Embodied Energy in Concrete and Structural Masonry on Typical Brazilian Buildings

The AEC sector has an expressive environmental responsibility. Actually, most building materials have severe environmental impacts along their production cycle. Professionals enrolled in building design may choice the materials and techniques with less impact among the viable options. This work presents a study about embodied energy in materials of two typical Brazilian constructive alternatives. The construction options considered are reinforced concrete structure and structural masonry. The study was developed for the region of São Leopoldo, southern Brazil. Results indicated that the energy embodied in these two constructive systems is approximately 1.72 GJ·m-2 and 1.26 GJ·m-2, respectively. It may be concluded that the embodied energy is lower in the structural masonry system, with a reduction around to 1/4 in relation to the traditional option. The results can be used to help design decisions.

Relationship of Arm Acupressure Points and Thai Traditional Massage

The purpose of this research paper was to describe the relationship of acupressure points on the anterior surface of the upper limb in accordance with Applied Thai Traditional Massage (ATTM) and the deep structures located at those acupressure points. There were 2 population groups; normal subjects and cadaver specimens. Eighteen males with age ranging from 20-40 years old and seventeen females with ages ranging from 30-97 years old were studies. This study was able to obtain a fundamental knowledge concerning acupressure point and the deep structures that related to those acupressure points. It might be used as the basic knowledge for clinically applying and planning treatment as well as teaching in ATTM.

Thai Halal Products Brand Tips

The purpose of this research is to analyze the marketing strategies of Thai Halal products which related to the way of life for Thai Muslims. The expected benefit is the marketing strategy for brand building process for Halal products in Thailand. 4 elements of marketing strategies which necessary for the brand identity creation is the research framework: consists of Attributes, Benefits, Values and Personality. The research methodology was applied using qualitative and quantitative; 19 marketing experts with dynamic roles in Thai consumer products were interviewed. In addition, a field survey of 122 Thai Muslims selected from 175 Muslim communities in Bangkok was studied. Data analysis will be according to 5 categories of Thai Halal product: 1) Meat 2) Vegetable and Fruits 3) Instant foods and Garnishing ingredient 4) Beverages, Desserts and Snacks 5) Hygienic daily products; such as soap, shampoo and body lotion. The results will explain some suitable representation in the marketing strategies of Thai Halal products as are: 1) Benefit; the characteristics of the product with its benefit. Consumers will purchase this product with the reason of; it is beneficial nutrients product, there are no toxic or chemical residues. Fresh and clean materials 2) Attribute; the exterior images that attract to consumer. Consumers will purchase this product with the reason of; there is a standard proof mark, food and drug secure proof mark and Halal products mark. Packaging and its materials should be draw attention. Use an attractive graphic. Use outstanding images of product, material or ingredients. 3) Value; the value of products that affect to consumers perception; it is healthy products. Accumulate quality of life. It is a product of expertise, manufacturing of research result. Consumers are important. It’s sincere, honest and reliable to all. 4) Personality; reflection of consumers thought. The Personality feedback to them after they were consumes this product; they are health care persons. They are the rational person, moral person, justice person and thoughtful person like a progressive thinking.

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Customers Satisfaction: Evidences nearby Khao San Road

The study aims to determine which factors account for customer satisfaction and to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and business success, in particular, context of the information understanding of hostel business in Pranakorn district, Bangkok and the significant element of entrepreneurship in tourism industry. This study covers 352 hostels customers and 61 hostel owners/managers nearby Khao San road. Data collection methods were used by survey questionnaire and a series of hypotheses were developed from services marketing literature. The findings suggest the customer satisfaction most influenced by image, service quality, room quality and price accordingly. Furthermore the findings revealed that significant relationships exist between entrepreneurial orientation and business success; while competitive aggressiveness was found unrelated. The ECSI model’s generic measuring customer satisfaction was found partially mediate the business success. A reconsideration of other variables applicable should be supported with the model of hostel business. The study provides context and overall view of hostel business while discussing from the entrepreneurial orientation to customer satisfaction, thereby reducing decision risk on hostel investment.

Development of a Vegetation Searching System

  This paper describes the development of a Vegetation Searching System based on Web Application in case of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. The model was developed by PHP, JavaScript and MySQL database system and it was designed to support searching for endemic and rare species of trees on Web site. We describe the design methods and functional components of this prototype. To evaluate the system performance, questionnaires for the system usability and Black Box Testing were used to measure expert and user satisfaction. The results were satisfactory as followed: Means for experts and users were 4.30 and 4.50, and standard deviation for experts and users were 0.61and 0.73 respectively. Further analysis showed that the quality of the plant searching Website was also at a good level as well.

Solving Definition and Relation Problems in English Navigation Terminology

Because of the increasing multidisciplinarity and multilinguality, communication problems in different technical fields grow more and more. Therefore, each technical field has its own specific language, terminology which is characterized by the different definition of terms. In addition to definition problems, there are also relation problems between terms. Among these problems of relation, there are the synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy/hyponymy, ambiguity, risk of confusion and translation problems etc. Thus, the terminology management system iglos of the Institute for Traffic Safety and Automation Engineering of the Technische Universität Braunschweig has the target to solve these problems by a methodological standardisation of term definitions with the aid of the iglos sign model and iglos relation types. The focus of this paper should be on solving definition and relation problems between terms in English navigation terminology.

Antioxidant Properties and Nutritive Values of Raw and Cooked Pool Barb (Puntius sophore) of Eastern Himalayas

Antioxidant properties and nutritive values of raw and cooked Pool barb, Puntius sophore (Hamilton-Buchanan) of Eastern Himalayas, India were determined. Antioxidant activity of the methanol extract of the raw, steamed, fried and curried Pool barb was evaluated by using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging assay. In DPPH scavenging assay the IC50 value of the raw, steamed, fried and curried Pool barb was 1.66 micro-gram/ml, 16.09 micro-gram/ml, 8.99 micro-gram/ml, 0.59 micro-gram/ml whereas the IC50 of the reference ascorbic acid was 46.66miro-gram/ml. These results showed that the fish have high antioxidant activity. Protein content was found highest in raw (20.50±0.08%) and lowest in curried (18.66±0.13%). Moisture content in raw, fried and curried was 76.35±0.09, 46.27±0.14 and 57.46±0.24 respectively. Lipid content was recorded 2.46±0.14% in raw and 21.76±0.10% in curried. Ash content varied from 12.57±0.11 to 22.53±0.07%. The total amino acids varied from 36.79±0.02 and 288.43±0.12 mg/100g. Eleven essential mineral elements were found abundant in all the samples. The samples had considerable amount of Fe ranging from 152.17 to 320.39 milli-gram/100gram, Ca 902.06 to 1356.02 milli-gram/100gram, Zn 91.07 to 138.14 milli-gram/100gram, K 193.25 to 261.56 milli-gram/100gram, Mg 225.06 to 229.10 milli-gram/100gram. Ni was not detected in the curried fish. The Mg and K contents were significantly decreased in frying method; however the Fe, Cu, Ca, Co and Mn contents were increased significantly in all the cooked samples. The Mg and Na contents were significantly increased in curried sample and the Cr content was decreased significantly (p

A Development of OTOP Web Application: In Case of Samut Songkhram Province

This paper aims to present the development of a web‑based system to serve the need of selling OTOP products in Samut Songkhram, Thailand. This system was designed to promote and sell OTOP products on Web site. We describe the design approaches and functional components of this system. The system was developed by PHP and JavaScript and MySQL database System. To evaluate the system performance, questionnaires were used to measure user satisfaction with system usability by specialists and users. The results were satisfactory as followed: Means for specialists and users were 4.05 and 3.97, and standard deviation for specialists and users were 0.563 and 0.644 respectively. Further analysis showed that the quality of One Tambon One Product (OTOP) Website was also at a good level as well.

Understanding and Political Participation in Constitutional Monarchy of Dusit District Residents

The purposes of this research were to study in three areas: 1) to study political understanding and participating of the constitutional monarchy, 2) to study the level of participation. This paper drew upon data collected from 395 Dusit residents by using questionnaire. In addition, a simple random sampling was utilized to collect data. The findings revealed that 94 percent of respondents had a very good understanding of constitution monarchy with a mean of 4.8. However, the respondents overall had a very low level of participation with the mean score of 1.69 and standard deviation of .719. 

The Current Situation of Ang Thong Province’s Court Doll Distribution

This research is objected to study the pattern and channel of distribution of Ang Thong’s court doll OTOP product and try to develop the quality of distribution of the court doll product. The population of this research is 50 court doll manufacturers of Ang Thong’s court doll. The data and information was collected by using the questionnaire and use percentage, mean and standard deviation as an analysis tools. The distribution channel of Ang Thong’s court doll can be separated into 3 channels which are direct distribution from the manufacturer, via the middleman and via the co-operated manufacturing group. In the direct distribution from the manufacturer channel, it was found that the manufacturer is given the highest rate of importance to how they keep the inventory. In the distribution via the middleman channel, it was found that the manufacturer is given the highest rate of importance to the distribution efficiency. But in the distribution via the co-operated manufacturing group, it was found that the manufacturer is given the highest rate of importance to the public relationship.

Public Transport Planning System by Dijkstra Algorithm: Case Study Bangkok Metropolitan Area

Nowadays the promotion of the public transportation system in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area is increased such as the “Free Bus for Thai Citizen” Campaign and the prospect of the several MRT       routes to increase the convenient and comfortable to the Bangkok Metropolitan area citizens. But citizens do not make full use of them it because the citizens are lack of the data and information and also the confident to the public transportation system of Thailand especially in the time and safety aspects. This research is the Public Transport Planning System by Dijkstra Algorithm: Case Study Bangkok Metropolitan Area by focusing on buses, BTS and MRT schedules/routes to give the most information to passengers. They can choose the way and the routes easily by using Dijkstra STAR Algorithm of Graph Theory which also shows the fare of the trip. This Application was evaluated by 30 normal users to find the mean and standard deviation of the developed system. Results of the evaluation showed that system is at a good level of satisfaction (4.20 and 0.40). From these results we can conclude that the system can be used properly and effectively according to the objective.

Mining Educational Data to Support Students’ Major Selection

This paper aims to create the model for student in choosing an emphasized track of student majoring in computer science at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. The objective of this research is to develop the suggested system using data mining technique to analyze knowledge and conduct decision rules. Such relationships can be used to demonstrate the reasonableness of student choosing a track as well as to support his/her decision and the system is verified by experts in the field. The sampling is from student of computer science based on the system and the questionnaire to see the satisfaction. The system result is found to be satisfactory by both experts and student as well. 

Application of EEG Wavelet Power to Prediction of Antidepressant Treatment Response

In clinical practice, the selection of an antidepressant often degrades to lengthy trial-and-error. In this work we employ a normalized wavelet power of alpha waves as a biomarker of antidepressant treatment response. This novel EEG metric takes into account both non-stationarity and intersubject variability of alpha waves. We recorded resting, 19-channel EEG (closed eyes) in 22 inpatients suffering from unipolar (UD, n=10) or bipolar (BD, n=12) depression. The EEG measurement was done at the end of the short washout period which followed previously unsuccessful pharmacotherapy. The normalized alpha wavelet power of 11 responders was markedly different than that of 11 nonresponders at several, mostly temporoparietal sites. Using the prediction of treatment response based on the normalized alpha wavelet power, we achieved 81.8% sensitivity and 81.8% specificity for channel T4.

A Simple Heat and Mass Transfer Model for Salt Gradient Solar Ponds

A salinity gradient solar pond is a free energy source system for collecting, convertingand storing solar energy as heat. In thispaper, the principles of solar pond are explained. A mathematical model is developed to describe and simulate heat and mass transferbehaviour of salinity gradient solar pond. MATLAB codes are programmed to solve the one dimensional finite difference method for heat and mass transfer equations. Temperature profiles and concentration distributions are calculated. The numerical results are validated with experimental data and the results arefound to be in good agreement.

Retaining Users in a Commercially-Supported Social Network

A commercially-supported social network has become an emerging channel for an organization to communicate with and provide services to customers. The success of the commercially-supported social network depends on the ability of the organization to keep the customers in participating in the network. Drawing from the theories of information adoption, information systems continuance, and web usability, the author develops a model to explore how a commercially-supported social network can encourage customers to continue participating and using the information in the network. The theoretical model will be proved through an online survey of customers using the commercially-supported social networking sites of several high technology companies operating in the same sector. The result will be compared with previous studies to learn about the explanatory power of the research model, and to identify the main factors determining users’ intention to continue using a commercially-supported social network. Theoretical and practical implications and limitations are discussed.

The Inhibitory Effect of Weissella koreensis 521 Isolated from Kimchi on 3T3-L1 Adipocyte Differentiation

Abnormal adipocyte growth, in terms of increased cell numbers and increased cell differentiation, is considered to be a major pathological feature of obesity. Thus, the inhibition of preadipocyte mitogenesis and differentiation could help prevent and suppress obesity. The aim of this study was to assess whether extracts from Weissella koreensis 521 cells isolated from kimchi could exert anti-adipogenic effects in 3T3-L1 cells (fat cells). Differentiating 3T3-L1 cells were treated with W. koreensis 521 cell extracts (W. koreensis 521_CE), and cell viability was assessed by MTT assays. At concentrations below 0.2 mg/ml, W. koreensis 521_CE did not exert any cytotoxic effect in 3T3-L1 cells. However, treatment with W. koreensis 521_CE significantly inhibited adipocyte differentiation, as assessed by morphological analysis and Oil Red O staining of fat. W. koreensis 521_CE treatment (0.2 mg/ml) also reduced lipid accumulation by 24% in fully differentiated 3T3-L1 adipocytes. These findings collectively indicate that Weissella koreensis 521 may help prevent obesity.

