Search results for: Stability analysis

Authors: Abdolghani Ebrahimi, Diego Klabjan, Chenxi Ge, Daniela Ladner, Parker Stride

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In this work, we use machine learning and data analysis techniques to predict the one-year mortality of cirrhotic patients. Data from 2,322 patients with liver cirrhosis are collected at a single medical center. Different machine learning models are applied to predict one-year mortality. A comprehensive feature space including demographic information, comorbidity, clinical procedure and laboratory tests is being analyzed. A temporal pattern mining technic called Frequent Subgraph Mining (FSM) is being used. Model for End-stage liver disease (MELD) prediction of mortality is used as a comparator. All of our models statistically significantly outperform the MELD-score model and show an average 10% improvement of the area under the curve (AUC). The FSM technic itself does not improve the model significantly, but FSM, together with a machine learning technique called an ensemble, further improves the model performance. With the abundance of data available in healthcare through electronic health records (EHR), existing predictive models can be refined to identify and treat patients at risk for higher mortality. However, due to the sparsity of the temporal information needed by FSM, the FSM model does not yield significant improvements. Our work applies modern machine learning algorithms and data analysis methods on predicting one-year mortality of cirrhotic patients and builds a model that predicts one-year mortality significantly more accurate than the MELD score. We have also tested the potential of FSM and provided a new perspective of the importance of clinical features.

Keywords: machine learning, liver cirrhosis, subgraph mining, supervised learning

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Authors: Satyanadh Gundimada, Vijayan K Asari

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A novel feature selection strategy to improve the recognition accuracy on the faces that are affected due to nonuniform illumination, partial occlusions and varying expressions is proposed in this paper. This technique is applicable especially in scenarios where the possibility of obtaining a reliable intra-class probability distribution is minimal due to fewer numbers of training samples. Phase congruency features in an image are defined as the points where the Fourier components of that image are maximally inphase. These features are invariant to brightness and contrast of the image under consideration. This property allows to achieve the goal of lighting invariant face recognition. Phase congruency maps of the training samples are generated and a novel modular feature selection strategy is implemented. Smaller sub regions from a predefined neighborhood within the phase congruency images of the training samples are merged to obtain a large set of features. These features are arranged in the order of increasing distance between the sub regions involved in merging. The assumption behind the proposed implementation of the region merging and arrangement strategy is that, local dependencies among the pixels are more important than global dependencies. The obtained feature sets are then arranged in the decreasing order of discriminating capability using a criterion function, which is the ratio of the between class variance to the within class variance of the sample set, in the PCA domain. The results indicate high improvement in the classification performance compared to baseline algorithms.

Keywords: Discriminant analysis, intra-class probability distribution, principal component analysis, phase congruency.

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Authors: Mustafa M. Donma, Orkide Donma

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Indices derived from anthropometric measurements [waist-to-hip ratio (WHR)] or body fat mass compositions [trunk-to-leg fat ratio (TLFR)] are used for the evaluation of obesity. The best for clinical practices is still being investigated. The aim of this study is to derive an index, which best suits the purpose for the discrimination of children with normal body mass index (N-BMI) from obese (OB) children. 83 children participated in the study. Groups 1 and 2 comprised 42 children with N-BMI and 41 OB children, whose age- and sex-adjusted BMI percentile values vary between 15-85 and 95-99, respectively. The institutional ethics committee approved the study protocol. Informed consent forms were filled by the parents of the participants. Anthropometric measurements (weight, height (Ht), waist circumference (WC), hip circumference (HC), neck circumference (NC) values) were taken. BMI, WHR, (WC+HC)/2, WC/Ht, (WC/HC)/Ht, WC*NC were calculated. Bioelectrical impedance analysis was performed to obtain body’s fat compartments in terms of total fat, trunk fat, leg fat, arm fat masses. TLFR, trunk-to-appendicular fat ratio (TAFR), (trunk fat+leg fat)/2 ((TF+LF)/2), fat mass index (FMI) and diagnostic obesity notation model assessment-II (D2I) index values were calculated. Statistical analysis was performed. Significantly higher values of (WC+HC)/2, (TF+LF)/2, D2I and FMI were observed in OB group than N-BMI group. Significant correlations were found between BMI and WC, (WC+HC)/2, (TF+LF)/2, TLFR, TAFR, D2I, FMI in both groups. Similar correlations were obtained for WC. (WC+HC)/2 was correlated with TLFR, TAFR, (TF+LF)/2, D2I and FMI in N-BMI group. In OB group, the correlations were the same except those with TLFR and TAFR. These correlations were not present with WHR. Correlations were observed between TLFR as well as TAFR and BMI, WC, (WC+HC)/2, (TF+LF)/2, D2I, FMI in N-BMI group. In OB group, correlations between TLFR or TAFR and BMI, WC as well as (WC+HC)/2 were missing. None was noted with WHR. In conclusion, the only correlation valid in both groups was that exists between (TF+LF)/2 and (WC+HC)/2, which was suggested as a link between fat-based and anthropometric indices. (WC+HC)/2, but not WHR, was much more suitable as an anthropometric obesity index.

