Abstract: PPG is a potential tool in clinical applications. Among such, the relationship between respiration and PPG signal has attracted attention in past decades. In this research, a bivariate AR spectral estimation method was utilized for the coherence analysis between these two signals. Ten healthy subjects participated in this research with signals measured at different respiratory rates. The results demonstrate that high coherence exists between respiration and PPG signal, whereas the coherence disappears in breath-holding experiments. These results imply that PPG signal reveals the respiratory information. The utilized method may provide an attractive alternative approach for the related researches.
Abstract: A large section of the society in Urban India is unable
to afford a basic dwelling unit. Housing shortage due to the rising unafforability makes it logical to consider alternative technologies more seriously for their application How far do these alternative
technologies match up with the conventional techniques? How do these integrate with the present-day need for urban amenities and
facilities? Are the owners of bamboo dwellings, for instance, a part of
the mainstream housing sector, having the same rights and privileges
as those enjoyed by other property owners? Will they have access to loans for building, improving, renovating or repairing their
dwellings? Why do we still hesitate to build a bamboo house for ourselves? Is our policy framework and political resolve in place, to
welcome such alternative technologies? It is time we found these answers, in order to explore the reasons for large-scale nonacceptance,
of a technology proven for its worthiness.
Abstract: Circular tubes have been widely used as structural
members in engineering application. Therefore, its collapse behavior
has been studied for many decades, focusing on its energy absorption
characteristics. In order to predict the collapse behavior of members,
one could rely on the use of finite element codes or experiments.
These tools are helpful and high accuracy but costly and require
extensive running time. Therefore, an approximating model of tubes
collapse mechanism is an alternative for early step of design. This
paper is also aimed to develop a closed-form solution of thin-walled
circular tube subjected to bending. It has extended the Elchalakani et
al.-s model (Int. J. Mech. Sci.2002; 44:1117-1143) to include the
rate of energy dissipation of rolling hinge in the circumferential
direction. The 3-D geometrical collapse mechanism was analyzed by
adding the oblique hinge lines along the longitudinal tube within the
length of plastically deforming zone. The model was based on the
principal of energy rate conservation. Therefore, the rates of internal
energy dissipation were calculated for each hinge lines which are
defined in term of velocity field. Inextensional deformation and
perfect plastic material behavior was assumed in the derivation of
deformation energy rate. The analytical result was compared with
experimental result. The experiment was conducted with a number of
tubes having various D/t ratios. Good agreement between analytical
and experiment was achieved.
Abstract: The density estimates considered in this paper comprise
a base density and an adjustment component consisting of a linear
combination of orthogonal polynomials. It is shown that, in the
context of density approximation, the coefficients of the linear combination
can be determined either from a moment-matching technique
or a weighted least-squares approach. A kernel representation of
the corresponding density estimates is obtained. Additionally, two
refinements of the Kronmal-Tarter stopping criterion are proposed
for determining the degree of the polynomial adjustment. By way of
illustration, the density estimation methodology advocated herein is
applied to two data sets.
Abstract: Jayanti-s algorithm is one of the best known abortable mutual exclusion algorithms. This work is an attempt to overcome an already known limitation of the algorithm while preserving its all important properties and elegance. The limitation is that the token number used to assign process identification number to new incoming processes is unbounded. We have used a suitably adapted alternative data structure, in order to completely eliminate the use of token number, in the algorithm.
Abstract: As the world changes more rapidly, the demand for update information for resource management, environment monitoring, planning are increasing exponentially. Integration of Remote Sensing with GIS technology will significantly promote the ability for addressing these concerns. This paper presents an alternative way of update GIS applications using image processing and high resolution images. We show a method of high-resolution image segmentation using graphs and morphological operations, where a preprocessing step (watershed operation) is required. A morphological process is then applied using the opening and closing operations. After this segmentation we can extract significant cartographic elements such as urban areas, streets or green areas. The result of this segmentation and this extraction is then used to update GIS applications. Some examples are shown using aerial photography.
