Search results for: interest rate risk

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

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

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

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Authors: Jin-O Kim, Hyun-Il Son

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

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

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Authors: Yuling Xu, Haibo Wang, Dong Xie

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A photopolymerizable dimethacrylamide was synthesized and copolymerized with the selected (meth)acrylates. The polymerization rate, degree of conversion, gel time, and compressive strength of the formed neat resins were investigated. The results show that in situ photo-polymerization of the synthesized dimethacrylamide with comonomers having an electron-withdrawing and/or acrylate group dramatically increased the polymerization rate, degree of conversion, and compressive strength. On the other hand, an electron-donating group on either carbon-carbon double bond or the ester linkage slowed down the polymerization. In contrast, the triethylene glycol dimethacrylate-based system did not show a clear pattern. Both strong hydrogen-bonding between (meth)acrylamide and organic acid groups may be responsible for higher compressive strengths. Within the limitation of this study, the photo-polymerization of dimethacrylamide can be greatly accelerated by copolymerization with monomers having electron-withdrawing and/or acrylate groups. The monomers with methacrylate group can significantly reduce the polymerization rate and degree of conversion.

Keywords: Photopolymerization, dimethacrylamide, degree of conversion, compressive strength.

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Authors: Miho Tsukamoto

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This paper examines Japanese life expectancy, and the declining birth rate to investigate the Japanese people’s view of death, and their consciousness of death. To support their perspectives toward death, “Eitai Kuyobo,” and tombs with Japanese animation will be focused as Japanese citizens have created unique tombs designs of their own tombs. With the methodological aspects, Japan’s birth and mortality rates, Japan’s average life expectancy, history of tombs, creation of one’s own tombs and types of marriage will be significant. By examining the Japanese history of tombs, social change and unique tombs, and the increase of mortality rate in Japanese super-aging society, this study contributes the change of people’s view toward tombs, and a view toward life and death. Accordingly, focusing on the change of people’s view toward tombs it is concluded that the change is caused by the increase of mortality rate in Japanese super-aging society.

Keywords: Tombs, History, Change, New Designed Tombs, Family Relationship.

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Authors: Saleem Z. Ramadan

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A model is presented to find the optimal design of the mixed renewable warranty policy for non-repairable Weibull life products. The optimal design considers the conflict of interests between the customer and the manufacturer: the customer interests are longer full rebate coverage period and longer total warranty coverage period, the manufacturer interests are lower warranty cost and lower risk. The design factors are full rebate and total warranty coverage periods. Results showed that mixed policy is better than full rebate policy in terms of risk and total warranty coverage period in all of the three bathtub regions. In addition, results showed that linear policy is better than mixed policy in infant mortality and constant failure regions while the mixed policy is better than linear policy in ageing region of the model. Furthermore, the results showed that using burn-in period for infant mortality products reduces warranty cost and risk.

Keywords: Reliability, Mixed warranty policy, Optimization, Weibull Distribution.

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Authors: Ananya Das, Arun Kumar, Gazala Habib, Vivekanandan Perumal

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Regulatory bodies has proposed limits on Particulate Matter (PM) concentration in air; however, it does not explicitly indicate the incorporation of effects of toxicities of constituents of PM in developing regulatory limits. This study aimed to provide a structured approach to incorporate toxic effects of components in developing regulatory limits on PM. A four-step human health risk assessment framework consists of - (1) hazard identification (parameters: PM and its constituents and their associated toxic effects on health), (2) exposure assessment (parameters: concentrations of PM and constituents, information on size and shape of PM; fate and transport of PM and constituents in respiratory system), (3) dose-response assessment (parameters: reference dose or target toxicity dose of PM and its constituents), and (4) risk estimation (metric: hazard quotient and/or lifetime incremental risk of cancer as applicable). Then parameters required at every step were obtained from literature. Using this information, an attempt has been made to determine limits on PM using component-specific information. An example calculation was conducted for exposures of PM_2.5 and its metal constituents from Indian ambient environment to determine limit on PM values. Identified data gaps were: (1) concentrations of PM and its constituents and their relationship with sampling regions, (2) relationship of toxicity of PM with its components.

Keywords: Air, component-specific toxicity, human health risks, particulate matter.

