Abstract: In this study a ternary system containing sodium
chloride as solute, water as primary solvent and ethanol as the
antisolvent was considered to investigate the application of artificial
neural network (ANN) in prediction of sodium solubility in the
mixture of water as the solvent and ethanol as the antisolvent. The
system was previously studied using by Extended UNIQUAC model
by the authors of this study. The comparison between the results of
the two models shows an excellent agreement between them
(R2=0.99), and also approves the capability of ANN to predict the
thermodynamic behavior of ternary electrolyte systems which are
difficult to model.
Abstract: A thermosyphon system is a heat transfer loop which
operates on the basis of gravity and buoyancy forces. It guarantees a
good reliability and low maintenance cost as it does not involve any
mechanical pump. Therefore, it can be used in many industrial
applications such as refrigeration and air conditioning, electronic
cooling, nuclear reactors, geothermal heat extraction, etc. But flow
instabilities and loop configuration are the major problems in this
system. Several previous researchers studied that stabilities can be
suppressed by using nanofluids as loop fluid. In the present study a
rectangular thermosyphon loop with end heat exchangers are
considered for the study. This configuration is more appropriate for
many practical applications such as solar water heater, geothermal
heat extraction, etc. In the present work, steady-state analysis is
carried out on thermosyphon loop with parallel flow coaxial heat
exchangers at heat source and heat sink. In this loop nanofluid is
considered as the loop fluid and water is considered as the external
fluid in both hot and cold heat exchangers. For this analysis onedimensional
homogeneous model is developed. In this model,
conservation equations like conservation of mass, momentum, energy
are discretized using finite difference method. A computer code is
written in MATLAB to simulate the flow in thermosyphon loop. A
comparison in terms of heat transfer is made between water and
nanofluid as working fluids in the loop.
Abstract: Vertical Handover(VHO) among different
communication technologies ensuring uninterruption and service
continuity is one of the most important performance parameter in
Heterogenous networks environment. In an integrated Universal
Mobile Telecommunicatin System(UMTS) and Wireless Local
Area Network(WLAN), WLAN is given an inherent priority over
UMTS because of its high data rates with low cost. Therefore
mobile users want to be associated with WLAN maximum of the
time while roaming, to enjoy best possible services with low cost.
That encourages reduction of number of VHO. In this work the
reduction of number of VHO with respect to varying number of
WLAN Access Points(APs) in an integrated UMTS and WLAN
network is investigated through simulation to provide best possible
cost effective service to the users. The simulation has been carried
out for an area (7800 × 9006)m2 where COST-231 Hata model
and 3GPP (TR 101 112 V 3.1.0) specified models are used for
WLAN and UMTS path loss models respectively. The handover
decision is triggered based on the received signal level as compared
to the fade margin. Fade margin gives a probabilistic measure of
the reliability of the communication link. A relationship between
number of WLAN APs and the number of VHO is also established
in this work.
Abstract: Welfare may be considered to be a subjective
experience; it has a biological function that is related to the fitness
and survival of the animal accordingly, researches have suggested
that welfare is compromised when the animal's evolutionary fitness is
reduced. This study was carried out to explain the effect of some
managerial stressors as handling and restraint on behavioral patterns
and biochemical parameters of rats. A total of 24 (12 males & 12
females) Sprague-Dawley rats (12 months & 150-180g) were allotted
into 3 groups, handled group (4 male & 4 female), restrained group (4
male & 4 female) and control group (4 males & 4 females).
The obtained results revealed that time spent feeding, drinking,
movement and cage exploration frequencies increased significantly in
handled rats than other groups, while lying time and licking increased
significantly in restrained rats than handled and controls. Moreover,
social behavior decreased in both stressed groups than control.
Triglycerides were significantly increased in handled rats than
other groups, while total lipid, total protein and globulin significantly
increased in both treated groups than control. Corticosterone
increased in restrained and handled rats than control ones. Moreover,
there was an increment in packed cell volume significantly in
restrained rats than others. These deducted that if we want to study
the effect of stress on animal welfare it is necessary to study the
effect of such stressors on animal’s behavior and physiological
responses.
