Search results for: AUDTWMN- Alagappa University DelayTolerant Water Monitoring Network

Authors: Eduardo N. Velloso, Fernando M. N. Dantas, Luciano S. Barros

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A common complaint from power system analysis students lies in the overly complex tools they need to learn and use just to simulate very basic systems or just to check the answers to power system calculations. The most basic power system studies are power-flow solutions and short-circuit calculations. This paper presents a simple tool with an intuitive interface to perform both these studies and assess its performance in comparison with existent commercial solutions. With this in mind, Elegant is a pure Python software tool for learning power system analysis developed for undergraduate and graduate students. It solves the power-flow problem by iterative numerical methods and calculates bolted short-circuit fault currents by modeling the network in the domain of symmetrical components. Elegant can be used with a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) and automatically generates human-readable reports of the simulation results. The tool is exemplified using a typical Brazilian regional system with 18 buses. This study performs a comparative experiment with 1 undergraduate and 4 graduate students who attempted the same problem using both Elegant and a commercial tool. It was found that Elegant significantly reduces the time and labor involved in basic power system simulations while still providing some insights into real power system designs.

Keywords: Free- and open-source software, power-flow, power system analysis, Python, short-circuit.

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Vít Voženílek

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Olomouc is a unique and complex landmark with widespread forestation and land use. This research work was conducted to assess important and complex land use change trajectories in Olomouc region. Multi-temporal satellite data from 1991, 2001 and 2013 were used to extract land use/cover types by object oriented classification method. To achieve the objectives, three different aspects were used: (1) Calculate the quantity of each transition; (2) Allocate location based landscape pattern (3) Compare land use/cover evaluation procedure. Land cover change trajectories shows that 16.69% agriculture, 54.33% forest and 21.98% other areas (settlement, pasture and water-body) were stable in all three decade. Approximately 30% of the study area maintained as a same land cove type from 1991 to 2013. Here broad scale of political and socioeconomic factors was also affect the rate and direction of landscape changes. Distance from the settlements was the most important predictor of land cover change trajectories. This showed that most of landscape trajectories were caused by socio-economic activities and mainly led to virtuous change on the ecological environment.

Keywords: Remote Sensing, land use/cover, Change trajectories, Image classification.

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Authors: Carey Curtis

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There is a renewed interest in land use transport integration as a means of achieving sustainable accessibility. Such accessibility requires designing more than simply the transport network; it also requires attention to place (built form). Transitoriented development would appear to capture many of the criteria deemed important in land use transport integration. In Perth, Australia, there have been planning policies for the past 20 years requiring transit-oriented development around railway stations throughout the metropolitan area. While the policy intent, particularly at the State level, is clear the implementation of policy has been fairly ineffective. The first part of this paper provides an examination of state and local government planning and transport policies, evaluating them using a set of land use transport integration criteria considered all encompassing. This provides some insight into the extent of state and local government capacity to deliver land use transport integration. The second part of this paper examines the extent of implementation by examining existing and proposed land use around station precincts throughout metropolitan Perth. The findings of this research suggest that the capacity of state and local government to deliver land use transport integration is reasonable in a planning policy sense. Implementation, despite long policy lead times, has been lacking. It appears to be more effective where local planning controls have been suspended with new redevelopment authorities given powers to develop land around railway stations.

Keywords: Transit-oriented development, sustainable transport, transport policy.

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Authors: Ploysai Ohama, Nattida Tumpat

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Natural dye extracted from Caesalpinia sappan Linn. was applied to a cotton fabric and silk yarn by dyeing process. The dyestuff component of Caesalpinia sappan Linn. was extracted using water and ethanol. Analytical studies such as UV–VIS spectrophotometry and gravimetric analysis were performed on the extracts. Brazilein, the major dyestuff component of Caesalpinia sappan Linn. was confirmed in both aqueous and ethanolic extracts by UV–VIS spectrum. The color of each dyed material was investigated in terms of the CIELAB (L*, a* and b*) and K/S values. Cotton fabric dyed without mordant had a shade of reddish-brown, while those post-mordanted with aluminum potassium sulfate, ferrous sulfate and copper sulfate produced a variety of wine red to dark purple color shades. Cotton fabric and silk yarn dyeing was studied using aluminum potassium sulfate as a mordant. The observed color strength was enhanced with increase in mordant concentration.

Keywords: Natural dyes, Plant materials, Dyeing, Mordant.

