Search results for: Economic lot scheduling problem

Authors: F. Boustani

Abstract:

Energy generated by the force of water in hydropower can provide a more sustainable, non-polluting alternative to fossil fuels, along with other renewable sources of energy, such as wind, solar and tidal power, bio energy and geothermal energy. Small scale hydroelectricity in Iran is well suited for “off-grid" rural electricity applications, while other renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and biomass, can be beneficially used as fuel for pumping groundwater for drinking and small scale irrigation in remote rural areas or small villages. Small Hydro Power plants in Iran have very low operating and maintenance costs because they consume no fossil or nuclear fuel and do not involve high temperature processes. The equipment is relatively simple to operate and maintain. Hydropower equipment can adjust rapidly to load changes. The extended equipment life provides significant economic advantages. Some hydroelectric plants installed 100 years ago still operate reliably. The Polkolo river is located on Karun basin at southwest of Iran. Situation and conditions of Polkolo river are evaluated for construction of small hydropower in this article. The topographical conditions and the existence of permanent water from springs provide the suitability to install hydroelectric power plants on the river Polkolo. The cascade plant consists of 9 power plants connected with each other and is having the total head as 1100m and discharge about 2.5cubic meter per second. The annual production of energy is 105.5 million kwh.

Keywords: Hydropower potential, Iran, SHP, Yasuj.

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Authors: Rayeheh Khatami, Toktam Hanaei, Mohammad Reza Mansouri Daneshvar

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The growth of the agricultural sector is known as an essential way to achieve development goals in developing countries. Urban agriculture is a way to reduce the vulnerability of urban populations of the world toward global environmental change. It is a sustainable and efficient system to respond to the environmental, social and economic needs of the city, which leads to urban sustainability. Today, many local and national governments are developing urban agriculture as an effective tool in responding to challenges such as poverty, food security, and environmental problems. In this study, we follow a perspective based on urban agriculture literature in order to indicate the urban agriculture’s benefits in environmental planning strategies in non-western countries like Iran. The methodological approach adopted is based on qualitative approach and documentary studies. A total of 35 articles (mixed quantitative and qualitative methods studies) were studied in final analysis, which are published in relevant journals that focus on this subject. Studies show the wide range of positive benefits of urban agriculture on food security, nutrition outcomes, health outcomes, environmental outcomes, and social capital. However, there was no definitive conclusion about the negative effects of urban agriculture. This paper provides a conceptual and theoretical basis to know about urban agriculture and its roles in environmental planning, and also conclude the benefits of urban agriculture for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who seek to create spaces in cities for implementation urban agriculture in future.

Keywords: Urban agriculture, environmental planning, urban planning, literature.

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Authors: E. Neamatollahi, M. Bannayan, A. Souhani Darban, A. Ghanbari

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In production of medicinal plants, seed germination is very important problem. The treated seeds (control, hydro priming and ZnSO4) of Cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) were evaluated at germination and seedling growth for tolerance to salt (NaCl and Na2SO4) conditions at the same water potentials of 0.0, -0.3, -0.6, - 0.9 and -1.2MPa. Electrical conductivity (EC) values of the NaCl solutions were 0.0, 6.5, 12.7, 18.4 and 23.5 dSm-1, respectively. The objective of the study was to determine factors responsible for germination and early seedling growth due to salt toxicity or osmotic effect and to optimize the best priming treatment for these stress conditions. Results revealed that germination delayed in both solutions, having variable germination with different priming treatments. Germination, shoot and weight, root and shoot length were higher but mean germination time and abnormal germination percentage were lower in NaCl than Na2SO4 at the same water potential. The root / shoot weight and R/S length increased with increase in osmotic potential in both NaCl and Na2SO4 solutions. NaCl had less inhibitor effect on seedling growth than the germination. It was concluded that inhibition of germination at the same water potential of NaCl and Na2SO4 resulted from salt toxicity rather than osmotic effect. Hydro priming increased germination and seedling growth under salt stress. This protocol has practical importance and could be recommended to farmers to achieve higher germination and uniform emergence under field conditions.

Keywords: Priming, Germination, Nacl, ZnSo4, Na2So4.

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Authors: Kianoosh Samimi, Siham Kamali-Bernard, Ali Akbar Maghsoudi

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Due to the difficult placement and vibration between reinforcements of reinforced concrete and the defects that it may cause, the use of self-compacting concrete (SCC) is becoming more widespread. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is the most widely used binder in the construction industry. However, the manufacture of this cement results in a significant amount of CO₂ being released, which is detrimental to the environment. Thus, an alternative to reduce the cost of SCC is the use of more economical and environmental mineral additives in partial or total substitution of Portland cement. Our study is in this context and aims to develop SCCs both economic and ecological. Two natural pozzolans such as pumice and zeolite are chosen in this research. This research tries to answer questions including the microstructure of the two types of natural pozzolan and their influence on the mechanical properties as well as on the transport property of SCC. Based on the findings of this study, the studied zeolite is a clinoptilolite that presents higher pozzolan activity compared to pumice. However, the use of zeolite decreases the compressive strength of SCC composites. On the contrary, the compressive strength in SCC containing of pumice increases at both early and long term ages with a remarkable increase at long term. A correlation is obtained between the compressive strength with permeable pore and capillary absorption. Also, the results concerning compressive strength and transport property are well justified by evaporable and non-evaporable water content measurement. This paper shows that the substitution of Portland cement by 15% of pumice or 10% of zeolite in HSSCC is suitable in all aspects. 

