Improving out-of-plane strength and ductility of unreinforced masonry walls in low-rise buildings by centrally applied FRP strip
February 2010
The seismic collapse of a low-rise unreinforced masonry (URM) building is initiated by the out-of-plane failure of walls at roof level. The theoretical basis of this engineering problem is presented. The available strength and ductility of a URM wall is presented, which was tested under reversed loads to simulate seismic effects. It was seen that both ductility and strength need to be improved. Another geometrically...
Experimental and numerical analysis of end anchored steel plate and CFRP laminate flexurally strengthened r. c. beams
February 2010
End anchors have been shown to significantly reduce premature plate end debonding failure of plate bonded strengthened reinforced concrete (r. c.) beams. One of the main interest in designing end anchors is to determine the minimum or optimal length of end anchors for a given thickness and height of the end anchor. This paper presents experimental and numerical studies in determining those optimum lengths for steel...
Modification of gravitational field equation and rational solution to cosmological puzzles
February 2010
The present article has systematically solved the problem of galaxy formation and some significant cosmological puzzles. First a mistake with Einstein’s equation of gravitational field is corrected, next space-time is proved to be infinite, cosmic expansion and contraction are proved to be in circles, the singular point of big bang is eliminated naturally, celestial bodies and galaxies are proved growing up with...
Evaluation of the 137Cs activity-depth profiles by the diffusion-convection model
February 2010
The diffusion-convection model of 137Cs transport has been used to evaluate the activity-depth profiles of soils in southwestern Nigeria in this study. The experimentally determined depth profiles were fitted into the diffusion-convection equation to obtain the diffusion coefficient D and the convective velocity υ. Results obtained showed that the range of the diffusion coefficient was 0.72 – 1.02...
Fast and efficient use of geophysical and geotechnical data in urban microzonation studies at small scales: Using Sisli/Istanbul (Turkey) as example
February 2010
The main purpose of this study is to provide the combined use of geophysical and geotechnical data in context of microzonation. Earthquake occurrences on the North Anatolian Fault, being usually characterized and well documented in history, a time dependent model can be reasonably used for the probabilistic assessment of the seismic hazard in Istanbul. For the study area, the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis was...
Natural radioactivity and dose rates in commercially-used marble from Afyonkarahisar - Turkey
February 2010
The gamma radiation has been measured to determine natural radioactivity of238U, 232Th and 40K in some marble materials produced in Afyonkarahisar region of Turkey. The absorbed dose rate and effective dose rate have been obtained from those activities. The measurement have been performed using a γ-ray spectrometer contains NaI(Tl) detector and Multi – Channel – Analyser (MCA). The activity...
Reconsideration of the principle of relativity
February 2010
The applicable ranges of the principle of relativity were reconsidered. There are magnetic field forces between positive charge and negative charge in an electric doublet which is moving in a laboratory reference frame, whereas, analyzing the electric doublet with the same physical method in a reference frame which is at rest relative to the electric doublet, no magnetic field force exists between the two charges. The...
A characterization of the projective transformation
January 2010
We consider the transformations preserving the asymptotic directions of hypersurfaces in n-dimensional Euclidean space and we obtain the following characterization of the projective transformation: In n-dimensional Euclidean space, a transformation preserves the asymptotic directions of hypersurfaces if and only if it is the projective transformation. Key words: Projective transformation,...
Euler savary formula for the one parameter motions in the complex plane C
January 2010
Müller (1978), in the Euclidean plane introduced the one parameter planar motions and obtained the relation between absolute, relative, sliding velocities (and accelerations). During one parameter planar motion in the Euclidean plane , the Euler-Savary formula was expressed by Müller (Blaschke and Müller, 1956). Blaschke and Müller (1956) and Tutar et al. (2001) provided the relation...
Modeling economic system with the use of matrix algebra (Leontief input-output model)
January 2010
The purpose of the study was to determine the external industrial demand output, given a 3 x 3 matrix input values with prescribed demand values. The Leontief input-output model leads to a better understanding of modeling economic systems. The identity matrix and a 3 x 3 matrix was used to produce industry’s output unit for external demand. Of the 8619 external demand output unit turned out by a farmer, 0.4 unit...
Students’ representations of the cell concept from 6 to 11 grades: Persistence of the “fried-egg modelâ€
January 2010
This study aimed to display the level of students’ conceptual understanding of the cell concept. The study attempted to explore how students had conceptually constructed the general shape of the cell, the organelles and their positions within a cell and the definition of the cell and then compared grade 6, 9 and 11 students’ representations of the cell concept. A conceptual understanding test was developed...
Hydraulic jump in stilling basin with vertical end sill
January 2010
Stilling basins with dentiated or continuous sills are frequently used as energy dissipaters downstream of hydraulic structures. In this study, experiments are conducted to evaluate effects of a single vertical continuous sill and its position on control of depth and length of a forced jump in stilling basin without considering tailwater depth which is variable and totally controlled by downstream river conditions. A...
Parametric study on the effect of burial depth on the surface explosion resistance of cylindrical concrete oil tanks
January 2010
In this paper, the effect of surface explosions on the buried cylindrical concrete oil tanks regarding various parameter changes has been studied. The finite element method has been applied to determine the structural target responses and ANSYS 11.0 macro file was utilized to model more than 7500 models. Moreover, an economical study was performed to prove the favorable effect of increase in the burial depth on the...
Estimation of different biologically effective irradiances at Visakhapatnam (17.7°N, 83.3°E) from standard action spectra
January 2010
Measurements of solar ultraviolet radiation in the biological band (280 - 320 nm) using a ground based UV-B Photometer at VISAKHAPATNAM have been used to estimate the biological effects of the incoming radiation on various species like human, animals, plants etc. with the help of standard action spectra. A comparison is made with TOMS ozone data to find the dependence on column ozone at a subtropical Indian station...
Correlation between electrical resistivity and soil-water content based artificial intelligent techniques
January 2010
By using an artificial intelligent approaches, the purpose of this study is to compare water content of soils obtained from electrical resistivity in order to better results from conventional techniques system. The input variables for this system are the electrical resistivity reading, the water content laboratory measurements. The output variable is water content of soils. In this study, 148 data sets are clustered...
Optimum designing of thin film filter layers of SiO2 and SnTe based on optical particle swarm opimizer
January 2010
Optical design of multilayer filter has been carried out using a particle swarm optimizer algorithm. The filters are designed to work for wavelength in the range of 1550 - 1600 nm. Our calculation results show good convergence rate and higher performance in comparison with results based on genetic algorithm. The calculated result for band pass filter layers of Sio2 and SnTe have also shown that the transmittance...
Kinetic studies of adsorption of palmitate and laurate soaps onto some metal ores in aqueous media
January 2010
The kinetics of adsorption of sodium-palmitate and sodium-laurate onto galena, hematite and cassiterite in aqueous media was investigated at various concentrations, times and temperatures. Experimental results were analysed using the pseudo-first and pseudo-second order kinetic models. The pseudo-first order model with higher correlation coefficient values described the adsorption kinetics better than the pseudo-second...
The application of artificial neural networks technique to estimate mass attenuation coefficient of shielding barrier
December 2009
This study aims to investigate comparison of radiation attenuation property of harzburgite mineral calculated by Monte Carlo (MCNP) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Slab sample modeled in MCNP with 1, 2 and 4 cm thickness was irradiated with parallel beam of monoenergetic particles. Incoming and outgoing particle fluxes were computed with F1 tally. Beer-Lambert equation was used to obtain mass attenuation...
Energy performance of electrical support facilities: The case of adaptive re-used historical buildings in Malaysia
December 2009
Electricity could be the most expensive form of energy used in buildings. Hence, reduction in electricity consumption may save more money than other cost-saving measures. Although the cost of providing and installing electrical equipment represents a relatively small proportion of the total mechanical and electrical (M&E) costs, in historic buildings, however, it is an increasingly significant element in saving the...
Effects of introducing periodical polymer gratings on the solar cell
December 2009
Effects of the light-collecting solar cell with high polymer reflecting gratings and experimental accomplishment of periodical gratings on the solar cell surface are studied. It mainly discusses the way and advantage to enhance the solar cell efficiency by using holographic interference lithography to produce high polymer reflecting gratings on the solar cell. Based on the easy processing method, the theoretically...
