Monitoring Coptic Masonry Affected by Clay Minerals and Microorganisms at the Church of Virgin Mary, Wadi El-Natrun (Egypt)

This paper focuses on the role played by the clay minerals and microorganisms in the deterioration process of Coptic architecture units at the church of Virgin Mary, Wadi El-Natrun region. For this purpose building materials (mainly mortars and plasters) from the studied church were examined using X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS); in order to identify their composition and were investigated petro-graphically to determine the real response of the masonry structure to the deformation imposed at the endogenous factors. Wall gypsum mortars in the church contain halloysite as a dominant clay mineral while plaster is clay free; concerning microorganisms, the fungal flora Aspergillus glaucus represent the most dominant fungi constituting (22.22%), Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus occhraceus, and Aspergillus caudidus were also isolated.

The role of topic vaginal products in posthysterectomy vaginal atrophy

Vaginal atrophy represents a frequently encountered condition which is significantly correlated with decreased amounts of circulating oestrogen levels. It is usually characterized by the presence of burning, itching, irritation and dyspareunia. In such cases attention was focused on identifying a topic product which might alleviate these symptoms and stop the deterioration process of the vaginal lining. One product which seems to have an effective role in order to stop this process and to offer a good local control of the disease should contain anti-inflammatory, healing and antiseptic principles. The aim of the current paper is to study the possible benefits of Cerviron a topic product with intravaginal administration which contains seven active principles in order to offer the above mentioned effects.

Bimbingan Membaca Al-Qur’an Kepada Lansia di Desa Tambalang Oleh Mahasiswi KKN Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Al-Quran (STIQ) Amuntai Tahun 2021

In line with the increasing age of a person and the deterioration process followed by the emergence of cognitive impairment, the decline in cognitive function in the elderly can be prevented by reading the Qur'an, one of which. An elderly person who wants to learn to read the Qur'an properly and correctly must have their own difficulties, but behind that there are always supporting factors that make the elderly continue to be enthusiastic about learning and obstacles in the learning process. The community service subjects were 10 elderly in Tambalang village who wanted to learn to read the Qur'an. The data obtained came from direct activities and direct interviews. Activities run with classical learning. The difficulty of the Tambalang elderly in learning to read the Koran is that it is difficult to pronounce bold letters such as the letter, in distinguishing any similar sound of letters, in determining ikhfa haqiqi and ikhfa syafawi, determining where the recitation stops and repeating it, adjusting the length of the mad, the lack of pressure on the gunnah, in reflecting the letter qalqalah. The supporting factors are being able to read the Qur'an well and correctly from a young age, always being enthusiastic and trying hard, having high motivation. The inhibiting factor is blurred vision, it has been a long time since learning to read the Qur'an, teeth have fallen out.

Acoustics Based Monitoring and Diagnostics for the Progressive Deterioration of Helical Gearboxes

Gearbox condition monitoring (CM) plays a significant role in ensuring the operational reliability and efficiency of a wide range of critical industrial systems such as wind turbines and helicopters. Accurate and timely diagnosis of gear faults will improve the maintenance of gearboxes operating under sub-optimal conditions, avoid excessive energy consumption and prevent avoidable damages to systems. This study focuses on developing CM for a multi-stage helical gearbox using airborne sound. Based on signal phase alignments, Modulation Signal Bispectrum (MSB) analysis allows random noise and interrupting events in sound signals to be suppressed greatly and obtains nonlinear modulation features in association with gear dynamics. MSB coherence is evaluated for selecting the reliable bi-spectral peaks for indication of gear deterioration. A run-to-failure test of two industrial gearboxes was tested under various loading conditions. Two omnidirectional microphones were fixed near the gearboxes to sense acoustic information during operation. It has been shown that compared against vibration based CM, acoustics can perceive the responses of vibration in a larger areas and contains more comprehensive and stable information related to gear dynamics variation due to wear. Also, the MSB magnitude peaks at the first three harmonic components of gear mesh and rotation components are demonstrated to be sufficient in characterizing the gradual deterioration of gear transmission. Consequently, the combining of MSB peaks with baseline normalization yields more accurate monitoring trends and diagnostics, allowing the gradual deterioration process and gear wear location to be represented more consistently.

