide the solution to urban traffic problems, but to direct more sustainable and greener consideration for future urban development planning and design. In this study, we use both the TOD and Green Urbanism concepts to proceed to the study of the built environment planning and design. Fuzzy Delphi Technique (FDT) is utilized to screen suitable criteria of the green TOD. Furthermore, Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) were then developed to evaluate the criteria and prioritize the alternatives. The study results can be regarded as the future guidelines of the built environment planning and designing under green TOD development in Taiwan.

Keywords: Green transit-oriented development, built environment, fuzzy Delphi technique, quality function deployment, fuzzy analytic network process.

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Authors: K. Aravindhan, Trishit Bandyopadhyay, Mahesh Mehendale, Supriya Kumar De

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The inherent iterative nature of product design and development poses significant challenge to reduce the product design and development time (PD). In order to shorten the time to market, organizations have adopted concurrent development where multiple specialized tasks and design activities are carried out in parallel. Iterative nature of work coupled with the overlap of activities can result in unpredictable time to completion and significant rework. Many of the products have missed the time to market window due to unanticipated or rather unplanned iteration and rework. The iterative and often overlapped processes introduce greater amounts of ambiguity in design and development, where the traditional methods and tools of project management provide less value. In this context, identifying critical metrics to understand the iteration probability is an open research area where significant contribution can be made given that iteration has been the key driver of cost and schedule risk in PD projects. Two important questions that the proposed study attempts to address are: Can we predict and identify the number of iterations in a product development flow? Can we provide managerial insights for a better control over iteration? The proposal introduces the concept of decision points and using this concept intends to develop metrics that can provide managerial insights into iteration predictability. By characterizing the product development flow as a network of decision points, the proposed research intends to delve further into iteration probability and attempts to provide more clarity.

Keywords: Decision Points, Iteration, Product Design, Rework.

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Authors: Lebari B. Gboeloh

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Ficus exasperata is a plant used in the traditional management of malaria in south-south Nigeria. An investigation into the effects of the ethanolic extract of the leaf of the plant on some biochemical indices in albino mice infected with Plasmodium berghei (NK 65) was conducted. 48 mice with weight range of 13-23 g were grouped into six (A, B, C, D, E, and F). Each group contained 8 mice. Groups A, B, C, D and E were infected with blood containing the parasite. Group F was not infected and served as the normal control. On the 6^th day after infection, 4 mice from each group were sacrificed and blood samples are collected for investigation. The remaining mice in each group were treated. Mice in Groups A, B and C were administered orally with 200, 300 and 500 mg/kg body weight of Ficus exasperata respectively for six days. Group D was not treated while Group F was given distilled water. Group E was treated with 5 mg/kg body weight of chloroquine. On the 6^th day post treatment, these mice were sacrificed and blood samples were collected for biochemical analysis. The results indicated that on the 6^th day post inoculation, the levels of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in all the mice infected with the parasite were significantly (p < 0.05) elevated. However, on the 6^th day post administration of extract, the increased levels of AST, ALP and ALT were significantly (p < 0.05) reduced in groups administered with 300 and 500 mg/kg body weight of the extract compared with groups D and F. The reduction in the levels of these enzymes is an indication that F. exasperata have no hepatotoxic effect on the mice at the dose levels administered.

Keywords: Ficus exasperata, albino mice, Plasmodium berghei, biochemical parameters.

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Authors: Kamaljit Singh Sokhal, Gangacharyulu Dasoraju, Vijaya Kumar Bulasara

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Biopolymers are popular in many areas, like petrochemicals, food industry and agriculture due to their favorable properties like environment-friendly, availability, and cost. In this study, a biopolymer gum Arabic was used to find its effect on the pressure drop at various concentrations (100 ppm – 300 ppm) with various Reynolds numbers (10000 – 45000). A rheological study was also done by using the same concentrations to find the effect of the shear rate on the shear viscosity. Experiments were performed to find the effect of injection of gum Arabic directly near the boundary layer and to investigate its effect on the maximum possible drag reduction. Experiments were performed on a test section having i.d of 19.50 mm and length of 3045 mm. The polymer solution was injected from the top of the test section by using a peristaltic pump. The concentration of the polymer solution and the Reynolds number were used as parameters to get maximum possible drag reduction. Water was circulated through a centrifugal pump having a maximum 3000 rpm and the flow rate was measured by using rotameter. Results were validated by using Virk's maximum drag reduction asymptote. A maximum drag reduction of 62.15% was observed with the maximum concentration of gum Arabic, 300 ppm. The solution was circulated in the closed loop to find the effect of degradation of polymers with a number of cycles on the drag reduction percentage. It was observed that the injection of the polymer solution in the boundary layer was showing better results than premixed solutions.

Keywords: Drag reduction, shear viscosity, gum Arabic, injection point.

