Abstract: Considering the numerous applications of the study of
the flow due to leakage in a buried pipe
in unsaturated porous media, finding a proper model to explain the
influence of the effective factors is of great importance.There are
various important factors involved in this type of flow such as: pipe
leakage size and location, burial depth, the degree of the saturation of
the surrounding porous medium, characteristics of the porous
medium, fluid type and pressure of the upstream.In this study, the
flow through unsaturated porous media due to leakage of a buried
pipe for up and down leakage location is studied experimentally and
numerically and their results are compared. Study results show that
Darcy equation together with BCM method (for calculating the
relative permeability) have suitable ability for predicting the flow due
to leakage of buried pipes in unsaturated porous media.
Abstract: Green home rating has emerged as an important
agenda to practice the principles of sustainability. In Malaysia, the
establishment of the 'Green Building Index ' Residential New
Construction- (GBI-RNC) has brought this agenda closer to the
stakeholders of the local green building industry. GBI-RNC focuses
on the evaluation of the environmental impacts posed by houses
rather than assessing the Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) of Sustainability
which also include socio-economic factors. Therefore, as part of a
wider study, a survey was conducted to gather the backgrounds of
green building stakeholders in Malaysia and their responses to a
number of exploratory questions regarding the setting up of a
framework to rate green homes against the TBL. This paper reports
the findings from Section A and B from this survey and discusses
them accordingly with a conclusion that forms part of the basis for a
new generation green home rating framework specifically for use in
Malaysia.
Abstract: Treatment of tar-containing wastewater is necessary
for the successful operation of biomass gasification plants (BGPs). In
the present study, tar-containing wastewater was treated using lime
and alum for the removal of in-organics, followed by adsorption on
powdered activated carbon (PAC) for the removal of organics. Limealum
experiments were performed in a jar apparatus and activated
carbon studies were performed in an orbital shaker. At optimum
concentrations, both lime and alum individually proved to be capable
of removing color, total suspended solids (TSS) and total dissolved
solids (TDS), but in both cases, pH adjustment had to be carried out
after treatment. The combination of lime and alum at the dose ratio
of 0.8:0.8 g/L was found to be optimum for the removal of inorganics.
The removal efficiency achieved at optimum
concentrations were 78.6, 62.0, 62.5 and 52.8% for color, alkalinity,
TSS and TDS, respectively. The major advantages of the lime-alum
combination were observed to be as follows: no requirement of pH
adjustment before and after treatment and good settleability of
sludge. Coagulation-precipitation followed by adsorption on PAC
resulted in 92.3% chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal and
100% phenol removal at equilibrium. Ammonia removal efficiency
was found to be 11.7% during coagulation-flocculation and 36.2%
during adsorption on PAC. Adsorption of organics on PAC in terms
of COD and phenol followed Freundlich isotherm with Kf = 0.55 &
18.47 mg/g and n = 1.01 & 1.45, respectively. This technology may
prove to be one of the fastest and most techno-economically feasible
methods for the treatment of tar-containing wastewater generated
from BGPs.
Abstract: For a spatiotemporal database management system,
I/O cost of queries and other operations is an important performance
criterion. In order to optimize this cost, an intense research on
designing robust index structures has been done in the past decade.
With these major considerations, there are still other design issues
that deserve addressing due to their direct impact on the I/O cost.
Having said this, an efficient buffer management strategy plays a key
role on reducing redundant disk access. In this paper, we proposed an
efficient buffer strategy for a spatiotemporal database index
structure, specifically indexing objects moving over a network of
roads. The proposed strategy, namely MONPAR, is based on the data
type (i.e. spatiotemporal data) and the structure of the index
structure. For the purpose of an experimental evaluation, we set up a
simulation environment that counts the number of disk accesses
while executing a number of spatiotemporal range-queries over the
index. We reiterated simulations with query sets with different
distributions, such as uniform query distribution and skewed query
distribution. Based on the comparison of our strategy with wellknown
page-replacement techniques, like LRU-based and Prioritybased
buffers, we conclude that MONPAR behaves better than its
competitors for small and medium size buffers under all used query-distributions.
