GIS based Traffic Accident Analysis System

In Malaysia, every year over thousands human beings die and tens of thousands are injured in road accidents. This paper focused on the goal of developing tools and methodologies to reduce accidents, and to make roadway safer, through the ability to better interpret accident records and to provide more information for individuals to evaluate accidents. It founds that the customization of GIS application for Traffic accidents analysis could be performed using Map Object and visual basic 6.0. This integration produced expert system provides wide range functions in low cost programming

Column study of humic acid removal from water into surfactant granular zeolite

In this study, natural zeolite (mordenite) was modified by using dimetliyldioctadecylammonium bromide (DDAB) with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to afford surfactant modified granular zeolite (SMGZ) as adsorbent for humic acid (HA) removal. Column adsorption studies were carried out to examine the optimum conditions for the removal of HA by SMGZ. The optimum loading of surfactant was later utilized in characterization studies. The SMGZ were characterized by XRD. FTIR. BET specific surface area and FESEM. The removal of HA was performed in a fixed bed reactor. The effects of different experimental parameters such as DDAB loading levels, solution pH and HA solution flow rate were evaluated. Samples were collected and analyzed using UV. The results indicated that SMGZ showed great enhanced adsorption capacity of HA compared to natural granular zeolite due to the hydrophobic interaction and hydrogen bonding. The equilibrium uptake (geq(exp)) of HA decreased with increasing, flow rate and granular size. Total removal percent (Y) of HA SMGZ was found to increase with increasing solution pH. influent concentration and bed depth

Reconstruction of 3D Surface Maps from Anterior Segment Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using Graph Theory and Genetic Algorithms

Automatic segmentation of anterior segment optical coherence tomography images provides an important tool to aid management of ocular diseases. Previous studies have mainly focused on 2D segmentation of these images. A novel technique capable of producing 3D maps of the anterior segment is presented here. This method uses graph theory and dynamic programming with shape constraint to segment the anterior and posterior surfaces in individual 2D images. Genetic algorithms are then used to align 2D images to produce a full 3D representation of the anterior segment. In order to validate the results of the 2D segmentation comparison is made to manual segmentation over a set of 39 images. For the 3D reconstruction a data set of 17 eyes is used. These have each been imaged twice so a repeatability measurement can be made. Good agreement was found with manual segmentation for the 2D segmentation method achieving a Dice similarity coefficient of 0.96, which is comparable to the inter-observer agreement. Good repeatability of results was demonstrated with the 3D registration method. A mean difference of 1.77 pixels was found between the anterior surfaces found from repeated scans of the same eye

An agricultural investment map based on geographic information system and multi-criteria method.

The study aimed to produce an investment classification map, which shows the potential areas of investment in agriculture in Sinnar, Sudan. The spatial multi-criteria analysis was used to rank and display potential locations, while the analytical hierarchy process method was used to compute the priority weights of each criterion. The study attempted to explore the utilization of Geographic Information System (GIS) to map the potential investment areas, therefore, it did not cover a comprehensive analysis of all factors that influence investment in agriculture. In addition, the analysis was limited to criteria that had spatial reference. The investment criteria for spatial analysis were defined from the guidelines provided by the Ministry of Investment, Sudan. Even with the shortcomings of the data, it was found that the results obtained were very encouraging and provided clear indicative areas for agricultural investment in Sinnar. Government agencies can use GIS to access information regarding the potential areas of investment, and minimize investment risks. On the other hand, the economic development organizations will now have the ability to benefit from the Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions by leveraging on this technology to attract and retain business from worldwide sources. Thus, the model will serve as a decision support tool for investors and decision makers at various levels

Investigations on humic acid removal from water using surfactant-modified zeolite as adsorbent in a fixed-bed reactor

Natural organic matter (NOM) is ubiquitous in aquatic environments and has recently become an issue of worldwide concern in drinking water treatment. The major component of NOM is humic acids (HA). In this study, a natural zeolite (mordenite) was modified employing hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HDTMA) to enhance greater efficient sites for sorption of HA. The natural zeolite and surfactant-modified zeolite (SMZ) were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), N-2 Adsorption-desorption isotherms and BET-specific surface area, thermographic analysis, derivative thermographic analysis (TGA-DTA) and Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). A fixed-bed reactor was used for the removal of HA and the effects of different experimental parameters such as HDTMA loading levels, HA solution flow rate, solution pH and eluent concentration were investigated. The results indicated that the SMZ bed with HDTMA loading of 75% of external cation exchange capacity (ECEC) at a flow rate of 2 BV/h and pH of 10 showed the greatest enhanced removal efficiency of HA while ethanol solutions (25% v/v) with feed flow rate of 2 BV/h were sufficient for complete regeneration of SMZ and desorption of HA. Measurements of surface area of SMZ indicated that a monolayer formation of the surfactant at those conditions allowed the optimum removal of HA

On the Oscillation of Impulsive Neutral First-order Differential Equations with Variable Arguments

