Applied Sciences Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Microorganisms play a significant role in heavy metal adsorption from contaminated waste water. In the present study cyanobacterial isolates were picked up from the contaminated water and purified, identified by morphological and cultural... more

Microorganisms play a significant role in heavy metal adsorption from contaminated waste water. In the present study cyanobacterial isolates were picked up from the contaminated water and purified, identified by morphological and cultural characteristics. Each isolate was determined by the dilution method, Ni2+, Cd2+, Fe2+, Pb2+ and Zn2+ were used in varying concentrations (10 to 1000μgL-1). Anabaena sp., Trichodesmium sp., Oscillatoria sp., Cylindrospermopsis sp. and Nostoc sp. were showed minimum inhibitory concentration (MICs) to heavy metals. From this Nostoc sp. showed high resistant so this strain use for further studies. One ml were collected each Three days interval for analyze the growth, pH and adsorbed heavy metals analyzed by ICP-OES. During this experiment 95.4% of Cd, 97.7% of Fe, 99.6% of Pb, 88.23% of Ni and 75.3% of Zn was removed by the Nostoc sp. From this experiment Nostoc sp. showed high efficiency to remove the heavy metals and this experiment may be helpful to...

The growing popularity of soccer has led to the prediction of match results becoming of interest to the research community. The aim of this research is to detect the effects of weather on the result of matches by implementing Random... more

The growing popularity of soccer has led to the prediction of match results becoming of interest to the research community. The aim of this research is to detect the effects of weather on the result of matches by implementing Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbors Algorithm, and Extremely Randomized Trees Classifier. The analysis was executed using the Spanish La Liga and Segunda division from the seasons 2013–2014 to 2017–2018 in combination with weather data. Two tasks were proposed as part of this study: the first was to find out whether the game will end in a draw, a win by the hosts or a victory by the guests, and the second was to determine whether the match will end in a draw or if one of the teams will win. The results show that, for the first task, Extremely Randomized Trees Classifier is a better method, with an accuracy of 65.9%, and, for the second task, Support Vector Machine yielded better results with an accuracy of 79.3%. Moreover, it is possible ...

Melt electrospinning has been developed in the last decade as an eco-friendly and solvent-free process to fill the gap between the advantages of solution electrospinning and the need of a cost-effective technique for industrial... more

Melt electrospinning has been developed in the last decade as an eco-friendly and solvent-free process to fill the gap between the advantages of solution electrospinning and the need of a cost-effective technique for industrial applications. Although the benefits of using melt electrospinning compared to solution electrospinning are impressive, there are still challenges that should be solved. These mainly concern to the improvement of polymer melt processability with reduction of polymer degradation and enhancement of fiber stability; and the achievement of a good control over the fiber size and especially for the production of large scale ultrafine fibers. This review is focused in the last research works discussing the different melt processing techniques, the most significant melt processing parameters, the incorporation of different additives (e.g., viscosity and conductivity modifiers), the development of polymer blends and nanocomposites, the new potential applications and th...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease that currently has no cure. There are numerous studies showing that carnosine and hyaluronic acid (HA) have a positive pharmacological action during joint inflammation. For this reason, the goal of this... more

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease that currently has no cure. There are numerous studies showing that carnosine and hyaluronic acid (HA) have a positive pharmacological action during joint inflammation. For this reason, the goal of this research was to discover the protective effect of a new carnosine conjugate with hyaluronic acid (FidHycarn) on the inflammatory response and on the cartilage degradation in an in vivo experimental model of OA. This model was induced by a single intra-articular (i.ar.) injection of 25 µL of normal saline with 1 mg of monosodium iodoacetate solution (MIA) in the knee joint of rats. MIA injection caused histological alterations and degradation of the cartilage, as well as behavioral changes. Oral treatment with FidHycarn ameliorated the macroscopic signs, improved thermal hyperalgesia and the weight distribution of the hind paw, and decreased histological and radiographic alterations. The oxidative damage was analyzed by evaluating the levels of nitroty...

Cloud computing is changing the way organizations approach technology and its infrastructure. However, in spite of its attractiveness, cloud computing can be seen as a threat in terms of compliance. Given its intrinsic distributed nature,... more

Cloud computing is changing the way organizations approach technology and its infrastructure. However, in spite of its attractiveness, cloud computing can be seen as a threat in terms of compliance. Given its intrinsic distributed nature, regulations and laws may differ and customers and cloud providers must find a way to balance increasing compliance pressures with cloud computing benefits. In this paper, the authors present a framework aimed to help organizations to cope with compliance aspects in their cloud-oriented environments. Built upon current literature on the topic and qualitative approaches, the framework has been implemented in two organizations. Results from its contribution are encouraging, leading to adopter organizations to less reported compliance violations and higher contribution of cloud computing to overall quality of service and organizational compliance management.

