Abstract: This paper reports the results of an experimental work
conducted to investigate the effect of curing conditions on the
compressive strength of self-compacting geopolymer concrete
prepared by using fly ash as base material and combination of sodium
hydroxide and sodium silicate as alkaline activator. The experiments
were conducted by varying the curing time and curing temperature in
the range of 24-96 hours and 60-90°C respectively. The essential
workability properties of freshly prepared Self-compacting
Geopolymer concrete such as filling ability, passing ability and
segregation resistance were evaluated by using Slump flow,
V-funnel, L-box and J-ring test methods. The fundamental
requirements of high flowability and resistance to segregation as
specified by guidelines on Self-compacting Concrete by EFNARC
were satisfied. Test results indicate that longer curing time and curing
the concrete specimens at higher temperatures result in higher
compressive strength. There was increase in compressive strength
with the increase in curing time; however increase in compressive
strength after 48 hours was not significant. Concrete specimens cured
at 70°C produced the highest compressive strength as compared to
specimens cured at 60°C, 80°C and 90°C.
Abstract: NFκB is a transcription factor regulating many
function of the vessel wall. In the normal condition , NFκB is
revealed diffuse cytoplasmic expressionsuggesting that the system is
inactive. The presence of activation NFκB provide a potential
pathway for the rapid transcriptional of a variety of genes encoding
cytokines, growth factors, adhesion molecules and procoagulatory
factors. It is likely to play an important role in chronic inflamatory
disease involved atherosclerosis. There are many stimuli with the
potential to active NFκB, including hyperlipidemia. We used 24 mice
which was divided in 6 groups. The HFD given by et libitum
procedure during 2, 4, and 6 months. The parameters in this study
were the amount of NFKB activation ,H2O2 as ROS and VCAM-1 as
a product of NFKB activation. H2O2 colorimetryc assay performed
directly using Anti Rat H2O2 ELISA Kit. The NFKB and VCAM-1
detection obtained from aorta mice, measured by ELISA kit and
imunohistochemistry. There was a significant difference activation of
H2O2, NFKB and VCAM-1 level at induce HFD after 2, 4 and 6
months. It suggest that HFD induce ROS formation and increase the
activation of NFKB as one of atherosclerosis marker that caused by
hyperlipidemia as classical atheroschlerosis risk factor.
Abstract: The wide increase and diffusion on telecommunication
technologies have caused a huge spread of electromagnetic sources
in most European Countries. Since the public is continuously being
exposed to electromagnetic radiation the possible health effects have
become the focus of population concerns. As a result, electromagnetic
field monitoring stations which control field strength in commercial
frequency bands are being placed on the flat roof of many buildings.
However there is no guidance on where to place them. This paper
presents an analysis of frequency, polarization and angles of incidence
of a plane wave which impinges on a flat roof security wall and its
dependence on electromagnetic field strength meters placement.
Abstract: Dual phase steels (DPS)s have a microstructure
consisting of a hard second phase called Martensite in the soft Ferrite
matrix. In recent years, there has been interest in dual-phase steels,
because the application of these materials has made significant usage;
particularly in the automotive sector Composite microstructure of
(DPS)s exhibit interesting characteristic mechanical properties such
as continuous yielding, low yield stress to tensile strength
ratios(YS/UTS), and relatively high formability; which offer
advantages compared with conventional high strength low alloy
steels(HSLAS). The research dealt with the characterization of
damage in (DPS)s. In this study by review the mechanisms of failure
due to volume fraction of martensite second phase; a new method is
introduced to identifying the mechanisms of failure in the various
phases of these types of steels. In this method the acoustic emission
(AE) technique was used to detect damage progression. These failure
mechanisms consist of Ferrite-Martensite interface decohesion and/or
martensite phase fracture. For this aim, dual phase steels with
different volume fraction of martensite second phase has provided by
various heat treatment methods on a low carbon steel (0.1% C), and
then AE monitoring is used during tensile test of these DPSs. From
AE measurements and an energy ratio curve elaborated from the
value of AE energy (it was obtained as the ratio between the strain
energy to the acoustic energy), that allows detecting important
events, corresponding to the sudden drops. These AE signals events
associated with various failure mechanisms are classified for ferrite
and (DPS)s with various amount of Vm and different martensite
morphology. It is found that AE energy increase with increasing Vm.
This increasing of AE energy is because of more contribution of
martensite fracture in the failure of samples with higher Vm. Final
results show a good relationship between the AE signals and the
mechanisms of failure.
Abstract: The hot deformation behavior of high strength low
alloy (HSLA) steels with different chemical compositions under hot
working conditions in the temperature range of 900 to 1100℃ and
strain rate range from 0.1 to 10 s-1 has been studied by performing a
series of hot compression tests. The dynamic materials model has been
employed for developing the processing maps, which show variation
of the efficiency of power dissipation with temperature and strain rate.
Also the Kumar-s model has been used for developing the instability
map, which shows variation of the instability for plastic deformation
with temperature and strain rate. The efficiency of power dissipation
increased with decreasing strain rate and increasing temperature in the
steel with higher Cr and Ti content. High efficiency of power
dissipation over 20 % was obtained at a finite strain level of 0.1 under
the conditions of strain rate lower than 1 s-1 and temperature higher
than 1050 ℃ . Plastic instability was expected in the regime of
temperatures lower than 1000 ℃ and strain rate lower than 0.3 s-1. Steel
with lower Cr and Ti contents showed high efficiency of power
dissipation at higher strain rate and lower temperature conditions.
Abstract: The purpose of this work is measurement of the
system presampling MTF of a variable resolution x-ray (VRX) CT
scanner. In this paper, we used the parameters of an actual VRX CT
scanner for simulation and study of effect of different focal spot sizes
on system presampling MTF by Monte Carlo method (GATE
simulation software). Focal spot size of 0.6 mm limited the spatial
resolution of the system to 5.5 cy/mm at incident angles of below 17º
for cell#1. By focal spot size of 0.3 mm the spatial resolution
increased up to 11 cy/mm and the limiting effect of focal spot size
appeared at incident angles of below 9º. The focal spot size of 0.3
mm could improve the spatial resolution to some extent but because
of magnification non-uniformity, there is a 10 cy/mm difference
between spatial resolution of cell#1 and cell#256. The focal spot size
of 0.1 mm acted as an ideal point source for this system. The spatial
resolution increased to more than 35 cy/mm and at all incident angles
the spatial resolution was a function of incident angle. By the way
focal spot size of 0.1 mm minimized the effect of magnification nonuniformity.
Abstract: The dental composites are preferably used as filling
materials due to their esthetic appearances. Nevertheless one of the
major problems, during the application of the dental composites, is
shape change named as “polymerisation shrinkage" affecting clinical
success of the dental restoration while photo-polymerisation.
Polymerisation shrinkage of composites arises basically from the
formation of a polymer due to the monomer transformation which
composes of an organic matrix phase. It was sought, throughout this
study, to detect and evaluate the structural polymerisation shrinkage
of prepared dental composites in order to optimize the effects of
various fillers included in hydroxyapatite (HA)-reinforced dental
composites and hence to find a means to modify the properties of
these dental composites prepared with defined parameters. As a
result, the shrinkage values of the experimental dental composites
were decreased by increasing the filler content of composites and the
composition of different fillers used had effect on the shrinkage of
the prepared composite systems.
Abstract: This paper fist examines three set of bivariate cointegrations between any two of current accounts, stock markets, and currency exchange markets in ten Asian countries. Furthermore, we examined the effect of country characters on this bivariate cointegration. Our findings suggest that for three sets of cointegration test, each sample country at least exists one cointegration. India consistently exhibited a bi-directional causal relationship between any two of three indicators. Unlike Pan et al. (2007) and Phylaktis and Ravazzolo (2005), we found that such cointegration is influenced by three characteristics: capital control; flexibility in foreign exchange rates; and the ratio of trade to GDP. These characteristics are the result of liberalization in each Asian country. This implies that liberalization policies are effective on improving the cointegration between any two of financial markets and current account for ten Asian countries.
Abstract: Traffic Density provides an indication of the level of
service being provided to the road users. Hence, there is a need to
study the traffic flow characteristics with specific reference to
density in detail. When the length and speed of the vehicles in a
traffic stream vary significantly, the concept of occupancy, rather
than density, is more appropriate to describe traffic concentration.
When the concept of occupancy is applied to heterogeneous traffic
condition, it is necessary to consider the area of the road space and
the area of the vehicles as the bases. Hence, a new concept named,
'area-occupancy' is proposed here. It has been found that the
estimated area-occupancy gives consistent values irrespective of
change in traffic composition.
Abstract: Online news websites are one of the main and wide areas of Mass Media. Since the nineties several Jordanian newspapers were introduced to the World Wide Web to reach various and large numbers of audiances. Examples of these newspapers that have online version are Al-Rai, Ad-Dustor and AlGhad. Other pure online news websites include Ammon and Rum. The main aim of this study is to evaluate online newspaper websites using two assessment measures; usability and web content. This aim is achieved by using a questionnaire based evaluation which is based on the definition of usability and web content in the ISO document as the standard number 9241-part 11. The results are obtained based on 204 audiences- responses. The results of the research showed that the usability factor is relatively good for all Jordanian online newspapers whereas the web content factor is moderate.
Abstract: Nowadays, butyl acetate, a pineapple flavor has been applied widely in food, beverage, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. In this study, Butyl acetate, a flavor ester was successfully synthesized via green synthesis of enzymatic reaction route. Commercial immobilized lipase from Rhizomucor miehei (Lipozyme RMIM) was used as biocatalyst in the esterification reaction between acetic acid and butanol. Various reaction parameters such as reaction time (RT), temperature (T) and amount of enzyme (E) were chosen to optimize the reaction synthesis in solvent-free system. The optimum condition to produce butyl acetate was at reaction time (RT), 18 hours; temperature (T), 37°C and amount of enzyme, 25 % (w/w of total substrate). Analysis of yield showed that at optimum condition, >78 % of butyl acetate was produced. The product was confirmed as butyl acetate from FTIR analysis whereby the presence of an ester group was observed at wavenumber of 1742 cm-1.
Abstract: A methodology to design a nonlinear observer in a
bond graph approach is proposed. The class of nonlinear observer
with multivariable nonlinearities is considered. A junction structure
of the bond graph observer is proposed. The proposed methodology
to an electrical transformer and a DC motor including the nonlinear
saturation is applied. Nonlinear observers for the transformer and DC
motor based on multivariable circle criterion in the physical domain
are proposed. In order to show the saturation effects on the
transformer and DC motor, simulation results are obtained. Finally,
the paper describes that convergence of the estimates to the true
states is achieved.
Abstract: Dispersions of casein micelles (CM) were studied at a
constant protein concentration of 5 wt % in high NaCl environment
ranging from 0% to 12% by Dynamic light scattering (DLS) and
Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR). The rehydration profiles obtained
were interpreted in term of wetting, swelling and dispersion stages by
using a turbidity method. Two behaviours were observed depending
on the salt concentration. The first behaviour (low salt concentration)
presents a typical rehydration profile with a significant change
between 3 and 6% NaCl indicating quick wetting, swelling and long
dispersion stage. On the opposite, the dispersion stage of the second
behaviour (high salt concentration) was significantly shortened
indicating a strong modification of the protein backbone. A salt
increase result to a destabilization of the micelle and the formation of
mini-micelles more or less aggregated indicating an average micelles
size ranging from 100 to 200 nm. For the first time, the estimations
of secondary structural elements (irregular, ß-sheet, α-helix and turn)
by the Amide III assignments were correlated with results from
Amide I.
Abstract: The present paper discusses the basic concepts and the underlying principles of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) along with an interdisciplinary exploitation of these principles. It has been found that they have been utilized for lots of research and studies on various systems spanning across diverse engineering and scientific realms showing the need of development of a proper generalized framework. Such framework has been developed for the Multi-Agent Systems and it has been generalized keeping in mind the diverse areas where they find application. All the related aspects have been categorized and a general definition has been given where ever possible.
Abstract: The objective of this research is to examine the shear thinning behaviour of mixing flow of non-Newtonian fluid like toothpaste in the dissolution container with rotating stirrer. The problem under investigation is related to the chemical industry. Mixing of fluid is performed in a cylindrical container with rotating stirrer, where stirrer is eccentrically placed on the lid of the container. For the simulation purpose the associated motion of the fluid is considered as revolving of the container, with stick stirrer. For numerical prediction, a time-stepping finite element algorithm in a cylindrical polar coordinate system is adopted based on semi-implicit Taylor-Galerkin/pressure-correction scheme. Numerical solutions are obtained for non-Newtonian fluids employing power law model. Variations with power law index have been analysed, with respect to the flow structure and pressure drop.
Abstract: This research investigates the suitability of fuel oil in
improving gypseous soil. A detailed laboratory tests were carried-out
on two soils (soil I with 51.6% gypsum content, and soil II with
26.55%), where the two soils were obtained from Al-Therthar site
(Al-Anbar Province-Iraq).
This study examines the improvement of soil properties using the
gypsum material which is locally available with low cost to minimize
the effect of moisture on these soils by using the fuel oil. This study
was conducted on two models of the soil gypsum, from the Tharthar
area. The first model was sandy soil with Gypsum content of (51.6%)
and the second is clayey soil and the content of Gypsum is (26.55%).
The program included tests measuring the permeability and
compressibility of the soil and their collapse properties. The shear
strength of the soil and the amounts of weight loss of fuel oil due to
drying had been found. These tests have been conducted on the
treated and untreated soils to observe the effect of soil treatment on
the engineering properties when mixed with varying degrees of fuel
oil with the equivalent of the water content.
The results showed that fuel oil is a good material to modify the
basic properties of the gypseous soil of collapsibility and
permeability, which are the main problems of this soil and retained
the soil by an appropriate amount of the cohesion suitable for
carrying the loads from the structure.
Abstract: The policies governing the business of any
organization are well reflected in her business rules. The business
rules are implemented by data validation techniques, coded during
the software development process. Any change in business
policies results in change in the code written for data validation
used to enforce the business policies. Implementing the change in
business rules without changing the code is the objective of this
paper. The proposed approach enables users to create rule sets at
run time once the software has been developed. The newly defined
rule sets by end users are associated with the data variables for
which the validation is required. The proposed approach facilitates
the users to define business rules using all the comparison
operators and Boolean operators. Multithreading is used to
validate the data entered by end user against the business rules
applied. The evaluation of the data is performed by a newly
created thread using an enhanced form of the RPN (Reverse Polish
Notation) algorithm.
Abstract: As known, the guard wires of overhead high voltage
are usually grounded through the grounding systems of support and
of the terminal stations. They do affect the zero sequence impedance
value of the line, Z0, which is generally, calculated assuming that the
wires guard are at ground potential. In this way it is not considered
the effect of the resistances of earth of supports and stations. In this
work is formed a formula for the calculation of Z0 which takes
account of said resistances. Is also proposed a method of calculating
the impedance zero sequence overhead lines in which, in various
sections or spans, the guard wires are connected to the supports, or
isolated from them, or are absent. Parametric analysis is given for
lines 220 kV and 400 kV, which shows the extent of the errors made
with traditional methods of calculation.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the viewpoints in terms of changing distances and levels and thereby, comparatively analyze the visual sensitivity to the elements of the natural views. The questionnaire survey was conducted separately for experts and non-experts. Summing up, it was confirmed that the visual sensitivity to the elements of the same natural views differed significantly depending on subjects' professionalism, changes of the viewpoint levels and distances, while the visual sensitivity to 'openness of visual/view axes' did not differ significantly when only the distances of the viewpoints were varied. In addition, the visual sensitivity to visual/view axes differed between experts and ordinary people when the levels of the viewpoints were varied, while the visual sensitivity to 'damaged natural view resources' differed between two groups when the distances of the viewpoints were varied.
Abstract: We have developed a computer program consisting of
6 subtests assessing the children hand dexterity applicable in the
rehabilitation medicine. We have carried out a normative study on a
representative sample of 285 children aged from 7 to 15 (mean age
11.3) and we have proposed clinical standards for three age groups
(7-9, 9-11, 12-15 years). We have shown statistical significance of
differences among the corresponding mean values of the task time
completion. We have also found a strong correlation between the task
time completion and the age of the subjects, as well as we have
performed the test-retest reliability checks in the sample of 84
children, giving the high values of the Pearson coefficients for the
dominant and non-dominant hand in the range 0.740.97 and
0.620.93, respectively.
A new MATLAB-based programming tool aiming at analysis of
cardiologic RR intervals and blood pressure descriptors, is worked
out, too. For each set of data, ten different parameters are extracted: 2
in time domain, 4 in frequency domain and 4 in Poincaré plot
analysis. In addition twelve different parameters of baroreflex
sensitivity are calculated. All these data sets can be visualized in time
domain together with their power spectra and Poincaré plots. If
available, the respiratory oscillation curves can be also plotted for
comparison. Another application processes biological data obtained
from BLAST analysis.