Keywords: SCC, concrete, pumice, zeolite, durability, transport.

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Authors: J. Hroudova, M. Sedlmajer, J. Zach

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Problems insulation of building structures is often closely connected with the problem of moisture remediation. In the case of historic buildings or if only part of the redevelopment of envelope of structures, it is not possible to apply the classical external thermal insulation composite systems. This application is mostly effective thermal insulation plasters with high porosity and controlled capillary properties which assures improvement of thermal properties construction, its diffusion openness towards the external environment and suitable treatment capillary properties of preventing the penetration of liquid moisture and salts thereof toward the outer surface of the structure. With respect to the current trend of reducing the energy consumption of building structures and reduce the production of CO2 is necessary to develop capillary-active materials characterized by their low density, low thermal conductivity while maintaining good mechanical properties. The aim of researchers at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Brno University of Technology is the development and study of hygrothermal behaviour of optimal materials for thermal insulation and rehabilitation of building structures with the possible use of alternative, less energy demanding binders in comparison with conventional, frequently used binder, which represents cement. The paper describes the evaluation of research activities aimed at the development of thermal insulation and repair materials using lightweight aggregate and alternative binders such as metakaolin and finely ground fly ash.

Keywords: Thermal insulating plasters, rehabilitation materials, thermal conductivity, lightweight aggregate, alternative binders.

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Authors: Zarabizan Zakaria, Syuhaida Ismail, Aminah Md Yusof

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Project management process starts from the planning stage up to the stage of completion (handover of buildings, preparation of the final accounts and the closing balance). Seeing as this process is not easy to be implemented efficiently and effectively, the issue of unsuccessful delivery as per contract in construction has become a major problem for construction projects. These issues have been blamed mainly on inefficient traditional construction practices that continue to dominate the current industry. This is due to several factors, such as environments of construction technology, sophisticated design and customer demand, that are constantly changing and influencing, either directly or indirectly, to the practice of management. Among the identified influences are physical environment, social environment, information environment, political and moral atmosphere. Therefore, this paper is emerged to determine the fundamental variables in the final account closing success in construction project. This aim can be achieved via its objectives of identifying the key constraints to the closing of final accounts in construction projects in Malaysia, investigating solutions to the identified constraints and analysing the relative levels of impact of the identified constraints. It is expected that this paper provides effective measures to avoid or at least reduce the problems in final account closing to the optimum level. It is also anticipated that the finding or outcome reported in this paper could address the unsuccessful contributors in final account closing and define tools for their mitigation for the better development of construction project.

Keywords: Fundamental variables, closing of final account, construction project, Malaysia.

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Authors: Seyedvahid Najafi, Viliam Makis

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In recent years, maintenance optimization has attracted special attention due to the growth of industrial systems complexity. Maintenance costs are high for many systems, and preventive maintenance is effective when it increases operations' reliability and safety at a reduced cost. The novelty of this research is to consider general repair in the modeling of multi-unit series systems and solve the maintenance problem for such systems using the semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) framework. We propose an opportunistic maintenance policy for a series system composed of two main units. Unit 1, which is more expensive than unit 2, is subjected to condition monitoring, and its deterioration is modeled using a gamma process. Unit 1 hazard rate is estimated by the proportional hazards model (PHM), and two hazard rate control limits are considered as the thresholds of maintenance interventions for unit 1. Maintenance is performed on unit 2, considering an age control limit. The objective is to find the optimal control limits and minimize the long-run expected average cost per unit time. The proposed algorithm is applied to a numerical example to compare the effectiveness of the proposed policy (policy Ⅰ) with policy Ⅱ, which is similar to policy Ⅰ, but instead of general repair, replacement is performed. Results show that policy Ⅰ leads to lower average cost compared with policy Ⅱ. 

Keywords: Condition-based maintenance, proportional hazards model, semi-Markov decision process, two-unit series systems.

