Recently RESS method has been used by researchers to produce fine particles for pharmaceutical drug substances. Since RESS technology acknowledges a lot of benefits compare to conventional method of ginger extraction. Therefore, the objective of this research is to produce direct solid oil particles formation from ginger rhizome which contains valuable compounds by using RESS-CO2 process and to study the effect of pressure and temperature on extraction yield. RESS experiments were carried out at various extraction pressure of 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000 and 7000psi and at different extraction temperature of 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65 and 70°C, respectively for 40 minutes extraction time and constant flowrate (24ml/min).From the studies conducted, it was found that extraction pressure is an important factor that can affect particle size and extraction yield. By increasing the extraction pressure, the extraction yield was found to increase with increasing of pressure at constant temperature, but extraction yield was found to decrease with increasing temperature. The highest extraction yield is 2.41% obtained at extraction pressure of 6000psi and constant extraction temperature of 65°C.
Computer vision is applied in many software and devices. The detection and
reconstruction of the human skeletal structure is one of area of interest, where the
camera will identify the human parts and construct the joints of the person standing in
front. Three-dimensional pose estimation is solved using various learning approaches,
such as Support Vector Machines and Gaussian processes. However, difficulties in
cluttered scenarios are encountered, and require additional input data, such as
silhouettes, or controlled camera settings. The paper focused on estimating the threedimensional
pose of a person without requiring background information, which is
robust to camera variations. Each of the joint has three-dimensional space position and
matrix orientation with respect to the sensor. Matlab Simulink was utilized to provide
communication tools with depth camera using Kinect device for skeletal detection.
Results on the skeletal detection using Kinect sensor is analysed in measuring the
abilities to detect skeletal structure accurately, and it is shown that the system is able
to detect human skeletal performing non-complex basic motions in daily life.
Muhammad Adil Khattak, Muhammad Khairy Harmaini Shaharuddin, Muhammad Saiful Islam Haris, Muhammad Zuhaili Mohammad Aminuddin, Nik Mohamad Amirul Nik Azhar, Nik Muhammad Hakimi Nik Ahmad
It is essential to ensure the nuclear power plant system are not compromise and avoid
failure that can result in significant economic loss and physical damage to the public.
However, a very little attention was given to software and cybersecurity hazard. This
review paper discusses about the cybersecurity in nuclear power plant, history of
accident, implementation and future plan on cybersecurity deeply. About 51 published
studies (2006-2017) are reviewed in this paper. It is marked from the literature survey
articles that it is important for the cybersecurity of a nuclear power plant to be at par
with the evolution of hardware and software and to counter the increasing risk on
cyber vulnerabilities. Moreover, it should be addressed as a concern and major priority
for researches and policy-makers.
Muhammad Adil Khattak, Nurul Syahrizzat Mohd Yasin, Hannah Natasha Andjani, Puteri Nurailah Husna Mohd Tajuddin, Sakeshraj Narajah, See, Zhi Fei, et al.
Geopolitical risks will less affect the oil supply in the United States due to its stability
and widespread oil sectors since 1970s. Nevertheless, energy prosperity in the United
States appears differently in relation to a fuller period for conventional energy export
states where geopolitical challenges have been intensified by monetary pressure and
escalating energy demand in residential areas. The relationship between the United
States and other energy export states will continue to change as the United States
becomes more independent and non-OPEC resources become worthwhile especially
in Western Hemisphere. With expansion of global economic growth, maintained
multilateral relationship among countries and technological development are two
prominent concerns to secure long-term energy supplies and to enable further
exploration of new energy sources.
Muhammad Adil Khattak, Mohammad Azfar Haziq Ayoub, Muhammad Ariff Fadhlillah Abdul Manaf, Mohd Faidhi Mahrul, Mohd Ridwan Mohd Juhari, Mira Idora Mustaffa, et al.
Energy supply security is a vital aim of energy policy in countries across the globe.
