Search results for: resource estimation

Authors: Andrea N. Ofori-Boadu

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The purpose is to develop a conceptual model of subcontractor development practices and processes that strengthen the integration of subcontractors into construction supply chain systems for improved subcontractor performance on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building projects. The construction management of a LEED project has an important objective of meeting sustainability certification requirements. This is in addition to the typical project management objectives of cost, time, quality, and safety for traditional projects; and, therefore increases the complexity of LEED projects. Considering that construction management organizations rely heavily on subcontractors, poor performance on complex projects such as LEED projects has been largely attributed to the unsatisfactory preparation of subcontractors. Furthermore, the extensive use of unique and non-repetitive short term contracts limits the full integration of subcontractors into construction supply chains and hinders long-term cooperation and benefits that could enhance performance on construction projects. Improved subcontractor development practices are needed to better prepare and manage subcontractors, so that complex objectives can be met or exceeded. While supplier development and supply chain theories and practices for the manufacturing sector have been extensively investigated to address similar challenges, investigations in the construction sector are not that obvious. Consequently, the objective of this research is to investigate effective subcontractor development practices and processes to guide construction management organizations in their development of a strong network of high performing subcontractors. Drawing from foundational supply chain and supplier development theories in the manufacturing sector, a mixed interpretivist and empirical methodology is utilized to assess the body of knowledge within literature for conceptual model development. A self-reporting survey with five-point Likert scale items and open-ended questions is administered to 30 construction professionals to estimate their perceptions of the effectiveness of 37 practices, classified into five subcontractor development categories. Data analysis includes descriptive statistics, weighted means, and t-tests that guide the effectiveness ranking of practices and categories. The results inform the proposed three-phased LEED subcontractor development program model which focuses on preparation, development and implementation, and monitoring. Highly ranked LEED subcontractor pre-qualification, commitment, incentives, evaluation, and feedback practices are perceived as more effective, when compared to practices requiring more direct involvement and linkages between subcontractors and construction management organizations. This is attributed to unfamiliarity, conflicting interests, lack of trust, and resource sharing challenges. With strategic modifications, the recommended practices can be extended to other non-LEED complex projects. Additional research is needed to guide the development of subcontractor development programs that strengthen direct involvement between construction management organizations and their network of high performing subcontractors. Insights from this present research strengthen theoretical foundations to support future research towards more integrated construction supply chains. In the long-term, this would lead to increased performance, profits and client satisfaction.

Keywords: construction management, general contractor, supply chain, sustainable construction

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Authors: Kaleem Kashif, Tayyaba Anam, Yizhi Wu

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This paper introduces a methodology for advancing Italian speech vowels landmark detection within the distinctive feature-based speech recognition domain. Leveraging the legacy tool 'xkl' by integrating combined convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), the study presents a comprehensive enhancement to the 'xkl' legacy software. This integration incorporates re-assigned spectrogram methodologies, enabling meticulous acoustic analysis. Simultaneously, our proposed model, integrating combined CNNs and RNNs, demonstrates unprecedented precision and robustness in landmark detection. The augmentation of re-assigned spectrogram fusion within the 'xkl' software signifies a meticulous advancement, particularly enhancing precision related to vowel formant estimation. This augmentation catalyzes unparalleled accuracy in landmark detection, resulting in a substantial performance leap compared to conventional methods. The proposed model emerges as a state-of-the-art solution in the distinctive feature-based speech recognition systems domain. In the realm of deep learning, a synergistic integration of combined CNNs and RNNs is introduced, endowed with specialized temporal embeddings, harnessing self-attention mechanisms, and positional embeddings. The proposed model allows it to excel in capturing intricate dependencies within Italian speech vowels, rendering it highly adaptable and sophisticated in the distinctive feature domain. Furthermore, our advanced temporal modeling approach employs Bayesian temporal encoding, refining the measurement of inter-landmark intervals. Comparative analysis against state-of-the-art models reveals a substantial improvement in accuracy, highlighting the robustness and efficacy of the proposed methodology. Upon rigorous testing on a database (LaMIT) speech recorded in a silent room by four Italian native speakers, the landmark detector demonstrates exceptional performance, achieving a 95% true detection rate and a 10% false detection rate. A majority of missed landmarks were observed in proximity to reduced vowels. These promising results underscore the robust identifiability of landmarks within the speech waveform, establishing the feasibility of employing a landmark detector as a front end in a speech recognition system. The synergistic integration of re-assigned spectrogram fusion, CNNs, RNNs, and Bayesian temporal encoding not only signifies a significant advancement in Italian speech vowels landmark detection but also positions the proposed model as a leader in the field. The model offers distinct advantages, including unparalleled accuracy, adaptability, and sophistication, marking a milestone in the intersection of deep learning and distinctive feature-based speech recognition. This work contributes to the broader scientific community by presenting a methodologically rigorous framework for enhancing landmark detection accuracy in Italian speech vowels. The integration of cutting-edge techniques establishes a foundation for future advancements in speech signal processing, emphasizing the potential of the proposed model in practical applications across various domains requiring robust speech recognition systems.

Keywords: landmark detection, acoustic analysis, convolutional neural network, recurrent neural network

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Authors: Ekta Yadav, Sukanta Bhattacharya, Brijesh Yadav, Ariel Hus, Jagjit Yadav

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Background and Significance: Respiratory exposure to toxicants (chemicals or particulates) causes disruption of lung homeostasis leading to lung toxicity/injury manifested as pulmonary inflammation, edema, and/or other effects depending on the type and extent of exposure. This emphasizes the need for investigating toxicant type-specific mechanisms to understand therapeutic targets. Aquaporins, aka water channels, are known to play a role in lung homeostasis. Particularly, the two major lung aquaporins AQP5 and AQP1 expressed in alveolar epithelial and vasculature endothelia respectively allow for movement of the fluid between the alveolar air space and the associated vasculature. In view of this, the current study is focused on understanding the regulation of lung aquaporins and other targets during inhalation exposure to toxic chemicals (Cigarette smoke chemicals) versus toxic particles (Carbon nanoparticles) or co-exposures to understand their relevance as markers of injury and intervention. Methodologies: C57BL/6 mice (5-7 weeks old) were used in this study following an approved protocol by the University of Cincinnati Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The mice were exposed via oropharyngeal aspiration to multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) particles suspension once (33 ugs/mouse) followed by housing for four weeks or to Cigarette smoke Extract (CSE) using a daily dose of 30µl/mouse for four weeks, or to co-exposure using the combined regime. Control groups received vehicles following the same dosing schedule. Lung toxicity/injury was assessed in terms of homeostasis changes in the lung tissue and lumen. Exposed lungs were analyzed for transcriptional expression of specific targets (AQPs, surfactant protein A, Mucin 5b) in relation to tissue homeostasis. Total RNA from lungs extracted using TRIreagent kit was analyzed using qRT-PCR based on gene-specific primers. Total protein in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid was determined by the DC protein estimation kit (BioRad). GraphPad Prism 5.0 (La Jolla, CA, USA) was used for all analyses. Major findings: CNT exposure alone or as co-exposure with CSE increased the total protein content in the BAL fluid (lung lumen rinse), implying compromised membrane integrity and cellular infiltration in the lung alveoli. In contrast, CSE showed no significant effect. AQP1, required for water transport across membranes of endothelial cells in lungs, was significantly upregulated in CNT exposure but downregulated in CSE exposure and showed an intermediate level of expression for the co-exposure group. Both CNT and CSE exposures had significant downregulating effects on Muc5b, and SP-A expression and the co-exposure showed either no significant effect (Muc5b) or significant downregulating effect (SP-A), suggesting an increased propensity for infection in the exposed lungs. Conclusions: The current study based on the lung toxicity mouse model showed that both toxicant types, particles (CNT) versus chemicals (CSE), cause similar downregulation of lung innate defense targets (SP-A, Muc5b) and mostly a summative effect when presented as co-exposure. However, the two toxicant types show differential induction of aquaporin-1 coinciding with the corresponding differential damage to alveolar integrity (vascular permeability). Interestingly, this implies the potential of AQP1 as a differential marker of toxicant type-specific lung injury.

Keywords: aquaporin, gene expression, lung injury, toxicant exposure

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Authors: Brogan Guest, Amy Donaldson-Perrott

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The Master’s of Physician Associate Studies (MPAS) programme at St George’s, University of London (SGUL), is an intensive two-year course that trains students to become physician associates (PAs). PAs are generalized healthcare providers who work in primary and secondary care across the UK. PA programmes face the difficult task of preparing students to become safe medical providers in two short years. Our goal is to teach students to develop clinical reasoning early on in their studies and historically, this has been done predominantly though problem-based learning (PBL). We have had an increase concern about student engagement in PBL and difficulty recruiting facilitators to maintain the low student to facilitator ratio required in PBL. To address this issue, we created ‘Clinical Application of Anatomy and Physiology (CAAP)’. These peer-led, interactive, problem-based, small group sessions were designed to facilitate students’ clinical reasoning skills. The sessions were designed using the concept of Team-Based Learning (TBL). Students were divided into small groups and each completed a pre-session quiz consisting of difficult questions devised to assess students’ application of medical knowledge. The quiz was completed in small groups and they were not permitted access of external resources. After the quiz, students worked through a series of openended, clinical tasks using all available resources. They worked at their own pace and the session was peer-led, rather than facilitator-driven. For a group of 35 students, there were two facilitators who observed the sessions. The sessions utilised an infinite space whiteboard software. Each group member was encouraged to actively participate and work together to complete the 15-20 tasks. The session ran for 2 hours and concluded with a post-session quiz, identical to the pre-session quiz. We obtained subjective feedback from students on their experience with CAAP and evaluated the objective benefit of the sessions through the quiz results. Qualitative feedback from students was generally positive with students feeling the sessions increased engagement, clinical understanding, and confidence. They found the small group aspect beneficial and the technology easy to use and intuitive. They also liked the benefit of building a resource for their future revision, something unique to CAAP compared to PBL, which out students participate in weekly. Preliminary quiz results showed improvement from pre- and post- session; however, further statistical analysis will occur once all sessions are complete (final session to run December 2022) to determine significance. As a post-graduate healthcare professional programme, we have a strong focus on self-directed learning. Whilst PBL has been a mainstay in our curriculum since its inception, there are limitations and concerns about its future in view of student engagement and facilitator availability. Whilst CAAP is not TBL, it draws on the benefits of peer-led, small group work with pre- and post- team-based quizzes. The pilot of these sessions has shown that students are engaged by CAAP, and they can make significant progress in clinical reasoning in a short amount of time. This can be achieved with a high student to facilitator ratio.

