Search results for: Direct power control

Authors: Kianoosh Samimi, Siham Kamali-Bernard, Ali Akbar Maghsoudi

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This paper aims to contribute to the characterization and the understanding of fresh state, compressive strength and chloride penetration tendency of high strength self-compacting concretes (HSSCCs) where Portland cement type II is partially substituted by 10% and 15% of natural pumice and zeolite. First, five concrete mixtures with a control mixture without any pozzolan are prepared and tested in both fresh and hardened states. Then, resistance to chloride penetration for all formulation is investigated in non-steady state and steady state by measurement of chloride penetration and diffusion coefficient. In non-steady state, the correlation between initial current and chloride penetration with diffusion coefficient is studied. Moreover, the relationship between diffusion coefficient in non-steady state and electrical resistivity is determined. The concentration of free chloride ions is also measured in steady state. Finally, chloride penetration for all formulation is studied in immersion and tidal condition. The result shows that, the resistance to chloride penetration for HSSCC in immersion and tidal condition increases by incorporating pumice and zeolite. However, concrete with zeolite displays a better resistance. This paper shows that the HSSCC with 15% pumice and 10% zeolite is suitable in fresh, hardened, and durability characteristics.

Keywords: Chloride penetration, immersion, pumice, HSSCC, tidal, zeolite.

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Authors: Adrienne Kline, Jaydip Desai

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Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a noninvasive technique that registers signals originating from the firing of neurons in the brain. The Emotiv EEG Neuroheadset is a consumer product comprised of 14 EEG channels and was used to record the reactions of the neurons within the brain to two forms of stimuli in 10 participants. These stimuli consisted of auditory and visual formats that provided directions of ‘right’ or ‘left.’ Participants were instructed to raise their right or left arm in accordance with the instruction given. A scenario in OpenViBE was generated to both stimulate the participants while recording their data. In OpenViBE, the Graz Motor BCI Stimulator algorithm was configured to govern the duration and number of visual stimuli. Utilizing EEGLAB under the cross platform MATLAB®, the electrodes most stimulated during the study were defined. Data outputs from EEGLAB were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics® Version 20. This aided in determining the electrodes to use in the development of a brain-machine interface (BMI) using real-time EEG signals from the Emotiv EEG Neuroheadset. Signal processing and feature extraction were accomplished via the Simulink® signal processing toolbox. An Arduino™ Duemilanove microcontroller was used to link the Emotiv EEG Neuroheadset and the right and left Mecha TE™ Hands.

Keywords: Brain-machine interface, EEGLAB, emotiv EEG neuroheadset, openViBE, simulink.

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Authors: Salim Cerig, Fatime Geyikoglu, Murat Bakir, Suat Colak, Merve Sonmez, Kubra Koc

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Cisplatin (CIS) is one of the most effective an anticancer drug and also toxic to cells by activating oxidative stress. Oleuropein (OLE) has key role against oxidative stress in mammalian cells, but the role of this antioxidant in the toxicity of CIS remains unknown. The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of OLE on CIS-induced liver damages in male rats. With this aim, male Sprague Dawley rats were randomly assigned to one of eight groups: Control group; the group treated with 7 mg/kg/day CIS; the groups treated with 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg/day OLE (i.p.); and the groups treated with OLE for three days starting at 24 h following CIS injection. After 4 days of injections, serum was provided to assess the blood AST, ALT and LDH values. The liver tissues were removed for histological, biochemical (TAC, TOS and MDA) and genotoxic evaluations. In the CIS treated group, the whole liver tissue showed significant histological changes. Also, CIS significantly increased both the incidence of oxidative stress and the induction of 8-hydroxy-deoxyguanosine (8-OH-dG). Moreover, the rats taking CIS have abnormal results on liver function tests. However, these parameters reached to the normal range after administration of OLE for 3 days. Finally, OLE demonstrated an acceptable high potential and was effective in attenuating CIS-induced liver injury. In this trial, the 200 mg/kg dose of OLE firstly appeared to induce the most optimal protective response.

Keywords: Antioxidant response, cisplatin, histology, liver, oleuropein, 8-OhdG.

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

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Due to the sensor technology, video surveillance has become the main way for security control in every big city in the world. Surveillance is usually used by governments for intelligence gathering, the prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. Many surveillance systems based on computer vision technology have been developed in recent years. Moving target tracking is the most common task for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to find and track objects of interest in mobile aerial surveillance for civilian applications. The paper is focused on vision-based collision avoidance for UAVs by recurrent neural networks. First, images from cameras on UAV were fused based on deep convolutional neural network. Then, a recurrent neural network was constructed to obtain high-level image features for object tracking and extracting low-level image features for noise reducing. The system distributed the calculation of the whole system to local and cloud platform to efficiently perform object detection, tracking and collision avoidance based on multiple UAVs. The experiments on several challenging datasets showed that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.

