Search results for: process control.

Authors: Wafa Labib

Abstract:

Teaching methods include lectures, workshops and tutorials for the presentation and discussion of ideas have become out of date; were developed outside the discipline of architecture from the college of engineering and do not satisfy the architectural students’ needs and causes them many difficulties in integrating structure into their design. In an attempt to improve structure teaching methods, this paper focused upon proposing a supportive teaching/learning tool using multi-media applications which seeks to better meet the architecture student’s needs and capabilities and improve the understanding and application of basic and intermediate structural engineering and technology principles. Before introducing the use of multi-media as a supportive teaching tool, a questionnaire was distributed to third year students of a structural design course who were selected as a sample to be surveyed forming a sample of 90 cases. The primary aim of the questionnaire was to identify the students’ learning style and to investigate whether the selected method of teaching could make the teaching and learning process more efficient. Students’ reaction on the use of this method was measured using three key elements indicating that this method is an appropriate teaching method for the nature of the students and the course as well.

Keywords: Teaching Method, Architecture, Learning style, Multi-Media.

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Authors: Walsh Joe, Climstein Mike, Heazlewood Ian Timothy, Burke Stephen, Kettunen Jyrki, Adams Kent, DeBeliso Mark

Abstract:

Whilst there is growing evidence that activity across the lifespan is beneficial for improved health, there are also many changes involved with the aging process and subsequently the potential for reduced indices of health. Data gathered on a subsample of 535 football code athletes, aged 31-72 yrs ( = 47.4, s = ±7.1), competing at the Sydney World Masters Games (2009) demonstrated a significantly (p < 0.001), reduced classification of obesity using Body Mass Index (BMI) when compared to the general Australian population. This evidence of improved classification in one index of health (BMI < 30) for master athletes (when compared to the general population) implies there are either improved levels of this index of health due to adherence to sport or possibly the reduced BMI is advantageous and contributes to this cohort adhering (or being attracted) to masters sport. Demonstration of this proportionately under-investigated World Masters Games population having improved health over the general population is of particular interest.

Keywords: BMI, masters athlete, rugby union, soccer, touch football.

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Authors: Kalyan Deepak Kolla, Ketan Paua, Rajkumar Bhagate

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Transmission dynamics occupy major role in customer perception of the product in both senses of touch and quality of sound. The quantity and quality of sound perceived is more concerned with the whine noise of the gears engaged. Whine noise is tonal in nature and tonal noises cause fatigue and irritation to customers, which in turn affect the quality of the product. Transmission error is the usual suspect for whine noise, which can be caused due to misalignments, tolerances, manufacturing variabilities. In-cabin noise is also more sensitive to the gear design. As the details of the gear tooth design and manufacturing are in microns, anything out of the tolerance zone, either in design or manufacturing, will cause a whine noise. This will also cause high variation in stress and deformation due to change in the load and leads to the fatigue failure of the gears. Hence gear design and development take priority in the transmission development process. This paper aims to study such variability by considering five pairs of helical spur gears and their effect on the transmission error, contact pattern and vibration level on the transmission.

Keywords: Gears, whine noise, manufacturing variability, mount vibration variability.

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Authors: War War Myint

Abstract:

Geometric design is an important part of planning process design for physical highway to fill up basic function of roads, to give good traffic service. It is found that most of the road safety problems occur at the horizontal curves and complex-compound curves. In this paper, review on Sagarinn-Myinsain Portion of Nay Pyi Taw - Mandalay highway has been conducted in aspect of geometric design induced road safety condition. Horizontal alignment of geometric features and curve details are reviewed based on (AASHTO) standard and revised by Autodesk Land Desktop Software. Moreover, 85th Percentile Operation Speeds (V85) with driver confidence on horizontal curves is evaluated in order to obtain the range of highway safety factor (FS). The length of the selected highway portion is 13.65 miles and 8 lanes. The results of this study can be used to investigate the possible hazardous locations in advance and to revise how design radius and super elevation should be for better road safety performance for the selected portion. Moreover, the relationship between highway safety and highway geometry characteristics can also be known.

Keywords: Geometric design; horizontal alignment; superelevation; 85th percentile operation speed (V85), safety factor (FS).

