Search results for: strongly generalized differentiability

Authors: Kun Lei, Hongfang Ma, Haitao Zhang, Weiyong Ying, Dingye Fang

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This paper reported an experimental research of steady-state heat transfer behaviour of a gas flowing through a fixed bed under the different operating conditions. Studies had been carried out in a fixed-bed packed methanol synthesis catalyst percolated by air at appropriate flow rate. Both radial and axial direction temperature distribution had been investigated under the different operating conditions. The effects of operating conditions including the reactor inlet air temperature, the heating pipe temperature and the air flow rate on temperature distribution was investigated and the experimental results showed that a higher inlet air temperature was conducive to uniform temperature distribution in the fixed bed. A large temperature drop existed at the radial direction, and the temperature drop increased with the heating pipe temperature increasing under the experimental conditions; the temperature profile of the vicinity of the heating pipe was strongly affected by the heating pipe temperature. A higher air flow rate can improve the heat transfer in the fixed bed. Based on the thermal distribution, heat transfer models of the fixed bed could be established, and the characteristics of the temperature distribution in the fixed bed could be finely described, that had an important practical significance.

Keywords: Thermal distribution, heat transfer, axial-flow, fixed bed.

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Authors: Manuel Seidel, Rainer Seidel, Des Tedford, Richard Cross, Logan Wait

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Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in many economies. In New Zealand, for example, 97% of all manufacturing companies employ less than 100 staff, and generate the predominant part of this industry sector-s economic output. Manufacturing SMEs as a group also have a significant impact on the environment. This situation is similar in many developed economies, including the European Union. Sustainable economic development therefore needs to strongly consider the role of manufacturing SMEs, who generally find it challenging to move towards more environmentally friendly business practices. This paper presents a systems thinking approach to modelling and understanding the factors which have an influence on the successful uptake of environmental practices in small and medium sized manufacturing companies. It presents a number of causal loop diagrams which have been developed based on primary action research, and a thorough understanding of the literature in this area. The systems thinking model provides the basis for further development of a strategic framework for the successful uptake of environmental innovation in manufacturing SMEs.

Keywords: Environmentally benign manufacturing, SMEs, Systems modeling.

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Authors: Tae-Hyub Hong, Choeng-Ryul Choi, Chang-Nyung Kim

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Human heart valves diseased by congenital heart defects, rheumatic fever, bacterial infection, cancer may cause stenosis or insufficiency in the valves. Treatment may be with medication but often involves valve repair or replacement (insertion of an artificial heart valve). Bileaflet mechanical heart valves (BMHVs) are widely implanted to replace the diseased heart valves, but still suffer from complications such as hemolysis, platelet activation, tissue overgrowth and device failure. These complications are closely related to both flow characteristics through the valves and leaflet dynamics. In this study, the physiological flow interacting with the moving leaflets in a bileaflet mechanical heart valve (BMHV) is simulated with a strongly coupled implicit fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method which is newly organized based on the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach and the dynamic mesh method (remeshing) of FLUENT. The simulated results are in good agreement with previous experimental studies. This study shows the applicability of the present FSI model to the complicated physics interacting between fluid flow and moving boundary.

Keywords: Bileaflet Mechanical Heart Valve, Fluid- Structure Interaction.

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Authors: Prakash Singh

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For schools to be desirable places in which to work, it is necessary for principals to recognise their teachers’ emotions, and be sensitive to their needs. This necessitates that principals are capable to correctly identify their emotionally intelligent behaviours (EIBs) they need to use in order to be successful leaders. They also need to have knowledge of their emotional intelligence and be able to identify the factors and situations that evoke emotion at an interpersonal level. If a principal is able to do this, then the control and understanding of emotions and behaviours of oneself and others could improve vastly. This study focuses on the interpersonal EIBS of principals affecting the job satisfaction of teachers. The correlation coefficients in this quantitative study strongly indicate that there is a statistical significance between the respondents’ level of job satisfaction, the rating of their principals’ EIBs and how they believe their principals’ EIBs will affect their sense of job satisfaction. It can be concluded from the data obtained in this study that there is a significant correlation between the sense of job satisfaction of teachers and their principals’ interpersonal EIBs. This means that the more satisfied a teacher is at school, the more appropriate and meaningful a principal’s EIBs will be. Conversely, the more dissatisfied a teacher is at school the less appropriate and less meaningful a principal’s interpersonal EIBs will be. This implies that the leaders’ EIBs can be construed as one of the major factors affecting the job satisfaction of employees.

Keywords: Emotional intelligence, teachers’ emotions, teachers’ job satisfaction, principals’ emotionally intelligent behaviours.

