Search results for: Development Plans

Authors: Diky Mudhakir, M. Fauzi Bostanudin, Fiki Firmawan, Rachmat Mauludin

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In the present study, development of salbutamol sulphate nanoparticles that adhere to gastric mucus was investigated. Salbutamol sulphate has low bioavailability due to short transit time in gastric. It also has a positive surface charge that provides hurdles to be encapsulated by the positively strong mucoadhesive polymer of chitosan. To overcome the difficulties, the surface charge of active ingredient was modified using several nonionic and anionic stomach-specific polymers. The nanoparticles were prepared using ionotropic gelation technique. The evaluation involved determination of particle size, zeta potential, entrapment efficiency, in vitro drug release and in vitro mucoadhesion test. Results exhibited that the use of anionic alginate polymer was more satisfactory than that of nonionic polymer. Characteristics of the particles was nano-size, high encapsulation efficiency, fulfilled the drug release requirements and adhesive towards stomach for around 11 hours. This result shows that the salbutamol sulphate nanoparticles can be utilized for improvement its delivery.

Keywords: Mucoadhesive, salbutamol sulphate, nanosize, anionic polymer.

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Authors: Soltani Amir, Hu Jiaxin

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Determination of optimal parameters of a passive  control system device is the primary objective of this study.  Expanding upon the use of control devices in wind and earthquake  hazard reduction has led to development of various control systems.  The advantage of non-linearity characteristics in a passive control  device and the optimal control method using LQR algorithm are  explained in this study. Finally, this paper introduces a simple  approach to determine optimum parameters of a nonlinear viscous  damper for vibration control of structures. A MATLAB program is  used to produce the dynamic motion of the structure considering the  stiffness matrix of the SDOF frame and the non-linear damping  effect. This study concluded that the proposed system (variable  damping system) has better performance in system response control  than a linear damping system. Also, according to the energy  dissipation graph, the total energy loss is greater in non-linear  damping system than other systems.

 

Keywords: Passive Control System, Damping Devices, Viscous Dampers, Control Algorithm.

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Authors: Ivana Tadić, Snježana Pivac

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Although human resources are recognized as the crucial companies’ resources and their positive influence on companies’ performances has been confirmed through different researches, scientists are still debating it. In order to contribute this debate, this paper firstly discusses the most important human resource management elements and practices and its influence on companies’ success. Afterwards it defines human resource “bundles” – interrelated and internally consistent human resource practices, complementary to each other, or the most important human resource practices and elements regarding Croatian companies and its human resource management activities. Finally, the paper provides empirical results; more precisely it reveals the relation of the level of development of human resource management function (“bundles”) and companies’ financial performances (using profitability ratios, liquidity ratios, solvency ratios and a group of additional ratios related to employees’ indicators).

Keywords: Companies’ performances, human resource bundles, multivariate statistical analysis.

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Authors: Muh. Hisjam, Nancy Oktyajati, Wakhid A. Jauhari, Wahyudi Sutopo

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This research is intended to develop a raw material allocation model in timber processing industry in Perum Perhutani Unit I, Central Java, Indonesia. The model can be used to determine the quantity of allocation of timber between chain in the supply chain to select supplier considering factors that are log price and the distance. In determining the quantity of allocation of timber between chains in the supply chain, the model considers the optimal inventory in each chain. Whilst the optimal inventory is determined based on demand forecast, the capacity and safety stock. Problem solving allocation is conducted by developing linear programming model that aims to minimize the total cost of the purchase, transportation cost and storage costs at each chain. The results of numerical examples show that the proposed model can generate savings of the purchase cost of 20.84% and select suppliers with mileage closer.

Keywords: Allocation model, linear programming, purchase costs, storage costs, suppliers, transportation costs.

