Search results for: index variation

Authors: Allaeddine Athmani, Abdelhacine Gouasmia, Tiago Ferreira, Romeu Vicente

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The seismic risk mitigation from the perspective of the old buildings stock is truly essential in Algerian urban areas, particularly those located in seismic prone regions, such as Annaba city, and which the old buildings present high levels of degradation associated with no seismic strengthening and/or rehabilitation concerns. In this sense, the present paper approaches the issue of the seismic vulnerability assessment of old masonry building stocks through the adaptation of a simplified methodology developed for a European context area similar to that of Annaba city, Algeria. Therefore, this method is used for the first level of seismic vulnerability assessment of the masonry buildings stock of the old city center of Annaba. This methodology is based on a vulnerability index that is suitable for the evaluation of damage and for the creation of large-scale loss scenarios. Over 380 buildings were evaluated in accordance with the referred methodology and the results obtained were then integrated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) tool. Such results can be used by the Annaba city council for supporting management decisions, based on a global view of the site under analysis, which led to more accurate and faster decisions for the risk mitigation strategies and rehabilitation plans.

Keywords: Damage scenarios, masonry buildings, old city center, seismic vulnerability, vulnerability index.

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Authors: Jenan Shakoor

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Obesity prevalence is increasing worldwide. University life is a challenging period especially for students who have to leave their familiar surroundings and settle in a new environment. The current study aimed to assess the diet and exercise habits and their association with body mass index (BMI) among nursing college students living at Kirkuk University residence. This was a descriptive study. A non-probability (purposive) sample of 101 students living in Kirkuk University residence was recruited during the period from the 15^th November 2015 to the 5^th May 2016. A questionnaire was constructed for the purpose of the study which consisted of four parts: the demographic characteristics of the study sample, eating habits, eating at college and healthy habits. The data were collected by interviewing the study sample and the weight and height were measured by a trained researcher at the college. Descriptive statistical analysis was undertaken. Data were prepared, organized and entered into the computer file; the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 20) was used for data analysis. A p value≤ 0.05 was accepted as statistical significant. A total of 63 (62.4%) of the sample were aged20-21with a mean age of 22.1 (SD±0.653). A third of the sample 38 (37.6%) were from level four at college, 67 (66.3%) were female and 46 45.5% of participants were from a middle socio-economic status. 14 (13.9%) of the study sample were overweight (BMI =25-29.9kg/m²) and 6 (5.9%) were obese (BMI≥30kg/m²) compared to 73 (72.3%) were of normal weight (BMI =18.5-24.9kg/m²). With regard to eating habits and exercise, 42 (41.6%) of the students rarely ate breakfast, 79 (78.2%) eat lunch at university residence, 77 (78.2%) of the students reported rarely doing exercise and 62 (61.4%) of them were sleeping for less than eight hours. No significant association was found between the variables age, sex, level of college and socio-economic status and BMI, while there was a significant association between eating lunch at university and BMI (p =0.03). No significant association was found between eating habits, healthy habits and BMI. The prevalence of overweight and obesity among the study sample was 19.8% with female students being more obese than males. Further studies are needed to identify BMI among residence students in other colleges and increasing the awareness of undergraduate students to healthy food habits.

Keywords: Body mass index, diet, obesity, university residence.

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Authors: L. P. K. Liyanage, N. R. P. Withana, A. L. Sandika

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The purpose of this study was to determine tourist and community perception-based sustainable tourism indicators as well as Human Pressure Index (HPI) and Tourist Activity Index (TAI). Study was carried out in Sinharaja forest which is considered as one of the major eco-tourism destination in Sri Lanka. Data were gathered using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire as well as records from Forest department. Convenient sampling technique was applied. For the majority of issues, the responses were obtained on multi-point Likert-type scales. Visual portrayal was used for display analyzed data. The study revealed that the host community of the Kudawa gets many benefits from tourism. Also, tourism has caused negative impacts upon the environment and community. The study further revealed the need of proper waste management and involvement of local cultural events for the tourism business in the Kudawa conservation center. The TAI, which accounted to be 1.27 and monthly evolution of HPI revealed that congestion can be occurred in the Sinharaja rainforest during peak season. The results provide useful information to any party involved with tourism planning anywhere, since such attempts would be more effective once the people’s perceptions on these aspects are taken into account.

Keywords: Kudawa conservation center, Sinharaja world heritage rainforest, sustainability indicators.

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Authors: Sudip Kumar Kundu, Charu Singh

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The climatic condition over Indian region is highly dependent on monsoon. India receives maximum amount of rainfall during southwest monsoon. Indian economy is highly dependent on agriculture. The presence of flood and drought years influenced the total cultivation system as well as the economy of the country as Indian agricultural systems is still highly dependent on the monsoon rainfall. The present study has been planned to investigate the flood and drought years for the north-west Himalayan region from 1951 to 2014 by using area average Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) rainfall data. For this investigation the Normalized index (NI) has been utilized to find out whether the particular year is drought or flood. The data have been extracted for the north-west Himalayan (NWH) region states namely Uttarakhand (UK), Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to find out the rainy season average rainfall for each year, climatological mean and the standard deviation. After calculation it has been plotted by the diagrams (or graphs) to show the results- some of the years associated with drought years, some are flood years and rest are neutral. The flood and drought years can also relate with the large-scale phenomena El-Nino and La-Lina.

