Abstract: In this study, solid phase micro-extraction (SPME)
was optimized to improve the sensitivity and accuracy in
formaldehyde determination for plywood panels. Further work has
been carried out to compare the newly developed technique with
existing method which reacts formaldehyde collected in desiccators
with acetyl acetone reagent (DC-AA). In SPME, formaldehyde was
first derivatized with O-(2,3,4,5,6 pentafluorobenzyl)-hydroxylamine
hydrochloride (PFBHA) and analysis was then performed by gas
chromatography in combination with mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
SPME data subjected to various wood species gave satisfactory
results, with relative standard deviations (RSDs) obtained in the
range of 3.1-10.3%. It was also well correlated with DC values,
giving a correlation coefficient, RSQ, of 0.959. The quantitative
analysis of formaldehyde by SPME was an alternative in wood
industry with great potential
Abstract: The purposes of this study are to study political
information exposure, politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and
political participations among people in Bangkok Metropolitan Area.
The sample consisted of 420 which were selected by using accidental sampling method. Questionnaires were administered to all of the
respondents to obtain the data for this research. T-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson-s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The findings are as follows: The difference in gender,
education, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political information exposures. The difference in age, income has
significantly effect upon politicians- perceptions. The difference in income has significantly effect upon political attitudes. The
difference in gender, income and occupation has significantly effect
upon political participations. There were a significantly relations between political information exposures, political attitudes, political
participations and between politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations.
Abstract: In the last decades, the problem of perforation
damage has been considered as the major factor for the
reduction of oil productivity. Underbalance perforation is
considered as one of the best means to minimize or overcome
this problem. By maintaining wellbore pressure lower than
formation pressure, perforation damage could be minimize or
eliminated. This can be achieved by the use of nontraditional
lightweight completion fluid. This paper presents the effect of
natural clay in formulating nontraditional completion fluid to
ensure successful perforation job and increase of production
rate. Natural clay is used as homogenizing agent to create a
stable and non-damaging low-density completion fluid.
Results indicate that the addition of natural clay dramatically
increase the stability of the final fluids. In addition, field test
has shown that the application of nontraditional completion
fluid increases oil production by three folds.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to assess the value of Second Life among post-secondary instructors with experience using Second Life as an educational tool. Using Everett Rogers-s diffusion of innovations theory, survey respondents (N = 162), were divided into three adopter categories: innovators, early adopters and the early majority. Respondents were from 15 countries and 25 academic disciplines, indicating the considerable potential this innovation has to be adopted across many different borders and in many areas of academe. Nearly 94% of respondents said they plan to use Second Life again as an educational tool. However, no significant differences were found in instructors- levels of satisfaction with Second Life as an educational tool or their perceived effect on student learning across adopter categories. On the other hand, instructors who conducted class fully in Second Life were significantly more satisfied than those who used Second Life as only a small supplement to a real-world class. Overall, personal interest factors, rather than interpersonal communication factors, most influenced respondents- decision to adopt Second Life as an educational tool. In light of these findings, theoretical implications are discussed and practical suggestions are provided.
Abstract: Salary risk and demographic risk have been identified
as main risks in analyzing pension expenditure particularly in
Defined Benefit pension plan. Therefore, public pension plan in
Malaysia is studied to analyze pension expenditure due to salary and
demographic risk. Through the literature review and interview session
with several officers in public sector, factors affecting pension
expenditure are determined. Then, the inter-relationships between
these factors are analyzed through causal loop diagram. The System
Dynamics model is later developed using iThink software to show how
demographic and salary changes affect the pension expenditure. Then, by
using actual data, the impact of different policy scenarios on pension
expenditure is analyzed. It is shown that dynamics simulation model of
pension expenditure is useful to evaluate the impact of changes and
policy decisions on risk particularly involving demographic and salary risk.
Abstract: In this paper we describe our efforts to design and
implement an agent development framework that has the potential to
scale to the size of any underlying network suitable for various ECommerce
activities. The main novelty in our framework is it-s
capability to allow the development of sophisticated, secured agents
which are simple enough to be practical.
We have adopted FIPA agent platform reference Model as
backbone for implementation along with XML for agent
Communication and Java Cryptographic Extension and architecture
to realize the security of communication information between agents.
The advantage of our architecture is its support of agents
development in different languages and Communicating with each
other using a more open standard i.e. XML
Abstract: Degradation of polymeric insulation systems of
electrical equipments increases the space charge density and the
concentration of electrical dipoles. By consequence, the maximum
values and the slopes of absorption/resorption (A/R) currents can
change with insulation systems ageing. In this paper, an analysis of
the nature of the A/R currents and the importance of their
components, especially the polarization current and the current given
by the space charge, is presented. The experimental study concerns
the A/R currents measurements of plane samples (made from
CALMICAGLAS tapes), virgin and thermally accelerated aged. The
obtained results show that the ageing process produces an increase of
the values and a decrease of shapes of the A/R currents. Finally, the
possibility of estimating insulations ageing state and lifetime from
A/R currents measurements is discussed.