Honey bee mating is difficult to control as it occurs in flight, several kilometers away from the hive of origin of both queens and drones. In recent years, there has been an increase in the introduction into Italy of queen bees and... more

Honey bee mating is difficult to control as it occurs in flight, several kilometers away from the hive of origin of both queens and drones. In recent years, there has been an increase in the introduction into Italy of queen bees and swarms originating from interracial crossings (especially those known as “Buckfast”), or belonging to non-native subspecies. Consequently, there is a strong need to establish areas suitable for controlled mating. The Italian national beekeeping registry (BDNA) has been recently set up to monitor the position of apiaries and movement of hives, with the purpose of economic and sanitary protection and improvement of bee heritage and food safety. The BDNA was, thus, deemed a suitable tool to explore the availability of areas that could be used as mating stations. Specific criteria, such as not be classified as wetlands, altitude below 1500 m a.s.l., distance of at least 6000 m from an apiary, and distance of at least 1500 m from the national terrestrial bord...

For the paper, experimental studies were performed on the damage of the Ge- and Si-based flat window by lasers out-of-band. The experimental results showed that lasers out-of-band can cause film damage and substrate damage to Ge and Si... more

For the paper, experimental studies were performed on the damage of the Ge- and Si-based flat window by lasers out-of-band. The experimental results showed that lasers out-of-band can cause film damage and substrate damage to Ge and Si windows. The high-energy laser damage window mechanism mainly manifested as thermal effects. The composite laser damage thresholds for the substrate were an Si window of 21.6 J/cm2 and a Ge window of 3 J/cm2. Compared with continuous laser and long pulse laser experimental results, it was found that the use of long pulse-continuous composite constitution could effectively reduce the damage threshold. Compared to the long-pulse laser, the composite laser could achieve similar damage effects with a smaller energy density.

The aim of this study is to identify the relationship between different internal and external load measures and next day subjective wellbeing. With institutional ethics approval, ten academy rugby union players (Five forwards, and five... more

The aim of this study is to identify the relationship between different internal and external load measures and next day subjective wellbeing. With institutional ethics approval, ten academy rugby union players (Five forwards, and five backs) with a local National League One club agreed to participate in the study (aged; 18.4 ± 1.0 years, height; 181.3 ± 5.9 cm, body mass 85.9 ± 13.0 kg, VO2max 56.2 ± 6.8 mL·kg−1·min−1). Before the 6-week in-season data collection period, participants completed an incremental treadmill test to determine lactate thresholds at 2 mmol·L−1 (LT) and 4 mmol·L−1 and the heart rate blood lactate (HR-BLa) profile for individualized training impulse (iTRIMP) calculations. Internal training load was quantified using Banister’s TRIMP, Edward’s TRIMP, Lucia’s TRIMP, individualised TRIMP and session-RPE. External training load was reported using total distance, PlayerLoadTM, high-speed distances (HSD) > 18 km∙h−1 and >15 km∙h−1, and individualized high-spee...

For many years, surface has quality received a serious attention due to its influence on various mechanical properties. The main contribution made in this scientific paper is the performance of actual experiments, as well as the... more

For many years, surface has quality received a serious attention due to its influence on various mechanical properties. The main contribution made in this scientific paper is the performance of actual experiments, as well as the experimental processing obtained in order to develop a model for predicting the surface roughness based on the optimization of cutting parameters. The novelty of this paper is brought by the method of obtaining the regression equation of the surface roughness, resulted from a standard end-milling process (standard milling tools, standard milling parameters, recommended by the tool manufacturer, 3 axis CNC machine and standard vice), on aluminum alloy 7136 in temper T76511, through two statistical methods of data analysis. This material is used for the production of extruded parts and is poorly understood for the proposed line of research. This study’s aim is to determine the surface roughness equation obtained by the milling of aluminum alloy 7136 in two way...

