Search results for: particle number concentrations
3224 Influence of Surface-Treated Coarse Recycled Concrete Aggregate on Compressive Strength of Concrete
Authors: Sallehan Ismail, Mahyuddin Ramli
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This paper reports on the influence of surface-treated coarse recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) on developing the compressive strength of concrete. The coarse RCA was initially treated by separately impregnating it in calcium metasilicate (CM) or wollastonite and nanosilica (NS) prepared at various concentrations. The effects of both treatment materials on concrete properties (e.g., slump, density and compressive strength) were evaluated. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis was performed to examine the microstructure of the resulting concrete. Results show that the effective use of treated coarse RCA significantly enhances the compressive strength of concrete. This result is supported by the SEM analysis, which indicates the formation of a dense interface between the treated coarse RCA and the cement matrix. Coarse RCA impregnated in CM solution results in better concrete strength than NS, and the optimum concentration of CM solution recommended for treated coarse RCA is 10%.
Keywords: Calcium metasilicate, compressive strength, nanosilica, recycled concrete aggregate.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 28603223 Innovation Strategies and Challenges in Emerging Economies: The Case of Research and Technology Organizations in Turkey
Authors: F. Demir
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Innovation is highly critical for every company, especially for technology-based organizations looking to sustain their competitive advantage. However, this is not an easy task. Regardless of the size of the enterprise, market and location, all organizations face numerous challenges. Even though huge barriers to innovation exist in different countries, firm- and industry-specific challenges can be distinguished. This paper examines innovation strategies and obstacles to innovation in research and technology organizations (RTO) of Turkey. From the most important to the least, nine different challenges are ranked according the results of this survey. The findings reveal that to take the lead in innovation, financial constraint is the biggest challenge, which is consistent with the related literature. It ranked number one in this study. Beyond that, based on a sample of 40 RTOs, regional challenges such as underdeveloped regional innovation ecosystem plays a significant role in hampering innovation. Most of the organizations (55%) embrace an incremental approach to innovation, while only few pursue radical shifts. About 40% of the RTOs focus on product innovation, and 27.5% of them concentrate on technological innovation, while a very limited number aim for operational excellence and customer engagement as the focus of their strategic innovation efforts.
Keywords: Innovation strategies, innovation challenges, emerging economies, research and technology organizations.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13073222 Terminal Velocity of a Bubble Rise in a Liquid Column
Authors: Mário A. R. Talaia
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As it is known, buoyancy and drag forces rule bubble's rise velocity in a liquid column. These forces are strongly dependent on fluid properties, gravity as well as equivalent's diameter. This study reports a set of bubble rising velocity experiments in a liquid column using water or glycerol. Several records of terminal velocity were obtained. The results show that bubble's rise terminal velocity is strongly dependent on dynamic viscosity effect. The data set allowed to have some terminal velocities data interval of 8.0 ? 32.9 cm/s with Reynolds number interval 1.3 -7490. The bubble's movement was recorded with a video camera. The main goal is to present an original set data and results that will be discussed based on two-phase flow's theory. It will also discussed, the prediction of terminal velocity of a single bubble in liquid, as well as the range of its applicability. In conclusion, this study presents general expressions for the determination of the terminal velocity of isolated gas bubbles of a Reynolds number range, when the fluid proprieties are known.Keywords: Bubbles, terminal velocity, two phase-flow, vertical column.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 186113221 Design and Implementation of Reed Solomon Encoder on FPGA
Authors: Amandeep Singh, Mandeep Kaur
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Error correcting codes are used for detection and correction of errors in digital communication system. Error correcting coding is based on appending of redundancy to the information message according to a prescribed algorithm. Reed Solomon codes are part of channel coding and withstand the effect of noise, interference and fading. Galois field arithmetic is used for encoding and decoding reed Solomon codes. Galois field multipliers and linear feedback shift registers are used for encoding the information data block. The design of Reed Solomon encoder is complex because of use of LFSR and Galois field arithmetic. The purpose of this paper is to design and implement Reed Solomon (255, 239) encoder with optimized and lesser number of Galois Field multipliers. Symmetric generator polynomial is used to reduce the number of GF multipliers. To increase the capability toward error correction, convolution interleaving will be used with RS encoder. The Design will be implemented on Xilinx FPGA Spartan II.
