Abstract: Bentonitic material from South Aswan, Egypt was evaluated in terms of mineral-ogy and chemical composition as bleaching clay in refining of transformer oil before and after acid activation and thermal treatment followed by acid leaching using HCl and H2SO4 for different contact times. Structural modification and refining power of bento-nite were investigated during modification by means of X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy. The results revealed that the activated bentonite could be used for refining of transformer oil. The oil parameters such as; dielectric strength, viscosity and flash point had been improved. The dielectric breakdown strength of used oil increased from 29 kV for used oil treated with unactivated bentonite to 74 kV after treatment with activated bentonite. Kinematic Viscosity changed from 19 to 11 mm2 /s after treatment with activated bentonite. However, flash point achieved 149 ºC.
Abstract: In this study, hydrogels consisted of polyvinyl alcohol,
propylene glycol and β-glucan were developed by radiation technique
for wound dressing. The prepared hydrogels were characterized by
examining of physical properties such as gel fraction and absorption
ratio. The gel fraction and absorption ratio were dependent on the
crosslinking density. On observing the wound healing of rat skin, the
resulting hydrogels accelerated the wound healing comparing to cotton
gauze. Therefore, the PVA/propylene glycol/β-glucan blended
hydrogels can greatly accelerate the healing without causing irritation.
Abstract: This article investigated the validity of C-test and Cloze test which purport to measure general English proficiency. To provide empirical evidence pertaining to the validity of the interpretations based on the results of these integrative language tests, their criterion-related validity was investigated. In doing so, the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL) which is an established, standardized, and internationally administered test of general English proficiency was used as the criterion measure. Some 90 Iranian English majors participated in this study. They were seniors studying English at a university in Tehran, Iran. The results of analyses showed that there is a statistically significant correlation among participants- scores on Cloze test, C-test, and the TOEFL. Building on the findings of the study and considering criterion-related validity as the evidential basis of the validity argument, it was cautiously deducted that these tests measure the same underlying trait. However, considering the limitations of using criterion measures to validate tests, no absolute claims can be made as to the construct validity of these integrative tests.
Abstract: Work-life balance has been acknowledged and
promoted for the sake of employee retention. It is essential for a
manager to realize the human resources situation within a company to
help employees work happily and perform at their best. This paper
suggests knowledge management and critical thinking are useful to
motivate employees to think about their work-life balance. A
qualitative case study is presented, which aimed to discover the
meaning of work-life balance-s meaning from the perspective of Thai
knowledge workers and how it affects their decision-making towards
work resignation. Results found three types of work-life balance
dimensions; a work- life balance including a workplace and a private
life setting, an organizational working life balance only, and a worklife
balance only in a private life setting. These aspects all influenced
the decision-making of the employees. Factors within a theme of an
organizational work-life balance were involved with systematic
administration, fair treatment, employee recognition, challenging
assignments to gain working experience, assignment engagement,
teamwork, relationship with superiors, and working environment,
while factors concerning private life settings were about personal
demands such as an increasing their salary or starting their own
business.
Abstract: In this contribution, a way to enhance the performance of the classic Genetic Algorithm is proposed. The idea of restarting a Genetic Algorithm is applied in order to obtain better knowledge of the solution space of the problem. A new operator of 'insertion' is introduced so as to exploit (utilize) the information that has already been collected before the restarting procedure. Finally, numerical experiments comparing the performance of the classic Genetic Algorithm and the Genetic Algorithm with restartings, for some well known test functions, are given.
Abstract: The experimental thermal performance of two heat
exchangers in closed-wet cooling tower (CWCT) was investigated in
this study. The test sections are heat exchangers which have multi path
that is used as the entrance of cooling water and are consisting of
bare-type copper tubes between 15.88mm and 19.05mm. The process
fluids are the cooling water that flows from top part of heat exchanger
to bottom side in the inner side of tube, and spray water that flows
gravitational direction in the outer side of it. Air contacts its outer side
of that as it counterflows. Heat and mass transfer coefficients and
cooling capacity were calculated with variations of process fluids,
multi path and different diameter tubes to figure out the performance
of characteristics of CWCT.
