Archives-June... 

Excessive wood consumption in Burkina Faso has led not only to deforestation, but also to soil degradation. The preservation of ecosystem balances, the management of soil fertility and the safeguarding of forests are major issues for future generations. It is in this context that our work has focused on the development of an energy conversion technology that effectively uses little-used agricultural residues (cotton stalks, bare corn cobs, rice husks, etc.). This device is a multifunction family furnace that produces biochar for soil amendment and provides alternative energy for household needs. The physical and mathematical modeling of the oven based on the nodal method whose equations were solved by implicit finite differences allowed to describe its thermal behavior. K-type thermocouples were used for the experimental study to validate the mathematical model. Indeed, the pyrolysis temperature of the bare corn cobs is on average 450 °C. The model allowed us to show that the thickness of the pyrolysis chamber influences the pyrolysis temperature and reduces the pyrolysis time. For a thickness of 8 cm of the pyrolysis chamber, the average pyrolysis time is 1 hour 30 minutes. The study also showed that the variation of the ambient temperature does not influence the pyrolysis temperature. Moreover, the thickness of the insulation chamber affects the external wall temperature but not the pyrolysis temperature.

Sample pretreatment methods, such as separation / preconcentration prior to the determination of metal ions have developed rapidly due to the increasing need for accurate and precise measurements at extremely low levels of ions in diverse matrices. The development of new sorbents and their application in preconcentration methods for determination of trace analytes is subject of great interest. This review summarizes and discusses several analytical methods involving the preparation and use of new solid phase extractant. A literature survey of the last ten years offering a critical review of these new sorbents available for use in trace analyte enrichment is provided.

Students’ satisfaction has become an essence of success in today’s highly competitive world. In service industry specifically the education industry, communication is vital to determine students’ satisfaction. Past researches indicated that, most meaning of conversational messages comes from non-verbal communication. Therefore, this study intended to examine the relationship of non-verbal communication cues to students’ satisfaction. A total of 300 respondents were sampled from all around UiTM Kedah. They were evaluated on their perception on lecturers’ non-verbal communication behavior that would lead to their satisfaction to the services provided. The results of the study illustrate that three of the non-verbal communication cues were significant and positively related to students’ satisfaction. Kinesics and paralanguage was rated as among the non-verbal communication cues that provided the most impact on students’ satisfaction. However the result also indicated that there was no significant relationship between physical appearances of the lecturers to the students’ satisfaction. Overall, students’ in UiTM Kedah are fairly satisfied with the non-verbal communication cues of the lecturers. The present study caters for a wide spectrum of students and development professionals, especially those who are interested in non-verbal communication related issues. It is highly hoped that the information gleaned from the present study may assist all service employees specifically in understanding better, the importance of non-verbal communication and its effects on students’ satisfaction.

The seed of Syzygium aromaticum was analysed for its proximate and mineral elements constituents, the chemical characteristics and fatty acids profile of the seed oil were also investigated. Results revealed that the seed contain (g/100g) moisture (23.4 ± 1.25), ash (9.10 ± 0.55), crude fibre (10.65± 0.21), crude fat (18.90± 0.04), crude protein (7.00± 0.01) and carbohydrate (30.95 ± 2.17), gross calorific value of 321.9 K cal/g. The quantities of nutritive elements in mg/kg were Mg (1259.50 ± 30.10); Ca (782.40 ± 10.65); Fe (710.65 ± 5.20), Na (2.56 ± 0.02) and K (2.69 ± 0.03). The chemical properties of the seed oil revealed iodine value of 122.08 ± 1.01 mg/g oil, peroxide value of 6.00 ± 0.02Meq/kg and saponification value of 187.00 ± 1.42 mg KOH/g. Eleven fatty acids were identified in the seed oil by GC, total saturated fatty acids was 61.37 %, alpha linoleic acid was 19.09 % and docosahexaenoic acid was present at 2.94%. The seed could be explored as feed supplement and its oil considered for industrial applications.

