This research aims at determining whether a correlation exists between trees planted alongside highways and distresses in asphalt concrete (AC) pavements. The root system of the trees could cause significant distress to the pavement depending on the tree’s location, tree species, and the spreading of the root system. In this research two models for calculation of the correlation between the root systems and distresses were used: a statistical model and a geospatial model using the ArcGIS software. Twelve types of trees were identified in the study area which comprised of ten urban arterials around the capital, Amman. The Present Serviceability Index (PSI) was adopted as the evaluation criterion and rating measurement of the pavement section, and was calculated based on observations and measurements of the slope variance, rutting, and cracking and patching. From the field survey during the research, it was found that more than 90% of the distresses associated with the trees were longitudinal and transverse cracking. According to the results of the modelling, it was found that only four of these tree types had a correlation value higher than 50% with distresses. The results of the analysis allows proposing guidelines for tree farming along highways in Jordan based on the scientific and research findings.

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The two-phase flow of blood in a small diameter blood vessel under mild stenotic condition is investigated in this mathematical analysis, modelling the densely concentrated red cells in the inner phase region as Herschel-Bulkley fluid and the plasma with depleted red cells in the peripheral phase region as Newtonian fluid. The analytic solutions for the velocity profile, rate of flow, slip velocity, shear stress at the blood vessel’s wall, resistive impedance to flow and core fluid’s viscosity are obtained. It is found that when the stenosis length ratio and the flow index parameter increase, the slip velocity increases significantly and an opposite behavior is noticed for the core fluid’s viscosity. It is also recorded that the percentage of difference between the core fluid’s viscosity in the two-phase Herschel-Bulkley fluid model and the corresponding experimental values in the blood vessel’s of diameter and are found to be 1.27% and 0.32% respectively and the respective differences observed by Ponalagausamy and Tamil Selvi (2011) in their two-layered Casson fluid model are 3.75% and 6.86% respectively. The estimated slip velocity values of two-phase Herschel-Bulkley fluid model in the blood vessels of diameter and are recoded as 1.202 cm/s and 0.7405 cm/s respectively and these values are in good alignment with the respective values obtained by Ponalagusamy and Tamil Selvi (2011) for two-fluid Casson model. The estimates of the core fluid’s viscosity in two-phase Herschel-Bulkley fluid model increase gradually when the flow index parameter increases in the blood vessels of diameter and this behavior is reversed in the blood vessels of diameter.

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This work presents the implementation of an experimental compressed air pressure plant controlled by PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). The main contribution of this work is to provide a new tool for training in the control area and industrial instrumentation. Industrial devices such as the Micro830 PLC, a proportional valve and a pressure sensor were used for the construction of the plant. The plant model was identified by Matlab and the controller was implemented using the automatic configuration option of the PLC's IPID block. The IPID controller function showed good performance because it meets the proposed design requirements such as settling time and overshoot.

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The research purpose is experimental studying of technological regimes of lithium-containing compounds manufacture using water of Kazakhstan salty Priaral’ye lakes. First of all, the brine’s chemical composition and impurity content were preliminary determined. Change of the precipitation yield depending on the extraction time, volume of the extracted raw material was studied and the optimum parameters of obtaining a lithium concentrate from the brine was determined. The purification process of the lithium concentrates from ??²⁺, ?g²⁺  and other metals ions was investigated. Effective methods of the brine’s purification and sedimentation of lithium as lithium carbonate are suggested. The experimental results show, that the purification degree of lithium chloride concentrate by a lime-soda method makes 99,9 %. The four-component mixture formed at the lithium chloride cleaning and consisting of magnesium hydroxide, calcium borate, barium sulphate and calcium carbonate acts as a precipitator of heavy metals - lead, arsenic, zinc, copper and cadmium. It was established, that the optimum ratio of brine:butanol:SAS is 1:3:0,015-0,020; in this case the precipitate mass is 0,47-0,48 g. The lithium transition degree into the extract makes 96,7-98,9 %. The extraction technique of lithium chloride recovery from the brine and processing of lithium-containing concentrates proves the efficiency of the methods of lithium carbonate obtaining and its purification from ??²⁺, ?g²⁺ ions and other metals.

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In this document is described the design and simulation (by software) of a system composed of a set of agent robots which will be coordinated so that they can form a collaborative multi-agent system oriented to the development of tasks of exploration, collection and transport of elements taking into account the environment of displacement. Each agent consists of the union of multiple MECABOT robotic modules, which were previously designed and built by the DAVINCI group of the Nueva Granada Military University. A strategy will be developed to coordinate agents (composed of modules) that will have a fuzzy logic component, which will give the system the ability to automatically make decisions in order to optimize system performance, reducing the time of operation and energy consumption . In order to increase the robustness of the system to disturbances in the operating environment and / or possible failures in agent components, a distributed command architecture will be developed under which each agent will have artificial intelligence algorithms in order to recognize said Events and adapt its operating plan autonomously. The validation of the operation of the heterogeneous robotic system will be done through the simulation of each agent and then the collective system using specialized software.

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In this study, three experimental dental composites materials with zirconia as a major filler is used. It is intended to vary the percentage of the zirconia in the matrix along with other two fillers and study the wear behavior. It is intended to optimize the percentage of the fillers and obtain minimum wear for the experimental dental composite under study. Taguchi’s method of optimization was used for limiting the number of experimentation and finding the most influencing factors.

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Ventricular septal defect is a hole or multiple hole in the inter-ventricular septum. It is considered to be one of the critical congenital heart defect malformations. The junction between the right ventricle and left ventricle is shown to be as H-shaped symbol, which is identified as the sonographic marker for the ventricular septal defect (VSD). The dataset intended for this work roots from ultrasound images which is ideal to use due to its non-invasive nature. Diagnosing the fetal heart during early eight weeks of pregnancy from ultrasound images is a challenging task due to the continuous movement of the fetus, speckle noise added in the image, low signal to noise ratio that leads to poor quality of the ultrasound images. The proposed work encompasses different preprocessing techniques to remove the inherent speckle noise seen in the ultrasound images. The second step involves Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to extract the features of the heart. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) is the preeminent classifier in the machine learning which optimally classifies the input data. In combining the robust image processing techniques and machine learning algorithm, the simulation results highlights the sonographic marker for VSD screening from 2D ultrasound images. The application of machine learning algorithm proves the eminence outcomes in terms of images than the existing techniques.

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Person re-identification is a technique which has an objective to identify a person captured in different views in a community space monitored by network of numerous non-overlapping surveillance cameras. For better view over a region, surveillance camera is usually placed at a height more than person’s height. With this set up , getting the facial features of the person becomes very difficult. Moreover, the cameras used will be of less resolution and other conditions including view angle, lighting conditions, occlusion and pose change are amongst the challenges which prevents to get essential facial features from the person’s image. In this paper we have proposed double threshold-based person re-identification using significant colour matching in the spatial correspondence regions, which uses clothing colour as key feature to re-identify a person. Experiments are conducted on images in underground re-identification (GRID) dataset and results of the Cumulative Matching Characteristic (CMC) curve in evaluation with existing methods establish the efficiency of our method for person re-identification. With this proposed method we have achieved the first rank accuracy as 40.1% with the GRID database.

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The paper proposes to use the color rendering parameter as a criterion for the color constancy parameter for evaluation. The method for determining color rendering is proposed to be based on an objective evaluation method using an extended color set. The color set is proposed to be formed in an equidistant coordinate system of the equal-contrast coordinate system CAM16. In the paper, the estimation of color consistency is based on the spectral distribution of light sources and colors.

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Tribotechnical properties of aromatic polyamides named poly para phenylene isophthalamide and polysulfonamide had been studied. It had been founded the optimal value of load and velocity for friction pair aromatic polyamide-steel while the grinding process of it. The influence of loadings and velocities on the main tribotechnical parameters of investigated friction pairs had been studied. It had been founded maximum value of load and velocity, which a friction pair aromatic polyamide-steel work in normal friction mode. It had been studied the physical-mechanical and thermal properties of aromatic polyamide. It was found, that accordingly to the level of strength characteristics aromatic polyamide is close to metals and their alloys. Thermal properties of investigated materials have a higher level than in other large-capacity polymers.

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This paper presents the synthesis of a facil and low cost Cengar clay/La catalyst for biodiesel production from Ceiba Pentandra (CP) seed oil. The clay was activated using base (NaOH) and acid (H2SO4). Both activated clay were impregnated using La2O3 to increase the activity of catalyst. The concentration of NaOH, H2SO4 and La2O3 loading were varied to obtain the best catalyst for biodiesel synthesis. The obtained catalyst was then calcined at 300°C for 3 hours to remove the impurities and activated the catalyst. The catalysts were characterized using SEM to study the morphology of the catalyst. The performance of the catalysts was tested and compared on transesterification process of esterified CP seed oil. The result showed that Cengar clay activated using 1 N NaOH and 1% Lanthanum loading has the highest activity. The FAME yield obtained was of 86 % at reaction temperature of 60°C, methanol to oil molar ratio of 9:1, catalyst loading of 0.5% and transesterification reaction time of 120 min. The physicochemical properties of the produced biodiesel comply with SNI 04-1782-2006.

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Abstract:

Demand of air transportation services keep increasing each year in line with the increasing of population and welfare. Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport Makassar (SHIAM) is the 4th busiest airport in Indonesia and the busiest airport in Sulawesi Island. This paper aims to analysis hub and spoke airport networks in Sulawesi Island based on the freight ratio. Based on freight ratio value, airport can be classified in four types i.e.: full passenger airport, freight interest airport, freight specialist airport, and mixed passenger and freight airport. The freight ratio analysis for domestic flight carried out for six airports and two for international flight. The results of the study show that the freight ratio value for domestic flight is 0.443-6.222 kg/passenger. SHIAM has the highest of freight ratio value for domestic flight and international flight and categorized as a mixed passenger and freight airport. Tampa Padang Airport in Mamuju, West Sulawesi categorized as a full passenger airport category. Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado, Djalaluddin Airport in Gorontalo, Mutiara Airport in Palu, and Haluoleo (Wolter Monginsidi) Airport in Kendari categorized as mixed passenger and freight airport category. Freight ratio value for international flight is 5.961 kg/passenger for Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado and 9.574 kg/passenger in Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport. Two airports includes in mixed passenger and freight airport category.

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The hoax phenomenon can easily be seen on a number of social media. Hoax spreading is also often found in a number of WhatsApp Group, including WhatsApp Group, which is followed by people with visual impairments. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of the spread of hoax among people with visually impaired conditions, and the stages of the steps taken by WhatsApp Group administrators among people with visually impaired information are to check hoax information, this is done through a hoax information checking program, this checking program is available in the form of websites and applications. This research uses the descriptive research method. The data obtained were generated by means of questionnaire collection to detect symptoms of hoax spreading among adolescents with visual impairment. The respondents collected were 60 respondents. Furthermore, research data were obtained by testing hoax information checking through a number of hoax information checking programs. The results showed there were symptoms of hoax spreading among visually impaired people caused by ignorance of the way to check the truth of the information. At this stage of checking the accuracy of this information, there are some difficulties experienced by WhatsApp Group administrators with the visually impaired in using the information checking program which is based on the website or application.

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