Abstract: This study investigated possible ways to improve the
efficiency of the platinum precipitation process using ammonium
chloride by reducing the platinum content reporting to the effluent.
The ore treated consist of five platinum group metals namely,
ruthenium, rhodium, iridium, platinum, palladium and a precious
metal gold. Gold, ruthenium, rhodium and iridium were extracted
prior the platinum precipitation process. Temperature, reducing
agent, flow rate and potential difference were the variables controlled
to determine the operation conditions for optimum platinum
precipitation efficiency. Hydrogen peroxide was added as the
oxidizing agent at the temperature of 85-90oC and potential
difference of 700-850mV was the variable used to check the
oxidizing state of platinum. The platinum was further purified at
temperature between 60-65oC, potential difference above 700 mV,
ammonium chloride of 200 l, and at these conditions the platinum
content reporting to the effluent was reduced to less than 300ppm,
resulting in optimum platinum precipitation efficiency and purity of
99.9%.
Abstract: This paper proposes a dual tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) based directional interpolation scheme for noisy images. The problems of denoising and interpolation are modelled as to estimate the noiseless and missing samples under the same framework of optimal estimation. Initially, DT-CWT is used to decompose an input low-resolution noisy image into low and high frequency subbands. The high-frequency subband images are interpolated by linear minimum mean square estimation (LMMSE) based interpolation, which preserves the edges of the interpolated images. For each noisy LR image sample, we compute multiple estimates of it along different directions and then fuse those directional estimates for a more accurate denoised LR image. The estimation parameters calculated in the denoising processing can be readily used to interpolate the missing samples. The inverse DT-CWT is applied on the denoised input and interpolated high frequency subband images to obtain the high resolution image. Compared with the conventional schemes that perform denoising and interpolation in tandem, the proposed DT-CWT based noisy image interpolation method can reduce many noise-caused interpolation artifacts and preserve well the image edge structures. The visual and quantitative results show that the proposed technique outperforms many of the existing denoising and interpolation methods.
Abstract: There has been a growing interest in the oxygenation
by plunging water jets in the last few years due to their inherent
advantages, like energy-efficient, low operation cost, etc. Though a
lot of work has been reported on the oxygen-transfer by single
plunging water jets but very few studies have been carried out using
multiple plunging jets. In this paper, volumetric oxygen-transfer
coefficient and oxygen-transfer efficiency has been studied
experimentally for multiple inclined plunging jets (having jet plunge
angle of 60 0 ) in a pool of water for different configurations, in
terms of varying number of jets and jet diameters. This research
suggests that the volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and oxygentransfer
efficiency of the multiple inclined plunging jets for air-water
system are significantly higher than those of a single vertical as well
as inclined plunging jet for same flow area and other similar
conditions. The study also reveals that the oxygen-transfer increase
with increase in number of multiple jets under similar conditions,
which will be most advantageous and energy-efficient in practical
situations when large volumes of wastewaters are to be treated. A
relationship between volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient and jet
parameters is also proposed. The suggested relationship predicts the
volumetric oxygen-transfer coefficient for multiple inclined plunging
jet(s) within a scatter of ±15 percent. The relationship will be quite
useful in scale-up and in deciding optimum configuration of multiple
inclined plunging jet aeration system.
Abstract: Two group of kids (“Safflower cake" and “Control") were fed ad libitum with pelleted total mixed rations. After a 7-days adaptation period, the diet of the “Safflower cake" group were supplemented with 20% of safflower cake. The kids were slaughtered at 96 days of age. Dietary safflower cake did not affect the growth traits of kids. In addition, kids fed experimental diet showed a lower feed intake and consequently a better feed conversion ratio in comparison to the “Control" group. The use of safflower decreased the level of SFA and increased the level of MUFA in kid meat. The level of PUFA was higher in lipid extracted from animals feeding “Control“ diet even if the UFA level was lower. Furthermore, lipid extracted from animals feeding control diet contained more ω6 fatty acids in comparison to kids feeding experimental diet while the opposite trend was observed for the level of ω3 fatty acids. The ω6 to ω3 ratio was significantly affected by diet and in particular this ratio decreased in meat of kids fed experimental diet. Our results indicate that intramuscular fatty acid composition of kid meat can be improved from a human health perspective by inclusion of safflower cake in the diet.
