bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
PREDICTION OF ELECTRONIC WASTE DISPOSALS FROM RESIDENTIAL AREAS IN MALAYSIA
Authors: Othman Norazli , Mohammad Roslina , Kamaruddin Samira Albati 
Published: September 2015

The most fundamental element in planning electronic waste management is to acquire reliable data on the total volume of electronic waste generated from various sources such as residential premises, commercial buildings and industrial areas. Hence, a crucial aspect of electronic waste management is to predict the accumulation of electronic wastes in the future. This study aims to predict electronic waste to be disposed of for the next 15 years, focusing only on electronic waste from residential areas. A few rural and urban areas of residential premises were randomly selected as a case study. The result for this study was deduced from the survey and interviews conducted in the vicinity of the study area. Thirty sets of questionnaire were distributed randomly at each selected area. The residential area was divided into three categories i.e. residents with low income (LI), residents with medium income (MI) and residents with high income (HI). The survey was done by distributing the questionnaire to investigate electronic equipment usage and its lifespan by users as well as the waste management option preferred by the residents. The findings of the study showed that approximately 51% of the generated electronic waste will go through four stages of waste management options i.e. reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling, while approximately 49% of the generated electronic waste will go through the disposal option i.e. landfill sites. The result of the study showed that the predicted lifespan for the electronic equipment used by residents in Malaysia is between the ranges of 0-15 years. On average, as much as 5% of used home electronic equipment will be disposed of after 6 years of usage, 41% after 9 years and 3% after 12 years. From the study, the information regarding the percentage of electronic waste that will be reused, repaired, remanufactured, recycled and disposed of for the next 15 years can be gained and is presented via scientific analysis.
AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE BEHAVIOUR OF GLASS FILLED POLYPROPYLENE AND POLYETHYLENE COMPOSITE PIPES UNDER QUASI-STATIC AXIAL LOADING
Authors: Ya H. H. , EL-Sobky H. 
Published: September 2015

The behaviour of extruded glass fibre reinforced thermoplastic pipes under axial crushing load was investigated experimentally. It was envisaged that the difference between the axial and hoop moduli and strengths as well as the volume fraction would influence the mode of collapses and energy absorption. The ability to vary the moduli and the fibre volume fraction provides means of controlling the collapse mode in order to optimize specific energy absorption. Axial compression tests were performed on glass filled Polypropylene (GPP) and glass filled Polyethylene (GPE) composite pipes. The samples were chosen with a variety of fibre volume fraction (Vf = 5% to 20% and average angle of orientation 15Î¸"> = 50o to 80o) to evaluate the effect of anisotropy and Vf to the collapse modes when subjected to axial static loading. The results from the experiments revealed that typical axial and hoop modulus (Ea and 15EÎ¸"> ) of GPP and GPE pipes increased with increasing of 15Î¸"> from 55 15Â°"> to 75 15Â°"> and decreased gradually in between 75 15Â°"> to 80 15Â°"> . The axial modulus was increased constantly with the increase of Vf from 5 % to 20 %. However, the hoop modulus is the highest at 5% Vf, decreases significantly at 10%, and gradually increases at 20%. It is noticed that, the GPP and GPE pipes contain higher Vf and 15Î¸"> , collapsed in brittle failure mode (fragmentation), whereas those with less Vf and 15Î¸"> angle, collapsed in non-axis-symmetric (diamond) mode with the local fracture while the local fracture disappeared with lower fibre contents.
POTENTIAL USE OF OZONATION WITH LIMESTONE ADSORPTION IN GROUND TREATMENT: A CASE STUDY AT KELANTAN WATER TREATMENT PLANT
Authors: Akbar Nor Azliza , Abdul Aziz Hamidi , Adlan Mohd Nordin 
Published: September 2015

