Abstract: The objectives of this study are to determine the
effects of soil cover type on characteristics of leachates generated
from landfill lysimeters. Four lysimeters with diameter and height
of 0.15 and 3.00 m, respectively, were prepared. Three lysimeters
were filled with municipal waste and three different cover soil types
i.e. sandy loam soil, silty loam soil and clay soil while another
lysimeter was filled solely with municipal waste. The study was
conducted in the rainy season. Leachate quantities were measured
every day and leachate characteristics were determined once a week.
The cumulative leachate quantity from the lysimeter filled solely
with municipal waste was found to be around 27% higher than the
lysimeters using cover soils. There were no any differences of the
cumulative leachate amounts generated from the lysimeters using
three types of soils. The comparison of the total mass of pollutants
generated from all lysimeters showed that the lysimeter filled solely
with municipal waste generated the maximum quantities of
pollutants. Among the lysimeters using different types of soils, the
lysimeter using sandy loam soil generated the lowest amount of most
of pollutants, compared with the lysimeters using silty loam and clay
soils. It can be concluded that in term of pollutant attenuation in the
leachate, a sandy loam is the most suitable soil to be used as a cover
soil in the landfill.
Abstract: Ethical Education is a compulsorily optional subject in
primary and secondary schools. The Ethical Education objective is
the education of a personality with one´s own identity, with
interiorized ethical standards, with mature moral judgement and
therefore with the behaviour determined by one´s own beliefs; with a
positive attitude to himself/herself and other people and that is why
he/she is able to cooperate and to initiate cooperation. In the paper we
describe the contents and the principles of Ethical education. We also
shows that Ethical education is subject supported primary socialpathological
prevention and education to citizenship. In this context
we try to show that ethical education contributes to the education of
good people who are aware of the necessity to respect social norms
and are able to assume responsibility for their own behaviour in any
situation at present and in the future.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity
of a range of EEG indices to time-on-task effects and to a workload
manipulation (cueing), during performance of a resource-limited
vigilance task. Effects of task period and cueing on performance and
subjective state response were consistent with previous vigilance
studies and with resource theory. Two EEG indices – the Task Load
Index (TLI) and global lower frequency (LF) alpha power – showed
effects of task period and cueing similar to those seen with correct
detections. Across four successive task periods, the TLI declined and
LF alpha power increased. Cueing increased TLI and decreased LF
alpha. Other indices – the Engagement Index (EI), frontal theta and
upper frequency (UF) alpha failed to show these effects. However, EI
and frontal theta were sensitive to interactive effects of task period
and cueing, which may correspond to a stronger anxiety response to
the uncued task.
Abstract: Detection of human emotions has many potential applications. One of application is to quantify attentiveness audience in order evaluate acoustic quality in concern hall. The subjective audio preference that based on from audience is used. To obtain fairness evaluation of acoustic quality, the research proposed system for multimodal emotion detection; one modality based on brain signals that measured using electroencephalogram (EEG) and the second modality is sequences of facial images. In the experiment, an audio signal was customized which consist of normal and disorder sounds. Furthermore, an audio signal was played in order to stimulate positive/negative emotion feedback of volunteers. EEG signal from temporal lobes, i.e. T3 and T4 was used to measured brain response and sequence of facial image was used to monitoring facial expression during volunteer hearing audio signal. On EEG signal, feature was extracted from change information in brain wave, particularly in alpha and beta wave. Feature of facial expression was extracted based on analysis of motion images. We implement an advance optical flow method to detect the most active facial muscle form normal to other emotion expression that represented in vector flow maps. The reduce problem on detection of emotion state, vector flow maps are transformed into compass mapping that represents major directions and velocities of facial movement. The results showed that the power of beta wave is increasing when disorder sound stimulation was given, however for each volunteer was giving different emotion feedback. Based on features derived from facial face images, an optical flow compass mapping was promising to use as additional information to make decision about emotion feedback.
Abstract: Aggregation behavior of sodium salicylate and sodium cumene sulfonate was studied in aqueous solution at different temperature. Specific conductivity and relative viscosity were measured at different temperature to find minimum hydrotropic concentration. The thermodynamic parameters (free energy, enthalpy and entropy) were evaluated in the temperature range of 30°C-70°C. The free energy decreased with increase in temperature. The aggregation was found to be exothermic in nature and favored by positive value of entropy.