Binding data analysis for the interaction of ferrocyphen with sodium dodecylsulfate in the presence of sodium benzoate
December 2009
The binding of ferrocyphen (Fe(C12H8N2)(CN)2) with sodium dodecylsulfate has been studied at various concentration of sodium dodecylsulfate as a function of aromatic counter ion (sodium benzoate) concentration. The unusual scatchard plot has been interpreted using binding capacity concept. The results represents two binding set for all the studied conditions. The value of Hill equation parameter have been estimated and...
Isolation and characterization of the organic components of a black indigenous mineral hair dye
December 2009
Isolation and characterization of the main organic component of a black indigenous mineral dye; Yombotumtum (YT) was carried out. The methods employed include physicochemical characterization using solubility test, melting point, combustion test, organic and inorganic (ash) contents, functional group tests, IR and UV- VIS spectroscopic analysis and preparation of derivatives. The results obtained were...
Geothermal gradients in the Chad Basin, Nigeria, from bottom hole temperature logs
December 2009
Bottom Hole Temperature (BHT) data from 21 oil wells in the Nigerian sector of the Chad Basin were analyzed and interpreted to investigate the thermal structure of the basin. A regional average geothermal gradient of 3.4°C/100 m geothermal gradients in the range of 3.0 to 4.4 °C/100 m were obtained. The gradients are relatively lower at the Northeast and Southwest axis and maximum at the North-centre. These...
Measurements of apparent electrical conductivity and water content using a resistivity meter
December 2009
Measurement of soil water content (Wn), a major interest in many disciplines which requires collection, analysis and interpretation of soil data, may be expensive and time consuming. One way to reduce the cost of it is to measure the soil apparent conductivity (ECa) and to correlate with soil volumetric water content. However, the influences of soil properties such as salinity, porosity, structure, pH and clay content...
The ecoclimatic indexes specific for the Arges valley (Fagaras Mountains, the Southern Carpathians, Romania)
December 2009
The important features of the mountain areas may be synthetically assessed, based on several methods of numerical analysis (a series of indexes) of the ecological potential. In this paper we have analyzed the following indexes: De Martonne’s aridity index, continentality index of Gams, hydrothermal index, pluviothermal index and snow index. To achieve this, climate date obtain from these stations were...
Interannual variability of Atlantic hurricane activity and some features of West African climate
December 2009
The aim of this study is to describe over the Atlantic Ocean and West Africa, the large scale differences between an inactive hurricane period (1991 - 1994) and an active hurricane period (1998 - 2001), before and during the peak of the cyclone season (May - June - July; MJJ and August- September - October; ASO). Over West Africa, the monsoon flow at low level extends more northward during the active period. This period...
Calculation of Ricci tensors by mathematica V 5.1
December 2009
In solution of Einstein field equations it is necessary to contracting Riemann-Christofell tensor. The contraction of Riemann-Christofell tensor or simply the curvature tensor is called the Ricci tensor and denoted by QUOTE . The calculation of Ricci tensor in 3 and especially in 4-dimension is not very difficult but, it is very tedious; and need more time with accuracy. In this paper, the focus has...
Bifurcations and chaos in simple dynamical systems
December 2009
Chaos is an active research subject in the fields of science in recent years. It is a complex and an erratic behaviour that is possible in very simple systems. In the present day, the chaotic behaviour can be observed in experiments. Many studies have been made in chaotic dynamics during the past three decades and many simple chaotic systems have been discovered. In this work, the behaviour of some simple dynamical...
Heat and fluid flow analysis in gas turbine blade cooling passages with semicircular turbulators
December 2009
This paper reports a numerical investigation of heat transfer and flow characteristics in a two-dimensional u-tube over semicircular turbulators. Repeated semicircular turbulators (ribs) are used inside a cooling passage to promote turbulence and enhance convective heat transfer in gas turbine blades to create higher thrust-to-weight ratios. The u-tube has a 180° bend while the turbulators are distributed on both...
