Search results for: frequency rate of change

Authors: Manal H. Saleh

Abstract:

A numerical study has been carried out to investigate the heat transfer by natural convection of nanofluid taking Cu as nanoparticles and the water as based fluid in a three dimensional annulus enclosure filled with porous media (silica sand) between two horizontal concentric cylinders with 12 annular fins of 2.4mm thickness attached to the inner cylinder under steady state conditions. The governing equations which used are continuity, momentum and energy equations under an assumptions used Darcy law and Boussinesq-s approximation which are transformed to dimensionless equations. The finite difference approach is used to obtain all the computational results using the MATLAB-7. The parameters affected on the system are modified Rayleigh number (10 ≤Ra*≤ 1000), fin length Hf (3, 7 and 11mm), radius ratio Rr (0.293, 0.365 and 0.435) and the volume fraction(0 ≤ ¤ò ≤ 0 .35). It was found that the average Nusselt number depends on (Ra*, Hf, Rr and φ). The results show that, increasing of fin length decreases the heat transfer rate and for low values of Ra*, decreasing Rr cause to decrease Nu while for Ra* greater than 100, decreasing Rr cause to increase Nu and adding Cu nanoparticles with 0.35 volume fraction cause 27.9% enhancement in heat transfer. A correlation for Nu in terms of Ra*, Hf and φ, has been developed for inner hot cylinder.

Keywords: Annular fins, laminar free convection, nanofluid, porous media, three dimensions horizontal annulus.

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Authors: Rachel Hurdley, Jane Hopkinson

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This article is based on observation of a cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional team that worked on an intervention called ‘Memory Mate’ for use in a UK Cancer Centre. This aimed to improve treatment outcomes for patients who had comorbid dementia or other memory impairment. Comorbid patients present ambiguous, spoiled identities, problematising the boundaries of health specialisms and frames of understanding. Memory Mate is theorised as a boundary object facilitating service transformation by changing relations between oncology and mental health care practice. It crosses the boundaries between oncology and mental health. Its introduction signifies an important step in reconfiguring relations between the specialisms. As a boundary object, it contains parallel, even contesting worlds, with potential to enable an eventual synthesis of the double stigma of cancer and dementia. Memory Mate comprises physical things, such as an animation, but its principal value is in the interaction it initiates across disciplines and services. It supports evolution of practices to address a newly emergent challenge for health service provision, namely the cancer patient with comorbid dementia/cognitive impairment. Getting clinicians from different disciplines working together on a practical solution generates a dialogue that can shift professional identity and change the culture of practice.

Keywords: Boundary object, cancer, dementia, interdisciplinary teams.

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Authors: Farhad Kolahan, Mehdi Heidari

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Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) processes is an important joining process widely used in metal fabrication industries. This paper addresses modeling and optimization of this technique using a set of experimental data and regression analysis. The set of experimental data has been used to assess the influence of GMAW process parameters in weld bead geometry. The process variables considered here include voltage (V); wire feed rate (F); torch Angle (A); welding speed (S) and nozzle-to-plate distance (D). The process output characteristics include weld bead height, width and penetration. The Taguchi method and regression modeling are used in order to establish the relationships between input and output parameters. The adequacy of the model is evaluated using analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. In the next stage, the proposed model is embedded into a Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm to optimize the GMAW process parameters. The objective is to determine a suitable set of process parameters that can produce desired bead geometry, considering the ranges of the process parameters. Computational results prove the effectiveness of the proposed model and optimization procedure.

Keywords: Weld Bead Geometry, GMAW welding, Processparameters Optimization, Modeling, SA algorithm

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Authors: H. Aldousari, T. Buchacher, N. M. Spyrou

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Cerium-doped lanthanum bromide LaBr3:Ce(5%) crystals are considered to be one of the most advanced scintillator materials used in PET scanning, combining a high light yield, fast decay time and excellent energy resolution. Apart from the correct choice of scintillator, it is also important to optimise the detector geometry, not least in terms of source-to-detector distance in order to obtain reliable measurements and efficiency. In this study a commercially available 25 mm x 25 mm BrilLanCeTM 380 LaBr3: Ce (5%) detector was characterised in terms of its efficiency at varying source-to-detector distances. Gamma-ray spectra of 22Na, 60Co, and 137Cs were separately acquired at distances of 5, 10, 15, and 20cm. As a result of the change in solid angle subtended by the detector, the geometric efficiency reduced in efficiency with increasing distance. High efficiencies at low distances can cause pulse pile-up when subsequent photons are detected before previously detected events have decayed. To reduce this systematic error the source-to-detector distance should be balanced between efficiency and pulse pile-up suppression as otherwise pile-up corrections would need to be necessary at short distances. In addition to the experimental measurements Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out for the same setup, allowing a comparison of results. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach have been highlighted.

