Abstract: The aim of this work is to study the possible use of
stone cutting sludge waste in concrete production, which would
reduce both the environmental impact and the production cost .Slurry
sludge was used a source of water in concrete production, which was
obtained from Samara factory/Jordan, The physico-chemical and
mineralogical characterization of the sludge was carried out to
identify the major components and to compare it with the typical
sand used to produce concrete. Samples analysis showed that 96% of
slurry sludge volume is water, so it should be considered as an
important source of water. Results indicated that the use of slurry
sludge as water source in concrete production has insignificant effect
on compression strength, while it has a sharp effect on the slump
values. Using slurry sludge with a percentage of 25% of the total
water content obtained successful concrete samples regarding slump
and compression tests. To clarify slurry sludge, settling process can
be used to remove the suspended solid. A settling period of 30 min.
obtained 99% removal efficiency. The clarified water is suitable for
using in concrete mixes, which reduce water consumption, conserve
water recourses, increase the profit, reduce operation cost and save
the environment. Additionally, the dry sludge could be used in the
mix design instead of the fine materials with sizes < 160 um. This
application could conserve the natural materials and solve the
environmental and economical problem caused by sludge
accumulation.
Abstract: This paper presents a system for tracking the movement of laparoscopic instruments which is based on an orthogonal system of webcams and video image processing. The movements are captured with two webcams placed orthogonally inside of the physical trainer. On the image, the instruments were detected by using color markers placed on the distal tip of each instrument. The 3D position of the tip of the instrument within the work space was obtained by linear triangulation method. Preliminary results showed linearity and repeatability in the motion tracking with a resolution of 0.616 mm in each axis; the accuracy of the system showed a 3D instrument positioning error of 1.009 ± 0.101 mm. This tool is a portable and low-cost alternative to traditional tracking devices and a trustable method for the objective evaluation of the surgeon’s surgical skills.
Abstract: REY area has been located in Tehran Province and several archaeological ruins of this area indicate that the settlement in this area has been started since several thousand years ago. In this paper, the main investigation items consist of analysis of oil components and groundwater quality inside the wells. By finding the contents of oil in the well, it is possible to find out the pollution source by comparing the oil contents of well with other oil products that are used inside and outside of the oil farm. Investigation items consist of analysis of BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl-benzene, Xylene), Gas chromatographic distillation characteristics, Water content, Density, Sulfur content, Lead content, Atmospheric distillation, MTBE(Methyl tertiary butyl ether). Analysis of polluting oil components showed that except MW(Monitoring Well)10 and MW 15 that oil with slightly heavy components was detected in them; with a high possibility the polluting oil is light oil.
Abstract: One of the vital developmental tasks that an
individual faces during adolescence is choosing a career. Arriving at
a career decision is difficult and anxious for many adolescents in the
tertiary level. The main purpose of this study is to determine the
factors relating to career indecision among freshmen college students
as basis for the formulation of a comprehensive career counseling
program for the psychological well-being of freshmen university
students. The subjects were purposively selected. The Slovin-s
formula was used in determining the sample size, using a 0.05
margin of error in getting the total number of samples per college and
per major. The researcher made use of descriptive correlational study
in determining significant factors relating to career indecision.
Multiple Regression Analysis indicated that career thoughts, career
decisions and vocational identity as factors related to career
indecision.
Abstract: Evaluation of contact pressure, surface and
subsurface contact stresses are essential to know the functional
response of surface coatings and the contact behavior mainly depends
on surface roughness, material property, thickness of layer and the
manner of loading. Contact parameter evaluation of real rough
surface contacts mostly relies on statistical single asperity contact
approaches. In this work, a three dimensional layered solid rough
surface in contact with a rigid flat is modeled and analyzed using
finite element method. The rough surface of layered solid is
generated by FFT approach. The generated rough surface is exported
to a finite element method based ANSYS package through which the
bottom up solid modeling is employed to create a deformable solid
model with a layered solid rough surface on top. The discretization
and contact analysis are carried by using the same ANSYS package.
The elastic, elastoplastic and plastic deformations are continuous in
the present finite element method unlike many other contact models.
The Young-s modulus to yield strength ratio of layer is varied in the
present work to observe the contact parameters effect while keeping
the surface roughness and substrate material properties as constant.
The contacting asperities attain elastic, elastoplastic and plastic states
with their continuity and asperity interaction phenomena is inherently
included. The resultant contact parameters show that neighboring
asperity interaction and the Young-s modulus to yield strength ratio
of layer influence the bulk deformation consequently affect the
interface strength.
Abstract: Natural gas is the most popular fossil fuel in the
current era and future as well. Natural gas is existed in underground
reservoirs so it may contain many of non-hydrocarbon components
for instance, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen and water vapor. These
impurities are undesirable compounds and cause several technical
problems for example, corrosion and environment pollution.
