Search results for: Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy control algorithm

Authors: S. Asadzadeh Vostakolaei

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In this study, the effect of L-arginine was examined at the neuromuscular junction of the chick biventer cervicis muscle. LArginine at 500 μg/ ml, decreased twitch response to electerical stimulation, and produced rightward shift of the dose- response curve for acetylcholine or carbachol. L-Arginine at 1000μg/ ml produced a strong shift to the right of the dose – response curve for acetylcholine or carbachol with a reduction in the efficacy. The inhibitory effect of L-arginine on the twitch response was blocked by caffeine (200μg/ ml). NO levels were also measured in the chick biventer cervicis muscle homogenates, using spectrophotometric method for the direct detection of NO, nitrite and nitrate. Total nitrite (nitrite + nitrate) was measured by a spectrophotometer at 540 nm after the conversion of nitrate to nitrite by copperized cadmium granules. NO levels were found to be significantly increased in concentrations 500 and 1000μg/ ml of L-arginine in comparison with the control group (p<0.001). These findings indicate a possible role of increased NO levels in the suppressive action of L-arginine on the twitch response. In addition, the results indicate that the post- junctional antagonistic action of L-arginine is probably the result of impaired sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca+2 releases.

Keywords: Chick, L-Arginine, Nitric Oxide, Skeletal muscle.

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Authors: William H. O'Brien, Erin Bannon, M.A., Heather McCarren, Eileen Delaney

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Employees commonly encounter unpredictable and unavoidable work related stressors. Exposure to such stressors can evoke negative appraisals and associated adverse mental, physical, and behavioral responses. Because Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasizes acceptance of unavoidable stressors and diffusion from negative appraisals, it may be particularly beneficial for work stress. Forty-five workers were randomly assigned to an ACT intervention for work stress (n = 21) or a waitlist control group (n = 24). The intervention consisted of two 3-hour sessions spaced one week apart. An examination of group process and outcomes was conducted using the Revised Sessions Rating Scale. Results indicated that the ACT participants reported that they perceived the intervention to be supportive, task focused, and without adverse therapist behaviors (e.g., feelings of being criticized or discounted). Additionally, the second session (values clarification and commitment to action) was perceived to be more supportive and task focused than the first session (mindfulness, defusion). Process ratings were correlated with outcomes. Results indicated that perceptions of therapy supportiveness and task focus were associated with reduced psychological distress and improved perceived physical health.

Keywords: Work stress, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, therapy process.

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Authors: Nasrin Bakhshizadeh, Ashkan Forootan

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A major problem that affects the quality control of polymer in the industrial polymerization is the lack of suitable on-line measurement tools to evaluate the properties of the polymer such as melt and density indices. Controlling the polymerization in ordinary method is performed manually by taking samples, measuring the quality of polymer in the lab and registry of results. This method is highly time consuming and leads to producing large number of incompatible products. An online application for estimating melt index and density proposed in this study is a neural network based on the input-output data of the polyethylene production plant. Temperature, the level of reactors' bed, the intensity of ethylene mass flow, hydrogen and butene-1, the molar concentration of ethylene, hydrogen and butene-1 are used for the process to establish the neural model. The neural network is taught based on the actual operational data and back-propagation and Levenberg-Marquart techniques. The simulated results indicate that the neural network process model established with three layers (one hidden layer) for forecasting the density and the four layers for the melt index is able to successfully predict those quality properties.

Keywords: Polyethylene, polymerization, density, melt index, neural network.

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Authors: Chimaobi Valentine Okolo, Chizoba Obidigbo

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As a basic physiology need, threat to sufficient food production is threat to human survival. Food security has been an issue that has gained global concern. This paper looks at the food security in Nigeria by assessing the availability of food and accessibility of the available food. The paper employed multiple linear regression technique and graphic trends of growth rates of relevant variables to show the situation of food security in Nigeria. Results of the tests revealed that population growth rate was higher than the growth rate of food availability in Nigeria for the earlier period of the study. Commercial bank credit to agricultural sector, foreign exchange utilization for food and the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund (ACGSF) contributed significantly to food availability in Nigeria. Food prices grew at a faster rate than the average income level, making it difficult to access sufficient food. It implies that prior to the year 2012; there was insufficient food to feed the Nigerian populace. However, continued credit to the food and agricultural sector will ensure sustained and sufficient production of food in Nigeria. Microfinance banks should make sufficient credit available to smallholder farmer. Government should further control and subsidize the rising price of food to make it more accessible by the people.