Abstract: A three-dimensional and pulsatile blood flow in the left ventricle of heart model has been studied numerically. The geometry was derived from a simple approximation of the left ventricle model and the numerical simulations were obtained using a formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations. In this study, simulation was used to investigate the pattern of flow velocity in 3D model of heart with consider the left ventricle based on critical parameter of blood under steady condition. Our results demonstrate that flow velocity focused from mitral valve channel and continuous linearly to left ventricle wall but this skewness progresses into outside wall in atrium through aortic valve with random distribution that is irregular due to force subtract from ventricle wall during cardiac cycle. The findings are the prediction of the behavior of the blood flow velocity pattern in steady flow condition which can assist the medical practitioners in their decision on the patients- treatments.
Abstract: This paper presents the IP traffic analysis. The traffic
was collected from the network of Suranaree University of
Technology using the software based on the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP). In particular, we analyze the
distribution of the aggregated traffic during the hours of peak load
and light load. The traffic profiles including the parameters described
the traffic distributions were derived. From the statistical analysis
applying three different methods, including the Kolmogorov Smirnov
test, Anderson Darling test, and Chi-Squared test, we found that the
IP traffic distribution is a non-normal distribution and the
distributions during the peak load and the light load are different. The
experimental study and analysis show high uncertainty of the IP
traffic.
Abstract: This study demonstrates the feasibility of joining the commercial pure copper plates by friction stir welding (FSW). Microstructure, microhardness and tensile properties in terms of the joint efficiency were found 94.03 % compare to as receive base material (BM). The average hardness at the top was higher than bottom. Hardness of weld zone was higher than the base material. Different microstructure zones were revealed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The stirred zone (SZ) exhibited primary two phases namely, recrystallized grains and fine precipitates in matrix of copper.
Abstract: Stegnography is a new way of secret
communication the most widely used mechanism on account
of its simplicity is the use of the least significant bit. We have
used the least significant bit (2 LSB and 4 LSB) substitution
method. Depending upon the characteristics of the individual
portions of cover image we decide whether to use 2 LSB or 4
LSB thus it is an adaptive stegnography technique. We used
one of the three channels to behave as indicator to indicate the
presence of hidden data in other two channels. The module
showed impressive results in terms of capacity to hide the
data. In proposed method, instead of using RGB color space
directly, YCbCr color space is used to make use of human
visual system characteristic.
Abstract: At the end of the 17th Century the Greek orthodox
Archbishop in Venice -Meletios Typaldos- decided to turn the
doctrine of the orthodox Greeks into Catholicism. More than 5.000
Greeks were living in Venice then. Their leadership -the Greek
confraternity- fought against Meletios. Participants in this conflict
were the Pope, the ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople and Peter
the Great of Russia. All the play according to my opinion -which is
followed by evidence and theoretical support is a strong conflict
between the two actors -the Archbishop and the Confraternity- and
the object of conflict is the change of the Greek orthodox beliefs to
Catholicism. Ethnicity especially for Greeks of the era is identified
with orthodoxy. So this was a conflict of identity. The results of that
conflict were of tremendous importance to the Greeks in Venice and
affected them for long.
Abstract: In this paper, we use Generalized Hamiltonian systems approach to synchronize a modified sixth-order Chua's circuit, which generates hyperchaotic dynamics. Synchronization is obtained between the master and slave dynamics with the slave being given by an observer. We apply this approach to transmit private information (analog and binary), while the encoding remains potentially secure.
Abstract: Adenylate kinase (AK) catalyse the phosphotransferase
reaction plays an important role in cellular energy homeostasis. The
inhibitors of bacterial AK are useful in the treatment of several
bacterial infections. To the novel inhibitors of AK, docking studies
performed by using the 3D structure of Bacillus stearothermophilus
adenylate kinase from protein data bank (IZIP). 46 Quinoxaline
analogues were docked in 1ZIP and selected the highly interacting
compounds based on their binding energies, for further studies
Abstract: Rapid progress in audio compression technology has contributed to the explosive growth of music available in digital form today. In a reversal of ideas, this work makes use of a recently proposed efficient audio compression scheme to develop three important applications in the context of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) for the effective manipulation of large music databases, namely automatic music recommendation (AMR), digital rights management (DRM) and audio finger-printing for song identification. The performance of these three applications has been evaluated with respect to a database of songs collected from a diverse set of genres.