Pollution of groundwater occurs due to rapid industrialization and agricultural activities. A desktop study was carried out to identify the actual groundwater problem occurs in Malaysia. The quality of groundwater was investigated to obtain the baseline groundwater data for an alternative integrated water treatment process that involved combination of ozonation and adsorption process. Preliminary data on groundwater pollution were collected from nine Mineral and Geoscience Department(JMG) groundwater monitoring wells, Air Kelantan Sdn Bhd (AKSB) water treatment plant and Natioal Hydraulics Research Institute of Malaysia (NAHRIM). The result shows that raw groundwater in Kelantan contains high concentration of Fe and thus an alternative treatment is necessary. However, based on the previous treated effluent data at one of the water treatment plants in Malaysia has indicated that the use of ozone alone may only remove Fe concentration up to 0.5- 0.8 mg/L. This exceeded the acceptable limit of 0.3 mg/L .1 Application of ozonation process for groundwater treatment has received more attention based on its capability to transform contaminants into non-harmful substance within a short period. Most previous literature found that limestone is very effective in removing more than 90% of heavy metal such as Cu, Zn, Cd, Ni, Cr, Fe and Mn in water. To improve the performance of ozonation process, an integrated treatment of ozonation and adsorption processes using limestone is proposed in the current study for groundwater treatment.
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS IN ORDER TO VIRTUAL HISTOLOGY (VH) IMAGE SEGMENTATION
Authors: Rezaei Zahra , Kasmuni Mohd Daud , Selamat Ali , Mohd Rahim Mohd Shafry , Abaei Golnoush , Abdul Kadir Mohammed Rafiq 
Published: September 2015

Atherosclerosis is the deadliest type of heart disease caused by soft or “vulnerable” plaque (VP) formation in the coronary arteries. Recently, Virtual Histology (VH) has been proposed based on spectral analysis of Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) provides color code of coronary tissue maps. Based on pathophysiological studies, obtaining information about existence and extension of confluent pool’s component inside plaque is important. In addition, plaque components’ localization respect to the luminal border has major role in determining plaque vulnerability and plaque–stent interaction. Computational methods were applied to prognostic the pattern's structure of each component inside the plaque. The first step for post-processing of VH methodology to get further information of geometrical features is segmentation or decomposition. The medical imaging segmentation field has developed to assist cardiologist and radiologists and reduce human error in recent years as well. To perform color image clustering, several strategies can be applied which include traditional hierarchical and nonhierarchical. In this paper, we applied and compared four nonhierarchical clustering methods consists of Fuzzy C-means (FCM), Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-means (IFCM), K-means and SOM artificial neural networks in order to automate segmentation of the VH-IVUS images.
DESIGN OF DOMESTIC SCALE BIO-DIGESTER ASSEMBLY, EXPERIMENTATION FOR BIOGAS PRODUCTION AND COMPARISON OF RESULTS WITH CONVENTIONAL DIGESTER
Authors: Mishra Susmita , Tenneti Srinivas , Mishra Suman 
Published: September 2015

The work explored various digesters that are currently under implementation, explored their pros and cons and designed a digestion gas collection mechanism suitable for small scale applications. Internal mixing being uneconomical in the domestic and individual scale, it is not being practiced which has to be compensated with large hydraulic retention time to prevent sludge accumulation and scum formation. This in turn reduces the plant capacity for gas production. Our design configuration incorporates automatic and controlled pressure swing mechanisms incorporated by the gas production which acts as the driving force for slurry circulation in the digester and promotes gas recovery as well as improve digestion efficiency. The configuration was run in 20 l and 50 L scales and observed for the physical constraints encountered during operation, recorded for change in digestion parameters with changes in substrate and organic loading rates and also recorded the gas production which was compared with the results in the literature as well as conventionally operated domestic scale digesters.
PERTURBATION PARAMETERS TUNING OF MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION AND ITS APPLICATION TO DYNAMIC SYSTEM MODELING
Authors: Zakaria Mohd Zakimi , Jamaluddin Hishamuddin , Ahmad Robiah , Harun Azmi , Hussin Radhwan , Mohd Khalil Ahmad Nabil , Md Naim Muhammad Khairy , Annuar Ahmad Faizal 
Published: September 2015

