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.
An investigation of bending loss characteristics of a Polymer Optical Fiber is presented experimentally. Loss of optical power in an optical fiber due to bending has been investigated for a wavelength of 650 nm. Variations of bending loss with different lengths have been measured, with a number of radii of curvature. Bending Loss equations for short length POF is proposed, which shows the dependence of bending loss on the curvature radii. The equations can be an initial reference or aid in predicting the loss contributes by the polymer optical fiber.
Bioethanol is one of the leading alternative biofuel to fossil fuels and can be use in
existing gasoline engines without any major modification. Bioethanol can be
produced from sugar containing biomass fermentation using different potential
strains. In this study, the gram negative, facultative anaerobic, rod shaped strain
‘Zymomonas mobilis’ was used as microorganism to produce bioethanol from sugar
cane molasses using anaerobic fermentation. The study was conducted to investigate
the optimized conditions for production of bioethanol through batch fermentation
process. The fermentation unit was designed to determine the effect of process
parameters such as fermentation temperature, pH, sugar concentration and supply of
nutrients. The Zymomonas mobilis produced 9.3% (v/v) bioethanol by utilizing 16
g/100mL sugar with the fermentation efficiency 92.5%. The fertilized based nutrients
were supplied to enhance the production of bioethanol yield. The bioethanol yield
produced by using this strain in optimized conditions is in good compromise with
previous study and also compared with commercially available yeast strain.
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.
Due to high energy demand worldwide, finding an alternative renewable and
sustainable energy source is of great interest. Plant microbial fuel cell (P-MFC) is one
of the most promising methods to generate green energy. In P-MFC, a plant is placed
into the anode compartment. Mutual interaction between plant root rhizodeposits
and bacterial community results in the biofilm formation at the vicinity of the
rhizosphere area in plant root could be utilized to generate electricity. Indeed, in PMFC,
bacteria metabolize rhizodeposits into electrons and protons. These electrons
could be then converted into green electricity. The objectives of this research are to
utilize Epipremnum aureum plant collected from Kota Tinggi’s lake to generate
electricity and observe current generation by different resistors, to characterize
immobilized bacteria attached on the anode surface then identify the optimum growth
temperature for isolated bacteria. Five plant microbial fuel cells were constructed in a
H-shape (dual- chambers) configuration in the plastic container. Maximum current
density for 20 days for P-MFC by external resistance of 100k Ω was 0.1 µA/cm2
with
maximum power density of 0.85 µW/cm2 and the open circuit voltage (OCV) was
measured at 195 mV. Besides, fresh biomass averages increased 5g after 20 days of
experiments below and above ground as compared to the initial fresh biomass. Five
isolated bacterial strains from the graphite felt surface found on the anode were
screened by nine biochemical tests such as catalase, TSI (triple sugar iron agar), gelatin
and etc. The immobilized bacteria attached to anode electrode in P-MFC were further
examined with Fast Electron Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM). The isolated
bacterial growth curves were determined at two different temperatures of 25 °C and
37 °C. The optimum growth temperature predominantly for them was 37 °C.
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.
Housing is ranked second as a basic human need after food. Generally, there is
inadequate housing both in the rural and urban centres in most of the developing
countries. The issue of housing quality seems to be common in the rural areas
whereas the major housing problem in urban areas is more of insufficient supply
from which the people can make choices. In any preference and choice situation,
certain underlying motivational factors make it possible for an individual to evaluate
available alternatives. Preferences and choices are dynamic operational activities
individuals make based on changing circumstances and situations. The study
examines housing choices and preferences within the Nigerian housing delivery
systems. The study employed quantitative method of data collection. A total of 434
questionnaires were distributed to selected households in the South West,
geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The analysis was based on 359 retrieved questionnaires
that represented 82.7 percent response rate. Descriptive statistics, relative
importance index and regression analysis was used for the analysis. Using relative
importance index, the study found out that 41 percent of the respondents preferred
3 bedroom flat with a relative importance index of 0.74, followed by 2 bedrooms flat
with RII of 0.64, self-contain with RII of 0.61. The study also revealed that the state of
the national economy plays a prominent role in individual’s housing preferences and
choices and increasingly a large number of Nigerians find housing to be beyond the
family budget. The authors are also of the opinion that policy measures that
incorporate the design of low-cost social housing and the creation of conducive
environment for developers such as the granting of tax break and provision of
subsidy may promote a better housing delivery system. Consideration of user
preferences for housing is a requirement to meeting and satisfying housing needs.
The probability of the construction accident to happen is high due the nature of
Construction work that involves complex activities, methods, machineries, materials
and hazards. The occupational safety and health (OSH) law and regulations are
mandatory for every construction project to uphold. Responsibilities to ensure the
safety and health at the workplace lies with those who create the risk and with those
who work with the risk. The owner or client of the construction project has the upper
hand in determining the standard of OSH implementation in their project through
contract documents. If the contract documents comprehensively spell out OSH
requirements and cover all OSH cost, then the issues of contractor not implementing
OSH measures could be minimized. The objective of this study is to identify
Occupational Safety and Health requirements (OSH) in the contract document of
selected construction projects. To achieve this objective, a total of seven contract
document was collected from several construction companies. The qualitative analysis
was performed to identify the extent of OSH requirements and costs are being
mentioned in the contract documents. The finding shows that most of the contract
document contains very little emphasis on OSH requirements and budgeting. Only one
contract contains, an appendix that spell out about the safe work practices for
construction works. The visible allocated budget for OSH requirements for all seven
contracts is very minute range from 0.21% to 1.99% of contract value. In order to
ensure that occupational safety and health is properly implemented, safety needs must
be included in the budget because implementation it is not free, this can be achieved
by making it a permanent feature in all bills of quantity of the project.
Interest in Indigenous Knowledge (IK) system has been particularly highlighted in
flood disasters, due to the likely increase of flood events resulting from
anthropogenic climate change through heavy precipitation, increased catchment
wetness, and sea level rise. Therefore, bringing IK of flood risk reduction into focus
and context to deepen the understanding of how people manage their own changing
circumstances can bring more pertinent information about flood risk reduction. This
paper reviews the significance of IK in flood risk reduction. Specifically, the paper
discusses IK flood forecasting, early warning signs, adaptation and coping strategies
in flood risk reduction around the world. The Methodological approach employed for
this paper is the review of existing literature on IK in flood Disaster Risk Reduction
(DRR), and then a summary of the outcomes of the studies reviewed was discussed.
However, it was deduced from the review undertaken, the need for an intensive
empirical study to be conducted to explore how efficient these strategies or
techniques are, in relation to flood risk reduction, which this paper strongly
recommends for further investigation. Additionally, the paper concludes by
emphasizing that although the IK of flood risk reduction is embedded in varied
regions around the globe, still there is a need for further study to be carried out in
order to unveil why the similarities and variations in flood risk reduction
practices/strategies between regions.
The purpose of this research is to enhance the gain signal amplification by using dual
pump double pass configuration in comparative with single pump double pass that are
commonly used as conventional optical amplifier configuration in optical
communication system nowadays. Two input signals power have been implemented
which are -30 and 0 decibel (dB). The input signal defined as low and high input signals
power by using a pump power of 1480 nm. The amplification of EDFA in this study have
been taken place in conventional band (C) band and long wavelength band (L) band of
EDFA within the range of 1515 to 1615 nm. Therefore, to understand the performance
of the gain amplification, the OptiSystem software simulator version 13 has been used
for simulation and the values of fiber length and pump power has been varied for both
configurations. It has been found that the, dual pump double pass configuration has
shown better gain performance at lower input signal power compared to the single
pump double pass configuration.
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.