Abstract: One of the factors to maintain system survivability is
the adequate reactive power support to the system. Lack of reactive
power support may cause undesirable voltage decay leading to total
system instability. Thus, appropriate reactive power support scheme
should be arranged in order to maintain system stability. The strength
of a system capacity is normally denoted as system loadability. This
paper presents the enhancement of system loadability through
optimal reactive power planning technique using a newly developed
optimization technique, termed as Multiagent Immune Evolutionary
Programming (MAIEP). The concept of MAIEP is developed based
on the combination of Multiagent System (MAS), Artificial Immune
System (AIS) and Evolutionary Programming (EP). In realizing the
effectiveness of the proposed technique, validation is conducted on
the IEEE-26-Bus Reliability Test System. The results obtained from
pre-optimization and post-optimization process were compared
which eventually revealed the merit of MAIEP.
Abstract: This paper deals with motion planning of multiple
mobile robots. Mobile robots working together to achieve several
objectives have many advantages over single robot system. However,
the planning and coordination between the mobile robots is
extremely difficult. In the present investigation rule-based and rulebased-
neuro-fuzzy techniques are analyzed for multiple mobile
robots navigation in an unknown or partially known environment.
The final aims of the robots are to reach some pre-defined goals.
Based upon a reference motion, direction; distances between the
robots and obstacles; and distances between the robots and targets;
different types of rules are taken heuristically and refined later to find
the steering angle. The control system combines a repelling influence
related to the distance between robots and nearby obstacles and with
an attracting influence between the robots and targets. Then a hybrid
rule-based-neuro-fuzzy technique is analysed to find the steering
angle of the robots. Simulation results show that the proposed rulebased-
neuro-fuzzy technique can improve navigation performance in
complex and unknown environments compared to this simple rulebased
technique.
Abstract: This study sought to uncover the complex role of
stress in the workplace by investigating both positive (eustress) and
negative (distress) stress responses. In particular, the study tested a
mediation model in which organisational stressors (person-job fit and
role overload) influence employee affective wellbeing, both directly
and indirectly through stress responses. Participants were recruited
from retail and finance organisations in Australia and New Zealand,
and asked to complete an anonymous online questionnaire. A total of
140 individuals returned completed questionnaires. The results show
that person-job fit influenced eustress, which in turn had a positive
effect on employee affective wellbeing; and role overload impacted
distress, which in turn held a negative influence on affective
wellbeing. These findings indicate that different organisational
stressors have unique relationships with eustress and distress
responses. Limitations and implications of the study are discussed.
Abstract: This paper presents an innovative computer system
that contributes to sustainable development of the enterprise. The
research refers to a rethinking of traditional systems of collaboration
and risk assessment, present in any organization, leading to a
sustainable enterprise. This concept integrates emerging tools that
allow the implementation and exploitation of the collective
intelligence of the enterprise, allowing the exchange of contextual,
agile and simplified information, and collaboration with networks of
customers and partners in an environment where risks are controlled.
Risk assessment is done in a systemic way: the enterprise as the
system compared to the contained departments and the enterprise as a
subsystem compared to: families of international standards and
sustainability-s responsibilities. The enterprise, in this systemic
vision, responds to the requirements that any existing system to
operate continuously in an indefinite future without reaching key
resource depletion. The research is done by integrating collaborative
science, engineering, management, psychology, obtaining thus a
cornerstone of sustainable development of the enterprise.
