Search results for: natural plants
831 Effects of the Wavy Surface on Free Convection-Radiation along an Inclined Plate
Authors: M. Si Abdallah, B. Zeghmati
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A numerical analysis used to simulate the effects of wavy surfaces and thermal radiation on natural convection heat transfer boundary layer flow over an inclined wavy plate has been investigated. A simple coordinate transformation is employed to transform the complex wavy surface into a flat plate. The boundary layer equations and the boundary conditions are discretized by the finite difference scheme and solved numerically using the Gauss-Seidel algorithm with relaxation coefficient. Effects of the wavy geometry, the inclination angle of the wavy plate and the thermal radiation on the velocity profiles, temperature profiles and the local Nusselt number are presented and discussed in detail.
Keywords: Free convection, wavy surface, inclined surface, thermal radiation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2331830 Pomelo Peel: Agricultural Waste for Biosorption of Cadmium Ions from Aqueous Solutions
Authors: Wanna Saikaew, Pairat Kaewsarn, Wuthikorn Saikaew
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The ability of pomelo peel, a natural biosorbent, to remove Cd(II) ions from aqueous solution by biosorption was investigated. The experiments were carried out by batch method at 25 °C. The influence of solution pH, initial cadmium ion concentrations and contact times were evaluated. Cadmium ion removal increased significantly as the pH of the solution increased from pH 1 to pH 5. At pH 5, the cadmium ion removal reached a maximum value. The equilibrium process was described well by the Langmuir isotherm model, with a maximum biosorption capacity of 21.83 mg/g. The biosorption was relatively quick, (approx. 20 min). Biosorption kinetics followed a pseudo-second-order model. The result showed that pomelo peel was effective as a biosorbent for removing cadmium ions from aqueous solution. It is a low cost material that shows potential to be applied in wastewater technology for remediation of heavy metal contamination.
Keywords: Pomelo peel, biosorption, Cadmium ions.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3559829 Assessment of Health Risks to Ground Water Resources for the Emergency Supply of Population in Relation to the Content of Nitrates and Nitrites
Authors: Frantisek Bozek, Lenka Jesonkova, Jiri Dvorak, Milos Bozek, Eduard Bakos
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The contents of nitrates and nitrites were monitored in 15 ground water resources of a selected region earmarked for the emergency supply of population. The resources have been selected on the basis of previous assessment of natural conditions and the exploitation of territory in the infiltration area as well as the surroundings of water resources. The health risk analysis carried out in relation to nitrates and nitrites, which were found to be the most serious water contaminants, proved, that 14 resources met the health standards in relation to the assessed criterion and could be included in crisis plans. Water quality of ground resources may be assessed in the same way with regard to other contaminants.
Keywords: Drinking water, health risks, methemoglobinemia, nitrates, nitrites, water pollution.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2042828 The Paralinguistic Function of Emojis in Twitter Communication
Authors: Yasmin Tantawi, Mary Beth Rosson
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In response to the dearth of information about emoji use for different purposes in different settings, this paper investigates the paralinguistic function of emojis within Twitter communication in the United States. To conduct this investigation, the Twitter feeds from 16 population centers spread throughout the United States were collected from the Twitter public API. One hundred tweets were collected from each population center, totaling to 1,600 tweets. Tweets containing emojis were next extracted using the “emot” Python package; these were then analyzed via the IBM Watson API Natural Language Understanding module to identify the topics discussed. A manual content analysis was then conducted to ascertain the paralinguistic and emotional features of the emojis used in these tweets. We present our characterization of emoji usage in Twitter and discuss implications for the design of Twitter and other text-based communication tools.
