Search results for: reducing fuel

Authors: K. A. Weidenmann, M. Grigo, B. Brylka, P. Elsner, T. Böhlke

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In order to reduce fuel consumption, the weight of automobiles has to be reduced. Fiber reinforced polymers offer the potential to reach this aim because of their high stiffness to weight ratio. Additionally, the use of fiber reinforced polymers in automotive applications has to allow for an economic large-scale production. In this regard, long fiber reinforced thermoplastics made by direct processing offer both mechanical performance and processability in injection moulding and compression moulding. The work presented in this contribution deals with long glass fiber reinforced polypropylene directly processed in compression moulding (D-LFT). For the use in automotive applications both the temperature and the time dependency of the materials properties have to be investigated to fulfill performance requirements during crash or the demands of service temperatures ranging from -40 °C to 80 °C. To consider both the influence of temperature and time, quasistatic tensile tests have been carried out at different temperatures. These tests have been complemented by high speed tensile tests at different strain rates. As expected, the increase in strain rate results in an increase of the elastic modulus which correlates to an increase of the stiffness with decreasing service temperature. The results are in good accordance with results determined by dynamic mechanical analysis within the range of 0.1 to 100 Hz. The experimental results from different testing methods were grouped and interpreted by using different time temperature shift approaches. In this regard, Williams-Landel-Ferry and Arrhenius approach based on kinetics have been used. As the theoretical shift factor follows an arctan function, an empirical approach was also taken into consideration. It could be shown that this approach describes best the time and temperature superposition for glass fiber reinforced polypropylene manufactured by D-LFT processing.

Keywords: Composite, long fiber reinforced thermoplastics, mechanical properties, dynamic mechanical analysis, time temperature superposition.

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Authors: Huan Chen, Bo-Chao Cheng, Chih-Chuan Cheng, Yi-Geng Chen, Yu Ling Chou

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Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) comprises of sensor nodes which are designed to sense the environment, transmit sensed data back to the base station via multi-hop routing to reconstruct physical phenomena. Since physical phenomena exists significant overlaps between temporal redundancy and spatial redundancy, it is necessary to use Redundancy Suppression Algorithms (RSA) for sensor node to lower energy consumption by reducing the transmission of redundancy. A conventional algorithm of RSAs is threshold-based RSA, which sets threshold to suppress redundant data. Although many temporal and spatial RSAs are proposed, temporal-spatial RSA are seldom to be proposed because it is difficult to determine when to utilize temporal or spatial RSAs. In this paper, we proposed a novel temporal-spatial redundancy suppression algorithm, Codebookbase Redundancy Suppression Mechanism (CRSM). CRSM adopts vector quantization to generate a codebook, which is easily used to implement temporal-spatial RSA. CRSM not only achieves power saving and reliability for WSN, but also provides the predictability of network lifetime. Simulation result shows that the network lifetime of CRSM outperforms at least 23% of that of other RSAs.

Keywords: Redundancy Suppression Algorithm (RSA), Threshold-based RSA, Temporal RSA, Spatial RSA and Codebookbase Redundancy Suppression Mechanism (CRSM)

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Authors: Sanaa K. Bardaweel, Mohammad M. Hudaib, Khaled A. Tawaha, Rasha M. Bashatwah

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Eucalyptus species are well reputed for their traditional use in Asia as well as in other parts of the world; therefore, the present study was designed to investigate the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities associated with essential oils from different Eucalyptus species. Essential oils from the leaves of six Eucalyptus species, including: Eucalyptus woodwardi, Eucalyptus stricklandii, Eucalyptus salubris, Eucalyptus sargentii, Eucalyptus torquata and Eucalyptus wandoo were separated by hydrodistillation and dried over anhydrous sodium sulphate. DPPH, ferric reducing antioxidant power, and hydroxyl radical scavenging activity assays were carried out to evaluate the antioxidant potential of the oils. The results indicate that examined oils exhibit substantial antioxidant activities relative to ascorbic acid. Previously, these oils were evaluated for their antimicrobial activities, against wide range of bacterial and fungal strains, and they were shown to possess significant antimicrobial activities. In this study, further investigation into the growth kinetics of oil-treated microbial cultures was conducted. The results clearly demonstrate that the microbial growth was markedly inhibited when treated with sub-MIC concentrations of the oils. Taken together, the results obtained indicate a high potential of the examined essential oils as bioactive oils, for nutraceutical and medical applications, possessing significant antioxidant and anti microbial activities.

Keywords: Antimicrobial, antioxidants, essential (volatile) oil, Eucalyptus.