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Authors: Anthony Ikechukwu Agboeze, Walter Timo de Vries, Pamela Durán-Díaz

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Since attaining urban status, the population of Enugu, Nigeria, has continued to grow rapidly, leading to growing demands for housing by the teeming population which is predominantly low income. Several government dispensations have developed various affordable housing projects to help deliver decent housing to the Enugu populace. However, over a long period of usage, some of those housing projects in Enugu are unabatedly deteriorating into slums alongside rising housing deficits which has remained problematic for most Nigerian urban centers to address. Emerging from a literature review, this research posits that the link between slum and affordable housing is that both the seekers of affordable housing and slum housing are the low-income earners. This research further investigated the possible causalities of slum emergence from decently built affordable housing projects in Enugu, Nigeria. To do so, we first analyzed the Nigerian housing policy to examine how the policy addresses slum prevention. We further conducted semi-structured expert interviews (qualitative) to sample the views of private housing developers on the degeneration of government housing projects into slums in Enugu, Nigeria. Findings from the housing policy analysis suggest that the housing policy itself is not legally binding on anybody to implement. Sequel to this non-compulsory nature of the housing policy is the poor/non-implementation of the Nigerian housing policy, leading to a constant tendency by the government developers (contractors) to deliver potential slums. The expert respondents corroborated this viewpoint by suggesting that poor planning (including designs of the housing units and the master plan) and poor management (including non-maintenance, poor documentation, and inaccurate housing inventory) are germane to the emergence of slums from affordable housings. This research recommends periodic auditing of delivered housing projects to evaluate the developers’ adherence to the housing policy guidelines – it proposes incentives to policy adherents since the housing policy is not legally binding. We also recommend a participatory management to engage the occupants in the monitoring and reporting of breakdowns in the housing properties – to help improve the quality of management and maintenance to have slum-free settlements.

Keywords: Affordable housing, Enugu, low income, Nigeria, slum.

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Authors: Dali Zhang, Baoqun Yin, Hongsheng Xi

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In this paper, we propose a single sample path based algorithm with state aggregation to optimize the average rewards of singularly perturbed Markov reward processes (SPMRPs) with a large scale state spaces. It is assumed that such a reward process depend on a set of parameters. Differing from the other kinds of Markov chain, SPMRPs have their own hierarchical structure. Based on this special structure, our algorithm can alleviate the load in the optimization for performance. Moreover, our method can be applied on line because of its evolution with the sample path simulated. Compared with the original algorithm applied on these problems of general MRPs, a new gradient formula for average reward performance metric in SPMRPs is brought in, which will be proved in Appendix, and then based on these gradients, the schedule of the iteration algorithm is presented, which is based on a single sample path, and eventually a special case in which parameters only dominate the disturbance matrices will be analyzed, and a precise comparison with be displayed between our algorithm with the old ones which is aim to solve these problems in general Markov reward processes. When applied in SPMRPs, our method will approach a fast pace in these cases. Furthermore, to illustrate the practical value of SPMRPs, a simple example in multiple programming in computer systems will be listed and simulated. Corresponding to some practical model, physical meanings of SPMRPs in networks of queues will be clarified.

Keywords: Singularly perturbed Markov processes, Gradient of average reward, Differential reward, State aggregation, Perturbed close network.

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Authors: Nadiah Yola Putri, Nesia Putri Sharfina, Traviata Prakarti

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This paper is a literature review presented descriptively to review the concept of green building to face the challenge of sustainable development and food in urban areas. In this paper, researchers initiated the concept of green building with sky farming method. Sky farming use vertical landscape system in order to realizing food self-sufficient green city. Sky farming relying on plantings and irrigation system efficiency in the building which is adopted the principles of green building. Planting system is done by applying hydroponic plants with Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) using energy source of solar cell and grey water from the processing of waste treatment plant. The application of sky farming in urban areas can be a recommendation for the design of environmental-friendly construction. In order to keep the land and distance efficiency, this system is a futuristic idea that would be the connector of human civilization in the future.

Keywords: Green building, urban area, sky farming, vertical landscape.

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Authors: Luz Janeth Ospina M.

