Search results for: informal mechanisms
241 Variant Polymorphisms of GST and XRCC Genes and the Early Risk of Age Associated Disease in Kazakhstan
Authors: Zeinep A. Berkimbayeva, Almagul T. Mansharipova, Elmira M. Khussainova, Leyla B. Djansugurova
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It is believed that DNA damaging toxic metabolites contributes to the development of different pathological conditions. To prevent harmful influence of toxic agents, cells developed number of protecting mechanisms, such as enzymatic reaction of detoxification of reactive metabolites and repair of DNA damage. The aim of the study was to examine the association between polymorphism of GSTT1/GSTM1 and XRCC1/3 genes and coronary artery disease (CAD) incidence. To examine a polymorphism of these genes in CAD susceptibility in patients and controls, PCR based genotyping assay was performed. For GST genes, frequency of GSTM1 null genotype among CAD affected group was significantly increased than in control group (P<0.001). Frequencies of the GSTT1 null and positive alleles are almost equal in both groups (P>0.1). We found that neither XRCC1 Arg399Gln nor XRCC3 Thr241Met were associated with CAD risk. Obtained data suggests that GSTM1 null genotype carriers are more susceptible to CAD development.
Keywords: Cardiovascular disease, DNA reparation, gene polymorphism, risk factors, xenobiotic detoxification.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1923240 Job Stressors and Coping Mechanisms among Emergency Department Nurses in the Armed Force Hospitals of Taiwan
Authors: Wei-Wen Liu, Feng-Chuan Pan, Pei-Chi Wen, Sen-Ji Chen, Su-Hui Lin
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Nurses in an Armed Force Hospital (AFH) expose to stronger stress than those in a civil hospital, especially in an emergency department (ED). Ironically, stresses of these nurses received few if any attention in academic research in the past. This study collects 227 samples from the emergency departments of four armed force hospitals in central and southern Taiwan. The research indicates that the top five stressors are a massive casualty event, delayed physician support, overloads of routine work, overloads of assignments, and annoying paper work. Excessive work loading was found to be the primary source of stress. Nurses who were perceived to have greater stress levels were more inclined to deploy emotion-oriented approaches and more likely to seek job rotations. Professional stressors and problem-oriented approaches were positively correlated. Unlike other local studies, this study concludes that the excessive work-loading is more stressful in an AFH.
Keywords: Emergency nurse, Job stressor, Coping behavior, Armed force hospital.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2935239 Biometric Steganography Using Variable Length Embedding
Authors: Souvik Bhattacharyya, Indradip Banerjee, Anumoy Chakraborty, Gautam Sanyal
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Recent growth in digital multimedia technologies has presented a lot of facilities in information transmission, reproduction and manipulation. Therefore, the concept of information security is one of the superior articles in the present day situation. The biometric information security is one of the information security mechanisms. It has the advantages as well as disadvantages. The biometric system is at risk to a range of attacks. These attacks are anticipated to bypass the security system or to suspend the normal functioning. Various hazards have been discovered while using biometric system. Proper use of steganography greatly reduces the risks in biometric systems from the hackers. Steganography is one of the fashionable information hiding technique. The goal of steganography is to hide information inside a cover medium like text, image, audio, video etc. through which it is not possible to detect the existence of the secret information. Here in this paper a new security concept has been established by making the system more secure with the help of steganography along with biometric security. Here the biometric information has been embedded to a skin tone portion of an image with the help of proposed steganographic technique.
Keywords: Biometrics, Skin tone detection, Series, Polynomial, Cover Image, Stego Image.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2651238 The Expression of a Novel Gene Encoding an Ankyrin-Repeat Protein, DRA1, is Regulated by Drought-Responsive Alternative Splicing
Authors: H. Sakamoto, Y. Nakagawara, S. Oguri
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Drought stress is a critical environmental factor that adversely affects crop productivity and quality. Because of their immobile nature, plants have evolved mechanisms to sense and respond to drought stress. We identified a novel locus of Arabidopsis, designated DRA1 (drought responsive ankyrin1), whose disruption leads to increased drought-stress tolerance. DRA1 encodes a transmembrane protein with an ankyrin-repeat motif that has been implicated in diverse cellular processes such as signal transduction. RT-PCR analysis revealed that there were at least two splicing variants of DRA1 transcripts in wild-type plants. In response to drought stress, the levels of DRA1 transcripts retaining second and third introns were increased, whereas these introns were removed under unstressed conditions. These results suggest that DRA1 protein may negatively regulate plant drought tolerance and that the expression of DRA1is regulated in response to drought stress by alternative splicing.
