Abstract: The article presents two mathematical models of the
interaction between a rotating shaft and an incompressible fluid. The
mathematical model includes both the journal bearings and the
axially traversed hydrodynamic sealing gaps of hydraulic machines.
A method is shown for the identification of additional effects of the
fluid acting on the rotor of the machine, both for a linear and a nonlinear
model. The interaction is expressed by matrices of mass,
stiffness and damping.
Abstract: The Scheduling and mapping of tasks on a set of
processors is considered as a critical problem in parallel and
distributed computing system. This paper deals with the problem of
dynamic scheduling on a special type of multiprocessor architecture
known as Linear Crossed Cube (LCQ) network. This proposed
multiprocessor is a hybrid network which combines the features of
both linear types of architectures as well as cube based architectures.
Two standard dynamic scheduling schemes namely Minimum
Distance Scheduling (MDS) and Two Round Scheduling (TRS)
schemes are implemented on the LCQ network. Parallel tasks are
mapped and the imbalance of load is evaluated on different set of
processors in LCQ network. The simulations results are evaluated
and effort is made by means of through analysis of the results to
obtain the best solution for the given network in term of load
imbalance left and execution time. The other performance matrices
like speedup and efficiency are also evaluated with the given
dynamic algorithms.
Abstract: Lignocellolusic material is a substance that is resistant to be degraded by microorganisms or hydrolysis enzymes. To be used as materials for biofuel production, it needs pretreatment process to improve efficiency of hydrolysis. In this work, chemical pretreatments on rice straw using three diluted organic acids, including acetic acid, citric acid, oxalic acid, were optimized. Using Response Surface Methodology (RSM), the effect of three pretreatment parameters, acid concentration, treatment time, and reaction temperature, on pretreatment efficiency were statistically evaluated. The results indicated that dilute oxalic acid pretreatment led to the highest enhancement of enzymatic saccharification by commercial cellulase and yielded sugar up to 10.67 mg/ml when using 5.04% oxalic acid at 137.11 oC for 30.01 min. Compared to other acid pretreatment by acetic acid, citric acid, and hydrochloric acid, the maximum sugar yields are 7.07, 6.30, and 8.53 mg/ml, respectively. Here, it was demonstrated that organic acids can be used for pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials to enhance of hydrolysis process, which could be integrated to other applications for various biorefinery processes.
Abstract: Rice straw is lignocellulosic biomass which can be utilized as substrate for the biogas production. However, due to the property and composition of rice straw, it is difficult to be degraded by hydrolysis enzymes. One of the pretreatment methods that modify such properties of lignocellulosic biomass is the application of lignocellulose-degrading microbial consortia. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of microbial consortia to enhance biogas production. To select the high efficient consortium, cellulase enzymes were extracted and their activities were analyzed. The results suggested that microbial consortium culture obtained from cattle manure is the best candidate compared to decomposed wood and horse manure. A microbial consortium isolated from cattle manure was then mixed with anaerobic sludge and used as inoculum for biogas production. The optimal conditions for biogas production were investigated using response surface methodology (RSM). The tested parameters were the ratio of amount of microbial consortium isolated and amount of anaerobic sludge (MI:AS), substrate to inoculum ratio (S:I) and temperature. Here, the value of the regression coefficient R2 = 0.7661 could be explained by the model which is high to advocate the significance of the model. The highest cumulative biogas yield was 104.6 ml/g-rice straw at optimum ratio of MI:AS, ratio of S:I, and temperature of 2.5:1, 15:1 and 44°C respectively.
Abstract: The quality and condition of perishable products
delivered to the market and their subsequent selling prices are
directly affected by the care taken during harvesting and handling.