Parameter estimation of complex exponential signals corrupted by additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN) is crucial in the study of distributed beamforming in a practical
scenario. Near zero (0) phase offset are expected at the receiver end which rely on the
smoothing and correction of the frequency and phase estimates. Neither
computational complexity nor the processing latency has an effect on the expected
zero phase offset but the estimation accuracy does. Thus, the maximum likelihood
estimator (MLE) using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) approach is being considered for
cases with none and post processing in locating of the maximum peaks. Details on how
the phase estimates are arrived at is not always covered in literatures but explained in
the article. Numerical results obtained showed that global maximum peaks are arrived
at by employing a fine search with higher values of FFT.
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
This paper reports the effect of microbending losses in single mode optical fiber
for pressure sensing system application. Several types of periodical corrugated
plates were fabricated, namely cylindrical-structured surface (Plate A) and
rectangular-structured surface (Plate B) with thicknesses of corrugated parts
were varied at 0.1 cm, 0.2 cm and 0.3 cm. Laser sources with excitation
wavelengths of 1= 1310 nm and 2= 1550 nm were launched at the first end
of the fiber. The values of losses were recorded by using an optical power
meter. It was clearly seen that the microbending losses were polynomially
increased with the increment of applied pressure and the thicknesses of
corrugated parts of Plate A and Plate B. The maximum microbending losses of
1.5185 dBm/kPa was resulted as SMF was coupled with corrugated plates B
with thicknesses of 0.3cm by using excitation wavelength of 1550nm. These
values reduced to 0.7628 dBm/kPa and 0.4014 dBm/kPa as the thicknesses
were decreased to 0.2cm and 0.1cm respectively. In comparison with a plain
plate which acted as a reference indicator, the maximum percentage of
microbending losses was obtained as 74.29 % for Plate A and 95.02 % for Plate
B. In conclusions, we successfully proved the ability of SMF as a pressure sensor
by manipulating the microbending losses experienced by the fiber. The
employment of 1550nm of laser wavelength results better sensitivity sensor
where the system able to detect large losses as the pressure applied on the
corrugated surfaces.
This article presents a Wall Climbing Robot (WCR) that able to move on ferromagnetic vertical surface to carry out visual inspection process. Visual inspection process is important in the industry to check the condition of storage tank, surface of building, piping or equipment thus can prevents structures collapsing or explosion which would bring a huge loss to the company. Moreover, most of the structures nowadays is expose under the sun and rain, corrosion and cracks could easily occur on the surface after exposing under sunlight and rain a long period of time. Therefore the periodic visual inspection process need to be carry out to detect the damaged occur on the surface of the structure and take action at the fastest time to ensure the safety of the structures and extend the lifespan of the structures. With the well maintenance to the structures, the condition of the structures is monitored and the lifespan is longer. The risk of collapse of the building is decrease by a large margin. Normally, the periodic visual inspection process is performed by operator. Sometime the temporary scaffolding is needed to reach the higher place to carry out the inspection. However, this method create a hazardous environment to the operator and cause the safety of the operator threatened. Therefore, the proposed WCR could help operator to work at the hazardous environment. The permanent magnet is used to provide adhesion for WCR, thus WCR able to move on vertical ferromagnetic surface. The WCR is controlled by operator via wireless remote to reach the higher place or the hazardous environment. The operator then can stream the on the real time images via web browser which connected to the same network with the WCR. Hence, the condition of the surface can be observed.
Energy consumption of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is an important aspect in
the design requirement. This is especially true in a situation where WSN is being
operated in isolated areas and thus relying on batteries due to unavailability of power
infrastructure. Since energy efficiency is the main concern in the deployment of WSN,
the sensor node must keep track of the charge that is left in the battery, commonly
referred as the State of Charge (SoC). To prevent the discontinuation of the operation
of the sensor node from power cut off, it is important to find an analytic model for
the battery’s state of charge. In this paper, an optimized structure of Multi-Layer
Perceptron (MLP) is utilized to obtain a model of the battery state-of-charge in
wireless sensor nodes. Results show the suitability of the method that produces
accurate and simple models, capable of being implemented even in low cost and very
constrained real motes.