Abstract: Primary and secondary data from the Bauchi abattoir were utilized to determine the relative contributions of different livestock species to meat supply in Bauchi Metropolis. Daily livestock slaughter figures for five months (June – October 2011) indicated that more goats (64.0) were slaughtered than either sheep (47.3) or cattle (41.30) each day (P
Abstract: The use of hard and brittle material has become
increasingly more extensive in recent years. Therefore processing of
these materials for the parts fabrication has become a challenging
problem. However, it is time-consuming to machine the hard brittle
materials with the traditional metal-cutting technique that uses
abrasive wheels. In addition, the tool would suffer excessive wear as
well. However, if ultrasonic energy is applied to the machining
process and coupled with the use of hard abrasive grits, hard and
brittle materials can be effectively machined. Ultrasonic machining
process is mostly used for the brittle materials. The present research
work has developed models using finite element approach to predict
the mechanical stresses sand strains produced in the tool during
ultrasonic machining process. Also the flow behavior of abrasive
slurry coming out of the nozzle has been studied for simulation using
ANSYS CFX module. The different abrasives of different grit sizes
have been used for the experimentation work.
Abstract: In present study the effects of anti-inflammatory and
antinociceptive of vitex hydro-alcoholic extract were evaluated on
male mice. In inflammatory test mice were divided into 7 groups:
first group was control. The second group, positive control group,
received dexamethasone (15 mg/kg) and the other five groups
received different doses of hydroalcohol extract of Vitex fruit (265,
365, 465, 565, and 665 mg/kg). The inflammation was caused by
xylene-induced ear edema. Formalin test was used for evaluation of
antinociceptive effect of extract. In this test, mice were divided into 7
groups: control, morphine (10mg/kg) as positive control group, and
Vitex extract groups ((265, 365, 465, 565, and 665 mg/kg). All drugs
were administered intrapritoneally, 30 min before each test. The data
were analyzed using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey-kramer
multiple comparison test. Results have shown significant antiinflammatory
effects of extract at all dosed as compared with control
(P
Abstract: This paper shows a simple and effective approach to
the design and implementation of Industrial Information Systems
(IIS) oriented to control the characteristics of each individual product manufactured in a production line and also their manufacturing conditions. The particular products considered in this work are large steel strips that are coiled just after their manufacturing. However, the approach is directly applicable to coiled strips in other industries, like
paper, textile, aluminum, etc. These IIS provide very detailed information of each manufactured product, which complement the general information managed by the ERP system of the production line. In spite of the high importance of this type of IIS to guarantee and improve the quality of the products manufactured in many industries, there are very few works about them in the technical literature. For this reason, this paper represents an important contribution to the development of this type of IIS, providing guidelines for their design, implementation and exploitation.
Abstract: Iron oxide nanoparticle was synthesized by reactive-precipitation method followed by high speed centrifuge and phase transfer in order to stabilized nanoparticles in the solvent. Particle size of SPIO was 8.2 nm by SEM, and the hydraulic radius was 17.5 nm by dynamic light scattering method. Coercivity and saturated magnetism were determined by VSM (vibrating sample magnetometer), coercivity of nanoparticle was lower than 10 Hc, and the saturated magnetism was higher than 65 emu/g. Stabilized SPIO was then transferred to aqueous phase by reacted with excess amount of poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) silane. After filtration and dialysis, the SPIO T2 contrast agent was ready to use. The hydraulic radius of final product was about 70~100 nm, the relaxation rates R2 (1/T2) measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was larger than 200(sec-1).
Abstract: In this paper effect of stator slots structure and
switching angle on a cylindrical single-phase brushless direct current
motor (BLDC) is analyzed. BLDC motor with three different
structures for stator slots is designed by using RMxprt software and
efficiency of BLDC motor for different structures in full-load
condition has been presented. Then the BLDC motor in different
conditions by using Maxwell 3D software is designed and with finite
element method is analyzed electromagnetically. At the end with the
use of MATLAB software influence of switching angle on motor
performance investigated and optimal angle has been determined.
The results indicate that with correct choosing of stator slots structure
and switching angle, maximum efficiency can be found.
Abstract: In this paper we describe a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for automated detection of pulmonary nodules in computed-tomography (CT) images. After extracting the pulmonary parenchyma using a combination of image processing techniques, a region growing method is applied to detect nodules based on 3D geometric features. We applied the CAD system to CT scans collected in a screening program for lung cancer detection. Each scan consists of a sequence of about 300 slices stored in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) format. All malignant nodules were detected and a low false-positive detection rate was achieved.
