Abstract: The adsorption of bovine serum albumin (BSA), immunoglobulin G (IgG) and fibrinogen (Fgn) on fluorinated selfassembled monolayers have been studied using time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE). The objective of the work has to establish the utility of ToF-SIMS for the determination of the amount of protein adsorbed on the surface. Quantification of surface adsorbed proteins was carried out using SE and a good correlation between ToF-SIMS results and SE was achieved. The surface distribution of proteins were also analysed using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). We show that the surface distribution of proteins strongly affect the ToFSIMS results.
Abstract: Papaya and banana bars were developed incorporating
inulin (IN) and fructooligosaccharides (FOS) (Liquid and Powder
form) in various proportions. The control bars were standardized
using 70% fruit pulp, 30% sugar, 0.3% citric acid while the treated
bars were standardized with 70% fruit pulp, 15% sugar, 15% of IN
and FOS and 0.3% citric acid. Among the various proportions tested,
papaya bars with 90% FOS (Powder) + 10% IN and banana bars with
90% FOS (liquid) + 10% IN were sensorially best accepted. The
study revealed that addition of IN and FOS improved the sensory
scores. The Physico-chemical and proximatecomposition analysis
revealed slight changes in brix°, total sugars, reducing sugars, nonreducing
sugars, moisture, protein, fat, vitamin C, ash, iron,
zinc, calcium and crude fibre between control and treated fruit bars.
Further the glycemic index of papaya bar was reduced from 65 to 54
when treated with FOS and IN.
Abstract: Thermite welding is mainly used in world. The
reasons why the thermite welding method is widely used are
that the equipment has good mobility and total working time
of that is shorter than that of the enclosed arc welding method
on site. Moreover, the operating skill, which required for
thermite welding, is less than that of for enclosed arc welding.
In the present research work, heat treatment and combined
'expulsion and heat treatment' techniques were used improve
the mechanical properties and weldment structure. The
specimens were cut in the transverse direction from expulsion
with Heat treated and heat treated Thermite Welded rails.
Specimens were prepared according to AWS standard and
subjected to tensile test, Impact test and hardness and their
results were tabulated. Microstructural analysis was carried
out with the help of SEM. Then analyze to effect of heat
treated and 'expulsion with heat treated' with the properties of
their thermite welded rails. Compare the mechanical and
microstructural properties of thermite welded rails between
heat expulsion with heat treated and heat treated. Mechanical
and microstructural response expulsion with heat treated
thermite welded rail is higher value as compared to heat
treatment.
Abstract: Pore water pressure is normally because of
consolidation, compaction and water level fluctuation on reservoir.
Measuring, controlling and analyzing of pore water pressure have
significant importance in both of construction and operation period.
Since end of 2002, (dam start up) nature of KARKHEH dam has
been analyzed by using the gathered information from
instrumentation system of dam. In this lecture dam condition after
start up have been analyzed by using the gathered data from located
piezometers in core of dam. According to TERZAGHI equation and
records of piezometers, consolidation lasted around five years during
early years of construction stage, and current pore water pressure in
core of dam is caused by water level fluctuation in reservoir.
Although there is time lag between water level fluctuation and results
of piezometers. These time lags have been checked and the results
clearly show that one of the most important causes of it is distance
between piezometer and reservoir.
Abstract: Provision of optical devices without proper instruction
and training may cause frustration resulting in rejection or incorrect
use of the magnifiers. However training in the use of magnifiers
increases the cost of providing these devices. This study compared
the efficacy of providing instruction alone and instruction plus
training in the use of magnifiers. 24 participants randomly assigned
to two groups. 15 received instruction and training and 9 received
instruction only. Repeated measures of print size and reading speed
were performed at pre, post training and follow up. Print size
decreased in both groups between pre and post training maintained at
follow up. Reading speed increased in both groups over time with the
training group demonstrating more rapid improvement. Whilst
overall outcomes were similar, training decreased the time required
to increase reading speed supporting the use of training for increased
efficiency. A cost effective form of training is suggested.