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Authors: Olatunde I. Sekunowo, Stephen I. Durowaye, Oluwashina P. Gbenebor

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Copper being one of the major intrinsic residual impurities in steel possesses the tendency to induce severe microstructural distortions if not controlled within certain limits. Hence, this paper investigates the effect of this element on the mechanical properties of construction steel with a view to ascertain its safe limits for effective control. The experiment entails collection of statistically scheduled samples of hot rolled profiles with varied copper concentrations in the range of 0.12-0.39 wt. %. From these samples were prepared standard test specimens subjected to tensile, impact, hardness and microstructural analyses. Results show a rather huge compromise in mechanical properties as the specimens demonstrated 54.3%, 74.2% and 64.9% reduction in tensile strength, impact energy and hardness respectively as copper content increases from 0.12 wt. % to 0.39 wt. %. The steel’s abysmal performance is due to the severe distortion of the microstructure occasioned by the development of incoherent complex compounds which weaken the pearlite reinforcing phase. It is concluded that the presence of copper above 0.22 wt. % is deleterious to construction steel performance.

Keywords: Construction steel, mechanical properties, processing method, trace elements.

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Authors: J. Zambujal-Oliveira

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The relation between taxation states and foreign direct investment has been studied for several perspectives and with states of different levels of development. Usually it's only considered the impact of tax level on the foreign direct investment volume. This paper enhances this view by assuming that multinationals companies (MNC) can use transfer prices systems and have got investment timing flexibility. Thus, it evaluates the impact of the use of international transfer pricing systems on the states- policy and on the investment timing of the multinational companies. In uncertain business environments (with periodical release of news), the investment can increase if MNC detain investment delay options. This paper shows how tax differentials can attract foreign direct investments (FDI) and influence MNC behavior. The equilibrium is set in a global environment where MNC can shift their profits between states depending on the corporate tax rates. Assuming the use of transfer pricing schemes, this paper confirms the relationship between MNC behavior and the release of new business news.

Keywords: Corporate Taxation, International Profit Shifting, Real Options

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Authors: S. Tangjuank, N. Insuk , J. Tontrakoon , V. Udeye

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Cashew nut shells were converted into activated carbon powders using KOH activation plus CO2 gasification at 1027 K. The increase both of impregnation ratio and activation time, there was swiftly the development of mesoporous structure with increasing of mesopore volume ratio from 20-28% and 27-45% for activated carbon with ratio of KOH per char equal to 1 and 4, respectively. Activated carbon derived from KOH/char ratio equal to 1 and CO2 gasification time from 20 to 150 minutes were exhibited the BET surface area increasing from 222 to 627 m2.g-1. And those were derived from KOH/char ratio of 4 with activation time from 20 to 150 minutes exhibited high BET surface area from 682 to 1026 m2.g-1. The adsorption of Lead(II) and Cadmium(II) ion was investigated. This adsorbent exhibited excellent adsorption for Lead(II) and Cadmium(II) ion. Maximum adsorption presented at 99.61% at pH 6.5 and 98.87% at optimum conditions. The experimental data was calculated from Freundlich isotherm and Langmuir isotherm model. The maximum capacity of Pb2+ and Cd2+ ions was found to be 28.90 m2.g-1 and 14.29 m2.g-1, respectively.

Keywords: Activated carbon, cashew nut shell, heavy metals, adsorption.

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Authors: V. Vicente E. Mujica, Gustavo Gonzalez

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The global coverage of broadband multimedia and internet-based services in terrestrial-satellite networks demand particular interests for satellite providers in order to enhance services with low latencies and high signal quality to diverse users. In particular, the delay of on-board processing is an inherent source of latency in a satellite communication that sometimes is discarded for the end-to-end delay of the satellite link. The frame work for this paper includes modelling of an on-orbit satellite payload using an agent model that can reproduce the properties of processing delays. In essence, a comparison of different spatial interpolation methods is carried out to evaluate physical data obtained by an GEO satellite in order to define a discretization function for determining that delay. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed agent and the development of a delay discretization function are together validated by simulating an hybrid satellite and terrestrial network. Simulation results show high accuracy according to the characteristics of initial data points of processing delay for Ku bands.

