Search results for: provider service time

Authors: Carolyn Cameron

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Stop Food Waste Australia is working with the industry to co-design sector action plans to prevent and reduce food waste across the supply chain. We are a public-private partnership, funded in 2021 by the Australian national government under the 2017 National Food Waste Strategy. Our partnership has representatives from all levels of government, industry associations from farm to fork, and food rescue groups. Like many countries, Australia has adopted the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of 12.3 to halve food waste by 2030. A seminal 2021 study, the National Food Waste Feasibility Report, developed a robust national baseline, illustrating hotspots in commodities and across the supply chain. This research found that the consumption stages – households, food service, and institutions - account for over half of all food waste, and 22% of food produced never leaves the farm gate. Importantly the study found it is feasible for Australia to meet SDG 12.3, but it will require unprecedented action by governments, industry, and the community. Sector Action Plans (Plan) are one of the four main initiatives of Stop Food Waste Australia, including a voluntary commitment, a coordinated food waste communications hub, and robust monitoring and reporting framework. These plans provide a systems-based approach to reducing food loss and waste while realising multiple benefits for supply chain partners and other collaborators. Each plan is being co-designed with the key stakeholders most able to directly control or influence the root cause(s) of food waste hotspots and to take action to reduce or eliminate food waste in their value chain.  The initiatives in the Plans are fit-for-purpose, reflecting current knowledge and recognising priorities may refocus over time. To date, sector action plans have been developed with the Food Rescue, Cold Chain, Bread and Bakery, and Dairy Sectors. Work is currently underway on Meat and Horticulture, and we are also developing supply-chain stage plans for food services and institutions. The study will provide an overview of Australia’s food waste baseline and challenges, the important role of sector action plans in reducing food waste, and case studies of implementation outcomes.

Keywords: co-design, horticulture, sector action plans, voluntary

Procedia PDF Downloads 134

Authors: Sangwon Han, Chengquan Jin

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Time-cost trade-off (TCTO) is one of the most significant part of construction project management. Despite the significance, current TCTO analysis, based on the Critical Path Method, does not consider resource constraint, and accordingly sometimes generates an impractical and/or infeasible schedule planning in terms of resource availability. Therefore, resource constraint needs to be considered when doing TCTO analysis. In this research, genetic algorithms (GA) based optimization model is created in order to find the optimal schedule. This model is utilized to compare four distinct scenarios (i.e., 1) initial CPM, 2) TCTO without considering resource constraint, 3) resource allocation after TCTO, and 4) TCTO with considering resource constraint) in terms of duration, cost, and resource utilization. The comparison results identify that ‘TCTO with considering resource constraint’ generates the optimal schedule with the respect of duration, cost, and resource. This verifies the need for consideration of resource constraint when doing TCTO analysis. It is expected that the proposed model will produce more feasible and optimal schedule.

Keywords: time-cost trade-off, genetic algorithms, critical path, resource availability

Procedia PDF Downloads 187

Authors: Yunhan Zhang, Xiaopeng Li, Zhongxiao Peng

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Additive manufacturing (AM) possesses several key characteristics, including high design freedom, energy-efficient manufacturing process, reduced material waste, high resolution of finished products, and excellent performance of finished products. These advantages have garnered widespread attention and fueled rapid development in recent decades. AM has significantly broadened the spectrum of available materials in the manufacturing industry and is gradually replacing some traditionally manufactured parts. Similar to components produced via traditional methods, products manufactured through AM are susceptible to degradation caused by wear during their service life. Given the prevalence of 316L stainless steel (SS) parts and the limited research on the tribological behavior of 316L SS samples or products fabricated using AM technology, this study aims to investigate the degradation process and wear mechanisms of 316L SS disks fabricated using AM technology. The wear mechanisms and tribological performance of these AM-manufactured samples are compared with commercial 316L SS samples made using conventional methods. Additionally, methods to enhance the tribological performance of additive-manufactured SS samples are explored. Four disk samples with a diameter of 75 mm and a thickness of 10 mm are prepared. Two of them (Group A) are prepared from a purchased SS bar using a milling method. The other two disks (Group B), with the same dimensions, are made of Gas Atomized 316L Stainless Steel (size range: 15-45 µm) purchased from Carpenter Additive and produced using Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF). Pin-on-disk tests are conducted on these disks, which have similar surface roughness and hardness levels. Multiple tests are carried out under various operating conditions, including varying loads and/or speeds, and the friction coefficients are measured during these tests. In addition, the evolution of the surface degradation processes is monitored by creating moulds of the wear tracks and quantitatively analyzing the surface morphologies of the mould images. This analysis involves quantifying the depth and width of the wear tracks and analyzing the wear debris generated during the wear processes. The wear mechanisms and wear performance of these two groups of SS samples are compared. The effects of load and speed on the friction coefficient and wear rate are investigated. The ultimate goal is to gain a better understanding of the surface degradation of additive-manufactured SS samples. This knowledge is crucial for enhancing their anti-wear performance and extending their service life.

Keywords: degradation process, additive manufacturing, stainless steel, surface features

Procedia PDF Downloads 79

Authors: Abdullahi Ibrahim

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The culture of Clarias gariepinus for fish production is becoming increasingly essential as the fish is contributing to the food abundance and nutritional benefit to family health, income generation, and employment opportunities. The effect of feeding frequency was investigated over a period of ten (10) weeks; the experiment was conducted to monitor survival rates, growth performance, and feeding behavior of juvenile catfish. The experimental fish were randomly assigned to five treatment groups; (i.e., with different feeding frequency intervals) of 100 fish each. Each treatment was replicated twice with 50 fish per replicate. All the groups were fed with floating fish feed (blue crown®). The five treatments (feeding frequency) were T1- once a day feeding of night hours only, T2- twice a day feeding time of morning and night hours, T3- trice a day feeding time of morning, evening and night hours, T-4 four times a day feeding of morning, afternoon, evening, and night hours, T-5 five times a day feeding at four hours interval. There were significant differences (p > 0.05) among treatments. Feed intake and weight gain improved significantly (p < 0.05) in T-4 and T-3. The best of the feeding time on weight gain, survival rate, and feed conversion ratio were obtained at three times a day feeding (T-3) compared to other treatments, especially those fed once and five times feeding a regiment. This might be attributed to the high level of dissolve oxygen and less stress. Feeding fish three times a day is therefore recommended for efficient catfish production to maximize profits as the feed represents more than 50% of aquaculture inputs, particularly in intensive farming systems.

Keywords: catfish, floating fish feed, dissolve oxygen, juvenile

Procedia PDF Downloads 155

Authors: Elnaz Saeedi, Jamileh Abolaghasemi, Mohsen Nasiri Tousi, Saeedeh Khosravi

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Goals and Objectives: A typical analysis of survival data involves the modeling of time-to-event data, such as the time till death. A frailty model is a random effect model for time-to-event data, where the random effect has a multiplicative influence on the baseline hazard function. This article aims to investigate the use of gamma frailty model with concomitant variable in order to individualize the prognostic factors that influence the liver cirrhosis patients’ survival times. Methods: During the one-year study period (May 2008-May 2009), data have been used from the recorded information of patients with liver cirrhosis who were scheduled for liver transplantation and were followed up for at least seven years in Imam Khomeini Hospital in Iran. In order to determine the effective factors for cirrhotic patients’ survival in the presence of latent variables, the gamma frailty distribution has been applied. In this article, it was considering the parametric model, such as Exponential and Weibull distributions for survival time. Data analysis is performed using R software, and the error level of 0.05 was considered for all tests. Results: 305 patients with liver cirrhosis including 180 (59%) men and 125 (41%) women were studied. The age average of patients was 39.8 years. At the end of the study, 82 (26%) patients died, among them 48 (58%) were men and 34 (42%) women. The main cause of liver cirrhosis was found hepatitis 'B' with 23%, followed by cryptogenic with 22.6% were identified as the second factor. Generally, 7-year’s survival was 28.44 months, for dead patients and for censoring was 19.33 and 31.79 months, respectively. Using multi-parametric survival models of progressive and regressive, Exponential and Weibull models with regard to the gamma frailty distribution were fitted to the cirrhosis data. In both models, factors including, age, bilirubin serum, albumin serum, and encephalopathy had a significant effect on survival time of cirrhotic patients. Conclusion: To investigate the effective factors for the time of patients’ death with liver cirrhosis in the presence of latent variables, gamma frailty model with parametric distributions seems desirable.

Keywords: frailty model, latent variables, liver cirrhosis, parametric distribution

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Authors: Najia Zulfiqar

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Imparting moral education is the need of time, considering the obvious moral decline in society. Recent research shows the downfall of moral competence among university students. The main objective of the present study was to develop moral development intervention strategies for undergraduate students of Sports and Physical Education. Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, insight into field-specific moral issues was gained through interviews with 7 subject experts and a focus-group discussion session with 8 students. Two research assistants who were trained in qualitative interviewing collected, transcribed and analyzed data into the MAXQDA software using content and discourse analyses. The identified moral issues in Sports and Physical Education were sports gambling and betting, pay-for-play, doping, coach misconduct, tampering, cultural bias, gender equity/nepotism, bullying/discrimination, and harassment. Next, intervention modules were developed for each moral issue based on hypothetical situations, and followed by guided reflection and dilemma discussion questions. The third moral development strategy was community services that included posture screening, diet plan for different age groups, open fitness ground training, exercise camps for physical fitness, balanced diet awareness camp, gymnastic camp, shoe assessment as per health standards, and volunteering for public awareness at the playground, gymnasium, stadium, park, etc. The intervention modules were given to four subject specialists for expert validation who were from different backgrounds within Sport Sciences. Upon refinement and finalization, four students were presented with these intervention modules and questioned about accuracy, relevance, comprehension, and content organization. Iterative changes were made in the content of the intervention modules to tailor them to the moral development needs of undergraduate students. This intervention will strengthen positive moral values and foster mature decision-making about right and wrong acts. As this intervention is easy to apply as a remedial tool, academicians and policymakers can use this to promote students’ moral development.

Keywords: community service, dilemma discussion, morality, physical education, university students.

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Authors: Arta Jashari, Enver Kutllovci

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Abstract— The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of recruitment and selection practice and performance in medium service enterprises in Kosovo. A total of 110 managers from public and private sector was analyzed. Our empirical results show that enterprises in Kosovo use recruitment and selection practice and they know how important is to have the right people with skills and knowledge accordingly with the job requirements. The outcome of Pearson correlation analysis provides evidence that recruitment and selection practice, positively and significantly influence the financial performance. Also, our results show a significant relationship between the education of managers and the use of the recruitment and selection practice. From our results we can conclude and suggest that with a good recruiting and selection, the organization will fill with a group of potentially qualified candidates who will be able to fulfill the enterprises objective.

Keywords: Human Resource, Kosovo, Recruitment and Selection, Performance

Procedia PDF Downloads 166

Authors: Elena Maria Scalisi, Roberta Pecoraro, Martina Contino, Sara Ignoto, Carmelo Iaria, Santi Concetto Pavone, Gino Sorbello, Loreto Di Donato, Maria Violetta Brundo

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5G Technology is evolving to satisfy a variety of service requirements that may allow high data-rate connections (1Gbps) and lower latency times than current (<1ms). In order to support a high data transmission speed and a high traffic service for eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband) use cases, 5G systems have the characteristic of using different frequency bands of the radio wave spectrum (700 MHz, 3.6-3.8 GHz and 26.5-27.5 GHz), thus taking advantage of higher frequencies than previous mobile radio generations (1G-4G). However, waves at higher frequencies have a lower capacity to propagate in free space and therefore, in order to guarantee the capillary coverage of the territory for high reliability applications, it will be necessary to install a large number of repeaters. Following the introduction of this new technology, there has been growing concern over the past few months about possible harmful effects on human health. The aim of this preliminary study is to evaluate possible short term effects induced by 5G-millimeter waves on embryonic development and early life stages of Danio rerio by Z-FET. We exposed developing zebrafish at frequency of 27 GHz, with a standard pyramidal horn antenna placed at 15 cm far from the samples holder ensuring an incident power density of 10 mW/cm2. During the exposure cycle, from 6 h post fertilization (hpf) to 96 hpf, we measured a different morphological endpoints every 24 hours. Zebrafish embryo toxicity test (Z-FET) is a short term test, carried out on fertilized eggs of zebrafish and it represents an effective alternative to acute test with adult fish (OECD, 2013). We have observed that 5G did not reveal significant impacts on mortality nor on morphology because exposed larvae showed a normal detachment of the tail, presence of heartbeat, well-organized somites, therefore hatching rate was lower than untreated larvae even at 48 h of exposure. Moreover, the immunohistochemical analysis performed on larvae showed a negativity to the HSP-70 expression used as a biomarkers. This is a preliminary study on evaluation of potential toxicity induced by 5G and it seems appropriate to underline the importance that further studies would take, aimed at clarifying the probable real risk of exposure to electromagnetic fields.

Keywords: Biomarker of exposure, embryonic development, 5G waves, zebrafish embryo toxicity test

Procedia PDF Downloads 129

Authors: Tina Wu, Andrew Martin

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The expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) brings a new level of threat. Attacks on IoT are already being used by criminals to form botnets, launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and distribute malware. This opens a whole new digital forensic arena to develop forensic methodologies in order to have the capability to investigate IoT related crimes. However, existing proposed IoT forensic models are still premature requiring further improvement and validation, many lack details on the acquisition and analysis phase. This paper proposes an enhanced theoretical IoT digital forensic model focused on identifying and acquiring the main sources of evidence in a methodical way. In addition, this paper presents a theoretical acquisition framework of the different stages required in order to be capable of acquiring evidence from IoT devices.

Keywords: acquisition, Internet of Things, model, zoning

Procedia PDF Downloads 271

Authors: Samah Senbel

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Database Design is a fundamental part of the Computer Science and Information technology curricula in any school, as well as in the study of management, business administration, and data analytics. In this study, we compare the performance of two groups of students studying the same database design and implementation course at Sacred Heart University in the fall of 2018. Both courses used the same textbook and were taught by the same professor, one for seven graduate students and one for 26 undergraduate students (juniors). The undergraduate students were aged around 20 years old with little work experience, while the graduate students averaged 35 years old and all were employed in computer-related or management-related jobs. The textbook used was 'Database Systems, Design, Implementation, and Management' by Coronel and Morris, and the course was designed to follow the textbook roughly a chapter per week. The first 6 weeks covered the design aspect of a database, followed by a paper exam. The next 6 weeks covered the implementation aspect of the database using SQL followed by a lab exam. Since the undergraduate students are on a 16 week semester, we spend the last three weeks of the course covering NoSQL. This part of the course was not included in this study. After the course was over, we analyze the results of the two groups of students. An interesting discrepancy was observed: In the database design part of the course, the average grade of the graduate students was 92%, while that of the undergraduate students was 77% for the same exam. In the implementation part of the course, we observe the opposite: the average grade of the graduate students was 65% while that of the undergraduate students was 73%. The overall grades were quite similar: the graduate average was 78% and that of the undergraduates was 75%. Based on these results, we concluded that having both classes follow the same time schedule was not beneficial, and an adjustment is needed. The graduates could spend less time on design and the undergraduates would benefit from more design time. In the fall of 2019, 30 students registered for the undergraduate course and 15 students registered for the graduate course. To test our conclusion, the undergraduates spend about 67% of time (eight classes) on the design part of the course and 33% (four classes) on the implementation part, using the exact exams as the previous year. This resulted in an improvement in their average grades on the design part from 77% to 83% and also their implementation average grade from 73% to 79%. In conclusion, we recommend using two separate schedules for teaching the database design course. For undergraduate students, it is important to spend more time on the design part rather than the implementation part of the course. While for the older graduate students, we recommend spending more time on the implementation part, as it seems that is the part they struggle with, even though they have a higher understanding of the design component of databases.

Keywords: computer science education, database design, graduate and undergraduate students, pedagogy

Procedia PDF Downloads 121

Authors: Eslam Mohammed Abdelkader, Mohamed Marzouk, Tarek Zayed

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Infrastructure systems are crucial to every aspect of life on Earth. Existing Infrastructure is subjected to degradation while the demands are growing for a better infrastructure system in response to the high standards of safety, health, population growth, and environmental protection. Bridges play a crucial role in urban transportation networks. Moreover, they are subjected to high level of deterioration because of the variable traffic loading, extreme weather conditions, cycles of freeze and thaw, etc. The development of Bridge Management Systems (BMSs) has become a fundamental imperative nowadays especially in the large transportation networks due to the huge variance between the need for maintenance actions, and the available funds to perform such actions. Deterioration models represent a very important aspect for the effective use of BMSs. This paper presents a probabilistic time-based model that is capable of predicting the condition ratings of the concrete bridge decks along its service life. The deterioration process of the concrete bridge decks is modeled using semi-Markov process. One of the main challenges of the Markov Chain Decision Process (MCDP) is the construction of the transition probability matrix. Yet, the proposed model overcomes this issue by modeling the sojourn times based on some probability density functions. The sojourn times of each condition state are fitted to probability density functions based on some goodness of fit tests such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Anderson Darling, and chi-squared test. The parameters of the probability density functions are obtained using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). The condition ratings obtained from the Ministry of Transportation in Quebec (MTQ) are utilized as a database to construct the deterioration model. Finally, a comparison is conducted between the Markov Chain and semi-Markov chain to select the most feasible prediction model.

Keywords: bridge management system, bridge decks, deterioration model, Semi-Markov chain, sojourn times, maximum likelihood estimation

Procedia PDF Downloads 211

Authors: B. Kędra, R. Małkowski

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This paper presents information on Power System Component Simulator – a device designed for LINTE^2 laboratory owned by Gdansk University of Technology in Poland. In this paper, we first provide an introductory information on the Power System Component Simulator and its capabilities. Then, the concept of the unit is presented. Requirements for the unit are described as well as proposed and introduced functions are listed. Implementation details are given. Hardware structure is presented and described. Information about used communication interface, data maintenance and storage solution, as well as used Simulink real-time features are presented. List and description of all measurements is provided. Potential of laboratory setup modifications is evaluated. Lastly, the results of experiments performed using Power System Component Simulator are presented. This includes simulation of under frequency load shedding, frequency and voltage dependent characteristics of groups of load units, time characteristics of group of different load units in a chosen area.

Keywords: power converter, Simulink Real-Time, Matlab, load, tap controller

Procedia PDF Downloads 242

Authors: Arif Tri Setyanto, Aditya Nanda Priyatama, Nugraha Arif Karyanta, Fadjri Kirana A., Afia Fitriani, Rini Setyowati, Moh.Abdul Hakim

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The Basic Health Research Report by the Ministry of Health (2018) shows an increase in the prevalence of mental health disorders in the adolescent and early adult age ranges. Supporting this finding, data on the psychological examination of the student health service unit at one State University recorded 115 cases of moderate and severe health problems in the period 2016 - 2019. More specifically, the highest number of cases was experienced by clients in the age range of 21-23 years or equivalent, with the mid-semester stage towards the end. Based on the distribution of cases experienced and the disorder becomes a psychological problem experienced by students. A total of 29% or the equivalent of 33 students experienced anxiety disorders, 25% or 29 students experienced problems ranging from mild to severe, as well as other classifications of disorders experienced, including adjustment disorders, family problems, academics, mood disorders, self-concept disorders, personality disorders, cognitive disorders, and others such as trauma and sexual disorders. Various mental health disorders have a significant impact on the academic life of students, such as low GPA, exceeding the limit in college, dropping out, disruption of social life on campus, to suicide. Based on literature reviews and best practices from universities in various countries, one of the effective ways to prevent and treat student mental health disorders is to implement a mental health monitoring system in universities. This study uses a participatory action research approach, with a sample of 423 from a total population of 32,112 students. The scale used in this study is the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to measure depression and the Taylor Minnesota Anxiety Scale (TMAS) to measure anxiety levels. This study aims to (1) develop a digital-based health monitoring system for students' mental health situations in the mental health category. , dangers, or those who have mental disorders, especially indications of symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders, and (2) implementing a mental health monitoring system in universities at the beginning and end of each semester. The results of the analysis show that from 423 respondents, the main problems faced by all coursework, such as thesis and academic assignments. Based on the scoring and categorization of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), 191 students experienced symptoms of depression. A total of 24.35%, or 103 students experienced mild depression, 14.42% (61 students) had moderate depression, and 6.38% (27 students) experienced severe or extreme depression. Furthermore, as many as 80.38% (340 students) experienced anxiety in the high category. This article will review this review of the student mental health service system on campus.

Keywords: monitoring system, mental health, psychological problems, students

Procedia PDF Downloads 111

Authors: Josip Visković, Josip Arnerić, Ante Rozga

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Based on the fact that volatility is time varying in high frequency data and that periods of high volatility tend to cluster, the most successful and popular models in modelling time varying volatility are GARCH type models. When financial returns exhibit sudden jumps that are due to structural breaks, standard GARCH models show high volatility persistence, i.e. integrated behaviour of the conditional variance. In such situations models in which the parameters are allowed to change over time are more appropriate. This paper compares different GARCH models in terms of their ability to describe structural changes in returns caused by financial crisis at stock markets of six selected central and east European countries. The empirical analysis demonstrates that Markov regime switching GARCH model resolves the problem of excessive persistence and outperforms uni-regime GARCH models in forecasting volatility when sudden switching occurs in response to financial crisis.

Keywords: central and east European countries, financial crisis, Markov switching GARCH model, transition probabilities

Procedia PDF Downloads 226

Authors: Solanki Ravirajsinh, Kudo Kuniaki, Sharma Ankit, Devi Sherine, Kuboshima Misaki, Tachi Shuntaro

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In software development life cycles, the absence of scalable CI/CD significantly impacts organizations, leading to increased overall maintenance costs, prolonged release delivery times, heightened manual efforts, and difficulties in meeting tight deadlines. Implementing CI/CD with standard serverless technologies using cloud services overcomes all the above-mentioned issues and helps organizations improve efficiency and faster delivery without the need to manage server maintenance and capacity. By integrating scalable CI/CD with scalable automation testing, productivity, quality, and agility are enhanced while reducing the need for repetitive work and manual efforts. Implementing scalable CI/CD for development using cloud services like ECS (Container Management Service), AWS Fargate, ECR (to store Docker images with all dependencies), Serverless Computing (serverless virtual machines), Cloud Log (for monitoring errors and logs), Security Groups (for inside/outside access to the application), Docker Containerization (Docker-based images and container techniques), Jenkins (CI/CD build management tool), and code management tools (GitHub, Bitbucket, AWS CodeCommit) can efficiently handle the demands of diverse development environments and are capable of accommodating dynamic workloads, increasing efficiency for faster delivery with good quality. CI/CD pipelines encourage collaboration among development, operations, and quality assurance teams by providing a centralized platform for automated testing, deployment, and monitoring. Scalable CI/CD streamlines the development process by automatically fetching the latest code from the repository every time the process starts, building the application based on the branches, testing the application using a scalable automation testing framework, and deploying the builds. Developers can focus more on writing code and less on managing infrastructure as it scales based on the need. Serverless CI/CD eliminates the need to manage and maintain traditional CI/CD infrastructure, such as servers and build agents, reducing operational overhead and allowing teams to allocate resources more efficiently. Scalable CI/CD adjusts the application's scale according to usage, thereby alleviating concerns about scalability, maintenance costs, and resource needs. Creating scalable automation testing using cloud services (ECR, ECS Fargate, Docker, EFS, Serverless Computing) helps organizations run more than 500 test cases in parallel, aiding in the detection of race conditions, performance issues, and reducing execution time. Scalable CI/CD offers flexibility, dynamically adjusting to varying workloads and demands, allowing teams to scale resources up or down as needed. It optimizes costs by only paying for the resources as they are used and increases reliability. Scalable CI/CD pipelines employ automated testing and validation processes to detect and prevent errors early in the development cycle.

Keywords: achieve parallel execution, cloud services, scalable automation testing, scalable continuous integration and deployment

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Authors: Juan P. Novoa, Mario A. Rios

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This paper presents a transmission planning methodology that considers the conversion of HVAC transmission lines to HVDC as an alternative of expansion of power systems, as a consequence of restrictions for the construction of new lines. The transmission expansion planning problem formulates an optimization problem that minimizes the total cost that includes the investment cost to convert lines from HVAC to HVDC and possible required reinforcements of the power system prior to the conversion. The costs analysis assesses the impact of the conversion on the reliability because transmission lines are out of service during the conversion work. The presented methodology is applied to a test system considering a planning a horizon of 10 years.

Keywords: transmission expansion planning, HVDC, cost optimization, energy non-supplied

Procedia PDF Downloads 388

Authors: Kazi Rizvan, Yamin Rekhu

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Due to high competitiveness in industries throughout the world, every industry is trying hard to utilize all their resources to keep their productivity as high as possible. Many tools have been being used to ensure smoother flow of an operation, to balance tasks, to maintain proper schedules for tasks, to maintain proper sequence for tasks, to reduce unproductive time. All of these tools are used to augment productivity within an industry. Kanban board is one of them and of the many important tools of lean production system. Kanban Board is a visual depiction of the status of tasks. Kanban board shows the actual status of the tasks. It conveys the progress and issues of tasks as well. Using Kanban Board, tasks can be distributed among workers and operation targets can be visually represented to them. In this paper, an example of Kanban board from the aspects of Brothers Furniture Limited was taken and how the Kanban board system was implemented, how the board was designed and how it was made easily perceivable for the less literate or illiterate workers. The Kanban board was designed for the packing section of Brothers Furniture Limited. It was implemented for the purpose of representing the tasks flow to the workers and to mitigate the time that was wasted while the workers remained wondering about what task they should start after they finish one. Kanban board subsumed seven columns and there was a column for comments where if any problem occurred during working on the tasks. Kanban board was helpful for the workers as the board showed the urgency of the tasks. It was also helpful for the store section as they could understand which products and how much of them could be delivered to store at any certain time. Kanban board had all the information centralized which is why the work-flow got paced up and idle time was minimized. Regardless of many workers being illiterate or less literate, Kanban board was still explicable for the workers as the Kanban cards were colored. Since the significance of colors can be conveniently interpretable to them, colored cards helped a great deal in that matter. Hence, the illiterate or less literate workers didn’t have to spend time wondering about the significance of the cards. Even when the workers weren’t told the significance of the colored cards, they could grow a feeling about their meaning as colors can trigger anyone’s mind to perceive the situation. As a result, the board elucidated the workers about what board required them to do, when to do and what to do next. Kanban board alleviated excessive time between tasks by setting day-plan for targeted tasks and it also reduced time during tasks as the workers were acknowledged of forthcoming tasks for a day. Being very specific to the tasks, Kanban board helped the workers become more focused on their tasks helped them do their job with more perfection. As a result, The Kanban board helped achieve a 8.75% increase in productivity than the productivity before the Kanban board was implemented.

Keywords: color, Kanban Board, Lean Tool, literacy, packing, productivity

Procedia PDF Downloads 233

Authors: Chiahsu Yang, Peiling Wu, Ted Ho

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From emphasizing economic development to stressing public happiness, the international community mainly hopes to be able to understand whether the quality of life for the public is becoming better. The Better Life Index (BLI) constructed by OECD uses living conditions and quality of life as starting points to cover 11 areas of life and to convey the state of the general public’s well-being. In light of the BLI framework, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) of the Executive Yuan instituted the Gross National Happiness Index to understand the needs of the general public and to measure the progress of the aforementioned conditions in residents across the island. Whereas living conditions consist of income and wealth, jobs and earnings, and housing conditions, health status, work and life balance, education and skills, social connections, civic engagement and governance, environmental quality, personal security. The ICT area consists of health care, living environment, ICT-enabled communication, transportation, government, education, pleasure, purchasing, job & employment. In the wake of further science and technology development, rapid formation of information societies, and closer integration between lifestyles and information societies, the public’s well-being within information societies has indeed become a noteworthy topic. the Board of Science and Technology of the Executive Yuan use the OECD’s BLI as a reference in the establishment of the Taiwan-specific ICT-Enabled Better Life Index. Using this index, the government plans to examine whether the public’s quality of life is improving as well as measure the public’s satisfaction with current digital quality of life. This understanding will enable the government to gauge the degree of influence and impact that each dimension of digital services has on digital life happiness while also serving as an important reference for promoting digital service development. The content of the ICT Enabled Better Life Index. Information and communications technology (ICT) has been affecting people’s living styles, and further impact people’s quality of life (QoL). Even studies have shown that ICT access and usage have both positive and negative impact on life satisfaction and well-beings, many governments continue to invest in e-government programs to initiate their path to information society. This research is the few attempts to link the e-government benchmark to the subjective well-being perception, and further address the gap between user’s perception and existing hard data assessment, then propose a model to trace measurement results back to the original public policy in order for policy makers to justify their future proposals.

Keywords: information and communications technology, quality of life, satisfaction, well-being

Procedia PDF Downloads 355

Authors: Houda Najeh, Stéphane Ploix, Mahendra Pratap Singh, Karim Chabir, Mohamed Naceur Abdelkrim

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Building systems are highly vulnerable to different kinds of faults and failures. In fact, various faults, failures and human behaviors could affect the building performance. This paper tackles the detection of unreliable sensors in buildings. Different literature surveys on diagnosis techniques for sensor grids in buildings have been published but all of them treat only bias and outliers. Occurences of data gaps have also not been given an adequate span of attention in the academia. The proposed methodology comprises the automatic thresholding for data gap detection for a set of heterogeneous sensors in instrumented buildings. Sensor measurements are considered to be regular time series. However, in reality, sensor values are not uniformly sampled. So, the issue to solve is from which delay each sensor become faulty? The use of time series is required for detection of abnormalities on the delays. The efficiency of the method is evaluated on measurements obtained from a real power plant: an office at Grenoble Institute of technology equipped by 30 sensors.

Keywords: building system, time series, diagnosis, outliers, delay, data gap

Procedia PDF Downloads 245

Authors: H. A. Taner, V. Önen

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A suitable choice of flotation parameters and reagents have a strong effect on the effectiveness of flotation process. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of the flotation of chalcopyrite with the different conditions and dispersants. Flotation parameters such as grinding time, pH, type, and dosage of dispersant were investigated. In order to understand the interaction of some dispersants, sodium silicate, sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium polyphosphate were used. The optimum results were obtained at a pH of 11.5 and a grinding time of 10 minutes. A copper concentrate was produced assaying 29.85% CuFeS₂ and 65.97% flotation recovery under optimum rougher flotation conditions with sodium silicate.

Keywords: chalcopyrite, dispersant, flotation, reagent

Procedia PDF Downloads 182

Authors: Ashwin Belle, Bryce Benson, Mark Salamango, Fadi Islim, Rodney Daniels, Kevin Ward

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A reliable, real-time, and non-invasive system that can identify patients at risk for hemodynamic instability is needed to aid clinicians in their efforts to anticipate patient deterioration and initiate early interventions. The purpose of this pilot study was to explore the clinical capabilities of a real-time analytic from a single lead of an electrocardiograph to correctly distinguish between rapid response team (RRT) activations due to hemodynamic (H-RRT) and non-hemodynamic (NH-RRT) causes, as well as predict H-RRT cases with actionable lead times. The study consisted of a single center, retrospective cohort of 21 patients with RRT activations from step-down and telemetry units. Through electronic health record review and blinded to the analytic’s output, each patient was categorized by clinicians into H-RRT and NH-RRT cases. The analytic output and the categorization were compared. The prediction lead time prior to the RRT call was calculated. The analytic correctly distinguished between H-RRT and NH-RRT cases with 100% accuracy, demonstrating 100% positive and negative predictive values, and 100% sensitivity and specificity. In H-RRT cases, the analytic detected hemodynamic deterioration with a median lead time of 9.5 hours prior to the RRT call (range 14 minutes to 52 hours). The study demonstrates that an electrocardiogram (ECG) based analytic has the potential for providing clinical decision and monitoring support for caregivers to identify at risk patients within a clinically relevant timeframe allowing for increased vigilance and early interventional support to reduce the chances of continued patient deterioration.

Keywords: critical care, early warning systems, emergency medicine, heart rate variability, hemodynamic instability, rapid response team

Procedia PDF Downloads 143

Authors: T. R. Hidayat, G. Irawan, F. Kurniawan, E. H. I. Prasetya, Suharto, T. F. Ridwan, A. Pitoyo, A. Juniantoro, R. T. Hidayat

Abstract:

Swab activities is an activity to lift fluid from inside the well with the use of a sand line that aims to find out fluid influx after conducting perforation or to reduce the level of fluid as an effort to get the difference between formation pressure with hydrostatic pressure in the well for underbalanced perforation. During the swab activity, problems occur frequent problems occur with the rubber swab. The rubber swab often breaks and becomes a fish inside the well. This rubber swab fishing activity caused the rig operation takes longer, the swab result data becomes too late and create potential losses of well operation for the company. The average time needed for fishing the fractions of rubber swab plus swab work is 42 hours. Innovation made for such problems is to modify the rubber swab tool. The rubber swab tool is modified by provided a series of brushes at the end part of the tool with a thread of connection in order to improve work safety, so when the rubber swab breaks, the broken swab will be lifted by the brush underneath; therefore, it reduces the loss time for rubber swab fishing. This tool has been applied, it and is proven that with this rubber swab tool modification, the rig operation becomes more efficient because it does not carry out the rubber swab fishing activity. The fish fractions of the rubber swab are lifted up to the surface. Therefore, it saves the fuel cost, and well production potentials are obtained. The average time to do swab work after the application of this modified tool is 8 hours.

Keywords: rubber swab, modifikasi swab, brush, fishing rubber swab, saving cost

Procedia PDF Downloads 167

Authors: Mallikarjuna Rao Gundavarapu, Ch. Mallikarjuna Rao, K. Anuradha Bai

Abstract:

Real Time Video Tracking is a challenging task for computing professionals. The performance of video tracking techniques is greatly affected by background detection and elimination process. Local regions of the image frame contain vital information of background and foreground. However, pixel-level processing of local regions consumes a good amount of computational time and memory space by traditional approaches. In our approach we have explored the concurrent computational ability of General Purpose Graphic Processing Units (GPGPU) to address this problem. The Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) with adaptive weighted kernels is used for detecting the background. The weights of the kernel are influenced by local regions and are updated by inter-frame variations of these corresponding regions. The proposed system has been tested with GPU devices such as GeForce GTX 280, GeForce GTX 280 and Quadro K2000. The results are encouraging with maximum speed up 10X compared to sequential approach.

Keywords: connected components, embrace threads, local weighted kernel, structuring elements

Procedia PDF Downloads 440

Authors: Tatiana R. Simonyan, Elena A. Protasova, Anastasia V. Mamontova, Eugene G. Maksimov, Konstantin A. Lukyanov, Alexey M. Bogdanov

Abstract:

Here, we describe two variants of the calcium indicators based on the GCaMP sensitive core and BrUSLEE fluorescent protein (GCaMP-BrUSLEE and GCaMP-BrUSLEE-145). In contrast to the conventional GCaMP6-family indicators, these fluorophores are characterized by the well-marked responsiveness of their fluorescence decay kinetics to external calcium concentration both in vitro and in cellulo. Specifically, we show that the purified GCaMP-BrUSLEE and GCaMP-BrUSLEE-145 exhibit three-component fluorescence decay kinetics, with the amplitude-normalized lifetime component (t3*A3) of GCaMP-BrUSLEE-145 changing four-fold (500-2000 a.u.) in response to a Ca²⁺ concentration shift in the range of 0—350 nM. Time-resolved fluorescence microscopy of live cells displays the two-fold change of the GCaMP-BrUSLEE-145 mean lifetime upon histamine-stimulated calcium release. The aforementioned Ca²⁺-dependence calls considering the GCaMP-BrUSLEE-145 as a prospective Ca²⁺-indicator with the signal read-out in the time domain.

Keywords: calcium imaging, fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, fluorescent proteins, genetically encoded indicators

Procedia PDF Downloads 158

Authors: Shashikant R. Kuchekar, Haribhau R. Aher, Priti M. Dhage

Abstract:

The removal vanadium from aqueous solution using natural exchanger was investigated. The effects of pH, contact time and exchanger dose were studied at ambient temperature (25 ⁰C ± 2 ⁰C). The equilibrium process was described by the Langmuir isotherm model with adsorption capacity for vanadium. The natural exchanger i.e. tamarindus seeds powder was treated with formaldehyde and sulpuric acid to increase the adsorptivity of metals. The maximum exchange level was attained as 80.1% at pH 3 with exchanger dose 5 g and contact time 60 min. Method is applied for removal of vanadium from industrial effluents.

