Search results for: software quality.

Authors: Abhimanyu Pati, Prabir K. Bandyopadhyay

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The paper intends to highlight the significance of Digital Manufacturing (DM) strategy in support and achievement of business strategy and goals of any manufacturing organization. Towards this end, DM initiatives have been given a process perspective, while not undermining its technological significance, with a view to link its benefits directly with fulfilment of customer needs and expectations in a responsive and cost-effective manner. A digital process model has been proposed to categorize digitally enabled organizational processes with a view to create synergistic groups, which adopt and use digital tools having similar characteristics and functionalities. This will throw future opportunities for researchers and developers to create a unified technology environment for integration and orchestration of processes. Secondly, an effort has been made to apply “what” and “how” features of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) framework to establish the relationship between customers’ needs – both for external and internal customers, and the features of various digital processes, which support for the achievement of these customer expectations. The paper finally concludes that in the present highly competitive environment, business organizations cannot thrive to sustain unless they understand the significance of digital strategy and integrate it with their business strategy with a clearly defined implementation roadmap. A process-oriented approach to DM strategy will help business executives and leaders to appreciate its value propositions and its direct link to organization’s competitiveness.

Keywords: Digital manufacturing, digital process model, quality function deployment, business strategy.

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Authors: Ivanka Valova

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This paper is aimed at using a multi-agent approach to monitor and diagnose a biotechnological system in order to validate certain control actions depending on the process development and the operating conditions. A multi-agent system is defined as a network of interacting software modules that collectively solve complex tasks. Remote monitoring and control of biotechnological processes is a necessity when automated and reliable systems operating with no interruption of certain activities are required. The advantage of our approach is in its flexibility, modularity and the possibility of improving by acquiring functionalities through the integration of artificial intelligence.

Keywords: Multi-agent approach, artificial intelligence, biotechnological processes, anaerobic biodegradation.

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Authors: Farouq Twaiq, Ishaq Al-Anbari, Mustafa Nasser

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The kinetics of palm oil catalytic cracking over aluminum containing mesoporous silica Al-MCM-41 (5% Al) was investigated in a batch autoclave reactor at the temperatures range of 573 – 673 K. The catalyst was prepared by using sol-gel technique and has been characterized by nitrogen adsorption and x-ray diffraction methods. Surface area of 1276 m2/g with average pore diameter of 2.54 nm and pore volume of 0.811 cm3/g was obtained. The experimental catalytic cracking runs were conducted using 50 g of oil and 1 g of catalyst. The reaction pressure was recorded at different time intervals and the data were analyzed using Levenberg- Marquardt (LM) algorithm using polymath software. The results show that the reaction order was found to be -1.5 and activation energy of 3200 J/gmol.

Keywords: Batch Reactor, Catalytic Cracking, Kinetics, Palm Oil.

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Authors: Wiroon Sriborrirux, Sorakrai Kraipui, Nakorn Indra-Payoong

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One of the most importance of intelligence in-car and roadside systems is the cooperative vehicle-infrastructure system. In Thailand, ITS technologies are rapidly growing and real-time vehicle information is considerably needed for ITS applications; for example, vehicle fleet tracking and control and road traffic monitoring systems. This paper defines the communication protocols and software design for middleware components of B-VIS (Burapha Vehicle-Infrastructure System). The proposed B-VIS middleware architecture serves the needs of a distributed RFID sensor network and simplifies some intricate details of several communication standards.

Keywords: Middleware, RFID sensor network, Cooperativevehicle-infrastructure system, Enterprise Java Bean.

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Authors: Fengchi Shen, Rongtao Ding

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The Informational Infrastructures of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises are relatively poor, there are serious shortages of capitals which can be invested in informatization construction, computer hardware and software resources, and human resources. To address the informatization issue in small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, and enable them to the application of advanced management thinking and enhance their competitiveness, the paper establish a manufacturing-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises informatization platform based on the ASP business intelligence technology, which effectively improves the scientificity of enterprises decision and management informatization.

Keywords: ASP, business intelligence, data warehouse.

