Abstract: Oil leakage from the pipelines and the tanks carrying them, or during oil extraction, could lead to the changes in the characteristics and properties of the soil. In this paper, conducting a series of experimental cyclic triaxial tests, the effects of oil contamination on the liquefaction potential of sandy soils is investigated. The studied specimens are prepared by mixing the Firoozkuh sand with crude oil in 4, 8 and 12 percent by soil dry weight. The results show that the oil contamination up to 8% causes an increase in the soil liquefaction resistance and then with increase in the contamination, the liquefaction resistance decreases.
Abstract: This study was conducted to investigate the effect of the leaf essential oil of C. sinensis harvested at 7.00a.m and 4.00p.m on some Liver and Kidney function indices of diabetic rats as well as investigate the effect of time of harvest on the observed effect. Experimental animals were divided into 4 groups (A, B, C and D). Diabetes mellitus was induced in all animals, except the normal control group (Group A), by injecting 150mg/kg body weight of alloxan monohydrate intraperitoneally. Group A received distilled water while group B (diabetic control group) was not treated. Group C and D were treated with leaf essential oil of C. sinensis harvested at 7.00 a.m and 4.00p.m respectively at a dose of 110 mg/kg body weight every other day for 15 days. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), Alanine Transaminase (ALT) and Aspartate Transaminase (AST) activity was evaluated in the serum, Liver and Kidney of studied animals. Total and Direct Bilirubin level, Total Protein and Globulin, Creatinine and Urea level were also evaluated. Result showed that creatinine and urea, serum ALP, AST and ALT levels was significantly reduced (p < 0.05), while the levels of total Protein and Globulin increased significantly (p < 0.05) for the treated animals compared to the diabetic control group. In conclusion, the leaf essential oil of Citrus sinensis ameliorated the impaired renal and liver function; however, the time of harvest of the leaf does not significantly affect its ameliorative effect.
Abstract: Leather industry is the most important traditional
industry to provide the leather products in the world for thousand
years. The fierce global competitive environment and common
awareness of global carbon reduction make livestock supply quantities
falling, salt and wet blue leather material reduces and the price
skyrockets significantly. Exchange rate fluctuation led sales revenue
decreasing which due to the differences of export exchanges and
compresses the overall profitability of leather industry. This paper
applies activity-based benefit assessment approach to build up fitness
fur input mixed model, fur is Wet Blue, which concerned with four key
factors: the output rate of wet blue, unit cost of wet blue, yield rate and
grade level of Wet Blue to achieve the low cost strategy under given
unit price of leather product condition of the company. The research
findings indicate that applying this model may improve the input cost
structure, decrease numbers of leather product inventories and to raise
the competitive advantages of the enterprise in the future.
Abstract: In recent years, the intellectual capital reporting in higher education institutions has been acquiring progressive importance worldwide. Intellectual capital approaches becomes critical at universities, mainly due to the fact that knowledge is the main output as well as input in these institutions. Universities produce knowledge, either through scientific and technical research (the results of investigation, publications, etc.) or through teaching (students trained and productive relationships with their stakeholders). The purpose of the present paper is to identify the intangible elements about which university stakeholders demand most information. The results of a study done at Spanish universities are used to see which groups of universities have stakeholders who are more proactive to the disclosure of intellectual capital.
Abstract: Traditional service channel is losing its edge due to emerging service technology. To establish interaction with the clients, the service industry is using effective mechanism to give clients direct access to services with emerging technologies. Thus, as service science receives attention, special and unique consumption pattern evolves; henceforth, leading to new market mechanism and influencing attitudes toward life and consumption patterns. The market demand for customized services is thus valued due to the emphasis of personal value, and is gradually changing the demand and supply relationship in the traditional industry. In respect of interior design service, in the process of traditional interior design, a designer converts to a concrete form the concept generated from the ideas and needs dictated by a user (client), by using his/her professional knowledge and drawing tool. The final product is generated through iterations of communication and modification, which is a very time-consuming process. Although this process has been accelerated with the help of computer graphics software today, repeated discussions and confirmations with users are still required to complete the task. In consideration of what is addressed above a space user’s life model is analyzed with visualization technique to create an interaction system modeled after interior design knowledge. The space user document intuitively personal life experience in a model requirement chart, allowing a researcher to analyze interrelation between analysis documents, identify the logic and the substance of data conversion. The repeated data which is documented are then transformed into design information for reuse and sharing. A professional interior designer may sort out the correlation among user’s preference, life pattern and design specification, thus deciding the critical design elements in the process of service design.