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The fourth industrial revolution is changing the role of education substantially and, therefore, the role of instructors and learners at all levels. Education 4.0 is an imminent response to the needs of a globalized world where humans and technology are being aligned to enable endless possibilities, among them the need for students, as digital natives, to communicate effectively in at least one language besides their mother tongue, and also the requirement of developing theirs. This is an exploratory study in which a control group (N = 21), all of the students of Spanish as a foreign language at the university level, after taking a Spanish class, responded to an online questionnaire about the engagement, atmosphere, and environment in which their course was delivered. These aspects considered in the survey were relative to the instructor’s teaching style, including: (a) active, hands-on learning; (b) flexibility for in-class activities, easily switching between small group work, individual work, and whole-class discussion; and (c) integrating technology into the classroom. Strongly believing in these principles, the instructor deliberately taught the course in a SCALE-UP room, as it could facilitate such a positive and encouraging learning environment. These aspects are trends related to Education 4.0 and have become integral to the instructor’s pedagogical stance that calls for a constructive-affective role, instead of a transmissive one. As expected, with a learning environment that (a) fosters student engagement and (b) improves student outcomes, the subjects were highly engaged, which was partially due to the learning environment. An overwhelming majority (all but one) of students agreed or strongly agreed that the atmosphere and the environment were ideal. Outcomes of this study are relevant and indicate that it is about time for teachers to build up a meaningful correlation between humans and technology. We should see the trends of Education 4.0 not as a threat but as practices that should be in the hands of critical and creative instructors whose pedagogical stance responds to the needs of the learners in the 21st century.

Keywords: Active learning, education 4.0, higher education, pedagogical stance.

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Authors: Punit Kumar, Niraj Kumar

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The traction behavior of lubricants with the linear pressure-viscosity response in EHL line contacts is investigated numerically for smooth as well as rough surfaces. The analysis involves the simultaneous solution of Reynolds, elasticity and energy equations along with the computation of lubricant properties and surface temperatures. The temperature modified Doolittle-Tait equations are used to calculate viscosity and density as functions of fluid pressure and temperature, while Carreau model is used to describe the lubricant rheology. The surface roughness is assumed to be sinusoidal and it is present on the nearly stationary surface in near-pure sliding EHL conjunction. The linear P-V oil is found to yield much lower traction coefficients and slightly thicker EHL films as compared to the synthetic oil for a given set of dimensionless speed and load parameters. Besides, the increase in traction coefficient attributed to surface roughness is much lower for the former case. The present analysis emphasizes the importance of employing realistic pressure-viscosity response for accurate prediction of EHL traction.

Keywords: EHL, linear pressure-viscosity, surface roughness, traction, water/glycol.

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Authors: Yananda Siraphatthada

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The current study was the succession of a previous study on value added of recycling business management. Its aims are to 1) explore conditions on how to increasing value add of Thai recycling business, and 2) exam the implementation of the 3-staged plan (short, medium, and long term), suggested by the former study, to increase value added of the recycling business as immediate mechanisms to accelerate government operation. Quantitative and qualitative methods were utilized in this research. A qualitative research consisted of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. Responses were obtained from owners of the waste separation plants, and recycle shops, as well as officers in relevant governmental agencies. They were randomly selected via Quota Sampling. Data was analyzed via content analysis. The sample used for quantitative method consisted of 1,274 licensed recycling operators in eight provinces. The operators were randomly stratified via sampling method. Data were analyzed via descriptive statistics frequency, percentage, average (Mean) and standard deviation.The study recommended three-staged plan: short, medium, and long terms. The plan included the development of logistics, the provision of quality market/plants, the amendment of recycling rules/regulation, the restructuring recycling business, the establishment of green-purchasing recycling center, support for the campaigns run by the International Green Purchasing Network (IGPN), conferences/workshops as a public forum to share insights among experts/concern people.

Keywords: Strategies, Value Added, Recycle Business.

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Authors: Raquel P. F. Guiné, Ana R. B. Figueiredo, Paula M. R. Correia, Fernando J. Gonçalves

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The purpose of the present work was to develop an innovative food product with nutritional properties as well as appealing organoleptic qualities. The product, a jam, was prepared with the beans’ cooking water combined with fresh apple or carrot, without the addition of any conservatives. Three different jams were produced: bean and carrot, bean and apple and bean, apple and cinnamon. The developed products underwent a sensorial analysis that revealed that the bean, apple and cinnamon jam was globally better accepted. However, with this study, the consumers determined that the bean and carrot jam had the most attractive color and the bean and apple jam the better consistency. Additionally, it was possible to analyze the jams for their chemical components, namely fat, fiber, protein, sugars and antioxidant activity. The obtained results showed that the bean and carrot jam had the highest lipid content, while the bean, apple and cinnamon jam had the highest fiber content, when compared to the other two jams. Regarding the sugar content, both jams with apple revealed similar sugar values, which were higher than the sugar content of the bean and carrot jam. The antioxidant activity was on average 10 mg TE/g.

Keywords: Bean jam, chemical composition, sensorial analysis, product acceptability.

