Search results for: high temperature erosion.

Authors: Tonislav Ivanov, Oleksii Nedashkivskyi, Denis Babeshko, Vadim Pinskiy, Matthew Putman

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Training a machine learning model for object detection that generalizes well is known to benefit from a training dataset with diverse examples. However, training datasets usually contain many repeats of common examples of a class and lack rarely seen examples. This is due to the process commonly used during human annotation where a person would proceed sequentially through a list of images labeling a sufficiently high total number of examples. Instead, the method presented involves an active process where, after the initial labeling of several images is completed, the next subset of images for labeling is selected by an algorithm. This process of algorithmic image selection and manual labeling continues in an iterative fashion. The algorithm used for the image selection is a deep learning algorithm, based on the U-shaped architecture, which quantifies the presence of unseen data in each image in order to find images that contain the most novel examples. Moreover, the location of the unseen data in each image is highlighted, aiding the labeler in spotting these examples. Experiments performed using semiconductor wafer data show that labeling a subset of the data, curated by this algorithm, resulted in a model with a better performance than a model produced from sequentially labeling the same amount of data. Also, similar performance is achieved compared to a model trained on exhaustive labeling of the whole dataset. Overall, the proposed approach results in a dataset that has a diverse set of examples per class as well as more balanced classes, which proves beneficial when training a deep learning model.

Keywords: Computer vision, deep learning, object detection, semiconductor.

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Authors: Ranjan Sarukkalige, Dinushi Gamage

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The aim of this study was to develop a storm water quality improvement strategy plan (WQISP) which assists managers and decision makers of local city councils in enhancing their activities to improve regional water quality. City of Gosnells in Western Australia has been considered as a case study. The procedure on developing the WQISP consists of reviewing existing water quality data, identifying water quality issues in the study areas and developing a decision making tool for the officers, managers and decision makers. It was found that land use type is the main factor affecting the water quality. Therefore, activities, sources and pollutants related to different land use types including residential, industrial, agricultural and commercial are given high importance during the study. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with coordinators of different management sections of the regional councils in order to understand the associated management framework and issues. The issues identified from these interviews were used in preparing the decision making tool. Variables associated with the defined “value versus threat" decision making tool are obtained from the intensive literature review. The main recommendations provided for improvement of water quality in local city councils, include non-structural, structural and management controls and potential impacts of climate change.

Keywords: Storm water quality, Storm water Management, Land use, Strategy plan

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Authors: Hassan Masoumi, Rashed Alavi

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Wheat is one of the strategic crops in Iran, on which the household food basket is highly dependent. Although this crop is cultivated and produced in almost all provinces of the country, its production efficiency is lower than the global and regional averages due to the lack of optimal use of allocated resources. In this research, which was carried out with a documentary and library method, first, the total and partial productivity indices of irrigated wheat production were calculated in large, medium and small exploitation scales in different provinces of the country, and then the provinces were clustered in terms of these indices. The results showed that the total productivity of production factors had a direct correlation with the scale of exploitation, so that with the increase in the size of exploitations, the total productivity index increased. On the scale of small exploitations, North Khorasan, Zanjan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, on a medium scale, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province and on the scale of large exploitations, Zanjan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinces, Kohkiloyeh and Boyer Ahmad and North Khorasan, with better use of production resources compared to other provinces, were placed in the best cluster in terms of total productivity index. The high total productivity index in Zanjan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province is related to the higher productivity of factors such as mechanization and land in these provinces. Finally, the methods of using these factors in productive provinces, along with technical and specialized regional guidelines, can facilitate the improvement of productivity in less productive provinces.

Keywords: Clustering, Irrigated wheat, Iran, total productivity.

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Authors: Abimbola M. Enitan, Josiah Adeyemo, Sheena Kumari, Feroz M. Swalaha, Faizal Bux

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Industries produce millions of cubic meters of effluent every year and the wastewater produced may be released into the surrounding water bodies, treated on-site or at municipal treatment plants. The determination of organic matter in the wastewater generated is very important to avoid any negative effect on the aquatic ecosystem. The scope of the present work is to assess the physicochemical composition of the wastewater produced from one of the brewery industry in South Africa. This is to estimate the environmental impact of its discharge into the receiving water bodies or the municipal treatment plant. The parameters monitored for the quantitative analysis of brewery wastewater include biological oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids, volatile suspended solids, ammonia, total oxidized nitrogen, nitrate, nitrite, phosphorus and alkalinity content. In average, the COD concentration of the brewery effluent was 5340.97 mg/l with average pH values of 4.0 to 6.7. The BOD5 and the solids content of the wastewater from the brewery industry were high. This means that the effluent is very rich in organic content and its discharge into the water bodies or the municipal treatment plant could cause environmental pollution or damage the treatment plant. In addition, there were variations in the wastewater composition throughout the monitoring period. This might be as a result of different activities that take place during the production process, as well as the effects of peak period of beer production on the water usage.

