Mortars and plasters—how to manage mortars and plasters conservation

The use of mortars and plasters has been widespread in many cultures for thousands of years and these materials are found in the vast majority of built cultural heritage. They play a crucial role in the preservation of immovable heritage and must be taken into great consideration when conserving historical buildings. Plasters and mortars have been extensively studied from a chemical and mineralogical point of view. The main causes and mechanisms of damage and deterioration are understood and various methods and materials have been developed for their preservation. Treatment development, testing and evaluation in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, has produced a high level of knowledge. However, there is a divergence between the results of academic-scientific studies and practice in the field. Laboratory studies typically tackle only a few variables at the time and the results cannot always be directly applied to address the complex problems that restorers face in their daily work practice. In addition, in situ conservation-restoration is extremely challenging because many of large number of variables involved cannot be controlled or modified. Following a description of the ideal “value-based” conservation process, this compilation work discusses aspects related to understanding deterioration mechanisms and planning of preventive and remedial interventions in a way that may be useful to update conservators-restorers on the status of scientific research in this field, and to guide conservation-scientists to identify unresolved issues, which require future research efforts.

A Novel Clean Biopolymer-Based Additive To Improve Mechanical And Microstructural Properties of Clayey Soil

Conventional soil additives, as a sector of construction materials, can cause serious environmental problems due to their cement-dependent nature. To eliminate destroying effects of these kinds of additives, environmentally friendly ones have gained great consideration. Although polysaccharides are considered as powerful biocompatible soil additives in recent studies, the effect of their crosslinked hydrogel with elevated rheological and adhesive properties has been very rarely investigated in soil stabilization. In this paper, calcium chloride was used as ionic crosslinker to enhance recently proposed Persian gum biopolymer as a novel polysaccharide-based additive for clayey soil stabilization. A group of macro and micro scale tests including unconfined compressive strength (UCS), direct shear test (DS), freeze thaw durability, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), stereo zoom microscopy (SZM), Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (N2-BET) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were conducted. The tests were also performed on soil treated with xanthan gum as a common hydrocolloid of soil stabilization. As the results show, the introduced ionic crosslinked hydrogel at its optimum content has superior performance than well-known xanthan gum in terms of soil strength and ductility. Crosslinking has also positive effects on durability results of pure Persian gum to make it comparable to xanthan gum. Consumption of lower amounts of Persian gum at presence of ionic crosslinker can make stabilization projects more economical efficient. Microscale tests also confirmed the powerful impact of optimum modified hydrogel on soil interstructure by filling the pores, agglomeration of soil particles and formation of new cementitious compounds in the mineralogical structure of the soil.

Tokenization of Assets Using Blockchain

In a continuous opportunity, Blockchain technology (BCT) was able to receive a great consideration outside the financial area. The chain concepts of blocks are more passed than the furniture and the rhythm of encryption. Block the universe chain Research of internal probabilities of assets several applications in BCT is frequently achieved. In this document, we participate in the two BCT prospects to add the future scope of these two points of view and future transactions in the tokenization of assets. This document is intended to investigate a part of the chain of blocks in the maintainable transaction with real money and dispersed through the network of block chains.

Implimentation of Novel Framework For Efficient Data Gathering With Multiple Mobile Sink Sensor Nodes In WSN

In couple of years, the great research towards oceanographic data transmission and submerged impurity the Submerged Wireless Sensor Networks are getting great consideration. SWSN includes issues such as link sustainability, time to begin interaction, data loss due to real-time transmission attempts and transmission range. The aforementioned complications have been approached through different routing configurations, but none of these can handle transmission efficiently. In this paper we proposed a framework of network in depth based data acquisition system with simulation and experimental results. The system model has been efficiently transmit data (Turbidity, Temperature and PH) in a region (Indus River) using the smart cluster sensor nodes and acquires result of 6.5 to 31 N.T.U of turbidity. The experimental results proved that the projected work improves the performance of the data transmission in Submerged Wireless Sensor Networks.

Online Learning Media: English Education Department Students’ Perspective

<p class="AbstractText">The use of virtual learning media is now being daily needs since global pandemic appears. All educations units must use virtual platform to ruin learning process. This study is aimed to investigate the effectiveness of virtual media platform used by lecturer from students’ perspective, in teaching and learning process of English education students in Public Speaking subject. Besides, the research focuses on analyzing how effective the media is from students’ point of view. This study is a case study approach, that is natural qualitative. The study involved university students, conducted on one biggest university in Medan, Indonesia, majoring in English Education. The participants were surveyed through questionnaire distributed through Google Survey. The questionnaires and interview were conducted to assemble the data related to students’ experiences in using certain online media given by the lecturers, both provided by the institutions and other platform. By their response, Zoom Cloud Meeting is the most effective media in teaching-learning process, where 79% of them say so. It is followed by Whatsapp, where 41.30% respondents choose it. This findings hopefully will be great consideration for the researcher and other parties, to apply the chosen media in teaching learning process, as students expect in their response.</p>

Seeing through Words: Hypotyposis and its Functions

This essay aims to analyse the rhetorical device of hypotyposis, which is held in great consideration both by ancient rhetoricians (Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian) and by modern critics (Dumarsais, Barthes and Eco) for its capacity to portray visual experiences through the use of words, so as to make them as perceptible as if they were present before the reader’s eyes. The essay compares hypotyposis with other similar rhetorical strategies, such as description (an important moment in which the narratio is suspended and the author describes a place or character), evidentia, and especially ekphrasis - which comes from ekphràzo, meaning “describe, represent”, it is used with reference to the description of artworks - which all exercise a significant persuasive function, for they make arguments more tangible and convincing.