Keywords: Alternative splicing, ankyrin repeat, Arabidopsis, drought tolerance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1749237 Failure Analysis of a Medium Duty Vehicle Leaf Spring
Authors: Gül Çevik
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This paper summarizes the work conducted to assess the root cause of the failure of a medium commercial vehicle leaf spring failed in service. Macro- and micro-fractographic analyses by scanning electron microscope as well as material verification tests were conducted in order to understand the failure mechanisms and root cause of the failure. Findings from the fractographic analyses indicated that failure mechanism is fatigue. Crack initiation was identified to have occurred from a point on the top surface near to the front face and to the left side. Two other crack initiation points were also observed, however, these cracks did not propagate. The propagation mode of the fatigue crack revealed that the cyclic loads resulting in crack initiation and propagation were unidirectional bending. Fractographic analyses have also showed that the root cause of the fatigue crack initiation and propagation was loading the part above design stress. Material properties of the part were also verified by chemical composition analysis, microstructural analysis by optical microscopy and hardness tests.
Keywords: Leaf spring, failure analysis, fatigue, fractography.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 729236 Multi-Scale Damage and Mechanical Behavior of Sheet Molding Compound Composites Subjected to Fatigue, Dynamic, and Post-Fatigue Dynamic Loadings
Authors: M. Shirinbayan, J. Fitoussi, N. Abbasnezhad, A. Lucas, A. Tcharkhtchi
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Sheet Molding Compounds (SMCs) with special microstructures are very attractive to use in automobile structures especially when they are accidentally subjected to collision type accidents because of their high energy absorption capacity. These are materials designated as standard SMC, Advanced Sheet Molding Compounds (A-SMC), Low-Density SMC (LD-SMC) and etc. In this study, testing methods have been performed to compare the mechanical responses and damage phenomena of SMC, LD-SMC, and A-SMC under quasi-static and high strain rate tensile tests. The paper also aims at investigating the effect of an initial pre-damage induced by fatigue on the tensile dynamic behavior of A-SMC. In the case of SMCs and A-SMCs, whatever the fibers orientation and applied strain rate are, the first observed phenomenon of damage corresponds to decohesion of the fiber-matrix interface which is followed by coalescence and multiplication of these micro-cracks and their propagations. For LD-SMCs, damage mechanisms depend on the presence of Hollow Glass Microspheres (HGM) and fibers orientation.
Keywords: SMC, LD-SMC, A-SMC, HGM, damage.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 703235 Calculation of Water Economy Balance for Water Management
Authors: Vakhtang Geladze, Nana Bolashvili, Tamazi Karalashvili, Nino Machavariani, Ana Karalashvili, George Geladze, Nana Kvirkvelia
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Fresh water deficit is one of the most important global problems today. It must be taken into consideration that in the nearest future fresh water crisis will become even more acute owing to the global climate warming and fast desertification processes in the world. Georgia is rich in water resources, but there are disbalance between the eastern and western parts of the country. The goal of the study is to integrate the recent mechanisms compatible with European standards into Georgian water resources management system on the basis of GIS. Moreover, to draw up water economy balance for the purpose of proper determination of water consumption priorities that will be an exchange ratio of water resources and water consumption of the concrete territory. For study region was choose south-eastern part of country, Kvemo kartli Region. This is typical agrarian region, tends to the desertification. The water supply of the region was assessed on the basis of water economy balance, which was first time calculated for this region.
Keywords: GIS, water economy balance, water resources.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 903234 The Expression of a Novel Gene Encoding an Ankyrin-Repeat Protein, DRA1, is Regulated by Drought-Responsive Alternative Splicing
Authors: H. Sakamoto, Y. Nakagawara, S. Oguri
Abstract:
Drought stress is a critical environmental factor that adversely affects crop productivity and quality. Because of their immobile nature, plants have evolved mechanisms to sense and respond to drought stress. We identified a novel locus of Arabidopsis, designated DRA1 (drought responsive ankyrin1), whose disruption leads to increased drought-stress tolerance. DRA1 encodes a transmembrane protein with an ankyrin-repeat motif that has been implicated in diverse cellular processes such as signal transduction. RT-PCR analysis revealed that there were at least two splicing variants of DRA1 transcripts in wild-type plants. In response to drought stress, the levels of DRA1 transcripts retaining second and third introns were increased, whereas these introns were removed under unstressed conditions. These results suggest that DRA1 protein may negatively regulate plant drought tolerance and that the expression of DRA1is regulated in response to drought stress by alternative splicing.
