Influence of washing on textile material thermal properties under exposure of an open flame and heating ele-ment heat flow

Elevated temperatures are factors causing harm to human health and life. To ensure protection, various personal protective equipment is used, which includes special protective clothing. The article discusses the heat-shielding indicators of the safety of textile material. In order to determine the heat-shielding properties of the material, various types of exposure are used – convective heat from a heating element and an open flame. Fabrics of various raw materials and surface density are used for sewing special protective clothing. Five clothes were selected for the research. The research was held under the exposure of an open flame and convective heat of heating element with a comparable heat flux density equal to 80 kW/m². Also, research was held under influence of multiple wash cycles on radiant heat transfer index and heat transfer index.

Effect of blending ratio on the hollow coffee carbon polyester/cotton blended yarn

The effect of blending ratio on the performance of hollow coffee carbon polyester/cotton blended compact siro-spun yarn was investigated. Five blend ratios of hollow coffee carbon polyester/cotton fiber (i.e. 20/80, 35/65, 50/50, 65/35, and 80/20) and polyester/cotton fiber 35/65 were designed, and six groups of 14.6 tex yarn were spun by compact siro. Indices for the performance of the yarn (surface morphology, evenness, hairiness, tensile property, and hydroscopicity) were tested and analyzed. The regression analysis showed the excellent linear relationship between the content of hollow coffee carbon polyester and each performance index was obtained. Cubic curve models were built to comprehensively evaluate the performance of the yarn. The blending effect in these yarns was evaluated using the Hamilton transfer index. The tests results show that with the increase of the content of hollow coffee carbon polyester in the blended yarn, the evenness and tensile properties of the hollow coffee carbon polyester/cotton blended yarn continue to increase, whereas the hairiness index and moisture regain of the yarn gradually decrease. With the change of blending ratio, the transfer index of each fiber in hollow coffee carbon polyester/cotton blended yarn will change. When the content of hollow coffee carbon polyester is more than or equal to 50%, it has the tendency to preferentially distribute inward, whereas the cotton fiber has the tendency to preferentially distribute outward. When the content of hollow coffee carbon polyester is less than 50%, the reverse is true. The comprehensive evaluation value of the yarn performance decreased first and then increased with the increase in the content of hollow coffee carbon polyester.

Comparision of performance of multi criteria decision making ensemble-clustering algorithms in rainfall frequency analysis

Non availability of adequate extreme rainfall information at any place of interest are solved using regionalization where subjective grouping of similar attributes of nearby gauged stations is performed. K-Means and Fuzzy C-Means are commonly used methods in regionalization of rainfall, but application of genetic algorithm is very rarely explored. Genetic algorithms (GA) are highly efficient evolutionary algorithms, and through an appropriate objective function can effectively achieve the purpose of clustering. In the present study, Davies-Bouldin index is considered and validation is performed using a set of validation measures. Taking into account the varied output obtained in each validation measure, an ensembled approach involving multi criteria decision making is applied to obtain optimal ranked solutions, and the procedure is extended to K-Means and Fuzzy C-Means for comparision. From the results obtained, GA based clustering is found to outperform other two algorithms in formation of homogenous regions with better performances in leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) test and sensitivity analysis. Accuracy of regional growth curves of regions assessed using regional relative bias and RMSE suggest low uncertainty and accurate quantile estimates in GA regions. Further, information transfer index based on entropy evaluated among GA regions is found to be highest and K-Means lowest.

Typha Latifolia L. Grown in Carrying Petroleum Secondary Effluent Supply Nutrients Enhance for Biomass Growth and Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals and TPH

Phytoremediation is an innovative tool which can be used for the treatment of industrial and agricultural wastewater. Typha latifolia L. (T. latifolia L) is an aquatic plant which grows on petroleum secondary effluent (PSE) containing metals like cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), manganese (Mn) and TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbon). The growth performance in biomass, nutrient concentrations and heavy metals in parts of the T. latifolia L. The reason for the accumulation of Cd, Co and Mn in T. latifolia L. can be explained as a tolerance strategy due to its transfer index (TI) which is higher than 2.9. The enrichment coefficients of the metals present in the root compared to stem of T. latifolia L. were higher than 3.31 to 2.56 for Cd, 5.35 to 3.55 Co. But, for Mn were found to be lower 1.98 than 3.51 at 75%. Similarly, the enrichment coefficients of all the metals, except for Co, in roots of T. latifolia L. were higher than 5.36. (TI) for Co (2.95) and Mn (2.55) which is absolutely better as compared to the enrichment coefficients of Cd (2.35) and TPH (3.45) in PSE. Thus, there is a possibility that PSE could be a source of important nutrients.