Keywords: problem based learning, team based learning, active learning, peer-to-peer teaching, engagement

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Authors: Qianxi Lv, Junying Liang

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Among the various modes of interpreting, simultaneous interpreting (SI) is regarded as a ‘complex’ and ‘extreme condition’ of cognitive tasks while consecutive interpreters (CI) do not have to share processing capacity between tasks. Given that SI exerts great cognitive demand, it makes sense to posit that the output of SI may be more compromised than that of CI in the linguistic features. The bulk of the research has stressed the varying cognitive demand and processes involved in different modes of interpreting; however, related empirical research is sparse. In keeping with our interest in investigating the quantitative linguistic factors discriminating between SI and CI, the current study seeks to examine the potential lexical simplification, syntactic complexity and sequential organization mechanism with a self-made inter-model corpus of transcribed simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, translated speech and original speech texts with a total running word of 321960. The lexical features are extracted in terms of the lexical density, list head coverage, hapax legomena, and type-token ratio, as well as core vocabulary percentage. Dependency distance, an index for syntactic complexity and reflective of processing demand is employed. Frequency motif is a non-grammatically-bound sequential unit and is also used to visualize the local function distribution of interpreting the output. While SI is generally regarded as multitasking with high cognitive load, our findings evidently show that CI may impose heavier or taxing cognitive resource differently and hence yields more lexically and syntactically simplified output. In addition, the sequential features manifest that SI and CI organize the sequences from the source text in different ways into the output, to minimize the cognitive load respectively. We reasoned the results in the framework that cognitive demand is exerted both on maintaining and coordinating component of Working Memory. On the one hand, the information maintained in CI is inherently larger in volume compared to SI. On the other hand, time constraints directly influence the sentence reformulation process. The temporal pressure from the input in SI makes the interpreters only keep a small chunk of information in the focus of attention. Thus, SI interpreters usually produce the output by largely retaining the source structure so as to relieve the information from the working memory immediately after formulated in the target language. Conversely, CI interpreters receive at least a few sentences before reformulation, when they are more self-paced. CI interpreters may thus tend to retain and generate the information in a way to lessen the demand. In other words, interpreters cope with the high demand in the reformulation phase of CI by generating output with densely distributed function words, more content words of higher frequency values and fewer variations, simpler structures and more frequently used language sequences. We consequently propose a revised effort model based on the result for a better illustration of cognitive demand during both interpreting types.

Keywords: cognitive demand, corpus-based, dependency distance, frequency motif, interpreting types, lexical simplification, sequential units distribution, syntactic complexity

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Authors: Yaser S. Kishawi, Sadi R. Ali

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Part of Palestine, Gaza Strip (365 km2 and 1.8 million habitants) is considered a semi-arid zone relies solely on the Coastal Aquifer. The coastal aquifer is only source of water with only 5-10% suitable for human use. This barely covers the domestic and agricultural needs of Gaza Strip. Palestinian Water Authority Strategy is finding non-conventional water resource from treated wastewater to cover agricultural requirements and serve the population. A new WWTP project is to replace the old-overloaded Biet Lahia WWTP. The project consists of three parts; phase A (pressure line and infiltration basins-IBs), phase B (a new WWTP) and phase C (Recovery and Reuse Scheme–RRS– to capture the spreading plume). Currently, only phase A is functioning. Nearly 23 Mm3 of partially treated wastewater were infiltrated into the aquifer. Phase B and phase C witnessed many delays and this forced a reassessment of the RRS original design. An Environmental Management Plan was conducted from Jul 2013 to Jun 2014 on 13 existing monitoring wells surrounding the project location. This is to measure the efficiency of the SAT system and the spread of the contamination plume with relation to the efficiency of the proposed RRS. Along with the proposed location of the 27 recovery wells as part of the proposed RRS. The results of monitored wells were assessed compared with PWA baseline data. This was put into a groundwater model to simulate the plume to propose the best suitable solution to the delays. The redesign mainly manipulated the pumping rate of wells, proposed locations and functioning schedules (including wells groupings). The proposed simulations were examined using visual MODFLOW V4.2 to simulate the results. The results of monitored wells were assessed based on the location of the monitoring wells related to the proposed recovery wells locations (200m, 500m, and 750m away from the IBs). Near the 500m line (the first row of proposed recovery wells), an increase of nitrate (from 30 to 70mg/L) compare to a decrease in Chloride (1500 to below 900mg/L) was found during the monitoring period which indicated an expansion of plume to this distance. On this rate with the required time to construct the recovery scheme, keeping the original design the RRS will fail to capture the plume. Based on that many simulations were conducted leading into three main scenarios. The scenarios manipulated the starting dates, the pumping rate and the locations of recovery wells. A simulation of plume expansion and path-lines were extracted from the model monitoring how to prevent the expansion towards the nearby municipal wells. It was concluded that the location is the most important factor in determining the RRS efficiency. Scenario III was adopted and showed effective results even with a reduced pumping rates. This scenario proposed adding two additional recovery wells in a location beyond the 750m line to compensate the delays and effectively capture the plume. A continuous monitoring program for current and future monitoring wells should be in place to support the proposed scenario and ensure maximum protection.

Keywords: soil aquifer treatment, recovery reuse scheme, infiltration basins, North Gaza

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Authors: Atabaev I. G., Fayziev Sh. A., Irmatova Sh. K.

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Raw materials with high content of Kalium oxide widely used in ceramic technology for prevention or decreasing of deformation of ceramic goods during drying process and under thermal annealing. Becouse to low melting temperature it is also used to decreasing of the temperature of thermal annealing during fabrication of ceramic goods [1,2]. So called “Porceline or China stones” - quartz-sericite (muscovite) minerals is also can be used for prevention of deformation as the content of Kalium oxide in muscovite is rather high (SiO2, + KAl2[AlSi3O10](OH)2). [3] . To estimation of possibility of use of this mineral for ceramic manufacture, in the presented article the influence of thermal processing on phase and a chemical content of this raw material is investigated. As well as to other ceramic raw materials (kaoline, white burning clays) the basic requirements of the industry to quality of "a porcelain stone» are following: small size of particles, relative high uniformity of disrtribution of components and phase, white color after burning, small content of colorant oxides or chromophores (Fe2O3, FeO, TiO2, etc) [4,5]. In the presented work natural minerale from the Boynaksay deposit (Uzbekistan) is investigated. The samples was mechanically polished for investigation by Scanning Electron Microscope. Powder with size of particle up to 63 μm was used to X-ray diffractometry and chemical analysis. The annealing of samples was performed at 900, 1120, 1350oC during 1 hour. Chemical composition of Boynaksay raw material according to chemical analysis presented in the table 1. For comparison the composition of raw materials from Russia and USA are also presented. In the Boynaksay quartz – sericite the average parity of quartz and sericite makes 55-60 and 30-35 % accordingly. The distribution of quartz and sericite phases in raw material was investigated using electron probe scanning electronic microscope «JEOL» JXA-8800R. In the figure 1 the scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrograps of the surface and the distributions of Al, Si and K atoms in the sample are presented. As it seen small granular, white and dense mineral includes quartz, sericite and small content of impurity minerals. Basically, crystals of quartz have the sizes from 80 up to 500 μm. Between quartz crystals the sericite inclusions having a tablet form with radiant structure are located. The size of sericite crystals is ~ 40-250 μm. Using data on interplanar distance [6,7] and ASTM Powder X-ray Diffraction Data it is shown that natural «a porcelain stone» quartz – sericite consists the quartz SiO2, sericite (muscovite type) KAl2[AlSi3O10](OH)2 and kaolinite Al203SiO22Н2О (See Figure 2 and Table 2). As it seen in the figure 3 and table 3a after annealing at 900oC the quartz – sericite contains quartz – SiO2 and muscovite - KAl2[AlSi3O10](OH)2, the peaks related with Kaolinite are absent. After annealing at 1120oC the full disintegration of muscovite and formation of mullite phase Al203 SiO2 is observed (the weak peaks of mullite appears in fig 3b and table 3b). After annealing at 1350oC the samples contains crystal phase of quartz and mullite (figure 3c and table 3с). Well known Mullite gives to ceramics high density, abrasive and chemical stability. Thus the obtained experimental data on formation of various phases during thermal annealing can be used for development of fabrication technology of advanced materials. Conclusion: The influence of thermal annealing in the interval 900-1350oC on phase composition and structure of quartz-sericite minerale is investigated. It is shown that during annealing the phase content of raw material is changed. After annealing at 1350oC the samples contains crystal phase of quartz and mullite (which gives gives to ceramics high density, abrasive and chemical stability).