Keywords: Alternative splicing, ankyrin repeat, Arabidopsis, drought tolerance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1855233 Semantic Indexing Approach of a Corpora Based On Ontology
Authors: Mohammed Erritali
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The growth in the volume of text data such as books and articles in libraries for centuries has imposed to establish effective mechanisms to locate them. Early techniques such as abstraction, indexing and the use of classification categories have marked the birth of a new field of research called "Information Retrieval". Information Retrieval (IR) can be defined as the task of defining models and systems whose purpose is to facilitate access to a set of documents in electronic form (corpus) to allow a user to find the relevant ones for him, that is to say, the contents which matches with the information needs of the user. This paper presents a new semantic indexing approach of a documentary corpus. The indexing process starts first by a term weighting phase to determine the importance of these terms in the documents. Then the use of a thesaurus like Wordnet allows moving to the conceptual level. Each candidate concept is evaluated by determining its level of representation of the document, that is to say, the importance of the concept in relation to other concepts of the document. Finally, the semantic index is constructed by attaching to each concept of the ontology, the documents of the corpus in which these concepts are found.Keywords: Semantic, indexing, corpora, WordNet, ontology.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1361232 Incidence of Disasters and Coping Mechanism among Farming Households in South West Nigeria
Authors: Fawehinmi Olabisi Alaba, Adeniyi O. R.
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Farming households faces lots of disaster which contribute to endemic poverty. Anticipated increases in extreme weather events will exacerbate this. Primary data was administered to farming household using multi-stage random sampling technique. The result of the analysis shows that majority of the respondents (69.9%) are male, have mean household size, years of formal education and age of 5±1.14, 6±3.41, and 51.06±10.43 respectively. The major (48.9%) type of disaster experienced is flooding. Major coping mechanism adopted is sourcing for support from family and friends. Age, education, experience, access to extension agent, and mitigation control method contribute significantly to vulnerability to disaster. The major adaptation method (62.3%) is construction of drainage.
The study revealed that the coping mechanisms employed may become less effective as increasingly fragile livelihood systems struggle to withstand disaster shocks. Thus there is need for training of the farmers on measures to adapt to mitigate the shock from disasters
Keywords: Adaptation, Disasters, Flooding, Vulnerability.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2115231 Enhancing Teaching of Engineering Mathematics
Authors: Tajinder Pal Singh
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Teaching of mathematics to engineering students is an open ended problem in education. The main goal of mathematics learning for engineering students is the ability of applying a wide range of mathematical techniques and skills in their engineering classes and later in their professional work. Most of the undergraduate engineering students and faculties feels that no efforts and attempts are made to demonstrate the applicability of various topics of mathematics that are taught thus making mathematics unavoidable for some engineering faculty and their students. The lack of understanding of concepts in engineering mathematics may hinder the understanding of other concepts or even subjects. However, for most undergraduate engineering students, mathematics is one of the most difficult courses in their field of study. Most of the engineering students never understood mathematics or they never liked it because it was too abstract for them and they could never relate to it. A right balance of application and concept based teaching can only fulfill the objectives of teaching mathematics to engineering students. It will surely improve and enhance their problem solving and creative thinking skills. In this paper, some practical (informal) ways of making mathematics-teaching application based for the engineering students is discussed. An attempt is made to understand the present state of teaching mathematics in engineering colleges. The weaknesses and strengths of the current teaching approach are elaborated. Some of the causes of unpopularity of mathematics subject are analyzed and a few pragmatic suggestions have been made. Faculty in mathematics courses should spend more time discussing the applications as well as the conceptual underpinnings rather than focus solely on strategies and techniques to solve problems. They should also introduce more ‘word’ problems as these problems are commonly encountered in engineering courses. Overspecialization in engineering education should not occur at the expense of (or by diluting) mathematics and basic sciences. The role of engineering education is to provide the fundamental (basic) knowledge and to teach the students simple methodology of self-learning and self-development. All these issues would be better addressed if mathematics and engineering faculty join hands together to plan and design the learning experiences for the students who take their classes. When faculties stop competing against each other and start competing against the situation, they will perform better. Without creating any administrative hassles these suggestions can be used by any young inexperienced faculty of mathematics to inspire engineering students to learn engineering mathematics effectively.
