Abstract: The sequential morphologic changes of rabbit duodenal mucosa-submucosa were studied from primodial stage to birth in 15 fetuses and during the early days of life in 21 rabbit newborns till maturity using light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Fetal rabbit duodenum develops from a simple tube of stratified epithelium to a tube containing villus and intervillus regions of simple columnar epithelium. By day 21 of gestation, the first rudimentary villi were appeared and by day 24 the first true villi were appeared. The Crypts of Lieberkuhn did not appear until birth. By the first day of postnatal life the duodenal glands appeared. The histological maturity of the rabbit small intestine occurred one month after birth. In conclusion, at all stages, the sequential morphologic changes of the rabbit small intestine developed to meet the structural and physiological demands during the fetal stage to be prepared to extra uterine life.
Abstract: Use of microemulsion in enhanced oil recovery has become more attractive in recent years because of its high level of extraction efficiency. Experimental investigations have been made on characterization of microemulsions of oil-brinesurfactant/ cosurfactant system for its use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Sodium dodecyl sulfate, propan-1-ol and heptane were selected as surfactant, cosurfactant and oil respectively for preparation of microemulsion. The effects of salinity on the relative phase volumes and solubilization parameters have also been studied. As salinity changes from low to high value, phase transition takes place from Winsor I to Winsor II via Winsor III. Suitable microemulsion composition has been selected based on its stability and ability to reduce interfacial tension. A series of flooding experiments have been performed using the selected microemulsion. The flooding experiments were performed in a core flooding apparatus using uniform sand pack. The core holder was tightly packed with uniform sands (60-100 mesh) and saturated with brines of different salinities. It was flooded with the brine at 25 psig and the absolute permeability was calculated from the flow rate of the through sand pack. The sand pack was then flooded with the crude oil at 800 psig to irreducible water saturation. The initial water saturation was determined on the basis of mass balance. Waterflooding was conducted by placing the coreholder horizontally at a constant injection pressure at 200 pisg. After water flooding, when water-cut reached above 95%, around 0.5 pore volume (PV) of the above microemulsion slug was injected followed by chasing water. The experiments were repeated using different composition of microemulsion slug. The additional recoveries were calculated by material balance. Encouraging results with additional recovery more than 20% of original oil in place above the conventional water flooding have been observed.
Abstract: Biodiversity crisis is one of the many crises that
started at the turn of the millennia. Concrete form of expression is
still disputed, but there is a relatively high consensus regarding the
high rate of degradation and the urgent need for action. The strategy
of action outlines a strong economic component, together with the
recognition of market mechanisms as the most effective policies to
protect biodiversity. In this context, biodiversity and ecosystem
services are natural assets that play a key role in economic strategies
and technological development to promote development and
prosperity. Developing and strengthening policies for transition to an
economy based on efficient use of resources is the way forward.
To emphasize the co-viability specific to the connection economyecosystem
services, scientific approach aimed on one hand how to
implement policies for nature conservation and on the other hand, the
concepts underlying the economic expression of ecosystem services-
value, in the context of current technology. Following the analysis of
business opportunities associated with changes in ecosystem services
was concluded that development of market mechanisms for nature
conservation is a trend that is increasingly stronger individualized
within recent years. Although there are still many controversial issues
that have already given rise to an obvious bias, international
organizations and national governments have initiated and
implemented in cooperation or independently such mechanisms.
Consequently, they created the conditions for convergence between
private interests and social interests of nature conservation, so there
are opportunities for ongoing business development which leads,
among other things, the positive effects on biodiversity. Finally,
points out that markets fail to quantify the value of most ecosystem
services. Existing price signals reflect at best, only a proportion of the
total amount corresponding provision of food, water or fuel.
Abstract: Leprosy is an infectious disease caused by
Mycobacterium Leprae, this disease, generally, compromises
the neural fibers, leading to the development of disability.
