Abstract: The effect of moisture content and loading rate on
mechanical strength of 12 brown rice grain varieties was determined.
The results showed that the rupture force of brown rice grain
decreased by increasing the moisture content and loading rate. The
highest rupture force values was obtained at the moisture content of
8% (w.b.) and loading rate of 10 mm/min; while the lowest rupture
force corresponded to the moisture content of 14% (w.b.) and loading
rate of 15 mm/min. The 12 varieties were divided into three groups,
namely local short grain varieties, local long grain varieties and
improved long grain varieties. It was observed that the rupture
strength of the three groups were statistically different from each
other (P
Abstract: User-Centered Design (UCD), Usability Engineering (UE) and Participatory Design (PD) are the common Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) approaches that are practiced in the software development process, focusing towards issues and matters concerning user involvement. It overlooks the organizational perspective of HCI integration within the software development organization. The Management Information Systems (MIS) perspective of HCI takes a managerial and organizational context to view the effectiveness of integrating HCI in the software development process. The Human-Centered Design (HCD) which encompasses all of the human aspects including aesthetic and ergonomic, is claimed as to provide a better approach in strengthening the HCI approaches to strengthen the software development process. In determining the effectiveness of HCD in the software development process, this paper presents the findings of a content analysis of HCI approaches by viewing those approaches as a technology which integrates user requirements, ranging from the top management to other stake holder in the software development process. The findings obtained show that HCD approach is a technology that emphasizes on human, tools and knowledge in strengthening the HCI approaches to strengthen the software development process in the quest to produce a sustainable, usable and useful software product.
Abstract: From food consumption surveys has been found that potato consumption comparing to other European countries is one of the highest. Hence acrylamide (AA) intake coming from fried potatoes in population might be high as well. The aim of the research was to determine acrylamide content and estimate intake of acrylamide from roasted potatoes bred and cultivated in Latvia. Five common Latvian potato varieties were selected: Lenora, Brasla, Imanta, Zile, and Madara. A two-year research was conducted during two periods: just after harvesting and after six months of storage. Time and temperature (210 ± 5°C) was recorded during frying. AA was extracted from potatoes by solid phase extraction and AA content was determined by LC-MS/MS. estimated intake of acrylamide ranges from 0.012 to 0.496μgkg-1 BW per day.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the impacts of
computer games on the mathematics instruction. First, the research
designed and implemented the web-based games according to the
content of existing textbook. And the researcher collected and
analyzed the information related to the mathematics instruction
integrating the computer games. In this study, the researcher focused
on the learning motivation of mathematics, mathematics achievement,
and pupil-teacher interactions in classroom. The results showed that
students under instruction integrating computer games significantly
improved in motivation and achievement. The teacher tended to use
less direct teaching and provide more time for student-s active
learning.
Abstract: This paper describes a segmentation algorithm based
on the cooperation of an optical flow estimation method with edge
detection and region growing procedures.
The proposed method has been developed as a pre-processing
stage to be used in methodologies and tools for video/image indexing
and retrieval by content. The addressed problem consists in
extracting whole objects from background for producing images of
single complete objects from videos or photos. The extracted images
are used for calculating the object visual features necessary for both
indexing and retrieval processes.
The first task of the algorithm exploits the cues from motion
analysis for moving area detection. Objects and background are then
refined using respectively edge detection and region growing
procedures. These tasks are iteratively performed until objects and
background are completely resolved.
The developed method has been applied to a variety of indoor and
outdoor scenes where objects of different type and shape are
represented on variously textured background.
Abstract: Nowadays, computer worms, viruses and Trojan horse
become popular, and they are collectively called malware. Those
malware just spoiled computers by deleting or rewriting important
files a decade ago. However, recent malware seems to be born to earn
money. Some of malware work for collecting personal information so
that malicious people can find secret information such as password for
online banking, evidence for a scandal or contact address which relates
with the target. Moreover, relation between money and malware
becomes more complex. Many kinds of malware bear bots to get
springboards. Meanwhile, for ordinary internet users,
countermeasures against malware come up against a blank wall.
Pattern matching becomes too much waste of computer resources,
since matching tools have to deal with a lot of patterns derived from
subspecies. Virus making tools can automatically bear subspecies of
malware. Moreover, metamorphic and polymorphic malware are no
longer special. Recently there appears malware checking sites that
check contents in place of users' PC. However, there appears a new
type of malicious sites that avoids check by malware checking sites. In
this paper, existing protocols and methods related with the web are
reconsidered in terms of protection from current attacks, and new
protocol and method are indicated for the purpose of security of the
web.