The objective of this work was to evaluate some of the mechanical and physical properties of the flooring materials manufactured from panels having magnesia substrate overlaid with oak veneer (Querqus alba) and linoleum sheets.... more

The objective of this work was to evaluate some of the mechanical and physical properties of the flooring materials manufactured from panels having magnesia substrate overlaid with oak veneer (Querqus alba) and linoleum sheets. Commercially manufactured panels were used in this work. Bending characteristics, internal bond strength, thickness swelling, and surface quality of the samples were evaluated. The highest modulus of elasticity (MOE) value of 4406 MPa for the sample type-A2 was loaded in the direction of the substrate followed by 3478 MPa for linoleum covered samples which were loaded in the same direction. Internal bond strength values of the panels did not show any significant differences from each other. Dimensional stability of the specimens in the form of thickness swelling for both 2-h and 24-h water soaking tests resulted in values ranging from 0.11 to 0.19%. The surface quality of the samples was not substantially influenced as a function of water exposure. Based on t...

This paper discusses the reliability equivalences of a parallel- series system. It is assumed that the system components are independent and identical. Each has a constant failure rate. We assumed three difierent method to improve the... more

This paper discusses the reliability equivalences of a parallel- series system. It is assumed that the system components are independent and identical. Each has a constant failure rate. We assumed three difierent method to improve the system. Both the reliability function and the mean time to failure are used to derive two types of reliability equivalence factors. We also obtain the fractiles of the original and improved systems. We illustrate the results obtained with an application example.

Background: The conventional drill technique is the most commonly used for the implant site preparation of the desired diameter and length. Ultrasonic implant site preparation (UISP) can also be used to perform an implant site preparation... more

Background: The conventional drill technique is the most commonly used for the implant site preparation of the desired diameter and length. Ultrasonic implant site preparation (UISP) can also be used to perform an implant site preparation of the desired dimensions. Methods: Implant sites were prepared in fresh bone ribs with two different implant site preparation techniques: implant surgical drills and piezoelectric tips. Samples were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for evaluating the peri-implant bone damage. Result: In the surgical drills group, the cortical bone surface showed several cracks and the bone vascular canals were hidden by a dense smear layer. Cancellous bone showed large irregularities and trabecular fractures. The piezoelectric group showed a clean and smooth cortical bone surface with opened bone vascular canals; the cancellous bone presented a regular morphology, and the trabecular spaces, clearly visible, were free of debris. Conclusions: Ultraso...

Nowadays material science involves powerful 3D imaging techniques such as X-ray computed tomography that generates high-resolution images of different structures. These methods are widely used to reveal information about the internal... more

Nowadays material science involves powerful 3D imaging techniques such as X-ray computed tomography that generates high-resolution images of different structures. These methods are widely used to reveal information about the internal structure of geological cores; therefore, there is a need to develop modern approaches for quantitative analysis of the obtained images, their comparison, and classification. Topological persistence is a useful technique for characterizing the internal structure of 3D images. We show how persistent data analysis provides a useful tool for the classification of porous media structure from 3D images of hydrocarbon reservoirs obtained using computed tomography. We propose a methodology of 3D structure classification based on geometry-topology analysis via persistent homology.

The forehand jump smash is an essential attacking stroke within a badminton player’s repertoire. A key determinate of the stroke’s effectiveness is post-impact shuttlecock speed, and therefore awareness of critical technique factors that... more

The forehand jump smash is an essential attacking stroke within a badminton player’s repertoire. A key determinate of the stroke’s effectiveness is post-impact shuttlecock speed, and therefore awareness of critical technique factors that impact upon speed is important to players/coaches. Three-dimensional kinematic data of player, racket and shuttlecock were recorded for 18 experienced players performing maximal effort forehand jump smashes. Joint angles and X-factor (transverse plane pelvis-thorax separation) were calculated at key instants: preparation, end of retraction, racket lowest point, turning point and shuttlecock contact. Peak shoulder, elbow, and wrist joint centre linear velocities, phase durations and jump height were also calculated. Correlational analyses were performed with post-impact shuttlecock speed, revealing significant correlations to peak wrist joint centre linear velocity (r = 0.767), acceleration phase duration (r = −0.543), shoulder internal/external rota...

In recent years, smart cities have been significantly developed and have greatly expanded their potential. In fact, novel advancements to the Internet of things (IoT) have paved the way for new possibilities, representing a set of key... more

In recent years, smart cities have been significantly developed and have greatly expanded their potential. In fact, novel advancements to the Internet of things (IoT) have paved the way for new possibilities, representing a set of key enabling technologies for smart cities and allowing the production and automation of innovative services and advanced applications for the different city stakeholders. This paper presents a review of the research literature on IoT-enabled smart cities, with the aim of highlighting the main trends and open challenges of adopting IoT technologies for the development of sustainable and efficient smart cities. This work first provides a survey on the key technologies proposed in the literature for the implementation of IoT frameworks, and then a review of the main smart city approaches and frameworks, based on classification into eight domains, which extends the traditional six domain classification that is typically adopted in most of the related works.