Therefore, these impurities should be reduce or removed from natural
gas stream. Khurmala dome is located in southwest Erbil-Kurdistan
region. The Kurdistan region government has paid great attention for
this dome to provide the fuel for Kurdistan region. However, the
Khurmala associated natural gas is currently flaring at the field.
Moreover, nowadays there is a plan to recover and trade this gas and
to use it either as feedstock to power station or to sell it in global
market. However, the laboratory analysis has showed that the
Khurmala sour gas has huge quantities of H2S about (5.3%) and CO2
about (4.4%). Indeed, Khurmala gas sweetening process has been
removed in previous study by using Aspen HYSYS. However,
Khurmala sweet gas still contents some quintets of water about 23
ppm in sweet gas stream. This amount of water should be removed or
reduced. Indeed, water content in natural gas cause several technical
problems such as hydrates and corrosion. Therefore, this study aims
to simulate the prospective Khurmala gas dehydration process by
using Aspen HYSYS V. 7.3 program. Moreover, the simulation
process succeeded in reducing the water content to less than 0.1ppm.
In addition, the simulation work is also achieved process
optimization by using several desiccant types for example, TEG and
DEG and it also study the relationship between absorbents type and
its circulation rate with HCs losses from glycol regenerator tower.
Abstract: A design of communication area for infrared
electronic-toll-collection systems to provide an extended
communication interval in the vehicle traveling direction and
regular boundary between contiguous traffic lanes is proposed.
By utilizing two typical low-cost commercial infrared LEDs with
different half-intensity angles Φ1/2 = 22◦ and 10◦, the radiation
pattern of the emitter is designed to properly adjust the spatial
distribution of the signal power. The aforementioned purpose
can be achieved with an LED array in a three-piece structure
with appropriate mounting angles. With this emitter, the influence
of the mounting parameters, including the mounting height and
mounting angles of the on-board unit and road-side unit, on the
system performance in terms of the received signal strength and
communication area are investigated. The results reveal that, for
our emitter proposed in this paper, the ideal ”long-and-narrow”
characteristic of the communication area is very little affected by
these mounting parameters. An optimum mounting configuration is
also suggested.
Abstract: Composites based on a biodegradable polycaprolactone (PCL) containing 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 wt % of titanium dioxide (TiO2) micro and nanoparticles were prepared by melt mixing and the effect of filler type and contents on the thermal properties, dynamic-mechanical behaviour and morphology were investigated. Measurements of storage modulus and loss modulus by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) showed better results for microfilled PCL/TiO2 composites than nanofilled composites, with the same filler content. DSC analysis showed that the Tg and Tc of micro and nanocomposites were slightly lower than those of neat PCL. The crystallinity of the PCL increased with the addition of TiO2 micro and nanoparticles; however, the cc for the PCL was unchanged with micro TiO2 content. The thermal stability of PCL/TiO2 composites were characterized using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The initial weight loss (5 wt %) occurs at slightly higher temperature with micro and nano TiO2 addition and with increasing TiO2 content.
Abstract: A two-dimensional numerical simulation of the contribution
of both inertial and aerodynamic forces on the blade loads of
a Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) is presented. After describing
the computational model and the relative validation procedure, a
complete campaign of simulations - based on full RANS unsteady
calculations - is proposed for a three-bladed rotor architecture characterized
by a NACA 0021 airfoil. For each analyzed angular velocity,
the combined effect of pressure and viscous forces acting on every
rotor blade are compared to the corresponding centrifugal forces,
due to the revolution of the turbine, thus achieving a preliminary
estimation of the correlation between overall rotor efficiency and
structural blade loads.
Abstract: This article describes the aspects of the formation of
the national idea and national identity through the prism of gender
control and its contradistinction to the obsolete, Soviet component.
The role of females in ethnic and national projects is considered from
the point of view of Dr. Nira Yuval-Davis: as biological reproducers
of the ethnic communities- members; as reproducers of the boarders
of ethnic/national groups; as central participants in the ideological
reproduction of community and transducers of its culture; as symbols
in ideology, reproduction and transformation of ethnic/national
categories; and as participants of national, economical, political and
military combats. The society of the transitional type uses the
symbolic resources of the formation of gender component in the
national project. The gender patterns act like cultural codes,
executing the important ideological function in formation of the
national female- image, i.e. the discussion on hijab - it-s not just the
discussion on control over the female body, it-s the discussion on the
metaphor of social order.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate effects of
modality and redundancy principles on music theory learning among
pupils of different anxiety levels. The lesson of music theory was
developed in three different modes, audio and image (AI), text with
image (TI) and audio with image and text (AIT). The independent
variables were the three modes of courseware. The moderator
variable was the anxiety level, while the dependent variable was the
post test score. The study sample consisted of 405 third-grade pupils.
Descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted to analyze the
collected data. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) and Post hoc
were carried out to examine the main effects as well as the
interaction effects of the independent variables on the dependent
variable. The findings of this study showed that medium anxiety
pupils performed significantly better than low and high anxiety
pupils in all the three treatment modes. The AI mode was found to
help pupils with high anxiety significantly more than the TI and AIT
modes.
Abstract: Color printing proceeds with multiple halftone
separations overlay. Because of separation overlay misalignment in
printing, the percentage of different primary color combination may
vary and it will result in color shift. In traditional printing procedure
with AM halftone, every separation has different screening angle to
make the superposition pattern in a random style, which will reduce
the color shift. To evaluate the color shift of printing with hybrid
halftoning, we simulate printing procedure with halftone images
overlay and calculate the color difference between expected color and
color in different overlay misalignment configurations. The color
difference for hybrid halftone and AM halftone is very close. So the
color shift for hybrid halftone is acceptable with current color printing
procedure.
Abstract: A total of 33,680 nuclear power plants (NPPs) workers were monitored and recorded from 1990 to 2007. According to the record, the average individual radiation dose has been decreasing continually from it 3.20 mSv/man in 1990 to 1.12 mSv/man at the end of 2007. After the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) 60 recommendation was generalized in South Korea, no nuclear power plant workers received above 20 mSv radiation, and the numbers of relatively highly exposed workers have been decreasing continuously. The age distribution of radiation workers in nuclear power plants was composed of mainly 20-30- year-olds (83%) for 1990 ~ 1994 and 30-40-year-olds (75%) for 2003 ~ 2007. The difference in individual average dose by age was not significant. Most (77%) of NPP radiation exposures from 1990 to 2007 occurred mostly during the refueling period. With regard to exposure type, the majority of exposures were external exposures, representing 95% of the total exposures, while internal exposures represented only 5%. External effective dose was affected mainly by gamma radiation exposure, with an insignificant amount of neutron exposure. As for internal effective dose, tritium (3H) in the pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) was the biggest cause of exposure.
Abstract: Air conditioning is mainly use as human comfort
cooling medium. It use more in high temperatures are country such as
Malaysia. Proper estimation of cooling load will archive ideal
temperature. Without proper estimation can lead to over estimation or
under estimation. The ideal temperature should be comfort enough.
This study is to develop a program to calculate an ideal cooling load
demand, which is match with heat gain. Through this study, it is easy
to calculate cooling load estimation. Objective of this study are to
develop user-friendly and easy excess cooling load program. This is
to insure the cooling load can be estimate by any of the individual
rather than them using rule-of-thumb. Developed software is carryout
by using Matlab-GUI. These developments are only valid for
common building in Malaysia only. An office building was select as
case study to verify the applicable and accuracy of develop software.
In conclusion, the main objective has successfully where developed
software is user friendly and easily to estimate cooling load demand.
Abstract: This paper presents the optimal design and development
of an axial flux motor for blood pump application. With the design
objective of maximizing the motor efficiency and torque, different
topologies of AFPM machine has been examined. Selection of
optimal magnet fraction, Halbach arrangement of rotor magnets and
the use of Soft Magnetic Composite (SMC) material for the stator
core results in a novel motor with improved efficiency and torque
profile. The results of the 3D Finite element analysis for the novel
motor have been shown.
Abstract: Market based models are frequently used in the resource
allocation on the computational grid. However, as the size of
the grid grows, it becomes difficult for the customer to negotiate
directly with all the providers. Middle agents are introduced to
mediate between the providers and customers and facilitate the
resource allocation process. The most frequently deployed middle
agents are the matchmakers and the brokers. The matchmaking agent
finds possible candidate providers who can satisfy the requirements
of the consumers, after which the customer directly negotiates with
the candidates. The broker agents are mediating the negotiation with
the providers in real time.
In this paper we present a new type of middle agent, the marketmaker.
Its operation is based on two parallel operations - through
the investment process the marketmaker is acquiring resources and
resource reservations in large quantities, while through the resale process
it sells them to the customers. The operation of the marketmaker
is based on the fact that through its global view of the grid it can
perform a more efficient resource allocation than the one possible in
one-to-one negotiations between the customers and providers.
We present the operation and algorithms governing the operation
of the marketmaker agent, contrasting it with the matchmaker and
broker agents. Through a series of simulations in the task oriented
domain we compare the operation of the three agents types. We find
that the use of marketmaker agent leads to a better performance in the
allocation of large tasks and a significant reduction of the messaging
overhead.