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Authors: Liubov A. Magerramova, Mikhail A. Petrov, Vladimir V. Isakov, Liana A. Shcherbinina, Suren G. Gukasyan, Daniil V. Povalyukhin, Olga G. Klimova-Korsmik, Darya V. Volosevich

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Aircraft engines are developing along the path of increasing resource, strength, reliability, and safety. The building of gas turbine engine body parts is a complex design and technological task. Particularly complex in the design and manufacturing are the casings of the input stages of helicopter gearboxes and central drives of aircraft engines. Traditional technologies, such as precision casting or isothermal forging, are characterized by significant limitations in parts production. For parts like housing, additive technologies guarantee spatial freedom and limitless or flexible design. This article presents the results of computational and experimental studies. These investigations justify the applicability of additive technologies (AT) to reduce the weight of aircraft housing gearbox parts by up to 32%. This is possible due to geometrical optimization compared to the classical, less flexible manufacturing methods and as-casted aircraft parts with over-insured values of safety factors. Using an example of the body of the input stage of an aircraft gearbox, visualization of the layer-by-layer manufacturing of a part based on thermal deformation was demonstrated.

Keywords: Additive technologies, gas turbine engines, geometric optimization, weight reduction.

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Authors: Pavel Pořízka, David Prochazka, Karel Novotný, Ota Samek, ZdeněkPilát, Klára Procházková, and Jozef Kaiser

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Themain goal of this article is to find efficient methods for elemental and molecular analysis of living microorganisms (algae) under defined environmental conditions and cultivation processes. The overall knowledge of chemical composition is obtained utilizing laser-based techniques, Laser- Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) for acquiring information about elemental composition and Raman Spectroscopy for gaining molecular information, respectively. Algal cells were suspended in liquid media and characterized using their spectra. Results obtained employing LIBS and Raman Spectroscopy techniques will help to elucidate algae biology (nutrition dynamics depending on cultivation conditions) and to identify algal strains, which have the potential for applications in metal-ion absorption (bioremediation) and biofuel industry. Moreover, bioremediation can be readily combined with production of 3rd generation biofuels. In order to use algae for efficient fuel production, the optimal cultivation parameters have to be determinedleading to high production of oil in selected cellswithout significant inhibition of the photosynthetic activity and the culture growth rate, e.g. it is necessary to distinguish conditions for algal strain containing high amount of higher unsaturated fatty acids. Measurements employing LIBS and Raman Spectroscopy were utilized in order to give information about alga Trachydiscusminutus with emphasis on the amount of the lipid content inside the algal cell and the ability of algae to withdraw nutrients from its environment and bioremediation (elemental composition), respectively. This article can serve as the reference for further efforts in describing complete chemical composition of algal samples employing laserablation techniques.

Keywords: Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, Algae, Algal strains, Bioremediation, Biofuels.

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Authors: A Fouda, Z. Melikyan

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Air conditioning systems of houses consume large quantity of electricity. To reducing energy consumption for air conditioning purposes it is becoming attractive the use of evaporative cooling air conditioning which is less energy consuming compared to air chillers. But, it is obvious that higher energy efficiency of evaporative cooling is not enough to judge whether evaporative cooling economically is competitive with other types of cooling systems. To proving the higher energy efficiency and cost effectiveness of the evaporative cooling competitive analysis of various types of cooling system should be accomplished. For noted purpose optimization mathematical model for each system should be composed based on system approach analysis. In this paper different types of evaporative cooling-heating systems are discussed and methods for increasing their energy efficiency and as well as determining of their design parameters are developed. The optimization mathematical models for each of them are composed with help of which least specific costs for each of them are reviled. The comparison of specific costs proved that the most efficient and cost effective is considered the “direct evaporating" system if it is applicable for given climatic conditions. Next more universal and applicable for many climatic conditions system providing least cost of heating and cooling is considered the “direct evaporating" system.

Keywords: air, conditioning, system, evaporative cooling, mathematical model, optimization, thermoeconomic.

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Authors: Beata Hornickova, Sona Lorencova

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The study deals with the presentation of the results of qualitatively oriented research, which was carried out in the scope of determining the attitudes of parents to preschool education in the Czech Republic. The research is conceived as an entry into the field of the researched issue and aimed to support the effectiveness of the items of the questionnaire, which was subsequently created based on the parents’ statements from interviews. The research method was interview with 15 parents of preschool children. The main aim of the interviews was to find out their views on the compulsory attendance of their children in kindergarten. Compulsory pre-school attendance has been introduced in the Czech Republic since 2017/18 with the aim of reducing delays in the entry of children into primary school and eliminating subsequent school failures. The findings offered a look at the differing views on compulsory kindergarten school influenced by the different socio-economic status of parents. Parents with a higher socio-economic status attached greater importance to the educational component of compulsory preschool attendance as a preparation for primary school, while parents with a lower socio-economic status emphasized the educational component. An interesting finding is also a statement from interviews of a parent who does not find benefits in compulsory preschool attendance.

Keywords: Compulsory pre-school education, education of preschool children, kindergarten, parents’ opinions on pre-school education.

