Abstract: A total of 150 meat type chickens comprising 50 each
of Arbor Acre, Marshall and Ross were used for this study which
lasted for 10 weeks at the Federal University of Agriculture,
Abeokuta, Nigeria. Growth performance data were collected from the
third week through week 10 and data obtained were analysed using
the Generalized Linear Model Procedure. Heritability estimates (h2)
for body dimensions carried out on the chicken strains ranged from
low to high. Marshall broiler chicken strain had the highest h2 for
body weight 0.46±0.04, followed by Arbor Acre and Ross with h2
being 0.38±0.12 and 0.26±0.06, respectively. The repeatability
estimates for body weight in the three broiler strains were high, and it
ranged from 0.70 at week 4 to 0.88 at week 10. Relationships
between the body weight and linear body measurements in the broiler
chicken strains were positive and highly significant (p > 0.05).
Abstract: In order to investigate the effect of Plant Growth
Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) and rhizobium bacteria on grain
yield and some agronomic traits of mungbean (Vigna radiate L.), an
experiment was carried out based on randomized complete block
design with three replications in Malekshahi, Ilam province, Iran
during 2012-2013 cropping season. Experimental treatments
consisted of control treatment, inoculation with rhizobium bacteria,
rhizobium bacteria and Azotobacter, rhizobium bacteria and
Azospirillum, rhizobium bacteria and Pseudomonas, rhizobium
bacteria, Azotobacter and Azospirillum, rhizobium bacteria,
Azotobacter and Pseudomonas, rhizobium bacteria, Azospirillum and
Pseudomonas and rhizobium bacteria, Azotobacter, Azospirillum and
Pseudomonas. The results showed that the effect of PGPR and
rhizobium bacteria were significant affect on grain and its
components in mungbean plant. Grain yield significantly increased
by PGPR and rhizobium bacteria, so that the maximum grain yield
was obtained from rhizobium bacteria + Azospirillum +
Pseudomonas with the amount of 2287 kg.ha-1 as compared to
control treatment. Excessive application of chemical fertilizers causes
environmental and economic problems. That is, the overfertilization
of P and N leads to pollution due to soil erosion and runoff water, so
the use of PGPR and rhizobium bacteria can be justified due to
reduce input costs, increase in grain yield and environmental friendly.
Abstract: In this paper, we have proposed a numerical method
for solving fuzzy Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. In
this method a combination of orthonormal Bernstein and Block-Pulse
functions are used. In most cases, the proposed method leads to
the exact solution. The advantages of this method are shown by an
example and calculate the error analysis.
Abstract: Voltage sags are the most common power quality
disturbance in the distribution system. It occurs due to the fault in the
electrical network or by the starting of a large induction motor and
this can be solved by using the custom power devices such as
Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR). In this paper DVR is proposed to
compensate voltage sags on critical loads dynamically. The DVR
consists of VSC, injection transformers, passive filters and energy
storage (lead acid battery). By injecting an appropriate voltage, the
DVR restores a voltage waveform and ensures constant load voltage.
The simulation and experimental results of a DVR using MATLAB
software shows clearly the performance of the DVR in mitigating
voltage sags.
Abstract: In the 13th Malaysia’s General Elections held in 2013,
it was observed that large numbers of urban constituencies saw
strongly decisive young voters (between 21-39 age group) determine
the outcome in their favour. Also, the Elections Commission had
approximated that 70% of some 4.2 million unregistered voters at the
time were citizens aged between 21 and 40 years old. If they are not
already considered an important form of political leverage, 450,000
young Malaysians turn 21 years old each year. Further compounding
this fact were the 2.4 million new voters registered in 2012, which at
the time constituted almost 30% of the entire voting population. This
article discusses the importance of issues for the youth, with
reference to the university students in Malaysia in their decision
making on polling day.
Abstract: Malathion (ML) is a well known pesticide commonly
used in many agricultural and non-agricultural processes. Its toxicity
has been attributed primarily to the accumulation of acetylcholine
(Ach) at nerve junctions, due to the inhibition of acetylcholinesterase
(AChE). The aim of the current research was to study the protective
effect of the melissa plant extract against reproductive impairment
induced by malathion in 32 male albino rats, and the biological
experiment was divided into four groups (8 in each) that given
malathion (27 mg/kg; 1/50 of the LD50 for an oral dose) and/or
Melissa officinalis (MO) extract (200mg/kg/day) by gavages
technique. The sperm counts, sperm motility, sperm morphology,
FSH, LH, and testosterone levels had been determined in testes
homogenate at the end of the experiment. It is worthy to report that,
rats treated with melissa extract did not show a significant difference
when compared with the control group, while rats given malathion
alone had significantly lower sperm count, sperm motility, and
significantly higher abnormal sperm numbers, than the untreated
control rats as well as having significantly lower serum FSH, LH, and
testosterone levels compared with the control group. Administrations
of melissa extract restore all mentioned histological parameters
towards the control group and the melissa extract had a strong
positive protective effect against malathion toxicity. Results the of
biological parameters were confirmed by the histological
examination of rat testes and indicated that, both control and melissa
groups showing normal seminiferous tubules, while malathion group
testicular tissues had necrosis, edema in the seminiferous tubules and
degeneration of spermatogonial cells lining the seminiferous tubules
with incomplete spermatogenesis. The use of melissa against
malathion improved the histological picture and showing normal
seminiferous tubules with complete spermatogenesis and almost there
was no histopathological changes could be noted.
Abstract: Opportunistic routing is used, where the network has
the features like dynamic topology changes and intermittent network
connectivity. In Delay tolerant network or Disruption tolerant
network opportunistic forwarding technique is widely used. The key
idea of opportunistic routing is selecting forwarding nodes to forward
data packets and coordination among these nodes to avoid duplicate
transmissions. This paper gives the analysis of pros and cons of
various opportunistic routing techniques used in MANET.
Abstract: Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an ancient fruit of great medical interest and rich source of antioxidants. Pesticides as dimethoate play a crucial role in the occurrence many diseases in plants, animal and human. Therefore the ability of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) to alleviate hepatotoxicity induced by organophosphate pesticide dimethoate was investigated. Albino male rats were divided randomly into 4 groups and kept at 7 animals per group in an environmentally controlled condition for 6 weeks. The first group was served as a control group (basal diet), the second group fed on basal diet supplemented with 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds, the third group fed on 20 ppm dimethoate contaminated diet and the last group fed on dimethoate contaminated diet supplemented with 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds. The results revealed that administration of dimethoate caused high significant increased in liver functions: alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activities as well as lipid peroxide (malonaldhyde, MDA); on the other hand high significant decreased on glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), albumin and total protein were observed. However addition of 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds significantly improved all previously mentioned parameters. These results indicate the dimethoate induced hepatotoxicity and highlight the protective effect of pomegranate seeds as a potential protective agent against dimethoate induced hepatotoxicity. This may be attributed to the powerful antioxidants (polyphenols, total phenols, and total flavonoids) which present in high levels in pomegranate as well as improving the immunity by activation of antioxidant enzymes GSH and GPx.
Abstract: In development of floating photovoltaic generation
system, finding a suitable place of installation is as important as
development of economically feasible and stable structure. Especially
since floating photovoltaic system has its facility floating on water
surface, it is extremely important to review the effects of weather
conditions such as wind, water flow and floating matters, various
factors (such as fogs) that can reduce generation efficiency, possibility
of connection with power system, and legal restrictions. The method of
investigating suitable area and resource for development of
tracking-type floating photovoltaic generation system was proposed in
this paper, which can be used for development of floating and ocean
photovoltaic system in the future.
Abstract: Business interpreting talents are in badly need for local
economic development, but currently there are problems of traditional
business interpreting training mode in China. In view of the good
opportunity for college business interpreters provided by international
trading center development in Qingdao China and with the aim of
being in line with market demand and enhancing business interpreters'
employment competitive advantage, this paper aims to explore how to
cultivate interdisciplinary business interpreting talents based on
market demand.
Abstract: This paper aims at finding a suitable neural network
for monitoring congestion level in electrical power systems. In this
paper, the input data has been framed properly to meet the target
objective through supervised learning mechanism by defining normal
and abnormal operating conditions for the system under study. The
congestion level, expressed as line congestion index (LCI), is
evaluated for each operating condition and is presented to the NN
along with the bus voltages to represent the input and target data.
Once, the training goes successful, the NN learns how to deal with a
set of newly presented data through validation and testing
mechanism. The crux of the results presented in this paper rests on
performance comparison of a multi-layered feed forward neural
network with eleven types of back propagation techniques so as to
evolve the best training criteria. The proposed methodology has been
tested on the standard IEEE-14 bus test system with the support of
MATLAB based NN toolbox. The results presented in this paper
signify that the Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation algorithm
gives best training performance of all the eleven cases considered in
this paper, thus validating the proposed methodology.
Abstract: In healthy humans, the cortical brain rhythm shows
specific mu (~6-14 Hz) and beta (~18-24 Hz) band patterns in the
cases of both real and imaginary motor movements. As cerebellar
ataxia is associated with impairment of precise motor movement
control as well as motor imagery, ataxia is an ideal model system in
which to study the role of the cerebellocortical circuit in rhythm
control. We hypothesize that the EEG characteristics of ataxic patients
differ from those of controls during the performance of a
Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) task. Ataxia and control subjects
showed a similar distribution of mu power during cued relaxation.
During cued motor imagery, however, the ataxia group showed
significant spatial distribution of the response, while the control group
showed the expected decrease in mu-band power (localized to the
motor cortex).
Abstract: The mineral bioflotation represents a viable
alternative for the evaluation of new processes benefit alternative.
The adsorption bacteria on minerals surfaces will depend mainly on
the type of the microorganism as well as of the studied mineral
surface. In the current study, adhesion of S. carnosus on coal was
studied. Several methods were used as: DRX, Fourier Transform
Infra-Red (FTIR) adhesion isotherms and kinetic. The main goal is to
recovery of organic matter by the microflotation process on coal
particles with biological reagent (S. carnosus). Adhesion tests
revealed that adhesion took place after of 8 h at pH 9. The results
suggest that the adhesion of bacteria to solid substrates can be
considered an abiotic physicochemical process that is consequently
governed by bacterial surface properties such as their specific surface
area, hydrophobicity and surface functionalities. The greatest coal
fine flotability was of 75%, after 5 min of flotation.
Abstract: Anultra-low power capacitor less low-dropout voltage
regulator with improved transient response using gain enhanced feed
forward path compensation is presented in this paper. It is based on a
cascade of a voltage amplifier and a transconductor stage in the feed
forward path with regular error amplifier to form a composite gainenhanced
feed forward stage. It broadens the gain bandwidth and thus
improves the transient response without substantial increase in power
consumption. The proposed LDO, designed for a maximum output
current of 100 mA in UMC 180 nm, requires a quiescent current of
69 )A. An undershot of 153.79mV for a load current changes from
0mA to 100mA and an overshoot of 196.24mV for current change of
100mA to 0mA. The settling time is approximately 1.1 )s for the
output voltage undershooting case. The load regulation is of 2.77
)V/mA at load current of 100mA. Reference voltage is generated by
using an accurate band gap reference circuit of 0.8V.The costly
features of SOC such as total chip area and power consumption is
drastically reduced by the use of only a total compensation
capacitance of 6pF while consuming power consumption of 0.096
mW.
