Abstract: Data on 657 lactation from 163 Maltese goat,
collected over a 5-year period were analyzed by a mixed model to
estimate the variance components for heritability. The considered
lactation traits were: milk yield (MY) and lactation length (LL). Year,
parity and type of birth (single or twin) were significant sources of
variation for lactation length; on the other hand milk yield was
significantly influenced only by the year. The average MY was
352.34 kg and the average LL was 230 days. Estimates of heritability
were 0.21 and 0.15 for MY and LL respectively. These values
suggest there is low correlation between genotype and phenotype so
it may be difficult to evaluate animals directly on phenotype. So, the
genetic improvement of this breed may be quite slow without the
support of progeny test aimed to select Maltese breeders.
Abstract: Commercial hydroxyapatite (HA) was reinforced by
adding 2, 5, and 10 wt % of 28.5%CaO-28.5%P2O5-38%Na2 O-
5%CaF2 based glass and then sintered. Although HA shows good
biocompatibility with the human body, its applications are limited to
non load-bearing areas and coatings due to its poor mechanical
properties. These mechanical properties can be improved
substantially with addition of glass ceramics by sintering. In this
study, the effects of sintering hydroxyapatite with above specified
phosphate glass additions are quantified. Each composition was
sintered over a range of temperatures. Scanning electron microscopy
and x-ray diffraction were used to characterize the microstructure and
phases of the composites. The density, microhardness, and
compressive strength were measured using Archimedes Principle,
Vickers Microhardness Tester (at 0.98 N), and Instron Universal
Testing Machine (cross speed of 0.5 mm/min) respectively. These
results were used to indicate which composition provided suitable
material for use in hard tissue replacement. Composites containing 10
wt % glass additions formed dense HA/TCP (tricalcium phosphate)
composite materials possessing good compressive strength and
hardness than HA. In-vitro bioactivity was assessed by evaluating
changes in pH and Ca2+ ion concentration of SBF-simulated body
fluid on immersion of these composites in it for two weeks.
Abstract: Sputter deposition processes, especially for sputtering
from metal targets, are well investigated. For practical reasons, i.e.
for industrial processes, energetic considerations for sputter
deposition are useful in order to optimize the sputtering process. In
particular, for substrates at floating conditions it is required to obtain
energetic conditions during film growth that enables sufficient dense
metal films of good quality. The influence of ion energies, energy
density and momentum transfer is thus examined both for sputtering
at the target as well as during film growth. Different regimes
dominated by ion energy, energy density and momentum transfer
were identified by using different plasma sources and by varying
power input, pressure and bias voltage.
Abstract: The importance of machining process in today-s
industry requires the establishment of more practical approaches to
clearly represent the intimate and severe contact on the tool-chipworkpiece
interfaces. Mathematical models are developed using the
measured force signals to relate each of the tool-chip friction
components on the rake face to the operating cutting parameters in
rough turning operation using multilayers coated carbide inserts.
Nonlinear modeling proved to have high capability to detect the
nonlinear functional variability embedded in the experimental data.
While feedrate is found to be the most influential parameter on the
friction coefficient and its related force components, both cutting
speed and depth of cut are found to have slight influence. Greater
deformed chip thickness is found to lower the value of friction
coefficient as the sliding length on the tool-chip interface is reduced.
Abstract: Natural disasters, including earthquake, kill many people around the world every year. Society rescue actions, which start after the earthquake and are called LAST in abbreviation, include locating, access, stabilization and transportation. In the present article, we have studied the process of local accessibility to the injured and transporting them to health care centers. With regard the heavy traffic load due to earthquake, the destruction of connecting roads and bridges and the heavy debris in alleys and street, which put the lives of the injured and the people buried under the debris in danger, accelerating the rescue actions and facilitating the accessibilities are of great importance, obviously. Tehran, the capital of Iran, is among the crowded cities in the world and is the center of extensive economic, political, cultural and social activities. Tehran has a population of about 9.5 millions and because of the immigration of people from the surrounding cities. Furthermore, considering the fact that Tehran is located on two important and large faults, a 6 Richter magnitude earthquake in this city could lead to the greatest catastrophe during the entire human history. The present study is a kind of review and a major part of the required information for it, has been obtained from libraries all of the rescue vehicles around the world, including rescue helicopters, ambulances, fire fighting vehicles and rescue boats, and their applied technology, and also the robots specifically designed for the rescue system and the advantages and disadvantages of them, have been investigated. The studies show that there is a significant relationship between the rescue team-s arrival time at the incident zone and the number of saved people; so that, if the duration of burial under debris 30 minutes, the probability of survival is %99.3, after a day is %81, after 2days is %19 and after 5days is %7.4. The exiting transport systems all have some defects. If these defects are removed, more people could be saved each hour and the preparedness against natural disasters is increased. In this study, transport system has been designed for the rescue team and the injured; which could carry the rescue team to the incident zone and the injured to the health care centers. In addition, this system is able to fly in the air and move on the earth as well; so that the destruction of roads and the heavy traffic load could not prevent the rescue team from arriving early at the incident zone. The system also has the equipment required firebird for debris removing, optimum transport of the injured and first aid.
