Search results for: higher order ODEs.

Authors: Rohayu Izanwati M. R., Muhamad Ridhwan M. R., Abbe Maleyki M. J., Ahmad Zubaidi A. L., Zahri M. K.

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PPARs function as regulators of lipid and lipoprotein metabolism. The aim of the study was to compare the lipid profile between two phases of fasting and to examine the frequency and relationship of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, PPARα gene polymorphisms to lipid profile in fasting respondents. We conducted a case-control study protocol, which included 21 healthy volunteers without gender discrimination at the age of 18 years old. 3 ml of blood sample was drawn before the fasting phase and during the fasting phase (in Ramadhan month). 1ml of serum for the lipid profile was analyzed by using the automated chemistry analyser (Olympus, AU 400) and the data were analysed using the Paired T-Test (SPSS ver.20). DNA was extracted and PCR was conducted utilising 6 sets of primer. Primers were designed within 6 exons of interest in PPARα gene. Genetic and metabolic characteristics of fasting respondents and controls were estimated and compared. Fasting respondents were significantly have lowered the LDL levels (p=0.03). There were no polymorphisms detected except in exon 1 with 5% of this population study respectively. The polymorphisms in exon 1 of the PPARα gene were found in low frequency. Regarding the 1375G/T and 1386G/T polymorphisms in the exon 1 of the PPARα gene, the T-allele in fasting phase had no association with the decreased LDL levels (Fisher Exact Test). However this association is more promising when the sample size is larger in order to elucidate the precise impact of the polymorphisms on lipid profile in the population. In conclusion, the PPARα gene polymorphisms do not appear to affect the LDL of fasting respondents.

Keywords: Fasting, LDL, Peroxisome proliferator activated receptor alpha (PPAR-α), Polymorphisms.

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Authors: Andres Piña, Amy Meléndez, Pablo Cano, Tomas Cahuich

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The purpose of this project is to propose a quick and environmentally friendly alternative to measure the quality of oils used in food industry. There is evidence that repeated and indiscriminate use of oils in food processing cause physicochemical changes with formation of potentially toxic compounds that can affect the health of consumers and cause organoleptic changes. In order to assess the quality of oils, non-destructive optical techniques such as Interferometry offer a rapid alternative to the use of reagents, using only the interaction of light on the oil. Through this project, we used interferograms of samples of oil placed under different heating conditions to establish the changes in their quality. These interferograms were obtained by means of a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer using a beam of light from a HeNe laser of 10mW at 632.8nm. Each interferogram was captured, analyzed and measured full width at half-maximum (FWHM) using the software from Amcap and ImageJ. The total of FWHMs was organized in three groups. It was observed that the average obtained from each of the FWHMs of group A shows a behavior that is almost linear, therefore it is probable that the exposure time is not relevant when the oil is kept under constant temperature. Group B exhibits a slight exponential model when temperature raises between 373 K and 393 K. Results of the t-Student show a probability of 95% (0.05) of the existence of variation in the molecular composition of both samples. Furthermore, we found a correlation between the Iodine Indexes (Physicochemical Analysis) and the Interferograms (Optical Analysis) of group C. Based on these results, this project highlights the importance of the quality of the oils used in food industry and shows how Interferometry can be a useful tool for this purpose.

Keywords: Food industry, interferometric, oils, quality control.

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Authors: Yukinori Taniguchi, Kazuyoshi Kurita, Kohei Mizuta, Keigo Nishitani, Ryuichi Fukuda

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Tungsten carbide is widely used as a tool material in metal manufacturing process. Since tungsten is typical rare metal, establishment of recycle process of tungsten carbide tools and restore into cemented carbide material bring great impact to metal manufacturing industry. Recently, recycle process of tungsten carbide has been developed and established gradually. However, the demands for quality of cemented carbide tool are quite severe because hardness, toughness, anti-wear ability, heat resistance, fatigue strength and so on should be guaranteed for precision machining and tool life. Currently, it is hard to restore the recycled tungsten carbide powder entirely as raw material for new processed cemented carbide tool. In this study, to suggest positive use of recycled tungsten carbide powder, we have tried to fabricate a carbon based sintered steel which shows reinforced mechanical properties with recycled tungsten carbide powder. We have made set of newly designed sintered steels. Compression test of sintered specimen in density ratio of 0.85 (which means 15% porosity inside) has been conducted. As results, at least 1.7 times higher in nominal strength in the amount of 7.0 wt.% was shown in recycled WC powder. The strength reached to over 600 MPa for the Fe-WC-Co-Cu sintered alloy. Wear test has been conducted by using ball-on-disk type friction tester using 5 mm diameter ball with normal force of 2 N in the dry conditions. Wear amount after 1,000 m running distance shows that about 1.5 times longer life was shown in designed sintered alloy. Since results of tensile test showed that same tendency in previous testing, it is concluded that designed sintered alloy can be used for several mechanical parts with special strength and anti-wear ability in relatively low cost due to recycled tungsten carbide powder.

Keywords: Tungsten carbide, recycle process, compression test, powder metallurgy, anti-wear ability.

