Abstract: In this article, we propose a new surgical device for
circumferentially excision of high anal fistulas in a minimally
invasive manner. The new apparatus works on the basis of axially
rotating and moving a tubular blade along a fistulous tract
straightened using a rigid straight guidewire. As the blade moves
along the tract, its sharp circular cutting edge circumferentially
separates approximately 2.25 mm thickness of tract encircling the
rigid guidewire. We used the new set to excise two anal fistulas in a
62-year-old male patient, an extrasphincteric type and a long tract
with no internal opening. With regard to the results of this test, the
new device can be considered as a sphincter preserving mechanism
for treatment of high anal fistulas. Consequently, a major reduction
in the risk of fecal incontinence, recurrence rate, convalescence
period and patient morbidity may be achieved using the new device
for treatment of fistula-in-ano.
Abstract: This experiment was conducted in attempt of
improving hydrodynamic efficiency of the propulsion mechanism by
installing a spring to the wing so that the opening angle of the wing in
one stroke can be changed automatically, compared to the existing
method of fixed maximum opening angle in Weis-Fogh type ship
propulsion mechanism. Average thrust coefficient was almost fixed
with all velocity ratio with the prototype, but with the spring type,
thrust coefficient increased sharply as velocity ratio increased.
Average propulsive efficiency was larger with bigger opening angle in
the prototype, but in the spring type, the one with smaller spring
coefficient had larger value. In the range over 1.0 in velocity ratio
where big thrust can be generated, spring type had more than twice of
propulsive efficiency increase compared to the prototype.
Abstract: The quest for alternatefuels for a CI engine has
become all the more imperative considering its importance in the
economy of a nation and from the standpoint of preserving the environment. Reported in this paper are the combustion performance and P-θ characteristics of a CI engine operating on B20 biodiesel fuel derived from Jatropha oil.Itis observed that the twin effect of advancing the injection timing and increasing the injector opening pressure (IOP) up to 220 barhas resulted in minimum brake specific
energy consumption and higherpeak pressure. It is also observed that
the crank angle of occurrence of peak pressure progressestowards top
dead center (TDC) as the timing is advanced and IOP is increased.
Abstract: Sedimentation in reservoirs and the corresponding
loss of storage capacity is one of the most serious problems in dam
engineering. Pressurized flushing, a way to remove sediments from the reservoir, is flushing under a pressurized flow condition and
nearly constant water level. Pressurized flushing has only local
effects around the outlet. Sediment in the vicinity of the outlet openings is scoured and a funnel shaped crater is created. In this study, the temporal development of flushing cone under various
hydraulic conditions was studied experimentally. Time variations of
parameters such as maximum length and width of flushing and also
depth of scouring cone was measured. Results indicated that an
increase in flow velocity (and consequently in Froude number)
established new hydraulically conditions for flushing mechanism and
so a sudden growth was observed in the amount of sediment released
and also scouring dimenssions. In addition, a set of nondimensional
relationships were identified for temporal variations of flushing scour
dimenssions, which can eventuallt be used to estimate the development of flushing cone.
Abstract: Experimental study on the influence of fibre content
on crack behaviour and propagation in synthetic-fibre reinforced
beams has been reported in this paper. The tensile behaviour of
metallic fibre concrete is evaluated in terms of residual flexural
tensile strength values determined from the load-crack mouth
opening displacement curve or load-deflection curve obtained by
applying a centre-point load on a simply supported notched prism.
The results achieved demonstrate that an increase in fibre content has
an almost negligible effect on compressive and tensile splitting
properties, causes a marginal increment in flexural tensile strength
and increasesthe Re3 value.
Abstract: Morphological operators transform the original image
into another image through the interaction with the other image of
certain shape and size which is known as the structure element.
Mathematical morphology provides a systematic approach to analyze
the geometric characteristics of signals or images, and has been
applied widely too many applications such as edge detection,
objection segmentation, noise suppression and so on. Fuzzy
Mathematical Morphology aims to extend the binary morphological
operators to grey-level images. In order to define the basic
morphological operations such as fuzzy erosion, dilation, opening
and closing, a general method based upon fuzzy implication and
inclusion grade operators is introduced. The fuzzy morphological
operations extend the ordinary morphological operations by using
fuzzy sets where for fuzzy sets, the union operation is replaced by a
maximum operation, and the intersection operation is replaced by a
minimum operation.