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Authors: Ruili Zhou, Yuesheng Zhu

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In this paper, a new robust audio fingerprinting algorithm in MP3 compressed domain is proposed with high robustness to time scale modification (TSM). Instead of simply employing short-term information of the MP3 stream, the new algorithm extracts the long-term features in MP3 compressed domain by using the modulation frequency analysis. Our experiment has demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve a hit rate of above 95% in audio retrieval and resist the attack of 20% TSM. It has lower bit error rate (BER) performance compared to the other algorithms. The proposed algorithm can also be used in other compressed domains, such as AAC.

Keywords: Audio Fingerprinting, MP3, Modulation Frequency, TSM

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Authors: M. D. Haneef, R. B. Randall, Z. Peng

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Journal bearings used in IC engines are prone to premature failures and are likely to fail earlier than the rated life due to highly impulsive and unstable operating conditions and frequent starts/stops. Vibration signature extraction and wear debris analysis techniques are prevalent in industry for condition monitoring of rotary machinery. However, both techniques involve a great deal of technical expertise, time, and cost. Limited literature is available on the application of these techniques for fault detection in reciprocating machinery, due to the complex nature of impact forces that confounds the extraction of fault signals for vibration-based analysis and wear prediction. In present study, a simulation model was developed to investigate the bearing wear behaviour, resulting because of different operating conditions, to complement the vibration analysis. In current simulation, the dynamics of the engine was established first, based on which the hydrodynamic journal bearing forces were evaluated by numerical solution of the Reynold’s equation. In addition, the essential outputs of interest in this study, critical to determine wear rates are the tangential velocity and oil film thickness between the journals and bearing sleeve, which if not maintained appropriately, have a detrimental effect on the bearing performance. Archard’s wear prediction model was used in the simulation to calculate the wear rate of bearings with specific location information as all determinative parameters were obtained with reference to crank rotation. Oil film thickness obtained from the model was used as a criterion to determine if the lubrication is sufficient to prevent contact between the journal and bearing thus causing accelerated wear. A limiting value of 1 μm was used as the minimum oil film thickness needed to prevent contact. The increased wear rate with growing severity of operating conditions is analogous and comparable to the rise in amplitude of the squared envelope of the referenced vibration signals. Thus on one hand, the developed model demonstrated its capability to explain wear behaviour and on the other hand it also helps to establish a co-relation between wear based and vibration based analysis. Therefore, the model provides a cost effective and quick approach to predict the impending wear in IC engine bearings under various operating conditions.

Keywords: Condition monitoring, IC engine, journal bearings, vibration analysis, wear prediction.

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Authors: Merita Dauti, Edita Alili-Idrizi, Sihana Ahmeti–Lika, Ledjan Malaj

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The extermination and proper disposal of pharmaceutical wastes from expired and unused medications remains a disputable issue due to their specific nature and characteristics. Even though the hazards from these wastes are already well known in terms of environment and human health, people still treat them as usual wastes. At a national level, in many countries the management of pharmaceutical and medical wastes has been one of the main objectives in order to protect people’s health and the environment. Even though many legal regulations exist in this respect, there has not been a single law that would clearly explain the procedures of returning medicines, ways of selection, treatment and extermination of pharmaceutical wastes. This paper aims at analyzing the practices of pharmaceutical waste management and treatment in some European countries as well as a review of the legislation and official guidelines in managing these kinds of wastes and protecting the environment and human health. A suitable treatment and management of expired medications and other similar wastes would be in the interest of public health in the first place, as well as in the interest of healthcare institutions and other bodies engaged in environment protection.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical waste, legal regulation, proper disposal, environment pollution.

