Feasibility study for an employee owned company... to deliver health care services to seniors in (north) Hartford, Connecticut

This feasibility study was instituted in April 1997, after the author was in the Community Economic Development - Masters Program, at New Hampshire College for nine months, beginning in September 1996. This change from the original topic was instituted after prodding from the project advisor Mr. Woullard Lett, coupled with the buildup of class information, which showed that additional work was needed to secure greater community input and a more detailed analysis of 'need and market'. The goal of this study was to determine whether or not it was feasible to setup such a business in (North) Hartford. The central outcome of the study was, that those involved should go on immediately to the next step, that of putting together a full blown business plan. I have two desires for this paper: 1. That it directs others to work closer and earlier with their respective advisors, in order than valuable time is not lost, in really coming to grips with the task of delivering a product that not only receives an above average grade, but also really contributes something significant to the many needs that exist in our communities. 2. That it kindles a spark in at least one reader in the future, to take this idea to the next level of implementation. This is applicable in most urban areas of the country, where the elderly population is increasing at a rate faster than the country as a whole. (Author abstract)Al-Ghani, D. A. I. (1998). Feasibility study for an employee owned company... to deliver health care services to seniors in (north) Hartford, Connecticut. Retrieved from http://academicarchive.snhu.eduMaster of Science (M.S.)School of Community Economic Developmen

Design and analysis of the internally cooled smart cutting tools with the applications to adaptive machining

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Adaptive machining with internally cooled smart cutting tools is a smart solution for industrial applications, which have stringent manufacturing requirements such as contamination free machining (CFM), high material removal rate, low tool wear and better surface integrity. The absence of cutting fluid in CFM causes the cutting tool and the workpiece subject to great thermal loads owing to higher friction and adhesion, and as a result may increase the levels of tool wear drastically. The increase in cutting temperature may influence the chip morphology which in return producing metal chips in unfavourable ribbon or snarl forms. CFM is difficult to be realized as contaminants can be in various forms in the machining operation and to avoid them totally requires a very tight controlled condition. However, the ecological, economical and technological demands compel the manufacturing practitioners to implement environmentally clean machining process (ECMP). Machining with innovative cooling techniques such as heat pipe, single-phase microduct, cryogenic or minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) has been intensely researched in recent years in order to reduce the cutting temperature in ECMP, thus enabling the part quality, the tool life and the material removal rate achieved in ECMP at least equate or surpass those obtained in conventional machining. On the other hand, the reduction of cutting temperature by using these techniques is often superfluous and is adverse to the produced surface roughness as the work material tends to inherent brittle and hard property at low temperature. Open cooling system means the machining requires a constant cooling supply and it does not provide a solution for process condition feedback as well.This Ph.D. project aims to investigate the design and analysis of internally cooled cutting tools and their implementation and application perspectives for smart adaptive machining in particular. Circulating the water based cooling fluid in a closed loop circuit contributes to sustainable manufacturing. The advantage of reducing cutting temperature from localized heat at the tool tip of an internally cooled cutting tool is enhanced with the smart features of the tool, which is trained by real experimental data, to cognitively vary the coolant flow rate, cutting feed rate or/and cutting speed to control the critical machining temperature as well as optimum machining conditions. Environmental friendly internal micro-cooling can avoid contamination of generated swarf which can also reduce the cutting temperature and thus reduce tool wear, increase machining accuracy and optimize machining economics. Design of the smart cutting tool with internal micro-cooling not only takes into account of the environmental aspects but also justifies with its ability to reduce the machining cost. Reduction of production cost can be achieved with the lower consumption of cooling fluid and improved machining resources/ energy efficiency. The models of structural, heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and tool life provide useful insight of the performance of the internally cooled smart cutting tool. Experimental validation using the smart cutting tool to machine titanium, steel and aluminium, indicates that the application of internally cooled smart cutting tools in adaptive machining can improve machining performance such as cutting temperature, cutting forces and surface quality generated. The useful tool life span is also extended significantly with internally cooled smart cutting tools in comparison to the tool life in conventional machining. The internally cooled smart cutting tool has important implications in the application to ECMP particularly by overcoming the stigma of high uncontrollable cutting temperature with the absence of cooling fluid.Brunel Universit