Keywords: Galois Field, Generator polynomial, LFSR, Reed Solomon.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 48443220 Exploiting Non Circularity for Angle Estimation in Bistatic MIMO Radar Systems
Authors: Ebregbe David, Deng Weibo
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The traditional second order statistics approach of using only the hermitian covariance for non circular signals, does not take advantage of the information contained in the complementary covariance of these signals. Radar systems often use non circular signals such as Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) signals. Their noncicular property can be exploited together with the dual centrosymmetry of the bistatic MIMO radar system to improve angle estimation performance. We construct an augmented matrix from the received data vectors using both the positive definite hermitian covariance matrix and the complementary covariance matrix. The Unitary ESPRIT technique is then applied to the signal subspace of the augmented covariance matrix for automatically paired Direction-of-arrival (DOA) and Direction-of-Departure (DOD) angle estimates. The number of targets that can be detected is twice that obtainable with the conventional ESPRIT approach. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this method in terms of increase in resolution and the number of targets that can be detected.
Keywords: Bistatic MIMO Radar, Unitary Esprit, Non circular signals.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19183219 Screening of Process Variables for the Production of Extracellular Lipase from Palm Oil by Trichoderma Viride using Plackett-Burman Design
Authors: R. Rajendiran, S. Gayathri devi, B.T. SureshKumar, V. Arul Priya
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Plackett-Burman statistical screening of media constituents and operational conditions for extracellular lipase production from isolate Trichoderma viride has been carried out in submerged fermentation. This statistical design is used in the early stages of experimentation to screen out unimportant factors from a large number of possible factors. This design involves screening of up to 'n-1' variables in just 'n' number of experiments. Regression coefficients and t-values were calculated by subjecting the experimental data to statistical analysis using Minitab version 15. The effects of nine process variables were studied in twelve experimental trials. Maximum lipase activity of 7.83 μmol /ml /min was obtained in the 6th trail. Pareto chart illustrates the order of significance of the variables affecting the lipase production. The present study concludes that the most significant variables affecting lipase production were found to be palm oil, yeast extract, K2HPO4, MgSO4 and CaCl2.Keywords: lipase, submerged fermentation, statistical optimization, Trichoderma viride
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23203218 Convective Heat Transfer Enhancement in an Enclosure with Fin Utilizing Nano Fluids
Authors: S. H. Anilkumar, Ghulam Jilani
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The objective of the present work is to conduct investigations leading to a more complete explanation of single phase natural convective heat transfer in an enclosure with fin utilizing nano fluids. The nano fluid used, which is composed of Aluminum oxide nano particles in suspension of Ethylene glycol, is provided at various volume fractions. The study is carried out numerically for a range of Rayleigh numbers, fin heights and aspect ratio. The flow and temperature distributions are taken to be two-dimensional. Regions with the same velocity and temperature distributions are identified as symmetry of sections. One half of such a rectangular region is chosen as the computational domain taking into account the symmetry about the fin. Transport equations are modeled by a stream functionvorticity formulation and are solved numerically by finite-difference schemes. Comparisons with previously published works on the basis of special cases are done. Results are presented in the form of streamline, vector and isotherm plots as well as the variation of local Nusselt number along the fin under different conditions.Keywords: Fin height, Nano fluid, natural convection, Rayleigh number.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14703217 Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Data Aggregation Trees in Wireless Sensor Networks and Comparison with Genetic Algorithm
Authors: Ladan Darougaran, Hossein Shahinzadeh, Hajar Ghotb, Leila Ramezanpour
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In ad hoc networks, the main issue about designing of protocols is quality of service, so that in wireless sensor networks the main constraint in designing protocols is limited energy of sensors. In fact, protocols which minimize the power consumption in sensors are more considered in wireless sensor networks. One approach of reducing energy consumption in wireless sensor networks is to reduce the number of packages that are transmitted in network. The technique of collecting data that combines related data and prevent transmission of additional packages in network can be effective in the reducing of transmitted packages- number. According to this fact that information processing consumes less power than information transmitting, Data Aggregation has great importance and because of this fact this technique is used in many protocols [5]. One of the Data Aggregation techniques is to use Data Aggregation tree. But finding one optimum Data Aggregation tree to collect data in networks with one sink is a NP-hard problem. In the Data Aggregation technique, related information packages are combined in intermediate nodes and form one package. So the number of packages which are transmitted in network reduces and therefore, less energy will be consumed that at last results in improvement of longevity of network. Heuristic methods are used in order to solve the NP-hard problem that one of these optimization methods is to solve Simulated Annealing problems. In this article, we will propose new method in order to build data collection tree in wireless sensor networks by using Simulated Annealing algorithm and we will evaluate its efficiency whit Genetic Algorithm.
