Search results for: high traffic environments.

Authors: Ilias A. Makris

Abstract:

In this work, we attempt to associate firm characteristics with innovative activity. We collect microdata from listed firms of selected Eurozone Country-members, after the beginning of 2007 financial crisis. The following literature, several indicators of growth and performance were selected and tested for their ability to interpret innovative activity. The main scope is to examine the possible differences in performance and growth between innovative and non-innovative firms, during a severe recession. Additionally to that, a special focus will be held on whether macroeconomic performance and national innovation system, determines the extent of innovators' performance. Preliminary findings, through correlation matrices and non-parametric tests, strongly indicate the positive relation between innovative activity and most of the measures used (profitability, size, employment), confirming that even during a recessionary period, innovative firms not only survive but also seem to succeed better economic results in almost all indexes relative to non-innovative. However, even though innovators seem to perform better in all economies examined, the extent of that performance seems to be strongly affected by the supportive mechanisms (financial and structural) that their country provides. Thus, it is clear, that the technologically intensive 'gap' between European South and North, during the economic crisis, became chaotic, due to the harsh austerity measures and reduced budgets in those countries, even in sectors with high potentials in economic activity and employment, impairing the effects of crisis and enhancing the vicious circle of recession.

Keywords: Eurozone, innovative activity, development, firm performance, non-parametric tests.

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Authors: Ntokozo C. Mthembu

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The notion of sustainable chemistry has become significant in the discourse for a global post-colonial era, including South Africa, especially when it comes to access to the general health system and related policies in relation to disease or ease of human life. In view of the stubborn vestiges of coloniality in the daily lives of indigenous African people in general, the fundamentals of present Western medical and traditional medicine systems and related policies in the democratic era were examined in this study. The situation of traditional healers in relation to current policy was also reviewed. The advent of democracy in South Africa brought about a variety of development opportunities and limitations, particularly with respect to indigenous African knowledge systems such as traditional medicine. There were high hopes that the limitations of previous narrow cultural perspectives would be rectified in the democratic era through development interventions, but some sections of society, such as traditional healers, remain marginalised. The Afrocentric perspective was explored in dissecting government interventions related to traditional medicine. This article highlights that multiple medical systems should be adopted and that health policies should be aligned in order to guarantee mutual respect and to address the remnants of colonialism in South Africa, Africa and the broader global community.

Keywords: Traditional healing system, healers, pluralist healthcare system, post-colonial era.

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Authors: Syed M. Shahid, Rozeena Shaikh, Syeda N. Nawab, Shah A. Qader, Abid Azhar, Tabassum Mahboob

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This study was designed to investigate the role of serum nitric oxide and sialic acid in the development of diabetic nephropathy as disease marker. Total 210 diabetic patients (age and sex matched) were selected followed by informed consent and divided into four groups (70 each) as I: control; II: diabetic; III: diabetic hypertensive; IV: diabetic nephropathy. The blood samples of all subjects were collected and analyzed for serum nitric oxide, sialic acid, fasting blood glucose, serum urea, creatinine, HbA1c and GFR. The BMI, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, blood glucose, HbA1c and serum sialic acid levels were high (p<0.01) in group II as compared to control subjects. The higher levels (p<0.01) of BMI, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, blood glucose, HbA1c, serum urea, creatinine and sialic acid were observed in group III and IV as compared to controls. Significantly low levels of GFR and serum nitric oxide (p<0.01) were observed in group III and IV as compared to controls. Results indicated that serum nitric oxide and sialic acid are the major biochemical indicators for micro and macrovascular complications of diabetes such as hypertension and nephropathy. These should be taken into account during screening procedures regarding identifications of the diabetic patients to get them rid of progressive renal impairment to ESRD.

Keywords: Diabetic nephropathy, hypertension, nitric oxide, sialic acid.

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Authors: A.A Abou-Rawash, H.S. Abd EL-Hamed. H A. Abd-Ellatieff, S. M. Elsamanoudy

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Clinically, chickens showed progressively developed clinical signs represented by sever cyanosis of the comb and wattles with hemorrhage at the shanks, depression, and ruffling feathers with loss of appetite and high daily mortalities. The ducks showed severe neurological signs as torticollus, seizures and inability to stand with mild signs of diarrhea and depression. Grossly, chickens showed hemorrhages and congestion in most of the organs particularly lung, liver, spleen, trachea and kidney. The examined ducks showed multiple petechial hemorrhages, multifocal hemorrhagic necrosis in the pancreas, pulmonary edema, congestion and hemorrhage in meninges and congestion in the skeletal muscles. Histopathology revealed severe congestion and hemorrhages in most of the organs particularly lung, liver and kidney. Microscopic erosive tracheitis, sever pulmonary congestion and perivascular oedema and lymphogranulocytic pneumonia were constant. The liver showed hepatocyts necrosis and lympho-granulocytic infiltration. The kidney showed renal tubular necrosis and diffuse congestion. Multifocal, neuronal necrosis, hemorrhages, multifocal glial nodules, lympho- histiocytic perivascular cuffing, and occasional neuronophagia were observed in the cerebrum. Other organs showed moderate changes.