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Authors: J. E. Oti, J. M. Kinuthia, R. Robinson, P. Davies

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This work reports the potential of using Palm Kernel (PK) ash and shell as a partial substitute for Portland Cement (PC) and coarse aggregate in the development of mortar and concrete. PK ash and shell are agro-waste materials from palm oil mills, the disposal of PK ash and shell is an environmental problem of concern. The PK ash has pozzolanic properties that enables it as a partial replacement for cement and also plays an important role in the strength and durability of concrete, its use in concrete will alleviate the increasing challenges of scarcity and high cost of cement. In order to investigate the PC replacement potential of PK ash, three types of PK ash were produced at varying temperature (350-750C) and they were used to replace up to 50% PC. The PK shell was used to replace up to 100% coarse aggregate in order to study its aggregate replacement potential. The testing programme included material characterisation, the determination of compressive strength, tensile splitting strength and chemical durability in aggressive sulfatebearing exposure conditions. The 90 day compressive results showed a significant strength gain (up to 26.2 N/mm2). The Portland cement and conventional coarse aggregate has significantly higher influence in the strength gain compared to the equivalent PK ash and PK shell. The chemical durability results demonstrated that after a prolonged period of exposure, significant strength losses in all the concretes were observed. This phenomenon is explained, due to lower change in concrete morphology and inhibition of reaction species and the final disruption of the aggregate cement paste matrix.

Keywords: Sustainability, Concrete, mortar, Palm kernel shell, compressive strength, consistency.

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Authors: Amira Mabrouk, Chokri Abdennadher

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The reduction of road congestion which is inherent to the use of vehicles is an obvious priority to public authority. Therefore, assessing the willingness to pay of an individual in order to save trip-time is akin to estimating the change in price which was the result of setting up a new transport policy to increase the networks fluidity and improving the level of social welfare. This study holds an innovative perspective. In fact, it initiates an economic calculation that has the objective of giving an estimation of the monetized time value during the trips made in Sfax. This research is founded on a double-objective approach. The aim of this study is to i) give an estimation of the monetized value of time; an hour dedicated to trips, ii) determine whether or not the consumer considers the environmental variables to be significant, iii) analyze the impact of applying a public management of the congestion via imposing taxation of city tolls on urban dwellers. This article is built upon a rich field survey led in the city of Sfax. With the use of the contingent valuation method, we analyze the “declared time preferences” of 450 drivers during rush hours. Based on the fond consideration of attributed bias of the applied method, we bring to light the delicacy of this approach with regards to the revelation mode and the interrogative techniques by following the NOAA panel recommendations bearing the exception of the valorization point and other similar studies about the estimation of transportation externality.

Keywords: Willingness to pay, value of time, contingent valuation, time value, city toll, transport.

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Authors: Gaofetoge Lenetha, Malerato Moloi, Ntsoaki Malebo

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Microbial contamination of ready-to-eat foods and beverages sold by street vendors has become an important public health issue. In developing countries including South Africa, health risks related to such kinds of foods are thought to be common. Thus, this study assessed knowledge, attitude and practices of street food vendors. Street vendors in the city of Mangaung Metro were investigated in order to assess their knowledge, attitudes and handling practices. A semi-structured questionnaire and checklist were used in interviews to determine the status of the vending sites and associa. ted food-handling practices. Data was collected by means of a face-to-face interview. The majority of respondents were black females. Hundred percent (100%) of the participants did not have any food safety training. However, street vendors showed a positive attitude towards food safety. Despite the positive attitude, vendors showed some non-compliance when it comes to handling food. During the survey, it was also observed that the vending stalls lack basic infrastructures like toilets and potable water that is currently a major problem. This study indicates a need for improvements in the environmental conditions at these sites to prevent foodborne diseases. Moreover, based on the results observed food safety and food hygiene training or workshops for street vendors are highly recommended.

Keywords: Food hygiene, foodborne illnesses, food safety, street foods.

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Authors: Papon Thamvasupong, Kwanchanok Viravaidya-Pasuwat

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Osteoarthritis affects a lot of people worldwide. Local injection of glucosamine is one of the alternative treatment methods to replenish the natural lubrication of cartilage. However, multiple injections can potentially lead to possible bacterial infection. Therefore, a drug delivery system is desired to reduce the frequencies of injections. A hydrogel is one of the delivery systems that can control the release of drugs. Thermo-reversible hydrogels can be beneficial to the drug delivery system especially in the local injection route because this formulation can change from liquid to gel after getting into human body. Once the gel is in the body, it will slowly release the drug in a controlled manner. In this study, various formulations of Pluronic-based hydrogels were synthesized for the controlled release of glucosamine. One of the challenges of the Pluronic controlled release system is its fast dissolution rate. To overcome this problem, alginate and calcium sulfate (CaSO₄) were added to the polymer solution. The characteristics of the hydrogels were investigated including the gelation temperature, gelation time, hydrogel dissolution and glucosamine release mechanism. Finally, a mathematical model of glucosamine release from Pluronic-alginate-hyaluronic acid hydrogel was developed. Our results have shown that crosslinking Pluronic gel with alginate did not significantly extend the dissolution rate of the gel. Moreover, the gel dissolution profiles and the glucosamine release mechanisms were best described using the zeroth-order kinetic model, indicating that the release of glucosamine was primarily governed by the gel dissolution.

Keywords: Controlled release, drug delivery system, glucosamine, Pluronic® F-127, thermoreversible hydrogel.