In recent years, citizen science campaigns have provided a very good platform for widespread data collection. Within the marine domain, jellyfish are among the most commonly deployed species for citizen reporting purposes. The timely... more

In recent years, citizen science campaigns have provided a very good platform for widespread data collection. Within the marine domain, jellyfish are among the most commonly deployed species for citizen reporting purposes. The timely validation of submitted jellyfish reports remains challenging, given the sheer volume of reports being submitted and the relative paucity of trained staff familiar with the taxonomic identification of jellyfish. In this work, hundreds of photos that were submitted to the "Spot the Jellyfish" initiative are used to train a group of region-based, convolution neural networks. The main aim is to develop models that can classify, and distinguish between, the five most commonly recorded species of jellyfish within Maltese waters. In particular, images of the Pelagia noctiluca, Cotylorhiza tuberculata, Carybdea marsupialis, Velella velella and salps were considered. The reliability of the digital architecture is quantified through the precision, reca...

Foot strike mode and footwear features are known to affect ankle joint kinematics and loading patterns, but how those factors are related to the ankle dynamic properties is less clear. In our study, two distinct samples of experienced... more

Foot strike mode and footwear features are known to affect ankle joint kinematics and loading patterns, but how those factors are related to the ankle dynamic properties is less clear. In our study, two distinct samples of experienced long-distance runners: habitual rearfoot strikers (n = 10) and habitual forefoot strikers (n = 10), were analysed while running at constant speed on an instrumented treadmill in three footwear conditions. The joint dynamic stiffness was analysed for three subphases of the moment–angle plot: early rising, late rising and descending. Habitual rearfoot strikers displayed a statistically (p < 0.05) higher ankle dynamic stiffness in all combinations of shoes and subphases, except in early stance in supportive shoes. In minimal-supportive shoes, both groups had the lowest dynamic stiffness values for early and late rising (initial contact through mid-stance), whilst the highest stiffness values were at late rising in minimal shoes for both rearfoot and fo...

This paper sheds light on the reasons why conventional messages prove largely ineffective at fostering pro-environmental behaviors among individuals with high egoistic values. We conducted three experiments comparing the effectiveness of... more

This paper sheds light on the reasons why conventional messages prove largely ineffective at fostering pro-environmental behaviors among individuals with high egoistic values. We conducted three experiments comparing the effectiveness of prevention-focused and promotion-focused messages at promoting pro-environmental behaviors. We found that egoistic individuals exposed to prevention-focused messages tended to perceive pro-environmental efforts as less worthy, compared to those exposed to promotion-focused messages. This effect, in turn, decreased their willingness to take environmental action. We also observed that the negative effect prevention -focused messages have on egoists is attributable to a defense mechanism. Egoistic people exposed to prevention-focused messages seem to deny the veracity of the message, which in turn decreases the perceived worthiness of the environmental effort and thus the intention to act. The findings highlight the best way to frame environmental communication to reach those who are least likely to adopt eco-responsible behavior, i.e., egoistic people.

Data imbalance is a frequently occurring problem in classification tasks where the number of samples in one category exceeds the amount in others. Quite often, the minority class data is of great importance representing concepts of... more

Data imbalance is a frequently occurring problem in classification tasks where the number of samples in one category exceeds the amount in others. Quite often, the minority class data is of great importance representing concepts of interest and is often challenging to obtain in real-life scenarios and applications. Imagine a customers’ dataset for bank loans-majority of the instances belong to non-defaulter class, only a small number of customers would be labeled as defaulters, however, the performance accuracy is more important on defaulters labels than non-defaulter in such highly imbalance datasets. Lack of enough data samples across all the class labels results in data imbalance causing poor classification performance while training the model. Synthetic data generation and oversampling techniques such as SMOTE, AdaSyn can address this issue for statistical data, yet such methods suffer from overfitting and substantial noise. While such techniques have proved useful for synthetic...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a surge of demand for medical supplies and spare parts, which has put pressure on the manufacturing sector. As a result, 3D printing communities and companies are currently operating to ease the breakdown... more

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a surge of demand for medical supplies and spare parts, which has put pressure on the manufacturing sector. As a result, 3D printing communities and companies are currently operating to ease the breakdown in the medical supply chain. If no parts are available, 3D printing can potentially be used to produce time-critical parts on demand such as nasal swabs, face shields, respirators, and spares for ventilators. A structured search using online sources and feedback from key experts in the 3D printing area was applied to highlight critical issues and to suggest potential solutions. The prescribed outcomes were estimated in terms of cost and productivity at a small and large scale. This study analyzes the number and costs of parts that can be manufactured with a single machine within 24 h. It extrapolates this potential with the number of identical 3D printers in the world to estimate the global potential that can help practitioners, frontline workers, a...

The Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO; ~40 Ma), which interrupted for ~500–600 kyr the long-term cooling trend culminating at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, still requires a comprehensive understanding of the biotic resilience. Here we... more

The Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO; ~40 Ma), which interrupted for ~500–600 kyr the long-term cooling trend culminating at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, still requires a comprehensive understanding of the biotic resilience. Here we present a high-resolution integrated foraminiferal and calcareous nannofossil study across the MECO from the expanded and continuous Tethyan Baskil section (eastern Turkey) that offers a complete magneto-biostratigraphic and geochemical framework. The five MECO phases identified reveal a transition from oligotrophic (pre-MECO) to eu-mesotrophic conditions, possibly related to accelerated hydrological cycle, during the initial MECO and MECO δ13C negative excursion phases. The MECO WARMING PEAK phase, marking the highest carbonate dissolution interval, records the most striking biotic changes, such as peak in warm and eutrophic nannofossils, virtual disappearance of the oligotrophic planktic foraminiferal large Acarinina and Morozovelloides, and peak...

Target searching is a well-known but difficult problem in many research domains, including computational intelligence, swarm intelligence, and robotics. The main goal is to search for the targets within the specific boundary with the... more

Target searching is a well-known but difficult problem in many research domains, including computational intelligence, swarm intelligence, and robotics. The main goal is to search for the targets within the specific boundary with the minimum time that is required and the obstacle avoidance that has been equipped in place. Swarm robotics (SR) is an extension of the multi-robot system that particularly discovers a concept of coordination, collaboration, and communication among a large number of robots. Because the robots are collaborating and working together, the task that is given will be completed faster compared to using a single robot. Thus, searching for single or multiple targets with swarm robots is a significant and realistic approach. Robustness, flexibility, and scalability, which are supported by distributed sensing, also make the swarm robots strategy suitable for target searching problems in real-world applications. The purpose of this article is to deliver a systematic ...

Durian (Durio zibethinus Murr.), like many other exotic, tropical, and conventional fruits, is important in the prevention of different diseases. In this study, the characterization of the main bioactive compounds of the most popular... more

Durian (Durio zibethinus Murr.), like many other exotic, tropical, and conventional fruits, is important in the prevention of different diseases. In this study, the characterization of the main bioactive compounds of the most popular cultivars of durian and their properties are described. The changes in the quality indices of the antioxidant status were determined by CUPRAC, ABTS, FRAP, DPPH, and ORAC assays. The profiling of phytochemicals was carried out by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). For the first time, in vitro studies were performed by the interaction of extracted durian polyphenols with human serum proteins (HSP) such as human serum albumin (HSAlb), fibrinogen (HSFib) and globulin (HSGlo) as novel biomarkers of coronary artery disease (CAD). The fluorescence measurements of the resulting intensity and calculated binding properties of the interaction of polyphenols with proteins showed that the most reactive was Mo...

Sport psychologist needs to understand how psychological factors affect athletic performance of an individual, considering individual differences among athletes. Each specific problem in working with athletes must be considered depending... more

Sport psychologist needs to understand how psychological factors affect athletic performance of an individual, considering individual differences among athletes. Each specific problem in working with athletes must be considered depending on complex factors: the type (specificity) of sport ; characteristics of the activity (the training or competition) ; stages of athletes’ sports development ; gender and age differences, etc. Although there are numerous psychological instruments, which assess psychological characteristics of athletes, it is important to select instruments adjusted to athletes, working style of sports psychologist, available time and other constraints. Here, we have formulated a preliminary version of our own battery of questionnaires, named Multidimensional Inventory of Sport Excellence (MUSI), selecting the items for following psychological characteristics: energizing, maintaining attention, directing attention, wide internal / external attention and narrow interna...