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Authors: C. Hemasundara Rao, M. Madhavi Latha

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Image compression can improve the performance of the digital systems by reducing time and cost in image storage and transmission without significant reduction of the image quality. Furthermore, the discrete cosine transform has emerged as the new state-of-the art standard for image compression. In this paper, a hybrid image compression technique based on reversible blockade transform coding is proposed. The technique, implemented over regions of interest (ROIs), is based on selection of the coefficients that belong to different transforms, depending on the coefficients is proposed. This method allows: (1) codification of multiple kernals at various degrees of interest, (2) arbitrary shaped spectrum,and (3) flexible adjustment of the compression quality of the image and the background. No standard modification for JPEG2000 decoder was required. The method was applied over different types of images. Results show a better performance for the selected regions, when image coding methods were employed for the whole set of images. We believe that this method is an excellent tool for future image compression research, mainly on images where image coding can be of interest, such as the medical imaging modalities and several multimedia applications. Finally VLSI implementation of proposed method is shown. It is also shown that the kernal of Hartley and Cosine transform gives the better performance than any other model.

Keywords: VLSI, Discrete Cosine Transform, JPEG, Hartleytransform, Radon Transform

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Authors: Omid A. Zargar

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The simulated mass and spring method evaluation for subway or railways construction and installation systems have a wide application in rail industries. This kind of design should be optimizing all related parameters to reduce the amount of vibration in cities, homelands, historical zones and other critical locations. Finite element method could help us a lot to analysis such applications with an excellent accuracy but always developing some simple, fast and user friendly evaluation method required in subway industrial applications. In addition, process parameter optimization extremely required in railway industries to achieve some optimal design of railways with maximum safety, reliability and performance. Furthermore, it is important to reduce vibrations and further related maintenance costs as well as possible. In this paper a simple but useful simulated mass and spring evaluation system developed for Esfahan subway construction. Besides, some of related recent patent and innovations in rail world industries like Suspension mass tuned vibration reducer, short sleeper vibration attenuation fastener and Airtight track vibration-noise reducing fastener discussed in details.

Keywords: Subway construction engineering, natural frequency, operation frequency, vibration analysis, polyurethane layer.

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Authors: Popoola M. O., Abiola S. O., Adeniji W. A.

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This study investigates the causes, effects and remedies of traffic congestion which has become a common sight in most highways in Nigeria; Mowe/Ibafo section of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was used as the case-study. 300 Structured questionnaires were distributed among the road users comprising drivers (Private and Commercial), passengers, pedestrians, traffic officers, church congregations, community leaders, Mowe/Ibafo residents, and other users of the road.

300 questionnaires were given out; the average of 276 well completed returned questionnaires formed the basis of the study and was analyzed by the Relative Importance Index (R.I.I.). The result from the study showed the causes of traffic congestion as inadequate road capacity, poor road pavement, poor traffic management, poor drainage system poor driving habit, poor parking habit, poor design junctions/round-about, presence of heavy trucks, lack of pedestrian facilities, lack of road furniture, lack of parking facilities and others. Effects of road congestion from the study are waste of time, delay movement, stress, accident, inability to forecast travel of time, fuel consumption, road rage, relocation, night driving, and environmental pollution. To drastically reduce these negative effects; there must be provision for adequate parking space, construction of proper drainage, enlarging the width of the road, rehabilitate all roads needing attention, public enlightenment, traffic education, hack down all illegal buildings/shops built on the right of way (ROW), create a separate/alternative root for trucks and heavy vehicles, provision of pedestrian facilities, In-depth training of transport/traffic personnel, ban all form of road trading/hawking, and reduce the number of bus-stop where necessary. It is hoped that this study will become the foundation of further research in the area of improve road traffic management on our major highway.

Keywords: Highways, Congestion, Traffic, Traffic congestion, traffic management, Nigeria.

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Authors: Damian Ramajo, Santiago Corzo, Norberto Nigro

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A Multi-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) two-phase model was developed with the aim to simulate the in-core coolant circuit of a pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) of a commercial nuclear power plant (NPP). Due to the fact that this PHWR is a Reactor Pressure Vessel type (RPV), three-dimensional (3D) detailed modelling of the large reservoirs of the RPV (the upper and lower plenums and the downcomer) were coupled with an in-house finite volume one-dimensional (1D) code in order to model the 451 coolant channels housing the nuclear fuel. Regarding the 1D code, suitable empirical correlations for taking into account the in-channel distributed (friction losses) and concentrated (spacer grids, inlet and outlet throttles) pressure losses were used. A local power distribution at each one of the coolant channels was also taken into account. The heat transfer between the coolant and the surrounding moderator was accurately calculated using a two-dimensional theoretical model. The implementation of subcooled boiling and condensation models in the 1D code along with the use of functions for representing the thermal and dynamic properties of the coolant and moderator (heavy water) allow to have estimations of the in-core steam generation under nominal flow conditions for a generic fission power distribution. The in-core mass flow distribution results for steady state nominal conditions are in agreement with the expected from design, thus getting a first assessment of the coupled 1/3D model. Results for nominal condition were compared with those obtained with a previous 1/3D single-phase model getting more realistic temperature patterns, also allowing visualize low values of void fraction inside the upper plenum. It must be mentioned that the current results were obtained by imposing prescribed fission power functions from literature. Therefore, results are showed with the aim of point out the potentiality of the developed model.

Keywords: CFD, PHWR, Thermo-hydraulic, Two-phase flow.

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Authors: A. A. Ladele, N. T. Meludu, O. Ezekiel, T. F. Olaoye, O. M. Okanlawon

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Value addition to agricultural produce is of possible potential in reducing poverty, improving food security and malnutrition, therefore the need to develop small and microenterprises of sweet potato production. A study was carried out in Nigeria to determine the acceptability of blends sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) and commodities yellow maize (Zea mays), millet (Pennisetum glaucum), soybean (Glycine max), bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranean), guinea corn (Sorghum vulgare), wheat (Triticum aestivum), and roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) through sensory evaluation. Sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) roots were processed using two methods: oven and sun drying. The blends were also assessed in terms of functional, chemical and color properties. Most acceptable blends include BAW (80:20 of sweet potato/wheat), BBC (80:20 of sweet potato/guinea corn), AAB (60:40 of sweet potato/guinea corn), YTE (100% soybean), TYG (100% sweet potato), KTN (100% wheat flour), XGP (80:20 of sweet potato/soybean), XAX (60:40 of sweet potato/wheat), LSS (100% Roselle), CHK (100% Guinea corn), and ABC (60:40% of sweet potato/ yellow maize). In addition, carried out chemical analysis revealed that sweet potato has high percentage of vitamins A and C, potassium (K), manganese (Mn), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe) and fibre content. There is also an increase of vitamin A and Iron in the blended products.

Keywords: Blends, diversification, sensory evaluation, sweet potato, utilization.

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Authors: Peter U. Eze, P. Udaya, Robin J. Evans

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Data hiding can be achieved by Steganography or invisible digital watermarking. For digital watermarking, both accurate retrieval of the embedded watermark and the integrity of the cover image are important. Medical image security in Teleradiology is one of the applications where the embedded patient record needs to be extracted with accuracy as well as the medical image integrity verified. In this research paper, the Constant Correlation Spread Spectrum digital watermarking for medical image tamper detection and accurate embedded watermark retrieval is introduced. In the proposed method, a watermark bit from a patient record is spread in a medical image sub-block such that the correlation of all watermarked sub-blocks with a spreading code, W, would have a constant value, p. The constant correlation p, spreading code, W and the size of the sub-blocks constitute the secret key. Tamper detection is achieved by flagging any sub-block whose correlation value deviates by more than a small value, ℇ, from p. The major features of our new scheme include: (1) Improving watermark detection accuracy for high-pixel depth medical images by reducing the Bit Error Rate (BER) to Zero and (2) block-level tamper detection in a single computational process with simultaneous watermark detection, thereby increasing utility with the same computational cost.

Keywords: Constant correlation, medical image, spread spectrum, tamper detection, watermarking.

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Authors: Amin Kamal Akhnoukh, Lois Zaki Kamel, Magued Mourad Barsoum

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The objective of this research is to mitigate and prevent the alkali silica reactivity (ASR) in highway construction projects. ASR is a deleterious reaction initiated when the silica content of the aggregate reacts with alkali hydroxides in cement in the presence of relatively high moisture content. The ASR results in the formation of an expansive white colored gel-like material which forms the destructive tensile stresses inside hardened concrete. In this research, different types of local aggregates available in the State of Arkansas were mixed and mortar bars were poured according to the ASTM specifications. Mortar bars expansion was measured versus time and aggregates with potential ASR problems were detected. Different types of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) were used in remixing mortar bars with highly reactive aggregates. Length changes for remixed bars proved that different types of SCMs can be successfully used in reducing the expansive effect of ASR. SCMs percentage by weight is highly dependent on the SCM type. The result of this study will help avoiding future losses due to ASR cracking in construction project and reduce the maintenance, repair, and replacement budgets required for highways network.

Keywords: Alkali Silica Reaction, Aggregates, Moisture, Cracks, Mortar Bar Test supplementary cementitious materials.

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Authors: Yao-Hong Tsai

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Due to the sensor technology, video surveillance has become the main way for security control in every big city in the world. Surveillance is usually used by governments for intelligence gathering, the prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. Many surveillance systems based on computer vision technology have been developed in recent years. Moving target tracking is the most common task for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to find and track objects of interest in mobile aerial surveillance for civilian applications. The paper is focused on vision-based collision avoidance for UAVs by recurrent neural networks. First, images from cameras on UAV were fused based on deep convolutional neural network. Then, a recurrent neural network was constructed to obtain high-level image features for object tracking and extracting low-level image features for noise reducing. The system distributed the calculation of the whole system to local and cloud platform to efficiently perform object detection, tracking and collision avoidance based on multiple UAVs. The experiments on several challenging datasets showed that the proposed algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.

Keywords: Unmanned aerial vehicle, object tracking, deep learning, collision avoidance.

