Search results for: Finite difference time domain (FDTD)

Authors: Khalide Jbilou

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In the present paper, we propose numerical methods for solving the Stein equation AXC - X - D = 0 where the matrix A is large and sparse. Such problems appear in discrete-time control problems, filtering and image restoration. We consider the case where the matrix D is of full rank and the case where D is factored as a product of two matrices. The proposed methods are Krylov subspace methods based on the block Arnoldi algorithm. We give theoretical results and we report some numerical experiments.

Keywords: IEEEtran, journal, LATEX, paper, template.

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Authors: Le Xuan Cau

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Flash flood is occurred in short time rainfall interval: from 1 hour to 12 hours in small and medium basins. Flash floods typically have two characteristics: large water flow and big flow velocity. Flash flood is occurred at hill valley site (strip of lowland of terrain) in a catchment with large enough distribution area, steep basin slope, and heavy rainfall. The risk of flash floods is determined through Gridded Basin Flash Flood Potential Index (GBFFPI). Flash Flood Potential Index (FFPI) is determined through terrain slope flash flood index, soil erosion flash flood index, land cover flash floods index, land use flash flood index, rainfall flash flood index. Determining GBFFPI, each cell in a map can be considered as outlet of a water accumulation basin. GBFFPI of the cell is determined as basin average value of FFPI of the corresponding water accumulation basin. Based on GIS, a tool is developed to compute GBFFPI using ArcObjects SDK for .NET. The maps of GBFFPI are built in two types: GBFFPI including rainfall flash flood index (real time flash flood warning) or GBFFPI excluding rainfall flash flood index. GBFFPI Tool can be used to determine a high flash flood potential site in a large region as quick as possible. The GBFFPI is improved from conventional FFPI. The advantage of GBFFPI is that GBFFPI is taking into account the basin response (interaction of cells) and determines more true flash flood site (strip of lowland of terrain) while conventional FFPI is taking into account single cell and does not consider the interaction between cells. The GBFFPI Map of QuangNam, QuangNgai, DaNang, Hue is built and exported to Google Earth. The obtained map proves scientific basis of GBFFPI.

Keywords: ArcObjects SDK for .NET, Basin average value of FFPI, Gridded basin flash flood potential index, GBFFPI map.

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Authors: Natalia Politaeva, Iuliia Smiatskaia, Iuliia Bazarnova, Iryna Atamaniuk, Kerstin Kuchta

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Nowadays, the progressive decrease of primary natural resources and ongoing upward trend in terms of energy demand, have resulted in development of new generation technological processes which are focused on step-wise production and residues utilization. Thus, microalgae-based 3^rd generation bioeconomy is considered one of the most promising approaches that allow production of value-added products and sophisticated utilization of residues biomass. In comparison to conventional biomass, microalgae can be cultivated in wide range of conditions without compromising food and feed production, and thus, addressing issues associated with negative social and environmental impacts. However, one of the most challenging tasks is to undergo seasonal variations and to achieve optimal growing conditions for indoor closed systems that can cover further demand for material and energetic utilization of microalgae. For instance, outdoor cultivation in St. Petersburg (Russia) is only suitable within rather narrow time frame (from mid-May to mid-September). At earlier and later periods, insufficient sunlight and heat for the growth of microalgae were detected. On the other hand, without additional physical effects, the biomass increment in summer is 3-5 times per week, depending on the solar radiation and the ambient temperature. In order to increase biomass production, scientists from all over the world have proposed various technical solutions for cultivators and have been studying the influence of various physical factors affecting biomass growth namely: magnetic field, radiation impact, and electric field, etc. In this paper, the influence of infrared radiation (IR) and fluorescent light on the growth rate of microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana has been studied. The cultivation of Chlorella sorokiniana was carried out in 500 ml cylindrical glass vessels, which were constantly aerated. To accelerate the cultivation process, the mixture was stirred for 15 minutes at 500 rpm following 120 minutes of rest time. At the same time, the metabolic needs in nutrients were provided by the addition of micro- and macro-nutrients in the microalgae growing medium. Lighting was provided by fluorescent lamps with the intensity of 2500 ± 300 lx. The influence of IR was determined using IR lamps with a voltage of 220 V, power of 250 W, in order to achieve the intensity of 13 600 ± 500 lx. The obtained results show that under the influence of fluorescent lamps along with the combined effect of active aeration and variable mixing, the biomass increment on the 2^nd day was three times, and on the 7^th day, it was eight-fold. The growth rate of microalgae under the influence of IR radiation was lower and has reached 22.6·10⁶ cells·mL^-1. However, application of IR lamps for the biomass growth allows maintaining the optimal temperature of microalgae suspension at approximately 25-28°C, which might especially be beneficial during the cold season in extreme climate zones.