Keywords: Food security, food availability and food accessibility.

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Authors: Badiossadat Hassanpour, Nangkula Utaberta, Azami Zaharim, Nurakmal Goh Abdullah

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Architecture education was based on apprenticeship models and its nature has not changed much during long period but the Source of changes was its evaluation process and system. It is undeniable that art and architecture education is completely based on transmitting knowledge from instructor to students. In contrast to other majors this transmitting is by iteration and practice and studio masters try to control the design process and improving skills in the form of supervision and criticizing. Also the evaluation will end by giving marks to students- achievements. Therefore the importance of the evaluation and assessment role is obvious and it is not irrelevant to say that if we want to know about the architecture education system, we must first study its assessment procedures. The evolution of these changes in western countries has literate and documented well. However it seems that this procedure has unregarded in Malaysia and there is a severe lack of research and documentation in this area. Malaysia as an under developing and multicultural country which is involved different races and cultures is a proper origin for scrutinizing and understanding the evaluation systems and acceptability amount of current implemented models to keep the evaluation and assessment procedure abreast with needs of different generations, cultures and even genders. This paper attempts to answer the questions of how evaluation and assessments are performed and how students perceive this evaluation system in the context Malaysia. The main advantage of this work is that it contributes in international debate on evaluation model.

Keywords: Architecture, assessment, design studio, learning

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Authors: Mohammad Iman Mokhlespour Esfahani, Masoud Mosayebi, Mohammad Pourshams, Ahmad Keshavarzi

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Simulation accuracy by recent dynamic vehicle simulation multidimensional expression significantly has progressed and acceptable results not only for passive vehicles but also for active vehicles normally equipped with advanced electronic components is also provided. Recently, one of the subjects that has it been considered, is increasing the safety car in design. Therefore, many efforts have been done to increase vehicle stability especially in the turn. One of the most important efforts is adjusting the camber angle in the car suspension system. Optimum control camber angle in addition to the vehicle stability is effective in the wheel adhesion on road, reducing rubber abrasion and acceleration and braking. Since the increase or decrease in the camber angle impacts on the stability of vehicles, in this paper, a car suspension system mechanism is introduced that could be adjust camber angle and the mechanism is application and also inexpensive. In order to reach this purpose, in this paper, a passive double wishbone suspension system with variable camber angle is introduced and then variable camber mechanism designed and analyzed for study the designed system performance, this mechanism is modeled in Visual Nastran software and kinematic analysis is revealed.

Keywords: Suspension molding, double wishbone, variablecamber, hydraulic mechanism

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Authors: Rama Debbarma, Debanjan Das

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The performance of multiple tuned mass dampers to mitigate the seismic vibration of structures considering real time history data is investigated in this paper. Three different real earthquake time history data like Kobe, Imperial Valley and Mammoth Lake are taken in the present study. The multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMD) are distributed at each storey. For comparative study, single tuned mass damper (STMD) is installed at top of the similar structure. This study is conducted for a fixed mass ratio (5%) and fixed damping ratio (5%) of structures. Numerical study is performed to evaluate the effectiveness of MTMDs and overall system performance. The displacement, acceleration, base shear and storey drift are obtained for both combined system (structure with MTMD and structure with STMD) for all earthquakes. The same responses are also obtained for structure without damper system. From obtained results, it is investigated that the MTMD configuration is more effective for controlling the seismic response of the primary system with compare to STMD configuration.

Keywords: Earthquake, multiple tuned mass dampers, single tuned mass damper, time history.

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Authors: García López

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The Government Departments of Health have the task of informing and educating citizens about public health issues. For this, they use channels like Twitter, key in the search for health information and the propagation of content. The tweets, important in the virality of the content, may contain emotions that influence the contagion and exchange of knowledge. The goal of this study is to perform an analysis of the emotional projection of health information shared on Twitter by official American accounts: the disease control account CDCgov, National Institutes of Health, NIH, the government agency HHSGov, and the professional organization PublicHealth. For this, we used Tone Analyzer, an International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) tool specialized in emotion detection in text, corresponding to the categorical model of emotion representation. For 15 days, all tweets from these accounts were analyzed with the emotional analysis tool in text. The results showed that their tweets contain an important emotional load, a determining factor in the success of their communications. This exposes that official accounts also use subjective language and contain emotions. The predominance of emotion joy over sadness and the strong presence of emotions in their tweets stimulate the virality of content, a key in the work of informing that government health departments have.

