Abstract: This study was conducted to investigate the incidence
of pathogenic bacteria: Salmonella, Shigella, Escherichia coli O157
and Staphylococcus aureus in cakes and tarts collected from thirtyfive
confectionery producing and selling premises located within
Tripoli city, Libya. The results revealed an incidence of S. aureus
with 94.4 and 48.0 %, E. coli O157 with 14.7 and 4.0 % and Salmonella
sp. with 5.9 and 8.0 % in cakes and tarts samples respectively;
while Shigella was not detected in all samples. In order to determine
the source of these pathogenic bacteria, cotton swabs were taken
from the hands of workers on the production line, the surfaces of
preparation tables and cream whipping instruments. The results
showed that the cotton swabs obtained from the hands of workers
contained S. aureus and Salmonella sp. with an incidence of 42.9 and
2.9 %, the cotton swabs obtained from the surfaces of preparation
tables 22.9 and 2.9 % and the cotton swabs obtained from the cream
whipping instruments 14.3 and 0.0 % respectively; while E. coli
O157 and Shigella sp. were not detected in all swabs. Additionally,
other bacteria were isolated from the hands of workers and the Surfaces
of producing equipments included: Aeromonas sp., Pseudomonas
sp., E. coli, Klebsiella sp., Enterobacter sp., Citrobacter sp.,
Proteus sp., Serratia sp. and Acinetobacter sp. These results indicate
that some of the cakes and tarts might pose threat to consumer's
health. Meanwhile, occurrences of pathogenic bacteria on the hands
of those who are working in production line and the surfaces of
equipments reflect poor hygienic practices at most confectionery
premises examined in this study. Thus, firm and continuous surveillance
of these premises is needed to insure the consumer's health and
safety.
Abstract: This study analyzed environmental health risks and
people-s perceptions of risks related to waste management in poor
settlements of Abidjan, to develop integrated solutions for health and
well-being improvement. The trans-disciplinary approach used relied
on remote sensing, a geographic information system (GIS),
qualitative and quantitative methods such as interviews and a
household survey (n=1800). Mitigating strategies were then
developed using an integrated participatory stakeholder workshop.
Waste management deficiencies resulting in lack of drainage and
uncontrolled solid and liquid waste disposal in the poor settlements
lead to severe environmental health risks. Health problems were
caused by direct handling of waste, as well as through broader
exposure of the population. People in poor settlements had little
awareness of health risks related to waste management in their
community and a general lack of knowledge pertaining to sanitation
systems. This unfortunate combination was the key determinant
affecting the health and vulnerability. For example, an increased
prevalence of malaria (47.1%) and diarrhoea (19.2%) was observed
in the rainy season when compared to the dry season (32.3% and
14.3%). Concerted and adapted solutions that suited all the
stakeholders concerned were developed in a participatory workshop
to allow for improvement of health and well-being.
Abstract: An electrocardiogram (ECG) feature extraction system
based on the calculation of the complex resonance frequency
employing Prony-s method is developed. Prony-s method is applied
on five different classes of ECG signals- arrhythmia as a finite sum
of exponentials depending on the signal-s poles and the resonant
complex frequencies. Those poles and resonance frequencies of the
ECG signals- arrhythmia are evaluated for a large number of each
arrhythmia. The ECG signals of lead II (ML II) were taken from
MIT-BIH database for five different types. These are the ventricular
couplet (VC), ventricular tachycardia (VT), ventricular bigeminy
(VB), and ventricular fibrillation (VF) and the normal (NR). This
novel method can be extended to any number of arrhythmias.
Different classification techniques were tried using neural networks
(NN), K nearest neighbor (KNN), linear discriminant analysis (LDA)
and multi-class support vector machine (MC-SVM).
Abstract: This paper presents the study of parameters affecting
the environment protection in the printing industry. The paper has
also compared LCA studies performed within the printing industry in
order to identify common practices, limitations, areas for
improvement, and opportunities for standardization. This comparison
is focused on the data sources and methodologies used in the printing
pollutants register. The presented concepts, methodology and results
represent the contribution to the sustainable development
management. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the result of the
quantitative identification of hazardous substances emitted in printing
industry of Novi Sad.
Abstract: Radio-frequency identification has entered as a beneficial means with conforming GS1 standards to provide the best solutions in the manufacturing area. It competes with other automated identification technologies e.g. barcodes and smart cards with regard to high speed scanning, reliability and accuracy as well. The purpose of this study is to improve production line-s performance by implementing RFID system in the manufacturing area on the basis of radio-frequency identification (RFID) system by 3D modeling in the program Cinema 4D R13 which provides obvious graphical scenes for users to portray their applications. Finally, with regard to improving system performance, it shows how RFID appears as a well-suited technology in a comparison of the barcode scanner to handle different kinds of raw materials in the production line base on logical process.