Keywords: Children, hip circumference, obesity, waist circumference.

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Authors: Masoud Mahdavi, Mojtaba Farzaneh Moghadam

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The seismic forces caused by the waves created in the depths of the earth during the earthquake hit the structure and cause the building to vibrate. Creating large seismic forces will cause low-strength sections in the structure to suffer extensive surface damage. The use of new steel shear walls in steel structures has caused the strength of the building and its main members (columns) to increase due to the reduction and depreciation of seismic forces during earthquakes. In the present study, an attempt was made to evaluate a type of steel shear wall that has regular holes in the inner sheet by modeling the finite element model with Abacus software. The shear wall of the steel plate, measuring 6000 × 3000 mm (one floor) and 3 mm thickness, was modeled with four different pores with a cross-sectional area. The shear wall was dynamically subjected to a time history of 5 seconds by three accelerators, El Centro, Imperial Valley and Kobe. The results showed that increasing the distance between the geometric center of the hole and the geometric center of the inner plate in the steel shear wall (increasing the R_CS index) caused the total maximum acceleration to be transferred from the perimeter of the hole to horizontal and vertical beams. The results also show that there is no direct relationship between R_CS index and total acceleration in steel shear wall and R_CS index is separate from the peak ground acceleration value of earthquake.

Keywords: Hollow Steel plate shear wall, time history analysis, finite element method, Abaqus Software.

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Authors: Meriem Bahij, Ahmed Nafidi, Boujemâa Achchab, Sílvio M. A. Gama, José A. O. Matos

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Stochastic modeling concerns the use of probability to model real-world situations in which uncertainty is present. Therefore, the purpose of stochastic modeling is to estimate the probability of outcomes within a forecast, i.e. to be able to predict what conditions or decisions might happen under different situations. In the present study, we present a model of a stochastic diffusion process based on the bi-Weibull distribution function (its trend is proportional to the bi-Weibull probability density function). In general, the Weibull distribution has the ability to assume the characteristics of many different types of distributions. This has made it very popular among engineers and quality practitioners, who have considered it the most commonly used distribution for studying problems such as modeling reliability data, accelerated life testing, and maintainability modeling and analysis. In this work, we start by obtaining the probabilistic characteristics of this model, as the explicit expression of the process, its trends, and its distribution by transforming the diffusion process in a Wiener process as shown in the Ricciaardi theorem. Then, we develop the statistical inference of this model using the maximum likelihood methodology. Finally, we analyse with simulated data the computational problems associated with the parameters, an issue of great importance in its application to real data with the use of the convergence analysis methods. Overall, the use of a stochastic model reflects only a pragmatic decision on the part of the modeler. According to the data that is available and the universe of models known to the modeler, this model represents the best currently available description of the phenomenon under consideration.

Keywords: Diffusion process, discrete sampling, likelihood estimation method, simulation, stochastic diffusion equation, trends functions, bi-parameters Weibull density function.

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Authors: Manoj Sarda, Abhishek Agarwal, Juhi Kaushik, Vatsal Sanjay, Arup Kumar Das

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Railways in India remain primary mode of transport having one of the largest networks in the world and catering to billions of transits yearly. Catastrophic economic damage and loss to life is encountered over the past few decades due to fire to locomotives. Study of fire dynamics and fire propagation plays an important role in evacuation planning and reducing losses. Simulation based study of propagation of fire and soot inside an air conditioned coach of Indian locomotive is done in this paper. Finite difference based solver, Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS) version 6 has been used for analysis. A single air conditioned 3 tier coupe closed to ambient surroundings by glass windows having occupancy for 8 people is the basic unit of the domain. A system of three such coupes combined is taken to be fundamental unit for the entire study to resemble effect to an entire coach. Analysis of flame and soot contours and concentrations is done corresponding to variations in heat release rate per unit volume (HRRPUA) of fire source, variations in conditioned air velocity being circulated inside coupes by vents and an alternate fire initiation and propagation mechanism via ducts. Quantitative results of fractional area in top and front view of the three coupes under fire and smoke are obtained using MATLAB (IMT). Present simulations and its findings will be useful for organizations like Commission of Railway Safety and others in designing and implementing safety and evacuation measures.