Keywords: Biomass, fluorescent lamp, infrared radiation, microalgae.

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Authors: H. Zormati, J. Chebil, J. Bel Hadj Taher

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The goal of this paper is to present an addressing scheme that allows for assigning a unique IPv6 address to each node in the Internet of Things (IoT) network. This scheme guarantees uniqueness by extracting the clock skew of each communication device and converting it into an IPv6 address. Simulation analysis confirms that the presented scheme provides reductions in terms of energy consumption, communication overhead and response time as compared to four studied addressing schemes Strong DAD, LEADS, SIPA and CLOSA.

Keywords: Addressing, IoT, IPv6, network, nodes.

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Authors: Armando Cartenì, Ilaria Henke

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The perceived public transport quality is an important driver that influences both customer satisfaction and mobility choices. The competition among transport operators needs to improve the quality of the services and identify which attributes are perceived as relevant by passengers. Among the “traditional” public transport quality attributes there are, for example: travel and waiting time, regularity of the services, and ticket price. By contrast, there are some “non-conventional” attributes that could significantly influence customer satisfaction jointly with the “traditional” ones. Among these, the beauty/aesthetics of the transport terminals (e.g. rail station and bus terminal) is probably one of the most impacting on user perception. Starting from these considerations, the point stressed in this paper was if (and how munch) the travel experience of the overall travel (e.g. how long is the travel, how many transport modes must be used) influences the perception of the public transport quality. The aim of this paper was to investigate the weight of the terminal quality (e.g. aesthetic, comfort and service offered) within the overall travel experience. The case study was the extra-urban Italian bus network. The passengers of the major Italian terminal bus were interviewed and the analysis of the results shows that about the 75% of the travelers, are available to pay up to 30% more for the ticket price for having a high quality terminal. A travel experience effect was observed: the average perceived transport quality varies with the characteristic of the overall trip. The passengers that have a “long trip” (travel time greater than 2 hours) perceived as “low” the overall quality of the trip even if they pass through a high quality terminal. The opposite occurs for the “short trip” passengers. This means that if a traveler passes through a high quality station, the overall perception of that terminal could be significantly reduced if he is tired from a long trip. This result is important and if confirmed through other case studies, will allow to conclude that the “travel experience impact" must be considered as an explicit design variable for public transport services and planning.

Keywords: Transportation planning, sustainable mobility, decision support system, discrete choice model, design problem.

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Authors: M. N. Nwodo, Y. P. Cheng, N. H. Minh

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In the process of recovering oil in weak sandstone formations, the strength of sandstones around the wellbore is weakened due to the increase of effective stress/load from the completion activities around the cavity. The weakened and de-bonded sandstone may be eroded away by the produced fluid, which is termed sand production. It is one of the major trending subjects in the petroleum industry because of its significant negative impacts, as well as some observed positive impacts. For efficient sand management therefore, there has been need for a reliable study tool to understand the mechanism of sanding. One method of studying sand production is the use of the widely recognized Discrete Element Method (DEM), Particle Flow Code (PFC^3D) which represents sands as granular individual elements bonded together at contact points. However, there is limited knowledge of the particle-scale behavior of the weak sandstone, and the parameters that affect sanding. This paper aims to investigate the reliability of using PFC^3D and a simple Darcy flow in understanding the sand production behavior of a weak sandstone. An isotropic tri-axial test on a weak oil sandstone sample was first simulated at a confining stress of 1MPa to calibrate and validate the parallel bond models of PFC^3D using a 10m height and 10m diameter solid cylindrical model. The effect of the confining stress on the number of bonds failure was studied using this cylindrical model. With the calibrated data and sample material properties obtained from the tri-axial test, simulations without and with fluid flow were carried out to check on the effect of Darcy flow on bonds failure using the same model geometry. The fluid flow network comprised of every four particles connected with tetrahedral flow pipes with a central pore or flow domain. Parametric studies included the effects of confining stress, and fluid pressure; as well as validating flow rate – permeability relationship to verify Darcy’s fluid flow law. The effect of model size scaling on sanding was also investigated using 4m height, 2m diameter model. The parallel bond model successfully calibrated the sample’s strength of 4.4MPa, showing a sharp peak strength before strain-softening, similar to the behavior of real cemented sandstones. There seems to be an exponential increasing relationship for the bigger model, but a curvilinear shape for the smaller model. The presence of the Darcy flow induced tensile forces and increased the number of broken bonds. For the parametric studies, flow rate has a linear relationship with permeability at constant pressure head. The higher the fluid flow pressure, the higher the number of broken bonds/sanding. The DEM PFC^3D is a promising tool to studying the micromechanical behavior of cemented sandstones.

Keywords: Discrete Element Method, fluid flow, parametric study, sand production/bonds failure.

