Search results for: Steady state solution

Authors: Haleem K. Hussain, Liu Gui Wei, Zhang Lian Zhen, Yongxue Li

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It is necessary to evaluate the bridges conditions and strengthen bridges or parts of them. The reinforcement necessary due to some reasons can be summarized as: First, a changing in use of bridge could produce internal forces in a part of structural which exceed the existing cross-sectional capacity. Second, bridges may also need reinforcement because damage due to external factors which reduced the cross-sectional resistance to external loads. One of other factors could listed here its misdesign in some details, like safety of bridge or part of its.This article identify the design demands of Qing Shan bridge located in is in Heilongjiang Province He gang - Nen Jiang Road 303 provincial highway, Wudalianchi area, China, is an important bridge in the urban areas. The investigation program was include the observation and evaluate the damage in T- section concrete beams , prestressed concrete box girder bridges section in additional evaluate the whole state of bridge includes the pier , abutments , bridge decks, wings , bearing and capping beam, joints, ........etc. The test results show that the bridges in general structural condition are good. T beam span No 10 were observed, crack extended upward along the ribbed T beam, and continue to the T beam flange. Crack width varying between 0.1mm to 0.4mm, the maximum about 0.4mm. The bridge needs to be improved flexural bending strength especially at for T beam section.

Keywords: Field investigation, prestressed concrete box girder, maintenance, Qing Shan Bridge

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Authors: M. R. Homaeinezhad, E. Tavakkoli, M. Habibi, S. A. Atyabi, A. Ghaffari

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This paper describes a new supervised fusion (hybrid) electrocardiogram (ECG) classification solution consisting of a new QRS complex geometrical feature extraction as well as a new version of the learning vector quantization (LVQ) classification algorithm aimed for overcoming the stability-plasticity dilemma. Toward this objective, after detection and delineation of the major events of ECG signal via an appropriate algorithm, each QRS region and also its corresponding discrete wavelet transform (DWT) are supposed as virtual images and each of them is divided into eight polar sectors. Then, the curve length of each excerpted segment is calculated and is used as the element of the feature space. To increase the robustness of the proposed classification algorithm versus noise, artifacts and arrhythmic outliers, a fusion structure consisting of five different classifiers namely as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Modified Learning Vector Quantization (MLVQ) and three Multi Layer Perceptron-Back Propagation (MLP–BP) neural networks with different topologies were designed and implemented. The new proposed algorithm was applied to all 48 MIT–BIH Arrhythmia Database records (within–record analysis) and the discrimination power of the classifier in isolation of different beat types of each record was assessed and as the result, the average accuracy value Acc=98.51% was obtained. Also, the proposed method was applied to 6 number of arrhythmias (Normal, LBBB, RBBB, PVC, APB, PB) belonging to 20 different records of the aforementioned database (between– record analysis) and the average value of Acc=95.6% was achieved. To evaluate performance quality of the new proposed hybrid learning machine, the obtained results were compared with similar peer– reviewed studies in this area.

Keywords: Feature Extraction, Curve Length Method, SupportVector Machine, Learning Vector Quantization, Multi Layer Perceptron, Fusion (Hybrid) Classification, Arrhythmia Classification, Supervised Learning Machine.

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Authors: D. Geringswald, B. Hintze

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The miniaturization of circuits is advancing. During chip manufacturing, structures are filled for example by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Since this process reaches its limits in case of very high aspect ratios, the use of alternatives such as the atomic layer deposition (ALD) is possible, requiring the extension of existing coating systems. However, it is an unsolved question to what extent MOCVD can achieve results similar as an ALD process. In this context, this work addresses the characterization of a metal organic vapor deposition of titanium nitride. Based on the current state of the art, the film properties coating thickness, sheet resistance, resistivity, stress and chemical composition are considered. The used setting parameters are temperature, plasma gas ratio, plasma power, plasma treatment time, deposition time, deposition pressure, number of cycles and TDMAT flow. The derived process instructions for unstructured wafers and inside a structure with high aspect ratio include lowering the process temperature and increasing the number of cycles, the deposition and the plasma treatment time as well as the plasma gas ratio of hydrogen to nitrogen (H₂:N₂). In contrast to the current process configuration, the deposited titanium nitride (TiN) layer is more uniform inside the entire test structure. Consequently, this paper provides approaches to employ the MOCVD for structures with increasing aspect ratios.

Keywords: ALD, high aspect ratio, PE-MOCVD, TiN.

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Authors: Jayshree Patnaik, Bhaskar Bhowmick

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The economic growth of any nation is steered and dependent on innovation in technology. It can be preferably argued that technology has enhanced the quality of life. Technology is linked both with an economic and a social structure. But there are some parts of the world or communities which are yet to reap the benefits of technological innovation. Business and organizations are now well equipped with cutting-edge innovations that improve the firm performance and provide them with a competitive edge, but rarely does it have a positive impact on any community which is weak and marginalized. In recent times, it is observed that communities are actively handling social or ecological issues with the help of indigenous technologies. Thus, "Appropriate Technology" comes into the discussion, which is quite prevalent in the rural third world. Appropriate technology grew as a movement in the mid-1970s during the energy crisis, but it lost its stance in the following years when people started it to describe it as an inferior technology or dead technology. Basically, there is no such technology which is inferior or sophisticated for a particular region. The relevance of appropriate technology lies in penetrating technology into a larger and weaker section of community where the “Bottom of the pyramid” can pay for technology if they find the price is affordable. This is a theoretical paper which primarily revolves around how appropriate technology has faded and again evolved in both developed and developing countries. The paper will try to focus on the various concepts, history and challenges faced by the appropriate technology over the years. Appropriate technology follows a documented approach but lags in overall design and diffusion. Diffusion of technology into the poorer sections of community remains unanswered until the present time. Appropriate technology is multi-disciplinary in nature; therefore, this openness allows having a varied working model for different problems. Appropriate technology is a friendly technology that seeks to improve the lives of people in a constraint environment by providing an affordable and sustainable solution. Appropriate technology needs to be defined in the era of modern technological advancement for sustainability.