Keywords: Emotions in tweets emotion detection in text, health information on Twitter, American health official accounts, emotions on Twitter, emotions and content.

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Authors: Ashish Kumar Nayak, Dhamodharan K., Ajay S. Kalamdhad

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The present study is aimed at alteration of sewage sludge into stable compost product using vermicomposting of sewage sludge mixed with cattle manure and saw dust in five different proportions based on C/N ratios (C/N 15 (R1), 20 (R2), 25 (R3) and 30 (R4); and control (R5)) by employing an epigeic earthworm Eisenia fetida. Higher reductions in C/N ratio, CO₂ evolution and OUR were observed in R4 demonstrated the compost stability. In addition, R4 proved to be best combination for the growth of the earthworms. In order to observe the optimal degradation, kinetics for degradation of organic matter in vermicomposting were quantitatively evaluated. An approach model was developed by assuming that composting process is carried out in a homogeneous way and the kinetics for decomposition reaction is represented by a Monod-type equation. The results exhibit comparable variations in the kinetic constants K_m and K₃ under varying parameters during vermicomposting process. Results suggested that higher R² value in R4, enhanced suitability towards Lineweaver-Burke plot. R4 yields higher degradability coefficient (K) reveals that the occurrence of optimal nutrient balance, which not only enhanced the affinity of enzymes towards substrate but also improved its degradation process. Therefore, it can be proved that R4 provided to be the best feed combination for vermicomposting process as compared to other reactors.

Keywords: Vermicomposting, Eisenia fetida, Sewage sludge, C/N ratio, Stability, Enzyme kinetics concept.

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Authors: Ingy A. El-Khouly, Khaled S. El-Kilany, Aziz E. El-Sayed

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The process of wafer fabrication is arguably the most technologically complex and capital intensive stage in semiconductor manufacturing. This large-scale discrete-event process is highly reentrant, and involves hundreds of machines, restrictions, and processing steps. Therefore, production control of wafer fabrication facilities (fab), specifically scheduling, is one of the most challenging problems that this industry faces. Dispatching rules have been extensively applied to the scheduling problems in semiconductor manufacturing. Moreover, lot release policies are commonly used in this manufacturing setting to further improve the performance of such systems and reduce its inherent variability. In this work, simulation is used in the scheduling of re-entrant flow shop manufacturing systems with an application in semiconductor wafer fabrication; where, a simulation model has been developed for the Intel Five-Machine Six Step Mini-Fab using the ExtendTM simulation environment. The Mini-Fab has been selected as it captures the challenges involved in scheduling the highly re-entrant semiconductor manufacturing lines. A number of scenarios have been developed and have been used to evaluate the effect of different dispatching rules and lot release policies on the selected performance measures. Results of simulation showed that the performance of the Mini-Fab can be drastically improved using a combination of dispatching rules and lot release policy.

Keywords: Dispatching rules, lot release policy, re-entrant flowshop, semiconductor manufacturing.

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Authors: Nicholas Lambert, Seungyeon Ryu, Mehmet Mulla, Albert Kim

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In this paper, an interactive in-car interface called HoloDash is presented. It is intended to provide information and infotainment in both autonomous vehicles and ‘connected cars’, vehicles equipped with Internet access via cellular services. The research focuses on the development of interactive avatars for this system and its gesture-based control system. This is a case study for the development of a possible human-centred means of presenting a connected or autonomous vehicle’s On-Board Diagnostics through a projected ‘holographic’ infotainment system. This system is termed a Holographic Human Vehicle Interface (HHIV), as it utilises a dashboard projection unit and gesture detection. The research also examines the suitability for gestures in an automotive environment, given that it might be used in both driver-controlled and driverless vehicles. Using Human Centred Design methods, questions were posed to test subjects and preferences discovered in terms of the gesture interface and the user experience for passengers within the vehicle. These affirm the benefits of this mode of visual communication for both connected and driverless cars.

Keywords: Holographic interface, human-computer interaction, user-centered design, Gesture.