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Authors: Ali Habiboghli, Rouhollah Mostafaei, Vasif Nabiyev

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Optical network uses a tool for routing called Latin router. These routers use particular algorithms for routing. For example, we can refer to LDF algorithm that uses backtracking (one of CSP methods) for problem solving. In this paper, we proposed new approached for completion routing table (DRA&CRA algorithm) and compare with pervious proposed ways and showed numbers of backtracking, blocking and run time for DRA algorithm less than LDF and CRA algorithm.

Keywords: Latin Router, Constraint Satisfaction Problem, Wavelength Routing.

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Authors: K. K. Kaldybay, T. K. Abdrassilov, G. K. Abdygalieva, P. M. Suleymenov, M. O. Nassimov

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People have always needed to believe in some supernatural power, which could explain nature phenomena. Different kinds of religions like Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism have thought believers in all world, how to behave themselves. We think the most important role of religion in modern society most important role of religion in modern society is safety of the People. World and traditional religion played a prominent role in the socio-cultural progress, and in the development of man as a spiritual being. At the heart of religious morals the belief in god and responsibility before it lies and specifies religious and ethical values and categories . The religion is based on ethical standards historically developed by society, requirements and concepts, but it puts all social and moral relations of the person in dependence on religious values. For everything that the believer makes on a debt or a duty, he bears moral responsibility before conscience, people and god. The concept of value of religious morals takes the central place because the religion from all forms of public consciousness most values is painted as it is urged to answer vital questions. Any religion not only considers questions of creation of the world, sense of human existence, relationship of god and the person, but also offers the ethical concept, develops rules of behavior of people. The religion a long time dominated in the history of culture, and during this time created a set of cultural and material values. The identity of Kazakh culture can be defined as a Cultural identity traditional ,national identity and the identity values developed by Kazakh people in process of cultural-historical development, promoting formation of Kazakh culture identity on public consciousness. Identity is the historical process but always the tradition exists in it as a component of stability, as a component of self that what this identity formed .

Keywords: Philosophy, religion, education, culture, human, national value, security, religious value.

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Authors: Bradley Christensen, Kevin T. McCusker, Daniel J. Gauthier, Daniel Kumor, Venkat Chandar, P. G. Kwiat

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We report on a high-speed quantum cryptography system that utilizes simultaneous entanglement in polarization and in “time-bins". With multiple degrees of freedom contributing to the secret key, we can achieve over ten bits of random entropy per detected coincidence. In addition, we collect from multiple spots o the downconversion cone to further amplify the data rate, allowing usto achieve over 10 Mbits of secure key per second.

Keywords: Downconversion, Hyper-entanglement, Quantum Cryptography

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Authors: N. Slepickova Kasalkova, P. Slepicka, L. Bacakova, V. Svorcik

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Tissue engineering includes combination of materials and techniques used for the improvement, repair or replacement of the tissue. Scaffolds, permanent or temporally material, are used as support for the creation of the "new cell structures". For this important component (scaffold), a variety of materials can be used. The advantage of some polymeric materials is their cytocompatibility and possibility of biodegradation. Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) is a biodegradable,  semi-crystalline thermoplastic polymer. PLLA can be fully degraded into H₂O and CO₂. In this experiment, the effect of the surface modification of biodegradable polymer (performed by plasma treatment) on the various cell types was studied. The surface parameters and changes of the physicochemical properties of modified PLLA substrates were studied by different methods. Surface wettability was determined by goniometry, surface morphology and roughness study were performed with atomic force microscopy and chemical composition was determined using photoelectron spectroscopy. The physicochemical properties were studied in relation to cytocompatibility of human osteoblast (MG 63 cells), rat vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC), and human stem cells (ASC) of the adipose tissue in vitro. A fluorescence microscopy was chosen to study and compare cell-material interaction. Important parameters of the cytocompatibility like adhesion, proliferation, viability, shape, spreading of the cells were evaluated. It was found that the modification leads to the change of the surface wettability depending on the time of modification. Short time of exposition (10-120 s) can reduce the wettability of the aged samples, exposition longer than 150 s causes to increase of contact angle of the aged PLLA. The surface morphology is significantly influenced by duration of modification, too. The plasma treatment involves the formation of the crystallites, whose number increases with increasing time of modification. On the basis of physicochemical properties evaluation, the cells were cultivated on the selected samples. Cell-material interactions are strongly affected by material chemical structure and surface morphology. It was proved that the plasma treatment of PLLA has a positive effect on the adhesion, spreading, homogeneity of distribution and viability of all cultivated cells. This effect was even more apparent for the VSMCs and ASCs which homogeneously covered almost the whole surface of the substrate after 7 days of cultivation. The viability of these cells was high (more than 98% for VSMCs, 89-96% for ASCs). This experiment is one part of the basic research, which aims to easily create scaffolds for tissue engineering with subsequent use of stem cells and their subsequent "reorientation" towards the bone cells or smooth muscle cells.