Keywords: Appropriate technology, community, developing country, sustainability.

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Authors: Mayur Milan Kale, Indu Mehrotra

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Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) is a measure of the oxygen used in bacteria mediated oxidation of organic substances in water and wastewater. Theoretically an infinite time is required for complete biochemical oxidation of organic matter, but the measurement is made over 5-days at 20 0C or 3-days at 27 0C test period with or without dilution. Researchers have worked to further reduce the time of measurement. The objective of this paper is to review advancement made in BOD measurement primarily to minimize the time and negate the measurement difficulties. Survey of literature review in four such techniques namely BOD-BARTTM, Biosensors, Ferricyanidemediated approach, luminous bacterial immobilized chip method. Basic principle, method of determination, data validation and their advantage and disadvantages have been incorporated of each of the methods. In the BOD-BARTTM method the time lag is calculated for the system to change from oxidative to reductive state. BIOSENSORS are the biological sensing element with a transducer which produces a signal proportional to the analyte concentration. Microbial species has its metabolic deficiencies. Co-immobilization of bacteria using sol-gel biosensor increases the range of substrate. In ferricyanidemediated approach, ferricyanide has been used as e-acceptor instead of oxygen. In Luminous bacterial cells-immobilized chip method, bacterial bioluminescence which is caused by lux genes was observed. Physiological responses is measured and correlated to BOD due to reduction or emission. There is a scope to further probe into the rapid estimation of BOD.

Keywords: BOD, Four methods, Rapid estimation

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Authors: D. C. Soares, J. T. S. Santos, D. G. Costa, A. K. S. Abud, T. P. Nunes, A. V. D. Figueiredo, A. M. de Oliveira Junior

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Mangabeira (Hancornia speciosa Gomes), a native plant in Brazil, is found growing spontaneously in various regions of the country. The high perishability of tropical fruits such as mangaba, causes it to be necessary to use technologies that promote conservation, aiming to increase the shelf life of this fruit and add value. The objective of this study was to compare the mangabas lyophilization curves behaviors with different sizes and maturation stages. The fruits were freeze-dried for a period of approximately 45 hours at lyophilizer Liotop brand, model L -108. It has been considered large the fruits between 38 and 58 mm diameter and small, between 23 and 28 mm diameter and the two states of maturation, intermediate and mature. Large size mangabas drying curves in both states of maturation were linear behavior at all process, while the kinetic drying curves related to small fruits, independent of maturation state, had a typical behavior of drying, with all the well-defined steps. With these results it was noted that the time of lyophilization was suitable for small mangabas, a fact that did not happen with the larger one. This may indicate that the large mangabas require a longer time to freeze until reaches the equilibrium level, as it happens with the small fruits, going to have constant moisture at the end of the process. For both types of fruit were analyzed water activity, acidity, protein, lipid, and vitamin C before and after the process.

Keywords: Freeze dryer, mangaba, conservation, chemical characteristics.

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Authors: Syarifah Abd Rahim, Fatinah Ab Rahman, Engku N. E. M. Nasir, Noor A. Ramle

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Co-crystal is believed to improve the solubility and dissolution rates and thus, enhanced the bioavailability of poor water soluble drugs particularly during the oral route of administration. With the existing of poorly soluble drugs in pharmaceutical industry, the screening of co-crystal formation using carbamazepine (CBZ) as a model drug compound with dicarboxylic acids co-crystal formers (CCF) namely fumaric (FA) and succinic (SA) acids in ethanol has been studied. The co-crystal formations were studied by varying the mol ratio values of CCF to CBZ to access the effect of CCF concentration on the formation of the co-crystal. Solvent evaporation, slurry and cooling crystallization which representing the solution based method co-crystal screening were used. Based on the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis, the melting point of CBZ-SA in different ratio was in the range between 188oC-189oC. For CBZ-FA form A and CBZ-FA form B the melting point in different ratio were in the range of 174oC-175oC and 185oC-186oC respectively. The product crystal from the screening was also characterized using X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD). The XRPD pattern profile analysis has shown that the CBZ co-crystals with FA and SA were successfully formed for all ratios studied. The findings revealed that CBZ-FA co-crystal were formed in two different polymorphs. It was found that CBZ-FA form A and form B were formed from evaporation and slurry crystallization methods respectively. On the other hand, in cooling crystallization method, CBZ-FA form A was formed at lower mol ratio of CCF to CBZ and vice versa. This study disclosed that different methods and mol ratios during the co-crystal screening can affect the outcome of co-crystal produced such as polymorphic forms of co-crystal and thereof. Thus, it was suggested that careful attentions is needed during the screening since the co-crystal formation is currently one of the promising approach to be considered in research and development for pharmaceutical industry to improve the poorly soluble drugs.

Keywords: Carbamazepine, co-crystal, co-crystal former, dicarboxylic acid.