Keywords: Brewery wastewater, environmental pollution, industrial effluents, physicochemical composition.

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Authors: Rajvir Kaur, Jeewani Anupama Ginige

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With recent trends in Big Data and advancements in Information and Communication Technologies, the healthcare industry is at the stage of its transition from clinician oriented to technology oriented. Many people around the world die of cancer because the diagnosis of disease was not done at an early stage. Nowadays, the computational methods in the form of Machine Learning (ML) are used to develop automated decision support systems that can diagnose cancer with high confidence in a timely manner. This paper aims to carry out the comparative evaluation of a selected set of ML classifiers on two existing datasets: breast cancer and cervical cancer. The ML classifiers compared in this study are Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Logistic Regression, Ensemble (Bagged Tree) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The evaluation is carried out based on standard evaluation metrics Precision (P), Recall (R), F1-score and Accuracy. The experimental results based on the evaluation metrics show that ANN showed the highest-level accuracy (99.4%) when tested with breast cancer dataset. On the other hand, when these ML classifiers are tested with the cervical cancer dataset, Ensemble (Bagged Tree) technique gave better accuracy (93.1%) in comparison to other classifiers.

Keywords: Artificial neural networks, breast cancer, cancer dataset, classifiers, cervical cancer, F-score, logistic regression, machine learning, precision, recall, support vector machine.

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Authors: Majid Saaly, Shahriar Tavousi Tafreshi, Mehdi Nazari Afshar

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Most reinforced concrete structures are designed only under heavy loads have large transverse reinforcement spacing values, and therefore suffer severe failure after intense ground movements. The main goal of this paper is to compare the shear- and axial failure of concrete bending frames available in Tehran using Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) under near- and far-field records. For this purpose, IDA of 5, 10, and 15-story concrete structures were done under seven far-fault records and five near-faults records. The results show that in two-dimensional models of short-rise, mid-rise and high-rise reinforced concrete frames located on Type-3 soil, increasing the distance of the transverse reinforcement can increase the maximum inter-story drift ratio values up to 37%. According to the existing results on 5, 10, and 15-story reinforced concrete models located on Type-3 soil, records with characteristics such as fling-step and directivity create maximum drift values between floors more than far-fault earthquakes. The results indicated that in the case of seismic excitation modes under earthquake encompassing directivity or fling-step, the probability values of failure and failure possibility increasing rate values are much smaller than the corresponding values of far-fault earthquakes. However, in near-fault frame records, the probability of exceedance occurs at lower seismic intensities compared to far-fault records.

Keywords: Directivity, fling-step, fragility curve, IDA, inter story drift ratio.v

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Authors: H. B. Kekre, Sudeep D. Thepade

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The automatic construction of large, high-resolution image vistas (mosaics) is an active area of research in the fields of photogrammetry [1,2], computer vision [1,4], medical image processing [4], computer graphics [3] and biometrics [8]. Image stitching is one of the possible options to get image mosaics. Vista Creation in image processing is used to construct an image with a large field of view than that could be obtained with a single photograph. It refers to transforming and stitching multiple images into a new aggregate image without any visible seam or distortion in the overlapping areas. Vista creation process aligns two partial images over each other and blends them together. Image mosaics allow one to compensate for differences in viewing geometry. Thus they can be used to simplify tasks by simulating the condition in which the scene is viewed from a fixed position with single camera. While obtaining partial images the geometric anomalies like rotation, scaling are bound to happen. To nullify effect of rotation of partial images on process of vista creation, we are proposing rotation invariant vista creation algorithm in this paper. Rotation of partial image parts in the proposed method of vista creation may introduce some missing region in the vista. To correct this error, that is to fill the missing region further we have used image inpainting method on the created vista. This missing view regeneration method also overcomes the problem of missing view [31] in vista due to cropping, irregular boundaries of partial image parts and errors in digitization [35]. The method of missing view regeneration generates the missing view of vista using the information present in vista itself.

Keywords: Vista, Overlap Estimation, Rotation Invariance, Missing View Regeneration.

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Authors: Mojisola F. Oyewole, Franscisca T. Adetoro, Nkiru T. Meludu

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Moringa oleifera is a nutritious vegetable tree with varieties of potential uses, as almost every part of the Moringa oleifera tree can be used for food. This study was conducted in Oyo State, Nigeria, to find out the level of acceptability of Moringa oleifera diversified products among rural and urban dwellers. Purposive sampling was used to select two local governments’ areas. Stratified sampling technique was also used to select one community each from rural and urban areas while snowball sampling technique was used to select ten respondents each from the two communities, making a total number of forty respondents. Data were analyzed using frequencies, percentages, Chi-square, Pearson Product Moment Correlation and regression analysis. Result from the study revealed that majority of the respondents (80%) fell within the age range of 20-49 years and 55% of them were male, 55% were married, 70% of them were Christians, 80% of them had tertiary education. The result also showed that 85% were aware of the Moringa plant and (65%) of them have consumed Moringa oleifera and the perception statements on the benefits of Moringa oleifera indicated that (52.5%) of the respondents rated Moringa oleifera to be favorable, most of them had high acceptability for Moringa egusi soup, Moringa tea, Moringa pap and yam pottage with Moringa. The result of the hypotheses testing showed that there is a significant relationship between sex of the respondents and acceptability of the diversified Moringa oleifera products (x2=6.465, p = 0.011). There is also a significant relationship between family size of the respondents level of acceptability of the Moringa oleifera products (r = 0.327, p = 0.040). Based on the level of acceptability of Moringa oleifera diversified products; the plant is of great economic importance to the populace. Therefore, there should be more public awareness through the media to enlighten people on the beneficial effects of Moringa oleifera.