Keywords: Unmanned aerial vehicle, object tracking, deep learning, collision avoidance.

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Authors: M. S. Manikandan, K. V. Nithish Kumar, M. Krishnamoorthi, V. Ganesh

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The Automobile Braking System has a crucial role for safety of the passenger and riding quality of the vehicle. The braking force mainly depends on normal reaction on the wheel and the co-efficient of friction between the tire and the road surface. Whenever a vehicle is loaded, the normal reaction on the rear wheel is increased. Thus the amount of braking force required to halt the vehicle with minimum stopping distance, is based on the pillion load on the vehicle. In this work, in order to vary the braking force in two wheelers, the mechanical leverage which operates the master cylinder is varied based on the pillion load. Thus the amount of braking force developed between ground and tire is varied. This optimum braking force on the disc brake helps in attaining the minimum vehicle stopping distance. In addition to that, it also helps in preventing sliding. Thus the system results in reducing the stopping distance of the two wheelers and providing a better braking efficiency than the conventional braking system.

Keywords: Braking force, Master cylinder, Mechanical leverage, Minimum stopping distance.

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Authors: Alireza Barari

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Physical activity and diet are factors that influence the body's structure. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of four weeks of resistance training, and glutamine supplement consumption on growth hormone (GH), and Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) Axis. 40 amateur male bodybuilders, participated in this study. They were randomly divided into four equal groups, Resistance (R), Glutamine (G), Resistance with Glutamine (RG), and Control (C). The R group was assigned to a four week resistance training program, three times/week, three sets of 10 exercises with 6-10 repetitions, at the 80-95% 1RM (One Repetition Maximum), with 120 seconds rest between sets), G group is consuming l-glutamine (0.1 g/kg^-1/day^-1), RG group resistance training with consuming L-glutamine, and C group continued their normal lifestyle without exercise training. GH, IGF1, IGFBP-III plasma levels were measured before and after the protocol. One-way ANOVA indicated significant change in GH, IGF, and IGFBP-III between the four groups, and the Tukey test demonstrated significant increase in GH, IGF1, IGFBP-III plasma levels in R, and RG group. Based upon these findings, we concluded that resistance training at 80-95% 1RM intensity, and resistance training along with oral glutamine shows significantly increase secretion of GH, IGF-1, and IGFBP-III in amateur males, but the addition of oral glutamine to the exercise program did not show significant difference in GH, IGF-1, and IGFBP-III.

Keywords: Strength, glutamine, growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1.

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Authors: Rong-Terng Juang

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Autonomous vehicles offer the possibility of significant benefits to social welfare. However, fully automated cars might not be going to happen in the near further. To speed the adoption of the self-driving technologies, many governments worldwide are passing laws requiring data recorders for the testing of autonomous vehicles. Currently, the self-driving vehicle, (e.g., shuttle bus) has to be monitored from a remote control center. When an autonomous vehicle encounters an unexpected driving environment, such as road construction or an obstruction, it should request assistance from a remote operator. Nevertheless, large amounts of data, including images, radar and lidar data, etc., have to be transmitted from the vehicle to the remote center. Therefore, this paper proposes a data compression method of in-vehicle networks for remote monitoring of autonomous vehicles. Firstly, the time-series data are rearranged into a multi-dimensional signal space. Upon the arrival, for controller area networks (CAN), the new data are mapped onto a time-data two-dimensional space associated with the specific CAN identity. Secondly, the data are sampled based on differential sampling. Finally, the whole set of data are encoded using existing algorithms such as Huffman, arithmetic and codebook encoding methods. To evaluate system performance, the proposed method was deployed on an in-house built autonomous vehicle. The testing results show that the amount of data can be reduced as much as 1/7 compared to the raw data.

Keywords: Autonomous vehicle, data recording, remote monitoring, controller area network.

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Authors: Asmat Ismail, Muna Hanim Abdul Samad, Abdul Malek Abdul Rahman

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The phenomenon of global warming or climate change has led to many environmental issues including higher atmospheric temperatures, intense precipitation, increased greenhouse gaseous emissions and increased indoor discomfort. Studies have shown that bringing nature to the roof such as constructing green roof and implementing high-reflective roof may give positive impact in mitigating the effects of global warming and in increasing thermal comfort sensation inside buildings. However, no study has been conducted to compare both types of passive roof treatments in Malaysia in order to increase thermal comfort in buildings. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate the effect of green roof and white painted roof as passive roof treatment in improving indoor comfort of Malaysian homes. This study uses an experimental approach in which the measurements of temperatures are conducted on the case study building. The measurements of outdoor and indoor environments were conducted on the flat roof with two different types of roof treatment that are green roof and white roof. The measurement of existing black bare roof was also conducted to act as a control for this study.

