Search results for: power system losses
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 10166

Search results for: power system losses

956 Fingers Exergames to Improve Fine Motor Skill in Autistic Children

Authors: Zulhisyam Salleh, Fizatul Aini Patakor, Rosilah Wahab, Awangku Khairul Ridzwan Awangku Jaya

Abstract:

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others. Most of these children have difficulty with fine motor skills which typically struggle with handwriting and fine activities in their routine life such as getting dressed and controlled use of the everyday tool. Because fine motor activities encompass so many routine functions, a fine motor delay can have a measurable negative impact on a person's ability to handle daily practical tasks. This project proposed a simple fine motor exercise aid plus the game (exergame) for autistic children who discover from fine motor difficulties. The proposed exergame will be blinking randomly and user needs to bend their finger accordingly. It will notify the user, whether they bend the right finger or not. The system is realized using Arduino, which is programmed to control all the operated circuit. The feasibility studies with six autistic children were conducted and found the child interested in using exergame and could quickly get used to it. This study provides important guidance for future investigations of the exergame potential for accessing and improving fine motor skill among autistic children.

Keywords: Autism children, Arduino project, fine motor skill, finger exergame.

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955 Nanostructured Pt/MnO2 Catalysts and Their Performance for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Air Cathode Microbial Fuel Cell

Authors: Maksudur Rahman Khan, Kar Min Chan, Huei Ruey Ong, Chin Kui Cheng, Wasikur Rahman

Abstract:

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) represent a promising technology for simultaneous bioelectricity generation and wastewater treatment. Catalysts are significant portions of the cost of microbial fuel cell cathodes. Many materials have been tested as aqueous cathodes, but air-cathodes are needed to avoid energy demands for water aeration. The sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) rate at air cathode necessitates efficient electrocatalyst such as carbon supported platinum catalyst (Pt/C) which is very costly. Manganese oxide (MnO2) was a representative metal oxide which has been studied as a promising alternative electrocatalyst for ORR and has been tested in air-cathode MFCs. However the single MnO2 has poor electric conductivity and low stability. In the present work, the MnO2 catalyst has been modified by doping Pt nanoparticle. The goal of the work was to improve the performance of the MFC with minimum Pt loading. MnO2 and Pt nanoparticles were prepared by hydrothermal and sol gel methods, respectively. Wet impregnation method was used to synthesize Pt/MnO2 catalyst. The catalysts were further used as cathode catalysts in air-cathode cubic MFCs, in which anaerobic sludge was inoculated as biocatalysts and palm oil mill effluent (POME) was used as the substrate in the anode chamber. The asprepared Pt/MnO2 was characterized comprehensively through field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), X-Ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and cyclic voltammetry (CV) where its surface morphology, crystallinity, oxidation state and electrochemical activity were examined, respectively. XPS revealed Mn (IV) oxidation state and Pt (0) nanoparticle metal, indicating the presence of MnO2 and Pt. Morphology of Pt/MnO2 observed from FESEM shows that the doping of Pt did not cause change in needle-like shape of MnO2 which provides large contacting surface area. The electrochemical active area of the Pt/MnO2 catalysts has been increased from 276 to 617 m2/g with the increase in Pt loading from 0.2 to 0.8 wt%. The CV results in O2 saturated neutral Na2SO4 solution showed that MnO2 and Pt/MnO2 catalysts could catalyze ORR with different catalytic activities. MFC with Pt/MnO2 (0.4 wt% Pt) as air cathode catalyst generates a maximum power density of 165 mW/m3, which is higher than that of MFC with MnO2 catalyst (95 mW/m3). The open circuit voltage (OCV) of the MFC operated with MnO2 cathode gradually decreased during 14 days of operation, whereas the MFC with Pt/MnO2 cathode remained almost constant throughout the operation suggesting the higher stability of the Pt/MnO2 catalyst. Therefore, Pt/MnO2 with 0.4 wt% Pt successfully demonstrated as an efficient and low cost electrocatalyst for ORR in air cathode MFC with higher electrochemical activity, stability and hence enhanced performance.

Keywords: Microbial fuel cell, oxygen reduction reaction, Pt/MnO2, palm oil mill effluent, polarization curve.

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954 Flow Analysis of Viscous Nanofluid Due to Rotating Rigid Disk with Navier’s Slip: A Numerical Study

Authors: Khalil Ur Rehman, M. Y. Malik, Usman Ali

Abstract:

In this paper, the problem proposed by Von Karman is treated in the attendance of additional flow field effects when the liquid is spaced above the rotating rigid disk. To be more specific, a purely viscous fluid flow yield by rotating rigid disk with Navier’s condition is considered in both magnetohydrodynamic and hydrodynamic frames. The rotating flow regime is manifested with heat source/sink and chemically reactive species. Moreover, the features of thermophoresis and Brownian motion are reported by considering nanofluid model. The flow field formulation is obtained mathematically in terms of high order differential equations. The reduced system of equations is solved numerically through self-coded computational algorithm. The pertinent outcomes are discussed systematically and provided through graphical and tabular practices. A simultaneous way of study makes this attempt attractive in this sense that the article contains dual framework and validation of results with existing work confirms the execution of self-coded algorithm for fluid flow regime over a rotating rigid disk.