Keywords: Data aggregation, wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency, simulated annealing algorithm, genetic algorithm.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16843216 Fabrication and Characterization of CdS Nanoparticles Annealed by using Different Radiations
Authors: Aneeqa Sabah, Saadat Anwar Siddiqi, Salamat Ali
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The systematic manipulations of shapes and sizes of inorganic compounds greatly benefit the various application fields including optics, magnetic, electronics, catalysis and medicine. However shape control has been much more difficult to achieve. Hence exploration of novel method for the preparation of differently shaped nanoparticles is challenging research area. II-VI group of semiconductor cadmium sulphide (CdS) nanostructure with different morphologies (such as, acicular like, mesoporous, spherical shapes) and of crystallite sizes vary from 11 to 16 nm were successfully synthesized by chemical aqueous precipitation of Cd2+ ions with homogeneously released S2- ions from decomposition of cadmium sulphate (CdSO4) and thioacetamide (CH3CSNH2) by annealing at different radiations (microwave, ultrasonic and sunlight) with matter and systematic research has been done for various factors affecting the controlled growth rate of CdS nanoparticles. The obtained nanomaterials have been characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Thermogravometric (DSC-TGA) analysis and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The result indicates that on increasing the reaction time particle size increases but on increasing the molar ratios grain size decreases.Keywords: CdS nanoparticles, Morphology, Oxidation, Radiations
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 29853215 Analytical Mathematical Expression for the Channel Capacity of a Power and Rate Simultaneous Adaptive Cellular DS/FFH-CDMA Systemin a Rayleigh Fading Channel
Authors: P.Varzakas
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In this paper, an accurate theoretical analysis for the achievable average channel capacity (in the Shannon sense) per user of a hybrid cellular direct-sequence/fast frequency hopping code-division multiple-access (DS/FFH-CDMA) system operating in a Rayleigh fading environment is presented. The analysis covers the downlink operation and leads to the derivation of an exact mathematical expression between the normalized average channel capacity available to each system-s user, under simultaneous optimal power and rate adaptation and the system-s parameters, as the number of hops per bit, the processing gain applied, the number of users per cell and the received signal-tonoise power ratio over the signal bandwidth. Finally, numerical results are presented to illustrate the proposed mathematical analysis.
Keywords: Shannon capacity, adaptive systems, code-division multiple access, fading channels.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15263214 Ecological Risk Assessment of Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons in the North Port, Malaysia
Authors: Belin Tavakoly Sany, Aishah Salleh, Abdul Halim Sulaiman, Ghazaleh Monazami Tehrani
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The pollution of sediments sampled from the North Port by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was investigated. Concentrations of PAHs estimated in the port sediments ranged from 199 to 2851.2 μg/kg dw. The highest concentration was found which is closed to the Berth line, this locations affected by intensive shipping activities and Land based runoff and they were dominated by the high molecular weight PAHs (4–6- rings). Source identification showed that PAHs originated mostly from the pyrogenic source either from the combustion of fossil fuels, grass, wood and coal (majority of the samples). Ecological Risk Assessment on the port sediments presented that slightly adverse ecological effects to biological community are expected to occur at the vicinity of the stations 1 and 4. Thus PAHs are not considered as pollutants of concern in the North Port.Keywords: PAHs, North Port, Ecological Risk, sediment
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18413213 Spatial-Temporal Awareness Approach for Extensive Re-Identification
Authors: Tyng-Rong Roan, Fuji Foo, Wenwey Hseush
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Recent development of AI and edge computing plays a critical role to capture meaningful events such as detection of an unattended bag. One of the core problems is re-identification across multiple CCTVs. Immediately following the detection of a meaningful event is to track and trace the objects related to the event. In an extensive environment, the challenge becomes severe when the number of CCTVs increases substantially, imposing difficulties in achieving high accuracy while maintaining real-time performance. The algorithm that re-identifies cross-boundary objects for extensive tracking is referred to Extensive Re-Identification, which emphasizes the issues related to the complexity behind a great number of CCTVs. The Spatial-Temporal Awareness approach challenges the conventional thinking and concept of operations which is labor intensive and time consuming. The ability to perform Extensive Re-Identification through a multi-sensory network provides the next-level insights – creating value beyond traditional risk management.
Keywords: Long-short-term memory, re-identification, security critical application, spatial-temporal awareness.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5333212 Classification of Political Affiliations by Reduced Number of Features
Authors: Vesile Evrim, Aliyu Awwal
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By the evolvement in technology, the way of expressing opinions switched direction to the digital world. The domain of politics, as one of the hottest topics of opinion mining research, merged together with the behavior analysis for affiliation determination in texts, which constitutes the subject of this paper. This study aims to classify the text in news/blogs either as Republican or Democrat with the minimum number of features. As an initial set, 68 features which 64 were constituted by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) features were tested against 14 benchmark classification algorithms. In the later experiments, the dimensions of the feature vector reduced based on the 7 feature selection algorithms. The results show that the “Decision Tree”, “Rule Induction” and “M5 Rule” classifiers when used with “SVM” and “IGR” feature selection algorithms performed the best up to 82.5% accuracy on a given dataset. Further tests on a single feature and the linguistic based feature sets showed the similar results. The feature “Function”, as an aggregate feature of the linguistic category, was found as the most differentiating feature among the 68 features with the accuracy of 81% in classifying articles either as Republican or Democrat.Keywords: Politics, machine learning, feature selection, LIWC.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23653211 Ammonia Release during Photocopying Operations
Authors: Kiurski S. Jelena, Kecić S. Vesna, Oros B. Ivana, Ranogajec G. Jonjaua
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The paper represents the dependence of ammonia concentration on microclimate parameters and photocopying shop circulation. The concentration of ammonia was determined during 8-hours working time over five days including three sampling points of a photocopying shop in Novi Sad, Serbia. The obtained results pointed out that the room temperature possesses the highest impact on ammonia release. The obtained ammonia concentration was in the range of 1.53 to 0.42ppm and decreased with the temperature decreasing from 24.6 to 20.7oC. As the detected concentrations were within the permissible levels of The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, The National Institute for Occupational Safety and The Health and Official Gazette of Republic of Serbia, in the range of 35 to 200ppm, there was no danger to the employee’s health in the photocopying shop.
Keywords: Ammonia, emission, indoor environment, photocopying procedure.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22433210 Herpes Simplex Virus Type I Infection of Mice Testis and Effect on Fertility
Authors: Victor A. Naumenko, Yuriy A. Tyulenev, Alla A. Kushch
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The objective of current issue was to develop a model of testicular herpes simplex virus (HSV) type I infection for assessment of viral effect on fertility. 56 male mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with different concentrations of HSV on 8 day post partum. It was revealed that the optimal dose was 100 plaque forming units per mice as it provided testicular infection in 100% of survivors. HSV proteins were detected both in somatic and germ cells (spermatogonia, spermatocytes, spermatides). Although DNA load in testis was descending from 3 to 28 days post infection only 12.5% of infected males had offspring after mating with uninfected females comparing to 87.5% in control (p=0.012). These results are the first direct evidence for HSV impact in male sterility. Prepuberal mice appeared to be a suitable model for investigation of pathogenesis of virus-associated fertility disorders.Keywords: Herpes simplex virus type I, male fertility, prepuberal mice, spermatogenesis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17433209 Attacks Classification in Adaptive Intrusion Detection using Decision Tree
Authors: Dewan Md. Farid, Nouria Harbi, Emna Bahri, Mohammad Zahidur Rahman, Chowdhury Mofizur Rahman
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Recently, information security has become a key issue in information technology as the number of computer security breaches are exposed to an increasing number of security threats. A variety of intrusion detection systems (IDS) have been employed for protecting computers and networks from malicious network-based or host-based attacks by using traditional statistical methods to new data mining approaches in last decades. However, today's commercially available intrusion detection systems are signature-based that are not capable of detecting unknown attacks. In this paper, we present a new learning algorithm for anomaly based network intrusion detection system using decision tree algorithm that distinguishes attacks from normal behaviors and identifies different types of intrusions. Experimental results on the KDD99 benchmark network intrusion detection dataset demonstrate that the proposed learning algorithm achieved 98% detection rate (DR) in comparison with other existing methods.Keywords: Detection rate, decision tree, intrusion detectionsystem, network security.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 36313208 Analysis of Genotype Size for an Evolvable Hardware System
Authors: Emanuele Stomeo, Tatiana Kalganova, Cyrille Lambert
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The evolution of logic circuits, which falls under the heading of evolvable hardware, is carried out by evolutionary algorithms. These algorithms are able to automatically configure reconfigurable devices. One of main difficulties in developing evolvable hardware with the ability to design functional electrical circuits is to choose the most favourable EA features such as fitness function, chromosome representations, population size, genetic operators and individual selection. Until now several researchers from the evolvable hardware community have used and tuned these parameters and various rules on how to select the value of a particular parameter have been proposed. However, to date, no one has presented a study regarding the size of the chromosome representation (circuit layout) to be used as a platform for the evolution in order to increase the evolvability, reduce the number of generations and optimize the digital logic circuits through reducing the number of logic gates. In this paper this topic has been thoroughly investigated and the optimal parameters for these EA features have been proposed. The evolution of logic circuits has been carried out by an extrinsic evolvable hardware system which uses (1+λ) evolution strategy as the core of the evolution.
Keywords: Evolvable hardware, genotype size, computational intelligence, design of logic circuits.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16623207 Study on Butterfly Visitation Patterns of Stachytarpheta jamaicensis as a Beneficial Plant for Butterfly Conservation
Authors: P. U. S. Peiris
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The butterflies are ecologically very important insects. The adults generally feed on nectar and are important as pollinators of flowering plants. However, these pollinators are under threat with their habitat loss. One reason for habitat loss is spread of invasive plants. However, there are even beneficial exotic plants which can directly support for Butterfly Conservation Action Plan of Sri Lanka by attracting butterflies for nectar. Stachytarpheta jamaicensis (L.) is an important nectar plant which attracts a diverse set of butterflies in higher number. It comprises a violet color inflorescence which last for about 37 hours where it attracted a peak of butterflies around 9.00am having around average of 15 butterflies. There were no butterflies in early and late hours where the number goes to very low values as 2 at 1.00pm. it was found that a diverse group of butterflies were attracted from around 15 species including 01 endemic species, 02 endemic subspecies and 02 vulnerable species. Therefore, this is a beneficial exotic plant that could be used in butterfly attraction and conservation however with adequate monitoring of the plant population.Keywords: Butterflies, exotic plants, pollinators, Stachytarpheta jamaicensis (L.), butterfly conservation
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18063206 Effect of Personality Traits on Classification of Political Orientation
