Search results for: food quality.

Authors: Katrin Zaiß, Tim Schlüter, Stefan Conrad

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Ontology Matching is a task needed in various applica-tions, for example for comparison or merging purposes. In literature,many algorithms solving the matching problem can be found, butmost of them do not consider instances at all. Mappings are deter-mined by calculating the string-similarity of labels, by recognizinglinguistic word relations (synonyms, subsumptions etc.) or by ana-lyzing the (graph) structure. Due to the facts that instances are oftenmodeled within the ontology and that the set of instances describesthe meaning of the concepts better than their meta information,instances should definitely be incorporated into the matching process.In this paper several novel instance-based matching algorithms arepresented which enhance the quality of matching results obtainedwith common concept-based methods. Different kinds of formalismsare use to classify concepts on account of their instances and finallyto compare the concepts directly.KeywordsInstances, Ontology Matching, Semantic Web

Keywords: Instances, Ontology Matching, Semantic Web

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Authors: Bo Wun Huang, Ah Der Lin, Yung Chuan Chen, Jao Hwa Kuang

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The dynamic model of a drill in drilling process was proposed and investigated in this study. To assure a good drilling quality, the vibration variation on the drill tips during high speed drilling is needed to be investigated. A pre-twisted beam is used to simulate the drill. The moving Winkler-Type elastic foundation is used to characterize the tip boundary variation in drilling. Due to the variation of the drill depth, a time dependent dynamic model for the drill is proposed. Results simulated from this proposed model indicate that an abrupt natural frequencies drop are experienced as the drill tip tough the workpiece, and a severe vibration is induced. The effects of parameters, e.g. drilling speed, depth, drill size and thrust force on the drill tip responses studied.

Keywords: Drilling, vibration of drill, twisted beam

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Authors: Ilyas Khan. Liliane Pintelon, Harry Martin, Michael Shömig

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The increasing costs of healthcare on one hand, and the rise in aging population and associated chronic disease, on the other hand, are putting increasing burden on the current health care system in many Western countries. For instance, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a common disease and in Europe, the cost of renal replacement therapy (RRT) is very significant to the total health care cost. However, the recent advancement in healthcare technology, provide the opportunity to treat patients at home in their own comfort. It is evident that home healthcare offers numerous advantages apparently, low costs and high patients’ quality of life. Despite these advantages, the intake of home hemodialysis (HHD) therapy is still low in particular in Germany. Many factors are accounted for the low number of HHD intake. However, this paper is focusing on patients’ safety-related factors of current HHD practices in Germany. The aim of this paper is to analyze the current HHD practices in Germany and to identify risks related factors if any exist. A case study has been conducted in a dialysis center which consists of four dialysis centers in the south of Germany. In total, these dialysis centers have 350 chronic dialysis patients, of which, four patients are on HHD. The centers have 126 staff which includes six nephrologists and 120 other staff i.e. nurses and administration. The results of the study revealed several risk-related factors. Most importantly, these centers do not offer allied health services at the pre-dialysis stage, the HHD training did not have an established curriculum; however, they have just recently developed the first version. Only a soft copy of the machine manual is offered to patients. Surprisingly, the management was not aware of any standard available for home assessment and installation. The home assessment is done by a third party (i.e. the machines and equipment provider) and they may not consider the hygienic quality of the patient’s home. The type of machine provided to patients at home is similar to the one in the center. The model may not be suitable at home because of its size and complexity. Even though portable hemodialysis machines, which are specially designed for home use, are available in the market such as the NxStage series. Besides the type of machine, no assistance is offered for space management at home in particular for placing the machine. Moreover, the centers do not offer remote assistance to patients and their carer at home. However, telephonic assistance is available. Furthermore, no alternative is offered if a carer is not available. In addition, the centers are lacking medical staff including nephrologists and renal nurses.

Keywords: Home hemodialysis, home hemodialysis practices, patients’ related risks in the current home hemodialysis practices, patient safety in home hemodialysis.