Abstract: Currently, biological control programs in greenhouse
crops involve the use, at the same time, several natural enemies
during the crop cycle. Also, large number of plant species grown in
greenhouses, among them, the used cultivars are also wide. However,
the cultivar effects on entomophagous species efficacy (predators and
parasitoids) have been scarcely studied. A new method had been
developed, using the factitious prey or host Ephestia kuehniella. It
allow us to evaluate, under greenhouse or controlled conditions
(semi-field), the cultivar effects on the entomophagous species
effectiveness. The work was carried out in greenhouse tomato crop. It
has been found the biological and ecological activities of predatory
species (Nesidiocoris tenuis) and egg-parasitoid (Trichogramma
achaeae) can be well represented with the use of the factitious prey
or host; being better in the former than the latter. The data found in
the trial are shown and discussed. The developed method could be
applied to evaluate new plant materials before making available to
farmers as commercial varieties, at low costs and easy use.
Abstract: The most important part of modern lean low NOx combustors is a premixer where swirlers are often used for intensification of mixing processes and further formation of required flow pattern in combustor liner. Swirling flow leads to formation of complex eddy structures causing flow perturbations. It is able to cause combustion instability. Therefore, at design phase, it is necessary to pay great attention to aerodynamics of premixers. Analysis based on unsteady CFD modeling of swirling flow in production combustor swirler showed presence of large number of different eddy structures that can be conditionally divided into three types relative to its location of origin and a propagation path. Further, features of each eddy type were subsequently defined. Comparison of calculated and experimental pressure fluctuations spectrums verified correctness of computations.
Abstract: Composite materials have important assets compared
to traditional materials. They bring many functional advantages:
lightness, mechanical resistance and chemical, etc. In the present
study we examine the effect of a circular central notch and a precrack
on the tensile fracture of two woven composite materials. The tensile
tests were applied to a standardized specimen, notched and a
precarcked (orientation of the crack 0°, 45° and 90°). These tensile
tests were elaborated according to an experimental planning design of
the type 23.31 requiring 24 experiments with three repetitions. By the
analysis of regression, we obtained a mathematical model describing
the maximum load according to the influential parameters (hole
diameter, precrack length, angle of a precrack orientation). The
specimens precracked at 90° have a better behavior than those having
a precrack at 45° and still better than those having of the precracks
oriented at 0°. In addition the maximum load is inversely
proportional to the notch size.
Abstract: The paper describes the experiments and the kinetic
parameters calculus of the gasoil hydrofining. They are presented
experimental results of gasoil hidrofining using Mo and promoted
with Ni on aluminum support catalyst. The authors have adapted a
kinetic model gasoil hydrofining. Using this proposed kinetic model
and the experimental data they have calculated the parameters of the
model. The numerical calculus is based on minimizing the difference
between the experimental sulf concentration and kinetic model
estimation.
Abstract: The article is devoted to the problem of political
discourse and its reflection on mass cognition. This article is
dedicated to describe the myth as one of the main features of political
discourse. The dominance of an expressional and emotional
component in the myth is shown. Precedent phenomenon plays an
important role in distinguishing the myth from the linguistic point of
view. Precedent phenomena show the linguistic cognition, which is
characterized by their fame and recognition. Four types of myths
such as master myths, a foundation myth, sustaining myth,
eschatological myths are observed. The myths about the national idea
are characterized by national specificity. The main aim of the
political discourse with the help of myths is to influence on the mass
consciousness in order to motivate the addressee to certain actions so
that the target purpose is reached owing to unity of forces.
Abstract: This research proposes a novel reconstruction protocol
for restoring missing surfaces and low-quality edges and shapes in
photos of artifacts at historical sites. The protocol starts with the
extraction of a cloud of points. This extraction process is based on
four subordinate algorithms, which differ in the robustness and
amount of resultant. Moreover, they use different -but
complementary- accuracy to some related features and to the way
they build a quality mesh. The performance of our proposed protocol
is compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms and toolkits. The
statistical analysis shows that our algorithm significantly outperforms
its rivals in the resultant quality of its object files used to reconstruct
the desired model.