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Authors: Kgomotso Matobole, Pascal Mwenge, Tumisang Seodigeng

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The global urbanisation and worldwide economic growth have caused a high rate of food waste generation, resulting in environmental pollution. Food waste disposed on landfills decomposes to produce methane (CH₄), a greenhouse gas. Inadequate waste management practices contribute to food waste polluting the environment. Thus effective organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) management and treatment are attracting widespread attention in many countries. This problem can be minimised by the employment of anaerobic digestion process, since food waste is rich in organic matter and highly biodegradable, resulting in energy generation and waste volume reduction. The current study investigated the Biomethane Potential (BMP) of the Vaal University of Technology canteen food waste using anaerobic digestion. Tests were performed on canteen food waste, as a substrate, with total solids (TS) of 22%, volatile solids (VS) of 21% and moisture content of 78%. The tests were performed in batch reactors, at a mesophilic temperature of 37 °C, with two different types of inoculum, primary and digested sludge. The resulting CH₄ yields for both food waste with digested sludge and primary sludge were equal, being 357 Nml/g VS. This indicated that food waste form this canteen is rich in organic and highly biodegradable. Hence it can be used as a substrate for the anaerobic digestion process. The food waste with digested sludge and primary sludge both fitted the first order kinetic model with k for primary sludge inoculated food waste being 0.278 day^-1 with R² of 0.98, whereas k for digested sludge inoculated food waste being 0.034 day^-1, with R² of 0.847.

Keywords: Anaerobic digestion, biogas, biomethane potential, food waste.

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Authors: E. Šarauskis, L. Masilionyte, Z. Kriaučiūniene, K. Romaneckas

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All over the world, including the Middle and East European countries, sustainable tillage and sowing technologies are applied increasingly broadly with a view to optimising soil resources, mitigating soil degradation processes, saving energy resources, preserving biological diversity, etc. As a result, altered conditions of tillage and sowing technological processes are faced inevitably. The purpose of this study is to determine the seedbed topsoil hardness when using a combined sowing coulter in different sustainable tillage technologies. The research involved a combined coulter consisting of two dissected blade discs and a shoe coulter. In order to determine soil hardness at the seedbed area, a multipenetrometer was used. It was found by experimental studies that in loosened soil, a combined sowing coulter equally suppresses the furrow bottom, walls and soil near the furrow; therefore, here, soil hardness was similar at all researched depths and no significant differences were established. In loosened and compacted (double-rolled) soil, the impact of a combined coulter on the hardness of seedbed soil surface was more considerable at a depth of 2 mm. Soil hardness at the furrow bottom and walls to a distance of up to 26 mm was 1.1 MPa. At a depth of 10 mm, the greatest hardness was established at the furrow bottom. In loosened and heavily compacted (rolled for 6 times) soil, at a depth of 2 and 10 mm a combined coulter most of all compacted the furrow bottom, which has a hardness of 1.8 MPa. At a depth of 20 mm, soil hardness within the whole investigated area varied insignificantly and fluctuated by around 2.0 MPa. The hardness of furrow walls and soil near the furrow was by approximately 1.0 MPa lower than that at the furrow bottom

Keywords: Coulters design, seedbed, soil hardness, combined coulters, soil compaction.

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Authors: Muhammed Ordu, Eren Demir, Chris Tofallis

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Over the past decade, the non-elective admissions in the UK have increased significantly. Taking into account limited resources (i.e. beds), the related service managers are obliged to manage their resources effectively due to the non-elective admissions which are mostly admitted to inpatient specialities via A&E departments. Geriatric medicine is one of specialities that have long length of stay for the non-elective admissions. This study aims to develop a discrete event simulation model to understand how possible increases on non-elective demand over the next 12 months affect the bed occupancy rate and to determine required number of beds in a geriatric medicine speciality in a UK hospital. In our validated simulation model, we take into account observed frequency distributions which are derived from a big data covering the period April, 2009 to January, 2013, for the non-elective admission and the length of stay. An experimental analysis, which consists of 16 experiments, is carried out to better understand possible effects of case studies and scenarios related to increase on demand and number of bed. As a result, the speciality does not achieve the target level in the base model although the bed occupancy rate decreases from 125.94% to 96.41% by increasing the number of beds by 30%. In addition, the number of required beds is more than the number of beds considered in the scenario analysis in order to meet the bed requirement. This paper sheds light on bed management for service managers in geriatric medicine specialities.

Keywords: Bed management, bed occupancy rate, discrete event simulation, geriatric medicine, non-elective admission.

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Authors: Nastaran Hajiheydari, Mohammad Soltani Delgosha

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Vendor (supplier) selection is a group decision-making (GDM) process, in which, based on some predetermined criteria, the experts’ preferences are provided in order to rank and choose the most desirable suppliers. In the real business environment, our attitudes or our choices would be made in an uncertain and indecisive situation could not be expressed in a crisp framework. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) could handle such situations in the best way. VIKOR method was developed to solve multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. This method, which is used to determine the compromised feasible solution with respect to the conflicting criteria, introduces a multi-criteria ranking index based on the particular measure of 'closeness' to the 'ideal solution'. Until now, there has been a little investigation of VIKOR with IFS, therefore we extended the intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) VIKOR to solve vendor selection problem under IF GDM environment. The present study intends to develop an IF VIKOR method in a GDM situation. Therefore, a model is presented to calculate the criterion weights based on entropy measure. Then, the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy weighted geometric (IFWG) operator utilized to obtain the total decision matrix. In the next stage, an approach based on the positive idle intuitionistic fuzzy number (PIIFN) and negative idle intuitionistic fuzzy number (NIIFN) was developed. Finally, the application of the proposed method to solve a vendor selection problem illustrated.

Keywords: Group decision making, intuitionistic fuzzy entropy measure, intuitionistic fuzzy set, vendor selection VIKOR.