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Authors: Nkongho Ayuketang Arreyndip, Ebobenow Joseph

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In this paper, to model a real life wind turbine, a probabilistic approach is proposed to model the dynamics of the blade elements of a small axial wind turbine under extreme stochastic wind speeds conditions. It was found that the power and the torque probability density functions even-dough decreases at these extreme wind speeds but are not infinite. Moreover, we also fund that it is possible to stabilize the power coefficient (stabilizing the output power)above rated wind speeds by turning some control parameters. This method helps to explain the effect of turbulence on the quality and quantity of the harness power and aerodynamic torque.

Keywords: Probability, Stochastic, Probability density function, Turbulence.

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Authors: Amine Naït-Ali

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The aim of this paper is to present a new method which can be used for progressive transmission of electrocardiogram (ECG). The idea consists in transforming any ECG signal to an image, containing one beat in each row. In the first step, the beats are synchronized in order to reduce the high frequencies due to inter-beat transitions. The obtained image is then transformed using a discrete version of Radon Transform (DRT). Hence, transmitting the ECG, leads to transmit the most significant energy of the transformed image in Radon domain. For decoding purpose, the receptor needs to use the inverse Radon Transform as well as the two synchronization frames. The presented protocol can be adapted for lossy to lossless compression systems. In lossy mode we show that the compression ratio can be multiplied by an average factor of 2 for an acceptable quality of reconstructed signal. These results have been obtained on real signals from MIT database.

Keywords: Discrete Radon Transform, ECG compression, synchronization.

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Authors: M. S. Sreejith, Steffy Joy, Abhishesh Pal, Beom-Sahng Ryuh, V. R. Sanal Kumar

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In this paper, an attempt has been made for the design of a robotic library using an intelligent system. The robot works on the ARM microprocessor, motor driver circuit with 5 degrees of freedom with Wi-Fi and GPS based communication protocol. The authenticity of the library books is controlled by RFID. The proposed robotic library system is facilitated with embedded system and ARM. In this library issuance system, the previous potential readers’ authentic review reports have been taken into consideration for recommending suitable books to the deserving new users and the issuance of books or periodicals is based on the users’ decision. We have conjectured that the Wi-Fi based robotic library management system would allow fast transaction of books issuance and it also produces quality readers.

Keywords: GPS based based robotic library, library management system, robotic library, Wi-Fi library.

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Authors: Dirk Hegemann, Martin Amberg

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Sputter deposition processes, especially for sputtering from metal targets, are well investigated. For practical reasons, i.e. for industrial processes, energetic considerations for sputter deposition are useful in order to optimize the sputtering process. In particular, for substrates at floating conditions it is required to obtain energetic conditions during film growth that enables sufficient dense metal films of good quality. The influence of ion energies, energy density and momentum transfer is thus examined both for sputtering at the target as well as during film growth. Different regimes dominated by ion energy, energy density and momentum transfer were identified by using different plasma sources and by varying power input, pressure and bias voltage.

Keywords: Energy density, film growth, momentum transfer, sputtering.

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Authors: N. Arulanand, P. M. Ananth

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Quality of Service (QoS) attributes as part of the service description is an important factor for service attribute. It is not easy to exactly quantify the weight of each QoS conditions since human judgments based on their preference causes vagueness. As web services selection requires optimization, evolutionary computing based on heuristics to select an optimal solution is adopted. In this work, the evolutionary computing technique Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used for selecting a suitable web services based on the user’s weightage of each QoS values by optimizing the QoS weight vector and thereby finding the best weight vectors for best services that is being selected. Finally the results are compared and analyzed using static inertia weight and deterministic inertia weight of PSO.

Keywords: QoS, Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), weight vector, web services, web service selection.

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Authors: Adil AL-Rammahi

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When we prefer to make the data secure from various attacks and fore integrity of data, we must encrypt the data before it is transmitted or stored. This paper introduces a new effective and lossless image encryption algorithm using a natural logarithmic function. The new algorithm encrypts an image through a three stage process. In the first stage, a reference natural logarithmic function is generated as the foundation for the encryption image. The image numeral matrix is then analyzed to five integer numbers, and then the numbers’ positions are transformed to matrices. The advantages of this method is useful for efficiently encrypting a variety of digital images, such as binary images, gray images, and RGB images without any quality loss. The principles of the presented scheme could be applied to provide complexity and then security for a variety of data systems such as image and others.

