Petro physical Evaluation and Reservoir Characterization of the Zubair Formation in Majnoon oil field, Southern Iraq.

The Barremian succession in the present study is represented by the Zubair Formation which the most significant sandstone reservoir in Iraq. The area of study is located in the Southern part of Iraq at Majnoon oil field, within the Mesopotamian basin. The thickness of the Zubair Formation is about 450 m in the studied area. It is divided into three lithofacies: The upper unit is composed mostly of shale layers, the middle unit is consisting of thick layers of sandstone rocks and the lower ones is consisting mainly of Shale with less sandstone layers. These units are characterized by three types of petrophysical features according to total porosity/effective porosity: High-moderate effective porosity rocks (type I), moderate effective porosity rocks (type II) and low-non pores rocks (type III). The upper unit of the Zubair Formation at Majnoon oil field is characterized by two horizons. The first is showing high resisitivity-high gamma ray which represent the upper part, while the lower part show low resisitivity-low gamma ray. There is a good reservoir horizon with high oil saturation (low water saturation) in this unit at the Majnoon oil field is appeared as a non-continuous horizon. The middle member is dominated by low resistivity-low gamma ray. The high percentage of water saturation in this unit caused the lack of clarity of the oil saturation, which appears in a narrow band. The lower member of Zubair Formation is distinguished by shale dominated rocks and poor sorted sandstone. This shows high resisitivity-high gamma ray. There are many sub horizons as bands within the lower horizon as high resistivity-low gamma ray. There is a good reservoir horizon with high oil saturation (low water saturation) in this unit

Situating emotional experience

Psychological construction approaches to emotion suggest that emotional experience is situated and dynamic. Fear, for example, is typically studied in a physical danger context (e.g., threatening snake), but in the real world, it often occurs in social contexts, especially those involving social evaluation (e.g., public speaking). Understanding situated emotional experience is critical because adaptive responding is guided by situational context (e.g., inferring the intention of another in a social evaluation situation vs. monitoring the environment in a physical danger situation). In an fMRI study, we assessed situated emotional experience using a newly developed paradigm in which participants vividly imagine different scenarios from a first-person perspective, in this case scenarios involving either social evaluation or physical danger. We hypothesized that distributed neural patterns would underlie immersion in social evaluation and physical danger situations, with shared activity patterns across both situations in multiple sensory modalities and in circuitry involved in integrating salient sensory information, and with unique activity patterns for each situation type in coordinated large-scale networks that reflect situated responding. More specifically, we predicted that networks underlying the social inference and mentalizing involved in responding to a social threat (in regions that make up the “default mode” network) would be reliably more active during social evaluation situations. In contrast, networks underlying the visuospatial attention and action planning involved in responding to a physical threat would be reliably more active during physical danger situations. The results supported these hypotheses. In line with emerging psychological construction approaches, the findings suggest that coordinated brain networks offer a systematic way to interpret the distributed patterns that underlie the diverse situational contexts characterizing emotional life

