Search results for: higher cognition

Authors: Sudarat Jiamyangyuen, Tipawan Thongsook, Riantong Singanusong, Chanida Saengtubtim

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Rice bran is normally used as a raw material for rice bran oil production or sold as feed with a low price. Conventionally, the protein in defatted rice bran was extracted using alkaline extraction and acid precipitation, which involves in chemical usage and lowering some nutritious component. This study was conducted in order to extract of rice bran protein concentrate (RBPC) from defatted rice bran using enzymes and employing polysaccharides in a precipitating step. The properties of RBPC obtained will be compared to those of a control sample extracted using a conventional method. The results showed that extraction of protein from rice bran using enzymes exhibited the higher protein recovery compared to that extraction with alkaline. The extraction conditions using alcalase 2% (v/w) at 50 C, pH 9.5 gave the highest protein (2.44%) and yield (32.09%) in extracted solution compared to other enzymes. Rice bran protein concentrate powder prepared by a precipitation step using alginate (protein in solution: alginate 1:0.016) exhibited the highest protein (27.55%) and yield (6.84%). Precipitation using alginate was better than that of acid. RBPC extracted with alkaline (ALK) or enzyme alcalase (ALC), then precipitated with alginate (AL) (samples RBP-ALK-AL and RBP-ALC-AL) yielded the precipitation rate of 75% and 91.30%, respectively. Therefore, protein precipitation using alginate was then selected. Amino acid profile of control sample, and sample precipitated with alginate, as compared to casein and soy protein isolated, showed that control sample showed the highest content among all sample. Functional property study of RBP showed that the highest nitrogen solubility occurred in pH 8-10. There was no statically significant between emulsion capacity and emulsion stability of control and sample precipitated by alginate. However, control sample showed a higher of foaming capacity and foaming stability compared to those of sample precipitated with alginate. The finding was successful in terms of minimizing chemicals used in extraction and precipitation steps in preparation of rice bran protein concentrate. This research involves in a production of value-added product in which the double amount of protein (28%) compared to original amount (14%) contained in rice bran could be beneficial in terms of adding to food products e.g. healthy drink with high protein and fiber. In addition, the basic knowledge of functional property of rice bran protein concentrate was obtained, which can be used to appropriately select the application of this value-added product from rice bran.

Keywords: Alginate, carrageenan, rice bran, rice bran protein.

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Authors: Panagiotis H. Tsarouhas

Abstract:

the reliability analysis of the medical equipments can help to increase the availability and the efficiency of the systems. In this manuscript we present a simple method of decomposition that could be easily applied on the complex medical systems. Using this method we can easily calculate the effect of the subsystems or components on the reliability of the overall system. Furthermore, to investigate the effect of subsystems or components on system performance, we perform a numerical study varying every time the worst reliability of subsystem or component with another which has higher reliability. It can also be useful to engineers and designers of medical equipment, who wishes to optimize the complex systems.

Keywords: Reliability, Availability, Series-parallel System, medical equipment.

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Authors: Marc Veillette, Mostafa Chamoumi, Nathalie Faucheux, Michèle Heitz

Abstract:

Biodiesel is traditionally produced from oleaginous plants. On the other hand, increasing biodiesel production from these raw materials could create problems of food supply. Producing biodiesel from microalgae could help to overcome this difficulty, because microalgae are rich in lipids and do not compete for arable lands. However, no studies had compared vegetable and microalgae oil-based biodiesel in terms of yield, viscosity and heat of combustion. In the present study, commercial canola and microalgae oil were therefore transesterified with methanol under a homogenous alkali catalyst (potassium hydroxide) at 100oC for 1h. The result showed that microalgae-based oil has a higher yield in biodiesel with 89.7% (g biodiesel/g oil) and a lower kinematic viscosity (22oC) of 4.31 mm/s2 than canola oil.

