Search results for: heat generation rate.

Authors: M. S. Reza, M. Hamdi, A.S. Hadi

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The operating control parameters of injection flushing type of electrical discharge machining process on stainless steel 304 workpiece with copper tools are being optimized according to its individual machining characteristic i.e. material removal rate (MRR). Lower MRR during EDM machining process may decrease its- machining productivity. Hence, the quality characteristic for MRR is set to higher-the-better to achieve the optimum machining productivity. Taguchi method has been used for the construction, layout and analysis of the experiment for each of the machining characteristic for the MRR. The use of Taguchi method in the experiment saves a lot of time and cost of preparing and machining the experiment samples. Therefore, an L18 Orthogonal array which was the fundamental component in the statistical design of experiments has been used to plan the experiments and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to determine the optimum machining parameters for this machining characteristic. The control parameters selected for this optimization experiments are polarity, pulse on duration, discharge current, discharge voltage, machining depth, machining diameter and dielectric liquid pressure. The result had shown that the higher the discharge voltage, the higher will be the MRR.

Keywords: ANOVA, EDM, Injection Flushing, L18 OrthogonalArray, MRR, Stainless Steel 304

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Authors: Meor O. Hamzah, Teoh C. Yi

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As the resources for naturally occurring aggregates diminished at an ever increasing rate, researchers are keen to utilize recycled materials in road construction in harmony with sustainable development. Steel slag, a waste product from the steel making industry, is one of the recycled materials reported to exhibit great potential to replace naturally occurring aggregates in asphalt mixtures. This paper presents the resilient modulus properties of steel slag asphalt mixtures subjected to short term oven ageing (STOA). The resilient modulus test was carried out to evaluate the stiffness of asphalt mixtures at 10ºC, 25ºC and 40ºC. Previous studies showed that stiffness changes in asphalt mixture played an important role in inflicting pavement distress particularly cracking and rutting that are common at low and high temperatures respectively. Temperature was found to significantly influence the resilient modulus of asphalt mixes. The resilient modulus of the asphalt specimens tested decreased by more than 90% when the test temperature increased from 10°C to 40°C.

Keywords: Granite, Resilient Modulus, Steel Slag, Temperature.

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Authors: Farid Amidi-Fazli, Neda Amidi-Fazli

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Replacement of plastics used in the food industry seems to be a serious issue to overcome mainly the environmental problems in recent years. This study investigates the hydrophilicity and permeability properties of starch biopolymer which ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) (0-10%) and nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) (1-15%) were used to enhance its properties. Starch -EVOH nanocomposites were prepared by casting method in different formulations. NCC production by acid hydrolysis was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy. Solubility, water vapor permeability, water vapor transmission rate and moisture absorbance were measured on each of the nanocomposites. The results were analyzed by SAS software. The lowest moisture absorbance was measured in pure starch nanocomposite containing 8% NCC. The lowest permeability to water vapor belongs to starch nanocomposite containing 8% NCC and the sample containing 7.8% EVOH and 13% NCC. Also the lowest solubility was observed in the composite contains the highest amount of EVOH. Applied Process resulted in production of bio films which have good resistance to water vapor permeability and solubility in water. The use of NCC and EVOH leads to reduced moisture absorbance property of the biofilms.

Keywords: Starch, EVOH, nanocrystalline cellulose, Hydrophilicity.

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Authors: A. Seham A. Elgamal, Reham H. Saleh

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Chronic kidney disease became a global health problem worldwide. Therefore, in order to maintain a patient’s life and improve the survival rate, hemodialysis is essential to replace the function of their kidneys. However, those patients may complain about multiple physical and psychological stressors due to the nature of the disease and the need for frequent hemodialysis sessions. So, those patients use various strategies to cope with the stressors related to their disease and the treatment procedures. Cross-sectional, descriptive study was carried out to achieve the aim of the study. A convenient sample including all adult patients was recruited for this study. Hemodialysis Stressors Scale (HSS) and Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS) were used to investigate the stressors and coping strategies of 89 hemodialysis patients, at a governmental hospital (King Khalid Hospital-Jeddah). Results of the study revealed that 50.7% experienced physiological stressors and 38% experienced psychosocial stressors. Also, optimistic, fatalistic, and supportive coping strategies were the most common coping strategies used by the patients with mean scores (2.88 + 0.75, 2.87 + 0.75, and 1.82 + 0.71), respectively. In conclusion, being familiar with the types of stressors and the effective coping strategies of hemodialysis patients and their families are important in order to enhance their adaptation with chronic kidney diseases.

Keywords: Coping strategies, hemodialysis, physiological stressors, psychological stressors.

