Microstructure Characterisation of Rapidly Solidified Al-Ni-Cr and Si-Ge Alloy Powders.

Al-Ni and Si-Ge alloys were subject to microstructure and crystal characterisation techniques following rapid solidification processes. Firstly, Al-25 at.% Ni was synthesised via close-coupled gas atomization and sieved into standard size fractions to investigate the microstructural effect of cooling rate. Cooling rate in the Al-Ni samples was found to affect not only the microstructure morphology but also the phase fractions. Al-23.5 at.% Ni-1.5 at.% Cr samples were also created using the same method to investigate the changes in the microstructure with the addition of Cr. When Cr was added to the alloy the same changes in microstructure and phase fraction was found with a change in cooling rate but the addition of a fourth phase: Al13Cr2 was revealed. While Cr doping has previously proven to enhance catalytic activity this study was conducted to understand the mechanism(s) that contribute to this increase in activity. The formation of better defined dendrites, and the addition Al-rich Al13Cr2 phase, means that after leaching a better nanoporous structure is achieved, which may explain the enhanced catalytic activity that has previously been observed in Cr-doped Al-Ni catalysts. Si-30 wt.% Ge samples were created using a 6.5m drop tube and sieved into size fractions to understand the effect of cooling rate and solidification sequence. As the cooling rate increased finer grains are found as expected in rapid solidification. Partitioning however, does not follow the expected trend; a greater amount of partitioning was found in the faster cooled samples which is characteristic with the absence of solute trapping, instead it is hypothesised that the mechanism responsible is back-diffusion. Si-Ge is expected to solidify as a solid solution, but by using EDX analysis in the TEM small regions of preferred stoichiometry were observed. An interesting finding was that the Si-60 at.% Ge region, potentially Ge3Si2, was also chemically disordered like the rest of the alloy

Detecting Spam Review through Spammer’s Behavior Analysis

Online reviews about the purchase of a product or services provided have become the main source of user opinions. To gain profit or fame usually spam reviews are written to promote or demote some target products or services. This practice is known as review spamming. In the last few years, different methods have been suggested to solve the problem of review spamming but there is still a need to introduce new spam review detection method to improve accuracy results. In this work, researchers have studied six different spammer behavioral features and analyzed the proposed spam review detection method using weight method. An experimental evaluation was conducted on a benchmark dataset and achieved 84.5% accuracy

Climate Change and Drought: Impact of Food Insecurity on Gender Based Vulnerability in District Tharparkar

Climate change has now become a reality that has intensified the sufferings of people living in arid ecosystems. Decrease in rainfall, rise in temperature and increase in the frequency of extreme events are some of the changes observed in the semi-arid desert of district Tharparkar. For thousands of years, people of Tharparkar are coping with drought and aridity of the land by using indigenous knowledge. However, global changes in the climatic pattern and deterioration of social and economic conditions have pushed the inhabitants of this arid region into extreme vulnerable situation. This paper investigates the link between climate-induced natural disasters, particularly drought, from the perspective of changing climate patterns which have resulted in food insecurity and water scarcity. The paper analyses the rainfall pattern in the last 38 years—dividing it into two periods i.e. from 1975-1994 and 1995-2014. The findings of the paper have challenged the prevailing notions about aridity and rainfall patterns in Tharparkar district. The research found that there is an increase in average annual precipitation in the district with erratic patterns. Thus, the nature of drought in the district has changed from its historic pattern of less or no rainfall to more but erratic rainfall that is more threatening to livelihoods of the people that in turn have multiplier effect on water and food insecurity. In particularly, women are more vulnerable in the absence of social security and lack of basic necessities for their survival amidst drought. For instance, traditionally the burden of managing water resources falls on women, which leads to an increased work load during the time of drought and also water scarcity. JEL Classification: Q54, Q56, Q25, I30 Keywords: Climate, Environment and Development, Drought, Water, Povert

Re-recurrent Dermatofibrosarcomaprotuberans of the chest wall.

Dermatofibrosarcomaprotuberans is a rare, soft tissue tumour with high rate of recurrence. It is locally aggressive, with a low rate of metastasis. We describe the case of a 42 year old man who presented with a re-recurrent, large tumour situated on the anterior chest wall in the sternal region. We did a wide local excision and covered the resulting defect by using bilateral, pectoralis major myocutaneous flaps. Histopathology and immunohistochemical staining findings were consistent with the diagnosis of Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberance. Post operatively the patient was treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy

Automated planning for pathfinding in real-time strategy games

This thesis is focused on the design of a new path planning algorithm to solve path planning problems in dynamic, partially observable and real-time environments such as Real-Time Strategy(RTS) games. The emphasis is put on fast action selection motivating the use of Monte-Carlo planning techniques. Three main contributions are presented in this thesis. The first contribution is a Monte-Carlo planning technique, called MCRT, that performs selective action sampling and limits how many times a particular state-action pair is explored to balance the trade-off between exploration of new actions and exploitation of the current best action. The thesis also presents two variations of MCRT as the second contribution. The first variation of MCRT randomly selects an action as a sample at each state seen during the look-ahead search. The second variation, called MCRT-CAS, performs the selective action sampling using corridors. The third contribution is the design of four real-time path planners that exploit MCRT and its variations to solve path planning problems in real-time. Three of these planners are empirically evaluated using four standard pathfinding benchmarks (and over 1000 instances). Performance of these three planners is compared against two recent rival algorithms (Real-time D*-Lite (RTD) and Local Search Space-Learning Real-Time A* (LSS-LRTA)). These rival algorithms are based on real-time heuristic search. The results show that a variation of MOCART, called MOCART-CAS, performs action selection significantly faster than the rival planners. The fourth planner, called the MG-MOCART planner, is evaluated using a typical Real-Time Strategy game. The MG-MOCART planner can solve the path planning problems with multiple goals. This planner is compared against four rivals: Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees (UCT), LSS-LRTA, Real-Time Dynamic Programming (RTDP) and a rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) planner. The performance is measured using score and planning cost. The results show that the MG-MOCART planner performs better than its rival techniques with respect to score and planning cost.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Arthroscopic removal of loose bodies in synovial chondromatosis of shoulder joint, unusual location of rare disease: A case report and literature review

Introduction: Synovial chondromatosis is a benign mono-articular arthropathy affecting synovial joints. It mostly affects knee joint, followed by hip, elbow and wrist and is rarely reported for shoulder joint. The exact pathogenesis is not known. Usual symptoms are pain, difficulty in movement due to mechanical obstruction. The classic treatment is arthrotomy, removal of chondromatoid loose bodies and synovectomy. With recent advances arthroscopic removal of the chondromatoid loose bodies is a good option with relatively better post op rehabilitation and faster recovery.Case presentation: 20 years old gentleman presented to clinic with history of pain in right shoulder for 2 years and decreased range of motion. There was no history of trauma or fever. Work up done and diagnosed with synovial chondromatosis. Arthroscopic removal of chondromatoid loose bodies and synovectomy was done. More than 120 loose bodies were removed. On two (2) years follow-up patient is pain free and having full range of motion at right shoulder joint.Discussion: Synovial chondromatosis is rare in shoulder joint. The Primary synovial chondromatosis of unknown etiology, and secondary synovial chondromatosis due to degenerative joint disease. Classic treatment is arthrotomy and synovectomy. With recent advances, arthroscopic removal of loose bodies and synovectomy is also a good option for its treatment. In literature only few cases have been reported treated with arthroscopic removal of loose bodies and synovectomy.Conclusion: Arthroscopic treatment of synovial chondromatosis is a good option if expertise is available. It causes less surgical trauma, better visualization during surgery, early recovery

Relationship of Risk Premium with Expected Volatility and Unexpected Volatility in Developing and Developed Economies

After application of ARIMA model to monthly risk premium and Threshold GARCH-In-Mean (TGARCH-M) models to daily risk premium of developed economies i.e. USA, UK, Germany, France and Canada and developing economies i.e. Pakistan, India, Malaysia and China over a period from January 2000 to December 2014, this study reported that in monthly data relationship between risk premium and expected volatility is negative in Pakistan: positive in Indonesia and Canada while insignificant in all other countries. The relationship between risk premium and unexpected volatility is negative in all the countries except Pakistan and China where it is insignificant while positive in USA. By the application of asymmetric volatility model on daily data for the same span, the relationship between risk premium and expected volatility is negative and significant in UK and France while this relationship is insignificant in all other countries. The study also indicates that the arrival of bad news has a greater impact on conditional volatility than the arrival of good news in all the economies whether developing or developed

Impact of modernization on gender roles: a study of advocates in Muzaffar Garh

The present study has been conducted to view the impact of modernization on gender roles. This was a quantitative study. The researcher has selected the area of Muzaffar Garh, And one hundred Advocates of Muzaffar garh are respondents. The researcher has study the socialization, decision-making, choice of marriage and household duties. Gender roles have been changed at a great extent due to modernization. Education played an important role for the progress and change in gender roles. The question comes in mind that is modernization good or bad. It had changed traditional gender roles. Now females have equal right in decision making. Females have choice to marriage and equal opportunity in education, and have easily access to university. Socialization of children and liberty are influenced due to modernization. It is concluded that male and female both are doing work out of home and in the home, due to which there have been created a gap and socialization of children is influenced. Our morals, values have remained back and we are not thinking about it. Females have choice to marriage, and male do not feel any hesitation to do house work. Modernization, mass media, technology and education have played important role to change gender roles