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Authors: Yunseok Noh, Chang-Uk Kwak, Sun-Joong Kim, Seong-Bae Park

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Scripts are one of the basic text resources to understand broadcasting contents. Topic modeling is the method to get the summary of the broadcasting contents from its scripts. Generally, scripts represent contents descriptively with directions and speeches, and provide scene segments that can be seen as semantic units. Therefore, a script can be topic modeled by treating a scene segment as a document. Because scene segments consist of speeches mainly, however, relatively small co-occurrences among words in the scene segments are observed. This causes inevitably the bad quality of topics by statistical learning method. To tackle this problem, we propose a method to improve topic quality with additional word co-occurrence information obtained using scene similarities. The main idea of improving topic quality is that the information that two or more texts are topically related can be useful to learn high quality of topics. In addition, more accurate topical representations lead to get information more accurate whether two texts are related or not. In this paper, we regard two scene segments are related if their topical similarity is high enough. We also consider that words are co-occurred if they are in topically related scene segments together. By iteratively inferring topics and determining semantically neighborhood scene segments, we draw a topic space represents broadcasting contents well. In the experiments, we showed the proposed method generates a higher quality of topics from Korean drama scripts than the baselines.

Keywords: Broadcasting contents, generalized P´olya urn model, scripts, text similarity, topic model.

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Authors: Abdenour Bourabaa, Mohamed Saighi, Ibrahim Belal

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A numerical study has been conducted to investigate the influence of fin pitch and relative humidity on the heat transfer performance of the fin-and-tube heat exchangers having plain fin geometry under dehumidifying conditions. The analysis is done using the ratio between the heat transfer coefficients in totally wet conditions and those in totally dry conditions using the appropriate correlations for both dry and wet conditions. For a constant relative humidity, it is found that the heat transfer coefficient increases with the increase of the air frontal velocity. By contrast, the fin efficiency decreases when the face velocity is increased. Apparently, this phenomenon is attributed to the path of condensate drainage. For the influence of relative humidity, the results showed an increase in heat transfer performance and a decrease in wet fin efficiency when relative humidity increases. This is due to the higher amount of mass transfer encountered at higher relative humidity. However, it is found that the effect of fin pitch on the heat transfer performance depends strongly on the face velocity. At lower frontal velocity the heat transfer increases with fin pitch. Conversely, an increase in fin pitch gives lower heat transfer coefficients when air velocity is increased.

Keywords: Dehumidifying conditions, Fin efficiency, Heat andmass transfer, Heat exchangers.

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Authors: Hasan Furkan Kurt, Tugba Nur Atabey, Onat Cavit Dereli, Ahmad Salmanogli, H. Selcuk Gecim

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In the article, the main goal is to study the effect of the plasmonic properties on the photocurrent generated by a photodetector. Fundamentally, a typical photodetector is designed and simulated using the finite element methods. To utilize the plasmonic effect, gold nanoparticles with different shape, size and morphology are buried into the intrinsic region. Plasmonic effect is arisen through the interaction of the incoming light with nanoparticles by which electrical properties of the photodetector are manipulated. In fact, using plasmonic nanoparticles not only increases the absorption bandwidth of the incoming light, but also generates a high intensity near-field close to the plasmonic nanoparticles. Those properties strongly affect the generated photocurrent. The simulation results show that using plasmonic nanoparticles significantly enhances the electrical properties of the photodetectors. More importantly, one can easily manipulate the plasmonic properties of the gold nanoparticles through engineering the nanoparticles' size, shape and morphology. Another important phenomenon is plasmon-plasmon interaction inside the photodetector. It is shown that plasmon-plasmon interaction improves the electron-hole generation rate by which the rate of the current generation is severely enhanced. This is the key factor that we want to focus on, to improve the photodetector electrical properties.

Keywords: Nanoparticles, plasmonic, plasmon-plasmon interaction, plasmonic photodetector.

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Authors: Wayan F. Mahmudy, Romeo M. Marian, Lee H. S. Luong

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This paper and its companion (Part 2) deal with modeling and optimization of two NP-hard problems in production planning of flexible manufacturing system (FMS), part type selection problem and loading problem. The part type selection problem and the loading problem are strongly related and heavily influence the system-s efficiency and productivity. The complexity of the problems is harder when flexibilities of operations such as the possibility of operation processed on alternative machines with alternative tools are considered. These problems have been modeled and solved simultaneously by using real coded genetic algorithms (RCGA) which uses an array of real numbers as chromosome representation. These real numbers can be converted into part type sequence and machines that are used to process the part types. This first part of the papers focuses on the modeling of the problems and discussing how the novel chromosome representation can be applied to solve the problems. The second part will discuss the effectiveness of the RCGA to solve various test bed problems.