Keywords: Application based learning, conceptual learning, engineering mathematics, word problem.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2279230 Influence of Measurement System on Negative Bias Temperature Instability Characterization: Fast BTI vs Conventional BTI vs Fast Wafer Level Reliability
Authors: Vincent King Soon Wong, Hong Seng Ng, Florinna Sim
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Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is one of the critical degradation mechanisms in semiconductor device reliability that causes shift in the threshold voltage (Vth). However, thorough understanding of this reliability failure mechanism is still unachievable due to a recovery characteristic known as NBTI recovery. This paper will demonstrate the severity of NBTI recovery as well as one of the effective methods used to mitigate, which is the minimization of measurement system delays. Comparison was done in between two measurement systems that have significant differences in measurement delays to show how NBTI recovery causes result deviations and how fast measurement systems can mitigate NBTI recovery. Another method to minimize NBTI recovery without the influence of measurement system known as Fast Wafer Level Reliability (FWLR) NBTI was also done to be used as reference.Keywords: Fast vs slow BTI, Fast wafer level reliability, Negative bias temperature instability, NBTI measurement system, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, MOSFET, NBTI recovery, reliability.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1644229 Antimicrobial Agents Produced by Yeasts
Authors: T. Buyuksirit, H. Kuleasan
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Natural antimicrobials are used to preserve foods that can be found in plants, animals, and microorganisms. Antimicrobial substances are natural or artificial agents that produced by microorganisms or obtained semi/total chemical synthesis are used at low concentrations to inhibit the growth of other microorganisms. Food borne pathogens and spoilage microorganisms are inactivated by the use of antagonistic microorganisms and their metabolites. Yeasts can produce toxic proteins or glycoproteins (toxins) that cause inhibition of sensitive bacteria and yeast species. Antimicrobial substance producing phenotypes belonging different yeast genus were isolated from different sources. Toxins secreted by many yeast strains inhibiting the growth of other yeast strains. These strains show antimicrobial activity, inhibiting the growth of mold and bacteria. The effect of antimicrobial agents produced by yeasts can be extremely fast, and therefore may be used in various treatment procedures. Rapid inhibition of microorganisms is possibly caused by microbial cell membrane lipopolysaccharide binding and in activation (neutralization) effect. Antimicrobial agents inhibit the target cells via different mechanisms of action.
Keywords: Antimicrobial agents, Glycoprotein, Toxic protein, Yeast.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4537228 Risk of Plastic Shrinkage Cracking in Recycled Aggregate Concrete
Authors: M. Eckert, M. Oliveira
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The intensive use of natural aggregates, near cities and towns, associated to the increase of the global population, leads to its depletion and increases the transport distances. The uncontrolled deposition of construction and demolition waste in landfills and city outskirts, causes pollution and takes up space. The use of recycled aggregates in concrete preparation would contribute to mitigate the problem. However, it arises the problem that the high water absorption of recycled aggregate decreases the bleeding rate of concrete, and when this gets lower than the evaporation rate, plastic shrinkage cracking occurs. This phenomenon can be particularly problematic in hot and windy curing environments. Cracking facilitates the flow of liquid and gas into concrete which attacks the reinforcement and degrades the concrete. These factors reduce the durability of concrete structures and consequently the lifetime of buildings. A ring test was used, cured in a wind tunnel, to evaluate the plastic shrinkage cracking sensitivity of recycled aggregate concrete, in order to implement preventive means to control this phenomenon. The role of several aggregate properties on the concrete segregation and cracking mechanisms were also discussed.