Keywords: quartz-sericite, kaolinite, mullite, thermal processing

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Authors: O. D. Ohijeagbon, Oluseyi O. Ajayi, M. Ogbonnaya, Ahmeh Attabo

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This study analyzed the electricity generation potential from wind at seven sites spread across seven states of the North-Central region of Nigeria. Twenty-one years (1987 to 2007) wind speed data at a height of 10m were assessed from the Nigeria Meteorological Department, Oshodi. The data were subjected to different statistical tests and also compared with the two-parameter Weibull probability density function. The outcome shows that the monthly average wind speeds ranged between 2.2 m/s in November for Bida and 10.1 m/s in December for Jos. The yearly average ranged between 2.1m/s in 1987 for Bida and 11.8 m/s in 2002 for Jos. Also, the power density for each site was determined to range between 29.66 W/m2 for Bida and 864.96 W/m2 for Jos, Two parameters (k and c) of the Weibull distribution were found to range between 2.3 in Lokoja and 6.5 in Jos for k, while c ranged between 2.9 in Bida and 9.9m/s in Jos. These outcomes points to the fact that wind speeds at Jos, Minna, Ilorin, Makurdi and Abuja are compatible with the cut-in speeds of modern wind turbines and hence, may be economically feasible for wind-to-electricity at and above the height of 10 m. The study further assessed the potential and economic viability of standalone wind generation systems for off-grid rural communities located in each of the studied sites. A specific electric load profile was developed to suite hypothetic communities, each consisting of 200 homes, a school and a community health center. Assessment of the design that will optimally meet the daily load demand with a loss of load probability (LOLP) of 0.01 was performed, considering 2 stand-alone applications of wind and diesel. The diesel standalone system (DSS) was taken as the basis of comparison since the experimental locations have no connection to a distribution network. The HOMER® software optimizing tool was utilized to determine the optimal combination of system components that will yield the lowest life cycle cost. Sequel to the analysis for rural community utilization, a Distributed Generation (DG) analysis that considered the possibility of generating wind power in the MW range in order to take advantage of Nigeria’s tariff regime for embedded generation was carried out for each site. The DG design incorporated each community of 200 homes, freely catered for and offset from the excess electrical energy generated above the minimum requirement for sales to a nearby distribution grid. Wind DG systems were found suitable and viable in producing environmentally friendly energy in terms of life cycle cost and levelised value of producing energy at Jos ($0.14/kWh), Minna ($0.12/kWh), Ilorin ($0.09/kWh), Makurdi ($0.09/kWh), and Abuja ($0.04/kWh) at a particluar turbine hub height. These outputs reveal the value retrievable from the project after breakeven point as a function of energy consumed Based on the results, the study demonstrated that including renewable energy in the rural development plan will enhance fast upgrade of the rural communities.

Keywords: wind speed, wind power, distributed generation, cost per kilowatt-hour, clean energy, North-Central Nigeria

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Authors: Leonid Zhukov, Dmytro Petrenko

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Optical thermometry has no alternative in many cases of industrial most effective continuous temperature control. Classical optical thermometry technologies can be used on available for pyrometers controlled objects with stable radiation characteristics and transmissivity of the intermediate medium. Without using temperature corrections, it is possible in the case of a “black” body for energy pyrometry and the cases of “black” and “grey” bodies for spectral ratio pyrometry or with using corrections – for any colored bodies. Consequently, with increasing the number of operating waves, optical thermometry possibilities to reduce methodical errors significantly expand. That is why, in recent 25-30 years, research works have been reoriented on more perfect spectral (multicolor) thermometry technologies. There are two physical material substances, i.e., substance (controlled object) and electromagnetic field (thermal radiation), to be operated in optical thermometry. Heat is transferred by radiation; therefore, radiation has the energy, entropy, and temperature. Optical thermometry was originating simultaneously with the developing of thermal radiation theory when the concept and the term "radiation temperature" was not used, and therefore concepts and terms "conditional temperatures" or "pseudo temperature" of controlled objects were introduced. They do not correspond to the physical sense and definitions of temperature in thermodynamics, molecular-kinetic theory, and statistical physics. Launched by the scientific thermometric society, discussion about the possibilities of temperature measurements of objects, including colored bodies, using the temperatures of their radiation is not finished. Are the information about controlled objects transferred by their radiation enough for temperature measurements? The positive and negative answers on this fundamental question divided experts into two opposite camps. Recent achievements of spectral thermometry develop events in her favour and don’t leave any hope for skeptics. This article presents the results of investigations and developments in the field of spectral thermometry carried out by the authors in the Department of Thermometry and Physics-Chemical Investigations. The authors have many-year’s of experience in the field of modern optical thermometry technologies. Innovative technologies of optical continuous temperature control have been developed: symmetric-wave, two-color compensative, and based on obtained nonlinearity equation of spectral emissivity distribution linear, two-range, and parabolic. Тhe technologies are based on direct measurements of physically substantiated and proposed by Prof. L. Zhukov, radiation temperatures with the next calculation of the controlled object temperature using this radiation temperatures and corresponding mathematical models. Тhe technologies significantly increase metrological characteristics of continuous contactless and light-guide temperature control in energy, metallurgical, ceramic, glassy, and other productions. For example, under the same conditions, the methodical errors of proposed technologies are less than the errors of known spectral and classical technologies in 2 and 3-13 times, respectively. Innovative technologies provide quality products obtaining at the lowest possible resource-including energy costs. More than 600 publications have been published on the completed developments, including more than 100 domestic patents, as well as 34 patents in Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Canada, the USA, Sweden, and Japan. The developments have been implemented in the enterprises of USA, as well as Western Europe and Asia, including Germany and Japan.

Keywords: emissivity, radiation temperature, object temperature, spectral thermometry

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Authors: Nicholas Aerne, John P. Parmigiani

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There is an increasing desire for renewable and sustainable energy sources to replace fossil fuels. This desire is the result of several factors. First, is the role of fossil fuels in climate change. Scientific data clearly shows that global warming is occurring. It has also been concluded that it is highly likely human activity; specifically, the combustion of fossil fuels, is a major cause of this warming. Second, despite the current surplus of petroleum, fossil fuels are a finite resource and will eventually become scarce and alternatives, such as clean or renewable energy will be needed. Third, operations to obtain fossil fuels such as fracking, off-shore oil drilling, and strip mining are expensive and harmful to the environment. Given these environmental impacts, there is a need to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources as a primary energy source. Various sources of renewable energy exist. Many familiar sources obtain renewable energy from the sun and natural environments of the earth. Common examples include solar, hydropower, geothermal heat, ocean waves and tides, and wind energy. Often obtaining significant energy from these sources requires physically-large, sophisticated, and expensive equipment (e.g., wind turbines, dams, solar panels, etc.). Other sources of renewable energy are from the man-made environment. An example is municipal water distribution systems. The movement of water through the pipelines of these systems typically requires the reduction of hydraulic pressure through the use of pressure reducing valves. These valves are needed to reduce upstream supply-line pressures to levels suitable downstream users. The energy associated with this reduction of pressure is significant but is currently not harvested and is simply lost. While the integrity of municipal water supplies is of paramount importance, one can certainly envision means by which this lost energy source could be safely accessed. This paper provides a technical description and analysis of one such means by the technology company InPipe Energy to generate hydroelectricity by harvesting energy from municipal water distribution pressure reducing valve stations. Specifically, InPipe Energy proposes to install hydropower turbines in parallel with existing pressure reducing valves in municipal water distribution systems. InPipe Energy in partnership with Oregon State University has evaluated this approach and built a prototype system at the O. H. Hinsdale Wave Research Lab. The Oregon State University evaluation showed that the prototype system rapidly and safely initiates, maintains, and ceases power production as directed. The outgoing water pressure remained constant at the specified set point throughout all testing. The system replicates the functionality of the pressure reducing valve and ensures accurate control of down-stream pressure. At a typical water-distribution-system pressure drop of 60 psi the prototype, operating at an efficiency 64%, produced approximately 5 kW of electricity. Based on the results of this study, this proposed method appears to offer a viable means of producing significant amounts of clean renewable energy from existing pressure reducing valves.

Keywords: pressure reducing valve, renewable energy, sustainable energy, water supply

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Authors: Taif Rocky, Uttam Saha, Mahobul Islam

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With a rapid urbanisation in Bangladesh, waste management remains one of the core challenges. Turning municipal waste into biogas for mass usage is a solution that Bangladesh needs to adopt urgently. Practical Action with its commitment to challenging poverty with technological justice has piloted such idea in Gaibandha. The initiative received immense success and drew the attention of policy makers and practitioners. We believe, biogas from waste can highly contribute to meet the growing demand for energy in the country at present and in the future. Practical Action has field based experience in promoting small scale and innovative technologies. We have proven track record in integrated solid waste management. We further utilized this experience to promote waste to biogas at end users’ level. In 2011, we have piloted a project on waste to biogas in Gaibandha, a northern secondary town of Bangladesh. With resource and support from UNICEF and with our own innovative funds we have established a complete chain of utilizing waste to the renewable energy source and organic fertilizer. Biogas is produced from municipal solid waste, which is properly collected, transported and segregated by private entrepreneurs. The project has two major focuses, diversification of biogas end use and establishing a public-private partnership business model. The project benefits include Recycling of Wastes, Improved institutional (municipal) capacity, Livelihood from improved services and Direct Income from the project. Project risks include Change of municipal leadership, Traditional mindset, Access to decision making, Land availability. We have observed several outcomes from the initiative. Up scaling such an initiative will certainly contribute for sustainable cleaner and healthier urban environment and urban poverty reduction. - It reduces the unsafe disposal of wastes which improve the cleanliness and environment of the town. -Make drainage system effective reducing the adverse impact of water logging or flooding. -Improve public health from better management of wastes. -Promotes usage of biogas replacing the use of firewood/coal which creates smoke and indoor air pollution in kitchens which have long term impact on health of women and children. -Reduce the greenhouse gas emission from the anaerobic recycling of wastes and contributes to sustainable urban environment. -Promote the concept of agroecology from the uses of bio slurry/compost which contributes to food security. -Creates green jobs from waste value chain which impacts on poverty alleviation of urban extreme poor. -Improve municipal governance from inclusive waste services and functional partnership with private sectors. -Contribute to the implementation of 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) Strategy and Employment Creation of extreme poor to achieve the target set in Vision 2021 by Government of Bangladesh.

