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The existence of large deposit of crude oil in the Nigerian Niger-Delta accords the region a strategic position in the country’s economy. However, activities associated with the oil and gas industry have resulted in extensive and in some instances indelible damages on the ecosystems. The destructive effect of hydrocarbon on bionetwork necessitated this study that aimed at evaluating the potential of adopting microbial and biosurfactant technology as tools for bioremediation. The research involved gas chromatography monitoring of hydrocarbon degradation in polluted soil, microbiological/molecular identification of hydrocarbon degraders and the evaluation of biosurfactant production by indigenous bacteria. The performance of four treatments involving; co-treatment with mixed bacterial consortium and close-to-nature surfactants (Bioversal QF and Bioversal UK), treatments with mixed bacteria culture, single bacteria culture and treatment with close-to-nature surfactants only were evaluated for the mineralization of hydrocarbons contained in 500g of 2% crude oil contaminated soil supplemented with NaH₂PO*₄2HO₂, KHP₂O₄ and NHC₄l as nutrient sources over a period of 20 weeks. Six indigenous biosurfactant producing and/or hydrocarbon degrading bacteria strains were isolated namely: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus sp, Achromobacter sp, Stenotrophonas sp, Lysinibacillus sp. and Delftia sp. Molecular characterization of sequenced polymerase chain reaction products of these cultured bacteria using Nucleotide Basic Local Alignment Search Tool confirmed close relationships ranging from 98.83% to 100% with those on the NCBI databank. Co-treatment with mixed bacteria culture and Bioversal UK/Bioversal QF yielded synergetic impact that enhanced 73.35% and 71.52% degradation of total petroleum hydrocarbon respectively. Treatments with close-to-nature surfactants and with mix bacterial culture recorded 53.61% and 54.58%. The use of single bacteria strains resulted in the mineralization of 46% - 62.26% total petroleum hydrocarbon while their use as a consortium yielded 54%. Liquid chromatography-Mass spectrometry assessment of extracellular polymeric substances produced by cultured bacteria strains indicated the presence of rhamnolipids (L-rhamnosyl-3-hydroxydecanoyl-3-hydroxydecanoic acid with a mass of 504.654 Da) and lipopeptides (2-(Hydroxymethyl) phenyl 6-O-palmitoyl-β-D-glucopyranoside with a mass of 524.687 Da). Extracellular polymeric substances produced yielded emulsion index ranging from 70.70% to 75% and 39% to 65% with crude oil and heptane respectively. EPS yields ranging from 1.34 g/ml to 1.5 g/ml were recorded.
Urban heritage planning in Tehran and beyond : sequences of disrupted spatial-discursive assemblages
(2023)
Despite the impact of ideological rigidity, the primary challenge of heritage planning in Tehran and beyond lies not in the dominance of an inflexible Authorized Heritage Discourse, but rather in the absence of stable spatial-discursive and administrative structures. Solmaz Yadollahi maps the historical trajectory of conservation and urban heritage planning in Iran, depicting a discursive-spatial assemblage that tends to knock down its accumulated resources. This is in line with Katouzian's portrayal of Iran as a pick-axe society. Residing within this society, the studied assemblage strives to deconstruct the prevailing structures and usher in a fresh one, paradoxically perpetuating the very cycle it seeks to escape.
The dissertation at hand employs the concept of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) for understanding the process of urban change and continuity within the context of the historic city of Isfahan and further investigates its application as an analytic tool for guiding urban conservation and development procedures. With regard to the inefficiency of urban conservation approaches in Isfahan during the last three decades, this study aims at identifying context-based problems and potentials that would lead to conceptualising a new framework. Therefore, drawing on the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation, the notion of HUL is hereby explored and a preliminary framework is provided for analysing the urban intervention cases within the historic core of Isfahan.
The work is dedicated to the aspects of characterization of surface charge phenomena in two colloidal systems: synthetic mixtures of textile dyes and aqueous suspension of ceramic powders. An implication to the areas of physicochemical colour removal from textile effluents and gel-casting of ceramics is made. A model for dye-coagulant interaction has been developed based on surface charge density and floc size investigations. Various dispersant optimization techniques have been compared in stabilizing aqueous slurries of ultra-fine alumina particles, the zeta potential derived from CVI measurements being viewed as a most reliable one. The chemical environment of the ceramic slurry together with maintaining an optimal process conditions in gel-casting plays an equally important role in providing a desired properties of complex shaped ceramic bodies.
Today, urban conservation scholarship calls for case studies that problematise universal conservation principles in local planning circumstances, particularly in countries from which modern conservation has not originated. In this series of workshops, we discuss singularities of urban conservation and the protection of historic urban areas with local experts who have been directly involved in processes of putting conservation policy documents into practice. We discuss how the planned goals of conservation projects are influenced by unplanned factors such as war, economic and political instability, inter-organisational conflicts, and natural hazards. The discussed cases represent cities with non-western cultural backgrounds that are geographically and culturally interconnected. By discussing urban conservation issues in Ankara, Baghdad, Tehran, Shiraz, Yazd, Kerman, Herat, and Mumbai, we aim to reflect on the functionality of mainstream conservation approaches in local conditions. The speakers share their local insight into obstacles of realising the international conservation models under rapidly changing natural and socio-political conditions. The workshops' moderators are outstanding young academics who have a deep understanding of the discussed issues and have co-planned the sessions with the speakers. This series of events is cooperatively organised by the Chair Urban Management and the DFG Training Group 1913, "Cultural and Technological Significance of Historic Buildings" in the framework of the DFG project, Assembling Iran's Urban Heritage Conservation Policy and Practice: Problematised in Tehran.