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Authors: Yuji Kotani, Shunsuke Kanai, Hisaki Watari

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In recent years, global warming has become a worldwide problem. The reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is a top priority for many companies in the manufacturing industry. In the automobile industry as well, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is one of the most important issues. Technology to reduce the weight of automotive parts improves the fuel economy of automobiles, and is an important technology for reducing carbon dioxide. Also, even if this weight reduction technology is applied to electric automobiles rather than gasoline automobiles, reducing energy consumption remains an important issue. Plastic processing of hollow pipes is one important technology for realizing the weight reduction of automotive parts. Ohashi et al. [1],[2] present an example of research on pipe formation in which a process was carried out to enlarge a pipe diameter using a lost core, achieving the suppression of wall thickness reduction and greater pipe expansion than hydroforming. In this study, we investigated a method to increase the wall thickness of a pipe through pipe compression using planetary rolls. The establishment of a technology whereby the wall thickness of a pipe can be controlled without buckling the pipe is an important technology for the weight reduction of products. Using the finite element analysis method, we predicted that it would be possible to increase the compression of an aluminum pipe with a 3mm wall thickness by approximately 20%, and wall thickness by approximately 20% by pressing the hollow pipe with planetary rolls.

Keywords: Pipe-Forming, Wall Thickness, Finite-element-method

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Authors: Anton A. Bykov, Irina O. Glot, Igor N. Shardakov, Alexey P. Shestakov

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This paper presents the results of experimental and theoretical investigations of the mechanisms of crack formation in reinforced concrete beams subjected to quasi-static bending. The boundary-value problem has been formulated in the framework of brittle fracture mechanics and has been solved by using the finite-element method. Numerical simulation of the vibrations of an uncracked beam and a beam with cracks of different size serves to determine the pattern of changes in the spectrum of eigenfrequencies observed during crack evolution. Experiments were performed on the sequential quasistatic four-point bending of the beam leading to the formation of cracks in concrete. At each loading stage, the beam was subjected to an impulse load to induce vibrations. Two stages of cracking were detected. At the first stage the conservative process of deformation is realized. The second stage is an active cracking, which is marked by a sharp change in eingenfrequencies. The boundary of a transition from one stage to another is well registered. The vibration behavior was examined for the beams strengthened by carbon-fiber sheet before loading and at the intermediate stage of loading after the grouting of initial cracks. The obtained results show that the vibrodiagnostic approach is an effective tool for monitoring of cracking and for assessing the quality of measures aimed at strengthening concrete structures.

Keywords: Crack formation. experiment. mathematical modeling. reinforced concrete. vibrodiagnostics.

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Authors: Kurniawan D. Irianto, Demetres D. Kouvatsos

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The growth of wireless devices affects the availability of limited frequencies or spectrum bands as it has been known that spectrum bands are a natural resource that cannot be added. Meanwhile, the licensed frequencies are idle most of the time. Cognitive radio is one of the solutions to solve those problems. Cognitive radio is a promising technology that allows the unlicensed users known as secondary users (SUs) to access licensed bands without making interference to licensed users or primary users (PUs). As cloud computing has become popular in recent years, cognitive radio networks (CRNs) can be integrated with cloud platform. One of the important issues in CRNs is security. It becomes a problem since CRNs use radio frequencies as a medium for transmitting and CRNs share the same issues with wireless communication systems. Another critical issue in CRNs is performance. Security has adverse effect to performance and there are trade-offs between them. The goal of this paper is to investigate the performance related to security trade-off in CRNs with supporting cloud platforms. Furthermore, Queuing Network Models with preemptive resume and preemptive repeat identical priority are applied in this project to measure the impact of security to performance in CRNs with or without cloud platform. The generalized exponential (GE) type distribution is used to reflect the bursty inter-arrival and service times at the servers. The results show that the best performance is obtained when security is disabled and cloud platform is enabled.

Keywords: Cloud Platforms, Cognitive Radio Networks, GEtype Distribution, Performance Vs Security.

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Authors: Zhanar Aldubasheva, Mukhtar Senggirbay, Elnura Assyltayeva

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The modern world is experiencing fundamental and dynamic changes. The transformation of international relations; the end of confrontation and successive overcoming of the Cold War consequences have expanded possible international cooperation. The global nuclear conflict threat has been minimized, while a tendency to establish a unipolar world structure with the U.S. economic and power domination is growing. The current world system of international relations, apparently is secular. However, the religious beliefs of one or another nations play a certain (sometimes a key) role, both in the domestic affairs of the individual countries and in the development of bilateral ties. Political situation in Central Asia has been characterized by new factors such as international terrorism; religious extremism and radicalism; narcotrafficking and illicit arms trade of a global character immediately threaten to peace and political stability in Central Asia. The role and influence of Islamic fundamentalism is increasing; political ethnocentrism and the associated aggravation of inter-ethnic relations, the ambiguity of national interests and objectives of major geo-political groups in the Central Asian region regarding the division the political influence, emerge. This article approaches the following issues: the role of Islam in Central Asia; destabilizing factors in Central Asia; Islamic movements in Central Asia, Western Europe and the United States; the United States, Western Europe and Central Asia: religion, politics, ideology, and the US-Central Asia antiterrorism and religious extremism cooperation.