Physical performance and durability evaluation of rubberized concrete

The main objective of this research is to develop rubberized concrete with achievable structural strength using simple mix design. Simple mix design is a description by using the crumb rubber, used as in condition just received from the plant without any washing or pre-treating procedure. Then, three types of durability test were conducted namely, 1) Chloride ion diffusion test, 2) Abrasion wear resistance test, and 3) Freezing and thawing test. Up-to-date, many successful achievements were reported by researchers around the world. However, in Asian cases, very rare information on the use of wasted as a mixture component is gathered. By conducting this study, it could provide useful and valuable knowledge for construction technology especially for Asian industry. This dissertation consists mainly of the seven chapters. In Chapter 1, the background, problem statement, significance, research contribution and novelty of this study are listed out. In Chapter 2, research review on previous researchers work on the application of waste tire rubber in mortar/concrete and durability are described. Several important properties related to this study were viewed and discussed. High reduction in strength properties was observed by previous researchers and many suggestions were proposed either by washing the rubber or the use of suitable treatment on the rubber surface in order to enhance the bonding of the matrix. However, in my research, by using conventional mixing method, it was proposed that to use the rubber without any treatment (use directly as received) with maximum 20% sand replacement in volume is a method to use crumb rubber effectively. As a result, each rubberized mixture showed an acceptable structural strength value. In Chapter 3, three step-by-step stages of mix design were conducted and discussed. The first stage was the preliminary study to determine the suitable waste tire rubber size and percentage replacement that can be used in rubberized mortar. Three rubber size group were received from the industry plant which where combination of 1mm-3mm, combination of 0.71mm-1.7mm and 0.425mm. Size of 1mm – 3mm with 10% of sand replacement was chosen in terms of acceptable fresh and hardened mortar properties. In second stage, suitable water-to-cement ratio (w/c) and required additional binder was determined before proceeding to concrete mix. Results shows that w/c = 0.35 gave reliable mortar physical properties. Finally, rubberized concrete with w/c =0.35 was carried out and specimens were prepared for mechanical test and durability test. Along these three stages, air content was carefully studied and controlled. In Chapter 4, experimental work and discussion on chloride ion diffusion in rubberized concrete tested by migration test and by immersion in salt water was described. Effective diffusion coefficient, De test was conducted according to JSCE-G571-2003. Meanwhile, immersion test in salt water was conducted according to JSCE-G572-2003. Additional concrete specimen with w/c = 0.50 was prepared to study the effectiveness of CR in high w/c in comparison with w/c = 0.35. Results showed that chloride transport characteristics were improved by increasing the amount of CR due to the fact that CR has the ability to repel water. Meanwhile, rubberized concrete with w/c = 0.35 gave better resistance against chloride ion compared to w/c = 0.50. In Chapter 5, discussion on the effectiveness of crumb rubber to improve wear resistance tested by surface abrasion test was described. An experimental study on abrasion wear resistance was conducted on mortar (w/c = 0.35, 0.30 and 0.25) and concrete (w/c = 0.35) specimen containing CR with and without silica fume. From test results, it was clearly seen that 10% crumb rubber addition as sand replacement provide good resistance against abrasion. Meanwhile, compressive strength was the most important factor affecting the abrasion resistance, where abrasion resistance was increased with an increase in compressive strength. However, abrasion resistance was found to be slightly decreased when compressive strength exceeds 50N/mm2. In Chapter 6, the role of crumb rubber as air void under freezing and thawing was studied. Specimen was prepared in three groups; first group was the specimen without silica fume with air content ranging between 4% to 5%, second group was the specimen without silica fume with air content ranging between 0% to 1.5% and third group was the specimen with silica fume with air content ranging between 4% to 5%. These rubberized concrete were tested on freezing and thawing resistance to understand this behavior. The temperature for freezing and thawing was set to 15oC ±5oC for thawing temperature and -18oC ±5oC for freezing. This test was continued until 300 cycles according to ASTM C666. Results show that up to 300 freeze-thaw cycle, there was no minus effect observed for all specimen. In Chapter 7, conclusions are drawn based on Chapter 4 to Chapter 6 and recommendations for future works is presented

The OPERA trial : a protocol for the process evaluation of a randomised trial of an exercise intervention for older people in residential and nursing accommodation

