Abstract: Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. There are several reasons for this insufficiency and uncontrolled population growth is one of the prime reasons. Others include low economic progress, imbalanced resource management, unemployment and underemployment, urban migration and natural catastrophes etc. As a result, the rate of urban poor is increasing inevitably in every sphere of urban cities in Bangladesh and Dhaka is the most affected one. Besides there is scarcity of urban land, housing, urban infrastructure and amenities which create pressure on urban cities and mostly encroach the open space, wetlands that causes environmental degradation. Government has no or limited control over these due to poor government policy and management, political pressure and lack of resource management. Unfortunately, over centralization and bureaucracy creates unnecessary delay and interruptions in any government initiations. There is also no coordination between government and private sector developer to solve the problem of urban Poor. To understand the problem of these huge populations this paper analyzes one of the single largest slum areas in Dhaka, Korail Slum. The study focuses on socio demographic analysis, morphological pattern and role of different actors responsible for the improvements of the area and recommended some possible steps for determining the potential outcomes.
Abstract: Various length dimensions of the body have been a variable of interest in the research areas of kinanthropometry. However the inclusion of length measurements in various studies remains restricted to reflect characteristics of a particular game/sport at a particular time. Hence, the present investigation was conducted to study various length dimensions correlates of a longitudinal physical conditioning program on Indian male youth. The study was conducted on 90 Indian male youth. The sample was equally divided into three groups namely, progressive load training (PLT), constant load training (CLT) and no load training (NL). The variables included sitting height, leg length, arm length and foot length. The study was conducted by adopting the multi group repeated measure design. Three different groups were measured four times after completion of each of the three meso-cycles of six-weeks duration each. The measurements were taken using the standard landmarks and procedures. Mean, standard deviation and analysis of co-variance were computed to analyze the data statistically. The post-hoc analysis was conducted for the significant F-ratios at 0.05 level. The study concluded that the followed longitudinal physical conditioning program had significant effect on various length dimensions of Indian male youth.
Abstract: Obesity is an abnormal physical condition where an increased and undesirable fat accumulates in the human body. Obesity is an international phenomenon. In the present study, 12 schools were randomly selected from each district considering the areas i.e. Elite Private Schools in the private sector, Government schools in urban areas and Government schools in rural areas. Interviews were conducted with male students studying in grade 5 to grade 9 in each school. The sample size was 600 students; 300 from Faisalabad district and 300 from Rawalpindi district in Pakistan. A well-structured and pre-tested questionnaire was used for data collection. The calibrated scales were used to attain the heights and weights of the respondents. Obesity of school-going children depends on family types, family size, family history, junk food consumption, mother’s education, weekly time spent in walking, and sports facility at school levels. Academic performance, physical health and psychological health of school going children are affected with obesity. Concrete steps and policies could minimize the incidence of obesity in children in Pakistan.
Abstract: Campus buildings are educational facilities where various amount of energy consumption for lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation occurs. Some of the new universities in Turkey, where this investigation takes place, still continue their educational activities in existing buildings primarily designed for different architectural programs and converted to campus buildings via changes of function, space organizations and structural interventions but most of the time without consideration of appropriate micro climatic conditions. Reducing energy consumption in these structures not only contributes to the national economy but also mitigates the negative effects on environment. Furthermore, optimum thermal comfort conditions should be provided during the refurbishment of existing campus structures and their building envelope. Considering this issue, the first step is to investigate the climatic performance of building elements regarding refurbishment process. In the context of the study Kocaeli University, Faculty of Design and Architecture building constructed in 1980s in Anıtpark campus located in the central part of Kocaeli, Turkey was investigated. Climatic factors influencing thermal conditions; the deteriorations on building envelope; temperature distribution; heat losses from façade elements observed by thermography were presented in order to improve strategies for retrofit process for the building envelope. Within the scope of the survey, refurbishment strategies towards providing optimum climatic comfort conditions, increasing energy efficiency of building envelope were proposed.