Keywords: USA, Central Asia, religious conflict, terrorism, regional security.

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Authors: S. M. Kamruzzaman

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In this paper, we propose a dynamic TDMA slot reservation (DTSR) protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks. Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee plays a critically important role in such networks. We consider the problem of providing QoS guarantee to users as well as to maintain the most efficient use of scarce bandwidth resources. According to one hop neighboring information and the bandwidth requirement, our proposed protocol dynamically changes the frame length and the transmission schedule. A dynamic frame length expansion and shrinking scheme that controls the excessive increase of unassigned slots has been proposed. This method efficiently utilizes the channel bandwidth by assigning unused slots to new neighboring nodes and increasing the frame length when the number of slots in the frame is insufficient to support the neighboring nodes. It also shrinks the frame length when half of the slots in the frame of a node are empty. An efficient slot reservation protocol not only guarantees successful data transmissions without collisions but also enhance channel spatial reuse to maximize the system throughput. Our proposed scheme, which provides both QoS guarantee and efficient resource utilization, be employed to optimize the channel spatial reuse and maximize the system throughput. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed mechanism achieves desirable performance in multichannel multi-rate cognitive radio ad hoc networks.

Keywords: TDMA, cognitive radio, ad hoc networks, QoSguarantee, dynamic frame length.

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Authors: Abd Rasid Abd Rahman

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For the past thirty years the Malaysian economy has been said to contribute well to the progress of the nations. However, the intensification of global economy activity and the extensive use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in recent years are challenging government-s effort to further develop Malaysian society. The competition posed by the low wage economies such as China and Vietnam have made the government realise the importance of engaging in high-skill and high technology industries. It is hoped this will be the basis of attracting more foreign direct investment (FDI) in order to help the country to compete in globalised world. Using Vision 2020 as it targeted vision, the government has decided to engage in the use of ICTs and introduce many policies pertaining to it. Mainly based on the secondary analysis approach, the findings show that policy pertaining to ICTs in Malaysia contributes to economic growth, but the consequences of this have resulted in greater division within society. Although some of the divisions such as gender and ethnicity are narrowing down, the gap in important areas such as regions and class differences is becoming wider. The widespread use of ICTs might contribute to the further establishment of democracy in Malaysia, but the increasing number of foreign entities such as FDI and foreign workers, cultural hybridisation and to some extent cultural domination are contributing to neocolonialism in Malaysia. This has obvious consequences for the government-s effort to create a Malaysian national identity. An important finding of this work is that there are contradictions within ICT policy between the effort to develop the economy and society.

Keywords: Globalisation, ICTs, ICT Policy, Malaysia, National Identity, Vision 2020

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Authors: Taruna Katyal Arora, Geeta Kumari, Hari Shankar, Neelima Mishra

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Substandard and counterfeit antimalarials is a major problem in malaria endemic areas. The availability of counterfeit/ substandard medicines is not only decreasing the efficacy in patients, but it is also one of the contributing factors for developing antimalarial drug resistance. Owing to this, a pilot study was conducted to survey quality of drugs collected from different malaria endemic areas of India. Artesunate+Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (AS+SP), Artemether-Lumefantrine (AL), Chloroquine (CQ) tablets were randomly picked from public health facilities in selected states of India. The quality of antimalarial drugs from these areas was assessed by using Global Pharma Health Fund Minilab test kit. This includes physical/visual inspection and disintegration test. Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) was carried out for semi-quantitative assessment of active pharmaceutical ingredients. A total of 45 brands, out of which 21 were for CQ, 14 for AL and 10 for AS+SP were tested from Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), Mizoram, Meghalaya and Gujrat states. One out of 45 samples showed variable disintegration and retension factor. The variable disintegration and retention factor which would have been due to substandard quality or other factors including storage. However, HPLC analysis confirms standard active pharmaceutical ingredient, but may be due to humid temperature and moisture in storage may account for the observed result.

Keywords: Antimalarial medicines, counterfeit, substandard, thin layer chromatography.

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Authors: M.Aasif Shahzad, N.Mukhtar, M.Sarwar

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Dietary macro and micro nutrients in their respective proportion and fractions present a practical potential tool to fabricate milk constituents since cells of lactating mammary glands obtain about 80 % of milk synthesis nutrients from blood, reflecting the existence of an isotonic equilibrium between blood and milk. Diverting milk biosynthetic activities through manipulation of nutrients towards producing milk not only keeping in view its significance as natural food but also as food item which prevents or dilutes the adverse effects of some diseases (like cardiovascular problem by saturated milk fat intake) has been area of interest in the last decade. Nutritional modification / supplementation has been reported to enhance conjugated linoleic acid, fatty acid type and concentration, essential fatty acid concentration, vitamin B12& C, Se, Cu, I and Fe which are involved to counter the health threats to human well being. Synchronizing dietary nutrients aimed to modify rumen dynamics towards synthesis of nutrients or their precursors to make their drive towards formulated milk constituents presents a practical option. Formulating dietary constituents to design milk constituents will let the farmers, consumers and investors know about the real potential and profit margins associated with this enterprise. This article briefly recapitulates the ways and means to modify milk constituents keeping an eye on human health and well being issues, which allows milk to serve more than a food item.

