Search results for: capacity building
881 Assessment of the Environmental Destructive Effects of Building Dams
Authors: Mohammad Reza Pirestani, Mehdi Shafaghati, Amir Ahmad Dehghani
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From the beginning of creation, human being has ever fought against the ecosystem by changes has made in environment. The most environmental changes on the nature have been done after starting the concentrated life in the same region. Dams are one of the most important buildings in water resources and transferring. These buildings have been made from old times without access to hydrological, hydraulically, hydro mechanical information. Dams have positive and negative effects on environment. Constructing a dam relatively causes equal ecological consequences. According to different criteria, environmental effects of dams can lead short term and long term damages. These effects may influence on the situation and treatment of meteorology, biology, culture, ancient works, etc and severely causes to change and complicate it. So considering importance of positive effects of dam construction, it is necessary to minimize negative environmental effects of dams to achieve a stable development. In this article the considered effects and their solutions in influencing on assessment of destructive environmental effects of dams construction have been surveyed and presented.Keywords: Dam, Environment, Water Resources, Assessment
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3589880 Present Energy Scenario and Potentiality of Wind Energy in Bangladesh
Authors: Md. Alamgir Hossain, Md. Raju Ahmed
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Scarcity in energy sector is a major problem, which can hamper the growing development of a country. Bangladesh is one of the electricity-deprived countries; however, the energy demand of Bangladesh is increasing day by day. Due to the shortage of natural resources and environmental issues, many nations are now moving towards renewable energy. Among various form of renewable energy, wind energy is one of most potential source. In this paper, the present energy condition of Bangladesh is discussed and the necessity of moving towards renewable energy is clarified. The wind speed found at different locations at different heights and different years from the survey of several organizations are presented. Although, the results of installed low capacity wind turbines (from few kW to few tens of kW) operated by private or government organization at different places in Bangladesh are not so encouraging; however, it is shown that Bangladesh has a high potential of using large wind turbine (MW range) for capturing wind energy at different places. The present condition of wind energy in Bangladesh and other countries in the world are also presented to emphasize the requisite of moving towards wind energy.
Keywords: Renewable energy, wind speed, wind power, modern wind turbine, scarcity of power and gas crisis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3553879 Smart Grid Communication Architecture Modeling for Heterogeneous Network Based Advanced Metering Infrastructure
Authors: S. Prem Kumar, H. Thameemul Ansari, V. Saminadan
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A smart grid is an emerging technology in the power delivery system which provides an intelligent, self-recovery and homeostatic grid in delivering power to the users. Smart grid communication network provides transmission capacity for information transformation within the connected nodes in the network, in favor of functional and operational needs. In the electric grids communication network delay is based on choosing the appropriate technology and the types of devices enforced. In distinction, the combination of IEEE 802.16 based WiMAX and IEEE 802.11 based WiFi technologies provides improved coverage and gives low delay performances to meet the smart grid needs. By incorporating this method in Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) the performance of the smart grid will be considerably improved. This work deals with the implementation of WiMAX-WLAN integrated network architecture for WAMS and AMI in the smart grid.Keywords: WiMAX, WLAN, WAMS, Smart Grid, HetNet, AMI.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1004878 Composite Distributed Generation and Transmission Expansion Planning Considering Security
Authors: Amir Lotfi, Seyed Hamid Hosseini
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During the recent past, due to the increase of electrical energy demand and governmental resources constraints in creating additional capacity in the generation, transmission, and distribution, privatization, and restructuring in electrical industry have been considered. So, in most of the countries, different parts of electrical industry like generation, transmission, and distribution have been separated in order to create competition. Considering these changes, environmental issues, energy growth, investment of private equity in energy generation units and difficulties of transmission lines expansion, distributed generation (DG) units have been used in power systems. Moreover, reduction in the need for transmission and distribution, the increase of reliability, improvement of power quality, and reduction of power loss have caused DG to be placed in power systems. On the other hand, considering low liquidity need, private investors tend to spend their money for DGs. In this project, the main goal is to offer an algorithm for planning and placing DGs in order to reduce the need for transmission and distribution network.Keywords: Planning, transmission, distributed generation, power security, power systems.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1111877 Institutionalising Corporate Social Responsibility: A Study on the CSR Statements on Corporate Websites of Malaysian and Singapore Corporations