Keywords: Terrestrial-satellite networks, latency, on-orbit satellite payload, simulation.

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Authors: Jamel Miri, Bechir Nsiri, Ridha Bouallegue

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Ultra WidBand-IR physical layer technology has seen a great development during the last decade which makes it a promising candidate for short range wireless communications, as they bring considerable benefits in terms of connectivity and mobility. However, like all wireless communication they suffer from vulnerabilities in terms of security because of the open nature of the radio channel. To face these attacks, distance bounding protocols are the most popular counter measures. In this paper, we presented a protocol based on distance bounding to thread the most popular attacks: Distance Fraud, Mafia Fraud and Terrorist fraud. In our work, we study the way to adapt the best secure distance bounding protocols to mapping code of ultra-wideband (TH-UWB) radios. Indeed, to ameliorate the performances of the protocol in terms of security communication in TH-UWB, we combine the modified protocol to ultra-wideband impulse radio technology (IR-UWB). The security and the different merits of the protocols are analyzed.

Keywords: Distance bounding, mapping code ultra-wideband, Terrorist Fraud.

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Authors: E. A. Tkachenko, E. M. Rogova, A. S. Osipenko

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The problems of technological development for the Russian Federation take on special significance in the context of modernization of the production base. The complexity of the position of the Russian economy is that it cannot be attributed fully to developing ones. Russia is a strong industrial power that has gone through the processes of destructive de-industrialization in the conditions of changing its economic and political structure. The need to find ways for re-industrialization is not a unique task for the economies of industrially developed countries. Under the influence of production outsourcing for 20 years, the industrial potential of leading economies of the world was regressed against the backdrop of the ascent of China, a new industrial giant. Therefore, methods, tools, and techniques utilized for industrial renaissance in EU may be used to achieve a technological leap in the Russian Federation, especially since the temporary gap of 5-7 years makes it possible to analyze best practices and use those technological transfer tools that have shown the greatest efficiency. In this article, methods of technological transfer are analyzed, the role of technological audit is justified, and factors are analyzed that influence the successful process of commercialization of technologies.

Keywords: Technological transfer, productivity, technological audit, commercialization of technologies.

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Authors: Eldah Ephraim Buba

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This paper evaluated the quality of tourism education in Nigeria higher education. The problem of poor quality of tourism education in Nigeria’s higher institutions prompted the study. Archival research was used with evaluation reports as secondary data, twenty evaluation reports for different polytechnics from the National board for technical education (NBTE) from 1995-2012 were assessed. The evidence from the documents shows that the quality of teaching and evaluation is fair. The programmes resources are fairly good, and most of the teachers do not have a postgraduate qualification in tourism related courses. It is therefore recommended that the institutions running tourism programmes in Nigeria need to introduce self -assessment of programmes and not rely on the NBTE accreditation which comes up in three years. Also there is need for a staff development policy that will encourage Tourism educators to further their education; The Tertiary Educational Trust Fund (TETFUND) should focus on developing staff of tourism education because it is an area of study in Nigeria that lacks qualified personnel. With the way higher institution in Nigeria are finding interest in tourism programmes, having good quality programmes will not only produce better professionals but it will help in offering better services in the industry and maximizing the impacts of the business.

Keywords: Education, evaluation tourism, quality.