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Tabatabaei, Ali Vaseghi Ardekani

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In this paper, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films are deposited on glass substrate by sol-gel method. The ZnO thin films with well defined orientation were acquired by spin coating of zinc acetate dehydrate monoethanolamine (MEA), de-ionized water and isopropanol alcohol. These films were pre-heated at 275°C for 10 min and then annealed at 350°C, 450°C and 550°C for 80 min. The effect of annealing temperature and different thickness on structure and surface morphology of the thin films were verified by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). It was found that there was a significant effect of annealing temperature on the structural parameters of the films such as roughness exponent, fractal dimension and interface width. Thin films also were characterizied by X-ray Diffractometery (XRD) method. XRD analysis revealed that the annealed ZnO thin films consist of single phase ZnO with wurtzite structure and show the c-axis grain orientation. Increasing annealing temperature increased the crystallite size and the c-axis orientation of the film after 450°C. Also In this study, ZnO thin films in different thickness have been prepared by sol-gel method on the glass substrate at room temperature. The thicknesses of films are 100, 150 and 250 nm. Using fractal analysis, morphological characteristics of surface films thickness in amorphous state were investigated. The results show that with increasing thickness, surface roughness (RMS) and lateral correlation length (ξ) are decreased. Also, the roughness exponent (α) and growth exponent (β) were determined to be 0.74±0.02 and 0.11±0.02, respectively.

Keywords: ZnO, Thin film, Fractal analysis, Morphology, AFM, annealing temperature, different thickness, XRD.

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Authors: Deng Zengming, Wang Mingjiang

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As 3D video is explored as a hot research topic in the last few decades, free-viewpoint TV (FTV) is no doubt a promising field for its better visual experience and incomparable interactivity. View synthesis is obviously a crucial technology for FTV; it enables to render images in unlimited numbers of virtual viewpoints with the information from limited numbers of reference view. In this paper, a novel hybrid synthesis framework is proposed and blending priority is explored. In contrast to the commonly used View Synthesis Reference Software (VSRS), the presented synthesis process is driven in consideration of the temporal correlation of image sequences. The temporal correlations will be exploited to produce fine synthesis results even near the foreground boundaries. As for the blending priority, this scheme proposed that one of the two reference views is selected to be the main reference view based on the distance between the reference views and virtual view, another view is chosen as the auxiliary viewpoint, just assist to fill the hole pixel with the help of background information. Significant improvement of the proposed approach over the state-of –the-art pixel-based virtual view synthesis method is presented, the results of the experiments show that subjective gains can be observed, and objective PSNR average gains range from 0.5 to 1.3 dB, while SSIM average gains range from 0.01 to 0.05.

Keywords: View synthesis, Gaussian mixture model, hybrid framework, fusion method.

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Authors: Mehmet Balci, Sakir Tasdemir, Mustafa Altin, Ozlem Bozok

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Our globalizing world has become almost a small village and everyone can access any information at any time. Everyone lets each other know who does whatever in which place. We can learn which social events occur in which place in the world. From the perspective of education, the course notes that a lecturer use in lessons in a university in any state of America can be examined by a student studying in a city of Africa or the Far East. This dizzying communication we have mentioned happened thanks to fast developments in computer and internet technologies. While these developments occur in the world, Turkey that has a very large young population and whose electronic infrastructure rapidly improves has also been affected by these developments. Nowadays, mobile devices have become common and thus, it causes to increase data traffic in social networks. This study was carried out on students in the different age groups in Selcuk University Vocational School of Technical Sciences, the Department of Computer Technology. Students’ opinions about the use of internet and social media were obtained. The features such as using the Internet and social media skills, purposes, operating frequency, accessing facilities and tools, social life and effects on vocational education and so forth were explored. The positive effects and negative effects of both internet and social media use on the students in this department and findings are evaluated from different perspectives and results are obtained. In addition, relations and differences were found out statistically.

Keywords: Computer technologies, internet use, social network, higher vocational school.

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Authors: Houda Najeh, Mahendra Pratap Singh, Stéphane Ploix, Antoine Caucheteux, Karim Chabir, Mohamed Naceur Abdelkrim

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Building system is highly vulnerable to different kinds of faults and human misbehaviors. Energy efficiency and user comfort are directly targeted due to abnormalities in building operation. The available fault diagnosis tools and methodologies particularly rely on rules or pure model-based approaches. It is assumed that model or rule-based test could be applied to any situation without taking into account actual testing contexts. Contextual tests with validity domain could reduce a lot of the design of detection tests. The main objective of this paper is to consider fault validity when validate the test model considering the non-modeled events such as occupancy, weather conditions, door and window openings and the integration of the knowledge of the expert on the state of the system. The concept of heterogeneous tests is combined with test validity to generate fault diagnoses. A combination of rules, range and model-based tests known as heterogeneous tests are proposed to reduce the modeling complexity. Calculation of logical diagnoses coming from artificial intelligence provides a global explanation consistent with the test result. An application example shows the efficiency of the proposed technique: an office setting at Grenoble Institute of Technology.

Keywords: Heterogeneous tests, validity, building system, sensor grids, sensor fault, diagnosis, fault detection and isolation.