Keywords: Chicken, Ducks, H5N1 Avian Influenza, Pathology

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Authors: A. Soualem

Abstract:

The design of multi stage deep drawing processes requires the evaluation of many process parameters such as the intermediate die geometry, the blank shape, the sheet thickness, the blank holder force, friction, lubrication etc..These process parameters have to be determined for the optimum forming conditions before the process design. In general sheet metal forming may involve stretching drawing or various combinations of these basic modes of deformation. It is important to determine the influence of the process variables in the design of sheet metal working process. Especially, the punch and die corner for deep drawing will affect the formability. At the same time the prediction of sheet metals springback after deep drawing is an important issue to solve for the control of manufacturing processes. Nowadays, the importance of this problem increases because of the use of steel sheeting with high stress and also aluminum alloys.

The aim of this paper is to give a better understanding of the springback and its effect in various sheet metals forming process such as expansion and restreint deep drawing in the cup drawing process, by varying radius die, lubricant for two commercially available materials e.g. galvanized steel and Aluminum sheet. To achieve these goals experiments were carried out and compared with other results. The original of our purpose consist on tests which are ensured by adapting a U-type stretching-bending device on a tensile testing machine, where we studied and quantified the variation of the springback.

Keywords: Deep drawing, Expansion, Restreint deep drawing, Springback.

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Authors: Anton Golubkov, Gleb Ermachkov, Aleksandr Smerdin, Oleg Sidorov, Victor Philippov

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Current collection quality is one of the limiting factors when increasing trains movement speed in the rail sector. With the movement speed growth, the impact forces on the current collector from the rolling stock and the aerodynamic influence increase, which leads to the spread in the contact pressure values, separation of the current collector head from the contact wire, contact arcing and excessive wear of the contact elements. The upcoming trend in resolving this issue is the use of the automatic control systems providing stabilization of the contact pressure value. The present paper considers the features of the contemporary automatic control systems of the current collector’s pressure; their major disadvantages have been stated. A scheme of current collector pressure automatic control has been proposed, distinguished by a proactive influence on undesirable effects. A mathematical model of contact strips wearing has been presented, obtained in accordance with the provisions of the central composition rotatable design program. The analysis of the obtained dependencies has been carried out. The procedures for determining the optimal current collector pressure on the contact wire and the pressure control principle in the pneumatic drive have been described.

Keywords: High-speed running, current collector, contact strip, mathematical model, contact pressure, program control, wear, life cycle.

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Authors: Hilal A. Abdelwali, Elsayed E.M. Ellaimony, Ahmad E.M. Murad, Jasem M.S. Al-Rajhi

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Due to the excess of a vehicle operation through its life, some elements may face failure and deteriorate with time. This leads us to carry out maintenance, repair, tune up or full overhaul. After a certain period, the vehicle elements deteriorations increase with time which causes a very high increase of doing the maintenance operations and their costs. However, the logic decision at this point is to replace the current vehicle by a new one with minimum failure and maximum income. The importance of studying vehicle replacement problems come from the increase of stopping days due to many deteriorations in the vehicle parts. These deteriorations increase year after year causing an increase of operating costs and decrease the vehicle income. Vehicle replacement aims to determine the optimum time to keep, maintain, overhaul, renew and replace vehicles. This leads to an improvement in vehicle income, total operating costs, maintenance cost, fuel and oil costs, ton-kilometers, vehicle and engine performance, vehicle noise, vibration, and pollution. The aim of this paper is to find the optimum replacement policies of Kuwait Passenger Transport Company (KPTCP) fleet of busses. The objective of these policies is to maximize the busses pure profits. The dynamic programming (D.P.) technique is used to generate the busses optimal replacement policies

Keywords: Replacement Problem, Automotive Replacement, Dynamic Programming, Equipment Replacement, K.P.T.C.