Keywords: Flexible manufacturing system, production planning, part type selection problem, loading problem, real-coded genetic algorithm

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Authors: Yongxin Yuan

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In this paper, we first give the representation of the general solution of the following inverse eigenvalue problem (IEP): Given X ∈ Rn×p and a diagonal matrix Λ ∈ Rp×p, find nontrivial real-valued symmetric arrow-head matrices A and B such that AXΛ = BX. We then consider an optimal approximation problem: Given real-valued symmetric arrow-head matrices A, ˜ B˜ ∈ Rn×n, find (A, ˆ Bˆ) ∈ SE such that Aˆ − A˜2 + Bˆ − B˜2 = min(A,B)∈SE (A−A˜2 +B −B˜2), where SE is the solution set of IEP. We show that the optimal approximation solution (A, ˆ Bˆ) is unique and derive an explicit formula for it.

Keywords: Partially prescribed spectral information, symmetric arrow-head matrix, inverse problem, optimal approximation.

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Authors: Bhausaheb L. Pangarkar, M. G. Sane, Saroj B. Parjane, Rajendra M. Abhang, Mahendra Guddad

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Vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) process can be used for water purification or the desalination of salt water. The process simply consists of a flat sheet hydrophobic micro porous PTFE membrane and diaphragm vacuum pump without a condenser for the water recovery or trap. The feed was used aqueous NaCl solution. The VMD experiments were performed to evaluate the heat and mass transfer coefficient of the boundary layer in a membrane module. The only operating parameters are feed inlet temperature, and feed flow rate were investigated. The permeate flux was strongly affected by the feed inlet temperature, feed flow rate, and boundary layer heat transfer coefficient. Since lowering the temperature polarization coefficient is essential enhance the process performance considerable and maximizing the heat transfer coefficient for maximizes the mass flux of distillate water. In this paper, the results of VMD experiments are used to measure the boundary layer heat transfer coefficient, and the experimental results are used to reevaluate the empirical constants in the Dittus- Boelter equation.

Keywords: Desalination, heat and mass transfer coefficient, temperature polarization, membrane distillation

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Authors: Ayesha S. Rahman, Khaled Haddad, Ataur Rahman

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At-site flood frequency analysis is used to estimate flood quantiles when at-site record length is reasonably long. In Australia, FLIKE software has been introduced for at-site flood frequency analysis. The advantage of FLIKE is that, for a given application, the user can compare a number of most commonly adopted probability distributions and parameter estimation methods relatively quickly using a windows interface. The new version of FLIKE has been incorporated with the multiple Grubbs and Beck test which can identify multiple numbers of potentially influential low flows. This paper presents a case study considering six catchments in eastern Australia which compares two outlier identification tests (original Grubbs and Beck test and multiple Grubbs and Beck test) and two commonly applied probability distributions (Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) and Log Pearson type 3 (LP3)) using FLIKE software. It has been found that the multiple Grubbs and Beck test when used with LP3 distribution provides more accurate flood quantile estimates than when LP3 distribution is used with the original Grubbs and Beck test. Between these two methods, the differences in flood quantile estimates have been found to be up to 61% for the six study catchments. It has also been found that GEV distribution (with L moments) and LP3 distribution with the multiple Grubbs and Beck test provide quite similar results in most of the cases; however, a difference up to 38% has been noted for flood quantiles for annual exceedance probability (AEP) of 1 in 100 for one catchment. This finding needs to be confirmed with a greater number of stations across other Australian states.

Keywords: Floods, FLIKE, probability distributions, flood frequency, outlier.

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Authors: Mayowa Philips Ibitola, Abe Oluwaseun Banji, Olorunfemi Akinade-Solomon

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A total of 20 bottom sediment samples were collected from the Lekki Lagoon during the wet and dry season. The study was carried out to determine the textural characteristics, sediment distribution pattern and energy of transportation within the lagoon system. The sediment grain sizes and depth profiling was analyzed using dry sieving method and MATLAB algorithm for processing. The granulometric reveals fine grained sand both for the wet and dry season with an average mean value of 2.03 ϕ and -2.88 ϕ, respectively. Sediments were moderately sorted with an average inclusive standard deviation of 0.77 ϕ and -0.82 ϕ. Skewness varied from strongly coarse and near symmetrical 0.34- ϕ and 0.09 ϕ. The kurtosis average value was 0.87 ϕ and -1.4 ϕ (platykurtic and leptokurtic). Entirely, the bathymetry shows an average depth of 4.0 m. The deepest and shallowest area has a depth of 11.2 m and 0.5 m, respectively. High concentration of fine sand was observed at deep areas compared to the shallow areas during wet and dry season. Statistical parameter results show that the overall sediments are sorted, and deposited under low energy condition over a long distance. However, sediment distribution and sediment transport pattern of Lekki Lagoon is controlled by a low energy current and the down slope configuration of the bathymetry enhances the sorting and the deposition rate in the Lekki Lagoon.

