An education

This audio documentary examines the available educational opportunities for children with autism in Egypt. Through interviews with parents and educators, Nour Ibrahim tries to understand autism, explore the available opportunities and discover possible alternatives. This audio documentary was produced by Nour Ibrahim for the Audio Production Course taught at the American University (AUC) in Cairo by Professor Kim Fox in Fall 2015. Special thanks to my interviewees (in order of appearance): Ms. Maha Helali, co-founder of the Learning Resource Center and the Arab Network for Autism. Ms. Rosette Zaki, former shadow teacher and current educator. Dr. Manal Mahran, a loving mother. Professor Alexandra Gazis, Professor and Assistant Director of the Disability Services Unit at the AUC. Credits: Music (in order - used under Creative Commons Attribution, non-commercial license): - La Rencontre by Circus Marcus retrieved from Freemusicarchive.org (freemusicarchive.org/music/CIRCUSMA…ircus_Marcus_-) - Sunset by Kai Engel retrieved from Freemusicarchive.org (freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Enge…ea_-_09_Sunset) - Le Réveil by Circus Marcus retrieved from Free music archive (freemusicarchive.org/music/CIRCUSMA…us_-_Le_reveil) - Dix-neuf Cent Trente by Circus Marcus retrieved from Free music archive (freemusicarchive.org/music/CIRCUSMA…uf_cent_trente) Sound effects retrieved from YouTube Audio Library and FreeSFX.co.uk. Voice Over by Abdelhamid Mahmou

Development of Smart Lead-Acid Battery Charger for Electric Vehicle Application

The battery charger is a critical part in an electric vehicle (EV) because it charges the battery, which is the weakest part of it. An unduly long charging time limits the use of the EV. Currently, it takes a long time to charge a battery of limited capacity, making EVs rather impractical to use. The objective of this thesis is to design, simulate, construct and test a smart charger for fast charging a battery. The charger consists of two units - the power processing unit and the battery management unit. The power processor is based on a step-down DC-to-DC converter topology. The battery management unit uses first a current control (constant current mode) and then voltage control (constant voltage mode) to charge the battery. The smart control mechanism is based on current and voltage sensing combined with sequenced average current and voltage control to charge the battery as fast as possible and to maximise its charge. The charger was tested successfully on single-phase and three-phase voltage supplies at different output voltages and currents. The charger developed was able to charge a 30 Ah lead-acid battery in two hours as opposed to six hours using a conventional charger. The research showed that it was possible to develop a battery charger which can charge a battery to its limits quickly without gassing and overheating. It is likely that the battery life will be extended without the detrimental effects experienced

Load distribution in curved composite concrete deck-steel multiple-spine box girder bridges.

An analytical modelling was performed using the finite-element method with the commercially available ABAQUS software. A shell element was used to model the concrete deck, steel webs, bottom flanges, and end-diaphragms. A three-dimensional beam element was adopted to model the top flanges, cross-bracings, and top chords. The multi-point-constraint option in the ABAQUS software was used between the shell nodes of the concrete deck and the beam element nodes of the steel top flanges, thus modelling the presence of shear connectors. Extensive parametric study, using the finite-element modelling, was conducted, in which 50 prototype bridges were analyzed to evaluate their load distribution factors for bending stress and shear under dead load and truck loading conditions. The span length of prototype bridges ranged from 20 to 100 meters, with two to four lanes. The number of steel boxes ranged from 2 to 4 in the case of two lanes, 3 to 5 in the case of three lanes, and 3 to 6 in the case of four lanes. The span-to-radius ratio was taken as 0, 0.4, 1, 1.4, and 2 for selected prototype bridges. The key parameters considered in the study were: number and stiffness of cross-bracings and top-chord systems, number of steel boxes, number of traffic lanes, bridge aspect ratio, and degree of curvature. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2000 .N67. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-03, page: 0748. Advisers: J. B. Kennedy; K. M. Sennah. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2001

Sensorless Adaptive Fuzzy Logic Control Of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor

Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSM) require an electromechanical rotor position sensor to operate. The rotor position sensor has disadvantages, such as reliability, size, higher cost, and increased electrical connections. PMSM is used in many speed and position control industrial applications. Proportional integral (PI) and proportional integral derivative (PID) controllers have been widely utilised as speed controllers in PMSM drives. However, these controllers are very sensitive to step change of command speed, parameter variations and load disturbance. In this work, an adaptive fuzzy logic speed controller is proposed. The main features of the proposed controller are; quick recovery of motor’s speed from load disturbances and insensitivity to parameter variation over a wide speed range. The proposed controller is a hybrid model reference adaptive speed controller (HMRASC) which mainly consists of two functional blocks. The first block is a direct FLC that has the error and the change of error as inputs. The error signal is measured between the actual motor speed and the desired speed and the output is the change in the torque command. The second block implements a model reference adaptive controller. In the proposed system, the output speed of the reference model is compared with the actual speed of the motor and the resulted speed error is applied to a PI controller. The output signal of the PI controller is added to the direct FLC output to compensate any deviations in the motor speed from the reference speed due to parameters variation and disturbances in the load. The design and optimisation of the FLC are carried out using an adaptive fuzzy inference system network that uses the backpropagation, least square and gradient algorithms. The fuzzy inference system is trained and designed using an adaptive network. The rules and the implication method used are also optimised and minimised in order to shorten the computation time. In addition, the effect of different types and distributions of the membership functions were investigated and presented. This work also presents the estimation of the rotor position, which works effectively with nearly zero estimation error over wide speed range, to replace the electrometrical rotor position sensor. An estimation method based on the back EMF and flux estimation is presented to calculate the rotor position for medium to high speed. At low speed, the rotor position is calculated using signal injection where a high frequency low voltage signal is injected on the stator winding. In the proposed method, the measured motor’s current and the estimated motor’s voltage are processed through a signal processing block and a PI regulator to calculate the angle of the rotor position.Finally the performance of the HMRASC and the rotor position angle estimation algorithms are evaluated by simulation and verified experimentally for two motors using MCK2407 kit and IMDM15 board which are based on the TMS320LF2407 fixed point Digital Signal Processor (DSP) for different operating conditions. The first motor is rated at 50W and the second is rated at 380W. Both experimental and simulation results obtained from the HMRASC and the position angle estimation algorithms showed superior results compared to other methods presented in the literature

Optimisation of road safety treatment strategies through crash modification factors and simulation

