Abstract: Debates on residential satisfaction topic have been
vigorously discussed in family house setting. Nonetheless, less or
lack of attention was given to survey on student residential
satisfaction in the campus house setting. This study, however, tried to
fill in the gap by focusing more on the relationship between students-
socio-economic backgrounds and student residential satisfaction with
their on-campus student housing facilities. Two-stage cluster
sampling method was employed to classify the respondents. Then,
self-administered questionnaires were distributed face-to-face to the
students. In general, it was confirmed that the students- socioeconomic
backgrounds have significantly influence the students-
satisfaction with their on-campus student housing facilities. The main
influential factors were revealed as the economic status, sense of
sharing, and the ethnicity of roommates. Likewise, this study could
also provide some useful feedback for the universities administration
in order to improve their student housing facilities.
Abstract: We propose a phenomenological model for the
process of polymer desorption. In so doing, we omit the usual
theoretical approach of incorporating a fictitious viscoelastic
stress term into the flux equation. As a result, we obtain a
model that captures the essence of the phenomenon of trapping
skinning, while preserving the integrity of the experimentally
verified Fickian law for diffusion. An appropriate asymptotic
analysis is carried out, and a parameter is introduced to represent
the speed of the desorption front. Numerical simulations are
performed to illustrate the desorption dynamics of the model.
Recommendations are made for future modifications of the
model, and provisions are made for the inclusion of experimentally
determined frontal speeds.
Abstract: The porous silicon (PS), formed from the anodization
of a p+ type substrate silicon, consists of a network organized in a
pseudo-column as structure of multiple side ramifications. Structural
micro-topology can be interpreted as the fraction of the interconnected
solid phase contributing to thermal transport. The
reduction of dimensions of silicon of each nanocristallite during the
oxidation induced a reduction in thermal conductivity. Integration of
thermal sensors in the Microsystems silicon requires an effective
insulation of the sensor element. Indeed, the low thermal conductivity
of PS consists in a very promising way in the fabrication of integrated
thermal Microsystems.In this work we are interesting in the
measurements of thermal conductivity (on the surface and in depth)
of PS by the micro-Raman spectroscopy. The thermal conductivity is
studied according to the parameters of anodization (initial doping and
current density. We also, determine porosity of samples by
spectroellipsometry.
Abstract: Email has become a fast and cheap means of online
communication. The main threat to email is Unsolicited Bulk Email
(UBE), commonly called spam email. The current work aims at
identification of unigrams in more than 2700 UBE that advertise
body-enhancement drugs. The identification is based on the
requirement that the unigram is neither present in dictionary, nor is a
slang term. The motives of the paper are many fold. This is an
attempt to analyze spamming behaviour and employment of wordmutation
technique. On the side-lines of the paper, we have
attempted to better understand the spam, the slang and their interplay.
The problem has been addressed by employing Tokenization
technique and Unigram BOW model. We found that the non-lexicon
words constitute nearly 66% of total number of lexis of corpus
whereas non-slang words constitute nearly 2.4% of non-lexicon
words. Further, non-lexicon non-slang unigrams composed of 2
lexicon words, form more than 71% of the total number of such
unigrams. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to
analyze usage of non-lexicon non-slang unigrams in any kind of
UBE.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to identify and
disseminate good practice in quality assurance and enhancement as
well as in teaching and learning at master level. This paper focuses
on the experience of the Erasmus Mundus Master program CIMET
(Color in Informatics and Media Technology). Amongst topics
covered, we discuss the adjustments necessary to a curriculum
designed for excellent international students and their preparation for
a global labor market.
Abstract: Superelastic Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) is accepted
when it used as connection in steel structures. The seismic behaviour
of steel frames with SMA is being assessed in this study. Three eightstorey
steel frames with different SMA systems are suggested, the
first one of which is braced with diagonal bracing system, the second
one is braced with nee bracing system while the last one is which the
SMA is used as connection at the plastic hinge regions of beams.
