Search results for: Natural Hazard.

Authors: Mohd Yussni Hashim, Mohd Nazrul Roslan, Shahruddin Mahzan @ Mohd Zin, Saparudin Ariffin

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Fiber cross sectional area value is a crucial factor in determining the strength properties of natural fiber. Furthermore, unlike synthetic fiber, a diameter and cross sectional area of natural fiber has a large variation along and between the fibers. This study aims to determine the main and interaction effects of alkali treatment conditions which influence kenaf bast fiber mean cross sectional area. Three alkali treatment conditions at two different levels were selected. The conditions setting were alkali concentrations at 2 and 10 w/v %; fiber immersed temperature at room temperature and 100⁰C; and fiber immersed duration for 30 and 480 minutes. Untreated kenaf fiber was used as a control unit. Kenaf bast fiber bundle mounting tab was prepared according to ASTM C1557-03. Cross sectional area was measured using a Leica video analyzer. The study result showed that kenaf fiber bundle mean cross sectional area was reduced 6.77% to 29.88% after alkali treatment. From analysis of variance, it shows that interaction of alkali concentration and immersed time has a higher magnitude at 0.1619 compared to alkali concentration and immersed temperature interaction which was 0.0896. For the main effect, alkali concentration factor contributes to the higher magnitude at 0.1372 which indicated are decrease pattern of variability when the level was change from lower to higher level. Then, it was followed by immersed temperature at 0.1261 and immersed time at 0.0696 magnitudes.

Keywords: Natural fiber, kenaf bast fiber bundles, alkali treatment, cross sectional area.

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Authors: R. Hegedűs, É. Kerepeczki, D. Gál, F. Pekár, M. Oncsik Bíróné, Gy. Lakatos

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The growth of the aquaculture industry has been associated with negative environmental impacts through the discharge of raw effluents into the adjacent receiving water bodies. Macrophytes from natural saline lakes, which have adaptability to the high salinity, can be suitable for saline effluent treatment. Eight emergent species from natural saline area were planted in an experimental gravel bed hydroponic mesocosm (GBH) which was treated with effluent water from an intensive fish farm using geothermal water. In order to examine the applicability of the halophytes in treatment processes, we tested the relative efficacy of total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), potassium (K), sodium (Na), magnesium (Mg) and calcium (Ca) removal for the saline wastewater treatment. Four of the eight species, which were Phragmites australis, Typha angustifolia, Glyceria maxima, Scirpus lacustris spp. tabernaemontani could survive and contribute the experimental treatment.

Keywords: Gravel bed hydroponic system, halophytes, intensive fish farm, salt removal

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Authors: Bishnupriya Sahoo, Prasad K. Bhaskaran

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Tropical cyclone is one among the worst natural hazards that results in a trail of destruction causing enormous damage to life, property, and coastal infrastructures. In a global perspective, the Indian Ocean is considered as one of the cyclone prone basins in the world. Specifically, the frequency of cyclogenesis in the Bay of Bengal is higher compared to the Arabian Sea. Out of the four maritime states in the East coast of India, Odisha is highly susceptible to tropical cyclone landfall. Historical records clearly decipher the fact that the frequency of cyclones have reduced in this basin. However, in the recent decades, the intensity and size of tropical cyclones have increased. This is a matter of concern as the risk and vulnerability level of Odisha coast exposed to high wind speed and gusts during cyclone landfall have increased. In this context, there is a need to assess and evaluate the severity of coastal risk, area of exposure under risk, and associated vulnerability with a higher dimension in a multi-risk perspective. Changing climate can result in the emergence of a new hazard and vulnerability over a region with differential spatial and socio-economic impact. Hence there is a need to have coastal vulnerability projections in a changing climate scenario. With this motivation, the present study attempts to estimate the destructiveness of tropical cyclones based on Power Dissipation Index (PDI) for those cyclones that made landfall along Odisha coast that exhibits an increasing trend based on historical data. The study also covers the futuristic scenarios of integral coastal vulnerability based on the trends in PDI for the Odisha coast. This study considers 11 essential and important parameters; the cyclone intensity, storm surge, onshore inundation, mean tidal range, continental shelf slope, topo-graphic elevation onshore, rate of shoreline change, maximum wave height, relative sea level rise, rainfall distribution, and coastal geomorphology. The study signifies that over a decadal scale, the coastal vulnerability index (CVI) depends largely on the incremental change in variables such as cyclone intensity, storm surge, and associated inundation. In addition, the study also performs a critical analysis on the modulation of PDI on storm surge and inundation characteristics for the entire coastal belt of Odisha State. Interestingly, the study brings to light that a linear correlation exists between the storm-tide with PDI. The trend analysis of PDI and its projection for coastal Odisha have direct practical applications in effective coastal zone management and vulnerability assessment.

