Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Primary Choroidal Lymphoma Diagnosed With 27-Gauge Pars Plana Vitrectomy Choroidal Biopsy, Andrew Kam, Justin Galvin, Svetlana Cherepanoff, Andrew Alexis Miller, Adrian Fung

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Currently, transvitreal fine-needle aspiration biopsy is the most widely used tissue biopsy technique in cases of suspected intraocular lymphoma due to its relative simplicity and low trauma. The small sample produced, however, may be inadequate for diagnostic and prognostic analyses due to mechanical artefacts, insufficient material, or sampling errors. Small case series have demonstrated choroidal biopsy via vitrectomy to be safe and effective. With smaller-gauge vitrectomy instruments, visual recovery is rapid, and post-operative inflammation and conjunctival scarring is minimised. Furthermore, smaller-gauge instrumentation does not appear to affect the diagnostic yield of biopsies for intraocular lymphoma in vitro. We report a …

Fire-Resistance Of Eccentrically Loaded Rectangular Concrete-Filled Steel Tubular Slender Columns Incorporating Interaction Of Local And Global Buckling, Ghanim Mohammed Kamil, Qing Quan Liang, Muhammad N. S Hadi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

A mathematical model using the fiber approach is presented in this paper for quantifying the strength and fire-resistance of eccentrically loaded slender concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) columns with rectangular sections incorporating the interaction of local and global buckling. The model utilizes the thermal simulator to ascertain the temperature distribution in cross-sections, and the nonlinear global buckling analysis to predict the interaction responses of local and global buckling of loaded CFST slender columns to fire effects. The initial geometric imperfection, air gap between the concrete and steel tube, tensile concrete strength, deformations caused by preloads, and temperature-dependent material behavior are included …

Mechanical Properties Of Steel, Glass, And Hybrid Fiber Reinforced Reactive Powder Concrete, Atheer Hilal Mahdi Al - Gburi, M Neaz Sheikh, Muhammad N. S Hadi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This study examines the properties of fiber-reinforced reactive powder concrete (FR-RPC). Steel fibers, glass fibers, and steel-glass hybrid fibers were used to prepare the FR-RPC. The non-fibrous reactive powder concrete (NF-RPC) was prepared as a reference mix. The proportion of fibers by volume for all FR-RPC mixes was 1.5%. Steel fibers of 13 mm length and 0.2 mm diameter were used to prepare the steel fiber-reinforced RPC (SFR-RPC). Glass fibers of 13 mm length and 1.3 mm diameter were used to prepare the glass fiber-reinforced RPC (GFR-RPC). The hybrid fiber-reinforced RPC (HFR-RPC) was prepared by mixing 0.9% steel fibers and …

Mining Phosphorus From Anaerobically Treated Dairy Manure By Forward Osmosis Membrane, Biplob K. Pramanik, Faisal I. Hai, Ashley Ansari, Felicity Roddick

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

We investigated the effect of draw solution type on the forward osmosis (FO) performance for enriching nutrients from anaerobically treated dairy manure (ATDM) followed by chemical precipitation for phosphorus recovery as struvite crystal. The FO membrane significantly rejected COD (>97%) and phosphate (>98%) whereas there was only 70%-73% and 73%-76% rejection of ammonia-nitrogen and total nitrogen, respectively. The draw solution type had little impact on the retention of the aforementioned wastewater constituents by the FO membrane. At 60% water recovery, a water flux decline of 82%-96% was observed due to increasing contaminant concentration in the concentrated feed solution. …

Improved Performance Of Ballasted Tracks At Transition Zones: A Review Of Experimental And Modelling Approaches, Buddhima Indraratna, Muhammad Babar Sajjad, Ngoc Trung Ngo, A Correia, Richard B. Kelly

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Track transitionssuch as bridge approaches, road crossings and shifts from slab track to ballasted track are common locations wheretrack degradation accelerates due to dynamic and high impact forces; as a consequence there is higher differential settlement. Thesetypes of discontinuities cause an abrupt change in the structural responseof the track due mainly tovariations in stiffness and track damping. Track transitionzones are prone to an accelerated deterioration of track material and geometrythat leads to increased maintenance costs.Track deteriorationalso leads to vehicle degradation due to enhanced acceleration, low frequency oscillation, and high frequency vibrations. While ballastdeterioration is amajor factor affecting thestability and longevity …

Anchorage Mechanical Characteristics Of Newly Designed Rebar Bolt And Optimization Of Its Support Scheme, Bingjie Huo, Xuedong Jin, Chen Cao

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

In Shendong coalfield, large cross-section underground gateways are often excavated for large machine transportation. It causes large deformation of the surrounding rock and the phenomenon of rib spalling. In this study, taking Xiaobaodang coal mine as the engineering background, a newly designed rebar bolt for large deformational roadway support was introduced to control large deformation. Results that the peak anchoring force of the new bolt increased by 20-30%, the total energy absorption of the system is increased by 35-50%, the post-peak displacement increases by 4.5mm comparing with traditional left-spiral non-longitudinal rebar bolt. The support schemes were analyzed by using FLAC3D, …

Numerical Study Of Circular Double-Skin Concrete-Filled Aluminum Tubular Stub Columns, Vipulkumar I. Patel, Qing Quan Liang, Muhammad N. S Hadi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The sandwiched concrete in a circular double-skin concrete-filled aluminum tubular (DCFAT) column is subjected to the lateral confinement from inner and outer aluminum tubes. The effects of double-skin confinement have not been considered in the existing numerical models for the analysis of DCFAT stub columns. This paper describes a numerical model for the simulation of concentrically compressed circular DCFAT short columns. The numerical model is developed using the fiber element methodology. A new expression for determining the lateral confining pressures on the sandwiched concrete in circular DCFAT stub columns is proposed based on experimental results and incorporated in the computational …

A Mixture Of Coal Wash And Fly Ash As A Pavement Substructure Material, Dong Wang, Miriam Tawk, Buddhima Indraratna, Ana Heitor, Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The reuse of waste materials in engineering projects has become the subject of many research efforts worldwide as it provides economical as well as environmental benefits. Coal wash (CW) and fly ash (FA) are example waste materials that can be used as alternative aggregates in transportation infrastructure projects, specifically as base and subbase materials in roads. Class C FA has been extensively used as a stabilizing material due to its hardening potential. However, Class F fly ash, a non­pozzolanic material when used alone, has not been considered in past research projects. In this study, Class F fly ash is mixed …

Leveraging Bert To Improve The Fears Index For Stock Forecasting, Linyi Yang, Yang Xu, Tin L. Ng, Ruihai Dong

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Financial and Economic Attitudes Revealed by Search (FEARS) index reflects the attention and sentiment of public investors and is an important factor for predicting stock price return. In this paper, we take into account the semantics of the FEARS search terms by leveraging the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), and further apply a self-attention deep learning model to our refined FEARS seamlessly for stock return prediction. We demonstrate the practical benefits of our approach by comparing to baseline works.

Leucaena Shows Potential In Northern Inland New South Wales, Australia, Carol Harris, S Boschma, Mark Brennan, Lauren Borg, Steven Harden, Brian R. Cullis

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

A study was conducted during 2013-2017 to evaluate the potential of 5 cultivars/experimental lines of leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala) at 2 sites in Northern Inland NSW. In this frost-prone, summer-dominant rainfall region, all cultivars/lines established well and survival was > 70% at Bingara and > 95% at Manilla. Cultivars Wondergraze and Cunningham were the most productive, producing up to approximately 2.4 t DM/ha and 1.9 t DM/ha per growing season at Bingara and Manilla, respectively. Tropical grass establishment in the alleys was poor with plant productivity inversely related to leucaena productivity. Although this study has confirmed the persistence and productive potential of leucaena, …