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Authors: Nadia H. Mohammed, Anmar Al-Taie, Fadia H. Al-Sultany

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Although breast cancer prevalence continues to increase, mortality has been decreasing as a result of early detection and improvement in adjuvant systemic therapy. Nevertheless, this disease required further efforts to understand and identify the associated potential risk factors that could play a role in the prevalence of this malignancy among Iraqi women. The objective of this study was to assess the perception of certain predictive risk factors on the prevalence of breast cancer types among a sample of Iraqi women diagnosed with breast cancer. This was a retrospective observational study carried out at National Cancer Research Center in College of Medicine, Baghdad University from November 2017 to January 2018. Data of 100 patients with breast cancer whose biopsies examined in the National Cancer Research Center were included in this study. Data were collected to structure a detailed assessment regarding the patients’ demographic, medical and cancer records. The majority of study participants (94%) suffered from ductal breast cancer with mean age 49.57 years. Among those women, 48.9% were obese with body mass index (BMI) 35 kg/m². 68.1% of them had positive family history of breast cancer and 66% had low parity. 40.4% had stage II ductal breast cancer followed by 25.5% with stage III. It was found that 59.6% and 68.1% had positive oestrogen receptor sensitivity and positive human epidermal growth factor (HER2/neu) receptor sensitivity respectively. In regard to the impact of prediction of certain variables on the incidence of ductal breast cancer, positive family history of breast cancer (P < 0.0001), low parity (P< 0.0001), stage I and II breast cancer (P = 0.02) and positive HER2/neu status (P < 0.0001) were significant predictive factors among the study participants. The results from this study provide relevant evidence for a significant positive and potential association between certain risk factors and the prevalence of breast cancer among Iraqi women.

Keywords: Ductal breast cancer, hormone sensitivity, Iraq, risk factors.

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Authors: Gangacharyulu Dasaroju, Sumeet Sharma, Sanjay Singh

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Heat pipe is characterised as superconductor of heat because of its excellent heat removal ability. The operation of several engineering system results in generation of heat. This may cause several overheating problems and lead to failure of the systems. To overcome this problem and to achieve desired rate of heat dissipation, there is need to study the performance of heat pipe with annular fins under free convection at different inclinations. This study demonstrates the effect of different mass flow rate of hot fluid into evaporator section on the condenser side heat transfer coefficient with annular fins under natural convection at different inclinations. In this study annular fins are used for the experimental work having dimensions of length of fin, thickness of fin and spacing of fin as 10 mm, 1 mm and 6 mm, respectively. The main aim of present study is to discover at what inclination angles the maximum heat transfer coefficient shall be achieved. The heat transfer coefficient on the external surface of heat pipe condenser section is determined by experimental method and then predicted by empirical correlations. The results obtained from experimental and Churchill and Chu relation for laminar are in fair agreement with not more than 22% deviation. It is elucidated the maximum heat transfer coefficient of 31.2 W/(m²-K) at 25˚ tilt angle and minimal condenser heat transfer coefficient of 26.4 W/(m²-K) is seen at 45˚ tilt angle and 200 ml/min mass flow rate. Inclination angle also affects the thermal performance of heat pipe. Beyond 25^o inclination, heat transport rate starts to decrease.

Keywords: Annular fins, condenser heat transfer coefficient, heat pipe, natural convection, tilt angle.

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Authors: Maziyar Nouraee

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Today, quality improvement is an essential manner that is notified primarily as an essence in industry, manufacturing, health and education. Whenever quality is noticed as a criterion, then it results into empowering managers and job satisfaction of staffs. The research is aimed to evaluate the rate of relationship between TQM executions toward rate of empowering and satisfaction of staff paper mill in Isfahan. Results showed that there is a meaningful relationship between TQM, empowerment and satisfaction and even between TQM and empowerment dimensions; total quality management can perfectly predict empowerment and job satisfaction.      

Keywords: TQM (total quality management), Empowerment, Job Satisfaction.

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Authors: Vishal Awasthi, Krishna Raj

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Unwanted side effects because of spectral aliasing and spectral imaging during signal processing would be the major concern over the sampling rate alteration. Multirate-multistage implementation of digital filter could come about a large computational saving than single rate filter suitable for sample rate conversion. This implementation can further improve through high-level architectural transformation in circuit level. Reallocating registers and  relocating flip-flops across logic gates through retiming certainly a prominent sequential transformation technology, that optimize hardware circuits to achieve faster clocking speed without affecting the functionality. In this paper, we proposed an efficient compensated cascade Integrator comb (CIC) decimation filter structure that analyze the consequence of filter order variation which has a retimed FIR filter being compensator while using the cutset retiming technique and achieved an improvement in the passband droop by 14% to 39%, in computation time by 38.04%, 25.78%, 12.21%, 6.69% and 4.44% and reduction in path delay by 62.27%, 72%, 86.63%, 91.56% and 94.42% of 3, 6, 8, 12 and 24 order filter respectively than the non-retimed CIC compensation filter.