Keywords: Air-conditioned coaches, fire propagation, flame contour, soot flow, train fire.

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Authors: Tai Yuan Yu, Pei-Jen Wang

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Oil-free turbomachinery is considered one of the critical technologies for future green power generation systems as rotor machinery systems. Oil-free technology allows clean, compact, and maintenance-free working, and gas foil bearings (GFBs) are important for the technology. Since the first applications in the auxiliary power units and air cycle machines in the 1970s, obvious improvement has been created to the computational models for dynamic rotor behavior. However, many technical issues are still poorly understood or remain unsolved, and some of those are thermal management and the pattern of how pressure will be distributed in bearing clearance. This paper presents a three-dimensional (3D) fluid-structure interaction model of single pad foil bearings and three pad foil bearings to predict bearing working behavior that researchers could compare characteristics of those. The coupling analysis model involves dynamic working characteristics applied to all the gas film and mechanical structures. Therefore, the elastic deformation of foil structure and the hydrodynamic pressure of gas film can both be calculated by a finite element method program. As a result, the temperature distribution pattern could also be iteratively solved by coupling analysis. In conclusion, the working fluid state in a gas film of various pad forms of bearings working characteristic at constant rotational speed for both can be solved for comparisons with the experimental results.

Keywords: Fluid structure interaction multi-physics simulations, gas foil bearing, oil-free, transient thermohydrodynamic.

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Authors: Ashwini V. Chavan, Sukhanand S. Bhosale

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Challenges of weak soil subgrade are often resolved either by stabilization or reinforcing it. However, it is also practiced to reinforce the granular fill to improve the load-settlement behavior of it over weak soil strata. The inclusion of reinforcement in the engineered granular fill provided a new impetus for the development of enhanced Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) models, also known as mechanical foundation models or lumped parameter models. Several researchers have been working in this direction to understand the mechanism of granular fill-reinforcement interaction and the response of weak soil under the application of load. These models have been developed by extending available SSI models such as the Winkler Model, Pasternak Model, Hetenyi Model, Kerr Model etc., and are helpful to visualize the load-settlement behavior of a physical system through 1-D and 2-D analysis considering beam and plate resting on the foundation, respectively. Based on the literature survey, these models are categorized as ‘Reinforced Pasternak Model,’ ‘Double Beam Model,’ ‘Reinforced Timoshenko Beam Model,’ and ‘Reinforced Kerr Model’. The present work reviews the past 30+ years of research in the field of SSI models for reinforced foundation systems, presenting the conceptual development of these models systematically and discussing their limitations. A flow-chart showing procedure for compution of deformation and mobilized tension is also incorporated in the paper. Special efforts are taken to tabulate the parameters and their significance in the load-settlement analysis, which may be helpful in future studies for the comparison and enhancement of results and findings of physical models. 

Keywords: geosynthetics, mathematical modeling, reinforced foundation, soil-structure interaction, ground improvement, soft soil

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Authors: Shrikant Charhate, Gayatri Deshpande

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Permeable pavements have significant benefits like managing runoff, infiltration, and carrying traffic over conventional pavements in terms of sustainability and environmental impact. Some of the countries are using this technique, especially at locations where durability and other parameters are of importance in nature; however, sparse work has been done on this concept. In India, this is yet to be adopted. In this work, the progress in the characterization and development of Permeable Articulated Concrete Blocks (PACB) pavement design is described and discussed with reference to Indian conditions. The experimentation and in-depth analysis was carried out considering conditions like soil erosion, water logging, and dust which are significant challenges caused due to impermeability of pavement. Concrete blocks with size 16.5’’x 6.5’’x 7’’ consisting of arch shape (4’’) at beneath and ½” PVC holes for articulation were casted. These blocks were tested for flexural strength. The articulation process was done with nylon ropes forming series of concrete block system. The total spacing between the blocks was kept about 8 to 10% of total area. The hydraulic testing was carried out by placing the articulated blocks with the combination of layers of soil, geotextile, clean angular aggregate. This was done to see the percentage of seepage through the entire system. The experimental results showed that with the shape of concrete block the flexural strength achieved was beyond the permissible limit. Such blocks with the combination could be very useful innovation in Indian conditions and useful at various locations compared to the traditional blocks as an alternative for long term sustainability.

Keywords: Connections, geotextile, permeable ACB, pavements, stone base.

