Abstract: The clinical laboratory has received considerable recognition globally due to the rapid development of advanced technology, economic demands and its role in a patient’s treatment cycle. Although various cross-domain experiments and practices with respect to clinical laboratory projects are ready for the full swing, the customer needs are still ambiguous and debatable. The purpose of this study is to apply Kano’s model and customer satisfaction matrix to categorize service quality attributes in order to see how well these attributes are able to satisfy customer needs. The result reveals that ten of the 26 service quality attributes have greater impacts on highly increasing customer’s satisfaction and should be taken in consideration firstly.
Abstract: Coproduction of fructose and ethanol from dates extract by a glucose-selective S. cerevisiae ATCC 36859 strain has been studied. Various initial sugar concentrations (i.e., 131.4, 315.3, 408.2, and 500.0 g/l) have been tested. The fermentation experiments were performed in a water shaker bath at 30°C and 120 rpm. The results showed that highest yields of fructose (95.0%) and ethanol (72.8%) were achieved for the 131.4 g/l concentration. Increasing the initial concentration to 315.3 g/l resulted in lower yields of fructose (82.2%) and ethanol (61.0%). However, further increase to 408.2 g/l increased the fructose yield (97.5%) at the expense of ethanol yield (42.0%) due to probable substrate inhibitions that resulted in lower glucose conversion. At 500 g initial sugar/l the growth rate of ATCC 36859 was highly inhibited.
Abstract: Object identification and segmentation application requires extraction of object in foreground from the background. In this paper the Bhattacharya distance based probabilistic approach is utilized with an active contour model (ACM) to segment an object from the background. In the proposed approach, the Bhattacharya histogram is calculated on non-linear structure tensor space. Based on the histogram, new formulation of active contour model is proposed to segment images. The results are tested on both color and gray images from the Berkeley image database. The experimental results show that the proposed model is applicable to both color and gray images as well as both texture images and natural images. Again in comparing to the Bhattacharya based ACM in ICA space, the proposed model is able to segment multiple object too.
Abstract: We address a complex scheduling problem arising in the wood panel industry with the objective of minimizing a quadratic function of job tardiness. The proposed solution strategy, which is based on an effective genetic algorithm, has been coded and implemented within a major Tunisian company, leader in the wood panel manufacturing. Preliminary experimental results indicate significant decrease of delivery times.
Abstract: In this paper, 3D image based composite unit cell is constructed from high resolution tomographic images. Through-thickness thermal diffusivity and in-plane Young’s modulus are predicted for the composite unit cell. The accuracy of the image based composite unit cell is tested by comparing its results with the experimental results obtained from laser flash and tensile test. The FE predictions are in close agreement with experimental results. Through-thickness thermal diffusivity and in-plane Young’s modulus of a virgin C/C composite are predicted by replacing the properties of air (porosity) with the properties of carbon matrix. The effect of porosity was found to be more profound on thermal diffusivity than young’s modulus.
Abstract: To solve saddle point systems efficiently, several preconditioners have been published. There are many methods for constructing preconditioners for linear systems from saddle point problems, for instance, the relaxed dimensional factorization (RDF) preconditioner and the augmented Lagrangian (AL) preconditioner are used for both steady and unsteady Navier-Stokes equations. In this paper we compare the RDF preconditioner with the modified AL (MAL) preconditioner to show which is more effective to solve Navier-Stokes equations. Numerical experiments indicate that the MAL preconditioner is more efficient and robust, especially, for moderate viscosities and stretched grids in steady problems. For unsteady cases, the convergence rate of the RDF preconditioner is slightly faster than the MAL perconditioner in some circumstances, but the parameter of the RDF preconditioner is more sensitive than the MAL preconditioner. Moreover the convergence rate of the MAL preconditioner is still quite acceptable. Therefore we conclude that the MAL preconditioner is more competitive than the RDF preconditioner. These experiments are implemented with IFISS package.