Keywords: Computer mediated communication, content analysis, paralinguistics, sociology.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2026827 Particle Image Velocimetry for Measuring Water Flow Velocity
Authors: King Kuok Kuok, Po Chan Chiu
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Floods are natural phenomena, which may turn into disasters causing widespread damage, health problems and even deaths. Nowadays, floods had become more serious and more frequent due to climatic changes. During flooding, discharge measurement still can be taken by standing on the bridge across the river using portable measurement instrument. However, it is too dangerous to get near to the river especially during high flood. Therefore, this study employs Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) as a tool to measure the surface flow velocity. PIV is a image processing technique to track the movement of water from one point to another. The PIV codes are developed using Matlab. In this study, 18 ping pong balls were scattered over the surface of the drain and images were taken with a digital SLR camera. The images obtained were analyzed using the PIV code. Results show that PIV is able to produce the flow velocity through analyzing the series of images captured.
Keywords: Particle Image Velocimetry, flow velocity, surface flow.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2845826 Perceptions of Health Risks amongst Tertiary Education Students in Mauritius
Authors: Smita S. D. Goorah, Dilish Jokhoo
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A personal estimate of a health risk may not correspond to a scientific assessment of the health risk. Hence, there is a need to investigate perceived health risks in the public. In this study, a young, educated and healthy group of people from a tertiary institute were questioned about their health concerns. Ethics clearance was obtained and data was collected by means of a questionnaire. 362 students participated in the study. Tobacco use, heavy alcohol drinking, illicit drugs, unsafe sex and potential carcinogens were perceived to be the five greatest threats to health in this cohort. On the other hand natural health products, unemployment, unmet contraceptive needs, family violence and homelessness were felt to be the least perceived health risks. Nutrition-related health risks as well as health risks due to physical inactivity and obesity were not perceived as major health threats. Such a study of health perceptions may guide health promotion campaigns.
Keywords: Health promotion, perceptions of health risks, university students.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1863825 Comparison of Knowledge Regarding Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and Cervical Cancer in Students with or without Sexual Intercourse
Authors: F. Bakiri, T. Rexha, A. Mitre
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The aim of our study was to compare knowledge of regarding HPV and cervical cancer in female student of 18 to 26 years old, with or without sexual intercourse. We conducted a questionnaire survey of the students (N=568), in Faculty of Natural Sciences, Tirana, Albania. Sexually experienced students were more likely to have heard of risk factors such as multiple sex partners, sexual intercourse before age 18, having contracted any sexually transmitted diseases, having genital warts, smoking cigarettes, use of oral contraceptive, poor diet or nutrition and using tampons. No significant sexually experience differences were observed in knowledge of the way of transmission of the virus associated with cervical cancer knowledge, the virus associated with cervical cancer knowledge, the prevention of cervical cancer knowledge. On the other hand strong significant sexually experience differences were observed in knowledge of the diagnostic way of cervical cancer and what HPV can cause knowledge.
Keywords: Risk factors, HPV, Cervical cancer, Albanian students.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1830824 Aeration Optimization in an Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment Plant Based on CFD Method: A Case Study
Authors: Seyed Sina Khamesi, Rana Rafiei
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The extensive aeration process is widely used for wastewater treatment. However, due to the high energy consumption of this process, which is closely related to the issues of environmental sustainability and global climate change, this article presents a simple solution to reduce energy consumption in this process. The amount of required energy is one of the critical considerations for various wastewater treatment techniques. For this purpose, an industrial wastewater treatment plant and all energy-consumer equipment in terms of energy consumption have been analyzed. The investigations and measurements revealed that the aeration unit has the highest energy consumption rate. To address this, an innovative approach is proposed to reduce energy consumption in the identified high-consumer unit. The proposed solution involves introducing baffles to divide the tank into multiple parts and using a tank with a small width and long length to enhance the mixing process. This approach reduces the need for additional equipment and significantly lowers energy consumption. To thoroughly scrutinize the proposed solution and analyze the behavior of the multi-phase fluid inside the tank, the sewage flow has been modeled using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. The study presents an optimal design for the aeration unit based on these findings. The results indicate that implementing the technique suggested in this article can decrease total energy consumption by 33.15% and can be applied to all types of biological treatment plants.