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Authors: Fardin Boustani, Mohammad Hosein Hojati

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Groundwater is one of the most important water resources in Fars province. Based on this study, 95 percent of the total annual water consumption in Fars is used for agriculture, whereas the percentages for domestic and industrial uses are 4 and 1 percent, respectively. Population growth, urban and industrial growth, and agricultural development in Fars have created a condition of water stress. In this province, farmers and other users are pumping groundwater faster than its natural replenishment rate, causing a continuous drop in groundwater tables and depletion of this resource. In this research variation of groundwater level, their effects and ways to help control groundwater levels in aquifer of the Niriz plains in Fars plain were evaluated .Excessive exploitation of groundwater in this aquifer caused the groundwater levels fall too fast or to unacceptable levels. The average drawdown of the groundwater level in this plain were 9.1 meters during 1997 to 2004. The purpose of this study is to evaluate water level changes in the Niriz Aquifer in the Fars province in order to determine the areas of greatest depletion, the cause of depletion, and predict the remaining life of the aquifer.

Keywords: Aquifer, ground water depletion, water table

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Authors: Su-Hyun Cho, Chang-U Chae

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Environmental impact assessment techniques have been developed as a result of the worldwide efforts to reduce the environmental impact of global warming. By using the quantification method in the construction industry, it is now possible to manage the greenhouse gas is to systematically evaluate the impact on the environment over the entire construction process. In particular, the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions at the production stage of construction material occupied is high, and efforts are needed in particular in the construction field. In this research, intended for concrete products for the construction materials, by using the LCA method, we compared the results of environmental impact assessment and carbon emissions of developing products that have been applied low-carbon technologies compared to existing products. As a results, by introducing a raw material of industrial waste, showed carbon reduction. Through a comparison of the carbon emission reduction effect of low carbon technologies, it is intended to provide academic data for the evaluation of greenhouse gases in the construction sector and the development of low carbon technologies of the future.

Keywords: CO2 Emissions, CO2 Reduction, Ready-mixed Concrete, Environmental Impact Assessment.

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Authors: N. Z. A. Hamid, M. S. M. Noorani

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This study is focused on the development of prediction models of the Ozone concentration time series. Prediction model is built based on chaotic approach. Firstly, the chaotic nature of the time series is detected by means of phase space plot and the Cao method. Then, the prediction model is built and the local linear approximation method is used for the forecasting purposes. Traditional prediction of autoregressive linear model is also built. Moreover, an improvement in local linear approximation method is also performed. Prediction models are applied to the hourly Ozone time series observed at the benchmark station in Malaysia. Comparison of all models through the calculation of mean absolute error, root mean squared error and correlation coefficient shows that the one with improved prediction method is the best. Thus, chaotic approach is a good approach to be used to develop a prediction model for the Ozone concentration time series.

Keywords: Chaotic approach, phase space, Cao method, local linear approximation method.

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Authors: Luis Arias, Jorge E. Pezoa, Daniel Sbárbaro

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In this paper, an automated algorithm to estimate and remove the continuous baseline from measured spectra containing both continuous and discontinuous bands is proposed. The algorithm uses previous information contained in a Continuous Database Spectra (CDBS) to obtain a linear basis, with minimum number of sampled vectors, capable of representing a continuous baseline. The proposed algorithm was tested by using a CDBS of flame spectra where Principal Components Analysis and Non-negative Matrix Factorization were used to obtain linear bases. Thus, the radical emissions of natural gas, oil and bio-oil flames spectra at different combustion conditions were obtained. In order to validate the performance in the baseline estimation process, the Goodness-of-fit Coefficient and the Root Mean-squared Error quality metrics were evaluated between the estimated and the real spectra in absence of discontinuous emission. The achieved results make the proposed method a key element in the development of automatic monitoring processes strategies involving discontinuous spectral bands.

Keywords: Flame spectra, removing baseline, recovering spectrum.

