Search results for: social work practice

Authors: Paola Gattinoni, Laura Scesi, Elena Cerino Adbin, Daniele Cremonesi

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The interaction of tunneling or mining with groundwater has become a very relevant problem not only due to the need to guarantee the safety of workers and to assure the efficiency of the tunnel drainage systems, but also to safeguard water resources from impoverishment and pollution risk. Therefore it is very important to forecast the drainage processes (i.e., the evaluation of drained discharge and drawdown caused by the excavation). The aim of this study was to know better the system and to quantify the flow drained from the Fontane mines, located in Val Germanasca (Turin, Italy). This allowed to understand the hydrogeological local changes in time. The work has therefore been structured as follows: the reconstruction of the conceptual model with the geological, hydrogeological and geological-structural study; the calculation of the tunnel inflows (through the use of structural methods) and the comparison with the measured flow rates; the water balance at the basin scale. In this way it was possible to understand what are the relationships between rainfall, groundwater level variations and the effect of the presence of tunnels as a means of draining water. Subsequently, it the effects produced by the excavation of the mining tunnels was quantified, through numerical modeling. In particular, the modeling made it possible to observe the drawdown variation as a function of number, excavation depth and different mines linings.

Keywords: Groundwater, Italy, numerical model, tunneling.

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Authors: Hassan Attahiru Gwandu

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This study aims at surveying and analyzing the contribution of Sokoto scholars or Sokoto Caliphate in the development of science and technology in West Africa. Today, it is generally accepted that the 19^th century Islamic revivalism in Hausaland was a very important revolution in the history of Hausa society and beyond. It is therefore, as a result of this movement or Jihad; the Hausaland (West Africa in general) witnessed several changes and transformations. These changes were in different sectors of life from politics, economy to social and religious aspect. It is these changes especially on religion that will be given considerations in this paper. The jihad resulted is the establishment of an Islamic state of Sokoto Caliphate, the revival Islam and development of learning and scholarship. During the existence of this Caliphate, a great deal of scholarship on Islamic laws were revived, written and documented by mostly, the three Jihad leaders; Usmanu Danfodiyo, his brother Abdullahi Fodiyo and his son Muhammad Bello. The trio had written more than one thousand books and made several verdicts on Islamic medicine. This study therefore, seeks to find out the contributions of these scholars or the Sokoto caliphate in the development of science in West Africa.

Keywords: Sokoto Caliphate, scholarship, science and technology, West Africa.

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Authors: Cuneyt Yucelbas, Seral Ozsen, Sule Yucelbas, Gulay Tezel

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Due to the fact that there exist only a small number of complex systems in artificial immune system (AIS) that work out nonlinear problems, nonlinear AIS approaches, among the well-known solution techniques, need to be developed. Gaussian function is usually used as similarity estimation in classification problems and pattern recognition. In this study, diagnosis of breast cancer, the second type of the most widespread cancer in women, was performed with different distance calculation functions that euclidean, gaussian and gaussian-euclidean hybrid function in the clonal selection model of classical AIS on Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset (WBCD), which was taken from the University of California, Irvine Machine-Learning Repository. We used 3-fold cross validation method to train and test the dataset. According to the results, the maximum test classification accuracy was reported as 97.35% by using of gaussian-euclidean hybrid function for fold-3. Also, mean of test classification accuracies for all of functions were obtained as 94.78%, 94.45% and 95.31% with use of euclidean, gaussian and gaussian-euclidean, respectively. With these results, gaussian-euclidean hybrid function seems to be a potential distance calculation method, and it may be considered as an alternative distance calculation method for hard nonlinear classification problems.

Keywords: Artificial Immune System, Breast Cancer Diagnosis, Euclidean Function, Gaussian Function.

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Authors: Taha Bensiradj, Samira Moussaoui

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Hybrid Sensors and Vehicular Networks (HSVN), represent a hybrid network, which uses several generations of Ad-Hoc networks. It is used especially in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). The HSVN allows making collaboration between the Wireless Sensors Network (WSN) deployed on the border of the road and the Vehicular Network (VANET). This collaboration is defined by messages exchanged between the two networks for the purpose to inform the drivers about the state of the road, provide road safety information and more information about traffic on the road. Moreover, this collaboration created by HSVN, also allows the use of a network and the advantage of improving another network. For example, the dissemination of information between the sensors quickly decreases its energy, and therefore, we can use vehicles that do not have energy constraint to disseminate the information between sensors. On the other hand, to solve the disconnection problem in VANET, the sensors can be used as gateways that allow sending the messages received by one vehicle to another. However, because of the short communication range of the sensor and its low capacity of storage and processing of data, it is difficult to ensure the exchange of road messages between it and the vehicle, which can be moving at high speed at the time of exchange. This represents the time where the vehicle is in communication range with the sensor. This work is the proposition of a communication protocol between the sensors and the vehicle used in HSVN. The latter has as the purpose to ensure the exchange of road messages in the available time of exchange.