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Authors: M. S. Manikandan, K. V. Nithish Kumar, M. Krishnamoorthi, V. Ganesh

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The Automobile Braking System has a crucial role for safety of the passenger and riding quality of the vehicle. The braking force mainly depends on normal reaction on the wheel and the co-efficient of friction between the tire and the road surface. Whenever a vehicle is loaded, the normal reaction on the rear wheel is increased. Thus the amount of braking force required to halt the vehicle with minimum stopping distance, is based on the pillion load on the vehicle. In this work, in order to vary the braking force in two wheelers, the mechanical leverage which operates the master cylinder is varied based on the pillion load. Thus the amount of braking force developed between ground and tire is varied. This optimum braking force on the disc brake helps in attaining the minimum vehicle stopping distance. In addition to that, it also helps in preventing sliding. Thus the system results in reducing the stopping distance of the two wheelers and providing a better braking efficiency than the conventional braking system.

Keywords: Braking force, Master cylinder, Mechanical leverage, Minimum stopping distance.

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Authors: Christos Bouras, Eirini Stergiou, Charitini Karakostaki, Vasileios Tzanos, Vasileios Kokkinos

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Wind power represents a major pathway to curtailing greenhouse gas emissions and thus reducing the rate of climate change. A wind turbine runs practically emission-free for 20 years, representing one of the most environmentally sustainable sources of energy. Nevertheless, environmental and biodiversity concerns can often slow down or halt the deployment of wind farms due to local public opposition. This opposition is often fuelled by poor relationships between wind energy stakeholders and civil society, which in many cases led to conflictual protests and property damage. In this context, addressing these concerns is essential in order to facilitate the proliferation of wind farms in Europe and the phase-out of fossil fuels from the energy mix. The aim of this study is to identify a number of good practices and cases to avoid increasing biodiversity protection at all stages of wind farms’ lifecycle in three participating countries, namely Greece, Latvia, and Poland. The results indicate that although available technological solutions are already being exploited worldwide, in these countries, there is still room for improvement. To address this gap, a set of policy recommendations is proposed to accomplish the wind energy targets in the near future while simultaneously mitigating the pertinent biodiversity risks.

Keywords: Biodiversity protection, environmental impact, social acceptance, wind energy.

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Authors: Valentina Obradović, Josip Mesić, Maja Ergović Ravančić, Kamila Mijowska, Brankica Svitlica

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French oak and American oak barrels are most famous all over the world, but barrels of different origin can also be used for obtaining high quality wines. The aim of this research was to compare the influence of different Slovenian (Croatian) and French oak barrels on the quality of Chardonnay wine. Grapes were grown in the Croatian wine growing region of Kutjevo in 2015. Chardonnay wines were tested for basic oenological parameters (alcohol, extract, reducing sugar, SO₂, acidity), total polyphenols content (Folin-Ciocalteu method), antioxidant activity (ABTS and DPPH method) and colour density. Sensory evaluation was performed by students of viticulture/oenology. Samples produced by classical fermentation and ageing in French oak barrels had better results for polyphenols and sensory evaluation (especially low toasting level) than samples in Slovenian barrels. All tested samples were scored as a “quality” or “premium quality” wines. Sur lie method of fermentation and ageing in Slovenian oak barrel had very good extraction of polyphenols and high antioxidant activity with the usage of authentic yeasts, while commercial yeast strain resulted in worse chemical and sensory parameters.

Keywords: Chardonnay, French oak, Slovenian oak, sur lie.

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Authors: Pramote Paengkoum, Y. Han , S. Traiyakun, J. Khotsakdee, S. Paengkoum

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This experiment was performed with the purpose of investigating effect of additional blend of probiotics Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Lactobacillus acidophilus on plasma fatty acid profiles particularly conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) in growing goats fed corn silage, and selected the optimal levels of the probiotics for further study. Twenty-four growing crossbred (Thai native x Anglo-Nubian) goats that weighed (14.2 ± 2.3) kg, aged about 6 months, were purchased and allocated to 4 treatments according to Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with 6 goats in each treatment. The blocks were made by weight into heavy, medium, and light goats and each of the treatments contained two goats from each of the blocks. In the mean time, ruminal average pH unaffected, but the NH3-N and also plasma urea nitrogen (p<0.05), total volatile fatty acid (p>0.05) were raised, but propionic proportion (p<0.05) and butyric proportion (p>0.05) were reduced in concurrent with raise of acetic proportion and resultantly C2:C3 ratio (p>0.05). On plasma fatty acid profiles, total saturated fatty acids (p>0.05) was increased, and contrasted with decrease of C15:0 (p<0.01), C16:0 (p>0.05), and C18-C22 polyunsaturated fatty acids (p<0.05 or p<0.01). In addition, the experiment proved that the supplemented probiotics was in force for heightening CLA (p<0.01); for raising desirable fatty acids (p<0.05); for reducing ratio of PUFA: SFA (p>0.05) and for raising ratio of n6:n3 (p<0.05).