The main results were summarized as follows: The results show this
experiment is reliable with values of heat and mass transfer
coefficients comparing to values of correlations. Heat and mass
transfer coefficients and cooling capacity of two paths are higher than
these with one path using 15.88 and 19.05mm tubes. Cooling capacity
per unit volume with 15.88mm tube using one and two paths are
higher than 19.05mm tube due to increase of surface area per unit
volume.
Abstract: This study investigated the presence of polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the sediments of the Musa Bay
(around the PETZONE coastal area) from Feb 2010 to Jun 2010.
Concentrations of PAHs recorded in the Musa Bay sediments ranged
from 537.89 to 26,659.06 ng/g dry weight with a mean value of
3990.74 ng/g. the highest concentration of PAHs was observed at
station 4, which is located near the aromatic outlet of Imam
Khomeini petrochemical company (station 4: BI-PC Aromatic
effluent outlet) in which its concentration level was more than the
NOAA sediment quality guideline value (ERL= 4022 ng/g dry
weight). Owing to the concentration of PAHs in the study area, its
concentration level was still meet the NOAA sediment quality
guideline value (ERL: 4022 ng/g dry weight); however, according to
the PELq factor, slightly adverse biological effects are associated
with the exposure to PAHs levels in the study area (0.1< PELq= 0.24
> 0.5).
Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine the dynamics of functional composition of a non flooded Amazonian forest in response to drought stress in terms of diameter growth, recruitment and mortality. The survey was carried out in the continuous forest of the Biological dynamics of forest fragments project 90 km outside the city of Manaus, state of Amazonas Brazil. All stems >10 cm dbh where identified to species level and monitored in 18 one hectare permanent sample plots from 1981 to 2004.For statistical analysis all species where aggregated in three ecological guilds. Two distinct drought events occurred in 1983 and 1997. Results showed that more early successional species performed better than later successional ones. Response was significant for both events but for the 1997 event this was more pronounced possibly because of the fact that the event was in the middle of the dry rather than the wet period as was the 1983 one.
Abstract: School experiences, family bonding and self-concept
had always been a crucial factor in influencing all aspects of a
student-s development. The purpose of this study is to develop and to
validate a priori model of self-concept among students. The study
was tested empirically using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)
and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to validate the structural
model. To address these concerns, 1167 students were randomly
selected and utilized the Cognitive Psycho-Social University of
Malaya instrument (2009).Resulted demonstrated there is indirect
effect from family bonding to self-concept through school
experiences among secondary school students as a mediator. Besides
school experiences, there is a direct effect from family bonding to
self-concept and family bonding to school experiences among
students.
Abstract: In this article the influence of higher frequency effects
in addition to a special damper design on the electrical behavior of a
synchronous generator main exciter machine is investigated. On the
one hand these machines are often highly stressed by harmonics from
the bridge rectifier thus facing additional eddy current losses. On the
other hand the switching may cause the excitation of dangerous
voltage peaks in resonant circuits formed by the diodes of the
rectifier and the commutation reactance of the machine. Therefore
modern rotating exciters are treated like synchronous generators
usually modeled with a second order equivalent circuit. Hence the
well known Standstill Frequency Response Test (SSFR) method is
applied to a test machine in order to determine parameters for the
simulation. With these results it is clearly shown that higher
frequencies have a strong impact on the conventional equivalent
circuit model. Because of increasing field displacement effects in the
stranded armature winding the sub-transient reactance is even smaller
than the armature leakage at high frequencies. As a matter of fact this
prevents the algorithm to find an equivalent scheme. This issue is
finally solved using Laplace transfer functions fully describing the
transient behavior at the model ports.
Abstract: In this paper, a technique is proposed to implement
an artificial voltage-controlled capacitance or inductance which can
replace the well-known varactor diode in many applications. The
technique is based on injecting the current of a voltage-controlled
current source onto a fixed capacitor or inductor. Then, by controlling
the transconductance of the current source by an external bias voltage,
a voltage-controlled capacitive or inductive reactance is obtained.