How good is a given graph clustering, graph layout, or graph ordering --specifically, how well does it group densely connected vertices and separate sparsely connected vertices? How good is a given software design -- specifically, how well does it minimize the interdependence of the subsystems? This work introduces and validates simple and uniform measures for these two properties. Together with existing optimization algorithms, the introduced measures enable the automatic computation e.g. of communities in social networks and of design flaws in software systems. The first part derives, validates, and unifies quality measures for graph clusterings, graph layouts, and graph orderings, with the following results: - Identical quality measures can be applied to clusterings, layouts, and orderings; this enables the computation of consistent clusterings, layouts, and orderings. - Diverse existing and new measures can be unified into few general measures; this facilitates their comparison and validation. - Many existing measures are biased towards certain clusterings, layouts, or orderings, even for graphs without particularly dense or sparse subgraphs, and thus do not (only) measure quality in the above sense. - For example graphs, the minimization of new, unbiased (or weakly biased) measures reveals nonobvious groups, e.g. communities in social networks, subject areas in hypertexts, or closely interlocked countries in international trade. The second part derives, validates, and unifies dependency-based indicators of software design quality. It applies two quality measures for graph clusterings as measures for the coupling of software subsystems -- specifically for the coupling indicated by common changes and for the coupling indicated by references -- and shows: - The measures quantify the dependency-caused development costs, under well-defined simplifying assumptions. - The minimization of the measures conforms to existing dependency-related design principles (like locality of change, acyclicity of references, and stability of references), design rules, and design patterns. - For example software systems, the incremental minimization of the measures reveals nonobvious design flaws, like the distribution of coherent responsibilities over several subsystems, or references from low-level to high-level subsystems. In summary, this work shows that - simple measures can suffice to capture important aspects of graph clustering quality, graph layout quality, graph ordering quality, and software design quality, and - the optimization of simple measures can suffice to detect nonobvious and often useful structure in various real-world systems.
Experiments with wireless sensor networks have shown that unidirectional communication links are quite common. What is even more, they have also shown that the range of a unidirectional link can exceed that of a bidirectional one by far. Still, most of todays routing protocols do not use them, they only eliminate their implications. Those protocols that do use unidirectional links introduce a lot of protocol overhead. One possible conclusion that is often drawn from this fact is that it does not pay to use unidirectional links in a routing protocol. An alternative one is that the overhead produced by the protocols needs to be reduced. This thesis follows the second line of reasoning, and introduces, describes and evaluates five new routing protocols for wireless sensor networks with unidirectional links.
This paper offers a new perspective on heritage interpretation as a mechanism for understanding heritage sites. It builds a theory of understanding for heritage interpretation based on constructivism perspectives, which shift the focus of attention from heritage interpretation and the process of understanding as a purely cognitive process into a communicative one. In such a view understanding a heritage site means meeting orientation expectations put forth by heritage interpreters in interpretive provision. By analyzing visitor responses (emotional, verbal and behavioural) managers of a heritage site and heritage interpreters are able to determine whether orientation expectations have been met and thus whether understanding took place. In so far understanding of a heritage site means orienting visitors’ perceptions of and behaviours at a heritage site. The paper also analyses the role of culture in the process of understanding and in the process of heritage interpretation. Culture as such does not influence understanding, nevertheless the collective knowledge systems inherent in it are important for the process of understanding and communication, as they offer the meanings, structures and symbol systems that allow the individuals of a particular cultural group to communicate effectively with each other. Because cultures are characteristic of having a pattern and overlapping with each other, a communication and understanding between the individuals of various cultures is a difficult but not impossible process. In order to ensure effective communication and reaching understanding a communication model for heritage interpretation was suggested with three interlinked components (team of communicators, active meaning-maker and interpretive medium), which ensure message formation, interpretation and exchange. In order to assist in communication with various visitors, and especially visitors from different cultural backgrounds, some techniques in the construction of information have been analysed, which allow assisting in reaching understanding on the presented issues in heritage interpretation. These techniques are framing, making of themes and stories. The use of these techniques in the construction of the interpretive information, as well as the overall influence of interpretive provision for understanding, have been tested in two cross-sectional studies. These studies have shown that, in view of constructivism theories, a well developed interpretive activity is able to contribute to a better understanding of a heritage site.