Keywords: Lekki Lagoon, marine sediment, bathymetry, grain size distribution.

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Authors: Chayarat Tantanasarit, Sandhya Babel

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Green mussels (Perna viridis) can effectively remove  nutrients from seawater through their filtration process. This study  aims to estimate “net” nutrient removal rate by green mussel through  calculation of nutrient uptake and release. Nutrients (carbon, nitrogen  and phosphorus) uptake was calculated based on the mussel filtration  rate. Nutrient release was evaluated from carbon, nitrogen and  phosphorus released as mussel faeces. By subtracting nutrient release  from nutrient uptake, net nutrient removal by green mussel can be  found as 3302, 380 and 124 mg/year/indv. Mass balance model was  employed to simulate nutrient removal in actual green mussel  farming conditions. Mussels farm area, seawater flow rate, and  amount of mussels were considered in the model. Results show that  although larger quantity of green mussel farms lead to higher nutrient  removal rate, the maximum green mussel cultivation should be taken  into consideration as nutrients released through mussel excretion can  strongly affect marine ecosystem.

 

Keywords: Carbon, Excretion, Filtration, Nitrogen, Phosphorus.

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Authors: M. Bayareh, S. Mortazavi

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The migration of a deformable drop in simple shear flow at finite Reynolds numbers is investigated numerically by solving the full Navier-Stokes equations using a finite difference/front tracking method. The objectives of this study are to examine the effectiveness of the present approach to predict the migration of a drop in a shear flow and to investigate the behavior of the drop migration with different drop sizes and non-unity viscosity ratios. It is shown that the drop deformation depends strongly on the capillary number, so that; the proper non-dimensional number for the interfacial tension is the capillary number. The rate of migration increased with increasing the drop radius. In other words, the required time for drop migration to the centreline decreases. As the viscosity ratio increases, the drop rotates more slowly and the lubrication force becomes stronger. The increased lubrication force makes it easier for the drop to migrate to the centre of the channel. The migration velocity of the drop vanishes as the drop reaches the centreline under viscosity ratio of one and non-unity viscosity ratios. To validate the present calculations, some typical results are compared with available experimental and theoretical data.

Keywords: drop migration, shear flow, front-tracking method, finite difference method.

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Authors: Georgios Linardatos, Miltiadis Zamparas, Vlasoula Bekiari, Georgios Bokias, Georgios Hotos

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Hydrogels are three-dimensional, hydrophilic, polymeric networks composed of homopolymers or copolymers and are insoluble in water due to the presence of chemical or physical cross-links. When hydrogels come in contact with aqueous solutions, they can effectively sorb and retain the dissolved substances, depending on the nature of the monomeric units comprising the hydrogel. For this reason, hydrogels have been proposed in several studies as water purification agents. At the present work anionic hydrogels bearing negatively charged –COO- groups were prepared and investigated. These gels are based on sodium acrylate (ANa), either homopolymerized (poly(sodiumacrylate), PANa) or copolymerized (P(DMAM-co-ANa)) with N,N Dimethylacrylamide (DMAM). The hydrogels were used to extract some model organic dyes from water. It is found that cationic dyes are strongly sorbed and retained by the hydrogels, while sorption of anionic dyes was negligible. In all cases it was found that both maximum sorption capacity and equilibrium binding constant varied from one dye to the other depending on the chemical structure of the dye, the presence of functional chemical groups and the hydrophobic-hydrophilic balance. Finally, the nonionic hydrogel of the homopolymer poly(N,Ndimethylacrylamide), PDMAM, was also used for reasons of comparison.

Keywords: Anionic organic hydrogels, sorption, organic dyes, water purification agents.

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Authors: M. H. Sedaghat, A. Zamani, S. Morshedi, R. Janamiri, M. Safdari, I. Mahdavi, A. Hosseini, A. Hatampour

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Although lots of experiments have been done in enhanced oil recovery, the number of experiments which consider the effects of local and global heterogeneity on efficiency of enhanced oil recovery based on the polymer-surfactant flooding is low and rarely done. In this research, we have done numerous experiments of water flooding and polymer-surfactant flooding on a five spot glass micromodel in different conditions such as different positions of layers. In these experiments, five different micromodels with three different pore structures are designed. Three models with different layer orientation, one homogenous model and one heterogeneous model are designed. In order to import the effect of heterogeneity of porous media, three types of pore structures are distributed accidentally and with equal ratio throughout heterogeneous micromodel network according to random normal distribution. The results show that maximum EOR recovery factor will happen in a situation where the layers are orthogonal to the path of mainstream and the minimum EOR recovery factor will happen in a situation where the model is heterogeneous. This experiments show that in polymer-surfactant flooding, with increase of angles of layers the EOR recovery factor will increase and this recovery factor is strongly affected by local heterogeneity around the injection zone.

