Abstract: Calcium phosphate coating (CaP) has been employed
for protein delivery, but the typical direct protein adsorption on the
coating led to low incorporation content and fast release of the
protein from the coating. By using bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a
model protein, rapid biomimetic co-precipitation between calcium
phosphate and BSA was employed to control the distribution of BSA
within calcium phosphate coating during biomimetic formation on
titanium surface for only 6 h at 50oC in an accelerated calcium
phosphate solution. As a result, the amount of BSA incorporation and
release duration could be increased by using a rapid biomimetic coprecipitation
technique. Up to 43 fold increases in the BSA
incorporation content and the increase from 6 h to more than 360 h in
release duration compared to typical direct adsorption technique were
observed depending on the initial BSA concentration used during coprecipitation
(1, 10 and 100 μg.ml-1). From x-ray diffraction and
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy studies, the coating
composition was not altered with the incorporation of BSA by this
rapid biomimetic co-precipitation and mainly comprised octacalcium
phosphate and hydroxyapatite. However, the microstructure of
calcium phosphate crystals changed from straight, plate-like units to
curved, plate-like units with increasing BSA content.
Abstract: An anthropometric study applied to 1,115 students of
the Faculty of Chemical Sciences and Engineering of the
Autonomous University of California. Thirteen individual
measurements were taken in a sitting position. The results obtained
allow forming a reliable anthropometric database for statistical
studies and analysis and inferences of specific distributions, so the
opinion of experts in occupational medicine recommendations may
emit to reduce risks resulting in an alteration of the vital signs during
the execution of their school activities. Another use of these analyses
is to use them as a reliable reference for future deeper research, to the
design of spaces, tools, utensils, workstations, with anthropometric
dimensions and ergonomic characteristics suitable to use.
Abstract: No matter how much perfect we become in our
practical skills regarding the implementation of learned ideas, the
need of technical writing capability cannot be neglected being a
professional. Technical writing is a way of communicating the ideas
in written which otherwise need to be presented orally. Technical
writing skills have always been the need of the time, as they are
required for internal as well as external official communication in
both formal and informal manner. Moreover, they are the best way to
capture the attention of your customers by presenting information in
effective manner. This paper aims to analyze the importance of
technical writing skills in professional industries of Pakistan by
conducting a survey. Survey results presented in this paper clearly
depicts the importance of formal and informal written communication
media used in different professional industries in Pakistan. Analysis
and discussion of the extent to which the alternative ways of
communication besides technical writing have got importance in
Pakistan is also an important aspect of this survey.
Abstract: This study focuses on the cooling of a photovoltaic
panel (PV). Indeed, the cooling improves the conversion capacity of
this one and maintains, under extreme conditions of air temperature,
the panel temperature at an appreciable level which avoids the
altering. To do this, a fan provides forced circulation of air. Because
the fan is supplied by the panel, it is necessary to determine the
optimum operating point that unites efficiency of the PV with the
consumption of the fan. For this matter, numerical simulations are
performed at varying mass flow rates of air, under two extreme air
temperatures (50°C, 25°C) and a fixed solar radiation (1000W.m2) in
a case of no wind.
Abstract: The Sigma-Delta A/D converters have been proposed
as a practical application for A/D conversion at high rates because of
its simplicity and robustness to imperfections in the circuit, also
because the traditional converters are more difficult to implement in
VLSI technology. These difficulties with conventional conversion
methods need precise analog components in their filters and
conversion circuits, and are more vulnerable to noise and
interference. This paper aims to analyze the architecture, function and
application of Analog-Digital converters (A/D) Sigma-Delta to
overcome these difficulties, showing some simulations using the
Simulink software and Multisim.
Abstract: A simple, accurate and precise direct spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of cefixime in tablets and capsules. The method is based on the reaction of cefixime with a mixture of potassium iodide and potassium iodate to form yellow coloured product in ethanol-distilled water medium at room temperature which absorbed maximally at 352 nm. The factors affecting the reaction product were carefully studied and optimized. The validation parameters based on International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH, USA) guidelines were followed. The effect of common excipients used as additives has been tested and the tolerance limit was calculated for the determination of cefixime. Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration range of 4 – 24 ug mL-1 with apparent molar absorptivity of 1.52 × 104 L mol-1cm-1 and Sandell’s sensitivity of 0.033 ug/cm2/ 0.001 absorbance unit. The limits of detection and quantitation for the proposed method are 0.32 and 1.06 ug mL-1, respectively. The proposed method has been successfully applied for the determination of cefixime in pharmaceutical formulations. The results obtained by the proposed method were statistically compared with the reference method using t- and F- values and found no significant difference between the two methods. The proposed method can be used as an alternate method for routine quality control analysis of cefixime in pharmaceutical formulations.