Keywords: Linear Systems, Image Encryption, Calculus.

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Authors: Hadj Bourdoucen, Amer Alhabsi

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In this paper, a post processing scheme is suggested for improvement of Bit Error-Rate (BER) in optical fiber transmission receivers. The developed scheme has been tested on optical fiber systems operating with a non-return-to-zero (NRZ) format at transmission rates of up to 10Gbps. The transmission system considered is based on well known transmitters and receivers blocks operating at wavelengths in the region of 1550 nm using a standard single mode fiber. Performance of improved detected signals has been evaluated via the analysis of quality factor and computed bit error rates. Numerical simulations have shown a noticeable improvement of the system BER after implementation of the suggested post processing operation on the detected electrical signals.

Keywords: BER improvement, Optical fiber, transmissionperformance, NRZ.

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Authors: Yih-Chuan Lin, Jung-Hong Li

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In this paper, we propose a reversible watermarking scheme based on histogram shifting (HS) to embed watermark bits into the H.264/AVC standard videos by modifying the last nonzero level in the context adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC) domain. The proposed method collects all of the last nonzero coefficients (or called last level coefficient) of 4×4 sub-macro blocks in a macro block and utilizes predictions for the current last level from the neighbor block-s last levels to embed watermark bits. The feature of the proposed method is low computational and has the ability of reversible recovery. The experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed scheme has acceptable degradation on video quality and output bit-rate for most test videos.

Keywords: Reversible data hiding, H.264/AVC standard, CAVLC, Histogram shifting

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Authors: Suk-Hyun Yu, Heeyong Kwon

Abstract:

Recently PM-10 has become a social and global issue. It is one of major air pollutants which affect human health. Therefore, it needs to be forecasted rapidly and precisely. However, PM-10 comes from various emission sources, and its level of concentration is largely dependent on meteorological and geographical factors of local and global region, so the forecasting of PM-10 concentration is very difficult. Neural network model can be used in the case. But, there are few cases of high concentration PM-10. It makes the learning of the neural network model difficult. In this paper, we suggest a simple input balancing method when the data distribution is uneven. It is based on the probability of appearance of the data. Experimental results show that the input balancing makes the neural networks’ learning easy and improves the forecasting rates.

Keywords: AI, air quality prediction, neural networks, pattern recognition, PM-10.

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Authors: Anurag Saxena, Alkesh Agrawal, Dinesh Kumar

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The next generation mobile communication systems i.e. fourth generation (4G) was developed to accommodate the quality of service and required data rate. This project focuses on multiple access technique proposed in 4G communication systems. It is attempted to demonstrate the IDMA (Interleave Division Multiple Access) technology. The basic principle of IDMA is that interleaver is different for each user whereas CDMA employs different signatures. IDMA inherits many advantages of CDMA such as robust against fading, easy cell planning; dynamic channel sharing and IDMA increase the spectral efficiency and reduce the receiver complexity. In this, performance of IDMA is analyzed using QC-LDPC coding scheme further it is compared with LDPC coding and at last BER is calculated and plotted in MATLAB.

Keywords: 4G, QC-LDPC, CDMA, IDMA.

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Authors: K. Saab, F. Bart, Y.-M. Seveque

Abstract:

The deployment of Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) systems requires the development of robust and reliable Optical Ground Stations (OGS) that can be easily installed and operated. To this end, the Engineering Department of Airbus Defence and Space is actively working on the development of innovative and compact OGS solutions that can be deployed in various environments and provide high-quality connectivity under different atmospheric conditions. This article presents an overview of our recent developments in this field, including an evaluation study of different use cases of the FSOC with respect to different atmospheric conditions. The goal is to provide OGS solutions that are both simple and highly effective, allowing for the deployment of high-speed communication networks in a wide range of scenarios.

Keywords: End-to-end optical communication, laser propagation, optical ground station, turbulence.