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Authors: Josiel Delgadillo, Johnson Kinyua, Charles Mutigwe

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The purpose of sentiment analysis is to determine the sentiment strength (e.g., positive, negative, neutral) from a textual source for good decision-making. Natural Language Processing (NLP) in domains such as financial markets requires knowledge of domain ontology, and pre-trained language models, such as BERT, have made significant breakthroughs in various NLP tasks by training on large-scale un-labeled generic corpora such as Wikipedia. However, sentiment analysis is a strong domain-dependent task. The rapid growth of social media has given users a platform to share their experiences and views about products, services, and processes, including financial markets. StockTwits and Twitter are social networks that allow the public to express their sentiments in real time. Hence, leveraging the success of unsupervised pre-training and a large amount of financial text available on social media platforms could potentially benefit a wide range of financial applications. This work is focused on sentiment analysis using social media text on platforms such as StockTwits and Twitter. To meet this need, SkyBERT, a domain-specific language model pre-trained and fine-tuned on financial corpora, has been developed. The results show that SkyBERT outperforms current state-of-the-art models in financial sentiment analysis. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of SkyBERT.

Keywords: BERT, financial markets, Twitter, sentiment analysis.

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Mobinipouya, Zahra Barzegar

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Accurate and comprehensive thermodynamic properties of pure and mixture of refrigerants are in demand by both producers and users of these materials. Information about thermodynamic properties is important initially to qualify potential candidates for working fluids in refrigeration machinery. From practical point of view, Refrigerants and refrigerant mixtures are widely used as working fluids in many industrial applications, such as refrigerators, heat pumps, and power plants The present work is devoted to evaluating seven cubic equations of state (EOS) in predicting gas and liquid phase volumetric properties of nine ozone-safe refrigerants both in super and sub-critical regions. The evaluations, in sub-critical region, show that TWU and PR EOS are capable of predicting PVT properties of refrigerants R32 within 2%, R22, R134a, R152a and R143a within 1% and R123, R124, R125, TWU and PR EOS's, from literature data are 0.5% for R22, R32, R152a, R143a, and R125, 1% for R123, R134a, and R141b, and 2% for R124. Moreover, SRK EOS predicts PVT properties of R22, R125, and R123 to within aforementioned errors. The remaining EOS's predicts volumetric properties of this class of fluids with higher errors than those above mentioned which are at most 8%.In general, the results are in favor of the preference of TWU and PR EOS over other remaining EOS's in predicting densities of all mentioned refrigerants in both super and sub critical regions. Typically, this refrigerant is known to offer advantages such as ozone depleting potential equal to zero, Global warming potential equal to 140, and no toxic.

Keywords: Refrigerant, cooling systems, Sub-CriticalRegions, volumetric properties, efficiency.

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Authors: A. A. Zaidan, Anas Majeed, B. B. Zaidan

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Nowadays, the rapid development of multimedia and internet allows for wide distribution of digital media data. It becomes much easier to edit, modify and duplicate digital information Besides that, digital documents are also easy to copy and distribute, therefore it will be faced by many threatens. It-s a big security and privacy issue with the large flood of information and the development of the digital format, it become necessary to find appropriate protection because of the significance, accuracy and sensitivity of the information. Nowadays protection system classified with more specific as hiding information, encryption information, and combination between hiding and encryption to increase information security, the strength of the information hiding science is due to the non-existence of standard algorithms to be used in hiding secret messages. Also there is randomness in hiding methods such as combining several media (covers) with different methods to pass a secret message. In addition, there are no formal methods to be followed to discover the hidden data. For this reason, the task of this research becomes difficult. In this paper, a new system of information hiding is presented. The proposed system aim to hidden information (data file) in any execution file (EXE) and to detect the hidden file and we will see implementation of steganography system which embeds information in an execution file. (EXE) files have been investigated. The system tries to find a solution to the size of the cover file and making it undetectable by anti-virus software. The system includes two main functions; first is the hiding of the information in a Portable Executable File (EXE), through the execution of four process (specify the cover file, specify the information file, encryption of the information, and hiding the information) and the second function is the extraction of the hiding information through three process (specify the steno file, extract the information, and decryption of the information). The system has achieved the main goals, such as make the relation of the size of the cover file and the size of information independent and the result file does not make any conflict with anti-virus software.

Keywords: Cryptography, Steganography, Portable ExecutableFile.

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Authors: G. Wagner, R. Herrmann

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Cytotoxic platinum compounds play a major role in the chemotherapy of a large number of human cancers. However, due to the severe side effects for the patient and other problems associated with their use, there is a need for the development of more efficient drugs and new methods for their selective delivery to the tumours. One way to achieve the latter could be in the use of nanoparticular substrates that can adsorb or chemically bind the drug. In the cell, the drug is supposed to be slowly released, either by physical desorption or by dissolution of the particle framework. Ideally, the cytotoxic properties of the platinum drug unfold only then, in the cancer cell and over a longer period of time due to the gradual release. In this paper, we report on our first steps in this direction. The binding properties of a series of cytotoxic Pt(II) oxadiazoline compounds to mesoporous silica particles has been studied by NMR and UV/vis spectroscopy. High loadings were achieved when the Pt(II) compound was relatively polar, and has been dissolved in a relatively nonpolar solvent before the silica was added. Typically, 6-10 hours were required for complete equilibration, suggesting the adsorption did not only occur to the outer surface but also to the interior of the pores. The untreated and Pt(II) loaded particles were characterised by C, H, N combustion analysis, BET/BJH nitrogen sorption, electron microscopy (REM and TEM) and EDX. With the latter methods we were able to demonstrate the homogenous distribution of the Pt(II) compound on and in the silica particles, and no Pt(II) bulk precipitate had formed. The in vitro cytotoxicity in a human cancer cell line (HeLa) has been determined for one of the new platinum compounds adsorbed to mesoporous silica particles of different size, and compared with the corresponding compound in solution. The IC50 data are similar in all cases, suggesting that the release of the Pt(II) compound was relatively fast and possibly occurred before the particles reached the cells. Overall, the platinum drug is chemically stable on silica and retained its activity upon prolonged storage.