Abstract: The global demand for continuous and eco-friendly
renewable energy as alternative to fossils fuels is large and ever
growing in nowadays. This paper will focus on capability of Vortex
Induced Vibration (VIV) phenomenon in generating alternative
energy for offshore platform application. In order to maximize the
potential of energy generation, the effects of lock in phenomenon and
different geometries of cylinder were studied in this project. VIV is
the motion induced on bluff body which creates alternating lift forces
perpendicular to fluid flow. Normally, VIV is unwanted in order to
prevent mechanical failure of the vibrating structures. But in this
project, instead of eliminating these vibrations, VIV will be exploited
to transform these vibrations into a valuable resource of energy.
Abstract: This paper reports the empirical investigation on the
effect of involuntary displacement of indigenous tribes on their sociocultural
and food practices. A descriptive research design using the
quantitative approach was applied and individual of indigenous tribes
as unit of analysis. Through a self-administered survey among two
selected Malaysia indigenous tribes, one hundred fifty questionnaires
were successfully collected. With the application of descriptive and
inferential statistic some useful insights pertaining to the issue
investigated was significantly obtained. Findings revealed that
improvement on the socio-culture, economy and knowledge is
apparent on the indigenous groups’ resulted from displacement
program. Displacement also has a slight impact on indigenous
groups’ food practices. These positive indications provide significant
implications, not only for the indigenous groups themselves, but also
for the responsible authorities.
Abstract: Voltage sags are the most common power quality
disturbance in the distribution system. It occurs due to the fault in the
electrical network or by the starting of a large induction motor and
this can be solved by using the custom power devices such as
Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR). In this paper DVR is proposed to
compensate voltage sags on critical loads dynamically. The DVR
consists of VSC, injection transformers, passive filters and energy
storage (lead acid battery). By injecting an appropriate voltage, the
DVR restores a voltage waveform and ensures constant load voltage.
The simulation and experimental results of a DVR using MATLAB
software shows clearly the performance of the DVR in mitigating
voltage sags.
Abstract: The mineral bioflotation represents a viable
alternative for the evaluation of new processes benefit alternative.
The adsorption bacteria on minerals surfaces will depend mainly on
the type of the microorganism as well as of the studied mineral
surface. In the current study, adhesion of S. carnosus on coal was
studied. Several methods were used as: DRX, Fourier Transform
Infra-Red (FTIR) adhesion isotherms and kinetic. The main goal is to
recovery of organic matter by the microflotation process on coal
particles with biological reagent (S. carnosus). Adhesion tests
revealed that adhesion took place after of 8 h at pH 9. The results
suggest that the adhesion of bacteria to solid substrates can be
considered an abiotic physicochemical process that is consequently
governed by bacterial surface properties such as their specific surface
area, hydrophobicity and surface functionalities. The greatest coal
fine flotability was of 75%, after 5 min of flotation.
Abstract: As currently various portable devices were launched,
smart business conducted using them became common. Since smart
business can use company-internal resources in an exlternal remote
place, user authentication that can identify authentic users is an
important factor. Commonly used user authentication is a method of
using user ID and Password. In the user authentication using ID and
Password, the user should see and enter authentication information
him or her. In this user authentication system depending on the user’s
vision, there is the threat of password leaks through snooping in the
process which the user enters his or her authentication information.
This study designed and produced a user authentication module
using an actuator to respond to the snooping threat.
Abstract: Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) E-commerce has been
growing at a very high speed in recent years. Since identical or
nearly-same kinds of products compete one another by relying on
keyword search in C2C E-commerce, some sellers describe their
products with spam keywords that are popular but are not related to
their products. Though such products get more chances to be retrieved
and selected by consumers than those without spam keywords,
the spam keywords mislead the consumers and waste their time.
