Abstract: Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation (SSF) of sugarcane bagasse by cellulase and Pachysolen tannophilus MTCC *1077 were investigated in the present study. Important process variables for ethanol production form pretreated bagasse were optimized using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) based on central composite design (CCD) experiments. A 23 five level CCD experiments with central and axial points was used to develop a statistical model for the optimization of process variables such as incubation temperature (25–45°) X1, pH (5.0–7.0) X2 and fermentation time (24–120 h) X3. Data obtained from RSM on ethanol production were subjected to the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and analyzed using a second order polynomial equation and contour plots were used to study the interactions among three relevant variables of the fermentation process. The fermentation experiments were carried out using an online monitored modular fermenter 2L capacity. The processing parameters setup for reaching a maximum response for ethanol production was obtained when applying the optimum values for temperature (32°C), pH (5.6) and fermentation time (110 h). Maximum ethanol concentration (3.36 g/l) was obtained from 50 g/l pretreated sugarcane bagasse at the optimized process conditions in aerobic batch fermentation. Kinetic models such as Monod, Modified Logistic model, Modified Logistic incorporated Leudeking – Piret model and Modified Logistic incorporated Modified Leudeking – Piret model have been evaluated and the constants were predicted.
Abstract: Humic acids (HAs) have been shown to activate some
ion uptakes along with stimulating the lateral roots at effective
concentration of micronutrients. However, the effects of HA on ion
adsorption by plant roots are not easily explainable due to the
varieties of HAs that differ from origins. Therefore, this study was
aimed to investigate the effect of various concentrations of HA
obtained from the compost derived from mix manures and some
agricultural wastes on the growth of eggplant seedlings (Solanum
melongena L. cv. Chao Praya) in tissue cultures at low nutrient level.
Egg plant seeds were surfaced sterilized and germinated in ½
Murashige and Skoog medium (MS) without HA added or in ¼ MS
supplemented with 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 ppm of HAs. Then, they
were cultured for 4 weeks under the controlled environment. The
results showed that seedlings grown on ¼MS supplemented with
HAs at the concentration of 25 and 50 ppm had the average plant
heights (2.49 and 2.28 cm, respectively) higher than the other
treatments. Both treatments also significantly showed the maximum
average fresh and dry weights (p
Abstract: Bacterial cellulose, a biopolysaccharide, is produced by the bacterium, Gluconacetobacter xylinus. Static batch fermentation for bacterial cellulose production was studied in sucrose and date syrup solutions (Bx. 10%) at 28 °C using G. xylinus (PTCC, 1734). Results showed that the maximum yields of bacterial cellulose (BC) were 4.35 and 1.69 g/l00 ml for date syrup and sucrose medium after 336 hours fermentation period, respectively. Comparison of FTIR spectrum of cellulose with BC indicated appropriate coincidence which proved that the component produced by G. xylinus was cellulose. Determination of the area under X-ray diffractometry patterns demonstrated that the crystallinity amount of cellulose (83.61%) was more than that for the BC (60.73%). The scanning electron microscopy imaging of BC and cellulose were carried out in two magnifications of 1 and 6K. Results showed that the diameter ratio of BC to cellulose was approximately 1/30 which indicated more delicacy of BC fibers relative to cellulose.
Abstract: The effect of the discontinuity of the rail ends and the
presence of lower modulus insulation material at the gap to the
variations of stresses in the insulated rail joint (IRJ) is presented. A
three-dimensional wheel – rail contact model in the finite element
framework is used for the analysis. It is shown that the maximum stress
occurs in the subsurface of the railhead when the wheel contact occurs
far away from the rail end and migrates to the railhead surface as the
wheel approaches the rail end; under this condition, the interface
between the rail ends and the insulation material has suffered
significantly increased levels of stress concentration. The ratio of the
elastic modulus of the railhead and insulation material is found to alter
the levels of stress concentration. Numerical result indicates that a
higher elastic modulus insulating material can reduce the stress
concentration in the railhead but will generate higher stresses in the
insulation material, leading to earlier failure of the insulation material
Abstract: Generally flow behavior in centrifugal fan is observed
to be in a state of instability with flow separation zones on suction
surface as well as near the front shroud. Overall performance of the
diffusion process in a centrifugal fan could be enhanced by
judiciously introducing the boundary layer suction slots. With easy
accessibility of CFD as an analytical tool, an extensive numerical
whole field analysis of the effect of boundary layer suction slots in
discrete regions of suspected separation points is possible. This paper
attempts to explore the effect of boundary layer suction slots
corresponding to various geometrical locations on the impeller with
converging configurations for the slots. The analysis shows that the
converging suction slots located on the impeller blade about 25%
from the trailing edge, significantly improves the static pressure
recovery across the fan. Also it is found that Slots provided at a
radial distance of about 12% from the leading and trailing edges
marginally improve the static pressure recovery across the fan.
Abstract: In this paper, a frequency-variation based method has
been proposed for transistor parameter estimation in a commonemitter
transistor amplifier circuit. We design an algorithm to estimate
the transistor parameters, based on noisy measurements of the output
voltage when the input voltage is a sine wave of variable frequency
and constant amplitude. The common emitter amplifier circuit has
been modelled using the transistor Ebers-Moll equations and the
perturbation technique has been used for separating the linear and
nonlinear parts of the Ebers-Moll equations. This model of the amplifier
has been used to determine the amplitude of the output sinusoid as
a function of the frequency and the parameter vector. Then, applying
the proposed method to the frequency components, the transistor
parameters have been estimated. As compared to the conventional
time-domain least squares method, the proposed method requires
much less data storage and it results in more accurate parameter
estimation, as it exploits the information in the time and frequency
domain, simultaneously. The proposed method can be utilized for
parameter estimation of an analog device in its operating range of
frequencies, as it uses data collected from different frequencies output
signals for parameter estimation.
Abstract: This paper proposes the novel model order
formulation scheme to design a discrete PID controller for higher
order linear time invariant discrete systems. Modified PSO (MPSO)
based model order formulation technique has used to obtain the
successful formulated second order system. PID controller is tuned to
meet the desired performance specification by using pole-zero
cancellation and proposed design procedures. Proposed PID
controller is attached with both higher order system and formulated
second order system. System specifications are tabulated and closed
loop response is observed for stabilization process. The proposed
method is illustrated through numerical examples from literature.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the chemical
degradation of the organophosphorus pesticide of parathion and
carbamate insecticide of methomyl in the aqueous phase through
Fenton process. With the employment of batch Fenton process, the
degradation of the two selected pesticides at different pH, initial
concentration, humic acid concentration, and Fenton reagent dosages
was explored. The Fenton process was found effective to degrade
parathion and methomyl. The optimal dosage of Fenton reagents (i.e.,
molar concentration ratio of H2O2 to Fe2+) at pH 7 for parathion
degradation was equal to 3, which resulted in 50% removal of
parathion. Similarly, the optimal dosage for methomyl degradation
was 1, resulting in 80% removal of methomyl. This study also found
that the presence of humic substances has enhanced pesticide
degradation by Fenton process significantly. The mass spectroscopy
results showed that the hydroxyl free radical may attack the single
bonds with least energy of investigated pesticides to form smaller
molecules which is more easily to degrade either through
physio-chemical or bilolgical processes.
Abstract: Let the vertices of a graph such that every two
adjacent vertices have different color is a very common problem in
the graph theory. This is known as proper coloring of graphs. The
possible number of different proper colorings on a graph with a given
number of colors can be represented by a function called the
chromatic polynomial. Two graphs G and H are said to be
chromatically equivalent, if they share the same chromatic
polynomial. A Graph G is chromatically unique, if G is isomorphic to
H for any graph H such that G is chromatically equivalent to H. The
study of chromatically equivalent and chromatically unique problems
is called chromaticity. This paper shows that a wheel W12 is
chromatically unique.
Abstract: Over the past decades, automatic face recognition has become a highly active research area, mainly due to the countless application possibilities in both the private as well as the public sector. Numerous algorithms have been proposed in the literature to cope with the problem of face recognition, nevertheless, a group of methods commonly referred to as appearance based have emerged as the dominant solution to the face recognition problem. Many comparative studies concerned with the performance of appearance based methods have already been presented in the literature, not rarely with inconclusive and often with contradictory results. No consent has been reached within the scientific community regarding the relative ranking of the efficiency of appearance based methods for the face recognition task, let alone regarding their susceptibility to appearance changes induced by various environmental factors. To tackle these open issues, this paper assess the performance of the three dominant appearance based methods: principal component analysis, linear discriminant analysis and independent component analysis, and compares them on equal footing (i.e., with the same preprocessing procedure, with optimized parameters for the best possible performance, etc.) in face verification experiments on the publicly available XM2VTS database. In addition to the comparative analysis on the XM2VTS database, ten degraded versions of the database are also employed in the experiments to evaluate the susceptibility of the appearance based methods on various image degradations which can occur in "real-life" operating conditions. Our experimental results suggest that linear discriminant analysis ensures the most consistent verification rates across the tested databases.
Abstract: Dill contains range of phytochemicals, such as vitamin C and polyphenols, which significantly contribute to their total antioxidant activity. The aim of the current research was to determine the best blanching method for processing of dill prior to microwave vacuum drying based on the content of phenolic compounds, vitamin C and free radical scavenging activity. Two blanching mediums were used – water and steam, and for part of the samples microwave pretreatment was additionally used. Evaluation of vitamin C, phenolic contents and scavenging of DPPH˙ radical in dried dill was performed. Blanching had an effect on all tested parameters and the blanching conditions are very important. After evaluation of the results, as the best method for dill pretreatment was established blanching at 90 °C for 30 seconds.
Abstract: In this paper, we proposed a method to classify each
type of natural rock texture. Our goal is to classify 26 classes of rock
textures. First, we extract five features of each class by using
principle component analysis combining with the use of applied
spatial frequency measurement. Next, the effective node number of
neural network was tested. We used the most effective neural
network in classification process. The results from this system yield
quite high in recognition rate. It is shown that high recognition rate
can be achieved in separation of 26 stone classes.
Abstract: This paper study the behavior of the solution at the crack edges for an elliptical crack with developing cusps, Ω in the plane elasticity subjected to shear loading. The problem of finding the resulting shear stress can be formulated as a hypersingular integral equation over Ω and it is then transformed into a similar equation over a circular region, D, using conformal mapping. An appropriate collocation points are chosen on the region D to reduce the hypersingular integral equation into a system of linear equations with (2N+1)(N+1) unknown coefficients, which will later be used in the determination of shear stress intensity factors and maximum shear stress intensity. Numerical solution for the considered problem are compared with the existing asymptotic solution, and displayed graphically. Our results give a very good agreement to the existing asymptotic solutions.
Abstract: It can be said that the business sector is faced with a range of challenges–a rapidly changing business environment, an increase and diversification of customers- demands and the consequent need for quick response–for having in place flexible management and production info systems. As a matter of fact, many manufacturers have adopted production info management systems such as MES and ERP. Nevertheless, managers are having difficulties obtaining ever-changing production process information in real time, or responding quickly to any change in production related needs on the basis of such information. This is because they rely on poor production info systems which are not capable of providing real-time factory settings. If the manufacturer doesn-t have a capacity for collecting or digitalizing the 4 Ms (Man, Machine, Material, Method), which are resources for production, on a real time basis, it might to difficult to effectively maintain the information on production process. In this regard, this paper will introduce some new alternatives to the existing methods of collecting the 4 Ms in real time, which are currently comprise the production field.
Abstract: The nonlinear chaotic non-autonomous fourth order
system is algebraically simple but can generate complex chaotic
attractors. In this paper, non-autonomous fourth order chaotic
oscillator circuits were designed and simulated. Also chaotic nonautonomous
Attractor is addressed suitable for chaotic masking
communication circuits using Matlab® and MultiSIM® programs.