Keywords: Layered Reservoir, Micromodel, Local Heterogeneity, Polymer-Surfactant Flooding, Enhanced Oil Recovery.

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Authors: Angela–M. Paleologou, Aphrodite Dellaporta

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Erroneous computer entry problems [here: 'e'errors] in hospital labs threaten the patients-–health carers- relationship, undermining the health system credibility. Are e-errors random, and do lab professionals make them accidentally, or may they be traced through meaningful determinants? Theories on internal causality of mistakes compel to seek specific causal ascriptions of hospital lab eerrors instead of accepting some inescapability. Undeniably, 'To Err is Human'. But in view of rapid global health organizational changes, e-errors are too expensive to lack in-depth considerations. Yet, that efunction might supposedly be entrenched in the health carers- job description remains under dispute – at least for Hellenic labs, where e-use falls behind generalized(able) appreciation and application. In this study: i) an empirical basis of a truly high annual cost of e-errors at about €498,000.00 per rural Hellenic hospital was established, hence interest in exploring the issue was sufficiently substantiated; ii) a sample of 270 lab-expert nurses, technicians and doctors were assessed on several personality, burnout and e-error measures, and iii) the hypothesis that the Hardiness vs Alienation personality construct disposition explains resistance vs proclivity to e-errors was tested and verified: Hardiness operates as a resilience source in the encounter of high pressures experienced in the hospital lab, whereas its 'opposite', i.e., Alienation, functions as a predictor, not only of making e-errors, but also of leading to burn-out. Implications for apt interventions are discussed.

Keywords: Hospital lab, personality hardiness/alienation, e-errors' cost, burnout.

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Authors: N. Chegeni, M. J. Tahmasebi Birgani

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Nowadays, in most radiotherapy departments, the commercial treatment planning systems (TPS) used to calculate dose distributions needs to be verified; therefore, quick, easy-to-use and low cost dose distribution algorithms are desirable to test and verify the performance of the TPS. In this paper, we put forth an analytical method to calculate the phantom scatter contribution and depth dose on the central axis based on the equivalent square concept. Then, this method was generalized to calculate the profiles at any depth and for several field shapes regular or irregular fields under symmetry and asymmetry photon beam conditions. Varian 2100 C/D and Siemens Primus Plus Linacs with 6 and 18 MV photon beam were used for irradiations. Percentage depth doses (PDDs) were measured for a large number of square fields for both energies, and for 45^º wedges which were employed to obtain the profiles in any depth. To assess the accuracy of the calculated profiles, several profile measurements were carried out for some treatment fields. The calculated and measured profiles were compared by gamma-index calculation. All γ–index calculations were based on a 3% dose criterion and a 3 mm dose-to-agreement (DTA) acceptance criterion. The γ values were less than 1 at most points. However, the maximum γ observed was about 1.10 in the penumbra region in most fields and in the central area for the asymmetric fields. This analytical approach provides a generally quick and fairly accurate algorithm to calculate dose distribution for some treatment fields in conventional radiotherapy.

Keywords: Dose distribution, equivalent field, asymmetric field, irregular field.

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Authors: U. Datta

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The main objective of this study is to find a suitable approach to monitor the land infrastructure growth over a period of time using multispectral satellite images. Bi-temporal change detection method is unable to indicate the continuous change occurring over a long period of time. To achieve this objective, the approach used here estimates a statistical model from series of multispectral image data over a long period of time, assuming there is no considerable change during that time period and then compare it with the multispectral image data obtained at a later time. The change is estimated pixel-wise. Statistical composite hypothesis technique is used for estimating pixel based change detection in a defined region. The generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) is used to detect the changed pixel from probabilistic estimated model of the corresponding pixel. The changed pixel is detected assuming that the images have been co-registered prior to estimation. To minimize error due to co-registration, 8-neighborhood pixels around the pixel under test are also considered. The multispectral images from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 from 2015 to 2018 are used for this purpose. There are different challenges in this method. First and foremost challenge is to get quite a large number of datasets for multivariate distribution modelling. A large number of images are always discarded due to cloud coverage. Due to imperfect modelling there will be high probability of false alarm. Overall conclusion that can be drawn from this work is that the probabilistic method described in this paper has given some promising results, which need to be pursued further.

Keywords: Co-registration, GLRT, infrastructure growth, multispectral, multitemporal, pixel-based change detection.

