Abstract: Macro invertebrates have been used to monitor
organic pollution in rivers and streams. Several biotic indices based
on macro invertebrates have been developed over the years including
the Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP). A new biotic
index, the Gammarus:Asellus ratio has been recently proposed as an
index of organic pollution. This study tested the validity of the
Gammarus:Asellus ratio as an index of organic pollution, by
examining the relationship between the Gammarus:Asellus ratio and
physical chemical parameters, and other biotic indices such as
BMWP and, Average Score Per Taxon (ASPT) from lakes and
streams at Markeaton Park, Allestree Park and Kedleston Hall,
Derbyshire. Macro invertebrates were sampled using the standard
five minute kick sampling techniques physical and chemical
environmental variables were obtained based on standard sampling
techniques. Eighteen sites were sampled, six sites from Markeaton
Park (three sites across the stream and three sites across the lake). Six
sites each were also sampled from Allestree Park and Kedleston Hall
lakes. The Gammarus:Asellus ratio showed an opposite significant
positive correlations with parameters indicative of organic pollution
such as the level of nitrates, phosphates, and calcium and also
revealed a negatively significant correlations with other biotic indices
(BMWP/ASPT). The BMWP score correlated positively significantly
with some water quality parameters such as dissolved oxygen and
flow rate, but revealed no correlations with other chemical
environmental variables. The BMWP score was significantly higher
in the stream than the lake in Markeaton Park, also The ASPT scores
appear to be significantly higher in the upper Lakes than the middle
and lower lakes. This study has further strengthened the use of
BMWP/ASPT score as an index of organic pollution. But additional
application is required to validate the use of Gammarus:Asellus as a
rapid bio monitoring tool.
Abstract: In this investigation, we have evaluated the effects of
arsenic trioxide on hepatic function in pregnant and lactating Swiss
albino mice and their suckling pups. Experiments were carried out on
female mice given 175 ppm As2O3 in their drinking water from the
14th day of pregnancy until day 14 after delivery. Our results showed
a significant decrease in plasma levels of total protein and albumin,
cholesterol and triglyceride in As2O3 treated mice and their pups. The
hyperbilirubinemia and the increased plasma total alkaline
phosphatase activity suggested the presence of cholestasis.
Transaminase activities as well as lactate deshydrogenase activity in
plasma, known as biomarkers of hepatocellular injury, were elevated
indicating hepatic cells’ damage after treatment with As2O3.
Exposure to arsenic led to an increase of liver thiobarbituric acid
reactive substances level along with a concomitant decrease in the
activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase and glutathione
peroxidase and in glutathione.
Abstract: Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been widely
used as a non-invasive method to measure brain activity, but it is
corrupted by baseline drift noise. Here we present a method to measure
regional cerebral blood flow as a derivative of NIRS output. We
investigate whether, when listening to languages, blood flow can
reasonably localize and represent regional brain activity or not. The
prefrontal blood flow distribution pattern when advanced
second-language listeners listened to a second language (L2) was most
similar to that when listening to their first language (L1) among the
patterns of mean and standard deviation. In experiments with 25
healthy subjects, the maximum blood flow was localized to the left
BA46 of advanced listeners. The blood flow presented is robust to
baseline drift and stably localizes regional brain activity.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to perform experimental
modal analysis (EMA) of reinforced concrete (RC) square slabs.
EMA is the process of determining the modal parameters (Natural
Frequencies, damping factors, modal vectors) of a structure from a
set of frequency response functions FRFs (curve fitting). Although,
experimental modal analysis (or modal testing) has grown steadily in
popularity since the advent of the digital FFT spectrum analyzer in
the early 1970’s, studying all types of members and materials using
such method have not yet been well documented. Therefore, in this
work, experimental tests were conducted on RC square slab
specimens of dimensions 600mm x 600mmx 40mm. Experimental
analysis was based on freely supported boundary condition.
Moreover, impact testing as a fast and economical means of finding
the modes of vibration of a structure was used during the
experiments. In addition, Pico Scope 6 device and MATLAB
software were used to acquire data, analyze and plot Frequency
Response Function (FRF). The experimental natural frequencies
which were extracted from measurements exhibit good agreement
with analytical predictions. It is showed that EMA method can be
usefully employed to investigate the dynamic behavior of RC slabs.