Abstract: In view of a possible application in optical data
storage devices, diffraction grating efficiency of an organic dye, Acid
Fuchsin doped in PMMA matrix was studied under excitation with
CW diode pumped Nd: YAG laser at 532 nm. The open aperture Zscan
of dye doped polymer displayed saturable absorption and the
closed aperture Z-scan of the samples exhibited negative
nonlinearity. The diffraction efficiency of the grating is the ratio of
the intensity of the first order diffracted power to the incident read
beam power. The dye doped polymer films were found to be good
media for recording. It is observed that the formation of gratings
strongly depend on the concentration of dye in the polymer film, the
intensity ratios of the writing beams and the angle between the
writing beams. It has been found that efficient writing can be made at
an angle of 20o and when the intensity ratio of the writing beams is
unity.
Abstract: The objective of this research is to design and
construct the PV-Wind hybrid autonomous system for the greenhouse
plantation, and analyze the technical performance of the PV-Wind
energy system. This design depends on the water consumption in the
greenhouse by using 24 of the fogging mist each with the capability
of 24 liter/min. The operating time is 4 times per day, each round for
15 min. The fogging system is being driven by water pump with AC
motor rating 0.5 hp. The load energy consumed is around 1.125
kWh/d. The designing results of the PV-Wind hybrid energy system
is that sufficient energy could be generated by this system. The
results of this study can be applied as a technical data reference for
other areas in the central part of Thailand.
Abstract: Auckland has a temperate climate with comfortable warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters. An Auckland school normally does not need air conditioning for cooling during the summer and only needs heating during the winter. The Auckland school building thermal design should more focus on winter thermal performance and indoor thermal comfort for energy efficiency. This field study of testing indoor and outdoor air temperatures, relative humidity and indoor surface temperatures of three classrooms with different envelopes were carried out in the Avondale College during the winter months in 2013. According to the field study data, this study is to compare and evaluate winter thermal performance and indoor thermal conditions of school buildings with different envelopes.
Abstract: The final energy use can be divided mainly in four sectors: commercial, industrial, residential, and transportation. The trend in final energy consumption by sector plays as a most straightforward way to provide a wide indication of progress for reducing energy consumption and associated environmental impacts by different end use sectors. The average share of end use energy for residential sector in the world was nearly 20% until 2011, in Germany a higher proportion is between 25% and 30%. However, it remains less studied than energy use in other three sectors as well its impacts on climate and environment. The reason for this involves a wide range of fields, including the diversity of residential construction like different housing building design and materials, living or energy using behavioral patterns, climatic condition and variation as well other social obstacles, market trend potential and financial support from government.
This paper presents an extensive and in-depth analysis of the manner by which projects researched and operated by authors in the fields of energy efficiency primarily from the perspectives of both technical potential and initiative energy saving consciousness in the residential sectors especially in social housing buildings.
Abstract: A strain of Monascus purpureus CMU001 was used to
prepare red yeast rice from Thai glutinous rice Korkor 6 (RD 6).
Adding of different amounts of histidine (156, 312, 625 and 1250 mg
in 100 g of rice grains)) under aerobic and air limitation (air-lock)
condition were used in solid fermentation. Determination of the yield
as well as monacolin K content was done. Citrinin content was also
determined in order to confirm the safety use of prepared red yeast
rice. It was found that under air-lock condition with 1250 mg of
histidine addition gave the highest yield of 37.40 g of dried red yeast
rice prepared from 100 g of rice. Highest 5.72 mg content of
monacolin K was obtained under air-lock condition with 312 mg
histidine addition. In the other hand, citrinin content was found to be
less than 24462 ng/g of all dried red yeast rice samples under the
experimental methods used in this work.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine gas transport
behavior of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) combined with
porous particles. Main existing models are categorized in two main
groups; two-phase (ideal contact) and three-phase (non-ideal contact).
A new coefficient, J, was obtained to express equations for estimating
effect of the particle porosity in two-phase and three-phase models.
Modified models evaluates with existing models and experimental
data using Matlab software. Comparison of gas permeability of
proposed modified models with existing models in different MMMs
shows a better prediction of gas permeability in MMMs.
Abstract: In this study, data loss tolerance of Support Vector Machines (SVM) based activity recognition model and multi activity classification performance when data are received over a lossy wireless sensor network is examined. Initially, the classification algorithm we use is evaluated in terms of resilience to random data loss with 3D acceleration sensor data for sitting, lying, walking and standing actions. The results show that the proposed classification method can recognize these activities successfully despite high data loss. Secondly, the effect of differentiated quality of service performance on activity recognition success is measured with activity data acquired from a multi hop wireless sensor network, which introduces high data loss. The effect of number of nodes on the reliability and multi activity classification success is demonstrated in simulation environment. To the best of our knowledge, the effect of data loss in a wireless sensor network on activity detection success rate of an SVM based classification algorithm has not been studied before.
