The study aims to explore farmers’ practice and constraints in organic vegetable farming as well as to identify farmers’ perception and their adaptability to move to or improve their organic vegetable farming. It also helps to select and determine factors influencing farmers’ perception and adaptation to uptake organic vegetable farming and to investigate if this in turn supports sustaina…

Evolution of Game Theory Application in Irrigation Systems

Agriculture is the largest consumer of water. Since water demand for irrigational purposes is expected to rise and given the fact that freshwater is not an unlimited resource, conflicts about the use of water and allocation issues are becoming more intense. The present paper examines the potential for water conflict when water consumption for irrigation takes place. In order to contribute to th…

The growth of Arthrocnemum macrostachyum and Halimione portulacoides in an ex…

The marine halophytes Arthrocnemum macrostachyum and Halimione portulacoides are found growing naturally in saltmarshes within Greece creating an aesthetically pleasing groundcover that also reflects the changing of seasons. The potential use of these species in an extensive green roof system in coastal areas would lead to additional benefits such as preserving and enhancing the local landscap…

Determinants of Growth in Fast-Developing Countries: Evidence from Bundling a…

This study assesses growth determinants in the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey nations the period 2001-11. Particular emphasis is laid on the bundling and unbundling of ten governance dynamics. Contemporary and noncontemporary fixed- and random-effects regressions are employed. The following are some findings. First, governance is more p…

Relation between types of yolk sac abnormalities and early embryonic morpholo…

Abstract: Aim: The aim of this study was to identify yolk sac (YS) abnormalities and analyze their relation with different embryonic morphologies detected by ultrasonography in first-trimester missed miscarriage. Material and Methods: This descriptive study was carried out on 204 women with established first-trimester missed miscarriage. Ultrasonography depicted the YS’s diameter, shape, an…

Evaluation of P300 components for emotion-loaded visual event-related potenti…

Aim: In the present study, the P300 component of the emotion-loaded visual event-related potential in response to photographs of babies crying or smiling was measured to evaluate cognitive function in elderly subjects, including those with dementia. Methods: The subjects were 48 elderly people who consulted a memory disorder clinic. The visual eventrelated potential was measured using oddball …

Survival strategies of male nurses in rural areas of Japan

Abstract: Aim: This study seeks to describe the survival strategies of male nurses in Japanese rural areas. Methods: Interviews were conducted with 12 male nurses who described their occupational experiences. The modified grounded theory approach was used for the data collection and analysis. Results: The survival strategies of these male nurses can be categorized into four types: (i) giving…

Predictors of nurses’ family-centered care practises in the neonatal intens…

Abstract: Aim: To identify the predictors of nurses’ family-centered care (FCC) practises in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in Japan. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted by administrating a self-reported questionnaire to 30 nurse managers and 710 staff nurses in 30 NICUs in Japan. A facility-level questionnaire, including items about the philosophy, policies,…

Fracture Resistance of Endodontically Treated Teeth: Three Walls versus Four …

Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the fracture resistance of endodontically treated teeth between those with four walls and those with three walls of remaining coronal tooth structure and the effect of the site of the missing coronal wall. Materials and Methods: Thirty-two endodontically treated second mandibular premolars were decoronated, leaving 3 mm above the ce…

How Not to Increase Participation in Local Government: Th e Advantages of Exp…

Abstract: Local governments benefi t from nonelected committees that provide citizen input on important issues. Although these committees off er a valuable tool for policy makers, they suff er from low participation and tend to underrepresent economically disadvantaged citizens. Th is article reports the results of a randomized survey experiment that evaluated the relative eff ectiveness of o…

Statistical modeling of nitrogen-dependent modulation of root system architec…

Abstract; Plant root development is strongly affected by nutrient availability. Despite the importance of structure and function of roots in nutrient acquisition, statistical modeling approaches to evaluate dynamic and temporal modulations of root system architecture in response to nutrient availability have remained as widely open and exploratory areas in root biology. In this study, we devel…

Clinical peptidomic analysis by a one-step direct transfer technology: Its po…

Abstract: To date, numerous studies have searched for candidate molecules or clinical examination methods as potential biomarkers for monitoring intractable diseases, such as carcinomas. Evidence accumulated over the past decade shows that many proteolytic peptides appear in human humoral fluids, including peripheral blood, in association with an individual’s health condition. Although an an…

Agricultural irrigation canals in southern France and new urban territorial u…

Agricultural irrigation canals are widespread across southern France, where they cover a large portion of the Provençal region. While they are still extensively used in productive farming, part of the irrigated area is gradually being taken over by peri-urban habitat and business and industrial parks. As a result, some parts of the canal network have now been abandoned, either built over or tu…