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Authors: Zakaria Boual, Abdellah Kemassi, Toufik Chouana, Philippe Michaud, Mohammed Didi Ould El Hadj

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In order to investigate the prebiotic potential of oligosaccharides prepared by chemical hydrolysis of water-soluble polysaccharides (WSP) from Zizyphus lotus leaves, the effect of oligosaccharides on bacterial growth was studied. The chemical composition of WSP was evaluated by colorimetric assays revealed the average values: 7.05±0.73% proteins and 86.21±0.74% carbohydrates, among them 64.81±0.42% is neutral sugar and the rest 16.25±1.62% is uronic acids. The characterization of monosaccharides was determined by high performance anion exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD) was found to be composed of galactose (23.95%), glucose (21.30%), rhamnose (20.28%), arabinose (9.55%), and glucuronic acid (22.95%). The effects of oligosaccharides on the growth of lactic acid bacteria were compared with those of fructooligosaccharide (RP95). The oligosaccharides concentration was 1g/L of Man, Rogosa, Sharpe broth. Bacterial growth was assessed during 2, 4.5, 6.5, 9, 12, 16 and 24 h by measuring the optical density of the cultures at 600 nm (OD600) and pH values. During fermentation, pH in broth cultures decreased from 6.7 to 5.87±0.15. The enumeration of lactic acid bacteria indicated that oligosaccharides led to a significant increase in bacteria (P≤0.05) compared to the control. The fermentative metabolism appeared to be faster on RP95 than on oligosaccharides from Zizyphus lotus leaves. Both RP95 and oligosaccharides showed clear prebiotic effects, but had differences in fermentation kinetics because of to the different degree of polymerization. This study shows the prebiotic effectiveness of oligosaccharides, and provides proof for the selection of leaves of Zizyphus lotus for use as functional food ingredients.

Keywords: Zizyphus lotus, polysaccharides, characterization, prebiotic effects.

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Authors: A. Abbas Khalaf, L. Issazadeh, Z. Arif Abdullah, J. Hassanpour

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In order to evaluate the growth and yield properties of two Sorghum-Sudangrass hybrids under different irrigation levels, an investigation was done in the experiment site of Collage of Agriculture, University of Duhok, Kurdistan region of Iraq (36°5´38^⸗ N, 42°52´02^⸗ E) in the years 2015-16. The experiment was conducted under Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications, which main factor was irrigation treatments (I₁₀₀, I₇₅ and I₅₀) according to evaporation pan class A and type of Sorghum-Sudangrass hybrids (KH12SU9001, G₁) and (KH12SU9002, G₂) were factors of subplots. The parameters studied were: plant height (cm), number of green leaves per plant; leaf area (m²/m²), stem thickness (mm), percent of protein, fresh and dry biomass (ton.ha^-1) and also crop water productivity. The results of variance analysis showed that KH12SU9001 variety had more amount of leaf area, percent of protein, fresh and dry biomass yield in comparison to KH12SU9002 variety. By comparing effects of irrigation levels on vegetative growth and yield properties, results showed that amount of plant height, fresh and dry biomass weight was decreased by decreasing irrigation level from full irrigation regime to 5 _o% of irrigation level. Also, results of crop water productivity (CWP) indicated that improvement in quantity of irrigation would impact fresh and dry biomass yield significantly. Full irrigation regime was recorded the highest level of CWP (1.28-1.29 kg.m^-3).

Keywords: Deficit irrigation, growth, Sorghum-Sudangrass hybrid, yield.

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Authors: Domenico Chizzoniti, Monica Moscatelli, Letizia Cattani, Luca Preis

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A primary healthcare facility in developing countries should be a multifunctional space able to respond to different requirements: Flexibility, modularity, aggregation and reversibility. These basic features could be better satisfied if applied to an architectural artifact that complies with the typological, figurative and constructive aspects of the context in which it is located. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify a procedure that can define the figurative aspects of the architectural structure of the health prototype for the marginal areas of developing countries through a critical approach. The application context is the rural areas of the Northeast of Bahia in Brazil. The prototype should be located in the rural district of Quingoma, in the municipality of Lauro de Freitas, a particular place where there is still a cultural fusion of black and indigenous populations. Based on the historical analysis of settlement strategies and architectural structures in spaces of public interest or collective use, this paper aims to provide a procedure able to identify the categories and rules underlying typological and figurative aspects, in order to detect significant and generalizable elements, as well as materials and constructive techniques typically adopted in the rural areas of Brazil. The object of this work is therefore not only the recovery of certain constructive approaches but also the development of a procedure that integrates the requirements of the primary healthcare prototype with its surrounding economic, social, cultural, settlement and figurative conditions.

Keywords: Architectural typology, Developing countries, Local construction techniques, Primary health care.

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Authors: Mannan Mridha, Usama Gazay, Kosovare V. Aslani, Hugo Linder, Alice Ravizza, Carmelo de Maria

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In most developing countries, although the vast majority of the people are living in the rural areas, the qualified medical doctors are not available there. Health care workers and paramedics, called village doctors, informal healthcare providers, are largely responsible for the rural medical care. Mishaps due to wrong diagnosis and inappropriate medication have been causing serious suffering that is preventable. While innovators have created many devices, the vast majority of these technologies do not find applications to address the needs and conditions in low-resource settings. The primary motive is to address the acute lack of affordable medical technologies for the poor people in low-resource settings. A low cost smart medical device that is portable, battery operated and can be used at any point of care has been developed to detect breathing rate, electrocardiogram (ECG) and arterial pulse rate to improve diagnosis and monitoring of patients and thus improve care and safety. This simple and easy to use smart medical device can be used, managed and maintained effectively and safely by any health worker with some training. In order to empower the health workers and village doctors, our device is being further developed to integrate with ICT tools like smart phones and connect to the medical experts wherever available, to manage the serious health problems.

Keywords: Healthcare for low resources settings, health awareness education, improve patient care and safety, smart and affordable medical device.