Keywords: Multirate Filtering, CIC decimation filter, Compensation theory, Retiming, Retiming algorithm, Filter order, Synchronous dataflow graph.

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Authors: Philip Rose, Markus Linke, David Busquets

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The distinction between interlaminar and intralaminar fracture toughness is challenging. For loading mode I, the double cantilever beam specimens were often used for the interlaminar fracture toughness and the compact tension specimen for the intralaminar fracture toughness. For the analysis of interlaminar properties regarding energy release under different loading modes, the geometry of the DCB specimen can also be tested under three-point bending for Mode II characteristics. The same specimen can also be tested with defined superimposed loading conditions (mixed mode) using the Mixed Mode Bending test apparatus. However, this approach has not been applicable for intralaminar characteristics, as crack initiation in a single layer for laminates made out of prepreg, has not been feasible. The method presented in this work enables differentiation of interlaminar and intralaminar energy release rates in Mode II loading with nearly identical specimen geometry. With this, a practically identical energy release rate is observed in Mode II for the investigated material IM7/8552.

Keywords: Fibre reinforced plastics, end-notched flexure, energy release rate, fracture toughness, intralaminar, interlaminar.

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Authors: Xiaoqing Wang, Junfeng Wang, Xiaolan Zhu

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Android operating system has been recognized by most application developers because of its good open-source and compatibility, which enriches the categories of applications greatly. However, it has become the target of malware attackers due to the lack of strict security supervision mechanisms, which leads to the rapid growth of malware, thus bringing serious safety hazards to users. Therefore, it is critical to detect Android malware effectively. Generally, the permissions declared in the AndroidManifest.xml can reflect the function and behavior of the application to a large extent. Since current Android system has not any restrictions to the number of permissions that an application can request, developers tend to apply more than actually needed permissions in order to ensure the successful running of the application, which results in the abuse of permissions. However, some traditional detection methods only consider the requested permissions and ignore whether it is actually used, which leads to incorrect identification of some malwares. Therefore, a machine learning detection method based on the actually used permissions combination and API calls was put forward in this paper. Meanwhile, several experiments are conducted to evaluate our methodology. The result shows that it can detect unknown malware effectively with higher true positive rate and accuracy while maintaining a low false positive rate. Consequently, the AdaboostM1 (J48) classification algorithm based on information gain feature selection algorithm has the best detection result, which can achieve an accuracy of 99.8%, a true positive rate of 99.6% and a lowest false positive rate of 0.

Keywords: Android, permissions combination, API calls, machine learning.

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Authors: Niklas Echterhoff, Benjamin Amshoff, Jürgen Gausemeier

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Due to today-s fierce competition, companies have to be proactive creators of the future by effectively developing innovations. Especially radical innovations allow high profit margins – but they also entail high risks. One possibility to realize radical innovations and reduce the risk of failure is cross-industry innovation (CII). CII brings together problems and solution ideas from different industries. However, there is a lack of systematic ways towards CII. Bridging this gap, the present paper provides a systematic approach towards planned CII. Starting with the analysis of potentials, the definition of promising search strategies is crucial. Subsequently, identified solution ideas need to be assessed. For the most promising ones, the adaption process has to be systematically planned – regarding the risk affinity of a company. The introduced method is explained on a project from the furniture industry.

Keywords: Analogy building, cross-industry innovations, knowledge transfer, solution adaption.

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Authors: Chanin Park, Sundarapandian Thangapandian, Yuno Lee, Minky Son, Shalini John, Young-sik Sohn, Keun Woo Lee

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Hypertension is characterized with stress on the heart and blood vessels thus increasing the risk of heart attack and renal diseases. The Renin angiotensin system (RAS) plays a major role in blood pressure control. Renin is the enzyme that controls the RAS at the rate-limiting step. Our aim is to develop new drug-like leads which can inhibit renin and thereby emerge as therapeutics for hypertension. To achieve this, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and receptor-based pharmacophore modeling were implemented, and three rennin-inhibitor complex structures were selected based on IC50 value and scaffolds of inhibitors. Three pharmacophore models were generated considering conformations induced by inhibitor. The compounds mapped to these models were selected and subjected to drug-like screening. The identified hits were docked into the active site of renin. Finally, hit1 satisfying the binding mode and interaction energy was selected as possible lead candidate to be used in novel renin inhibitors.

Keywords: Renin inhibitor, Molecular dynamics simulation, Structure-based pharmacophore modeling

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Authors: Sanae Attioui, Said Najah

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The Earth's surface is constantly changing through forces of nature and human activities. Reliable, accurate, and timely change detection is critical to environmental monitoring, resource management, and planning activities. Recently, interest in deep learning algorithms, especially convolutional neural networks, has increased in the field of image change detection due to their powerful ability to extract multi-level image features automatically. However, these networks are prone to drawbacks that limit their applications, which reside in their inability to capture spatial relationships between image instances, as this necessitates a large amount of training data. As an alternative, Capsule Network has been proposed to overcome these shortcomings. Although its effectiveness in remote sensing image analysis has been experimentally verified, its application in change detection tasks remains very sparse. Motivated by its greater robustness towards improved hierarchical object representation, this study aims to apply a capsule network for PolSAR image Change Detection. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed change detection method can yield a significantly higher detection rate compared to methods based on convolutional neural networks.

Keywords: Change detection, capsule network, deep network, Convolutional Neural Networks, polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images, PolSAR images.

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Authors: Christina A. van Hal, Xiaoqian Jiang, Luyao Chen, Yan Chu, Robert D. Jolly, Yaobin Lin, Jitian Zhao, Kang Lin Hsieh

Abstract:

The COVID-19 Literature Summary App, now live on the university website, was created for the primary purpose of enabling academicians and clinicians to quickly sort through the vast array of recent coronavirus publications by topics of interest. Multiple methods of summarizing and sorting the manuscripts were created. A summary page introduces the application function and capabilities, while an interactive map provides daily updates on infection, death, and recovery rates. A page with a pivot table allows publication sorting by topic, with an interactive data table that allows sorting topics by columns, as wells as the capability to view abstracts. Additionally, publications may be sorted by the medical topics they cover. We used the CORD-19 database to compile lists of publications. The data table can sort binary variables, allowing the user to pick desired publication topics, such as papers that describe COVID-19 symptoms. The application is primarily designed for use by researchers but can be used by anybody who wants a faster and more efficient means of locating papers of interest. 

Keywords: COVID-19, literature summary, information retrieval, snorkel

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Authors: S. K. Appiah, E. N. Aidoo, D. Asamoah Owusu, M. W. Nuonabuor

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Urbanization remains one of the unique predominant factors which is linked to the destruction of urban environment and its associated cases of soil contamination by heavy metals through the natural and anthropogenic activities. These activities are important sources of toxic heavy metals such as arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and lead (Pb), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn). Often, these heavy metals lead to increased levels in some areas due to the impact of atmospheric deposition caused by their proximity to industrial plants or the indiscriminately burning of substances. Information gathered on potentially hazardous levels of these heavy metals in soils leads to establish serious health and urban agriculture implications. However, characterization of spatial variations of soil contamination by heavy metals in Ghana is limited. Kumasi is a Metropolitan city in Ghana, West Africa and is challenged with the recent spate of deteriorating soil quality due to rapid economic development and other human activities such as “Galamsey”, illegal mining operations within the metropolis. The paper seeks to use both univariate and multivariate geostatistical techniques to assess the spatial distribution of heavy metals in soils and the potential risk associated with ingestion of sources of soil contamination in the Metropolis. Geostatistical tools have the ability to detect changes in correlation structure and how a good knowledge of the study area can help to explain the different scales of variation detected. To achieve this task, point referenced data on heavy metals measured from topsoil samples in a previous study, were collected at various locations. Linear models of regionalisation and coregionalisation were fitted to all experimental semivariograms to describe the spatial dependence between the topsoil heavy metals at different spatial scales, which led to ordinary kriging and cokriging at unsampled locations and production of risk maps of soil contamination by these heavy metals. Results obtained from both the univariate and multivariate semivariogram models showed strong spatial dependence with range of autocorrelations ranging from 100 to 300 meters. The risk maps produced show strong spatial heterogeneity for almost all the soil heavy metals with extremely risk of contamination found close to areas with commercial and industrial activities. Hence, ongoing pollution interventions should be geared towards these highly risk areas for efficient management of soil contamination to avert further pollution in the metropolis.