Abstract: Hepatitis B and hepatitis C are among the most
significant hepatic infections all around the world that may lead to
hepatocellular carcinoma. This study is first time performed at the
blood transfussion centre of Omar hospital, Lahore. It aims to
determine the sero-prevalence of these diseases by screening the
apparently healthy blood donors who might be the carriers of HBV or
HCV and pose a high risk in the transmission. It also aims the
comparison between the sensitivity of two diagnostic tests;
chromatographic immunoassay – one step test device and Enzyme
Linked Immuno Sorbant Assay (ELISA). Blood serum of 855
apparently healthy blood donors was screened for Hepatitis B surface
antigen (HBsAg) and for anti HCV antibodies. SPSS version 12.0
and X2 (Chi-square) test were used for statistical analysis. The seroprevalence
of HCV was 8.07% by the device method and by ELISA
9.12% and that of HBV was 5.6% by the device and 6.43% by
ELISA. The unavailability of vaccination against HCV makes it more
prevalent. Comparing the two diagnostic methods, ELISA proved to
be more sensitive.
Abstract: This paper describes fast and efficient method for page segmentation of document containing nonrectangular block. The segmentation is based on edge following algorithm using small window of 16 by 32 pixels. This segmentation is very fast since only border pixels of paragraph are used without scanning the whole page. Still, the segmentation may contain error if the space between them is smaller than the window used in edge following. Consequently, this paper reduce this error by first identify the missed segmentation point using direction information in edge following then, using X-Y cut at the missed segmentation point to separate the connected columns. The advantage of the proposed method is the fast identification of missed segmentation point. This methodology is faster with fewer overheads than other algorithms that need to access much more pixel of a document.
Abstract: Hydrogen diffusion is the main problem for corrosion fatigue in corrosive environment. In order to analyze the phenomenon, it is needed to understand their behaviors specially the hydrogen behavior during the diffusion. So, Hydrogen embrittlement and prediction its behavior as a main corrosive part of the fractions, needed to solve combinations of different equations mathematically. The main point to obtain the equation, having knowledge about the source of causing diffusion and running the atoms into materials, called driving force. This is produced by either gradient of electrical or chemical potential. In this work, we consider the gradient of chemical potential to obtain the property equation. In diffusion of atoms, some of them may be trapped but, it could be ignorable in some conditions. According to the phenomenon of hydrogen embrittlement, the thermodynamic and chemical properties of hydrogen are considered to justify and relate them to fracture mechanics. It is very important to get a stress intensity factor by using fugacity as a property of hydrogen or other gases. Although, the diffusive behavior and embrittlement event are common and the same for other gases but, for making it more clear, we describe it for hydrogen. This considering on the definite gas and describing it helps us to understand better the importance of this relation.
Abstract: In this paper, an extreme learning machine with an automatic segmentation algorithm is applied to heart disorder classification by heart sound signals. From continuous heart sound signals, the starting points of the first (S1) and the second heart pulses (S2) are extracted and corrected by utilizing an inter-pulse histogram. From the corrected pulse positions, a single period of heart sound signals is extracted and converted to a feature vector including the mel-scaled filter bank energy coefficients and the envelope coefficients of uniform-sized sub-segments. An extreme learning machine is used to classify the feature vector. In our cardiac disorder classification and detection experiments with 9 cardiac disorder categories, the proposed method shows significantly better performance than multi-layer perceptron, support vector machine, and hidden Markov model; it achieves the classification accuracy of 81.6% and the detection accuracy of 96.9%.
Abstract: This paper analyses the structural changes in
education sector since the introduction of liberalization policy in
India. This paper explains how the so-called non-profit trusts and
societies appropriated the liberalization policy and enhanced
themselves as new capitalist class in higher education sector. Over
the decades, the policy witnessed the role of private sector in terms
of maintaining market equilibrium. The state also witnessed the
incompatibility of the private sector in inculcating the values of
social justice. The most important consequence of the policy is to
witness the rise of new capitalist class and academic capitalism.
When the state came to realize that it no longer cope up with
market demands, it opens the entry of private sector in higher
education. Concessions and tax exemptions were provided to the
trusts and societies to establish higher education institutions. There
is a basic difference between western countries and India in
providing higher education by the trusts and societies. In western
countries the big business houses contributed their surplus
revenues to promote higher education and research as a
complementary service to society and nation. In India, several
entrepreneurs came up with business motive using education
sector. Over the period, they accumulated wealth at the cost of
students and concessions from the government. Four major results
can now be identified: production of manpower in view of market
demands; reduction of standards in higher education; bypassing the
values of social justice; and the rise of new capitalist class from the
business of education. This paper tries to substantiate these issues
with the inputs from case studies.