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Authors: Wen-Hong Liu, Hao-Tang Jhan, Kun-Lung Lin, Meng-Tsung Lee

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Weather disaster events were frequent and caused loss of lives and property in Taiwan recently. Excessive concentration of population and lacking of integrated planning led to Taiwanese coastal zone face the impacts of climate change directly. Comparing to many countries which have already set up legislation, competent authorities and national adaptation strategies, the ability of coastal management adapting to climate change is still insufficient in Taiwan. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a complete institutional arrangement for coastal management due to climate change in order to protect environment and sustain socio-economic development. This paper firstly reviews the impact of climate change on Taiwanese coastal zone. Secondly, development of Taiwanese institutional arrangement of coastal management is introduced. Followed is the analysis of four dimensions of legal basis, competent authority, scientific and financial support and international cooperations of institutional arrangement. The results show that Taiwanese government shall: 1) integrate climate change issue into Coastal Act, Wetland Act and territorial planning Act and pass them; 2) establish the high level competent authority for coastal management; 3) set up the climate change disaster coordinate platform; 4) link scientific information and decision markers; 5) establish the climate change adjustment fund; 6) participate in international climate change organizations and meetings actively; 7) cooperate with near countries to exchange experiences.

Keywords: Climate Change, Coastal Zone Management, Institution Arrangement, Adaptation.

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Authors: A. Ras, I. Nait Zerrad, N. Benmouna, N. Boumechra

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Use of base isolators in the seismic design of structures has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The major concern in the design of these structures is to have enough lateral stability to resist wind and seismic forces. There are different systems providing such isolation, among them there are friction- pendulum base isolation systems (FPS) which are rather widely applied nowadays involving to both affordable cost and high fundamental periods. These devices are characterised by a stiff resistance against wind loads and to be flexible to the seismic tremors, which make them suitable for different situations. In this paper, a 3D numerical investigation is done considering the seismic response of a twelve-storey steel building retrofitted with a FPS. Fast nonlinear time history analysis (FNA) of Boumerdes earthquake (Algeria, May 2003) is considered for analysis and carried out using SAP2000 software. Comparisons between fixed base, bearing base isolated and braced structures are shown in a tabulated and graphical format. The results of the various alternatives studies to compare the structural response without and with this device of dissipation energy thus obtained were discussed and the conclusions showed the interesting potential of the FPS isolator. This system may to improve the dissipative capacities of the structure without increasing its rigidity in a significant way which contributes to optimize the quantity of steel necessary for its general stability.

Keywords: Steel structure, energy dissipation, friction-pendulum system, nonlinear analysis.

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Authors: Festus A. Olutoge, Ahmed A. Akintunde, Anuoluwapo S. Kolade, Aaron A. Chadee, Jovanca Smith

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Geopolymer concrete's (GPC) compressive strength was investigated. The GPC was incorporated with rice husk ash (RHA) and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), which may have potential in the construction industry to replace Portland limestone cement (PLC) concrete. The sustainable construction binders used were GGBFS and RHA, and a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium silicate gel (Na2SiO3) was used as the 12-molar alkaline activator. Five GPC mixes comprising fine aggregates, coarse aggregates, GGBS, and RHA, and the alkaline solution in the ratio 2: 2.5: 1: 0.5, respectively, were prepared to achieve grade 40 concrete, and PLC was substituted with GGBFS and RHA in the ratios of 0:100, 25:75, 50:50, 75:25, and 100:0. A control mix was also prepared which comprised of 100% water and 100% PLC as the cementitious material. The GPC mixes were thermally cured at 60-80 ºC in an oven for approximately 24 h. After curing for 7 and 28 days, the compressive strength test results of the hardened GPC samples showed that GPC-Mix #3, comprising 50% GGBFS and 50% RHA, was the most efficient geopolymer mix. The mix had compressive strengths of 35.71 MPa and 47.26 MPa, 19.87% and 8.69% higher than the PLC concrete samples, which had 29.79 MPa and 43.48 MPa after 7 and 28 days, respectively. Therefore, GPC containing GGBFS incorporated with RHA is an efficient method of decreasing the use of PLC in conventional concrete production and reducing the high amounts of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere in the construction industry.

Keywords: Alkaline solution, cementitious material, geopolymer concrete, ground granulated blast furnace slag, rice husk ash.

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Authors: Hanaa T. El-Madany, Faten H. Fahmy, Ninet M. A. El-Rahman, Hassen T. Dorrah

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Designing and implementing intelligent systems has become a crucial factor for the innovation and development of better products of space technologies. A neural network is a parallel system, capable of resolving paradigms that linear computing cannot. Field programmable gate array (FPGA) is a digital device that owns reprogrammable properties and robust flexibility. For the neural network based instrument prototype in real time application, conventional specific VLSI neural chip design suffers the limitation in time and cost. With low precision artificial neural network design, FPGAs have higher speed and smaller size for real time application than the VLSI and DSP chips. So, many researchers have made great efforts on the realization of neural network (NN) using FPGA technique. In this paper, an introduction of ANN and FPGA technique are briefly shown. Also, Hardware Description Language (VHDL) code has been proposed to implement ANNs as well as to present simulation results with floating point arithmetic. Synthesis results for ANN controller are developed using Precision RTL. Proposed VHDL implementation creates a flexible, fast method and high degree of parallelism for implementing ANN. The implementation of multi-layer NN using lookup table LUT reduces the resource utilization for implementation and time for execution.