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Authors: H. López-Moreno, A. Rodríguez-Sánchez, C. Viñas-Arrebola, C. Porras-Amores

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The ventilated façade has great advantages when compared to traditional façades as it reduces the air conditioning thermal loads due to the stack effect induced by solar radiation in the air chamber. Optimizing energy consumption by using a ventilated façade can be used not only in newly built buildings but also it can be implemented in existing buildings, opening the field of implementation to energy building retrofitting works. In this sense, the following three prototypes of façade where designed, built and further analyzed in this research: non-ventilated façade (NVF); slightly ventilated façade (SLVF) and strongly ventilated façade (STVF). The construction characteristics of the three facades are based on the Spanish regulation of building construction “Technical Building Code”. The façades have been monitored by type-k thermocouples in a representative day of the summer season in Madrid (Spain). Moreover, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures, studying the thermal lag in the ventilated and no-ventilated façades has been designed. Results show that STVF façade presents higher levels of thermal inertia as the thermal lag reduces up to 17% (daily mean) compared to the non-ventilated façade. In addition, the statistical analysis proves that an increase of the ventilation holes size in STVF façades can improve the thermal lag significantly (p >0.05) when compared to the SLVF façade.

Keywords: Energy efficiency, experimental study, statistical analysis, thermal behavior, ventilated façade.

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Authors: Minsoo Lee, Yun-mi Kim, Yearn Jeong Kim, Yoon-kyung Lee, Hyejung Yoon

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Biological data has several characteristics that strongly differentiate it from typical business data. It is much more complex, usually large in size, and continuously changes. Until recently business data has been the main target for discovering trends, patterns or future expectations. However, with the recent rise in biotechnology, the powerful technology that was used for analyzing business data is now being applied to biological data. With the advanced technology at hand, the main trend in biological research is rapidly changing from structural DNA analysis to understanding cellular functions of the DNA sequences. DNA chips are now being used to perform experiments and DNA analysis processes are being used by researchers. Clustering is one of the important processes used for grouping together similar entities. There are many clustering algorithms such as hierarchical clustering, self-organizing maps, K-means clustering and so on. In this paper, we propose a clustering algorithm that imitates the ecosystem taking into account the features of biological data. We implemented the system using an Ant-Colony clustering algorithm. The system decides the number of clusters automatically. The system processes the input biological data, runs the Ant-Colony algorithm, draws the Topic Map, assigns clusters to the genes and displays the output. We tested the algorithm with a test data of 100 to1000 genes and 24 samples and show promising results for applying this algorithm to clustering DNA chip data.

Keywords: Ant colony system, biological data, clustering, DNA chip.

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Authors: Zohreh Soltani, Seyedmohammadhossein Hosseinian

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Reduction of energy consumption in built infrastructure, through the installation of energy-efficient technologies, is a major approach to achieving sustainability. In practice, the viability of energy efficiency projects strongly depends on the cost reimbursement and profitability. These projects are subject to failure if the actual cost savings do not reimburse the project cost promptly. In such cases, refinancing could be a solution to benefit from the long-term returns of the project, if implemented wisely. However, very little is still known about the effect of refinancing options on financial performance of energy efficiency projects. In order to fill this gap, the present study investigates the financial behavior of energy efficiency projects with focus on refinancing options, such as Leveraged Loans. A System Dynamics (SD) model is introduced, and the model application is presented using an actual case-study data. The case study results indicate that while high-interest start-ups make using Leveraged Loan inevitable, refinancing can rescue the project and bring about profitability. This paper also presents some managerial implications of refinancing energy efficiency projects based on the case-study analysis. Results of this study help to implement financially viable energy efficiency projects so that the community could benefit from their environmental advantages widely.

Keywords: Energy efficiency projects, leveraged loan, refinancing, sustainability.

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Authors: M.N. Khan, T. Rehman, Z Iqbal, M.S Sajid, M Ahmad, M Riaz

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A cross-sectional study was carried out to determine the prevalence, species characterization and associated risk factors with Eimeria (E.) in sheep of district Toba Tek Singh from April, 2009 to March, 2010. Of the total 486 faecal samples examined for Eimeria, 209 (43%) were found infected with five species of Eimeria. Amongst the identified species of Eimeria, E. ovinoidalis was the commonest one (48.32%), followed in order by E. ahsata, E. intricata, E. parva and E. faurei with prevalence of 45.45, 28.71, 24.40 and 19.14 percent respectively. Peak prevalence was observed in August. Wet season (rainy and post-rainy) was found to be favourable for Eimeria infection. Lambs had significantly higher prevalence (P < 0.05) of Eimeria than adults. Similarly higher prevalence of Eimeria was observed in female as compared to male. Among management and husbandry practices; watering system, housing system, floor type and herd size strongly influenced the prevalence of Eimeria. Coccidiosis was more prevalent in closed housing system, non-cemented floor type, pond watered animals and larger herds (P < 0.05) as compared to open housing system, partially cemented floor type, tap watered animals and smaller herds respectively. Feeding system, breed and body condition of animals were not found as risk factors (P>0.05) influencing prevalence of Eimeria.