Keywords: Indian Meteorological Department, Rainfall, Normalized index, Flood, Drought, NWH.

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Authors: A.K. Baliarsingh, S. Panda, A.K. Mohanty, C. Ardil

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This paper presents a systematic approach for designing Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) based supplementary damping controllers for damping low frequency oscillations in a single-machine infinite-bus power system. Detailed investigations have been carried out considering the four alternatives UPFC based damping controller namely modulating index of series inverter (mB), modulating index of shunt inverter (mE), phase angle of series inverter (δB ) and phase angle of the shunt inverter (δE ). The design problem of the proposed controllers is formulated as an optimization problem and Real- Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) is employed to optimize damping controller parameters. Simulation results are presented and compared with a conventional method of tuning the damping controller parameters to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed design approach.

Keywords: Power System Oscillations, Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA), Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS), Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC), Damping Controller.

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Authors: Olayiwola M.O., Gbolagade A .W., Akinpelu F. O.

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In this work, we present a reliable framework to solve boundary value problems with particular significance in solid mechanics. These problems are used as mathematical models in deformation of beams. The algorithm rests mainly on a relatively new technique, the Variational Iteration Method. Some examples are given to confirm the efficiency and the accuracy of the method.

Keywords: Variational iteration method, boundary value problems, convergence, restricted variation.

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Authors: Abdollah Javanmard, Fariborz Shekari, Hasan Dehghanian

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Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), vetch (Vicia villosa), and grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) monocultures as well as mixtures of barley with each of the above legumes, in three seeding ratios (i.e., barley: legume 75:25, 50:50 and 25:75, based on seed numbers) were used to investigated forage yield and competition indices. The results showed that intercropping reduced the dry matter yield of the three component plants, compared with their respective monocrops. The greatest value of total dry matter yield was obtained from barley25- grasspea75 (5.44 t ha-1) mixture, followed by grass pea sole crop (4.99 t ha-1). The total actual yield loss (AYL) values were positive and greater than 0 in all mixtures, indicating an advantage from intercropping over sole crops. Intercropped barley had a higher relative crowding coefficient (K=1.64) than intercropped legumes (K=1.20), indicating that barley was more competitive than legumes in mixtures. Furthermore, grass pea was more competitive than vetch in mixtures with barley. The highest land equivalent ratio (LER), system productivity index (SPI) and monetary advantage index (MAI) were obtained when barley was mixed at a rate of 25% with 75% seed rate of grass pea. It is concluded that intercropping of barley with grass pea has a good potential to improve the performance of forage with high land-use efficiency.

Keywords: Forage, grass pea, intercropping, land equivalent ratio (LER), monetary advantage.

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Authors: Juan Llopis, Reyes Gonzalez, Jose Gasco

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This paper has as its main aim to analyse how corporate web pages can become an essential tool in order to detect strategic trends by firms or sectors, and even a primary source for benchmarking. This technique has made it possible to identify the key issues in the strategic management of the most excellent large Spanish firms and also to describe trends in their long-range planning, a way of working that can be generalised to any country or firm group. More precisely, two objectives were sought. The first one consisted in showing the way in which corporate websites make it possible to obtain direct information about the strategic variables which can define firms. This tool is dynamic (since web pages are constantly updated) as well as direct and reliable, since the information comes from the firm itself, not from comments of third parties (such as journalists, academicians, consultants...). When this information is analysed for a group of firms, one can observe their characteristics in terms of both managerial tasks and business management. As for the second objective, the methodology proposed served to describe the corporate profile of the large Spanish enterprises included in the Ibex35 (the Ibex35 or Iberia Index is the reference index in the Spanish Stock Exchange and gathers periodically the 35 most outstanding Spanish firms). An attempt is therefore made to define the long-range planning that would be characteristic of the largest Spanish firms.

Keywords: Web Pages, Strategic Management, Corporate Description, Large Firms, Spain.

