Abstract: The use of herbs to treat disease is accompanied with the history of human life. This research is aimed to study the anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive effects of hydroalcoholic extract of aerial parts of "Tanacetum balsamita balsamita". In the experimental studies 144 male mice are used. In the inflammatory test, animals were divided into six groups: Control, positive control (receiving Dexamethason at dose of 15mg/kg), and four experimental groups receiving Tanacetum balsamita balsamita hydroalcoholic extract at doses of 25, 50, 100 and 200mg/kg. Xylene was used to induce inflammation. Formalin was used to study the nociceptive effects. Animals were divided into six groups: control group, positive control group (receiving morphine) and four experimental groups receiving Tanacetum balsamita balsamita (Tb.) hydroalcoholic extract at doses of 25, 50, 100 and 200mg/kg. I.p. injection of drugs or normal saline was performed 30 minutes before test. The data were analyzed by using one way Variance analysis and Tukey post test. Aerial parts of Tanacetum balsamita balsamita hydroalcoholic extract decreased significantly inflammatory at dose of 200mg/kg (P
Abstract: Useful lifetime evaluation of railpads were very important in design procedure to assure the safety and reliability. It is, therefore, necessary to establish a suitable criterion for the replacement period of rail pads. In this study, we performed properties and accelerated heat aging tests of rail pads considering degradation factors and all environmental conditions including operation, and then derived a lifetime prediction equation according to changes in hardness, thickness, and static spring constants in the Arrhenius plot to establish how to estimate the aging of rail pads. With the useful lifetime prediction equation, the lifetime of e-clip pads was 2.5 years when the change in hardness was 10% at 25°C; and that of f-clip pads was 1.7 years. When the change in thickness was 10%, the lifetime of e-clip pads and f-clip pads is 2.6 years respectively. The results obtained in this study to estimate the useful lifetime of rail pads for high speed trains can be used for determining the maintenance and replacement schedule for rail pads.
Abstract: This study is carried out to understand the effects of Static frequency converter (SFC) on large machine. SFC has a feature of four quadrant operations. By virtue of this it can be implemented to run a synchronous machine either as a motor or alternator. This dual mode operation helps a single machine to start & run as a motor and then it can be converted as an alternator whenever required. One such dual purpose machine is taken here for study. This machine is installed at a laboratory carrying out short circuit test on high power electrical equipment. SFC connected with this machine is broadly described in this paper. The same SFC has been modeled with the MATLAB/Simulink software. The data applied on this virtual model are the actual parameters from SFC and synchronous machine. After running the model, simulated machine voltage and current waveforms are validated with the real measurements. Processing of these waveforms is done through Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) which reveals that the waveforms are not sinusoidal rather they contain number of harmonics. These harmonics are the major cause of generating shaft voltage. It is known that bearings of electrical machine are vulnerable to current flow through it due to shaft voltage. A general discussion on causes of shaft voltage in perspective with this machine is presented in this paper.
Abstract: ICT services are a key element of communications and important for socio-economic development. In recognition of the importance of this, the Tanzanian Government started to implement a National ICT Broadband Infrastructure Fibre Optic Backbone (NICTBB) in 2009; this development was planned to be implemented in four phases using an optical dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network technology in collaboration with the Chinese Government through the Chinese International Telecommunications Construction Corporation (CITCC) under a bilateral agreement. This paper briefly explores the NICTBB network technologies implementation, operations and Internet bandwidth costs. It also provides an in depth assessment of the delivery of ICT services such as e-services and m-services in both urban and rural areas following commissioning of the NICTBB system. Following quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study shows that there have been significant improvements in utilization efficiency, effectiveness and the reliability of the ICT service such as e-services and m-services the NICTCBB was commissioned.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to use an experiential view of wine tourism to develop a battery of items that can potentially capture the overall Douro Valley experience from the tourist’s perspective. The Douro Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage region located in Portugal, was the target of this study. The research took a mixed approach using both qualitative and quantitative designs. Firstly, we combine the literature review on service quality scales with a content analysis of five in-depth interviews with winery managers and a focus group with wine tourists to identify the main dimensions of the overall tourism experience and to develop a battery of items for each dimension. Eight dimensions of the overall wine tourism experience came out, as follows: winery service and staff, winery facilities, winery service, wine product, wine region environment, wine region accessibilities, wine region´s offerings, and the wine region and winery reputation.
