Abstract: This work presents the results of a study the incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in women with impaired reproductive function (IRF) according to the data of Astana, Kazakhstan. The anthropometric, biochemical and instrumental studies were conducted among 515 women, of which 53 patients with MetS according to IDF criteria, 2006, were selected. The frequency of occurrence of the IRF, due to MetS is 10.3% of cases according to the data of Astana. In women of childbearing age with IRF and the MetS, blood pressure (BP), indicators of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism were significantly higher and the level of high density lipoprotein (HDL) significantly lower compared to the same in women with the IRF without MetS. The hyperandrogenism, the hyperestrogenemia, the hyperprolactinemia and the hypoprogesteronemia were found in the patients with MetS and IRF, indicating the impact of MetS on the development of the polycystic ovary syndrome in 28% of cases and hyperplastic processes of the myometrium in 20% of cases.
Abstract: This paper presents the result of large-scale traveling ionospheric disturbance (LSTID) observation during moderate magnetic storm event on 25 October 2011 with SYM-H ~ -160 nT and Kp ~ 7 over Peninsular Malaysia at equatorial region using vertical total electron content (VTEC) from the Global Positioning System (GPS) observation measurement. The propagation of the LSTID signatures in the TEC measurements over Peninsular Malaysia was also investigated using VTEC map. The LSTID was found to propagate equatorward during this event. The results showed that the LSTID propagated with an average phase velocity of 526.41 m/s and average periods of 140 min. The occurrence of this LSTID was also found to be the subsequent effects of substorm activities in the auroral region.
Abstract: This study considers the problem of calculating safety stocks in disaster situations inventory systems that face demand uncertainties. Safety stocks are essential to make the supply chain, which is controlled by forecasts of customer needs, in response to demand uncertainties and to reach predefined goal service levels. To solve the problem of uncertainties due to the disaster situations affecting the industry sector, the concept of Emergency Safety Stock (ESS) was proposed. While there exists a huge body of literature on determining safety stock levels, this literature does not address the problem arising due to the disaster and dealing with the situations. In this paper, the problem of improving the Order Quantity Model to deal with uncertainty of demand due to disasters is managed by incorporating a new idea called ESS which is based on the probability of disaster occurrence and uses probability matrix calculated from the historical data.
Abstract: Occurrence of popcorn in IC packages while assembling them onto the PCB is a well known moisture sensitive reliability issues, especially for surface mount packages. Commonly reflow soldering simulation process is conducted to assess the impact of assembling IC package onto PCB. A strain gauge-based instrumentation is developed to investigate the popcorn effect in surface mount packages during reflow soldering process. The instrument is capable of providing real-time quantitative information of the occurrence popcorn phenomenon in IC packages. It is found that the popcorn occur temperatures between 218 to 241°C depending on moisture soak condition, but not at the peak temperature of the reflow process. The presence of popcorn and delamination are further confirmed by scanning acoustic tomography as a failure analysis.
Abstract: CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) is mainly used as reinforcing material for degraded structures owing to its advantages including its non-corrodibility, high strength and lightweight properties. Recently, dedicated studies focused not only on its simple bonding but also on its tensioning. The tension necessary for prestressing requires the anchoring of multi-CFRP tendons with high capacity and the surface treatment of the CFRP tendons may also constitute an important issue according to the type of anchor. The wedge type, swage type or bonded type anchor can be used to anchor the CFRP tendon. The bonded type anchor presents the disadvantage to lengthen the length of the anchor due to the low bond strength of the CFRP tendon without surface treatment. This study intends to overcome this drawback through the application of a method enlarging the bond area at the end of the CFRP tendon. This method enlarges the bond area by splitting the end of the CFRP tendon along its length and can be applied when CFRP is produced by pultrusion. The application of this method shows that the mono-CFRP tendon and 3-multi CFRP tendon secured the anchor performance corresponding to the tensile performance of the CFRP tendon and that the 7-multi tendon secured anchor performance corresponding to 90% of the tensile strength due to the occurrence of buckling in the steel tube anchorage.
