Search results for: coverage analysis

Authors: S. Dhivya, M. Abirami, M. Farjana Parveen, M. Keerthiga

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The development of high-speed railway makes people’s lives more and more convenient; meanwhile, handover is the major problem on high-speed railway communication services. In order to overcome that drawback the architecture of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) femtocell networks is used to improve network performance, and the deployment of a femtocell is a key for bandwidth limitation and coverage issues in conventional mobile network system. To increase the handover performance this paper proposed a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) assisted handoff (MAHO) algorithm. It is a technique used in mobile telecom to transfer a mobile phone to a new radio channel with stronger signal strength and improved channel quality.

Keywords: flawless handover, high-speed train, home evolved Node B, LTE, mobile femtocell, RSS

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Authors: Anshul Gupta, T. Shankar

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In this paper, we had analyzed the call drop to provide a good quality of service to user. By optimizing it we can increase the coverage area and also the reduction of interference and congestion created in a network. Basically handover is the transfer of call from one cell site to another site during a call. Here we have analyzed the whole network by two method-statistic model and analytic model. In statistic model we have collected all the data of a network during busy hour and normal 24 hours and in analytic model we have the equation through which we have to find the call drop probability. By avoiding unnecessary handovers we can increase the number of calls per hour. The most important parameter is co-efficient of variation on which the whole paper discussed.

Keywords: coefficient of variation, mean, standard deviation, call drop probability, handover

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Authors: Aabha Chaubey, Bani Bhattacharya

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Evaluation of the quality of teaching in engineering education in India needs to be conducted on a continuous basis to achieve the best teaching quality in technical education. Quality teaching is an influential factor in technical education which impacts largely on learning outcomes of the students. Present study is not exclusively theory-driven, but it draws on various specific concepts and constructs in the domain of technical education. These include teaching and learning in higher education, teacher effectiveness, and teacher evaluation and performance management in higher education. Student Evaluation of Education Quality (SEEQ) was proposed as one of the evaluation instruments of the quality teaching in engineering education. SEEQ is one of the popular and standard instrument widely utilized all over the world and bears the validity and reliability in educational world. The present study was designed to evaluate the teaching quality through SEEQ in the context of technical education in India, including its validity and reliability based on the collected data. The multiple dimensionality of SEEQ that is present in every teaching and learning process made it quite suitable to collect the feedback of students regarding the quality of instructions and instructor. The SEEQ comprises of 9 original constructs i.e.; learning value, teacher enthusiasm, organization, group interaction, and individual rapport, breadth of coverage, assessment, assignments and overall rating of particular course and instructor with total of 33 items. In the present study, a total of 350 samples comprising first year undergraduate students from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, Kharagpur, India) were included for the evaluation of the importance of SEEQ. They belonged to four different courses of different streams of engineering studies. The above studies depicted the validity and reliability of SEEQ was based upon the collected data. This further needs Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Analysis of Moment structure (AMOS) for various scaled instrument like SEEQ Cronbach’s alpha which are associated with SPSS for the examination of the internal consistency. The evaluation of the effectiveness of SEEQ in CFA is implemented on the basis of fit indices such as CMIN/df, CFI, GFI, AGFI and RMSEA readings. The major findings of this study showed the fitness indices such as ChiSq = 993.664,df = 390,ChiSq/df = 2.548,GFI = 0.782,AGFI = 0.736,CFI = 0.848,RMSEA = 0.062,TLI = 0.945,RMR = 0.029,PCLOSE = 0.006. The final analysis of the fit indices presented positive construct validity and stability, on the other hand a higher reliability was also depicted which indicated towards internal consistency. Thus, the study suggests the effectivity of SEEQ as the indicator of the quality evaluation instrument in teaching-learning process in engineering education in India. Therefore, it is expected that with the continuation of this research in engineering education there remains a possibility towards the betterment of the quality of the technical education in India. It is also expected that this study will provide an empirical and theoretical logic towards locating a construct or factor related to teaching, which has the greatest impact on teaching and learning process in a particular course or stream in engineering education.

Keywords: confirmatory factor analysis, engineering education, SEEQ, teaching and learning process

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Authors: Islem Kedidi, Rihab Bedoui Bensalem, Faysal Manssouri

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In traditional models of insurance data, the number and size of claims are assumed to be independent. Relaxing the independence assumption, this article explores the Vine copula to model dependence structure between multivariate frequency and average severity of insurance claim. To illustrate this approach, we use the Wisconsin local government property insurance fund which offers several insurance protections for motor vehicles, property and contractor’s equipment claims. Results show that the C-vine copula can better characterize the multivariate dependence structure between frequency and severity. Furthermore, we find significant dependencies especially between frequency and average severity among different coverage types.