Simultaneous sensor and hand-sensor calibration of a robot-based measurement system
December 2009
This paper presents a system for object digitalization by use of a laser stripe triangulation displacement sensor and an industrial MOTOMAN robot. In order to ensure the precision of the scanning system, a novel calibration scheme referred to as one-stage approach is proposed. This procedure mainly utilizes a circular-marked board as calibration target and calibrates the range finder and hand-sensor model simultaneously...
The magnetic behaviour of an isolated paramagnetic spin-1 and spin-1/2 degree of freedom
December 2009
The effect of external magnetic field and temperature on paramagnetic spin-1/2 and spin-1 degree of freedom was investigated. Magnetization m(h,T) and magnetic susceptibility are found to have a direct and inverse behaviour with external magnetic field and temperature respectively. Various limiting cases ofm(h,T) were considered for different temperatures and external magnetic field. The agreement with...
Photothermal conversion in a solar collector with tilted walls
December 2009
This paper presents a performance analysis of a solar air collector with tilted side faces. The northern side wall is tilted at an angle of 38° and other walls are tilted at an angle of 9° relative to the vertical. All these walls are covered with a thin reflective aluminium film. The device may be used as drier, sterilizer or cooker in rural areas. The prototype collector was designed and produced in the Study...
Global warming and climate change: realities, uncertainties and measures
December 2009
This paper is an attempt to show that global warming and climate change are real, and are greatly affecting the biosphere. Evidences suggesting that the increasing concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activities is mainly responsible for global warming and climate change are presented. Uncertainties about the future course of global warming and climate change centred on the role of two important...
Health impact of climate change due to combustion of fossil fuel
December 2009
The analysis of temperature data obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database showed that each of the last 13 years was one of the warmest years for the last several thousand years in the temperature record. In this study, it was observed that the changes in the weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, wind etc., due to increase in greenhouse gases, adversely affect human...
Atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge chemical and biological applications
December 2009
Recently atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge (APDBD) plays an important role in chemical, industrial and biological applications. It has been used for ozone synthesis, hydrogen production from natural gas, surface treatment including textile and polymer treatment, yeast and bacterial inactivation. The physics and mechanism of atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge will be reviewed. Coaxial and...
Effective electronic waste management and recycling process involving formal and non-formal sectors
December 2009
Electronics waste is becoming a crisis for the society. Huge accumulation of e-waste and their recycling through primitive means for extraction of precious metals is real concern in the developing countries as e-waste contains hazardous materials. Recycling of e-waste through proper technologies is, however, considered to be a profitable business in developed countries due to the presence of precious metals...
Synthesis and applications: Ten years of experience in monodentate, bidentate, tridentate and macrocycle pyrazole heterocyclic chemistry
December 2009
Herein we report the development of efficient methods to prepare monodentate, bidentate, tridentate and macrocycle compounds based on pyrazole moieties, with the opportunity to change easily structure, substituents, cavities or all these parameters in the synthesis of huge library compounds. These methods take advantage of the vast number of commercially available starting materials containing functional and aliphatic...
Calculation of the Mie scattering field inside and outside a coated spherical particle. Vol. 3 (1), pp. 038-041, January, 2008
November 2009
An error was discovered in our paper published in this Journal (Suzuki and Lee, 2008). The second term in the numerator of Equation (9) should read -m2 x Bn n-1(x2) instead of -m2 x Bn n(x2). Because of this error, the data in Figures should also be corrected as shown below.
Utilization of greenhouse effect for solar drying of cassava chips
November 2009
An indirect passive solar dryer was designed, constructed and tested. The dryer was designed to accommodate a total quantity of 45 kg and was tested by carrying out three experiments with fresh cassava chips of approximate sizes of 2.5, 3.0 and 3.5 cm. The highest temperature recorded during the experiments was 60.5°C. The average result shows that the 3.0 cm chips inside the drying chamber were dried from 65% (187%...