Abstract: This paper employs a new approach to regulate the
blood glucose level of type I diabetic patient under an intensive
insulin treatment. The closed-loop control scheme incorporates
expert knowledge about treatment by using reinforcement learning
theory to maintain the normoglycemic average of 80 mg/dl and the
normal condition for free plasma insulin concentration in severe
initial state. The insulin delivery rate is obtained off-line by using Qlearning
algorithm, without requiring an explicit model of the
environment dynamics. The implementation of the insulin delivery
rate, therefore, requires simple function evaluation and minimal
online computations. Controller performance is assessed in terms of
its ability to reject the effect of meal disturbance and to overcome the
variability in the glucose-insulin dynamics from patient to patient.
Computer simulations are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the
proposed technique and to show its superiority in controlling
hyperglycemia over other existing algorithms
Abstract: The technical realization of data transmission using
glass fiber began after the development of diode laser in year 1962.
The erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA's) in high speed networks
allow information to be transmitted over longer distances without
using of signal amplification repeaters. These kinds of fibers are
doped with erbium atoms which have energy levels in its atomic
structure for amplifying light at 1550nm. When a carried signal wave
at 1550nm enters the erbium fiber, the light stimulates the excited
erbium atoms which pumped with laser beam at 980nm as additional
light. The wavelength and intensity of the semiconductor lasers
depend on the temperature of active zone and the injection current.
The present paper shows the effect of the diode lasers temperature
and injection current on the optical amplification. From the results of
in- and output power one may calculate the max. optical gain by
erbium doped fiber amplifier.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of the preliminary investigation of microwave (MW) irradiation pretreatments on the anaerobic digestion of food residues using biochemical methane potential (BMP) assays. Low solids systems with a total solids (TS) content ranging from 5.0-10.0% were analyzed. The inoculum to bulk mass of substrates to water ratio was 1:2:2 (mass basis). The experimental conditions for pretreatments were as follows: a control (no MW irradiation), two runs with MW irradiation for 15 and 30 minutes at 320 W, and another two runs with MW irradiation at 528 W for 30 and 60 minutes. The cumulative biogas production were 6.3 L and 8.7 L for 15min/320 W and 30min/320 W MW irradiation conditions, respectively, and 10.5 L and 11.4 L biogas for 30min/528 W and 60min/528 W, respectively, as compared to the control giving 5.8 L biogas. Both an increase in exposure time of irradiation and power of MW had increased the rate and yield of biogas. Singlefactor ANOVA tests (p
Abstract: Work is focused to the study of unburned carbon in
ash from coal (and wastes) combustion in 8 combustion tests at 3
fluidised-bed power station, at co-combustion of coal and wastes
(also at fluidized bed) and at bench-scale unit simulating coal
combustion in small domestic furnaces. The attention is paid to
unburned carbon contents in bottom ashes and fly ashes at these 8
combustion tests and to morphology of unburned carbons. Specific
surface area of coals, unburned carbons and ashes and the relation of
specific surface area of unburned carbon and the content of volatile
combustibles in coal were studied as well.
Abstract: The AL-MAJIRI school system is a variant of private
Arabic and Islamic schools which cater for the religious and moral development of Muslims. In the past, the system produced clerics,
scholars, judges, religious reformers, eminent teachers and great men who are worthy of emulation, particularly in northern Nigeria.
Gradually, the system lost its glory but continued to discharge its
educational responsibilities to a certain extent. This paper takes a
look at the activities of the AL-MAJIRI schools. The introduction
provides background information about Nigeria where the schools
operate. This is followed by an overview of the Nigerian educational system, the nature and the features of the AL-MAJIRI school system,
its weaknesses and the current challenges facing the schools. The paper concludes with emphasis on the urgent need for a comprehensive reform of the curriculum content of the schools. The step by step procedure required for the reform is discussed.