The Critical Indicator of Red-Bed Soft Rocks in Deterioration Process Induced by Water Basing on Renormalization Group Theory

The internal damage of red-bed soft rock induced by water is pervasive. The accumulation, growth, and localization of damage is a multi-scale process that can lead to significant strength loss in red-bed soft rock. Yet, research on the critical state of deterioration process considering multi-scale failure is limited due to high degree of system freedom. Renormalization group theory is an effective approach to find critical point of phase transition in a disordered system. To apply renormalization group theory in red-bed soft rocks, this article firstly analyzed their microstructures. Then, the granular unit model and stripy unit model are proposed to describe the self-similar characteristics of red-bed soft rocks. The calculation results based on renormalization group theory are consistent with the experimental results. The critical reductions of strength induced by water are 60% in light-yellow silty mudstone and 80% in grey silty mudstone. In addition, the critical state of damage propagation caused by stress is also studied and the analytical solution is derived. Results show that the renormalization group theory can effectively couple the micro damage and strength deterioration which provides guidance to the engineering.

Combining Knowledge- and Data-driven Fuzzy Approach to Evaluate Shelf-life of Various Seafood Products

Due to the complexity of the deterioration process of seafood products, relying on one indicator is not adequate to determine the quality of such products. Usually, shelf-life was estimated based on various indicators complicating the decision-making process. Decision Support Systems is considered as a good solution. The current study aims to establish a simple and novel fuzzy model based on a combination of knowledge- and data-driven approach to define a fuzzy quality deterioration index (FQDI), in various seafood products (rainbow trout, threadfin bream and white shrimp samples) during cold storage. Total Volatile Basic Nitrogen (TVB-N) and Psychrotrophic Microorganisms values (PMCs) were determined based on the traditional methods. The sensory analysis was performed by a data-driven fuzzy approach. Overall, the shelf-life of the rainbow-trout filet was estimated to be 8 days, based on all the freshness parameters. However, the shelf-life of the Japanese threadfin bream fillet was 5-7 days according to the microbial and chemical parameters, respectively. This time for shrimp samples was 6 to 8 days using sensory score and TVB-N content. The results of data-driven fuzzy approach showed all of the quality properties were considered as the “important”- “very important” (defuzzification score>75). The TVB-N and PMCs were the most and weakest freshness quality properties (defuzzified-values: 84.64 and 78.75, respectively). Based on FQDI, the shelf-life of the rainbow-trout, Japanese threadfin bream, and shrimp samples were estimated to be 8, 5, and 7 days, respectively. This method was able to successfully provide a comprehensive deterioration index for evaluating the seafood shelf-life. Such a total index can be considered as a comprehensive output (y-variable) to predict seafood freshness by rapid and non-destructive method.

Using expert judgement techniques to assess reliability for long service-life components: An application to railway wheelsets

Due to uncertainties in the deterioration process of long service-life assets, assessing reliability and planning maintenance and inspection activities are often difficult tasks. Most of the methods developed use operational or historical data from the manufacturer to predict the deterioration of the asset and estimate its reliability. However, in practice, such failure data is often scarce (e.g. very rare events) and the reliability prediction models might not be adapted to the operation of the user. In addition, available data gathered from maintenance or inspection tasks might only inform about a short period of time, and it might be difficult to obtain the corresponding reliability predictions as the associated uncertainty is still significant. Hence, this paper introduces a reliability assessment method that quantifies uncertainties regarding the failure of long service-life components. It combines Cooke’s classical method (also known as Structured Expert Judgement) with a histogram technique, creating a performance-based method to assess uncertainty in components lifetime distributions. A case study on railway wheelsets is analysed to illustrate the effectiveness of such approach. The results show that the presented method is able to assess failure rates, which can support decisions in reliability-based maintenance of engineering systems.

Reliability analysis and selective maintenance for multistate queueing system

The reliability theory of the multi-state system (MSS) has received considerable attention in recent years, as it is able to characterize the multi-state property and complicated deterioration process of systems in a finer way than that of binary-state system. In general, the performance of the task processing type MSS is typically measured by an operation time (processing speed). Whereas, considering the queueing phenomenon caused by the random arrival and processing of tasks, some other criteria should be taken into account to evaluate the quality of service (QoS) and the profit of stakeholders, such as waiting time, service and abandon rate of tasks and consequent profit rate. In this article, we focus on the queueing process of tasks and analyse the performance and reliability of MSS in an M/M/2 queueing model, which is referred to as a multi-state queueing system (MSQS). Two kinds of deterioration are studied including the gradual degradation of servers and the sudden breakdown of the whole system. A performance assessment function is defined to obtain the profit rate of MSQS in different performance states. Based on the proposed performance function, the selective maintenance method is studied to optimize the accumulated profit under the constraint of maintenance resource and time.