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Authors: Feng Yue, Fei Dai

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With the rapid development of urbanization process in China, its environmental protection pressure is severely tested. So, analyzing and optimizing the landscape pattern is an important measure to ease the pressure on the ecological environment. This paper takes Wuhan Urban Development Zone as the research object, and studies its landscape pattern evolution and quantitative optimization strategy. First, remote sensing image data from 1990 to 2015 were interpreted by using Erdas software. Next, the landscape pattern index of landscape level, class level, and patch level was studied based on Fragstats. Then five indicators of ecological environment based on National Environmental Protection Standard of China were selected to evaluate the impact of landscape pattern evolution on the ecological environment. Besides, the cost distance analysis of ArcGIS was applied to simulate wildlife migration thus indirectly measuring the improvement of ecological environment quality. The result shows that the area of land for construction increased 491%. But the bare land, sparse grassland, forest, farmland, water decreased 82%, 47%, 36%, 25% and 11% respectively. They were mainly converted into construction land. On landscape level, the change of landscape index all showed a downward trend. Number of patches (NP), Landscape shape index (LSI), Connection index (CONNECT), Shannon's diversity index (SHDI), Aggregation index (AI) separately decreased by 2778, 25.7, 0.042, 0.6, 29.2%, all of which indicated that the NP, the degree of aggregation and the landscape connectivity declined. On class level, the construction land and forest, CPLAND, TCA, AI and LSI ascended, but the Distribution Statistics Core Area (CORE_AM) decreased. As for farmland, water, sparse grassland, bare land, CPLAND, TCA and DIVISION, the Patch Density (PD) and LSI descended, yet the patch fragmentation and CORE_AM increased. On patch level, patch area, Patch perimeter, Shape index of water, farmland and bare land continued to decline. The three indexes of forest patches increased overall, sparse grassland decreased as a whole, and construction land increased. It is obvious that the urbanization greatly influenced the landscape evolution. Ecological diversity and landscape heterogeneity of ecological patches clearly dropped. The Habitat Quality Index continuously declined by 14%. Therefore, optimization strategy based on greenway network planning is raised for discussion. This paper contributes to the study of landscape pattern evolution in planning and design and to the research on spatial layout of urbanization.

Keywords: Landscape pattern, optimization strategy, ArcGIS, Erdas, landscape metrics, landscape architecture.

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Authors: C. Felho, J. Kundrak

Abstract:

The quality of machined surfaces is an important characteristic of cutting processes and surface roughness has strong effects on the performance of sliding, moving components. The ability to forecast these values for a given process has been of great interests among researchers for a long time. Different modeling procedures and algorithms have been worked-out, and each has its own advantages and drawbacks. A new method will be introduced in this paper which will make it possible to calculate both the profile (2D) and surface (3D) parameters of theoretical roughness in the face milling of plain surfaces. This new method is based on an expediently developed CAD model, and uses a professional program for the roughness evaluation. Cutting experiments were performed on 42CrMo4 specimens in order to validate the accuracy of the model. The results have revealed that the method is able to predict surface roughness with good accuracy.

Keywords: CAD-based modeling, face milling, surface roughness, theoretical roughness.

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Authors: B. Prabhakara Rao, M. V. H. Bhaskara Murthy

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An Ad hoc wireless network comprises of mobile terminals linked and communicating with each other sans the aid of traditional infrastructure. Optimized Link State Protocol (OLSR) is a proactive routing protocol, in which routes are discovered/updated continuously so that they are available when needed. Hello messages generated by a node seeks information about its neighbor and if the latter fails to respond to a specified number of hello messages regulated by neighborhood hold time, the node is forced to assume that the neighbor is not in range. This paper proposes to evaluate OLSR routing protocol in a random mobility network having various neighborhood hold time intervals. The throughput and delivery ratio are also evaluated to learn about its efficiency for multimedia loads.