The sustainable power source systems (RESs) are an appealing alternative to energize the group as they are condition amicable, free of cost, and all-overrunning. The effectiveness of these vitality systems is low and can be enhanced by coordinating them in parallel. In this paper, hydro (7.5?kW) and PV (10?kW) are taken as RESs and associated with the utility grid. Because of the discontinuous idea of both the hydro and photovoltaic energy sources, utility grid is associated with the system for guaranteeing the ceaseless power stream. The hydro power generation system uses the 3-phase synchronous machine and converters. The AC/DC/AC converter is used as interface to connect the hydro turbine to the utility grid to adjust the generated voltage to the utility grid voltage. The solar generation system is the combination of PV array, boost converter, and solar inverter. The control of both the hydro and solar power plants is provided through the constant current controller. The analysis has been done to verify the existence of the proposed system. Results demonstrate that the proposed system is able to be put into service and can feed the community.

Transmission Network Expansion Planning (TNEP) is a basic part of the power system planning that verifies where, when and how many new transmission lines should be added to the network. In this paper, expansion planning has been implemented by merging lines loading parameter in the TNEP problem using an improved Discrete Honey Bee Mating Optimization (DHBMO) algorithm. Expanded network will possess a maximum adequacy to provide load demand and also the transmission lines overloaded later. DHBMO algorithm combines the power of genetic algorithms and simulated annealing with a fast problem specific local search heuristic to find the best possible solution within a reasonable computation time. For this reason, the potential of the proposed approach for optimal solution of TNEP problem has been investigated and tested on the Garvers network and a real transmission network in Iran in comparison with the Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (DPSO) method. The results evaluation show that the using the proposed DHBMO based method, the expansion costs is significantly reduced and the network adequacy is increased considerably than the DPSO algorithm. Also, regarding the convergence curves of both approaches, it can be seen that precision of the proposed algorithm to solve the TNEP problem is more than DPSO one.

Tuberculosis and HIV co-infection is a major public health problem worldwide. Tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients presents clinical and paraclinical atypicalities making the diagnosis of this pathology difficult.We report in this manuscript the observation of a patient with multifocal tuberculosis revealing HIV infection.

This paper presents various types of interpolation techniques to obtain a high quality image The difference between the proposed algorithm and conventional algorithms (in estimation of missing pixel value) is that if standard deviation of image is used to calculate pixel value rather than the value of near most neighbor, the image gives the better result .. The proposed method demonstrated higher performances in terms of PSNR and SSIM when compared to the conventional interpolation algorithms mentioned.

Smile is an expression that exhibits a feeling of joy, success, sensuality, affection, and reveals self-confidence and kindness. The harmony of the smile is determined not only by the shape, the position, and the color of the teeth, but also by the gingival tissues. In case the gingival tissues do not exhibit harmony with that of smile the individual loses self-confidence. The maintenance of esthetics in the anterior zone is important and especially if the patient is female the importance increases. The present case report, highlights the importance of perio-esthetics in maintaining the harmony of the gingival tissues.

Periodontal regenerative therapy aims to predictably restore the tooth’s supporting periodontal tissues and should result in formation of a new connective tissue attachment (i.e. new cementum with inserting periodontal ligament fibres) and new alveolar bone. Numerous clinical trials have shown positive outcomes for various reconstructive surgical protocols. Reduced probing depths, clinical attachment gain, and radiographic bone fill have been reported extensively for intrabony and furcation defects following scaling and root planing, open flap debridement, autogenous bone grafting, implantation of biomaterials including bone derivatives and bone substitutes, guided-tissue regeneration (GTR) procedures, and implantation of biologic factors, including enamel matrix proteins. The present article aims at providing an overview on basic principles of periodontal regeneration, various materials being used and recent techniques in periodontal regeneration and factors influencing the outcome.