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Authors: Moatlhodi Wise Letshwenyo, Lesedi Lebogang

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Botswana is an arid country that needs to start reusing wastewater as part of its water security plan. Pilot scale slow sand filtration in combination with roughing filter was investigated for the treatment of effluent from Botswana International University of Science and Technology to meet Botswana irrigation standards. The system was operated at hydraulic loading rates of 0.04 m/hr and 0.12 m/hr. The results show that the system was able to reduce turbidity from 262 Nephelometric Turbidity Units to a range between 18 and 0 Nephelometric Turbidity Units which was below 30 Nephelometric Turbidity Units threshold limit. The overall efficacy ranged between 61% and 100%. Suspended solids, Biochemical Oxygen Demand, and Chemical Oxygen Demand removal efficiency averaged 42.6%, 45.5%, and 77% respectively and all within irrigation standards. Other physio-chemical parameters were within irrigation standards except for bicarbonate ion which averaged 297.7±44 mg L^-1 in the influent and 196.22±50 mg L^-1 in the effluent which was above the limit of 92 mg L^-1, therefore averaging a reduction of 34.1% by the system. Total coliforms, fecal coliforms, and Escherichia coli in the effluent were initially averaging 1.1 log counts, 0.5 log counts, and 1.3 log counts respectively compared to corresponding influent log counts of 3.4, 2.7 and 4.1, respectively. As time passed, it was observed that only roughing filter was able to reach reductions of 97.5%, 86% and 100% respectively for faecal coliforms, Escherichia coli, and total coliforms. These organism numbers were observed to have increased in slow sand filter effluent suggesting multiplication in the tank. Water quality index value of 22.79 for the physio-chemical parameters suggests that the effluent is of excellent quality and can be used for irrigation purposes. However, the water quality index value for the microbial parameters (1820) renders the quality unsuitable for irrigation. It is concluded that slow sand filtration in combination with roughing filter is a viable option for the treatment of secondary effluent for reuse purposes. However, further studies should be conducted especially for the removal of microbial parameters using the system.

Keywords: Irrigation, roughing filter, slow sand filter, turbidity, water quality index.

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Authors: Bahman Ramezani Gourabi

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Drought is one of the most important natural disasters which is probable to occur in all regions with completely different climates and in addition to causing death. It results in many economic losses and social consequences. For this reason. Studying the effects and losses caused by drought which include limitation or shortage of agricultural and drinking water resources. Decreased rainfall and increased evapotranspiration. Limited plant growth and decreased agricultural products. Especially those of dry-farming. Lower levels of surface and ground waters and increased immigrations. Etc. in the country is statistical period (1988-2007) for six stations in Roudbar town were used for statistical analysis and calculating humid and dry years. The dependable rainfall index (DRI) was the main method used in this research. Results showed that during the said statistical period and also during the years 1996-1998 and 2007. more than half of the stations had faced drought. With consideration of the conducted studies. Drawing diagrams and comparing the available data with those of dry and humid years it was found that drought affected agricultural products (e.g.olive) in a way that during the year 1996 1996 drought. Olive groves of Roudbar suffered the greatest damages. Whereupon about 70% of the crops were lost.

Keywords: Dependable rainfall, drought, annual rainfall, roudbar, olive, gilan.

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Authors: Rihab Hamdi, Amel Hadri Hamida, Fatiha Khelili, Sakina Zerouali, Ouafae Bennis

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This paper features a comparative study performance of sliding mode controller (SMC) for closed-loop voltage control of direct current to direct current (DC-DC) three-cells buck converter connected in parallel, operating in continuous conduction mode (CCM), based on pulse-width modulation (PWM) with SMC based on hysteresis modulation (HM) where an adaptive feedforward technique is adopted. On one hand, for the PWM-based SM, the approach is to incorporate a fixed-frequency PWM scheme which is effectively a variant of SM control. On the other hand, for the HM-based SM, oncoming an adaptive feedforward control that makes the hysteresis band variable in the hysteresis modulator of the SM controller in the aim to restrict the switching frequency variation in the case of any change of the line input voltage or output load variation are introduced. The results obtained under load change, input change and reference change clearly demonstrates a similar dynamic response of both proposed techniques, their effectiveness is fast and smooth tracking of the desired output voltage. The PWM-based SM technique has greatly improved the dynamic behavior with a bit advantageous compared to the HM-based SM technique, as well as provide stability in any operating conditions. Simulation studies in MATLAB/Simulink environment have been performed to verify the concept.

Keywords: Sliding mode control, pulse-width modulation, hysteresis modulation, DC-DC converter, parallel multi-cells converter, robustness.

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Authors: K. A. Ghazaryan, G. A. Gevorgyan, H. S. Movsesyan, N. P. Ghazaryan, K. V. Grigoryan

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The heavy metal pollution degree in the soils around the Zangezur copper and molybdenum combine in Syunik Marz, Armenia was assessed. The results of the study showed that heavy metal pollution degree in the soils mainly decreased with increasing distance from the open mine and the ore enrichment combine which indicated that the open mine and the ore enrichment combine were the main sources of heavy metal pollution. The only exception was observed in the northern part of the open mine where pollution degree in the sites (along the open mine) situated 600 meters far from the mine was higher than that in the sites located 300 meters far from the mine. This can be explained by the characteristics of relief and air currents as well as the weak vegetation cover of these sites and the characteristics of soil structure. According to geo-accumulation index (I-geo), contamination factor (Cf), contamination degree (Cd) and pollution load index (PLI) values, the pollution degree in the soils around the open mine and the ore enrichment combine was higher than that in the soils around the tailing dumps which was due to the proper and accurate operation of the Artsvanik tailing damp and the recultivation of the Voghji tailing dump. The high Cu and Mo pollution of the soils was conditioned by the character of industrial activities, the moving direction of air currents as well as the physicochemical peculiarities of the soils.

