Search results for: Control rods design

Authors: Ali Akbar Sadat Asl

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Diagnosis and deciding about diseases in medical fields is facing innate uncertainty which can affect the whole process of treatment. This decision is made based on expert knowledge and the way in which an expert interprets the patient's condition, and the interpretation of the various experts from the patient's condition may be different. Fuzzy logic can provide mathematical modeling for many concepts, variables, and systems that are unclear and ambiguous and also it can provide a framework for reasoning, inference, control, and decision making in conditions of uncertainty. In systems with high uncertainty and high complexity, fuzzy logic is a suitable method for modeling. In this paper, we use type-2 fuzzy logic for uncertainty modeling that is in diagnosis of leukemia. The proposed system uses an indirect-direct approach and consists of two stages: In the first stage, the inference of blood test state is determined. In this step, we use an indirect approach where the rules are extracted automatically by implementing a clustering approach. In the second stage, signs of leukemia, duration of disease until its progress and the output of the first stage are combined and the final diagnosis of the system is obtained. In this stage, the system uses a direct approach and final diagnosis is determined by the expert. The obtained results show that the type-2 fuzzy expert system can diagnose leukemia with the average accuracy about 97%.

Keywords: Expert system, leukemia, medical diagnosis, type-2 fuzzy logic.

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Authors: M. A. Adejumobi, J. O. Ojediran

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The aim of irrigation is to recharge the available water in the soil. Quality of irrigation water is essential for the yield and quality of crops produced, maintenance of soil productivity and protection of the environment. The analysis of irrigation water arises as a need to know the impact of irrigation water on the yield of crops, the effect, and the necessary control measures to rectify the effect of this for optimum production and yield of crops. This study was conducted to assess the quality of irrigation water with its performance on crop planted, in Josepdam irrigation scheme Bacita, Nigeria. Field visits were undertaken to identify and locate water supply sources and collect water samples from these sources; X1 Drain, Oshin, River Niger loop and Ndafa. Laboratory experiments were then undertaken to determine the quality of raw water from these sources. The analysis was carried for various parameters namely; physical and chemical analyses after water samples have been taken from four sources. The samples were tested in laboratory. Results showed that the raw water sources shows no salinity tendencies with SAR values less than 1me/l and Ecvaules at Zero while the pH were within the recommended range by FAO, there are increase in potassium and sulphate content contamination in three of the location. From this, it is recommended that there should be proper monitoring of the scheme by conducting analysis of water and soil in the environment, preferable test should be carried out at least one year to cover the impact of seasonal variations and to determine the physical and chemical analysis of the water used for irrigation at the scheme.

Keywords: Irrigation, Salinity, Raw water quality, Scheme.

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Authors: Mahdi Fakoor, Seyed Mohammad Navid Ghoreishi

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Composite patching is a common way for reinforcing the cracked pipes and cylinders. The effects of composite patch reinforcement on fracture parameters of a cracked pipe depend on a variety of parameters such as number of layers, angle, thickness, and material of each layer. Therefore, stacking sequence optimization of composite patch becomes crucial for the applications of cracked pipes. In this study, in order to obtain the optimal stacking sequence for a composite patch that has minimum weight and maximum resistance in propagation of cracks, a coupled Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) and Finite Element Method (FEM) process is proposed. This optimization process has done for longitudinal and transverse semi-elliptical cracks and optimal stacking sequences and Pareto’s front for each kind of cracks are presented. The proposed algorithm is validated against collected results from the existing literature.

Keywords: Multi objective optimization, Pareto front, composite patch, cracked pipe.

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Authors: Kamran Yousefpour, Mojtaba Rostaghi-Chalaki, Jason Warden, David Wallace, Chanyeop Park

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There has been a rising trend in using impulse current generators to investigate the lightning strike protection of materials including aluminum and composites in structures such as wind turbine blade and aircraft body. The focus of this research is to present an impulse current generator built in the High Voltage Lab at Mississippi State University. The generator is capable of producing component A and D of the natural lightning discharges in accordance with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) standard, which is widely used in the aerospace industry. The generator can supply lightning impulse energy up to 400 kJ with the capability of producing impulse currents with magnitudes greater than 200 kA. The electrical circuit and physical components of an improved impulse current generator are described and several lightning strike waveforms with different amplitudes is presented for comparing with the standard waveform. The results of this study contribute to the fundamental understanding the functionality of the impulse current generators and present an impulse current generator developed at the High Voltage Lab of Mississippi State University.

