Effect of vane twist on the performance of dome swirlers for gas turbine airblast atomizers

For advanced gas turbine engines, two combustor systems, the lean premixed/prevaporized (LPP) and the rich burn/quick quench/lean burn (RQL) offer great potential for reducing NO(x) emissions. An important consideration for either concept is the development of an advanced fuel injection system that will provide a stable, efficient, and very uniform combustion system over a wide operating range. High-shear airblast fuel injectors for gas turbine combustors have exhibited superior atomization and mixing compared with pressure-atomizing fuel injectors. This improved mixing has lowered NO(x) emissions and the pattern factor, and has enabled combustors to alternate fuels while maintaining a stable, efficient combustion system. The performance of high-shear airblast fuel injectors is highly dependent on the design of the dome swirl vanes. The type of swirl vanes most widely used in gas turbine combustors are usually flat for ease of manufacture, but vanes with curvature will, in general, give superior aerodynamic performance. The design and performance of high-turning, low-loss curved dome swirl vanes with twist along the span are investigated. The twist induces a secondary vortex flow pattern which will improve the atomization of the fuel, thereby producing a more uniform fuel-air distribution. This uniform distribution will increase combustion efficiency while lowering NO(x) emissions. A systematic swirl vane design system is presented based on one-, two-, and three-dimensional flowfield calculations, with variations in vane-turning angle, rate of turning, vane solidity, and vane twist as design parameters

Reduction of Context Switches due to Task Synchronization in Uniprocessor and Multiprocessor Platform

The problem of frequent context switches in multitasking is a real scheduling overhead which wastes extra CPU cycles, memory and causes much delay in scheduling. This paper focuses on reducing the context switches that result due to blocking when jobs are required to synchronize. The Priority Ceiling Protocol (PCP) is used to synchronize the tasks in uniprocessor as well as multiprocessor platforms. The jobs are scheduled using Earliest Deadline First (EDF) policy. The simulation results show that the context switches are reduced by about 20% on an average using our technique of avoiding context switches due to blocking

Effectiveness of Benson relaxation therapy on prenatal anxiety among mothers in a tertiary care hospital, Kochi

Background: The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Benson relaxation therapy on prenatal anxiety among mothers. Methods: An experimental pre-test and post-test study were conducted among 30 antenatal mothers who were admitted to antenatal wards of a tertiary-level hospital. The antenatal mothers with gestational age 28 and above, with anxiety score above 21 according to the Prenatal Anxiety Screening Scale (PASS) were included in the study, and mothers with a history of substance dependence, psychotic disorders, or any other major psychiatric disorders, and epilepsy were excluded from the study. Probability sampling was used. Data were collected after ethical clearance and informed consent. Following to the pre-test, which includes a collection of demographic data, the antenatal mothers in the experimental group received the Benson relaxation therapy. And post-test was conducted among both groups on the fifteenth day. Results: The mean age group of the antenatal mothers were in age group of 26-33 years. 46.7% of samples have a secondary level of education. The majority (53.3%) are self-employed. Sixty percent of the mothers are primigravida. Fifty-seven percent are residing in a rural area and belong to joint family. There is a significant difference between the post-test score of the experimental and control group at the p=0.001 level. The Benson relaxation therapy is effective in reducing prenatal anxiety among antenatal mothers. Conclusions: Benson relaxation therapy is a simple, effective and mind-body relaxation technique to relieve anxiety among pregnant women

Wearing Gold: A Study on Select Malayalam Movies

Movies play a major role in the construction of cultures and customs. Rajasenan is a major figure of Malayalam cinema of the late twentieth century, especially when it comes to family entertainers. Family is a major social institution where changes can be initiated and that initiative can be something that would make greater impacts. This paper tries to analyze major Rajasenan movies of the late twentieth century and early twenty first century to study the creation of subtle narratives that would impact the use of gold in marriage and household and thus a construction of a set norm of how much gold a person can (should) ideally wear

Design and development of smart interoperable electric vehicle supply equipment for electric mobility

The transportation industry at present is moving towards electrification and the number of electric vehicles in the market increased with the different policies of the directorate. Consumers, who wish to contribute to green mobility are concerned about the limited availability of charging points due to high manufacturing costs and the interoperability issues related to smart charging. This work proposes an Internet of things-based low-cost, interoperable smart electric vehicle supply equipment for deploying in all charging stations. The device hardware is designed to monitor, analyze, and collect consumed energy by the vehicle and transfer this data to a connected network. The pre-defined messages associated with the firmware will help to record this data with a remote management server for further processing. The messages are defined in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which helps to overcome the interoperability issue. The device is smart because it can gather energy usage, detect device faults, and be intimate with the controller for a better operational environment. The associated management servers and mobile applications help to operate the smart device remotely and keep track of the usage statics. The developed low-cost, interoperable smart model is most suitable for two and three-wheeler vehicles