Keywords: kitchen waste, secondary town, biogas, segregation

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Authors: Utkarsh A. Mishra, Ankit Bansal

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At high temperature, radiative heat transfer is the dominant mode of heat transfer. It is governed by various phenomena such as photon emission, absorption, and scattering. The solution of the governing integrodifferential equation of radiative transfer is a complex process, more when the effect of participating medium and wavelength properties are taken into consideration. Although a generic formulation of such radiative transport problem can be modeled for a wide variety of problems with non-gray, non-diffusive surfaces, there is always a trade-off between simplicity and accuracy of the problem. Recently, solutions of complicated mathematical problems with statistical methods based on randomization of naturally occurring phenomena have gained significant importance. Photon bundles with discrete energy can be replicated with random numbers describing the emission, absorption, and scattering processes. Photon Monte Carlo (PMC) is a simple, yet powerful technique, to solve radiative transfer problems in complicated geometries with arbitrary participating medium. The method, on the one hand, increases the accuracy of estimation, and on the other hand, increases the computational cost. The participating media -generally a gas, such as CO₂, CO, and H₂O- present complex emission and absorption spectra. To model the emission/absorption accurately with random numbers requires a weighted sampling as different sections of the spectrum carries different importance. Importance sampling (IS) was implemented to sample random photon of arbitrary wavelength, and the sampled data provided unbiased training of MC estimators for better results. A better replacement to uniform random numbers is using deterministic, quasi-random sequences. Halton, Sobol, and Faure Low-Discrepancy Sequences are used in this study. They possess better space-filling performance than the uniform random number generator and gives rise to a low variance, stable Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) estimators with faster convergence. An optimal supervised learning scheme was further considered to reduce the computation costs of the PMC simulation. A one-dimensional plane-parallel slab problem with participating media was formulated. The history of some randomly sampled photon bundles is recorded to train an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), back-propagation model. The flux was calculated using the standard quasi PMC and was considered to be the training target. Results obtained with the proposed model for the one-dimensional problem are compared with the exact analytical and PMC model with the Line by Line (LBL) spectral model. The approximate variance obtained was around 3.14%. Results were analyzed with respect to time and the total flux in both cases. A significant reduction in variance as well a faster rate of convergence was observed in the case of the QMC method over the standard PMC method. However, the results obtained with the ANN method resulted in greater variance (around 25-28%) as compared to the other cases. There is a great scope of machine learning models to help in further reduction of computation cost once trained successfully. Multiple ways of selecting the input data as well as various architectures will be tried such that the concerned environment can be fully addressed to the ANN model. Better results can be achieved in this unexplored domain.

Keywords: radiative heat transfer, Monte Carlo Method, pseudo-random numbers, low discrepancy sequences, artificial neural networks

Procedia PDF Downloads 217

Authors: Hanna Mamo Ergando

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Climate change is already having a severe influence on agriculture, affecting crop yields, the nutritional content of main grains, and livestock productivity. Significant adaptation investments will be necessary to sustain existing yields and enhance production and food quality to fulfill demand. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) provides numerous potentials in this regard, combining a focus on enhancing agricultural output and incomes while also strengthening resilience and responding to climate change. To improve agriculture production and productivity, the Ethiopian government has adopted and implemented a series of strategies, including the recent agricultural cluster farming that is practiced as an effort to change, improve, and transform subsistence farming to modern, productive, market-oriented, and climate-smart approach through farmers production cluster. Besides, greater attention and focus have been given to wheat production and productivity by the government, and wheat is the major crop grown in cluster farming. Therefore, the objective of this assessment was to examine various opportunities and challenges farmers face in a cluster farming system. A qualitative research approach was used to generate primary and secondary data. Respondents were chosen using the purposeful sampling technique. Accordingly, experts from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute, and the Ethiopian Environment Protection Authority were interviewed. The assessment result revealed that farming in clusters is an economically viable technique for sustaining small, resource-limited, and socially disadvantaged farmers' agricultural businesses. The method assists farmers in consolidating their products and delivering them in bulk to save on transportation costs while increasing income. Smallholders' negotiating power has improved as a result of cluster membership, as has knowledge and information spillover. The key challenges, on the other hand, were identified as a lack of timely provision of modern inputs, insufficient access to credit services, conflict of interest in crop selection, and a lack of output market for agro-processing firms. Furthermore, farmers in the cluster farming approach grow wheat year after year without crop rotation or diversification techniques. Mono-cropping has disadvantages because it raises the likelihood of disease and insect outbreaks. This practice may result in long-term consequences, including soil degradation, reduced biodiversity, and economic risk for farmers. Therefore, the government must devote more resources to addressing the issue of environmental sustainability. Farmers' access to complementary services that promote production and marketing efficiencies through infrastructure and institutional services has to be improved. In general, the assessment begins with some hint that leads to a deeper study into the efficiency of the strategy implementation, upholding existing policy, and scaling up good practices in a sustainable and environmentally viable manner.

Keywords: cluster farming, smallholder farmers, wheat, challenges, opportunities

Procedia PDF Downloads 202

Authors: Kazuhiro Tateda, Elisa Gonzalez, Shuhei Ito, Kirstin Heinrich, Kevin Sweetland, Pingping Zhang, Catia Ferreira, Michael Pride, Jennifer Moisi, Sharon Gray, Bennett Lee, Fred Angulo

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Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is the most common cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and infectious diarrhea in healthcare settings. Japan has an aging population; the elderly are at increased risk of hospitalization, antibiotic use, and C. difficile infection (CDI). Little is known about the population-based incidence and disease burden of CDI in Japan although limited hospital-based studies have reported a lower incidence than the United States. To understand CDI disease burden in Japan, CLOUD (Clostridium difficile Infection Burden of Disease in Adults in Japan) was developed. CLOUD will derive population-based incidence estimates of the number of CDI cases per 100,000 population per year in Ota-ku (population 723,341), one of the districts in Tokyo, Japan. CLOUD will include approximately 14 of the 28 Ota-ku hospitals including Toho University Hospital, which is a 1,000 bed tertiary care teaching hospital. During the 12-month patient enrollment period, which is scheduled to begin in November 2018, Ota-ku residents > 50 years of age who are hospitalized at a participating hospital with diarrhea ( > 3 unformed stools (Bristol Stool Chart 5-7) in 24 hours) will be actively ascertained, consented, and enrolled by study surveillance staff. A stool specimen will be collected from enrolled patients and tested at a local reference laboratory (LSI Medience, Tokyo) using QUIK CHEK COMPLETE® (Abbott Laboratories). which simultaneously tests specimens for the presence of glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and C. difficile toxins A and B. A frozen stool specimen will also be sent to the Pfizer Laboratory (Pearl River, United States) for analysis using a two-step diagnostic testing algorithm that is based on detection of C. difficile strains/spores harboring toxin B gene by PCR followed by detection of free toxins (A and B) using a proprietary cell cytotoxicity neutralization assay (CCNA) developed by Pfizer. Positive specimens will be anaerobically cultured, and C. difficile isolates will be characterized by ribotyping and whole genomic sequencing. CDI patients enrolled in CLOUD will be contacted weekly for 90 days following diarrhea onset to describe clinical outcomes including recurrence, reinfection, and mortality, and patient reported economic, clinical and humanistic outcomes (e.g., health-related quality of life, worsening of comorbidities, and patient and caregiver work absenteeism). Studies will also be undertaken to fully characterize the catchment area to enable population-based estimates. The 12-month active ascertainment of CDI cases among hospitalized Ota-ku residents with diarrhea in CLOUD, and the characterization of the Ota-ku catchment area, including estimation of the proportion of all hospitalizations of Ota-ku residents that occur in the CLOUD-participating hospitals, will yield CDI population-based incidence estimates, which can be stratified by age groups, risk groups, and source (hospital-acquired or community-acquired). These incidence estimates will be extrapolated, following age standardization using national census data, to yield CDI disease burden estimates for Japan. CLOUD also serves as a model for studies in other countries that can use the CLOUD protocol to estimate CDI disease burden.

Keywords: Clostridium difficile, disease burden, epidemiology, study protocol

Procedia PDF Downloads 255

Authors: Aura Alejandra Burbano Patino, Mariela Agotegaray, Veronica Lassalle, Fernanda Horst

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Water pollution is of worldwide concern due to its importance as an essential resource for life. Industrial and urbanistic growth are anthropogenic activities that have caused an increase of undesirable compounds in water. In the last decade, emerging pollutants have become of great interest since, at very low concentrations (µg/L and ng/L), they exhibit a hazardous effect on wildlife, aquatic ecosystems, and human organisms. One group of emerging pollutants that are a matter of study are pharmaceuticals. Their high consumption rate and their inappropriate disposal have led to their detection in wastewater treatment plant influent, effluent, surface water, and drinking water. In consequence, numerous technologies have been developed to efficiently treat these pollutants. Adsorption appears like an easy and cost-effective technology. One of the most used adsorbents of emerging pollutants removal is carbon-based materials such as hydrochars. This study aims to use a magnetic hydrochar nanocomposite to be employed as an adsorbent for diclofenac removal. Kinetics models and the adsorption efficiency in real water samples were analyzed. For this purpose, a magnetic hydrochar nanocomposite was synthesized through the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) technique hybridized to co-precipitation to add the magnetic component into the hydrochar, based on iron oxide nanoparticles. The hydrochar was obtained from sunflower husk residue as the precursor. TEM, TGA, FTIR, Zeta potential as a function of pH, DLS, BET technique, and elemental analysis were employed to characterize the material in terms of composition and chemical structure. Adsorption kinetics were carried out in distilled water and real water at room temperature, pH of 5.5 for distilled water and natural pH for real water samples, 1:1 adsorbent: adsorbate dosage ratio, contact times from 10-120 minutes, and 50% dosage concentration of DCF. Results have demonstrated that magnetic hydrochar presents superparamagnetic properties with a saturation magnetization value of 55.28 emu/g. Besides, it is mesoporous with a surface area of 55.52 m²/g. It is composed of magnetite nanoparticles incorporated into the hydrochar matrix, as can be proven by TEM micrographs, FTIR spectra, and zeta potential. On the other hand, kinetic studies were carried out using DCF models, finding percent removal efficiencies up to 85.34% after 80 minutes of contact time. In addition, after 120 minutes of contact time, desorption of emerging pollutants from active sites took place, which indicated that the material got saturated after that t time. In real water samples, percent removal efficiencies decrease up to 57.39%, ascribable to a possible mechanism of competitive adsorption of organic or inorganic compounds, ions for active sites of the magnetic hydrochar. The main suggested adsorption mechanism between the magnetic hydrochar and diclofenac include hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions as well as hydrogen bonds. It can be concluded that the magnetic hydrochar nanocomposite could be valorized into a by-product which appears as an efficient adsorbent for DCF removal as a model emerging pollutant. These results are being complemented by modifying experimental variables such as pollutant’s initial concentration, adsorbent: adsorbate dosage ratio, and temperature. Currently, adsorption assays of other emerging pollutants are being been carried out.

Keywords: environmental remediation, emerging pollutants, hydrochar, magnetite nanoparticles

Procedia PDF Downloads 184

Authors: Rajkumar Ghosh

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Water scarcity is a pressing issue in urban areas, even in smart cities where efficient resource management is a priority. This scarcity is mainly caused by factors such as lifestyle changes, excessive groundwater extraction, over-usage of water, rapid urbanization, and uncontrolled population growth. In the specific case of Gomti Nagar, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, the depletion of groundwater resources is particularly severe, leading to a water imbalance and posing a significant challenge for the region's sustainable development. The aim of this study is to address the water shortage in the Gomti Nagar region by focusing on the implementation of artificial groundwater recharge methods. Specifically, the research aims to investigate the effectiveness of rainwater collection through rooftop rainwater harvesting systems (RTRWHs) as a sustainable approach to reduce aquifer depletion and bridge the gap between groundwater recharge and extraction. The research methodology for this study involves the utilization of RTRWHs as the main method for collecting rainwater. This approach is considered effective in managing and conserving water resources in a sustainable manner. The focus is on implementing RTRWHs in residential and commercial buildings to maximize the collection of rainwater and its subsequent utilization for various purposes in the Gomti Nagar region. The study reveals that the installation of RTRWHs in the Gomti Nagar region has a positive impact on addressing the water scarcity issue. Currently, RTRWHs cover only a small percentage (0.04%) of the total rainfall collected in the region. However, when RTRWHs are installed in all buildings, their influence on increasing water availability and reducing aquifer depletion will be significantly greater. The study also highlights the significant water imbalance of 24519 ML/yr in the region, emphasizing the urgent need for sustainable water management practices. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of sustainable water management systems in smart cities. By highlighting the effectiveness of RTRWHs in reducing aquifer depletion, it emphasizes the importance of implementing such systems in urban areas. The findings of this study can serve as a basis for policymakers, urban planners, and developers to prioritize and incentivize the installation of RTRWHs as a potential solution to the water shortage crisis. The data for this study were collected through various sources such as government reports, surveys, and existing groundwater abstraction patterns. The collected data were then analysed to assess the current water situation, groundwater depletion rate, and the potential impact of implementing RTRWHs. Statistical analysis and modelling techniques were employed to quantify the water imbalance and evaluate the effectiveness of RTRWHs. The findings of this study demonstrate that the implementation of RTRWHs can effectively mitigate the water scarcity crisis in Gomti Nagar. By reducing aquifer depletion and bridging the gap between groundwater recharge and extraction, RTRWHs offer a sustainable solution to the region's water scarcity challenges. The study highlights the need for widespread adoption of RTRWHs in all buildings and emphasizes the importance of integrating such systems into the urban planning and development process. By doing so, smart cities like Gomti Nagar can achieve efficient water management, ensuring a better future with improved water availability for its residents.

Keywords: rooftop rainwater harvesting, rainwater, water management, aquifer

Procedia PDF Downloads 87

Authors: Kimberly Samaha

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The Bio-Hub Ecosystem model was developed to address a critical area of concern within the global energy market regarding biomass as a feedstock for power plants. Yet the lack of an economically-viable business model for bioenergy facilities has resulted in the continuation of idled and decommissioned plants. This study analyzed data and submittals to the Born Global Maine Innovation Challenge. The Innovation Challenge was a global innovation challenge to identify process innovations that could address a ‘whole-tree’ approach of maximizing the products, byproducts, energy value and process slip-streams into a circular zero-waste design. Participating companies were at various stages of developing bioproducts and included biofuels, lignin-based products, carbon capture platforms and biochar used as both a filtration medium and as a soil amendment product. This case study shows the QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) methodology of the prequalification process and the resulting techno-economic model that was developed for the maximizing profitability of the Bio-Hub Ecosystem through continuous expansion of system waste streams into valuable process inputs for co-hosts. A full site plan for the integration of co-hosts (biorefinery, land-based shrimp and salmon aquaculture farms, a tomato green-house and a hops farm) at an operating forestry-based biomass to energy plant in West Enfield, Maine USA. This model and process for evaluating the profitability not only proposes models for integration of forestry, aquaculture and agriculture in cradle-to-cradle linkages of what have typically been linear systems, but the proposal also allows for the early measurement of the circularity and impact of resource use and investment risk mitigation, for these systems. In this particular study, profitability is assessed at two levels CAPEX (Capital Expenditures) and in OPEX (Operating Expenditures). Given that these projects start with repurposing facilities where the industrial level infrastructure is already built, permitted and interconnected to the grid, the addition of co-hosts first realizes a dramatic reduction in permitting, development times and costs. In addition, using the biomass energy plant’s waste streams such as heat, hot water, CO₂ and fly ash as valuable inputs to their operations and a significant decrease in the OPEX costs, increasing overall profitability to each of the co-hosts bottom line. This case study utilizes a proprietary techno-economic model to demonstrate how utilizing waste streams of a biomass energy plant and/or biorefinery, results in significant reduction in OPEX for both the biomass plants and the agriculture and aquaculture co-hosts. Economically viable Bio-Hubs with favorable environmental and community impacts may prove critical in garnering local and federal government support for pilot programs and more wide-scale adoption, especially for those living in severely economically depressed rural areas where aging industrial sites have been shuttered and local economies devastated.

Keywords: bio-economy, biomass energy, financing, zero-waste

Procedia PDF Downloads 127

Authors: Dhekra Khazri, Hakim Gabtni

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Because of Sidi Bouzid water table overexploitation, this study aims at integrating geophysical methods to determinate aquifers geometry assessing their geological situation and geophysical characteristics. However in highly tectonic zones controlled by Atlassic structural features with NE-SW major directions (central Tunisia), Bouguer gravimetric responses of some areas can be as much dominated by the regional structural tendency, as being non-identified or either defectively interpreted such as the case of Sidi Bouzid basin. This issue required a residual gravity anomaly elaboration isolating the Sidi Bouzid basin gravity response ranging between -8 and -14 mGal and crucial for its aquifers geometry characterization. Several gravity techniques helped constructing the Sidi Bouzid basin's residual gravity anomaly, such as Upwards continuation compared to polynomial regression trends and power spectrum analysis detecting deep basement sources at (3km), intermediate (2km) and shallow sources (1km). A 3D Euler Deconvolution was also performed detecting deepest accidents trending NE-SW, N-S and E-W with depth values reaching 5500 m and delineating the main outcropping structures of the study area. Further gravity treatments highlighted the subsurface geometry and structural features of Sidi Bouzid basin over Horizontal and vertical gradient, and also filters based on them such as Tilt angle and Source Edge detector locating rooted edges or peaks from potential field data detecting a new E-W lineament compartmentalizing the Sidi Bouzid gutter into two unequally residual anomaly and subsiding domains. This subsurface morphology is also detected by the used 2D seismic reflection sections defining the Sidi Bouzid basin as a deep gutter within a tectonic set of negative flower structures, and collapsed and tilted blocks. Furthermore, these structural features were confirmed by forward gravity modeling process over several modeled residual gravity profiles crossing the main area. Sidi Bouzid basin (central Tunisia) is also of a big interest cause of the unknown total thickness and the undefined substratum of its siliciclastic Tertiary package, and its aquifers unbounded structural subsurface features and deep accidents. The Combination of geological, hydrogeological and geophysical methods is then of an ultimate need. Therefore, a geophysical methods integration based on gravity survey supporting available seismic data through forward gravity modeling, enhanced lateral and vertical extent definition of the basin's complex sedimentary fill via 3D gravity models, improved depth estimation by a depth to basement modeling approach, and provided 3D isochronous seismic mapping visualization of the basin's Tertiary complex refining its geostructural schema. A subsurface basin geomorphology mapping, over an ultimate matching between the basin's residual gravity map and the calculated theoretical signature map, was also displayed over the modeled residual gravity profiles. An ultimate multidisciplinary geophysical study of the Sidi Bouzid basin aquifers can be accomplished via an aeromagnetic survey and a 4D Microgravity reservoir monitoring offering temporal tracking of the target aquifer's subsurface fluid dynamics enhancing and rationalizing future groundwater exploitation in this arid area of central Tunisia.