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Authors: Dalin Si, Azizan Aziz, Bertrand Lasternas

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To encourage building owners to purchase electricity at the wholesale market and reduce building peak demand, this study aims to develop models that predict day-ahead hourly electricity consumption and demand using artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM). All prediction models are built in Python, with tool Scikit-learn and Pybrain. The input data for both consumption and demand prediction are time stamp, outdoor dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, air handling unit (AHU), supply air temperature and solar radiation. Solar radiation, which is unavailable a day-ahead, is predicted at first, and then this estimation is used as an input to predict consumption and demand. Models to predict consumption and demand are trained in both SVM and ANN, and depend on cooling or heating, weekdays or weekends. The results show that ANN is the better option for both consumption and demand prediction. It can achieve 15.50% to 20.03% coefficient of variance of root mean square error (CVRMSE) for consumption prediction and 22.89% to 32.42% CVRMSE for demand prediction, respectively. To conclude, the presented models have potential to help building owners to purchase electricity at the wholesale market, but they are not robust when used in demand response control.

Keywords: Building energy prediction, data mining, demand response, electricity market.

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Authors: Azian Hariri, M. Z. M Yusof, A. M. Leman

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Experimental study was conducted to assess personal welding fumes exposure toward welders during an aluminum metal inert gas (MIG) process. The welding process was carried out by a welding machine attached to a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) workbench. A dummy welder was used to replicate welder during welding works and was attached with sampling pumps and filter cassettes for welding fumes sampling. Direct reading instruments to measure air velocity, humidity, temperature and particulate matter with diameter size 10µm or less (PM₁₀) were located behind the dummy welder and parallel to the neck collar level to make sure the measured welding fumes exposure were not being influenced by other factors. Welding fumes exposure during standing and sitting position with and without the usage of local exhaust ventilation (LEV) was investigated. Welding fume samples were then digested and analyzed by using inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) according to ASTM D7439-08 method. The results of the study showed the welding fume exposure during sitting was lower compared to standing position. LEV helped reduce aluminum and lead exposure to acceptable levels during standing position. However during sitting position reduction of exposure was smaller. It can be concluded that welder position and the correct positioning of LEV should be implemented for effective exposure reduction. 

Keywords: ICP-MS, MIG process, personal sampling, welding fumes exposure.

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Authors: S. Yodyingyong, C. Chaichana, C. Nuchsuk, S. Roytrakul, N. P. T-Thienprasert, S. Ratanapo

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Protein hydrolysates prepared from a number of medicinal plants are promising sources of various bioactive peptides. In this work, proteins from dried whole plant of Euphorbia hirta Linn. were extracted and digested with pepsin for 12h. The hydrolysates of lesser than 3 KDa were fractionated by a cut-off membrane. The peptide hydrolysate was then purified by an anion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sephacel™ column and reverse-phase chromatography on Sep-pak C₁₈ column, respectively. The cytotoxic effect of each peptide fraction against a gastric carcinoma cell line (KATO-III, ATCC No. HTB103) was investigated using colorimetric MTT viability assay. A human liver cell line (Chang Liver, CLS No. 300139) was used as a control normal cell line. Two purified peptide peaks, peak l and peak ll at 100µg peptides mL^-1 affected cell viability of the gastric cancer cell lines to 63.85±4.94 and 66.92±6.46%, respectively. Our result showed for the first time that the peptide fractions derived from protein hydrolysate of Euphorbia hirta Linn. have anti-gastric cancer activity, which offers a potential novel and natural anti-gastric cancer remedy.

Keywords: Cytotoxic, peptides, Euphorbia hirta Linn., gastric carcinoma.

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Authors: Andreas Theissler, Ian Dear

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In the automotive industry test drives are being conducted during the development of new vehicle models or as a part of quality assurance of series-production vehicles. The communication on the in-vehicle network, data from external sensors, or internal data from the electronic control units is recorded by automotive data loggers during the test drives. The recordings are used for fault analysis. Since the resulting data volume is tremendous, manually analysing each recording in great detail is not feasible. This paper proposes to use machine learning to support domainexperts by preventing them from contemplating irrelevant data and rather pointing them to the relevant parts in the recordings. The underlying idea is to learn the normal behaviour from available recordings, i.e. a training set, and then to autonomously detect unexpected deviations and report them as anomalies. The one-class support vector machine “support vector data description” is utilised to calculate distances of feature vectors. SVDDSUBSEQ is proposed as a novel approach, allowing to classify subsequences in multivariate time series data. The approach allows to detect unexpected faults without modelling effort as is shown with experimental results on recordings from test drives.

Keywords: Anomaly detection, fault detection, test drive analysis, machine learning.