Abstract: To achieve reliable welds with minimum distortion for
the fabrication of components in aerospace industry laser beam
welding is attempted. Laser welding can provide a significant benefit
for the welding of Titanium and Aluminium thin sheet alloys of its
precision and rapid processing capability. For laser welding, pulse
shape, energy, duration, repetition rate and peak power are the most
important parameters that influence directly the quality of welds. In
this experimental work for joining 1mm thick TI6AL4V and AA2024
alloy and JK600 Nd:YAG pulsed laser units used. The distortions at
different welding power and speed of titanium and aluminium thin
sheet alloys are investigated. Test results reveal that increase in
welding speed increases distortion in weldment
Abstract: The practice of freeing monuments from subsequent
additions crosses the entire history of conservation and it is
traditionally connected to the aim of valorisation, both for cultural
and educational purpose and recently even for touristic exploitation.
Defence heritage has been widely interested by these cultural and
technical moods from philological restoration to critic innovations. A
renovated critical analysis of Italian episodes and in particular the
Sardinian case of the area of San Pancrazio in Cagliari, constitute an
important lesson about the limits of this practice and the uncertainty
in terms of results, towards the definition of a sustainable good
practice in the restoration of military architectures.
Abstract: Social Media (SM) is websites increasingly popular
and built to allow people to express themselves and to interact
socially with others. Most SMT are dominated by youth particularly
College students. The proliferation of popular social media tools,
which can accessed from any communication devices has become
pervasive in the lives of today’s student life. Connecting traditional
education to social media tools are a relatively new era and any
collaborative tool could be used for learning activities. This study
focuses (i) how the social media tools are useful for the learning
activities of the students of faculty of medicine in King Khalid
University (ii) whether the social media affects the collaborative
learning with interaction among students, among course instructor,
their engagement, perceived ease of use and perceived ease of
usefulness (TAM) (iii) overall, the students satisfy with this
collaborative learning through Social media.
Abstract: Graphical User Interface (GUI) is essential to
programming, as is any other characteristic or feature, due to the fact
that GUI components provide the fundamental interaction between
the user and the program. Thus, we must give more interest to GUI
during building and development of systems. Also, we must give a
greater attention to the user who is the basic corner in the dealing
with the GUI. This paper introduces an approach for designing GUI
from one of the models of business workflows which describe the
workflow behavior of a system, specifically through Activity
Diagrams (AD).
Abstract: As the use of geothermal energy grows internationally
more effort is required to monitor and protect areas with rare and
important geothermal surface features. A number of approaches are
presented for developing and calibrating numerical geothermal
reservoir models that are capable of accurately representing
geothermal surface features. The approaches are discussed in the
context of cases studies of the Rotorua geothermal system and the
Orakei-korako geothermal system, both of which contain important
surface features. The results show that models are able to match the
available field data accurately and hence can be used as valuable
tools for predicting the future response of the systems to changes in
use.
Abstract: Although, arsenic trioxide has been the subject of
toxicological research, in vitro cytotoxicity and genotoxicity studies
using relevant cell models and uniform methodology are not well
elucidated. Hence, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the
cytotoxicity and genotoxicity induced by arsenic trioxide in human
keratinocytes (HaCaT) using the MTT [3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-
2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] and alkaline single cell gel
electrophoresis (Comet) assays, respectively. Human keratinocytes
were treated with different doses of arsenic trioxide for 4 h prior to
cytogenetic assessment. Data obtained from the MTT assay indicated
that arsenic trioxide significantly reduced the viability of HaCaT cells
in a dose-dependent manner, showing an IC50 value of 34.18 ± 0.6
μM. Data generated from the comet assay also indicated a significant
dose-dependent increase in DNA damage in HaCaT cells associated
with arsenic trioxide exposure. We observed a significant increase in
comet tail length and tail moment, showing an evidence of arsenic
trioxide -induced genotoxic damage in HaCaT cells. This study
confirms that the comet assay is a sensitive and effective method to
detect DNA damage caused by arsenic.