Keywords: Spacecraft, neural network, FPGA, VHDL.

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Authors: Sky Chou, Joseph C. Chen

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This paper focuses on using six sigma methodologies to reach the desired shrinkage of a manufactured high-density polyurethane (HDPE) part produced by the injection molding machine. It presents a case study where the correct shrinkage is required to reduce or eliminate defects and to improve the process capability index Cp and Cpk for an injection molding process. To improve this process and keep the product within specifications, the six sigma methodology, design, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) approach, was implemented in this study. The six sigma approach was paired with the Taguchi methodology to identify the optimized processing parameters that keep the shrinkage rate within the specifications by our customer. An L9 orthogonal array was applied in the Taguchi experimental design, with four controllable factors and one non-controllable/noise factor. The four controllable factors identified consist of the cooling time, melt temperature, holding time, and metering stroke. The noise factor is the difference between material brand 1 and material brand 2. After the confirmation run was completed, measurements verify that the new parameter settings are optimal. With the new settings, the process capability index has improved dramatically. The purpose of this study is to show that the six sigma and Taguchi methodology can be efficiently used to determine important factors that will improve the process capability index of the injection molding process.

Keywords: Injection molding, shrinkage, six sigma, Taguchi parameter design.

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Authors: Thossaporn Thossansin

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This paper presents the development of a mobile application for students at the Faculty of Information Technology, Rangsit University (RSU), Thailand. RSU upgrades an enrollment process by improving its information systems. Students can download the RSU APP easily in order to access the RSU substantial information. The reason of having a mobile application is to help students to access the system regardless of time and place. The objectives of this paper include: 1. To develop an application on iOS platform for those students at the Faculty of Information Technology, Rangsit University, Thailand. 2. To obtain the students’ perception towards the new mobile app. The target group is those from the freshman year till the senior year of the faculty of Information Technology, Rangsit University. The new mobile application, called as RSU APP, is developed by the department of Information Technology, Rangsit University. It contains useful features and various functionalities particularly on those that can give support to students. The core contents of the app consist of RSU’s announcement, calendar, events, activities, and ebook. The mobile app is developed on the iOS platform. The user satisfaction is analyzed from the interview data from 81 interviewees as well as a Google application like a Google form which 122 interviewees are involved. The result shows that users are satisfied with the application as they score it the most satisfaction level at 4.67 SD 0.52. The score for the question if users can learn and use the application quickly is high which is 4.82 SD 0.71. On the other hand, the lowest satisfaction rating is in the app’s form, apps lists, with the satisfaction level as 4.01 SD 0.45.

Keywords: Mobile application, development of mobile application, framework of mobile development, software development for mobile devices.

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Authors: Walid MOUDANI

Abstract:

The healthcare environment is generally perceived as being information rich yet knowledge poor. However, there is a lack of effective analysis tools to discover hidden relationships and trends in data. In fact, valuable knowledge can be discovered from application of data mining techniques in healthcare system. In this study, a proficient methodology for the extraction of significant patterns from the Coronary Heart Disease warehouses for heart attack prediction, which unfortunately continues to be a leading cause of mortality in the whole world, has been presented. For this purpose, we propose to enumerate dynamically the optimal subsets of the reduced features of high interest by using rough sets technique associated to dynamic programming. Therefore, we propose to validate the classification using Random Forest (RF) decision tree to identify the risky heart disease cases. This work is based on a large amount of data collected from several clinical institutions based on the medical profile of patient. Moreover, the experts- knowledge in this field has been taken into consideration in order to define the disease, its risk factors, and to establish significant knowledge relationships among the medical factors. A computer-aided system is developed for this purpose based on a population of 525 adults. The performance of the proposed model is analyzed and evaluated based on set of benchmark techniques applied in this classification problem.

Keywords: Multi-Classifier Decisions Tree, Features Reduction, Dynamic Programming, Rough Sets.

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

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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: O. Ologe, A. I. Augie

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A geophysical investigation involving geoelectric depths sounding has been conducted as pre-foundation study in part of Ilorin, Nigeria. The area is underlain by the Precambrian basement complex rocks. 15 sounding stations were established along five traverses. The Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES) (three-five) conducted along each of the traverses was subjected to computer iteration using IP2Win software. Three -five subsurface geologic layers were delineated in the study area. These include the topsoil with resistivity and thickness values ranging from 103 Ωm-210 Ωm and 0 m-1 m; lateritic (117 Ωm-590 Ωm and 1 m-4.7 m); sandy clay (137 – 859 Ωm and 2.9 m – 4.3 m); weathered (60.5 Ωm to 2539 Ωm and 3,2 m-10 m) and fresh basement (2253-∞ and 7.1 m-∞) respectively. The resistivity pseudosection shows continuous high resistivity zone on the surface. Resistivity of this layer from depth 0-5 m varies from 300-800 Ωm along traverse 1 and 2. Hence, this layer is rated competent as it has the ability to support engineering structure. However, along traverse 1, very low resistive layer occurs between VES 5 and 15 with resistivity values ranging from 30 Ωm-70 Ωm. This layer was rated incompetent based on the competence rating. This study revealed the importance of geophysical survey as a pre-construction engineering survey at any civil engineering site since it can reliably evaluate the competence of the subsurface geomaterials.