Abstract: Signature amortization schemes have been introduced
for authenticating multicast streams, in which, a single signature is
amortized over several packets. The hash value of each packet is
computed, some hash values are appended to other packets, forming
what is known as hash chain. These schemes divide the stream into
blocks, each block is a number of packets, the signature packet in
these schemes is either the first or the last packet of the block.
Amortization schemes are efficient solutions in terms of computation
and communication overhead, specially in real-time environment.
The main effictive factor of amortization schemes is it-s hash chain
construction. Some studies show that signing the first packet of each
block reduces the receiver-s delay and prevents DoS attacks, other
studies show that signing the last packet reduces the sender-s delay.
To our knowledge, there is no studies that show which is better, to
sign the first or the last packet in terms of authentication probability
and resistance to packet loss.
In th is paper we will introduce another scheme for authenticating
multicast streams that is robust against packet loss, reduces the
overhead, and prevents the DoS attacks experienced by the receiver
in the same time. Our scheme-The Multiple Connected Chain signing
the First packet (MCF) is to append the hash values of specific
packets to other packets,then append some hashes to the signature
packet which is sent as the first packet in the block. This scheme
is aspecially efficient in terms of receiver-s delay. We discuss and
evaluate the performance of our proposed scheme against those that
sign the last packet of the block.
Abstract: The mathematical equation for Separation of the
binary aqueous solution is developed by using the Spiegler- Kedem
theory. The characteristics of a B-9 hollow fibre module of Du Pont
are determined by using these equations and their results are
compared with the experimental results of Ohya et al. The agreement
between these results is found to be excellent.
Abstract: The benefits of eco-roofs is quite well known, however there remains very little research conducted for the implementation of eco-roofs in subtropical climates such as Australia. There are many challenges facing Australia as it moves into the future, climate change is proving to be one of the leading challenges. In order to move forward with the mitigation of climate change, the impacts of rapid urbanization need to be offset. Eco-roofs are one way to achieve this; this study presents the energy savings and environmental benefits of the implementation of eco-roofs in subtropical climates. An experimental set-up was installed at Rockhampton campus of Central Queensland University, where two shipping containers were converted into small offices, one with an eco-roof and one without. These were used for temperature, humidity and energy consumption data collection. In addition, a computational model was developed using Design Builder software (state-of-the-art building energy simulation software) for simulating energy consumption of shipping containers and environmental parameters, this was done to allow comparison between simulated and real world data. This study found that eco-roofs are very effective in subtropical climates and provide energy saving of about 13% which agrees well with simulated results.
Abstract: This study was an investigation on the suitability of Lahar/HDPE composite as a primary material for low-cost smallscale biogas digesters. While sources of raw materials for biogas are abundant in the Philippines, cost of the technology has made the widespread utilization of this resource an indefinite proposition. Aside from capital economics, another problem arises with space requirements of current digester designs. These problems may be simultaneously addressed by fabricating digesters on a smaller, household scale to reach a wider market, and to use materials that may accommodate optimization of overall design and fabrication cost without sacrificing operational efficiency. This study involved actual fabrication of the Lahar/HDPE composite at varying composition and geometry, subsequent mechanical and thermal characterization, and implementation of Statistical Analysis to find intrinsic relationships between variables. From the results, Lahar/HDPE composite was found to be feasible for use as digester material from both mechanical and economic standpoints.
Abstract: This paper presents a new compact analytical model of
the gate leakage current in high-k based nano scale MOSFET by
assuming a two-step inelastic trap-assisted tunneling (ITAT) process
as the conduction mechanism. This model is based on an inelastic
trap-assisted tunneling (ITAT) mechanism combined with a semiempirical
gate leakage current formulation in the BSIM 4 model. The
gate tunneling currents have been calculated as a function of gate
voltage for different gate dielectrics structures such as HfO2, Al2O3
and Si3N4 with EOT (equivalent oxide thickness) of 1.0 nm. The
proposed model is compared and contrasted with santaurus
simulation results to verify the accuracy of the model and excellent
agreement is found between the analytical and simulated data. It is
observed that proposed analytical model is suitable for different highk
gate dielectrics simply by adjusting two fitting parameters. It was
also shown that gate leakages reduced with the introduction of high-k
gate dielectric in place of SiO2.