Predictive Maintenance (PM) is a proactive maintenance strategy that tries to minimize a system’s downtime by predicting failures before they happen. It uses data from sensors to measure the component’s state of health and make forecasts... more

Predictive Maintenance (PM) is a proactive maintenance strategy that tries to minimize a system’s downtime by predicting failures before they happen. It uses data from sensors to measure the component’s state of health and make forecasts about its future degradation. However, existing PM methods typically focus on individual measurements. While it is natural to assume that a history of measurements carries more information than a single one. This paper aims at incorporating such information into PM models. In practice, especially in the automotive domain, diagnostic models have low performance, due to a large amount of noise in the data and limited sensing capability. To address this issue, this paper proposes to use a specific type of ensemble learning known as Stacked Ensemble. The idea is to aggregate predictions of multiple models—consisting of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Convolutional-LSTM—via a meta model, in order to boost performance. Stacked Ensemble model performs we...

Phase change materials (PCMs) are classified according to their phase change process, temperature, and composition. The utilization of PCMs lies mainly in the field of solar energy and building applications as well as in industrial... more

Phase change materials (PCMs) are classified according to their phase change process, temperature, and composition. The utilization of PCMs lies mainly in the field of solar energy and building applications as well as in industrial processes. The main advantage of such materials is the use of latent heat, which allows the storage of a large amount of thermal energy with small temperature variation, improving the energy efficiency of the system. The study of PCMs using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is widespread and has been documented in several papers, following the tendency that CFD nowadays tends to become increasingly widespread. Numerical studies of solidification and melting processes use a combination of formulations to describe the physical phenomena related to such processes, these being mainly the latent heat and the velocity transition between the liquid and the solid phases. The methods used to describe the latent heat are divided into three main groups: source term...

Long-term durability of the vacuum edge seal plays a significant part in retrofitting triple vacuum glazing (TVG) to existing buildings in achieving progress towards a zero-energy building (ZEB) target. Vacuum pressure decrement with... more

Long-term durability of the vacuum edge seal plays a significant part in retrofitting triple vacuum glazing (TVG) to existing buildings in achieving progress towards a zero-energy building (ZEB) target. Vacuum pressure decrement with respect to time between panes affects the thermal efficiency of TVG. This study reports a 3D finite element model, with validated mathematical methods and comparison, for the assessment of the influence of vacuum pressure diminution on the thermal transmittance (U value) of TVG. The centre-of-pane and total U values of TVG are calculated to be 0.28 Wm−2 K−1 and 0.94 Wm−2 K−1 at the cavity vacuum pressure of 0.001 Pa. The results suggest that a rise in cavity pressure from 0.001 Pa to 100 kPa increases the centre-of-pane and total U values from 0.28 Wm−2 K−1 and 0.94 Wm−2 K−1 to 2.4 Wm−2 K−1 and 2.58 Wm−2 K−1, respectively. The temperature descent on the surfaces of TVG between hot and cold sides increases by decreasing the cavity vacuum pressure from 50...

We apply a fast terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) system based on electronically controlled optical sampling (ECOPS) to contact-free thickness gauging. Our setup achieves a measurement speed of 1600 terahertz pulse traces per... more

We apply a fast terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) system based on electronically controlled optical sampling (ECOPS) to contact-free thickness gauging. Our setup achieves a measurement speed of 1600 terahertz pulse traces per second, which—to our knowledge—represents the fastest thickness measurement performed with any terahertz system to-date. Using a silicon wafer as a test sample, we compare data of the ECOPS experiment to results obtained with a conventional terahertz TDS system and a mechanical micrometer gauge. We show that all systems provide consistent results within the measurement accuracy. Moreover, we perform thickness measurements of a rapidly moving sample and characterize the ECOPS setup with respect to time-domain dynamic range, signal-to-noise ratio, and spectral properties.

A growth trial was conducted to study the effect of feeding sugarcane byproducts based complete ration on carcass characteristics of 24 Murrah buffalo bull calves. The bull calves were divided into six groups randomly in a Randomized... more

A growth trial was conducted to study the effect of feeding sugarcane byproducts based complete ration on carcass characteristics of 24 Murrah buffalo bull calves. The bull calves were divided into six groups randomly in a Randomized Block Design and fed six rations comprising of five complete rations (formulated by using sugarcane by-products and other crop residues) and one conventional ration (containing chopped hybrid Napier and concentrate mixture) and balanced concentrate mixture in the mash form for a period of 168 days. The results revealed that the average daily gain of 480 to 610 g was observed in calves fed with sugarcane by-product based diets with an intake level of 2.51 to 2.57 kg (Kg/100 kg body weight) and showed greater weight gains when compared to control group (364 g of growth rate). At the production level of 3 tons of SCT hay per acre, one acre of sugarcane crop can support 8 buffalo calves during the harvesting season. The dressing percentage on empty body weight ranged from 33% to 45%, indicating that the feeding of sugarcane by products and other crop residues based complete ration yielded the dressing percentages within the normal range without showing any adverse effects on growth performance of Murrah buffalo bull calves.