Abstract: Names are important in many societies, even in technologically oriented ones which use e.g. ID systems to identify individual people. Names such as surnames are the most important as they are used in many processes, such as identifying of people and genealogical research. On the other hand variation of names can be a major problem for the identification and search for people, e.g. web search or security reasons. Name matching presumes a-priori that the recorded name written in one alphabet reflects the phonetic identity of two samples or some transcription error in copying a previously recorded name. We add to this the lode that the two names imply the same person. This paper describes name variations and some basic description of various name matching algorithms developed to overcome name variation and to find reasonable variants of names which can be used to further increasing mismatches for record linkage and name search. The implementation contains algorithms for computing a range of fuzzy matching based on different types of algorithms, e.g. composite and hybrid methods and allowing us to test and measure algorithms for accuracy. NYSIIS, LIG2 and Phonex have been shown to perform well and provided sufficient flexibility to be included in the linkage/matching process for optimising name searching.
Abstract: The feature extraction method(s) used to recognize
hand-printed characters play an important role in ICR applications.
In order to achieve high recognition rate for a recognition system, the
choice of a feature that suits for the given script is certainly an
important task. Even if a new feature required to be designed for a
given script, it is essential to know the recognition ability of the
existing features for that script. Devanagari script is being used in
various Indian languages besides Hindi the mother tongue of majority
of Indians. This research examines a variety of feature extraction
approaches, which have been used in various ICR/OCR applications,
in context to Devanagari hand-printed script. The study is conducted
theoretically and experimentally on more that 10 feature extraction
methods. The various feature extraction methods have been evaluated
on Devanagari hand-printed database comprising more than 25000
characters belonging to 43 alphabets. The recognition ability of the
features have been evaluated using three classifiers i.e. k-NN, MLP
and SVM.
Abstract: This paper discusses the cued speech recognition
methods in videoconference. Cued speech is a specific gesture
language that is used for communication between deaf people. We
define the criteria for sentence intelligibility according to answers of
testing subjects (deaf people). In our tests we use 30 sample videos
coded by H.264 codec with various bit-rates and various speed of
cued speech. Additionally, we define the criteria for consonant sign
recognizability in single-handed finger alphabet (dactyl) analogically
to acoustics. We use another 12 sample videos coded by H.264 codec
with various bit-rates in four different video formats. To interpret the
results we apply the standard scale for subjective video quality
evaluation and the percentual evaluation of intelligibility as in
acoustics. From the results we construct the minimum coded bit-rate
recommendations for every spatial resolution.
Abstract: Cassava bagasse is one of major biomass wastes in Thailand from starch processing industry, which contains high starch content of about 60%. The object of this study was to investigate the optimal condition for hydrothermally pretreating cassava baggasses with or without acid addition. The pretreated samples were measured reducing sugar yield directly or after enzymatic hydrolysis (alpha-amylase). In enzymatic hydrolysis, the highest reducing sugar content was obtained under hydrothermal conditions for at 125oC for 30 min. The result shows that pretreating cassava baggasses increased the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis. For acid hydrolysis, pretreating cassava baggasses with sulfuric acid at 120oC for 60 min gave a maximum reducing sugar yield. In this study, sulfuric acid had a greater capacity for hydrolyzing cassava baggasses than phosphoric acid. In comparison, dilute acid hydrolysis to provide a higher yield of reducing sugar than the enzymatic hydrolysis combined hydrothermal pretreatment. However, enzymatic hydrolysis in a combination with hydrothermal pretreatment was an alternative to enhance efficiency reducing sugar production from cassava bagasse.
Abstract: International markets driven forces are changing
continuously, therefore companies need to gain a competitive edge in
such markets. Improving the company's products, processes and
practices is no longer auxiliary. Lean production is a production
management philosophy that consolidates work tasks with minimum
waste resulting in improved productivity. Lean production practices
can be mapped into many production areas. One of these is
Manufacturing Equipment and Technology (MET). Many lean
production practices can be implemented in MET, namely, specific
equipment configurations, total preventive maintenance, visual
control, new equipment/ technologies, production process
reengineering and shared vision of perfection.The purpose of this
paper is to investigate the implementation level of these six practices
in Jordanian industries. To achieve that a questionnaire survey has
been designed according to five-point Likert scale. The questionnaire
is validated through pilot study and through experts review. A sample
of 350 Jordanian companies were surveyed, the response rate was
83%. The respondents were asked to rate the extent of
implementation for each of practices. A relationship conceptual
model is developed, hypotheses are proposed, and consequently the
essential statistical analyses are then performed. An assessment tool
that enables management to monitor the progress and the
effectiveness of lean practices implementation is designed and
presented. Consequently, the results show that the average
implementation level of lean practices in MET is 77%, Jordanian
companies are implementing successfully the considered lean
production practices, and the presented model has Cronbach-s alpha
value of 0.87 which is good evidence on model consistency and
results validation.