We have demonstrated in simulations that chaos can be synchronized
and applied to signal masking communications. We suggest that this
phenomenon of chaos synchronism may serve as the basis for little
known chaotic non-autonomous Attractor to achieve signal masking
communication applications. Simulation results are used to visualize
and illustrate the effectiveness of non-autonomous chaotic system in
signal masking. All simulations results performed on nonautonomous
chaotic system are verify the applicable of secure
communication.
Abstract: Enterprise applications are complex systems that are hard to develop and deploy in organizations. Although software application development tools, frameworks, methodologies and patterns are rapidly developing; many projects fail by causing big costs. There are challenging issues that programmers and designers face with while working on enterprise applications. In this paper, we present the three of the significant issues: Architectural, technological and performance. The important subjects in each issue are pointed out and recommendations are given. In architectural issues the lifecycle, meta-architecture, guidelines are pointed out. .NET and Java EE platforms are presented in technological issues. The importance of performance, measuring performance and profilers are explained in performance issues.
Abstract: Nowadays, desalination of salt water is considered an important industrial process. In many parts of the world, particularly in the gulf countries, the multi-stage flash (MSF) water desalination has an essential contribution in the production of fresh water. In this study, a simple mathematical model is defined to design a MSF desalination system and the feasibility of using the MSF desalination process in proximity of a 42 MW power plant is investigated. This power plant can just provide 10 ton/h superheated steam from low pressure (LP) section of heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) for thermal desalting system. The designed MSF system with gained output ratio (GOR) of 10.3 has 24 flashing stages and can produce 2480 ton/d of fresh water. The expected performance characteristics of the designed MSF desalination plant are determined. In addition, the effect of motive water pressure on the amount of non-condensable gases removed by water jet vacuum pumps is investigated.
Abstract: Rainbow trout homogametic males, (XX or YY sex genotype), can be obtained, respectively, through masculinisation of genetic females or induced androgenesis. Aim of this study was to compare reproductive potential of neo-males (XX) and super-males (YY) with heterogametic males (XY). We measured spermatozoa motility parameters, sperm concentration, osmolality and characterized protein profiles in samples of stripped and testicular sperm obtained from XY and YY males, and testicular sperm of XX males. The motile spermatozoa, as measured by both subjective method and CASA, showed no differences between testicular sperm of XX males and stripped sperm of XY and YY males whereas testicular sperm of XY and YY males had significantly lower sperm motility. Result of protein densitometry showed similarities in protein profile between seminal plasma of XY and YY males and testicular fluids of XX males. Testis of XX males showed specific histological structures of cysts consists hypertrophied Sertoli cells.
Abstract: These All pig-producing countries from around the world report the presence of Postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS.) In America, PCV2 has been recognized in Canada, United States and Brazil. Knowledge concerning the genetic sequences of PMWS has been very important. In Mexico, there is no report describing the genetic sequences and variations of the PCV2 virus present around the country. For this reason, the main objective was to describe the homology and genetic sequences of the PCV2 virus obtained from different regions of Mexico. The results show that in Mexico are present both subgenotypes \"a\" and \"b\" of this virus and the homologies are from 89 to 99%. Regarding with the aminoacid sequence, three major heterogenic regions were present in the position 59-91, 123–136 and 185–210. This study presents the results of the first genetic characterization of PCV2 in production herds from Mexico.
Abstract: In this paper, we proposed the direct method for converting
Finite-Impulse Response (FIR) filter with low nonzero tap
into Infinite-Impulse Response (IIR) filter using the pre-determined
table. The prony method is used by ghost cancellator which is IIR
approximation to FIR filter which is better performance than IIR and
have much larger calculation difference. The direct method for many
ghost combination with low nonzero tap of NTSC(National Television
System Committee) TV signal in Korea is described. The proposed
method is illustrated with an example.