Abstract: Abrasive Water Jet Machining is an unconventional machining process well known for machining hard to cut materials. The primary research focus on the process was for through cutting and a very limited literature is available on pocket milling using AWJM. The present work is an attempt to use this process for milling applications considering a set of various process parameters. Four different input parameters, which were considered by researchers for part separation, are selected for the above application, i.e., abrasive size, flow rate, standoff distance and traverse speed. Pockets of definite size are machined to investigate surface roughness, material removal rate and pocket depth. Based on the data available through experiments on SS304 material, it is observed that higher traverse speeds gives a better finish because of reduction in the particle energy density and lower depth is also observed. Increase in the standoff distance and abrasive flow rate reduces the rate of material removal as the jet loses its focus and occurrence of collisions within the particles. ANOVA for individual output parameter has been studied to know the significant process parameters.
Abstract: Breast Cancer is the most common malignancy in women and the second leading cause of death for women all over the world. Earlier the detection of cancer, better the treatment. The diagnosis and treatment of the cancer rely on segmentation of Sonoelastographic images. Texture features has not considered for Sonoelastographic segmentation. Sonoelastographic images of 15 patients containing both benign and malignant tumorsare considered for experimentation.The images are enhanced to remove noise in order to improve contrast and emphasize tumor boundary. It is then decomposed into sub-bands using single level Daubechies wavelets varying from single co-efficient to six coefficients. The Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Local Binary Pattern (LBP) features are extracted and then selected by ranking it using Sequential Floating Forward Selection (SFFS) technique from each sub-band. The resultant images undergo K-Means clustering and then few post-processing steps to remove the false spots. The tumor boundary is detected from the segmented image. It is proposed that Local Binary Pattern (LBP) from the vertical coefficients of Daubechies wavelet with two coefficients is best suited for segmentation of Sonoelastographic breast images among the wavelet members using one to six coefficients for decomposition. The results are also quantified with the help of an expert radiologist. The proposed work can be used for further diagnostic process to decide if the segmented tumor is benign or malignant.
Abstract: Force sensor has been used as requisite for knowing information on the amount and the directions of forces on the skin surface. We have developed a four-degrees-of-freedom capacitive force sensor (approximately 20×20×5 mm3) that has a flexible structure and sixteen parallel plate capacitors. An iterative algorithm was developed for estimating four displacements from the sixteen capacitances using fourth-order polynomial approximation of characteristics between capacitance and displacement. The estimation results from measured capacitances had large error caused by deterioration of the characteristics. In this study, effective capacitors had major information were selected on the basis of the capacitance change range and the characteristic shape. Maximum errors in calibration and non-calibration points were 25%and 6.8%.However the maximum error was larger than desired value, the smallness of averaged value indicated the occurrence of a few large error points. On the other hand, error in non-calibration point was within desired value.
Abstract: The presence of a vertical edge-crack within a web
plate subjected to pure bending induces local compressive stresses
about the crack which may cause tension buckling. Approximate
theoretical expressions were derived for the critical far-field tensile
stress and bending moment capacity of an edge-cracked web plate
associated with tension buckling. These expressions were validated
with finite element analyses and used to investigate the possibility of
tension buckling in web-cracked trial girders. It was found that
tension buckling is an unlikely occurrence unless the web is relatively
thin or the crack is very long.
Abstract: Measuring the effect of perinatal lead exposure on learning ability of offspring is considered as a sensitive and selective index for providing an early marker for central nervous system damage produced by this toxic metal. A total of 35 Sprague-Dawley adult rats were used to investigate the effect of lead acetate toxicity on behavioral patterns of adult female rats and learning ability of offspring. Rats were allotted into 4 groups, group one received 1g/l lead acetate (n=10), group two received 1.5g/l lead acetate (n=10), group three received 2g/l lead acetate in drinking water (n=10) and control group did not receive lead acetate (n=5) from 8th day of pregnancy till weaning of pups.
