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This study is the first comprehensive investigation of enzyme-producing bacteria isolated from four sludge samples (primary, secondary, press and machine) collected in a Kraft paper mill. Overall, 41 strains encompassing 11 different genera were identified by 16S rRNA gene analysis and biochemical testing. Both biodiversity and enzymatic activities were correlated with sludge composition. Press sludge hosted the largest variety of bacterial strains and enzymatic activities, which included hydrolytic enzymes and ligninolytic enzymes. In contrast, strains isolated from secondary sludge were devoid of several enzymatic activities. Most strains were found to metabolize Kraft liquor at its alkaline pH and to decolorize industrial lignin-mimicking dyes. Resistance to lignin or the ability to metabolize this substrate is a prerequisite to survival in any paper mill sludge type. We demonstrate here that the bacterial strains found in a typical Kraft paper mill represent a source of potential novel enzymes for both industrial applications and bioremediation. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-3147-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Blood paper cards provide an effective DNA storage method. In this study, we used three DNA dissolving reagents (Tris-EDTA [TE] buffer, Tris–HCl buffer, and water) and one common commercially available kit (DN131 from MRC Inc) to elute DNA from 105 human blood paper cards collected up to 10 years ago. These DNA samples were used as templates for amplification of a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, C125T) region of human caspase-12 by PCR and a specific Taqman genotyping assay using the same amount of DNA. We show that DNA isolated by Tris–HCl buffer has higher yield and quality in comparison to DN131 solution. PCR success rate to amplify caspase-12 C125T SNP using Tris–HCl is comparable to the method using DN131 (89.5% vs 87.6%). The Taqman genotyping success rate using Tris–HCl is higher than using DN131 (81.9% vs 70.5%). Using TE or water, PCR success rates are lower than using DN131 (73.3% [TE]; 72.4% [H2O]), but Taqman genotyping success rates are comparable to the method using DN131 (70.5% [TE]; 79.1% [H2O]). We concluded that using Tris–HCl is a reliable and effective method to elute DNA from old human blood paper cards. The crude DNA isolated by Tris–HCl can be used to study genetic polymorphisms in human populations.

Rock phosphate (RP) addition in cow-dung waste-paper mixtures at rates above 2% P has been reported to increase the rate of bio-transformation and humification of organic waste mixtures during vermicomposting to produce organic fertilizer for organic farming. However, the optimization of RP for vermicomposting was not established. The objective of this study was to determine the optimal amount of RP integration rates for effective bio-transformation of cow-dung waste-paper mixtures. Arrays of RP integration degrees (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, and 4% P as RP) were thoroughly mixed with cow- dung waste-paper mixtures to achieve an optimized C:N ratio of 30 and allowed to vermidegrade following the introduction of earthworms at a stocking mass of 12.5 g-worms kg−1. The bio-transformation of the waste mixtures was examined by measuring C:N ratios and humification index (HI) and per cent ash and volatile solids. Application of 1% P as RP resulted in fast bio-transformation and maturation of cow-dung waste-paper mixtures. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to evaluate the morphological properties of the different vermicomposts affected by rates of RP showing the degree of degradation of initial compacted aggregates of cellulose and protein fibres in the mixtures at maturity. A germination test was used to further determine phytotoxicity of the final composts and microbial biomass assessment. The final vermicompost (organic fertilizer) had a C:N ratio of 7, MBC of 900 mg kg−1 and HI of 27.1%. The RP incorporation rate of 1% P of RP investigated is therefore, recommended for efficient vermidegradation and humification of cow-dung waste-paper mixtures. However, higher rates of RP incorporation should be considered where greater P enrichment of the final vermicompost (organic fertilizer) is desired.

Let H be a Hilbert space and let C be a closed convex nonempty subset of H and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$T : C\rightarrow H$$\end{document}T:C→H a non-self nonexpansive mapping. A map \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$h : C\rightarrow R$$\end{document}h:C→R defined by \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$h(x) := \inf \{\lambda \ge 0 : \lambda x+(1-\lambda )Tx \in C \}$$\end{document}h(x):=inf{λ≥0:λx+(1-λ)Tx∈C}. Then, for a fixed \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$x_0 \in C$$\end{document}x0∈C and for \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\begin{aligned}{\alpha _0} = \max \left\{ {\frac{1}{2},h({x_0})} \right\}\end{aligned}$$\end{document}α0=max12,h(x0), Krasnoselskii–Mann algorithm is defined by \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$x_{n+1}=\alpha _n+(1-\alpha _n)Tx_n,$$\end{document}xn+1=αn+(1-αn)Txn, where \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha _{n+1}=\max \{\alpha _n, h(x_{x_{n+1}})\}$$\end{document}αn+1=max{αn,h(xxn+1)}. Recently, Colao and Marino (Fixed Point Theory Appl 2015:39, 2015) have proved both weak and strong convergence theorems when C is a strictly convex set and T is an inward mapping. Meanwhile, they proposed a open question for a countable family of non-self nonexpansive mappings. In this article, authors will give an answer and will prove the further generalized results with the examples to support them.

Contamination rate of Ethiopian paper currency notes handled by various food handlers with Escherichia coli and antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolates was assessed. A total of 384 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) notes were randomly sampled from meat handlers at butchers, bread and the related food handlers at cafeteria, fruit and vegetables handlers at supermarket, and milk sellers both at open market and dairy station. Fifty control new currencies were also sampled from Commercial Bank of Ethiopia. Both surfaces of the currency were swabbed using wet sterile cotton. The swab was overnight incubated in buffered peptone water. A loop full was streaked on eosin methylene blue agar and followed by biochemical test on presumptive E. coli colonies. Randomly selected isolates were exposed to chloramphenicol (C-30 µg), neomycin (N-30 µg), oxytetracycline (OT-30 µg), polymyxin-B (PB-300 IU) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (SXT-1.25/23.75/µg) susceptibility using disc diffusion techniques. E. coli was not isolated from currency used as control. A total of 288 (75 %) currency notes were found carrying E. coli. E. coli prevalence was ranges from 67.2 % at open market milk sellers to 87.2 % at dairy station milk sellers; from 64.8 % on ETB 100 to 82.9 % on ETB 1. Differences were not observed in E. coli prevalence on currency notes from among almost all food handlers (P > 0.05). Susceptibility of tested isolates to each chloramphenicol, oxytetracycline and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole was 100 %, and to polymyxin-B was 97.3 %. High resistance (83.7 %) was observed to neomycin. The finding indicates, contaminated food can be a source of E. coli for further contamination of currency which again transfer through various foods ready for consumption.

In an attempt to find a thermostable xylanase enzyme for potential application in the pretreatment prior to H2O2 bleaching of paper pulp for industry, an extracellular xylanase from Aureobasidium pullulans CBS 135684 was purified 17.3-fold to apparent homogeneity with a recovery yield of 13.7%. Its molecular mass was approximately 72 kDa as determined by SDS-PAGE. The optimal pH and temperature for activity of the purified enzyme were pH 6.0 and 70°C, respectively. The enzyme was relatively stable at 50°C, retaining more than half of its original activity after 3-h incubation. The thermostability of the enzyme was improved by the addition of 0.75 mM sorbitol prolonging the enzyme’s activity up to 10-fold at 70°C. When the potential of using the enzyme in pretreatment of rice straw pulp prior to bleaching was evaluated, the greatest efficiency was obtained in a mixture containing xylanase and sorbitol. Treatment of the rice straw pulp with xylanase prior to treatment with 10% (v/v) H2O2 and production of hand sheets increased the ISO sheet brightness by 13.5% and increased the tensile and tear strengths of the pulp by up to 1.16 and 1.71-fold, respectively, compared with pulps treated with H2O2 alone. The results suggested the potential application of the enzyme before the bleaching process of paper pulp when the maintenance of high temperature and enzyme stability are desirable.

Large amounts of coffee residues are generated from coffee processing plants in Ethiopia. These residues are toxic and possess serious environmental problems following the direct discharge into the nearby water bodies which cause serious environmental and health problems. This study was aimed to quantify wet coffee processing waste and estimate its bio-ethanol production. The study showed that the wastes are potential environmental problems and cause water pollution due to high organic component and acidic nature. The waste was hydrolyzed by dilute H2SO4 (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1 M) and distilled water. Total sugar content of the sample was determined titrimetrically and refractometry. Maximum value (90%) was obtained from hydrolysis by 0.4 M H2SO4. Ethanol production was monitored by gas chromatography. The optimum yield of ethanol (78%) was obtained from the sample hydrolyzed by 0.4 M H2SO4 for 1 h at hydrolysis temperature of 100 °C and after fermentation for 24 h and initial pH of 4.5. Based on the data, it was concluded that reuse of the main coffee industry wastes is of significant importance from environmental and economical view points. In conclusion, this study has proposed to utilize the wet coffee processing waste to produce bio-ethanol which provides the alternative energy source from waste biomass and solves the environmental waste disposal as well as human health problem.

Coconut is a high-quality agricultural product of the Asia–Pacific region. In this paper, coconut shell which mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin was used as a raw material for coconut shell oil from coconut shell pyrolysis. The influence of the pyrolysis temperature, heating rate and particle size on coconut oil yield was investigated, and the effect of heating rate on coconut oil components was discussed. Experimental results show that the maximum oil yield of 75.74 wt% (including water) were obtained under the conditions that the final pyrolysis temperature 575 °C, heating rate 20 °C/min, coconut shell diameter about 5 mm. Thermal gravimetric analysis was used and it can be seen that coconut shell pyrolysis process can be divided into three stages: water loss, pyrolysis and pyrocondensation. The main components of coconut-shell oil are water (about 50 wt%), aromatic, phenolic, acid, ketone and ether containing compounds.

With the rising demand for renewable energy and environmental protection, anaerobic digestion of biogas technology has attracted considerable attention within the scientific community. The effect of physico-chemical pretreatment on cellulose degradation followed by fungal treatment by Aspergillus terreus and Trichoderma viride to treat cellulosic biomass for enhancing its digestibility was investigated. The tested substrate was digested with and without physical, chemical, and biological treatment. Fresh leaves, dry leaves and cattle dung were characterized by a total solids content 35, 84 and 17 %, volatile solids content 81.2, 59.49 and 64.5 % and C/N ratio 31, 45.4 and 13.6, respectively. Biogas total volume was determined using water replacement technique, while methane volume was determined using precipitation of CO2 in 20 % NaOH solution. Pretreatment steps were carried out by using mechanical and chemical pretreatments using 2.5 % NaOH mixed with 2.5 % NH4OH for 15 days, followed by biological treatment of A. terreus and T. viride. The potential of pretreatment of substrate was studied at regular intervals of 0, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63 and 70 days determining the change in chemical and physical compositions of used substrates. Biogas production was 102.6 and 125.9 L/KgVS from untreated and pretreated substrate, respectively. On the other hand, methane production was 61.4 and 79.8 L/KgVS from untreated and pretreated substrate, respectively. In conclusion, Physical (milling), chemical (NaOH and NH4OH) pretreatment in addition to fungal (A. terreus and T. viride) treatment for the tested substrate prior to AD was an efficient process for improvement of biogas and methane production. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-015-1466-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The disposal of solid waste is a serious problem worldwide that is made worse in developing countries due to inadequate planning and unsustainable solid waste management. In Mexico, only 2% of total urban solid waste is recycled. One non-recyclable material is poly (styrene-co-butadiene), which is commonly used in consumer products (like components of appliances and toys), in the automotive industry (in instrument panels) and in food services (e.g. hot and cold drinking cups and glasses). In this paper, a lab-scale strategy is proposed for recycling poly (styrene-co-butadiene) waste by sulfonation with fuming sulfuric acid. Tests of the sulfonation strategy were carried out at various reaction conditions. The results show that 75°C and 2.5 h are the operating conditions that maximize the sulfonation level expressed as number of acid sites. The modified resin is tested as a heterogeneous catalyst in the first step (known as esterification) of biodiesel production from a mixture containing tallow fat and canola oil with 59% of free fatty acids. The preliminary results show that esterification can reach 91% conversion in the presence of the sulfonated polymeric catalyst compared with 67% conversion when the reaction is performed without catalyst.

In this study, the performance of an aerobic moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) was assessed for the removal of phenol as the sole substrate from saline wastewater. The effect of several parameters namely inlet phenol concentration (200-1200 mg/L), hydraulic retention time (8-24 h), inlet salt content (10-70 g/L), phenol shock loading, hydraulic shock loading and salt shock loading on the performance of the 10 L MBBR inoculated with a mixed culture of active biomass gradually acclimated to phenol and salt were evaluated in terms of phenol and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies. The results indicated that phenol and COD removal efficiencies are affected by HRT, phenol and salt concentration in the bioreactor saline feed. The MBBR could remove up to 99% of phenol and COD from the feed saline wastewater at inlet phenol concentrations up to 800 mg/L, HRT of 18 h and inlet salt contents up to 40 g/L. The reactor could also resist strong shock loads. Furthermore, measuring biological quantitative parameters indicated that the biofilm plays a main role in phenol removal. Overall, the results of this investigation revealed that the developed MBBR system with high concentration of the active mixed biomass can play a prominent role in order to treat saline wastewaters containing phenol in industrial applications as a very efficient and flexible technology.

In this study, a green composite was produced from Oil Palm Trunk Lumber (OPTL) by impregnating oil palm shell (OPS) nanoparticles with formaldehyde resin. The changes of physical, mechanical and morphological properties of the OPS nanoparticles impregnated OPTL as a result of natural weathering was investigated. The OPS fibres were ground with a ball-mill for producing nanoparticles before being mixed with the phenol formaldehyde (PF) resin at a concentration of 1, 3, 5 and 10% w/w basis and impregnated into the OPTL by vacuum-pressure method. The treated OPTL samples were exposed to natural weathering for the period of 6 and 12 months in West Java, Indonesia according to ASTM D1435-99 standard. Physical and mechanical tests were done for analyzing the changes in phenol formaldehyde-nanoparticles impregnated (PF-NPI) OPTL. FT-IR and SEM studies were done to analyze the morphological changes. The results showed that both exposure time of weathering and concentration of PF-NPI had significant impact on physical and mechanical properties of OPTL. The longer exposure of samples to weathering condition reduced the wave numbers during FT-IR test. However, all these physical, mechanical and morphological changes were significant when compared with the untreated samples or only PF impregnated samples. Thus, it can be concluded that PF-NP impregnation into OPTL improved the resistance against natural weathering and would pave the ground for improved products from OPTL for outdoor conditions.

Babassu is considered the largest native oil resource worldwide and occurs naturally in Brazil. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential of babassu nut residues (epicarp, mesocarp and endocarp) for bioenergy use, especially for direct combustion and charcoal production. The material was collected in the rural area of the municipality of Sitio Novo do Tocantins, in the state of Tocantins, Brazil. Analyses were performed considering jointly the three layers that make up the babassu nut shell. The following chemical characterizations were performed: molecular (lignin, total extractives and holocellulose), elemental (C, H, N, S and O), immediate (fixed carbon, volatiles and ash), energy (higher heating value and lower heating value), physical (basic density and energy density) and thermal (thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis), besides the morphological characterization by scanning electron microscopy. Babassu nut residues showed a high bioenergy potential, mainly due to their high energy density. The use of this biomass as a bioenergy source can be highly feasible, given their chemical and thermal characteristics, combined with a low ash content. Babassu nut shell showed a high basic density and a suitable lignin content for the sustainable production of bioenergy and charcoal, capable of replacing coke in Brazilian steel plants.

Aims The recent increases in food prices caused by the corresponding increases in fertilizer costs have highlighted the demand for reducing the overuse of fertilizers in industrial agriculture. There has been increasing interest in developing plant root-targeted delivery (RTD) of fertilizers in order to address the problem of inefficient fertilizer use. The aim of this study is to develop a low cost controlled release device to deliver fertilizers to plant roots and thereby increase fertilizer use efficiency. Methods The Root Targeted Delivery Vehicle (RTDV) is formed by dissolving Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC) chains in water, mixing it with liquid fertilizer and crosslinking using iron and calcium salts. Basic measurements quantifying nutrient release and green house growth trials were carried out to evaluate fertilizer use efficiency on wheat growing in nutrient depleted soil media. Results Growing wheat in nutrient depleted media showed that the RTDV permits a 78% reduction in the amount of fertilizer needed to achieve similar levels of plant yield in these conditions. Quantifying the losses associated with the RTDV synthesis showed that optimizing manufacturing could possibly increase this value as high as 94%. Furthermore, the delivery device showed a similar lifetime in soil to the plant’s growth cycle, delivering fertilizer over the course of the plant’s growth before removal from soil by degradation. Conclusions These results illustrate the importance of fertilizer delivery in facilitating absorption and may have potential to vastly increase the use efficiency of fertilizers in soil, resulting in a significant reduction of costs and environmental damage. With more in depth study to quantify the fertilizer release and refine the device, there is great potential for the use of the RTDV as an effective means to increase fertilizer use efficiency in agriculture.

Industrial-scale use of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-gel beads as biocarriers is still not being implemented due to the lack of understanding regarding the optimal operational parameters. In this study, the parameters for organic loading rate (OLR), alkalinity, recycle rate, and addition of trace elements were investigated in an expanded granular sludge blanket reactor (EGSB) treating high-strength ethylene glycol wastewater (EG) with PVA-gel beads as biocarrier. Stable chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies of 95 % or greater were achieved, and continuous treatment was demonstrated with appropriate parameters being an OLR of 15 kg COD/m(3)/day, NaHCO3 added at 400 mg/L, a recycle rate of 15 L/h, and no addition of trace elements addition. A biogas production yield rate of 0.24 m(3)/kg COD was achieved in this study. A large number of long rod-shaped bacteria (Methanosaeta), were found with low acetate concentration in the EGSB reactor.

As a substitute to petroleum-derived diesel, biodiesel has high potential as a renewable and environment friendly energy source. For petroleum importing countries the choice of feedstock for biodiesel production within the geographical region is a major influential factor. Crude rice bran oil is found to be good and viable feedstock for biodiesel production. A two step esterification is carried out for higher free fatty acid crude rice bran oil. Blends of 10, 20 and 40 % by vol. crude rice bran biodiesel are tested in a variable compression ratio diesel engine at compression ratio 15, 16, 17 and 18. Engine performance and exhaust emission parameters are examined. Cylinder pressure-crank angle variation is also plotted. The increase in compression ratio from 15 to 18 resulted in 18.6 % decrease in brake specific fuel consumption and 14.66 % increase in brake thermal efficiency on an average. Cylinder pressure increases by 15 % when compression ratio is increased. Carbon monoxide emission decreased by 22.27 %, hydrocarbon decreased by 38.4 %, carbon dioxide increased by 17.43 % and oxides of nitrogen as NOx emission increased by 22.76 % on an average when compression ratio is increased from 15 to 18. The blends of crude rice bran biodiesel show better results than diesel with increase in compression ratio.

Renewable biodiesels are needed as an alternative to petroleum-derived transport fuels, which contribute to global warming and are of limited availability. Algae biomass, are a potential source of renewable energy, and they can be converted into energy such as biofuels. This study introduces an integrated method for the production of biodiesel from Chara vulgaris algae collected from the coastal region of Bangladesh. The Box-Behnken design based on response surface methods (RSM) used as the statistical tool to optimize three variables for predicting the best performing conditions (calorific value and yield) of algae biodiesel. The three parameters for production condition were chloroform (X1), sodium chloride concentration (X2) and temperature (X3). Optimal conditions were estimated by the aid of statistical regression analysis and surface plot chart. The optimal condition of biodiesel production parameter for 12 g of dry algae biomass was observed to be 198 ml chloroform with 0.75 % sodium chloride at 65 °C temperature, where the calorific value of biodiesel is 9255.106 kcal/kg and yield 3.6 ml.

Remediation of aquaculture water using microorganisms like Bacillus species is a burgeoning trend for the sustainable development of aquaculture industries. In this work, a Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain (namely B. amyloliquefaciens HN), isolated from activated sludge of a polluted river, was evaluated for its potential in water remediation using simulated aquaculture water. B. amyloliquefaciens HN exhibited high tolerance towards 80 mg l(-1) of nitrite-N and ammonia-N. It could effectively remove 20 mg l(-1) of nitrite-N, but was inefficient in eliminating ammonia-N when the ammonia-N concentration was below 20 mg l(-1). Further studies showed that the ammonia-N removal by B. amyloliquefaciens HN was more efficient at 30°C and 35°C than 25°C, and that maximum nitrite-N removal rate was achieved at pH 8.

Background Silicon single-photon avalanche diodes (Si-SPADs) are the most used devices for measuring ultra-weak optical radiant fluxes in many quantum technology fields, such as quantum optics, quantum communication, quantum computing, etc. In all these fields, the detection efficiency is the main parameter, which has to be accurately known for achieving reliable measurements. In this paper we present the improvements performed on the setup described in López et al. (J Mod Opt 62:S21–S27, 2015) for determining the detection efficiency of Si-SPAD detectors with a low measurement uncertainty. The improvement arises from the precise alignment of the Si-SPAD detector and the low deviation reached between the total calculated filter transmission and the individual filter transmission measurements (≤0.05%) performed with an integrating sphere with attached Si-photodiode as standard detector. Results The relative standard uncertainty of the Si-SPAD detection efficiency measurement achieved is now as low as ~0.16%. Furthermore, the investigation of the detection efficiency homogeneity of two commercial Si-SPAD detectors from different manufacturers and with different sensor diameters is also presented. The obtained homogeneity is ≤2.2% within a region of diameter of 40 μm. Conclusions The detailed analysis presented in this paper shows the potential for achieving low measurement uncertainties for Si-SPAD detector calibration even in the low photon flux range. The low uncertainties are only to be realized for reproducible measurement conditions, i.e. in specific for equal beam sizes and beam shapes and well as for an irradiation of equal active areas of the detector. This, however, will be difficult to obtain when measurements are performed at different national metrology institutes.

With the continuous expansion of the cloud computing platform scale and rapid growth of users and applications, how to efficiently use system resources to improve the overall performance of cloud computing has become a crucial issue. To address this issue, this paper proposes a method that uses an analytic hierarchy process group decision (AHPGD) to evaluate the load state of server nodes. Training was carried out by using a hybrid hierarchical genetic algorithm (HHGA) for optimizing a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN). The AHPGD makes the aggregative indicator of virtual machines in cloud, and become input parameters of predicted RBFNN. Also, this paper proposes a new dynamic load balancing scheduling algorithm combined with a weighted round-robin algorithm, which uses the predictive periodical load value of nodes based on AHPPGD and RBFNN optimized by HHGA, then calculates the corresponding weight values of nodes and makes constant updates. Meanwhile, it keeps the advantages and avoids the shortcomings of static weighted round-robin algorithm.

Background Adverse drug events (ADEs), harmful unintended consequences of medication use, are a leading cause of hospital admissions, yet are rarely documented in a structured format between care providers. We describe pilot-testing structured ADE documentation fields prior to integration into an electronic medical record (EMR). Methods We completed a qualitative study at two Canadian hospitals. Using data derived from a systematic review of the literature, we developed screen mock-ups for an ADE reporting platform, iteratively revised in participatory workshops with diverse end-user groups. We designed a paper-based form reflecting the data elements contained in the mock-ups. We distributed them to a convenience sample of clinical pharmacists, and completed ethnographic workplace observations while the forms were used. We reviewed completed forms, collected feedback from pharmacists using semi-structured interviews, and coded the data in NVivo for themes related to the ADE form. Results We completed 25 h of clinical observations, and 24 ADEs were documented. Pharmacists perceived the form as simple and clear, with sufficient detail to capture ADEs. They identified fields for omission, and others requiring more detail. Pharmacists encountered barriers to documenting ADEs including uncertainty about what constituted a reportable ADE, inability to complete patient follow-up, the need for inter-professional communication to rule out alternative diagnoses, and concern about creating a permanent record. Conclusion Paper-based pilot-testing allowed planning for important modifications in an ADE documentation form prior to implementation in an EMR. While paper-based piloting is rarely reported prior to EMR implementations, it can inform design and enhance functionality. Piloting with other groups of care providers and in different healthcare settings will likely lead to further revisions prior to broader implementations.