Keywords: Probiotic, conjugated linoleic acid, plasma fattyacid, goats

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Authors: H. Salonen, E. Castagnoli, C. Vornanen-Winqvist, R. Mikkola, C. Duchaine, L. Morawska, J. Kurnitski

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A wide range of health effects among occupants are associated with the exposure to bioaerosols from fungal sources. Although the accurate role of these aerosols in causing the symptoms and diseases is poorly understood, the important effect of bioaerosol exposure on human health is well recognized. Thus, there is a need to determine all of the contributing factors related to the concentration of fungi in indoor air. In this study, we reviewed and summarized the different factors affecting the concentrations of viable fungi in school buildings. The literature research was conducted using Pubmed and Google Scholar. In addition, we searched the lists of references of selected articles. According to the literature, the main factors influencing the concentration of viable fungi in the school buildings are moisture damage in building structures, the season (temperature and humidity conditions), the type and rate of ventilation, the number and activities of occupants and diurnal variations. This study offers valuable information that can be used in the interpretation of the fungal analysis and to decrease microbial exposure by reducing known sources and/or contributing factors. However, more studies of different local factors contributing to the human microbial exposure in school buildings—as well as other type of buildings and different indoor environments—are needed.

Keywords: Fungi, concentration, indoor, school, contributing factor.

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Authors: Limouzade E., Joorabian M.

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Most of the losses in a power system relate to the distribution sector which always has been considered. From the important factors which contribute to increase losses in the distribution system is the existence of radioactive flows. The most common way to compensate the radioactive power in the system is the power to use parallel capacitors. In addition to reducing the losses, the advantages of capacitor placement are the reduction of the losses in the release peak of network capacity and improving the voltage profile. The point which should be considered in capacitor placement is the optimal placement and specification of the amount of the capacitor in order to maximize the advantages of capacitor placement. In this paper, a new technique has been offered for the placement and the specification of the amount of the constant capacitors in the radius distribution network on the basis of Genetic Algorithm (GA). The existing optimal methods for capacitor placement are mostly including those which reduce the losses and voltage profile simultaneously. But the retaliation cost and load changes have not been considered as influential UN the target function .In this article, a holistic approach has been considered for the optimal response to this problem which includes all the parameters in the distribution network: The price of the phase voltage and load changes. So, a vast inquiry is required for all the possible responses. So, in this article, we use Genetic Algorithm (GA) as the most powerful method for optimal inquiry.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm (GA), capacitor placement, voltage profile, network losses, Simulating Annealing (SA), distribution network.

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Authors: Rosemarie Velik

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Gait disturbance, particularly freezing of gait (FOG), is a phenomenon that is common in Parkinson’s patients and significantly contributes to a loss of function and independence. Walking performance and number of freezing episodes have been known to respond favorably to sensory cues of different modalities. However, a topic that has so far barely been touched is how to resolve freezing episodes via sensory cues once they have appeared. In this study, we analyze the effect of five different sensory cues on the duration of freezing episodes: (1) vibratory alert, (2) auditory alert, (3) vibratory rhythm, (4) auditory rhythm, (5) visual cue in form of parallel lines projected to the floor. The motivation for this study is to investigate the possibility of the design of a gait assistive device for Parkinson’s patients. Test subjects were 7 Parkinson’s patients regularly suffering from FOG. The patients had to repeatedly walk a pre-defined course and cues were triggered always 2 s after freezing onset. The effect was analyzed via experimental measurements and patient interviews. The measurements showed that all 5 sensory cues led to a decrease of the average duration of freezing: baseline (7.9s), vibratory alert (7.1s), auditory alert (6.7s), auditory rhythm (6.4s), vibratory rhythm (6.3s), and visual cue (5.3s). Nevertheless, interestingly, patients subjectively evaluated the audio alert and vibratory signals to have a significantly better effect for reducing their freezing duration than the visual cue.

Keywords: Auditory cueing, freezing of gait, gait assistance, Parkinson’s disease, vibratory cueing, visual cueing

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Authors: Fatima Zohra Ibn Majdoub Hassani, Ivan Lavandera, Joseph Kreit

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This study explored the effects of different organic solvents, temperature, and the amount of glycerol on the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH)-catalysed stereoselective reduction of different ketones. These conversions were then analyzed by gas chromatography. It was found that when the amount of deep eutectic solvents (DES) increases, it can improve the stereoselectivity of the enzyme although reducing its ability to convert the substrate into the corresponding alcohol. Moreover, glycerol was found to have a strong stabilizing effect on the ADH from Ralstonia sp. (E. coli/ RasADH). In the case of organic solvents, it was observed that the best conversions into the alcohols were achieved with DMSO and hexane. It was also observed that temperature decreased the ability of the enzyme to convert the substrates into the products and also affected the selectivity. In addition to that, the recycling of DES up to three times gave good conversions and enantiomeric excess results and glycerol showed a positive effect in the stability of various ADHs. Using RasADH, a good conversion and enantiomeric excess into the S-alcohol were obtained. It was found that an enhancement of the temperature disabled the stabilizing effect of glycerol and decreased the stereoselectivity of the enzyme. However, for other ADHs a temperature increase had an opposite positive effect, especially with ADH-T from Thermoanaerobium sp. One of the objectives of this study was to see the effect of cofactors such as NAD(P) on the biocatlysis activities of ADHs.

Keywords: Alcohol dehydrogenases, DES, gas chromatography, RasADH.