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Authors: E.Kvesitadze, T.Sadunishvili, G.Kvesitadze

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As a result of urbanization, the unpredictable growth of industry and transport, production of chemicals, military activities, etc. the concentration of anthropogenic toxicants spread in nature exceeds all the permissible standards. Most dangerous among these contaminants are organic compounds having great persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity along with our awareness of their prominent occurrence in the environment and food chain. Among natural ecological tools, plants still occupying above 40% of the world land, until recently, were considered as organisms having only a limited ecological potential, accumulating in plant biomass and partially volatilizing contaminants of different structure. However, analysis of experimental data of the last two decades revealed the essential role of plants in environment remediation due to ability to carry out intracellular degradation processes leading to partial or complete decomposition of carbon skeleton of different structure contaminants. Though, phytoremediation technologies still are in research and development, their various applications have been successfully used. The paper aims to analyze mechanisms of organic contaminants uptake and detoxification in plants, being the less studied issue in evaluation and exploration of plants potential for environment remediation.

Keywords: organic contaminants, Detoxification, metalloenzymes, plant ultrastructure.

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Authors: I. R. Farah, I. B. Ismail, M. B. Ahmed

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The huge development of new technologies and the apparition of open communication system more and more sophisticated create a new challenge to protect digital content from piracy. Digital watermarking is a recent research axis and a new technique suggested as a solution to these problems. This technique consists in inserting identification information (watermark) into digital data (audio, video, image, databases...) in an invisible and indelible manner and in such a way not to degrade original medium-s quality. Moreover, we must be able to correctly extract the watermark despite the deterioration of the watermarked medium (i.e attacks). In this paper we propose a system for watermarking satellite images. We chose to embed the watermark into frequency domain, precisely the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). We applied our algorithm on satellite images of Tunisian center. The experiments show satisfying results. In addition, our algorithm showed an important resistance facing different attacks, notably the compression (JEPG, JPEG2000), the filtering, the histogram-s manipulation and geometric distortions such as rotation, cropping, scaling.

Keywords: Digital data watermarking, Spatial Database, Satellite images, Discrete Wavelets Transform (DWT).

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Authors: Ziad. Sh. Al Sarraf

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Ultrasonic metal welding has been the subject of ongoing research and development, most recently concentrating on metal joining in miniature devices, for example to allow solder-free wire bonding. As well as at the small scale, there are also opportunities to research the joining of thicker sheet metals and to widen the range of similar and dissimilar materials that can be successfully joined using this technology. This study presents the design, characterisation and test of a lateral-drive ultrasonic metal spot welding device. The ultrasonic metal spot welding horn is modelled using finite element analysis (FEA) and its vibration behaviour is characterised experimentally to ensure ultrasonic energy is delivered effectively to the weld coupon. The welding stack and fixtures are then designed and mounted on a test machine to allow a series of experiments to be conducted for various welding and ultrasonic parameters. Weld strength is subsequently analysed using tensile-shear tests. The results show how the weld strength is particularly sensitive to the combination of clamping force and ultrasonic vibration amplitude of the welding tip, but there are optimal combinations of these and also limits that must be clearly identified.

Keywords: Ultrasonic welding, vibration amplitude, welding force, weld strength.

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Authors: Yu Zhang, Pedro Desouza

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Since big data has become substantially more accessible and manageable due to the development of powerful tools for dealing with unstructured data, people are eager to mine information from social media resources that could not be handled in the past. Sentiment analysis, as a novel branch of text mining, has in the last decade become increasingly important in marketing analysis, customer risk prediction and other fields. Scientists and researchers have undertaken significant work in creating and improving their sentiment models. In this paper, we present a concept of selecting appropriate classifiers based on the features and qualities of data sources by comparing the performances of five classifiers with three popular social media data sources: Twitter, Amazon Customer Reviews, and Movie Reviews. We introduced a couple of innovative models that outperform traditional sentiment classifiers for these data sources, and provide insights on how to further improve the predictive power of sentiment analysis. The modeling and testing work was done in R and Greenplum in-database analytic tools.

Keywords: Sentiment Analysis, Social Media, Twitter, Amazon, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Text Mining.