Optimisation Framework For Operation Of Battery Storage Within Solar Rich Microgrids, Herath Pathiranage Asanga Priyankara Jayawardana, Ashish P. Agalgaonkar, Duane A. Robinson, Massimo Fiorentini

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The growing trend of distributed generation, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and small scale wind turbines have promoted the development of microgrids which are highly dependent on renewable energy. Due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy, these microgrids are generally equipped with energy storage, such as batteries. Batteries are generally operated using fixed control methods, often deviating from the optimal operation. This aspect has created an opportunity to gain improved outcomes for microgrid owners and operators. This research study describes a pathway for designing an optimisation framework which can be used to optimise the charge and discharge operation …

Microstructure And Mechanical Properties Of Large-Volume Gradient-Structure Aluminium Sheets Fabricated By Cyclic Skin-Pass Rolling, Hai Liang Yu, Cheng Lu, Anh Kiet Tieu, Hui Jun Li, Ajit R. Godbole, Xiong Liu, Charlie Kong

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Materials of a gradient structure have been shown to possess both high strength and high ductility. To date, materials of a gradient structure can only be produced in small quantities. In this paper, we report a novel 'cyclic skin-pass rolling' (CSPR) technique capable of producing sheets of gradient structure in large quantities. Both experimental and analytical/numerical investigations are reported. In the experiments on aluminium sheets, the outer layer was subjected to 40 passes of CSPR with a reduction ratio of 1% per pass. After CSPR, the sample surface shows an ultrafine-grained microstructure with a mean grain size of 206 nm, …

Lubricant As A Sticking-Scale Inhibitor On High Temperature Sliding Contact, Hoang Bach Tran, Anh Kiet Tieu, Shanhong Wan, Hongtao Zhu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Sticking oxide scale is one of the most serious concerns on moving steel surfaces at elevated temperature. However, there has been limited research dedicated to overcoming this issue. In the present work, pin-on-disc testing was carried out to reveal the effects of lubrication on wear characteristics of High Speed Steel sliding against Stainless Steel 316 at 700 °C. Apart from improved friction behavior, the use of inorganic lubricant significantly inhibits material transfer onto the HSS surface which otherwise suffers growing adhered scale during dry sliding contact. In addition, it was found that prolonged exposure to lubrication induces phase transformation of …

Channel Covariance Matrix Estimation Via Dimension Reduction For Hybrid Mimo Mmwave Communication Systems, Rui Hu, Jun Tong, Jiangtao Xi, Qinghua Guo, Yanguang Yu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Hybrid massive MIMO structures with lower hardware complexity and power consumption have been considered as potential candidates for millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. Channel covariance information can be used for designing transmitter precoders, receiver combiners, channel estimators, etc. However, hybrid structures allow only a lower-dimensional signal to be observed, which adds difficulties for channel covariance matrix estimation. In this paper, we formulate the channel covariance estimation as a structured low-rank matrix sensing problem via Kronecker product expansion and use a low-complexity algorithm to solve this problem. Numerical results with uniform linear arrays (ULA) and uniform squared planar arrays (USPA) are provided …

Experimental Study On Flow Resistance Over Rigid Vegetated Channel, Xiao Liu, Liang Tang, Yu Han, Jian Chen, Shu-Qing Yang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Vegetation is an important part of the ecological channel, and flow structure over vegetation in ecological channel is rather complex. The vegetation resistance to flow is affected by many factors, and there is still no general calculation method to express it. Thus, it is necessary to explore the mechanism of flow resistance over vegetation in open channel. In this paper, the rigid cylindrical sticks arranged in the open channel were used to simulate the stems of non-submerged vegetation in order to investigate the effects of vegetation on the flow. Through theoretical analysis and experimental verification, it shows the form drag …

Natural Sd-Rcca Secure Public-Key Encryptions From Hybrid Paradigms, Yuan Chen, Qingkuan Dong, Yannan Li, Qiqi Lai, Zhedong Wang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The existence of natural public-key encryption (PKE) schemes satisfying secretly detectable replayable CCA (sd-RCCA) security is left as open. By introducing probabilistic message authentication codes (MACs) into popular KEM plus DEM paradigms, several instances of such schemes are presented in this paper. It is known that the encrypt-then-authenticate paradigm gives an RCCA secure DEM when the underlying MAC is regular (but not strong) secure, where forgeries for old messages might be possible. By further requiring that the validity of such forgeries can be verified only secretly, sd-RCCA secure DEMs is obtained. Combining such DEMs with CCA secure KEMs gives sd-RCCA …

Boundaries, Spectral Triples And K-Homology, Iain G. Forsyth, Magnus Goffeng, Bram Mesland, Adam C. Rennie

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper extends the notion of a spectral triple to a relative spectral triple, an unbounded analogue of a relative Fredholm module for an ideal J◃A. Examples include manifolds with boundary, manifolds with conical singularities, dimension drop algebras, θ-deformations and Cuntz–Pimsner algebras of vector bundles.

The bounded transform of a relative spectral triple is a relative Fredholm module, making the image of a relative spectral triple under the boundary mapping in K-homology easy to compute. We introduce an additional operator called a Clifford normal with which a relative spectral triple can be doubled into a spectral triple.

The Clifford normal …

Gwas Hints At Pleiotropic Roles For Flowering Locus T In Flowering Time And Yield-Related Traits In Canola, Harsh Raman, Rosy Raman, Yu Qiu, Avilash Yadav, Sridevi Sureshkumar, Lauren Borg, Maheswaran Rohan, David Wheeler, Oliver Owen, Ian Menz, Sureshkumar Balasubramanian

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Background: Transition to flowering at the right time is critical for local adaptation and to maximize grain yield in crops. Canola is an important oilseed crop with extensive variation in flowering time among varieties. However, our understanding of underlying genes and their role in canola productivity is limited.

Results: We report our analyses of a diverse GWAS panel (300-368 accessions) of canola and identify SNPs that are significantly associated with variation in flowering time and response to photoperiod across multiple locations. We show that several of these associations map in the vicinity of FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) paralogs …

Toward High-Performance Hybrid Zn-Based Batteries Via Deeply Understanding Their Mechanism And Using Electrolyte Additive, Junnan Hao, Jun Long, Bo Li, Xiaolong Li, Shilin Zhang, Fuhua Yang, Xiaohui Zeng, Zhanhong Yang, Wei Kong Pang, Zaiping Guo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Aqueous hybrid Zn-based batteries (ZIBs), as a highly promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries for grid application, have made considerable progress recently. However, few studies have been reported that investigate their working mechanism in detail. Here, the operando synchrotron X-ray diffraction is employed to thoroughly investigate the operational mechanism of a hybrid LiFePO₄(LFP)/Zn battery, which indicates only Li⁺ extraction/insertion from/into cathode during cycling. Based on this system, a cheap electrolyte additive, sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate, is proposed to effectively enhance its electrochemical properties. The influence of the additive on the Zn anode and LFP cathode is comprehensively studied, …

Development And Evaluation Of A Comfort-Oriented Control Strategy For Thermal Management Of Mixed-Mode Ventilated Buildings, Massimo Fiorentini, Gianluca Serale, Georgios Kokogiannakis, Alfonso Capozzoli, Paul Cooper

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

The paper presents the development, implementation and performance investigation via simulations and experiments of a comfort-oriented control strategy for natural ventilation and mechanical air conditioning management of a mixed-mode building. The proposed comfort-oriented control strategy determines whether it would be possible to operate in natural ventilation mode or in mechanical heating/cooling. The control algorithm calculates first the optimal opening percentage of the windows according to adaptive thermal comfort criteria. If natural ventilation cannot guarantee the thermal comfort requirements and mechanical conditioning is required, the algorithm dynamically optimises the heating or cooling set-point targeting a defined Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) index …