Keywords: Armenia, Zangezur copper and molybdenum combine, soil, heavy metal pollution degree.

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Authors: Anjian Chen, Joseph C. Chen

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This paper studies a case where the targeted surface roughness of fused deposition modeling (FDM) additive manufacturing process is improved. The process is designing to reduce or eliminate the defects and improve the process capability index Cp and Cpk for an FDM additive manufacturing process. The baseline Cp is 0.274 and Cpk is 0.654. This research utilizes the Taguchi methodology, to eliminate defects and improve the process. The Taguchi method is used to optimize the additive manufacturing process and printing parameters that affect the targeted surface roughness of FDM additive manufacturing. The Taguchi L9 orthogonal array is used to organize the parameters' (four controllable parameters and one non-controllable parameter) effectiveness on the FDM additive manufacturing process. The four controllable parameters are nozzle temperature [°C], layer thickness [mm], nozzle speed [mm/s], and extruder speed [%]. The non-controllable parameter is the environmental temperature [°C]. After the optimization of the parameters, a confirmation print was printed to prove that the results can reduce the amount of defects and improve the process capability index Cp from 0.274 to 1.605 and the Cpk from 0.654 to 1.233 for the FDM additive manufacturing process. The final results confirmed that the Taguchi methodology is sufficient to improve the surface roughness of FDM additive manufacturing process.

Keywords: Additive manufacturing, fused deposition modeling, surface roughness, Six-Sigma, Taguchi method, 3D printing.

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Authors: B. F. Oliveira, T. I. Gonçalves, M. M. Sousa, S. M. Pimenta, O. F. Ramalho, J. B. Cruz, F. V. Barbosa

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The EU Circular Economy action plan, launched in 2020, is one of the major initiatives to promote the transition into a more sustainable industry. The circular economy is a popular concept used by many companies nowadays. Some industries are better forwarded to this reality than others, and the tannery industry is a sector that needs more attention due to its strong environmental impact caused by its dimension, intensive resources consumption, lack of recyclability, and second use of its products, as well as the industrial effluents generated by the manufacturing processes. For these reasons, the zero-waste goal and the European objectives are further being achieved. In this context, a need arises to provide an effective methodology that allows to determine the level of circularity of tannery companies. Regarding the complexity of the circular economy concept, few factories have a specialist in sustainability to assess the company’s circularity or have the ability to implement circular strategies that could benefit the manufacturing processes. Although there are several methodologies to assess circularity in specific industrial sectors, there is not an easy go-to methodology applied in factories aiming for cleaner production. Therefore, a straightforward methodology to assess the level of circularity, in this case of a tannery industry, is presented and discussed in this work, allowing any company to measure the impact of its activities. The methodology developed consists in calculating the Overall Circular Index (OCI) by evaluating the circularity of four key areas -energy, material, economy and social- in a specific factory. The index is a value between 0 and 1, where 0 means a linear economy, and 1 is a complete circular economy. Each key area has a sub-index, obtained through key performance indicators (KPIs) regarding each theme, and the OCI reflects the average of the four sub-indexes. Some fieldwork in the appointed company was required in order to obtain all the necessary data. By having separate sub-indexes, one can observe which areas are more linear than others. Thus, it is possible to work on the most critical areas by implementing strategies to increase the OCI. After these strategies are implemented, the OCI is recalculated to check the improvements made and any other changes in the remaining sub-indexes. As such, the methodology in discussion works through continuous improvement, constantly reevaluating and improving the circularity of the factory. The methodology is also flexible enough to be implemented in any industrial sector by adapting the KPIs. This methodology was implemented in a selected Portuguese small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) tannery industry and proved to be a relevant tool to measure the circularity level of the factory. It was witnessed that it is easier for non-specialists to evaluate circularity and identify possible solutions to increase its value, as well as learn how one action can impact their environment. In the end, energetic and environmental inefficiencies were identified and corrected, increasing the sustainability and circularity of the company. Through this work, important contributions were provided, helping the Portuguese SMEs to achieve the European and UN 2030 sustainable goals.

Keywords: Circular economy, circularity index, sustainability, tannery industry, zero-waste.

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Authors: Pradyumna Kumar Sahoo, Prasanta Kumar Satpathy

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This paper aims at finding a suitable neural network for monitoring congestion level in electrical power systems. In this paper, the input data has been framed properly to meet the target objective through supervised learning mechanism by defining normal and abnormal operating conditions for the system under study. The congestion level, expressed as line congestion index (LCI), is evaluated for each operating condition and is presented to the NN along with the bus voltages to represent the input and target data. Once, the training goes successful, the NN learns how to deal with a set of newly presented data through validation and testing mechanism. The crux of the results presented in this paper rests on performance comparison of a multi-layered feed forward neural network with eleven types of back propagation techniques so as to evolve the best training criteria. The proposed methodology has been tested on the standard IEEE-14 bus test system with the support of MATLAB based NN toolbox. The results presented in this paper signify that the Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation algorithm gives best training performance of all the eleven cases considered in this paper, thus validating the proposed methodology.