Keywords: Wastewater treatment, aeration, energy consumption, Computational Fluid Dynamics, activated sludge.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 318823 Towards Improved Public Information on Industrial Emissions in Italy: Concepts and Specific Issues Associated to the Italian Experience in IPPC Permit Licensing
Authors: Mazziotti Gomez de Teran C., Fiore D., Cola B., Fardelli A.
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The present paper summarizes the analysis of the request for consultation of information and data on industrial emissions made publicly available on the web site of the Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea on integrated pollution prevention and control from large industrial installations, the so called “AIA Portal”. As a matter of fact, a huge amount of information on national industrial plants is already available on internet, although it is usually proposed as textual documentation or images. Thus, it is not possible to access all the relevant information through interoperability systems and also to retrieval relevant information for decision making purposes as well as rising of awareness on environmental issue. Moreover, since in Italy the number of institutional and private subjects involved in the management of the public information on industrial emissions is substantial, the access to the information is provided on internet web sites according to different criteria; thus, at present it is not structurally homogeneous and comparable. To overcome the mentioned difficulties in the case of the Coordinating Committee for the implementation of the Agreement for the industrial area in Taranto and Statte, operating before the IPPC permit granting procedures of the relevant installation located in the area, a big effort was devoted to elaborate and to validate data and information on characterization of soil, ground water aquifer and coastal sea at disposal of different subjects to derive a global perspective for decision making purposes. Thus, the present paper also focuses on main outcomes matured during such experience.
Keywords: Public information, emissions into atmosphere, IPPC permits, territorial information systems.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2058822 Factoring a Polynomial with Multiple-Roots
Authors: Feng Cheng Chang
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A given polynomial, possibly with multiple roots, is factored into several lower-degree distinct-root polynomials with natural-order-integer powers. All the roots, including multiplicities, of the original polynomial may be obtained by solving these lowerdegree distinct-root polynomials, instead of the original high-degree multiple-root polynomial directly. The approach requires polynomial Greatest Common Divisor (GCD) computation. The very simple and effective process, “Monic polynomial subtractions" converted trickily from “Longhand polynomial divisions" of Euclidean algorithm is employed. It requires only simple elementary arithmetic operations without any advanced mathematics. Amazingly, the derived routine gives the expected results for the test polynomials of very high degree, such as p( x) =(x+1)1000.Keywords: Polynomial roots, greatest common divisor, Longhand polynomial division, Euclidean GCD Algorithm.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1578821 Vibration Analysis of Gas Turbine SIEMENS 162MW - V94.2 Related to Iran Power Plant Industry in Fars Province
Authors: Omid A. Zargar
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Vibration analysis of most critical equipment is considered as one of the most challenging activities in preventive maintenance. Utilities are heart of the process in big industrial plants like petrochemical zones. Vibration analysis methods and condition monitoring systems of these kinds of equipments are developed too much in recent years. On the other hand, there are too much operation factors like inlet and outlet pressures and temperatures that should be monitored. In this paper, some of the most effective concepts and techniques related to gas turbine vibration analysis are discussed. In addition, a gas turbine SIEMENS 162MW - V94.2 vibration case history related to Iran power industry in Fars province is explained. Vibration monitoring system and machinery technical specification are introduced. Besides, absolute and relative vibration trends, turbine and compressor orbits, Fast Fourier transform (FFT) in absolute vibrations, vibration modal analysis, turbine and compressor start up and shut down conditions, bode diagrams for relative vibrations, Nyquist diagrams and waterfall or three-dimensional FFT diagrams in startup and trip conditions are discussed with relative graphs. Furthermore, Split Resonance in gas turbines is discussed in details. Moreover, some updated vibration monitoring system, blade manufacturing technique and modern damping mechanism are discussed in this paper.
