Abstract: In this paper, we study statistical multiplexing of VBR
video in ATM networks. ATM promises to provide high speed realtime
multi-point to central video transmission for telemedicine
applications in rural hospitals and in emergency medical services.
Video coders are known to produce variable bit rate (VBR) signals
and the effects of aggregating these VBR signals need to be
determined in order to design a telemedicine network infrastructure
capable of carrying these signals. We first model the VBR video
signal and simulate it using a generic continuous-data autoregressive
(AR) scheme. We carry out the queueing analysis by the Fluid
Approximation Model (FAM) and the Markov Modulated Poisson
Process (MMPP). The study has shown a trade off: multiplexing
VBR signals reduces burstiness and improves resource utilization,
however, the buffer size needs to be increased with an associated
economic cost. We also show that the MMPP model and the Fluid
Approximation model fit best, respectively, the cell region and the
burst region. Therefore, a hybrid MMPP and FAM completely
characterizes the overall performance of the ATM statistical
multiplexer. The ramifications of this technology are clear: speed,
reliability (lower loss rate and jitter), and increased capacity in video
transmission for telemedicine. With migration to full IP-based
networks still a long way to achieving both high speed and high
quality of service, the proposed ATM architecture will remain of
significant use for telemedicine.
Abstract: Job stress is one of the most important concepts for
the today-s corporate as well as institutional world. The current study
is conducted to identify the causes of faculty stress at Higher
Education in Pakistan. For the purpose, Public & Private Business
Schools of Punjab is selected as representative of Pakistan. A sample
of 300 faculty members (214 males, 86 females) responded to the
survey. Regression analysis shows that the Workload, Student
Related issues and Role Conflicts are the major sources contributing
significantly towards producing stress. The study also revealed that
Private sector faculty members experienced more stress as compared
to faculty in Public sector Business Schools. Moreover, females,
younger ages, lower designation & low qualification faculty
members experience more stress as compared to males, older ages,
higher designation and high qualification. The study yield many
significant results for the policy makers of Business Institutions.
Abstract: Among all microRNAs (miRNAs) in 12 plant species investigated in this study, only miR398 targeted the copper chaperone for superoxide dismutase (CCS). The nucleotide sequences of miRNA binding sites were located in the mRNA protein-coding sequence (CDS) and were highly homologous. These binding sites in CCS mRNA encoded a conservative GDLGTL hexapeptide. The binding sites for miR398 in the CDS of superoxide dismutase 1 mRNA encoded GDLGN pentapeptide. The conservative miR398 binding site located in the CDS of superoxide dismutase 2 mRNA encoded the GDLGNI hexapeptide. The miR398 binding site in the CDS of superoxide dismutase 3 mRNA encoded the GDLGNI or GDLGNV hexapeptide. Gene expression of the entire superoxide dismutase family in the studied plant species was regulated only by miR398. All members of the miR398 family, i.e. miR398a,b,c were connected to one site for each CuZnSOD and chaperone mRNA.
Abstract: Heavy metal transfer in soil profiles is a major
environmental concern because even slow transport through the soil
may eventually lead to deterioration of groundwater quality. The use
of sewage sludge and effluents from wastewater treatment plants for
irrigation of agricultural lands is on the rise particularly in peri-urban
area of developing countries. In this study soil samples under sludge
application and wastewater irrigation were studied and soil samples
were collected in the soil profiles from the surface to 100 cm in
depth. For this purpose, three plots were made in a treatment plant in
south of Tehran-Iran. First plot was irrigated just with effluent from
wastewater treatment plant, second plot with simulated heavy metals
concentration equal 50 years irrigation and in third plot sewage
sludge and effluent was used. Trace metals concentration (Cd, Cu)
were determined for soil samples. The results indicate movement of
metals was observed, but the most concentration of metals was found
in topsoil samples. The most of Cadmium concentration was
measured in the topsoil of plot 3, 4.5mg/kg and Maximum cadmium
movement was observed in 0-20 cm. The most concentration of
copper was 27.76mg/kg, and maximum percolation in 0-20 cm.
Metals (Cd, Cu) were measured in leached water. Preferential flow
and metal complexation with soluble organic apparently allow
leaching of heavy metals.