In this work, it consists of two articles. In the first one, fuzzy set
theory, fuzzy Mathematical morphology which is based on fuzzy
logic and fuzzy set theory; fuzzy Mathematical operations and their
properties will be studied in details. As a second part, the application
of fuzziness in Mathematical morphology in practical work such as
image processing will be discussed with the illustration problems.
Abstract: This paper attempts to identify the significance of
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and
competitiveness to the profit efficiency of commercial banks in
Malaysia. The profit efficiency of commercial banks in Malaysia, the
dependent variable, was estimated using the Stochastic Frontier
Approach (SFA) on a sample of unbalanced panel data, covering 23
commercial banks, between 1995 to 2007. Based on the empirical
results, ICT was not found to exert a significant impact on profit
efficiency, whereas competitiveness, non ICT stock expenditure and
ownership were significant contributors. On the other hand, the size
of banks was found to have significantly reduced profit efficiency,
opening up for various interpretations of the interrelated role of ICT
and competition.
Abstract: The basis of this paper is the assumption, that graviton
is a measurable entity of molecular gravitational acceleration and this
is not a hypothetical entity. The adoption of this assumption as an
axiom is tantamount to fully opening the previously locked door to
the boundary theory between laminar and turbulent flows. It leads to
the theorem, that the division of flows of Newtonian (viscous) fluids
into laminar and turbulent is true only, if the fluid is influenced by a
powerful, external force field. The mathematical interpretation of this
theorem, presented in this paper shows, that the boundary between
laminar and turbulent flow can be determined theoretically. This is a
novelty, because thus far the said boundary was determined
empirically only and the reasons for its existence were unknown.
Abstract: Operating rooms are important assets for hospitals as
they generate the largest revenue and, at the same time, produce the
largest cost for hospitals. The model presented in this paper helps
make capacity planning decisions on the combination of open
operating rooms (ORs) and estimated overtime to satisfy the
allocated OR time to each specialty. The model combines both
decisions on determining the amount of OR time to open and to
allocate to different surgical specialties. The decisions made are
based on OR costs, overutilization and underutilization costs, and
contribution margins from allocating OR time. The results show the
importance of having a good estimate of specialty usage of OR time
to determine the amount of needed capacity and highlighted the
tradeoff that the OR manager faces between opening more ORs
versus extending the working time of the ORs already in use.
Abstract: An experiment of vented gas explosions involving two
different cylinder vessel volumes (0.2 and 0.0065 m3) was reported,
with equivalence ratio (Φ) ranged from 0.3 to 1.6. Both vessels were
closed at the rear end and fitted at the other side with a circular
orifice plate that gives a constant vent coefficient (K =Av/V2/3) of
16.4. It was shown that end ignition gives higher overpressures than
central ignition, even though most of the published work on venting
uses central ignition. For propane and ethylene, it is found that rich
mixtures gave the highest overpressures and these mixtures are not
considered in current vent design guidance; which the guideline is
based on mixtures giving the maximum flame temperature. A strong
influence of the vessel volume at constant K was found for methane,
propane, ethylene and hydrogen-air explosions. It can be concluded
that self- acceleration of the flame, which is dependent on the
distance of a flame from the ignition and the ‘suction’ at the vent
opening are significant factors affecting the vent flow during
explosion development in vented gas explosion. This additional
volume influence on vented explosions is not taken into account in
the current vent design guidance.
Abstract: As the world changes more rapidly, the demand for update information for resource management, environment monitoring, planning are increasing exponentially. Integration of Remote Sensing with GIS technology will significantly promote the ability for addressing these concerns. This paper presents an alternative way of update GIS applications using image processing and high resolution images. We show a method of high-resolution image segmentation using graphs and morphological operations, where a preprocessing step (watershed operation) is required. A morphological process is then applied using the opening and closing operations. After this segmentation we can extract significant cartographic elements such as urban areas, streets or green areas. The result of this segmentation and this extraction is then used to update GIS applications. Some examples are shown using aerial photography.