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Authors: Christopher C. Ihueze, Charles C. Okpala, Christian E. Okafor, Peter O. Ogbobe

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This paper focuses on robust design and optimization of industrial production wastes. Past literatures were reviewed to case study Clamason Industries Limited (CIL) - a leading ladder-tops manufacturer. A painstaking study of the firm-s practices at the shop floor revealed that Over-production, Waiting time, Excess inventory, and Defects are the major wastes that are impeding their progress and profitability. Design expert8 software was used to apply Taguchi robust design and response surface methodology in order to model, analyse and optimise the wastes cost in CIL. Waiting time and overproduction rank first and second in contributing to the costs of wastes in CIL. For minimal wastes cost the control factors of overproduction, waiting-time, defects and excess-inventory must be set at 0.30, 390.70, 4 and 55.70 respectively for CIL. The optimal value of cost of wastes for the months studied was 22.3679. Finally, a recommendation was made that for the company to enhance their profitability and customer satisfaction, they must adopt the Shingeo Shingo-s Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED), which will immediately tackle the waste of waiting by drastically reducing their setup time.

Keywords: Excess-inventory, setup time, single minute exchange of dies, optimal value, over-production, robust design.

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Authors: Ercan Ceyhan, Ali Kahraman, Hasan Dalgıç

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This research was made during the 2011 and 2012 growing periods in the trial filed of "Research Station for Management of Soil Water and Desertification" according to “Randomized Blocks Design” with 3 replications. Research material was the following chickpea genotype; CA119, CA128, CA149, CA150, CA222, CA250, CA254 and other 2 commercial varieties named as Gökçe and Yaşa. Some agronomical characteristics such as plant height (cm), number of pod per plant, number of seed per pod, number of seed per plant, 1000 seed weight (g) and seed yield (kg ha^-1) were determined. Statistically significant variations were found amongst the genotypes for all variables except seeds per pod. Means of the two years showed the range for plant height was from 52.83cm (Gökçe) to 73.00cm (CA150), number of pod per plant was from 14.00 (CA149) to 26.83 (CA261), number of seed per pod was from 1.10 (Gökçe) to 1.19 (CA149 and CA250), number of seed per plant was from 16.28 (CA149) to 31.65 (CA261), 1000 seed weight was from 295.85g (CA149) to 437.80g (CA261) and seed yield was from 1342.73 kg ha^-1 (CA261) to 2161.50 kg ha^-1 (CA128). Results of the research implicated that the new developed lines were superior compared with the control (commercial) varieties by means of most of the characteristics.

Keywords: Agricultural characters, chickpea, seed yield.

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Authors: Eda Gök

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Peridynamics is a new modeling concept of non-local interactions for solid structures. The formulations of Peridynamic (PD) theory are based on integral equations rather than differential equations. Through, undefined equations of associated problems are avoided. PD theory might be defined as continuum version of molecular dynamics. The medium is usually modeled with mass particles bonded together. Particles interact with each other directly across finite distances through central forces named as bonds. The main assumption of this theory is that the body is composed of material points which interact with other material points within a finite distance. Although, PD theory developed for discontinuities, it gives good results for structures which have no discontinuities. In this paper, displacement control of the isotropic plate under the effect of tensile and bending loading has been investigated by means of PD theory. A MATLAB code is generated to create PD bonds and corresponding surface correction factors. Using generated MATLAB code the geometry of the specimen is generated, and the code is implemented in Finite Element Software. The results obtained from non-local continuum theory are compared with the Finite Element Analysis results and analytical solution. The results show good agreement.

Keywords: Flexural loading, non-local continuum mechanics, Peridynamic theory, solid structures, tensile loading.

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Authors: Shao-lun Zeng, Yu-long Ren

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Benchmarking cleaner production performance is an effective way of pollution control and emission reduction in coal-fired power industry. A benchmarking method using two-stage super-efficiency data envelopment analysis for coal-fired power plants is proposed – firstly, to improve the cleaner production performance of DEA-inefficient or weakly DEA-efficient plants, then to select the benchmark from performance-improved power plants. An empirical study is carried out with the survey data of 24 coal-fired power plants. The result shows that in the first stage the performance of 16 plants is DEA-efficient and that of 8 plants is relatively inefficient. The target values for improving DEA-inefficient plants are acquired by projection analysis. The efficient performance of 24 power plants and the benchmarking plant is achieved in the second stage. The two-stage benchmarking method is practical to select the optimal benchmark in the cleaner production of coal-fired power industry and will continuously improve plants- cleaner production performance.