Abstract: The Zung self-depression scale and Beck Anxiety Inventory were used both to study the depression and anxiety levels of Armenian Crohn’s disease patients, and to reveal the relation between emotional status and placebo effect of these patients. On the other hand, the blood cell analyses and gut bacteria investigations were used to assess the placebo effect on ESR, and haemoglobin-s and leukocyte-s levels as well as gut commensal E. coli quantities of these patients. Despite of registered high levels of depression and anxiety, the high placebo effect on psychoemotional status for investigated patients during the investigations was described. On the other hand, no positive effect of placebo on measurements of ESP and hemoglobin-s levels of Crohn’s disease patients was revealed. The importance of use of psychotherapies for optimal outcomes during treatments of Crohn’s disease is discussed.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with raw or heat-treated sunflower oil seed with two levels of 7.5% or 15% on unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat and performances of high-yielding lactating cows. Twenty early lactating Holstein cows were used in a complete randomized design. Treatments included: 1) CON, control (without sunflower oil seed). 2) LS-UT, 7.5% raw sunflower oil seed. 3) LS-HT, 7.5% heat-treated sunflower oil seed. 4) HS-UT, 15% raw sunflower oil seed. 5) HS-HT, 15% heat-treated sunflower oil seed. Experimental period lasted for 4 wk, with first 2 wk used for adaptation to the diets. Supplementation with 7.5% raw sunflower seed (LS-UT) tended to decrease milk yield, with 28.37 kg/d compared with the control (34.75 kg/d). Milk fat percentage was increased with the HS-UT treatment that obtained 3.71% compared with CON that was 3.39% and without significant different. Milk protein percent was decreased high level sunflower oil seed treatments (15%) with 3.18% whereas CON treatment is caused 3.40% protein. The cows fed added low sunflower heat-treated (LS-HT) produced milk with the highest content of total unsaturated fatty acid with 32.59 g/100g of milk fat compared with the HS-UT with 23.59 g/100g of milk fat. Content of C18 unsaturated fatty acids in milk fat increased from 21.68 g/100g of fat in the HS-UT to 22.50, 23.98, 27.39 and 30.30 g/100g of fat from the cow fed HS-HT, CON, LS-UT and LS-HT treatments, respectively. C18:2 isomers of fatty acid in milk were greater by LSHT supplementation with significant effect (P < 0.05). Total of C18 unsaturated fatty acids content was significantly higher in milk of animal fed added low heat-treated sunflower (7.5%) than those fed with high sunflower. In all, results of this study showed that diet cow's supplementation with sunflower oil seed tended to reduce milk production of lactating cows but can improve C18 UFA (Unsaturated Fatty Acid) content in milk fat. 7.5% level of sunflower oil seed that heated seemed to be the optimal source to increase UFA production.
Abstract: The research purpose was to evaluate the effect of
Active Imagination Technique (AIT) for bruxism treatment. This
project was approved by the Ethics Committee on Human Research
(CAAE: 05619512.9.0000.0109). Twenty-one volunteers using
interocclusal splint completed the study. Initially they filled in a
questionnaire about their condition, composed of objective questions
on signs and symptoms. Following they were underwent asingle
session of AIT. After 15 days, the volunteers met again the same
initial questionnaire. The results were compared and showed that the
vast majority had pain symptoms, difficulty opening the mouth, pain
when chewing, reduced, some of the participants abandoned the
interocclusal splint during the evaluate period. It is concluded that the
technique can be used in bruxism treatment. Results seem to be
promising and demonstrates the need of highlighting Active
Imagination Technique since it points a possibility of bruxism cure
and that is unprecedented.
Abstract: Removing noise from the any processed images is very important. Noise should be removed in such a way that important information of image should be preserved. A decisionbased nonlinear algorithm for elimination of band lines, drop lines, mark, band lost and impulses in images is presented in this paper. The algorithm performs two simultaneous operations, namely, detection of corrupted pixels and evaluation of new pixels for replacing the corrupted pixels. Removal of these artifacts is achieved without damaging edges and details. However, the restricted window size renders median operation less effective whenever noise is excessive in that case the proposed algorithm automatically switches to mean filtering. The performance of the algorithm is analyzed in terms of Mean Square Error [MSE], Peak-Signal-to-Noise Ratio [PSNR], Signal-to-Noise Ratio Improved [SNRI], Percentage Of Noise Attenuated [PONA], and Percentage Of Spoiled Pixels [POSP]. This is compared with standard algorithms already in use and improved performance of the proposed algorithm is presented. The advantage of the proposed algorithm is that a single algorithm can replace several independent algorithms which are required for removal of different artifacts.