Authors: Shahrina Md Nordin, Zulhamri Abdullah, Yuhanis Abdul Aziz
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the current state of corporate social responsibility statements on corporate websites of Malaysian and Singaporean corporations and analyze how the CSR statements contribute in building a unique corporate identity of corporations. Content analysis is employed to examine the websites of Malaysian and Singaporean consumer corporations. It is believed that generally most companies tend to publish and communicate their CSR statements visibly to general stakeholders. However, there is a significantly different outcome of the articulation of CSR on practices on websites between Malaysian and Singaporean consumer corporations. A number of Singaporean organizations were found less concerned with CSR practices as compared to Malaysian organizations. The findings indicate a need for corporations in Malaysia and Singapore to orchestrate their core competence of CSR activities in order to develop a unique corporate identity in a global business environment.Keywords: Corporate identity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Asian country.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2560876 Mean Shift-based Preprocessing Methodology for Improved 3D Buildings Reconstruction
Authors: Nikolaos Vassilas, Theocharis Tsenoglou, Djamchid Ghazanfarpour
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In this work, we explore the capability of the mean shift algorithm as a powerful preprocessing tool for improving the quality of spatial data, acquired from airborne scanners, from densely built urban areas. On one hand, high resolution image data corrupted by noise caused by lossy compression techniques are appropriately smoothed while at the same time preserving the optical edges and, on the other, low resolution LiDAR data in the form of normalized Digital Surface Map (nDSM) is upsampled through the joint mean shift algorithm. Experiments on both the edge-preserving smoothing and upsampling capabilities using synthetic RGB-z data show that the mean shift algorithm is superior to bilateral filtering as well as to other classical smoothing and upsampling algorithms. Application of the proposed methodology for 3D reconstruction of buildings of a pilot region of Athens, Greece results in a significant visual improvement of the 3D building block model.Keywords: 3D buildings reconstruction, data fusion, data upsampling, mean shift.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1982875 Multiproject Scheduling in Construction Industry
Authors: Y. Gholipour
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In this paper, supply policy and procurement of shared resources in some kinds of concurrent construction projects are investigated. This could be oriented to the problems of holding construction companies who involve in different projects concurrently and they have to supply limited resources to several projects as well as prevent delays to any project. Limits on transportation vehicles and storage facilities for potential construction materials and also the available resources (such as cash or manpower) are some of the examples which affect considerably on management of all projects over all. The research includes investigation of some real multi-storey buildings during their execution periods and surveying the history of the activities. It is shown that the common resource demand variation curve of the projects may be expanded or displaced to achieve an optimum distribution scheme. Of course, it may cause some delay to some projects, but it has minimum influence on whole execution period of all projects and its influence on procurement cost of the projects is considerable. These observations on investigation of some multistorey building which are built in Iran will be presented in this paper.Keywords: Construction Management, Supply Management, Resources Sharing, Multi-Project, Resource Procurement.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2558874 Perspectives of Renewable Energy in 21st Century in India: Statistics and Estimation
Authors: Manoj Kumar, Rajesh Kumar
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With the favourable geographical conditions at Indian-subcontinent, it is suitable for flourishing renewable energy. Increasing amount of dependence on coal and other conventional sources is driving the world into pollution and depletion of resources. This paper presents the statistics of energy consumption and energy generation in Indian Sub-continent, which notifies us with the increasing energy demands surpassing energy generation. With the aggrandizement in demand for energy, usage of coal has increased, since the major portion of energy production in India is from thermal power plants. The increase in usage of thermal power plants causes pollution and depletion of reserves; hence, a paradigm shift to renewable sources is inevitable. In this work, the capacity and potential of renewable sources in India are analyzed. Based on the analysis of this work, future potential of these sources is estimated.Keywords: Energy consumption and generation, depletion of reserves, pollution, estimation, renewable sources.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 803873 Use of Opti-Jet Cs Md1mr Device for Biocide Aerosolisation in 3t Magnetic Resonance