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Authors: Hema Nair

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This paper presents a new system developed in Java® for pattern recognition and pattern summarisation in multi-band (RGB) satellite images. The system design is described in some detail. Results of testing the system to analyse and summarise patterns in SPOT MS images and LANDSAT images are also discussed.

Keywords: Pattern recognition, image analysis, feature extraction, blackboard component, linguistic summary.

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Authors: Chao Yi, Cunyue Lu, Lingwei Quan

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Piezoelectric linear motors have the characteristics of great electromagnetic compatibility, high positioning accuracy, compact structure and no deceleration mechanism, which make it promising to applicate in micro-miniature precision drive systems. However, most piezoelectric motors are employed by flexible clamping, which has insufficient rigidity and is difficult to use in rapid positioning. Another problem is that this clamping method seriously affects the vibration efficiency of the vibrating unit. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposes a piezoelectric stack linear motor based on double-end rigid clamping. First, a piezoelectric linear motor with a length of only 35.5 mm is designed. This motor is mainly composed of a motor stator, a driving foot, a ceramic friction strip, a linear guide, a pre-tightening mechanism and a base. This structure is much simpler and smaller than most similar motors, and it is easy to assemble as well as to realize precise control. In addition, the properties of piezoelectric stack are reviewed and in order to obtain the elliptic motion trajectory of the driving head, a driving scheme of the longitudinal-shear composite stack is innovatively proposed. Finally, impedance analysis and speed performance testing were performed on the piezoelectric linear motor prototype. The motor can measure speed up to 25.5 mm/s under the excitation of signal voltage of 120 V and frequency of 390 Hz. The result shows that the proposed piezoelectric stacked linear motor obtains great performance. It can run smoothly in a large speed range, which is suitable for various precision control in medical images, aerospace, precision machinery and many other fields.

Keywords: Elliptical trajectory, linear motor, piezoelectric stack, rigid clamping.

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Authors: Ali E. Abbas

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Industrial Engineering is a broad multidisciplinary field with intersections and applications in numerous areas. When designing a product, it is important to determine the appropriate attributes of value and the preference function for which the product is optimized. This paper provides some guidelines on appropriate selection of attributes for preference and value functions for engineering design.

Keywords: Decision analysis, engineering design, direct vs. indirect values.

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

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

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

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Authors: Ahmad Ali Shahid, Muhammad Shakil Shaukat, Kamran Shehzad Bajwa, Abdul Qayyum Rao, Tayyab Husnain

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Agriculture is the backbone of economy of Pakistan and cotton is the major agricultural export and supreme source of raw fiber for our textile industry. To combat severe problems of insect and weed, combination of three genes namely Cry1Ac, Cry2A and EPSPS genes was transferred in locally cultivated cotton variety MNH-786 with the use of Agrobacterium mediated genetic transformation. The present study focused on the molecular screening of transgenic cotton plants at T3 generation in order to confirm integration and expression of all three genes (Cry1Ac, Cry2A and EPSP synthase) into the cotton genome. Initially, glyphosate spray assay was used for screening of transgenic cotton plants containing EPSP synthase gene at T3 generation. Transgenic cotton plants which were healthy and showed no damage on leaves were selected after 07 days of spray. For molecular analysis of transgenic cotton plants in the laboratory, the genomic DNA of these transgenic cotton plants were isolated and subjected to amplification of the three genes. Thus, seventeen out of twenty (Cry1Ac gene), ten out of twenty (Cry2A gene) and all twenty (EPSP synthase gene) were produced positive amplification. On the base of PCR amplification, ten transgenic plant samples were subjected to protein expression analysis through ELISA. The results showed that eight out of ten plants were actively expressing the three transgenes. Real-time PCR was also done to quantify the mRNA expression levels of Cry1Ac and EPSP synthase gene. Finally, eight plants were confirmed for the presence and active expression of all three genes at T3 generation.

Keywords: Agriculture, Cotton, Transformation, Cry Genes, ELISA and PCR.

