Abstract: This study deals with the experimental investigation
and theoretical modeling of Semi crystalline polymeric materials with
a rubbery amorphous phase (HDPE) subjected to a uniaxial cyclic
tests with various maximum strain levels, even at large deformation.
Each cycle is loaded in tension up to certain maximum strain and
then unloaded down to zero stress with N number of cycles. This
work is focuses on the measure of the volume strain due to the
phenomena of damage during this kind of tests. On the basis of
thermodynamics of relaxation processes, a constitutive model for
large strain deformation has been developed, taking into account the
damage effect, to predict the complex elasto-viscoelastic-viscoplastic
behavior of material. A direct comparison between the model
predictions and the experimental data show that the model accurately
captures the material response. The model is also capable of
predicting the influence damage causing volume variation.
Abstract: Today-s Wi Fi generation utilize the latest technology in their daily lives. Instructors at National University, the second largest non profit private institution of higher learning in California, are incorporating these new tools to modify their Online class formats to better accommodate these new skills in their distance education delivery modes. The University provides accelerated learning in a one-course per month format both Onsite and Online. Since there has been such a significant increase in Online classes over the past three years, and it is expected to grow even more over the over the next five years, Instructors cannot afford to maintain the status quo and not take advantage of these new options. It is at the discretion of the instructors which accessory they use and how comfortable and familiar they are with the technology. This paper explores the effects and summarizes students- comments of some of these new technological options which have been recently provided in order to make students- online learning experience more exciting and meaningful.
Abstract: Neonatal lupus erythematous (NLE) is a rare disease marked by clinical characteristic and specific maternal autoantibody. Many cutaneous, cardiac, liver, and hematological manifestations could happen with affect of one organ or multiple. In this case, both babies were premature, low birth weight (LBW), small for gestational age (SGA) and born through caesarean section from a systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) mother. In the first case, we found a baby girl with dyspnea and grunting. Chest X ray showed respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) great I and echocardiography showed small atrial septal defect (ASD) and ventricular septal defect (VSD). She also developed anemia, thrombocytopenia, elevated C-reactive protein, hypoalbuminemia, increasing coagulation factors, hyperbilirubinemia, and positive blood culture of Klebsiella pneumonia. Anti-Ro/SSA and Anti-nRNP/sm were positive. Intravenous fluid, antibiotic, transfusion of blood, thrombocyte concentrate, and fresh frozen plasma were given. The second baby, male presented with necrotic tissue on the left ear and skin rashes, erythematous macula, athropic scarring, hyperpigmentation on all of his body with various size and facial haemorrhage. He also suffered from thrombocytopenia, mild elevated transaminase enzyme, hyperbilirubinemia, anti-Ro/SSA was positive. Intravenous fluid, methyprednisolone, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), blood, and thrombocyte concentrate transfution were given. Two cases of neonatal lupus erythematous had been presented. Diagnosis based on clinical presentation and maternal auto antibody on neonate. Organ involvement in NLE can occur as single or multiple manifestations.
Abstract: In this paper, a Bayesian Network (BN) based system
is presented for providing clinical decision support to healthcare
practitioners in rural or remote areas of India for young infants or
children up to the age of 5 years. The government is unable to
appoint child specialists in rural areas because of inadequate number
of available pediatricians. It leads to a high Infant Mortality Rate
(IMR). In such a scenario, Intelligent Pediatric System provides a
realistic solution. The prototype of an intelligent system has been
developed that involves a knowledge component called an Intelligent
Pediatric Assistant (IPA); and User Agents (UA) along with their
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). The GUI of UA provides the
interface to the healthcare practitioner for submitting sign-symptoms
and displaying the expert opinion as suggested by IPA. Depending
upon the observations, the IPA decides the diagnosis and the
treatment plan. The UA and IPA form client-server architecture for
knowledge sharing.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose the low-MAC FEC controller for practical implementation of JPEG2000 image transmission using IEEE 802.15.4. The proposed low-MAC FEC controller has very small HW size and spends little computation to estimate channel state. Because of this advantage, it is acceptable to apply IEEE 802.15.4 which has to operate more than 1 year with battery. For the image transmission, we integrate the low-MAC FEC controller and RCPC coder in sensor node of LR-WPAN. The modified sensor node has increase of 3% hardware size than conventional zigbee sensor node.