Keywords: Recycled Aggregate, Plastic Shrinkage Cracking; Wind Tunnel, Durability.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1022227 Impact of the Transport on the Urban Heat Island
Authors: L. Haddad, Z. Aouachria
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The development of transport systems has negative impacts on the environment although it has beneficial effects on society. The car policy caused many problems such as: - the spectacular growth of fuel consumption hence the very vast increase in urban pollution, traffic congestion in certain places and at certain times, the increase in the number of accidents. The exhaust emissions from cars and weather conditions are the main factors that determine the level of pollution in urban atmosphere. These conditions lead to the phenomenon of heat transfer and radiation occurring between the air and the soil surface of any town. These exchanges give rise, in urban areas, to the effects of heat islands that correspond to the appearance of excess air temperature between the city and its surrounding space. In this object, we perform a numerical simulation of the plume generated by the cars exhaust gases and show that these gases form a screening effect above the urban city which cause the heat island in the presence of wind flow. This study allows us: 1. To understand the different mechanisms of interactions between these phenomena.2. To consider appropriate technical solutions to mitigate the effects of the heat island.Keywords: Atmospheric pollution, impact on the health, urban transport, heat island.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2992226 New Feed-Forward/Feedback Generalized Minimum Variance Self-tuning Pole-placement Controller
Authors: S. A. Mohamed, A. S. Zayed, O. A. Abolaeha
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A new Feed-Forward/Feedback Generalized Minimum Variance Pole-placement Controller to incorporate the robustness of classical pole-placement into the flexibility of generalized minimum variance self-tuning controller for Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) has been proposed in this paper. The design, which provides the user with an adaptive mechanism, which ensures that the closed loop poles are, located at their pre-specified positions. In addition, the controller design which has a feed-forward/feedback structure overcomes the certain limitations existing in similar poleplacement control designs whilst retaining the simplicity of adaptation mechanisms used in other designs. It tracks set-point changes with the desired speed of response, penalizes excessive control action, and can be applied to non-minimum phase systems. Besides, at steady state, the controller has the ability to regulate the constant load disturbance to zero. Example simulation results using both simulated and real plant models demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.Keywords: Pole-placement, Minimum variance control, self-tuning control and feedforward control.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1738225 Effects of Manufacture and Assembly Errors on the Output Error of Globoidal Cam Mechanisms
Authors: Shuting Ji, Yueming Zhang, Jing Zhao
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The output error of the globoidal cam mechanism can be considered as a relevant indicator of mechanism performance, because it determines kinematic and dynamical behavior of mechanical transmission. Based on the differential geometry and the rigid body transformations, the mathematical model of surface geometry of the globoidal cam is established. Then we present the analytical expression of the output error (including the transmission error and the displacement error along the output axis) by considering different manufacture and assembly errors. The effects of the center distance error, the perpendicular error between input and output axes and the rotational angle error of the globoidal cam on the output error are systematically analyzed. A globoidal cam mechanism which is widely used in automatic tool changer of CNC machines is applied for illustration. Our results show that the perpendicular error and the rotational angle error have little effects on the transmission error but have great effects on the displacement error along the output axis. This study plays an important role in the design, manufacture and assembly of the globoidal cam mechanism.Keywords: Globoidal cam mechanism, manufacture error, transmission error, automatic tool changer.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2339224 Is Cognitive Dissonance an Intrinsic Property of the Human Mind? An Experimental Solution to a Half-Century Debate
Authors: Álvaro Machado Dias, Eduardo Oda, Henrique Teruo Akiba, Leo Arruda, Luiz Felipe Bruder
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Cognitive Dissonance can be conceived both as a concept related to the tendency to avoid internal contradictions in certain situations, and as a higher order theory about information processing in the human mind. In the last decades, this last sense has been strongly surpassed by the former, as nearly all experiment on the matter discuss cognitive dissonance as an output of motivational contradictions. In that sense, the question remains: is cognitive dissonance a process intrinsically associated with the way that the mind processes information, or is it caused by such specific contradictions? Objective: To evaluate the effects of cognitive dissonance in the absence of rewards or any mechanisms to manipulate motivation. Method: To solve this question, we introduce a new task, the hypothetical social arrays paradigm, which was applied to 50 undergraduate students. Results: Our findings support the perspective that the human mind shows a tendency to avoid internal dissonance even when there are no rewards or punishment involved. Moreover, our findings also suggest that this principle works outside the conscious level.