Abstract: Given a graph G. A cycle of G is a sequence of
vertices of G such that the first and the last vertices are the same.
A hamiltonian cycle of G is a cycle containing all vertices of G.
The graph G is k-ordered (resp. k-ordered hamiltonian) if for any
sequence of k distinct vertices of G, there exists a cycle (resp.
hamiltonian cycle) in G containing these k vertices in the specified
order. Obviously, any cycle in a graph is 1-ordered, 2-ordered and 3-
ordered. Thus the study of any graph being k-ordered (resp. k-ordered
hamiltonian) always starts with k = 4. Most studies about this topic
work on graphs with no real applications. To our knowledge, the
chordal ring families were the first one utilized as the underlying
topology in interconnection networks and shown to be 4-ordered.
Furthermore, based on our computer experimental results, it was
conjectured that some of them are 4-ordered hamiltonian. In this
paper, we intend to give some possible directions in proving the
conjecture.
Abstract: Replacement of plastics used in the food industry
seems to be a serious issue to overcome mainly the environmental
problems in recent years. This study investigates the hydrophilicity
and permeability properties of starch biopolymer which ethylene
vinyl alcohol (EVOH) (0-10%) and nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC)
(1-15%) were used to enhance its properties. Starch -EVOH
nanocomposites were prepared by casting method in different
formulations. NCC production by acid hydrolysis was confirmed by
scanning electron microscopy. Solubility, water vapor permeability,
water vapor transmission rate and moisture absorbance were
measured on each of the nanocomposites. The results were analyzed
by SAS software. The lowest moisture absorbance was measured in
pure starch nanocomposite containing 8% NCC. The lowest
permeability to water vapor belongs to starch nanocomposite
containing 8% NCC and the sample containing 7.8% EVOH and 13%
NCC. Also the lowest solubility was observed in the composite
contains the highest amount of EVOH. Applied Process resulted in
production of bio films which have good resistance to water vapor
permeability and solubility in water. The use of NCC and EVOH
leads to reduced moisture absorbance property of the biofilms.
Abstract: This paper proposed a silicon controller rectifier (SCR)
based ESD protection device to protect low voltage ESD for integrated
circuit. The proposed ESD protection device has low trigger voltage
and high holding voltage compared with conventional SCR-based
ESD protection devices. The proposed ESD protection circuit is
verified and compared by TCAD simulation. This paper verified
effective low voltage ESD characteristics with low trigger voltage of
5.79V and high holding voltage of 3.5V through optimization
depending on design variables (D1, D2, D3 and D4).
Abstract: Examining existing experimental results for shallow
rigid foundations subjected to vertical centric load (N), accompanied
or not with a bending moment (M), two main non-linear mechanisms
governing the cyclic response of the soil-foundation system can be
distinguished: foundation uplift and soil yielding. A soil-foundation
failure limit, is defined as a domain of resistance in the two
dimensional (2D) load space (N, M) inside of which lie all the
admissible combinations of loads; these latter correspond to a pure
elastic, non-linear elastic or plastic behavior of the soil-foundation
system, while the points lying on the failure limit correspond to a
combination of loads leading to a failure of the soil-foundation
system. In this study, the proposed resistance domain is constructed
analytically based on mechanics. Original elastic limit, uplift
initiation limit and iso-uplift limits are constructed inside this
domain. These limits give a prediction of the mechanisms activated
for each combination of loads applied to the foundation. A
comparison of the proposed failure limit with experimental tests
existing in the literature shows interesting results. Also, the
developed uplift initiation limit and iso-uplift curves are confronted
with others already proposed in the literature and widely used due to
the absence of other alternatives, and remarkable differences are
noted, showing evident errors in the past proposals and relevant
accuracy for those given in the present work.
Abstract: In situ modified cyclohexanone-formaldehyde resins
were prepared by addition of alendronic acid during resin
preparation. Clay nanocomposites in ketonic resins were achieved by
adding clay into the flask at the beginning of the resin preparation.
