Abstract: The development of the agricultural sector in Ghana
has been reliant on the use of irrigation systems to ensure food
security. However, the manual operation of these systems has not
facilitated their maximum efficiency due to human limitations.
This paper seeks to address this problem by designing and
implementing an efficient, cost effective automated system which
monitors and controls the water flow of irrigation through
communication with an authorized operator via text messages. The
automatic control component of the system is timer based with an
Atmega32 microcontroller and a real time clock from the SM5100B
cellular module. For monitoring purposes, the system sends periodic
notification of the system on the performance of duty via SMS to the
authorized person(s). Moreover, the GSM based Irrigation
Monitoring and Control System saves time and labour and reduces
cost of operating irrigation systems by saving electricity usage and
conserving water.
Field tests conducted have proven its operational efficiency and
ease of assessment of farm irrigation equipment due to its costeffectiveness
and data logging capabilities.
Abstract: The objective of this study is to analyze the
prophylactic usage of low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) along
pregnancy and the correlation between their usage and month/week
of pregnancy, in the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, at
Clinical Hospital in Tetovo. A retrospective study was undertaken
during 01 January – 31 December 2012. Over of one year, the total
number of patients was 4636. Among the 1447 (32.21%) pregnant
women, 298 (20.59%) of them were prescribed LMWH. The majority
of patients given LMWH, 119 (39.93%) were diagnosed
hypercoagulable. The age group with the highest attendance was 25-
35, 141 patients (47.32%). For 195 (65.44%) patients, this was their
first pregnancy. Earliest stage of using LMWH was the second month
of pregnancy 4 (1.34%) cases. The most common patients were 70
women along the seventh month (23.49%), followed by 68 in the
ninth month of pregnancy (22.81%). Women in the 28th gestational
week, were found to be the most affected, a total of 55 (78.57%) were
in that week. Clexane 2000 and Fraxiparine 0.3 were the most
common for which low molecular weight heparin was prescribed.
The number of patients which received Clexane 2000 was 84
(28.19%), followed by those with Fraxiparine 0.3 81 (27.18%). The
administration of LMWH is associated with long hospitalization
(median 14,6 days).
Abstract: Due to the advancement of Internet technology, online
learning is widely used in higher education institutions. Online
learning offers several means of communication, including online
forum. Through online forum, students and instructors are able to
discuss and share their knowledge and expertise without having a
need to attend the face-to-face, ordinary classroom session. The
purposes of this study are to analyze the students’ levels of
participation and critical thinking, types of action and factors
influencing their participation in online forum. A total of 41
postgraduate students undertaking a course in educational technology
from a public university in Malaysia were involved in this study. In
this course, the students participated in a weekly online forum as part
of the course requirement. Based on the log data file extracted from
the online forum, the students’ type of actions (view, add, update,
delete posts) and their levels of participation (passive, moderate or
active) were identified. In addition, the messages posted in the forum
were analyzed to gauge their level of critical thinking. Meanwhile,
the factors that might influence their online forum participation were
measured using a 24-items questionnaire. Based on the log data, a
total of 105 posts were sent by the participants. In addition, the
findings show that (i) majority of the students are moderate
participants, with an average of two to three posts per person, (ii)
viewing posts are the most frequent type of action (85.1%), and
followed by adding post (9.7%). Furthermore, based on the posts
they made, the most frequent type of critical thinking observed was
justification (50 input or 19.0%), followed by linking ideas and
interpretation (47 input or 18%), and novelty (38 input or 14.4%).
The findings indicate that online forum allows for social interaction
and can be used to measure the students’ critical thinking skills. In
order to achieve this, monitoring students’ activities in the online
forum is recommended.
Abstract: This paper presents a method for the efficient
implementation of a unidirectional or bidirectional DC/DC converter.
The DC/DC converter is used essentially for energy exchange
between the low voltage service battery and a high voltage battery
commonly found in Electric Vehicle applications. In these
applications, apart from cost, efficiency of design is an important
characteristic. A useful way to reduce the size of electronic
equipment in the electric vehicles is proposed in this paper. The
technique simplifies the mechanical complexity and maximizes the
energy usage using the latest converter control techniques. Moreover
a bidirectional battery charger for hybrid electric vehicles is also
implemented in this paper. Several simulations on the test system
have been carried out in Matlab/Simulink environment. The results
exemplify the robustness of the proposed design methodology in case
of a 1.5 KW DC-DC converter.