Abstract: A lot of computer-based methods have been developed
to assess the evacuation capability (EC) of high-rise buildings.
Because softwares are time-consuming and not proper for on scene
applications, we adopted two methods, fuzzy analytic hierarchy
process (FAHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to an
ideal solution (TOPSIS), for EC assessment of a high-rise building in
Jinan. The EC scores obtained with the two methods and the
evacuation time acquired with Pathfinder 2009 for floors 47-60 of the
building were compared with each other. The results show that FAHP
performs better than TOPSIS for EC assessment of high-rise buildings,
especially in the aspect of dealing with the effect of occupant type and
distance to exit on EC, tackling complex problem with multi-level
structure of criteria, and requiring less amount of computation.
However, both FAHP and TOPSIS failed to appropriately handle the
situation where the exit width changes while occupants are few.
Abstract: This work aims to test the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to fixed bed catalytic cracking reactors. Studies of CFD with a fixed bed design commonly use a regular packing with N=2 to define bed geometry. CFD allows us to obtain a more accurate view of the fluid flow and heat transfer mechanisms present in fixed bed equipment. Naphtha was used as feedstock and the reactor length was 80cm. It is divided in three sections that catalyst bed packed in the middle section of the reactor. The reaction scheme was involved one primary reaction and 24 secondary reactions. Because of high CPU times in these simulations, parallel processing have been used. In this study the coke formation process in fixed bed and empty tube reactor was simulated and coke in these reactors are compared. In addition, the effect of steam ratio and feed flow rate on coke formation was investigated.
Abstract: Distributed Computing Systems are usually considered the most suitable model for practical solutions of many parallel algorithms. In this paper an enhanced distributed system is presented to improve the time complexity of Binary Indexed Trees (BIT). The proposed system uses multi-uniform processors with identical architectures and a specially designed distributed memory system. The analysis of this system has shown that it has reduced the time complexity of the read query to O(Log(Log(N))), and the update query to constant complexity, while the naive solution has a time complexity of O(Log(N)) for both queries. The system was implemented and simulated using VHDL and Verilog Hardware Description Languages, with xilinx ISE 10.1, as the development environment and ModelSim 6.1c, similarly as the simulation tool. The simulation has shown that the overhead resulting by the wiring and communication between the system fragments could be fairly neglected, which makes it applicable to practically reach the maximum speed up offered by the proposed model.
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to design costume by the inspiration from the configurations, colors and decorations of Thai Royal Barges. The researcher investigated the bibliographies and the important of the Thai Royal Water-Course Procession, configurations and decoration techniques of four Royal Barges history. Furthermore, the researcher combined the contemporary architecture which became part of the four costumes with four patterns in this research. The four costumes designed by applied the physical configuration of the Royal Barge with the fold techniques which create the geometry pattern that are part of the Royal Barge-s decoration and contemporary architecture. Therefore, the researcher united each identity color of the barges with each costume composed with the original patterns by adjusted new layout and resized. Lastly, the new attractive patterns appeared. Nevertheless, the beauty of Thai traditional still remain by using Thai painting figure with black and white color which are the prevalent colors for the contemporary architectures.
Abstract: This research studied recycled wastes by Recyclable Material Bank project of 17 universities of Thailand for evaluation of reducing greenhouse gasses emission compared with landfilling activity during January 2011 to December 2011. The results showed that the projects collected total amount of recyclable wastes about 1,626.917 metric ton. The office paper has the largest amount among these recycled wastes (55.61 % of total recycled wastes). Groups of recycled waste can be prioritized from high to low according to their amount as paper, plastic, glass, mixed recyclables and metal, respectively. The project reduced greenhouse gasses emission equivalent to about 5,263.481 metric ton of carbon dioxide. The most significant recycled waste that affects the reduction of greenhouse gasses emission is office paper which is 73.45% of total reduced greenhouse gasses emission. According to amount of reduced greenhouse gasses emission, groups of recycled waste can be prioritized from high to low significances as paper, plastic, metal, mixed recyclables and glass, respectively.
