Development of affordable hot box calorimeter to determine the U-value of inhomogeneous building material

open access articleIn recent years, the use of three-dimensional printing to create construction components has advanced quickly; it is possible now to simplify construction, increase speed, and lower cost while using natural resources responsibly. It also allows us to use recycled material to produce building envelopes while increasing design flexibility. However, the thermal performance of building materials must be characterized to achieve the necessary energy efficiency of the building envelopes. This study aims to develop, produce, and calibrate a hot box calorimeter at a reasonable price for thermal testing components building envelope. The heat loss through these components using a hot box can be measured in a lab to get an idea of the thermal performance of the building envelopes. In order to evaluate and analyze the thermal performance of various 3D-printed building brick samples made in the labs, this study explains the design and creation of an inexpensive hot box. The hot box can conduct a conventional thermal experiment, which involves monitoring heat flux, surface temperatures, and air temperatures. The testing process, instrumentation, test conditions, and validation of the new metering box are all covered in the article. The U-value of the brand-new lattice-based 3D printed building blocks was afterward determined using the validated new hot box. It was observed that the U-values values of 1.04 W/m2.K and 0.99 W/m2.K, respectively, for small components utilizing developed hot box and larger lattice panels using commercial equipment, with a maximum variance of 5%. It highlights the dependability of the hot box apparatus, which is also made affordable to operate by using less material for specimen preparation and less energy to maintain the temperature in the hot and cold chambers. Its small size also makes setup and thermal testing of construction materials simple

Gaussian mixture model based probabilistic modeling of images for medical image segmentation

In this paper, we propose a novel image segmentation algorithm that is based on the probability distributions of the object and background. It uses the variational level sets formulation with a novel region based term in addition to the edge-based term giving a complementary functional, that can potentially result in a robust segmentation of the images. The main theme of the method is that in most of the medical imaging scenarios, the objects are characterized by some typical characteristics such a color, texture, etc. Consequently, an image can be modeled as a Gaussian mixture of distributions corresponding to the object and background. During the procedure of curve evolution, a novel term is incorporated in the segmentation framework which is based on the maximization of the distance between the GMM corresponding to the object and background. The maximization of this distance using differential calculus potentially leads to the desired segmentation results. The proposed method has been used for segmenting images from three distinct imaging modalities i.e. magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), dermoscopy and chromoendoscopy. Experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed method giving better qualitative and quantitative results when compared with the current state-of-the-art. INDEX TERMS Gaussian Mixture Model, Level Sets, Active Contours, Biomedical Engineerin

TH-6: a high yielding cultivar of sesame released for general cultivation in Punjab

Background: Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is a diploid species, known as Beniseed, Gingelly, Sim-Sim and Til. It is grown in tropical and subtropical areas of the world. Sesame seed contains high nutritional values of certain compounds (25% protein and 50% oil) and is a vital source of natural antioxidants. TH-6 (96006) is characterized by white, bold and high yielding seeded variety of sesame with a unique character of having single stem.Methodology: Variety Punjab Til-90 and line 436602 were cultivated at Oilseeds Research Institute, Faisalabad. At flowering, Til-89 was crossed as female with the line 436602 in 1990. In 1991, the F1 generation of plants were grown and self-pollinated at flowering. Homozygous progenies of pedigree number F6-96006 from F6 were evaluated for their high yield in season 1996-97. Evaluation was done through micro, zonal, station and finally “National Uniform Yield Trials”.Results: In 2006, 2217 kg/ha production was marked as its maximum potential at Oilseed Research Institute (Faisalabad) in Zonal Varietal Trail. In National Uniform Sesame Yield 2006 and 2007 the performance of TH-6 was better than TS-3 (check) by giving 32.16% and 9.59% more yield respectively. TH-6 also showed moderate tolerance against insect pests Phyllody diseases and Charcoal Rot.Conclusion: Agronomic studies revealed that TH-6 performed better if planted in 15th to 30thJune if supplementation of one bag of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and half bag of Urea at the time of sowing and flowering, respectively, with 1st and 2nd irrigation

Pattern of Congenital Heart Diseases in Paediatric Age Group

Background: To determine the pattern of differenttypes of congenital heart diseases, in paediatric agegroup.Methods: In this observational cross sectionalstudy cases of congenital heart defects (CHD) wereincluded, through simple random samplingirrespective of age and gender. Every patient’s dataon echocardiographic report clearly indicating hisCHD type along with age and gender was recorded.Variables of study i.e. type of CHDs, age, and genderwith relative frequencies were presented separatelygraphically.Results: Out of 298 diagnosed patients of CHD 156were males and 142 were females. Isolatedventricular septal defect found to be the mostcommon anomaly (32.6%). In combination atrialseptal defect and ventricular defect were found to bemost common with 5.4% burden rate. Out of 298patients Acyanotic CHDs were 67.1% while CyanoticCHDs were found to be 32.9%.Conclusion: Acyanotic CHDs were found to bedominant over Cyanotic CHDs with relativepercentages of 67.1% and 32.9% respectivel

Heritability, heterosis and heterobeltiosis studies for morphological traits of maize (Zea mays L.) seedlings

Background: Maize is one of most important cereal crop in world after wheat and rice. It is grown in Pakistan as a major cash crop cultivation in the area of 1083 thousand hectares producing 3990 thousand tones. Maize is dual propose crop it is used as feed for livestock and food for human. It is also used as a raw material in textile, food and medicine industries. The present study was conducted to evaluate parents and F1 hybrids of maize for seedling traits including heritability, heterosis and heterobelteiosis.Methodology: The genetic material was comprises of twelve parents and including their 36 F1 hybrids. The parents and F1 hybrids were sown in the iron treys filled with sand in three replications following completely randomized design. The data was recorded for fresh root length, fresh shoot length, fresh root-to-shoot length ratio, fresh root weight, fresh shoot weight and fresh root-to-shoot weight ratio. The data was subjected for analysis genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variance. The genetic advance was calculated by using Falconer (1989) formula.Results: The average batter performance was given by B-336, EV-347, EV-1097Q and B-327. The F1 hybrids, EV-1097Q × EV-347, EV-1097Q × EV-340, Raka-poshi × EV-347, B-327 × B-316 and Sh-139 × EV-347 showed higher values of heterosis and heterobeltiosis for respected studied traits of maize seedlings.Conclusion: In this study, it is concluded that the F1 hybrids, EV-1097Q x EV-347, EV-1097Q x EV-340, Raka-poshi x EV-347, B-327 x B-316 and Sh-139 x EV-347 may be used as higher yield maize hybrids and parents EV-347, EV-1097Q, B-327 and B-316 may be used to develop higher yield maize hybrids following heterosis breeding scheme

Revealing the Yield and Quality Responses of Soybean Advanced Lines under Semi-Arid Conditions

Background: Soybean as human diet is a rich source of protein and oil. It also plays a vital role in livestock and poultry industries. Objective of this work is to exploit the local soybean germplasm for semi-arid conditions.Methods: The experiment was conducted in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Plant × plant and row × row distance was maintained as 4 inch and 1ft respectively. At maturity data for plant height, days to 50% flowering, no. of branches, no. of pods, grains per pod and grain yield per hectare were recorded.  Furthermore, oil percentage, protein percentage, omega-3, omega-6, omega-9, palmitic acid and stearic acids were also measured.Results: All genotypes showed highly significant difference from each other for selected traits. Grain yield per hectare was significant in genotypes such as CN-5, FS-10, E-402 and SH-1274 as compared to Faisal soybean (check). Protein and oil percentage were significantly more in CN-5, HS-17 and FS-10. Branches per plant significantly correlated with the yield but protein and oil percentage negatively correlated with each other. PCA indicated that only four out of 13 PCAs exhibited more than 1 Eigen value and showed 76.53 % variation. All traits for yield and quality were presented in PCA1, PCA2 and PCA3. Biplot indicated that genotype CN-5, SH-1274 and HB-17 falls in the positive portion that perform good.Conclusion: Soybean genotypes CN-5 and FS-10 showed the more yield with high protein and oil percentage as compared to check variety and could be used in semi-arid environments.Keywords: Oilseeds; Soybean; Semi-arid; Yield; Quality   

Reliability of standardized uptake value normalized to lean body mass using the liver as a reference organ, in contrast-enhanced 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging

Purpose: To evaluate the reliability of standardized uptake value (SUV) normalized to lean body mass for maximum (SULmax) and mean values (SULmean) as well as maximum SUV values (SUVmax) in contrast-enhanced 18F-FDG PET/CT by assessment of inter-reader agreement, using the liver as a reference organ. Materials and methods: 272 images of baseline PET/CT scans were analyzed. A volume of interest (VOI) of 30-mm in diameter was placed by two independent readers in the right liver lobe to measure the parameters. An analysis was performed for the variance, intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland-Altman plots. Results and discussion: For Reader 1, the SUVmax ranging from 1.33 to 5.94 (3.20 ± 0.69), SULmean ranging from 0.84 to 3.46 (1.90 ± 0.40) and SULmax ranging from 1.18 to 4.07 (2.38 ± 0.50), were obtained; for Reader 2 the SUVmax ranging from 1.47 to 5.43 (3.20 ± 0.70), SULmean ranging from 0.84 to 3.45 (1.90 ± 0.40), and SULmax ranging from 1.18 to 4.48 (2.38 ± 0.50), were obtained. The coefficient of variance for SUVmax, SULmean, and SULmax, were 21.9%, 21.1%, and 20.8%, respectively, having no significant differences between Reader 1 and Reader 2. The ICC of the two readers for SUVmax, SULmean and SULmax were 0.975, 0.982 and 0.977 (95% CI of 0.97, 0.98 and 0.97; p < .001) respectively. Bland-Altman plots revealed that SUVmax gave the best agreement with 97.1% of measurements falling within 2SD. Conclusion: There is an excellent inter-reader agreement for liver SUVmax, SULmean and SULmax, and the best reliability of measurements achieved with SULmax in contrast-enhanced PET/CT scans

Development of Asymmetric Low Pressure Reverse Osmosis-Surfactants Membrane: Effect of Surfactant Types and Concentration

The effect of surfactants that are cationic (Cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)), anionic (Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS)) and non-ionic (Triton X-100) on performance, morphologies and molecular orientation of Polysulfone (PSF) low pressure reverse osmosis (LPRO) membrane were addressed. The experimental data showed that the increasing of 0.5 wt% in surfactant concentration produced higher pure water permeation (PWP) and flux. At 2.5 wt% of SDS, the LPRO membranes achieved the highest PWP of about &nbsp;64.42 L/m2&nbsp;×&nbsp;h while 3.0 wt% of CTAB demonstrated the highest flux of 55.28 L/m2&nbsp;×&nbsp;h. Analysis from morphological results foundthat the optimal performance at 89.6 % rejection was produced by the membrane with 2 wt% SDS which is a good promoter for the fine morphological structures of the membrane, thus producing fine spectrum of molecular orientation factor