Abstract: Olive oil production sector plays an important role in Portuguese economy. It had a major growth over the last decade, increasing its weight in the overall national exports. International market penetration for Mediterranean traditional products is increasingly more demanding, especially in the Northern European markets, where consumers are looking for more sustainable products. Trying to support this growing demand this study addresses olive oil production under the environmental and eco-efficiency perspectives. The analysis considers two consecutive product life cycle stages: olive trees farming; and olive oil extraction in mills. Addressing olive farming, data collection covered two different organizations: a middle-size farm (~12ha) (F1) and a large-size farm (~100ha) (F2). Results from both farms show that olive collection activities are responsible for the largest amounts of Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. In this activities, estimate for the Carbon Footprint per olive was higher in F2 (188g CO2e/kgolive) than in F1 (148g CO2e/kgolive). Considering olive oil extraction, two different mills were considered: one using a two-phase system (2P) and other with a three-phase system (3P). Results from the study of two mills show that there is a much higher use of water in 3P. Energy intensity (EI) is similar in both mills. When evaluating the GHG generated, two conditions are evaluated: a biomass neutral condition resulting on a carbon footprint higher in 3P (184g CO2e/Lolive oil) than in 2P (92g CO2e/Lolive oil); and a non-neutral biomass condition in which 2P increase its carbon footprint to 273g CO2e/Lolive oil. When addressing the carbon footprint of possible combinations among studied subsystems, results suggest that olive harvesting is the major source for GHG.
Abstract: The spectroscopic study on 4-(9-anthrylazo) phenol has revealed that the azo dye under study exists in two tautomeric forms which are azo phenol and hydrazo keto forms in ratio of almost (1:1). The azo hydrazone tautomerism was confirmed by the use of IR spectroscopy and HNMR in which the characteristic absorption bands and chemical shifts for both tautomers were assigned.
Abstract: This study examined the effect of porous dielectric silica gel the discharge ignition voltage and input power in a plasma reactor. For the experiment was used a plasma reactor with two mesh electrodes made of stainless steel with a mesh size of 0.1x0.1mm. The study analyzed and compared with parameters such as power, ignition and operation voltage of the reactor for two dielectrics a porous and glass. During experiment were observed several new phenomena conducted for porous dielectric. The first phenomenon was the reduction the ignition voltage discharge to volume around few hundred volts. Second it was increase input power six times more compared with power those obtained for the glass dielectric. Thirdly difference it is ΔV between ignition voltage Vi and operating voltage reactor Vm for porous dielectric it was 11%, while ΔV for the glass dielectric it was 60%. Also change the discharge characteristics from DBD for glass dielectric to the streamer resistance discharge for the porous dielectric.
Abstract: In economical evaluation literature, although the combination of some variables such as repair and maintenance costs and accumulated use hours has been widely considered in determining of optimum life for tractor, no investigation has indicated the influence of failure rate on repair and maintenance costs. In this study, the owners of three hundred tractors, which include Massey Ferguson, John Deere and Universal, were interviewed, from five regions of Khouzestan Province. A regression model was used to predict the tractors annual repair and maintenance costs based on failure rate. Results showed that the maximum percentage of annual repair and maintenance costs occurred in engine parts for MF285, JD3140 and U650 tractors while these costs for tire, ring, ball bearing and operator seat were higher compared to other MF399 tractor systems. According to the results of the regression, the failure rate increase would lead to annual repair and maintenance costs increase for all tractors. But, of all the tractors, repair and maintenance costs of JD3140 tractors extremely affected by the failure rate increase.
Abstract: The production of aluminum alloys and ingots –
starting from the processing of alumina to aluminum, and the final
cast product – was studied using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
approach. The studied aluminum supply chain consisted of a carbon
plant, a reduction plant, a casting plant, and a power plant. In the
LCA model, the environmental loads of the different plants for the
production of 1 ton of aluminum metal were investigated. The impact
of the aluminum production was assessed in eight impact categories.
The results showed that for all of the impact categories the power
plant had the highest impact only in the cases of Human Toxicity
Potential (HTP) the reduction plant had the highest impact and in the
Marine Aquatic Eco-Toxicity Potential (MAETP) the carbon plant
had the highest impact. Furthermore, the impact of the carbon plant
and the reduction plant combined was almost the same as the impact
of the power plant in the case of the Acidification Potential (AP). The
carbon plant had a positive impact on the environment when it come
to the Eutrophication Potential (EP) due to the production of clean
water in the process. The natural gas based power plant used in the
case study had 8.4 times less negative impact on the environment
when compared to the heavy fuel based power plant and 10.7 times
less negative impact when compared to the hard coal based power
plant.
Abstract: Television news has gained a new dimension in terms
of ideological approaches as a result of such factors as globalization,
cross monopolization, presence of international companies etc. and
certain strategies have been developed at the production, presentation
and distribution stages of news. In this study, television news about a
process called “settlement process” was investigated. In this
framework, news about the settlement process on TV channels of
TRT 1, ATV, FOX TV, NTV, HABERTÜRK, TRT HABER and
STV was investigated using the content analysis method in terms of
the strategies the ideology construction, attitude towards the party in
power, attitude towards parties in opposition and attitude towards
BDP (Peace and Democracy Part) and Imrali (the island where
Abdullah Ocalan, head of PKK, is kept). First, the aforementioned
TV channels were selected randomly from 3 groups in order to be
able to reveal the representational capacity of commercial, news and
public channels.