Keywords: Poly(L-lactic acid), plasma treatment, surface characterization, cytocompatibility, human osteoblasts, rat vascular smooth muscle cells, human stem cells.

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Authors: Ph. Fauquet-Alekhine

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Decision-making occurs several times an hour when working in high risk industry and an erroneous choice might have undesirable outcomes for people and the environment surrounding the industrial plant. Industrial decisions are very often made in a context of acute stress. Time pressure is a crucial stressor leading decision makers sometimes to boost up the decision-making process and if it is not possible then shift to the simplest strategy. We thus found it interesting to update the characterization of the stress factors impairing decision-making at Chinon Nuclear Power Plant (France) in order to optimize decision making contexts and/or associated processes. The investigation was based on the analysis of reports addressing safety events over the last 3 years. Among 93 reports, those explicitly addressing decision-making issues were identified. Characterization of each event was undertaken in terms of three criteria: stressors, biases impairing decision making and weaknesses of the decision-making process. The statistical analysis showed that biases were distributed over 10 possibilities among which the hypothesis confirmation bias was clearly salient. No significant correlation was found between criteria. The analysis indicated that the main stressor was time pressure and highlights an unexpected form of stressor: the trust asymmetry principle of the expert. The analysis led to the conclusion that this stressor impaired decision-making from a psychological angle rather than from a physiological angle: it induces defensive bias of self-esteem, self-protection associated with a bias of confirmation. This leads to the hypothesis that this stressor can intervene in some cases without being detected, and to the hypothesis that other stressors of the same kind might occur without being detected too. Further investigations addressing these hypotheses are considered. The analysis also led to the conclusion that dealing with these issues implied i) decision-making methods being well known to the workers and automated and ii) the decision-making tools being well known and strictly applied. Training was thus adjusted.

Keywords: Bias, expert, high risk industry, stress.

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Authors: Peng Zhang, Lihui Zheng, Xiangchun Wang, Xiaopan Kou

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Quantitative research on the main control factors of lost circulation has few considerations and single data source. Using Unmanned Intervention Algorithm to find the main control factors of lost circulation adopts all measurable parameters. The degree of lost circulation is characterized by the loss rate as the objective function. Geological, engineering and fluid data are used as layers, and 27 factors such as wellhead coordinates and Weight on Bit (WOB) used as dimensions. Data classification is implemented to determine function independent variables. The mathematical equation of loss rate and 27 influencing factors is established by multiple regression method, and the undetermined coefficient method is used to solve the undetermined coefficient of the equation. Only three factors in t-test are greater than the test value 40, and the F-test value is 96.557%, indicating that the correlation of the model is good. The funnel viscosity, final shear force and drilling time were selected as the main control factors by elimination method, contribution rate method and functional method. The calculated values of the two wells used for verification differ from the actual values by -3.036 m3/h and -2.374 m3/h, with errors of 7.21% and 6.35%. The influence of engineering factors on the loss rate is greater than that of funnel viscosity and final shear force, and the influence of the three factors is less than that of geological factors. The best combination of funnel viscosity, final shear force and drilling time is obtained through quantitative calculation. The minimum loss rate of lost circulation wells in Shunbei area is 10 m3/h. It can be seen that man-made main control factors can only slow down the leakage, but cannot fundamentally eliminate it. This is more in line with the characteristics of karst caves and fractures in Shunbei fault solution oil and gas reservoir.

Keywords: Drilling fluid, loss rate, main controlling factors, Unmanned Intervention Algorithm.

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Authors: Srisuwan Kasemsawat

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This is a survey research using quantitative and qualitative methodology. There were three objectives: 1) To study participatory level of community in water and waste environment management. 2) To study the affecting factors for community participation in water and waste environment management in Ampawa District, Samut Songkram Province. 3) To search for the participatory patterns in water and waste management. The population sample for the quantitative research was 1,364 people living in Ampawa District. The methodology was simple random sampling. Research instrument was a questionnaire and the qualitative research used purposive sampling in 6 Sub Districts which are Ta Ka, Suanluang, Bangkae, Muangmai, Kwae-om, and Bangnanglee Sub District Administration Organization. Total population is 63. For data analysis, the study used content analysis from quantitative research to synthesize and build question frame from the content for interview and conducting focus group interview. The study found that the community participatory in the issue of level in water and waste management are moderate of planning, operation, and evaluation. The issue of being beneficial is at low level. Therefore, the overall participatory level of community in water and waste environment management is at a medium level. The factors affecting the participatory of community in water and waste management are age, the period dwelling in the community and membership in which the mean difference is statistic significant at 0.05 in area of operation, being beneficial, and evaluation. For patterns of community participation, there is the correlation with water and waste management in 4 concerns which are 1) Participation in planning 2) Participation in operation 3) Participation in being beneficial both directly and indirectly benefited 4) Participation in evaluation and monitoring. The recommendation from this study is the need to create conscious awareness in order to increase participation level of people by organizing activities that promote participation with volunteer spirit. Government should open opportunities for people to participate in sharing ideas and create the culture of living together with equality which would build more concrete participation.