Keywords: HSVN, ITS, VANET, WSN.

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Authors: Nuttanuch Munsakorn

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This questionnaire-based study, aimed to measure and compare the awareness of English reading strategies among EFL learners at Bangkok University (BU) classified by their gender, field of study, and English learning experience. Proportional stratified random sampling was employed to formulate a sample of 380 BU students. The data were statistically analyzed in terms of the mean and standard deviation. t-Test analysis was used to find differences in awareness of reading strategies between two groups (-male and female- /-science and social-science students). In addition, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare reading strategy awareness among BU students with different lengths of English learning experience. The results of this study indicated that the overall awareness of reading strategies of EFL learners at BU was at a high level (ðÑ = 3.60) and that there was no statistically significant difference between males and females, and among students who have different lengths of English learning experience at the significance level of 0.05. However, significant differences among students coming from different fields of study were found at the same level of significance.

Keywords: EFL learners, higher education, reading comprehension, reading strategies

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Authors: H. Iranmanesh, M. R. Skandari, M. Allahverdiloo

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Project managers are the ultimate responsible for the overall characteristics of a project, i.e. they should deliver the project on time with minimum cost and with maximum quality. It is vital for any manager to decide a trade-off between these conflicting objectives and they will be benefited of any scientific decision support tool. Our work will try to determine optimal solutions (rather than a single optimal solution) from which the project manager will select his desirable choice to run the project. In this paper, the problem in project scheduling notated as (1,T|cpm,disc,mu|curve:quality,time,cost) will be studied. The problem is multi-objective and the purpose is finding the Pareto optimal front of time, cost and quality of a project (curve:quality,time,cost), whose activities belong to a start to finish activity relationship network (cpm) and they can be done in different possible modes (mu) which are non-continuous or discrete (disc), and each mode has a different cost, time and quality . The project is constrained to a non-renewable resource i.e. money (1,T). Because the problem is NP-Hard, to solve the problem, a meta-heuristic is developed based on a version of genetic algorithm specially adapted to solve multi-objective problems namely FastPGA. A sample project with 30 activities is generated and then solved by the proposed method.

Keywords: FastPGA, Multi-Execution Activity Mode, Pareto Optimality, Project Scheduling, Time-Cost-Quality Trade-Off.

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Authors: U. Achutha Kini, S. S. Sharma, K. Jagannath, P. R. Prabhu, Gowri Shankar M. C.

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Aluminium matrix composites with alumina reinforcements give superior mechanical & physical properties. Their applications in several fields like automobile, aerospace, defense, sports, electronics, bio-medical and other industrial purposes are becoming essential for the last several decades. In the present work, fabrication of hybrid composite was done by Stir casting technique using Al 6061 as a matrix with alumina and silicon carbide (SiC) as reinforcement materials. The weight percentage of alumina is varied from 2 to 4% and the silicon carbide weight percentage is maintained constant at 2%. Hardness and wear tests are performed in the as cast and heat treated conditions. Age hardening treatment was performed on the specimen with solutionizing at 550°C, aging at two temperatures (150 and 200°C) for different time durations. Hardness distribution curves are drawn and peak hardness values are recorded. Hardness increase was very sensitive with respect to the decrease in aging temperature. There was an improvement in wear resistance of the peak aged material when aged at lower temperature. Also increase in weight percent of alumina, increases wear resistance at lower temperature but opposite behavior was seen when aged at higher temperature.

Keywords: Hybrid composite, hardness test, wear test, heat treatment, pin on disc wear testing machine.

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Authors: Gizelle K. Vianna, Gabriel V. Cunha, Gustavo S. Oliveira

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Foliage diseases in plants can cause a reduction in both quality and quantity of agricultural production. Intelligent detection of plant diseases is an essential research topic as it may help monitoring large fields of crops by automatically detecting the symptoms of foliage diseases. This work investigates ways to recognize the late blight disease from the analysis of tomato digital images, collected directly from the field. A pair of multilayer perceptron neural network analyzes the digital images, using data from both RGB and HSL color models, and classifies each image pixel. One neural network is responsible for the identification of healthy regions of the tomato leaf, while the other identifies the injured regions. The outputs of both networks are combined to generate the final classification of each pixel from the image and the pixel classes are used to repaint the original tomato images by using a color representation that highlights the injuries on the plant. The new images will have only green, red or black pixels, if they came from healthy or injured portions of the leaf, or from the background of the image, respectively. The system presented an accuracy of 97% in detection and estimation of the level of damage on the tomato leaves caused by late blight.