Abstract: Due to their high power-to-weight ratio and low cost, pneumatic actuators are attractive for robotics and automation applications; however, achieving fast and accurate control of their position have been known as a complex control problem. The paper presents a methodology for obtaining controllers that achieve high position accuracy and preserve the closed-loop characteristics over a broad operating range. Experimentation with a number of conventional (or "classical") three-term controllers shows that, as repeated operations accumulate, the characteristics of the pneumatic actuator change requiring frequent re-tuning of the controller parameters (PID gains). Furthermore, three-term controllers are found to perform poorly in recovering the closed-loop system after the application of load or other external disturbances. The key reason for these problems lies in the non-linear exchange of energy inside the cylinder relating, in particular, to the complex friction forces that develop on the piston-wall interface. In order to overcome this problem but still remain within the boundaries of classical control methods, we designed an auto selective classicaql controller so that the system performance would benefit from all three control gains (KP, Kd, Ki) according to system requirements and the characteristics of each type of controller. This challenging experimentation took place for consistent performance in the face of modelling imprecision and disturbances. In the work presented, a selective PID controller is presented for an experimental rig comprising an air cylinder driven by a variable-opening pneumatic valve and equipped with position and pressure sensors. The paper reports on tests carried out to investigate the capability of this specific controller to achieve consistent control performance under, repeated operations and other changes in operating conditions.
Abstract: Chess is one of the indoor games, which improves the
level of human confidence, concentration, planning skills and
knowledge. The main objective of this paper is to help the chess
players to improve their chess openings using data mining
techniques. Budding Chess Players usually do practices by analyzing
various existing openings. When they analyze and correlate
thousands of openings it becomes tedious and complex for them. The
work done in this paper is to analyze the best lines of Blackmar-
Diemer Gambit(BDG) which opens with White D4... using data
mining analysis. It is carried out on the collection of winning games
by applying association rules. The first step of this analysis is
assigning variables to each different sequence moves. In the second
step, the sequence association rules were generated to calculate
support and confidence factor which help us to find the best
subsequence chess moves that may lead to winning position.
Abstract: This research investigates the effects of the opening
shape and location on the structural behavior of reinforced concrete
deep beam with openings, while keeping the opening size unchanged.
The software ANSYS 12.1 is used to handle the nonlinear finite
element analysis. The ultimate strength of reinforced concrete deep
beam with opening obtained by ANSYS 12.1 shows fair agreement
with the experimental results, with a difference of no more than 20%. The present work concludes that the opening location has much more effect on the structural strength than the opening shape. It was
concluded that placing the openings near the upper corners of the
deep beam may double the strength, and the use of a rectangular
narrow opening, with the long sides in the horizontal direction, can save up to 40% of structural strength of the deep beam.
Abstract: A large quantity of world-s oil reserves exists in
carbonate reservoirs. Carbonate reservoirs are very sensitive to
chemical enhanced oil recovery process because of containing large
amount of calcite, dolomite and calcium sulfate minerals. These
minerals cause major obstacles during alkali-surfactant-polymer
(ASP) flooding. Alkali reacts with these minerals and form undesired
precipitations which plug effective porous openings, reduce
permeability and cause scale occurrence at the wellbore. In this
paper, a new chemical combination consists of acrylic acid and alkali
was used to minimize precipitation problem during ASP flooding. A
series of fluid-fluid compatibility tests were performed using acrylic
acid and different concentrations of alkaline. Two types of alkalis
namely; sodium carbonate and sodium metaborate were screened. As
a result, the combination of acrylic acid and sodium carbonate was
not effective in preventing calcium and magnesium precipitations.
However, acrylic acid and sodium metaborate showed promising
results for keeping all solutions without any precipitations. The ratio
of acrylic acid to sodium metaborate of 0.7:1.0 was found to be
optimum for achieving a compatible solution for 30 days at 80oC.
Abstract: To compare Healing Effects of an
Ayurvedic Preparation and Silver Sulfadiazine on burn wounds in
Albino Rats.