The proposed voltage-controlled reactance devices can be designed
to work anywhere in the frequency spectrum. Practical circuits for the
proposed voltage-controlled reactances are suggested and simulated.
Abstract: The purposes of this research were to study the citizen
participation in preventing illegal drugs in one of a poor and small
community of Bangkok, Thailand and to compare the level of
participation and concern of illegal drugs problem by using
demographic variables. This paper drew upon data collected from a
local citizens survey conducted in Bangkok, Thailand during summer
of 2012. A total of 200 respondents were elicited as data input for,
and one way ANOVA test. The findings revealed that the overall
citizen participation was in the level of medium. The mean score
showed that benefit from the program was ranked as the highest and
the decision to participate was ranked as second while the follow-up
of the program was ranked as the lowest.
In terms of the difference in demographic such as gender, age,
level of education, income, and year of residency, the hypothesis
testing’s result disclosed that there were no difference in their level
of participation. However, difference in occupation showed a
difference in their level of participation and concern which was
significant at the 0.05 confidence level.
Abstract: Traditional principal components analysis (PCA)
techniques for face recognition are based on batch-mode training
using a pre-available image set. Real world applications require that
the training set be dynamic of evolving nature where within the
framework of continuous learning, new training images are
continuously added to the original set; this would trigger a costly
continuous re-computation of the eigen space representation via
repeating an entire batch-based training that includes the old and new
images. Incremental PCA methods allow adding new images and
updating the PCA representation. In this paper, two incremental
PCA approaches, CCIPCA and IPCA, are examined and compared.
Besides, different learning and testing strategies are proposed and
applied to the two algorithms. The results suggest that batch PCA is
inferior to both incremental approaches, and that all CCIPCAs are
practically equivalent.
Abstract: Recent research on seeds of bio-diesel plants like
Jatropha curcas, constituting 40-50% bio-crude oil indicates its
potential as one of the most promising alternatives to conventional
sources of energy. Also, limited studies on utilization of de-oiled cake
have revealed that Jatropha bio-waste has good potential to be used as
organic fertilizers produced via aerobic and anaerobic treatment.
However, their commercial exploitation has not yet been possible. The
present study aims at developing appropriate bio-processes and
formulations utilizing Jatropha seed cake as organic fertilizer, for
improving the growth of Polianthes tuberose L. (Tuberose). Pot
experiments were carried out by growing tuberose plants on soil
treated with composted formulations of Jatropha de-oiled cake, Farm
Yard Manure (FYM) and inorganic fertilizers were also blended in
soil. The treatment was carried out through soil amendment as well as
foliar spray. The growth and morphological parameters were
monitored for entire crop cycle.
The growth Length and number of leaves, spike length, rachis
length, number of bulb per plant and earliness of sprouting of bulb and
yield enhancement were comparable to that achieved under inorganic
fertilizer. Furthermore, performance of inorganic fertilizer also showed
an improvement when blended with composted bio-waste. These
findings would open new avenues for Jatropha based bio-wastes to be
composted and used as organic fertilizers for commercial floriculture.
Abstract: Cosmic showers, from their places of origin in space,
after entering earth generate secondary particles called Extensive Air
Shower (EAS). Detection and analysis of EAS and similar High
Energy Particle Showers involve a plethora of experimental setups
with certain constraints for which soft-computational tools like
Artificial Neural Network (ANN)s can be adopted. The optimality
of ANN classifiers can be enhanced further by the use of Multiple
Classifier System (MCS) and certain data - dimension reduction
techniques. This work describes the performance of certain data
dimension reduction techniques like Principal Component Analysis
(PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Self Organizing
Map (SOM) approximators for application with an MCS formed
using Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP), Recurrent Neural Network
(RNN) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN). The data inputs are
obtained from an array of detectors placed in a circular arrangement
resembling a practical detector grid which have a higher dimension
and greater correlation among themselves. The PCA, ICA and SOM
blocks reduce the correlation and generate a form suitable for real
time practical applications for prediction of primary energy and
location of EAS from density values captured using detectors in a
circular grid.