Keywords: global warming, green roof, white painted roof, indoor temperature reduction.

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Authors: H. C. Chinwenyi, H. D. Ibrahim, J. O. Adekunle

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The incubation period is defined as the time from infection with a microorganism to development of symptoms. In this research, two disease models: one with incubation period and another without incubation period were studied. The study involves the use of a  mathematical model with a single incubation period. The test for the existence and stability of the disease free and the endemic equilibrium states for both models were carried out. The fourth order Runge-Kutta method was used to solve both models numerically. Finally, a computer program in MATLAB was developed to run the numerical experiments. From the results, we are able to show that the endemic equilibrium state of the model with incubation period is locally asymptotically stable whereas the endemic equilibrium state of the model without incubation period is unstable under certain conditions on the given model parameters. It was also established that the disease free equilibrium states of the model with and without incubation period are locally asymptotically stable. Furthermore, results from numerical experiments using empirical data obtained from Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) showed that the overall population of the infected people for the model with incubation period is higher than that without incubation period. We also established from the results obtained that as the transmission rate from susceptible to infected population increases, the peak values of the infected population for the model with incubation period decrease and are always less than those for the model without incubation period.

Keywords: Asymptotic stability, incubation period, Routh-Hurwitz criterion, Runge Kutta method.

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Authors: C. Lanzerstorfer

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Liquid sprays of water are frequently used in air pollution control for gas cooling purposes and for gas cleaning. Twin-fluid nozzles with internal mixing are often used for these purposes because of the small size of the drops produced. In these nozzles the liquid is dispersed by compressed air or another pressurized gas. In high efficiency scrubbers for particle separation, several nozzles are operated in parallel because of the size of the cross section. In such scrubbers, the scrubbing water has to be re-circulated. Precipitation of some solid material can occur in the liquid circuit, caused by chemical reactions. When such precipitations are detached from the place of formation, they can partly or totally block the liquid flow to a nozzle. Due to the resulting unbalanced supply of the nozzles with water and gas, the efficiency of separation decreases. Thus, the nozzles have to be cleaned if a certain fraction of blockages is reached. The aim of this study was to provide a tool for continuously monitoring the status of the nozzles of a scrubber based on the available operation data (water flow, air flow, water pressure and air pressure). The difference between the air pressure and the water pressure is not well suited for this purpose, because the difference is quite small and therefore very exact calibration of the pressure measurement would be required. Therefore, an equation for the reference air flow of a nozzle at the actual water flow and operation pressure was derived. This flow can be compared with the actual air flow for assessment of the status of the nozzles.

Keywords: Twin-fluid nozzles, operation data, condition monitoring, flow equation.

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Authors: Ahmed Mostafa, Mohamed Mahmoud, Nesreen H. Hafez, Mohamed Fahim

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This retrospective study includes 60 patients with pre-invasive breast cancer. Aim of the study: Evaluation of premalignant lesions of the breast (DCIS), different treatment methods and outcome. Patients and methods: 60 patients with DCIS were studied from the period between 2005 to 2012, for 38 patients the primary surgical method was wide local resection (WLE) (63.3%) and the other cases (22 patients, 36.7%) had mastectomy, fourteen cases from those who underwent local excision received radiotherapy, while no adjuvant radiotherapy was given for those who underwent mastectomy. In case of hormonal receptor positive DCIS lesions hormonal treatment (Tamoxifen) was given after local control. Results: No difference in overall survival between mastectomy & breast conserving therapy (wide local excision and adjuvant radiotherapy), however local recurrence rate is higher in case of breast conserving therapy, also no role of Axillary evacuation in case of DCIS. The use of hormonal therapy decreases the incidence of local recurrence by about 98%. Conclusion: The main management of DCIS is local treatment (wide local excision and radiotherapy) with hormonal treatment in case of hormone receptor positive lesions.

Keywords: Ductal carcinoma in situ, surgical treatment, radiotherapy, breast conserving therapy, hormonal treatment.

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Authors: Teyana S. Sapula, Damian D. Haule

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In online context, the design and implementation of effective remote laboratories environment is highly challenging on account of hardware and software needs. This paper presents the remote laboratory software framework modified from ilab shared architecture (ISA). The ISA is a framework which enables students to remotely acccess and control experimental hardware using internet infrastructure. The need for remote laboratories came after experiencing problems imposed by traditional laboratories. Among them are: the high cost of laboratory equipment, scarcity of space, scarcity of technical personnel along with the restricted university budget creates a significant bottleneck on building required laboratory experiments. The solution to these problems is to build web-accessible laboratories. Remote laboratories allow students and educators to interact with real laboratory equipment located anywhere in the world at anytime. Recently, many universities and other educational institutions especially in third world countries rely on simulations because they do not afford the experimental equipment they require to their students. Remote laboratories enable users to get real data from real-time hand-on experiments. To implement many remote laboratories, the system architecture should be flexible, understandable and easy to implement, so that different laboratories with different hardware can be deployed easily. The modifications were made to enable developers to add more equipment in ISA framework and to attract the new developers to develop many online laboratories.