Authors: Robert Pintaric, Joze Matela, Stefan Pintaric, Stanka Vadnjal
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Introduction: This work is aimed to represent the use of the OPTI-JET CS MD1 MR prototype for application of neutral electrolyzed oxidizing water (NEOW) in magnetic resonance rooms. Material and Methods: We produced and used OPTI-JET CS MD1 MR aerosolisator whereby was performed aerosolization. The presence of microorganisms before and after the aerosolisation was recorded with the help of cyclone air sampling. Colony formed units (CFU) was counted. Results: The number of microorganisms in magnetic resonance 3T room was low as expected. Nevertheless, a possible CFU reduction of 87% was recorded. Conclusions: The research has shown that the use of EOW for the air and hard surface disinfection can considerably reduce the presence of microorganisms and consequently the possibility of hospital infections. It has also demonstrated that the use of OPTI-JET CS MD1 MR is very good. With this research, we started new guidelines for aerosolization in magnetic resonance rooms. Future work: We predict that presented technique works very good but we must focus also on time capacity sensors, and new appropriate toxicological studies.Keywords: Biocide, electrolyzed oxidizing water (EOW), disinfection, microorganisms, OPTI-JET CS MD1MR.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1704872 Verification and Validation for Java Classes using Design by Contract. The Modular External Approach
Authors: Dario Ramirez de Leon, Oscar Chavez Bosquez, Julian J. Francisco Leon
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Since the conception of JML, many tools, applications and implementations have been done. In this context, the users or developers who want to use JML seem surounded by many of these tools, applications and so on. Looking for a common infrastructure and an independent language to provide a bridge between these tools and JML, we developed an approach to embedded contracts in XML for Java: XJML. This approach offer us the ability to separate preconditions, posconditions and class invariants using JML and XML, so we made a front-end which can process Runtime Assertion Checking, Extended Static Checking and Full Static Program Verification. Besides, the capabilities for this front-end can be extended and easily implemented thanks to XML. We believe that XJML is an easy way to start the building of a Graphic User Interface delivering in this way a friendly and IDE independency to developers community wich want to work with JML.
Keywords: Model checking, verification and validation, JML, XML, java, runtime assertion checking, extended static checking, full static program verification.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1562871 Re-Examination of Louis Pasteur’s S-Shaped Flask Experiment
Authors: Ming-Hua Fu
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No negative control nor control to prevent microbes from escaping was set when the S-shaped flask experiments were performed by Pasteur. Microscope was not used to observe the media in the flasks. Louis Pasteur’s S-shaped flask experiment was re-examined by using U-shaped flasks, modified S-shaped flasks and microscope. A mixture of microbes was isolated from the room air, from which one rod-shaped Bacillus species with proposed name Bacillus gaso-mobilis sp nov and one grape-shaped Staphylococcus species with proposed name of Staphylococcus gaso-mobilis sp nov were identified. Their penicillin and ampicillin resistant strains containing plasmids were isolated. These bacteria could change color, produce odor and automatically move in the air. They did not form colonies on solid media. They had a high suspension capacity in liquid media. Their light absorbance peaked at the wave length of 320 nm. It was concluded that there were flaws with Louis Pasteur’s S-shaped flask experiments.
Keywords: Bacteria, gaso-mobile, re-examine, S-shaped flasks.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2812870 A Tabu Search Heuristic for Scratch-Pad Memory Management
Authors: Maha Idrissi Aouad, Rene Schott, Olivier Zendra
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Reducing energy consumption of embedded systems requires careful memory management. It has been shown that Scratch- Pad Memories (SPMs) are low size, low cost, efficient (i.e. energy saving) data structures directly managed at the software level. In this paper, the focus is on heuristic methods for SPMs management. A method is efficient if the number of accesses to SPM is as large as possible and if all available space (i.e. bits) is used. A Tabu Search (TS) approach for memory management is proposed which is, to the best of our knowledge, a new original alternative to the best known existing heuristic (BEH). In fact, experimentations performed on benchmarks show that the Tabu Search method is as efficient as BEH (in terms of energy consumption) but BEH requires a sorting which can be computationally expensive for a large amount of data. TS is easy to implement and since no sorting is necessary, unlike BEH, the corresponding sorting time is saved. In addition to that, in a dynamic perspective where the maximum capacity of the SPM is not known in advance, the TS heuristic will perform better than BEH.
Keywords: Energy consumption, memory allocation management, optimization, tabu search heuristic.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1669869 Effect of Social Media on Knowledge Work
Authors: Pekka Makkonen, Georgios Lampropoulos, Kerstin Siakas
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This paper examines the impact of social media on knowledge work. It discloses and highlights which specific aspects, areas and tasks of knowledge work can be improved by the use of social media. Moreover, the study includes a survey about higher education students’ viewpoints in regard to the use of social media as a means to enhance knowledge work and knowledge sharing. The analysis has been conducted based both on empirical data and on discussions about the sources dealing with knowledge work and how it can be enhanced by using social media. The results show that social media can improve knowledge work, knowledge building and maintenance tasks in which communication, information sharing and collaboration play a vital role. Additionally, by using social media, personal, collaborative and supplementary work activities can be enhanced. Based on the results of the study, we suggest how knowledge work can be enhanced when using the contemporary information and communications technologies (ICTs) of the 21st century and recommend future directions towards improving knowledge work.
Keywords: Knowledge work, social media, social media services, improving work performance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1058868 An Experimental Study on Clothes Drying Using Waste Heat from Split Type Air Conditioner
Authors: P. Suntivarakorn, S. Satmarong, C. Benjapiyaporn, S. Theerakulpisut
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This paper was to study the clothes dryer using waste heat from a split type air conditioner with a capacity of 12,648 btu/h. The drying chamber had a minimum cross section area with the size of 0.5 x 1.0 m2. The chamber was constructed by sailcloth and was inside folded with aluminium foil. Then, it was connected to the condensing unit of an air conditioner. The experiment was carried out in two aspects which were the clothes drying with and without auxiliary fan unit. The results showed that the drying rate of clothes in the chamber installed with and without auxiliary fan unit were 2.26 and 1.1 kg/h, respectively. In case of the chamber installed with a auxiliary fan unit, the additional power of 0.011 kWh was consumed and the drying rate was higher than that of clothes drying without auxiliary fan unit. Without auxiliary fan unit installation, no energy was required but there was a portion of hot air leaks away through the punctured holes at the wall of the drying chamber, hence the drying rate was dropped below. The drying rate of clothes drying using waste heat was higher than natural indoor drying and commercial dryer which their drying rate were 0.17 and 1.9 kg/h, respectively. It was noted that the COP of the air conditioner did not change during the operating of clothes drying.Keywords: Drying Rate, Clothes Dryer, COP, Air Conditioner.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3487867 Reduction of Differential Column Shortening in Tall Buildings
Authors: Hansoo Kim, Seunghak Shin
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The differential column shortening in tall buildings can be reduced by improving material and structural characteristics of the structural systems. This paper proposes structural methods to reduce differential column shortening in reinforced concrete tall buildings; connecting columns with rigidly jointed horizontal members, using outriggers, and placing additional reinforcement at the columns. The rigidly connected horizontal members including outriggers reduce the differential shortening between adjacent vertical members. The axial stiffness of columns with greater shortening can be effectively increased by placing additional reinforcement at the columns, thus the differential column shortening can be reduced in the design stage. The optimum distribution of additional reinforcement can be determined by applying a gradient based optimization technique.
Keywords: Column shortening, long-term behavior, optimization, tall building.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3986866 Influence of Differences of Heat Insulation Methods on Thermal Comfort of Apartment Buildings
Authors: Hikaru Sato, Hiroatsu Fukuda, Yupeng Wang
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The aim of this study is to analyze influence of differences of heat insulation methods on indoor thermal environment and comfort of apartment buildings. This study analyzes indoor thermal environment and comfort on units of apartment buildings using calculation software "THERB" and compares three different kinds of heat insulation methods. Those are outside insulation on outside walls, inside insulation on outside walls and interior insulation. In terms of indoor thermal environment, outside insulation is the best to stabilize room temperature. In winter, room temperature on outside insulation after heating is higher than other and it is kept 3-5 degrees higher through all night. But the surface temperature with outside insulation did not dramatically increase when heating was used, which was 3 to 5oC lower than the temperature with other insulation. The PMV of interior insulation fall nearly range of comfort when the heating and cooling was use.Keywords: Apartment Building, Indoor Thermal Environment, Insulation, PMV
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1344865 The Influence of User Involvement and Personal Innovativeness on User Behavior
Authors: Anne M. Sørebø, Øystein Sørebø, Maung K. Sein
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The search for factors that influence user behavior has remained an important theme for both the academic and practitioner Information Systems Communities. In this paper we examine relevant user behaviors in the phase after adoption and investigate two factors that are expected to influence such behaviors, namely User Involvement (UI) and Personal Innovativeness in IT (PIIT). We conduct a field study to examine how these factors influence postadoption behavior and how they are interrelated. Building on theoretical premises and prior empirical findings, we propose and test two alternative models of the relationship between these factors. Our results reveal that the best explanation of post-adoption behavior is provided by the model where UI and PIIT independently influence post-adoption behavior. Our findings have important implications for research and practice. To that end, we offer directions for future research.
