This paper discusses the design of a low-cost educational robot arm system. The robotic arm was developed as an undergraduate project at the Obafemi Awolowo University. The robotic arm system is a five Degree of Freedom (DOF) system and is fully functional having all of its joints (apart from the gripper) capable of 360 ° movement. The paper shows how cost was reduced in the design of the robot. The paper posits that through the process of building such a robot system, students can be introduced to sustainability, machine design, basic mechanics, electronics, and computing. A cost breakdown and analysis of the robotic arm developed is also given. In conclusion, the studies show that an educational robotic arm made using locally-available materials is not only feasible and viable for teaching robotics especially at early stages, but can be low-cost.

In this paper, we describe an engineering process of building an ontology for Yoruba Cultural Heritage (YCH). The aim of this work is to design and implement an ontology representing knowledge embedded in YCH as a digital (documentation) resource. Building an indigenous knowledge management system requires a formal representation of YCH concepts and their relationships. Even so, YCH resources are endangered in the face of globalisation, westernisation and inter-ethnic interaction with the available few locked up in memory institutions. A combination of observation, consultation, documented materials and prototyping was used for the knowledge elicitation from domain experts. Formal Concept Analysis approach was adopted for the design aspect of the work. And, Protege was used for the implementation. The resulting ontology was jointly validated with both the domain experts and the ontology experts. The final ontology represents the documentation of the elicited knowledge of the YCH domain. In conclusion, the formal digital documentation resulting from the study is a useful software artefact for the development of a semantic application for Yoruba heritage domain.

This study presents the viabilities for power generation in Nigeria through the utilization of the sun's energy. Solar-thermal and photovoltaic options were discussed. It highlights the basic science for the design and selection of com- ponents for successfully harnessing solar power. Requirements for solar panel placement and orientation were also high- lighted. It emphasizes that the knowledge and experience gained in solar energy as an abundant and convenient energy source, can play a role in steering the nation toward a permanent and sustainable development. The energy demand in Nigeria far outweighs the supply which is epileptic in nature. The acute electricity supply hinders the country's develop- ment notwithstanding the availability of vast natural resources in the country. Our ability to continue the trend for afford- able energy will be severely tested in the coming decades, as evidenced by the widening trade imbalance, collapse of big manufacturing companies, sharp increase in the cost of doing business just to mention but a few. It is the issue of utilizing the sun's silent, inexhaustible, and non-polluting resource for power generation in Nigeria that this work addresses; hence it is the long-range review of the energy problem.

Within the last two decades, a substantial amount of research efforts has been directed at the application of Soft Computing (SC) techniques in engineering. This paper provides a systematic review of the literature emanating from these efforts with particular focus on materials engineering. The primary aim is to provide background information, motivation for applications and an exposition to the methodologies employed in the development of soft computing technologies in engineering. Our review shows that all the works on the application of SC to materials engineering have reported excellent, good, positive or at least encouraging results. In our opinion, the lack of negative results might be due to the simplification of materials engineering problems to manageable and predictable situations. We draw particular attention to the strengths and weaknesses of soft computing techniques in the context of materials engineering applications. Our appraisal of the literature suggests that the interface between materials engineering and intelligent systems engineering techniques, such as soft computing, is still blur. The need to formalise the computational and intelligent systems engineering methodology used in materials engineering, therefore, arises. We also provide a brief exposition to our on-going efforts in this direction. Although our study focuses on materials engineering in particular, we think that our findings applies to other areas of engineering as well. Key words: Composite materials, fuzzy logic, soft computing, intelligent systems engineering,formal methods.

A mathematical model for expressing palm oil was developed using the properties of the fruit and based on previous work on seed-oil expression. Linearisation of the theoretical model developed was carried out by using empirical expressions for flow parameters such as permeability, viscosity and pressure-porosity relationship. The general equation developed was solved numerically using MatLab. The model was validated by comparing the experimental and predicted oil yield recovery at combinations of sterilisation time (30, 60 and 90 min), digestion time (3, 5 and 10 min) and expression pressure (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 MPa). The result indicated that generally, both the measured and predicted oil recovery increased with increasing sterilisation time, digestion time and expression pressure. The model had an overall deviation between the predicted and measured values of about 5%. (C) 2008 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We consider the application of complex variable method to elastic problem and investigate the nonlinear effect of finite torsion of a compressible elastic composite layer. We obtain that as a result of finite deformation approach, a tube subjected to torsion decreases in radius giving rise to a “hold effect”.