Keywords: Coregionalization, ordinary cokriging, multivariate geostatistical analysis, soil contamination, soil heavy metals, risk maps, spatial distribution.

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Authors: Desmond B. Keenan

Abstract:

The clinical usefulness of heart rate variability is limited to the range of Holter monitoring software available. These software algorithms require a normal sinus rhythm to accurately acquire heart rate variability (HRV) measures in the frequency domain. Premature ventricular contractions (PVC) or more commonly referred to as ectopic beats, frequent in heart failure, hinder this analysis and introduce ambiguity. This investigation demonstrates an algorithm to automatically detect ectopic beats by analyzing discrete wavelet transform coefficients. Two techniques for filtering and replacing the ectopic beats from the RR signal are compared. One technique applies wavelet hard thresholding techniques and another applies linear interpolation to replace ectopic cycles. The results demonstrate through simulation, and signals acquired from a 24hr ambulatory recorder, that these techniques can accurately detect PVC-s and remove the noise and leakage effects produced by ectopic cycles retaining smooth spectra with the minimum of error.

Keywords: Heart rate variability, vagal tone, sympathetic, parasympathetic, wavelets, ectopic beats, spectral analysis.

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Authors: L. Grinis, N. Lubashevsky, Y. Ostrovski

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A jet pump is a type of pump that accelerates the flow of a secondary fluid (driven fluid) by introducing a motive fluid with high velocity into a converging-diverging nozzle. Jet pumps are also known as adductors or ejectors depending on the motivator phase. The ejector's motivator is of a gaseous nature, usually steam or air, while the educator's motivator is a liquid, usually water. Jet pumps are devices that use air bubbles and are widely used in wastewater treatment processes. In this work, we will discuss about the characteristics of the jet pump and the computational simulation of this device. To find the optimal angle and depth for the air pipe, so as to achieve the maximal air volumetric flow rate, an experimental apparatus was constructed to ascertain the best geometrical configuration for this new type of jet pump. By using 3D printing technology, a series of jet pumps was printed and tested whilst aspiring to maximize air flow rate dependent on angle and depth of the air pipe insertion. The experimental results show a major difference of up to 300% in performance between the different pumps (ratio of air flow rate to supplied power) where the optimal geometric model has an insertion angle of 60⁰ and air pipe insertion depth ending at the center of the mixing chamber. The differences between the pumps were further explained by using CFD for better understanding the reasons that affect the airflow rate. The validity of the computational simulation and the corresponding assumptions have been proved experimentally. The present research showed high degree of congruence with the results of the laboratory tests. This study demonstrates the potential of using of the jet pump in many practical applications.

Keywords: Air bubbles, CFD simulation, jet pump, practical applications.

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Authors: P. Nafisi Poor, P. Javid

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Over the past few years, the idea of adaptive buildings and specifically, adaptive building energy management systems (ABEMS) has become popular. Well-performed management in terms of energy is to create a balance between energy consumption and user comfort; therefore, in new energy management models, efficient energy consumption is not the sole factor and the user's comfortability is also considered in the calculations. One of the main ways of measuring this factor is by analyzing user feedback on the conditions to understand whether they are satisfied with conditions or not. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent approaches towards energy management systems based on users' feedbacks and subsequently performs a comparison between them premised upon their efficiency and accuracy to understand which approaches were more accurate and which ones resulted in a more efficient way of minimizing energy consumption while maintaining users' comfortability. It was concluded that the highest accuracy rate among the presented works was 95% accuracy in determining satisfaction and up to 51.08% energy savings can be achieved without disturbing user’s comfort. Considering the growing interest in designing and developing adaptive buildings, these studies can support diverse inquiries about this subject and can be used as a resource to support studies and researches towards efficient energy consumption while maintaining the comfortability of users.

Keywords: Adaptive buildings, energy efficiency, intelligent buildings, user comfortability.

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Authors: S. Iijima, K. Nakayama, D. Kuchar, M. Kubota, H. Matsuda

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Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO) is one of the best solutions for removal of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) from industrial processes. In the RTO, VOC in a raw gas are usually decomposed at 950-1300 K and the combustion heat of VOC is recovered by regenerative heat exchangers charged with ceramic honeycombs. The optimization of the treatment of VOC leads to the reduction of fuel addition to VOC decomposition, the minimization of CO2 emission and operating cost as well. In the present work, the thermal efficiency of the RTO was investigated experimentally in a pilot-scale RTO unit using toluene as a typical representative of VOC. As a result, it was recognized that the radiative heat transfer was dominant in the preheating process of a raw gas when the gas flow rate was relatively low. Further, it was found that a minimum heat exchanger volume to achieve self combustion of toluene without additional heating of the RTO by fuel combustion was dependent on both the flow rate of a raw gas and the concentration of toluene. The thermal efficiency calculated from fuel consumption and the decomposed toluene ratio, was found to have a maximum value of 0.95 at a raw gas mass flow rate of 1810 kg·h-1 and honeycombs height of 1.5m.

Keywords: Regenerative Heat Exchange, Self Combustion, Toluene, Volatile Organic Compounds.

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Authors: Leena Sharma

Abstract:

Chemical reaction and diffusion are important phenomena in quantitative neurobiology and biophysics. The knowledge of the dynamics of calcium Ca²⁺ is very important in cellular physiology because Ca²⁺ binds to many proteins and regulates their activity and interactions Calcium waves propagate inside cells due to a regenerative mechanism known as calcium-induced calcium release. Buffer-mediated calcium diffusion in the cytosol plays a crucial role in the process. A mathematical model has been developed for calcium waves by assuming the buffers are in equilibrium with calcium i.e., the rapid buffering approximation for a one dimensional unsteady state case. This model incorporates important physical and physiological parameters like dissociation rate, diffusion rate, total buffer concentration and influx. The finite difference method has been employed to predict [Ca²⁺] and buffer concentration time course regardless of the calcium influx. The comparative studies of the effect of the rapid buffered diffusion and kinetic parameters of the model on the concentration time course have been performed.

Keywords: Calcium Profile, Rapid Buffering Approximation, Influx, Dissociation rate constant.

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Authors: Dipti Patra, Mridula J

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose a new image segmentation approach for colour textured images. The proposed method for image segmentation consists of two stages. In the first stage, textural features using gray level co-occurrence matrix(GLCM) are computed for regions of interest (ROI) considered for each class. ROI acts as ground truth for the classes. Ohta model (I1, I2, I3) is the colour model used for segmentation. Statistical mean feature at certain inter pixel distance (IPD) of I2 component was considered to be the optimized textural feature for further segmentation. In the second stage, the feature matrix obtained is assumed to be the degraded version of the image labels and modeled as Markov Random Field (MRF) model to model the unknown image labels. The labels are estimated through maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation criterion using ICM algorithm. The performance of the proposed approach is compared with that of the existing schemes, JSEG and another scheme which uses GLCM and MRF in RGB colour space. The proposed method is found to be outperforming the existing ones in terms of segmentation accuracy with acceptable rate of convergence. The results are validated with synthetic and real textured images.

Keywords: Texture Image Segmentation, Gray Level Cooccurrence Matrix, Markov Random Field Model, Ohta colour space, ICM algorithm.

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Authors: Smita S. D. Goorah, Dilish Jokhoo

Abstract:

A personal estimate of a health risk may not correspond to a scientific assessment of the health risk. Hence, there is a need to investigate perceived health risks in the public. In this study, a young, educated and healthy group of people from a tertiary institute were questioned about their health concerns. Ethics clearance was obtained and data was collected by means of a questionnaire. 362 students participated in the study. Tobacco use, heavy alcohol drinking, illicit drugs, unsafe sex and potential carcinogens were perceived to be the five greatest threats to health in this cohort. On the other hand natural health products, unemployment, unmet contraceptive needs, family violence and homelessness were felt to be the least perceived health risks. Nutrition-related health risks as well as health risks due to physical inactivity and obesity were not perceived as major health threats. Such a study of health perceptions may guide health promotion campaigns.

Keywords: Health promotion, perceptions of health risks, university students.

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Authors: F. Bakiri, T. Rexha, A. Mitre

Abstract:

The aim of our study was to compare knowledge of regarding HPV and cervical cancer in female student of 18 to 26 years old, with or without sexual intercourse. We conducted a questionnaire survey of the students (N=568), in Faculty of Natural Sciences, Tirana, Albania. Sexually experienced students were more likely to have heard of risk factors such as multiple sex partners, sexual intercourse before age 18, having contracted any sexually transmitted diseases, having genital warts, smoking cigarettes, use of oral contraceptive, poor diet or nutrition and using tampons. No significant sexually experience differences were observed in knowledge of the way of transmission of the virus associated with cervical cancer knowledge, the virus associated with cervical cancer knowledge, the prevention of cervical cancer knowledge. On the other hand strong significant sexually experience differences were observed in knowledge of the diagnostic way of cervical cancer and what HPV can cause knowledge.

Keywords: Risk factors, HPV, Cervical cancer, Albanian students.

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Authors: Muhammad Rizwan Azhar, Emadadeen Ali

Abstract:

In this paper, periodic force operation of a wastewater treatment process has been studied for the improved process performance. A previously developed dynamic model for the process is used to conduct the performance analysis. The static version of the model was utilized first to determine the optimal productivity conditions for the process. Then, feed flow rate in terms of dilution rate i.e. (D) is transformed into sinusoidal function. Nonlinear model predictive control algorithm is utilized to regulate the amplitude and period of the sinusoidal function. The parameters of the feed cyclic functions are determined which resulted in improved productivity than the optimal productivity under steady state conditions. The improvement in productivity is found to be marginal and is satisfactory in substrate conversion compared to that of the optimal condition and to the steady state condition, which corresponds to the average value of the periodic function. Successful results were also obtained in the presence of modeling errors and external disturbances.

Keywords: Dilution rate, nonlinear model predictive control, sinusoidal function, wastewater treatment.

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Authors: Ticijana Prijon, Branko Ermenc

Abstract:

Background: Blunt aortic trauma (BAT) includes various morphological changes that occur during deceleration, acceleration and/or body compression in traffic accidents. The various forms of BAT, from limited laceration of the intima to complete transection of the aorta, depends on the force acting on the vessel wall and the tolerance of the aorta to injury. The force depends on the change in velocity, the dynamics of the accident and of the seating position in the car. Tolerance to aortic injury depends on the anatomy, histological structure and pathomorphological alterations due to aging or disease of the aortic wall. An overview of the literature and medical documentation reveals that different terms are used to describe certain forms of BAT, which can lead to misinterpretation of findings or diagnoses. We therefore, propose a classification that would enable uniform systematic screening of all forms of BAT. We have classified BAT into three morphologycal types: TYPE I (intramural), TYPE II (transmural) and TYPE III (multiple) aortic ruptures with appropriate subtypes. Methods: All car accident casualties examined at the Institute of Forensic Medicine from 2001 to 2009 were included in this retrospective study. Autopsy reports were used to determine the occurrence of each morphological type of BAT in deceased drivers, front seat passengers and other passengers in cars and to define the morphology of BAT in relation to the accident dynamics and the age of the fatalities. Results: A total of 391 fatalities in car accidents were included in the study. TYPE I, TYPE II and TYPE III BAT were observed in 10,9%, 55,6% and 33,5%, respectively. The incidence of BAT in drivers, front seat and other passengers was 36,7%, 43,1% and 28,6%, respectively. In frontal collisions, the incidence of BAT was 32,7%, in lateral collisions 54,2%, and in other traffic accidents 29,3%. The average age of fatalities with BAT was 42,8 years and of those without BAT 39,1 years. Conclusion: Identification and early recognition of the risk factors of BAT following a traffic accident is crucial for successful treatment of patients with BAT. Front seat passengers over 50 years of age who have been injured in a lateral collision are the most at risk of BAT.

Keywords: Aorta, blunt trauma, car accidents, morphology, risk factors.

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