Abstract: The biomarker for colorectal cancer (CRC) is CEACAM-6 antigen (C6AG). Therefore, this study aims to develop a novel, simple and low-cost CEACAM-6 antigen immumosensor (C6AG-IMS), based on electrical impedance measurement, for precise determination of C6AG. A low-cost screen-printed graphite electrode was constructed and used as the sensor, with CEACAM-6 antibody (C6AB) immobilized on it. The procedures of sensor fabrication and antibody immobilization are simple and low-cost. Measurement of the electrical impedance at a definite frequency ranges (0.43 – 1.26 MHz) showed that the C6AG-IMS has an excellent linear (r2>0.9) response range (8.125 – 65 pg/mL), covering the normal physiological and pathological ranges of blood C6AG levels. Also, the C6AG-IMS has excellent reliability and validity, with the intraclass correlation coefficient being 0.97. In conclusion, a novel, simple, low-cost and reliable C6AG-IMS was designed and developed, being able to accurately determine blood C6AG levels in the range of pathological and normal physiological regions. The C6AG-IMS can provide a point-of-care and immediate screening results to the user at home.
Abstract: The hydrogen peroxide treatment was able to
remediate chlorophenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, diesel
and transformer oil contaminated soil. Chemical treatment of
contaminants adsorbed in peat resulted in lower contaminants-
removal and required higher addition of chemicals than the treatment
of contaminants in sand. The hydrogen peroxide treatment was found
to be feasible for soil remediation at natural soil pH. Contaminants in
soil could degrade with the addition of hydrogen peroxide only
indicating the ability of transition metals ions and minerals of these
metals presented in soil to catalyse the reaction of hydrogen peroxide
decomposition.
Abstract: The concurrent era is characterised by strengthened interactions among financial markets and increased capital mobility globally. In this frames we examine the effects the international financial integration process has on the European bond markets. We perform a comparative study of the interactions of the European and international bond markets and exploit Cointegration analysis results on the elimination of stochastic trends and the decomposition of the underlying long run equilibria and short run causal relations. Our investigation provides evidence on the relation between the European integration process and that of globalisation, viewed through the bond markets- sector. Additionally the structural formulation applied, offers significant implications of the findings. All in all our analysis offers a number of answers on crucial queries towards the European bond markets integration process.
Abstract: Sickness absence represents a major economic and
social issue. Analysis of sick leave data is a recurrent challenge to analysts because of the complexity of the data structure which is
often time dependent, highly skewed and clumped at zero. Ignoring these features to make statistical inference is likely to be inefficient
and misguided. Traditional approaches do not address these problems. In this study, we discuss model methodologies in terms of statistical techniques for addressing the difficulties with sick leave data. We also introduce and demonstrate a new method by performing a longitudinal assessment of long-term absenteeism using
a large registration dataset as a working example available from the Helsinki Health Study for municipal employees from Finland during the period of 1990-1999. We present a comparative study on model
selection and a critical analysis of the temporal trends, the occurrence
and degree of long-term sickness absences among municipal employees. The strengths of this working example include the large
sample size over a long follow-up period providing strong evidence in supporting of the new model. Our main goal is to propose a way to
select an appropriate model and to introduce a new methodology for analysing sickness absence data as well as to demonstrate model
applicability to complicated longitudinal data.
Abstract: Text categorization (the assignment of texts in natural language into predefined categories) is an important and extensively studied problem in Machine Learning. Currently, popular techniques developed to deal with this task include many preprocessing and learning algorithms, many of which in turn require tuning nontrivial internal parameters. Although partial studies are available, many authors fail to report values of the parameters they use in their experiments, or reasons why these values were used instead of others. The goal of this work then is to create a more thorough comparison of preprocessing parameters and their mutual influence, and report interesting observations and results.
Abstract: A novel thermo-sensitive superabsorbent hydrogel
with salt- and pH-responsiveness properties was obtained by grafting
of mixtures of acrylic acid (AA) and N-isopropylacrylamide
(NIPAM) monomers onto kappa-carrageenan, kC, using ammonium
persulfate (APS) as a free radical initiator in the presence of
methylene bisacrylamide (MBA) as a crosslinker. Infrared
spectroscopy was carried out to confirm the chemical structure of the
hydrogel. Moreover, morphology of the samples was examined by
scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The effect of MBA
concentration and AA/NIPAM weight ratio on the water absorbency
capacity has been investigated. The swelling variations of hydrogels
were explained according to swelling theory based on the hydrogel
chemical structure. The hydrogels exhibited salt-sensitivity and
cation exchange properties. The temperature- and pH-reversibility
properties of the hydrogels make the intelligent polymers as good
candidates for considering as potential carriers for bioactive agents,
e.g. drugs.
Abstract: Rule Discovery is an important technique for mining knowledge from large databases. Use of objective measures for discovering interesting rules lead to another data mining problem, although of reduced complexity. Data mining researchers have studied subjective measures of interestingness to reduce the volume of discovered rules to ultimately improve the overall efficiency of KDD process. In this paper we study novelty of the discovered rules as a subjective measure of interestingness. We propose a hybrid approach that uses objective and subjective measures to quantify novelty of the discovered rules in terms of their deviations from the known rules. We analyze the types of deviation that can arise between two rules and categorize the discovered rules according to the user specified threshold. We implement the proposed framework and experiment with some public datasets. The experimental results are quite promising.