Background: The OPERA trial is large cluster randomised trial testing a physical activity intervention to address depression amongst people living in nursing and residential homes for older people. A process evaluation was commissioned alongside the trial and we report the protocol for this process evaluation. Challenges included the cognitive and physical ability of the participants, the need to respect the privacy of all home residents, including study non-participants, and the physical structure of the homes. Evaluation activity had to be organised around the structured timetable of homes, leaving limited opportunities for data collection. The aims of this process evaluation are to provide findings that will assist in the interpretation of the clinical trial results, and to inform potential implementation of the physical activity intervention on a wider scale. Methods/design: Quantitative data on recruitment of homes and individuals is being collected. For homes in the intervention arm, data on dose and fidelity of the intervention delivered; including individual rates of participation in exercise classes are collected. In the control homes, uptake and delivery of depression awareness training is monitored. These data will be combined with qualitative data from an in-depth study of a purposive sample of eight homes (six intervention and two control). Discussion: Although process evaluations are increasingly funded alongside trials, it is still rare to see the findings published, and even rarer to see the protocol for such an evaluation published. Process evaluations have the potential to assist in interpreting and understanding trial results as well as informing future roll-outs of interventions. If such evaluations are funded they should also be reported and reviewed in a similar way to the trial outcome evaluation

Evaluation Factors for Multi-Stakeholder Broadband Visual Communication Projects

This paper presents a summary of multifaceted evaluation factors that we have identified through our research with Broadband Visual Communication (BVC) projects involving multiple stakeholders. The main benefit of these evaluation factors is that they provide a general evaluation framework for multiple stakeholder projects. The factors are social infrastructure, technical infrastructure, physical space, interaction style and content

Development of a novel virtual coordinate measuring machine

Existing VCMMs (virtual coordinate measuring machine) have been mainly developed to either simulate the measurement process hence enabling the off-line programming, or to perform error analysis and uncertainty evaluation. Their capability and performance could be greatly improved if there is a complete solution to cover the whole process and provide an integrated environment. The aim of this study is to develop such a VCMM that not only supports measurement process simulation, but also performs uncertainty evaluation. It makes use of virtual reality techniques to provide an accurate model of a physical CMM, together with uncertainty evaluation. An interface is also provided to communicate with CMM controller, allowing the measuring programs generated and simulated in the VCMM to be executed or tested on the physical CMM afterwards. This paper discusses the proposal of a novel VCMM design and the preliminary results

Can virtual reality predict body part discomfort and performance of people in realistic world for assembling tasks?

This paper presents our work on relationship of evaluation results between virtual environment (VE) and realistic environment (RE) for assembling tasks. Evaluation results consist of subjective results (BPD and RPE) and objective results (posture and physical performance). Same tasks were performed with same experimental configurations and evaluation results were measured in RE and VE respectively. Then these evaluation results were compared. Slight difference of posture between VE and RE was found but not great difference of effect on people according to conventional ergonomics posture assessment method. Correlation of BPD and performance results between VE and RE are found by linear regression method. Moreover, results of BPD, physical performance, and RPE in VE are higher than that in RE with significant difference. Furthermore, these results indicates that subjects feel more discomfort and fatigue in VE than RE because of additional effort required in VE

"Touch me": workshop on tactile user experience evaluation methods

In this workshop we plan to explore the possibilities and challenges of physical objects and materials for evaluating the User Experience (UX) of interactive systems. These objects should face shortfalls of current UX evaluation methods and allow for a qualitative (or even quantitative), playful and holistic evaluation of UX -- without interfering with the users' personal experiences during interaction. This provides a tactile enhancement to a solely visual stimulation as used in classical evaluation methods. The workshop serves as a basis for networking and community building with interested HCI researchers, designers and practitioners and should encourage further development of the field of tactile UX evaluation

Physical modelling of tundish slag entrainment under various technological conditions

This paper deals with the issue of physical modelling of vortexes creation and tundish slag entrainment over the mouth of the nozzle into the individual casting strands. Proper physical model is equivalent to the operational continuous casting machine No. 2 in TRINECKE ZELEZARN, a.s. Physical modelling methodology and simulated operational conditions are shortly described. Physical modelling was used for the evaluation of current conditions of steel casting at the application of different impact pads in the tundish. Further, laboratory measurement on the physical model aiming the determination of exact critical periods of vortexes creation and study of the slag entrainment as a consequence of changes in surface level during the tundish refilling to standard level were realised. The obtained results were analysed and discussed.Web of Science6231471146