Keywords: Acceptability, Moringa oleifera, Diversified, Product, Dwellers.

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Authors: Mousa Bani Baker, Maria Elektorowicz, Adel Hanna, Altayeb Qasem

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Liners are made to protect the groundwater table from the infiltration of leachate which normally carries different kinds of toxic materials from landfills. Although these liners are engineered to last for long period of time; unfortunately these liners fail; therefore, toxic materials pass to groundwater. This paper focuses on the changes of the hydraulic conductivity of a sand-bentonite liner due to the infiltration of biofuel and ethanol fuel. Series of laboratory tests were conducted in 20-cm-high PVC columns. Several compositions of sand-bentonite liners were tested: 95% sand: 5% bentonite; 90% sand: 10% bentonite; and 100% sand (passed mesh #40). The columns were subjected to extreme pressures of 40 kPa, and 100 kPa to evaluate the transport of alternative fuels (biofuel and ethanol fuel). For comparative studies, similar tests were carried out using water. Results showed that hydraulic conductivity increased due to the infiltration of alternative fuels through the liners. Accordingly, the increase in the hydraulic conductivity showed significant dependency on the type of liner mixture and the characteristics of the liquid. The hydraulic conductivity of a liner (subjected to biofuel infiltration) consisting of 5% bentonite: 95% sand under pressure of 40 kPa and 100 kPa had increased by one fold. In addition, the hydraulic conductivity of a liner consisting of 10% bentonite: 90% sand under pressure of 40 kPa and 100 kPa and infiltrated by biofuel had increased by three folds. On the other hand, the results obtained by water infiltration under 40 kPa showed lower hydraulic conductivities of 1.50×10-5 and 1.37×10-9 cm/s for 5% bentonite: 95% sand, and 10% bentonite: 90% sand, respectively. Similarly, under 100 kPa, the hydraulic conductivities were 2.30×10-5 and 1.90×10-9 cm/s for 5% bentonite: 95% sand, and 10% bentonite: 90% sand, respectively.

Keywords: Biofuel, Ethanol; Hydraulic conductivity Landfill, Leakage, Liner failure, Liner performance Fine-grained soils, Particle size, Sand-bentonite.

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Authors: Ml. López-Moreno, Le. Lugo Avilés, Fr. Román, J. Lugo Rosas, Ja. Hernández-Viezcas, Jr. Peralta-Videa, Jl. Gardea-Torresdey

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Degradation of agricultural soils has increased rapidly during the last 20 years due to the indiscriminate use of pesticides and other anthropogenic activities. Currently, there is an urgent need of soil restoration to increase agricultural production. Utilization of sewage sludge or municipal solid waste is an important way to recycle nutrient elements and improve soil quality. With these amendments, nutrient availability in the aqueous phase might be increased and production of healthier crops can be accomplished. This research project aimed to achieve sustainable management of tropical agricultural soils, specifically in Puerto Rico, through the amendment of water treatment plant sludge’s. This practice avoids landfill disposal of sewage sludge and at the same time results costeffective practice for recycling solid waste residues. Coriander sativum was cultivated in a compost-soil-sludge mixture at different proportions. Results showed that Coriander grown in a mixture of 25% compost+50% Voladora soi+25% sludge had the best growth and development. High chlorophyll content (33.01 ± 0.8) was observed in Coriander plants cultivated in 25% compost+62.5% Coloso soil+ 12.5% sludge compared to plants grown with no sludge (32.59 ± 0.7). ICP-OES analysis showed variations in mineral element contents (macro and micronutrients) in coriander plant grown I soil amended with sludge and compost.

Keywords: Compost, Coriandrum sativum, nutrients, waste sludge.