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Authors: Mohamed Haffar, Lombe Ngome Enongene, Mohammed Hamdan, Gbolahan Gbadamosi

Abstract:

Despite the considerable body of literature investigating the influence of National Culture (NC) dimensions on consumer behaviour, there is a lack of studies comparing the influence of NC in Africa with Western European countries. This study is intended to fill the vacuum in knowledge by exploring how NC affects consumer buyer behavior in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The primary data were collected through in depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with three groups of individuals: British students, Nigerian students in the United Kingdom, and Nigerian-based students. This approach and new frontier to analyze culture and consumer behaviour could help understand residual cultural threads of people (that are ingrained in their being) irrespective of exposure to other cultures. The findings of this study show that Nigerian and British consumers differ remarkably in cultural orientations such as symbols, values and psychological standpoints. This ultimately affects the choices made at every stage of the decision building process, and proves beneficial for international retail marketing.

Keywords: National culture, consumer behaviour, international business, Nigeria, UK.

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Authors: Mohammad Asif

Abstract:

A large number of chemical, bio-chemical and pollution-control processes use heterogeneous fixed-bed reactors. The use of finite hollow cylindrical catalyst pellets can enhance conversion levels in such reactors. The absence of the pellet core can significantly lower the diffusional resistance associated with the solid phase. This leads to a better utilization of the catalytic material, which is reflected in the higher values for the effectiveness factor, leading ultimately to an enhanced conversion level in the reactor. It is however important to develop a rigorous heterogeneous model for the reactor incorporating the two-dimensional feature of the solid phase owing to the presence of the finite hollow cylindrical catalyst pellet. Presently, heterogeneous models reported in the literature invariably employ one-dimension solid phase models meant for spherical catalyst pellets. The objective of the paper is to present a rigorous model of the fixed-bed reactors containing finite hollow cylindrical catalyst pellets. The reaction kinetics considered here is the widely used Michaelis–Menten kinetics for the liquid-phase bio-chemical reactions. The reaction parameters used here are for the enzymatic degradation of urea. Results indicate that increasing the height to diameter ratio helps to improve the conversion level. On the other hand, decreasing the thickness is apparently not as effective. This could however be explained in terms of the higher void fraction of the bed that causes a smaller amount of the solid phase to be packed in the fixed-bed bio-chemical reactor.

Keywords: Fixed-bed reactor, Finite hollow cylinder, Catalyst pellet, Conversion, Michaelis-Menten kinetics.

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Authors: V. Endo, A. G. Silva Sobrinho, F. A. Almeida, N. L. L. Lima, G. M. Manzi, L. G. A. Cirne, N. M. B. L. Zeola

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We used 24 Ile de France lambs, weighing between 15 and 32 kg (BW). Treatments were supplemented with concentrate: “in nature” sugarcane (IN), sugarcane hydrolyzed using 0.6% calcium oxide (CaO) under aerobic condition (AER), and sugarcane hydrolyzed using 0.6% CaO under anaerobic condition (ANA), constituting a completely randomized design with eight repetitions per treatment. Lambs were housed in individual stalls and fed into the through, allowing 10% of leftovers. Lambs were slaughtered when body weight reached 32 kg. The following parameters were determined on Longissimu lumborum muscle of hot and cold carcasses: pH and color, 45 minutes and 24 hours after slaughtering. Qualitative analysis of the meat were performed in the loins, water-holding capacity (WHC), cooking loss (CL), and shear force (SF). We used a completely randomized design with three treatments and eight repetitions. Means were compared by Tukey test at 5% significance. A higher value for redness (a*) 45 minutes after slaughter (10.48) were found for lambs fed hydrolyzed under anaerobic conditions sugarcane. The other qualitative characteristics of meat were not affected by treatments (P >0.05). The comparison of meat quality resulting from the treatments shows that it is possible to feed in nature sugarcane to lambs, thus waiving hydrolyses process and the spending with alkalizing agent.

Keywords: Calcium oxide, hydrolysis, meat quality, pH.

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Authors: Muhammad Javed, Yalemisew M. Abgaz, Claus Pahl

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Ontology-based modelling of multi-formatted software application content is a challenging area in content management. When the number of software content unit is huge and in continuous process of change, content change management is important. The management of content in this context requires targeted access and manipulation methods. We present a novel approach to deal with model-driven content-centric information systems and access to their content. At the core of our approach is an ontology-based semantic annotation technique for diversely formatted content that can improve the accuracy of access and systems evolution. Domain ontologies represent domain-specific concepts and conform to metamodels. Different ontologies - from application domain ontologies to software ontologies - capture and model the different properties and perspectives on a software content unit. Interdependencies between domain ontologies, the artifacts and the content are captured through a trace model. The annotation traces are formalised and a graph-based system is selected for the representation of the annotation traces.