Road safety has become an intensively studied topic with an overarching aim of better understanding why road crashes occur and thus to reduce both frequency and severity. If it is known why road crashes occur, agencies should be able to better apply more effective and efficient road safety improvement strategies. The aim of the traffic engineer is to design and provide a safe travel environment to the road user. While road crashes cannot be completely prevented, a sound understanding of the causative factors helps to minimise crash rate. Crash occurrences can be viewed as a result of the interaction of numerous variables including road geometry, vehicle condition, and operational conditions such as speed and traffic volume. The main objective of this research was to evaluate traffic and geometric road features and their influences on the safety performance of road intersections, roundabouts, and road segments by estimating suitable crash modification factors (CMFs). To accomplish the study objective, crash prediction models (CPMs) were developed using a generalised linear model (GLM) technique, i.e. Poisson or negative binomial (NB) distribution. The regional area of Toowoomba City, Australia was adopted as the case study. Traffic, geometric, and crash data on 106 road intersections for the years 2008-2015, as well as 49 roundabouts and 84 roadway segments for years the 2010-2015 were used for crash modelling and evaluation. The NB distribution was adopted in preference to Poisson distribution as the data showed over-dispersion. Several goodness-of-fit (GOF) tests were performed on the developed models to identify the better-fitting models. These models were then validated using both the estimation and validation datasets. An accurate identification of hazardous road locations (HRLs) prevents wasted resources that may result if possible improvements at such locations are identified with less accuracy. The Empirical-Bayes (EB) approach was employed to identify the HRLs in the study area. This approach was adopted to provide more accurate safety estimation by accounting for the regression-to-the-mean bias usually associated with the road crash data. The HRLs were then ranked based on their potential for safety improvement (PSI) value, which is the difference between the expected and predicted road crashes at each location. The top 10 poorly performing locations for each of theroad intersections, roundabouts, and road segments were identified for further investigation. The CMFs identify any change in the safety performance resulting from implementing a particular treatment. In this study, CMFs were used to estimate the effect of the various proposed safety treatments at identified HRLs. The cross-sectional method (regression approach) was applied to estimate CMFs for individual safety treatment. This method has been considered recently and has not been extensively applied, however, it can be considered as a viable alternative method to estimate the CMFs in cases where observational before-and-after studies are not practical due to data restrictions. In order to estimate the variation in the values of CMF with different sites characteristics, the crash modification functions (CMFunctions) were developed. Using CMFunctions, the safety effects of various traffic and geometric elements of different road facilities (i.e., intersections, roundabouts, and roadway segments) were investigated. The study also notes that while there has been substantial research in the broad area, very few studies have been undertaken to estimate CMFs for the combined effect of multiple safety treatments. However, the four most suitable techniques for estimating combined CMFs were reviewed and applied together to propose effective safety measures for the HRLs. Since there were variations in the estimation of combined CMFs using the four techniques, the average values were adopted as the best approach to estimate the effect of combined treatments. The results demonstrated that multiple treatments have higher safety effects (i.e., lower CMF) than single treatments. The results also indicated that the effect of treatments on road safety does not depend on the number of treatments that have been applied but rather depend on environment. The traffic simulation software PTV VISSIM 9.0 was employed to assess the traffic operational performance before and after safety treatment implementation. The top 10 HRLs for each of the road facilities were simulated and evaluated under different scenarios in terms of level of service (LOS), traffic delay, travel time, and average speed. The results showed that there is no significant degradation of traffic operations expected at treated locations. Finally, a benefit analysis was conducted to estimate the savings during the 10 years after applying the proposed treatments. The crash reduction factors and crash costs were utilised to estimate the crash cost reduction that was associated with single and combined treatments. Such estimation can support road authorities and practitioners to select the final treatment plans for the identified HRLs by undertaking benefit-cost analysis to assist the decision-making process. Contributions of this research can be summarised as: (i) to develop CPMs for different types of road facilities, (ii) to develop CMFunctions to estimate the variation in the values of CMF with different sites characteristics, (iii) to propose a methodology to identify the most appropriate safety treatments (single and multiple treatments) using CMFs, costing and simulation packages. The research has also identified some important aspects for future research to extend the present work

Techno-Economic Analysis of a Residential PV-Storage Model in a Distribution Network

The high penetration level of photovoltaic (PV) generation in distribution networks not only brings benefits like carbon savings, but also induces undesirable outcomes, like more harmonic components and voltage fluctuations. Driven by decreasing costs of energy storage, the focus of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of applying energy storage in the grid-connected PV system to mitigate its intermittency. Firstly, to appreciate the functionality of storage, a generic PV-battery-supercapacitor model was simulated in MATLAB/Simulink, and a flat load profile was obtained to enhance predictability from the network management point of view. However, the usage of supercapacitors at the residential level is limited, due to its high startup costs. Secondly, a detailed residential PV-battery model was implemented in the System Advisor Model (SAM) based on local data in Dubai. The optimal sizing of a battery system was determined by assessing two criteria: The number of excursions, and average target power, which are contradictory in optimization process. Statistical indicators show that a properly sized battery system can alleviate network fluctuations. The proposed sizing method can be also applied to other PV-storage systems. Finally, economic studies of PV-battery system demonstrated its competitiveness against standalone PV systems under appropriate tariff incentives

Organizational Readiness and its Role in Developing the Managerial Skills of Managers in the National and Iraqi Insurance Companies

The objective of the research was to determine the role of organizational readiness in the development of management skills from the point of view of a sample of managers in the insurance companies of Aloni and Iraqi and the number of 37 directors, and was based on the questionnaire as a main tool in the collection of data and information, and was analyzed based on the statistical program (SPSS) In extract search results. The research reached the main conclusions: 1) There is a positive and positive relationship between organizational readiness and managerial skills. 2)  There is a significant effect between organizational readiness and managerial skills

The Evaluation of Public Relations Management’s Efforts from the Perspective of the Internal Public in Hotels "Case Study: Afamia Hotel"