Keywords: Biodiesel, microalgae, canola, alkalitransesterification

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Authors: Kemkanit Sanyanunthana

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The purpose of this research is to study the management system of information technology which supports the education of five private universities in Thailand, according to the case studies which have been developing their qualities and standards of management and education by service provision of information technology to support the excellence performance. The concept to connect information technology with a suitable system has been created by information technology administrators for development, as a system that can be used throughout the organizations to help reach the utmost benefits of using all resources. Hence, the researcher as a person who has been performing these duties within higher education is interested to do this research by selecting the Control Objective for Information and Related Technology 5 (COBIT 5) for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) of America, or the National Award which applies the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) to the organization evaluation. Such evaluation is called the Education Criteria for Performance Excellence (EdPEx) focuses on studying and comparing education quality development for excellent performance using COBIT 5 in terms of information technology to study the problems and obstacles of the investigation process for an information technology system, which is considered as an instrument to drive all organizations to reach the excellence performance of the information technology, and to be the model of evaluation and analysis of the process to be in accordance with the strategic plans of the information technology in the universities. This research is conducted in the form of descriptive and survey research according to the case studies. The data collection were carried out by using questionnaires through the administrators working related to the information technology field, and the research documents related to the change management as the main study. The research can be concluded that the performance based on the APO domain process (ALIGN, PLAN AND ORGANISE) of the COBIT 5 standard frame, which emphasizes concordant governance and management of strategic plans for the organizations, could reach only 95%. This might be because of some restrictions such as organizational cultures; therefore, the researcher has studied and analyzed the management of information technology in universities as a whole, under the organizational structures, to reach the performance in accordance with the overall APO domain which would affect the determined strategic plans to be able to develop based on the excellence performance of information technology, and to apply the risk management system at the organizational level into every performance process which would develop the work effectiveness for the resources management of information technology to reach the utmost benefits. 

Keywords: COBIT 5, APO, EdPEx Criteria, MBNQA.

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Authors: A. Goi, M. Trapido, N. Kulik

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The hydrogen peroxide treatment was able to remediate chlorophenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, diesel and transformer oil contaminated soil. Chemical treatment of contaminants adsorbed in peat resulted in lower contaminants- removal and required higher addition of chemicals than the treatment of contaminants in sand. The hydrogen peroxide treatment was found to be feasible for soil remediation at natural soil pH. Contaminants in soil could degrade with the addition of hydrogen peroxide only indicating the ability of transition metals ions and minerals of these metals presented in soil to catalyse the reaction of hydrogen peroxide decomposition.

Keywords: Hydrogen peroxide, oxidation, soil treatment, decontamination.

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Authors: F. Smach, M. Atri, J. Mitéran, M. Abid

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Face detection and recognition has many applications in a variety of fields such as security system, videoconferencing and identification. Face classification is currently implemented in software. A hardware implementation allows real-time processing, but has higher cost and time to-market. The objective of this work is to implement a classifier based on neural networks MLP (Multi-layer Perceptron) for face detection. The MLP is used to classify face and non-face patterns. The systm is described using C language on a P4 (2.4 Ghz) to extract weight values. Then a Hardware implementation is achieved using VHDL based Methodology. We target Xilinx FPGA as the implementation support.

Keywords: Classification, Face Detection, FPGA Hardware description, MLP.

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Authors: Chang-Myeon Lee, Min-Hyung Lee, Jin-Young Hur, Ho-Nyun Lee, Hong-Kee Lee

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An ultrasound-assisted activation method for electroless silver plating is presented in this study. When the ultrasound was applied during the activation step, the amount of the Pd species adsorbed on substrate surfaces was higher than that of sample pretreated with a conventional activation process without ultrasound irradiation. With this activation method, it was also shown that the adsorbed Pd species with a size of about 5 nm were uniformly distributed on the surfaces, thus a smooth and uniform coating on the surfaces was obtained by subsequent electroless silver plating. The samples after each step were characterized by AFM, XPS, FIB, and SEM.