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Authors: Kiyohiro Yamazaki

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This paper considers a forming process of a single competitive factor in the digital camera industry from the viewpoint of product platform. To make product development easier for companies and to increase product introduction ratios, development efforts concentrate on improving and strengthening certain product attributes, and it is born in the process that the product platform is formed continuously. It is pointed out that the formation of this product platform raises product development efficiency of individual companies, but on the other hand, it has a trade-off relationship of causing unification of competitive factors in the whole industry. This research tries to analyze product specification data which were collected from the web page of digital camera companies. Specifically, this research collected all product specification data released in Japan from 1995 to 2003 and analyzed the composition of image sensor and optical lens; and it identified product platforms shared by multiple products and discussed their application. As a result, this research found that the product platformation was born in the development of the standard product for major market segmentation. Every major company has made product platforms of image sensors and optical lenses, and as a result, this research found that the competitive factors were unified in the entire industry throughout product platformation. In other words, this product platformation brought product development efficiency of individual firms; however, it also caused industrial competition factors to be unified in the industry.

Keywords: Digital camera industry, product evolution trajectory, product platform, unification of competitive factors.

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Authors: B. A. Parate, K. D. Deodhar, V. K. Dixit, V. Venkateswara Rao

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This article outlines the ballistics of main seat ejection cartridges for aircraft application. The ballistics of main seat ejection cartridges plays a vital role during the ejection of the pilot in an emergency. The ballistic parameters such as maximum pressure, time to reach the maximum pressure, and time required to reach half the maximum pressure that responsible to the spinal injury of the pilot are assessed. Therefore, the evaluations of these parameters are very critical during various stages of development. Elaborate testing is carried out for main seat ejection cartridges on seat ejection tower (SET) at different operating temperatures considering physiological limits. As these trials are cumbersome in nature, a vented vessel (VV) testing facility is devised to lay down the performance parameters at hot and cold temperature conditions. Single base (SB) propellant having hepta-tubular configuration is selected as the main filling. Gun powder plays the role of a booster based on ballistic requirements. The evaluation methodology of various performance parameters of main seat ejection cartridges is explained in this paper. Physiological parameters such as maximum seat ejection velocity, acceleration, and rate of rising of acceleration are also experimentally determined on SET. All the parameters are observed well within physiological limits. This paper addresses the internal ballistic of main seat ejection cartridges, propellant selection, its calculation, and evaluation of various performance parameters for aircraft application.

Keywords: Ballistics of seat ejection, ejection seat, gas generator, gun propulsion, main seat ejection cartridges, maximum pressure, performance parameters, propellant, progressive burning and vented vessel.

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Authors: Yehjune Heo

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Fingerprint Anti-Spoofing approaches have been actively developed and applied in real-world applications. One of the main problems for Fingerprint Anti-Spoofing is not robust to unseen samples, especially in real-world scenarios. A possible solution will be to generate artificial, but realistic fingerprint samples and use them for training in order to achieve good generalization. This paper contains experimental and comparative results with currently popular GAN based methods and uses realistic synthesis of fingerprints in training in order to increase the performance. Among various GAN models, the most popular StyleGAN is used for the experiments. The CNN models were first trained with the dataset that did not contain generated fake images and the accuracy along with the mean average error rate were recorded. Then, the fake generated images (fake images of live fingerprints and fake images of spoof fingerprints) were each combined with the original images (real images of live fingerprints and real images of spoof fingerprints), and various CNN models were trained. The best performances for each CNN model, trained with the dataset of generated fake images and each time the accuracy and the mean average error rate, were recorded. We observe that current GAN based approaches need significant improvements for the Anti-Spoofing performance, although the overall quality of the synthesized fingerprints seems to be reasonable. We include the analysis of this performance degradation, especially with a small number of samples. In addition, we suggest several approaches towards improved generalization with a small number of samples, by focusing on what GAN based approaches should learn and should not learn.

Keywords: Anti-spoofing, CNN, fingerprint recognition, GAN.

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Authors: Nishant Rodrigues, Nicole Spanedda, Chilukuri K. Mohan, Arindam Chakraborty

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A crucial objective in quantum chemistry is the computation of the energy levels of chemical systems. This task requires electron-repulsion integrals as inputs and the steep computational cost of evaluating these integrals poses a major numerical challenge in efficient implementation of quantum chemical software. This work presents a moment-based machine learning approach for the efficient evaluation of electron-repulsion integrals. These integrals were approximated using linear combinations of a small number of moments. Machine learning algorithms were applied to estimate the coefficients in the linear combination. A random forest approach was used to identify promising features using a recursive feature elimination approach, which performed best for learning the sign of each coefficient, but not the magnitude. A neural network with two hidden layers was then used to learn the coefficient magnitudes, along with an iterative feature masking approach to perform input vector compression, identifying a small subset of orbitals whose coefficients are sufficient for the quantum state energy computation. Finally, a small ensemble of neural networks (with a median rule for decision fusion) was shown to improve results when compared to a single network.

Keywords: Quantum energy calculations, atomic orbitals, electron-repulsion integrals, ensemble machine learning, random forests, neural networks, feature extraction.