Abstract: SUVA (equivalent to UV254/DOC) value in raw water is a precursor for the formation of trihalomethane during chlorination at a water treatment plant. This study collected rapidly filtered water from an advanced water treatment plant for use in experiments on raw water. The removal rate of treating the trihalomethanes formation potential (THMFP) was conducted by using a biological activated carbon. The hydraulic retention time and SUVA loading were major factors in biological degradation tests. The results showed that biological powder-activated carbon (BPAC) lowered the average concentration of UV254 and value of SUVA in raw water. A removal efficiency of THMFP was present in the treatment of the three primary organic carbon items. These results highlighted the importance of the BPAC had an excellent treatment efficiency on THMFP.
Abstract: In this paper, getting an high-efficiency parallel algorithm to solve sparse block pentadiagonal linear systems suitable for vectors and parallel processors, stair matrices are used to construct some parallel polynomial approximate inverse preconditioners. These preconditioners are appropriate when the desired target is to maximize parallelism. Moreover, some theoretical results about these preconditioners are presented and how to construct preconditioners effectively for any nonsingular block pentadiagonal H-matrices is also described. In addition, the availability of these preconditioners is illustrated with some numerical experiments arising from two dimensional biharmonic equation.
Abstract: In maize growing technologies, tillage technological operations are the most time-consuming and require the greatest fuel input. Substitution of conventional tillage, involving deep ploughing, by other reduced tillage methods can reduce technological production costs, diminish soil degradation and environmental pollution from greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improve economic competitiveness of agricultural produce.
Experiments designed to assess energy and environmental aspects associated with different reduced tillage systems, applied in maize cultivation were conducted at Aleksandras Stulginskis University taking into account Lithuania’s economic and climate conditions. The study involved 5 tillage treatments: deep ploughing (DP, control), shallow ploughing (SP), deep cultivation (DC), shallow cultivation (SC) and no-tillage (NT).
Our experimental evidence suggests that with the application of reduced tillage systems it is feasible to reduce fuel consumption by 13-58% and working time input by 8.4% to nearly 3-fold, to reduce the cost price of maize cultivation technological operations, decrease environmental pollution with CO2 gas by 30 to 146 kg ha-1, compared with the deep ploughing.
Abstract: In this article, a new inexact alternating direction method(ADM) is proposed for solving a class of variational inequality problems. At each iteration, the new method firstly solves the resulting subproblems of ADM approximately to generate an temporal point ˜xk, and then the multiplier yk is updated to get the new iterate yk+1. In order to get xk+1, we adopt a new descent direction which is simple compared with the existing prediction-correction type ADMs. For the inexact ADM, the resulting proximal subproblem has closedform solution when the proximal parameter and inexact term are chosen appropriately. We show the efficiency of the inexact ADM numerically by some preliminary numerical experiments.
Abstract: The author proposes an extension of particle swarm optimization (PSO) for solving interval-valued optimization problems and applies the extended PSO to evolutionary training of neural networks (NNs) with interval weights. In the proposed PSO, values in the genotypes are not real numbers but intervals. Experimental results show that interval-valued NNs trained by the proposed method could well approximate hidden target functions despite the fact that no training data was explicitly provided.
Abstract: Support vector clustering (SVC) is an important kernelbased clustering algorithm in multi applications. It has got two main bottle necks, the high computation price and labeling piece. In this paper, we presented a modified SVC method, named Grid–SVC, to improve the original algorithm computationally. First we normalized and then we parted the interval, where the SVC is processing, using a novel Grid–based clustering algorithm. The algorithm parts the intervals, based on the density function of the data set and then applying the cartesian multiply makes multi-dimensional grids. Eliminating many outliers and noise in the preprocess, we apply an improved SVC method to each parted grid in a parallel way. The experimental results show both improvement in time complexity order and the accuracy.
