Recent Advances in Science and Technology Research Vol. 2

Research on Strength, Fatigue Strength and Stiffness of High-Tech Bamboo/Epoxy Composites

Michael James Platts — 2020-06-22

A major problem in the strength data available for cellulose fibre‐based materials is that the moisture content of the test specimens is rarely measured, and yet it is the dominant variable in the tests. Detailed strength and stiffness results are presented for Brazilian Dendrocalamus Giganteus bamboo at a wide range of moisture contents down to 2% and the fatigue curve is given for Chinese Moso bamboo at 4% moisture content. Techniques are described for handling the variability of these natural materials, both in design and in manufacturing quality control, for the mass production of large, high-tech composites wind turbine blades.

Design Parameters Specification for the Construction of 33kV Overhead Lines across Lagoon Using Transmission Towers

Lambe Mutalub Adesina — 2020-06-22

Overhead aluminium conductors used for both medium and high voltage installations are flexible and uniform in weight along their lengths. They often take the form of catenary changes with conductor temperature, ice and wind loading and time. Adequate vertical and horizontal clearance under all weather and electrical loading conditions are guaranteed by ensuring the breaking strength of the conductor is not exceeded. Thus, the behaviour of the conductor catenary under all conditions need to be incorporated into the transmission line in the constructional design regardless of the length of the transmission line. Overhead transmission lines constructed across water such as Lagoon are good illustration of the characteristics described above. Therefore, this research presents a case study of 33kV overhead line construction crossing 265 m wide ‘Lagoon’ which requires Sag parameter calculations. Detail description of the case study, specifications for Aluminium conductor steel reinforced (ACSR) type A1/S1A IEC 61089 standard and sag calculations with and without wind or ice weather conditions are presented. The design calculation for weight of a required Dead-End Lattice Tower via determination of weight of the individual 5 components of a Tower are also presented. The obtained results are presented and discussed. The Sag parameter results and that of Dead-end lattice tower and its components weights evaluated were applied to the proposed project. The method of this research work generated reliable results suggesting that it can be applied to any other Transmission tower successfully.

Critical Overview on Global Warming as Evolution: Rebuttal of Two Extreme Positions

Jan-Erik Lane — 2020-06-22

In the global meetings among governments, IGO and NGO, a hidden premise is that the process of climate change can be not only halted but reversed, if and only if there could finally be coordina-tion of a global warming set of counter-measures. Somehow, global warming would be stabilised at 2C, and all countries would reduce their GHC emissions slowly but consistently over the coming decades. Given the costs of such measures in terms of economic development, it is said that a super fund put up by the rich countries would alleviate the burden on the poor or developing countries. This is a global myth, which entirely bypasses the fundamental fact that the history of mankind is evolving to a new stage, namely a society with an increasing average temperature and its attending consequences for all systems, biological and social. It involves travelling on a new road path that may end up in 4C, 6C or even more. It is a riskier one than before, because it is irreversible and probablities are not known.

Complexities and Solution Strategies in Structural Health Assessment

Abdullah Al-Hussein — 2020-06-22

The complexities and solution strategies in the health assessment of civil infrastructures are briefly discussed. To meet the current needs of locating defect spots and their severity accurately and efficiently, infrastructures are represented by finite elements. To increase the implementation potential, the stiffness parameters of all the elements are tracked using only few noise-contaminated dynamic responses measured at small part of the infrastructures. To extract the required information, Kalman filter concept is integrated with other advanced numerical schemes. An unscented Kalman filter (UKF) concept is developed for highly nonlinear dynamic systems. The basic UKF concept is improved in several ways. Instead of using one long duration time history uased in one global iteration, very short duration time histories and multiple global iterations with weight factors are used to locate the defect spot accurately and efficiently. The capabilities of the procedure are demonstrated with the help of two informative examples. The proposed procedure is much superior to the extended Kalman filter-based procedures developed by the team earlier.

Comparative Nutritional and Phytochemical Evaluation of the Aerial and Underground Tubers of Air Potato (Dioscorea bulbifera) Available in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nigeria: Detailed Study