A study of the diagnostic effectiveness of repeated fine needle aspiration in thyroid and breast lesions

Background: Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is a relatively safe diagnostic tool with high sensitivity and specificity. Due to lesion inherent properties and lack of proper technique, adequate cellularity is not yielded in some instances, resulting in an inconclusive report. In such instances we have to go for repeat FNA to make a proper diagnosis. Repeat aspirations impose unnecessary workload on the lab and are distressful to the patients. The issue of repeat aspiration is largely unaddressed. Objectives were to identify the proportion of repeated fine needle aspirations in breast and thyroid lesions turning out to be diagnostic and to identify and describe the common factors leading to repeat fine needle aspiration.Methods: 190 cases of repeated FNA including both thyroid and breast lesions are included in the study. FNA done after an initial aspiration with inconclusive smear is considered as repeated FNA. History, clinical examination findings, findings in imaging studies, nature of aspirate obtained for each patient advised repeat FNA, are recorded. Proportion of repeat FNAs turning out to be diagnostic and the documented reasons for repeat were taken as the outcome measure.Results: 78% of repeat FNA in thyroid lesions and 50% of the repeat FNA in breast lesions were diagnostic. Inadequate cellularity, haemorrhagic aspirate and cystic change are the most common factors leading to repeat FNA.Conclusions: Since thyroid and breast are the most common sites where FNA is done and 64% of the total lesions are diagnostic, repeat FNA in all other sites are likely to yield a similar diagnostic outcome. Hence, repeat FNA is advisable in lesions which had initial non diagnostic result

Dynamic Voltage Scaling With Reduced Frequency Switching And Preemptions

Dynamic Voltage Scaling is an innovative technique for reducing the power consumption of a processor by utilizing its hardware functionality. Dynamic Voltage Scaling processors are mainly focusing on power management. Such processors can be switch between discrete frequency and voltage levels. The main challenges of Dynamic Voltage Scaling are increased number of preemptions and frequency switching. A part of dynamic energy as well as CPU time is lost due to these processes. To limit such processes, an algorithm is proposed which reduces both unwanted frequency switching and preemptions

Review on investigation of corrosion behavior of reinforced concrete with supplementary cementitious materials

Cement concrete is the most widely used material for various constructions. Properly designed and prepared concrete results in good strength and durability. Sometime these mixes are found to be inadequate, hence variety of admixtures are used along with cement. A certain percentage of cement will be replaced separately with metakaolin and silica fumes. Hence the flexural strength test of concrete and evaluation of corrosion behavior of the reinforcement can be performed. The study of flexural property of concrete will be conducted at 7 or 28 days characteristic strength with different replacement level of cement (i.e.0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%). Corrosion behavior of reinforcement will be evaluated based on half-cell potential. Concrete samples will be cured in either fresh water of 4% NaCl saline water for 7 or 28 days of curing period. We assumed that the addition of silica fumes and metakaolin will improve the flexural strength characteristics of concrete and corrosion resistivity of reinforcement. Keywords: Flexural strength, corrosion, metakaolin, silica fumes

Developing an Inclusive Education Game Using a Design Science Research Gestalt Method

As business firms seek a diverse talent pool to attain a competitive advantage, the need for inclusive education has become even more apparent across academic domains. An essential way to impart inclusive education today includes digital tools such as educational games. In this study, we apply the design science research (DSR) Gestalt methodology to develop an inclusive educational game that would advance learning for both male and female engineering students. We also assess the game’s efficacy in achieving performance improvements using a survey-based experimental design. Results demonstrate that the game resulted in greater student performance compared to traditional round-table discussions. Additionally, the game had a greater positive impact on female students’ performance compared to male students. The study shows that one can apply the DSR gestalt method to develop gender-inclusive educational games

Unleashing the Power of Deep Attention Networks: A Comprehensive Approach for Enhanced Artificial Intelligence

Deep learning has revolutionized the field of artificial intelligence by achieving state-of-the-art performance on a variety of complex tasks. Attention mechanisms have emerged as a powerful tool to enhance the capabilities of deep neural networks by enabling them to selectively focus on relevant information. In this article, we propose a novel artificial intelligence algorithm called Deep Attention Networks (DANs), which associate multiple attention mechanisms to improve performance on interesting tasks. We evaluate DANs on benchmark datasets in natural language processing, computer vision, and speech recognition and demonstrate superior results compared to existing state-of-the-art approaches. Our approach opens up new possibilities for advancing the field of artificial intelligence and holds promise for various real-world applications. Overall, our results demonstrate the effectiveness and potential of DANs for various AI applications, and highlight the power of combining deep neural networks with attention mechanisms