Keywords: aquifer geometry, geophysics, 3D gravity modeling, improved depths, source edge detector

Procedia PDF Downloads 278

Authors: Manju Bala Jassi

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The Covid 19 pandemic has badly mauled Dubai’s GDP heavily dependent on hospitality, tourism, entertainment, logistics, property and the retail sectors. In the context of the World Health protocols on social distancing for better maintenance of health and hygiene, the revival of the battered tourism and hospitality sectors has serious lessons for designers- interiors and public places. The tangible and intangible aesthetic elements and design –ambiance, materials, furnishings, colors, lighting and interior with architectural design issues of tourism and hospitality need a rethink to ensure a memorable tourist experience. Designers ought to experiment with sustainable places of tourism and design, develop, build and projects are aesthetic and leave as little negative impacts on the environment and public as possible. In short, they ought to conceive public spaces that makes use of little untouched materials and energy, and creates pollution and waste that are minimal. The spaces can employ healthier and more resource-efficient prototypes of construction, renovation, operation, maintenance, and demolition and thereby mitigate the environment impacts of the construction activities and it is sustainable These measures encompass the hospitality sector that includes hotels and restaurants which has taken the hardest fall from the pandemic. The paper sought to examine building energy efficiency and materials and design employed in public places, green buildings to achieve constructive sustainability and to establish the benefits of utilizing energy efficiency, green materials and sustainable design; to document diverse policy interventions, design and Spatial dimensions of tourism and hospitality sectors; to examine changes in the hospitality, aviation sector especially from a design perspective regarding infrastructure or operational constraints and additional risk-mitigation measures; to dilate on the nature of implications for interior designers and architects to design public places to facilitate sustainable tourism and hospitality while balancing convenient space and their operations' natural surroundings. The qualitative research approach was adopted for the study. The researcher collected and analyzed data in continuous iteration. Secondary data was collected from articles in journals, trade publications, government reports, newspaper/ magazine articles, policy documents etc. In depth interviews were conducted with diverse stakeholders. Preliminary data indicates that designers have started imagining public places of tourism and hospitality against the backdrop of the government push and WHO guidelines. For instance, with regard to health, safety, hygiene and sanitation, Emirates, the Dubai-based airline has augmented health measures at the Dubai International Airport and on board its aircraft. It has leveraged high tech/ Nano-tech, social distancing to encourage least human contact, flexible design layouts to limit the occupancy. The researcher organized the data into thematic categories and found that the Government of Dubai has initiated comprehensive measures in the hospitality, tourism and aviation sectors in compliance with the WHO guidelines.

Keywords: Covid 19, design, Dubai, hospitality, public spaces, tourism

Procedia PDF Downloads 159

Authors: Ahmad Ali, Muhammad Imran Ghani, Haiyan Ding, Zhihui Cheng, Muhammad Iqbal

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Background and Aims: In recent years, protected cultivation trend, especially in the northern parts of China, spread dynamically where production area, structure, and crops diversity have expanded gradually under plastic greenhouse vegetable cropping (PGVC) system. Under this growing system, continuous monoculture with excessive synthetic fertilizers inputs are common cultivation practices frequently adopted by commercial producers. Such long-term cumulative wild exercise year after year sponsor the continuous cropping obstacles in PGVC soil, which have greatly threatened the regional soil eco-sustainability and further impose the continuous assault on soil ecological diversity leading to the exhaustion of agriculture productivity. The aim of this study was to develop new allelopathic insights by exploiting available biological resources in the favor of sustainable PGVC to illuminate the continuous obstacle factors in plastic greenhouse. Method: A greenhouse study was executed under plastic tunnel located at the Horticulture Experimental Station of the College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi Province, one of the prominent regions for intensive commercial PGVC in China. Post-harvest garlic residues (stalk, leaves) mechanically smashed, homogenized into powder size and incorporated at the ratio of 1:100; 3:100; 5:100 as a soil amendment in a replanted soil that have been used for continuous cucumber monoculture for 7 years (annually double cropping system in a greenhouse). Results: Incorporated C-rich garlic stalk significantly influenced the soil condition through various ways; organic matter decomposition and mineralization, moderately adjusted the soil pH, enhanced the soil nutrient availability, increased enzymatic activities, and promoted 20% more cucumber yield in short-time. Using Illumina MiSeq sequencing analysis of bacterial 16S rRNA and fungal 18S rDNA genes, the current study revealed that addition of garlic stalk/residue could also improve the microbial abundance and community composition in extensively exploited soil, and contributed in soil functionality, caused prosper changes in soil characteristics, reinforced to good crop yield. Conclusion: Our study provided evidence that addition of garlic stalk as soil fertility amendment is a feasible, cost-effective and efficient resource utilization way for renovation of degraded soil health, ameliorate soil quality components and improve ecological environment in short duration. Our study may provide a better scientific understanding for efficient crop residue management typically from allelopathic source.

Keywords: garlic stalk, microbial community dynamics, plant growth, soil amendment, soil-plant system

Procedia PDF Downloads 131

Authors: Gözde Arzu Sarıcan

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Contemporary urbanization processes and spatial transformations are intensely debated across various fields of social sciences. One prominent concept in these discussions is "common spaces." Common spaces offer a critical theoretical framework, particularly for addressing the social and economic inequalities brought about by urbanization. This study examines the processes of commoning and their impacts through the lens of squatter neighborhoods in Turkey, emphasizing the importance of affordable housing. It focuses on the role and significance of these neighborhoods in the formation of common spaces, analyzing the collective actions and resistance strategies of residents. This process, which began with the construction of shelters to meet the shelter needs of low-income households migrating from rural to urban areas, has turned into low-quality squatter settlements over time. For low-income households lacking the economic power to rent or buy homes in the city, these areas provided an affordable housing solution. Squatter neighborhoods reflect the efforts of local communities to protect and develop their communal living spaces through collective actions and resistance strategies. This collective creation process involves the appropriation of occupied land as a common resource through the rules established by the commons. Organized occupations subdivide these lands, shaped through collective creation processes. For the squatter communities striving for economic and social adaptation, these areas serve as buffer zones for urban integration. In squatter neighborhoods, bonds of friendship, kinship, and compatriotism are strong, playing a significant role in the creation and dissemination of collective knowledge. Squatter areas can be described as common spaces that emerge out of necessity for low-income and marginalized groups. The design and construction of housing in squatter neighborhoods are shaped by the collective participation and skills of the residents. Streets are formed through collective decision-making and labor. Over time, the demands for housing are communicated to local authorities, enhancing the potential for commoning. Common spaces are shaped by collective needs and demands, appropriated, and transformed into potential new spaces. Common spaces are continually redefined and recreated. In this context, affordable housing becomes an essential aspect of these common spaces, providing a foundation for social and economic stability. This study evaluates the processes of commoning and their effects through the lens of squatter neighborhoods in Turkey. Communities living in squatter neighborhoods have managed to create and protect communal living spaces, especially in situations where official authorities have been inadequate. Common spaces are built on values such as solidarity, cooperation, and collective resistance. In urban planning and policy development processes, it is crucial to consider the concept of common spaces. Policies that support the collective efforts and resistance strategies of communities can contribute to more just and sustainable living conditions in urban areas. In this context, the concept of common spaces is considered an important tool in the fight against urban inequalities and in the expression and defense mechanisms of communities. By emphasizing the importance of affordable housing within these spaces, this study highlights the critical role of common spaces in addressing urban social and economic challenges.

Keywords: affordable housing, common space, squating process, turkey

Procedia PDF Downloads 23

Authors: Kimberly Samaha

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In order to attract new types of investors into the emerging Bio-Economy, a new set of metrics and measurement system is needed to better quantify the environmental, social and economic impacts of circular zero-waste design. The Bio-Hub Ecosystem model was developed to address a critical area of concern within the global energy market regarding the use of biomass as a feedstock for power plants. Lack of an economically-viable business model for bioenergy facilities has resulted in the continuation of idled and decommissioned plants. In particular, the forestry-based plants which have been an invaluable outlet for woody biomass surplus, forest health improvement, timber production enhancement, and especially reduction of wildfire risk. This study looked at repurposing existing biomass-energy plants into Circular Zero-Waste Bio-Hub Ecosystems. A Bio-Hub model that first targets a ‘whole-tree’ approach and then looks at the circular economics of co-hosting diverse industries (wood processing, aquaculture, agriculture) in the vicinity of the Biomass Power Plants facilities. It proposes not only models for integration of forestry, aquaculture, and agriculture in cradle-to-cradle linkages of what have typically been linear systems, but the proposal also allows for the early measurement of the circularity and impact of resource use and investment risk mitigation, for these systems. Typically, life cycle analyses measure environmental impacts of different industrial production stages and are not integrated with indicators of material use circularity. This concept paper proposes the further development of a new set of metrics that would illustrate not only the typical life-cycle analysis (LCA), which shows the reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but also the zero-waste circularity measures of mass balance of the full value chain of the raw material and energy content/caloric value. These new measures quantify key impacts in making hyper-efficient use of natural resources and eliminating waste to landfills. The project utilized traditional LCA using the GREET model where the standalone biomass energy plant case was contrasted with the integration of a jet-fuel biorefinery. The methodology was then expanded to include combinations of co-hosts that optimize the life cycle of woody biomass from tree to energy, CO₂, heat and wood ash both from an energy/caloric value and for mass balance to include reuse of waste streams which are typically landfilled. The major findings of both a formal LCA study resulted in the masterplan for the first Bio-Hub to be built in West Enfield, Maine. Bioenergy facilities are currently at a critical juncture where they have an opportunity to be repurposed into efficient, profitable and socially responsible investments, or be idled and scrapped. If proven as a model, the expedited roll-out of these innovative scenarios can set a new standard for circular zero-waste projects that advance the critical transition from the current ‘take-make-dispose’ paradigm inherent in the energy, forestry and food industries to a more sustainable bio-economy paradigm where waste streams become valuable inputs, supporting local and rural communities in simple, sustainable ways.