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Venerando Eustáquio Amaro

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The objective of this study was to improve our understanding of vulnerability and environmental change; it's causes basically show the intensity, its distribution and human-environment effect on the ecosystem in the Apodi Valley Region, This paper is identify, assess and classify vulnerability and environmental change in the Apodi valley region using a combined approach of landscape pattern and ecosystem sensitivity. Models were developed using the following five thematic layers: Geology, geomorphology, soil, vegetation and land use/cover, by means of a Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based on hydro-geophysical parameters. In spite of the data problems and shortcomings, using ESRI-s ArcGIS 9.3 program, the vulnerability score, to classify, weight and combine a number of 15 separate land cover classes to create a single indicator provides a reliable measure of differences (6 classes) among regions and communities that are exposed to similar ranges of hazards. Indeed, the ongoing and active development of vulnerability concepts and methods have already produced some tools to help overcome common issues, such as acting in a context of high uncertainties, taking into account the dynamics and spatial scale of asocial-ecological system, or gathering viewpoints from different sciences to combine human and impact-based approaches. Based on this assessment, this paper proposes concrete perspectives and possibilities to benefit from existing commonalities in the construction and application of assessment tools.

Keywords: Vulnerability, Land use/cover, Ecosystem, Remotesensing, GIS.

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Authors: Antonella Hadzich, Santiago Flores

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Alkyds have become essential raw materials in the coating and paint industry, due to their low cost, good application properties and lower environmental impact in comparison with petroleum-based polymers. The properties of these oil-modified materials depend on the type of polyunsaturated vegetable oil used for its manufacturing, since a higher degree of unsaturation provides a better crosslinking of the cured paint. Linum usitatissimum L. (flax) oil is widely used to develop alkyd resins due to its high degree of unsaturation. Although it is intended to find non-traditional sources and increase their commercial value, to authors’ best knowledge a natural source that can replace flaxseed oil has not yet been found. However, Plukenetia volubilis L. oil, of Peruvian origin, contains a similar fatty acid polyunsaturated content to the one reported for Linum usitatissimum L. oil. In this perspective, medium alkyd resins were prepared with a mixture of 50% of Linum usitatissimum L. oil and 50% of Plukenetia volubilis L. oil. Pure Linum usitatissimum L. oil was also used for comparison purposes. Three different resins were obtained by varying the amount of glycerol and pentaerythritol. The synthesized alkyd resins were characterized by FT-IR, and physicochemical properties like acid value, colour, viscosity, density and drying time were evaluated by standard methods. The pencil hardness and chemical resistance behaviour of the cured resins were also studied. Overall, it can be concluded that medium alkyd resins containing Plukenetia volubilis L. oil have an equivalent behaviour compared to those prepared purely with Linum usitatissimum L. oil. Both Plukenetia volubilis L. oil and pentaerythritol have a remarkable influence on certain physicochemical properties of medium alkyd resins.

Keywords: Alkyd resins, flaxseed oil, pentaerythritol, Plukenetia volubilis L. oil, protective coating.

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Authors: Charlotte C. Shagol, Tongmin Sa

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One of the major pollutants in the environment is arsenic (As). Due to the toxic effects of As to all organisms, its remediation is necessary. Conventional technologies used in the remediation of As contaminated soils are expensive and may even compromise the structure of the soil. An attractive alternative is phytoremediation, which is the use of plants which can take up the contaminant in their tissues. Plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) has been known to enhance growth of plants through several mechanisms such as phytohormone production, phosphate solubilization, siderophore production and 1-aminocyclopropane-1- carboxylate (ACC) deaminase production, which is an essential trait that aids plants especially under stress conditions such as As stress. Twenty one bacteria were isolated from As-contaminated soils in the vicinity of the Janghang Smelter in Chungnam Province, South Korea. These exhibited high tolerance to either arsenite (As III) or arsenate (As V) or both. Most of these isolates possess several plant growth promoting traits which can be potentially exploited to increase phytoremediation efficiency. Among the identified isolates is Pseudomonas sp. JS1215, which produces ACC deaminase, indole acetic acid (IAA), and siderophore. It also has the ability to solubilize phosphate. Inoculation of JS1215 significantly enhanced root and shoot length and biomass accumulation of maize under normal conditions. In the presence of As, particularly in lower As level, inoculation of JS1215 slightly increased root length and biomass. Ethylene increased with increasing As concentration, but was reduced by JS1215 inoculation. JS1215 can be a potential bioinoculant for increasing phytoremediation efficiency.

Keywords: As-tolerant bacteria, plant growth promoting bacteria, As stress, phytoremediation.

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Authors: Ichiro Mukai

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The purpose of this study is to investigate whether firms applying International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), provide high-quality and comparable earnings information that is useful for decision making of information users relative to firms applying local Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Focus is placed on the earnings quality of listed firms in several developed countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US). Except for Japan and the US, the adoption of IFRS is mandatory for listed firms in these countries. In Japan, the application of IFRS is allowed for specific listed firms. In the US, the foreign firms listed on the US securities market are permitted to apply IFRS but the listed domestic firms are prohibited from doing so. In this paper, the differences in earnings quality are compared between firms applying local GAAP and those applying IFRS in each country and industry category, and the reasons of differences in earnings quality are analyzed using various factors. The results show that, although the earnings quality of firms applying IFRS is higher than that of firms applying local GAAP, this varies with country and industry category. Thus, even if a single set of global accounting standards is used for all listed firms worldwide, it is difficult to establish comparability of financial information among global firms. These findings imply that various circumstances surrounding firms, industries, and countries etc. influence business operations and affect the differences in earnings quality.