Keywords: Batched, ISA, labserver, servicebroker.

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Authors: Gouda K. Helal, Marwa I. Shabayek, Heba A. El-Ramly, Heba A. Awida

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The adverse effects of Clindamycin (Clind.) / Ibuprofen (Ibu.) combination on liver, kidney, blood elements and the significances of antioxidants (N-acetylcysteine and Zinc) against these effects were evaluated. The study includes: Group I; control n=30, Group II; patients on Clind.300mg/Ibu.400mg twice daily for a week n=30, Group III; patients on Clind.300mg/Ibu.400mg+Nacetylcysteine 200mg twice daily for a week n=15 and Group IV; patients on Clind.300mg/Ibu.400mg+Zinc50mg twice daily for a week n=15. Serum malondialdehyde (MDA), alanine transferase (ALT), aspartate transferase (AST), γ glutamyl transferase (GGT), creatinine, blood urea nitrogen (BUN) were measured. Applying one way ANOVA followed by Tuckey Kramer post test, Group II showed significant increase in ALT, AST, GGT, BUN and decrease in Hb, RBCs, platelets than Group I. Group III showed significant decrease in ALT, AST, GGT, BUN than Group II. Moreover, Group IV showed significant decrease in ALT, AST, GGT and increase in Hb, RBCs, and platelets than Group II. Conclusively, Adding Zinc or Nacetylcysteine buffer the oxidative stress and improve the therapeutic outcome of Clindamycin/Ibuprofen combination.

Keywords: Clindamycin, Ibuprofen, Adverse effects, Antioxidant, Zinc, N-acetylcysteine.

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Authors: Sze Wai Veera Fung, Peter W. Ferretto

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Similar to most ethnic groups in China, men of the Dong minority hold the primary position in policymaking, moral authority, social values, and the control of the property. As the spatial embodiment of the patriarchal ideals, the house plays a significant role in producing and reproducing the distinctive gender status within the Dong society. Nevertheless, Dong women do not see their home as a cage of confinement, nor do they see themselves as a victim of oppression. For these women with reference to their productive identity, a house is a dwelling place with manifold meanings, including a proof of identity, an economic instrument, and a public resource operating on the community level. This paper examines the role of the house as a central site for identity construction and maintenance for the southern dialect Dong minority women in Hunan, China. Drawing on recent interviews with the Dong women, this study argues that women as productive individuals have a strong influence on the form of their house and the immediate environment, regardless of the male-dominated social construct of the Dong society. The aim of this study is not to produce a definitive relationship between women, house, and identity. Rather, it seeks to offer an alternative lens into the complexity and diversity of gender dynamics operating in and beyond the boundary of the house in the context of contemporary rural China.

Keywords: Conception of home, Dong minority, house, rural China, woman’s identity.

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Authors: Juliana A. Galhardi, Daniel M. Bonotto

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Coal is an important non-renewable energy source of and can be associated with radioactive elements. In Figueira city, Paraná state, Brazil, it was recorded high uranium activity near the coal mine that supplies a local thermoelectric power plant. In this context, the radon activity (Rn-222, produced by the Ra-226 decay in the U-238 natural series) was evaluated in groundwater, river water and effluents produced from the acid mine drainage in the coal reject dumps. The samples were collected in August 2013 and in February 2014 and analyzed at LABIDRO (Laboratory of Isotope and Hydrochemistry), UNESP, Rio Claro city, Brazil, using an alpha spectrometer (AlphaGuard) adjusted to evaluate the mean radon activity concentration in five cycles of 10 minutes. No radon activity concentration above 100 Bq.L-1, which was a previous critic value established by the World Health Organization. The average radon activity concentration in groundwater was higher than in surface water and in effluent samples, possibly due to the accumulation of uranium and radium in the aquifer layers that favors the radon trapping. The lower value in the river waters can indicate dilution and the intermediate value in the effluents may indicate radon absorption in the coal particles of the reject dumps. The results also indicate that the radon activities in the effluents increase with the sample acidification, possibly due to the higher radium leaching and the subsequent radon transport to the drainage flow. The water samples of Laranjinha River and Ribeirão das Pedras stream, which, respectively, supply Figueira city and receive the mining effluent, exhibited higher pH values upstream the mine, reflecting the acid mine drainage discharge. The radionuclides transport indicates the importance of monitoring their activity concentration in natural waters due to the risks that the radioactivity can represent to human health.