Keywords: Line congestion index, critical bus, contingency, neural network.

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Authors: M. Irannezhad, E. H. N. Gashti, S. Mohammadighavam, M. Zarrini, B. Kløve

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Climate warming would increase rainfall by shifting precipitation falling form from snow to rain, and would accelerate snow cover disappearing by increasing snowpack. Using temperature and precipitation data in the temperature-index snowmelt model, we evaluated variability of snowfall and continuous snow cover duration (CSCD) during 1944-2010 over Pelso, central Finland. Mann- Kendall non-parametric test determined that annual precipitation increased by 2.69 (mm/year, p<0.05) during the study period, but no clear trend in annual temperature. Both annual rainfall and snowfall increased by 1.67 and 0.78 (mm/year, p<0.05), respectively. CSCD was generally about 205 days from 14 October to 6 May. No clear trend was found in CSCD over Pelso. Spearman’s rank correlation showed most significant relationships of annual snowfall with the East Atlantic (EA) pattern, and CSCD with the East Atlantic/West Russia (EA/WR) pattern. Increased precipitation with no warming temperature caused the rainfall and snowfall to increase, while no effects on CSCD.

Keywords: Variations, snowfall, snow cover duration, temperature-index snowmelt model, teleconnection patterns.

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Authors: Jinrui Ren, Li Wu

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Anthropogenic activities and changes of underlying surface affect the temporal and spatial distribution of surface temperature in Kunming. Taking Kunming city as the research area, the surface temperature in 2000, 2010 and 2020 as the research object, using ENVI 5.3 and ArcGIS 10.8 as auxiliary tools, and based on the spatial autocorrelation method, this paper devoted to exploring the interactions among the changes of surface temperature, urban heat island effect and land use type, so as to provide theoretical basis and scientific basis for mitigating climate change. The results showed that: (1) The heat island effect was obvious in Kunming City, the high temperature area increased from 604 km2 in 2000 to 1269 km2 in 2020, and the sub-high temperature area reached 1099 km2 in 2020; (2) In terms of space, the spatial distribution of LST was significantly different with the change of underlying surface. The high temperature zone extended in three directions: south, north and east. The overall spatial distribution pattern of LST was high in the east and low in the west. (3) The inter-annual fluctuation of land surface temperature (LST) was large, and the growth rate was faster, from 2000 to 2010. The lowest temperature in 2000 was 13.45 ℃, which raised to 19.71 ℃ in 2010, and the temperature difference in 10 years was 6.26 ℃. (4) The land use/land cover type has a strong effect on the change of LST: the man-made land made a great contribution to the increase of LST, followed by grassland and farmland, while forest and water have a significant cooling effect on LST. To sum up, the variation of surface temperature in Kunming is the result of the interactions of human activities and climate change.

Keywords: Surface temperature, urban heat island effect, land use cover type, spatiotemporal variation.

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Authors: Adam Gorine, Faten Spondon

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Python is considered the most popular programming language and offers its own ecosystem for archiving and maintaining open-source software packages. This system is called the Python Package Index (PyPI), the repository of this programming language. Unfortunately, one-third of these software packages have vulnerabilities that allow attackers to execute code automatically when a vulnerable or malicious package is installed. This paper contributes to large-scale empirical studies investigating security issues in the Python ecosystem by evaluating package vulnerabilities. These provide a series of implications that can help the security of software ecosystems by improving the process of discovering, fixing, and managing package vulnerabilities. The vulnerable dataset is generated using the NVD, the National Vulnerability Database, and the Snyk vulnerability dataset. In addition, we evaluated 807 vulnerability reports in the NVD and 3900 publicly known security vulnerabilities in Python Package Manager (Pip) from the Snyk database from 2002 to 2022. As a result, many Python vulnerabilities appear in high severity, followed by medium severity. The most problematic areas have been improper input validation and denial of service attacks. A hybrid scanning tool that combines the three scanners, Bandit, Snyk and Dlint, which provide a clear report of the code vulnerability, is also described.

Keywords: Python vulnerabilities, Bandit, Snyk, Dlint, Python Package Index, ecosystem, static analysis, malicious attacks.