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Authors: B. A. Berns, V. Romanovicz, M. M. de Camargo Forte, D. E. O. S. Carpenter

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The Proton Exchange Membranes (PEM) are largely studied because they operate at low temperatures and they are suitable for mobile applications. However, there are some deficiencies in their operation, mainly those that use ethanol as a hydrogen source, that require a certain attention. Therefore, this research aimed to develop Nafion® composite membranes, mixing clay minerals, kaolin and halloysite to the polymer matrix in order to improve the ethanol molecule retentions and, at the same time, to keep the system’s protonic conductivity. The modified Nafion/Kaolin, Nafion/Halloysite composite membranes were prepared in weight proportion of 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5. The membranes obtained were characterized as to their ethanol permeability, protonic conductivity and water absorption. The composite morphology and structure are characterized by SEM and EDX and the thermal behavior is determined by TGA and DSC. The analysis of the results shows ethanol permeability reduction from 48% to 63%. However, the protonic conductivity results are lower in relation to pure Nafion®. As to the thermal behavior, the Nafion® composite membranes were stable up to a temperature of 325ºC.

Keywords: Polymer-matrix composites (PMCs), Thermal properties, Nanoclay, Differential scanning calorimetry.

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Authors: Peng Hao Wang, Garam Kim, Ronald Sterkenburg

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The applications of composite materials within the aviation industry has been increasing at a rapid pace.  However, the growing applications of composite materials have also led to growing demand for more tooling to support its manufacturing processes. Tooling and tooling maintenance represents a large portion of the composite manufacturing process and cost. Therefore, the industry’s adaptability to new techniques for fabricating high quality tools quickly and inexpensively will play a crucial role in composite material’s growing popularity in the aviation industry. One popular tool fabrication technique currently being developed involves additive manufacturing such as 3D printing. Although additive manufacturing and 3D printing are not entirely new concepts, the technique has been gaining popularity due to its ability to quickly fabricate components, maintain low material waste, and low cost. In this study, a team of Purdue University School of Aviation and Transportation Technology (SATT) faculty and students investigated the effectiveness of a 3D printed composite compression mold. A 3D printed composite compression mold was fabricated by 3D scanning a steel valve cover of an aircraft reciprocating engine. The 3D printed composite compression mold was used to fabricate carbon fiber versions of the aircraft reciprocating engine valve cover. The 3D printed composite compression mold was evaluated for its performance, durability, and dimensional stability while the fabricated carbon fiber valve covers were evaluated for its accuracy and quality. The results and data gathered from this study will determine the effectiveness of the 3D printed composite compression mold in a mass production environment and provide valuable information for future understanding, improvements, and design considerations of 3D printed composite molds.

Keywords: Additive manufacturing, carbon fiber, composite tooling, molds.

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Authors: Bin Su

Abstract:

This study focuses on the impact of school building design factors on winter extra energy consumption which mainly includes space heating, water heating and other appliances related to winter indoor thermal conditions. A number of Auckland schools were randomly selected for the study which introduces a method of using real monthly energy consumption data for a year to calculate winter extra energy data of school buildings. The study seeks to identify the relationships between winter extra energy data related to school building design data related to the main architectural features, building envelope and elements of the sample schools. The relationships can be used to estimate the approximate saving in winter extra energy consumption which would result from a changed design datum for future school development, and identify any major energy-efficient design problems. The relationships are also valuable for developing passive design guides for school energy efficiency.

Keywords: Building energy efficiency, Building thermal design, Building thermal performance, School building design.

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Authors: P. Kanakasabapathy, Radhika. S,

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In the competitive electricity market environment, the profit of the pumped-storage plant in the energy market can be maximized by operating it as a generator, when market clearing price is high and as a pump, to pump water from lower reservoir to upper reservoir, when the price is low. An optimal self-scheduling plan has been developed for a pumped-storage plant, carried out on weekly basis in order to maximize the profit of the plant, keeping into account of all the major uncertainties such as the sudden ancillary service delivery request and the price forecasting errors. For a pumped storage power plant to operate in a real time market successive self scheduling has to be done by considering the forecast of the day-ahead market and the modified reservoir storage due to the ancillary service request of the previous day. Sliding Window Technique has been used for successive self scheduling to ensure profit for the plant.

Keywords: Ancillary services, BPSO, Power System Economics (Electricity markets), Self-Scheduling, Sliding Window Technique.