Keywords: impulse current generator, lightning, society of automotive engineers, capacitor

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Authors: Yue-Der Lin, Ya-Hsueh Chien, Yen-Ting Lin, Shih-Fan Wang, Cheng-Lun Tsai, Ching-Che Tsai

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Capacitive electrocardiogram (ECG) measurement is an attractive approach for long-term health monitoring. However, there is little literature available on its implementation, especially for multichannel system in standard ECG leads. This paper begins from the design criteria for capacitive ECG measurement and presents a multichannel limb-lead capacitive ECG system with conductive fabric tapes pasted on a double layer PCB as the capacitive sensors. The proposed prototype system incorporates a capacitive driven-body (CDB) circuit to reduce the common-mode power-line interference (PLI). The presented prototype system has been verified to be stable by theoretic analysis and practical long-term experiments. The signal quality is competitive to that acquired by commercial ECG machines. The feasible size and distance of capacitive sensor have also been evaluated by a series of tests. From the test results, it is suggested to be greater than 60 cm2 in sensor size and be smaller than 1.5 mm in distance for capacitive ECG measurement.

Keywords: capacitive driven-body (CDB) circuit, capacitive electrocardiogram (ECG) measurement, capacitive sensor, conductive fabric tape, power-line interference (PLI).

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Authors: D. Henninger, A. Zopey, T. Ihde, C. Mehring

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The dynamic performance of a 4-way solenoid operated hydraulic spool valve has been analyzed by means of a one-dimensional modeling approach capturing flow, magnetic and fluid forces, valve inertia forces, fluid compressibility, and damping. Increased model accuracy was achieved by analyzing the detailed three-dimensional electromagnetic behavior of the solenoids and flow behavior through the spool valve body for a set of relevant operating conditions, thereby allowing the accurate mapping of flow and magnetic forces on the moving valve body, in lieu of representing the respective forces by lower-order models or by means of simplistic textbook correlations. The resulting high-fidelity one-dimensional model provided the basis for specific and timely design modification eliminating experimentally observed valve oscillations.

Keywords: Dynamic performance model, high-fidelity model, 1D-3D decoupled analysis, solenoid-operated hydraulic servo valve, CFD and electromagnetic FEA.

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Authors: Manisha Dubey, Gaurav Gupta, Anoop Arya

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The demand for power supply increases day by day in developing countries like India henceforth demand of reactive power support in the form of ancillary services provider also has been increased. The multi-line and multi-type Flexible alternating current transmission system (FACTS) controllers are playing a vital role to regulate power flow through the transmission line. Unified power flow controller and interline power flow controller can be utilized to control reactive power flow through the transmission line. In a restructured power system, the demand of such controller is being popular due to their inherent capability. The transmission pricing by using reactive power cost allocation through modified matrix methodology has been proposed. The FACTS technologies have quite costly assembly, so it is very useful to apportion the expenses throughout the restructured electricity industry. Therefore, in this work, after embedding the FACTS devices into load flow, the impact on the costs allocated to users in fraction to the transmission framework utilization has been analyzed. From the obtained results, it is clear that the total cost recovery is enhanced towards the Reactive Power flow through the different transmission line for 5 bus test system. The fair pricing policy towards reactive power can be achieved by the proposed method incorporating FACTS controller towards cost recovery of the transmission network.

Keywords: Inter line power flow controller, Transmission Pricing, Unified power flow controller, cost allocation.