Keywords: User involvement, personal innovativeness in IT, use of systems, user support, post-adoption behavior.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1542864 Determining Earthquake Performances of Existing Reinforced Concrete Buildings by Using ANN
Authors: Musa H. Arslan, Murat Ceylan, Tayfun Koyuncu
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In this study, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) analytical method has been developed for analyzing earthquake performances of the Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings. 66 RC buildings with four to ten storeys were subjected to performance analysis according to the parameters which are the existing material, loading and geometrical characteristics of the buildings. The selected parameters have been thought to be effective on the performance of RC buildings. In the performance analyses stage of the study, level of performance possible to be shown by these buildings in case of an earthquake was determined on the basis of the 4-grade performance levels specified in Turkish Earthquake Code-2007 (TEC-2007). After obtaining the 4-grade performance level, selected 23 parameters of each building have been matched with the performance level. In this stage, ANN-based fast evaluation algorithm mentioned above made an economic and rapid evaluation of four to ten storey RC buildings. According to the study, the prediction accuracy of ANN has been found about 74%.Keywords: Artificial neural network, earthquake, performance, reinforced concrete.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2645863 A Real-time 4M Collecting Method for Production Information System
Authors: Seung Woo Lee, So Jeong Nam, Jai-Kyung Lee
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It can be said that the business sector is faced with a range of challenges–a rapidly changing business environment, an increase and diversification of customers- demands and the consequent need for quick response–for having in place flexible management and production info systems. As a matter of fact, many manufacturers have adopted production info management systems such as MES and ERP. Nevertheless, managers are having difficulties obtaining ever-changing production process information in real time, or responding quickly to any change in production related needs on the basis of such information. This is because they rely on poor production info systems which are not capable of providing real-time factory settings. If the manufacturer doesn-t have a capacity for collecting or digitalizing the 4 Ms (Man, Machine, Material, Method), which are resources for production, on a real time basis, it might to difficult to effectively maintain the information on production process. In this regard, this paper will introduce some new alternatives to the existing methods of collecting the 4 Ms in real time, which are currently comprise the production field.
Keywords: 4M, Acquisition of Data on shop-floor, Real-time machine interface
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4317862 Improving the Road Construction Supply Chain by Developing a National Level Performance Measurement System: the Case of Estonia
Authors: Kati Kõrbe Kaare, Ott Koppel
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Transport and logistics are the lifeblood of societies. There is a strong correlation between overall growth in economic activity and growth of transport. The movement of people and goods has the potential for creating wealth and prosperity, therefore the state of transportation infrastructure and especially the condition of road networks is often a governmental priority. The design, building and maintenance of national roads constitute a substantial share of government budgets. Taking into account the magnitude and importance of these investments, the expedience, efficiency and sustainability of these projects are of great public interest. This paper provides an overview of supply chain management principles applied to road construction. In addition, road construction performance measurement systems and ICT solutions are discussed. Road construction in Estonia is analyzed. The authors propose the development of a national performance measurement system for road construction.Keywords: ICT in road construction, key performance indicators, quality performance measurement, road construction supply chain.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3711861 Effect of Nigerian Portland-Limestone Cement Grades on Concrete Compressive Strength
Authors: Kazeem K. Adewole, Festus. A. Olutoge, Hamzat Habib
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In this paper, the effect of grades 32.4 and 42.5 Portland-limestone cements generally used for concrete production in Nigeria on concrete compressive strength is investigated. Investigation revealed that the compressive strength of concrete produced with Portland-limestone cement grade 42.5 is generally higher than that produced with cement grade 32.5. The percentage difference between the compressive strengths of the concrete cubes produced with Portland-limestone cement grades 42.5 and 32.5 is inversely proportional to the richness of the concrete with the highest and the least percentage difference associated with the 1:2:4 and 1:1:2 mix ratios respectively. It is recommended that cement grade 42.5 be preferred for construction in Nigeria as this will lead to the construction of stronger concrete structures, which will reduce the incidence of failure of building and other concrete structures at no additional cost since the cost of both cement grades are the same.