Abstract: Sediment and mangrove root samples from Iko River
Estuary, Nigeria were analyzed for microbial and polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) content. The total heterotrophic
bacterial (THB) count ranged from 1.1x107 to 5.1 x107 cfu/g, total
fungal (TF) count ranged from 1.0x106 to 2.7x106 cfu/g, total
coliform (TC) count ranged from 2.0x104 to 8.0x104cfu/g while
hydrocarbon utilizing bacterial (HUB) count ranged from 1.0x 105 to
5.0 x 105cfu/g. There was a range of positive correlation (r = 0.72 to
0.93) between THB count and total HUB count, respectively. The
organisms were Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus,
Flavobacterium breve, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Erwinia
amylovora, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter sp, Desulfovibrio sp,
Acinetobacter iwoffii, Chromobacterium violaceum, Micrococcus
sedentarius, Corynebacterium sp, and Pseudomonas putrefaciens.
The PAH were Naphthalene, 2-Methylnaphthalene, Acenapthylene,
Acenaphthene, Fluorene, Phenanthene, Anthracene, Fluoranthene,
Pyrene, Benzo(a)anthracene, Chrysene, Benzo(b)fluoranthene,
Benzo(k)fluoranthene, Benzo(a)pyrene, Dibenzo(a,h)anthracene,
Benzo(g,h,l)perylene ,Indeno(1,2,3-d)pyrene with individual PAH
concentrations that ranged from 0.20mg/kg to 1.02mg/kg, 0.20mg/kg
to 1.07mg/kg and 0.2mg/kg to 4.43mg/kg in the benthic sediment,
epipellic sediment and mangrove roots, respectively. Total PAH
ranged from 6.30 to 9.93mg/kg, 6.30 to 9.13mg/kg and 9.66 to
16.68mg/kg in the benthic sediment, epipellic sediment and
mangrove roots, respectively. The high concentrations in the
mangrove roots are indicative of bioaccumulation of the pollutant in
the plant tissue. The microorganisms are of ecological significance
and the detectable quantities of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
could be partitioned and accumulated in tissues of infaunal and
epifaunal organisms in the study area.
Abstract: The vast amount of information on the World Wide
Web is created and published by many different types of providers.
Unlike books and journals, most of this information is not subject to
editing or peer review by experts. This lack of quality control and the
explosion of web sites make the task of finding quality information
on the web especially critical. Meanwhile new facilities for
producing web pages such as Blogs make this issue more significant
because Blogs have simple content management tools enabling nonexperts
to build easily updatable web diaries or online journals. On
the other hand despite a decade of active research in information
quality (IQ) there is no framework for measuring information quality
on the Blogs yet. This paper presents a novel experimental
framework for ranking quality of information on the Weblog. The
results of data analysis revealed seven IQ dimensions for the Weblog.
For each dimension, variables and related coefficients were
calculated so that presented framework is able to assess IQ of
Weblogs automatically.
Abstract: In view of geological origin, formation of the shallow
gas reservoir of the Hangzhou Bay, northern Zhejiang Province,
eastern China, and original occurrence characteristics of the gassy
sand are analyzed. Generally, gassy sand in scale gas reservoirs is in
the state of residual moisture content and the approximate scope of
initial matric suction of sand ranges about from 0kPa to100kPa.
Results based on GDS triaxial tests show that the classical shear
strength formulas of unsaturated soil can not effectively describe basic
strength characteristics of gassy sand; the relationship between
apparent cohesion and matric suction of gassy sand agrees well with
the power function, which can reasonably be used to describe the
strength of gassy sand. In the stress path of gas release, shear strength
of gassy sand will increase and experimental results show the formula
proposed in this paper can effectively predict the strength increment.
When saturated strength indexes of the sand are used in engineering
design, moderate reduction should be considered.
Abstract: Environmental micro-organisms include a large number of taxa and some species that are generally considered nonpathogenic, but can represent a risk in certain conditions, especially for elderly people and immunocompromised individuals. Chemotaxonomic identification techniques are powerful tools for environmental micro-organisms, and cellular fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) content is a powerful fingerprinting identification technique. A system based on an unsupervised artificial neural network (ANN) was set up using the fatty acid profiles of standard bacterial strains, obtained by gas-chromatography, used as learning data. We analysed 45 certified strains belonging to Acinetobacter, Aeromonas, Alcaligenes, Aquaspirillum, Arthrobacter, Bacillus, Brevundimonas, Enterobacter, Flavobacterium, Micrococcus, Pseudomonas, Serratia, Shewanella and Vibrio genera. A set of 79 bacteria isolated from a drinking water line (AMGA, the major water supply system in Genoa) were used as an example for identification compared to standard MIDI method. The resulting ANN output map was found to be a very powerful tool to identify these fresh isolates.