Abstract: Controlled release urea has become popular in agricultural industry as it helps to solve environmental issues and increase crop yield. Recently biomass was identified to replace the polymer used as a coating material in the conventional coated urea. In this paper spreading and contact angle of biomass droplet (lignin, cellulose and clay) on urea surface are investigated experimentally. There were two tests were conducted, sessile drop for contact angle measurement and pendant drop for contact angle measurement. A different concentration of biomass droplet was released from 30 mm above a substrate. Glass was used as a controlled substrate. Images were recorded as soon as the droplet impacted onto the urea before completely adsorb into the urea. Digitized droplets were then used to identify the droplet-s surface tension and contact angle. There is large difference observed between the low surface tension and high surface tension liquids, where the wetting and spreading diameter is higher for lower surface tension. From the contact angle results, the data showed that the biomass coating films were possible as wetting liquid (θ < 90º). Contact angle of biomass coating material gives good indication for the wettablity of a liquid on urea surface.
Abstract: In recent years, scanning probe atomic force
microscopy SPM AFM has gained acceptance over a wide spectrum
of research and science applications. Most fields focuses on physical,
chemical, biological while less attention is devoted to manufacturing
and machining aspects. The purpose of the current study is to assess
the possible implementation of the SPM AFM features and its
NanoScope software in general machining applications with special
attention to the tribological aspects of cutting tool. The surface
morphology of coated and uncoated as-received carbide inserts is
examined, analyzed, and characterized through the determination of
the appropriate scanning setting, the suitable data type imaging
techniques and the most representative data analysis parameters
using the MultiMode SPM AFM in contact mode. The NanoScope
operating software is used to capture realtime three data types
images: “Height", “Deflection" and “Friction". Three scan sizes are
independently performed: 2, 6, and 12 μm with a 2.5 μm vertical
range (Z). Offline mode analysis includes the determination of three
functional topographical parameters: surface “Roughness", power
spectral density “PSD" and “Section". The 12 μm scan size in
association with “Height" imaging is found efficient to capture every
tiny features and tribological aspects of the examined surface. Also,
“Friction" analysis is found to produce a comprehensive explanation
about the lateral characteristics of the scanned surface. Configuration
of many surface defects and drawbacks has been precisely detected
and analyzed.
Abstract: A composite made of plasma functionalized multiwall
carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) coated with SnO2 was synthesized by
sonochemical precipitation method. Thick layer of this
nanocomposite material was used as ethanol sensor at low
temperatures. The composite sensitivity for ethanol has increased by
a factor of 2 at room temperature and by a factor of 13 at 250°C in
comparison to that of pure SnO2. SEM image of nanocomposite
material showed MWNTs were embedded in SnO2 matrix and also a
higher surface area was observed in the presence of functionalized
MWNTs. Greatly improved sensitivity of the composite material to
ethanol can be attributed to new gas accessing passes through
MWNTs and higher specific surface area.
Abstract: Numerical studies have been carried out using a
validated two-dimensional RNG k-epsilon turbulence model for the
design optimization of a thrust vector control system using shock
induced supersonic secondary jet. Parametric analytical studies have
been carried out with various secondary jets at different divergent
locations, jet interaction angles, jet pressures. The results from the
parametric studies of the case on hand reveal that the primary nozzle
with a small divergence angle, downstream injections with a distance
of 2.5 times the primary nozzle throat diameter from the primary
nozzle throat location warrant higher efficiency over a certain range
of jet pressures and jet angles. We observed that the supersonic
secondary jet opposing the core flow with jets interaction angle of
40o to the axis far downstream of the nozzle throat facilitates better
thrust vectoring than the secondary jet with same direction as that of
core flow with various interaction angles. We concluded that fixing
of the supersonic secondary jet nozzle pointing towards the throat
direction with suitable angle at a distance 2 to 4 times of the primary
nozzle throat diameter, as the case may be, from the primary nozzle
throat location could facilitate better thrust vectoring for the
supersonic aerospace vehicles.