Abstract: As a result of urbanization, the unpredictable growth of industry and transport, production of chemicals, military activities, etc. the concentration of anthropogenic toxicants spread in nature exceeds all the permissible standards. Most dangerous among these contaminants are organic compounds having great persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity along with our awareness of their prominent occurrence in the environment and food chain. Among natural ecological tools, plants still occupying above 40% of the world land, until recently, were considered as organisms having only a limited ecological potential, accumulating in plant biomass and partially volatilizing contaminants of different structure. However, analysis of experimental data of the last two decades revealed the essential role of plants in environment remediation due to ability to carry out intracellular degradation processes leading to partial or complete decomposition of carbon skeleton of different structure contaminants. Though, phytoremediation technologies still are in research and development, their various applications have been successfully used. The paper aims to analyze mechanisms of organic contaminants uptake and detoxification in plants, being the less studied issue in evaluation and exploration of plants potential for environment remediation.
Abstract: Nowadays, engineering ceramics have significant
applications in different industries such as; automotive, aerospace,
electrical, electronics and even martial industries due to their
attractive physical and mechanical properties like very high hardness
and strength at elevated temperatures, chemical stability, low friction
and high wear resistance. However, these interesting properties plus
low heat conductivity make their machining processes too hard,
costly and time consuming. Many attempts have been made in order
to make the grinding process of engineering ceramics easier and
many scientists have tried to find proper techniques to economize
ceramics' machining processes. This paper proposes a new diamond
plunge grinding technique using ultrasonic vibration for grinding
Alumina ceramic (Al2O3). For this purpose, a set of laboratory
equipments have been designed and simulated using Finite Element
Method (FEM) and constructed in order to be used in various
measurements. The results obtained have been compared with the
conventional plunge grinding process without ultrasonic vibration
and indicated that the surface roughness and fracture strength
improved and the grinding forces decreased.
Abstract: This study applied Theory of Planned Behaviour
(TPB) to explain the knowledge sharing behaviour among academic
staff at a Public Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Malaysia. The
main objectives of this study are; to identify the components that
influence knowledge sharing behaviour and to determine the levels of
knowledge sharing behaviour among academic staff. A total of 200
respondents were participated in answering questionnaires. The
findings of this study revealed that level of perceiving and
implementing knowledge sharing behaviour among academic staff at
a Public HEI in Malaysia exist but not openly or strongly practiced.
The findings were discussed and recommendations for the future
research were also addressed.
Abstract: The increased number of automobiles in recent years
has resulted in great demand for fossil fuel. This has led to the
development of automobile by using alternative fuels which include
gaseous fuels, biofuels and vegetables oils as fuel. Energy from
biomass and more specific bio-diesel is one of the opportunities that
could cover the future demand of fossil fuel shortage. Biomass in the
form of cashew nut shell represents a new energy source and
abundant source of energy in India. The bio-fuel is derived from
cashew nut shell oil and its blend with diesel are promising
alternative fuel for diesel engine. In this work the pyrolysis Cashew
Nut Shell Liquid (CNSL)-Diesel Blends (CDB) was used to run the
Direct Injection (DI) diesel engine. The experiments were conducted
with various blends of CNSL and Diesel namely B20, B40, B60, B80
and B100. The results are compared with neat diesel operation. The
brake thermal efficiency was decreased for blends of CNSL and
Diesel except the lower blends of B20. The brake thermal efficiency
of B20 is nearly closer to that of diesel fuel. Also the emission level
of the all CNSL and Diesel blends was increased compared to neat
diesel. The higher viscosity and lower volatility of CNSL leads to
poor mixture formation and hence lower brake thermal efficiency and
higher emission levels. The higher emission level can be reduced by
adding suitable additives and oxygenates with CNSL and Diesel
blends.
Abstract: Network layer multicast, i.e. IP multicast, even after
many years of research, development and standardization, is not
deployed in large scale due to both technical (e.g. upgrading of
routers) and political (e.g. policy making and negotiation) issues.
Researchers looked for alternatives and proposed application/overlay
multicast where multicast functions are handled by end hosts, not
network layer routers. Member hosts wishing to receive multicast
data form a multicast delivery tree. The intermediate hosts in the tree
act as routers also, i.e. they forward data to the lower hosts in the
tree. Unlike IP multicast, where a router cannot leave the tree until all
members below it leave, in overlay multicast any member can leave
the tree at any time thus disjoining the tree and disrupting the data
dissemination. All the disrupted hosts have to rejoin the tree. This
characteristic of the overlay multicast causes multicast tree unstable,
data loss and rejoin overhead. In this paper, we propose that each node
sets its leaving time from the tree and sends join request to a number
of nodes in the tree. The nodes in the tree will reject the request if
their leaving time is earlier than the requesting node otherwise they
will accept the request. The node can join at one of the accepting
nodes. This makes the tree more stable as the nodes will join the tree
according to their leaving time, earliest leaving time node being at the
leaf of the tree. Some intermediate nodes may not follow their leaving
time and leave earlier than their leaving time thus disrupting the tree.