Abstract: Pleurotus ostreatus is a common edible mushroom with a number of properties that can help to solve the nutritional and economical problems of people in Chiapas, Mexico. The objective of this project was to produce the mushroom under a sustainable management in which only regional products were allowed as a way to promote the cultivation and consumption of Pleurotus ostreatus; 5 different substrates were tested as well as 2 sanitation methods. The obtained results showed that the highest yields were obtained using corn husk and a thermal sanitation method. Pests and diseases were not a problem during the project but they appeared more in the substrates sanitized with calcium hydroxide.
Abstract: Paddy being cultivated since about 10,000 years B.C in Ganga Valley in India, its production reached up to 99 million tons in the year 2012. BGA are of much ecological importance for maintaining the soil fertility and reclaiming the alkalinity. In present investigation attempts were made to identify the local cyanobacterial genera from the paddy fields, BGA application for green farming enabling the paddy to utilize more amount of nitrogen released and to examine its impact along with Urea upon growth and yield responses of the Paddy crop. It was observed that combined treatment of BGA with Urea proved better response in almost all growth parameters and yield attributes except number of tillers/ Plant and grains/ panicle as compared to application of either Urea or BGA alone. The Paddy growers should be encouraged to adopt BGA along with Urea as source of Nitrogen for Paddy cultivation.
Abstract: Experiments were carried out on the survival and growth of Rasbora daniconius, Puntius ticto and Puntius conchonius. The motivation of the study was to obtain information for growing the fish on a commercial scale for their use as biological control agents against mosquito larvae. The effects of temperature, total hardness, DO, pH and feed on the growth of fish were also investigated. Excessive value of total hardness was found because very rich calcium ion is present in Chitrakoot area. There was significant increases in growth rates of fish as temperature was increased from 280C to 300C. Further increases in temperature up to 320C, did not further affect growth. The positive and highly significant correlations 0.991488, 0.9581 and 0.9935 were found between length and weight of P. ticto, P. conchonius and R. daniconius respectively. The regression was significant at 5% level of probability.
Abstract: This study, focusing on the importance of encouraging
outdoor activities for children, aims to propose and implement a
Web-GIS based outdoor education program for elementary schools,
which will then be evaluated by users. Specifically, for the purpose of
improved outdoor activities in the elementary school education, the
outdoor education program, with chiefly using the Web-GIS that
provides a good information provision and sharing tool, is proposed
and implemented before being evaluated by users. Conclusions of the
study boil down to:
(1) An eight-staged outdoor education program based on the Web-GIS
was proposed for a “second school" of an elementary school that
was then implemented before being evaluated by users (teachers,
instructors, students, and their parents).
(2) The program generally received a good evaluation, while a lot of
students and their parents evaluated negatively for the degree of
discovery and for the degree of interest, respectively, in the
questionnaire survey of students and their parents conducted after
the “second school". The surveys clearly show that an issue to be
solved, from the viewpoint of teachers in particular, is the
establishment of the GIS that will easily represent teaching materials
developed by teachers and of Web-GIS, and improved significance
of the use of GIS and Web-GIS for their widespread.
Abstract: Feature-based registration is an effective technique for clinical use, because it can greatly reduce computational costs. However, this technique, which estimates the transformation by using feature points extracted from two images, may cause misalignments. To handle with this limitation, we propose to extract the salient edges and extracted control points (CP) of medical images by using efficiency of multiresolution representation of data nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) that finds the best feature points. The MR images were first decomposed using the NSCT, and then Edge and CP were extracted from bandpass directional subband of NSCT coefficients and some proposed rules. After edge and CP extraction, mutual information was adopted for the registration of feature points and translation parameters are calculated by using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The experimental results showed that the proposed method produces totally accurate performance for registration medical CT-MR images.
