A computerized symbolic integration technique for development of triangular and quadrilateral composite shallow-shell finite elements

Computerized symbolic integration was used in conjunction with group-theoretic techniques to obtain analytic expressions for the stiffness, geometric stiffness, consistent mass, and consistent load matrices of composite shallow shell structural elements. The elements are shear flexible and have variable curvature. A stiffness (displacement) formulation was used with the fundamental unknowns consisting of both the displacement and rotation components of the reference surface of the shell. The triangular elements have six and ten nodes; the quadrilateral elements have four and eight nodes and can have internal degrees of freedom associated with displacement modes which vanish along the edges of the element (bubble modes). The stiffness, geometric stiffness, consistent mass, and consistent load coefficients are expressed as linear combinations of integrals (over the element domain) whose integrands are products of shape functions and their derivatives. The evaluation of the elemental matrices is divided into two separate problems - determination of the coefficients in the linear combination and evaluation of the integrals. The integrals are performed symbolically by using the symbolic-and-algebraic-manipulation language MACSYMA. The efficiency of using symbolic integration in the element development is demonstrated by comparing the number of floating-point arithmetic operations required in this approach with those required by a commonly used numerical quadrature technique

Morphometric and Phylogenic Analysis of Six Population Indonesian Local Goats

The research objectives were to characterize morphometric and genetic distance between populations of Indonesian local goats. The morphological discriminant and canonical analysis were carried out to estimate the phylogenic relationship and determine the discriminant variable between Benggala goats (n= 96), Marica (n= 60), Jawarandu (n= 94), (Kacang (n= 217), Muara (n= 30) and Samosir (n= 42). Discriminant analysis used to clasify body weight and body measurements. In the analysis of variance showed that body weight and body measurement (body length, height at withers, thorax width, thorax height, hert girth, skull width and height, tail length and width, ear length and width) of Muara goats was higher (P<0.05) compared to the other groups, and the lowest was in Marica goats. The smallest genetic distance was between Marica and Samosir (11.207) and the highest were between Muara and Benggala (255.110). The highest similarity between individual within population was found in Kacang (99.28%) and the lowest in Samosir (82.50%). The canonical analysis showed high correlation on canon circumference, body weight, skull width, skull height, and tail width variables so these six variables can be used as distinguishing variables among population. The result from Mahalonobis distance for phenogram tree and canonical analysis showed that six populations of Indonesian local goats were divided into six breed of goats: the first was Muara, the second was Jawarandu, the third was Kacang, the fourth was Benggala, the fifth was Samosir and the sixth was Marica goats. The diversity of body size and body weight of goats was observed quite large, so the chances of increasing productivity could be made through selection and mating programs

Corrosion study of pipeline material for seabed sediment in tropical climate

Corrosive environments such as marine sediments can cause corrosion to steel pipelines at any time when certain conditions are met. Seabed sediment could cause severe corrosion damage due to its corrosiveness to the pipelines buried under it. Many consequences could take place in case if there is incident in oil/gas pipelines. Successfully identifying elements of corrosion in marine sediment would enhance the future of steel structure protection and monitoring systems. This article focuses on the behaviour of corrosion rate of steel located near shore environment and the aim is to determine the effect of sediment on corrosion of steel. To investigate that, simulated near shore sediment conditions have been used where the steel coupons buried in sediments which have different characteristics. Weight loss technique has been implemented to determine the weight loss rate of the steel specimens. Based on the results of this study, metal weight loss increases as the duration of exposure to seabed sediment environment become longer. The sea sediment simulated condition has given significant levels of corrosion. Conclusively, the corrosion rate of steel in seabed sediment located in tropical region is complicated and further studies are suggested

Non-Imaging Acoustical Properties in Monitoring Arteriovenous Hemodialysis Access. a Review

The limitations of the gold standard angiography technique in arteriovenous access surveillance have opened a gap for researchers to find the best way to monitor this condition with low-cost, non-invasive and continuous bedside monitoring. The phonoangiography technique has been developed prior to these limits. This measurement and monitoring technique, associated with intelligence signal processing, promises better analysis for early detection of hemodialysis access problems, such as stenosis and thrombosis. Some research groups have shown that the phonoangiography technique could identify as many as 20% of vascular diameter changes and also its frequency characteristics due to hemodialysis access problems. The frequency characteristics of these acoustical signals are presented and discussed in detail to understand the association with the stenosis level, blood flows, sensor locations, fundamental frequency bands of normal and abnormal conditions, and also the spectral energy produced. This promising technique could be used in the near future as a tool for pre-diagnosis of arteriovenous access before any further access correction by surgical techniques is required. This paper provides an extensive review of various arteriovenous access monitoring techniques based on non-imaging acoustical properties

Burning Skin Detection System in Human Body

Early accurate burn depth diagnosis is crucial for selecting the appropriate clinical intervention strategies and assessing burn patient prognosis quality. However, with limited diagnostic accuracy, the current burn depth diagnosis approach still primarily relies on the empirical subjective assessment of clinicians. With the quick development of artificial intelligence technology, integration of deep learning algorithms with image analysis technology can more accurately identify and evaluate the information in medical images. The objective of the work is to detect and classify burn area in medical images using an unsupervised deep learning algorithm. The main contribution is to developing computations using one of the deep learning algorithm. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework, experiments are performed on the benchmark to evaluate system stability. The results indicate that, the proposed system is simple and suits real life applications. The system accuracy was 75%, when compared with some of the state-of-the-art techniques

Energy transduction in Propionibacterium acnes

1. Propionibacterium acnes was shown to be sensitive to valinomycin thus enabling the membrane potential (∆Ψ) generated under a variety of conditions to be measured by determining the distribution of K⁺ across the membrane in the presence of valinomycin.2. Under anaerobic conditions, both anaerobically- and aerobically-grown P. acnes generated a ∆Ψ of approximately -140 mV. Oxygen stimulated the generation of the ∆Ψ in both anaerobically- and aerobically-grown cells. The effect of inhibitors of oxidative phosphorylation on the ∆Ψ generated was studied.3. Anaerobically- and aerobically-grown P. acnes were capable of uncoupler-stimulated respiration. The effect of various inhibitors on respiration was studied.4. Respiration-driven H⁺ translocation was demonstrated in both anaerobically- and aerobically-grown P. acnes. The →H⁺/O ratios obtained were consistent with the presence of one coupling site on the electron transport chain. The effect of inhibitors on respiration-driven H⁺ translocation was studied.5. Anaerobically- and aerobically-grown P. acnes contained cytochromes b, a₁, d and o.6. Attempts to characterize the ATPase from P. acnes and to demonstrate its sensitivity to classical energy-transfer inhibitors were unsuccessful.7. Using the results obtained from the various approaches, a role for oxygen in the energy transduction process of P. acnes was proposed