Abstract: Increasing attention has been given in academia to the concept of corporate social responsibility. Also, the number of companies that undertake social responsibility initiatives has been boosting day by day since behaving in a socially responsible manner brings a lot to the companies. Literature provides various benefits of social responsibility and under which situations these benefits could be realized. However, most of these studies focus on one aspect of the consequences of behaving in a socially responsible manner and there is no study that unifies the conditions that a company should fulfill to make customers prefer its brand. This study aims to fill this gap. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to identify the conditions that a socially responsible company should fulfill in order to attract customers. To this end, a scale is developed and its reliability and validity is assessed through the method of Multitrait- Multimethod Matrix.
Abstract: In this paper effects of inclination angle on natural
convection flow in an open cavity has been analyzed with Lattice
Boltzmann Method (LBM).The angle of inclination varied from θ= -
45° to 45° with 15° intervals. Study has been conducted for Rayleigh
numbers (Ra) 104 to 106. The comparisons show that the average
Nusselt number increases with growth of Rayleigh number and the
average Nusselt number increase as inclination angles increases at
Ra=104.At Ra=105 and Ra=106 the average Nusselt number enhance
as inclination angels varied from θ= -45° to θ= 0° and decrease as
inclination angels increase in θ= 0° to θ= 45°.
Abstract: The article considers religious aspects of Kazakh
society pre-Soviet times. Studying the mental, political and spiritual
content of Islam, the reasons for its wide distribution among the ancestors of the Kazakhs is analyzed. Interested Russians since the
accession of the Kazakh Khanate to the Russian Empire more than
once pointed out that Islam is a synthesis of Islam and Shamanism.
But shamanism is a generalization of the name of religion, which
took place prior to Islam in the land of the Kazakh people. Here we can see the elements of Zoroastrianism, Tengrianism, etc. This shows
that the ancestors of the Kazakhs - Turkic people - not renounced the
ancient beliefs completely and leave some portion of these religions
as an integral part of the worldview of the people, by the device.
Therefore, the founder of the Turkic Sufi Yasaui still has a huge impact on the religiosity of the Kazakhs. He managed elements of the
ancient religion, which formed the basis of the Kazakhs world, interpreted in the Muslim perspective. The Russian authorities tried
to quell by Islamization Kazakh people. But it was Islam that has
revived the national consciousness of the Kazakh people.
Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to analyze climbers
involved in motivation and risk perception and analysis of the
predictive ability of the risk perception "mountaineering" involved in
motivation. This study used questionnaires, to have to climb the
3000m high mountain in Taiwan climbers object to carry out an
investigation in order to non-random sampling, a total of 231 valid
questionnaires were. After statistical analysis, the study found that: 1.
Climbers the highest climbers involved in motivation "to enjoy the
natural beauty of the fun. 2 climbers for climbers "risk perception" the
highest: the natural environment of risk. 3. Climbers “seeking
adventure stimulate", “competence achievement" motivation highly
predictive of risk perception. Based on these findings, this study not
only practices the recommendations of the outdoor leisure industry,
and also related research proposals for future researchers.
Abstract: Novel nitrogen removal technologies via nitrite
pathway attract increasing interest in recent years. In this study,
batch experiments were performed to investigate nitrite accumulation
characteristics and shifts in nitrifying community structure at
different growth environments including ammonia concentration, pH
and alkalinity. It was found that nitrite accumulation ratios were
maintained at around 95% at studied conditions, and the optimum pH
and Alk/N (ratio between alkalinity and nitrogen) for ammonium
oxidization were 8.5 and 8.33, respectively. Fluorescence in situ
hybridization analysis of nitrifying bacteria showed that high free
ammonia (from influent ammonium or caused by high pH)
significantly altered the structure of nitrifying community, leading to
abundance of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB), especially
Nitrososmonas, and inhibition of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB).
The results suggest that free ammonia plays more important role than
other studied conditions on nitrite accumulation.
Abstract: Many advanced Routing protocols for wireless sensor networks have been implemented for the effective routing of data. Energy awareness is an essential design issue and almost all of these routing protocols are considered as energy efficient and its ultimate objective is to maximize the whole network lifetime. However, the introductions of video and imaging sensors have posed additional challenges. Transmission of video and imaging data requires both energy and QoS aware routing in order to ensure efficient usage of the sensors and effective access to the gathered measurements. In this paper, the performance of the energy-aware QoS routing Protocol are analyzed in different performance metrics like average lifetime of a node, average delay per packet and network throughput. The parameters considered in this study are end-to-end delay, real time data generation/capture rates, packet drop probability and buffer size. The network throughput for realtime and non-realtime data was also has been analyzed. The simulation has been done in NS2 simulation environment and the simulation results were analyzed with respect to different metrics.
