An Evaluation of the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset using Ensemble Classifiers and RFE Feature Selection Technique

Breast cancer represents one of the deadliest diseases that records a high number of death rate annually. It is the most common type of cancer and the main cause of death among women worldwide. Machine learning (ML) approach is an effective way to classify data, especially in medical field. It is widely used for classification and analysis to make decisions. In this paper, a performance comparison between two ensemble ML classifiers: Random Forest (RF) and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) on the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset (WBCD) is conducted. The main objective of this study is to assess the correctness of the classifiers with respect to their efficiency and effectiveness in classifying the dataset. This was done by utilizing all and reduced features of the dataset that were generated with Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) feature selection technique. Four metrics were used in the study: Accuracy, Precision, Recall and F1-Score to evaluate the classifiers. All experiments were executed within Anaconda Environment with Jupyter Notebook and conducted using Python programming language. Experimental result shows that XGBoost with 5 reduced feature using RFE feature selection technique gives the highest accuracy (99.02%) with lowest error rate

Tensile and Water Absorbing Properties of Natural Fibre Reinforced Plastic Composites from Waste Polystyrene and Rice Husk

This paper presents a study on the development of Natural fibre reinforced plastic composite from the waste polystyrene and rice husk, a new class of composites consisting of polystyrene based resin reinforced with rice husk fibre. Four different sets of polystyrene/rice husk composites were fabricated with addition of 10, 20, 30 and 40 wt% of rice husk particulates. Tensile and water absorbing properties of these composites were evaluated as per ASTM standard. Tests for water absorption were performed by immersing the samples in a bath of distilled water at room temperature and water uptake was measured gravimetrically along the process. It was observed that young modulus, force at peak, percentage water absorbed and diffusion coefficient of the composite increased while elongation at peak force decreased with addition of rice husk in the PBR matrix. The highest values of young modulus, force at peak, diffusion coefficients and elongation at peak force at 40 % rice husk content are: 365 N/mm2, 562 N, 1.77E-04 mm2/s and 0.76 % respectively. The recycled rice husk in combination with the PBR has produced plastic composite with moderate tensile and water absorbing properties applicable in various application

Cake compressibility analysis of BPOME from a hybrid adsorption microfiltration process

This study investigates the utility of a hybrid adsorption-membrane process for cake compressibility evaluation of biotreated palm oil mill effluent. A low-cost empty fruit bunch (EFB) based powdered activated carbon (PAC) was employed for the upstream adsorption process with operation conditions of 60 g/L PAC dose, 68 min mixing time, and 200 rpm mixing speed to reduce the feed-water strength and alleviate probable fouling of the membranes. Two polyethersulfone microfiltration (MF) membranes of 0.1 and 0.2 lm pore sizes were investigated under constant transmembrane pressures (TMP) of 40, 80, and 120 kPa. The compressibility factors (z), which was obtained from the slopes of power plots (function of specific cake resistance (a) and pressure gradient) were evaluated. The z values of 0.32 and 0.52, respectively obtained, for the 0.1 and 0.2 lm MF membranes provided compressible and stable z values as observed from their power plots. Besides, these membranes were found suitable for the measurement of z since the results are in consonance with the established principle of cake compressibility. Moreover, the upstream adsorption mitigated the clogging of the membranes which ultimately led to moderate resistances and cake compressibility. These are indications that with the secondary cake filtration, a sustainable flux can be achieved during BPOME filtration. The membranes exhibited close to 100% restoration after cleaning

Modelling of pore-blocking behaviors of low-pressure membranes during constant-pressure filtration of an agro-industrial wastewater

Despite the widely documented excellent purification capacity of membranes, their main drawback—fouling—is still being extensively researched with a view to finding a sustainable solution. Fouling simply implies the process that results in the performance loss of a membrane due to the deposition of suspended or dissolved matters onto its external surface or the internal pore walls [1]. Fouling eventually leads to a reduction in the active area of the membrane and thereby results in a reduction in flux below the theoretical capacity of the membrane. Fouling or pore-blocking has been identified as the main reason limiting the adoption of membrane purification processes by many industries. Consequently, an apt understanding of the pore-blocking mechanisms of membranes is imperative, as it is a pertinent factor dictating the overall performance of the filtration process. Pore blockage can occur in any of the two commonly known membrane operations: constant-pressure and constant-flux rate. In a constant-pressure operation, pore blockage usually leads to a sharp decline in permeate flux, while a severe pressure rise is usually encountered in a constant-flux rate operation. In principle, governing filtration models can facilitate the design of membrane processes more than any experiment or characterization can, yet data from experiments are usually required for validation purposes [2–5]. To properly control particulate fouling at the design stage, as well as appropriately monitor it during a plant operation, the methods utilized in evaluating the particulate content of feed-water in predicting membrane fouling are crucial. Soluble and colloidal materials are assumed to be responsible for membrane pore blockage, while suspended solids are mainly accountable for the cake layer resistance [4,6,7]. To accurately measure and predict particulate fouling, it is recommended that specific fouling mechanisms/indices be investigated with respect to specific membranes since the Modified Fouling Index (MFI), where a 0.45 μm membrane filter is used and usually represented as MFI0.45, cannot represent all membrane types. This is due to the fact that some principal parameters such as retention of smaller particulates, the nature and concentration of solutes and solvents, proof of cake filtration, pore size distribution, surface morphology, module hydrodynamics and membrane type/material must be considered in such investigations [1,8]. Therefore, in any proposed membrane process with plans for sustainability, pore-blocking modeling is germane for the determination of some key factors necessary for the design of an efficient membrane system. These factors are: (1) the description of the extent of membrane fouling in terms of particle accumulation at the membrane surface or inside the membrane pores; (2) the prediction of the fouling potential of a specific feed with respect to a specific membrane; and (3) the identification of the most appropriate and sustainable cleaning method necessary for the membrane process. In this study, a systemic investigation was carried out on high-strength agro-industrial wastewater to describe the successive steps involved in the flux decline of a membrane filtration process in terms of pore-blocking mechanism. Microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes, which are the popular low-pressure membranes (LPMs), were utilized for the filtration of the high-strength wastewater. The wastewater is specifically a discharge of an end-of-pipe treatment process from the agro-industry palm oil milling process. An upstream adsorption process was applied to lower the feed strength and reduce its fouling effects on the membranes. The investigative experiments were conducted in a constant-pressure and cross-flow filtration mode through polyethersulfone (PES) MF (pore sizes: 0.1 and 0.2 μm) and UF (molecular weight cut-off: 1, 5 and 10 kDa) membranes at the transmembrane pressures of 40, 80 and 120 kPa. The examined results within the frame of the common blocking mechanisms revealed that the blocking index, η, decreased from 2 to 0 in all five membranes. The pore-blocking phenomenon was successively observed from the complete blocking mechanism (i.e., η = 2) down to the cake filtration mechanism (i.e., η = 0). Furthermore, there is an indication that the early blockage of the pores and formation of a cake resulted in a limiting cake height evident from the near-constant trend of the permeate flux. This means that cake filtration could be best used to explain the fouling mechanisms of the feed on the LPMs based 139Modeling of Pore-Blocking Behaviors of Low-Pressure Membranes on the coefficient of determination (R2) values at all applied pressures. This further demonstrates that the fouling is primarily caused by the gradual reversible cake deposition, which could be easily removed by less onerous cleaning methods