Abstract: Service-oriented systems have become popular and
presented many advantages in develop and maintain process. The
coupling is the most important attribute of services when they are
integrated into a system. In this paper, we propose a suite of metrics
to evaluate service-s quality according to its ability of coupling. We
use the coupling metrics to measure the maintainability, reliability,
testability, and reusability of services. Our proposed metrics are
operated in run-time which bring more exact results.
Abstract: The effects of different parameters on the
hydrodynamics of trickle bed reactors were discussed for Newtonian
and non-Newtonian foaming systems. The varying parameters are
varying liquid velocities, gas flow velocities and surface tension. The
range for gas velocity is particularly large, thanks to the use of dense
gas to simulate very high pressure conditions. This data bank has
been used to compare the prediction accuracy of the different
trendlines and transition points from the literature. More than 240
experimental points for the trickle flow (GCF) and foaming pulsing
flow (PF/FPF) regime were obtained for present study.
Hydrodynamic characteristics involving dynamic liquid saturation
significantly influenced by gas and liquid flow rates. For 15 and 30
ppm air-aqueous surfactant solutions, dynamic liquid saturation
decreases with higher liquid and gas flow rates considerably in high
interaction regime. With decrease in surface tension i.e. for 45 and 60
ppm air-aqueous surfactant systems, effect was more pronounced
with decreases dynamic liquid saturation very sharply during regime
transition significantly at both low liquid and gas flow rates.
Abstract: Controlled release urea has become popular in agricultural industry as it helps to solve environmental issues and increase crop yield. Recently biomass was identified to replace the polymer used as a coating material in the conventional coated urea. In this paper spreading and contact angle of biomass droplet (lignin, cellulose and clay) on urea surface are investigated experimentally. There were two tests were conducted, sessile drop for contact angle measurement and pendant drop for contact angle measurement. A different concentration of biomass droplet was released from 30 mm above a substrate. Glass was used as a controlled substrate. Images were recorded as soon as the droplet impacted onto the urea before completely adsorb into the urea. Digitized droplets were then used to identify the droplet-s surface tension and contact angle. There is large difference observed between the low surface tension and high surface tension liquids, where the wetting and spreading diameter is higher for lower surface tension. From the contact angle results, the data showed that the biomass coating films were possible as wetting liquid (θ < 90º). Contact angle of biomass coating material gives good indication for the wettablity of a liquid on urea surface.
Abstract: Chronic diseases prevailed along with economic
growth as well as life style changed in recent years in Taiwan.
According to the governmental statistics, hypertension related disease
is the tenth of death causes with 1,816 died directly from hypertension
in 2010. There were more death causes amongst the top ten had been
proofed that having strong association with the hypertension, such as
heart diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Hypertension or
High blood pressure is one of the major indicators for chronic diseases,
and was generally perceived as the major causes of mortality. The
literature generally suggested that regular physical exercise was
helpful to prevent the occurrence or to ease the progress of a
hypertension. This paper reported the process and outcomes in
detailed of an improvement project of physical exercise intervention
specific for hypertension patients. Physical information were
measured before and after the project to obtain information such as
weight, waistline, cholesterol (HD & LD), blood examination, as well
as self-perceived health status. The intervention project involved a
six-week exercise program, of which contained three times a week, 30
minutes of tutored physical exercise intervention. The project had
achieved several gains in changing the subjects- behavior in terms of
many important biophysical indexes. Around 20% of the participants
had significantly improved their cholesterols, BMI, and changed
unhealthy behaviors. Results from the project were encouraging, and
would be good reference for other samples.
Abstract: The development of shape and size of a crack in a
pressure vessel under uniaxial and biaxial loadings is important in
fitness-for-service evaluations such as leak-before-break. In this
work finite element modelling was used to evaluate the mean stress
and the J-integral around a front of a surface-breaking crack. A
procedure on the basis of ductile tearing resistance curves of high and
low constrained fracture mechanics geometries was developed to
estimate the amount of ductile crack extension for surface-breaking
cracks and to show the evolution of the initial crack shape. The
results showed non-uniform constraint levels and crack driving forces
around the crack front at large deformation levels. It was also shown
that initially semi-elliptical surface cracks under biaxial load
developed higher constraint levels around the crack front than in
uniaxial tension. However similar crack shapes were observed with
more extensions associated with cracks under biaxial loading.
Abstract: In textile industry, besides the conventional textile
products, technical textile goods, that have been brought external
functional properties into, are being developed for technical textile
industry. Especially these products produced with weaving
technology are widely preferred in areas such as sports, geology,
medical, automotive, construction and marine sectors. These textile
products are exposed to various stresses and large deformations under
typical conditions of use. At this point, sufficient and reliable data
could not be obtained with uniaxial tensile tests for determination of
the mechanical properties of such products due to mainly biaxial
stress state. Therefore, the most preferred method is a biaxial tensile
test method and analysis. These tests and analysis is applied to fabrics
with different functional features in order to establish the textile
material with several characteristics and mechanical properties of the
product. Planar biaxial tensile test, cylindrical inflation and bulge
tests are generally required to apply for textile products that are used
in automotive, sailing and sports areas and construction industry to
minimize accidents as long as their service life. Airbags, seat belts
and car tires in the automotive sector are also subject to the same
biaxial stress states, and can be characterized by same types of
experiments. In this study, in accordance with the research literature
related to the various biaxial test methods are compared. Results with
discussions are elaborated mainly focusing on the design of a biaxial
test apparatus to obtain applicable experimental data for developing a
finite element model. Sample experimental results on a prototype
system are expressed.
Abstract: Transient Stability is an important issue in power systems planning, operation and extension. The objective of transient stability analysis problem is not satisfied with mere transient instability detection or evaluation and it is most important to complement it by defining fast and efficient control measures in order to ensure system security. This paper presents a new Fuzzy Support Vector Machines (FSVM) to investigate the stability status of power systems and a modified generation rescheduling scheme to bring back the identified unstable cases to a more economical and stable operating point. FSVM improves the traditional SVM (Support Vector Machines) by adding fuzzy membership to each training sample to indicate the degree of membership of this sample to different classes. The preventive control based on economic generator rescheduling avoids the instability of the power systems with minimum change in operating cost under disturbed conditions. Numerical results on the New England 39 bus test system show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Abstract: Hospitals in southern Hualien teamed with the
Hypertension Joint Care Network. Working with the network, the
team provided a special designed health education to the individual
who had been identified as a hypertension patient in the outpatient
department. Some metabolism improvements achieved. This is a
retrospective study by purposively taking 106 patients from a hospital
between 2008 and 2010. Records of before and after education
intervention of the objects was collected and analyzed to see the how
the intervention affected the patients- hypertension control via clinical
parameter monitoring. The results showed that the clinical indicators,
the LDL-C, the cholesterol and the systolic blood pressure were
significantly improved. The study provides evidence for the
effectiveness of the network in controlling hypertension.