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Authors: Wojciech Górecki, Anna Sowiżdżał, Grzegorz Machowski, Tomasz Maćkowski, Bartosz Papiernik, Michał Stefaniuk

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The article shows results of the project which aims at evaluating possibilities of effective development and exploitation of natural gas from argillaceous series of the Autochthonous Miocene in the Carpathian Foredeep. To achieve the objective, the research team develop a world-trend based but unique methodology of processing and interpretation, adjusted to data, local variations and petroleum characteristics of the area. In order to determine the zones in which maximum volumes of hydrocarbons might have been generated and preserved as shale gas reservoirs, as well as to identify the most preferable well sites where largest gas accumulations are anticipated a number of task were accomplished. Evaluation of petrophysical properties and hydrocarbon saturation of the Miocene complex is based on laboratory measurements as well as interpretation of well-logs and archival data. The studies apply mercury porosimetry (MICP), micro CT and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (using the Rock Core Analyzer). For prospective location (e.g. central part of Carpathian Foredeep – Brzesko-Wojnicz area) reprocessing and reinterpretation of detailed seismic survey data with the use of integrated geophysical investigations has been made. Construction of quantitative, structural and parametric models for selected areas of the Carpathian Foredeep is performed on the basis of integrated, detailed 3D computer models. Modeling are carried on with the Schlumberger’s Petrel software. Finally, prospective zones are spatially contoured in a form of regional 3D grid, which will be framework for generation modelling and comprehensive parametric mapping, allowing for spatial identification of the most prospective zones of unconventional gas accumulation in the Carpathian Foredeep. Preliminary results of research works indicate a potentially prospective area for occurrence of unconventional gas accumulations in the Polish part of Carpathian Foredeep.

Keywords: Autochthonous Miocene, Carpathian Foredeep, Poland, shale gas.

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Authors: Zita Šereš, Ljubica Dokić, Nikola Maravić, Dragana Šoronja–Simović, Cecilia Hodur, Ivana Nikolić, Biljana Pajin

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New environmental regulations and the increasing market preference for companies that respect the ecosystem had encouraged the industry to look after new treatments for its effluents. The sugar industry, one of the largest emitter of environmental pollutants, follows this tendency. Membrane technology is convenient for separation of suspended solids, colloids and high molecular weight materials that are present in a wastewater from sugar industry. The idea is to microfilter the wastewater, where the permeate passes through the membrane and becomes available for recycle and re-use in the sugar manufacturing process. For microfiltration of this effluent a tubular ceramic membrane was used with a pore size of 200 nm at transmembrane pressure in range of 1–3 bars and in range of flow rate of 50–150 l/h. Kenics static mixer was used for permeate flux enhancement. Turbidity and suspended solids were removed and the permeate flux was continuously monitored during the microfiltration process. The flux achieved after 90 minutes of microfiltration was in a range of 50–70 l/m2h. The obtained turbidity decrease was in the range of 50-99 % and total amount of suspended solids was removed.

Keywords: Ceramic membrane, microfiltration, sugar industry, wastewater.

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Authors: L.C. Ram, R.E. Masto, Smriti Singh, R.C. Tripathi, S.K. Jha, N.K. Srivastava, A.K. Sinha, V.A. Selvi, A. Sinha

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Coal will continue to be the predominant source of global energy for coming several decades. The huge generation of fly ash (FA) from combustion of coal in thermal power plants (TPPs) is apprehended to pose the concerns of its disposal and utilization. FA application based on its typical characteristics as soil ameliorant for agriculture and forestry is the potential area, and hence the global attempt. The inferences drawn suffer from the variations of ash characteristics, soil types, and agro-climatic conditions; thereby correlating the effects of ash between various plant species and soil types is difficult. Indian FAs have low bulk density, high water holding capacity and porosity, rich silt-sized particles, alkaline nature, negligible solubility, and reasonable plant nutrients. Findings of the demonstrations trials for more than two decades from lab/pot to field scale long-term experiments are developed as FA soil amendment technology (FASAT) by Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFR), Dhanbad. Performance of different crops and plant species in cultivable and problematic soils, are encouraging, eco-friendly, and being adopted by the farmers. FA application includes ash alone and in combination with inorganic/organic amendments; combination treatments including bio-solids perform better than FA alone. Optimum dose being up to 100 t/ha for cultivable land and up to/ or above 200 t/ha of FA for waste/degraded land/mine refuse, depending on the characteristics of ash and soil. The elemental toxicity in Indian FA is usually not of much concern owing to alkaline ashes, oxide forms of elements, and elemental concentration within the threshold limits for soil application. Combating toxicity, if any, is possible through combination treatments with organic materials and phytoremediation. Government initiatives through extension programme involving farmers and ash generating organizations need to be accelerated

Keywords: Fly ash, soil quality, CIMFR, FASAT, agriculture, forestry, toxicity, remediation

