Selection of Optimal Conditions of Inulin Extraction from Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus Tuberosus L.) Tubers by using Ultrasonic Water Bath

Ultrasonic extraction is an inexpensive, simple and efficient alternative to conventional extraction techniques, as compared with other novel extraction techniques such as microwave-assisted extraction & supercritical fluid extraction techniques, the ultrasound apparatus is cheaper and its operation is easier. Ultrasound assisted extraction has risen rapidly in the latest decade, and for most applications it has proven to be effective compared to traditional extraction techniques. In this paper, a method of ultrasonic-assisted extraction was used to extract Inulin from tubers of Jerusalem artichoke, which have been reported to have several medicinal properties and uses. Inulin is a storage carbohydrate found in many plants especially in chicory root, Jerusalem artichoke and dahlia tuber. In this study, the effect of time, temperature, pH and solid to liquid ratio on Inulin extraction from Jerusalem artichoke tubers by using ultrasonic water bath. The highest yield of Inulin were investigated from Jerusalem artichoke tuber was (99.47%) at temperature of 70°C, pH=7, 60 min and ratio of solid to solvent was (10gm/100ml). Then, The UV detector by colorimetric method with vanillin–sulfuric acid was used for the quantification of Inulin

The Impact of Dumping Policy on the Food Gap of Chicken Meat in Iraq For the Period (2004-2019) - Turkish Imports Of Chicken Meat a Case Study

Purpose: As a result of the sudden and ill-considered trade openness of Iraq after 2003 to the countries of the world in general and the neighboring countries in particular, and in the absence of the necessary support for the national productive forces and the lack of effective standardization and quality control devices, this led to the exposure of most local products, especially agricultural ones, to decline and inability On the competition and thus dumping the Iraqi market, especially the agricultural products, with imported products, this study came to find out the effect that dumping has on the local production of chicken meat and the impact of that impact on the size of the food gap, and whether the results of the practical study will be in accordance with the logic of economic theory.   Theoretical framework: The concept of dumping, its causes and the difference between it and competition, the WTO position of dumping, and the concept of the food gap were also discussed.   Design/methodology/approach: The data was collected from its official sources, and then the mathematical equations were developed according to economic theory and logic, and using the (EViews) program, the final results were obtained, which were compatible with the logic of economic theory.   Findings: The results of the study proved that when the dumping of chicken meat increased by (1%), the food gap of chicken meat increased by (5.1%).   Research, Practical & Social implications: This study contributes to proving the negative impact of dumping resulting from commercial exposure or unstudied commercial openness, and thus its impact on the food security of the Iraqi community. Originality/value: This research is the first of its kind in the field of agricultural economics, as it links the food gap and dumping policy in a theoretical and practical way

Design of triple-band h slot patch antenna

This paper attempts to design a triple band h-slot antenna by using feed line technique. These bands cover GSM mobile phone system (0.9 and 1.8 GHz) and ISM band which is used for Bluetooth and wireless local area network bands applications. The CST microwave studio software is used as a tool for simulation. This antenna is an attractive candidate for important applications like mobile phone communication systems, mobile phone jammer application, and so on

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE ASSESSMENT TOOLS BASED ON THE PEOPLES FRAMEWORK: WEB APP AND DESKTOP SOFTWARE

Measuring community resilience has been an exploding field of inquiry in the last decade. Many options for measuring resilience ranging from specific measurements to frameworks can be found in literature. Among the different options available, indicators are perceived as an important instrument to assess the resilience of communities due to the simplicity involved in the process. This paper introduces indicator-based software tools to compute the resilience of communities. The tools are implemented in the form of web and desktop application that is accessible from any platform. The algorithm adopted in these tools is based on the PEOPLES framework. PEOPLES is a framework for defining and measuring the resilience of communities at various scales. The presented tools allow the user to choose both the type of hazard and community (rural, urban, industry) against which the resilience is measured. These inputs identify what indicators should be considered and suggest what weighting factor each indicator should take. The software tools take as inputs the performance of the indicators before and after a disaster event as well as the restoration time. The output is presented in the form of a resilience curve of the whole community. The developed tools have been tested to assess the level of resilience of San Francisco. Results of the case study show that the developed tools allow decision makers to derive key aspects on which most effort should be placed to improve their community resilience

A new approach to Multi-hazard analysis

Multi-hazard engineering is increasingly recognized as a serious worldwide concern. In this paper, the principle of multi-hazard is applied to an essential steel structure (a hospital) located in California, US. The studied structure is assumed to be exposed to a sequence of three different cascading hazards (earthquake, blast, and fire). First, non-linear time-history analyses are performed and the seismic response of the structure is evaluated. The seismic input is assumed to cause damage to the hospital’s power supply which it turns to generate an explosion. The probability of explosion is estimated accounting for the probabilities of fuel leakage, fuel concentration, and ignition. A set of twelve blast intensity levels is considered in the analysis, corresponding to the different quantity of fuel content inside the tank. Afterward, a fire hazard is generated following the explosion, whose intensity level is evaluated using the compartmental heat flux. The effect of the fire is translated into an increase in the steel’s temperature, and damage is consequently evaluated. A methodology is proposed to accumulate the cascading damage caused by multi-hazard based on the conditional probability of occurrence. This method is capable of predicting the damage severity of the structural and non-structural components with a high accuracy. The proposed multi-hazard method is considered a significant step in improving the accuracy of loss estimation and in providing risk mitigation measures within the resilience-based environment. The results obtained in this paper verify the effectiveness and the practicality of the proposed method

Resilience Assessment of Urban Communities

The multiple uncertainties of both natural and man-made disasters have prompted increased attention in the topic of resilience engineering. In this paper, an indicator-based method for measuring urban community resilience is proposed. The method is based on the PEOPLES framework, which is a hierarchical framework for defining disaster resilience of communities at various scales. It consists of seven dimensions summarized with the acronym PEOPLES: Population; Environment; Organized governmental services; Physical infrastructures; Lifestyle; Economic; and Social capital. Each of the dimensions is split into several components and indicators, which have been derived by the authors or collected from a wide range of literature. Each indicator is represented using a performance function, which portrays the functionality of the indicator in time. Higher functionality of the indicator leads to higher resilience of the community. These functions can be constructed in a systematic manner using damage and restoration parameters. The aggregation of the performance functions, passing through the different hierarchical levels of PEOPLES framework, leads to one function that represents the dynamic performance of the analysed community. This paper also introduces a matrix-based interdependency technique that serves as a weighting scheme for the different indicators. As a case study, the proposed methodology is applied to the city of San Francisco for which a resilience curve and a resilience metric have been computed

Design and analysis of triple-band microstrip patch antenna with h-shaped slots

Multi-band antennas are very important in many application systems such as mobile phone jammer. A new shape triple-band microstrip antenna is proposed in this paper. By embedding h-shaped slots placed in the centre of a microstrip patch, the triple-band character can be achieved. Procedures to select the length and location of the h-shaped slots were discussed in detail. The required antenna gain, input impedance, radiation pattern and return losses were achieved

Deterministic and fuzzy-based methods to evaluate community resilience

Community resilience is becoming a growing concern for authorities and decision makers. This paper introduces two indicator-based methods to evaluate the resilience of communities based on the PEOPLES framework. PEOPLES is a multi-layered framework that defines community resilience using seven dimensions. Each of the dimensions is described through a set of resilience indicators collected from literature and they are linked to a measure allowing the analytical computation of the indicator’s performance. The first method proposed in this paper requires data on previous disasters as an input and returns as output a performance function for each indicator and a performance function for the whole community. The second method exploits a knowledge-based fuzzy modeling for its implementation. This method allows a quantitative evaluation of the PEOPLES indicators using descriptive knowledge rather than deterministic data including the uncertainty involved in the analysis. The output of the fuzzy-based method is a resilience index for each indicator as well as a resilience index for the community. The paper also introduces an open source online tool in which the first method is implemented. A case study illustrating the application of the first method and the usage of the tool is also provided in the paper

Resilience of critical structures, infrastructure, and communities

In recent years, the concept of resilience has been introduced to the field of engineering as it relates to disaster mitigation and management. However, the built environment is only one element that supports community functionality. Maintaining community functionality during and after a disaster, defined as resilience, is influenced by multiple components. This report summarizes the research activities of the first two years of an ongoing collaboration between the Politecnico di Torino and the University of California, Berkeley, in the field of disaster resilience. Chapter 1 focuses on the economic dimension of disaster resilience with an application to the San Francisco Bay Area; Chapter 2 analyzes the option of using base-isolation systems to improve the resilience of hospitals and school buildings; Chapter 3 investigates the possibility to adopt discrete event simulation models and a meta-model to measure the resilience of the emergency department of a hospital; Chapter 4 applies the meta-model developed in Chapter 3 to the hospital network in the San Francisco Bay Area, showing the potential of the model for design purposes Chapter 5 uses a questionnaire combined with factorial analysis to evaluate the resilience of a hospital; Chapter 6 applies the concept of agent-based models to analyze the performance of socio-technical networks during an emergency. Two applications are shown: a museum and a train station; Chapter 7 defines restoration fragility functions as tools to measure uncertainties in the restoration process; and Chapter 8 focuses on modeling infrastructure interdependencies using temporal networks at different spatial scales

PEOPLES: indicator based tool to compute community resilience

This paper introduces a new methodology to evaluate the resilience of communities. The methodology is based on the PEOPLES framework and it makes use of resilience indicators to evaluate community resilience. The methodology requires data for the indicators as input and returns a resilience function as an output. The resilience function shows the serviceability of the community for a given period of time following the disaster. This methodology has been implemented in the form of two software tools. The first one is a web app that is accessible at http://www.resiltronics.org/PEOPLES/login.php or http://borispio.ddns.net/PEOPLES/login.php while the other is a desktop software. The output quality provided by the tools is not compromised with their usage simplicity. Both softwares are meant to assist the user to use the introduced resilience framework by offering a user-friendly interface. As a case study, the resilience of the city of San Francisco city has been evaluated using both tools