Abstract: Musculoskeletal injuries in school children could be
reduced improving trunk strength and hamstring flexibility. Low
levels of trunk muscle strength and hamstring flexibility may result in
acute and musculoskeletal chronic diseases. The Pilates Method can
be appropriate to improve these physical condition attributes and has
been rarely employed by this social group. On the other hand, it has
been shown that trunk strength and flexibility are different between
genders, but there is no evidence about the effect of exercise
programs designed to improve both items in school children.
Therefore the objective of this study was to measure the effect of a
six-week Pilates-based exercise program in 14 year old school
children trunk strength and hamstring flexibility, establishing
differences in gender. The sample was composed of 57 students
divided into experimental group (EG; n=30) and control group (CG;
n=27). Bench Trunk Curl test (BTC), Sörensen test and Toe-touch
test (TT) were used to measure dynamic muscular resistance in trunk
flexion, isometric strength in trunk extension and hamstring
flexibility, respectively. EG utilized the Pilates exercise program
during six-weeks (2 days/week, 55minutes/session). After this period
of training, EG improved trunk strength and hamstring flexibility
significantly but there were no significant differences within CG.
Although boys were better in BTC test and girls were better in TT
test, there were no significant differences between them.
Abstract: This study aimed at designing and developing a
mechanical force gauge for the square watermelon mold for the first
time. It also tried to introduce the square watermelon characteristics
and its production limitations. The mechanical force gauge
performance and the product itself were also described. There are
three main designable gauge models: a. hydraulic gauge, b. strain
gauge, and c. mechanical gauge. The advantage of the hydraulic
model is that it instantly displays the pressure and thus the force
exerted by the melon. However, considering the inability to measure
forces at all directions, complicated development, high cost, possible
hydraulic fluid leak into the fruit chamber and the possible influence
of increased ambient temperature on the fluid pressure, the
development of this gauge was overruled. The second choice was to
calculate pressure using the direct force a strain gauge. The main
advantage of these strain gauges over spring types is their high
precision in measurements; but with regard to the lack of conformity
of strain gauge working range with water melon growth, calculations
were faced with problems. Finally the mechanical pressure gauge has
advantages, including the ability to measured forces and pressures on
the mold surface during melon growth; the ability to display the peak
forces; the ability to produce melon growth graph thanks to its
continuous force measurements; the conformity of its manufacturing
materials with the required physical conditions of melon growth; high
air conditioning capability; the ability to permit sunlight reaches the
melon rind (no yellowish skin and quality loss); fast and
straightforward calibration; no damages to the product during
assembling and disassembling; visual check capability of the product
within the mold; applicable to all growth environments (field,
greenhouses, etc.); simple process; low costs and so forth.
Abstract: In this research, the goal was construction of a system by which multiple sensors were used to observe the daily life behavior of persons living alone (while respecting their privacy), using this information to judge such conditions as bad physical condition or falling in the home, etc., so that these abnormal conditions can be made known to relatives and third parties. The daily life patterns of persons living alone are expressed by the number of responses of sensors each time that a set time period has elapsed. By comparing data for the prior two weeks, it was possible to judge a situation as “normal” when the person was in good physical condition or as “abnormal” when the person was in bad physical condition.
Abstract: The paper explores the development of an optimization of method and apparatus for retrieving extended high dynamic range from digital negative image. Architectural photo imaging can benefit from high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) technique for preserving and presenting sufficient luminance in the shadow and highlight clipping image areas. The HDRI technique that requires multiple exposure images as the source of HDRI rendering may not be effective in terms of time efficiency during the acquisition process and post-processing stage, considering it has numerous potential imaging variables and technical limitations during the multiple exposure process. This paper explores an experimental method and apparatus that aims to expand the dynamic range from digital negative image in HDRI environment. The method and apparatus explored is based on a single source of RAW image acquisition for the use of HDRI post-processing. It will cater the optimization in order to avoid and minimize the conventional HDRI photographic errors caused by different physical conditions during the photographing process and the misalignment of multiple exposed image sequences. The study observes the characteristics and capabilities of RAW image format as digital negative used for the retrieval of extended high dynamic range process in HDRI environment.
