Pedal powered cassava peeling machine

The Base of the Pyramid (BoP) refers to 4 - 4,5 billion people in the world, who are living on less than a few dollars per day. This majority of the world's population has a little resources and is usually considered as a group with no purchasing power and therefore is currently unserved and underserved by current products and services. However, more than any others, the low-income consumers are constantly and eagerly looking for products that can improve their living and working quality at an affordable price. Hence it is important today to re-conceptualize and pay interested in the value-demanding customers at the BoP. This is also considered as mission to offer low-income people pathways to prosperity. By investing in the 4-5 billion-person market, will engage in ways to do well (make profit) and do good (improve humanity). This Master's Degree Project is supported by the Innovation Engineering group at the Department of Design Sciences, Lund University, in collaboration with Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden and Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Brazil. An one-month fieldtrip has been taken place at the rural communities near Manaus, Amazonas, focused on the target of low-income people living in the Amazon region in order to access closer to the daily life of local and clearly understand the context of the people within. Cassava is the third most important crop plant after rice and maize in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and its flour is a primary calorie source in tropical regions around the world. In the Amazon region, Cassava roots are processed into a type of flour called Farinha, which is extremely common and is used as a basic staple food. The product also provides an important income to huge numbers of households in the rural areas. Transforming cassava into flour is a long process which takes a couple of days and basically includes six steps: Peeling, Washing, Grinding, Drying, Sifting and Frying. Men usually engage in machine operations for grinding, pressing and sifting, while women and children are usually responsible for any manual operations such as peeling, washing and frying. It has been reported that peeling the roots by hand is a major problem and takes 65% of the total time of the whole process. This hard and tedious job has low productivity and high product losses, and it is very time consuming and requires physical labour in poor working conditions. However, machines for peeling cassava are rare in this region due to the high cost of available machines in the market, the scarcity of electricity, and high cost of gas. How could this be improved? My goal in this project was to design and develop a solution for how a low cost product could satisfy the identified needs, thinking about the importance of rural development and poverty alleviation and how small scale productions can contribute to households and livelihood security. The result is a cassava peeling machine that improves working conditions, increases the productivity, reduces product losses, reduces time consumption and physical labour. Due to the limit of electricity and high cost of gas, a pedal-powered concept was chosen. The rotating drum efficiently maintains the purpose of rubbing the cassava skin off, using high-tech abrasive rollers with wire brushes

Direct detection prospects of dark vectors with xenon-based dark matter experiments

Dark matter experiments primarily search for the scattering of WIMPs on target nuclei of well shielded underground detectors. The results from liquid scintillator experiments furthermore provide precise probes of very light and very weakly coupled particles that may be absorbed by electrons. In these proceedings we summarize previously obtained constraints on long-lived dark matter vector particles $V$ (dark photons) in the $0.01-100$ keV mass range. In addition, we provide a first projected sensitivity reach for the upcoming XENON1T dark matter search to detect dark photons.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure; proceedings of the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics 2015 (EPS-HEP 2015), Vienna, Austria; reference adde