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Authors: H. Rasouli Pirouzian, J. Hesari, S. Farajnia, M. Moghaddam, S. Ghiassifar, M. Manafi

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Lighvan cheese is basically made from sheep milk in the area of Sahand mountainside which is located in the North West of Iran. The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of enterococci isolated from traditional Lighvan cheese on the quality of Iranian UF white during ripening. The experimental design was split plot based on randomized complete blocks, main plots were four types of starters and subplots were different ripening durations. Addition of Enterococcus spp. did not significantly (P<0.01) affect the pH and gross composition of cheeses. In the cheeses produced with Ent. faecalis and Ent. faecium strains, lipolysis rates were higher and flavor were improved. Moreover, proteolysis assay by measuring percentage of soluble nitrogen at pH 4.6 and urea polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis indicated the increase in proteolysis rate in the cheese containing Ent. faecalis and Ent. faecium strains compared to the control cheeses. Furthermore, the highest percentage of non- protein nitrogen was observed in the cheese containing Ent. faecium. In conclusion, the results showed the positive effect of the Ent. faecalis and Ent. faecium on secondary proteolysis, lipolysis and sensorial characteristics development of UF white cheeses.

Keywords: Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, Lighvan cheese, Lipolysis, Proteolysis, UF cheese

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Authors: Hanife Genc

Abstract:

This study was conducted to determine sex differentiation of laboratory reared Elm nymphalid (Nymphalis polychloros Linnaeus, 1758) by examining the morphological structure of pupal stage. Laboratory colony of elm nymphalid, reared on pear leaves, was used to set up experiments. It was performed with 5 replications having 8 pupae for each replication. Dorsal, ventral and lateral parts of external morphological structures of pupae were examined by Olympus SZX9 stereozoom microscope and photographed. When fully grown, mature larvae wander the highest part of the rearing cage and pupae were formed hanging by cremaster. After completing prepupa stage about 1.5±0.3 days, they all pupated. Pupal stage was completed at 24±1°C about 4.38±1.20 days. Pupal weights were 0.483±0.05 g in females and 0.392±0.08 g (n=40) in males respectively. Pupal emergence rate was 95%, with 22 females and 16 males. Examinations of ventral parts of 8th, 9th, and 10th abdominal segments revealed that anal opening were found at 10th abdominal segment in both sexes, 3 lumps were determined at 9th abdominal segments then the specific opening structure at 8th segment was only found on female pupae.

Keywords: Butterfly, Nymphalis polychloros, pupae, sex differentiation.

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Authors: A. A. Hekmatzadeh, A. Karimi-Jashani, N. Talebbeydokhti

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The rate of nitrate adsorption by a nitrate selective ion exchange resin was investigated in a well-stirred batch experiments. The kinetic experimental data were simulated with diffusion models including external mass transfer, particle diffusion and chemical adsorption. Particle pore volume diffusion and particle surface diffusion were taken into consideration separately and simultaneously in the modeling. The model equations were solved numerically using the Crank-Nicholson scheme. An optimization technique was employed to optimize the model parameters. All nitrate concentration decay data were well described with the all diffusion models. The results indicated that the kinetic process is initially controlled by external mass transfer and then by particle diffusion. The external mass transfer coefficient and the coefficients of pore volume diffusion and surface diffusion in all experiments were close to each other with the average value of 8.3×10-3 cm/S for external mass transfer coefficient. In addition, the models are more sensitive to the mass transfer coefficient in comparison with particle diffusion. Moreover, it seems that surface diffusion is the dominant particle diffusion in comparison with pore volume diffusion.

Keywords: External mass transfer, pore volume diffusion, surface diffusion, mass action law isotherm.

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Authors: T. S. Shashikumar

Abstract:

Radon is a radioactive gas emitted from radium, a daughter product of uranium that occurs naturally in rocks and soil. Radon, together with its decay products, emits alpha particles that can damage lung tissue. The activity concentration of ²²²Ra has been analyzed in water samples collected from borewells and rivers in and around Hassan city, Karnataka State, India. The measurements were performed by Emanometry technique. The concentration of ²²²Rn in borewell waters varies from 18.49±1.89 to 397.26±12.3 Bql^-1 with geometric mean 120.48±12.87 Bql^-1 and in river waters it varies from 92.63±9.31 to 93.98±9.51 Bql^-1 with geometric mean of 93.16±9.33 Bql^-1. In the present study, the radon concentrations are higher in Adarshanagar and Viveka Nagar which are found to be 397.26±12.3 Bql^-1 and 325.78±32.56 Bql^-1. Most of the analysed samples show a ²²²Rn concentration more than 100 Bql^-1 and this can be attributed to the geology of the area where the ground waters are located, which is predominantly of granitic characteristic. The average inhalation dose and ingestion dose in the borewell water are found to be 0.405 and 0.033 µSvy^-1; and in river water it is found to be 0.234 and 0.019 µSvy^-1, respectively. The average total effective dose rate in borewell waters and river waters are found to be 0.433 and 0.253 µSvy^-1, which does not cause any health risk to the population of Hassan region.