Abstract: Nowadays, ontologies are the only widely accepted paradigm for the management of sharable and reusable knowledge in a way that allows its automatic interpretation. They are collaboratively created across the Web and used to index, search and annotate documents. The vast majority of the ontology based approaches, however, focus on indexing texts at document level. Recently, with the advances in ontological engineering, it became clear that information indexing can largely benefit from the use of general purpose ontologies which aid the indexing of documents at word level. This paper presents a concept indexing algorithm, which adds ontology information to words and phrases and allows full text to be searched, browsed and analyzed at different levels of abstraction. This algorithm uses a general purpose ontology, OntoRo, and an ontologically tagged corpus, OntoCorp, both developed for the purpose of this research. OntoRo and OntoCorp are used in a two-stage supervised machine learning process aimed at generating ontology tagging rules. The first experimental tests show a tagging accuracy of 78.91% which is encouraging in terms of the further improvement of the algorithm.
Abstract: The fixed partial dentures are mainly used in the frontal
part of the dental arch because of their great esthetics. There are
several factors that are associated with the stress state created in
ceramic restorations, including: thickness of ceramic layers,
mechanical properties of the materials, elastic modulus of the
supporting substrate material, direction, magnitude and frequency of
applied load, size and location of occlusal contact areas, residual
stresses induced by processing or pores, restoration-cement
interfacial defects and environmental defects. The purpose of this
study is to evaluate the capability of Polarization Sensitive Optical
Coherence Tomography (PSOCT) in detection and analysis of
possible material defects in metal-ceramic and integral ceramic fixed
partial dentures. As a conclusion, it is important to have a non
invasive method to investigate fixed partial prostheses before their
insertion in the oral cavity in order to satisfy the high stress
requirements and the esthetic function.
Abstract: This paper reports on the enhanced photoluminescence
(PL) of nanocomposites through the layered structuring of phosphor
and quantum dot (QD). Green phosphor of Sr2SiO4:Eu, red QDs of
CdSe/CdS/CdZnS/ZnS core-multishell, and thermo-curable resin
were used for this study. Two kinds of composite (layered and mixed)
were prepared, and the schemes for optical energy transfer between
QD and phosphor were suggested and investigated based on PL decay
characteristics. It was found that the layered structure is more effective
than the mixed one in the respects of PL intensity, PL decay and
thermal loss. When this layered nanocomposite (QDs on phosphor) is
used to make white light emitting diode (LED), the brightness is
increased by 37 %, and the color rendering index (CRI) value is raised
to 88.4 compared to the mixed case of 80.4.
Abstract: The influence of twist arrangement on the temperature
distribution in an annular diffuser fitted with twisted rectangular hub
is investigated. Different pitches (Y = 120 mm, 100 mm, 80 mm, and
60 mm) for the twist arrangements are simulated to be compared. The
geometry of the annular diffuser and the inlet condition for the hub
arrangements are kept constant. The result reveals that using twisted
rectangular hub insert with different pitches will force the
temperature to distribute in a circular direction. However,
temperature distribution will be enhanced with the length pitch
increases.
Abstract: Previous studies on political budget cycles (PBCs)
implicitly assume the executive has full discretion power over fiscal
policy, neglecting the role of checks and balances of the legislature.
This paper goes beyond traditional PBCs models and sheds light on
the case study of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan over the 1988-2007
periods. Based on the results, we find no evidence of electoral impacts
on the public expenditures in South Korean and Taiwan's
congressional elections. We also noted that PBCs are found on
Taiwan-s government expenditures during our sample periods.
Furthermore, the results also show that Japan-s legislature has a
significant checks and balances on government-s expenditures.
However, empirical results show that the legislature veto player in
Taiwan neither has effect on the reduction of public expenditures, nor
has the moderating effect over Taiwan-s political budget cycles, albeit
that they are statistically insignificant.We suggest that the existence of
PBCs in Taiwan is due to a weaker systemof checks and balances. Our
conjecture is that Taiwan either has no legislative veto player or has
observed low compliance to the law during the time period examined
in our study.