Abstract: The crude oil in an oil well exists in various phases
such as gas, seawater, and sand, as well as oil. Therefore, a phase
separator is needed at the front of a single-phase pump for
pressurization and transfer. On the other hand, the application of a
multiphase pump can provide such advantages as simplification of the
equipment structure and cost savings, because there is no need for a
phase separation process. Therefore, the crude oil transfer method
using a multiphase pump is being applied to recently developed oil
wells. Due to this increase in demand, technical demands for the
development of multiphase pumps are sharply increasing, but the
progress of research into related technologies is insufficient, due to the
nature of multiphase pumps that require high levels of skills. This
study was conducted to verify the reliability of pump performance
evaluation using numerical analysis, which is the basis of the
development of a multiphase pump. For this study, a model was
designed by selecting the specifications of this study. The performance
of the designed model was evaluated through numerical analysis and
experiment. The results of the performance evaluation were compared
to verify the reliability of the result using numerical analysis.
Abstract: Climate change will affect the hydrological cycle in
many different ways such as increase in evaporation and rainfalls.
There have been growing interests among researchers to identify the
nature of trends in historical rainfall data in many different parts of
the world. This paper examines the trends in annual maximum
rainfall data from 30 stations in New South Wales, Australia by using
two non-parametric tests, Mann-Kendall (MK) and Spearman’s Rho
(SR). Rainfall data were analyzed for fifteen different durations
ranging from 6 min to 3 days. It is found that the sub-hourly
durations (6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 48 minutes) show statistically
significant positive (upward) trends whereas longer duration (subdaily
and daily) events generally show a statistically significant
negative (downward) trend. It is also found that the MK test and SR
test provide notably different results for some rainfall event durations
considered in this study. Since shorter duration sub-hourly rainfall
events show positive trends at many stations, the design rainfall data
based on stationary frequency analysis for these durations need to be
adjusted to account for the impact of climate change. These shorter
durations are more relevant to many urban development projects
based on smaller catchments having a much shorter response time.
Abstract: One of the biggest challenges facing Theological/
Religious Education in Nigeria is access to quality learning materials.
For instance at the Trinity (Union) Theological College, Umuahia, it
was difficult for lecturers to access suitable and qualitative materials
for instruction especially the ones that would suit the African context
and stimulate a deep rooted interest among the students. Some
textbooks written by foreign authors were readily available in the
School Library, but were lacking in the College bookshops for
students to own copies. Even when the College was able to order
some of the books from abroad, it did not usher in the needed
enthusiasm expected from the students because they were either very
expensive or very difficult to understand during private studies. So it
became necessary to develop contextual materials which were
affordable and understandable, though with little success. The
National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)’s innovation in the
development and sharing of learning resources through its Open
Courseware is a welcome development and of great assistance to
students. Apart from NOUN students who could easily access the
materials, many others from various theological/religious institutes
across the nation have benefited immensely. So, the thesis of this
paper is that the promotion of open educational resources in
theological/religious education in Nigeria would facilitate a better
informed/equipped religious leadership, which would in turn impact
its adherents for a healthier society and national development.
Adopting a narrative and historical approach within the context of
Nigeria’s educational system, the paper discusses: educational
traditions in Nigeria; challenges facing theological/religious
education in Nigeria; and benefits of open educational resources. The
study goes further to making recommendations on how OER could
positively influence theological/religious education in Nigeria. It is
expected that theologians, religious educators, and ODL practitioners
would find this work very useful.