Keywords: Bay of Bengal, coastal vulnerability index, power dissipation index, tropical cyclone.

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Authors: Javier Ordorica Villalvazo, Claudia Camargo Wilson, Jesus Everardo Olguin Tiznado

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This paper presents an experimental case using sensory thermography to describe temperatures behavior on median nerve once an activity of repetitive motion was done. Thermography is a noninvasive technique without biological hazard and not harm at all times and has been applied in many experiments to seek for temperature patterns that help to understand diseases like cancer and cumulative trauma disorders (CTD’s). An infrared sensory thermography technology was developed to execute this study. Three women in good shape were selected for the repetitive motion tests for 4 days, two right-handed women and 1 left handed woman, two sensory thermographers were put on both median nerve wrists to get measures. The evaluation time was of 3 hours 30 minutes in a controlled temperature, 20 minutes of stabilization time at the beginning and end of the operation. Temperatures distributions are statistically evaluated and showed similar temperature patterns behavior.

Keywords: Median nerve, temperature, sensory thermography, wrists, CTD’s.

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Authors: Farid Vahedi

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There is a great deal of interest in constructing Double Skin Facade (DSF) structures which are considered as modern movement in field of Energy Conservation, renewable energies, and Architecture design. This trend provides many conclusive alternatives which are frequently associated with sustainable building. In this paper a building with Double Skin Facade is considered in the semiarid climate of Tehran, Iran, in order to consider the DSF-s performance during hot seasons. Mathematical formulations calculate solar heat gain by the external skin. Moreover, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed on the case study building to enhance effectiveness of the facade. The conclusion divulged difference of gained energy by the cavity and room with and without blind and louvers. Some solutions were introduced to surge the performance of natural ventilation by plunging the cooling loads in summer.

Keywords: Double Skin Façade Buildings, Energy Conservation, Renewable Energy, Natural Ventilation, Semi-arid Climate.

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Authors: R. E. Masto, L. C. Ram, S. K. Verma, V. A. Selvi, J. George, R. C. Tripathi, N. K. Srivastava, D. Mohanty, S. K.Jha, A. K. Sinha, A. Sinha

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There are many sources trough which the soil get enriched and contaminated with REEs. The determination of REEs in environmental samples has been limited because of the lack of sensitive analytical techniques. Soil samples were collected from four sites including open cast coal mine, natural coal burning, coal washery and control in the coal field located in Dhanbad, India. Total concentrations of rare earth elements (REEs) were determined using the inductively coupled plasma atomic absorption spectrometry in order to assess enrichment status in the coal field. Results showed that the mean concentrations of La, Pr, Eu, Tb, Ho, and Tm in open cast mine and natural coal burning sites were elevated compared to the reference concentrations, while Ce, Nd, Sm, and Gd were elevated in coal washery site. When compared to reference soil, heavy REEs (HREEs) were enriched in open cast mines and natural coal burning affected soils, however, the HREEs were depleted in the coal washery sites. But, the Chondrite-normalization diagram showed significant enrichment for light REEs (LREEs) in all the soils. High concentration of Pr, Eu, Tb, Ho, Tm, and Lu in coal mining and coal burning sites may pose human health risks. Factor analysis showed that distribution and relative abundance of REEs of the coal washery site is comparable with the control. Eventually washing or cleaning of coal could significantly decrease the emission of REEs from coal into the environment.