Keywords: Ad hoc Network, Optimized Link State Routing, Multimedia traffic

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Authors: Won-Pil Park, Seung-Kwan Cho, Jai-Young Ko, Anders Kristensson, S.T.S. Al-Hassani, Han-Sung Kim, Dohyung Lim

Abstract:

A number of previous studies were rarely considered the effects of transient non-uniform balloon expansion on evaluation of the properties and behaviors of stents during stent expansion, nor did they determine parameters to maximize the performances driven by mechanical characteristics. Therefore, in order to fully understand the mechanical characteristics and behaviors of stent, it is necessary to consider a realistic modeling of transient non-uniform balloon-stent expansion. The aim of the study is to propose design parameters capable of improving the ability of vascular stent through a comparative study of seven commercial stents using finite element analyses of a realistic transient non-uniform balloon-stent expansion process. In this study, seven representative commercialized stents were evaluated by finite element (FE) analysis in terms of the criteria based on the itemized list of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Standards (prEN). The results indicate that using stents composed of opened unit cells connected by bend-shaped link structures and controlling the geometrical and morphological features of the unit cell strut or the link structure at the distal ends of stent may improve mechanical characteristics of stent. This study provides a better method at the realistic transient non-uniform balloon-stent expansion by investigating the characteristics, behaviors, and parameters capable of improving the ability of vascular stent.

Keywords: Finite Element Analysis, Mechanical Characteristic, Transient Non-uniform Balloon-Stent Expansion, Vascular Stent.

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Authors: Roshafima R. Ali, W. A. Wan Abdul Rahman, Rafiziana M. Kasmani, N. Ibrahim

Abstract:

This current research focused on development of degradable starch based packaging film with enhanced mechanical properties. A series of low density polyethylene (LDPE)/tapioca starch compounds with various tapioca starch contents were prepared by twin screw extrusion with the addition of maleic anhydride grafted polyethylene as compatibilizer. Palm cooking oil was used as processing aid to ease the blown film process, thus, degradable film can be processed via conventional blown film machine. Studies on their characteristics, mechanical properties and biodegradation were carried out by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and optical properties, tensile test and exposure to fungi environment respectively. The presence of high starch contents had an adverse effect on the tensile properties of LDPE/tapioca starch blends. However, the addition of compatibilizer to the blends improved the interfacial adhesion between the two materials, hence, improved the tensile properties of the films. High content of starch amount also was found to increase the rate of biodegradability of LDPE/tapioca starch films. It can be proved by exposure of the film to fungi environment. A growth of microbes colony can be seen on the surface of LDPE/tapioca starch film indicates that the granular starch present on the surface of the polymer film is attacked by microorganisms, until most of it is assimilated as a carbon source.

Keywords: Degradable polymer, starch based biofilms, blown film extrusion, green food packaging.

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Authors: Mousmita Sarma, Krishna Dutta, Kandarpa Kumar Sarma

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Speech corpus is one of the major components in a Speech Processing System where one of the primary requirements is to recognize an input sample. The quality and details captured in speech corpus directly affects the precision of recognition. The current work proposes a platform for speech corpus generation using an adaptive LMS filter and LPC cepstrum, as a part of an ANN based Speech Recognition System which is exclusively designed to recognize isolated numerals of Assamese language- a major language in the North Eastern part of India. The work focuses on designing an optimal feature extraction block and a few ANN based cooperative architectures so that the performance of the Speech Recognition System can be improved.

Keywords: Filter, Feature, LMS, LPC, Cepstrum, ANN.

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Authors: Vipan Kumar Sohpal, Rajesh K Sharma

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Diminishing of conventional fuels and hysterical vehicles emission leads to deterioration of the environment, which emphasize the research to work on biofuels. Biofuels from different sources attract the attention of research due to low emission and biodegradability. Emission of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and H-C reduced drastically using Biofuels (B-20) combustion. Contrary to the conventional fuel, engine emission results indicated that nitrous oxide emission is higher in Biofuels. So this paper examines and compares the nitrogen oxide emission of Jatropha Curcus (JCO) B-20% blends with the vegetable oil. In addition to that computational analysis of crude non edible oil performed to assess the impact of composition on emission quality. In conclusion, JCO have the potential feedstock for the biodiesel production after the genetic modification in the plant.