Keywords: Competence rating, geoelectric, pseudosection, soil, vertical electrical sounding.

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Authors: Zeynep İltüzer Samur, Gül Tekin Temur

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Due to the increasing and varying risks that economic units face with, derivative instruments gain substantial importance, and trading volumes of derivatives have reached very significant level. Parallel with these high trading volumes, researchers have developed many different models. Some are parametric, some are nonparametric. In this study, the aim is to analyse the success of artificial neural network in pricing of options with S&P 100 index options data. Generally, the previous studies cover the data of European type call options. This study includes not only European call option but also American call and put options and European put options. Three data sets are used to perform three different ANN models. One only includes data that are directly observed from the economic environment, i.e. strike price, spot price, interest rate, maturity, type of the contract. The others include an extra input that is not an observable data but a parameter, i.e. volatility. With these detail data, the performance of ANN in put/call dimension, American/European dimension, moneyness dimension is analyzed and whether the contribution of the volatility in neural network analysis make improvement in prediction performance or not is examined. The most striking results revealed by the study is that ANN shows better performance when pricing call options compared to put options; and the use of volatility parameter as an input does not improve the performance.

Keywords: Option Pricing, Neural Network, S&P 100 Index, American/European options

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Authors: O. I. Rufai, G. I. Lawal, B. O. Bolasodun, S. I. Durowaye, J. O. Etoh

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It is an established fact that polymers have several physical limitations such as low stiffness and low resistance to impact on loading. Hence, polymers do not usually have requisite mechanical strength for application in various fields. The reinforcement by high strength fibers provides the polymer substantially enhanced mechanical properties and makes them more suitable for a large number of diverse applications. This research evaluates the effects of particulate Cow bone and Groundnut shell additions on the mechanical properties and microstructure of cow bone and groundnut shell reinforced epoxy composite in order to assess the possibility of using it as a material for engineering applications. Cow bone and groundnut shell particles reinforced with epoxy (CBRPC and GSRPC) was prepared by varying the cow bone and groundnut shell particles from 0-25 wt% with 5 wt% intervals. A Hybrid of the Cow bone and Groundnut shell (HGSCB) reinforce with epoxy was also prepared. The mechanical properties of the developed composites were investigated. Optical microscopy was used to examine the microstructure of the composites. The results revealed that mechanical properties did not increase uniformly with additions in filler but exhibited maximum properties at specific percentages of filler additions. From the Microscopic evaluation, it was discovered that homogeneity decreases with increase in % filler, this could be due to poor interfacial bonding.

Keywords: Groundnut shell reinforced polymer composite (GSRPC), Cow bone reinforced polymer composite (CBRPC), Hybrid of ground nutshell and cowbone (HGSCB).

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Authors: Shobha Sharma, Amita Dev

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This research paper presents highly optimized barrel shifter at 22nm Hi K metal gate strained Si technology node. This barrel shifter is having a unique combination of static and dynamic body bias which gives lowest power delay product. This power delay product is compared with the same circuit at same technology node with static forward biasing at ‘supply/2’ and also with normal reverse substrate biasing and still found to be the lowest. The power delay product of this barrel sifter is .39362X10-17J and is lowered by approximately 78% to reference proposed barrel shifter at 32nm bulk CMOS technology. Power delay product of barrel shifter at 22nm Hi K Metal gate technology with normal reverse substrate bias is 2.97186933X10-17J and can be compared with this design’s PDP of .39362X10-17J. This design uses both static and dynamic substrate biasing and also has approximately 96% lower power delay product compared to only forward body biased at half of supply voltage. The NMOS model used are predictive technology models of Arizona state university and the simulations to be carried out using HSPICE simulator.

Keywords: Dynamic body biasing, highly optimized barrel shifter, PDP, Static body biasing.

