Soot formation and burnout in flames

The amount of soot formed when burning a benzene/hexane mixture in a turbulent combustor was examined. Soot concentration profiles in the same combustor for kerosene fuel are given. The chemistry of the formation of soot precursors, the nucleation, growth and subsequent burnout of soot particles, and the effect of mixing on the previous steps were considered

Chemical Constituents and Biological Activity of Kaempferia Angustifolia, K. Rotunda,Spermacoce Articularis and S. Exilis

Kaempferia angustifolia, K rotunda (Zingiberaceae), Spennacoce articularis and S. exilis (Rubiaceae) were chosen since they have long been used traditionally in medicinal treatment. In this research, isolation and separation work had been carried out using various solvents and chromatographic methods. The structure of these compounds were determined by using spectroscopic methods such as ineared (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance ('H, 13C and 2D- NMR), mass spectrometry (MS) and by comparison with the data reported previously. The crude extracts and some of the isolated compounds were subjected to the biological activity test: antioxidant, antimicrobial tests, cytotoxic screening and larvicidal activity.Extracts fiom Kaempferia angush~oliah ave yielded a new compound angustifolienol (58), together with seven other compounds; crotepoxide (33), p-sitosterol (a), boesenboxide (M), 2'-hydroxy-4, 4', 6'-trimethoxychalcone (Xi), 6-methylzeylenol (59), and sucrose (60), and zeylenol(35). Frationation of extracts fiom K. rotunda has yielded five pure compounds; crotepoxide (33), tetracosanoic acid (61), benzoic acid (62), stigmasterol (45) and p-sitosterol (44). Both tetracosanoic acid (61) and benzoic acid (62) are new to species. Extracts fiom S. art'iculm's gave two pure compounds, identified as ursolic acid (63) and stigmasterol (45). While the extracts from S. exilis gave four compounds, benzo[g]isoquinoline-5,IOdione (64), stigmasterol (49, hexadecanoic acid (65) and ursolic acid (63). Phytochemical studies on later species had never been reported before. Acetylations of new compound, angustifolienol (58) gave two derivatives, triacetoxyangustifolienol (66) and diacetoxyangustifolienol (67). Both are new compounds, and have never been reported previously either as natural product or synthesized compounds. The major constituents of the essential oil of K. angustifolia was DL- camphor (20.57 %), while the major constituent of K. rotunda was benzyl benzoate (49.84 %). The major constituent of the essential oil of S. articularis was phytol(10.31 %), while the major constituent of S. exilis was oleic acid (20.9 %).Cytotoxic screening showed that all the crude extracts of K angustiijolia and K. rotunab were not cytotoxic against HL-60 cell line. However, pure compounds of K. angu~hyolia showed strong activity. All crude extracts of S. articularis and S. exilis (except hexane extract of S. exilis) and ursolic acid (63) were strongly cytotoxic towards HL-60 and MCF-7 cell lines. All extracts and most of the pure compounds were subjected to four strains of microbes (MRSA, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhimurium and Bacillus subtilis) in the antimicrobial test. Pet. ether extracts fiom Kaempferia species, all extracts fiom S. exilis and boesenboxide (34) were active towards some microbes. In antioxidant assay, K rotunda was more active than Kaempferia angustiyolia while both Spennacoce species were moderately active. Besides that, some of the compounds from Kaempferia angustzyolia were subjected to the antioxidant assay and showed stronger antioxidant activity than a- tocopherol. In addition, all plants also showed moderate to low larvicidal activity

Variation of household electricity consumption and potential impact of outdoor PM2.5 concentration: a comparison between Singapore and Shanghai

The auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach was used to study the relationships between the monthly household electricity consumption and outdoor PM2.5 concentration with the consideration of ambient temperature and the number of rainy days for Singapore and Shanghai. It is shown that there are significant long-run relationships between the household electricity consumption and the regressors for both Singapore and Shanghai. For Singapore, a 20% increase in the PM2.5 concentration of a single month is in the long-run significantly related to a 0.8% increase in the household electricity consumption. This corresponds to an electricity overconsumption of 5.0 GWh, a total of 0.7–1.0 million USD in electricity cost, and 2.1 kilotons of CO2 emission associated with electricity generation. For Shanghai, a 20% decrease in the PM2.5 concentration of a single month is in the long-run significantly related to a 2.2% decrease in the household electricity consumption. This corresponds to a 35.0 GWh decrease in the overall household electricity consumption, 1.6–5.1 million USD decrease in electricity cost, and 17.5 kilotons of CO2 emission. The results suggest that the cost of electricity consumption should be included in the economic cost analysis of PM2.5 pollution in the future. A 1 °C increase in the monthly temperature is in the long-run significantly related to a 13.6% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Singapore, while a 30 degree days increase in heating & cooling days (HCDD) is in the long-run significantly related to a 24.9% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Shanghai. A 5-day increase in the number of rainy days per month is in the long-run significantly related to a 3.0% and 5.8% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Singapore and Shanghai, respectively

