Performance Prediction and Uses of PV Band Drains under the Embankments on Soft Marine Clays of Bangkok

The use of prefabricated vertical (PV) drains for the improvement of soft clays is a widely adopted technique today. Vertical drains arc used to accelerate the consolidation under preloading by taking the advantage of higher rate of horizontal flow of water through the soil. The present paper is aimed at the prediction of the performances shown by the ‘Alidrain’, used in the soft marine clays of Bangkok, in the field under embankment loading and in the laboratory in a in-house designed large scale consolidometer, by using a Finite Element model of the transient, axi-symmetric flow problem considering equal strain. This model also considers the disturbances caused by the driven mandrels to the surrounding subsoil (smear effect) and the effect of the sizes of mandrel used for installation. The data collected from field and laboratory has been compared with the results from this model. The model demonstrated good prediction of both the field and laboratory performances with proper choice of the Cfield/Clab ratio, the smear zone diameter (ds), the kh/kh\u27 ratio for the smear zone and the other input soil parameters found from different laboratory experiments. For the prediction of consolidation settlement in the field, a proposed value of kh/kh\u27 ratio around 10 with the combination of ds=2dm has been found to give the best results

CEO personality & stakeholder engagement

The dissertation examines how the chief executive officer (CEO) personality traits have implications for the firm’s strategy. The first chapter discusses the relationship between CEO Big Five personality traits and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The next chapter is on CEO Big Five and equity analyst forecasts. The final chapter deals with how CEO personality traits relate to corporate governance aspects such as board independence and board diversity

QUICK/SLOW BIPHASIC RELEASE OF A POORLY WATER SOLUBLE ANTIDIABETIC DRUG FROM BI-LAYER TABLETS

Objective: The objective of the present work is to develop a bi-layer tablet consisting of an Immediate Pulse Release [IPR] layer and a sustained release [SR] layer that can produce a distinct biphasic release having two different drug release rates. The IPR layer is intended to release a fraction of the dose rapidly at a faster rate and the SR layer is meant for slow release of the remaining dose at a slower rate for a desired period of time.Methods: The quantitative determination was carried out by UV spectrophotometer. Solid dispersion was prepared by melt method. IPR layer was prepared by direct compression method, SR layer was prepared by wet granulation method. In-vitro drug release study from tablets was carried out in USP II tablet dissolution rate test apparatus. FTIR, DSC, XRD studies were performed.Results: 89% of the incorporated drug was released within 30 min in acid solution of pH 1.2 from the IPR tablet prepared with the highest amount of gelucire due to solid state transformation of the drug. The SR layer (SR8) comprising of SAL, CG and CMC produced prolonged drug release (70% in 10 h). The optimized IPR3 layer and SR layers were compressed to form bi-layer tablets from which 23-37% drug was released immediately in 30 min, and the remaining drug was released slowly for 7 to 10 h depending upon the compositions of the tablets.Conclusion: This study revealed that bi-phasic release of GPZ consisting of an initial quick release and subsequent slow release could be achieved by formulating bi-layer tablets using the existing tablet technology, and such formulation may be able to control hyperglycaemia effectively for a longer period of timeÂ

Parameter-uniform improved hybrid numerical scheme for singularly perturbed problems with interior layers

In this paper, we consider a class of singularly perturbed convection-diffusion boundary-value problems with discontinuous convection coefficient which often occur as mathematical models for analyzing shock wave phenomena in gas dynamics. In general, interior layers appear in the solutions of this class of problems and this gives rise to difficulty while solving such problems using the classical numerical methods (standard central difference or standard upwind scheme) on uniform meshes when the perturbation parameter ε is small. To achieve better numerical approximation in solving this class of problems, we propose a new hybrid scheme utilizing a layer-resolving piecewise-uniform Shishkin mesh and the method is shown to be ε-uniformly stable. In addition to this, it is proved that the proposed numerical scheme is almost second-order uniformly convergent in the discrete supremum norm with respect to the parameter ε. Finally, extensive numerical experiments are conducted to support the theoretical results. Further, the numerical results obtained by the newly proposed scheme are also compared with the hybrid scheme developed in the paper [Z.Cen, Appl. Math. Comput., 169(1): 689-699, 2005]. It shows that the current hybrid scheme exhibits a significant improvement over the hybrid scheme developed by Cen, in terms of the parameter-uniform order of convergence

Users’ time preference based stochastic resource allocation in cloud spot market: cloud provider’s perspective

Cloud Computing spot markets have enabled the users to make use of the spare computing capacities of the cloud providers at a relatively cheaper price which in turn has given the providers such as Amazon and Google an opportunity to earn extra money by auctioning-off the underutilized resources. However, resource availability is a problem in the spot market owing to spot-price fluctuations. Ignoring the customer’s preference is one of the potential reasons behind this. In this paper, we propose a time preference (value of service at different points of time) based stochastic integer linear programming model to allocate the cloud resources among the cloud users with a view to maximizing the revenue of cloud providers from the spot-market

Architecture of in-app ad recommender system

Increased adoption of smartphones has caused mobile advertising to be the secondmost revenue-generating medium among all forms of existing online advertising. Application (henceforth called app) developers try to monetize their apps by selling in-app ad-spaces to the advertisers (or ad-agencies) through various intermediaries such as ad-networks. Surveys, however, indicate that mobile ad campaigns are not as successful as they can be, in part due to inappropriate audience targeting, and in turn, user-apathy toward such ads. This motivates the need for a system, where both advertisers and mobile-app developers gain from the in-app advertising eco-system. In this paper, we propose an architecture of design-science artifacts for an ad-network, to meet the objectives of both these stakeholders

Association of different socio-economic factors with hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment and control in India: a demographic analysis of NFHS-4

Background: National Family Health Survey (NHFS) is a periodically conducted survey, which delivers data on health and healthcare of a representative sample of households of India. Studies that have evaluated hypertension awareness, treatment and control and its association with patient level socioeconomic factors are limited in India. The objectives of this study were to determine association of demographic variables like age, sex, habitat, wealth, religion and educational status with prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension among rural and urban subjects in different states and union territories of india from NFHS-4 data.Methods: Data of 803211 subjects were taken from NFHS survey in 36 states and union territories of india, in 2015-2016. Prevalence of hypertension and its awareness, treatment, and control status and their association with age, sex, habitat, wealth, religion and educational status were determined. Logistic regression was carried out to evaluate the impact of different predictor variables.Results: Data of 803211 subjects were taken from NFHS survey voluntarily given by them for our project, of which 565705 (70.43%) came from rural population. 103525 of them were male which comprised of 12.89% and rest 87.11% were female volunteers in 36 states and union territories of india. Hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment and control level in India was 17.69%, 20.44%, 34.37% and 13.64% respectively. In general, these parameters were much better in urban population and in female.  Although variations were observed between different study sites, they were low with poor education and wealth index.Conclusions: Hypertension awareness, treatment, and control were mostly low among the male, rural, poor and less educated individuals with large state wise variations