Colour and ergonomics: On the selection of a “colour of the year”

The key role of colour in ergonomics has been emphasized by a number of researchers and design professionals. Although several research studies have been published regarding the use of colour in ergonomics, there are still some areas that need to be considered. The issue of deciding a “colour of the year” is an example, which represents a new challenge for researchers in the field of ergonomics. This is of particular interest considering the fact that the nature of research on the selection of a “colour of the year” is generally based on user experience. This paper argues that ergonomics should play a more prominent role in this field to ensure better user experience and performance. This paper highlights specific areas that need further study and development.     

Nickel Oxide Based Supported Catalysts for the In-situ Reactions of Methanation and Desulfurization in the Removal of Sour Gases from Simulated Natural Gas

Supported nickel oxide based catalysts were prepared by wetness impregnation method for the in-situ reactions of H₂S desulfurization and CO₂ methanation from ambient temperature up to 300 °C. Fe/Co/Ni (10:30:60)–Al₂O₃ and Pr/Co/Ni (5:35:60)–Al₂O₃ catalysts were revealed as the most potential catalysts, which yielded 2.9% and 6.1% of CH₄ at reaction temperature of 300 °C, respectively. From XPS, Ni₂O₃ and Fe₃O₄ were suggested as the surface active components on the Fe/Co/Ni (10:30:60)–Al₂O₃ catalyst, while Ni₂O₃ and Co₃O₄ on the Pr/Co/Ni (5:35:60)–Al₂O₃ catalyst.     

Study of the microbial diversity and antimicrobial properties of Irish edible brown seaweeds

Brown Irish edible seaweeds, Himanthalia elongata, Laminaria sachharina and Laminaria digitata, were evaluated for the microbiota in raw and heat processed form. Raw seaweeds showed complete absence of aerobic mesophiles, halophiles, yeasts and molds. However, heating at 85 °C for 15 min resulted in spore germination. Bacterial counts as high as 10⁷ were observed for aerobic mesophiles and halophiles. Heating above 95 °C for 15 min resulted in complete inactivation of surface microflora. Bacteria belonging to Bacillaceae, Paenibacillaceae, Moraxellaceae and Enterobacteriaceae family were identified by 16S rRNA sequencing. In vitro antimicrobial activity of the methanolic extracts of the seaweed on food pathogenic and food spoilage bacteria were also evaluated. The seaweeds in their raw state had almost 100% inhibition against Listeria monocytogenes; 98% and 93% inhibition was achieved against Pseudomonas aeruginosa by H. elongata and L. saccharina extracts, respectively. Heating the seaweeds resulted in the reduction of antimicrobial activity as compared to raw. The effect was more pronounced against Gram negative bacteria.     

Sustainability of Groundwater Resources in the North-Eastern Region of Bangladesh

Water is essential for economic, social, and environmental development. Global water resources are vulnerable due to increasing demand related to population growth, pollution potential, and climate change. Competition for water between different sectors is increasing. To meet the increasing demand, the use of groundwater is increasing worldwide. In this paper, the water-table dynamics of the north-eastern region of Bangladesh were studied using the MEKESENS software. This study reveals that the depth to water-table (WT) of almost all the wells is declining slowly. In many cases, the depth will approximately double by the year 2040, and almost all will double by 2060, if the present trend continues. If the decline of the water-table is allowed to continue in the long run, the result could be a serious threat to the ecology and to the sustainability of food production, which is vital for the nation’s food security. Therefore, necessary measures should be taken to sustain water resources and thereby agricultural production. Demand-side management of water and the development of alternative surface water sources seem to be viable strategies for the area. These strategies could be employed to reduce pressure on groundwater and thus maintain the sustainability of the resource.     

Performance Analysis of Prefix Delegation-Based Route Optimization Schemes: Effects of Increasing the Number of Nodes

Prefix delegation-based schemes have been proposed to solve the route optimization problem in NEtwork MObility where multiple IP-enabled hosts move together as a mobile network. Differences in the route optimization for hosts at the cost of increased signaling will result in performance difference of the schemes depending on parameters, such as speed of the mobile network, its distance from the home network (the network to which mobile network usually belongs), and the number of hosts in the mobile network. Although the effects of the first two parameters on the performance of the schemes have been studied, effects of increasing the number of hosts have not been studied. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate performance when the number of hosts is increased. We perform the evaluation through ns-2 simulation. Results show that the performance superiority achieved by the hosts?? route optimization is only affected by the distance significantly only when the number of hosts is small. The results will help to decide when to use the route optimization for hosts depending on the values of the parameters.     

Physicochemical and sensory characteristics of no‐bake wheat–soy snack bars

BACKGROUND: Health and wellness is a trend observed throughout ready‐to‐eat cereals, cereal health bars. Therefore, the main objectives of this research were to produce a low cost, acceptable, nutritious and healthy wheat‐ and soy‐based bar under no‐bake conditions. Also, the physical, chemical, microbial, acceptability and the nutritional value of this product were studied. Six different bars were produced: a wheat bar (WB), a wheat bar with coating (WBC), a wheat and soy bar with coating (WSBC), a soy bar with coating (SBC), a wheat bar with 3% glycerin (WB3%), and a wheat bar with 6% glycerine (WB6%). RESULTS: WB and WBC had the highest water activities while WSBC had the lowest. The three bars with coating had higher L and lower b values, which indicates that they were lighter and not as highly yellow coloured as the wheat samples. WSBC had the lowest value for hardness while the SBC and WBC had the highest. SBC received the highest scores for overall acceptability, appearance, sweetness, flavour and texture while WSBC received the second highest score in all categories. CONCLUSION: It appears that consumers prefer the soy varieties to the wheat bars. These types of bars can aid in feeding the general population, which is becoming increasingly concerned with nutrition and convenience. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry     