Keywords: Consistent Content Management, Impact Categorisation, Trace Model, Ontology Evolution

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Authors: Reza Bazargan-Lari, Mohammad Ebrahim Bahrololoom, Afshin Nemati

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Heavy metals have bad effects on environment and soils and it can uptake by natural HAP .natural Hap is an inexpensive material that uptake large amounts of various heavy metals like Zn (II) .Natural HAP (N-HAP), extracted from bovine cortical bone ash, is a good choice for substitution of commercial HAP. Several experiments were done to investigate the sorption capacity of Zn (II) to N-HAP in various particles sizes, temperatures, initial concentrations, pH and reaction times. In this study, the sorption of Zinc ions from a Zn solution onto HAP particles with sizes of 1537.6 nm and 47.6 nm at three initial pH values of 4.50, 6.00 and 7.50 was studied. The results showed that better performance was obtained through a 47.6 nm particle size and higher pH values. The experimental data were analyzed using Langmuir, Freundlich, and Arrhenius equations for equilibrium, kinetic and thermodynamic studies. The analysis showed a maximum adsorption capacity of NHAP as being 1.562 mmol/g at a pH of 7.5 and small particle size. Kinetically, the prepared N-HAP is a feasible sorbent that retains Zn (II) ions through a favorable and spontaneous sorption process.

Keywords: Natural Hydroxyapatite, Heavy metal ions, Adsorption, Zn removal, kinetic model, bone ash

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Authors: J. Palán, M. Zemko

Abstract:

COMTES FHT has been active in a field of research and development of high-strength wires for quite some time. The main material was pure titanium. The primary goal of this effort is to develop a continuous production process for ultrafine and nanostructured materials with the aid of severe plastic deformation (SPD). This article outlines mechanical and microstructural properties of the materials and the options available for testing the components made of these materials. Ti Grade 2 and Grade 4 wires are the key products of interest. Ti Grade 2 with ultrafine to nano-sized grain shows ultimate strength of up to 1050 MPa. Ti Grade 4 reaches ultimate strengths of up to 1250 MPa. These values are twice or three times as higher as those found in the unprocessed material. For those fields of medicine where implantable metallic materials are used, bulk ultrafine to nanostructured titanium is available. It is manufactured by SPD techniques. These processes leave the chemical properties of the initial material unchanged but markedly improve its final mechanical properties, in particular, the strength. Ultrafine to nanostructured titanium retains all the significant and, from the biological viewpoint, desirable properties that are important for its use in medicine, i.e. those properties which made pure titanium the preferred material also for dental implants.

Keywords: CONFORM SPD, ECAP, titanium, rotary swaging.

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Authors: Min Ye Koo, Gyo Woo Lee

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In this study, epoxy composite specimens reinforced with multi-walled carbon nanotube filler were fabricated using shear mixer and ultra-sonication processor. The mechanical and thermal properties of the fabricated specimens were measured and evaluated. From the electron microscope images and the results from the measurements of tensile strengths, the specimens having 0.6 wt% nanotube content show better dispersion and higher strength than those of the other specimens. The Young’s moduli of the specimens increased as the contents of the nanotube filler in the matrix were increased. The specimen having a 0.6 wt% nanotube filler content showed higher thermal conductivity than that of the other specimens. While, in the measurement of thermal expansion, specimens having 0.4 and 0.6 wt% filler contents showed a lower value of thermal expansion than that of the other specimens. On the basis of the measured and evaluated properties of the composites, we believe that the simple and time-saving fabrication process used in this study was sufficient to obtain improved properties of the specimens.

Keywords: Carbon Nanotube Filler, Epoxy Composite, Ultra-Sonication, Shear Mixer, Mechanical Property, Thermal Property.

