Abstract: Sclareolide is made from sclareol by oxidiative synthesis and subsequent crystallization, while the crystallization mother liquor still contains 15%~30%wt of sclareolide to be reclaimed. With the reaction material of sclareol is provided as plant extract, many sorts of complex impurities exist in the mother liquor. Due to the difficulty in recycling sclareolide after solvent recovery, it is common practice for the factories to discard the mother liquor, which not only results in loss of sclareolide, but also contributes extra environmental burden. In this paper, a process based on adsorption and elution has been presented for recycling of sclareolide from mother liquor. After pretreatment of the crystallization mother liquor by HZ-845 resin to remove parts of impurities, sclareolide is adsorbed by HZ-816 resin. The HZ-816 resin loaded with sclareolide is then eluted by elution solvent. Finally, the eluent containing sclareolide is concentrated and fed into the crystallization step in the process. By adoption of the recycle from mother liquor, total yield of sclareolide increases from 86% to 90% with a stable purity of the final sclareolide products maintained.
Abstract: The present study is based on the three-dimensional digital analysis by the finite elements method of the mechanical loading effect on the delamination of unidirectional and multidirectional stratified composites. The aim of this work is the determination of the release energy rate G in mode I and the Von Mises equivalent constraint distribution along the damaged area under the influence of several parameters such as the applied load and the delamination size. The results obtained in this study show that the unidirectional composite laminates have better mechanical resistance one the loading line than the multidirectional composite laminates.
Abstract: Among other traditional and non-traditional
additives, polymers have shown an efficient performance in the field
and improved sustainability. Polyacrylamide (PAM) is one such
additive that has demonstrated many advantages including a
reduction in permeability, an increase in durability and the provision
of strength characteristics. However, information about its effect on
the improved geotechnical characteristics is very limited to the field
performance monitoring. Therefore, a laboratory investigation was
carried out to examine the basic and engineering behaviors of three
types of soils treated with a PAM additive. The results showed an
increase in dry density and unconfined compressive strength for all
the soils. The results further demonstrated an increase in unsoaked
CBR and a reduction in permeability for all stabilized samples.
Abstract: To increase the quality of learning, teacher and learner need mutual effort for realization of educational value. For this purpose, we need to manage the co-creational education among teacher and learners. In this research, we try to find a feature of co-creational education. To be more precise, we analyzed learners’ reports by natural language processing, and extract some features that describe the state of the co-creational education.
Abstract: In this paper, an improved active snubber cell is proposed on account of soft switching (SS) family of pulse width modulation (PWM) DC-DC converters. The improved snubber cell provides zero-voltage transition (ZVT) turn on and zero-current transition (ZCT) turn off for main switch. The snubber cell decreases EMI noise and operates with SS in a wide range of line and load voltages. Besides, all of the semiconductor devices in the converter operate with SS. There is no additional voltage and current stress on the main devices. Additionally, extra voltage stress does not occur on the auxiliary switch and its current stress is acceptable value. The improved converter has a low cost and simple structure. The theoretical analysis of converter is clarified and the operating states are given in detail. The experimental results of converter are obtained by prototype of 500 W and 100 kHz. It is observed that the experimental results and theoretical analysis of converter are suitable with each other perfectly.
Abstract: To focus on the vibration mode of a cone loudspeaker,
which acts as an electroacoustic transducer, excitation experiments
were performed using two types of loudspeaker units: one employing
an impulse hammer and the other a sweep signal. The on-axis sound
pressure frequency properties of the loudspeaker were evaluated, and
the characteristic properties of the loudspeakers were successfully
determined in both excitation experiments. Moreover, under
conditions identical to the experiment conditions, a coupled analysis of
the vibration-acoustics of the cone loudspeaker was performed using
an acoustic analysis software program that considers the impact of
damping caused by air viscosity. The result of sound pressure
frequency properties with the numerical analysis are the most closely
match that measured in the excitation experiments over a wide range
of frequency bands.