The obtained results revealed a dose dependent increase in the feeding time, drinking frequency, licking frequency, scratching frequency, licking litters, nest building and retrieving frequencies, while standing time increased significantly in rats treated with 1.5g/l lead acetate than other treated groups and control, on contrary lying time decreased gradually in a dose dependent manner. Moreover, movement activities were higher in rats treated with 1g/l lead acetate than other treated groups and control. Furthermore, time spent in closed arms was significantly lower in rats given 2g/l lead acetate than other treated groups, while, they spent significantly much time spent in open arms than other treated groups which could be attributed to occurrence of adaptation. Furthermore, number of entries in open arms was dose dependent. However, the ratio between open/closed arms revealed a significant decrease in rats treated with 2g/l lead acetate than control group.
Abstract: In this paper, different nonlinear dynamics analysis techniques are employed to unveil the rich nonlinear phenomena of the electromagnetic system. In particular, bifurcation diagrams, time responses, phase portraits, Poincare maps, power spectrum analysis, and the construction of basins of attraction are all powerful and effective tools for nonlinear dynamics problems. We also employ the method of Lyapunov exponents to show the occurrence of chaotic motion and to verify those numerical simulation results. Finally, two cases of a chaotic electromagnetic system being effectively controlled by a reference signal or being synchronized to another nonlinear electromagnetic system are presented.
Abstract: The novelty proposed in this study is twofold and consists in the developing of a new color similarity metric based on the human visual system and a new color indexing based on a textual approach. The new color similarity metric proposed is based on the color perception of the human visual system. Consequently the results returned by the indexing system can fulfill as much as possibile the user expectations. We developed a web application to collect the users judgments about the similarities between colors, whose results are used to estimate the metric proposed in this study. In order to index the image's colors, we used a text indexing engine to facilitate the integration of visual features in a database of text documents. The textual signature is build by weighting the image's colors in according to their occurrence in the image. The use of a textual indexing engine, provide us a simple, fast and robust solution to index images. A typical usage of the system proposed in this study, is the development of applications whose data type is both visual and textual. In order to evaluate the proposed method we chose a price comparison engine as a case of study, collecting a series of commercial offers containing the textual description and the image representing a specific commercial offer.
Abstract: The occurrence and removal of trace organic
contaminants in the aquatic environment has become a focus of
environmental concern. For the selective removal of carbamazepine
from loaded waters molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) were
synthesized with carbamazepine as template. Parameters varied were
the type of monomer, crosslinker, and porogen, the ratio of starting
materials, and the synthesis temperature. Best results were obtained
with a template to crosslinker ratio of 1:20, toluene as porogen, and
methacrylic acid (MAA) as monomer. MIPs were then capable to
recover carbamazepine by 93% from a 10-5 M landfill leachate
solution containing also caffeine and salicylic acid. By comparison,
carbamazepine recoveries of 75% were achieved using a nonimprinted
polymer (NIP) synthesized under the same conditions, but
without template. In landfill leachate containing solutions
carbamazepine was adsorbed by 93-96% compared with an uptake of
73% by activated carbon. The best solvent for desorption was
acetonitrile, with which the amount of solvent necessary and dilution
with water was tested. Selected MIPs were tested for their reusability
and showed good results for at least five cycles. Adsorption
isotherms were prepared with carbamazepine solutions in the
concentration range of 0.01 M to 5*10-6 M. The heterogeneity index
showed a more homogenous binding site distribution.
Abstract: Program slicing is the task of finding all statements in
a program that directly or indirectly influence the value of a variable
occurrence. The set of statements that can affect the value of a
variable at some point in a program is called a program backward
slice. In several software engineering applications, such as program
debugging and measuring program cohesion and parallelism, several
slices are computed at different program points. The existing
algorithms for computing program slices are introduced to compute a
slice at a program point. In these algorithms, the program, or the
model that represents the program, is traversed completely or
partially once. To compute more than one slice, the same algorithm
is applied for every point of interest in the program. Thus, the same
program, or program representation, is traversed several times.
In this paper, an algorithm is introduced to compute all forward
static slices of a computer program by traversing the program
representation graph once. Therefore, the introduced algorithm is
useful for software engineering applications that require computing
program slices at different points of a program. The program
representation graph used in this paper is called Program Dependence
Graph (PDG).