Keywords: Cytotoxicity, mesoporous silica, nanoparticles platinum compounds.

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Authors: Dong-Yan Huang, Ee Ping Ong, Susanto Rahardja, Minghui Dong, Haizhou Li

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The transformation of vocal characteristics aims at modifying voice such that the intelligibility of aphonic voice is increased or the voice characteristics of a speaker (source speaker) to be perceived as if another speaker (target speaker) had uttered it. In this paper, the current state-of-the-art voice characteristics transformation methodology is reviewed. Special emphasis is placed on voice transformation methodology and issues for improving the transformed speech quality in intelligibility and naturalness are discussed. In particular, it is suggested to use the modulation theory of speech as a base for research on high quality voice transformation. This approach allows one to separate linguistic, expressive, organic and perspective information of speech, based on an analysis of how they are fused when speech is produced. Therefore, this theory provides the fundamentals not only for manipulating non-linguistic, extra-/paralinguistic and intra-linguistic variables for voice transformation, but also for paving the way for easily transposing the existing voice transformation methods to emotion-related voice quality transformation and speaking style transformation. From the perspectives of human speech production and perception, the popular voice transformation techniques are described and classified them based on the underlying principles either from the speech production or perception mechanisms or from both. In addition, the advantages and limitations of voice transformation techniques and the experimental manipulation of vocal cues are discussed through examples from past and present research. Finally, a conclusion and road map are pointed out for more natural voice transformation algorithms in the future.

Keywords: Voice transformation, Voice Quality, Emotion, Individuality, Speaking Style, Speech Production, Speech Perception.

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Authors: Jehnming Lin

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The effects of the contact ball-lens on the soda lime glass in laser thermal cleavage with a cw Nd-YAG laser were investigated in this study. A contact ball-lens was adopted to generate a bending force on the crack formation of the soda-lime glass in the laser cutting process. The Nd-YAG laser beam (wavelength of 1064 nm) was focused through the ball-lens and transmitted to the soda-lime glass, which was coated with a carbon film on the surface with a bending force from a ball-lens to generate a tensile stress state on the surface cracking. The fracture was controlled by the contact ball-lens and a straight cutting was tested to demonstrate the feasibility. Experimental observations on the crack propagation from the leading edge, main section and trailing edge of the glass sheet were compared with various mechanical and thermal loadings. Further analyses on the stress under various laser powers and contact ball loadings were made to characterize the innovative technology. The results show that the distributions of the side crack at the leading and trailing edges are mainly dependent on the boundary condition, contact force, cutting speed and laser power. With the increase of the mechanical and thermal loadings, the region of the side cracks might be dramatically reduced with proper selection of the geometrical constrains. Therefore the application of the contact ball-lens is a possible way to control the fracture in laser cleavage with improved cutting qualities.

Keywords: Laser cleavage, controlled fracture, contact ball lens.

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Authors: Kazuki Kamada, Haruka Yamashita

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In Japan, taxi is one of the popular transportations and taxi industry is one of the big businesses. However, in recent years, there has been a difficult problem of reducing the number of taxi drivers. In the taxi business, mainly three passenger catching methods are applied. One style is "cruising" that drivers catches passengers while driving on a road. Second is "waiting" that waits passengers near by the places with many requirements for taxies such as entrances of hospitals, train stations. The third one is "dispatching" that is allocated based on the contact from the taxi company. Above all, the cruising taxi drivers need the experience and intuition for finding passengers, and it is difficult to decide "the destination for cruising". The strong recommendation system for the cruising taxies supports the new drivers to find passengers, and it can be the solution for the decreasing the number of drivers in the taxi industry. In this research, we propose a method of recommending a destination for cruising taxi drivers. On the other hand, as a machine learning technique, the embedding models that embed the high dimensional data to a low dimensional space is widely used for the data analysis, in order to represent the relationship of the meaning between the data clearly. Taxi drivers have their favorite courses based on their experiences, and the courses are different for each driver. We assume that the course of cruising taxies has meaning such as the course for finding business man passengers (go around the business area of the city of go to main stations) and course for finding traveler passengers (go around the sightseeing places or big hotels), and extract the meaning of their destinations. We analyze the cruising history data of taxis based on the embedding model and propose the recommendation system for passengers. Finally, we demonstrate the recommendation of destinations for cruising taxi drivers based on the real-world data analysis using proposing method.

Keywords: Taxi industry, decision making, recommendation system, embedding model.

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Authors: C. Gallottini, W. Di Mari, A. Amaddeo, K. Barbaro, A. Dolci, G. Dolci, L. Gallottini, G. Barraco, S. Eramo

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A group of 10 dogs (group A) with Periodontal Disease in the third stage, were subjected to regenerative therapy of periodontal tissues, by use of nano hydroxy apatite (NHA). These animals induced by general anesthesia, where treated by ultrasonic scaling, root planning, and at the end by a mucogingival flap in which it was applied NHA. The flap was closed and sutured with simple steps. Another group of 10 dogs (group B), control group, was treated only by scaling and root planning. No patient was subjected to antibiotic therapy. After three months, a check was made by inspection of the oral cavity, radiography and bone biopsy at the alveolar level. Group A showed a total restitutio ad integrum of the periodontal structures, and in group B still mild gingivitis in 70% of cases and 30% of the state remains unchanged. Numerous experimental studies both in animals and humans have documented that the grafts of porous hydroxyapatite are rapidly invaded by fibrovascular tissue which is subsequently converted into mature lamellar bone tissue by activating osteoblast. Since we acted on the removal of necrotic cementum and rehabilitating the root tissue by polishing without intervention in the ligament but only on anatomical functional interface of cement-blasts, we can connect the positive evolution of the clinical-only component of the cement that could represent this perspective, the only reason that Periodontal Disease become a Cement Disease, while all other clinical elements as nothing more than a clinical pathological accompanying.

