Abstract: Taking into account the importance of Lake Sevan and
Lake Sevan basin-s rivers for Armenian economy, the main goals of
our investigations were the documentation of water quality and the
biodiversity of invertebrates developed in Lake Sevan basin-s rivers
and selected tributaries.
Moderately satisfied ecological condition for the biodiversity of
Lake Sevan basin-s rivers has been established, and the changes in
species- composition of zoobenthos in Lake Sevan were detected.
A growing tendency of antibiotic resistance among E. coli isolates
in water resources has been shown.
Abstract: In this paper, one-dimensional analysis of flow in a
single-stage gas gun is conducted. The compressible inviscid flow
equations are numerically solved by the second-order Roe TVD
method, by using moving boundaries. For investigation of real gas
effect the Noble-Able equation is applied. The numerical results are
compared with the experimental data to validate the numerical
scheme. The results show that with using the Noble-Able equation,
the muzzle velocity decreases.
Abstract: This article presents the boundary conditions for the problem of turbulent supersonic gas flow in a plane channel with a perpendicular injection jets. The non-reflection boundary conditions for direct modeling of compressible viscous gases are studied. A formulation using the NSCBC (Navier- Stocks characteristic boundary conditions) through boundaries is derived for the subsonic inflow and subsonic non-reflection outflow situations. Verification of the constructed algorithm of boundary conditions is carried out by solving a test problem of perpendicular sound of jets injection into a supersonic gas flow in a plane channel.
Abstract: This paper presents features that characterize power
quality disturbances from recorded voltage waveforms using wavelet
transform. The discrete wavelet transform has been used to detect
and analyze power quality disturbances. The disturbances of interest
include sag, swell, outage and transient. A power system network has
been simulated by Electromagnetic Transients Program. Voltage
waveforms at strategic points have been obtained for analysis, which
includes different power quality disturbances. Then wavelet has been
chosen to perform feature extraction. The outputs of the feature
extraction are the wavelet coefficients representing the power quality
disturbance signal. Wavelet coefficients at different levels reveal the
time localizing information about the variation of the signal.
Abstract: Unlike Christianity and Buddhism, Islam, being one
of the three universal world religions, actively penetrates into
people-s everyday life. The main reason for this is that in Islam the
religion and ideology, philosophy, religious organizations and state
bodies are closely interrelated. In order to analyze the state of being
of interrelations of religion and civil society in Kazakhstan, it is
necessary to study Islam and its relations with spiritual culture of the
society. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan
the religion is separated from the state, i.e. each performs its own
function without interfering into each other-s affairs. The right of the
citizens of our republic to freedom of thinking and faith is based on
the Constitution of the RK, Civil Code, Law “On freedom of faith
and religious unions in the Republic of Kazakhstan".
Legislatively secured separation of the mosque and church from
the state does not mean that religion has no influence on the latter.
The state, consisting of citizens with their own beliefs, including
religious ones, cannot be isolated from the influence of religion.
Nowadays it is commonly accepted that it is not possible to
understand and forecast key social processes without taking into
account the religious factor.
Abstract: Formative usability evaluation aims at finding
usability problems during the development process. The earlier these
problems are identified, the less expensive to fix they are. This paper
presents some preliminary results from a formative usability testing
of the 1st prototype developed for the ARiSE (Augmented Reality in
School Environments) project.
Abstract: Present communication deals with general
distribution and diversification of Monogenean families parasitizing
different freshwater fish families of India. Levels of monogenean
parasitism and their diversity are significantly greater in Indian fishes.
The most monogeneans parasitized family of fish is Cyprinidae and
most dactylogyrids parasitise cyprinids. The family dactylogyridae
has more species than any other monogenean family and frequently
associated with cyprinid, silurids and bagrids families. Of the various
52 families of freshwater fishes from India, only the Anguillidae,
Balitoridae, Chacidae, Chanidae, Channidae, Cobitidae, Coiidae,
Erethistidae, Megalopidae, Pristidae, Psilorhynchidae, Salmonidae,
Schileidae, Sparidae, Synodontidae and Terapontidae were found to
be free of infection with monogeneans. The present study takes a
broad look at monogenean diversity in the freshwater fishes of India.
Abstract: This paper presented a MATLAB-based system named Smart Access Network Testing, Analyzing and Database (SANTAD), purposely for in-service transmission surveillance and self restoration against fiber fault in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) access network. The developed program will be installed with optical line terminal (OLT) at central office (CO) to monitor the status and detect any fiber fault that occurs in FTTH downwardly from CO towards residential customer locations. SANTAD is interfaced with optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) to accumulate every network testing result to be displayed on a single computer screen for further analysis. This program will identify and present the parameters of each optical fiber line such as the line's status either in working or nonworking condition, magnitude of decreasing at each point, failure location, and other details as shown in the OTDR's screen. The failure status will be delivered to field engineers for promptly actions, meanwhile the failure line will be diverted to protection line to ensure the traffic flow continuously. This approach has a bright prospect to improve the survivability and reliability as well as increase the efficiency and monitoring capabilities in FTTH.