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Authors: Y.C. Liu, S.J. Lu, Y.C. Weng, H. Su

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The objective of this paper is to investigate a new approach based on the idea of pictograms for food portion size. This approach adopts the model of the United States Pharmacopeia- Drug Information (USP-DI). The representation of each food portion size composed of three parts: frame, the connotation of dietary portion sizes and layout. To investigate users- comprehension based on this approach, two experiments were conducted, included 122 Taiwanese people, 60 male and 62 female with ages between 16 and 64 (divided into age groups of 16-30, 31-45 and 46-64). In Experiment 1, the mean correcting rate of the understanding level of food items is 48.54% (S.D.= 95.08) and the mean response time 2.89sec (S.D.=2.14). The difference on the correct rates for different age groups is significant (P*=0.00<0.05). In Experiment 2, the correcting rate of selecting the right life-size measurement aid is 65.02% (S.D.=21.31). The result showed the potential of the approach for certain food potion sizes. Issues raised for discussions including comprehension on numerous food varieties in an open environment, selection of photograph or drawing, reasons of different correcting rates for the measurement aid. This research also could be used for those interested in systematic and pictorial representation of dietary portion size information.

Keywords: Comprehension, Food Portion Size, Model of DietaryInformation, Pictogram Design, USP-DI.

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Authors: Hafizah Che Hasan, Fateen Nazwa Yusof, Maslina Daud

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Internet of Things (IoT) is a powerful industry system, which end-devices are interconnected and automated, allowing the devices to analyze data and execute actions based on the analysis. The IoT technology leverages the technology of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), including mobile and sensor. These technologies contribute to the evolution of IoT. However, due to more devices are connected each other in the Internet, and data from various sources exchanged between things, confidentiality of the data becomes a major concern. This paper focuses on one of the major challenges in IoT; authentication, in order to preserve data integrity and confidentiality are in place. A few solutions are reviewed based on papers from the last few years. One of the proposed solutions is securing the communication between IoT devices and cloud servers with Elliptic Curve Cryptograhpy (ECC) based mutual authentication protocol. This solution focuses on Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) cookies as security parameter.  Next proposed solution is using keyed-hash scheme protocol to enable IoT devices to authenticate each other without the presence of a central control server. Another proposed solution uses Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) based mutual authentication protocol. It emphasizes on tamper resistant and resource-efficient technology, which equals a 3-way handshake security protocol.

Keywords: Internet of Things, authentication, PUF ECC, keyed hash scheme protocol.

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Authors: Mohammad Ali Jabraeil Jamali, Ahmad khademzadeh

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In this paper we present high performance dynamically allocated multi-queue (DAMQ) buffer schemes for fault tolerance systems on chip applications that require an interconnection network. Two virtual channels shared the same buffer space. Fault tolerant mechanisms for interconnection networks are becoming a critical design issue for large massively parallel computers. It is also important to high performance SoCs as the system complexity keeps increasing rapidly. On the message switching layer, we make improvement to boost system performance when there are faults involved in the components communication. The proposed scheme is when a node or a physical channel is deemed as faulty, the previous hop node will terminate the buffer occupancy of messages destined to the failed link. The buffer usage decisions are made at switching layer without interactions with higher abstract layer, thus buffer space will be released to messages destined to other healthy nodes quickly. Therefore, the buffer space will be efficiently used in case fault occurs at some nodes.

Keywords: DAMQ, NoC, fault tolerant, odd-even routingalgorithm, buffer space.

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Authors: Sihem Mostefai, Abdelaziz Bouras, Mohamed Batouche

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To achieve competitive advantage nowadays, most of the industrial companies are considering that success is sustained to great product development. That is to manage the product throughout its entire lifetime ranging from design, manufacture, operation and destruction. Achieving this goal requires a tight collaboration between partners from a wide variety of domains, resulting in various product data types and formats, as well as different software tools. So far, the lack of a meaningful unified representation for product data semantics has slowed down efficient product development. This paper proposes an ontology based approach to enable such semantic interoperability. Generic and extendible product ontology is described, gathering main concepts pertaining to the mechanical field and the relations that hold among them. The ontology is not exhaustive; nevertheless, it shows that such a unified representation is possible and easily exploitable. This is illustrated thru a case study with an example product and some semantic requests to which the ontology responds quite easily. The study proves the efficiency of ontologies as a support to product data exchange and information sharing, especially in product development environments where collaboration is not just a choice but a mandatory prerequisite.

Keywords: Information exchange, product lifecyclemanagement, product ontology, semantic interoperability.