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Authors: Wenjun Zhang, Yunqing Du, Ming L. Wang

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Noninvasive diagnostics of diseases via breath analysis has attracted considerable scientific and clinical interest for many years and become more and more promising with the rapid advancements in nanotechnology and biotechnology. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath, which are mainly blood borne, particularly provide highly valuable information about individuals’ physiological and pathophysiological conditions. Additionally, breath analysis is noninvasive, real-time, painless, and agreeable to patients. We have developed a wireless sensor array based on single-stranded DNA (ssDNA)-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) for the detection of a number of physiological indicators in breath. Seven DNA sequences were used to functionalize SWNT sensors to detect trace amount of methanol, benzene, dimethyl sulfide, hydrogen sulfide, acetone, and ethanol, which are indicators of heavy smoking, excessive drinking, and diseases such as lung cancer, breast cancer, and diabetes. Our test results indicated that DNA functionalized SWNT sensors exhibit great selectivity, sensitivity, and repeatability; and different molecules can be distinguished through pattern recognition enabled by this sensor array. Furthermore, the experimental sensing results are consistent with the Molecular Dynamics simulated ssDNAmolecular target interaction rankings. Thus, the DNA-SWNT sensor array has great potential to be applied in chemical or biomolecular detection for the noninvasive diagnostics of diseases and personal health monitoring.

Keywords: Breath analysis, DNA-SWNT sensor array, diagnosis, noninvasive.

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Authors: Ankit Sinha, Soham Banerjee, Pratik Chattopadhyay

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Automated product recognition in retail stores is an important real-world application in the domain of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatically identifying the classes of the products placed on racks in retail stores from an image of the rack and information about the query/product images. We improve upon the existing approaches in terms of effectiveness and memory requirement by developing a two-stage object detection and recognition pipeline comprising of a Faster-RCNN-based object localizer that detects the object regions in the rack image and a ResNet-18-based image encoder that classifies  the detected regions into the appropriate classes. Each of the models is fine-tuned using appropriate data sets for better prediction and data augmentation is performed on each query image to prepare an extensive gallery set for fine-tuning the ResNet-18-based product recognition model. This encoder is trained using a triplet loss function following the strategy of online-hard-negative-mining for improved prediction. The proposed models are lightweight and can be connected in an end-to-end manner during deployment to automatically identify each product object placed in a rack image. Extensive experiments using Grozi-32k and GP-180 data sets verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Keywords: Retail stores, Faster-RCNN, object localization, ResNet-18, triplet loss, data augmentation, product recognition.

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Authors: María-Dolores Afonso-Suárez, Nayra Pumar-Carreras, Juan Ruiz-Alzola

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This research addresses the use of an e-Learning creation methodology for learning objects. Throughout the process, indicators are being gathered, to determine if it responds to the main objectives of an engineering discipline. These parameters will also indicate if it is necessary to review the creation cycle and readjust any phase. Within the project developed for this study, apart from the use of structured methods, there has been a central objective: the establishment of a learning atmosphere. A place where all the professionals involved are able to collaborate, plan, solve problems and determine guides to follow in order to develop creative and innovative solutions. It has been outlined as a blended learning program with an assessment plan that proposes face to face lessons, coaching, collaboration, multimedia and web based learning objects as well as support resources. The project has been drawn as a long term task, the pilot teaching actions designed provide the preliminary results object of study. This methodology is been used in the creation of learning content for the African countries of Senegal, Mauritania and Cape Verde. It has been developed within the framework of the MACbioIDi, an Interreg European project for the International cooperation and development. The educational area of this project is focused in the training and advice of professionals of the medicine as well as engineers in the use of applications of medical imaging technology, specifically the 3DSlicer application and the Open Anatomy Browser.

Keywords: Teaching contents engineering, e-learning, blended learning, international cooperation, 3DSlicer, open anatomy browser.

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Authors: Se Kyung Oh, Young Hwan Yoon, Ary Bachtiar Krishna

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Nowadays, a passenger car suspension must has high performance criteria with light weight, low cost, and low energy consumption. Pilot controlled proportional valve is designed and analyzed to get small pressure change rate after blow-off, and to get a fast response of the damper, a reverse damping mechanism is adapted. The reverse continuous variable damper is designed as a HS-SH damper which offers good body control with reduced transferred input force from the tire, compared with any other type of suspension system. The damper structure is designed, so that rebound and compression damping forces can be tuned independently, of which the variable valve is placed externally. The rate of pressure change with respect to the flow rate after blow-off becomes smooth when the fixed orifice size increases, which means that the blow-off slope is controllable using the fixed orifice size. Damping forces are measured with the change of the solenoid current at the different piston velocities to confirm the maximum hysteresis of 20 N, linearity, and variance of damping force. The damping force variance is wide and continuous, and is controlled by the spool opening, of which scheme is usually adapted in proportional valves. The reverse continuous variable damper developed in this study is expected to be utilized in the semi-active suspension systems in passenger cars after its performance and simplicity of the design is confirmed through a real car test.

Keywords: Blow-off, damping force, pilot controlledproportional valve, reverse continuous damper.

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Authors: M. Farzadkia, S. Jorfi

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Hospital waste is a category of waste consisting of infectious and non-infectious waste, which pose environmental and health risks. Therefore, special planning and management is required, due to the potential hazards of them. The lack of valid and comprehensive information regarding the generation and management of hospital waste in Iran is one of the most important problems in this field. This research aimed to evaluate hospital waste management efficiency in Karaj city, Iran. The four greatest hospitals in Karaj city had been selected in this cross-sectional study. Site observations and interviews with employees were implemented. The data was gathered based on the hospital waste management questionnaire which was designed by World Health Organization for developing countries. Collected Data had been analyzed using SPSS software. The average of solid waste which was generated per bed was 2.78 kg, which included 90% of domestic waste and 10% of infectious waste. Based on the quantitative analysis of general and infectious waste in these hospitals, the highest contributors of general waste were consisting of food waste (37.39%), while textile (28.06%) were the highest contributors of the infectious waste. According to the information contained in the questionnaires, the main defects of waste management in these hospitals were; inadequate staff in waste management sector, poorly disinfection of solid waste containers and temporary storage locations, and a lack of proper infectious waste treatment. According to the results of this research, waste management in these hospitals were far from optimum conditions. In order to improve the existing conditions, mentioned problems must be solved quickly, and planning for continuous monitoring in the waste management field in these hospitals should be established.

Keywords: Waste management, hospital wastes, solid wastes, Iran.

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Authors: Brian H. Marsh

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Nitrogen fertilizer is the most used and often the most mismanaged nutrient input. Nitrogen management has tremendous implications on crop productivity, quality and environmental stewardship. Sufficient nitrogen is needed to optimum yield and quality. Soil and in-season plant tissue testing for nitrogen status are a time consuming and expensive process. Real time sensing of plant nitrogen status can be a useful tool in managing nitrogen inputs. The objectives of this project were to assess the reliability of remotely sensed non-destructive plant nitrogen measurements compared to wet chemistry data from sampled plant tissue, develop in-season nitrogen recommendations based on remotely sensed data for improved nitrogen use efficiency and assess the potential for determining yield and quality from remotely sensed data. Very good correlations were observed between early-season remotely sensed crop nitrogen status and plant nitrogen concentrations and subsequent in-season fertilizer recommendations. The transmittance/absorbance type meters gave the most accurate readings. Early in-season fertilizer recommendation would be to apply 40 kg nitrogen per hectare plus 15 kg nitrogen per hectare for each unit difference measured with the SPAD meter between the crop and reference area or 25 kg plus 13 kg per hectare for each unit difference measured with the CCM 200. Once the crop was sufficiently fertilized meter readings became inconclusive and were of no benefit for determining nitrogen status, silage yield and quality and grain yield and protein.

Keywords: Wheat, nitrogen fertilization, chlorophyll meter.

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Authors: Kanthida Kusonmano, Michael Netzer, Bernhard Pfeifer, Christian Baumgartner, Klaus R. Liedl, Armin Graber

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Availability of high dimensional biological datasets such as from gene expression, proteomic, and metabolic experiments can be leveraged for the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases. Many classification methods in this area have been studied to predict disease states and separate between predefined classes such as patients with a special disease versus healthy controls. However, most of the existing research only focuses on a specific dataset. There is a lack of generic comparison between classifiers, which might provide a guideline for biologists or bioinformaticians to select the proper algorithm for new datasets. In this study, we compare the performance of popular classifiers, which are Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic Regression, k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, and Random Forest based on mock datasets. We mimic common biological scenarios simulating various proportions of real discriminating biomarkers and different effect sizes thereof. The result shows that SVM performs quite stable and reaches a higher AUC compared to other methods. This may be explained due to the ability of SVM to minimize the probability of error. Moreover, Decision Tree with its good applicability for diagnosis and prognosis shows good performance in our experimental setup. Logistic Regression and Random Forest, however, strongly depend on the ratio of discriminators and perform better when having a higher number of discriminators.

Keywords: Classification, High dimensional data, Machine learning

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Authors: A. Asem, N. Rastegar-Pouyani, P. De Los Rios, R. Manaffar, F. Mohebbi

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Nowadays, biometrical characterizations of Artemia cysts are used as one of the most important factors in the study of Artemia populations and intraspecific particularity; meanwhile these characters can be used as economical indices. For example, typically high hatching efficiency is possible due to the small diameter of cysts (high number per gram); therefore small diameter of cysts show someway high quality of cysts. This study was performed during a ten year period, including two different ecological conditions: rainy and drought. It is important from two different aspects because it covers alteration of A. urmiana during ten years also its variation in the best and worst environmental situations in which salinity increased from 173.8 ppt in 1994 to 280.8 ppt in 2003/4. In this study the biometrical raw data of Artemia urmiana cysts at seven stations from the Urmia Lake in 1994 and their seven identical locations at 26 studied stations in 2003/4 were reanalyzed again and compared together. Biometrical comparison of untreated and decapsulated cysts in each of the seven similar stations showed a highly significant variation between 1994 and 2003/4. Based on this study, in whole stations the untreated and decapsulated cysts from 1994 were larger than cysts of 2003/4 without any exception. But there was no logical relationship between salinity and chorion thickness in the Urmia Lake. With regard to PCA analyses the stations of two different studied years certainly have been separated with factor 1 from each other. In conclusion, the interaction between genetic and environmental factors can determine and explain variation in the range of cysts diameter in Artemia.