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Authors: Mojtaba Heydarizad

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Zagros mountain range is a very important precipitation zone in Iran as it receives high average annual precipitation compared to other parts of this country. Although this region is important precipitation zone in semi-arid an arid country like Iran, accurate method to study water resources in this region has not been applied yet. In this study, stable isotope δ¹⁸O content of precipitation and groundwater resources showed spatial variations across Zagros region as southern parts of Zagros region showed more enriched isotope values compared to the northern parts. This is normal as southern Zagros region is much drier with higher air temperature and evaporation compared to northern parts. In addition, the spatial variations of stable isotope δ¹⁸O in precipitation in Zagros region have been simulated by the models which consider the altitude and latitude variations as input to simulate δ¹⁸O in precipitation.

Keywords: Groundwater, precipitation, simulation, stable isotopes, Zagros region.

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Authors: M. Bortolini, E. Ferrari, F. G. Galizia, C. Mora

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In the last decades, an increasing set of companies adopted lean philosophy to improve their productivity and efficiency promoting the so-called continuous improvement concept, reducing waste of time and cutting off no-value added activities. In parallel, increasing attention rises toward green practice and management through the spread of the green supply chain pattern, to minimise landfilled waste, drained wastewater and pollutant emissions. Starting from a review on contributions deepening lean and green principles applied to supply chain management, the most relevant drivers to measure the performance of industrial processes are pointed out. Specific attention is paid on the role of cost because it is of key importance and it crosses both lean and green principles. This analysis leads to figure out an original reference framework for integrating lean and green principles in designing and managing supply chains. The proposed framework supports the application, to the whole value chain or to parts of it, e.g. distribution network, assembly system, job-shop, storage system etc., of the lean-green integrated perspective. Evidences show that the combination of the lean and green practices lead to great results, higher than the sum of the performances from their separate application. Lean thinking has beneficial effects on green practices and, at the same time, methods allowing environmental savings generate positive effects on time reduction and process quality increase.

Keywords: Environmental sustainability, green supply chain, integrated framework, lean thinking, supply chain management.

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Authors: B. Gechbaia, K. Goletiani, G. Gabedava, N. Mikeltadze

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At this stage, Georgia is a country which is actively involved in the European integration process, for which the primary priority is effective integration in the European education system. The modern Georgian higher education system is the process of establishing a new sociocultural reality, whose main priorities are determined by the Quality System as a continuous cycle of planning, implementation, checking and acting. Obviously, in this situation, the issue of management of education institutions comes out in the foreground, since the proper planning and implementation of personnel management processes is one of the main determinants of the company's performance. At the same time, one of the most important factors is the psychological comfort of the personnel, ensuring their protection and efficiency of stress management policy.

The purpose of this research is to determine how intensely the relationship is between the psychological comfort of the personnel and the efficiency of the quality system in the institution as the quality assurance mechanisms of educational institutions affect the stability of personnel, prevention and management of the stressful situation. The research was carried out within the framework of the Internal Grant Project «The Role of Organizational Culture in the Process of Settlement of Management of Stress and Conflict, Georgian Reality and European Experience » of the Batumi Navigation Teaching University, based on the analysis of the survey results of target groups. The small-scale research conducted by us has revealed that the introduction of quality assurance system and its active implementation increased the quality of management of Georgian educational institutions, increased the level of universal engagement in internal and external processes and as a result, it has improved the quality of education as well as social and psychological comfort indicators of the society.

Keywords: Quality assurance, effective management, stability of personnel, psychological comfort, stress management.

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Authors: Papathanasiou Anastasios, Liontos George, Liagkou Vasiliki, Glavas Euripides

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The purpose of this paper is to describe the growing problem of various cyber fraud schemes that exist on the internet and are currently among the most prevalent. The main focus of this paper is to provide a detailed description of the modus operandi, tools, and techniques utilized in four basic typologies of cyber frauds: Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, investment fraud, romance scams, and online sales fraud. The paper aims to shed light on the methods employed by cybercriminals in perpetrating these types of fraud, as well as the strategies they use to deceive and victimize individuals and businesses on the internet. Furthermore, this study outlines defense strategies intended to tackle the issue head-on, with a particular emphasis on the crucial role played by European legislation. European legislation has proactively adapted to the evolving landscape of cyber fraud, striving to enhance cybersecurity awareness, bolster user education, and implement advanced technical controls to mitigate associated risks. The paper evaluates the advantages and innovations brought about by the European legislation while also acknowledging potential flaws that cybercriminals might exploit. As a result, recommendations for refining the legislation are offered in this study in order to better address this pressing issue.

Keywords: Business email compromise, cybercrime, European legislation, investment fraud, Network and Information Security, online sales fraud, romance scams.