Keywords: Nanoidroxiaphatite, Parodontal Disease, Rigenerative Therapy.

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Authors: Amjad Alsulami, Farah Albishri, Kholod Alzubidi, Lama Almehemadi, Salma Elhag

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Food allergy is a common and rising problem among children. Many students have their first allergic reaction at school, one of these is anaphylaxis, which can be fatal. This study discovered that several schools' processes lacked safety regulations and information on how to handle allergy issues and chronic diseases like diabetes where students were not supervised or monitored during the cafeteria purchasing process. Academic institutions have no obvious prevention or effort when purchasing food containing allergens or negatively impacting the health status of students who suffer from chronic diseases. The stability of students' health must be maintained because it greatly affects their performance and educational achievement. To address this issue, this paper uses a business reengineering process to propose the automation of the whole food-purchasing process, which will aid in detecting and avoiding allergic occurrences and preventing any side effects from eating foods that are conflicting with students' health. This may be achieved by designing a smart card with an embedded QR code that reveals which foods cause an allergic reaction in a student. A survey was distributed to determine and examine how the cafeteria will handle allergic children and whether any management or policy is applied in the school. Also, the survey findings indicate that the integration of QR technology into the food purchasing process would improve health condition detection. The family supported that the suggested solution would be advantageous because it ensured their children avoided eating not allowed food. Moreover, by analyzing and simulating the as-is process and the suggested process, the results demonstrate that there is an improvement in quality and time.

Keywords: QR code, smart card, food allergies, Business Process reengineering, health condition detection.

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Authors: Susanta Banerjee, Sanjaya Kumar Patro

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Buildings with floating column are highly undesirable built in seismically active areas. Many urban multi-storey buildings today have floating column buildings which are adopted to accommodate parking at ground floor or reception lobbies in the first storey. The earthquake forces developed at different floor levels in a building need to be brought down along the height to the ground by the shortest path; any deviation or discontinuity in this load transfer path results in poor performance of the building. Floating column buildings are severely damaged during earthquake. Damage on this structure can be reduce by taking the effect of infill wall. This paper presents the effect of stiffness of infill wall to the damage occurred in floating column building when ground shakes. Modelling and analysis are carried out by non linear analysis programme IDARC-2D. Damage occurred in beams, columns, storey are studied by formulating modified Park & Ang model to evaluate damage indices. Overall structural damage indices in buildings due to shaking of ground are also obtained. Dynamic response parameters i.e. lateral floor displacement, storey drift, time period, base shear of buildings are obtained and results are compared with the ordinary moment resisting frame buildings. Formation of cracks, yield, plastic hinge, are also observed during analysis.

Keywords: Floating column, Infill Wall, Park-Ang Damage Index, Damage State.

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Authors: Yehia A. Eldrainy, Mohammad Nazri Mohd. Jaafar, Tholudin Mat Lazim

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This paper presents a cold flow simulation study of a small gas turbine combustor performed using laboratory scale test rig. The main objective of this investigation is to obtain physical insight of the main vortex, responsible for the efficient mixing of fuel and air. Such models are necessary for predictions and optimization of real gas turbine combustors. Air swirler can control the combustor performance by assisting in the fuel-air mixing process and by producing recirculation region which can act as flame holders and influences residence time. Thus, proper selection of a swirler is needed to enhance combustor performance and to reduce NOx emissions. Three different axial air swirlers were used based on their vane angles i.e., 30°, 45°, and 60°. Three-dimensional, viscous, turbulent, isothermal flow characteristics of the combustor model operating at room temperature were simulated via Reynolds- Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) code. The model geometry has been created using solid model, and the meshing has been done using GAMBIT preprocessing package. Finally, the solution and analysis were carried out in a FLUENT solver. This serves to demonstrate the capability of the code for design and analysis of real combustor. The effects of swirlers and mass flow rate were examined. Details of the complex flow structure such as vortices and recirculation zones were obtained by the simulation model. The computational model predicts a major recirculation zone in the central region immediately downstream of the fuel nozzle and a second recirculation zone in the upstream corner of the combustion chamber. It is also shown that swirler angles changes have significant effects on the combustor flowfield as well as pressure losses.

Keywords: cold flow, numerical simulation, combustor;turbulence, axial swirler.

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Authors: Pegah Farshadmanesh, Jamshid Mohammadi, Mehdi Modares

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In nearly all earthquakes of the past century that resulted in moderate to significant damage, the occurrence of postearthquake fire ignition (PEFI) has imposed a serious hazard and caused severe damage, especially in urban areas. In order to reduce the loss of life and property caused by post-earthquake fires, there is a crucial need for predictive models to estimate the PEFI risk. The parameters affecting PEFI risk can be categorized as: 1) factors influencing fire ignition in normal (non-earthquake) condition, including floor area, building category, ignitability, type of appliance, and prevention devices, and 2) earthquake related factors contributing to the PEFI risk, including building vulnerability and earthquake characteristics such as intensity, peak ground acceleration, and peak ground velocity. State-of-the-art statistical PEFI risk models are solely based on limited available earthquake data, and therefore they cannot predict the PEFI risk for areas with insufficient earthquake records since such records are needed in estimating the PEFI model parameters. In this paper, the correlation between normal condition ignition risk, peak ground acceleration, and PEFI risk is examined in an effort to offer a means for predicting post-earthquake ignition events. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate how such correlation can be employed in a seismic area to predict PEFI hazard.