Abstract: A feasibility study for the design and construction of a
pilot plant for the extraction of castor oil in South Africa was
conducted. The study emphasized the four critical aspects of project
feasibility analysis, namely technical, financial, market and
managerial aspects. The technical aspect involved research on
existing oil extraction technologies, namely: mechanical pressing and
solvent extraction, as well as assessment of the proposed production
site for both short and long term viability of the project. The site is
on the outskirts of Nkomazi village in the Mpumalanga province,
where connections for water and electricity are currently underway,
potential raw material supply proves to be reliable since the province
is known for its commercial farming. The managerial aspect was
evaluated based on the fact that the current producer of castor oil will
be fully involved in the project while receiving training and technical
assistance from Sasol Technology, the TSC and SEDA. Market and
financial aspects were evaluated and the project was considered
financially viable with a Net Present Value (NPV) of R2 731 687 and
an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of 18% at an annual interest rate of
10.5%. The payback time is 6years for analysis over the first 10
years with a net income of R1 971 000 in the first year. The project
was thus found to be feasible with high chance of success while
contributing to socio-economic development. It was recommended
for lab tests to be conducted to establish process kinetics that would
be used in the initial design of the plant.
Abstract: Knowing about the customer behavior in a grocery has
been a long-standing issue in the retailing industry. The advent of
RFID has made it easier to collect moving data for an individual
shopper's behavior. Most of the previous studies used the traditional
statistical clustering technique to find the major characteristics of
customer behavior, especially shopping path. However, in using the
clustering technique, due to various spatial constraints in the store,
standard clustering methods are not feasible because moving data such
as the shopping path should be adjusted in advance of the analysis,
which is time-consuming and causes data distortion. To alleviate this
problem, we propose a new approach to spatial pattern clustering
based on the longest common subsequence. Experimental results using
real data obtained from a grocery confirm the good performance of the
proposed method in finding the hot spot, dead spot and major path
patterns of customer movements.
Abstract: Symbolic dynamics studies dynamical systems on the basis of the symbol sequences obtained for a suitable partition of the state space. This approach exploits the property that system dynamics reduce to a shift operation in symbol space. This shift operator is a chaotic mapping. In this article we show that in the symbol space exist other chaotic mappings.
Abstract: Durian husk (DH), a fruit waste, was studied for its ability to remove Basic blue 3 (BB3) from aqueous solutions. Batch kinetic studies were carried out to study the sorption characteristics under various experimental conditions. The optimum pH for the dye removal occurred in the pH range of 3-10. Sorption was found to be concentration and agitation dependent. The kinetics of dye sorption fitted a pseudo-second order rate expression. Both Langmuir and Freundlich models appeared to provide reasonable fittings for the sorption data of BB3 on durian husk. Maximum sorption capacity calculated from the Langmuir model is 49.50 mg g-1.
Abstract: The paper evaluates the ongoing reform of VAT in the Czech Republic in terms of impacts on individual households. The main objective is to analyse the impact of given changes on individual households. The adopted method is based on the data related to household consumption by individual household quintiles; obtained data are subjected to micro-simulation examining. Results are discussed in terms of vertical tax justice. Results of the analysis reveal that VAT behaves regressively and a sole consolidation of rates at a higher level only increases the regression of this tax in the Czech Republic.