A. Afiukwa Celestine — 2020-06-22

The wild yam species (Dioscorea bulbifera), known as edu in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nigeria, has two types of edible tubers (underground tubers and aerial bulbils) produced simultaneously by the same plant. The yam species is highly neglected in the region such that it is only consumed in the rural areas often not out of preference but at periods of food scarcity. Both tuber forms are consumed in Abakaliki. The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the nutritional and antinutritional profiles of the two tuber forms. The proximate and phytochemical constituents were determined using standard official methods of the Association of Analytical Chemists while mineral elements were quantified by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (AAS) method. The study revealed no significant difference between the tuber forms in their contents of crude fats, fibre ash and carbohydrates and calorific values (P>0.05) while crude protein was significantly higher in the aerial bulbils (P<0.05). The mineral elements K, Na, Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu and P but Mn were all significantly higher in the underground tubers while the heavy metals Cd, Pb, Cr, Ni, Se and Co were not detected. Oxalate, tannins and phenols were significantly higher in the underground tubers while the bulbils were richer in alkaloids, HCN, saponins and flavonoids. Compared with nutritional values of common edible yam species in the literature, this study also showed that this neglected yam species is a good source of protein, lipid, crude fibre, carbohydrates and minerals. Its contents of the toxic substances (phytate, oxalate, tannins, alkaloids and HCN) were not exceedingly higher compared to common yams. This study revealed the high nutritional values of D. bublifera in terms of proximate and mineral composition, and its safety in terms of anti-nutrient contents, coupled with numerous literature reports on its medicinal potentials. We therefore advocate for increased cultivation, utilization and valorisation of the species in the area and beyond to enhance food and nutrition security.

A Study of Mechanical Thresher over Traditional Method of Threshing Kutki

Shalini Chaturvedi — 2020-06-22

This research was based on efficiency of plot size millet thresher over traditional method of threshing Kutki millet. Kutki millet (little millet) is one of the most important small millet crop grown in rainfed area of Madhya Pradesh India. Traditionally in tribal and hilly area, threshing of Kutki millet crops is done by beating sticks and tractor bare operation which is more time consuming, energy intensive, labour intensive and uneconomical. The plot size millet thresher can reduce the drudgery of farmers, labours improve the quality of product, with existing socio economic condition of millet growing tribal farmers. Thus, the plot size millet thresher was found best with 99.6% threshing efficiency, 98.9% cleaning efficiency, 20.2 kg/h output capacity, 0.45% un-threshed grain percentage and 0% broken grain.

General and Specific Combining Ability Studies in Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

Ravi Kumar — 2020-06-22

This experiment aimed to determine General Combining Ability (GCA) and Specific Combining Ability (SCA) of six parental lines; SBRB-6/12, SBRB-1/12, KS-224, SBRB-2/12, Swarna Mani and SBRB-3/12 through full-diallel parental crosses. Experiment was conducted from June 2012 to march 2013 and designed in Randomized Complete Block with three replications. The combining ability analysis revealed highly significant differences among the treatments for all the parameters studied except days to 50% flowering and number of primary branches per plant. The genotype SBRB-6/12 was found best general combiner for number of fruit per plant and yield per plant. The top three crosses (SBRB-3/12 x SBRB-2/12, SBRB-6/12 x SBRB-3/12 and KS-224 x Swarna Mani) with high per se performance have exhibited high SCA effects for yield. Both additive and non-additive gene actions were operating for all the characters except days to 50% flowering, fruit diameter and number of primary branches per plant. Therefore, the general combiner can be exploited for the creation of varieties and the presence of specific combinining ability in the hybrids.

Adaptive Method for State Estimation of Sound Environment System with Uncertainty and Its Application to Psychological Evaluation: Recent Perspecives

Hisako Orimoto — 2020-06-22

The actual sound environment system exhibits various types of linear and non-linear characteristics, and it often contains uncertainty. Furthermore, the observations in the sound environment are often in the level-quantized form. In this paper, two types of methods for estimating the specific signal for sound environment systems with uncertainty and the quantized observation are proposed by introducing newly a system model of the conditional probability type and moment statistics of fuzzy events. The effectiveness of the proposed theoretical methods is confirmed by applying them to the actual problem of psychological evaluation for the sound environment.

Attendance Marking System Using Face Recognition

G. Thilagavathi — 2020-06-22

Marking of attendance in a classroom during a lecture is considered as a time consuming task. Large number of students present in the lecture hall leads to the possibility of proxy attendance. It is extremely difficult task for lecturers to manually identify the students who skip their lectures on regular basis. Student’s attendance Management through the conventional methods had been a challenge in the recent years. There is a need of efficient and automatic techniques of marking attendance which leads to growing challenge in the area of face recognition.

Even though standard biometrics are widely used for automatic attendance marking, still it faces lot of problems. However, most of the previously proposed techniques lack the element of reliability. The main focus of our project is to analyse and evaluate the recent attendance marking techniques using face recognition methods. Our proposed system is a conceptual model for automated attendance system through facial recognition and it uses an integral validation process which enhances the reliability of model.

Profiling Lipids in People Living with HIV Receiving Antiretroviral Therapy at Mpilo Central Hospital OIC: Hitherto Going Forth?

Nicholas Maunga — 2020-06-22

Introduction: Long term use of antiretroviral therapy subpopulation living with HIV is associated with disturbances in plasma lipids concentrations. Lipids profiles were not routinely used to monitor treatment in the course of treatment resulting in adverse outcomes. Supportive information for the use of lipid concentrations is necessary for the day to day monitoring of people living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment. Evidence of the importance of lipid profiles in monitoring treatment was hoped to influence end users to institute routine monitoring. To this end, the prevalence and timing of dyslipidemia onset in people living with HIV/AIDS on ART Bulawayo, Zimbabwe were determined.