Mechanical injury, in fact, occurs at all stages, from pre-harvest
operations through post-harvest handling, packing and transport to
the market. The main implications of this damage are the reduction of
the product’s quality and economical losses related to the shelf life
diminution. For most perishable products, the shelf life is relatively
short and it is typically dictated by microbial growth related to the
application of dynamic and static loads during transportation. This
paper presents the correlation between vibration levels and
microbiological growth on strawberries and woodland strawberries
and detects the presence of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in
order to develop an intelligent logistic unit capable of monitoring
VOCs using a specific sensor system. Fresh fruits were exposed to
vibrations by means of a vibrating table in a temperature-controlled
environment. Microbiological analyses were conducted on samples,
taken at different positions along the column of the crates. The values
obtained were compared with control samples not exposed to
vibrations and the results show that different positions along the
column influence the development of bacteria, yeasts and filamentous
fungi.
Abstract: Rice husk and kenaf filled with calcium carbonate
(CaCO3) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) composite were
prepared separately using twin-screw extruder at 50rpm. Different
filler loading up to 30 parts of rice husk particulate and kenaf fiber
were mixed with the fixed 30% amount of CaCO3 mineral filler to
produce rice husk/CaCO3/HDPE and kenaf/CaCO3/HDPE hybrid
composites. In this study, the effects of natural fiber for both rice
husk and kenaf in CaCO3/HDPE composite on physical, mechanical
and morphology properties were investigated. Field Emission
Scanning Microscope (FeSEM) was used to investigate the impact
fracture surfaces of the hybrid composite. The property analyses
showed that water absorption increased with the presence of kenaf
and rice husk fillers. Natural fibers in composite significantly
influence water absorption properties due to natural characters of
fibers which contain cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin structures.
The result showed that 10% of additional natural fibers into hybrid
composite had caused decreased flexural strength, however additional
of high natural fiber (>10%) filler loading has proved to increase its
flexural strength.
Abstract: Traditional document representation for classification
follows Bag of Words (BoW) approach to represent the term weights.
The conventional method uses the Vector Space Model (VSM) to
exploit the statistical information of terms in the documents and they
fail to address the semantic information as well as order of the terms
present in the documents. Although, the phrase based approach
follows the order of the terms present in the documents rather than
semantics behind the word. Therefore, a semantic concept based
approach is used in this paper for enhancing the semantics by
incorporating the ontology information. In this paper a novel method
is proposed to forecast the intraday stock market price directional
movement based on the sentiments from Twitter and money control
news articles. The stock market forecasting is a very difficult and
highly complicated task because it is affected by many factors such
as economic conditions, political events and investor’s sentiment etc.
The stock market series are generally dynamic, nonparametric, noisy
and chaotic by nature. The sentiment analysis along with wisdom of
crowds can automatically compute the collective intelligence of
future performance in many areas like stock market, box office sales
and election outcomes. The proposed method utilizes collective
sentiments for stock market to predict the stock price directional
movements. The collective sentiments in the above social media have
powerful prediction on the stock price directional movements as
up/down by using Granger Causality test.
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of the volatility of oil
prices on food price in South Africa using monthly data covering the
period 2002:01 to 2014:09. Food price is measured by the South
African consumer price index for food while oil price is proxied by
the Brent crude oil. The study employs the GARCH-in-mean VAR
model, which allows the investigation of the effect of a negative and
positive shock in oil price volatility on food price. The model also
allows the oil price uncertainty to be measured as the conditional
standard deviation of a one-step-ahead forecast error of the change in
oil price. The results show that oil price uncertainty has a positive
and significant effect on food price in South Africa. The responses of
food price to a positive and negative oil price shocks is asymmetric.
Abstract: In urban context, urban nodes such as amenity or
hazard will certainly affect house price, while classic hedonic analysis
will employ distance variables measured from each urban nodes.
However, effects from distances to facilities on house prices generally
do not represent the true price of the property. Distance variables
measured on the same surface are suffering a problem called
multicollinearity, which is usually presented as magnitude variance
and mean value in regression, errors caused by instability. In this paper,
we provided a theoretical framework to identify and gather the data
with less bias, and also provided specific sampling method on locating
the sample region to avoid the spatial multicollinerity problem in three
distance variable’s case.
