Investigation for a suitable screw of a briquetting machine

[Abstract]: Briquetting is a well-established technology. But its crucial part is the screw wear, which has a great influence on the cost of production. The aim of this study is to look for the suitable parameters of screw, which can make this technology attractive to the people. With this objective, the study of existing Bangladeshi screw and a few newly designed screws has been done. Four different types of new screw have been constructed, the design and idea of which are taken from the experience of the Institute of Energy in Vietnam. The remarkable features of the screw are that it is short in length and the thread is not made as an integral part of the base of screw. Different types of pitch and height of screw have been used for this stud

Pile capacity utilization for bridge bents designed using simplified procedures

Bent substructure systems are being used increasingly in bridge construction. Among the various bent systems, pile bents are considered a popular choice due to their effectiveness in reducing time and cost. They are constructed by first driving piles to a specified elevation above the ground surface. Then, a cast-in-place reinforced concrete bent cap ties the piles together at their top end. The current Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Bridge Design Manual provides guidelines for the structural analysis and construction details for general use in the preparation of plans for pile bents. The manual allows the use of a simplified method in which ranges of allowable axial compressive loads for different pile sizes can be used in selecting a recommended pile size once the pile axial load is known. The procedure requires axial load demands to be determined due to dead and live load effects only. However, at high wind velocity or as bridge spans become larger, lateral loads and moments acting on the pile increase and cannot be neglected. Therefore, identifying limitations on the use of the simplified procedure is the main motivation behind this research. This study makes an endeavor to analyze many bridges that cover a wide design space including different span lengths, unsupported pile lengths, skew angles, and pile-cap continuity. The bridges are supported on pile bents to investigate the applicability of the simplified design procedure under different limit states. The pile sizes and layouts for the bridges of different configurations were selected considering the existing guidelines. The scope of this study is to determine the load and moment demand on the piles using refined analyses. The capacity of the piles was then determined taking into account the interaction between axial loads and flexure. Based on the results, the capacity utilization for each pile was determined and used to investigate the limitations on the use of simplified method. The results show that the simplified procedure should not be universally used for pile design. At high wind velocity (Strength III limit state) the procedure results in unsafe designs. A summary of the limitations was mapped for the 128 bridge cases considered in this study for pile caps with two pile-to-cap continuity assumptions. Recommendations for future research have been identified to further refine the simplified design procedure

An Economic Analysis of the Production Behaviour of Fishing Firms in Selected Fisheries of Malaysia.

An import an t problem in the fishing industry of Peninsular Malaysia is the existence of grouprivalry and conflict between art is anal fishermen and trawlers resulting from the common property nature of fishery. This has led to overfishing in the inshore waters affecting both the catch and income of a large majority of artisanal fishermen. The present system of distributing marine earnings which favours boat owners further aggravates the problem of poverty among fishermen. This study examines the distribution of marine earnings, costs and returns of the fishing operations for three gears namely, trawl, purse seine and gill net, and the structure of their respective harvesting technologies. The general objective is to study the production behaviour of the relevant fishing firms and the specific objectives include the study of supply response to changes in fish prices, input demand response to changes in fact or prices, and cross supply and demand responses to changes in output-input prices. The nature of the share systems in marine fishing and the extent of their variations across boats and locations is also examined. The study also attempts to determine whether the observed vessel sizes are in long-run equilibrium

Advocacy Coalitions and Canadian Energy Policy Decision: Navigating Four Pipeline Projects

The conflicting goals of sustaining the Canadian economy through energy and prioritizing climate action lead to diverse interest groups with varying views on policies advocating their positions to government. Despite energy\u27s economic importance, climate change remains central for the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau. The management of pipeline proposals such as Transmountain, Northern Gateway, Energy East, Keystone Xl under this government showcased its balancing act between economic interests and environmental commitments. Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework, this paper examines how governments and regulatory authorities modify the process for accepting or rejecting pipeline proposals, the evolution of interest groups in shaping their proposals, and the influence of this process on shaping their belief systems. The intersection involving the government, First Nations, environmentalists, provincial decisions, courts, media scrutiny, and the regulatory board\u27s decision-making process explores the complex and contentious nature of approving major energy infrastructure projects, such as the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion

A Multistage Budgeting Approach to the Analysis of Demand for Fish: An Application to Inland Areas of Bangladesh

This study was conducted to estimate the elasticities of demand for eight different fish types and four income groups in Bangladesh using year-round data collected from inland areas of the country. It uses a three-stage budgeting framework that estimates a demand function for food in the first stage, a demand function for fish (as a group) in the second stage, and a set of demand functions for fish by type in the third stage using a quadratic extension of the Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) model. The Heckman procedure was used in stage three to remove the possible bias in the parameter estimates brought about by zero consumption. The magnitude of both price and income elasticities varies across different fish types and income quartile groups, indicating the relevance of estimation specific to fish types and quartiles. Except for assorted small fish, the other seven fish types included in the study were found to have positive income elasticity for all income levels. Assorted small fish is an inferior commodity for the richest quartile of the population.Bangladesh, fish demand elasticities, Inverse Mills Ratio, multi-stage budgeting, quadratic extension to Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS), Demand and Price Analysis, International Development, Public Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C3, Q21,

The impact of HIV/AIDS education through formal curriculum and texts in Bangladesh : a study on secondary and higher secondary students

Background: The education sector in Bangladesh provides students with information about HIV/ AIDS which may emerge as a major public health and socioeconomic problem affecting students. Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS education through Formal Curriculum and Texts (FCT) on secondary and higher secondary students in Bangladesh. Methods: Using multistage cluster sampling technique, a total of 384 students aged between 11- 19 years were chosen from four secondary and higher secondary institutions in Bangladesh and interviewed through a predesigned structured questionnaire. For triangulation of the quantitative findings, the study employed Key Informant Interview (KII) technique to collect qualitative data from the teachers. Results: The findings of the study show that a little more than half of the students (53.1 percent) reported that HIV/AIDS education prevented students from having unprotected intercourse while 52.60 percent of them stated that it helped to increase self-efficacy. Again, a significant proportion of the students (70.1 percent) said that HIV/AIDS education removed their misconceptions. It can be said that the textbooks of secondary and higher secondary students lack sufficient information about HIV/AIDS. Conclusion: Therefore, the Government of Bangladesh may take an initiative to include more information about HIV/AIDS in the textbooks of secondary and higher secondary students

Resource-Aware Hierarchical Federated Learning for Video Caching in Wireless Networks

Video caching can significantly improve backhaul traffic congestion by locally storing the popular content that users frequently request. A privacy-preserving method is desirable to learn how users' demands change over time. As such, this paper proposes a novel resource-aware hierarchical federated learning (RawHFL) solution to predict users' future content requests under the realistic assumptions that content requests are sporadic and users' datasets can only be updated based on the requested content's information. Considering a partial client participation case, we first derive the upper bound of the global gradient norm that depends on the clients' local training rounds and the successful reception of their accumulated gradients over the wireless links. Under delay, energy and radio resource constraints, we then optimize client selection and their local rounds and central processing unit (CPU) frequencies to minimize a weighted utility function that facilitates RawHFL's convergence in an energy-efficient way. Our simulation results show that the proposed solution significantly outperforms the considered baselines in terms of prediction accuracy and total energy expenditure.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE ICC 2024. \c{opyright} 2024 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other use