Abstract: The standard investigational method for obstructive
sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) diagnosis is polysomnography (PSG),
which consists of a simultaneous, usually overnight recording of
multiple electro-physiological signals related to sleep and
wakefulness. This is an expensive, encumbering and not a readily
repeated protocol, and therefore there is need for simpler and easily
implemented screening and detection techniques. Identification of
apnea/hypopnea events in the screening recordings is the key factor
for the diagnosis of OSAS. The analysis of a solely single-lead
electrocardiographic (ECG) signal for OSAS diagnosis, which may
be done with portable devices, at patient-s home, is the challenge of
the last years. A novel artificial neural network (ANN) based
approach for feature extraction and automatic identification of
respiratory events in ECG signals is presented in this paper. A
nonlinear principal component analysis (NLPCA) method was
considered for feature extraction and support vector machine for
classification/recognition. An alternative representation of the
respiratory events by means of Kohonen type neural network is
discussed. Our prospective study was based on OSAS patients of the
Clinical Hospital of Pneumology from Iaşi, Romania, males and
females, as well as on non-OSAS investigated human subjects. Our
computed analysis includes a learning phase based on cross signal
PSG annotation.
Abstract: Aurein 1.2 is a 13-residue amphipathic peptide with antibacterial and anticancer activity. Aurein1.2 and its retro analog were synthesized to study the activity of the peptides in relation to their structure. The antibacterial test result showed the retro-analog is inactive. The secondary structural analysis by CD spectra indicated that both of the peptides at TFE/Water adopt alpha-helical conformation. MD simulation was performed on aurein 1.2 and retro-analog in water and TFE in order to analyse the factors that are involved in the activity difference between retro and the native peptide. The simulation results are discussed and validated in the light of experimental data from the CD experiment. Both of the peptides showed a relatively similar pattern for their hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, solvent accessible surfaces, and solvent accessible hydrophobic surfaces. However, they showed different in directions of dipole moment of peptides. Also, Our results further indicate that the reversion of the amino acid sequence affects flexibility .The data also showed that factors causing structural rigidity may decrease the activity. Consequently, our finding suggests that in the case of sequence-reversed peptide strategy, one has to pay attention to the role of amino acid sequence order in making flexibility and role of dipole moment direction in peptide activity. KeywordsAntimicrobial peptides, retro, molecular dynamic, circular dichroism.
Abstract: We studied the evolution of elliptic heavy SF6
gas cylinder surrounded by air when accelerated by a planar
Mach 1.25 shock. A multiple dynamics imaging technology has
been used to obtain one image of the experimental initial
conditions and five images of the time evolution of elliptic
cylinder. We compared the width and height of the circular and
two kinds of elliptic gas cylinders, and analyzed the vortex
strength of the elliptic ones. Simulations are in very good
agreement with the experiments, but due to the different initial
gas cylinder shapes, a certain difference of the initial density
peak and distribution exists between the circular and elliptic
gas cylinders, and the latter initial state is more sensitive and
more inenarrable.
Abstract: How to coordinate the behaviors of the agents through
learning is a challenging problem within multi-agent domains.
Because of its complexity, recent work has focused on how
coordinated strategies can be learned. Here we are interested in using
reinforcement learning techniques to learn the coordinated actions of a
group of agents, without requiring explicit communication among
them. However, traditional reinforcement learning methods are based
on the assumption that the environment can be modeled as Markov
Decision Process, which usually cannot be satisfied when multiple
agents coexist in the same environment. Moreover, to effectively
coordinate each agent-s behavior so as to achieve the goal, it-s
necessary to augment the state of each agent with the information
about other existing agents. Whereas, as the number of agents in a
multiagent environment increases, the state space of each agent grows
exponentially, which will cause the combinational explosion problem.
Profit sharing is one of the reinforcement learning methods that allow
agents to learn effective behaviors from their experiences even within
non-Markovian environments. In this paper, to remedy the drawback
of the original profit sharing approach that needs much memory to
store each state-action pair during the learning process, we firstly
address a kind of on-line rational profit sharing algorithm. Then, we
integrate the advantages of modular learning architecture with on-line
rational profit sharing algorithm, and propose a new modular
reinforcement learning model. The effectiveness of the technique is
demonstrated using the pursuit problem.
Abstract: Batch adsorption of recalcitrant melanoidin using the abundantly available coal fly ash was carried out. It had low specific surface area (SBET) of 1.7287 m2/g and pore volume of 0.002245 cm3/g while qualitative evaluation of the predominant phases in it was done by XRD analysis. Colour removal efficiency was found to be dependent on various factors studied. Maximum colour removal was achieved around pH 6, whereas increasing sorbent mass from 10g/L to 200 g/L enhanced colour reduction from 25% to 86% at 298 K. Spontaneity of the process was suggested by negative Gibbs free energy while positive values for enthalpy change showed endothermic nature of the process. Non-linear optimization of error functions resulted in Freundlich and Redlich-Peterson isotherms describing sorption equilibrium data best. The coal fly ash had maximum sorption capacity of 53 mg/g and could thus be used as a low cost adsorbent in melanoidin removal.
