The utilisation of End-of-Life Plastics for the production of paver blocks: A waste management and disposal strategy

The volume of municipal solid waste in developing countries continues to grow, yet disposal and management have become significant challenges.  As a result, a proper disposal strategy is required.  The feasibility of making paver blocks from plastic waste for construction work was investigated in this study.  Paver blocks manufactured from plastic waste (PP and HDPE) and sand in varied proportions were evaluated for compressive strength, water absorption, and abrasion resistance.  Paver blocks were manufactured with plastic (PP and HDPE) to sand ratios of 30:70%, 40:60%, 50:50%, 60:40%, and 70:30%, or PP30, PP40, PP50, PP60, and PP70, and HDPE30, HDPE40, HDPE50, HDPE60, and HDPE70.  The paver blocks were inspected after 28 days.  Compressive strength, LA abrasion, and water absorption of paver blocks increased from 30% to 40% HDPE, then fell to 70%.  As paver block PP content grew from 30% to 70%, abrasion and water absorption decreased.  The compressive strength of PP paver blocks declined from 30% to 50% PP, then increased somewhat, and then fell to 60% and 70% PP.  PP60 and HDPE40 paver blocks had the highest compressive strength, abrasion value, and water absorption.  HDPE40 pavers have lesser water absorption and more abrasion than PP60 pavers.  PP60 water absorption and abrasion were 0.53% and 11%; HDPE40 was 0.03% and 24.2%.  PP60 and HDPE50 have compressive strength, abrasion resistance, and water absorption of 20.09 MPa, 11%, and 0.53%, respectively, and 13.06 MPa, 12.1%, and 0.03%

Groundwater resources assessment using integrated geophysical techniques in the southwestern region of Peninsular Malaysia.

Combined geophysical techniques such as multi-electrode resistivity, induced polarization, and borehole geophysical techniques were carried out on volcano-sedimentary rocks in the north of Gemas as part of the groundwater resource’s investigations. The result identifies four resistivity units: the tuffaceous mudstone, tuffaceous sandstone, the tuff bed, and the shale layer. Two types of aquifer systems in terms of storage were identified within the area: one within a fracture system (tuff), which is the leaky area through which vertical flow of groundwater occurs, and an intergranular property of the sandy material of the aquifer which includes sandstone and tuffaceous sandstone. The result also reveals that the aquifer occupies a surface area of about 3,250,555 m2 with a mean depth of 43.71 m and a net volume of 9.798 × 107 m3. From the approximate volume of the porous zone (28 %) and the total aquifer volume, a usable capacity of (274.339 ± 30.177) × 107 m3 of water in the study area can be deduced. This study provides useful information that can be used to develop a much broader understanding of the nature of groundwater potential in the area and their relationship with the local geology

Critical issues of offshore software development project failures

Increased globalization and the consequent dispersion of IT activities around the world have driven the growth of offshore outsourcing. The share of offshore software development (OSD) in the high-cost countries has grown tremendously since the 1990s and this trend will continue in the coming years. Software development projects continue to experience poor performance problems because of their inherent complexities. Despite the cost advantages of OSD projects, the underlying risks such as cultural and geographic distances, communication and coordination challenges, and knowledge transfer complexities make OSD projects more vulnerable to failure than domestically outsourced projects. We attempt to identify the critical issues specific to OSD project failures, their underlying causes and their interrelationships using the grounded theory approach. We have conducted exploratory interviews with offshore experts from Indian and Swiss client and vendor companies. We developed a preliminary empirical model to explain the OSD project failures using offshore-specific and offshore-indispensable issues

Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy for the rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 immune response in plasma

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic persists, methods that can quickly and reliably confirm infection and immune status is extremely urgently and critically needed. In this contribution we show that combining laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) with machine learning can distinguish plasma of donors who previously tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR from those who did not, with up to 95% accuracy. The samples were also analyzed by LIBS-ICP-MS in tandem mode, implicating a depletion of Zn and Ba in samples of SARS-CoV-2 positive subjects that inversely correlate with CN lines in the LIBS spectra