Engineering Commons^™

A Radial Basis Function Neural Network Algorithm For The Simultaneous Retrieval Of Two Meteorological Parameters From Solar Radiation, Nicholas W. Nzala, Nicolausi Ssebiyonga, Dennis Muyimbwa, Taddeo Ssenyonga

Tanzania Journal of Science

Local meteorological parameters are key in understanding the frequency of occurrence of extreme weather conditions such as floods, and droughts, among others. In this study, we present a method for simultaneous retrieval of two weather parameters. The method is based on already measured monthly average values of weather parameters from 2011 to 2016, which were used to train a Feed-forward radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) to obtain a fast and accurate method to compute global solar radiation for specified weather parameters pair. In inverse modelling, a multidimensional unconstrained non-linear optimization was employed to retrieve the weather parameters pair. The …

Assessment Of Spatial Variability Of Groundwater Potential Using Remote Sensing And Gis-Based-Criteria Evaluation For Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Augustina Alexander

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Groundwater is an important resource for the continuous provision of water supply in both urban and rural areas. Lack of enough knowledge about the spatial variability of groundwater potential zones (GWPZS) has a negative impact on groundwater extraction development and management and may result into over exploitation. In this study, analytic hierarchy approach (AHP)-coupled with multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and GIS techniques were employed to integrate hydrogeological, geological as well as topographical data to assess spatial variability of groundwater potential zones of Dar es Salaam city. Seven thematic layers such as lithology, slope, land-use, lineament, drainage, soil, and rainfall …

Designing A Model Of Solar Photovoltaic Water Pumping System For Off-Grid Localities In Tanzania, Imani Mruma

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Modeling of photovoltaic (PV) water pumping system for rural water localities is vital especially in these modern days, in Tanzania. This is due to the rise of high number of solar-powered rural water projects constructed lacking appropriate design. The fate result into poor and substandard projects delivering below expectations. Kikombo Solar Water Project situated in Dodoma; Tanzania is one among poorly designed solar project chosen as a case study to validate proposed model. The main problem of Kikombo project is unsatisfactory amount of water from domestic points to satisfy population demand. This matter has been raised by pumping-station attendants and …

Extraction And Characterization Of Fibres From The Bark Of Ficus Nekbudu Tree, Liberato V Haule

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

This paper investigates the extraction and characterization of fibres from the bark of the ficus nekbudu tree. The Ficus Nekbudu Fibres (FNF) was extracted from the bark by retting in water and then treatment with sodium hydroxide solution. The extracted FNF was analysed for chemical composition, physical, tensile, surface, structural and thermal stability properties. Findings on the chemical composition indicated that FNF has cellulose (49.9 %), lignin (13.4%), ash (7.1%) and water content (8.1%). From the physical investigation it was found that FNF has density (1.42 ± 0.005 g/cm3) and moisture regain (9.2 ±0.3%). From mechanical investigation it was found …

Designing A Cylindrical Capacitive Based Sensor For Monitoring The Table Salt’S Moisture Content During Iodization, Mwajuma Lungo

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Coaxial cylinder capacitive moisture sensor for determination of moisture content of table salts has been fabricated. The CMS method for determination of moisture content of table salts overcomes the effect of evaporation of iodine in table salt which results from heating in the oven drying method. The CMS overcomes the polarization effect result from the resistive methods of moisture content determination and it is non expensive to construct and it has high accuracy since measurements involves programming system in interpretation of the results. In this research, moisture content sensor based on capacitive principal created using two coaxial cylinders with height …

Comparison Of End-Point Energies Of Bremsstrahlung Photons From 28 Ghz Ecr Ion Source In Three Measurement Locations, Mwingereza John Kumwenda Dr

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Bremsstrahlung photons measurement show elevated energy emission beyond critical energy in 28-GHz ECR and its nature is not revealed. Thus, the aim of this study is to unveil the nature of high end-point energies at the three measurement locations. Bremsstrahlung photons from a 28-GHz ECR ion source were measured at Busan center of Korean Basic Science Institute (KBSI). The gamma-ray detection system consists of three round type NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors placed 62 cm radially from the beam axis at the three measurement locations namely injection, centre and extraction sides of an ECR ion source, and a NaI(Tl) scintillation detector placed …