Keywords: Artemia urmiana, Biometry, Cyst, Urmia Lake

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Authors: T. C. Machaba, S. M. Mahlo

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The current study investigates the antifungal properties of crude plant extracts from selected medicinal plant species. Eight plant species used by the traditional healers and local people to treat fungal infections were selected for further phytochemical analysis and biological assay. The selected plant species were extracted with solvent of various polarities such as acetone, methanol, ethanol, hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate and water. Leaf, roots and bark extracts of Maerua juncea Pax, Albuca seineri (Engl & K. Krause) J.C Manning & Goldblatt, Senna italica Mill., Elephantorrhiza elephantina (Burch.) Skeels, Indigofera circinata Benth., Schinus molle L., Asparagus buchananii Bak., were screened for antifungal activity against three animal fungal pathogens (Candida albicans, Aspergillus fumigatus and Cryptococcus neoformans). All plant extracts were active against the tested microorganisms. Acetone, dichloromethane, hexane and ethanol extracts of Senna italica and Elephantorrhiza elephantine had excellent activity against Candida albicans and A. fumigatus with the lowest MIC value of 0.02 mg/ml. Bioautography assay was used to determine the number of antifungal compounds presence in the plant extracts. No active compounds were observed in plant extracts of Indigofera circinnata, Schinus molle and Pentarrhinum insipidum with good antifungal activity against C. albicans and A. fumigatus indicating possible synergism between separated metabolites.

Keywords: Antifungal activity, minimum inhibitory concentration, bioautography.

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Authors: Rukayya Ibrahim Muazu, Aiduan Li Borrion, Julia A. Stegemann

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Biomass briquette gasification is regarded as a promising route for efficient briquette use in energy generation, fuels and other useful chemicals. However, previous research has been focused on briquette gasification in fixed bed gasifiers such as updraft and downdraft gasifiers. Fluidised bed gasifier has the potential to be effectively sized to medium or large scale. This study investigated the use of fuel briquettes produced from blends of rice husks and corn cobs biomass, in a bubbling fluidised bed gasifier. The study adopted a combination of numerical equations and Aspen Plus simulation software, to predict the product gas (syngas) composition base on briquette density and biomass composition (blend ratio of rice husks to corn cobs). The Aspen Plus model was based on an experimentally validated model from the literature. The results based on a briquette size 32 mm diameter and relaxed density range of 500 to 650kg/m3, indicated that fluidisation air required in the gasifier increased with increase in briquette density, and the fluidisation air showed to be the controlling factor compared with the actual air required for gasification of the biomass briquettes. The mass flowrate of CO2 in the predicted syngas composition increased with an increase in air flow, in the gasifier, while CO decreased and H2 was almost constant. The ratio of H2 to CO for various blends of rice husks and corn cobs did not significantly change at the designed process air, but a significant difference of 1.0 was observed between 10/90 and 90/10 % blend of rice husks and corn cobs.

Keywords: Briquettes, fluidised bed, gasification, Aspen Plus, syngas.

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Authors: Jeremy Faludi, Zhongyin Hu, Shahd Alrashed, Christopher Braunholz, Suneesh Kaul, Leulekal Kassaye

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Environmental impacts of six 3D printers using various materials were compared to determine if material choice drove sustainability, or if other factors such as machine type, machine size, or machine utilization dominate. Cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessments were performed, comparing a commercial-scale FDM machine printing in ABS plastic, a desktop FDM machine printing in ABS, a desktop FDM machine printing in PET and PLA plastics, a polyjet machine printing in its proprietary polymer, an SLA machine printing in its polymer, and an inkjet machine hacked to print in salt and dextrose. All scenarios were scored using ReCiPe Endpoint H methodology to combine multiple impact categories, comparing environmental impacts per part made for several scenarios per machine. Results showed that most printers’ ecological impacts were dominated by electricity use, not materials, and the changes in electricity use due to different plastics was not significant compared to variation from one machine to another. Variation in machine idle time determined impacts per part most strongly. However, material impacts were quite important for the inkjet printer hacked to print in salt: In its optimal scenario, it had up to 1/38th the impacts coreper part as the worst-performing machine in the same scenario. If salt parts were infused with epoxy to make them more physically robust, then much of this advantage disappeared, and material impacts actually dominated or equaled electricity use. Future studies should also measure DMLS and SLS processes / materials.

Keywords: 3D printing, Additive Manufacturing, Sustainability, Life-cycle assessment, Design for Environment.