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

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

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

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Authors: Vedansh Gupta, Allyson Lutz, Ameen Razavi, Fatemeh Shirazi

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The agriculture industry is especially vulnerable to forecasted water shortages. In the fresh and fresh-cut produce sector, conventional flume-based washing with recirculation exhibits high water demand. This leads to a large water footprint and possible cross-contamination of pathogens. These can be alleviated through advanced water reuse processes, such as membrane technologies including reverse osmosis (RO). Water reuse technologies effectively remove dissolved constituents but can easily foul without pre-treatment. Biological treatment is effective for the removal of organic compounds responsible for fouling, but not at the low temperatures encountered at most produce processing facilities. This study showed that the Microvi MicroNiche Engineering (MNE) technology effectively removes organic compounds (> 80%) at low temperatures (6-8 °C) from wash water. The MNE technology uses synthetic microorganism-material composites with negligible solids production, making it advantageously situated as an effective bio-pretreatment for RO. A preliminary technoeconomic analysis showed 60-80% savings in operation and maintenance costs (OPEX) when using the Microvi MNE technology for organics removal. This study and the accompanying economic analysis indicated that the proposed technology process will substantially reduce the cost barrier for adopting water reuse practices, thereby contributing to increased food safety and furthering sustainable water reuse processes across the agricultural industry.

Keywords: Biological pre-treatment, innovative technology, vegetable processing, water reuse, agriculture, reverse osmosis, MNE biocatalysts.

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Authors: Anca-Diana Bibiri, Mihaela Mocanu, Adrian Turculeț

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In a language the inventory of greetings is dynamic with frequent input and output, although this is hardly noticed by the speakers. In this register, there are a number of constant, conservative elements that survive different language models (among them, the classic formulae: bună ziua! (good afternoon!), bună seara! (good evening!), noapte bună! (good night!), la revedere! (goodbye!) and a number of items that fail to pass the test of time, according to language use at a time (ciao!, pa!, bai!). The source of innovation depends both of internal factors (contraction, conversion, combination of classic formulae of greetings), and of external ones (borrowings and calques). Their use imposes their frequencies at once, namely the elimination of the use of others. This paper presents a sociolinguistic approach of contemporary Romanian greetings, based on prosodic surveys in two research projects: AMPRom, and SoRoEs. Romanian language presents a rich inventory of questions (especially partial interrogatives questions/WH-Q) which are used as greetings, alone or, more commonly accompanying a proper greeting. The representative of the typical formulae is Ce mai faci? (How are you?), which, unlike its English counterpart How do you do?, has not become a stereotype, but retains an obvious emotional impact, while serving as a mark of sociolinguistic group. The analyzed corpus consists of structures containing greetings recorded in the main Romanian cultural (urban) centers. From the methodological point of view, the acoustic analysis of the recorded data is performed using software tools (GoldWave, Praat), identifying intonation patterns related to three sociolinguistics variables: age, sex and level of education. The intonation patterns of the analyzed statements are at the interface between partial questions and typical greetings.

Keywords: acoustic analysis, greetings, Romanian language, sociolinguistics

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Authors: Sundararajan Sangeetha, Joseph Jesu Christopher, Swaminathan Ramakrishnan

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In this work, the primary compressive strength components of human femur trabecular bone are qualitatively assessed using image processing and wavelet analysis. The Primary Compressive (PC) component in planar radiographic femur trabecular images (N=50) is delineated by semi-automatic image processing procedure. Auto threshold binarization algorithm is employed to recognize the presence of mineralization in the digitized images. The qualitative parameters such as apparent mineralization and total area associated with the PC region are derived for normal and abnormal images.The two-dimensional discrete wavelet transforms are utilized to obtain appropriate features that quantify texture changes in medical images .The normal and abnormal samples of the human femur are comprehensively analyzed using Harr wavelet.The six statistical parameters such as mean, median, mode, standard deviation, mean absolute deviation and median absolute deviation are derived at level 4 decomposition for both approximation and horizontal wavelet coefficients. The correlation coefficient of various wavelet derived parameters with normal and abnormal for both approximated and horizontal coefficients are estimated. It is seen that in almost all cases the abnormal show higher degree of correlation than normals. Further the parameters derived from approximation coefficient show more correlation than those derived from the horizontal coefficients. The parameters mean and median computed at the output of level 4 Harr wavelet channel was found to be a useful predictor to delineate the normal and the abnormal groups.

Keywords: Image processing, planar radiographs, trabecular bone and wavelet analysis.