Renewable Energy Potential Assessment For Improving Electric Power Availability In Urban Area: A Case Of Msigani Ward In Ubungo Municipal, Tanzania, Respicius Kiiza

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

The demand for electricity in urban areas of the developing countries like Tanzania is increasing rapidly due to factors such as increasing population, expansion of economic activities and industrialization. Msigani ward is one of the fourteen (14) administrative urban wards in Ubungo Municipal, Dar es Salaam, located at latitude 6.8031 oS and longitude 39.1188 oE. Recently, there has been observed increase in power demand in this ward. This in turn has caused a supply deficit that sometimes led to large number of interruptions caused by frequent power outage and load shedding. The total capacity of the national grid is limited …

Mppt Dc-Dc Buck-Boost Converter For Off Grid Hybrid Solar-Wind Battery System In Ikuza Island, Tanzania, Aviti Thadei Mushi

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Ikuza Island in Kagera-Tanzania faces lack of electricity due to cost challenges of extending the grid by marine cables and other transmission facilities. These makes such endeavour not appealing to the supply authority due to those higher charges. Therefore, this paper undertakes to design hybrid renewable energy sources for the island by specifically focusing on the buck-boost converter for the energy conversion from these renewable resources. The design of the bidirectional buck-boost converter for maximum power point tracking in off-grid hybrid renewable energy systems is multifaceted due to the inhomogeneity nature of the renewable energy sources. The bidirectional buck-boost converter, …

Assessing Spatio-Temporal Variations And Trends Of Rainfall Over Somalia From 1991 To 2020, Paul Ts Limbu Sr

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

This study aims to examine the spatiotemporal variability and trends of rainfall over Somalia using the Mann-Kendall (MK) test and Sen’s slope estimator to investigate the trend and magnitude of the rainfall changes and the arithmetic mean and coefficient of variation (CV) to examine the rainfall variability. To achieve this aim, the gridded monthly satellite rainfall datasets from Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) for the period between 1991 and 2020 were used. Results show that annual rainfall generally exhibits bimodal rainfall distribution, March to May (Gu) and September to November (Deyr), though southern coastal regions receive extended …

Enhancing Service Restoration In Tanzanian Power Grid Using Internet Of Things Sensors And Renewable Energy Sources, Rukia J. Mwifunyi, Daudi C. Mnyanghwalo, Shamte J. Kawambwa

Tanzania Journal of Science

The increased dependence on the electric power grid, coupled with the increasing number of new customers, motivates the need to improve the reliability and resilience of the electric distribution systems. Modern distribution systems are becoming more resilient against power outages due to the increasing integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and the availability of efficient mechanisms for load shedding. Several studies considered fault detection and Service Restoration (SR) as separate problems without considering the implementation feasibility of integrating both solutions. To ensure the resiliency in the power system, it is important to have proper mechanisms which integrate sensing, detection, and …

Stress-Dependent Petrophysical Properties Of The Bakken Unconventional Petroleum System: Insights From Elastic Wave Velocities And Permeability Measurements, Prasad Pothana, Ghoulem Ifrene, Kegang Ling

Petroleum Engineering Student Publications

The net-effective stress is a fundamental physical property that undergoes dynamic changes in response to variations in pore pressure during production and injection activities. Petrophysical properties, including porosity, permeability, and wave velocities, play a critical role and exhibit strong dependence on the mechanical stress state of the formation. The Williston basin’s Bakken Formation represents a significant reservoir of hydrocarbons within the United States. To investigate this formation, we extracted core plugs from three distinct Bakken members, namely Upper Bakken, Middle Bakken, and Lower Bakken. Subsequently, we conducted a series of measurements of ultrasonic compressional and shear wave velocities, as well …