Utilization of Soymilk Residue for Wheat Flour Substitution in Gyoza skin

Soymilk residue is obtained as a byproduct from soymilk and tofu production with little economic value. It contains high protein and fiber as well as various minerals and phyto-chemical compounds. The objective of this research was to substitute soymilk residue for wheat flour in gyoza skin in order to enhance value of soymilk residue and increase protein and fiber content of gyoza skin. Wheat flour was replaced with soymilk residue from 0 to 40%. The soy milk residue prepared in this research contains 26.92%protein, 3.58% fiber, 2.88% lipid, 6.29% ash and 60.33% carbohydrate. The results showed that increasing soymilk residue decreased lightness (L*value), tensile strength and sensory attributes but increased redness (a*), yellowness (b*), protein and fiber contents of product. The result also showed that the gyoza skin substituted with 30% soymilk residue was the most acceptable (p≤0.05) and its protein and fiber content increased up to 45 % and 867 % respectively.

Clove Essential Oil Improves Lipid Peroxidation and Antioxidant Activity in Tilapia Fish Fillet Cooked by Grilling and Microwaving

The fish meat plays an important role in the human health as it contains high quality protein. The tilapia fish considered as the third largest group of farmed fish. The oxidative deterioration of fish meat may occur during the cooking process. The proper cooking process and using natural antioxidant to prevent oxidation and enhance the quality of the tilapia fish fillet is necessary. Hence, this research was carried out to evaluate the potential of clove essential oil to prevent lipid peroxidation and enhance the antioxidant activity of tilapia fish fillet cooked using microwaving and grilling methods. The results showed that cooking using microwave significantly (p

Precipitation Hardening Behavior of Directly Cold Rolled Al-6Mg Alloy Containing Ternary Sc and Quaternary Zi/Ti

Ageing of 75% cold rolled Al-6Mg alloy with ternary 0.4 wt% scandium and quaternary zirconium and titanium has been carried out. Alloy samples are naturally, isochronally and isothermally aged for different time and temperatures. Hardness values of the differently processed alloys have been measured to understand the ageing behavior of Al-6Mg alloy with scandium and quaternary zirconium and titanium addition. Resistivity changes with annealing time and temperature were measured to understand the precipitation behavior and recovery of strain of the alloy. Attempts were also made to understand the grain refining effect of scandium in Al-6Mg alloy. It is observed that significant hardening takes place in the aged alloys due to the precipitation of scandium aluminides and the dendrites of the Al-6Mg alloy have been refined significantly due to addition of scandium.

Modeling and Simulation of Delaminations in FML Using Step Pulsed Active Thermography

The study focuses to investigate the thermal response of delaminations and develop mathematical models using numerical results to obtain the optimum heat requirement and time to identify delaminations in GLARE type of Fibre Metal Laminates (FML) in both reflection mode and through-transmission (TT) mode of step pulsed active thermography (SPAT) method in the type of nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDTE) technique. The influence of applied heat flux and time on various sizes and depth of delaminations in FML is analyzed to investigate the thermal response through numerical simulations. A finite element method (FEM) is applied to simulate SPAT through ANSYS software based on 3D transient heat transfer principle with the assumption of reflection mode and TT mode of observation individually. The results conclude that the numerical approach based on SPAT in reflection mode is more suitable for analysing smaller size of near-surface delaminations located at the thermal stimulator side and TT mode is more suitable for analysing smaller size of deeper delaminations located far from thermal stimulator side or near thermal detector/Infrared camera side. The mathematical models provide the optimum q and T at the required MRTD to identify unidentified delamination 7 with 25015.0022W/m2 at 2.531sec and delamination 8 with 16663.3356 W/m2 at 1.37857sec in reflection mode. In TT mode, the delamination 1 with 34954W/m2 at 13.0399sec, delamination 2 with 20002.67W/m2 at 1.998sec and delamination 7 with 20010.87 W/m2 at 0.6171sec could be identified.