Polynomial Based Dynamic Key Management for Secure Cluster Communication in Wireless Mobile Sensor Network

For inter and intra cluster communication, member nodes jointly build a mutual session key called cluster key to allow secure communication. Most existing schemes for cluster key management use messages exchange among the member nodes within a cluster for the new cluster key establishment when a node leaves or joins a cluster. This causes significant communication and computation costs. Furthermore, the secure distribution of cluster keys among member nodes in frequently changing environments is a difficult task without encryption and decryption operations. For secure cluster key management, we utilized polynomial (P) to accomplish effective intra-cluster key management and produced polynomial for making an inter-cluster key distribution. The main contribution is to generate polynomials and broadcast to nodes whenever a change occurs in a network or demanding nodes for secure key management. The presented scheme supports scalability for an increasing number of nodes using polynomials. The proposed scheme increases the lifetime of the network by decreasing the key pool size

The Role of Sharia Monetary Instrument in Liquidity Management and Performance Improvement of Islamic Banking Financial in Indonesia

This study analyzes the variables of liquidity and financial performance of Islamic banks that affect the number of transactions in Islamic monetary instruments. The aim is to find out which instruments is better in supporting liquidity management and financial performance of Islamic banks in Indonesia. This study uses the CAR and FDR variables as proxies of liquidity and ROA as a proxy for the financial performance of Islamic banks. While the proxy for sharia monetary instruments in Indonesia is the variable SBIS and SBPUS. This study uses monthly Islamic banking reports in Indonesia for the period January 2015 to September 2017. Data is processed and analyzed by Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) Stationery Test as a way of testing stationary data and then testing hypotheses using Vector Autoregression (VAR). This study found that the the most contributing variable to the changes in transaction volume in Islamic monetary instruments was the variable liquidity, namely CAR and FDR. In Addition, SBIS sharia monetary instruments are better used by Islamic banking in Indonesia compared to SBPUS

Effect of Different Processing Methods on the Physicochemical Properties and Sensory Evaluations of Sweet Potatoes Chips

Sweet potatoes is a popular root vegetable and highly nutritious. It is highly perishable and the need of processing required to enable it to be shelf stable. However, some processing methods have been degrading nutrient content of the sweet potatoes while increasing the fat content. Hence, the main aim of this research is to identify sweet potato chips which are nutritious and have acceptable organoleptic properties. Thus, the research also conducted to compare the physicochemical and sensory analysis on two types of sweet potatoes based on different processing methods. The processing methods used were deep-fry, freeze-dry, sun dry, air-fry and oven bake methods. The results obtained comparing both types of sweet potatoes mostly did not show statistical significant difference. The physicochemical analysis which shows the nutrition value of sweet potatoes based on different processing methods produced results where the freeze-dried samples tend to have the highest values of ash (1.77 g/100 g), crude protein (5.65 g/100 g) and crude fiber content (3.56 g/100 g). Adversely, freeze-dried samples provided small amount of fat content for both type of sweet potato which are 1.51 g/100 g compared to other samples. However for the sensory acceptance, deep-fried was most acceptable by the panelist with the score of range 5 to 6 in the seven-hedonic scale test. Whereas, the deep-fried sample showed lowest value for the chemical analysis where for ash both type of sweet potatoes (1.19 g/100 g), crude protein (3.74 g/100 g) and crude fiber content (1.62 g/100 g). However, the deep-fried samples had highest fat content for both type of sweet potatoes which are 45.85 g/100 g. Concerning the physical attributes, the sun dried samples had the highest hardness value whereas the freeze-dried samples had the lowest fracturability value which made it least sensory acceptance. Color analysis indicated that orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) retained its colour, but purple-fleshed sweet potato  (PFSP) leached its color. Overall, the oven baked samples had moderate amount of ash, crude fiber and crude protein. Besides, it consist lower fat content compared to deep-fried samples. Moreover, oven baked samples obtained similar sensory attributes score of range 5 to 6 as deep-fried samples