Keywords: bio-economy, biomass energy, financing, metrics

Procedia PDF Downloads 150

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

Procedia PDF Downloads 37

Authors: F. Iberraken, R. Medjoudj, D. Aissani

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The development of the smart grids concept is built around two separate definitions, namely: The European one oriented towards sustainable development and the American one oriented towards reliability and security of supply. In this paper, we have investigated reliability merits enabling decision-makers to provide a high quality of service. It is based on system behavior using interruptions and failures modeling and forecasting from one hand and on the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICT) to mitigate catastrophic ones such as blackouts from the other hand. It was found that this concept has been adopted by developing and emerging countries in short and medium terms followed by sustainability concept at long term planning. This work has highlighted the reliability merits such as: Benefits, opportunities, costs and risks considered as consistent units of measuring power customer satisfaction. From the decision making point of view, we have used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to achieve customer satisfaction, based on the reliability merits and the contribution of such energy resources. Certainly nowadays, fossil and nuclear ones are dominating energy production but great advances are already made to jump into cleaner ones. It was demonstrated that theses resources are not only environmentally but also economically and socially sustainable. The paper is organized as follows: Section one is devoted to the introduction, where an implicit review of smart grids development is given for the two main concepts (for USA and Europeans countries). The AHP method and the BOCR developments of reliability merits against power customer satisfaction are developed in section two. The benefits where expressed by the high level of availability, maintenance actions applicability and power quality. Opportunities were highlighted by the implementation of ICT in data transfer and processing, the mastering of peak demand control, the decentralization of the production and the power system management in default conditions. Costs were evaluated using cost-benefit analysis, including the investment expenditures in network security, becoming a target to hackers and terrorists, and the profits of operating as decentralized systems, with a reduced energy not supplied, thanks to the availability of storage units issued from renewable resources and to the current power lines (CPL) enabling the power dispatcher to manage optimally the load shedding. For risks, we have razed the adhesion of citizens to contribute financially to the system and to the utility restructuring. What is the degree of their agreement compared to the guarantees proposed by the managers about the information integrity? From technical point of view, have they sufficient information and knowledge to meet a smart home and a smart system? In section three, an application of AHP method is made to achieve power customer satisfaction based on the main energy resources as alternatives, using knowledge issued from a country that has a great advance in energy mutation. Results and discussions are given in section four. It was given us to conclude that the option to a given resource depends on the attitude of the decision maker (prudent, optimistic or pessimistic), and that status quo is neither sustainable nor satisfactory.

Keywords: reliability, AHP, renewable energy resources, smart grids

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Authors: Yuguang Gao, Mingtao Deng

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The integration of independently operating hospitals into a unified healthcare service system has become a strategic imperative in the pursuit of hospitals’ high-quality development. Central to the concept of group governance over such transformation, exemplified by a collaborative medical alliance, is the delineation of shared value, vision, and goals. Given the inherent disparity in capabilities among hospitals within the alliance, particularly in the treatment of different diseases characterized by Disease Related Groups (DRG) in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and resource utilization, this study aims to address the centralized decision-making of intra-hospital patient referral within the medical alliance to enhance the overall production and quality of service provided. We first introduce the notion of production utility, where a higher production utility for a hospital implies better performance in treating patients diagnosed with that specific DRG group of diseases. Then, a Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) framework is established for patient referral among hospitals, where patient flow modeling incorporates a queueing system with fixed capacities for each hospital. The simulation study begins with a two-member alliance. The pivotal strategy examined is a "whether-to-refer" decision triggered when the bed usage rate surpasses a predefined threshold for either hospital. Then, the decision encompasses referring patients to the other hospital based on DRG groups’ production utility differentials as well as bed availability. The objective is to maximize the total production utility of the alliance while minimizing patients’ average length of stay and turnover rate. Thus the parameter under scrutiny is the bed usage rate threshold, influencing the efficacy of the referral strategy. Extending the study to a three-member alliance, which could readily be generalized to multi-member alliances, we maintain the core setup while introducing an additional “which-to-refer" decision that involves referring patients with specific DRG groups to the member hospital according to their respective production utility rankings. The overarching goal remains consistent, for which the bed usage rate threshold is once again a focal point for analysis. For the two-member alliance scenario, our simulation results indicate that the optimal bed usage rate threshold hinges on the discrepancy in the number of beds between member hospitals, the distribution of DRG groups among incoming patients, and variations in production utilities across hospitals. Transitioning to the three-member alliance, we observe similar dependencies on these parameters. Additionally, it becomes evident that an imbalanced distribution of DRG diagnoses and further disparity in production utilities among member hospitals may lead to an increase in the turnover rate. In general, it was found that the intra-hospital referral mechanism enhances the overall production utility of the medical alliance compared to individual hospitals without partnership. Patients’ average length of stay is also reduced, showcasing the positive impact of the collaborative approach. However, the turnover rate exhibits variability based on parameter setups, particularly when patients are redirected within the alliance. In conclusion, the re-structuring of diagnostic disease groups within the medical alliance proves instrumental in improving overall healthcare service outcomes, providing a compelling rationale for the government's promotion of patient referrals within collaborative medical alliances.

Keywords: collaborative medical alliance, disease related group, patient referral, simulation

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Authors: Joanna Marie A. Paulino-Morente, Vaneza Valentina L. Penolio, Grace Sabado

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Ovarian cancer is extremely hard to diagnose in its early stages, and those afflicted at the time of diagnosis are typically asymptomatic and in the late stages of the disease, with metastasis to other organs. Ovarian cancers often occur sporadically, with only 5% associated with hereditary mutations. Mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 tumor suppressor genes have been found to be responsible for the majority of hereditary ovarian cancers. One type of ovarian tumor is Malignant Mixed Mullerian Tumor (MMMT), which is a very rare and aggressive type, accounting for only 1% of all ovarian cancers. Reported is a case of a 43-year-old G3P3 (3003), who came into our institution due to a 2-month history of difficulty of breathing. Family history reveals that her eldest and younger sisters both died of ovarian malignancy, with her younger sister having a histopathology report of endometrioid ovarian carcinoma, left ovary stage IIIb. She still has 2 asymptomatic sisters. Physical examination pointed to pleural effusion of right lung, and presence of bilateral ovarian new growth, which had a Sassone score of 13. Admitting Diagnosis was G3P3 (3003), Ovarian New Growth, bilateral, Malignant; Pleural effusion secondary to malignancy. BRCA was requested to establish a hereditary mutation; however, the patient had no funds. Once the patient was stabilized, TAHBSO with surgical staging was performed. Intraoperatively, the pelvic cavity was occupied by firm, irregularly shaped ovaries, with a colorectal metastasis. Microscopic sections from both ovaries and the colorectal metastasis had pleomorphic tumor cells lined by cuboidal to columnar epithelium exhibiting glandular complexity, displaying nuclear atypia and increased nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio, which are infiltrating the stroma, consistent with the features of Malignant Mixed Mullerian Tumor, since MMMT is composed histologically of malignant epithelial and sarcomatous elements. In conclusion, discussed is the clinic-pathological feature of a patient with primary ovarian Malignant Mixed Mullerian Tumor, a rare malignancy comprising only 1% of all ovarian neoplasms. Also, by understanding the hereditary ovarian cancer syndromes and its relation to this patient, it cannot be overemphasized that a comprehensive family history is really fundamental for early diagnosis. The familial association of the disease, given that the patient has two sisters who were diagnosed with an advanced stage of ovarian cancer and succumbed to the disease at a much earlier age than what is reported in the general population, points to a possible hereditary syndrome which occurs in only 5% of ovarian neoplasms. In a low-resource setting, being in a third world country, the following will be recommended for monitoring and/or screening women who are at high risk for developing ovarian cancer, such as the remaining sisters of the patient: 1) Physical examination focusing on the breast, abdomen, and rectal area every 6 months. 2) Transvaginal sonography every 6 months. 3) Mammography annually. 4) CA125 for postmenopausal women. 5) Genetic testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 will be reserved for those who are financially capable.

Keywords: BRCA, hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome, malignant mixed mullerian tumor, ovarian cancer

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Authors: Suikinai Nobre Santos, Ranko Gacesa, Paul F. Long, Itamar Soares de Melo

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Extremophilic microorganism are adapted to biotopes combining several stress factors (temperature, pressure, radiation, salinity and pH), which indicate the richness valuable resource for the exploitation of novel biotechnological processes and constitute unique models for investigations their biomolecules (1, 2). The above information encourages us investigate bioprospecting synthesized compounds by a noval actinomycete, designated thermotolerant Streptomyces caatingaensis CMAA 1322, isolated from sample soil tropical dry forest (Caatinga) in the Brazilian semiarid region (3-17°S and 35-45°W). This set of constrating physical and climatic factores provide the unique conditions and a diversity of well adapted species, interesting site for biotechnological purposes. Preliminary studies have shown the great potential in the production of cytotoxic, pesticidal and antimicrobial molecules (3). Thus, to extend knowledge of the genes clusters responsible for producing biosynthetic pathways of natural products in strain CMAA1322, whole-genome shotgun (WGS) DNA sequencing was performed using paired-end long sequencing with PacBio RS (Pacific Biosciences). Genomic DNA was extracted from a pure culture grown overnight on LB medium using the PureLink genomic DNA kit (Life Technologies). An approximately 3- to 20-kb-insert PacBio library was constructed and sequenced on an 8 single-molecule real-time (SMRT) cell, yielding 116,269 reads (average length, 7,446 bp), which were allocated into 18 contigs, with 142.11x coverage and N50 value of 20.548 bp (BioProject number PRJNA288757). The assembled data were analyzed by Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology (RAST) (4) the genome size was found to be 7.055.077 bp, comprising 6167 open reading frames (ORFs) and 413 subsystems. The G+C content was estimated to be 72 mol%. The closest-neighbors tool, available in RAST through functional comparison of the genome, revealed that strain CMAA1322 is more closely related to Streptomyces hygroscopicus ATCC 53653 (similarity score value, 537), S. violaceusniger Tu 4113 (score value, 483), S. avermitilis MA-4680 (score value, 475), S. albus J1074 (score value, 447). The Streptomyces sp. CMAA1322 genome contains 98 tRNA genes and 135 genes copies related to stress response, mainly osmotic stress (14), heat shock (16), oxidative stress (49). Functional annotation by antiSMASH version 3.0 (5) identified 41 clusters for secondary metabolites (including two clusters for lanthipeptides, ten clusters for nonribosomal peptide synthetases [NRPS], three clusters for siderophores, fourteen for polyketide synthetase [PKS], six clusters encoding a terpene, two clusters encoding a bacteriocin, and one cluster encoding a phenazine). Our work provide in comparative analyse of genome and extract produced (data no published) by lineage CMAA1322, revealing the potential of microorganisms accessed from extreme environments as Caatinga” to produce a wide range of biotechnological relevant compounds.