Keywords: Jatropha Curcus, computational analysis, emissions, biofuels.

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Authors: Armin Ghayoori, Faramarz Hendessi, Asrar Sheikh

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In developing a text-to-speech system, it is well known that the accuracy of information extracted from a text is crucial to produce high quality synthesized speech. In this paper, a new scheme for converting text into its equivalent phonetic spelling is introduced and developed. This method is applicable to many applications in text to speech converting systems and has many advantages over other methods. The proposed method can also complement the other methods with a purpose of improving their performance. The proposed method is a probabilistic model and is based on Smooth Ergodic Hidden Markov Model. This model can be considered as an extension to HMM. The proposed method is applied to Persian language and its accuracy in converting text to speech phonetics is evaluated using simulations.

Keywords: Hidden Markov Models, text, synthesis.

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Authors: Maria E. Eggink

Abstract:

Innovation plays an important role in economic growth and development. Evolutionary economics has entrepreneurs at the centre of the innovation system, but includes all other participants as contributors to the performance of the innovation system. Education and training institutions, one of the participants in the innovation system, contributes in different ways to human capital. The gap in literature on the competence building as part of human capital in the analysis of innovation systems is addressed in this paper. The Mpumalanga Province of South Africa is used as a case study. It was found that the absence of a university, the level of education, the quality and performance in the education sector and the condition of the education infrastructure have not been conducive to learning.

Keywords: Education institutions, human capital, innovation systems, Mpumalanga Province.

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Authors: M. Khakbazan, S. L. Scott, H. C. Block, C. D. Robins, W. P. McCaughey

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A ten-year grazing study was conducted at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Brandon Research Centre in Manitoba to study the effect of alfalfa inclusion and fertilizer (N, P, K, and S) addition on economics and efficiency of non-renewable energy use in meadow brome grass-based pasture systems for beef production. Fertilizing grass-only or alfalfa-grass pastures to full soil test recommendations improved pasture productivity, but did not improve profitability compared to unfertilized pastures. Fertilizing grass-only pastures resulted in the highest net loss of any pasture management strategy in this study. Adding alfalfa at the time of seeding, with no added fertilizer, was economically the best pasture improvement strategy in this study. Because of moisture limitations, adding commercial fertilizer to full soil test recommendations is probably not economically justifiable in most years, especially with the rising cost of fertilizer. Improving grass-only pastures by adding fertilizer and/or alfalfa required additional non-renewable energy inputs; however, the additional energy required for unfertilized alfalfa-grass pastures was minimal compared to the fertilized pastures. Of the four pasture management strategies, adding alfalfa to grass pastures without adding fertilizer had the highest efficiency of energy use. Based on energy use and economic performance, the unfertilized alfalfa-grass pasture was the most efficient and sustainable pasture system.

Keywords: Alfalfa, grass, fertilizer, pasture systems, economics, energy.

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Authors: Bo Wun Huang, Pu Ping Yu, Jao-Hwa Kuang

Abstract:

For smaller mechatronic device, especially for micro Electronic system, a micro machining is a must. However, most investigations on vibration of a mill have been limited to the traditional type mill. In this article, vibration and dynamic characteristics of a micro mill were investigated in this study. The trend towards higher precision manufacturing technology requires producing miniaturized components. To improve micro-milled product quality, obtain a higher production rate and avoid milling breakage, the dynamic characteristics of micro milling must be studied. A stepped pre-twisted mill is used to simulate the micro mill. The finite element analysis is employed in this work. The flute length and diameter effects of the micro mill are considered. It is clear that the effects of micro mill shape parameters on vibration in a micro mill are significant.

Keywords: micro system, micro mill, vibration.

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Authors: Violina R. Angelova, Dimitar F. Grekov, Veselin K. Kisyov, Krasimir I. Ivanov

Abstract:

A field study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of lavender for phytoremediation of contaminated soils. The experiment was performed on an agricultural fields contaminated by the Non-Ferrous-Metal Works near Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The concentrations of Pb, Zn and Cd in lavender (roots, stems, leaves and inflorescences) and in the essential oils of lavender were determined. Lavender is a plant which is tolerant to heavy metals and can be grown on contaminated soils, and which can be referred to the hyperaccumulators of lead and the accumulators of cadmium and zinc, and can be successfully used in the phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils. Favorable is also the fact that heavy metals do not influence the development of the lavender, as well as on the quality and quantity of the essential oil. The possibility of further industrial processing will make lavender economically interesting crops for farmers of phytoextraction technology.

