1,746 research outputs found
DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AN ALMOND KERENEL EXTRACTION MACHINE
A low-cost Almond (Prunus dulcis) kernel extraction machine was locally designed, manufactured and evaluated. Kernel extraction by the machine was conducted by first crushing the nut, and then separating seeds from a shell. The performance of the developed machine was evaluated in terms of machine productivity, cracking efficiency, kernel breakage and specific energy requirements. The evaluation was conducted at roller speeds (ranging from 0.5 to 1 m/s), rollers clearance (ranging from 14 to 25 mm) and two different roller casing materials (rubber and metal mesh). Results revealed that the increase of the roller speed was found to increase the machine productivity. However, it caused a decrease in the kernel breakage, cracking efficiency, energy requirements and the extraction cost. At all levels of roller speeds and both casing materials, the clearance between rollers of 16 mm resulted in lowest values of energy requirement, extraction cost and highest values of machine productivity. On the other hand, the clearance between rollers of 14 mm resulted in the maximum values of cracking efficiency. The use of rubber casing was found to increase the machine productivity, cracking efficiency and decrease the kernel breakage, energy requirements and extraction cost.
Toxicity Assessment of Certain Insecticides Against the Onion Thrips, Thrips Tabaci Lindeman (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) on Onion Crop Under Field Conditions
Onion is one of the most significant vegetable plants that cultivated on large areas in Egypt. The onion thrips, Thrips tabaci Lindeman (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) is the most destructive insect pest causes significant damage to seed heads and reduce onion seed crop production about 50% annually. The combinationof Thiamethoxam + Abamectin has been recommended to control T. tabaci in Egypt. Herein, we evaluated the toxicity of eight selected insecticides [Abamectin (1.8% EC), Lufenuron (5% EC), Thiamethoxam (18.6% SC), and Thiamethoxam + Abamectin (18.6 EC+1.8% EC), Lambda-cyhalothrin+ Abamectin (5% EC+1.8% EC), Carbosulfan (20% SP), Lambda-cyhalothrin (5% EC) and Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki (4.6% EC) against T. tabaci under field conditions. The results were recorded after 1, 2, 3, 7 and 14 days. Among all tested insecticides, the combination of Thiamethoxam + Abamectin was more potent to T. tabaci than separate application of Thiamethoxam or Abamectin solely, While, Lufenuron and Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki were the least toxic insecticides. These insecticides mixtures gave promising results in controlling the onion thrips, T. tabaci
Development and Qualification of an FPGA-Based Multi-Processor System-on-Chip On-Board Computer for LEO Satellites
九州工業大学博士学位論文 学位記番号:工博甲第374号 学位授与年月日:平成26年9月26日Chapter 1: Introduction||Chapter 2: Background and Literature Review||Chapter 3: Multi-Processor System-on-Chip On-Borad Computer Design||Chapter 4: Space and Time Redundancy Trade-offs||Chapter 5: Radiation and Fault Injection Testing||Chapter 6: Thermal Vacuum Testing||Chapter 7: Results and Discussion||Chapter 8: Conclusion and Future Perspectives||ReferencesDeveloping small satellites for scientific and commercial purposes is emerging rapidly in the last decade. The future is still expected to carry more challenging services and designs to fulfill the growing needs for space based services. Nevertheless, there exists a big challenge in developing cost effective and highly efficient small satellites yet with accepted reliability and power consumption that is adequate to the mission capabilities. This challenge mandates the use of the recent developments in digital design techniques and technologies to strike the required balance between the four basic parameters: 1) Cost, 2) Performance, 3) Reliability and 4) Power consumption. This balance becomes even more stringent and harder to
reach when the satellite mass reduces significantly. Mass reduction puts strict constraints on the power system in terms of the solar panels and the batteries. That fact creates the need to miniaturize the design of the subsystems as much as possible which can be viewed as the fifth parameter in the design balance dilemma.
At Kyuhsu Institute of Technology-Japan we are investigating the use of SRAMbased Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) in building: 1) High performance, 2)Low cost, 3) Moderate power consumption and 4) Highly reliable Muti-Processor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) On-Board Computers (OBC) for future space missions and applications. This research tries to investigate how commercial grade SRAMbased FPGAs would perform in space and how to mitigate them against the space environment. Our methodology to answer that question depended on following formal design procedure for the OBC according to the space environment requirements then qualifying the design through extensive testing. We developed the
MPSoC OBC with 4 complete embedded processor systems. The Inter Processor Communication (IPC) takes place through hardware First-In-First-Out (FIFO) mailboxes. One processor acts as the system master controller which monitors the operation and controls the reset and restore of the system in case of faults and the other three processors form Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) fault tolerance architecture with each other. We used Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (DPR) in scrubbing the configuration memory frames and correcting the faults that might exist. The system is implemented using a Virtex-5 LX50 commercial grade FPGA from Xilinx. The research also qualifies the design in the ground-simulated space environment conditions. We tested the implemented MPSoC OBC in Thermal Vacuum Chambers (TVC) at the Center of Nano-Satellite Testing (CeNT) at Kyushu Institute of Technology. Also we irradiated the design with proton accelerated beam at 65 MeV with fluxes of 10e06 and 3e06 particle/cm2/sec at the Takasaki Advanced Radiation Research Institute (TARRI).
The TVC test results showed that the FPGA design exceeded the limits of normal operation for the commercial grade package at about 105 C°. Therefore, we mitigated the package using: 1) heat sink, 2) dynamic temperature management through operating frequency reduction from 100 MHz to 50 MHz and 3) reconfiguration to reduce the number of working processors to 2 instead of 4 by replacing the spaceredundancy TMR with time-redundancy TMR during the sunlight section of the orbit. The mitigation proved to be efficient and it even reduced the temperature from 105 C° to about 66 C° when the heat sink, frequency reduction, and reconfiguration techniques were used together.
The radiation and the fault injection tests showed that mitigating the FPGA configuration frames through scrubbing are efficient when Single Bit Upsets (SBU) are recorded. Multiple Bit Upsets (MBU) are not well mitigated using the scrubbing with Single Error Correction Double Error Detection (SECDED) technique and the FPGA needs to be totally reset and reloaded when MBUs are detected in its configuration frames. However, as MBUs occurrence in space is very seldom and rare compared to SBUs, we consider that SECDED scrubbing is very efficient in decreasing the soft error rate and increasing the reliability of having error-free bitstreams. The reliability was proven to be at 0.9999 when the scrubbing rate was continuous at a period of 7.1 msec between complete scans of the FPGA bitstream. In the proton radiation tests we managed to develop a new technique to estimate the static cross section using internal scrubbing only without using external monitoring, control and scrubbing device. Fault injection was used to estimate the dynamic cross section in a cost effective alternative for estimating it through radiation test.
The research proved through detailed testing that the 65 nm commercial grade SRAM-based FPGA can be used in future space missions. The MPSoC OBC design achieved an adequate balance between the performance, power, mass, and reliability requirements. Extensive testing and applying carefully crafted mitigation techniques were the key points to verify and validate the MPSoC OBC design. In-orbit validation through a scientific demonstration mission would be the next step for the future research
Social Support and Morality Among Community Dwelling Elders
Social support prevents mental and psychological distress of elderly people. Elderly individuals are revered and respected by family and friends. Many moral values elderly people can acquired through their relations with their children, friends and relatives. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between social support and morality among community dwelling elders. The study followed a descriptive correlational research design. It was conducted on 240 elders, at Damanhour and Alexandria governorate elders’ clubs. Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) and The Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale (PGCMS) scales were used to collect the data of this study. The results revealed that there is a significant relationship between elders perceived social support and their level of morality.It was concluded that, there is a significant relation between morals and multi-dimensions perceived social support among community dwelling elders. There is a significant relation between Sons/daughters, relative visits and having friends and multidimensional perceived social support and morality. Recommendations encompassed that increasing numbers of elders’ clubs with sufficient financial support; will permit elders to engage in club activities. Family members should respect the elders’ decisions, appreciate their personal achievements, as it will reflect that elders are still valued, wanted and useful; this will increase their feeling of satisfaction and enhance their morals. Elders must be encouraged to participate actively in the economic, political, social and cultural life of their societies. Keywords: Social support, Morality, community dwelling elders DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/70-02 Publication date: January 31st 202
Calcareous Nannofossils Biostratigraphy and Mineralogical Changes across the Cretaceous/Paleogene Boundary at Wadi Nukhul, Southwestern Sinai, Egypt
Performance Evaluation of Hand-Held Olive Harvesters
The aim of this research was to evaluate three types of commonly used hand-held olive harvesters in small olive farms (pulsed motion double head olive harvester, hook type hand-held olive harvester and pneumatic comb olive harvester) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The specific objectives were to (a) determine the values of some olive plant parameters including physical-mechanical properties of fruit-stem system, natural frequency of the olive fruit-stem system and suitable shaking stroke), (b) establish and determine the values of the evaluation criteria which included machine productivity, fruit removal percentage, fruit damage, specific consumed energy and olive harvesting cost, (c) determine the quality characteristic for each criterion, (d) assign the evaluating criteria their relative weights, (e ) perform field experiments to assess the performance of the three harvesters and (f) calculate the value of overall evaluation criterion. The study was carried out during the period of 2017-2018. The average values of natural frequency were 30.1, 28.1 and 24.0 Hz for full mature stage, half-ripe and full-ripe fruits, respectively. The estimated values of damping ratio were 0.103, 0.103 and 0.106 for full mature stage, half-ripe and full-ripe fruits respectively. The estimated shaking stroke was about 70 mm. The highest values of machine productivity (88.4 kg.h-1) and fruit removal percentage (98.0%) were found with the pulsed motion double head olive harvester at the speed of 1500 rpm while the lowest value of machine productivity (55.6 kg.h-1) and fruit removal percentage (62.4%) were found with the hook type olive harvester at the 24 Hz frequency and 70 mm stroke. The highest fruit damage (5.5-6.6) was observed with the pulse motion double head harvester while the lowest fruit damage (2.0-2.5%) was observed with the hook type harvester. The specific consumed energy values ranged from 17.0 to 27.0 W.h.kg-1. The total harvesting costs were 3.62, 3.65 and 3.69 $.h-1 for the pulse motion double head harvester, the hook type harvester and the pneumatic comb harvester, respectively. The results showed that the highest value of overall evaluation criterion (OEC) was 84.9 for the pulsed motion double head olive harvester at speed of 1500 rpm). Also, the values of OEC of the pulsed motion double head olive harvester for the other two speeds (1100 and 1300 rpm) outperformed the other harvesters (at all treatments). The higher OEC of the pulse motion double head olive harvester was due to the low operating costs and increased fruit removal percentage. Based on OEC, the pulsed motion double head olive harvester came first (OEC in the range of 70.2.5-84.9 %), followed by the pneumatic comb olive harvester (OEC in the range of 42.8-70.2 %) and the hook type olive harvester olive harvesters (OEC in the range of 13.9-54.3%)
INTRANASAL MICROEMULGEL AS SURROGATE CARRIER TO ENHANCE LOW ORAL BIOAVAILABILITY OF SULPIRIDE
Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate microemulsion based gel (MBG) of sulpiride "a poorly water soluble antipsychotic with low oral bioavailability."Methods: Gelling polymers such as sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC-Na), hydroxyl propyl methyl cellulose (HPMC K4m), carbopol 940 and Na alginate were evaluated for their potential to gel sulpiride microemulsions (MEs) without affecting the MEs structure. Also, sulpiride solution (SS) and conventional gel (without ME) were prepared and compared with MBG. Gel formulations were checked for their viscosity, pH, spreadability (S), mucoadhesive force (MF), and nasal ciliotoxicity studies. The in vitro release of sulpiride across a cellophane membrane and its permeation through the nasal mucosa in phosphate buffered saline pH 6.8 (PBS) were also performed. In addition, a pharmacodynamic study of optimized formulae compared to SS and microemulsion (ME) was evaluated in rats.Results: CMC-Na and HPMC K4m were not able to gel sulpiride loaded MEs while Na alginate gave an unclear gel with a sticky texture. Results revealed that the viscosity, mucoadhesion force, and spreadability of the MBG increased with increasing carbopol 940 concentrations. The flux was arranged as the following, MBG>conventional gel>sulpiride solution (SS). According to histopathological study, safe and non-irritant MBGs suitable for nasal administration were successfully prepared. Finally, the pharmacodynamic study indicated that intranasal sulpiride MBG had a significant effect (*P<0.001) than SS and ME administered either intravenous or intranasal.Conclusion: MBG provides signiï¬cant enhancement in nasal bioavailability not only by absorption enhancing effect of ME but also, by increasing nasal residence tim
Lupine as a potential agent against diet-induced obesity through adenosine monophosphateactivated protein kinase pathway: crude oil versus nanoemulsion formulations
Obesity represents a major challenge to the pharmaceutical community due to the minimal availability of anti-obesity drugs and the drawbacks of current weight-loss agents. The study described herein presents lupine oil, in two pharmaceutical formulations, as a potential anti-obesity agent via its effect on different physiological, biochemical, and hormonal parameters. Rats were divided into two groups; one group was continued on a standard commercial rodent diet and served as the non-obese control. The other group was fed a high-fat diet for 7 weeks to prepare an obese rat model. Then, the obese rats were divided into groups to receive 100 mg/kg of the crude lupine oil or nanoemulsion for 10 or 20 days. Lupine oil showed a potent body weight-reducing effect and improved insulin resistance. The oil altered obesity-induced hyperlipidemia and it enhanced the leptin/adiponectin/AMPK hormonal system in epididymal fat, serum, and liver, to which all the above physiological activities could be attributed. The nanoemulsion formulation of lupine oil significantly amplified the activity for all the above physiological and hormonal parameters when compared to the crude oil formulation. Lupine oil nanoemulsion could be used as a potential drug against diet-induced obesity
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