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Authors: Ashok Kumar, Vinod Kumar

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Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used to monitor/observe vast inaccessible regions through deployment of large number of sensor nodes in the sensing area. For majority of WSN applications, the collected data needs to be combined with geographic information of its origin to make it useful for the user; information received from remote Sensor Nodes (SNs) that are several hops away from base station/sink is meaningless without knowledge of its source. In addition to this, location information of SNs can also be used to propose/develop new network protocols for WSNs to improve their energy efficiency and lifetime. In this paper, range free localization protocols for WSNs have been proposed. The proposed protocols are based on weighted centroid localization technique, where the edge weights of SNs are decided by utilizing fuzzy logic inference for received signal strength and link quality between the nodes. The fuzzification is carried out using (i) Mamdani, (ii) Sugeno, and (iii) Combined Mamdani Sugeno fuzzy logic inference. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed protocols provide better accuracy in node localization compared to conventional centroid based localization protocols despite presence of unintentional radio frequency interference from radio frequency (RF) sources operating in same frequency band.

Keywords: localization, range free, received signal strength, link quality indicator, Mamdani fuzzy logic inference, Sugeno fuzzy logic inference.

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Authors: Cao Ziyuan, Luo Xuan

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To study the local force characteristics of a spatial Y-arch bridge, a medium-bearing spatial Y-arch bridge is used as the object of study, and the finite element software FEA is used to establish a spatial finite element model and analyze the force conditions of the arch legs under different most unfavorable loading conditions. It is found that the forces on the arch foot under different conditions are mainly in the longitudinal direction and transverse direction, which should be considered for strengthening. The research results can provide reference for the design and construction of the same type of bridge.

Keywords: Bridge engineering, special-shaped arch bridge, mechanical properties, local analysis.

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Authors: Paua Ketan, Bhagate Rajkumar, Adiga Ganesh, M. Kiran

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Low gear noise is an important sound quality feature in modern passenger cars. Annoying gear noise from the gearbox is influenced by the gear design, gearbox shaft layout, manufacturing deviations in the components, assembly errors and the mounting arrangement of the complete gearbox. Geometrical deviations in the form of profile and lead errors are often present on the flanks of the inspected gears. Ghost frequencies of a gear are very challenging to identify in standard gear measurement and analysis process due to small wavelengths involved. In this paper, gear whine noise occurring at non-integral multiples of gear mesh frequency of passenger car gearbox is investigated and the root cause is identified using the displacement deviation analysis (DDA) method. DDA method is applied to identify ghost frequency excitations on the flanks of gears arising out of generation grinding. Frequency identified through DDA correlated with the frequency of vibration and noise on the end-of-line machine as well as vehicle level measurements. With the application of DDA method along with standard lead profile measurement, gears with ghost frequency geometry deviations were identified on the production line to eliminate defective parts and thereby eliminate ghost frequency noise from a vehicle. Further, displacement deviation analysis can be used in conjunction with the manufacturing process simulation to arrive at suitable countermeasures for arresting the ghost frequency.

Keywords: Displacement deviation analysis, gear whine, ghost frequency, sound quality.

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Authors: B. G. Sheeparamatti, Prashant Hanasi, Vanita Abbigeri

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The objective of this work is to carryout critical comparison of different actuation mechanisms like electrostatic, thermal, piezoelectric, and magnetic with reference to a micro cantilever. The relevant parameters like force generated, displacement are compared in actuation methods. With these results, helps in choosing the best actuation method for a particular application. In this study, Comsol/Multiphysics software is used. Modeling and simulation is done by considering the micro cantilever of same dimensions as an actuator using all the above mentioned actuation techniques. In addition to their small size, micro actuators consume very little power and are capable of accurate results. In this work, a comparison of actuation mechanisms is done to decide the efficient system in micro domain.

Keywords: Actuation techniques, microswitch, micro actuator, microsystems.