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Authors: Mohammad Hassanzadeh

Abstract:

As far as incidental vocabulary learning is concerned, the basic contention of the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) is that retention of unfamiliar words is, generally, conditional upon the degree of involvement in processing them. This study examined input modality and incidental vocabulary uptake in a task-induced setting whereby three variously loaded task types (marginal glosses, fill-in-task, and sentence-writing) were alternately assigned to one group of students at Allameh Tabataba’i University (n=2l) during six classroom sessions. While one round of exposure was comprised of the audiovisual medium (TV talk shows), the second round consisted of textual materials with approximately similar subject matter (reading texts). In both conditions, however, the tasks were equivalent to one another. Taken together, the study pursued the dual objectives of establishing a litmus test for the ILH and its proposed values of ‘need’, ‘search’ and ‘evaluation’ in the first place. Secondly, it sought to bring to light the superiority issue of exposure to audiovisual input versus the written input as far as the incorporation of tasks is concerned. At the end of each treatment session, a vocabulary active recall test was administered to measure their incidental gains. Running a one-way analysis of variance revealed that the audiovisual intervention yielded higher gains than the written version even when differing tasks were included. Meanwhile, task 'three' (sentence-writing) turned out the most efficient in tapping learners' active recall of the target vocabulary items. In addition to shedding light on the superiority of audiovisual input over the written input when circumstances are relatively held constant, this study for the most part, did support the underlying tenets of ILH.

Keywords: Evaluation, incidental vocabulary learning, input mode, involvement load hypothesis, need, search.

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Authors: M. Barański

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This paper presents a several diagnostic methods designed to electrical machinesespecially for permanent magnets (PM) machines. Those machines are commonly used in small wind and water systems and vehicles drives.Thosemethodsare preferred by the author in periodic diagnostic of electrical machines. The special attentionshould be paid to diagnostic method of turn-to-turn insulation and vibrations. Both of those methodswere createdinInstitute of Electrical Drives and MachinesKomel. The vibration diagnostic method is the main thesis of author’s doctoral dissertation. This is method of determination the technical condition of PM electrical machine basing on its own signals is the subject of patent application No P.405669. Specific structural properties of machines excited by permanent magnets are used in this method - electromotive force (EMF) generated due to vibrations. There was analysed number of publications which describe vibration diagnostic methods and tests of electrical machines with permanent magnets and there was no method found to determine the technical condition of such machine basing on their own signals.

Keywords: Electrical vehicle, generator, main insulation, permanent magnet, thermography, turn-to- traction drive, turn insulation, vibrations.

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Authors: É. Kónya, E. Szabó, I. Bata-Vidács, T. Deák, M. Ottucsák, N. Adányi, A. Székács

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Spice paprika is a major spice commodity in the European Union (EU), produced locally and imported from non-EU countries, reported not only for chemical and microbiological contamination, but also for fraud. The effective interaction between producers’ quality management practices and government and EU activities is described on the example of spice paprika production and control in Hungary, a country of leading spice paprika producer and per capita consumer in Europe. To demonstrate the importance of various contamination factors in the Hungarian production and EU trade of spice paprika, several aspects concerning food safety of this commodity are presented. Alerts in the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) of the EU between 2005 and 2013, as well as Hungarian state inspection results on spice paprika in 2004 are discussed, and quality non-compliance claims regarding spice paprika among EU member states are summarized in by means of network analysis. Quality assurance measures established along the spice paprika production technology chain at the leading Hungarian spice paprika manufacturer, Kalocsai Fűszerpaprika Zrt. are surveyed with main critical control points identified. The structure and operation of the Hungarian state food safety inspection system is described. Concerted performance of the latter two quality management systems illustrates the effective interaction between internal (manufacturer) and external (state) quality control measures.

Keywords: Spice paprika, quality control, reporting mechanisms, RASFF, vulnerable points, HACCP, BRC Global Standard.

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Authors: Xiao-Li Dong, Quan-Gui Gao, Sa-Sa Gu, Hao-Tian Feng, Man-Sau Wong, Liya Denney

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Postmenopausal osteoporosis is a disorder characterized by the progressive bone loss induced by estrogen deficiency in postmenopausal women. This imbalance affects calcium–phosphate metabolism and results in secondary hyperparathyroidism. Purariae Radix (PR), the root of P. lobata (Wild.) Ohwi, is one of the earliest medicinal herbs employed in ancient China. PR contains a high quantity of isoflavones and their glycosides, which are regarded as phytoestrogen. Few investigations of PR are related to its osteoprotective effects. The present study is designed to administer PR water extract to ovariectomized (OVX) female rats, for the investigation of its possibly protective actions on bone and to delineate the potential mechanisms involved. Our results demonstrated that long-term treatment of PR could not significantly improve bone properties, whereas it greatly ameliorated the condition of secondary hyperparathyroidism induced by ovariectomy in those animals. PR might be useful as alternative regimen for protecting against postmenopausal bone loss.

