Compressive and flexural strength of concrete containing palm oil biomass clinker and polypropylene fibres

This paper presents the effects of using palm oil biomass (POB) clinker with polypropylene (PP) fibres in concrete on its compressive and flexural strength performances. Due to infrastructural development works, the use of concrete in the construction industry has been increased. Simultaneously, it raises the demand natural sand, which causes depletion of natural resources. While considering the environmental and economic benefits, the utilization of industrial waste by-products in concrete will be the alternative solution of the problem. Among the waste products, one of such waste by-product is the palm oil biomass clinker, which is a waste product from burning processes of palm oil fibres. Therefore, it is important to utilize palm oil biomass clinker as partial replacement of fine aggregates in concrete. Considering the facts, an experimental study was conducted to find out the potential usage of palm oil fibres in concrete. In this study, total 48 number of specimens were cast to evaluate the compressive and flexural strength performances. Polypropylene fibre was added in concrete at the rate of 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.6%, and sand was replaced at a constant rate of 10% with palm oil biomass clinker. The flexural strength of concrete was noticed in the range of 2.25 MPa and 2.29 MPa, whereas, the higher value of flexural strength was recorded with 0.4% polypropylene fibre addition. Hence, these results show that the strength performances of concrete containing POB clinker could be improved with the addition of polypropylene fibre

Incident type 2 diabetes attributable to suboptimal diet in 184 countries

The global burden of diet-attributable type 2 diabetes (T2D) is not well established. This risk assessment model estimated T2D incidence among adults attributable to direct and body weight-mediated effects of 11 dietary factors in 184 countries in 1990 and 2018. In 2018, suboptimal intake of these dietary factors was estimated to be attributable to 14.1 million (95% uncertainty interval (UI), 13.814.4 million) incident T2D cases, representing 70.3% (68.871.8%) of new cases globally. Largest T2D burdens were attributable to insufficient whole-grain intake (26.1% (25.027.1%)), excess refined rice and wheat intake (24.6% (22.327.2%)) and excess processed meat intake (20.3% (18.323.5%)). Across regions, highest proportional burdens were in central and eastern Europe and central Asia (85.6% (83.487.7%)) and Latin America and the Caribbean (81.8% (80.183.4%)); and lowest proportional burdens were in South Asia (55.4% (52.160.7%)). Proportions of diet-attributable T2D were generally larger in men than in women and were inversely correlated with age. Diet-attributable T2D was generally larger among urban versus rural residents and higher versus lower educated individuals, except in high-income countries, central and eastern Europe and central Asia, where burdens were larger in rural residents and in lower educated individuals. Compared with 1990, global diet-attributable T2D increased by 2.6 absolute percentage points (8.6 million more cases) in 2018, with variation in these trends by world region and dietary factor. These findings inform nutritional priorities and clinical and public health planning to improve dietary quality and reduce T2D globally. (c) 2023, The Author(s)

Children's and adolescents' rising animal-source food intakes in 1990-2018 were impacted by age, region, parental education and urbanicity

Animal-source foods (ASF) provide nutrition for children and adolescents physical and cognitive development. Here, we use data from the Global Dietary Database and Bayesian hierarchical models to quantify global, regional and national ASF intakes between 1990 and 2018 by age group across 185 countries, representing 93% of the worlds child population. Mean ASF intake was 1.9 servings per day, representing 16% of children consuming at least three daily servings. Intake was similar between boys and girls, but higher among urban children with educated parents. Consumption varied by age from 0.6 at <1 year to 2.5 servings per day at 1519 years. Between 1990 and 2018, mean ASF intake increased by 0.5 servings per week, with increases in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, total ASF consumption was highest in Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey, and lowest in Uganda, India, Kenya and Bangladesh. These findings can inform policy to address malnutrition through targeted ASF consumption programmes. (c) 2023, The Author(s)

Scientific Validation of Three-Dimensional Stereophotogrammetry Compared to the IGAIS Clinical Scale for Assessing Wrinkles and Scars after Laser Treatment

Measuring outcomes from treatments to the skin is either reliant upon patient’s subjective feedback or scale-based peer assessments. Three-Dimensional stereophotogrammetry intend to accurately quantify skin microtopography before and after treatments. The objective of this study is comparing the accuracy of stereophotogrammetry with a scale-based peer evaluation in assessing topographical changes to skin surface following laser treatment. A 3D stereophotogrammetry system photographed skin surface of 48 patients with facial wrinkles or scars before and three months after laser resurfacing, followed immediately by topical application of vitamin C. The software measured changes in skin roughness, wrinkle depth and scar volume. Images were presented to three observers, each independently scoring cutaneous improvement according to Investigator Global Aesthetic Improvement Scale (IGAIS). As for the results, a trend reflecting skin/scar improvement was reported by 3D SPM measurements and raters. The percentage of topographical change given by the raters matched 3D SPM findings. Agreement was highest when observers analysed 3D images. However, observers overestimated skin improvement in a nontreatment control whilst 3D SPM was precise in detecting absence of intervention. This study confirmed a direct correlation between the IGAIS clinical scale and 3D SPM and confirmed the efficacy and accuracy of the latter when assessing cutaneous microtopography alterations as a response to laser treatment