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Authors: Xiaowei Zhang, Min Xu, Saeid Habibi, Fengjun Yan, Ryan Ahmed

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Recently, Electric Vehicles (EVs) have received extensive consideration since they offer a more sustainable and greener transportation alternative compared to fossil-fuel propelled vehicles. Lithium-Ion (Li-ion) batteries are increasingly being deployed in EVs because of their high energy density, high cell-level voltage, and low rate of self-discharge. Since Li-ion batteries represent the most expensive component in the EV powertrain, accurate monitoring and control strategies must be executed to ensure their prolonged lifespan. The Battery Management System (BMS) has to accurately estimate parameters such as the battery State-of-Charge (SOC), State-of-Health (SOH), and Remaining Useful Life (RUL). In order for the BMS to estimate these parameters, an accurate and control-oriented battery model has to work collaboratively with a robust state and parameter estimation strategy. Since battery physical parameters, such as the internal resistance and diffusion coefficient change depending on the battery state-of-life (SOL), the BMS has to be adaptive to accommodate for this change. In this paper, an extensive battery aging study has been conducted over 12-months period on 5.4 Ah, 3.7 V Lithium polymer cells. Instead of using fixed charging/discharging aging cycles at fixed C-rate, a set of real-world driving scenarios have been used to age the cells. The test has been interrupted every 5% capacity degradation by a set of reference performance tests to assess the battery degradation and track model parameters. As battery ages, the combined model parameters are optimized and tracked in an offline mode over the entire batteries lifespan. Based on the optimized model, a state and parameter estimation strategy based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the relatively new Smooth Variable Structure Filter (SVSF) have been applied to estimate the SOC at various states of life.

Keywords: Lithium-Ion batteries, genetic algorithm optimization, battery aging test, and parameter identification.

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Authors: Pradeep Kumar, Shibashish Chakraborty, Sasadhar Bera

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In the anticipation of demand fluctuations, services cannot be inventoried and hence it creates a difficult problem in marketing of services. The inability to meet customers (patients) requirements in healthcare context has more serious consequences than other service sectors. In order to meet patient requirements in the current uncertain environment, healthcare organizations are seeking ways for improved service delivery. Flexibility provides a mechanism for reducing variability in service encounters and improved performance. Flexibility is defined as the ability of the organization to cope with changing circumstances or instability caused by the environment. Patient satisfaction is an important performance outcome of healthcare organizations. However, the paucity of information exists in healthcare delivery context to examine the impact of flexibility on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. The present study is an attempt to develop a conceptual foundation for investigating overall impact of flexibility on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. Several dimensions of flexibility in healthcare context are examined and proposed to have a significant impact on patient satisfaction and intention. Furthermore, the study involves a critical examination of determinants of patient satisfaction and development of a comprehensive view the relationship between flexibility, patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. Finally, theoretical contributions and implications for healthcare professionals are suggested from flexibility perspective.

Keywords: Healthcare, flexibility, patient satisfaction, behavioral intention.

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Authors: Ayo Afolabi, Rudzani Sigwadi, Ambali Abdulkareem

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All around the world pulp and paper industries are the biggest plant production with the environmental pollution as the biggest challenge facing the pulp manufacturing operations. The concern among these industries is to produce a high volume of papers with the high quality standard and of low cost without affecting the environment. This result obtained from this bleaching study show that the activation of peroxide was an effective method of reducing the total applied charge of chlorine dioxide which is harmful to our environment and also show that softwood and hardwood Kraft pulps responded linearly to the peroxide treatments. During the bleaching process the production plant produce chlorines. Under the trial stages chloride dioxide has been reduced by 3 kg/ton to reduce the brightness from 65% ISO to 60% ISO of pulp and the dosing point returned to the E stage charges by pre-treating Kraft pulps with hydrogen peroxide. The pulp and paper industry has developed elemental chlorine free (ECF) and totally chlorine free (TCF) bleaching, in their quest for being environmental friendly, they have been looking at ways to turn their ECF process into a TCF process while still being competitive. This prompted the research to investigate the capability of the hydrogen peroxide as catalyst to reduce chloride dioxide.

Keywords: bleaching, chloride dioxide, elemental chlorine free (ECF), hydrogen peroxide, totally chlorine free (TCF).

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Authors: Woranart Jonglertjunya, Nattawadee Pranrawang, Nuanyai Phookongka, Thanasak Sridangtip, Watthana Sawedrungreang, Chularat Krongtaew