Disabilities are changes that limit daily activities or social life
of a normal individual. When comes to leprosy, the study of
disability considered the functional limitation (physical
disabilities), the limitation of activity and social participation,
which are measured respectively by the scales: EHF, SALSA
and PARTICIPATION SCALE. The objective of this work is
to propose an on-line monitoring of leprosy patients, which is
based on information scales EHF, SALSA and
PARTICIPATION SCALE. It is expected that the proposed
system is applied in monitoring the patient during treatment
and after healing therapy of the disease. The correlations that
the system is between the scales create a variety of
information, presented the state of the patient and full of
changes or reductions in disability. The system provides
reports with information from each of the scales and the
relationships that exist between them. This way, health
professionals, with access to patient information, can
intervene with techniques for the Prevention of Disability.
Through the automated scale, the system shows the level of
the patient and allows the patient, or the responsible, to take a
preventive measure. With an online system, it is possible take
the assessments and monitor patients from anywhere.
Abstract: Temperature, humidity and precipitation in an area,
are parameters proved influential in the climate of that area, and one
should recognize them so that he can determine the climate of that
area. Climate changes are of primary importance in climatology, and
in recent years, have been of great concern to researchers and even
politicians and organizations, for they can play an important role in
social, political and economic activities. Even though the real cause
of climate changes or their stability is not yet fully recognized, they
are a matter of concern to researchers and their importance for
countries has prompted them to investigate climate changes in
different levels, especially in regional, national and continental level.
This issue has less been investigated in our country. However, in
recent years, there have been some researches and conferences on
climate changes. This study is also in line with such researches and
tries to investigate and analyze the trends of climate changes
(temperature and precipitation) in Sefid-roud (the name of a river)
basin. Three parameters of mean annual precipitation, temperature,
and maximum and minimum temperatures in 36 synoptic and
climatology stations in a statistical period of 49 years (1956-2005) in
the stations of Sefid-roud basin were analyzed by Mann-Kendall test.
The results obtained by data analysis show that climate changes are
short term and have a trend. The analysis of mean temperature
revealed that changes have a significantly rising trend, besides the
precipitation has a significantly falling trend.
Abstract: A new Feed-Forward/Feedback Generalized
Minimum Variance Pole-placement Controller to incorporate the
robustness of classical pole-placement into the flexibility of
generalized minimum variance self-tuning controller for Single-Input
Single-Output (SISO) has been proposed in this paper. The design,
which provides the user with an adaptive mechanism, which ensures
that the closed loop poles are, located at their pre-specified positions.
In addition, the controller design which has a feed-forward/feedback
structure overcomes the certain limitations existing in similar poleplacement
control designs whilst retaining the simplicity of
adaptation mechanisms used in other designs. It tracks set-point
changes with the desired speed of response, penalizes excessive
control action, and can be applied to non-minimum phase systems.
Besides, at steady state, the controller has the ability to regulate the
constant load disturbance to zero. Example simulation results using
both simulated and real plant models demonstrate the effectiveness of
the proposed controller.
Abstract: This paper investigates the problem of tracking spa¬tiotemporal changes of a satellite image through the use of Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD). The purpose of this study is to help a given user effectively discover interesting knowledge and then build prediction and decision models. Unfortunately, the KDD process for spatiotemporal data is always marked by several types of imperfections. In our paper, we take these imperfections into consideration in order to provide more accurate decisions. To achieve this objective, different KDD methods are used to discover knowledge in satellite image databases. Each method presents a different point of view of spatiotemporal evolution of a query model (which represents an extracted object from a satellite image). In order to combine these methods, we use the evidence fusion theory which considerably improves the spatiotemporal knowledge discovery process and increases our belief in the spatiotemporal model change. Experimental results of satellite images representing the region of Auckland in New Zealand depict the improvement in the overall change detection as compared to using classical methods.
Abstract: Most fingerprint recognition techniques are based on minutiae matching and have been well studied. However, this technology still suffers from problems associated with the handling of poor quality impressions. One problem besetting fingerprint matching is distortion. Distortion changes both geometric position and orientation, and leads to difficulties in establishing a match among multiple impressions acquired from the same finger tip. Marking all the minutiae accurately as well as rejecting false minutiae is another issue still under research. Our work has combined many methods to build a minutia extractor and a minutia matcher. The combination of multiple methods comes from a wide investigation into research papers. Also some novel changes like segmentation using Morphological operations, improved thinning, false minutiae removal methods, minutia marking with special considering the triple branch counting, minutia unification by decomposing a branch into three terminations, and matching in the unified x-y coordinate system after a two-step transformation are used in the work.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the influence
of reaction temperature and wheat straw moisture content on the
pyrolysis product yields, in the temperature range of 475-575 °C.