Keywords: Borewell, effective dose, emanometry, 222Rn.

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Authors: Yung-Ting Chang, Chung-You Tsai, Yu-Chuan Li

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Nosocomial (i.e., hospital-acquired) infections (NI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitals. NI rate is higher in intensive care units (ICU) than in the general ward due to patients with severe symptoms, poor immunity, and accepted many invasive therapies. Contact behaviors between health caregivers and patients is one of the infect factors. It is difficult to obtain complete contact records by traditional method of retrospective analysis of medical records. This paper establishes a contact history inferential model (CHIM) intended to extend the use of Proximity Sensing of rapid frequency identification (RFID) technology to transferring all proximity events between health caregivers and patients into clinical events (close-in events, contact events and invasive events).The results of the study indicated that the CHIM can infer proximity care activities into close-in events and contact events. The infection control team could redesign and build optimal workflow in the ICU according to the patient-specific contact history which provided by our automatic tracing system.

Keywords: Active Radio Frequency Identification, Intensive Care Unit, Nosocomial Infections

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Authors: Zhaojun Wang, Zongdi Sun, Qinqin Cui, Xingwan Ren

Abstract:

Based on multivariate statistical analysis theory, this paper uses the principal component analysis method, Mahalanobis distance analysis method and fitting method to establish the photovoltaic health model to evaluate the health of photovoltaic panels. First of all, according to weather conditions, the photovoltaic panel variable data are classified into five categories: sunny, cloudy, rainy, foggy, overcast. The health of photovoltaic panels in these five types of weather is studied. Secondly, a scatterplot of the relationship between the amount of electricity produced by each kind of weather and other variables was plotted. It was found that the amount of electricity generated by photovoltaic panels has a significant nonlinear relationship with time. The fitting method was used to fit the relationship between the amount of weather generated and the time, and the nonlinear equation was obtained. Then, using the principal component analysis method to analyze the independent variables under five kinds of weather conditions, according to the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test, it was found that three types of weather such as overcast, foggy, and sunny meet the conditions for factor analysis, while cloudy and rainy weather do not satisfy the conditions for factor analysis. Therefore, through the principal component analysis method, the main components of overcast weather are temperature, AQI, and pm2.5. The main component of foggy weather is temperature, and the main components of sunny weather are temperature, AQI, and pm2.5. Cloudy and rainy weather require analysis of all of their variables, namely temperature, AQI, pm2.5, solar radiation intensity and time. Finally, taking the variable values in sunny weather as observed values, taking the main components of cloudy, foggy, overcast and rainy weather as sample data, the Mahalanobis distances between observed value and these sample values are obtained. A comparative analysis was carried out to compare the degree of deviation of the Mahalanobis distance to determine the health of the photovoltaic panels under different weather conditions. It was found that the weather conditions in which the Mahalanobis distance fluctuations ranged from small to large were: foggy, cloudy, overcast and rainy.

Keywords: Fitting, principal component analysis, Mahalanobis distance, SPSS, MATLAB.

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Authors: Israa Al-Neami, Ali J. Al-Askery, Martin Johnston, Charalampos Tsimenidis

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In this paper, we focus on the design of a multi-line copper wire (MLCW) communication system. First, we construct our proposed MLCW channel and verify its characteristics based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. In addition, we apply Middleton class A impulsive noise (IN) to the copper channel for further investigation. Second, the MIMO G.fast system is adopted utilizing the proposed MLCW channel model and is compared to a single line G-fast system. Second, the performance of the coded system is obtained utilizing concatenated interleaved Reed-Solomon (RS) code with four-dimensional trellis-coded modulation (4D TCM), and compared to the single line G-fast system. Simulations are obtained for high quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations that are commonly used with G-fast communications, the results demonstrate that the bit error rate (BER) performance of the coded MLCW system shows an improvement compared to the single line G-fast systems.

Keywords: G.fast, Middleton Class A impulsive noise, mitigation techniques, copper channel Model.