Keywords: Accruals, earnings quality, IFRS, information comparability.

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Authors: Ho-Jung Ryu, Seung-Yong Lee, Young Cheol Park, Moon-Hee Park

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Two-interconnected fluidized bed systems are widely used in various processes such as Fisher-Tropsch, hot gas desulfurization, CO2 capture-regeneration with dry sorbent, chemical-looping combustion, sorption enhanced steam methane reforming, chemical-looping hydrogen generation system, and so on. However, most of two-interconnected fluidized beds systems require riser and/or pneumatic transport line for solid conveying and loopseals or seal-pots for gas sealing, recirculation of solids to the riser, and maintaining of pressure balance. The riser (transport bed) is operated at the high velocity fluidization condition and residence times of gas and solid in the riser are very short. If the reaction rate of catalyst or sorbent is slow, the riser can not ensure sufficient contact time between gas and solid and we have to use two bubbling beds for each reaction to ensure sufficient contact time. In this case, additional riser must be installed for solid circulation. Consequently, conventional two-interconnected fluidized bed systems are very complex, large, and difficult to operate. To solve these problems, a novel two-interconnected fluidized bed system has been developed. This system has two bubbling beds, solid injection nozzles, solid conveying lines, and downcomers. In this study, effects of operating variables on solid circulation rate, gas leakage between two beds have been investigated in a cold mode two-interconnected fluidized bed system. Moreover, long-term operation of continuous solid circulation up to 60 hours has been performed to check feasibility of stable operation.

Keywords: Fluidized bed, Gas leakage, Long-term operation, Solid circulation.

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Authors: U. Datta

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The main objective of this study is to find a suitable approach to monitor the land infrastructure growth over a period of time using multispectral satellite images. Bi-temporal change detection method is unable to indicate the continuous change occurring over a long period of time. To achieve this objective, the approach used here estimates a statistical model from series of multispectral image data over a long period of time, assuming there is no considerable change during that time period and then compare it with the multispectral image data obtained at a later time. The change is estimated pixel-wise. Statistical composite hypothesis technique is used for estimating pixel based change detection in a defined region. The generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) is used to detect the changed pixel from probabilistic estimated model of the corresponding pixel. The changed pixel is detected assuming that the images have been co-registered prior to estimation. To minimize error due to co-registration, 8-neighborhood pixels around the pixel under test are also considered. The multispectral images from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 from 2015 to 2018 are used for this purpose. There are different challenges in this method. First and foremost challenge is to get quite a large number of datasets for multivariate distribution modelling. A large number of images are always discarded due to cloud coverage. Due to imperfect modelling there will be high probability of false alarm. Overall conclusion that can be drawn from this work is that the probabilistic method described in this paper has given some promising results, which need to be pursued further.

Keywords: Co-registration, GLRT, infrastructure growth, multispectral, multitemporal, pixel-based change detection.

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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: Prasanta Kundu, N.K. Kishore, A.K. Sinha

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Insulation used in transformer is mostly oil pressboard insulation. Insulation failure is one of the major causes of catastrophic failure of transformers. It is established that partial discharges (PD) cause insulation degradation and premature failure of insulation. Online monitoring of PDs can reduce the risk of catastrophic failure of transformers. There are different techniques of partial discharge measurement like, electrical, optical, acoustic, opto-acoustic and ultra high frequency (UHF). Being non invasive and non interference prone, acoustic emission technique is advantageous for online PD measurement. Acoustic detection of p.d. is based on the retrieval and analysis of mechanical or pressure signals produced by partial discharges. Partial discharges are classified according to the origin of discharges. Their effects on insulation deterioration are different for different types. This paper reports experimental results and analysis for classification of partial discharges using acoustic emission signal of laboratory simulated partial discharges in oil pressboard insulation system using three different electrode systems. Acoustic emission signal produced by PD are detected by sensors mounted on the experimental tank surface, stored on an oscilloscope and fed to computer for further analysis. The measured AE signals are analyzed using discrete wavelet transform analysis and wavelet packet analysis. Energy distribution in different frequency bands of discrete wavelet decomposed signal and wavelet packet decomposed signal is calculated. These analyses show a distinct feature useful for PD classification. Wavelet packet analysis can sort out any misclassification arising out of DWT in most cases.

Keywords: Acoustic emission, discrete wavelet transform, partial discharge, wavelet packet analysis.

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Authors: Ziad Abdeldayem, Jakub Markiewicz, Kunal Kansara, Laura Edwards

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Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) is one of the main technologies for generating high-resolution digital terrain models (DTMs). DTMs are crucial to several applications, such as topographic mapping, flood zone delineation, geographic information systems (GIS), hydrological modelling, spatial analysis, etc. Laser scanning system generates irregularly spaced three-dimensional cloud of points. Raw ALS data are mainly ground points (that represent the bare earth) and non-ground points (that represent buildings, trees, cars, etc.). Removing all the non-ground points from the raw data is referred to as filtering. Filtering heavily forested areas is considered a difficult and challenging task as the canopy stops laser pulses from reaching the terrain surface. This research presents an approach for removing non-ground points from raw ALS data in densely forested areas. Smoothing splines are exploited to interpolate and fit the noisy ALS data. The presented filter utilizes a weight function to allocate weights for each point of the data. Furthermore, unlike most of the methods, the presented filtering algorithm is designed to be automatic. Three different forested areas in the United Kingdom are used to assess the performance of the algorithm. The results show that the generated DTMs from the filtered data are accurate (when compared against reference terrain data) and the performance of the method is stable for all the heavily forested data samples. The average root mean square error (RMSE) value is 0.35 m.

Keywords: Airborne laser scanning, digital terrain models, filtering, forested areas.

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Authors: Zi-Ang Li, Mu-Xuan Tao

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During the process of the industrialization of steel structure housing, a composite structural system with separated gravity and lateral resistant systems has been applied in engineering practices, which consists of composite frame with hinged beam-column joints, steel brace and RC shear wall. As an attempt in steel structural system area, seismic performance evaluation of the separated composite structure is important for further application in steel housing. This paper focuses on the seismic performance comparison of the separated composite structural system and traditional steel frame-shear wall system under the same inter-story drift ratio (IDR) provision limit. The same architectural layout of a high-rise building is designed as two different structural systems at the same IDR level, and finite element analysis using pushover method is carried out. Static pushover analysis implies that the separated structural system exhibits different lateral deformation mode and failure mechanism with traditional steel frame-shear wall system. Different indexes are adopted and discussed in seismic performance evaluation, including IDR, safe factor (SF), shear wall damage, etc. The performance under maximum considered earthquake (MCE) demand spectrum shows that the shear wall damage of two structural systems are similar; the separated composite structural system exhibits less plastic hinges; and the SF index value of the separated composite structural system is higher than the steel frame shear wall structural system.

Keywords: Finite element analysis, seismic performance evaluation, separated composite structural system, static pushover analysis.

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Authors: Shidvash Vakilipour, Masoud Mohammadi, Rouzbeh Riazi, Scott Ormiston, Kimia Amiri, Sahar Barati

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An essential component of a finite volume method (FVM) is the advection scheme that estimates values on the cell faces based on the calculated values on the nodes or cell centers. The most widely used advection schemes are upwind schemes. These schemes have been developed in FVM on different kinds of structured and unstructured grids. In this research, the physical influence scheme (PIS) is developed for a cell-centered FVM that uses an implicit coupled solver. Results are compared with the exponential differencing scheme (EDS) and the skew upwind differencing scheme (SUDS). Accuracy of these schemes is evaluated for a lid-driven cavity flow at Re = 1000, 3200, and 5000 and a backward-facing step flow at Re = 800. Simulations show considerable differences between the results of EDS scheme with benchmarks, especially for the lid-driven cavity flow at high Reynolds numbers. These differences occur due to false diffusion. Comparing SUDS and PIS schemes shows relatively close results for the backward-facing step flow and different results in lid-driven cavity flow. The poor results of SUDS in the lid-driven cavity flow can be related to its lack of sensitivity to the pressure difference between cell face and upwind points, which is critical for the prediction of such vortex dominant flows.

Keywords: Cell-centered finite volume method, physical influence scheme, exponential differencing scheme, skew upwind differencing scheme, false diffusion.

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Authors: P. Thepnarintra, S. Nikorn

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Agricultural machinery industry plays an important role in the industrial development especially the production industry of the country. There has been continuing development responding to the higher demand of the production. However, the problem in agricultural machinery production still exists. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate problems on fundamental factors of industry based on the entrepreneurs’ point of view. The focus was on the small and medium size industry receiving factory license type number 0660 from the Department of Industrial Works. The investigation was on the comparison between the management of the small and medium size agricultural industry in 3 provinces in the central region of Thailand. Population in this study consisted of 189 company managers or managing directors, of which 101 were from the small size and 88 were from the medium size industry. The data were analyzed to find percentage, arithmetic mean, and standard deviation with independent sample T-test at the statistical significance .05. The results showed that the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers in the central region of Thailand reported high problems in every aspect. When compared the problems on basic factors in running the business, it was found that there was no statistically difference at .05 in managing of the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers on the aspect of policy and services of the government. The problems reported by the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers were the services on public tap water and the problem on politic and stability of the country.

Keywords: Agricultural machinery, manufacturers, problems, on running the business.