Keywords: Rare earth elements, coal, soil, factor analysis

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Authors: Sarbjot Singh Sandhu

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This paper presents the experimental results of a single cylinder Enfield engine using an electronically controlled fuel injection system which was developed to carry out exhaustive tests using neat CNG, and mixtures of hydrogen in compressed natural gas (HCNG) as 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20% by energy. Experiments were performed at 2000 and 2400 rpm with wide open throttle and varying the equivalence ratio. Hydrogen which has fast burning rate, when added to compressed natural gas, enhances its flame propagation rate. The emissions of HC, CO, decreased with increasing percentage of hydrogen but NOx was found to increase. The results indicated a marked improvement in the brake thermal efficiency with the increase in percentage of hydrogen added. The improved thermal efficiency was clearly observed to be more in lean region as compared to rich region. This study is expected to reduce vehicular emissions along with increase in thermal efficiency and thus help in reduction of further environmental degradation.

Keywords: Hydrogen, CNG, HCNG, Emissions.

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Authors: Ali Nadi, Ali Edrissi

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Relief demand and transportation links availability is the essential information that is needed for every natural disaster operation. This information is not in hand once a disaster strikes. Relief demand and network condition has been evaluated based on prediction method in related works. Nevertheless, prediction seems to be over or under estimated due to uncertainties and may lead to a failure operation. Therefore, in this paper a stochastic programming model is proposed to evaluate real-time relief demand and network condition at the onset of a natural disaster. To address the time sensitivity of the emergency response, the proposed model uses reinforcement learning for optimization of the total relief assessment time. The proposed model is tested on a real size network problem. The simulation results indicate that the proposed model performs well in the case of collecting real-time information.

Keywords: Disaster management, real-time demand, reinforcement learning, relief demand.

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Authors: Ashly Joseph, Jithu Paulose

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In an era where misleading information may quickly circulate on digital news channels, it is crucial to have efficient and trustworthy methods to detect and reduce the impact of misinformation. This research proposes an innovative framework that combines Natural Language Processing (NLP), Reinforcement Learning (RL), and Blockchain technologies to precisely detect and minimize the spread of false information in news articles on social media. The framework starts by gathering a variety of news items from different social media sites and performing preprocessing on the data to ensure its quality and uniformity. NLP methods are utilized to extract complete linguistic and semantic characteristics, effectively capturing the subtleties and contextual aspects of the language used. These features are utilized as input for a RL model. This model acquires the most effective tactics for detecting and mitigating the impact of false material by modeling the intricate dynamics of user engagements and incentives on social media platforms. The integration of blockchain technology establishes a decentralized and transparent method for storing and verifying the accuracy of information. The Blockchain component guarantees the unchangeability and safety of verified news records, while encouraging user engagement for detecting and fighting false information through an incentive system based on tokens. The suggested framework seeks to provide a thorough and resilient solution to the problems presented by misinformation in social media articles.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning, Blockchain, fake news mitigation, misinformation detection.

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Authors: A. Gandomkar, R. Dehghani

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Drought is natural and climate phenomenon and in fact server as a part of climate in an area and also it has significant environmental, social ,and economic consequences .drought differs from the other natural disasters from this viewpoint that it s a creeping phenomenon meaning that it progresses little and its difficult to determine the time of its onset and termination .most of the drought definitions are on based on precipitation shortage and consequently ,the shortage of water some of the activities related to the water such as agriculture In this research ,drought condition in Fars province was evacuated using SPI method within a 37 year – statistical –period(1974-2010)and maps related to the drought were prepared for each of the statistical period years. According to the results obtained from this research, the years 1974, 1976, 1975, 1982 with SPI (-1.03, 0.39, -1.05, -1.49) respectively, were the doughiest years and 1996,1997,2000 with SPI (2.49, 1.49, 1.46, 1.04) respectively, the most humid within the studying time series and the rest are in more normal conditions in the term of drought.

Keywords: Fars Province, Drought, SPI Method, Time Series

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Authors: Ranojoy Dutta, Adam Barker

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Multifamily residential buildings are increasingly being built with large glazed areas to provide tenants with greater daylight and outdoor views. However, traditional double-glazed window assemblies can lead to significant thermal discomfort from high radiant temperatures as well as increased cooling energy use to address solar gains. Dynamic glazing provides an effective solution by actively controlling solar transmission to maintain indoor thermal comfort, without compromising the visual connection to outdoors. This study uses thermal simulations across three Canadian cities (Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal) to verify if dynamic glazing along with operable windows and ceiling fans can maintain the indoor operative temperature of a prototype southwest facing high-rise apartment unit within the ASHRAE 55 adaptive comfort range for a majority of the year, without any mechanical cooling. Since this study proposes the use of natural ventilation for cooling and the typical building life cycle is 30-40 years, the typical weather files have been modified based on accepted global warming projections for increased air temperatures by 2050. Results for the prototype apartment confirm that thermal discomfort with dynamic glazing occurs only for less than 0.7% of the year. However, in the baseline scenario with low-E glass there are up to 7% annual hours of discomfort despite natural ventilation with operable windows and improved air movement with ceiling fans.

