Abstract: In order to study floristic and molecular classification
of common wild wheat (Triticum boeoticum Boiss.), an analysis was
conducted on populations of the Triticum boeoticum collected from
different regions of Iran. Considering all floristic compositions of
habitats, six floristic groups (syntaxa) within the populations were
identified. A high level of variation of T. boeoticum also detected
using SSR markers. Our results showed that molecular method
confirmed the grouping of floristic method. In other word, the results
from our study indicate that floristic classification are still useful,
efficient, and economic tools for characterizing the amount and
distribution of genetic variation in natural populations of T.
boeoticum. Nevertheless, molecular markers appear as useful and
complementary techniques for identification and for evaluation of
genetic diversity in studied populations.
Abstract: In this paper we present a novel technique for data
hiding in binary document images. We use the concept of entropy in
order to identify document specific least distortive areas throughout
the binary document image. The document image is treated as any
other image and the proposed method utilizes the standard document
characteristics for the embedding process. Proposed method
minimizes perceptual distortion due to embedding and allows
watermark extraction without the requirement of any side information
at the decoder end.
Abstract: A model of a system concerning one species of demersal
(inshore) fish and one of pelagic (offshore) fish undergoing fishing
restricted by marine protected areas is proposed in this paper. This
setup was based on the FISH-BE model applied to the Tabina fishery
in Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines. The components of the model
equations have been adapted from widely-accepted mechanisms in
population dynamics. The model employs Gompertz-s law of growth
and interaction on each type of protected and unprotected subpopulation.
Exchange coefficients between protected and unprotected
areas were assumed to be proportional to the relative area of the
entry region. Fishing harvests were assumed to be proportional to
both the number of fishers and the number of unprotected fish. An
extra term was included for the pelagic population to allow for the
exchange between the unprotected area and the outside environment.
The systems were found to be bounded for all parameter values. The
equations for the steady state were unsolvable analytically but the
existence and uniqueness of non-zero steady states can be proven.
Plots also show that an MPA size yielding the maximum steady state
of the unprotected population can be found. All steady states were
found to be globally asymptotically stable for the entire range of
parameter values.
Abstract: The problem discussed in this paper involves packing fresh fish fileet of the northern Cod into a standard square container. The fish is first cleaned and split and then collected on a belt ready to be stacked in a container. The aim of our work is to pack the fish into the container with constraints on the amount of overlap allowed for the fileets. The current focus is to design a packing cell that can be real-time and of practical use, while finding the optimal solution to the degree of overlap and minimise the unused space of the container.
Abstract: A laboratory set-up was designed to survey the
effectiveness of UV/O3 advanced oxidation process (AOP) for the
removal of Carbaryl from polluted water in batch reactor. The study
was carried out by UV/O3 process for water samples containing 1 to
20 mg/L of Carbaryl in distilled water. Also the range of drinking
water resources adjusted in synthetic water and effects of contact
time, pH and Carbaryl concentration were studied. The residual
pesticide concentration was determined by applying high
performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The results indicated
that increasing of retention time and pH, enhances pesticide removal
efficiency. The removal efficiency has been affected by pesticide
initial concentration. Samples with low pesticide concentration
showed a remarkable removal efficiency compared to the samples
with high pesticide concentration. AOP method showed the removal
efficiencies of 80% to 100%. Although process showed high
performance for removal of pesticide from water samples, this
process has different disadvantages including complication,
intolerability, difficulty of maintenance and equipmental and
structural requirements.
Abstract: Column leach test has been performed to examine the
behavior of leaching of sodium, calcium and potassium in landfills.
In the column leach apparatus, two different layers of contaminated
and uncontaminated soils of different height ratios (ratio of depth of
contaminated soil to the depth of uncontaminated soil) are taken.
Water is poured from an overhead tank at a particular flowrate to the
inlet of the soil column for a certain ponding depth over the
contaminated soil. Subsequent infiltration causes leaching and the
leachates are collected from the bottom of the column. The
concentrations of Na, Ca and K in the leachate are measured using
flame photometry. The experiments are further extended by changing
the rates of flow from the overhead tank to the inlet of the column in
achieving the same ponding depth. The experiments are performed
for different scenarios in which the height ratios are altered and the
variations of concentrations of Na, Ca, and K are observed. The study
brings an estimation of leaching in landfill sites for different heights
and precipitation intensity where a ponding depth is maintained over
the landfill. It has been observed that the leaching behavior of Na,
Ca, and K are not similar. Calcium exhibits highest amount of
leaching compared to Sodium and Potassium under similar
experimental conditions.