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Authors: S. Totong, K. Faungnawakij, N. Laosiripojana

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The development of alternative energy is interesting in the present especially, hydrogen production because it is an important energy resource in the future. This paper studied the hydrogen production from catalytic dehydrogenation of ethanol through via low temperature (<500°C) reaction. Copper (Cu) and silver (Ag) supported on fumed silica (SiO2) were selected in the present work; in addition, bimetallic material; Ag-Cu supported on SiO2 was also investigated. The catalysts were prepared by the incipient wetness impregnation method and characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), temperature-programmed reduction (TPR)and nitrogen adsorption measurements. The catalytic dehydrogenation of ethanol was carried out in a fixed bed continuous flow reactor at atmospheric pressure. The effect of reaction temperature between 300-375°C was studied in order to maximize the hydrogen yield. It was found that Ag-Cu/SiO2 exhibited the highest hydrogen yield compared to Ag/SiO2 and Cu/SiO2 at low reaction temperature (300°C) with full ethanol conversion. The highest hydrogen yield observed was 40% and will be further used as a reactant in fuel cells to generate electricity or feedstock of chemical production. 

Keywords: Catalyst, dehydrogenation, ethanol, hydrogen production.

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Authors: Aki Sugano, Mika Ohta, Mineko Ikegami, Kenji Miura, Sayo Tsukamoto, Akihiro Ichinose, Toshiko Ohshima, Eiichi Maeda, Masako Matsuura, Yutaka Takao

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Along with the advances in medicine, providing medical information to individual patient is becoming more important. In Japan such information via Braille is hardly provided to blind and partially sighted people. Thus we are researching and developing a Web-based automatic translation program “eBraille" to translate Japanese text into Japanese Braille. First we analyzed the Japanese transcription rules to implement them on our program. We then added medical words to the dictionary of the program to improve its translation accuracy for medical text. Finally we examined the efficacy of statistical learning models (SLMs) for further increase of word segmentation accuracy in braille translation. As a result, eBraille had the highest translation accuracy in the comparison with other translation programs, improved the accuracy for medical text and is utilized to make hospital brochures in braille for outpatients and inpatients.

Keywords: Automatic Braille translation, Medical text, Partially sighted people.

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Authors: Zulaiha Ali Othman, Helmi Md Rais, Abdul Razak Hamdan

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Ants are fascinating creatures that demonstrate the ability to find food and bring it back to their nest. Their ability as a colony, to find paths to food sources has inspired the development of algorithms known as Ant Colony Systems (ACS). The principle of cooperation forms the backbone of such algorithms, commonly used to find solutions to problems such as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Ants communicate to each other through chemical substances called pheromones. Modeling individual ants- ability to manipulate this substance can help an ACS find the best solution. This paper introduces a Dynamic Ant Colony System with threelevel updates (DACS3) that enhance an existing ACS. Experiments were conducted to observe single ant behavior in a colony of Malaysian House Red Ants. Such behavior was incorporated into the DACS3 algorithm. We benchmark the performance of DACS3 versus DACS on TSP instances ranging from 14 to 100 cities. The result shows that the DACS3 algorithm can achieve shorter distance in most cases and also performs considerably faster than DACS.

Keywords: Dynamic Ant Colony System (DACS), Traveling Salesmen Problem (TSP), Optimization, Swarm Intelligent.

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Authors: Yee-Ting Lee, Jyun-Rong Zhuang, Wen-Hsin Hsieh, An-Shik Yang

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Additive manufacturing (AM) is increasingly crucial in biomedical and aerospace industries. As a recently developed AM technique, selective laser melting (SLM) has become a commercial method for various manufacturing processes. However, the molten pool configuration during SLM of metal powders is a decisive issue for the product quality. It is very important to investigate the heat transfer characteristics during the laser heating process. In this work, the finite element method (FEM) software ANSYS^® (work bench module 16.0) was used to predict the unsteady temperature distribution for resolving molten pool dimensions with consideration of temperature-dependent thermal physical properties of TiAl6V4 at different laser powers and scanning speeds. The simulated results of the temperature distributions illustrated that the ratio of laser power to scanning speed can greatly influence the size of molten pool of titanium alloy powder for SLM development.