Keywords: Nanoparticles, Newtonian fluid model, chemical reaction, heat source/sink.

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953 Effect of Bentonite on the Rheological Behavior of Cement Grout in Presence of Superplasticizer

Authors: K. Benyounes, A. Benmounah

Abstract:

Cement-based grouts has been used successfully to repair cracks in many concrete structures such as bridges, tunnels, buildings and to consolidate soils or rock foundations. In the present study the rheological characterization of cement grout with water/binder ratio (W/B) is fixed at 0.5. The effect of the replacement of cement by bentonite (2 to 10% wt) in presence of superplasticizer (0.5% wt) was investigated. Several rheological tests were carried out by using controlled-stress rheometer equipped with vane geometry in temperature of 20°C. To highlight the influence of bentonite and superplasticizer on the rheological behavior of grout cement, various flow tests in a range of shear rate from 0 to 200 s-1 were observed. Cement grout showed a non-Newtonian viscosity behavior at all concentrations of bentonite. Three parameter model Herschel- Bulkley was chosen for fitting of experimental data. Based on the values of correlation coefficients of the estimated parameters, The Herschel-Bulkley law model well described the rheological behavior of the grouts. Test results showed that the dosage of bentonite increases the viscosity and yield stress of the system and introduces more thixotropy. While the addition of both bentonite and superplasticizer with cement grout improve significantly the fluidity and reduced the yield stress due to the action of dispersion of SP.

Keywords: Cement grout, bentonite, superplasticizer, viscosity, yield stress.

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952 Traditional Dyeing of Silk with Natural Dyes by Eco-Friendly Method

Authors: Samera Salimpour Abkenar

Abstract:

In traditional dyeing of natural fibers with natural dyes, metal salts are commonly used to increase color stability. This method always carries the risk of environmental pollution (contamination of arable soils and fresh groundwater) due to the release of dyeing effluents containing large amounts of metal. Therefore, researchers are always looking for new methods to obtain a green dyeing system. In this research, the use of the enzymatic dyeing method to prevent environmental pollution with metals and reduce production costs has been proposed. After degumming and bleaching, raw silk fabrics were dyed with natural dyes (Madder and Sumac) by three methods (pre-mordanting with a metal salt, one-step enzymatic dyeing, and two-step enzymatic dyeing). Results show that silk dyed with natural dyes by the enzymatic method has higher color strength and colorfastness than the pretreated with a metal salt. Also, the amount of remained dyes in the dyeing wastewater is significantly reduced by the enzymatic method. It is found that the enzymatic dyeing method leads to improvement of dye absorption, color strength, soft hand, no change in color shade, low production costs (due to low dyeing temperature), and a significant reduction in environmental pollution.

Keywords: Eco-friendly, natural dyes, silk, traditional dyeing.

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951 Artificial Intelligence Techniques applied to Biomedical Patterns

Authors: Giovanni Luca Masala

Abstract:

Pattern recognition is the research area of Artificial Intelligence that studies the operation and design of systems that recognize patterns in the data. Important application areas are image analysis, character recognition, fingerprint classification, speech analysis, DNA sequence identification, man and machine diagnostics, person identification and industrial inspection. The interest in improving the classification systems of data analysis is independent from the context of applications. In fact, in many studies it is often the case to have to recognize and to distinguish groups of various objects, which requires the need for valid instruments capable to perform this task. The objective of this article is to show several methodologies of Artificial Intelligence for data classification applied to biomedical patterns. In particular, this work deals with the realization of a Computer-Aided Detection system (CADe) that is able to assist the radiologist in identifying types of mammary tumor lesions. As an additional biomedical application of the classification systems, we present a study conducted on blood samples which shows how these methods may help to distinguish between carriers of Thalassemia (or Mediterranean Anaemia) and healthy subjects.

Keywords: Computer Aided Detection, mammary tumor, pattern recognition, thalassemia.

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950 Preliminary Chaos Analyses of Explosion Earthquakes Followed by Harmonic Tremors at Semeru Volcano, East Java, Indonesia

Authors: Sukir Maryanto, Didik R. Santosa, Iyan Mulyana, Muhammad Hendrasto

Abstract:

Successive event of explosion earthquake and harmonic tremor recorded at Semeru volcano were analyzed to investigate the dynamical system regarding to their eruptive mechanism. The eruptive activity at Semeru volcano East Java, Indonesia is intermittent emission of ash and bombs with Strombolian style which occurred at interval of 15 to 45 minutes. The explosive eruptions accompanied by explosion earthquakes and followed by volcanic tremor which generated by continuous emission of volcanic ash. The spectral and Lyapunov exponent of successive event of explosion and harmonic tremor were analyzed. Peak frequencies of explosion earthquakes range 1.2 to 1.9 Hz and those of the harmonic tremor have peak frequency range 1.5 — 2.2 Hz. The phase space is reconstructed and evaluated based on the Lyapunov exponents. Harmonic tremors have smaller Lyapunov exponent than explosion earthquakes. It can be considerably as correlated complexity of the mechanism from the variance of spectral and fractal dimension and can be concluded that the successive event of harmonic tremor and explosions are chaotic.