Keywords: Cognitive Dissonance, Cognitive Psychology, Information Processing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1619223 Reliability Modeling and Data Analysis of Vacuum Circuit Breaker Subject to Random Shocks
Authors: Rafik Medjoudj, Rabah Medjoudj, D. Aissani
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The electrical substation components are often subject to degradation due to over-voltage or over-current, caused by a short circuit or a lightning. A particular interest is given to the circuit breaker, regarding the importance of its function and its dangerous failure. This component degrades gradually due to the use, and it is also subject to the shock process resulted from the stress of isolating the fault when a short circuit occurs in the system. In this paper, based on failure mechanisms developments, the wear out of the circuit breaker contacts is modeled. The aim of this work is to evaluate its reliability and consequently its residual lifetime. The shock process is based on two random variables such as: the arrival of shocks and their magnitudes. The arrival of shocks was modeled using homogeneous Poisson process (HPP). By simulation, the dates of short-circuit arrivals were generated accompanied with their magnitudes. The same principle of simulation is applied to the amount of cumulative wear out contacts. The objective reached is to find the formulation of the wear function depending on the number of solicitations of the circuit breaker.
Keywords: reliability, short-circuit, models of shocks.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1920222 Fault Localization and Alarm Correlation in Optical WDM Networks
Authors: G. Ramesh, S. Sundara Vadivelu
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For several high speed networks, providing resilience against failures is an essential requirement. The main feature for designing next generation optical networks is protecting and restoring high capacity WDM networks from the failures. Quick detection, identification and restoration make networks more strong and consistent even though the failures cannot be avoided. Hence, it is necessary to develop fast, efficient and dependable fault localization or detection mechanisms. In this paper we propose a new fault localization algorithm for WDM networks which can identify the location of a failure on a failed lightpath. Our algorithm detects the failed connection and then attempts to reroute data stream through an alternate path. In addition to this, we develop an algorithm to analyze the information of the alarms generated by the components of an optical network, in the presence of a fault. It uses the alarm correlation in order to reduce the list of suspected components shown to the network operators. By our simulation results, we show that our proposed algorithms achieve less blocking probability and delay while getting higher throughput.
Keywords: Alarm correlation, blocking probability, delay, fault localization, WDM networks.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2058221 Activation Parameters of the Low Temperature Creep Controlling Mechanism in Martensitic Steels
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Martensitic steels with an ultimate tensile strength beyond 2000 MPa are applied in the powertrain of vehicles due to their excellent fatigue strength and high creep resistance. However, the creep controlling mechanism in martensitic steels at ambient temperatures up to 423 K is not evident. The purpose of this study is to review the low temperature creep (LTC) behavior of martensitic steels at temperatures from 363 K to 523 K. Thus, the validity of a logarithmic creep law is reviewed and the stress and temperature dependence of the creep parameters α and β are revealed. Furthermore, creep tests are carried out, which include stepped changes in temperature or stress, respectively. On one hand, the change of the creep rate due to a temperature step provides information on the magnitude of the activation energy of the LTC controlling mechanism and on the other hand, the stress step approach provides information on the magnitude of the activation volume. The magnitude, the temperature dependency, and the stress dependency of both material specific activation parameters may deliver a significant contribution to the disclosure of the nature of the LTC rate controlling mechanism.
Keywords: Activation parameters, creep mechanisms, high strength steels, low temperature creep.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 695220 Towards a Load Balancing Framework for an SMS–Based Service Invocation Environment
Authors: Mandla T. Nene, Edgar.Jembere, Matthew O. Adigun, Themba Shezi, Siyabonga S. Cebekhulu
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The drastic increase in the usage of SMS technology has led service providers to seek for a solution that enable users of mobile devices to access services through SMSs. This has resulted in the proposal of solutions towards SMS-based service invocation in service oriented environments. However, the dynamic nature of service-oriented environments coupled with sudden load peaks generated by service request, poses performance challenges to infrastructures for supporting SMS-based service invocation. To address this problem we adopt load balancing techniques. A load balancing model with adaptive load balancing and load monitoring mechanisms as its key constructs is proposed. The load balancing model then led to realization of Least Loaded Load Balancing Framework (LLLBF). Evaluation of LLLBF benchmarked with round robin (RR) scheme on the queuing approach showed LLLBF outperformed RR in terms of response time and throughput. However, LLLBF achieved better result in the cost of high processing power.Keywords: SMS (Short Message Service), LLLBF (Least Loaded Load Balancing Framework), Service Oriented Computing (SOC).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1634219 Studying Frame-Resistant Steel Structures under Near Field Ground Motion