Aquaculture In Hydropower Reservoirs, Racheal Macharia

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

There is an undoubtedly existing relationship between water, energy, and food and their interaction with the natural environment and mankind. Climate change is the talk of the day in global development discussions as it intensifies water shortages, energy, poverty, food shortages, and environmental degradation. Currently, most of the hydropower dams constructed in Africa are majorly built to store water for agricultural purposes, control flooding, and generate electricity. Notable projects include the seven forks hydropower stations located on the Tana River in Kenya; Aswan high dam in Egypt; Grand Renaissance dam in Ethiopia; Kariba dam in Zimbabwe and Akosombo in Ghana. …

Application Of Mangrove Timber In Reinforcing Concrete, John K. Makunza Jkm

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Use of mangrove timber beams for supporting floor slabs in historic buildings in Zanzibar Stone Town is still applied although the available structural data on mangrove timber is inadequate. This concern has called for an investigation on the structural properties of mangrove timber, so that the information obtained could help to establish the structural strength of the existing floor slabs in historic buildings. Hence, mangrove timber specimens were sampled from Zanzibar, and tested in the laboratory for their strengths in tension, compression and shear. The test results showed that mangrove is a hardwood timber of strength class D70, the highest …

A Multitask Learning Framework For Pilot Decontamination In 5g Massive Mimo, Crallet Victor

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Reference signals enable the acquisition of channel state information (CSI) for purposes such as channel estimation, beam selection, precoding, and symbol detection in 5G massive multiple-input multiple output (MAMIMO) systems. Eventually, as more and more users and cells are added, orthogonal reference signals become few which leads to pilot contamination. Pilot contamination limits the performance and occurs when non-orthogonal reference signals occupy time-frequency resources that are alike. Learning-based techniques have been proposed to alleviate it. However, each can only learn to perform a single task namely pilot assignment, power allocation, pilot design, or de-noising for pilot decontamination. In addition, each …

Engineering Of Functionalized Carbon Nano-Onions Embedded Bsa Nanocomposite Fibers For Stimuli-Responsive Drug Release, Ramiro Manuel Velasco Delgadillo, Narsimha Mamidi

Research Symposium

Background: Advanced drug delivery systems (DDSs) have received enormous attention in biomedical applications due to their pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic drug properties. For the present study, poly 4-hydroxyphenyl methacrylate (PHPMA)/CNOs (f-CNOs) inserted bovine serum albumin (BSA) nanofibers were prepared for stimuli-responsive release of Doxorubicin (DOX). Temperature and pH would be altered to study the release of DOX in acidic microenvironments.

Methods: PHPMA were coupled with COOH-CNOs via ester coupling via the sonochemical method to produce PHPMA-CNOs (f-CNOs). Then, f-CNOs/DOX embedded BSA nanofibers were prepared at room temperature using Forcespinning. UV spectra of DOX-loaded nanofibers were studied to investigate the …

Engineered Exosomes For The Multimodal Imaging Directed Photo-Immunotherapy Of Colorectal Cancer, Deepak S. Chauhan, Meena Jaggi, Subhash C. Chauhan, Murali M. Yallapu

Research Symposium

Background: Rio Grande Valley experience severe cancer health disparity. A novel therapeutic modality may serve as better therapeutic option. Nanohybrids endowed with multifunctionality, longer circulation time, large surface area have emerged as an active preference for cancer research. However, rising concern of nanomaterials toxicity and scalability issues has slowed their translation to clinics. Exosomes (Exo) are endogenous endocytic origin 40-100 nm vesicles found in various body fluids, which in comparison to synthetic nanoparticles, are biodegradable, highly biocompatible as well as immunocompatible in nature. Although bulk isolation of exosomes from human body fluids is still a problem and engineering of exosomes …

Biocidal Properties Of Hybrid Nanonanomaterial, Chandrasekaran Karthikeyan, Kokkarachedu Varaprasad

