Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate whether
magnetite nanoparticles affect the viability of Bradyrhizobium
japanicum cells residing on the surface of soybean seeds during
desiccation. Different concentrations of nanoparticles suspended in
liquid medium, mixed with and adhering to Bradyrhizobium
japanicum, were investigated at two temperatures, using both
soybean seeds and glass beads as surrogates. Statistical design was a
complete randomized block (CRB) in a factorial 6×2×2×6
experimental arrangement with four replications. The most important
variable was the viability of Bradyrhizobium on the surface of the
seeds. The nanoparticles increased Bradyrhizobium viability and
inoculated seeds stored at low temperature had greater viability when
nanoparticles had been added. At the optimum nanoparticle
concentration, 50% bacterium viability on the seeds was retained
after 5 days at 4ºC. Possible explanations for the observed effects are
proposed.
Abstract: The combustion chamber dimensions have important
effects on pollutant emission in furnaces as a direct result of
temperature distribution and maximum temperature value. In this
paper the pollutant emission and the temperature distribution in two
cylindrical furnaces with different dimensions (with similar length to
diameter ratio) in similar condition have been investigated
experimentally. The furnace fuel is gas oil that is used with three
different flow rates. The results show that in these two cases the
temperature increases to its maximum value quickly, and then
decreases slowly. The results also show that increase in fuel flow rate
cause to increase in NOx emission in each case, but this increase is
greater in small furnace. With increase in fuel flow rate, CO emission
decreases firstly, and then it increases. Combustion efficiency
reduces with increase in fuel flow rate but the rate of reduction in
small furnace is greater than large furnace. The results of axial
temperature distribution have been compared with those have been
obtained numerically and experimentally by Moghiman.
Abstract: A fault detection and identification (FDI) technique is
presented to create a fault tolerant control system (FTC). The fault
detection is achieved by monitoring the position of the light source
using an array of light sensors. When a decision is made about the
presence of a fault an identification process is initiated to locate the
faulty component and reconfigure the controller signals. The signals
provided by the sensors are predictable; therefore the existence of a
fault is easily identified. Identification of the faulty sensor is based on
the dynamics of the frame. The technique is not restricted to a
particular type of controllers and the results show consistency.
Abstract: In this work, we address theoretically the influence of red and white Gaussian noise for electronic energies and eigenstates of cylindrically shaped quantum dots. The stochastic effect can be imagined as resulting from crystal-growth statistical fluctuations in the quantum-dot material composition. In particular we obtain analytical expressions for the eigenvalue shifts and electronic envelope functions in the k . p formalism due to stochastic variations in the confining band-edge potential. It is shown that white noise in the band-edge potential leaves electronic properties almost unaffected while red noise may lead to changes in state energies and envelopefunction amplitudes of several percentages. In the latter case, the ensemble-averaged envelope function decays as a function of distance. It is also shown that, in a stochastic system, constant ensembleaveraged envelope functions are the only bounded solutions for the infinite quantum-wire problem and the energy spectrum is completely discrete. In other words, the infinite stochastic quantum wire behaves, ensemble-averaged, as an atom.
Abstract: Reverse Engineering is a very important process in
Software Engineering. It can be performed backwards from system
development life cycle (SDLC) in order to get back the source data
or representations of a system through analysis of its structure,
function and operation. We use reverse engineering to introduce an
automatic tool to generate system requirements from its program
source codes. The tool is able to accept the Cµ programming source
codes, scan the source codes line by line and parse the codes to
parser. Then, the engine of the tool will be able to generate system
requirements for that specific program to facilitate reuse and
enhancement of the program. The purpose of producing the tool is to
help recovering the system requirements of any system when the
system requirements document (SRD) does not exist due to
undocumented support of the system.
Abstract: Turbulent heat transfer to fluid flow through channel with triangular ribs of different angles are presented in this paper. Ansys 14 ICEM and Ansys 14 Fluent are used for meshing process and solving Navier stokes equations respectively. In this investigation three angles of triangular ribs with the range of Reynolds number varied from 20000 to 60000 at constant surface temperature are considered. The results show that the Nusselt number increases with the increase of Reynolds number for all cases at constant surface temperature. According to the profile of local Nusselt number on ribs walled of channel, the peak is at the midpoint between the two ribs. The maximum value of average Nusselt number is obtained for triangular ribs of angel 60°and at Reynolds number of 60000 compared to the Nusselt number for the ribs of angel 90° and 45° and at same Reynolds number. The recirculation regions generated by the ribs corresponding to the velocity streamline show the largest recirculation region at triangular ribs of angle 60° which also provides the highest enhancement of heat transfer.