Keywords: Cavitation, Electroless silver, Pd activation, Ultrasonic

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Authors: H. Assaedi, F. U. A. Shaikh, I. M. Low

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Geopolymer composites reinforced with flax fabrics and nanoclay are fabricated and studied for physical and mechanical properties using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Nanoclay platelets at a weight of 1.0%, 2.0%, and 3.0% were added to geopolymer pastes. Nanoclay at 2.0 wt.% was found to improve density and decrease porosity while improving flexural strength and post-peak toughness. A microstructural analysis indicated that nanoclay behaves as filler and as an activator supporting geopolymeric reaction while producing a higher content geopolymer gel improving the microstructure of binders. The process enhances adhesion between the geopolymer matrix and flax fibres.

Keywords: Flax fibres, geopolymer, mechanical properties, nanoclay.

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Authors: M. Ionascu, L. Olimid

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In the last few years, several steps were taken in order to improve the quality of corporate governance for Romanian listed companies. Higher standards of corporate governance is documented in the literature to lead to a better information environment, and, consequently, to increase analysts forecast accuracy. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which corporate governance policies affect analysts forecasts for companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange. The results showed that there is indeed a negative correlation between a corporate governance index – used as a proxy for the quality of corporate governance practices - and analysts forecast errors.

Keywords: corporate governance, aanalysts' forecasts, information environment

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Authors: Eun-Geun Kim, Won-Pil Park, Dae-Gon Woo, Chang-Yong Ko, Yong-Heum Lee, Dohyung Lim, Tae-Min Shin, Han-Sung Kim, Gyoun-Jung Lee

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Functional gastrointestinal disorders affect millions of people spread all age regardless of race and sex. There are, however, rare diagnostic methods for the functional gastrointestinal disorders because functional disorders show no evidence of organic and physical causes. Our research group identified recently that the gastrointestinal tract well in the patients with the functional gastrointestinal disorders becomes more rigid than healthy people when palpating the abdominal regions overlaying the gastrointestinal tract. Aim of this study is, therefore, to develop a diagnostic system for the functional gastrointestinal disorders based on ultrasound technique, which can quantify the characteristic above related to the rigidity of the gastrointestinal tract well. Ultrasound system was designed. The system consisted of transmitter, ultrasonic transducer, receiver, TGC, and CPLD, and verified via a phantom test. For the phantom test, ten soft-tissue specimens were harvested from porcine. Five of them were then treated chemically to mimic a rigid condition of gastrointestinal tract well, which was induced by functional gastrointestinal disorders. Additionally, the specimens were tested mechanically to identify if the mimic was reasonable. The customized ultrasound system was finally verified through application to human subjects with/without functional gastrointestinal disorders (Normal and Patient Groups). It was identified from the mechanical test that the chemically treated specimens were more rigid than normal specimen. This finding was favorably compared with the result obtained from the phantom test. The phantom test also showed that ultrasound system well described the specimen geometric characteristics and detected an alteration in the specimens. The maximum amplitude of the ultrasonic reflective signal in the rigid specimens (0.2±0.1Vp-p) at the interface between the fat and muscle layers was explicitly higher than that in the normal specimens (0.1±0.0Vp-p). Clinical tests using our customized ultrasound system for human subject showed that the maximum amplitudes of the ultrasonic reflective signals near to the gastrointestinal tract well for the patient group (2.6±0.3Vp-p) were generally higher than those in normal group (0.1±0.2Vp-p). Here, maximum reflective signals was appeared at 20mm depth approximately from abdominal skin for all human subjects, corresponding to the location of the boundary layer close to gastrointestinal tract well. These results suggest that newly designed diagnostic system based on ultrasound technique may diagnose enough the functional gastrointestinal disorders.

Keywords: Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders, DiagnosticSystem, Phantom Test, Ultrasound System.

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Authors: Yong-Seo Koo, Jin-Woo Jung, Byung-Seok Lee, Dong-Su Kim, Yil-Suk Yang

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In this paper, a novel LVTSCR-based device for electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection of integrated circuits (ICs) is designed, fabricated and characterized. The proposed device is similar to the conventional LVTSCR but it has an embedded PMOSFET in the anode n-well to enhance the turn on speed, the clamping capability and the robustness. This is possible because the embedded PMOSFET provides the sub-path of ESD discharge current. The TLP, HBM and MM testing are carried out to verify the ESD performance of the proposed devices, which are fabricated in 0.35um (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) BCDMOS process. The device has the robustness of 70mA/um that is higher about 60mA/um than the LVTSCR, approximately.