Authors: Vesile Evrim, Aliyu Awwal
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Today, there is a large number of political transcripts available on the Web to be mined and used for statistical analysis, and product recommendations. As the online political resources are used for various purposes, automatically determining the political orientation on these transcripts becomes crucial. The methodologies used by machine learning algorithms to do an automatic classification are based on different features that are classified under categories such as Linguistic, Personality etc. Considering the ideological differences between Liberals and Conservatives, in this paper, the effect of Personality traits on political orientation classification is studied. The experiments in this study were based on the correlation between LIWC features and the BIG Five Personality traits. Several experiments were conducted using Convote U.S. Congressional- Speech dataset with seven benchmark classification algorithms. The different methodologies were applied on several LIWC feature sets that constituted by 8 to 64 varying number of features that are correlated to five personality traits. As results of experiments, Neuroticism trait was obtained to be the most differentiating personality trait for classification of political orientation. At the same time, it was observed that the personality trait based classification methodology gives better and comparable results with the related work.Keywords: Politics, personality traits, LIWC, machine learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21623205 Analysis and Categorization of e-Learning Activities Based On Meaningful Learning Characteristics
Authors: Arda Yunianta, Norazah Yusof, Mohd Shahizan Othman, Dewi Octaviani
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Learning is the acquisition of new mental schemata, knowledge, abilities and skills which can be used to solve problems potentially more successfully. The learning process is optimum when it is assisted and personalized. Learning is not a single activity, but should involve many possible activities to make learning become meaningful. Many e-learning applications provide facilities to support teaching and learning activities. One way to identify whether the e-learning system is being used by the learners is through the number of hits that can be obtained from the e-learning system's log data. However, we cannot rely solely to the number of hits in order to determine whether learning had occurred meaningfully. This is due to the fact that meaningful learning should engage five characteristics namely active, constructive, intentional, authentic and cooperative. This paper aims to analyze the e-learning activities that is meaningful to learning. By focusing on the meaningful learning characteristics, we match it to the corresponding Moodle e-learning activities. This analysis discovers the activities that have high impact to meaningful learning, as well as activities that are less meaningful. The high impact activities is given high weights since it become important to meaningful learning, while the low impact has less weight and said to be supportive e-learning activities. The result of this analysis helps us categorize which e-learning activities that are meaningful to learning and guide us to measure the effectiveness of e-learning usage.
Keywords: e-learning system, e-learning activity, meaningful learning characteristics, Moodle
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 31503204 Analysis of Genetic Variations in Camel Breeds (Camelus dromedarius)
Authors: Yasser M. Saad, Amr A. El Hanafy, Saleh A. Alkarim, Hussein A. Almehdar, Elrashdy M. Redwan
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Camels are substantial providers of transport, milk, sport, meat, shelter, security and capital in many countries, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Inter simple sequence repeat technique was used to detect the genetic variations among some camel breeds (Majaheim, Safra, Wadah, and Hamara). Actual number of alleles, effective number of alleles, gene diversity, Shannon’s information index and polymorphic bands were calculated for each evaluated camel breed. Neighbor-joining tree that re-constructed for evaluated these camel breeds showed that, Hamara breed is distantly related from the other evaluated camels. In addition, the polymorphic sites, haplotypes and nucleotide diversity were identified for some camelidae cox1 gene sequences (obtained from NCBI). The distance value between C. bactrianus and C. dromedarius (0.072) was relatively low. Analysis of genetic diversity is an important way for conserving Camelus dromedarius genetic resources.
Keywords: Camel, genetics, ISSR, cox1, neighbor-joining.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13063203 Numerical Optimization of Trapezoidal Microchannel Heat Sinks
Authors: Yue-Tzu Yang, Shu-Ching Liao
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This study presents the numerical simulation of three-dimensional incompressible steady and laminar fluid flow and conjugate heat transfer of a trapezoidal microchannel heat sink using water as a cooling fluid in a silicon substrate. Navier-Stokes equations with conjugate energy equation are discretized by finite-volume method. We perform numerical computations for a range of 50 ≦ Re ≦ 600, 0.05W ≦ P ≦ 0.8W, 20W/cm2 ≦q"≦ 40W/cm2. The present study demonstrates the numerical optimization of a trapezoidal microchannel heat sink design using the response surface methodology (RSM) and the genetic algorithm method (GA). The results show that the average Nusselt number increases with an increase in the Reynolds number or pumping power, and the thermal resistance decreases as the pumping power increases. The thermal resistance of a trapezoidal microchannel is minimized for a constant heat flux and constant pumping power.