Keywords: Gas turbine, turbine compressor, vibration data collector, utility, condition monitoring, non-contact probe, Relative Vibration, Absolute Vibration, Split Resonance, Time Wave Form (TWF), Fast Fourier transform (FFT).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3682820 Evaluation of the Antifungal and Antioxidant Activities of the Leaf Extract of Aloe vera(Aloe barbadensis Miller)
Authors: Tin A. Khaing
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Aloe vera has been used worldwide both for pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industries due to the plethora of biological activities of some of its metabolites. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antifungal and antioxidant activities of the leaf extract. The antifungal activity was determined by the agar-well diffusion method against plant and human fungal pathogens. The methanol and ethanol portions of the extracts studied were more bioactive than ethyl acetate portion. It was also observed that the activity was more pronounced on plant pathogen than human pathogen except Candida albicans. This is an indication that the extract has the potential to treat plant fungal infections. The Aloe extract showed the significant antioxidant activity by the DPPH radical scavenging method. Therefore, the Aloe extract provided as natural antioxidant has been used in health foods for medical and preservative purposes.Keywords: Aloe vera, antifungal, antioxidant, DPPH
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2695819 Environmental and Technical Modeling of Industrial Solid Waste Management Using Analytical Network Process; A Case Study: Gilan-IRAN
Authors: D. Nouri, M.R. Sabour, M. Ghanbarzadeh Lak
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Proper management of residues originated from industrial activities is considered as one of the serious challenges faced by industrial societies due to their potential hazards to the environment. Common disposal methods for industrial solid wastes (ISWs) encompass various combinations of solely management options, i.e. recycling, incineration, composting, and sanitary landfilling. Indeed, the procedure used to evaluate and nominate the best practical methods should be based on environmental, technical, economical, and social assessments. In this paper an environmentaltechnical assessment model is developed using analytical network process (ANP) to facilitate the decision making practice for ISWs generated at Gilan province, Iran. Using the results of performed surveys on industrial units located at Gilan, the various groups of solid wastes in the research area were characterized, and four different ISW management scenarios were studied. The evaluation process was conducted using the above-mentioned model in the Super Decisions software (version 2.0.8) environment. The results indicates that the best ISW management scenario for Gilan province is consist of recycling the metal industries residues, composting the putrescible portion of ISWs, combustion of paper, wood, fabric and polymeric wastes as well as energy extraction in the incineration plant, and finally landfilling the rest of the waste stream in addition with rejected materials from recycling and compost production plants and ashes from the incineration unit.Keywords: Analytical Network Process, Disposal Scenario, Gilan Province, Industrial Waste.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1954818 Experimental Study on Damping Ratios of in-situ Buildings
Authors: Zhiying Zhang, Chongdu Cho
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Accurate evaluation of damping ratios involving soilstructure interaction (SSI) effects is the prerequisite for seismic design of in-situ buildings. This study proposes a combined approach to identify damping ratios of SSI systems based on ambient excitation technique. The proposed approach is illustrated with main test process, sampling principle and algorithm steps through an engineering example, as along with its feasibility and validity. The proposed approach is employed for damping ratio identification of 82 buildings in Xi-an, China. Based on the experimental data, the variation range and tendency of damping ratios of these SSI systems, along with the preliminary influence factor, are shown and discussed. In addition, a fitting curve indicates the relation between the damping ratio and fundamental natural period of SSI system.
