Mediators: accreditation and training requirements

This chapter discusses the accreditation requirements of mediators with reference to selected jurisdiction. The reasons and the benefits for accreditation, who should regulate and the qualifications required for accreditation among others are also addressed in this chapter. At this juncture, it is worth noting that the Mediation Act 2012 provides that only a person who possesses the relevant qualifications, knowledge or experience in mediation through training or formal tertiary education or satisfies the requirements of an organisation which provides mediation services, can be appointed as a mediator under the Act

Utilization of Agro-Residual Ligno-Cellulosic Substances by Using Solid State Fermentation: A Review

Agro-residual wastes contain many usable substrates of high value such as carbohydrates and fi bers. Direct disposal of these wastes as burning or landfill will cause serious environmental problems. Thus, designing new methods for exploitation and treatment of these wastes to produce useful products with great economic advantages are substantial. Solid state fermentation (SSF) has become an attractive method in recent years due to its features of using these wastes directly as raw materials or substrates. Thus, SSF is considered as an environmentally-friendly technique for waste treatment. This paper reviews the exploitation of the agro-residual wastes through SSF technology

Luminance pyramid for image generation and colorization

Many image processing and machine learning applications require sufficient image feature selection and representation. This can be achieved by imitating human ability to process visual information. One such ability is that human eyes are much more sensitive to changes in the intensity (luminance) than the color information. In this paper, we present how to exploit luminance information, organized in a pyramid structure, to transfer properties between two images. Two applications are presented to demonstrate the results of using luminance channel in the similarity metric of two images. These are image generation; where a target image is to be generated from a source one, and image colorization; where color information is to be browsed from one colored image to another but grayscale image. The results demonstrate the suitability of luminance in achieving the two selected applications

Finite control set model predictive direct current control strategy with constraints applying to drive three-phase induction motor

In this, work the finite control set (FCS) model predictive direct current control strategy with constraints, is applied to drive three-phase induction motor (IM) using the well-known field-oriented control. As a modern algorithm approach of control, this kind of algorithm decides the suitable switching combination that brings the error between the desired command currents and the predicated currents, as low as possible, according to the process of optimization. The suggested algorithm simulates the constraints of maximum allowable current and the accepted deviation, between the desired command and actual currents. The new constraints produce an improvement in system performance, with the predefined error threshold. This can be applied by avoiding the switching combination that exceeds the limited values. The additional constraints are more suitable for loads that require minimum distortion in harmonic and offer protection from maximum allowable currents. This approach is valuable especially in electrical vehicle (EV) applications since its result offers more reliable system performance with low total harmonics distortion (THD), low motor torque ripple, and better speed tracking

Load Balancing Evaluation Tools for a Private Cloud: A Comparative Study

Cloud computing turns out to be an emerging technology that revolutionized the world of IT infrastructure. However, since the number of users is increasing daily, the demand for cloud services is increasing too. Thus, congestion occurs on the servers that provide services in the cloud. To avoid congestion, we used load balancer tools such as HAProxy and Nginx to intercept the requests of users and distribute them evenly to the servers. Jmeter is used to measure the performance metrics of least connection algorithm in terms of CPU utilization, response time, and concurrency level. Results showed high performance of HAProxy compared to Nginx in terms of response time and treating requests. Furthermore, we examined the characteristic of availability of the load balancer through deploying redundant load balancers, and we studied the effect of the failure of the load balancer on the quality of service of the end users. Keepalived is used to ensure a smooth transition between the two load balancers. According to the concurrency level, results proved that the number of unsuccessful requests during the failure of the master load balancer is proportionally minuscule compared to the total number of requests sent in a normal situation.

Comparative study of oxidative stress in diabetes mellitus

The aim of the study was comparative between oxidative stress in diabetes mellitus using the measurement of some biophysical and biochemical parameters on two groups of diabetic patients, were conducted in the Al-Yarmuk Teaching Hospital,30 patients insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) or type 1 ,their ages ranged between (15-45) and30 patients non- insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or type 2,their ages ranged between (42-65).This study has been compared with 30 healthy subjects. The present study was demonstrated to evaluate the alteration in oxidative stress as measured by plasma and red blood cells Malondialdehyde (MDA) andchanges in antioxidant mechanism as measured by plasma and red blood cells Glutathione (GSH) in patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2,in compares to healthy control group. The results showed significant increment in serum Malondialdehyde (MDA) levels ,and significant decrease in serum glutathione (GSH) levels of Diabetic patients (IDDM), (NIDDM)),compared with control. Total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and low density lipoprotein (LDL), high density lipoprotein (HDL), Diabetic patients (IDDM),and (NIDDM)patients showed significant increases in LDL levels. LDLs and very-low-density lipoproteins (VLDLs) the so-called “bad” cholesterols. Unlike HDLs, LDLs and VLDLs are high-cholesterol particles and significant decrease in HDL compared with control Oxidative stress results when free radicals increase more than antioxidants which is naturally synthesis in the body, then causes changing in the cells accure by oxidative stress