The study covers 557 news items broadcast in the main news
bulletins between the dates of 15 March 2013 and 15 March 2013.
While there was a positive attitude towards the government in a
sizable portion of the news about the settlement process (63.6%), the
attitude of 25.3% of the news was impartial towards the government
and 11.3% had a negative attitude. On the other hand, there was a
negative attitude towards the Opposition in a considerable portion of
the news about the settlement process (56.1%). The attitude of 35.9%
of the news towards the Opposition was impartial whereas 8.0% had
a positive attitude. While 34.9% of the news about the settlement
process used the legitimization strategy from among the ideology
construction strategies, 22.8% used the unification strategy, 15.7%
the reification strategy, 15.6% fractional and 11%
concealment/mystification strategy.
Abstract: Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have gained increasing
interest in recent times. This is greatly due to their special features,
which include unusual optical and electronic properties, high stability
and biological compatibility, controllable morphology and size
dispersion, and easy surface functionalization. In typical synthesis,
AuNPs were produced by reduction of gold salt AuCl4 in an
appropriate solvent. A stabilizing agent was added to prevent the
particles from aggregating. The antibacterial activity of different
sizes of gold nanoparticles was investigated against Staphylococcus
aureus, Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas pneumonia using the disk
diffusion method in a Müeller–Hinton Agar. The Au-NPs were
effective against all bacteria tested. That the Au-NPs were
successfully synthesized in suspension and were used to study the
antibacterial activity of the two medicinal plants against some
bacterial pathogens suggests that Au-NPs can be employed as an
effective bacteria inhibitor and may be an effective tool in medical
field. The study clearly showed that the Au-NPs exhibiting inhibition
towards the tested pathogenic bacteria in vitro could have the same
effects in vivo and thus may be useful in the medical field if well
researched into.
Abstract: A cross-sectional survey to ascertain the capacity of laboratory persons in using ICTs was conducted in 15 Ugandan districts (July-August 2013). A self-administered questionnaire served as data collection tool, interview guide and observation checklist. 69 questionnaires were filled, 12 interviews conducted, 45 HC observed. SPSS statistics 17.0 and SAS 9.2 software were used for entry and analyses. 69.35% of participants find it difficult to access a computer at work. Of the 30.65% who find it easy to access a computer at work, a significant 21.05% spend 0 hours on a computer daily. 60% of the participants cannot access internet at work. Of the 40% who have internet at work, a significant 20% lack email address but 20% weekly read emails weekly and 48% daily. It is viable/feasible to pilot informatics projects as strategies to build bridges develop skills for e-health landscape in laboratory services with a bigger financial muscle.
Abstract: In order to investigate the effect of drought stress and row spacing on grain yield and associated traits of Mungbean, an experiment was conducted as a factorial in based on randomized complete block design with three replications in Ilam station, Iran during 2008-2009 growing season. This experiment was conducted in four stages on one kind of Mungbean named Gohar. The experimental factors including (80, 110 and 140mm cumulative evaporation from class A pan) and row spacing (25, 50, and 75cm) were selected. The results of the experiment showed that the varieties affected by the treatment showed significant differences. The highest total yield was obtained in the condition in which evaporation of water was 80mm. Of course some traits such as grain yield did not show a significant difference between the conditions in which evaporation of the irrigation water was 80 and 110mm. The traits under study also showed a significant difference to different raw spacing. Row spacing of 50cm had a higher total yield compared to other raw spaces. It was due to the higher number of pods per plant and grain weight. The interaction of drought stress and row spacing showed that in the condition in which the row space is 50 cm and the evaporation of the irrigation water is 80mm, the highest number of grain is achieved.
Abstract: Nocturnal enuresis or bed-wetting is intermittent incontinence during sleep of children after age 5 that may precipitate wide range of behavioral and developmental problems. One of the non-pharmacological treatment methods is the use of a bed-wetting alarm system. In order to improve comfort conditions of nocturnal enuresis alarm system, modular moisture sensor should be replaced by a textile sensor. In this study behavior and moisture detection speed of woven and sewn sensors were compared by analyzing change in electrical resistance after solution (salt water) was dripped on sensor samples. Material of samples has different structure and yarn location, which affects solution detection rate. Sensor system circuit was designed and two sensor tests were performed: system activation test and false alarm test to determine the sensitivity of the system and activation threshold. Sewn sensor had better result in system’s activation test – faster reaction, but woven sensor had better result in system’s false alarm test – it was less sensitive to perspiration simulation. After experiments it was found that the optimum switching threshold is 3V in case of 5V input voltage, which provides protection against false alarms, for example – during intensive sweating.