Materials and Methods: The study was conducted at Mpilo Central Hospital OIC in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe over 3 months. A cross-sectional study was conducted in people living with HIV who were on highly active anti-retroviral treatment at Mpilo Central Hospital OIC. Lipid assays were determined by Elisa methods. Viral loads and CD4 were measured using the COBAS® TaqMan® and BD FACSCount™ Flow Cytometer, respectively.

Results: A total of 149 accepting participants were enrolled with most (63.2%) being females. The median age of the respondents was 43 years and their median CD4 count was 436 cells/μL after a median duration on ART of 36 months. Viral load was <40 in the majority (68.6%) of the participants. More females (63.1%) were on HAART and were aged >35 (60.4%) years. NNRTI (90.6%) were the more commonly prescribed HAART. The prevalence of dyslipidemia was 70.2%. Hypercholesterolaemia was detected in 72 (48.3%) patients with 26 being male and 46 being female. High levels of LDL-cholesterol (LDL-c ≥ 3.0 mmol/L) were found in 115 patients with 74 of them being female. Hypertriacylglycerolaemia (TAG ≥ 2.0 mmol/L) was present in 8 cases. The proportion of patients with a low HDL-cholesterol (HDL-c < 1.0 mmol/L) was 15.3% while those with a ratio of TC/HDL-c ≥ 4.1 were 87.5%.

Conclusion: The study demonstrated a high prevalence of dyslipidemia in HIV-patients receiving HAART. There is a need for the HIV program to institute laboratory monitoring of blood lipids in patients over one year on HAART. In addition, testing and development of biomarkers of other novel pathophysiological changes and HAART outcomes that may develop in the subpopulation in time, is of paramount importance as adverse drug effects are still being experienced that may necessitate regimen changes.

Study on: Essence and Conditions for Application of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Methods

Ivelina Peneva — 2020-06-22

This paper acquaints skilled in the humanitarian field with basic definitions in the field of statistics. The paper reveals the essence and the differences between the parametric and nonparametric statistical methods. Discussed are the conditions for their correct application. Drawn are trends for checking those conditions. We pay more attention to their interpretation in terms of non-mathematicians.

Discussion Surrounding the Identification of Henry IV’s Alleged Skull: Advanced Study

X. Riaud — 2020-06-22

On Sunday, 13^th March 2011, at half past eight in the evening, the French public national television channel France 5 broadcasted a documentary relating the investigation which had led to the “formal” identification of Henry IV’s skull. It had been conducted by a team of scientists led by Doctor Philippe Charlier, a forensic medical examiner - a well-known anthropologist.

Throughout the programme, many factors were introduced and proved the identification. And yet, taking a scientific step back and looking at things from a distance with historical knowledge, these factors seem to be questionable. A new perspective which sowed the seeds of doubt on the showcasing of absolute certainty.

The Details of Ambient Air PM10 Particulate Levels at Ashaiman Near Tema in Ghana

Francis G. Ofosu — 2020-06-22

Introduction: Emissions from a variety of air particulate sources have resulted in atmospheric pollution that, in turn, has produced serious problems, causing irreversible reactions in the environment and hence is posing a major threat to our very existence.

Aim: Identify monthly variations of particulate matter mass concentrations in air, the contribution of each size fraction (coarse and fine) to PM₁₀ levels, and the contributions from natural and anthropogenic sources.

Methodology: PM₁₀ ambient air particulates in two size fractions being the coarse (PM_10-2.5) and fine (PM_2.5) were sampled. Heavy metals and carbonaceous compounds [organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC)] concentrations were determined. Enrichment factor (EF) was used to identify species of crustal and non-crustal origin in ambient air particulates. The identified elements were used to develop fingerprints for a number of particulate sources.

Results: The mean coarse and fine particulate levels obtained were 89.2 μg/m³ and 21.6 μg/m³ respectively. The maximum and minimum levels occurred in February (dry season) and July (rainy season) respectively. Soil dust was found to be the major source of particulates in the two size fractions (coarse and fine). The sulphur contents in Harmattan (cold dry winds) dust in the dry season was found to be predominantly in the coarse fraction. EF was used to identify species of crustal and non–crustal origin in ambient air particulates. The Enrichment Factor values for the elements Cr, Cu, Zn, Pb and Br showed that they were mostly from anthropogenic sources.

Conclusion: This study emphasizes the significant impact of seasonal variations on particulate levels. The problem with air quality is seen to be greatest during the Harmattan when cold dry winds blow soil dust particulates across West Africa.