Keywords: Radon, radium, acid mine drainage, coal

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Authors: Abdulaziz Alsadhan, Naveed Khan

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In recent years intrusions on computer network are the major security threat. Hence, it is important to impede such intrusions. The hindrance of such intrusions entirely relies on its detection, which is primary concern of any security tool like Intrusion detection system (IDS). Therefore, it is imperative to accurately detect network attack. Numerous intrusion detection techniques are available but the main issue is their performance. The performance of IDS can be improved by increasing the accurate detection rate and reducing false positive. The existing intrusion detection techniques have the limitation of usage of raw dataset for classification. The classifier may get jumble due to redundancy, which results incorrect classification. To minimize this problem, Principle component analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) can be applied to transform raw features into principle features space and select the features based on their sensitivity. Eigen values can be used to determine the sensitivity. To further classify, the selected features greedy search, back elimination, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) can be used to obtain a subset of features with optimal sensitivity and highest discriminatory power. This optimal feature subset is used to perform classification. For classification purpose, Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) are used due to its proven ability in classification. The Knowledge Discovery and Data mining (KDD’99) cup dataset was considered as a benchmark for evaluating security detection mechanisms. The proposed approach can provide an optimal intrusion detection mechanism that outperforms the existing approaches and has the capability to minimize the number of features and maximize the detection rates.

Keywords: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Principle component analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Local Binary Pattern (LBP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP).

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Authors: Mehdi Modabberifar, Sanaz Jabary, Mojtaba Ghodsi

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Stiffness sensing is an important issue in medical diagnostic, robotics surgery, safe handling, and safe grasping of objects in production lines. Detecting and obtaining the characteristics in dwelling lumps embedded in a soft tissue and safe removing and handling of detected lumps is needed in surgery. Also in industry, grasping and handling an object without damaging in a place where it is not possible to access a human operator is very important. In this paper, a method for object handling is presented. It is based on the use of an intelligent gripper to detect the object stiffness and then setting a programmable force for grasping the object to move it. The main components of this system includes sensors (sensors for measuring force and displacement), electrical (electrical and electronic circuits, tactile data processing and force control system), mechanical (gripper mechanism and driving system for the gripper) and the display unit. The system uses a rotary potentiometer for measuring gripper displacement. A microcontroller using the feedback received by the load cell, mounted on the finger of the gripper, calculates the amount of stiffness, and then commands the gripper motor to apply a certain force on the object. Results of Experiments on some samples with different stiffness show that the gripper works successfully. The gripper can be used in haptic interfaces or robotic systems used for object handling.

Keywords: Gripper, haptic, stiffness, robotic.

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Authors: Mohammad Reza Haj Seyed Hadi, Fereshteh Ghanepasand, Mohammad Taghi Darzi

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The main objective of this study was to determine the effects of Nitrogen fixing bacteria and manure application on the seed yield and yield components in black cumin (Nigella sativa L.). The experiment was carried out at the RAN Research Station in Firouzkouh in 2012. A 4×4 factorial experiment, arranged in a randomized complete blocks designed with three replications. Nitrogen fixing bacteria at 4 levels (control, Azotobacter, Azospirillum and Azotobacter + Azospirillum) and manure application at 4 levels (0, 2.5, 5 and 7.5 ton ha-1) were used at this investigation. The present results have shown that the highest height, 1000 seeds weight, seed number per follicle, follicle yield, seed yield and harvest index were obtained after using Azotobacter and Azospirillum, simultaneously. Manure application only effects on follicle yield and by 5ton manure ha-1 the highest follicle yield obtained. Results of this investigation showed that the maximum seed yield obtained when Aotobacter+Azospirillum inoculated with black cumin seeds and 5 ton manure ha-1 applied. According to the results of this investigation the integrated management of Azotobacter and Azospirillum with manure application is the best treatment for achieving the maximum quantitative charactersitics of Black cumin.

Keywords: Azotobacter, azospirillum, black cumin, yield, yield components.