Spin-cast films of the ferroelectric copolymer P(VDF-TrFE) are attractive for various applications. For such films the question arises whether there exists a depending on film thickness of ferroelectric functionality. In this work, ultra-thin films of P(VDF-TrFE) up to 0.35nm of thickness have been successfully spin coated, which is quite promising in respect of low cost approach in the electronic industry. This thesis focuses on the preparation of the ultra-thin P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer film and its characterizations to find out a scientific guideline for the suitable application as a non-volatile memory element. Therefore, the ultra-thin film preparations have been investigated initially. Optimization of annealing parameters has been done to get the ferroelectric beta phase and thickness determination is also done carefully. The copolymer layer thickness could be determined down to about 0.35 nm. Photoelectron spectroscopy is used extensively for the characterization of the thin film. Eventually, longer time X-ray irradiation of the P(VDF-TrFE) sample may cause a phase change from ferroelectric to paraelectric. Therefore the X-ray irradiation time was also optimized. With photoelectron spectroscopy, the interface chemistry of the P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer and different electrode materials was studied. The interfaces aluminum/P(VDF-TrFE) and PEDOT:PSS/P(VDF-TrFE) are compared. PEDOT:PSS is a conducting polymer, Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxidethiophene): poly(styrenesulfonate). This data suggested that an interface layer is formed for electrodes, made of aluminum. An interface reaction occurs in both cases: for aluminum as top and as bottom electrode. In contract, the organic PEDOT:PSS electrode shows no chemical interaction with the P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer. The much lower reactivity of organic electrode, compare to aluminum, gives a direct hint to improved functional properties of thin organic ferroelectric films. In terms of a low cost approach for electronics, based on organic devices, the introduction of organic non volatile memories is of great importance. P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer is the material with a very hopeful perspective. In next part electrical measurements with P(VDF-TrFE) have been done. By capacitance voltage measurements, the ferroelectric behavior of the polymer by measurements at elevated temperatures (Curie-Point) is confirmed, a threshold for remanent poalrization for films below 100 nm is found, if aluminum electrodes are used, but with inert electrodes, a downscaling of a low coercitive field was possible down to ten nm. This is very important, because due to the high coercitive field of the copolymer (>50 MV/m), ultrathin films for low operation voltages are needed. A prerequisite for memory applications is a high retention time, this was also confirmed. By the help of Near edge X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (NEXAFS) the possible ferroelectric dipole orientation have been also investigated. The average dipole orientation (perpendicular to the substrate) is observed up to 0.35 nm P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer films when PEDOT:PSS/Si substrate is used. The ferroelectric properties of ultrathin films down to a layer thickness of 10nm were characterized using spectroscopic (F1s NEXAFS) and electrical methods (Capacitance voltage). The results indicates an extrinsic switching mechanism with a much lower opera-tion voltage than for a collective intrinsic switching. Both independent methods agree that there is no critical thickness for spincoated copolymer films down to 10 nm, if an adapted system of electrodes is used.
This thesis proposes a design of experiment for testing and evaluation of the equipment and the methods used in manual mine clearance. The thesis is based on several metal detector trials and a trial of manual demining methods. The core of this dissertation comprises four metal detector trials performed in Germany and Croatia in 2003 and 2005. The purpose of these trials was to investigate the feasibility of the tests described in the CWA (Comit´e Europ´een de Normalisation /CEN/ Workshop Agreement) 14747:-2003, the standard for testing metal detectors for humanitarian demining. The goals of the trials were: to find an appropriate design of experiment for testing metal detectors; to establish the use of ROC diagrams (Receiver Operating Characteristics) and POD curves (Probability of Detection) in the analysis of the experimental results; and to gain practical experience in organising and conducting metal detector trials. A part of this thesis is devoted to a trial of manual demining methods performed in Mozambique in 2004. The main goal of that trial was to compare the speed of various manual demining methods, including the most common excavation methods. The outcome of this work are the proposals and recommendations for an update of the standard for testing metal detectors CWA 14747:2003. Maximum detection height measurements were performed as a part of the metal detector trial carried out in Croatia in 2005. The results reveal a high variability of the maximum detection height. This high variability needs to be taken into account in all experiments. A part of the variability is caused by the differences between the operators and by the setup of the metal detector. It is therefore recommended that two kinds of experiments with the maximum detection height as a response variable are defined in the next update of CWA 14747:2003. The first kind should include the setup, the soil and the operator as factors in the design of experiment. The in-soil measurements with the same detector should be performed with repeated setups and with several operators. The second kind of experiments should be experiments evaluating the influence of other predictor variables. In those experiments, it is recommended to perform one-factor or multiple-factor in-air measurements with the operators and the setup as a block. The main part of the metal detector trials described in this thesis were the detection reliability tests. Detection reliability tests as described in CWA 14747:2003 come closest to representing the real field conditions in demining. They include many environmental influences and, most importantly, many of the human factor influences. However, each test design is a compromise between fully representative conditions and cost effectiveness. In this thesis, a fractional factorial design based on the Graeco-Latin square is proposed as a solution to the experimental problem. The results are reported in the form of ROC diagrams and POD curves. The crossover design enables each operator to work with fewer detector models within a certain time. The variations of the design enabled an unbiased comparison of detectors in each soil and with each target model separately. It is recommended that the solutions proposed in this thesis be incorporated in the standard CWA 14747:2003. It has been shown that maximum detection height measurements provide the information about the best possible performance of a metal detector in a reliability test.