Keywords: dependency modeling, government insurance, insurance claims, vine copula

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Authors: Maria Christine Rizzon Cintra, Tâmara Duarte Borges, Cristina Santos Sotomaior

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Lamb’s fleece quality can be influenced by many factors, including welfare, stress, nutritional imbalance and presence of ectoparasites. The association of fleece quality and endoparasitism, until now, was not well solved. The present study was undertaken to evaluate if a fleece visual score could predict lamb parasitosis with the focus on gastrointestinal parasites. Fleece quality was scored based on a combination of cleanliness and wool cover, using a three-point scale (1-3). Score 1: fleece shows no sign of dirt or contamination, and had sufficient fleece for the breed and time of year with whole body coverage; Score 2: fleece was little damp or wet, with coat contaminated by small patches of mud or dung and some areas of fleece loose, but no shed or bald patches of no more than 10cm in diameter; Score 3: fleece filthy, very wet with coated in mud or dug, and loose fleece with shed areas of pulls with bald patches greater than 10cm, some areas may be trailing. All fleece quality scores (FQS) were assessed with lamb restrained to ensure close inspection and were done along lamb back and considered just one side of the body. To confirm the gastrointestinal parasites and animal’s anemia, faecal egg counts (FEC) and hematocrit were done for each animal. Lambs were also weighed. All these measurements were done every 15-days, beginning at 60-days until 150-days of life, using 48 animals crossed Texel x Ile de France. For statistics analysis, it was used Stratigraphic Program (4.1. version), and all significant differences between FQS, weight gain, age, hematocrit, and FEC were assessed using analysis of variance following by Duncan test, and the correlation was done by Pearson test at P<0.05. Results showed that animals scored as ‘3’ in FQS had a lower hematocrit and a higher FEC (p<0.05) than animals scored as ‘1’ (hematocrit: 26, 24, 23 and FEC 2107, 2962, 4626 respectively for 1, 2 and 3 FQS). There were correlations between FQS and FEC (r = 0.16), FQS and hematocrit (r = -0.33) an FQS and weight gain (r = -0.20) indicating that worst FQS animals (score 3) had greater gastrointestinal parasites’ infection, were more anemic and had lower weight gain than animals scored as ‘1’ or ‘2’ for FQS. Concerning the lamb´s age, animals that received score ‘3’ in FQS, maintained gastrointestinal parasites’ infection over the time (P<0.05). It was concluded that FQS could be an important indicator to be included in the selective treatment for control verminosis in lambs.

Keywords: fleece, gastrointestinal parasites, sheep, welfare

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Authors: F. Argurio, F. G. Vaccaro

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In a global environment defined by ever-increasing health issues, in spite of the progress made by modern medicine, this paper seeks to readdress the question of global health in an international relations perspective. The research hypothesis is: the lower the security environment, the higher the spread of communicable diseases. This question will be channeled by re-scaling the connotation of 'global' and 'international' dimension through the theoretical lens of glocalization, a theory by Bauman that starts its analysis from simple systems to get to the most complex ones. Glocalization theory will be operationalized by analyzing health in an armed-conflict context. In this respect, the independent variable 'low security environment' translates into the cases of Syria and Yemen, which provide a clear example of the all-encompassing nature of conflict on national health and the effects on regional development. In fact, Syria and Yemen have been affected by poliomyelitis and cholera outbreaks respectively. The dependent variable will be constructed on said communicable diseases which belong to the families of sanitation-related and vaccine-preventable diseases. The research will be both qualitative and quantitative, based on primary (interviews) and secondary (WHO and other NGO’s reports) sources. The methodology is based on the assessment of the vaccine coverage and case-analysis in time and space using epidemiological data. Moreover, local health facilities’ functioning and efficiency will be studied. The article posits that the intervention and cooperation of international organizations with the local authorities becomes crucial to provide the local populations with their primary health needs. In Yemen, the majority of fatal cholera cases were in the regions controlled by the Houthi rebels, not officially accredited by the International Community. Similarly, the polio outbreak in Syria primarily affected the areas not controlled by the Syrian Arab Republic forces, recognized as the leading interlocutor by the WHO. The jeopardized possibilities to access these countries have been pivotal to the determining the problem in controlling sanitation-related and vaccine preventable diseases. This represents a potential threat to global health.

Keywords: health in conflict-affected areas, cholera, polio, Yemen, Syria, glocalization

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Authors: Alexandra McKinzie, Lucy Brown, Sarah Komanapalli, Sarah Swiezy, Caitlin Bernard

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Background: While 25% of US women will seek an abortion before age 45, targeted laws have led to a decline in abortion clinics, subsequently leaving 96% of Indiana counties and the 70% of Hoosier women residing in these counties without access to services they desperately need.1,2 Despite the need for a physician workforce that is educated and able to provide full-spectrum reproductive health care, few medical institutions have a standardized family planning and abortion pre-clinical curriculum. Methods: A Qualtrics survey was disseminated to students from Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) to evaluate (1) student interest in curriculum reform, (2) self-assessed preparedness to counsel on contraceptive and pregnancy options, and (3) preferred modality of instruction for family planning and abortion topics. Based on the pre-panel survey feedback, a case-based pregnancy options counseling panel will be implemented in the students’ pre-clinical, didactic course Endocrine, Reproductive, Musculoskeletal, Dermatologic Systems (ERMD) in February 2022. A Qualtrics post-panel survey will be disseminated to evaluate students’ perceived efficacy and quality of the panel, as well as their self-assessed preparedness to counsel on pregnancy options. Results: Participants in the pre-panel survey (n=303) were primarily female (61.72%) and White (74.43%). Across all class levels, many (60.80%) students expected to learn about family planning and abortion in their pre-clinical education. While most (84-88%) participants felt prepared to counsel about common, non-controversial pharmacotherapies (e.g. beta-blockers and diuretics), only 20% of students felt prepared to counsel on abortion options. Overall, 85.67% of students believed that IUSM should enhance its reproductive health coverage in pre-clinical, didactic courses. Traditional lectures, panels, and direct clinical exposure were the most popular instructional modalities. Expected Results: The authors predict that following the panel, students will indicate improved confidence in providing pregnancy options counseling. Additionally, students will provide constructive feedback on the structure and content of the panel for incorporation into future years’ curriculum. Conclusions: IUSM students overwhelmingly expressed interest in expanding their pre-clinical curriculum’s coverage of family planning and abortion topics. To specifically improve students’ self-assessed preparedness to provide pregnancy options counseling and address students’ self-cited learning gaps, a case-based provider panel session will be implemented in response to students’ preferred modality feedback.