Keywords: ESD Protection, grounded gate NMOS (GGNMOS), low trigger voltage SCR (LVTSCR)

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Authors: Sabrina N. Rabelo, Tiago de F. Paulino, Willian M. Duarte, Samer Sawalha, Luiz Machado

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Energy use is one of the main indicators for the economic and social development of a country, reflecting directly in the quality of life of the population. The expansion of energy use together with the depletion of fossil resources and the poor efficiency of energy systems have led many countries in recent years to invest in renewable energy sources. In this context, solar-assisted heat pump has become very important in energy industry, since it can transfer heat energy from the sun to water or another absorbing source. The direct-expansion solar assisted heat pump (DX-SAHP) water heater system operates by receiving solar energy incident in a solar collector, which serves as an evaporator in a refrigeration cycle, and the energy reject by the condenser is used for water heating. In this paper, a DX-SAHP using carbon dioxide as refrigerant (R744) was assembled, and the influence of the variation of the water mass flow rate in the system was analyzed. The parameters such as high pressure, water outlet temperature, gas cooler outlet temperature, evaporator temperature, and the coefficient of performance were studied. The mainly components used to assemble the heat pump were a reciprocating compressor, a gas cooler which is a countercurrent concentric tube heat exchanger, a needle-valve, and an evaporator that is a copper bare flat plate solar collector designed to capture direct and diffuse radiation. Routines were developed in the LabVIEW and CoolProp through MATLAB software’s, respectively, to collect data and calculate the thermodynamics properties. The range of coefficient of performance measured was from 3.2 to 5.34. It was noticed that, with the higher water mass flow rate, the water outlet temperature decreased, and consequently, the coefficient of performance of the system increases since the heat transfer in the gas cooler is higher. In addition, the high pressure of the system and the CO₂ gas cooler outlet temperature decreased. The heat pump using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant, especially operating with solar radiation has been proven to be a renewable source in an efficient system for heating residential water compared to electrical heaters reaching temperatures between 40 °C and 80 °C.

Keywords: Water mass flow rate, R-744, heat pump, solar evaporator, water heater.

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Authors: Stelian Petrescu, Adina Frunzâ, Camelia Petrescu

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A method to determine experimentally the melting rate, rm, and the heat transfer coefficients, αv (W/(m3K)), at convective melting in a fixed bed of particles under adiabatic regime is established in this paper. The method lies in the determining of the melting rate by measuring the fixed bed height in time. Experimental values of rm, α and α v were determined using cylindrical particles of ice (d = 6.8 mm, h = 5.5 mm) and, as a melting agent, aqueous NaCl solution with a temperature of 283 K at different values of the liquid flow rate (11.63·10-6, 28.83·10-6, 38.83·10-6 m3/s). Our experimental results were compared with those existing in literature being noticed a good agreement for Re values higher than 50.

Keywords: Convective melting, fixed bed, packed bed, heat transfer, ice melting.

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Authors: V. Viliene, V. Sasyte, A. Raceviciute-Stupeliene, R. Gruzauskas

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In horse nutrition, the most suitable cereal for their rations composition could be defined as oats and barley. Oats have high nutritive value because it provides more protein, fiber, iron and zinc than other whole grains, has good taste, and an activity of stimulating metabolic changes in the body. Another cereal – barley is very similar to oats as a feed except for some characteristics that affect how it is used; however, barley is lower in fiber than oats and is classified as a "heavy" feed. The value of oats and barley grain, first of all is dependent on its composition. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has long been considered and used as a significant method in component and quality analysis and as an emerging technology for authenticity applications for cereal quality control. This paper presents the chemical and amino acid composition of different varieties of barley and oats, also digestible energy of different cereals for horses. Ten different spring barley (n = 5) and oats (n = 5) varieties, grown in one location in Lithuania, were assayed for their chemical composition (dry matter, crude protein, crude fat, crude ash, crude fiber, starch) and amino acids content, digestible amino acids and amino acids digestibility. Also, the grains digestible energy for horses was calculated. The oats and barley samples reflectance spectra were measured by means of NIRS using Foss-Tecator DS2500 equipment. The chemical components: fat, crude protein, starch and fiber differed statistically (P<0.05) between the oats and barley varieties. The highest total amino acid content between oats was determined in variety Flamingsprofi (4.56 g/kg) and the lowest – variety Circle (3.57 g/kg), and between barley - respectively in varieties Publican (3.50 g/kg) and Sebastian (3.11 g/kg). The different varieties of oats digestible amino acid content varied from 3.11 g/kg to 4.07 g/kg; barley different varieties varied from 2.59 g/kg to 2.94 g/kg. The average amino acids digestibility of oats varied from 74.4% (Liz) to 95.6% (Fen) and in barley - from 75.8 % (Tre) to 89.6% (Fen). The amount of digestible energy in the analyzed varieties of oats and barley was an average compound 13.74 MJ/kg DM and 14.85 MJ/kg DM, respectively. An analysis of the results showed that different varieties of oats compared with barley are preferable for horse nutrition according to the crude fat, crude fiber, ash and separate amino acids content, but the analyzed barley varieties dominated the higher amounts of crude protein, the digestible Liz amount and higher DE content, and thus, could be recommended for making feed formulation for horses combining oats and barley, taking into account the chemical composition of using cereal varieties.

Keywords: Barley, digestive energy, horses, nutritional value, oats.

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Authors: R. Eslami Farsani, S. Raissi, A. Shokuhfar, A. Sedghi

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In this investigation, types of commercial and special polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers contain sodium 2-methyl-2- acrylamidopropane sulfonate (SAMPS) and itaconic acid (IA) comonomers were studied by fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The study of FT-IR spectra of PAN fibers samples with different comonomers shows that during stabilization of PAN fibers, the peaks related to C≡N bonds and CH2 are reduced sharply. These reductions are related to cyclization of nitrile groups and stabilization procedure. This reduction in PAN fibers contain IA comonomer is very intense in comparison with PAN fibers contain SAMPS comonomer. This fact indicates the cycling and stabilization for sample contain IA comonomer have been conducted more completely. Therefore the carbon fibers produced from this material have higher tensile strength due to suitable stabilization.

Keywords: PAN Fibers, Stabilization, Carbon Fibers, FT-IR.

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Authors: Darby Tien-Hao Chang, Guan-Yu Shiu, You-Jie Sun

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Various cis-regulatory module (CRM) predictors have been proposed in the last decade. Several well-established CRM predictors adopted different categories of prediction strategies, including window clustering, probabilistic modeling and phylogenetic footprinting. Appropriate integration of them has a potential to achieve high quality CRM prediction. This study analyzed four existing CRM predictors (ClusterBuster, MSCAN, CisModule and MultiModule) to seek a predictor combination that delivers a higher accuracy than individual CRM predictors. 465 CRMs across 140 Drosophila melanogaster genes from the RED fly database were used to evaluate the integrated CRM predictor proposed in this study. The results show that four predictor combinations achieved superior performance than the best individual CRM predictor.

Keywords: Cis-regulatory module, transcription factor binding site.

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Authors: Julio Cesar Lopes de Oliveira, Carlos Henrique Gonc¸alves Treviso

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The shortage of the automotive market in relation to options for sources of high power car audio systems, led to development of this work. Thus, we developed a source with stabilized voltage with 4320 W effective power. Designed to the voltage of 14.4 V and a choice of two currents: 30 A load option in battery banks and 300 A at full load. This source can also be considered as a source of general use dedicated commercial with a simple control circuit in analog form based on discrete components. The assembly of power circuit uses a methodology for higher power than the initially stipulated.

Keywords: DC-DC power converters, converters, power convertion, pulse width modulation converters.

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Authors: E. F. Ochulor, S. O. Adeosun, S. A. Balogun

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Effect of sprue/metal head height on mould filling, microstructure and mechanical properties of TWDI casting is studied. Results show that metal/sprue height of 50 mm is not sufficient to push the melt through the gating channel, but as it is increased from 100-350 mm, proper mould filling is achieved. However at higher heights between 200 mm and 350 mm, defects associated with incomplete solidification, carbide precipitation and turbulent flow are evident. This research shows that superior UTS, hardness, nodularity and nodule count are obtained at 100 mm sprue height.

Keywords: Melt pressure and velocity, nodularity, nodule count, sprue height.

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Authors: H.B.Kekre, Archana Athawale, Pallavi N.Halarnkar

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Steganography, derived from Greek, literally means “covered writing". It includes a vast array of secret communications methods that conceal the message-s very existence. These methods include invisible inks, microdots, character arrangement, digital signatures, covert channels, and spread spectrum communications. This paper proposes a new improved version of Least Significant Bit (LSB) method. The approach proposed is simple for implementation when compared to Pixel value Differencing (PVD) method and yet achieves a High embedding capacity and imperceptibility. The proposed method can also be applied to 24 bit color images and achieve embedding capacity much higher than PVD.

Keywords: Information Hiding, LSB Matching, PVD Steganography.

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Authors: Sharan Badiger, Prema T. Akkasaligar, Patil LS, Manish Patel, Biradar MS

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Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a global pandemic with cases reporting from virtually every country and continues to be a common infection in developing country like India. Microalbuminuria is a manifestation of human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy. Therefore, microalbuminuria may be an early marker of human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy, and screening for its presence may be beneficial. A strikingly high prevalence of microalbuminuria among human immunodeficiency virus infected patients has been described in various studies. Risk factors for clinically significant proteinuria include African - American race, higher human immunodeficiency virus ribonucleic acid level and lower CD4 lymphocyte count. The cardiovascular risk factors of increased systolic blood pressure and increase fasting blood sugar level are strongly associated with microalbuminuria in human immunodeficiency virus patient. These results suggest that microalbuminuria may be a sign of current endothelial dysfunction and micro-vascular disease and there is substantial risk of future cardiovascular disease events. Positive contributing factors include early kidney disease such as human immunodeficiency virus associated nephropathy, a marker of end organ damage related to co morbidities of diabetes or hypertension, or more diffuse endothelial cells dysfunction. Nevertheless after adjustment for non human immunodeficiency virus factors, human immunodeficiency virus itself is a major risk factor. The presence of human immunodeficiency virus infection is independent risk to develop microalbuminuria in human immunodeficiency virus patient. Cardiovascular risk factors appeared to be stronger predictors of microalbuminuria than markers of human immunodeficiency virus severity person with human immunodeficiency virus infection and microalbuminuria therefore appear to potentially bear the burden of two separate damage related to known vascular end organ damage related to know vascular risk factors, and human immunodeficiency virus specific processes such as the direct viral infection of kidney cells.The higher prevalence of microalbuminuria among the human immunodeficiency virus infected could be harbinger of future increased risks of both kidney and cardiovascular disease. Further study defining the prognostic significance of microalbuminuria among human immunodeficiency virus infected persons will be essential. Microalbuminuria seems to be a predictor of cardiovascular disease in diabetic and non diabetic subjects, hence it can also be used for early detection of micro vascular disease in human immunodeficiency virus positive patients, thus can help to diagnose the disease at the earliest.

Keywords: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, Human immunodeficiency virus, Microalbuminuria.

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Authors: Sung Ho Ha, Seong Hyeon Joo, Hyun U. Pae

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In terms of total online audience, newspapers are the most successful form of online content to date. The online audience for newspapers continues to demand higher-quality services, including personalized news services. News providers should be able to offer suitable users appropriate content. In this paper, a news article recommender system is suggested based on a user-s preference when he or she visits an Internet news site and reads the published articles. This system helps raise the user-s satisfaction, increase customer loyalty toward the content provider.

Keywords: Content classification, content recommendation, customer profiling, documents clustering.

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Authors: Yuji Mizuno, Hiroshi Mabuchi

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Initial values of reference vectors have significant influence on recognition accuracy in LVQ. There are several existing techniques, such as SOM and k-means, for setting initial values of reference vectors, each of which has provided some positive results. However, those results are not sufficient for the improvement of recognition accuracy. This study proposes an ACO-used method for initializing reference vectors with an aim to achieve recognition accuracy higher than those obtained through conventional methods. Moreover, we will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by applying it to the wine data and English vowel data and comparing its results with those of conventional methods.

Keywords: Clustering, LVQ, ACO, SOM, k-means.

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Authors: Numan Unaldi, Samil Temel, Süleyman Demirci

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A novel undecimated wavelet transform based contrast enhancement algorithmis proposed to for both gray scale andcolor images. Contrast enhancement is realized by tuning the magnitude of approximation coefficients at each level with respect to the approximation coefficients of one higher level during the inverse transform phase in a center/surround  enhancement sense.The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using a statistical visual contrast measure (VCM). Experimental results on the proposed algorithm show improvement in terms of the VCM.

Keywords: Image enhancement, local contrast enhancement, visual contrast measure.

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Authors: Vladyslav Povoroznyuk, Nataliia Dzerovych, Larysa Martynyuk, Tetiana Kovtun

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Obesity and osteoporosis are the two diseases whose increasing prevalence and high impact on the global morbidity and mortality, during the two recent decades, have gained a status of major health threats worldwide. Obesity purports to affect the bone metabolism through complex mechanisms. Debated data on the connection between the bone mineral density and fracture prevalence in the obese patients are widely presented in literature. There is evidence that the correlation of weight and fracture risk is sitespecific. This study is aimed at determining the connection between the bone mineral density (BMD) and trabecular bone score (TBS) parameters in Ukrainian women suffering from obesity. We examined 1025 40-89-year-old women, divided them into the groups according to their body mass index: Group A included 360 women with obesity whose BMI was ≥30 kg/m2, and Group B – 665 women with no obesity and BMI of <30 kg/m2. The BMD of total body, lumbar spine at the site L1-L4, femur and forearm were measured by DXA (Prodigy, GEHC Lunar, Madison, WI, USA). The TBS of L1- L4 was assessed by means of TBS iNsight® software installed on our DXA machine (product of Med-Imaps, Pessac, France). In general, obese women had a significantly higher BMD of lumbar spine, femoral neck, proximal femur, total body and ultradistal forearm (p<0.001) in comparison with women without obesity. The TBS of L1-L4 was significantly lower in obese women compared to nonobese women (p<0.001). The BMD of lumbar spine, femoral neck and total body differed to a significant extent in women of 40-49, 50- 59, 60-69 and 70-79 years (p<0.05). At same time, in women aged 80-89 years the BMD of lumbar spine (p=0.09), femoral neck (p=0.22) and total body (p=0.06) barely differed. The BMD of ultradistal forearm was significantly higher in women of all age groups (p<0.05). The TBS of L1-L4 in all the age groups tended to reveal the lower parameters in obese women compared with the nonobese; however, those data were not statistically significant. By contrast, a significant positive correlation was observed between the fat mass and the BMD at different sites. The correlation between the fat mass and TBS of L1-L4 was also significant, although negative. Women with vertebral fractures had a significantly lower body weight, body mass index and total body fat mass in comparison with women without vertebral fractures in their anamnesis. In obese women the frequency of vertebral fractures was 27%, while in women without obesity – 57%.

Keywords: Bone mineral density, trabecular bone score, obesity, women.

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Authors: Sebastian Kusch, Markus Kaiser

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In this paper we analyze the application of a formal proof system to the discrete logarithm problem used in publickey cryptography. That means, we explore a computer verification of the ElGamal encryption scheme with the formal proof system Isabelle/HOL. More precisely, the functional correctness of this algorithm is formally verified with computer support. Besides, we present a formalization of the DSA signature scheme in the Isabelle/HOL system. We show that this scheme is correct what is a necessary condition for the usefulness of any cryptographic signature scheme.

Keywords: Formal proof system, higher-order logic, formal verification, cryptographic signature scheme.

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Authors: L. P. L. Nguyen, G. Hitka, T. Zsom, Z. Kókai

Abstract:

This study is aimed to investigate the influence of postharvest delays of 1-Methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) treatment on prolonging the storage potential of melon. Melons were treated with 625-650 ppb 1-MCP at 10 °C for 24 hours on the 1st, 3rd and 5th day after harvest. Decreased ethylene production and retarded softening of melon fruits after 7 days of storage at 10 °C plus 3 days of shelflife were obtained by 1-MCP applications. 1-MCP strongly affected the chlorophyll fluorescence characteristics and hue angle values of melon. After shelf-life, the peel color of treated melon was slow in turning to yellow compared to the control. Additionally, firmness of melons treated on the first day after harvest was 38% higher than that of the control fruit. Results showed that fruits treated on the 1st and the 3rd day after harvest could maintain the quality of melon.

Keywords: 1-MCP, delay, muskmelon, storage.

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Authors: T. Khampan, N. Thavarungkul, J. Tiansuwan, S. Kamthai

Abstract:

This research aimed to modify pineapple leaf paper (PALP) for using as wet media in the evaporation cooling system by improving wet mechanical property (tensile strength) without compromising water absorption property. Polyamideamineepichorohydrin resin (PAE) and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) were used to strengthen the paper, and the PAE and CMC ratio of 80:20 showed the optimum wet and dry tensile index values, which were higher than those of the commercial cooling pad (CCP). Compared with CCP, PALP itself and all the PAE/CMC modified PALP possessed better water absorption. The PAE/CMC modified PALP had potential to become a new type of wet media.

Keywords: wet strength, evaporative cooling, pineapple leaves, polyamideamine-epichorohydrin, carboxymethylcellulose.

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Authors: Boncho G. Bonev, Kliment N. Angelov, Emil S. Altimirski

Abstract:

In this paper, the link quality in SHF and EHF ranges are studied. In order to achieve high data rate higher frequencies must be used – centimeter waves (SHF), millimeter waves (EHF) or optical range. However, there are significant problem when a radio link work in that diapason – rain attenuation and attenuation in earth-s atmosphere. Based on statistical rain rates data for Bulgaria, the link availability can be determined, depending on the working frequency, the path length and the Power Budget of the link. For the calculations of rain attenuation and atmosphere-s attenuation the ITU recommendations are used.

Keywords: rain attenuation, atmospheric gaseous attenuation, link availability, link breaking probability

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Authors: Aare Kuusik, E. Loigu, O. Sokk, Argo Kuusik

Abstract:

This paper describes technological possibilities to enhance methane productionin the anaerobic stabilization of wastewater treatment plant excess sludge. This objective can be achieved by the addition of waste residues: crude glycerol from biodiesel production and residues from fishery. The addition ofglycerol in an amount by weight of 2 – 5% causes enhancement of methane production of about 250 – 400%. At the same time the percentage increase of total solids concentration in the outgoing sludge is ten or more times less. The containment of methane in biogas is higher in case of admixed substrate.

Keywords: Enhancement of methane production, fishery residues, waste glycerol

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Authors: N. Hamzah, M.A. Khoiry, I. Arshad, W.H.W. Badaruzzaman, N. M. Tawil

Abstract:

Construction delay is unavoidable in developing countries including Malaysia. It is defined as time overrun or extension of time for completion of a project. The purpose of the study is to determine the causes of delay in Malaysian construction industries based on previous worldwide research. The field survey conducted includes the experienced developers, consultants and contractors in Malaysia. 34 causes of the construction delay have been determined and 24 have been selected using the Rasch model analysis. The analysis result will be used as the baseline for the next research to find the causes of delay in the Malaysian construction industry taking place in Malaysian higher learning institutions.

Keywords: Causes of construction delay, construction projects, Malaysian construction industry, Rasch model analysis.

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