Abstract: Fatigue is the major threat in service of steel structure
subjected to fluctuating loads. With the additional effect of corrosion
and presence of weld joints the fatigue failure may become more
critical in structural steel. One of the apt examples of such structural
is the sailing ship. This is experiencing a constant stress due to
floating and a pulsating bending load due to the waves. This paper
describes an attempt to verify theory of fatigue in fracture mechanics
approach with experimentation to determine the constants of crack
growth curve. For this, specimen is prepared from the ship building
steel and it is subjected to a pulsating bending load with a known
defect. Fatigue crack and its nature is observed in this experiment.
Application of fracture mechanics approach in fatigue with a simple
practical experiment is conducted and constants of crack growth
equation are investigated.
Abstract: An organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) was fabricated using a blended film containing Copper (II) tetrakis(4-acumylphenoxy) phthalocyanine (Tc-CuPc) along with [6,6]-Phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). Weight ratio between Tc-CuPc and PCBM was 1:1. The electrical properties of Tc-CuPc: PCBM BHJ were examined. Rectifying nature of the BHJ was displayed by current-voltage (I-V) curves, recorded in dark and at various temperatures. At low voltages, conduction was ohmic succeeded by space-charge limiting current (SCLC) conduction at higher voltages in which exponential trap distribution was dominant. Series resistance, shunt resistance, ideality factor, effective barrier height and mobility at room temperature were found to be 526 4, 482 k4, 3.7, 0.17 eV and 2×10-7 cm2V-1s-1 respectively. Temperature effect towards different BHJ parameters was observed under dark condition.
Abstract: The purpose of this research is to reduce the amount of incomplete coating of stainless steel washers in the electrodeposition painting process by using an experimental design technique. The surface preparation was found to be a major cause of painted surface quality. The influence of pretreating and painting process parameters, which are cleaning time, chemical concentration and shape of hanger were studied. A 23 factorial design with two replications was performed. The analysis of variance for the designed experiment showed the great influence of cleaning time and shape of hanger. From this study, optimized cleaning time was determined and a newly designed electrical conductive hanger was proved to be superior to the original one. The experimental verification results showed that the amount of incomplete coating defects decreased from 4% to 1.02% and operation cost decreased by 10.5%.
Abstract: In this paper, a recursive algorithm for the
computation of 2-D DCT using Ramanujan Numbers is proposed.
With this algorithm, the floating-point multiplication is completely
eliminated and hence the multiplierless algorithm can be
implemented using shifts and additions only. The orthogonality of
the recursive kernel is well maintained through matrix factorization
to reduce the computational complexity. The inherent parallel
structure yields simpler programming and hardware implementation
and provides
log 1
2
3
2 N N-N+
additions and
N N
2 log
2 shifts which is
very much less complex when compared to other recent multiplierless
algorithms.
Abstract: A scaffold is necessary for tooth regeneration because of its three-dimensional geometry. For restoration of defect, it is necessary for the scaffold to be prepared in the shape of the defect. Sponges made from polyvinyl alcohol with formalin cross-linking (PVF sponge) have been used for scaffolds for bone formation in vivo. To induce osteogenesis within the sponge, methods of growing rat bone marrow cells (rBMCs) among the fiber structures in the sponge might be considered. Storage of rBMCs among the fibers in the sponge coated with dextran (10 kDa) was tried. After seeding of rBMCs to PVF sponge immersed in dextran solution at 2 g/dl concentration, osteogenesis was recognized in subcutaneously implanted PVF sponge as a scaffold in vivo. The level of osteocalcin was 25.28±5.71 ng/scaffold and that of Ca was 129.20±19.69 µg/scaffold. These values were significantly higher than those in sponges without dextran coating (p
Abstract: In this paper, low end Digital Signal Processors (DSPs)
are applied to accelerate integer neural networks. The use of DSPs
to accelerate neural networks has been a topic of study for some
time, and has demonstrated significant performance improvements.