Abstract: In this paper, genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed for
the design of an optimization algorithm to achieve the bandwidth
allocation of ATM network. In Broadband ISDN, the ATM is a highbandwidth;
fast packet switching and multiplexing technique. Using
ATM it can be flexibly reconfigure the network and reassign the
bandwidth to meet the requirements of all types of services. By
dynamically routing the traffic and adjusting the bandwidth
assignment, the average packet delay of the whole network can be
reduced to a minimum. M/M/1 model can be used to analyze the
performance.
Abstract: Attachment of the circulating monocytes to the
endothelium is the earliest detectable events during formation of
atherosclerosis. The adhesion molecules, chemokines and matrix
proteases genes were identified to be expressed in atherogenesis.
Expressions of these genes may influence structural integrity of the
luminal endothelium. The aim of this study is to relate changes in the
ultrastructural morphology of the aortic luminal surface and gene
expressions of the endothelial surface, chemokine and MMP-12 in
normal and hypercholesterolemic rabbits. Luminal endothelial
surface from rabbit aortic tissue was examined by scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) using low vacuum mode to ascertain
ultrastructural changes in development of atherosclerotic lesion. Gene
expression of adhesion molecules, MCP-1 and MMP-12 were studied
by Real-time PCR. Ultrastructural observations of the aortic luminal
surface exhibited changes from normal regular smooth intact
endothelium to irregular luminal surface including marked globular
appearance and ruptures of the membrane layer. Real-time PCR
demonstrated differentially expressed of studied genes in
atherosclerotic tissues. The appearance of ultrastructural changes in
aortic tissue of hypercholesterolemic rabbits is suggested to have
relation with underlying changes of endothelial surface molecules,
chemokine and MMP-12 gene expressions.
Abstract: In-vitro mouse co-culture of E14 embryonic stem cells
(ESCs) and OP9 stromal cells can recapitulate the earliest stages of
haematopoietic development, not accessible in human embryos,
supporting both haemogenic precursors and their primitive
haematopoietic progeny. 1α, 25-Dihydroxy-vitamin D3 (VD3) has
been demonstrated to be a powerful differentiation inducer for a wide
variety of neoplastic cells, and could enhance early differentiation of
ESCs into blood cells in E14/OP9 co-culture. This study aims to
ascertain whether VD3 is key in promoting differentiation and
suppressing proliferation, by separately investigating the effects of
VD3 on the proliferation phase of the E14 cell line and on stromal
OP9 cells.The results showed that VD3 inhibited the proliferation of
the cells in a dose-dependent manner, quantitatively by decreased cell
number, and qualitatively by alkaline-phosphatase staining that
revealed significant differences between VD3-treated and untreated
cells, characterised by decreased enzyme expression (colourless
cells). Propidium-iodide cell-cycle analyses showed no significant
percentage change in VD3-treated E14 and OP9 cells within their G
and S-phases, compared to the untreated controls, despite the
increased percentage of G-phase compared to the S-phase in a dosedependent
manner. These results with E14 and OP9 cells indicate that
adequate VD3 concentration enhances cellular differentiation and
inhibits proliferation. The results also suggest that if E14 and OP9
cells were co-cultured andVD3-treated, there would be furtherenhanced
differentiation of ESCs into blood cells.
Abstract: Space exploration is a highly visible endeavour of
humankind to seek profound answers to questions about the origins
of our solar system, whether life exists beyond Earth, and how we
could live on other worlds. Different platforms have been utilized in
planetary exploration missions, such as orbiters, landers, rovers, and
penetrators.
Having low mass, good mechanical contact with the surface,
ability to acquire high quality scientific subsurface data, and ability to
be deployed in areas that may not be conducive to landers or rovers,
Penetrators provide an alternative and complimentary solution that
makes possible scientific exploration of hardly accessible sites (icy
areas, gully sites, highlands etc.).
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has put space exploration as
one of the pillars of its space program, and established ExCo program
to prepare Canada for future international planetary exploration.
ExCo sets surface mobility as its focus and priority, and invests
mainly in the development of rovers because of Canada's niche space
robotics technology. Meanwhile, CSA is also investigating how
micro-penetrators can help Canada to fulfill its scientific objectives
for planetary exploration.
This paper presents a review of the micro-penetrator technologies,
past missions, and lessons learned. It gives a detailed analysis of the
technical challenges of micro-penetrators, such as high impact
survivability, high precision guidance navigation and control, thermal
protection, communications, and etc. Then, a Canadian perspective of
a possible micro-penetrator mission is given, including Canadian
scientific objectives and priorities, potential instruments, and flight
opportunities.