Abstract: Cardiovascular diseases, principally atherosclerosis, are responsible for 30% of world deaths. Atherosclerosis is due to the formation of plaque. The fatty plaque may be at risk of rupture, leading typically to stroke and heart attack. The plaque is usually associated with a high degree of lumen reduction, called a stenosis.It is increasingly recognized that the initiation and progression of disease and the occurrence of clinical events is a complex interplay between the local biomechanical environment and the local vascular biology. The aim of this study is to investigate the flow behavior through a stenosed artery. A physical experiment was performed using an artery model and blood analogue fluid. An axisymmetric model constructed consists of contraction and expansion region that follow a mathematical form of cosine function. A 30% diameter reduction was used in this study. The flow field was measured using particle image velocimetry (PIV). Spherical particles with 20μm diameter were seeded in a water-glycerol-NaCl mixture. Steady flow Reynolds numbers are 250. The area of interest is the region after the stenosis where the flow separation occurs. The velocity field was measured and the velocity gradient was investigated. There was high particle concentration in the recirculation zone. High velocity gradient formed immediately after the stenosis throat created a lift force that enhanced particle migration to the flow separation area.
Abstract: Nigeria is considered as one of the many countries in
sub-Saharan Africa with a weak economy and gross deficiencies in technology and engineering. Available data from international monitoring and regulatory organizations show that technology is pivotal to determining the economic strengths of nations all over the
world. Education is critical to technology acquisition, development,
dissemination and adaptation. Thus, this paper seeks to critically
assess and discuss issues and challenges facing technological
advancement in Nigeria, particularly in the education sector, and also
proffers solutions to resuscitate the Nigerian education system
towards achieving national technological and economic sustainability
such that Nigeria can compete favourably with other technologicallydriven
economies of the world in the not-too-distant future.
Abstract: High-voltage power transmission lines are the back
bone of electrical power utilities. The stability and continuous
monitoring of this critical infrastructure is pivotal. Nine-Sigma
representing Eskom Holding SOC limited, South Africa has a major
problem on proactive detection of fallen power lines and real time
sagging measurement together with slipping of such conductors. The
main objective of this research is to innovate RFID technology to
solve this challenge. Various options and technologies such as GPS,
PLC, image processing, MR sensors and etc., have been reviewed
and draw backs were made. The potential of RFID to give precision
measurement will be observed and presented. The future research
will look at magnetic and electrical interference as well as corona
effect on the technology.
Abstract: An experiment was performed with a 24.5 MeV 14N
beam on a 12C target in the cyclotron DC-60 located in Astana,
Kazakhstan, to study the elastic scattering of 14N on 12C; the
scattering was also analyzed at different energies for tracking the
phenomenon of remarkable structure at large angles. Its aims were to
extend the measurements to very large angles, and attempt to
uniquely identify the elastic scattering potential. Good agreement
between the theoretical and experimental data has been obtained with
suitable optical potential parameters. Optical model calculations with
l -dependent imaginary potentials were also applied to the data and
relatively good agreement was found.
Abstract: In the control theory one attempts to find a controller
that provides the best possible performance with respect to some
given measures of performance. There are many sorts of controllers
e.g. a typical PID controller, LQR controller, Fuzzy controller etc. In
the paper will be introduced polynomial controller with novel tuning
method which is based on the special pole placement encoding
scheme and optimization by Genetic Algorithms (GA). The examples
will show the performance of the novel designed polynomial
controller with comparison to common PID controller.
Abstract: Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been
extensively used for classification of heart sounds for its
discriminative training ability and easy implementation. However, it
suffers from overparameterization if the number of nodes is not
chosen properly. In such cases, when the dataset has redundancy
within it, ANN is trained along with this redundant information that
results in poor validation. Also a larger network means more
computational expense resulting more hardware and time related
cost. Therefore, an optimum design of neural network is needed
towards real-time detection of pathological patterns, if any from heart
sound signal. The aims of this work are to (i) select a set of input
features that are effective for identification of heart sound signals and
(ii) make certain optimum selection of nodes in the hidden layer for a
more effective ANN structure. Here, we present an optimization
technique that involves Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and
QR factorization with column pivoting (QRcp) methodology to
optimize empirically chosen over-parameterized ANN structure.
Input nodes present in ANN structure is optimized by SVD followed
by QRcp while only SVD is required to prune undesirable hidden
nodes. The result is presented for classifying 12 common
pathological cases and normal heart sound.