Abstract: The aim of this work is to determine the supersonic
nozzle profiles used in propulsion, for the launchers or embarked
with the satellites. This design has as a role firstly, to give a
important propulsion, i.e. with uniform and parallel flow at exit,
secondly to find a short length profiles without modification of the
flow in the nozzle. The first elaborate program is used to determine
the profile of divergent by using the characteristics method for an
axisymmetric flow. The second program is conceived by using the
finite volume method to determine and test the profile found
connected to a convergent.
Abstract: Sustainable development is highly dependent on the
implementation of environmental education programs, which has as
its ultimate goal to produce environmentally literate citizens that
undertake environmentally friendly actions. Efforts on environmental
education along past years are now perceived on the increase of
citizens awareness on European countries and, particularly, in
Portugal. However, we still have a lack of information on the
prevalence of specific behaviors that contributes to sustainability,
influenced by a new attitude toward the environment. The
determination of pro-environmental behaviors prevalence in higher
education students is an important approach to understand to which
extend the next leading generation is, in practice, committed with the
goals of sustainable development. Therefore, present study evaluates
the prevalence of a specific set of behaviors (water savings, energy
savings, environmental criteria on shopping, and mobility) on the
University of Madeira students and discusses their commitment with
sustainable development.
Abstract: Mental health professionals views about mental illness
is an important issue which has not received enough attention. The
negative stigma associated with mental illness can have many
negative consequences. Unfortunately, health professionals working
with the mentally ill can also exhibit stigma. It has been suggested
that causal explanations or beliefs around the causes of mental illness
may influence stigma. This study aims to gain a greater insight into
stigma through examining stigma among potential mental health
professionals. Firstly, results found that potential mental health
professionals had relatively low social distance t(205) = -3.62, p
Abstract: The scientific community has invested a great deal of effort in the fields of discrete wavelet transform in the last few decades. Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) associated with the vector quantization has been proved to be a very useful tool for the compression of image. However, the DWT is very computationally intensive process requiring innovative and computationally efficient method to obtain the image compression. The concurrent transformation of the image can be an important solution to this problem. This paper proposes a model of concurrent DWT for image compression. Additionally, the formal verification of the model has also been performed. Here the Symbolic Model Verifier (SMV) has been used as the formal verification tool. The system has been modeled in SMV and some properties have been verified formally.
Abstract: In recent past, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the de facto industry standard for object-oriented modeling of the software systems. The syntax and semantics rich UML has encouraged industry to develop several supporting tools including those capable of generating deployable product (code) from the UML models. As a consequence, ensuring the correctness of the model/design has become challenging and extremely important task. In this paper, we present an approach for automatic verification of protocol model/design. As a case study, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) design is verified for the property, “the CALLER will not converse with the CALLEE before the connection is established between them ". The SIP is modeled using UML statechart diagrams and the desired properties are expressed in temporal logic. Our prototype verifier “UML-SMV" is used to carry out the verification. We subjected an erroneous SIP model to the UML-SMV, the verifier could successfully detect the error (in 76.26ms) and generate the error trace.
Abstract: Understanding of how and where NOx formation
occurs in industrial burner is very important for efficient and clean
operation of utility burners. Also the importance of this problem is
mainly due to its relation to the pollutants produced by more burners
used widely of gas turbine in thermal power plants and glass and steel
industry.
In this article, a numerical model of an industrial burner operating
in MILD combustion is validated with experimental data.. Then
influence of air flow rate and air temperature on combustor
temperature profiles and NOX product are investigated. In order to
modification this study reports on the effects of fuel and air dilution
(with inert gases H2O, CO2, N2), and also influence of lean-premixed
of fuel, on the temperature profiles and NOX emission.
Conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy, and
transport equations of species concentrations, turbulence, combustion
and radiation modeling in addition to NO modeling equations were
solved together to present temperature and NO distribution inside the
burner.
The results shows that dilution, cause to a reduction in value of
temperature and NOX emission, and suppresses any flame
propagation inside the furnace and made the flame inside the furnace
invisible. Dilution with H2O rather than N2 and CO2 decreases further
the value of the NOX. Also with raise of lean-premix level, local
temperature of burner and the value of NOX product are decreases
because of premixing prevents local “hot spots" within the combustor
volume that can lead to significant NOx formation. Also leanpremixing
of fuel with air cause to amount of air in reaction zone is
reach more than amount that supplied as is actually needed to burn
the fuel and this act lead to limiting NOx formation
Abstract: Every 2-3 years the influenza B virus serves
epidemics. Neuraminidase (NA) is an important target for influenza
drug design. Although, oseltamivir, an oral neuraminidase drug, has
been shown good inhibitory efficiency against wild-type of influenza
B virus, the lower susceptibility to the R152K mutation has been
reported. Better understanding of oseltamivir efficiency and
resistance toward the influenza B NA wild-type and R152K mutant,
respectively, could be useful for rational drug design. Here, two
complex systems of wild-type and R152K NAs with oseltamivir
bound were studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.