Keywords: Fire risk, post-earthquake fire ignition (PEFI), risk management, seismicity.

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Authors: Angelina A. Tzacheva, Jaishree Ranganathan

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Interest in (STEM) Science Technology Engineering Mathematics education especially Computer Science education has seen a drastic increase across the country. This fuels effort towards recruiting and admitting a diverse population of students. Thus the changing conditions in terms of the student population, diversity and the expected teaching and learning outcomes give the platform for use of Innovative Teaching models and technologies. It is necessary that these methods adapted should also concentrate on raising quality of such innovations and have positive impact on student learning. Light-Weight Team is an Active Learning Pedagogy, which is considered to be low-stake activity and has very little or no direct impact on student grades. Emotion plays a major role in student’s motivation to learning. In this work we use the student feedback data with emotion classification using surveys at a public research institution in the United States. We use Actionable Pattern Discovery method for this purpose. Actionable patterns are patterns that provide suggestions in the form of rules to help the user achieve better outcomes. The proposed method provides meaningful insight in terms of changes that can be incorporated in the Light-Weight team activities, resources utilized in the course. The results suggest how to enhance student emotions to a more positive state, in particular focuses on the emotions ‘Trust’ and ‘Joy’.

Keywords: Actionable pattern discovery, education, emotion, data mining.

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Authors: Timothy Akinwande, Eddie C. M. Hui

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Housing the urban poor has remained a challenge for many years across the world, especially in developing economies, despite the apparent research attention and policy interventions. It is apt to investigate the prevalent affordable housing (AH) provision challenges using unconventional approaches. It is pragmatic to thoroughly examine housing experts to provide supply-side solutions to AH challenges and investigate informal settlers to deduce solutions from AH demand viewpoints. This study, being the supply-side investigation of an ongoing research, interrogated housing experts to determine significant expert solutions. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with housing experts in Nigeria. Through descriptive, content, and systematic thematic analyses of data, major findings are that deliberate finance models designed for the urban poor are the most significant housing finance solution in developing economies. Other findings are that adequately implemented rent control policies, deliberate Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approaches like inclusionary housing and land-value capture, and urban renewal programs to enlighten and tutor the urban poor on how to earn more, spend wisely, and invest in their own better housing will effectively solve AH finance challenges. Study findings are informative for the best approaches to achieve effective, AH finance for the urban poor in Nigeria, which is indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development goals. This research’s originality lies in the exploration of experts’ opinions in relation to AH finance to produce an equation model of critical solutions to AH finance challenges. Study data are useful resources for future pro-poor housing studies. This study makes housing policy-oriented recommendations toward effective, AH for the urban poor in developing countries.

Keywords: Affordable housing, effective affordable housing, housing policy, housing research, sustainable development, urban poor.

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Authors: Nadheer A. Shalash, Abu Zaharin Bin Ahmad

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Technological developments in industrial innovations have currently been related to interconnected system assistance and distribution networks. This important in order to enable an electrical load to continue receive power in the event of disconnection of load from the main power grid. This paper represents a method for reliability assessment of interconnected power systems based. The multi-agent system consists of four agents. The first agent was the generator agent to using as connected the generator to the grid depending on the state of the reserve margin and the load demand. The second was a load agent is that located at the load. Meanwhile, the third is so-called "the reverse margin agent" that to limit the reserve margin between 0 - 25% depend on the load and the unit size generator. In the end, calculation reliability Agent can be calculate expected energy not supplied (EENS), loss of load expectation (LOLE) and the effecting of tie line capacity to determine the risk levels Roy Billinton Test System (RBTS) can use to evaluated the reliability indices by using the developed JADE package. The results estimated of the reliability interconnection power systems presented in this paper. The overall reliability of power system can be improved. Thus, the market becomes more concentrated against demand increasing and the generation units were operating in relation to reliability indices. 

Keywords: Reliability indices, Load expectation, Reserve margin, Daily load, Probability, Multi-agent system.

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Authors: Saliha Gachi, Mouloud Aissani, Fouad Boubenider

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Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a solid-state welding technique that can join material without melting the plates to be welded. In this work, we are interested to demonstrate the potentiality of FSW for joining the heat-treatable aluminum alloy 2024-T3 which is reputed as difficult to be welded by fusion techniques. Thereafter, the FSW joint is compared with another one obtained from a conventional fusion process Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG). FSW welds are made up using an FSW tool mounted on a milling machine. Single pass welding was applied to fabricated TIG joint. The comparison between the two processes has been made on the temperature evolution, mechanical and microstructure behavior. The microstructural examination revealed that FSW weld is composed of four zones: Base metal (BM), Heat affected zone (HAZ), Thermo-mechanical affected zone (THAZ) and the nugget zone (NZ). The NZ exhibits a recrystallized equiaxed refined grains that induce better mechanical properties and good ductility compared to TIG joint where the grains have a larger size in the welded region compared with the BM due to the elevated heat input. The microhardness results show that, in FSW weld, the THAZ contains the lowest microhardness values and increase in the NZ; however, in TIG process, the lowest values are localized on the NZ.

