Infrared spectroscopy of zinc oxide and magnesium nanostructures

Impurities in ZnO nanoparticles andMg nanorods were investigated. ZnO nanopar-ticles were prepared by a reaction of zinc acetate and sodium hydrogen carbonate. Thepresence and source of CO2 impurities in ZnO nanoparticles were studied by infrared(IR) spectroscopy. Isotopic substitution was used to verify the vibrational frequencyassignment. Isochronal annealing experiments were performed to study the formationand stability of molecular impurities. The results indicate that the molecules are muchmore stable than CO2 adsorbed on bulk ZnO surfaces. IR reflectance spectra of as-grown and hydrogen-annealed ZnO nanoparticles were measured at near-normal incidence. The as-grown particles were semi-insulating and showed reflectance spectra characteristic of insulating ionic crystals. Samples annealed in hydrogen showed a significant increase in electrical conductivity and free-carrier ab-sorption. A difference was observed in the reststrahlen line shape of the conductive sample compared to that of the as-grown sample. The effective medium approximation was applied to model the reflectance and absorption spectra. The agreement between the experimental results and the model suggests that the nanoparticles have inhomogeneous carrier concentrations. Exposure to oxygen for several hours led to a significant decrease in carrier concentration, possibly due to the adsorption of negative oxygen molecules on the nanoparticle surfaces. Cu doped ZnO nanoparticles were prepared by using a zinc acetate/copper acetate precursor. The electronic transitions of Cu2+ ions were observed in the IR absorption spectrum at low temperatures. The high resistivity property of ZnO:Cu nanoparticles was observed. Magnesium hydroxide thin layers were formed by a chemical reaction between magnesium nanorods and water. IR spectroscopy showed hydroxide (OH) vibrational modes. The assignment was verified by reactions with heavy water which produced the expected OD vibrational frequency. A Fano interference was detected for hydroxide layers formed on metallic magnesium. For hydroxide layers on insulating magnesium hydride, however, the line shape was symmetric and no Fano resonance was observed. The results show that the hydroxide layer is thin such that the vibrational motion couples to the free electron continuum of the magnesium metal

Modelling of Sunshine Duration for Peninsular Malaysia

Knowledge of solar radiation at any area is important for designing solar energy conversion systems, and is also useful for ecophysiological studies. In the present study, we have analysed the daily sunshine duration records for Peninsular Malaysia and apply them in solar radiation modelling. Firstly, we fitted Angstrom type equation to solar radiation and sunshine duration, to deter mine the relation between them. We have found that the seasonal variations of the regression parameters, are different for even two nearby locations. Variation of solar radiation within a small area are also noticable. Secondly, we have studied on the probability distribution nature of daily relative sunshine duration. Daily relative sunshine duration data are fitted to three models. Parameters of the models are estimated only from the monthly mean. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is applied to determine the goodness of fit. We have found that the four stations can model led by two distributions. Data are also fitted to well known beta distribution model. The effect of variance is also presented. Finally, time series analysis of daily relative sunshine duration data are presented in chapter 4. Using gaussian mapping technique, nonstationary and non-normal distribution nature of the sunshine can be transformed into stationary and normal distribution. The autocorrelation function and partial autocorrelation function show the characteristics of autoregressive process. Results from the Box-Pierce and Ljung-Box statistics indicate that the first order autoregressive model is not suitable, while the second order autoregressive model gives satisfactory results. The relative sunshine duration of any day is dependent on the previous two days

Loss Minimization of Power Distribution Network using Different Types of Distributed Generation Unit

A Radial Distribution network is important in power system area because of its simple design and reduced cost. Reduction of system losses and improvement of voltage profile is one of the key aspects in power system operation. Distributed generators are beneficial in reducing losses effectively in distribution systems as compared to other methods of loss reduction. Sizing and location of DG sources places an important role in reducing losses in distribution network. Four types of DG are considered in this paper with one DG installed for minimize the total real and reactive power losses. The objective of this methodology is to calculate size and to identify the corresponding optimum location for DG placement for minimizing the total real and reactive power losses and to improve voltage profile   in primary distribution system. It can obtain maximum loss reduction for each of four types of optimally placed DGs. Optimal sizing of Distributed Generation can be calculated using exact loss formula and an efficient approach is used to determine the optimum location for Distributed Generation Placement.  To demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach 36-bus radial distribution system in Belin Substation in Myanmar was tested and validated with different sizes and the result was discussed

Sediment Dynamics in Irrawaddy River, Myanmar

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Poverty among households living in slum area of Hlaing Tharyar Township, Yangon City, Myanmar

Background: Slums can be regarded as physical manifestations of urban poverty. Although the world has made dramatic improvement in reducing poverty since 1990, poverty still persists at an unacceptable level. Although current situations highlights the importance of slum areas to be given priority in poverty alleviation, there are limited data on poverty level among people living in urban slums of Myanmar.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among households living in slum areas of Hlaing Tharyar Township, Yangon City, Myanmar during 2016. Multi-staged systematic random sampling and face-to-face interview were applied in selecting the samples and collecting the data, respectively. The new global poverty line (1.9 USD per person per day) was used as a threshold in determining the poverty. Chi-squared test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were utilized in data analysis.Results: Altogether 254 participants were recruited after getting informed consent. The occurrence of poverty among households was 54.3% (95% CI: 48.2%, 60.5%). Head counts of poverty among study population was 58.8%. The education status of household’s head, size of household and the presence of less than 15 years old children in the household were detected as significant determinants of being poor household.Conclusions: Poverty among households living in slum area of Hlaing Tharyar Township, Yangon City was high. Measures to alleviate poverty in urban slums should be intensified. Education level of household’s heads should be improved. Family planning or birth spacing programme should also be strengthened, especially in urban slums.

Evaluation of tumor markers for the detection of hepatocellular carcinoma in Yangon General Hospital, Myanmar.

Levels of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), its glycoforms AFP-L3 and AFP-P4, and proteins induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist-II (PIVKA-II) were determined in sera obtained from patients in Yangon General Hospital (20 with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), 29 with chronic liver diseases, including 3 with chronic hepatitis and 26 with cirrhosis of the liver, and 9 with other hepatobiliary diseases). Forty-five percent of the patients with HCC had serum AFP levels above 10,000 ng/ml, indicating that nearly half of the HCC patients were at an advanced stage of the disease. Thus, the AFP sensitivity was as high as 70% with 100% specificity for a cutoff level of 200 ng/ml. The sensitivity of AFP-L3 was 75% and a specificity 90% for a cutoff level of 15%. AFP-P4 showed a higher sensitivity of 80% and a similar specificity of 86% for a cutoff level of 12%. Combined evaluation of AFP-L3 and/or AFP-P4 increased the sensitivity to 90% with the same specificity of 86%, indicating that AFP-L3 and AFP-P4 are useful as adjuncts for diagnosis of HCC in the present population. PIVKA-II had a high sensitivity of 90%, although the specificity was lower than 45%, probably due to the low cutoff level, as some cholestatic patients were included in the control group.</p

Analysis of residuals in daily solar radiation time series

The Box-Jenkins approach is applied to daily solar radiation data from four different locations in Malaysia. The deterministic annual component is obtained by Fourier analysis. The stochastic component of the time series is fitted to three models, ARMA (1,0), ARMA (2,0) and ARMA (1,1). Random shocks from these models are tested by Box-Pierce statistic and Ljung-Box for whiteness of residuals. Skewness and kurtosis coefficients are tested for normality

Statistical Machine Translation between Myanmar Sign Language and Myanmar Written Text

This paper contributes the first evaluation of the quality of automatic translation between Myanmar sign language (MSL) and Myanmar written text, in both directions. Our developing MSL-Myanmar parallel corpus was used for translations and the experiments were carried out using three different statistical machine translation (SMT) approaches: phrase-based, hierarchical phrase-based, and the operation sequence model. In addition, three different segmentation schemes were studies, these were syllable segmentation, word segmentation and sign unit based word segmentation. The results show that the highest quality machine translation was attained with syllable segmentations for both MSL and Myanmar written text

Conceptual design of a hybrid thermal and photovoltaic receiver of an FMDF collector

The optical characteristic of a Fixed Mirror Distributed Focus (FMDF) solar collector is used as a basis for the design of an hybrid thermal and photovoltaic (PV) receiver. The result provides another variation in energy conversion that an FMDF solar collector can conveniently perform

Development of Natural Language Processing based Communication and Educational Assisted Systems for the People with Hearing Disability in Myanmar

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide people with disabilities to better integrate socially and economically into their communities by supporting access to information and knowledge, learning and teaching situations, personal communication and interaction. Our research purpose is to develop systems that will provide communication and educational assistance to persons with hearing disability using Natural Language Processing (NLP). In this paper, we present corpus building for Myanmar sign language (MSL), Machine Translation (MT) between MSL, Myanmar written text (MWT) and Myanmar SignWriting (MSW) and two Fingerspelling keyboard layouts for Myanmar SignWriting. We believe that the outcome of this research is useful for educational contents and communication between hearing disability and general people