Keywords: Participation, Participatory Patterns, Water and Waste Management, Environmental Management.

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Authors: Liang Wang, Wei Zhang

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Nowadays sustainable development has increasingly become an important research topic of engineering education all over the world. Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) highlighted the importance of addressing sustainable development in engineering practice. However, whether and how the professional engineering learning and experience affect those perceptions is an interesting research topic especially in Chinese context. Our study fills this gap by investigating perceptions bias of EESD among first-grade engineering students, fourth-grade engineering students and experienced engineers using a triple-dimensional model. Our goal is to find the effect of engineering learning and experience on sustainable development and make these learning and experiences more accessible for students and engineers in school and workplace context. The data (n = 138) came from a Likert questionnaire based on the triple-dimensional model of EESD adopted from literature reviews and the data contain 48 first-grade students, 56 fourth-grade students and 34 engineers with rich working experience from Environmental Engineering, Energy Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Civil Engineering in or graduated from Zhejiang University, China. One-way ANOVA analysis was used to find the difference in different dimensions among the three groups. The statistical results show that both engineering students and engineers have a well understanding of sustainable development in ecology dimension of EESD while there are significant differences among three groups as to the socio-economy and value rationality dimensions of EESD. The findings provide empirical evidence that both engineering learning and professional engineering experience are helpful to cultivate the cognition and perception of sustainable development in engineering education. The results of this work indicate that more practical content should be added to students’ engineering education while more theoretical content should be added to engineers’ training in order to promote the engineering students’ and engineers’ perceptions of sustainable development. In addition, as to the design of engineering courses and professional practice system for sustainable development, we should not only pay attention to the ecological aspects, but also emphasize the coordination of ecological, socio-economic and human-centered sustainable development (e.g., engineer's ethical responsibility).

Keywords: Engineering education, sustainable development, experienced engineers, engineering students.

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Authors: Thanida Sujarittham, Narumon Emarat, Jintawat Tanamatayarat, Kwan Arayathanitkul, Suchai Nopparatjamjomras

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Electric field is an important fundamental concept in electrostatics. In high-school, generally Thai students have already learned about definition of electric field, electric field due to a point charge, and superposition of electric fields due to multiple-point charges. Those are the prerequisite basic knowledge students holding before entrancing universities. In the first-year university level, students will be quickly revised those basic knowledge and will be then introduced to a more complicated topic—electric field due to continuous charged distributions. We initially found that our freshman students, who were from the Faculty of Science and enrolled in the introductory physic course (SCPY 158), often seriously struggled with the basic physics concepts—superposition of electric fields and inverse square law and mathematics being relevant to this topic. These also then resulted on students’ understanding of advanced topics within the course such as Gauss's law, electric potential difference, and capacitance. Therefore, it is very important to determine students' understanding of electric field due to continuous charged distributions. The open-ended question about sketching net electric field vectors from a uniformly charged insulating rod was administered to 260 freshman science students as pre- and post-tests. All of their responses were analyzed and classified into five levels of understandings. To get deep understanding of each level, 30 students were interviewed toward their individual responses. The pre-test result found was that about 90% of students had incorrect understanding. Even after completing the lectures, there were only 26.5% of them could provide correct responses. Up to 50% had confusions and irrelevant ideas. The result implies that teaching methods in Thai high schools may be problematic. In addition for our benefit, these students’ alternative conceptions identified could be used as a guideline for developing the instructional method currently used in the course especially for teaching electrostatics.

Keywords: Electrostatics Electric field due to continuous charged distributions, inverse square law, superposition principle, levels of student understandings.