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Authors: Sanaz Seraj, Shohre Rouhani

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Recently, graphene has gained much attention because of its unique optical, mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. Graphene has been used as a key material in the technological applications in various areas such as sensors, drug delivery, super capacitors, transparent conductor, and solar cell. It has a superior quenching efficiency for various fluorophores. Based on these unique properties, the optical sensors with graphene materials as the energy acceptors have demonstrated great success in recent years. During quenching, the emission of a fluorophore is perturbed by a quencher which can be a substrate or biomolecule, and due to this phenomenon, fluorophore-quencher has been used for selective detection of target molecules. Among fluorescence dyes, 1,8-naphthalimide is well known for its typical intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) and photo-induced charge transfer (PET) fluorophore, strong absorption and emission in the visible region, high photo stability, and large Stokes shift. Derivatives of 1,8-naphthalimides have found applications in some areas, especially fluorescence sensors. Herein, the fluorescence quenching of graphene oxide has been carried out on a naphthalimide dye as a fluorescent probe model. The quenching ability of graphene oxide on naphthalimide dye was studied by UV-VIS and fluorescence spectroscopy. This study showed that graphene is an efficient quencher for fluorescent dyes. Therefore, it can be used as a suitable candidate sensing platform. To the best of our knowledge, studies on the quenching and absorption of naphthalimide dyes by graphene oxide are rare.

Keywords: Fluorescence, graphene oxide, naphthalimide dye, quenching.

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Authors: Mohd Aftar Abu Bakar, Noratiqah Mohd Ariff, Abdul Aziz Jemain

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Storm Event Analysis (SEA) provides a method to define rainfalls events as storms where each storm has its own amount and duration. By modelling daily probability of different types of storms, the onset, offset and cycle of rainfall seasons can be determined and investigated. Furthermore, researchers from the field of meteorology will be able to study the dynamical characteristics of rainfalls and make predictions for future reference. In this study, four categories of storms; short, intermediate, long and very long storms; are introduced based on the length of storm duration. Daily probability models of storms are built for these four categories of storms in Peninsular Malaysia. The models are constructed by using Bernoulli distribution and by applying linear regression on the first Fourier harmonic equation. From the models obtained, it is found that daily probability of storms at the Eastern part of Peninsular Malaysia shows a unimodal pattern with high probability of rain beginning at the end of the year and lasting until early the next year. This is very likely due to the Northeast monsoon season which occurs from November to March every year. Meanwhile, short and intermediate storms at other regions of Peninsular Malaysia experience a bimodal cycle due to the two inter-monsoon seasons. Overall, these models indicate that Peninsular Malaysia can be divided into four distinct regions based on the daily pattern for the probability of various storm events.

Keywords: Daily probability model, monsoon seasons, regions, storm events.

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Authors: Mojibul Sajjad, Mohammad G. Rasul, Md. Sharif Imam Ibne Amir

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The rate of natural gas dissociation from the Coal Matrix depends on depressurization of reservoir through removing of the cleat water from the coal seam. These waters are similar to brine and aged of very long years. For improving the connectivity through fracking /fracturing, high pressure liquids are pumped off inside the coal body. A significant quantity of accumulated water, a combined mixture of cleat water and fracking fluids (back flow water) is pumped out through gas well. In Queensland, Australia Coal Seam Gas (CSG) industry is in booming state and estimated of 30,000 wells would be active for CSG production forecasting life span of 30 years. Integrated water management along with water softening programs is practiced for subsequent treatment and later on discharge to nearby surface water catchment. Water treatment is an important part of the CSG industry. A case study on a CSG site and review on the test results are discussed for assessing the Standards & Practices for management of CSG by-product water and their subsequent disposal activities. This study was directed toward (i) water management and softening process in Spring Gully CSG field, (ii) Comparative analysis on experimental study and standards and (iii) Disposal of the treated water. This study also aimed for alternative usages and their impact on vegetation, living species as well as long term effects.

Keywords: Coal Seam Gas (CSG), Cleat Water, Hydro-Fracking, Desalination, Reverse Osmosis.

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Authors: David Halley, Tyra Oseng-Rees, Luca Pagano, Juan A Ferriz-Papi

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Recycled glass material is made from 100% recycled bottle glass and consumes less energy than re-melt technology. It also uses no additives in the manufacturing process allowing the recycled glass material, in principal, to go back to the recycling stream after end-of-use, contributing to the circular economy with a low ecological impact. The aim of this paper is to investigate the procedure for testing the recycled glass material for impact resistance, so it can be applied to pavements and other surfaces which are at risk of impact during service. A review of different impact test procedures for construction materials was undertaken, comparing methodologies and international standards applied to other materials such as natural stone, ceramics and glass. A drop weight impact testing machine was designed and manufactured in-house to perform these tests. As a case study, samples of the recycled glass material were manufactured with two different thicknesses and tested. The impact energy was calculated theoretically, obtaining results with 5 and 10 J. The results on the material were subsequently discussed. Improvements on the procedure can be made using high speed video technology to calculate velocity just before and immediately after the impact to know the absorbed energy. The initial results obtained in this procedure were positive although repeatability needs to be developed to obtain a correlation of results and finally be able to validate the procedure. The experiment with samples showed the practicality of this procedure and application to the recycled glass material impact testing although further research needs to be developed.