On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization announced a new coronavirus, which later turned out to be very dangerous. Since that date, COVID-19 has spread to become a pandemic that has now affected practically all regions in the... more

On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization announced a new coronavirus, which later turned out to be very dangerous. Since that date, COVID-19 has spread to become a pandemic that has now affected practically all regions in the world. Since then, many researchers in medicine have contributed to fighting COVID-19. In this context and given the great growth of scientific publications related to this global pandemic, manual text and data retrieval has become a challenging task. To remedy this challenge, we are proposing CovBERT, a pre-trained language model based on the BERT model to automate the literature review process. CovBERT relies on prior training on a large corpus of scientific publications in the biomedical domain and related to COVID-19 to increase its performance on the literature review task. We evaluate CovBERT on the classification of short text based on our scientific dataset of biomedical articles on COVID-19 entitled COV-Dat-20. We demonstrate statistically sig...

One of the complex processes in spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) data analysis is the inversion procedure. An initial soil profile needs to be assumed at the beginning of the inversion analysis, which involves calculating the... more

One of the complex processes in spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) data analysis is the inversion procedure. An initial soil profile needs to be assumed at the beginning of the inversion analysis, which involves calculating the theoretical dispersion curve. If the assumption of the starting soil profile model is not reasonably close, the iteration process might lead to nonconvergence or take too long to be converged. Automating the inversion procedure will allow us to evaluate the soil stiffness properties conveniently and rapidly by means of the SASW method. Multilayer perceptron (MLP), random forest (RF), support vector regression (SVR), and linear regression (LR) algorithms were implemented in order to automate the inversion. For this purpose, the dispersion curves obtained from 50 field tests were used as input data for all of the algorithms. The results illustrated that SVR algorithms could potentially be used to estimate the shear wave velocity of soil.

Microwave ablation is one type of hyperthermia treatment of cancer that involves heating tumor cells. This technique uses electromagnetic wave effects to kill cancer cells. A micro-coaxial antenna is introduced into the biological tissue.... more

Microwave ablation is one type of hyperthermia treatment of cancer that involves heating tumor cells. This technique uses electromagnetic wave effects to kill cancer cells. A micro-coaxial antenna is introduced into the biological tissue. The radiation emitted by the antenna is absorbed by the tissue and leads to the heating of cancer cells. The diffuse increase in temperature should reach a certain value to achieve the treatment of cancer cells but it should be less than a certain other value to avoid damaging normal cells. This is why hyperthermia treatment should be carefully monitored. A numerical simulation is useful and may provide valuable information. The bio-heat equation and Maxwell’s equations are solved using the finite element method. Electro-thermal effects, temperature distribution profile, specific absorption rate (SAR), and fraction of necrotic tissue within cancer cells are analyzed. The results show that SAR and temperature distribution are strongly affected by in...

Reluctance coil guns are electromagnetic launchers having a good ratio of energy transmitted to actuator volume, making them a good choice for propelling objects with a limited actuator space. In this paper, we focus on an application,... more

Reluctance coil guns are electromagnetic launchers having a good ratio of energy transmitted to actuator volume, making them a good choice for propelling objects with a limited actuator space. In this paper, we focus on an application, which is launching real size soccer balls with a size constrained robot. As the size of the actuator cannot be increased, kicking strength can only be improved by enhancing electrical to mechanical energy conversion, compared to existing systems. For this, we propose to modify its inner structure, splitting the coil and the energy storage capacitor into several ones, and triggering the coils successively for propagating the magnetic force in order to improve efficiency. This article first presents a model of reluctance electromagnetic coil guns using a coupled electromagnetic, electrical and mechanical models. Four different coil gun structures are then simulated, concluding that splitting the kicking coil into two half size ones is the best trade-off...