Abstract: Supermarkets are the most electricity-intensive type of
commercial buildings. The unsuitable indoor environment of a
supermarket provided by abnormal HVAC operations incurs waste
energy consumption in refrigeration systems. This current study
briefly describes significantly solid backgrounds and proposes easyto-
use analysis terminology for investigating the impact of HVAC
operations on refrigeration power consumption using the field-test
data obtained from building automation system (BAS). With solid
backgrounds and prior knowledge, expected energy interactions
between HVAC and refrigeration systems are proposed through
Pearson’s correlation analysis (R value) by considering correlations
between equipment power consumption and dominantly independent
variables (driving force conditions).The R value can be conveniently
utilized to evaluate how strong relations between equipment
operations and driving force parameters are. The calculated R values
obtained from field data are compared to expected ranges of R values
computed by energy interaction methodology. The comparisons can
separate the operational conditions of equipment into faulty and
normal conditions. This analysis can simply investigate the condition
of equipment operations or building sensors because equipment could
be abnormal conditions due to routine operations or faulty
commissioning processes in field tests. With systematically solid and
easy-to-use backgrounds of interactions provided in the present
article, the procedures can be utilized as a tool to evaluate the proper
commissioning and routine operations of HVAC and refrigeration
systems to detect simple faults (e.g. sensors and driving force
environment of refrigeration systems and equipment set-point) and
optimize power consumption in supermarket buildings. Moreover,
the analysis will be used to further study the FDD research for
supermarkets in future.
Abstract: Due to the large amount of information in the World
Wide Web (WWW, web) and the lengthy and usually linearly
ordered result lists of web search engines that do not indicate
semantic relationships between their entries, the search for topically
similar and related documents can become a tedious task. Especially,
the process of formulating queries with proper terms representing
specific information needs requires much effort from the user. This
problem gets even bigger when the user's knowledge on a subject and
its technical terms is not sufficient enough to do so. This article
presents the new and interactive search application DocAnalyser that
addresses this problem by enabling users to find similar and related
web documents based on automatic query formulation and state-ofthe-
art search word extraction. Additionally, this tool can be used to
track topics across semantically connected web documents.
Abstract: Recently, there have been a lot of earthquakes in Japan.
It is necessary to promote seismic isolation devices for buildings. The
devices have been hardly diffused in attached houses, because the
devices are very expensive. We should develop a low-cost seismic
isolation device for detached houses. We suggested a new seismic
isolation device which uses a two-layer circular tube as a unit. If
hysteresis is produced in the two-layer circular tube under lateral
compression load, we think that the two-layer circular tube can have
energy absorbing capacity. It is necessary to contact the outer layer
and the inner layer to produce hysteresis. We have previously reported
how the inner layer comes in contact with the outer layer from a
perspective of analysis used mechanics of materials. We have clarified
that the inner layer comes in contact with the outer layer under a lateral
compression load. In this paper, we explored contact area between the
outer layer and the inner layer under a lateral compression load by
using FEA. We think that changing the inner layer’s thickness is
effective in increase the contact area. In order to change the inner
layer’s thickness, we changed the shape of the inner layer. As a result,
the contact area changes depending on the inner layer’s thickness.
Additionally, we experimented to check whether hysteresis occurs in
fact. As a consequence, we can reveal hysteresis in the two-layer
circular tube under the condition.
Abstract: Molluca Collision Zone is located at the junction of
the Eurasian, Australian, Pacific and the Philippines plates. Between
the Sangihe arc, west of the collision zone, and to the east of
Halmahera arc is active collision and convex toward the Molluca Sea.
This research will analyze the behavior of earthquake occurrence in
Molluca Collision Zone related to the distributions of an earthquake
in each partition regions, determining the type of distribution of a
occurrence earthquake of partition regions, and the mean occurence
of earthquakes each partition regions, and the correlation between the
partitions region. We calculate number of earthquakes using partition
method and its behavioral using conventional statistical methods. In
this research, we used data of shallow earthquakes type and its
magnitudes ≥4 SR (period 1964-2013). From the results, we can
classify partitioned regions based on the correlation into two classes:
strong and very strong. This classification can be used for early
warning system in disaster management.
Abstract: Kigelia africana (Lam.) Benth. (Bignoniaceae) is a
reputed traditional remedy for various human ailments such as skin
diseases, microbial infections, melanoma, stomach troubles,
metabolic disorders, malaria and general pains. In spite of the fruit
being widely used for purposes related to its antibacterial and
antifungal properties, the chemical constituents associated with the
activity have not been fully identified. To elucidate the active
principles, we evaluated the antimicrobial activity of fruit extracts
and purified fractions against Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus
faecalis, Moraxella catarrhalis, Escherichia coli, Candida albicans
and Candida tropicalis. Shade-dried fruits were powdered and
extracted with hydroalcoholic (1:1) mixture by soaking at room
temperature for 72 h. The crude extract was further fractionated by
column chromatography, with successive elution using hexane,
dichloromethane, ethyl acetate, acetone and methanol. The
dichloromethane and ethyl acetate fractions were combined and
subjected to column chromatography to furnish a wax and oil from
the eluates of 20% and 40% ethyl acetate in hexane, respectively. The
GC-MS and GC×GC-MS results revealed that linoleic acid, linolenic
acid, palmitic acid, arachidic acid and stearic acid were the major
constituents in both oil and wax. The crude hydroalcoholic extract
exhibited the strongest activity with MICs of 0.125-0.5 mg/mL,
followed by the ethyl acetate (MICs = 0.125-1.0 mg/mL),
dichloromethane (MICs = 0.250-2.0 mg/mL), hexane (MICs = 0.25-
2.0 mg/mL), acetone (MICs = 0.5-2.0 mg/mL) and methanol (MICs =
1.0-2.0 mg/mL), whereas the wax (MICs = 2.0-4.0 mg/mL) and oil
(MICs = 4.0-8.0 mg/mL) showed poor activity. The study concludes
that synergistic interactions of chemical constituents could be
responsible for the antimicrobial activity of K. africana fruits, which
needs a more holistic approach to understand the mechanism of its
antimicrobial activity.
Abstract: Apps are today the most important possibility to adapt
mobile phones and computers to fulfill the special needs of their
users. Location- and context-sensitive programs are hereby the key to
support the interaction of the user with his/her environment and also
to avoid an overload with a plenty of dispensable information. The
contribution shows, how a trusted, secure and really bi-directional
communication and interaction among users and their environment
can be established and used, e.g. in the field of home automation.
Abstract: The study identified the socio-economic and
demographic factors of both married and unmarried females in third
world countries. Almost all the countries have same problems but we
have selected Pakistan as a sample country. The main purpose of this
study was to examine which factors forced women to participate in
labor market. So the best technique of data collection was survey of
both married and unmarried females between the ages of 20 to 49.
Two models (probit and logit) were used to analyze the factors which
effect on FLFP. The result showed that some factors e.g. age;
education and marital status have significant effect on FLFP. The
findings showed that educated women and those who belong to joint
families are more participate because of financial pressure.
Abstract: The reachable set bounding estimation for distributed
delay systems with disturbances is a new problem. In this paper,we
consider this problem subject to not only time varying delay and
polytopic uncertainties but also distributed delay systems which is
not studied fully untill now. we can obtain improved non-ellipsoidal
reachable set estimation for neural networks with time-varying delay
by the maximal Lyapunov-Krasovskii fuctional which is constructed
as the pointwise maximum of a family of Lyapunov-Krasovskii
fuctionals corresponds to vertexes of uncertain polytope.On the other
hand,matrix inequalities containing only one scalar and Matlabs
LMI Toolbox is utilized to give a non-ellipsoidal description of the
reachable set.finally,numerical examples are given to illustrate the
existing results.
Abstract: Robotics provides answers to amputees. The most
expensive solutions surgically connect the prosthesis to nerve endings.
There are also several types of non-invasive technologies that recover
nerve messages passing through the muscles. After analyzing these
messages, myoelectric prostheses perform the desired movement.
The main goal is to avoid all surgeries, which can be heavy and offer
cheaper alternatives. For an amputee, we use valid muscles to recover
the electrical signal involved in a muscle movement. EMG sensors
placed on the muscle allows us to measure a potential difference,
which our program transforms into control for a robotic arm with two
degrees of freedom. We have shown the feasibility of non-invasive
prostheses with two degrees of freedom. Signal analysis and an
increase in degrees of freedom is still being improved.
Abstract: The psychological impact of peer influence on its
individual group members, can make them resist HIV/AIDS
counselling and testing. This study investigated the correlate of peer
influence and resistance to HIV/AIDS counselling and testing among
students in tertiary institutions in Kano state, Nigeria. To achieve
this, three null hypotheses were postulated and tested. Cross-
Sectional Survey Design was employed in which 1512 sample was
selected from a student population of 104,841.Simple Random
Sampling was used in the selection. A self-developed 20-item scale
called Peer Influence and Psychological Resistance Inventory
(PIPRI) was used for data collection. Pearson Product Moment
Correlation (PPMCC) via test-retest method was applied to estimate a
reliability coefficient of 0.86 for the scale. Data obtained was
analyzed using t-test and PPMCC at 0.05 level of confidence. Results
reveal 26.3% (397) of the respondents being influenced by their peer
group, while 39.8% showed resistance. Also, the t-tests and PPMCC
statistics were greater than their respective critical values. This shows
that there was a significant gender difference in peer influence and a
difference between peer influence and resistance to HIV/AIDS
counselling and testing. However, a positive relationship between
peer influence and resistance to HIV/AIDS counselling and testing
was shown. A major recommendation offered suggests the use of
reinforcement and social support for positive attitudes and
maintenance of safe behaviour among students who patronize
HIV/AIDS counselling.
Abstract: Cement-based grouts has been used successfully to
repair cracks in many concrete structures such as bridges, tunnels,
buildings and to consolidate soils or rock foundations. In the present
study the rheological characterization of cement grout with
water/binder ratio (W/B) is fixed at 0.5. The effect of the replacement
of cement by bentonite (2 to 10% wt) in presence of superplasticizer
(0.5% wt) was investigated. Several rheological tests were carried out
by using controlled-stress rheometer equipped with vane geometry in
temperature of 20°C. To highlight the influence of bentonite and
superplasticizer on the rheological behavior of grout cement, various
flow tests in a range of shear rate from 0 to 200 s-1 were observed.
Cement grout showed a non-Newtonian viscosity behavior at all
concentrations of bentonite. Three parameter model Herschel-
Bulkley was chosen for fitting of experimental data. Based on the
values of correlation coefficients of the estimated parameters, The
Herschel-Bulkley law model well described the rheological behavior
of the grouts. Test results showed that the dosage of bentonite
increases the viscosity and yield stress of the system and introduces
more thixotropy. While the addition of both bentonite and
superplasticizer with cement grout improve significantly the fluidity
and reduced the yield stress due to the action of dispersion of SP.
Abstract: In order to study the effect of drought stress on grain
yield, yield components and associated traits of durum wheat
cultivars, an experiment was done as split plot arrangement using
randomized complete block design with three replications in Ilam
province, Iran in 2009-2010 cropping season. Different levels of
irrigation (Full irrigation, drought stress at stem elongation,
Flowering and grain formation stages) were considered as a main plot
and three durum wheat cultivars (Yavaros, Seimareh and Karkheh)
were assigned as a sub plot. The results showed that drought stress
was significant on grain yield, spike.m-2, grain. Spike-1, 1000-grain
weight, biological yield, harvest index and protein content. Drought
stress at all stages caused a loss in grain yield and its components.
Full irrigation had the highest grain yield and yield components.
Drought stress at stem elongation, flowering and grain formation
stages caused a reduction in spike.m-2, grain.spike-1 and 1000-grain
weight, respectively. Protein content was significantly affected by
drought stress. The highest protein content was obtained from
drought stress at grain formation stage. Cultivars had an influence on
grain yield and yield components. Yavaros and Seimareh cultivars
had the highest and lowest grain yield, respectively. Interaction effect
between drought stress and cultivar had a significant effect on grain
and yield components. Full irrigation and Yavaros cultivar had the
highest grain yield and drought stress at grain formation stage and
Seimareh cultivar had the lowest grain yield, respectively.