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Authors: S. S. Sharma, Jagannath K, P. R. Prabhu

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Metal matrix composites consists of a metallic matrix combined with dispersed particulate phase as reinforcement. Aluminum alloys have been the primary material of choice for structural components of aircraft since about 1930. Well known performance characteristics, known fabrication costs, design experience, and established manufacturing methods and facilities, are just a few of the reasons for the continued confidence in 7XXX Al alloys that will ensure their use in significant quantities for the time to come. Particulate MMCs are of special interest owing to the low cost of their raw materials (primarily natural river sand here) and their ease of fabrication, making them suitable for applications requiring relatively high volume production. 7XXX Al alloys are precipitation hardenable and therefore amenable for thermomechanical treatment. Al–Zn alloys reinforced with particulate materials are used in aerospace industries in spite of the drawbacks of susceptibility to stress corrosion, poor wettability, poor weldability and poor fatigue resistance. The resistance offered by these particulates for the moving dislocations impart secondary hardening in turn contributes strain hardening. Cold deformation increases lattice defects, which in turn improves the properties of solution treated alloy. In view of this, six different Al–Zn–Mg alloy composites reinforced with silica (3 wt. % and 5 wt. %) are prepared by conventional semisolid synthesizing process. The cast alloys are solution treated and aged. The solution treated alloys are further severely cold rolled to enhance the properties. The hardness and strength values are analyzed and compared with silica free Al – Zn-Mg alloys. Precipitation hardening phenomena is accelerated due to the increased number of potential sites for precipitation. Higher peak hardness and lesser aging time are the characteristics of thermo mechanically treated samples. For obtaining maximum hardness, optimum number and volume of precipitate particles are required. The Al-5Zn-1Mg with 5% SiO₂ alloy composite shows better result.

Keywords: Dislocation, hardness, matrix, thermomechanical, precipitation hardening, reinforcement.

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Authors: Emad Alenany, M. Adel El-Baz

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In this paper, the flow of different classes of patients into a hospital is modelled and analyzed by using the queueing network analyzer (QNA) algorithm and discrete event simulation. Input data for QNA are the rate and variability parameters of the arrival and service times in addition to the number of servers in each facility. Patient flows mostly match real flow for a hospital in Egypt. Based on the analysis of the waiting times, two approaches are suggested for improving performance: Separating patients into service groups, and adopting different service policies for sequencing patients through hospital units. The separation of a specific group of patients, with higher performance target, to be served separately from the rest of patients requiring lower performance target, requires the same capacity while improves performance for the selected group of patients with higher target. Besides, it is shown that adopting the shortest processing time and shortest remaining processing time service policies among other tested policies would results in, respectively, 11.47% and 13.75% reduction in average waiting time relative to first come first served policy.

Keywords: Queueing network, discrete-event simulation, health applications, SPT.

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Authors: Li Wu

Abstract:

By using linear regression methodology to analyze the data of daily precipitation from 1961-2012, this paper studied the variation tendency of precipitation in Chenzhou. The outcome showed: (1) The annual precipitation was decreasing for 52 years and the difference of precipitation variation tendency among four seasons was remarkable. The precipitation of spring and autumn showed more remarkable decrease than of summer; but the precipitation of winter significantly increased. (2) The annual precipitation frequency tended to lower, which was consistent with the tendency of yearly variation. The seasonal precipitation frequency was greatly different, namely, precipitation frequency in spring and autumn decreased, co-occurring with the phenomenon of mutation; but the winter precipitation frequency increased notably. (3) The precipitation intensity displayed a tendency of increase, including spring, autumn and winter; among them, winter had the most obvious tendency to increase, and autumn had the most yearly variation. Summer was the only season with a tendency of decreasing in precipitation intensity. (4) Annual extreme precipitation tended to reduce, spring, summer and autumn are all included; whereas, winter extreme precipitation tended to increase at the rate of 0.1d/10a. (5) The daily maximum precipitation intensity increased slightly and it varied greatly.

Keywords: Chenzhou, precipitation variation, precipitation frequency, precipitation intensity.

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Authors: Ehab F. Badran, Guoxiang Gu

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We consider optimal channel equalization for MIMO (multi-input/multi-output) time-varying channels in the sense of MMSE (minimum mean-squared-error), where the observation noise can be non-stationary. We show that all ZF (zero-forcing) receivers can be parameterized in an affine form which eliminates completely the ISI (inter-symbol-interference), and optimal channel equalizers can be designed through minimization of the MSE (mean-squarederror) between the detected signals and the transmitted signals, among all ZF receivers. We demonstrate that the optimal channel equalizer is a modified Kalman filter, and show that under the AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) assumption, the proposed optimal channel equalizer minimizes the BER (bit error rate) among all possible ZF receivers. Our results are applicable to optimal channel equalization for DWMT (discrete wavelet multitone), multirate transmultiplexers, OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), and DS (direct sequence) CDMA (code division multiple access) wireless data communication systems. A design algorithm for optimal channel equalization is developed, and several simulation examples are worked out to illustrate the proposed design algorithm.

Keywords: Channel equalization, Kalman filtering, Time-varying systems.