Abstract: 10 clinically healthy hemal nodes were collected from male bulls aged 2-3 years. Light microscopy revealed a capsule of connective tissue consisted mainly of collagen fiber surrounding hemal node, numerous erythrocytes were found in wide subcapsular sinus under the capsule. The parenchyma of the hemal node was divided into cortex and medulla. Diffused lymphocytes, and lymphoid follicles, having germinal centers were the main components of the cortex, while in the medulla there was wide medullary sinus, diffused lymphocytes and few lymphoid nodules. The area occupied with lymph nodules was larger than that occupied with non-nodular structure of lymphoid cords and blood sinusoids. Electron microscopy revealed the cellular components of hemal node including elements of circulating erythrocytes intermingled with lymphocytes, plasma cells, mast cells, reticular cells, macrophages, megakaryocytes and endothelial cells lining the blood sinuses. The lymphocytes were somewhat triangular in shape with cytoplasmic processes extending between adjacent erythrocytes. Nuclei were triangular to oval in shape, lightly stained with clear nuclear membrane indentation and clear nucleoli. The reticular cells were elongated in shape with cytoplasmic processes extending between adjacent lymphocytes, rough endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes and few lysosomes were seen in their cytoplasm. Nucleus was elongated in shape with less condensed chromatin. Plasma cells were oval to irregular in shape with numerous dilated rough endoplasmic reticulum containing electron lucent material occupying the whole cytoplasm and few mitochondria were found. Nuclei were centrally located and oval in shape with heterochromatin emarginated and often clumped near the nuclear membrane. Occasionally megakaryocytes and mast cells were seen among lymphocytes. Megakaryocytes had multilobulated nucleus and free ribosomes often appearing as small aggregates in their cytoplasm, while mast cell had their characteristic electron dense granule in the cytoplasm, few electron lucent granules were found also, we conclude that, the main function of the hemal node of cattle is proliferation of lymphocytes. No role for plasma cell in erythrophagocytosis could be suggested.
Abstract: Learning outcomes of a course (CLOs) and the abilities at the time of graduation referred to as Student Outcomes (SOs) are required to be assessed for ABET accreditation. A question in an assessment must target a CLO as well as an SO and must represent a required level of competence. This paper presents the idea of an Expert System (ES) to select a proper question to satisfy ABET accreditation requirements. For ES implementation, seven attributes of a question are considered including the learning outcomes and Bloom’s Taxonomy level. A database contains all the data about a course including course content topics, course learning outcomes and the CLO-SO relationship matrix. The knowledge base of the presented ES contains a pool of questions each with tags of the specified attributes. Questions and the attributes represent expert opinions. With implicit rule base the inference engine finds the best possible question satisfying the required attributes. It is shown that the novel idea of such an ES can be implemented and applied to a course with success. An application example is presented to demonstrate the working of the proposed ES.
Abstract: Healthcare waste management continues to present an
array of challenges for developing countries, and Liberia is of no
exception. There is insufficient information available regarding the
generation, handling, and disposal of health care waste. This face
serves as an impediment to healthcare management schemes. The
specific objective of this study is to present an evaluation of the
current health care management practices in Liberia. It also presented
procedures, techniques used, methods of handling, transportation, and
disposal methods of wastes as well as the quantity and composition
of health care waste. This study was conducted as an investigative
case study, covering three different health care facilities; a hospital, a
health center, and a clinic in Monrovia, Montserrado County. The
average waste generation was found to be 0-7kg per day at the clinic
and health center and 8-15kg per/day at the hospital. The composition
of the waste includes hazardous and non-hazardous waste i.e. plastic,
papers, sharps, and pathological elements etc. Nevertheless, the
investigation showed that the healthcare waste generated by the
surveyed healthcare facilities were not properly handled because of
insufficient guidelines for separate collection, and classification, and
adequate methods for storage and proper disposal of generated
wastes. This therefore indicates that there is a need for improvement
within the healthcare waste management system to improve the
existing situation.
Abstract: Copreneurship is a term used to describe the business
pattern of operations run by married couples who share commitment,
goals, and responsibilities in handling a business. Research conducted
overseas showed that copreneurship business activities grew quickly
and played a role in elevating families’ and nations’ socio-economic
standards. In Malaysia, copreneurship has long been cultivated by
spouses. Thus, this study aimed to explore the factors that motivate
married partners to start a copreneurship business, and who is the
dominant partner in the management of this business. The study
participants are four entrepreneurial couples who are SME business
operators selected through purposive sampling. In-depth interviews
and direct observation were used as methods of measurement for
triangulation of qualitative data in this study. The findings of the
interviews were administered using NVivo 8.0 software. The result
shows that freedom is a key factor that drives entrepreneurs to set up
copreneurship businesses, and that the husband dominates the
management aspects of the business. The study gives an overview of
the parties involved in entrepreneurship to provide understanding of
the copreneurship concept as it is practiced. This study provides
academic value by creating understanding of the importance of a
harmonious family institution specifically for forming entrepreneurs
in the familial environment in Malaysia.
Abstract: Sun tracking systems are the systems following the sun ray by a right angle or by predetermined certain angle. In this study, we used theoretical trajectory of sun for latitude of central Anatolia in Turkey. A two degree of freedom spherical mechanism was designed to have a large workspace able to follow the sun's theoretical motion by the right angle during the whole year. An inverse kinematic analysis was generated to find the positions of mechanism links for the predicted trajectory. Force and torque analysis were shown for the first day of the year.
Abstract: Despite the benefits of innovation diffusion in the
South African public service, implementation thereof seems to be
problematic, particularly with regard to e-governance which would
enhance the quality of service delivery, especially accessibility,
choice, and mode of operation. This paper reports on differences
between the public service and the private sector in terms of
innovation diffusion. Innovation diffusion will be investigated to
explore identified obstacles that are hindering successful
implementation of e-governance. The research inquiry is underpinned
by the diffusion of innovation theory, which is premised on the
assumption that innovation has a distinct channel, time, and mode of
adoption within the organisation. A comparative thematic document
analysis was conducted to investigate organisational differences with
regard to innovation diffusion. A similar approach has been followed
in other countries, where the same conceptual framework has been
used to guide document analysis in studies in both the private and the
public sectors. As per the recommended conceptual framework, three
organisational characteristics were emphasised, namely the external
characteristics of the organisation, the organisational structure, and
the inherent characteristics of the leadership. The results indicated
that the main difference in the external characteristics lies in the
focus and the clientele of the private sector. With regard to
organisational structure, private organisations have veto power,
which is not the case in the public service. Regarding leadership,
similarities were observed in social and environmental responsibility
and employees’ attitudes towards immediate supervision. Differences
identified included risk taking, the adequacy of leadership
development, organisational approaches to motivation and
involvement in decision making, and leadership style. Due to the
organisational differences observed, it is recommended that
differentiated strategies be employed to ensure effective innovation
diffusion, and ultimately e-governance. It is recommended that the
results of this research be used to stimulate discussion on ways to
improve collaboration between the mentioned sectors, to capitalise on
the benefits of each sector.
Abstract: This project aims at building an efficient and
automatic power monitoring SCADA system, which is capable of
monitoring the electrical parameters of high voltage powered devices
in real time for example RMS voltage and current, frequency, energy
consumed, power factor etc. The system uses RS-485 serial
communication interface to transfer data over longer distances.
Embedded C programming is the platform used to develop two
hardware modules namely: RTU and Master Station modules, which
both use the CC2540 BLE 4.0 microcontroller configured in slave /
master mode. The Si8900 galvanic ally isolated microchip is used to
perform ADC externally. The hardware communicates via UART
port and sends data to the user PC using the USB port. Labview
software is used to design a user interface to display current state of
the power loads being monitored as well as logs data to excel
spreadsheet file. An understanding of the Si8900’s auto baud rate
process is key to successful implementation of this project.
Abstract: The importance of culture and tourism in the attractiveness and competitiveness of the countries is central, and many regions are evidencing their cultural assets, tangible and intangible, as a means to create comparative advantages in tourism and produce a distinctive place in response to the pressures of globalization. Culture and tourism are interlinked because of their obvious combination and growth potential. Cultural tourism is a crucial global tourism market with fast growing. Regions can develop significant relations between culture and tourism to increase their attractiveness as places to visit, live and invest, increasing their competitiveness. Accordingly, having new and creative approach to historical areas as cultural value-based destinations can improve their conditions to promote tourism. Furthermore, in 21st century, media become the most important factor affecting the development of urban cities, including public places. As a result of the digital revolution, re-imaging and re-linkage public places by media are essential to create more interactions between public spaces and users, interaction media display, and urban screens, one of the most important defined media. This interaction can transform the urban space from being neglected to be more interactive space with users, especially the pedestrians. The paper focuses on The Walled City of Famagusta. As many other historic quarters elsewhere in the world, is in a process, of decay and deterioration, and its functionally distinctive areas are severely threatened by physical, functional, locational, and image obsolescence at varying degrees. So the focus on the future development of this area through tourism promotion can be an appropriate decision for the monument enhancement of the spatial quality in Walled City of Famagusta. In this paper, it is aimed to identify the effects of these new digital factors to transform public spaces especially in historic urban areas to promote creative tourism. Accordingly, two different analysis methods are used as well as a theoretical review. The first is case study on site and the second is Close ended questionnaire, test many concepts raised in this paper. The physical analysis on site carried out in order to evaluate the walled city restoration for touristic purpose. Besides, theoretical review is done in order to provide background to the subject and cleared Factors to attract tourists.