Abstract: In the culture of Thailand, the Yak serve as a mediated
icon representing strength, power, and mystical protection not only
for the Buddha, but for population of worshipers. Originating from
the forests of China, the Yak continues to stand guard at the gates of
Buddhist temples. The Yak represents Thai culture in the hearts of
Thai people. This paper presents a qualitative study regarding the
curious mix of media, culture, and religion that projects the Yak of
Thailand as a larger than life message throughout the political,
cultural, and religious spheres. The gate guardians, or gods as they
are sometimes called, appear throughout the religious temples of
Asian cultures. However, the Asian cultures demonstrate differences
in artistic renditions (or presentations) of such sentinels. Thailand
gate guards (the Yak) stand in front of many Buddhist temples, and
these iconic figures display unique features with varied symbolic
significance. The temple (or wat), plays a vital role in every
community; and, for many people, Thailand’s temples are the
country’s most endearing sights. The authors applied folknography as
a methodology to illustrate the importance of the Thai Yak in serving
as meaningful icons that transcend not only time, but the culture,
religion, and mass media. The Yak represents mythical, religious,
artistic, cultural, and militaristic significance for the Thai people.
Data collection included interviews, focus groups, and natural
observations. This paper summarizes the perceptions of the Thai
people concerning their gate sentries and the relationship,
communication, connection, and the enduring respect that Thai
people hold for their guardians of the gates.
Abstract: Cognitive Radio is a turning out technology that
empowers viable usage of the spectrum. Energy Detector-based
Sensing is the most broadly utilized spectrum sensing strategy.
Besides, it's a lot of generic as receivers doesn't would like any
information on the primary user's signals, channel data, of even the
sort of modulation. This paper puts forth the execution of energy
detection sensing for AM (Amplitude Modulated) signal at 710 KHz,
FM (Frequency Modulated) signal at 103.45 MHz (local station
frequency), Wi-Fi signal at 2.4 GHz and WiMAX signals at 6 GHz.
The OFDM/OFDMA based WiMAX physical layer with
convolutional channel coding is actualized utilizing USRP N210
(Universal Software Radio Peripheral) and GNU Radio based
Software Defined Radio (SDR). Test outcomes demonstrated the
BER (Bit Error Rate) augmentation with channel noise and BER
execution is dissected for different Eb/N0 (the energy per bit to noise
power spectral density ratio) values.
Abstract: Access control is one of the most challenging issues
facing information security. Access control is defined as, the ability to
permit or deny access to a particular computational resource or digital
information by an unauthorized user or subject. The concept of usage
control (UCON) has been introduced as a unified approach to capture a
number of extensions for access control models and systems. In
UCON, an access decision is determined by three factors:
authorizations, obligations and conditions. Attribute mutability and
decision continuity are two distinct characteristics introduced by
UCON for the first time. An observation of UCON components
indicates that, the components are predefined and static. In this paper,
we propose a new and flexible model of usage control for the creation
and elimination of some of these components; for example new
objects, subjects, attributes and integrate these with the original
UCON model. We also propose a model for concurrent usage
scenarios in UCON.
Abstract: A simple, accurate and precise direct spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of cefixime in tablets and capsules. The method is based on the reaction of cefixime with a mixture of potassium iodide and potassium iodate to form yellow coloured product in ethanol-distilled water medium at room temperature which absorbed maximally at 352 nm. The factors affecting the reaction product were carefully studied and optimized. The validation parameters based on International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH, USA) guidelines were followed. The effect of common excipients used as additives has been tested and the tolerance limit was calculated for the determination of cefixime. Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration range of 4 – 24 ug mL-1 with apparent molar absorptivity of 1.52 × 104 L mol-1cm-1 and Sandell’s sensitivity of 0.033 ug/cm2/ 0.001 absorbance unit. The limits of detection and quantitation for the proposed method are 0.32 and 1.06 ug mL-1, respectively. The proposed method has been successfully applied for the determination of cefixime in pharmaceutical formulations. The results obtained by the proposed method were statistically compared with the reference method using t- and F- values and found no significant difference between the two methods. The proposed method can be used as an alternate method for routine quality control analysis of cefixime in pharmaceutical formulations.