Keywords: Heavy metals, lavender, phytoremediation, polluted soils.

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Authors: Viera Zatkalíková, Lenka Markovičová, Aneta Tor-Swiatek

Abstract:

The effect of molybdate addition to chloride environment on resistance of AISI 316Ti stainless steel to pitting corrosion was studied. Potentiodynamic polarisation tests were performed in 1 M and 0.1 M chloride acidified solutions with various additions of sodium molybdate at room temperature. The presented results compare the effect of molybdate anions on quality of passive film (expressed by the pitting potential) in both chloride solutions. The pitting potential increases with the increase inhibitor concentration. The inhibitive effect of molybdate ions is stronger in chloride solution of lower aggressiveness (0.1M).

Keywords: AISI 316Ti steel, molybdate inhibitor, pitting corrosion, pitting potential, potentiodynamic polarization.

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Authors: Emad T. Khalaf, Norrozila Sulaiman

Abstract:

Many researchers are working on information hiding techniques using different ideas and areas to hide their secrete data. This paper introduces a robust technique of hiding secret data in image based on LSB insertion and RSA encryption technique. The key of the proposed technique is to encrypt the secret data. Then the encrypted data will be converted into a bit stream and divided it into number of segments. However, the cover image will also be divided into the same number of segments. Each segment of data will be compared with each segment of image to find the best match segment, in order to create a new random sequence of segments to be inserted then in a cover image. Experimental results show that the proposed technique has a high security level and produced better stego-image quality.

Keywords: steganography; LSB Matching; RSA Encryption; data segments

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Authors: Warunpun Kongsom, Chaiwat Kongsom

Abstract:

The objective of this study was to investigate the awareness, knowledge and consumer behavior towards organic products in Thailand. For this study, a purposive sampling technique was used to identify a sample group of 2,575 consumers over the age of 20 years who intended or made purchases from 1) green shops; 2) supermarkets with branches; and, 3) green markets. A questionnaire was used for data collection across the country. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. The results showed that more than 92% of consumers were aware of organic agriculture, but had less knowledge about it. More than 60% of consumers knew that organic agriculture production and processing did not allow the use of chemicals. And about 40% of consumers were confused between the food safety logo and the certified organic logo, and whether GMO was allowed in organic agriculture practice or not. In addition, most consumers perceived that organic agricultural products, good agricultural practice (GAP) products, agricultural chemicals free products, and hydroponic vegetable products had the same standard. In the view of organic consumers, the organic Thailand label was the most seen and reliable among various organic labels. Less than 3% of consumers thought that the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) Global Organic Mark (GOM) was the most seen and reliable. For the behaviors of organic consumers, they purchased organic products mainly at the supermarket and green shop (55.4%), one to two times per month, and with a total expenditure of about 200 to 400 baht each time. The main reason for buying organic products was safety and free from agricultural chemicals. The considered factors in organic product selection were price (29.5%), convenience (22.4%), and a reliable certification system (21.3%). The demands for organic products were mainly rice, vegetables and fruits. Processed organic products were relatively small in quantity.

Keywords: Consumer behavior, consumer knowledge, organic products, Thailand.

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Authors: Sivapan Choo-In

Abstract:

The main objective of this study was to investigate particulate matter concentration on main and secondary roadsides in urban area and study the concentration of some heavy metals including lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu) and cadmium (Cd) in particulate matter in the Bangkok area.     

  The averaged particle concentration for main roadsides is higher than secondary roadsides. The particulate matter less than 10 micron concentration contribute the majority of the Total Suspended Particulate matter for main roads and zinc concentrations were higher than copper and lead for both sites.

Keywords: Air Pollution, Air Quality, Pollution and monitoring.

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