Abstract: Thailand is one of the world-s leaders of rice
producers and exporters. Farmers have to increase the rice cultivation
frequency for serving the national increasing of export-s demand. It
leads to an elimination of rice residues by open burning which is the
quickest and costless management method. The open burning of rice
residue is one of the major causes of air pollutants and greenhouse
gas (GHG) emission. Under ASEAN agreement on trans-boundary
haze, Thailand set the master plan to mitigate air pollutant emission
from open burning of agricultural residues. In this master plan,
residues incorporation is promoted as alternative management
method to open burning. However, the assessment of both options in
term of GHG emission in order to investigate their contribution to
long-term global warming is still scarce or inexistent. In this study, a
method on rice residues assessment was first developed in order to
estimate and compare GHG emissions from rice cultivation under
rice residues open burning and the case with incorporation of the
same amount of rice residues, using 2006 IPCC guidelines for
emission estimation and Life Cycle Analysis technique. The
emission from rice cultivation in different preparing area practice
was also discussed.
Abstract: In this paper, perceptions of actors on changes in
crop productivity, quantity and quality of water, and determinants of
their perception are analyzed using descriptive statistics and ordered
logit model. Data collected from 297 Ethiopian farmers and 103
agricultural professionals from December 2009 to January 2010 are
employed. Results show that the majority of the farmers and
professionals recognized decline in water resources, reasoning
climate changes and soil erosion as some of the causes. However,
there is a variation in views on changes in productivity. The
household asset, education level, age and geographical positions are
found to affect farmers- perception on changes in crop productivity.
But, the study underlines that there is no evidence that farmers-
economic status, age, or education level affects recognition of
degradation of water resources. Thus, more focus shall be given on
providing them different coping mechanisms and alternative
resource conserving technologies than educating about the
problems.
Abstract: The current situation in the eurozone raises a number of topics for discussion and to help in finding an answer to the question of whether a common currency is a more suitable means of coping with the impact of the financial crisis or whether national currencies are better suited to this. The economic situation in the EU is now considerably volatile and, due to problems with the fulfilment of the Maastricht convergence criteria, it is now being considered whether, in their further development, new member states will decide to distance themselves from the euro or will, in an attempt to overcome the crisis, speed up the adoption of the euro. The Czech Republic is one country with little interest in adopting the euro, justified by the fact that a better alternative to dealing with this crisis is an independent monetary policy and its ability to respond flexibly to the economic situation not only in Europe, but around the world. One attribute of the crisis in the Czech Republic and its mitigation is the freely floating exchange rate of the national currency. It is not only the Czech Republic that is attempting to alleviate the impact of the crisis, but also new EU member countries facing fresh questions to which theory have yet to provide wholly satisfactory answers. These questions undoubtedly include the problem of inflation targeting and the choice of appropriate instruments for achieving financial stability. The difficulty lies in the fact that these objectives may be contradictory and may require more than one means of achieving them. In this respect we may assume that membership of the euro zone might not in itself mitigate the development of the recession or protect the nation from future crises. We are of the opinion that the decisive factor in the development of any economy will continue to be the domestic economic policy and the operability of market economic mechanisms. We attempt to document this fact using selected countries as examples, these being the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia.
Abstract: The blood ducts must be occluded to avoid loss of
blood from vessels in laparoscopic surgeries. This paper presents a
locking mechanism to be used in a ligation laparoscopic procedure
(LigLAP I), as an alternative solution for a stapling procedure.
Currently, stapling devices are being used to occlude vessels. Using
these devices may result in some problems, including injury of bile
duct, taking up a great deal of space behind the vessel, and bile leak.
In this new procedure, a two-layer suture occludes a vessel. A
locking mechanism is also required to hold the suture. Since there is
a limited space at the device tip, a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA)
actuator is used in this mechanism. Suitability for cleanroom
applications, small size, and silent performance are among the
advantages of SMA actuators in biomedical applications. An
experimental study is conducted to examine the function of the
locking mechanism. To set up the experiment, a prototype of a
locking mechanism is built using nitinol, which is a nickel-titanium
shape memory alloy. The locking mechanism successfully locks a
polymer suture for all runs of the experiment. In addition, the effects
of various surface materials on the applied pulling forces are studied.
Various materials are mounted at the mechanism tip to compare the
maximum pulling forces applied to the suture for each material. The
results show that the various surface materials on the device tip
provide large differences in the applied pulling forces.