Abstract: In this paper, a heuristic method for simultaneous
rescue robot path-planning and mission scheduling is introduced
based on project management techniques, multi criteria decision
making and artificial potential fields path-planning. Groups of
injured people are trapped in a disastrous situation. These people are
categorized into several groups based on the severity of their
situation. A rescue robot, whose ultimate objective is reaching
injured groups and providing preliminary aid for them through a path
with minimum risk, has to perform certain tasks on its way towards
targets before the arrival of rescue team. A decision value is assigned
to each target based on the whole degree of satisfaction of the criteria
and duties of the robot toward the target and the importance of
rescuing each target based on their category and the number of
injured people. The resulted decision value defines the strength of the
attractive potential field of each target. Dangerous environmental
parameters are defined as obstacles whose risk determines the
strength of the repulsive potential field of each obstacle. Moreover,
negative and positive energies are assigned to the targets and
obstacles, which are variable with respects to the factors involved.
The simulation results show that the generated path for two cases
studies with certain differences in environmental conditions and
other risk factors differ considerably.
Abstract: In this paper, a novel wave equation for electromagnetic
waves in a medium having anisotropic permittivity has been derived
with the help of Maxwell-s curl equations. The x and y components
of the Maxwell-s equations are written with the permittivity () being
a 3 × 3 symmetric matrix. These equations are solved for Ex , Ey,
Hx, Hy in terms of Ez, Hz, and the partial derivatives. The Z
components of the Maxwell-s curl are then used to arrive to the
generalized Helmholtz equations for Ez and Hz.
Abstract: A theoretical study of the rigidities of slabs with
circular voids oriented in the longitudinal and in the transverse
direction is discussed. Equations are presented for predicting the
bending and torsional rigidities of the voided slabs. This paper
summarizes the results of an extensive literature search and initial
review of the current methods of analyzing voided slab. The various
methods of calculating the equivalent plate parameters, which are
necessary for two-dimensional analysis, are also reviewed. Static
deflections on voided slabs are shown to be in good agreement with
proposed equation.
Abstract: This paper presents the experiment results of investigating the effects of adding various types and proportions of fibre on mechanical strength and permeability characteristics of recycled aggregate concrete (RAC), which was produced with treated coarse recycled concrete aggregate (RCA). Two types of synthetic fibres (i.e., barchip and polypropylene fibre) with various volume fractions were added to the RAC, which was calculated by the weight of the cement. The hardened RAC properties such as compressive strength, flexural strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity, water absorption and total porosity at the curing ages of 7 and 28 days were evaluated and compared with the properties of the control specimens. Results indicate that the treated coarse RCA enhances the mechanical strength and permeability properties of RAC and adding barchip fibre further optimises the results. Adding 1.2% barchip fibre has the best effect on the mechanical strength performance of the RAC.
Abstract: Using finite element method (FEM), the elastic
new strain-concentration factor (SNCF) of cylindrical bars
with circumferential flat-bottom groove is studied. This new
SNCF has been defined under triaxial stress state. The
employed specimens have constant groove depth with net
section and gross diameters of 10.0 and 16.7 mm,
respectively. The length of flatness ao has been varied form
0.0 ~12.5 mm to study the elastic SNCF of this type of
geometrical irregularities. The results that the elastic new
SNCF rapidly drops from its elastic value of the groove with
ao = 0.0, i.e. circumferential U-notch, and reaches minimum
value at ao = 2 mm. After that the elastic new SNCF becomes
nearly constant with increasing flatness length (ao). The value
of tensile load at yielding at the groove root increases with
increasing ao. The current results show that severity of the
notch decreases with increasing flatness length ao.
Abstract: In this paper, removal of chromium(VI) from aqueous
solution has been researched using reverse osmosis. The influence of
transmembrane pressure and feed concentration on permeate flux,
water recovery, permeate concentration, and salt rejection was
studied. The results showed that according to the variation of
transmembrane pressure and feed concentration, the permeate flux
and salt rejection were in the range 19.17 to 58.75 l/m2.min and
99.51 to 99.8 %, respectively. The highest permeate flux, 58.75
l/m2.min, and water recovery, 42.47 %, were obtained in the highest
pressure and the lowest feed concentration. On the other hand, the
lowest permeate concentration, 0.01 mg/l, and the highest salt
rejection, 99.8 %, were obtained in the highest pressure and the
lowest feed concentration.
Abstract: The gamma radiation in samples of a variety of
natural tiling rocks (granites) produced and imported in Iran use in
the building industry was measured, employing high-resolution
Gamma-ray spectroscopy. The rock samples were pulverized, sealed
in 0.5 liter plastic Marinelli beakers, and measured in the laboratory
with an accumulating time between 50000 and 80000 second each.