Abstract: In this paper a scheme is proposed for generating
a programmable current reference which can be implemented
in the CMOS technology. The current can be varied over a
wide range by changing an external voltage applied to one
of the control gates of FGMOS (Floating Gate MOSFET).
For a range of supply voltages and temperature, CMOS
current reference is found to be dependent, this dependence
is compensated by subtracting two current outputs with the
same dependencies on the supply voltage and temperature.
The system performance is found to improve with the
use of FGMOS. Mathematical analysis of the proposed
circuit is done to establish supply voltage and temperature
independence. Simulation and performance evaluation of the
proposed current reference circuit is done using TANNER
EDA Tools. The current reference shows the supply and
temperature dependencies of 520 ppm/V and 312 ppm/oC,
respectively. The proposed current reference can operate down
to 0.9 V supply.
Abstract: With advances in solid-state power electronic devices
and microprocessors, various pulse-width-modulation (PWM)
techniques have been developed for industrial applications. This
paper presents the comparison of two different PWM techniques, the
sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) technique and the space-vector PWM
(SVPWM) technique applied to two level VSI for micro grid
applications. These two methods are compared by discussing their
ease of implementation and by analyzing the output harmonic spectra
of various output voltages (line-to-neutral voltages, and line-to-line
voltages) and their total harmonic distortion (THD). The SVPWM
technique in the under-modulation region can increase the
fundamental output voltage by 15.5% over the SPWM technique.
Abstract: The current study explored the effect of economic
development, financial development and institutional quality on
environmental destruction in upper-middle income countries during
the time period of 1999-2011. The dependent variable is logarithm of
carbon dioxide emissions that can be considered as an index for
destruction or quality of the environment given to its effects on the
environment. Financial development and institutional development
variables as well as some control variables were considered. In order
to study cross-sectional correlation among the countries under study,
Pesaran and Friz test was used. Since the results of both tests show
cross-sectional correlation in the countries under study, seemingly
unrelated regression method was utilized for model estimation. The
results disclosed that Kuznets’ environmental curve hypothesis is
confirmed in upper-middle income countries and also, financial
development and institutional quality have a significant effect on
environmental quality. The results of this study can be considered by
policy makers in countries with different income groups to have
access to a growth accompanied by improved environmental quality.
Abstract: Microarray technology is universally used in the study
of disease diagnosis using gene expression levels. The main
shortcoming of gene expression data is that it includes thousands of
genes and a small number of samples. Abundant methods and
techniques have been proposed for tumor classification using
microarray gene expression data. Feature or gene selection methods
can be used to mine the genes that directly involve in the
classification and to eliminate irrelevant genes. In this paper
statistical measures like T-Statistics, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)
and F-Statistics are used to rank the genes. The ranked genes are used
for further classification. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
algorithm and Shuffled Frog Leaping (SFL) algorithm are used to
find the significant genes from the top-m ranked genes. The Naïve
Bayes Classifier (NBC) is used to classify the samples based on the
significant genes. The proposed work is applied on Lung and Ovarian
datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed method
achieves 100% accuracy in all the three datasets and the results are
compared with previous works.
Abstract: The main goal of this paper was evaluate the effect of
diets containing different levels of probiotic on performance and milk
composition of lactating cows.
Eight Holstein cows were distributed in two 4x4 Latin square. The
diets were based on corn silage, concentrate and the treatment (0, 3, 6
or 9 grams of probiotic/animal/day). It was evaluated the dry matter
intake of nutrients, milk yield and composition.
The use of probiotics did not affect the nutrient intake (p>0.05)
neither the daily milk production or corrected to 4% fat (p>0.05).
However, it was observed that there was a significant fall in milk
composition with higher levels of probiotics supplementation.
These results emphasize the need of further studies with different
experimental designs or improve the number of Latin square with
longer periods of adaptation.