For this, we propose a proactive recovery mechanism so that disrupted
nodes can rejoin the tree at predetermined nodes immediately. We
have shown by simulation that there is less overhead when joining
the multicast tree and the recovery time of the disrupted nodes is
much less than the previous works. Keywords
Abstract: Increasing growth of information volume in the
internet causes an increasing need to develop new (semi)automatic
methods for retrieval of documents and ranking them according to
their relevance to the user query. In this paper, after a brief review
on ranking models, a new ontology based approach for ranking
HTML documents is proposed and evaluated in various
circumstances. Our approach is a combination of conceptual,
statistical and linguistic methods. This combination reserves the
precision of ranking without loosing the speed. Our approach
exploits natural language processing techniques to extract phrases
from documents and the query and doing stemming on words. Then
an ontology based conceptual method will be used to annotate
documents and expand the query. To expand a query the spread
activation algorithm is improved so that the expansion can be done
flexible and in various aspects. The annotated documents and the
expanded query will be processed to compute the relevance degree
exploiting statistical methods. The outstanding features of our
approach are (1) combining conceptual, statistical and linguistic
features of documents, (2) expanding the query with its related
concepts before comparing to documents, (3) extracting and using
both words and phrases to compute relevance degree, (4) improving
the spread activation algorithm to do the expansion based on
weighted combination of different conceptual relationships and (5)
allowing variable document vector dimensions. A ranking system
called ORank is developed to implement and test the proposed
model. The test results will be included at the end of the paper.
Abstract: We propose that Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) should be designed by taking into account the characteristics, the special needs and the specific operating rules of the academic institutions in which they are employed. In this context, we describe a VLE module that extends the support of the organization and delivery of course material by including administration activities related to the various stages of teaching. These include the co-ordination, collaboration and monitoring of the course material development process and institution-specific course material delivery modes. Our specialized module, which enhances VLE capabilities by Helping Educators and Learners through a Laboratory Assistance System, is willing to assist the Greek tertiary technological sector, which includes Technological Educational Institutes (T.E.I.).
Abstract: The overall penumbra is usually defined as the
distance, p20–80, separating the 20% and 80% of the dose on the beam axis at the depth of interest. This overall penumbra accounts
also for the fact that some photons emitted by the distal parts of the source are only partially attenuated by the collimator. Medulloblastoma is the most common type of childhood brain tumor
and often spreads to the spine. Current guidelines call for surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible, followed by radiation of the brain and spinal cord, and finally treatment with chemotherapy.
The purpose of this paper was to present results on an Uniformity of dose distribution in radiation fields surrounding the spine using film
dosimetry and comparison with 3D treatment planning software.
Abstract: Mycophenolic acid “MPA" is a secondary metabolite
of Penicillium bervicompactum with antibiotic and
immunosuppressive properties. In this study, fermentation process
was established for production of mycophenolic acid by Penicillium
bervicompactum MUCL 19011 in shake flask. The maximum MPA
production, product yield and productivity were 1.379 g/L, 18.6 mg/g
glucose and 4.9 mg/L.h respectively. Glucose consumption, biomass
and MPA production profiles were investigated during fermentation
time. It was found that MPA production starts approximately after
180 hours and reaches to a maximum at 280 h. In the next step, the
effects of methionine and acetate concentrations on MPA production
were evaluated. Maximum MPA production, product yield and
productivity (1.763 g/L, 23.8 mg/g glucose and 6.30 mg/L. h
respectively) were obtained with using 2.5 g/L methionine in culture
medium. Further addition of methionine had not more positive effect
on MPA production. Finally, results showed that the addition of
acetate to the culture medium had not any observable effect on MPA
production
Abstract: This paper presents the experimental results of silicone rubber polymer insulators for 22 kV systems under salt water dip wheel test based on IEC 62217. Straight shed silicone rubber polymer insulators having leakage distance 685 mm were tested continuously 30,000 cycles. One test cycle includes 4 positions, energized, de-energized, salt water dip and deenergized, respectively. For one test cycle, each test specimen remains stationary for about 40 second in each position and takes 8 second for rotate to next position. By visual observation, sever surface erosion was observed on the trunk near the energized end of tested specimen. Puncture was observed on the upper shed near the energized end. In addition, decreasing in hydrophobicity and increasing in hardness were measured on tested specimen comparing with new specimen. Furthermore, chemical analysis by ATR-FTIR was conducted in order to elucidate the chemical change of tested specimens comparing with new specimen.