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Authors: A. Bozkurt, C. Kocatepe, R. Yumurtaci, İ. C. Tastan, G. Tulun

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Efficient use of energy, the increase in demand of energy and also with the reduction of natural energy sources, has improved its importance in recent years. Most of the losses in the system from electricity produced until the point of consumption is mostly composed by the energy distribution system. In this study, analysis of the resulting loss in power distribution transformer and distribution power cable is realized which are most of the losses in the distribution system. Transformer losses in the real distribution system are analyzed by CYME Power Engineering Software program. These losses are disclosed for different voltage levels and different loading conditions.

Keywords: Distribution system, distribution transformer, power cable, technical losses.

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Authors: A.L. Seetharam, B.L. Udaya Simha

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The Bangalore City is facing the acute problem of pollution in the atmosphere due to the heavy increase in the traffic and developmental activities in recent years. The present study is an attempt in the direction to assess trend of the ambient air quality status of three stations, viz., AMCO Batteries Factory, Mysore Road, GRAPHITE INDIA FACTORY, KHB Industrial Area, Whitefield and Ananda Rao Circle, Gandhinagar with respect to some of the major criteria pollutants such as Total Suspended particular matter (SPM), Oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and Oxides of sulphur (SO2). The sites are representative of various kinds of growths viz., commercial, residential and industrial, prevailing in Bangalore, which are contributing to air pollution. The concentration of Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) at all locations showed a falling trend due to use of refined petrol and diesel in the recent years. The concentration of Oxides of nitrogen (NOx) showed an increasing trend but was within the permissible limits. The concentration of the Suspended particular matter (SPM) showed the mixed trend. The correlation between model and observed values is found to vary from 0.4 to 0.7 for SO2, 0.45 to 0.65 for NOx and 0.4 to 0.6 for SPM. About 80% of data is observed to fall within the error band of ±50%. Forecast test for the best fit models showed the same trend as actual values in most of the cases. However, the deviation observed in few cases could be attributed to change in quality of petro products, increase in the volume of traffic, introduction of LPG as fuel in many types of automobiles, poor condition of roads, prevailing meteorological conditions, etc.

Keywords: Bangalore, urban air pollution, time series analysis.

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Authors: Trung Hieu Tran, Hyo-Moon Cho, Sang-Bock Cho

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Motion estimation is the most computationally intensive part in video processing. Many fast motion estimation algorithms have been proposed to decrease the computational complexity by reducing the number of candidate motion vectors. However, these studies are for fast search algorithms themselves while almost image and video compressions are operated with software based. Therefore, the timing constraints for running these motion estimation algorithms not only challenge for the video codec but also overwhelm for some of processors. In this paper, the performance of motion estimation is enhanced by using Intel's Streaming SIMD Extension 2 (SSE2) technology with Intel Pentium 4 processor.

Keywords: Motion Estimation, Full Search, Three StepSearch, MMX/SSE/SSE2 Technologies, SIMD.

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Authors: Khairul Jauhari, Achmad Widodo, Ismoyo Haryanto

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The spindle system is one of the most important components of machine tool. The dynamic properties of the spindle affect the machining productivity and quality of the work pieces. Thus, it is important and necessary to determine its dynamic characteristics of spindles in the design and development in order to avoid forced resonance. The finite element method (FEM) has been adopted in order to obtain the dynamic behavior of spindle system. For this reason, obtaining the Campbell diagrams and determining the critical speeds are very useful to evaluate the spindle system dynamics. The unbalance response of the system to the center of mass unbalance at the cutting tool is also calculated to investigate the dynamic behavior. In this paper, we used an ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) program which based on finite element method has been implemented to make the full dynamic analysis and evaluation of the results. Results show that the calculated critical speeds are far from the operating speed range of the spindle, thus, the spindle would not experience resonance, and the maximum unbalance response at operating speed is still with acceptable limit. ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) can be used by spindle designer as tools in order to increase the product quality, reducing cost, and time consuming in the design and development stages.

Keywords: ANSYS parametric design language (APDL), Campbell diagram, Critical speeds, Unbalance response, The Spindle system.