Abstract: Metal stamping die design is a complex, experiencebased
and time-consuming task. Various artificial intelligence (AI)
techniques are being used by worldwide researchers for stamping die
design to reduce complexity, dependence on human expertise and
time taken in design process as well as to improve design efficiency.
In this paper a comprehensive review of applications of AI
techniques in manufacturability evaluation of sheet metal parts, die
design and process planning of metal stamping die is presented.
Further the salient features of major research work published in the
area of metal stamping are presented in tabular form and scope of
future research work is identified.
Abstract: An advanced Monte Carlo simulation method, called Subset Simulation (SS) for the time-dependent reliability prediction for underground pipelines has been presented in this paper. The SS can provide better resolution for low failure probability level with efficient investigating of rare failure events which are commonly encountered in pipeline engineering applications. In SS method, random samples leading to progressive failure are generated efficiently and used for computing probabilistic performance by statistical variables. SS gains its efficiency as small probability event as a product of a sequence of intermediate events with larger conditional probabilities. The efficiency of SS has been demonstrated by numerical studies and attention in this work is devoted to scrutinise the robustness of the SS application in pipe reliability assessment. It is hoped that the development work can promote the use of SS tools for uncertainty propagation in the decision-making process of underground pipelines network reliability prediction.
Abstract: Transesterification of candlenut (aleurites moluccana)
oil with methanol using potassium hydroxide as catalyst was
studied. The objective of the present investigation was to produce
the methyl ester for use as biodiesel. The operation variables
employed were methanol to oil molar ratio (3:1 – 9:1), catalyst
concentration (0.50 – 1.5 %) and temperature (303 – 343K). Oil
volume of 150 mL, reaction time of 75 min were fixed as common
parameters in all the experiments. The concentration of methyl ester
was evaluated by mass balance of free glycerol formed which was
analyzed by using periodic acid. The optimal triglyceride conversion
was attained by using methanol to oil ratio of 6:1, potassium
hydroxide as catalyst was of 1%, at room temperature. Methyl ester
formed was characterized by its density, viscosity, cloud and pour
points. The biodiesel properties had properties similar to those of
diesel oil, except for the viscosity that was higher.
Abstract: In Peer-to-Peer service networks, where peers offer any kind of publicly available services or applications, intuitive navigation through all services in the network becomes more difficult as the number of services increases. In this article, a concept is discussed that enables users to intuitively browse and use large scale P2P service networks. The concept extends the idea of creating virtual 3D-environments solely based on Peer-to-Peer technologies. Aside from browsing, users shall have the possibility to emphasize services of interest using their own semantic criteria. The appearance of the virtual world shall intuitively reflect network properties that may be of interest for the user. Additionally, the concept comprises options for load- and traffic-balancing. In this article, the requirements concerning the underlying infrastructure and the graphical user interface are defined. First impressions of the appearance of future systems are presented and the next steps towards a prototypical implementation are discussed.
Abstract: In this article the accumulated results out of the effects
and length of the manufacture and production projects in the
university and research standard have been settled with the usefulness
definition of the process of project management for the accessibility
to the proportional pattern in the “time and action" stages. Studies
show that many problems confronted by the researchers in these
projects are connected to the non-profiting of: 1) autonomous timing
for gathering the educational theme, 2) autonomous timing for
planning and pattern, presenting before the construction, and 3)
autonomous timing for manufacture and sample presentation from the
output. The result of this study indicates the division of every
manufacture and production projects into three smaller autonomous
projects from its kind, budget and autonomous expenditure, shape
and order of the stages for the management of these kinds of projects.
In this case study real result are compared with theoretical results.
Abstract: Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB) and Palm Oil Mill
Effluent (POME) are two main wastes from oil palm industries which
contain rich lignocellulose. Degradation of EFB and POME by
microorganisms will produce hydrolytic enzyme which will degrade
cellulose and hemicellulose during composting process. However,
normal composting takes about four to six months to reach maturity.
Hence, application of fungi into compost can shorten the period of
composting. This study identifies the effect of xylanase and cellulase
produced by Aspergillus niger and Trichoderma virens on
composting process using EFB and POME. The degradation of EFB
and POME indicates the lignocellulolytic capacity of Aspergillus
niger and Trichoderma virens with more than 7% decrease in
hemicellulose and more than 25% decrease in cellulose for both
inoculated compost. Inoculation of Aspergillus niger and
Trichoderma virens also increased the enzyme activities during the
composting period compared to the control compost by 21% for both
xylanase and cellulase. Rapid rise in the activities of cellulase and
xylanase was observed by Aspergillus niger with the highest
activities of 14.41 FPU/mg and 3.89 IU/mg, respectively. Increased
activities of cellulase and xylanase also occurred in inoculation of
Trichoderma virens with the highest activities obtained at 13.21
FPU/mg and 4.43 IU/mg, respectively. Therefore, it is evident that
the inoculation of fungi can increase the enzyme activities hence
effectively degrading the EFB and POME.