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Authors: Mustafa M. Donma

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Circumference measurements may give meaningful information about the varying stages of obesity. Some formulas may be derived from a number of body circumference measurements to estimate body fat. Waist (WC), hip (HC) and neck (NC) circumferences are currently the most frequently used measurements. The aim of this study was to develop a formula derived from these three anthropometric measurements for the differential diagnosis of morbid obesity with and without metabolic syndrome (MetS), MOMetS+ and MOMetS-, respectively. 187 children were recruited from the pediatrics outpatient clinic of Tekirdag Namik Kemal University, Faculty of Medicine. Signed informed consent forms were taken from the participants. The study was carried out according to the Helsinki Declaration. The study protocol was approved by the institutional non-interventional ethics committee of Tekirdag Namik Kemal University Medical Faculty. The study population was divided into four groups as normal-body mass index (N-BMI) (n = 35), obese (OB) (n = 44), morbid obese (MO) (n = 75) and MetS (n = 33). Age- and gender-adjusted BMI percentile values were used for the classification of groups. The children in MetS group were selected based upon the nature of the MetS components described as MetS criteria. Anthropometric measurements, laboratory analysis and statistical evaluation confined to study population were performed. BMI values were calculated. A circumference index, advanced Donma circumference index (ADCI) was presented as WC*HC/NC. The statistical significance degree was chosen as p < 0.05. BMI values were 17.7 ± 2.8, 24.5 ± 3.3, 28.8 ± 5.7, 31.4 ± 8.0 kg/m2, for N-BMI, OB, MO, MetS groups (p = 0.001), respectively. An increasing trend from N-BMI to MetS was observed. However, the increase in MetS group compared to MO group was not significant. For the new index, significant differences were obtained between N-BMI and OB, MO, MetS groups (p = 0.001). A significant difference between MO and MetS groups was detected (p = 0.043). A significant correlation was found between BMI and ADCI. In conclusion, in spite of the strong correlation between BMI and ADCI values obtained when all groups were considered, ADCI, but not BMI, was the index, which was capable of differentiating cases with morbid obesity from cases with morbid obesity and MetS.

Keywords: Anthropometry, body mass index, childhood obesity, body circumference, metabolic syndrome.

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Authors: Saranya Chularee, Tawa Chularee

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Successful intelligence (SI) is the integrated set of the ability needed to attain success in life, within individual-s sociocultural context. People are successfully intelligent by recognizing their strengths and weaknesses. They will find ways to strengthen their weakness and maintain their strength or even improve it. SI people can shape, select, and adapt to the environments by using balance of higher-ordered thinking abilities including; critical, creative, and applicative. Aims: The purposes of this study were to; 1) develop curriculum that promotes SI for nursing students, and 2) study the effectiveness of the curriculum development. Method: Research and Development was a method used for this study. The design was divided into two phases; 1) the curriculum development which composed of three steps (needs assessment, curriculum development and curriculum field trail), and 2) the curriculum implementation. In this phase, a pre-experimental research design (one group pretest-posttest design) was conducted. The sample composed of 49 sophomore nursing students of Boromarajonani College of Nursing, Surin, Thailand who enrolled in Nursing care of Health problem course I in 2011 academic year. Data were carefully collected using 4 instruments; 1) Modified essay questions test (MEQ) 2) Nursing Care Plan evaluation form 3) Group processing observation form (α = 0.74) and 4) Satisfied evaluation form of learning (α = 0.82). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Results: The results revealed that the sample had post-test average score of SI higher than pre-test average score (mean difference was 5.03, S.D. = 2.84). Fifty seven percentages of the sample passed the MEQ posttest at the criteria of 60 percentages. Students demonstrated the strategies of how to develop nursing care plan. Overall, students- satisfaction on teaching performance was at high level (mean = 4.35, S.D. = 0.46). Conclusion: This curriculum can promote the attribute of characteristic of SI person and was highly required to be continued.

Keywords: Curriculum Development, Nursing Education, Successful Intelligence, Thinking ability.

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Authors: Sachin Kumar, Y. K. Gupta, J. R. Sharma

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In the present article, a new class of solutions of Einstein field equations is investigated for a spherically symmetric space-time when the source of gravitation is a perfect fluid. All the solutions have been derived by making some suitable arrangements in the field equations. The solutions so obtained have been seen to describe Schwarzschild interior solutions. Most of the solutions are subjected to the reality conditions. As far as the authors are aware the solutions are new.

Keywords: Einstein's equations, General Relativity, PerfectFluid, Spherical symmetric.

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Authors: Jasminka Radolović

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Countries in recession, among them Croatia, have lower tax revenues as a result of unfavorable economic situation, which is decrease of the economic activities and unemployment. The global tax base has decreased. In order to create larger state revenues, states use the institute of tax authorities. By controlling transfer pricing in the international companies and using certain techniques, tax authorities can create greater tax obligations for the companies in a short period of time.

Keywords: Documentation, Methods, Tax Optimization, Transfer Pricing

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Authors: H. Mhamdi, N. Hamrouni, A. Temimi, M. Bouhlel

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In this article, we expose our research work in Human-machine Interaction. The research consists in manipulating the workspace by eyes. We present some of our results, in particular the detection of eyes and the mouse actions recognition. Indeed, the handicaped user becomes able to interact with the machine in a more intuitive way in diverse applications and contexts. To test our application we have chooses to work in real time on videos captured by a camera placed in front of the user.