The research problem has focused on the role of public relations management in creating and enhancing the internal public’s confidence with the hotel, and improving the hotel mental image, that the staff has. The researcher used the case study method and depended on descriptive approach in the research community (Afamia Hotel). In addition to the Trilogy Approach (survey- interview- observation) to collect primary data, Then the researcher analyzed the survey results by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The research concluded the following findings:  Public relations management follows the top management directly. The number of public relations employees is not enough to do their jobs efficiently. All the Public Relations employees have university degrees, but they are not related to the specialization of the PR. Lack of communication devices in the PR management. The budget is not enough, and there is a lack of human and material resources. The PR management is oriented towards the external audiences alone. A large percentage of the hotel employees is unaware of tasks and functions of the public relations management. PR management does not survey the internal public opinions and they do not take advantage of the good electronic infrastructure that the hotel has. تقييم جهود إدارة العلاقات العامة من وجهة نظر الجمهور الداخلي للمنشآت الفندقية )دراسة حالة فندق أفاميا في محافظة اللاذقية( هدفت الدراسة إلى التعرف على الدور الذي تقوم به إدارة العلاقات العامة بهدف خلق وتعزيز الثقة مع الجمهور الداخلي للمنشأة الفندقية المدروسة، وتحسين الصورة الذهنية للمنشأة لدى العاملين فيها. وقد اتبعت الباحثة أسلوب دراسة الحالة، حيث استخدمت لذلك المنهج الوصفي، وتمّ تصميم وتوزيع استبانة على العاملين في المنشأة الفندقية المدروسة، كما تمّت دراسة وتحليل البيانات باستخدام برنامج spss وقد أظهرت النتائج تبعية إدارة العلاقات العامة للإدارة العليا بشكل مباشر، وعدم كفاية عدد الموظفين فيها للقيام بالمهام المسندة إليهم، كما أنّ جميع هؤلاء الموظفين هم من حملة الإجازات الجامعية، إلّا أنّها لا تندرج جميعها ضمن الاختصاصات ذات الصلة بعمل العلاقات العامة، وتعاني هذه الإدارة من نقص في أجهزة الاتصال الضرورية لممارسة أعمالها. وعلى الرغم من أنّ الإدارة العليا تقوم بتخصيص موازنة محددة لإدارة العلاقات العامة، إلّا أنّها لا تغطي حاجاتها بالشكل الكافي فهم يعانون من النقص في الموارد البشرية والمادية. بالإضافة إلى جهل نسبة كبيرة من العاملين في الفندق بطبيعة مهام ووظائف هذه الإدارة، كما لا تستغلّ المنشأة الفندقية بنيتها التحتية الإلكترونية الجيدة بحسب رأي جمهورها الداخلي للتواصل معهم بصورة صحيحة. قدمت الدراسة مجموعةً من التوصيات كان من ضمنها زيادة اهتمام الإدارة العليا في المنشأة الفندقية بإدارة العلاقات العامة، وإنشاء قسم خاص ضمن إدارة العلاقات العامة يعتني بأمور الجمهور الداخلي فقط، مع التركيز على توفير سبل اتصال كافية للتواصل مع الجمهور الخارجي للمنشأة بفاعلية أكبر

Factors influencing the inclination of settlers hiring contract workers for oil palm FFB harvesting in Felda Kerteh, Dungun,Terengganu / Nour Aina Mardhia Ibrahim

In Malaysia, oil palm planted area has been increasing rapidly since 1960. A large number of labors require working under plantation because of development of plantation sector. The big problem facing by Malaysian plantation is labor shortage. In harvesting of fresh fruit bunch involve harvester, collector and transportation. Smallholders like settler prefer hiring contract workers to do harvesting, collecting, transporting and other task. Contract workers consist of local workers and foreign workers. The settlers have to pay high charges to pay the contract workers. There are many factors that influencing inclination settlers hiring contract worker for instance age factor, health status, labor shortage, financial, lack of skills and lack of interest from young generations and others. So, this study is done to identify the factors that contribute settlers hiring contract workers especially in harvesting oil palm FFB. or why settlers prefer to hire contract workers than done on its own. This case study has been done in Felda Kerteh 1 in Dungun, Terengganu. From the survey area, the totals of respondent are 400 peoples. According to Israel (1992), the samples will be taken are 135 peoples from 400 peoples as the respondents in this case study. The respondents are randomly selected to avoid bias and make it easier. Questionnaire will be used the method to collect the data and face to face interviews have been carried out in this study. Data were subjected to be descriptive analysis and test using SPSS software. This study conducted at the end of June 2014 until September 2014