Managing soil biodiversity: The New Zealand experience

Species diversity is a very important component of a healthy soil ecosystem, and a necessary condition for long-term sustainable development. However, it is widely recognised that soil degradation and species extinction are on the increase in New Zealand, as land resources come under pressure from urban expansion and modern agribusiness. New Zealand's soils, flora and fauna have evolved many unique elements during their long isolation from other land masses. Habitat destruction and introduced plants and animals have, therefore, had increasingly detrimental effects on indigenous biodiversity. New Zealand must conserve what remains

Aplikasi Image Thresholding Untuk Segmentasi Objek

Salah satu operasi di dalam analisis citra adalah segmentasi citra, yaitu memisahkan objek dari latar belakangnya atau dari objek lain yang tidak menjadi perhatian. Metode sementasi yang sederhana adalah dengan operasi pengambangan (thresholding). Operasi pengambangan menghasilkan citra biner, yang dalam hal ini objek yang diacu di-set berwarna putih sedangkan latar belakangnya di-set berwarna hitam (atau sebaliknya bergantung kasusnya). Makalah ini mempresentasikan penggunaan operasi pengambangan untuk melakukan segmentasi objek. Eksperimen dilakukan dengan menggunakan kakas MATLAB. Hasil eksperimen memperlihatkan bahwa pemilihan nilai ambang (threshold) yang tepat sangat menentukan keberhasilan segmentasi

Database independent Migration of Objects into an Object-Relational Database

This paper reports on the CERN-based WISDOM project which is studying the serialisation and deserialisation of data to/from an object database (objectivity) and ORACLE 9i.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures; CMS CERN Conference Report cr02_01

Determination of the Diagnostic Reference Level (DRL) in Samarinda Hospitals

The diagnostic reference level (DRL) is a form of investigative level used as a tool to help optimize protection to radiation exposure for diagnostic and interventional procedures. The purpose of this study was to determine the local DRL values for the examination of the abdomen, thorax, and head at radiology installations. The modality used was 128-slice CT scan. The numbers of patients whose data were used were 200 for abdominal examinations, 160 for thoracic examinations, and 100 for head examinations. Overall, the total patient whose data was used was 460. Data processing in this study was carried out with a quantitative analysis technique, namely descriptive statistics. This analysis technique used secondary data obtained from the results of recaptures or archival books for examination of the abdomen, thorax, and head. Data processing was carried out with a measure of diversity through the calculation of the third quartile in the data distribution. It was assumed that 75 % of patients performed examinations with a common diagnosis. The results of these calculations are visualized in the form of graphs of the relationship of computed tomography dose index volume (CTDIvol) with the number of patients and a graph of the relationship of dose length product (DLP) with the number of patients. In the abdominal examination, a CTDIvol of 12 mGy and a DLP of 1545.5 mGy·cm. In the thoracic examination, a CTDIvol of 11 mGy and a DLP of 903 mGy·cm were obtained. For the head examination, a CTDIvol of 34.25mGy and a DLP of 2190.25 mGy·cm were obtained. The conclusion obtained from this study is that the DRLs are relatively low, but they still need to be optimized by medical physicists

Hydrocracking of a plastic mixture over various micro-mesoporous composite zeolites

Conventional plastic waste management methods such as incineration and landfilling are not benign to the environment. Landfilling results in the accumulation of gigantic volume of plastic waste to occupy the land for a longer period of time and incineration emits poisonous gases. These methods are considered unacceptable from environmental point of view whereas chemical recycling methods such as cracking and hydrocracking are considered more environmentally friendly. Hydrocracking of a plastic material in which longer chain hydrocarbon molecules are broken down to shorter chain hydrocarbons is a promising method of converting waste plastic materials to high quality liquid transportation fuels. It is exothermic in nature, carried out at lower temperatures, and gives higher quality liquid products compared to catalytic and thermal cracking processes. In the present work, various micro-mesoporous zeolite catalysts are synthesized and well characterized using XRD, BET, SEM, EDX, and Py-FTIR techniques. The catalysts are tested in a high pressure autoclave reactor to study the hydrocracking of a model plastic mixture with initial H2 pressure of 20 bar, 400 °C, residence time of 50 min, and feed to catalyst ratio of 10:0.5 (by wt). The conversion of plastic material and yields of the products are obtained by solvent extraction using tetrahydrofuran (THF) and n-heptane and GC-MS and GC-FID are used for the analysis of gas and oil fractions. A few of the composite catalysts used in the study are found highly active and selective towards liquid yield and show the ability to be used on the commercial scale

OSRR-based BPF with Square Groundplane Window

In this paper, a bandpass filter (BPF) composedof open split-ring resonator (OSRR) structure with squaregroundplane windows underneath the structure is investigatednumerically and experimentally. Square groundplane windowsare proposed to enhance the property of OSRR-based BPF inovercoming the passband bandwidth response. The designed BPFis constructed of 3 cascaded OSRRs connected with microstriplines. Some parametrical study to obtain the optimum bandwidthresponse is carried out by changing the dimension of squaregroundplane window in the design process. The filter is thendeployed on a 0.8mm thick FR4 Epoxy dielectric substrate withthe dimension of 60mm in length and 20mm in width. Fromthe experimental characterization, the realized OSRR-based BPFwith the dimension of each square groundplane window of 12mm× 12mm shows the bandwidth response of 0.81GHz ranges from1.75GHz 2.56GHz which is comparable with the numerical one

Analysis of Radiation Exposure Level on Linen and Other Objects in Patient Rooms at Nuclear Medicine Installation

Analysis of radiation contamination levels has been carried out using an Atomtex surveymeter in the patient rooms after thyroid cancer ablation therapy, in the Nuclear Medicine Installation, Abdoel Wahab Sjahranie Hospital. This study aims to measure the level of radiation exposure based on the rate of radiation exposure and radiation contamination of objects in the patient rooms after ablation therapy, and to find out how long linen can be washed since the first measurement. Data collection was carried out once a week, on the same weekday, for five weeks for objects in the patient rooms by using the surveymeter at a fixed distances from the objects’ surfaces. Radiation contamination measurements for linen items were carried out for 3 d by aiming the surveymeter to container containing linen items from certain distances. Based on this study, the level of radiation exposure obtained is categorized as low because the value range is below 10 μSv/h. The radiation contamination for some objects are categorized as low-level exposure because the value is less than 3.7 Bq/cm2. Other objects tend to be in the moderate-level category because the value is more than 3.7 Bq/cm2 and less than 37 Bq/cm2. The values obtained refer to the standard issued by BATAN. It can be concluded that the patient rooms in the Nuclear Medicine Installation of Abdoel Wahab Sjahranie Hospital are safe