Abstract: Boron-gypsum is a waste which occurs in the boric
acid production process. In this study, the boron content of this waste
is evaluated for the use in synthesis of magnesium borates and such
evaluation of this kind of waste is useful more than storage or
disposal. Magnesium borates, which are a sub-class of boron
minerals, are useful additive materials for the industries due to their
remarkable thermal and mechanical properties. Magnesium borates
were obtained hydrothermally at different temperatures. Novelty of
this study is the search of the solution density effects to magnesium
borate synthesis process for the increasing the possibility of borongypsum
usage as a raw material. After the synthesis process, products
are subjected to XRD and FT-IR to identify and characterize their
crystal structure, respectively.
Abstract: Fly ash is an important waste, produced in thermal
power plants which causes very important environmental pollutions.
For this reason the usage and evaluation the fly ash in various areas
are very important. Nearly, 15 million tons/year of fly ash is
produced in Turkey. In this study, usage of fly ash with diatomite and
molasses for heavy metal (Cd) adsorption from wastewater is
investigated. The samples of Seyitomer region fly ash were analyzed
by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Scanning Electron Microscope
(SEM) then diatomite (0 and 1% in terms of fly ash, w/w) and
molasses (0-0.75 mL) were pelletized under 30 MPa of pressure for
the usage of cadmium (Cd) adsorption in wastewater. After the
adsorption process, samples of Seyitomer were analyzed using
Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). As a result, it is seen that
the usage of Seyitomer fly ash is proper for cadmium (Cd) adsorption
and an optimum adsorption yield with 52% is found at a compound
with Seyitomer fly ash (10 g), diatomite (0.5 g) and molasses (0.75
mL) at 2.5 h of reaction time, pH:4, 20ºC of reaction temperature and
300 rpm of stirring rate.
Abstract: The objectives of this study are to find out the
approaches to promote healthy recreation activities for elderly
tourists and develop Bang Nam Phueng Floating Market to be a
health tourism attraction. The research methodology was to analyze
internal and external situations according to MP-MF and the MCSTEPS
principles.
As for the results of this study the researcher found that the
healthy recreational activities for elderly tourists could be divided in
7 groups; travelling Bang Nam Phueng Floating Market activity,
homestay relaxation, arts center platform activity, healthy massage
activity, paying homage to a Buddha image activity, herbal joss-stick
home activity, making local desserts and food activity.
Abstract: Phase equilibria of AZ91D Mg alloys for
nonflammable use, containing Ca and Y, were carried out by using
FactSage® and FTLite database, which revealed that solid solution
treatment could be performed at temperatures from 400 to 450oC.
Solid solution treatment of AZ91D Mg alloy without Ca and Y was
successfully conducted at 420oC and supersaturated microstructure
with all beta phase resolved into matrix was obtained. In the case of
AZ91D Mg alloy with some Ca and Y; however, a little amount of
intermetallic particles were observed after solid solution treatment.
After solid solution treatment, each alloy was annealed at temperatures
of 180 and 200oC for time intervals from 1 min to 48 hrs and hardness
of each condition was measured by micro-Vickers method. Peak aging
conditions were deduced as at the temperature of 200oC for 10 hrs.
Abstract: In this paper the issue of dimensionality reduction is
investigated in finger vein recognition systems using kernel Principal
Component Analysis (KPCA). One aspect of KPCA is to find the
most appropriate kernel function on finger vein recognition as there
are several kernel functions which can be used within PCA-based
algorithms. In this paper, however, another side of PCA-based
algorithms -particularly KPCA- is investigated. The aspect of
dimension of feature vector in PCA-based algorithms is of
importance especially when it comes to the real-world applications
and usage of such algorithms. It means that a fixed dimension of
feature vector has to be set to reduce the dimension of the input and
output data and extract the features from them. Then a classifier is
performed to classify the data and make the final decision. We
analyze KPCA (Polynomial, Gaussian, and Laplacian) in details in
this paper and investigate the optimal feature extraction dimension in
finger vein recognition using KPCA.
Abstract: Azadirachta excelsa or locally known as sentang are
frequently used as a traditional medicine by diabetes patients in
Malaysia. However, less attention has been given to their toxicity
effect. Thus, the study is an attempt to examine the protective effect
of A. excelsa on the pancreas and to determine possible toxicity
mediated by the extract. Diabetes was induced experimentally in rats
by high-fat-diet for 16 weeks followed by intraperitoneal injection of
streptozotocin at dosage of 35 mg/kg of body weight. Declination of
the fasting blood glucose level was observed after continuous
administration of A. excelsa for 14 days twice daily. This is due to the
refining structure of the pancreas. However, surprisingly, the plant
extract reduced the leukocytes, erythrocytes, hemoglobin, MCHC and
lymphocytes. In addition, the rat treated with the plant extract
exhibited increment in AST and eosinocytes level. Overall, the
finding shows that A. excelsa possesses antidiabetic activity by
improving the structure of pancreatic islet of Langerhans but
involved in ameliorating of hematology and biochemical parameters.