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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: J. Bernasovska, I. Boronova, J. Poracova, M. Mydlarova Blascakova, V. Szabadosova, P. Ruzbarsky, E. Petrejcikova, I. Bernasovsky

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The paper presents the results of the molecular genetics analysis in sports research, with special emphasis to use genetic information in diagnosing of motoric predispositions in Roma boys from East Slovakia. The ability and move are the basic characteristics of all living organisms. The phenotypes are influenced by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Genetic tests differ in principle from the traditional motoric tests, because the DNA of an individual does not change during life. The aim of the presented study was to examine motion abilities and to determine the frequency of ACTN3 (R577X) gene in Roma children. Genotype data were obtained from 138 Roma and 155 Slovak boys from 7 to 15 years old. Children were investigated on physical performance level in association with their genotype. Biological material for genetic analyses comprised samples of buccal swabs. Genotypes were determined using Real Time High resolution melting PCR method (Rotor-Gene 6000 Corbett and Light Cycler 480 Roche). The software allows creating reports of any analysis, where information of the specific analysis, normalized and differential graphs and many information of the samples are shown. Roma children of analyzed group legged to non-Romany children at the same age in all the compared tests. The % distribution of R and X alleles in Roma children was different from controls. The frequency of XX genotype was 9.26%, RX 46.33% and RR was 44.41%. The frequency of XX genotype was 9.26% which is comparable to a frequency of an Indian population. Data were analyzed with the ANOVA test.

Keywords: ACTN3 gene, R577X polymorphism, Roma children, Slovakia, sports performance.

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Authors: Jagadish H. Pujar, Pallavi S. Gurjal, Shambhavi D. S, Kiran S. Kunnur

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Medical image segmentation based on image smoothing followed by edge detection assumes a great degree of importance in the field of Image Processing. In this regard, this paper proposes a novel algorithm for medical image segmentation based on vigorous smoothening by identifying the type of noise and edge diction ideology which seems to be a boom in medical image diagnosis. The main objective of this algorithm is to consider a particular medical image as input and make the preprocessing to remove the noise content by employing suitable filter after identifying the type of noise and finally carrying out edge detection for image segmentation. The algorithm consists of three parts. First, identifying the type of noise present in the medical image as additive, multiplicative or impulsive by analysis of local histograms and denoising it by employing Median, Gaussian or Frost filter. Second, edge detection of the filtered medical image is carried out using Canny edge detection technique. And third part is about the segmentation of edge detected medical image by the method of Normalized Cut Eigen Vectors. The method is validated through experiments on real images. The proposed algorithm has been simulated on MATLAB platform. The results obtained by the simulation shows that the proposed algorithm is very effective which can deal with low quality or marginal vague images which has high spatial redundancy, low contrast and biggish noise, and has a potential of certain practical use of medical image diagnosis.

Keywords: Image Segmentation, Image smoothing, Edge Detection, Impulsive noise, Gaussian noise, Median filter, Canny edge, Eigen values, Eigen vector.

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Authors: Chaiwat Tantarangsee

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The purposes of this study are 1) to study the effects of participatory error correction process and 2) to find out the students’ satisfaction of such error correction process. This study is a Quasi Experimental Research with single group, in which data is collected 5 times preceding and following 4 experimental studies of participatory error correction process including providing coded indirect corrective feedback in the students’ texts with error treatment activities. Samples include 52 2nd year English Major students, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. Tool for experimental study includes the lesson plan of the course; Reading and Writing English for Academic Purposes II, and tools for data collection include 5 writing tests of short texts and a questionnaire. Based on formative evaluation of the students’ writing ability prior to and after each of the 4 experiments, the research findings disclose the students’ higher scores with statistical difference at 0.00. Moreover, in terms of the effect size of such process, it is found that for mean of the students’ scores prior to and after the 4 experiments; d equals 0.6801, 0.5093, 0.5071, and 0.5296 respectively. It can be concluded that participatory error correction process enables all of the students to learn equally well and there is improvement in their ability to write short texts. Finally the students’ overall satisfaction of the participatory error correction process is in high level (Mean = 4.39, S.D. = 0.76).

Keywords: Coded indirect corrective feedback, participatory error correction process, error treatment.

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Authors: D. Jayalakshmi, S. Bhosale

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This paper, in its first part, presents the state-of-the-art literature of design approaches for geosynthetic reinforced unpaved roads. The literature starting since 1970 and the critical appraisal of flexible pavement design by Giroud and Han (2004) and Jonathan Fannin (2006) is presented. The design example is illustrated for Indian conditions. The example emphasizes the results computed by Giroud and Han's (2004) design method with the Indian road congress guidelines by IRC SP 72 -2015. The input data considered are related to the subgrade soil condition of Maharashtra State in India. The unified soil classification of the subgrade soil is inorganic clay with high plasticity (CH), which is expansive with a California bearing ratio (CBR) of 2% to 3%. The example exhibits the unreinforced case and geotextile as reinforcement by varying the rut depth from 25 mm to 100 mm. The present result reveals the base thickness for the unreinforced case from the IRC design catalogs is in good agreement with Giroud and Han (2004) approach for a range of 75 mm to 100 mm rut depth. Since Giroud and Han (2004) method is applicable for both reinforced and unreinforced cases, for the same data with appropriate Nc factor, for the same rut depth, the base thickness for the reinforced case has arrived for the Indian condition. From this trial, for the CBR of 2%, the base thickness reduction due to geotextile inclusion is 35%. For the CBR range of 2% to 5% with different stiffness in geosynthetics, the reduction in base course thickness will be evaluated, and the validation will be executed by the full-scale accelerated pavement testing set up at the College of Engineering Pune (COE), India.