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Authors: Ayad A. Abdalla, Elhadi I. Elhadi, Hisham A. Elfergani

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Developing mixed convection in circular and annular sector ducts is investigated numerically for steady laminar flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid with Pr = 0.7 and a wide range of Grashof number (0 £ Gr £ 10⁷). Investigation is limited to the case of heating in circular and annular sector ducts with apex angle of 2ϕ = π/4 for the thermal boundary condition of uniform wall temperature axially and peripherally. A numerical, finite control volume approach based on the SIMPLER algorithm is employed to solve the 3D governing equations. Numerical analysis is conducted using marching technique in the axial direction with axial conduction, axial mass diffusion, and viscous dissipation within the fluid are assumed negligible. The results include developing secondary flow patterns, developing temperature and axial velocity fields, local Nusselt number, local friction factor, and local apparent friction factor. Comparisons are made with the literature and satisfactory agreement is obtained. It is found that free convection enhances the local heat transfer in some cases by up to 2.5 times from predictions which account for forced convection only and the enhancement increases as Grashof number increases. Duct geometry and Grashof number strongly influence the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics.

Keywords: Mixed convection, annular and circular sector ducts, heat transfer enhancement, pressure drop.

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Authors: Jianwei Zhang, Dazhi Jiang, Huaxin Peng, Chunqi Wang

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Stress-strain curve of inter-tube connected carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced polymer composite under axial loading generated from molecular dynamics simulation is presented. Comparison of the response to axial mechanical loading between this composite system with composite systems reinforced by long, continuous CNTs (replicated via periodic boundary conditions) and short, discontinuous CNTs has been made. Simulation results showed that the inter-tube connection improved the mechanical properties of short discontinuous CNTs dramatically. Though still weaker than long CNT/polymer composite, more remarkable increase in the stiffness relative to the polymer was observed in the inter-tube connected CNT/polymer composite than in the discontinuous CNT/polymer composite. The manually introduced bridge break process resulted in a stress-strain curve of ductile fracture mode, which is consistent with the experimental result.

Keywords: Carbon nanotube, inter-tube connection, molecular dynamics, stress-strain curve

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Authors: Olga Długosz, Jolanta Pulit-Prociak, Marcin Banach

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The paper presents a process to obtain glutathione-modified titanium oxide nanoparticles. The processes were carried out in a microwave radiation field. The influence of the molar ratio of glutathione to titanium oxide and the effect of the fold of NaOH vs. stoichiometric amount on the size of the formed TiO2 nanoparticles was determined. The physicochemical properties of the obtained products were evaluated using dynamic light scattering (DLS), transmission electron microscope- energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (TEM-EDS), low-temperature nitrogen adsorption method (BET), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) microscopy methods. The size of TiO2 nanoparticles was characterized from 30 nm to 336 nm. The release of titanium ions from the prepared products was evaluated. These studies were carried out using different media in which the powders were incubated for a specific time. These were: water, SBF and Ringer's solution. The release of titanium ions from modified products is weaker compared to unmodified titanium oxide nanoparticles. The reduced release of titanium ions may allow the use of such modified materials as substances in drug delivery systems.

Keywords: titanium dioxide, nanoparticles, drug carrier, glutathione

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Authors: N. Sumathi, R. Srinivasa Rao

Abstract:

This paper presents the experimental results of 11 kV and 33 kV silicon composite insulators under artificial salt and urea polluted conditions. The tests were carried out under different seasons like summer, winter, and monsoon. The artificial pollution is prepared by properly dissolving the salt and urea in the water. The prepared salt and urea pollutions are sprayed on the insulators and dried up for sufficiently large time. The process is continued until a uniform layer is formed on the surface of insulator. For each insulator rating, four samples were tested. The maximum leakage current and breakdown voltage were measured. From experimental data, performance of test specimen is evaluated by comparing breakdown voltage and leakage current during different seasons when exposed to salt and urea polluted conditions. From these results the performance of the insulators can be predicted when they are installed in industrial, agricultural, and coastal areas. The experimental tests were carried out in the High Voltage laboratory using two stage cascade transformer having the rating of 1000 kVA, 500 kV.

Keywords: Silicon composite insulators, Urea pollution, Leakage current, Breakdown voltage, salt pollution, artificial pollution.