Abstract: Road industry has challenged the prospect of ecoconstruction. Pavements may fit within the framework of sustainable development. Hence, research implements assessments of conventional pavements impacts on environment in use of life cycle approach. To meet global, and often national, targets on pollution control, newly introduced pavement designs are under study. This is the case of Cyprus demonstration, which occurred within EcoLanes project work. This alternative pavement differs on concrete layer reinforced with tire recycling product. Processing of post-consumer tires produces steel fibers improving strength capacity against cracking. Thus maintenance works are relevantly limited in comparison to flexible pavement. This enables to be more ecofriendly, referenced to current study outputs. More specific, proposed concrete pavement life cycle processes emits 15 % less air pollutants and consumes 28 % less embodied energy than those of the asphalt pavement. In addition there is also a reduction on costs by 0.06 %.
Abstract: Consumer demand for products with low fat or sugar content and low levels of food additives, as well as cost factors, make exopolysaccharides (EPS) a viable alternative. EPS remain an interesting tool to modulate the sensory properties of yoghurt. This study was designed to evaluate EPS production potential of commercial yoghurt starter cultures (Yo-Flex starters: Harmony 1.0, TWIST 1.0 and YF-L902, Chr.Hansen, Denmark) and their influence on an apparent viscosity of yoghurt samples. The production of intracellularly synthesized EPS by different commercial yoghurt starters varies roughly from 144,08 to 440,81 mg/l. Analysing starters’ producing EPS, they showed large variations in concentration and supposedly composition. TWIST 1.0 had produced greater amounts of EPS in MRS medium and in yoghurt samples but there wasn’t determined significant contribution to development of texture as well as an apparent viscosity of the final product. YF-L902 and Harmony 1.0 starters differed considerably in EPS yields, but not in apparent viscosities (p>0.05) of the final yoghurts. Correlation between EPS concentration and viscosity of yoghurt samples was not established in the study.
Abstract: In this work, the surgical theater of a local hospital in
KSA was analyzed using simulation. The focus was on attempting to
answer questions related to how many Operating Rooms (ORs) to
open and to analyze the performance of the surgical theater in
general and mainly the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) to assist
making decisions regarding PACU staffing. The surgical theater
consists of ten operating rooms and the PACU unit which has a
maximum capacity of fifteen beds. Different sequencing rules to
sequence the surgical cases were tested and the Longest Case First
(LCF) were superior to others. The results of the different
alternatives developed and tested can be used by the manager as a
tool to plan and manage the OR and PACU
Abstract: This work concerns the topological optimization
problem for determining the optimal petroleum refinery
configuration. We are interested in further investigating and
hopefully advancing the existing optimization approaches and
strategies employing logic propositions to conceptual process
synthesis problems. In particular, we seek to contribute to this
increasingly exciting area of chemical process modeling by
addressing the following potentially important issues: (a) how the
formulation of design specifications in a mixed-logical-and-integer
optimization model can be employed in a synthesis problem to enrich
the problem representation by incorporating past design experience,
engineering knowledge, and heuristics; and (b) how structural
specifications on the interconnectivity relationships by space (states)
and by function (tasks) in a superstructure should be properly
formulated within a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP)
model. The proposed modeling technique is illustrated on a case
study involving the alternative processing routes of naphtha, in which
significant improvement in the solution quality is obtained.
Abstract: In this paper an alternative visualisation approach of
the wake behind different vehicle body shapes with simplified and
fully-detailed underbody has been proposed and analysed. This
allows for a more clear distinction among the different wake regions.
This visualisation is based on a transformation of the cartesian
coordinates of a chosen wake plane to polar coordinates, using as
filter velocities lower than the freestream. This transformation
produces a polar wake plot that enables the division and
quantification of the wake in a number of sections. In this paper,
local drag has been used to visualise the drag contribution of the flow
by the different sections. Visually, a balanced wake can be observed
by the concentric behaviour of the polar plots. Alternatively,
integration of the local drag of each degree section as a ratio of the
total local drag yields a quantifiable approach of the wake uniformity,
where different sections contribute equally to the local drag, with the
exception of the wheels.
