Search results for: Objective evaluation

Authors: Napisporn Memongkol, Runchana Sinthavalai, Nattapong Seneeratanaprayune Weerawat Ounsaneha, Chanisada Choosuk

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The objective of this research is to develop the performance indicators (PIs) in operational level for the Pre-hospital Emergency Medical Service (EMS) system employing in Thailand. This research started with ascertaining the current pre-hospital care system. The team analyzed the strategies of Narerthorn, a government unit under the ministry of public health, and the existing PIs of the pre-hospital care. Afterwards, the current National Strategic Plan of EMS development (2008-2012) of the Emergency Medical Institute of Thailand (EMIT) was considered using strategic analysis to developed Strategy Map (SM) and identified the Success Factors (SFs). The analysis results from strategy map and SFs were used to develop the Performance Indicators (PIs). To verify the set of PIs, the team has interviewed with the relevant practitioners for the possibilities to implement the PIs. To this paper, it was to ascertain that all the developed PIs support the objectives of the strategic plan. Nevertheless, the results showed that the operational level PIs suited only with the first dimension of National Strategic Plan (infrastructure and information technology development). Besides, the SF was the infrastructure development (to contribute the EMS system to people throughout with standard and efficiency both in normally and disaster conditions). Finally, twenty-nine indicators were developed from the analysis results of SM and SFs.

Keywords: Emergency Medical Service, Performance Indicator, Success Factor, Thailand

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Authors: L. Dixon, D. Gavani

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Objective: Sharing devastating news with patients is often considered the most difficult task of doctors. This study aimed to explore patients’ perceptions of receiving bad news including which features improve the experience and which areas need refining. Methods: A questionnaire was written based on the steps of the SPIKES model for breaking bad new. 20 patients receiving treatment for a hematological malignancy completed the questionnaire. Results: Overall, the results are promising as most patients praised their consultation. ‘Poor’ was more commonly rated by women and participants aged 45-64. The main differences between the ‘excellent’ and ‘poor’ consultations include the doctor’s sensitivity and checking the patients’ understanding. Only 35% of patients were asked their existing knowledge and 85% of consultations failed to discuss the impact of the diagnosis on daily life. Conclusion: This study agreed with the consensus of existing literature. The commended aspects include consultation set-up and information given. Areas patients felt needed improvement include doctors determining the patient’s existing knowledge and checking new information has been understood. Doctors should also explore how the diagnosis will affect the patient’s life. With a poorer prognosis, doctors should work on conveying appropriate hope. The study was limited by a small sample size and potential recall bias.

Keywords: Communication, diagnosis, hematology, patients.

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Authors: Shahabeddin Sotudian, M. H. Fazel Zarandi, I. B. Turksen

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Hepatitis is one of the most common and dangerous diseases that affects humankind, and exposes millions of people to serious health risks every year. Diagnosis of Hepatitis has always been a challenge for physicians. This paper presents an effective method for diagnosis of hepatitis based on interval Type-II fuzzy. This proposed system includes three steps: pre-processing (feature selection), Type-I and Type-II fuzzy classification, and system evaluation. KNN-FD feature selection is used as the preprocessing step in order to exclude irrelevant features and to improve classification performance and efficiency in generating the classification model. In the fuzzy classification step, an “indirect approach” is used for fuzzy system modeling by implementing the exponential compactness and separation index for determining the number of rules in the fuzzy clustering approach. Therefore, we first proposed a Type-I fuzzy system that had an accuracy of approximately 90.9%. In the proposed system, the process of diagnosis faces vagueness and uncertainty in the final decision. Thus, the imprecise knowledge was managed by using interval Type-II fuzzy logic. The results that were obtained show that interval Type-II fuzzy has the ability to diagnose hepatitis with an average accuracy of 93.94%. The classification accuracy obtained is the highest one reached thus far. The aforementioned rate of accuracy demonstrates that the Type-II fuzzy system has a better performance in comparison to Type-I and indicates a higher capability of Type-II fuzzy system for modeling uncertainty.

Keywords: Hepatitis disease, medical diagnosis, type-I fuzzy logic, type-II fuzzy logic, feature selection.

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Authors: Ismail Karaca, Ridvan Saracoglu, Omer Soner

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Fuzzy Logic, an advanced method to support decision-making, is used by various scientists in many disciplines. Fuzzy programming is a product of fuzzy logic, fuzzy rules, and implication. In marine science, fuzzy programming for ships is dramatically increasing together with autonomous ship studies. In this paper, a program to support the decision-making process for ship navigation has been designed. The program is produced in fuzzy logic and rules, by taking the marine accidents and expert opinions into account. After the program was designed, the program was tested by 46 ship accidents reported by the Transportation Safety Investigation Center of Turkey. Wind speed, sea condition, visibility, day/night ratio have been used as input data. They have been converted into a risk factor within the Fuzzy Logic Designer application and fuzzy rules set by marine experts. Finally, the expert's meteorological risk factor for each accident is compared with the program's risk factor, and the error rate was calculated. The main objective of this study is to improve the navigational safety of ships, by using the advance decision support model. According to the study result, fuzzy programming is a robust model that supports safe navigation.