Characterisation of the core-binding properties of fatty - based oils
November 2009
Core-binding properties of beniseed and melon oils are hereby characterised with a view to finding alternatives to the imported foundry core oils that deplete Nigeria’s foreign exchange. Clay and sand samples collected from Niger and Plateau states respectively were blended with varying proportions of core-oils in order to assess their functional properties. Baked strength of 3,223.41 kNm-2 obtained for the...
Optimization of design tolerance and asymmetric quality loss cost using pattern search algorithm
November 2009
Tolerances have a significant impact on manufacturing cost and product quality. In the design of discrete part shapes, the specification of tolerance constraints can have major consequences for product quality and cost. Traditional methods for tolerance analysis and synthesis are time consuming and have limited applicability. A more scientific approach is often desirable for better performance to overcome this...
Removal of xylene in gas - phase using compost - ceramic ball biofilter
November 2009
Biofiltration is fast emerging as a feasible option for treating odorous compounds and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from process waste - gas streams using microorganisms attached to porous support matrix. Compost, owing to its inherent physico-chemical and biological characteristics, has shown to be a promising filter material in biofiltration to treat both hydrophobic and hydrophilic gas - phase VOCs at low...
Design and synthesis of FPGA for speed control of induction motor
November 2009
The industrial motor control is quickly changing from micro to nanotechnology design with speed and performance based design implementation. Considering accuracy and synchronism of output response, the attention has been brought to fully digitized design to adopt Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) as a control technique for three phase Induction Motors due to its resulted advantages in harmonic reduction. Very...
Voltage standing wave ratio measurement and prediction
November 2009
In this work, Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) was measured in a Global System for Mobile communication base station (GSM) located in Evbotubu district of Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria. The measurement was carried out with the aid of the Anritsu site master instrument model S332C. This Anritsu site master instrument is capable of determining the voltage standing wave ratio in a transmission line. It was produced by...
Exponential chaos lag synchronization of nonlinear bloch equations
November 2009
This paper proposes a new exponential lag synchronization (ELS) method for chaotic behavior in nonlinear Bloch equations. An ELS controller that is based on Lyapunov theory and linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach is presented to guarantee the exponential synchronization of drive and response systems. The proposed controller can be obtained by solving a convex optimization problem represented by the LMI. A simulation...
Analysis of non-newtonian fluid flow in a stenosed artery
November 2009
The numerical illustration presented at the end of the paper provides the results for the resistance to flow, apparent viscosity and the wall shear stress through their graphical representations. It has been shown that the resistance to flow, apparent viscosity and wall shear stress increases with the size of the stenosis but these increases is comparatively small due to non-Newtonian behavior of the blood indicating...
A characterization of H- strictly convex hypersurfaces in de Sitter space
November 2009
In this study, we introduce a H-strictly convex hypersurface in the 6-dimensional unitary de Sitter space and give a lower bound approximation for the Ricci curvature of such hypersurfaces under some appropriate conditions. Key words: Ricci curvature, H-convex submanifold, hypersurface, de Sitter space.
Analysis of inventory-production systems with Weibull distributed deterioration
November 2009
We studied the inventory-production system with two-parameter Weibull distributed deterioration items. The solution of optimal inventory production control problem with Weibull distribution deteriorating item was revisited based on Baten and Kamil (2009) and carried out using Pontryagin maximum principle. It was also illustrated with an example. The overall inventory and production control were tested for different...
Equilibrium and continuous flow studies on the sorption of Congo Red using ethylenediamine modified rice hulls
November 2009
The effectiveness of using ethylenediamine rice hulls (EDA-RH) to remove Congo Red (CR) from synthetic dye solution was carried out in batch and column experiments under various experimental conditions. Surface morphology analysis was carried out also using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The experimental data obtained at different initial dye concentrations fitted well to pseudo-second order kinetic model. Application...
Removal of Pb2+ and Cr6+ ions from aqueous solution by earthworm cast soil
November 2009
The problem of removing pollutants from aqueous wastewater is growing with the increase in water pollution owing to enhanced industrial activities. Three earthworm cast soil types were studied. Modified and unmodified types were prepared and used for removal of lead and Chromium ions. At about 298 K, the earthworm cast soil types, modified and unmodified removed lead and Chromium ions from aqueous solution. Both...
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