Keywords: Hyperparathyroidism, Ovariectomy, Postmenopausal Osteoporosis, Purariae Radix

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Authors: Aswin Kumar Krishnan, Yat Choy Wong, Reiza Mukhlis, Zipeng Zhang, Arul Arulrajah

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The continuous increase in vehicle uptake escalates the number of rubber tyres waste which need to be managed to avoid landfilling and stockpiling. The present research focused on the sustainable use of crumb rubber in clay roof tiles. The properties of roof tiles composed of clay, crumb rubber, NaOH, and Na2SiO3 with 10 wt.% alkaline activator were studied. Tile samples were fabricated by heating the compacted mixtures at 50 °C for 72 hours, followed by a higher heating temperature of 200 °C for 24 hours. The effect of crumb rubber aggregates as a substitution for the raw clay materials were investigated by varying their concentration from 0 wt.% to 2.5 wt.%. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses have been conducted to study the phases and microstructures of the samples. It was found that the optimum rubber crumbs concentration was at 0.5 wt.% and 1 wt.%, while cracks and larger porosity were found at higher crumbs concentration. Water absorption, and compressive strength test results demonstrated that rubber crumbs and clay satisfied the standard requirement for the roof tiles.

Keywords: Crumb rubber, clay, roof tiles, alkaline activators.

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Authors: Parvinder S. Sandhu, Sandeep Khimta, Kiranpreet Kaur

Abstract:

The prediction of Software quality during development life cycle of software project helps the development organization to make efficient use of available resource to produce the product of highest quality. “Whether a module is faulty or not" approach can be used to predict quality of a software module. There are numbers of software quality prediction models described in the literature based upon genetic algorithms, artificial neural network and other data mining algorithms. One of the promising aspects for quality prediction is based on clustering techniques. Most quality prediction models that are based on clustering techniques make use of K-means, Mixture-of-Guassians, Self-Organizing Map, Neural Gas and fuzzy K-means algorithm for prediction. In all these techniques a predefined structure is required that is number of neurons or clusters should be known before we start clustering process. But in case of Growing Neural Gas there is no need of predetermining the quantity of neurons and the topology of the structure to be used and it starts with a minimal neurons structure that is incremented during training until it reaches a maximum number user defined limits for clusters. Hence, in this work we have used Growing Neural Gas as underlying cluster algorithm that produces the initial set of labeled cluster from training data set and thereafter this set of clusters is used to predict the quality of test data set of software modules. The best testing results shows 80% accuracy in evaluating the quality of software modules. Hence, the proposed technique can be used by programmers in evaluating the quality of modules during software development.

Keywords: Growing Neural Gas, data clustering, fault prediction.

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Authors: Hossam el-ddin Mostafa, Pavel Čičak

Abstract:

IETF RFC 2002 originally introduced the wireless Mobile-IP protocol to support portable IP addresses for mobile devices that often change their network access points to the Internet. The inefficiency of this protocol mainly within the handoff management produces large end-to-end packet delays, during registration process, and further degrades the system efficiency due to packet losses between subnets. The criterion to initiate a simple and fast full-duplex connection between the home agent and foreign agent, to reduce the roaming duration, is a very important issue to be considered by a work in this paper. State-transition Petri-Nets of the modeling scenario-based CIA: communication inter-agents procedure as an extension to the basic Mobile-IP registration process was designed and manipulated. The heuristic of configuration file during practical Setup session for registration parameters, on Cisco platform Router-1760 using IOS 12.3 (15)T is created. Finally, stand-alone performance simulations results from Simulink Matlab, within each subnet and also between subnets, are illustrated for reporting better end-to-end packet delays. Results verified the effectiveness of our Mathcad analytical manipulation and experimental implementation. It showed lower values of end-to-end packet delay for Mobile-IP using CIA procedure. Furthermore, it reported packets flow between subnets to improve packet losses between subnets.

Keywords: Cisco configuration, handoff, packet delay, Petri-Nets, registration process, Simulink.