Keywords: Damping ratio, seismic design, soil-structure interaction, system parameter identification.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2396817 Performance Analysis of MT Evaluation Measures and Test Suites
Authors: Yao Jian-Min, Lv Qiang, Zhang Jing
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Many measures have been proposed for machine translation evaluation (MTE) while little research has been done on the performance of MTE methods. This paper is an effort for MTE performance analysis. A general frame is proposed for the description of the MTE measure and the test suite, including whether the automatic measure is consistent with human evaluation, whether different results from various measures or test suites are consistent, whether the content of the test suite is suitable for performance evaluation, the degree of difficulty of the test suite and its influence on the MTE, the relationship of MTE result significance and the size of the test suite, etc. For a better clarification of the frame, several experiment results are analyzed relating human evaluation, BLEU evaluation, and typological MTE. A visualization method is introduced for better presentation of the results. The study aims for aid in construction of test suite and method selection in MTE practice.Keywords: Machine translation, natural language processing, visualization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1707816 An Efficient Tool for Mitigating Voltage Unbalance with Reactive Power Control of Distributed Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems
Authors: Malinwo Estone Ayikpa
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With the rapid increase of grid-connected PV systems over the last decades, genuine challenges have arisen for engineers and professionals of energy field in the planning and operation of existing distribution networks with the integration of new generation sources. However, the conventional distribution network, in its design was not expected to receive other generation outside the main power supply. The tools generally used to analyze the networks become inefficient and cannot take into account all the constraints related to the operation of grid-connected PV systems. Some of these constraints are voltage control difficulty, reverse power flow, and especially voltage unbalance which could be due to the poor distribution of single-phase PV systems in the network. In order to analyze the impact of the connection of small and large number of PV systems to the distribution networks, this paper presents an efficient optimization tool that minimizes voltage unbalance in three-phase distribution networks with active and reactive power injections from the allocation of single-phase and three-phase PV plants. Reactive power can be generated or absorbed using the available capacity and the adjustable power factor of the inverter. Good reduction of voltage unbalance can be achieved by reactive power control of the PV systems. The presented tool is based on the three-phase current injection method and the PV systems are modeled via an equivalent circuit. The primal-dual interior point method is used to obtain the optimal operating points for the systems.Keywords: Photovoltaic generation, primal-dual interior point method, three-phase optimal power flow, unbalanced system.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1088815 Segmentation of Images through Clustering to Extract Color Features: An Application forImage Retrieval
Authors: M. V. Sudhamani, C. R. Venugopal
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This paper deals with the application for contentbased image retrieval to extract color feature from natural images stored in the image database by segmenting the image through clustering. We employ a class of nonparametric techniques in which the data points are regarded as samples from an unknown probability density. Explicit computation of the density is avoided by using the mean shift procedure, a robust clustering technique, which does not require prior knowledge of the number of clusters, and does not constrain the shape of the clusters. A non-parametric technique for the recovery of significant image features is presented and segmentation module is developed using the mean shift algorithm to segment each image. In these algorithms, the only user set parameter is the resolution of the analysis and either gray level or color images are accepted as inputs. Extensive experimental results illustrate excellent performance.Keywords: Segmentation, Clustering, Image Retrieval, Features.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1460814 Experimental Study on Dehumidification Performance of Supersonic Nozzle
Authors: Esam Jassim
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Supersonic nozzles are commonly used to purify natural gas in gas processing technology. As an innovated technology, it is employed to overcome the deficit of the traditional method, related to gas dynamics, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics theory. An indoor test rig is built to study the dehumidification process of moisture fluid. Humid air was chosen for the study. The working fluid was circulating in an open loop, which had provision for filtering, metering, and humidifying. A stainless steel supersonic separator is constructed together with the C-D nozzle system. The result shows that dehumidification enhances as NPR increases. This is due to the high intensity in the turbulence caused by the shock formation in the divergent section. Such disturbance strengthens the centrifugal force, pushing more particles toward the near-wall region. In return return, the pressure recovery factor, defined as the ratio of the outlet static pressure of the fluid to its inlet value, decreases with NPR.
Keywords: Supersonic nozzle, dehumidification, particle separation, geometry.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1217813 Matching Facial Images using Age Related Morphing Changes
Authors: Udeni Jayasinghe, Anuja Dharmaratne
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Each year many people are reported missing in most of the countries in the world owing to various reasons. Arrangements have to be made to find these people after some time. So the investigating agencies are compelled to make out these people by using manpower. But in many cases, the investigations carried out to find out an absconding for a long time may not be successful. At a time like that it may be difficult to identify these people by examining their old photographs, because their facial appearance might have changed mainly due to the natural aging process. On some occasions in forensic medicine if a dead body is found, investigations should be held to make sure that this corpse belongs to the same person disappeared some time ago. With the passage of time the face of the person might have changed and there should be a mechanism to reveal the person-s identity. In order to make this process easy, we must guess and decide as to how he will look like by now. To address this problem this paper presents a way of synthesizing a facial image with the aging effects.