Abstract: In this paper, the potential use of an exponential
hidden Markov model to model a hidden pavement deterioration
process, i.e. one that is not directly measurable, is investigated. It is
assumed that the evolution of the physical condition, which is the
hidden process, and the evolution of the values of pavement distress
indicators, can be adequately described using discrete condition states
and modeled as a Markov processes. It is also assumed that condition
data can be collected by visual inspections over time and represented
continuously using an exponential distribution. The advantage of
using such a model in decision making process is illustrated through
an empirical study using real world data.
Abstract: To comply with the international human right
legislation concerning the freedom of movement, transport systems
are required to be made accessible in order that all citizens, regardless
of their physical condition, have equal possibilities to use them. In
Hungary, apparently there is a considerable default in the
improvement of accessible public transport. This study is aiming to
overview the current Hungarian situation and to reveal the reasons of
the deficiency. The result shows that in spite of the relatively
favourable juridical background linked to the accessibility needs and
to the rights of persons with disabilities there is a strong delay in
putting all in practice in the field of public transport. Its main reason
is the lack of financial resource and referring to this the lack of
creating mandatory regulations. In addition to this the proprietary
rights related to public transport are also variable, which also limits
the improvement possibilities. Consequently, first of all an accurate
and detailed regulatory procedure is expected to change the present
unfavourable situation and to create the conditions of the fast
realization, which is already behind time.
Abstract: Following the laser ablation studies leading to a
theory of nuclei confinement by a Debye layer mechanism, we
present here numerical evaluations for the known stable nuclei where
the Coulomb repulsion is included as a rather minor component
especially for lager nuclei. In this research paper the required
physical conditions for the formation and stability of nuclei
particularly endothermic nuclei with mass number greater than to
which is an open astrophysical question have been investigated.
Using the Debye layer mechanism, nuclear surface energy, Fermi
energy and coulomb repulsion energy it is possible to find conditions
under which the process of nucleation is permitted in early universe.
Our numerical calculations indicate that about 200 second after the
big bang at temperature of about 100 KeV and subrelativistic region
with nucleon density nearly equal to normal nuclear density namely,
10cm all endothermic and exothermic nuclei have been
formed.
Abstract: An attempt has been made to develop a
seminumerical model to study temperature variations in dermal
layers of human limbs. The model has been developed for two
dimensional steady state case. The human limb has been assumed to
have elliptical cross section. The dermal region has been divided
into three natural layers namely epidermis, dermis and subdermal
tissues. The model incorporates the effect of important physiological
parameters like blood mass flow rate, metabolic heat generation, and
thermal conductivity of the tissues. The outer surface of the limb is
exposed to the environment and it is assumed that heat loss takes
place at the outer surface by conduction, convection, radiation, and
evaporation. The temperature of inner core of the limb also varies at
the lower atmospheric temperature. Appropriate boundary conditions
have been framed based on the physical conditions of the problem.
Cubic splines approach has been employed along radial direction and
Fourier series along angular direction to obtain the solution. The
numerical results have been computed for different values of
eccentricity resembling with the elliptic cross section of the human
limbs. The numerical results have been used to obtain the
temperature profile and to study the relationships among the various
physiological parameters.
Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are emerging
because of the developments in wireless communication technology and miniaturization of the hardware. WSN consists of a large number of low-cost, low-power, multifunctional sensor nodes to monitor physical conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure,
motion, etc. The MAC protocol to be used in the sensor networks must be energy efficient and this should aim at conserving the energy during its operation. In this paper, with the focus of analyzing the
MAC protocols used in wireless Adhoc networks to WSN, simulation
experiments were conducted in Global Mobile Simulator
(GloMoSim) software. Number of packets sent by regular nodes, and received by sink node in different deployment strategies, total energy
spent, and the network life time have been chosen as the metric for comparison. From the results of simulation, it is evident that the IEEE 802.11 protocol performs better compared to CSMA and MACA protocols.