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Authors: Mohd Iz'aan Paiz Bin Zamri, Anis Salwa Mohd Khairuddin, Norrima Mokhtar, Rubiyah Yusof

Abstract:

Effective statistical feature extraction and classification are important in image-based automatic inspection and analysis. An automatic wood species recognition system is designed to perform wood inspection at custom checkpoints to avoid mislabeling of timber which will results to loss of income to the timber industry. The system focuses on analyzing the statistical pores properties of the wood images. This paper proposed a fuzzy-based feature extractor which mimics the experts’ knowledge on wood texture to extract the properties of pores distribution from the wood surface texture. The proposed feature extractor consists of two steps namely pores extraction and fuzzy pores management. The total number of statistical features extracted from each wood image is 38 features. Then, a backpropagation neural network is used to classify the wood species based on the statistical features. A comprehensive set of experiments on a database composed of 5200 macroscopic images from 52 tropical wood species was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed feature extractor. The advantage of the proposed feature extraction technique is that it mimics the experts’ interpretation on wood texture which allows human involvement when analyzing the wood texture. Experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed method.

Keywords: Classification, fuzzy, inspection system, image analysis.

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Authors: N. Daneshvar, S. Aber, M. S. Seyed Dorraji, A. R. Khataee, M. H. Rasoulifard

Abstract:

ZnO nanocrystals with mean diameter size 14 nm have been prepared by precipitation method, and examined as photocatalyst for the UV-induced degradation of insecticide diazinon as deputy of organic pollutant in aqueous solution. The effects of various parameters, such as illumination time, the amount of photocatalyst, initial pH values and initial concentration of insecticide on the photocatalytic degradation diazinon were investigated to find desired conditions. In this case, the desired parameters were also tested for the treatment of real water containing the insecticide. Photodegradation efficiency of diazinon was compared between commercial and prepared ZnO nanocrystals. The results indicated that UV/ZnO process applying prepared nanocrystalline ZnO offered electrical energy efficiency and quantum yield better than commercial ZnO. The present study, on the base of Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism, illustrated a pseudo first-order kinetic model with rate constant of surface reaction equal to 0.209 mg l-1 min-1 and adsorption equilibrium constant of 0.124 l mg-1.

Keywords: Zinc oxide nanopowder, Electricity consumption, Quantum yield, Nanoparticles, Photodegradation, Kinetic model, Insecticide.

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Authors: Ashok Kumar, Vinod Kumar

Abstract:

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used to monitor/observe vast inaccessible regions through deployment of large number of sensor nodes in the sensing area. For majority of WSN applications, the collected data needs to be combined with geographic information of its origin to make it useful for the user; information received from remote Sensor Nodes (SNs) that are several hops away from base station/sink is meaningless without knowledge of its source. In addition to this, location information of SNs can also be used to propose/develop new network protocols for WSNs to improve their energy efficiency and lifetime. In this paper, range free localization protocols for WSNs have been proposed. The proposed protocols are based on weighted centroid localization technique, where the edge weights of SNs are decided by utilizing fuzzy logic inference for received signal strength and link quality between the nodes. The fuzzification is carried out using (i) Mamdani, (ii) Sugeno, and (iii) Combined Mamdani Sugeno fuzzy logic inference. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed protocols provide better accuracy in node localization compared to conventional centroid based localization protocols despite presence of unintentional radio frequency interference from radio frequency (RF) sources operating in same frequency band.

Keywords: localization, range free, received signal strength, link quality indicator, Mamdani fuzzy logic inference, Sugeno fuzzy logic inference.

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Authors: Chin-Jung Lin, Yi-Hsien Yu, Szu-Ying Chen, Ya-Hsuan Liou

Abstract:

Highly ordered arrays of TiO2 nanotubes (TiNTs) were grown vertically on Ti foil by electrochemical anodization. We controlled the lengths of these TiNTs from 2.4 to 26.8 ¶üÇóμm while varying the water contents (1, 3, and 6 wt%) of the electrolyte in ethylene glycol in the presence of 0.5 wt% NH4F with anodization for various applied voltages (20–80 V), periods (10–240 min) and temperatures (10–30 oC). For vertically aligned TiNT arrays, not only the increase in their tube lengths, but also their geometric (wall thickness and surface roughness) and crystalline structure lead to a significant influence on photocatalytic activity. The length optimization for methylene blue (MB) photodegradation was 18 μm. Further extending the TiNT length yielded lower photocatalytic activity presumably related to the limited MB diffusion and light-penetration depth into the TiNT arrays. The results indicated that a maximum MB photodegradation rate was obtained for the discrete anatase TiO2 nanotubes with thick and rough walls.

Keywords: Anodic oxidation, nanotube, photocatalytic, TiO2.

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