Abstract: Microplasma welding is a less expensive alternative to
laser welding in dental technology. The aim of the study was to
highlight discontinuities present in the microplasma welded joints of
dental base metal alloys by visual analysis. Five base metal alloys
designated for fixed prostheses manufacture were selected for the
experiments. Using these plates, preliminary tests were conducted by
microplasma welding in butt joint configuration, without filler
material, bilaterally and with filler material, proper for each base
metal. Macroscopic visual inspection was performed to assess
carefully the irregularities in the welds. Electron microscopy allowed
detection of discontinuities that are not visible to the eye and
revealing details regarding location, trajectory, morphology and size
of discontinuities. Supplementing visual control with microscopic
analysis allows to detect small discontinuities, which escapes the
macroscopic control and to make a detailed study of the weld.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to propose a text mining
approach to evaluate companies- practices on affective management.
Affective management argues that it is critical to take stakeholders-
affects into consideration during decision-making process, along with
the traditional numerical and rational indices. CSR reports published
by companies were collected as source information. Indices were
proposed based on the frequency and collocation of words relevant to
affective management concept using text mining approach to analyze
the text information of CSR reports. In addition, the relationships
between the results obtained using proposed indices and traditional
indicators of business performance were investigated using
correlation analysis. Those correlations were also compared between
manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. The results of this
study revealed the possibility to evaluate affective management
practices of companies based on publicly available text documents.
Abstract: In this study, static batch fermentation was used for bacterial cellulose production in date syrup solution (Bx. 10%) at 28°C using Gluconacetobacter. xylinus (PTCC 1734). The physicochemical properties of standard Sigma CMC and the produced carboxymethyl bacterial cellulose (CMBC) were studied using FT-IR spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). According to the FT-IR spectra the bands at 1664 and 1431 cm-1 indicate that carboxylic acid groups and carboxylate groups exist on the surface. The SEM imaging of CMBC and CMC carried out in magnification of 1K. Comparing the SEM imaging obviously showed that the ribbon shape in CMC remained but the length of ribbons became shorter while that shape changed to flake shape for CMBC. Determination of the area under XRD patterns demonstrated that the crystallinity amount of CMC was more than that for CMBC (51.08% and 81.84% for CMBC and CMC, respectively).
Abstract: Air pollution is still considered as one of the major
environmental and health issues. There is enough research evidence
to show a strong relationship between exposure to air contaminants
and respiratory illnesses among children and adults. In this paper we
used the Copula approach to study a potential relationship between
selected air pollutants (PM10 and NO2) and hospital admissions for
respiratory diseases. Kendall-s tau and Spearman-s rho rank
correlation coefficients are calculated and used in Copula method.
This paper demonstrates that copulas can be used to provide
additional information as a measure of an association when compared
to the standard correlation coefficients. The results find a significant
correlation between the selected air pollutants and hospital
admissions for most of the selected respiratory illnesses.
Abstract: The objective of this study is to present the test
results of variable air volume (VAV) air conditioning system
optimized by two objective genetic algorithm (GA). The objective
functions are energy savings and thermal comfort. The optimal set
points for fuzzy logic controller (FLC) are the supply air temperature
(Ts), the supply duct static pressure (Ps), the chilled water
temperature (Tw), and zone temperature (Tz) that is taken as the
problem variables. Supply airflow rate and chilled water flow rate are
considered to be the constraints. The optimal set point values are
obtained from GA process and assigned into fuzzy logic controller
(FLC) in order to conserve energy and maintain thermal comfort in
real time VAV air conditioning system. A VAV air conditioning
system with FLC installed in a software laboratory has been taken for
the purpose of energy analysis. The total energy saving obtained in
VAV GA optimization system with FLC compared with constant air
volume (CAV) system is expected to achieve 31.5%. The optimal
duct static pressure obtained through Genetic fuzzy methodology
attributes to better air distribution by delivering the optimal quantity
of supply air to the conditioned space. This combination enhanced
the advantages of uniform air distribution, thermal comfort and
improved energy savings potential.
