Search results for: Human motion analysis

Authors: Görkem Ülkü, Esin A. Güvel, Nesrin Köken, Nilgün Kızılcan

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This study presents synthesis of novel block copolymers of thienyl end capped ethoxylated nonyl phenol and pyrrole via chemical oxidative polymerization. Ethoxylated nonyl phenol (ENP) was reacted with 2-thiophenecarbonyl chloride in order to synthesize a macromonomer containing thienyl end-group (ENPThC). Then copolymers of ENP-ThC and pyrrole were synthesized by chemical oxidative polymerization using iron (III) chloride as an oxidant. ENP-ThC served both as a macromonomer and an emulsifier for pyrrole with poor solubility in water. The synthesized block copolymers (ENP-ThC-b-PPy) were characterized by spectroscopic analysis and the electrical conductivities were investigated with 4-point probe technique.

Keywords: End capped polymer, ethoxylated nonyl phenol, heterophase polymerization, polypyrrole.

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Authors: Krishnan V. Pagalthivarthi, Pankaj K. Gupta, Vipin Tyagi, M. R. Ravi

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Dense slurry flow through centrifugal pump casing has been modeled using the Eulerian-Eulerian approach with Eulerian multiphase model in FLUENT 6.1®. First order upwinding is considered for the discretization of momentum, k and ε terms. SIMPLE algorithm has been applied for dealing with pressurevelocity coupling. A mixture property based k-ε turbulence model has been used for modeling turbulence. Results are validated first against mesh independence and experiments for a particular set of operational and geometric conditions. Parametric analysis is then performed to determine the effect on important physical quantities viz. solid velocities, solid concentration and solid stresses near the wall with various operational geometric conditions of the pump.

Keywords: Centrifugal pump casing, Dense slurry, Solidsconcentration, Wall shear stress, Pump geometric parameters.

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Authors: Morteza Khaleghi Meybodi, Hossein Bisadi

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Explosive forming is one of the unconventional techniques in which, most commonly, the water is used as the pressure transmission medium. One of the newest methods in explosive forming is gas detonation forming which uses a normal shock wave derived of gas detonation, to form sheet metals. For this purpose a detonation is developed from the reaction of H2+O2 mixture in a long cylindrical detonation tube. The detonation wave goes through the detonation tube and acts as a blast load on the steel blank and forms it. Experimental results are compared with a finite element model; and the comparison of the experimental and numerical results obtained from strain, thickness variation and deformed geometry is carried out. Numerical and experimental results showed approximately 75 – 90 % similarity in formability of desired shape. Also optimum percent of gas mixture obtained when we mix 68% H2 with 32% O2.

Keywords: Explosive forming, High strain rate, Gas detonation, Finite element analysis.

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Authors: Wondwosen Teshome B.

Abstract:

The major aim of this paper is to investigate the opposition politics in Africa. The paper also examines the status and the role, the contributions and the weaknesses of opposition1 political parties in Africa, particularly in transitional democracies that emerged in the 1990s. In Africa, many of the opposition parties appear or become active only during an election, and disappear when the election is over. It is found out that most of the opposition parties in Africa are established around the personalities of individuals, lack internal democracy, suffer from inter-party and intra-party conflicts, have severe shortage of finance, and lack strong base and experience. Their weaknesses also include bad organization and weak connection with the popular constituencies. The paper concludes that most of the weaknesses of the African opposition parties emanate from the incumbents- hostile policies, which are mostly aimed at fragmenting and weakening the opposition groups.

Keywords: Africa, Hybrid regime, Incumbent party, Neopatrimonialsim, Opposition party, Political party, Pseudo-democracy.

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Authors: Bin Su

Abstract:

According to the Auckland climate, building passive design more focus on improving winter indoor thermal and health conditions. Based on field study data of indoor air temperature and relative humidity close to ceiling and floor of an insulated Auckland townhouse with and without a whole home mechanical ventilation system, this study is to analysis variation of indoor microclimate data of an Auckland townhouse using or not using the mechanical ventilation system to evaluate winter indoor thermal and health conditions for the future house design with a mechanical ventilation system.

Keywords: House ventilation, indoor thermal condition, indoor health condition, passive design.