Keywords: industrial effluent, natural ion exchange, Tamarindous indica, vanadium

Procedia PDF Downloads 251

Authors: Yogesh Shukla

Abstract:

Many attempts have been made to study temperature distribution problem in human tissues under normal environmental and physiological conditions at constant arterial blood temperature. But very few attempts have been made to investigate temperature distribution in human tissues under different arterial blood temperature. In view of above, a finite element model has been developed to unsteady temperature distribution in dermal region in human body. The model has been developed for one dimension unsteady state case. The variation in parameters like thermal conductivity, blood mass flow and metabolic activity with respect to position and time has been incorporated in the model. Appropriate boundary conditions have been framed. The central difference approach has been used in space variable and trapezoidal rule has been employed a long time variable. Numerical results have been obtained to study relationship among temperature and time.

Keywords: rate of metabolism, blood mass flow rate, thermal conductivity, heat generation, finite element method

Procedia PDF Downloads 353

Authors: Nguyen Chan Hung, Mai Ngoc Anh, Nguyen Xuan Ha, Tran Xuan Duc, Dang Bao Lam, Nguyen Hoang Viet

Abstract:

This paper presents a design and implementation of a navigation controller for a humanoid mobile robot platform to operate in indoor office environments. In order to fulfil the requirement of recognizing and approaching human to provide service while avoiding random obstacles, a behavior-based fuzzy logic controller was designed to simultaneously coordinate multiple behaviors. Experiments in real office environment showed that the fuzzy controller deals well with complex scenarios without colliding with random objects and human.

Keywords: behavior control, fuzzy logic, humanoid robot, mobile robot

Procedia PDF Downloads 420

Authors: Jia-Chao Wang

Abstract:

The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) freed during the recombination era can be considered as a photon source of small duration; a one-time event happened everywhere in the universe simultaneously. If space is divided into concentric shells centered at an observer’s location, one can imagine that the CMB photons originated from the nearby shells would reach and pass the observer first, and those in shells farther away would follow as time goes forward. In the Big Bang model, space expands rapidly in a time-dependent manner as described by the scale factor. This expansion results in an event horizon coincident with one of the shells, and its radius can be calculated using cosmological calculators available online. Using Planck 2015 results, its value during the recombination era at cosmological time t = 0.379 million years (My) is calculated to be Revent = 56.95 million light-years (Mly). The event horizon sets a boundary beyond which the freed CMB photons will never reach the observer. The photons within the event horizon also exhibit a peculiar behavior. Calculated results show that the CMB observed today was freed in a shell located at 41.8 Mly away (inside the boundary set by Revent) at t = 0.379 My. These photons traveled 13.8 billion years (Gy) to reach here. Similarly, the CMB reaching the observer at t = 1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 Gy are calculated to be originated at shells of R = 16.98, 29.96, 37.79, 46.47, 53.66, 55.91, 56.62, 56.85 and 56.92 Mly, respectively. The results show that as time goes by, the R value approaches Revent = 56.95 Mly but never exceeds it, consistent with the earlier statement that beyond Revent the freed CMB photons will never reach the observer. The difference Revert - R can be used as a measure of the remaining observable CMB photons. Its value becomes smaller and smaller as R approaching Revent, indicating a dwindling supply of the observable CMB radiation. In this paper, detailed dwindling effects near the event horizon are analyzed with the help of online cosmological calculators based on the lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model. It is demonstrated in the literature that assuming the CMB to be a blackbody at recombination (about 3000 K), then it will remain so over time under cosmological redshift and homogeneous expansion of space, but with the temperature lowered (2.725 K now). The present result suggests that the observable CMB photon density, besides changing with space expansion, can also be affected by the dwindling supply associated with the event horizon. This raises the question of whether the blackbody of CMB at recombination can remain so over time. Being able to explain the blackbody nature of the observed CMB is an import part of the success of the Big Bang model. The present results cast some doubts on that and suggest that the model may have an additional challenge to deal with.

Keywords: blackbody of CMB, CMB radiation, dwindling supply of CMB, event horizon

Procedia PDF Downloads 119

Authors: Rajendra Kumar Dubey

Abstract:

Einstein’s field equations with variable cosmological term Λ are considered in the presence of viscous fluid for Bianchi type I space time. Exact solutions of Einstein’s field equations are obtained by assuming cosmological term Λ Proportional to (R is a scale factor and m is constant). We observed that the shear viscosity is found to be responsible for faster removal of initial anisotropy in the universe. The physical significance of the cosmological models has also been discussed.

Keywords: bianchi type, I cosmological model, viscous fluid, cosmological constant Λ

Procedia PDF Downloads 528

Authors: William Huang

Abstract:

Retinal prostheses are currently limited to low resolution grayscale images that lack color and spatial information. This study develops a novel real-time image optimization framework and tools to encode maximum information to the prostheses which are constrained by the number of electrodes. One key idea is to localize main objects in images while reducing unnecessary background noise through region-contrast saliency maps. A novel color depth mapping technique was developed through MiniBatchKmeans clustering and color space selection. The resulting image was downsampled using bicubic interpolation to reduce image size while preserving color quality. In comparison to current schemes, the proposed framework demonstrated better visual quality in tested images. The use of the region-contrast saliency map showed improvements in efficacy up to 30%. Finally, the computational speed of this algorithm is less than 380 ms on tested cases, making real-time retinal prostheses feasible.

Keywords: retinal implants, virtual processing unit, computer vision, saliency maps, color quantization

Procedia PDF Downloads 153