Keywords: Cranio-facial growth model, eigenfaces, eigenvectors, Face Anthropometry.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1741812 Non-contact Gaze Tracking with Head Movement Adaptation based on Single Camera
Authors: Ying Huang, Zhiliang Wang, An Ping
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With advances in computer vision, non-contact gaze tracking systems are heading towards being much easier to operate and more comfortable for use, the technique proposed in this paper is specially designed for achieving these goals. For the convenience in operation, the proposal aims at the system with simple configuration which is composed of a fixed wide angle camera and dual infrared illuminators. Then in order to enhance the usability of the system based on single camera, a self-adjusting method which is called Real-time gaze Tracking Algorithm with head movement Compensation (RTAC) is developed for estimating the gaze direction under natural head movement and simplifying the calibration procedure at the same time. According to the actual evaluations, the average accuracy of about 1° is achieved over a field of 20×15×15 cm3.
Keywords: computer vision, gaze tracking, human-computer interaction.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1920811 Causal Relation Identification Using Convolutional Neural Networks and Knowledge Based Features
Authors: Tharini N. de Silva, Xiao Zhibo, Zhao Rui, Mao Kezhi
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Causal relation identification is a crucial task in information extraction and knowledge discovery. In this work, we present two approaches to causal relation identification. The first is a classification model trained on a set of knowledge-based features. The second is a deep learning based approach training a model using convolutional neural networks to classify causal relations. We experiment with several different convolutional neural networks (CNN) models based on previous work on relation extraction as well as our own research. Our models are able to identify both explicit and implicit causal relations as well as the direction of the causal relation. The results of our experiments show a higher accuracy than previously achieved for causal relation identification tasks.
Keywords: Causal relation identification, convolutional neural networks, natural Language Processing, Machine Learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2258810 Detection and Pose Estimation of People in Images
Authors: Mousa Mojarrad, Amir Masoud Rahmani, Mehrab Mohebi
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Detection, feature extraction and pose estimation of people in images and video is made challenging by the variability of human appearance, the complexity of natural scenes and the high dimensionality of articulated body models and also the important field in Image, Signal and Vision Computing in recent years. In this paper, four types of people in 2D dimension image will be tested and proposed. The system will extract the size and the advantage of them (such as: tall fat, short fat, tall thin and short thin) from image. Fat and thin, according to their result from the human body that has been extract from image, will be obtained. Also the system extract every size of human body such as length, width and shown them in output.Keywords: Analysis of Image Processing, Canny Edge Detection, Human Body Recognition, Measurement, Pose Estimation, 2D Human Dimension.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2300809 Salinity on Survival and Early Development of Biofuel Feedstock Crops
Authors: Vincent M. Russo
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Salinity level may affect early development of biofuel feedstock crops. The biofuel feedstock crops canola (Brassica napus L.), sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], and sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.); and the potential feedstock crop sweet corn (Zea mays L.) were planted in media in pots and treated with aqueous solutions of 0, 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 M NaCl once at: 1) planting; 2) 7-10 days after planting or 3) first true leaf expansion. An additional treatment (4) comprised of one-half strength of the 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 M (concentrations 0.05, 0.25, 0.5 M at each application) was applied at first true leaf expansion and four days later. Survival of most crops decreased below 90% above 0.5 M; survival of canola decreased above 0.1 M. Application timing had little effect on crop survival. For canola root fresh and dry weights improved when application was at plant emergence; for sorghum top and root fresh weights improved when the split application was used. When application was at planting root dry weight was improved over most other applications. Sunflower top fresh weight was among the highest when saline solutions were split and top dry weight was among the highest when application was at plant emergence. Sweet corn root fresh weight was improved when the split application was used or application was at planting. Sweet corn root dry weight was highest when application was at planting or plant emergence. Even at high salinity rates survival rates greater than what might be expected occurred. Plants that survived appear to be able to adjust to saline during the early stages of development.Keywords: Canola, Development, Sorghum, Sunflower, Sweetcorn, Survival