Based on 5-ns MD simulation, the loss of notable hydrogen bond and
decrease in per-residue decomposition energy from the mutated
residue K152 contributed to drug compared to those of R152 in wildtype
were found to be a primary source of high-level of oseltamivir
resistance due to the R152K mutation.
Abstract: There is currently intensive debate in Alberta,
Canada, regarding rural to urban water reallocation. This paper
explores the demographic and attitudinal influences that are
associated with the acceptance of water reallocation policies and
whether such acceptance differs between urban and rural residents.
We investigate three policy orientations in regards to water policies:
i) government intervention; ii) environmental protection; and iii)
protecting irrigators- water rights. We find that urban dwellers are
more likely to favour government intervention while rural dwellers
are more likely to support policies that aim at protecting irrigators-
water rights. While urban dwellers are also more likely to favour
environmental protection, the difference is not statistically
significant. We also find that other factors have a significant impact
on policy choice irrespective of residence such as demographic and
socioeconomic factors as well as the values people hold toward water
and the environment.
Abstract: Sustainable energy usage has been recognized as one
of the important measure to increase the competitiveness of the
nation globally. Many strong emphases were given in the Ninth
Malaysia Plan (RMK9) to improve energy efficient especially to
government buildings. With this in view, a project to investigate the
potential of energy saving in selected building in Universiti Tun
Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) was carried out. In this project, a
case study involving electric energy consumption of the academic
staff office building was conducted. The scope of the study include to
identify energy consumption in a selected building, to study energy
saving opportunities, to analyse cost investment in term of economic
and to identify users attitude with respect to energy usage. The
MS1525:2001, Malaysian Standard -Code of practice on energy
efficiency and use of renewable energy for non-residential buildings
was used as reference. Several energy efficient measures were
considered and their merits and priority were compared. Improving
human behavior can reduce energy consumption by 6% while
technical measure can reduce energy consumption by 44%. Two
economic analysis evaluation methods were applied; they are the
payback period method and net present value method.
Abstract: In recent five decades, textured yarns of polyester fiber produced by false twist method are the most
important and mass-produced manmade fibers. There are
many parameters of cross section which affect the physical and mechanical properties of textured yarns. These parameters
are surface area, perimeter, equivalent diameter, large
diameter, small diameter, convexity, stiffness, eccentricity, and hydraulic diameter. These parameters were evaluated by
digital image processing techniques. To find trends between production criteria and evaluated parameters of cross section, three criteria of production line have been adjusted and different types of yarns were produced. These criteria are
temperature, drafting ratio, and D/Y ratio. Finally the relations between production criteria and cross section parameters were
considered. The results showed that the presented technique can recognize and measure the parameters of fiber cross section in acceptable accuracy. Also, the optimum condition
of adjustments has been estimated from results of image analysis evaluation.
Abstract: Acoustic Imaging based sound localization using microphone
array is a challenging task in digital-signal processing.
Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based near-field acoustical holography
(NAH) is an important acoustical technique for sound source
localization and provide an efficient solution to the ill-posed problem.
However, in practice, due to the usage of small curtailed aperture
and its consequence of significant spectral leakage, the DFT could
not reconstruct the active-region-of-sound (AROS) effectively, especially
near the edges of aperture. In this paper, we emphasize the
fundamental problems of DFT-based NAH, provide a solution to
spectral leakage effect by the extrapolation based on linear predictive
coding and 2D Tukey windowing. This approach has been tested to
localize the single and multi-point sound sources. We observe that
incorporating extrapolation technique increases the spatial resolution,
localization accuracy and reduces spectral leakage when small curtail
aperture with a lower number of sensors accounts.
Abstract: This research aimed to study the market feasibility for
new brand coffee house, the case study of Thailand.. This study is a
mixed methods research combining quantitative research and the
qualitative research. Primary data 350 sets of questionnaires were
distributed, and the high quality completed questionnaires of 320 sets
returned. Research samples are identified as customers’ of Hi-end
department stores in Thailand. The sources of secondary data were
critical selected from highly reliable sources, both from public and
private sectors. The results were used to classify the customer group
into two main groups, the younger than 25 and the older than 25years
old. Results of the younger group, are give priority to the dimension
of coffee house and its services dimension more than others, then
branding dimension and the product dimension respectively. On the
other hand, the older group give the difference result as they rate the
important of the branding, coffee house and its services, then the
product respectively. Coffee consuming is not just the trend but it
has become part of people lifestyle. And the new cultures also created
by the wise businessman. Coffee was long produced and consumed in
Thailand. But it is surprisingly the hi-end brand coffee houses in Thai
market are mostly imported brands. The café business possibility for
Thai brand coffee house in Thai market were discussed in the paper.
Abstract: Building conservation work generally involves complex and non-standard work different from new building construction processes. In preparing tenders for building conservation projects, therefore, the quantity surveyor must carefully consider the specificity of non-standard items and demarcate the scope of unique conservation work. While the quantity surveyor must appreciate the full range of works to prepare a good tender document, he typically manages many unfamiliar elements, including practical construction methods, restoration techniques and work sequences. Only by fulfilling the demanding requirements of building conservation work can the quantity surveyor enhance his professionalism an area of growing cultural value and economic importance. By discussing several issues crucial to tender preparations for building conservation projects in Malaysia, this paper seeks a deeper understanding of how quantity surveying can better standardize tender preparation work and more successfully manage building conservation processes.