Keywords: Microchannel heat sinks, Conjugate heat transfer, Optimization, Genetic algorithm method.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21593202 Predicting Effective Permeability of Nanodielectric Composites Bonded by Soft Magnetic Nanoparticles
Authors: A. Thabet, M. Repetto
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Dielectric materials play an important role in broad applications, such as electrical and electromagnetic applications. This research studied the prediction of effective permeability of composite and nanocomposite dielectric materials based on theoretical analysis to specify the effects of embedded magnetic inclusions in enhancing magnetic properties of dielectrics. Effective permeability of Plastics and Glass nanodielectrics have been predicted with adding various types and percentages of magnetic nano-particles (Fe, Ni-Cu, Ni-Fe, MgZn_Ferrite, NiZn_Ferrite) for formulating new nanodielectric magnetic industrial materials. Soft nanoparticles powders that have been used in new nanodielectrics often possess the structure of a particle size in the range of micrometer- to nano-sized grains and magnetic isotropy, e.g., a random distribution of magnetic easy axes of the nanograins. It has been succeeded for enhancing characteristics of new nanodielectric magnetic industrial materials. The results have shown a significant effect of inclusions distribution on the effective permeability of nanodielectric magnetic composites, and so, explained the effect of magnetic inclusions types and their concentration on the effective permeability of nanodielectric magnetic materials.
Keywords: Nanoparticles, Nanodielectrics, Nanocomposites, Effective Permeability, Magnetic Properties.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 27603201 Evaluation of Fluoride Contents of Kirkuk City's Drinking Water and Its Source: Lesser Zab River and Its Effect on Human Health
Authors: Abbas R. Ali, Safa H. Abdulrahman
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In this study, forty samples had been collected from water of Lesser Zab River and drinking water to determine fluoride concentration and show the impact of fluoride on general health of society of Kirkuk city. Estimation of fluoride concentration and determination of its proportion in water samples were performed attentively using a fluoride ion selective electrode. The fluoride concentrations in the Lesser Zab River samples were between 0.0265 ppm and 0.0863 ppm with an average of 0.0451 ppm, whereas the average fluoride concentration in drinking water samples was 0.102 ppm and ranged from 0.010 to 0.289 ppm. A comparison between results obtained with World Health Organization (WHO) show a low concentration of fluoride in the samples of the study. Thus, for health concerns we should increase the concentration of this ion in water of Kirkuk city at least to about (1.0 ppm) and this will take place after fluorination process.Keywords: Fluoride concentration, Lesser Zab River, drinking water, health society, Kirkuk city.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14193200 An Efficient Passive Planar Micromixer with Finshaped Baffles in the Tee Channel for Wide Reynolds Number Flow Range
Authors: C. A. Cortes-Quiroz, A. Azarbadegan, E. Moeendarbary
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A new design of a planar passive T-micromixer with fin-shaped baffles in the mixing channel is presented. The mixing efficiency and the level of pressure loss in the channel have been investigated by numerical simulations in the range of Reynolds number (Re) 1 to 50. A Mixing index (Mi) has been defined to quantify the mixing efficiency, which results over 85% at both ends of the Re range, what demonstrates the micromixer can enhance mixing using the mechanisms of diffusion (lower Re) and convection (higher Re). Three geometric dimensions: radius of baffle, baffles pitch and height of the channel define the design parameters, and the mixing index and pressure loss are the performance parameters used to optimize the micromixer geometry with a multi-criteria optimization method. The Pareto front of designs with the optimum trade-offs, maximum mixing index with minimum pressure loss, is obtained. Experiments for qualitative and quantitative validation have been implemented.
Keywords: Computational fluids dynamics, fin-shaped baffle, mixing strategies, multi-objective optimization, passive micromixer.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19873199 Drug Abuse among Immigrant Youth in Canada
Authors: Qin Wei
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There has been an increased number of immigrants arriving in Canada and a concurrent rise in the number of immigrant youth suffering from drug abuse. Immigrant youths’ drug abuse has become a significant social and public health concern for researchers. This paper explores the nature of immigrant youths’ drug abuse by examining the factors influencing the onset of substance misuse, the barriers that discourage youth to seek out treatment, and how to resolve addictions amidst immigrant youth. Findings demonstrate that diminished parental supervision, acculturation challenges, peer conformity, discrimination, and ethnic marginalization are all significant factors influencing youth to use drugs as an outlet for their pain, while culturally incompetent care and fear of family and culture-based addiction stigma act as barriers discouraging youth from seeking out addiction support. To resolve addiction challenges amidst immigrant youth, future research should focus on promoting and implementing culturally sensitive practices and psychoeducational initiatives into immigrant communities and within public health policies.