Abstract: Addis Ababa is a seat of African Union (AU), United
Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) and hundreds of
embassies and consular representatives. Addis Ababa is one of the
highest capitals in the world with an average 2400 meters above sea
level. It is dichotomous city with a blend of modern high-rise and
deteriorating slum quarters. Water supply and sanitation, waste
management and housing are continuing to be serious problems.
Forest wood based domestic energy use as well as uncontrolled
emissions from mobile and fixed sources has endangered the state of
the urban environment. Analysis based on satellite imagery has
revealed the deteriorating urban environment within the last three
decades. The recently restructured city administration has brought
improvements in the condition of the urban environment. However,
the overwhelming size of the challenges faced by the city dwarfed
their fairly good results.
Abstract: Image registration plays an important role in the
diagnosis of dental pathologies such as dental caries, alveolar bone
loss and periapical lesions etc. This paper presents a new wavelet
based algorithm for registering noisy and poor contrast dental x-rays.
Proposed algorithm has two stages. First stage is a preprocessing
stage, removes the noise from the x-ray images. Gaussian filter has
been used. Second stage is a geometric transformation stage.
Proposed work uses two levels of affine transformation. Wavelet
coefficients are correlated instead of gray values. Algorithm has been
applied on number of pre and post RCT (Root canal treatment)
periapical radiographs. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and
Correlation coefficients (CC) are used for quantitative evaluation.
Proposed technique outperforms conventional Multiresolution
strategy based image registration technique and manual registration
technique.
Abstract: This paper presents a possibilistic (fuzzy) model in optimal siting and sizing of Distributed Generation (DG) for loss reduction and improve voltage profile in power distribution system. Multi-objective problem is developed in two phases. In the first one, the set of non-dominated planning solutions is obtained (with respect to the objective functions of fuzzy economic cost, and exposure) using genetic algorithm. In the second phase, one solution of the set of non-dominated solutions is selected as optimal solution, using a suitable max-min approach. This method can be determined operation-mode (PV or PQ) of DG. Because of considering load uncertainty in this paper, it can be obtained realistic results. The whole process of this method has been implemented in the MATLAB7 environment with technical and economic consideration for loss reduction and voltage profile improvement. Through numerical example the validity of the proposed method is verified.
Abstract: ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible
Markup Language) is an e-business standard, sponsored by
UN/CEFACT and OASIS, which enables enterprises to exchange
business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate
data in common terms and define and register business
processes. While there is tremendous e-business value in the
ebXML, security remains an unsolved problem and one of the
largest barriers to adoption. XML security technologies emerging
recently have extensibility and flexibility suitable for security
implementation such as encryption, digital signature, access
control and authentication.
In this paper, we propose ebXML business transaction models
that allow trading partners to securely exchange XML based
business transactions by employing XML security technologies.
We show how each XML security technology meets the ebXML
standard by constructing the test software and validating messages
between the trading partners.
Abstract: With the tremendous growth of World Wide Web
(WWW) data, there is an emerging need for effective information
retrieval at the document level. Several query languages such as
XML-QL, XPath, XQL, Quilt and XQuery are proposed in recent
years to provide faster way of querying XML data, but they still lack of
generality and efficiency. Our approach towards evolving a framework
for querying semistructured documents is based on formal query
algebra. Two elements are introduced in the proposed framework:
first, a generic and flexible data model for logical representation of
semistructured data and second, a set of operators for the manipulation
of objects defined in the data model. In additional to accommodating
several peculiarities of semistructured data, our model offers novel
features such as bidirectional paths for navigational querying and
partitions for data transformation that are not available in other
proposals.
Abstract: For best collaboration, Asynchronous tools and particularly the discussion forums are the most used thanks to their flexibility in terms of time. To convey only the messages that belong to a theme of interest of the tutor in order to help him during his tutoring work, use of a tool for classification of these messages is indispensable. For this we have proposed a semantics classification tool of messages of a discussion forum that is based on LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis), which includes a thesaurus to organize the vocabulary. Benefits offered by formal ontology can overcome the insufficiencies that a thesaurus generates during its use and encourage us then to use it in our semantic classifier. In this work we propose the use of some functionalities that a OWL ontology proposes. We then explain how functionalities like “ObjectProperty", "SubClassOf" and “Datatype" property make our classification more intelligent by way of integrating new terms. New terms found are generated based on the first terms introduced by tutor and semantic relations described by OWL formalism.