Keywords: Eimeria, Pakistan prevalence, sheep.

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Authors: Ali Komakpanah, Maryam Yazdi

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Few studies have been conducted on polymeric strip and the behavior of soil retaining walls. This paper will present the effect of frequency on the dynamic behavior of reinforced soil retaining walls with polymeric strips. The frequency content describes how the amplitude of a ground motion is distributed among different frequencies. Since the frequency content of an earthquake motion will strongly influence the effects of that motion, the characterization of the motion cannot be completed without the consideration of its frequency content. The maximum axial force of reinforcements and horizontal displacement of the reinforced walls are focused in this research. To clarify the dynamic behavior of reinforced soil retaining walls with polymeric strips, a numerical modeling using Finite Difference Method is benefited. As the results indicate, the frequency of input base acceleration has an important effect on the behavior of these structures. Because of resonant in the system, where the frequency of the input dynamic load is equal to the natural frequency of the system, the maximum horizontal displacement and the maximum axial forces in polymeric strips is occurred. Moreover, they were to increase the structure flexibility because of the main advantages of polymeric strips; i.e. being simple method of construction, having a homogeneous behavior with soils, and possessing long durability, which are of great importance in dynamic analysis.

Keywords: dynamic analysis, frequency, polymeric strip, reinforced soil.

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Authors: Amira Abbes Kheriji, Faouzi Bouani, Mekki Ksouri, Mohamed Ben Ahmed

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Model Predictive Control (MPC) is increasingly being proposed for real time applications and embedded systems. However comparing to PID controller, the implementation of the MPC in miniaturized devices like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and microcontrollers has historically been very small scale due to its complexity in implementation and its computation time requirement. At the same time, such embedded technologies have become an enabler for future manufacturing enterprises as well as a transformer of organizations and markets. Recently, advances in microelectronics and software allow such technique to be implemented in embedded systems. In this work, we take advantage of these recent advances in this area in the deployment of one of the most studied and applied control technique in the industrial engineering. In fact in this paper, we propose an efficient framework for implementation of Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) in the performed STM32 microcontroller. The STM32 keil starter kit based on a JTAG interface and the STM32 board was used to implement the proposed GPC firmware. Besides the GPC, the PID anti windup algorithm was also implemented using Keil development tools designed for ARM processor-based microcontroller devices and working with C/Cµ langage. A performances comparison study was done between both firmwares. This performances study show good execution speed and low computational burden. These results encourage to develop simple predictive algorithms to be programmed in industrial standard hardware. The main features of the proposed framework are illustrated through two examples and compared with the anti windup PID controller.

Keywords: Embedded systems, Model Predictive Control, microcontroller, Keil tool.

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Authors: E. Rahmathulla Noufal

Abstract:

Investigating the dynamic responses of high rise structures under the effect of siesmic ground motion is extremely important for the proper analysis and design of multitoried structures. Since the presence of infilled walls strongly influences the behaviour of frame systems in multistoried buildings, there is an increased need for developing guidelines for the analysis and design of infilled frames under the effect of dynamic loads for safe and proper design of buildings. In this manuscript, we evaluate the natural frequencies and natural periods of single bay single storey frames considering the effect of infill walls by using the Eigen value analysis and validating with SAP 2000 (free vibration analysis). Various parameters obtained from the diagonal strut model followed for the free vibration analysis is then compared with the Finite Element model, where infill is modeled as shell elements (four noded). We also evaluated the effect of various parameters on the natural periods of vibration obtained by free vibration analysis in SAP 2000 comparing them with those obtained by the empirical expressions presented in I.S. 1893(Part I)- 2002.

Keywords: Infilled frame, eigen value analysis, free vibration analysis, diagonal strut model, finite element model, SAP 2000, natural period.