Abstract: The African Great Lakes Region refers to the zone
around lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, Albert, Edward, Kivu, and
Malawi. The main source of electricity in this region is hydropower
whose systems are generally characterized by relatively weak,
isolated power schemes, poor maintenance and technical deficiencies
with limited electricity infrastructures. Most of the hydro sources are
rain fed, and as such there is normally a deficiency of water during
the dry seasons and extended droughts. In such calamities fossil fuels
sources, in particular petroleum products and natural gas, are
normally used to rescue the situation but apart from them being nonrenewable,
they also release huge amount of green house gases to our
environment which in turn accelerates the global warming that has at
present reached an amazing stage. Wind power is ample, renewable,
widely distributed, clean, and free energy source that does not
consume or pollute water. Wind generated electricity is one of the
most practical and commercially viable option for grid quality and
utility scale electricity production. However, the main shortcoming
associated with electric wind power generation is fluctuation in its
output both in space and time. Before making a decision to establish
a wind park at a site, the wind speed features there should therefore
be known thoroughly as well as local demand or transmission
capacity. The main objective of this paper is to utilise monthly
average wind speed data collected from one prospective site within
the African Great Lakes Region to demonstrate that the available
wind power there is high enough to generate electricity. The mean
monthly values were calculated from records gathered on hourly
basis for a period of 5 years (2001 to 2005) from a site in Tanzania.
The documentations that were collected at a height of 2 m were
projected to a height of 50 m which is the standard hub height of
wind turbines. The overall monthly average wind speed was found to
be 12.11 m/s whereas June to November was established to be the
windy season as the wind speed during the session is above the
overall monthly wind speed. The available wind power density
corresponding to the overall mean monthly wind speed was evaluated
to be 1072 W/m2, a potential that is worthwhile harvesting for the
purpose of electric generation.
Abstract: Increased energy demand and the concern about
environment friendly technology, renewable bio-fuels are better
alternative to petroleum products. In the present study linseed oil was
used as alternative source for diesel engine fuel and the results were
compared with baseline data of neat diesel. Performance parameters
such as brake thermal efficiency (BTE) and brake specific fuel
consumption (BSFC) and emissions parameters such as CO,
unburned hydro carbon (UBHC), NOx, CO2 and exhaust temperature
were compared. BTE of the engine was lower and BSFC was higher
when the engine was fueled with Linseed oil compared to diesel fuel.
Emission characteristics are better than diesel fuel. NOx formation by
using linseed oil during the experiment was lower than diesel fuel.
Linseed oil is non edible oil, so it can be used as an extender of diesel
fuel energy source for small and medium energy needs.
Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of the hand-hold
positions on both antenna performance and the specific absorption
rate (SAR) induced in the user-s head. A cellular handset with
external antenna operating at GSM-900 frequency is modeled and
simulated using a finite difference time-domain (FDTD)-based
platform SEMCAD-X. A specific anthropomorphic mannequin
(SAM) is adopted to simulate the user-s head, whereas a semirealistic
CAD-model of three-tissues is designed to simulate the
user-s hand. The results show that in case of the handset in hand close
to head at different positions; the antenna total efficiency gets
reduced to (14.5% - 5.9%) at cheek-position and to (27.5% to 11.8%)
at tilt-position. The peak averaged SAR1g values in head close to
handset without hand, are 4.67 W/Kg and 2.66 W/Kg at cheek and
tilt-position, respectively. Due to the presence of hand, the SAR1g in
head gets reduced to (3.67-3.31 W/Kg) at cheek-position and to
(1.84-1.64 W/Kg) at tilt-position, depending on the hand-hold
position.
Abstract: In this study, the performance of a high-frequency arc
welding machine including a two-switch inverter is analyzed. The
control of the system is achieved using two different control
techniques i- fuzzy logic control (FLC) ii- state space averaging
based sliding control. Fuzzy logic control does not need accurate
mathematical model of a plant and can be used in nonlinear
applications. The second method needs the mathematical model of
the system. In this method the state space equations of the system are
derived for two different “on" and “off" states of the switches. The
derived state equations are combined with the sliding control rule
considering the duty-cycle of the converter. The performance of the
system is analyzed by simulating the system using SIMULINK tool
box of MATLAB. The simulation results show that fuzzy logic
controller is more robust and less sensitive to parameter variations.
Abstract: Celiac disease is an immune-mediated disease, triggered in genetically susceptible individuals by ingested gluten from wheat, rye, barley and other closely related cereal grains. The only effective treatment is a strict gluten free diet for life. Latvian producers do not offer gluten-free products. In this research, use of extruded maize flour was tested for substituting rice, maize or buckwheat flour in gluten-free bread formulations at different ratios. Also the influence of extruded maize flour on the quality parameters of gluten-free bread was investigated. The aim of research was to study the influence of extruded maize flour on gluten-free bread quality. Addition of extruded maize flour affect gluten-free bread crumb color, structure of crumb, weight loss and dry off of bread.