20,772 research outputs found

    An application of artificial neural network classifier for medical diagnosis

    Get PDF
    In recent year, various models have been proposed for medical diagnosis, which broadly can be classified into physical-based approaches and statistical-based approaches. Uncertainty and imprecision are the most important problems in medical diagnosis, other many problems in medical diagnostic domains need to be represented at varying degrees of diagnosis to be solved. Moreover, classification is very important in computer-aided medical diagnosis. In this respect, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) have been successfully applied and with no doubt, they provide the ability and potentials to diagnose the diseases. Therefore, this research focuses on using ANN to classify medical data. ANN model with two layers of tunable weights were used and trained using four different backpropagation algorithms while are the gradient descent(GD), gradient descent with momentum(GDM), gradient descent with adaptive learning rate(GDA) and gradient descent with momentum and adaptive learning rate(GDX). The network was used to classify three sets of medical data taken from UCI machine learning repository. The ability of all training algorithms tested and compared to each other on all datasets. Simulation results proved the ability of ANN for medical data classification with high accuracy and excellent performance and efficiency. This research provides the possibility of reduce costs and human resources. Increasing speed to find the results of medical analysis by using ANN also contributes in saving time for both physicians and patient

    Fate and occurrence of alkylphenolic compounds in sewage sludges determined by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

    Get PDF
    This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & Francis.An analytical method has been developed and applied to determine the concentrations of the nonionic alkylphenol polyethoxylate surfactants and their metabolites, alkylphenoxy carboxylates and alkyphenols, in sewage sludges. The compounds were extracted with methanol/acetone (1:1 v/v) from sludge, and concentrated extracts were cleaned by silica solid‐phase extraction prior to determination by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. The recoveries, determined by spiking sewage sludge at two concentrations, ranged from 51% to 89% with method detection limits from 6 ”g kg−1 to 60 ”g kg−1. The methodology was subsequently applied to sludge samples obtained from a carbonaceous activated sludge plant, a nitrifying/denitrifying activated sludge plant and a nitrifying/denitrifying activated sludge plant with phosphorus removal. Concentrations of nonylphenolic compounds were two to three times higher than their octyl analogues. Long‐chain nonylphenol polyethoxylates (NP3–12EO) ranged from 16 ”g kg−1 to 11754 ”g kg−1. The estrogenic metabolite nonylphenol was present at concentrations ranging from 33 ”g kg−1 to 6696 ”g kg−1.Public Utilities Board of Singapore, Thames Water and Yorkshire Water

    Recycling of inorganic waste in monolithic and cellular glass-based materials for structural and functional applications

    Get PDF
    The stabilization of inorganic waste of various nature and origin, in glasses, has been a key strategy for environmental protection for the last decades. When properly formulated, glasses may retain many inorganic contaminants permanently, but it must be acknowledged that some criticism remains, mainly concerning costs and energy use. As a consequence, the sustainability of vitrification largely relies on the conversion of waste glasses into new, usable and marketable glass-based materials, in the form of monolithic and cellular glass-ceramics. The effective conversion in turn depends on the simultaneous control of both starting materials and manufacturing processes. While silica-rich waste favours the obtainment of glass, iron-rich wastes affect the functionalities, influencing the porosity in cellular glass-based materials as well as catalytic, magnetic, optical and electrical properties. Engineered formulations may lead to important reductions of processing times and temperatures, in the transformation of waste-derived glasses into glass-ceramics, or even bring interesting shortcuts. Direct sintering of wastes, combined with recycled glasses, as an example, has been proven as a valid low-cost alternative for glass-ceramic manufacturing, for wastes with limited hazardousness. The present paper is aimed at providing an up-to-date overview of the correlation between formulations, manufacturing technologies and properties of most recent waste-derived, glass-based materials

    Path planning algorithm for a car like robot based on MILP method

    Get PDF
    This project is presents an algorithm for path planning optimal routes mobile robot “like a car” to a target in unknown environment. The proposed algorithm allows a mobile robot to navigate through static obstacles and finding the path in order to reach the target without collision. This algorithm provides the robot the possibility to move from the initial position to the final position (target). The proposed path finding strategy is to use mathematical programming techniques to find the optimal path between to state for mobile robot designed in unknown environment with stationary obstacles. Formulation of the basic problems is to have the vehicle moved from the initial dynamic state to a state without colliding with each other, while at the same time avoiding other stationary obstacles. It is shown that this problem can be rewritten as a linear program with mixed integer / linear constraints that account for the collision avoidance. This approach is that the path optimization can be easily solved using the CPLEX optimization software with AMPL interface / MATLAB. The final phases are the design and build coalitions of linear programs and binary constraints to avoid collision with obstacles by Integer Mixed Linear Program (MILP). The findings of this research have shown that the MILP method can be used in the path planning problem in terms of finding a safe and shortest path. This has been combined with collision avoidance constraints to form a mixed integer linear program, which can be solved by a commercial software package