Abstract: Silica was extracted from agriculture waste rice husk
ash (RHA) and was used as the silica source for synthesis of
RMCM-48 and RSBA-16. An alkali fusion process was utilized to
separate silicate supernatant and the sediment effectively. The
CTAB/Si and F127/Si molar ratio was employed to control the
structure properties of the obtained RMCM-48 and RSBA-16
materials. The N2 adsorption-desorption results showed the
micro-mesoporous RSBA-16 possessed high specific surface areas
(662-1001 m2/g). All the obtained RSBA-16 materials were applied as
the adsorbents for acetone adsorption. And the breakthrough tests
clearly revealed that the RSBA-16(0.004) materials could achieve the
highest acetone adsorption capacity of 181 mg/g under 1000 ppmv
acetone vapor concentration at 25oC, which was also superior to
ZSM-5 (71mg/g) and MCM-41 (157mg/g) under same test conditions.
This can help to reduce the solid waste and the high adsorption
performance of the obtained materials could consider as potential
adsorbents for acetone adsorption.
Abstract: The objectives of the study were to determine the
marketing mix factors that influencing tourist’s destination decision
making for cultural tourism in the Chonburi province. Both
quantitative and qualitative data were applied in this study. The
samples of 400 cases for quantitative analysis were tourists (both
Thai and foreign) who were interested in cultural tourism in the
Chonburi province, and traveled to cultural sites in Chonburi and 14
representatives from provincial tourism committee of Chonburi and
local tourism experts. Statistics utilized in this research included
frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and multiple
regression analysis. The study found that Thai and foreign tourists
are influenced by different important marketing mix factors. The
important factors for Thai respondents were physical evidence, price,
people, and place at high importance level. For foreign respondents,
physical evidence, price, people, and process were high importance
level, whereas, product, place and promotion were moderate
importance level.
Abstract: In this study, the Compressive strength of concretes
made with Ground Granulated Blast furnace Slag (GGBS),
Pulverised Fuel Ash (PFA), Rice Husk Ash (RHA) and Waste Glass
Powder (WGP) after they were exposed 7800C (exposure duration of
around 60 minutes) and then allowed to cool down gradually in the
furnace for about 280 minutes at water binder ratio of 0.50 was
investigated. GGBS, PFA, RHA and WGP were used to replace up to
20% Portland cement in the control concrete. Test for the
determination of workability, compressive strength and tensile
splitting strength of the concretes were carried out and the results
were compared with control concrete. The test results showed that the
compressive strength decreased by an average of around 30% after
the concretes were exposed to the heating and cooling scenario.
Abstract: Fungal mutant strains have produced cellulase and
xylanase enzymes, and have induced high hydrolysis with enhanced
of rice straw. The mutants were obtained by exposing Penicillium
strain to UV-light treatments. Screening and selection after treatment
with UV-light were carried out using cellulolytic and xylanolytic
clear zones method to select the hypercellulolytic and
hyperxylanolytic mutants. These mutants were evaluated for their
cellulase and xylanase enzyme production as well as their abilities for
biodegradation of rice straw. The mutant 12 UV/1 produced 306.21%
and 209.91% cellulase and xylanase, respectively, as compared with
the original wild type strain. This mutant showed high capacity of
rice straw degradation. The effectiveness of tested mutant strain and
that of wild strain was compared in relation to enhancing the
composting process of rice straw and animal manures mixture. The
results obtained showed that the compost product of inoculated
mixture with mutant strain (12 UV/1) was the best compared to the
wild strain and un-inoculated mixture. Analysis of the composted
materials showed that the characteristics of the produced compost
were close to those of the high quality standard compost. The results
obtained in the present work suggest that the combination between
rice straw and animal manure could be used for enhancing the
composting process of rice straw and particularly when applied with
fungal decomposer accelerating the composting process.
Abstract: The paper deals with behaviour of the segment 50+ in
the financial market in the Czech Republic. This segment could be
said as the strong market power and it can be a crucial business
potential for financial business units. The main defined objective of
this paper is analysis of the customers´ behaviour of the segment 50-
60 years in the financial market in the Czech Republic and proposal
making of the suitable marketing approach to satisfy their demands in
the area of product, price, distribution and marketing communication
policy. This paper is based on data from one part of primary
marketing research. Paper determinates the basic problem areas as
well as definition of financial services marketing, defining the
primary research problem, hypothesis and primary research
methodology. Finally suitable marketing approach to selected sub
segment at age of 50-60 years is proposed according to marketing
research findings.