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Authors: N. R. Putra, A. H. Abdul Aziz, A. S. Zaini, Z. Idham, F. Idrus, M. Z. Bin Zullyadini, M. A. Che Yunus

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The content of omega-3 in soybean oil is important in the development of infants and is an alternative for the omega-3 in fish oils. The investigation of extraction of soybean oil is needed to obtain the bioactive compound in the extract. Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction is modern and green technology to extract herbs and plants to obtain high quality extract due to high diffusivity and solubility of the solvent. The aim of this study was to obtain the optimum condition of soybean oil extraction by modified supercritical carbon dioxide. The soybean oil was extracted by using modified supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO₂) under the temperatures of 40, 60, 80 °C, pressures of 150, 250, 350 Bar, and constant flow-rate of 10 g/min as the parameters of extraction processes. An experimental design was performed in order to optimize three important parameters of SC-CO₂ extraction which are pressure (X₁), temperature (X₂) to achieve optimum yields of soybean oil. Box Behnken Design was applied for experimental design. From the optimization process, the optimum condition of extraction of soybean oil was obtained at pressure 338 Bar and temperature 80 °C with oil yield of 2.713 g. Effect of pressure is significant on the extraction of soybean oil by modified supercritical carbon dioxide. Increasing of pressure will increase the oil yield of soybean oil.

Keywords: Soybean oil, SC-CO2 extraction, yield, optimization.

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Authors: Norhanim Nordin, Rosnah Shamsudin, Azrina Azlan, Mohammad Effendy Ya’acob

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An environmental friendly approach for disposal of voluminous durian husk waste could be implemented by substituting them into various valuable commodities, such as healthcare and biofuel products. Thus, the study of composition value in each segment of durian husk was very crucial to determine the suitable proportions of nutrients that need to be added and mixed in the product. A total of 12 ‘Durian Kampung’ fruits from Sg Ruan, Pahang were selected and each fruit husk was divided into four segments and labelled as P-L (thin neck area of white inner husk), P-B (thick bottom area of white inner husk), H (green and thorny outer husk) and W (whole combination of P-B and H). Four experiments have been carried out to determine the dry matter, moisture, ash and crude fibre content. The results show that the H segment has the highest dry matter content (30.47%), while the P-B segment has the highest percentage in moisture (81.83%) and ash (6.95%) content. It was calculated that the ash content of the P-B segment has a higher rate of moisture level which causes the ash content to increase about 2.89% from the P-L segment. These data have proven that each segment of durian husk has a significant difference in terms of composition value, which might be useful information to fully utilize every part of the durian husk in the future.

Keywords: Durian husk, crude fibre content, dry matter content, moisture content.

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Authors: Srikanth Pandurangi, Basheer Mohammed, Nezar Al Sayegh

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In order to meet the increasing demand for housing care for Kuwaiti citizens, the government authorities in Kuwait are undertaking a series of projects in the form of new large cities, outside the current urban area. Al Mutlaa City located to the north-west of the Kuwait Metropolitan Area is one such project out of the 15 planned new cities. The city accommodates a wide variety of residential developments, employment opportunities, commercial, recreational, health care and institutional uses. This paper examines the application of comprehensive transportation demand modeling works undertaken in VISUM platform to understand the future intracity and intercity travel distribution patterns in Kuwait. The scope of models developed varied in levels of detail: strategic model update, sub-area models representing future demand of Al Mutlaa City, sub-area models built to estimate the demand in the residential neighborhoods of the city. This paper aims at offering model update framework that facilitates easy integration between sub-area models and strategic national models for unified traffic forecasts. This paper presents the transportation demand modeling results utilized in informing the planning of multi-modal transportation system for Al Mutlaa City. This paper also presents the household survey data collection efforts undertaken using GPS devices (first time in Kuwait) and notebook computer based digital survey forms for interviewing representative sample of citizens and residents. The survey results formed the basis of estimating trip generation rates and trip distribution coefficients used in the strategic base year model calibration and validation process.

Keywords: GPS based household surveys, transportation infrastructure, origin-destination trip matrices, traffic forecasts, transportation demand modeling, travel behavior patterns.

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Authors: Murat Sengoz, Mustafa Kemal Topcu

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This study aims to contribute to efforts of Turkey to increase research and development to overcome mid-income level trap by discussing regulations on patenting and licensing. Knowledge and technology transfer from universities to business world is attached great significance to increase innovation. Through literature survey, it is observed that the States accomplished to boost the economy and increase welfare by the Bayh-Dole Act enacted in 1980. Thus, this good practice is imitated by other nations to make technological developments. The Act allows universities to acquire patent right in research programs funded by government to increase technology transfer from universities whilst motivating real sector to use research pools in the universities. An act similar with Bayh-Dole could be beneficial to Turkey since efforts in Turkey are to promote research, development and innovation. Towards this end, the impact of Bayh-Dole Act on the patent system for universities in the Sates is deliberately examined, applicability in Turkey is discussed. However, it is conceded that success rate of applying Bayh-Dole Act in Turkey would be low once Turkey mainly differs from the States regarding social, economic and cultural traits.

