Abstract: Ipomoea batatas (Sweetpotato) is currently ranked
sixth in the total world food production and are planted mainly for
their storage roots. The present study was undertaken to evaluate and
compare the antioxidant properties of the leaf and carotenoids extract
from the Ipomoea batatas var. Oren leaves. Total flavonoids in the
leaf extract was 144.6 ± 40.5 μg/g compared to 114.86 ± 4.35 μg/g
catechin equivalent in the carotenoids extract. Total polyphenols in
the leaf extracts (3.470 ± 0.024 GAE g/100g DW) was slightly higher
compared to carotenoids extract (2.994 ± 0.078 GAE g/100g DW).
The carotenoids extract marked a higher radical scavenging capacity
with the IC50= 491.86 μg/ml compared to leaf extract (IC50= 545.39
μg/ml). Concentration-dependent reducing activity was observed for
both extracts. Thus, the carotenoids extraction process retained most
of the antioxidant capacity from the leaves and can be made into
potential natural yellow dye with antioxidant property.
Abstract: A modified Saleh-Valenzuela channel model has been
adapted for Ultra Wideband (UWB) system. The suggested realistic
channel is assessed by its distribution of fading amplitude and time of
arrivals. Furthermore, the propagation characteristic has been distinct
into four channel models, namely CM 1 to 4. Each are differentiate in
terms of cluster arrival rates, rays arrival rate within each cluster and
its respective constant decay rates. This paper described the
multiband OFDM system performance simulates under these
multipath conditions. Simulation work described in this paper is
based on WiMedia ECMA-368 standard, which has been deployed
for practical implementation of low cost and low power UWB
devices.
Abstract: The 9/11 suicide attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, triggered a number of security responses both in the United States of America and other Countries in the World. Kenya, which is an ally and a close partner to North America and Europe, was not left behind. While many states had been parties to numerous terrorism conventions, their response in implementing them had been slow and needed this catalyst. This special case offered a window of opportunity for many “security conscious" regimes in cementing their legal-criminological and political security apparatus. At the international level, the 9/11 case led to the hasty adoption of Security Council resolution 1373 in 2001, which called upon states to adopt wide-ranging and comprehensive steps and strategies to combat international terrorism and to become parties to the relevant international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism. Since then, Kenya has responded with speed in devising social-legal-criminological-political actions.
Abstract: Mendelian Disease Genes represent a collection of single points of failure for the various systems they constitute. Such genes have been shown, on average, to encode longer proteins than 'non-disease' proteins. Existing models suggest that this results from the increased likeli-hood of longer genes undergoing mutations. Here, we show that in saturated mutagenesis experiments performed on model organisms, where the likelihood of each gene mutating is one, a similar relationship between length and the probability of a gene being lethal was observed. We thus suggest an extended model demonstrating that the likelihood of a mutated gene to produce a severe phenotype is length-dependent. Using the occurrence of conserved domains, we bring evidence that this dependency results from a correlation between protein length and the number of functions it performs. We propose that protein length thus serves as a proxy for protein cardinality in different networks required for the organism's survival and well-being. We use this example to argue that the collection of Mendelian Disease Genes can, and should, be used to study the rules governing systems vulnerability in living organisms.
Abstract: We depend upon explanation in order to “make sense"
out of our world. And, making sense is all the more important when
dealing with change. But, what happens if our explanations are
wrong? This question is examined with respect to two types of
explanatory model. Models based on labels and categories we shall
refer to as “representations." More complex models involving
stories, multiple algorithms, rules of thumb, questions, ambiguity we
shall refer to as “compressions." Both compressions and
representations are reductions. But representations are far more
reductive than compressions. Representations can be treated as a set
of defined meanings – coherence with regard to a representation is
the degree of fidelity between the item in question and the definition
of the representation, of the label. By contrast, compressions contain
enough degrees of freedom and ambiguity to allow us to make
internal predictions so that we may determine our potential actions in
the possibility space. Compressions are explanatory via mechanism.