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Authors: Mohsen A. Bakouri, Andrey V. Savkin, Abdul-Hakeem H. Alomari, Robert F. Salamonsen, Einly Lim, Nigel H. Lovell

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Physiological control of a left ventricle assist device (LVAD) is generally a complicated task due to diverse operating environments and patient variability. In this work, a tracking control algorithm based on sliding mode and feed forward control for a class of discrete-time single input single output (SISO) nonlinear uncertain systems is presented. The controller was developed to track the reference trajectory to a set operating point without inducing suction in the ventricle. The controller regulates the estimated mean pulsatile flow Qp and mean pulsatility index of pump rotational speed PIω that was generated from a model of the assist device. We recall the principle of the sliding mode control theory then we combine the feed-forward control design with the sliding mode control technique to follow the reference trajectory. The uncertainty is replaced by its upper and lower boundary. The controller was tested in a computer simulation covering two scenarios (preload and ventricular contractility). The simulation results prove the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed controller

Keywords: robust control system, discrete-sliding mode, left ventricularle assist devicse, pulsatility index.

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Authors: Chimaobi V. Okolo, Onyinye S. Ugwuanyi, Kenneth A. Okpala

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This study evaluated the effect of exchange rate volatility on the manufacturing sector of Nigeria. The flow and stock market theories of exchange rate determination was adopted considering macroeconomic determinants such as balance of trade, trade openness, and net international investment. Furthermore, the influence of changes in parallel exchange rate, official exchange rate and real effective exchange rate was modeled on the manufacturing sector output. Vector autoregression techniques and vector error correction mechanism were adopted to explore the macroeconomic determinants of exchange rate fluctuation in Nigeria and to examine the influence of exchange rate volatility on the manufacturing sector output in Nigeria. The exchange rate showed an unstable and volatile movement in Nigeria. Official exchange rate significantly impacted on the manufacturing sector of Nigeria and shock to previous manufacturing sector output caused 60.76% of the fluctuation in the manufacturing sector output in Nigeria. Trade balance, trade openness and net international investments did not significantly determine exchange rate in Nigeria. However, own shock accounted for about 95% of the variation of exchange rate fluctuation in the short-run and long-run. Among other macroeconomic variables, net international investment accounted for about 2.85% variation of the real effective exchange rate fluctuation in the short-run and in the long-run. Monetary authorities should maintain stability of the exchange rates through proper management so as to encourage local production and government should formulate and implement policies that will develop other sectors of the economy as this will widen the country’s revenue base, reduce our over reliance on oil sector for our foreign exchange earnings and in turn reduce the shocks on our domestic economy.

Keywords: Exchange rate volatility, exchange rate determinants, manufacturing sector, official exchange rate, parallel exchange rate, real effective exchange rate.

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Authors: Zahid O. Alibrahim, Craig D. Williams, Clive L. Roberts

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The study area (Ecton mining area) is located in the southern part of the Peak District in Derbyshire, England. It is bounded by the River Manifold from the west. This area has been mined for a long period. As a result, huge amounts of potentially toxic metals were released into the surrounding area and are most likely to be a significant source of heavy metal contamination to the local soil, water and vegetation. In order to appraise the potential heavy metal pollution in this area, 37 topsoil samples (5-20 cm depth) were collected and analysed for their total content of Cu, Pb, Zn, Mn, Cr, Ni and V using ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) optical emission spectroscopy. Multivariate Geospatial analyses using the GIS technique were utilised to draw geochemical maps of the metals of interest over the study area. A few hotspot points, areas of elevated concentrations of metals, were specified, which are presumed to be the results of anthropogenic activities. In addition, the soil’s environmental quality was evaluated by calculating the Mullers’ Geoaccumulation index (I geo), which suggests that the degree of contamination of the investigated heavy metals has the following trend: Pb > Zn > Cu > Mn > Ni = Cr = V. Furthermore, the potential ecological risk, using the enrichment factor (EF), was also specified. On the basis of the calculated amount or the EF, the levels of pollution for the studied metals in the study area have the following order: Pb>Zn>Cu>Cr>V>Ni>Mn.

Keywords: Heavy metals, GIS, multivariate analysis, geoaccumulation index, enrichment factor.

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Authors: Elżbieta Antczak

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Cities offer important opportunities for economic development and for expanding access to basic services, including health care and education, for large numbers of people. Moreover, green areas (as an integral part of sustainable urban development) present a major opportunity for improving urban environments, quality of lives and livelihoods. This paper examines, using spatial concentration and spatial taxonomic measures, regional diversification of greenery in the cities of Poland. The analysis includes location quotients, Lorenz curve, Locational Gini Index, and the synthetic index of greenery and spatial statistics tools: (1) To verify the occurrence of strong concentration or dispersion of the phenomenon in time and space depending on the variable category, and, (2) To study if the level of greenery depends on the spatial autocorrelation. The data includes the greatest Polish cities, categories of the urban greenery (parks, lawns, street greenery, and green areas on housing estates, cemeteries, and forests) and the time span 2004-2015. According to the obtained estimations, most of cites in Poland are already taking measures to become greener. However, in the country there are still many barriers to well-balanced urban greenery development (e.g. uncontrolled urban sprawl, poor management as well as lack of spatial urban planning systems).

Keywords: Greenery, urban areas, regional spatial diversification and concentration, spatial taxonomic measure.