Abstract: A high thermal dissipation performance polyethylene terephthalate heat pipe has been fabricated and tested in this research. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is used as the container material instead of copper. Copper mesh and methanol are sealed in the middle of two PET films as the wick structure and working fluid. Although the thermal conductivity of PET (0.15-0.24 W/m·K) is much smaller than copper (401 W/m·K), the experiment results reveal that the PET heat pipe can reach a minimum thermal resistance of 0.146 (oC/W) and maximum effective thermal conductivity of 18,310 (W/m·K) with 36.9 vol% at 26 W input power. However, when the input power is larger than 30 W, the laminated PET will debond due to the high vapor pressure of methanol.
Abstract: Experimental study was conducted to assess personal welding fumes exposure toward welders during an aluminum metal inert gas (MIG) process. The welding process was carried out by a welding machine attached to a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) workbench. A dummy welder was used to replicate welder during welding works and was attached with sampling pumps and filter cassettes for welding fumes sampling. Direct reading instruments to measure air velocity, humidity, temperature and particulate matter with diameter size 10µm or less (PM10) were located behind the dummy welder and parallel to the neck collar level to make sure the measured welding fumes exposure were not being influenced by other factors. Welding fumes exposure during standing and sitting position with and without the usage of local exhaust ventilation (LEV) was investigated. Welding fume samples were then digested and analyzed by using inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) according to ASTM D7439-08 method. The results of the study showed the welding fume exposure during sitting was lower compared to standing position. LEV helped reduce aluminum and lead exposure to acceptable levels during standing position. However during sitting position reduction of exposure was smaller. It can be concluded that welder position and the correct positioning of LEV should be implemented for effective exposure reduction.
Abstract: A crossbreeding experiment was carried out between two Egyptian strains of chickens namely Mandarah (MM) and El-Salam (SS). The two purebred strains and their reciprocal crosses (MS and SM) were used to estimate the effect of crossing on egg laying and egg quality parameters, direct additive and maternal additive effects as well as heterosis and direct heterosis percentages for studied traits. Results revealed that SM cross recorded the highest significant averages for most of egg production traits including body weight at sexual maturity (BW1), egg numbers at first 90 days, 42 weeks and 65 weeks of age (EN1, EN2 and EN3; respectively), egg weight at 90 days, 42 weeks of age (EW1 and EW2), egg mass at 90 days, 42 weeks and 65 weeks of age (EM1, EM2 and EM3; respectively), feed conversion ratio to egg production at 90 days , 42 weeks and 65 weeks of age (FCR1, FCR2 and FCR3; respectively), fertility and commercial hatchability percentages. Moreover, SM line reached the age sexual maturity (ASM) and period to the first ten eggs (Pf10 egg) at earlier age than other lines. On the other hand, crossing did not well improve egg quality parameters. Estimates and percentages of direct additive effect (GI) were negative for most of the studied traits except for EN1, EN2, EN3, FCR3, fertility, scientific and commercial hatchability percentages that were positive. But Estimates and percentages of maternal heterosis (Gm) were positive for all the studied traits of egg production, except for BW2, BW3, ASM, Pf10, FCR1, FCR2, FCR3 and scientific hatchability that were negative. Also, positive estimates and percentages of heterosis were recorded for most of egg production and egg quality traits. It was concluded that using of SS strain as a sire line and MM strain as a dam line resulting in best new commercial egg line (SM) which is of great concern for poultry breeder in Egypt.
Abstract: Activated carbons were produced from olive stones by a chemical process. The activated carbon (AC) were modified by nitric acid and used as adsorbents for the removal of methylene blue dye from aqueous solution. The activated carbons were characterized by nitrogen adsorption and enthalpy of immersion. Batch adsorption experiments were carried out to study the effect of initial different concentrations solution on dye adsorption properties. Isotherms were fitted to Langmuir model, and corresponding parameters were determined. The results showed that the increase of ration of ZnCl2 leads to increase in apparent surface areas and produces activated carbons with pore structure more developed. However, the maximum MB uptakes for all carbons were determined and correlated with activated carbons characteristics.