Keywords: Electrochromic, operable windows, thermal comfort, natural ventilation, adaptive comfort.

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Authors: Zefry Darmawan, Shigeyuki Haruyama, Ken Kaminishi

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Product development is a big issue in the industrial competition and takes a serious part in development of technology. Product development process could adapt high changes of market needs and transform into engineering concept in order to produce high-quality product. One of the latest methods in product development is Analysis-Led-Design (ALD). It utilizes digital engineering design tools with finite analysis to perform product robust analysis and valuable for product reliability assurance. Heavy machinery which operates under severe condition should maintain safety to the customer when faced with potential hazard. Cab frame should able to absorb the energy while collision. Through ALD, a series of improvement of cab frame to increase energy absorption was made and analyzed. Improvement was made by modifying shapes of frame and-or install absorption device in certain areas. Simulation result showed that install absorption device could increase absorption energy than modifying shape.

Keywords: ALD, ROPS, energy absorption, cab frame.

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Authors: Omid Ghasemalizadeh, Mohammad Reza Mirzaee, Hossein Sadeghi, Mohammad Taghi Ahmadian

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There are lots of different ways to find the natural frequencies of a rotating system. One of the most effective methods which is used because of its precision and correctness is the application of the transfer matrix. By use of this method the entire continuous system is subdivided and the corresponding differential equation can be stated in matrix form. So to analyze shaft that is this paper issue the rotor is divided as several elements along the shaft which each one has its own mass and moment of inertia, which this work would create possibility of defining the named matrix. By Choosing more elements number, the size of matrix would become larger and as a result more accurate answers would be earned. In this paper the dynamics of a rotor-bearing system is analyzed, considering the gyroscopic effect. To increase the accuracy of modeling the thickness of the disk and bearings is also taken into account which would cause more complicated matrix to be solved. Entering these parameters to our modeling would change the results completely that these differences are shown in the results. As said upper, to define transfer matrix to reach the natural frequencies of probed system, introducing some elements would be one of the requirements. For the boundary condition of these elements, bearings at the end of the shaft are modeled as equivalent spring and dampers for the discretized system. Also, continuous model is used for the shaft in the system. By above considerations and using transfer matrix, exact results are taken from the calculations. Results Show that, by increasing thickness of the bearing the amplitude of vibration would decrease, but obviously the stiffness of the shaft and the natural frequencies of the system would accompany growth. Consequently it is easily understood that ignoring the influences of bearing and disk thicknesses would results not real answers.

Keywords: Rotor System, Disk and Bearing Thickness, Transfer Matrix, Amplitude.

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Authors: A.R.Tahmasebi Birgani, M.Hosseinjani Zamenjani, M.R.Isvandzibaei

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In the present work, study of the vibration of thin cylindrical shells made of a functionally gradient material (FGM) composed of stainless steel and nickel is presented. Material properties are graded in the thickness direction of the shell according to volume fraction power law distribution. The objective is to study the natural frequencies, the influence of constituent volume fractions and the effects of boundary conditions on the natural frequencies of the FG cylindrical shell. The study is carried out using third order shear deformation shell theory. The governing equations of motion of FG cylindrical shells are derived based on shear deformation theory. Results are presented on the frequency characteristics, influence of constituent volume fractions and the effects of free-free boundary conditions.

Keywords: Vibration, FGM, Cylindrical shell.