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Authors: Gesine Hellwig

Abstract:

Functional imaging procedures for the non-invasive assessment of tissue microcirculation are highly requested, but require a mathematical approach describing the trans- and intercapillary passage of tracer particles. Up to now, two theoretical, for the moment different concepts have been established for tracer kinetic modeling of contrast agent transport in tissues: pharmacokinetic compartment models, which are usually written as coupled differential equations, and the indicator dilution theory, which can be generalized in accordance with the theory of lineartime- invariant (LTI) systems by using a convolution approach. Based on mathematical considerations, it can be shown that also in the case of an open two-compartment model well-known from functional imaging, the concentration-time course in tissue is given by a convolution, which allows a separation of the arterial input function from a system function being the impulse response function, summarizing the available information on tissue microcirculation. Due to this reason, it is possible to integrate the open two-compartment model into the system-theoretic concept of indicator dilution theory (IDT) and thus results known from IDT remain valid for the compartment approach. According to the long number of applications of compartmental analysis, even for a more general context similar solutions of the so-called forward problem can already be found in the extensively available appropriate literature of the seventies and early eighties. Nevertheless, to this day, within the field of biomedical imaging – not from the mathematical point of view – there seems to be a trench between both approaches, which the author would like to get over by exemplary analysis of the well-known model.

Keywords: Functional imaging, Tracer kinetic modeling, LTIsystem, Indicator dilution theory / convolution approach, Two-Compartment model.

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Authors: M. Aghili, S. Tabarestani, C. Freytes, M. Shojaie, M. Cabrerizo, A. Barreto, N. Rishe, R. E. Curiel, D. Loewenstein, R. Duara, M. Adjouadi

Abstract:

A major challenge in medical studies, especially those that are longitudinal, is the problem of missing measurements which hinders the effective application of many machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, recent Alzheimer's Disease studies have focused on the delineation of Early Mild Cognitive Impairment (EMCI) and Late Mild Cognitive Impairment (LMCI) from cognitively normal controls (CN) which is essential for developing effective and early treatment methods. To address the aforementioned challenges, this paper explores the potential of using the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithm in handling missing values in multiclass classification. We seek a generalized classification scheme where all prodromal stages of the disease are considered simultaneously in the classification and decision-making processes. Given the large number of subjects (1631) included in this study and in the presence of almost 28% missing values, we investigated the performance of XGBoost on the classification of the four classes of AD, NC, EMCI, and LMCI. Using 10-fold cross validation technique, XGBoost is shown to outperform other state-of-the-art classification algorithms by 3% in terms of accuracy and F-score. Our model achieved an accuracy of 80.52%, a precision of 80.62% and recall of 80.51%, supporting the more natural and promising multiclass classification.

Keywords: eXtreme Gradient Boosting, missing data, Alzheimer disease, early mild cognitive impairment, late mild cognitive impairment, multiclass classification, ADNI, support vector machine, random forest.

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Authors: M. R. Nematollahi

Abstract:

Vibration characteristics of subcooled flow boiling on thin and long structures such as a heating rod were recently investigated by the author. The results show that the intensity of the subcooled boiling-induced vibration (SBIV) was influenced strongly by the conditions of the subcooling temperature, linear power density and flow velocity. Implosive bubble formation and collapse are the main nature of subcooled boiling, and their behaviors are the only sources to originate from SBIV. Therefore, in order to explain the phenomenon of SBIV, it is essential to obtain reliable information about bubble behavior in subcooled boiling conditions. This was investigated at different conditions of coolant subcooling temperatures of 25 to 75°C, coolant flow velocities of 0.16 to 0.53m/s, and linear power densities of 100 to 600 W/cm. High speed photography at 13,500 frames per second was performed at these conditions. The results show that even at the highest subcooling condition, the absolute majority of bubbles collapse very close to the surface after detaching from the heating surface. Based on these observations, a simple model of surface tension and momentum change is introduced to offer a rough quantitative estimate of the force exerted on the heating surface during the bubble ebullition. The formation of a typical bubble in subcooled boiling is predicted to exert an excitation force in the order of 10-4 N.

Keywords: Subcooled boiling, vibration mechanism, bubble behavior.

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Authors: A. A. Ugla

Abstract:

The present paper aims to investigate the effects of the welding process parameters and cooling state on the weld bead geometry, mechanical properties and microstructure characteristics for weldments of AISI 304L stainless steel. The welding process was carried out using TIG welding with pulsed/non-pulsed current techniques. The cooling state was introduced as an input parameter to investigate the main effects on the structure morphology and thereby the mechanical property. This paper clarifies microstructure- mechanical property relationship of the welded specimens. In this work, the selected pulse frequency levels were 5-500 Hz in order to study the effect of low and high frequencies on the weldment characteristics using filler metal of ER 308LSi. The key findings of this work clarified that the pulse frequency has a significant effect on the breaking of the dendrite arms during the welding process and so strongly influences on the tensile strength and microhardness. The cooling state also significantly affects on the microstructure texture and thereby, the mechanical properties. The most important factor affects the bead geometry and aspect ratio is the travel speed and pulse frequency.

Keywords: Microstructure, mechanical properties, pulse frequency, high pulse frequency, austenitic stainless steel, TIG welding.

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