Keywords: Construction materials, drop weight impact, impact testing, recycled glass.

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Authors: A. Zahiri, A. A. Dehghani

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Although many researchers have studied the flow hydraulics in compound channels, there are still many complicated problems in determination of their flow rating curves. Many different methods have been presented for these channels but extending them for all types of compound channels with different geometrical and hydraulic conditions is certainly difficult. In this study, by aid of nearly 400 laboratory and field data sets of geometry and flow rating curves from 30 different straight compound sections and using artificial neural networks (ANNs), flow discharge in compound channels was estimated. 13 dimensionless input variables including relative depth, relative roughness, relative width, aspect ratio, bed slope, main channel side slopes, flood plains side slopes and berm inclination and one output variable (flow discharge), have been used in ANNs. Comparison of ANNs model and traditional method (divided channel method-DCM) shows high accuracy of ANNs model results. The results of Sensitivity analysis showed that the relative depth with 47.6 percent contribution, is the most effective input parameter for flow discharge prediction. Relative width and relative roughness have 19.3 and 12.2 percent of importance, respectively. On the other hand, shape parameter, main channel and flood plains side slopes with 2.1, 3.8 and 3.8 percent of contribution, have the least importance.

Keywords: ANN model, compound channels, divided channel method (DCM), flow rating curve

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Authors: R. A. Shahmiri, O. C. Standard, J. N. Hart, C. C. Sorrell

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The ceramic yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystal (Y-TZP) has been used as a dental biomaterial for several decades. The strength and toughness of this material can be accounted for by its toughening mechanisms, which include transformation toughening, crack deflection, zone shielding, contact shielding, and crack bridging. Prevention of crack propagation is of critical importance in high-fatigue situations, such as those encountered in mastication and para-function. However, the poor translucence of Y-TZP in polycrystalline form is such that it may not meet the aesthetic requirements due to its white/grey appearance. To improve the optical properties of Y-TZP, more detailed study of the optical properties is required; in particular, precise evaluation of the refractive index, absorption coefficient, and scattering coefficient are necessary. The measurement of the optical parameters has been based on the assumption that light scattered from biological media is isotropically distributed over all angles. In fact, the optical behavior of real biological materials depends on the angular scattering of light due to the anisotropic nature of the materials. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the optical properties (including color, opacity/translucence, scattering, and fluorescence) of zirconia dental ceramics and their control through modification of the chemical composition, phase composition, and surface microstructure.

Keywords: Optical properties, opacity/translucence, scattering, fluorescence, chemical composition, phase composition, surface microstructure.

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Authors: P. Pečlin, J. Rozman

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In this paper we present the modeling, design, and experimental testing of a nerve cuff multi-electrode system for diameter-selective vagus nerve stimulation. The multi-electrode system contained ninety-nine platinum electrodes embedded within a self-curling spiral silicone sheet. The electrodes were organized in a matrix having nine parallel groups, each containing eleven electrodes. Preliminary testing of the nerve cuff was performed in an isolated segment of a swinish left cervical vagus nerve. For selective vagus nerve stimulation, precisely defined current quasitrapezoidal, asymmetric and biphasic stimulating pulses were applied to preselected locations along the left vagus segment via appointed group of three electrodes within the cuff. Selective stimulation was obtained by anodal block. However, these pulses may not be safe for a long-term application because of a frequently used high imbalance between the cathodic and anodic part of the stimulating pulse. Preliminary results show that the cuff was capable of exciting A and B-fibres, and, that for a certain range of parameters used in stimulating pulses, the contribution of A-fibres to the CAP was slightly reduced and the contribution of B-fibres was slightly larger. Results also showed that measured CAPs are not greatly influenced by the imbalance between a charge Qc injected in cathodic and Qa in anodic phase of quasitrapezoidal, asymmetric and biphasic pulses.

Keywords: Vagus nerve stimulation, multi-electrode nerve cuff.