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Authors: Gela Gelashvili, David Gelenidze, Sulkhan Nanobashvili, Irakli Nanobashvili, George Tavkhelidze, Tsiuri Sitchinava

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Development of new highly efficient plasma arc combustion system of pulverized coal is presented. As it is well-known, coal is one of the main energy carriers by means of which electric and heat energy is produced in thermal power stations. The quality of the extracted coal decreases very rapidly. Therefore, the difficulties associated with its firing and complete combustion arise and thermo-chemical preparation of pulverized coal becomes necessary. Usually, other organic fuels (mazut-fuel oil or natural gas) are added to low-quality coal for this purpose. The fraction of additional organic fuels varies within 35-40% range. This decreases dramatically the economic efficiency of such systems. At the same time, emission of noxious substances in the environment increases. Because of all these, intense development of plasma combustion systems of pulverized coal takes place in whole world. These systems are equipped with Non-Transferred Plasma Arc Torches. They allow practically complete combustion of pulverized coal (without organic additives) in boilers, increase of energetic and financial efficiency. At the same time, emission of noxious substances in the environment decreases dramatically. But, the non-transferred plasma torches have numerous drawbacks, e.g. complicated construction, low service life (especially in the case of high power), instability of plasma arc and most important – up to 30% of energy loss due to anode cooling. Due to these reasons, intense development of new plasma technologies that are free from these shortcomings takes place. In our proposed system, pulverized coal-air mixture passes through plasma arc area that burns between to carbon electrodes directly in pulverized coal muffler burner. Consumption of the carbon electrodes is low and does not need a cooling system, but the main advantage of this method is that radiation of plasma arc directly impacts on coal-air mixture that accelerates the process of thermo-chemical preparation of coal to burn. To ensure the stability of the plasma arc in such difficult conditions, we have developed a power source that provides fixed current during fluctuations in the arc resistance automatically compensated by the voltage change as well as regulation of plasma arc length over a wide range. Our combustion system where plasma arc acts directly on pulverized coal-air mixture is simple. This should allow a significant improvement of pulverized coal combustion (especially low-quality coal) and its economic efficiency. Preliminary experiments demonstrated the successful functioning of the system.

Keywords: Coal combustion, plasma arc, plasma torches, pulverized coal.

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Authors: Moustafa Osman Mohammed

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Integration sustainability outcomes give attention to construction ecology in the design review of urban environments to comply with Earth’s System that is composed of integral parts of the (i.e., physical, chemical and biological components). Naturally, exchange patterns of industrial ecology have consistent and periodic cycles to preserve energy flows and materials in Earth’s System. When engineering topology is affecting internal and external processes in system networks, it postulated the valence of the first-level spatial outcome (i.e., project compatibility success). These instrumentalities are dependent on relating the second-level outcome (i.e., participant security satisfaction). The construction ecology-based topology (i.e., as feedback energy system) flows from biotic and abiotic resources in the entire Earth’s ecosystems. These spatial outcomes are providing an innovation, as entails a wide range of interactions to state, regulate and feedback “topology” to flow as “interdisciplinary equilibrium” of ecosystems. The interrelation dynamics of ecosystems are performing a process in a certain location within an appropriate time for characterizing their unique structure in “equilibrium patterns”, such as biosphere and collecting a composite structure of many distributed feedback flows. These interdisciplinary systems regulate their dynamics within complex structures. These dynamic mechanisms of the ecosystem regulate physical and chemical properties to enable a gradual and prolonged incremental pattern to develop a stable structure. The engineering topology of construction ecology for integration sustainability outcomes offers an interesting tool for ecologists and engineers in the simulation paradigm as an initial form of development structure within compatible computer software. This approach argues from ecology, resource savings, static load design, financial other pragmatic reasons, while an artistic/architectural perspective, these are not decisive. The paper described an attempt to unify analytic and analogical spatial modeling in developing urban environments as a relational setting, using optimization software and applied as an example of integrated industrial ecology where the construction process is based on a topology optimization approach.

Keywords: Construction ecology, industrial ecology, urban topology, environmental planning.