Keywords: BrilLanCeTM380 LaBr3:Ce(5%), Coincidence summing, GATE simulation, Geometric efficiency

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Authors: Madhuri Bhavsar, Anupam K Singh, Shrikant Pradhan

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Long term rainfall analysis and prediction is a challenging task especially in the modern world where the impact of global warming is creating complications in environmental issues. These factors which are data intensive require high performance computational modeling for accurate prediction. This research paper describes a prototype which is designed and developed on grid environment using a number of coupled software infrastructural building blocks. This grid enabled system provides the demanding computational power, efficiency, resources, user-friendly interface, secured job submission and high throughput. The results obtained using sequential execution and grid enabled execution shows that computational performance has enhanced among 36% to 75%, for decade of climate parameters. Large variation in performance can be attributed to varying degree of computational resources available for job execution. Grid Computing enables the dynamic runtime selection, sharing and aggregation of distributed and autonomous resources which plays an important role not only in business, but also in scientific implications and social surroundings. This research paper attempts to explore the grid enabled computing capabilities on weather indices from HOAPS data for climate impact modeling and change detection.

Keywords: Climate model, Computational Grid, GridApplication, Heterogeneous Grid

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Authors: Wanwisa Kuncharin, Badaruddin Mohamed

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There have been few studies of cross-border shopping. However, many have focused on macroeconomic effects rather than on discovering the motivation and behaviour of cross-border shoppers who purchase abroad. Hatyai, Thailand is located about 30 km from the Malaysian border. The statistics reports that each year more than 400,000 Malaysian visitors visited Hatyai. The aims of this study are fourfold: (1) to investigate factors motivating cross-border shoppers to shop in Hatyai, Thailand; (2) to examine the relationship between ethnicity and shopper ethnocentrism; (3) to discover the impact of shopper ethnocentrism on foreign product judgment; and (4) to explore the impact of shopper ethnocentrism on the willingness to buy foreign products. The results reveal that the three most popular consumption items were food and beverages, clothing, and grocery products. Factor analysis shows that the three key reasons for choosing Hatyai as the cross-border shopping destination included product and store, close distance, and low exchange rate. Moreover, there were significant differences in ethnocentrism by three ethnic groups. Shopper ethnocentrism had a significant negative correlation with foreign product judgment, while shopper ethnocentrism was not significantly correlated with willingness to buy foreign products.

Keywords: Cross-border shopping behaviours, Malaysian shoppers, Ethnocentrism, Hatyai, Thailand.

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Authors: Somnath Dey, Debasis Samanta

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Iris-based biometric system is gaining its importance in several applications. However, processing of iris biometric is a challenging and time consuming task. Detection of iris part in an eye image poses a number of challenges such as, inferior image quality, occlusion of eyelids and eyelashes etc. Due to these problems it is not possible to achieve 100% accuracy rate in any iris-based biometric authentication systems. Further, iris detection is a computationally intensive task in the overall iris biometric processing. In this paper, we address these two problems and propose a technique to localize iris part efficiently and accurately. We propose scaling and color level transform followed by thresholding, finding pupil boundary points for pupil boundary detection and dilation, thresholding, vertical edge detection and removal of unnecessary edges present in the eye images for iris boundary detection. Scaling reduces the search space significantly and intensity level transform is helpful for image thresholding. Experimental results show that our approach is comparable with the existing approaches. Following our approach it is possible to detect iris part with 95-99% accuracy as substantiated by our experiments on CASIA Ver-3.0, ICE 2005, UBIRIS, Bath and MMU iris image databases.

Keywords: Iris recognition, iris localization, biometrics, image processing.

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Authors: Weinian Wang, Joseph C. Chen

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The objective of this research is to optimize the process of cutting cylindrical workpieces utilizing live tooling on a HAAS ST-20 lathe. Surface roughness (Ra) has been investigated as the indicator of quality characteristics for machining process. Aluminum alloy was used to conduct experiments due to its wide range usages in engineering structures and components where light weight or corrosion resistance is required. In this study, Taguchi methodology is utilized to determine the effects that each of the parameters has on surface roughness (Ra). A total of 18 experiments of each process were designed according to Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array (OA) with four control factors at three levels of each and signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) were computed with Smaller the better equation for minimizing the system. The optimal parameters identified for the surface roughness of the turning operation utilizing live tooling were a feed rate of 3 inches/min(A3); a spindle speed of 1300 rpm(B3); a 2-flute titanium nitrite coated 3/8” endmill (C1); and a depth of cut of 0.025 inches (D2). The mean surface roughness of the confirmation runs in turning operation was 8.22 micro inches. The final results demonstrate that Taguchi methodology is a sufficient way of process improvement in turning process on surface roughness.