Effect of Postweld Heat Treatment on Microstructure, Hardness, and Tensile Properties of Laser-Welded Ti-6Al-4V

The effects of postweld heat treatment (PWHT) on 3.2-mm- and 5.1-mm-thick Ti-6Al-4V butt joints welded using a continuous wave (CW) 4-kW Nd:YAG laser welding machine were investigated in terms of microstructural transformations, welding defects, and hardness, as well as global and local tensile properties. Two postweld heat treatments, i.e., stress-relief annealing (SRA) and solution heat treatment followed by aging (STA), were performed and the weld qualities were compared with the as-welded condition. A digital image correlation technique was used to determine the global tensile behavior for the transverse welding samples. The local tensile properties including yield strength and maximum strain were determined, for the first time, for the laser-welded Ti-6Al-4V. The mechanical properties, including hardness and the global and local tensile properties, were correlated to the microstructure and defects in the as-welded, SRA, and STA conditions.     

A review of investigations on liquid fuel combustion in porous inert media

Utilization of a porous medium for combustion of liquid fuels is proved to be a promising approach for future applications. The porous medium burner for liquid fuels is more advantageous than the conventional open spray flame burner for several reasons; these include enhanced evaporation of droplet spray owing to regenerative combustion characteristics, low emission of pollutants, high combustion intensity with moderate turn-down ratio and compactness. This article provides a comprehensive picture of the global scenario of research and developments in combustion of liquid fuels within a porous medium that enable a researcher to determine the direction of further investigation. Accordingly, a glossary of the important terminology, the modeling approach, advances in numerical and experimental works and applications are included. The papers published in standard journals are reviewed and summarized with relevant comments and suggestions for future work.     

Effects of radiation process on total protein and amino acids composition of raw and processed pearl millet flour during storage

The present work describes radiation‐induced effects during storage on total protein and amino acids composition of raw and processed flour of two pearl millet cultivars (Ashana and Dembi). The protein content of the whole raw flour was 14.46% and 13.38% for Ashana and Dembi cultivars, respectively. Dehulling of the grains reduced the protein content to 13.38% and 12.67% for the cultivars, respectively. Storage of the radiated whole and dehulled flour for 60 days slightly reduced the protein content even after cooking. The effect of radiation process in combination with the treatments applied to the grains and/or flour on amino acids contents was found to be varying between the cultivars. Most of the amino acids were stable against all treatments except leucine, glutamic acid and phenylalanine. Regardless of the storage period and processing method, amino acid contents of Ashana cultivar were increased after radiation process compared to that of Dembi cultivar.     

Cache modeling and optimization for portable devices running MPEG-4 video decoder

There are increasing demands on portable communication devices to run multimedia applications. ISO (an International Organization for Standardization) standard MPEG-4 is an important and demanding multimedia application. To satisfy the growing consumer demands, more functions are added to support MPEG-4 video applications. With improved CPU speed, memory sub-system deficiency is the major barrier to improving the system performance. Studies show that there is sufficient reuse of values for caching that significantly reduce the memory bandwidth requirement for video data. Software decoding of MPEG-4 video data generates much more cache-memory traffic than required. Proper understanding of the decoding algorithm and the composition of its data set is obvious to improve the performance of such a system. The focus of this paper is cache modeling and optimization for portable communication devices running MPEG-4 video decoding algorithm. The architecture we simulate includes a digital signal processor (DSP) for running the MPEG-4 decoding algorithm and a memory system with two levels of caches. We use VisualSim and Cachegrind simulation tools to optimize cache sizes, levels of associativity, and cache levels for a portable device decoding MPEG-4 video. Abu Asaduzzaman is, currently, a PhD candidate in the department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Boca Raton, Florida. He received his MS degree in computer engineering from FAU in 1997. Mr. Asaduzzaman worked for ECI Telecom as a software engineer from 1998 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he worked for BlueCross and BlueShield of Florida and SunPass (FDoT) as an IT Consultant. Currently, he is working as a research assistant at CSE Dept, FAU. His research interests include cache optimization, architecture exploration, embedded system evaluation, and networks-on-a-chip (NoC). He has published several research papers in these areas. Abu is a member of the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi, Tau Beta Pi, Upsilon Phi Epsilon, and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) FAU Chapter. Imad Mahgoub received the MS degree in applied mathematics and MS degree in electrical and computer engineering, both from North Carolina State University, Raleigh in 1983 and 1986 respectively and the PhD degree in computer engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA in 1989. Dr. Mahgoub joined Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Boca Raton, Florida in 1989. Currently he is a full professor of Computer Science and Engineering department and the director of the Mobile Computing Laboratory. His research interests include performance evaluation, mobile computing, sensor networks, and parallel and distributed processing. He has published over 80 research papers in these areas. He is the co-editor of the Mobile Computing Handbook and the Handbook of Sensor Networks. Dr. Mahgoub has served on the program committees of numerous conferences. He has been the vice-chair for the Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS) since 2003. He is a senior member of the IEEE. He is also a member of Tau Beta Pi, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the IEEE Computer Society, and the ACM.