Internal (the consumer itself) and external factors influence the consumer to buy a product. It is these factors that can affect the length of time the consumer to buy a product. Time-to-event data analysis is the method to analyze the data when the response of interest is the time until some event occurs. The data to be analyzed is in the form of time, also called failure time or survival time…

Biosafety Competencies in Developing Countries: The Role of Universities

Abstract: With the objective of strengthening biosafety capacities in Honduras, a technical cooperation program has been established with the School of Microbiology, National Autonomous University of Honduras, where most of the country’s infectious disease research and teaching is done. To complete a 2-year cooperation cycle, two significant activities took place in May 2010: the first Nati…

Morphological, physicochemical, and antioxidant profile of noncommercial bana…

Abstract Banana cultivars––Luvhele (Musa ABB), Mabonde (Musa AAA), and Muomvared (Musa balbisiana) ––were characterized for morphological, physicochemical, and antioxidant properties. All three cultivars varied significantly (P < 0.05) in their morphology, pH, titratable acidity and total soluble solids with no significant difference in their ash content. Individual cultivars showed va…

Marketing Strategy Based on Marketing Mix Influence on Purchasing Decisions o…

The aim of this research was to know the influences of 7P marketing mix variables, which consists of product, price, promotion,place, people, physical evidence and process on purchasing decision of consumers in determining appropriate marketing strategy of Malang apples at Giant MOG. The result analysis showed that the most influential marketing mix variable was price with the odd pricing as th…

Advanced Concepts in Photovoltaics

Over the past several years, developments in photovoltaic (PV) solar cells have enabled enormous progress to occur in reducing the cost of PV electrical energy ($/kWh) such that it is rapidly approaching the cost of electrical energy produced by power plants fuelled by coal, natural gas, and nuclear reactors; this cost goal is generally termed ‘achieving grid parity’. In 1977, when U.S…

Activity Theory in Formal and Informal Science Education

This book aims to contribute to an emergent agenda for cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and science education in Europe. It especially focuses on the application of activity theory in formal and informal science education. This focus leads to rethinking scientific literacy (Roth & Lee, 2004), as well as to rethinking the role of information and communication technologies (van Eijc…

Acoustic Microscopy

This new edition follows growing demand for copies of Acoustic microscopy, the original print run having become exhausted. Almost all of the original edition is reproduced without change, except for a small number of corrections and some minor additions. Of the errors in the first edition, the most mysterious was the renumbering of Newton’s laws on their transmission from Cambridge to Ox…

Ablative thermal protection systems modeling

For one area discussed in this book, namely the modeling of phenomena, the sum of physical knowledge is broad. It includes (from microscopic to macroscopic) atomic physics, thermodynamics, gas kinetics, radiative transfer, physical and chemical reactions (both homogeneous and heterogeneous), fluid mechanics, and turbulence applied to previously studied areas, such as rough walls. There are, of …

A Theory of Ether, Particles Andatoms: Introduction to the Reform of Modern …

This work is the result of the research which I started independently late in the 60s in Russia and since August 1992 have proceeded with abroad. The subject of the research was initially chosen to be Systems Theory, because it seemed rather close to the theory of communications, the then field of my occupation, on the one hand, and because it sounded intriguing enough and worth attempting at, …

Positivity of an explicit Runge–Kutta method

This paper deals with the numerical solution of initial value problems (IVPs), for systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), by an explicit fourth-order Runge–Kutta method (we will refer to it as the classical fourth-order method) with special nonlinear stability property indicated by the positivity. Stepsize conditions, guaranteeing this property based on general theory,have been st…

Comparative study of PEM fuel cell parameter extraction using Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, a new formulation based on the derivative of maximum power with respect to current is proposed for fuel cell parameter extraction. Compared to conventional extraction methods, the proposed method has various features such as faster convergence, higher efficiency and accuracy. In this work, the problem of parameter extraction is formulated as an optimization task and it is solved …

A new analytical technique for strongly nonlinear damped forced systems

Combining the general Struble’s technique and homotopy perturbation method, an analytical technique has been presented to determine approximate solutions of strongly nonlinear differential systems with severe damping effect in the presence of an external force. The method is illustrated by examples. The approximate solutions show a good coincidence with corresponding numerical solution (consi…

Meshless method for the numerical solution of the Fokker–Planck equation

In this paper numerical meshless method for solving Fokker–Planck equation is considered. This meshless method is based on multiquadric radial basis function and collocation method to approximate the solution. Here we apply h-weighted finite difference method. The stability analysis of the method is dealt with, using a linearized stability method. Numerical examples illustrate the validity an…

Dynamic control modeling and simulation of a UPFC–SMES compensator in power…

Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) is granting a new group of advanced power electronic devices emerging for the enhancement of the power system performance. Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) is a recent version of FACTS devices for power system applications. The back-up energy supply system incorporated with UPFC is providing a complete control of real and reactive power at the same t…

Analytical modeling of threshold voltage for Cylindrical Gate All Around (CGA…

In this paper, an analytical threshold voltage model is proposed for a cylindrical gate-allaround (CGAA) MOSFET by solving the 2-D Poisson’s equation in the cylindrical coordinate system. A comparison is made for both the center and the surface potential model of CGAA MOSFET. This paper claims that the calculation of threshold voltage using center potential is more accurate rather than the ca…

Evolution of informal settlements upgrading strategies in Egypt: From neglige…

The issue of informal settlements represents a key challenge not only in Egypt, but also worldwide. A review of informal settlements upgrading policies shows that governments have moved away from eradication policies to provision, enabling and participatory policies. This shift was motivated by the recognition that informal settlements were not a problem but a solution stimulated by the society…

Performance analysis of Arithmetic Mean method in determining peak junction t…

High reliability users of microelectronic devices have been derating junction temperature and other critical stress parameters to improve device reliability and extend operating life. The reliability of a semiconductor is determined by junction temperature. This paper gives a useful analysis on mathematical approach which can be implemented to predict temperature of a silicon die. The problem c…

Physical model study for mitigating local scour downstream of clear over-fall…

Local scouring action downstream of clear over-fall weirs associated with three-dimensional turbulent flow field is a common morphological problem in mobile channel bed. The objective of this study was to assess and quantify the impact of hydraulic structural measures (double lines water jets) on minimizing the scour-hole dimensions downstream of a Fayoum type weir. Ninety runs were conducted c…

A hybrid DE–PS algorithm for load frequency control under deregulated power…

In this paper, a Modified Integral Derivative (MID) controller is proposed for Load Frequency Control (LFC) of multi-area multi-source power system in deregulated environment. The multi-source power system is having different sources of power generation such as thermal,hydro, wind and diesel generating units considering boiler dynamics for thermal plants,Generation Rate Constraint (GRC) and Gov…

An experimental investigation on flexural behaviour of fibre-reinforced pond …

The flexural behaviour of plain and fibre-reinforced pond ash concrete (FRC) beams under monotonic loading condition was analysed. Sixteen beams reinforced with top and bottom longitudinal deformed steel bars and transverse steel stirrups were tested. The beams were cast using three different percentages of pond ash, namely, 10%, 20% and 30% by weight of cement. Grooved type steel fibres were i…

Analysis of resistive SFCL in a test-bed microgrid

This paper tests and analyzes the working capability of a resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) in a microgrid. The microgrid is a test-bed, consisting of a conventional power plant, two renewable energy sources in the form of wind-farm and solar-farm as two distributed generation (DG) units and five loads (i.e., industrial and domestic). Utilization of DG in mainstream is incr…

A new MATLAB/Simulink model of triple-junction solar cell and MPPT based on a…

This paper presents a new Matlab/Simulink model of a PV module and a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system for high efficiency InGaP/InGaAs/Ge triple-junction solar cell. The proposed technique is based on Artificial Neural Network. The equivalent circuit model of the triple-junction solar cell includes the parameters of each sub-cell. It is also include the effect of the temperature varia…

Automated space allocation using mathematical techniques

This paper presents a systematic pathway for the floor plan design when given the shape of required floor plan, the list of spaces, the dimensions of each space and the weighted matrix of required adjacencies between the spaces. The first step is to partition the given shape into say k possible rectangles. Then using the given adjacencies, divide the given spaces into k groups. Next is to cons…

Submerged vane-attached to the abutment as scour countermeasure

Over the past few decades, the cause of many bridge failures has been reported to be abutment scour. A large number of studies have been conducted to develop countermeasures to ensure the safety of existing bridges. A submerged vane is a measure that has recently been studied and found to be a promising scour mitigation technique for river bank erosion. Therefore, the main purpose of this study…

Interactive approach for determination of salinity concentration in tidal riv…

In this research, a perceptron artificial neural network is trained and validated by a number of observed data. Inputs of artificial neural network (ANN) are distance from upstream, discharge of freshwater at upstream and tidal height at downstream and its output is salinity concentration. Because of shortage of observed data especially in extreme conditions, a numerical model was developed. Th…