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1528808 Removal of Hexavalent Chromium from Wastewater by Use of Scrap Iron
Authors: Marius Gheju, Rodica Pode
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Hexavalent chromium is highly toxic to most living organisms and a known human carcinogen by the inhalation route of exposure. Therefore, treatment of Cr(VI) contaminated wastewater is essential before their discharge to the natural water bodies. Cr(VI) reduction to Cr(III) can be beneficial because a more mobile and more toxic chromium species is converted to a less mobile and less toxic form. Zero-valence-state metals, such as scrap iron, can serve as electron donors for reducing Cr(VI) to Cr(III). The influence of pH on scrap iron capacity to reduce Cr(VI) was investigated in this study. Maximum reduction capacity of scrap iron was observed at the beginning of the column experiments; the lower the pH, the greater the experiment duration with maximum scrap iron reduction capacity. The experimental results showed that highest maximum reduction capacity of scrap iron was 12.5 mg Cr(VI)/g scrap iron, at pH 2.0, and decreased with increasing pH up to 1.9 mg Cr(VI)/g scrap iron at pH = 7.3.
Keywords: hexavalent chromium, heavy metals, scrap iron, reduction capacity, wastewater treatment.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2085807 Real-Time Hand Tracking and Gesture Recognition System Using Neural Networks
Authors: Tin Hninn Hninn Maung
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This paper introduces a hand gesture recognition system to recognize real time gesture in unstrained environments. Efforts should be made to adapt computers to our natural means of communication: Speech and body language. A simple and fast algorithm using orientation histograms will be developed. It will recognize a subset of MAL static hand gestures. A pattern recognition system will be using a transforrn that converts an image into a feature vector, which will be compared with the feature vectors of a training set of gestures. The final system will be Perceptron implementation in MATLAB. This paper includes experiments of 33 hand postures and discusses the results. Experiments shows that the system can achieve a 90% recognition average rate and is suitable for real time applications.
Keywords: Hand gesture recognition, Orientation Histogram, Myanmar Alphabet Language, Perceptronnetwork, MATLAB.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4700806 The Effect of Biochar, Inoculated Biochar and Compost Biological Component of the Soil
Authors: H. Dvořáčková, I. Mikajlo, J. Záhora, J. Elbl
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Biochar can be produced from the waste matter and its application has been associated with returning of carbon in large amounts into the soil. The impacts of this material on physical and chemical properties of soil have been described. The biggest part of the research work is dedicated to the hypothesis of this material’s toxic effects on the soil life regarding its effect on the soil biological component. At present, it has been worked on methods which could eliminate these undesirable properties of biochar. One of the possibilities is to mix biochar with organic material, such as compost, or focusing on the natural processes acceleration in the soil. In the experiment has been used as the addition of compost as well as the elimination of toxic substances by promoting microbial activity in aerated water environment. Biochar was aerated for 7 days in a container with a volume of 20 l. This way modified biochar had six times higher biomass production and reduce mineral nitrogen leaching. Better results have been achieved by mixing biochar with compost.Keywords: Leaching of nitrogen, soil, biochar, compost.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3033805 Peer-Mediated Intervention for Social Communication Difficulties in Adolescents with Autism: Literature Review and Research Recommendations
Authors: Christine L. Cole
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Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often experience social-communication difficulties that negatively impact their social interactions with typical peers. However, unlike other age and disability groups, there is little intervention research to inform best practice for these students. One evidence-based strategy for younger students with ASD is peer-mediated intervention (PMI). PMI may be particularly promising for use with adolescents, as peers are readily available and are natural experts for encouraging authentic high school conversations. This paper provides a review of previous research that evaluated the use of PMI to improve the socialcommunication skills of students with ASD. Specific intervention features associated with positive student outcomes are identified and recommendations for future research are provided. Adolescents with ASD are targeted due the critical importance of social conversation at the high school level.