Abstract: The enthusiasm for gluten avoidance in a growing
market is met by improvements in sensitive detection methods for
analysing gluten content. Paradoxically, manufacturers employ no
such systems in the production process but continue to market their
product as gluten free, a significant risk posed to an undetermined
coeliac population. This paper resonates with an immunological
response that causes gastrointestinal scarring and villous atrophy with
the conventional description of personal injury. This thesis divulges
into evaluating potential inadequacies of gluten labelling laws which
not only present a diagnostic challenge for general practitioners in the
UK but it also exposes a less than adequate form of available legal
protection to those who suffer adverse reactions as a result of gluten
digestion. Central to this discussion is whether a claim brought in
misrepresentation, negligence and/or under the Consumer Protection
Act 1987 could be sustained. An interesting comparison is then made
with the legal regimes of neighboring jurisdictions furthering the
theme of a legally un-catered for gluten kingdom.
Abstract: There have been significant improvements in automatic
voice recognition technology. However, existing systems still face difficulties,
particularly when used by non-native speakers with accents.
In this paper we address a problem of identifying the English accented
speech of speakers from different backgrounds. Once an accent is
identified the speech recognition software can utilise training set from
appropriate accent and therefore improve the efficiency and accuracy
of the speech recognition system. We introduced the Q factor, which
is defined by the sum of relationships between frequencies of the
formants. Four different accents were considered and experimented
for this research. A scoring method was introduced in order to
effectively analyse accents. The proposed concept indicates that the
accent could be identified by analysing their formants.
Abstract: Very Large and/or computationally complex optimization problems sometimes require parallel or highperformance computing for achieving a reasonable time for computation. One of the most popular and most complicate problems of this family is “Traveling Salesman Problem". In this paper we have introduced a Branch & Bound based algorithm for the solution of such complicated problems. The main focus of the algorithm is to solve the “symmetric traveling salesman problem". We reviewed some of already available algorithms and felt that there is need of new algorithm which should give optimal solution or near to the optimal solution. On the basis of the use of logarithmic sampling, it was found that the proposed algorithm produced a relatively optimal solution for the problem and results excellent performance as compared with the traditional algorithms of this series.
Abstract: Control of complex systems is one of important files in complex systems, that not only relies on the essence of complex systems which is denoted by the core concept – emergence, but also embodies the elementary concept in control theory. Aiming at giving a clear and self-contained description of emergence, the paper introduces a formal way to completely describe the formation and dynamics of emergence in complex systems. Consequently, this paper indicates the Emergence-Oriented Control methodology that contains three kinds of basic control schemes: the direct control, the system re-structuring and the system calibration. As a universal ontology, the Emergence-Oriented Control provides a powerful tool for identifying and resolving control problems in specific systems.
Abstract: Solar energy is the most “available", ecological and clean energy. This energy can be used in active or passive mode. The active mode implies the transformation of solar energy into a useful energy. The solar energy can be transformed into thermal energy, using solar collectors. In these collectors, the active and the most important element is the absorber, material which performs the absorption of solar radiation and, in at the same time, limits its reflection. The paper presents some aspects regarding the IR absorbing material – a type of cermets, used as absorber in the solar collectors, by X Ray Diffraction Technique (XRD) characterization.
Abstract: A comprehensive program of laboratory testing on a
compacted kaolin in a modified triaxial cell was perform to
investigate the influence of hydraulic hysteresis on effective stress in
unsaturated soils. The test data are presented on a range of constant
suction shear tests along wetting and drying paths. The values of
effective stress parameter χ at different matric suction were
determined using the test results. The effect of hydraulic hysteresis
phenomenon on the effective stress was observed. The values of
effective stress parameter χ obtained from the experiments were
compared with those obtained from the expressions proposed in
literature.
Abstract: This paper describes a finite-difference time-domainFDTD) method to analyze lightning surge propagation in electric transmission lines. Numerical computation of solving the Telegraphist-s equations is determined and investigated its effectiveness. A source of lightning surge wave on power transmission lines is modeled by using Heidler-s surge model. The
proposed method was tested against medium-voltage power
transmission lines in comparison with the solution obtained by using
lattice diagram. As a result, the calculation showed that the method is one of accurate methods to analyze transient
lightning wave in power transmission lines.
Abstract: The paper provides biomasses characteristics by
proximate analysis (volatile matter, fixed carbon and ash) and
ultimate analysis (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen) for the
prediction of the heating value equations. The heating value
estimation of various biomasses can be used as an energy evaluation.
Thirteen types of biomass were studied. Proximate analysis was
investigated by mass loss method and infrared moisture analyzer.
Ultimate analysis was analyzed by CHNO analyzer. The heating
values varied from 15 to 22.4MJ kg-1. Correlations of the calculated
heating value with proximate and ultimate analyses were undertaken
using multiple regression analysis and summarized into three and two
equations, respectively. Correlations based on proximate analysis
illustrated that deviation of calculated heating values from
experimental heating values was higher than the correlations based
on ultimate analysis.