Keywords: benchmarking, cleaner production performance, coal-fired power plant, super-efficiency data envelopment analysis

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Authors: Kamaruzaman Jusoff, Siti Akmar Abu Samah, Posiah Mohd Isa

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Being creative in an educational environment, such as in the university, has many times been downplayed by bureaucracy, human inadequacy and physical hindrance. These factors control, stifle and subsequently condemn this natural phenomenon which is normally exuded by the tertiary community. If taken in a positive light, creativity has always led to many new discoveries and inventions. These creations are then gradually developed for the university reputation and achievements, in all fields of studies from the sciences to the humanities. This paper attempts to explore, through more than twenty years of observation, issues that stifle the university citizenry – academicians and students- – creativity. It also scrutinizes how enhancement of such creativity can be further supported by bureaucracy simplicity, encouraging and developing human potential and constructing uncompromising physical infrastructure and administrative support. These ideals – all of which can help to promote creativity, increases the productivity of the university community in aspects of teaching, research, publication, innovation and commercialization; be it at national as well as at international arena for the good of human and societal growth and development. This discursive presentation hopes to address another issue on promoting university community creativity through several deliverables which require cooperation from every quarter of the institution so that being creative continues to be promoted for sustainable human capital growth and development of the country, if not, the global community.

Keywords: Bureaucracy, creative, productivity, sustainable human capital.

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Authors: V. Hadavi, J. Zamani, R. Hosseini

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The special and unique advantages of explosive forming, has developed its use in different industries. Considering the important influence of improving the current explosive forming techniques on increasing the efficiency and control over the explosive forming procedure, the effects of air and water as the energy-conveying medium, and also their differences will be illustrated in this paper. Hence, a large number of explosive forming tests have been conducted on two sizes of thin walled cylindrical shells by using air and water as the working medium. Comparative diagrams of the maximum radial deflection of work-pieces of the same size, as a function of the scaled distance, show that for the points with the same values of scaled distance, the maximum radial deformation caused by the under water explosive loading is 4 to 5 times more than the deflection of the shells under explosive forming, while using air. Results of this experimental research have also been compared with other studies which show that using water as the energy conveying media increases the efficiency up to 4.8 times. The effect of the media on failure modes of the shells, and the necking mechanism of the walls of the specimens, while being explosively loaded, are also discussed in this issue. Measuring the tested specimens shows that, the increase in the internal volume has been accompanied by necking of the walls, which finally results in the radial rupture of the structure.

Keywords: Explosive Forming, Energy Conveying Medium, Tubular Shell

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Authors: Joshi Manohar. V., Sujatha. P., Anjaneyulu K. S. R

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The range of the output power is a very important and evident limitation of two-level inverters. In order to overcome this disadvantage, multilevel inverters are introduced. Recently, Cascade H-Bridge inverters have emerged as one of the popular converter topologies used in numerous industrial applications. The modulation switching strategies such as phase shifted carrier based Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique and Stair case modulation with Selective Harmonic Elimination (SHE) PWM technique are generally used. NR method is used to solve highly non linear transcendental equations which are formed by SHEPWM method. Generally NR method has a drawback of requiring good initial guess but in this paper a new approach is implemented for NR method with any random initial guess. A three phase CHB 11-level inverter is chosen for analysis. MATLAB/SIMULINK programming environment and harmonic profiles are compared. Finally this paper presents a method at fundamental switching frequency with least % THDV.

Keywords: Cascade H-bridge 11- level Inverter, NR method, Phase shifted carrier based pulse width modulation (PSCPWM), Selective Harmonic Elimination Pulse Width Modulation (SHEPWM), Total Harmonic Distortion (%THDv).

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Authors: Masaki Yamaguchi, Daimei Sasayama, Shinsuke Washizuka

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The goal of this study was to examine the possibility of salivary cytokines for the screening of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. We carried out a case-control study, including 19 children with ADHD and 17 healthy children (controls). A multiplex bead array immunoassay was used to conduct a multi-analysis of 27 different salivary cytokines. Six salivary cytokines (interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-8, IL12p70, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)) were significantly associated with the presence of ADHD (p < 0.05). An informative salivary cytokine panel was developed using VEGF by logistic regression analysis (odds ratio: 0.251). Receiver operating characteristic analysis revealed that assessment of a panel using VEGF showed “good” capability for discriminating between ADHD patients and controls (area under the curve: 0.778). ADHD has been hypothesized to be associated with reduced cerebral blood flow in the frontal cortex, due to reduced VEGF levels. Our study highlights the possibility of utilizing differential salivary cytokine levels for point-of-care testing (POCT) of biomarkers in children with ADHD.