Abstract: In this paper, an artificial neural network simulator is
employed to carry out diagnosis and prognosis on electric motor as
rotating machinery based on predictive maintenance. Vibration data
of the primary failed motor including unbalance, misalignment and
bearing fault were collected for training the neural network. Neural
network training was performed for a variety of inputs and the motor
condition was used as the expert training information. The main
purpose of applying the neural network as an expert system was to
detect the type of failure and applying preventive maintenance. The
advantage of this study is for machinery Industries by providing
appropriate maintenance that has an essential activity to keep the
production process going at all processes in the machinery industry.
Proper maintenance is pivotal in order to prevent the possible failures
in operating system and increase the availability and effectiveness of
a system by analyzing vibration monitoring and developing expert
system.
Abstract: This study uses natural water and the surface properties of powdered activated carbon to acclimatize organics, forming biofilms on the surface of powdered activated carbon. To investigate the influence of different hydraulic retention times on the removal efficacy of trace organics in raw water, and to determine the optimal hydraulic retention time of a biological powdered activated carbon system, this study selects ozone-treated water processed by Feng-shan Advanced Water Purification Plant in southern Taiwan for the experiment. The evaluation indicators include assimilable organic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, and total organic carbon. The results of this study can improve the quality of drinking water treated using advanced water purification procedures.
Abstract: A code has been developed in Mathematica using
Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) technique. The code was
tested for 2-D air flow around a circular cylinder. Same geometry
and flow properties were used in FLUENT 6.2 for comparison. The
results obtained from Mathematica simulation indicated significant
agreement with FLUENT calculations, hence providing insight into
particle nature of fluid flows.
Abstract: Some theoretical and experimental aspects related to
the conceptual analyses concerning the direct correspondence
identification between the shape, area and orientation of plantar
pressure and obtaining adequate corrective insoles by rapid
prototyping are presented in this paper. In the first part of the paper
there is the theoretical-correlative concept, which is the fundament of
correspondence deduction between plantar surface characteristics and
respectively corrective insoles. In the second part of the paper the
experimental equipment used to analyze and perform the
correspondence stages and then the integral ones between the
analyzed foot shapes and the ones with corrective insoles is
presented. In the final parte the results used to adapt the insoles
obtained by rapid prototyping but also some specific aspects and
conclusions of the conceptual analysis of direct and rapid
correspondence are shown.
Abstract: The main purpose of the research is to address the role of psychological harassment behaviors (mobbing) to which employees are exposed and personality characteristics over work alienation. Research population was composed of the employees of Provincial Special Administration. A survey with four sections was created to measure variables and reach out the basic goals of the research. Correlation and step-wise regression analyses were performed to investigate the separate and overall effects of sub-dimensions of psychological harassment behaviors and personality characteristic on work alienation of employees. Correlation analysis revealed significant but weak relationships between work alienation and psychological harassment and personality characteristics. Step-wise regression analysis revealed also significant relationships between work alienation variable and assault to personality, direct negative behaviors (sub dimensions of mobbing) and openness (sub-dimension of personality characteristics). Each variable was introduced into the model step by step to investigate the effects of significant variables in explaining the variations in work alienation. While the explanation ratio of the first model was 13%, the last model including three variables had an explanation ratio of 24%.
Abstract: Membrane distillation (MD) is a rising technology for
seawater or brine desalination process. In this work, an air gap
membrane distillation (AGMD) performance was investigated for
aqueous NaCl solution along with natural ground water and seawater.
In order to enhance the performance of the AGMD process in
desalination, that is, to get more flux, it is necessary to study the
effect of operating parameters on the yield of distillate water. The
influence of operational parameters such as feed flow rate, feed
temperature, feed salt concentration, coolant temperature and air gap
thickness on the membrane distillation (MD) permeation flux have
been investigated for low and high salt solution. the natural
application of ground water and seawater over 90 h continuous
operation, scale deposits observed on the membrane surface and
reduction in flux represents 23% for ground water and 60% for
seawater, in 90 h. This reduction was eliminated (less than 14 %) by
acidification of feed water. Hence, promote the research attention in
apply of AGMD for the ground water as well as seawater
desalination over today-s conventional RO operation.
Abstract: By means of Mawhin’s continuation theorem, we study a kind of third-order p-Laplacian functional differential equation with distributed delay in the form: ϕp(x (t)) = g t, 0 −τ x(t + s) dα(s) + e(t), some criteria to guarantee the existence of periodic solutions are obtained.
Abstract: The small interfering RNA (siRNA) alters the
regulatory role of mRNA during gene expression by translational
inhibition. Recent studies show that upregulation of mRNA because
serious diseases like cancer. So designing effective siRNA with good
knockdown effects plays an important role in gene silencing. Various
siRNA design tools had been developed earlier. In this work, we are
trying to analyze the existing good scoring second generation siRNA
predicting tools and to optimize the efficiency of siRNA prediction
by designing a computational model using Artificial Neural Network
and whole stacking energy (%G), which may help in gene silencing
and drug design in cancer therapy. Our model is trained and tested
against a large data set of siRNA sequences. Validation of our results
is done by finding correlation coefficient of experimental versus
observed inhibition efficacy of siRNA. We achieved a correlation
coefficient of 0.727 in our previous computational model and we
could improve the correlation coefficient up to 0.753 when the
threshold of whole tacking energy is greater than or equal to -32.5
kcal/mol.