Samples of straw with moisture contents from 1.5 wt % to 15.0 wt %
were fed to a bench scale Pyrolysis Centrifuge Reactor (PCR). The
experimental results show that the changes in straw moisture content
have no significant effect on the distribution of pyrolysis product
yields. The maximum bio-oil yields approximately 60 (wt %, on dry
ash free feedstock basis) was observed around 525 °C - 550 °C for all
straw moisture levels. The water content in the wet straw bio-oil was
the highest. The heating value of bio-oil and solid char were
measured and the percentages of its energy distribution were
calculated. The energy distributions of bio-oil, char and gas were 56-
69 % 24-33 %, and 2-19 %, respectively.
Abstract: This paper presents the investigation results of UV
measurement at different level of altitudes and the development of a
new portable instrument for measuring UV. The rapid growth of
industrial sectors in developing countries including Malaysia, brings
not only income to the nation, but also causes pollution in various
forms. Air pollution is one of the significant contributors to global
warming by depleting the Ozone layer, which would reduce the
filtration of UV rays. Long duration of exposure to high to UV rays
has many devastating health effects to mankind directly or indirectly
through destruction of the natural resources. This study aimed to
show correlation between UV and altitudes which indirectly can help
predict Ozone depletion. An instrument had been designed to
measure and monitors the level of UV. The instrument comprises of
two main blocks namely data logger and Graphic User Interface
(GUI). Three sensors were used in the data logger to detect changes
in the temperature, humidity and ultraviolet. The system has
undergone experimental measurement to capture data at two different
conditions; industrial area and high attitude area. The performance of
the instrument showed consistency in the data captured and the
results of the experiment drew a significantly high reading of UV at
high altitudes.
Abstract: Although e-mail is the most efficient and popular communication method, unwanted and mass unsolicited e-mails, also called spam mail, endanger the existence of the mail system. This paper proposes a new algorithm called Dynamic Weighted Majority Concept Drift Detection (DWM-CDD) for content-based filtering. The design purposes of DWM-CDD are first to accurate the performance of the previously proposed algorithms, and second to speed up the time to construct the model. The results show that DWM-CDD can detect both sudden and gradual changes quickly and accurately. Moreover, the time needed for model construction is less than previously proposed algorithms.
Abstract: Each year many people are reported missing in most of the countries in the world owing to various reasons. Arrangements have to be made to find these people after some time. So the investigating agencies are compelled to make out these people by using manpower. But in many cases, the investigations carried out to find out an absconding for a long time may not be successful. At a time like that it may be difficult to identify these people by examining their old photographs, because their facial appearance might have changed mainly due to the natural aging process. On some occasions in forensic medicine if a dead body is found, investigations should be held to make sure that this corpse belongs to the same person disappeared some time ago. With the passage of time the face of the person might have changed and there should be a mechanism to reveal the person-s identity. In order to make this process easy, we must guess and decide as to how he will look like by now. To address this problem this paper presents a way of synthesizing a facial image with the aging effects.
Abstract: Whilst there is growing evidence that activity across
the lifespan is beneficial for improved health, there are also many
changes involved with the aging process and subsequently the
potential for reduced indices of health. The nexus between all forms
of health, physical activity and aging is complex and has raised much
interest in recent times due to the realization that a multifaceted
approached is necessary in order to counteract a growing obesity
epidemic. By investigating age based trends within a population
adherring to competitive sport at older ages, further insight might be
gleaned to assist in understanding one of many factors influencing
this relationship. This study evaluated those sport psychological
constructs of health, physical fitness, mental health states, and social
dimension factors in sport that were associated with factors to
participate in sport and physical activity based on responses from the
2009 World Masters Games in Sydney. The sample consisted of
7846 athletes who competed at the games and who completed a 56
item sports participation survey using a 7-point Likert response (1 -
not important to 7 - very important). Questions focuses on factors
thought to promote participation, such as weight control, living
longer, improving mental health (self-esteem, mood states),
improving physical health and factors related to the athlete-s
competitive perspective. The most significant factors related to
participation with this cohort of masters athletes were the socializing
environment of sport, getting physically fit and improving
competitive personal best performances. Strategies to increase
participation in masters sport should focus on these factors as other
factors such as weight loss, improving mental health and living
longer were not identified as important determinates of sports
participation at the World Masters level.
Abstract: The aim of the study was to determine how different
ripening processes (traditional vs. industrial) influenced the
proteolysis in traditional Serbian dry-fermented sausage Petrovská
klobása. The obtained results indicated more intensive pH decline
(0.7 units after 9 days) in industrially ripened products (I), what had a
positive impact on drying process and proteolytic changes in these
samples. Thus, moisture content in I sausages was lower at each
sampling time, amounting 24.7% at the end of production period
(90 days). Likewise, the process of proteolysis was more pronounced
in I samples, resulting in higher contents of non-protein nitrogen
(NPN) and free amino acids nitrogen (FAAN), as well as in faster
and more intensive degradation of myosin (≈220 kDa), actin (≈45
kDa) and other polypeptides during processing. Consequently, the
appearance and accumulation of several protein fragments were
registered.
Abstract: This article presents a computationally tractable probabilistic model for the relation between the complex wavelet coefficients of two images of the same scene. The two images are acquisitioned at distinct moments of times, or from distinct viewpoints, or by distinct sensors. By means of the introduced probabilistic model, we argue that the similarity between the two images is controlled not by the values of the wavelet coefficients, which can be altered by many factors, but by the nature of the wavelet coefficients, that we model with the help of hidden state variables. We integrate this probabilistic framework in the construction of a new image registration algorithm. This algorithm has sub-pixel accuracy and is robust to noise and to other variations like local illumination changes. We present the performance of our algorithm on various image types.
Abstract: Nowadays there is a growing interest in biofuel production in most countries because of the increasing concerns about hydrocarbon fuel shortage and global climate changes, also for enhancing agricultural economy and producing local needs for transportation fuel. Ethanol can be produced from biomass by the hydrolysis and sugar fermentation processes. In this study ethanol was produced without using expensive commercial enzymes from sugarcane bagasse. Alkali pretreatment was used to prepare biomass before enzymatic hydrolysis. The comparison between NaOH, KOH and Ca(OH)2 shows NaOH is more effective on bagasse. The required enzymes for biomass hydrolysis were produced from sugarcane solid state fermentation via two fungi: Trichoderma longibrachiatum and Aspergillus niger. The results show that the produced enzyme solution via A. niger has functioned better than T. longibrachiatum. Ethanol was produced by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with crude enzyme solution from T. longibrachiatum and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast. To evaluate this procedure, SSF of pretreated bagasse was also done using Celluclast 1.5L by Novozymes. The yield of ethanol production by commercial enzyme and produced enzyme solution via T. longibrachiatum was 81% and 50% respectively.
Abstract: Advances in information technology, recent changes in business environment, globalization, deregulation, privatization have made running a successful business more difficult than ever before. To remain successful and to be competitive have forced companies to react to the new changes in order to survive and succeed. The implementation of an Enterprise Resource planning (ERP) system improves information flow, reduce costs, establish linkage with suppliers and reduce response time to customer needs. This paper focuses on a sample of Greek companies, investigates the ERP market in Greece, the reasons why the Greek companies are investing in ERP systems, the benefits that users have achieved and the influence of ERP systems on the use of new accounting practices. The results indicate a greater level on information integration, flexibility in information access and greater functionality provided by ERP systems but little influence on the use of new accounting practices.
Abstract: Polymer-like organic thin films were deposited on both
aluminum alloy type 6061 and glass substrates at room temperature by
Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) methodusing
benzene and hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) as precursor materials.