Methods: Albino rats– 30 male / female rats weighing between
150-200 g were used in the study. They were individually housed and
maintained on normal diet and water ad libitum. Partial thickness
burn wounds were inflicted, on overnight-starved animals under
pentobarbitone (30mg/kg, i.p.) anaesthesia, by pouring hot molten
wax at 80oC into a plastic cylinder of 300 mm2 circular openings
placed on the shaven back of the animal. Apart from the drugs under
investigation no local/ systemic chemotherapeutic cover will be
provided to animals. All the animals were assessed for the percentage
of wound contraction, signs of infection, scab formation and
histopathological examination.
Results: Percentage of wound healing was significantly better in
the test ointment group compared to the standard. Signs of infection
were observed in more animals in the test ointment group compared
to the standard. Scab formation also took place earlier in the test
ointment group compared to standard. Epithelial regeneration and
healing profile was better in the test ointment compared to the
standard. Moreover the test ointment group did not show any raised
margins in the wound or blackish discoloration as was observed in
silver sulfadiazine group.
Conclusion: The burn wound healing effect of the ayurvedic
ointment under study is better in comparison to standard therapy of
silver sulfadiazine. The problem of infection encountered with the
test ointment can be overcome by changing the concentrations and
proportions of the ingredients in the test ointment which constitutes
the further plan of the study.
Abstract: Due to the stringent legislation for emission of diesel
engines and also increasing demand on fuel consumption, the
importance of detailed 3D simulation of fuel injection, mixing and
combustion have been increased in the recent years. In the present
work, FIRE code has been used to study the detailed modeling of
spray and mixture formation in a Caterpillar heavy-duty diesel
engine. The paper provides an overview of the submodels
implemented, which account for liquid spray atomization, droplet
secondary break-up, droplet collision, impingement, turbulent
dispersion and evaporation. The simulation was performed from
intake valve closing (IVC) to exhaust valve opening (EVO). The
predicted in-cylinder pressure is validated by comparing with
existing experimental data. A good agreement between the predicted
and experimental values ensures the accuracy of the numerical
predictions collected with the present work. Predictions of engine
emissions were also performed and a good quantitative agreement
between measured and predicted NOx and soot emission data were
obtained with the use of the present Zeldowich mechanism and
Hiroyasu model. In addition, the results reported in this paper
illustrate that the numerical simulation can be one of the most
powerful and beneficial tools for the internal combustion engine
design, optimization and performance analysis.
Abstract: A research program is conducted to evaluate the
mechanical properties of Ultra High Performance Concrete, target
compressive strength at the age of 28 days being more than 150 MPa.
The methodology to develop such mix has been explained. The
material properties, mix design and curing regime are determined.
The material attributes are understood by studying the stress strain
behaviour of UHPC cylinders under uniaxial compressive loading.
The load –crack mouth opening displacement (cmod) of UHPC
beams, flexural strength and fracture energy was evaluated using
third point loading test. Compressive strength and Split tensile
strength results are determined to find out the compressive and tensile
behaviour. Residual strength parameters are presented vividly
explaining the flexural performance, toughness of concrete.Durability
studies were also done to compare the effect of fibre to that of a
control mix For all the studies the Mechanical properties were
evaluated by varying the percentage and aspect ratio of steel fibres
The results reflected that higher aspect ratio and fibre volume
produced drastic changes in the cube strength, cylinder strength, post
peak response, load-cmod, fracture energy flexural strength, split
tensile strength, residual strength and durability. In regards to null
application of UHPC in India, an initiative is undertaken to
comprehend the mechanical behaviour of UHPC, which will be vital
for longer run in commercialization for structural applications.
Abstract: Fracture process in mechanically loaded steel fiber
reinforced high-strength (SFRHSC) concrete is characterized by
fibers bridging the crack providing resistance to its opening.
Structural SFRHSC fracture model was created; material fracture
process was modeled, based on single fiber pull-out laws, which were
determined experimentally (for straight fibers, fibers with end hooks
(Dramix), and corrugated fibers (Tabix)) as well as obtained
numerically ( using FEM simulations). For this purpose experimental
program was realized and pull-out force versus pull-out fiber length
was obtained (for fibers embedded into concrete at different depth
and under different angle). Model predictions were validated by
15x15x60cm prisms 4 point bending tests. Fracture surfaces analysis
was realized for broken prisms with the goal to improve elaborated
model assumptions. Optimal SFRHSC structures were recognized.