    Marine debris composition in Batu Pahat, Johor: a comparison between Sungai Lurus and Minyak Beku beaches

    Get PDF
    The increment of population growth and rapid economic development near the beaches area enhance the generation of marine debris annually thus has become an environmental concern. In BatuPahat, Johor, determination ofmarine debris compositions on the beach provide a preliminary caution on the level of contamination and also enable to identify the most abundant waste. For this study, a comparison between two beaches namely Sungai Lurus and Minyak Beku in Batu Pahat district and located in the same coastline, were carried out. The composition, density and moisture content of the marine debris collected were determined The results demonstrated that plastic waste was the most abundant item at 80% of the total amount of debris and represents 54% by weight of marine debris composition in Sungai Lurus beach. Meanwhile, glass waste predominates at 60% with 39% by weight of marine debris composition at MinyakBeku beach. The moisture content of debris composition at Minyak Beku beach represents up to 12.61% compared to 8.68% at Sungai Lurus beach. High density of debris composition was obtained at Minyak Beku beach with 94.56kg/m followed by 66.15kg/m3 at Sungai Lurus beach. As a conclusion, the economic activities and solid waste management along the beaches highly influence the amount of marine debris composition at Sungai Lurus and Minyak Beku beaches. Due to the number of marine debris that is still littered along the beaches has indicated that environmental concerns among Malaysian are still low

    In silico simulation of blood glucose-insulin dynamics using MATLAB-Simulink

    Get PDF
    Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major public health concern in Malaysia and it continuously increases over years. Based on International Diabetes Federation, there are rising numbers of people having diabetes with 3.6 million people in Malaysia and 463 million people in the world [1]. The National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2019 has shown that the diabetes in Malaysia has increased from 13.4% in 2015 to 18.3% in 2019 [2]. This can significantly increase the cost in diabetes treatment and management

    Sewage sludge as a deposit inhibitor when co-fired with high potassium fuels

    Get PDF
    The objective of this work is to survey the fate of potassium in the gas phase of a fluidised bed boiler and gain deeper understanding of the involved mechanisms during co-firing of municipal sewage sludge with biomass containing high amounts of potassium and chlorine. The results show that formation of alkali chlorides in the flue gas and corrosive deposits on heat transfer surfaces can be controlled by addition of municipal sewage sludge even though the fuel is highly contaminated with chlorine. The beneficial effects are partly due to the content of sulphur in the sludge, partly to the properties of the sludge ash. The sludge ash consists of both crystalline and amorphous phases. It contains silica, aluminium, calcium, iron and phosphorus which all are involved in the capture of potassium. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

    ADVANCING THE SEPARATION SCIENCES THROUGH THE DELIVERY OF NEW MATERIALS, TECHNOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY.

    Get PDF
    A thesis and collection of works submitted to Plymouth University in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF SCIENC

    Synthesis and characterization of iron and iron nitride microtubes obtained from biogenic iron oxide

    Get PDF
    With the aim to obtain iron tubular microstructures attractive for various applications, we have used a natural biogenic iron ochre as a raw material and explore various procedures and experimental conditions to achieve our goal. Our experiments included reduction, nitridation and characterization of microtubes derived from biogenic iron ochre. Various temperatures of reduction under streams of H2/N2 or NH3 were tested. Our results show that the tubular structure is maintained after reduction of the natural material under H2/N2. In addition, ammonia was not produced under our experimental conditions, and as expected, hydrogen reduced the material. However, the treatment under NH3 reduces the material and allows the incorporation of nitrogen into the structure of the solid yielding iron nitride microtubes. Reduced and nitrided microstructures were successfully obtained from natural biogenic iron ochre. A temperature of 500 °C seems to be suitable to expose the calcined biogenic iron ochre under H2/N2 for 4 h or under ammonia for 8 h to obtain reduced or nitrided microtubes, respectively. The stability of the tubular structure during reduction/reduction–nitridation is maintained under both treatments. Further interesting applications of this natural biomaterial could be envisaged
    • 

    corecore