Abstract: Variable channel conditions in underwater networks,
and variable distances between sensors due to water current, leads to
variable bit error rate (BER). This variability in BER has great
effects on energy efficiency of error correction techniques used. In
this paper an efficient energy adaptive hybrid error correction
technique (AHECT) is proposed. AHECT adaptively changes error
technique from pure retransmission (ARQ) in a low BER case to a
hybrid technique with variable encoding rates (ARQ & FEC) in a
high BER cases. An adaptation algorithm depends on a precalculated
packet acceptance rate (PAR) look-up table, current BER,
packet size and error correction technique used is proposed. Based
on this adaptation algorithm a periodically 3-bit feedback is added to
the acknowledgment packet to state which error correction technique
is suitable for the current channel conditions and distance.
Comparative studies were done between this technique and other
techniques, and the results show that AHECT is more energy
efficient and has high probability of success than all those
techniques.
Abstract: There are three possible effects of Special Theory of
Relativity (STR) on a thermodynamic system. Planck and Einstein
looked upon this process as isobaric; on the other hand Ott saw it as
an adiabatic process. However plenty of logical reasons show that the
process is isotherm. Our phenomenological consideration
demonstrates that the temperature is invariant with Lorenz
transformation. In that case process is isotherm, so volume and
pressure are Lorentz covariant. If the process is isotherm the Boyles
law is Lorentz invariant. Also equilibrium constant and Gibbs energy,
activation energy, enthalpy entropy and extent of the reaction became
Lorentz invariant.
Abstract: Full search block matching algorithm is widely used for hardware implementation of motion estimators in video compression algorithms. In this paper we are proposing a new architecture, which consists of a 2D parallel processing unit and a 1D unit both working in parallel. The proposed architecture reduces both data access power and computational power which are the main causes of power consumption in integer motion estimation. It also completes the operations with nearly the same number of clock cycles as compared to a 2D systolic array architecture. In this work sum of absolute difference (SAD)-the most repeated operation in block matching, is calculated in two steps. The first step is to calculate the SAD for alternate rows by a 2D parallel unit. If the SAD calculated by the parallel unit is less than the stored minimum SAD, the SAD of the remaining rows is calculated by the 1D unit. Early termination, which stops avoidable computations has been achieved with the help of alternate rows method proposed in this paper and by finding a low initial SAD value based on motion vector prediction. Data reuse has been applied to the reference blocks in the same search area which significantly reduced the memory access.
Abstract: The Iranian bentonite was first characterized by
Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Inductively Coupled Plasma
mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray
Diffraction (XRD) and BET. The bentonite was then treated
thermally between 150°C-250°C at 15min, 45min and 90min and
also was activated chemically with different concentration of
sulphuric acid (3N, 5N and 10N). Although the results of thermal
activated-bentonite didn-t show any considerable changes in specific
surface area and Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC), but the results of
chemical treated bentonite demonstrated that such properties have
been improved by acid activation process.
Abstract: This paper explores the issues that influence online retailing in Saudi Arabia. Retailers in Saudi Arabia have been reserved in their adoption of electronically delivered aspects of their business. Despite the fact that Saudi Arabia has the largest and fastest growth of ICT marketplaces in the Arab region, e-commerce activities are not progressing at the same speed. Only very few Saudi companies, mostly medium and large companies from the manufacturing sector, are involved in e-commerce implementation. Based on qualitative data collected by conducting interviews with 16 retailers and 16 potential customers in Saudi Arabia, several factors influencing online retailing diffusion in Saudi Arabia are identified. However, government support comes the highest and most influencing factor for online retailing growth as identified by both parties; retailers and potential customers in Saudi Arabia.
Abstract: Natural convection heat transfer from a heated
horizontal semi-circular cylinder (flat surface upward) has been
investigated for the following ranges of conditions; Grashof number,
and Prandtl number. The governing partial differential equations
(continuity, Navier-Stokes and energy equations) have been solved
numerically using a finite volume formulation. In addition, the role of
the type of the thermal boundary condition imposed at cylinder
surface, namely, constant wall temperature (CWT) and constant heat
flux (CHF) are explored. Natural convection heat transfer from a
heated horizontal semi-circular cylinder (flat surface upward) has
been investigated for the following ranges of conditions; Grashof
number, and Prandtl number, . The governing partial differential
equations (continuity, Navier-Stokes and energy equations) have
been solved numerically using a finite volume formulation. In
addition, the role of the type of the thermal boundary condition
imposed at cylinder surface, namely, constant wall temperature
(CWT) and constant heat flux (CHF) are explored. The resulting flow
and temperature fields are visualized in terms of the streamline and
isotherm patterns in the proximity of the cylinder. The flow remains
attached to the cylinder surface over the range of conditions spanned
here except that for and ; at these conditions, a separated flow
region is observed when the condition of the constant wall
temperature is prescribed on the surface of the cylinder. The heat
transfer characteristics are analyzed in terms of the local and average
Nusselt numbers. The maximum value of the local Nusselt number
always occurs at the corner points whereas it is found to be minimum
at the rear stagnation point on the flat surface. Overall, the average
Nusselt number increases with Grashof number and/ or Prandtl
number in accordance with the scaling considerations. The numerical
results are used to develop simple correlations as functions of
Grashof and Prandtl number thereby enabling the interpolation of the
present numerical results for the intermediate values of the Prandtl or
Grashof numbers for both thermal boundary conditions.
Abstract: in this work, we present a new strategy of direct adaptive control denoted: Extended minimal controller synthesis (EMCS). This algorithm is designed for an induction motor, which includes both electrical and mechanical dynamics under the assumptions of linear magnetic circuits. The main motivation of the EMCS control is to enhance the robustness of the MRAC algorithms, i.e. the rejection of bounded effects of rapidly varying external disturbances.
Abstract: Isobaric and cooling zone of iron ore reactor have been
simulated. In this paper, heat and mass transfer equation are
formulated to perform the temperature and concentration of gas and
solid phase respectively. Temperature profile for isobaric zone is
simulated on the range temperature of 873-1163K while cooling zone
is simulated on the range temperature of 733-1139K. The simulation
results have a good agreement with the plant data. Total carbon
formation in the isobaric zone is only 30% of total carbon contained in
the sponge iron product. The formation of Fe3C in isobaric zone
reduces metallization degree up to 0.58% whereas reduction of
metallization degree in cooling zone up to 1.139%. The decreasing of
sponge iron temperature in the isobaric and cooling zone is around 300
K and 600 K respectively.
Abstract: We apply a particle tracking technique to track the motion of individual pathogenic Leptospira. We observe and capture images of motile Leptospira by means of CCD and darkfield microscope. Image processing, statistical theories and simulations are used for data analysis. Based on trajectory patterns, mean square displacement, and power spectral density characteristics, we found that the motion modes are most likely to be directed motion mode (70%) and the rest are either normal diffusion or unidentified mode. Our findings may support the fact that why leptospires are very well efficient toward targeting internal tissues as a result of increase in virulence factor.
Abstract: A two-dimensional numerical simulation of crossflow
around four cylinders in an in-line rectangular configuration is
studied by using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). Special
attention is paid to the effect of the spacing between the cylinders.
The Reynolds number ( Re ) is chosen to be e 100 R = and the
spacing ratio L / D is set at 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0
and 10.0. Results show that, as in the case of four cylinders in an inline
rectangular configuration , flow fields show four different
features depending on the spacing (single square cylinder, stable
shielding flow, wiggling shielding flow and a vortex shedding flow)
are observed in this study. The effects of spacing ratio on physical
quantities such as mean drag coefficient, Strouhal number and rootmean-
square value of the drag and lift coefficients are also presented.
There is more than one shedding frequency at small spacing ratios.
The mean drag coefficients for downstream cylinders are less than
that of the single cylinder for all spacing ratios. The present results
using the LBM are compared with some existing experimental data
and numerical studies. The comparison shows that the LBM can
capture the characteristics of the bluff body flow reasonably well and
is a good tool for bluff body flow studies.