Keywords: Calculation of risk factor, fuzzy logic, fuzzy programming for ship, safe navigation of ships.

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Authors: H. Djaara, M. Yahia, H. Bousselsela, N Khelif, A. Zidani, S. Benbia.

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Von Willebrand-s disease is the most common inherited bleeding disorder in humans, it caused by qualitative abnormalities of the von Willebrand factor (vWF). Our objective is to determine the prevalence of this disease at part of the Algerian population in the East and the South by a biological diagnosis based on specific biological tests (automated platelet count, the bleeding time (TS), the time of cephalin + activator (TCA), measure of the prothrombin rate (TP), vWF rate and factor VIII rate, Molecular electrophoresis of vWF multimers in agarose gel in the presence of SDS). Four patients of type III or severe Willebrand-s disease were found on 200 suspect cases. All cases are showed a deficit in vWF rate (< 5%), and factor VIII (P<0, 0001), and lengthening very significantly high of the TCA (P<0, 0001) and of the bleeding time (P<0,0001), with a normal blood platelet rate (P=0,7433) and a normal prothrombin rate (P=0,5808), an absence of all the multimers of vWF in plasma patients. The severe Willebrand-s disease is not only one pathology of primary haemostasis, but it can be accompanied by coagulation-s anomaly due to deficit in factor VIII. At this studied population, von Willebrand-s disease is less frequent (2%) than other hemorrhagic syndromes identified by the differential diagnosis like the thrombocytopenia (36%).

Keywords: Von Willebrand's disease, differential diagnosis, von Willebrand factor, factor VIII, biological diagnosis, thrombocytopenia.

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Authors: Nooshin Salari, Viliam Makis

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In this paper, we propose a condition-based maintenance policy for multi-unit systems considering the existence of economic dependency among units. We consider a system composed of N identical units, where each unit deteriorates independently. Deterioration process of each unit is modeled as a three-state continuous time homogeneous Markov chain with two working states and a failure state. The average production rate of units varies in different working states and demand rate of the system is constant. Units are inspected at equidistant time epochs, and decision regarding performing maintenance is determined by the number of units in the failure state. If the total number of units in the failure state exceeds a critical level, maintenance is initiated, where units in failed state are replaced correctively and deteriorated state units are maintained preventively. Our objective is to determine the optimal number of failed units to initiate maintenance minimizing the long run expected average cost per unit time. The problem is formulated and solved in the semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) framework. A numerical example is developed to demonstrate the proposed policy and the comparison with the corrective maintenance policy is presented.

Keywords: Reliability, production, maintenance optimization, Semi-Markov Decision Process.

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Authors: Glenn M. Calaguas, Carmela S. Dizon

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This study aimed to develop and initially validate an instrument that measures social competency among tertiary level faculty members. A review of extant literature on social competence was done. The review of extant literature led to the writing of the items in the initial instrument which was evaluated by 11 Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The SMEs were either educators or psychologists. The results of the evaluations done by the SMEs served as bases for the creation of the pre-try-out instrument used in the first trial-run. Insights from the first trial-run participants led to the development of the main try-out instrument used in the final test administration. One Hundred Forty-one participants from five private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the National Capital Region (NCR) and five private HEIs in Central Luzon in the Philippines participated in the final test administration. The reliability of the instrument was evaluated using Cronbach-s Coefficient Alpha formula and had a Cronbach-s Alpha of 0.92. On the other hand, Factor Analysis was used to evaluate the validity of the instrument and six factors were identified. The development of the final instrument was based on the results of the evaluation of the instrument-s reliability and validity. For purposes of recognition, the instrument was named “Social Competency Inventory for Tertiary Level Faculty Members (SCI-TLFM)."

Keywords: development, initial validation, social competency, tertiary level faculty members

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Authors: M. Amrita, R. R. Srikant, A. V. Sita Rama Raju

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Water miscible cutting fluids are conventionally used to lubricate and cool the machining zone. But issues related to health hazards, maintenance and disposal costs have limited their usage, leading to application of Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL). To increase the effectiveness of MQL, nanocutting fluids are proposed. In the present work, water miscible nanographite cutting fluids of varying concentration are applied at cutting zone by two systems A and B. System A utilizes high pressure air and supplies cutting fluid at a flow rate of 1ml/min. System B uses low pressure air and supplies cutting fluid at a flow rate of 5ml/min. Their performance in machining is evaluated by measuring cutting temperatures, tool wear, cutting forces and surface roughness and compared with dry machining and flood machining. Application of nanocutting fluid using both systems showed better performance than dry machining. Cutting temperatures and cutting forces obtained by both techniques are more than flood machining. But tool wear and surface roughness showed improvement compared to flood machining. Economic analysis has been carried out in all the cases to decide the applicability of the techniques.