Keywords: Bayh-Dole act, knowledge transfer, license, patent, spin-off.

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Authors: Mingyang Sun, Guozheng Yan, Dasheng Liu, Lei Yang

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Driven by the demand of intelligent monitoring in rehabilitation centers or hospitals, a high accuracy real-time location system based on UWB (ultra-wideband) technology was proposed. The system measures precise location of a specific person, traces his movement and visualizes his trajectory on the screen for doctors or administrators. Therefore, doctors could view the position of the patient at any time and find them immediately and exactly when something emergent happens. In our design process, different algorithms were discussed, and their errors were analyzed. In addition, we discussed about a , simple but effective way of correcting the antenna delay error, which turned out to be effective. By choosing the best algorithm and correcting errors with corresponding methods, the system attained a good accuracy. Experiments indicated that the ranging error of the system is lower than 7 cm, the locating error is lower than 20 cm, and the refresh rate exceeds 5 times per second. In future works, by embedding the system in wearable IoT (Internet of Things) devices, it could provide not only physical parameters, but also the activity status of the patient, which would help doctors a lot in performing healthcare.

Keywords: Intelligent monitoring, IoT devices, real-time location, smart healthcare, ultra-wideband technology.

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Authors: Thiang, Handry Khoswanto, Rendy Pangaldus

Abstract:

Inverse kinematics analysis plays an important role in developing a robot manipulator. But it is not too easy to derive the inverse kinematic equation of a robot manipulator especially robot manipulator which has numerous degree of freedom. This paper describes an application of Artificial Neural Network for modeling the inverse kinematics equation of a robot manipulator. In this case, the robot has three degree of freedoms and the robot was implemented for drilling a printed circuit board. The artificial neural network architecture used for modeling is a multilayer perceptron networks with steepest descent backpropagation training algorithm. The designed artificial neural network has 2 inputs, 2 outputs and varies in number of hidden layer. Experiments were done in variation of number of hidden layer and learning rate. Experimental results show that the best architecture of artificial neural network used for modeling inverse kinematics of is multilayer perceptron with 1 hidden layer and 38 neurons per hidden layer. This network resulted a RMSE value of 0.01474.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, back propagation, inverse kinematics, manipulator, robot.

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Authors: G. Revathi, P. Saikrishnan

Abstract:

An analysis is performed to study the influence of nonuniform double slot suction on a steady laminar boundary layer flow over a rotating sphere when fluid properties such as viscosity and Prandtl number are inverse linear functions of temperature. Nonsimilar solutions have been obtained from the starting point of the streamwise co-ordinate to the exact point of separation. The difficulties arising at the starting point of the streamwise co-ordinate, at the edges of the slot and at the point of separation have been overcome by applying an implicit finite difference scheme in combination with the quasi-linearization technique and an appropriate selection of the finer step sizes along the stream-wise direction. The present investigation shows that the point of ordinary separation can be delayed by nonuniform double slot suction if the mass transfer rate is increased and also if the slots are positioned further downstream. In addition, the investigation reveals that double slot suction is found to be more effective compared to a single slot suction in delaying ordinary separation. As rotation parameter increase the point of separation moves upstream direction.

Keywords: Boundary layer, suction, mass transfer, rotating sphere.

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Authors: Kittisak Kerdprasop, Nittaya Kerdprasop, Pairote Sattayatham

Abstract:

Data stream analysis is the process of computing various summaries and derived values from large amounts of data which are continuously generated at a rapid rate. The nature of a stream does not allow a revisit on each data element. Furthermore, data processing must be fast to produce timely analysis results. These requirements impose constraints on the design of the algorithms to balance correctness against timely responses. Several techniques have been proposed over the past few years to address these challenges. These techniques can be categorized as either dataoriented or task-oriented. The data-oriented approach analyzes a subset of data or a smaller transformed representation, whereas taskoriented scheme solves the problem directly via approximation techniques. We propose a hybrid approach to tackle the data stream analysis problem. The data stream has been both statistically transformed to a smaller size and computationally approximated its characteristics. We adopt a Monte Carlo method in the approximation step. The data reduction has been performed horizontally and vertically through our EMR sampling method. The proposed method is analyzed by a series of experiments. We apply our algorithm on clustering and classification tasks to evaluate the utility of our approach.