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Authors: Thevaneyan K. David, John P. Forth

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Integral Abutment Bridges (IAB) are defined as simple or multiple span bridges in which the bridge deck is cast monolithically with the abutment walls. This kind of bridges are becoming very popular due to different aspects such as good response under seismic loading, low initial costs, elimination of bearings, and less maintenance. However the main issue related to the analysis of this type of structures is dealing with soil-structure interaction of the abutment walls and the supporting piles. Various soil constitutive models have been used in studies of soil-structure interaction in this kind of structures by researchers. This paper is an effort to review the implementation of various finite elements model which explicitly incorporates the nonlinear soil and linear structural response considering various soil constitutive models and finite element mesh.

Keywords: Constitutive Models, FEM, Integral AbutmentBridges, Soil-structure Interactions

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Authors: Thiago R. Pereira

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The philosophical hermeneutics is able to change the Brazilian Judiciary because of the understanding of the characteristics of the human being. It is impossible for humans, to be invested in the function of being a judge, making absolutely neutral decisions, but the philosophical hermeneutics can assist the judge making impartial decisions, based on the federal constitution. The normative legal positivism imagined a neutral judge, a judge able to try without any preconceived ideas, without allowing his/her background to influence him/her. When a judge arbitrates based on legal rules, the problem is smaller, but when there are no clear legal rules, and the judge must try based on principles, the risk of the decision is based on what they believe in. Solipsistically, this issue gains a huge dimension. Today, the Brazilian judiciary is independent, but there must be a greater knowledge of philosophy and the philosophy of law, partially because the bigger problem is the unpredictability of decisions made by the judiciary. Actually, when a lawsuit is filed, the result of this judgment is absolutely unpredictable. It is almost a gamble. There must be the slightest legal certainty and predictability of judicial decisions, so that people, with similar cases, may not receive opposite sentences. The relativism, since classical antiquity, believes in the possibility of multiple answers. Since the Greeks in in the sixth century before Christ, through the Germans in the eighteenth century, and even today, it has been established the constitution as the great law, the Groundnorm, and thus, the relativism of life can be greatly reduced when a hermeneut uses the Constitution as North interpretational, where all interpretation must act as the hermeneutic constitutional filter. For a current philosophy of law, that inside a legal system with a Federal Constitution, there is a single correct answer to a specific case. The challenge is how to find this right answer. The only answer to this question will be that we should use the constitutional principles. But in many cases, a collision between principles will take place, and to resolve this issue, the judge or the hermeneut will choose a solipsism way, using what they personally believe to be the right one. For obvious reasons, that conduct is not safe. Thus, a theory of decision is necessary to seek justice, and the hermeneutic philosophy and the linguistic turn will be necessary for one to find the right answer. In order to help this difficult mission, it will be necessary to use philosophical hermeneutics in order to find the right answer, which is the constitutionally most appropriate response. The constitutionally appropriate response will not always be the answer that individuals agree to, but we must put aside our preferences and defend the answer that the Constitution gives us. Therefore, the hermeneutics applied to Law, in search constitutionally appropriate response, should be the safest way to avoid judicial individual decisions. The aim of this paper is to present the science of law starting from the linguistic turn, the philosophical hermeneutics, moving away from legal positivism. The methodology used in this paper is qualitative, academic and theoretical, philosophical hermeneutics with the mission to conduct research proposing a new way of thinking about the science of law. The research sought to demonstrate the difficulty of the Brazilian courts to depart from the secular influence of legal positivism. Moreover, the research sought to demonstrate the need to think science of law within a contemporary perspective, where the linguistic turn, philosophical hermeneutics, will be the surest way to conduct the science of law in the present century.

Keywords: Hermeneutic, right answer, solipsism, Brazilian Judiciary.

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Authors: Janet L. Kourik, Peter E. Maher

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To investigate the correspondence of theory and practice, a successfully implemented Knowledge Management System (KMS) is explored through the lens of Alavi and Leidner-s proposed KMS framework for the analysis of an information system in knowledge management (Framework-AISKM). The applied KMS system was designed to manage curricular knowledge in a distributed university environment. The motivation for the KMS is discussed along with the types of knowledge necessary in an academic setting. Elements of the KMS involved in all phases of capturing and disseminating knowledge are described. As the KMS matures the resulting data stores form the precursor to and the potential for knowledge mining. The findings from this exploratory study indicate substantial correspondence between the successful KMS and the theory-based framework providing provisional confirmation for the framework while suggesting factors that contributed to the system-s success. Avenues for future work are described.

