Towards the Development of a Capability Assessment System for Flood Risk Management

Having in place adequate levels of emergency management capabilities (EMCs) underpins a managed civil emergency response, especially during a flooding event(s). Good EMC is either built on having the right internal capabilities or by exploiting existing emergency capabilities from other responders. In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, there is a noted lack of decision‐making in the Civil Defence (CD) Authority about generating effective mutual‐aid requests. Three core areas of EMC include having the right types and levels of response equipment to hand, ensuring sufficient Human Resources, can be maintained throughout a sustained event, and developing adequate Training capabilities. Other factors impacting on Saudi Arabia include both stress and a lack of work experience. In this chapter, we examine the effectiveness of a prototype IT System in the case of Saudi CD Authority as a tool for addressing the availability and adequacy of mutual‐aid for EMC, Human Resources (HR), and training capabilities against scalable levels of flood risk event(s). The proposed IT System is built using the ‘fuzzy expert system’ approach

Parallel Implementation of Systolic Array Design for Developing Medical Image Rotation

Many image-processing algorithms are particularly suited to parallel computing, as they process images that are difficult and time consuming to analyse. In particular, medical images of tissues tend to be very complex with great irregularity and variability in shapes. Furthermore, existing algorithms contain explicit parallelism, which can be efficiently exploited by processing arrays. A good example of an image processing operation is the geometric rotation of a rectangular bitmap. This paper presents a set of systolic array designs for implementing the geometric rotation algorithms of images on VLSI processing arrays. The examined algorithm performs a trigonometric transformation on each pixel in an image.  The design is implemented as a distributed computing system of networked computers using Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) model. Each node (computer) in the network takes part in the task in hand – such as image processing – using message passing. Comments and conclusions about the implementation of the design as a distributed computing system are discussed. Keywords: parallel computing, distributed computing. PVM, image rotation, systolic array

Modeling and optimization of surface roughness and vibration amplitude in heat assisted end milling of SKD 11 tool steel using ball nose tool

Tool steel - SKD 11 is frequently used in industries for making dies and molds. This grade is chosen for its toughness, strength, and hardness maintained up to high temperature. However, the same properties make the steel extremely difficult and expensive to machine using conventional approaches. Heat assisted machining has been found wide spread application in recent years to improve machinability of difficult-to-cut materials. This research paper presents the outcome of an investigation on heat assisted end milling of SKD 11 conducted on a vertical machining center using ball nose coated carbide inserts. The Design of Experiments (DoE) was done using the Response Surface Methodology, in order to develop empirical mathematical models of surface roughness and vibration in terms of cutting speed, feed, axial depth of cut, and heating temperature. The models were checked for significance using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). 3-D response surface graphs of the interactions of primary cutting parameters with the responses were plotted. Optimization was then performed by using the desirability function approach. From the graphs and optimized results it was concluded that the primary input parameters could be controlled in order to reduce vibration amplitude and produce semi-finished machined surfaces applying induction heat assisted technique

Symbolic Analysis of Waiting for Godot: A Critical Comparison Between the Bible and Quran Symbols in Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot (1952) is a conventional and remarkable play that is written by Irish author Samuel Beckett. The play Waiting for Godot is part of theater of absurd and it is written during modernism. This research is divided into three different sections and conclusion. Firstly the introduction for this research is given and the twentieth century drama, theater of the absurd, and the summary of the play. Also in an independent section we show other people’s work on the play Waiting for Godot. Later on we clarified the Biblical and Quranic symbols in Waiting for Godot and shows the comparison of the symbols in the holy books Quran and Bible in Waiting for Godot. Eventually, conclusion will be drawn as the final outcome of the study.

Ultrafiltration fouling trend simulation of a municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent with model wastewater

