Abstract: In this study, effects of EGR on CO and HC emissions
of a dual fuel HCCI-DI engine are investigated. Tests were
conducted on a single-cylinder variable compression ratio (VCR)
diesel engine with compression ratio of 17.5. Premixed gasoline is
provided by a carburetor connected to intake manifold and equipped
with a screw to adjust premixed air-fuel ratio, and diesel fuel is
injected directly into the cylinder through an injector at pressure of
250 bars. A heater placed at inlet manifold is used to control the
intake charge temperature. Optimal intake charge temperature was
110-115ºC due to better formation of a homogeneous mixture
causing HCCI combustion. Timing of diesel fuel injection has a great
effect on stratification of in-cylinder charge in HCCI combustion.
Experiments indicated 35 BTDC as the optimum injection timing.
Coolant temperature was maintained 50ºC during the tests. Results
show that increasing engine speed at a constant EGR rate leads to
increase in CO and UHC emissions due to the incomplete
combustion caused by shorter combustion duration and less
homogeneous mixture. Results also show that increasing EGR
reduces the amount of oxygen and leads to incomplete combustion
and therefore increases CO emission due to lower combustion
temperature. HC emission also increases as a result of lower
combustion temperatures.
Abstract: This work presents the experimental results obtained
at a pilot plant which works with a slow, wet and catalytic pyrolysis
process of dry fowl manure. This kind of process mainly consists in
the cracking of the organic matrix and in the following reaction of
carbon with water, which is either already contained in the organic
feed or added, to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Reactions
are conducted in a rotating reactor maintained at a temperature of
500°C; the required amount of water is about 30% of the dry organic
feed. This operation yields a gas containing about 59% (on a volume
basis) of hydrogen, 17% of carbon monoxide and other products such
as light hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, propane) and carbon
monoxide in lesser amounts. The gas coming from the reactor can be
used to produce not only electricity, through internal combustion
engines, but also heat, through direct combustion in industrial
boilers. Furthermore, as the produced gas is devoid of both solid
particles and pollutant species (such as dioxins and furans), the
process (in this case applied to fowl manure) can be considered as an
optimal way for the disposal and the contemporary energetic
valorization of organic materials, in such a way that is not damaging
to the environment.
Abstract: In metal cutting industries, mathematical/statistical
models are typically used to predict tool replacement time. These
off-line methods usually result in less than optimum replacement
time thereby either wasting resources or causing quality problems.
The few online real-time methods proposed use indirect measurement
techniques and are prone to similar errors. Our idea is based on
identifying the optimal replacement time using an electronic nose to
detect the airborne compounds released when the tool wear reaches
to a chemical substrate doped into tool material during the
fabrication. The study investigates the feasibility of the idea, possible
doping materials and methods along with data stream mining
techniques for detection and monitoring different phases of tool
wear.
Abstract: Due to availability of powerful image processing software
and improvement of human computer knowledge, it becomes
easy to tamper images. Manipulation of digital images in different
fields like court of law and medical imaging create a serious problem
nowadays. Copy-move forgery is one of the most common types
of forgery which copies some part of the image and pastes it to
another part of the same image to cover an important scene. In
this paper, a copy-move forgery detection method proposed based
on Fourier transform to detect forgeries. Firstly, image is divided to
same size blocks and Fourier transform is performed on each block.
Similarity in the Fourier transform between different blocks provides
an indication of the copy-move operation. The experimental results
prove that the proposed method works on reasonable time and works
well for gray scale and colour images. Computational complexity
reduced by using Fourier transform in this method.
Abstract: 28 healthy adult Maradi bucks were used to evaluate
sperm production and sperm storage capacity in the breed. Daily
sperm production (DSP) averaged 0.55±0.05x109, while the daily
sperm production/g (DSP/g) was 1.37±0.12 x107. Gonadal sperm
reserve was 1.99±0.18 x109, while the caput, upper corpus and lower
corpus averaged 0.58±0.04 x109, 0.36±0.02 x109 and 0.33±0.08 x109
respectively. The proximal cauda, mid cauda, distal cauda and ductus
deferens had values of 0.68±0.10 x109, 1.23±0.16 x109,1.87±0.
x109and 0.17±0.05 x109 respectively. The relative contributions of
the respective epididymal sections and ductus deferens to the total
extragonadal sperm reserves were, 11.11%, 6.89%, 6.32%, 13.03%,
23.56%, 35.82% and 3.26% respectively. Gonadal sperm reserves
were significantly higher (p0.05) to
mid cauda and distal cauda epididymal reserves.