Abstract: Porcelain specimens were fired at 6C/min to 1250C (dwell time 0.5-3h) and cooled at 6C/min to room temperature. Additionally, three different slower firing/cooling cycles were tried. Sintering profile and effects on MOR, crystalline phase content and morphology were investigated using dilatometry, 4-point bending strength, XRD and FEG-SEM respectively. Industrial-sized specimens prepared using the promising cycle were tested basing on the ANSI standards. Increasing dwell time from 1h to 3h at peak temperature of 1250C resulted in neither a significant effect on the quartz and mullite content nor MOR. Reducing the firing/cooling rate to below 6C/min, for peak temperature of 1250C (dwell time of 1h) does not result in improvement of strength of porcelain. The industrial sized specimen exhibited flashover voltages of 20.3kV (dry) and 9.3kV (wet) respectively, transverse strength of 12.5kN and bulk density of 2.27g/cm3, which are satisfactory. There was however dye penetration during porosity test. KeywordsDwell time, Microstructure, Porcelain, Strength.
Abstract: The experiment was conducted to study the effect of
rearing systems on fatty acid composition and cholesterol content of
Thai indigenous chicken meat. Three hundred and sixty chicks were
allocated to 2 different rearing systems: conventional, housing in an
indoor pen (5 birds/m2); free-range, housing in an indoor pen (5
birds/m2) with access to a grass paddock (1 bird/m2) from 8 wk of age
until slaughter. All birds were provided with the same diet during the
experimental period. At 16 wk of age, 24 birds per group were
slaughtered to evaluate the fatty acid composition and cholesterol
content of breast and thigh meat. The results showed that the
proportion of SFA, MUFA and PUFA in breast and thigh meat were
not different among groups (P>0.05). However, the proportion of n-3
fatty acids was higher and the ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids was lower
in free-range system than in conventional system (P0.05). The data indicated that the free-range system
could increase the proportion of n-3 fatty acids, but no effect on
cholesterol content in Thai indigenous chicken meat.
Abstract: The effects of seawater and slurry ice bleeding methods on the sensory, microbiological and chemical quality changes of cod fillets during chilled storage were examined in this study. The results from sensory evaluation showed that slurry ice bleeding method prolonged the shelf life of cod fillets up to 13-14 days compared to 10-11 days for fish bled in seawater. Slurry ice bleeding method also led to a slower microbial growth and biochemical developments, resulting lower total plate count (TPC), H2S-producing bacteria count, total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), trimethylamine (TMA), free fatty acid (FFA) content and higher phospholipid content (PL) compared to those of samples bled in seawater. The results of principle component analysis revealed that TPC, H2S-producing bacteria, TVB-N, TMA and FFA were in significant correlation. They were also in negative correlation with sensory evaluation (Torry score), PL and water holding capacity (WHC).
Abstract: Recommender Systems act as personalized decision
guides, aiding users in decisions on matters related to personal taste.
Most previous research on Recommender Systems has focused on the
statistical accuracy of the algorithms driving the systems, with no
emphasis on the trustworthiness of the user. RS depends on
information provided by different users to gather its knowledge. We
believe, if a large group of users provide wrong information it will
not be possible for the RS to arrive in an accurate conclusion. The
system described in this paper introduce the concept of Testing the
knowledge of user to filter out these “bad users".
This paper emphasizes on the mechanism used to provide robust
and effective recommendation.
Abstract: This study evaluates the performance of horizontal
subsurface flow constructed wetland (HSSF-CW) for the removal of
chlorinated resin and fatty acids (RFAs) from pulp and paper mill
wastewater. The dimensions of the treatment system were 3.5 m x 1.5
m x 0.28 m with surface area of 5.25 m2, filled with fine sand and
gravel. The cell was planted with an ornamental plant species Canna
indica. The removal efficiency of chlorinated RFAs was in the range
of 92-96% at the hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 5.9 days. Plant
biomass and soil (sand and gravel) were analyzed for chlorinated
RFAs content. No chlorinated RFAs were detected in plant biomass
but detected in soil samples. Mass balance studies of chlorinated
RFAs in HSSF-CW were also carried out.