Peningkatan Hasil Belajar Biologi pada Materi Ekosistem Melalui Strategi Pembelajaran Make A Match pada Siswa Kelas VII A SMP Muhammadiyah 10 Surakarta Tahun Pelajaran 2011/2012”.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kondisi pembelajaran kelas VII A SMP Muhammadiyah 10 Surakarta yang terdapat kelemahan, antara lain: partisipasi siswa masih rendah, siswa ramai dan tidak aktif, pembelajaran masih berpusat pada guru, hal ini yang mengakibatkan hasil belajar rendah. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa pada aspek kognitif maupun aspek afektif pada materi ekosistem kelas VII A SMP Muhammadiyah 10 Surakarta tahun pelajaran 2011/2012 dengan menerapkan strategi pembelajaran Make A Match. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian tindakan kelas yang terdiri dari perencanaan, pelaksanaan (tindakan), observasi dan refleksi yang terlaksana sebanyak 2 siklus. Analisis data yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif dengan 3 langkah, yaitu reduksi data, penyajian data dan penarikan kesimpulan data. Sumber data diperoleh dari hasil belajar siswa (aspek kognitif) mata pelajaran Biologi dan pengamatan sikap siswa selama proses pembelajaran berlangsung (aspek afektif) antara peneliti dan kolaborator. Penelitian ini diawali menyampaikan materi dengan strategi pembelajaran Make A Match yang diakhiri kesimpulan dan pelaksanaan post-test setiap siklusnya. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan adanya peningkatan hasil belajar disetiap siklus. Banyaknya siswa yang tuntas KKM (> 65) sebelum tindakan sebanyak 12 siswa (42,86%), siklus I meningkat menjadi 20 siswa (71,43%) dan pada sikus II sebesar 27 siswa (90,63%). Nilai rata-rata kelas sebelum tindakan 58,21 meningkat pada siklus I yaitu 73,5 dan pada siklus II menjadi 83,6. Rata-rata hasil belajar siswa aspek afektif dari penskoran indikator, skor nilai pada siklus I adalah 16,82 dengan kriteria cukup berminat, dan meningkat menjadi kriteria berminat pada siklus II dengan skor nilai 20,18. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian dapat disimpulkan bahwa penerapan strategi pembelajaran Make A Match dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar siswa pada aspek kognitif dan afektif pada materi ekosistem kelas VII A SMP Muhammadiyah 10 Surakarta tahun pelajaran 2011/2012

A randomized algorithm for the QR decomposition-based approximate SVD

Matrix decomposition is a very important mathematical tool in numerical linear algebra for data processing. In this paper, we introduce a new randomized matrix decomposition algorithm, which is called randomized approximate SVD based on Qatar Riyal decomposition (RCSVD-QR). Our method utilize random sampling and the OR decomposition to address a serious bottlenck associated with classical SVD. RCSVD-QR gives satisfactory convergence speed as well as accuracy as compared to those state-of-the-art algorithms. In addition, we provides an estimate for the expected approximation error in Frobenius norm. Numerical experiments verify these claims.Comment: 6 pages,6 figure

Early detection of mental illness for women suffering high-risk pregnancies : an explorative study on self-perceived burden during pregnancy and early postpartum depressive symptoms among Chinese women hospitalized with threatened preterm labour

Background The mental health of pregnant women, particularly those with elevated risks, has been an issue of global concern. Thus far, few studies have addressed the mental health of pregnant women with threatened preterm labour (TPL). This study investigated the prevalence of self-perceived burden (SPB) among Chinese women hospitalized due to TPL during pregnancy and early postpartum depressive disorders, exploring the effect of SPB and other potential risk factors on the early signs of postpartum depressive disorders. Methods A self-reported survey was conducted in the obstetrics department of Anhui Provincial Hospital, China. Women hospitalized with TPL were approached 1 week after delivery. One hundred fifty women were recruited from January 2017 to December 2017. The Self-Perceived Burden Scale (SPBS) and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) were the main measures. Descriptive statistics, Spearman correlations, and a multiple logistic regression were employed for data analysis. Results SPB and early postpartum depressive disorders were commonly experienced by Chinese women hospitalized with TPL, and SPB was positively and significantly correlated with depressive symptoms. A multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that for the women hospitalized with TPL during pregnancy, the emotional aspect of SPB (OR = 1.42, 95% CI = 1.11-1.83, p = 0.006), age (OR = 1.14, 95% CI = 1.02-1.27, p = 0.023), occupation (OR = 3.48, 95% CI = 1.18-10.20, p = 0.023), the history of scarred uterus (OR = 7.96, 95% CI = 1.49-42.48, p = 0.015), the delivery mode of the present birth (OR = 6.19, 95% CI = 1.72-22.30, p = 0.005), and family support during pregnancy (OR = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.45-0.82, p = 0.001) were significant factors predicting early postpartum depressive symptoms. Conclusion This study indicates that SPB and early postpartum depressive disorders are prevalent mental issues among Chinese women hospitalized with TPL, and that SPB, especially perceived emotional burden, is a strong predictor of early postpartum depressive disorders. Our study suggests the necessity of paying attention to mental health issues, e.g. SPB and postpartum depressive symptoms among hospitalized women with TPL, and providing appropriate interventions at the prenatal stage to prevent adverse consequences.Peer reviewe