Throughout the article, we study the oscillation of a general class of first-order neutral differential equations in presence of variable delays under the effect of impulses. Due to its importance in applications, there are many papers concerning with the property of oscillation and non-oscillation of neutral delay differential equations. Although, a lot of works are concerning with the oscillation of neutral delay differential equations without impulse or impulsive neutral with constant delays, however few papers dealt with the impulsive neutral and those with variable delays. In this paper, we establish sufficient conditions of certain neutral equations with variable delay arguments. New oscillation criteria are deduced. Our results are based on using equivalence transformation and two useful lemmas to prove the obtained criteria. The results of this paper improve those of [20] by adding several non-linear delay functions to the equations instead of having one delay term. Where it is assumed that the two variable delays satisfying a Lipschitz condition. Moreover we discuss more general non-linear delay functions comparing with those used in [14]. Our results improve and extend some recent results in the literature. An illustrative example is given

Comparative DNA Analysis of Solid Tumors by Flow Cytometric and Image Analyses of Touch Imprints and Flow Cell Suspensions

Comparative DNA analysis by flow cytometric (FCM) and image analyses (IA) has shown a high concordance rate. When present, discordance has been attributed to the presence of aneuploid cell populations detected only by IA, yet missed by FCM. This phenomenon has been explained by loss of aneuploid cells during FCM cell processing, differences in sampling area, or misinterpretation of the DNA histograms. To determine which factors are responsible for the discordance between IA and FCM, 82 fresh solid tumors from various sites were examined. Flow cytometric analysis was performed on cell suspensions isolated from the tumors, whereas IA was performed on touch imprints (IAT) and on cytosmears of the same cell suspension used for FCM (IAF). Comparison between IAT and IAF (IAT/IAF) assessed cell processing and sampling area differences, whereas IAF/FCM comparison assessed differences in apparatus and methodology as possible contributing factors to discordance. Furthermore, DNA histograms of IAT, IAF, and FCM were analyzed in the discordant cases to determine whether the discordance was due primarily to different cell populations detected (true discordance) or due to differences in histogram interpretation of the same cell populations (false discordance). IAT/IAF and IAF/FCM concordance rates (90% and 88%) were not significantly different from that of IAT/FCM (87%). False discordance accounted for most of the discordant cases in IAT/FCM comparison (six cases, 67%), whereas true discordance was seen in three cases. In all three truly discordant cases, the DNAaneuploid cell populations detected only by IAT yet missed by FCM were also detected by IAF. This study demonstrates that discordance between IA and FCM is probably not due to cell loss during FCM cell processing or sampling area differences, but may be due to differences in assessing DNA ploidy in the interpretation of IA histograms and/or dilution of aneuploid cells by normal diploid cells in FCM

Exploratory genome-wide analyses of cortical inhibition, facilitation, and plasticity in late-life depression

Late-life depression (LLD) is a heterogenous mood disorder influenced by genetic factors. Cortical physiological processes such as cortical inhibition, facilitation, and plasticity may be markers of illness that are more strongly associated with genetic factors than the clinical phenotype. Thus, exploring the relationship between genetic factors and these physiological processes may help to characterize the biological mechanisms underlying LLD and improve diagnosis and treatment selection. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) combined with electromyography was used to measure short interval intracortical inhibition (SICI), cortical silent period (CSP), intracortical facilitation (ICF), and paired associative stimulation (PAS) in 79 participants with LLD. We used exploratory genome-wide association and gene-based analyses to assess for genetic correlations of these TMS measures. MARK4 (which encodes microtubule affinity-regulating kinase 4) and PPP1R37 (which encodes protein phosphatase 1 regulatory subunit 37) showed genome-wide significant association with SICI. EGFLAM (which encodes EGF-like fibronectin type III and laminin G domain) showed genome-wide significant association with CSP. No genes met genome-wide significant association with ICF or PAS. We observed genetic influences on cortical inhibition in older adults with LLD. Replication with larger sample sizes, exploration of clinical phenotype subgroups, and functional analysis of relevant genotypes is warranted to better characterize genetic influences on cortical physiology in LLD. This work is needed to determine whether cortical inhibition may serve as a biomarker to improve diagnostic precision and guide treatment selection in LLD

Fast preparation route to high-performances textured Sr-doped Ca 3 Co 4 O 9 thermoelectric materials through precursor powder modification

This work presents a short and very efficientmethod to produce high performance textured Ca3Co4O9thermoelectric materials through initial powders modifica-tion. Microstructure has shown good grain orientation, andlow porosity while slightly lower grain sizes were obtained insamples prepared from attrition milled powders. All samplesshow the high density of around 96% of the theoretical value.These similar characteristics are reflected in, approximately,the same electrical resistivity and Seebeck coefficient valuesfor both types of samples. However, in spite of similar powerfactor (PF) at low temperatures, it is slightly higher at hightemperature for the attrition milled samples. On the otherhand, the processing time reduction (from 38 to 2 h) whenusing attrition milled precursors, leads to lower mechanicalproperties in these samples. All these data clearly point out tothe similar characteristics of both kinds of samples, with adrastic processing time decrease when using attrition milledprecursors, which is of the main economic importance whenconsidering their industrial production