Background In the first decade of this century players in the National Football League, the NFL community, fans, even the public at large, became aware that multiple concussions, heretofore considered inconsequential, could have devastating consequences later in life. Results Since 1978, each one of the 32 teams in the NFL plays 16 games in the regular season. In the 25 years from 1978 to 2004 home advantage in the regular season tended to increase with Game Number (1–16). Then in the following decade (2005–2014) it changed direction and tended clearly to decrease. The change in direction was highly reliable statistically. Discussion The result reported in this paper is an association in time between two striking events, a new consciousness regarding the long-term consequences of concussions in football, and a change in the course of home advantage in the regular season. The paper then advances a possible explanation for this association. The home advantage may be equally well treated as an away disadvantage, the disadvantage being that away players tend to feel on the defensive, that both the hometown crowd and the officials are against them. Injuries put players on both teams on the defensive. The higher the percentage of players on a team who are injured or playing hurt (injury prevalence) the less likely it is that as-yet-uninjured players will adopt an attacking style of play. Injury prevalence increases linearly with Game Number. It turns out, however, that formal considerations require that injury prevalence be the same or close to it for teams playing at home and teams playing away. Therefore, the away disadvantage in total defensiveness (defensiveness due to playing away plus defensiveness due to injury) starts at 1 in the first game of the season, decreases steeply at first, and then decelerates as it approaches .5. This downward course of the away disadvantage in total defensiveness leads directly to a corresponding downward course of the home advantage in game outcome (by the teamwork theory of home advantage). Conclusions Further research on the reported association or its explanation may be complicated by continued change in the association itself.

This paper looks at both the prepayment risks of housing mortgage loan credit default swaps (LCDS) as well as the fuzziness and hesitation of investors as regards prepayments by borrowers. It further discusses the first default pricing of a basket of LCDS in a fuzzy environment by using stochastic analysis and triangular intuition-based fuzzy set theory. Through the ‘fuzzification’ of the sensitivity coefficient in the prepayment intensity, this paper describes the dynamic features of mortgage housing values using the One-factor copula function and concludes with a formula for ‘fuzzy’ pricing the first default of a basket of LCDS. Using analog simulation to analyze the sensitivity of hesitation, we derive a model that considers what the LCDS fair premium is in a fuzzy environment, including a pure random environment. In addition, the model also shows that a suitable pricing range will give investors more flexible choices and make the predictions of the model closer to real market values.

The global k-means algorithm is an incremental approach to clustering that dynamically adds one cluster center at a time through a deterministic global search procedure from suitable initial positions, and employs k-means to minimize the sum of the intra-cluster variances. However the global k-means algorithm sometimes results singleton clusters and the initial positions sometimes are bad, after a bad initialization, poor local optimal can be easily obtained by k-means algorithm. In this paper, we modified the global k-means algorithm to eliminate the singleton clusters at first, and then we apply MinMax k-means clustering error method to global k-means algorithm to overcome the effect of bad initialization, proposed the global Minmax k-means algorithm. The proposed clustering method is tested on some popular data sets and compared to the k-means algorithm, the global k-means algorithm and the MinMax k-means algorithm. The experiment results show our proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms mentioned in the paper.

This paper addresses continuous fusion frames and fusion pairs which are extensions of discrete fusion frames and continuous frames. The study of equalities and inequalities for various frames has seen great achievements. In this paper, using operator methods we establish some new inequalities for continuous fusion frames and fusion pairs. Our results extend and improve ones obtained by Balan, Casazza and Găvruţa.

This paper builds a bridge between heavy metal music, complexity theory and sustainability science to show the potential of the (auditory) arts to inform different aspects of complex systems of people and nature. The links are described along different dimensions. This first dimension focuses on the scientific aspect of heavy metal. It uses complex adaptive systems theory to show that the rapid diversification and evolution of heavy metal into multiple subgenres leads to a self-organizing and resilient socio-musicological system. The second dimension builds on the recent use of heavy metal as a critical thinking model and educational tool, emphasizing the artistic component of heavy metal and its potential to increase people's awareness of environmental sustainability challenges. The relationships between metal, complexity theory and sustainability are first discussed independently to specifically show mechanistic links and the reciprocal potential to inform one domain (science) by the other (metal) within these dimensions. The paper concludes by highlighting that these dimensions entrain each other within a broader social-cultural-environmental system that cannot be explained simply by the sum of independent, individual dimensions. Such a unified view embraces the inherent complexity with which systems of people and nature interact. These lines of exploration suggest that the arts and the sciences form a logical partnership. Such a partnership might help in endeavors to envision, understand and cope with the broad ramifications of sustainability challenges in times of rapid social, cultural, and environmental change.

In this report, we present the research results on using the conventional method and microwave technology to extract curcuminoid from turmeric roots originated in different regions of Northern Vietnam. This method is simple, yet economical, non-toxic and still able to achieve high extraction performance to get curcuminoid from turmeric roots. The detailed results on the Raman vibration spectra combined with X-ray powder diffraction and high-performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry allowed the evaluation of each batch of curcumin crystalline powder sample received, under the conditions of applied fabrication technology. Also, the absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies of the samples are presented in the paper. The information to be presented in this paper: absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies of the samples; new experimental study results on applied technology to mass-produce curcumin from turmeric rhizomes; comparative study results between fabricated samples and marketing curcumin products-to state the complexity of co-existing crystalline phase in curcumin powder samples. We noticed that, it is possible to use the vibration line at ~959 cm(-1)-characteristic of the ν C=O vibration, and the ~1625 cm(-1) line-characteristic of the ν C=O and ν C=C vibration in curcumin molecules, for preliminary quality assessment of naturally originated curcumin crystalline powder samples. Data on these new optical spectra will contribute to the bringing of detailed information on natural curcumin in Vietnam, serving research purposes and applications of natural curcumin powder and nanocurcumin in Vietnam, as well as being initial materials for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics or functional food industries.

The aim of this paper is to study a finite family of H-accretive operators and prove common zero point theorems of them in Banach space. The results presented in this paper extend and improve the corresponding results of Zegeye and Shahzad (Nonlinear Anal 66:1161–1169, 2007), Liu and He (J Math Anal Appl 385:466–476, 2012) and the related results.

Roadways supported by bolts contain support structures that are built into the rock surrounding the roadway, referred to as reinforced rocks in this paper. Using physical model simulation, the paper investigates the bearing characteristics of the reinforced rock under different bolt parameters with incrementally increased load. The experimental results show that the stress at the measurement point inside the structure varies with the kinetic pressure. The stress increases slowly as the load is initially applied, displays accelerated growth in the middle of the loading application, and decreases or remains constant in the later stage of the loading application. The change in displacement of the surrounding rock exhibits the following characteristics: a slow increase when the load is first applied, accelerated growth in the middle stage, and violent growth in the later stage. There is a good correlation between the change in the measured stress and the change in the surrounding rock displacement. Increasing the density of the bolt support and the length and diameter of the bolt improves the load-bearing performance of the reinforced rock, including its strength, internal peak stress, and residual stress. Bolting improves the internal structure of the surrounding rocks, and the deterioration of the surrounding rock decreases with the distance between the bolt supports.

The aim of this paper is to investigate hybrid algorithm for a common zero point of the sum of two monotone operators which is also a fixed point of a family of countable quasi-nonexpansive mappings. We point out two incorrect proof in paper (Hecai in Fixed Point Theory Appl 2013:11, 2013). Further, we modify and generalize the results of Hecai’s paper, in which only a quasi-nonexpansive mapping was considered. In addition, two family of countable quasi-nonexpansive mappings with uniform closeness examples are provided to demonstrate our results. Finally, the results are applied to variational inequalities.

Evolution systems containing fractional derivatives can result to suitable mathematical models for describing better and important physical phenomena. In this paper, we consider a multi-components nonlinear fractional-in-space reaction–diffusion equations consisting of an improved deterministic model which describe the spread of hepatitis B virus disease in areas of high endemic communities. The model is analyzed. We give some useful biological results to show that the disease-free equilibrium is both locally and globally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is less than unity. Our findings of this paper strongly recommend a combination of effective treatment and vaccination as a good control measure, is important to record the success of HBV disease control through a careful choice of parameters. Some simulation results are presented to support the analytical findings.

In this paper, we present some sufficient conditions for the oscillation of all solutions of a second order forced impulsive delay differential equation with damping term. Three factors-impulse, delay and damping that affect the interval qualitative properties of solutions of equations are taken into account together. The results obtained in this paper extend and generalize some of the the known results for forced impulsive differential equations. An example is provided to illustrate the main result.

Background Malaysia is a multicultural state comprising three main races: Malays, Chinese and Indians. The three main religions are Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. Other religions such as Sikhism and Christianity are also practised. Muslims are the majority comprising 67 % of the population. Methods This paper is qualitative in nature. It applies historical comparative method in presenting its data. The Undang-undang Melaka (Malacca Laws) was obtained from the monograph available at National Library of Malaysia under the name of Hukum Kanun Melaka. Analysis was done on selected examples from this document. Result This paper highlights that had there been no introduction to a common law system, Malaysia would have remained with its traditional laws influenced by Islam and its local customs as evident from Undang-undang Melaka (Malacca laws). The Undang-undang Melaka was practised from 1422 to 1444 and the law of the country was developed to accommodate the introduction of civil law during the colonial period. Discussion One of the unique aspects of multicultural Malaysia is the fact that it has a parallel legal system: sharia and civil law. This paper examines histo-cultural development of the Islamic law as practised in pre-independent Malaysia, as well as the coexistence between these two laws after the independence of Malaya in 1957. Conclusions This paper concludes that Islamic law in Malaysia is confined to Muslim family matters, while civil law covers all other matters.

Based on a new trial function, an analytical coupled technique (a combination of homotopy perturbation method and variational method) is presented to obtain the approximate frequencies and the corresponding periodic solutions of the free vibration of a conservative oscillator having inertia and static non-linearities. In some of the previous articles, the first and second-order approximations have been determined by the same method of such nonlinear oscillator, but the trial functions have not been satisfied the initial conditions. It seemed to be a big shortcoming of those articles. The new trial function of this paper overcomes aforementioned limitation. The first-order approximation is mainly considered in this paper. The main advantage of this present paper is, the first-order approximation gives better result than other existing second-order harmonic balance methods. The present method is valid for large amplitudes of oscillation. The absolute relative error measures (first-order approximate frequency) in this paper is 0.00 % for large amplitude A = 1000, while the relative error gives two different second-order harmonic balance methods: 10.33 and 3.72 %. Thus the present method is suitable for solving the above-mentioned nonlinear oscillator.

This paper proposes a novel continuous sparse autoencoder (CSAE) which can be used in unsupervised feature learning. The CSAE adds Gaussian stochastic unit into activation function to extract features of nonlinear data. In this paper, CSAE is applied to solve the problem of transformer fault recognition. Firstly, based on dissolved gas analysis method, IEC three ratios are calculated by the concentrations of dissolved gases. Then IEC three ratios data is normalized to reduce data singularity and improve training speed. Secondly, deep belief network is established by two layers of CSAE and one layer of back propagation (BP) network. Thirdly, CSAE is adopted to unsupervised training and getting features. Then BP network is used for supervised training and getting transformer fault. Finally, the experimental data from IEC TC 10 dataset aims to illustrate the effectiveness of the presented approach. Comparative experiments clearly show that CSAE can extract features from the original data, and achieve a superior correct differentiation rate on transformer fault diagnosis.

Vulnerabilities at various levels are main cause of security risks in e-learning system. This paper presents a modified threat driven modeling framework, to identify the threats after risk assessment which requires mitigation and how to mitigate those threats. To model those threat mitigations aspects oriented stochastic petri nets are used. This paper included security metrics based on vulnerabilities present in e-learning system. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System designed to provide a normalized method for rating vulnerabilities which will be used as basis in metric definitions and calculations. A case study has been also proposed which shows the need and feasibility of using aspect oriented stochastic petri net models for threat modeling which improves reliability, consistency and robustness of the e-learning system.

Background This research-based paper examined the Indonesian foundation and endowment laws in relation to educational and religious institutions which are managed under foundation legal structure. The institutions examined were: 1) The Pondok Pesantren al-Ansor Foundation in Padangsidimpuan City; 2) The Pesantren Dar al-Ma’arif Education Foundation in South Labuhanbatu Regency; and 3) ​The Masjid Agung Foundation in Medan City. Methods Using legal sociology and critical legal analysis, data were collected through field research, document study, and in-depth interviews. The documents studied were laws, books, papers, and other related writings relevant to this research. Interviews were conducted with informants obtained from snowball sampling and key person methods. Results It was found that in terms of foundation wealth, these institutions can be categorized into three: (1) foundation with founder’s wealth; (2) foundation with endowment wealth; and (3) foundation with both founder’s and endowment wealth. Even though both foundation and endowment legal structures have the same aim of societal welfare, it was found that when they are merged into one legal structure, the foundation becomes more dominant, and there is a risk that the endowment asset’s status become unclear. The asset may be sold or its status may be changed from endowment wealth to foundation wealth. This unclear status may also be caused by conflict of interests among the foundation members and people involved in the foundations. Even when the foundation status is clear, most if not all foundation members violate the rules stipulated by the Foundation Law. The lack of status clarity has caused these institutions to become objects of conflict. Conclusions There is a need to position the status of these institutions accurately and it is recommended that the endowment legal structure is used for institutions with endowment wealth.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in economically developed countries and the second leading cause of death in developing countries. Gastric cancers are among the most devastating and incurable forms of cancer and their treatment may be excessively complex and costly. Data mining, a technology that is used to produce analytically useful information, has been employed successfully with medical data. Although the use of traditional data mining techniques such as association rules helps to extract knowledge from large data sets, sometimes the results obtained from a data set are so large that it is a major problem. In fact, one of the disadvantages of this technique is a lot of nonsense and redundant rules due to the lack of attention to the concept and meaning of items or the samples. This paper presents a new method to discover association rules using ontology to solve the expressed problems. This paper reports a data mining based on ontology on a medical database containing clinical data on patients referring to the Imam Reza Hospital at Tabriz. The data set used in this paper is gathered from 490 random visitors to the Imam Reza Hospital at Tabriz, who had been suspicions of having gastric cancer. The proposed data mining algorithm based on ontology makes rules more intuitive, appealing and understandable, eliminates waste and useless rules, and as a minor result, significantly reduces Apriori algorithm running time. The experimental results confirm the efficiency and advantages of this algorithm.

Traditional fiscal federalism theory postulates that devolution for the provision of local public goods increases welfare. However, most of the services offered at local level are local impure public goods whose characteristics may prevent devolution from being efficient. Our paper shows that devolution is the optimal choice only for local impure public goods. For an environment characterised by coordination and asymmetry of information problems, we propose the optimal grants-in-aid formula that Central Government should use to reduce welfare losses and we compare it with what suggested by the mainstream literature. Finally, we show under which conditions devolution should be preferred to a centralised solution. From a policy point of view, our paper may explain the heterogeneity in the choices made by countries in terms of devolution in the provision of merit and impure public goods.

The existing transportation sector creates heavily environmental impacts and is a prime cause for the current climate change. The need to reduce emissions from this sector has stimulated efforts to speed up the application of electric vehicles (EVs). A subset of EVs, called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), backup batteries with combustion engine, which makes PHEVs have a comparable driving range to conventional vehicles. However, this hybridization comes at a cost of higher emissions than all-electric vehicles. This paper studies the routing problem for PHEVs to minimize emissions. The existing shortest-path based algorithms cannot be applied to solving this problem, because of the several new challenges: (1) an optimal route may contain circles caused by detour for recharging; (2) emissions of PHEVs not only depend on the driving distance, but also depend on the terrain and the state of charge (SOC) of batteries; (3) batteries can harvest energy by regenerative braking, which makes some road segments have negative energy consumption. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a green navigation algorithm (GNA) which finds the optimal strategies: where to go and where to recharge. GNA discretizes the SOC, then makes the PHEV routing problem to satisfy the principle of optimality. Finally, GNA adopts dynamic programming to solve the problem. We evaluate GNA using synthetic maps generated by the delaunay triangulation. The results show that GNA can save more than 10 % energy and reduce 10 % emissions when compared to the shortest path algorithm. We also observe that PHEVs with the battery capacity of 10–15 KWh detour most and nearly no detour when larger than 30 KWh. This observation gives some insights when developing PHEVs.

Garment and textile (G&T) industry has been playing as a driving force for the socio-economic development of Vietnam. With the international integration process and rising challenges from the global market, there is a need to examine international competitiveness of Vietnam’s G&T industry to find out what Vietnam should focus on to enhance its position in the global market place. This paper, by using the Generalized Double Diamond Model (GDDM), analyzed international competitiveness of Vietnam’s G&T industry and compared it with China. The results showed that Vietnam was less competitive than China in all four attributes of the GDDM. The lowest competitiveness of Vietnam in comparison with China was Related and Supporting industries, followed by Factor Conditions. Therefore, the paper argued that although Vietnam should improve all of the four attributes in the long term, Vietnam must put a high priority on developing Related and Supporting Industries and then enhance Factor Conditions while maintaining its strengths over China in terms of G&T export growths and favorable business context. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-1912-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In this paper, by using the existence of the exponential dichotomy of linear dynamic equations on time scales and the theory of calculus on time scales, we study the existence and global exponential stability of periodic solutions for a class of n-dimensional neutral dynamic equations on time scales. We also present an example to illustrate the feasibility of our results. The results of this paper are completely new and complementary to the previously known results even in both the case of differential equations (time scale \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb {T}}={\mathbb {R}}$$\end{document}T=R) and the case of difference equations (time scale \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathbb {T}}={\mathbb {Z}}$$\end{document}T=Z).

This paper focuses on the usage of a learning management system in an educational institution for higher education in Greece. More specifically, the paper examines the literature on the use of different learning management systems for blended learning in higher education in Greek Universities and Technological Educational Institutions and reviews the advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, the paper describes the usage of the Open eClass platform in a Technological Educational Institution, TEI of Ionian Islands, and the effort to improve the educational material by organizing it and adding video-lectures. The platform has been evaluated by the students of the TEI of Ionian Islands based on six dimensions: namely student, teacher, course, technology, system design, and environmental dimension. The results of this evaluation revealed that Open eClass has been successfully used for blended learning in the TEI of Ionian Islands. Despite the instructors’ initial worries about students’ lack of participation in their courses if their educational material was made available online and especially in video lectures; blended learning did not reduce physical presence of the students in the classroom. Instead it was only used as a supplementary tool that helps students to study further, watch missed lectures, etc.