Keywords: Cement grades, Concrete, Compressive strength, Portland-limestone cement, Ordinary Portland cement.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4239860 Carbon-Based Composites Enable Monitoring of Internal States in Concrete Structures
Authors: René Čechmánek, Jiří Junek, Bohdan Nešpor, Pavel Šteffan
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Regarding previous research studies it was concluded that thin-walled fiber-cement composites are able to conduct electric current under specific conditions. This property is ensured by using of various kinds of carbon materials. Though carbon fibers are less conductive than metal fibers, composites with carbon fibers were evaluated as better current conductors than the composites with metal fibers. The level of electric conductivity is monitored by the means of impedance measurement of designed samples. These composites could be used for a range of applications such as heating of trafficable surfaces or shielding of electro-magnetic fields. The aim of the present research was to design an element with the ability to monitor internal processes in building structures and prevent them from collapsing. As a typical element for laboratory testing there was chosen a concrete column, which was repeatedly subjected to load by simple pressure with continual monitoring of changes in electrical properties.
Keywords: Carbon, conductivity, loading, monitoring.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1822859 Comparison of Conventional and “ECO“Transportation Pavements in Cyprus using Life Cycle Approach
Authors: Constantia Achilleos, Diofantos G. Hadjimitsis
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Road industry has challenged the prospect of ecoconstruction. Pavements may fit within the framework of sustainable development. Hence, research implements assessments of conventional pavements impacts on environment in use of life cycle approach. To meet global, and often national, targets on pollution control, newly introduced pavement designs are under study. This is the case of Cyprus demonstration, which occurred within EcoLanes project work. This alternative pavement differs on concrete layer reinforced with tire recycling product. Processing of post-consumer tires produces steel fibers improving strength capacity against cracking. Thus maintenance works are relevantly limited in comparison to flexible pavement. This enables to be more ecofriendly, referenced to current study outputs. More specific, proposed concrete pavement life cycle processes emits 15 % less air pollutants and consumes 28 % less embodied energy than those of the asphalt pavement. In addition there is also a reduction on costs by 0.06 %.
Keywords: Environmental impact assessment, life cycle, tirerecycling, transportation pavement.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2169858 Political Preconditions for National Values of the Kazakhstan Nation
Authors: Zhazira Kuanyshbayeva
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Article is devoted to the problem of Kazakhstan people national values in the conditions of the Republic of Kazakhstan independence. Formation of ethnos national values is viewed as the mandatory constituent of this process in contemporary conditions. The article shows the dynamics of forming socialspiritual basis of Kazakhstan people-s national values. It depicts peculiarities of interethnic relations in poly-ethnic and multiconfessional Kazakhstan. The study reviews in every detail various directions of the state social policy development in the sphere of national values. It is aimed to consolidation of the society to achieve the shared objective, i.e. building democratic and civilized state. The author discloses peculiarities of ethnos national values development using specific sources. It is underlined that renewal and modernization of Kazakhstan society represents new stage in the national value development, and its typical feature is integration process based on peoples- friendship, cultural principles of interethnic communication.
Keywords: Interethnic relation, Kazakhstan people, national policy, national values.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1800857 Extensions to Some AOSE Methodologies
Authors: Louay M. Jeroudaih, Mohamed S. Hajji
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This paper looks into areas not covered by prominent Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies. Extensive paper review led to the identification of two issues, first most of these methodologies almost neglect semantic web and ontology. Second, as expected, each one has its strength and weakness and may focus on some phases of the development lifecycle but not all of the phases. The work presented here builds extensions to a highly regarded AOSE methodology (MaSE) in order to cover the areas that this methodology does not concentrate on. The extensions include introducing an ontology stage for semantic representation and integrating early requirement specification from a methodology which mainly focuses on that. The integration involved developing transformation rules (with the necessary handling of nonmatching notions) between the two sets of representations and building the software which automates the transformation. The application of this integration on a case study is also presented in the paper. The main flow of MaSE stages was changed to smoothly accommodate the new additions.Keywords: Agents, Intelligent Agents, Software Engineering(SE), UML, AUML, and Design Patterns.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1876856 Design of Reconfigurable Supernumerary Robotic Limb Based on Differential Actuated Joints
Authors: Qinghua Zhang, Yanhe Zhu, Xiang Zhao, Yeqin Yang, Hongwei Jing, Guoan Zhang, Jie Zhao
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This paper presents a wearable reconfigurable supernumerary robotic limb with differential actuated joints, which is lightweight, compact and comfortable for the wearers. Compared to the existing supernumerary robotic limbs which mostly adopted series structure with large movement space but poor carrying capacity, a prototype with the series-parallel configuration to better adapt to different task requirements has been developed in this design. To achieve a compact structure, two kinds of cable-driven mechanical structures based on guide pulleys and differential actuated joints were designed. Moreover, two different tension devices were also designed to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the cable-driven transmission. The proposed device also employed self-designed bearings which greatly simplified the structure and reduced the cost.
Keywords: Cable-driven, differential actuated joints, reconfigurable, supernumerary robotic limb.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 980855 Incremental Mining of Shocking Association Patterns
Authors: Eiad Yafi, Ahmed Sultan Al-Hegami, M. A. Alam, Ranjit Biswas
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Association rules are an important problem in data mining. Massively increasing volume of data in real life databases has motivated researchers to design novel and incremental algorithms for association rules mining. In this paper, we propose an incremental association rules mining algorithm that integrates shocking interestingness criterion during the process of building the model. A new interesting measure called shocking measure is introduced. One of the main features of the proposed approach is to capture the user background knowledge, which is monotonically augmented. The incremental model that reflects the changing data and the user beliefs is attractive in order to make the over all KDD process more effective and efficient. We implemented the proposed approach and experiment it with some public datasets and found the results quite promising.Keywords: Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD), Data mining, Incremental Association rules, Domain knowledge, Interestingness, Shocking rules (SHR).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1858854 Motivational Orientation of the Methodical System of Teaching Mathematics in Secondary Schools
Authors: M. Rodionov, Z. Dedovets
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The article analyses the composition and structure of the motivationally oriented methodological system of teaching mathematics (purpose, content, methods, forms, and means of teaching), viewed through the prism of the student as the subject of the learning process. Particular attention is paid to the problem of methods of teaching mathematics, which are represented in the form of an ordered triad of attributes corresponding to the selected characteristics. A systematic analysis of possible options and their methodological interpretation enriched existing ideas about known methods and technologies of training, and significantly expanded their nomenclature by including previously unstudied combinations of characteristics. In addition, examples outlined in this article illustrate the possibilities of enhancing the motivational capacity of a particular method or technology in the real learning practice of teaching mathematics through more free goal-setting and varying the conditions of the problem situations. The authors recommend the implementation of different strategies according to their characteristics in teaching and learning mathematics in secondary schools.
Keywords: Education, methodological system, teaching of mathematics, teachers, lesson, students motivation, secondary school.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 837853 Big Data Analytics and Data Security in the Cloud via Fully Homomorphic Encryption
Authors: Victor Onomza Waziri, John K. Alhassan, Idris Ismaila, Moses Noel Dogonyaro
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This paper describes the problem of building secure computational services for encrypted information in the Cloud Computing without decrypting the encrypted data; therefore, it meets the yearning of computational encryption algorithmic aspiration model that could enhance the security of big data for privacy, confidentiality, availability of the users. The cryptographic model applied for the computational process of the encrypted data is the Fully Homomorphic Encryption Scheme. We contribute a theoretical presentations in a high-level computational processes that are based on number theory and algebra that can easily be integrated and leveraged in the Cloud computing with detail theoretic mathematical concepts to the fully homomorphic encryption models. This contribution enhances the full implementation of big data analytics based cryptographic security algorithm.
Keywords: Data Analytics, Security, Privacy, Bootstrapping, and Fully Homomorphic Encryption Scheme.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3443852 A New Method for Image Classification Based on Multi-level Neural Networks
Authors: Samy Sadek, Ayoub Al-Hamadi, Bernd Michaelis, Usama Sayed
Abstract:
In this paper, we propose a supervised method for color image classification based on a multilevel sigmoidal neural network (MSNN) model. In this method, images are classified into five categories, i.e., “Car", “Building", “Mountain", “Farm" and “Coast". This classification is performed without any segmentation processes. To verify the learning capabilities of the proposed method, we compare our MSNN model with the traditional Sigmoidal Neural Network (SNN) model. Results of comparison have shown that the MSNN model performs better than the traditional SNN model in the context of training run time and classification rate. Both color moments and multi-level wavelets decomposition technique are used to extract features from images. The proposed method has been tested on a variety of real and synthetic images.Keywords: Image classification, multi-level neural networks, feature extraction, wavelets decomposition.
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