Keywords: Autism, peer-mediation, social communication, adolescents.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3547804 Packing Theory for Natural and Crushed Aggregate to Obtain the Best Mix of Aggregate: Research and Development
Authors: Mohammed H. Mohammed, Mats Emborg, Roland Pusch, Sven Knutsson
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Concrete performance is strongly affected by the particle packing degree since it determines the distribution of the cementitious component and the interaction of mineral particles. By using packing theory designers will be able to select optimal aggregate materials for preparing concrete with low cement content, which is beneficial from the point of cost. Optimum particle packing implies minimizing porosity and thereby reducing the amount of cement paste needed to fill the voids between the aggregate particles, taking also the rheology of the concrete into consideration. For reaching good fluidity superplasticizers are required. The results from pilot tests at Luleå University of Technology (LTU) show various forms of the proposed theoretical models, and the empirical approach taken in the study seems to provide a safer basis for developing new, improved packing models.Keywords: Aggregate mix, Computer program, Concrete mix design, Models of packing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3292803 On a Way for Constructing Numerical Methods on the Joint of Multistep and Hybrid Methods
Authors: G.Mehdiyeva, M.Imanova, V.Ibrahimov
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Taking into account that many problems of natural sciences and engineering are reduced to solving initial-value problem for ordinary differential equations, beginning from Newton, the scientists investigate approximate solution of ordinary differential equations. There are papers of different authors devoted to the solution of initial value problem for ODE. The Euler-s known method that was developed under the guidance of the famous scientists Adams, Runge and Kutta is the most popular one among these methods. Recently the scientists began to construct the methods preserving some properties of Adams and Runge-Kutta methods and called them hybrid methods. The constructions of such methods are investigated from the middle of the XX century. Here we investigate one generalization of multistep and hybrid methods and on their base we construct specific methods of accuracy order p = 5 and p = 6 for k = 1 ( k is the order of the difference method).Keywords: Multistep and hybrid methods, initial value problem, degree and stability of hybrid methods
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1598802 Influence of Dilution and Lean-premixed on Mild Combustion in an Industrial Burner
Authors: Sh.Khalilarya, H.Oryani, S.Jafarmadar, H.Khatamnezhad, A.Nemati
Abstract:
Understanding of how and where NOx formation occurs in industrial burner is very important for efficient and clean operation of utility burners. Also the importance of this problem is mainly due to its relation to the pollutants produced by more burners used widely of gas turbine in thermal power plants and glass and steel industry. In this article, a numerical model of an industrial burner operating in MILD combustion is validated with experimental data.. Then influence of air flow rate and air temperature on combustor temperature profiles and NOX product are investigated. In order to modification this study reports on the effects of fuel and air dilution (with inert gases H2O, CO2, N2), and also influence of lean-premixed of fuel, on the temperature profiles and NOX emission. Conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy, and transport equations of species concentrations, turbulence, combustion and radiation modeling in addition to NO modeling equations were solved together to present temperature and NO distribution inside the burner. The results shows that dilution, cause to a reduction in value of temperature and NOX emission, and suppresses any flame propagation inside the furnace and made the flame inside the furnace invisible. Dilution with H2O rather than N2 and CO2 decreases further the value of the NOX. Also with raise of lean-premix level, local temperature of burner and the value of NOX product are decreases because of premixing prevents local “hot spots" within the combustor volume that can lead to significant NOx formation. Also leanpremixing of fuel with air cause to amount of air in reaction zone is reach more than amount that supplied as is actually needed to burn the fuel and this act lead to limiting NOx formationKeywords: Mild combustion, Flameless, Numerical simulation, Burner, CFD.
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