This paper presents perturbation parameters for tuning of multi-objective optimization differential evolution and its application to dynamic system modeling. The perturbation of the proposed algorithm was composed of crossover and mutation operators. Initially, a set of parameter values was tuned vigorously by executing multiple runs of algorithm for each proposed parameter variation. A set of values for crossover and mutation rates were proposed in executing the algorithm for model structure selection in dynamic system modeling. The model structure selection was one of the procedures in the system identification technique. Most researchers focused on the problem in selecting the parsimony model as the best represented the dynamic systems. Therefore, this problem needed two objective functions to overcome it, i.e. minimum predictive error and model complexity. One of the main problems in identification of dynamic systems is to select the minimal model from the huge possible models that need to be considered. Hence, the important concepts in selecting good and adequate model used in the proposed algorithm were elaborated, including the implementation of the algorithm for modeling dynamic systems. Besides, the results showed that multi-objective optimization differential evolution performed better with tuned perturbation parameters.
-CHYMOTRYPSIN IMMOBILIZED ENZYME: PHYSICAL, ACTIVITY & STABILITY PROPERTIES
Authors: Nazir Mohd Hakimi , Ngadi Norzita 
Published: September 2015

In this study, α-chymotrypsin enzyme was used as a substrate while micropore Y-zeolite, which is HY, USY and NaY as a support. The purpose of this study was to compare the physical properties of zeolite and immobilization of enzyme with zeolite. The characteristics such as BET surface area, isotherm adsorption, BJH adsorption, pore size, t-plot and pore volume have been studied. Furthermore, a comparison has been conducted between immobilized and mobile enzyme for their ability to adsorb hydrolysate at λ=410 nm. The stability of the immobilized enzyme was also determined by varying the parameters of phosphate and tris-chloride buffer and loading of sample solution. Based on the result obtained, HY zeolite has the best physical properties compared to USY and NaY zeolite. Besides that, immobilized enzyme gave higher hydrolysate adsorption activity than the free enzyme. Stability results showed that pH of phosphate and tris-chloride buffer and amount of sample solution play an important role in obtaining the stable immobilized enzyme.
Analytical and Functional Determination of Polymyxin B Protein Binding in Serum
Authors: Abodakpi Henrietta , Gohlke Jie , Chang Kai-Tai , Chow Diana S.-L. , Tam Vincent H. 
Published: September 2015

ABSTRACT
To enhance our understanding of the pharmacological properties of polymyxin B, serum protein binding for polymyxin B1, B2, and B3 and for isoleucine-polymyxin B1 was evaluated. Using equilibrium dialysis and ultrafiltration, comparable protein binding was found in all 4 components of polymyxin B (92% to 99%). Protein binding in human serum was further assessed using a functional assay, the results of which were in general agreement with previous findings (approximately 90%).
CbbR, the Master Regulator for Microbial Carbon Dioxide Fixation
Authors: Dangel Andrew W. , Tabita F. Robert 
Published: September 2015

ABSTRACT

Biological carbon dioxide fixation is an essential and crucial process catalyzed by both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms to allow ubiquitous atmospheric CO
2
to be reduced to usable forms of organic carbon. This process, especially the Calvin-Bassham-Benson (CBB) pathway of CO
2
fixation, provides the bulk of organic carbon found on earth. The enzyme ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) performs the key and rate-limiting step whereby CO
2
is reduced and incorporated into a precursor organic metabolite. This is a highly regulated process in diverse organisms, with the expression of genes that comprise the CBB pathway (the
cbb
genes), including RubisCO, specifically controlled by the master transcriptional regulator protein CbbR. Many organisms have two or more
cbb
operons that either are regulated by a single CbbR or employ a specific CbbR for each
cbb
operon. CbbR family members are versatile and accommodate and bind many different effector metabolites that influence CbbR's ability to control
cbb
transcription. Moreover, two members of the CbbR family are further posttranslationally modified via interactions with other transcriptional regulator proteins from two-component regulatory systems, thus augmenting CbbR-dependent control and optimizing expression of specific
cbb
operons. In addition to interactions with small effector metabolites and other regulator proteins, CbbR proteins may be selected that are constitutively active and, in some instances, elevate the level of
cbb
expression relative to wild-type CbbR. Optimizing CbbR-dependent control is an important consideration for potentially using microbes to convert CO
2
to useful bioproducts.
Induction of the Sugar-Phosphate Stress Response Allows Saccharomyces cerevisiae 2-Methyl-4-Amino-5-Hydroxymethylpyrimidine Phosphate Synthase To Function in Salmonella enterica
Authors: Palmer Lauren D. , Paxhia Michael D. , Downs Diana M. 
Published: September 2015