The Laplacian energy of conjugacy class graph of some dihedral groups

Let G be a dihedral group and Gamma its conjugacy class graph. The Laplacian energy of the graph, LE(Gamma) is defined as the sum of the absolute values of the difference between the Laplacian eigenvalues and the ratio of twice the edges number divided by the number of vertices. In this research, the Laplacian matrices of the conjugacy class graph of some dihedral groups and its eigenvalues are first computed. Then, the Laplacian energy of this graph is determined

Ductility and energy dissipation of perforated steel plate shear walls

Steel plate shear wall (SPSW) that consists of boundary elements and steel plate, has been used as a structural system to resist lateral loads such as strong wind and earthquake. The capability of SPSW to resist a relatively strong earthquake has been tested in an actual earthquake when a 35-story high rise building that employed SPSW stood still during 1995 Kobe earthquake while a nearby building collapsed during the catastrophe. The need for serviceability such as piping, duct for air conditioning, heating and ventilation as well as passageway requires SPSW to be perforated. Despite the expanding research on SPSW, there is a scarcity in the research on the effect of perforations on the performance of the SPSW. The objective of this research is to determine how openings of different sizes and orientations influence energy dissipation, shear load capacity, and ductility ratio of SPSW. Earthquake resistant building must have adequate energy dissipation capacity and ductility. Analysis was carried out on six SPSW models where three of them were denoted as Model A series. These models differ in the area of the openings. The rest of the models were denoted as Model B series which have the exact area of perforation, but different orientation. In both series, ASTM A36 steel was used for the plate and ASTM A992 steel was used for the boundary elements. The results were obtained with the aid of ABAQUS software application. Lateral loads were allowed in a cyclic orientation applied to a single side of the structure following the protocols of ATC 24. It is concluded that certain sizes of openings enhance the energy dissipation and ductility ratio. Model B3 which has the smallest dimension of the opening perpendicular to the load has the largest energy dissipation and shear load capacity but, has the smallest ductility

Development of an optimal reservoir pumping operation for adaptation to climate change

Optimization of operation rule curve of Layang reservoir located in southern part of peninsular Malaysia under climate change uncertainties has been presented in this study. Downscaled climate data were incorporated in a lumped rainfall-runoff model to project daily reservoir inflow, which was then used to determine the reservoir operation rule curves to minimize the operation cost. The results reveal that climatic change will cause a rise of temperature in the range of 1.5-2.9°C, but decrease in rainfall in most of the months in the end of this century which will casue a change in the seasonal pattern of inflow to reservoir. Comparison of historical and model generated operation costs indicates that annual savings of 23% and 33% is possible with optimized reservoir operation rule curves. Assessment of the performance of the optimized operation curve under climate change scenarios shows that it will be able to cope with the changing pattern of reservoir inflow with proper adjustment. It is expected that the method presented in this paper to derive pumping operation curves to optimize the total volume of water to be pumped from various sources to reservoir can be useful for reservoir operators in the context of climate change

Comparative structural performance of diagrid and bracing system in mitigation of lateral displacement

The design of high rise building with more than 10 stories is controlled by lateral drift which increases the cost rapidly with the number of stories. Recently, the diagrid structural system has emerged and in fact has been widely used for high rise buildings. How effective is a diagrid system in mitigating the lateral displacement of a high rise building? Thus, the objective of this research is to compare the lateral displacement of high rise building that adopts diagrid system with those that use X-bracing and frame system, due to wind. This research also explored the effect of using diagrid, X-bracing and frame system to the natural frequency of high rise building. Two diagrid systems which are 60°-diagrid and 80°-diagrid that has an angle of inclination of 60 degrees and 80 degrees, respectively, were studied. STAAD Pro software was used to analyse twelve building models to determine the lateral displacement due to wind load and the natural frequency in the along wind, across wind and torsional directions. Building with 80°-diagrid has the least lateral displacement, followed by buildings with the X-bracing, 60°-diagrid and frame for 40 and 60 storey buildings. Further study showed that X-bracing became the most effective system to lower the lateral displacement compared with the diagrid and frame when the number of storey of the building exceeds 71 storeys. Natural frequency was not affected by the different systems used except for torsional natural frequency that increased substantially by the use of 60°-diagrid

A review on assembly sequence planning and assembly line balancing optimisation using soft computing approaches

Assembly optimisation activities occur across development and production stages of manufacturing goods. Assembly Sequence Planning (ASP) and Assembly Line Balancing (ALB) problems are among the assembly optimisation. Both of these activities are classified as NP-hard. Several soft computing approaches using different techniques have been developed to solve ASP and ALB. Although these approaches do not guarantee the optimum solution, they have been successfully applied in many ASP and ALB optimisation works. This paper reported the survey on research in ASP and ALB that use soft computing approaches for the past 10years. To be more specific, only Simple Assembly Line Balancing Problem (SALBP) is considered for ALB. The survey shows that three soft computing algorithms that frequently used to solve ASP and ALB are Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony Optimisation and Particle Swarm Optimisation. Meanwhile, the research in ASP and ALB is also progressing to the next level by integration of assembly optimisation activities across product development stages