The Effect of Temperature on Zinc Leaching from Rubber Tire Mulch

Scrap tires are being recycled into many products in order to bypass slow degradation in landfills. Recycled rubber tire mulch contains zinc oxide used in tire formation that can be released through the creation of leachates. This study examines the relationship between temperature environment and leachate zinc concentration. After observing rubber mulch surface temperatures in conjunction with other factors, it was hypothesized that higher temperatures would lead to increased zinc release by rubber mulch and higher leachate zinc concentrations. Leachates were created by mixing 10 grams of mulch and 200 mL distilled water and placing in 5ºC, 29ºC, and 71ºC environments for 24 hours. Zinc content in ppm was then tested and statistically analyzed with ANOVA at alpha=0.05. A significant decrease in mean leachate zinc concentration as temperature increased was shown between the 29ºC (M = 5.733, SD = 1.486) and 71ºC (M = 4.133, SD = 0.516) treatments and the 5ºC (M = 6.533, SD = 0.743) and 71ºC treatments (F(2, 42) = 22.19, p\u3c 0.01). Therefore, within these intervals, decreasing temperatures increased rubber mulch breakdown and leachate zinc concentration. Because tires are created at high temperatures during the vulcanization process, it is reasonable to consider that tires are strongest at higher temperatures. Studying the effect of rubber mulch leachates on soil and various organisms would provide a direct study to more accurately deduce potential environmental impacts

A Survey of RFID Authentication Protocols Based on Hash-Chain Method

Security and privacy are the inherent problems in RFID communications. There are several protocols have been proposed to overcome those problems. Hash chain is commonly employed by the protocols to improve security and privacy for RFID authentication. Although the protocols able to provide specific solution for RFID security and privacy problems, they fail to provide integrated solution. This article is a survey to closely observe those protocols in terms of its focus and limitations.Comment: Third ICCIT 2008 International Conference on Convergence and Hybrid Information Technolog

Ear Training for Worship Musicians: An Applied Curriculum Project

The purpose of this applied research curriculum project is to assess the effectiveness of the curriculum “Ear Training for Worship Musicians” for non-traditionally trained college students using contemporary musical examples, introducing basic piano skills, and applying the Nashville number system. Current curriculum trends in aural skills training have not addressed the issue of teaching harmonic dictation for worship music to college students who are not traditionally trained. This study applies a quasi-experimental research design with identical pre- and post- implementation quantitative tests and a qualitative online survey once the curriculum is complete. Twenty participants were recruited for the online curriculum study based on convenience and snowball sampling and fit the criteria of being over eighteen years of age and interested in worship music. Before beginning the curriculum, a musical knowledge and listening test was administered. Participants were then enrolled in the eight-week course where they studied sight-singing with solfege, rhythmic dictation, basic piano skills, and harmonic dictation using contemporary worship songs. The same musical knowledge and listening test was administered at the end of the final week. The results of the quantitative tests were analyzed using an independent sample t-test, and results from the qualitative survey were analyzed for common themes. The quantitative data revealed no significant difference in pre- and post- implementation tests for “Ear Training for Worship Musicians.” The qualitative survey revealed the participants felt their understanding and knowledge grew through the course. Further research is recommended in testing with a paired samples t-test and specific participant qualifications when recruiting

Use of UML 2.1 to model multi-agent systems based on a goal-driven software engineering ontology

In this paper, we present the use of UML 2.1 to model multi-agent systems based on a goal-driven software engineering ontology. The lack of an efficient standardized modeling language is evident. The uses of UML and stereotypes UML to model multi-agent systems have been proposed. However, there are still a number of issues with the existing approaches due to inconsistent semantics of the existing UML diagrams and unintuitive and complext notations. UML 2.1 allows representing more complex scenarios and introducing greater details into the modeling process enabling effective capture and representation of multi-agent actions and interactions. UML 2.1 has not only enabled the introduction of a notation for the Ontology based multi-agent systems, but also effective capture and representation of the dynamic processes associated with these Ontology based multi-agent systems