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Authors: John N. Ellinas

Abstract:

In this paper, a new reversible watermarking method is presented that reduces the size of a stereoscopic image sequence while keeping its content visible. The proposed technique embeds the residuals of the right frames to the corresponding frames of the left sequence, halving the total capacity. The residual frames may result in after a disparity compensated procedure between the two video streams or by a joint motion and disparity compensation. The residuals are usually lossy compressed before embedding because of the limited embedding capacity of the left frames. The watermarked frames are visible at a high quality and at any instant the stereoscopic video may be recovered by an inverse process. In fact, the left frames may be exactly recovered whereas the right ones are slightly distorted as the residuals are not embedded intact. The employed embedding method reorders the left frame into an array of consecutive pixel pairs and embeds a number of bits according to their intensity difference. In this way, it hides a number of bits in intensity smooth areas and most of the data in textured areas where resulting distortions are less visible. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed scheme is quite effective.

Keywords: Stereoscopic video, Reversible watermarking, Disparity compensation, Joint compensation

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Authors: May-Ling Tan, Yi Su, Chi-Wan Lim, Liang Zhong, Ru-San Tan

Abstract:

This paper describes an automatic algorithm to restore the shape of three-dimensional (3D) left ventricle (LV) models created from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data using a geometry-driven optimization approach. Our basic premise is to restore the LV shape such that the LV epicardial surface is smooth after the restoration. A geometrical measure known as the Minimum Principle Curvature (κ2) is used to assess the smoothness of the LV. This measure is used to construct the objective function of a two-step optimization process. The objective of the optimization is to achieve a smooth epicardial shape by iterative in-plane translation of the MRI slices. Quantitatively, this yields a minimum sum in terms of the magnitude of κ 2, when κ2 is negative. A limited memory quasi-Newton algorithm, L-BFGS-B, is used to solve the optimization problem. We tested our algorithm on an in vitro theoretical LV model and 10 in vivo patient-specific models which contain significant motion artifacts. The results show that our method is able to automatically restore the shape of LV models back to smoothness without altering the general shape of the model. The magnitudes of in-plane translations are also consistent with existing registration techniques and experimental findings.

Keywords: Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Left Ventricle, ShapeRestoration, Principle Curvature, Optimization

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Authors: Faizan Ahmad, Lau Kok Keong, Azmi Mohd. Shariff

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The upgrading of low quality crude natural gas (NG) is attracting interest due to high demand of pipeline-grade gas in recent years. Membrane processes are commercially proven technology for the removal of impurities like carbon dioxide from NG. In this work, cross flow mathematical model has been suggested to be incorporated with ASPEN HYSYS as a user defined unit operation in order to design the membrane system for CO2/CH4 separation. The effect of operating conditions (such as feed composition and pressure) and membrane selectivity on the design parameters (methane recovery and total membrane area required for the separation) has been studied for different design configurations. These configurations include single stage (with and without recycle) and double stage membrane systems (with and without permeate or retentate recycle). It is shown that methane recovery can be improved by recycling permeate or retentate stream as well as by using double stage membrane systems. The ASPEN HYSYS user defined unit operation proposed in the study has potential to be applied for complex membrane system design and optimization.

Keywords: CO2/CH4 Separation, Membrane Process, Membrane modeling, Natural Gas Processing

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Authors: Saba Shams Bidhendi, Steven Goh, Andrew Wandel

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The implementation of lean manufacturing initiatives has produced significant impacts in improving operational performance and reducing manufacturing wastes in the production process. However, selecting an appropriate set of lean strategies is critical to avoid misapplication of the lean manufacturing techniques and consequential increase in non-value-adding activities. To the author’s best knowledge, there is currently no methodology to select lean strategies that considers their impacts on manufacturing wastes and performance metrics simultaneously. In this research, a multi-objective methodology is proposed that suggests an appropriate set of lean initiatives based on their impacts on performance metrics and manufacturing wastes and within manufacturers’ resource limitation. The proposed methodology in this research suggests the best set of lean initiatives for implementation that have highest impacts on identified critical performance metrics and manufacturing wastes. Therefore, manufacturers can assure that implementing suggested lean tools improves their production performance and reduces manufacturing wastes at the same time. A case study was conducted to show the effectiveness and validate the proposed model and methodologies.

Keywords: Lean manufacturing, Lean strategies, manufacturing wastes, manufacturing performance metrics, decision making, optimisation.

