Abstract: Restorative materials, such as artificial heart valve, artificial members, artificial lens, etc, are regarded as abnormal materials that are implanted in a normal one. Non-destructive ultrasonic tool can characterize various materials. Therefore ultrasonic technique can be used to characterize restorative materials. Characterizing the implanted restorative materials is very important because these materials can be susceptible to various changes like the creation of inside cracks, surface or deep corrosion, etc. These changes can affect the work efficiency of the implanted restorative material. Ultrasonic pulse-echo technique was used to characterize various discontinuities in dental composite resin samples, which were susceptible to different tensile stress (50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 mm/min crosshead speed). The study showed that 100 mm/min crosshead speed is a critical load at which cracks are initiated in the dental restorative material. Otherwise, at 300 mm/min crosshead speed the material was broken, thus it can be said that this dental restorative material can sustain tensile stress below 300 mm/min crosshead speed.

Abstract: Perforated concrete block is a new form of breakwater that has similar function like coral reef and artificial breakwater, so the purpose of this research is to investigate how a perforated concrete block works as a breakwater protector structure towards the reduction level of wave height. The result showed that the perforated concrete block is one of breakwater types that could be used to muffle the wave height, and the use of perforated concrete block as a breakwater could reduce the wave height in the protected area and this could be developed into one of economic and eco-friendly breakwaters because the large pores of the concrete block could be used as a home of marine biota and it also reduces the volume of concrete using.

Abstract: Behavioral Finance is a science that encompasses the knowledge of finance, economics and cognitive psychology in order to understand the investment decision making process. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the emergence of behavioral finance contributes to a better understanding about the decision making process. Behavioral finance presents evidence that this process can be triggered by cognitive illusions, heuristics and cognitive biases, resulting in misleading investment decision-making, which is not based on rationality. In general, the goal of learning about the cognitive l biases and the decision-making process is being able to recognize situations in which these particular errors can manifest themselves. This way, it can help investors to avoid mistakes in the process of asset allocation and, consequently, improve future performance. It provides a better theoretical foundation of the investor´s behavior, one can better understand the dynamics of financial markets and avoid actions of euphoria and panic that can produce serious economic consequences, as evidenced by recurring financial crises in history.

Abstract: The concentration of this numerical investigation is focused to generate data for developing optimum profile of Supersonic nozzle irrespective of the altitude of operation. The investigation has been carried out for different altitudes when the combustion conditions including combustion temperature, combustion pressure, specific heat ratio and molecular weight remain unchanged. Considering the aerodynamic issues, method of characteristics is chosen for profile generation. During the application of method of characteristics, exit pressure to atmospheric pressure ratio is maintained unity. The coding has been done in the MATLAB interface with an aim to generate maximum thrust at the outlet of the optimized supersonic nozzle. Both Mach and pressure distribution for maximum thrust generation are within the domain of interest of this investigation.

Abstract: Human face detection plays an important role in many applications such as computer-human interaction, face recognition and video surveillance and so on. In human face detection application a false detection rate and slow detection speed remain major problems. In this paper, we present a method to avoid these problems, by combining a Fast Saliency-based visual attention (FSBVA), skin color filtering (SCF), and Viola and Jones Face detector (VJFD) : After determining all possible face candidate regions using FSBVA with SC, the VJFD is applied to detect Human face and then a discrimination based SCF is used to reject false positive. Our method takes advantage from the visual attention mechanism to rapidly find the attractive face regions and to overcome the problems of false negatives when both VJFD and SC are applied directly in video frames with complex backgrounds. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Abstract: The interest in techniques for enhanced oil recovery has grown due to the need to improve oil productivity reducing water injection and production. Although waterflooding is the most widely used method to recover oil, this process becomes less effective when the mobility ratio is unfavorable and the displacement efficiency is low. Furthermore, great volumes of injected and produced water lead to a premature economic limitation of the production wells and the field itself. In this context, the polymer flooding appears as a good alternative method to reduce water production. The addition of polymer increases fluids viscosity and, therefore, a more favorable mobility ratio is achieved. This improvement on mobility ratio leads to a better swept efficiency, so, the water breakthrough is postponed and also the oil production is anticipated. On the other hand, there are concerns about the effectiveness of the polymer when formation water with high-salinity and hardness are considered. The main objective of this work is to analyze the procedures for tailoring a polymer fluid from a given synthetic formation water composition aiming to reach a target viscosity to further displacement experiments. Moreover, the polymer solutions properties, such as, overlapping concentration, molecular weight, salt influence and ionic strength are evaluated under rheological analysis. As a result, the target viscosity for a specific reservoir condition and polymer were determined. Additionally, it was possible to identify two concentration regions, a dilute and a semi-dilute, and the overlapping concentration (C*) as a function of the shear rate. It was found that all salts added to the synthetic formation water composition negatively affect the apparent viscosity of the polymer fluids. Also, this effect is more pronounced when salts with divalent ions content are considered.