From the measured Gamma-ray spectra, activity concentrations were
determined for 232Th (range from 6.5 to 172.2 Bq kg-1), 238U (from
7.5 to 178.1 Bq kg-1 ),226Ra( from 3.8 to 94.2 Bq kg-1 ) 40K (from
556.9 to 1539.2 Bq kg-1). From the 29 samples measured in this
study, “Nehbndan ( Berjand )" appears to present the highest
concentrations for 232Th,“Big Red Flower (China) "for 238U , “
Khoram dareh" for 226 Ra and “ Peranshahr" for 40K , respectively.
Abstract: Environment today is featured with aging population,
increasing prevalence of chronic disease and complex of medical
treatment. Safe use of pharmaceutics relied very much on the efforts
made by both the health- related organizations and as well as the
government agencies. As far as the specialization concern in providing
health services to the patients, the government actively issued and
implemented the divisions of medical treatment and pharmaceutical to
improve the quality of care and to reduce medication errors and ensure
public health. Pharmaceutical sub-sector policy has been implemented
for 13 years. This study attempts to explore the factors that affect the
patients- behavior intention of refilling a prescription from a NHIB
pharmacy. Samples were those patients refilling their prescriptions
with the case NHIB pharmacies. A self-administered questionnaire
was used to collect respondents- information while the patients or
family members visit the pharmacy for the refilling. 1,200
questionnaires were dispatched in 37 pharmacies that randomly
selected from Pingtung City, Dongkang, Chaozhou, Hengchun areas.
732 responses were gained with 604 valid samples for further analyses.
Results of data analyses indicated that respondents- attitude,
subjective norm, perceived behavior control and behavior intentions
toward refilling behavior varied from some demographic variables to
another. This research also suggested adding actual behavior, either by
a self-report or observed, into the research.
Abstract: Privacy issues commonly discussed among
researchers, practitioners, and end-users in pervasive healthcare.
Pervasive healthcare systems are applications that can support
patient-s need anytime and anywhere. However, pervasive healthcare
raises privacy concerns since it can lead to situations where patients
may not be aware that their private information is being shared and
becomes vulnerable to threat. We have systematically analyzed the
privacy issues and present a summary in tabular form to show the
relationship among the issues. The six issues identified are medical
information misuse, prescription leakage, medical information
eavesdropping, social implications for the patient, patient difficulties
in managing privacy settings, and lack of support in designing
privacy-sensitive applications. We narrow down the issues and chose
to focus on the issue of 'lack of support in designing privacysensitive
applications' by proposing a privacy-sensitive architecture
specifically designed for pervasive healthcare monitoring systems.
Abstract: The protein domain structure has been widely used as the most informative sequence feature to computationally predict protein-protein interactions. However, in a recent study, a research group has reported a very high accuracy of 94% using hydrophobicity feature. Therefore, in this study we compare and verify the usefulness of protein domain structure and hydrophobicity properties as the sequence features. Using the Support Vector Machines (SVM) as the learning system, our results indicate that both features achieved accuracy of nearly 80%. Furthermore, domains structure had receiver operating characteristic (ROC) score of 0.8480 with running time of 34 seconds, while hydrophobicity had ROC score of 0.8159 with running time of 20,571 seconds (5.7 hours). These results indicate that protein-protein interaction can be predicted from domain structure with reliable accuracy and acceptable running time.
Abstract: Lutein is a dietary oxycarotenoid which is found
to reduce the risks of Age-related Macular Degeneration
(AMD). Supercritical fluid extraction of lutein esters from
marigold petals was carried out and was found to be much
effective than conventional solvent extraction. The
saponification of pre-concentrated lutein esters to produce free
lutein was studied which showed a composition of about 88%
total carotenoids (UV-VIS spectrophotometry) and 90.7%
lutein (HPLC). The lipase catalyzed hydrolysis of lutein esters
in conventional medium was investigated. The optimal
temperature, pH, enzyme concentration and water activity
were found to be 50°C, 7, 15% and 0.33 respectively and the
activity loss of lipase was about 25% after 8 times re-use in at
50°C for 12 days. However, the lipase catalyzed hydrolysis of
lutein esters in conventional media resulted in poor
conversions (16.4%).
Abstract: Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an established control
technique in a wide range of process industries. The reason for
this success is its ability to handle multivariable systems and systems
having input, output or state constraints. Neverthless comparing to
PID controller, the implementation of the MPC in miniaturized
devices like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and microcontrollers
has historically been very small scale due to its complexity in
implementation and its computation time requirement. At the same
time, such embedded technologies have become an enabler for future
manufacturing enterprisers as well as a transformer of organizations
and markets. In this work, we take advantage of these recent advances
in this area in the deployment of one of the most studied and applied
control technique in the industrial engineering. In this paper, we
propose an efficient firmware for the implementation of constrained
MPC in the performed STM32 microcontroller using interior point
method. Indeed, performances study shows good execution speed
and low computational burden. These results encourage to develop
predictive control algorithms to be programmed in industrial standard
processes. The PID anti windup controller was also implemented in
the STM32 in order to make a performance comparison with the
MPC. The main features of the proposed constrained MPC framework
are illustrated through two examples.