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Authors: Esam Jassim

Abstract:

Industries using conventional fossil fuels have an  interest in better understanding the mechanism of particulate  formation during combustion since such is responsible for emission  of undesired inorganic elements that directly impact the atmospheric  pollution level. Fine and ultrafine particulates have tendency to  escape the flue gas cleaning devices to the atmosphere. They also  preferentially collect on surfaces in power systems resulting in  ascending in corrosion inclination, descending in the heat transfer  thermal unit, and severe impact on human health. This adverseness  manifests particularly in the regions of world where coal is the  dominated source of energy for consumption.  This study highlights the behavior of calcium transformation as  mineral grains verses organically associated inorganic components  during pulverized coal combustion. The influence of existing type of  calcium on the coarse, fine and ultrafine mode formation mechanisms  is also presented. The impact of two sub-bituminous coals on particle  size and calcium composition evolution during combustion is to be  assessed. Three mixed blends named Blends 1, 2, and 3 are selected  according to the ration of coal A to coal B by weight. Calcium  percentage in original coal increases as going from Blend 1 to 3.  A mathematical model and a new approach of describing  constituent distribution are proposed. Analysis of experiments of  calcium distribution in ash is also modeled using Poisson distribution.  A novel parameter, called elemental index λ, is introduced as a  measuring factor of element distribution.  Results show that calcium in ash that originally in coal as mineral  grains has index of 17, whereas organically associated calcium  transformed to fly ash shown to be best described when elemental  index λ is 7.  As an alkaline-earth element, calcium is considered the  fundamental element responsible for boiler deficiency since it is the  major player in the mechanism of ash slagging process. The  mechanism of particle size distribution and mineral species of ash  particles are presented using CCSEM and size-segregated ash  characteristics. Conclusions are drawn from the analysis of  pulverized coal ash generated from a utility-scale boiler.

 

Keywords: Calcium transformation, Coal Combustion, Inorganic Element, Poisson distribution.

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Authors: Meng-Jou Chien, Jheng-Cheng Chen, Chang-Hsiung Tsai

Abstract:

Let max_ζG(m) denote the maximum number of edges in a subgraph of graph G induced by m nodes. The n-dimensional augmented cube, denoted as AQn, a variation of the hypercube, possesses some properties superior to those of the hypercube. We study the cases when G is the augmented cube AQn.

Keywords: Interconnection network, Augmented cube, Induced subgraph, Bisection width.

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Authors: Amirmohsen Behjat, Aleck Ostry, Christina Miewald, Bernie Pauly

Abstract:

Substantial research has indicated that socioeconomic and demographic characteristics’ of neighborhoods are strong determinants of food security. The aim of this study was to develop a Food Insecurity Neighborhood Index (FINI) based on the associated socioeconomic and demographic variables to identify the areas at potential risk of food insecurity in rural British Columbia (BC). Principle Component Analysis (PCA) technique was used to calculate the FINI for each rural Dissemination Area (DA) using the food security determinant variables from Canadian Census data. Using ArcGIS, the neighborhoods with the top quartile FINI values were classified as food insecure. The results of this study indicated that the most food insecure neighborhood with the highest FINI value of 99.1 was in the Bulkley-Nechako (central BC) area whereas the lowest FINI with the value of 2.97 was for a rural neighborhood in the Cowichan Valley area. In total, 98.049 (19%) of the rural population of British Columbians reside in high food insecure areas. Moreover, the distribution of food insecure neighborhoods was found to be strongly dependent on the degree of rurality in BC. In conclusion, the cluster of food insecure neighbourhoods was more pronounced in Central Coast, Mount Wadington, Peace River, Kootenay Boundary, and the Alberni-Clayoqout Regional Districts.

Keywords: Neighbourhood food insecurity index, socioeconomic and demographic determinants, principal component analysis, Canada Census, ArcGIS.

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Authors: Bingchun Liu, Pei-Chann Chang, Natasha Huang, Dun Li

Abstract:

Machine Learning and Data Mining are the two important tools for extracting useful information and knowledge from large datasets. In machine learning, classification is a wildly used technique to predict qualitative variables and is generally preferred over regression from an operational point of view. Due to the enormous increase in air pollution in various countries especially China, Air Quality Classification has become one of the most important topics in air quality research and modelling. This study aims at introducing a hybrid classification model based on information theory and Support Vector Machine (SVM) using the air quality data of four cities in China namely Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin from Jan 1, 2014 to April 30, 2016. China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has classified the daily air quality into 6 levels namely Serious Pollution, Severe Pollution, Moderate Pollution, Light Pollution, Good and Excellent based on their respective Air Quality Index (AQI) values. Using the information theory, information gain (IG) is calculated and feature selection is done for both categorical features and continuous numeric features. Then SVM Machine Learning algorithm is implemented on the selected features with cross-validation. The final evaluation reveals that the IG and SVM hybrid model performs better than SVM (alone), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) models in terms of accuracy as well as complexity.