Representations are explanatory via category. Managers are often
confusing their evocation of a representation (category inclusion) as
the creation of a context of compression (description of mechanism).
When this type of explanatory error occurs, more errors follow. In
the drive for efficiency such substitutions are all too often proclaimed
– at the manager-s peril..
Abstract: Compaction testing methods allow at-speed detecting
of errors while possessing low cost of implementation. Owing to this
distinctive feature, compaction methods have been widely used for
built-in testing, as well as external testing. In the latter case, the
bandwidth requirements to the automated test equipment employed
are relaxed which reduces the overall cost of testing. Concurrent
compaction testing methods use operational signals to detect
misbehavior of the device under test and do not require input test
stimuli. These methods have been employed for digital systems only.
In the present work, we extend the use of compaction methods for
concurrent testing of analog-to-digital converters. We estimate
tolerance bounds for the result of compaction and evaluate the
aliasing rate.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is applied Taguchi method on the optimization for PEMFC performance, and a representative Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is selectively performed for statistical analysis. The studied factors in this paper are pressure of fuel cell, operating temperature, the relative humidity of anode and cathode, porosity of gas diffusion electrode (GDE) and conductivity of GDE. The optimal combination for maximum power density is gained by using a three-level statistical method. The results confirmed that the robustness of the optimum design parameters influencing the performance of fuel cell are founded by pressure of fuel cell, 3atm; operating temperature, 353K; the relative humidity of anode, 50%; conductivity of GDE, 1000 S/m, but the relative humidity of cathode and porosity of GDE are pooled as error due to a small sum of squares. The present simulation results give designers the ideas ratify the effectiveness of the proposed robust design methodology for the performance of fuel cell.
Abstract: The effect of flooding can be a serious problem for
wheat farmers, even at dry land condition. Amount of flooding
damage depends on duration flooding, developmental stage, wheat
type and variety. Therefore as a factorial experiment in randomized
complete design based on winter bread wheat cultivars (Pishtaz,
Marvdasht, Shiraz, Zarin, Shahriar, C-81-4, Sardari, Agosta seed,
FGS and Azar2) at stages (Non- flooding stress, flooding at tillering
and stem elongation stages for 15 days) carried out in Faculty of
Agriculture, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran. During flooding,
soil environment of plant roots were water saturated. Analysis of
variance showed that flooding had a significant effect on the number
of grains per spike, grain weight per spike and a grain weight. Hence
flooding reduces the number of grain per spike between 27.1 to 42.5
percent, grain weight per spike between 34.7 to 54.4 percent and
single grain weight between 12.1 to 15.1 percent. Effects of flooding
at the tillering stage reduced higher than stem elongation stage on
studied traits. The result also showed that flooding at tillering stage
delayed spikelet primordial and floret. Between wheat cultivars was
significant for traits, but were different reactions. "Shiraz", "Zarin"
and "Shahriar" had the most no. grain per spike, but "Zarin" and
"Sardari" had the most grain weight per spike and single grain
weight, respectively. Also, interaction between start of flooding and
cultivar was significant.
Abstract: Although the level crossing concept has been the subject of intensive investigation over the last few years, certain problems of great interest remain unsolved. One of these concern is distribution of threshold levels. This paper presents a new threshold level allocation schemes for level crossing based on nonuniform sampling. Intuitively, it is more reasonable if the information rich regions of the signal are sampled finer and those with sparse information are sampled coarser. To achieve this objective, we propose non-linear quantization functions which dynamically assign the number of quantization levels depending on the importance of the given amplitude range. Two new approaches to determine the importance of the given amplitude segment are presented. The proposed methods are based on exponential and logarithmic functions. Various aspects of proposed techniques are discussed and experimentally validated. Its efficacy is investigated by comparison with uniform sampling.