Polynomial Based Fuzzy Vault Technique for Template Security in Fingerprint Biometrics

In recent years the security breaches and fraud transactions are increasing day by day. So there is a necessity for highly secure authentication technologies. The security of an authentication system can be strengthened by using Biometric system rather than the traditional method of authentication like Identity Cards (ID) and password which can be stolen easily. A biometric system works on biometric traits and fingerprint has the maximum share in market for providing biometric authentication as it is reliable, consistent and easy to capture. Although the biometric system is used to provide security to many applications but it is susceptible to different types of assaults too. Among all the modules of the biometric system which needs security, biometric template protection has received great consideration in the past years from the research community due to sensitivity of the biometric data stored in the form of template. A number of methods have been devised for providing template protection. Fuzzy vault is one of the cryptosystem based method of template security. The aim of fuzzy vault technique is to protect the precarious data with the biometric template in a way that only certified user can access the secret by providing valid biometric. In this paper, a modified version of fuzzy vault is presented to increase the level of security to the template and the secret key. The polynomial whose coefficients represent the key is transformed using an integral operator to hide the key where the key can no longer be derived if the polynomial is known to the attacker. The proposed fuzzy vault scheme also prevents the system from stolen key inversion attack. The results are achieved in terms of False Accept Rate (FAR), False Reject Rate (FRR), Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR) by varying the degree of polynomial and number of biometric samples. It was calculated that for 40 users GAR was found to be 92%, 90%, 85% for degree of polynomial to be 3, 4 and 5 respectively. It was observed that increasing the degree of polynomial decreased the FAR rate, thus increasing the security

Analysis of 64 channels based IS-OWC system using different intereference reduction techniques

Optical wireless communication in space is attracting great consideration due to high speed, high capacity, no EMI, high security, and wide bandwidth. OWC has edge over microwave communication because in laser based communication, relay feature saves the time of the system. In this paper, different interference reduction techniques in wavelength division multiplexing based inter-satellite optical wireless system are presented at different data rates 10, 20, and 40 Gbps. Hybrid multiplexing using wide division multiplexing and time division multiplexing is proposed first and second technique proposed is polarization interleaving in IsOWC systems. Dense channel spacing system with diverse modulations is investigated further such as Chirped, differential phase shift keying, and alternate mark inversion (AMI). Q factor is the performance evaluation parameters for different distances.

Digitizing the Pharma Neurons – A Technological Operation in Progress!

Background: Digitization and automation are the buzzwords in clinical research and pharma companies are investigating heavily here. Right from drug discovery to personalized medicine, digital patients and patient engagement, there is great consideration of technology at each step. Methods: The published data and online information available is reviewed to give an overview of digitization in pharma, across the drug development cycle, industry collaborations and innovations. The regulatory guidelines, innovative collaborations across industry, academics and thought leadership are presented. Also included are some ideas, suggestions, way forwards while digitizing the pharma neurons, the regulatory stand, benefits and challenges. Results: The innovations range from discovering personalized medicine to conducting virtual clinical trials, and maximizing data collection from the real-world experience. To address the increasing demand for the real-world data and the needs of tech-savvy patients, the innovations are shaping up accordingly. Pharma companies are collaborating with academics and they are co-innovating the technology for example Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s program. This focuses on the modernization of clinical trials, strategic use of artificial intelligence and machine learning using real-world evidence, assess the risk-benefit ratio of deploying digital analytics in medicine, and proactively identifying the solutions. Conclusions: With unfolding data on the impact of science and technology amalgamation, we need shared mindset between data scientists and medical professionals to maximize the utility of enormous health and medical data. To tackle this efficiently, there is a need of cross-collaboration and education, and align with ethical and regulatory requirements. A perfect blend of industry, regulatory, and academia will ensure successful digitization of pharma neurons.

The Flavor of Dairy Products from Grass-Fed Cows

The milks used for manufacturing bovine dairy products are not all equal. The feeding regimen of lactating cows can widely vary, giving rise to remarkable compositional differences. Recently, grass-fed/based milk and transformed products are being taken into great consideration due to their more favorable nutritional characteristics and better sustainability over those from intensive systems. Besides these well-established aspects, the existence of differences in flavor is highly debated. The “cheese story tellers” consider it as a proven fact and tend to directly link the aroma of grass-based dairy products to the plants the animals ate. Unfortunately, this claim is not yet supported by scientific data. Actually, there is sufficient evidence of the presence of a distinctive aroma in milk from grass-fed cows, but the connection with specific aroma-active compounds is still in progress. In addition to this, the role of some compounds deriving from cow’s metabolism seems to be much more important than that of other compounds that directly derive from feed. The situation in transformed products, in particular cheese, is even more complicated due to the overlapping of flavor compounds originating from technological operations, microbial metabolism and enzyme activities during storage or ripening. Further work is still needed to answer the question, but the increasing application of a flavoromics approach to the studies should rapidly bring about a decisive contribution to the knowledge.