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Authors: Othman Maklouf, Abdurazag Ghila, Ahmed Abdulla

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This paper introduces a low cost INS/GPS algorithm for land vehicle navigation application. The data fusion process is done with an extended Kalman filter in cascade configuration mode. In order to perform numerical simulations, MATLAB software has been developed. Loosely coupled configuration is considered. The results obtained in this work demonstrate that a low-cost INS/GPS navigation system is partially capable of meeting the performance requirements for land vehicle navigation. The relative effectiveness of the kalman filter implementation in integrated GPS/INS navigation algorithm is highlighted. The paper also provides experimental results; field test using a car is carried out.

Keywords: GPS, INS, IMU, Kalman filter.

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Authors: Melek Oktay, Ayşe Betül Gülbağcı, Mustafa Sarıöz

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Enterprise applications are complex systems that are hard to develop and deploy in organizations. Although software application development tools, frameworks, methodologies and patterns are rapidly developing; many projects fail by causing big costs. There are challenging issues that programmers and designers face with while working on enterprise applications. In this paper, we present the three of the significant issues: Architectural, technological and performance. The important subjects in each issue are pointed out and recommendations are given. In architectural issues the lifecycle, meta-architecture, guidelines are pointed out. .NET and Java EE platforms are presented in technological issues. The importance of performance, measuring performance and profilers are explained in performance issues.

Keywords: Enterprise Applications, Architecture, Technology, Performance.

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Authors: Wann-Ming Wey

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In recent years, the problems of global climate change and natural disasters have induced the concerns and attentions of environmental sustainability issues for the public. Aside from the environmental planning efforts done for human environment, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has been widely used as one of the future solutions for the sustainable city development. In order to be more consistent with the urban sustainable development, the development of the built environment planning based on the concept of Green TOD which combines both TOD and Green Urbanism is adapted here. The connotation of the urban development under the green TOD including the design toward environment protect, the maximum enhancement resources and the efficiency of energy use, use technology to construct green buildings and protected areas, natural ecosystems and communities linked, etc. Green TOD is not only to provide the solution to urban traffic problems, but to direct more sustainable and greener consideration for future urban development planning and design. In this study, we use both the TOD and Green Urbanism concepts to proceed to the study of the built environment planning and design. Fuzzy Delphi Technique (FDT) is utilized to screen suitable criteria of the green TOD. Furthermore, Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) were then developed to evaluate the criteria and prioritize the alternatives. The study results can be regarded as the future guidelines of the built environment planning and designing under green TOD development in Taiwan.

Keywords: Green transit-oriented development, built environment, fuzzy Delphi technique, quality function deployment, fuzzy analytic network process.

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Authors: R. S. Quintal, J. L. Tesch Santos, M. D. Davis, E. C. de Santana, M. de F. Bandeira dos Santos

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The objective is to identify the contributions from the introduction of the computerized system deal within the Accounting Department of Brazilian Navy Financial Directorship and its possible effects on the budgetary and financial harvest of Brazilian Navy. The relevance lies in the fact that the management process is responsible for the continuous improvement of organizational performance through higher levels of quality in their activities. Improvements in organizational processes have direct effects on crops cost, quality, reliability, flexibility and speed. The method of study of this research is the case study. The choice of case study attended, among other demands, a need for greater flexibility to study processes related to a computerized system. The sources of evidence were used literature, documentary and direct observation. Direct observation was made by monitoring the implementation of the computerized system in the Division of Management Analysis. The main findings of the study point to the fact that the computerized system may contribute significantly to the standardization of information. There was improvement of internal processes in the division of management analysis, made possible the consolidation of a standard management and performance analysis that contribute to global homogeneity in the treatment of information essential to the process of decision making. This study has limitations related to the fact the search result be subject exclusively to the case studied, and it is impossible to generalize to other organs of government.

Keywords: Process Management, Management Control, Business Intelligence.

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Authors: Virginia Melnyk

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This paper explores the design for catenary structure using knitted textiles. Using the advantages of Grasshopper and Kangaroo parametric software to simulate and pre-design an overall form, the design is then translated to a pattern that can be made with hand manipulated stitches on a knitting machine. The textile takes advantage of the structure of knitted materials and the ability for it to stretch. Using different types of stitches to control the amount of stretch that can occur in portions of the textile generates an overall formal design. The textile is then hardened in an upside-down hanging position and then flipped right-side-up. This then becomes a structural catenary form. The resulting design is used as a small Cat House for a cat to sit inside and climb on top of.