Abstract: Contamination of aromatic compounds in water can
cause severe long-lasting effects not only for biotic organism but also
on human health. Several alternative technologies for remediation of
polluted water have been attempted. One of these is adsorption
process of aromatic compounds by using organic modified clay
mineral. Porous structure of clay is potential properties for molecular
adsorptivity and it can be increased by immobilizing hydrophobic
structure to attract organic compounds. In this work natural
montmorillonite were modified with cetyltrimethylammonium
(CTMA+) and was evaluated for use as adsorbents of aromatic
compounds: benzene, toluene, and 2-chloro phenol in its single and
multicomponent solution by ethanol:water solvent. Preparation of
CTMA-montmorillonite was conducted by simple ion exchange
procedure and characterization was conducted by using x-day
diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infra red (FTIR) and gas
sorption analysis. The influence of structural modification of
montmorillonite on its adsorption capacity and adsorption affinity of
organic compound were studied. It was shown that adsorptivity of
montmorillonite was increased by modification associated with
arrangements of CTMA+ in the structure even the specific surface
area of modified montmorillonite was lower than raw
montmorillonite. Adsorption rate indicated that material has affinity
to adsorb compound by following order: benzene> toluene > 2-chloro
phenol. The adsorption isotherms of benzene and toluene showed 1st
order adsorption kinetic indicating a partition phenomenon of
compounds between the aqueous and organophilic CTMAmontmorillonite.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider the effect of the initial
sample size on the performance of a sequential approach that used
in selecting a good enough simulated system, when the number
of alternatives is very large. We implement a sequential approach
on M=M=1 queuing system under some parameter settings, with a
different choice of the initial sample sizes to explore the impacts on
the performance of this approach. The results show that the choice
of the initial sample size does affect the performance of our selection
approach.
Abstract: Although many studies on the assembly technology of
the bridge construction have dealt mostly with on the pier, girder or the
deck of the bridge, studies on the prefabricated barrier have rarely been
performed. For understanding structural characteristics and
application of the concrete barrier in the modular bridge, which is an
assembly of structure members, static loading test was performed.
Structural performances as a road barrier of the three methods,
conventional cast-in-place(ST), vertical bolt connection(BVC) and
horizontal bolt connection(BHC) were evaluated and compared
through the analyses of load-displacement curves, strain curves of the
steel, concrete strain curves and the visual appearances of crack
patterns. The vertical bolt connection(BVC) method demonstrated
comparable performance as an alternative to conventional
cast-in-place(ST) while providing all the advantages of prefabricated
technology. Necessities for the future improvement in nuts
enforcement as well as legal standard and regulation are also
addressed.
Abstract: Dengue disease is an infectious vector-borne viral
disease that is commonly found in tropical and sub-tropical regions,
especially in urban and semi-urban areas, around the world and
including Malaysia. There is no currently available vaccine or
chemotherapy for the prevention or treatment of dengue disease.
Therefore prevention and treatment of the disease depend on vector
surveillance and control measures. Disease risk mapping has been
recognized as an important tool in the prevention and control
strategies for diseases. The choice of statistical model used for
relative risk estimation is important as a good model will
subsequently produce a good disease risk map. Therefore, the aim of
this study is to estimate the relative risk for dengue disease based
initially on the most common statistic used in disease mapping called
Standardized Morbidity Ratio (SMR) and one of the earliest
applications of Bayesian methodology called Poisson-gamma model.
This paper begins by providing a review of the SMR method, which
we then apply to dengue data of Perak, Malaysia. We then fit an
extension of the SMR method, which is the Poisson-gamma model.
Both results are displayed and compared using graph, tables and
maps. Results of the analysis shows that the latter method gives a
better relative risk estimates compared with using the SMR. The
Poisson-gamma model has been demonstrated can overcome the
problem of SMR when there is no observed dengue cases in certain
regions. However, covariate adjustment in this model is difficult and
there is no possibility for allowing spatial correlation between risks in
adjacent areas. The drawbacks of this model have motivated many
researchers to propose other alternative methods for estimating the
risk.
Abstract: Since injection engines have a considerable portion, in
consumption of energy and environmental pollution, using an
alternative source of energy with lower pollutant effects in this
regard is necessary.
Biodiesel fuel is a suitable alternative for gasoline in diesel
engines.
In this research the property of biodiesel, the function and the
pollution effects of diesel engine, when using 100% biodiesel, using
100% gasoline and mixing ratio of both fuels for comparing them,
have been investigated.
The researches have shown, using biodiesel fuel in prevalent
diesel engine, will reduce the pollutants such as Co, half burned
carbohydrate and suspended particles and a little increase in
oxidation will achieve while power consumption, particularly fuel
and thermal efficiency of diesel fuel has the same.