Nonlinear time history analyses of steel frames with SMA subjected
to two different ground motion records have been performed using
Seismostruct software. To evaluate the efficiency of suggested
systems, the dynamic responses of the frames were compared. From
the comparison results, it can be concluded that using SMA element
is an effective way to improve the dynamic response of structures
subjected to earthquake excitations. Implementing the SMA braces
can lead to a reduction in residual roof displacement. The shape
memory alloy is effective in reducing the maximum displacement at
the frame top and it provides a large elastic deformation range. SMA
connections are very effective in dissipating energy and reducing the
total input energy of the whole frame under severe seismic ground
motion. Using of the SMA connection system is more effective in
controlling the reaction forces at the base frame than other bracing
systems. Using SMA as bracing is more effective in reducing the
displacements. The efficiency of SMA is dependant on the input
wave motions and the construction system as well.
Abstract: Preparation of hydrogel based on carrageenan
extracted from Kappaphycus alvarezii was conducted with film
immersion in glutaraldehyde solution (GA 4%w/w) for 2min and
then followed by thermal curing at 110°C for 25min. The method of
carrageenan recovery strongly determines the properties of
crosslinked carrageenan. Hydrogel obtained from alkali treated
carrageenan showed higher swelling ability compared to hydrogel
from nonalkali treated carrageenan. Hydrogel from alkali treated
showed the ability of sensitive to pH media.
Abstract: This study presents design of a carbon silicon electrode
for iontophorsis treatment towards alopecia. The alopecia is a medical
description means loss of hair from the body. For solving this problem,
the drug need to be delivered into the scalp, therefore, the
iontophoresis was chosen to use in this treatment. However, almost
common electrodes of iontophoresis device are made with metal
material, the electrodes could give patients hurt when they using it, and
it is hard to avoid the hair for attaching the hair. For this reason, an
electrode is made with silicon material to decrease the hurt from the
electrodes, and the carbon material is mixed in it for increasing
conductance. The several cones with stainless material on the
electrode make the electrode is able to void hair to attach the affected
part. According to the results of a vivo-experiment, the carbon silicon
electrode showed a good performance and in treatment comfortably.
Abstract: Calcium oxide (CaO) as carbon dioxide (CO2)
adsorbent at the elevated temperature has been very well-received
thus far. The CaO can be synthesized from natural calcium carbonate
(CaCO3) sources through the reversible calcination-carbonation
process. In the study, cockle shell has been selected as CaO
precursors. The objectives of the study are to investigate the
performance of calcination and carbonation with respect to different
temperature, heating rate, particle size and the duration time. Overall,
better performance is shown at the calcination temperature of 850oC
for 40 minutes, heating rate of 20oC/min, particle size of < 0.125mm
and the carbonation temperature is at 650oC. The synthesized
materials have been characterized by nitrogen physisorption and
surface morphology analysis. The effectiveness of the synthesized
cockle shell in capturing CO2 (0.72 kg CO2/kg adsorbent) which is
comparable to the commercialized adsorbent (0.60 kg CO2/kg
adsorbent) makes them as the most promising materials for CO2
capture.
Abstract: This paper presents an algorithm for reconstructing phase and magnitude responses of the impulse response when only the output data are available. The system is driven by a zero-mean independent identically distributed (i.i.d) non-Gaussian sequence that is not observed. The additive noise is assumed to be Gaussian. This is an important and essential problem in many practical applications of various science and engineering areas such as biomedical, seismic, and speech processing signals. The method is based on evaluating the bicepstrum of the third-order statistics of the observed output data. Simulations results are presented that demonstrate the performance of this method.
Abstract: An electric utility-s main concern is to plan, design, operate and maintain its power supply to provide an acceptable level of reliability to its users. This clearly requires that standards of reliability be specified and used in all three sectors of the power system, i.e., generation, transmission and distribution. That is why reliability of a power system is always a major concern to power system planners. This paper presents the reliability analysis of Bangladesh Power System (BPS). Reliability index, loss of load probability (LOLP) of BPS is evaluated using recursive algorithm and considering no de-rated states of generators. BPS has sixty one generators and a total installed capacity of 5275 MW. The maximum demand of BPS is about 5000 MW. The relevant data of the generators and hourly load profiles are collected from the National Load Dispatch Center (NLDC) of Bangladesh and reliability index 'LOLP' is assessed for the period of last ten years.