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Authors: Win Win Tun, Han Su Yin, Ohn Zin Lin

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Transmission networks are an important part of an electric power system. The transmission lines not only have high power transmission capacity but also they are prone of larger magnitudes. Different types of faults occur in transmission lines such as single line to ground (L-G) fault, double line to ground (L-L-G) fault, line to line (L-L) fault and three phases (L-L-L) fault. These faults are needed to be cleared quickly in order to reduce damage caused to the system and they have high impact on the electrical power system equipment’s which are connected in transmission line. The main fault in transmission line is L-G fault. Therefore, protection relays are needed to protect transmission line. Overcurrent and earth fault relay is an important relay used to protect transmission lines, distribution feeders, transformers and bus couplers etc. Sometimes these relays can be used as main protection or backup protection. The modeling of protection relays is important to indicate the effects of network parameters and configurations on the operation of relays. Therefore, the modeling of overcurrent and earth fault relay is described in this paper. The overcurrent and earth fault relays with standard inverse definite minimum time are modeled and simulated by using MATLAB/Simulink software. The developed model was tested with L-G, L-L-G, L-L and L-L-L faults with various fault locations and fault resistance (0.001Ω). The simulation results are obtained by MATLAB software which shows the feasibility of analysis of transmission line protection with overcurrent and earth fault relay.

Keywords: Transmission line, overcurrent and earth fault relay, standard inverse definite minimum time, various faults, MATLAB Software.

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Authors: Rui Qiu, Giles Hardy, Dong Qu, Robert Trengove, Manjree Agarwal, YongLin Ren

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Phytophthora cinnamomi (P. c) is a plant pathogenic oomycete that is capable of damaging plants in commercial production systems and natural ecosystems worldwide. The most common methods for the detection and diagnosis of P. c infection are expensive, elaborate and time consuming. This study was carried out to examine whether species specific and life cycle specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be absorbed by solid-phase microextraction fibers and detected by gas chromatography that are produced by P. c and another oomycete Pythium dissotocum. A headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) together with gas chromatography (GC) method was developed and optimized for the identification of the VOCs released by P. c. The optimized parameters included type of fiber, exposure time, desorption temperature and desorption time. Optimization was achieved with the analytes of P. c+V8A and V8A alone. To perform the HS-SPME, six types of fiber were assayed and compared: 7μm Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), 100μm Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), 50/30μm Divinylbenzene/CarboxenTM/Polydimethylsiloxane DVB/CAR/PDMS), 65μm Polydimethylsiloxane/Divinylbenzene (PDMS/DVB), 85μm Polyacrylate (PA) fibre and 85μm CarboxenTM/ Polydimethylsiloxane (Carboxen™/PDMS). In a comparison of the efficacy of the fibers, the bipolar fiber DVB/CAR/PDMS had a higher extraction efficiency than the other fibers. An exposure time of 16h with DVB/CAR/PDMS fiber in the sample headspace was enough to reach the maximum extraction efficiency. A desorption time of 3min in the GC injector with the desorption temperature of 250°C was enough for the fiber to desorb the compounds of interest. The chromatograms and morphology study confirmed that the VOCs from P. c+V8A had distinct differences from V8A alone, as did different life cycle stages of P. c and different taxa such as Pythium dissotocum. The study proved that P. c has species and life cycle specific VOCs, which in turn demonstrated the feasibility of this method as means of

Keywords: Gas chromatography, headspace solid-phase microextraction, optimization, volatile compounds.

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Authors: Mi Sook Lee

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The number of the companies accepting RFID in Korea has been increased continuously due to the domestic development of information technology. The acceptance of RFID by companies in Korea enabled them to do business with many global enterprises in a much more efficient and effective way. According to a survey[33, p76], many companies in Korea have used RFID for inventory or distribution manages. But, the use of RFID in the companies in Korea is in the early stages and its potential value hasn-t fully been realized yet. At this time, it would be very important to investigate the factors that affect RFID acceptance. For this study, many previous studies were referenced and some RFID experts were interviewed. Through the pilot test, four factors were selected - Security Trust, Employee Knowledge, Partner Influence, Service Provider Trust - affecting RFID acceptance and an extended technology acceptance model(e-TAM) was presented with those factors. The proposed model was empirically tested using data collected from employees in companies or public enterprises. In order to analyze some relationships between exogenous variables and four variables in TAM, structural equation modeling(SEM) was developed and SPSS12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used for analyses. The results are summarized as follows: 1) security trust perceived by employees positively influences on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; 2) employee-s knowledge on RFID positively influences on only perceived ease of use; 3) a partner-s influence for RFID acceptance positively influences on only perceived usefulness; 4) service provider trust very positively influences on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use 5) the relationships between TAM variables are the same as the previous studies.

Keywords: RFID, TAM, Security Trust, Employee Knowledge, Partner Influence, Service Provider Trust.

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Authors: Li Xu, Huanbao Jiang, Zhenfei Huang, Lailai Zhang

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In recent years, as global warming, the sea-ice extent of North Arctic undergoes an evident decrease and Arctic channel has attracted the attention of shipping industry. Ice crystals existing in the seawater of Arctic channel which enter the seawater system of the ship with the seawater were found blocking the seawater pipe. The appearance of cooler paralysis, auxiliary machine error and even ship power system paralysis may be happened if seriously. In order to reduce the effect of high temperature in auxiliary equipment, seawater system will use external ice-water to participate in the cooling cycle and achieve the state of its flow. The distribution of ice crystals in seawater pipe can be achieved. As the ice slurry system is solid liquid two-phase system, the flow process of ice-water mixture is very complex and diverse. In this paper, the flow process in seawater pipe of ice slurry is simulated with fluid dynamics simulation software based on k-ε turbulence model. As the ice packing fraction is a key factor effecting the distribution of ice crystals, the influence of ice packing fraction on the flowing process of ice slurry is analyzed. In this work, the simulation results show that as the ice packing fraction is relatively large, the distribution of ice crystals is uneven in the flowing process of the seawater which has such disadvantage as increase the possibility of blocking, that will provide scientific forecasting methods for the forming of ice block in seawater piping system. It has important significance for the reliability of the operating of polar ships in the future.

Keywords: Ice slurry, seawater pipe, ice packing fraction, numerical simulation.

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Authors: T. R. Bandara, H. Jaelani, G. J. Griffin

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The conversion of lignocellulosic waste materials, such as sugar cane bagasse, to biofuels such as ethanol has attracted significant interest as a potential element for transforming transport fuel supplies to totally renewable sources. However, the refractory nature of the cellulosic structure of lignocellulosic materials has impeded progress on developing an economic process, whereby the cellulose component may be effectively broken down to glucose monosaccharides and then purified to allow downstream fermentation. Ionic liquid (IL) treatment of lignocellulosic biomass has been shown to disrupt the crystalline structure of cellulose thus potentially enabling the cellulose to be more readily hydrolysed to monosaccharides. Furthermore, conventional hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials yields byproducts that are inhibitors for efficient fermentation of the monosaccharides. However, selective extraction of monosaccharides from an aqueous/IL phase into an organic phase utilizing a combination of boronic acids and quaternary amines has shown promise as a purification process. Hydrolysis of sugar cane bagasse immersed in an aqueous solution with IL (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate) was conducted at different pH and temperature below 100 ºC. It was found that the use of a high concentration of hydrochloric acid to acidify the solution inhibited the hydrolysis of bagasse. At high pH (i.e. basic conditions), using sodium hydroxide, catalyst yields were reduced for total reducing sugars (TRS) due to the rapid degradation of the sugars formed. For purification trials, a supported liquid membrane (SLM) apparatus was constructed, whereby a synthetic solution containing xylose and glucose in an aqueous IL phase was transported across a membrane impregnated with phenyl boronic acid/Aliquat 336 to an aqueous phase. The transport rate of xylose was generally higher than that of glucose indicating that a SLM scheme may not only be useful for purifying sugars from undesirable toxic compounds, but also for fractionating sugars to improve fermentation efficiency.

Keywords: Biomass, bagasse, hydrolysis, monosaccharide, supported liquid membrane, purification.

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Authors: Carine Cridelich, Pablo Juesas Cano, Emmanuel Ramasso, Noureddine Zerhouni, Bernd Weiler

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Safety is one of the most important considerations when buying a new car. While active safety aims at avoiding accidents, passive safety systems such as airbags and seat belts protect the occupant in case of an accident. In addition to legal regulations, organizations like Euro NCAP provide consumers with an independent assessment of the safety performance of cars and drive the development of safety systems in automobile industry. Those ratings are mainly based on injury assessment reference values derived from physical parameters measured in dummies during a car crash test. The components and sub-systems of a safety system are designed to achieve the required restraint performance. Sled tests and other types of tests are then carried out by car makers and their suppliers to confirm the protection level of the safety system. A Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process is proposed in order to minimize the number of tests. The KDD process is based on the data emerging from sled tests according to Euro NCAP specifications. About 30 parameters of the passive safety systems from different data sources (crash data, dummy protocol) are first analysed together with experts opinions. A procedure is proposed to manage missing data and validated on real data sets. Finally, a procedure is developed to estimate a set of rough initial parameters of the passive system before testing aiming at reducing the number of tests.

Keywords: KDD process, passive safety systems, sled test, dummy injury assessment reference values, frontal impact

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Authors: Guarry Montrose, Ted Soubdhan

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In the fight against climate change, the energy consuming building sector must also be taken into account to solve this problem. In this case thermal insulation of buildings using bio-based materials is an interesting solution. Therefore, the thermal performance of some materials of this type has been studied. The advantages of these natural materials of plant origin are multiple, biodegradable, low economic cost, renewable and readily available. The use of biobased materials is widespread in the building sector in order to replace conventional insulation materials with natural materials. Vegetable fibers are very important because they have good thermal behaviour and good insulating properties. The aim of using bio-sourced materials is in line with the logic of energy control and environmental protection, the approach is to make the inhabitants of the houses comfortable and reduce their energy consumption (energy efficiency). In this research we will present the results of studies carried out on the thermal conductivity of banana leaves, latan leaves, vetivers fibers, palm kernel fibers, sargassum, coconut leaves, sawdust and bulk sugarcane leaves. The study on thermal conductivity was carried out in two ways, on the one hand using the flash method, and on the other hand a so-called hot box experiment was carried out. We will discuss and highlight a number of influential factors such as moisture and air pockets present in the samples on the thermophysical properties of these materials, in particular thermal conductivity. Finally, the result of a thermal performance test of banana leaves on a roof in Haiti will also be presented in this work.

Keywords: Buildings, insulating properties, natural materials of plant origin, thermal performance.

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Authors: Othman Maklouf, Abdurazag Ghila, Ahmed Abdulla, Ameer Yousef

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Land vehicle navigation system technology is a subject of great interest today. Global Positioning System (GPS) is a common choice for positioning in such systems. However, GPS alone is incapable of providing continuous and reliable positioning, because of its inherent dependency on external electromagnetic signals. Inertial Navigation is the implementation of inertial sensors to determine the position and orientation of a vehicle. As such, inertial navigation has unbounded error growth since the error accumulates at each step. Thus in order to contain these errors some form of external aiding is required. The availability of low cost Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) inertial sensors is now making it feasible to develop Inertial Navigation System (INS) using an inertial measurement unit (IMU), in conjunction with GPS to fulfill the demands of such systems. Typically IMU’s are very expensive systems; however this INS will use “low cost” components. Unfortunately with low cost also comes low performance and is the main reason for the inclusion of GPS and Kalman filtering into the system. The aim of this paper is to develop a GPS/MEMS INS integrated system, which is able to provide a navigation solution with accuracy levels appropriate for land vehicle navigation. The primary piece of equipment used was a MEMS-based Crista IMU (from Cloud Cap Technology Inc.) and a Garmin GPS 18 PC (which is both a receiver and antenna). The integration of GPS with INS can be implemented using a Kalman filter in loosely coupled mode. In this integration mode the INS error states, together with any navigation state (position, velocity, and attitude) and other unknown parameters of interest, are estimated using GPS measurements. All important equations regarding navigation are presented along with discussion.

Keywords: GPS, IMU, Kalman Filter.

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Authors: M. P. Valles-González, A. González Meije, A. Pastor Muro, M. García-Martínez, B. González Caballero

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This paper studies a failure case of a fuel pressure supply tube from an aircraft engine. Multiple fracture cases of the fuel pressure control tube from aircraft engines have been reported. The studied set was composed by the mentioned tube, a welded connecting pipe, where the fracture has been produced, and a union nut. The fracture has been produced in one of the most critical zones of the tube, in a region next to the supporting body of the union nut to the connector. The tube material was X6CrNiTi18-10, an austenitic stainless steel. Chemical composition was determined using an X-Ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF) and combustion equipment. Furthermore, the material was characterized mechanically, by a hardness test, and microstructurally using a stereo microscope and an optical microscope. The results confirmed that the material was within specifications. To determine the macrofractographic features, a visual examination and an observation using a stereo microscope of the tube fracture surface were carried out. The results revealed a tube plastic macrodeformation, surface damaged and signs of a possible corrosion process. Fracture surface was also inspected by scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis system (EDX), to determine the microfractographic features in order to find out the failure mechanism involved in the fracture. Fatigue striations, which are typical from a progressive fracture by a fatigue mechanism, were observed. The origin of the fracture was placed in defects located on the outer wall of the tube, leading to a final overload fracture.

Keywords: Aircraft Engine, microstructure, fatigue, FE-SEM, fractography, fracture, fuel tube, stainless steel.

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Authors: Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Somayyeh Jafarali Jassbi, Keivan Navi

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Residue Number System (RNS) is a modular representation and is proved to be an instrumental tool in many digital signal processing (DSP) applications which require high-speed computations. RNS is an integer and non weighted number system; it can support parallel, carry-free, high-speed and low power arithmetic. A very interesting correspondence exists between the concepts of Multiple Valued Logic (MVL) and Residue Number Arithmetic. If the number of levels used to represent MVL signals is chosen to be consistent with the moduli which create the finite rings in the RNS, MVL becomes a very natural representation for the RNS. There are two concerns related to the application of this Number System: reaching the most possible speed and the largest dynamic range. There is a conflict when one wants to resolve both these problem. That is augmenting the dynamic range results in reducing the speed in the same time. For achieving the most performance a method is considere named “One-Hot Residue Number System" in this implementation the propagation is only equal to one transistor delay. The problem with this method is the huge increase in the number of transistors they are increased in order m² . In real application this is practically impossible. In this paper combining the Multiple Valued Logic and One-Hot Residue Number System we represent a new method to resolve both of these two problems. In this paper we represent a novel design of an OHRNS-based adder circuit. This circuit is useable for Multiple Valued Logic moduli, in comparison to other RNS design; this circuit has considerably improved the number of transistors and power consumption.

Keywords: Computer Arithmetic, Residue Number System, Multiple Valued Logic, One-Hot, VLSI.

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Authors: Barenten Suciu

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Classical matrix calculus and Routh-Hurwitz stability conditions, applied to the snake-like motion of the conical wheel axle, lead to the conclusion that the hunting mode is inherently unstable, and its natural frequency is a complex number. In order to analytically solve such a complicated vibration model, either the inertia terms were neglected, in the model designated as geometrical, or restrictions on the creep coefficients and yawing diameter were imposed, in the so-called dynamical model. Here, an alternative solution is proposed to solve the hunting mode, based on the observation that the bullet train wheel axle is equipped with cylindrical wheels. One argues that for such wheel treads, the geometrical hunting is irrelevant, since its natural frequency becomes nil, but the dynamical hunting is significant since its natural frequency reduces to a real number. Moreover, one illustrates that the geometrical simplification of the wheel causes the stabilization of the hunting mode, since the characteristic quartic equation, derived for conical wheels, reduces to a quadratic equation of positive coefficients, for cylindrical wheels. Quite simple analytical expressions for the damping ratio and natural frequency are obtained, without applying restrictions into the model of contact. Graphs of the time-depending hunting lateral perturbation, including the maximal and inflexion points, are presented both for the critically-damped and the over-damped wheel axles.

Keywords: Bullet train, dynamical hunting, cylindrical wheels, damping, stability, creep, vibration analysis.

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Authors: F. A. Gdhaidh, K. Hussain, H. S. Qi

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A numerical study of natural convection heat transfer in water filled cavity has been examined in 3-Dfor single phase liquid cooling system by using an array of parallel plate fins mounted to one wall of a cavity. The heat generated by a heat source represents a computer CPU with dimensions of 37.5∗37.5mm mounted on substrate. A cold plate is used as a heat sink installed on the opposite vertical end of the enclosure. The air flow inside the computer case is created by an exhaust fan. A turbulent air flow is assumed and k-ε model is applied. The fins are installed on the substrate to enhance the heat transfer. The applied power energy range used is between 15 - 40W. In order to determine the thermal behaviour of the cooling system, the effect of the heat input and the number of the parallel plate fins are investigated. The results illustrate that as the fin number increases the maximum heat source temperature decreases. However, when the fin number increases to critical value the temperature start to increase due to the fins are too closely spaced and that cause the obstruction of water flow. The introduction of parallel plate fins reduces the maximum heat source temperature by 10% compared to the case without fins. The cooling system maintains the maximum chip temperature at 64.68°C when the heat input was at 40W that is much lower than the recommended computer chips limit temperature of no more than 85°C and hence the performance of the CPU is enhanced.

Keywords: Chips limit temperature, closed enclosure, natural convection, parallel plate, single phase liquid.

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Authors: Shankar Subramanian Iyer

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The vocational education, enhanced by technology and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is going to be the main ingredient of the future of education. This is coming from the various issues of the current educational system like cost, time, type of course, type of curriculum, unemployment, to name the major reasons. Most millennials like to perform and learn rather than learning how to perform. This is the essence of vocational education be it any field from cooking, painting, plumbing to modern technologies using computers. Even a more theoretical course like entrepreneurship can be taught as to be an entrepreneur and learn about its nuances. The best way to learn accountancy is actually keeping accounts for a small business or grocer and learn the ropes of accountancy and finance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between vocational skills, RPL and new technologies with future employability. This study implies that individual's knowledge and skills are essential aspects to be emphasized in future education and to give credit for prior experience for future employability. Virtual reality can be used to stimulate workplace situations for vocational learning for fields like hospitality, medical emergencies, healthcare, draughtsman ship, building inspection, quantity surveying, estimation, to name a few. All disruptions in future education, especially vocational education, are going to be technology driven with the advent of AI, ML, IoT, VR, VI etc. Vocational education not only helps institutes cut costs drastically, but allows all students to have hands-on experiences, rather than to be observers. The earlier experiential learning theory and the recent theory of knowledge and skills-based learning modified and applied to the vocational education and development of skills is the proposed contribution of this paper. Apart from secondary research study on major scholarly articles, books, primary research using interviews, questionnaire surveys have been used to validate and test the reliability of the suggested model using Partial Least Square- Structural Equation Method (PLS-SEM), the factors being assimilated using an existing literature review. Major findings have been that there exists high relationship between the vocational skills, RPL, new technology to the future employability through mediation of future employability skills.

Keywords: Vocational education, vocational skills, competencies, modern technologies, Recognition of Prior Learning, RPL.

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Authors: Huda S. Al-Azmi

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There is a growing consensus that adoption of teachers’ self-efficacy measurement tools help to assess teachers’ abilities in specific areas in order to improve their skills. As a result, different instruments to assess teachers’ ability were developed by academics and practitioners. However, many of these instruments focused either on general teaching skills, or on the other hand, were very specific to one subject. As such, these instruments do not offer a tool to measure the ability of teachers in teaching 21^st century skills such as innovation skills. Teaching innovation skills helps to prepare students for lives and careers in the 21^st century. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument measuring teachers’ self-efficacy of teaching innovation skills related to the classroom context and evaluating the teachers’ beliefs regarding their ability in teaching innovation skills. To reach this goal, the 16-item instrument measures four dimensions of innovation skills: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. 211 secondary-school teachers filled out the survey to quantitatively analyze the quality of the instrument. The instrument’s reliability and item analysis were measured by using jMetrik. The results concluded that the mean of self-efficacy ranged from 3 to 3.6 without extreme high or low self-efficacy scores. The discrimination analysis revealed that one item recorded a negative correlation with the total, and three items recorded low correlation with the total. The reliabilities of items ranged from 0.64 to 0.69 and the instrument needed a couple of revisions before practical use. The study concluded the need to discard one item and revise five items to increase the quality of the instrument for future work.

Keywords: Critical thinking, collaboration, innovation skills, self-efficacy.

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Authors: Yeo Kyeong Lee, Hae Won Min, Ji Yeon Kang, Hee Sun Kim, Yeong Soo Shin

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In recent years, fire accidents have been steadily increased and the amount of property damage caused by the accidents has gradually raised. Damaging building structure, fire incidents bring about not only such property damage but also strength degradation and member deformation. As a result, the building structure undermines its structural ability. Examining the degradation and the deformation is very important because reusing the building is more economical than reconstruction. Therefore, engineers need to investigate the strength degradation and member deformation well, and make sure that they apply right rehabilitation methods. This study aims at evaluating deformation characteristics of fire damaged and rehabilitated normal strength concrete beams through both experiments and finite element analyses. For the experiments, control beams, fire damaged beams and rehabilitated beams are tested to examine deformation characteristics. Ten test beam specimens with compressive strength of 21MPa are fabricated and main test variables are selected as cover thickness of 40mm and 50mm and fire exposure time of 1 hour or 2 hours. After heating, fire damaged beams are air-recurred for 2 months and rehabilitated beams are repaired with polymeric cement mortar after being removed the fire damaged concrete cover. All beam specimens are tested under four points loading. FE analyses are executed to investigate the effects of main parameters applied to experimental study. Test results show that both maximum load and stiffness of the rehabilitated beams are higher than those of the fire damaged beams. In addition, predicted structural behaviors from the analyses also show good rehabilitation effect and the predicted load-deflection curves are similar to the experimental results. For the further, the proposed analytical method can be used to predict deformation characteristics of fire damaged and rehabilitated concrete beams without suffering from time and cost consuming of experimental process.

Keywords: Fire, Normal strength concrete, Rehabilitation, Reinforced concrete beam.

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Authors: Bilgehan Gültekin, Tuba Gültekin

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It is quite essential to form dialogue mechanisms and dialogue channels to solve intercultural communication issues. Therefore, every country should develop a intercultural education project which aims to resolve international communication issues. For proper mediation training, the first step is to reach an agreement on the actors to run the project. The strongest mediation mechanisms in the world should be analyzed and initiated within the educational policies. A communication-based mediation model should be developed for international mediation training. Mediators can use their convincing communication skills as a part of this model. At the first, fundamental stages of the mediation training should be specified within the scope of the model. Another important topic at this point is common sence and peace leaders to act as an ombudsman in this process. Especially for solving some social issues and conflicts, common sense leaders acting as an ombudsman would lead to effective communication. In mediation training that is run by universities and non-governmental organizations, another phase is to focus on conducting the meetings. In intercultural mediation training, one of the most critical topics is to conduct the meeting traffic and performing a shuttle diplomacy. Meeting traffic is where the mediator organizes meetings with the parties with initiative powers, in order to contribute to the solution of the issue, and schedule these meetings. In this notice titled “ Intercultural mediation training and the training process of common sense leaders by the leadership of universities communication and artistic campaigns" , communication models and strategies about this topic will be constructed and an intercultural art activities and perspectives will be presented.

Keywords: Intercultural communication, mediation education, common sense leaders, artistic sensitivity

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Authors: Mohammad Ali Jabraeil Jamali, Ahmad Khademzadeh

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The success of an electronic system in a System-on- Chip is highly dependent on the efficiency of its interconnection network, which is constructed from routers and channels (the routers move data across the channels between nodes). Since neither classical bus based nor point to point architectures can provide scalable solutions and satisfy the tight power and performance requirements of future applications, the Network-on-Chip (NoC) approach has recently been proposed as a promising solution. Indeed, in contrast to the traditional solutions, the NoC approach can provide large bandwidth with moderate area overhead. The selected topology of the components interconnects plays prime rule in the performance of NoC architecture as well as routing and switching techniques that can be used. In this paper, we present two generic NoC architectures that can be customized to the specific communication needs of an application in order to reduce the area with minimal degradation of the latency of the system. An experimental study is performed to compare these structures with basic NoC topologies represented by 2D mesh, Butterfly-Fat Tree (BFT) and SPIN. It is shown that Cluster mesh (CMesh) and MinRoot schemes achieves significant improvements in network latency and energy consumption with only negligible area overhead and complexity over existing architectures. In fact, in the case of basic NoC topologies, CMesh and MinRoot schemes provides substantial savings in area as well, because they requires fewer routers. The simulation results show that CMesh and MinRoot networks outperforms MESH, BFT and SPIN in main performance metrics.

Keywords: MinRoot, CMesh, NoC, Topology, Performance Evaluation

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Authors: Ek-Uma Imkome, Jintana Yunibhand, Waraporn Chaiyawat

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Background: Persons with schizophrenia patient and misusing methamphetamines suffering from social dysfunction that impact on their quality of life. Knowledge of factors related to social dysfunction will guide the effective intervention. Objectives: To determine the direct effect, indirect effect and total effect of an acerbate Psychotics’ Symptoms, Social Support, Stressful life events, Medication use self-efficacy impact on social dysfunction in Thai schizophrenic patient and methamphetamine misuse. Methods: Data were collected from schizophrenic and methamphetamine misuse patient by self report. A linear structural relationship was used to test the hypothesized path model. Results: The hypothesized model was found to fit the empirical data and explained 54% of the variance of the psychotic symptoms (X² = 114.35, df = 92, p-value = 0.05, X² /df = 1.24, GFI = 0.96, AGFI = 0.92, CFI = 1.00, NFI = 0.99, NNFI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.02). The highest total effect on social dysfunction was psychotic symptoms (0.67, p<0.05). Medication use self-efficacy had a direct effect on psychotic symptoms (-0.25, p<0.01), and social support had direct effect on medication use self efficacy (0.36, p <0.01). Conclusions: Psychotic symptoms and stressful life events were the significance factors that influenced direct on social dysfunctioning. Therefore, interventions that are designed to manage these factors are crucial in order to enhance social functioning in this population.

Keywords: Psychotic symptoms, methamphetamine, schizophrenia, stressful life events, social dysfunction, social support, medication use self-efficacy.

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Authors: Anesha Atul Shende

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When we are aiming at high goals for economic development such as sustainable growth and development of economy, poverty reduction, and reduction in inequality etc., we must not forget to include each and everyone in the society in process of achieving these goals. This study particularly talks about women’s participation in economic activities with the special focus on the analysis of female labour force participation rate in the states of India. It makes comparison between the states having low female labour force participation with the states that have comparatively high female labour population. The study began with review of data on the current state of gender biases in employment. It has been found that the male workforce is dominant all across India. Further, the study highlights the major reasons for low women participation in economic activities in some of the backward Indian states like Bihar, etc. Reasons for low female participation are related to economic, cultural and social factors that are responsible for women’s unemployment. Afterwards, it analyses the reasons behind comparatively higher female participation in some of the other states in India. The case of the north-eastern region and state of Telangana and Tamil Nadu have been analysed in brief. These states show improvements in female labour force participation over a few decades. This is due to the government policies that have been adopted, women-friendly workplaces, availability of quality jobs for women etc. UN women has recognized the social and economic benefits of having an active female labour force in a country; if female unemployment declines, it will improve the growth rate of the nation as well as the welfare of the society. The study discusses the reasons why an economy must try to increase female workforce participation. It further provides suggestions to improve the conditions in backward states in India where the unemployment rate for women is high. The policy interventions and government schemes are some of the ways to recognise poor women workforce participation issues and work on it. The condition will improve when the changes would take place from regional level with social and moral support to the women.

Keywords: Women unemployment, labour force participation, women empowerment, economic growth and development, gender disparity.

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