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Authors: G. Blázquez, A. Gálvez-Pérez, M. Calero, I. Iáñez-Rodríguez, M. A. Martín-Lara, A. Pérez

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The production of olive oil is considered as one of the most important agri-food industries. However, some of the by-products generated in the process are potential pollutants and cause environmental problems. Consequently, the management of these by-products is currently considered as a challenge for the olive oil industry. In this context, several technologies have been developed and tested. In this sense, the autohydrolysis of these by-products could be considered as a promising technique. Therefore, this study focused on autohydrolysis treatments of a solid residue from the olive oil industry denominated olive cake. This one comes from the olive pomace extraction with hexane. Firstly, a water washing was carried out to eliminate the water soluble compounds. Then, an experimental design was developed for the autohydrolysis experiments carried out in the hydrothermal pressure reactor. The studied variables were temperature (30, 60 and 90 ºC) and time (30, 60, 90 min). On the other hand, aliquots of liquid obtained fractions were analysed by HPLC to determine the fructose and sucrose contents present in the liquid fraction. Finally, the obtained results of sugars contents and the yields of the different experiments were fitted to a neuro-fuzzy and to a polynomial model.

Keywords: ANFIS, olive cake, polyols, saccharides.

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Authors: B. Kędra, R. Małkowski

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This paper presents information on Power System Component Simulator – a device designed for LINTE^2 laboratory owned by Gdansk University of Technology in Poland. In this paper, we first provide an introductory information on the Power System Component Simulator and its capabilities. Then, the concept of the unit is presented. Requirements for the unit are described as well as proposed and introduced functions are listed. Implementation details are given. Hardware structure is presented and described. Information about used communication interface, data maintenance and storage solution, as well as used Simulink real-time features are presented. List and description of all measurements is provided. Potential of laboratory setup modifications is evaluated. Lastly, the results of experiments performed using Power System Component Simulator are presented. This includes simulation of under frequency load shedding, frequency and voltage dependent characteristics of groups of load units, time characteristics of group of different load units in a chosen area.

Keywords: Power converter, Simulink real-time, MATLAB, load, tap controller.

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Authors: Qian, C. Z., Chen, V. Y., R. F. Woodbury

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This paper describes the NEAR (Navigating Exhibitions, Annotations and Resources) panel, a novel interactive visualization technique designed to help people navigate and interpret groups of resources, exhibitions and annotations by revealing hidden relations such as similarities and references. NEAR is implemented on A•VI•RE, an extended online information repository. A•VI•RE supports a semi-structured collection of exhibitions containing various resources and annotations. Users are encouraged to contribute, share, annotate and interpret resources in the system by building their own exhibitions and annotations. However, it is hard to navigate smoothly and efficiently in A•VI•RE because of its high capacity and complexity. We present a visual panel that implements new navigation and communication approaches that support discovery of implied relations. By quickly scanning and interacting with NEAR, users can see not only implied relations but also potential connections among different data elements. NEAR was tested by several users in the A•VI•RE system and shown to be a supportive navigation tool. In the paper, we further analyze the design, report the evaluation and consider its usage in other applications.

Keywords: measure similarity, trace reference, inherentrelation, information visualization, online multimedia repository

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Authors: Ratnakar Tripathi, Rajnikant Mishra

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The PAX6, a transcription factor, is essential for the morphogenesis of the eyes, brain, pituitary and pancreatic islets. In rodents, the loss of Pax6 function leads to central nervous system defects, anophthalmia, and nasal hypoplasia. The haplo-insufficiency of Pax6 causes microphthalmia, aggression and other behavioral abnormalities. It is also required in brain patterning and neuronal plasticity. In human, heterozygous mutation of Pax6 causes loss of iris [aniridia], mental retardation and glucose intolerance. The 3- deletion in Pax6 leads to autism and aniridia. The phenotypes are variable in peneterance and expressivity. However, mechanism of function and interaction of PAX6 with other proteins during development and associated disease are not clear. It is intended to explore interactors of PAX6 to elucidated biology of PAX6 function in the tissues where it is expressed and also in the central regulatory pathway. This report describes In-silico approaches to explore interacting proteins of PAX6. The models show several possible proteins interacting with PAX6 like MITF, SIX3, SOX2, SOX3, IPO13, TRIM, and OGT. Since the Pax6 is a critical transcriptional regulator and master control gene of eye and brain development it might be interacting with other protein involved in morphogenesis [TGIF, TGF, Ras etc]. It is also presumed that matricelluar proteins [SPARC, thrombospondin-1 and osteonectin etc] are likely to interact during transport and processing of PAX6 and are somewhere its cascade. The proteins involved in cell survival and cell proliferation can also not be ignored.

Keywords: Interacting Proteins, Pax6, PIP, STRING

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Authors: Arash Azizi Mazreah, Mohammad T. Manzuri Shalmani, Hamid Barati, Ali Barati

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This paper presents a novel CMOS four-transistor SRAM cell for very high density and low power embedded SRAM applications as well as for stand-alone SRAM applications. This cell retains its data with leakage current and positive feedback without refresh cycle. The new cell size is 20% smaller than a conventional six-transistor cell using same design rules. Also proposed cell uses two word-lines and one pair bit-line. Read operation perform from one side of cell, and write operation perform from another side of cell, and swing voltage reduced on word-lines thus dynamic power during read/write operation reduced. The fabrication process is fully compatible with high-performance CMOS logic technologies, because there is no need to integrate a poly-Si resistor or a TFT load. HSPICE simulation in standard 0.25μm CMOS technology confirms all results obtained from this paper.

Keywords: Positive feedback, leakage current, read operation, write operation, dynamic energy consumption.

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Authors: T. Yilmaz, N. Kirac

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Beam-column elements are defined as structural members subjected to a combination of axial and bending forces. Lateral torsional buckling is one of the major failure modes in which beam-columns that are bent about its strong axis may buckle out of the plane by deflecting laterally and twisting. This study presents a compact closed-form equation that it can be used for calculating critical lateral torsional-buckling load of beam-columns with monosymmetric sections in the presence of a known axial load. Lateral-torsional buckling behavior of beam-columns subjected to constant axial force and various transverse load cases are investigated by using Ritz method in order to establish proposed equation. Lateral-torsional buckling loads calculated by presented formula are compared to finite element model results. ABAQUS software is utilized to generate finite element models of beam-columns. It is found out that lateral-torsional buckling load of beam-columns with monosymmetric sections can be determined by proposed equation and can be safely used in design.

Keywords: Lateral-torsional buckling, stability, beam-column, monosymmetric section.

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Authors: H. Al-Baghli, F. Al-Asfour

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The current applied asphalt technology for Kuwait roads pavement infrastructure is the hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavement, including both pen grade and polymer modified bitumen (PMBs), that is produced and compacted at high temperature levels ranging from 150 to 180 °C. There are no current specifications for warm and cold mix asphalts in Kuwait’s Ministry of Public Works (MPW) asphalt standard and specifications. The process of the conventional HMA is energy intensive and directly responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases and other environmental hazards into the atmosphere leading to significant environmental impacts and raising health risk to labors at site. Warm mix asphalt (WMA) technology, a sustainable alternative preferred in multiple countries, has many environmental advantages because it requires lower production temperatures than HMA by 20 to 40 °C. The reduction of temperatures achieved by WMA originates from multiple technologies including foaming and chemical or organic additives that aim to reduce bitumen and improve mix workability. This paper presents a literature review of WMA technologies and techniques followed by an experimental study aiming to compare the results of produced WMA samples, using a water containing additive (foaming process), at different compaction temperatures with the HMA control volumetric properties mix designed in accordance to the new MPW’s specifications and guidelines.

Keywords: Warm-mix asphalt, water-bearing additives, foaming-based process, chemical additives, organic additives.

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Authors: Ki Hyun Kim, Jang-Hee Yoo, Kyo Il Chung

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This paper proposes a VPN Accelerator Board (VPN-AB), a virtual private network (VPN) protocol designed for trust channel security system (TCSS). TCSS supports safety communication channel between security nodes in internet. It furnishes authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and access control to security node to transmit data packets with IPsec protocol. TCSS consists of internet key exchange block, security association block, and IPsec engine block. The internet key exchange block negotiates crypto algorithm and key used in IPsec engine block. Security Association blocks setting-up and manages security association information. IPsec engine block treats IPsec packets and consists of networking functions for communication. The IPsec engine block should be embodied by H/W and in-line mode transaction for high speed IPsec processing. Our VPN-AB is implemented with high speed security processor that supports many cryptographic algorithms and in-line mode. We evaluate a small TCSS communication environment, and measure a performance of VPN-AB in the environment. The experiment results show that VPN-AB gets a performance throughput of maximum 15.645Gbps when we set the IPsec protocol with 3DES-HMAC-MD5 tunnel mode.

Keywords: TCSS(Trust Channel Security System), VPN(VirtualPrivate Network), IPsec, SSL, Security Processor, Securitycommunication.

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Authors: Antoni Grau, Yolanda Bolea, Alberto Sanfeliu

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Embedding Sustainability in technological curricula has become a crucial factor for educating engineers with competences in sustainability. The Technical University of Catalonia UPC, in 2008, designed the Sustainable Technology Excellence Program STEP 2015 in order to assure a successful Sustainability Embedding. This Program takes advantage of the opportunity that the redesign of all Bachelor and Master Degrees in Spain by 2010 under the European Higher Education Area framework offered. The STEP program goals are: to design compulsory courses in each degree; to develop the conceptual base and identify reference models in sustainability for all specialties at UPC; to create an internal interdisciplinary network of faculty from all the schools; to initiate new transdisciplinary research activities in technology-sustainability-education; to spread the know/how attained; to achieve international scientific excellence in technology-sustainability-education and to graduate the first engineers/architects of the new EHEA bachelors with sustainability as a generic competence. Specifically, in this paper authors explain their experience in leading the STEP program, and two examples are presented: Industrial Robotics subject and the curriculum for the School of Architecture.

Keywords: Sustainability, curricula improvement, robotics.

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Authors: Suhadiyana Hanapi, Alhassan Salami Tijani, W. A. N Wan Mohamed

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In this paper, a prototype PEM fuel cell vehicle integrated with a 1 kW air-blowing proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack as a main power sources has been developed for a lightweight cruising vehicle. The test vehicle is equipped with a PEM fuel cell system that provides electric power to a brushed DC motor. This vehicle was designed to compete with industrial lightweight vehicle with the target of consuming least amount of energy and high performance. Individual variations in driving style have a significant impact on vehicle energy efficiency and it is well established from the literature. The primary aim of this study was to assesses the power and fuel consumption of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle operating at three difference driving technique (i.e. 25 km/h constant speed, 22-28 km/h speed range, 20-30 km/h speed range). The goal is to develop the best driving strategy to maximize performance and minimize fuel consumption for the vehicle system. The relationship between power demand and hydrogen consumption has also been discussed. All the techniques can be evaluated and compared on broadly similar terms. Automatic intelligent controller for driving prototype fuel cell vehicle on different obstacle while maintaining all systems at maximum efficiency was used. The result showed that 25 km/h constant speed was identified for optimal driving with less fuel consumption.

Keywords: Prototype fuel cell electric vehicles, energy efficient, control/driving technique, fuel economy.

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Authors: Muzna Tariq, Ihtzaz Qamar

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In most engineering cases, the working temperatures inside a combustion chamber are high enough that they lie beyond the operational range of thermocouples. Furthermore, design and manufacturing limitations restrict the use of internal thermocouples in many applications. Heat transfer inside a combustion chamber is caused due to interaction of the post-combustion hot fluid with the chamber wall. Heat transfer that involves an interaction between the fluid and solid is categorized as Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT). Therefore, to satisfy the needs of CHT, CHT Analysis is performed by using ANSYS CFD tool to estimate theoretically precise thermocouple positions at the combustion chamber wall where excessive temperatures (beyond thermocouple range) can be avoided. In accordance with these Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results, a combustion chamber is designed, and a prototype is manufactured with multiple thermocouple ports positioned at the specified distances so that the temperature of hot gases can be measured on the chamber wall where the temperatures do not exceed the thermocouple working range.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, conduction, conjugate heat transfer, CHT, convection, fluid flow, thermocouples.

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Authors: Charles Mbohwa, Alexander Mudiwakure

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This paper reviews designs of the built environment from a sustainability perspective, emphasizing their importance in achieving ecological and sustainable economic objectives. The built environment has traditionally resulted in loss of biodiversity, extinction of some species, climate change, excessive water use, land degradation, space depletion, waste accumulation, energy consumption and environmental pollution. Materials used like plastics, metals, bricks, concrete, cement, natural aggregates, glass and plaster have wreaked havoc on the earth´s resources, since they have high levels of embodied energy hence not sustainable. Additional resources are consumed during use and disposal phases. Proposed designs for sustainability solutions include: ecological sanitation and eco-efficiency systems that ensure social, economic, environmental and technical sustainability. Renewable materials and energy systems, passive cooling and heating systems and material and energy reduction, reuse and recycling can improve the sector. These ideas are intended to inform the field of ecological design of the built environment.

Keywords: Ecological and sustainability designs, environmental degradation, ecological sanitation, energy use efficiency.

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Authors: Daniel Joseph Whittaker

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This paper examines the broad array of historic sites from which Chicago common brick has emerged, and the methods this brick has been utilized within and around a new hybrid structure recently completed-and periodically opened to the public, as a private art, architecture, design, and social activism gallery space. Various technical aspects regarding the structural and aesthetic reuse methods of salvaged brick within the interior and exterior of this new Tadao Ando-designed building in Lincoln Park, Chicago, are explored. This paper expands specifically upon the multiple possible origins of Chicago common brick, as well as the extant brick currently composing the surrounding alley which is integral to demarcating the southern site boundary of the old apartment building now gallery. Themes encompassing Chicago’s archeological and architectural history, local resource extraction, and labor practices permeate this paper’s investigation into urban, social and architectural history and building construction technology advancements through time.

Keywords: Masonry construction, history brickmaking, private museums, Chicago Illinois, Tadao Ando.

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Authors: Novita Verayanti Manalu, Alvin Salim, Esti Yunitasari

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Background: Palliative care is caring holistically for patients and families to improve their quality of life. The approach by a multidisciplinary team requires integrated collaboration based on sufficient knowledge of the principles of palliative care as a whole, especially for nurses. Therefore, this study wants to find out the level of knowledge about palliative care of the nurses along the relationship with attitude and performance. Method: This study applies cross-sectional survey design and allows the respondents to fill two questionnaires to determine the level of knowledge and attitude toward palliative care, while one questionnaire is filled by the head nurse to evaluate nurses’ performance. The relationship was analyzed by Spearman rho’s correlation in alpha < 0.05 by SPSS. Results: The majority of respondents were females, age above 25 years old, and married. Most of the nurses are staff nurses and the ratio of education level is not significantly different. The knowledge level is poor, while the attitude and performance are in adequate level. Knowledge may affect attitude, but it does not happen toward performance. Conclusion: There is a need for increased knowledge about palliative care to improve attitude and work performance. Future researchers might use this finding as reference to conduct further study in improving knowledge of palliative care.

Keywords: Knowledge, attitude, work performance, palliative care.

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Authors: Nneka N. Uchegbu, Charles N. Ishiwu

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The nutritional composition and hypoglycaemic effect of crackers produced from blend of sprouted pigeon pea, unripe plantain and brewers’ spent grain and fed to Alloxan induced diabetic rat was investigated. Crackers were produced from different blends of sprouted pigeon pea, unripe plantain and brewers’ spent grain. The crackers were evaluated for proximate composition, amino acid profile and antinutritional factors. Blood glucose levels of normal and diabetic rats fed with the control sample and different formulations of cracker were measured. The protein content of the samples were significantly different (p<0.05) from each other with sample A having the lowest value and sample B with the highest value. The values obtained showed that the samples contained most of the amino acids that are found in plant proteins. The levels of antinutritional factor determined were generally low. Administration of the formulated cracker meals led to a significant reduction in the fasting blood glucose level in the diabetic rats. The present study concluded that consumption of crackers produced from this composite flour could be recommended for the diabetics and those who are sceptical about the disease.

Keywords: Crackers, diabetics rat, sprouted pigeon pea, unripe plantain and brewers’ spent grain.

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Authors: Anukriti Kumar, Tanmay Singh, Dinesh Kumar Vishwakarma

Abstract:

Traffic control has been one of the most common and irritating problems since the time automobiles have hit the roads. Problems like traffic congestion have led to a significant time burden around the world and one significant solution to these problems can be the proper implementation of the Intelligent Transport System (ITS). It involves the integration of various tools like smart sensors, artificial intelligence, position technologies and mobile data services to manage traffic flow, reduce congestion and enhance driver's ability to avoid accidents during adverse weather. Road and traffic signs’ recognition is an emerging field of research in ITS. Classification problem of traffic signs needs to be solved as it is a major step in our journey towards building semi-autonomous/autonomous driving systems. The purpose of this work focuses on implementing an approach to solve the problem of traffic sign classification by developing a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifier using the GTSRB (German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark) dataset. Rather than using hand-crafted features, our model addresses the concern of exploding huge parameters and data method augmentations. Our model achieved an accuracy of around 97.6% which is comparable to various state-of-the-art architectures.

Keywords: Multiclass classification, convolution neural network, OpenCV, Data Augmentation.

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Authors: Masatora Daito, Noriyuki Tanida

Abstract:

The underground shopping mall has the constructional problem of the fire evacuation. Also, the people sometimes lose their direction and information of current time in the mall. If the emergencies such as terrorist explosions or gas explosions are happened, they have to go out soon. Under such circumstances, inside of the mall has high risk for life. In this research, the authors propose a way that he/she can go out from the underground shopping mall quickly. If the narrow exits are discovered by using active RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags and using cellular phones, they can evacuate as soon as possible. To verify this hypothesis, the authors design the model and carry out the agent-based simulation. They treat, as a case study, the Tenjin mall in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan. The result of the simulation is that the case of the pedestrian with using active RFID tags and cellular phones reduced the amount of time to spend on the evacuation. Even if the diffusion of RFID tags and cellular phones was not perfect, they could show the effectiveness of reducing the time of evacuation.

Keywords: Evacuation, active RFID tag and cellular phone, underground shopping mall, agent-based simulation.

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Authors: Siliang Wang, Minghui Wang, Jun Hu

Abstract:

A novel path planning approach is presented to solve optimal path in stochastic, time-varying networks under priori traffic information. Most existing studies make use of dynamic programming to find optimal path. However, those methods are proved to be unable to obtain global optimal value, moreover, how to design efficient algorithms is also another challenge. This paper employs a decision theoretic framework for defining optimal path: for a given source S and destination D in urban transit network, we seek an S - D path of lowest expected travel time where its link travel times are discrete random variables. To solve deficiency caused by the methods of dynamic programming, such as curse of dimensionality and violation of optimal principle, an integer programming model is built to realize assignment of discrete travel time variables to arcs. Simultaneously, pruning techniques are also applied to reduce computation complexity in the algorithm. The final experiments show the feasibility of the novel approach.

Keywords: pruning method, stochastic, time-varying networks, optimal path planning.

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Authors: Dimitrios Ntardas, Alexandros Tzanetos, Georgios Dounias

Abstract:

High Voltage Substations (HVS) are the intermediate step between production of power and successfully transmitting it to clients, making them one of the most important checkpoints in power grids. Nowadays - renewable resources and consequently distributed generation are growing fast, the construction of HVS is of high importance both in terms of quality and time completion so that new energy producers can quickly and safely intergrade in power grids. The resources needed, such as machines and workers, should be carefully allocated so that the construction of a HVS is completed on time, with the lowest possible cost (e.g. not spending additional cost that were not taken into consideration, because of project delays), but in the highest quality. In addition, there are milestones and several checkpoints to be precisely achieved during construction to ensure the cost and timeline control and to ensure that the percentage of governmental funding will be granted. The management of such a demanding project is a NP-hard problem that consists of prerequisite constraints and resource limits for each task of the project. In this work, a hybrid meta-heuristic method is implemented to solve this problem. Meta-heuristics have been proven to be quite useful when dealing with high-dimensional constraint optimization problems. Hybridization of them results in boost of their performance.

Keywords: High voltage substations, nature-inspired algorithms, project management, meta-heuristics.

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