Abstract: Sustainable energy usage has been recognized as one
of the important measure to increase the competitiveness of the
nation globally. Many strong emphases were given in the Ninth
Malaysia Plan (RMK9) to improve energy efficient especially to
government buildings. With this in view, a project to investigate the
potential of energy saving in selected building in Universiti Tun
Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) was carried out. In this project, a
case study involving electric energy consumption of the academic
staff office building was conducted. The scope of the study include to
identify energy consumption in a selected building, to study energy
saving opportunities, to analyse cost investment in term of economic
and to identify users attitude with respect to energy usage. The
MS1525:2001, Malaysian Standard -Code of practice on energy
efficiency and use of renewable energy for non-residential buildings
was used as reference. Several energy efficient measures were
considered and their merits and priority were compared. Improving
human behavior can reduce energy consumption by 6% while
technical measure can reduce energy consumption by 44%. Two
economic analysis evaluation methods were applied; they are the
payback period method and net present value method.
Abstract: In this study it is aimed to determine the level of preservice teachers- computer phobia. Whether or not computer phobia meaningfully varies statistically according to gender and computer experience has been tested in the study. The study was performed on 430 pre-service teachers at the Education Faculty in Rize/Turkey. Data in the study were collected through the Computer Phobia Scale consisting of the “Personal Knowledge Questionnaire", “Computer Anxiety Rating Scale", and “Computer Thought Survey". In this study, data were analyzed with statistical processes such as t test, and correlation analysis. According to results of statistical analyses, computer phobia of male pre-service teachers does not statistically vary depending on their gender. Although male preservice teachers have higher computer anxiety scores, they have lower computer thought scores. It was also observed that there is a negative and intensive relation between computer experience and computer anxiety. Meanwhile it was found out that pre-service teachers using computer regularly indicated lower computer anxiety. Obtained results were tried to be discussed in terms of the number of computer classes in the Education Faculty curriculum, hours of computer class and the computer availability of student teachers.
Abstract: This research aimed to study the market feasibility for
new brand coffee house, the case study of Thailand.. This study is a
mixed methods research combining quantitative research and the
qualitative research. Primary data 350 sets of questionnaires were
distributed, and the high quality completed questionnaires of 320 sets
returned. Research samples are identified as customers’ of Hi-end
department stores in Thailand. The sources of secondary data were
critical selected from highly reliable sources, both from public and
private sectors. The results were used to classify the customer group
into two main groups, the younger than 25 and the older than 25years
old. Results of the younger group, are give priority to the dimension
of coffee house and its services dimension more than others, then
branding dimension and the product dimension respectively. On the
other hand, the older group give the difference result as they rate the
important of the branding, coffee house and its services, then the
product respectively. Coffee consuming is not just the trend but it
has become part of people lifestyle. And the new cultures also created
by the wise businessman. Coffee was long produced and consumed in
Thailand. But it is surprisingly the hi-end brand coffee houses in Thai
market are mostly imported brands. The café business possibility for
Thai brand coffee house in Thai market were discussed in the paper.
Abstract: In this study, solid phase micro-extraction (SPME)
was optimized to improve the sensitivity and accuracy in
formaldehyde determination for plywood panels. Further work has
been carried out to compare the newly developed technique with
existing method which reacts formaldehyde collected in desiccators
with acetyl acetone reagent (DC-AA). In SPME, formaldehyde was
first derivatized with O-(2,3,4,5,6 pentafluorobenzyl)-hydroxylamine
hydrochloride (PFBHA) and analysis was then performed by gas
chromatography in combination with mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
SPME data subjected to various wood species gave satisfactory
results, with relative standard deviations (RSDs) obtained in the
range of 3.1-10.3%. It was also well correlated with DC values,
giving a correlation coefficient, RSQ, of 0.959. The quantitative
analysis of formaldehyde by SPME was an alternative in wood
industry with great potential
Abstract: The purposes of this study are to study political
information exposure, politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and
political participations among people in Bangkok Metropolitan Area.