This problem has been reported in many commercial services like
ebay and taobao, but there have been little research to solve this
problem. As a solution to this problem, this paper proposes a method
to classify whether keywords of a product are spam or not. The
proposed method assumes that a keyword for a given product is
more reliable if the keyword is observed commonly in specifications
of products which are the same or the same kind as the given
product. This is because that a hierarchical category of a product
in general determined precisely by a seller of the product and so is
the specification of the product. Since higher layers of the hierarchical
category represent more general kinds of products, a reliable degree
is differently determined according to the layers. Hence, reliable
degrees from different layers of a hierarchical category become
features for keywords and they are used together with features only
from specifications for classification of the keywords. Support Vector
Machines are adopted as a basic classifier using the features, since
it is powerful, and widely used in many classification tasks. In
the experiments, the proposed method is evaluated with a golden
standard dataset from Yi-han-wang, a Chinese C2C E-commerce,
and is compared with a baseline method that does not consider
the hierarchical category. The experimental results show that the
proposed method outperforms the baseline in F1-measure, which
proves that spam keywords are effectively identified by a hierarchical
category in C2C E-commerce.
Abstract: In many communication and signal processing
systems, it is highly desirable to implement an efficient narrow-band
filter that decimate or interpolate the incoming signals. This paper
presents hardware efficient compensated CIC filter over a narrow
band frequency that increases the speed of down sampling by using
multiplierless decimation filters with polyphase FIR filter structure.
The proposed work analyzed the performance of compensated CIC
filter on the bases of the improvement of frequency response with
reduced hardware complexity in terms of no. of adders and
multipliers and produces the filtered results without any alterations.
CIC compensator filter demonstrated that by using compensation
with CIC filter improve the frequency response in passed of interest
26.57% with the reduction in hardware complexity 12.25%
multiplications per input sample (MPIS) and 23.4% additions per
input sample (APIS) w.r.t. FIR filter respectively.
Abstract: The high Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAR) in Filter
Bank Multicarrier with Offset Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
(FBMC-OQAM) can significantly reduce power efficiency and
performance. In this paper, we address the problem of PAPR
reduction for FBMC-OQAM systems using Tone Reservation (TR)
technique. Due to the overlapping structure of FBMCOQAM signals,
directly applying TR schemes of OFDM systems to FBMC-OQAM
systems is not effective. We improve the tone reservation (TR)
technique by employing sliding window with Active Constellation
Extension for the PAPR reduction of FBMC-OQAM signals, called
sliding window tone reservation Active Constellation Extension
(SW-TRACE) technique. The proposed SW-TRACE technique uses
the peak reduction tones (PRTs) of several consecutive data
blocks to cancel the peaks of the FBMC-OQAM signal inside a
window, with dynamically extending outer constellation points in
active(data-carrying) channels, within margin-preserving constraints,
in order to minimize the peak magnitude. Analysis and simulation
results compared to the existing Tone Reservation (TR) technique for
FBMC/OQAM system. The proposed method SW-TRACE has better
PAPR performance and lower computational complexity.
Abstract: Roof top rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been
carried out worldwide to provide an inexpensive source of water for
many people. This research aims at evaluating the potential of roof
top rain water harvesting as a resource in Jordan. For the purpose of
this work, two case studies at Al-Jubiha and Shafa-Badran districts in
Amman city were selected. All existing rooftops in both districts
were identified by digitizing 2012 satellite images of the two districts
using Google earth and ArcGIS tools. Rational method was used to
estimate the potential volume of rainwater that can be harvested from
the digitized rooftops. Results indicated that 1.17 and 0.526 MCM/yr
can be harvested in Al-Jubiha and Shafa-Badran districts,
respectively. This study should increase the attention to the
importance of implementing RWH technique in Jordanian residences
as a viable alternative for ensuring a continued source of non-potable
water.
Abstract: The emergence of the Semantic Web technology
increases day by day due to the rapid growth of multiple web pages.
Many standard formats are available to store the semantic web data.
The most popular format is the Resource Description Framework
(RDF). Querying large RDF graphs becomes a tedious procedure
with a vast increase in the amount of data. The problem of query
optimization becomes an issue in querying large RDF graphs.