Abstract: High temperature deformation behavior of cast
Fe-20Cr-5Al alloy has been investigated in this study by performing
tensile and compression tests at temperatures from 1100 to 1200oC.
Rectangular ingots of which the dimensions were 300×300×100 in
millimeter were cast using vacuum induction melting. Phase
equilibrium was calculated using the FactSage®, thermodynamic
software and database. Tensile strength of cast Fe-20Cr-5Al alloy was
4 MPa at 1200oC. With temperature decreased, tensile strength
increased rapidly and reached up to 13 MPa at 1100oC. Elongation
also increased from 18 to 80% with temperature decreased from
1200oC to 1100oC. Microstructure observation revealed that M23C6
carbide was precipitated along the grain boundary and within the
matrix.
Abstract: ‘Steganalysis’ is one of the challenging and attractive interests for the researchers with the development of information hiding techniques. It is the procedure to detect the hidden information from the stego created by known steganographic algorithm. In this paper, a novel feature based image steganalysis technique is proposed. Various statistical moments have been used along with some similarity metric. The proposed steganalysis technique has been designed based on transformation in four wavelet domains, which include Haar, Daubechies, Symlets and Biorthogonal. Each domain is being subjected to various classifiers, namely K-nearest-neighbor, K* Classifier, Locally weighted learning, Naive Bayes classifier, Neural networks, Decision trees and Support vector machines. The experiments are performed on a large set of pictures which are available freely in image database. The system also predicts the different message length definitions.
Abstract: In this paper influence of packaging method (vacuum
and modified atmosphere packaging) on lipid oxidative stability and
sensory properties of odor and taste of the traditional sausage
Petrovská klobása were examined. These parameters were examined
during storage period (7 months). In the end of storage period,
vacuum packed sausage showed better oxidative stability. Propanal
content was significantly lower (P
Abstract: Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been identified as an
important factor for corporate success. However, there are few
empirical findings on the impact of Strategic EI per se. The ooverall
objective of the study was to empirically examine the relationship
between the Strategic EI and Transformational Leadership style of
managers. Sixty four managers were selected from the banking
industry in Czech Republic. Genos EI Inventory, and the Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire – Form 5X-Short were employed as the
major research instruments of the study. Descriptive and inferential
analyses of survey data were conducted using SPSS software.
Variations were observed among the components of Strategic EI
between males, and females. Study concludes positive a relationship
between Strategic EI of Czech managers and their transformational
leadership style. Improving awareness and usage of EI, will
contribute to facilitate career success through enhanced levels of
transformational leadership of managers.
Abstract: Ion exchange is one of the methods used to remove heavy metal such as copper and cobalt from wastewaters. Parameters affecting the ion-exchange of copper and cobalt aqueous solutions using clinoptilolite are the objectives of this study. Synthetic solutions were prepared with the concentration of 0.02M, 0.06M and 0.1M. The cobalt solution was maintained to 0.02M while varying the copper solution to the above stated concentrations. The clinoptilolite was activated with HCl and H2SO4 for removal efficiency. The pHs of the solutions were found to be acidic hence enhancing the copper and cobalt removal. The natural clinoptilolite performance was also found to be lower compared to the HCl and H2SO4 activated one for the copper removal ranging from 68% to 78% of Cu2+ uptake with the natural clinoptilolite to 66% to 51% with HCl and H2SO4 respectively. It was found that the activated clinoptilolite removed more copper and cobalt than the natural one and found that the electronegativity of the metal plays a role in the metal removal and the clinoptilolite selectivity.
Abstract: Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer
which has good mechanical properties, however, its brittleness limits
its usage especially in packaging materials. Therefore, in this work,
PLA based polyurethane films were prepared by synthesizing with
different types of isocyanates; methylene diisocyanate (MDI) and
hexamethylene diisocyanates (HDI). For this purpose, PLA based
polyurethane must have good strength and flexibility. Therefore,
polycaprolactone which has better flexibility were prepared with
PLA. An effective way to endow polylactic acid with toughness is
through chain-extension reaction of the polylactic acid pre-polymer
with polycaprolactone used as chain extender. Polyurethane prepared
from MDI showed brittle behaviour, while, polyurethane prepared
from HDI showed flexibility at same concentrations.