Abstract: The composite materials were prepared by sawdust, cassava starch and natural rubber latex (NR). The mixtures of 15%w/v gelatinized cassava starch and 15%w/v PVOH were used as the binder of these composite materials. The concentrated rubber latex was added to the mixtures. They were mixed rigorously to the treated sawdust in the ratio of 70:30 until achive uniform dispersion. The batters were subjected to the hot compression moulding at the temperature of 160°C and 3,000 psi pressure for 5 min. The experimental results showed that the mechanical properties of composite materials, which contained the gelatinized cassava starch and PVOH in the ratio of 2:1, 20% NR latex by weight of the dry starch and treated sawdust with 5%NaOH or 1% BPO, were the best. It contributed the maximal compression strength (341.10 + 26.11 N), puncture resistance (8.79 + 0.98 N/mm2) and flexural strength (3.99 + 0.72N/mm2). It is also found that the physicochemical and mechanical properties of composites strongly depends on the interface quality of sawdust, cassava starch and NR latex.
Abstract: UK breweries generate extensive by products in the
form of spent grain, slurry and yeast. Much of the spent grain is
produced by large breweries and processed in bulk for animal feed.
Spent brewery grains contain up to 20% protein dry weight and up to
60% fiber and are useful additions to animal feed. Bulk processing is
economic and allows spent grain to be sold so providing an income
to the brewery. A proportion of spent grain, however, is produced by
small local breweries and is more variably distributed to farms or
other users using intermittent collection methods. Such use is much
less economic and may incur losses if not carefully assessed for
transport costs. This study reports an economic returns of using wet
brewery spent grain (WBSG) in animal feed using the Co-product
Optimizer Decision Evaluator model (Cattle CODE) developed by
the University of Nebraska to predict performance and economic
returns when byproducts are fed to finishing cattle. The results
indicated that distance from brewery to farm had a significantly
greater effect on the economics of use of small brewery spent grain
and that alternative uses than cattle feed may be important to
develop.
Abstract: The Yasuj city stream named the Beshar supply
water for different usages such as aquaculture farms , drinking,
agricultural and industrial usages. Fish processing plants
,Agricultural farms, waste water of industrial zones and hospitals
waste water which they are generate by human activity produce a
considerable volume of effluent and when they are released in to the
stream they can effect on the water quality and down stream aquatic
systems. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of outflow
effluent from different human activity and point and non point
pollution sources on the water quality and health of the Beshar
river next to Yasuj. Yasuj is the biggest and most important city in
the Kohkiloye and Boyerahmad province . The Beshar River is one
of the most important aquatic ecosystems in the upstream of the
Karun watershed in south of Iran which is affected by point and non
point pollutant sources . This study was done in order to evaluate the
effects of human activities on the water quality and health of the
Beshar river. This river is approximately 190 km in length and
situated at the geographical positions of 51° 20' to 51° 48' E and 30°
18' to 30° 52' N it is one of the most important aquatic ecosystems of
Kohkiloye and Boyerahmad province in south-west Iran. In this
research project, five study stations were selected to examine water
pollution in the Beshar River systems. Human activity is now one of
the most important factors affecting on hydrology and water quality
of the Beshar river. Humans use large amounts of resources to sustain
various standards of living, although measures of sustainability are
highly variable depending on how sustainability is defined. The
Beshar river ecosystems are particularly sensitive and vulnerable to
human activities. The water samples were analyzed, then some
important water quality parameters such as pH, dissolve oxygen
(DO), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Chemical Oxygen
Demand (COD), Total Suspended Solids (TDS),Turbidity,
Temperature, Nitrates (NO3) and Phosphates (PO4) were estimated
at the two stations. The results show a downward trend in the water
quality at the down stream of the city. The amounts of
BOD5,COD,TSS,T,Turbidity, NO3 and PO4 in the down stream
stations were considerably more than the station 1. By contrast the
amounts of DO in the down stream stations were less than to the
station 1. However when effluent discharge consequence of human
activities are released into the Beshar river near the city, the quality
of river are decreases and the environmental problems of the river
during the next years are predicted to rise.
Abstract: The primary objective of this paper was to construct a
“kinematic parameter-independent modeling of three-axis machine
tools for geometric error measurement" technique. Improving the
accuracy of the geometric error for three-axis machine tools is one of
the machine tools- core techniques. This paper first applied the
traditional method of HTM to deduce the geometric error model for
three-axis machine tools. This geometric error model was related to the
three-axis kinematic parameters where the overall errors was relative
to the machine reference coordinate system. Given that the
measurement of the linear axis in this model should be on the ideal
motion axis, there were practical difficulties. Through a measurement
method consolidating translational errors and rotational errors in the
geometric error model, we simplified the three-axis geometric error
model to a kinematic parameter-independent model. Finally, based on
the new measurement method corresponding to this error model, we
established a truly practical and more accurate error measuring
technique for three-axis machine tools.
Abstract: A typical definition of the Computer Aided Diagnosis
(CAD), found in literature, can be: A diagnosis made by a radiologist
using the output of a computerized scheme for automated image
analysis as a diagnostic aid. Often it is possible to find the expression
Computer Aided Detection (CAD or CADe): this definition
emphasizes the intent of CAD to support rather than substitute the
human observer in the analysis of radiographic images. In this article
we will illustrate the application of CAD systems and the aim of
these definitions.
Commercially available CAD systems use computerized
algorithms for identifying suspicious regions of interest. In this paper
are described the general CAD systems as an expert system
constituted of the following components: segmentation / detection,
feature extraction, and classification / decision making.
As example, in this work is shown the realization of a Computer-
Aided Detection system that is able to assist the radiologist in
identifying types of mammary tumor lesions. Furthermore this
prototype of station uses a GRID configuration to work on a large
distributed database of digitized mammographic images.
Abstract: This work examines thermal convection in two porous
layers. Flow in the upper layer is governed by Brinkman-s equations
model and in the lower layer is governed by Darcy-s model.
Legendre polynomials are used to obtain numerical solution when the
lower layer is heated from below.
Abstract: Effect of oral administration of “Gadagi" tea on liver
function was assessed on 50 healthy male albino rats which were
grouped and administered with different doses(mg/kg) i.e low dose
(380mg/kg, 415mg/kg, 365mg/kg, 315mg/kg for “sak", “sada" and
“magani" respectively), standard dose ( 760mg/kg, 830mg/kg,
730mg/kg for “sak-, “sada" and “magani" respectively) and high dose
(1500mg/kg, 1700mg/kg and 1460mg/kg for “sak--,"sada" and
“magani" groups respectively) for a period of four weeks. Animals
that were not administered with the tea constituted the control group.
At the end of fourth week, the animals were sacrificed and their
serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase
(AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total protein (TP), albumin
(ALB), and globulins (GLO) were determined. Mean serum ALT and
ALP activities were significantly higher (P
Abstract: A new target detection technique is presented in this
paper for the identification of small boats in coastal surveillance. The
proposed technique employs an adaptive progressive thresholding (APT) scheme to first process the given input scene to separate any
objects present in the scene from the background. The preprocessing
step results in an image having only the foreground objects, such as
boats, trees and other cluttered regions, and hence reduces the search
region for the correlation step significantly. The processed image is then fed to the shifted phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform
correlator (SPFJTC) technique which produces single and delta-like
correlation peak for a potential target present in the input scene. A
post-processing step involves using a peak-to-clutter ratio (PCR) to determine whether the boat in the input scene is authorized or unauthorized. Simulation results are presented to show that the
proposed technique can successfully determine the presence of an authorized boat and identify any intruding boat present in the given input scene.
Abstract: Measurement of the quality of image compression is important for image processing application. In this paper, we propose an objective image quality assessment to measure the quality of gray scale compressed image, which is correlation well with subjective quality measurement (MOS) and least time taken. The new objective image quality measurement is developed from a few fundamental of objective measurements to evaluate the compressed image quality based on JPEG and JPEG2000. The reliability between each fundamental objective measurement and subjective measurement (MOS) is found. From the experimental results, we found that the Maximum Difference measurement (MD) and a new proposed measurement, Structural Content Laplacian Mean Square Error (SCLMSE), are the suitable measurements that can be used to evaluate the quality of JPEG200 and JPEG compressed image, respectively. In addition, MD and SCLMSE measurements are scaled to make them equivalent to MOS, given the rate of compressed image quality from 1 to 5 (unacceptable to excellent quality).
Abstract: Decision Feedback equalizers (DFEs) usually outperform linear equalizers for channels with intersymbol interference. However, the DFE performance is highly dependent on the availability of reliable past decisions. Hence, in coded systems, where reliable decisions are only available after decoding the full block, the performance of the DFE will be affected. A symbol based DFE is a DFE that only uses the decision after the block is decoded. In this paper we derive the optimal settings of both the feedforward and feedback taps of the symbol based equalizer. We present a novel symbol based DFE filterbank, and derive its taps optimal settings. We also show that it outperforms the classic DFE in terms of complexity and/or performance.