Tasa de preñez post vitrificación en los embriones de équidos producidos in vivo. Revisión

Vitrification is a cryo-preservation method often used in embryos obtained from mares or jennies. It consists in the dramatic reduction of temperature to levels close to -196 °C, that allows the cryopreserving solution containing the embryo to pass from liquid to vitreous state. Several improvements to vitrification protocols have made possible to cryo-preserve embryos with different sizes; since during the first decade after the year 2000, only small embryos were successfully vitrified. Embryos collected at the sixth day post ovulation (PO) are usually smaller or equal to 300 micrometers in diameter (≤ 300 µmØ) and can be routinely vitrified following simple protocols; they have a higher post vitrification pregnancy rate (PVPR) when compared to large embryos which have more than 300 micrometers in diameter (˃ 300 µmØ). The high PVPR of embryos ≤ 300 µmØ is due to an embryo capsule (EC) that is not fully developed yet and has a high permeability to cryo-preserving solutions. At present time, embryos collected either the seventh or eighth day PO are ˃ 300 µmØ and are characterized to have a low post vitrification survival; in order to increase their PVPR their EC might be punctured to make it permeable to cryopreserving solutions. Additionally, there are at least two factors that can be manipulated to increase the PVPR of embryos ˃ 300 µmØ; one is to reduce their size by aspiring their blastocoelic liquid (BL), and the other is to induce a high temperature transfer index (TTI) to rapidly reach -196 °C.

International technology transfer: evidence on foreign direct investment in Albania

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the presumed role played by foreign direct investment (FDI) in transferring technology from home country into a host country. This paper uses data from Albanian manufacturing industry; first, to examine whether foreign presence results in technology transfer and, if yes, what type of technology is more prevalent and to what extent? Second, the paper attempts to investigate the purported determinants of technology transfer.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses two main methodological approaches; first, the technology transfer was determined using an arithmetic index developed using simple arithmetic average. This index is determined using all the industries and taking six key components of technology into consideration. They included: products; production processes; technology and innovation; supplier and customers system; human resource management, training and reporting system; financial management, marketing and organizational structure. Second, assuming a limited dependent relationship between the variables and the technology transfer, a Tobit technique was proposed to examine the significant determinants of technology transfer. Technology transfer was proxied by the technology transfer index developed.FindingsThe results clearly demonstrate that FDI plays an important role in technology transfer and that notwithstanding the industrialization of Albania. As per the technology transfer index developed, product-related technology transfer ranked highest followed by the process-related technology. The Tobit results generated indicated that firm age, performance, absorptive capacity, labor mobility, innovation, demonstration effect and systematic support were all key determinants of technology transfer. Surprisingly, size of the firm did not seem to matter.Research limitations/implicationsThe results have possible managerial and policy ramifications. First, the government should continue to provide basic infrastructure. Second, the government needs to formulate policies focused on human capital accumulation. Third, policies should be focused on firm learning and innovation in order to build technological and absorptive capabilities. Moreover, there should be increased effort to facilitate and encourage R&D. Fourth, the government should coordinate and support the institutions especially those that play a crucial role in industrial investment promotion. Fifth, the government should encourage systemic interactions among different entities. Sixth, since high competition from foreign firms can crowd out domestic investment, strategic measures to regulate such competition should be enacted.Originality/valueThe novelty in this paper is the broad conceptualization of technology transfer to include not only the direct but also the indirect mode of technology transfer, which often takes place in the form of spillovers. The physical technology transfer, as well as, its actual impact in the economy is examined to ascertain that technology transfer indeed takes place. The analytical framework adopted overlaps international business, technology transfer and technological innovation literature strands to examine the holistic process of technology transfer.

Transfer index, NetUniFrac and some useful shortest path-based distances for community analysis in sequence similarity networks

Motivation Phylogenetic trees and the methods for their analysis have played a key role in many evolutionary, ecological and bioinformatics studies. Alternatively, phylogenetic networks have been widely used to analyze and represent complex reticulate evolutionary processes which cannot be adequately studied using traditional phylogenetic methods. These processes include, among others, hybridization, horizontal gene transfer, and genetic recombination. Nowadays, sequence similarity and genome similarity networks have become an efficient tool for community analysis of large molecular datasets in comparative studies. These networks can be used for tackling a variety of complex evolutionary problems such as the identification of horizontal gene transfer events, the recovery of mosaic genes and genomes, and the study of holobionts. Results The shortest path in a phylogenetic tree is used to estimate evolutionary distances between species. We show how the shortest path concept can be extended to sequence similarity networks by defining five new distances, NetUniFrac, Spp, Spep, Spelp and Spinp, and the Transfer index, between species communities present in the network. These new distances can be seen as network analogs of the traditional UniFrac distance used to assess dissimilarity between species communities in a phylogenetic tree, whereas the Transfer index is intended for estimating the rate and direction of gene transfers, or species dispersal, between different phylogenetic, or ecological, species communities. Moreover, NetUniFrac and the Transfer index can be computed in linear time with respect to the number of edges in the network. We show how these new measures can be used to analyze microbiota and antibiotic resistance gene similarity networks. Availability and implementation Our NetFrac program, implemented in R and C, along with its source code, is freely available on Github at the following URL address: https://github.com/XPHenry/Netfrac. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.