Keywords: Additive manufacturing, finite element method, molten pool dimensions, selective laser melting.

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Authors: Javad Majrouhi Sardroud, Mukesh C. Limbachiya

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Construction projects generally take place in uncontrolled and dynamic environments where construction waste is a serious environmental problem in many large cities. The total amount of waste and carbon dioxide emissions from transportation vehicles are still out of control due to increasing construction projects, massive urban development projects and the lack of effective tools for minimizing adverse environmental impacts in construction. This research is about utilization of the integrated applications of automated advanced tracking and data storage technologies in the area of environmental management to monitor and control adverse environmental impacts such as construction waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) integrated with the Global Position System (GPS) provides an opportunity to uniquely identify materials, components, and equipments and to locate and track them using minimal or no worker input. The transmission of data to the central database will be carried out with the help of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).

Keywords: Clear environment, Construction industry, RFID.

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Authors: Marco T. C. Faria

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Fixed-geometry hydrodynamic journal bearings are one of the best supporting systems for several applications of rotating machinery. Cylindrical journal bearings present excellent loadcarrying capacity and low manufacturing costs, but they are subjected to the oil-film instability at high speeds. An attempt of overcoming this instability problem has been the development of non-circular journal bearings. This work deals with an analysis of oil-lubricated elliptical journal bearings using the finite element method. Steadystate and dynamic performance characteristics of elliptical bearings are rendered by zeroth- and first-order lubrication equations obtained through a linearized perturbation method applied on the classical Reynolds equation. Four-node isoparametric rectangular finite elements are employed to model the bearing thin film flow. Curves of elliptical bearing load capacity and dynamic force coefficients are rendered at several operating conditions. The results presented in this work demonstrate the influence of the bearing ellipticity on its performance at different loading conditions.

Keywords: Elliptical journal bearings, non-circular journal bearings, hydrodynamic bearings, finite element method.

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Authors: Miguel José Oliveira, Fátima Farinha, Elisa M. J. da Silva, Rui Lança, Manuel Duarte Pinheiro, Cátia Miguel

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The Observatory of Sustainability of the Algarve Region for Tourism (OBSERVE) will be a valuable tool to assess the sustainability of this region. The OBSERVE tool is designed to provide data and maintain an up-to-date, consistent set of indicators defined to describe the region on the environmental, sociocultural, economic and institutional domains. This ongoing two-year project has the active participation of the Algarve’s stakeholders, since they were consulted and asked to participate in the discussion for the indicators proposal. The environmental and sociocultural indicators chosen must indicate the characteristics of the region and should be in alignment with other global systems used to monitor the sustainability. This paper presents a review of sustainability indicators systems that support the first proposal for the environmental and sociocultural indicators. Others constraints are discussed, namely the existing data and the data available in digital platforms in a format suitable for automatic importation to the platform of OBSERVE. It is intended that OBSERVE will be a valuable tool to assess the sustainability of the region of Algarve.

Keywords: Sustainability, observatory, environmental indicators, sociocultural indicators, development, tourism, Algarve.

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Authors: Weera Chotithammaporn

Abstract:

This research aims to study employment trends in printing industry for prepress support by Suan Sunandha University Fund. The objectives of this research are to explain the trends of the employment in Thai Printing Industry for prepress in Bangkok and the description of different personnel that prepress entrepreneur need and also the problems of employment. The population of prepress entrepreneurs is about 100 organizations in the area of Bangkok. The questionnaires has been taken and analyzed with SPSS program by using the average percentage and standard deviation. This research is multiple case studies. The conceptual framework is developed on the basis of the open systems theory. The research result show that 1. The most of prepress entrepreneur have trend to choose the employee by any sex, the age 25-29 years old, bachelor degree and have 1-2 years experience. 2. The most problems are the understanding in job, communication/relation and the understanding in new technology. 3. The trends aims to employment in 1-3 years have 57.8% for prepress industry in Bangkok. This research suggests that: 1. Thai printing industry for prepress in Bangkok need quality employee that expert in printing technology. 2. Prepress entrepreneur should have agreement to development with university for practice the employee. 3. Prepress entrepreneur should support personal to fulfill the knowledge.