Abstract: In this paper, design and fabrication of an actuated parallel-plate mirror based on a 3D-printer is described. The mirror and electrode layers are fabricated separately and assembled thereafter. The alignment is performed by dowel pin-hole pairs fabricated on the respective layers. The electrodes are formed on the surface of the electrode layer by Au ion sputtering using a suitable mask, which is also fabricated by a 3D-printer.For grounding the mirror layer, except the contact area with the electrode paths, all the surface is Au ion sputtered. 3D-printers are widely used for creating 3D models or mock-ups. The authors have recently proposed that these models can perform electromechanical functions such as actuators by suitably masking them followed by metallization process. Since the smallest possible fabrication size is in the order of sub-millimeters, these electromechanical devices are named by the authors as SMEMS (Sub-Milli Electro-Mechanical Systems) devices. The proposed mirror described in this paper which consists of parallel-plate electrostatic actuators is also one type of SMEMS devices. In addition, SMEMS is totally environment-clean compared to MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) fabrication processes because any hazardous chemicals or gases are utilized.
Abstract: The microstructure characterization of tempered nanocrystalline bainitic steel is investigated in the present study. It is found that two types of plastic relaxation, dislocation debris and nanotwin, occurs in the displacive transformation due to relatively low transformation temperature and high carbon content. Because most carbon atoms trap in the dislocation, high dislocation density can be sustained during the tempering process. More carbides only can be found in the high tempered temperature due to intense recovery progression.
Abstract: The effect of the modification of ZnO powders by ZrO2, Al2O3, TiO2, SiO2, CeO2 and Y2O3 nanoparticles with a concentration of 1-30 wt % is investigated by diffuse reflectance spectra within the wavelength range 200 to 2500 nm before and after 100 keV proton and electron irradiation. It has been established that the introduction of nanoparticles ZrO2, Al2O3 enhances the optical stability of the pigments under proton irradiation, but reduces it under electron irradiation. Modifying with TiO2, SiO2, CeO2, Y2O3 nanopowders leads to decrease radiation stability in both types of irradiation. Samples modified by 5 wt. % of ZrO2 nanoparticles have the highest stability of optical properties after proton exposure. The degradation of optical properties under electron irradiation is not high for this concentration of nanoparticles. A decrease in the absorption of pigments modified with nanoparticles proton exposure is determined by a decrease in the intensity of bands located in the UV and visible regions. After electron exposure the absorption bands have in the whole spectrum range.
Abstract: Environmental education is the key to enhancing or changing students’ ways of thinking and acting in order to create an environmentally robust future for all. The present study investigates the beliefs of 812 primary school students, which merit consideration when developing educational interventions. Results of multiple regression analyses reveal that educational interventions should focus on promoting students’ feelings of control over pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). For example, schools could provide recycling bins on the premises. Furthermore, it is critical to develop positive attitudes in students by stressing the various benefits of PEB for keeping our planet clean and protecting wildlife. Unfortunately, our results indicate that students believe that PEB is boring and annoying. Suggestions are offered for making PEB more interesting and relevant. Further research is needed to test the effectiveness of interventions based on the present results.
Abstract: A mathematical heat transfer model for the prediction of transient heating of the slab in a direct-fired walking beam type reheating furnace has been developed by considering the nongray thermal radiation with given furnace environments. The furnace is modeled as radiating nongray medium with carbon dioxide and water with five-zoned gas temperature and the furnace wall is considered as a constant temperature lower than furnace gas one. The slabs are moving with constant velocity depending on the residence time through the non-firing, charging, preheating, heating, and final soaking zones. Radiative heat flux obtained by considering the radiative heat exchange inside the furnace as well as convective one from the surrounding hot gases are introduced as boundary condition of the transient heat conduction within the slab. After validating thermal radiation model adopted in this work, thermal fields in both model and real reheating furnace are investigated in terms of radiative heat flux in the furnace and temperature inside the slab. The results show that the slab in the furnace can be more heated with higher slab emissivity and residence time.
Abstract: The present analysis considers the steady stagnation point flow and heat transfer towards a permeable shrinking sheet in an upper-convected Maxwell (UCM) electrically conducting fluid, with a constant magnetic field applied in the transverse direction to flow and a local heat generation within the boundary layer, with a heat generation rate proportional to (T-T)p Using a similarity transformation, the governing system of partial differential equations is first transformed into a system of ordinary differential equations, which is then solved numerically using a finite-difference scheme known as the Keller-box method. Numerical results are obtained for the flow and thermal fields for various values of the stretching/shrinking parameter λ, the magnetic parameter M, the elastic parameter K, the Prandtl number Pr, the suction parameter s, the heat generation parameter Q, and the exponent p. The results indicate the existence of dual solutions for the shrinking sheet up to a critical value λc whose value depends on the value of M, K, and s. In the presence of internal heat absorption (Q
Abstract: The proliferation of multimedia technology and services in today’s world provide ample research scope in the frontiers of visual signal processing. Wide spread usage of video based applications in heterogeneous environment needs viable methods of Video Quality Assessment (VQA). The evaluation of video quality not only depends on high QoS requirements but also emphasis the need of novel term ‘QoE’ (Quality of Experience) that perceive video quality as user centric. This paper discusses two vital video quality assessment methods namely, subjective and objective assessment methods. The evolution of various video quality metrics, their classification models and applications are reviewed in this work. The Mean Opinion Score (MOS) based subjective measurements and algorithm based objective metrics are discussed and their challenges are outlined. Further, this paper explores the recent progress of VQA in emerging technologies such as mobile video and 3D video.
Abstract: Building code-related literature provides
recommendations on normalizing approaches to the calculation of
the dynamic properties of structures. Most building codes make a
distinction among types of structural systems, construction material,
and configuration through a numerical coefficient in the
expression for the fundamental period. The period is then used in
normalized response spectra to compute base shear. The typical
parameter used in simplified code formulas for the fundamental
period is overall building height raised to a power determined from
analytical and experimental results. However, reinforced concrete
buildings which constitute the majority of built space in less
developed countries pose additional challenges to the ones built with
homogeneous material such as steel, or with concrete under stricter
quality control. In the present paper, the particularities of reinforced
concrete buildings are explored and related to current methods of
equivalent static analysis. A comparative study is presented between
the Uniform Building Code, commonly used for buildings within
and outside the USA, and data from the Middle East used to model
151 reinforced concrete buildings of varying number of bays, number
of floors, overall building height, and individual story height. The
fundamental period was calculated using eigenvalue matrix
computation. The results were also used in a separate regression
analysis where the computed period serves as dependent variable,
while five building properties serve as independent variables. The
statistical analysis shed light on important parameters that simplified
code formulas need to account for including individual story height,
overall building height, floor plan, number of bays, and concrete
properties. Such inclusions are important for reinforced concrete
buildings of special conditions due to the level of concrete damage,
aging, or materials quality control during construction.
Overall results of the present analysis show that simplified code
formulas for fundamental period and base shear may be applied but
they require revisions to account for multiple parameters. The
conclusion above is confirmed by the analytical model where
fundamental periods were computed using numerical techniques and
eigenvalue solutions. This recommendation is particularly relevant
to code upgrades in less developed countries where it is customary to
adopt, and mildly adapt international codes.
We also note the necessity of further research using empirical data
from buildings in Lebanon that were subjected to severe damage due
to impulse loading or accelerated aging. However, we excluded this
study from the present paper and left it for future research as it has its
own peculiarities and requires a different type of analysis.
Abstract: Genome rearrangement is an important area in computational biology and bioinformatics. The basic problem in genome rearrangements is to compute the edit distance, i.e., the minimum number of operations needed to transform one genome into another. Unfortunately, unsigned genome rearrangement problem is NP-hard. In this study an improved ant colony optimization algorithm to approximate the edit distance is proposed. The main idea is to convert the unsigned permutation to signed permutation and evaluate the ants by using Kaplan algorithm. Two new operations are added to the standard ant colony algorithm: Replacing the worst ants by re-sampling the ants from a new probability distribution and applying the crossover operations on the best ants. The proposed algorithm is tested and compared with the improved breakpoint reversal sort algorithm by using three datasets. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm achieves better accuracy ratio than the previous methods.