Keywords: options counseling, family planning, abortion, curriculum reform, case-based panel

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Authors: Ebenezer Kwesi Armah-Ansah, Kenneth Fosu Oteng, Esther Selasi Avinu, Eugene Budu, Edward Kwabena Ameyaw

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Background: Maternal mortality, particularly in Benin, is a major public health concern in Sub-Saharan Africa. To provide a positive pregnancy experience and reduce maternal morbidities, all pregnant women must get appropriate and timely prenatal support. However, many pregnant women in developing countries, including Benin, begin antenatal care late. There is a paucity of empirical literature on the prevalence and predictors of early antenatal care visits in Benin. As a result, the purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and predictors of early antenatal care visits among women of productive age in Benin. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of the 2017/2018 Benin Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) data. The study involved 6,919 eligible women. Data analysis was conducted using Stata version 14.2 for Mac OS. We adopted a multilevel logistic regression to examine the predictors of early ANC visits in Benin. The results were presented as odds ratios (ORs) associated with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and p-value <0.05 to determine the significant associations. Results: The prevalence of early ANC visits among pregnant women in Benin was 57.03% [95% CI: 55.41-58.64]. In the final multilevel logistic regression, early ANC visit was higher among women aged 30-34 [aOR=1.60, 95% CI=1.17-2.18] compared to those aged 15-19, women with primary education [aOR=1.22, 95% CI=1.06-142] compared to the non-educated women, women who were covered by health insurance [aOR=3.03, 95% CI=1.35-6.76], women without a big problem in getting the money needed for treatment [aOR=1.31, 95% CI=1.16-1.49], distance to the health facility, not a big problem [aOR=1.23, 95% CI=1.08-1.41], and women whose partners had secondary/higher education [aOR=1.35, 95% CI=1.15-1.57] compared with those who were not covered by health insurance, had big problem in getting money needed for treatment, distance to health facility is a big problem and whose partners had no education respectively. However, women who had four or more births [aOR=0.60, 95% CI=0.48-0.74] and those in Atacora Region [aOR=0.50, 95% CI=0.37-0.68] had lower odds of early ANC visit. Conclusion: This study revealed a relatively high prevalence of early ANC visits among women of reproductive age in Benin. Women's age, educational status of women and their partners, parity, health insurance coverage, distance to health facilities, and region were all associated with early ANC visits among women of reproductive in Benin. These factors ought to be taken into account when developing ANC policies and strategies in order to boost early ANC visits among women in Benin. This will significantly reduce maternal and newborn mortality and help achieve the World Health Organization’s recommendation that all pregnant women should initiate early ANC visits within the first three months of pregnancy.

Keywords: antenatal care, Benin, maternal health, pregnancy, DHS, public health

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Authors: Min Han, Di Wu, Lin Yuan, Fei Liu

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Mechanical sensors have undergone a continuous evolution and have become an important part of many industries, ranging from manufacturing to process, chemicals, machinery, health-care, environmental monitoring, automotive, avionics, and household appliances. Concurrently, the microelectronics and microfabrication technology have provided us with the means of producing mechanical microsensors characterized by high sensitivity, small size, integrated electronics, on board calibration, and low cost. Here we report a new kind of mechanical sensors based on the quantum transport process of electrons in the closely spaced nanoparticle films covering a flexible polymer sheet. The nanoparticle films were fabricated by gas phase depositing of preformed metal nanoparticles with a controlled coverage on the electrodes. To amplify the conductance of the nanoparticle array, we fabricated silver interdigital electrodes on polyethylene terephthalate(PET) by mask evaporation deposition. The gaps of the electrodes ranged from 3 to 30μm. Metal nanoparticles were generated from a magnetron plasma gas aggregation cluster source and deposited on the interdigital electrodes. Closely spaced nanoparticle arrays with different coverage could be gained through real-time monitoring the conductance. In the film coulomb blockade and quantum, tunneling/hopping dominate the electronic conduction mechanism. The basic principle of the mechanical sensors relies on the mechanical deformation of the fabricated devices which are translated into electrical signals. Several kinds of sensing devices have been explored. As a strain sensor, the device showed a high sensitivity as well as a very wide dynamic range. A gauge factor as large as 100 or more was demonstrated, which can be at least one order of magnitude higher than that of the conventional metal foil gauges or even better than that of the semiconductor-based gauges with a workable maximum applied strain beyond 3%. And the strain sensors have a workable maximum applied strain larger than 3%. They provide the potential to be a new generation of strain sensors with performance superior to that of the currently existing strain sensors including metallic strain gauges and semiconductor strain gauges. When integrated into a pressure gauge, the devices demonstrated the ability to measure tiny pressure change as small as 20Pa near the atmospheric pressure. Quantitative vibration measurements were realized on a free-standing cantilever structure fabricated with closely-spaced nanoparticle array sensing element. What is more, the mechanical sensor elements can be easily scaled down, which is feasible for MEMS and NEMS applications.

Keywords: gas phase deposition, mechanical sensors, metallic nanoparticle arrays, quantum conductance

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Authors: Prajwal Prakash Vasisht, Sharath Rajamurthy, Nishanth Dara

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In a supervised machine learning approach, metrics such as precision, accuracy, and coverage can be calculated using ground truth labels to help in model tuning, evaluation, and selection. In an unsupervised setting, however, where the data has no ground truth, there are few interpretable metrics that can guide us to do the same. Our approach creates a framework to adapt the Intersection over Union metric, referred to as Adapted IoU, usually used to evaluate supervised learning models, into the unsupervised domain, which solves the problem by factoring in subject matter expertise and intuition about the ideal output from the model. This metric essentially provides a scale that allows us to compare the performance across numerous unsupervised models or tune hyper-parameters and compare different versions of the same model.

Keywords: general metric, unsupervised learning, classification, intersection over union

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Authors: W. S. Li, S. T. Yang, H. C. Cheng

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The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the perovskite solar cells has been achieved by inserting vertically-aligned ZnO nanowires (NWs) between the cathode and the active layer and shows better solar cells performance. Perovskite solar cells have drawn significant attention due to the superb efficiency and low-cost fabrication process. In this experiment, ZnO nanowires are used as the electron transport layer (ETL) due to its low temperature process. The main idea of this thesis is utilizing the 3D structures of the hydrothermally-grown ZnO nanowires to increase the junction area to improve the photovoltaic performance of the perovskite solar cells. The infiltration and the surface coverage of the perovskite precursor solution changed as tuning the length of the ZnO nanowires. It is revealed that the devices with ZnO nanowires of 150 nm demonstrated the best PCE of 8.46 % under the AM 1.5G illumination (100 mW/cm2).

Keywords: hydrothermally-grown ZnO nanowires, perovskite solar cells, low temperature process, pinholes

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Authors: Asmat Nawaz, Ali Koray Erdinc, Burak Gultekin, Muhammad Tayyib, Ceylan Zafer, Kaiying Wang, M. Nadeem Akram

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In this study, a sequential deposition process is used for the fabrication of PEDOT: PSS based inverted planar perovskite solar cell. A small amount of additive deionized water (DI-H₂O) was added into PbI₂ + Dimethyl formamide (DMF) precursor solution in order to increase the solubility of PbI₂ in DMF, and finally to manipulate the surface morphology of the perovskite films. A morphology transition from needle like structure to hexagonal plates, and then needle-like again has been observed as the DI-H2O was added continuously (0.0 wt% to 3.0wt%). The latter one leads to full surface coverage of the perovskite, which is essential for high performance solar cell.

Keywords: charge carrier diffusion lengths, Methylamonium lead iodide, precursor composition, perovskite solar cell, sequential deposition

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Authors: Liu Yao, B. T. Wan Maseri, Wan Mohd, B. T. Nurul Izzah, Mohd Shah, Wei Wei

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Effectively managing knowledge has become a vital weapon for businesses to survive or to succeed in the increasingly competitive market. But do they perform environmental analysis when managing knowledge? If yes, how is the level and significance? This paper established a conceptual framework covering the basic knowledge management activities (KMA) to examine their contribution towards organizational performance (OP). Environmental analysis (EA) was then investigated from both internal and external aspects, to identify its effects on that contribution. Data was collected from 400 Chinese SMEs by questionnaires. Cronbach's α and factor analysis were conducted. Regression results show that the external analysis presents higher level than internal analysis. However, the internal analysis mediates the effects of external analysis on the KMA-OP relation and plays more significant role in the relation comparing with the external analysis. Thus, firms shall improve environmental analysis especially the internal analysis to enhance their KM practices.

Keywords: knowledge management, environmental analysis, performance, mediating, small sized enterprises, medium sized enterprises

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Authors: Aissa Hanifi

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People across different world societies are using information and communication technology (ICT) for different purposes. Unfortunately, in contemporary societies, some people have little access to ICT and thus cannot have effective participation in society compared with those who have better access. The purpose of this study is to test the impact of ICTs on university life in general and students' performance in particular. The study relied on an online survey questionnaire that was administered to 30 undergraduate students at Chef University. The findings of the survey revealed that there is still an important number of students who do not have easy access to ICT. Such limited access to ICTs is attributed to varied factors. Some students live in rural areas, where due to the poor internet coverage, they face difficulties in competing with students who live in urban areas with better ICT access. The lack of ICT access has hindered the students' university performance in general and their language skills, and the exchange of information with teachers and classmates.