This study provides a biomechanical analysis of the bodyweight wall-squat exercise considering four exercise variants: knee angle; horizontal hip-ankle distance (d); shift between the rearfoot and forefoot of the centre of pressure (xGR)... more

This study provides a biomechanical analysis of the bodyweight wall-squat exercise considering four exercise variants: knee angle; horizontal hip-ankle distance (d); shift between the rearfoot and forefoot of the centre of pressure (xGR) of the ground reaction force; back supported via the scapular or pelvic zone. The ankle and hip angles corresponding to a given knee angle can be modulated, changing the distance d, to manage limitation in lumbopelvic and ankle mobility. The knee-extensor muscles can be overloaded (250 Nm muscle torque) with knees flexed at 90°, back supported through the pelvic zone, and feet away from the wall (d = 50 cm). Scapular support, xGR at forefoot, and d = 50 cm, yield a higher level of muscle-torque for hip-extension (130 Nm) and knee-flexion (65 Nm), with knees at 90° of flexion or near full extension, respectively. Ankle-dorsiflexion (plantarflexion) muscle torque up to 40 Nm is reached with xGR at the forefoot (rearfoot). This study may aid trainers a...

Laser tracking systems are widely used in large-scale metrology of geometric quantities. Their importance is confirmed by the fact that one of the parts of the ISO 10360 series of standards has been devoted to the issue of assessing their... more

Laser tracking systems are widely used in large-scale metrology of geometric quantities. Their importance is confirmed by the fact that one of the parts of the ISO 10360 series of standards has been devoted to the issue of assessing their accuracy (ISO 10360-10). A laser tracker is a device whose final measurement result is calculated using indications from various subsystems included in it, such as devices for measuring length and angle. The analysis of these individual impacts can be useful in creating simulation models of accuracy which, in regard to the Industry 4.0 concept, seem to be the most justified in terms of speed of operation and ease of use. For this reason, it may be particularly important to undertake research on the accuracy of this component in isolation from other factors affecting the measurement of the coordinates of the point. The article describes a method that allows separation of the length measurement error from the other components. The method uses a high-...

The world has witnessed recently a global outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This pandemic has affected many countries and has resulted in worldwide health concerns, thus governments are attempting to reduce its spread and impact... more

The world has witnessed recently a global outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This pandemic has affected many countries and has resulted in worldwide health concerns, thus governments are attempting to reduce its spread and impact on different aspects of life such as health, economics, education, and politics by making emergent decisions and policies (e.g., lockdown and social distancing). These new regulations influenced people’s daily life and cast significant burdens, concerns, and disparities on various population groups. Taking the wrong actions and enforcing bad decisions by some countries result in increasing the contagion rate and more catastrophic results. People start to post their opinions and feelings about their government’s decisions on different social media networks, and the data received through these platforms present a very useful source of information that affects how governments perceive and cope with the current the pandemic. Jordan was one of the top a...

Many organizations devote significant resources to building high-fidelity deep learning (DL) models. Therefore, they have a great interest in making sure the models they have trained are not appropriated by others. Embedding watermarks... more

Many organizations devote significant resources to building high-fidelity deep learning (DL) models. Therefore, they have a great interest in making sure the models they have trained are not appropriated by others. Embedding watermarks (WMs) in DL models is a useful means to protect the intellectual property (IP) of their owners. In this paper, we propose KeyNet, a novel watermarking framework that satisfies the main requirements for an effective and robust watermarking. In KeyNet, any sample in a WM carrier set can take more than one label based on where the owner signs it. The signature is the hashed value of the owner’s information and her model. We leverage multi-task learning (MTL) to learn the original classification task and the watermarking task together. Another model (called the private model) is added to the original one, so that it acts as a private key. The two models are trained together to embed the WM while preserving the accuracy of the original task. To extract a W...

In the context of Industry 4.0, the matrix production concept represents revolutionary solutions from a technological and logistics point of view. In a matrix production system, flexible, configurable production and assembly cells are... more

In the context of Industry 4.0, the matrix production concept represents revolutionary solutions from a technological and logistics point of view. In a matrix production system, flexible, configurable production and assembly cells are arranged in a grid layout, and the in-plant supply is based on autonomous vehicles. Adaptable and flexible material handling solutions are required to perform the dynamically changing supply-demands of standardized and categorized manufacturing and assembly cells. Within the frame of this paper, the authors describe the in-plant supply process of matrix production and the optimization potential in these processes. After a systematic literature review, this paper introduces the structure of matrix production as a cyber-physical system focusing on logistics aspects. A mathematical model of this in-plant supply process is described including extended and real-time optimization from routing, assignment, and scheduling points of view. The optimization probl...