Abstract: This paper presents views on condom use and the contexts of safe and unsafe sexual practices with different sexual partners and their relationships among Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) in Hai Phong, Vietnam. Fifteen IDUs participated and two local interviewers conducted qualitative semi-structured face-to-face interviews in September-October, 2012 in Vietnamese language. Data were analyzed thematically. Non-protective condom attitudes include negotiate or convince Female Sex Workers (FSW); not realizing risk, importance or necessity; partner doesn’t like, and having extra money/drug from clients. On the other hand, self-awareness, family-consciousness, suspicion of STI presence, fear of getting HIV, and client negotiation sometimes resulted in a safe-sex practice. A thematic diagram was developed to present the relationship (strong/weak) between condom attitude and sexual practice (safe/unsafe) by partner types. The experiences and views reflected in the qualitative information emphasize the heightened need for safe-sex education especially among young IDUs (male/female) highlighting sexual transmission risk.
Abstract: Microalgae lipid is a promising feedstock for biodiesel production. The objective of this work was to study growth factors affecting marine mutant Synechococcus sp. (PCC 7002) for high lipid production. Four growth factors were investigated; nitrogen-phosporus-potassium (NPK) concentration, light intensity, temperature and NaNO3 concentration on mutant strain growth and lipid production were studied. Design Expert v8.0 was used to design the experimental and analyze the data. The experimental design selected was Min-Run Res IV which consists of 12 runs and the response surfaces measured were specific growth rate and lipid concentration. The extraction of lipid was conducted by chloroform/methanol solvents system. Based on the study, mutant Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 gave the highest specific growth rate of 0.0014 h-1 at 0% NPK, 2500 lux, 40oC and 0% NaNO3. On the other hand, the highest lipid concentration was obtained at 0% NPK, 3500 lux, 30oC and 1% NaNO3.
Abstract: This paper presents the performance of electricity
generation and consumption from solar generator installed at
Rajabhat Suan Sunandha’s learning center in Samutsongkram.
The result from the experiment showed that solar cell began to
work and distribute the current into the system when the solar energy
intensity was 340 w/m2, starting from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm (duration
of 8 hours). The highest intensity read during the experiment was
1,051.64w/m2. The solar power was 38.74kWh/day. The
electromotive force from solar cell averagely was 93.6V. However,
when connecting solar cell with the battery charge controller system,
the voltage was dropped to 69.07V. After evaluating the power
distribution ability and electricity load of tested solar cell, the result
showed that it could generate power to 11 units of 36-watt
fluorescent lamp bulbs, which was altogether 396W. In the
meantime, the AC to DC power converter generated 3.55A to the
load, and gave 781VA.
Abstract: Multilevel inverters such as flying capacitor, diodeclamped,
and cascaded H-bridge inverters are very popular
particularly in medium and high power applications. This paper
focuses on a cascaded H-bridge module using a single direct current
(DC) source in order to generate an 11-level output voltage. The
noble approach reduces the number of switches and gate drivers, in
comparison with a conventional method. The anticipated topology
produces more accurate result with an isolation transformer at high
switching frequency. Different modulation techniques can be used for
the multilevel inverter, but this work features modulation techniques
known as selective harmonic elimination (SHE).This modulation
approach reduces the number of carriers with reduction in Switching
Losses, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), and thereby increasing
Power Quality (PQ). Based on the simulation result obtained, it
appears SHE has the ability to eliminate selected harmonics by
chopping off the fundamental output component. The performance
evaluation of the proposed cascaded multilevel inverter is performed
using PSIM simulation package and THD of 0.94% is obtained.
Abstract: This paper discuss a coupling strategy of two different
software packages to provide fluid structure interaction (FSI) analysis.
The basic idea is to combine the advantages of the two codes
to create a powerful FSI solver for two and three dimensional
analysis. The fluid part is computed by a program called PETSc-FEM
a software developed at Centro de Investigaci´on de M´etodos
Computacionales –CIMEC. The structural part of the coupled process
is computed by the research code elementary Parallel Solver –
(ELPASO) of the Technische Universit¨at Braunschweig, Institut f¨ur
Konstruktionstechnik (IK).
Abstract: One of the major power quality concerns in modern times is the problem of current harmonics. The current harmonics is caused due to the increase in non-linear loads which is largely dominated by power electronics devices. The Shunt active filtering is one of the best solutions for mitigating current harmonics. This paper describes a fuzzy logic controller based (FLC) based three Phase Shunt active Filter to achieve low current harmonic distortion (THD) and Reactive power compensation. The performance of fuzzy logic controller is analysed under both balanced sinusoidal and unbalanced sinusoidal source condition. The above controller serves the purpose of maintaining DC Capacitor Voltage constant. The proposed shunt active filter uses hysteresis current controller for current control of IGBT based PWM inverter. The simulation results of model in Simulink MATLAB reveals satisfying results.