Abstract: Random epistemologies and hash tables have garnered
minimal interest from both security experts and experts in the last
several years. In fact, few information theorists would disagree with
the evaluation of expert systems. In our research, we discover how
flip-flop gates can be applied to the study of superpages. Though
such a hypothesis at first glance seems perverse, it is derived from
known results.
Abstract: Arising problems of countries’ public finances, social
and demographic changes motivate scientific and policy debates on
public spending size, structure and efficiency in order to meet the
changing needs of society and business. The concept of sustainable
development poses new challenges for scientists and policy-makers
in the field of public finance. This paper focuses on the investigation
of the relationship between government expenditure and country’s
economic development in the context of sustainable development.
Empirical analysis focuses on the data of the European Union (except
Croatia and Luxemburg) countries. The study covers 2003 – 2012
years, using annual cross-sectional data. Summarizing the research
results, it can be stated that governments should pay more attention to
the needs that ensure sustainable development in the long-run when
formulating public expenditure policy, particularly in the field of
environment protection.
Abstract: Recently, universities are increasingly consuming
energy to support various activities. A large population of staff and
students in Malaysian universities has led to excessive energy
consumption which directly gives an impact to the environment. The
key question then ascended “How well is an energy management
(EM) been practiced in universities without taking the Critical
Success Factors (CSFs) into consideration to ensure the management
of university achieves the goals in reducing energy consumption.
Review on past literature is carried out to establish CSFs for EM best
practices. Thus, this paper highlighted the CSFs which have to be
focused on by management of university to successfully measure the
EM implementation and its performance. At the end of this paper, a
theoretical framework is developed for EM success factors towards
sustainable university.
Abstract: The concentration levels of six heavy metals (Cd, Cr,
Fe, Ni, Pb and Zn) and two mineral elements (Ca and Mg) were
determined in soil samples collected from the vicinity of two auto
mechanic workshops in Sabon-Gari, Kaduna state, Nigeria, using
Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (AAS), in order to compare the
gradation of their concentrations with distance and depth of soil from
the workshop sites. At site 1, concentrations of Lead, Chromium, Iron
and Zinc were generally found to be above the World Health
Organization limits, while those of Nickel and Cadmium fell within
the limits. Iron had the highest concentration with a range of 176.274
ppm to 489.127 ppm at depths of 5 cm to 15 cm and a distance range
of 5 m to 15 m, while the concentration of cadmium was least with a
range of 0.001 ppm to 0.008 ppm at similar depth and distance
ranges. In addition, there was more of calcium (11.521 ppm to
121.709 ppm), in all the samples, than magnesium (11.293 ppm to
21.635 ppm). Similar results were obtained for site II. The
concentrations of all the metals analyzed showed a downward
gradient with increase in depth and distance from both workshop sites
except for iron and zinc at site 2. The immediate and remote
implications of these findings on the biota are discussed.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of the
laser and partial vibration stimulation on the mice tibia with
morphological characteristics. Twenty female C57BL/6 mice (12
weeks old) were used for the experiment. The study was carried out on
four groups of animals each consisting of five mice. Four groups of
mice were ovariectomized. Animals were scanned at 0 and 2 weeks
after ovariectomy by using micro computed tomography to estimate
morphological characteristics of tibial trabecular bone. Morphological
analysis showed that structural parameters of multi-stimuli group
appear significantly better phase in BV/TV, BS/BV, Tb.Th, Tb.N,
Tb.Sp, and Tb.pf than single stimulation groups. However, single
stimulation groups didn’t show significant effect on tibia with Sham
group. This study suggests that multi-stimuli may restrain the change
as the degenerate phase on osteoporosis in the mice tibia.