Abstract: During recent years, the traditional learning
approaches have undergone fundamental changes due to the
emergence of new technologies such as multimedia, hypermedia and
telecommunication. E-learning is a modern world phenomenon that
has come into existence in the information age and in a knowledgebased
society. E-learning has developed significantly within a short
period of time. Thus it is of a great significant to secure information,
allow a confident access and prevent unauthorized accesses. Making
use of individuals- physiologic or behavioral (biometric) properties is
a confident method to make the information secure. Among the
biometrics, fingerprint is more acceptable and most countries use it as
an efficient methods of identification. This article provides a new
method to compare the fingerprint comparison by pattern recognition
and image processing techniques. To verify fingerprint, the shortest
distance method is used together with perceptronic multilayer neural
network functioning based on minutiae. This method is highly
accurate in the extraction of minutiae and it accelerates comparisons
due to elimination of false minutiae and is more reliable compared
with methods that merely use directional images.
Abstract: Abdominal aortic aneurysms rupture (AAAs) is one of the main causes of death in the world. This is a very complex phenomenon that usually occurs “without previous warning". Currently, criteria to assess the aneurysm rupture risk (peak diameter and growth rate) can not be considered as reliable indicators. In a first approach, the main geometric parameters of aneurysms have been linked into five biomechanical factors. These are combined to obtain a dimensionless rupture risk index, RI(t), which has been validated preliminarily with a clinical case and others from literature. This quantitative indicator is easy to understand, it allows estimating the aneurysms rupture risks and it is expected to be able to identify the one in aneurysm whose peak diameter is less than the threshold value. Based on initial results, a broader study has begun with twelve patients from the Clinic Hospital of Valladolid-Spain, which are submitted to periodic follow-up examinations.
Abstract: Mycotoxin (aflatoxins) contamination of peanuts is a
great concern for human health. A total of 72 samples of unripe,
roasted, and salty peanuts were collected randomly from Pothohar
plateau of Pakistan for the assessment of aflatoxin. Samples were
dried, ground and extracted by acetonitrile (84%). The filtered
extracts were cleaned up by MycoSep-226 and analyzed by high
performance liquid chromatography with flourescence detector.
Quantification limit of Aflatoxin was 1 μg/kg and 70% Recovery was
observed in spiked samples in the range 1–10 μg/kg. The screening
of mycotoxins indicated that aflatoxins were present in most of the
samples being detected in 82%, in concentrations from 14.25 μg/kg
to 98.80 μg/kg. Optimal conditions for mycotoxin production and
fungal growth are frequently found in the crop fields as well as in
store houses. Human exposure of such toxin can be controlled by
pointed out such awareness and implemented the regulations.
Abstract: We prove detailed analysis of a waveguide-based Schottky barrier photodetector (SBPD) where a thin silicide film is put on the top of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) channel waveguide to absorb light propagating along the waveguide. Taking both the confinement factor of light absorption and the wall scanning induced gain of the photoexcited carriers into account, an optimized silicide thickness is extracted to maximize the effective gain, thereby the responsivity. For typical lengths of the thin silicide film (10-20 Ðçm), the optimized thickness is estimated to be in the range of 1-2 nm, and only about 50-80% light power is absorbed to reach the maximum responsivity. Resonant waveguide-based SBPDs are proposed, which consist of a microloop, microdisc, or microring waveguide structure to allow light multiply propagating along the circular Si waveguide beneath the thin silicide film. Simulation results suggest that such resonant waveguide-based SBPDs have much higher repsonsivity at the resonant wavelengths as compared to the straight waveguidebased detectors. Some experimental results about Si waveguide-based SBPD are also reported.
Abstract: The procurement and cost management approach adopted for mechanical and electrical (M&E) services in Malaysian construction industry have been criticized for its inefficiency. The study examined early cost estimating practices adopted for mechanical and electrical services (M&E) in Malaysia so as to understand the level of compliance of the current techniques with best practices. The methodology adopted for the study is a review of bidding documents used on both completed and on – going building projects awarded between 2008 – 2010 under 9th Malaysian Plan. The analysis revealed that, M&E services cost cannot be reliably estimated at pre-contract stage; the bidding techniques adopted for M&E services failed to provide uniform basis for contractors to submit tender; detailed measurement of items were not made which could complicate post contract cost control and financial management. The paper concluded that, there is need to follow a structured approach in determining the pre-contract cost estimate for M&E services which will serve as a virile tool for post contract cost control.