Keywords: Cytokine, saliva, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, child, biomarker.

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Authors: M. Zake, I. Barmina, A. Kolmickovs, R. Valdmanis

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Experimental investigations of the DC electric field effect on thermal decomposition of biomass, formation of the axial flow of volatiles (CO, H2, CxHy), mixing of volatiles with swirling airflow at low swirl intensity (S ≈ 0.2-0.35), their ignition and on formation of combustion dynamics are carried out with the aim to understand the mechanism of electric field influence on biomass gasification, combustion of volatiles and heat energy production. The DC electric field effect on combustion dynamics was studied by varying the positive bias voltage of the central electrode from 0.6 kV to 3 kV, whereas the ion current was limited to 2 mA. The results of experimental investigations confirm the field-enhanced biomass gasification with enhanced release of volatiles and the development of endothermic processes at the primary stage of thermochemical conversion of biomass determining the field-enhanced heat energy consumption with the correlating decrease of the flame temperature and heat energy production at this stage of flame formation. Further, the field-enhanced radial expansion of the flame reaction zone correlates with a more complete combustion of volatiles increasing the combustion efficiency by 3% and decreasing the mass fraction of CO, H2 and CxHy in the products, whereas by 10% increases the average volume fraction of CO2 and the heat energy production downstream the combustor increases by 5-10% 

Keywords: Biomass, combustion, electrodynamic control, gasification.

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Authors: Zeinab Hajifathali, Moghan Amirhosseinian

Abstract:

This study had two main aims: firstly, to determine how the individual substitution of CaO/MgO and CaO/SrO can affect the in vitro bioactivity of sol-gel derived substituted 58S bioactive glass (BG) and secondly to introduce a composition in the 60SiO₂–(36-x)CaO–4P₂O₅–(x)MgO and 60SiO₂–(36-x)CaO–4P₂O₅–(x)SrO quaternary systems (where x= 0, 5, 10 mol.%) with enhanced biocompatibility, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, and more efficient antibacterial activity against MRSA bacteria. Results showed that both magnesium-substituted bioactive glasses (M-BGs) and strontium- substituted bioactive glasses (S-BGs) retarded the Hydroxyapatite (HA) formation. Meanwhile, magnesium had more pronounced effect. The 3-(4, 5dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and ALP assays revealed that the presence of moderate amount (5 mol%) of Mg and Sr had a stimulating effect on increasing of both proliferation and differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells. Live dead and Dapi/actin staining revealed both substitution of CaO/MgO and CaO/SrO resulted in more biocompatibility and stimulation potential of the MC3T3 cells compared with control. Taken together, among all of the synthesized magnesium substituted (MBGs) and strontium substituted (SBGs), the sample 58- BG with 5 mol% CaO/MgO substitution (BG-5M) was considered as a multifunctional biomaterial in bone tissue regeneration field with enhanced biocompatibility, ALP activity as well as the highest antibacterial efficiency against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria.

Keywords: Apatite, alkaline earth, bioactivity, biomedical applications, sol-gel.

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Authors: R. Satish, G. Raja Rao

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In this paper a hybrid distributed generation (DG) system connected to isolated load is studied. The DG system consisting of photo voltaic (PV) system, fuel cells, aqua electrolyzer, diesel engine generator and a battery energy storage system. The ambient temperature value of PV is taken as constant to make the output power of PV is directly proportional to the radiation and output power of other DG sources and frequency of the system is controlled by simple integral (I), proportional plus integral (PI), and proportional plus integral and derivative(PID) controllers. A maiden attempt is made to apply a more recent and powerful optimization technique named as bacterial foraging technique for optimization of controllers gains of the proposed hybrid DG system. The system responses with bacterial foraging based controllers are compared with that of classical method. Investigations reveal that bacterial foraging based controllers gives better responses than the classical method and also PID controller is best. Sensitivity analysis is carried out which demonstrates the robustness of the optimized gain values for system loading condition.

Keywords: Aqua electrolyzer, bacterial foraging, battery energy storage system, diesel engine generator, distributed generation, fuel cells, photo voltaic system.