Abstract: The legends about “user-friendly” and “easy-to-use”
birotical tools (computer-related office tools) have been spreading
and misleading end-users. This approach has led us to the extremely
high number of incorrect documents, causing serious financial losses
in the creating, modifying, and retrieving processes. Our research
proved that there are at least two sources of this underachievement:
(1) The lack of the definition of the correctly edited, formatted
documents. Consequently, end-users do not know whether their
methods and results are correct or not. They are not aware of their
ignorance. They are so ignorant that their ignorance does not allow
them to realize their lack of knowledge. (2) The end-users’ problem
solving methods. We have found that in non-traditional programming
environments end-users apply, almost exclusively, surface approach
metacognitive methods to carry out their computer related activities,
which are proved less effective than deep approach methods.
Based on these findings we have developed deep approach
methods which are based on and adapted from traditional
programming languages. In this study, we focus on the most popular
type of birotical documents, the text based documents. We have
provided the definition of the correctly edited text, and based on this
definition, adapted the debugging method known in programming.
According to the method, before the realization of text editing, a
thorough debugging of already existing texts and the categorization
of errors are carried out. With this method in advance to real text
editing users learn the requirements of text based documents and also
of the correctly formatted text.
The method has been proved much more effective than the
previously applied surface approach methods. The advantages of the
method are that the real text handling requires much less human and
computer sources than clicking aimlessly in the GUI (Graphical User
Interface), and the data retrieval is much more effective than from
error-prone documents.
Abstract: Diffusion stills have been effective in water
desalination. The present work represents a model of the distillation
process by using vertical single-effect diffusion stills. A semianalytical
model has been developed to model the process. A
software computer code using Engineering Equation Solver EES
software has been developed to solve the equations of the developed
model. An experimental setup has been constructed, and used for the
validation of the model. The model is also validated against former
literature results. The results obtained from the present experimental
test rig, and the data from the literature, have been compared with the
results of the code to find its best range of validity. In addition, a
parametric analysis of the system has been developed using the
model to determine the effect of operating conditions on the system's
performance. The dominant parameters that affect the productivity of
the still are the hot plate temperature that ranges from (55- 90°C) and
feed flow rate in range of (0.00694-0.0211 kg/m2-s).
Abstract: PLA emerged as a promising polymer because of its
property as a compostable, biodegradable thermoplastic made from
renewable sources. PLA can be polymerized from monomers
(Lactide or Lactic acid) obtained by fermentation processes from
renewable sources such as corn starch or sugarcane. For PLA
synthesis, ring opening polymerization (ROP) of Lactide monomer is
one of the preferred methods. In the literature, the technique mainly
developed for ROP of PLA is based on metal/bimetallic catalyst (Sn,
Zn and Al) or other organic catalysts in suitable solvent. However,
the PLA synthesized using such catalysts may contain trace elements
of the catalyst which may cause toxicity. This work estimated the
usefulness and drawbacks of using different catalysts as well as effect
of alternative energies and future aspects for PLA production.
Abstract: Geometric and mechanical properties all influence the
resistance of RC structures and may, in certain combination of
property values, increase the risk of a brittle failure of the whole
system.
This paper presents a statistical and probabilistic investigation on
the resistance of RC beams designed according to Eurocodes 2 and 8,
and subjected to multiple failure modes, under both the natural
variation of material properties and the uncertainty associated with
cross-section and transverse reinforcement geometry. A full
probabilistic model based on JCSS Probabilistic Model Code is
derived. Different beams are studied through material nonlinear
analysis via Monte Carlo simulations. The resistance model is
consistent with Eurocode 2. Both a multivariate statistical evaluation
and the data clustering analysis of outcomes are then performed.
Results show that the ultimate load behaviour of RC beams
subjected to flexural and shear failure modes seems to be mainly
influenced by the combination of the mechanical properties of both
longitudinal reinforcement and stirrups, and the tensile strength of
concrete, of which the latter appears to affect the overall response of
the system in a nonlinear way. The model uncertainty of the
resistance model used in the analysis plays undoubtedly an important
role in interpreting results.
Abstract: The main aim of this article is to present a balance of the decade of Polish air transport market in the European Union having taking into account selected entities of the aviation market. This article analyzes the functioning of the Polish air transport market after the Polish accession to the European Union. During the study two main areas were pointed: shipping activity and activity of the airports. The most important benefits of integration and the benefits of introducing of the open sky policy were indicated. The last part of the article presents the perspectives of development of air traffic.