Keywords: Machine learning, air quality classification, air quality index, information gain, support vector machine, cross-validation.

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Authors: Mamidi Ramakrishna Rao

Abstract:

Doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) is currently the choice for many wind turbines. These generators, when connected to the grid through a converter, is subjected to varied power system conditions like voltage variation, frequency variation, short circuit fault conditions, etc. Further, many countries like Canada, Germany, UK, Scotland, etc. have distinct grid codes relating to wind turbines. Accordingly, following the network faults, wind turbines have to supply a definite reactive current. To satisfy the requirements including reactive current capability, an optimum electrical design becomes a mandate for DFIG to function. This paper intends to optimize the equivalent circuit parameters of an electrical design for satisfactory DFIG performance. Direct search method has been used for optimization of the parameters. The variables selected include electromagnetic core dimensions (diameters and stack length), slot dimensions, radial air gap between stator and rotor and winding copper cross section area. Optimization for 2 MW DFIG has been executed separately for three objective functions - maximum reactive power capability (Case I), maximum efficiency (Case II) and minimum weight (Case III). In the optimization analysis program, voltage variations (10%), power factor- leading and lagging (0.95), speeds for corresponding to slips (-0.3 to +0.3) have been considered. The optimum designs obtained for objective functions were compared. It can be concluded that direct search method of optimization helps in determining an optimum electrical design for each objective function like efficiency or reactive power capability or weight minimization.

Keywords: Direct search, DFIG, equivalent circuit parameters, optimization.

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Authors: Gláucya C. Boechat, Jeneffer C. Ferreira, Edson C. B. Carvalho

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This paper presents a boarding on biometric authentication through the Keystrokes Dynamics that it intends to identify a person from its habitual rhythm to type in conventional keyboard. Seven done experiments: verifying amount of prototypes, threshold, features and the variation of the choice of the times of the features vector. The results show that the use of the Keystroke Dynamics is simple and efficient for personal authentication, getting optimum resulted using 90% of the features with 4.44% FRR and 0% FAR.

Keywords: Biometrics techniques, Keystroke Dynamics, patternrecognition.

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Authors: D. L. David, J. A. Wahedi, Q. T. Zaku

Abstract:

A study was conducted at River Mayo Ranewo and River Lau, Taraba State Nigeria. The two rivers empty into the Upper Benue Basin. A survey of visual encounter was conducted within the two wetlands from June to August, 2014. The fish record was based entirely on landings of fishermen, number of canoes that land fish was counted, types of nets and baits used on each sampling day. Fishes were sorted into taxonomic groups, identified to family/ species level, counted and weighed in groups by species. Other aquatic organisms captured by the fishermen were scallops, turtles and frogs. The relative species abundance was determined by dividing the number of species from a site by the total number of species from all tributaries/sites. The fish were preserved in 2% formaldehyde solution and taken to the laboratory, were identified through keys of identification to African fishes and field guides. Shannon-Wieiner index of species diversity indicated that the diversity was highest at River Mayo Ranewo than River Lau. Results showed that at River Mayo Ranewo, the family Mochokidae recorded the highest (23.15%), followed by Mormyridae (22.64%) and the least was the family Lepidosirenidae (0.04%). While at River Lau, the family Mochokidae recorded the highest occurrence of (24.1%), followed by Bagridae (20.20%), and then Mormyridae, which also was the second highest in River Lau, with 18.46% occurrence. There was no occurrence of Malapteruridae and Osteoglossidae (0%) in River Lau, but the least occurrence was the family Gymnarchidae (0.04%). According to the result from the t-test, the fish composition was not significantly different (p≤0.05).

Keywords: Diversity Index, Lau, Mayo Ranewo, Wetlands.

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Authors: Shang-En Yu

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Human society, there are many uncertainties, such as economic growth rate forecast of the financial crisis, many scholars have, since the the Song Chissom two scholars in 1993 the concept of the so-called fuzzy time series (Fuzzy Time Series)different mode to deal with these problems, a previous study, however, usually does not consider the relevant variables selected and fuzzy process based solely on subjective opinions the fuzzy semantic discrete, so can not objectively reflect the characteristics of the data set, in addition to carrying outforecasts are often fuzzy rules as equally important, failed to consider the importance of each fuzzy rule. For these reasons, the variable selection (Factor Selection) through self-organizing map (Self-Organizing Map, SOM) and proposed high-end weighted multivariate fuzzy time series model based on fuzzy neural network (Fuzzy-BPN), and using the the sequential weighted average operator (Ordered Weighted Averaging operator, OWA) weighted prediction. Therefore, in order to verify the proposed method, the Taiwan stock exchange (Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation) Taiwan Weighted Stock Index (Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index, TAIEX) as experimental forecast target, in order to filter the appropriate variables in the experiment Finally, included in other studies in recent years mode in conjunction with this study, the results showed that the predictive ability of this study further improve.

Keywords: Heterogeneity, residential mortgage loans, foreclosure.

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