The prepared resins were used for the synthesis of fire resistant
polyurethanes foam. Both phosphorous containing modifier
compound alendronic acid and nanoclay increases fire resistance of
the cyclohexanone-formaldehyde resin thus polyurethane produced
from these resins. The effect of the concentrations of alendronic acid
and clay on the fire resistance and physical properties of
polyurethanes was studied.
Abstract: In-memory database systems are becoming popular
due to the availability and affordability of sufficiently large RAM and
processors in modern high-end servers with the capacity to manage
large in-memory database transactions. While fast and reliable inmemory
systems are still being developed to overcome cache misses,
CPU/IO bottlenecks and distributed transaction costs, disk-based data
stores still serve as the primary persistence. In addition, with the
recent growth in multi-tenancy cloud applications and associated
security concerns, many organisations consider the trade-offs and
continue to require fast and reliable transaction processing of diskbased
database systems as an available choice. For these
organizations, the only way of increasing throughput is by improving
the performance of disk-based concurrency control. This warrants a
hybrid database system with the ability to selectively apply an
enhanced disk-based data management within the context of inmemory
systems that would help improve overall throughput.
The general view is that in-memory systems substantially
outperform disk-based systems. We question this assumption and
examine how a modified variation of access invariance that we call
enhanced memory access, (EMA) can be used to allow very high
levels of concurrency in the pre-fetching of data in disk-based
systems. We demonstrate how this prefetching in disk-based systems
can yield close to in-memory performance, which paves the way for
improved hybrid database systems. This paper proposes a novel EMA
technique and presents a comparative study between disk-based EMA
systems and in-memory systems running on hardware configurations
of equivalent power in terms of the number of processors and their
speeds. The results of the experiments conducted clearly substantiate
that when used in conjunction with all concurrency control
mechanisms, EMA can increase the throughput of disk-based systems
to levels quite close to those achieved by in-memory system. The
promising results of this work show that enhanced disk-based
systems facilitate in improving hybrid data management within the
broader context of in-memory systems.
Abstract: Proof of controlling crack width is a basic condition
for securing suitable performance in serviceability limit state. The
cracking in concrete can occur at any time from the casting of time to
the years after the concrete has been set in place. Most codes struggle
with offering procedure for crack width calculation. There is lack in
availability of design charts for designers to compute crack width
with ease. The focus of the study is to utilize design charts and
parametric equations in calculating crack width with minimum error.
The paper contains a simplified procedure to calculate crack width
for reinforced concrete (RC) sections subjected to bending with axial
tensile force following the guidelines of Euro code [DS EN-1992-1-1
& DS EN-1992-1-2]. Numerical examples demonstrate the
application of the suggested procedure. Comparison with parallel
analytical tools supports the validity of result and show the
percentage deviation of crack width in both the procedures. The
technique is simple, user friendly and ready to evolve for a greater
spectrum of section sizes and materials.
Abstract: In this study, we propose a novel technique for acoustic
echo suppression (AES) during speech recognition under barge-in
conditions. Conventional AES methods based on spectral subtraction
apply fixed weights to the estimated echo path transfer function
(EPTF) at the current signal segment and to the EPTF estimated until
the previous time interval. However, the effects of echo path changes
should be considered for eliminating the undesired echoes. We
describe a new approach that adaptively updates weight parameters in
response to abrupt changes in the acoustic environment due to
background noises or double-talk. Furthermore, we devised a voice
activity detector and an initial time-delay estimator for barge-in speech
recognition in communication networks. The initial time delay is
estimated using log-spectral distance measure, as well as
cross-correlation coefficients. The experimental results show that the
developed techniques can be successfully applied in barge-in speech
recognition systems.
Abstract: Food as perishable goods represents a specific and
sensitive part in the supply chain theory, since changing physical or
chemical characteristics considerably influence the approach to stock
management. The most delicate phase of this process is
transportation, where it becomes difficult to ensure the stable
conditions which limit deterioration, since the value of the
deterioration rate could be easily influenced by the mode of
transportation. The fuzzy definition of variables allows one to take
these variations into account. Furthermore, an appropriate choice of
the defuzzification method permits one to adapt results to real
conditions as far as possible. In this article those methods which take
into account the relationship between the deterioration rate of
perishable goods and transportation by ship will be applied with the
aim of (a) minimizing the total cost function, defined as the sum of
the ordering cost, holding cost, disposing cost and transportation
costs, and (b) improving the supply chain sustainability by reducing
environmental impact and waste disposal costs.