Research Symposium

Background: Cancer is one of the essential unpredictable diseases worldwide; simultaneously, complicated issues created are by the human health system. Especially, breast cancer is the most commonly occurring cancer in women and is increasing remarkably in developing countries. It is a leading cause of cancer death in women, and breast cancer incidence rates are growing globally. To diagnose and treat cancer cells, different methods such as Radiation Therapy, Surgery, and Chemotherapy. These methods are high risk, more side effects, and high costs. The advanced healthcare material was developed to overcome this problem, inexpensive tools, and diagnosis of less-toxic drugs with …

A 3d Printed Microneedle System For Transdermal Drug Delivery Of Anticancer Drugs, Md Jasim Uddin, Tanvir Ahmed, Dennis Douroumis

Research Symposium

Background: Transdermal delivery of drugs is an attractive alternative to the conventional route of administration as oral delivery. The hypodermic injections are painful and less patient compliance. Microneedles (MNs) are micron-sized, minimally invasive needles to deliver a wide range of molecules (e.g., small, DNA, vaccines etc.) to the upper portion of the dermis in a sustained and controlled manner, without causing any pain. The introduction of 3D printing technologies in the fabrication of MN will promote one-step manufacturing tools and scale-up for the delivery devices of anticancer drugs.

Methods: The 3D printed MN (3DMN) arrays were fabricated using Stereolithography (SLA), …

The Santa Clara, 2023-09-29, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

Vulnerable Road User Safety: Data Collection, Analysis, And Countermeasures, Anahita Kakhani

Theses and Dissertations

The safety of pedestrians and bicyclists (vulnerable road users) has become a paramount global concern, especially with a 53% and 31% surge in related crashes over the past decade in the U.S. Despite transportation agencies implementing various safety measures to address this issue, the number of severe injuries among these road users continues to climb annually. This underscores the urgent need for innovative methodologies and technologies to pinpoint the factors compromising their safety. To do so, this study aimed to introduce and employ techniques and countermeasures to gain deeper insight into risks faced by vulnerable road users. This study includes …

The Role Of Nanofluids In Renewable Energy Engineering, M. M. Bhatti, K. Vafai, Sara I. Abdelsalam

Basic Science Engineering

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Octree Meshes For Simulation Of Extracellular Electrophysiology, Christopher Bc Girard, Dong Song

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Objective. The interaction between neural tissues and artificial electrodes is crucial for understanding and advancing neuroscientific research and therapeutic applications. However, accurately modeling this space around the neurons rapidly increases the computational complexity of neural simulations. Approach. This study demonstrates a dynamically adaptive simulation method that greatly accelerates computation by adjusting spatial resolution of the simulation as needed. Use of an octree structure for the mesh, in combination with the admittance method for discretizing conductivity, provides both accurate approximation and ease of modification on-the-fly. Main results. In tests of both local field potential estimation and multi-electrode stimulation, dynamically adapted meshes …

Stepwise Dynamic Nearest Neighbor (Sdnn): A New Algorithm For Classification, Deni̇z Karabaş, Derya Bi̇rant, Peli̇n Yildirim Taşer

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Although the standard k-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm has been used widely for classification in many different fields, it suffers from various limitations that abate its classification ability, such as being influenced by the distribution of instances, ignoring distances between the test instance and its neighbors during classification, and building a single/weak learner. This paper proposes a novel algorithm, called stepwise dynamic nearest neighbor (SDNN), which can effectively handle these problems. Instead of using a fixed parameter k like KNN, it uses a dynamic neighborhood strategy according to the data distribution and implements a new voting mechanism, called stepwise voting. Experimental …

Cognitive Load Detection Using Ci-Ssa For Eeg Signal Decomposition And Nature-Inspired Feature Selection, Jammisetty Yedukondalu, Lakhan Dev Sharma

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Cognitive load detection is eminent during the mental assignment of neural activity because it indicates how the brain reacts to stimuli. The level of cognitive load experienced during mental arithmetic tasks can be determined using an electroencephalogram (EEG). The EEG data were collected from publicly available datasets, namely, mental arithmetic task (MAT) and simultaneous task workload (STEW). The first phase comprises decomposing the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using circulant singular spectrum analysis (Ci-SSA). In the second phase, entropy-based features were evaluated using IMFs. After that, the extracted features were fed to nature-inspired feature selection algorithms: genetic …