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Authors: Astiaj Khoramshahi, Hossein Ahmadi Danesh Ashtiani, Ahmad Khoshgard, Hamidreza Damghani, Leila Damghani

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Solar energy systems using various storages are required to be evaluated based on energy requirements and applications. Also, modeling and analysis of storage systems are necessary to increase the effectiveness of combinations of these systems. In this paper, analysis based on the MATLAB software has been analyzed to evaluate the response of the hybrid energy system considering various technologies of renewable energy and energy storage. In the present study, three different simulation scenarios are presented. Simulation output results using software for the first scenario show that the battery is effective in smoothing the overall power demand to the consumer studied during a day, but temporary loads on the grid with high frequencies, effectively cannot be canceled due to the limited response speed of battery control. Simulation outputs for the second scenario using the energy storage system show that sudden changes in demand power are paved by super saving. The majority of these sudden changes in power demand are caused by sewing consumers and receiving variable solar power (due to clouds passing through the solar array). Simulation outputs for the third scenario show the effects of the hybrid system for the same consumer and the output of the solar array, leading to the smallest amount of power demand fed into the grid, as well as demand at peak times. According to the "battery only" scenario, the displacement technique of the peak load has been significantly reduced.

Keywords: Storage system, super storage, standalone, microgrid.

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Authors: Amir Eghbal Khajeh Rahimi, Fardin Boustani, Omid Tabiee, Masoud Hashemi

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The Beshar River is one of the most important aquatic ecosystems in the upstream of the Karun watershed in south of Iran which is affected by point and non point pollutant sources . This study was done in order to evaluate the effects of pollutants activities on the water quality of the Beshar river and its aquatic ecosystems. This river is approximately 190 km in length and situated at the geographical positions of 51° 20´ to 51° 48´ E and 30° 18´ to 30° 52´ N it is one of the most important aquatic ecosystems of Kohkiloye and Boyerahmad province in south-west Iran. In this research project, five study stations were selected to examine water pollution in the Beshar River systems. Human activity is now one of the most important factors affecting on hydrology and water quality of the Beshar river. Humans use large amounts of resources to sustain various standards of living, although measures of sustainability are highly variable depending on how sustainability is defined. The Beshar river ecosystems are particularly sensitive and vulnerable to human activities. Therefore, to determine the impact of human activities on the Beshar River, the most important water quality parameters such as pH, dissolve oxygen (DO), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Total Dissolve Solids (TDS), Nitrates (NO3-N) and Phosphates (PO4) were estimated at the five stations. As the results show, the most important pollution index parameters such as BOD5, NO3 and PO4 increase and DO and pH decrease according to human activities (P<0.05). However, due to pollutant degradation and dilution, pollution index parameters improve downstream sampling stations.

Keywords: Human activities, Water pollution, Beshar River, Iran.

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Authors: Jungho Choi, Youngwan Cho

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This paper presents an algorithm for the recognition and tracking of moving objects, 1/10 scale model car is used to verify performance of the algorithm. Presented algorithm for the recognition and tracking of moving objects in the paper is as follows. SURF algorithm is merged with Lucas-Kanade algorithm. SURF algorithm has strong performance on contrast, size, rotation changes and it recognizes objects but it is slow due to many computational complexities. Processing speed of Lucas-Kanade algorithm is fast but the recognition of objects is impossible. Its optical flow compares the previous and current frames so that can track the movement of a pixel. The fusion algorithm is created in order to solve problems which occurred using the Kalman Filter to estimate the position and the accumulated error compensation algorithm was implemented. Kalman filter is used to create presented algorithm to complement problems that is occurred when fusion two algorithms. Kalman filter is used to estimate next location, compensate for the accumulated error. The resolution of the camera (Vision Sensor) is fixed to be 640x480. To verify the performance of the fusion algorithm, test is compared to SURF algorithm under three situations, driving straight, curve, and recognizing cars behind the obstacles. Situation similar to the actual is possible using a model vehicle. Proposed fusion algorithm showed superior performance and accuracy than the existing object recognition and tracking algorithms. We will improve the performance of the algorithm, so that you can experiment with the images of the actual road environment.

Keywords: SURF, Optical Flow Lucas-Kanade, Kalman Filter, object recognition, object tracking.

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Authors: Nazmul Huda, Ashik Mosaddik, Abdul Awal, Shafiqur Rahman, Rukhsana Shaheen, Mustofa Nabi

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Polyherbal formulation Sharbat Deenar is a very popular unani medicine in Bangladesh. It is usually used for different kinds of liver disorders. In absence of reliable and inadequate hepatoprotective agents in conventional medicine, the herbal preparations are preferred for liver diseases. The present study was designed to evaluate the hepatoprotective activity of Sharbat Deenar on carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄) induced hepatotoxicity in male Long-Evans albino rats. Group I served as normal control and received neither formulation nor carbon tetrachloride. Group II received only CCl₄ 1mL/kg body weight of rat intraperitoneally for consecutive 14 days. Group III received CCl₄ 1mL/kg body weight of rat intraperitoneally and Silymarin, in dose 50mg/kg body weight of rat orally. Group IV received CCl₄ 1mL/kg body weight of rat intraperitoneally and Sharbat Deenar 1mL/kg body weight of rat for the same 14 consecutive days. At the end of the study, hepatoprotective activity was evaluated by the levels of total bilirubin, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP). Histopathological study of rat liver was also carried out. The results showed that polyherbal formulation Sharbat Deenar exhibited a significant hepatoprotective effect. Such an outcome seems to be the synergistic effect of all ingredients of tested herbal formulation. Although this study suggests that Sharbat Deenar may be used to cure or minimize various liver diseases, it needs further study to attain the clarity of mechanism and safety.