Keywords: Live tooling, surface roughness, Taguchi Parameter Design, CNC turning operation.

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Authors: Shan Ding, Lijia Zhang, Hongming Xu

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this paper presents a novel scheme which is capable of reducing the error rate and improves the transmission performance in the asynchronous cooperative MIMO systems. A case study of image transmission is applied to prove the efficient of scheme. The linear dispersion structure is employed to accommodate the cooperative wireless communication network in the dynamic topology of structure, as well as to achieve higher throughput than conventional space–time codes based on orthogonal designs. The LDPC encoder without girth-4 and the STBC encoder with guard intervals are respectively introduced. The experiment results show that the combined coder of LDPC-STBC with guard intervals can be the good error correcting coders and BER performance in the asynchronous cooperative communication. In the case study of image transmission, the results show that in the transmission process, the image quality which is obtained by applied combined scheme is much better than it which is not applied the scheme in the asynchronous cooperative MIMO systems.

Keywords: Cooperative MIMO, image transmission, lineardispersion codes, Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC)

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Authors: Ana-Marija Stjepić, Dalia Suša Vugec

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Today, digital transformation is one of the leading topics that occupy the attention of scientific circles and business experts. Organizational success is most often reflected through the successful managing of business processes. Given the growing market for digital innovations and its ever-increasing impact on business, organizations need to be prepared for organizational changes that come with the digital era. In order to maintain their competitive advantage in the global market, organizations must adapt their processes to new digitalization conditions. The main goal of this study is to point out the link between the digital transformation and the business process management concept. Therefore, in order to contribute to the scientific field that explores the potential relation between business process management concept and digital transformation, a literature review has been conducted. Papers have been searched within the Business Process Management Journal by keywords related to the term digital transformation. Selected papers have been analyzed according to the topic, type of publication, year of publication, keywords, etc. The results reveal a growing number of papers published on the topic of digital transformation to the Business Process Management Journal, but the lack of case studies. This paper contributes to the extension of academic literature in this important, yet insufficiently researched, scientific field that creates the bond between two strong concepts of digital transformation and business process management.

Keywords: Business process management, digital transformation, digitalization, process change.

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Authors: Lynette Sheridan Burns, Benjamin J. Matthews

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The context of post-industrial journalism is one in which the material circumstances of mechanical publication have been displaced by digital technologies, increasing the distance between the orthodoxy of the newsroom and the culture of journalistic writing. Content is, with growing frequency, created for delivery via the internet, publication on web-based ‘platforms’ and consumption on screen media. In this environment, the question is not ‘who is a journalist?’ but ‘what is journalism?’ today. The changes bring into sharp relief new distinctions between journalistic work and journalistic labor, providing a key insight into the current transition between the industrial journalism of the 20^th century, and the post-industrial journalism of the present. In the 20^th century, the work of journalists and journalistic labor went hand-in-hand as most journalists were employees of news organizations, whilst in the 21^st century evidence of a decoupling of ‘acts of journalism’ (work) and journalistic employment (labor) is beginning to appear. This 'decoupling' of the work and labor that underpins journalism practice is far reaching in its implications, not least for institutional structures. Under these conditions we are witnessing the emergence of expanded ‘entrepreneurial’ journalism, based on smaller, more independent and agile - if less stable - enterprise constructs that are a feature of creative industries. Entrepreneurial journalism is realized in a range of organizational forms from social enterprise, through to profit driven start-ups and hybrids of the two. In all instances, however, the primary motif of the organization is an ideological definition of journalism. An example is the Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism in New Zealand, which owns and operates Scoop Publishing Limited, a not for profit company and social enterprise that publishes an independent news site that claims to have over 500,000 monthly users. Our paper demonstrates that this journalistic work meets the ideological definition of journalism; conducted within the creative industries using an innovative organizational structure that offers a new, viable post-industrial future for journalism.

Keywords: Creative industries, digital communication, journalism, post-industrial.

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Authors: Zakaria Smahi, Khadidja Remaoun, Fatima Achouri

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Bir El Djir is an important coastal township in Oran department, located at 450 Km far away from Algiers on northwest of Algeria. In this coastal area, the urban sprawl is one of the main problems that reduce the limited highly fertile land. So, using the remote sensing and GIS technologies have shown their great capabilities to solve many earth resources issues. The aim of this study is to produce land use and cover map for the studied area at varied periods to monitor possible changes that may occurred, particularly in the urban areas and subsequently predict likely changes. For this, two spatial images SPOT and Landsat satellites from 1987 and 2014 respectively were used to assess the changes of urban expansion and encroachment during this period with photo-interpretation and GIS approach. The results revealed that the town of Bir El Djir has shown a highest growth rate in the period 1987-2014 which is 1201.5 hectares in terms of area. These expansions largely concern the new real estate constructions falling within the social and promotional housing programs launched by the government. The most urban expansion is characterized by the new construction in the form of spontaneous or peripheral precarious habitat, but also unstructured slums settled especially in the southeastern part of town.

Keywords: Urban expansion, Remote Sensing, Photointerpretation, Spatial dynamics.

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Authors: Mohammed A. Elhaj, Jamal S. Yassin

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This paper presents the exergy analysis of a desalination unit using humidification-dehumidification process. Here, this unit is considered as a thermal system with three main components, which are the heating unit by using a solar collector, the evaporator or the humidifier, and the condenser or the dehumidifier. In these components the exergy is a measure of the quality or grade of energy and it can be destroyed in them. According to the second law of thermodynamics this destroyed part is due to irreversibilities which must be determined to obtain the exergetic efficiency of the system. In the current paper a computer program has been developed using visual basic to determine the exergy destruction and the exergetic efficiencies of the components of the desalination unit at variable operation conditions such as feed water temperature, outlet air temperature, air to feed water mass ratio and salinity, in addition to cooling water mass flow rate and inlet temperature, as well as quantity of solar irradiance. The results obtained indicate that the exergy efficiency of the humidifier increases by increasing the mass ratio and decreasing the outlet air temperature. In the other hand the exergy efficiency of the condenser increases with the increase of this ratio and also with the increase of the outlet air temperature.

Keywords: Exergy analysis, desalination, solar, humidifier, condenser.

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Authors: S. Jursová, P. Pustějovská, S. Brožová, J. Bilík

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The paper deals with possibilities of interpretation of iron ore reducibility tests. It presents a mathematical model developed at Centre ENET, VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic for an evaluation of metallurgical material of blast furnace feedstock such as iron ore, sinter or pellets. According to the data from the test, the model predicts its usage in blast furnace technology and its effects on production parameters of shaft aggregate. At the beginning, the paper sums up the general concept and experience in mathematical modelling of iron ore reduction. It presents basic equation for the calculation and the main parts of the developed model. In the experimental part, there is an example of usage of the mathematical model. The paper describes the usage of data for some predictive calculation. There are presented material, method of carried test of iron ore reducibility. Then there are graphically interpreted effects of used material on carbon consumption, rate of direct reduction and the whole reduction process.

Keywords: Blast furnace technology, iron ore reduction, mathematical model, prediction of iron ore reduction.

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Authors: Ahmad Amiri, Hamed K. Arzani, S. N. Kazi, B. T. Chew

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Since graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) is a promising material due to desirable thermal properties, this paper is related to the thermophysical and heat transfer performance of covalently functionalized GNP-based water/ethylene glycol nanofluid through an annular channel. After experimentally measuring thermophysical properties of prepared samples, a computational fluid dynamics study has been carried out to examine the heat transfer and pressure drop of well-dispersed and stabilized nanofluids. The effect of concentration of GNP and Reynolds number at constant wall temperature boundary condition under turbulent flow regime on convective heat transfer coefficient has been investigated. Based on the results, for different Reynolds numbers, the convective heat transfer coefficient of the prepared nanofluid is higher than that of the base fluid. Also, the enhancement of convective heat transfer coefficient and thermal conductivity increase with the increase of GNP concentration in base-fluid. Based on the results of this investigation, there is a significant enhancement on the heat transfer rate associated with loading well-dispersed GNP in base-fluid.

Keywords: Nanofluid, turbulent flow, forced convection flow, graphene, annular, annulus.

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Authors: V. Heral

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Ideas about the mechanism of heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenation are diverse. The Horiuti-Polanyi mechanism is most often referred to base on the idea of a semi-hydrogenated state. In our opinion, it does not represent a satisfactory explanation of the hydrogenation mechanism because, for example, (1) It neglects the fact that the bond of atomic hydrogen to the metal surface is strongly polarized, (2) It does not explain why a surface deprived of atomic hydrogen (by thermal desorption or by alkyne) loses isomerization capabilities, but hydrogenation capabilities remain preserved, (3) It was observed that during the hydrogenation of 1-alkenes, the reaction can be of the 0th order to hydrogen and to the alkene at the same time, which is excluded during the competitive adsorption of both reactants on the catalyst surface. We offer an alternative mechanism that satisfactorily explains many of the ambiguities: It is the idea of an independent course of olefin isomerization, catalyzed by acidic atomic hydrogen bonded on the surface of the catalyst, in addition to the hydrogenation itself, in which a two-layer complex appears on the surface of the catalyst: olefin bound to the surface and molecular hydrogen bound to it in the second layer. The rate-determining step of hydrogenation is the conversion of this complex into the final product. In our opinion, the Horiuti-Polanyi mechanism is flawed, and we naturally think that our two-layer theory better describes the experimental findings.

Keywords: Acidity of hydrogenation catalyst, Horiuti-Polanyi, hydrogenation, two-layer hydrogenation.

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Authors: M. S. Mahmoud

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This study was conducted to evaluate the manganese removal from aqueous solution using Banana peels activated carbon (BPAC). Batch experiments have been carried out to determine the influence of parameters such as pH, biosorbent dose, initial metal ion concentrations and contact times on the biosorption process. From these investigations, a significant increase in percentage removal of manganese 97.4% is observed at pH value 5.0, biosorbent dose 0.8 g, initial concentration 20 ppm, temperature 25 ± 2°C, stirring rate 200 rpm and contact time 2h. The equilibrium concentration and the adsorption capacity at equilibrium of the experimental results were fitted to the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models; the Langmuir isotherm was found to well represent the measured adsorption data implying BPAC had heterogeneous surface. A raw groundwater samples were collected from Baharmos groundwater treatment plant network at Embaba and Manshiet Elkanater City/District-Giza, Egypt, for treatment at the best conditions that reached at first phase by BPAC. The treatment with BPAC could reduce iron and manganese value of raw groundwater by 91.4% and 97.1%, respectively and the effect of the treatment process on the microbiological properties of groundwater sample showed decrease of total bacterial count either at 22°C or at 37°C to 85.7% and 82.4%, respectively. Also, BPAC was characterized using SEM and FTIR spectroscopy.

Keywords: Biosorption, banana peels, isothermal models, manganese.

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Authors: Kevin Fong-Rey Liu, Ken Yeh, Cheng-Wu Chen, Han-Hsi Liang

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The sanitary sewerage connection rate becomes an important indicator of advanced cities. Following the construction of sanitary sewerages, the maintenance and management systems are required for keeping pipelines and facilities functioning well. These maintenance tasks often require sewer workers to enter the manholes and the pipelines, which are confined spaces short of natural ventilation and full of hazardous substances. Working in sewers could be easily exposed to a risk of adverse health effects. This paper proposes the use of Bayesian belief networks (BBN) as a higher level of noncarcinogenic health risk assessment of sewer workers. On the basis of the epidemiological studies, the actual hospital attendance records and expert experiences, the BBN is capable of capturing the probabilistic relationships between the hazardous substances in sewers and their adverse health effects, and accordingly inferring the morbidity and mortality of the adverse health effects. The provision of the morbidity and mortality rates of the related diseases is more informative and can alleviate the drawbacks of conventional methods.

Keywords: Bayesian belief networks, sanitary sewerage, healthrisk assessment, hazard quotient, target organ-specific hazard index.

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Authors: B. O. Diyaolu

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The opportunity provided by advances in technology as regard to sports betting is so numerous. Nigerian youth are not left out especially with the use of phones and visit to sports betting outlets. Today, it is more difficult to differentiate a true fan as there are quite a number of them that became fans as a result of betting on live games. This study investigated the influence of online sports events on betting among Nigerian youth. A descriptive survey research design was used and the population consists of all Nigerian youth that engages in betting and lives within the southwest zone of Nigeria. A simple random sampling technique was used to pick three states from the southwest zone of Nigeria. 2500 respondents comprising of males and females were sampled from the three states. A structured questionnaire on Online Sports Event Contribution to Sports Betting (OSECSB) was used. The instrument consists of three sections. Section A seeks information on the demographic data of the respondents. Section B seeks information on online sports events while section C was used to extract information on sports betting. The modified instrument which consists of 14 items has a reliability coefficient of 0.74. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 significance level. The completed questionnaire was collated, coded, and analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentage and pie chart, and inferential statistics of multiple regressions. The findings of this study revealed that online sports betting is a significant predictor of an increase in sports betting among Nigerian youth. The media and television, as well as globalization and the internet, coupled with social media and various online platforms, have all contributed to the immense increase in sports betting. The increase in the advertisement of the betting platform during live matches, especially football, is becoming more alarming. In most organized international events, the media attention, as well as sponsorship rights, are now been given to one or two betting platforms. There is a need for all stakeholders to put in place school-based intervention programs to reorientate our youth about the consequences of addiction to betting. Such programs must include meta-analyses and emotional control towards sports betting.