Abstract: The material selection problem is concerned with the
determination of the right material for a certain product to optimize
certain performance indices in that product such as mass, energy
density, and power-to-weight ratio. This paper is concerned about
optimizing the selection of the manufacturing process along with the
material used in the product under performance indices and
availability constraints. In this paper, the material selection problem
is formulated using binary programming and solved by genetic
algorithm. The objective function of the model is to minimize the
total manufacturing cost under performance indices and material and
manufacturing process availability constraints.
Abstract: Hydrologic models are increasingly used as tools to
predict stormwater quantity and quality from urban catchments.
However, due to a range of practical issues, most models produce
gross errors in simulating complex hydraulic and hydrologic systems.
Difficulty in finding a robust approach for model calibration is one of
the main issues. Though automatic calibration techniques are
available, they are rarely used in common commercial hydraulic and
hydrologic modelling software e.g. MIKE URBAN. This is partly
due to the need for a large number of parameters and large datasets in
the calibration process. To overcome this practical issue, a
framework for automatic calibration of a hydrologic model was
developed in R platform and presented in this paper. The model was
developed based on the time-area conceptualization. Four calibration
parameters, including initial loss, reduction factor, time of
concentration and time-lag were considered as the primary set of
parameters. Using these parameters, automatic calibration was
performed using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC). ABC is
a simulation-based technique for performing Bayesian inference
when the likelihood is intractable or computationally expensive to
compute. To test the performance and usefulness, the technique was
used to simulate three small catchments in Gold Coast. For
comparison, simulation outcomes from the same three catchments
using commercial modelling software, MIKE URBAN were used.
The graphical comparison shows strong agreement of MIKE URBAN
result within the upper and lower 95% credible intervals of posterior
predictions as obtained via ABC. Statistical validation for posterior
predictions of runoff result using coefficient of determination (CD),
root mean square error (RMSE) and maximum error (ME) was found
reasonable for three study catchments. The main benefit of using
ABC over MIKE URBAN is that ABC provides a posterior
distribution for runoff flow prediction, and therefore associated
uncertainty in predictions can be obtained. In contrast, MIKE
URBAN just provides a point estimate. Based on the results of the
analysis, it appears as though ABC the developed framework
performs well for automatic calibration.
Abstract: MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA found in
many different species. They play crucial roles in cancer such as
biological processes of apoptosis and proliferation. The identification
of microRNA-target genes can be an essential first step towards to
reveal the role of microRNA in various cancer types. In this paper,
we predict miRNA-target genes for lung cancer by integrating
prediction scores from miRanda and PITA algorithms used as a
feature vector of miRNA-target interaction. Then, machine-learning
algorithms were implemented for making a final prediction. The
approach developed in this study should be of value for future studies
into understanding the role of miRNAs in molecular mechanisms
enabling lung cancer formation.
Abstract: An experiment to verify the relationships between
physiological indexes of an e-learner and the presence or absence of an
operation during e-learning is described. Electroencephalogram
(EEG), hemoencephalography (HEG), skin conductance (SC), and
blood volume pulse (BVP) values were measured while participants
performed experimental learning tasks. The results show that there are
significant differences between the SC values when reading with
clicking on learning materials and the SC values when reading without
clicking, and between the HEG ratio when reading (with and without
clicking) and the HEG ratio when resting for four of five participants.
We conclude that the SC signals can be used to estimate whether or not
a learner is performing an active task and that the HEG ratios can be
used to estimate whether a learner is learning.
Abstract: The effect of upstream surface roughness over a
smooth forward facing step in an open channel was investigated
using a particle image velocimetry technique. Three different
upstream surface topographies consisting of hydraulically smooth
wall, sandpaper 36 grit and sand grains were examined. Besides the
wall roughness conditions, all other upstream flow characteristics
were kept constant. It was also observed that upstream roughness
decreased the approach velocity by 2% and 10% but increased the
turbulence intensity by 14% and 35% at the wall-normal distance
corresponding to the top plane of the step compared to smooth
upstream. The results showed that roughness decreased the
reattachment lengths by 14% and 30% compared to smooth upstream.
Although the magnitudes of maximum positive and negative
Reynolds shear stress in separated and reattached region were 0.02Ue
for all the cases, the physical size of both the maximum and
minimum contour levels were decreased by increasing upstream
roughness.
Abstract: This paper presents an analysis study on the impacts
of the changes of the capacitor banks, the loss of a transformer, and
the installation of distributed generation on the voltage total harmonic
distortion and harmonic resonance. The study is applied in a real
system in Oman, Sohar Industrial Port–C Substation Network.
Frequency scan method and Fourier series analysis method are used
with the help of EDSA software. Moreover, the results are compared
with limits specified by national Oman distribution code.