Abstract: When a small H/W IP is designed, we can develop an
appropriate verification environment by observing the simulated
signal waves, or using the serial test vectors for the fixed output. In the
case of design and verification of a massive parallel processor with
multiple IPs, it-s difficult to make a verification system with existing
common verification environment, and to verify each partial IP. A
TestDrive verification environment can build easy and reliable
verification system that can produce highly intuitive results by
applying Modelsim and SystemVerilog-s DPI. It shows many
advantages, for example a high-level design of a GPGPU processor
design can be migrate to FPGA board immediately.
Abstract: Porcine production in China represents approximately
the 50% of the worldwide pig production. Information about pig
husbandry characteristics in China and manure properties from sows
to fatteners in intensive pig farms are not broadly available for
scientific studies as it is a time consuming, expensive task and highly
inaccessible. This study provides a report about solid pig manures
(28% dry matter) in a commercial pig farm located in the peri-urban
area of Beijing as well as a general overview of the current pig
husbandry techniques including pig breeds, feeds, diseases, housing as
well as pig manure and wastewater disposal. The main results are
intended to serve as a literature source for young scientists in order to
understand the main composition of pig manures as well as to identify
the husbandry techniques applied in an intensive pig farm in Beijing.
Abstract: This paper examines the role and the place of
transdisciplinarity in the urbanism of the 21st century, with the
emphasis on Montenegro urbanism. Global processes require a
systematic strategy and systemic synergistic engagement in the
development of cities in 21st centuries. Urbanism as a profession and
a discipline should be developed parallel and in correlation, based on
the principles of integrality and communication skills, in order to
enable development of the sustainable urban system. The importance
of integrated urbanism and other disciplines are also emphasized as
well as their synergies activities. The paper also presents the positive
examples of urban theory and practice in the world, which influenced
the direction of development of the modern urbanism.
Transdisciplinarity is a priority methodology for sustainable urban
development, which is insufficiently developed in Montenegro, but
there is a basis for its development. It is necessary to unite different
social sensibilities, academic and non-academic knowledge, as well
as the public and private sectors in order to develop holistic,
inclusive and sustainable urban spaces of the 21st centuries.
Abstract: In this paper, an efficient wave concept iterative
process (WCIP) with auxiliary Sources is presented for full wave
investigation of an active microwave structure on micro strip
technology. Good agreement between the experimental and
simulation results is observed.
Abstract: Application of Information Technology (IT) has
revolutionized the functioning of business all over the world. Its
impact has been felt mostly among the information of dependent
industries. Tourism is one of such industry. The conceptual
framework in this study represents an innovation of travel
information searching system on mobile devices which is used as
tools to deliver travel information (such as hotels, restaurants, tourist
attractions and souvenir shops) for each user by travelers
segmentation based on data mining technique to segment the tourists-
behavior patterns then match them with tourism products and
services. This system innovation is designed to be a knowledge
incremental learning. It is a marketing strategy to support business to
respond traveler-s demand effectively.
Abstract: Methods for organizing web data into groups in order
to analyze web-based hypertext data and facilitate data availability
are very important in terms of the number of documents available
online. Thereby, the task of clustering web-based document structures
has many applications, e.g., improving information retrieval on the
web, better understanding of user navigation behavior, improving web
users requests servicing, and increasing web information accessibility.
In this paper we investigate a new approach for clustering web-based
hypertexts on the basis of their graph structures. The hypertexts will
be represented as so called generalized trees which are more general
than usual directed rooted trees, e.g., DOM-Trees. As a important
preprocessing step we measure the structural similarity between the
generalized trees on the basis of a similarity measure d. Then,
we apply agglomerative clustering to the obtained similarity matrix
in order to create clusters of hypertext graph patterns representing
navigation structures. In the present paper we will run our approach
on a data set of hypertext structures and obtain good results in
Web Structure Mining. Furthermore we outline the application of
our approach in Web Usage Mining as future work.