The surface and physical properties of plasma-polymerized organic
thin films were investigated at different r.f. powers. The effects of
benzene/argon ratio on the properties of plasma polymerized benzene
films were also investigated. It is found that using benzene alone
results in a non-coherent and non-adherent powdery deposited
material. The chemical structure and surface properties of the asgrown
plasma polymerized thin films were analyzed on glass
substrates with FTIR and contact angle measurements. FTIR spectra
of benzene deposited film indicated that the benzene rings are
preserved when increasing benzene ratio and/or decreasing r.f.
powers. FTIR spectra of HMDSO deposited films indicated an
increase of the hydrogen concentration and a decrease of the oxygen
concentration with the increase of r.f. power. The contact angle (θ) of
the films prepared from benzene was found to increase by about 43%
as benzene ratio increases from 10% to 20%. θ was then found to
decrease to the original value (51°) when the benzene ratio increases
to 100%. The contact angle, θ, for both benzene and HMDSO
deposited films were found to increase with r.f. power. This signifies
that the plasma polymerized organic films have substantially low
surface energy as the r.f power increases. The corrosion resistance of
aluminum alloy substrate both bare and covered with plasma
polymerized thin films was carried out by potentiodynamic
polarization measurements in standard 3.5 wt. % NaCl solution at
room temperature. The results indicate that the benzene and HMDSO
deposited films are suitable for protection of the aluminum substrate
against corrosion. The changes in the processing parameters seem to
have a strong influence on the film protective ability. Surface
roughness of films deposited on aluminum alloy substrate was
investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The SEM
images indicate that the surface roughness of benzene deposited films
increase with decreasing the benzene ratio. SEM images of benzene
and HMDSO deposited films indicate that the surface roughness
decreases with increasing r.f. power. Studying the above parameters
indicate that the films produced are suitable for specific practical
applications.
Abstract: One of the essential components of much of DSP
application is noise cancellation. Changes in real time signals are
quite rapid and swift. In noise cancellation, a reference signal which
is an approximation of noise signal (that corrupts the original
information signal) is obtained and then subtracted from the noise
bearing signal to obtain a noise free signal. This approximation of
noise signal is obtained through adaptive filters which are self
adjusting. As the changes in real time signals are abrupt, this needs
adaptive algorithm that converges fast and is stable. Least mean
square (LMS) and normalized LMS (NLMS) are two widely used
algorithms because of their plainness in calculations and
implementation. But their convergence rates are small. Adaptive
averaging filters (AFA) are also used because they have high
convergence, but they are less stable. This paper provides the
comparative study of LMS and Normalized NLMS, AFA and new
enhanced average adaptive (Average NLMS-ANLMS) filters for noise
cancelling application using speech signals.
Abstract: In the recent past, there has been an increasing interest
in applying evolutionary methods to Knowledge Discovery in
Databases (KDD) and a number of successful applications of Genetic
Algorithms (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP) to KDD have been
demonstrated. The most predominant representation of the
discovered knowledge is the standard Production Rules (PRs) in the
form If P Then D. The PRs, however, are unable to handle
exceptions and do not exhibit variable precision. The Censored
Production Rules (CPRs), an extension of PRs, were proposed by
Michalski & Winston that exhibit variable precision and supports an
efficient mechanism for handling exceptions. A CPR is an
augmented production rule of the form:
If P Then D Unless C, where C (Censor) is an exception to the rule.
Such rules are employed in situations, in which the conditional
statement 'If P Then D' holds frequently and the assertion C holds
rarely. By using a rule of this type we are free to ignore the exception
conditions, when the resources needed to establish its presence are
tight or there is simply no information available as to whether it
holds or not. Thus, the 'If P Then D' part of the CPR expresses
important information, while the Unless C part acts only as a switch
and changes the polarity of D to ~D.
This paper presents a classification algorithm based on evolutionary
approach that discovers comprehensible rules with exceptions in the
form of CPRs.
The proposed approach has flexible chromosome encoding, where
each chromosome corresponds to a CPR. Appropriate genetic
operators are suggested and a fitness function is proposed that
incorporates the basic constraints on CPRs. Experimental results are
presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.