Keywords: Betting platform, Nigerian fans, Nigerian youth, sports betting.

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Authors: M. Azadi, M. Kalhor

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Excavation of shallow tunnels such as subways in urban areas plays a significant role as a life line and investigation of the soil behavior against tunnel construction is one of the vital subjects studied in the geotechnical scope. Nowadays, urban tunnels are mostly drilled by T.B.Ms and changing the applied forces to tunnel lining is one of the most risky matters while drilling tunnels by these machines. Variation of soil cementation can change the behavior of these forces in the tunnel lining. Therefore, this article is designed to assess the impact of tunnel excavation in different soils and several amounts of cementation on applied loads to tunnel lining under static and dynamic loads. According to the obtained results, changing the cementation of soil will affect the applied loadings to the tunnel envelope significantly. It can be determined that axial force in tunnel lining decreases considerably when soil cementation increases. Also, bending moment and shear force in tunnel lining decreases as the soil cementation increases and causes bending and shear behavior of the segments to improve. Based on the dynamic analyses, as cohesion factor in soil increases, bending moment, axial and shear forces of segments decrease but lining behavior of the tunnel is the same as static state. The results show that decreasing the overburden applied to lining caused by cementation is different in two static and dynamic states.

Keywords: Tunnel, Soil cementation, Static, Dynamic.

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Authors: Jin A Ryu, Ga Ye Kim, Hee Sun Kim

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As the number of fire accidents is gradually raising, many studies have been reported on evacuation. Previous studies have mostly focused on evaluating the safety of evacuation and the risk of fire in particular buildings. However, studies on effects of various parameters on evacuation have not been nearly done. Therefore, this paper aims at observing evacuation time under the effect of fire initiated location. In this study, evacuation simulations are performed on a 5-floor building located in Seoul, South Korea using the commercial program, Fire Dynamics Simulator with Evacuation (FDS+EVAC). Only the fourth and fifth floors are modeled with an assumption that fire starts in a room located on the fourth floor. The parameter for evacuation simulations is location of fire initiation to observe the evacuation time and safety. Results show that the location of fire initiation is closer to exit, the more time is taken to evacuate. The case having the nearest location of fire initiation to exit has the lowest ratio of successful occupants to the total occupants. In addition, for safety evaluation, the evacuation time calculated from computer simulation model is compared with the tolerable evacuation time according to code in Japan. As a result, all cases are completed within the tolerable evacuation time. This study allows predicting evacuation time under various conditions of fire and can be used to evaluate evacuation appropriateness and fire safety of building.

Keywords: Evacuation safety, Evacuation simulation, FDS+Evac, Time.

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Authors: Nacim Khelil, Amar Kahil, Said Boukais

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The aim of the present study is to investigate the changes in the mechanical properties of mortars including additions of Condensed Silica Fume (CSF), Hydrated Lime (CH) or both at various amounts (5% to 15% of cement replacement) and high water ratios (w/b) (0.4 to 0.7). The physical and mechanical changes in the mixes were evaluated using non-destructive tests (Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV)) and destructive tests (crushing tests) on 28 day-long specimens consecutively, in order to assess CSF and CH replacement rate influence on the mechanical and physical properties of the mortars, as well as CSF-CH pre-mixing on the improvement of these properties. A significant improvement of the mechanical properties of the CSF, CSF-CH mortars, has been noted. CSF-CH mixes showed the best improvements exceeding 50% improvement, showing the sizable pozzolanic reaction contribution to the specimen strength development. UPV tests have shown increased velocities for CSF and CSH mixes, however no proportional evolution with compressive strengths could be noted. The results of the study show that CSF-CH addition could represent a suitable solution to significantly increase the mechanical properties of mortars.

Keywords: Compressive strength, condensed silica fume, hydrated lime, pozzolanic reaction, UPV testing.

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Authors: Sh. Edrisi, A. Farahbakhsh

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An experiment was conducted under controlled conditions to study the effect of water extract of leaves, shoots and roots of either Sisymbrium irio L. =SISIR and or Descurainia sophia (L.) Schur =DESSO on the germination and primary growth of barley. A split-split plot experiment in CRD with three replications was used. The main plots were the type of weed: i.e. SISIR and DESSO and the sub-plots were type of organ: i.e. leaf, stem and root and, the sub-sub plots were concentration of the water extract of each organ of the weeds: i.e. 0, 2, 4 and 8 % w/v. The results showed that the SISIR water extracts had a greater inhibitory effects on the germination and primary growth of barley than those of DESSO water extracts. The water extracts of the leaves of both weeds had the greatest inhibitory effects on the germination and primary growth of barley, compared to those of stems and roots. Increasing the concentration of water extracts of leaves, stems and roots of both weeds up to 8 % caused the greatest inhibitory effects to barley and reduced the germination rate and primary growth of it linearly.

Keywords: Allelopathy, barley, DESSO, SISIR

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Authors: D. I. Ekine, C. C. Akpanibah

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This paper analyses the productivity of median scale battery cage and deep litter chicken egg producers in Rivers State, Nigeria. 90 battery cage and 90 deep litter farmers giving a total of 180 farmers were sampled through a multistage sampling procedure. Mean productivity was higher for the battery cage than the deep litter farmers at 2.65 and 2.33 respectively. Productivity of battery cage farmers were positively influenced by age, extension contacts, experience and feed quantity while the productivity of deep litter farmers was positively influenced by age, extension contacts, household size, experience and labour. The major constraints identified by both categories are high cost of feed, high price of day-old chick, inadequate finance, lack of credit and high cost of drug/vaccination. Furthermore, the work recommends that government should assist chicken egg farmers through subsidies of input resources and put policies to make financial institutions give out loans at low interest rate to the farmers. The farmers should abide by the recommended number of birds per unit area while stocking.

Keywords: Productivity, battery cage, deep litter, median scale, egg production.

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Authors: Chien-Lung Chen, Jeng-Lin Tsai, Feng-Chao Chung, Su-Ching Kuo, Kuo-Hsin Tseng, Pei-Hsuan Kuo, Li-Ying Hsieh, Ying I. Tsai

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This study applied the Gaussian trajectory transfer-coefficient model (GTx) to simulate the particulate matter concentrations and the source apportionments at Nanzih Air Quality Monitoring Station in southern Taiwan from November 2007 to February 2008. The correlation coefficient between the observed and the calculated daily PM10 concentrations is 0.5 and the absolute bias of the PM10 concentrations is 24%. The simulated PM10 concentrations matched well with the observed data. Although the emission rate of PM10 was dominated by area sources (58%), the results of source apportionments indicated that the primary sources for PM10 at Nanzih Station were point sources (42%), area sources (20%) and then upwind boundary concentration (14%). The obvious difference of PM10 source apportionment between episode and non-episode days was upwind boundary concentrations which contributed to 20% and 11% PM10 sources, respectively. The gas-particle conversion of secondary aerosol and long range transport played crucial roles on the PM10 contribution to a receptor.

Keywords: back trajectory model, particulate matter, sourceapportionment

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Authors: Mildred Moreno Villanueva

Abstract:

Public space is essential to strengthen the social and urban fabric and the social cohesion; there lies the importance of its study. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyze the quality of public space in the XXI century in both quantitative and qualitative terms. In this article, the concept of public space includes open spaces such as parks, public squares and walking areas. To make this analysis, we take Mexico City as the case study. It has a population of nearly 9 million inhabitants and is composed of sixteen boroughs. For this analysis, we consider both existing public spaces and the government intervention for building and improving new and existent public spaces. Results show that on the one hand, quantitatively there is not an equitable distribution of public spaces due to both the growth of the city itself as well as due to the absence of political will to create public spaces. Another factor is the evolution of this city, which has been growing merely in a “patched pattern”, where public space has played no role at all with a total absence of urban design. On the other hand, qualitatively, even the boroughs with the most public spaces have not shown interest in making these spaces qualitatively inclusive and open to the general population aiming for integration. Therefore, urban projects that privatize public space seem to be the rule, rather than a rehabilitation effort of the existent public spaces. Hence, state intervention should reinforce its role as an agent of social change acting in benefit of the majority of the inhabitants with the promotion of more inclusive public spaces.

Keywords: Exclusion, inclusion, Mexico City, public space.

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Authors: Nguyen Anh Dzung, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hà, Dang Thi Hong Van, Nguyen Thi Lan Phuong, Nguyen Thi Nhu Quynh, Dinh Minh Hiep, Le Van Hiep

Abstract:

The aims of this paper are to study the efficacy of chitosan nanoparticles in stimulating specific antibody against A/H1N1 influenza antigen in mice. Chitosan nanoparticles (CSN) were characterized by TEM. The results showed that the average size of CSN was from 80nm to 106nm. The efficacy of A/H1N1 influenza vaccine loaded on the surface of CSN showed that loading efficiency of A/H1N1 influenza antigen on CSN was from 93.75 to 100%. Safe property of the vaccine were tested. In 10 days post vaccination, group of CSN 30 kDa and 300 kDa loaded A/H1N1 influenza antigen were the rate of immune response on mice to be 100% (9/9) higher than Al(OH)3 and other adjuvant. 100% mice in the experiment of all groups had immune response in 20 days post vaccination. The results also showed that HI titer of the group using CSN 300 kDa as an adjuvant increased significantly up to 3971 HIU, over three-fold higher than the Al(OH)3 adjuvant, chitosan (CS), and one hundredfold than the A/H1N1 antigen only. Stability of the vaccine formulation was investigated.

Keywords: Chitosan nanoparticles, A/H1N1 influenza antigen, vaccine, immunogenicity, adjuvant, antibody titer

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Authors: Agus Harjoko, Sri Hartati, Henry Dwiyasa

Abstract:

There have been numerous implementations of security system using biometric, especially for identification and verification cases. An example of pattern used in biometric is the iris pattern in human eye. The iris pattern is considered unique for each person. The use of iris pattern poses problems in encoding the human iris. In this research, an efficient iris recognition method is proposed. In the proposed method the iris segmentation is based on the observation that the pupil has lower intensity than the iris, and the iris has lower intensity than the sclera. By detecting the boundary between the pupil and the iris and the boundary between the iris and the sclera, the iris area can be separated from pupil and sclera. A step is taken to reduce the effect of eyelashes and specular reflection of pupil. Then the four levels Coiflet wavelet transform is applied to the extracted iris image. The modified Hamming distance is employed to measure the similarity between two irises. This research yields the identification success rate of 84.25% for the CASIA version 1.0 database. The method gives an accuracy of 77.78% for the left eyes of MMU 1 database and 86.67% for the right eyes. The time required for the encoding process, from the segmentation until the iris code is generated, is 0.7096 seconds. These results show that the accuracy and speed of the method is better than many other methods.

Keywords: Biometric, iris recognition, wavelet transform.

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Authors: Shashank N. Mathur, Anil K. Ahlawat, Virendra P. Vishwakarma

Abstract:

In this paper, a comparative study of application of supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms on illumination invariant face recognition has been carried out. The supervised learning has been carried out with the help of using a bi-layered artificial neural network having one input, two hidden and one output layer. The gradient descent with momentum and adaptive learning rate back propagation learning algorithm has been used to implement the supervised learning in a way that both the inputs and corresponding outputs are provided at the time of training the network, thus here is an inherent clustering and optimized learning of weights which provide us with efficient results.. The unsupervised learning has been implemented with the help of a modified Counterpropagation network. The Counterpropagation network involves the process of clustering followed by application of Outstar rule to obtain the recognized face. The face recognition system has been developed for recognizing faces which have varying illumination intensities, where the database images vary in lighting with respect to angle of illumination with horizontal and vertical planes. The supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms have been implemented and have been tested exhaustively, with and without application of histogram equalization to get efficient results.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Networks, back propagation, Counterpropagation networks, face recognition, learning algorithms.

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Authors: P. Garbagnoli, M. Musitelli, B. Del Curto, MP. Pedeferri

Abstract:

The study and development of an innovative material for building insulation is really important for a sustainable society in order to improve comfort and reducing energy consumption. The aim of this work is the development of insulating panels for sustainable buildings based on an innovative material made by cardboard and Phase Change Materials (PCMs). The research has consisted in laboratory tests whose purpose has been the obtaining of the required properties for insulation panels: lightweight, porous structures and mechanical resistance. PCMs have been used for many years in the building industry as smart insulation technology because of their properties of storage and release high quantity of latent heat at useful specific temperatures [1]- [2]. The integration of PCMs into cellulose matrix during the waste paper recycling process has been developed in order to obtain a composite material. Experiments on the productive process for the realization of insulating panels were done in order to make the new material suitable for building application. The addition of rising agents demonstrated the possibility to obtain a lighter structure with better insulation properties. Several tests were conducted to verify the new panel properties. The results obtained have shown the possibility to realize an innovative and sustainable material suitable to replace insulating panels currently used.

Keywords: Sustainability, recycling, waste cardboard, PCM, cladding system, insulating materials.

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