Abstract: Uniqueness and distinctiveness of localities (referred to as genius loci or sense of place) are important to ensure people-s identification with their locality. Existing frameworks reveals that the affective dimension of environments is rarely mentioned or explored and limited public participation was used in constructing the frameworks. This research argues that the complexity of sense of place would be recognised and appropriate planning guidelines formulated by exploring and integrating the affective dimension of a site. Aims of the research therefore are to (i) explore relational dimensions between people and a natural rural landscape, (ii) to implement a participatory approach to obtain insight into different relational dimensions, and (ii) to concretise socio-affective relational dimensions into site planning guidelines. A qualitative, interdisciplinary research approach was followed and conducted on the farm Kromdraai, Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site. In essence the first phase of the study reveals various affective responses and projections of personal meanings. The findings in phase 1 informed the second phase, to involve people from various disciplines and different involvement with the area to make visual presentations of appropriate planning and design of the site in order to capture meanings of the interactions between people and their environment. Final site planning and design guidelines were formulated, based on these. This research contributed to provide planners with new possibilities of exploring the dimensions between people and places as well as to develop appropriate methods for participation to obtain insight into the underlying meanings of sites.
Abstract: In this paper we propose a new classification method for automatic sleep scoring using an artificial neural network based decision tree. It attempts to treat sleep scoring progress as a series of two-class problems and solves them with a decision tree made up of a group of neural network classifiers, each of which uses a special feature set and is aimed at only one specific sleep stage in order to maximize the classification effect. A single electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is used for our analysis rather than depending on multiple biological signals, which makes greatly simplifies the data acquisition process. Experimental results demonstrate that the average epoch by epoch agreement between the visual and the proposed method in separating 30s wakefulness+S1, REM, S2 and SWS epochs was 88.83%. This study shows that the proposed method performed well in all the four stages, and can effectively limit error propagation at the same time. It could, therefore, be an efficient method for automatic sleep scoring. Additionally, since it requires only a small volume of data it could be suited to pervasive applications.
Abstract: The problems with high complexity had been the challenge in combinatorial problems. Due to the none-determined and polynomial characteristics, these problems usually face to unreasonable searching budget. Hence combinatorial optimizations attracted numerous researchers to develop better algorithms. In recent academic researches, most focus on developing to enhance the conventional evolutional algorithms and facilitate the local heuristics, such as VNS, 2-opt and 3-opt. Despite the performances of the introduction of the local strategies are significant, however, these improvement cannot improve the performance for solving the different problems. Therefore, this research proposes a meta-heuristic evolutional algorithm which can be applied to solve several types of problems. The performance validates BBEA has the ability to solve the problems even without the design of local strategies.
Abstract: Over the early years of the 21st century, cities
throughout the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf region have
expanded more rapidly than ever before. Given the presence of a
large volume of high-rise buildings allover the region, the local
authority aims to set a new standard for sustainable development;
with an integrated approach to maintain a balance between economy,
quality, environmental protection and safety of life. In the very near
future, as mandatory requirements, sustainability will be the criteria
that should be included in all building projects. It is well known in
the building sustainability topics that structural design engineers do
not have a key role in this matter. In addition, the LEED (Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design) has looked almost exclusively
on the environmental components and materials specifications. The
objective of this paper is to focus and establish groundwork for
sustainability techniques and applications related to the RC high-rise
buildings design, from the structural point of view. A set of
recommendations related to local conditions, structural modeling and
analysis is given, and some helpful suggestions for structural design
team work are addressed. This paper attempts to help structural
engineers in identifying the building sustainability design, in order to
meet local needs and achieve alternative solutions at an early stage of
project design.
Abstract: Knowledge of food resource of the houbara which an
endangered species would be a important step toward the
preservation of this bird. Adequate study has not been done in this
field and therefore the food sources of the houbara during the
brooding season was studied in the central steppe of Iran. In order to
determine the density of insect in plant communities the pitfall trap
was used , positioned in five linear transects divided between plant
communities and in two repetitions. The results showed that the
among communities there was a significant difference in term of the
number beetles and ants ( p= 0.01, F2, 29= 4.66) collectively. Also
bush steppe habitat had a higher arthropoda density in comparison
with the shrub steppe habitat. Considering that most houbara nests
were found in the bush steppe habitat .It seems this habitat provides
the most available food supply for the houbara chicks.