Keywords: Architectural materials, catenary structures, knitting fabrication, textile design.

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Authors: Matheus Borges Carneiro, Fabiane Letícia Lizarelli, José Carlos de Toledo

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The evolution of quality management by companies was strongly enabled by, among others, ISO 9001 certification, which is considered a crucial requirement for several customers. Likewise, performance measurement provides useful insights for companies to identify the reflection of their decision-making process on their improvement. One of the most used performance measurement models is the balanced scorecard (BSC), which uses four perspectives to address a firm’s performance: financial, internal process, customer satisfaction, and learning and growth. Since ISO 9001 certified firms are likely to measure their performance through BSC approach, it is important to verify whether the certificate influences the firm performance or not. Therefore, this paper aims to verify the impact of ISO 9001:2015 on Brazilian firms’ performance based on the BSC perspective. Hence, nine certified companies located in the Southeast region of Brazil were studied through a multiple case study approach. Within this study, it was possible to identify the positive impact of ISO 9001 on firms’ overall performance, and four Critical Success Factors (CSFs) were identified as relevant on the linkage among ISO 9001 and firms’ performance: employee involvement, top management, process management, and customer focus. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of interviews was limited to the quality manager specialist, and the sample was limited since several companies were closed during the period of the study. This study presents an in-depth analysis of how the relationship between ISO 9001 certification and firms’ performance in a developing country is.

Keywords: Balanced scorecard, Brazilian firms’ performance, critical success factors, ISO 9001 certification, performance measurement.

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Authors: Saria Abed, Tahar Khir, Ammar Ben Brahim

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A thermo-exergy optimization of a gas turbine cycle with two different regenerator designs is established. A comparison was made between the performance of the two regenerators and their roles in improving the cycle efficiencies. The effect of operational parameters (the pressure ratio of the compressor, the ambient temperature, excess of air, geometric parameters of the regenerators, etc.) on thermal efficiencies, the exergy efficiencies, and irreversibilities were studied using thermal balances and quantitative exegetic equilibrium for each component and for the whole system. The results are given graphically by using the EES software, and an appropriate discussion and conclusion was made.

Keywords: Exergy efficiency, gas turbine, heat transfer, irreversibility, optimization, regenerator, thermal efficiency.

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Authors: C. C. D. Kulathilake, M. Jayatilake, T. Takahashi

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The myocardium is composed of specialized muscle which relies mainly on fatty acid and sugar metabolism and it is widely contribute to the heart functioning. The changes of the cardiac energy-producing system during heart failure have been proved using autoradiography techniques. This study focused on evaluating sugar and fatty acid metabolism in myocardium as cardiac energy getting system using heart-accumulated radiopharmaceuticals. Two sets of autoradiographs of heart cross sections of Lewis male rats were analyzed and the time- accumulation curve obtained with use of the MATLAB image processing software to evaluate fatty acid and sugar metabolic functions.

Keywords: Autoradiographs, fatty acid, radiopharmaceuticals and sugar.

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Authors: M. Nassereddine, A. Hellany, M. Nagrial, J. Rizk

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The demand on High voltage (HV) infrastructures is growing due to the corresponding growth in industries and population. Many areas are being developed and therefore require additional electrical power to comply with the demand. Substation upgrade is one of the rapid solutions to ensure the continuous supply of power to customers. This upgrade requires civil modifications to structures and fences. The civil work requires excavation and steel works that may create unsafe touch conditions. This paper presents a brief theoretical overview of the touch voltage inside and around substations and uses CDEGS software to simulate a case study.

Keywords: Earth safety, High Voltage, AC interference, Earthing Design.