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Authors: Aroonsri Priprem, Sucharat Limsitthichaikoon, Suttasinee Thappasarapong

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Anthocyanins are natural pigments with effective UV protection but their topical use could be limited due to their physicochemical characteristics. An attempt to overcome such limitations by complexation of 2 major anthocyanin-rich sources, C. ternatea and Z. mays, has potentiated its use as topical antiinflammatory. Cell studies indicate no cytotoxicity of the anthocyanin complex (AC) up to 1 mg/ml tested in HaCaT and human fore head fibroblasts by MTT. Croton oil-induced ear edema in Wistar rats suggests an effective dose of 5 mg/cm2 of AC as a topical anti-inflammatory in comparison to 0.5 mg/cm2 of fluocinolone acetonide. Niosomal encapsulation of the AC significantly prolonged the anti-inflammatory activity particularly at 8 h after topical application (p = 0.0001). The AC was not cytotoxic and its anti-inflammatory and activity was dose-dependent and prolonged by niosomal encapsulation. It has also shown to promote collagen type 1 production in cell culture. Thus, AC could be a potential candidate for topical anti-inflammatory agent from natural resources.

Keywords: Anthocyanin complex, ear edema, inflammation, niosomes, skin.

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Authors: Supriyo Goswami, Debabrata Mazumder

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Chrome tannery wastewater causes serious environmental hazard due to its high pollution potential. As a result, rigorous treatment is necessary for abatement of pollution from this type of wastewater. There are many research studies on chrome tannery wastewater treatment in the field of physical, chemical, and biological methods. In general, biological treatment process is found ineffective for direct application because of adverse effects by toxic chromium, sulphide, chloride etc. However, biological methods were employed mainly for a few sub processes generating significant amount of organic matter and without chromium, chlorides etc. In this context the present paper reviews the characteristics feature and pollution potential of wastewater generated from chrome tannery units and treatment of the same. The different biological processes used earlier and their chronological development for treatment of the chrome tannery wastewater are thoroughly reviewed in this paper. In this regard, the scope of hybrid bioreactor - an advanced technology option has also been explored, as this kind of treatment is well suited for the wastewater having inhibitory substances. 

Keywords: Composite tannery wastewater, biological treatment, Hybrid bioreactor, Organic removal

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Authors: Raymond Xu, Ashley Hua, Andrew Wang, Yuru Lin

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During COVID-19, the depression rate has increased dramatically. Young adults are most vulnerable to the mental health effects of the pandemic. Lower-income families have a higher ratio to be diagnosed with depression than the general population, but less access to clinics. This research aims to achieve early depression detection at low cost, large scale, and high accuracy with an interdisciplinary approach by incorporating clinical practices defined by American Psychiatric Association (APA) as well as multimodal AI framework. The proposed approach detected the nine depression symptoms with Natural Language Processing sentiment analysis and a symptom-based Lexicon uniquely designed for young adults. The experiments were conducted on the multimedia survey results from adolescents and young adults and unbiased Twitter communications. The result was further aggregated with the facial emotional cues analyzed by the Convolutional Neural Network on the multimedia survey videos. Five experiments each conducted on 10k data entries reached consistent results with an average accuracy of 88.31%, higher than the existing natural language analysis models. This approach can reach 300+ million daily active Twitter users and is highly accessible by low-income populations to promote early depression detection to raise awareness in adolescents and young adults and reveal complementary cues to assist clinical depression diagnosis.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, depression detection, facial emotion recognition, natural language processing, mental disorder.

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Authors: Esam I. Jassim, Mohamed M. Awad

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Natural gas flow contains undesirable solid particles, liquid condensation, and/or oil droplets and requires reliable removing equipment to perform filtration. Recent natural gas processing applications are demanded compactness and reliability of process equipment. Since conventional means are sophisticated in design, poor in efficiency, and continue lacking robust, a supersonic nozzle has been introduced as an alternative means to meet such demands. A 3-D Convergent-Divergent Nozzle is simulated using commercial Code for pressure ratio (NPR) varies from 1.2 to 2. Six different shapes of nozzle are numerically examined to illustrate the position of shock-wave as such spot could be considered as a benchmark of particle separation. Rectangle, triangle, circular, elliptical, pentagon, and hexagon nozzles are simulated using Fluent Code with all have same cross-sectional area. The simple one-dimensional inviscid theory does not describe the actual features of fluid flow precisely as it ignores the impact of nozzle configuration on the flow properties. CFD Simulation results, however, show that nozzle geometry influences the flow structures including location of shock wave. The CFD analysis predicts shock appearance when p01/pa>1.2 for almost all geometry and locates at the lower area ratio (Ae/At). Simulation results showed that shock wave in Elliptical nozzle has the farthest distance from the throat among the others at relatively small NPR. As NPR increases, hexagon would be the farthest. The numerical result is compared with available experimental data and has shown good agreement in terms of shock location and flow structure.