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Authors: Nattapong Techarattanased

Abstract:

The purposes of this research are to make comparisons in respect of the behaviors on the use of the services of metered taxi classified by the demographic factor and to study the influence of the recognition on service quality having the effect on usage behaviors of metered taxi services of consumers in Bangkok Metropolitan Areas. The samples used in this research were 400 metered taxi service users in Bangkok Metropolitan Areas and questionnaire was used as the tool for collecting the data. Analysis statistics are mean and multiple regression analysis. Results of the research revealed that the consumers recognize the overall quality of services in each aspect include tangible aspects of the service, responses to customers, assurance on the confidence, understanding and knowing of customers which is rated at the moderate level except the aspect of the assurance on the confidence and trustworthiness which are rated at a high level. For the result of hypothetical test, it is found that the quality in providing the services on the aspect of the assurance given to the customers has the effect on the usage behaviors of metered taxi services and the aspect of the frequency on the use of the services per month which in this connection. Such variable can forecast at one point nine percent (1.9%). In addition, quality in providing the services and the aspect of the responses to customers have the effect on the behaviors on the use of metered taxi services on the aspect of the expenses on the use of services per month which in this connection, such variable can forecast at two point one percent (2.1%).

Keywords: Consumer behavior, metered taxi, satisfaction, service quality.

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Authors: Yamini Raju, Parminder S. Kang, Adam Moroz, Ross Clement, Ashley Hopwell, Alistair Duffy

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Accurate forecasting of fresh produce demand is one the challenges faced by Small Medium Enterprise (SME) wholesalers. This paper is an attempt to understand the cause for the high level of variability such as weather, holidays etc., in demand of SME wholesalers. Therefore, understanding the significance of unidentified factors may improve the forecasting accuracy. This paper presents the current literature on the factors used to predict demand and the existing forecasting techniques of short shelf life products. It then investigates a variety of internal and external possible factors, some of which is not used by other researchers in the demand prediction process. The results presented in this paper are further analysed using a number of techniques to minimize noise in the data. For the analysis past sales data (January 2009 to May 2014) from a UK based SME wholesaler is used and the results presented are limited to product ‘Milk’ focused on café’s in derby. The correlation analysis is done to check the dependencies of variability factor on the actual demand. Further PCA analysis is done to understand the significance of factors identified using correlation. The PCA results suggest that the cloud cover, weather summary and temperature are the most significant factors that can be used in forecasting the demand. The correlation of the above three factors increased relative to monthly and becomes more stable compared to the weekly and daily demand.

Keywords: Demand Forecasting, Deteriorating Products, Food Wholesalers, Principal Component Analysis and Variability Factors.

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Authors: R. Hocine, K. Belkacemi, A. Boukortt, A. Boudjemai

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When designing satellites, one of the major issues aside for designing its primary subsystems is to devise its thermal. The thermal management of satellites requires solving different sets of issues with regards to modelling. If the satellite is well conditioned all other parts of the satellite will have higher temperature no matter what. The main issue of thermal modelling for satellite design is really making sure that all the other points of the satellite will be within the temperature limits they are designed. The insertion of power electronics in aerospace technologies is becoming widespread and the modern electronic systems used in space must be reliable and efficient with thermal management unaffected by outer space constraints. Many advanced thermal management techniques have been developed in recent years that have application in high power electronic systems. This paper presents a Three-Dimensional Modal Transmission Line Matrix (3D-TLM) implementation of transient heat flow in space power electronics. In such kind of components heat dissipation and good thermal management are essential. Simulation provides the cheapest tool to investigate all aspects of power handling. The 3DTLM has been successful in modeling heat diffusion problems and has proven to be efficient in terms of stability and complex geometry. The results show a three-dimensional visualisation of self-heating phenomena in the device affected by outer space constraints, and will presents possible approaches for increasing the heat dissipation capability of the power modules.

Keywords: Thermal management, conduction, heat dissipation, CTE, ceramic, heat spreader, nodes, 3D-TLM.

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Authors: R. M. Siddiqui, D. Z. Moghaddam, T. R. Turlapati, S. H. Khan, I. Ul Ahad

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Quality of 2D and 3D cross-sectional images produce by Computed Tomography primarily depend upon the degree of precision of primary and secondary X-Ray intensity detection. Traditional method of primary intensity detection is apt to errors. Recently the X-Ray intensity measurement system along with smart X-Ray sensors is developed by our group which is able to detect primary X-Ray intensity unerringly. In this study a new smart X-Ray sensor is developed using Light-to-Frequency converter TSL230 from Texas Instruments which has numerous advantages in terms of noiseless data acquisition and transmission. TSL230 construction is based on a silicon photodiode which converts incoming X-Ray radiation into the proportional current signal. A current to frequency converter is attached to this photodiode on a single monolithic CMOS integrated circuit which provides proportional frequency count to incoming current signal in the form of the pulse train. The frequency count is delivered to the center of PICDEM FS USB board with PIC18F4550 microcontroller mounted on it. With highly compact electronic hardware, this Demo Board efficiently read the smart sensor output data. The frequency output approaches overcome nonlinear behavior of sensors with analog output thus un-attenuated X-Ray intensities could be measured precisely and better normalization could be acquired in order to attain high resolution.

Keywords: Computed tomography, detector technology, X-Ray intensity measurement

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