Authors: S. A. Hashemi, A. Khoshraftar
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This paper presents the influence of the vertical seismic component on the non-linear dynamics analysis of three different structures. The subject structures were analyzed and designed according to recent codes. This paper considers three types of buildings: 5-, 10-, and 15-story buildings. The non-linear dynamics analysis of the structures with assuming elastic-perfectlyplastic behavior was performed using RAM PERFORM-3D software; the horizontal component was taken into consideration with and without the incorporation of the corresponding vertical component. Dynamic responses obtained for the horizontal component acting alone were compared with those obtained from the simultaneous application of both seismic components. The results show that the effect of the vertical component of ground motion may increase the axial load significantly in the interior columns and, consequently, the stories. The plastic mechanisms would be changed. The P-Delta effect is expected to increase. The punching base plate shear of the columns should be considered. Moreover, the vertical component increases the input energy when the structures exhibit inelastic behavior and are taller.Keywords: Inelastic behavior, non-linear dynamic analysis, steel structure, vertical component.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1574218 Friction and Wear Characteristics of Pongamia Oil Based Blended Lubricant at Different Load and Sliding Distance
Authors: Yashvir Singh
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Around the globe, there is demand for the development of bio-based lubricant which will be biodegradable, non -toxic and environmental friendly. This paper outlines the friction and wear characteristics of Pongamia oil (PO) contaminated bio-lubricant by using pin-on-disc tribometer. To formulate the bio-lubricants, PO was blended in the ratios 15, 30 and 50% by volume with the base lubricant SAE 20 W 40. Tribological characteristics of these blends were carried out at 3.8 m/s sliding velocity and loads applied were 50, 100, 150 N. Experimental results showed that the lubrication regime that occurred during the test was boundary lubrication while the main wear mechanisms were abrasive and the adhesive wear. During testing, the lowest wear was found with the addition of 15% PO, and above this contamination, the wear rate was increased considerably. With increase in load, viscosity of all the bio-lubricants increases and meets the ISO VG 100 requirement at 40 oC except PB 50. The addition of PO in the base lubricant acted as a very good lubricant additive which reduced the friction and wear scar diameter during the test. It has been concluded that the PB 15 can act as an alternative lubricant to increase the mechanical efficiency at 3.8 m/s sliding velocity and contribute in reduction of dependence on the petroleum based products.Keywords: Pongamia oil, sliding velocity, load, friction, wear.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1499217 Establishing a Change Management Model for Precision Machinery Industry in Taiwan
Authors: Feng-Tsung Cheng, Shu-Li Wang, Mei-Fang Wu, Hui-Yu Chuang
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The rapid development technology and widespread Internet make business environment changing a lot. In order to stand in the global market and to keep subsistence, “changing” is unspoken rule for the company’s survival. The purpose of this paper is building up change model by using SWOT, strategy map, KPI and change management theory. The research findings indicate that the company needs to deal with employee’s resistance emotion firstly before building up change model. The ways of providing performance appraisal reward, consulting and counseling mechanisms that will great help to achieve reducing staff negative emotions and motivate staff’s efficiencies also. To revise strategy map, modify corporate culture, and improve internal operational processes which is based on change model. Through the change model, the increasing growth rate of net income helps company to achieve the goals and be a leading brand of precision machinery industry.
Keywords: Organizational change, SWOT analysis, strategy maps, performance indicators.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1789216 Identification and Characterization of Heavy Metal Resistant Bacteria from the Klip River
Authors: P. Chihomvu, P. Stegmann, M. Pillay
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Pollution of the Klip River has caused microorganisms inhabiting it to develop protective survival mechanisms. This study isolated and characterized the heavy metal resistant bacteria in the Klip River. Water and sediment samples were collected from six sites along the course of the river. The pH, turbidity, salinity, temperature and dissolved oxygen were measured in-situ. The concentrations of six heavy metals (Cd, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb and Zn) of the water samples were determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Biochemical and antibiotic profiles of the isolates were assessed using the API 20E® and Kirby Bauer Method. Growth studies were carried out using spectrophotometric methods. The isolates were identified using 16SrDNA sequencing. The uppermost part of the Klip River with the lowest pH had the highest levels of heavy metals. Turbidity, salinity and specific conductivity increased measurably at Site 4 (Henley on Klip Weir). MIC tests showed that 16 isolates exhibited high iron and lead resistance. Antibiotic susceptibility tests revealed that the isolates exhibited multitolerances to drugs such as Tetracycline, Ampicillin, and Amoxicillin.
Keywords: Klip River, heavy metals, resistance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3988215 FleGSens – Secure Area Monitoring Using Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Peter Rothenpieler, Daniela Kruger, Dennis Pfisterer, Stefan Fischer, Denise Dudek, Christian Haas, Martina Zitterbart
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In the project FleGSens, a wireless sensor network (WSN) for the surveillance of critical areas and properties is currently developed which incorporates mechanisms to ensure information security. The intended prototype consists of 200 sensor nodes for monitoring a 500m long land strip. The system is focused on ensuring integrity and authenticity of generated alarms and availability in the presence of an attacker who may even compromise a limited number of sensor nodes. In this paper, two of the main protocols developed in the project are presented, a tracking protocol to provide secure detection of trespasses within the monitored area and a protocol for secure detection of node failures. Simulation results of networks containing 200 and 2000 nodes as well as the results of the first prototype comprising a network of 16 nodes are presented. The focus of the simulations and prototype are functional testing of the protocols and particularly demonstrating the impact and cost of several attacks.Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network, Security, Trespass Detection, Testbed.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1962214 An Efficient Passive Planar Micromixer with Finshaped Baffles in the Tee Channel for Wide Reynolds Number Flow Range
Authors: C. A. Cortes-Quiroz, A. Azarbadegan, E. Moeendarbary
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A new design of a planar passive T-micromixer with fin-shaped baffles in the mixing channel is presented. The mixing efficiency and the level of pressure loss in the channel have been investigated by numerical simulations in the range of Reynolds number (Re) 1 to 50. A Mixing index (Mi) has been defined to quantify the mixing efficiency, which results over 85% at both ends of the Re range, what demonstrates the micromixer can enhance mixing using the mechanisms of diffusion (lower Re) and convection (higher Re). Three geometric dimensions: radius of baffle, baffles pitch and height of the channel define the design parameters, and the mixing index and pressure loss are the performance parameters used to optimize the micromixer geometry with a multi-criteria optimization method. The Pareto front of designs with the optimum trade-offs, maximum mixing index with minimum pressure loss, is obtained. Experiments for qualitative and quantitative validation have been implemented.
Keywords: Computational fluids dynamics, fin-shaped baffle, mixing strategies, multi-objective optimization, passive micromixer.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1970213 Dynamic Window Secured Implicit Geographic Forwarding Routing for Wireless Sensor Network
Authors: Z.M. Hanapi, M. Ismail, K. Jumari, M. Mahdavi
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Routing security is a major concerned in Wireless Sensor Network since a large scale of unattended nodes is deployed in ad hoc fashion with no possibility of a global addressing due to a limitation of node-s memory and the node have to be self organizing when the systems require a connection with the other nodes. It becomes more challenging when the nodes have to act as the router and tightly constrained on energy and computational capabilities where any existing security mechanisms are not allowed to be fitted directly. These reasons thus increasing vulnerabilities to the network layer particularly and to the whole network, generally. In this paper, a Dynamic Window Secured Implicit Geographic Forwarding (DWSIGF) routing is presented where a dynamic time is used for collection window to collect Clear to Send (CTS) control packet in order to find an appropriate hoping node. The DWIGF is expected to minimize a chance to select an attacker as the hoping node that caused by a blackhole attack that happen because of the CTS rushing attack, which promise a good network performance with high packet delivery ratios.Keywords: sensor, security, routing, attack, random.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1395212 Recent Advances and Challenges in the Catalytic Combustion at Micro-Scales
Authors: Junjie Chen, Deguang Xu
Abstract:
The high energy density of hydrocarbon fuels creates a great opportunity to develop catalytic combustion based micro-power generation systems to meet increasing demands for micro-scale devices. In this work, the recent technological development progress in fundamental understanding of the catalytic combustion at micro-scales are reviewed. The underlying fundamental mechanisms, flame stability, hetero-homogeneous interaction, catalytic ignition, and catalytic reforming are reviewed in catalytic micro-scale combustion systems. Catalytic combustion and its design, diagnosis, and modeling operation are highlighted for micro-combustion application purpose; these fundamental aspects are reviewed. Finally, an overview of future studies is made. The primary objective of this review is to present an overview of the development of micro-power generators by focusing more on the advances and challenges in the fundamental understanding of the catalytic combustion at micro-scales.
Keywords: Micro-combustion, catalytic combustion, flame stability, hetero-homogeneous interaction, catalytic ignition, catalytic reforming.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1867