Secondary treatment effluents from Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants require tertiary treatments to be reused in agriculture. Among tertiary treatment technologies, ultrafiltration has been proven to be a reliable reclamation process. Nevertheless this technique has an important disadvantage: membrane fouling. This phenomenon causes decline in permeate flux with time and increases the operational costs. Due to the fact that secondary effluents from Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants contain a large amount of different compounds and that there is certain variability in their composition, the use of a simplified model wastewater consisting of only few compounds may help to simulate better the ultrafiltration fouling trend. The main secondary treatment effluent components responsible for fouling membrane during ultrafiltration tests are extracellular polymeric substances. These substances are mainly composed of proteins and polysaccharides, thus they are commonly used to prepare model wastewaters. This work consisted in two parts. Firstly, a model wastewater was selected among different model solutions mimicking secondary treatment effluent. Secondly, ultrafiltration behaviour of the selected model solution was compared with the behaviour of the secondary effluent in the ultrafiltration tests at different cross-flow velocities and transmembrane pressures. The membrane used in the ultrafiltration tests was UFCM5 Norit X-flow® hollow-fiber. To prepare model wastewaters, three parameters (proteins and carbohydrates concentrations and chemical oxygen demand) were considered. The model wastewater that represented the best the fouling trend of the secondary treatment effluent had a composition of 15 mg/l of bovine serum albumin and 5.5 mg/l of dextranThe authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Generalitat Valenciana through the project "Ayudas para la realizacion de proyectos I+D para grupos de investigacion emergentes GV/2013."Tora Grau, M.; Soler Cabezas, JL.; Vincent Vela, MC.; Mendoza Roca, JA.; Martínez Francisco, FJ. (2015). Ultrafiltration fouling trend simulation of a municipal wastewater treatment plant effluent with model wastewater. Desalination and Water Treatment. 1-9. doi:10.1080/19443994.2014.999714S19Qin, J.-J., Oo, M. H., Lee, H., & Kolkman, R. (2004). Dead-end ultrafiltration for pretreatment of RO in reclamation of municipal wastewater effluent. Journal of Membrane Science, 243(1-2), 107-113. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2004.06.010Arévalo, J., Garralón, G., Plaza, F., Moreno, B., Pérez, J., & Gómez, M. Á. (2009). Wastewater reuse after treatment by tertiary ultrafiltration and a membrane bioreactor (MBR): a comparative study. Desalination, 243(1-3), 32-41. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2008.04.013Katsoufidou, K., Yiantsios, S. G., & Karabelas, A. J. (2008). An experimental study of UF membrane fouling by humic acid and sodium alginate solutions: the effect of backwashing on flux recovery. Desalination, 220(1-3), 214-227. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2007.02.038Muthukumaran, S., Nguyen, D. A., & Baskaran, K. (2011). Performance evaluation of different ultrafiltration membranes for the reclamation and reuse of secondary effluent. Desalination, 279(1-3), 383-389. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2011.06.040Henderson, R. K., Subhi, N., Antony, A., Khan, S. J., Murphy, K. R., Leslie, G. L., … Le-Clech, P. (2011). Evaluation of effluent organic matter fouling in ultrafiltration treatment using advanced organic characterisation techniques. Journal of Membrane Science, 382(1-2), 50-59. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2011.07.041Muthukumaran, S., Jegatheesan, J. V., & Baskaran, K. (2013). Comparison of fouling mechanisms in low-pressure membrane (MF/UF) filtration of secondary effluent. Desalination and Water Treatment, 52(4-6), 650-662. doi:10.1080/19443994.2013.826324Yu, C.-H., Fang, L.-C., Lateef, S. K., Wu, C.-H., & Lin, C.-F. (2010). Enzymatic treatment for controlling irreversible membrane fouling in cross-flow humic acid-fed ultrafiltration. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 177(1-3), 1153-1158. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2010.01.022Gao, W., Liang, H., Ma, J., Han, M., Chen, Z., Han, Z., & Li, G. (2011). Membrane fouling control in ultrafiltration technology for drinking water production: A review. Desalination, 272(1-3), 1-8. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2011.01.051Kaya, Y., Barlas, H., & Arayici, S. (2011). Evaluation of fouling mechanisms in the nanofiltration of solutions with high anionic and nonionic surfactant contents using a resistance-in-series model. Journal of Membrane Science, 367(1-2), 45-54. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2010.10.037Delgado, S., Dı́az, F., Vera, L., Dı́az, R., & Elmaleh, S. (2004). Modelling hollow-fibre ultrafiltration of biologically treated wastewater with and without gas sparging. Journal of Membrane Science, 228(1), 55-63. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2003.09.011Fan, L., Nguyen, T., Roddick, F. A., & Harris, J. L. (2008). Low-pressure membrane filtration of secondary effluent in water reuse: Pre-treatment for fouling reduction. Journal of Membrane Science, 320(1-2), 135-142. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2008.03.058Xiao, D., Li, W., Chou, S., Wang, R., & Tang, C. Y. (2012). A modeling investigation on optimizing the design of forward osmosis hollow fiber modules. Journal of Membrane Science, 392-393, 76-87. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2011.12.006Zator, M., Ferrando, M., López, F., & Güell, C. (2007). Membrane fouling characterization by confocal microscopy during filtration of BSA/dextran mixtures. Journal of Membrane Science, 301(1-2), 57-66. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2007.05.038Nataraj, S., Schomäcker, R., Kraume, M., Mishra, I. M., & Drews, A. (2008). Analyses of polysaccharide fouling mechanisms during crossflow membrane filtration. Journal of Membrane Science, 308(1-2), 152-161. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2007.09.060Nguyen, S. T., & Roddick, F. A. (2011). Chemical cleaning of ultrafiltration membrane fouled by an activated sludge effluent. Desalination and Water Treatment, 34(1-3), 94-99. doi:10.5004/dwt.2011.2790Xiao, K., Wang, X., Huang, X., Waite, T. D., & Wen, X. (2009). Analysis of polysaccharide, protein and humic acid retention by microfiltration membranes using Thomas’ dynamic adsorption model. Journal of Membrane Science, 342(1-2), 22-34. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2009.06.016Hwang, K.-J., & Chiang, Y.-C. (2014). Comparisons of membrane fouling and separation efficiency in protein/polysaccharide cross-flow microfiltration using membranes with different morphologies. Separation and Purification Technology, 125, 74-82. doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2014.01.041Yamamura, H., Okimoto, K., Kimura, K., & Watanabe, Y. (2014). Hydrophilic fraction of natural organic matter causing irreversible fouling of microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes. Water Research, 54, 123-136. doi:10.1016/j.watres.2014.01.024Nigam, M. O., Bansal, B., & Chen, X. D. (2008). Fouling and cleaning of whey protein concentrate fouled ultrafiltration membranes. Desalination, 218(1-3), 313-322. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2007.02.027MOUROUZIDISMOUROUZIS, S., & KARABELAS, A. (2006). Whey protein fouling of microfiltration ceramic membranes—Pressure effects. Journal of Membrane Science, 282(1-2), 124-132. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2006.05.012Carić, M. Đ., Milanović, S. D., Krstić, D. M., & Tekić, M. N. (2000). Fouling of inorganic membranes by adsorption of whey proteins. Journal of Membrane Science, 165(1), 83-88. doi:10.1016/s0376-7388(99)00221-5Tasselli, F., Cassano, A., & Drioli, E. (2007). Ultrafiltration of kiwifruit juice using modified poly(ether ether ketone) hollow fibre membranes. Separation and Purification Technology, 57(1), 94-102. doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2007.03.007Vincent-Vela, M.-C., Álvarez-Blanco, S., Lora-García, J., & Bergantiños-Rodríguez, E. (2009). Estimation of the gel layer concentration in ultrafiltration: Comparison of different methods. Desalination and Water Treatment, 3(1-3), 157-161. doi:10.5004/dwt.2009.454Valiño, V., San Román, M. F., Ibáñez, R., Benito, J. M., Escudero, I., & Ortiz, I. (2014). Accurate determination of key surface properties that determine the efficient separation of bovine milk BSA and LF proteins. Separation and Purification Technology, 135, 145-157. doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2014.07.051Luck, P. J., Vardhanabhuti, B., Yong, Y. H., Laundon, T., Barbano, D. M., & Foegeding, E. A. (2013). Comparison of functional properties of 34% and 80% whey protein and milk serum protein concentrates. Journal of Dairy Science, 96(9), 5522-5531. doi:10.3168/jds.2013-6617Marcos, B., Moresoli, C., Skorepova, J., & Vaughan, B. (2009). CFD modeling of a transient hollow fiber ultrafiltration system for protein concentration. Journal of Membrane Science, 337(1-2), 136-144. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2009.03.036Chung, T.-S., Qin, J.-J., & Gu, J. (2000). Effect of shear rate within the spinneret on morphology, separation performance and mechanical properties of ultrafiltration polyethersulfone hollow fiber membranes. Chemical Engineering Science, 55(6), 1077-1091. doi:10.1016/s0009-2509(99)00371-1Salahi, A., Mohammadi, T., Rahmat Pour, A., & Rekabdar, F. (2009). Oily wastewater treatment using ultrafiltration. Desalination and Water Treatment, 6(1-3), 289-298. doi:10.5004/dwt.2009.480Janssen, A. N., van Agtmaal, J., van den Broek, W. B. P., de Koning, J., Menkveld, H. W. H., Schrotter, J.-C., … van der Graaf, J. H. J. M. (2008). Monitoring of SUR to control and enhance the performance of dead-end ultrafiltration installations treating wwtp effluent. Desalination, 231(1-3), 99-107. doi:10.1016/j.desal.2007.10.024Torà-Grau, M., Soler-Cabezas, J. L., Vincent-Vela, M. C., Mendoza-Roca, J. A., & Martínez-Francisco, F. J. (2014). Comparison of different model solutions to simulate membrane fouling in the ultrafiltration of a secondary effluent from a municipal wastewater treatment plant. Desalination and Water Treatment, 1-7. doi:10.1080/19443994.2014.93986