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Authors: C. Xavier Mendieta, J. J McArthur

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Governments are playing an increasingly active role in reducing carbon emissions, and a key strategy has been the introduction of mandatory energy disclosure policies. These policies have resulted in a significant amount of publicly available data, providing researchers with a unique opportunity to develop location-specific energy and carbon emission benchmarks from this data set, which can then be used to develop building archetypes and used to inform urban energy models. This study presents the development of such a benchmark using the public reporting data. The data from Ontario’s Ministry of Energy for Post-Secondary Educational Institutions are being used to develop a series of building archetype dynamic building loads and energy benchmarks to fill a gap in the currently available building database. This paper presents the development of a benchmark for college and university residences within ASHRAE climate zone 6 areas in Ontario using the mandatory disclosure energy and greenhouse gas emissions data. The methodology presented includes data cleaning, statistical analysis, and benchmark development, and lessons learned from this investigation are presented and discussed to inform the development of future energy benchmarks from this larger data set. The key findings from this initial benchmarking study are: (1) the importance of careful data screening and outlier identification to develop a valid dataset; (2) the key features used to develop a model of the data are building age, size, and occupancy schedules and these can be used to estimate energy consumption; and (3) policy changes affecting the primary energy generation significantly affected greenhouse gas emissions, and consideration of these factors was critical to evaluate the validity of the reported data.

Keywords: Building archetypes, data analysis, energy benchmarks, GHG emissions.

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Authors: M. Feliciano, F. Maia, A. Gonçalves

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Olive oil production sector plays an important role in Portuguese economy. It had a major growth over the last decade, increasing its weight in the overall national exports. International market penetration for Mediterranean traditional products is increasingly more demanding, especially in the Northern European markets, where consumers are looking for more sustainable products. Trying to support this growing demand this study addresses olive oil production under the environmental and eco-efficiency perspectives. The analysis considers two consecutive product life cycle stages: olive trees farming; and olive oil extraction in mills. Addressing olive farming, data collection covered two different organizations: a middle-size farm (~12ha) (F1) and a large-size farm (~100ha) (F2). Results from both farms show that olive collection activities are responsible for the largest amounts of Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. In this activities, estimate for the Carbon Footprint per olive was higher in F2 (188g CO₂e/kg_olive) than in F1 (148g CO₂e/kg_olive). Considering olive oil extraction, two different mills were considered: one using a two-phase system (2P) and other with a three-phase system (3P). Results from the study of two mills show that there is a much higher use of water in 3P. Energy intensity (EI) is similar in both mills. When evaluating the GHG generated, two conditions are evaluated: a biomass neutral condition resulting on a carbon footprint higher in 3P (184g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}) than in 2P (92g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}); and a non-neutral biomass condition in which 2P increase its carbon footprint to 273g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}. When addressing the carbon footprint of possible combinations among studied subsystems, results suggest that olive harvesting is the major source for GHG.

Keywords: Carbon footprint, environmental indicators, farming subsystem, industrial subsystem, olive oil.

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Authors: Y. Haik

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The objective of this study is to present a micro mechanical pump that was fabricated using SwIFT™ microfabrication surface micromachining process and to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating such micro pump into a micro analysis system. The micropump circulates the bio-sample and magnetic nanoparticles through different compartments to separate and purify the targeted bio-sample. This article reports the flow characteristics in the microchannels and in a crescent micro pump.

Keywords: Crescent micropumps, microanalysis, nanoparticles.

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Authors: Virginia Bassily, Sherif Goubran

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In heritage conservation and revival, much of the focus is placed on the techniques and methods to preserve, restore, and revive heritage structures and locations. However, more attention needs to be drawn to how deterioration happens and its effect on the area’s character and socio-economic status. To this end, this research aims to examine the decline and its effect in the El Korba area in Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt. El Korba was designed with a unique architectural character to stimulate social and economic life. However, the area has been on a path of physical deterioration that is corroding the social life on its streets. This research uses diachronic analysis in Ibrahim El-Lakkani Boulevard of El Korba based on a previously developed framework that connects buildings’ architectural features to the degree of social interaction in the street to document the changes that the building deterioration could have caused. Architectural features of the street level during both the original state (1906) and the current state (2021) are broken down and categorized in those six parameters to understand their decline or improvement over time. We find that the parameters that have decreased over the years and caused the deterioration are complexity and architectural character, permeability, territoriality and personalization, and physical comfort.  Based on these findings, revival projects can focus on physical parameters that create synergistic benefits by preserving and renewing heritage locations and revitalizing their socio-economic potential.

Keywords: Architectural character, heritage building conservation, enclosure, ground-floor use, El Korba, visual and physical permeability, personalization, physical comfort, social life, territoriality.

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Authors: Raad Nari, Maura Moriaty, Maha T. Barakat

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Introduction: Sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are a new class of oral anti-diabetic drugs with a unique mechanism of action. They are used to improve glycaemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes by enhancing urinary glucose excretion. In the UAE, there has been certainly an increased use of these medications. As with any new medication, there are safety considerations related to their use in patients with type two diabetes. A retrospective study was conducted at the three main centres of the Imperial College London Diabetes Centre. Methodology: All patients in electronic database (Diamond) from October 2014 to October 2017 were included with a minimum of six months usage of sodium glucose co-transporter inhibitors that comprise canagliflozin, dapagliflozin and empagliflozin. There were 15 paired sample biochemical and clinical correlations. The analysis was done at the start of the study, three months and six months apart. SPSS version 24 was used for this study. Conclusion: This study of sodium glucose co-transporter-2 inhibitors used showed significant reductions in weight, glycated haemoglobin A1C, systolic and diastolic blood pressures. As the case with systematic reviews, there were similar changes in liver enzymes, raised total cholesterol, low density lipopoptein and high density lipoprotein. There was slight improvement in estimated glomerular filtration rate too. Our analysis also showed that they increased in the incidence of urinary tract symptoms and incidence of urinary tract infections.

Keywords: SGLT2 inhibitors dapagliflozin empagliflozin canagliflozin, adverse effects, amputation diabetic ketoacidosis DKA, urinary tract infection.

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Authors: Omowunmi E. Isafiade, Isaac O. Osunmakinde, Antoine B. Bagula

Abstract:

Robots- visual perception is a field that is gaining increasing attention from researchers. This is partly due to emerging trends in the commercial availability of 3D scanning systems or devices that produce a high information accuracy level for a variety of applications. In the history of mining, the mortality rate of mine workers has been alarming and robots exhibit a great deal of potentials to tackle safety issues in mines. However, an effective vision system is crucial to safe autonomous navigation in underground terrains. This work investigates robots- perception in underground terrains (mines and tunnels) using statistical region merging (SRM) model. SRM reconstructs the main structural components of an imagery by a simple but effective statistical analysis. An investigation is conducted on different regions of the mine, such as the shaft, stope and gallery, using publicly available mine frames, with a stream of locally captured mine images. An investigation is also conducted on a stream of underground tunnel image frames, using the XBOX Kinect 3D sensors. The Kinect sensors produce streams of red, green and blue (RGB) and depth images of 640 x 480 resolution at 30 frames per second. Integrating the depth information to drivability gives a strong cue to the analysis, which detects 3D results augmenting drivable and non-drivable regions in 2D. The results of the 2D and 3D experiment with different terrains, mines and tunnels, together with the qualitative and quantitative evaluation, reveal that a good drivable region can be detected in dynamic underground terrains.

Keywords: Drivable Region Detection, Kinect Sensor, Robots' Perception, SRM, Underground Terrains.

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Authors: Bashir Ahmad Amiri, Nsenda Lukumwena

Abstract:

The global trend indicates that more and more people live and will continue to live in urban areas. Today cities are expanding both in physical size and number due to the rapid population growth along with sprawl development, which caused the cities to expand beyond the growth boundary and exerting intense pressure on environmental resources specially farmlands to accommodate new housing and urban facilities. Also noticeable is the increase in urban decay along with the increase of slum dwellers present another challenge that most cities in developed and developing countries have to deal with. Today urban practitioners, researchers, planners, and decision-makers are seeking for alternative development and growth management policies to house the rising urban population and also cure the urban decay and slum issues turn to Smart Growth to achieve their goals. Many cities across the globe have adopted smart growth as an alternative growth management tool to deal with patterns and forms of development and to cure the rising urban and environmental problems. The method used in this study is a literature analysis method through reviewing various resources to highlight the potential benefits of Smart Growth in both developed and developing countries and analyze, to what extent it can be a strategic alternative for Afghanistan’s cities, especially the capital city. Hence a comparative analysis is carried on three countries, namely the USA, China, and India to identify the potential benefits of smart growth likely to serve as an achievable broad base for recommendations in different urban contexts.

Keywords: Growth management, housing, Kabul city, smart growth, urban-expansion.

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Authors: Magda S. Taipina, Maria L. Garbelotti, Mariana G.B. Cadioli

Abstract:

Banana is one of the most consumed fruits in the tropics and subtropics. Brazil accounts for about 9% of the world banana production. However, the production losses are as high as 30 to 40% and even much higher in some developing countries. The green banana flour is a complex carbohydrate source, including a high total starch (73.4%), resistant starch (17.5%) with functional properties. Gamma irradiation is considered to be an alternative method for food preservation. It has been performed due to the need of extending the shelf - life of foods, whilst maintaining their safety and avoiding one of the main concerns: the nutrient loss. In this work data about on the effects of ionizing radiation on the physicochemical analysis (carbohydrate, proteins, lipids, alimentary fiber, moistures and ashes) of Brazilian functional products (biscuits and bread) of the green banana pulp are presented. The caloric value was calculated. No significant difference was observed between the samples of irradiated and non – irradiated green banana biscuits with the following determinations: carbohydrates, proteins, alimentary fiber and ashes. Only a small significant difference was found in lipids (macronutrients). The results of physical chemical analysis of the irradiated and non- irradiated green banana bread non- irradiated showed no significant difference with the following determinations: carbohydrates, lipids (macronutrients), moisture, ashes and caloric value. A small difference was found in proteins (macronutrients). Irradiation of functional products (biscuits and bread) with doses of 1 and 3kGy maintained their original macronutrients content, showing good radioresistance.