Recently, work has been done on integer only neural networks, which
greatly reduces hardware requirements, and thus allows for cheaper
hardware implementation. DSPs with Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs)
that support floating or fixed point arithmetic are generally more
expensive than their integer only counterparts due to increased circuit
complexity. However if the need for floating or fixed point math
operation can be removed, then simpler, lower cost DSPs can be
used. To achieve this, an integer only neural network is created in
this paper, which is then accelerated by using DSP instructions to
improve performance.
Abstract: A gold coated copper rotating electrode was used to
eliminate surface oxidation effect. This study examined the effect of
electrode rotation on the ozone generation process and showed that an
ozonizer with an electrode rotating system might be a possible way to
increase ozone-synthesis efficiency. Two new phenomena appeared
during experiments with the rotating electrode. First was that ozone
concentration increased to about two times higher than that of the case
with no rotation. Second, input power and discharge area were found
to increase with the rotation speed. Both ozone concentration and
ozone production efficiency improved in the case of rotating electrode
compared to the case with a non-rotating electrode. One possible
reason for this was the increase in discharge length of
micro-discharges during electrode rotation. The rotating electrode
decreased onset voltage, while reactor capacitance increased with
rotation. Use of a rotating-type electrode allowed earlier observation
of the ozone zero phenomena compared with a non-rotating electrode
because, during rotation, the entire electrode surface was functional,
allowing nitrogen on the electrode surface to be evenly consumed.
Nitrogen demand increased with increasing rotation s
Abstract: Business process management (BPM) has become
widely accepted within business community as a means for
improving business performance. However, it is of the highest
importance to incorporate BPM as part of the curriculum at the
university level education in order to achieve the appropriate
acceptance of the method. Goal of the paper is to determine the
current state of education in business process management (BPM) at
the Croatian universities and abroad. It investigates the applied forms
of instruction and teaching methods and gives several proposals for
BPM courses improvement. Since majority of undergraduate and
postgraduate students have limited understanding of business
processes and lack of any practical experience, there is a need for
introducing new teaching approaches. Therefore, we offer some
suggestions for further improvement, among which the introduction
of simulation games environment in BPM education is strongly
recommended.
Abstract: Field experiment was conducted to investigate the combine use of animal manure and inorganic fertilizer on growth and yield performance of vegetable cowpea. The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with seven treatments. Poultry manure, cattle manure and goat manure were evaluated with recommended level of inorganic fertilizer for vegetable cowpea. The highest crop yield was obtained by the application of poultry manure combined with the recommended level of inorganic fertilizer. The lowest yield was obtained by the application of goat manure only. In addition, the results revealed that the goat manure and cattle manure were inferior to poultry manure as a source of organic manure for vegetable cowpea cultivation. The animal manure combine with chemical fertilizer gave a higher yield when compared to the sole application of animal manure. The soil analysis showed that the nitrogen content and phosphorus content of poultry manure treated plots were higher than other treatments tested. But potassium content was higher in goat manure treated plots. The results further revealed that the poultry manure has a beneficial effect on crop growth and yield compared with other treatments. Therefore, the combined use of poultry manure with inorganic fertilizer application has been recognized as the most suitable way of ensuring high crop yield.
Abstract: This paper presents a comparative study on
Vanadyl Phthalocyanine (VOPc) thin films deposited by thermal
evaporation and spin coating techniques. The samples
were prepared on cleaned glass substrates and annealed at
various temperatures ranging form 95oC to 155oC. To obtain
the morphological and structural properties of VOPc thin
films, X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique and atomic force
microscopy (AFM) have been implied. The AFM topographic
images show a very slight difference in the thermally grown
films, before and after annealing, however best results are
achieved for the spin-cast film annealed at 125oC. The XRD
spectra show no existence of the sharp peaks, suggesting the
material to be amorphous. The humps in the XRD patterns
indicate the presence of some crystallites.
Abstract: In recent times there has been a growing interest in the
development of quasi-two-dimensional niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5)
as a semiconductor for the potential electronic applications such as
capacitors, filtration, dye-sensitised solar cells and gas sensing
platforms. Therefore once the purpose is established, Nb2O5 can be
prepared in a number of nano- and sub-micron-structural
morphologies that include rods, wires, belts and tubes. In this study
films of Nb2O5 were prepared on gold plated silicon substrate using
spin-coating technique and subsequently by mechanical exfoliation.
The reason this method was employed was to achieve layers of less
than 15nm in thickness. The sintering temperature of the specimen
was 800oC. The morphology and structural characteristics of the
films were analyzed by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Raman
Spectroscopy, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS).