Mix Design For Oil-Palm-Boiler Clinker (OPBC) Concrete

An experimental investigation was conducted in mix design for lightweight concrete using Oil-Palm-Boiler Clinker (OPBC) as coarse aggregate. ACI mix design as used for normal weight concrete and mix design methods as used for lightweight concrete were employed to obtain the target compressive strength at 28-day and was found to be lower than the target strength for OPBC concrete. It was confirmed that the above established mix design methods couldn’t be used in this new OPBC concrete. Through trial mixes, the acceptable mix designs of this new concrete were obtained. The properties obtained from the acceptable mix designs were slumps of 40 to 100mm, demoulded densities of 1845 to 1980 kg/m3 and the 28-day compressive strengths of 27 to 35MPa.Keywords: Oil-Palm-Boiler Clinker (OPBC), Solid Waste, Mix Design, Lightweight Concrete, Compressive Strengt

What has been missed for predicting human attention in viewing driving clips?

Recent research progress on the topic of human visual attention allocation in scene perception and its simulation is based mainly on studies with static images. However, natural vision requires us to extract visual information that constantly changes due to egocentric movements or dynamics of the world. It is unclear to what extent spatio-temporal regularity, an inherent regularity in dynamic vision, affects human gaze distribution and saliency computation in visual attention models. In this free-viewing eye-tracking study we manipulated the spatio-temporal regularity of traffic videos by presenting them in normal video sequence, reversed video sequence, normal frame sequence, and randomised frame sequence. The recorded human gaze allocation was then used as the ‘ground truth’ to examine the predictive ability of a number of state-of-the-art visual attention models. The analysis revealed high inter-observer agreement across individual human observers, but all the tested attention models performed significantly worse than humans. The inferior predictability of the models was evident from indistinguishable gaze prediction irrespective of stimuli presentation sequence, and weak central fixation bias. Our findings suggest that a realistic visual attention model for the processing of dynamic scenes should incorporate human visual sensitivity with spatio-temporal regularity and central fixation bias

What is the role of the film viewer? The effects of narrative comprehension and viewing task on gaze control in film

Film is ubiquitous, but the processes that guide viewers' attention while viewing film narratives are poorly understood. In fact, many film theorists and practitioners disagree on whether the film stimulus (bottom-up) or the viewer (top-down) is more important in determining how we watch movies. Reading research has shown a strong connection between eye movements and comprehension, and scene perception studies have shown strong effects of viewing tasks on eye movements, but such idiosyncratic top-down control of gaze in film would be anathema to the universal control mainstream filmmakers typically aim for. Thus, in two experiments we tested whether the eye movements and comprehension relationship similarly held in a classic film example, the famous opening scene of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (Welles & Zugsmith, Touch of Evil, 1958). Comprehension differences were compared with more volitionally controlled task-based effects on eye movements. To investigate the effects of comprehension on eye movements during film viewing, we manipulated viewers' comprehension by starting participants at different points in a film, and then tracked their eyes. Overall, the manipulation created large differences in comprehension, but only produced modest differences in eye movements. To amplify top-down effects on eye movements, a task manipulation was designed to prioritize peripheral scene features: a map task. This task manipulation created large differences in eye movements when compared to participants freely viewing the clip for comprehension. Thus, to allow for strong, volitional top-down control of eye movements in film, task manipulations need to make features that are important to narrative comprehension irrelevant to the viewing task. The evidence provided by this experimental case study suggests that filmmakers' belief in their ability to create systematic gaze behavior across viewers is confirmed, but that this does not indicate universally similar comprehension of the film narrative

Hypothermia for encephalopathy in low and middle-income countries (HELIX): Study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic hypothermia reduces death and disability after moderate or severe neonatal encephalopathy in high-income countries and is used as standard therapy in these settings. However, the safety and efficacy of cooling therapy in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where 99% of the disease burden occurs, remains unclear. We will examine whether whole body cooling reduces death or neurodisability at 18-22 months after neonatal encephalopathy, in LMICs. METHODS: We will randomly allocate 408 term or near-term babies (aged ≤ 6 h) with moderate or severe neonatal encephalopathy admitted to public sector neonatal units in LMIC countries (India, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka), to either usual care alone or whole-body cooling with usual care. Babies allocated to the cooling arm will have core body temperature maintained at 33.5 °C using a servo-controlled cooling device for 72 h, followed by re-warming at 0.5 °C per hour. All babies will have detailed infection screening at the time of recruitment and 3 Telsa cerebral magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy at 1-2 weeks after birth. Our primary endpoint is death or moderate or severe disability at the age of 18 months. DISCUSSION: Upon completion, HELIX will be the largest cooling trial in neonatal encephalopathy and will provide a definitive answer regarding the safety and efficacy of cooling therapy for neonatal encephalopathy in LMICs. The trial will also provide important data about the influence of co-existent perinatal infection on the efficacy of hypothermic neuroprotection. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02387385. Registered on 27 February 2015

Sesquiterpenoids lactones: benefits to plants and people

Sesquiterpenoids, and specifically sesquiterpene lactones from Asteraceae, may play a highly significant role in human health, both as part of a balanced diet and as pharmaceutical agents, due to their potential for the treatment of cardiovascular disease and cancer. This review highlights the role of sesquiterpene lactones endogenously in the plants that produce them, and explores mechanisms by which they interact in animal and human consumers of these plants. Several mechanisms are proposed for the reduction of inflammation and tumorigenesis at potentially achievable levels in humans. Plants can be classified by their specific array of produced sesquiterpene lactones, showing high levels of translational control. Studies of folk medicines implicate sesquiterpene lactones as the active ingredient in many treatments for other ailments such as diarrhea, burns, influenza, and neurodegradation. In addition to the anti-inflammatory response, sesquiterpene lactones have been found to sensitize tumor cells to conventional drug treatments. This review explores the varied ecological roles of sesquiterpenes in the plant producer, depending upon the plant and the compound. These include allelopathy with other plants, insects, and microbes, thereby causing behavioural or developmental modification to these secondary organisms to the benefit of the sesquiterpenoid producer. Some sesquiterpenoid lactones are antimicrobial, disrupting the cell wall of fungi and invasive bacteria, whereas others protect the plant from environmental stresses that would otherwise cause oxidative damage. Many of the compounds are effective due to their bitter flavor, which has obvious implications for human consumers. The implications of sesquiterpenoid lactone qualitiesfor future crop production are discussed

Using a Markov simulation model to assess the impact of changing trends in coronary heart disease incidence on requirements for coronary artery revascularization procedures in Western Australia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The population incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) has been declining in Australia and many other countries. This decline has been due to reduced population levels of risk factors for CHD and improved medical care for those at higher risk of CHD. However, there are signs that there may be a slowing down or even reversal in the decline of CHD incidence due to the 'obesity epidemic' and other factors and this will have implications for the requirements for surgical treatments for those with CHD.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using a validated Markov simulation model applied to the population of Western Australia, different CHD incidence trend scenarios were developed to explore the effect of changing CHD incidence on requirements for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), together known as coronary artery revascularization procedures (CARPs).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The most dominant component of CHD incidence is the risk of CHD hospital admission for those with no history of CHD and if this risk leveled off and the trends in all other risks continued unchanged, then the projected numbers of CABGs and PCIs are only minimally changed. Further, the changes in the projected numbers remained small even when this risk was increased by 20 percent (although it is an unlikely scenario). However, when the other CHD incidence components that had also been declining, namely, the risk of CABG and that of CHD death for those with no history of CHD, were also projected to level off as these were declining in 1998-2000 and the risk of PCI for those with no history of CHD (which was already increasing) was projected to further increase by 5 percent, it had a substantial effect on the projected numbers of CARPs.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>There needs to be dramatic changes to several CHD incidence components before it has a substantial impact on the projected requirements for CARPs. Continued monitoring of CHD incidence and also the mix of initial presentation of CHD incidence is required in order to understand changes to future CARP requirements.</p

Recent advancement of remaining useful life prediction of lithium-ion battery in electric vehicle applications: A review of modelling mechanisms, network configurations, factors, and outstanding issues

The remaining useful life (RUL) prediction of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) plays a crucial role in battery management, safety assurance, and the anticipation of maintenance needs for reliable electric vehicle (EV) operation. An efficient prediction of RUL can ensure its safe operation and prevent both internal and external failures, as well as avoid any unwanted catastrophic events. However, achieving precise RUL prediction for electric vehicles presents a challenging task due to several issues related to intricate operational characteristics and dynamic shifts in model parameters throughout the aging process, battery parameters data extraction, data preprocessing, and hyperparameters tuning of the prediction model. This phenomenon significantly impacts the advancement of electric vehicle technology. To address these challenges, this study offers a comprehensive overview of various RUL prediction methods, presenting a comparative analysis of their outcomes, advantages, drawbacks, and associated research constraints. Emphasis is placed on the necessity of a battery management system (BMS) to ensure the safe and reliable functioning of LIBs. The review delves into crucial implementation factors, including battery test bench considerations, data selection, feature extraction, data preprocessing, performance evaluation indicators, and hyperparameter tuning. Additionally, the issues and challenges related to RUL prediction approaches such as; thermal runaway, material selection, cell balancing, battery aging, relaxation impact, training algorithms, data acquisition, and hyperparameter tuning were outlined to provide an in-depth understanding of the recent situations. The outcome of this review comprehensively examines various methods for predicting the RUL of LIB in EV applications, offering insights into their advantages, limitations, and research challenges. Recommendations for future trends in LIBs technology comprise enhancing prognostic accuracy and developing robust approaches to guarantee sustainable operation and management

Recent Development of Grid-Connected Microgrid Scheduling Controllers for Sustainable Energy: A Bibliometric Analysis and Future Directions

This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of grid-connected microgrid (MG) scheduling controller techniques. An extensive search was done in the Scopus database using preset parameters to extract articles relating to the MG scheduling controller. The selection of the most cited paper involved careful keyword filtering on grid-connected MG scheduling controllers over the period from 2013 to 2024. Within the timeframe, a total of 115 top-cited articles were extracted, focusing on the scheduling controller algorithms applied to the grid-connected MG system. These highly cited articles originated from a diverse source, encompassing 49 distinct journals, spanning 28 different regions, and representing the publications of 7 distinct publishers. This paper seeks to identify and analyze the highly referenced published articles in the relevant area to yield an in-depth analysis of advanced controllers and optimization strategies in MG energy management systems. The key challenges such as power electronic interface, quality, controller, safety and optimization were also highlighted to provide the clearest insight on the recent MG development. Valuable recommendations for future research directions are also provided, aimed at promoting the sustainable growth of MGs. A substantial total of 63.56% articles were published based on simulation while 18.6%, 13.95% and 3.87% of total articles were published on the experimental setup, critical analysis and review-based study. Therefore, it can be inferred that ongoing research and development efforts continually seek to improve the sustainability of MG systems within the electric power sector. The bibliometric analysis was employed to identify pivotal research publications concerning grid-connected MG scheduling controller technique. This analysis aimed to delineate the multidisciplinary nature, illustrate trends, and outline areas warranting further research in the field. Thus, to ensure an effective, economical, reliable, and sustainable power supply, this analysis will broaden the scope and offer context for the development of MG scheduling controller integrated grid systems

Active fixturing: literature review and future research directions

Fixtures are used to fixate, position and support workpieces and represent a crucial tool in manufacturing. Their performance determines the result of the whole manufacturing process of a product. There is a vast amount of research done on automatic fixture layout synthesis and optimisation and fixture design verification. Most of this work considers fixture mechanics to be static and the fixture elements to be passive. However, a new generation of fixtures has emerged that has actuated fixture elements for active control of the part–fixture system during manufacturing operations to increase the end product quality. This paper analyses the latest studies in the field of active fixture design and its relationship with flexible and reconfigurable fixturing systems. First, a brief introduction is given on the importance of research of fixturing systems. Secondly, the basics of workholding and fixture design are visited, after which the state-of-the-art in active fixturing and related concepts is presented. Fourthly, part–fixture dynamics and design strategies which take these into account are discussed. Fifthly, the control strategies used in active fixturing systems are examined. Finally, some final conclusions and prospective future research directions are presented

SHOPPING MALL AIR DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

The objective to design Heating, Ventilation &amp; Air conditioning (HVAC) system for a commercial Building, with simultaneously controls its temperature, humidity, cleanliness, proper distribution, noise level, heat load calculation, fresh air, exhaust, duct design, pipe design, equipment selection and layout of accessories such as indoor and outdoor unit of the project. Cooling load will be calculated on E20 form. Indeed, today the emphasis is no more on understanding air conditioning ‘products’ but on creating ‘solutions’ and not just solutions, but ‘customized solutions’ that suit specific cooling needs of specific business and establishment