Global energy security is one of the main concerns as it depends on the concentrations
of the energy supplies political pressure from energy exporters. In Europe’s case,
energy security has been of large concern by the gas crisis which resulted from gas
prices and debts that caused the halt in Russian gas flowing through Ukraine’s
pipelines. The crisis coincidentally happened during the increasing concerns in the
nationalism resource of energy exporters as well as the circumstance involving high oil
prices. Europe’s economies were a huge concern as it was susceptible of energy
exporters’ political pressure and the rivalry with the resource demanding China. Energy
security, however, is still confused as it is shown in political actions. The focus of energy
security in the U.S. has originally been to reduce the susceptibility of it towards political
manipulation and that has tipped the politicians to voice out for the independence of
energy increasing shares of renewable energy. The plan of energy independence in
Brazil, however, had come to a reality as there were timeframes of politician
represented a rising share in fossil fuel supply imports and lowered shares of
renewable energy as to encourage energy security. For other countries, the energy
security they went for was the protection of the poor in countering the products price
instability while others highlight the prominence of defending the economy in contrast
of the disturbance in energy service supplies which is done by letting the prices of
products to increase in times of shortage. The paper will define the energy security
better in terms of the European Union as to shed some light on the issue. It will review
the European Union and the global energy security whilst including the implication of
oil market which will be concentrated in terms of EU, elaboration of the energy security
of EU in context of foreign relation, the physical security issues and challenges faced
by EU, and the elaboration of energy policy of EU.
This paper has evaluated the spatial growth of Bauchi Metropolis from 1976 to 2015
through the application of Remote Sensing and GIS techniques. Various satellite
imageries of the metropolis (Landsat MSS of 1976, TM of 1986, 1996 and ETM+ of 2006
and 2015) were integrated; processed and classified using ERDAS imagine 9.1. The
results showed an increase in area from 11.68km2
in 1976 to 12.51km2
in 1986 to
32.44km2 in 1996, to 49.66km2
in 2006 and finally to 89.23km2 in 2015. It is
recommended that government should provide the required capacities for the use of
Remote Sensing and GIS in planning for the growth of the town.
Recently natural polyphenol compounds (PCs) of plants, gained wide consideration of
scientists, companies and public people because of its unique pharmaceutical and
preservative benefits in the physiological system. They can prevent mortal and serious
diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and Alzheimer. However, defining a suitable
source of PCs and their proper, economic and efficient extraction method are still a
challenge. The aim of this study was to review PCs as an important antioxidant, the
significance of pomegranate as a source of natural PCs and its application in meat and
meat product. This study also covers different types of PCs extraction methods such as
solid-liquid extraction (SLE) method as a conventional extraction which using Soxhlet
apparatus and several solvents and advanced methods such as microwave-assisted
extraction (MAE), supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), accelerated solvent extraction
(ASE), ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) and high hydrostatic pressure extraction
(HHPE). Simple and developed analytical method of PCs is also reviewed in the study.
SLE method is an easy and simple method but, it uses lots of chemicals and is not
suitable for all kinds of PCs extraction. UAE is using for quick extraction PCs, SFE is green
extraction method uses less solvent and have a good result but it needs high
technology. ASE method is a proper alternative for Soxhlet extraction method for its
quick result. MAE method has high extraction result but is not suitable for some
thermolabile PCs. Several parts of pomegranate showed antioxidant and antimicrobial
traits for shelf life extension of meat and meat product. Pomegranate peel is the
strongest antioxidant followed by pomegranate juice and seed. Pomegranate peel
prolonged chilled chicken meat shelf live up to three weeks.
Rock with moderate strengths (20 to 70 MPa) effectively excavated by ripping
method which is considered as shallow excavation or surface striping method.
Disputed between client and contractor often occur due to the lack of proper
assessment to determine the rippabality of hard material. Practically, rippability of in
situ rock is assessed based on field ripping test that being conducted using actual
ripper dozer which is time-consuming and expensive. Therefore the assessment of
rippability of rock based on specific laboratory tests able to resolve the conflict that
occurs on ripping method. The correlation between specific energy with surface
hardness and tensile strength is chose as the material properties to assess in order to
determine the rippability of rock in this study. Few samples of Sandstone undergone
several laboratory tests such as laboratory ripping test, Brazilian's test and Schmitt
hammer test in order to obtain the required parameters in this study. The average
tensile strength (σT) obtained was 4.62MPa with a range of value from 3.19 to 7.50
MPa whilst the average rebound number (R) obtained for Sandstone was 26.6 with a
range between 19.0 and 34.0. The specific energy (SE) obtained indicates an average
value of 3.95 MJ/m3
with a range value between 1.73MJ/m3
and 6.45 MJ/m3
. The
correlation of R and σT with SE shows a relatively good relationship. Parameters of R
and σT are acceptable and reliable for assessing rippability of Sandstone based on the
value of regression coefficient (R2) which is consistence above 0.8 for both
correlation between SE, R and σT.
This study presents an investigation about the effect of size variation on mechanical
performance of square core interlocking structures, by using finite element analysis
(FEA). The material used in this study is flax fibre reinforced polypropylene (PP)
composite. Abaqus software was used for modelling and visualizing number of six
interlocking honeycomb structures with different cell sizes and heights. In the first
analysis, Abaqus/standard was performed on the perfect models by applying quasistatic
loading to identify the imperfection shape and obtaining the buckling Eigenmodes
for the models, then the Eigen-modes from abaqus/standard were imported
to abaqus/explicit to run post-buckling analysis and simulate the overall imperfection
behaviour of models. The numerical results from the finite element analysis
simulation were used to plot load-displacement curve to each model. The area under
the load-displacement curve represents the total absorbed energy, energy absorption
per unit mass indicates the specific energy absorption, and the highest value of
specific energy absorption represents the optimum size. The findings demonstrated
that the square interlocking structure exhibits good energy absorption performance
in some geometrical cases, and also revealed that the natural fibre composites have
unique energy absorption capability under quasi-static loads.
Yeast growth and biomass production are greatly influenced by the length of the
incubation period during cultivation. Therefore, this study was conducted to
investigate the growth kinetics of five Lipomyces starkeyi strains as determined by
biomass production. The five L. starkeyi strains, namely L. starkeyi ATCC 12659, L.
starkeyi MV-1, L. starkeyi MV-4, L. starkeyi MV-5 and L. starkeyi MV-8, were inoculated
in sterilized Yeast Malt broth, and, incubated for 192 hr at ambient temperature.
Biomass yields were assessed and calculated gravimetrically every 24 hr. Results
indicated that the optimal biomass production of L. starkeyi ATCC 12659, L. starkeyi
MV-1, L. starkeyi MV-4, L. starkeyi MV-5 and L. starkeyi MV-8 were at 120, 168, 144,
168 and 120 hr, with the concentrations of 6.64, 6.43, 9.78, 11.23 and 8.56 g/L,
respectively. These results indicate that each L. starkeyi strain requires specific
incubation period for the optimum production of fungal biomass. Therefore, by
cultivating each L. starkeyi strain at the predetermined incubation period, biomass
yields could significantly be improved for further downstream applications such as
single cell protein and lipid production.
Nowadays, the applications of tracking moving object are commonly used in various
areas especially in computer vision applications. There are many tracking algorithms
have been introduced and they are divided into three groups which are generative
trackers, discriminative trackers and hybrid trackers. One of the methods is TrackingLearning-Detection
(TLD) framework which is an example of the hybrid trackers where
combination between the generative trackers and the discriminative trackers occur. In
TLD, the detector consists of three stages which are patch variance, ensemble classifier
and KNearest Neighbor classifier. In the second stage, the ensemble classifier depends
on simple pixel comparison hence, it is likely fail to offer a better generalization of the
appearances of the target object in the detection process. In this paper, OnlineSequential
Extreme Learning Machine (OS-ELM) was used to replace the ensemble
classifier in the TLD framework. Besides that, different types of Haar-like features were
used for the feature extraction process instead of using raw pixel value as the features.
The objectives of this study are to improve the classifier in the second stage of detector
in TLD framework by using Haar-like features as an input to the classifier and to get a
more generalized detector in TLD framework by using OS-ELM based detector. The
results showed that the proposed method performs better in Pedestrian 1 in terms of
F-measure and also offers good performance in terms of Precision in four out of six
videos.
Scholars have opined that the courtyard is a passive architectural design element and
that it can act as a microclimate modifier provided that its design requirements are not
ignored. But despite the assertions, empirical studies on the microclimatic
performance of a fully enclosed courtyard house and the non-courtyard house seems
to be deficient, and the assumption that the Courtyard is a passive architectural design
element needs to be substantiated. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to
investigate the microclimatic performance of a fully enclosed courtyard and noncourtyard
residential buildings. The main objective is to compare their microclimatic
performances in other to draw a conclusion on the best option. Three Hobo Weather
Data Loggers were used to collect climatic data in the buildings, and the third one was
situated in the outdoor area as a benchmark. The climatic variables investigated are;
air temperature and relative humidity. The fully enclosed courtyard residential building
is seen to have a better air temperature difference of 2 oC to 4 oC and the relative
humidity of 2 % to 6 %. In conclusion, the fully enclosed courtyard residential building
has confirmed a more favorable microclimatic performance, and future studies
towards its optimization are recommended.
Nowadays, intelligent vehicles have received a considerable attention among the
researchers to reduce the number of collisions and road accidents. One of the
challenging tasks for these vehicles is road lane detection or road boundaries
detection. In this research, a lane detection algorithm was developed to detect the
right and left lane markers on the road by using two cameras which act as a stereo
vision for the system. It is based on edge detection by using Canny Edge Detection to
reduce unnecessary data on the images and to perform features recognition for the
lane. After the features has been extracted, the algorithm is followed by Hough
Transform method to generate the detected lines on the image obtained from the
stereo vision camera. The algorithm has to work in different environment to be used
in real world applications. The stereo vision algorithm is implemented to generate
disparity map of area. This helps to gain more information on environment, such as the
estimated distance of the lines, the distance of the vehicle to the turns. The experiment
result shows the detection of right and left lane on the road with disparity map to
determine an estimate of the distance of detected lanes from the stereo vision camera.
Purpose of this study to be conducted is to identify the risk factor of low back pain amongst port crane operator and to improve the health management program in the company. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the major group of port crane operator that having low back pain problem, to analyse the risk factors that associated to low back pain problem (WBV, Awkward prolonged sitting and shift work-psychological) , individual characteristics (sport activity or hobby), to analyse the associated rate operator’s absence from work (medical leave) and low back pain problem and to propose the basic ergonomic assessment checklist for management to investigate health incident cases and fit-to-work (ergonomics) screening checklist for new recruitment. A survey research design through the distribution of the questionnaire and interview & field observation will
be used for research methodology. The population of this study consists of port crane operatorsRubber Tyred Gantry Operator (RTG). Questionnaire method used to collect all relevant information from correspondence. Interview also will be conducted to gain further details information. Data were analyzed with the usage of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) to make the process of analysis easier. As result, firstly, the study shown that there are association of risk factor for working posture and years of exposure with Low back Pain. The null hypothesis was rejected and there is probability that these risk factors have influence the low back pain. It was also concluded that the null hypothesis was accepted which means there are no correlation of risk factors for heavy physical works, previous job experience, previous accident with low back pain problem. Thirdly, the study
shown there are no correlation of rate operator’s absence from work (medical leave) with low back pain problem as the null hypothesis was accepted with p value <0.05
Keywords: Port, Low Back Pain, Ergonomics, Occupational Safety & Health, Rubber tyre gantry, Back Pain