Keywords: Computer vision, Face and Eyes Detection, Mouse pointer recognition.

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Authors: B. Dehghan, T. Toppi, M. Aprile, M. Motta

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The environmental concerns related to global warming and ozone layer depletion along with the growing worldwide demand for heating and cooling have brought an increasing attention toward ecological and efficient Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. Furthermore, since space heating accounts for a considerable part of the European primary/final energy use, it has been identified as one of the sectors with the most challenging targets in energy use reduction. Heat pumps are commonly considered as a technology able to contribute to the achievement of the targets. Current research focuses on the full load operation and seasonal performance assessment of three gas-driven absorption heat pump cycles. To do this, investigations of the gas-driven air-source ammonia-water absorption heat pump systems for small-scale space heating applications are presented. For each of the presented cycles, both full-load under various temperature conditions and seasonal performances are predicted by means of numerical simulations. It has been considered that small capacity appliances are usually equipped with fixed geometry restrictors, meaning that the solution mass flow rate is driven by the pressure difference across the associated restrictor valve. Results show that gas utilization efficiency (GUE) of the cycles varies between 1.2 and 1.7 for both full and partial loads and vapor exchange (VX) cycle is found to achieve the highest efficiency. It is noticed that, for typical space heating applications, heat pumps operate over a wide range of capacities and thermal lifts. Thus, partially, the novelty introduced in the paper is the investigation based on a seasonal performance approach, following the method prescribed in a recent European standard (EN 12309). The overall result is a modest variation in the seasonal performance for analyzed cycles, from 1.427 (single-effect) to 1.493 (vapor-exchange).

Keywords: Absorption cycles, gas utilization efficiency, heat pump, seasonal performance, vapor exchange cycle.

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Authors: Zhengisbek Tolen, Kubash Mengdigali, Dinara Akbolat, Elnura Assyltaeva, Aliya Alimzhanova

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In the article the historical formation of interethnic and interconfessional agreement policy in Kazakhstan and their developing features at present time will be analyzed. The successfully pursued by Kazakhstan at the present in the direction of ethnic and confessional policy is regarded as a major factor in promoting stability for the country.

Keywords: Political stability, interethnic relationship, interconfessional agreement, tolerance.

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Authors: Daniela N. Correa-Llantén, Sebastián A. Muñoz-Ibacache, Mathilde Maire, Jenny M. Blamey

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The biosynthesis of nanoparticles by microorganisms, on the contrary to chemical synthesis, is an environmentally-friendly process which has low energy requirements. In this investigation, we used the microorganism Geobacillus wiegelii, strain GWE1, an aerobic thermophile belonging to genus Geobacillus, isolated from a drying oven. This microorganism has the ability to reduce selenite evidenced by the change of color from colorless to red in the culture. Elemental analysis and composition of the particles were verified using transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. The nanoparticles have a defined spherical shape and a selenium elemental state. Previous experiments showed that the presence of the whole microorganism for the reduction of selenite was not necessary. The results strongly suggested that an intracellular NADPH/NADH-dependent reductase mediates selenium nanoparticles synthesis under aerobic conditions. The enzyme was purified and identified by mass spectroscopy MALDI-TOF TOF technique. The enzyme is a 1-pyrroline-5-carboxylate dehydrogenase. Histograms of nanoparticles sizes were obtained. Size distribution ranged from 40-160 nm, where 70% of nanoparticles have less than 100 nm in size. Spectroscopic analysis showed that the nanoparticles are composed of elemental selenium. To analyse the effect of pH in size and morphology of nanoparticles, the synthesis of them was carried out at different pHs (4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0). For thermostability studies samples were incubated at different temperatures (60, 80 and 100 ºC) for 1 h and 3 h. The size of all nanoparticles was less than 100 nm at pH 4.0; over 50% of nanoparticles have less than 100 nm at pH 5.0; at pH 6.0 and 8.0 over 90% of nanoparticles have less than 100 nm in size. At neutral pH (7.0) nanoparticles reach a size around 120 nm and only 20% of them were less than 100 nm. When looking at temperature effect, nanoparticles did not show a significant difference in size when they were incubated between 0 and 3 h at 60 ºC. Meanwhile at 80 °C the nanoparticles suspension lost its homogeneity. A change in size was observed from 0 h of incubation at 80ºC, observing a size range between 40-160 nm, with 20% of them over 100 nm. Meanwhile after 3 h of incubation at size range changed to 60-180 nm with 50% of them over 100 nm. At 100 °C the nanoparticles aggregate forming nanorod structures. In conclusion, these results indicate that is possible to modulate size and shape of biologically synthesized nanoparticles by modulating pH and temperature.

Keywords: Genus Geobacillus, NADPH/NADH-dependent reductase, Selenium nanoparticles.

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Authors: O. Shiman, V. Gerbreders, E. Sledevskis, A. Bulanovs, V.Pashkevich

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The selective wet-etching of amorphous and crystalline region of Sb20Se80 thin films was carried out using organic based solution e.g. amines. We report the development of an in situ real-time method to study the wet chemical etching process of thin films. Characterization of the structure and surface of films studied by X-ray diffraction, SEM and EBSD methods has been done and potential application suggested.

Keywords: amorphous and crystalline phases, chalcogenide thinfilm, etching process

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Authors: Kiwon Rhee, Kyung-Jin You, Hyun-Chool Shin

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This paper proposes a method of remotely controlling robots with arm gestures using surface electromyography (EMG) and accelerometer sensors attached to the operator’s wrists. The EMG and accelerometer sensors receive signals from the arm gestures of the operator and infer the corresponding movements to execute the command to control the robot. The movements of the robot include moving forward and backward and turning left and right. The accuracy is over 99% and movements can be controlled in real time.

Keywords: EMG, accelerometer, K-nn, entropy.

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Authors: Y. Shpungin

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Estimating the lifetime distribution of computer networks in which nodes and links exist in time and are bound for failure is very useful in various applications. This problem is known to be NP-hard. In this paper we present efficient combinatorial approaches to Monte Carlo estimation of network lifetime distribution. We also present some simulation results.

Keywords: Combinatorial spectrum, Monte Carlo, Networklifetime, Unreliable nodes and edges.

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Authors: Won-Ho Kim

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In this paper, a design of H.263 based wireless video transceiver is presented for wireless camera system. It uses standard WIFI transceiver and the covering area is up to 100m. Furthermore the standard H.263 video encoding technique is used for video compression since wireless video transmitter is unable to transmit high capacity raw data in real time and the implemented system is capable of streaming at speed of less than 1Mbps using NTSC 720x480 video.

Keywords: Digital signal processing, H.263 video encoder, surveillance camera, wireless video transceiver.

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Authors: Zhiguo Yang, Xiangan Yue, Minglu Shao, Yang Yue, Tianqi Yue

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In low permeability reservoirs, the reservoir pore throat is small and the micro heterogeneity is prominent. Conventional microsphere profile control agents generally have good injectability but poor plugging effect; however, profile control agents with good plugging effect generally have poor injectability, which makes it difficult for agent to realize deep profile control of reservoir. To solve this problem, styrene and acrylamide were used as monomers in the laboratory. Emulsion polymerization was used to prepare the Controllable Self-Aggregating Colloidal Particle (CSA), which was rich in amide group. The CSA microsphere dispersion solution with a particle diameter smaller than the pore throat diameter was injected into the reservoir to ensure that the profile control agent had good inject ability. After dispersing the CSA microsphere to the deep part of the reservoir, the CSA microspheres dispersed in static for a certain period of time will self-aggregate into large-sized particle clusters to achieve plugging of hypertonic channels. The CSA microsphere has the characteristics of low expansion and avoids shear fracture in the process of migration. It can be observed by transmission electron microscope that CSA microspheres still maintain regular and uniform spherical and core-shell heterogeneous structure after aging at 100 ºC for 35 days, and CSA microspheres have good thermal stability. The results of bottle test showed that with the increase of cation concentration, the aggregation time of CSA microspheres gradually shortened, and the influence of divalent cations was greater than that of monovalent ions. Physical simulation experiments show that CSA microspheres have good injectability, and the aggregated CSA particle clusters can produce effective plugging and migrate to the deep part of the reservoir for profile control.

Keywords: Heterogeneous reservoir, deep profile control, emulsion polymerization, colloidal particles, plugging characteristic.

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Authors: Muna Tabuni

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The paper contains an investigation of zeros Of Bargmann analytic representation. A brief introduction to Harmonic oscillator formalism is given. The Bargmann analytic representation has been studied. The zeros of Bargmann analytic function are considered. The Q or Husimi functions are introduced. The The Bargmann functions and the Husimi functions have the same zeros. The Bargmann functions f(z) have exactly q zeros. The evolution time of the zeros μn are discussed. Various examples have been given.

Keywords: Bargmann functions, Husimi functions, zeros.

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Authors: G. Korotcenkov, B. K. Cho, L. B. Gulina, V. P. Tolstoy

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The effect of SnO2 surface modification by Ag nanoclusters, synthesized by SILD method, on the operating characteristics of thin film gas sensors was studied and models for the promotional role of Ag additives were discussed. It was found that mentioned above approach can be used for improvement both the sensitivity and the rate of response of the SnO2-based gas sensors to CO and H2. At the same time, the presence of the Ag clusters on the surface of SnO2 depressed the sensor response to ozone.

Keywords: Ag nanoparticles, deposition, characterization, gas sensors, optimization.

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