Keywords: CFD, Particle Separation, Shock wave, Supersonic Nozzle.

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Authors: Othman O. Khalifa, Zakiah Hanim Ahmad, Teddy Surya Gunawan

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This paper presents a rule-based text- to- speech (TTS) Synthesis System for Standard Malay, namely SMaTTS. The proposed system using sinusoidal method and some pre- recorded wave files in generating speech for the system. The use of phone database significantly decreases the amount of computer memory space used, thus making the system very light and embeddable. The overall system was comprised of two phases the Natural Language Processing (NLP) that consisted of the high-level processing of text analysis, phonetic analysis, text normalization and morphophonemic module. The module was designed specially for SM to overcome few problems in defining the rules for SM orthography system before it can be passed to the DSP module. The second phase is the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) which operated on the low-level process of the speech waveform generation. A developed an intelligible and adequately natural sounding formant-based speech synthesis system with a light and user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) is introduced. A Standard Malay Language (SM) phoneme set and an inclusive set of phone database have been constructed carefully for this phone-based speech synthesizer. By applying the generative phonology, a comprehensive letter-to-sound (LTS) rules and a pronunciation lexicon have been invented for SMaTTS. As for the evaluation tests, a set of Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT) word list was compiled and several experiments have been performed to evaluate the quality of the synthesized speech by analyzing the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) obtained. The overall performance of the system as well as the room for improvements was thoroughly discussed.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Text-To-Speech (TTS), Diphone, source filter, low-/ high- level synthesis.

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Authors: Tengku Mohd T. Sembok

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Documents retrieval in Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) is generally about understanding of information in the documents concern. The more the system able to understand the contents of documents the more effective will be the retrieval outcomes. But understanding of the contents is a very complex task. Conventional IRS apply algorithms that can only approximate the meaning of document contents through keywords approach using vector space model. Keywords may be unstemmed or stemmed. When keywords are stemmed and conflated in retrieving process, we are a step forwards in applying semantic technology in IRS. Word stemming is a process in morphological analysis under natural language processing, before syntactic and semantic analysis. We have developed algorithms for Malay and Arabic and incorporated stemming in our experimental systems in order to measure retrieval effectiveness. The results have shown that the retrieval effectiveness has increased when stemming is used in the systems.

Keywords: Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence.

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Authors: Siti Khadijah Che Osmi, Syed Mohd Ahmad

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This paper presents a methodology to develop fragility curves for shallow tunnels so as to describe a relationship between seismic hazard and tunnel vulnerability. Emphasis is given to the influence of surrounding soil material properties because the dynamic behaviour of the tunnel mostly depends on it. Four ground properties of soils ranging from stiff to soft soils are selected. A 3D nonlinear time history analysis is used to evaluate the seismic response of the tunnel when subjected to five real earthquake ground intensities. The derived curves show the future probabilistic performance of the tunnels based on the predicted level of damage states corresponding to the peak ground acceleration. A comparison of the obtained results with the previous literature is provided to validate the reliability of the proposed fragility curves. Results show the significant role of soil properties and input motions in evaluating the seismic performance and response of shallow tunnels.

Keywords: Fragility analysis, seismic performance, tunnel lining, vulnerability.

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Authors: Chien-Hung Chen, Yan-Chun Hsing, Yung-Chun Chang

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The Internet has grown into a powerful medium for information dispersion and social interaction that leads to a rapid growth of social media which allows users to easily post their emotions and perspectives regarding certain topics online. Our research aims at using natural language processing and text mining techniques to explore the public emotions expressed on Twitter by analyzing the sentiment behind tweets. In this paper, we propose a composite kernel method that integrates tree kernel with the linear kernel to simultaneously exploit both the tree representation and the distributed emotion keyword representation to analyze the syntactic and content information in tweets. The experiment results demonstrate that our method can effectively detect public emotion of tweets while outperforming the other compared methods.

Keywords: Public emotion recognition, natural language processing, composite kernel, sentiment analysis, text mining.