Keywords: Semeru volcano, explosion earthquakes, harmonic tremor, lyapunov exponent, chaotic.

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949 Development of Coronal Field and Solar Wind Components for MHD Interplanetary Simulations

Authors: Ljubomir Nikolic, Larisa Trichtchenko

Abstract:

The connection between solar activity and adverse phenomena in the Earth’s environment that can affect space and ground based technologies has spurred interest in Space Weather (SW) research. A great effort has been put on the development of suitable models that can provide advanced forecast of SW events. With the progress in computational technology, it is becoming possible to develop operational large scale physics based models which can incorporate the most important physical processes and domains of the Sun-Earth system. In order to enhance our SW prediction capabilities we are developing advanced numerical tools. With operational requirements in mind, our goal is to develop a modular simulation framework of propagation of the disturbances from the Sun through interplanetary space to the Earth. Here, we report and discuss on the development of coronal field and solar wind components for a large scale MHD code. The model for these components is based on a potential field source surface model and an empirical Wang-Sheeley-Arge solar wind relation. 

Keywords: Space weather, numerical modeling, coronal field, solar wind.

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948 Comparative Spatial Analysis of a Re-arranged Hospital Building

Authors: Burak Köken, Hatice D. Arslan, Bilgehan Y. Çakmak

Abstract:

Analyzing the relation networks between the hospital buildings which have complex structure and distinctive spatial relationships is quite difficult. The hospital buildings which require specialty in spatial relationship solutions during design and selfinnovation through the developing technology should survive and keep giving service even after the disasters such as earthquakes. In this study, a hospital building where the load-bearing system was strengthened because of the insufficient earthquake performance and the construction of an additional building was required to meet the increasing need for space was discussed and a comparative spatial evaluation of the hospital building was made with regard to its status before the change and after the change. For this reason, spatial organizations of the building before change and after the change were analyzed by means of Space Syntax method and the effects of the change on space organization parameters were searched by applying an analytical procedure. Using Depthmap UCL software, Connectivity, Visual Mean Depth, Beta and Visual Integration analyses were conducted. Based on the data obtained after the analyses, it was seen that the relationships between spaces of the building increased after the change and the building has become more explicit and understandable for the occupants. Furthermore, it was determined according to findings of the analysis that the increase in depth causes difficulty in perceiving the spaces and the changes considering this problem generally ease spatial use.

Keywords: Architecture, hospital building, space syntax, strengthening.

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947 Electronic Nose Based On Metal Oxide Semiconductor Sensors as an Alternative Technique for the Spoilage Classification of Oat Milk

Authors: A. Deswal, N. S. Deora, H. N. Mishra

Abstract:

The aim of the present study was to develop a rapid method for electronic nose for online quality control of oat milk. Analysis by electronic nose and bacteriological measurements were performed to analyze spoilage kinetics of oat milk samples stored at room temperature and refrigerated conditions for up to 15 days. Principal component analysis (PCA), Discriminant Factorial Analysis (DFA) and Soft Independent Modelling by Class Analogy (SIMCA) classification techniques were used to differentiate the samples of oat milk at different days. The total plate count (bacteriological method) was selected as the reference method to consistently train the electronic nose system. The e-nose was able to differentiate between the oat milk samples of varying microbial load. The results obtained by the bacteria total viable countsshowed that the shelf-life of oat milk stored at room temperature and refrigerated conditions were 20hrs and 13 days, respectively. The models built classified oat milk samples based on the total microbial population into “unspoiled” and “spoiled”.

Keywords: Electronic-nose, bacteriological, shelf-life, classification.

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946 A Cooperative Multi-Robot Control Using Ad Hoc Wireless Network

Authors: Amira Elsonbaty, Rawya Rizk, Mohamed Elksas, Mofreh Salem

Abstract:

In this paper, a Cooperative Multi-robot for Carrying Targets (CMCT) algorithm is proposed. The multi-robot team consists of three robots, one is a supervisor and the others are workers for carrying boxes in a store of 100×100 m2. Each robot has a self recharging mechanism. The CMCT minimizes robot-s worked time for carrying many boxes during day by working in parallel. That is, the supervisor detects the required variables in the same time another robots work with previous variables. It works with straightforward mechanical models by using simple cosine laws. It detects the robot-s shortest path for reaching the target position avoiding obstacles by using a proposed CMCT path planning (CMCT-PP) algorithm. It prevents the collision between robots during moving. The robots interact in an ad hoc wireless network. Simulation results show that the proposed system that consists of CMCT algorithm and its accomplished CMCT-PP algorithm achieves a high improvement in time and distance while performing the required tasks over the already existed algorithms.

Keywords: Ad hoc network, Computer vision based positioning, Dynamic collision avoidance, Multi-robot, Path planning algorithms, Self recharging.

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945 Automated Vehicle Traffic Control Tower: A Solution to Support the Next Level Automation

Authors: Xiaoyun Zhao, Rami Darwish, Anna Pernestål

Abstract:

Automated vehicles (AVs) have the potential to enhance road capacity, improving road safety and traffic efficiency. Research and development on AVs have been going on for many years. However, when the complicated traffic rules and real situations interacted, AVs fail to make decisions on contradicting situations, and are not able to have control in all conditions due to highly dynamic driving scenarios. This limits AVs’ usage and restricts the full potential benefits that they can bring. Furthermore, regulations, infrastructure development, and public acceptance cannot keep up at the same pace as technology breakthroughs. Facing these challenges, this paper proposes automated vehicle traffic control tower (AVTCT) acting as a safe, efficient and integrated solution for AV control. It introduces a concept of AVTCT for control, management, decision-making, communication and interaction with various aspects in transportation. With the prototype demonstrations and simulations, AVTCT has the potential to overcome the control challenges with AVs and can facilitate AV reaching their full potential. Possible functionalities, benefits as well as challenges of AVTCT are discussed, which set the foundation for the conceptual model, simulation and real application of AVTCT.

Keywords: Automated vehicle, connectivity and automation, intelligent transport system, traffic control, traffic safety.

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944 Image Features Comparison-Based Position Estimation Method Using a Camera Sensor

Authors: Jinseon Song, Yongwan Park

Abstract:

In this paper, propose method that can user’s position that based on database is built from single camera. Previous positioning calculate distance by arrival-time of signal like GPS (Global Positioning System), RF(Radio Frequency). However, these previous method have weakness because these have large error range according to signal interference. Method for solution estimate position by camera sensor. But, signal camera is difficult to obtain relative position data and stereo camera is difficult to provide real-time position data because of a lot of image data, too. First of all, in this research we build image database at space that able to provide positioning service with single camera. Next, we judge similarity through image matching of database image and transmission image from user. Finally, we decide position of user through position of most similar database image. For verification of propose method, we experiment at real-environment like indoor and outdoor. Propose method is wide positioning range and this method can verify not only position of user but also direction.

Keywords: Positioning, Distance, Camera, Features, SURF (Speed-Up Robust Features), Database, Estimation.

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943 Kinematic Analysis of Roll Motion for a Strut/SLA Suspension System

Authors: Yung Chang Chen, Po Yi Tsai, I An Lai

Abstract:

The roll center is one of the key parameters for designing a suspension. Several driving characteristics are affected significantly by the migration of the roll center during the suspension-s motion. The strut/SLA (strut/short-long-arm) suspension, which is widely used in production cars, combines the space-saving characteristics of a MacPherson strut suspension with some of the preferred handling characteristics of an SLA suspension. In this study, a front strut/SLA suspension is modeled by ADAMS/Car software. Kinematic roll analysis is then employed to investigate how the rolling characteristics change under the wheel travel and steering input. The related parameters, including the roll center height, roll camber gain, toe change, scrub radius and wheel track width change, are analyzed and discussed. It is found that the strut/SLA suspension clearly has a higher roll center than strut and SLA suspensions do. The variations in the roll center height under roll analysis are very different as the wheel travel displacement and steering angle are added. The results of the roll camber gain, scrub radius and wheel track width change are considered satisfactory. However, the toe change is too large and needs fine-tuning through a sensitivity analysis.

Keywords: roll analysis, roll center height, steering, strut/SLA suspension, wheel travel

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942 Resveratrol Incorporated Liposomes Prepared from Pegylated Phospholipids and Cholesterol

Authors: Mont Kumpugdee-Vollrath, Khaled Abdallah

Abstract:

Liposomes and pegylated liposomes were widely used as drug delivery system in pharmaceutical field since a long time. However, in the former time, polyethylene glycol (PEG) was connected into phospholipid after the liposomes were already prepared. In this paper, we intend to study the possibility of applying phospholipids which already connected with PEG and then they were used to prepare liposomes. The model drug resveratrol was used because it can be applied against different diseases. Cholesterol was applied to stabilize the membrane of liposomes. The thin film technique in a laboratory scale was a preparation method. The liposomes were then characterized by nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA), photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS) and light microscopic techniques. The stable liposomes can be produced and the particle sizes after filtration were in nanometers. The 2- and 3-chains-PEG-phospholipid (PL) caused in smaller particle size than the 4-chains-PEG-PL. Liposomes from PL 90G and cholesterol were stable during storage at 8 °C of 56 days because the particle sizes measured by PCS were almost not changed. There was almost no leakage of resveratrol from liposomes PL 90G with cholesterol after diffusion test in dialysis tube for 28 days. All liposomes showed the sustained release during measuring time of 270 min. The maximum release amount of 16-20% was detected with liposomes from 2- and 3-chains-PEG-PL. The other liposomes gave max. release amount of resveratrol only of 10%. The release kinetic can be explained by Korsmeyer-Peppas equation. 

Keywords: Liposome, NTA, resveratrol, pegylation, cholesterol.

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941 Effect of Cooled EGR in Combustion Characteristics of a Direct Injection CI Engine Fuelled with Biodiesel Blend

Authors: Sankar Chandrasekar, Rana Niranchan V.S., Joseph Sidharth Leon

Abstract:

As the demand and prices of various petroleum products have been on the rise in recent years, there is a growing need for alternative fuels. Biodiesel, which consists of alkyl monoesters of fatty acids from vegetable oils and animal fats, is considered as an alternative to petroleum diesel. Biodiesel has comparable performance with that of diesel and has lower brake specific fuel consumption than diesel with significant reduction in emissions of CO, hydrocarbons (HC) and smoke with however, a slight increase in NOx emissions. This paper analyzes the effect of cooled exhaust gas recirculation in the combustion characteristics of a direct injection compression ignition engine using biodiesel blended fuel as opposed to the conventional system. The combustion parameters such as cylinder pressure, heat release rate, delay period and peak pressure were analyzed at various loads. The maximum cylinder pressure reduces as the fraction of biodiesel increases in the blend the maximum rate of pressure rise was found to be higher for diesel at higher engine loads.

Keywords: Cylinder pressure, delay period, EGR, heat release.

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940 SOA-Based Mobile Application for Crime Control in Thailand

Authors: Jintana Khemprasit, Vatcharaporn Esichaikul

Abstract:

Crime is a major societal problem for most of the world's nations. Consequently, the police need to develop new methods to improve their efficiency in dealing with these ever increasing crime rates. Two of the common difficulties that the police face in crime control are crime investigation and the provision of crime information to the general public to help them protect themselves. Crime control in police operations involves the use of spatial data, crime data and the related crime data from different organizations (depending on the nature of the analysis to be made). These types of data are collected from several heterogeneous sources in different formats and from different platforms, resulting in a lack of standardization. Moreover, there is no standard framework for crime data collection, integration and dissemination through mobile devices. An investigation into the current situation in crime control was carried out to identify the needs to resolve these issues. This paper proposes and investigates the use of service oriented architecture (SOA) and the mobile spatial information service in crime control. SOA plays an important role in crime control as an appropriate way to support data exchange and model sharing from heterogeneous sources. Crime control also needs to facilitate mobile spatial information services in order to exchange, receive, share and release information based on location to mobile users anytime and anywhere.

Keywords: Crime Control, Geographic Information System (GIS), Mobile GIS, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

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939 LCA/CFD Studies of Artisanal Brick Manufacture in Mexico

Authors: H. A. Lopez-Aguilar, E. A. Huerta-Reynoso, J. A. Gomez, J. A. Duarte-Moller, A. Perez-Hernandez

Abstract:

Environmental performance of artisanal brick manufacture was studied by Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis in Mexico. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the environmental impact during artisanal brick manufacture. LCA cradle-to-gate approach was complemented with CFD analysis to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The lifecycle includes the stages of extraction, baking and transportation to the gate. The functional unit of this study was the production of a single brick in Chihuahua, Mexico and the impact categories studied were carcinogens, respiratory organics and inorganics, climate change radiation, ozone layer depletion, ecotoxicity, acidification/ eutrophication, land use, mineral use and fossil fuels. Laboratory techniques for fuel characterization, gas measurements in situ, and AP42 emission factors were employed in order to calculate gas emissions for inventory data. The results revealed that the categories with greater impacts are ecotoxicity and carcinogens. The CFD analysis is helpful in predicting the thermal diffusion and contaminants from a defined source. LCA-CFD synergy complemented the EIA and allowed us to identify the problem of thermal efficiency within the system.

Keywords: LCA, CFD, brick, artisanal.

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938 Decolorization and COD Reduction Efficiency of Magnesium over Iron based Salt for the Treatment of Textile Wastewater Containing Diazo and Anthraquinone Dyes

Authors: Akshaya Kumar Verma, Puspendu Bhunia*, Rajesh Roshan Dash

Abstract:

Magnesium chloride, though cost wise roughly same as of ferrous sulphate, is less commonly used coagulant in comparison to the ferrous sulphate for the treatment of wastewater. The present study was conducted to investigate the comparative effectiveness of ferrous sulphate (FeSO4.7H2O) as iron based salt and magnesium chloride (MgCl2) as magnesium based salt in terms of decolorization and chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction efficiency of textile wastewater. The coagulants were evaluated for synthetic textile wastewater containing two diazo dyes namely Reactive Black 5 (RB5) and Congo Red (CR) and one anthraquinone dye as Disperse Blue 3 (DB3), in seven possible equi-ratio combinations. Other chemical constituents that are normally released from different textile processing units were also added to replicate a practical scenario. From this study, MgCl2/Lime was found to be a superior coagulant system as compared to FeSO4.7H2O/Lime, FeSO4.7H2O/NaOH and MgCl2/NaOH.

Keywords: Coagulation, Color removal, Magnesium chloride, Textile wastewater

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937 Generic Workload Management System Using Condor-Based Pilot Factory in PanDA Framework

Authors: Po-Hsiang Chiu, Torre Wenaus

Abstract:

In the current Grid environment, efficient workload management presents a significant challenge, for which there are exorbitant de facto standards encompassing resource discovery, brokerage, and data transfer, among others. In addition, the real-time resource status, essential for an optimal resource allocation strategy, is often not readily accessible. To address these issues and provide a cleaner abstraction of the Grid with the potential of generalizing into arbitrary resource-sharing environment, this paper proposes a new Condor-based pilot mechanism applied in the PanDA architecture, PanDA-PF WMS, with the goal of providing a more generic yet efficient resource allocating strategy. In this architecture, the PanDA server primarily acts as a repository of user jobs, responding to pilot requests from distributed, remote resources. Scheduling decisions are subsequently made according to the real-time resource information reported by pilots. Pilot Factory is a Condor-inspired solution for a scalable pilot dissemination and effectively functions as a resource provisioning mechanism through which the user-job server, PanDA, reaches out to the candidate resources only on demand.

Keywords: Condor, glidein, PanDA, Pilot, Pilot Factory.

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936 Studying Implication of Globalization on Engineering Education

Authors: S. Sharafi, G. Bassak Harouni, S. Torfi, H. Makenalizadeh, A. Sayahi

Abstract:

The primary purpose of this article is an attempt to find the implication of globalization on education. Globalization has an important role as a process in the economical, political, cultural and technological dimensions in the life of the contemporary human being and has been affected by it. Education has its effects in this procedure and while influencing it through educating global citizens having universal human features and characteristics, has been influenced by this phenomenon too. Nowadays, the role of education is not just to develop in the students the knowledge and skills necessary for the new kinds of jobs. If education wants to help students be prepared of the new global society, it has to make them engaged productive and critical citizens for the global era, so that they can reflect about their roles as key actors in a dynamic often uneven, matrix of economic and cultural exchanges. If education wants to reinforce and raise the national identity, the value system and the children and teenagers, it should make them ready for living in the global era of this century. The used method in this research is documentary and analyzing the documents. Studies in this field show globalization has influences on the processes of the production, distribution and consuming of knowledge. The happening of this event in the information era has not only provide the necessary opportunities for the exchanges of education worldwide but also has privileges for the developing countries which enables them to strengthen educational bases of their society and have an important step toward their future.

Keywords: Globalization, Education, global erea

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935 Laminar Free Convection of Nanofluid Flow in Horizontal Porous Annulus

Authors: Manal H. Saleh

Abstract:

A numerical study has been carried out to investigate the heat transfer by natural convection of nanofluid taking Cu as nanoparticles and the water as based fluid in a three dimensional annulus enclosure filled with porous media (silica sand) between two horizontal concentric cylinders with 12 annular fins of 2.4mm thickness attached to the inner cylinder under steady state conditions. The governing equations which used are continuity, momentum and energy equations under an assumptions used Darcy law and Boussinesq-s approximation which are transformed to dimensionless equations. The finite difference approach is used to obtain all the computational results using the MATLAB-7. The parameters affected on the system are modified Rayleigh number (10 ≤Ra*≤ 1000), fin length Hf (3, 7 and 11mm), radius ratio Rr (0.293, 0.365 and 0.435) and the volume fraction(0 ≤ ¤ò ≤ 0 .35). It was found that the average Nusselt number depends on (Ra*, Hf, Rr and φ). The results show that, increasing of fin length decreases the heat transfer rate and for low values of Ra*, decreasing Rr cause to decrease Nu while for Ra* greater than 100, decreasing Rr cause to increase Nu and adding Cu nanoparticles with 0.35 volume fraction cause 27.9% enhancement in heat transfer. A correlation for Nu in terms of Ra*, Hf and φ, has been developed for inner hot cylinder.

Keywords: Annular fins, laminar free convection, nanofluid, porous media, three dimensions horizontal annulus.

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934 A Theoretical Model for a Humidification Dehumidification (HD) Solar Desalination Unit

Authors: Yasser Elhenawy, M. Abd Elkader, Gamal H. Moustafa

Abstract:

A theoretical study of a humidification dehumidification solar desalination unit has been carried out to increase understanding the effect of weather conditions on the unit productivity. A humidification-dehumidification (HD) solar desalination unit has been designed to provide fresh water for population in remote arid areas. It consists of solar water collector and air collector; to provide the hot water and air to the desalination chamber. The desalination chamber is divided into humidification and dehumidification towers. The circulation of air between the two towers is maintained by the forced convection. A mathematical model has been formulated, in which the thermodynamic relations were used to study the flow, heat and mass transfer inside the humidifier and dehumidifier. The present technique is performed in order to increase the unit performance. Heat and mass balance has been done and a set of governing equations has been solved using the finite difference technique. The unit productivity has been calculated along the working day during the summer and winter sessions and has compared with the available experimental results. The average accumulative productivity of the system in winter has been ranged between 2.5 to 4 (kg/m2)/day, while the average summer productivity has been found between 8 to 12 (kg/m2)/day.

Keywords: Finite difference, Dehumidification, Humidification, Solar desalination, Solar collector, Simulation, Water productivity.

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933 Magnetohydrodynamic Maxwell Nanofluids Flow over a Stretching Surface through a Porous Medium: Effects of Non-Linear Thermal Radiation, Convective Boundary Conditions and Heat Generation/Absorption

Authors: Sameh E. Ahmed, Ramadan A. Mohamed, Abd Elraheem M. Aly, Mahmoud S. Soliman

Abstract:

In this paper, an enhancement of the heat transfer using non-Newtonian nanofluids by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) mixed convection along stretching sheets embedded in an isotropic porous medium is investigated. Case of the Maxwell nanofluids is studied using the two phase mathematical model of nanofluids and the Darcy model is applied for the porous medium. Important effects are taken into account, namely, non-linear thermal radiation, convective boundary conditions, electromagnetic force and presence of the heat source/sink. Suitable similarity transformations are used to convert the governing equations to a system of ordinary differential equations then it is solved numerically using a fourth order Runge-Kutta method with shooting technique. The main results of the study revealed that the velocity profiles are decreasing functions of the Darcy number, the Deborah number and the magnetic field parameter. Also, the increase in the non-linear radiation parameters causes an enhancement in the local Nusselt number.

Keywords: MHD, nanofluids, stretching surface, non-linear thermal radiation, convective condition.

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932 “Blood Family“ Activity With Respect To Comprehensive Guidance School Program

Authors: Ali Eryılmaz

Abstract:

Children and adolescents developing in the worlds of today are facing a getting array of new and old challenges. School counselling is improving rapidly in contemporary education systems around the world. It can be said that counselling system in Turkey was newly borning. In this study, “Family of the Blood" activity is improved with respect to compherensive guidance school program. The sample included 22 adolescents who were high school students. The activity was carried out in 4 sessions, each of which lasted 45 minutes. In the first session, students- personal-social needs were determined. In the second session, in order to warm up, the students were asked three questions consisting of the constructional aspect. In the third session, the counselor and the teacher shared the results of students- responses obtained in the previous session. In the fourth session, the tables formed by students were presented in the classroom. In order to evaluate the activity, three questions were asked of the teacher and counselor. According to the results, the lesson aims of curriculum and counselling aims of curriculum were attained. In the light of literature, the results were discussed and some suggestions were made. It is taken into consideration that the activitiy was beneficial in many respects, similar studies should be carried out in the near future.

Keywords: Comprehensive guidance program, education, family

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931 Toxicity Depletion Rates of Water Lettuce (Pistia stratoites) in an Aquaculture Effluent Hydroponic System

Authors: E. A. Kiridi, A. O. Ogunlela

Abstract:

The control of ammonia build-up and its by-product is a limiting factor for a successful commercial aquaculture in a developing country like Nigeria. The technology for an advanced treatment of fish tank effluent is uneconomical to local fish farmers which have led to indiscriminate disposal of aquaculture wastewater, thereby increasing the concentrations of these nitrogenous compound and other contaminants in surface and groundwater above the permissible level. Phytoremediation using water lettuce could offer cheaper and sustainable alternative. On the first day of experimentation, approximately 100 g of water lettuce were replicated in four hydroponic units containing aquaculture effluents. The water quality parameters measured were concentration of ammonium–nitrogen (NH4+-N), nitrite-nitrogen (NO2--N), nitrate-nitrogen (NO3--N), and phosphate–phosphorus (PO43--P). Others were total suspended solids (TSS), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), and biomass value. At phytoremediation intervals of 7, 14, 21 and 28 days, the biomass recorded were 361.2 g, 498.7 g, 561.2 g, and 623.7 g. Water lettuce was able to reduce the pollutant concentration of all the selected parameter. The percentage reduction of pH ranged from 3.9% to 14.4%, EC from 49.8% to 96.2%, TDS from 50.4% to 96.2%, TSS from 38.3% to 81.7%, NH4+-N from 38.9% to 90.7%, NO2--N from 0% to 74.9%, NO3--N from 63.2% to 95.9% and PO43--P from 0% to 76.3%. At 95% confidence level, the analysis of variance shows that F(critical) is less than F(cal) and p < 0.05; therefore, it can be concluded statistically that the inequality between the pre-treatment and post-treatment values are significant. This suggests the potency of water lettuce for remediation of aquaculture effluent.

Keywords: Aquaculture effluent, nitrification, phytoremediation, water lettuce.