Keywords: Friction stir welding, tungsten inert gaz, aluminum, microstructure.

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Authors: Manop Aorpimai, Ponthep Navakitkanok

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In this paper, the development of the ephemeris generation module used for the Thaichote satellite operations is presented. It is a vital part of the flight dynamics system, which comprises, the orbit determination, orbit propagation, event prediction and station-keeping maneouvre modules. In the generation of the spacecraft ephemeris data, the estimated orbital state vector from the orbit determination module is used as an initial condition. The equations of motion are then integrated forward in time to predict the satellite states. The higher geopotential harmonics, as well as other disturbing forces, are taken into account to resemble the environment in low-earth orbit. Using a highly accurate numerical integrator based on the Burlish-Stoer algorithm the ephemeris data can be generated for long-term predictions, by using a relatively small computation burden and short calculation time. Some events occurring during the prediction course that are related to the mission operations, such as the satellite’s rise/set viewed from the ground station, Earth and Moon eclipses, the drift in groundtrack as well as the drift in the local solar time of the orbital plane are all detected and reported. When combined with other modules to form a flight dynamics system, this application is aimed to be applied for the Thaichote satellite and successive Thailand’s Earth-observation missions. 

Keywords: Flight Dynamics System, Orbit Propagation, Satellite Ephemeris, Thailand’s Earth Observation Satellite.

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Authors: O. I. H. Dimitry, N. A. Mansour, A. L. G. Saad

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Natural sodium montmorillonite (NaMMT), Cloisite Na⁺ and two organophilic montmorillonites (OMMTs), Cloisites 20A and 15A were used. Polycaprolactone (PCL)/MMT composites containing 1, 3, 5, and 10 wt% of Cloisite Na⁺ and PCL/OMMT nanocomposites containing 5 and 10 wt% of Cloisites 20A and 15A were prepared via solution intercalation technique to study the influence of organic modifier loading on particle dispersion of PCL/ NaMMT composites. Thermal stabilities of the obtained composites were characterized by thermal analysis using the thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) which showed that in the presence of nitrogen flow the incorporation of 5 and 10 wt% of filler brings some decrease in PCL thermal stability in the sequence: Cloisite Na+>Cloisite 15A > Cloisite 20A, while in the presence of air flow these fillers scarcely influenced the thermoxidative stability of PCL by slightly accelerating the process. The interaction between PCL and silicate layers was studied by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy which confirmed moderate interactions between nanometric silicate layers and PCL segments. The electrical conductivity (σ) which describes the ionic mobility of the systems was studied as a function of temperature and showed that σ of PCL was enhanced on increasing the modifier loading at filler content of 5 wt%, especially at higher temperatures in the sequence: Cloisite Na⁺<Cloisite 20A<Cloisite 15A, and was then decreased to some extent with a further increase to 10 wt%. The activation energy E_σ obtained from the dependency of σ on temperature using Arrhenius equation was found to be lowest for the nanocomposite containing 5 wt% of Cloisite 15A. The dispersed behavior of clay in PCL matrix was evaluated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses which revealed partial intercalated structures in PCL/NaMMT composites and semi-intercalated/semi-exfoliated structures in PCL/OMMT nanocomposites containing 5 wt% of Cloisite 20A or Cloisite 15A.

Keywords: Polycaprolactone, organoclay, nanocomposite, montmorillonite, electrical conductivity, activation energy, exfoliation, intercalation.

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Authors: Yousef Swesi, Asia Elmeshergi, Abdelati Elalem, Walid Alfoghy

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This paper involves a study of the heavy metal pollution of the soils around one of cement plants in Libya called Suk-Alkhameas and surrounding urban areas caused by cement kiln dust (CKD) emitted. Samples of soil was collected from sites at four directions around the cement factory at distances 250m, 1000m, and 3000m from the factory and at (0-10)cm deep in the soil. These samples are analyzed for Fe (iii), Zn(ii), and Pb (ii) as major pollutants. These values are compared with soils at 25 Km distances from the factory as a reference or control samples. The results show that the concentration of Fe ions in the surface soil was within the acceptable range of 1000ppm. However, for Zn and Pb ions the concentrations at the east and north sides of the factory were found six fold higher than the benchmark level. This high value was attributed to the wind which blows usually from south to north and from west to east. This work includes an investigation of the adsorption isotherms and adsorption efficiency of CKD as adsorbent of heavy metal ions (Fe (iii), Zn(ii), and Pb(ii)) from the polluted soils of Suk-Alkameas city. The investigation was conducted in batch and fixed bed column flow technique. The adsorption efficiency of the studied heavy metals ions removals onto CKD depends on the pH of the solution. The optimum pH values are found to be in the ranges of 8-10 and decreases at lower pH values. The removal efficiency of these heavy metals ions ranged from 93% for Pb, 94% for Zn, and 98% for Fe ions for 10 g.l^-1 adsorbent concentration. The maximum removal efficiency of these ions was achieved at 50-60 minutes contact times at which equilibrium is reached. Fixed bed column experimental measurements are also made to evaluate CKD as an adsorbent for the heavy metals. Results obtained are with good agreement with Langmuir and Drachsal assumption of multilayer formation on the adsorbent surface.

Keywords: Adsorption, Cement Kiln dust (CKD & CAC), Isotherms, Zn and Pb ions.

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