Keywords: caatinga, streptomyces, environmental stresses, biosynthetic pathways

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Authors: Muhammad Alhada Fuadilah Habib, Ayla Karina Budita, Cut Rizka Al Usrah, Mukhammad Fatkhullah, Kanita Khoirun Nisa, Siti Muslihatul Mukaromah

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In this contemporary era, the term of development often emphasised merely on the economic growth aspect. Development of a program often considered as superior by the government, in fact, it often raises various problems. The problems occur because the development policies determined by the government tend to favor private entrepreneurs and impose on the oppression toward the community. The development promised to prosper the community's life, turn out in fact of harming the community, threatening the survival of the community and damaging the ecosystem of nature where the community hangs their life to it. Nowadays many natural resources should be used for the community’s life prosperity. However, the prosperity is conquered by the private entrepreneurs that are regulated through the free market mechanism and wrapped in democratization. This condition actually is a form of neoliberalism that builds new administration order system which is far from the meaning of the word democracy. The government should play more role in protecting community's life and prosperity, but in fact, the government sides with the private entrepreneurs for the sake of the economic benefits regardless of other aspects of the community’s life. This unjustified condition presents a wide range of social movements from the community in response to the neoliberalis policy that actually eliminates the doctrine of community sovereignty. Social movements performed by Yogyakarta south coastal area community, as the focus of the discussion in this paper, is one of the community’s response toward the government policies related to the construction of the ferruginous sand quarry which is tend to favor on private entrepreneurs and highly prejudicing or even threatening the survival of Yogyakarta south coastal area community. The data collection in this study uses qualitative research methods with in-depth interview data collection techniques and purposive informant determination techniques. This method was chosen in order to obtain the insightful data and detailed information to uncover the injustice policies committed by the government-private entrepreneurs toward Yogyakarta south coastal area community. The brief results of this study show that the conflicts between the community and government-private entrepreneurs occurred because of the differences of interests and paradigm of natural resource management. The resistance movements done by the community to fight back the government-private entrepreneurs was conducted by forming an organization called Paguyupan Petani Lahan Pantai Kulon Progo (PPLP-KP). This organization do the resistances through two ways; firstly, quiet action done through various actions such as; refusing against the socialization, performing discussion to deliberate their argument with the government-private entrepreneurs, complaining the problems to the central government, creating banners or billboards which contain the writing of rejection, performing pray rituals to invoke the justice from the God, as well as instill the resistance ideology to their young generation. Secondly, the rough action also is done through various actions such as; doing roadblocks, conducting rallies, as well as doing clash with the government apparatus. In case the resistances done by the community are seen from the pattern. Actually, the resistances are reaction toward the aggression carried out by the government-private entrepreneurs.

Keywords: community resistance, conflict, ferruginous sand quarry construction, social movement

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Authors: Nada Poropat Jeletic, Gordana Hrzica

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Bilingual conversational corpora represent a meaningful and the most comprehensive data source for investigating the genuine contact phenomena in non-monitored bi-lingual speech productions. They can be particularly useful for bilingual research since some features of bilingual interaction can hardly be accessed with more traditional methodologies (e.g., elicitation tasks). The method of language sampling provides the resources for describing language interaction in a bilingual community and/or in bilingual situations (e.g. code-switching, amount of languages used, number of languages used, etc.). To capture these phenomena in genuine communication situations, such sampling should be as close as possible to spontaneous communication. Bilingual spoken corpus design is methodologically demanding. Therefore this paper aims at describing the methodological challenges that apply to the corpus design of the conversational corpus design of the Istrian Istrovenetian-Croatian Bilingual Corpus. Croatian is the first official language of the Croatian-Italian officially bilingual Istria County, while Istrovenetian is a diatopic subvariety of Venetian, a longlasting lingua franca in the Istrian peninsula, the mother tongue of the members of the Italian National Community in Istria and the primary code of informal everyday communication among the Istrian Italophone population. Within the CLARIN infrastructure, TalkBank is being used, as it provides relevant procedures for designing and analyzing bilingual corpora. Furthermore, it allows public availability allows for easy replication of studies and cumulative progress as a research community builds up around the corpus, while the tools developed within the field of corpus linguistics enable easy retrieval and analysis of information. The method of language sampling employed is kept at the level of spontaneous communication, in order to maximise the naturalness of the collected conversational data. All speakers have provided written informed consent in which they agree to be recorded at a random point within the period of one month after signing the consent. Participants are administered a background questionnaire providing information about the socioeconomic status and the exposure and language usage in the participants social networks. Recording data are being transcribed, phonologically adapted within a standard-sized orthographic form, coded and segmented (speech streams are being segmented into communication units based on syntactic criteria) and are being marked following the CHAT transcription system and its associated CLAN suite of programmes within the TalkBank toolkit. The corpus consists of transcribed sound recordings of 36 bilingual speakers, while the target is to publish the whole corpus by the end of 2020, by sampling spontaneous conversations among approximately 100 speakers from all the bilingual areas of Istria for ensuring representativeness (the participants are being recruited across three generations of native bilingual speakers in all the bilingual areas of the peninsula). Conversational corpora are still rare in TalkBank, so the Corpus will contribute to BilingBank as a highly relevant and scientifically reliable resource for an internationally established and active research community. The impact of the research of communities with societal bilingualism will contribute to the growing body of research on bilingualism and multilingualism, especially regarding topics of language dominance, language attrition and loss, interference and code-switching etc.

Keywords: conversational corpora, bilingual corpora, code-switching, language sampling, corpus design methodology

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Authors: Bianca Peterson, Tomasz J. Sańko, Carlos C. Bezuidenhout, Johnnie Van Den Berg

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Busseola fusca (Fuller) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), the maize stem borer, is a major pest in sub-Saharan Africa. It causes economic damage to maize and sorghum crops and has evolved non-recessive resistance to genetically modified (GM) maize expressing the Cry1Ab insecticidal toxin. Since B. fusca is a non-model organism, very little genomic information is publicly available, and is limited to some cytochrome c oxidase I, cytochrome b, and microsatellite data. The biology of B. fusca is well-described, but still poorly understood. This, in combination with its larval-specific behavior, may pose problems for limiting the spread of current resistant B. fusca populations or preventing resistance evolution in other susceptible populations. As part of on-going research into resistance evolution, B. fusca larvae were collected from Bt and non-Bt maize in South Africa, followed by RNA isolation (15 specimens) and sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. Quality of reads was assessed with FastQC, after which Trimmomatic was used to trim adapters and remove low quality, short reads. Trinity was used for the de novo assembly, whereas TransRate was used for assembly quality assessment. Transcript identification employed BLAST (BLASTn, BLASTp, and tBLASTx comparisons), for which two libraries (nucleotide and protein) were created from 3.27 million lepidopteran sequences. Several transcripts that have previously been implicated in Cry toxin resistance was identified for B. fusca. These included aminopeptidase N, cadherin, alkaline phosphatase, ATP-binding cassette transporter proteins, and mitogen-activated protein kinase. MEGA7 was used to align these transcripts to reference sequences from Lepidoptera to detect mutations that might potentially be contributing to Cry toxin resistance in this pest. RSEM and Bioconductor were used to perform differential gene expression analysis on groups of B. fusca larvae challenged and unchallenged with the Cry1Ab toxin. Pairwise expression comparisons of transcripts that were at least 16-fold expressed at a false-discovery corrected statistical significance (p) ≤ 0.001 were extracted and visualized in a hierarchically clustered heatmap using R. A total of 329,194 transcripts with an N50 of 1,019 bp were generated from the over 167.5 million high-quality paired-end reads. Furthermore, 110 transcripts were over 10 kbp long, of which the largest one was 29,395 bp. BLAST comparisons resulted in identification of 157,099 (47.72%) transcripts, among which only 3,718 (2.37%) were identified as Cry toxin receptors from lepidopteran insects. According to transcript expression profiles, transcripts were grouped into three subclusters according to the similarity of their expression patterns. Several immune-related transcripts (pathogen recognition receptors, antimicrobial peptides, and inhibitors) were up-regulated in the larvae feeding on Bt maize, indicating an enhanced immune status in response to toxin exposure. Above all, extremely up-regulated arylphorin genes suggest that enhanced epithelial healing is one of the resistance mechanisms employed by B. fusca larvae against the Cry1Ab toxin. This study is the first to provide a resource base and some insights into a potential mechanism of Cry1Ab toxin resistance in B. fusca. Transcriptomic data generated in this study allows identification of genes that can be targeted by biotechnological improvements of GM crops.

Keywords: epithelial healing, Lepidoptera, resistance, transcriptome

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