Keywords: Irradiation, Functional Food, Nutritional value.

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Authors: Haleh Rezaei Zanjirabadi, Fatemeh Saberi, Bahman Rahimzadeh, Fariborz Masoudi, Mohammad Rahgosha

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In this study, apatite minerals from the iron-phosphate deposit of Yazd have been investigated within the microcontinent zone of Iran in the Zagros structural zone. The geological units in the Esfordi area belong to the pre-Cambrian to lower-Cambrian age, consisting of a succession of carbonate rocks (dolomite), shale, tuff, sandstone, and volcanic rocks. In addition to the mentioned sedimentary and volcanic rocks, the granitoid mass of Bahabad, which is the largest intrusive mass in the region, has intruded into the eastern part of this series and has caused its metamorphism and alteration. After collecting the available data, various samples of Esfordi’s apatite were prepared, and their mineralogy and crystallography were investigated using laboratory methods such as petrographic microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, EDS (Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). In non-destructive Raman spectroscopy, the molecular structure of apatite minerals was revealed in four distinct spectral ranges. Initially, the spectra of phosphate and aluminum bonds with O2HO, OH, were observed, followed by the identification of Cl, OH, Al, Na, Ca and hydroxyl units depending on the type of apatite mineral family. In SEM analysis, based on various shapes and different phases of apatites, their constituent major elements were identified through EDS, indicating that the samples from the Esfordi mining area exhibit a dense and coherent texture with smooth surfaces. Based on the elemental analysis results by EDS, the apatites in the Esfordi area are classified into the calcic apatite group.

Keywords: Petrology, apatite, Esfordi, EDS, SEM, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Raman spectroscopy.

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Authors: Midiya Khademi, Ali Nikoo, Shabnam Rahimnezhad Baghche Jooghi

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Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the main cause of death globally. Most CVDs can be prevented by avoiding habitual risk factors. Separate from the habitual risk factors, there are some inherent factors in each individual that can increase the risk potential of CVDs. Vessel shapes and geometry are influential factors, having great impact on the blood flow and the hemodynamic behavior of the vessels. In the present study, the influence of bifurcation angle on blood flow characteristics is studied. In order to approach this topic, by simplifying the details of the bifurcation, three models with angles 30°, 45°, and 60° were created, then by using CFD analysis, the response of these models for stable flow and pulsatile flow was studied. In the conducted simulation in order to eliminate the influence of other geometrical factors, only the angle of the bifurcation was changed and other parameters remained constant during the research. Simulations are conducted under dynamic and stable condition. In the stable flow simulation, a steady velocity of 0.17 m/s at the inlet plug was maintained and in dynamic simulations, a typical LAD flow waveform is implemented. The results show that the bifurcation angle has an influence on the maximum speed of the flow. In the stable flow condition, increasing the angle lead to decrease the maximum flow velocity. In the dynamic flow simulations, increasing the bifurcation angle lead to an increase in the maximum velocity. Since blood flow has pulsatile characteristics, using a uniform velocity during the simulations can lead to a discrepancy between the actual results and the calculated results.

Keywords: Coronary artery, cardiovascular disease, bifurcation, atherosclerosis, CFD, artery wall shear stress.

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Authors: Kankeyanathan Kannan

Abstract:

The uniform Roe C*-algebra (also called uniform translation)C^*- algebra provides a link between coarse geometry and C^*- algebra theory. The uniform Roe algebra has a great importance in geometry, topology and analysis. We consider some of the elementary concepts associated with coarse spaces. 

Keywords: Invariant Approximation Property, Uniform Roe algebras.

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Authors: Yasuhito Tanaka

Abstract:

We examine the maximum theorem by Berge from the point of view of Bishop style constructive mathematics. We will show an approximate version of the maximum theorem and the maximum theorem for functions with sequentially locally at most one maximum.

Keywords: Maximum theorem, Constructive mathematics, Sequentially locally at most one maximum.

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