On the association between outdoor PM 2.5 concentration and the seasonality of tuberculosis for Beijing and Hong Kong

Tuberculosis (TB) is still a serious public health problem in various countries. One of the long-elusive but critical questions about TB is what the risk factors are and how they contribute for its seasonality. An ecologic study was conducted to examine the association between the variation of outdoor PM2.5 concentration and the TB seasonality based on the monthly TB notification and PM2.5 concentration data of Hong Kong and Beijing. Both descriptive analysis and Poisson regression analysis suggested that the outdoor PM2.5 concentration could be a potential risk factor for the seasonality of TB disease. The significant relationship between the number of TB cases and PM2.5 concentration was not changed when regression models were adjusted by sunshine duration, a potential confounder. The regression analysis showed that a 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 concentrations during winter is significantly associated with a 3% (i.e. 18 and 14 cases for Beijing and Hong Kong, respectively) increase in the number of TB cases notified during the coming spring or summer for both Beijing and Hong Kong. Three potential mechanisms were proposed to explain the significant relationship: (1) increased PM2.5 exposure increases host's susceptibility to TB disease by impairing or modifying the immunology of the human respiratory system; (2) increased indoor activities during high outdoor PM2.5 episodes leads to an increase in human contact and thus the risk of TB transmission; (3) the seasonal change of PM2.5 concentration is correlated with the variation of other potential risk factors of TB seasonality. Preliminary evidence from the analysis of this work favors the first mechanism about the PM2.5 exposure-induced immunity impairment. This work adds new horizons to the explanation of the TB seasonality and improves our understanding of the potential mechanisms affecting TB incidence, which benefits the prevention and control of TB disease

Development Of Eye Gaze Estimation System Using Two Cameras

Eye Gaze is the direction where a person is looking at. It is suitable to be used as a type of natural Human Computer Interface (HCI). Current researches uses infrared or LED to locate the iris of the user to have better gaze estimation accuracy compared to researches that does not. Infrared and LED are intrusive to human eyes and might cause damage to the cornea and the retina of the eye. This research suggests a non-intrusive approach to locate the iris of the user. By using two remote cameras to capture the images of the user, a better accuracy gaze estimation system can be achieved. The system uses Haar cascade algorithms to detect the face and eye regions. The iris detection uses Hough Circle Transform algorithm to locate the position of the iris, which is critical for the gaze estimation calculation. To enable the system to track the eye and the iris location of the user in real time, the system uses CAMshift (Continuously Adaptive Meanshift) to track the eye and iris of the user. The parameters of the eye and iris are then collected and are used to calculate the gaze direction of the user. The left and right camera achieves 70.00% and 74.67% accuracy respectively. When two cameras are used to estimate the gaze direction, 88.67% accuracy is achieved. This shows that by using two cameras, the accuracy of gaze estimation is improved

Shared parenting : adding children\u27s voices and their measures of adjustment to the evaluation

Shared parenting has been advocated to be a better arrangement for children than sole residence and access arrangements after parental separation. Although there is some research on this issue, studies have been restricted in their reliance on the reports of others. In this paper, we report on a study in Australia, in which children in each of these arrangements were compared with children in intact families on a range of adjustment measures and with each other in relation to their responses to their parents\u27 separation, using both self- and parent-reporting. We found that there was little difference between children in the three family configurations, suggesting that shared parenting is not necessarily associated with better outcomes for the child. On other aspects of adjustment, the children in shared parenting and sole residence/access families did not differ. We also found that parents in all groups underestimated the emotional problems reported by children. In separated families, they also overestimated the children\u27s desire for parents to re-unite. Finally, we found that parents in shared parenting families are more satisfied with their situation than are their children, and fathers are particularly so. The findings suggest that the promotion of shared parenting as the best post-separation family structure is contestable. <br /

Bond markets in Malaysia & Singapore

This book is about two bond markets respectively in Malaysia and Singapore. The book describes the historical development of these markets, and provides for the first time, both operational details about how the markets operate, as well as identifying the economic and financial behaviour of the markets. Necessarily, references to theories of how the market ought to behave and how they actually behave are documented for these price-efficient bond instruments. This book is also an excellent reference book for professionals, practitioners in accounting, banking and finance and also to regulators who set standards for financial sector. Readers from Asia-Pacific countries will also find in this book a useful resource comparing their countries in this region