Choosing the best query plan reduces the amount of query execution
time. To address this problem, nature inspired algorithms can be used
as an alternative to the traditional query optimization techniques. In
this research, the optimal query plan is generated by the proposed
SAPSO algorithm which is a hybrid of Simulated Annealing (SA)
and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms. The proposed
SAPSO algorithm has the ability to find the local optimistic result
and it avoids the problem of local minimum. Experiments were
performed on different datasets by changing the number of predicates
and the amount of data. The proposed algorithm gives improved
results compared to existing algorithms in terms of query execution
time.
Abstract: This paper analyzes innovation trends in South Korea
by means of the number of patent applications filed by residents and
nonresidents during the period 1965 to 2012. Making use of patent
data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), we search for the presence of multiple structural changes in
patent application series in this country. These changes may suggest
that firms’ innovative activity has been modified as a result of
implementing some science, technology and innovation (STI)
policies. Accordingly, the new regulations implemented in this
country in the last decades have influenced its innovative activity.
The question conducting this research is thus how STI policies in
South Korea have influenced its innovation activity. The results
confirm the existence of multiple structural changes in the series of
patent applications resulting from alternative STI policies
implemented during these years.
Abstract: Enzyme activity was evaluated in the intestine of
juvenile dourado (Salminus brasiliensis) fed with diets containing 0,
10 or 20% of lyophilized bovine colostrum (LBC) inclusion for either
30 or 60 days. The intestinal enzymes acid and alkaline phosphatase
(ACP and ALP, respectively), non-specific esterase (NSE), lipase
(LIP), dipeptidyl aminopeptidase IV (DAP IV) and leucine
aminopeptidase (LAP) were studied using histochemistry in four
intestinal segments (S1, S2, S3 and posterior intestine). Weak
proteolitic activity was observed in all intestinal segments for DAP
IV and LAP. The activity of NSE and LIP was also weak in all
intestines, except for the moderate activity of NSE in the S2 of 20%
LBC group after 30 days and in the S1 of 0% LBC group after 60
days. The ACP was detected only in the S2 and S3 of the 10% LBC
group after 30 days. Moderate and strong staining was observed in
the first three intestinal segments for ALP and weak activity in the
posterior intestine. The activity of DAP IV, LAP and ALP were also
present in the cytoplasm of the enterocytes. In the present results,
bovine colostrum feeding did not cause alterations in activity of
intestinal enzymes.
Abstract: An extensive amount of work has been done in data
clustering research under the unsupervised learning technique in Data
Mining during the past two decades. Moreover, several approaches
and methods have been emerged focusing on clustering diverse data
types, features of cluster models and similarity rates of clusters.
However, none of the single clustering algorithm exemplifies its best
nature in extracting efficient clusters. Consequently, in order to
rectify this issue, a new challenging technique called Cluster
Ensemble method was bloomed. This new approach tends to be the
alternative method for the cluster analysis problem. The main
objective of the Cluster Ensemble is to aggregate the diverse
clustering solutions in such a way to attain accuracy and also to
improve the eminence the individual clustering algorithms. Due to
the massive and rapid development of new methods in the globe of
data mining, it is highly mandatory to scrutinize a vital analysis of
existing techniques and the future novelty. This paper shows the
comparative analysis of different cluster ensemble methods along
with their methodologies and salient features. Henceforth this
unambiguous analysis will be very useful for the society of clustering
experts and also helps in deciding the most appropriate one to resolve
the problem in hand.
Abstract: This paper deals with advanced state estimation algorithms for estimation of biomass concentration and specific growth rate in a typical fed-batch biotechnological process. This biotechnological process was represented by a nonlinear mass-balance based process model. Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Particle Filter (PF) was used to estimate the unmeasured state variables from oxygen uptake rate (OUR) and base consumption (BC) measurements. To obtain more general results, a simplified process model was involved in EKF and PF estimation algorithms. This model doesn’t require any special growth kinetic equations and could be applied for state estimation in various bioprocesses. The focus of this investigation was concentrated on the comparison of the estimation quality of the EKF and PF estimators by applying different measurement noises. The simulation results show that Particle Filter algorithm requires significantly more computation time for state estimation but gives lower estimation errors both for biomass concentration and specific growth rate. Also the tuning procedure for Particle Filter is simpler than for EKF. Consequently, Particle Filter should be preferred in real applications, especially for monitoring of industrial bioprocesses where the simplified implementation procedures are always desirable.