Abstract: Transportation authorities need to provide the services
and facilities that are critical to every country-s well-being and
development. Management of the road network is becoming
increasingly challenging as demands increase and resources are
limited. Public sector institutions are integrating performance
information into budgeting, managing and reporting via
implementing performance measurement systems. In the face of
growing challenges, performance measurement of road networks is
attracting growing interest in many countries. The large scale of
public investments makes the maintenance and development of road
networks an area where such systems are an important assessment
tool. Transportation agencies have been using performance
measurement and modeling as part of pavement and bridge
management systems. Recently the focus has been on extending the
process to applications in road construction and maintenance
systems, operations and safety programs, and administrative
structures and procedures. To eliminate failure and dysfunctional
consequences the importance of obtaining objective data and
implementing evaluation instrument where necessary is presented in
this paper
Abstract: The paper deals with results of a project “Interoperability Workplaces to Support Teaching of Security Management in a Computer Network". This project is focused on the perspectives and possibilities of "new approaches" to education, training and crisis communication of rescue teams in the Czech Republic. It means that common technologies considering new perspectives are used to educate selected members of crisis management. The main part concentrates on possibilities of application of new technology and computer-aided tools to education and training of Integrated Rescue System teams.This project uses the COST principle for the creation of specialized centers and for all communication between these workplaces.
Abstract: The direct sewage sludge application is a relative
cheap method for their liquidation. In the past heavy metal contents
increase in soils treated with sewage sludge was observed. In 2003
there was acceptance on act n.188/2003 about sewage sludge
application on soils. The basic philosophy of act is a safety of the
environmental proof of sludge application on soils. The samples of
soils from wastewater treatment plant (WTP) Poprad (35) and WTP
Michalovce (33 samples) were analyzed which were chosen for
sludge application on soils. According to the results only 14 areas for
Poprad and 25 areas for Michalovce are suitable for sludge
application according to act No. 188/2003. The application dose of
sludge was calculated 50 t.ha-1 or 75 t. ha-1 once in 5 years to ensure
that heavy metal contents in treated soils will be kept.
Abstract: Citizens are increasingly are provided with choice and
customization in public services and this has now also become a key
feature of higher education in terms of policy roll-outs on personal
development planning (PDP) and more generally as part of the
employability agenda. The goal here is to transform people, in this
case graduates, into active, responsible citizen-workers. A key part of
this rhetoric and logic is the inculcation of graduate attributes within
students. However, there has also been a concern with the issue of
student lack of engagement and perseverance with their studies. This
paper sets out to explore some of these conceptions that link graduate
attributes with citizenship as well as the notion of how identity is
forged through the higher education process. Examples are drawn
from a quality enhancement project that is being operated within the
context of the Scottish higher education system. This is further
framed within the wider context of competing and conflicting
demands on higher education, exacerbated by the current worldwide
economic climate. There are now pressures on students to develop
their employability skills as well as their capacity to engage with
global issues such as behavioural change in the light of
environmental concerns. It is argued that these pressures, in effect,
lead to a form of personalization that is concerned with how
graduates develop their sense of identity as something that is
engineered and re-engineered to meet these demands.
Abstract: Although, it is a long time that human know about
the importance of environment in life, but at the last decade of 20
century, the space that was full of hot scientific, collegial and
political were made in environmental challenge, So much that, this
problem not only disarrange the peace and security of life, but also it
has threatened human existence. One of the problems in last years
that are significant for authorities is unsatisfactory achieved results
against of using huge cost for magnificent environmental projects.
This subject leads thinker to this thought that for solving the
environmental problems it is needed new methods include of
sociology, ethics and philosophic, etc. methods apart of technical
affairs. Environment ethics is a new branch of philosophic ethics
discussion that discusses about the ethics relationship between
humans and universe that is around them. By notifying to the above
considered affairs, in today world, necessity of environmental ethics
for environment management is reduplicated. In the following the
article has been focused on environmental ethics role and
environmental management methods and techniques for developing
it.