Keywords: Carbon tetrachloride, Hepatoprotective, Sharbat Deenar, Silymarin.

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Authors: Mohamed Asaad Abdelrazek, Amir Taher El-Sheikh, M. Zayan, A.M. Elhady

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The successful realization of complex systems is dependent not only on the technology issues and the process for implementing them, but on the management issues as well. Managing the systems development lifecycle requires technical management. Systems engineering management is the technical management. Systems engineering management is accomplished by incorporating many activities. The three major activities are development phasing, systems engineering process and lifecycle integration. Systems engineering management activities are performed across the system development lifecycle. Due to the ever-increasing complexity of systems as well the difficulty of managing and tracking the development activities, new ways to achieve systems engineering management activities are required. This paper presents a systematic approach used as a design management tool applied across systems engineering management roles. In this approach, Transdisciplinary System Development Lifecycle (TSDL) Model has been modified and integrated with Quality Function Deployment. Hereinafter, the name of the systematic approach is the Transdisciplinary Quality System Development Lifecycle (TQSDL) Model. The QFD translates the voice of customers (VOC) into measurable technical characteristics. The modified TSDL model is based on Axiomatic Design developed by Suh which is applicable to all designs: products, processes, systems and organizations. The TQSDL model aims to provide a robust structure and systematic thinking to support the implementation of systems engineering management roles. This approach ensures that the customer requirements are fulfilled as well as satisfies all the systems engineering manager roles and activities.

Keywords: Axiomatic design, quality function deployment, systems engineering management, system development lifecycle.

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Authors: M. J. Xavier, J. Raja, S. Usha Nandhini

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For scores of years now, several microfinance organizations, non governmental organizations and other welfare organizations have, with a view to aiding the progress of communities rooted in poverty have been focusing on creating microentrepreneurs, besides taking several other measures. In recent times, business corporations have joined forces to combat poverty by taking up microenterprise development. Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), the Indian subsidiary of Unilever Limited exemplifies this through its Project Shakti. The company through the Project creates rural women entrepreneurs by making them direct to home sales distributors of its products in villages that have thus far been ignored by multinational corporations. The members participating in Project Shakti are largely self help group members. The paper focuses on assessing the impact made by the company on the members engaged in Project Shakti. The analysis involves use of quantitative methods to study the effect of Project Shakti on those self help group members engaged in Project Shakti and those not engaged with Project Shakti. Path analysis has been used to study the impact made on those members engaged in Project Shakti. Significant differences were observed on fronts of entrepreneurial development, economic empowerment and social empowerment between members associated with Project Shakti and those not associated with Project Shakti. Path analysis demonstrated that involvement in Project Shakti led to entrepreneurial development resulting in economic empowerment that in turn led to social empowerment and that these three elements independently induced a feeling of privilege in the women for being associated with the Project.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship development, economicempowerment, impact assessment, microentrepreneurs, pathanalysis, social empowerment.

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Authors: Wei Sun, Yan Dong

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There is an increasing interest in introducing computational thinking at an early age. Computational thinking, like mathematical thinking, engineering thinking, and scientific thinking, is a kind of analytical thinking. Learning computational thinking skills is not only to improve technological literacy, but also allows learners to equip with practicable skills such as problem-solving skills. As people realize the importance of computational thinking, the field of educational technology faces a problem: how to choose appropriate tools and activities to help students develop computational thinking skills. Robots are gradually becoming a popular teaching tool, as robots provide a tangible way for young children to access to technology, and controlling a robot through programming offers them opportunities to engage in developing computational thinking. This study explores whether the introduction of flowcharts into the robotics programming courses can help children convert natural language into a programming language more easily, and then to better cultivate their computational thinking skills. An experimental study was adopted with a sample of children ages six to seven (N = 16) participated, and a one-meter-tall humanoid robot was used as the teaching tool. Results show that children can master basic programming concepts through robotic courses. Children's computational thinking has been significantly improved. Besides, results suggest that flowcharts do have an impact on young children’s computational thinking skills development, but it only has a significant effect on the "sequencing" and "correspondence" skills. Overall, the study demonstrates that the humanoid robot and flowcharts have qualities that foster young children to learn programming and develop computational thinking skills.

Keywords: Robotics, computational thinking, programming, young children, flowcharts.

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Authors: Murugan, K. N. Sharma, S. D.

