A Feasibility Study of a CHP System in a Commercial Facilities: Sizing and Parameters Analysis

The focus of this report is to design a CHP system using energy demand load profile for a food distribution center. This study has investigated energy requirements in food industry. The main distinction of this report is to carry out economic and environmental analysis of a CHP system. Case studies based on food industry demonstrates that the CHP system is able to run continuously at optimal efficiency and operational costs of the CHP system can be effectively reduced in both electric and heating cost

GABA mediated response of aqueous, ethanol andethyl acetate extracts of Dicranopteris linearis leaf inSwiss Albino mice

Introduction: The objective of the study was to assess the potential of the leaf of Dicranopteris linearis in altering the CNS functions with three different extracts; aqueous, ethanol and ethyl acetate.Methods: To evaluate and compare the activities Morris maze, elevated plus maze (EPM),open field, hole cross and head dip tests were performed and many behavioral parameters wereobserved. The forced swim in Morris water maze analyzed the depression of rodents in termsof inability to self-rescue. Alongside, hole cross and open field tests assessed the inhibition oflocomotor activities. Moreover, EPM test screened the anxiolytic potential while the head dippinghole board test supported the previous experiments by evaluating both sedative, depressive andanxiolytic potentials of the extracts.Results: The results showed that the ethanol extract significantly suppressed CNS activity byreducing number of locomotor activities and increasing the stability phase (in EPM and Morrismaze) supporting mild sedation, depression and anxiolysis. Furthermore, the ethyl acetate extractalso possessed moderate to high potential in reducing locomotor activities depending on gradientdoses. Results were compared with control group and found statistically significant.Conclusion: As this plant mimic the activity of a gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) agonist, itcan be concluded that the plant may have GABA mediated involvement in central nervous system.However, the responsible compounds for these activities are yet to be investigated and this maypotentiate a new source of drug development

An effective hotel recommendation system through processing heterogeneous data

Recommendation systems have recently gained a lot of popularity in various industries such as entertainment and tourism. They can act as filters of information by providing relevant suggestions to the users through processing heterogeneous data from different networks. Many travelers and tourists routinely rely on textual reviews, numerical ratings, and points of interest to select hotels in cities worldwide. To attract more customers, online hotel booking systems typically rank their hotels based on the recommendations from their customers. In this paper, we present a framework that can rank hotels by analyzing hotels’ customer reviews and nearby amenities. In addition, a framework is presented that combines the scores generated from user reviews and surrounding facilities. We perform experiments using datasets from online hotel booking platforms such as TripAdvisor and Booking to evaluate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed framework. We first store the keywords extracted from reviews and assign weights to each considered unigram and bigram keywords and, then, we give a numerical score to each considered keyword. Finally, our proposed system aggregates the scores generated from the reviews and surrounding environments from different categories of the facilities. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed recommendation framework

Increasing frailty is associated with higher prevalence and reduced recognition of delirium in older hospitalised inpatients: results of a multi-centre study

Purpose: Delirium is a neuropsychiatric disorder delineated by an acute change in cognition, attention, and consciousness. It is common, particularly in older adults, but poorly recognised. Frailty is the accumulation of deficits conferring an increased risk of adverse outcomes. We set out to determine how severity of frailty, as measured using the CFS, affected delirium rates, and recognition in hospitalised older people in the United Kingdom. Methods: Adults over 65 years were included in an observational multi-centre audit across UK hospitals, two prospective rounds, and one retrospective note review. Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), delirium status, and 30-day outcomes were recorded. Results: The overall prevalence of delirium was 16.3% (483). Patients with delirium were more frail than patients without delirium (median CFS 6 vs 4). The risk of delirium was greater with increasing frailty [OR 2.9 (1.8–4.6) in CFS 4 vs 1–3; OR 12.4 (6.2–24.5) in CFS 8 vs 1–3]. Higher CFS was associated with reduced recognition of delirium (OR of 0.7 (0.3–1.9) in CFS 4 compared to 0.2 (0.1–0.7) in CFS 8). These risks were both independent of age and dementia. Conclusion: We have demonstrated an incremental increase in risk of delirium with increasing frailty. This has important clinical implications, suggesting that frailty may provide a more nuanced measure of vulnerability to delirium and poor outcomes. However, the most frail patients are least likely to have their delirium diagnosed and there is a significant lack of research into the underlying pathophysiology of both of these common geriatric syndromes

Gradient-Based Routing in Sensor Networks

this paper we propose a novel energy e#cient, fully distributed and reactive routing protocol based on gradient of event's e#ect for environmental monitoring sensor networks. Our protocol handles local and isolated maxima or hole of information using simulated annealing concept

1 - The Impact of class attendance on student performance at TRU

Students’ class attendance and engagement play a vital role in their performances in higher education. This study aims to investigate the association between students’ class attendance and their performances throughout the semester. The study also highlights the positive impacts of having a faculty-wide attendance policy. This study incorporates data from eight science and engineering courses offered in 2019 at TRU. Students\u27 performances are assessed via quizzes, assignments, midterms, projects and exams. The association between class attendance and students’ performances is assessed using statistical analysis such as scatter plots, correlation and regression. A strong positive association is found between attendance and class performance in all of the eight courses. Preliminary analysis shows that with an increase of 10% class attendance, the performance is increased by 8% to 15%. This association is found highly statistically significant. Based on the findings, it is concluded that class attendance has a positive impact on students’ academic performance and hence a mandatory attendance policy has been proposed to be established in all the departments in the Faculty of Science at TRU. This study clearly suggests that class attendance is critical for learning, however other factors such as students\u27 language proficiency, gender, ethnicity and uses of online tools/software etc, may be incorporated to increase the explanatory power of the model to assess association

Pervasiveness of microplastics in the gastrointestinal tract of some selected fish species from Turag River alongside the capital city of Bangladesh

Microplastics (MPs) are synthetic contaminants that have received global attention due to their ubiquitous occurrence, extreme durability, and capacity to harm ecosystems and human health. This study investigated the occurrence of MPs in three fish species (Channa striata, Puntius sophore and Anabas testudineus) collected from two locations (Ashulia Bridge and Mirpur Road) of the Turag River, which flows alongside the Dhaka city, Bangladesh. MPs abundance (items/individuals) was highest in Channa striata (3.8 ± 0.6) from the Ashulia Bridge area and lowest in Puntius sophore (1.8 ± 0.4) from the Mirpur Road area. Fiber was found to be the most dominant (89–93%) form of MPs followed by fragments (21–35%), films (0–26%) and foams (0–5%). The dominant color of MPs was blue (69–83%), then red (20–33%), black (11–14%), green (8–20%), and purple (6–8%). The majority (56–71%) of the MPs assessed were <0.5 mm in size, followed by 0.5–1.0 mm (29–33%) and 1–5 mm (38–53%). ATR-FTIR examination revealed three specific polymer varieties - PP (40%), PS (30%) and LDPE (30%). The results of this study provided a baseline of MPs pollution in one of the major protein sources freshwater fishes and raised concern on public health particularly who consume fishes from the urban waterways