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930 Transient Analysis of Central Region Void Fraction in a 3x3 Rod Bundle under Bubbly and Cap/Slug Flows

Authors: Ya-Chi Yu, Pei-Syuan Ruan, Shao-Wen Chen, Yu-Hsien Chang, Jin-Der Lee, Jong-Rong Wang, Chunkuan Shih

Abstract:

This study analyzed the transient signals of central region void fraction of air-water two-phase flow in a 3x3 rod bundle. Experimental tests were carried out utilizing a vertical rod bundle test section along with a set of air-water supply/flow control system, and the transient signals of the central region void fraction were collected through the electrical conductivity sensors as well as visualized via high speed photography. By converting the electric signals, transient void fraction can be obtained through the voltage ratios. With a fixed superficial water velocity (Jf=0.094 m/s), two different superficial air velocities (Jg=0.094 m/s and 0.236 m/s) were tested and presented, which were corresponding to the flow conditions of bubbly flows and cap/slug flows, respectively. The time averaged central region void fraction was obtained as 0.109-0.122 with 0.028 standard deviation for the selected bubbly flow and 0.188-0.221with 0.101 standard deviation for the selected cap/slug flow, respectively. Through Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis, no clear frequency peak was found in bubbly flow, while two dominant frequencies were identified around 1.6 Hz and 2.5 Hz in the present cap/slug flow.

Keywords: Central region, rod bundles, transient void fraction, two-phase flow.

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929 A Fuzzy TOPSIS Based Model for Safety Risk Assessment of Operational Flight Data

Authors: N. Borjalilu, P. Rabiei, A. Enjoo

Abstract:

Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) program assists an operator in aviation industries to identify, quantify, assess and address operational safety risks, in order to improve safety of flight operations. FDM is a powerful tool for an aircraft operator integrated into the operator’s Safety Management System (SMS), allowing to detect, confirm, and assess safety issues and to check the effectiveness of corrective actions, associated with human errors. This article proposes a model for safety risk assessment level of flight data in a different aspect of event focus based on fuzzy set values. It permits to evaluate the operational safety level from the point of view of flight activities. The main advantages of this method are proposed qualitative safety analysis of flight data. This research applies the opinions of the aviation experts through a number of questionnaires Related to flight data in four categories of occurrence that can take place during an accident or an incident such as: Runway Excursions (RE), Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT), Mid-Air Collision (MAC), Loss of Control in Flight (LOC-I). By weighting each one (by F-TOPSIS) and applying it to the number of risks of the event, the safety risk of each related events can be obtained.

Keywords: F-TOPSIS, fuzzy set, FDM, flight safety.

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928 A Novel Approach to Iris Localization for Iris Biometric Processing

Authors: Somnath Dey, Debasis Samanta

Abstract:

Iris-based biometric system is gaining its importance in several applications. However, processing of iris biometric is a challenging and time consuming task. Detection of iris part in an eye image poses a number of challenges such as, inferior image quality, occlusion of eyelids and eyelashes etc. Due to these problems it is not possible to achieve 100% accuracy rate in any iris-based biometric authentication systems. Further, iris detection is a computationally intensive task in the overall iris biometric processing. In this paper, we address these two problems and propose a technique to localize iris part efficiently and accurately. We propose scaling and color level transform followed by thresholding, finding pupil boundary points for pupil boundary detection and dilation, thresholding, vertical edge detection and removal of unnecessary edges present in the eye images for iris boundary detection. Scaling reduces the search space significantly and intensity level transform is helpful for image thresholding. Experimental results show that our approach is comparable with the existing approaches. Following our approach it is possible to detect iris part with 95-99% accuracy as substantiated by our experiments on CASIA Ver-3.0, ICE 2005, UBIRIS, Bath and MMU iris image databases.

Keywords: Iris recognition, iris localization, biometrics, image processing.

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927 Optimization of Surface Roughness in Turning Process Utilizing Live Tooling via Taguchi Methodology

Authors: Weinian Wang, Joseph C. Chen

Abstract:

The objective of this research is to optimize the process of cutting cylindrical workpieces utilizing live tooling on a HAAS ST-20 lathe. Surface roughness (Ra) has been investigated as the indicator of quality characteristics for machining process. Aluminum alloy was used to conduct experiments due to its wide range usages in engineering structures and components where light weight or corrosion resistance is required. In this study, Taguchi methodology is utilized to determine the effects that each of the parameters has on surface roughness (Ra). A total of 18 experiments of each process were designed according to Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array (OA) with four control factors at three levels of each and signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) were computed with Smaller the better equation for minimizing the system. The optimal parameters identified for the surface roughness of the turning operation utilizing live tooling were a feed rate of 3 inches/min(A3); a spindle speed of 1300 rpm(B3); a 2-flute titanium nitrite coated 3/8” endmill (C1); and a depth of cut of 0.025 inches (D2). The mean surface roughness of the confirmation runs in turning operation was 8.22 micro inches. The final results demonstrate that Taguchi methodology is a sufficient way of process improvement in turning process on surface roughness.

Keywords: Live tooling, surface roughness, Taguchi Parameter Design, CNC turning operation.

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