New and improved hydraulic radius for channels of the second kind

The Manning’s equation is commonly used to calculate discharge and mean velocity of the uniform flows. According to experimental data, Manning’s equation with constant Manning’s coefficient overestimates the discharge of second-kind channels (channels with a closing top-width),under the partially full flow. This problem can be solved by altering the Manning’s coefficient depending on th…

Reactive power planning with FACTS devices using gravitational search algorithm

In this paper, Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) is used as optimization method in reactive power planning using FACTS (Flexible AC transmission system) devices. The planning problem is formulated as a single objective optimization problem where the real power loss and bus voltage deviations are minimized under different loading conditions. GSA based optimization algorithm and particle swarm…

A new approach for automatic control modeling,analysis and design in fully fu…

The paper presents a new approach for the modeling, analysis and design of automatic control systems in fully fuzzy environment based on the normalized fuzzy matrices. The approach is also suitable for determining the propagation of fuzziness in automatic control and dynamical systems where all system coefficients are expressed as fuzzy parameters. A new consolidity chart is suggested based on …

Steady flow over triangular extended solid attached to square cylinder – A …

Numerical analysis of two dimensional steady flows over a triangular extended solid (thorn) attached to square cylinder positioned at front stagnation point and at rear stagnation point separately is reported at low Reynolds number (Re = 40). The variation of thorn length (l0 = 0.2,0.4 & 0.6) & inclination angle (H= 5, 10, 15 & 20) and its effect on the drag, pressure, shear stress, boundar…

Finite element implementation of punching shear behaviors in shear-reinforced…

Punching shear reinforcement systems such as studs and stirrups are used to improve the punching shear strength of flat slabs. A three dimensional finite element model (FEM) is developed through Ansys 10 computer software, to carry out the nonlinear analysis of 16 flat-slab models with and without punching shear reinforcement. Several important parameters are incorporated in the analysis, namel…

Steady state load shedding to mitigate blackout in power systems using an imp…

Generation contingencies in a power system lead to under-frequency and low voltages owing to active and reactive power deficiencies. Load shedding is considered as a last alternative to avoid the cascaded tripping and blackout in power systems during generation contingencies. It is essential to optimize the amount of load to be shed in order to prevent excessive load shedding. To minimize load …

Analysis and effect of multi-fuel and practical constraints on economic load …

This paper presents an attempt to analyze the effect of multi-fuel and practical constraints on economic load dispatch problem using a novel uniform distributed two-stage particle swarm optimization (UDTPSO) algorithm without and with unified power flow controller (UPFC) while satisfying equality, inequality, practical constraints such as ramp-rate and prohibited operating zone (POZ) limits and…

Generalized space vector controls for MLZSI

This paper proposes two advanced algorithms for multilevel Z-source inverter (MLZSI),which employ space vector control (SVC) as control algorithm of cascaded H-bridge multilevel Z-source inverter; where output voltage is achieved by summing the output voltages of bridge. In these algorithms different states to generate the same voltage with low THD, as the purpose, are verified and the suitable…

Materials for the Study of the Spring Migration ofWaterfowl (Anseriformes,Ave…

The results of 11 years (2003–2013) monitoring activities, including estimation of number and gender structure of waterfowl on the Lake Khanka, are presented. The accounting work (50 days) took place in the first decade of April, in the period of mass spring migration of migratory birds. About 682,270 birds are registered. The comparison of the species composition and the ratio of the maj…

Glucose-6-phosphate Dehydrogenase Activity During Nʹ-nitrosodiethylamine-ind…

Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), a key regulatory enzyme of the pentose phosphate pathway, catalyses the first rate-limiting reaction to produce ribose-5-phosphate for nucleic acid synthesis and NADPH to use in reductive biosynthesis. The available studies indicate an antioxidant role for G6PD and variation in its levels as a result of cellular insult. In this study, the activity of G6…

Organic Matter in the Small Lakes of the Sikhote-Alin Biosphere Reserve

The carbon concentration and distribution in dissolved organic matter (DOM) and particulate organic matter (POM) in the lagoon lakes Blagodaty and Golubichnoe located in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve and Lake Vaskovskoye оf the Dalnegorsk urban district of Primorsky Krai were analysed using data collected in July–August of 2011–2014. The content of DOM carbon ranged from1.9 to 8.6 mg/l, …

A Taxonomic List of the Mayflies, Stoneflies and Caddisflies (Insecta: Epheme…

Three orders of amphibiotic insects were examined from the eastern and western streams of the Sikhote-Alin State Nature Biosphere Reserve, which is located in the southern Russian Far East in the central portion of a mountain range with the same name. Data were obtained on Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera (EPT) fauna inhabiting streams in the Sikhote-Alin State Nature Biosphere Reserve an…