Keywords: Economic analysis, Machining, Minimum Quantity lubrication, nanofluid.

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Authors: Mohammadhossein Moghimi, Robert Stone, Pia Rotshtein

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Recording psychological and physiological correlates of human performance within virtual environments and interpreting their impacts on human engagement, ‘immersion’ and related emotional or ‘effective’ states is both academically and technologically challenging. By exposing participants to an effective, real-time (game-like) virtual environment, designed and evaluated in an earlier study, a psychophysiological database containing the EEG, GSR and Heart Rate of 30 male and female gamers, exposed to 10 games, was constructed. Some 174 features were subsequently identified and extracted from a number of windows, with 28 different timing lengths (e.g. 2, 3, 5, etc. seconds). After reducing the number of features to 30, using a feature selection technique, K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) methods were subsequently employed for the classification process. The classifiers categorised the psychophysiological database into four effective clusters (defined based on a 3-dimensional space – valence, arousal and dominance) and eight emotion labels (relaxed, content, happy, excited, angry, afraid, sad, and bored). The KNN and SVM classifiers achieved average cross-validation accuracies of 97.01% (±1.3%) and 92.84% (±3.67%), respectively. However, no significant differences were found in the classification process based on effective clusters or emotion labels.

Keywords: Virtual Reality, effective computing, effective VR, emotion-based effective physiological database.

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Authors: S. K. Bhullar, J. Ko, F. Ahmed, M. B. G. Jun

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The negative Poisson’s ratios can be described in terms of models based on the geometry of the system and the way this geometry changes due to applied loads. As the Poisson’s ratio does not depend on scale hence deformation can take place at the nano to macro level the only requirement is the right combination of the geometry. Our thrust in this paper is to combine our knowledge of tailored enhanced mechanical properties of the materials having negative Poisson’s ratio with the micromachining and electrospining technology to develop a novel stent carrying a drug delivery system. Therefore, the objective of this paper includes (i) fabrication of a micromachined metal sheet tailored with structure having negative Poisson’s ratio through rotating solid squares geometry using femtosecond laser ablation; (ii) rolling fabricated structure and welding to make a tubular structure (iii) wrapping it with nanofibers of biocompatible polymer PCL (polycaprolactone) for drug delivery (iv) analysis of the functional and mechanical performance of fabricated structure analytically and experimentally. Further, as the applications concerned, tubular structures have potential in biomedical for example hollow tubes called stents are placed inside to provide mechanical support to a damaged artery or diseased region and to open a blocked esophagus thus allowing feeding capacity and improving quality of life.

Keywords: Micromachining, electrospining, auxetic materials, enhanced mechanical properties.

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Authors: Todsaporn Fuangrod, Daryl J. O'Connor, Boyd MC McCurdy, Peter B. Greer

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An electronic portal image device (EPID) has become a method of patient-specific IMRT dose verification for radiotherapy. Research studies have focused on pre and post-treatment verification, however, there are currently no interventional procedures using EPID dosimetry that measure the dose in real time as a mechanism to ensure that overdoses do not occur and underdoses are detected as soon as is practically possible. As a result, an EPID-based real time dose verification system for dynamic IMRT was developed and was implemented with MATLAB/Simulink. The EPID image acquisition was set to continuous acquisition mode at 1.4 images per second. The system defined the time constraint gap, or execution gap at the image acquisition time, so that every calculation must be completed before the next image capture is completed. In addition, the <=-evaluation method was used for dose comparison, with two types of comparison processes; individual image and cumulative dose comparison monitored. The outputs of the system are the <=-map, the percent of <=<1, and mean-<= versus time, all in real time. Two strategies were used to test the system, including an error detection test and a clinical data test. The system can monitor the actual dose delivery compared with the treatment plan data or previous treatment dose delivery that means a radiation therapist is able to switch off the machine when the error is detected.

Keywords: real-time dose verification, EPID dosimetry, simulation, dynamic IMRT

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Authors: Oliver Haala, Bernhard Wagner, Maximilian Hofmann, Martin Marz

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The excellent suitability of the externally excited synchronous machine (EESM) in automotive traction drive applications is justified by its high efficiency over the whole operation range and the high availability of materials. Usually, maximum efficiency is obtained by modelling each single loss and minimizing the sum of all losses. As a result, the quality of the optimization highly depends on the precision of the model. Moreover, it requires accurate knowledge of the saturation dependent machine inductances. Therefore, the present contribution proposes a method to minimize the overall losses of a salient pole EESM and its inverter in steady state operation based on measurement data only. Since this method does not require any manufacturer data, it is well suited for an automated measurement data evaluation and inverter parametrization. The field oriented control (FOC) of an EESM provides three current components resp. three degrees of freedom (DOF). An analytic minimization of the copper losses in the stator and the rotor (assuming constant inductances) is performed and serves as a first approximation of how to choose the optimal current reference values. After a numeric offline minimization of the overall losses based on measurement data the results are compared to a control strategy that satisfies cos (ϕ) = 1.

Keywords: Current control, efficiency, externally excited synchronous machine, optimization.

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Authors: M. Bevilacqua, F. E. Ciarapica, G. Marcucci

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Supply Chain Resilience has been broadly studied during the last decade, focusing the research on many aspects of Supply Chain performance. Consequently, different definitions of Supply Chain Resilience have been developed by the research community, drawing inspiration also from other fields of study such as ecology, sociology, psychology, economy et al. This way, the definitions so far developed in the extant literature are therefore very heterogeneous, and many authors have pointed out a lack of consensus in this field of analysis. The aim of this research is to find common points between these definitions, through the development of a framework of study: the Resilience Triangle. The Resilience Triangle is a tool developed in the field of civil engineering, with the objective of modeling the loss of resilience of a given structure during and after the occurrence of a disruption such as an earthquake. The Resilience Triangle is a simple yet powerful tool: in our opinion, it can summarize all the features that authors have captured in the Supply Chain Resilience definitions over the years. This research intends to recapitulate within this framework all these heterogeneities in Supply Chain Resilience research. After collecting a various number of Supply Chain Resilience definitions present in the extant literature, the methodology approach provides a taxonomy step with the scope of collecting and analyzing all the data gathered. The next step provides the comparison of the data obtained with the plotting of a disruption profile, in order to contextualize the Resilience Triangle in the Supply Chain context. The tool and the results developed in this research will allow to lay the foundation for future Supply Chain Resilience modeling and measurement work.

Keywords: Supply chain resilience, resilience definition, supply chain resilience triangle.

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Authors: Morten Stigaard Laursen, Rasmus Nyholm Jørgensen, Henrik Skov Midtiby, Anders Krogh Mortensen, Sanmohan Baby

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This work contributes a statistical model and simulation framework yielding the best estimate possible for the potential herbicide reduction when using the MoDiCoVi algorithm all the while requiring a efficacy comparable to conventional spraying. In June 2013 a maize field located in Denmark were seeded. The field was divided into parcels which was assigned to one of two main groups: 1) Control, consisting of subgroups of no spray and full dose spraty; 2) MoDiCoVi algorithm subdivided into five different leaf cover thresholds for spray activation. In addition approximately 25% of the parcels were seeded with additional weeds perpendicular to the maize rows. In total 299 parcels were randomly assigned with the 28 different treatment combinations. In the statistical analysis, bootstrapping was used for balancing the number of replicates. The achieved potential herbicide savings was found to be 70% to 95% depending on the initial weed coverage. However additional field trials covering more seasons and locations are needed to verify the generalisation of these results. There is a potential for further herbicide savings as the time interval between the first and second spraying session was not long enough for the weeds to turn yellow, instead they only stagnated in growth.

Keywords: Weed crop discrimination, macrosprayer, herbicide reduction, site-specific, sprayer-boom.

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Authors: T. M. Agbede, A. O. Adekiya

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An experiment was carried out for three consecutive years at Owo, southwest Nigeria. The objective of the investigation was to determine the effect of Cocoa Pod Ash (CPA) and Poultry Manure (PM) applied solely and their combined form, as sources of fertilizers on soil properties, leaf nutrient composition, growth and yield of cocoyam. Three soil amendments: CPA, PM (sole forms), CPA and PM (mixture), were applied at 7.5 t ha^-1 with an inorganic fertilizer (NPK 15-15-15) at 400 kg ha^-1 as a reference and a natural soil fertility, NSF (control), arranged in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Results showed that soil amendments significantly increased (p = 0.05) corm and cormel weights and growth of cocoyam, soil and leaf N, P, K, Ca and Mg, soil pH and organic carbon (OC) concentrations compared with the NSF (control). The mixture of CPA+PM treatment increased corm and cormel weights, plant height and leaf area of cocoyam by 40, 39, 42, and 48%, respectively, compared with inorganic fertilizer (NPK) and 13, 12, 15 and 7%, respectively, compared with PM alone. Sole or mixed forms of soil amendments showed remarkable improvement in soil physical properties compared with NPK and the NSF (control). The mixture of CPA+PM applied at 7.5 t ha^-1 was the most effective treatment in improving cocoyam yield and growth parameters, soil and leaf nutrient composition.

Keywords: Cocoa pod ash, cocoyam, poultry manure, soil and leaf nutrient composition.

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Authors: Ya Lv

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This article presents the application of the semi-analytic method (SAM) in the thermal management solution (TMS) of the energy storage system (ESS). The TMS studied in this work is fluid cooling. In fluid cooling, both effective heat conduction and heat convection are indispensable due to the heat transfer from solid to fluid. Correspondingly, an efficient TMS requires a design investigation of the following parameters: fluid inlet temperature, ESS initial temperature, fluid flow rate, working c rate, continuous working time, and materials properties. Their variation induces a change of thermal performance in the battery module, which is usually evaluated by numerical simulation. Compared to complicated computation resources and long computation time in simulation, the SAM is developed in this article to predict the thermal influence within a few seconds. In SAM, a fast prediction model is reckoned by combining numerical simulation with theoretical/empirical equations. The SAM can explore the thermal effect of boundary parameters in both steady-state and transient heat transfer scenarios within a short time. Therefore, the SAM developed in this work can simplify the design cycle of TMS and inspire more possibilities in TMS design.

Keywords: Semi-analytic method, fast prediction model, thermal influence of boundary parameters, energy storage system.

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Authors: H. Nikzad, S. Yoshitomi

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This study investigates and develops the structural optimization method. The effect of size constraints on practical solution of reinforced concrete (RC) building structure with shear wall is proposed. Cross-sections of beam and column, and thickness of shear wall are considered as design variables. The objective function to be minimized is total cost of the structure by using a simple and efficient automated MATLAB platform structural optimization methodology. With modification of mathematical formulations, the result is compared with optimal solution without size constraints. The most suitable combination of section sizes is selected as for the final design application based on linear static analysis. The findings of this study show that defining higher value of upper bound of sectional sizes significantly affects optimal solution, and defining of size constraints play a vital role in finding of global and practical solution during optimization procedures. The result and effectiveness of proposed method confirm the ability and efficiency of optimal solutions for 3D RC shear wall-frame structure.

Keywords: Structural optimization, linear static analysis, ETABS, MATLAB, RC shear wall-frame structures.

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Authors: Pranee Pathomchaiwat

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This research aims to study tourism data and behavior of foreign tourists visited Wat Phrachetuponwimolmangkalaram (Wat Po) Sample groups are tourists who visited inside the temple, during February, March, April and May 2013. Tools used in the research are questionnaires constructed by the researcher, and samples are dawn by Convenience sampling. There are 207 foreign tourists who are willing to be respondents. Statistics used are percentage, average mean and standard deviation. The results of the research reveal that: A. General Data of Respondents The foreign tourists who visited the temple are mostly female (57.5 %), most respondents are aged between 20-29 years (37.2%). Most respondents live in Europe (62.3%), most of them got the Bachelor’s degree (40.1%), British are mostly found (16.4%), respondents who are students are also found (23.2%), and Christian are mostly found (60.9%). B. Tourists’ Behavior While Visiting the Temple Compound. The result shows that the respondents came with family (46.4%), have never visited the temples (40.6%), and visited once (42 %). It is found that the foreign tourists’ inappropriate behavior are wearing revealing attires (58.9%), touching or getting closed to the monks (55.1%), and speaking loudly (46.9%) respectively. The respondents’ outstanding objectives are to visit inside the temple (57.5%), to pay respect to the Reclining Buddha Image in the Viharn (44.4%) and to worship the Buddha image in the Phra Ubosod (37.7%) respectively. C. The Respondents’ Self-evaluation of Performance It is found that over all tourists evaluated themselves in the highest level averaged 4.40. When focusing on each item, it is shown that they evaluated themselves in the highest level on obeying the temple staff averaged 4.57, and cleanness concern of the temple averaged 4.52, well-behaved performance during the temple visit averaged 4.47 respectively.

Keywords: Deportment, Traveler

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Authors: Areej Almalkawi, Sameer Hamadna, Parviz Soroushian, Nalin Darsana

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The work on indigenous binders in this paper focused on the following indigenous raw materials: red clay, red lava and pumice (as primary aluminosilicate precursors), wood ash and gypsum (as supplementary minerals), and sodium sulfate and lime (as alkali activators). The experimental methods used for evaluation of these indigenous raw materials included laser granulometry, x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, and chemical reactivity. Formulations were devised for transforming these raw materials into alkali aluminosilicate-based hydraulic cements. These formulations were processed into hydraulic cements via simple heating and milling actions to render thermal activation, mechanochemical and size reduction effects. The resulting hydraulic cements were subjected to laser granulometry, heat of hydration and reactivity tests. These cements were also used to prepare mortar mixtures, which were evaluated via performance of compressive strength tests. The measured values of strength were correlated with the reactivity, size distribution and microstructural features of raw materials. Some of the indigenous hydraulic cements produced in this reporting period yielded viable levels of compressive strength. The correlation trends established in this work are being evaluated for development of simple and thorough methods of qualifying indigenous raw materials for use in production of indigenous hydraulic cements.

Keywords: One-part geopolymer cement, aluminosilicate precursors, thermal activation, mechanochemical.

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Authors: Sarayu Agarwal

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This paper aims to teach English (secondary language) by bridging the understanding between the Regional language (primary language) and the English Language (secondary language). Here primary language is the one a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, while secondary language would be any other language one learns or speaks. The paper also focuses on evolving old teaching methods to a contemporary participatory model of learning and teaching. Pilot studies were conducted to gauge an understanding of student’s knowledge of the English language. Teachers and students were interviewed and their academic curriculum was assessed as a part of the initial study. Extensive literature study and design thinking principles were used to devise a solution to the problem. The objective is met using a holistic learning kit/card game to teach children word recognition, word pronunciation, word spelling and writing words. Implication of the paper is a noticeable improvement in the understanding and grasping of English language. With increasing usage and applicability of English as a second language (ESL) world over, the paper becomes relevant due to its easy replicability to any other primary or secondary language. Future scope of this paper would be transforming the idea of participatory learning into self-regulated learning methods. With the upcoming govt. learning centres in rural areas and provision of smart devices such as tablets, the development of the card games into digital applications seems very feasible.

Keywords: English as a second language, vocabulary-building, learning through gamification.

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Authors: S. R. M. Kutty, S. N. I. Ngatenah, M. H. Isa, A. Malakahmad

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Water hyacinth has been used in aquatic systems for wastewater purification in many years worldwide. The role of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) species in polishing nitrate and phosphorus concentration from municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent by phytoremediation method was evaluated. The objective of this project is to determine the removal efficiency of water hyacinth in polishing nitrate and phosphorus, as well as chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia. Water hyacinth is considered as the most efficient aquatic plant used in removing vast range of pollutants such as organic matters, nutrients and heavy metals. Water hyacinth, also referred as macrophytes, were cultivated in the treatment house in a reactor tank of approximately 90(L) x 40(W) x 25(H) in dimension and built with three compartments. Three water hyacinths were placed in each compartments and water sample in each compartment were collected in every two days. The plant observation was conducted by weight measurement, plant uptake and new young shoot development. Water hyacinth effectively removed approximately 49% of COD, 81% of ammonia, 67% of phosphorus and 92% of nitrate. It also showed significant growth rate at starting from day 6 with 0.33 shoot/day and they kept developing up to 0.38 shoot/day at the end of day 24. From the studies conducted, it was proved that water hyacinth is capable of polishing the effluent of municipal wastewater which contains undesirable amount of nitrate and phosphorus concentration.

Keywords: water hyacinth, phytoremediation, nutrient removal, Eichhornia crassipes

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Authors: Kuntal Thakkar, Chaouki Ghenai, Ahmed Hachicha

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An integrated modeling approach was used in this study for energy planning and climate change mitigation assessment. The main objective of this study was to develop various green-house gas (GHG) mitigations scenarios in the energy demand and supply sectors for the state of Florida. The Long range energy alternative planning (LEAP) model was used in this study to examine the energy alternative and GHG emissions reduction scenarios for short and long term (2010-2050). One of the energy analysis and GHG mitigation scenarios was developed by taking into account the available renewable energy resources potential for power generation in the state of Florida. This will help to compare and analyze the GHG reduction measure against “Business As Usual” and ‘State of Florida Policy” scenarios. Two master scenarios: “Electrification” and “Energy efficiency and Lifestyle” were developed through combination of various mitigation scenarios: technological changes and energy efficiency and conservation. The results show a net reduction of the energy demand and GHG emissions by adopting these two energy scenarios compared to the business as usual.

Keywords: Integrated modeling, energy planning, climate change mitigation assessment, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy, energy efficiency.

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Authors: Chandrashekhar Bhat, Dilifa J. Noronha, Faber A. Saldanha

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Transportation of long turbine blades from one place to another is a difficult process. Hence a feasibility study of modularization of wind turbine blade was taken from structural standpoint through finite element analysis. Initially, a non-segmented blade is modeled and its structural behavior is evaluated to serve as reference. The resonant, static bending and fatigue tests are simulated in accordance with IEC61400-23 standard for comparison purpose. The non-segmented test blade is separated at suitable location based on trade off studies and the segments are joined with an innovative double strap bonded joint configuration. The adhesive joint is modeled by adopting cohesive zone modeling approach in ANSYS. The developed blade model is analyzed for its structural response through simulation. Performances of both the blades are found to be similar, which indicates that, efficient segmentation of the long blade is possible which facilitates easy transportation of the blades and on site reassembling. The location selected for segmentation and adopted joint configuration has resulted in an efficient segmented blade model which proves the methodology adopted for segmentation was quite effective. The developed segmented blade appears to be the viable alternative considering its structural response specifically in fatigue within considered assumptions.

Keywords: Cohesive zone modeling, fatigue, segmentation, wind turbine blade.

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Authors: Aminat. O Adelekan, Olawale T. Gbadebo

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Biscuit is one of the most consumed cereal foods in Nigeria and research has shown that locally available tropical crops like cassava, sweet potato can be made into flour and used in the production of biscuits and other pastries. This study investigates some quality parameters in biscuits made from blends of wheat, cassava and carrot flour. The values of result of samples increased with increasing percentage substitution of cassava and carrot flour in some quality parameter like fiber, ash, gluten content, and carbohydrate. The protein content reduced significantly (P < 0.05) with increasing percentage substitution of cassava and carrot flour which ranged from 14.80% to 11.80% compared with the control sample which had 15.60%. There was a recorded significant increase (P < 0.05) in some mineral composition such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, iron, phosphorus, and vitamin A and C composition as the percentage substitution of cassava and carrot flour increased. During storage stability test, samples stored in the fridge and freezer were found to be the best storage location to preserve the sensory attributes and inhibit microbial growth when compared with storage under the sun and on the shelf. Biscuit made with blends of wheat, cassava and carrot flour can therefore serve as an alternative to biscuits made from 100% wheat flour, as they are richer in vitamin A, vitamin C, carbohydrate, dietary fiber and some essential minerals.

Keywords: Biscuit, carrot, flour blends, storage.

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Authors: L. Bennaceur Farah, I. R. Farah, R. Bennaceur, Z. Belhadj, M. R. Boussema

Abstract:

The overall objective of this paper is to retrieve soil surfaces parameters namely, roughness and soil moisture related to the dielectric constant by inverting the radar backscattered signal from natural soil surfaces. Because the classical description of roughness using statistical parameters like the correlation length doesn't lead to satisfactory results to predict radar backscattering, we used a multi-scale roughness description using the wavelet transform and the Mallat algorithm. In this description, the surface is considered as a superposition of a finite number of one-dimensional Gaussian processes each having a spatial scale. A second step in this study consisted in adapting a direct model simulating radar backscattering namely the small perturbation model to this multi-scale surface description. We investigated the impact of this description on radar backscattering through a sensitivity analysis of backscattering coefficient to the multi-scale roughness parameters. To perform the inversion of the small perturbation multi-scale scattering model (MLS SPM) we used a multi-layer neural network architecture trained by backpropagation learning rule. The inversion leads to satisfactory results with a relative uncertainty of 8%.

Keywords: Remote sensing, rough surfaces, inverse problems, SAR, radar scattering, Neural networks and Fractals.

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Authors: Karan Vishavjit, Aakash Lakra, Shafaq Khan

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The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed healthcare professionals to use big data analytics as a vital tool for tracking and evaluating the effects of contagious viruses. To effectively analyse huge datasets, efficient NoSQL databases are needed. The analysis of post-COVID-19 health and well-being outcomes and the evaluation of the effectiveness of government efforts during the pandemic is made possible by this research’s integration of several datasets, which cuts down on query processing time and creates predictive visual artifacts. We recommend applying sharding and indexing technologies to improve query effectiveness and scalability as the dataset expands. Effective data retrieval and analysis are made possible by spreading the datasets into a sharded database and doing indexing on individual shards. Analysis of connections between governmental activities, poverty levels, and post-pandemic wellbeing is the key goal. We want to evaluate the effectiveness of governmental initiatives to improve health and lower poverty levels. We will do this by utilising advanced data analysis and visualisations. The findings provide relevant data that support the advancement of UN sustainable objectives, future pandemic preparation, and evidence-based decision-making. This study shows how Big Data and NoSQL databases may be used to address problems with global health.

Keywords: COVID-19, big data, data analysis, indexing, NoSQL, sharding, scalability, poverty.

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Authors: W. Swiderski

Abstract:

In the paper introduced the diagnostic technique making possible the research of internal structures in composite materials reinforced fibres using in different applications. The main reason of damages in structures of these materials is the changing distribution of load in constructions in the lifetime. Appearing defect is largely complicated because of the appearance of disturbing of continuity of reinforced fibres, binder cracks and loss of fibres adhesiveness from binders. Defect in composite materials is usually more complicated than in metals. At present, infrared thermography is the most effective method in non-destructive testing composite. One of IR thermography methods used in non-destructive evaluation is vibrothermography. The vibrothermography is not a new non-destructive method, but the new solution in this test is use ultrasonic waves to thermal stimulation of materials. In this paper, both modelling and experimental results which illustrate the advantages and limitations of ultrasonic IR thermography in inspecting composite materials will be presented. The ThermoSon computer program for computing 3D dynamic temperature distribuions in anisotropic layered solids with subsurface defects subject to ulrasonic stimulation was used to optimise heating parameters in the detection of subsurface defects in composite materials. The program allows for the analysis of transient heat conduction and ultrasonic wave propagation phenomena in solids. The experiments at MIAT were fulfilled by means of FLIR SC 7600 IR camera. Ultrasonic stimulation was performed with the frequency from 15 kHz to 30 kHz with maximum power up to 2 kW.

Keywords: Composite material, ultrasonic, infrared thermography, non-destructive testing.

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Authors: Lakshman Singh, Rajeshwar Singh, Naveen Kumar Singh, Davinder Singh, Pargat Singh

Abstract:

Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding is a high quality welding process used to weld the thin metals and their alloy. 5083 Aluminium alloys play an important role in engineering and metallurgy field because of excellent corrosion properties, ease of fabrication and high specific strength coupled with best combination of toughness and formability.

TIG welding technique is one of the precise and fastest processes used in aerospace, ship and marine industries. TIG welding process is used to analyze the data and evaluate the influence of input parameters on tensile strength of 5083 Al-alloy specimens with dimensions of 100mm long x 15mm wide x 5mm thick. Welding current (I), gas flow rate (G) and welding speed (S) are the input parameters which effect tensile strength of 5083 Al-alloy welded joints. As welding speed increased, tensile strength increases first till optimum value and after that both decreases by increasing welding speed further. Results of the study show that maximum tensile strength of 129 MPa of weld joint are obtained at welding current of 240 Amps, gas flow rate of 7 Lt/min and welding speed of 98 mm/min. These values are the optimum values of input parameters which help to produce efficient weld joint that have good mechanical properties as a tensile strength.

Keywords: 5083 Aluminium alloy, Gas flow rate, TIG welding, Welding current, Welding speed and Tensile strength.

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Authors: Pradyumna Kumar Sahoo, Prasanta Kumar Satpathy

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This paper aims at finding a suitable neural network for monitoring congestion level in electrical power systems. In this paper, the input data has been framed properly to meet the target objective through supervised learning mechanism by defining normal and abnormal operating conditions for the system under study. The congestion level, expressed as line congestion index (LCI), is evaluated for each operating condition and is presented to the NN along with the bus voltages to represent the input and target data. Once, the training goes successful, the NN learns how to deal with a set of newly presented data through validation and testing mechanism. The crux of the results presented in this paper rests on performance comparison of a multi-layered feed forward neural network with eleven types of back propagation techniques so as to evolve the best training criteria. The proposed methodology has been tested on the standard IEEE-14 bus test system with the support of MATLAB based NN toolbox. The results presented in this paper signify that the Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation algorithm gives best training performance of all the eleven cases considered in this paper, thus validating the proposed methodology.

Keywords: Line congestion index, critical bus, contingency, neural network.

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Authors: Zahid O. Alibrahim, Craig D. Williams, Clive L. Roberts

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The study area (Ecton mining area) is located in the southern part of the Peak District in Derbyshire, England. It is bounded by the River Manifold from the west. This area has been mined for a long period. As a result, huge amounts of potentially toxic metals were released into the surrounding area and are most likely to be a significant source of heavy metal contamination to the local soil, water and vegetation. In order to appraise the potential heavy metal pollution in this area, 37 topsoil samples (5-20 cm depth) were collected and analysed for their total content of Cu, Pb, Zn, Mn, Cr, Ni and V using ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) optical emission spectroscopy. Multivariate Geospatial analyses using the GIS technique were utilised to draw geochemical maps of the metals of interest over the study area. A few hotspot points, areas of elevated concentrations of metals, were specified, which are presumed to be the results of anthropogenic activities. In addition, the soil’s environmental quality was evaluated by calculating the Mullers’ Geoaccumulation index (I geo), which suggests that the degree of contamination of the investigated heavy metals has the following trend: Pb > Zn > Cu > Mn > Ni = Cr = V. Furthermore, the potential ecological risk, using the enrichment factor (EF), was also specified. On the basis of the calculated amount or the EF, the levels of pollution for the studied metals in the study area have the following order: Pb>Zn>Cu>Cr>V>Ni>Mn.

Keywords: Heavy metals, GIS, multivariate analysis, geoaccumulation index, enrichment factor.

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