Abstract: The main aim of string matching algorithm is to locate the appearance of a specific pattern in an array of larger size text. String matching algorithms has been used in many applications such as DNA analysis. This report introduces a new approach of string matching algorithm to detect the occurrence of several gene patterns in the human DNA sequence and verify whether the person has chances of getting cancer or not. DNA is a large database; many new and efficient algorithms are required to carry out the cancer diagnosis. This can be attained easily by applying parallelization techniques using GPU using CUDA programming model.

Abstract: The study of air quality in open environments typically focuses on air pollution concentration, and not on the presence of bioaerosols, which may bring risks to human health through contamination resulting from micro-organisms. A large sewage treatment plant was monitored using two types of air samplers for assessment of bioaerosols: a sampler that uses the system of direct impaction plate with agar medium and another by filtration of air in cellulose acetate membrane with 0.45 µm pore. The samples were in the vicinity of the various stages of treatment as: Grid Coarse, Aeration Tank, Exit the Effluent and Garden. The microorganisms studied were Pseudomonas sp, Total Coliforms, Thermotolerant Bacteria, E. coli, Salmonella /Shigella, Enterobacteria and Fungi. The samples plated on specific media were incubated at 37°C. The colonies count was made in 24 and 48 hours. The results show that there was a greater concentration of microorganisms in air in the areas of pre-treatment, that the point of greatest concentration of microorganisms was the coarse grid and the microbial group of greater occurrence in all sampling points was fungi. The two sampling systems presented statistically similar results, indicating that the sampler by filtration can be considered a low-cost alternative for monitoring of bioaerosols in open environments.

Abstract: The thermal upgrading of processing of nickel lateritic ore to produce ferronickel is energy intensive, and need source of high grade coal as reductor especially when low nickel content ores are processed. The beneficiation via selective reduction of laterite ore to produce high nickel content concentrate and abandon gangue minerals before smelting potentially offers an effective pre-treatment to this process. In this work, the authors conducted selective reduction of nickel laterite ores at 900 °C for 60 minute with addition of 10% calcium sulfate and 6% reductant coal lignite type and carbonation coal. The presence of calcium sulfate will increase of recovery of nikel to 92.1%. According to the microscopic study, nickel oxide had been reduced and nickel was mainly enriched into a Fe–Ni phase. The presence of sulfur significantly promoted Fe–Ni particle growth, from 15 µm to 30 µm, and improved the Ni enrichment in metallic phases.

Abstract: Extract of red rose apple (Syzygium malaccensis, (L.) Merryl & Perry ) peel was subjected to microencapsulation by spray drying, varying the maltodextrin concentration (5-17.5%) and air inlet temperature (169-205 °C). The quadratic model was not significant for yield, moisture, water activity, wettability, solubility, apparent density, volumetric diameter of 50% of D3,2 particles, and L and b color parameters, with the mean values for these properties being 63.83% 6.32%, 0.24, 99.49 g/100g, 0.27 g ml-1, 470.71 µm, 68.36 and 10.13, respectively. The model was significant for color and anthocyanins, which exhibited a mean value of 18.90 and 27.92 mg/100g. The maximum concentration of anthocyanin pigments was very low (30 mg/100g), indicating that the conditions used in this study were not adequate for increasing encapsulation efficiency, and the temperature of 190º C and 10% maltodextrin concentration resulted in lowest pigment losses and greatest red colour retention.