Keywords: Artificial neural networks, digital image processing, pattern recognition.

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Authors: Rosaline Govender

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This research study is an exploration of the selfdirected professional development of teachers who teach in public schools in an era of democracy and educational change in South Africa. Amidst an ever-changing educational system, the teachers in this study position themselves as self-directed teacher-learners where they adopt particular learning practices which enable change within the broader discourses of public schooling. Life-story interviews were used to enter into the private and public spaces of five teachers which offer glimpses of how particular systems shaped their identities, and how the meanings of self-directed teacher-learner shaped their learning practices. Through the Multidimensional Framework of Analysis and Interpretation the teachers’ stories were analysed through three lenses: restorying the field texts - the self through story; the teacher-learner in relation to social contexts, and practices of self-directed learning. This study shows that as teacherlearners learn for change through self-directed learning practices, they develop their agency as transformative intellectuals, which is necessary for the reworking of South African public schools.

Keywords: Professional development, professionality, professionalism, self-directed learning.

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Authors: Mitja Dečman

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The ever-increasing presence and use of information and communication technology (ICT) influences the different social relationships of today's society. Gender differences are especially important from the viewpoint of modern society since ICT can either deepen the existing inequalities or diminish them. In a developed Western world, gender equality has been a well-focused area for decades in many parts of society including education, employment or politics and has led to a decrease in the inequality of women and men in these and other areas. The area of digital equality, or inequality for that matter, is one of the areas where gender differences still exist in many countries of the world. The research presented in this paper focuses on Slovenia, one of the smallest EU member states, being an average achiever in the area of e-society according to the many different European benchmarking indexes. On the other hand, Slovenia is working in an alignment with many European gender equality guidelines and showing good results. The results of our research are based on the analysis of survey data from 2014 to 2017 dealing with Slovenian citizens and their households and the use of ICT. Considering gender issues, the synthesis showed that cultural differences influence some measured ICT indicators but on the other hand the differences are low and only sometimes statistically significant.

Keywords: Digital divide, e-society, gender inequality, Slovenia.

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Authors: H. Ali, A. Whitehead

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Providing a panoramic view of famous landmarks around the world offers artistic and historic value for historians, tourists, and researchers. Exploring the history of famous landmarks by presenting a comprehensive view of a temporal panorama merged with geographical and historical information presents a unique challenge of dealing with images that span a long period, from the 1800’s up to the present. This work presents the concept of temporal panorama through a timeline display of aligned historic and modern images for many famous landmarks. Utilization of this panorama requires a collection of hundreds of thousands of landmark images from the Internet comprised of historic images and modern images of the digital age. These images have to be classified for subset selection to keep the more suitable images that chronologically document a landmark’s history. Processing of historic images captured using older analog technology under various different capturing conditions represents a big challenge when they have to be used with modern digital images. Successful processing of historic images to prepare them for next steps of temporal panorama creation represents an active contribution in cultural heritage preservation through the fulfillment of one of UNESCO goals in preservation and displaying famous worldwide landmarks.

Keywords: Cultural heritage, image registration, image subset selection, registered image similarity, temporal panorama, timescapes.

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Authors: Sotirios Raptis

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Bayesian reasoning (BR) or Linear (Auto) Regression (AR/LR) can predict different sources of data using priors or other data, and can link social service demands in cohorts, while their consideration in isolation (self-prediction) may lead to service misuse ignoring the context. The paper advocates that BR with Binomial (BD), or Normal (ND) models or raw data (.D) as probabilistic updates can be compared to AR/LR to link services in Scotland and reduce cost by sharing healthcare (HC) resources. Clustering, cross-correlation, along with BR, LR, AR can better predict demand. Insurance companies and policymakers can link such services, and examples include those offered to the elderly, and low-income people, smoking-related services linked to mental health services, or epidemiological weight in children. 22 service packs are used that are published by Public Health Services (PHS) Scotland and Scottish Government (SG) from 1981 to 2019, broken into 110 year series (factors), joined using LR, AR, BR. The Primary component analysis found 11 significant factors, while C-Means (CM) clustering gave five major clusters.