Abstract: Occurrence of a multiple-points fault in machine operations could result in exhibiting complex fault signatures, which could result in lowering fault diagnosis accuracy. In this study, a multiple-points defect model (MPDM) is proposed which can simulate fault signature-s dynamics for n-points bearing faults. Furthermore, this study identifies that in case of multiple-points fault in the rotary machine, the location of the dominant component of defect frequency shifts depending upon the relative location of the fault points which could mislead the fault diagnostic model to inaccurate detections. Analytical and experimental results are presented to characterize and validate the variation in the dominant component of defect frequency. Based on envelop detection analysis, a modification is recommended in the existing fault diagnostic models to consider the multiples of defect frequency rather than only considering the frequency spectrum at the defect frequency in order to incorporate the impact of multiple points fault.
Abstract: The refueling of a transparent rectangular fuel tank
fitted with a standard filler pipe and roll-over valve was
experimentally studied. A fuel-conditioning cart, capable of
handling fuels of different Reid vapor pressure at a constant
temperature, was used to dispense fuel at the desired rate. The
experimental protocol included transient recording of the tank and
filler tube pressures while video recording the flow patterns in the
filler tube and tank during the refueling process. This information
was used to determine the effect of changes in the vent tube
diameter, fuel-dispense flow rate and fuel Reid vapor pressure on the
pressure-time characteristics and the occurrence of premature fuel
filling shut-off and fuel spill-back. Pressure-time curves for the case
of normal shut-off demonstrated the classic, three-phase
characteristic noted in the literature. The variation of the maximum
values of tank dome and filler tube pressures are analyzed in relation
to the occurrence of premature shut-off.
Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of knowledge-based acceleration feedback control integrated with Automatic Generation Control (AGC) to enhance the quality of frequency control of governing system. The Intelligent Acceleration Feedback Controller (IAFC) is proposed to counter the over and under frequency occurrences due to major load change in power system network. Therefore, generator tripping and load shedding operations can be reduced. Meanwhile, the integration of IAFC with AGC, a well known Load-Frequency Control (LFC) is essential to ensure the system frequency is restored to the nominal value. Computer simulations of frequency response of governing system are used to optimize the parameters of IAFC. As a result, there is substantial improvement on the LFC of governing system that employing the proposed control strategy.
Abstract: An experimental study is presented on the effect
of microstructural change on the Portevin-Le Chatelier effect
behaviour of Al-2.5%Mg alloy. Tensile tests are performed on
the as received and heat treated (at 400 ºC for 16 hours)
samples for a wide range of strain rates. The serrations
observed in the stress-time curve are investigated from
statistical analysis point of view. Microstructures of the
samples are characterized by optical metallography and X-ray
diffraction. It is found that the excess vacancy generated due
to heat treatment leads to decrease in the strain rate sensitivity
and the increase in the number of stress drop occurrences per
unit time during the PLC effect. The microstructural
parameters like domain size, dislocation density have no
appreciable effect on the PLC effect as far as the statistical
behavior of the serrations is considered.
Abstract: Occurrences of spurious crests on the troughs of large,
relatively steep second-order Stokes waves are anomalous and not an
inherent characteristic of real waves. Here, the effects of such
occurrences on the statistics described by the standard second-order
stochastic model are examined theoretically and by way of
simulations. Theoretical results and simulations indicate that when
spurious occurrences are sufficiently large, the standard model leads
to physically unrealistic surface features and inaccuracies in the
statistics of various surface features, in particular, the troughs and
thus zero-crossing heights of large waves. Whereas inaccuracies can
be fairly noticeable for long-crested waves in both deep and
shallower depths, they tend to become relatively insignificant in
directional waves.
Abstract: This paper presents an adaptive nonlinear position
controller with velocity constraint, capable of combining the
input-output linearization technique and Lyapunov stability theory.
Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, the adaptation law of the
proposed controller is derived along with the verification of the overall
system-s stability. Computer simulation results demonstrate that the
proposed controller is robust and it can ensure transient stability of
BLDCM, under the occurrence of a large sudden fault.