The sample consisted of 420 which were selected by using accidental sampling method. Questionnaires were administered to all of the
respondents to obtain the data for this research. T-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson-s correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. The findings are as follows: The difference in gender,
education, income and occupation has significantly effect upon political information exposures. The difference in age, income has
significantly effect upon politicians- perceptions. The difference in income has significantly effect upon political attitudes. The
difference in gender, income and occupation has significantly effect
upon political participations. There were a significantly relations between political information exposures, political attitudes, political
participations and between politicians- perceptions, political attitudes and political participations.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to assess the value of Second Life among post-secondary instructors with experience using Second Life as an educational tool. Using Everett Rogers-s diffusion of innovations theory, survey respondents (N = 162), were divided into three adopter categories: innovators, early adopters and the early majority. Respondents were from 15 countries and 25 academic disciplines, indicating the considerable potential this innovation has to be adopted across many different borders and in many areas of academe. Nearly 94% of respondents said they plan to use Second Life again as an educational tool. However, no significant differences were found in instructors- levels of satisfaction with Second Life as an educational tool or their perceived effect on student learning across adopter categories. On the other hand, instructors who conducted class fully in Second Life were significantly more satisfied than those who used Second Life as only a small supplement to a real-world class. Overall, personal interest factors, rather than interpersonal communication factors, most influenced respondents- decision to adopt Second Life as an educational tool. In light of these findings, theoretical implications are discussed and practical suggestions are provided.
Abstract: Distributed Computing Systems are usually considered the most suitable model for practical solutions of many parallel algorithms. In this paper an enhanced distributed system is presented to improve the time complexity of Binary Indexed Trees (BIT). The proposed system uses multi-uniform processors with identical architectures and a specially designed distributed memory system. The analysis of this system has shown that it has reduced the time complexity of the read query to O(Log(Log(N))), and the update query to constant complexity, while the naive solution has a time complexity of O(Log(N)) for both queries. The system was implemented and simulated using VHDL and Verilog Hardware Description Languages, with xilinx ISE 10.1, as the development environment and ModelSim 6.1c, similarly as the simulation tool. The simulation has shown that the overhead resulting by the wiring and communication between the system fragments could be fairly neglected, which makes it applicable to practically reach the maximum speed up offered by the proposed model.
Abstract: This research studied recycled wastes by Recyclable Material Bank project of 17 universities of Thailand for evaluation of reducing greenhouse gasses emission compared with landfilling activity during January 2011 to December 2011. The results showed that the projects collected total amount of recyclable wastes about 1,626.917 metric ton. The office paper has the largest amount among these recycled wastes (55.61 % of total recycled wastes). Groups of recycled waste can be prioritized from high to low according to their amount as paper, plastic, glass, mixed recyclables and metal, respectively. The project reduced greenhouse gasses emission equivalent to about 5,263.481 metric ton of carbon dioxide. The most significant recycled waste that affects the reduction of greenhouse gasses emission is office paper which is 73.45% of total reduced greenhouse gasses emission. According to amount of reduced greenhouse gasses emission, groups of recycled waste can be prioritized from high to low significances as paper, plastic, metal, mixed recyclables and glass, respectively.
Abstract: In this paper, a post processing scheme is suggested
for improvement of Bit Error-Rate (BER) in optical fiber
transmission receivers. The developed scheme has been tested on
optical fiber systems operating with a non-return-to-zero (NRZ)
format at transmission rates of up to 10Gbps. The transmission
system considered is based on well known transmitters and receivers
blocks operating at wavelengths in the region of 1550 nm using a
standard single mode fiber. Performance of improved detected
signals has been evaluated via the analysis of quality factor and
computed bit error rates. Numerical simulations have shown a
noticeable improvement of the system BER after implementation of
the suggested post processing operation on the detected electrical
signals.
Abstract: Solar energy is the most “available", ecological and clean energy. This energy can be used in active or passive mode. The active mode implies the transformation of solar energy into a useful energy. The solar energy can be transformed into thermal energy, using solar collectors. In these collectors, the active and the most important element is the absorber, material which performs the absorption of solar radiation and, in at the same time, limits its reflection. The paper presents some aspects regarding the IR absorbing material – a type of cermets, used as absorber in the solar collectors, by X Ray Diffraction Technique (XRD) characterization.