Abstract: Degradation of polymeric insulation systems of
electrical equipments increases the space charge density and the
concentration of electrical dipoles. By consequence, the maximum
values and the slopes of absorption/resorption (A/R) currents can
change with insulation systems ageing. In this paper, an analysis of
the nature of the A/R currents and the importance of their
components, especially the polarization current and the current given
by the space charge, is presented. The experimental study concerns
the A/R currents measurements of plane samples (made from
CALMICAGLAS tapes), virgin and thermally accelerated aged. The
obtained results show that the ageing process produces an increase of
the values and a decrease of shapes of the A/R currents. Finally, the
possibility of estimating insulations ageing state and lifetime from
A/R currents measurements is discussed.
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to design costume by the inspiration from the configurations, colors and decorations of Thai Royal Barges. The researcher investigated the bibliographies and the important of the Thai Royal Water-Course Procession, configurations and decoration techniques of four Royal Barges history. Furthermore, the researcher combined the contemporary architecture which became part of the four costumes with four patterns in this research. The four costumes designed by applied the physical configuration of the Royal Barge with the fold techniques which create the geometry pattern that are part of the Royal Barge-s decoration and contemporary architecture. Therefore, the researcher united each identity color of the barges with each costume composed with the original patterns by adjusted new layout and resized. Lastly, the new attractive patterns appeared. Nevertheless, the beauty of Thai traditional still remain by using Thai painting figure with black and white color which are the prevalent colors for the contemporary architectures.
Abstract: Control of complex systems is one of important files in complex systems, that not only relies on the essence of complex systems which is denoted by the core concept – emergence, but also embodies the elementary concept in control theory. Aiming at giving a clear and self-contained description of emergence, the paper introduces a formal way to completely describe the formation and dynamics of emergence in complex systems. Consequently, this paper indicates the Emergence-Oriented Control methodology that contains three kinds of basic control schemes: the direct control, the system re-structuring and the system calibration. As a universal ontology, the Emergence-Oriented Control provides a powerful tool for identifying and resolving control problems in specific systems.
Abstract: Solar energy is the most “available", ecological and clean energy. This energy can be used in active or passive mode. The active mode implies the transformation of solar energy into a useful energy. The solar energy can be transformed into thermal energy, using solar collectors. In these collectors, the active and the most important element is the absorber, material which performs the absorption of solar radiation and, in at the same time, limits its reflection. The paper presents some aspects regarding the IR absorbing material – a type of cermets, used as absorber in the solar collectors, by X Ray Diffraction Technique (XRD) characterization.
Abstract: Character segmentation is an important preprocessing
step for text recognition. In degraded documents, existence of
touching characters decreases recognition rate drastically, for any
optical character recognition (OCR) system. In this paper we have
proposed a complete solution for segmenting touching characters in
all the three zones of printed Gurmukhi script. A study of touching
Gurmukhi characters is carried out and these characters have been
divided into various categories after a careful analysis. Structural
properties of the Gurmukhi characters are used for defining the
categories. New algorithms have been proposed to segment the
touching characters in middle zone, upper zone and lower zone.
These algorithms have shown a reasonable improvement in
segmenting the touching characters in degraded printed Gurmukhi
script. The algorithms proposed in this paper are applicable only to
machine printed text. We have also discussed a new and useful
technique to segment the horizontally overlapping lines.
Abstract: Due to important issues, such as deadlock, starvation,
communication, non-deterministic behavior and synchronization,
concurrent systems are very complex, sensitive, and error-prone.
Thus ensuring reliability and accuracy of these systems is very
essential. Therefore, there has been a big interest in the formal
specification of concurrent programs in recent years. Nevertheless,
some features of concurrent systems, such as dynamic process
creation, scheduling and starvation have not been specified formally
yet. Also, some other features have been specified partially and/or
have been described using a combination of several different
formalisms and methods whose integration needs too much effort. In
other words, a comprehensive and integrated specification that could
cover all aspects of concurrent systems has not been provided yet.
Thus, this paper makes two major contributions: firstly, it provides a
comprehensive formal framework to specify all well-known features
of concurrent systems. Secondly, it provides an integrated
specification of these features by using just a single formal notation,
i.e., the Z language.
Abstract: The problem of agricultural-soil pollution is closely
linked to the production of ecologically pure foodstuffs and to human health. An important task, therefore, is to rehabilitate agricultural
soils with the help of state-of-the-art biotechnologies, based on the use of metal-accumulating plants. In this work, on the basis of
literature data and the results of prior research from this laboratory, plants were selected for which the growing technology is well
developed and which are widespread locally: sugar sorghum (Sorghum saccharatum), sudangrass (Sorghum sudanense (Piper.)
Stapf.), and sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). I report on laboratory
experiments designed to study the influence of synthetic indole-3-
acetic acid and the extracellular indole-3-acetic acid released by the
plant-growth-promoting rhizobacterium Azospirillum brasilense Sp245 on growth of and arsenic accumulation by these plants.