Keywords: Nutritional modification, fabricating milk composition, human health.

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Authors: Herdina Indrijati

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This research aims to describe teenager delinquency behavior (Juvenile Delinquency) of senior high school students in Surabaya, Indonesia. Juvenile Delinquency is a broad range of behaviors start from socially unacceptable behavior (overreact in school), violation (escape from home) to crimes (like stealing). This research uses quantitative descriptive method using 498 students who come from 8 different schools in Surabaya as subjects. Juvenile Delinquency behavior form questionnaire has been completed by subjects and was used to measure and describe the behavior. The result of this research is presented in statistic descriptive forms. Result shows that 169 subjects skip school, 55 subjects get out of home without parent’s permission, 110 subjects engage in smoking behavior, 74 subjects damage other people properties, 32 subjects steal, 16 subjects exploit others and 7 subjects engage in drug abuse. Frequency of the top five mentioned behavior are 1-10 times. It is also found that subject’s peers are most likely to be the victim of Juvenile Delinquency. The reasons teenagers engage in Juvenile Delinquency include (1) feeling tired, bored or lazy – that contributes to their skip school behavior (2) Having a lot of problem with parents - contrives them to run away from home, (3) accidentally damage other people’s properties, (4) financial problems – force them to steal and exploit, (5) feeling like having a lot of life problems – that makes them do drugs (6) trying smoking for experience.

Keywords: Juvenile delinquency, senior high school, student.

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Authors: Hrishikesh Purandare, Ashwini Pethe

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The built environment can have a significant effect on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. Children living in urban slums in India confront issues associated with poor living conditions and lack of access to basic service. It is a well-known fact that slums are places of extreme poverty, substandard housing, overcrowding, and poor sanitation. These challenges faced by children living in slums can have a significant impact on their physical, psychological, and social development. Despite the magnitude of the problem, the area of research particularly on the impact of the built environment of slums on children and adolescent well-being has been understudied in India. The impact of the built environment on children’s well-being has been understudied in the global south. Apart from issues of the limited access to health and education of these children, perception of children regarding the built environment which they inhabit is rarely addressed. A sample of 120 children living in the slums of Pune city between the ages 7 and 16 years participated in this study which employed a concurrent embedded approach of mixed method research. Questionnaires were administered to obtain quantitative data that included attributes of crowding, noise, privacy, territoriality, and housing quality in the built environment. The qualitative analysis of children’s sketches highlighted aspects of the built environment with which they associated themselves the most. The study sought to examine the perception of the deprived children living in the urban slums in the city of Pune (India) towards their built environment.

Keywords: Physical environment, poverty, underprivileged children, urban Indian slums.

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Authors: Yun-na Wu, Zhen Wang

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Due to the economic downturn and the deterioration of the living environment, the development of residential buildings as high energy consuming building is gradually changing from “extensive” to green building in China. So, the evaluation system of green building is continuously improved, but the current evaluation work has the following problems: (1) There are differences in the cost of the actual investment and the purchasing power of residents, also construction target of green residential building is single and lacks multi-objective performance development. (2) Green building evaluation lacks regional characteristics and cannot reflect the different regional residents demand. (3) In the process of determining the criteria weight, the experts’ judgment matrix is difficult to meet the requirement of consistency. Therefore, to solve those problems, questionnaires which are about the green residential building for Ningxia area are distributed, and the results of questionnaires can feedback the purchasing power of residents and the acceptance of the green building cost. Secondly, combined with the geographical features of Ningxia minority areas, the evaluation criteria system of green residential building is constructed. Finally, using the improved group AHP method and the grey clustering method, the criteria weight is determined, and a real case is evaluated, which is located in Xing Qing district, Ningxia. A conclusion can be obtained that the professional evaluation for this project and good social recognition is basically the same.

Keywords: Evaluation, green residential building, grey clustering method, group AHP.

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Authors: Sidney A. Lima, Hermann J. H. Kux, Elcio H. Shiguemori

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The Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) usually navigate through the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) associated with an Inertial Navigation System (INS). However, GNSS can have its accuracy degraded at any time or even turn off the signal of GNSS. In addition, there is the possibility of malicious interferences, known as jamming. Therefore, the image navigation system can solve the autonomy problem, because if the GNSS is disabled or degraded, the image navigation system would continue to provide coordinate information for the INS, allowing the autonomy of the system. This work aims to evaluate the accuracy of the positioning though photogrammetry concepts. The methodology uses orthophotos and Digital Surface Models (DSM) as a reference to represent the object space and photograph obtained during the flight to represent the image space. For the calculation of the coordinates of the perspective center and camera attitudes, it is necessary to know the coordinates of homologous points in the object space (orthophoto coordinates and DSM altitude) and image space (column and line of the photograph). So if it is possible to automatically identify in real time the homologous points the coordinates and attitudes can be calculated whit their respective accuracies. With the methodology applied in this work, it is possible to verify maximum errors in the order of 0.5 m in the positioning and 0.6º in the attitude of the camera, so the navigation through the image can reach values equal to or higher than the GNSS receivers without differential correction. Therefore, navigating through the image is a good alternative to enable autonomous navigation.