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Authors: M. Hossain, A. H. Khan, M. A. R. Sarkar

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Primary containment structure is one of the five safety layers of a nuclear facility which is needed to be designed in such a manner that it can withstand the pressure and excessive radioactivity during accidental situations. It is also necessary to ensure minimization of cost with maximum possible safety in order to make the design economically feasible and attractive. This paper attempts to identify the optimum design conditions for primary containment structure considering both mechanical and radiation safety keeping the economic aspects in mind. This work takes advantage of commercial simulation software to identify the suitable conditions without the requirement of costly experiments. Generated data may be helpful for further studies.

Keywords: PWR, concrete containment, finite element approach, neutron attenuation, Von Mises Stress.

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Authors: Humayun Rashid, Lin Zhao

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Retention in the IT profession is critical for organizations to stay competitive and operate reliably in the dynamic business environment. Most organizations rely on compensation and rewards as primary tools to enhance retention of employees. In this quantitative survey-based study conducted at a large global bank, we analyze the perceptions of 575 information technology (IT) software professionals in India and Malaysia and find that fairness of rewards has very little impact on retention likelihood. It is far more important to actively involve employees in organizational activities. In addition, our findings indicate that involvement is far more important than information flow: the typical organizational communication to keep employees informed.

Keywords: fairness of rewards, information flow, informationinvolvement, retention

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Authors: Mirjana Ruppel, Rajendra Persad, Amit Bahl, Sanja Dogramadzi, Chris Melhuish, Lyndon Smith

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Multimodal image registration is a profoundly complex task which is why deep learning has been used widely to address it in recent years. However, two main challenges remain: Firstly, the lack of ground truth data calls for an unsupervised learning approach, which leads to the second challenge of defining a feasible loss function that can compare two images of different modalities to judge their level of alignment. To avoid this issue altogether we implement a generative adversarial network consisting of two registration networks GAB, GBA and two discrimination networks DA, DB connected by spatial transformation layers. GAB learns to generate a deformation field which registers an image of the modality B to an image of the modality A. To do that, it uses the feedback of the discriminator DB which is learning to judge the quality of alignment of the registered image B. GBA and DA learn a mapping from modality A to modality B. Additionally, a cycle-consistency loss is implemented. For this, both registration networks are employed twice, therefore resulting in images ˆA, ˆB which were registered to ˜B, ˜A which were registered to the initial image pair A, B. Thus the resulting and initial images of the same modality can be easily compared. A dataset of liver CT and MRI was used to evaluate the quality of our approach and to compare it against learning and non-learning based registration algorithms. Our approach leads to dice scores of up to 0.80 ± 0.01 and is therefore comparable to and slightly more successful than algorithms like SimpleElastix and VoxelMorph.

Keywords: Multimodal image registration, GAN, cycle consistency, deep learning.

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Authors: Abimbola M. Enitan, Josiah Adeyemo

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Anaerobic modeling is a useful tool to describe and simulate the condition and behaviour of anaerobic treatment units for better effluent quality and biogas generation. The present investigation deals with the anaerobic treatment of brewery wastewater with varying organic loads. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total suspended solids (TSS) of the influent and effluent of the bioreactor were determined at various retention times to generate data for kinetic coefficients. The bio-kinetic coefficients in the modified Stover–Kincannon kinetic and methane generation models were determined to study the performance of anaerobic digestion process. At steady-state, the determination of the kinetic coefficient (K), the endogenous decay coefficient (Kd), the maximum growth rate of microorganisms (μmax), the growth yield coefficient (Y), ultimate methane yield (Bo), maximum utilization rate constant Umax and the saturation constant (KB) in the model were calculated to be 0.046 g/g COD, 0.083 (d¯¹), 0.117 (d-¹), 0.357 g/g, 0.516 (L CH4/gCODadded), 18.51 (g/L/day) and 13.64 (g/L/day) respectively. The outcome of this study will help in simulation of anaerobic model to predict usable methane and good effluent quality during the treatment of industrial wastewater. Thus, this will protect the environment, conserve natural resources, saves time and reduce cost incur by the industries for the discharge of untreated or partially treated wastewater. It will also contribute to a sustainable long-term clean development mechanism for the optimization of the methane produced from anaerobic degradation of waste in a close system.