ABSTRACT

Thiamine pyrophosphate is a required cofactor for all forms of life. The pyrimidine moiety of thiamine, 2-methyl-4-amino-5-hydroxymethylpyrimidine phosphate (HMP-P), is synthesized by different mechanisms in bacteria and plants compared to fungi. In this study,
Salmonella enterica
was used as a host to probe requirements for activity of the yeast HMP-P synthase, Thi5p. Thi5p synthesizes HMP-P from histidine and pyridoxal-5-phosphate and was reported to use a backbone histidine as the substrate, which would mean that it was a single-turnover enzyme. Heterologous expression of Thi5p did not complement an
S. enterica
HMP-P auxotroph during growth with glucose as the sole carbon source. Genetic analyses described here showed that Thi5p was activated in
S. enterica
by alleles of
sgrR
that induced the sugar-phosphate stress response. Deletion of
ptsG
(encodes enzyme IICB [EIICB] of the phosphotransferase system [PTS]) also allowed function of Thi5p and required
sgrR
but not
sgrS.
This result suggested that the role of
sgrS
in activation of Thi5p was to decrease PtsG activity. In total, the data herein supported the hypothesis that one mechanism to activate Thi5p in
S. enterica
grown on minimal medium containing glucose (minimal glucose medium) required decreased PtsG activity and an unidentified gene regulated by SgrR.

IMPORTANCE
This work describes a metabolic link between the sugar-phosphate stress response and the yeast thiamine biosynthetic enzyme Thi5p when heterologously expressed in
Salmonella enterica
during growth on minimal glucose medium. Suppressor analysis (i) identified a mutant class of the regulator SgrR that activate sugar-phosphate stress response constitutively and (ii) determined that Thi5p is conditionally active in
S. enterica
. These results emphasized the power of genetic systems in model organisms to uncover enzyme function and underlying metabolic network structure.
Preferential Budding of Vesicular Stomatitis Virus from the Basolateral Surface of Polarized Epithelial Cells Is Not Solely Directed by Matrix Protein or Glycoprotein
Authors: Drokhlyansky Eugene , Soh Timothy K. , Cepko Constance L. 
Published: September 2015

ABSTRACT
Vesicular stomatitis virus has been shown to bud basolaterally, and the matrix protein, but not glycoprotein, was proposed to mediate this asymmetry. Using polarized T84 monolayers, we demonstrate that no single viral protein is sufficient for polarized budding. Particles are released from the apical and basolateral surfaces and are indistinguishable, indicating that there is no apical assembly defect. We propose that aspects of host cell polarity create a more efficient budding process at the basolateral surface.
Leveraging Transactional Execution for Memory Consistency Model Emulation
Authors: Natarajan Ragavendra , Zhai Antonia 
Published: September 2015

System emulation is widely used in today’s computer systems. This technology opens new opportunities for resource sharing as well as enhancing system security and reliability. System emulation across different instruction set architectures (ISA) can enable further opportunities. For example, cross-ISA emulation can enable workload consolidation over a wide range of microprocessors and potentially facilitate the seamless deployment of new processor architectures. As multicore and manycore processors become pervasive, it is important to address the challenges toward supporting system emulation on these platforms. A key challenge in cross-ISA emulation on multicore systems is ensuring the correctness of emulation when the guest and the host memory consistency models differ. Many existing cross-ISA system emulators are sequential, thus they are able to avoid this problem at the cost of significant performance degradation. Recently proposed parallel emulators are able to address the performance limitation; however, they provide limited support for memory consistency model emulation.
When the host system has a weaker memory consistency model compared to the guest system, the emulator can insert memory fences at appropriate locations in the translated code to enforce the guest memory ordering constraints. These memory fences can significantly degrade the performance of the translated code. Transactional execution support available on certain recent microprocessors provides an alternative approach. Transactional execution of the translated code enforces sequential consistency (SC) at the coarse-grained transaction level, which in turn ensures that all memory accesses made on the host machine conform to SC. Enforcing SC on the host machine guarantees that the emulated execution will be correct for any guest memory model. In this article, we compare and evaluate the overheads associated with using transactions and fences for memory consistency model emulation on the Intel Haswell processor. Our experience of implementing these two approaches on a state-of-the-art parallel emulator, COREMU, demonstrates that memory consistency model emulation using transactions performs better when the transaction sizes are large enough to amortize the transaction overhead and the transaction conflict rate is low, whereas inserting memory fences is better for applications in which the transaction overhead is high. A hybrid implementation that dynamically determines which approach to invoke can outperform both approaches. Our results, based on the SPLASH-2 and the PARSEC benchmark suites, demonstrate that the proposed hybrid approach is able to outperform the fence insertion mechanism by 4.9% and the transactional execution approach by 24.9% for two-thread applications, and outperform them by 4.5% and 44.7%, respectively, for four-threaded execution.
Real-time In Vivo Tissue Characterization with Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy during Transthoracic Lung Biopsy: A Clinical Feasibility Study
Authors: Spliethoff Jarich W. , Prevoo Warner , Meier Mark A.J. , de Jong Jeroen , Klomp Houke M. , Evers Daniel J. , Sterenborg Hendricus J.C.M. , Lucassen Gerald W. , Hendriks Benno H.W. , Ruers Theodoor J.M. 
Published: September 2015