Keywords: Data Stream, Monte Carlo, Sampling, DensityEstimation.

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Authors: R. Karmouch

Abstract:

A thin gold metal layer was deposited on the top of silicon oxide films containing embedded Si nanocrystals (Si-nc). The sample was annealed in a gas containing nitrogen, and subsequently characterized by photoluminescence. We obtained 3-fold enhancement of photon emission from the Si-nc embedded in silicon dioxide covered with a Gold layer as compared with an uncovered sample. We attribute this enhancement to the increase of the spontaneous emission rate caused by the coupling of the Si-nc emitters with the surface plasmons (SP). The evolution of PL emission with laser irradiated time was also collected from covered samples, and compared to that from uncovered samples. In an uncovered sample, the PL intensity decreases with time, approximately with two decay constants. Although the decrease of the initial PL intensity associated with the increase of sample temperature under CW pumping is still observed in samples covered with a gold layer, this film significantly contributes to reduce the permanent deterioration of the PL intensity. The resistance to degradation of light-emitting silicon nanocrystals can be increased by SP coupling to suppress the permanent deterioration. Controlling the permanent photodeterioration can allow to perform a reliable optical gain measurement.

Keywords: Photodeterioration, Silicon Nanocrystals, Ion Implantation, Photoluminescence, Surface Plasmons.

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Authors: W. Y. Leng, S. M. Shamsuddin

Abstract:

Fingerprint based identification system; one of a well known biometric system in the area of pattern recognition and has always been under study through its important role in forensic science that could help government criminal justice community. In this paper, we proposed an identification framework of individuals by means of fingerprint. Different from the most conventional fingerprint identification frameworks the extracted Geometrical element features (GEFs) will go through a Discretization process. The intention of Discretization in this study is to attain individual unique features that could reflect the individual varianceness in order to discriminate one person from another. Previously, Discretization has been shown a particularly efficient identification on English handwriting with accuracy of 99.9% and on discrimination of twins- handwriting with accuracy of 98%. Due to its high discriminative power, this method is adopted into this framework as an independent based method to seek for the accuracy of fingerprint identification. Finally the experimental result shows that the accuracy rate of identification of the proposed system using Discretization is 100% for FVC2000, 93% for FVC2002 and 89.7% for FVC2004 which is much better than the conventional or the existing fingerprint identification system (72% for FVC2000, 26% for FVC2002 and 32.8% for FVC2004). The result indicates that Discretization approach manages to boost up the classification effectively, and therefore prove to be suitable for other biometric features besides handwriting and fingerprint.

Keywords: Discretization, fingerprint identification, geometrical features, pattern recognition

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Authors: Jishu Das Gupta, Srecko Howard, Angela Howard

Abstract:

Insufficient Quality of Service (QoS) of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a growing concern that has lead the need for research and study. In this paper we investigate the performance of VoIP and the impact of resource limitations on the performance of Access Networks. The impact of VoIP performance in Access Networks is particularly important in regions where Internet resources are limited and the cost of improving these resources is prohibitive. It is clear that perceived VoIP performance, as measured by mean opinion score [2] in experiments, where subjects are asked to rate communication quality, is determined by end-to-end delay on the communication path, delay variation, packet loss, echo, the coding algorithm in use and noise. These performance indicators can be measured and the affect in the Access Network can be estimated. This paper investigates the congestion in the Access Network to the overall performance of VoIP services with the presence of other substantial uses of internet and ways in which Access Networks can be designed to improve VoIP performance. Methods for analyzing the impact of the Access Network on VoIP performance will be surveyed and reviewed. This paper also considers some approaches for improving performance of VoIP by carrying out experiments using Network Simulator version 2 (NS2) software with a view to gaining a better understanding of the design of Access Networks.

Keywords: Codec, DiffServ, Droptail, RED, VOIP

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Authors: Sagaren Pillay

Abstract:

In this paper bi-annual time series data on unemployment rates (from the Labour Force Survey) are expanded to quarterly rates and linked to quarterly unemployment rates (from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey). The resultant linked series and the consumer price index (CPI) series are examined using Johansen’s cointegration approach and vector error correction modeling. The study finds that both the series are integrated of order one and are cointegrated. A statistically significant co-integrating relationship is found to exist between the time series of unemployment rates and the CPI. Given this significant relationship, the study models this relationship using Vector Error Correction Models (VECM), one with a restriction on the deterministic term and the other with no restriction.

A formal statistical confirmation of the existence of a unique linear and lagged relationship between inflation and unemployment for the period between September 2000 and June 2011 is presented. For the given period, the CPI was found to be an unbiased predictor of the unemployment rate. This relationship can be explored further for the development of appropriate forecasting models incorporating other study variables.

Keywords: Forecasting, lagged, linear, relationship.

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