Antecedents of psychological capital: The role of work design

Aim/purpose – Though psychological capital has become a hot topic in the recent years, scholars have given little attention to its antecedents. This study used the job characteristics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1975) as a framework to examine the relationship between the five job characteristics and the four components of psychological capital. Moreover, task performance is examined as an outcome of psychological capital. Design/methodology/approach – Using structural equation modelling, data were ob-tained from Egyptian professionals (N = 251). The survey included measures of psychological capital and job characteristics as well as task performance, which was rated by employees’ supervisors. Findings – Results indicate that the five job characteristics of skill variety, task significance, job feedback, job identity and job autonomy are positively related to the four components of psychological capital. Moreover, hope, self-efficacy and resilience were positively related to task performance. However, Egyptian employees’ optimism was not found to be related to task performance. Research implications/limitations – Results contribute to a better understanding of what enhances psychological capital in the workplace. Originality/value/contribution – The current study is the first to integrate the theory of work design with the psychological capacities of hope, optimism, resilience and self-efficacy. Research on the development of psychological capital has been limited to interventions with little or no attention given to macro or organisational factors that could contribute to its enhancement. Moreover, it is the first to link psychological capital to job performance in an Arab country

Carbamazepine and the QTc interval: any association?

Abstract Objective: To determine whether carbamazepine monotherapy in epilepsy patients is or is not associated with prolongation of the QTc interval. Methods: This case-control study enrolled 100 consecutive patients with generalized tonic-clonic seizures. Fifty patients were already taking carbamazepine for a variable time, and the rest (n=50) were not on any antiepileptic drug. The QTc interval was calculated after doing a resting 12-lead ECG examination on a single occasion. Results: Of the 50 patients who had received carbamazepine, 11 patients displayed prolongation of their QTc interval, while 8 patients out of the 50 in the control group had QTc interval prolongation after correction for gender; p value =0.49, OR 1.36, 95% CI 0.54-3.29. Conclusion: This study demonstrated no statistically signifi cant association between carbamazepine monotherapy and prolongation of the QTc interval. Carbamazepine does not seem to prolong the QT interval when used as monotherapy for epilepsy. The presence of prolonged QTc interval in such patients should prompt a search for co-factors that prolong this interval, such as multiple medications, electrolytes disturbances, structural heart disease, and congenital long QT interval syndromes

Prevalence of the Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Coagulase-Positive-and Negative-Staphylococcus in Chicken Meat Retailed to Consumers

The use of antibiotics in farm management (growing crops and raising animals) has become a major area of concern. Its implications is the consequent emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and accordingly their access into the human food chain with passage of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) to the normal human intestinal microbiota and hence to other pathogenic bacteria causative human disease. Therefore, we pursued in this study to unravel the frequency and the quinolone resistance determining region, mecA and cfr genes of methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococci (MRCNS) and methicillin-susceptible coagulase-negative staphylococci (MSCNS) isolated from the retail trade of ready-to-eat raw chicken meat samples collected during one year and sold across the Great Cairo area. The 50 Staphylococcus isolated from retail raw chicken meat were analyzed for their antibiotic resistance phenotypic profile on 12 antibiotics (penicillin, oxacillin, methicillin, ampicillin-sulbactam, erythromycin, tetracycline, clindamycin, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim and vancomycin) and their endorsement of the quinolone resistance determining region, mecA and cfr genes. The isolation results revealed 50 isolates, CPS (14) and CNS (36), representing ten species (S. aureus, S. hyicus, S. epidermedius, S. lugdunensis, S. haemolyticus, S. hominus, S. schleiferi, S. cohnii, S. intermedius and S. lentus). Twenty seven isolates were methicillin-resistant. Out of the characterized 50 staphylococcal isolates, three were MRSA but only 2/3 carried the mecA gene. The ARG that bestows resistance to quinolones, β-lactams, macrolides, lincosamides and streptogramin B (MLS(B)) in MRSA and MR-CNS were perceived. According to the available literature, the present investigation was a unique endeavor into the identification of the quinolone-resistance-determining-regions, the identification of MRSA and MR-CNS from retail chicken meat in Egypt. In addition, these isolates might indicate the promulgation of methicillin, oxacillin and vancomycin resistance in the community and imply food safety hazards

Single to Double Hump Transition in the Equilibrium Distribution Function of Relativistic Particles

We unveil a transition from single peaked to bimodal velocity distribution in a relativistic fluid under increasing temperature, in contrast with a non-relativistic gas, where only a monotonic broadening of the bell-shaped distribution is observed. Such transition results from the interplay between the raise in thermal energy and the constraint of maximum velocity imposed by the speed of light. We study the Bose-Einstein, the Fermi-Dirac, and the Maxwell-J\"uttner distributions, all exhibiting the same qualitative behavior. We characterize the nature of the transition in the framework of critical phenomena and show that it is either continuous or discontinuous, depending on the group velocity. We analyze the transition in one, two, and three dimensions, with special emphasis on two-dimensions, for which a possible experiment in graphene, based on the measurement of the Johnson-Nyquist noise, is proposed.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure