The hydraulic jump is mainly used for energy dissipation at the downstream side of spillways, drops, chutes, and gates with the assist of baffle blocks. This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of the hydraulic jump on crushed stone beds. Experiments were carried out to study the effect of bed roughness on both the sequent depth ratio and the jump length. It has been observed that crushed stone beds results in considerably higher energy dissipation than a smooth bed at the downstream. In this experimental study, the effect of five different sets of crushed stone bed on the characteristics of the hydraulic jump is studied. The experiment is carried out in such a way that the size of crushed stones is increased after each set. The analysis of the phenomenon was conducted using the Ballenger’s equation. The important conclusion which can be drawn from the experiment is that the effect of an increase in height of rough bed on energy dissipation will not improve after a certain height for a particular channel. The results confirm the effect of crushed stone bed for energy dissipation and can decrease the cost of stilling basins to a large extent.

Early reading ability is the foundation to start other academic proficiencies which should be mastered by a student. Low early reading proficency could have an effect of low academic achievement. This research is aimed to examine the effectiveness’ differences between multi-sensory reading method of stepping stone Flashcard Multisensory (FMS) and constructive game method scrabble to improve the early reading skill of first grade elementary school students. The hypothesis of this study is there is effectiveness difference between stepping stone FMS reading method and scrabble active constructive game method in improving early reading skill of first grade students of elementary school. It was shown that the early reading skill of first graders in the experiment group is higher than that of the control group. The research instrument applied was reading test. Mann-Whitney U was used for he data analysis. The results show that there is no significant difference in the early reading skill between the FMS and scrabble groups (Z = -1,720; p=0,0085 where p > 0,05). Eventhough the gain score average difference between experiment and control group is not significant, the early reading skill of FMS group is higher than scrabble group (Me = 20,38; Mk = 14,94).

Las áreas verdes en las ciudades son elementos importantes para la conservación de la avifauna. En este estudio se presentan estimaciones de riqueza y abundancia de aves y su relación con las áreas verdes de la ciudad de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, México. Identificamos un total de 75 especies de aves en diez áreas verdes de diferente tamaño de febrero a julio de 2016 y relacionamos su presencia con variables ambientales obtenidas a dos escalas geográficas distintas (local y de paisaje). Se utilizaron análisis no paramétricos para comparar la riqueza y abundancia de las aves entre áreas verdes y categorías de tamaño. El porcentaje de superficie total ocupada de vegetación fue la variable más importante al correlacionarse positivamente con la riqueza y abundancia de aves. Mientras que el porcentaje de cobertura de dosel, de construcciones, de pavimento y de áreas verdes muestreadas se correlacionaron negativamente con la riqueza y abundancia de aves. Por lo que la heterogeneidad espacial de la estructura vegetal vertical en las áreas verdes urbanas es importante para incrementar la diversidad de la avifauna.

The present work had as objective to contribute to scientifically knowledge expansion among senior year students, in a public secondary school at a Brazil’s country town, through nanoscience and nanotechnology dissemination. We have applied a questionnaire pre and post interventions. We have conducted four interventions about: introduction to nanotechnology, nanotechnology in cosmetics, nanotechnology in medicine and application to nanotechnology in food products. In the first questionnaire, 29% of the students answered that they have already heard about nanotechnology, but only 6% of them knew how to describe it. However, as the second questionnaire pointed out, about 80% of the students knew how to describe nanotechnology advantages in a day-to-day context. The students have showed to be receptive to our activities, and have took them as a way of contribution to the expansion of their understanding of science. In this way, the results indicate that our work objective was accomplished.

This paper presents a new solution approach to economic dispatch (ED) problems with practical operating constraints using a Cauchy mutated memetic particle swarm optimization (CMMPSO) algorithm. The practical operating constraints such as valve point effect, multiple fuel options, prohibited operating zones, ramp rates of generators and environmental constraints are considered in this paper. ED problems have non-smooth cost functions with equality and inequality constraints that make the problem of finding the global optimum difficult using any traditional optimization approaches. The main objective of this paper is to develop a simple, reliable and efficient algorithm for solving the Economic Dispatch problem with multiple practical operating constraints. The proposed CMMPSO algorithm is used to test ED problems with different practical operating constraints. The results of the CMMPSO are compared with the results of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and differential evolutionary algorithm.

Facial expression recognition is an innovative research area in human-machine interaction. Identification of facial emotion using facial expression is a challenging task. Principal Component Analysis along with the statistical analysis is used to extract the different features of the seven facial expressions. Feed Forward Back Propagation Neural Network (FFBPNN) is trained with seven features and it is used as a classifier to recognize different facial expressions such as happy, neutral, fear, anger, disgust, sad and surprise. Three different kinds of data bases such as JAFEE, CK+ and real time image are used for experimental studies. Results of the proposed feature extraction and classification is compared with the existing method and show the good performance. The recognition rate of JAFFE database and CK+ database is as follows 100% and 98.16% shows the better performance of the proposed method.

In this research paper a self–lift CUK converter is proposed to step up the output voltage obtained from a solar cell based system. For triggering the self–lift CUK converter, rectified sinusoidal pulse width modulation (RSPWM) is adopted, which is a new approach. The said converter with inverter coordination will provide suitable AC voltage for grid connection. The self–lift CUK converter with inverter is implemented in MATLAB simulation platform and the results of simulation are analytically verified. The simulated converter combination is connected to the a IEEE 15 – bus distribution network and the results are verified.

Atmospheric gases attenuation become a major concern on earth-space path at higher frequencies both uplink and down link at 0.01% unavailability of an average year. Moreover, few studies of non-rainy attenuation have been reported and the statistical analysis is still not clear most especially in West Africa. The meteorological data used in this study is obtained from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) satellites between 2002 and 2009, while the International Telecommunication Union Radio Propagation Recommendation (ITU-RP 676) model is used to validate and estimate gaseous attenuation for West Africa. The results show on contour map that total atmospheric absorption signal fade attenuation values at C band is between 0.015 to 0.09 dB, Ku band is 0.04 to 0.9 dB, Ka band is 0.04 to 1.4 dB and V band is 0.2 to 3.2 dB respectively for both uplink and downlink frequencies. The results also show consistent increase in attenuation due to gases are higher in the western region than in the southern part of West Africa.