Visual Thinking Process and Emotions Through Expressive Art

Background: Drawing has a therapeutic function in the lives of people with special needs.These people need additional support for communication and learning.Researchers believed that drawing is an effective way for these people to show their self-esteem, emotions, social competence, and other hidden personalities. Art therapy teaches knowledge of visual art (drawing and painting). It is also known as expressive art because it assists in dealing with some emotions that are difficult for verbal communication. Furthermore, art therapy is beneficial for fine motor skill development. The aim of this study was to explore the use of expressive art in a group of autistic people. Subjects and Method: This was a qualitative study. A series of art therapy workshop were conducted in University of Malaya in collaboration with Malaysian Rehabilitation Council, and Maybank Foundation. A number of 18 people aged 8-17 years old with autism from Malaysian Rehabilitation Council were invited to University of Malaya for the art therapy workshop. They consisted of Malays, Chinese, and Indians. These peoplehad some level of communication problems. Art therapy workshop was conducted twice a month for 6 month with each session lasted for 4 hours. Art template, art materials, and a list of activities were given to each participant. Before the session, the participants informed the researchers verbally the scope of art that they would be drawing. The researchers observed the thinking process and emotions of the participants through the art activities. Results: Some of the art work was not related to what they have mentioned earlier. We found that art demonstrated their thought process. Drawing was more accurate in visualizing their thinking process rather than verbal communication. Besides, we detected a range of emotions illustrated from their final art work. Some of the emotions were psychological distress, happiness, and sadness. Conclusion: Expressive artis useful for visualizing thinking process of autistic people. Keywords: art therapy, autistic, visual thinking, emotions, expressive ar

Conjugate heat and mass transfer in square porous cavity

The present article deals with the issue of heat and mass transfer in a square porous cavity having a small solid wall or block inserted at various places at bottom surface. The main objective is to investigate the effect of size of solid wall and its location inside the porous cavity on double diffusive convention. The heat and mass transfer behavior are governed by momentum, energy and concentration equations which are converted into a set of finite element equation with the help of Galerkin method. The left surface of cavity is maintained at higher temperature and concentration, Th and Ch as compared to that of right surface at Tc and Cc. The results are presented in terms of thermal, concentration and fluid flow profiles across the porous cavity

The influence of geometrical shapes of stenosis on the blood flow in stenosed artery

The present work was carried out to investigate the blood flow behavior and the severity of blockage caused in the arterial passage due to the different geometries such as elliptical, trapezium and triangular shapes of stenosis. The study was conducted with respect to various sizes of stenosis in terms of 70%, 80% and 90% area blockage of the arterial blood flow. The study was carried out numerically with the help of advance computational fluid dynamic software. It was found that the shape of the stenosis plays an important role in overall pressure drop across the blockage region of artery. The highest level of pressure drop was observed for trapezoidal shape of stenosis followed by elliptical and then by triangular shaped stenosis. The wall shear stress across the stenosis is great for trapezoidal shape followed by triangular and elliptical stenosis for same blockage area in the artery

Influence of Silica Nano-Additives on Performance and Emission Characteristics of Soybean Biodiesel Fuelled Diesel Engine

The present study examines the effect of silicon dioxide (SiO2) nano-additives on the performance and emission characteristics of a diesel engine fuelled with soybean biodiesel. Soybean biofuel was prepared using the transesterification process. The morphology of nano-additives was studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The Ultrasonication process was used for the homogeneous blending of nano-additives with biodiesel, while surfactant was used for the stabilisation of nano-additives. The physicochemical properties of pure and blended fuel samples were measured as per ASTM standards. The performance and emissions characteristics of different fuel samples were measured at different loading conditions. It was found that the brake thermal efficiency (BTE) and brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) increased by 3.48–6.39% and 5.81–9.88%, respectively, with the addition of SiO2 nano-additives. The carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC) and smoke emissions for nano-additive added blends were decreased by 1.9–17.5%, 20.56–27.5% and 10.16–23.54% compared to SBME25 fuel blends.</jats:p

The effect of light on the oxidative stability of palm olein

The effect of light and additives on the oxidative stability of palm olein has been studied. Acid value, peroxide value and iodine value of the oil samples at selected hours were evaluated in this study. The micro structural changes of palm olein were confirmed by using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy while thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was used in order to detect any changes in the bulk properties of palm olein. It was found that the effect of light and heat can increase the lipid oxidation. Palm olein blended with the additive Irgalube F10 showed lower acid values compared to original palm olein after 768 hours of heating. Addition of additive Irgalube F10 in oil samples is able to increase the thermal oxidation stability

Dufour and Soret Effects on Square Porous Annulus

A study on heat and mass transfer behaviour on porous medium embedded in a square annulus is conducted. The inner surface wall is considered to have a cool temperature T c while the outer surface is exposed to a hot temperature T h . Finite element method (FEM) is used to solve the governing partial differential equations. The results present the influences of the Dufour and Soret effects on the heat and mass transfer of a square annulus. The effects of various physical parameters on the temperature and concentration profiles together with the local Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are presented graphically. It is found that when Dufour parameter is increased, Nusselt number increases. Dufour effect has more influences on velocity profile, while it has no significant effect on the concentration and can be deemed negligible. It is observed that the local Nusselt number is highest at the bottom wall for low values of Dufour parameter; however, the top wall Nusselt number is highest for higher values of Dufour parameter. Soret effect tends to make more significant contribution to the concentration profile than Dufour effect

Generating Renewable Electricity from Food Waste

Mini biogas power plant (MBPP) was first used and launched in Malaysia by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). USM with the collaboration with Enerbon Sdn Bhd had set up this mini biogas power plant as an education and research and development tools to professionals and researchers and at the same time giving opportunities to people who are interested with this system to witness and experience it themselves by looking at how this mini biogas power plant works. There are 2 main objectives of this study being carried out; firstly to determine whether food wastes (canteen and cafeterias wastes) can produce methane gas (biogas) that can generate heat and electricity and secondly to establish how much methane gas (biogas) can be produced with the certain amount of the feedstock. It should be pointed out that this MBPP can generate 600kW electricity per day as this system can generate electricity about 25kW/h. The methane produced per day is approximately 180 cubic metres. The higher the wastes, the higher the amount of methane gas produced. The cow dung is used to increase the bacteria in the tank; the methane gas production will be higher if the bacteria breed