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Sugarcane bagasses are one of the most extensively used agricultural residues. Using acid hydrolysis and fermentation, conversion of sugarcane bagasses to lactic acid was technically and economically feasible. This research was concerned with the solubility of lignin in ammonium hydroxide, acid hydrolysis and lactic acid fermentation by Lactococcus lactis, Lactobacillus delbrueckii, Lactobacillus plantarum, and Lactobacillus casei. The lignin extraction results for different ammonium hydroxide concentrations showed that 10 % (v/v) NH4OH was favorable to lignin dissolution. Acid hydrolysis can be enhanced with increasing acid concentration and reaction temperature. The optimum glucose and xylose concentrations occurred at 121 ○C for 1 hour hydrolysis time in 10% sulphuric acid solution were 32 and 11 g/l, respectively. In order to investigate the significance of medium composition on lactic acid production, experiments were undertaken whereby a culture of Lactococcus lactis was grown under various glucose, peptone, yeast extract and xylose concentrations. The optimum medium was composed of 5 g/l glucose, 2.5 g/l xylose, 10 g/l peptone and 5 g/l yeast extract. Lactococcus lactis represents the most efficient for lactic acid production amongst those considered. The lactic acid fermentation by Lactococcus lactis after 72 hours gave the highest yield of 1.4 (g lactic acid per g reducing sugar).

Keywords: sugarcane bagasses, acid hydrolysis, lactic acid, fermentation

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Authors: Mustafa S. Fawad, Wang Wencheng, Wu Enhua

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Shadows add great amount of realism to a scene and many algorithms exists to generate shadows. Recently, Shadow volumes (SVs) have made great achievements to place a valuable position in the gaming industries. Looking at this, we concentrate on simple but valuable initial partial steps for further optimization in SV generation, i.e.; model simplification and silhouette edge detection and tracking. Shadow volumes (SVs) usually takes time in generating boundary silhouettes of the object and if the object is complex then the generation of edges become much harder and slower in process. The challenge gets stiffer when real time shadow generation and rendering is demanded. We investigated a way to use the real time silhouette edge detection method, which takes the advantage of spatial and temporal coherence, and exploit the level-of-details (LOD) technique for reducing silhouette edges of the model to use the simplified version of the model for shadow generation speeding up the running time. These steps highly reduce the execution time of shadow volume generations in real-time and are easily flexible to any of the recently proposed SV techniques. Our main focus is to exploit the LOD and silhouette edge detection technique, adopting them to further enhance the shadow volume generations for real time rendering.

Keywords: LOD, perception, Shadow Volumes, SilhouetteEdge, Spatial and Temporal coherence.

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Authors: R. Ruslee, H. Gollee

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Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a commonly used technique in rehabilitation and often associated with rapid muscle fatigue which becomes the limiting factor in its applications. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects on the onset of fatigue of conventional synchronous stimulation, as well as asynchronous stimulation that mimic voluntary muscle activation targeting different motor units which are activated sequentially or randomly via multiple pairs of stimulation electrodes. We investigate three different approaches with various electrode configurations, as well as different patterns of stimulation applied to the gastrocnemius muscle: Conventional Synchronous Stimulation (CSS), Asynchronous Sequential Stimulation (ASS) and Asynchronous Random Stimulation (ARS). Stimulation was applied repeatedly for 300 ms followed by 700 ms of no-stimulation with 40 Hz effective frequency for all protocols. Ten able-bodied volunteers (28±3 years old) participated in this study. As fatigue indicators, we focused on the analysis of Normalized Fatigue Index (NFI), Fatigue Time Interval (FTI) and pre-post Twitch-Tetanus Ratio (ΔTTR). The results demonstrated that ASS and ARS give higher NFI and longer FTI confirming less fatigue for asynchronous stimulation. In addition, ASS and ARS resulted in higher ΔTTR than conventional CSS. In this study, we proposed a randomly distributed stimulation method for the application of FES and investigated its suitability for reducing muscle fatigue compared to previously applied methods. The results validated that asynchronous stimulation reduces fatigue, and indicates that random stimulation may improve fatigue resistance in some conditions.

Keywords: Asynchronous stimulation, electrode configuration, functional electrical stimulation, muscle fatigue, pattern stimulation, random stimulation, sequential stimulation, synchronous stimulation.

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Authors: A. G. Pradeep, Gorantla Giridhar Kumar, Vijay Turaga, Vinod Srinivasa

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The major problem in the flow control valve is of lower Flow Capacity (Cv) which will reduce overall efficiency of flow circuit. Designers are continuously working to improve the Cv of the valve, but they need to validate the design ideas they have regarding the improvement of Cv. Traditional method of prototype and testing take a lot of time, that is where CFD comes into picture with very quick and accurate validation along with the visualization which is not possible with traditional testing method. We have developed a method to predict Cv value using CFD analysis by iterating on various Boundary conditions, solver settings and by carrying out grid convergence studies to establish correlation between the CFD model and Test data. The present study investigates 3 different ideas put forward by the designers for improving the flow capacity of the valves like reducing the cage thickness, changing the port position, and using the parabolic plug to guide the flow. Using CFD, we analyzed all design changes using the established methodology that we developed. We were able to evaluate the effect of these design changes on the Valve Cv. We optimized the wetted surface of the valve further by suggesting the design modification to the lower part of the valve to make the flow more streamlined. We could find that changing cage thickness and port position has little impact on the valve Cv. Combination of optimized wetted surface and introduction of parabolic plug improved the Cv of the valve significantly.

Keywords: Flow control valves, flow capacity, CFD simulations, design validation.

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