Abstract: The numerical simulation of fully developed gas–solid flow in a horizontal pipe is done using the eulerian-eulerian approach, also known as two fluids modeling as both phases are treated as continuum and inter-penetrating continua. The solid phase stresses are modeled using kinetic theory of granular flow (KTGF). The computed results for velocity profiles and pressure drop are compared with the experimental data. We observe that the convection and diffusion terms in the granular temperature cannot be neglected in gas solid flow simulation along a horizontal pipe. The particle-wall collision and lift also play important role in eulerian modeling. We also investigated the effect of flow parameters like gas velocity, particle properties and particle loading on pressure drop prediction in different pipe diameters. Pressure drop increases with gas velocity and particle loading. The gas velocity has the same effect ((proportional toU2 ) as single phase flow on pressure drop prediction. With respect to particle diameter, pressure drop first increases, reaches a peak and then decreases. The peak is a strong function of pipe bore.
Abstract: Molasses is one of the most important by-products in sugar industry, which contains a large amount of sucrose. The routine way to separate the sucrose from molasses is using steffen method. Whereas this method is very usual in sugar factories, the aim of this research is optimization of this method. Mentioned optimization depends to three factors of reactor alkality, reactor temperature and diluted molasses brix. Accordingly, three different stages must be done:
Construction of a pilot plant similar to actual steffen system in sugar factories
Experimenting using the pilot plant
Laboratory analysis
These experiences included 27 treatments in three replications. In each replication, brix, polarization and purity characters in Saccharate syrup and hot and cold waste were measured. The results showed that diluted molasses brix, reactor alkality and reactor temperature had many significant effects on Saccharate purity and efficiency of molasses desugarization. This research was performed in "randomize complete design" form & was analyzed with "duncan multiple range test". The significant difference in the level of α = 5% is observed between the treatments. The results indicated that the optimal conditions for molasses desugarization by steffen method are: diluted molasses brix= 10, reactor alkality= 10 and reactor temperature=8˚C.
Abstract: In most industrial compounds are used trapezoidal metal sheets like a roof decks. These trapezoidal metal sheets are exposed by concentrated loads, usually by service loads arise from installation of air distribution, sanitary distribution, sprinkler system or wiring installation. In objects of public facilities (like shopping centre, tennis hall, etc.) they can be used for hanging advertising posters etc, too. These systems work as “building kit”. These anchoring systems are represented by clamps in shape of “V”.
This paper is occupy with recapitulation of installation systems available in trade with focus on load-bearing capacity specified by producer and on possible methods, how exactly define load bearing capacity of trapezoidal sheet loaded by concentrated load. The load bearing capacity was verified at experimental samples to determine real behavior of trapezoidal metal sheets exposed to concentrated loads.
Abstract: This study is experimentally targeting to develop effective in heat and mass transfer processes for the adsorbate to obtain applicable adsorption capacity data. This is done by using fin and tube heat exchanger core and the adsorbate is adhesive over its surface and located as the core of the adsorber. The pairs are activated carbon powder/R-134a, activated carbon powder/R-407c, activated carbon powder/R-507A, activated carbon granules/R-507A, activated carbon granules/R-407c and activated carbon granules/R-134a, at different adsorption temperatures of 25, 30, 35 and 50°C. The following is results is obtained: at adsorption temperature of 25 °C the maximum adsorption capacity is found to be 0.8352kg/kg for activated carbon powder with R-134a and the minimum adsorption capacity found to be 0.1583kg/kg for activated carbon granules with R-407c. While, at adsorption temperature of 50°C the maximum adsorption capacity is found to be 0.3207kg/kg for activated carbon powder with R-134a and the minimum adsorption capacity found to be 0.0609kg/kg for activated carbon granules with R-407c. Therefore, the activated carbon powder/R-134a pair is highly recommended to be used as adsorption refrigeration working pair because of its higher maximum adsorption capacity than the other tested pairs, to produce a compact, efficient and reliable for long life performance adsorption refrigeration system.