Keywords: Printing Industry, Prepress.

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Authors: B. A. Berns, V. Romanovicz, M. M. de Camargo Forte, D. E. O. S. Carpenter

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The Proton Exchange Membranes (PEM) are largely studied because they operate at low temperatures and they are suitable for mobile applications. However, there are some deficiencies in their operation, mainly those that use ethanol as a hydrogen source, that require a certain attention. Therefore, this research aimed to develop Nafion® composite membranes, mixing clay minerals, kaolin and halloysite to the polymer matrix in order to improve the ethanol molecule retentions and, at the same time, to keep the system’s protonic conductivity. The modified Nafion/Kaolin, Nafion/Halloysite composite membranes were prepared in weight proportion of 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5. The membranes obtained were characterized as to their ethanol permeability, protonic conductivity and water absorption. The composite morphology and structure are characterized by SEM and EDX and the thermal behavior is determined by TGA and DSC. The analysis of the results shows ethanol permeability reduction from 48% to 63%. However, the protonic conductivity results are lower in relation to pure Nafion®. As to the thermal behavior, the Nafion® composite membranes were stable up to a temperature of 325ºC.

Keywords: Polymer-matrix composites (PMCs), Thermal properties, Nanoclay, Differential scanning calorimetry.

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Authors: S. Kittipongvises, A. Dubsok

Abstract:

The mineral and mining industry is necessary for countries to have an adequate and reliable supply of materials to meet their socio-economic development. Despite its importance, the environmental impacts from mineral exploration are hugely significant. This study aimed to investigate and quantify the amount of GHGs emissions emitted from both electricity and diesel vehicle fuel consumption in basalt mining in Thailand. Plant A, located in the northeastern region of Thailand, was selected as a case study. Results indicated that total GHGs emissions from basalt mining and operation (Plant A) were approximately 2,501,086 kgCO₂e and 1,997,412 kgCO₂e in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The estimated carbon intensity ranged between 1.824 kgCO₂e to 2.284 kgCO₂e per ton of rock product. Scope 1 (direct emissions) was the dominant driver of its total GHGs compared to scope 2 (indirect emissions). As such, transport related combustion of diesel fuels generated the highest GHGs emission (65%) compared to emissions from purchased electricity (35%). Some of the potential implications for mining entities were also presented.

Keywords: Basalt mining, diesel fuel, electricity, GHGs emissions, Thailand.

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Authors: D. Maneetham, L. Sivhour

Abstract:

Robotic arm manipulators are widely used to accomplish many kinds of tasks. SCORBOT-ER 4u is a 5-degree of freedom (DOF) vertical articulated educational robotic arm, and all joints are revolute. It is specifically designed to perform pick and place task with its gripper. The pick and place task consists of consideration of the end effector coordinate of the robotic arm and the desired position coordinate in its workspace. This paper describes about forward kinematics modeling and analysis of the robotic end effector motion through joint space. The kinematics problems are defined by the transformation from the Cartesian space to the joint space. Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) model is used in order to model the robotic links and joints with 4x4 homogeneous matrix. The forward kinematics model is also developed and simulated in MATLAB. The mathematical model is validated by using robotic toolbox in MATLAB. By using this method, it may be applicable to get the end effector coordinate of this robotic arm and other similar types to this arm. The software development of SCORBOT-ER 4u is also described here. PC-and EtherCAT based control technology from BECKHOFF is used to control the arm to express the pick and place task.

Keywords: Forward kinematics, D-H model, robotic toolbox, PC-and EtherCAT based control.

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