Keywords: Applied KMS, education, knowledge management (KM), KM framework, knowledge management system (KMS).

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Authors: Laidson P. Gomes, Cristina T. Andrade, Eduardo M. Del Aguila, Cameron Alexander, Vânia M. F. Paschoalin

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Chitosan is a natural polysaccharide prepared by the N-deacetylation of chitin. In this study, the physicochemical and antibacterial properties of chitosan nanoparticles, produced by ultrasound irradiation, were evaluated. The physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles were determined by dynamic light scattering and zeta potential analysis. Chitosan nanoparticles inhibited the growth of E. coli. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values were lower than 0.5 mg/mL, and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) values were similar or higher than MIC values. Confocal laser scanning micrographs (CLSM) were used to observe the interaction between E. coli suspensions mixed with FITC-labeled chitosan polymers and nanoparticles.

Keywords: Chitosan nanoparticles, dynamic light scattering, zeta potential, confocal microscopy, antibacterial activity.

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Authors: Sawangjit Sopid

Abstract:

In this study sugarcane field soils with a long history of atrazine application in Chachoengsao and Chonburi provinces have been explored for their potential of atrazine biodegradation. For the atrazine degrading bacteria isolation, the soils used in this study named ACS and ACB were inoculated in MS-medium containing atrazine. Six short rod and gram-negative bacterial isolates, which were able to use this herbicide as a sole source of nitrogen, were isolated and named as ACS1, ACB1, ACB3, ACB4, ACB5 and ACB6. From the 16S rDNA nucleotide sequence analysis, the isolated bacteria ACS1 and ACB4 were identified as Rhizobium sp. with 89.1-98.7% nucleotide identity, ACB1 and ACB5 were identified as Stenotrophomonas sp. with 91.0-92.8% nucleotide identity, whereas ACB3 and ACB6 were Klebsiella sp. with 97.4-97.8% nucleotide identity.

Keywords: Atrazine-degrading bacteria, bioremediation, Thai isolate bacteria.

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Authors: Xin Luo, Jin Huang, Chuan-Long Wang

Abstract:

The mechanical quadrature methods for solving the boundary integral equations of the anisotropic Darcy-s equations with Dirichlet conditions in smooth domains are presented. By applying the collectively compact theory, we prove the convergence and stability of approximate solutions. The asymptotic expansions for the error show that the methods converge with the order O (h3), where h is the mesh size. Based on these analysis, extrapolation methods can be introduced to achieve a higher convergence rate O (h5). An a posterior asymptotic error representation is derived in order to construct self-adaptive algorithms. Finally, the numerical experiments show the efficiency of our methods.

Keywords: Darcy's equation, anisotropic, mechanical quadrature methods, extrapolation methods, a posteriori error estimate.

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Authors: K. A. Sumithradevi, Vijayalakshmi. M. N., Annamma Abraham., Dr. Vasanta

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The various applications of VLSI circuits in highperformance computing, telecommunications, and consumer electronics has been expanding progressively, and at a very hasty pace. This paper describes a new model for partitioning a circuit using DBSCAN and fuzzy ARTMAP neural network. The first step is concerned with feature extraction, where we had make use DBSCAN algorithm. The second step is the classification and is composed of a fuzzy ARTMAP neural network. The performance of both approaches is compared using benchmark data provided by MCNC standard cell placement benchmark netlists. Analysis of the investigational results proved that the fuzzy ARTMAP with DBSCAN model achieves greater performance then only fuzzy ARTMAP in recognizing sub-circuits with lowest amount of interconnections between them The recognition rate using fuzzy ARTMAP with DBSCAN is 97.7% compared to only fuzzy ARTMAP.

Keywords: VLSI, Circuit partitioning, DBSCAN, fuzzyARTMAP.

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Authors: M. Paroncini, F. Corvaro, G. Nardini, S. Pistolesi

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A lightpipe is an about 99 percent specular reflective mirror pipe or duct that is used for the transmission of the daylight from the outside into a building. The lightpipes are usually used in the daylighting buildings, in the residential, industrial and commercial sectors. This paper is about the performances of a lightpipe installed in a laboratory (3 m x 2.6 m x 3 m) without windows. The aim is to analyse the luminous intensity distribution for several sky/sun conditions. The lightpipe was monitored during the year 2006. The lightpipe is 1 m long and the diameter of the top collector and of the internal diffuser device is 0.25 m. In the laboratory there are seven illuminance sensors: one external is located on the roof of the laboratory and six internal sensors are connected to a data acquisition system. The internal sensors are positioned under the internal diffusive device at an height of 0.85 m from the floor to simulate a working plane. The numerical data are obtained through a simulation software. This paper shows the comparison between the experimental and numerical results concerning the behavior of the lightpipe.

Keywords: Daylighting, Desktop Radiance, Lightpipe.

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Authors: Chungkuk Jin, Moo-Hyun Kim, HeonYong Kang

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A surface riding (SR) wave energy converter (WEC) is designed and its feasibility and performance are numerically simulated by the author-developed floater-mooring-magnet-electromagnetics fully-coupled dynamic analysis computer program. The biggest advantage of the SR-WEC is that the performance is equally effective even in low sea states and its structural robustness is greatly improved by simply riding along the wave surface compared to other existing WECs. By the numerical simulations and actuator testing, it is clearly demonstrated that the concept works and through the optimization process, its efficiency can be improved.

Keywords: Computer simulation, electromagnetics fully-coupled dynamics, floater-mooring-magnet, optimization, performance evaluation, surface riding, wave energy converter.

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Authors: João Cepeda

Abstract:

In crafting their way between theory and practice, authors and artists seem to be always immersed in a never-ending process of relating epochs, objects and images. Endless ‘affinities’ emerge, from a somewhat unexplainable (and intimate) magnetic relation. It is through this ‘warburgian’ assessment that two of the most prominent twentieth century modern architects from Japan and Portugal are put into perspective in this paper, focusing on their paths and thinking-practice, and on the research of their personal and professional archives. Moreover, this research especially aims its focus at essaying specifically on the possible ‘affinities’ between two of their most renowned architectural projects: the Kenzo Tange’s (demolished) Villa Seijo project in Tokyo (Japan), and Fernando Távora’s Tennis Pavilion design in Matosinhos (Portugal), respectively, side-by-side – through in-depth fieldwork in the sites, bibliographical and archival research, (unprecedented) material analysis, and a final critical consideration.

Keywords: Tange, Távora, architecture, affinities.

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Authors: Maziar Ramezani, Thomas Neitzert

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A dent is a gross distortion of the pipe cross-section. Dent depth is defined as the maximum reduction in the diameter of the pipe compared to the original diameter. Pipeline dent finite element (FE) simulation and theoretical analysis are conducted in this paper to develop an understanding of the geometric characteristics and strain distribution in the pressurized dented pipe. Based on the results, the magnitude of the denting force increases significantly with increasing the internal pressure, and the maximum circumferential and longitudinal strains increase by increasing the internal pressure and the dent depth. The results can be used for characterizing dents and ranking their risks to the integrity of a pipeline.

Keywords: dented steel pipelines, Finite element model, Internal pressure, Strain distribution

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Authors: Ankit Jain, Archana Agrawal

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With the ever-increasing need for wireless communication and the emergence of many systems, it is important to design broadband antennas to cover a wide frequency range. The aim of this paper is to design a broadband patch antenna, employing the three techniques of slotting, adding directly coupled parasitic elements, and fractal EBG structures. The bandwidth is improved from 9.32% to 23.77%. A wideband ranging from 4.15 GHz to 5.27 GHz is obtained. Also a comparative analysis of embedding EBG structures at different heights is also done. The composite effect of integrating these techniques in the design provides a simple and efficient method for obtaining low profile, broadband, high gain antenna. By the addition of parasitic elements the bandwidth was increased to only 18.04%. Later on by embedding EBG structures the bandwidth was increased up to 23.77%. The design is suitable for variety of wireless applications like WLAN and Radar Applications.

Keywords: Bandwidth, broadband, EBG structures, parasitic elements, Slotting.

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Authors: Marco Raciti Castelli, Paolo Cioppa, Ernesto Benini

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This paper presents a CFD analysis of the flow field around a thin flat plate of infinite span inclined at 90° to a fluid stream of infinite extent. Numerical predictions have been compared to experimental measurements, in order to assess the potential of the finite volume code of determining the aerodynamic forces acting on a bluff body invested by a fluid stream of infinite extent. Several turbulence models and spatial node distributions have been tested. Flow field characteristics in the neighborhood of the flat plate have been investigated, allowing the development of a preliminary procedure to be used as guidance in selecting the appropriate grid configuration and the corresponding turbulence model for the prediction of the flow field over a two-dimensional vertical flat plate.

Keywords: CFD, vertical flat plate, aerodynamic force

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Authors: G. Momen, R. Jafari, M. Farzaneh

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Two different superhydrophobic surfaces were elaborated and their oil repellency behavior was evaluated using several liquid with different surface tension. A silicone rubber/SiO2 nanocomposite coated (A) on aluminum substrate by “spin-coating" and the sample B was an anodized aluminum surface covered by Teflon-like coating. A high static contact angle about ∼162° was measured for two prepared surfaces on which the water droplet rolloff. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed the presence of micro/nanostructures for both sample A and B similar to that of lotus leaf. However the sample A presented significantly different behaviour of wettability against the low surface tension liquid. Sample A has been wetted totally by oil (dodecan) droplet while sample B showed oleophobic behaviour. Oleophobic property of Teflon like coating can be contributed to the presence of CF2 and CF3 functional group which was shown by XPS analysis.

Keywords: Oleophobic, Superhydrophobic, Aluminum surface, Nano-texture.

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Authors: Andra Costache, Rădiţa Alexe

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The analysis of the spatial disparities of social marginalization is a requirement in the present-day socio-economic and political context of Romania, an East-European state, member of the European Union since 2007, at present faced with the imperatives of the growth of its territorial cohesion. The main objective of this article is to develop a methodology for the assessment of social marginalization, in order to understand the intensity of the marginalization phenomenon at different spatial scales. The article proposes a social marginalization index (SMI), calculated through the integration of ten indicators relevant for the two components of social marginalization: the material component and the symbolical component. The results highlighted a strong connection between the total degree of social marginalization and the dependence on social benefits, unemployment rate, non-inclusion in the compulsory education, criminality rate, and the type of pension insurance.

Keywords: Romania, social marginalization index, territorial disparities.

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Authors: Débora V. Busman, Venerando E. Amaro, Mattheus da C. Prudêncio

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Prognostic studies of the shoreline are of utmost importance for Ponta Negra Beach, located in Natal, Northeastern Brazil, where the infrastructure recently built along the shoreline is severely affected by flooding and erosion. This study compares shoreline predictions using three linear regression methods (LMS, LRR and WLR) and tries to discern the best method for different shoreline position scenarios. The methods have shown erosion on the beach in each of the scenarios tested, even in less intense dynamic conditions. The WLA_A with confidence interval of 95% was the well-adjusted model and calculated a retreat of -1.25 m/yr to -2.0 m/yr in hot spot areas. The change of the shoreline on Ponta Negra Beach can be measured as a negative exponential curve. Analysis of these methods has shown a correlation with the morphodynamic stage of the beach.

Keywords: Coastal Erosion, Prognostic Model, DSAS.

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Authors: Jin-O Kim, Hyun-Il Son

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As the electrical power industry is restructured, the electrical power exchange is becoming extended. One of the key information used to determine how much power can be transferred through the network is known as available transfer capability (ATC). To calculate ATC, traditional deterministic approach is based on the severest case, but the approach has the complexity of procedure. Therefore, novel approach for ATC calculation is proposed using cost-optimization method in this paper, and is compared with well-being method and risk-benefit method. This paper proposes the optimal transfer capability of HVDC system between mainland and a separated island in Korea through these three methods. These methods will consider production cost, wheeling charge through HVDC system and outage cost with one depth (N-1 contingency)

Keywords: ATC, power system interconnection, well-being method, cost-optimization method, risk-benefit analysis, outage cost.

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Authors: Mohammad Mousaei Sanjerehei

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The objective of this research was to identify the vegetation-soil relationships in Nodushan arid rangelands of Yazd. 5 sites were selected for measuring the cover of plant species and soil attributes. Soil samples were taken in 0-10 and 10-80 cm layers. The species studied were Salsola tomentosa, Salsola arbuscula, Peganum harmala, Zygophylum eurypterum and Eurotia ceratoides. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was used to analyze the data. Based on the CCA results, 74.9 % of vegetation-soil variation was explained by axis 1-3. Axis 1, 2 and 3 accounted for 27.2%, 24.9 % and 22.8% of variance respectively. Correlation between axis 1, 2, 3 and speciesedaphic variables were 0.995, 0.989, 0.981 respectively. Soil texture, lime, salinity and organic matter significantly influenced the distribution of these plant species. Determination of soil-vegetation relationships will be useful for managing and improving rangelands in arid and semi arid environments.

Keywords: CCA, Nodushan, Rangelands, Vegetation-soil

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Authors: C. Silveira, A. Ascenso, J. Ferreira, A. I. Miranda, P. Tuccella, G. Curci

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Poor air quality is one of the main environmental causes of premature deaths worldwide, and mainly in cities, where the majority of the population lives. It is a consequence of successive land cover (LC) and use changes, as a result of the intensification of human activities. Knowing these landscape modifications in a comprehensive spatiotemporal dimension is, therefore, essential for understanding variations in air pollutant concentrations. In this sense, the use of air quality models is very useful to simulate the physical and chemical processes that affect the dispersion and reaction of chemical species into the atmosphere. However, the modelling performance should always be evaluated since the resolution of the input datasets largely dictates the reliability of the air quality outcomes. Among these data, the updated LC is an important parameter to be considered in atmospheric models, since it takes into account the Earth’s surface changes due to natural and anthropic actions, and regulates the exchanges of fluxes (emissions, heat, moisture, etc.) between the soil and the air. This work aims to evaluate the performance of the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), when different LC classifications are used as an input. The influence of two LC classifications was tested: i) the 24-classes USGS (United States Geological Survey) LC database included by default in the model, and the ii) CLC (Corine Land Cover) and specific high-resolution LC data for Portugal, reclassified according to the new USGS nomenclature (33-classes). Two distinct WRF-Chem simulations were carried out to assess the influence of the LC on air quality over Europe and Portugal, as a case study, for the year 2015, using the nesting technique over three simulation domains (25 km², 5 km² and 1 km² horizontal resolution). Based on the 33-classes LC approach, particular emphasis was attributed to Portugal, given the detail and higher LC spatial resolution (100 m x 100 m) than the CLC data (5000 m x 5000 m). As regards to the air quality, only the LC impacts on tropospheric ozone concentrations were evaluated, because ozone pollution episodes typically occur in Portugal, in particular during the spring/summer, and there are few research works relating to this pollutant with LC changes. The WRF-Chem results were validated by season and station typology using background measurements from the Portuguese air quality monitoring network. As expected, a better model performance was achieved in rural stations: moderate correlation (0.4 – 0.7), BIAS (10 – 21µg.m^-3) and RMSE (20 – 30 µg.m^-3), and where higher average ozone concentrations were estimated. Comparing both simulations, small differences grounded on the Leaf Area Index and air temperature values were found, although the high-resolution LC approach shows a slight enhancement in the model evaluation. This highlights the role of the LC on the exchange of atmospheric fluxes, and stresses the need to consider a high-resolution LC characterization combined with other detailed model inputs, such as the emission inventory, to improve air quality assessment.

Keywords: Land cover, tropospheric ozone, WRF-Chem, air quality assessment.

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Authors: M. A. Islam, P. J. Hazell, J. P. Escobedo, M. Saadatfar

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Metallic foams have good potential for lightweight structures for impact and blast mitigation. Therefore it is important to find out the optimized foam structure (i.e. cell size, shape, relative density, and distribution) to maximise energy absorption. In this paper, quasistatic compression and microstructural characterization of closed-cell aluminium foams of different pore size and cell distributions have been carried out. We present results for two different aluminium metal foams of density 0.49-0.51 g/cc and 0.31- 0.34 g/cc respectively that have been tested in quasi-static compression. The influence of cell geometry and cell topology on quasistatic compression behaviour has been investigated using optical microscope and computed tomography (micro-CT) analysis. It is shown that the deformation is not uniform in the structure and collapse begins at the weakest point.

Keywords: Metal foams, micro-CT, cell topology, quasistatic compression.

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Authors: Lorenzo Daghini, Andreas Archenti, Cornel Mihai Nicolescu

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This paper introduces a novel design for boring bar with enhanced damping capability. The principle followed in the design phase was to enhance the damping capability minimizing the loss in static stiffness through implementation of composite material interfaces. The newly designed tool has been compared to a conventional tool. The evaluation criteria were the dynamic characteristics, frequency and damping ratio, of the machining system, as well as the surface roughness of the machined workpieces. The use of composite material in the design of damped tool has been demonstrated effective. Furthermore, the autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models presented in this paper take into consideration the interaction between the elastic structure of the machine tool and the cutting process and can therefore be used to characterize the machining system in operational conditions.

Keywords: ARMA, cutting stability, damped tool, machining.

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Authors: Iracema Machado de Aragão Gomes, Íkaro Daniel Carvalho Barreto, Suzana Leitão Russo

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Policies that support entrepreneurship are keys to the generation of new business. In Brazil, seed capital, installation of technology parks, programs and zero interest financing, economic subsidy as Program First Innovative Company (PRIME) are examples of incentive policies. For the implementation of PRIME, in particular the Brazilian Innovation Agency (FINEP) decentralized operationalization so that business incubators could select innovative projects. This paper analyzes the program PRIME Business Incubator Center of the State of Sergipe (CISE) after calculating the mean and standard deviation of the grades obtained by companies in the factors of innovation, market potential, financial return economic, market strategy and staff and application of the Mann-Whitney test.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, innovation, technology parks, business incubators.

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Authors: Joon Ho Kim, Tae Kwon Ha

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Effect of aging treatment on microstructural aspects of interfacial layers of the Cu/Al clad sheet produced by differential speed rolling (DSR) process were studied by electron back scattered diffraction (EBSD). Clad sheet of Al/Cu has been fabricated by using DSR, which caused severe shear deformation between Al and Cu plate to easily bond to each other. Rolling was carried out at 100^oC with speed ratio of 2, in which the total thickness reduction was 45%. Interface layers of clad sheet were analyzed by EBSD after subsequent annealing at 400^oC for 30 to 120min. With increasing annealing time, thickness of interface layer and fraction of high angle grain boundary were increased and average grain size was decreased.

Keywords: Aluminum/Copper clad sheet, differential speed rolling, interface layer, microstructure, annealing, electron back scattered diffraction.

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Authors: Seung-Hun Kim, Kye-Hoon Jeon, Byoung-Doo Kang, I1-Kyun Jung

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Intelligent traffic surveillance technology is an issue in the field of traffic data analysis. Therefore, we need the technology to detect moving objects in real-time while there are variations in background and natural light. In this paper, we proposed a Weighted-Center Surround Difference method for object detection in outdoor environments. The proposed system detects objects using the saliency map that is obtained by analyzing the weight of each layers of Gaussian pyramid. In order to validate the effectiveness of our system, we implemented the proposed method using a digital signal processor, TMS320DM6437. Experimental results show that blurred noisy around objects was effectively eliminated and the object detection accuracy is improved.

Keywords: Saliency Map, Center Surround Difference, Object Detection, Surveillance System

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Authors: Mohamed A. Abou-Shouk, Mahamoud M. Hewedi

Abstract:

This study extends technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate the antecedents and consequences of social media adoption by tourists and travel agents. It compares their perceptions on social media adoption and its consequences. Online survey was addressed to tourists and travel agents for data collection purposes. Structural equation modelling was employed for analysis purposes. The findings revealed that the majority of tourists and travel agents involved in the study believe in the usefulness of social media adoption for travel planning and marketing purposes. They agree that adopting social media could change the attitude of tourists towards specific destination or attraction and influence their purchasing decisions. This study contributes to knowledge by extending TAM and provides some managerial implication to marketers.

Keywords: TAM, social media, travel, tourism, travel agents.

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