Keywords: Approaches, barriers, drug abuse, Canada, immigrant youth.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9783198 Reducing SAGE Data Using Genetic Algorithms
Authors: Cheng-Hong Yang, Tsung-Mu Shih, Li-Yeh Chuang
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Serial Analysis of Gene Expression is a powerful quantification technique for generating cell or tissue gene expression data. The profile of the gene expression of cell or tissue in several different states is difficult for biologists to analyze because of the large number of genes typically involved. However, feature selection in machine learning can successfully reduce this problem. The method allows reducing the features (genes) in specific SAGE data, and determines only relevant genes. In this study, we used a genetic algorithm to implement feature selection, and evaluate the classification accuracy of the selected features with the K-nearest neighbor method. In order to validate the proposed method, we used two SAGE data sets for testing. The results of this study conclusively prove that the number of features of the original SAGE data set can be significantly reduced and higher classification accuracy can be achieved.Keywords: Serial Analysis of Gene Expression, Feature selection, Genetic Algorithm, K-nearest neighbor method.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16103197 Bed Site Selection by Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) in Baghshadi Protected Area, Yazd Province, Iran
Authors: S. Aghainajafizadeh, F. Heydari, H. Abbasian
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Populations of wild boar present in semi-arid of central Iran. We studied features influencing bed site selection by this species in semi-arid central steppe of Iran. Habitat features of the detected bed site were compared with randomly selected by quantifying number of habitat variables in semi- arid area in Iran. The results revealed that the most important influencing factors in bed site selection were vegetation cover, number of Artemisia sieberi, percentage cover and height of Acer cinerascens, percentage cover and height of Amygdalus scoparia. This is the first ecological study of the wild boar in a protected area of the semi desert biome of Iran. Sustainability of wild boar populations in this area dependent to shrubs of Amygdalus scoparia and Acer cinerascens for thermal and camouflage cover.
Keywords: Wild boar, Bed site selection, Yazd, Iran
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13003196 Effectiveness of Radon Remedial Action Implemented in a School on the Island of Ischia
Authors: F. Loffredo, M. Quarto, M. Pugliese, A. Mazzella, F. De Cicco, V. Roca
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The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of radon remedial action in a school on the Ischia island, South Italy, affected by indoor radon concentration higher than the value of 500 Bq/m3. This value is the limit imposed by the Italian legislation, to above which corrective actions in schools are necessary. Before the application of remedial action, indoor radon concentrations were measured in 9 rooms of the school. The measurements were performed with LR-115 passive alpha detectors (SSNTDs) and E-Perm. The remedial action was conducted in one of the office affected by high radon concentration using a Radonstop paint applied after the construction of a concrete slab under the floor. The effect of remedial action was the reduction of the concentration of radon of 41% and moreover it has demonstrated to be durable over time. The chosen method is cheap and easy to apply and it could be designed for various types of building. This method can be applied to new and existing buildings that show high dose values.
Keywords: E-Perm, LR 115 detectors, radon remediation, school.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9563195 A Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm Applied to the Synthesis of Polyacrylamide Hydrogels
Authors: Florin Leon, Silvia Curteanu
Abstract:
The Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) algorithm is inspired by the behavior of bacteria such as Escherichia coli or Myxococcus xanthus when searching for food, more precisely the chemotaxis behavior. Bacteria perceive chemical gradients in the environment, such as nutrients, and also other individual bacteria, and move toward or in the opposite direction to those signals. The application example considered as a case study consists in establishing the dependency between the reaction yield of hydrogels based on polyacrylamide and the working conditions such as time, temperature, monomer, initiator, crosslinking agent and inclusion polymer concentrations, as well as type of the polymer added. This process is modeled with a neural network which is included in an optimization procedure based on BFO. An experimental study of BFO parameters is performed. The results show that the algorithm is quite robust and can obtain good results for diverse combinations of parameter values.
Keywords: Bacterial foraging optimization, hydrogels, neural networks, modeling.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 730