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Authors: Martin Lisý, Marek Baláš, Michal Špiláček, Zdeněk Skála

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This paper shortly describes various types of biomass and a growing number of facilities utilizing the biomass in the Czech Republic. The considerable part of this paper deals with energy parameters of the most frequently used types of biomass and results of their gasification testing. Sixteen most used "Czech" woody plants and grasses were selected; raw, element and biochemical analyses were performed and basic calorimetric values, ash composition, and ash characteristic temperatures were identified. Later, each biofuel was tested in a fluidized bed gasifier. The essential part of this paper provides results of the gasification of selected biomass types. Operating conditions are described in detail with a focus on individual fuels properties. Gas composition and impurities content are also identified. In terms of operating conditions and gas quality, the essential difference occurred mainly between woody plants and grasses. The woody plants were evaluated as more suitable fuels for fluidized bed gasifiers. Testing results significantly help with a decision-making process regarding suitability of energy plants for growing and with a selection of optimal biomass-treatment technology.

Keywords: Biomass Growing, Biomass Types, Gasification.

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Authors: J. Andrade-Garda, A. Anguera, J. Ares-Casal, M. Hidalgo-Lorenzo, J.-A. Lara, D. Lizcano, S. Suárez-Garaboa

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In the current constantly changing economic context, collaborative networks allow partners to undertake projects that would not be possible if attempted by them individually. These projects usually involve the performance of a group of tasks (named roles) that have to be distributed among the partners. Thus, an allocation/matching problem arises that will be referred to as Role-Partner Allocation problem. In real life this situation is addressed by negotiation between partners in order to reach ad hoc agreements. Besides taking a long time and being hard work, both historical evidence and economic analysis show that such approach is not recommended. Instead, the allocation process should be automated by means of a centralized matching scheme. However, as a preliminary step to start the search for such a matching mechanism (or even the development of a new one), the problem and its core components must be specified. To this end, this paper establishes (i) the definition of the problem and its constraints, (ii) the key features of the involved elements (i.e., roles and partners); and (iii) how to create preference lists both for roles and partners. Only this way it will be possible to conduct subsequent methodological research on the solution method.     

Keywords: Collaborative network, matching, partner, preference list, role.

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Authors: Eftah Bte. Moh Hj Abdullah, Izazol Binti Idris, Abd Aziz Bin Abd Shukor

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This study aims to identify the understanding expectations of school administrators concerning school assessment. The researcher utilized a qualitative descriptive study on 19 administrators from three secondary schools in the North Kinta district. The respondents had been interviewed on their understanding expectations of school assessment using the focus group discussion method. Overall findings showed that the administrators’ understanding expectations of school assessment was weak; especially in terms of content focus, articulation across age and grade, transparency and fairness, as well as the pedagogical implications. Findings from interviews indicated that administrators explained their understanding expectations of school assessment from the aspect of school management, and not from the aspect of instructional leadership or specifically as assessment leaders. The study implications from the administrators’ understanding expectations may hint at the difficulty of the administrators to function as assessment leaders, in order to reduce their focus as manager, and move towards their primary role in the process of teaching and learning. The administrator, as assessment leaders, would be able to reach assessment goals via collaboration in identifying and listing teacher assessment competencies, how to construct assessment capacity, how to interpret assessment correctly, the use of assessment and how to use assessment information to communicate confidently and effectively to the public.

Keywords: Assessment leaders, assessment goals, instructional leadership, understanding expectation of assessment.

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Authors: N. R. Putra, A. H. Abdul Aziz, A. S. Zaini, Z. Idham, F. Idrus, M. Z. Bin Zullyadini, M. A. Che Yunus

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The content of omega-3 in soybean oil is important in the development of infants and is an alternative for the omega-3 in fish oils. The investigation of extraction of soybean oil is needed to obtain the bioactive compound in the extract. Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction is modern and green technology to extract herbs and plants to obtain high quality extract due to high diffusivity and solubility of the solvent. The aim of this study was to obtain the optimum condition of soybean oil extraction by modified supercritical carbon dioxide. The soybean oil was extracted by using modified supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO₂) under the temperatures of 40, 60, 80 °C, pressures of 150, 250, 350 Bar, and constant flow-rate of 10 g/min as the parameters of extraction processes. An experimental design was performed in order to optimize three important parameters of SC-CO₂ extraction which are pressure (X₁), temperature (X₂) to achieve optimum yields of soybean oil. Box Behnken Design was applied for experimental design. From the optimization process, the optimum condition of extraction of soybean oil was obtained at pressure 338 Bar and temperature 80 °C with oil yield of 2.713 g. Effect of pressure is significant on the extraction of soybean oil by modified supercritical carbon dioxide. Increasing of pressure will increase the oil yield of soybean oil.

Keywords: Soybean oil, SC-CO2 extraction, yield, optimization.

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Authors: P. S. Gomathi, B. Kalaavathi

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The process in which the complementary information from multiple images is integrated to provide composite image that contains more information than the original input images is called image fusion. Medical image fusion provides useful information from multimodality medical images that provides additional information to the doctor for diagnosis of diseases in a better way. This paper represents the wavelet based medical image fusion algorithm on different multimodality medical images. In order to fuse the medical images, images are decomposed using Redundant Wavelet Transform (RWT). The high frequency coefficients are convolved with morphological operator followed by the maximum-selection (MS) rule. The low frequency coefficients are processed by MS rule. The reconstructed image is obtained by inverse RWT. The quantitative measures which includes Mean, Standard Deviation, Average Gradient, Spatial frequency, Edge based Similarity Measures are considered for evaluating the fused images. The performance of this proposed method is compared with Pixel averaging, PCA, and DWT fusion methods. When compared with conventional methods, the proposed framework provides better performance for analysis of multimodality medical images.

Keywords: Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Image Fusion, Morphological Processing, Redundant Wavelet Transform (RWT).

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Authors: M. A. Abou Donia, A. A. K. Abou-Arab, Nevin E. Sharaf, A. K. Enab, Sherif R. Mohamed

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Lead (Pb) poisoning is one of the most common and preventable environmental health problems. There are different sources of environmental pollution with lead as lead alkyl additives in petrol and manufacturing processes. Pb in the atmosphere can be deposited in urban soils, and may then be re-suspended to re-enter the atmosphere. This could increase human exposure to Pb and cause long-term health effects. Thus, monitoring Pb pollution is considered one of the major tasks in controlling pollution. Scalp hair can be utilized for the determination of lead (Pb) concentration. It provides a lasting record of metal intakes of weeks or even months, and for most metals, their accumulation in hair reflects their accumulation in the whole body. This work was conducted to investigate the concentration of lead in male scalp hair of Cairo (residential-traffic and residential-industrial) and rural residents after twenty years of phasing out of leaded gasoline. Results indicated that the mean concentration of lead in hair of residential-traffic (9.7552 μg/g ±0.71) and residential-industrial (12.3288 μg/g ±1.13) was significantly higher than that in rural residents (4.7327 μg/g ±0.67). The mean concentration of lead in hair of resident’s industrial areas was the highest among Cairo residents and not the traffic areas as it was before phasing out of leaded gasoline. Twenty years of phasing out of leaded gasoline in Cairo has greatly improved the lead pollution among residents of traffic areas, but industrial areas residents were still suffering from lead pollution, which needs more efforts to control the sources of lead pollution.

Keywords: Heavy metals, lead, hair, biological sample, urban pollution, rural pollution.

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Authors: Hamide Özyürek, Metin Yılmaz

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Standard processes, similar and limited production lines, the production of high direct costs will be more accurate than the use of parts of the traditional cost systems in the literature. However, direct costs, overhead expenses, in turn, decrease the burden of increasingly sophisticated production facilities, a situation that led the researchers to look for the cost of traditional systems of alternative techniques. Variety cost management approaches for example Total quality management (TQM), just-in-time (JIT), benchmarking, kaizen costing, targeting cost, life cycle costs (LLC), activity-based costing (ABC) value engineering have been introduced. Management and cost applications have changed over the past decade and will continue to change. Modern cost systems can provide relevant and accurate cost information. These methods provide the decisions about customer, product and process improvement. The aim of study is to describe and explain the adoption and application of costing systems in SME. This purpose reports on a survey conducted during 2014 small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Ankara. The survey results were evaluated using SPSS18 package program.

Keywords: Cost Accounting, Costing, Modern Costing Systems, Managerial Accounting.

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Authors: Mehran Bakhshi, Mohammad Raouf Hosseini, Mohammadhosein Rahimi

Abstract:

The cadmium sulfide nanoparticles were synthesized from the nickel-cadmium cake of a hydrometallurgical zinc producing plant and sodium sulfide as Cd²⁺ and S^-2 sources, respectively. Also, the synthesis process was performed by using the secretions of Bacillus licheniformis as bio-surfactant. Initially, in order to obtain a cadmium rich solution, two following steps were carried out: 1) Alkaline leaching for the removal of zinc oxide from the cake, and 2) acidic leaching to dissolve cadmium from the remained solid residue. Afterward, the obtained CdSO₄ solution was used for the nanoparticle biosynthesis. Nanoparticles were characterized by the energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to confirm the formation of CdS crystals with cubic structure. Also, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was applied to determine the particle sizes which were in 2-10 nm range. Moreover, the presence of the protein containing bio-surfactants was approved by using infrared analysis (FTIR). In addition, the absorbance below 400 nm confirms quantum particles’ size. Finally, it was shown that valuable CdS quantum dots could be obtained from the industrial waste products via environment-friendly biological approaches.

Keywords: Biosynthesis, cadmium cake, cadmium sulfide, nanoparticle, zinc smelter.

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Authors: Ashwani K. Rana, Narottam Chand, Vinod Kapoor

Abstract:

This paper presents a new compact analytical model of the gate leakage current in high-k based nano scale MOSFET by assuming a two-step inelastic trap-assisted tunneling (ITAT) process as the conduction mechanism. This model is based on an inelastic trap-assisted tunneling (ITAT) mechanism combined with a semiempirical gate leakage current formulation in the BSIM 4 model. The gate tunneling currents have been calculated as a function of gate voltage for different gate dielectrics structures such as HfO2, Al2O3 and Si3N4 with EOT (equivalent oxide thickness) of 1.0 nm. The proposed model is compared and contrasted with santaurus simulation results to verify the accuracy of the model and excellent agreement is found between the analytical and simulated data. It is observed that proposed analytical model is suitable for different highk gate dielectrics simply by adjusting two fitting parameters. It was also shown that gate leakages reduced with the introduction of high-k gate dielectric in place of SiO2.

Keywords: Analytical model, High-k gate dielectrics, inelastic trap assisted tunneling, metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) devices.

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Authors: S. R. M. Prasanna, Y. V. Subba Rao, A. Mitra

Abstract:

We describe an effective method for image encryption which employs magnitude and phase manipulation using carrier images. Although it involves traditional methods like magnitude and phase encryptions, the novelty of this work lies in deploying the concept of carrier images for encryption purpose. To this end, a carrier image is randomly chosen from a set of stored images. One dimensional (1-D) discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is then carried out on the original image to be encrypted along with the carrier image. Row wise spectral addition and scaling is performed between the magnitude spectra of the original and carrier images by randomly selecting the rows. Similarly, row wise phase addition and scaling is performed between the original and carrier images phase spectra by randomly selecting the rows. The encrypted image obtained by these two operations is further subjected to one more level of magnitude and phase manipulation using another randomly chosen carrier image by 1-D DFT along the columns. The resulting encrypted image is found to be fully distorted, resulting in increasing the robustness of the proposed work. Further, applying the reverse process at the receiver, the decrypted image is found to be distortionless.

Keywords: Encryption, Carrier images, Magnitude manipulation, Phase manipulation.

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Authors: Hossein Ramezani Ali-Akbari

Abstract:

This paper presents an innovative method to control the rotational speed of a satellite solar panel during its deployment phase. A brushed DC motor has been utilized in the passive spring driven deployment mechanism to reduce the deployment speed. In order to use the DC motor as a damper, its connector terminals have been connected with an external resistance in a closed circuit. It means that, in this approach, there is no external power supply in the circuit. The working principle of this method is based on the back electromotive force (or back EMF) of the DC motor when an external torque (here the torque produced by the torsional springs) is coupled to the DC motor’s shaft. In fact, the DC motor converts to an electric generator and the current flows into the circuit and then produces the back EMF. Based on Lenz’s law, the generated current produced a torque which acts opposite to the applied external torque, and as a result, the deployment speed of the solar panel decreases. The main advantage of this method is to set an intended damping coefficient to the system via changing the external resistance. To produce the sufficient current, a gearbox has been assembled to the DC motor which magnifies the number of turns experienced by the DC motor. The coupled electro-mechanical equations of the system have been derived and solved, then, the obtained results have been presented. A full-scale prototype of the deployment mechanism has been built and tested. The potential application of brushed DC motors as a rotational speed damper has been successfully demonstrated.

Keywords: Back electromotive force, brushed DC motor, rotational speed damper, satellite solar panel deployment mechanism.

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