Abstract: A big organization may have multiple branches spread across different locations. Processing of data from these branches becomes a huge task when innumerable transactions take place. Also, branches may be reluctant to forward their data for centralized processing but are ready to pass their association rules. Local mining may also generate a large amount of rules. Further, it is not practically possible for all local data sources to be of the same size. A model is proposed for discovering valid rules from different sized data sources where the valid rules are high weighted rules. These rules can be obtained from the high frequency rules generated from each of the data sources. A data source selection procedure is considered in order to efficiently synthesize rules. Support Equalization is another method proposed which focuses on eliminating low frequency rules at the local sites itself thus reducing the rules by a significant amount.
Abstract: A SnO2/CdS/CdTe heterojunction was fabricated by
thermal evaporation technique. The fabricated cells were annealed at
573K for periods of 60, 120 and 180 minutes. The structural
properties of the solar cells have been studied by using X-ray
diffraction. Capacitance- voltage measurements were studied for the
as-prepared and annealed cells at a frequency of 102 Hz. The
capacitance- voltage measurements indicated that these cells are
abrupt. The capacitance decreases with increasing annealing time.
The zero bias depletion region width and the carrier concentration
increased with increasing annealing time. The carrier transport
mechanism for the CdS/CdTe heterojunction in dark is tunneling
recombination. The ideality factor is 1.56 and the reverse bias
saturation current is 9.6×10-10A. The energy band lineup for the n-
CdS/p-CdTe heterojunction was investigated using current - voltage
and capacitance - voltage characteristics.
Abstract: The current paper presents the findings of a research
study on learners- barriers and motivators engaged into blended
programs in a workplace context. In this study, the participants were
randomly assigned to one of four parallel e-learning courses, each of
which was delivered using a different learning strategy. Data were
collected through web-based and telephone surveys developed by the
researchers. The results showed that vague instruction, time
management, and insufficient feedback were the top-most barriers to
blended learning. The major motivators for blended learning included
content relevance, flexibility in time, and the ability to work at own
pace.
Abstract: Pressure vessels are usually operating at temperatures
where the conditions of linear elastic fracture mechanics are no
longer met because massive plasticity precedes crack propagation. In
this work the development of a surface crack in a pressure vessel
subject to bending and tension under elastic-plastic fracture
mechanics conditions was investigated. Finite element analysis was
used to evaluate the hydrostatic stress, the J-integral and crack
growth for semi-elliptical surface-breaking cracks. The results
showed non-uniform stress triaxiality and crack driving force around
the crack front at large deformation levels. Different ductile crack
extensions were observed which emphasis the dependent of ductile
tearing on crack geometry and type of loading. In bending the crack
grew only beneath the surface, and growth was suppressed at the
deepest segment. This contrasts to tension where the crack breaks
through the thickness with uniform growth along the entire crack
front except at the free surface. Current investigations showed that
the crack growth developed under linear elastic fracture mechanics
conditions will no longer be applicable under ductile tearing
scenarios.
Abstract: In the present work, an attempt has been made to
understand the feasibility of using UHF technique for identification
of any corona discharges/ arcing in insulating material due to water
droplets. The sensors of broadband type are useful for identification
of such discharges. It is realised that arcing initiated by liquid droplet
radiates UHF signals in the entire bandwidth up to 2 GHz. The
frequency content of the UHF signal generated due to corona/arcing
is not much varied in epoxy nanocomposites with different weight
percentage of clay content. The exfoliated/intercalated properties
were analysed through TEM studies. It is realized that corona
initiated discharges are of intermittent process. The hydrophobicity
of the material characterized through contact angle measurement. It
is realized that low Wt % of nanoclay content in epoxy resin reduces
the surface carbonization due to arcing/corona discharges. The results
of the study with gamma irradiated specimen indicates that contact
angle, discharge inception time and evaporation time of the liquid are
much lower than the virgin epoxy nanocomposite material.