Keywords: Brewery wastewater, methane generation model, environment, anaerobic modeling.

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Authors: Wisam H. Benamer, Ehab A. Elfallah, Mohamed A. Elshaari, Farag A. Elshaari

Abstract:

A challenge for laboratories is to provide bacterial identification and antibiotic sensitivity results within a short time. Hence, advancement in the required technology is desirable to improve timing, accuracy and quality. Even with the current advances in methods used for both phenotypic and genotypic identification of bacteria the need is there to develop method(s) that enhance the outcome of bacteriology laboratories in accuracy and time. The hypothesis introduced here is based on the assumption that the chromosome of any bacteria contains unique sequences that can be used for its identification and typing. The outcome of a pilot study designed to test this hypothesis is reported in this manuscript. Methods: The complete chromosome sequences of several bacterial species were downloaded to use as search targets for unique sequences. Visual basic and SQL server (2014) were used to generate a complete set of 18-base long primers, a process started with reverse translation of randomly chosen 6 amino acids to limit the number of the generated primers. In addition, the software used to scan the downloaded chromosomes using the generated primers for similarities was designed, and the resulting hits were classified according to the number of similar chromosomal sequences, i.e., unique or otherwise. Results: All primers that had identical/similar sequences in the selected genome sequence(s) were classified according to the number of hits in the chromosomes search. Those that were identical to a single site on a single bacterial chromosome were referred to as unique. On the other hand, most generated primers sequences were identical to multiple sites on a single or multiple chromosomes. Following scanning, the generated primers were classified based on ability to differentiate between medically important bacterial and the initial results looks promising. Conclusion: A simple strategy that started by generating primers was introduced; the primers were used to screen bacterial genomes for match. Primer(s) that were uniquely identical to specific DNA sequence on a specific bacterial chromosome were selected. The identified unique sequence can be used in different molecular diagnostic techniques, possibly to identify bacteria. In addition, a single primer that can identify multiple sites in a single chromosome can be exploited for region or genome identification. Although genomes sequences draft of isolates of organism DNA enable high throughput primer design using alignment strategy, and this enhances diagnostic performance in comparison to traditional molecular assays. In this method the generated primers can be used to identify an organism before the draft sequence is completed. In addition, the generated primers can be used to build a bank for easy access of the primers that can be used to identify bacteria.

Keywords: Bacteria chromosome, bacterial identification, sequence, primer generation.

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Authors: M. Abdullahi, S. Sadiku, Bashar S. Mohammed, J. I. Aguwa

Abstract:

The properties of hollow sandcrete blocks produced in Minna, Nigeria are presented. Sandcrete block is made of cement, water and sand binded together in certain mix proportions. For the purpose of this work, fifty (50) commercial sandcrete block industries were visited in Minna, Nigeria to obtain block samples and aggregates used for the manufacture, and to take inventory of the mix composition and the production process. Sieve analysis tests were conduction on the soil sample from various block industries to ascertain their quality to be used for block making. The mix ratios were also investigated. Five (5) nine inches (9’’ or 225mm) blocks were obtained from each block industry and tested for dimensional compliance and compressive strength. The results of the soil test shows that the grading fall within the limit for natural aggregate and can easily are used to obtain workable mix. Physical examinations of the block sizes show slight deviation from the standard requirement in NIS 87:2000. Compressive strength of hollow sandcrete blocks in range of 0.12 N/mm2 to 0.54 N/mm2 was obtained which is below the recommendable value of 3.45 N/mm2 for load bearing hollow sandcrete blocks. This indicates that these blocks are below the standard for load-bearing sandcrete blocks and cannot be used as load bearing walling units. The mix composition also indicated low cement content resulting in low compressive strength. Most of the commercial block industries visited does not take curing very serious. Water were only sprinkled ones or twice before the blocks were stacked and made readily available for sale. It is recommended that a mix ratio of 1:4 to 1:6 should be used for the production of sandcrete blocks and proper curing practice should be adhered. Blocks should also be cured for 14 days before making them available for consumers.

Keywords: Compressive strength, dimensions, mix proportions, sandcrete blocks.

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