Abstract: Synchronous cooperative systems (SCS) bring together users that are geographically distributed and connected through a network to carry out a task. Examples of SCS include Tele- Immersion and Tele-Conferences. In SCS, the coordination is the core of the system, and it has been defined as the act of managing interdependencies between activities performed to achieve a goal. Some of the main problems that SCS present deal with the management of constraints between simultaneous activities and the execution ordering of these activities. In order to resolve these problems, orderings based on Lamport-s happened-before relation have been used, namely, causal, Δ-causal, and causal-total orderings. They mainly differ in the degree of asynchronous execution allowed. One of the most important orderings is the causal order, which establishes that the events must be seen in the cause-effect order as they occur in the system. In this paper we show that for certain SCS (e.g. videoconferences, tele-immersion) where some degradation of the system is allowed, ensuring the causal order is still rigid, which can render negative affects to the system. In this paper, we illustrate how a more relaxed ordering, which we call Fuzzy Causal Order (FCO), is useful for such kind of systems by allowing a more asynchronous execution than the causal order. The benefit of the FCO is illustrated by applying it to a particular scenario of intermedia synchronization of an audio-conference system.
Abstract: This paper presents results of an experimental study performed to investigate effect of incorporating silica fume on physico-mechanical properties and durability of resulting fly ash geopolymers. Geopolymer specimens were prepared by activating fly ash incorporated with additional silica fume in the range of 2.5% to 5%, with a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate solution having Na2O content of 8%. For studying durability, 10% magnesium sulphate solution was used to immerse the specimens up to a period of 15 weeks during which visual observation, weight changes and strength changes were monitored regularly. Addition of silica fume lowers performance of geopolymer pastes. However, in mortars, addition of silica fume significantly enhanced physico-mechanical properties and durability.
Abstract: The deposition of diamond films on a Si3N4 substrate
is an attractive technique for industrial applications because of the
excellent properties of diamond. Pretreatment of substrate is very
important prior to diamond deposition to promote nucleation and
adhesion between coating and substrate. Deposition of
nanocrystalline diamonds films on silicon nitride substrate have been
carried out by HF-CVD technique using mixture of methane and
hydrogen gases. Different pretreatment of substrate including
chemical etching consists of hot acid etching and basic etching and
mechanical etching were used to study the quality of diamond formed
on the substrate. The structure and morphology of diamond coating
have been studied using X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning
Electron Microscope (SEM) while diamond film quality has been
characterized using Raman spectroscopy. AFM was used to
investigate the effect of chemical etching and mechanical
pretreatment on the surface roughness of the substrates and the
resultant morphology of nanocrystalline diamond. It was found that
diamond film deposited on as-received, basic etched and grinded
substrate shows the morphology of cauliflower while blasted and
acidic etched substrates produce smooth, continuous diamond film.
However, the Raman investigation did not show any deviation in
quality of diamond film for any pretreatment.
Abstract: Fluency is a skill that, unfortunately, many students
lack. This deficiency causes students to be frustrated with, and
overwhelmed by, the act of reading. However, research suggests that
the repeated reading method may help students to improve their
fluency. This study examines the effects of repeated readings on
student fluency. The study-s overarching question is: What effect do
increases in repeated reading have on reading fluency among middle
school students from diverse backgrounds? More specifically, the
authors examine whether repeated reading improves the fluency,
reading speed, reading-oriented self-esteem, and confidence of
students of diverse academic abilities, socio-economics statuses, and
racial and ethnic backgrounds. To examine these questions the
authors conducted a study using repeated reading strategies with a
sample of students from an urban, middle school in the southeastern
United States. We found that, on average, the use of repeated reading
strategies increased students- fluency, words per minute (wpm)
reading score, reading-oriented self-esteem, and confidence.
Abstract: The orthogonal processes to shape the triangle steel plate into a equilateral vertical steel are examined by an incremental elasto-plastic finite-element method based on an updated Lagrangian formulation. The highly non-linear problems due to the geometric changes, the inelastic constitutive behavior and the boundary conditions varied with deformation are taken into account in an incremental manner. On the contact boundary, a modified Coulomb friction mode is specially considered. A weighting factor r-minimum is employed to limit the step size of loading increment to linear relation. In particular, selective reduced integration was adopted to formulate the stiffness matrix. The simulated geometries of verticality could clearly demonstrate the vertical processes until unloading. A series of experiments and simulations were performed to validate the formulation in the theory, leading to the development of the computer codes. The whole deformation history and the distribution of stress, strain and thickness during the forming process were obtained by carefully considering the moving boundary condition in the finite-element method. Therefore, this modeling can be used for judging whether a equilateral vertical steel can be shaped successfully. The present work may be expected to improve the understanding of the formation of the equilateral vertical steel.