Abstract
Purpose: This study presents the first in vivo real-time tissue characterization during image-guided percutaneous lung biopsies using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) sensing at the tip of a biopsy needle with integrated optical fibers.
Experimental Design: Tissues from 21 consented patients undergoing lung cancer surgery were measured intraoperatively using the fiber-optic platform capable of assessing various physical tissue properties highly correlated to tissue architecture and composition. In addition, the method was tested for clinical use by performing DRS tissue sensing during 11 routine biopsy procedures in patients with suspected lung cancer.
Results: We found that water content and scattering amplitude are the primary discriminators for the transition from healthy lung tissue to tumor tissue and that the reliability of these parameters is not affected by the amount of blood at the needle tip. In the 21 patients measured intraoperatively, the water-to-scattering ratio yielded a 56% to 81% contrast difference between tumor and surrounding tissue. Analysis of the 11 image-guided lung biopsy procedures showed that the tissue diagnosis derived from DRS was diagnostically discriminant in each clinical case.
Conclusions: DRS tissue sensing integrated into a biopsy needle may be a powerful new tool for biopsy guidance that can be readily used in routine diagnostic lung biopsy procedures. This approach may not only help to increase the successful biopsy yield for histopathologic analysis, but may also allow specific sampling of vital tumor tissue for genetic profiling. Clin Cancer Res; 22(2); 357–65. ©2015 AACR.
See related commentary by Aerts, p. 273
A Phase I Study of the SMAC-Mimetic Birinapant in Adults with Refractory Solid Tumors or Lymphoma
Authors: Amaravadi Ravi K. , Schilder Russell J. , Martin Lainie P. , Levin Myron , Graham Martin A. , Weng David E. , Adjei Alex A. 
Published: September 2015

Abstract
The inhibitor of apoptosis (IAP) family of antiapoptotic proteins has been identified as a target for small molecule inhibitors in cancer. Second mitochondrial-derived activator of caspases (SMAC) efficiently and naturally antagonizes IAPs, and preclinical studies have determined that SMAC mimetics have potent anticancer properties. Here, we report a first-in-human trial designed to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD), safety, and pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) of birinapant, a novel SMAC mimetic. Patients with advanced solid tumors or lymphoma were enrolled in a 3+3 dose escalation design with birinapant administered intravenously from 0.18 to 63 mg/m2 once weekly every 3 of 4 weeks. Fifty patients were enrolled to 12 dose cohorts. Birinapant 47 mg/m2 was determined to be the MTD. At 63 mg/m2, dose-limiting toxicities included headache, nausea, and vomiting. Two cases of Bell's palsy (grade 2) also occurred at 63 mg/m2. Birinapant had a plasma half-life of 30 to 35 hours and accumulated in tumor tissue. Birinapant suppressed cIAP1 and increased apoptosis in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and tumor tissue. Prolonged stable disease was observed in 3 patients: non–small cell lung cancer (5 months), colorectal cancer (5 months), and liposarcoma (9 months). Two patients with colorectal cancer had radiographic evidence of tumor shrinkage. In conclusion, birinapant was well tolerated with an MTD of 47 mg/m2 and exhibited favorable PK and PD properties. Several patients demonstrated stable disease and evidence of antitumor activity. These results support the ongoing clinical trials of birinapant in patients with cancer. Mol Cancer Ther; 14(11); 2569–75. ©2015 AACR.