Abstract: In this study an active controller is presented for vibration suppression of a full-bus model. The bus is modeled having seven degrees of freedom. Using the achieved model via Lagrange Equations the system equations of motion are derived. The suspensions of the bus model include air springs with two auxiliary chambers are used. Fuzzy logic controller is used to improve the ride comfort. The numerical results, verifies that the presented fuzzy logic controller improves the ride comfort.
Abstract: Celebrities are admired, appreciated and imitated all over the world. As a natural result of this, today many brands choose to work with celebrities for their advertisements. It can be said that the more the brands include celebrities in their marketing communication strategies, the tougher the competition in this field becomes and they allocate a large portion of their marketing budget to this. Brands invest in celebrities who will represent them in order to build the image they want to create.
This study aimed to bring under spotlight the perceptions of Turkish customers regarding the use of celebrities in advertisements and marketing communication and try to understand their possible effects on subsequent purchasing decisions. In addition, consumers’ reactions and perceptions were investigated in the context of the product-celebrity match, to what extent the celebrity conforms to the concept of the advertisement and the celebrity-target audience match.
In order to achieve this purpose, a quantitative research was conducted as a case study concerning Mavi Jeans (textile company). Information was obtained through survey. The results from this case study are supported by relevant theories concerning the main subject. The most valuable result would be that instead of creating an advertisement around a celebrity in demand at the time, using a celebrity that fits the concept of the advertisement and feeds the concept rather than replaces it, that is celebrity endorsement, will lead to more striking and positive results.
Abstract: Polyurethane foam is functionalized with Sulfonic acid groups to remove lead ions (Pb2+) from drinking water through a cation exchange process. The synthesis is based on addition polymerization of the -NCO groups of an isocyanate with the –OH groups of a polyol to form the urethane. Toluene-diisocyanateis reacted with Polypropylene glycol to form a linear pre-polymer, which is further polymerized using a chain extender, N, N-bis(2-hydorxyethyl)-2-aminoethane-sulfonic acid (BES). BES acts as a functional group site to exchange Pb2+ ions. A set of experiments was designed to study the effect of various processing parameters on the performance of the synthesized foam. The maximum Pb2+ ion exchange capacity of the foam was found to be 47ppb/g from a 100ppb Pb2+ solution over a period of 60 minutes. A multistage batch filtration process increased the lead removal to 50-54ppb/3g of foam over a period of 90 minutes.
Abstract: In Singapore, there are about 1 million baby boomers, defined as those born between 1947 and 1964. They constitute a sizeable proportion (about 30 per cent) of the resident population comprising Singapore citizens and permanent residents. The first batches of these baby boomers have already 65 years old by 2012. Thereafter, baby boomers will swell the ranks of the elderly population in Singapore until 2030. The baby boomers in this study are divided into broad groups, namely, the early baby boomers (born 1947-54) and late baby boomers (1955-64). Continuing decline in fertility and mortality rates in the past three decades as well as improvements in health care facilities and services have changed the demography of Singapore from a “pyramid-shape” young, post war baby boomers population to a rapidly ageing population. With the ageing of the baby boom generation, the population of Singapore is about to grey rapidly over the next three decades. As such, there is a need for Singapore to understand the profile, perceptions and aspirations of this group, and devise strategies to address the needs and concerns as well as opportunities that arise with the ageing of baby boomers are discussed and presented in this work.
Abstract: Palm kernel shell is an important bioenergy resource
in Thailand. However, due to elevated alkali content in biomass ash,
this oil palm residue shows high tendency to bed agglomeration in a
fluidized-bed combustion system using conventional bed material
(silica sand). In this study, palm kernel shell was burned in the
conical fluidized-bed combustor (FBC) using alumina and dolomite
as alternative bed materials to prevent bed agglomeration. For each
bed material, the combustion tests were performed at 45kg/h fuel feed
rate with excess air within 20–80%. Experimental results revealed
rather weak effects of the bed material type but substantial influence
of excess air on the behavior of temperature, O2, CO, CxHy, and NO
inside the reactor, as well as on the combustion efficiency and major
gaseous emissions of the conical FBC. The optimal level of excess air
ensuring high combustion efficiency (about 98.5%) and acceptable
level of the emissions was found to be about 40% when using
alumina and 60% with dolomite. By using these alternative bed
materials, bed agglomeration can be prevented when burning the
shell in the proposed conical FBC. However, both bed materials
exhibited significant changes in their morphological, physical and
chemical properties in the course of the time.