Abstract: Character segmentation is an important preprocessing
step for text recognition. In degraded documents, existence of
touching characters decreases recognition rate drastically, for any
optical character recognition (OCR) system. In this paper we have
proposed a complete solution for segmenting touching characters in
all the three zones of printed Gurmukhi script. A study of touching
Gurmukhi characters is carried out and these characters have been
divided into various categories after a careful analysis. Structural
properties of the Gurmukhi characters are used for defining the
categories. New algorithms have been proposed to segment the
touching characters in middle zone, upper zone and lower zone.
These algorithms have shown a reasonable improvement in
segmenting the touching characters in degraded printed Gurmukhi
script. The algorithms proposed in this paper are applicable only to
machine printed text. We have also discussed a new and useful
technique to segment the horizontally overlapping lines.
Abstract: A comprehensive program of laboratory testing on a
compacted kaolin in a modified triaxial cell was perform to
investigate the influence of hydraulic hysteresis on effective stress in
unsaturated soils. The test data are presented on a range of constant
suction shear tests along wetting and drying paths. The values of
effective stress parameter χ at different matric suction were
determined using the test results. The effect of hydraulic hysteresis
phenomenon on the effective stress was observed. The values of
effective stress parameter χ obtained from the experiments were
compared with those obtained from the expressions proposed in
literature.
Abstract: The paper provides biomasses characteristics by
proximate analysis (volatile matter, fixed carbon and ash) and
ultimate analysis (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen) for the
prediction of the heating value equations. The heating value
estimation of various biomasses can be used as an energy evaluation.
Thirteen types of biomass were studied. Proximate analysis was
investigated by mass loss method and infrared moisture analyzer.
Ultimate analysis was analyzed by CHNO analyzer. The heating
values varied from 15 to 22.4MJ kg-1. Correlations of the calculated
heating value with proximate and ultimate analyses were undertaken
using multiple regression analysis and summarized into three and two
equations, respectively. Correlations based on proximate analysis
illustrated that deviation of calculated heating values from
experimental heating values was higher than the correlations based
on ultimate analysis.
Abstract: The main objective of our study is to collect data
about the profile of the asthmatic patients in Assam and thereby have
a comprehensive knowledge of the factors influencing the asthmatic
patients of the state and their medication pattern. We developed a
search strategy to find any publication about the community based
survey asthma related and used. These to search the MEDLINE
(1996 to current literature) CINAHL DOAJ pubmed databases using
the key phrases, Asthma, Respiratory disorders, Drug therapy of
Asthma, database decision support system and asthma. The
appropriate literature was printed out from the online source and
library (Journal) source. The study was conducted through a set of
structured and non-structured questionnaires targeted on the
asthmatic patients belonging to the rural and urban areas of Assam,
during the month of Dec 2006 to July 2007, 138 cases were studied
in Gauwathi Medical College & Hospital located in Bhangagarh,
Assam in India. The demographic characteristics a factor in 138
patients with asthma with allergic rhinitis (cases) gives the detail
profile of asthmatic patient-s distribution of Assam as classified on
the basis of age and sex. It is evident from the study that male
populations (66%) are more prone to asthma as compared to the
females (34%).Another striking features that emerged from this
survey is the maximum prevalence of asthma in the age group of 20-
30 years followed by infants belonging to the age group of 7 (0.05%)
0-10years among both male and female populations of Assam. The
high incidence of asthma in the age group of 20-30 years may
probably be due to the allergy arising out of sudden exposure to dust
and pollen which the children face while playing and going to the
school. The rural females in the age group of 30-40 years are more
prone to asthma than urban females in the same age group may be
due to sex differentiation among the tribal population of the state.
Pharmacists should educate the asthmatics how to use inhalers
considering growing menace of asthma in the state. Safer drugs
should be produced in the form of aerosol so that easy administration
by the asthmatic patients and physicians of the state is possible for
curing asthma. The health centers should be more equipped with the
medicines to cure asthma in the state like Assam.