Is Food a (cross-cultural/interpersonal) communication medium?

The central question of this Master thesis is whether food is a (cross-cultural or interpersonal) communication medium or not. And if it is, how does it work and how does it relate to visual communication? This question is looked at through a multidisciplinary theoretical lens and accompanied by case studies. The newly emerged discipline of food design is the correct field to carry out such research. But what is food design? Is it even a true design discipline? This thesis argues that food design is a design discipline, although its territory within design has not been clearly defined yet. This thesis is an attempt to decode food design. It is believed that food is a form of nonverbal communication, which is used in a very similar manner to a language. The literature review includes a comprehensive study of different communication models and theories and considers food’s communicational aspects from both macro and micro levels. Food is also very visual. Therefore, from a visual communication point of view, it deserves to be studied properly. However, food goes beyond just sight. It stimulates all the five senses. Reviewing the comprehensive research on the multi-sensory dimensions of food carried out by neuro-gastronomists, reveals more about the communicational potential of food. Food is, naturally, the territory of chefs. That is why another part of this thesis is dedicated to the developments of the world of gastronomy, in an attempt to find out important clues, which link gastronomy to design. In the recent decades the chefs, designers and communication scientists have met each other in order to elevate food to a totally new level. Through studying the elements of this paradigm shift this thesis is finalised with two case studies, which examine food as a communication medium in practice. Through this multidisciplinary theoretical study and the case studies this Master thesis provides a framework for food design as a discipline and shows that food is, indeed, a communication medium, which can connect people on a visceral level, beyond cultural and linguistic barriers

Plastic Hinge Length of RC Columns under the Combined Effect of Near-Fault Vertical and Horizontal Ground Motions

Plastic hinges are an extension of the ductile design concept used in building seismically resistant structures. The formation of a plastic hinge in an RC column in regions that experience inelastic actions depends on the characteristics of the earthquakes as well as the column details. Recordings from recent earthquakes have proved that in the near-fault region of large earthquakes, the vertical component of the near-fault ground motion has exceeded the horizontal, and damage to the structures has been predominantly by these motions. Therefore, this paper focuses on near-fault ground motions that have been recorded within rather 20 km of the causative fault and 936 inelastic time-history analyses have been performed to predict the nonlinear behavior of RC columns subjected to combined effect of near-fault vertical and horizontal ground motions. The effects of some parameters are evaluated analytically by finite element methods and the results are compared with corresponding experimental data. Findings from this study provide a simple expression to estimate plastic hinge length of RC columns subjected to the combined effect of near-fault vertical and horizontal ground motions

A hybrid model for multi-objective capacitated facility location network design problem

One of the primary concerns on many traditional capacitated facility location/network problems is to consider transportation and setup facilities in one single objective function. This simple assumption may lead to misleading solutions since the cost of transportation is normally considered for a short period time and, obviously, the higher cost of setting up the facilities may reduce the importance of the transportation cost/network. In this paper, we introduce capacitated facility location/network design problem (CFLNDP) with two separate objective functions in forms of multi-objective with limited capacity. The proposed model is solved using a new hybrid algorithm where there are two stages. In the first stage, locations of facilities and design of fundamental network are determined and in the second stage demands are allocated to the facilities. The resulted multi-objective problem is solved using Lexicography method for a well-known example from the literature with 21 node instances. We study the behaviour of the resulted problem under different scenarios in order to gain insight into the behaviour of the model in response to changes in key problem parameters

Survey of fungal flora infecting P. indicus in larvae stages in hatcheries of Khouzestan Province, south Iran

Shrimp hatcheries around the world continue to be heavily dependent of wild broodstock. One of the factors that could damage this industry is fungal infestation. Hence, we studied the fungal flora infesting shrimp larvae in hatcheries of Khouzestan Province, south Iran. The study covered two reproduction periods 2001=2002 and totally 140 specimens were collected from 2 hatcheries under Thailand and Philippine management systems. Samples were obtained in completely sterile condition from water, live food and different stages of shrimp larvae P. indices. The samples were cultured on SDA, PYGA, PYGSA and similar media. We diagnosed ten fungal species including Cladosporium sp, Pencillium, Trichothesium sp., Aspergilus sp. A. niger, Rhizopus, Mucor and Fusarium, the last being the most abundant fungus. We found that the contaminating fungal species were all opportunistic

N-job, m-macine lot streaming problem with learning effects

The abilities of workers for performing same or similar tasks can be improved by repeating them. This phenomenon is recognized as learning effects. Many researches performed on the effects of learning in scheduling problems. However, there is not any study about lot streaming problem with learning considerations. In this study, we develop mixed-integer mathematical models for multiple products and multiple machines lot streaming problem with learning considerations. With the proposed model formulation, five goals of problem, namely determining the sequence among the sublots, optimal number of sublots for each lot, the size of the each lot, inventory levels and the size of the individual sublots, are solved simultaneously. Proposed models are tested by several numerical examples and results are presented

A Novel Scheme for Intelligent Recognition of Pornographic Images

Harmful contents are rising in internet day by day and this motivates the essence of more research in fast and reliable obscene and immoral material filtering. Pornographic image recognition is an important component in each filtering system. In this paper, a new approach for detecting pornographic images is introduced. In this approach, two new features are suggested. These two features in combination with other simple traditional features provide decent difference between porn and non-porn images. In addition, we applied fuzzy integral based information fusion to combine MLP (Multi-Layer Perceptron) and NF (Neuro-Fuzzy) outputs. To test the proposed method, performance of system was evaluated over 18354 download images from internet. The attained precision was 93% in TP and 8% in FP on training dataset, and 87% and 5.5% on test dataset. Achieved results verify the performance of proposed system versus other related works

Integration of lot sizing and flow shop scheduling with lot streaming

We will develop a mathematical model for the integration of lot sizing and flow shop scheduling with lot streaming. We will develop a mixed-integer linear model for multiple products lot sizing and lot streaming problems. Mixed-integer programming formulation is presented which will enable the user to find optimal production quantities, optimal inventory levels, optimal sublot sizes, and optimal sequence simultaneously. We will use numerical example to show practicality of the proposed model. We test eight different lot streaming problems: (1) consistent sublots with intermingling, (2) consistent sublots and no intermingling between sublots of the products (without intermingling), (3) equal sublots with intermingling, (4) equal sublots without intermingling, (5) no-wait consistent sublots with intermingling, (6) no-wait equal sublots with intermingling, (7) no-wait consistent sublots without intermingling, and (8) no-wait equal sublots without intermingling. We showed that the best makespan can be achieved through the consistent sublots with intermingling case

Variation of the Hydraulic Conductivity of Clayey Soils in Exposure to Organic Permeants

Clayey soils are the most common material used in waterproofing and play an essential role in waste and contamination control. Permeability is a key parameter in such problems and its determination is needed in ensuring the satisfactory performance of the soil. Research has shown that a permeant fluid with a low dielectric constant can shrink the double layer around the clay particles which will, in turn, increase the permeability of the soil. In this paper, the permeability of two types of clay with different plasticity, exposed to the flow of water and methanol as polar and miscible solvents and gasoline and car oil as non-polar and immiscible solvents is investigated. In addition, the effect of soil properties such as plasticity and compaction water content on permeability of the samples is examined. To this end, soil samples are prepared and compacted at various water contents. Then, permeability tests are conducted according to the modified constant head method and the effects of parameters such as the fluid dielectric constant, water content of the samples and soil plasticity are examined. The results demonstrate that the lower dielectric constant of the organic fluid decreases the thickness of the double layer, providing more space for the flow of the permeant and as a result, the permeability of the clay increases. The reduction of the permeant dielectric constant from 80.4 to 2.28 led to a remarkable increase in soil permeability

Seismic Performance of High-Rise RC Shear Wall Buildings Subjected to Ground Motions with Various Frequency Contents

Construction of tall buildings in societies is rising up for the increased population and limitation in horizontal expansion of cities. Therefore, behavior of these structures against earthquake essentially requires investigation. Recent research has shown that frequency content parameter of an earthquake has remarkable impacts on seismic response of buildings. This study aimed to investigate direct effects of frequency content on high – rise buildings. Thus, six Reinforced Concrete (RC) central core 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and 35- story buildings were built in open source software OpenSees, and their seismic behavior under seismic records with various frequency contents were investigated. In this research,  non – linear dynamic Time – History was carried out and also behavior of buildings was compared in drift, shear force of stories, and maximum displacement of stories. Results of Time – History analysis showed that low – frequency content records have the highest effects on buildings. Most of the responses of drift and displacement of stories pertained to low – frequency contents in low – rise 10 and 15-story buildings. Although the most shear force of stories was related to low – frequency contents, with increasing height of buildings, shear force of stories increased, too. So that under Kobe Japan record which has the lowest frequency content among all records in this paper. Maximum shear force of stories was 6840 ton in 10-story building, whereas it was 12332 ton in 35- story building