Keywords: Base thickness, design approach, equation, full scale accelerated pavement set up, Indian condition.

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Authors: Peng Hao Wang, Garam Kim, Ronald Sterkenburg

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In composite manufacturing, the fabrication of tooling and tooling maintenance contributes to a large portion of the total cost. However, as the applications of composite materials continue to increase, there is also a growing demand for more tooling. The demand for more tooling places heavy emphasis on the industry’s ability to fabricate high quality tools while maintaining the tool’s cost effectiveness. One of the popular techniques of tool fabrication currently being developed utilizes additive manufacturing technology known as 3D printing. The popularity of 3D printing is due to 3D printing’s ability to maintain low material waste, low cost, and quick fabrication time. In this study, a team of Purdue University School of Aviation and Transportation Technology (SATT) faculty and students investigated the effectiveness of a 3D printed composite mold. A steel valve cover from an aircraft reciprocating engine was modeled utilizing 3D scanning and computer-aided design (CAD) to create a 3D printed composite mold. The mold was used to fabricate carbon fiber versions of the aircraft reciprocating engine valve cover. The carbon fiber valve covers were evaluated for dimensional accuracy and quality while the 3D printed composite mold was evaluated for durability and dimensional stability. The data collected from this study provided valuable information in the understanding of 3D printed composite molds, potential improvements for the molds, and considerations for future tooling design.

Keywords: Additive manufacturing, carbon fiber, composite tooling, molds.

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Authors: Shiji Hu, Lei Li, Wanting Zhou, Daohong Yang

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The data encryption is the foundation of today’s communication. On this basis, to improve the speed of data encryption and decryption is always an important goal for high-speed applications. This paper proposed an elliptic curve crypto processor architecture based on SM2 prime field. Regarding hardware implementation, we optimized the algorithms in different stages of the structure. For modulo operation on finite field, we proposed an optimized improvement of the Karatsuba-Ofman multiplication algorithm and shortened the critical path through the pipeline structure in the algorithm implementation. Based on SM2 recommended prime field, a fast modular reduction algorithm is used to reduce 512-bit data obtained from the multiplication unit. The radix-4 extended Euclidean algorithm was used to realize the conversion between the affine coordinate system and the Jacobi projective coordinate system. In the parallel scheduling point operations on elliptic curves, we proposed a three-level parallel structure of point addition and point double based on the Jacobian projective coordinate system. Combined with the scalar multiplication algorithm, we added mutual pre-operation to the point addition and double point operation to improve the efficiency of the scalar point multiplication. The proposed ECC hardware architecture was verified and implemented on Xilinx Virtex-7 and ZYNQ-7 platforms, and each 256-bit scalar multiplication operation took 0.275ms. The performance for handling scalar multiplication is 32 times that of CPU (dual-core ARM Cortex-A9).

Keywords: Elliptic curve cryptosystems, SM2, modular multiplication, point multiplication.

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Authors: Jailan Mohamed El Demerdash

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Millennials are a distinctive and dominant consumer group whose behavior, preferences and purchase decisions are broadly explored but not fully understood yet. Making up the largest market segment in the world, and in Egypt, they have the power to reinvent the hospitality industry and contribute to forming prospective demand for green hotels by showing willingness to adopting their environmental-friendly practices. The current study aims to enhance better understanding of Millennials' perception about sustainable initiatives and to increase the prediction power of their intentions regarding green hotel practices in Egypt. In doing so, the study is exploring the relation among different factors; Millennials' environmental awareness, their acceptance of green practices and their willingness to pay more for them. Millennials' profile, their preferences and environmental decision-making process are brought under light to stimulate actions of hospitality decision-makers and hoteliers. Bearing in mind that responsible consumerism is depending on understanding the different influences on consumption. The study questionnaire was composed of four sections and it was distributed to random Egyptian travelers' blogs and Facebook groups, with approximately 8000 members. Analysis of variance test (ANOVA) was used to examine the study variables. The findings indicated that Millennials' environmental awareness will not be a significant factor in their acceptance of hotel green practices, as well as, their willingness to pay more for them. However, Millennials' acceptance of the level of hotel green practices will have an impact on their willingness to pay more. Millennials were found to have a noticeable level of environmental awareness but lack commitment to tolerating hotel green practices and their associated high prices.

Keywords: Millennials, environment, awareness, green practices, paying more, Egypt.

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