Keywords: access, communication, ICT, performance, technology

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Authors: Praskovya Britskaya, Fatima Shaizadina, Alua Omarova, Nessipkul Alysheva

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Planned preventive vaccination, which is carried out in the Republic of Kazakhstan, promoted permanent decrease in the incidence of measles and viral hepatitis B. In the structure of VHB patients prevail people of young, working age. Monitoring of infectious incidence, monitoring of coverage of immunization of the population, random serological control over the immunity enable well-timed identification of distribution of the activator, effectiveness of the taken measures and forecasting. The serological blood analysis was conducted in indicator groups of the population of Central Kazakhstan for the purpose of identification of antibody titre for vaccine preventable infections (measles, viral hepatitis B). Measles antibodies were defined by method of enzyme-linked assay (ELA) with test-systems "VektoKor" – Ig G ('Vektor-Best' JSC). Antibodies for HBs-antigen of hepatitis B virus in blood serum was identified by method of enzyme-linked assay (ELA) with VektoHBsAg test systems – antibodies ('Vektor-Best' JSC). The result of the analysis is positive, the concentration of IgG to measles virus in the studied sample is equal to 0.18 IU/ml or more. Protective level of concentration of anti-HBsAg makes 10 mIU/ml. The results of the study of postvaccinal measles immunity showed that the share of seropositive people made 87.7% of total number of surveyed. The level of postvaccinal immunity to measles in age groups differs. So, among people older than 56 the percentage of seropositive made 95.2%. Among people aged 15-25 were registered 87.0% seropositive, at the age of 36-45 – 86.6%. In age groups of 25-35 and 36-45 the share of seropositive people was approximately at the same level – 88.5% and 88.8% respectively. The share of people seronegative to a measles virus made 12.3%. The biggest share of seronegative people was found among people aged 36-45 – 13.4% and 15-25 – 13.0%. The analysis of results of the examined people for the existence of postvaccinal immunity to viral hepatitis B showed that from all surveyed only 33.5% have the protective level of concentration of anti-HBsAg of 10 mIU/ml and more. The biggest share of people protected from VHB virus is observed in the age group of 36-45 and makes 60%. In the indicator group – above 56 – seropositive people made 4.8%. The high percentage of seronegative people has been observed in all studied age groups from 40.0% to 95.2%. The group of people which is least protected from getting VHB is people above 56 (95.2%). The probability to get VHB is also high among young people aged 25-35, the percentage of seronegative people made 80%. Thus, the results of the conducted research testify to the need for carrying out serological monitoring of postvaccinal immunity for the purpose of operational assessment of the epidemiological situation, early identification of its changes and prediction of the approaching danger.

Keywords: antibodies, blood serum, immunity, immunoglobulin

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Authors: Marie Madeleine Sarzi Inacio, Ligiane Carolina Leite Dauzacker, Rodrigo Henriques Lopes Da Silva

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The climate changes resulting from human activity have increased interest in more sustainable production practices to reduce and offset pollutant emissions. Brazil, with its vast areas capable of carbon absorption, holds a significant advantage in this context. However, to optimize the country's sustainable potential, it is important to establish a robust carbon market with clear rules for the eligibility and validation of projects aimed at reducing and offsetting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. In this study, our objective is to conduct a feasibility analysis through a case study to evaluate the implementation of an urban forest credits standard in Brazil, using the Urban Forest Credits (UFC) model implemented in the United States as a reference. Thus, the city of Ribeirão Preto, located in Brazil, was selected to assess the availability of green areas. With the CO2 emissions value from the metalworking industry, it was possible to analyze information in the case study, considering the activity. The QGIS software was used to map potential urban forest areas, which can connect to various types of geospatial databases. Although the chosen municipality has little vegetative coverage, the mapping identified at least eight areas that fit the standard definitions within the delimited urban perimeter. The outlook was positive, and the implementation of projects like Urban Forest Credits (UFC) adapted to the Brazilian reality has great potential to benefit the country in the carbon market and contribute to achieving its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction goals.

Keywords: carbon neutrality, metalworking industry, carbon credits, urban forestry credits

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Authors: Megan Burfoot, Shanta Budha-Magar, Ali Ghaffarianhoseini, Amirhoseini Ghaffarianhoseini

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Domestic backyards offer a valuable opportunity to contribute to biodiversity conservation efforts and promote ecological sustainability by cultivating native plant species. This study focuses on assessing the presence and maintenance of native plants in New Zealand's residential gardens through an online questionnaire. The survey was designed to collect data on the presence of native, exotic, and lawn plants in New Zealand backyards, alongside the allocation of maintenance resources for each category. Targeting a diverse range of residents and property sizes from different regions of New Zealand, this study sought to gain essential insights into practices related to native plant cultivation. Results reveal there is a collective inclination to reduce lawn coverage and introduce a higher abundance of native and exotic species. A thorough analysis of maintenance practices reveals a significant portion of respondents embracing environmentally friendly gardening, characterized by low-intensity fertilizer usage. Homeowners, especially those residing in their properties, demonstrate proactive engagement in backyard maintenance. Native plants were found to require more time, money and fertilizer for maintenance than those of exotic and lawn species. The insights gained from this study can guide targeted efforts to enhance urban biodiversity, making a significant contribution to the preservation and enrichment of New Zealand's unique biodiversity and ecological heritage in urban settings.

Keywords: biodiversity, backyards, planting behaviour, backyard maintenance, native planting

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Authors: Shah Fahad

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Managing the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects is a pressing concern for achieving sustainable urban development and ensuring thermal comfort in major cities of developing nations, such as Lahore, Pakistan. The current UHI effect is mostly triggered by climate change and rapid urbanization. This study explored UHI over the Lahore district and its adjoining urban and rural-urban fringe areas. Landsat satellite data was utilized to investigate spatiotemporal patterns of Land Use and Land Cover changes (LULC), Land Surface Temperature (LST), UHI, Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and Urban Thermal Field Variance Index (UTFVI). The built-up area increased very fast, with a coverage of 22.99% in 2000, 36.06% in 2010, and 47.17% in 2020, while vegetation covered 53.21 % in 2000 and 46.16 % in 2020. It also revealed a significant increase in the mean LST, from 33°C in 2000 to 34.8°C in 2020. The results indicated a significantly positive correlation between LST and NDBI, a weak correlation was also observed between LST and NDVI. The study used scatterplots to show the correlation between NDBI and NDVI with LST, results revealed that the NDBI and LST had an R² value of 0.6831 in 2000 and 0.06541 in 2022, while NDVI and LST had an R² value of 0.0235 in 1998 and 0.0295 in 2022. Proper environmental planning is vital in specific locations to enhance quality of life, protect the ecosystem, and mitigate climate change impacts.

Keywords: land use land cover, spatio-temporal analysis, remote sensing, land surface temperature, urban heat island, lahore pakistan

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Authors: Patrick Nüß

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I estimate management opposition against unions in terms of hiring discrimination by a large scale field experiment in the German labor market. The results show that callback rates for union members decrease significantly in the presence of high sectoral union density and large firm size. I further explore how this effect varies with regional and sectoral labor dispute intensity and find that management opposition is stronger when a sector is exposed to an intense labor dispute. There is evidence that the observed management opposition can be explained by sectoral union threat effects. Sectors with lower hiring discrimination have lower coverage of collective agreements, and in the absence of a collective agreement, they are less likely to follow the collective agreement wage setting.

Keywords: trade unions, Industrial relations, management opposition, union threat, labor disputes, field experiments

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Authors: Asmamaw Yehun, Tsegaye Kassa, Addisu Hunegnaw, Martin Vermeer

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There are various models to estimate the neutral atmospheric parameter values, such as in-suite and reanalysis datasets from numerical models. Accurate estimated values of the atmospheric parameters are useful for weather forecasting and, climate modeling and monitoring of climate change. Recently, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements have been applied for atmospheric sounding due to its robust data quality and wide horizontal and vertical coverage. The Global Positioning System (GPS) solutions that includes tropospheric parameters constitute a reliable set of data to be assimilated into climate models. The objective of this paper is, to estimate the neutral atmospheric parameters such as Wet Zenith Delay (WZD), Precipitable Water Vapour (PWV) and Total Zenith Delay (TZD) using six selected GPS stations in the equatorial regions, more precisely, the Ethiopian GPS stations from 2012 to 2015 observational data. Based on historic estimated GPS-derived values of PWV, we forecasted the PWV from 2015 to 2030. During data processing and analysis, we applied GAMIT-GLOBK software packages to estimate the atmospheric parameters. In the result, we found that the annual averaged minimum values of PWV are 9.72 mm for IISC and maximum 50.37 mm for BJCO stations. The annual averaged minimum values of WZD are 6 cm for IISC and maximum 31 cm for BDMT stations. In the long series of observations (from 2012 to 2015), we also found that there is a trend and cyclic patterns of WZD, PWV and TZD for all stations.

Keywords: atmosphere, GNSS, neutral atmosphere, precipitable water vapour

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Authors: Meng Xu, Alexis K. H. Lau, Ming Xu, Bill Barron, Narges Shahraki

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As an emerging unconventional energy, shale gas has been an economically viable step towards a cleaner energy future in U.S. China also has shale resources that are estimated to be potentially the largest in the world. In addition, China has enormous unmet for a clean alternative to substitute coal. Nonetheless, the geological complexity of China’s shale basins and issues of water scarcity potentially impose serious constraints on shale gas development in China. Further, even if China could replicate to a significant degree the U.S. shale gas boom, China faces the problem of transporting the gas efficiently overland with its limited pipeline network throughput capacity and coverage. The aim of this study is to identify the potential bottlenecks in China’s gas transmission network, as well as to examine the shale gas development affecting particular supply locations and demand centers. We examine this through application of three scenarios with projecting domestic shale gas supply by 2020: optimistic, medium and conservative shale gas supply, taking references from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) projections and China’s shale gas development plans. Separately we project the gas demand at provincial level, since shale gas will have more significant impact regionally than nationally. To quantitatively assess each shale gas development scenario, we formulated a gas pipeline optimization model. We used ArcGIS to generate the connectivity parameters and pipeline segment length. Other parameters are collected from provincial “twelfth-five year” plans and “China Oil and Gas Pipeline Atlas”. The multi-objective optimization model uses GAMs and Matlab. It aims to minimize the demands that are unable to be met, while simultaneously seeking to minimize total gas supply and transmission costs. The results indicate that, even if the primary objective is to meet the projected gas demand rather than cost minimization, there’s a shortfall of 9% in meeting total demand under the medium scenario. Comparing the results between the optimistic and medium supply of shale gas scenarios, almost half of the shale gas produced in Sichuan province and Chongqing won’t be able to be transmitted out by pipeline. On the demand side, the Henan province and Shanghai gas demand gap could be filled as much as 82% and 39% respectively, with increased shale gas supply. To conclude, the pipeline network in China is currently not sufficient in meeting the projected natural gas demand in 2020 under medium and optimistic scenarios, indicating the need for substantial pipeline capacity expansion for some of the existing network, and the importance of constructing new pipelines from particular supply to demand sites. If the pipeline constraint is overcame, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Henan’s gas demand gap could potentially be filled, and China could thereby reduce almost 25% its dependency on LNG imports under the optimistic scenario.

Keywords: energy policy, energy systematic analysis, scenario analysis, shale gas in China

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Authors: Assad Maalouf, Lunjin Lu, James Lynott

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We present a taint analysis that can automatically detect when string operations result in a string that is free of taints, where all the tainted patterns have been removed. This is an improvement on the conservative behavior of previous taint analyzers, where a string operation on a tainted string always leads to a tainted string unless the operation is manually marked as a sanitizer. The taint analysis is built on top of a string analysis that uses finite state automata to approximate the sets of values that string variables can take during the execution of a program. The proposed approach has been implemented as an extension of FlowDroid and experimental results show that the resulting taint analyzer is much more precise than the original FlowDroid.

Keywords: android, static analysis, string analysis, taint analysis

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Authors: Ali Vaezi, Jyotirmoy Dalal, Manish Verma

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The railroad is one of the primary transportation modes for hazardous materials (hazmat) shipments in North America. Installing an emergency response network capable of providing a commensurate response is one of the primary levers to contain (or mitigate) the adverse consequences from rail hazmat incidents. To this end, we propose a two-stage stochastic program to determine the location of and equipment packages to be stockpiled at each response facility. The raw input data collected from publicly available reports were processed, fed into the proposed optimization program, and then tested on a realistic railroad network in Ontario (Canada). From the resulting analyses, we conclude that the decisions based only on empirical datasets would undermine the effectiveness of the resulting network; coverage can be improved by redistributing equipment in the network, purchasing equipment with higher containment capacity, and making use of a disutility multiplier factor.

Keywords: hazmat, rail network, stochastic programming, emergency response

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Authors: Shailender Kumar

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Current health policy pronouncements in India advocate for insurance-based financing mechanism to achieve universal health coverage (UHC), while undermine the role of comprehensive healthcare provision system. UHC is achieved when all people receive the health services they need without suffering financial hardship. This study, using 68th & 71st NSS rounds data, examines their relative and combined strength in achieving the above objective. Health-insurance has been unsuccessful in reducing prevalence and catastrophic effects of out-of-pocket payment and even dismantle the effectiveness of traditional way of health financing system. Healthcare provision is the best way forward to enhance health and well-being of households in condition if India removes existing inadequacies and inequalities in service provision across districts/states and ensure free/low cost medicines/diagnostics to the citizens.

Keywords: health policy, demand-side financing, supply-side financing, incidence of health payment

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Authors: Proud Arunrangsiwed

Abstract:

The part of “future direction” in the findings of meta-analysis could provide the great direction to conduct the future studies. This study, “The Documentary Analysis of Meta-Analysis Research in Violence of Media” would conclude “future directions” out of 10 meta-analysis papers. The purposes of this research are to find an appropriate research design or an appropriate methodology for the future research related to the topic, “violence of media”. Further research needs to explore by longitudinal and experimental design, and also needs to have a careful consideration about age effects, time spent effects, enjoyment effects, and ordinary lifestyle of each media consumer.

Keywords: aggressive, future direction, meta-analysis, media, violence

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Authors: Lior B. Navon

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The objective of this study is to investigate how technology, such as social media, can influence the biopower hierarchy between the medical knowledge about the body and women’s bodily knowledge through the case study of the hashtag 'notpee'. In January 2015, the hashtag #notpee, relating to a feminine physiological phenomenon called female ejaculation (FE) or squirting (SQ) started circulating on twitter. This hashtag, born as a reaction to a medical study claiming that SQ is essentially involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity, sparked an unusual public discourse about FE, a phenomenon that is usually not discussed or referred to in socio-legitimate public spheres. This unusual backlash got the attention of women’s magazines and blogs, as well as more mainstream large and respected outlets such as The Guardian and CNN. Both the tweets on twitter, as well as the media coverage of them, were mainly aimed at rejecting the research’s findings. While not offering an alternative and choosing to define the phenomenon by negation, women argued that the fluid extracted was not pee based on their personal experiences. Based on a critical discourse analysis of 742 tweets with the hashtag 'notpee' between January 2015 and January 2016, and of 15 articles covering the backlash, this study suggests that the #notpee backlash challenged the power balance between the medical knowledge about the feminine body and the feminine bodily knowledge through two different, yet related, forms of resistance to biopower. The first resistance is to the authority over knowledge production — who has the power to produce 'true' statements when it comes to the body? Is it the women who experience the phenomenon, or is it the medical institution? The second resistance to biopower has to do with what we regard as facts or veracity. A critical discourse analysis reveals that while both the scientific field, as well as the women arguing against its findings, use empirical information, they, nevertheless, rely on two dichotomic databases- while the scientific research relies on samples from the 'dead like body', these woman are relying on their lived subjective senses as a source for fact making. Nevertheless, while #notpee is asking to change the power relations between the feminine subjective bodily knowledge and the seemingly objective masculine medical knowledge about the body, it by no means dismisses it. These women are essentially asking the medical institution to take into consideration the subjective body as well as the objective one while acknowledging and accepting the power of the latter over knowledge production.

Keywords: biopower, female ejaculation, new media, bodily knowledge

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Authors: Domenico M. Mongelli, Michele De Carli, Laura Carnieletto, Filippo Busato

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Europe's dependence on imported fossil fuels has been particularly highlighted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Limiting this dependency with a massive replacement of fossil fuel boilers with heat pumps for building heating is the goal of this work. Therefore, with the aim of diversifying energy sources and evaluating the potential use of heat pump technologies for residential buildings with a view to decarbonization, the quantitative reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels was investigated in all regions of Europe through the use of heat pumps. First, a general overview of energy consumption in buildings in Europe has been assessed. The consumption of buildings has been addressed to the different uses (heating, cooling, DHW, etc.) as well as the different sources (natural gas, oil, biomass, etc.). The analysis has been done in order to provide a baseline at the European level on the current consumptions and future consumptions, with a particular interest in the future increase of cooling. A database was therefore created on the distribution of residential energy consumption linked to air conditioning among the various energy carriers (electricity, waste heat, gas, solid fossil fuels, liquid fossil fuels, and renewable sources) for each region in Europe. Subsequently, the energy profiles of various European cities representative of the different climates are analyzed in order to evaluate, in each European climatic region, which energy coverage can be provided by heat pumps in replacement of natural gas and solid and liquid fossil fuels for air conditioning of the buildings, also carrying out the environmental and economic assessments for this energy transition operation. This work aims to make an innovative contribution to the evaluation of the potential for introducing heat pump technology for decarbonization in the air conditioning of buildings in all climates of the different European regions.

Keywords: heat pumps, heating, decarbonization, energy policies

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Authors: Juan Cuesta

Abstract:

Satellite observation is a fundamental component of air pollution monitoring systems, such as the large-scale Copernicus Programme. Next-generation satellite sensors, in orbit or programmed in the future, offer great potential to observe major air pollutants, such as tropospheric ozone, with unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage. However, satellite approaches developed for remote sensing of tropospheric ozone are based solely on measurements from a single instrument in a specific spectral range, either thermal infrared or ultraviolet. These methods offer sensitivity to tropospheric ozone located at the lowest at 3 or 4 km altitude above the surface, thus limiting their applications for ozone pollution analysis. Indeed, no current observation of a single spectral domain provides enough information to accurately measure ozone in the atmospheric boundary layer. To overcome this limitation, we have developed a multispectral synergism approach, called "IASI+GOME2", at the Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA) laboratory. This method is based on the synergy of thermal infrared and ultraviolet observations of respectively the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) and the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) sensors embedded in MetOp satellites that have been in orbit since 2007. IASI+GOME2 allowed the first satellite observation of ozone plumes located between the surface and 3 km of altitude (what we call the lowermost troposphere), as it offers significant sensitivity in this layer. This represents a major advance for the observation of ozone in the lowermost troposphere and its application to air quality analysis. The ozone abundance derived by IASI+GOME2 shows a good agreement with respect to independent observations of ozone based on ozone sondes (a low mean bias, a linear correlation larger than 0.8 and a mean precision of about 16 %) around the world during all seasons. Using IASI+GOME2, lowermost tropospheric ozone pollution plumes are quantified both in terms of concentrations and also in the amounts of ozone photo-chemically produced along transport and also enabling the characterization of the ozone pollution, such as what occurred during the lockdowns linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current paper will show the IASI+GOME2 multispectral approach to observe the lowermost tropospheric ozone from space and an overview of several applications on different continents and at a global scale.

Keywords: ozone pollution, multispectral synergism, satellite, air quality

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Authors: Nazri Kama, Sufyan Basri, Roslina Ibrahim

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It is important to manage the changes in the software to meet the evolving needs of the customer. Accepting too many changes causes delay in the completion and it incurs additional cost. One type of information that helps to make the decision is through change impact analysis. Current impact analysis approaches assume that all classes in the class artifact are completely developed and the class artifact is used as a source of analysis. However, these assumptions are impractical for impact analysis in the software development phase as some classes in the class artifact are still under development or partially developed that leads to inaccuracy. This paper presents a novel impact analysis approach to be used in the software development phase. The significant achievements of the approach are demonstrated through an extensive experimental validation using three case studies.

Keywords: software development, impact analysis, traceability, static analysis.

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Authors: Sachin Nagargoje

Abstract:

Complete labeled data is often difficult to obtain in a practical scenario. Even if one manages to obtain the data, the quality of the data is always in question. In shopping vertical, offers are the input data, which is given by advertiser with or without a good quality of information. In this paper, an author investigated the possibility of using a very simple Semi-supervised learning approach to increase the recall of unhealthy offers (has badly written Offer Title or partial product details) in shopping vertical domain. The author found that the semisupervised learning method had improved the recall in the Smart Phone category by 30% on A=B testing on 10% traffic and increased the YoY (Year over Year) number of impressions per month by 33% at production. This also made a significant increase in Revenue, but that cannot be publicly disclosed.

Keywords: semi-supervised learning, clustering, recall, coverage

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