Abstract: Hamburger seed shell was activated and used as an alternative adsorbent for removing MB dye from aqueous solution. The kinetics study showed that MB dye adsorption followed the pseudo-second order kinetic model. Isotherm data fitted well to the Freundlich model in the pH and temperature ranges studied. The adsorption capacity was found to increase with temperature, which showed endothermic nature of MB dye adsorption. The negative value of the Gibb’s free energy confirmed the feasibility and spontaneity of the adsorption process. The magnitude of the enthalpy and Gibb’s free energy suggest that the MB dye adsorption occurred by both physical and weak chemical interaction.

Abstract: Marble industry of Pakistan is under developed facing so many problems from initial stages of extraction at quarry to the finish product due to traditional methods and techniques used in a process. Pre-manufacturing phase of marble has an influencing effect on the quality of marble product, with the most significant factor is the technique used for extraction. Generally two techniques are used for extraction of marble industry in quarry i.e. mechanized and non-mechanized. This paper gives an analysis of extraction phase of marble to compare both techniques by Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) with respect to of economic, environment and societal indicators of sustainability. A framework was developed on basis significant parameters under economic, environmental and societal indicators marked by experts and researchers to find sustainability of marble industries in Khyber Pakthunkhwa province.

Abstract: With the rapid increase in wireless applications such as mobile base stations, radars, etc.., the antenna array becomes the key issue in tackling these applications since the antenna is considered the eye of any wireless communication system. Recently, many research efforts are exerted to reach the optimum synthesis of an antenna array. One of the successful techniques that are developed recently to synthesize radiation patterns is the MoM/GA technique. This technique is based on both the Method of Moment (MoM) and the genetic algorithm (GA). The MoM is considered an accurate numerical technique to solve integral equations. The GA is questioned when compared to the particle swarm optimization (PSO) when optimizing the parameters of the MoM. In this paper, a comparative study to identify the features of both the GA and the PSO when added to the MoM to synthesis the antenna arrays is introduced. The performance of MoM/GA and MoM/PSO on the synthesis of arbitrary shaped pattern is compared in terms of convergence time and global best solution. The new MoM/PSO saves convergence time around 50% and reduces the least mean square error (LMSE) by 85% in the non-uniform spaced array compared to the recently reported MoM/GA.

Abstract: The adsorption of Total Dissolved Solid Particles (TDSP) onto Sawdust Activated Carbon (SDAC) was carried out in this work. The adsorbent capacity was enhanced by treatment using 0.1M NH4Cl. The adsorption process was investigated by varying the adsorbent dose, contact time, solution pH and solution temperature. The highest percentage removal of TDSP was found to be 82.2% at contact time of 60minutes. At pH < 4, the sorption of TDSP was more favourable. The adsorption data were best represented by the Langmuir model. Adsorption kinetic was found to follow the Pseudo – second - order kinetic model. The intraparticle diffusion model showed three steps where intraparticle diffusion was not the only rate controlling step of the adsorption process. Thermodynamic studies indicated that the adsorption was endothermic, predominantly chemisorption process, increasing in randomness of adsorbed species and spontaneous at high temperatures.

Abstract: The conditions for the diazitization coupling reaction of thymol with 4-aminoantipyrine at p H in the presence of Triton X-100 were studies . The reaction gave an intense water soluble yellow product that hss a maximum absorption at 454 nm and ?max of 1.966 × 104 L.mole-1.cm-1. A linear correlation (1-14µg ml) was found between absorbance at ?max and concentration . The results obtained are both precise (RSD was better than 1.9) and accurate (relative error was better than -2.5). The coloured product was found to be 1:1 thymol : 4-aminoantipyrine . The stability constant of the product at room temperature were 0.75 x104 L.mole-1 . The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of thymol in synthetic samples and in lastarine antiseptic pharmaceutical formulation.