Aum, She Who is Most Auspicious

Light seekers. Familial secrets. And parentified children. AUM, SHE WHO IS MOST AUSPICIOUS is a coming-of-age screenplay about what it means to care for others – and for our selves. On the morning she expects to leave for Europe to pursue music studies, 17-year-old Elise Lichten wakes to find her plane ticket gone – and her mother, too. It’s not the first time. As daughter to guru-seeking Paula, Elise and her sister Lily are used to their mother’s spiritual malaise and unannounced retreats at ashrams overseas. Elise is beyond ready to be free of her family. She has to find a place for her little sister to stay till their mother returns. At first, 17-year-old Gavin Cahill’s adoration for Elise comes with a family – a stable family – for Elise to entrust her sister. But when she begins to warm to his affections, she opens to a world she’s adamantly rejected: one of spiritual devotion, non-duality and an assuredness in the divine. Soon, she loses sight of her dream to study music and finds a new dream in Gavin. But their love comes at a cost: their relationship reveals long-hidden family secrets. When Paula returns, distant and vulnerable, Elise has to decide what she cares for most – and what she’s willing to lose in order to stand unapologetically in who she is. Combining research in storytelling, feminine psychology, and archetypes and mythology, AUM is a heroine’s journey about a young girl’s descent to the underworld and auspicious return

SLA-Based Trust Model for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a new form of technology, which infrastructure, developing platform, software, and storage can be delivered as a service in a pay as you use cost model. However, for critical business application and more sensitive information, cloud providers must be selected based on high level of trustworthiness. In this paper, we present a trust model to evaluate cloud services in order to help cloud users select the most reliable resources. We integrate our previous work “conceptual SLA framework for cloud computing” with the proposed trust management model to present a new solution of defining the reliable criteria for the selection process of cloud providers

XML as a basis for interoperability in Real Time Distributed Systems

Many real time applications consist of components that can situate in a centralized/distributed environment. Typically due to different system requirements these components could be developed in different technologies which require a bridge for communication. With the increasing popularity of XML, it has become an alternative solution for data exchange in the real time application domain. XML has become the most important mechanism for data exchange between heterogeneous data sources. This paper presents a methodology for real time application data in XML. By defining a solid XML schema for the real time domain attributes, applications from diverse platforms can be based on the data definition and create instances of XML documents to exchange data

A intelligent particle swarm optimization for short-term traffic flow forecasting using on-road sensor systems

On-road sensor systems installed on freeways are used to capture traffic flow data for short-term traffic flow predictors for traffic management, in order to reduce traffic congestion and improve vehicular mobility. This paper intends to tackle the impractical time-invariant assumptions which underlie the methods currently used to develop short-term traffic flow predictors: i) the characteristics of current data captured by on-road sensors are assumed to be time-invariant with respect to those of the historical data, which is used to developed short-term traffic flow predictors; and ii) the configuration of the on-road sensor systems is assumed to be time-invariant. In fact, both assumptions are impractical in the real world, as the current traffic flow characteristics can be very different from the historical ones, and also the on-road sensor systems are time-varying in nature due to damaged sensors or component wear. Therefore, misleading forecasting results are likely to be produced when short-term traffic flow predictors are designed using these two time-invariant assumptions. To tackle these time-invariant assumptions, an intelligent particle swarm optimization algorithm, namely IPSO, is proposed to develop short-term traffic flow predictors by integrating the mechanisms of particle swarm optimization, neural network and fuzzy inference system, in order to adapt to the time-varying traffic flow characteristics and the time-varying configurations of the on-road sensor systems. The proposed IPSO was applied to forecast traffic flow conditions on a section of freeway in Western Australia, whose traffic flow information can be captured on-line by the on-road sensor system. These results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of using the proposed IPSO for real-time traffic flow forecasting based on traffic flow data captured by on-road sensor systems

Ontological manifestations of trust for service oriented environment

Trust and Reputation are vital components for trusted e-business. In the literature however there has been no effort in proposing ontology for trust. The trusted agent in service oriented environment may trust a software agent or human agent or a service or a product. Based on this distinction, trust ontology could be proposed for different domains. The trust ontology for the individual domains is proposed and discussed

Towards the use of Semi-structured Annotators for Automated Essay Grading

The amount of time teachers spend grading essays has increased over the past decade, prompting the development of systems that are able to lighten the workload. Many systems have thus far used linear regression or semisupervised methods towards this objective. This paper discusses some of the main Automated Essay Grading systems, highlighting some of their strengths and weaknesses, in addition to providing a brief overview of Text Mining and meta-data annotation techniques that could be used to facilitate the process of grading essays through an automated system