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Authors: Mansoor Ahsan, Khalid Rafique, Farrukh Mazhar

Abstract:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained tremendous importance, in both Military and Civil, during first decade of this century. In a UAV, onboard computer (autopilot) autonomously controls the flight and navigation of the aircraft. Based on the aircraft role and flight envelope, basic to complex and sophisticated controllers are used to stabilize the aircraft flight parameters. These controllers constitute the autopilot system for UAVs. The autopilot systems, most commonly, provide lateral and longitudinal control through Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers or Phase-lead or Lag Compensators. Various techniques are commonly used to ‘tune’ gains of these controllers. Some techniques used are, in-flight step-by-step tuning, software-in-loop or hardware-in-loop tuning methods. Subsequently, numerous in-flight tests are required to actually ‘fine-tune’ these gains. However, an optimization-based tuning of these PID controllers or compensators, as presented in this paper, can greatly minimize the requirement of in-flight ‘tuning’ and substantially reduce the risks and cost involved in flight-testing.

Keywords: Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), autopilot, autonomous controls, PID controler gains tuning, optimization.

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Authors: Eylem Koç, Hasan Arda Burhan

Abstract:

Location selection presents a crucial decision problem in today’s business world where strategic decision making processes have critical importance. Thus, location selection has strategic importance for companies in boosting their strength regarding competition, increasing corporate performances and efficiency in addition to lowering production and transportation costs. A right choice in location selection has a direct impact on companies’ commercial success. In this study, a store location selection problem of Carglass Turkey which operates in vehicle glass branch is handled. As this problem includes both tangible and intangible criteria, Analytic Network Process (ANP) was accepted as the main methodology. The model consists of control hierarchy and BOCR subnetworks which include clusters of actors, alternatives and criteria. In accordance with the management’s choices, five different locations were selected. In addition to the literature review, a strict cooperation with the actor group was ensured and maintained while determining the criteria and during whole process. Obtained results were presented to the management as a report and its feasibility was confirmed accordingly.

Keywords: Analytic Network Process, BOCR, location selection, multi-actor decision making, multi-criteria decision making, real life problem.

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Authors: Doaa M. Atia, Faten H. Fahmy, Ninet M. Ahmed, Hassen T. Dorrah

Abstract:

In this paper, the optimum design for renewable energy system powered an aquaculture pond was determined. Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) software program, which is developed by U.S National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is used for analyzing the feasibility of the stand alone and hybrid system in this study. HOMER program determines whether renewable energy resources satisfy hourly electric demand or not. The program calculates energy balance for every 8760 hours in a year to simulate operation of the system. This optimization compares the demand for the electrical energy for each hour of the year with the energy supplied by the system for that hour and calculates the relevant energy flow for each component in the model. The essential principle is to minimize the total system cost while HOMER ensures control of the system. Moreover the feasibility analysis of the energy system is also studied. Wind speed, solar irradiance, interest rate and capacity shortage are the parameters which are taken into consideration. The simulation results indicate that the hybrid system is the best choice in this study, yielding lower net present cost. Thus, it provides higher system performance than PV or wind stand alone systems.

Keywords: Wind stand-alone system, Photovoltaic stand-alone system, Hybrid system, Optimum system sizing, feasibility, Cost analysis.

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Authors: Kaan Yamanturk, Cihan Dogruoz

Abstract:

Seismic isolators have been utilized around the world to protect the structures, nonstructural components and contents from the damaging effects of earthquakes. In Structural Engineering, seismic isolation is used for protecting buildings and its vibration-sensitive contents from earthquakes. Seismic isolation is a passive control system that lowers effective earthquake forces by utilizing flexible bearings. One of the most significant isolation systems is seismic isolators. In this paper, double pendulum type Teflon coated seismic isolators utilized in a city hospital project by Guris Construction and Engineering Co. Inc, located in Kutahya, Turkey, have been investigated. Totally, 498 seismic isolators were applied in the project. These isolators are double friction pendulum type seismic isolation devices. The review of current practices is also examined in this study. The focus of this study is related to the application of passive seismic isolation systems for buildings as practiced in Kutahya City Hospital Project. Based on the study, the acceleration at the top floor will be 0.18 g and it will decrease 0.01 g in every floor. Therefore, seismic isolators are very important for buildings located in earthquake zones.

Keywords: Maximum considered earthquake, moment resisting frame, seismic isolator, seismic design.

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