Abstract: To derive the fractional flow equation oil
displacement will be assumed to take place under the so-called
diffusive flow condition. The constraints are that fluid saturations at
any point in the linear displacement path are uniformly distributed
with respect to thickness; this allows the displacement to be described
mathematically in one dimension. The simultaneous flow of oil and
water can be modeled using thickness averaged relative permeability,
along the centerline of the reservoir. The condition for fluid potential
equilibrium is simply that of hydrostatic equilibrium for which the
saturation distribution can be determined as a function of capillary
pressure and therefore, height. That is the fluids are distributed in
accordance with capillary-gravity equilibrium.
This paper focused on the fraction flow of water versus
cumulative oil recoveries using Buckley Leverett method. Several
field cases have been developed to aid in analysis. Producing watercut
(at surface conditions) will be compared with the cumulative oil
recovery at breakthrough for the flowing fluid.
Abstract: IP networks are evolving from data communication
infrastructure into many real-time applications such as video
conferencing, IP telephony and require stringent Quality of Service
(QoS) requirements. A rudimentary issue in QoS routing is to find a
path between a source-destination pair that satisfies two or more endto-
end constraints and termed to be NP hard or complete. In this
context, we present an algorithm Multi Constraint Path Problem
Version 3 (MCPv3), where all constraints are approximated and
return a feasible path in much quicker time. We present another
algorithm namely Delay Coerced Multi Constrained Routing
(DCMCR) where coerce one constraint and approximate the
remaining constraints. Our algorithm returns a feasible path, if exists,
in polynomial time between a source-destination pair whose first
weight satisfied by the first constraint and every other weight is
bounded by remaining constraints by a predefined approximation
factor (a). We present our experimental results with different
topologies and network conditions.
Abstract: Energy efficiency is the key requirement in wireless sensor network as sensors are small, cheap and are deployed in very large number in a large geographical area, so there is no question of replacing the batteries of the sensors once deployed. Different ways can be used for efficient energy transmission including Multi-Hop algorithms, collaborative communication, cooperativecommunication, Beam- forming, routing algorithm, phase, frequency and time synchronization. The paper reviews the need for time synchronization and proposed a BFS based synchronization algorithm to achieve energy efficiency. The efficiency of our protocol has been tested and verified by simulation
Abstract: One of the major pollutants in the environment is arsenic (As). Due to the toxic effects of As to all organisms, its remediation is necessary. Conventional technologies used in the remediation of As contaminated soils are expensive and may even compromise the structure of the soil. An attractive alternative is phytoremediation, which is the use of plants which can take up the contaminant in their tissues. Plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) has been known to enhance growth of plants through several mechanisms such as phytohormone production, phosphate solubilization, siderophore production and 1-aminocyclopropane-1- carboxylate (ACC) deaminase production, which is an essential trait that aids plants especially under stress conditions such as As stress. Twenty one bacteria were isolated from As-contaminated soils in the vicinity of the Janghang Smelter in Chungnam Province, South Korea. These exhibited high tolerance to either arsenite (As III) or arsenate (As V) or both. Most of these isolates possess several plant growth promoting traits which can be potentially exploited to increase phytoremediation efficiency. Among the identified isolates is Pseudomonas sp. JS1215, which produces ACC deaminase, indole acetic acid (IAA), and siderophore. It also has the ability to solubilize phosphate. Inoculation of JS1215 significantly enhanced root and shoot length and biomass accumulation of maize under normal conditions. In the presence of As, particularly in lower As level, inoculation of JS1215 slightly increased root length and biomass. Ethylene increased with increasing As concentration, but was reduced by JS1215 inoculation. JS1215 can be a potential bioinoculant for increasing phytoremediation efficiency.