Abstract: Unsteady natural convection and heat transfer in a square cavity partially filled with porous media using a thermal
non-equilibrium model is studied in this paper. The left vertical wall is
maintained at a constant hot temperature Th and the right vertical wall
is maintained at a constant cold temperature Tc, while the horizontal
walls are adiabatic. The governing equations are obtained by applying
the Darcy model and Boussinesq approximation. COMSOL’s finite
element method is used to solve the non-dimensional governing
equations together with specified boundary conditions. The governing
parameters of this study are the Rayleigh number (Ra = 10^5, and Ra = 10^6 ), Darcy namber (Da = 10^−2, and Da = 10^−3),
the modified thermal conductivity ratio (10^−1 ≤ γ ≤ 10^4), the inter-phase heat transfer coefficien (10^−1 ≤ H ≤ 10^3) and the
time dependent (0.001 ≤ τ ≤ 0.2). The results presented for
values of the governing parameters in terms of streamlines in both
fluid/porous-layer, isotherms of fluid in fluid/porous-layer, isotherms
of solid in porous layer, and average Nusselt number.
Abstract: Environmental investments, including ecological
projects, relating to the protection of atmosphere are today a need.
However, investing in the environment should be based on rational
management rules. This comes across a problem of selecting a
method to assess substances reduced during projects. Therefore, a
method allowing for the assessment of decision rationality has to be
found.
The purpose of this article is to present and systematise pollution
reduction assessment methods and illustrate theoretical analyses with
empirical data.
Empirical results confirm theoretical considerations, which proved
that the only method for judging pollution reduction, free of apparent
disadvantages, is the Eco 99-ratio method. To make decisions on
environmental projects, financing institutions should take into
account a rationality rule. Therefore the Eco 99-ratio method could
be applied to make decisions relating to environmental investments in
the area of air protection.
Abstract: The aim of this research is to develop the
understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from
consumers- perspective toward Thai mobile service providers.
Based on the survey from 400 mobile customers, the result
shows that four dimensions of CSR of Thai mobile service
providers consist of economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic
responsibility. These four CSR factors have positive impacts
on enhancing customer satisfaction except one item of
economic responsibility - profitability to shareholders. Ethical
dimension has the strongest impact on customer satisfaction.
Economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic responsibility and
customer satisfaction have major impact on loyalty, whilst
philanthropic component mostly affects loyalty.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to develop a storm water quality improvement strategy plan (WQISP) which assists managers and decision makers of local city councils in enhancing their activities to improve regional water quality. City of Gosnells in Western Australia has been considered as a case study. The procedure on developing the WQISP consists of reviewing existing water quality data, identifying water quality issues in the study areas and developing a decision making tool for the officers, managers and decision makers. It was found that land use type is the main factor affecting the water quality. Therefore, activities, sources and pollutants related to different land use types including residential, industrial, agricultural and commercial are given high importance during the study. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with coordinators of different management sections of the regional councils in order to understand the associated management framework and issues. The issues identified from these interviews were used in preparing the decision making tool. Variables associated with the defined “value versus threat" decision making tool are obtained from the intensive literature review. The main recommendations provided for improvement of water quality in local city councils, include non-structural, structural and management controls and potential impacts of climate change.
Abstract: Location-aware computing is a type of pervasive
computing that utilizes user-s location as a dominant factor for
providing urban services and application-related usages. One of the
important urban services is navigation instruction for wayfinders in a
city especially when the user is a tourist. The services which are
presented to the tourists should provide adapted location aware
instructions. In order to achieve this goal, the main challenge is to
find spatial relevant objects and location-dependent information. The
aim of this paper is the development of a reusable location-aware
model to handle spatial relevancy parameters in urban location-aware
systems. In this way we utilized ontology as an approach which could
manage spatial relevancy by defining a generic model. Our
contribution is the introduction of an ontological model based on the
directed interval algebra principles. Indeed, it is assumed that the
basic elements of our ontology are the spatial intervals for the user
and his/her related contexts. The relationships between them would
model the spatial relevancy parameters. The implementation language
for the model is OWLs, a web ontology language. The achieved
results show that our proposed location-aware model and the
application adaptation strategies provide appropriate services for the
user.
Abstract: The thermal expansion behaviour of silicon carbide
(SCS-2) fibre reinforced 6061 aluminium matrix composite subjected
to the influenced thermal mechanical cycling (TMC) process were
investigated. The thermal stress has important effect on the
longitudinal thermal expansion coefficient of the composites. The
present paper used experimental data of the thermal expansion
behaviour of a SiC/Al composite for temperatures up to 370°C, in
which their data was used for carrying out modelling of theoretical
predictions.