Keywords: Bayesian probability, cohorts, data frames, regression, services, prediction.

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Authors: B. Tirandazi, M. Mehrpooya, A. Vatani

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This paper provides an exergy analysis of the multistage refrigeration cycle used for C2+ recovery plant. The behavior of an industrial refrigeration cycle with refrigerant propane has been investigated by the exergy method. A computational model based on the exergy analysis is presented for the investigation of the effects of the valves on the exergy losses, the second law of efficiency, and the coefficient of performance (COP) of a vapor compression refrigeration cycle. The equations of exergy destruction and exergetic efficiency for the main cycle components such as evaporators, condensers, compressors, and expansion valves are developed. The relations for the total exergy destruction in the cycle and the cycle exergetic efficiency are obtained. An ethane recovery unit with its refrigeration cycle has been simulated to prepare the exergy analysis. Using a typical actual work input value; the exergetic efficiency of the refrigeration cycle is determined to be 39.90% indicating a great potential for improvements. The simulation results reveal that the exergetic efficiencies of the heat exchanger and expansion sections get the lowest rank among the other compartments of refrigeration cycle. Refrigeration calculations have been carried out through the analysis of T–S and P–H diagrams where coefficient of performance (COP) was obtained as 1.85. The novelty of this article includes the effect and sensitivity analysis of molar flow, pressure drops and temperature on the exergy efficiency and coefficient of performance of the cycle.

Keywords: exergy; Valve; CRP; refrigeration cycle; propane refrigerant; C2+ Recovery; Ethane Recovery;.

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Authors: Erika Pigliapoco, Valerio Freschi, Alessandro Bogliolo

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This work presents a new phonetic transcription system based on a tree of hierarchical pronunciation rules expressed as context-specific grapheme-phoneme correspondences. The tree is automatically inferred from a phonetic dictionary by incrementally analyzing deeper context levels, eventually representing a minimum set of exhaustive rules that pronounce without errors all the words in the training dictionary and that can be applied to out-of-vocabulary words. The proposed approach improves upon existing rule-tree-based techniques in that it makes use of graphemes, rather than letters, as elementary orthographic units. A new linear algorithm for the segmentation of a word in graphemes is introduced to enable outof- vocabulary grapheme-based phonetic transcription. Exhaustive rule trees provide a canonical representation of the pronunciation rules of a language that can be used not only to pronounce out-of-vocabulary words, but also to analyze and compare the pronunciation rules inferred from different dictionaries. The proposed approach has been implemented in C and tested on Oxford British English and Basic English. Experimental results show that grapheme-based rule trees represent phonetically sound rules and provide better performance than letter-based rule trees.

Keywords: Automatic phonetic transcription, pronunciation rules, hierarchical tree inference.

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Authors: Rudolf Egger

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This paper explores the relationships between the basic learning processes of leading trade union workers and their methods for coping with the changes in the life-courses of societies today. It will discuss the fragile discourse on lifelong learning in trade unions and the “production of self-techniques” to get in touch with the new economic forms. On the basis of an empirical project, different processes of the socialization of leading trade union workers will be analysed to discover the consequences of the lifelong learning discourse. The results show what competences they need to develop for the “wider benefits of negotiations”. The main challenge remains to make visible how deeply intertwined trade union learning and education are with development in an ongoing dynamic economic process, rather than a quick-fix injection of skills and information. There is a complex relationship existing between the three ‘partners’, work, learning and society forming. The author suggests that contemporary trade unions could be trendsetters who make their own learning agendas by drawing less on formal education and more on informal and non-formal learning contexts. This is in parallel with growing political and scientific consciousness of the need to arrive at new educational/vocational policies and practices.

Keywords: Lifelong learning, Trade unions, Non-formal learning, Educational/vocational policies.

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Authors: Yuji Waizumi, Yuya Tsukabe, Hiroshi Tsunoda, Yoshiaki Nemoto

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A person-to-person information sharing is easily realized by P2P networks in which servers are not essential. Leakage of information, which are caused by malicious accesses for P2P networks, has become a new social issues. To prevent information leakage, it is necessary to detect and block traffics of P2P software. Since some P2P softwares can spoof port numbers, it is difficult to detect the traffics sent from P2P softwares by using port numbers. It is more difficult to devise effective countermeasures for detecting the software because their protocol are not public. In this paper, a discriminating method of network applications based on communication characteristics of application messages without port numbers is proposed. The proposed method is based on an assumption that there can be some rules about time intervals to transmit messages in application layer and the number of necessary packets to send one message. By extracting the rule from network traffic, the proposed method can discriminate applications without port numbers.

Keywords: Network Application Identification, Message Transition Pattern

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Authors: Surinder Deswal

Abstract:

There has been a growing interest in the oxygenation by plunging water jets in the last few years due to their inherent advantages, like energy-efficient, low operation cost, etc. Though a lot of work has been reported on the oxygen-transfer by single plunging water jets but very few studies have been carried out using multiple plunging jets. In this paper, volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and oxygen-transfer efficiency has been studied experimentally for multiple inclined plunging jets (having jet plunge angle of 60 0 ) in a pool of water for different configurations, in terms of varying number of jets and jet diameters. This research suggests that the volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and oxygentransfer efficiency of the multiple inclined plunging jets for air-water system are significantly higher than those of a single vertical as well as inclined plunging jet for same flow area and other similar conditions. The study also reveals that the oxygen-transfer increase with increase in number of multiple jets under similar conditions, which will be most advantageous and energy-efficient in practical situations when large volumes of wastewaters are to be treated. A relationship between volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and jet parameters is also proposed. The suggested relationship predicts the volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient for multiple inclined plunging jet(s) within a scatter of ±15 percent. The relationship will be quite useful in scale-up and in deciding optimum configuration of multiple inclined plunging jet aeration system.

Keywords: Multiple inclined plunging jets, jet plunge angle, volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient, oxygen-transfer efficiency.

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Authors: Glenda A. Gunter

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Current research has explored the impact of instructional immediacy, defined as those behaviors that help build close relationships or feelings of closeness, both on cognition and motivation in the traditional classroom and online classroom; however, online courses continue to suffer from higher dropout rates. Based on Albert Bandura-s Social Cognitive Theory, four primary relationships or interactions in an online course will be explored in light of how they can provide immediacy thereby reducing student attrition and improving cognitive learning. The four relationships are teacher-student, student-student, and student-content, and studentcomputer. Results of a study conducted with inservice teachers completing a 14-week online professional development technology course will be examined to demonstrate immediacy strategies that improve cognitive learning and reduce student attrition. Results of the study reveal that students can be motivated through various interactions and instructional immediacy behaviors which lead to higher completion rates, improved self-efficacy, and cognitive learning.

Keywords: Distance Learning, Self-Efficacy, Instructional immediacy, Student achievement.

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Authors: Maurizio Dapor, Isabel Abril, Pablo de Vera, Rafael Garcia-Molina

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The ionization yield of ion tracks in polymers and bio-molecular systems reaches a maximum, known as the Bragg peak, close to the end of the ion trajectories. Along the path of the ions through the materials, many electrons are generated, which produce a cascade of further ionizations and, consequently, a shower of secondary electrons. Among these, very low energy secondary electrons can produce damage in the biomolecules by dissociative electron attachment. This work deals with the calculation of the energy distribution of electrons produced by protons in a sample of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), a material that is used as a phantom for living tissues in hadron therapy. PMMA is also of relevance for microelectronics in CMOS technologies and as a photoresist mask in electron beam lithography. We present a Monte Carlo code that, starting from a realistic description of the energy distribution of the electrons ejected by protons moving through PMMA, simulates the entire cascade of generated secondary electrons. By following in detail the motion of all these electrons, we find the radial distribution of the energy that they deposit in PMMA for several initial proton energies characteristic of the Bragg peak.

Keywords: Monte Carlo method, secondary electrons, energetic ions, ion-beam cancer therapy, ionization cross section, polymethylmethacrylate, proton beams, secondary electrons, radial energy distribution.

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Authors: Abdallah Al-Shammari

Abstract:

This study discusses the effect of uncertainty on production levels of a petrochemical complex. Uncertainly or variations in some model parameters, such as prices, supply and demand of materials, can affect the optimality or the efficiency of any chemical process. For any petrochemical complex with many plants, there are many sources of uncertainty and frequent variations which require more attention. Many optimization approaches are proposed in the literature to incorporate uncertainty within the model in order to obtain a robust solution. In this work, a stability analysis approach is applied to a deterministic LP model of a petrochemical complex consists of ten plants to investigate the effect of such variations on the obtained optimal production levels. The proposed approach can determinate the allowable variation ranges of some parameters, mainly objective or RHS coefficients, before the system lose its optimality. Parameters with relatively narrow range of variations, i.e. stability limits, are classified as sensitive parameters or constraints that need accurate estimate or intensive monitoring. These stability limits offer easy-to-use information to the decision maker and help in understanding the interaction between some model parameters and deciding when the system need to be re-optimize. The study shows that maximum production of ethylene and the prices of intermediate products are the most sensitive factors that affect the stability of the optimum solution

Keywords: Linear programming, Petrochemicals, stability analysis, uncertainty

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Authors: Paula M. R. Correia, Marta Gonzaga, Luis M. Batista, Luísa Beirão-Costa, Raquel F. P. Guiné

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The purpose of the present work was to develop an innovative food product with good textural and sensorial characteristics. The product, a new type of bread, was prepared with wheat (90%) and lupin (10%) flours, without the addition of any conservatives. Several experiences were also done to find the most appropriate proportion of lupin flour. The optimized product was characterized considering the rheological, physical-chemical and sensorial properties. The water absorption of wheat flour with 10% of lupin was higher than that of the normal wheat flours, and Wheat Ceres flour presented the lower value, with lower dough development time and high stability time. The breads presented low moisture but a considerable water activity. The density of bread decreased with the introduction of lupin flour. The breads were quite white, and during storage the colour parameters decreased. The lupin flour clearly increased the number of alveolus, but the total area increased significantly just for the Wheat Cerealis bread. The addition of lupin flour increased the hardness and chewiness of breads, but the elasticity did not vary significantly. Lupin bread was sensorially similar to wheat bread produced with WCerealis flour, and the main differences are the crust rugosity, colour and alveolus characteristics.

Keywords: Lupin flour, physical-chemical properties, sensorial analysis, wheat flour.

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Authors: M.S. Mazăre, A. M. Pană, L. M. Ştefan, M. Silion, M. Bălan, G. Bandur, L. M. Rusnac

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In the last decade, carbohydrates have attracted great attention as renewable resources for the chemical industry. Carbohydrates are abundantly found in nature in the form of monomers, oligomers and polymers, or as components of biopolymers and other naturally occurring substances. As natural products, they play important roles in conferring certain physical, chemical, and biological properties to their carrier molecules.The synthesis of this particular carbohydrate glycomonomer is part of our work to obtain biodegradable polymers. Our current paper describes the synthesis and characterization of a novel carbohydrate glycomonomer starting from D-glucose, in several synthesis steps, that involve the protection/deprotection of the D-glucose ring via acetylation, tritylation, then selective deprotection of the aromaticaliphatic protective group, in order to obtain 1,2,3,4-tetra-O-acetyl- 6-O-allyl-β-D-glucopyranose. The glycomonomer was then obtained by the allylation in drastic conditions of 1,2,3,4-tetra-O-acetyl-6-Oallyl- β-D-glucopyranose with allylic alcohol in the presence of stannic chloride, in methylene chloride, at room temperature. The proposed structure of the glycomonomer, 2,3,4-tri-O-acetyl-1,6-di- O-allyl-β-D-glucopyranose, was confirmed by FTIR, NMR and HPLC-MS spectrometry. This glycomonomer will be further submitted to copolymerization with certain acrylic or methacrylic monomers in order to obtain competitive plastic materials for applications in the biomedical field.

Keywords: allylation, D-glucose, glycomonomer, trityl chloride

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Authors: Andrew Cummings, Rhianne Boag, Sarah Bryson, Gordon Turner

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Packages designed for transport of radioactive material must satisfy rigorous safety regulations specified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Higher Activity Waste (HAW) transport packages have to maintain containment of their contents during normal and accident conditions of transport (NCT and ACT). To ensure containment criteria is satisfied these packages are required to be leak-tight in all transport conditions to meet allowable activity release rates. Package design safety reports are the safety cases that provide the claims, evidence and arguments to demonstrate that packages meet the regulations and once approved by the competent authority (in the UK this is the Office for Nuclear Regulation) a licence to transport radioactive material is issued for the package(s). The standard approach to demonstrating containment in the RWM transport safety case is set out in BS EN ISO 12807. In this document a method for measuring a leak rate from the package is explained by way of a small interspace test volume situated between two O-ring seals on the underside of the package lid. The interspace volume is pressurised and a pressure drop measured. A small interspace test volume makes the method more sensitive enabling the measurement of smaller leak rates. By ascertaining the activity of the contents, identifying a releasable fraction of material and by treating that fraction of material as a gas, allowable leak rates for NCT and ACT are calculated. The adherence to basic safety principles in ISO12807 is very pessimistic and current practice in the demonstration of transport safety, which is accepted by the UK regulator. It is UK government policy that management of HAW will be through geological disposal. It is proposed that the intermediate level waste be transported to the geological disposal facility (GDF) in large cuboid packages. This poses a challenge for containment demonstration because such packages will have long seals and therefore large interspace test volumes. There is also uncertainty on the releasable fraction of material within the package ullage space. This is because the waste may be in many different forms which makes it difficult to define the fraction of material released by the waste package. Additionally because of the large interspace test volume, measuring the calculated leak rates may not be achievable. For this reason a justification for a lower releasable fraction of material is sought. This paper considers the use of aerosol processes to reduce the releasable fraction for both NCT and ACT. It reviews the basic coagulation and removal processes and applies the dynamic aerosol balance equation. The proposed solution includes only the most well understood physical processes namely; Brownian coagulation and gravitational settling. Other processes have been eliminated either on the basis that they would serve to reduce the release to the environment further (pessimistically in keeping with the essence of nuclear transport safety cases) or that they are not credible in the conditions of transport considered.

Keywords: Aerosol processes, Brownian coagulation, gravitational settling, transport regulations.

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Authors: E. Bruno, F. Lacarbonara, M. C. Placentino, D. Gramegna

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Environmental decision making, particularly about hazardous waste management, is inherently exposed to a high potential conflict, principally because of the trade-off between sociopolitical, environmental, health and economic factors. The need to plan complex contexts has led to an increasing request for decision analytic techniques as support for the decision process. In this work, alternative systems of asbestos-containing waste management (ACW) in Puglia (Southern Italy) were explored by a multi-criteria decision analysis. In particular, through Analytic Hierarchy Process five alternatives management have been compared and ranked according to their performance and efficiency, taking into account environmental, health and socio-economic aspects. A separated valuation has been performed for different temporal scale. For short period results showed a narrow deviation between the disposal alternatives “mono-material landfill in public quarry" and “dedicate cells in existing landfill", with the best performance of the first one. While for long period “treatment plant to eliminate hazard from asbestos-containing waste" was prevalent, although high energy demand required to achieve the change of crystalline structure. A comparison with results from a participative approach in valuation process might be considered as future development of method application to ACW management.

Keywords: Multi-criteria decision analysis, Hazardous wastemanagement, Asbestos.

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Authors: Mahmud Gungor, Ali Aydin, Erdal Akyol, Suat Tasdelen

Abstract:

The understanding of geotechnical characteristics of near-surface material and the effects of the groundwater is very important problem in such as site studies. For showing the relations between seismic data and groundwater, we selected about 25 km2 as the study area. It has been presented which is a detailed work of seismic data and groundwater depths of Gokpinar Damp area. Seismic waves velocity (Vp and Vs) are very important parameters showing the soil properties. The seismic records were used the method of the multichannel analysis of surface waves near area of Gokpinar Damp area. Sixty sites in this area have been investigated with survey lines about 60 m in length. MASW (Multichannel analysis of surface wave) method has been used to generate onedimensional shear wave velocity profile at locations. These shear wave velocities are used to estimate equivalent shear wave velocity in the study area at every 2 and 5 m intervals up to a depth of 45 m. Levels of equivalent shear wave velocity of soil are used the classified of the study area. After the results of the study, it must be considered as components of urban planning and building design of Gokpinar Damp area, Denizli and the application and use of these results should be required and enforced by municipal authorities.

Keywords: Seismic data, Gokpinar Damp, urban planning, Denizli.

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Tabatabaei, Mohammad Bagher Haddadi, Mojtaba Saeedimoghadam, Ali Vaseghi Ardekani

Abstract:

Economic Dispatch (ED) is one of the most challenging problems of power system since it is difficult to determine the optimum generation scheduling to meet the particular load demand with the minimum fuel costs while all constraints are satisfied. The objective of the Economic Dispatch Problems (EDPs) of electric power generation is to schedule the committed generating units outputs so as to meet the required load demand at minimum operating cost while satisfying all units and system equality and inequality constraints. In this paper, an efficient and practical steady-state genetic algorithm (SSGAs) has been proposed for solving the economic dispatch problem. The objective is to minimize the total generation fuel cost and keep the power flows within the security limits. To achieve that, the present work is developed to determine the optimal location and size of capacitors in transmission power system where, the Participation Factor Algorithm and the Steady State Genetic Algorithm are proposed to select the best locations for the capacitors and determine the optimal size for them.

Keywords: Economic Dispatch, Lagrange, Capacitors Placement, Losses Reduction, Genetic Algorithm.

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Authors: Carilette Fourie, Chris Cloete

Abstract:

The occurrence of traditional authorities and tribal land within South Africa results in unique developmental trends and challenges. Tribal communities, typically located in rural environments, are perceived to be severely affected by poverty and poor living conditions relative to their urban counterparts. The exact extent of the socio-economic disparity between tribal and non-tribal communities is addressed in this paper. After adjustment of available census data to correspond with the delineation of tribal and non-tribal land in the Kwazulu-Natal province, seven selected socio-economic indicators were compared. The investigation revealed that although tribal areas are characterised by low employment rates and educational levels, a young population, fairly large household sizes, lower access to basic services and lower income households that are highly dependent on social grants, tribal area populations do have moderate levels of education, access to formal housing and relatively good access to services.

Keywords: KwaZulu-Natal, tribal areas, traditional authority, socio-economic, well-being.

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Authors: Tsung-Chia Chen

Abstract:

The orthogonal processes to shape the triangle steel plate into a equilateral vertical steel are examined by an incremental elasto-plastic finite-element method based on an updated Lagrangian formulation. The highly non-linear problems due to the geometric changes, the inelastic constitutive behavior and the boundary conditions varied with deformation are taken into account in an incremental manner. On the contact boundary, a modified Coulomb friction mode is specially considered. A weighting factor r-minimum is employed to limit the step size of loading increment to linear relation. In particular, selective reduced integration was adopted to formulate the stiffness matrix. The simulated geometries of verticality could clearly demonstrate the vertical processes until unloading. A series of experiments and simulations were performed to validate the formulation in the theory, leading to the development of the computer codes. The whole deformation history and the distribution of stress, strain and thickness during the forming process were obtained by carefully considering the moving boundary condition in the finite-element method. Therefore, this modeling can be used for judging whether a equilateral vertical steel can be shaped successfully. The present work may be expected to improve the understanding of the formation of the equilateral vertical steel.

Keywords: Elasto-plastic, finite element, orthogonal pressing process, vertical steel.

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Authors: R. F. B. Gonçalves, E. N. Iwama, J. A. F. F. Rocco, K. Iha

Abstract:

Propellants based on Hydroxyl Terminated Polybutadiene/Ammonium Perchlorate (HTPB/AP) are the most commonly used in most of the rocket engines used by the Brazilian Armed Forces. This work aimed at the possibility of extending its useful life (currently in 10 years) by performing kinetic-chemical analyzes of its energetic material via Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and also performing computer simulation of aging process using the software Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS). Thermal analysis via DSC was performed in triplicates and in three heating ratios (5 ºC, 10 ºC, and 15 ºC) of rocket motor with 11 years shelf-life, using the Arrhenius equation to obtain its activation energy, using Ozawa and Kissinger kinetic methods, allowing comparison with manufacturing period data (standard motor). In addition, the kinetic parameters of internal pressure of the combustion chamber in 08 rocket engines with 11 years of shelf-life were also acquired, for comparison purposes with the engine start-up data.

Keywords: Shelf-life, thermal analysis, Ozawa method, Kissinger method, LAMMPS software, thrust.

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Authors: Thuraya M. Qaradaghi, Newroz N. Abdulrazaq

Abstract:

The McEliece cryptosystem is an asymmetric type of cryptography based on error correction code. The classical McEliece used irreducible binary Goppa code which considered unbreakable until now especially with parameter [1024, 524, and 101], but it is suffering from large public key matrix which leads to be difficult to be used practically. In this work Irreducible and Separable Goppa codes have been introduced. The Irreducible and Separable Goppa codes used are with flexible parameters and dynamic error vectors. A Comparison between Separable and Irreducible Goppa code in McEliece Cryptosystem has been done. For encryption stage, to get better result for comparison, two types of testing have been chosen; in the first one the random message is constant while the parameters of Goppa code have been changed. But for the second test, the parameters of Goppa code are constant (m=8 and t=10) while the random message have been changed. The results show that the time needed to calculate parity check matrix in separable are higher than the one for irreducible McEliece cryptosystem, which is considered expected results due to calculate extra parity check matrix in decryption process for g2(z) in separable type, and the time needed to execute error locator in decryption stage in separable type is better than the time needed to calculate it in irreducible type. The proposed implementation has been done by Visual studio C#.

Keywords: McEliece cryptosystem, Goppa code, separable, irreducible.

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