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Authors: Aitor Barbero-López, Soumaya Chibily, Gerhard Scheepers, Thomas Grahn, Martti Venäläinen, Antti Haapala

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Wood decay is addressed continuously within the wood industry through use and development of wood preservatives. The increasing awareness on the negative effects of many chemicals towards the environment is causing political restrictions in their use and creating more urgent need for research on green alternatives. This paper discusses some of the possible natural extracts for wood preserving applications and compares the analytical methods available for testing their behavior and efficiency against decay fungi. The results indicate that natural extracts have interesting chemical constituents that delay fungal growth but vary in efficiency depending on the chemical concentration and substrate used. Results also suggest that presence and redistribution of preservatives in wood during exposure trials can be assessed by spectral imaging methods although standardized methods are not available. This study concludes that, in addition to the many standard methods available, there is a need to develop new faster methods for screening potential preservative formulation while maintaining the comparability and relevance of results.

Keywords: Analytics, methods, preservatives, wood decay.

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Authors: H. Mat Kiah, Rafiziana M. Kasmani, Norazana Ibrahim, Roshafima R. Ali, Aziatul N.Sadikin

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An experimental study has been done to investigate the flame acceleration in a closed pipe. A horizontal steel pipe, 2m long and 0.1m in diameter (L/D of 20), was used in this work. For tests with 90 degree bends, the bend had a radius of 0.1m and thus, the pipe was lengthened 1m (based on the centreline length of the segment). Ignition was affected at one end of the vessel while the other end was closed. Only stoichiometric concentration (Ф, = 1.0) of natural gas/air mixtures will be reported in this paper. It was demonstrated that bend pipe configuration gave three times higher in maximum overpressure (5.5 bars) compared to straight pipe (2.0 bars). From the results, the highest flame speed, of 63ms^-1, was observed in a gas explosion with bent pipe; greater by a factor of ~3 as compared with straight pipe (23ms^-1). This occurs because bending acts similar to an obstacle, in which this mechanism can induce more turbulence, initiating combustion in an unburned pocket at the corner region and causing a high mass burning rate, which increases the flame speed.

Keywords: Bending, gas explosion, bending, flame acceleration, overpressure.

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Authors: Chaouki Ghenai

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Computational fluid dynamics analysis of the burning of syngas fuels derived from biomass and plastic solid waste mixture through gasification process is presented in this paper. The syngas fuel is burned in gas turbine can combustor. Gas turbine can combustor with swirl is designed to burn the fuel efficiently and reduce the emissions. The main objective is to test the impact of the alternative syngas fuel compositions and lower heating value on the combustion performance and emissions. The syngas fuel is produced by blending palm kernel shell (PKS) with polyethylene (PE) waste via catalytic steam gasification (fluidized bed reactor). High hydrogen content syngas fuel was obtained by mixing 30% PE waste with PKS. The syngas composition obtained through the gasification process is 76.2% H2, 8.53% CO, 4.39% CO2 and 10.90% CH4. The lower heating value of the syngas fuel is LHV = 15.98 MJ/m3. Three fuels were tested in this study natural gas (100%CH4), syngas fuel and pure hydrogen (100% H2). The power from the combustor was kept constant for all the fuels tested in this study. The effect of syngas fuel composition and lower heating value on the flame shape, gas temperature, mass of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) per unit of energy generation is presented in this paper. The results show an increase of the peak flame temperature and NO mass fractions for the syngas and hydrogen fuels compared to natural gas fuel combustion. Lower average CO2 emissions at the exit of the combustor are obtained for the syngas compared to the natural gas fuel.

Keywords: CFD, Combustion, Emissions, Gas Turbine Combustor, Gasification, Solid Waste, Syngas and Waste to Energy.

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Authors: Saead Negahdari, Davood Jalali Vahid

Abstract:

Nowadays, the importance of energy saving is clearance to everyone. By attention to increasing price of fuels and also the problems of environment pollutions, there are the most efforts for using fuels littler and more optimum in everywhere. This essay studies optimizing of gas consumption in gas-burner space heaters. In oven of each gas-burner space heaters there is two snags to prevent the hot air (the result of combustion of natural gas) to go out of oven of the gas-burner space heaters directly without delivering its heat to the space of favorite environment like a room. These snags cause a excess circulating that helps hot air deliver its heat to the space of favorite environment. It means the exhaust air temperature will be decreased then when there are no snags. This is the aim of this essay to use maximum potential energy of the natural gas to make heat. In this study, by the help of a finite volume software (FLUENT) consumption of the gas-burner space heaters is simulated and optimized. At the end of this writing, by comparing the results of software and experimental results, it will be proved the authenticity of this method.