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Authors: Eisa Noveiri, Adel Taheri Nia

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The Non-Rotating Adjustable Stabilizer / Directional Solution (NAS/DS) is the imitation of a mechanical process or an object by a directional drilling operation that causes a respond mathematically and graphically to data and decision to choose the best conditions compared to the previous mode. The NAS/DS Auto Guide rotary steerable tool is undergoing final field trials. The point-the-bit tool can use any bit, work at any rotating speed, work with any MWD/LWD system, and there is no pressure drop through the tool. It is a fully closed-loop system that automatically maintains a specified curvature rate. The Non–Rotating Adjustable stabilizer (NAS) can be controls curvature rate by exactly positioning and run with the optimum bit, use the most effective weight (WOB) and rotary speed (RPM) and apply all of the available hydraulic energy to the bit. The directional simulator allowed to specify the size of the curvature rate performance errors of the NAS tool and the magnitude of the random errors in the survey measurements called the Directional Solution (DS). The combination of these technologies (NAS/DS) will provide smoother bore holes, reduced drilling time, reduced drilling cost and incredible targeting precision. This simulator controls curvature rate by precisely adjusting the radial extension of stabilizer blades on a near bit Non-Rotating Stabilizer and control process corrects for the secondary effects caused by formation characteristics, bit and tool wear, and manufacturing tolerances.

Keywords: non-rotating, Adjustable stabilizer, simulator, Directional Drilling, optimization, Oil Well Drilling

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Authors: Andrii Shalaginov, Katrin Franke, Xiongwei Huang

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One of the leading problems in Cyber Security today is the emergence of targeted attacks conducted by adversaries with access to sophisticated tools. These attacks usually steal senior level employee system privileges, in order to gain unauthorized access to confidential knowledge and valuable intellectual property. Malware used for initial compromise of the systems are sophisticated and may target zero-day vulnerabilities. In this work we utilize common behaviour of malware called ”beacon”, which implies that infected hosts communicate to Command and Control servers at regular intervals that have relatively small time variations. By analysing such beacon activity through passive network monitoring, it is possible to detect potential malware infections. So, we focus on time gaps as indicators of possible C2 activity in targeted enterprise networks. We represent DNS log files as a graph, whose vertices are destination domains and edges are timestamps. Then by using four periodicity detection algorithms for each pair of internal-external communications, we check timestamp sequences to identify the beacon activities. Finally, based on the graph structure, we infer the existence of other infected hosts and malicious domains enrolled in the attack activities.

Keywords: Malware detection, network security, targeted attack.

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Authors: Abdallah AL Sabbagh, Robin Braun, Mehran Abolhasan

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Due to the coexistence of different Radio Access Technologies (RATs), Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN) are predicted to be heterogeneous in nature. The coexistence of different RATs requires a need for Common Radio Resource Management (CRRM) to support the provision of Quality of Service (QoS) and the efficient utilization of radio resources. RAT selection algorithms are part of the CRRM algorithms. Simply, their role is to verify if an incoming call will be suitable to fit into a heterogeneous wireless network, and to decide which of the available RATs is most suitable to fit the need of the incoming call and admit it. Guaranteeing the requirements of QoS for all accepted calls and at the same time being able to provide the most efficient utilization of the available radio resources is the goal of RAT selection algorithm. The normal call admission control algorithms are designed for homogeneous wireless networks and they do not provide a solution to fit a heterogeneous wireless network which represents the NGWN. Therefore, there is a need to develop RAT selection algorithm for heterogeneous wireless network. In this paper, we propose an approach for RAT selection which includes receiving different criteria, assessing and making decisions, then selecting the most suitable RAT for incoming calls. A comprehensive survey of different RAT selection algorithms for a heterogeneous wireless network is studied.

Keywords: Heterogeneous Wireless Network, RAT selection algorithms, Next Generation Wireless Network (NGWN), Beyond 3G Network, Common Radio Resource Management (CRRM).

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Authors: Oday Al-Mamoori, J. Enrique Martinez-Rueda

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'C' shape yielding devices (C-devices) are effective tools for introducing supplemental sources of energy dissipation by hysteresis. Studies have shown that C-devices made of mild steel can be successfully applied as integral parts of seismic retrofitting schemes. However, explicit modelling of these devices can become cumbersome, expensive and time consuming. The device under study in this article has been previously used in non-invasive dissipative bracing for seismic retrofitting. The device is cut from a mild steel plate and has an overall shape that resembles that of a rectangular portal frame with circular interior corner transitions to avoid stress concentration and to control the extension of the dissipative region of the device. A number of inelastic finite element (FE) analyses using either inelastic 2D plane stress elements or inelastic fibre frame elements are reported and used to calibrate a 1D equivalent inelastic spring model that effectively reproduces the cyclic response of the device. The more elaborate FE model accounts for the frictional forces developed between the steel plate and the bolts used to connect the C-device to structural members. FE results also allow the visualization of the inelastic regions of the device where energy dissipation is expected to occur. FE analysis results are in a good agreement with experimental observations.

Keywords: C-device, equivalent nonlinear spring, FE analyses, reversed cyclic tests.