Keywords: Autonomy, navigation, security, photogrammetry, remote sensing, spatial resection, UAS.

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Authors: Yusri Yusof, Stephen Newman, Aydin Nassehi, Keith Case

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The changing economic climate has made global manufacturing a growing reality over the last decade, forcing companies from east and west and all over the world to collaborate beyond geographic boundaries in the design, manufacture and assemble of products. The ISO10303 and ISO14649 Standards (STEP and STEP-NC) have been developed to introduce interoperability into manufacturing enterprises so as to meet the challenge of responding to production on demand. This paper describes and illustrates a STEP compliant CAD/CAPP/CAM System for the manufacture of rotational parts on CNC turning centers. The information models to support the proposed system together with the data models defined in the ISO14649 standard used to create the NC programs are also described. A structured view of a STEP compliant CAD/CAPP/CAM system framework supporting the next generation of intelligent CNC controllers for turn/mill component manufacture is provided. Finally a proposed computational environment for a STEP-NC compliant system for turning operations (SCSTO) is described. SCSTO is the experimental part of the research supported by the specification of information models and constructed using a structured methodology and object-oriented methods. SCSTO was developed to generate a Part 21 file based on machining features to support the interactive generation of process plans utilizing feature extraction. A case study component has been developed to prove the concept for using the milling and turning parts of ISO14649 to provide a turn-mill CAD/CAPP/CAM environment.

Keywords:

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Authors: J. K. Khare, Abhay Kumar Sharma, Ajay Tiwari, Amol A. Talankar

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Powder metallurgy (P/M) is the only economic way to produce porous parts/products. P/M can produce near net shape parts hence reduces wastage of raw material and energy, avoids various machining operations. The most vital use of P/M is in production of metallic filters and self lubricating bush bearings and siding surfaces. The porosity of the part can be controlled by varying compaction pressure, sintering temperature and composition of metal powder mix. The present work is aimed for experimental analysis of friction and wear properties of self lubricating copper and tin bush bearing. Experimental results confirm that wear rate of sintered component is lesser for components having 10% tin by weight percentage. Wear rate increases for high tin percentage (experimented for 20% tin and 30% tin) at same sintering temperature. Experimental results also confirms that wear rate of sintered component is also dependent on sintering temperature, soaking period, composition of the preform, compacting pressure, powder particle shape and size. Interfacial friction between die and punch, between inter powder particles, between die face and powder particle depends on compaction pressure, powder particle size and shape, size and shape of component which decides size & shape of die & punch, material of die & punch and material of powder particles.

Keywords: Interfacial friction, porous bronze bearing, sintering temperature, wear rate.

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Authors: Seema Chopra, R. Mitra, Vijay Kumar

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A neurofuzzy approach for a given set of input-output training data is proposed in two phases. Firstly, the data set is partitioned automatically into a set of clusters. Then a fuzzy if-then rule is extracted from each cluster to form a fuzzy rule base. Secondly, a fuzzy neural network is constructed accordingly and parameters are tuned to increase the precision of the fuzzy rule base. This network is able to learn and optimize the rule base of a Sugeno like Fuzzy inference system using Hybrid learning algorithm, which combines gradient descent, and least mean square algorithm. This proposed neurofuzzy system has the advantage of determining the number of rules automatically and also reduce the number of rules, decrease computational time, learns faster and consumes less memory. The authors also investigate that how neurofuzzy techniques can be applied in the area of control theory to design a fuzzy controller for linear and nonlinear dynamic systems modelling from a set of input/output data. The simulation analysis on a wide range of processes, to identify nonlinear components on-linely in a control system and a benchmark problem involving the prediction of a chaotic time series is carried out. Furthermore, the well-known examples of linear and nonlinear systems are also simulated under the Matlab/Simulink environment. The above combination is also illustrated in modeling the relationship between automobile trips and demographic factors.

Keywords: Fuzzy control, neuro-fuzzy techniques, fuzzy subtractive clustering, extraction of rules, and optimization of membership functions.

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Authors: Sabri Mrayed, David Maccioni, Greg Leslie

Abstract:

Seawater desalination has been accepted as one of the most effective solutions to the growing problem of a diminishing clean drinking water supply. Currently two desalination technologies dominate the market – the thermally driven multi-stage flash distillation (MSF) and the membrane based reverse osmosis (RO). However, in recent years membrane distillation (MD) has emerged as a potential alternative to the established means of desalination. This research project intended to determine the viability of MD as an alternative process to MSF and RO for seawater desalination. Specifically the project involves conducting thermodynamic analysis of the process based on the second law of thermodynamics to determine the efficiency of the MD. Data was obtained from experiments carried out on a laboratory rig. To determine exergy values required for the exergy analysis, two separate models were built in Engineering Equation Solver – the ’Minimum Separation Work Model’ and the ‘Stream Exergy Model’. The efficiency of MD process was found to be 17.3 % and the energy consumption was determined to be 4.5 kWh to produce one cubic meter of fresh water. The results indicate MD has potential as a technique for seawater desalination compared to RO and MSF. However it was shown that this was only the case if an alternate energy source such as green or waste energy was available to provide the thermal energy input to the process. If the process was required to power itself, it was shown to be highly inefficient and in no way thermodynamically viable as a commercial desalination process.

Keywords: Desalination, Exergy, Membrane distillation, Second law efficiency.

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Authors: Jalal M. Abdallah

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There is a great problem in testing and investigations the reliability of different type of transformers insulation materials. It summarized in how to create and simulate the real conditions of working transformer and testing its insulation materials for Partial Discharge PD, typically as in the working mode. A lot of tests may give untrue results as the physical behavior of the insulation material differs under tests from its working condition. In this work, the real working conditions were simulated, and a large number of specimens have been tested. The investigations first stage, begin with choosing samples of different types of insulation materials (papers, pressboards, etc.). The second stage, the samples were dried in ovens at 105 C⁰and 0.01bar for 48 hours, and then impregnated with dried and gasless oil (the water content less than 6 ppm.) at 105 C⁰and 0.01bar for 48 hours, after so specimen cooling at room pressure and temperature for 24 hours. The third stage is investigating PD for the samples using ICM PD measuring device. After that, a continuous test on oil-impregnated insulation materials (paper, pressboards) was developed, and the phase resolved partial discharge pattern of PD signals was measured. The important of this work in providing the industrial sector with trusted high accurate measuring results based on real simulated working conditions. All the PD patterns (results) associated with a discharge produced in well-controlled laboratory condition. They compared with other previous and other laboratory results. In addition, the influence of different temperatures condition on the partial discharge activities was studied.

Keywords: Transformers, insulation materials, voids, partial discharge (PD).

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Authors: Teerapon Pirom, Ura Pancharoen

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Amoxicillin is an antibiotic which is widely used to treat various infections in both human beings and animals. However, when amoxicillin is released into the environment, it is a major problem. Amoxicillin causes bacterial resistance to these drugs and failure of treatment with antibiotics. Liquid membrane is of great interest as a promising method for the separation and recovery of the target ions from aqueous solutions due to the use of carriers for the transport mechanism, resulting in highly selectivity and rapid transportation of the desired metal ions. The simultaneous processes of extraction and stripping in a single unit operation of liquid membrane system are very interesting. Therefore, it is practical to apply liquid membrane, particularly the HFSLM for industrial applications as HFSLM is proved to be a separation process with lower capital and operating costs, low energy and extractant with long life time, high selectivity and high fluxes compared with solid membranes. It is a simple design amenable to scaling up for industrial applications. The extraction and recovery for (Amoxicillin) through the hollow fiber supported liquid membrane (HFSLM) using aliquat336 as a carrier were explored with the experimental data. The important variables affecting on transport of amoxicillin viz. extractant concentration and operating time were investigated. The highest AMOX- extraction percentages of 85.35 and Amoxicillin stripping of 80.04 were achieved with the best condition at 6 mmol/L [aliquat336] and operating time 100 min. The extraction reaction order (n) and the extraction reaction rate constant (kf) were found to be 1.00 and 0.0344 min-1, respectively.

Keywords: Aliquat336, amoxicillin, HFSLM, kinetic.

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Authors: Mohamed Belaid, Edison Muzenda, Getrude Mitilene, Mansoor Mollagee

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A feasibility study for the design and construction of a pilot plant for the extraction of castor oil in South Africa was conducted. The study emphasized the four critical aspects of project feasibility analysis, namely technical, financial, market and managerial aspects. The technical aspect involved research on existing oil extraction technologies, namely: mechanical pressing and solvent extraction, as well as assessment of the proposed production site for both short and long term viability of the project. The site is on the outskirts of Nkomazi village in the Mpumalanga province, where connections for water and electricity are currently underway, potential raw material supply proves to be reliable since the province is known for its commercial farming. The managerial aspect was evaluated based on the fact that the current producer of castor oil will be fully involved in the project while receiving training and technical assistance from Sasol Technology, the TSC and SEDA. Market and financial aspects were evaluated and the project was considered financially viable with a Net Present Value (NPV) of R2 731 687 and an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 18% at an annual interest rate of 10.5%. The payback time is 6years for analysis over the first 10 years with a net income of R1 971 000 in the first year. The project was thus found to be feasible with high chance of success while contributing to socio-economic development. It was recommended for lab tests to be conducted to establish process kinetics that would be used in the initial design of the plant.

Keywords: Mechanical pressing, Net Present Value, Oilextraction, Project feasibility, Solvent extraction

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