Abstract: An implant elicits a biological response in the
surrounding tissue which determines the acceptance and long-term
function of the implant. Dental implants have become one of the
main therapy methods in clinic after teeth lose. A successful implant
is in contact with bone and soft tissue represent by fibroblasts. In our
study we focused on the interaction between six different chemically
and physically modified titanium implants (Tis-MALP, Tis-O, Tis-
OA, Tis-OPAAE, Tis-OZ, Tis-OPAE) with alveolar fibroblasts as
well as with five type of microorganisms (S. epidermis, S.mutans, S.
gordonii, S. intermedius, C.albicans). The analysis of microorganism
adhesion was determined by CFU (colony forming unite) and biofilm
formation. The presence of α3β1 and vinculin expression on alveolar
fibroblasts was demonstrated using phospho specific cell based
ELISA (PACE). Alveolar fibroblasts have the highest expression of
these proteins on Tis-OPAAE and Tis-OPAE. It corresponds with
results from bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation and it was
related to the lowest production of collagen I by alveolar fibroblasts
on Tis-OPAAE titanium disc.
Abstract: This paper introduces a hand gesture recognition system to recognize real time gesture in unstrained environments. Efforts should be made to adapt computers to our natural means of communication: Speech and body language. A simple and fast algorithm using orientation histograms will be developed. It will recognize a subset of MAL static hand gestures. A pattern recognition system will be using a transforrn that converts an image into a feature vector, which will be compared with the feature vectors of a training set of gestures. The final system will be Perceptron implementation in MATLAB. This paper includes experiments of 33 hand postures and discusses the results. Experiments shows that the system can achieve a 90% recognition average rate and is suitable for real time applications.
Abstract: Music has a great effect on human body and mind; it
can have a positive effect on hormone system. Objective of this study
is to analysis the effect of music (carnatic, hard rock and jazz) on
brain activity during mental work load using electroencephalography
(EEG). Eight healthy subjects without special musical education
participated in the study. EEG signals were acquired at frontal (Fz),
parietal (Pz) and central (Cz) lobes of brain while listening to music
at three experimental condition (rest, music without mental task and
music with mental task). Spectral powers features were extracted at
alpha, theta and beta brain rhythms. While listening to jazz music, the
alpha and theta powers were significantly (p < 0.05) high for rest as
compared to music with and without mental task in Cz. While
listening to Carnatic music, the beta power was significantly (p <
0.05) high for with mental task as compared to rest and music
without mental task at Cz and Fz location. This finding corroborates
that attention based activities are enhanced while listening to jazz and
carnatic as compare to Hard rock during mental task.
Abstract: One approach to assess neural networks underlying the cognitive processes is to study Electroencephalography (EEG). It is relevant to detect various mental states and characterize the physiological changes that help to discriminate two situations. That is why an EEG (amplitude, synchrony) classification procedure is described, validated. The two situations are "eyes closed" and "eyes opened" in order to study the "alpha blocking response" phenomenon in the occipital area. The good classification rate between the two situations is 92.1 % (SD = 3.5%) The spatial distribution of a part of amplitude features that helps to discriminate the two situations are located in the occipital regions that permit to validate the localization method. Moreover amplitude features in frontal areas, "short distant" synchrony in frontal areas and "long distant" synchrony between frontal and occipital area also help to discriminate between the two situations. This procedure will be used for mental fatigue detection.
Abstract: Life is beautiful. But, it is decided by genes, environment and the individual and shattered by the natural and / or the invited problems. Most of the global rural helpless masses are struggling for their survival since; they are neglected in all aspects of life including health. Amidst a countless number of miserable diseases in man, diabetes is becoming a dreaded killer and ramifying the entire globe in a jet speed. Diabetes control continues as a Herculean task to the scientific community and the modern society in the 21st century also. T2DM is not pertaining to any age and it can develop even during the childhood. This multifactorial disease abruptly changes the activities of certain vital biomarkers in the present rural T2DM cases. A remarkable variation in the levels of biomarkers like AST, ALT, GGT, ALP, LDH, HbA1C, C- peptide, fasting sugar, post-prandial sugar, sodium, potassium, BUN, creatinine and insulin show the rampant nature of T2DM in this physically active rural agrarian community.