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Authors: Alhaji M. H. Conteh, Xiangbin Yan, Alfred V. Gborie

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The goal of this study was to increase the awareness of the description and assessments of rice acreage response and to offer mechanisms for agricultural policy scrutiny. The ordinary least square (OLS) technique was utilized to determine the coefficients of acreage response models for the rice varieties. The magnitudes of the coefficients (λ) of both the ROK lagged and NERICA lagged acreages were found positive and highly significant, which indicates that farmers’ adjustment rate was very low. Regarding lagged actual price for both the ROK and NERICE rice varieties, the short-run price elasticitieswere lower than long-run, which is suggesting a long term adjustment of the acreage under the crop.

However, the apparent recommendations for policy transformation are to open farm gate prices and to decrease government’s involvement in agricultural sector especially in the acquisition of agricultural inputs. Impending research have to be centered on how this might be better realized. Necessary conditions should be made available to the private sector by means of minimizing price volatility. In accordance with structural reforms, it is necessary to convey output prices to farmers with minimum distortion. There is need to eradicate price subsidies and control, which generate distortion in the market in addition to huge financial costs.

Keywords: Acreage response, rate of adjustment, rice varieties, Sierra Leone.

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Authors: M. Athar Hussain, M. Zafar Iqbal., M. Saeed Akhtar

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The fast growing accessibility and capability of emerging technologies have fashioned enormous possibilities of designing, developing and implementing innovative teaching methods in the classroom. The global technological scenario has paved the way to new pedagogies in teaching-learning process focusing on technology based learning environment and its impact on student achievement. The present experimental study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of technology based learning environment on student achievement in English as a foreign language. The sample of the study was 90 students of 10th grade of a public school located in Islamabad. A pretest- posttest equivalent group design was used to compare the achievement of the two groups. A Pretest and A posttest containing 50 items each from English textbook were developed and administered. The collected data were statistically analyzed. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of Experimental group and the Control group. The performance of Experimental group was better on posttest scores that indicted that teaching through technology based learning environment enhanced the achievement level of the students. On the basis of the results, it was recommended that teaching and learning through information and communication technologies may be adopted to enhance the language learning capability of the students.

Keywords: English as a Foreign Language, Student Achievement, Technology Based Learning

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Authors: Reham A. El-mayet, Hesham M. El-Badawy, Salwa H. Elramly

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New generation mobile communication networks have the ability of supporting triple play. In order that, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) access techniques have been chosen to enlarge the system ability for high data rates networks. Many of cross-layer modeling and optimization schemes for Quality of Service (QoS) and capacity of downlink multiuser OFDM system were proposed. In this paper, the Maximum Weighted Capacity (MWC) based resource allocation at the Physical (PHY) layer is used. This resource allocation scheme provides a much better QoS than the previous resource allocation schemes, while maintaining the highest or nearly highest capacity and costing similar complexity. In addition, the Delay Satisfaction (DS) scheduling at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, which allows more than one connection to be served in each slot is used. This scheduling technique is more efficient than conventional scheduling to investigate both of the number of users as well as the number of subcarriers against system capacity. The system will be optimized for different operational environments: the outdoor deployment scenarios as well as the indoor deployment scenarios are investigated and also for different channel models. In addition, effective capacity approach [1] is used not only for providing QoS for different mobile users, but also to increase the total wireless network's throughput.

Keywords: Cross-layer, effective capacity, LTE, OFDM, QoS, resource allocation, wireless networks.

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Authors: Benjamin Osei-Tutu

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Food contaminated with biological, chemical and physical hazards usually leads to foodborne illnesses which in turn increase the disease burden of developing and developed economies. Restaurants play a key role in the food service industry and violations in application of standardized food safety management systems in these establishments have been associated with foodborne disease outbreaks. This study was undertaken to assess the level of compliance to the Code of practice that was developed and implemented after conducting needs assessment of the food safety management systems employed by the Food Service Establishments in Ghana. Data on pre-licence inspections were reviewed to assess the compliance of the Food Service Establishments. During the period under review (2012-2016), 74.52% of the food service facilities in the hospitality industry were in compliance with the FDA’s code of practice. Main violations observed during the study bordered on facility layout and fabrication (61.8%) and this is because these facilities may not have been built for use as a food service establishment. Another fact that came to the fore was that the redesigning of the facilities to bring them into compliance required capital intensive investments, which some establishments are not prepared for. Other challenges faced by the industry regarded issues on records and documentations, personnel facilities and hygiene, raw materials acquisition, storage and control, and cold storage.

Keywords: Assessment, Accra, food safety management systems, restaurants, hotel.