Abstract: Iron is an essential nutrient with limited
bioavailability. Nutritional anemia caused mainly by iron deficiency
is the most recognized nutritional problem in both countries as well
as affluent societies. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) has become the most
important cereal crop for the improvement of human health due to the
starch, protein, oil, and the majority of micronutrients, particularly in
Asian countries. In this study, the iron availability and profile lipid
were evaluated for the extracts from Cibeusi varieties (black rices) of
ancient rice brans.
Results: The quality of K, B, R, E diets groups shows the same
effect on the growth of rats. Hematocrit and MCHC levels of rats fed
K, B, R and E diets were not significantly (P
Abstract: Housing loans play an important role in CEE
countries’ economies. This fact is based on their share in total loans
to households and their importance for economic activity and growth
in CEE countries. Therefore, it is important to find out key
determinants of housing loans demand in these countries. The aim of
this study is to research and analyze the determinants of the demand
for housing loans in Croatia. In this regard, the effect of economic
activity, loan terms and real estate prices were analyzed. Also, the
aim of this study is to find out what motivates people to take housing
loans. Therefore, primarily empirical study was conducted among the
Croatian residents. The results show that demand for housing loans is
positively affected by economic growth, higher personal income and
flexible loan terms, while it is negatively affected by interest rate rise.
Abstract: In this paper, the author studied the possibilities of
using Rice Husk Ash (RHA) available in India; to produce concrete.
Experiments conducted with RHA obtained from West Bengal, India;
to replace cement partially to produce concrete of grade M10, M15,
M20, M25 and M30. The concrete produced in the laboratory by
replacing cement by 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% and 30% RHA.
Compressive strength tests carried out to determine the strength of
concrete. Cost analysis and comparison done to show the cost
effectiveness of RHA Concrete. Traditional uses of Rice Husk in
India pointed out and the advantages of using RHA in making
concrete highlighted. Suggestion provided regarding prospective
application of RHA concrete in India; which in turn will definitely
reduce the cost of concrete and environmental friendly due to
utilization of waste and replacement of Cement.
Abstract: Nowadays, it is a globalization era which social media
plays an important role to the lifestyle as an information source, tools
to connect people together and etc. This research is object to find out
about the significant level of the social media as a distribution
channel to the agriculture product of Thailand. In this research, the
agriculture product is the Rice Berry which is the cross-bred unmilled
rice producing dark violet grain, is a combination of Hom Nin Rice
and Thai Jasmine/ Fragrant Rice 105. Rice Berry has a very high
nutrition and nice aroma so the product is in the growth stage of the
product cycle. The problem for the Rice Berry product in Thailand is
the production and the distribution channel. This study is to confirm
that the social media is another option as the distribution channel for
the product which is not a mass production product. This will be the
role model for the other niche market product to select the
distribution channel.
Abstract: The object of the present paper is to investigate several
general families of bilinear and bilateral generating functions with
different argument for the Gauss’ hypergeometric polynomials.
Abstract: Conservation works in Malaysia that is procured by
public organisation usually follow the traditional approach where the
works are tendered based on Bills of Quantities (BQ). One of the
purposes of tendering is to enable the selection of a competent
contractor that offers a competitive price. While competency of the
contractors are assessed by their technical knowledge, experience and
track records, the assessment of pricing will be dependent on the
tender amount. However, the issue currently faced by the
conservation works sector is the difficulty in assessing the
competitiveness and reasonableness of the tender amount due to the
high variance between the tenders amount. Thus, this paper discusses
the factors that cause difficulty to the tenderers in pricing
competitively in a bidding exercise for conservation tenders. Data on
tendering is collected from interviews with conservation works
contractors to gain in-depth understanding of the barriers faced in
pricing tenders of conservation works. Findings from the study lent
support to the contention that the variance of tender amount is very
high amongst tenderers. The factors identified in the survey are the
format of BQ, hidden works, experience and labour and material
costs.