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The present work involves measurements to examine the effects of initial conditions on aerodynamic and acoustic characteristics of a Jet at M=0.8 by changing the orientation of sharp edged orifice plate. A thick plate with chamfered orifice presented divergent and convergent openings when it was flipped over. The centerline velocity was found to decay more rapidly for divergent orifice and that was consistent with the enhanced mass entrainment suggesting quicker spread of the jet compared with that from the convergent orifice. The mixing layer region elucidated this effect of initial conditions at an early stage – the growth was found to be comparatively more pronounced for the divergent orifice resulting in reduced potential core size. The acoustic measurements, carried out in the near field noise region outside the jet within potential core length, showed the jet from the divergent orifice to be less noisy. The frequency spectra of the noise signal exhibited that in the initial region of comparatively thin mixing layer for the convergent orifice, the peak registered a higher SPL and a higher frequency as well. The noise spectra and the mixing layer development suggested a direct correlation between the coherent structures developing in the initial region of the jet and the noise captured in the surrounding near field.

Keywords: Convergent orifice jet, Divergent orifice jet, Mass entrainment, mixing layer, near field noise, frequency spectrum, SPL, Strouhal number, wave number, reactive pressure field, propagating pressure field.

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Authors: Magdalena Musiał-Karg

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The expansion of telecommunication and progress of electronic media constitute important elements of our times. The recent worldwide convergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) and dynamic development of the mass media is leading to noticeable changes in the functioning of contemporary states and societies. Currently, modern technologies play more and more important roles and filter down to almost every field of contemporary human life. It results in the growth of online interactions that can be observed by the inconceivable increase in the number of people with home PCs and Internet access. The proof of it is undoubtedly the emergence and use of concepts such as e-society, e-banking, e-services, e-government, e-government, e-participation and e-democracy. The newly coined word e-democracy evidences that modern technologies have also been widely used in politics. Without any doubt in most countries all actors of political market (politicians, political parties, servants in political/public sector, media) use modern forms of communication with the society. Most of these modern technologies progress the processes of getting and sending information to the citizens, communication with the electorate, and also – which seems to be the biggest advantage – electoral procedures. Thanks to implementation of ICT the interaction between politicians and electorate are improved. The main goal of this text is to analyze electronic voting (e-voting) as one of the important forms of electronic democracy in terms of security aspects. The author of this paper aimed at answering the questions of security of electronic voting as an additional form of participation in elections and referenda.

Keywords: Electronic democracy, electronic participation, electronic voting, security of e-voting, ICT.

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Authors: Afrasyab Rahnama, Kazem Poustini, Reza Tavakkol-Afshari, Afshin Tavakoli

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Plant growth is affected by the osmotic stress as well as toxicity of salt in leaves. In order to study of salt stress effects on stomatal conductance and growth rate and relationship between them as wells osmotic and Na+-specific effects on these traits, four bread wheat genotypes differing in salt tolerance were selected. Salinity was applied when the leaf 4 was fully expanded. Sodium (Na+) concentrations in flag leaf blade at 3 salinity levels (0, 100 and 200 mM NaCl) were measured. Salt-tolerant genotypes showed higher stomatal conductance and growth rate compared to salt-sensitive ones. After 10 and 20 days exposure to salt, stomatal conductance and relative growth rate were reduced, but the reduction was greater in sensitive genotypes. Growth rate was reduced severely in the first period (1-10 days) of salt commencements and it was due to osmotic effect of salt not Na+ toxicity. In the second period (11-20 days) after salt treatment growth reduced only when salt accumulated to toxic concentrations in the leaves. A positive relationship between stomatal conductance and relative growth rate showed that stomatal conductance can be a reliable indicator of growth rate, and finally can be considered as a sensitive indicator of the osmotic stress. It seems 20 days after salinity, the major effect of salt, especially at low to moderate salinity levels on growth properties was due to the osmotic effect of salt, not to Na+-specific effects within the plant.

Keywords: Osmotic stress, relative growth rate, stomatal conductance, wheat.

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Authors: Sylvia Tumelo Nthutang, Nehemiah Mavetera

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Educational institutions are under pressure from their competitors. Regulators and community groups need educational institutions to adopt appropriate business and organizational practices. Globally, educational institutions are now using e-learning as the best teaching and learning approach. E-learning is becoming the center of attention to the learning institutions, educational systems and software inventors. North-West University (NWU) is currently using eFundi, a Learning Management System (LMS). LMS are all information systems and procedures that adds value to students learning and support the learning material in text or any multimedia files. With various e-learning tools, students would be able to access all the materials related to the course in electronic copies. The study was tasked with identifying the e-learning components at the NWU, Mafikeng campus. Quantitative research methodology was considered in data collection and descriptive statistics for data analysis. The Activity Theory (AT) was used as a theory to guide the study. AT outlines the limitations amongst e-learning at the macro-organizational level (plan, guiding principle, campus-wide solutions) and micro-organization (daily functioning practice, collaborative transformation, specific adaptation). On a technological environment, AT gives people an opportunity to change from concentrating on computers as an area of concern but also understand that technology is part of human activities. The findings have identified the university’s current IT tools and knowledge on e-learning elements. It was recommended that university should consider buying computer resources that consumes less power and practice e-learning effectively.

Keywords: E-learning, information and communication technology, teaching, and virtual learning environment.

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