Using T-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding For Visualization And Segmentation Of 3d Point Clouds Of Plants, Heli̇n Dutağaci

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this work, the use of t-SNE is proposed to embed 3D point clouds of plants into 2D space for plant characterization. It is demonstrated that t-SNE operates as a practical tool to flatten and visualize a complete 3D plant model in 2D space. The perplexity parameter of t-SNE allows 2D rendering of plant structures at various organizational levels. Aside from the promise of serving as a visualization tool for plant scientists, t-SNE also provides a gateway for processing 3D point clouds of plants using their embedded counterparts in 2D. In this paper, simple methods were proposed to perform semantic …

Direct Pore-Based Identification For Fingerprint Matching Process, Vedat Delican, Behçet Uğur Töreyi̇n, Ege Çeti̇n, Ayli̇n Yalçin Saribey

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Fingerprints are one of the most important scientific proof instruments in solving forensic cases. Identification in fingerprints consists of three levels based on the flow direction of the papillary lines at the first level, the minutiae points at the second level, and the pores at the third level. The inadequacy of existing imaging systems in detecting fingerprints and the lack of pore details at the desired level limit the widespread use of third-level identification. The fact that fingerprints with images based on pores in the unsolved database are not subjected to any evaluation criteria and remain in the database reveals …

Dynamic Deep Neural Network Inference Via Adaptive Channel Skipping, Meixia Zou, Xiuwen Li, Jinzheng Fang, Hong Wen, Weiwei Fang

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Deep neural networks have recently made remarkable achievements in computer vision applications. However, the high computational requirements needed to achieve accurate inference results can be a significant barrier to deploying DNNs on resource-constrained computing devices, such as those found in the Internet-of-things. In this work, we propose a fresh approach called adaptive channel skipping (ACS) that prioritizes the identification of the most suitable channels for skipping and implements an efficient skipping mechanism during inference. We begin with the development of a new gating network model, ACS-GN, which employs fine-grained channel-wise skipping to enable input-dependent inference and achieve a desirable balance …

Joint Intent Detection And Slot Filling For Turkish Natural Language Understanding, Osman Büyük

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Intent detection and slot filling are two crucial subtasks of a text-based goal-oriented dialogue system. In a goal-oriented dialogue system, users interact with the system to complete a goal (or to fulfill their intent) and provide the necessary information (slot values) to achieve that goal. Therefore, a user?s text input includes information about the user?s intent and contains required slot values. Recently, joint models that simultaneously detect the intent and extract the slots are proposed to benefit from the interaction between the two tasks. The proposed methods are usually tested using benchmark data sets in English such as ATIS and …

Recognizing Handwritten Digits Using Spiking Neural Networks With Learning Algorithms Based On Sliding Mode Control Theory, Yeşi̇m Öni̇z, Mehmet Ayyildiz

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a spiking neural network (SNN) has been proposed for recognizing the digits written on the LCD screen of an experimental setup. The convergence of the learning algorithm has been ensured by using sliding mode control (SMC) theory and the Lyapunov stability method for the adaptation of the network parameters. The spike response model (SRM) has been utilized in the design of the SNN. The performance of the proposed learning scheme has been evaluated both on the experimental data and on the MNIST dataset. The simulated and experimental results of the SNN structure have been compared with the …

Transforming Temporal-Dynamic Graphs Into Time-Series Data For Solving Event Detection Problems, Kutay Taşci, Fuat Akal

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Event detection on temporal-dynamic graphs aims at detecting significant events based on deviations from the normal behavior of the graphs. With the widespread use of social media, many real-world events manifest as social media interactions, making them suitable for modeling as temporal-dynamic graphs. This paper presents a workflow for event detection on temporal-dynamic graphs using graph representation learning. Our workflow leverages generated embeddings of a temporal-dynamic graph to reframe the problem as an unsupervised time-series anomaly detection task. We evaluated our workflow on four distinct real-world social media datasets and compared our results with the related work. The results show …