The paper seeks to establish whether or not remittances promoted financial developments and explore the traceable causality between remittances and financial developments in some countries in Africa. We examine the association between remittances received and how they affect the availability of credit to private sector, bank deposits intermediated by financial institutions and money supply. We also question whether the development in the financial sector causes higher levels or otherwise of remittances received. This paper uses data on remittance flows to 50 developing countries in Africa from 1990 to 2011 to explore the nexus. The study uses fixed effects and random effect estimations as well as Vector Error Correction Model method on the panel data. The study shows that remittances promote certain aspects of financial development to some extent and better financial system foster receipts of remittances. The effect of causality is seen in the short run and not in the long-run. The study alludes to literature that remittances could promote financial development in the short run and the development of the financial sector helps increase the propensity to remit via formal channels.

Virtual machine live migration is a method of moving virtual machine across hosts within a virtualized datacenter. It provides significant benefits for administrator to manage datacenter efficiently. It reduces service interruption by transferring the virtual machine without stopping at source. Transfer of large number of virtual machine memory pages results in long migration time as well as downtime, which also affects the overall system performance. This situation becomes unbearable when migration takes place over slower network or a long distance migration within a cloud. In this paper, precopy based virtual machine live migration method is thoroughly analyzed to trace out the issues responsible for its performance drops. In order to address these issues, this paper proposes three phase optimization (TPO) method. It works in three phases as follows: (i) reduce the transfer of memory pages in first phase, (ii) reduce the transfer of duplicate pages by classifying frequently and non-frequently updated pages, and (iii) reduce the data sent in last iteration of migration by applying the simple RLE compression technique. As a result, each phase significantly reduces total pages transferred, total migration time and downtime respectively. The proposed TPO method is evaluated using different representative workloads on a Xen virtualized environment. Experimental results show that TPO method reduces total pages transferred by 71 %, total migration time by 70 %, downtime by 3 % for higher workload, and it does not impose significant overhead as compared to traditional precopy method. Comparison of TPO method with other methods is also done for supporting and showing its effectiveness. TPO method and precopy methods are also tested at different number of iterations. The TPO method gives better performance even with less number of iterations.

At present, to realize or improve the quality of experience (QoE) is a major goal for network media transmission service, and QoE evaluation is the basis for adjusting the transmission control mechanism. Therefore, a kind of QoE collaborative evaluation method based on fuzzy clustering heuristic algorithm is proposed in this paper, which is concentrated on service score calculation at the server side. The server side collects network transmission quality of service (QoS) parameter, node location data, and user expectation value from client feedback information. Then it manages the historical data in database through the “big data” process mode, and predicts user score according to heuristic rules. On this basis, it completes fuzzy clustering analysis, and generates service QoE score and management message, which will be finally fed back to clients. Besides, this paper mainly discussed service evaluation generative rules, heuristic evaluation rules and fuzzy clustering analysis methods, and presents service-based QoE evaluation processes. The simulation experiments have verified the effectiveness of QoE collaborative evaluation method based on fuzzy clustering heuristic rules.

After conducting the intensive research on the distribution of fluid’s velocity and biochemical reactions in the membrane bioreactor (MBR), this paper introduces the use of the mass-transfer differential equation to simulate the distribution of the chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration in MBR membrane pool. The solutions are as follows: first, use computational fluid dynamics to establish a flow control equation model of the fluid in MBR membrane pool; second, calculate this model by adopting direct numerical simulation to get the velocity field of the fluid in membrane pool; third, combine the data of velocity field to establish mass-transfer differential equation model for the concentration field in MBR membrane pool, and use Seidel iteration method to solve the equation model; last but not least, substitute the real factory data into the velocity and concentration field model to calculate simulation results, and use visualization software Tecplot to display the results. Finally by analyzing the nephogram of COD concentration distribution, it can be found that the simulation result conforms the distribution rule of the COD’s concentration in real membrane pool, and the mass-transfer phenomenon can be affected by the velocity field of the fluid in membrane pool. The simulation results of this paper have certain reference value for the design optimization of the real MBR system.

Textures play an important role in image classification. This paper proposes a high performance texture classification method using a combination of multiresolution analysis tool and linear regression modelling by channel elimination. The correlation between different frequency regions has been validated as a sort of effective texture characteristic. This method is motivated by the observation that there exists a distinctive correlation between the image samples belonging to the same kind of texture, at different frequency regions obtained by a wavelet transform. Experimentally, it is observed that this correlation differs across textures. The linear regression modelling is employed to analyze this correlation and extract texture features that characterize the samples. Our method considers not only the frequency regions but also the correlation between these regions. This paper primarily focuses on applying the Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Packet Transform and the Linear Regression model for classification of the obtained texture features. Additionally the paper also presents a comparative assessment of the classification results obtained from the above method with two more types of wavelet transform methods namely the Discrete Wavelet Transform and the Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform.

The emphasis of this paper is on MicroBlaze implementation of GPS/INS integrated system on Virtex-6 field programmable gate array (FPGA). Issues related to accuracy of position, resource usage of FPGA in terms of slices, DSP48, block random access memory, computation time, latency and power consumption are presented. An improved design of a loosely coupled GPS/INS integrated system is described in this paper. The inertial navigation solution and Kalman filter computations are provided by the MicroBlaze on Virtex-6 FPGA. The real time processed navigation solutions are updated with a rate of 100 Hz.

This paper explores the differentials in youth development patterns determined by the economic condition of the household in India. The wealth index is used to glean youth development differentials in the different economic categories of the household. The findings suggest that youth from the bottom 20 per cent (poorest) of households are deprived in education, employment, labour force and are not working currently compared to youth from the middle and rich households. The states differ in youth development patterns (employment, appropriate education, skill development and awareness about health). There are more working youth among poor households than among rich households in India. Female youth are more disadvantaged compared to male youth and it is the same with the rural–urban distribution of youth. This paper concludes that the various economic categories/wealth index (poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest) directly determine the pattern of youth development in India.