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Authors: Martin Doran, Roy Sterritt, George Wilkie

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NASA, ESA, and NSSC space agencies have plans to put planetary rovers on Mars in 2020. For these future planetary rovers to succeed, they will heavily depend on sensors to detect obstacles. This will also become of vital importance in the future, if rovers become less dependent on commands received from earth-based control and more dependent on self-configuration and self-decision making. These planetary rovers will face harsh environments and the possibility of hardware failure is high, as seen in missions from the past. In this paper, we focus on using Autonomic principles where self-healing, self-optimization, and self-adaption are explored using the MAPE-K model and expanding this model to encapsulate the attributes such as Awareness, Analysis, and Adjustment (AAA-3). In the experimentation, a Pioneer P3-DX research robot is used to simulate a planetary rover. The sonar sensors on the P3-DX robot are used to simulate the sensors on a planetary rover (even though in reality, sonar sensors cannot operate in a vacuum). Experiments using the P3-DX robot focus on how our software system can be adapted with the loss of sonar sensor functionality. The autonomic manager system is responsible for the decision making on how to make use of remaining ‘enabled’ sonars sensors to compensate for those sonar sensors that are ‘disabled’. The key to this research is that the robot can still detect objects even with reduced sonar sensor capability.

Keywords: Autonomic, self-adaption, self-healing, self-optimization.

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Authors: Nader Nabhani, Amir Tofighi

Abstract:

Nanotechnology is the science of creating, using and manipulating objects which have at least one dimension in range of 0.1 to 100 nanometers. In other words, nanotechnology is reconstructing a substance using its individual atoms and arranging them in a way that is desirable for our purpose. The main reason that nanotechnology has been attracting attentions is the unique properties that objects show when they are formed at nano-scale. These differing characteristics that nano-scale materials show compared to their nature-existing form is both useful in creating high quality products and dangerous when being in contact with body or spread in environment. In order to control and lower the risk of such nano-scale particles, the main following three topics should be considered: 1) First of all, these materials would cause long term diseases that may show their effects on body years after being penetrated in human organs and since this science has become recently developed in industrial scale not enough information is available about their hazards on body. 2) The second is that these particles can easily spread out in environment and remain in air, soil or water for very long time, besides their high ability to penetrate body skin and causing new kinds of diseases. 3) The third one is that to protect body and environment against the danger of these particles, the protective barriers must be finer than these small objects and such defenses are hard to accomplish. This paper will review, discuss and assess the risks that human and environment face as this new science develops at a high rate.

Keywords: Nanotechnology, risk assessment, environment.

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Authors: Sanjida Ahmed Sinthia

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Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. There are several reasons for this insufficiency and uncontrolled population growth is one of the prime reasons. Others include low economic progress, imbalanced resource management, unemployment and underemployment, urban migration and natural catastrophes etc. As a result, the rate of urban poor is increasing inevitably in every sphere of urban cities in Bangladesh and Dhaka is the most affected one. Besides there is scarcity of urban land, housing, urban infrastructure and amenities which create pressure on urban cities and mostly encroach the open space, wetlands that causes environmental degradation. Government has no or limited control over these due to poor government policy and management, political pressure and lack of resource management. Unfortunately, over centralization and bureaucracy creates unnecessary delay and interruptions in any government initiations. There is also no coordination between government and private sector developer to solve the problem of urban Poor. To understand the problem of these huge populations this paper analyzes one of the single largest slum areas in Dhaka, Korail Slum. The study focuses on socio demographic analysis, morphological pattern and role of different actors responsible for the improvements of the area and recommended some possible steps for determining the potential outcomes.

Keywords: Demographic analysis, environmental degradation, physical condition, government policy, housing and land management policy.

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Authors: Thiago Viana

Abstract:

Eventually train accidents occur on railways and for some specific cases it is necessary to use a train rescue with a crane positioned under a platform wagon. These tumbled machines are collected and sent to the machine shop or scrap yard. In one of these cranes that were being used to rescue a wagon, occurred a fall of hoist due to fracture of two large pins. The two pins were collected and sent for failure analysis. This work investigates the main cause and the secondary causes for the initiation of the fatigue crack. All standard failure analysis procedures were applied, with careful evaluation of the characteristics of the material, fractured surfaces and, mainly, metallographic tests using an optical microscope to compare the geometry of the peaks and valleys of the thread of the pins and their respective seats. By metallographic analysis, it was concluded that the fatigue cracks were started from a notch (stress concentration) in the valley of the threads of the pin applied to the right side of the crane (pin 1). In this, it was verified that the peaks of the threads of the pin seat did not have proper geometry, with sharp edges being present that caused such notches. The visual analysis showed that fracture of the pin on the left side of the crane (pin 2) was brittle type, being a consequence of the fracture of the first one. Recommendations for this and other railway cranes have been made, such as nondestructive testing, stress calculation, design review, quality control and suitability of the mechanical forming process of the seat threads and pin threads.

Keywords: Crane, fracture, pin, railway.

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