Keywords: FLUENT, Heat transfer, Oven of Gas-burner spaceheaters, Simulation.

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Authors: Pratibha Gupta, Satyawati Sharma, Sanjay Saxena

Abstract:

Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni (natural sweetener) belongs to Asteraceae family and can be used as substitute of artificial sweeteners for diabetic patients. Conventionally, it is cultivated by seeds or stem cutting, but seed viability rate is poor. A protocol for callus induction and multiplication was developed to produce large no. of calli in short period. Surface sterilized nodal, leaf and root explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium with different concentrations of plant hormone like, IBA, kinetin, NAA, 2,4-D, and NAA in combination with 2,4-D. 100% callusing was observed from leaf explants cultured on combination of NAA and 2,4-D after three weeks while with 2,4-D, only 10% callusing was observed. Calli obtained from leaf and root explants were shiny green while with nodal explants it was hard and brown. The present findings deal with induction of callusing in Stevia to achieve the rapid callus multiplication for study of steviol glycosides in callus culture.

Keywords: 2, 4-D, Callusing, NAA, Stevia, Steviol glycosides

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Authors: H.A. Ashorynejad, M. Farhadi, K.Sedighi, A.Hasanpour

Abstract:

We report the results of an lattice Boltzmann simulation of magnetohydrodynamic damping of sidewall convection in a rectangular enclosure filled with a porous medium. In particular we investigate the suppression of convection when a steady magnetic field is applied in the vertical direction. The left and right vertical walls of the cavity are kept at constant but different temperatures while both the top and bottom horizontal walls are insulated. The effects of the controlling parameters involved in the heat transfer and hydrodynamic characteristics are studied in detail. The heat and mass transfer mechanisms and the flow characteristics inside the enclosure depended strongly on the strength of the magnetic field and Darcy number. The average Nusselt number decreases with rising values of the Hartmann number while this increases with increasing values of the Darcy number.

Keywords: Lattice Boltzmann method , Natural convection , Magnetohydrodynamic , Porous medium

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Authors: Abdullah Y. Al-Hossain

Abstract:

This paper considers inference under progressive type II censoring with a compound Rayleigh failure time distribution. The maximum likelihood (ML), and Bayes methods are used for estimating the unknown parameters as well as some lifetime parameters, namely reliability and hazard functions. We obtained Bayes estimators using the conjugate priors for two shape and scale parameters. When the two parameters are unknown, the closed-form expressions of the Bayes estimators cannot be obtained. We use Lindley.s approximation to compute the Bayes estimates. Another Bayes estimator has been obtained based on continuous-discrete joint prior for the unknown parameters. An example with the real data is discussed to illustrate the proposed method. Finally, we made comparisons between these estimators and the maximum likelihood estimators using a Monte Carlo simulation study.

Keywords: Progressive type II censoring, compound Rayleigh failure time distribution, maximum likelihood estimation, Bayes estimation, Lindley's approximation method, Monte Carlo simulation.

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Authors: R. Govender, D. Naidoo, E. M. Buys

Abstract:

The importance of ensuring safe meat handling and processing practices has been demonstrated in global reports on food safety scares and related illness and deaths. This necessitated stricter meat safety control strategies. Today, many countries have regulated towards preventative and systematic control over safe meat processing at abattoirs utilizing the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles. HACCP systems have been reported as effective in managing food safety risks, if correctly implemented. South Africa has regulated the Hygiene Management System (HMS) based on HACCP principles applicable to abattoirs. Regulators utilise the Hygiene Assessment System (HAS) to audit compliance at abattoirs. These systems were benchmarked from the United Kingdom (UK). Little research has been done them since inception as of 2004. This paper presents a review of the two systems, its implementation and comparison with HACCP. Recommendations are made for future research to demonstrate the utility of the HMS and HAS in assuring safe meat to consumers.

Keywords: Abattoir, co-regulation, food safety, HACCP, meat hygiene.

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