Abstract: The present investigation was undertaken to explore the biogas potentiality of Jatropha (Jatropha curcas, Euphorbiaceae) Fruit Coat (JFC) alone and in combination with cattle dung (CD) in various proportions at 15 per cent total solids by batch phase anaerobic digestion for a period of ten weeks HRT (Hydraulic Retention Time) under a temperature of 35°C+1°C. The maximum biogas production was noticed in Cattle dung and Jatropha Fruit Coat in 2:1 ratio with 403.84 L/kg dry matter followed by 3:1,1:2, 1:1 and 1:3 having 329.66, 219.77, 217.79, 203.64 L /kg dm respectively as compared to 178.49 L/kg dm in CD alone. The JFC alone found to produce 91 per cent of total biogas that obtained from Cattle dung. The per cent methane content of the biogas in all the treatments was found on par with Cattle dung.
Abstract: This study aims to analyze the effect of e-learning on
photonics technology and daily livings among college students. The
course contents of photonics technology and daily livings are first
drafted based on research discussions and expert interviews. Having
expert questionnaires with Delphi Technique for three times, the
knowledge units and items for the course of photonics technology and
daily livings are established. The e-learning materials and the drafts of
instructional strategies, academic achievement, and learning attitude
scales are then developed. With expert inspection, reliability and
validity test, and experimental instructions, the scales and the material
are further revised. Finally, the formal instructions are implemented to
test the effect of different instructional methods on the academic
achievement of photonics technology and daily livings among students
in universities of technology. The research results show that e-learning
could effectively promote academic achievement and learning
attitude, and the students with e-learning obviously outperform the
ones with trandition instructions.
Abstract: Low oxygen content vanadium powder was
prepared by hydrogenation dehydrogenization (HDH). The
effect of purification treatment on hydrogen absorption kinetics
of dendritic vanadium was tested, and the effects of milling
technique on powder yield and grain size were studied. The
crystal phase, oxygen and nitrgen content, and grain size of
prepared powder were characterized and analyzed by X-ray
diffraction (XRD), oxygen and nitrogen analyzer and grain size
analyzer. The results show that the alkaline cleaning can
improve the hydrogen absorption of vanadium. The yield of
vanadium hydride powder can reach as high as 90% by 4h
ball-milling, The resultant product also have an oxygen content
less than 600μg/g, and the grain size is smaller than 37μm.
Meanwhile, the XRD results show that the phase of hydride
vanadium powder is mainly VH0.81. After a hydrogen
desorption treatment in vacuum at 700Ôäâ, the phase of the
powder converts into V and a little of V2H.
Abstract: This paper describes an experience of research,
development and innovation applied in Industrial Naval at (Science
and Technology Corporation for the Development of Shipbuilding
Industry, Naval in Colombia (COTECMAR) particularly through
processes of research, innovation and technological development,
based on theoretical models related to organizational knowledge
management, technology management and management of human
talent and integration of technology platforms. It seeks ways to
facilitate the initial establishment of environments rich in
information, knowledge and content-supported collaborative
strategies on dynamic processes missionary, seeking further
development in the context of research, development and innovation
of the Naval Engineering in Colombia, making it a distinct basis for
the generation of knowledge assets from COTECMAR.
The integration of information and communication technologies,
supported on emerging technologies (mobile technologies, wireless,
digital content via PDA, and content delivery services on the Web 2.0
and Web 3.0) as a view of the strategic thrusts in any organization
facilitates the redefinition of processes for managing information and
knowledge, enabling the redesign of workflows, the adaptation of
new forms of organization - preferably in networking and support the
creation of symbolic-inside-knowledge promotes the development of
new skills, knowledge and attitudes of the knowledge worker
Abstract: Alumina matrix composites with addition of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), acting as solid lubricant, were produced. Main purpose of solid lubricants is to dispose the necessity of using cooling lubricants in machining process. Hot pressing was used as a consolidating process for Al2O3-x%wt.hBN (x=1/ 2,5/ 5 /7,5 /10) composites. Properties of sinters such as relative density, hardness, Young-s modulus and fracture toughness were examined. Obtained samples characterize by high relative density. Hardness and fracture toughness values allow the use of alumina – hBN composites for machining steels even in hardened condition. However it was observed that high weight content of hBN can negatively influence the mechanical properties of composites.